COLLECTIVE MADNESS



Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Following the results of 2016, 277 Ukrainian agricultural enterprises have been working on the European market, while their number was 238 in 2015, Ukrainian Agrarian Policy and Food Minister Taras Kutovyi has said writing in his blog on latifundist.com.

Currently, 277 Ukrainian enterprises have already been licensed to export their products to the European market. By comparison, there were 238 such enterprises back in 2015, Kutovyi noted.

In addition, Ukraine and the European Union agreed to increase the quotas for Ukrainian agricultural producers.

In terms of cooperation with Western partners, I would like to note that the European Union agreed to increase the quotas for Ukrainian agricultural producers. In particular, this refers to corn, wheat, honey, cereals, processed tomatoes (totaling $196 million), Kutovyi wrote.

According to him, foreign markets are expected to expand for Ukrainian agricultural producers thanks to an increase in organic food production output.

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine supported another important draft bill on the main principles and requirements for organic food production, turnover and labeling. Currently, the draft bill has been submitted for the approval of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, and we hope for an immediate result. Adopting this bill will make Ukrainian organic food products more competitive and expand foreign sales markets for them, Kutovyi stated.

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Ukraines Foreign Ministry voices protest against Russias repressions, illegal detentions, tortures, searches and arrests of Ukrainians and demands their immediate release
President-elect Donald Trump says wireless carrier Sprint Corp will bring 5,000 jobs back to the United States and OneWeb, a new company, will be hiring 3,000 people. (Video: The Washington Post)

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President-elect Donald Trump provided new details Wednesday of his agreement with Softbank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son to generate thousands of jobs in the United States, part of a string of unusually direct negotiations between Trump and corporate America. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump said telecom giant Sprint, which is owned by Tokyo-based Softbank, would take 5,000 jobs from other countries and move them to the United States. But Sprint said the effort is more complex, and nearly all of its roughly 30,000 employees already work here.

Spokesman David Tovar said the company had outsourced many of its customer service positions to third-party vendors with operations outside of the country. Sprint will request that those jobs be brought back to the country. In addition, it will hire new salespeople to staff its stores. It expects to complete the changes by the end of its 2017 fiscal year.

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Sprint Chief Executive Marcelo Claure told Trump of the company's plans in a phone call Wednesday.

We believe it is critical for business and government to partner together to create more job opportunities in the U.S. and ensure prosperity for all Americans, Sprint Chief Executive Marcelo Claure said.

In addition, Trump touted plans by Virginia-based startup OneWeb to create 3,000 jobs. Last week, OneWeb announced it had received $1 billion in financing from Softbank. The satellite company is building a new factory in Florida and expects to generate high-skilled manufacturing and engineering jobs across the country over the next four years.

On Wednesday, Trump said bringing jobs back to the United States was a nice change and credited Son for the agreement. He also defended the announcement of the deal.

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"Because of me they are doing 5,000 jobs in this country," Trump said.

Son met with Trump in New York earlier this month at the president-elects transition team headquarters at Trump Tower. At that time, Son announced plans to invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 new jobs -- moves that Trump said were spurred by his upset presidential victory.

OneWeb founder Greg Wyler said in an interview that he had been discussing potential funding with Softbank for several months. But after meeting with Trump, Son increased the size of the investment in OneWeb and the number of new hires, Wyler said. OneWeb aims to manufacture enough satellites at its new Florida facility to provide broadband access to every school in the world by 2022.

I dont think the quantum and the drive would have happened at this level otherwise, Wyler said.

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Sprint said Wednesday that its 5,000 jobs were part of Sons pledge but that the positions are being funded by Sprint, not Softbank.

In addition to its investment in OneWeb, Softbank announced in October that it had contributed $25 billion to an international fund to invest global technology companies over the next five years. The SoftBank Vision Fund also included capital from Saudi Arabia and outside investors.

Trumps direct involvement in negotiating deals with individual companies has generated controversy over the role the president should play in shaping the economy. Trump enjoyed plenty of fanfare when he announced a deal to prevent a factory in Indiana from moving to Mexico but came under fire when he overestimated the number of jobs that would be saved. Trump publicly criticized Boeing for the high pricetag on Air Force One, forcing the companys chief executive to promise last week to keep the cost down.

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Conservative economists questioned Trumps tactics, arguing that such efforts by the White House distort free markets. Democrats have cautioned that the deals could amount to corporate subsidies if they are accompanied by tax breaks or other preferential treatment.

Son has been seeking to acquire rival carrier T-Mobile in what would be one of the largest telecom mergers in history. However, he abandoned the effort in 2014 after pushback from the Federal Communications Commission, which raised antitrust concerns.

Its very important that at the outset of a new administration that legal doctrines that have been established for more than 100 years not be compromised with a desire to focus on opportunities for new jobs, said Gene Kimmelman, a former Justice Department official who now leads the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. Theyre two separate issues, and they really should be kept that way.

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Civilians fleeing fighting between the Syrian Democratic Forces and Islamic State militants in the countryside of Syrias Raqqa province wait at a screening center in Ain Issa. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

Raqqa we are coming say the words spray-painted in Kurdish at the entrance to this empty little town, which lies on the front line of a U.S.-backed advance toward the Islamic States capital.

The city of Raqqa is 17 miles away, a tantalizingly short hop to the place showcased in the militants propaganda videos as an Islamist utopia, where the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels were planned and where, U.S. officials warn, new plots against the West are being forged.

But a full offensive to retake the city could still be months or more away, despite hopes in Washington that an operation to take the Islamic States most symbolically significant stronghold would be well underway before President Obama left office.

A rare visit to the Raqqa front line illustrated how near and yet so far the defeat of the Islamic State remains. The battle for Mosul in neighboring Iraq has stalled, the attack in Berlin has brought home the continued threat of terrorism, and there is still no plan for an offensive on Raqqa, making the war one of the most immediate, and complicated, challenges the Trump administration will have to confront.

Meanwhile, a preliminary operation to isolate and besiege Raqqa is going well. Over the past month, a Kurdish-Arab alliance called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has been slicing briskly through Islamic State lines in the northern and western countryside of Raqqa province. The fighters have captured some 140 villages and nearly 800 square miles of mostly empty rural land on two fronts in just over a month, encountering little resistance along the way.



Graffiti in Tal Saman, Syria, reads YPG and Raqqa we are coming. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

This is not the battle for Mosul, where large armored formations are converging from different directions. There are more sheep than soldiers scattered across the empty fields. Flocks trot through the landscape herded by boys on donkeys as the lightly armored pickup trucks and SUVs used by the Kurdish and Arab militias weave among them.

Every now and then, American soldiers hurtle past, a reminder that the U.S. military is very much invested in the Raqqa front, however remote it may be. There are around 600 Special Operations troops embedded with the SDF in northeastern Syria, a number that could rise before the battle fully takes shape, U.S. officials say. One of those troops was killed on Nov. 24, the first U.S. casualty of the war in Syria.

He died in Tal Saman, a victim of one of the mines and booby traps that have become the Islamic States hallmark defense against advancing foes in Iraq and Syria.

Otherwise, the militants have put up little resistance, firing mortars as the soldiers advance but retreating well before their enemies arrive.

Bigger obstacles loom, however, in the form of a geopolitical tangle that could prove more daunting than any defenses mounted by the Islamic State.



A building in Hisha, recently recaptured from Islamic State control, serves as a military base for fighters with the Syrian Democratic Forces. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

At the heart of the issue is the U.S. militarys policy of sending arms to the area controlled by the main Syrian Kurdish militia, the Peoples Protection Units, widely known as the YPG.

The decision has paid off so far. The YPG  which constitutes the Kurdish component of the SDF  has proved to be the United States most effective military ally in Syria, and it has retaken vast swaths of territory. It is also expanding deep into Arab areas as it presses forward against the militants, raising questions among observers about the long-term sustainability of the gains.

The cooperation has, moreover, provoked the ire of Turkey, because of the YPGs long-standing ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara and Washington. Turkey is waging its own offensive against the Islamic State in nearby Aleppo province but has hinted it may soon turn on the SDF alliance and perhaps then make its own push for the Islamic State capital.

The Syrian government also opposes the Kurdish expansion and has repeatedly said it plans to retake Raqqa, which it lost control of in 2013. Syria is backed by Russia, which is forging a new alliance with Turkey over Syria, potentially setting the stage for a global clash over who wins the prize goal.

To ameliorate the concerns of NATO ally Turkey, the U.S. military says it is giving arms only to Arab fighters within the umbrella SDF, formed last year to serve as a vehicle for the delivery of military aid. There are 13,000 Arabs now serving with the SDF, alongside 45,000 Kurds with the YPG, according to a U.S. military spokesman, Col. John Dorrian.

Rojda Felat, a YPG commander, speaks on the radio at the entrance of Tal Saman shortly after the village was captured. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

But there seems to be little doubt that the YPG is leading the fight. Its flags flutter over the checkpoints along the newly liberated rural roads and at the military bases closest to the front lines. Its graffiti is scrawled over the walls of the captured towns and villages, as in Tal Saman, where the initials YPG were written alongside the pledge to take Raqqa.

The Kurdish-Arab alliance, with U.S. assistance, plans to recruit and train an additional 10,000 Arab fighters for an offensive on Raqqa, said Rojda Felat, one of the commanders of the offensive to encircle the city. But YPG participation will be essential because we have proved that we are the most effective fighters, she said.

We will even go past Raqqa, she added, to other areas farther south controlled by the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh.

Whether it is wise to send an overwhelmingly Kurdish force to capture the overwhelmingly Arab city of Raqqa is in question, however. A Kurdish push on Raqqa risks alienating the local population, perhaps encouraging residents who otherwise would not support the Islamic State to fight on its behalf, according to Abu Issa, a commander with the rebel Free Syrian Armys Liwa Thuwar al-Raqqa, or Raqqa Revolutionaries Brigade.

We saw in Iraq and other places that if the local people are not involved in the liberation, there wont be any stability, he said in an interview at his headquarters, in a remote farmhouse in the countryside of Raqqa province. He and his group are from Raqqa, and though they are loosely allied with the SDF, they fly the flag of the Free Syrian Army.

All the Arabs know that the SDF are YPG, and if things continue as they are, there will be big problems in the future, sectarian clashes and conflict, Abu Issa said. People dont understand why the YPG are going to Raqqa. Its an entirely Arab area, and the Arabs feel marginalized.





Arab residents of the areas recently freed from Islamic State control seem mostly just relieved to be rid of the extremists  and to have survived yet another battle, one that has so far proved mercifully brief. The fight has been so easy that there have been few casualties and relatively little damage to the isolated villages dotting the desert landscape.

The YPG fighters conduct what appear to be well-organized evacuations of the villages that lie in the path of the offensive. As people from areas close to the front lines leave, those from villages that have been cleared are allowed to return.

On one recent day, hundreds of people streamed into the destroyed Arab town of Ain Issa from villages well behind Islamic State lines, in trucks piled high with children, mattresses and sheep. They had responded, they said, to messages sent by the Kurds to vacate their homes before the battles arrived. They said they were glad to seize the chance to escape the seemingly collapsing rule of the Islamic State fighters fleeing in the other direction.

They used to take people with them to use as human shields, but now they are not even doing this, said Saleh Hassan, one of the men who said he had escaped his home through minefields to reach the Kurdish lines. People were with them before, but now even their fighters are trying to defect.

Ahmed Naim, 23, said he had covertly sold cigarettes and had many run-ins with the militants, who banned smoking. Their days are numbered, he said. Daesh is finished, and the majority of the people are happy.

It is hard to tell how happy people really are when armed guards are standing nearby. As the villagers who escaped areas behind the Islamic State lines arrived in Ain Issa, others were returning to their homes in the village of Hisha, which was freed last month after a brief battle.



Families who have fled the fighting wait at the screening center in Ain Issa. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

At the local barbershop, a line of long-haired customers waited on wobbly plastic chairs for haircuts that were forbidden under Islamic State rule. Nobody wants ISIS, Mouay ad Khalaf said as he snipped the curly locks of a teenage boy.

But some men, when stopped in the street and asked what they thought of the change of authority, seemed less thrilled.

They havent caused us any problems, one man said vaguely. He didnt want to be named.

Its okay, said another who didnt seem sure. Were cooperating with them.

U.S. officials acknowledge the concerns about sending Kurds into battle in Raqqa but say that at the moment there is no alternative. The only force that is capable on any near-term timeline is the Syrian Democratic Forces, of which the YPG are a significant portion, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend told reporters last month.

Turkey has, meanwhile, been waging a rival offensive against the Islamic State farther west, in the province of Aleppo, where Turkish troops are backing Syrian Arab rebels with the Free Syrian Army, with the support of the United States. Though the focus of the fighting is on the Islamic State, Turkey has threatened to attack the SDF, potentially drawing troops and resources away from the Raqqa battle.

So complicated are the politics that there is still no plan for a Raqqa offensive, said Nasir Haj Mansour, a veteran Kurdish fighter who is now an adviser to the SDF. Unfortunately, yes, he said when asked whether he thought the Islamic State would still be in control of Raqqa in six months time.

And in a year?

Probably, yes.



A shepherd passes by a roadside sign pointing to Raqqa, the Islamic States capital in Syria. (Alice Martins/For The Washington Post)

ISIS: A catastrophe for Sunnis

Endgame in Aleppo, the most decisive battle yet in Syrias war

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
As 2016, this year of upheavals, draws to a close, Waves of anger and fear/ Circulate over the bright/ And darkened lands of the earth,/ Obsessing our private lives (W.H. Auden). For many people, even this season of Christmas and New Years lacks some of its usual joy and sparkle. What better time, then, for a collection titled Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned?

"Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned: Enchanted Stories from the French Decadent Tradition," edited by Gretchen Schultz and Lewis Seifert (Princeton Univ.)

First published during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these Enchanted Stories From the French Decadent Tradition  note that word decadent  arent intended for children. As editors Gretchen Schultz and Lewis Seifert point out in this new volume, fairy tales have always reveled in irony, denouements that strayed from traditional morality, and ambiguous messages. After all, many of our most beloved nursery favorites  Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood  were initially written by 18th-century French sophisticates for other 18th-century French sophisticates.

[Michael Dirdas holiday book picks]

A century later, Parisian aesthetes and decadents began to repurpose these same contes de fees to comment on society, politics and sexual conventions. In Catulle Mendess Isolina/Isolin the bad-tempered fairy Urganda, who had not been invited to the christening of Princess Isolina, pronounces this terrible curse: As soon as she marries, on her wedding night, she will cease to be a girl and turn into a boy. While Urgandas curse cannot be undone, her sister Urgele shrewdly undercuts it: On the wedding night, the princess does become a boy, but her handsome new husband is simultaneously transformed into a blushing bride. Renee Viviens Prince Charming takes this sexual inversion one step further: Two mutually infatuated young people wed, and the prince turns out to be a woman in disguise. Nonetheless, the couple live happily ever after. Even more daringly, Claude Cahuns Cinderella, the Humble and Haughty Child ventures into S&M, as we learn of the princes shoe fetish and Cinderellas masochistic desire for humiliation.

Its clear, then, that the postmodernist fairy tale as practiced by Donald Barthleme, Anne Sexton, Angela Carter, Tanith Lee or A.S. Byatt has actually been around since before modernism itself. In these fin-de-siecle pages, Sleeping Beauty much prefers dreaming to real life; little Liette, retelling the gospel account of the Nativity, includes Bluebeards wife and Puss-in-Bootss Marquis of Carabas among the adoring angels, Wise Men and shepherds; and in the collections title story, Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned, Willy  the great writer Colettes first husband  reveals that Red Riding Hood actually incited the starving wolf to gobble up her grandmother and then turned the poor fellow into the police.

A similar topsy-turviness characterizes Pierre Vebers The Last Fairy, in which the protagonist and a genie visit Paris, planning to awe its citizens with their magical powers, only to discover a city of wonders much greater than their own. Lights go on by themselves, people fly in clouds, and carts operate without horses. As the genie says: The people of this country live in a state of enchantment. We wouldnt be able to surprise them. The two friends return, brokenhearted, to the dark, impenetrable forests of Thuringia.

[The man who brought humanist values  and Civilisation  to a mass market]

Several of these stories are even more deeply elegiac, stressing that industrial civilization has killed off the fairies or at least humankinds belief in them. In Alphonse Daudets The Fairies of France, the aged Melusina testifies that she and her sisters were forced to take jobs in factories or sell apples on the street until, one by one, they all died in the poorhouse. Still, arent laments over the disenchantment of the world implicit pleas for re-enchantment, if only through the magic of poetry and art? When  in Mendess The Lucky Find  Love and Beauty visit a lost-and-found office in search of the respect and adoration that the human race once vowed to us, the pair finally settle instead for illusions, which at least make us believe all the lies, make us see stars when the sky is dark and roses in the middle of winter.

In these deliberately tarnished tales, such wondrousness mainly shines through in their often beautiful imagery. One princesss father ordered that she be put in the highest room of a very tall tower, a tower so tall it rose beyond the clouds, so tall the swifts did not nest in it because their wings tired before they could reach the top. In another story, we learn about strange mountain plants whose names were known only to shepherds. And in still another, a kings daughter is said to be as blond as lily pollen and the slightly gilded silver of ancient altar vases.

My two favorite stories in Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned are both by the urbane and skeptical Anatole France. In The Seven Wives of Bluebeard, France wittily exonerates that infamous serial killer, explaining that recently discovered documents go far to proving that a truly kindhearted man was regularly betrayed by faithless women and eventually murdered by one of them. Even better is The Story of the Duchess of Cicogne and of Monsieur de Boulingrin, which retells Sleeping Beauty from a rationalist perspective. Fearing for their newborn daughter, the royal parents summon the kingdoms most learned advisers. First, the queen asks her doctor, Monsieur Gerberoy, can one really sleep for a hundred years? Then the king probes the science behind the curse, Monsieur Gastinel, can the point of a spindle cause a wound that will send one to sleep for a hundred years? Monsieur Gastinel waffles in his reply: Sire, it is not probable, but in the domain of pathology, we can never say with certainty, This will or will not happen. 

In the domain of decadent French fairy tales, however, we can safely say that just about anything can happen  and usually does.

Michael Dirda reviews books on Thursday in Style.


The Columbia Room returned with a menu of seasonal cocktails and more ways to enjoy the work of mixologists Derek Brown and J.P. Fetherston. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)

It seemed like a new bar opened every other week in 2016, but these were the most memorable.

Archipelago

The tiki bar makes a trip to U Street feel like a vacation. In addition to serving the Districts best Mai Tai and on-point pina coladas, Archipelago is home to the citys only public shrine to Tom Selleck. 1201 U St. NW.

The Columbia Room

The expanded Columbia Room offers a gorgeous sanctuary for savoring some of the countrys most sophisticated cocktails, but this Blagden Alley hot spot is more than just a pretty prix-fixe menu. The Spirits Library is a comfortable lounge with a rotating menu, and the Punch Garden is a welcome place to sit outside with a cool drink. 124 Blagden Alley NW.

[The most exciting restaurant and bar openings planned for 2017]

Kingfisher

One of the least fussy bars to open in D.C. this year, Kingfisher is in a basement under Sav-On Liquors at 14th and P streets NW. The beers (around 16), ciders and wines all come in cans, and the menu lists a variety of beer-and-a-shot combos, from basic to gourmand. The televisions screen old Kung-Fu flicks and B-movies, while bartenders hand out free baskets of fresh popcorn. Simple, yet awesome. 1414 14th St. NW.



Anxo serves a variety of ciders, including some made in-house and others sourced from around the world. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)

Anxo

Washingtons first cider-focused bar offers traditional ciders made in-house with foraged apples and a selection of tasty, funky ciders from around the globe. Coming in 2017: a much bigger production facility in Brightwood Park. 300 Florida Ave. NW.

Left Door

Before the Passenger made its big return in August, owner Tom Brown and his team unveiled a cozy, classy one-room bar just off the heart of the 14th Street strip. The vintage armchairs and window tables are perfect for dates, and the cocktails  a blend of age-old classics and inventive twists  are the reason to drop in, even on a Wednesday. 1345 S St. NW.

[These are our 15 favorite dishes of 2016]

Mason & Rook Hotel

The Hotel Helix renovation brought two new drinking options to Logan Circle. Radiator, the hotels main bar, offers a laid-back place for tropical, tiki-ish cocktails with a Hawaiian influence, and the summer-only rooftop pours poolside Orange Crushes and margaritas with a stellar view. 1430 Rhode Island Ave. NW.



The Passenger reopened in late summer after moving a few blocks north of its previous location. (Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post)

The Passenger

After being closed for almost 20 months, the beloved Passenger reopened in late summer, just a few blocks north of its old Seventh Street digs. Its still the place to go for a chalkboard menu of rotating cocktails, shots of rye whiskey and a Sunday hangover brunch. 1539 Seventh St. NW.

[The restaurants Tom Sietsema loved the most in 2016]

The Sovereign

From the team behind ChurchKey and Bluejacket, the Sovereign is a Belgian-inspired beer bar with 50 taps and hundreds of bottles. Its the perfect place to explore hoppy blonde ales, funky saisons and traditional sour lambics from both sides of the Atlantic. 1206 Wisconsin Ave. NW.

Read more:

- The most exciting restaurant and bar openings planned for 2017

- These are our 15 favorite dishes of 2016

- The restaurants Tom Sietsema loved the most in 2016
RACINE  A Union Grove woman was reported to be in the Racine County Jail Wednesday on a $15,000 bond for allegedly shooting her husband in the abdomen. Phyllis V. Madeja, 41, of the 1400 block of West Street, was formally charged in Racine County Circuit Court on Wednesday with first-degree recklessly endangering safety and first-degree reckless injury in connection with the incident.

Racine County Sheriffs deputies were called to the familys home just after midnight on Tuesday on a report of a woman who shot a man.

When one of the deputies arrived on scene they allegedly found Madeja talking on a cellphone, seeming very upset, crying and breathing heavily, according to the criminal complaint. When the deputy asked Madeja if she had shot her husband, she reportedly said yes.

A 17-year-old boy who was at the apartment with the couples son when the shooting took place reportedly told the deputy he and the son were watching Netflix in the sons room when Madejas husband (who also is the sons father) came into the room. He was allegedly drunk, telling jokes and talking very loudly, the complaint states. Thats when Madeja, who was sleeping in the room across the hall, got up and told the man to leave the boys alone, according to the complaint.

The couple then went into another room and began arguing, the witness reportedly said. The son went into the room to tell his parents to be quiet, the witness said, at which point the witness reportedly saw Madeja and her husband push at each other. When the son again asked the couple to stop fighting, Madeja reportedly told the boys to pack a bag because they were going to a hotel for the night.

As Madeja was trying to walk away from her husband, the witness saw Madejas husband allegedly punch her in the face, the complaint states. It was at that point that Madeja reportedly grabbed two Smith & Wessons: a silver .38 revolver and a silver 9mm semiautomatic handgun.

Her husband then reached for one of the guns, the witness told the deputy. The gun went off and the husband fell to the ground, the complaint stated.

While at Ascension All Saints Hospital in Racine, one of the deputies reportedly heard Madeja say I know that I should not have shot my husband. I feel bad about that.

Racine County Circuit Court John Bjelajac on Wednesday found probable cause to pursue charges against Madeja during an initial court appearance on Wednesday.

She faces up to 22 years in prison if convicted of both charges.


Dynasty stars, from left, Joan Collins, John Forsythe and Linda Evans. On camera, their love triangle had few peers for drama. Off camera, they were fast friends, here posing at a party celebrating 150 episodes of the popular series. (Reed Saxon/AP)

The Posts review of the Dynasty premiere in 1981.

Jan. 12, 1981 A little over a week before Ronald Reagans first inauguration, Americans were introduced to the Carringtons and over the next eight years would follow the schemes, squabbles, secret affairs and amnesia bouts of oil baron Blake Carrington (John Forsythe); his former secretary turned second wife, Krystle (Linda Evans); ex-wife Alexis (Joan Collins); and an assortment of adult children. Post critic Tom Shales sniffed that Dynasty was merely Dallas set in Denver, and called the three-hour premiere unpredictable only in the sense that its hard to foresee in precisely which order the cliches will plop out. But once the prime-time soap breezed past an early plot point about Krystle wanting to hold on to her middle-class roots and fully embraced its shoulder-padded, poofy-haired, sequined-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life inner self, it became a hit. The Carringtons not only looked like the sort of folks who benefited most from the Gippers tax cuts, but also lived the greed is good mantra of that other Reagan-era icon, Gordon Gekko. Like J.R. Ewing, Carrington is a ruthless and calculating robber baron, but were not supposed to despise him, just admire the fact that he gets what he wants, Shales wrote. Its a peculiar strain of anti-heroism. The shows peak was arguably the great Moldavian wedding cliffhanger of 1985, in which terrorists descended upon daughter Amanda Carringtonsnuptials to a prince. (Carnage was limited to a few minor characters.) But ratings later waned, and the show was canceled, ending in May 1989.
Dec. 4 Issue

Active shooters ...  by David Montgomery

I usually only write about or make comments on articles that make me frustrated or angry, but I felt strongly compelled to compliment David Montgomerys article Active Shooters, Active Resistance. As someone who is also a child of Columbine like a source mentioned in his article, I, too, have watched with horror as mass shootings have become seemingly commonplace.

The magazine article did an excellent job of presenting the complex issue of mass shooter preparedness training with empathy, intelligence and a lack of judgment. I was moved to tears by the first-hand accounts of survivors and by the dedication of Cpl. [Joseph] Gregory. They have given so much to ensure that we have the tools to protect ourselves.

Nicole Hester, Olney, Md.

Nov. 27 Issue

Harms Way by debra bruno

The shock devices used to punish children and adults at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Massachusetts are now under review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, with a possible ban in the offing. Regardless of what proponents say are the benefits of this phony therapy, the FDA needs to keep in mind the words of Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak during a June 2010 ABC Nightline interview regarding JRC practices: You cannot balance this. The prohibition of torture is absolute.

Laurie Ahern, president,

Disability Rights International,

Washington, D.C.

The only articles I would be interested in reading on this topic are (1) one announcing the closure of the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center or (2) one announcing that aversive shock punishment is illegal to use on individuals with disabilities.

I have an adult son with autism who has engaged in self-injurious behavior. It was decreased through use of a positive behavioral plan, designed by a competent psychologist and monitored with data collection. Any medication prescribed to him was overseen by a board-certified psychiatrist with expertise in working with autistic individuals.

Under no circumstances would I ever consider aversive shock punishment (dont call it therapy) for my son or any of his peers. You are doing a disservice to individuals with autism and their families by printing an article that [implies] folks with autism can be so dangerous that they must be shocked into compliance.

Lyda Astrove, Rockville, Md.
Dear Miss Manners: I am not a drinker; I do not drink beer, wine or any form of alcohol. Yet I do like to socialize with friends, co-workers and family, and they will always order a drink (but, thankfully, not get drunk).

We are not always in a place where I can just order a cup of coffee, and I really dont like soda either, so I am wondering if there is an adult equivalent of ordering a Shirley Temple, so I can blend in without looking like the one teetotaler in the bunch. Help!

(And just so you know  no, I have never been a drinker. My nondrinking is not a result of any 12-step program. It is just my choice. So, no lectures from me while others imbibe.)

Are you asking Miss Manners for drink recommendations? Or just trying to fend off the Aw, come on lectures?

She finds that many can be fooled by water or juice and a well-placed citrus wedge. She also finds that asking for the virgin version of better-known cocktails is popular shorthand among bartenders.

But surely there must be more to this socializing than discussing what people do or do not drink. So if the request is overheard by the parties you are trying to fool, you need only say, Thats what I prefer.

Dear Miss Manners: I am a retired widower and am planning a dream European vacation. I offered to pay the way for my married son and my married daughter to go with me since they cannot afford it, and I dont want to go alone.

I have not offered to pay for my son-in-law or daughter-in-law; therefore, they will not be going. I think this is acceptable since it is my money and I can invite whomever I wish.

My friend, however, thinks I should pay for them as well or not invite my son and daughter. I am not wealthy, and I cannot afford to pay for five people.

Unfortunately, you lost Miss Manners sympathy when you stated, Its my money and I can invite whomever I wish.

Had you posed the same conflict to your children, the same result might have been achieved, but with better diplomacy: I would love to have everyone on the trip, but unfortunately find myself unable to finance it. Do you think that Hamish and Brenda would want to come, too? And if so, lets see if we can figure out a way garners more sympathy than, Tough luck for them; its my money.

Dear Miss Manners: Whats the best response when youre wished Safe travel or told to Have a good time? I presume Thanks checks the box, but is there something better?

Well, there is Ill miss you terribly and think of you day and night, but not a lot of occasions to use it. At least not without either overexciting or alarming people who only voiced a simple pleasantry.

Therefore, Miss Manners warns you that there are times when it is safer just to check the Thanks box.

New Miss Manners columns are posted Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays on washingtonpost.com/advice. You can send questions to Miss Manners at her website, missmanners.com.


The VIP area of the NPG Music Club Room at Paisley Park, in Chanhassen, Minn.  where Prince held intimate dance parties  features apropos purple sofas. The facility now is a museum, open to the public. (Carlos Gonzalez/Minneapolis Star Tribune)

Its a windy October day, and my friend Liz and I are shivering in line outside Princes 65,000-square-foot recording studio and former residence in Chanhassen, Minn.

Paisley Park is legendary in Minnesota because of the late-night surprise concerts, often free, that the Purple One held here. Lizs friend Tim Alevizos, a 52-year-old partner at a creative agency, remembers nights in the early 90s spent waiting by the loading dock after midnight in the frigid cold for the doors to open. Princes hospitality meant something to Minnesotans. Here, we lived in flyover country, and now we could step up and say were right there on the cutting edge with this guy, Alevizos says.

After Prince died unexpectedly in April at 57, Alevizos pinned his LUVSXY license plate to the propertys chain-link fence as a final goodbye.





Regretfully, I never made it to a Paisley Park concert. But now that it has opened its doors as a museum, I made the 20ish-minute trek from Minneapolis hoping to find that a piece of our hometown legend survived inside the studio and performance space where he lived and worked for nearly 20 years.

From the exterior, the building possesses none of Princes flash. It looks like a white, aluminum warehouse with few windows. Even in death Prince demands utmost privacy from visitors, and his still-loyal and stiff-lipped employees oblige. As we enter, a stern staff member hands us green neoprene pouches. Lock up your cameras and phones, he says.

We had bought tickets online for the $100 VIP expert-guided tour, which at 100 minutes was said to be 30 minutes longer than the $38.50 standard self-guided tour and includes a few more rooms. One fan is wearing a purple dress. Another says she flew in from Detroit just for the day as sort of a Prince pilgrimage. Im not sure who she is talking to, so I just smile at her.

When we enter the lobby, a mural of Princes eyes, which he commissioned over an archway, reminds us that hes always watching, a guide tells us. I almost feel like we should apologize for intruding.

Though he left no will, he did leave detailed instructions on how to turn Paisley Park into a museum, and theres something cultish about being here. Its like he was writing his legacy, Liz says, noting the gold and platinum records on the wall, but to me it feels like he was building a shrine to the artist. Im more interested in who he was as a man.

We pass through the central atrium: Prince designed this space to free minds, says a different guide, this one dressed in a long-sleeved purple shirt. (There are many guides, and they do their best not to collide throughout the tour.) The light streaming in from the pyramid-shaped skylight creates a sense of flying free, as do the billowy painted clouds that appear to float up the baby-blue walls. Princes black Love Symbol, which he infamously used for a time as his stage name, is inlaid into the marble flooring.



Studio A still has much of the same gear  and feel  of the spot where the musician recorded classic albums including Diamonds & Pearls and Batman. (Paisley Park/NPG Records)

But I cant help feeling like an estate-sale shopper as I linger in a small, attached room to look at his clothing. Its so small  he was 5-foot-2  that I would have a hard time fitting one leg into his pants. Next-door in his office, a room preserved as it was, theres a tiny, shiny metallic desk and a glass table with coffee-table books about Egypt. In his editing room, the group stands awkwardly around a purple couch  no sitting on the furniture here  while watching clips from his Musicology tour and trying to spot band members rehearsal blunders as Prince, a notorious perfectionist, had.

We regroup in the atrium. Lets take a moment of silence, says yet another guide. People continue to talk. A moment of silence, she insists, and when our eyes follow hers, we realize that Princes remains are, in fact, in the room with us, in a purple box inside a model of Paisley Park displayed in the center of the atrium. Its jarring knowing that weve gawked in his presence. His doves, Divinity and Majesty, flutter in an ornate white cage on the viewing balcony above. The upstairs, where his private residence was located, is off-limits.



The Under the Cherry Moon/Graffiti Bridge Room is filled with memorabilia from Princes movies and performances. (Carlos Gonzalez/Minneapolis Star Tribune)

We enter Studio A, where Prince in the 1980s pioneered the Minneapolis Sound, a synthesizer-based brand of funk. Oh, he did love his dad! exclaims a teary-eyed fan while spotting a photo on the wall. I used to see Princes dad at the grocery store, volunteers another tour-goer, who lives nearby. We see Princes microphone and keyboards in the control room. His handwritten notes sit on a console. A guide plays an unreleased track and it feels like Prince could walk in at any moment to shoo us out to finish the songs rumored to be stored behind the steel door of his basement vault, for which only he knew the passcode. It has since been drilled open.

The tour moves quickly. We pause in the violet-lit Galaxy Room, designed as a relaxation space, to search for the glowing Love Symbol among the painted planets and stars. Its a little like being in a 70s-style pleasure palace, and I resist the urge to laugh.

Inside Studio B, as part of the VIP experience, Liz and I lean up against a wall to have our photographs taken with Princes guitar and purple piano  which has his lyrics carved into the lid  roped off behind us. (We had to buy a $10 USB flash drive at the front desk to store our photos on.) Afterward, in a surprising human-scale moment, we stop to play a game of Ping-Pong on his table.



The subdued exterior of Paisley Park, a 65,000-square-foot facility, belies the funkiness of what awaits inside. (Paisley Park/NPG Records)

In the Purple Rain room, purple light cascades down one wall while Princes movie clips roll on another. I tear up standing in front of his guitar, jacket and motorcycle as his Purple Rain lyrics transport me back to my middle-school fantasies, and Im not the only one. After marriage, three children and a career, Ive left this part of my life behind, but I relish feeling as if somewhere, deep inside, it still exists.

Perhaps what this tour does best is amp up this kind of nostalgia. Its a sentimental spell thats not broken until later, when we leave the premises at the end of the tour through a white tent where merchandise is sold.

Next the group enters the massive soundstage where Prince held his late-night concerts. The space, which was built to fit an audience of 1,500, feels overly spacious and sad without his caterwauling guitar and sequined, high-heeled-boot shimmy. Small stages display his purple Yamaha piano and a collection of vintage costumes.

Liz and I take a break in the private NPG Music Club, where Prince held intimate dance parties. As after any good pilgrimage, our feet hurt. At last, we are allowed to sit, and we sink into a velvet, purplish sofa. A candle flickers on a cube-shaped glass coffee table as we sit feeling empty. Every room hints at the cultural movement Prince tried to create and Im mad at myself for not making the midnight trek to become part of it. Now its too late to join in.

Patterson is a writer based in Edina, Minn. Her website is unplannedcooking.com.

More from Travel:

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The best jazz clubs in Paris

In the Bay Area, the Grateful Dead will live  and twirl  forever
This weeks best travel bargains around the globe.

Land

The Grand Hyatt New York, in midtown Manhattan, is offering 20 percent off stays of at least four nights through March 31. The Winter Offer also includes a $40 food-and-beverage credit per stay, valid at the hotels restaurant or for room service. Rates start at $159 a night, plus 9 percent tax; standard rate is from $199, Use promo code NYGIFT. Info: 212-883-1234, www.newyork.grand.hyatt.com/en/hotel/home.html.

The Tides Lodge & Villa, on Ushongo Beach in Tanzania, has a sale on its beachfront accommodations. Two adults can rent one of seven beach cottages for $250 a night, down from $400; price includes all meals, soft drinks, beers, house wine and taxes. In addition, the property is discounting its new Mawimbi Villa, a six-bedroom house with a pool and private chef. The nightly price drops from $2,000 to $1,200. Two-night minimum stay required. Book by Feb. 15; stay through Dec. 17, with the exception of July and August. Info: www.thetideslodge.com.

Save 20 percent on the best available rate with the Give Thanks promotion at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Mass. For example, a king room in mid-January starts at $236, including taxes and fees; the usual rate is $296. The hotel will donate $5 per booking to the Greater Boston Food Bank. Stay through Feb. 28; blackout dates apply. Request promo code THANKS16. Info: 800-882-1818, www.charleshotel.com.

Several hundred U.S. ski resorts are participating in Learn to Ski & Snowboard Month in January with discounted deals for beginners. For example, Liberty Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania, about 90 minutes from the District, has a $49 package for skiers age 8 and older. The deal includes an all-day beginner lift ticket, rental equipment and a lesson  a savings of $41. The package with Wednesday-night lodging is $99 per person, plus about $15 in taxes; the room alone starts at $179. Info: 717-642-8282, www.libertymountain

resort.com. For a list of participating resorts: www.learntoskiandsnowboard.org.

Sea

Azamara Club Cruises is offering half-off rates for the second passenger sharing a stateroom with a full-fare paying guest. In addition, book an oceanview cabin or one in a higher category and receive free WiFi. Savings vary. For instance, the nine-night Best of Italy & Crete Voyage departing Nice, France, on June 12 now starts at $4,841 per couple, including taxes. Oceanview staterooms start at $5,591 per couple and include free WiFi. Internet packages typically start at $70. The deal applies to Azamara Journey and Azamara Quest trips from June 12 through 2018. Book by March 31. Info: 877-999-9553, www.azamaraclubcruises.com.

Air

Icelandair is offering sale fares from Washington Dulles to several cities in Europe. Fare to Reykjavik starts at $399 round trip; to Paris, $449; and to London, Frankfurt, Munich or Glasgow, Scotland, $499. Taxes included. By comparison, other airlines charge from $690 for flights to Paris. Travel Jan. 15-May 15. Book by Monday at www.icelandair.us/special-offer.

Package

Save $290 per person on a trip to Greece with Gate 1 Travel. The Mykonos, Santorini & Athens Tour starts at $1,499 per person double for the April 23 and Oct. 8 departures. Price includes round-trip air from New York to Athens; flight from Santorini to Athens; nine nights lodging in Athens, Mykonos and Santorini; ferry from Athens to Mykonos; daily breakfast; airport transfers; and taxes. Book by Monday. Use promo code WPMSA290. Info: 800-682-3333, www.gate1travel.com.

 Carol Sottili, Andrea Sachs

Prices were verified at press time Thursday, but deals sell out and availability is not guaranteed. Some restrictions may apply.
The cover of a new CIA calendar features the painting An Air Combat First, by Keith Woodcock, from the CIA Art Gallery, created in 2005. (Keith Woodcock/FGAvA, ASAA)

Far Side cartoons, Ansel Adams landscapes, underwater dogs  so cliche. Why settle for a humdrum wall calendar in 2017 when you can track your days with CIA paintings showing agency operatives stealing secrets, killing off enemies or even getting killed themselves?

January features a painting of a CIA contractor firing an AK-47 out of an Air America chopper at a North Vietnamese biplane. Flip to April for The First Sting, depicting a CIA-trained Afghan mujahideen fighter striking a Soviet helicopter with a Stinger missile. End 2017 on a high note: December features the famous Glomar Explorer in 1974 recovering a portion of a Soviet submarine teeming with secrets from the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

The inaugural Secret Ops of the CIA calendar was produced by the nephew of an agency contractor killed in the line of duty and features reproductions of the actual paintings that have hung for years in the hallways of CIA headquarters in Northern Virginia. Yes, the CIA has an official art collection, although you cant just drive up to the agency to check it out.

But for as little as the cost of about a weeks worth of coffee, you can adorn your kitchen wall with prints of genuine CIA artwork showing clandestine missions from World War II to Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

The calendars month of April features The First Sting, by Stuart Brown. It depicts a mujahideen fighter firing a Stinger antiaircraft missile at a Soviet gunship in Afghanistan in the 1980s. (Stuart Brown)

The calendars are on sale for $28 at the International Spy Museum and its online gift store; or for $23.95 on the website of its producer, Erik Kirzinger, a North Carolina man whose uncle, a CIA contractor, was killed during a 1952 mission in China depicted in one of the calendar paintings, Ambush in Manchuria.

But the CIA wont sell the calendar at its gift shop.

I bent over backwards to make sure everyone on their end was comfortable, Kirzinger said, declining to elaborate. I mean, the CIA gift shop has sold made-in-China coffee mugs with the CIA logo on it. Good grief!

Toni Hiley, the longtime CIA museum director, said the gift shop cant sell the calendar because its not an official work of the U.S. government.

[CIA challenge coins: Secret symbolism, dark humor can be had for a price on eBay]

For the folks who run the International Spy Museum in downtown Washington, the CIAs loss is their gain. The shop bought 25 copies of the calendar and quickly sold out. Then the museum store purchased an additional 300.

When we tell visitors that its the first time you can have prints of these paintings all together, theyre surprised, and they get really excited, and they also get excited that the CIA logo itself is on it, said Allison Bishop, a book buyer for the spy museum and retail store. So few products have the CIA logo allowed to be on the product.

(In true, cryptic CIA fashion, Kirzingers calendar cover does carry the agencys blue seal with an eagle, but he said the agency also required him to print a disclaimer next to the seal that says the CIA does not approve, endorse or authorize use of its name, initials, or Seal.)

It was Kirzinger, 65, who began commissioning large oil-on-canvas paintings for the CIA. And it was Kirzinger who designed and published the calendar with his own money, along with significant contributions from a retired case officer in California and the chief executive of a technology company whose father was a CIA contract pilot.

I am unaware of any other CIA calendar like this, Kirzinger said. If the true-to-life scenes depicted in the CIA artwork involved the service branches, there certainly would be large medal presentation ceremonies with marching bands and well-deserved public acclaim. But for the men and women in the silent service, everything is on a need-to-know basis, including whether or not medals and citations were presented.

The backs of each page contain several paragraphs of Kirzingers research, archival photos of agency personnel and other documents. In advance of its release last month, he submitted the calendar to the agencys museum and staff historians to verify its accuracy.

Though Kirzinger has never worked in the spy business himself, he led a peripatetic life, working as a logger, a fly fishing guide, a cowboy on a 165,000-acre cattle ranch in Montana, and the regional director of a now-defunct Chinese restaurant franchise.

He first made contact with the CIA nearly two decades ago because of his dogged attempt to find the remains of his uncle, Norman A. Schwartz, a pilot killed on a secret mission into Communist China in 1952. In the spring of 1998, Kirzingers aging mother pushed him to have Schwartzs remains repatriated from China, where his plane crashed, so he could be buried next to their parents in Louisville.

[CIAs Memorial Wall is shaped by a Northern Virginia stone carver]

After getting nowhere, Kirzinger wrote then-CIA Director George J. Tenet. A few weeks later, his office called back, disclosing that the agency would chisel a star onto its marble Memorial Wall in his honor. Though Schwartzs remains were never found, he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Cross, the CIAs highest honor of valor. At the CIAs annual Memorial Wall ceremony in 2000, Kirzinger said Tenets vivid remarks about the slain operatives inspired his project.

I just had these visions of artwork, from the OSS through the contemporary war on global terrorism, and if you lined up all these paintings, youd see the visual history of the CIA, one painting at a time, he said. I knew the only artwork at the headquarters was some god-awful modern art . . . and tacky Americana prints.

Eventually, Kirzinger pitched himself to the CIA as a volunteer who could find the artists, pool private donations to pay them and research the missions scenes to ensure the paintings accuracy. The first painting, Earthquakes Final Flight, which depicts a CIA plane in May 1954 under fire over North Vietnam, was installed at the agency in 2005.

Eriks vision for the collection ran parallel to our own desire to create a world-class art collection, said Hiley. She added that the CIA wanted to amass a collection on par with the combat paintings owned by military branches.

In June 2010, after multiple pieces had been unveiled at the agency, Kirzinger was presented with the Agency Seal Medal, an honor awarded by the CIA to non-agency personnel. After that, Kirzinger bowed out of his role as the agencys unofficial arts commissioner. But last year, he decided to incorporate those paintings into the inaugural Secret Ops of the CIA calendar, at the insistence of one of the artworks donors, Bruce Walker, a retired CIA case officer in San Francisco.

Eriks very patriotic to begin with, but hes very skilled with understanding what the agency needed to pull this off, said Walker, 84. To achieve this product requires a lot of finesse and diplomacy.

Where does Kirzinger hang his Secret Ops of the CIA calendar?

Um, I dont have one, he said. As soon as I get them, I give them away. I have to send a batch to the CIA director and another batch to the Directorate of Operations.
Astronomer Vera Rubin, then 82, in her office at Carnegie Institution of Washington. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

Its pretty safe to say that 2016 was not the year of the woman.

We can start with the ridiculous tantrum the maniverse threw when the new Ghostbusters were women. We can discuss how female athletes who crushed the Summer Olympics were treated as second-tier celebrities back home. And we can continue wondering how one of the most experienced candidates to run for president won the popular vote but was edged out by a narcissist who bragged about grabbing women by the genitals.

That all happened this year. And women took a deep breath, looked at that cracked, glass ceiling overhead and decided to fight on.

Then Vera Rubin died.

Whos Vera Rubin?

In this image taken in the 1970s and provided by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Vera Rubin uses a measuring engine. Rubin helped find powerful evidence of dark matter. (AP)

Oh, shes just the scientist who verified the existence of 90 percent of the known universe.

Rubin is the mother of dark matter. She unlocked a mystery that astronomers have been puzzling over for nearly 100 years.

The work she did  while raising four children, while being dismissed by male colleagues, while being forbidden from presenting her work at conferences  was one of the great scientific advances of our time.

[How Vera Rubin changed science]

Yet Rubin, who died on Christmas at 88, was never awarded the Nobel Prize that she deserved. She never became a household name. Even her hometown paper, The Washington Post, didnt put her obituary on its front page, though it did so for the actress who played a fictitious denizen of the stars  Princess Leia. The person who actually discovered all those galaxies, far, far away? Rubins obituary ran inside the Metro section.

This isnt a knock on Carrie Fisher. She was the 1.0 of feminist movie heroines in Star Wars. Her role was empowering for an entire generation. Beyond Leia, she was a great writer as well as a brave chronicler of her substance abuse and mental health problems.

But the attention Fisher commanded compared with that of Rubin, who did such groundbreaking work against such daunting odds, reminds us of what most of society still expects of women.

Actresses? Cool. Well embrace that.

But scientists? Record-breaking athletes? Leaders?

Does. Not. Compute. Still! In 2016.

From the lab to the Olympic podium to the Oval Office, America still has a problem with women when theyre good at the things men have long reserved for themselves.

[Female firefighters still get harassed by misogynistic co-workers. Why is that okay?]

Thats where youll find the ugliest sexism.

Heres how Tim Hunt, who won a Nobel Prize in 2001 for his work on protein molecules, explained the problem with girls in his world.

Three things happen when they are in the lab . . . You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticize them, they cry, he said.

Oh, really?

Too bad Hunt and Rubin werent in the same scientific field. Rubin was as tough as nails.

Her high school teachers told her to avoid science. She didnt listen.

After Rubin graduated as the only female astrophysicist in her Vassar 1948 class, Princeton University wouldnt admit her for graduate studies because of her gender. Their loss. Rubin went to Cornell instead, then earned her PhD at Georgetown University.

When she showed up with a 1-year-old to present a paper once, the male scientists chastised her.

Oh, well, she said. And then she went on to blow them all away by verifying the dark matter theyd been trying to figure out for years, the work they struggled with while their wives stayed home with the kids.

It was back in the 1880s that the Harvard Observatory was dissed for using women to do scientific research, for subjecting a lady to the fatigue.

The director boldly hired the all-female research team because, well, he ran out of money to pay men.

And what did the unpaid women do? They created a map of the cosmos that is still used today, a triumph chronicled in Dava Sobels book, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars.

For centuries, women have been turned away, chased out, sexually harassed, unpaid or underpaid when they ventured into male-dominated worlds.

Think things have changed? Female scientists talk about being sexually assaulted by professors, denied promotions after asking for equal pay, threatened for not having sex with male colleagues.

But they work on.

Just this year, female scientists were part of some of the biggest advances in science and technology. They helped a quadriplegic play guitar, they found a walking fish that is an evolutionary missing link, they helped pinpoint the molecule that helped single-celled organisms evolve into multicellular organisms about 800 million years ago, and they were a huge part of the team that just announced the creation of the first successful Ebola vaccine.

Year of the Woman? Maybe thats not the headline.

Another Year Women Did Amazing Things Despite Haters?

That sounds about right.

Or how about we just call it The Year of Vera Rubin?

Twitter: @petulad
Jon Kramer and his brothers visit the Twinbrook library, to which they have made a donation after discovering long overdue books in their late fathers possesions. From left are Bill, Jon, and Michael Kramer. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

First, let it be said that the Kramer family never intended to be library scofflaws.

The four Kramer children loved Montgomery Countys Twinbrook Library and visited it often when they were growing up in suburban Maryland in the 1960s and 70s. Their parents, described by son Jon as freethinkers and avid readers, checked out books on all manner of topics, including camping tips and vegetarian cooking.

Unlike less enlightened folks, we loved our library! So much so in fact that we apparently absconded with part of it, Jon Kramer wrote to Montgomery Library Director Parker Hamilton on Thanksgiving Day.

As Kramer tells it, he was searching through his deceased parents library at their vacation cabin in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area along the Minnesota-Ontario border in early November, when he found two books, each borrowed more than 42 years ago.

Kramer made a quick calculation. He figured the books had been missing from the public library shelves for 31,046 days, and at a 1970s-era fine rate of a nickel a day, he figured family owed the library $1,552.30.

Late fines for books from the Montgomery County libraries now max out at $15, but Kramer didnt mind ratcheting up the fee. He wrote a check and a letter.

Every year, we think about what we can do to make the world a little better around Thanksgiving time, Kramer said in an interview.

Hamilton said she was happy to get the donation, which she can use to buy multiple books. More importantly, she and other librarians were delighted by the love letter to the library that accompanied it, calling it a ray of sunshine.

The recovery of overdue books happens regularly in the library world. A New York City library just received Gone With The Wind, overdue by 57 years. Portland State University in Oregon just retrieved two academic tomes that had been checked out in 1963. There are others, and by these terms, the Kramers are barely overdue: How To Live 365 Days a Year, offered to the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Library 50 years after it was checked out, and The Birth of Rome, checked out for 73 years from the Chestnut Green Elementary School in Prince Georges County, and returned in 2010.

The Kramer familys books, The New Way of the Wilderness (1958), by Calvin Rutstrum, and 365 Meatless Main Dishes (1974), by William Kaufman, are both out of print but important artifacts in the Kramer family history.

Kramer, who traveled from his Minneapolis home last week to Maryland for a Christmas visit with his siblings, said his father borrowed the first one because he remembered a childhood trip to the northern Minnesota wilderness and dreamed of taking his family there.

I think he was just trying to bone up on camping, Kramer said. That book became like his bible.

He must have skipped the chapter and verse on the importance of packing light for wilderness trips, however, because his son said both parents went a bit overboard.

You know, you take a lot of portages [between lakes] up there, he said. We hauled so much [stuff], it took multiple relays to portage. I swear we spent days to get to Cherokee Lake, which is only five miles in. We carried frozen food, chaise lounges, we even had folding tables, for crying out loud.

The second book is what led to the discovery that the books were overdue.

Kramer is trying to create a family cookbook and was going through his mothers cookbook collection when he came across the vegetarian compendium. He flipped it open and found a stamp from the Montgomery County library, and a checkout date of December 1974.

Uh-oh.

He then remembered a copy of the camping book that really looked old. He dug out the green hardcover, looked inside, and found a card with a June 13, 1973 due date.

Minnesotan Kramer is probably out of reach of the long arm of the (entirely fictional) Montgomery County library overdue patrol squad, but his sister lives in Baltimore, and his two brothers live in Olney and Gaithersburg.

In his letter, he told Hamilton, It is our hope that you will refrain from calling the FBI to report this as international trafficking of stolen goods, and instead allow us the freedom of maintaining the ill-begotten literature on loan for the next 85 combined years or so, at which time we hope to make another payment to your venerable institution on their behalf.
RACINE  A West Bend man has been charged with second-degree sexual assault for reportedly having sex with a local woman who was incapacitated by alcohol and drugs.

The incident reportedly took place on Nov. 29, 2015, but charges werent filed against the defendant, 27-year-old James A. Orosz, Jr., until Wednesday.

The charges come about four months after the Racine County District Attorneys Office received a toxicology report from the Wisconsin State Crime Lab revealing the victim had Oxycodone in her system on the night the alleged assault occurred, and about three months after the Crime Lab sent results of a rape kit revealing DNA matching Orosz was collected from the victim on the day of assault.

Racine police were called to a residence in the 3400 block of Third Avenue at 5:13 p.m. on Nov. 29, 2015, on a report that the victim had been assaulted by Orosz, her friend of roughly nine years.

The victim reportedly told police that she, her cousin and Orosz had been out drinking the night before. The group went to at least a couple bars, the complaint states, and the victim reportedly told police she probably had several drinks as well as about 6 or 7 shots of different liquors. Her cousin bought most of her drinks, but Orosz wasnt drinking with them, she said.

The next thing she remembered of the night, the complaint states, is waking up on her back in her bed with Orosz assualting her. She added that was only partially dressed and couldnt control anything. She couldnt tell Orosz to stop, she reportedly told police, and she couldnt speak.

Detained for questioning later that day, Orosz reportedly agreed to a search of his vehicle. During that search police allegedly recovered a pill bottle containing eight amphetamine pills and about 11 tablets of generic Xanax, a sedative.

Racine County Court Commissioner John Bjelajac on Wednesday found probable cause to pursue the sexual assault charge against Orosz, as well as two misdemeanor drug possession charges.

Orosz remained in custody at the Racine County Jail on Wednesday evening on a $20,000 bond.

He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted on the sexual assault charge.
Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) in his office on Capitol Hillin January 2015. (Andrew Harnik/For The Washington Post)

Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) has been pushing a plan to use a one-time tax on accumulated overseas corporate profits to pay for infrastructure projects since he first ran for office in 2012, but without much success.

Now with his political rivals poised to retain control of Congress and occupy the White House, Delaneys repatriation tax proposal may find new life.

Theres been comments coming out of the new administration indicating theyre interested in this kind of a framing, the three-term congressman said recently.

As the only former chief executive of a publicly traded company in Congress, Delaney has burnished a centrist image. Last year, a bipartisan group of lawmakers looking for a way to generate revenue for the Highway Trust Fund, a pot of money designated for transportation projects, backed his bill for the one-time tax.

If Delaney can claim a piece of whatever international tax reform legislation emerges from the 115th Congress, it could help propel the wealthy former health-care financier to a statewide campaign.

Delaney declined to comment on whether he will challenge Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a popular Republican who did not endorse Trump and has few obvious vulnerabilities heading into a 2018 reelection campaign.

[Democratic challenger says Rep. Delaney is looking too far ahead]

For now, Delaney is focused on continuing to build his bipartisan credibility and policy chops while representing a spectacularly gerrymandered district that stretches from Potomac in Montgomery County to the West Virginia border.

He easily defeated a Republican challenger this year after a 2,700-vote squeaker in 2014, the same year Hogan defeated Democrat Anthony Brown.

Returning to a Congress in which both chambers are dominated by Republicans, Delaney said he will continue to push for a Social Security Commission, a carbon pricing bill and redistricting reform.

But since winning reelection last month, wherever he goes, he spends most of his energy hawking a plan that he says could create 10 million construction, manufacturing and service jobs in 10 years and address $3 trillion in infrastructure needs across the country.

Todd Eberly, a political-science professor at St. Marys College of Maryland, said Delaney pulled off a rare victory by gaining co-sponsors from both parties for his funding proposal.

And he now has an incoming president who is going to be open to outside-the-box ideas and this certainly is that, he said.

However, Eberly noted, Delaney could face some push back from those on the left who deride the plan as a corporate tax break.

When Donald Trump announced his pick for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, some liberals complained that the former Goldman Sachs banker had benefited from the financial crisis.

But comments made by Mnuchin before he was nominated by Trump have given Delaney reason to cheer.

The congressmans proposal starts with a one-time 8.75 percent tax on money that U.S. multinational companies bring home through repatriation. The resulting $170 billion windfall could be split between transportation improvements and an infrastructure fund to help state and local governments.

Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) said tax restructuring and infrastructure are priorities for the Republican leadership.

She said talks on both issues are ongoing but declined to elaborate on her preferred funding mechanism. She supports a Virginia plan to use offshore drilling royalties to pay for transportation improvements within the state.

This is very early in the process, she said, referring to a federal bill, at a recent chamber forum. These are the things that are being discussed.

If Congress passes a comprehensive tax revision bill next year, analysts say theres a good chance repatriation will be part of it. Then lawmakers would tackle infrastructure spending separately.

Its clear the Congress is going to try to do tax reform over the coming year, said Scott Greenburg, an analyst at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Whether a bill actually gets through is anybodys guess.
Tim Regan was searching through public documents on the Districts Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administrations website for an interesting story. Every now and then, between mundane applications for liquor-license renewals and endless noise complaints, he would stumble upon a story he knew loyal Borderstan readers would relish.

During the story hunt in June, Regan struck what could only be considered local news gold. He determined that a popular Adams Morgan bar, Madams Organ, was fined $500 after a bands drummer briefly cracked opened a window to air out a fetid fart. Regan, 29, wrote the story, attracting thousands of readers to Borderstan, and publications across the country wrote their own stories on the flatulence mishap.

As co-editor of the neighborhood news website, Regan sat through long-winded neighborhood and zoning meetings each week, sifted through insomnia-curing local records and walked the citys streets looking for store closings and other news tidbits. Despite its successes, Borderstans publisher announced that the site wasnt financially viable and shuttered it Dec. 23, leaving a neighborhood-level news void in some of the citys fastest-growing areas.

[Charting the years-long decline of local news reporting]

Local advertisers didnt really flock to the site like readers did, Regan said. Our readership is growing, but everything costs money, and that includes running a local news website.

Borderstan co-editor Tim Regan is pictured in Dupont Circle. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

The latest iteration of Borderstan launched in June 2015, when Arlington-based Local News Now purchased the then-defunct neighborhood news website of the same name, which had started in 2008 and gained a local following. Local News Now also is the owner of ARLnow.com and Reston

Now.com, which operate in Virginia, but had hoped to branch into the District.

In October 2014, Scott Brodbeck, the founder of Local News Now, launched HillNow.com to cover the Capitol Hill neighborhood. When that site closed in July 2016, Regan and Borderstan co-editor Andrew Ramonas  who had both also worked at HillNow  moved full time to Borderstan.

Borderstan covered Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, U Street NW, Logan Circle, Dupont Circle, NoMa and H Street NE  hip neighborhoods filled with new, young and deep-pocketed residents. In July, the site attracted 80,000 unique visitors, setting a traffic record. Even though we are closing down, its not a failure of journalism, Brodbeck said. We cant stay in a place where we are losing business.

Borderstans struggles have mirrored the media landscape in recent years. In 2015, the American Society of News Editors reported that newsroom jobs had declined 10.4 percent from 2013 to 2014, dropping to 32,900 full-time journalists at nearly 1,400 daily newspapers.

Borderstans two reporters, who were part of a digital media company with no print component, wouldnt be included in the count, but it illustrates a tough news market in which media organizations are struggling to make money from content available free online.

Borderstan also faced other competition in what Brodbeck described as a crowded local market. DCist, owned by the Gothamist media company, and PoPville, which covers neighborhoods across the city, also tailor to a local audience, as do a handful of local blogs. Brodbeck said this competition, as well as bigger players like The Washington Post, in the District contributed to the lackluster advertising support.

There are going to be two fewer local news reporters in D.C. with this closure, and thats disappointing, Brodbeck said.

Ramonas and Regan work in their office. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

By contrast, he said, ARLnow and RestonNow face less competition in the Virginia suburbs and are financially viable, although Brodbeck wouldnt release specific numbers. He said he plans to put more resources toward those two sites, expanding their use of multimedia and video.

When Borderstan posted an article announcing its closure, readers were quick to lament the loss.

It was good while it lasted  thanks for all the neighborhood news Ive come to rely upon over the last year, one reader wrote in the websites comment section. Very sad. One of my most visited sites. You will be missed! said another.

After the closure, Regan has moved to ARLnow while Ramonas will cover securities regulation at Bloomberg BNA. Regan said his readers are likely to miss the sites coverage of business openings and closings and the reporters ability to find quirky stories by walking the streets of D.C.

We always just tried to go deeper than what we found in the surface, he said.
Prince William County

These were among incidents reported by Prince William County police for this edition of Local Living. For information, call 703-792-5123.

BRISTOW AREA

THEFT/BREAK-IN

Pentland Hills Way, 10000 block, 10:30 p.m. Dec. 18 to 5:30 a.m. Dec. 19. A computer, a laptop compute rand a camera were stolen from a residence entered through a garage door.

DUMFRIES AREA

CHILD NEGLECT

Diamondleaf Oak Dr., 16700 block, 11:15 p.m. Dec. 15. A woman left three children home alone. A Dumfries woman, 27, was arrested.

ROBBERY

Jefferson Davis Hwy., 17000 block, 1:57 p.m. Dec. 14. Two masked gunmen robbed a bank of cash.

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Chesapeake Dr., 3100 block, 4:49 p.m. Dec. 13. Cash, two TVs, a video game system, video accessories and clothes were stolen from a residence.

Stedham Cir., 16400 block, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Dec. 13. A pair of shoes and a speaker were stolen from a residence.

MANASSAS AREA

SEXUAL ASSAULTS

Peakwood Ct., 8100 block, 2008 to 2011. A man sexually assaulted a female juvenile acquaintance. A Manassas man, 46, was arrested.

Weems Rd., 8600 block, 2006 to 2007. A man sexually assaulted a female juvenile relative. A Manassas man, 46, was arrested.

ROBBERY

North Point Rd., 8400 block, 7:07 p.m. Dec. 14. Someone hit a woman from behind with a blunt object and stole property from her. She was treated for injuries.

NOKESVILLE AREA

THEFT/BREAK-IN

Bristow Rd., 12500 block, 8:04 a.m. Dec. 14. Two men forcibly entered a residence through a basement door. They fled when a resident confronted them. Police officers were investigating when the two returned. Two Nokesville men, 19, were arrested. During the investigation, officers found narcotics at the residence. Two additional Nokesville men, 48 and 19, were arrested.

WOODBRIDGE AREA

ASSAULT

Kempston Lane, 12500 block, 1:25 a.m. Dec. 16. During an argument, a man assaulted a female acquaintance.

ROBBERIES

Dale Blvd., 2900 block, 8:36 a.m. Dec. 13. A man at a gas station grabbed cash from a register, then pushed an employee who attempted to intervene.

Daniel Stuart Sq., 1900 block, 8:45 a.m. Dec. 13. A man in a fast food restaurant grabbed cash from a register and fled.

Smoketown Rd., 13700 block, 3 p.m. Dec. 14. A man in a parking lot asked another man for money, who said he had none. The man asked the same man a second time for money and he again said he had none. The first man got into a vehicle and pulled next to the second mans vehicle. A woman exited the first vehicle and attempted to grab a necklace from the second man who struggled with the woman and was able to drive away.

THEFTS/BREAK-INS

Kingsman Rd., 13300 block, Nov. 28 to 11 a.m. Dec. 10. A residence was entered and ransacked. Nothing was reported stolen.

Neabsco Overlook, 14900 block, 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 15. A firearm and two video game systems were stolen from a residence entered by damaging a basement door.

Manassas

No reports were received from Manassas police for this edition of Local Living. For information, call 703-257-8000.

Manassas Park

No reports were received from Manassas Park police for this edition of Local Living. For information, call 703-361-1136.
D.C. police on Thursday arrested an 18-year-old man and charged him with attacking and attempting to rape at knife point a female employee of a Northwest Washington hotel, according to authorities.

The suspect was arrested in Prince Georges County on Monday and extradited to the District on Thursday. Police said they tracked him for weeks by tracing his Metro SmarTrip card but didnt know his identity until he was arrested earlier this week.

Police identified the suspect as Ernesto Agustin Mendoza. He was charged with assault with intent to commit first-degree sexual abuse while armed. Police said he has no fixed address. He is scheduled to make an initial appearance in D.C. Superior Court on Friday.

The assault occurred on the evening of Nov. 26 in a hotel room of the Grand Hyatt Washington, at 10th and H streets NW near Metro Center, according to a police report.

D.C. Police Lt. John Haines, who heads the sex assault unit, said the woman was working in the room when a man entered. At first she thought he was a patron. Haines said the man pushed the woman against a bed, held her at knife point and demanded she remove her clothing.

The woman resisted and a scuffle followed. The man pulled the womans hair with such force that it was separated from her scalp, according to the report. The woman was able to run away. She didnt want to become a victim and she fought him off, Haines said.

Police said the suspect who was arrested has no connection to the hotel.

Haines said investigators obtained surveillance video from several locations at the hotel and outside it, indicating that he had used the Metro after the alleged attack. Police were able to see him go through a turnstile at a precise time, and then match that time to a code on a SmarTrip card.

Haines said police then were able to track his movements through the Metro system, though not in real time. Police chased him for weeks before arresting him in Prince Georges County on Monday and learned his name, Haines said.
Two men got into a brief fight over a television in their Alexandria, Va., retirement home on Oct. 24. One man, 77, pushed the other, who was 82. The 82-year-old fell and fractured his hip, causing cardiac complications that led to his death two days later.

The 77-year-old is suffering from severe dementia and will not be charged with a crime, Alexandria Commonwealths Attorney Bryan Porter said Wednesday. Porter warned that such violent acts by elderly people will probably increase as our population ages and dementia remains untreatable.

Elderly people who are in the clutches of cognitive disease may act out in a manner wholly inconsistent with their true personality, he said in a statement. I sincerely hope that our citizenry openly discusses this important issue and how it should be addressed. The resolution may, in fact, require the General Assembly to weigh in and provide guidance. In most cases, the criminal justice system is not the appropriate way to address this issue, but without additional resources it may end up being the only way.

The two men resided in a ward at Sunrise of Alexandria for people with memory impairment or dementia. When detectives tried to interview the 77-year-old, Porter said, the man did not seem to understand whom he was talking to or why. He is now at a facility in another state capable of providing him the care and attention he needs, Porter said.

A state investigation conducted after the death found no wrongdoing on Sunrises behalf. However, past inspections have cited failures to fully supervise residents. In 2004, a caregiver at the facility pleaded guilty to neglecting two incapacitated residents after falling asleep on the job.
The D.C. actress and yoga instructor who disappeared Christmas Day and was later found dead in her car had her legs bound by a seat belt and exhibited signs of sexual assault, according to an arrest affidavit filed in court.

Police said Tricia McCauley, 46, had been strangled and beaten, then stuffed in the rear of her white Scion iQ hatchback and concealed under several items.

The man charged in her death, Adrian Duane Johnson, 29, did not know McCauley, police have said. Johnson told police that McCauley offered him a ride on Christmas as he was walking and that she killed herself, according to the affidavit.

McCauley apparently left her apartment in the Bloomingdale neighborhood Sunday, headed to a party for members of her theater group. She posted on social media at 5:30 p.m. that she was on her way, but she never showed.

Police arrested Johnson shortly after midnight Tuesday, when a dog walker saw McCauleys car near Dupont Circle and recognized it from a missing-person bulletin.

Tricia Lynn McCauley (Courtesy of Metropoliitan Police Department)

Johnson, who also goes by Duane Johnson, was ordered detained by a D.C. Superior Court judge Wednesday until a preliminary hearing Jan. 13. He has a lengthy arrest record, mostly for theft. His family describes him as homeless and suffering from mental illness.

[Actress, yoga instructor found strangled, beaten in car]

Johnsons attorney, Jacqueline Cadman, initially asked the judge to release her client pending trial. A man in the gallery, later identified as Greg Upwall, a close friend of McCauleys, shouted: Wait! No! Hes an animal! As U.S. marshals escorted Upwall out, he yelled: He took my friend from me! He stole her.

Cadman told the judge that the felony murder charges and others filed against Johnson were based on assumptions and speculation and a rush to judgment. She said that not a single person sees Mr. Johnson with McCauley before her death, and she said her client was one of several people seen near or in her car the day after Christmas.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney David Misler said police had arrested the right person. Arguing that Johnson should be held in jail, Misler highlighted a long criminal history of thefts and some robberies, a few of which involved violence, and a history of not showing up in court.

Johnson was arrested Dec. 17 and charged with shoplifting electric toothbrushes from a CVS in the Columbia Heights neighborhood. He was detained until Dec. 20 and then released after prosecutors said they did not have a witness available for a hearing. A judge ordered that Johnson be monitored by GPS.

Officials said Johnson did not pick up the GPS ankle bracelet, as required, on Dec. 21. Pretrial officials are supposed to report the infraction, although those records are not filed on the public docket. Judges typically do not issue arrest warrants until after a hearing. Johnson had a show cause hearing scheduled Jan. 4.

[Slain actress radiated light on stage]

Johnsons lengthy arrest record in the District and elsewhere, and penalties that typically involved no more than a few weeks or months in jail, have raised questions. He also is wanted on two arrest warrants for failure to appear in court in Maryland. Because the underlying charges are minor, Johnson cannot be extradited.

Johnsons stepfather said Tuesday that he needed help but the court system let him go.

Upwall, who disrupted Wednesdays hearing, said, We feel as though the justice system is broken. . . . I was overcome because if theres any possibility this guy gets released, I wont be able to live. He added: Tricia was the most peace-loving, happy, joyful and giving person imaginable. And because of some senseless, insane act, completely random, well never see her eyes again, well never hear her voice again, well never see her smile.

The arrest affidavit does not answer a crucial question of how Johnson might have encountered McCauley, or where. A witness told police that McCauleygot into her Scion near her house on North Capitol Street and drove away alone about 6 p.m. Dec. 25.

Johnson told police that he met McCauley sometime on or around Christmas Day and that she had offered him a ride, according to the affidavit.

Authorities said there were several sightings of her car and of Johnson on Dec. 26. One was at a CVS on 14th Street NW, where police said he stole 15 Dove soap bars, struck an employee and grabbed his phone. His image was captured on surveillance video.

Police also said that on the same day, Johnson was seen with other men and at least one woman who did not resemble McCauley. Another person saw the white car heading toward a campground in Northern Virginia. Johnson also told police that at one point he picked up a prostitute, according to the affidavit.

After his arrest, police said Johnson asked detectives, If someone is suicidal and gives you all their stuff, is that illegal? according to the affidavit. Police said in the court document, The defendant said he did not realize it was illegal to accept something from a dead person.
A Virginia lawmaker is asking the state legislature to declare pornography a public health hazard  a move he hopes will pave the way for limits of some sort.

Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William) has proposed a resolution stating that pornography leads to many social problems and that the General Assembly, which convenes its annual session on Jan. 11, needs to do something about it. Just what lawmakers should do is unspecified.

The measure does not call for any sort of ban, only a broad recognition of the need for education, prevention, research, and policy change at the community and societal level in order to address the pornography epidemic that is harming the people of the Commonwealth and the nation.

He compared the value of the declaration to the one U.S. Surgeon General Luther L. Terry made in 1964, with the first federal government report linking cigarettes to disease.

Weve got to say, This is a problem, Marshall said in an interview Thursday. Before smoking was identified as a problem, at least the recognition that it led to certain pathologies was a starting point to put restrictions on it. . . . If you recognize it as a problem, then youre going to try to find ways to solve it within the framework of the statutes we can pass and the institutions we have.

[From the archives: Decades after declaration, war on smoking begins]

Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, expressed concern that the ultimate goal might be some form of censorship. She did not take a formal position, though, because she had not yet studied the proposal.

Obviously were cautious about anything that looks like it ultimately aims to regulate the content of speech, although we dont like pornography any better than anybody else, she said.

Marshall is one of the General Assemblys most outspoken conservatives, but he has an independent streak that sometimes appeals to the left. On some privacy and surveillance issues, for instance, he has found common ground with civil libertarians. Liberals joined his efforts in recent years to compensate Virginians who were forcibly sterilized between 1924 and 1979 under a state eugenics program.

His pornography resolution has the potential to create some strange bedfellows, even if the ACLU does not warm to it. The legislation frames pornography not just as a moral scourge that leads to infidelity, the hypersexualization of teenagers and deviant sexual arousal, but as a weapon against women. The measure blames pornography for low self-esteem and body image disorders and devotes a lot of attention to the objectification of women and girls.

It reads, in part: WHEREAS, because pornography treats women as objects and commodities for the viewers use, it teaches girls that they are to be used and teaches boys to be users; and WHEREAS, pornography normalizes violence and abuse of women and children; and WHEREAS, pornography treats women and children as objects and often depicts rape and abuse as if such acts are harmless . . .

The resolution piqued the interest of state Sen. Barbara A. Favola (D-Arlington), one of the legislatures staunchest defenders of womens rights. She has often been at odds with Marshall on the issue of abortion, which he strongly opposes.

We will talk about it in the womens health caucus, Im sure of that, she said. Hes right; pornography does have a negative impact on public health, and it does lead to lots of other issues. Im going to look at it.
KENOSHA COUNTY  Firefighters from several communities battled a fire Wednesday afternoon in the Town of Randall in southwest Kenosha County near Wilmot.

Kenosha County deputies arriving at the scene home in the 11800 block of Fox River Road found an active fire. They were able to determine that the house was unoccupied and that neighbors had rescued a dog from inside the residence.

Fire personnel from the Town of Randall, Town of Salem, Town of Wheatland and the Village of Bristol responded to the scene. The fire caused significant damage to the home, sheriff's officials said. An estimate of the damage was not available as of Wednesday night.

Initial reports indicate the cause of the fire is not suspicious, the Sheriff's Department reported.

Traffic on Fox River Road (Highway W) was closed for approximately three hours as the fire suppression and investigation was conducted. The investigation is continuing.

The home is located just northeast of Twin Lakes and southwest of the unincorporated community of Wilmot and anout a mile north of the Illinois state line.
MASSACHUSETTS

Provisions of pot law delayed by lawmakers

The Massachusetts Legislature approved a six-month delay in the implementation of several key provisions of the states new recreational marijuana law, angering backers of the voter-approved measure.

The House and Senate passed the bill without a public hearing and without debate during lightly attended, informal sessions in both chambers Wednesday.

The ballot initiative approved by 53.7 percent of voters Nov. 8 allows adults 21 and older to possess and use limited amounts of recreational marijuana and to grow as many as a dozen pot plants in their homes took effect on Dec. 15. The action by lawmakers doesnt change that. But what its almost certain to do is push back the timetable for opening retail marijuana stores from the beginning of 2018 until the middle of that year.

For now, it remains illegal in Massachusetts to sell pot except to registered medical marijuana patients.

Delaying key deadlines by six months will give legislators more time to improve the current law by considering issues that were not included in the ballot question, Senate President Stan Rosenberg and House Speaker Robert DeLeo, both Democrats, said in a joint statement.

Wayne Twombley chases after a hockey puck in Portland, Maine. Weather more favorable to skiers will move in on Thursday as a winter storm is expected to dump about six inches of snow in Portland. (Robert F. Bukaty/AP)

A spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who strongly opposed the ballot question, said Wednesday he would review the bill before deciding whether to sign it. Baker recently told reporters he would respect the will of voters but was open to delaying implementation of the law for a reasonable time period.

Votes in California, Maine and Nevada also approved recreational marijuana initiatives last month, joining Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska where it had previously been legalized.

 Associated Press

ILLINOIS

Chicago to expand use of police body cameras

All police officers in Chicago will be equipped with body cameras by the end of 2017, a year ahead of schedule, officials announced Wednesday.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement that body cameras improve transparency while building trust.

Scrutiny of police intensified after the release of a squad-car video last year ago showing a white officer fatally shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times. The Justice Department launched a civil rights investigation, and Emanuel pledged sweeping reforms. The city launched its body-camera program in 2015 and expanded it following protest over the McDonald video.

Wednesdays statement didnt include costs or camera numbers. But police said in September that 2,000 body cameras were in use and that 5,000 more would be bought for about $8 million.

 Associated Press

PENNSYLVANIA

Army officer sentenced for child porn offenses

A colonel who once headed the U.S. Armys strategic war gaming division will be serving a 12-year sentence for receipt and distribution of child pornography.

Col. Robert Rice apologized and sobbed Wednesday before a federal judge in Harrisburg issued the sentence. It is concurrent with a four-year sentence on similar charges from a recent military court-martial.

The 59-year-old Rice was most recently assigned to the U.S. Army War Colleges Center for Strategic Leadership in Carlisle, Pa. He was arrested in 2013.

Rice says he is deeply ashamed and acknowledges that damage to the victims of child pornography may never heal.

Prosecutors say Rices actions during the investigation and jury trial were calculated, and that the severity of his type of crime cannot be overstated.

 Associated Press

2 killed in helicopter crash: Two people were killed Wednesday when an Army Air National Guard helicopter crashed into waters near the Bayport Cruise Terminal in Texas, military officials said. The cause of the accident, some 25 miles southeast of Houston, was not known. The names of those killed have not been released. The helicopter crash did not affect navigation in the Houston Ship Channel, which links the busiest U.S. petrochemical port to the Gulf of Mexico, the Houston Pilots Association said.

 Reuters


Pallbearers unload a casket at Smith Cemetery in Strunk, Ky., earlier this year. McCreary County has about 18,000 residents and limited economic opportunities. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

Over the past year, The Washington Post has explored a historic increase in premature death among white Americans, particularly middle-aged women living in small towns and rural areas. Here are the key findings from The Posts Unnatural Causes series:

1. The nations health is deteriorating, with no end in sight. Since the turn of the century, white women have been dying prematurely in a slow-motion crisis driven by decaying health in rural and small-town America, a Washington Post analysis found. While rates of early mortality have continued to fall for women of other races, and have flattened out among white women in big cities, death rates among small-city and rural white women in their early 40s, for example, have shot up 47 percent since 1990.

Heavy drinking, suicide and drug overdoses  primarily from opioids  are driving the phenomenon. And though rates of premature death are rising fastest among white women, the effects of ill health are widespread: In 2015, overall life expectancy in the United States dropped for the first time in more than two decades.

Read more about premature mortality.

Explore the data.

Examine the statistics in your county.





2. Prescription drugs play a powerful role in the crisis. And its not just opioids. A third of white women who have died of opioid overdose since 1999 also had anti-anxiety drugs known as benzodiazepines in their bloodstreams  a potentially deadly combination, The Post found. Read more about opioids and benzos.

White women who take opioids are particularly likely to be prescribed additional drugs to manage the symptoms of long-term opioid use, The Post found. In addition to anti-anxiety medication, they might get drugs to help them sleep or to ease a condition known as opioid-induced constipation. A Post analysis found that nearly 6 in 10 working-age women who take opioids have three or more additional prescriptions. Read more about follow-on prescriptions.

Meanwhile, The Post found that the suicide rate has risen alongside prescriptions for anti-depressants and other psychiatric drugs, which are often ineffective. Multiple drugs overload the system in ways we cant predict, said Rene Muller, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins. Read more about suicide.



Some of the pills that Karen Franklin regularly takes during an eight hour period. Franklin suffers from a back injury and lives with chronic pain. She said that despite taking morphine and other prescription medications her pain level is usually a "10". (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post)

3. Doctors could be doing more to prevent opioid addiction. A third of Americans who have taken prescription opioids for at least two months say they became hooked on the powerful painkillers, according to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey. But more than 6 in 10 said doctors offered no advice on how or when to stop taking the drugs. And 1 in 5 said doctors provided insufficient information about the risk of side effects, including addiction. Read the poll results.





4. The federal government could be doing more, too. The Drug Enforcement Administration initially tried to combat the opioid epidemic by targeting wholesale distributors accused of leaking hundreds of millions of pills a year into the hands of illicit dealers. But in 2012, the drug industry fought back. The DEA virtually abandoned its campaign, shifting to other forms of enforcement. And this year, Congress passed and President Obama signed a measure to take away the DEAs most potent weapon: The authority to immediately shut down suspicious distribution centers.

Read more about the DEA pullback.

Read more about the cases against drug distributors.

Meanwhile, the drug companies have hired some of the best and brightest DEA regulators. At least 42 DEA personnel  31 of them directly from the division that regulates the pharmaceutical industry  have taken jobs in the pharmaceutical industry since the campaign against distributors began.

Read more about the revolving door.





5. But heavy drinking is also a major factor. The rate of alcohol-related deaths for white women age 35 to 54 has more than doubled since 1999, The Post found, accounting for 8 percent of all deaths in this age group. Liver failure has risen alongside dangerous drinking among white women, who report a 40 percent increase in binge drinking since 1997.

Unlike suicides and drug overdoses, alcohol-related liver failure is increasingly striking white women in big cities as well as in rural areas, The Post found. Read more about the trend and the role of alcohol marketing.





6. The epidemic of substance abuse is damaging entire communities while destroying individual lives.

In Tecumseh, Okla., where Anna Marrie Jones died at age 54 of cirrhosis, family members buried her alongside friends and relatives who had died in the past decade at ages 46, 52 and 37. Jones had buried her fiance at 55. She had eulogized her best friend, dead at 50 from alcohol-induced cirrhosis. Read more about Jones.

In Jasper, Ala., opioid painkillers are so enmeshed in the local economy that theyre traded for lawn mowers and school clothes. Read more about Jasper.

In McCreary County, Ky., there has been a 75 percent increase in the mortality rate for white women age 35 to 59, one of the highest increases in the nation, The Post found. Separate research at the University of Washington found that McCreary County women are more likely to be obese and to engage in life-shortening behaviors such as binge drinking than in previous generations. Read more about McCreary County.

In Farmington Hills, Mich., in the 11th year of her opioid addiction, Amanda Wendler decided to pursue one of the newest treatments for heroin: A monthly shot of a drug called naltrexone, which blocks the effects of opiates on the brain and makes getting high impossible  but also comes with dangerous side effects. Read more about Wendler.

In Chillicothe, Ohio, and surrounding Ross County, 40 people died of overdoses last year, almost all of them opioid related. That number has tripled in the past three years. Its the Zombie Apocalypse, said the local coroner. Read more about Chillicothe.

And in South Charleston, W. Va., officials are starting to focus more resources on opiate orphans, who have lost their parents to drugs. Three of the most recent ones live in a small house in South Charleston: Zoie, 10, who believed that her parents had died in their sleep; Arianna, 13, who was just starting to wear her mothers old makeup; and Zaine, 17, who had been the one to discover his parents dead of a heroin overdose that morning in 2015, and whose grades had been dropping ever since. Read more about Zaine.
Flowers were placed before portraits of Russian TV journalists who were aboard the plane that crashed into the Black Sea minutes after taking off from Sochi.

Dec. 25, 2016 Flowers were placed before portraits of Russian TV journalists who were aboard the plane that crashed into the Black Sea minutes after taking off from Sochi. Pavel Golovkin/AP

Photos show those grieving over the crash that may have killed all 92 on board.

Photos show those grieving over the crash that may have killed all 92 on board.

Photos show those grieving over the crash that may have killed all 92 on board.

SOUTH KOREA

Investigators detain former health minister

South Korean investigators on Wednesday detained a former health minister as they expand an inquiry into a corruption scandal involving the impeached president, Park Geun-hye.

Moon Hyung-pyo is accused of pressuring the National Pension Service to support a controversial merger deal between two Samsung affiliates last year, even though the funds stake in one of them lost an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars in value.

Investigators also summoned Kim Sang-ryul, Parks former senior secretary for education and culture, over allegations that the presidential office kept a blacklist of cultural figures deemed unfriendly to the administration and denied them state support.

The opposition-controlled parliament on Dec. 9 voted to impeach Park over allegations that she colluded with a longtime friend to extort money and favors from large companies and let the friend manipulate government affairs from the shadows.

Her friend, Choi Soon-sil, is accused of amassing an illicit fortune through her connections to the president. She is in jail.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish students from a Yeshiva religious school light candles on a menorah during the Jewish holiday of Hannukah, the festival of lights, in the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak near Tel Aviv on. (Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)

Samsung, the countrys largest business group, and other major conglomerates are accused of giving a combined $64 million to two nonprofit foundations Choi allegedly controlled and abused to expand her wealth.

 Associated Press

RUSSIA

Second flight recorder from crash site found

Search teams on Wednesday recovered an additional flight recorder from a military plane that crashed in the Black Sea en route to Syria on Christmas Day, killing all 92 people aboard, the Defense Ministry said.

The first flight recorder was found the previous day, and experts have started analyzing its data as they work to identify the cause of the crash. The Tu-154 crashed two minutes after taking off from the city of Sochi.

Investigators were looking into whether the crash might have been caused by bad fuel, pilot error, equipment failure or objects stuck in the engines.

The Komsomolskaya Pravda daily and the online publication Life.ru published what they described as a transcript of part of a cockpit conversation in which a pilot yells about a problem with the planes flaps and then shouts: Commander, we are falling! It was impossible to verify the report, but both publications are known to have good connections with Russian security agencies.

The Kommersant daily also said that investigators think the crash was caused by a combination of malfunctioning flaps and pilot error.

Russias main security agency, the FSB, said it found no indications or facts pointing at the possibility of a terror attack or an act of sabotage.

 Associated Press

Sixty-one injured as train derails in northern India: A train derailment in India injured 61 people, police and rail officials said, the third significant train accident in the country in recent months. The train came off the tracks and crashed near the northern city of Kanpur early in the morning. It had just pulled out of the station and its speed was rather slow, according to a spokesman for Indian Railways. Indias creaking railway system is the worlds fourth largest but has a poor safety record.

Russian Embassy in Damascus shelled: Russia said its embassy in Syrias capital was hit by mortar fire, and it blamed the attack on extremists opposed to a peaceful settlement to the conflict in the country. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that a mortar round landed in the embassy courtyard but did not explode and that another fell in the vicinity. Russia is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Five dead after attack in Chinas Xinjiang: Attackers drove a car into a government building in Chinas unruly far-western region of Xinjiang and set off an explosive device, killing one person, the regional government said. All four attackers were shot dead. Hundreds of people have been killed over the years in Xinjiang in violence between the Muslim Uighur people, who call the region home, and the ethnic-majority Han Chinese. The attack occurred deep in southern Xinjiangs Uighur heartland.

 From news services
MILWAUKEE  After the death of a man whose vehicle plummeted off the Hoan Bridge on Dec. 19, lawmakers are asking for additional safety measures.

A letter to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation from state Reps. Christine Sinicki and Jonathan Brostoff, both D-Milwaukee, state Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, stated that many constituents have expressed concerns about the bridge.

We have many constituents who drive over the Hoan Bridge as part of their daily commute. Some have remarked that the retaining walls seem too short to effectively restrain tall passenger vehicles like the truck Christopher Weber was driving. In fact, we recently heard from one constituent who noticed skid marks and bent guardrails on portions of the bridge, suggesting that other vehicles have come perilously close to tipping over the edge as well, the letter stated.

The Milwaukee County Sheriffs Office said Weber, 27, died at about 8:30 a.m. on Dec. 19 after he lost control of his truck on the Hoan Bridge. The vehicle went over the wall and landed on its roof on the ground below.

Weber was pronounced dead at the scene. He was alone in the vehicle.

The legislators letter goes on to state that the Hoan Bridge can feature gusty winds, speeding motorists and slick ice.

It is concerning to think that these factors could combine someday to produce a larger accident, possibly sending multiple vehicles over the retaining wall, the letter states.

We respectfully suggest that DOT explore ways to make the Hoan Bridge safer. Perhaps some options might include adding taller guardrails to the bridges retaining walls and improving warning signs on the Bridges sharp curves.

Another issue brought up had to do with plowing on the bridge.

Our understanding is that the ramps of snow created by plowing towards the Bridges outer walls may have contributed to the accident  by creating a gradient up the sides of the bridge. Perhaps snowplows should be directed to remove snow from the Hoan altogether when possible. We understand that Milwaukee County takes care of the plowing, but expect DOT could work with County staff to adjust snow removal practices on the Hoan.
Benjamin P. Edwards is a professor at Barry University School of Law.

Financial advisers no longer use telegrams and pneumatic tubes to execute customer orders, but they charge their customers based on an equally outdated and inefficient model: compensation is based on commissions for individual orders. With changes to the market, the law governing financial advisers should also evolve because their roles have changed.

The need for reform has long been clear. Twenty years ago, a Securities and Exchange Commission task force on compensation recognized that the stockbroker commission structure creates far too many conflicts of interest. Instead of fixing the problem, Congress and financial self-regulators have simply slapped patch after patch on our increasingly outdated Depression-era regulatory infrastructure.

In the current conflict-rich environment, Wall Street gorges itself on the publics retirement assets. While transaction fees are costs to the public, theyre often juicy paydays for financial advisers. A study by the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that Americans pay approximately $17 billion annually in excess fees because of such conflicts of interest. The high fees mean that the typical saver will run out of retirement money five years earlier than he or she would have with better, more disinterested advice.

Destitute retirees impose costs on everyone, adding pressure on taxpayer-funded public support systems and younger generations. Faced with a do-nothing Congress, the Obama administration turned to the only lever available to protect the public: rulemaking through the administrative process. The Labor Department created a 1,000-plus-page rule that extended fiduciary protections to any advice involving money in retirement accounts.

Anthony Scaramucci, a member of President-elect Donald Trumps transition team, recently derided the fiduciary rule as a Federal Babysitter for your 401(k). He called for the regulation to be scrapped and argued that the free market should decide where to place assets, claiming that firms putting client interests first thrive organically in a capitalist system.

This is simply not true. If it were, Wall Street would have an unimpeachable reputation for honesty and integrity because all the liars and cheats would already have been driven out of business. To the contrary, free markets frequently teem with manipulation, exploitation and deception. A market unfettered from regulation leaves market participants able to manipulate ill-informed and excitable humans into making unwise decisions. Specifically, financial advisers regularly receive fat kickbacks for steering trusting clients into expensive, actively managed mutual funds. This practice hurts ordinary investors and contributes to needless complexity and volatility.

If Scaramucci and the Trump team intend to junk the Obama administrations fiduciary rule, they should consider market-focused solutions. In an article forthcoming in the Ohio State Law Journal, I argue that simply banning commission compensation in connection with personalized investment advice would put market forces to work for consumers. This structure would kill the incentive for financial advisers to pitch lousy products with embedded fees to their clients. While the proposal might sound radical, Australia and Britain have already banned commission compensation linked to investment advice without any significant ill effect. While some might pay a small amount more under such a system, the amount of bias in advice would go down, likely more than offsetting the additional cost with investment gains.

To be sure, Scaramucci and others may worry that banning commission-based compensation might dissuade financial advisers from servicing smaller accounts. This fear is unwarranted. Evidence indicates that assistance from a commission-compensated financial adviser leads to lower-quality asset allocations than simply leaving people to invest on their own. Moreover, a free market with transparent costs for savers from upfront or hourly fees seems likely to function more effectively. Consumers will be more likely to demand quality for their dollars rather than unknowingly parting with them through embedded commissions and fees.

A more honest free market  without a strong incentive for advisers to betray clients  would also create new winners and losers. Asset managers offering active services would likely struggle. Scaramuccis firm, SkyBridge Capital, markets mutual fund shares to ordinary investors with ongoing 2 percent annual fees. One percent of that high fee (the maximum amount permitted by law) comes from a distribution and service fee, most of which gets returned to the financial advisers and brokerage firms that steered their clients into Scaramuccis high-fee fund. Under a different system, Scaramucci could keep charging a pricy 2 percent  but he would have to sell his products without paying financial advisers to pitch his funds.

Republicans concerned about excessive regulation and red tape should embrace a clean ban on commission compensation. It might not make investing great again, but it would at least make it fairer for the little guy.
The Dec. 26 letters How could the United States have intervened in Syria? decried the humanitarian tragedy occurring in Syria but claimed the United States has no reasonable options available to stop it. These claims are belied by the many instances of our country successfully deploying diplomacy, sanctions and limited force to protect people brutalized by the likes of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In 1991, the United States instituted a no-fly zone in northern Iraq to protect Kurds from Saddam Hussein. The success of that effort can be measured in the leadership role that Iraqs Kurds are taking today in battling the Islamic State. In 1995, NATO bombing forced an end to the conflict in Bosnia and the slaughter of innocents by Serbian forces through the Dayton Accords. And in 2007-2008, U.S. diplomacy led to the deployment of a joint U.N.-African Union force to Darfur to stop state-sponsored violence perpetrated in the region by Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

The common thread among all of these efforts was the political will to do more than be a bystander to mass atrocities. To claim we have no choice today in Syria is at best ignorance and at worst a poor excuse for the abdication of our moral responsibilities.

John Simon, Potomac
DURING PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trumps inauguration late next month, the areas apartments will be filled with fans and protesters who have booked rooms on Airbnb. To some, however, the tech upstart is just as controversial as Mr. Trump, and activists are demanding that governments across the country hamstring a hugely useful service. Regulators should resist cracking down.

The company, which is valued at $30 billion and operates in 34,000 cities in 191 countries, provides a platform for private homeowners to advertise rooms, apartments and whole houses to short-term visitors. But it has been accused of enabling racial discrimination, as owners decline to rent to minority customers, and of reducing scarce housing stock for permanent residents in crowded cities such as New York and San Francisco. Stories of landlords evicting renters in order to make their properties under-the-radar hotels have fueled fears that Airbnb is a menace. New York leaders reacted recently by slapping massive fines on owners who rent whole units for fewer than 30 days. That is too much, and cities such as the District should be more careful.

Perhaps sensing that it must work with regulators, Airbnb has adopted a reasonable tone lately. The companys chief executive has admitted that unscrupulous landlords are a problem, but also noted that its platform is mostly used by ordinary folks. The firm produced a report showing that units rented through its platform tend to be more dispersed throughout cities than hotels are, serving poor and minority areas. Among other things, this suggests that renting private rooms can be a valuable income source for distressed communities, even as the service offers visitors more locations to stay.

The company has also promised to restrict what landlords can do on the companys platforms in cities, such as San Francisco, concerned about preserving affordable permanent rental housing. For example: Owners cannot advertise more than one unit on the companys platform in New York and San Francisco, which deters landlords from converting apartment blocks into de facto hotels. The company has praised a rule in New Orleans that bars owners from renting units for more than 90 days a year if they do not live in them. The company has also said it would work with local governments to pay hotel taxes. Regulations such as these are better than the punitive approach others have taken, and if Airbnb is smart, it will help apply them rigorously.

The companys service should be a win-win-win, giving visitors cheaper and more abundant lodging options, allowing owners to put their unused rooms to good  and remunerative  use, and encouraging tourism in expensive cities. Regulators should aim to enable that vision  not to appease the hotel lobby or activists who shortsightedly favor preserving the status quo.
NO ONE is certain how President-elect Donald Trump intends to stiffen restrictions on immigrants and visitors to the United States, or what he means by extreme vetting, though there is little doubt he will try to tighten screening for many applying from Muslim countries.

What is clear is that beefed-up federal laws, rules, systems, programs and technology have added substantial layers of scrutiny for virtually every foreigner who has entered the country in recent years. Americans deserve to know that those entering the country have been screened carefully, but it will be difficult for Mr. Trump to fashion an even more muscular inspection and monitoring regimen without subjecting visitors and immigrants to outright religious profiling.

The advances in federal capabilities were highlighted last week when the Obama administration officially dismantled one post-Sept. 11 screening program, which seemed tough when it was enacted, because it had become obsolete. The program, known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, was in use for nine years before being suspended in 2011, largely because other, newer systems had proved more effective at tracking and monitoring foreign travelers before and after they entered the country.

While it was in use, NSEERS entailed registering some 180,000 teenage boys and men from 25 countries, most of them Muslim  subjecting them to fingerprinting, interrogations and, in some cases, periodic visits from federal agents. At least 13,000 of them were placed into deportation proceedings after overstaying their visas or otherwise failing to comply with rules.

The program applied for the most part to law-abiding visitors and residents, and as far as is known, never produced any terrorist prosecutions. In 2012, the Department of Homeland Securitys inspector general, noting it had done little to enhance public safety while draining government resources, recommended that it be permanently dismantled. Now it has been, meaning the Trump administration would have to jump through additional hoops to resurrect it, or something like it.

Doing so may be a waste of effort. Since NSEERS was established, and even more since its demise, other programs have leapfrogged it. Automated systems now collect and store biographic and biometric data including digitized fingerprints, iris scans and facial data for most foreigners entering the country, including students. Foreign nationals from or those who have visited high-risk countries such as Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen are ineligible for participation in the U.S. visa waiver program, meaning they are subject to extra scrutiny when applying to come to the United States. Government databases are increasingly searchable and better at helping officials spot those who may pose threats to national security.

Those systems and programs, detailed by Homeland Security in explanation of NSEERSs obsolescence, provide federal authorities with a range of tools to verify foreigners identities and monitor their movements. They apply broadly to visitors, travelers and immigrants. They also comport with constitutional standards and American values.

By contrast, a registry that singles out travelers from Muslim countries falls afoul of those standards  and may do little to enhance national security. While some prominent recent terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe were carried out by immigrants, the perpetrators of others, including the bloody assaults in Paris and Orlando, were by homegrown terrorists.
President-elect Donald Trump talks to members of the media on Dec. 21 as retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn stands next to him at Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

President-elect Donald Trump has stacked his Cabinet with military generals, pushed for more Pentagon spending and a bigger Navy, threatened to slap tariffs on China and Mexico and, last week, suggested that he was open to expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The aim, he has said, is to achieve peace through strength.

If Trump follows through with this confrontational approach, it will represent a sharp break with the multifaceted foreign policy strategy that both Democratic and Republican presidents have practiced for decades, including reliance on what diplomats call soft power to achieve objectives and avoid conflict. Instead, Trump views foreign policy as largely transactional, aides say, and his goal is to win  by speaking loudly and carrying a big stick.

But critics, including former Obama administration officials and foreign diplomats, said winning on the world stage requires more than bluster and intimidation and pugilistic messages on Twitter. American leadership, they said, also is about the carrots  the promotion of democratic values and building U.S.-led institutions that can address shared global challenges such as economic growth, climate change and terrorism.

If your slogan is, America first, other people will think, What about me?  said Joseph Nye, who was an assistant secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton.

Past presidents have tried to use soft power strategies to bolster the United States cultural appeal abroad and lend moral weight to the countrys standing as the free worlds leading alternative to communist or authoritarian systems. Such tactics are not a substitute for military and economic hard power, foreign affairs analysts said, but can help shape global perceptions of the United States and its motives.

President Obama, for example, spoke frequently about the need for an international order based on universal human rights and the rule of law as he pursued the Paris climate accord, a Pacific Rim free-trade pact and the Iran nuclear deal.

By comparison, Trump has seldom talked about such ideals, either during the campaign or since winning office. He has expressed skepticism about the international agreements negotiated by the Obama administration, saying they do not do enough to help the American people. This week, Trump tweeted that the United Nations has potential but right now is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time.

Trump has yet to appoint a foreign policy expert with an extensive background in development assistance or human rights. He has repeatedly questioned the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions globally in order to address climate change, while Obama made that issue a centerpiece of his foreign policy agenda.

Trumps administration is all about tough guys and being tough, said Suzanne Nossel, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international organizations under Obama. Nossel, now the executive director of PEN America, a literary free-speech group, added that theres a great sense of fear around the world that the U.S. is going to abandon its leadership role in the world on behalf of the vulnerable.

Trumps aides said his strategy is a necessary course correction to what they called Obamas apology tour of trying to build bridges to rogue regimes in places such as Iran and Cuba.

Obama took office on a pledge to recalibrate the U.S. role in the world and repair the countrys image after President George W. Bushs with us or against us war on terror and the U.S. military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Obama sought to build trust between the United States and the Muslim world, and he promised to reach out to despots and dictators if they were willing to unclench your fist. The administration restored diplomatic relations with authoritarian regimes in Burma and Cuba after 50 years of isolation in exchange for political reforms.

Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser in the Obama White House, said the presidents collaborative approach and emphasis on international norms helped convince other countries to partner with the United States to do things that were not always popular. He cited the economic sanctions on Iran and Russia, which received less support among some European nations.

Theres a counter-theory where we should be more strident in telling them what to do or saying with us or against us, Rhodes said. But in this world where power is much more diffuse than it was a decade or two ago, it just doesnt work any more.

Trump has threatened to terminate the Iran nuclear deal and Obamas diplomatic rapprochement with Havana, which included the lifting of some U.S. economic sanctions. And he has named to his administration several former generals with deeply pessimistic views of Iran. The group includes his national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn.

Obama was high on ideology, low on practicality, J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman during the Bush administration who served as a national security adviser to Trumps campaign, said in an email. Hostile regimes took full advantage of his olive branches for little to nothing in return. . . . [Trump] doesnt believe in giving anything away and always strives for the better deal.

One European diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment frankly about Trump, said: It is of some concern to listen to these statements, where it seems that theres less emphasis on the common-value basis and the multilateral structure of diplomacy.

The diplomat added that the risk is the U.S. will sort of step back from this leadership, and it will cause certain disarray.

Peter Feaver, a national security official in Bushs administration, said American presidents, going back decades, have wielded tools to coax other nations to embrace U.S. objectives without explicit coercion, in hopes of fostering a more benign view of American power.

President Ronald Reagan used this approach effectively against the Soviet Union, he said, by promoting a more desirable alternative and supporting dissident campaigns such as the anti-communist Solidarity movement in Poland. George W. Bush pursued widespread development aid and a presidential-level initiative to combat the spread of AIDS in Africa.

But there is a strain in the GOP that is strongly opposed to foreign aid, said Feaver, now a political science and public policy professor at Duke University, and its unclear whether Trump will side with this faction.

We have never had a president who understands branding as well as Trump does, Feaver said, and an element of soft power is branding.

Trump has expressed skepticism of the Bush-era military interventionism, but he also has discarded Obamas caution over using terms such as radical Islam to describe terrorist threats emanating from the Islamic State and Muslim nations.

Obama has warned that such language will perpetuate the terrorists goals of inflaming a clash of religions and will radicalize more disaffected young people in the Middle East. Polls show that while the United States is viewed more favorably under Obama than Bush across Europe and Asia, the rebound in reputation has not lasted in the Middle East despite initial enthusiasm for Obama.

Last week, Trump reacted to a deadly truck attack in Germany by labeling it an Islamic attack on Christianity  well before authorities had determined a motive or had a definitive suspect. During the campaign, he proposed a ban on Muslims entering the United States and spoke approvingly of the use of torture on terrorism suspects.

Vali Nasr, who served as a State Department senior adviser for Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Obama administration, accused Trump of cavalierly dispensing with Americas soft power.

The America first rhetoric, combined with the anti-Muslim rhetoric, will constrain Americas ability to persuade world powers to work with us, said Nasr, now the dean of Johns Hopkins Universitys School of Advanced International Studies.

Human rights advocates are alarmed by Trumps professed admiration for authoritarian figures such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he called a stronger leader than Obama.

After his election victory, Trump fielded a congratulatory call from Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose administration has overseen the extrajudicial killings of thousands of suspected drug dealers. Obama had canceled a bilateral meeting with Duterte, but Trump invited him to the White House.

But former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), a Trump ally, said there are some instances where Trump might object to persecution of minorities overseas, especially on behalf of Christians.

And theres a pragmatic side to the president-elects transactional approach that could produce results, Gingrich added. He pointed to Syria where Trump has suggested that he is amenable to a deal with the Russians and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that allows Assad to stay in power while ending the civil war.

The Obama administration has refused such a scenario based on what it sees as Assads human rights abuses, including the use of chemical weapons on his own citizens.

If you wanted to minimize the number of people killed in Syria, Gingrich said during a Washington Post Live forum last week, you wouldve supported Assad, because the truth is if Assad had won very quickly, fewer people wouldve died.
RACINE  A new law aimed at making it easier to obtain vital records such as birth and marriage certificates goes into effect after the new year.

The law was pushed by Racine County Register of Deeds Tyson Fettes, who said residents will have access to their records anywhere in the state if the event occurred in Wisconsin.

Before, if a Racine County resident was born in Brown County and married in Dane County (as an example), he or she would have to go to those counties to obtain those certificates. After Jan. 1, that resident can obtain those records at the Racine County Register of Deeds Office, on the first floor of the courthouse, 730 Wisconsin Ave.

The state vital records office is still working to back-scan all previous records, however. Birth certificates from as far back as 1907 will be available when county register of deeds offices open Jan. 3, the first business day after the New Years holiday.

Death records dating back to 2012, marriage certificates back to 2014 and divorce certificates from 2016 will also be available when the law goes into effect.

The system will be continuously updated with more records, Fettes said. In the meantime, residents will have to go to the county the event occurred for records that arent yet in the system.

Fettes said advances in technology made it possible for records to be available statewide.

Citizens are going to benefit from this change by having access to their records anywhere in the state, Fettes said in a statement. It is going to also benefit title companies, funeral homes, lawyers and banks to obtain records on behalf of their customers.

Gov. Scott Walker signed the vital records bill, co-authored by Republican state Sen. Van Wanggaard of Racine, on Feb. 29. It passed the state Assembly and Senate on voice votes.

Anyone with questions about the law should contact the Racine County Register of Deeds Office at 262-636-3208.
A cease-fire announced by the Syrian government went into effect across the country early Friday as part of a broader deal that includes a return to peace talks to end more than five years of war.

Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reestablished control over the northern city of Aleppo earlier this month, forcing rebels to flee what was once their largest stronghold and handing the government a victory that appeared to bring the wars endgame into view.

The Assad government, backed by Russia and Iran, is now in its strongest position since the start of the war, while rebel groups are mostly boxed into the northwestern province of Idlib and hold no strategically significant urban areas.

The Syrian military declared in a statement issued Thursday that the comprehensive cessation of hostilities follows victories and advances by the armed forces.

The cease-fire was reported to be generally holding Friday, despite some relatively minor violations. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said clashes occurred early Friday between government troops and rebels in Hama province and near Damascus but that no civilian casualties were reported. The group also said Syrian warplanes carried out at least 16 airstrikes Friday against rebels in Hama.

Russia and Turkey, which brokered the deal, said they could guarantee compliance from the government and its armed opposition, respectively, after weeks of negotiations.

In Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the agreement a historic opportunity that should not be squandered. But in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged it was fragile.

The agreement marks an ambitious venture by the Russian leader to establish himself as the dominant dealmaker in the Syrian conflict and further sideline the United States less than a month before President-elect Donald Trumps inauguration.

The Syrian army said the cease-fire excluded terrorist organizations, notably the Islamic State but also the countrys al-Qaeda affiliate, an influential component of what remains of Syrias armed opposition. The caveat suggested that the fighting could continue in Idlib, now the rebels final bastion.

Speaking in a televised meeting with his defense and foreign ministers Thursday, Putin said three documents were signed: the cease-fire to begin Friday between the Syrian government and certain rebel groups, an agreement on monitoring the truce and a statement of readiness to begin peace talks.

[On the road to Raqqa, the Islamic States de facto capital]

The State Department said it had played no part in the negotiations but called news of the cease-fire a positive development. Mark Toner, a department spokesman, said, We hope it will be implemented fully and respected by all parties.

As President Obama prepares to leave office next month, Washingtons influence in Syria is much diminished. Russia and Turkey have taken the lead on initiatives to end a war that has killed almost half a million people, spurred the largest refugee crisis since World War II and given safe haven to a global terrorist threat in the form of the Islamic State.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did not mention Obama in his remarks, instead inviting the incoming Trump administration to join the process after the president-elects inauguration.

I would also like to express my hope that when the administration of Donald Trump assumes its responsibilities, they may also join these efforts in order to work toward this goal in a friendly and collective manner, Lavrov said during the meeting.

Trump has signaled his willingness to work with Moscow on a solution to the Syrian conflict. He is also on record as supporting policies that include a withdrawal of support for the armed opposition and the establishment of safe zones for civilians.

The intervention of Russias air force last year transformed the Syrian governments fortunes, quashing a major rebel offensive and turning the war in Damascuss favor. Although Russia later announced a partial withdrawal, its air and ground forces continue to play an important role, even as the influence of Assads other main backer, Iran, rises.

[D.C. foreign-policy elite breaks with Obama over Syrian bloodshed]

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said seven opposition groups with a combined 60,000 fighters from central and northern Syria have agreed to the cease-fire, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, two powerful Islamist factions.

The exclusion of groups linked to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda seemed to be the latest attempt to peel jihadist fighters from more-moderate elements in the armed opposition.

The al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly called Jabhat al-Nusra, contributes significant firepower to a coalition of rebel groups in Idlib province. U.S. officials say it may be difficult to separate the extremists fighting alongside a number of key rebel groups.

Previous cease-fires have been short-lived. A similar deal announced by the United States and Russia in February lasted longer than most but was over by July. A U.S.-Russian deal in September lasted a week.

[Obama targets al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria]

The Syrian National Coalition, a leading political opposition group based in Turkey, confirmed its support for the truce. A senior official, Hadi al-Bahra, described it in a message posted to Twitter as a positive achievement, saying his group would make sure that this agreement will be implemented fully.

But as diplomacy continued, so did the fighting. A Syrian rescue group known as the White Helmets said Thursday that at least 12 people were killed and 27 injured in airstrikes and artillery shelling on civilian homes in Eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb. Footage from the area showed an elderly man being carried to an ambulance, his blood-soaked scarf streaking the vehicle as his stretcher was placed inside.



Peace efforts in Syria must still survive the many potential pitfalls of the shaky alliance between Russia and Turkey. But if Putins gambit to play peacemaker among the bitter regional rivals of the Middle East is successful, it would mark his greatest international achievement to date. To broker a solution to the regions bloodiest conflict while excluding the United States would be an important shift in the international balance of power  one that Putin has called for publicly since he took power in 2000.

Heba Habib in Stockholm contributed to this report.

Read more:

Syrian troops pull out as Islamic State militants sweep back into ancient Palmyra

Endgame in Aleppo, the most decisive battle yet in Syrias war

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Ms. Vulovic speaks with the Associated Press in Belgrade in 2008. (Marko Drobnjakovic/AP)

Vesna Vulovic, a Serbian flight attendant who miraculously survived a plunge from a reported 33,000 feet after her plane exploded in midair in 1972, was reported dead on Dec. 24. She was 66.

Serbias state TV said Ms. Vulovic was found dead by her friends in her apartment in Belgrade. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Ms. Vulovic was working as a Yugoslav Airlines flight attendant on Jan. 26, 1972, when the Douglas DC-9 airliner she was aboard blew up high above the snowy mountain ranges of Czechoslovakia. All 27 other passengers and crew aboard perished.

Ms. Vulovic entered the Guinness World Records in 1985 for the highest fall survived without a parachute.

It was suspected that a bomb was planted inside the jet during a scheduled stopover in Copenhagen, but no arrests were made.

Trapped in the planes tail cone, she plummeted to earth in sub-freezing temperatures and landed on a steep, heavily wooded slope near a village. The fuselage tumbled through pine branches and into a thick coating of snow, softening the impact and cushioning its descent down the hill, crash investigators said at the time.

Ms. Vulovic was rescued by a woodsman who followed her screams in the dark forest. She was rushed to a hospital, where she fell into a coma. She had a fractured skull, several crushed vertebrae and a broken pelvis, ribs and legs.

Initially paralyzed from the waist down, Ms. Vulovic eventually made a near-full recovery and returned to work for the airline in a desk job.

She never regained memory of the accident or her rescue. She told the Associated Press in an interview in 2008 that she could recall only greeting passengers before takeoff from the airport in Denmark  and then waking up in the hospital with her mother at her side.

An instant national heroine, Ms. Vulovic went on to put her celebrity at the service of political causes, protesting Slobodan Milosevics rule in the 1990s and later campaigning for liberal forces in elections.

Associated Press
President Barack Obama blames the "highest level of the Russian government for hacks," as he speaks during a news conference, Friday, Dec. 16, 2016, in the briefing room of the White House in Washington. (Susan Walsh/AP)

The Obama administration announced sweeping new measures against Russia on Thursday in retaliation for what U.S. officials have characterized as interference in this falls presidential election, ordering the expulsion of Russian intelligence operatives and slapping new sanctions on state agencies and individuals suspected in the hacks of U.S. computer systems.

The response, unveiled just weeks before President Obama leaves office, culminates months of internal debate over how to react to Russias election-year provocations. In recent months, the FBI and CIA have concluded that Russia intervened repeatedly in the 2016 election, leaking damaging information in an attempt to undermine the electoral process and help Donald Trump take the White House.

Because Thursdays announcement is an executive action, it can be undone by the next administration. But Obamas last-minute measures put pressure on Trump, who has largely waved off the allegations against Russia, to make a decision about whether to keep the punitive measures in place.

In a statement issued by his transition office late Thursday, Trump was noncommittal, saying, Its time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.

Nevertheless, he said, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.





Taken together, the sanctions and expulsions announced Thursday were the most far-reaching U.S. response to Russian activities since the end of the Cold War, and the most specific related to Russian hacking. The administration also released a listing of addresses of computers linked to the Russian cyberattacks and samples of malware inserted into U.S. systems.

Several lawmakers have called on the administration for months to respond, saying that tougher measures needed to be taken to punish Russia. The White House resisted acting ahead of the election for fear of appearing partisan.

Obama, who had promised a tough U.S. response, said the new actions were a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests. He said Americans should be alarmed by an array of Russian moves, including interference in the election and harassment of U.S. diplomats overseas.

Such activities have consequences, the president said in a statement.

The new measures include sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies, three companies that are believed to have provided support for government cyber operations, and four Russian cyber officials. The two agencies named are the GRU, Russias military spy service, and the civilian spy agency FSB, a successor to the KGB.

The administration has also ordered 35 Russian operatives to leave the United States and will shut down Russian-owned facilities on Marylands Eastern Shore and on Long Island in New York believed to have been used for intelligence purposes.

State Department spokesman Mark C. Toner said the diplomatic retaliation was partly a response to Russian provocations against American personnel in Russia, including arbitrary police stops, physical assault, and the broadcast on state TV of personal details about our personnel that put them at risk.

(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

In June, a senior U.S. diplomat was attacked by a Russian soldier at the doorway to the U.S. Embassy as he tried to enter. That incident, circulated on video, resulted in the earlier expulsion of two Russian diplomats from Washington. The State Department also said that personal details about U.S. diplomats were publicly released in Moscow, and that the Russian government had refused to approve security upgrades to the U.S. diplomatic facility in St. Petersburg.

Obama suggested Thursday that the United States may undertake covert activity in response to Russian activities. Officials gave no details. The Treasury Department also designated two Russian hackers, Evgeny Bogachev and Aleksey Belan, for criminal cyber-activities involving U.S. firms and unrelated to the election hacks.

Moscow, which has denied involvement in attacks related to the election, vowed to respond in kind.

I cannot say now what the response will be, although, as we know, there is no alternative here to the principle of reciprocity, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement late Thursday evening carried by the Interfax news service.

Peskov said the response would be authorized by President Vladimir Putin. In virtually all previous cases of Soviet or Russian diplomats declared persona non grata in this country, an equal number of U.S. officials have been expelled from Russia.

[Read the executive order released by the White House]

Trump has called on the Obama administration to present proof of Russian hacking. Speaking Thursday before the reprisal announcement, Sean Spicer, the incoming White House press secretary, said Trumps views on the hacking allegations could change if more solid evidence emerges that Russia was responsible.

If the United States has clear proof of anyone interfering with our elections, we should make that known, Spicer said, adding, Right now we need to see further facts.

Spicer also said that some on the political left were using the Russia allegations to downplay Trumps victory at the polls on Nov. 8.

[Kremlin spokesman vows retaliation against U.S. sanctions]

U.S. officials say they have been refining for months their assessment of the attacks, in which they say a Russian military intelligence agency hacked the Democratic National Committee and stole emails that were later released by WikiLeaks. Emails hacked from the account of John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clintons presidential campaign, also were made public. State electoral systems were also targeted, but administration officials said Thursday, as they have in the past, that they have no evidence the actual voting process was interfered with on Election Day.

While U.S. officials have not named Putin himself in the cyber-meddling, Obama has suggested that approval came from the very top of the Russian government.

As part of the new measures, the administration has amended a 2015 executive order allowing the president to respond to foreign cyberattacks.

That order was intended primarily for attacks against infrastructure or commercial targets, but officials adapted it to cover attempts to undermine the electoral process  not only in the United States but in other countries as well.

In a call with reporters, U.S. officials said they chose to announce the new measures before the end of Obamas term in an attempt to educate Americans about Russian activities and to deter future intrusions.

Theres every reason to believe Russia will interfere with future U.S. elections and future elections around the world, said one senior official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

The Russian actions have been sustained over an extended period of time, and by any definition are against the national interests of the United States, not the interests of President Obama. The harassment, the official said, has been escalating steadily for some time and is a direct threat to the ability of the United States to conduct diplomacy.

Both U.S. allies and American businesses were concerned about Russian activities, the official said, and if [Trump transition officials] arent, then they should explain why.

The Obama administration also released a document providing some details about the cyber operation U.S. officials have labeled Grizzly Steppe, including a list of names the hackers used.

These groups have conducted campaigns against think tanks, universities and corporations, as well as government agencies, according to the administration. In foreign countries, they have carried out damaging and disruptive cyberattacks, including on electrical utilities.

John Carlin, former head of the Justice Departments National Security Division, said the measures announced Thursday were significant.

Its important to show that we can do attribution and are willing to impose a deterrent  not just for the Russians, but for the world, as were figuring out what the norms should be in cyberspace, he said. Its not a world of free passes.

Identifying the malware that was used, imposing sanctions and affecting the Russians ability to hack for intelligence purposes all raise the cost of conducting such activities, Carlin said.

The Obama administration has already imposed sanctions on Russia for its activities in Ukraine, but those measures do not appear to have deterred Russias actions there.

Congressional Republicans welcomed the crackdown but said it was overdue.

It is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a statement.

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said the measures were inadequate and promised to fight for stronger sanctions.

Despite the Obama administrations efforts to deliver an 11th-hour blow against Russia, Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the international affairs committee of the State Duma, the lower house of Russias parliament, suggested the measures would not inflict lasting damage.

None of this will change the results of the election of the American president, and in January, the rightful owner of the White House will be Donald Trump, Slutsky said. I expect that with his arrival the dialogue between Russia and the United States will be conducted in a more healthy political atmosphere.

David Filipov and Andrew Roth in Moscow and John Wagner in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Putin to Democratic Party: You lost, get over it

FBI in agreement with CIA that Russia aimed to help Trump win White House

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Iraqi pro-government forces patrol the eastern part of Mosul on Dec. 28 during an ongoing military operation against the Islamic State. (Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images)

Iraqi forces launched a renewed assault on eastern neighborhoods of Mosul on Thursday, attempting to break a deadlock in the battle to retake the city from Islamic State militants.

The biggest military operation in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the siege of Mosul is progressing more slowly than expected amid fierce resistance by the hardened militants of the extremist Islamic State group. The presence of more than a million civilians is also complicating the effort.

Before the operation for Mosul, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said he expected it to be retaken by years end, but only about a quarter of the city is back under government control. After two months of grinding fighting and heavy casualties, the Iraqi government paused the campaign earlier this month to give its forces a chance to regroup.

Adjusting his predictions, Abadi said this week that security forces will need three more months to defeat Islamic State militants in the country. Mosul is the groups last major urban stronghold in Iraq, though it still controls other towns and villages.

Meanwhile, U.S. military officials said Thursday that during operations to liberate Mosul, an airstrike against militants in a hospital compounds parking lot may have also inadvertently caused the deaths of an undisclosed number of civilians.

The strike targeted a van carrying Islamic State fighters who were fleeing after being seen firing a recoilless rifle, defense officials said. The U.S. military said that the incident will be fully investigated and that it takes all allegations of civilian casualties seriously.

The fresh three-pronged offensive increases pressure on the Islamic States ability to generate forces, move fighters or resupply, U.S. Central Command said in a statement. Units of the 16th Division of the Iraqi army pushed from the north, Iraqs elite counterterrorism forces from the east and federal police from the south, it said.

We are advancing very slowly to preserve the life of the civilians, said Lt. Gen. Abdul Ghani al-Asadi, commander of counterterrorism forces, adding that his troops had already destroyed two car bombs. Thursdays assault began at 7 a.m., and counterterrorism forces had entered the Karama and Quds neighborhoods, he said, securing part of the latter by the afternoon.

His force, known as the Golden Division, has borne the brunt of the fighting in Mosul after also leading assaults on other cities the militants had taken. Its highly trained fighters are hard to replace, raising questions about whether they can sustain the rate of losses they have suffered so far.

The Iraqi government does not release casualty figures and has restricted access to the front lines for journalists in recent weeks, but attrition rates have been high, according to soldiers and commanders.

Federal police units operating south of the city have also moved to neighborhoods in the east to reinforce army and counterterrorism units fighting there.

On Thursday, Brig. Gen. Walid Khalifa, deputy commander of the Iraqi armys 9th Division, which is fighting in the citys southeast, was sounding a more positive note. We are facing a very limited resistance compared to the early days of the operation, he said. The enemy is collapsing, and its only a matter of days to control the whole eastern part.





Mosul, the biggest city in Iraqs north and jewel of the Islamic States self-proclaimed caliphate, is sliced in half by the Tigris River. Coalition airstrikes have knocked out all five bridges across the river, cutting the eastern side off from militant reinforcements.

Some commanders say the western side, with narrower streets and more civilians, will be an even tougher fight.

Army and police units progressing from the north and south of the city have made limited progress, and some of the gains announced Thursday appeared to be overblown.

Lt. Gen. Abdulameer Yarallah, commander of the Mosul operation, said forces in the north had retaken Tawela village, destroying eight car bombs. The Iraqi military had previously announced that it was retaken earlier this month.

[Iraqi forces launch the battle for Mosul]

The fall of Mosul in 2014 was the greatest victory for the Islamic State in Iraq, and soon afterward its leader declared from the citys great mosque a new caliphate that would supposedly one day encompass the whole region.

Morris reported from Beirut. Paul Schemm in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Dan Lamothe in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Last bridge in Mosul severed by an airstrike

Theres good news in Mosul  for now

Iraqi elite forces enter Mosul 2 years after city seized by Islamic State

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
A diver lifts a fragment of a plane outside in Sochi, Russia on Dec. 28, 2016. (Emergency Situations Ministry Photo via AP)

Russian investigators said Thursday that there was probably no bomb blast aboard a military jet that crashed Sunday off the Black Sea coast, as they revealed new details from flight recorders recently retrieved from the wreckage.

The three-engine Tu-154, flying to Syria from the southern Russian city of Sochi, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 92 aboard. Why it went down remains a mystery, although Russian officials are leaning toward accidental causes, such as mechanical problems or pilot error, rather than an act of sabotage.

It is clear that there was a technical malfunction, Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said during a briefing in Moscow. What caused it remains to be explained by the experts.

[The Russian aid worker and saint who died on the military flight]

More than a year after Russia first deployed military aircraft and special forces in Syria, blowback in the form of a terrorist attack has become a growing concern. Investigators said Thursday that the information revealed by the flight recorders has not eliminated the possibility the crash was caused by a terrorist attack, although it has made it less likely.

1 of 12 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Loved ones mourn after Russian military plane plunges into Black Sea View Photos Photos show those grieving over the crash that may have killed all 92 on board. Caption Photos show those grieving over the crash that may have killed all 92 on board. Dec. 25, 2016 Flowers were placed before portraits of Russian TV journalists who were aboard the plane that crashed into the Black Sea minutes after taking off from Sochi. Pavel Golovkin/AP Wait 1 second to continue.

We arrived at the conclusion that there was no explosion aboard, Sergei Bainetov, head of the Russian armed forces flight safety service, said at a briefing in Moscow. However, a terror attack does not have to be an explosion. Other causes are possible. Hence, we have not ruled out this theory for now.

Bainetov also said that an analysis of the pilots remarks before the crash indicated an emergency situation on board, but he did not elaborate.

Earlier, the Russian tabloid Life, which is close to the security services and regularly obtains surveillance camera footage after accidents, said the captain yelled the flaps! and a string of profanities shortly before the plane crashed. The flight was in the air for a total of 70 seconds and reached an altitude of 820 feet, Bainetov said Thursday.

Sokolov said 19 bodies, along with 230 body parts, have been retrieved by divers at the crash site.

Tu-154 jets, which have been in service for 33 years, were once the workhorse of the commercial airline industry here and are still widely used by government ministries.

It has been involved in serious crashes in Russia and abroad in recent years. Most significantly, a Tu-154 carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski and other senior Polish officials crashed in 2010. No one survived.

Russias intervention in the Syrian conflict has made the country a target for terrorism. An Islamic State affiliate in Egypt asserted responsibility for a bombing aboard a Russian passenger jet in 2015 that killed 224 people, mostly vacationers returning from resorts in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh.





Last week, Russias ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was fatally shot at a public event in an art gallery in downtown Ankara. The assassin, a 22-year-old police officer named Mevlut Mert Altintas, shouted, Dont forget Aleppo, dont forget Syria, moments after the killing.

The attacks have done little to change Russias policy in Syria or cause a rollback of its military deployment there. Russia has sought to strengthen its cooperation with Turkey in Syria despite Karlovs killing as the Kremlin hammers out a coalition without the United States that can determine the fate of the conflict.

Since the attack on the jet in Egypt, Russia has widened its footprint in Syria, deploying new aircraft, special forces ground troops and the countrys sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, to the region.

Read more:

How Russias lone aircraft carrier will change the fight in Syria

Russia avoids suggesting terrorism caused plane crash that killed 92 en route to Syria

Turkish police officer, invoking Aleppo, guns down Russian ambassador in Ankara

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
Gen. Gregorio Alvarez arrives at court for his trial in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 2007. (Andres Stapff/Reuters)

Gen. Gregorio Alvarez, the last leader of Uruguays brutal dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s, died Dec. 28 while serving a sentence for human rights abuses. He was 91.

The militarys health service said he died at the Central Hospital of the Armed Forces in the capital city of Montevideo.

Under Gen. Alvarez, Uruguay was part of the secret alliance of South American dictatorships known as Operation Condor, in which military leaders cooperated in persecuting and killing one anothers dissidents.

Gen. Alvarez, whose father was also a general, participated in the 1973 coup that dissolved the congress following a government crackdown on the Marxist Tupamaro rebels, who were trying to seize power by force. One of Gen. Alvarezs brothers was killed by Tupamaro attackers in 1972.

Gen. Alvarez became army chief in 1978 and took over the presidency in 1981. His government imprisoned democratic critics and censored the press.

Gen. Alvarez agreed to hand over power to an elected civilian government in 1984 as the wave of dictatorships in the region was starting to recede. Argentinas military rule ended a year earlier, Brazils a year later.

Hundreds of suspected leftists were arrested and tortured during the dictatorship, and historians say an estimated 180 Uruguayans were killed  most of them while in the custody of the governments Argentine allies.

In 2009, Gen. Alvarez was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his responsibility in the death or disappearance of 37 Uruguayans under Operation Condor.

During his trial, he said he knew nothing of illegal abductions and forced disappearances.

Prosecutors argued that Gen. Alvarez was in a position to know what happened to the political prisoners as army commander in chief and later as de facto president.

Associated Press
Gov. Scott Walker will travel to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Thursday "to personally thank Wisconsin Army National Guard personnel for their service," his office has announced.

A release from Walker's office said the governor will visit soldiers from the Milwaukee-based 32nd Military Police Company.

Earlier this year, about 120 soldiers from the company deployed to Guantanamo Bay to conduct detention operations.

The 32nd Miltary Police Company "is providing operational support for Joint Task Force Guantanamo and the Joint Detention Group," according to the release. The Guantanamo Bay naval base includes a military prison that houses terror suspects.

Walker will be accompanied on the visit by Wisconsins Adjutant General, Maj. Gen. Donald Dunbar. The state Department of Military Affairs is providing transport.
Last summer, Venezuelas food supply was put into the hands of its military after thousands of hungry people protested in the streets. According to an Associated Press investigation, instead of helping its starving citizens, the military is making a profit from selling the countrys food supply.[...

Last summer, Venezuelas food supply was put into the hands of its military after thousands of hungry people protested in the streets. According to an Associated Press investigation, instead of helping its starving citizens, the military is making a profit from selling the countrys food supply.

Lately, food is a better business than drugs, retired Gen. Cliver Alcala, who helped oversee border security, told AP. "The military is in charge of food management now, and they're not going to just take that on without getting their cut."

The military imports almost all of the food in Venezuela with inflated prices, said Werner Gutierrez, the former dean of the agronomy school at the University of Zulia.

"If Venezuela paid market prices, we'd be able to double our imports and easily satisfy the country's food needs," Gutierrez said. "Instead, people are starving."

Retired Gen. Antonio Rivero said the reasoning behind giving the military control over the food supply was to prevent the soldiers from going hungry and conspiring against President Nicolas Maduro.

"They gave absolute control to the military," Rivero said. "That drained the feeling of rebellion from the armed forces, and allowed them to feed their families."

However, regular citizens are still left desperate, starving, and at the mercy of the military.
A new study from the University of Warwicks Business School in the United Kingdom suggested that modafinil, a drug that reduces impulsive behavior, may be a potential component to combating obesity that is driven by addictions to food . Modafinil is used to treat excessive sleepiness...

A new study from the University of Warwicks Business School in the United Kingdom suggested that modafinil, a drug that reduces impulsive behavior, may be a potential component to combating obesity that is driven by addictions to food.

Modafinil is used to treat excessive sleepiness caused by narcolepsy, or shift work sleep disorder, by changing natural substances in the brain that control being awake and falling asleep, according to the Medline Plus website.

Other studies suggest that the drug alters levels of serotonin and dopamine, neurotransmitters that impact the brains reward and addiction system, Medical News Today reported.

According to the study, published in Personality and Individual Differences, food addicts lack a certain type of dopamine, leading them to impulsively eat more to reach the same level of reward and pleasure as someone who isnt a food addict.

The research team studied 60 men ages 19 to 32 and found that the group who took modafinil showed reduced impulsivity, compared to the placebo group and the group that took atomoxetine, a drug for ADHD, which both showed no difference.

"This could have important implications for people who are obese, co-author Ivo Vlaev said in the study.

There is mounting evidence to show that there is a substantial number of obese people who are food addicts because they have an inability to control their impulsive actions and this drug has shown it can give them more control, which will help overweight people lose weight and so improve their health.
Photo credit: Hearst Communications, Inc. All rights reserved

From Cosmopolitan

Tricia McCauley, the 46-year-old actress and yoga instructor who went missing on Christmas, was found strangled to death in her car in front of a CVS in Washington, D.C., just after midnight on Tuesday.

In a news release, the Metropolitan Police Department said that the actress had been strangled by a ligature and had suffered blunt force trauma. Her cause of death was asphyxiation by strangulation.

On Tuesday, Marlboro, Maryland, resident Adrian Duane Johnson was arrested and charged with McCauley's murder after witnesses told police they had seen him driving the actress' vehicle. At this time, police do not believe that the two knew one another, and it is unclear how they first came in contact. Police believe it was likely a carjacking.

Photo credit: Facebook

Friends and family of McCauley were first worried about her whereabouts after the actress missed a large Christmas dinner that she'd attended annually for the past 15 years on Sunday. Since she'd slept through it once before, her friends tried not to assume the worst - but after she missed a flight home to visit family the following day, they reported her missing to police.

Officers were able to track down Johnson after he robbed a CVS on Monday. When they arrived at the scene, Johnson gave them the key to McCauley's vehicle, which was found nearby with the actress' body inside.

"Tricia is gone, they have found her body," her brother, Brian McCauley, wrote in a Facebook post, according to Us Weekly. "Thank you all for your work, support and love. To all of her D.C. family, I know she truly thought of you that way, thank you for being there for her all these years. Hang on to each other."

According to her IMDb, McCauley was a stand-in for Jenna Dewan-Tatum in Step Up (2006), and starred in the short films The Paper Girl (2000) and Never Dream: The Beginning (2012). A candlelit vigil was held in her honor at the yoga studio where she works on Tuesday.

Additional reporting from The Associated Press.

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A federal court in Grand Rapids, Michigan, ruled that police can shoot a dog while entering a home if the animal moves or barks in the officers presence.

The decision is the final step in a case brought to court by Mark and Cheryl Brown of Battle Creek, whose pit bull was killed while officers were executing a search warrant on their home in 2013.

The couple claimed that officers unlawfully seized their property in violation of the Fourth Amendment when officers shot and killed two dogs while executing a search warrant.

An officer testified that he shot the first dog when it appeared to move a few inches and lunged at him. The dog fled to the basement, where the officer shot and killed it. Court documents reveal that another officer killed the second dog after it too ran to the basement and barked at the officers.

Judge Eric Clays decision ruled that the Browns failed to provide evidence that the first dog did not lunge at police and that the second dog did not bark.

Given the totality of the circumstances and viewed from the perspective of an objectively reasonable officer, the dog poses an imminent threat to the officers safety, the ruling reads. The standard we set out today is that a police officers use of deadly force against a dog while executing a search warrant to search a home for illegal drug activity is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when  the dog poses an imminent threat to the officers safety.

Related:

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Life dealt Gus the English bulldog a rough hand.

When Dawna Pederzani and Karen Sturtevant  who run Vermont English Bulldog Rescue in Williston, Vermont  heard the pup was going to be euthanized, they scooped him up, but discovered he was dealing with a host of health problems.

, skin infections, eye infections, teeth were completely rotted in his mouth  He was just a health disaster, Pederzani told MyChamplainValley.com.

The pair paid for a battery of surgeries to help Gus recover, though in doing so, they uncovered the fact that he was also suffering a life-threatening condition called megaesophagus, which essentially means that any food Gus eats will sit along his esophageal tract until he regurgitates it.

The condition is especially dangerous for bulldogs, because their nose is shortened, everything is squished. When they regurgitate and they breathe in, they breathe the food back into their lungs, Pederzani said.

The pairs research eventually brought them to a device called a Bailey Chair, invented and named for a familys dog with the same condition. They and their vet determined that if he was held upright while fed, the food would pass through normally, Pederzani said.

Pederzani went to her local Home Depot to pick up the necessary equipment to build Gus his chair. But shed recently undergone shoulder surgery, so she asked a six-year employee of the branch named Corey Shanteau for help.

He heard the story and said, Absolutely, bring me the plans and Ill have it built in a couple of days,  she recalled.

The chair came at no cost to the pair: Shanteau simply described his actions as the right thing to do.

I guess this one just being so close to the holidays and helping them out for the work that they do with the bulldogs themselves, it just makes it feel a little bit more special, he told MyChamplainValley.com.

If youd like to make a donation to help defray the cost of Guss care  hell be adopted once hes better trained on his chair  you can do so here.




Photo credit: undefined

From Esquire

In the official WTF news story of the day, a woman in Longview, Texas is claiming that her 11-year-old son found exposed razor blades in a pair of shoes while trying them on at Walmart. The mother-named Candi Mace-told the Longview News-Journal that, "He had one pair and was untying them and pulling out the paper and stuff out of it. He came up with a razor blade."

Photo credit: Candi Mace/Longview News-Journal

Fortunately the kid wasn't hurt, but all told Mace found four razor blades: two in the shoes her son was trying on and two in a pair that she had placed in her cart. In a statement made to the press, Walmart senior manager for corporate communications Charles Crowson said, "We're appalled someone would do this in our store, and we're thankful no one was injured. We checked the surrounding area and found no issues."

According to Mace, employees at the store told her that someone may have taken the razor blades from the hardware section and then hidden them in the shoes. So it's probably safe to say that razor blades will soon be under lock and key in all Walmart stores.

Fun times, though. When is 2017 getting here?

Want shoes that won't cut you? Try these:

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By Latifah Muhammad

The director of a non-profit organization in Clay, West Virginia has been fired from her job following a racist Facebook post in which she referred to First Lady Michelle Obama as an ape in heels, Reuters reports. State officials announced Tuesday (Dec. 27) that Pamela Taylor was removed from her position at the Clay County Development Corp.

Taylor originally resigned, but was reinstated in her position with the organization, last month. The decision led to public backlash, and a state review of its contract with CCDC, which provides services for poor and elderly residents.

Following the states request for specific assurances that the CCDC is following anti-discrimination policies, we have been assured that Pamela Taylor has been removed from her position as CCDC director, said Democratic Governor Earl Ray Tomblins in a statement.

On Nov. 8, Taylor wrote on Facebook: It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified first lady back in the White House, Im tired of seeing an ape in heels.

Beverly Whaling, former mayor of Clay, stepped down after commenting, Just made my day Pam, in response to Taylors post.

This post Non-Profit Director Fired Over Racist Ape In Heels Facebook Post About Michelle Obama first appeared on Vibe.
"I filled out the survey to send to a couple friends and forwarded it to them not realizing that I didnt hit forward I hit reply.'"

By J'na Jefferson

Carl Paladino, the New York co-chair for the Donald Trump campaign who called First Lady Michelle Obama a gorilla and said he hopes that President Obama dies from mad cow disease in 2017, has issued an apology towards the Obama family and the Obama administration.

In his apology, he stated that his comments were meant to be emailed to small group of friends, not the public. The original controversy came after Paladino held no answers back last week as a participant in a survey which circulated throughout the Buffalo, N.Y. community.

Id like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla, he wrote as an answer to the question, what would you like to see go away in 2017?

He also added he hopes that Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford. He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to [Senior White House Advisor] Valerie Jarret His comments were published in the results of the survey, along with a picture of him and his occupations.

I did not mean to send those answers to Artvoice, Paladino wrote in his Tuesday (Dec. 28) apology. Not that it makes any difference because what I wrote was inappropriate under any circumstance. I filled out the survey to send to a couple friends and forwarded it to them not realizing that I didnt hit forward I hit reply. All men make mistakes.

However, Paladino still made sure to throw more jabs in the Presidents direction in his lengthy letter.

Those survey questions provided me with the spark to vent and write deprecating humor about a bad President for whom the main stream media continues to seek an undeserved legacy, he wrote. I wanted to say something as sarcastic and hurtful as possible about the people who are totally responsible for the hurt and suffering of so many others. I was wired up, primed to be human and I made a mistake. I could not have made a worse choice in the words I used to express my feelings.

Story continues

Read the entire letter below.

This post Trump Ally Apologizes For Wishing Death On President Obama, Calling First Lady A Gorilla first appeared on Vibe.
Photo credit: Getty

From Cosmopolitan

Despite protest from Democrats, and even from Environmental Protection Agency workers themselves, the Senate confirmed the nomination of Scott Pruitt to run the EPA on Feb. 17. The pick was controversial because Pruitt himself is an opponent of the EPA who has even sued the organization. Here's what you need to know about Pruitt.



1. Hes served as head of the Republican Attorneys General Association.

Pruitt has been the attorney general of Oklahoma since 2010 and, during that time, he's served two terms as president of the Republican Attorneys General Association. His work with that group alone is enough to raise eyebrows from environmental advocates, since the association relies on funding from the oil industry and conservative groups.

2. Before serving as attorney general, he was a member of the Oklahoma state legislature.

In 1998, Pruitt was elected to the Oklahoma state Senate, where he went on to spend eight years serving in the legislature. While in the state Senate, he moved to prominence in the party, serving as Republican whip from 2001 to 2003 and assistant Republican floor leader from 2003 to 2006.

3. He ran, unsuccessfully, for other offices in Oklahoma before becoming attorney general.

In 2001, Pruitt ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives during a special election but lost the bid. Then, in 2006, he ran for lieutenant governor but failed to get past the Republican primary.

4. He's a climate change skeptic.

In May, Pruitt wrote a piece about climate change for the National Review, which many environmentalists found troubling. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind, he wrote. That debate should be encouraged - in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.

5. He believes the EPA currently oversteps its bounds.

Story continues

Pruitt has said in the past that he thinks EPA regulation goes beyond the scopes of its authority. What concerns the states is the process, the procedures, the authority that the EPA is exerting that we think is entirely inconsistent with its constitutional and statutory authority, he told the Washington Post.

As head of the EPA, Pruitt will likely pass a great deal of environmental oversight down to the states. He's said in the past that he thinks many environmental protection issues are better handled at the state level, a belief that his friend, Dallas investor Doug Deason, recently discussed. Just like most Republican attorney generals, especially in energy-producing states, he has been really frustrated with the government and the EPAs overreach into everything, Deason said.

6. And his personal LinkedIn page literally describes him as an advocate against the EPA.

On the site, Pruitt describes himself as a leading advocate against the EPAs activist agenda. He also wrote that he led the charge with repeated notices and subsequent lawsuits against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their leaderships activist agenda.

7. Hes received massive contributions from the fossil fuel industry.

Since 2002, Pruitt has received more than $300,000 in contributions from oil, gas, and coal companies.

8. Some saw his appointment as Trump making good on a campaign promise.

During the campaign, Trump made several promises related to weakening the EPA, and changing the United States' policies on climate change and the environment. He expressed a desire to "cancel" the Paris accord on climate change and called President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan a "war on coal." Back in 2012, he tweeted claims that climate change is a hoax.

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012

Trump announced on June 1, 2017, that the U.S. would pull out of the Paris Accord, and Pruitt defended this decision, saying, "Its a bad deal for this country. Were going to make sure as we make deals were going to put the interests of America first.

9. He's been involved in several groups and lawsuits against the Obama administration.

Pruitt, along with a group of likeminded attorneys general, has teamed up with top energy producers to fight back against Obama's regulations. Given that, it seems very likely that, if confirmed, Pruitt would work to dismantle existing regulation from within the EPA.

He and other conservative attorneys general have also filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration's climate rules. The case is currently awaiting a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals, but is expected to go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Pruitt was part of a group of attorneys general suing over new EPA regulations aimed at reducing methane emissions. He was also involved in suits regarding Obamas immigration policies, the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, and the Dodd-Frank financial reform.

10. Environmental groups and advocates are concerned.

Pruitt's nomination immediately drew criticism from Democrats and progressive groups, with many promising to fight his appointment. According to Chuck Schumer, the incoming Senate minority leader, Pruitt's "reluctance to accept the facts or science on climate change couldn't make him any more out of touch with the American people - and with reality."

Bernie Sanders has also spoken out against Pruitt's nomination and called out some of his questionable connections to the fossil fuel industry.

Trump's nominee to lead EPA, Scott Pruitt, is a climate denier who's worked closely with the fossil fuel industry. That's sad and dangerous. - Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 7, 2016

Climate change denier Scott Pruitt has worked with fossil fuel companies to make us more dependent on fossil fuels. https://t.co/ipXhImrXFY - Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 7, 2016

11. Even EPA employees protested his nomination.

According to the New York Times, workers at the Environmental Protection Agency called their senators to protest Pruitt's nomination. It seems like Trump and Pruitt want a complete reversal of what EPA has done," Nicole Cantello, a lawyer for the agency in Chicago, told the newspaper. "I dont know if theres any other agency thats been so reviled. So its in our interests to do this. And because it's hard to fire civil service workers, Pruitt is going to have to work with a group of employees who disagree with his mission.

12. He doesn't believe carbon dioxide is a major cause of climate change.

Contradicting @NASA and @NOAA, @EPA administrator Scott Pruitt denies CO2 is primary contributor to climate change. pic.twitter.com/t7Mr8OJ5vN - Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) March 9, 2017

On March 9, just two weeks after being confirmed as EPA chief, Pruitt told CNBC, "I would not agree that [carbon dioxide] is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see ... we need to continue to review the analysis."

"I believe that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact," he also said.

His statement contradicts the overwhelming body of scientific evidence, NPR noted, showing that humans are making the planet warmer by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. There are literally reams of data - including data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - supporting the notion that carbon dioxide is causing the planet to warm.

The EPA has the power to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and Pruitt, NPR added, is beginning to stack the EPA with people who hold similar views as his.

13. He considers himself an EPA "originalist."

In the early months of his tenure at the EPA, Pruitt started to get blowback from conservatives, who say his policies don't go far enough to overturn the Obama administration's environmental regulations, according to both CNN and Politico. But in an interview with Breitbart News, Pruitt explained his philosophy when it comes to running the organization.

Pruitt called that philosophy "EPA originalism," meaning he wants to roll the organization back to its original format, which focused on cleaning up hazardous "superfund" sites across the country and less on things like regulating carbon dioxide emissions. I can just tell you theres buoyancy, buoyancy across the country that theres a different attitude, a different belief, a different view, he said. We can be both pro-growth and pro-environment, weve done it as a country throughout our existence.

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The year 2016, now in its final days, has been kind to very few, and the general population has not been shy about voicing their outrage over the whirlwind of bad news that has been dumped on us over the past 363 days.

But there have been some rays of light among the storm clouds, and many of these beams have fallen upon animals, making the bright spots even brighter. To help get you through these final moments of 2016, and also allow you a chance to look back at the year with some positive feelings, we have rounded up 16 feel good and furry stories.

Your Pet Dreams of You

Dr. Deirdre Barrett, who is a teacher and a Clinical and Evolutionary Psychologist at Harvard Medical School, enlightened us about the magic of your pets dreams. Turns out that cats and dogs dream a lot like us, subconsciously pondering the things that matter to them most during sleep, which means they are thinking about us even when their eyes are closed.

Humans dream about the same things theyre interested in by day, though more visually and less logically. Theres no reason to think animals are any different. Since dogs are generally extremely attached to their human owners, its likely your dog is dreaming of your face, Dr. Barrett told PEOPLE.

A Trio of Kittens Turned into Superheroes

Powerpuff Girl kittens Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup were born with Cerebellar Hypoplasia, a neurological condition which causes jerky and uncoordinated movements. The three cuties could barely move, before 2016 gifted them with a trio of specially-made wheelchairs. Now, the adorable baby cats are starting to move around on their own and are ready for adoption into a loving home.

Now You May Run Into a Pig at the Airport

Travel can be stressful, especially with all the additional restrictions added on over the years. But in 2016, the San Francisco International Airport introduced a positive change, adding Lilou the therapy pig to its staff. This cutie is a professional at helping travelers unwind while they wait for delayed flights.

Story continues

Disabled Vet and His Dog Get a Job

After struggling to find a job after serving in the Air Force, Clay Luthy found a position for himself and his service pup. The pair was recently hired at a Lowes hardware store in Abilene, Texas. The story of these two new employees earned applause from animal lovers across the Internet and the world.

Polly the Goat Beats Her Anxiety in an Adorable Way

Polly, a goat living at the Goats of Anarchy animal rescue in New Jersey, is blind and has neurological problems, both of which contribute to her anxiety. This year she found a way to help battle these negative feelings: putting on a kids duck costume. Its a solution that makes Polly feel better and us feel better, too.

A Dog Became Mayor

After a brutal and seemingly never-ending election season, its great to have some positive political news. A pit bull in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, was declared mayor in a landslide victory, earning over 3,000 votes. By winning the election, Brynneth Pawltro the pit bull, also helped raise money for a shelter in need.

A Pup Met Her Idol

Jolene loves Gumby; her favorite toy is a Gumby doll that she carries with her almost everywhere. To show Jolene just how much he loves her, the dogs owner dressed up as Jolenes favorite clay creature and surprised his pup, who was overjoyed by the meeting.

A Bachelor Party Can Turn into a Puppy Party

If you are out celebrating an engagement, keep an eye out for puppies. A whole litter of stray baby dogs and their mom surprised a bachelor party in Tennessee. The men immediately welcomed the unexpected guests into their cabin and cared for and cleaned up the animals. By the end of the bachelor party weekend, every attendee walked away with a lifetime commitment in the form of an adorable dog.

This Young Boy No Longer Needs to Steal Puppy Hugs

Josh Breaux made headlines when he was caught on a home security camera sneaking into his neighbors garage to steal hugs from their dog. Now, the boy doesnt have to go far to get a furry embrace. The 9-year-old recently received his own puppy and personal hug buddy.

Stranger Things Went from Spooky to Sweet

A 2016 sensation, Netflix sci-fi show Stranger Things inspired plenty of parodies and homages, but perhaps the best, and certainly the cutest, was Doug the Pugs version of the series.

This Needy Pup Got a Boost

Eli the puppy can now enjoy a full meal and a full tummy thanks to a custom made high chair that helps him eat. The 7-month-old pup from Boise, Idaho, suffers from megaesophagus, a condition that doesnt allow food to travel from his throat to his stomach. Before getting his high chair, Eli was malnourished and needed to be syringe fed his meals. Now, thanks to donations, the pup has his special seat that allows him to eat just like other dogs.

Benedict Cumbercat Is a Real Feline Who Cares for Other Kitties

Its hard to stay sad when you know that somewhere out there is a kitty named Benedict Cumbercat. This fluffy gentleman has dedicated his nine lives to comforting the foster kittens that come into his home. Benny takes the little felines under his paw and helps them adjust to life outside the shelter, which helps the adoptable cats find forever homes faster.

Goat Yoga Is a Real Thing

Feeling stressed? Come do some downward dogs amongst the goats. No Regrets Farm in Albany, Oregon, started up Goat Yoga sessions this year. Its exactly what it sounds like: doing asanas outside while peaceful baby goats prance around and on you.

You Can Become a Wombat Cuddler

Bored and uninspired at your current job? With a quick move to Australia you can get a job cuddling wombats professionally. Tasmanian wombats like orphaned baby Derek are looking for folks (Australian citizens) to carry them around and tell them theyre wonderful from 9 to 5. Theres no reason it shouldnt be you.

This Dog Found Zen in 2016, You Can Too

One little dog at a Philadelphia Phillies game proved that anyone can find nirvana anywhere, if they are just open to life. This pup, swaddled in the comfort of a baby carrier, showed all of us that 2016 doesnt have to be bad if you have the right perspective.

A Hummingbird and a Dog Became Best Friends

Its a tale of acceptance and tolerance, and a story that should just put a smile on your face. In 2015, Rex the dog saved a hummingbird that had fallen from his nest, staying by the infant birds side until a human came to help. Instead of flying off and moving on with life, the bird stuck around to show her appreciation after her recovery. A year later the pair are still together, and spend nearly every moment side-by-side.




WHAT WE LIKE: With 120 cubic feet of interior space and more than six tons of towing capacity, our long-term Nissan Titan XD is an accomplished companion that has served us well for stricken-vehicle retrievals, sundry moving jobs, and being an all-around workhorse. During snowmobile season in Michigan, the XD also handily shouldered the weight of enclosed trailers on northward adventures, and, as previously noted, its remote starter and heated seats and steering wheel let us savor our morning coffee on the couch while the Cummins diesel comes up to temperature. The Pro-4X Utility and Audio packages thundering Rockford Fosgate audio system has entertained the audiophiles among us as well, even if it lacks the refined clarity of competing higher-end stereos.

WHAT WE DONT LIKE: Single-digit fuel economy when towing a decent-size trailer, but thats to be expected with any heavy-duty truck. What continues to really grind our gears is the Nissans stubbornly uncouth Aisin automatic transmission, which abruptly clunks into each forward ratio and is easily caught out by quick, stop-and-go accelerator inputsdespite having yet another software update performed by the dealer under warranty. Weve previously derided the 5.0-liter Cummins V-8 for its lack of thrust versus the larger engines in other big trucks, yet combined with the clumsy gearbox, the pairings lethargic response is an even greater annoyance when trying to move the Titans immense bulk through traffic. Servicing this beast also hasnt been cheap, with the trucks second 10K visit (oil and filter change, fuel-filter change, tire rotation, and inspection) costing us just shy of $400. Various other complaints have been logged for the difficult ingress and egress due to the Pro-4Xs lack of side steps, the poor resolution of the rearview camera, and for how easily the central touchscreen washes out in direct sunlight.

WHAT WENT WRONG: While its not really a malfunction, the diesel V-8s emission-control system continues to irritate for how quickly it consumes its diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) solution. Weve added 20 gallons thus faror one about every 1100 milesat roughly $6 per via the 2.5-gallon jugs weve most often purchased at auto-parts stores. And while that outlay would be considerably cheaper if we filled up at the DEF pump at a truck stop, where the fluid can run closer to $2 per gallon, the Titans filler tube is too small to accept the pump nozzle used by semi trucks. The Nissans remote tailgate-lock actuator also quit working on us, which the dealer replaced under warranty.

WHERE WE WENT: Other than a jaunt to Chicago, the Titans only far-flung adventures since our last update have been two journeys to somewhat-frozen northern Michigan in search of proper snowmobile conditions, both times with a trailer in tow. The XD was generally unfazed by the modest load (about 3500 pounds), and despite the workouts, our average fuel economy has held at a so-so 15 mpg.

Months in Fleet: 8 months Current Mileage: 21,203 miles

Average Fuel Economy: 15 mpg Fuel Tank Size: 26.0 gal Fuel Range: 390 miles Service: $770 Normal Wear: $0 Repair: $0 Urea-Solution Additions: 20.0 gal

Specifications >

VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, rear-/4-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door pickup



PRICE AS TESTED: $57,155 (base price: $52,165)



ENGINE TYPE: sequentially turbocharged and intercooled DOHC 32-valve diesel V-8, iron block and aluminum heads, direct fuel injection



Displacement: 305 cu in, 4997 cc

Power: 310 hp @ 3200 rpm

Torque: 555 lb-ft @ 1600 rpm



TRANSMISSION: 6-speed automatic with manual shifting mode



DIMENSIONS:

Wheelbase: 151.6 in

Length: 243.6 in

Width: 80.7 in Height: 78.4 in

Passenger volume: 120 cu ft

Curb weight: 7280 lb



PERFORMANCE: NEW

Zero to 60 mph: 9.4 sec

Zero to 100 mph: 28.9 sec

Rolling start, 560 mph: 10.1 sec

Top gear, 3050 mph: 5.3 sec

Top gear, 5070 mph: 7.0 sec

Standing -mile: 17.3 sec @ 82 mph

Top speed (governor limited): 104 mph

Braking, 700 mph: 204 ft

Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.66 g



FUEL ECONOMY:

C/D observed: 15 mpg

Unscheduled oil additions: 2.5 qt



WARRANTY:

3 years/36,000 miles bumper to bumper;

5 years/100,000 miles powertrain;

5 years/unlimited miles corrosion protection;

3 years/36,000 miles roadside assistance





An available Cummins V-8 diesel engine and near-heavy-duty capabilities make Nissans new-for-2016 Titan XD a unique beast, one that the company hopes will afford certain buyers an attractive middle ground between conventional half-ton pickups and full-on heavy-duty behemoths. Yet, the XDs gargantuan size and substantial mass call into question its tweener status, while some smaller, half-ton rigs can actually match its tow rating of more than 12,000 pounds. To see for ourselves how the XD fares in a real-world environmentserving as both a commuter and a general carryall for our various playthings and detrituswe ordered a 2016 Titan XD Pro-4X for 40,000 miles of servitude.

The big Nissan is the latest in a line of full-size trucks to grace our long-term fleet, including 40,000 miles with the first-generation Titan when it debuted back in 2004. The XD is the first diesel example since our 2010 Dodge Ram 2500 Mega Cab 4x4. These workhorses are in high demand around C/D HQ, accumulating their requisite miles in short order. Although we usually introduce new long-term vehicles soon after they arrive, our XDs 6000-mile break-in period meant we had to wait a couple of months before visiting the test track, during which time it racked up an impressive 7600 miles.

Although Nissan now offers a 390-hp 5.6-liter gasoline V-8 as standard in the Titan XD, and also in the conventional half-ton Titan, the optional turbocharged 5.0-liter Cummins V-8 ($5000) is a better match for moving the trucks significant 7280 pounds (its Gross Vehicle Weight Rating, or GVWR, in excess of 8500 pounds technically makes the XD a heavy-duty pickup, exempting it from EPA fuel-economy ratings). Backed by an Aisin six-speed automatic transmission, the Cummins has 310 horsepower and 555 lb-ft of torque, positioning it between the 420 lb-ft offered in the Ram 1500s EcoDiesel V-6 and the heavy-duty class of diesel engines that top the 900 lb-ft mark.

Similar to General Motors stillborn 4.5-liter Duramax V-8 diesel, the Cummins 5.0 was originally envisioned as a powerplant for half-ton pickupsa combination only Ram currently offers, although Ford has a diesel F-150 in the works. Its also thoroughly high tech, with an iron block, aluminum cylinder heads with composite valve covers, dual overhead camshafts, a 16.3:1 compression ratio, and Cummins M2 sequential-turbocharger setup for minimizing lag. A particulate filter and selective catalytic reduction (urea-based, diesel-exhaust-fluid injection) remove soot and oxides of nitrogen from the V-8s exhaust. Despite the inherent advantages in efficiency provided by energy-dense diesel fuel and compression ignition, the Nissans porky curb weight has kept any gains from materializing in the real world. Our test trucks 15-mpg average thus far is similar to the returns weve observed from other large-engine pickups (both gasoline- and diesel-fueled). And our best stint barely returned 20 mpg, which is still less than the 21-mpg figure weve recorded with the much-lighter Ram 1500 EcoDiesel.

How We Specd It

While you can get either a single- or crew-cab Titan XD for the 2017 model year, 2016 versions came only in the latter configuration, riding on a 151.6-inch wheelbase with a 6.5-foot cargo bed. Base, rear-wheel-drive S models start at $36,485 for 2016, with four-wheel drive adding about $3000, depending on the specific trim. The mid-level Pro-4X we chose, however, is four-by-four-only and begins at $47,165. Along with a two-speed transfer case, 3.92:1 axle ratios, and an electronically controlled limited-slip rear differential, the Pro-4X includes Bilstein monotube dampers, dark-finished 18-inch wheels shod with LT275/65R-18 tires (General Grabber APTs on our truck), and skid plates for the oil pan, 26-gallon fuel tank, transfer case, and lower radiator.

Additional standard equipment ranges from a spray-in bedliner to a gooseneck-hitch mount in the bed to a conventional Class IV receiver out back. An integrated trailer-brake controller also is included. Nissans Zero Gravity captains chairs coddle front-seat occupants, while the 60/40-split rear bench folds up to reveal more hauling space (extensions are there to create a flat floor, if you need it) and underseat storage. Theres also dual-zone automatic climate control, keyless entry and start, a rearview camera, a 5.0-inch color information display in the cluster, and a 7.0-inch central touchscreen with navigation, satellite radio, and USB and Bluetooth connectivity.

Along with the Cummins engine, our Cayenne Red test truck came with the $3310 Pro-4X Convenience package (leather upholstery with contrast stitching and Pro-4X embroidery, remote start, power for the tilting-and-telescoping steering column, a heated steering wheel, and heated front and rear seats); the $1100 Pro-4X Utility and Audio package (Rockford Fosgate audio with 12 speakers, front and rear parking sensors, a power sliding rear window, Nissans Utili-Track tie-down system, LED bed and tailgate lighting, and a 110-volt outlet in the bed); a $345 electronic tailgate lock; and $235 splash guards for a sizable as-tested total of $57,155.

Not a Track Star

In terms of performance, the Titan XD failed to impress on its initial outing at the test track. Its leisurely acceleration to 60 mph (9.4 seconds) and through the quarter-mile (17.3 at 82 mph) make it one of the slowest full-size trucks weve tested recently, regardless of size or engine. Not helped by its chunky all-terrain tires, the XD needed 204 feet to stop from 70 mph and circled the skidpad with just 0.66 g of lateral grip, both numbers that put it near the bottom of the segment. Nor is it especially quiet, generating slightly more noise at idle and full throttle (48 and 74 decibels, respectively) than most of the diesel pickups weve tested. The unusual warble of noises that the Cummins produces above 3000 rpm prompted one driver to declare, Chewbacca is my co-pilot.

Thats not to say the Titan isnt capable, what with 2003 pounds of payload capacity and a tow rating of 12,037 pounds. In addition to hauling various tires, people, and junk near home, the XDs break-in period included voyages to western Michigan, Illinois, and New Jersey. Notes in the logbook so far praise its respectable ride quality and the stability afforded by its long wheelbase and considerable mass. The cushy front seats also have earned fans for their long-haul comfort, and all drivers have appreciated the excellent visibility afforded by its massive, extendable towing mirrors.

While the Titan has never struggled with the heavier chores it has been tasked with, several driversperhaps accustomed to the greater outputs of heavy-duty diesel pickupswished for more passing and towing power. Others have complained about the unassisted climb up into the cabin and the poor maneuverability of its 20-foot-long bulk in traffic and parking lots. The electric tailgate release also stopped working for one driver, who resorted to removing the inner panels of the tailgate to access the latch mechanism manually.

Although the 4.5-gallon diesel-exhaust-fluid system was supposedly filled at the factory, a 20-percent-remaining notice illuminated at just 1200 miles, prompting us to add 2.5 gallons ($15.57) to the reservoir. Another 3.8 gallons ($28.37) were added at 5200 miles when the same warning returned; weve yet to determine whether the significant consumption is the result of our driving or if this is just one of the thirstier setups weve experienced in a modern diesel engine. In between, at 3000 miles on the odometer, the Cummins V-8 also ran low on oil, which cost us $21.39 for a 2.5-quart top-up.

With the Titans first service not scheduled until 10,000 miles, our only visit to the dealer was at 2170 miles for a software reflash for the transmission, which seemed to be slipping as it shifted into third gear. The fix appears to have worked, although the six-speed isnt as deft in its gearchanges as wed like, and it occasionally shudders if the driver abruptly lifts off the accelerator. The dealer also adjusted the front-wheel alignment and inspected the steering column, which produces an intermittent groaning sound when the driver twirls the wheel. The latter was deemed to be working properly, but the noise can still be heard occasionally, so well keep investigating the cause. While we remain uncertain of the true value of the Titan XDs mid-level position in the pickup world, our test truck has been immensely capable in the short time its been with us, and we expect more of the same over the next 32,000 miles.

Months in Fleet: 2 months Current Mileage: 7771 miles

Average Fuel Economy: 15 mpg Fuel Tank Size: 26.0 gal Fuel Range: 390 miles

Service: $21.39 Normal Wear: $0 Repair: $0 Urea-Solution Additions: 6.3 gal

Specifications >

VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, rear-/4-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door pickup



PRICE AS TESTED: $57,155 (base price: $52,165)



ENGINE TYPE: sequentially turbocharged and intercooled DOHC 32-valve diesel V-8, iron block and aluminum heads, direct fuel injection



Displacement: 305 cu in, 4997 cc

Power: 310 hp @ 3200 rpm

Torque: 555 lb-ft @ 1600 rpm



TRANSMISSION: 6-speed automatic with manual shifting mode



DIMENSIONS:

Wheelbase: 151.6 in

Length: 243.6 in

Width: 80.7 in Height: 78.4 in

Passenger volume: 120 cu ft

Curb weight: 7280 lb



PERFORMANCE: NEW

Zero to 60 mph: 9.4 sec

Zero to 100 mph: 28.9 sec

Rolling start, 560 mph: 10.1 sec

Top gear, 3050 mph: 5.3 sec

Top gear, 5070 mph: 7.0 sec

Standing -mile: 17.3 sec @ 82 mph

Top speed (governor limited): 104 mph

Braking, 700 mph: 204 ft

Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.66 g



FUEL ECONOMY:

C/D observed: 15 mpg

Unscheduled oil additions: 2.5 qt



WARRANTY:

3 years/36,000 miles bumper to bumper;

5 years/100,000 miles powertrain;

5 years/unlimited miles corrosion protection;

3 years/36,000 miles roadside assistance





WHAT WE LIKE: Our big 2016 Nissan Titan XD long-termer shines brightest when its working hard towing a trailer or carrying lots of heavy thingsbut that hasnt often been the case lately as we settle into a Michigan winter. Yet its still good to know that such capability is there, even if were just trudging through snow with an empty bed. The giant side mirrors are particularly helpful for maneuvering in traffic, and Nissans Zero Gravity front seats (touted as being inspired by the weightlessness of space, where one has no pressure points) are all-day supportive. Despite its bulky dimensions and ponderous driving dynamics, the Titans remote start, four-wheel drive, and heated seats and steering wheel make it a relatively popular commuter as temperatures plummet below freezing.

WHAT WE DONT LIKE: The rest of the Nissans logbook has been less flattering. The Cummins diesel V-8 is unpleasantly noisyand even took multiple tries to start on a recent not-that-cold morningand the six-speed automatic clunks and shudders in stop-and-go driving, despite having received a software-reflash update at the dealer. The Titans immense size, both real and perceived from the drivers seat, combines with its lackluster performance to make it cumbersome around town. (And thats before you try to park it.) A general lack of refinement manifests in the trucks cabin, with some panel vibrations being noted, some drivers describing the materials as chintzy, and the dated and slow infotainment system drawing brickbats from numerous users.

Our truck also continues to have a powerful thirst for diesel exhaust fluid (DEF), which is stored in a 4.5-gallon reservoir and is injected into the exhaust system to reduce oxides of nitrogen emissions. We may have worked our Titan pretty hard during its first couple of months with us, as we did plenty of towing, but the $125 weve already spent to add 16 gallons of DEF over 15,000 miles seems exorbitant. Nissan doesnt give a suggested range for the DEF tankthe refilling of which in many other diesel vehicles is tied to regular service intervalsinstead relying on a digital gauge in the instrument cluster and a series of Low DEF warnings that pop up all too frequently.

WHAT WENT WRONG: Our greatest expenditure to date was $352 for the Titan diesels first scheduled service at the 10,000-mile mark, which included changing the engine oil and filter, a new fuel filter, a tire rotation, and an inspection. A recall action for the fuel tanks breather tubeconsisting of securing it to the bed rail and removing a temporary cap that was accidentally left on at the factorywas performed as well. We also heard some groans from the hydraulically assisted power-steering system. Upon investigation, the cause turned out to be low fluid level, which was topped off. During that visit the dealer also secured a loose hose for the air-conditioning system, which eliminated an annoying underhood rattle.

WHERE WE WENT: Despite its capacious interior and decent highway ride, our Titan has remained close to home since our last check-in, venturing only as far as Chicago and northern Michigan. Commuting locally means that our meager 15-mpg average hasnt budged, but we expect the Titan to embark on a few longer trips as soon as snowmobile season ramps up in the northern parts of the state.

Months in Fleet: 5 months Current Mileage: 14,873 miles

Average Fuel Economy: 15 mpg Fuel Tank Size: 26.0 gal Fuel Range: 390 miles Service: $373 Normal Wear: $0 Repair: $0 Urea-Solution Additions: 16.0 gal

Specifications >

VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, rear-/4-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door pickup



PRICE AS TESTED: $57,155 (base price: $52,165)



ENGINE TYPE: sequentially turbocharged and intercooled DOHC 32-valve diesel V-8, iron block and aluminum heads, direct fuel injection



Displacement: 305 cu in, 4997 cc

Power: 310 hp @ 3200 rpm

Torque: 555 lb-ft @ 1600 rpm



TRANSMISSION: 6-speed automatic with manual shifting mode



DIMENSIONS:

Wheelbase: 151.6 in

Length: 243.6 in

Width: 80.7 in Height: 78.4 in

Passenger volume: 120 cu ft

Curb weight: 7280 lb



PERFORMANCE: NEW

Zero to 60 mph: 9.4 sec

Zero to 100 mph: 28.9 sec

Rolling start, 560 mph: 10.1 sec

Top gear, 3050 mph: 5.3 sec

Top gear, 5070 mph: 7.0 sec

Standing -mile: 17.3 sec @ 82 mph

Top speed (governor limited): 104 mph

Braking, 700 mph: 204 ft

Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.66 g



FUEL ECONOMY:

C/D observed: 15 mpg

Unscheduled oil additions: 2.5 qt



WARRANTY:

3 years/36,000 miles bumper to bumper;

5 years/100,000 miles powertrain;

5 years/unlimited miles corrosion protection;

3 years/36,000 miles roadside assistance




As 2016 drags its miserable carcass across times cold, cruel finish line, many are left wondering if 2017 will bring more of the same, worse, or better.

In order to encourage the latter, Foreign Policy put together a list of New Years resolutions countries around the world can strive for in 2017, that they might not repeat the mistakes of this year past.

Youre welcome, world.

Austria: Resolve to keep not voting for members of a party that was literally founded by a Nazi shortly after World War II. Even if that party just got a bunch of money from Moscow.

China: Now that youre the one calling for responsible global players, resolve to abide by international law in the South China Sea. You may want to move your sole aircraft carrier out of the area to make this easier for yourselves. Or maybe the missiles. Or the fishermen.

France: Resolve to take your upcoming elections seriously. Really. You all need to make a choice thats in the best interest of your countrys  and Europes  future.

Germany: Same!

India: Resolve to keep up the good macro economic work, but this time maybe try not to cause a cash crisis for your citizens by making most cash in circulation worthless.

Japan: Resolve to finally sign that peace treaty with Russia to formally end World War II. You didnt resolve that spat over the disputed islands this year, but maybe 2017 will be different.

NATO countries that are not currently paying the recommended 2 percent of GDP on defense (which is most of them): With President-elect Donald Trumps suggestion that freeloaders wont get protection, it is probably prudent to resolve to find a way to start paying something closer to 2 percent of GDP on defense.

New Zealand: Stock up on avocados to avoid another fruit shortage-fueled crime wave.

Pakistan: Please, we beg of you, resolve to not start a nuclear war over fake news. Or at all, really.

Poland: Resolve to respect your own constitution.

Romania: Well, your president just prevented your first ever female, Muslim prime minister from coming to power, so resolve to do something progressive in 2017.

Story continues

Russia: Where to begin!? Resolve not to (allegedly) hack other countries elections. Resolve not to annex territory that is not yours. Resolve not to purge senior government officials in the dark of night. Resolve not to threaten journalists lives. Alternatively: Youre back! Resolve to enjoy it.

Turkey: Stop jailing journalists. You beat out China, Egypt, and Eritrea for the country with the most jailed journalists worldwide  a pretty dubious honor.

Ukraine: Resolve, finally, seriously this time  no, but for real  to fix the rampant corruption plaguing your government.

United Nations: Try to break that glass ceiling. And quit trying to rely on Wonder Woman to do it for you.

United Kingdom: You arguably threw your countrys global role off a cliff in 2016, so resolve to enjoy the fall.

United States: Resolve not to start a trade war. Or a nuclear war. Or the third Intifada. Or neuter the Federal Reserve. Or deport millions immediately. Or ignore climate change. Also, maybe start doing something about that fake news problem.

Photo credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Prince George Prince George of Cambridge exercising his right to eat all the candy on Christmas while attending service at St. Marks Church.(Photo: Getty Images)

Theres no disputing it, Prince George of Cambridge and his little sister, Princess Charlotte, reigned cuteness all over 2016. Its well documented.

The eventful year saw Charlotte, 1, make her first public appearance during the Queens milestone birthday. Prince George, 3, started nursery school just months before meeting the President  and to top it all off, the family touched down in Canada for a prominent royal tour.

Click through the gallery for heart-warming footage of royal siblings this year.

You can tweet us your thoughts @YahooStyleCA!
26 best books of 2016, because at least we had some good stories to get us through the year

2016 has been, hands down, the most despicable. Beloved actors and musicians were ruthlessly taken from us, our country elected a person who needed his Twitter taken away from him as President, and countless numbers of hate crimes and terrorist attacks made headlines over and over again. 2016, I am DONE with you.

But that does lead me to what this post is actually about: books. This year was THE year to fully submerge yourself in fiction, in non-fiction, in pages and pages of words and words. Because while I know you are a responsible human person and you read the news and you digest it and you react to it, its okay to take a break and read and temporarily forget about this garbage shit show of a status quo.

So, thank god for books. Shall we celebrate the many amazing reads of the year? We SHALL.

1. Swing Time by Zadie Smith

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This yellow book was one of the most talked-about pieces of literature this year  and for good reason. Swing Time is about the friendship between two black girls and their aspirations to become great dancers. Female relationships and the way power is constantly shifted between them is the main theme, but what will keep you reading is Smiths breathtaking prose.

2. Modern Lovers by Emma Straub

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Modern Lovers presents readers with two hipster families living in Brooklyn, trying to navigate their mid-life malaise. There is a yoga cult involved, as well as an awkward teen romance. Theres a backstory that entails a college rock band and BETRAYAL (*gasp*).

3. Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam

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Its difficult to capture the friendship between two adult women, and when you realize Rumaan Alam is a man writer, you might think, How will he get us? How will he understand? Trust me, he does. Rich and Pretty follows two young women trying to pull off adulthood, each succeeding/failing in their own way. What will grab you is not even the story (which is very good, by the way), but the storytelling. Its just mesmerizing.

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4. The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

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This is not another story about star-crossed lovers! Okay, maybe it is, but thats okay. Daniel is the son of Korean immigrants, parents who expect their son to succeed beyond anyone (and everyones) wildest expectations. Natasha knows exactly what she wants for her future (she wants to be a scientist), and she knows how to get there (lots of college). But her plans are derailed when she learns her family is getting deported back to Jamaica. Pretty much immediately. Of course THIS is precisely when Daniel and Natasha meet. Get your Kleenex ready.

5. The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Change

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The once successful, wealthy Wangs are suddenly stripped of their fortune and big, fancy Bel Air house. Dun, dun, dun! Patriarch Charles Wang decides that after his cosmetics empire crumbles to the ground, hell just take his family to China, where they can start over and rebuild their life. Simple. A story about a Chinese immigrants rise to prosperity and how the American Dream both rewarded and crushed him is a brilliant (and endlessly entertaining) page-turner.

6. Ray & Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonalds Fortune and the Woman Who Gave it all Away by Lisa Napoli

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Behind every great man isa strong, smart woman who is willing to sacrifice everything for what she believes in. Ray & Joan is about a tumultuous marriage, and yes, McDonalds. If you need more exciting non-fiction in your life, this was meant for you.

7. Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers by Leslie Bennetts

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The iconic, ever-polarizing and hilarious Joan Rivers affected all of us in some way, shape or form. Maybe she was your comedic/fashion/snark queen. Or maybe you thought her jokes pretty crass and fashion intel too intense, but couldnt help but laugh and listen to her anyway. Regardless  Joan Rivers was a feminist and a rebel-rouser. Her story, her full story, deserves to be known. And in this biography, details of her personal and professional life are told in a smart, exquisite way. For any true Joan fan, Last Girl Before Freeway is a must-read.

8. The Girls by Emma Cline

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There were a lot of cults in 2016 literature (Jessica Groses Soulmates, Modern Lovers  for awhile, people thought American Horror Story Season 6 was going to be based on Charles Mansons gory following), but The Girls chilled us to the bone like no other story did. Because really, The Girls was about friendship, fitting in, and growing up. Its just that in Evie Boyds world, that included orgies and murder.

9. Soulmates by Jessica Grose

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Like I said, 2016 was the Year of Cults (and other terrible things). Groses Soulmates follows Danas ambitious life post-divorcing her yogi husband, Ethan. Everything comes to a halt when she reads in The New York Post that her ex-husband has been found slain in the desert. Turns out, he had been teaching yoga classes with the woman he left Dana for, and said woman was also found dead right next to him. WHAT THE WHAT. Dana enrolls in the yoga community that ensnarled Ethan, desperate to find out what happened. Soulmates is the satire and commentary on New Age spirituality you absolutely never knew you needed until right now.

10. An Innocent Fashion by R.J. Hernandez

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An Innocent Fashion is like The Devil Wears Prada, but much more serious (and just as good). Elian San Jamar works his ass off to get into Yale, where his academic pursuits lead him to fashion magazine Regine. Its there he comes to learn that the fashion and magazine industry isnt just glamor and labels. A poignant observation about the realities of our painstaking dreams and goals, An Innocent Fashion is a refreshing (and pretty) read for anyone trying to get through this whole adulthood thing without combusting.

11. A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women by Siri Hustvedt

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A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women (released just this month) is the book all the smart women (and men) will be talking about well into 2017. Why? Because Siri Hustvedt provides a very good and very insightful investigation into how gender biases effect everything we see and touch and know. In a Trump America, let A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women be your guide.

12. Little Nothing by Marisa Silver

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Little Nothing is the magical realism we needed this year: Pavla, a peasant girl who can grow no taller than a few feet, is subjected to medical treatments from the owner of a freak show  the effects are unimaginable. Following her journey is Danilo, a man who falls in love with Pavla, and stops at nothing to protect her. Little Nothing is the grown-up, twisted version of Thumbelina; you wont be able to stop reading.

13. Nicotine by Nell Zink

nicotine

A weirdly funny and unexpectedly essential novel, Nicotine follows Penny, an unemployed business major who did everything in her power to be everything her parents werent. But then life comes to a screeching halt when Pennys father dies, and she has to deal with his childhood home (which has been claimed by a crew of nicotine-addicted, Anarchist squatters). Consider this another satire to put on your to-read list.

14. Intimations: Stories by Alexandra Kleeman

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Intimations looks into the human existence through three lenses: birth, life, and death. The twelve stories are just as bizarre and wonderful as Kleemans first novel, You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine (you know, the blue book you saw everyone reading by the pool last year), but I hate to compare, because Intimations deserves its own praise. Its hard for fiction to capture the confusion and weirdness of living, and this collection of stories does so in a gorgeously creepy way.

15. We Could be Beautiful by Swan Huntley

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Swan Huntleys We Could Be Beautiful is a page-turning, satirical psychological thriller that is both hilarious and crazy captivating. The protagonist, Catherine West, is a wealthy adult woman whose expensive tastes are funded by the money her father left her and her sister. She owns a failing, artsy greeting card shop, a beautiful house in New York, and has her own personal trainer  what more could she want? True love and a family, of course! Serendipitously she meets William Stockton, and the two hit it off immediately. But you should always be weary of a person who shows up in your life claiming to be your soulmate (especially if it turns out hes a family friend who mysteriously moved to Europe for a number of years and your mother who has Alzheimers has a tantrum every time his name is mentioned).

16. Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins

kathleencollins

You may not have heard of her, but you should definitely get to know her (her work, that is  Kathleen Collins passed away in 1988). What Happened to Interracial Love? is a collection of stories about infatuation, the African American experience and identity, and otherness. Thoughtful and endlessly beautiful, were lucky to be able to read this collection of short fiction Collins left behind.

17. Break in Case of Emergency by Jessica Winter

breakincase

Jen has given up art (her lifes passion), is thrown into an aimless job hunt after shes laid off, and has been trying (and failing) to get pregnant with her husband. Things seemingly start to look up when shes suddenly employed by a feminist nonprofit  until Jen realizes her bosses (and company) are, well, ethically challenged. Worst of all, she accidentally involves her best friend in an offensively-executed work project, and now Jen is not only underemployed and struggling to get pregnant, but shes also sans-BFF. Break in Case of Emergency is a novel about careers, marriage, and how women treat each other. Required reading? Hell yes.

18. Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler

sweetbitter

Sweetbitter was one of 2016s most talked-about novels  and rightfully so. Its hard to capture the gritty and often times manic life that one leads when they work in the food and beverage industry, but Stephanie Danler somehow pulls it off, AND manages to write an uncomfortably good coming-of-age story. Meet Tess, a 22-year-old who stumbles into a restaurant looking for a job and walks out not knowing her life will be changed forever by a woman named Simone (an older server whose knowledge of wine and poetry is beyond), a bartender named Jake (what is it with guys/bartenders named Jake?), and all the alcohol and drugs you can imagine.

19. Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer

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Just as stop-you-in-your-tracks poetic and tremendous as the rest of Jonathan Safran Foers novels are, Here I Am is the big read weve all been waiting for. Foer, in his signature voice weve come to fall in love with ever since we read Everything is Illuminated, gives us a gorgeous tale of a family that must make some hard choices when an earthquake sets off what was already the murmurings of war in the Middle East.

20. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

homegoing

Homegoing is a story about two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, who are ruthlessly and painfully ripped away from each other. One is sold into slavery, while the other marries a British slave owner. Written with such precision and rawness, Yaa Gyasi creates a historically-rich novel (one that spans over 250 years) that addresses colonialism and slavery in America and Ghana, Africa.

21. Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine by Diane Williams

finefinefine

Diane Williams book of flash fiction is the punchy read you absolutely need in your life. Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine is comprised of 40 stories, which read more like observations. His recovery of an old debt reverses a disappointment. He will buy a new V-necked cardigan!, one segment reads. She holds the loaf against her breast and presses it up under her chin. But this is no violin! Wont she sever her head?, is another.Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine is weird, poignant, and wonderful.

22. What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi

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What is Not Yours is Not Yours is beautifully trippy and will make you think. Helen Oyeyemis short story collection has magical properties  though at first they may seem confusing, her tales eventually unveil themselves, and youre left asking questions, re-reading parts of the book, anything to unlock this fantastical world Oyeyemi has created for us.

23. Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett

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Pond is a quaint series of somewhat connected short stories, stories told through the lens of an Irish woman who lives alone. Though its dense, Pond explores day-to-day life and pokes and prods at the mundane in a fascinating way.

24. The Mothers by Brit Bennett

mothers

The last year of high school for Nadia Turner is a tumultuous one: Her mother commits suicide, and she becomes romantically involved with her communitys pastors son. Things happen, and Nadia discovers shes pregnant. Afraid, Nadia hides the truth from everyone, especially her righteous best friend, Aubrey. Mothers is about a relationship, but its also about belief and community and the different lives we could have led.

25. Youll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein

youllgrowoutofit

I dont know about you, but I REALLY needed this book when it came out. Comedian Jessi Klein (she writes for Amy Schumers show, Inside Amy Schumer) talks about womanhood, relationships, and her career in a super relatable, hilarious, and inspiring way. Plus, Youll Grow Out Of It is just a comforting read when youre in the midst of a quarter-life crisis and need the guidance of a smart, successful woman. Or, just, you know, whenever.

26. Today Will be Different by Maria Semple

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If you loved the quirkiness of Whered You Go, Bernadette, you will fall in love with Maria Semples newest flawed heroine, Eleanor. The crux of the story is ignited when Eleanor stops by her surgeon husbands office, only to discover he lied to his staff saying he was on vacation (when really he was not on vacation) which leads Eleanor to believe there is something deeply wrong with their marriage. Furthermore, we learn about Eleanors past and her mysterious sister. The heart of Today Will Be Different is about family and relationships, and its told through the perspective of a hilarious, imperfect woman. I dare you to not find pieces of yourself in Eleanor.

The post 26 best books of 2016, because at least we had some good stories to get us through the year appeared first on HelloGiggles.
A 3-year-old cancer patient got the surprise of a lifetime when he was sworn in as an honorary deputy at the Kootenai County Sheriffs Office in Coeur dAlene, Idaho, on Wednesday.

Landon Hill, who was diagnosed with stage four metastatic neuroblastoma at the age of 2, proudly held up his badge presented by Sheriff Ben Wolfinger. The toddler wants to be a sheriffs deputy when he grows up, according to KXLY.

I think every little boy wants to do something like that. So if thats the route he took, I would be extremely proud and happy, Landons father, Dylan Hill told the publication.

Landon was treated to a special tour of the sheriffs office before his family was presented with a check to help with medical expenses. The large sum was raised by deputies who participated in a No Shave November fundraiser.

To be able to be involved in a youngsters life at a young level whose family is going through such a hard time and have a significant impact is pretty special, Kootenai County Sheriffs Office Sgt. John Brandel told KXLY.

According to the Kootenai County Sheriffs Office Facebook page, Landon has spent the last few months at Seattle Childrens Hospital undergoing treatment.

He has endured extensive and difficult treatments but has continued to fight strong. The good news is that Landon has been able to come home for the Holiday season, the sheriffs office said on Facebook. Unfortunately, Landon has to return to Seattle to resume his treatment after the first of the year.

But his father says hes not worried.

Hes doing extremely well, Hill told KXLY of his son. Every single time hes been in the hospital hes been let out early and hes amazed the doctors with what hes done.




Over the last three months, shares of Kinder Morgan Inc. KMI slipped more than 10%, substantially underperforming the Zacks categorized Oil & Gas-Production/Pipeline industrys decline of only 2%. Hence, it may be the right time to offload the stock of this midstream player.

However, it is not advisable to avoid all energy stocks right now, as the possibilities of improving commodity prices should lead to better return from these scrips in 2017.

Why Dump the Kinder Morgan Stock?

Kinder Morgan carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell), which implies that the stock will underperform the broader U.S. equity market over the next one to three months. Moreover, the Value and Growth scores for Kinder Morgan stand at D & F. The combination of the low scores and an unfavorable Zacks Rank raises caution.

The company is overvalued as revealed that Kinder Morgan has forward PE ratio of 33.08 as compared to industry average of 14.30. We also expect the company to witness year-over-year earnings decline of more than 10% for the current year.

Moreover, the need for additional transportation and storage of natural gas and oil arises when there is a surge in the production of the commodities. Given the weak oil and gas prices, the production level of both the commodities are significantly lower than 2015. Naturally, there is less demand for new midstream assets to carry and store the commodities.

The company seems to be prepared for the decline in the need of energy midstream assets. Consequently, it has lowered its 2016 capital spending guidance. It goes without saying that lower spending for midstream operations might hamper the companys future cash flows.

Energy Stocks Worth Considering

The prospects for all energy stocks are not the same as Kinder Morgan. Some upstream energy players are set for a turnaround after a massive improvement in both oil and natural gas prices compared with early 2016. Although both oil and natural gas prices are way below the level they were trading during mid-2014, the commodities have significantly recovered from the historical lows they reached during the first quarter of this year.

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From a 17-year low mark of around $1.6 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) during the first quarter, natural gas prices have recovered substantially and are currently trading above the key psychological level of $3 per MMBtu. Cold weather forecast has also pushed the commodity price up as many homes in the U.S. need natural gas for heating purposes.

Moreover, the recent deal between OPEC and non-OPEC producers to curb production amid oversupplied commodity market has led crude to gain momentum. Oil has already crossed the psychological level of $50 per barrel.

We expect that the exploration and production companies will be able to sell the commodity at higher prices, in turn, garnering increased cash flows for shareholders. Moreover, firms involved in engineering and construction operations and solely focused on the offshore or onshore oil and gas business will likely receive more contracts following the increase in upstream operations.

Our Picks

With the help of the Zacks Stock Screener, we have zeroed in on four stocks that flaunt a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) and offer Value and Growth scores of B or better. With extensive research we found that the key to success is to focus on stocks with Zacks Rank #1 and #2 and Value or Growth scores of B or better.

Incorporated in 1959, Houston, TX-based McDermott International Inc. MDR is a leading global engineering and construction firm that has a diversified product portfolio, specialty manufacturing and service capabilities, and proprietary technological expertise.

Despite the weak commodity pricing environment, this Zacks Rank #1 stock has maintained its excellent track record of earnings surprise history, handily beating estimates in each of the last eight quarters. Key stats to note:

Value score: A

Growth score: B

Headquartered in Denver, CO, Antero Resources Corporation AR is involved in the exploitation and development of oil and natural gas properties in the U.S.

The company currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 and managed to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the last four quarters with an average positive earnings surprise of 370.83%. We also expect the company to post year-over-year earnings improvement of 74.74% for the current year. Key stats to note:

Value score: A

Growth score: A

CONE Midstream Partners LP CNNX  based in Canonsburg, PA  is the operator and developer of natural gas gathering and other midstream energy properties in the Marcellus Shale.

The partnership, which is involved in midstream operations, managed to beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the last four quarters. This Zacks Rank #1 stock is also projected to witness year-over-year earnings improvement of 33.1% for the current year. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.Key stats to note:

Value score: A

Growth score: B

Royal Dutch Shell plc RDS.A owns a strong and diversified portfolio of global energy businesses that offer attractive long-term growth opportunities. The companys upstream business is expected to grow on the back of improved commodity prices. Presently, the company carries a Zacks Rank #2. Key stats to note:

Value score: B

Growth score: B

Forget the gym, finding great stocks should be your New Year's resolution! Don't miss out on our new Top 10 Stocks for 2017 list, which has been hand-picked from 4,400 stocks covered by the Zacks Rank. Be one of the first to see this year's list here>>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



CONE MIDSTREAM (CNNX): Free Stock Analysis Report



MCDERMOTT INTL (MDR): Free Stock Analysis Report



ROYAL DTCH SH-A (RDS.A): Free Stock Analysis Report



KINDER MORGAN (KMI): Free Stock Analysis Report



ANTERO RESOURCE (AR): Free Stock Analysis Report



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Zacks Investment Research
Open enrollment for employee benefits is underway and wrapping up at many companies across the country, and as you probably noticed, health care costs continue to rise. The Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research & Education Trust 2016 Employer Health Benefits Survey found that annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage amounted to $18,142 this year, up 3 percent from last year. On average, workers paid just under a third of the cost of their coverage.

[Read: Open Enrollment: Deciding Between a PPO, HMO, EPO or POS Plan.]

To keep costs in check, many employers are gravitating towards high-deductible health plans and telemedicine, according to Jeff Griffin, president of the JP Griffin Group, an employee benefits advisory company headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. Telemedicine options such as using phone or video chat technology help to "facilitate access to coverage but keep the cost low as well," Griffin explains. Many basic types of care, including doctor visits for sinusitis, strep throat, pink eye and ear infections, can be administered using telemedicine tools, he adds.

Apart from the growth of telemedicine offerings, the new presidential administration could bring major changes to health care, though it's unclear what would replace these marketplaces if they're repealed and when changes would take effect. Given this uncertainty, the options available to you during open enrollment likely followed the mandate as it stands now. "We're proceeding under the current regulatory environment, but we're preparing employers for a discussion around new options as the year unfolds," says Dard Hunter, president of employee benefits at CLS Partners, an employee benefit advisory company based in Austin, Texas.

Beyond health care costs, here's what the new year could mean for your health plan and other employee benefits.

1. More help navigating the health care system. Rising health care costs strain employers and employees, but one positive development is that some employers now offer benefits that help plan participants understand their health care options and make more informed decisions. Traditionally, employees were left to fend for themselves when it came to using their health care benefits, says Jim Winkler, chief innovation officer for health care at Aon Hewitt, a human resources, consulting and benefits firm. But that's changing thanks to new benefits offerings.

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Winkler points to health care consulting companies like Quantum Health that help guide employees through insurance and health care questions. "They actually replace the 800-number for the health plan on the back of your health care card," he explains. According to Winkler, companies like that can answer employees' questions: "Did my claim get paid? Is my doctor in network?" Some health care consulting companies take a more proactive approach by making recommendations. For instance, if an employee were calling to find an endocrinologist, the phone representative might highlight other employee benefits such on-site Weight Watchers meetings to help them manage their weight and reduce the severity of health conditions such as diabetes, Winkler says.

2. Ancillary benefits. In addition to traditional benefits such as health insurance, dental coverage and a vision plan, Hunter sees more employers offering employees options, including accident coverage, critical illness coverage, pet insurance or group legal plans. "These things used to be rare considerations or maybe not considered at all, but most employers are now realizing with the quality of product on the market, there is tons of room for these types of products to be offered through their benefits plan," he says.

"The employer works with a broker or consultant like us to select an appropriate menu based on their own demographics or their own cultural requirements," Hunter adds. For instance, the cultural and demographic makeup of one employer might point to an interest in pet insurance if that employer values pets as part of the family, while others might prioritize life insurance if reducing risks is a cultural priority. Typically, the employer does not pay for these benefits, but the employee might benefit from group rates and the convenience of automatic payroll deductions rather than buying coverage on his or her own. Still, if you're cost-conscious, you might want to compare the benefits package price to what you can purchase independently or through your own broker to ensure that group pricing through your employer is your best option.

[See: The 6 Best Jobs for Work-Life Balance.]

3. Continued interest in wellness programs. Employers continue to recognize the value of newer programs that address physical or emotional well-being so that their employees can stay healthy and productive. However, Winkler says employers are using fewer financial incentives than in the past. For example, some employers who offered cash incentives or lower health care premiums found that low financial incentives didn't change behavior or, if they were too high, incentivized employees to try to game the system. Instead of giving employees cash for logging a certain number of steps or adopting other healthy behaviors, "what you're starting to see now is companies might do a Fitbit challenge, and they might have goofy prizes for who wins," he says. "It's a friendly team competition [rather than a cash prize]," he adds.

4. Growth of financial wellness programs. Employer-provided financial wellness programs have been picking up steam for the past few years. "Every year we do a survey of HR professionals, primarily at large employers, and far and away the number one initiative was this notion of building and expanding financial wellness tools in ways that go beyond retirement," says Rob Austin, director of retirement research at Aon Hewitt.

"If someone can't afford to come into work and be fully dedicated because they're worried about a creditor calling them, that employee is not the best employee they can be," Austin adds. "They want to help that employee get on more stable financial footing," he explains. Even at companies where the staff is likely to have creditors calling, employers are providing tools and resources that help employees learn to create a budget, plan for major expenses such as college or a new home and understand other money concepts. In 2016, several companies made headlines by offering student loan repayment assistance, but Austin says it's still a very small number of employers offering this benefit.

5. More telecommuting. Telework and telecommuting became trendy five years ago, and the number of employers offering these options continues to grow. The percentage of employers offering telecommuting on an ad hoc basis has increased from 45 percent in 2012 to 56 percent in 2016, according to a 2016 Employee Benefits survey report conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management. "I think we'll still continue to see telecommuting and flexible work arrangements grow," says Evren Esen, director of workforce analytics at SHRM. "As technology continues to improve, we'll see changes in how companies approach telecommuting," Esen adds.

[Read: 6 Ways Telecommuters Can Show They're Part of the Team.]

Similarly, Esen is seeing more employers providing a stipend for a phone or computer rather than simply providing one to employees. "It's a sign of being a little more practical and recognizing that smartphone use is very high now and you can do your personal and your work using the same device relatively seamlessly," Esen adds.

Susan Johnston Taylor has contributed to the money section of USNews.com since 2011, covering everything from personal finance apps and spending strategies to mortgages, insurance and estate planning. Her articles on business and personal finance have also appeared in or on The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, Learnvest, Entrepreneur and Fast Company. Susan's goal is to offer readers new insights and practical ways to save money, advance their careers or improve their lives. You can find her on Twitter @UrbanMuseWriter.
Yes  it's that time of the year again  end of year stock market performance review season. And predictions for 2017.

Which market sector outperformed all others in 2016? Knowing which sector has been hot could point to where you should invest in 2017.

Investors looking for the strongest performer for the U.S. stock market's price action this year need look no further than stocks in the energy sector. Yes, you heard it right.

With a market-thumping +25% return, 'Energy' has been the top performing sector S&P sector in 2016 proving that oil is indeed alive and kicking.

The Year in Review

Oil's 2016 journey was marked by sudden sharp sell-offs followed by swift recoveries. However, with crude's wild ride, we saw some big winners  and big losers as well. So essentially, investors with good stock-picking skills made a lot of money, while those who bet on the wrong stocks got absolutely hammered.

By February, prices plunged all the way to a low of $26 per barrel, thanks to the boom in shale oil production and rising output from OPEC. The dramatic slide prompted several analysts to make bold calls on a potential bottom. While some suggested prices might drop as low as $20 a barrel, gloomier estimates called for a sensational $10-per-barrel floor.

But thankfully, none of these bone-chilling forecasts were correct.

A historic OPEC production cut agreement, together with help from non-OPEC producers and slashing investments (in existing and new wells) have seen oil prices more than double from their February lows to $52.

Energy Roadmap for 2017

Yes, oil had a great 2016 but what about 2017? Will history repeat itself?

While its hard to predict whether oil will double again and energy will outperform all other sectors next year, there's reason to believe that 2017 could be an excellent one for oil stocks.

After a 2 year bear market, the rig counts  both U.S. and International  have bottomed and activity is starting to bounce off slowly. Oil has rebounded from its multi-year lows reached earlier in 2016 and while the commodity may not be at a level many thought it would be at the end of the year, even at todays price certain companies are in a position to earn profits.

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Throughout the downturn, producers worked tirelessly to cut costs down to a bare minimum and look for innovative ways to churn out more oil from rock. And they managed to do just that by improving drilling techniques and extracting favorable terms from the beleaguered service producers.

With these efforts, many upstream companies have repositioned themselves to thrive even at lower prices. Moreover, lower capital expenditures have led to numerous project cancellations and production losses - another step in reducing the glut of crude.

The deal by members of the OPEC oil cartel to cut output is expected to bring much needed stability to the market with prices set to improve steadily. Multinational oil enterprises, on the back of greater certainty, will now be able revive spending on drilling activities.

Thus, there's a possibility that the sector will see a replay of 2016 - with attractive upside potential and good returns.

Momentum Investing to the Rescue

As evident from the energy market story, stocks can take a sudden turn for the good (or bad), making stock picking a risky game. Every good stock also has its bad day, which further adds to the risk. At the same time, this volatility can be exploited to make significant profits, which is where the Momentum Style Score enters the picture.

The Momentum Style Score is an indication of the time to buy a stock to benefit from rising share prices. The highest score is an A, so getting in on an A and out on a B or C could be a strategy for short term gains. For a more in-depth understanding, check out our Style Score System.

But investors should bear in mind that this is a speculative strategy and not meant for the weak-of-heart.

That said, we pair the Momentum Style Score of A with a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy) or #2 (Buy), which as you know indicates stocks with high chances of outperforming the market over the next 1-3 months. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

One of the main factors driving the Zacks Rank is estimate revisions, so stocks with high ranks as well as high momentum scores have even greater chances of short-term appreciation.

Here, weve picked out five energy stocks for momentum investors based primarily on these two factors.

Our Choices

Newfield Exploration Co. NFX: Sporting a Zacks Rank #1, Woodlands, TX-based Newfield Exploration is an independent energy company engaged in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas onshore in the U.S.

Royal Dutch Shell plc RDS.A: The Hague-based Royal Dutch Shell is one of the largest publicly traded oil and gas companies in the world, based on proved reserves. Shell currently has a Zacks Rank #2.

InterOil Corp. IOC: InterOil  holding Zacks Rank #2 is a U.S.-listed, independent oil and gas company with assets in Papua New Guinea.

Stone Energy Corp. SGY: Lafayette, LA-based Stone Energy is an independent oil and gas exploration and production company engaged in the acquisition and subsequent exploration, development, operation and production of oil and gas properties located primarily in the Gulf of Mexico. Stone Energy currently has a Zacks Rank #2.

Bill Barrett Corp. BBG: Headquartered in Denver, CO, Bill Barrett  with a Zacks Rank #2  is an independent oil and gas developer in the Denver-Julesburg Basin of Colorado and the Uinta Basin of Utah

Bottom Line

If you are looking for fresh picks that have potential to move in the right direction, definitely keep the 5 abovementioned stocks on your list as these looks well-positioned to soar in 2017.

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You are welcome to download the full, up-to-the-minute list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 "Strong Buy" stocks free of charge. There is no better place to start your own stock search. Plus you can access the full list of must-avoid Zacks Rank #5 "Strong Sells" and other private research. See the stocks free >>



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Five members of the Islamic State group were sentenced to death in Jordan after a raid in March that killed a police officer. Jordans State Security Court sentenced the five men to death by hanging and sentenced another 15 alleged ISIS members involved in the attack to imprisonment with hard labor on Wednesday, according to state news agency Petra.

The 20 men were arrested in March during a raid of their hideout in Irbid, 12 miles from the Syrian border, when specialized security forces were deployed against the armed militants. Seven militants and a Jordanian police officer named Rashed Zyoud were killed in the resulting clash, according to the Jordan Times.

The men were charged with carrying out terrorist acts that led to the death of an individual, complicity in terrorist acts, manufacturing and possessing explosive substances with illicit intent and spreading terrorist ideologies. It was not the first time the states Security Court has sentenced terrorists to death. In 2015, Jordan executed two convicted jihadists who burned alive a Jordanian pilot after his jet crashed in Syria.

Jordan is part of a coalition led by the United States battling ISIS fighters in both Syria and Iraq. The State Department issued a warning in December to anyone traveling to the country following a terrorist attack on Dec. 18 in which 10 people were killed.

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Photo: Reuters

Terrorist organizations, including the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), its affiliates, and sympathizers, have successfully conducted attacks in Jordan and continue to plot assaults in the country, the warning said. Jordans prominent role in the counter-ISIL Coalition and its shared borders with Iraq and Syria increase the potential for future terrorist incidents.

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Jordan has seen more than its fair share of terrorist attacks in recent years. In addition to the raid in March and the attack in December, a gunman killed five Jordanian security officers in Baqaa in June. In November 2015, a terrorist killed two U.S. citizens who were working at the Jordan International Police Training Center near Amman.

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The U.S. presidential election had a positive impact on the school industry. Shares of for-profit education companies like Strayer Education STRA, Universal Technical Institute, Inc. UTI and American Public Education, Inc. APEI have rallied since the victory of Donald Trump.



Trump has assured support to schools, confirming federal funding for schools or online companies. He may even ease regulations imposed on the industry by the Obama administration.



Illinois-based DeVry Education Group Inc. DV is one such company to gain from Trumps win and strength in several of the key areas. Thus, adding the stock to your portfolio should be a prudent move. Notably, shares of this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) company gained more than 80% over the past six months compared to 16.9% growth of the Zacks categorized Schools industry.You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.





What Makes DeVry an Attractive Pick?



Transformation Strategy & Cost Savings: DeVry has adopted a transformation strategy for DeVry University which includes the improvement of both student experience and affordability of the programs along with strategic marketing. Through fiscal 2017, the company plans to introduce a number of short-period, stackable programs that provide students the flexibility and affordability to pursue education outside the traditional four-year degree course structure.



DeVry also undertook cost-saving initiatives like workforce reduction and reduction of discretionary spending. The company has brought down its expenses by $181 million in fiscal 2016 and expects to continue to do so in fiscal 2017 as well.



Superior ROE: DeVrys Return on Equity (ROE) ratio is 9.56% compared with the industry average of 6.74%. This indicates that the company reinvests more efficiently as compared to the industry.



Valuation: DeVry has a trailing twelve-month PE ratio of 12.93. This level actually compares favorably with the market as the PE for the S&P 500 stands at about 19.88.

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Further, the stocks PE also compares favorably with the Zacks classified Schools industrys trailing twelve months PE ratio, which stands at 25.14. At the very least, this indicates that the stock is relatively undervalued right now, compared to its peers.





Also DeVrys has a forward PE ratio (price relative to this years earnings) of 12.61, so it is fair to say that a slightly more value-oriented path may be ahead for DeVry stock in the near term too.



VGM Score: DeVry has a VGM Score of A. Our VGM Score identifies stocks that have the most attractive value, growth, and momentum characteristics. In fact, our research shows that stocks with VGM Scores of A or B when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 or 2 make solid investment choices.



Estimates Revisions: The companys current quarter has seen three estimates go up over the last two months compared to no estimate moving lower. Meanwhile, fiscal 2017 estimates have seen two upward revisions and no downward movement in the same time frame.



The resultant effect on the consensus estimates was an 8.9% increase for the current quarter and 0.4% rise for the current year. The positive earnings estimate revisions indicate analysts confidence and substantiate the solid rank for the stock. Also, DeVry beat earnings estimates in all of the past four quarters, the average being 8.94%.



Whats more, for fiscal 2017, earnings per share (EPS) are projected to grow nearly 6%.



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The loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs over the past decade played a substantial role in November's presidential election. Rhetoric promising to bring manufacturing jobs back and vilifying U.S. trade agreements that were blamed for the job losses were a steady drumbeat from both the Trump and Clinton campaigns.

Now that the election is settled, the question becomes one of whether or not those jobs will be coming back. And not only those jobs, but thousands of other jobs in hard-hit sectors like construction and energy production.

The pain of job losses was not spread evenly across the country either. In our recent survey of , 24/7 Wall Street reported that of the five cities losing the most jobs in the 12-month period between October 2015 and October 2016, three were in Louisiana. Of those five, job losses in three were primarily attributed to the downturn in energy production, and in two states, job losses came in the manufacturing sector.

ALSO READ: The Largest Private Company in Every State

Here are the five cities with the most job losses in the 12 months to October 2016:

Lafayette, Louisiana, lost nearly 8,500 jobs in the period, nearly 4.5% of its workforce. Most of the losses came in the manufacturing sector, and the unemployment rate at the end of October was 7.1%, compared with a national rate of 4.9%. Casper, Wyoming, dropped about 1,500 jobs in the coal mining and energy industries. The unemployment rate in the city is 6.6%, and the one-year decrease totaled 3.77% of the city's jobs. Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana, lost 3.74% of its jobs in the 12-month period, a total of about 3,400, primarily in the oil and gas business. The unemployment rate in the city is 6.7%. Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana, lost more than 4,200 jobs, or nearly 2.35% of the October 2015 workforce. The metro area is the hub of the natural gas-producing region known as the Haynesville shale play, and low gas prices hit the area hard. The unemployment rate is 6.8%. Mansfield, Ohio, lost nearly 1,200 jobs, primarily in the manufacturing sector. About 20% of the area's jobs are in manufacturing, so reversing this trend is a particular challenge here. The unemployment rate in Mansfield is 5.6%.

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Will President-elect Donald Trump be able to deliver on his promise to return manufacturing jobs to the United States? The prevailing opinion is that he won't. Here's the story in a nutshell from Ben Casselman at FiveThirtyEight:

ALSO READ: Americas Most and Least Successful Companies in 2016

Here's the problem: Whether or not those [lost] manufacturing jobs could have been saved, they aren't coming back, at least not most of them. How do we know? Because in recent years, factories have been coming back, but the jobs haven't. Because of rising wages in China, the need for shorter supply chains and other factors, a small but growing group of companies are shifting production back to the U.S. But the factories they build here are heavily automated, employing a small fraction of the workers they would have a generation ago.

Jobs in the oil and gas sector are more cyclic, and the recent decision by OPEC to cut production has already had the intended effect of boosting crude prices. If prices remain high, more drilling will commence and more people will go back to work in the nation's oil fields.

Job gains in coal mining, however, are less likely. Domestic demand for coal to generate electricity may rise slightly in 2017, but in the longer term coal is not expected to recover its dominance as a fuel to generate power. Import demand, particularly from China, for metallurgical coal for steel-making, can be more cheaply met by coal from Australia and south Asia than by U.S.-mined coal.

ALSO READ: Cities With the Highest Poverty Rates

See the full story, "," at our website. A companion story, "" is also posted there.

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The 7 best pieces of advice from Carrie Fishers last book, The Princess Diarist

I heard about Carrie Fishers heart attack on an airplane when I turned on my phone after my own flight had landed in Texas last week. I had just been reading her new book, The Princess Diarist, which she had been promoting  and my heart sank when I read the news. My friend and I had just been talking about how much we loved Carrie Fisher and how to decode her tweets a few days prior.

Just like the rest of her adoring fans, I retweeted messages wishing Fisher well and frantically checked the Internet every day for news on her condition.

Sadly, we lost her.

Carrie Fishers passing was one of many tragic deaths this year, but she gave us a pretty spectacular parting gift: Her final memoir.

carrie fisher princess diarist

The Princess Diarist is a sharp, nostalgic look at how Carrie Fisher came to be Princess (now General) Leia Organa in the Star Wars movies. Most of the material in the book comes from the diaries Fisher kept while filming the first Star Wars film. Like all of Fishers work, the book is filled with sage and sardonic advice.

Here are some of the best pearls of wisdom from the late, great Carrie Fisher, courtesy of The Princess Diarist.

carrie fisher snl

First of all, keep journals!!!

Carrie Fisher has discussed her need to write down her feelings and events in her life to make sense of them and remember them. In The Princess Diarist, she says that her inner voice tells her:

Write, dont think, write. Youre not thinking properly, Ms.Fisher, I suggest you write.

In this case, it obviously served her well. You never know which moments in your life will be the standouts when you look back 40 years later  or if the small space opera youre filming is going to wind up as a global phenomenon.

Princess Leia

A sense of humor can get you anywhere.

In her book, Fisher recounts her first Star Wars audition. She was nervous and flustered when George Lucas asked about her career (which had barely started). She wrote, I repressed the urge to say I had written three symphonies and learned how to perform dental surgery on monkeys, and instead told the truth.

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Fans of Fishers are familiar with her self-deprecating, smart, sarcastic sense of humor. She always had the perfect one-liners in interviews and on Twitter.

Please stop debating about whetherOR not aged well.unfortunately it hurts all3 of my feelings.My BODY hasnt aged as well as I have.Blow us  Carrie Fisher (@carrieffisher) December 29, 2015

She had a tough life, but she could always laugh about it, and that was her saving grace. Develop a thick skin and a good sense of humor, and it can be your saving grace too.

Its totally natural to want to be liked.

Fisher was very upfront about wanting to be well-liked. She wrote, I am someone who wants very much to be popular. I dont just want you to like me. I want to be one of the most joy-inducing human beings youve ever encountered. I want to explode on your night sky like fireworks at midnight on New Years Eve in Hong Kong.

And you did, Carrie. You brought incredible amounts of joy to us all.

carrie fisher 1977

And in relation to that  its human nature to second-guess yourself.

Everyone worries that people dont like them. When recounting her affair with Harrison Ford, Fisher wrote that she often felt uneasy in his presence  she called him a people unsettler, as opposed to a people pleaser. She couldnt tell how he actually felt about her, and it made her very anxious. Im sure we can all relate  I know I can. She mentions that she would sometimes avoid Harrison because she feared annoying him, and she chose her words with extreme care whenever speaking to him, hyperaware of making a good impression.

Fisher was never shy about her anxiety, always upfront and unashamed when discussing it  and that always made me feel better. I feel less alone in some of my more neurotic behaviors whenever I read Carrie Fishers books or interviews.

carrie fisher and harrison ford

Sometimes, you need distance to appreciate something.

She writes about her difficult childhood not with anger, but with reflection. She doesnt say she hates her father for cheating on her mother, she just states his infidelity as fact. She never gets angry about her difficult past; she never dwells on her mistakes. Instead, she only looks to the future.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, when discussing her affair with Ford, she touches on not appreciating things in the moment. She didnt understand at the time how a sexy older man could be interested in an inexperienced teenager. She wrote:

I was a lucky girl  without the self-esteem to feel it, or the wherewithal to enjoy what there was to enjoy of it, and then let go. Only to look back on it forty years on with amused, grateful, and all-but-puffy eyes.

princess leia

Everyone has insecurities.

Fisher writes at one point, I dont believe people are across-the-board confident. If they are well, theyve misjudged the situation where theres an arrogant result. Mostly people have those few things they do well and hope those things make up for the other shit.

When I read Carrie Fishers books, I get the sense that she made peace with her insecurities, and it gave her a healthier perspective and sense of humor. She could accept her flaws upfront  never making excuses  which is refreshing in Hollywood. Her willingness to talk about her insecurities and imperfections proves to young women that we dont always need to be okay. We can make mistakes.

carrie fisher

Be yourself, and never apologize or change if people dont like it.

In one of her diary entries, Fisher wrote:

I must be who I am, and people adjust to it. Do not try to rush or influence the decision. Do not let what you think they think of you stop and question everything you are.

This is probably one of the best pieces of advice Ive ever gotten from reading Carrie Fishers work. Everyone is special in their own way, and you should never try to fit the mold you think other people want to see. Like Fisher says, I should let people I meet do the work of piecing me together until they can complete, or mostly complete, the puzzlelet them discover you.

princess diarist

Thank you for all of your invaluable talent and endless inspiration, Carrie. May the force be with you.

The post The 7 best pieces of advice from Carrie Fishers last book, The Princess Diarist appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Physical disabilities no longer present the barriers to education they once did. More than 11 percent of students at U.S. postsecondary institutions have physical disabilities, according to available data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

But while many of the factors that once discouraged physically disabled students from pursuing higher education have been eliminated, the high cost still exists. The good news is that some scholarships are designated specifically for students with physical disabilities. Here are seven of the most lucrative.

[Discover tips on paying for college.]

The Lighthouse Guild offers multiple Lighthouse Guild Scholarships of up to $10,000 each to help legally blind students attend college or graduate school. Students applying for the scholarships must be U.S. citizens.

Applicants must document their academic achievement, provide proof of their legal blindness, submit three letters of recommendation and write an essay up to 500 words on their educational and personal goals. College-bound applicants must write a second essay about an outstanding teacher's influence. The deadline to apply is March 31.

The National Foundation of the Blind provides up to 30 scholarships between $3,000 and $12,000 to recognize blind scholars' achievements. The awards are based on leadership, academic achievement and community service.

Applicants must be U.S. citizens residing in the U.S. or Puerto Rico who are legally blind in both eyes. They must plan to pursue full-time studies at a U.S. college, although one scholarship may be given to a student who works full time and attends school part time. The application deadline is March 31.

Students battling or who have been treated for cancer or chronic or life-threatening, debilitating diseases in the last five years can apply for the Patient Advocate Foundation's Scholarship for Survivors. This $3,000-a-year award, for up to four years, helps students younger than 25 pursue a degree.

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To apply, students must be pursuing a bachelor's or higher degree. They must write an essay of up to 1,000 words on how their diagnosis has impacted their life and future goals.

Further, they must submit an official transcript, two letters of recommendation, a financial form and medical documentation. The application deadline is Feb. 25.

[Explore five scholarships for students with learning disabilities.]

Mobility equipment maker Silver Cross offers the Silver Cross Scholarship Program, which awards a $1,500 prize to a full-time college student who uses a power or manual wheelchair or a mobility scooter. Eligibility requirements include enrollment at a recognized U.S. or Canadian college in a three- or four-year undergraduate program.

Applicants must also submit a 500-word essay. The 2016 essay prompt asked applicants to describe the ways in which they have demonstrated leadership and how this has helped them build life skills.

A number of scholarships are also available for students who are deaf or hearing impaired. For example, Cochlear, the organization that developed the multichannel cochlear implant, awards the Graeme Clark Scholarship, worth $2,000 annually for up to four years, to a student who has received a Nucleus Cochlear Implant for hearing impairment.

High school seniors who wish to apply must submit transcripts, three letters of reference and written proof of U.S. residency. Students must also write a personal statement up to 1,000 words that describes their academic aspirations, proposed major, postgraduation goals, definition of success and the reasons they should receive the scholarship. Scholarship recipients must maintain a minimum 2.5 GPA.

[Find college scholarships that support students with autism.]

Students with significant bilateral hearing loss may apply for Sertoma's Scholarship for the Hard of Hearing or Deaf. This $1,000 award is available to high school seniors or undergraduates who are pursuing a four-year college degree in any field.

Applicants must have a minimum 3.2 GPA and must submit an application that includes two letters or recommendation and a personal statement. The deadline to apply is May 1.

Travelers Protective Association's Scholarship Trust for the Hearing Impaired is another scholarship opportunity for students who are deaf or hearing impaired. TPA offers awards in varying amounts, ranging between $100 and $1,000, on a quarterly basis. Special consideration is given to applicants who demonstrate significant financial need. Application deadlines are March 31, June 30, Sept. 30 and Dec. 31.

Arthur Murray, a graduate of the University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill, is managing editor of the GoodCall.com newsroom. The organization provides access to information, data, technology and tools, including a scholarship engine, to help visitors make important decisions.
O sleep! O gentle sleep! . . . The promise of a sound and peaceful rest has inspired people to wax poetic for centuries. The trouble is, assembling the dreamiest combination of mattress and pillow is something closer to a nightmare for a lot of consumers. And there are plenty of reasons why.

For starters, if you want to replace your old mattress with the same brandas 1 in 5 respondents to our new survey of nearly 62,000 Consumer Reports subscribers has doneyou probably wont be able to get the same model. Thats because manufacturers regularly discontinue or rename their products. Names and claims on mattresses range from the ethereal to the incomprehensible. Salespeople invariably hint at nocturnal disappointment unless you buy the priciest pick in the place. And trying to approximate the intimacy of sleep by lying down on a mattress in a fluorescent-lit public space can be awkward at best.

On the plus side, mattress makers are experimenting with new methods of construction, rearranging the layers of foam as well as the placement of coils in innerspring models in a bid to improve comfort. Meanwhile, savvy online retailers are trying to improve the shopping experience by removing the store from the equation altogether. And theyre doing a good job: The highest satisfaction scores from our survey went to two of the newer mattress brands in Americaonline outfits Casper and Tuft & Needle. Theyll ship a foam bed-in-a-box to your front door for a very competitive price. As for performance, Casper took the top overall score among foam mattresses.

Innersprings, however, are still the most common type of mattress sold, although that seems ripe for consumer reconsideration. In our survey, 65 percent of respondents said they were highly satisfied with innersprings, vs. 75 percent of memory foam owners and 80 percent of adjustable-air owners. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, memory foam mattresses are growing in popularity. And adjustable air mattresses, such as those sold at Sleep Number stores, rate very well in both our mattress tests and reader survey, especially among those who report neck pain, back pain, sleep apnea, and other health problems.

Whether you already have an idea of what you want or are starting from scratch, we think you should give your mattress choice at least as much consideration as a new car. True, its only a fraction of the price, but you spend nearly a third of your life in a prone position, so making the wrong choice has consequences. If your mattress is uncomfortable, it could disturb your sleep, exacerbate orthopedic problems, or possibly have a negative impact on your long-term health, says Michael H. Bonnet, Ph.D., a neurology professor and sleep expert at the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine.

Thats why we put every model we purchase through rigorous tests utilizing actual people as well as use sophisticated equipment to measure support and firmness. These machines pummel and abuse the mattresses to gauge how theyll hold up over time. Then we tear them apart to expose whats insidesprings, layers of foam, gel-infused foamto determine which materials improve performance. This year, weve introduced some methodology improvements, including a way to matchmake a mattress for you and your honey.

Here, seven steps to shopping for, choosing, and buying a mattress youll love, and that loves you back:

Step 1: Learn Lessons From Your Old Bed

Do you twist and turn and grit your teeth trying to find your mattress sweet spot? Do you wake up feeling drained or achy? Do you find that, curiously, you sleep better in a hotel? If not, you will eventually. Younger people can sleep just fine on almost any surface, including a piece of plywood, says Bonnet. We all become lighter sleepers as we age, and pain and other medical problems make this worse.

Theres no set rule for when to replace a mattresswe test them to approximate eight to 10 years of usebut there are some telltale signs that you should. Some you can plainly see, such as rips, divots, or stains (your old dog is sleeping with you, isnt he?). Others you can feel, for example if your hips and shoulders now sink deeply into the mattress. Still other signs you cant see at all: Your mattress and bedding provide an ideal environment for dust mites that can trigger allergies or even asthma. So if you wake up sniffling every morning, your mattress may be to blame.

You can use other observations to guide your choice in something new. If you feel lumps or sharp points, that could indicate damage to the inside of your mattress, so look for a model with a high durability score in our ratings. If you and your partner wake each other up while tossing and turning, look for a high stabilization rating.

Step 2: Master the Mattress Store

If it seems like mattress showrooms are on every block these days, thats because they are. There are more than 12,000 bed and specialty mattress stores nationwide, and the number is growing. If you cant find something you like at Mattress Firm, you can wander next door to Sleepys (which, by the way, is now owned by Mattress Firm).

Not that having more choice helps, given how fruitless it is to compare a mattress sold at one store with one sold at another. A Blissful Featherweight here may be nothing like the Delightful Featherlite there. And because manufacturers descriptions of firmness are so fanciful and sometimes fact-free, we suggest ignoring them altogether and instead checking our mattress ratings. Firmness is now presented on a handy scale from 1 to 10.

As awkward as it can be, we stand by our longtime advice to try before you buymeaning, kick off your shoes and lie down on a prospective pick for at least 15 minutes in the position you usually sleep in. In our survey, nearly 20,000 readers bought a mattress in the last three years. Among those who tried it out in the store, the more time they spent testing it before buying, the higher their satisfaction: 77 percent of respondents who spent more than 15 minutes were especially happy with their purchase. Fewer than 1 in 5 people actually do that, our survey shows, though 28 percent do lie down for a few minutes.

If you want to minimize some of the weirdness of publicly test-driving a mattress, consider visiting one of the more well-regarded mattress or furniture specialty stores in our survey. The Original Mattress Factory was the top-rated store, followed by several regional chains, including Nebraska Furniture Mart, Havertys, Jordans Furniture, and Bobs Discount Furniture.

Macys, a traditional department store, received only middling scores for price and selection. Costcowhere you cant try a mattress in the store because theyre standing uprightgot a top mark for price but fared poorly on selection. That might be just fine, given that the warehouse club makes one of our top-rated mattresses, the Novaform 14 Serafina Pearl Gel. And it may be a sign of where the market is heading that 57 percent of readers who bought a mattress from Costco did so online.

Step 3: Consider Buying Online

For those who want the ultimate convenience of buying online and skipping retail stores altogether, there are more options than ever before. Startups like Casper and Tuft & Needle are getting a lot of attention for their high-performing bed-in-a-box foam mattresses, but the fact is that you can buy almost any mattress online, innersprings included.

It might seem risky to buy a mattress without trying it, but consider that Amazon, which sells all types of mattresses, topped our retailer ratings among all sellers. Its excellent on price as well as on-time delivery. The limitation is that should you want to try a mattress in a store before purchasing it onlinea practice known as showroomingyou wouldnt be able to. Thats because you wont find the mattress you tried at, say, Ethan Allen on Amazon because its exclusive to that store.

You can try the mattress in the flesh but then buy it virtually, although you might need to stick to that retailers website.

If you have no qualms about buying a mattress sight unseen, try a bed-in-a-box. The foam mattresses are compressed, packed into a box less than 4 feet tall, and delivered to your doorstep by UPS or FedEx. These foam mattresses can be heavy100 pounds or more for a queen-sizeso you may need a friend to help you move it to an upstairs bedroom. Once you get it there, carefully slice open the packaging to let the mattress return to its original shape; its actually fun to watch.

When buying a mattress online, dont assume you cant haggleyou can, and you may actually do better because you can maintain a true poker face when youre virtual. Open the chat window, and when the customer-service rep responds, start the bidding.

More on Sleep

 Fact-Checking the Mattress Ads

 The Best Mattresses for Couples

 The Danger of 'Natural' Sleep Supplements

 Can You Get Hooked on OTC Sleep Aids?

 Whats Best for Neck and Back Pain

 Some Late-Night Snacks Showing Promise in Helping Insomniacs

Step 4: Never Pay Full Price

Youll see mattress sales in the run-up to most holiday weekends, but you dont have to wait for an official sale to get the best price. Mattresses have a huge markup, so dont be afraid to negotiate with gusto. More than half of the readers in our survey paid $500 to $1,750 for a mattress; those shoppers who haggled saved a median of $205. Hagglers were most successful at the mattress specialty stores Mattress Firm, Mattress Warehouse, Mattress King, Sleep Train, and Sleepys. And shoppers often walked away with something free, such as a mattress protector or bed frame.

Start by asking for a price thats 50 percent off the list price, and ask for free delivery and haul-away, to boot. If that doesnt work, then try one of these questions:

1. Whats the lowest price this mattress has sold for?

2. Can I have a price guarantee? If the mattress goes on sale within, say, 30 days, will you refund the difference?

3. Will you give me a discount if I pay cash? (This allows the merchant to avoid paying credit card fees.)

If you get a no to any of these, you can just say goodbye and walk out the door. After all, theres another mattress store right down the block.

Step 5: Make Good Use of the Trial Period

When your new mattress arrives, prepare to be patient. Bear in mind that your old mattress is familiar to you, flaws and all. Mattress sellers typically offer anywhere from three weeks to three months for you to try out your purchase. Others offer what they call a comfort guarantee. So before you buy, study the small print for the trial-period terms and ask whether and how you can return the mattress if you discover you dont like it.

Give yourself at least two weeks to make up your mind. During that time, focus on the mattress and not your beddingyou want to limit the number of variables. Stick with the same pillow for a while, so you can tell better whether its the mattress or the pillow that may be disturbing your sleep, says Steven Scharf, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. On the other hand, if you didnt buy a new box spring or frame for your new mattress, which some manufacturers recommend, you may not be giving it a fair shake.

To increase your odds of getting a good nights sleep on your new mattress, power down your gadgets 2 hours before you turn in and avoid eating a heavy dinner right before bedtime. Then, an hour before you hit the sack, dim the lights, read a physical book, listen to music, or otherwise relax.

Step 6: Have Many Happy Returns

Make sure you know in advance what the stores return policies are before you buy a new mattress. Some retailers charge various fees, restocking and otherwise. Mattress Firm advertises a 120-night Sleep Happy Guarantee and charges a $149 fee for an exchange or return. At the other end of the spectrum is the Original Mattress Factory, which accepts no returns or exchanges on upholstered bedding products. And thats why its prudent to keep your old mattress during your trial period, as inconvenient as that can be.

Returning a bed-in-a-box is another matter. For starters, its not realistic to think you can wrestle the bed back into the box. Thats why these retailers have developed a variety of ways for consumers to return mattresses, usually free of charge and with a full refund within 100 days.

Then theres the matter of getting rid of an old mattress. At least 20 million mattresses and box springs are thrown away each yearand one queen-size mattress can take up to 40 cubic feet in a landfill. Thats a shame given that 80 percent of the components in a mattress can be recycled. Some municipalities have restrictions on donating or reselling used mattresses, however, so check with your town.

Step 7: Make Your Mattress Last

With innersprings, our recommended cleaning routine has always been to flip and rotate them twice a year and to clean them at the same time. But many of todays mattresses, such as pillowtops, cant be flipped because they have a dedicated top and bottom. Still, youll want to clean all mattresses twice a year.

To do that, strip the bed to vacuum the fabric covering of the entire mattress with an upholstery attachment and spot clean any stains with an enzyme-based detergent or a mild dish detergent and water. Once the spots dry, sprinkle baking soda over the entire mattress and leave it for 24 hours. Then remove the baking soda with the vacuum. And of course replace with nice clean bedding.

Adding a mattress protector and a mattress pad will protect the mattress and extend its life, promoting many more restful nights of sleep.

Editor's Note: This article also appeared in the February 2017 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.





More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2017 Consumers Union of U.S.
WAVERLY, Ohio (AP)  The appointed, Democratic sheriff who won election while investigating the still-unsolved slayings of eight people from an Ohio family has been sworn in for a full term by the Republican attorney general whose office is helping with the case.

Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader was sworn in for a four-year term by Attorney General Mike DeWine on Wednesday as their offices continue cooperating on the massive investigation into the April slayings involving the extended Rhoden family.

Reader was appointed sheriff less a year before seven adults and a teenage boy were fatally shot in April at three trailers and a camper near Piketon. Most of the victims were repeatedly shot in the head, and some showed signs of bruising, as if they were beaten. Three young children at the scenes were unharmed.

Reader has said several times he believes that whoever was responsible was local. No arrests have been made, and the motive remains a mystery, though the discovery of a large-scale illegal marijuana growing operation at one of the crime scenes has contributed to public speculation that Mexican drug cartels might have been involved.

Reader tells The Columbus Dispatch that he thinks the key to solving the case is getting truthful information from the victims' friends, family and neighbors, which he says hasn't always happened.

"With the amount of personnel and resources we have committed to this case since April, I have no doubt that, had we been given truthful and accurate information from those who are closest to our victims, we would have had it solved by now," Reader said.

Like Reader, DeWine maintains optimism about solving the murders.

"We will find out who did it, we will be able to file charges, but how long it will take, I don't know," DeWine told WSYX-TV.
1. Study Up

Its smart to research your choices, even before you have your eyes examined, so that you will know what to ask, understand your options better, and avoid being oversold on extras you dont need.

There are many good online resources you can use to find information, including AllAboutVision.com, Eyeglasses.com, and LensesRx.com. Look for advice on choosing lenses, frames, and add-ons, such as anti-reflective coatings.

2. Talk to Your Eye Doctor

If your prescription is more than a year old, youll need a new eye exam, says James Wachter, an optometrist at Clarkson Eyecare in St. Louis. While at the doctors, ask for recommendations about which lenses and frames are right for you. For example, your ophthalmologist may recommend a certain type of progressive lens or a specific material for your lenses. Or he or she may advise you to avoid frames that cant properly accommodate your prescriptionrimless models that wont look right with thick lenses, for instance, or frames that are too narrow to handle the multiple vision fields in progressive and other multifocal lenses.

Ask the doctor to measure whats called your pupillary distance or PD (the distance between the center of each of your pupils) and include it on your prescription. Youll need the PD (two for multifocal lenses) if you decide to order lenses online. Some eyewear websites give you instructions on how to measure it yourself, but Adam Gordon, O.D., a clinical associate professor of optometry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says that a professional will be able to do it more accurately. At least five statesAlaska, Arizona, Kansas, Massachusetts and New Mexicorequire that doctors provide you with your PD. So when you book your exam, verify that your eye doctor will give it to you, advises Gordon. Some doctors charge extra for this service unless youre ordering glasses from them. If your doctor wont provide your PD or charges for it, consider going elsewhere. If you decide to pay for a PD measurement, Warby Parker will reimburse you up to $50 as long as you buy glasses from one of its outlets.

3. Explore Frames

If your doctor sells frames, start by trying on some from his or her selection. Make note of the brand, model, and size of the frames you like. Also record prices and details about the sellers return policies and warranty. (Youll need to know the cost of eyeglasses in order to comparison shop.)

4. Compare Your Options

Once youve narrowed the frame choices, use a web search to find and price your favorite pairs, which in most cases youre likely to find online. Get the prices on lenses, too, when considering the cost of eyeglasses, so that you can compare. One potential shortcut: If your eye exam was at Costco, Sams Club, or Walmart and you find a frame you like at the same store, our survey results suggest that youll likely be satisfied if you simply go ahead and order your lenses there. The same goes for Warby Parker if you have a simple, single-vision prescription. If you dont, you can probably find less expensive lenses elsewhere.

5. Negotiate

If you find better prices as you search, call or visit the store where you originally discovered your favorite frames and ask it to match your lowest price. When looking for the best deal on the cost of eyeglasses, its only fair to give the store the chance to reduce its price, especially if the staff spent time answering your questions. It may be worth paying more to deal with a professional in person, especially if youre ordering multifocal lenses or have a strong prescription. And its good to support a local business you may need for frame adjustments later on. Finally, if youre haggle-averse, youre not alone. Relatively few of our survey respondents tried negotiating for a discount. But of those who did, nearly half were successful, and more than a quarter of them saved $100 or more.

6. Divide and Conquer

If a single retailer doesnt provide everything you need, consider splitting up the process. You might have your eyes examined at your doctors office, take advantage of the savings you can get buying frames online, and have the lenses made at Costco or Walmart, for example.

7. Dont Pay for Add-ons That Dont Add Up

In our reader survey, half the respondents said they paid extra for scratch-resistant coatings, and 22 percent shelled out for coatings that offer ultraviolet protection.

But all plastic lenses already have an anti-scratch coating on the front of the lens, says Karl Citek, an optometry professor at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore. And most lenses nowadays completely protect wearers from harmful UV light from the sun without any add-ons. One more to skip: coatings that block blue light. The science connecting long-term exposure to blue light to damage to part of the retina is weak, says James Sheedy, Pacific University professor emeritus of optometry, who has studied the effect of blue light on the eyes. One add-on that he does say may be worth paying for is an anti-reflective coating. It reduces glare on the front and back of the lenses, making them easier to look throughespecially at nightand also lets other people see your eyes better, he explains.

8. Consider Buying a Second Pair

Its a good idea to order a backup in case your primary glasses break or are lost and you dont want to be forced to pay extra to get another pair quickly.

Editor's Note: This article also appeared in the February 2017 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.





More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

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7 best mattresses for couples





Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2017 Consumers Union of U.S.
Rich Shea can't remember the last time he attended a New Year's Eve party as a guest. As president of Big Night America, an organization that hosts New Year's Eve galas and other celebrations for thousands of people around the country, his job is to throw the party -- and sweat the details. "I'm getting paid for doing the worrying," says Shea, who will be at Big Night America's San Diego event when the clock strikes midnight this year.

But partiers should shoulder some of the burden, too. After all, it's hard to celebrate if you feel unsafe or unwell. "Take responsibility for yourself, and also for the folks you encounter, whether they're friends, family or strangers," says Reid Meloy, a San Diego-based forensic psychologist and coauthor of "The International Handbook of Threat Assessment." Here's how:

1. Choose wisely.

Not all New Year's Eve parties are created equal. Vet your options by seeking those hosted by companies with experience and at venues with good reputations, suggests Shea, whose organization partners with well-known hotels for its New Year's events. "They wouldn't have us back if it hadn't gone smoothly before," he points out. And don't be turned off by a ticket: It can mean organizers know who's coming and can prevent overcrowding. "It's less of a threat," Shea says, "because everyone's paying a good amount of money to be in there."

[See: 8 Resolutions Health Experts Want You to Make.]

2. Scout your surroundings.

As the warehouse fire in Oakland tragically revealed, a venue's layout is critically important to partygoers' safety, too. Make sure your fete's site has plenty of exits, multiple rooms (a mix of places to talk quietly and dance to a loud band, for example, can help prevent people from feeling trapped, Shea says) and multiple stairways if there's more than one level. "Places that are fire traps and fire hazards often look like they are fire traps and fire hazards," says Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. If your eyes tell you to leave, he adds, listen.

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3. Dress appropriately.

High heels may be part of your annual New Year's Eve uniform, but if you're going somewhere outdoors (say, New York City's Time Square or an outdoor concert), or are even anticipating a significant walk from the car to the event, flat, closed-toed shoes are your best bet, Benjamin says. "If you have to move quickly or run or get away, or if you have to go through an area where there are hazards like glass and tree trunks, people do better in closed-toed shoes," he says. Check the weather before you depart, too; there's nothing fun about standing in cold rain for hours with nowhere to warm up, Benjamin points out. "Things like that often don't get thought about," he says. "People just get up and go."

4. Come prepared.

What you put in your body and carry with you before departing is important to think through, too. Will you need to take medications during the hours you're gone? Do you need to take them with food and water? Even if you're medication-free, sufficient pre-party hydration is important for everyone. "Access to liquids and even water is sometimes limited at large events," says Benjamin, who also suggests tossing hand-sanitizer in your bag or pocket in case bathrooms aren't sufficiently equipped. "There's an infection risk with that," he says. "It's small, but it's certainly a risk you want to deal with."

5. Self-regulate.

Shea understands the logic: If your hefty ticket price covers an open bar, you want to get your money's worth. But remember: There are plenty of hours until midnight and a well-run event, at least, is unlikely to run out of alcohol. "The key is moderation and pacing yourself," says Shea, who also recommends eating a solid meal before imbibing. It's also important to be honest with yourself, Meloy adds. "If you're going to consume alcohol or drugs, know your reactions," he says. "If you tend to get belligerent when you drink, it's probably not a good idea to drink."

[See: 7 Health Risks of Binge Drinking You Can't Ignore.]

6. Be patient.

Know those people who stop at the base of an escalator to check their phones? Don't be one of them, Shea advises. But don't expect to move fast through a crowd, either. "Relax and go with the crowd, and you can eventually go through," he says. "Just like driving, you've got to pay attention to what other people are doing. Some patience goes a long way."

7. Be aware.

"If you see something, say something" is a catchphrase worth taking seriously, Meloy says. "Look for anomalies in the environment," he says, such as behaviors that seem threatening or abusive. "Do not hesitate to take care of your own safety immediately, and then to also alert someone who can intervene." Noticing such anomalies, as well as protecting yourself from becoming a crime victim, means keeping your head up -- not locked in on your smartphone, Meloy adds. "Individuals who are planning on some criminal activity like a mugging or robbery, they're looking for people who appear vulnerable," he says. "One vulnerability they look for is an absence of situational awareness."

8. Make a transportation plan.

While terrorism and mass violence may feel like a big threat, you're far more likely to be harmed by booze-infused dangers, Meloy says. "The biggest safety risk for people are automobile accidents and the combination of that with alcohol," he says. In addition to practicing moderation, be sure you have a safe transportation plan ahead of time, keeping in mind that some roads may be closed and cabs booked. Some party throwers partner with services like Uber and Lyft, which are worth taking advantage of, Shea says. "It's a worry-free evening when you do things like that," he says. "It makes a lot of sense."

[See: 9 Reasons It Rocks to Be the DD.]

9. Have fun.

Having fun isn't just the whole point, but it's good for your health and safety. For example, partying with friends you know and trust helps ensure you'll all get there and back safely, while being compassionate toward strangers might mean pointing out a drink that seems sketchy. "Having a good attitude going in is a big thing," Shea says. "It really makes it a good experience for everyone."
Abbott Laboratories ABT has agreed to divest two medical device businesses in order to settle Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges in relation to its proposed acquisition of St. Jude Medical STJ.

Shares of Abbott Labs underperformed the Zacks classified Large Cap Pharmaceuticals industry in the year-to-date period. In fact, the stock has lost 14.9% during this period, compared with a drop of 6.1% for the industry.

Coming back to the latest news, the divestment will ensure fair competition in the U.S. markets for medical devices used in cardiac and vascular catheterization.

Note that the FTC had alleged that the proposed acquisition would impact the competitive scenario in the U.S. markets for vascular closure devices if the company proceeds without a remedy.

The merged entity would control more than 70% of the vascular closure device market. St. Jude has been a pioneer in the steerable sheath market for more than a decade and Abbott is looking to foray into the space. The merger would thus eliminate substantial price competition between the competitors.

Under the consent order, the companies are required to divest all rights and assets related to St. Judes vascular closure device business and Abbott Labs steerable sheath unit to Tokyo-based medical device maker Terumo Corporation.

Meanwhile, Abbott Labs is required to notify the FTC if it intends to acquire lesion-assessing ablation catheter assets from Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics. We note that Abbott Labs and Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics have a partnership for developing these catheters. However, following the St. Jude acquisition, if Abbott acquires the lesion-assessing ablation catheter assets from Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics, it could eliminate additional competition that would have resulted if Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics was independent.

Abbott has been facing issues related to its recent acquisitions. Earlier this month, the company filed a complaint to terminate its proposed acquisition of Alere based on a substantial deterioration in the latters value following the merger agreement.

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ABBOTT LABS Price and Consensus

ABBOTT LABS Price and Consensus | ABBOTT LABS Quote

Abbott Labs currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Key Picks in the Sector

A couple of better-ranked stocks in the health care sector include Heska Corp. HSKA and Vanda Pharmaceuticals VNDA. Both of them sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Heskas earnings estimates increased from $1.13 to $1.35 for 2016 and from $1.38 to $1.53 for 2017 over the last 60 days. The company posted a positive earnings surprise in all of the four trailing quarters with an average beat of 301.64%. Its share price has increased 87.6% year to date.

Vandas loss estimates for 2016 narrowed from 62 cents to 45 cents, while its earnings estimates for 2017 decreased from 13 cents to 9 cents over the last 60 days. The company posted a positive earnings surprise in three of the four trailing quarters with an average beat of 56.65%. Its share price has surged almost 72.4% year to date.

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(Reuters) - Debbie Reynolds, the leading lady of Hollywood musicals and comedies in the 1950s and 1960s including Singin' in the Rain, was rushed to a hospital on Wednesday, the day after her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher, died, TMZ and E! News reported.

Reynolds, 84, was at her son Todd Fisher's home in Beverly Hills, California, discussing funeral arrangements for Fisher, who died on Tuesday, TMZ reported. Someone in the house called 911 shortly after 1 pm local time. E! News said Reynolds was transported in fair to serious condition. TMZ reported that she had a possible stroke. Representatives for Reynolds did not returns calls for comment.

One of the most enduring and endearing Hollywood stars of her time, Reynolds received a best actress Academy Award nomination for the 1964 musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

Carrie Fisher, who rose to fame as Princess Leia in the Star Wars films and later battled through drug addiction before going on to tell her story as a best-selling author, died on Tuesday at the age of 60 after suffering a heart attack last Friday.

After Fisher's death, Reynolds said on Facebook, "Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop." (Reporting and writing by Will Dunham; Additional reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit, Jill Serjeant in New York; Editing by Bill Trott, Toni Reinhold)
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The Agence France-Presse on Thursday updated a misleading headline that suggested that Russia manipulated US vote totals on Election Day through hacking.

"US sanctions Russia over vote hacking," read an AFP headline.

The Obama administration leveled sanctions against Russia on Thursday for election-related hacking. But there is no evidence that Russian hackers broke into election systems to change vote totals. The White House and US intelligence agencies have only accused Moscow of hacking the Democratic National Committee and political operatives.

The AFP later corrected its headline to read: "US punishes Russia over election hacks."

An editor's note was not attached to the story. In a short phone conversation with Business Insider, Chris Lefkow, chief North America editor for AFP, declined to say his publication made an error publishing the initial headline.

Lefkow said critics were reading the headline too "literally." He then hung up the phone amid further questioning.

Critics had, indeed, seized on the AFP's initial headline to go after the news outlet. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, tweeted, "Some news outlets appear to want their readers to (incorrectly) think Russia tampered with vote totals."

Others replied to the AFP's story on Twitter and accused it of propagating "fake news."

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Since President-elect Donald Trump's unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee for president, many in the media have focused on the prevalence of "fake news" and how it could have swayed some individuals to vote for the Republican businessman.

Conservatives have met the narrative with extreme skepticism. They argue that, while not fabricated out of thin air, much of the news reported by the so-called mainstream media is inaccurate or, as they characterize it, its own form of "fake news."

NOW WATCH: Trump slams Alec Baldwin: 'His imitation of me is really mean-spirited and not very good'





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Almost 300 people had to be evacuated in the middle of the night from the historic Mount Royal Hotel in Banff, Alberta, after a fire broke out on Thursday, December 29.

The fire reportedly started from the roof and was spotted by passing police officers at around 2.30am. Nobody was injured.

The hotel was built in 1908, according to its website, and a major fire in 1967 nearly burned down its oldest wing.

Footage shared by the fire department from nearby Canmore shows firefighters trying to extinguish the blaze. Credit: Twitter/@CanmoreFireRes via Storyful
After Republican nominee Donald Trump was elected president, white nationalists, the so-called alt-right, white supremacists and a whole host of other groups on the far-right fringes celebrated the victory. But weeks later, reports this week have indicated that many of these groups are now in disarray and have begun fighting with one another.

"DeploraBall"  a inauguration celebration for alt-right Trump supporters  sparked infighting earlier this week after one of the key figures was disinvited for making comments about Jews. Headliner Tim "Baked Alaska" Treadstone was barred from the event by Mike Cernovich, once considered a leading figure in the so-called alt-right movement, a group featuring many who embrace white nationalist ideologies. Treadstone had tweeted about Jewish people controlling "95 [percent] of American media."

Treadstone also posted the text of what appeared to be a private, expletive conversation during which Cernovich told him to be quiet about the "JQ" or "Jewish question," while also telling him to stop Nazi saluting. He continued retweeting posts critical of Cernovich Thursday.

Some Trump supporters, such as Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos and Bill Mitchell, both of whom are reportedly appearing at the DeploraBall, have come to Cernovich's defense and disavowed some of the more extreme elements connected with the alt-right. Now these folks, who have called themselves "Trumpists," are being branded as "alt-light" and have been criticized by other factions under the Trump-supporter umbrella.

Meanwhile, Andrew Anglin, the publisher of white supremacist website The Daily Stormer has planned a Neo-Nazi march next month in Whitefish, Montana "against Jews, Jewish businesses and everyone who supports either."

"We are planning an armed protest in Whitefish, Montana has extremely liberal open carry laws, so my lawyer is telling me we can easily march through the center of the town carrying high-powered rifles," Anglin wrote. "I myself am planning on being there to lead the protest, which has been dubbed March on Whitefish'."

The event stemmed from activists protesting Richard Spencer, a part-time resident of the town of just more than 6,000, and the white nationalist founder of the so-called alt-right who was recently filmed leading chants of "Hail Trump" while making Nazi salutes. Spencer's mother, who runs an apartment complex in town, has also been subject to protests, which helped spark the reaction from white supremacists coming to Spencer's defense.

But Spencer, the head of a white nationalist think tank and someone with seemingly mainstream aspirations, has distanced himself from the planned armed march. He said he didn't think the event would actually happen, according to local newspaper the Missoulian.

"I didn't move to Whitefish for politics. I don't take part in local politics," Spencer added, according to the Missoulian.

But further showing how factions have formed among Trump's more extreme supporters, Spencer also came out against the Deploraball leaders who banned Treadstone.

"The 'alt-light' faces a major problem," Spencer wrote in an email to the Daily Beast. "People like Mike Cernovich and Milo dont have an ideology; they dont even really have policies that you can point to. They are Trump fans, who are vaguely conservative and a bit neocon-ish . They don't like feminists and [social justice warriors]; in other words, they pick the low-hanging fruit."

An organizer of the Deploraball told the Daily Beast that this was indicative of the "bad breakup" between the so-called Trumpists and the alt-right.

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Amanda Palmer, a musician who The Guardian recently described as a cult cabaret artist  and far be it from me to add to that neat label  made some comments about President-Elect Trump and punk rock that struck a nerve with many. Of course, comments about Trump have been coming hard and fast ever since he unexpectedly won the presidency back in November, but hers are what some might qualify as a reach.

As The Guardian points out, while speaking at a press conference in Australia, Queensland to be exact, at Woodford Folk festival, Palmer made the following statements:

Its been a really scary time in America. I dont know how its felt over here [in Australia] for the past few months, but its a total sh*t show over there. Especially if youre an artist, a woman, a minority, gay  anything but a rich white man  its really very scary. But being an optimist  there is this part of me  especially having studied Weimar Germany extensively  Im like, This is our moment. Donald Trump is going to make punk rock great again. Were all going to crawl down staircases into basements and speakeasies and make amazing satirically political art. If the political climate keeps getting uglier, the art will have to answer. We will have to fight. Its already happening  the artists in my tribes have been like, Alright. This is not good. We are sharpening our knives for a large buffet.

Directly following this assertion, Palmer shared that she and her husband, a 56-year-old British writer named Neil Gaiman, will be living in Australia for the duration of Trumps term. The Australian government has granted the couple distinguished talent visas good for five years, so they will be living in the country during that time.

According to Palmer, the couple applied for the visas long before Trump emerged:

We started this [visa application] process long before the specter of Donald Trump, before his orange head was even a speck on the horizon of our lives. We have a brand new baby, whos a year old, and Ive been looking around at the world, the political climate, the art scenes, my friends, our whole situation, trying to figure out where we should land. And Australia does look pretty tasty.

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So, in summary, aside from her describing the potential rise of unrest and oppression in America as a buffet for artists, who historically suffer enormous setbacks, further oppression, financial losses, imprisonment and even death for speaking out, Palmer herself will be bowing out of any potential consequences that artists living in the United States might face for creating such art. There is much to be discussed about whether punk rock is currently great, has been great, or will return to being great, but the flippant way Palmer has spun the presidency of Trump  all while ducking out on living in the country during this time  left many with a bad taste in their mouth.

The thing is that #amandapalmer seems to say it will be fun to fight against Trump. But it won't. Not for sick people.  Jardinsvirtuels (@jardinsvirtuels) December 29, 2016

I already disliked this take but it's so much worse coming from an actual wealthy musician https://t.co/G63YZqmF4A  Arthur Chu (@arthur_affect) December 29, 2016

amanda palmer, calmly observing a mass murder: sad, but perhaps someday sufjan stevens will write a tender song about this https://t.co/uVo0jn2Zsx  daniel (@danielkrby) December 29, 2016

Dear Amanda Palmer, art didn't stop the Nazis in Weimar Germany and punk didn't stop the rise of neoliberalism. Now please stop.  Another Angry Woman (@stavvers) December 29, 2016

Ill leave the country before it gets bad, make art as if I were still there, and rebrand myself as a symbol of the struggle  Amanda Palmer  snks (@snooksarmy) December 29, 2016

Wouldn't it be nice if Amanda Palmer supported all the revolutionary artists taking on Trump by paying her musicians?  Kayleigh Anne (@Ceilidhann) December 29, 2016

That last tweet is a reference to Palmers history of asking musicians to work with her for free after successfully crowdfunding her album. Because, of course, the real problem with her statements is that her position as a wealthy, independent artist who has the ability to leave the country is at odds with the people who have the most to lose if Trump follows up on his policies of immigrant deportation, creating a Muslim registry, the restriction of birth control and abortion, and conversion therapy for members of the LGBTQ community that his running mate Mike Pence has adamantly supported. Would a couple good punk rock albums be enough to balance the effects of these policies out? I vote that they would not, and I dont think oppression necessarily means great art will crop up to counter it.

At least, Palmer does seem to acknowledge her privilege a bit when she discussed feeling guilty for not attending the Womens March on Washington, a national protest to be held on inauguration day.
By Makiko Yamazaki and Taro Fuse

TOKYO (Reuters) - Faced with the prospect of a multi-billion-dollar writedown that could wipe out its shareholders' equity, Japan's Toshiba is running out of fixes: it is burning cash, cannot issue shares and has few easy assets left to sell.

The Tokyo-based conglomerate, which is still recovering from a $1.3 billion accounting scandal in 2015, dismayed investors and lenders again this week by announcing that cost overruns at a U.S. nuclear business bought only last year meant it could now face a crippling charge against profit.

Toshiba says it will be weeks before it can give a final number, but a writedown of the scale expected - as much as 500 billion yen ($4.3 billion), according to one source close to Toshiba - would leave the group scrambling to plug the financial hole and keep up hefty investments in the competitive memory chip industry, which generates the bulk of its operating profit.

Shareholder equity, which represents its accumulated reserves, stood at 363.2 billion yen at the end of September, already just 7.5 percent of total assets.

Toshiba cannot raise cash by issuing shares because of restrictions imposed by the stock exchange after last year's scandal. One source close to the matter said Toshiba had been considering a share issue of around 300 billion yen, but the imminent lifting of those restrictions are now unlikely.

Private equity funding could be an option, but financial sources and investors said Toshiba would likely be forced to sell off more assets and stakes, months after having sold its two most easily marketable businesses: white goods and medical devices.

"Toshiba's immediate problem is that it is burning cash at an alarming rate, and this will be more than challenging," said Ken Courtis, chairman of Starfort Investment Holdings.

"I see little option but to sell a slew of non-core assets."

Its loss-making PC and TV businesses would be poor candidates for sale, while its many cross-shareholdings are unlikely to fetch enough.

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"Toshiba doesn't have many saleable assets in hand," Standard & Poor's analyst Hiroki Shibata said after the ratings agency downgraded Toshiba.

"It has mostly sold assets which have big price tags or that could easily find buyers already. It would be difficult to secure big funds through asset sales."

One source in the semiconductor industry said Toshiba could revive plans to list a slice of the memory chip business, which though highly profitable burns through cash for reinvestment.

"Toshiba will probably need to sell 30-40 percent of the NAND business in an IPO to secure enough cash," the source said, adding China's aggressive drive into NAND flash memory chips could make the timing reasonable.

The group has already said it could reconsider the "positioning" of its nuclear business, deemed core last year, and has signalled it could trim an 87 percent stake.

Toshiba has said it will consider a capital strategy, but has given no details.

CASH GAP

For now, creditor banks are expected to step into the liquidity breach, betting on Toshiba's growing chips business - though they were blindsided by the news and expressed concerns over continued governance and disclosure issues.

Some bankers had been on a factory tour with Toshiba on the day before the announcement, two of the banking sources said. They were told about the writedown that night.

Two days later, Toshiba's top executives, including Chief Executive Satoshi Tsunakawa, were asking for help.

"We really need a proper explanation of how, and to what extent, President Tsunakawa came to know of this," said an executive at one of Toshiba's regular bankers.

"It just defies common sense that this would come out only now about a deal done a year ago."

Just last month, Toshiba raised its annual profit forecast, thanks to strong demand for its NAND flash memory chips.

Bankers and analysts said the latest shock should at least push Toshiba to resolve long-standing headaches like its poor disclosure and governance, and could force it to offload some cross-shareholdings.

One Toshiba shareholder estimated that the book value of all its cross-shareholdings would be about $3.2 billion, and it could get more than that based on past experience.

Sale options would include its roughly 50 percent stakes in Toshiba Plant Systems and Services and Toshiba Tec (6588.T), both worth around $670 million at current market prices, according to Thomson Reuters data.

"If the company wants to survive, it needs to go through a 'scrap-and-build' process," said Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.

"Right now, even if banks are assisting, its like they are throwing their money down the drain."

($1 = 116.3400 yen)

(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki, Taro Fuse, Kentaro Hamada, Emi Emoto and Ayai Tomisawa in TOKYO; Additional reporting by Umesh Desai and Michelle Price in HONG KONG; Writing by Clara Ferreira Marques; Editing by Will Waterman)
By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) - Women who smoke during pregnancy may be more likely to have children with kidney damage than mothers who steer clear of cigarettes, a study suggests. Smoking during pregnancy has long been linked to preterm and underweight babies and a wide range of birth defects. The current study offers fresh evidence that the kidneys are among the organs at risk for damage, said lead author Dr. Maki Shinzawa, a public health researcher at Kyoto University in Japan. Cigarette smoking releases nicotine and other harmful or potentially harmful substances, such as nitrogen oxide, polycarbonate, and carbon monoxide, some of which cross the placenta, Shinzawa said by email. Some of these trans-placental substances may affect fetal programming of the kidney during pregnancy. Shinzawa and colleagues examined data from urine tests from 44,595 children to look for elevated levels of protein in the urine, which can indicate impaired kidney function. Data on maternal smoking was collected during womens prenatal checkups, and researchers also had records from their childrens health checkups at four, nine, 18 and 36 months of age. Overall, 79 percent of women said they never smoked and another 4 percent said they stopped smoking during pregnancy. About 17 percent of the mothers said they continued to smoke while they were pregnant. The absolute risk of kidney damage among the children was low. But compared with children born to nonsmoking mothers, kids whose mothers smoked while pregnant were 24 percent more likely to show signs of kidney damage in their urine tests by age three. Urine tests showed elevated protein levels in 1.7 percent of children born to smokers, 1.6 percent of kids whose mothers were former smokers and 1.3 percent of children born to women who never smoked. Children exposed to second-hand smoke at home also appeared to have a higher risk of kidney damage than kids who didnt live with smokers, but the difference wasnt big enough to rule out the possibility that it was due to chance. One limitation of the study is its reliance on women to accurately report and recall how much they smoked before or during pregnancy, and a lack of lab tests to confirm smoke exposure, the authors note in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Still, the findings add to evidence linking smoking to kidney damage, a connection that some previous research has established for adult smokers and for children who inhale second-hand smoke, said Dr. Paul Fowler, director of the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Aberdeen in the UK. Maternal smoking has been observed to lead to reduced kidney size in offspring, which is of concern since it is known that retarded kidney development contributes to (high blood pressure) and renal injury in adults, Fowler, who wasnt involved in the study, added by email. This study highlights one more reason why women should not smoke during pregnancy and why children should be raised in cigarette-free households, Fowler said. It is not, in itself, an overwhelming reason, but rather one more nail in the coffin. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2ihJDxI Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, online December 7, 2016.
The Daily Beast

Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesDonald Trumps desperate attempts to escape the wrath of the New York Attorney General were halted Thursday when a state judge there took the remarkable step of putting the former presidents company under court supervisionand preventing the billionaire from quietly shifting his money to avoid paying millions in fines.Justice Arthur F. Engoron intervened at the AGs request, ordering the appointment of an independent monitor to ensure that the company cant sec
DENVER (AP)  The Obama administration offered five possible plans Thursday for limiting mining on federal land in the West to protect the vulnerable greater sage grouse, but it isn't saying which it prefers.

The options range from banning new mining activity on about 15,000 square miles for up to 20 years to imposing no additional restrictions on mine locations.

The rules would affect sage grouse habitat on federal land in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.

Under all the options, mining and exploration projects already approved or underway could proceed. Energy companies could still extract oil and gas from any restricted lands, but they would have to use directional drilling from some distance away to avoid disturbing the surface.

After a public comment period ends in March, President-elect Donald Trump's administration will decide which option to choose, if any.

It's not yet clear whether Trump or his choice for Interior Secretary, Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana, would continue to pursue the current sage grouse conservation plans, modify them or scrap them.

Also unclear was why the federal government did not list a preferred alternative for mining restrictions, which it normally does in this kind of review.

Randi Spivak of the the Center for Biological Diversity said all mining is harmful to sage grouse. She said Zinke, who describes himself as "a Teddy Roosevelt Republican," could emulate the conservationist Roosevelt by protecting the bird.

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nevada, called the options an "11th-hour attack on Nevada and the West." He said he would try to overturn any mining restrictions.

Republicans have berated President Barack Obama for other last-minute environmental measures, including his designation Wednesday of two new national monuments, Bears Ears in Utah and Gold Butte in Nevada.

An estimated 200,000 to 500,000 sage grouse remain in 11 Western states, but their numbers are down significantly because they are losing habitat to development. The size of the sage grouse population is considered an indicator of the overall health of the vast Western sagebrush ecosystem and other species that depend on it.

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The proposed mining restrictions are part of a broad plan to save the chicken-size bird without resorting to the Endangered Species Act, which could bring stricter limits on mining, drilling, agriculture and other activity.

But the plan is under attack from both sides, with critics saying it is either too restrictive or too lax. Environmental groups and energy companies have filed lawsuits seeking to overturn all or parts of the plan.

The options for mining restrictions are part of a draft environmental impact statement drawn up by the federal Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the Interior Department.

The land that could be affected by the proposals includes about 6,190 square miles in Idaho, 4,320 in Nevada, 2,880 in Oregon, 1,370 in Montana, 414 in Wyoming and 365 in Utah.

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BLM mining proposals: http://bit.ly//2ic6DQn

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Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/dan-elliott.
Buenos Aires (AFP) - An Argentine appeals court ordered a new investigation Thursday into charges that ex-president Cristina Kirchner obstructed a probe into a 1994 bombing that killed 85 people at a Jewish community center.

She is accused of conspiring to protect high-ranking Iranian officials suspected of ordering the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah to carry out the attack.

Kirchner, Argentina's president from 2007 to 2015, allegedly received oil and trade benefits from Iran in exchange for signing off on a deal that enabled the suspects to avoid prosecution.

The accusations were first leveled by the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was found dead the night before he was due to present them to Congress in January 2015.

Iran has denied involvement in the attack. Kirchner likewise denies the allegations against her.

Four lower courts had thrown the case out on grounds there was no evidence a crime had been committed.

But the new decision reopens a murky case that has dogged Kirchner since her presidency, a day after she was charged in a separate corruption case.

The three judges also ordered the case be removed from the court of their colleague Daniel Rafecas and transferred to a randomly selected judge.

Rafecas threw out the original request to reopen Nisman's case, brought by the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations (DAIA).

The unsolved bombing at the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires was the deadliest terror attack in Argentine history.

It still haunts the country two decades later.

No one has been convicted for the bombing, which wounded 300 people.

Nisman's death also remains unsolved nearly two years on.

The case was transferred in September to federal investigators, who are now tasked with determining whether it was a suicide or homicide.

Nisman, who had ordered arrest warrants for Iranian officials, including ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, was found dead on his bathroom floor with a bullet through his head.
Photo credit: Getty

From Cosmopolitan

Photo credit: Getty

After encountering a fan whose comments left her upset and offended, Ariana Grande shared a lengthy post on Twitter describing the incident and imploring people to speak up when it happens to them. She and boyfriend Mac Miller were picking up food on Tuesday night when a fan followed them to their car and told him how much he liked Mac. I thought all of this was cute and exciting, Ariana wrote, until he said, Ariana is sexy as hell man I see you, I see you hitting that!!! Ariana, like most women whove experienced things like this, did not enjoy it.

I felt sick and objectified, she wrote. Ive felt really quiet and hurt since that moment. Things like [that] happen all the time and are the kinds of moments that contribute to womens sense of fear and inadequacy. I am not a piece of meat that a man gets to utilize for his pleasure. She then explained that she went public with this particular experience because she hopes it will help stop objectification like that. We need to talk about these moments openly because they are harmful and they live on inside of us as shame, she wrote. We need to share and be vocal when something makes us feel uncomfortable because if we dont, it will just continue. We are not objects or prizes. We are QUEENS.



Ariana then responded to a fan who accused of her being hypocritical because she objectifies herself in her music, and obviously, Ariana wasnt having that either. Women expressing sexuality is often mistaken for Hi come disrespect me, she wrote. Women (and men) can express themselves however theyd like!!! Even loving sex!! This is not an invitation to be disrespected.

@xxTirzaJessxx that's the thing. women expressing sexuality is often mistaken for "hi come disrespect me!!!!".. & that's just not the case. - Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) December 28, 2016

@xxTirzaJessxx women (and men) can express themselves however they'd like !!! even loving sex!! this is not an invitation to be disrespected - Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) December 28, 2016

Arianas mom Joan Grande tweeted her support too, writing, Women, and I mean ALL women have to agree to reject that behavior, and men, ALL men must learn to respect all women as equals. Amen, Joan.

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@ArianaGrande women, and I mean ALL women have to agree to reject that behavior, and men, ALL men must learn to respect All women as equals! - Joan Grande (@joangrande) December 28, 2016

You go get em Ariana!! Unite women around the world to stand up to being objectified !! Stop Them #WomenUnite #QueensDon'tTakethatShit https://t.co/Dgq332qLQo - Joan Grande (@joangrande) December 28, 2016

one huge problem is that many people believe if a woman enjoys being sexual, either with dress or actions then she's up for grabs.. #HellNO - Joan Grande (@joangrande) December 28, 2016

Get with the program! It's 2016!!Women are equals in EVERY WAY! Don't categorize us, or limit us in any way..we are who we are. #WomenUnite - Joan Grande (@joangrande) December 28, 2016

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311 cu ft timber seized, 2 held for investigation

Following the complaints of unchecked illegal logging in Dhading, the District Forest Office (DFO) has increased its surveillance.
By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - Joe Arpaio, the Arizona lawman who drew national prominence for his hard-line stance against illegal immigration but lost his bid for a seventh term in office, has asked a federal appeals court to throw out a civil contempt finding.

In a Tuesday filing with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, and two of his top officers said U.S. District Judge Murray Snow in Phoenix overstepped his authority in holding them in contempt for violating court orders stemming from a 2007 racial profiling case.

Arpaio also said the judge went too far by ordering "extraordinarily intrusive" reforms to his office's internal affairs operations and the reopening of closed cases.

Snow should also be disqualified for making repeated improper communications and creating an appearance of bias, including that he "hated" Arpaio, the sheriff said.

The case centers on allegations that Arpaio's office failed to comply with court orders meant to curb alleged racial profiling of Latino drivers stemming from the sheriff's immigration patrols.

Plaintiffs have until Jan. 23 to respond to Arpaio's filing. The U.S. Department of Justice has joined the appeals process on the plaintiffs' side.

In October, a different federal judge ordered Arpaio to stand trial for criminal contempt. A trial in that case is scheduled for April 4.

Arpaio, 84, a Republican who has proclaimed himself "America's toughest sheriff," will end his 24-year tenure on Sunday, after losing his reelection bid to former Phoenix police officer Paul Penzone, a Democrat, in November.

The civil appeal is Ortega et al v Arpaio et al, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 16-16663. The criminal contempt case is U.S. v. Arpaio et al, U.S. District Court, District of Arizona, No. 16-cr-01012.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)
An Arkansas high school teacher has been accused of making racist remarks about President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama on Facebook.

Trent Bennett, a science teacher at Malvern High School, allegedly called Obama a spider monkey, and referred to Michelle Obama as the first chimp, according to KATV, an ABC affiliate that cited screen shots of the Facebook posts.

Michelle Obummer  Americas First Chimp, Bennett allegedly wrote in a post that is no longer visible.

The Malvern School District said it was investigating Bennett regarding the posts.

Over the Holiday weekend the District became aware of what appears to be a social media post by a district employee on his personal account that was inappropriate, insensitive, and used racially charged rhetoric, the district said in a Facebook statement. In no way are these posts reflective of the District. The District is currently investigating the matter and due to privacy laws and regulations are not able to comment specifically on any details related to the investigation. The District takes this kind of activity very seriously and the appropriate measures will be taken once the investigation is complete.

Obama has repeatedly faced racist remarks during her time as first lady. A West Virginia nonprofit director who compared her to an ape in a Facebook post last month lost her job over the comment.


"Hungry Ghost Ritual" is produced and distributed by Asia Tropical Films.

29 Dec  Malaysian film production company Asia Tropical Films has released a statement clarifying that the company has no connection whatsoever with local production company YCP Film Productions Sdn Bhd, the latter which claims to be a subsidiary company of Asia Tropical Films.



On 28 December 2016, the movie producer and senior manager of Asia Tropical Films, Keoh Chee Ang received news from the company's partner in China that they have been approached by a woman named Michelle Chan from YCP Film who claimed to be associated with Asia Tropical Films.



Keoh Chee Ang (middle) together with Jazzlyn Loh and Raja Ahmad Shaidaley from ImagineX Studios.

The company had also used Asia Tropical Films' name to collect funding for a Chinese film titled "The Ice Coffin Mystery" () on the Sina Weibo platform.



The movie has already collected more than CNY380,000 according to Sina Weibo on 2 November.

"Asia Tropical Films was established in 2008. Although the company has collaborated with various overseas film and television production agencies, it has never set up a subsidiary company named YCP Film Productions Sdn Bhd, and Michelle Chan was never one of the shareholders of our company," Asia Tropical Films clarified in a statement.



"YCP Film also claimed that their company have previously worked with the National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (FINAS), Malaysian Radio and Television (RTM) and Ministry of Communications and Multimedia (KKMM), which has made us speechless."



The company also added that con woman Michelle Chan has previously been reported of scamming several TVB artistes too.



Keoh had since filed a police report to ensure the safety of his company and to remove all association with YCP Film.
By Richard Cowan PALM BEACH, Fla. (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested that the United States and Russia lay to rest the controversy over Moscow's computer hacking of Democratic Party computers, saying, "We ought to get on with our lives." Trump has cast doubt on the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russian hackers took information from Democratic Party computers and individuals and posted it online to help Trump win the election. The Obama administration plans to announce on Thursday a series of retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking into U.S. political institutions and individuals and leaking information, two U.S. officials said on Wednesday. Asked by reporters if the United States should sanction Russia, Trump replied: "I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what's going on." Trump made his remarks at Mar-a-Lago, his seaside Florida resort where he is spending the Christmas and New Year's holidays while also interviewing candidates for administration jobs. Trump said he was not familiar with remarks earlier on Wednesday by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who said Russia and President Vladimir Putin should expect tough sanctions for the cyber attacks. "We have speed. We have a lot of other things but I'm not sure you have the kind of security that you need. But I have not spoken with the senators and I certainly will be over a period of time," he said. (Reporting by Richard Cowan; Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Viola Davis, the star of ABCs How To Get Away With Murder. (Photo: Getty Images)

She broke out as a desperate mother in the drama Doubt, went on to slay audiences in the crowd pleaser The Help, and took home the first lead actress Emmy ever awarded to an African-American woman for her ravaged turn as a functioning alcoholic lawyer in How to Get Away With Murder, which returns Thursday night. Her Annalise Keating is brilliant and charismatic, mercurial, and melancholy.

And her hit show aside, Viola Davis is the odds-on favorite to take home an Oscar for Fences, playing the Golden Globe-winning, long-suffering wife of Denzel Washington (who also directed), with both reprising the roles from the 2010 Broadway production. She and her husband, Julius Tennon, run their production company, JuVee, and have stories in development. Theyre raising a daughter, Genesis, 6. Which, not to sound hokey, remains Daviss most treasured role.

Before she goes to school, I ask her to tell Mommy the two most important parts of you. Your heart and your head. Thats where your value lies, says Davis.

Shes an outspoken advocate for women, and for disadvantaged children, through the Hunger Is campaign. Davis grew up poor in Rhode Island, studied drama at Rhode Island College and the Juilliard School, and is open about the hardships of her upbringing and the lengths she went to to fill that empty belly. But its only recently, she says, that she felt a total ownership of herself and everything she represents.

Photo: Mike Windle/Getty Images

Im 51 years old. So it took 51 years, she says, partially joking. I feel like its not always here. I have moments, because Im human, that you can hurt me. I have good days and bad days and in-between days. I got to a place of self-acceptance because I had no choice. I cornered myself. I got to the point where I was tired of beating myself up. I could not trade myself in for anyone else. I have to tell you, one of the beautiful things, is to be able to speak all over the country. Theres something beautiful that happens when you share your story. The more you share it, the more you heal. The more you share it, the less shame you have.

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And Davis has even become more comfortable doing that whole red carpet thing that so many of her peers dread or resent, or mock. Its part of the job, is her outlook, and shes delivered, stunning in scarlet Donna Karan, white Max Mara, and a seafoam Monique Lhuillier.

Right now, I see the red carpet as a challenge in remaining my authentic self and trying the best I can to enjoy it and get through it. Its pretty daunting. If I feel like I have to alter who I am, that makes me uncomfortable. That doesnt work for me, she says.

Try as she might, she cant cocoon herself from awards prognostications. Theyre everywhere, and Davis, whos active on social media, isnt immune to all that chatter.

I did four or five hours of interviews the other day. How can you shield yourself? But what I have underneath me is 30 years of training, of being in the business. Thirty years of being the journeyman actor. Its not like I got on the bus, came to Los Angeles, and said I wanted to be a star. As soon as this period is over, I go back to work. At some point, the flowers and bottles of champagne, all of that is going to be over, she says.

But not quite yet. Fences, adapted from August Wilsons play, is being praised by critics for its authenticity, its nuanced performances, and its honest take on the travails of a long and bumpy marriage, of hopes squashed and unfulfilled. Davis calls the project perfect and an actors dream.

Photo: Dan MacMedan/WireImage

She and Washington share moments of quiet adoration, moments of resentment, like any married couple.

Part of it is seamless because I feel comfortable with Denzel. I feel comfortable to try things and risk things. The other part is just craft. Its crafting a marriage. Its easy to craft it when everything is on the page. Its the banter, the humor, the love, but also the conflict. Thats a marriage, says Davis.

Davis has no intention to slow down. Not even close. I want to do everything and anything. Anything thats good, she says.

Related: Kerry Washingtons Scandal-Free Domestic Life: I Like to Make Banana Bread

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One flight was forced to return to a Minnesota airport more than an hour after takeoff, thanks to two unruly passengers, according to authorities.

Read: 3 Teens Rescued From Capsized Boat Miles from Shore: 'They Were Lucky They Had a Cell Signal'

A report of a midair meltdown caused a Delta flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles to return to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Wednesday, about 75 minutes after takeoff.

Delta Flight 2565 left at about 6:20 p.m. only to return at 7:35 p.m. according to airport spokesman Patrick Hogan.

According to reports, the drama began as 35-year-old passenger Blake A. Fleisigs girlfriend, Anna C. Koosmann, 36, tried to use the bathroom just after takeoff, which is prohibited.

A flight attendant reportedly asked her to sit down, and thats when the couple allegedly lost it.



The pilot returned to Minneapolis, where police boarded the aircraft and took the two unruly passengers into custody. And as they did, fellow passengers actually began cheering.

Video of the incident shows Fleisig get loose and apparently throw a punch at another passenger on board. Cops then took him down.

"As they were being escorted off the plane, the male passenger was getting yelled at, both of them were by passengers," Patrick Whalen, who shot the video, told Inside Edition. "That is why you see in the video he took a swing at one... He actually punched someone at that point."

The couple was arrested and was charged with disorderly conduct.

Read: From the Pulse Nightclub Shooting to Pokemon Go, Here Are the Top Newsmakers of 2016

The flight crew of Delta 2565 from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Los Angeles elected to return to Minneapolis shortly after takeoff when two passengers refused to follow crew instructions, became aggressive and created a disruption in the cabin," the airline said in a statement.

"The passengers were removed by local law enforcement. The flight redeparted without further incident. The safety of delta customers and employees is our top priority.

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Watch: Chaos at Malls Across America Leads to Arrests, Injuries and Stampedes

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For the approximately 64 percent of Americans who wear them, prescription eyeglasses are part medical device and part fashion accessory. They correct your vision and, faster than you can say Jackie O or Harry Potter, help you tell the world how youd like to be viewed, too.

Even a simple pair, however, can easily set you back hundreds of dollars. Thats especially true if youre buying eyeglasses the old-fashioned way, at a doctors office or an eyewear chainor if you have a complicated prescription. Online retailers offer ways to save, as do big-box stores, but you may get less hand-holding and a smaller selection of frames. The choicesand the trade-offscan be overwhelming.

Thats why we surveyed more than 91,000 readers and also shopped for glasses ourselves, online and in walk-in stores, to discover the pros and cons of different vendors. We interviewed eyeglass experts and eye doctors to get their best advice, too. What we learned is that where you get your glasses should depend on whether your priority is convenience, service, selection, or a rock-bottom price.

Doctors offices and independent eyeglass shops. Nearly 40 percent of survey respondents bought their glasses from one of these sources. They gave these sellers high marks for lens and frame fitting, employee knowledge, and follow-up service. But frames and lenses tended to cost more than elsewhere: Our readers shelled out a median of around $400, two to three times what you might pay online or at a discount store.

Major eyewear chains. Since it has many locations to help you if theres a problem with your glasses, buying eyeglasses at an eyeglass chain can be convenient. Our readers reported good follow-up service from most chains, too. But in other areas, survey ratings varied depending on the company.

Warby Parker and Zenni Optical. Each of these stores sells only its own brand of glasses. Warby Parker retails both online (theyll mail you up to five frames to try at home for free) and in brick-and-mortar locations in 18 states, the District of Columbia, and Ontario, Canada. In the seven years since it launched, Warby Parker has become a major player, offering glasses with single-vision lenses for $95, including an anti-reflective coating. But if you order progressive lenses, those prices can rocket to nearly $300far more than the prices we found at some other retailers. And Warby Parkers warranty on frames is only 30 days, compared with a full year at some other stores.

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As for all-online retailer Zenni Optical, you can try on frames only virtually, by uploading a photo of yourself. And it, too, has a 30-day warranty. Still, Zennis frames with basic single-vision lenses start at less than $10, and upgrading to progressives begins at just $28. Survey respondents who bought from Zenni spent a median of just $69 for a complete pair of glasses, making them our surveys lowest-cost retailer.

Large discount chains. Costco and Walmart are low-cost one-stop spots for buying eyeglasses where you can do everything from having your eyes examined to getting your finished glasses adjusted for fit. Frames can be inexpensive at these stores. At Walmart and Sams Club, we found basic, plastic progressive lenses for as little as $79. Costco charges $130 for high-definition progressive lenses, which, as with all Costco lenses, include an anti-reflective coating. Thats about half what youd pay at many walk-in stores. But if you need basic, plastic single-vision lenses, you can pay as little as $29 at Walmart, about half as much as at Costco.

These retailers got high marks from readers, with Costco, our top-rated eyeglass retailer, edging out Walmart in several areas, including the quality of frames and lenses and follow-up service. But readers were not impressed by the selection of frames, especially at Costco. One workaround: You can usually have a discount store put lenses into frames you purchased elsewhere. Walmart charges an extra $10 and Costco $18 to do this. Theyll also adjust the frames while youre there.

Online retailers. While only about 5 percent of our respondents bought their glasses online, nearly twice as many browsed online before purchasing at a walk-in store. Even if you dont plan to buy from a website, the price information you get might help you negotiate your way to a discount from a walk-in store. For instance, in a web search, we found a Dolce & Gabbana mens frame that was $190 at LensCrafters on sale for $99 at LensesRx Optical and $89 at Amazon.com.

But no matter how good an online retailers tools, prices, and return policies, getting your glasses by mail can be a hassle, especially if you have to send them back.

The Best Choice?

Once you know the pros and cons, your decision may be easy. If you have a simple prescription, you might consider shopping at Warby Parker. If youre covered by insurance, youll probably want to choose a provider that accepts your plan. If your heart is set on pricey designer frames, online retailers may be a great option.

If no one retailer has the service, selection, convenience, and prices you want when buying glasses, think about splitting up the process. You might have your eyes examined by your doctor, search for frames online, and get your lenses from Costco. One eyeglass vendor doesnt necessarily fit allbut knowing what each retailer offers will let you buy your glasses with your eyes wide open.

Editor's Note: This article also appeared in the February 2017 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.





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Top pick tires for 2016

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Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2017 Consumers Union of U.S.
Nick Viall has nothing to hide.

Speaking exclusively to PEOPLE ahead of Mondays season premiere of the The Bachelor, the star reveals why hes a big believer in being open, especially when it comes to the ladies on the show  past and present.

Im a big believer in transparency in any type of a relationship and in life, he says.

There are things I like to keep personal but at the same time, I think one theme youll see throughout , is that I wanted all the women to feel incredibly comfortable and empowered to ask me whatever they wanted to ask me  knowing that I would give them an honest answer and that it would be a two-way street, the Bachelor explained.

When it comes to being candid, Viall has been very vocal about his distaste for how things were handled with his ex and former Bachelorette, Andi Dorfman, 29.

After she left the Wisconsin native in shock by choosing Josh Murrays proposal over his in season 10, Viall revealed on national television that the pair had sex in the Fantasy Suite  all because he felt Dorfman wasnt honest with him from the start.

After learning from others mistakes, Viall says he encouraged openness and honesty throughout his time as the leading man.

I wanted every relationship to feel like a mutual relationship and that we were on the same playing field and that we were both just as empowered as the other person, he says. I wanted to have an authentic relationship and that was something that was very important to me throughout the entire season.

 For more on Nick and this season of The Bachelor, pick up this weeks issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday

When youre going to consider spending the rest of your life with someone, you need to have some pretty transparent conversations, Vaill adds. If youre taking it seriously you have to be willing to have those conversations and be open about it. You cant have a watered down version of the real world, especially if youre considering proposing.

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RELATED VIDEO: Everything Nick Viall Has Said About Finding  and Keeping  Love in the Spotlight

Viall has been very open about his his past relationships, and doesnt hold back, especially when it comes to sex talk.

During his time as a contestant on Kaitlyn Bristowes season 11, he found himself getting intimate again with the leading lady, but this time he didnt have to reveal much  cameras were rolling and mics were on  but he didnt stay mum for long.

For better or worse, I say what Im thinking or say what other people are thinking and might be afraid to say, he admits. I think you can take things seriously and still have fun. I think that offers a more realistic setting.

One thing is for sure, the 36-year-old will be tuning in come Monday to see how his transparency with a new batch of girls unfolds.

Im definitely going to watch it, he said. I watched it even when things werent so good. If I can endure Andis season and Kaitlyns season, I think I can endure this.

The Bachelor premieres Monday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

 With BRITTANY KING

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At its height, the Farc was estimated to have some 20,000 active fighters

A 40-year-old Tunisian man has been detained in Berlin in connection with last week's attack on a Christmas market, German state prosecutors say.
Chinese search giant Baidu, Inc. BIDU has extended its partnership with Yum! Brands YUM subsidiary and fast food retail chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) by launching its first artificial intelligence (AI) powered store in Beijing. Year-to-date, the stock has underperformed the Zacks Internet-Services industry. It lost 12.43% as against the industrys gain of 3.11% over the same period.

The smart restaurant in the Financial Street Area will have a kiosk that uses facial recognition technology to determine a customers age, sex, facial expression, mood and other features and recommends food accordingly. It can make the ordering process easier for frequent visitors by remembering purchase history and dining habits.

The new restaurant will also offer augmented reality games as do 300 other KFC locations in the city. Notably, in April, KFC in partnership with Baidu opened its first Chinese smart restaurant in Shanghai, featuring smart robot ordering.

Artificial Intelligence Finds More Takers

Artificial intelligence focuses on the development of virtual programs and machines capable of replicating human mannerisms such as visual processing, speech recognition and so on.

The partnership underscores Baidus growing interest in this highly promising space. It appears that the company is flexing its muscles in this space to leverage upon the concept of consumer convenience and fun in a bid to impress consumers and investors.

BAIDU INC Net Income (TTM)

BAIDU INC Net Income (TTM) | BAIDU INC Quote

Artificial intelligence techniques have gained immense traction over the last couple of years due to massive demand for analyzing unstructured data like tweets, social media posts, photos and videos across different industries.

Techniques like machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) are being used by companies like Alphabet GOOGL, Facebook FB, IBM and Microsoft to develop computer systems that can translate text into different languages and recognize objects in pictures.

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Apples Siri, Microsofts Cortana, Amazons Alexa virtual personal assistants, IBMs Watson, and Google-DeepMinds AlphaGo program are some of the prime examples of the usage of AI techniques. Further, popular applications like Netflix and Pandora rely on AI algorithms to recommend program contents to their users.

Using massive databases, these companies have already created AI that can help users in various aspects of life.

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily on Thursday:

Sears Holdings Corp., up 82 cents to $9

The struggling retailer secured new financing that will help it fund its operations.

Cempra Inc., down $3.50 to $2.60

Regulators rejected its bacterial pneumonia drug solithromycin and asked the drug developer to run a new safety study.

Endologix Inc., up 59 cents to $5.92

The company restarted shipping a device used to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms after a two-day halt.

Bank of America Corp., down 33 cents to $22

Banks and other financial firms lagged the market on Thursday.

Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., up 64 cents to $44.05

Companies that pay big dividends, like utilities, did better than the rest of the market as bond yields slipped.

Digital Realty Trust Inc., up $2.39 to $98.41

Investors also bought shares of real estate investment trusts as bond prices rose and yields fell.

AngloGold Ashanti Ltd., up 75 cents to $11.03

Gold producers traded higher as the price of the precious metal increased.

Newmont Mining Corp., up $2.49 to $35.27

The gold miner was the biggest gainer in the Standard & Poor's 500 index.
By Erik Kirschbaum BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's arch conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) party, a junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition, wants to close off the Mediterranean Sea route for migrants by sending them back to Africa rather than allowing them to stay in Europe. As a reaction to the Dec. 19 truck attack in Berlin, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) has drafted a paper calling for a change in policies that allow refugees rescued from endangered vessels to remain in Europe. The CSU has long bristled at Merkel's open-door policies that allowed into Germany about 1.1 million refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere since mid-2015. Ignoring her objections, it insist on a limit of 200,000 refugees per year. The attack last week in Berlin in which an asylum-seeker from Tunisia killed 12 people has heightened fears in Germany that there could be more security threats among the refugees. With a election due in September, the CSU is worried about losing votes to the fast-growing far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party that takes a hard line against refugees and has directly blamed Merkel's refugee policies for the attack. "The automatism that all refugees are taken to Europe needs to be stopped," reads the internal paper by the CSU deputies in parliament, as quoted in the Rheinische Post daily. "That's the only way going to stop organized crime on the Mediterranean." The CSU proposal is not new. Interior Thomas de Maiziere, a leader in Merkel's CDU, in October proposed returning migrants to Africa where their claims for asylum in the EU can be studied as an antidote to the profitable smuggling trade. De Maiziere's ministry said there were no concrete plans or discussions at the EU-level about the proposal. At a meeting in Brussels on Dec. 15, the EU said it was seeking money-for-migration deals to curtail migration from Africa through the Mediterranean. The bloc has also strengthened control of its external borders and is trying to deport more people who make it to Europe but have no case for asylum. But they remained divided over how to share the burden of caring for those who are already in the EU. A record 5,000 migrants are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea this year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said last week. Just under 3,800 migrants perished at sea during all of 2015, according to IOM figures. IOM figures show 358,403 migrants and refugees had entered Europe by sea in 2016 up to and including Dec. 21, arriving mostly in Greece and Italy. (Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
An Australian bodybuilder is the latest to shame people at the gym. (Photos: Instagram/Conor Tisdell)

Australian body builder Conor Tisdell is banned for life from Go Health Clubs in Brisbane. On Wednesday, Tisdell filmed a woman using an exercise machine at the gym, captioning the video Epic bro gainz and uploading it to Instagram.

He later commented on the video that the woman must be practicing her new dance move and that he has never laughed so hard. A Go Health Clubs employee responded to the video, Aww when you know who the member is, with a series of laughing emoji.

A Go Health Clubs employee encouraged Conor Tisdells gym-shaming. (Photo: Instagram)

Go Health Clubs issued a statement on behalf of the employee, stating that she will apologize to the woman in the video.

People have taken to Facebook to call out Tisdell for his shameful actions and applaud the gym for banning him. I wanted to congratulate you for not accepting the behavior of Conor Tisdell and for taking a firm stance on what is not tolerated. I hope this firm stance extends to the employee also. Well done, one person wrote. I guess this is a trend now  mocking people at the gym on social media, another wrote, pointing out Playboy model Dani Mathers, who posted a Snapchat of a naked woman in the locker room at her gym in July.

Mathers captioned the invasive photo, If I cant unsee this then you cant either. She has since been banned from all LA Fitness gyms and apologized, but Mathers is now being sued. She recently pleaded not guilty to one count of invasion of privacy, and if charged, she could face a $1,000 fine and up to 6 months in prison.

Playboy model Dani Mathers shamed a woman at LA Fitness. (Photos: Snapchat/Dani Mathers)

The woman in Tisdells video isnt his first gym-shaming victim. A woman named Deb said that Tisdell laughed at her while she was doing a squat with her trainer at Go Health Clubs. Its disgusting. Hes starting an ongoing trend to publicly shame and embarrass people, Deb told Daily Mail Australia. The most disgusting part is this gym is in a very low socio-economic part of Brisbane. He should have gone up to her and asked if she wanted him to show her how to use the equipment. Its online bullying. She believes that the online-shaming will affect the culture at gyms in the area and will mess with people with low confidence. She added, I can handle it, but when I saw what he did to this elderly woman, I was shocked.

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Indeed, body-shaming elderly people at the gym could discourage them from exercise, and somebody as fitness-oriented as Tisdell should understand the importance of exercise, particularly among the aging. Unfortunately, though, gym-shaming is alive and well. Golds Gym came under fire in August for a series of fat-shaming ads, and in May, yet another man filmed a woman at the gym who was using equipment improperly.

This type of shaming keeps people out of gyms, according to a 2014 study by Sport England that revealed 75 percent of women would like to exercise more but fear being judged. But if your confidence is off-kilter at the gym, Michael Mantell, PhD, and author of Dont Sweat the Small Stuff (P.S. Its All Small Stuff), says that you should be gentle with yourself. If stories like Tisdells keep you from the gym, Mantell recommends cutting the negativity and sticking to self-talk like, Ill try, rather than thinking, I cant do it, Ill fail like I always do, people will laugh at me, or Ill get hurt, he told Shape. Focus on what went well, and why, with working out in the past. Then focus on what youre grateful for regarding exercise youve done. Focus on your larger goals, which might be better health, looking better, or being more productive.

Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.


The UK fashion retailer Boohoo.com has its eye on acquiring Los Angeles brand Nasty Gal.

The fast-fashion giant is proposing a bid of $20 million for its rival US label, which filed for bankruptcy in November. Nasty Gal Inc has announced it is seeking permission from the US Bankruptcy Court to launch an auction process for the sale of its business, and is set to ask for approval for Boohoo to act as the 'stalking horse bidder'. The auction is expected to take place in February.

A potential purchase would be a further boost for the rapidly-growing Manchester-based Boohoo, which added the fashion site Pretty Little Thing to its portfolio earlier this year, as well as teming up with model Jordyn Woods on a size-inclusive capsule collection released last autumn.

Founded in 2006, the company has carved out a niche for itself as the ultimate fast-fashion fix for an affordable price, releasing up to 100 new pieces every day, and a new collection each week. It covers menswear, womenswear and children's fashion and accessories.

Nasty Gal was also founded in 2006 by entrepreneur Sophia Amoruso. It began life as a vintage clothing store on eBay before expanding to become one of the industry's biggest online successes, selling a combination of curated and in-house ready-to-wear collections and accessories. Amoruso penned a bestselling book, "Girlboss", about her entrepreneurial experience, which is being transformed into a Netflix series set to debut in 2017. She stepped down as CEO of the company in 2015.
Kashim Shettima, the Governor of Borno State in Nigeria, met with a group of released Chibok schoolgirls on December 26, and criticized the decision of security forces to prevent the girls from spending Christmas with their families.

The Premium Times reported that the women were kept in a local politicians house instead of being allowed to spend Christmas with their families.

This video shows Shettima criticizing the decision, and shows the women singing in response to his statement. Credit: YouTube/Yusuf Usman via Storyful
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP)  Prosecutors in Bosnia have charged the commander of special police units in Sarajevo during the 1992-95 siege of the city by Bosnian Serb forces with war crimes over the execution of eight captured enemy combatants.

The Bosnian prosecutor's office said in a statement Thursday that Dragan Vikic and three former Bosnian police officers were charged over their roles in the 1992 killings in the center of Sarajevo. The eight Serb soldiers had been captured after their armored personnel carrier broke down on the outskirts of the city.

Vikic and one officer were charged with "failing to arrest, process and sanction" persons responsible for the crime and "failing to prevent removal of evidence and hiding of the bodies." Two other officers were charged with participation in the crime.
Sarajevo (AFP) - Bosnia's main university will not hold classes during Muslim Friday prayers, prompting criticism from some that it represents a step towards Islamisation.

The University of Sarajevo this week adopted a plan to halt activities for about an-hour-and-a-half each Friday during Muslim prayers.

Although the university has also decided not to hold classes during the hours of Catholic and Orthodox worship on Saturdays and Sundays, Milorad Dodic, president of the Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska condemned the move, saying "this is increasingly like an Islamic state".

Dodic said Sarajevo authorities had also banned alcohol on New Year's Eve.

The sale of alcohol is also prohibited by the internal regulations of two newly built shopping centres in the city owned by Gulf investors.

Three left-wing and liberal political parties including the Social Democratic Party (SDP) also denounced the move amid concerns over radicalisation among a minority of Bosnian Muslims.

The university however said the decision was taken with the aim of respecting "human rights and denominational freedoms".

Around half the population of 3.5 million is Muslim, according to 2013 Census figures published in 2016.
Photo credit: Getty

From Cosmopolitan

SECAUCUS, N.J. (AP) - The family of an 8-year-old New Jersey boy says he was kicked out of Cub Scouts because he is transgender, a move that could open a new front in thedebate over discrimination in Scouting.

Joe Maldonado joined Pack 87 in Secaucus in October and was asked to leave about a month later, according to The Record.

"I'm way more angry than sad," Joe said in a story published Tuesday. "My identity is a boy. If I was them, I would let every person in the world go in. It's right to do."

Joe was born a girl but has identified as male for more than a year. His mother, Kristie Maldonado, said Joe is accepted as a boy at school and that it was complaints from parents - not Joe's fellow Scouts - that led to his ouster.

"Not one of the kids said, 'You don't belong here,'" Maldonado said.

The Boy Scouts of America endured years of controversy before ultimately lifting bans on gay Scouts and leaders in recent years. But spokeswoman Effie Delimarkos said in a statement the organization considers transgender children as a separate issue.

"No youth may be removed from any of our programs on the basis of his or her sexual orientation," she said, but added: "Gender identity isn't related to sexual orientation."

She declined to directly address Joe's situation or say if there's a written policy on transgender participants. The statement said Cub Scout programs are for those identified as boys on their birth certificates.

The Boy Scouts of America is not known to have rejected any Scouts over gender identity before the Secaucus case, said Justin Wilson, the executive director of Scouts for Equality.

Wilson said he knows of at least two transgender boys who are Cub Scouts, one in a southern state that he did not name and the other in New York. He does not know of any instances where Scouts asked for a birth certificate as a condition of membership.

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Maldonado said she was not aware that anyone had a problem with her son being a member of the pack, which is hosted by Immaculate Conception Church, until she received a phone call from the Northern New Jersey Council of Boy Scouts.

A spokesman for the Newark Roman Catholic Archdiocese said it had nothing to do with the Boy Scouts' decision. He declined further comment.

Council executive Eric Chamberlin acknowledged calling Kristie Maldonado last month but declined further comment. He referred questions to the Scouts' national office and said the issue involved "our membership standards."

Earlier this year, the Boy Scouts told The Associated Press that it would admit transgender children to its coeducational programs, but not to programs that are for boys only, like the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts.

The national Girl Scouts organization, which is not affiliated with the Boy Scouts, has accepted transgender members for years.

The Boy Scouts did not respond to questions about whether the group would accept a transgender girl whose birth certificate indicates she is male.

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Balochistan war: Pakistan accused over 1,000 dumped bodies

Nearly 1,000 dead bodies of political activists and suspected armed separatists have been found in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province over the past six years.
Brad Pitt was able to spend time with his children on Christmas Day amid his divorce from Angelina Jolie.

While speaking with US Weekly, a source close to the estranged couple said that Pitt gave all of his children gifts. Another insider revealed that it was actually Jolie who organized the family get-together. The kids therapist was also present to supervise the reunion.

Meanwhile, Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt on Sept. 19. At the time, the Maleficent actress claimed that Pitt had a feud with their son, Maddox, after the 15-year-old tried to defend his mom from the actor.

Just last week, Pitt filed a counter affidavit slamming his wife of two years for making their divorce public. In the court documents, Pitt stated that Jolie doesnt really have their childrens best interest at heart. However, a source close to Jolie said that Pitt was just trying to prolong the court hearing, and this was why he filed another document in court. A few weeks ago, the couple had already signed a private agreement to seal their divorce case.

At present, Pitt has been granted temporary voluntary custody of all his children. The agreement states that his visits to the kids should be done in the presence of a therapist. The Fight Club actor is also requested to submit to voluntary drug and alcohol testing at least four times a month.

In other news, Pitt has already been cleared of child abuse allegations by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services after he was allegedly involved in a plane altercation with Maddox. The investigation into the incident by the FBI has also been dropped.

Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt

Photo: Reuters/Mario Anzouni

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2016 was a year of great uncertainty, to say the least: the Syrian conflict saw the historic city of Aleppo slip further into peril, the Brexit vote initiated the United Kingdoms departure from the European Union and Donald Trump was elected the next president of the United States, leading many to wonder what comes next for international alliances, diplomacy and peace.

To say the worlds leading forces are closer to war than ever in the past decade wouldnt be a far reach, according to a recent report published by the Council on Foreign Relations. In its ninth annual "Preventive Priorities Survey," the nonpartisan organization ranked a potential confrontation between the Russian Kremlin and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as well as the ongoing crisis and unpredictability in North Korea, as two of the top potential conflicts to arise in 2017. A military confrontation between Russia and the international peace-keeping body could possibly throw the entire world into a state of war, triggering World War III as Russian and U.S. allies across the globe are forced to take sides and provide resources.

RTSUN2V

Photo: Reuters

Whether world leaders will band together to prevent ongoing crises from reaching war-threatening levels remains to be seen, however. On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a ceasefire deal had been reached in Syria among President Bashar Assads regime and opposing forces on the ground, which forms the Free Syrian Army. Putin also revealed peace talks would begin imminently between the battling groups, though both agreements were "fragile" and relied heavily on forces on the ground adhering to the latest call for an end to the violence.

The United States was not involved in the ceasefire negotiations. Trump received a congratulatory call from Putin upon his surprise victory in the 2016 presidential election, however, reportedly discussing both leaders wishes to work together in eliminating the Islamic State and resolving the five-year-long Syrian conflict.

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The Council on Foreign Relations' report also indicates a mass casualty terrorist attack on U.S. soil, as well as the intensifying violence between Turkey and Kurdish forces as other potential major conflicts that could cause lasting impacts throughout next year.

That isnt to say such confrontations arent preventable, however. "With a new presidential administration assuming office, it is important to help policymakers anticipate and avert potential crises that could arise and threaten U.S. interests," Paul B. Stares, the Councils Center for Preventive Action director, said in a statement. "Our annual survey aims to highlight the most likely sources of instability and conflict around the world so that the government can prioritize its efforts appropriately."

RTSUN8M

Photo: Reuters

Meanwhile, U.S.-Israeli relations continue to dissolve after Washington failed to use its veto power on a United Nations resolution condemning Israel for establishing settlements in Palestinian territory and potentially hindering a two-state solution to maintain peace in the Middle Eastern region. Secretary of State John Kerry candidly spoke to the fate of peace in the Middle East in the years to come, describing the two-state solution as now being "in serious jeopardy."

"The truth is that trends on the ground  violence, terrorism, incitement, settlement expansion and the seemingly endless occupation  they are combining to destroy hopes for peace on both sides and increasingly cementing an irreversible one-state reality that most people do not actually want," Kerry said Wednesday. "This vote  I cant emphasize enough  is not about the possibility of arriving at an agreement thats going to resolve that overnight or in one year or two years. This is about a longer process. This is about how we make peace with the Palestinians in the future but preserve the capacity to do so."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Kerrys speech as "deeply disappointing" Thursday, writing in a statement: "In a speech ostensibly about peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Secretary Kerry paid lip service to the unremitting campaign of terrorism that has been waged by the Palestinians against the Jewish state for nearly a century."

Its unclear whether relations between the U.S. and Israel, which seemed to hit a new low this week, will continue to plummet in 2017 or greatly improve under the Trump administration. The president-elect slammed Kerrys speech and vowed to strengthen ties with Israel, which Netanyahu supported on Twitter Thursday afternoon.

As the world watches international conflicts continue to unfold and transitions in governmental power underway throughout Europe and the U.S., only one thing is sure: next year is certainly gearing up to be just as unprecedented as 2016.

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Nelson (New Zealand) (AFP) - Neil Broom's maiden century and the self-belief of Kane Williamson gave New Zealand a 67-run victory over Bangladesh to take the second one-day international and the series in Nelson on Thursday.

Bangladesh suffered a dramatic meltdown when they were cruising towards what should have been a comfortable victory after Broom's unbeaten 109 was the only significant score in New Zealand's 251.

The tourists reached 104 for one in the 23rd over and were all out for 184 by the 43rd, losing their last nine wickets for 80 runs.

The win, following New Zealand's 77-run victory in the first match, gives the home side an unbeatable 2-0 lead with one match remaining, also in Nelson, on Saturday.

With New Zealand's frontline bowlers struggling for consistency at the start of the Bangladesh innings, skipper and part-time spinner Williamson put himself into the attack as the seventh bowler and claimed three for 22 with his looping off-breaks.

Williamson described it as a "satisfying" outcome given the pressure New Zealand were under.

"They bowled outstandingly on that surface and gave us nothing for a long period of time. We certainly had to suck it up and Broomy did that and played the match-winning knock."

Williamson added his bowling effort was "a little bit fortunate. I was encouraged to bring myself on and it was nice that it came off."

For Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Mortaza there was no escaping that he had been let down by his batsmen who he said should have chased down their target.

"The bowlers did a very good job. But I'm very disappointed with the batters. One for 100 and then collapsing is obviously disappointing," he said.

- Bizarre run-out -

Williamson's triple strike was the breakthrough New Zealand needed after Imrul Kayes, Tamim Iqbal and Sabbir Rahman had given Bangladesh a solid start to their chase.

Tamim produced a quick 16 and Imrul (59) and Sabbir (38) kept the scoreboard ticking over at a constant rate.

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But after Imrul brought the 100 up with a huge six off Jimmy Neesham, Sabbir was run out in bizarre fashion as he turned back going for a single and both batsmen raced for the non-striker's end.

Imrul believed he lost the race and headed for the dressing room only to be recalled when television replays showed Sabbir had grounded his bat second.

It was the start of the Bangladesh downfall with Lockie Ferguson, who dropped a sitter from Imrul on 45, bowling new batsman Mahmudullah for one with a yorker.

Williamson then entered the attack to remove Shakib Al Hasan (7), Mosaddek Hossain (3) and Tanveer Haider (2).

Debutant Nurul Hasan, standing in for injured wicketkeeper Mushfiqur Rahim, dragged the innings out with 24 before being the last wicket to fall.

Bangladesh, in an unorthodox reaction to losing the first ODI, injected three debutants into their side.

Along with Nurul, who capped his game with the smart stumping of Neesham and two sharp catches, speedster Subashis Roy took the wicket of Mitchell Santner and Tanveer took a catch to remove New Zealand's Luke Ronchi for 35.

Ronchi (35) was the second best performing New Zealand batsman and featured in a 64-run stand with Broom for the sixth wicket.

New Zealand were sent into bat after Mushrafe won the toss and decided to make early use of heavily overcast conditions.

By the time the clouds dispersed the New Zealand top order, with the exception of Broom, were already out and the tail struggled to pick up the pace.

Mashrafe Mortaza led the Bangladesh bowling figures with three for 49.
The brother of JonBenet Ramsey has filed a $750 million defamation lawsuit against CBS and Critical Content in connection with the four-hour documentary series The Case of JonBenet Ramsey that aired in September.

Burke Ramsey, 29, asserts in the complaint filed in Michigans Wayne County state court that CBS and series producer Critical Content sought to generate ratings by pointing the finger at him as the killer of his younger sister, who was found dead in the familys Boulder, Colo., home on Dec. 26, 1996. The mystery of the Ramsey murder was revisited by CBS and a number of other outlets this year as the 20th anniversary of the 6-year-olds brutal death approached.

The suit also names as defendants seven individuals who were featured in the documentary series as criminal experts or students of the case: Jim Clemente, Laura Richards, Henry Lee, A. James Kolar, James Fitzgerald, Stanley Burke and Werner Spitz. Kolar wrote a book about the case, Foreign Faction, that was heavily cited in the docu series.

CBS originally ordered JonBenet as a six-hour documentary series but cut it back to four hours at the last minute.

CBS declined to comment Wednesday on the lawsuit.

Burke Ramseys lawsuit argues that producers overlooked a significant range evidence that points to his innocence. Burke Ramsey and his parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, were cleared of the crime by a Boulder prosecutor based on DNA evidence in 2008. But officials have now said that was premature and the district attorney has re-opened the case.

The shocking and sordid death of JonBenet made headlines around the world. Numerous investigations, by armchair sleuths and law enforcement orgs, over the years have sought to crack the case.

Burke Ramseys lawsuit seeks compensatory damages of $250 million and punitive damages of $500 million.

The accusation that Burke Ramsey killed his sister was based on a compilation of lies, half-truths, manufactured information, and the intentional omission and avoidance of truthful information about the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the lawsuit states.

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Moreover, the complaint asserts that the accusations against Burke Ramsey were negligently published and was published with actual knowledge of falsity and/or a reckless disregard of the truth  the key standard in defamation and libel cases.

The suit was filed by Atlanta-based attorney Lin Wood, who has long represented the Ramsey family in criminal and civil claims related to JonBenets murder. More than 15 years ago, Burke Ramseys parents sued Court TV, the New York Post and Star Magazine on his behalf for publishing similar accusations.

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OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore replaced army chief of staff Pingrenoma Zagre on Wednesday, the government said in a statement, after a string of deadly militant attacks, including against the security forces. The statement did not provide a reason for Zagre's replacement by Sadou Oumarou, formerly the inspector general of the armed forces, but military sources said the decision was prompted by the incidents. Attacks in Burkina Faso were relatively rare before an attack by al Qaeda-linked fighters on a hotel in the capital, Ouagadougou, that killed 29 people in January. Since then, the country has been hit by several attacks near its northern border with Mali, including one this month in which unidentified gunmen killed a dozen members of the army's special anti-terrorist group. Islamist militants are active in Mali, and Burkinabe authorities are concerned the long desert border between the two countries could become a transit point. Burkina Faso's army is also dealing with the fallout from a failed coup attempt by elite presidential guard soldiers in September of last year. The government said in October that it had foiled a new coup attempt by ex-members of the same unit, a pillar of former president Blaise Campaore's rule before he was ousted by demonstrators in 2014 over his attempts to change the constitution to prolong his 27 years in office. (Reporting by Mathieu Bonkoungou; Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Alison Williams)
California Dad Stabbed to Death While Reportedly Shopping for Daughter on Christmas Eve

Police say a California dad shopping for last-minute gifts on Christmas Eve was stabbed to death in front of his young son in the toy section of a Target.

According to authorities and witness statements, Tyrone Griffin Jr. was fatally injured after he got into a confrontation with two men. Griffins girlfriend reportedly said that the 36-year-old father was stabbed after he asked the men to turn down the loud music they were playing on a cell phone, which included explicit lyrics.

The confrontation grew heated and one of the men stabbed Griffin, according to a police report obtained by PEOPLE. He was rushed to a nearby hospital where he later died.

Last-Minute Shopping

Griffin was raising four children with his girlfriend, Nicole Simmons. She said they were doing an inventory of their Christmas gifts on Saturday night when he realized that his daughter, Jade, had one fewer gift than the other children. The family headed to Target.

Simmons told The East Bay Times that she had been told all went well until Griffin asked the men to turn down the music, which was inappropriate for children. A fight ensued. The couples 4-year-old son witnessed the entire altercation.

 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.

Police tell PEOPLE they dont yet know what led up to the confrontation, but they say that there is nothing in their investigation that is inconsistent with the familys account.

What type of person would take a life in front of a child? Simmons wrote on the familys GoFundMe page. My children are fatherless because of a thoughtless act of rage. Something that could have been totally avoided just by walking away.

Two Arrests

The Hayward Police Department confirms that two suspects have been arrested in connection with the homicide. The two men are brothers and have been identified as 22-year-old Frankie Archuleta and 25-year-old Jesse Archuleta.

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They were booked into Hayward City Jail and are being held without bond on suspicion of murder. They have not yet entered a plea and it was not immediately clear if they have retained attorneys.

They are expected to appear in court later this week. Griffins family could not be reached.




By Dan Levine

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A lawyer with deep experience fighting climate change will lead California's Department of Justice until the next attorney general takes office, as the state and several others vow to combat global warming despite skepticism from President-elect Donald Trump.

Current California Attorney General Kamala Harris was elected to the U.S. Senate, and Governor Jerry Brown said earlier this month he will nominate U.S. Representative Xavier Becerra to take her place. The choice of Becerra drew widespread praise in California.

In the meantime, Kathleen Kenealy will become acting attorney general when Harris is sworn in to the Senate early next month and while the state legislature mulls Becerra's nomination, according to a memo sent to state employees last week and seen by Reuters.

Kenealy previously served in the department's natural resources section, and defended California regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles. She then led the office's civil division.

Kenealy said in an email to Reuters she was honored by the appointment and looked forward to working on the transition to a new AG.

Trump has expressed skepticism toward the science behind climate change. Since his election, governors of California, Oregon and Washington said they joined a group of U.S. states and countries dedicated to reducing rising acidity in the oceans, a phenomenon tied to climate change that threatens fish, coral reefs and other marine life.

Brown has been particularly outspoken, vowing to launch a satellite from California to track climate change data if the federal government suspends its efforts.

"We got the scientists, we got the lawyers, and we're ready to fight," Brown said in a speech earlier this month.

Becerra's office did not respond to questions about what position Kenealy would occupy if Becerra is confirmed.

Chief Deputy Attorney General Nathan Barankin said Harris informed Becerra of her decision to elevate Kenealy, and Becerra did not object.

"She's one of the best managers we have in the entire department and deeply knowledgeable," Barankin said.

(Editing by Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis)
Debbie Reynolds family is reeling after losing both her and Carrie Fisher within the span of just one day. Although their hearts are broken, they are taking some solace in knowing that the legendary film stars are reunited in another life.

Todd Fisher opened up about his mothers final moments, revealing that Carries death left her devastated. TMZ reports that before she suffered a fatal stroke, Reynolds told her son, I miss her so much, I want to be with Carrie. The Singing in The Rain star is said to have been at Todds home when the stroke occurred. She was reportedly discussing details of her daughters funeral at the time.

Additionally, TMZs sources suggest that Reynolds suffered more than one stroke in 2016. It is not clear how many she suffered prior, but the publication suggests her health was failing. Still, it is believed that Carrie having died from heart attack complications was a contributing factor  the anonymous source believe it was simply too much for Reynolds.

Although Reynolds was struggling to cope with her grief after her daughters unexpected death, Todd said she died very gently. In an interview with ABC News he shared there was nothing more that could be done to save his mother. He added that she was very peaceful and quiet in the moment.

She loved taking care of my sister more than anything. So, she gets to do that and thats what she wanted to do.

Reynolds death, like Carries, has drawn an outpouring of love on social media from fans and peers. The Scream Queens cast rallied around granddaughter Billie Lourd, who lost both Reynolds and her mother Carrie this week. Additionally, stars like Ellen DeGeneres, William Shatner and Antonio Banderas fondly recalled Reynolds lengthy career and her love for Carrie.

Reynolds was rushed to a Los Angeles area hospital on Wednesday from Todds Beverly Hills, California, home. A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Fire Department told People magazine that they were called to the home due to a request for medical aid at 1:02 p.m. PST. They anonymous representative added that they transported one adult female patient in fair to serious condition to Cedars [Sinai Medical Center].

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No further information was available at that time. News of Reynolds death broke shortly after she was taken to the hospital.

Debbie Reynolds

Photo: Getty Images

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Carrie Fisher had begun working on the sequel to her 2006 critically acclaimed one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, before her death on Tuesday, ET confirms.

Josh Ravetch, co-creator and director of Fisher's show, tells ET that he and the actress had plans to work on the play, titled Wishful Drinking Strikes Back: From Star Wars to, uh Star Wars!, during the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve.

WATCH: Inside Carrie Fisher's Final Days in London

"We spent the day at her home in September discussing what the sequel would look like and how it would differ from the first and the tone," he explains, adding that their meeting was interrupted by a phone call from Fisher's mother, Debbie Reynolds.

"We walked across the driveway to see Debbie, and the thing that struck me more than anything; more than her wit, more than her original, remarkable, spectacular mind, what was mostly present that day was what a loving, sweet, attentive, daughter she was to her mother," Ravetch shares.

"We went back up to her house and spent the rest of the afternoon discussing our next steps and her schedule, which was to take her to New York, then London but she'd be back between Christmas and New Year's. Our plan was to spend this week working on the play," he reveals, adding that the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles green-lit the commission on Dec. 22, the day before Fisher went into cardiac arrest on a plane bound for L.A. from London.

WATCH: Remembering Some of Carrie Fisher's Best, Most Prolific Quotes

Randall Arney, Creative Director of the Geffen Playhouse, also confirms the news to ET, revealing that Fisher was excited to start work on the play.

"We were thrilled [when Ravetch and Fisher said they wanted to do a sequel]. She seemed so energetic and ready to go back to work," Arney says. "Doing the one-woman show was an incredible feat. She not only would have to write a 90-minute show, but she had to learn all of it and perform it eight times a week!"

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"It's an ambitious project and it speaks to the state she was in -- eager to take on a new challenge. It tested her as a writer, editor and performer. She was ready and excited to perform eight shows a week -- with great gusto!" he adds. "Carrie was so fearless She was a force."

Wishful Drinking, which focused on Fisher's personal life and mental health, debuted at the Geffen Playhouse in 2006, and went on to Broadway in 2009 and 2010. Fisher's show also toured San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Seattle, and was published as a memoir in 2008. HBO filmed a feature-length documentary of the stage play in 2010.

WATCH: Carrie Fisher Dies at 60: Stars React to Actress' Death

Fisher's trademark wit and humor shone through the pages of Wishful Drinking, which included the obit she penned for herself.

"I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra," she wrote.

See more in the video below.

-- Reporting by Darla Murray



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As Hollywood mourns the sudden deaths of Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, numerous incredible stories about the actresses have been surfacing. And this one, from Fishers former assistant of nearly three years, Byron Lane, sheds light on who she was when the cameras werent pointed her way.

Most of my time with her involved me staring at her, wide-eyed and in blissful shock that one person could live a life so fully, Lane wrote on Facebook. We rode dog sleds in Canada, swam hot springs in Japan, pet koalas in Australia. Thats how she lived. Extraordinary. Brilliant. Hilarious. And generous! Not every assistant job is like that. I was with her for nearly 3 years. Every moment is a treasure, inspiration.

Lane continued, I love this woman and will forever. She has been a force in my life from the moment I met her. To this day I think of her constantly. Every memory with her is bursting with color. I feel so lucky, you guys! So! Lucky! But, you know her, too. Because she was exactly the same in private as in public. Authentic. Honest. Real. A champion for mental health, veterans, feminism. She did anything for her family, loved her friends, embodied aliveness. Ill miss her so, so much.

Lane, an actor-director, began his post by sharing Fishers nicknames for him  Byronius and Ck Ring  and recalling the time Fisher dropped everything to travel and see the aurora borealis.

She once got a text alert from weather.com saying the northern lights were gonna be big so that night I had to book flights and the next day we were there, he recalled. When Gary had to pee on a plane she took him and a wee-wee pad into the lavatory and how they worked it out is one of lifes great mysteries.

See Lanes full post  along with photos of the two of them  below.

Lane also commented following the news of Reynolds death just one day after Fishers. Sending so much love to the family, he wrote. So much loss. Two amazing, hilarious, unforgettable human beings!

See more heartfelt tributes here.
Star Wars fans memorialize Carrie Fisher with a lightsaber vigil on Hollywoods Walk of Fame (Photo: gotpap/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)

Theres no better way to honor a fallen Jedi than with a lightsaber vigil. In the wake of Carrie Fishers death on Dec. 27, Star Wars fans have been staging impromptu memorials across the U.S. honoring the author/actress and her alter ego Princess-turned-General Leia Organa, who  like her onscreen father and brother  had the Force flowing through her veins. The day after her death, on Dec. 28, almost 100 people converged on Anaheims Downtown Disney district and saluted Fisher with every make, model, and color of lightsaber, including the one wielded by Leias troubled son, Kylo Ren.

That same evening, more than 200 fans had descended on the South Lamar location of the Austin-based theater chain, Alamo Drafthouse, for a lavish lightsaber tribute. Bring along as many lightsabers as you own, and invite your fellow Wookiees, Bounty Hunters, Ewoks, and Stormtroopers, the Drafthouse advised on its website. (Additional Alamo vigils were held outside of Austin in such Lone Star State cities as New Braunfels, Stone Oak, Park North, Westlakes, and Laredo.)

The Force was strong at South Lamar last night. Photos from the Lightsaber Vigil for Carrie Fisher (via @hlkfotos): https://t.co/4gEye5kTvi pic.twitter.com/sq28GoXjO9  Alamo Austin (@drafthouse) December 29, 2016

Meanwhile, in Tennessee, Chattanoogas premiere fan group, Chattoonie, hosted a vigil for Fisher and the many other beloved artists the world lost in 2016, including Fishers mother, Debbie Reynolds, who died on the evening of Dec. 28, a mere 30 hours after her daughters passing.

If you werent able to hoist your own lightsaber in tribute at these events, worry not  more vigils for Fisher are planned in the days ahead. The Alamo Drafthouse has vigils planned for its theater in the Mason Park area of Houston, as well as the chains Lubbock location on December 30. That same day, the New Orleans-based Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbaccus, which specializes in Star Wars-themed Mardi Gras parade events, has announced a parade in the Big Easy. Honor your General, you must.

Carrie Fisher Breaks Down THAT Empire Kiss With Screen Brother Mark Hamill:
Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds had a mother-daughter relationship for the ages: They had happy times and falling-outs, cared for one another in times of crisis, and even performed a nightclub act together. Both became overnight movie stars at a young age, and shared a penchant for disastrous relationships and a dislike for traditional feminine roles. Fisher and Reynolds understood each other in a way no one else could, and, remarkably, died one day apart this week.

Though Fisher clearly inherited some of her bawdy wit from Reynolds, she was the storyteller of the two, and frequently spoke of her admiration for (and occasional exasperation with) her mother. Here, just a few of the hilarious and heartwarming things Carrie Fisher said about Debbie Reynolds in her memoirs and interviews.

If anything, my mother taught me how to sur-thrive. Thats my word for it. She would go through these amazingly difficult things, and the message was clear: Doing the impossible is possible. Its just not fun.  New York Times interview, 2010

Related: Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Share Spotlight in Upcoming Documentary: Its a Love Story

My mother is a beautiful woman  shes beautiful today in her 70s, so at 24, she looked like a Christmas morning.  Wishful Drinking, 2008

My mother is this fantastic character. Eccentric wouldnt even quite cover it.  New York Times interview, 1990

Thank you, Mama, I mean, whos a more bitchen parent than you, right? Seriously, there are no words. There are, however, a few dance moves.  Acknowledgements to Shockaholic, 2011

Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds sing together on Oprah in 2011:

She has been more than a mother to me. Not much, but definitely more. Shes been an unsolicited stylist, interior decorator, and marriage counselor.  SAG Awards speech, 2015

She broke her ankle one night during a performance and went back onstage and sang Tammy with her foot in a bucket of ice. She should be put on that thing with the four presidents  Mount Rushmore. Right after Teddy Roosevelt, but have his eyes looking down at her cleavage. New York Times interview, 2010

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Related: Debbie Reynolds: Remembering the Blood, Sweat, and Tears That Went Into the Joyful Good Morning from Singin in the Rain

She also annoys me sometimes when shes mad at the nurses, but shes an extraordinary woman. Extraordinary. Theres very few women from her generation who worked like that, who just kept a career going all her life, and raised children, and had horrible relationships, and lost all her money, and got it back again. I mean, shes had an amazing life, and shes someone to admire.  NPR interview, 2016

Now I have officially turned into my mother. In my family, to turn into one another, we do nightclub acts.  Interview promoting her one-woman show Wishful Drinking on Today, 2012

Related: How Carrie Fisher Helped Create the Star Wars Legend

As a kid, I remember thinking, there is no other mother that even comes close to my mom. Then I became a teenager and thought she was an ass**** because lets face it  its a teenagers job to find her parent annoying and ridiculous  just ask my daughter. Anyway, after I was finished thinking she was this trippy lunatic, I realized that she was pretty f***ing amazing. I mean, shes loyal, shes reliable, shes just totally great. Seriously. Shes also really quick, and she can be really, really witty. She also still performs at the age of seventy-six Ive watched her for my whole life, and shes got this insanely strong life force. It pours through her veins and her muscles, and her heart. Shes remarkable.  passage from Wishful Drinking, 2008

Debbie Reynolds Memorable Film Roles:



Carrie Fishers Memorable Film Roles:
Carrie Fisher's fans paid the ultimate tribute to the late actress with a makeshift star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Star Wars icon never had an actual star and due to rules set by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, it'll be another five years before she's eligible to receive the honor posthumously.

An earlier version of Carrie's star, which was reportedly constructed by two diehard Star Wars fans featured a cardboard outline with Carrie's name and the words "Forever Our Princess."

NEWS: Gary the Dog's Tweets After Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds' Deaths Are Heartbreaking

Finished images of the homemade star, complete with a light saber and two cinnamon rolls (representing her iconic Princess Leia buns), flowers and candles, appeared on social media on Wednesday.

Fans created a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in honor of Carrie Fisher pic.twitter.com/Ylqny64HzM   (@SuchALook) December 28, 2016

"The finished star... hopefully Carrie Fisher was smiling down on us. Yes, we remembered the cinnamon rolls too," a fan wrote on Instagram alongside a photo of the completed star.

The finished star... hopefully Carrie Fisher was smiling down on us. Yes, we remembered the cinnamon rolls too. #tclchinesetheatres #princessleia #starwars #carriefisher #hollywoodblvd #iamonewiththeforce A photo posted by Jason GRIMLOCK thomas (@grimlock.os) on Dec 28, 2016 at 5:25am PST

WATCH: Carrie Fisher Wrapped Filming on 'Star Wars: Episode VIII': What Does Her Death Mean for 'Episode IX'?

Carrie's Star Wars co-star Mark Hammill tweeted an image of the fan tribute with the caption, "She took a little piece of all of us with her," and the hashtag "#TooSoon."

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She took a little piece of all of us with her. #TooSoon pic.twitter.com/QiKUQPR46p  Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) December 28, 2016

As news of the death of Carrie's mother, Debbie Reynolds, emerged late Wednesday, fans began leaving candles and white roses on the acting legend's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A small memorial of candles and flowers were also left outside Reynolds' dance studio in North Hollywood, California.

Reynolds died after suffering a stroke Wednesday afternoon. She was 84.

"She missed her daughter and wanted to very much be with her," Todd Fisher, Reynolds' son and Carrie's younger brother, told ET. "She had been very strong the last several days. [There was] enormous stress on her, obviously. And this morning she said those words to me and 15 minutes later she had a stroke and virtually left."

MORE: Inside Carrie Fisher's Final Days in London

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Hong Kong action star Jackie Chans collaboration with filmmaker Ding Sheng had produced satisfactory outcomes as observed in Police Story 2013. Unlike productions directed by Chan himself, choreographed stunt and action sequences arent the films primary drivers.



In Railway Tigers, Chan leads a group of volunteers to take over trains controlled by the Japanese military during their occupation in China. Despite such a setting that might draw strong nationalistic emotions, Ding approached his film with a casual treatment where many things arent taken seriously on the silver screen.



Starting from the comical Japanese Captain Yamaguchi played by the effective Hiroyuki Ikeuchi (who is also a seasoned practitioner of Judo in real life). Yamaguchi placed a strong impression upon the audience with his niche portrayal of the love-hate antagonist where viewers look forward to his scenes. His naive personality clashes with his top-level vocation as a ranking officer, and his tendency to be persistent towards the pursuit of his adversaries often result in loud roars of laughter.



Chans character as a leader of his clique of train thieves Ma Yuan is also unlike Chans past preference of clean and morally upright roles. With multiple killings and assaults, the level of violence is something one does not witness in any of Chans productions.



Speaking of action, there is no lack of visual spectacle ranging from tank duels to massive train wrecks and explosions. Ding has ensured a certain level of satisfaction for genre fans to keep it watchable from the middle act till the very end.



Railway Tigers suffers from some weak exposition along with some undesirable insertion of questionable opening and closing sequences set in the present. While it enabled a respectable star cameo appearance, it meant nothing at all to the film and its viewers.



The introduction of its multitude of supporting characters also tends to create confusion as it posed issues for the audience to relate whos who. Besides a few memorable supporting cast members, a number of characters who were provided dramatic introduction only appear in mere occasions within the film. This could likely be a result of several rounds of prescribed and proposed cuts in the editing room.



Despite some of its shortcomings, Railway Tigers is a visual treat and hearty laugh for the general audience that should appeal to many during this festive period. - Jason Lin




SANTIAGO, Chile (AP)  Chile's navy is investigating eight sailors accused of making and distributing video images of female colleagues in their dormitory aboard a frigate.

Defense Minister Jose Antonio Gomez says the sailors would be expelled from the military if a court martial finds them guilty and could face up to five years in prison.

The newspaper La Estrella de Valparaiso says the sailors are accused of planting small cameras in the women's dormitory and distributing the images over social media.

President Michelle Bachelet sent a tweet about the case on Thursday saying, "We will end all forms of violence against women."

Bachelet integrated women into Chile's navy in 2005 when she was defense minister.
By Natalie Thomas BEIJING (Reuters) - Dai Xiaolei last saw her son in 2014 when he was 17 months old and living with her Chinese in-laws outside the capital Beijing. Her marriage was crumbling and as relations with her husband's family worsened, they blocked her from entering the house and taking him back to her home in Beijing, she said. "The last time I saw my son was at the end of this alley. It's almost like a fortress," Dai, 37, said outside the home of her former in-laws in Baoding, 156 km from Beijing. Dai said the family has prevented her in all subsequent attempts to see her son. Reuters was unable to independently verify her account. Her husband, Liu Jie, filed for divorce, arguing that their marriage had fallen apart due to "conflicts in character, ideas and living habits," according to the court ruling seen by Reuters. Dai pushed for custody, but in April a judge dissolved the marriage and ruled that it was best for the boy's "healthy physical and mental growth" to be raised by his father, the court ruling said. Liu Jie, a movie stunt coordinator, and his family declined to comment when contacted by Reuters. As China's divorce rates rise, so too have calls by lawyers for an application of a new domestic violence law that would clamp down on aggressive tactics used by some parents to take and retain possession of children to gain the upper hand in custody battles. Lawyers say judges tend to favor the parent who has physical possession of the child, creating an incentive for a father or mother to take their child to gain an advantage in court. Dai appealed the April ruling to get custody of her son and lost. In its rejection of the appeal issued on Nov. 30, the court said the child's living environment was relatively stable and any change to this would not be beneficial to his upbringing. There are currently no laws against one parent taking sole possession of a child against the wishes of the other parent, lawyers say, reflecting a traditional view that conflicts between family members are considered private matters. The Supreme People's Court, China' highest court, declined to comment on specific cases when contacted by Reuters, but it said "maximizing benefit to the child is the basic principle by which custody decisions are made." JOINT CUSTODY RARE China's divorce rate since 2002 has more than tripled to 2.8 per 1,000 people last year, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. This is higher than the most recent official estimates for the European Union at 2.1 divorces per 1,000 people in 2011 and catching up to the United States at 3.2 in 2014 as increasingly individualistic aspirations compete with traditional notions of marriage. While official data is not publicly available, Yan Jun, a judge in Beijing's Haidian court, estimates that children are taken from spouses in 60 percent of cases where both parents are seeking custody. "The data tells us that divorce cases where husbands and wives snatch children from each other are by no means in the minority," Yan wrote in an article posted on the court's website in March. Under Chinese law, parents are rarely granted joint legal custody, as is the case in some countries where both parents share the responsibility of raising the child after a divorce. Instead judges give one parent "direct custody", often preferring to maintain the status quo living arrangement for a child between two- and ten-years-old, some lawyers say. A lawyer at a Beijing family law firm, who declined to be identified, said child snatching often takes place before divorce proceedings commence, by which point the parent can argue the child has a stable living environment with them. EMOTIONAL DAMAGE Li Ying, a Beijing-based lawyer and advocate for parental rights, said aggressive snatching tactics should be prosecuted under China's new domestic violence law enacted in March. Under these laws, beatings, frequent verbal abuse, and threatening behavior are considered forms of domestic violence. Some family law lawyers argue that preventing a child from seeing their parent is restricting the child's physical liberty, while preventing a parent from seeing her child could be considered a form of psychological abuse. Even when judges rule in their favor, some mothers complain about a lack of enforcement and sometimes take matters into their own hands. One mother, who did not want to be named because her dealings the court are ongoing, said she hired a private detective who found her son living under a fake name with an aunt of her ex-husband in a northern city in China. The court had awarded her custody but when she complained months later that the order had not been enforced, a court official was blunt. "She told me 'don't just depend on the courts. Are you working hard enough yourself or are you just depending on us to get your child back?" Reuters was unable to independently verify her account. (Editing by Darren Schuettler and Sam Holmes)
BEIJING (Reuters) - Companies running 605 Chinese coal-fired power plants have been fined a total of 328 million yuan ($47 million) by the country's economic planning agency for breaching environmental rules and falsifying data to claim green subsidies. Excessive levels of pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and dust were released by the power plants in question, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Wednesday. A subsidiary of China's power giant Shenhua Group [SHGRP.UL] was fined 52.14 million yuan and a plant controlled by China Guodian Corporation had to pay 7.73 million yuan, the NDRC said in a statement. While the NDRC has fined power producers before for breaching environmental rules it has not previously published the size of the penalties. In 2014, China, the world's biggest consumer of coal, raised the price it pays for electricity from plants that have installed expensive equipment to cut the emission of pollutants in a bid to improve China's air quality. For example, the price of electricity from plants that remove sulfur from their emissions is 0.015 yuan higher than the normal price per kilowatt-hour (KWh) for electricity. According to NDRC data, 99 percent of coal-fired plants had equipment to remove sulfur in 2015, up from 83 percent in 2010, while 92 percent of them had facilities to prevent nitrogen oxide being emitted, up from 12 percent five years earlier. The state planner, together with Ministry of Environmental Protection, inspected 759 plants in the second half of 2016. The two ministries plan to continue inspections of coal-fired power plants to make sure they abide by environmental protection policies. (Reporting by Muyu Xu and Beijing newsroom; editing by David Clarke)
China sent president-elect Donald Trump a not-so-subtle signal on Monday when its first aircraft carrier, accompanied by five warships, sailed in disputed waters of the South China Sea.

The implicit message from Beijing was: We are not cowed by your tough talk.

Related: As Trump Gets Tough With China, Facebook Plays Their Game

The Liaoning, a 999-foot retrofitted aircraft carrier, sailed past islands controlled by Taiwan, which has become a flashpoint in emerging relations between China and Trump since he took a congratulatory post-election call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.

That was the first direct contact between an American president and the leader of Taiwan since 1979, and it called into question the future of the One China policy that has been a bedrock of Washington-Beijing relations for decades.

More recently, Trump took China to task for seizing a U.S. submersible drone in international waters near the Philippines on December 15:

China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters - rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 17, 2016

After objections from the Obama Administration, the ocean-monitoring drone was returned.

Taking the drone was also seen a message to Trump. Patrick M. Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank, told The New York Times:

I see the snatched drone as a calculated act of coercive diplomacy approved at the top. I believe Beijing accelerated plans to create an early test for the new administration because Trump publicly called into question the One China policy and because China judged it safer to provoke Obama than an unpredictable Trump.

Related: What a Trade War With China Could Do to the Economy

The New Yorker Online made the case last week that Trump has taken a page from his best-selling The Art of the Deal and is being provocative with China to gain leverage. It cited the following tactic (whether conceived by Trump or his co-writer): My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what Im after. Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases, I still end up with what I want.

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Wrote Jiayang Fan: Those words provide a notion of Trumps self-image and, in conjunction with his Twitter tirades, a rough contour of his China strategy.

China may also have taken a less obvious shot across Trumps bow on Dec. 8 when it placed restrictions on the amount of money gamblers in Macau can withdraw from the ATMs of China UnionPay Co.

What has that got to do with Beijings anger at the president-elect? Its complicated.

There are limits on how much cash mainland Chinese gamblers are allowed to take across the border to the autonomous territory of Macau, which has been called the Las Vegas of Asia. So, about 50 percent of Chinese visitors use UnionPay ATM cards to withdraw more gambling money, according to Bloomberg.

Related: Making Friends with Russia May Be Harder than Trump Seems to Think

The new restrictions sent shares of U.S. gambling stocks tumbling, including Wynn Macau, which opened the $4.2 billion Wynn Palace last summer and Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVSC), which opened the $2.9 billion Parisian Macau in September. LVSC shares dropped by 13 percent.

Las Vegas Sands is controlled by billionaire and GOP mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, who along with his wife, Miriam, just happened to be Donald Trumps biggest campaign contributors, giving more than $20 million toward his election.

Beijing almost immediately softened the restrictions, putting a cap on per-transaction withdrawals and not imposing a daily limit. But the writing on the casino wall was clear: Retaliation can take many forms.

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Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Colombia approves amnesty agreed in Farc peace deal

The Colombian Congress has approved a law offering amnesty to some of those accused of minor crimes in the country's decades-long civil conflict.
BEIJING (AP)  The Chinese government plans to expand the country's high-speed rail network to 30,000 kilometers (18,600 miles) by 2020, part of public infrastructure spending aimed at shoring up economic growth.

The network would connect more than 80 percent of China's major cities, Vice Transport Minister Yang Yudong said. Last year, China's high-speed railway totaled 19,000 kilometers (11,800 miles).

Overall, China plans to invest 3.5 trillion yuan ($504 billion) in railway construction between this year and 2020, Yang said. He was speaking at a briefing introducing plans to improve the country's transportation services.

The plans call for the renovation of expressways and faster construction of railways to serve less-developed regions in central and western China.

Economic growth has steadily slowed over the past six years as communist leaders seek to wean the economy off manufacturing and exports in favor of more self-sustaining growth based on consumer spending.

In the last two years, officials have responded with ramped up spending on construction of highways and other public works.

On Wednesday, China began operating a new high-speed rail line linking the financial hub of Shanghai in the east with Kunming, the capital of southwestern Yunnan province, a poorer region.

The line spans 2,252 kilometers (1,400 miles) across five provinces, cutting travel time to 11 hours from 35 hours, state media reported.
BEIJING (AP)  Three knife-wielding assailants attacked staff at a Communist Party office in China's far western region of Xinjiang and set off an explosive device, killing two and injuring three others, an official news agency reported Thursday. The attackers were then shot dead by police.

The incident Wednesday afternoon was the first such publicly reported fatal attack in months in Xinjiang, where information is strictly controlled by authorities and reporting access has tightened over the past couple of years.

Authorities have blamed the attacks on radicals among the mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uighur ethnic minority seeking independence from Beijing.

Three "rioters" drove into Moyu County's Communist Party courtyard in a vehicle, attacked workers with knives and detonated an explosive device, Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the Ministry of Public Security. It said an official and security guard were killed. A ministry press officer, who would only identify herself by her surname, Wang, confirmed the information in the report.

Tianshan Net, a Communist Party-run news portal in Xinjiang, had earlier said four attackers were shot dead by police and that the attack had left another person dead and three others injured.

Wang said it had taken "time to verify the situation," and declined to elaborate on the change in the number of attackers.

The attack could not be independently verified. Xinjiang has been under heavy security since deadly riots in 2009 that pitted Uighurs against ethnic Han Chinese migrants. Those measures were tightened further following a wave of attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of China blamed on Uighur separatists.

In November 2015, police killed 28 people who authorities said had killed 11 civilians and five police officers at a remote coal mine in Asku controlled by members of China's Han majority.

Some critics say the violence in Xinjiang stems from government policies that have marginalized the Uighurs, and also warn that Beijing's harsh crackdown may be radicalizing some Uighurs.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, which advocates Uighur rights, said authorities were provoking and suppressing Uighurs and then choosing to "suppress the resistance with violence."

"I strongly question the cause of the incident and casualty toll owing to the lack of transparent reporting in official media," he said in a statement.
By Chen Aizhu and Meng Meng

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has cut oil product export quotas to the nation's four oil majors by 40 percent in the first round of licences for 2017, according to two sources who have seen the documents, even as traders expect allowances for overseas sales to meet or exceed this year's record levels.

The notice did not include quotas for independent refiners, known as "teapots", in line with a report by Reuters earlier this month that the government has ditched the small refiners from its export program.

In a notice dated Dec. 23, the Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs said the four state majors will be allowed to sell 12.4 million tonnes of gasoline, gasoil and jet fuel abroad next year. That's down from 20.54 million tonnes in the same round this year.

Still, the cut is likely to bring little relief to the stubbornly saturated Asian oil market as China's majors did not use up the huge quotas issued at the start of last year, and have simply applied for more realistic quotas this year, traders said.

"The shrinking quota doesn't reflect shrinking demand from overseas. Instead, it reflects a shift in company exporting strategy," said a China-based trader who declined to be named, adding that companies were better matching exports to quotas.

"We expect the total quota for 2017 to be on par or a bit higher than 2016," the trader added.

China issued allowances for a record 46.08 million tonnes of oil products in 2016, up 80 percent from 2015. In the first 11 months of the year, it exported 43 million tonnes of oil products - including products other than gasoline, gasoil and jet fuel - up 35 percent on a year earlier.

Traders said the next round of quotas is expected to be issued during the second quarter and will likely be higher than the first as regional fuel demand for construction and transport picks up after the winter slowdown. China usually releases three or four rounds of quotas a year.

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The Ministry of Commerce has yet to comment.

TEAPOTS MISS OUT

Independent refiners, known as "teapots", were not included in the list, a change from the first round this year when four independent refiners were granted quotas for the first time.

Teapots account for only a fraction of China's fuel exports, but dropping them will hand the export business back to the majors and deal a blow to the small but fast growing group that has brought new competition to China's oil industry.

With 6.05 million tonnes, Sinopec Corp won about half of the total in the first round. Sinochem Group did not receive any quota for jet fuel.

Out of the three products, gasoil accounted for 5.25 million tonnes, 42 percent of the total allotted to the four majors; gasoline for 3.65 million tonnes, 30 percent of the total, and jet fuel with 3.5 million tonnes made up the remaining 28 percent.

(Additional reporting by Elias Glenn and Ryan Woo; Writing by Josephine Mason; Editing by Richard Pullin)
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China Construction Bank Corp (CCB) has signed around 30 billion yuan ($4.31 billion) worth of debt-for-equity swaps with eastern Anhui province's state-owned coal and steel firms, the official Xinhua news agency said late on Wednesday.

Since China's policymakers re-launched the debt-for-equity scheme in October to ease the borrowing overhang of its struggling firms, the country's banks have rushed to sign deals with state-owned enterprises to ease their burden.

The country's second biggest lender CCB has signed a 30 billion yuan debt-for-equity framework agreement with Huainan Mining Industry (Group) Co, Huaibei Mining Group and Magang (Group) Holding, the parent company of Maanshan Iron & Steel Co, to reduce leverage and increase profits, said Xinhua.

CCB also agreed to provide Huainan Mining, Huaibei Mining and Wanbei Coal-Electricity Group with more than 30 billion yuan worth of credit within the next 5 years, together with comprehensive financial services that include investment banking and settlement services among other things, said Xinhua.

CCB, Huainan Mining, Huaibei Mining, Wanbei Coal-Electricity Group and Magang (Group) Holding were not immediately available for comment when contacted by Reuters.

The deal follows a CCB $739 million debt-for-equity swap with Xiamen CCRE in November.

Heavy industries such as coal and steel are suffering from over-capcity as China has switched its economic growth strategy to depend more on higher-end technology and consumption.

On Monday, the country's largest lender Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) signed three debt-for-equity swaps with Shanxi province's highly indebted state-owned coal and steel firms.

($1 = 6.9485 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Engen Tham in Shanghai and Shu Zhang in Beijing; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Coldplay frontman Chris Martin paid tribute to George Michael, who died Dec. 25 at age 53, by performing one of the late musicians songs at a homeless shelter in London.

According to posts on social media, Martin showed up at the citys Crisis shelter to play some of his own songs along with Wham!s Last Christmas.

That moment when Coldplays Chris Martin drops into the Crisis at Christmas shelter, with no fuss, no fanfare, and no press to help make tea and coffee and also play guitar so the guests can have a sing song, one attendee wrote on Instagram.

Michael was known for frequently getting involved with and donating to charities: He gave the royalties from some of his songs to charities and was a member of Band Aid, the supergroup that recorded Do They Know Its Christmas? in 1984 to raise money for Ethopia famine relief.

See footage of Martins Last Christmas duet below.
A&E may have canceled Escaping the KKK, but it wont be that easy for the network to escape from the show  especially if the Church of Scientology has anything to do with it.

The cable network yanked the upcoming docuseries about the Ku Klux Klan this month after network bosses said producers had paid participants in violation of the companys standards. But church leaders  involved in a separate battle with A&E over an anti-Scientology series starring Leah Remini  arent buying that story, saying that because Remini and a producer were paid for their efforts on her show, A&Es KKK explanation doesnt make any sense.

It is hypocritical for A&E to proclaim its intent to expose and combat racism and hatred in all its forms in cancelling the KKK show and at the same time promote Leah Reminis program which promotes the hatred that A&E claims that it wants to stop, church lawyers wrote A&E boss Nancy Dubuc in a letter obtained by TMZ.

Also Read: A&E Cancels KKK Documentary Because Participants Were Paid in 'Violation' of Policies

Escaping the KKK would not normally attract attention from the church, but in this case its a useful tool for Scientology leaders looking to pressure a media enemy on the Remini show, which they feel is detrimental to their cause.

When TheWrap contacted the church for comment, a spokeswoman responded with a written statement that said A&E needs to get its story straight.

Spokeswoman Karin Pouw said that A&E has said both that cash payments to documentary participants violate company policy (in the case of KKK) and that its common practice (in the case of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath).

Also Read: A&E's 'Generation KKK' Changes Title, Adds New Civil Rights Partner

The Church and its leaders have received more than 100 hate postings, which includes at least 50 threats of death or violence, while acts of vandalism have been carried out on our Churches since the [Remini] show began airing, Pouw wrote. So A&E is turning a blind eye on religious hate while claiming to take the subject of racism, hatred and violence very seriously' in the case of the KKK show.

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An A&E representative declined to comment. But a person close to the situation said that network executives made a distinction between payments going to members of a hate group, in the case of the Klan docuseries, and payments made to executive producers on a TV series, as in the case of Remini and her producer.

What seems clear, at this point, is that A&E hasnt heard the last of Escaping the KKK.

Related stories from TheWrap:

A&E Cancels KKK Documentary Because Participants Were Paid in 'Violation' of Policies

A&E's 'Generation KKK' Changes Title, Adds New Civil Rights Partner

What the Anti-Defamation League Says About 'Generation KKK' May Surprise You
The Clorox Company CLX, which had sort of settled in the green territory, has seen its shares slide recently. Evidently, this consumer goods big-wig has seen its stock decline 5.1% on a year-to-date basis, as against the Zacks categorized Soap and Cleaning Preparations industrys growth of 1.4%. So, lets see what lies behind Cloroxs sudden shift to the red zone.







One of the biggest hurdles in Cloroxs path is its significant international presence, which exposes it to major foreign currency risks. The companys results are being harmed by these headwinds for a while now, and management expects the unfavorable currency fluctuations to persist in fiscal 2017.



Moreover, being heavily dependent on consumer sentiment, Clorox fell prey to the slowdown in some key global economies. In fact, the company expects the challenging macroeconomic environment, together with heightened competition and currency woes to hamper fiscal 2017 sales, as was reflected in managements outlook following its first-quarter fiscal 2017 results.



A look at Cloroxs quarterly performance reveals that the companys first quarter earnings marked its second consecutive miss. This was due to persistent currency headwinds and higher manufacturing and logistics expenses that more than offset the benefits from solid sales and cost savings. Further, these factors weighed upon Cloroxs gross margin, which contracted 60 basis points to 44.4% in the quarter.



Following the quarter, management also tweaked its earnings guidance for fiscal 2017, including the ASU 2016-09 benefit, stemming from the new accounting standard adopted recently. Incidentally, management stated that the ASU 2016-09 benefit is now expected to boost fiscal 2017 earnings by 1015 cents per share compared with a gain of 2530 cents expected earlier. Consequently, the company lowered its earnings forecast for fiscal 2017 to $5.23$5.43 per share (including ASU benefit) from $5.38$5.58 expected earlier.



Together, these factors led to a downtrend in its Zacks Consensus Estimate for the second quarter and fiscal 2017, which has dropped 2.4% to $1.23 and 3.3% to $5.33, respectively, over the past 60 days. Nonetheless, excluding the benefit from the new accounting standard, the company reiterated its earnings per share (EPS) guidance range of $5.13$5.28 for fiscal 2017.

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CLOROX CO Price and Consensus



CLOROX CO Price and Consensus | CLOROX CO Quote

Apart from the aforementioned factors, stiff competition from well-established consumer product players raises threat for Clorox as the failure to offer high-quality products at competitive prices may dent its overall performance.



While these factors make Clorox a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell), investors can count on better-ranked consumer staples stocks like Ollie's Bargain Outlet Holdings, Inc. OLLI, with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), Blue Buffalo Pet Products, Inc. BUFF and Edgewell Personal Care Company EPC, each with a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



Ollie's Bargain has to its credit a spectacular earnings trend as the company delivered a positive earnings surprise over the past four quarters. Moreover, its long-term EPS growth rate of 18.9% and positive estimate revisions over the past 30 days help it stand strong against the industry.



Blue Buffalo, with a long-term EPS growth rate of 14%, has seen positive estimate revisions for 2016, over the past 60 days. The company also flaunts a solid earnings surprise history.



Edgewell Personal Care, with a long-term EPS growth rate of 8.1%, has an average positive earnings surprise of 0.5% over the trailing four quarters.



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BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)  Colombia's Defense Minister says an explosive device planted by rebels has killed a policeman and injured seven others.

Luis Carlos Villegas says rebels of the National Liberation Army lured police to a place in the capital where a bomb had been planted and set it off by remote control on Wednesday.

That rebel group has not claimed responsibility for the blast. The group hasn't yet formally started peace talks with the government, though the much larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia has signed a peace deal and is scheduled to lay down its arms in coming months.

Bogota's police commander, Gen. Hoover Penilla, said Thursday that officials are offering a reward for information about the attackers.
The suspect in the murder of a Washington, D.C. theater community member who was found dead and bound by seatbelts in her own car says the victim strangled herself, according to police.

Adrian Duane Johnson, 29, has been arrested in the death of 46-year-old Tricia McCauley, whose body was found concealed in her Scion iQ hatchback, which cops say Johnson was spotted driving following her Christmas Day disappearance.

Read: Man Missing From Party Found Stabbed to Death Inside Shallow Grave

According to an arrest affidavit, Johnson told cops that Johnson offered him a ride and then killed herself.

Cops say McCauley, who appeared as Jenna Dewan Tatum's stand-in in the film Step Up, was found strangled, and her body showed signs of blunt force trauma and sexual assault.

According to the affidavit, Johnson asked investigators, if someone is suicidal and gives you all their stuff, is that illegal?

Police reportedly believe Johnson drove McCauleys car for as long as 24 hours before he was caught, stopping at several CVS stores along the way.

He was allegedly involved in a theft at one CVS on the 700 block of Fourth Street, where he is accused of also assaulting employees, authorities said.

He was on pre-trial release at the time of McCauley's death, having been arrested less than two weeks earlier after police say he stole four electronic toothbrushes from a CVS on the 3000 block of 14th Street NW, according to court documents viewed by NBC Washington.

Johnson had reportedly been ordered to stay away from the store and to get a GPS monitor and a mental health evaluation, but it was not immediately clear if he was issued the device or underwent the evaluation.

Johnsons attorney initially asked the judge to release her client pending trial when a close friend of McCauleys in the gallery shouted, "wait! No! Hes an animal!" according to the Washington Post.

On Wednesday, Johnson was ordered detained until a preliminary hearing on January 13.

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Police don't believe McCauley and Johnson knew each other, and it is unclear how Johnson encountered McCauley.

Read: Neighbors Stop Abduction of 7-Year-Old Girl by Chasing and Tackling Suspect

McCauley was an actress and member of the Screen Actors Guild, appearing in countless local plays and in film and television.

Her creativity and wit were assets in any show she was in, and over the years she designed props, worked box-office, and pitched in to get shows on their feet however was needed, the Washington Stage Guild wrote of McCauley, who joined the group in 1998. We are heartbroken, for the loss of both her artistry and her friendship.

Watch: Woman Finds Grandson's Mummified Remains in Attic, 2 Years After He Went Missing

Related Articles:
Just one day after Carrie Fisher died at age 60, her mother Debbie Reynolds was rushed to the hospital and died following a report of a possible stroke.

The heartbreak of losing her daughter may have exacerbated the 84-year-olds existing health issues. The Singin in the Rain stars son Todd Fisher told reporters that Reynolds had said just hours earlier, I miss her so much, I want to be with Carrie.

There have been numerous reports of spouses who have spent decades together dying just days  or even hours  after their partners. On December 9, Trent Winstead, 88, of Tennessee, died only hours after learning Dolores, his wife of 63 years, had passed away.

But is such a thing possible? Can grief be so overwhelming that its fatal?

Experts say yes. Its called takotsubo cardiomyopathy  broken heart syndrome.

Although Reynolds had been battling various health problems in recent years  including a 2012 hospitalization after having an adverse reaction to prescription medications, spinal problems and a small stroke in June while recovering from an operation  Dr. Harmony Reynolds, a cardiologist at NYU Langone Medical Center, tells PEOPLE that upon hearing of Reynolds death, broken heart syndrome was the first thing that popped into my mind.

I think its very possible that she had broken heart syndrome, Dr. Reynolds says. Its a heart attack type that is often triggered by an extreme emotional stress, and certainly the death of a child would fit the bill.

Broken heart syndrome acts very much like a heart attack with symptoms such as chest pains, abnormal EKGs and the heart muscle not working properly. Dr. Reynolds says that although some cases are fatal, patients who survive the initial event usually make a full recovery.

The cardiologist explains that researchers believe stress is a significant factor because the attack often takes place in close association with severe stresses such as the loss of a loved one.

We think it may have something to do with an extreme adrenaline rush, and our research at NYU has focused on how the body can rein in an adrenaline surge, she says. We wonder if people who have this problem could have a difficulty reining in an adrenaline surge on a physical level.

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Dr. Reynolds also says that the actress falls in the demographic of those who experience broken heart syndrome: 90 percent of patients who experience it are female and are often postmenopausal.

David Kessler, a grief expert and founder of Grief.com, agrees that Fishers death was likely a contributing factor in her mothers sudden health complication. He says that although broken heart syndrome usually occurs among elderly couples, losing a child is an extreme and unexpected loss.

We all have what we call anticipatory grief. When you marry someone, you know someday down the road, youre going to lose them  one of you is going to die first. We have that anticipatory grief about our parents  we know that someday theyre going to die, Kessler explains. We dont have that feeling around our children, so Debbie would have every reason to expect that Carrie would be watching Debbie die  not the other way around. A parent doesnt have any kind of preparation for their children dying.

He continues, Debbie certainly had to make peace with her own death coming someday but there was no reason for her to even think that at this point their life, she would be burying her daughter.

Kessler says he worked with Fisher on numerous occasions, including a time when she opened up her home to a friend who was dying.

Debbie Reynolds was a quintessential mother who had planned every part of Carries birthday parties when she was young, Kessler says. It just isnt surprising that planning her funeral was the thing that would finally break her heart.




Consequences if elections are announced before amendment

Madhes-based parties have warned the ruling CPN (Maoist Centre) and Nepali Congress parties against abandoning a push to amend the statute before local elections as political forces are polarised over revising the charter ahead of the proposed polls.
London (AFP) - A fresh legal challenge to Britain's plans to leave the European Union was launched in London on Thursday, the latest in a series of claims against the government's approach to Brexit.

The claim argues that separate parliamentary approval is needed to bring Britain out of the European Economic Area, which allows for tariff-free trade and free movement of people.

All 28 members of the EU are part of the bloc, as well as Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

The legal challenge has been started with the Administrative Court, which sits within London's High Court, a spokesman for the judiciary told AFP.

A single judge will consider the claim and decide whether it can proceed to a hearing.

The spokesman was unable to confirm the number of claimants, which was put at four by the Guardian newspaper.

The claim joined a case already brought by pro-EU think-tank British Influence, a spokesperson for Britain's Brexit department told AFP.

"We have received the claim from British Influence and will respond in due course in accordance with normal litigation procedures," the spokesperson.

British Influence announced its decision last month to challenge the government, arguing there was a "strong chance" Downing Street would be acting unlawfully if it took the UK out of the EEA as well as the EU.

"We need judicial clarification," British Influence said in November.

But Prime Minister Theresa May's spokeswoman then told reporters: "Once we leave the EU, we will automatically cease to be a member of the EEA."

The Brexit department's spokesperson on Thursday reaffirmed the government's intention to stick to its plan for leaving the EU.

"The Prime Minister and Secretary of State (Brexit minister David Davis) have set out the timetable for triggering Article 50 by the end of March 2017 and that timetable has not changed," they said, referring to the formal procedure to kick-start negotiations with Brussels.

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"We were given a clear instruction by the people of the UK to leave the European Union and the government is determined to respect and deliver on the result of the referendum."

The High Court ruled in November that the government does not have the power to unilaterally begin divorce proceedings, raising the prospect of a parliamentary vote.

The decision was appealed by the government and the Supreme Court's 11 judges are due to announce their decision on the landmark case in January.

May has said she will also give a speech next month with more details of the government's plans.

The June 23 referendum on Britain's EU membership saw 52 percent vote to leave the bloc.
By Umberto Bacchi LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - After a year of record humanitarian needs, 2017 looks set to be even more challenging for aid agencies as they brace for the fallout from protracted conflicts and other escalating crises. The United Nations estimates almost 93 million people in 33 countries will need humanitarian aid and has appealed for a record $22.2 billion to help them. Conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and South Sudan account for half the budget. In Africa's Sahel belt, poverty, conflict and climate change have left one in six hungry, fuelling migration to Europe, the United Nations says. The Thomson Reuters Foundation asked aid agencies to name their three priorities for 2017: UNHCR - Filippo Grandi, head of the U.N. refugee agency 1) Access to safety for those fleeing conflict - upholding asylum for refugees, and tackling xenophobia, scapegoating and populist fear-mongering. 2) Stabilising frontline refugee hosting countries by supporting an early life-saving humanitarian response, and decisive engagement by development actors to mitigate the dramatic consequences of large-scale refugee influxes. 3) Robust international action to prevent and resolve conflict, and renewed focus on the growing number of people who are internally displaced. INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF RED CROSS AND RED CRESCENT SOCIETIES - Garry Conille, head of operations 1) Emerging infectious diseases are becoming more frequent, complex and difficult to manage as they spread in urban settings with poor sanitation, crop up in new places due to migration and move across borders. After Ebola, 2016 saw the wildfire spread of Zika and yellow fever and Rift Valley Fever in new places. 2) Aid for migrants. With no solution in sight to simmering conflicts and other triggers for migration, and little progress in establishing safe and legal routes for asylum seekers, we expect the staggering numbers of people taking flight to continue in 2017. 3) Local preparedness and localised funding. We will help vulnerable communities become more shock resistant (by) investing in strengthening local systems; teaching and delivering first aid, because 90 percent of lives saved at the outset of a disaster are by locals; and boosting community-based disease surveillance. INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE - Ciaran Donnelly, senior vice president, international programmes 1) Cash for refugees, not just tents or food. Cash assistance empowers people and gives them choice, it helps scarce resources go further, and it supports the local host economy. 2) Refugees need long-term support, not just emergency relief. This means getting refugee children into school, getting their parents into jobs, and working with international financial institutions, host country governments and the private sector. 3) Don't let Europe and the United States off the hook. Fight to protect the hard-won rights of refugees despite the political and popular backlash, and urge governments to do more. Wealthy countries host just 14 percent of the world's refugees and must not leave poorer countries to manage the crisis alone. OXFAM - Nigel Timmins, director of global humanitarian team 1) The eight-year conflict between Boko Haram and the military in northeast Nigeria has intensified, spreading into Niger, Chad and Cameroon. We are concerned at least 400,000 people could be experiencing famine-like conditions. Unless humanitarian aid is delivered, this could rise to 800,000. Over 2.6 million people have been forced to flee their homes. 2) After three years of fighting in South Sudan nearly 5 million people are desperately hungry. Half the population is already in need of humanitarian aid. Over 1.8 million people have been forced from their homes and more than one million have fled into neighbouring countries. The Ugandan village of Bidi Bidi has become the second largest refugee resettlement area in the world. 3) The Horn of Africa is experiencing a devastating drought where more than 12 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are facing food and water shortages. Forecasts suggest rainfall will not significantly increase, meaning both harvests and livestock productivity will decline sharply in early 2017. WORLD VISION - Mark Smith, senior director for humanitarian emergencies 1) As the Syria crisis enters its sixth year, civilians continue to bear the brunt of a conflict marked by unparalleled suffering, destruction and disregard for human life. Some 13.5 million people require humanitarian assistance, including 4.9 million trapped in besieged and hard-to-reach areas. 2) In the Lake Chad Basin, more than 2 million people have been displaced by Boko Haram-related insecurity and, according to USAID, 4.6 million in Nigeria's Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe states are experiencing acute food insecurity. 3) South Sudan continues to experience challenges including almost 600,000 refugees having fled to neighbouring Uganda. CHRISTIAN AID - Jane Backhurst, senior humanitarian advocacy officer 1) Raise awareness and funding for the crises in northeast Nigeria and South Sudan. 2) The Middle East crises in Iraq, Syria and Israel and occupied Palestinian territory will remain a high priority. 3) Scale up our work in Afghanistan as Afghan refugees are returned from Pakistan. NORWEGIAN REFUGEE COUNCIL - Jan Egeland, secretary general 1) Do more to be there for those who need us the most, in areas that are hard to reach, from Syria and Yemen, to northern Nigeria and South Sudan. Parties to the conflicts are blocking humanitarian workers from delivering life-saving assistance, and relief in neglected crises in Yemen and Nigeria is woefully underfunded. 2) Protect the displaced, by advocating for their rights. We will push for countries to take their share of responsibility for protecting refugees and we will speak out against barbaric breaches of international humanitarian laws. 3) Education for children affected by conflict. Many countries risk losing a generation to war and conflict. If we are not able to provide these children with an education, who will be there to rebuild these countries and create peace and stability? ACTIONAID - Mike Noyes, head of humanitarian response 1) Scale up our disaster response capability. This is in part because of the wider impacts of the Syria crisis following the battle for Aleppo and likely knock-on effects of the battle for Mosul (in Iraq). In particular we will be looking at strengthening our capacity to deliver cash-based responses, especially those targeted at women. 2) Look at how we can do more in our work on disaster anticipation, preventing emerging crises from escalating by engaging with the work of the Start Network (https://startnetwork.org/) on forecasting mechanisms and piloting early responses. 3) Ensure we meet the commitments at the World Humanitarian Summit to make a locally-directed response to a humanitarian disaster a reality. SAVE THE CHILDREN - Daniele Timarco, humanitarian director 1) Drought and hunger crises in Horn of Africa. 2) Coherent global response to migration and displacement. 3) Rapidly changing conflicts including Syria, Iraq, South Sudan. (Reporting by Umberto Bacchi @UmbertoBacchi, Editing by Emma Batha. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
Cropcast Morning Headlines:

-Midwest is cooler in the 6-10 day period. Showers in southern areas this weekend should further improve moisture for wheat. The 6-10 day outlook is drier. Temperatures are slightly cooler. The 11-15 day outlook is slightly wetter in southwestern areas. Temperatures are slightly warmer.

-Plains are drier in east central areas in the 6-10 day period. Snow in central and western Nebraska early next week should help build winterkill protection for wheat ahead of colder conditions later next week. The 6-10 day outlook is drier in east central areas. Temperatures are cooler. The 11-15 day outlook is drier in north central areas. Temperatures are warmer.

-No changes for Florida. Dry weather through the weekend should favor harvesting. Temperatures will cool a bit by the weekend, but should remain above frost levels. The 6-10 day outlook is unchanged. The 11-15 day outlook is unchanged.

-Delta is drier in northern areas in the 6-10 day period. Abundant showers again this weekend will continue to improve moisture for wheat. The 6-10 day outlook is drier in northern areas. Temperatures are cooler. The 11-15 day outlook is drier and warmer.

-No changes for Argentina. Additional rains in central and northeastern areas late this weekend and next week will further improve moisture, although some wetness may develop. Meanwhile, dryness will continue in La Pampa and southern Buenos Aires. The 6-10 day outlook is drier in southeastern Buenos Aires.

-No changes for Brazil. Additional showers in southern areas should continue to ease remaining dryness there. Some slight improvement will be possible in northwestern areas, but more rains will be needed there and in northeastern areas to end dryness. The 6-10 day outlook is wetter in central and northwestern areas.

-No changes for Europe. Dryness remains extensive in western and southeastern areas. Little change is expected through the weekend, but a notable upturn in snow cover is expected in central and eastern areas next week. This will improve moisture once it melts.

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-No changes for Black Sea. Snow cover should rebuild across eastern and northwestern Ukraine and Belarus early next week, which will be needed to prevent winterkill as much colder conditions return later next week.

-No changes for China. Showers in Yangtze Valley and North China Plain recently improved conditions for wheat and rapeseed, and additional improvements are expected in southeastern Yangtze Valley early next week.

-No changes for Australia. Showers in New South Wales and eastern Queensland through the weekend will maintain slow wheat harvesting, but will improve moisture for sorghum. Harvesting should progress well in South Australia and Western Australia.

-No changes for South Africa. Rains in western areas have improved moisture, but notable dryness continues in south central and southeastern corn areas. Some improvements will be likely there later next week.

Donald Keeney

Senior Agricultural Meteorologist

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Danny Brown has openly discussed his love for Dragon Ball before, and now, he'll be immortalized in the anime series' latest sequel.

A new Dragon Ball series titled Dragon Ball Super is coming to the U.S. soon. The show was originally premiered in July 2015 in Japan, but thanks to Toonami and Adult Swim, the show was dubbed and will be airing on January 7. A trailer for Dragon Ball Super has surfaced, and fittingly, Adult Swim has chosen Danny Brown's "Ain't It Funny" for it. With his high energy, raucous delivery, it works well with Dragon Ball. After all, its world is constantly under attack and the show features some of the most outrageous and awesome battle scenes.

Considering the success that the Detroit rapper had this year, being a part of one of his favorite anime shows seems like a great way to wrap up 2016. Watch the trailer for Dragon Ball Super above.

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Dec 29 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 2100 GMT on Thursday:

** Johnson & Johnson is negotiating a deal to acquire Swiss biotechnology company Actelion Ltd that would separate its commercialized portfolio from its research and development (R&D) assets, people familiar with the matter said.

** Greece's largest lender Piraeus Bank said that it had completed the sale of a majority stake in its Cyprus subsidiary to Holding M. Sehnaoui SAL for 3.2 million euros ($3.3 million), reducing its stake to 17.7 percent.

** Brazilian travel agency CVC Brasil Operadora e Agencia de Viagens SA will buy smaller rival Experimento for 41 million reais ($13 million), the company said in a securities filing.

** China Construction Bank Corp (CCB), has signed around 30 billion yuan ($4.31 billion) worth of debt-for-equity swaps with eastern Anhui province's state-owned coal and steel firms, the official Xinhua news agency said late on Wednesday.

** National Bank of Oman (NBO) said it had received a letter from Treasure Fleet International proposing to buy a stake in Oman's third biggest lender.

** Swiss airline catering company Gategroup Holding said it was buying Air France KLM's catering business Servair for 237.5 million euros ($248.3 million), including debt, to create the world's leading inflight catering group.

** Brazil's largest private bank, Itau Unibanco Holding SA, has completed the acquisition of 40 percent of Banco Itau BMG Consignado SA, specialized in payroll loans, for 1.46 billion reais ($445 million), the bank said in a securities filing on Wednesday.

** Brazil's state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA closed the sale of a 100 percent stake in Nansei Sekiyu to Taiyo Oil Company, according to a securities filing.

** Malaysia's Federal Land Development Authority (Felda) has secured government financing to fund its $505.4 million purchase of a minority stake in Indonesian palm oil firm PT Eagle High Plantations Tbk, state news agency Bernama reported.

** China's cash-strapped LeEco said it is in talks to secure 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) from an unidentified strategic investor, but the announcement was seen as insufficient to dispel concern over the high-tech conglomerate's financial health.

** Italy's Prime Minister said the government is not indifferent to France's Vivendi building its stake in private broadcaster Mediaset, but has no special powers to counteract the move. (Compiled by Ahmed Farhatha and Aravind K in Bengaluru)
Debbie Reynolds once approached pal Joey Bishop for his pants.

No, this wasn't some oddball flirtation. Reynolds wanted to add the tux trousers to her memorabilia collection. Bishop, she recalled in a 2014 interview, thought she was a "nutcase," but eventually he complied, giving Reynolds a complete set of Rat Pack tuxes (from Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop). The tuxes were sold in 2014 for $120,000 in the third and final auction of Reynolds' collection of film costumes and memorabilia.

Reynolds, who died on Dec. 28, one day after the death of daughter Carrie Fisher, was one of Hollywood's greatest memorabilia collectors and an early advocate for the preservation of the town's history. "Hollywood owes Debbie Reynolds a huge debt for elevating its costumes and props to high art," says James Comisar, whose Comisar Collection is the most comprehensive collection of TV costumes and memorabilia. "She believed they were nearly religious in their cultural significance, and with Hollywood artifacts now selling along the top tier for millions of dollars a piece, we have proof of sorts that she was right about the artistic and historic merits of items worn or wielded by screen gods."

From the moment Reynolds arrived in Hollywood as a 17-year-old beauty queen (she was Ms. Burbank 1948), she was interested in collecting. "I used to spend my spare time in the wardrobe department, watching the most talented people create costumes for the actors," she recalled when she sold her collection in 2011. "I was fascinated by how they were able to translate a simple suggestion in a script, sometimes even a piece of dialogue, into a magnificent costume. I loved everything that went into the process - the sketches, the fabrics, the construction."

Read more: Critic's Notebook: Debbie Reynolds Was More Than the Sum of Her Musicals

Reynolds' collecting kicked into high gear in 1970, when MGM sold off its props and wardrobes in a famous auction. "She was in shock," recalls Joe Maddalena, a longtime collecting friend of Reynolds and the owner of Profiles in History, which handled the sale of her collection in 2011.

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"They literally threw away our history, and I just got caught up in it," Reynolds told THR in 2011. "The stupidity and the lack of foresight to save our history. Oh yes, they gave them away if you came up and said that you have something you had to offer. It was no matter about the history." Maddalena says Reynolds was ahead of the curve in seeing the importance of preserving this material, even though famed gossip columnist Hedda Hopper mocked her for spending her money at the auction.

After the auction, Reynolds said she was transformed from a "normal" collector to an obsessive one. In the process, she created what Maddalena says was "hands down for film the best collection in the world." Ticking off everything in the lot would be impossible. A short list would include a pair of Dorothy's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, Marilyn Monroe's white "subway grate" dress from The Seven Year Itch, a headdress her friend Elizabeth Taylor wore in Cleopatra, a Charlie Chaplin bowler, a Tom Hanks costume from Big and on and on. (The auction catalogs are here, here and here.)

Courtesy of Joe Maddalena

Comisar says Reynolds had a shrewd instinct for what to collect. "Debbie's driver was always passion, never profit, though she still had an incredible eye for market-making," he says, adding that she paid the "then unheard of" of $100,000 for Audrey Hepburn's My Fair Lady dress in the late '90s (pictured) only to turn around and sell it for $4.4 million in 2011.

Courtesy of Joe Maddalena

Maddalena adds, "I could take a $50 costume or a $1 million one off the rack and show it to her, and her enthusiasm was equal. They all had a story. It was worn by a friend, or she knew this or that actor. She was the ultimate fangirl. She just happened to be an actress."

Reynolds dreamed of housing her collection in a museum. An ill-fated attempt in the early '90s to start one in Las Vegas tied to a Debbie Reynolds hotel and casino ended in bankruptcy in 1997. Next, her partner for a Los Angeles-based museum failed to find financing. Still another plan in the early 2000s to house it at a resort in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. (near Dollywood) also ended up in bankruptcy. As plans for a potential Academy museum began to coalesce, Reynolds hoped it would make an offer for the collection. She told THR in 2014 that she approached the Academy five times. "I said, 'Please, let's do this together.' It was refused each time."

The failed projects and the cost of maintaining the collection took a toll on Reynolds' finances. In 2011 she reluctantly began selling the collection. Three separate auctions were held between 2011 and 2014 and generated tens of millions of dollars (the first alone took in over $22 million).

Among the prices paid were $5.5 million for Monroe's "subway" dress, $510,000 for the ruby slippers, $910,000 for another of Dorothy's Wizard of Oz dresses and $140,000 for the guitar Julie Andrews played in The Sound of Music. Maddalena, whose Profiles in History conducted the auction, says the sale saw "prices that will never happen again" because of both the pedigree of Reynolds' collection and because "people came to support Debbie." He says the sale was bittersweet for Reynolds, who was giving up "her children" but took satisfaction because "the scorecard said she was right: This stuff matters."

Both Comisar and Maddalena say Reynolds helped make the Academy's film museum, now under construction on Wilshire Blvd., possible. "Likely most of the cinematic vintage pieces that are still here today are the result of her courage and connoisseurship," says Comisar. His suggestion? "Perhaps their forthcoming museum exhibit gallery should be named after the one unsinkable gal who never gave up on Hollywood's treasures."
When I met Carrie Fisher at last Mays Cannes Film Festival to moderate a panel with her, her beloved French bulldog Gary, and director Fisher Stevens celebrating the World Premiere of their new documentary Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, I had no clue of course that just seven months later both of the title stars of this remarkable film would be gone well before its scheduled debut on HBO in the spring of 2017. Watching it then in stops and starts on my laptop (with the horrible wifi in my hotel room) in order to prep for the panel, I couldnt turn away from it and was struck by how brutally honest both Carrie and Debbie were in presenting themselves to the world in this way, warts and all.

You can count on one hand the number of superstars that would allow a camera to peer into their most private moments in this way. In many ways it is a valentine from a daughter to a mother, but also from one major star to another of different generations, but both with the same gut instincts that made them great  and enduring. It will floor you with the kind of unfiltered access this pair gave these filmmakers, resulting in a pure show business saga like no other that has now ended, in the waning days of 2016, also like no other.

It seems a terribly cruel coda, but when seen with some distance from this weeks sad events, Bright Lights will likely stand as a stirring tribute to both who, as the film shows, lived side by side in a compound right off Coldwater Canyon. Now they are side by side again, odd and oddly comforting as that may sound. It is very clear Carrie, conflicted relationship and all, was looking out for her mother in these final years, and it will be nice to think she still is. It will be impossible for others now to watch this film the way that I and those who saw it in Cannes, Telluride, and a handful of other festivals saw it, but what is undeniably true is right there in its title. These were two very bright lights who fought insurmountable odds, and ups and downs in their lives and careers but always, always rose back to the top.

So much has been written about Carrie since Friday when she suffered cardiac arrest on that airplane that I cant really add much more than to agree she was an incomparable wit, a great writer and observer, a natural actress and most of all a terrific daughter, despite all those personal demons she had to conquer. But this cruel-seeming plot twist is incomprehensible. I cant dwell here though on the sadness now, so soon after Carrie, of hearing about the death of Debbie Reynolds, only on the joy that iconic and legendary career gave to so many even if life wasnt always fair to her in return.

She was a show business trouper if ever there was one, and it frustrated me that every single year when the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences had the opportunity to give her an Honorary Oscar, they didnt do it. Finally they did last year, but by then she was so sick she couldnt pick it up in person (her granddaughter Billie Lourd accepted it, and now has lost her mom and grandmother in the course of one day). It was the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, given more for philanthropic work in the industry than a film career. I was happy Debbie had an Oscar, but if anyone deserved it for more than charitable work it was this woman.

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Every day I stare at my original one sheet poster from Singin In The Rain (it is framed in the bathroom where, believe me, you cant miss it), and I look at those amazing names on the credits and think, well at least Debbie is still with us. Very few stars are ever even in a movie as lasting and classic at this one which only gets better with time some 64 years after it was made, and a musical that director Damien Chazelle often sites as a key inspiration for this years Best Picture Oscar frontrunner La La Land. It was a hell of a way for this little girl from Burbank, as she sometimes liked to describe herself, to hit the big time opposite Gene Kelly and Donald OConnor.

In another musical landmark in her career, she received her one and only Best Actress Oscar nomination in 1964 for the MGM film version of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a role she got after Shirley MacLaine dropped out. She might have won too, but had the dumb luck for that movie musical to be completely overshadowed that year by two others with higher profiles in the race, My Fair Lady and Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews of course beat her for that Oscar). It is another point of irony in this very mean year  that cant end a moment too soon  that Tammy Grimes, the original Molly Brown on Broadway, just passed away as well. But the phrase unsinkable  stuck with Debbie from then on and she owned it. A key song in the show, I Aint Down Yet really defined her life didnt it?

Unsinkable was also the title of her second memoir released in 2013. She lived so much life she had to write two books about it, the first simply called Debbie My Life in 1988. She was indeed unsinkable, through busted marriages and bankruptcies, through the public humiliation of Eddie leaving her for best friend Liz, through collecting the prime Hollywood memorabilia and costume collection of all time only to have to sell it off in bits and pieces after she failed to find a home for it. Too bad the Academy didnt listen when Debbie met with them, on more than one occasion I am told, trying to convince them to help in her dream of a Hollywood museum, something ironically they are in the midst of sinking hundreds of millions into building now.

But the opportunity for all of those priceless pieces of the movies to be a part of it, even as the Academy scrambles for content, is now, well, gone with the wind.

There was probably no better natural comic talent than Debbie, though she never got the credit Lucille Ball did, and her own 1960s NBC sitcom came and went quickly. But I defy you to take a look at even some of her lesser known big screen comedies, like The Gazebo, Mary Mary, Goodbye Charlie, How Sweet It Is, The Mating Game, Susan Slept Here and others where she was able to take material that might have been beneath her talents and lift it to the skies with her impeccable timing.

In Norman Lears 1967 Oscar nominated screenplay Divorce American Style she went toe to toe with Dick Van Dyke in a movie that will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year and still resonates. And then in 1996, long after her prime-time movie career was largely a thing of the past and shed moved on to clubs and the stage, Albert Brooks cast her in his brilliant Mother and she socked home another one, but somehow inexplicably lost the Golden Globe Comedy Actress prize to Madonna in Evita and failed to get the Oscar nomination she richly deserved.

Dont take my word for it, just find it and watch. I could go on and on with my favorite Reynolds roles, from the feisty and stalwart Lillith Prescott in 1963s How The West Was Won, to the macabre pairing of Debbie with Shelley Winters in 1971s creepy Whats The Matter With Helen?, to the touching and simply human 1956 The Catered Affair, the elegant pleasures of 1961s The Pleasure Of His Company opposite Fred Astaire, the underrated 1960 drama The Rat Race in which she was so good opposite Tony Curtis, and even to the irony of a revenge-filled 2001 ABC TV movie These Old Broads that paired her with, among others, once and then friend again Elizabeth Taylor in a fun and bitchy script written by none other than Carrie Fisher.

But lets face it she will always be remembered by most for Singin in that Rain, as an unsinkable Titanic survivor, and of course, Tammy. Yes, that 1957 movie, Tammy And The Bachelor brought her a number one pop hit that followed her for her entire career. There wasnt a show she did where she didnt sing it, and she never disappointed the crowd. There were other Tammys after Debbie did that first film, but she was the only one people remembered.

Perhaps her proudest achievement though were her kids, who both were there with her right near her side in these last few years. She wanted to be with Carrie, son Todd Fisher told our sister publication Variety after her sudden passing from a stroke today. In that HBO documentary Bright Lights, Carrie talks amusingly about how, early in her career, her mother would drag her on stage to join her in a song she liked to sing from the Unsinkable Molly Brown score. It was actually a love song called Ill Never Say No. These were the lyrics:

Ill Never Say No To You, Whatever You Say Or Do. If You Ask Me To Wait For A Lifetime, You Know I Will Gladly Wait For A Lifetime Or Two.

What a pair of lifetimes those two had. Somewhere they are probably together singing that song one more time.

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During the course of her career, Debbie Reynolds never won an Oscar. In fact, she was nominated just once - as best actress for the 1964 musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

But the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences board of governors decided to remedy that in 2015 when it voted to award her its Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, presented at the 74th Governors Awards. The Hersholt is awarded to an individual "whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry," and the Academy cited Reynolds' role as a founding member of The Thalians, the charitable organization founded by entertainers in 1955 to promote the awareness and treatment of mental health issues. Reynolds served as the group's president almost continuously from 1957 to 2011 as the Thalians raised millions it contributed to the Mental Health Center at Cedars-Sinai and UCLA's Operation Mend, which assisted military veterans.

Read more: Debbie Reynolds, Mother of Carrie Fisher and Star of 'Singin' in the Rain,' Dies at 84

Because of poor health, Reynolds could not attend the ceremony, and so her award was accepted on her behalf by her granddaughter Billie Lourd.

But first, Hollywood praised Reynolds for both her career and her philanthropic efforts.

Zooey Deschanel kicked off the evening's series of tributes by singing the song "Tammy," which became a popular hit in 1957 when it was introduced in Reynolds' film Tammy and the Bachelor.

Jane Fonda and Meryl Streep then testified to Reynolds' charitable work. Said Fonda, "The award we are giving Debbie tonight, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, is presented not for her body of work as a performer, although we all recognize and cherish Debbie as the vibrant movie star who brought so much life and energy to her classic film roles, but for the outstanding work she has done outside her day job to improve our city, our country and the world. Debbie's philanthropy is both wide and deep."

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Reynolds was so devoted to the issue of mental health, Fonda joked, that "she persuaded her daughter Carrie to pretend that she suffered from mental illness."

Read more: Hollywood Pays Tribute to "Legendary Entertainer" Debbie Reynolds

Carrie Fisher herself appeared in a video account of her mother's career and causes, saying, "I have no idea how she did all the things she did."

Streep went on to praise Reynolds' "passion to preserve the iconic costumes that we associate with Hollywood's golden age."

Reynolds did provide a audio acceptance, played for the crowd, in which she said, "I'm thrilled beyond words, shocked, and you couldn't be more amazed that a little girl from Burbank even came near this sort of accolade."

And Lourd, when she finally came to the podium to accept the award, concluded, "It honestly feels super weird to be up here without her. I've never seen her miss a show in her life" - words that now, in retrospect, almost play like a fitting epitaph for the indefatigable performer.

Watch the videos below.

Read more: Why L.A.'s Cedars-Sinai Hospital Wouldn't Exist Without Debbie Reynolds
Debbie Reynolds, who died at the age of 84 on Wednesday, was only thinking about daughter Carrie Fisher in her final moments.

The Singin in the Rain icon told her son, Todd Fisher, hours before her stroke: I miss her so much, I want to be with Carrie, according to TMZ.

Todd also spoke to Variety, saying She wanted to be with Carrie.

Reynolds was at her and Fishers Beverly Hills property when she had to be rushed to the hospital for a possible stroke on Wednesday afternoon, PEOPLE confirmed.

Fisher died on Tuesday at the age of 60 after suffering a heart attack onboard a plane.

On Tuesday, Reynolds had taken to social media to thank fans for their support in the wake of her daughters death.

Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter, Reynolds, 84, said on Facebook. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop.

Reynolds had one of those classic Hollywood discovery stories. Born Mary Frances Reynolds in El Paso, Texas, to parents Maxine and Raymond, she moved with the family around age 7 to Burbank, California. It was in the Miss Burbank beauty pageant, when Reynolds was 16, that a talent scout from Warner Bros. discovered her and signed her to a contract with the powerhouse studio.

Asked what the turning point was in her career, Reynolds told PEOPLE in 2011, Winning this contest, which was unusual. My suit came from the Salvation Army  I didnt have high heels. There were talent scouts, and they thought I was a funny little kid. They took me to Warner Brothers and signed me up.

Reynolds also took it upon herself to heal fractured relationships. After years of tension with daughter Carrie, the two had a rapprochement, maintaining a close relationship until Reynolds death. Reynolds even made up with Taylor, approaching her on the Queen Elizabeth cruise ship and rekindling a friendship of many, many years, she recalled. They starred together in the 2001 TV movie These Old Broads, written by Carrie.




Dentsu chief resigns after overworked employee commits suicide

The head of Japanese advertising group Dentsu is to step down following the suicide of an employee who had worked hundreds of hours of overtime.
Long before Hollywood costume designers were being tapped to design fashion collections for the likes of Banana Republic and H&M, Debbie Reynolds was working to preserve their art and craft.

The star, who died on Wednesday at the age of 84, was one of the first to see value in Hollywood's storytelling styles when she started collecting film costumes in 1970, saving them from the scrap heap.

When Kirk Kerkorian bought MGM and decided to consolidate the studio, Reynolds wanted to build an attraction for film fans out of old costumes, props, music and scripts. But MGM had other plans: to sell everything at auction. She emptied her bank account - some $600,000, to buy as many things as she could, including a pair of Dorothy's ruby red slippers from The Wizard of Oz, which sold at auction in 2011 for $690,000.

"They literally threw away our history, and I just got caught up in it," Reynolds told THR in 2013. "The stupidity and the lack of foresight to save our history. Oh yes, they gave them away if you came up and said that you have something you had to offer. It was no matter about the history."

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Over the years, she continued to collect, acquiring the famous Cecil Beaton-designed lace Royal Ascot dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, William Travilla's famous halter-neck dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in the subway grate scene of 1955's The Seven Year Itch, Irene Sharaff's gold lame 1934 Cleopatra gown made for Claudette Colbert, Charlie Chaplin's iconic bowler hat, five tuxedos worn by the Rat Pack, and Orson Welles' fur coat from 1941's Citizen Kane.

"They should be in a museum," she told THR of the items in her collection.

Reynolds tried; she opened a museum in Las Vegas in the '90s, but it went bankrupt in 1997. She hoped her treasures, thought to be the largest private collection of costumes and memorabilia in the world, could find a home in the Academy's museum, approaching the museum's leaders five times.

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"I said, 'Please, let's do this together.' It was refused each time."

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"Debbie is the patron saint of collectors, costume designers and a legion of fans," Deborah Nadoolman Landis, costume designer, preservationist and historian, and the director of the David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design at UCLA, told THR. "She was determined to preserve our history and the iconic artifacts of our popular culture. We will always be the beneficiaries of Debbie's generosity. She was right and they were wrong."

"To her lifelong frustration and disappointment she received little respect from our industry (and Los Angeles)," added Landis. "If Debbie had not zealously safeguarded these remarkable clothes they certainly would not have survived the endless recycling of the studio costume department. Costumes, like everything else on the lot, were just another asset."

In 2011, due to financial reasons, Reynolds began auctioning off her collection at her eponymous dance academy in North Hollywood through local auctioneers Profiles in History. The three sales raised millions, and the costumes were dispersed to private collectors around the world.

Several pieces, including Monroe's Travilla dress and Welles' fur coat, made their way courtesy of their new owners into the blockbuster Hollywood Costume exhibition curated by Landis, which drew record crowds to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2012 before traveling in 2014 to the May Co. building, the future home of the Academy Museum.

Reynolds' beloved My Fair Lady Ascot dress was not part of that lot. It sold in 2011 for $3.7 million and then disappeared.
With Debbie Reynolds death on Wednesday, Hollywood has lost a true legend of the Golden Age. At the height of her career, Reynolds was known as Americas sweetheart  and her fame often outshone the parts she played.

In fact, one of her most famous roles came during an offscreen drama which involved a love triangle seemingly ripped from a movie script.

Back in 1958, Reynolds and her husband, famed crooner Eddie Fisher, were among the most glamorous couples in Hollywood. The only other duo that came close to their star power also happened to be their best friends, Elizabeth Taylor and her husband, producer Mike Todd.

Reynolds had known Taylor since they were classmates together at MGM. I went to MGM when I was around 17, and Liz was there too, but she was already a star, Reynolds previously told PEOPLE.

We went to school together on the lot, when she was in between films. I was just a beginner, and she and I were not in any manner alike, but we got along very well because I was in awe of going to school with Elizabeth Taylor. And if anyone said they werent, then they were lying. Or blind.

The two remained close friends after school, and their husbands hit it off as well. In the mid-50s the two couples were inseparable, and when Taylor and Todd married in 1957, Fisher was Todds best man and Reynolds was Taylors matron of honor.

But everything changed after Todd died in a 1958 plane crash. Fisher took it upon himself to comfort his best friends stunning young widow. As Reynolds later put it, Taylor liked enough to take him without an invitation. Fisher and Taylor became an item, leading to Fishers widely publicized divorce from Reynolds in 1959 and marriage to Taylor just a year after Todds death.

After the divorce, public sympathy went to Reynolds, who was left to raise the couples two young children, Carrie and Todd, as a single mother. When he left, I raised the children. He never sent any money, so I found it a little scary, Reynolds said.

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Reynolds went on to marry a wealthy businessman named Harry Karl, who would later steal her fortune to pay off his gambling debts, and Taylor left Fisher, whos career was floundering, for Richard Burton.

The former best friends did not speak for years, but Reynolds later told PEOPLE that she put the blame mostly on her former husband. I felt you cant make a man leave, you cant make him do something he doesnt want to do, she explained. He obviously chose to leave, didnt he? She didnt lasso him. She was just beautiful Elizabeth Taylor. And he wanted her, and he wanted to be her lover, so he left and he was. He was the selfish one. She just gave him what he wanted.

Fortunately, the two old friends were able to reconcile before Taylor died in 2011. The reunion happened by accident, with both actresses embarking on a cruise without knowing the other was onboard. As Reynolds told it, she first learned they were shipmates when she saw an inordinate amount of luggage being loaded onboard. I said, Who has all that luggage? And they said, Thats Elizabeth Taylors luggage.  When she got the news, Reynolds said, I almost changed my mind and didnt go.

Once onboard, the two sent each other notes and she came to the stateroom and we had drinks, and we had dinner together. While Reynolds did not remember any apologies being exchanged, she felt ready to put the drama to rest. At that time, in my cabin, before we went to dinner, we both made our little . I said, Why in the world would you want him anyway? She said, Well, I dont know why I did it, and I certainly was wrong. But look what I have now! I said, Well, lucky you! And thats how that got over.

Not only did they get over their differences, Reynolds and Taylor even went on to costar together in a TV movie called These Old Broads, written by Reynolds daughter, Carrie Fisher. It was just fun. It was like girls getting together in a high school reunion or a class party, Reynolds said.

Reynolds was also able to speak with Taylor not long before Taylor died in 2011. She was very ill. She was feeling really miserable, just trying to survive, to rise above it  She expressed how scary it was. We talked about that for a while, that its really hell getting older. We were complaining to each other about that. Like two girls would.

Reynolds joked that her men after Eddie Fisher were no prizes either. I had another person after that who was a louse and another husband after that who was another louse. So Ive had my share of louses, she told PEOPLE. So it wasnt all Elizabeths fault. I had much more pain to go. I had many more bumpy paths to go along the way.

Ultimately, Reynolds credited her faith with helping her find forgiveness. Im very religious. I believe that things happen and you have to go along with them. You dont have to be angry and become an ugly person. You dont have to become what the the people are who are attacking you. Love blinds all. I just had to grow up and realize that.




A federal judge ordered the government to preserve a Senate report on Wednesday that documents the alleged torture of detainees in CIA custody through tactics such as regular beatings, forced rectal feeding, waterboarding, sensory and sleep deprivation and mock executions.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth passed the order on the appeal filed by the attorneys representing Abd al-Rahim Al-Nashiri who was waterboarded while in CIA custody for his alleged involvement in the attack on the destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden that killed 17 U.S. military personnel in October 2000.

The judge has also ordered for the preservation of all associated documents such as the CIA response to the report. He also directed for the report to be deposited with a court security officer. Although for now, the nearly 7,000-page report is being treated as a highly classified document, Lamberth's order raises the possibility of it being eventually released as a court record, according to Politico.

Several lawmakers such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Sen. Ron Wyden and human rights and transparency advocates have been urging Obama to release the fully declassified and unabridged version of the report (a 525-page executive summary of the report was released in 2014).

But according to a letter sent by White House Counsel Neil Eggleston to Feinstein on Dec 16, Obama has instead decided to place the report in his official presidential letters, making it available for declassification through public requests in 2029, according to Politico.

While his latest actions can make critics question Obamas legacy, his administration has had partial success in weeding out the use of torture tactics. Obama and congress were instrumental in securing the passage of the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act senate.

And by doing so, Obama solidified an executive order signed by him in his first week of office that established a task force to ensure humane treatment of detainees and barred them from being subjected to violence or humiliating and degrading treatment. 

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However, Obama was not able to deliver on his election promise of shutting down Guantanamo Bay, even though he made certain progress. Since its peak of more than 700 prisoners, when President George W. Bush in charge, the number of detainees remaining in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, now is 59, according to the Orlando Sentinel. And with 19 more inmates expected to be resettled before the inauguration ceremony of president-elect Donald Trump, Obama will leave office with about 40 inmates remaining at the facility.

However, Trump has already said he plans to "load it ( Guantanamo Bay) up with some bad dudes." Though he has later gone on record to reverse his stand on the issue, Trump had also made several other controversial statements such as advocating the killing of terrorists' families, advocating for the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique, remarking that torture works and also saying that (we ) would bomb the s--- out of the Islamic State.

But based on statements made by Trumps pick for defense secretary  retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis who wields the power to revert the contentious methods of interrogation by mid-December 2017 use of waterboarding will not be revived.

He saidI was surprisedhe said, Ive never found it to be useful, Trump recalled in an interview with the New York Times. He said, Ive always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture. And I was very impressed by that answer. I was surprised, because hes known as being like the toughest guy.

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It may have taken 10 years to do it, but Don Cheadle is actually grateful for the extra time he had to hone his unique vision for Miles Ahead, the film about Miles Davis he wrote, produced, directed and stars in. Sony Pictures Classics brought Cheadle and the movie to our big annual awards-season event, The Contenders Presented By Deadline, last month at the DGA theater.

In front of a packed audience of Oscar and key guild voters, Cheadle explained he didnt want to do a traditional cradle to grave Hollywood biopic, but instead decided to focus on a mid-1970s period where Davis was actually somewhat inactive, or out of the public eye. As a creator that interested him, as well as the challenge of being authentic to his subject matter. He also talks about constantly re-working the script while trying to get financing, and about how he prepared by always carrying the trumpet and mouthpiece with him as he traveled to the soul of one of the all-time greats.

Check out my conversation with Cheadle above.

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'Christine's True Tale Of A Local News Reporter's On-Air Suicide Makes For Harrowing Movie - The Contenders Video
Dont worry, 2016 hasnt dealt us another blow  but fake news has. Queen Elizabeth II is alive and well.

In one of the cruelest tweets of the year, a fake BBC account posted a fraudulent announcement today that Queen Elizabeth II was dead.

The now-suspended twitter account  @BBCNewsUKI  was posing as the British broadcast networks account, @BBCNewsUK. Unfortunately, due to the similarity in looks between the faux BBC account and the real one the inaccurate tweet sent many into an online frenzy.

Thought Queen Elizabeth II had died. Told my mom. Instantly in tears, clutching her commemorative phone case. Whoops. pic.twitter.com/D3IGZKyZpW  Helen Zook (@helenzook) December 29, 2016

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I've never experienced a rollercoaster of emotions as intense as what I felt when reading the Queen Elizabeth "news" then seeing it was fake  Rachel Simon (@Rachel_Simon) December 29, 2016

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GTFO DONT MESS WITH QUEEN ELIZABETH. SHE IS ALIVE AND HEALTHY THANK YOU VERY MUCH.  the bookcracker (@ashymareads) December 29, 2016

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Many have been worried about the Queens health over the past week, as she missed the annual Christmas church service at Sandringham for the first time in decades this past weekend due to a heavy cold. That worry meant that all thoughts of fake news flew from many heads when they saw a tweet confirm their worst fears.

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Others, however, werent so convinced.

#QueenElizabeth isn't dead because A, the source is a fake twitter account and

B, like the Emperor in 40K the throne gives her immortality.  Rika Furude (@Hellstorm901) December 29, 2016

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When you see Queen Elizabeth trending but it's only another death hoax pic.twitter.com/ZXWUyiR07j  Memestermcmemester (@lordharambe69) December 29, 2016

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I think it's safe to say this is all either a hoax or a rumour until Buckingham Palace confirm otherwise. #QueenElizabeth  Tammy Meaney (@TammyMeaney) December 29, 2016

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HOAX! Queen Elizabeth is NOT dead! Man won't these idiots ever get over creating death hoax's?  Joe (@TrajectoryFlash) December 29, 2016

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Our top story tonight: Queen Elizabeth II is still alive. pic.twitter.com/qQ6munvBqr  Orli Matlow (@HireMeImFunny) December 29, 2016

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But just remember: Fake news is prevalent nowadays, and the verified mark is there for a reason.

Now please, Your Majesty, drink your fluids and rest up. Clearly, the world isnt prepared to handle your death.




Luanda (AFP) - Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos's daughter, reportedly Africa's richest woman, has been cleared to head the national oil company Sonangol, after a court rejected a legal challenge.

Isabel dos Santos was put in charge of Sonangol in June in a move some analysts said was the first sign of succession plans for the country's long-time ruler.

The president, in power since 1979, later announced that he would stand down in 2017, though no successor has officially been named.

His daughter's appointment was disputed by 12 lawyers who said the law did not allow public officials to nominate family members, but the Supreme Court ruled in her favour on December 22, an official said Thursday.

"According to the decision... the appointment of Isabel dos Santos by her father does not violate the law on public probity or the Angolan Constitution," said David Mendes, a spokesman for the lawyers.

The country's opposition had equated her Sonangol appointment with nepotism, prompting the legal challenge.

Mendes said the lawyers would appeal the decision at the country's Constitutional Court.

"The judgement of the Supreme Court has many shortcomings and does not satisfactorily answer the questions we asked," he said.

Nicknamed the "Princess", the president's 43-year-old daughter has been ranked by Forbes magazine as the richest woman on the continent with a fortune of around $3 billion (2.87 billion euros).

She owns stakes in several companies in Angola and former colonial power Portugal, notably in the banking and telecommunications sectors.

Three years ago the president appointed his son Jose Filomeno dos Santos to chair the country's $5 billion Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Sonangol has been mired in financial difficulties since the fall in global oil prices. Since her appointment in the summer the president's daughter has pledged to turn the company around.

Earlier this month Sonangol announced it would not pay dividends to the state this year -- a first for the country's main source of foreign currency.

Angola's vast oil wealth has not trickled down to the masses and critics accuse both dos Santos and his family of amassing huge wealth by siphoning off state funds.
NIAMEY (Reuters) - Dozens of Boko Haram fighters have given themselves up to authorities in southern Niger, the interior minister said, days after the Islamist group suffered key losses over the border in Nigeria. "Thirty-one young people from Diffa, who were enrolled a few years ago in Boko Haram, decided to surrender," minister Mohamed Bazoum wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, above pictures of him touring the area near Nigeria's northeast border. The fighters arrived in the remote desert town of Diffa in groups and were being held by local authorities. "I learned that the first who surrendered were not arrested, and I surrendered," a former Boko Haram combatant told national television. "We expect a pardon from the government so that we can participate in the development of the country and help us get rid of the trauma." In June, tens of thousands of people fled Diffa as Boko Haram swept the region. Five Niger soldiers were killed by the militants near Diffa in September. In a statement carried later on national television, Bazoum said the government would welcome the former fighters "with open arms", adding: "All those who have parents who are with Boko Haram can tell them to return. Boko Haram is now weak." Boko Haram has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than 2 million during a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state in Nigeria. In recent years its attacks have spilled into neighbouring Niger, Cameroon and Chad. Hundreds of Boko Haram fighters surrendered in Chad in October and November as the group ceded territory. The group controlled an area about the size of Belgium in early 2015 but has since been pushed back by international forces including troops from Niger. Nigeria's army captured its last enclave in the vast Sambisa forest on Friday, President Muhammadu Buhari said on Saturday. (Reporting Boureima Balima; Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Andrew Roche)
Will Gibb isnt a wildlife expert, but he knows when he has to go to the mat for his dogs. Similar to a recent story out of Australia about a man who punched a kangaroo to rescue his dog, this time the attack animal was a North American cougar.

I wasnt really analyzing it too much at the time, Gibb told the CBC of his Dec. 26 encounter. All that was going through my mind is that I had to protect my dog.

Gibb was meeting a friend at a Tim Hortons when he let his two dogs, Sasha and Mongo, out for a run in the parking lot. Almost immediately, a cougar descended from the woods surrounding the Tim Hortons (this is Canada, after all) and attacked the pair.

Gibb, 31, says he heard Sasha crying and rushed over to investigate. I saw something wrapped around her so I ran up, punched for what looked like the head. At that point I realized it was a cougar.

Things got worse from there: Gibb chased the cougar into the woods, and attempted to scoop up the injured Sasha, who bit him in distress. The cougar then re-emerged from the woods and mounted phase two of its attack. Gibb began punching at it, driving it away from Sasha and towards Mongo.

I could see the cougar going for him, so I got between him and the cougar and started swinging and screaming at it, and called for my brother and friend to come give a hand, Gibb said. And then I reached down for the closest, biggest stick that I could find and I ran back into the trees to go fight the cougar.

Sasha was immediately escorted to a local veterinary clinic, where she was treated for her wounds. Staff told the CBC shed been released Wednesday. Gibb was clawed deeply on his arm, but is recovering. The cougar was located and killed shortly after the attack, allowing the patrons of that particular Tim Hortons to breathe easily again.

I wouldnt recommend everybody wrassle with a cougar, Sgt. Jack Poitras told the CBC, but in this case it worked for the best.

Tim Hortons locations across Canada have proved time and again to be popular gathering spots for local fauna, including goats, llamas and moose.




Govt sensitive about China ties

Amid suggestions that relations between Nepal and China had been eroding, Foreign Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat said on Wednesday that the government is sensitive towards its ties with China.
(Adds parliament comments)

CAIRO, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Egypt's government has approved a deal to hand over two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia and sent it to parliament for ratification, despite a legal dispute over the plan, according to state television.

The deal, announced in April, caused public uproar and rare protests by Egyptians who said the uninhabited islands of Tiran and Sanafir belonged to their country.

The controversy has become a source of tension with Saudi Arabia, which has provided billions of dollars of aid to Egypt but recently halted fuel shipments amid deteriorating relations.

In June, the Higher Administrative Court annulled the agreement, saying Egyptian sovereignty over the islands could not be given up. The Egyptian government lodged an appeal.

Earlier this month, an Egyptian state advisory body recommended the court uphold its original decision, in a report seen by Reuters.

The court is due to issue its final verdict on Jan. 16 and is not obliged to follow the advisory body's report.

The government's latest move shows "the collapse of the state of law and the constitution" in Egypt, said Khaled Ali, a lawyer who filed the June lawsuit to annul the deal.

"The decision that parliament is going to issue is void and the people should defend their land with all legitimate means against this tyrant regime that doesn't respect either law or judiciary," Ali said.

However, Nabil al-Gamal, member of the legislative and constitutional committee in parliament, said there was "absolutely no conflict" in sending the agreement to parliament for ratification before the court's final ruling.

"I expect the parliament not to vote ... on the agreement before the judiciary rules, so that there won't be any conflict between them," said al-Gamal.

Tiran and Sanafir are situated in the narrow entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba leading to Jordan and Israel.

Saudi and Egyptian officials say they belong to Saudi Arabia and were only under Egyptian control because Riyadh asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them.

Lawyers who opposed the handover said Cairo's sovereignty over the islands dated to a 1906 treaty, before Saudi Arabia was founded.

(Reporting by Ahmed Tolba and Amina Ismail and Mohamed Abdellah; Writing by Amina Ismail; Editing by Giles Elgood and Mark Potter)
Last week, the massive Chinese elevated bus whose renderings had rocketed around the Internet made its first test run.

The bus runs on rails embedded in the street, with room for cars to pass underneath it.

Officially known as the Transit Elevated Bus, or TEB-1, it carried its first passengers on a stretch of street in the city of Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province, in northern China.

DON'T MISS: Huge Chinese road-straddling elevated bus carries first passengers (video)

Tebtech, the company that designed and built the TEB-1, says governments in Brazil, France, and Indonesia have expressed interest in the massive vehicle.

But can such a bizarre vehicle actually be practical in the real world?

That's what the Chinese press is already asking, according to a summary of comments published by Agence France-Presse.

EDITOR'S NOTE: We first published this article in August 2016, under the title, "Is the elevated Chinese bus really practical? Could it work?"

The answer appears to be "no," as Shanghaiist reports that the straddling bus is now abandoned, gathering dust under a partially open metal building, and is presently blocking traffic on its test roadexacerbating the traffic jams it was designed to alleviate.

Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) - Image via China Xinhua News

Following the first test last Tuesday, a flurry of articles questioning the project's feasibility were reported published in Chinaincluding some from government-controlled media outlets.

One major potential issue is the TEB-1's size.

The elevated bus measures 72 feet (22 meters) long, 26 feet (7.8 meters) wide, and 16 feet (4.8 meters) tall.

It may allow cars to pass underneath, but the bus will still block intersections, the reports note.

The vehicle is also likely too tall to pass under the many pedestrian bridges that cross Chinese city streetsor to pass through tunnels.

The fact that only regular sedans and hatchbacks are seemingly able to pass under the bus also limits its utility somewhat.

Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) - Image via China Xinhua News

In a video of the bus, there appears to be very little clearance between car roofs and the bottom of the passenger compartment, precluding commercial vans and other taller vehicles.

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In addition to design issues, the financing behind the TEB-1 has also come under scrutiny.

The project is tied to online credit firm Huaying Kailai, which was placed under "strict surveillance" last year by the government, according to Chinese financial magazine Caixin.

MORE: China mulls congestion charge, quotas in Beijing for emission, traffic woes

With luck, many of the questions surrounding the TEB-1 project can be answering with further testing and perhaps an actual launch.

It seems most suited to new cities or those just now being builtof which China has dozensrather than retrofitting into existing urban environments.

Meanwhile, it continues to generate lots of interest from the public, meaning it is likely to continue to make Internet headlines.

[hat tip: Denis Arcand]

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What was described as a heavy cold and reportedly forced her highness to cancel Christmas travel plans has put Queen Elizabeth IIs reign and the British monarchys future under the microscope this week, including a debate over whether Prince Charles or Prince William should ascend to the throne.

Whatever happens, given the current line of succession and Williams son, George, it appears Britain may not see a woman wear the crown for decades to come.

A column published Thursday by John Lloyd, journalist and co-founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, dove into all aspects of the issue  namely the importance of the 90-year-old queens role at a time of great division in the United Kingdom as well as how popular she is, while Prince Charles really isnt and Prince Williams potential rise could be problematic.

Ascending to power in 1952 after the death of her father, King George VI, Elizabeth has seen her country through wars and turbulent times while acting as a unifier and appointer for the most important positions in government  albeit in a largely ceremonial way.

Still, as the UK deals with the fallout over the so-called Brexit, Elizabeth is enjoying her highest approval ratings in 20 years. A poll conducted in April found 75 percent of respondents believe the monarchy plays an important role and only one in five are hoping for Elizabeth to retire, a major jump compared to 50 percent in 1981, Newsweek reported.

The Queen is immensely popular. Almost 20 years ago, when things were going badly for the royal familyspecifically after the death of Diana, and for at least a couple of years after that, a lot of the indicators looked pretty rocky. Anti-monarchists were confident their cause was gaining, a Kings College London professor told Newsweek . At that time, when asked whether the monarchy would survive another 50 years, the majority of the public thought it wouldnt. That has completely changed. The Queen and the royal family have done a very good job of turning around public opinion. Most people in Britain feel the monarchy is part of their national identity.

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But if the monarchy hopes to build on and maintain that popularity, Lloyd posits Prince Charles may not be the answer. He suggests the princes outspoken nature on a number of issues like the environment, which he does press on government officials, could be problematic and the crown will suffer for it.

Prince William, on the other hand, may follow his grandmothers style and keep up crowns luster better than his father. The 34-year-old, who works as a pilot for the air ambulance service, has rarely taken any sort of public stance on major issues and his charity work, good looks and ever-popular wife in Kate Middleton.

Lloyd does, however, think if Charles is somehow passed over by his son  possible though unlikely  it could result in public outbursts from the Prince of Wales and only increase the burden on William to live up to Elizabeth.

While the issue continues to play out inside Buckingham Palace, it is quite clear that barring an unknowable calamity, Elizabeth will be Britains last queen for quite some time. After Charles and William, three year old George is next in the line of succession, followed by his sister, Charlotte, then Williams brother, Prince Harry.

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Bogota (AFP) - Colombia accused the ELN rebels Thursday of killing a Bogota policeman, then hiding explosives by his body and detonating them when colleagues rushed to his side, wounding five.

Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said investigators suspect that urban guerrillas from the National Liberation Army (ELN) killed the 19-year-old auxiliary officer as he was guarding a power substation on the capital's north side on Wednesday night.

They then booby-trapped his body to take out his colleagues, he said.

"The leading theory is that this incident is the heinous and irresponsible work of the National Liberation Army... to terrorize the civilian population," Villegas told Caracol Radio.

Bogota Mayor Enrique Penalosa also condemned it as a "terrorist attack."

When police rushed to the scene, the attackers remotely detonated a charge of ammonal explosive mixed with shrapnel, wounding five more officers, Bogota police chief Hoover Penilla told a press conference.

It is the latest blow to President Juan Manuel Santos's efforts to open peace talks with the ELN.

Proposed talks have stalled even as the government begins implementing a peace deal with a larger rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Both leftist guerrilla armies launched a war against the government in the 1960s, unleashing a messy, multi-sided conflict that has killed more than 260,000 people.

The ELN and the government have agreed in principle to open peace talks. But they broke down just as they were due to open in October when the rebels failed to release an ex-congressman they are holding hostage.

"Despicable terrorist acts like the one yesterday in Bogota, if confirmed to be the work of the ELN, make negotiations difficult," said the government's chief peace negotiator with the ELN, Juan Camilo Restrepo.

In a separate incident, authorities said four suspected ELN members had been arrested Tuesday in the southwestern department of Narino.

Soldiers seized guns, ammunition and communications equipment from them, the army said. They are suspected of planning attacks on security forces, it said.

Authorities estimate the ELN has 1,500 fighters, mostly in remote rural areas. Attacks in Bogota have become rare.
By Alexander Cornwell

DUBAI (Reuters) - Emirates, the world's biggest long-haul airline, has taken delivery of its first Rolls-Royce engine-powered Airbus A380 superjumbo and has resolved its dispute with the engine maker over a technical issue.

The A380 jet arrived in Dubai on Thursday morning, two days after Airbus said it would delay the delivery of 12 A380s to the airline over the next two years.

An Emirates spokeswoman told Reuters the Rolls-Royce engine jet had arrived, but declined to say when it would be deployed for passenger services.

The three-class configured jet was originally scheduled for delivery on Dec. 2. Emirates also operates two-class, business and economy A380s.

The airline "has come to an agreement with Rolls-Royce on the technical issue relating to engines for our A380s," a different spokeswoman told Reuters, adding two more Rolls-Royce powered A380s would be delivered before the end of 2016.

Planemaker Airbus said on Tuesday it had delayed deliveries to Emirates of six A380s in 2017 and six in 2018 following agreements between Emirates and Rolls-Royce as well as Emirates and Airbus.

Emirates President Tim Clark said on Nov. 18 the airline had some technical issues with the Rolls-Royce engines.

Rolls-Royce is to supply engines for 50 Emirates A380 jets. The $9.2 billion deal, announced in April 2015, was the largest order in the history of the British company.

Emirates is the biggest operator of the A380 having ordered 142 of the superjumbo jets. The rest of its A380 fleet uses Engine Alliance, a joint venture of General Electric and Pratt & Whitney.

(This story corrects paragraph 5 to show two more Rolls-Royce A380s will come in 2016, not 2017. Removes sentence in paragraph 3 on testing new aircraft)

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by MarkPotter)
By Sebastien Malo NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - More than a dozen Nobel laureates including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Malala Yousafzai urged the U.N. Security Council on Thursday to end "ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity" in Myanmar's troubled Rakhine State. At least 86 people have been killed in a military crackdown in Rakhine State, launched after attacks on police posts near the border with Bangladesh on Oct. 9. The government of predominantly Buddhist Myanmar has blamed Muslim Rohingyas supported by foreign militants for the coordinated attacks which killed nine police officers. More than 30,000 people have fled to Bangladesh, escaping the violence which has renewed international criticism that Aung San Suu Kyi's government has done too little to help the Rohingya, who are denied citizenship in Myanmar. In an open letter to the Security Council, Tutu and 22 others including fellow Nobel Peace laureates Jose Ramos-Horta and Muhammad Yunus said a "human tragedy amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity is unfolding in Myanmar". "If we fail to take action, people may starve to death if they are not killed with bullets," the letter said. The violence had the hallmarks of Rwanda's 1994 genocide as well as ethnic cleansing in Sudan's western Darfur region, Bosnia and Kosovo, it said. The signatories to the letter said even if a group of Rohingyas was behind the Oct. 9 attacks, the army's response had been "grossly disproportionate". "It would be one thing to round up suspects, interrogate them and put them on trial," the letter said. "It is quite another to unleash helicopter gunships on thousands of ordinary civilians and to rape women and throw babies into a fire." Myanmar's government has denied accusations that excessive military force was used following the October attacks. The letter was initiated by Ramos-Horta, according to a spokeswoman for the former East Timor president, and Yunus, who helped revolutionize finance for the poorest in Bangladesh. A spokeswoman for the presidency of the 15-member Security Council, currently held by Spain, confirmed it had received the letter, which also expresses frustration that Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, had not ensured citizenship rights to Rohingyas. The letter also called for the Myanmar government to lift all restrictions on humanitarian aid to Rakhine State. Officials from Myanmar's mission to the United Nations in New York were not immediately available for comment. (Reporting by Sebastien Malo, Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
IRVINE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / December 29, 2016 / Khang & Khang LLP (the "Firm") announces the filing of a class action lawsuit against Rio Tinto plc ("Rio Tinto" or the "Company") (RIO). Investors, who purchased or otherwise acquired shares between March 16, 2012 and November 14, 2016 inclusive (the "Class Period"), are encouraged to contact the Firm prior to the February 10, 2017 lead plaintiff motion deadline.

If you purchased shares of Rio Tinto during the Class Period, please contact Joon M. Khang, Esquire, of Khang & Khang, 18101 Von Karman Avenue, 3rd Floor, Irvine, CA 92612, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or via e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com.

There has been no class certification in this case. Until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. You may choose to take no action and remain a passive class member.

The Complaint claims that during the Class Period, Rio Tinto issued materially false and misleading statements to investors and/or failed to disclose that: the Company violated anti-corruption laws in the Simandou project; that these violations would subject Rio Tinto to fines and negative comments; and that due to the forgoing, Rio Tinto's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. When this information was revealed to the public, the value of Rio Tinto fell, causing investors severe harm.

If you wish to learn more about this lawsuit, at no charge, or if you have questions concerning this notice or your rights, please contact Joon M. Khang, a prominent litigator for almost two decades, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or via e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com.

This press release may constitute Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions.

Contact:

Khang & Khang LLP

Joon M. Khang, Esq.

Telephone: 949-419-3834

Facsimile: 949-225-4474

joon@khanglaw.com

SOURCE: Khang & Khang LLP
BRUSSELS (AP)  The European Union has joined the outgoing U.S. administration in defending the two-state solution as the best way to achieve lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

A spokeswoman for the 28-nation bloc reiterated the EU's support for the two-state solution on Thursday, the day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tore into Israel for settlement-building.

EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic says Kerry's remarks "all send one key message: The international community does not give up on peace in the Middle East."

Kocijancic added: "The only way to end the conflict is through a two-state solution negotiated between the parties."

In a farewell speech, Kerry defended President Barack Obama's move last week to allow the U.N. Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal, a move that caused an extraordinary diplomatic spat.
By Krishna N. Das

DHAKA (Reuters) - A top investigator into the electronic theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank is turning his attention to some IT technicians from the bank whom he suspects hooked up its transactions system to the public Internet, giving hackers access.

In a series of interviews this month, Mohammad Shah Alam, a Bangladesh police deputy inspector general who is heading investigations in Dhaka, went into some detail about how insiders at Bangladesh Bank may have helped in the execution of one of the world's biggest cyber-heists last February.

For instance, Alam said he was focusing on why a password token protecting the SWIFT international transactions network at Bangladesh Bank was left inserted in the SWIFT server for months leading up to the heist. It is supposed to be removed and locked in a secure vault after business hours each day.

The failure to remove the token allowed hackers to enter the system when it was not being monitored, first to infect it with malware and then to issue fake transfer orders, he said.

Alam's comments follow months of assertions by Bangladesh authorities that central bank officials were guilty of nothing more than negligence in the heist, in which hackers moved money out of the bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and sent it to individual accounts in the Philippines.

Reuters could not independently confirm Alam's claims. He declined to name any of the suspects.

No one has been arrested and Alam did not provide any further evidence to back up his assertions.

Bangladesh Bank spokesman Subhankar Saha declined comment on the investigation. He said the bank has not been told of any plans to detain any of its employees.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, among the agencies involved, had no comment on Alam's claims. Interpol was not available for comment.

A spokeswoman for SWIFT declined to comment.

Nearly 11 months since the audacious robbery that undermined confidence in the global SWIFT transactions system and sent tremors through the global financial community, there is no sign if any of the half-a-dozen investigating agencies involved are close to cracking the case.

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No suspects in the Bangladesh central bank had been arrested, Alam said, because investigations were incomplete. They were under watch and their movements monitored, but he was awaiting "specific information" on any communications they may have had with the hackers or with those who received the funds.

Help has been sought from police in the Philippines, Japan, Sri Lanka and China, countries where the hackers are believed to have links, he said.

THE SWIFT CONNECTION

Bangladesh police had previously blamed a group of contractors hired by the SWIFT transactions network for making its computer system vulnerable, a charge denied by the Belgium-based cooperative.

Alam said the investigation had instead shown that central bank IT technicians were most likely to have provided the inside help. Asked if he had any proof, he said: "There were a number of other things, which if the Bangladesh Bank people had not done, the hacking would not have been possible."

Alam said he believed the IT technicians connected the Bangladesh central bank's SWIFT network to the public Internet last year while linking the network to the bank's domestic payments system, the Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS). SWIFT is used only for international transactions.

Linking it to the Internet made the highly secure network accessible from any outside computer.

The work on linking SWIFT to the RTGS was supervised by SWIFT contractors but carried out by Bangladesh Bank technicians, Alam and a bank official said.

It was not known who was responsible for leaving the token that was supposed to protect the SWIFT system inserted in the server, Alam added.

At least half-a-dozen bank officials shared responsibility for safekeeping of the token, he said.

Once in the system, the hackers introduced six types of malware which captured keystrokes and screenshots and also delayed detection of fraudulent transactions, according to a report by Fireye Inc's Mandiant forensics division, which investigated the heist. Parts of the report were seen by Reuters for the first time this month.

The malware was customised for Bangladesh Bank's systems, Alam said, adding someone must have provided the hackers with technical details about the central bank's computer network.

On the evening of Feb 4, the hackers initiated fake transfer orders which sought to move nearly $1 billion from Bangladesh Bank's account at the New York Fed, mostly to accounts at the Philippines-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC).

They needed two types of passwords to carry out the transactions - the hardware token and additional credentials used by bank officials. These password credentials were either given to them by someone or were captured from previous transactions by the malware that logged keystrokes, Alam said.

Many of the transfer orders initiated by the hackers were blocked or reversed by intermediary banks, but $81 million made it to accounts in fake names at RCBC. Most of the funds then disappeared into Manila's loosely regulated casino industry and have not been tracked down since.

The Philippines' Anti-Money Laundering Council has accused seven bank officials of money-laundering in a complaint filed at the country's Justice Department.

The council has also filed complaints of money-laundering against Kim Wong, a long-time RCBC client and a casino owner and agent in Manila, an associate of his and the owners of a remittance agency. No links with the heist have been proven and no one has been arrested.

(Additional reporting by Serajul Quadir in Dhaka, Karen Lema in Manila, Tom Bergin in London, Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
By Pavel Polityuk and Matthias Williams KIEV/ODESSA, Ukraine (Reuters) - A young activist who became prominent in Ukraine's 2014 uprising and was later appointed to work on a major project to reform the corruption-plagued customs of Odessa is herself being investigated for corruption. Roman Nasirov, the head of Ukraine's Fiscal Service, which is spearheading the probe, told Reuters that he suspected 27-year-old Yulia Marushevska, who resigned last month, of undervaluing cargo and other violations that he didn't specify. He did not say whether other people besides Marushevska were being investigated. As evidence, Nasirov told Reuters that, in the weeks since Marushevska stepped down on Nov 14, the Odessa region had increased its customs revenues by 30 percent, or 300 million hryvnia ($11 million). He did not specify whether he was personally leading the investigation into Marushevska's actions. Reuters could not independently verify the figure and has no independent evidence of Marushevska's wrongdoing. Nasirov's office did provide official data for customs revenues between January and October, which showed that Odessa had not met its revenue target for 7 out of the 10 months in 2016. Marushevska's office has previously said that weaker revenues were due to the fact that some corrupt businesses avoided Odessa because of the reforms she had brought, thereby bringing in less revenue. In a separate interview with Reuters, Marushevska denied all wrongdoing and blamed Nasirov himself for derailing her efforts to rid Odessa port and other nearby ports of endemic corruption. She says she clamped down on the practice of goods being deliberately undervalued and accused Nasirov of shielding corrupt officers. She called Nasirov a guard dog for a corrupt system. "(The investigation) doesn't make any sense," she said. "It just demonstrates that this system isn't ready to change." Nasirov denied her accusations as "hollow". Their rift is part of a wider spat between reformers such as Marushevska who have been sacked or quit their positions this year and factions in the Western-backed Ukrainian authorities who took power after a pro-Kremlin president was toppled by protests in 2014. Both the United States and the European Union say Ukraine must reform to honor the sacrifices made during the Maidan protests in which around 100 demonstrators were killed in the final days. PUBLIC FEUD Since Maidan there have been no notable corruption-related convictions and the country still ranked 130th out of 168 countries in Transparency International's corruption perceptions index in 2015. The International Monetary Fund warned in October a $17.5 billion bailout program risked getting derailed if Kiev failed to show "concrete results" in tackling corruption. It also withheld a third tranche of the money for nearly a year and reduced its size to $1 billion from $1.7 billion citing Ukraine's "policy implementation". Cleaning up Odessa was meant to be a major step, both real and symbolic, to secure the death of old Ukraine, which in the eyes of the reformers had been squeezed by a rotten state in collusion with oligarchs. Marushevska was appointed to oversee customs clearances at several ports clustered around the city of Odessa, including Youzhny, Ukraine's largest port by volume, and Odessa port, the second largest. Marushevska had no previous relevant experience when she took on the role in late 2015. Soon her time at the helm descended into feuding between her and Nasirov at press conferences and on social media. Marushevska accused Nasirov of blocking her attempts to fire corrupt officials. A group of regional customs officers wrote a letter calling for her resignation, saying she had politicized the customs service. "The main reason for me to go was that I came to the point where the change I started couldn't become sustainable because of the non-existent political will to do that," she said. She also told Reuters that corruption had returned to Odessa customs since she resigned, an accusation also made by some local businessmen and Odessa's acting governor Solomiia Bobrovska. "Today, businesses must again pay a bribe in addition to the official price. The businesses are talking about this publicly. This indicates that the customs are returning to the past," Bobrovska told Reuters but did not elaborate further. Nasirov disputes that corruption is on the rise, calling it a "fable". (Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
Binod Ghimire covers parliamentary affairs and human rights for The Kathmandu Post. Since joining the Post in 2010, he has reported primarily on social issues, focusing on education and transitional justice.
Photo credit: The White Houseundefined

From Esquire

These are consequential times, but the bill President Obama signed this month might seem detached from them. After all, it's been more than 60 years since 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered by two white men for the crime of whistling at a white woman. The new law that bears his name-the Emmett Till Civil Rights Crimes Reauthorization Act of 2016-is an expansion of a 2008 bill authorizing the FBI and the Justice Department to investigate hate crime cold cases from the Civil Rights era.

Photo credit: Scott Olsonundefined

Since 1989, the United States' record on investigating cold cases has steadily improved. An early major victory was the 1994 conviction of Byron De La Beckwith for murdering Civil Rights icon Medgar Evers in 1963, according to USA Today. In the early 2000s, federal law enforcement took the lead in prosecuting two men, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry, for their part in the Ku Klux Klan's 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four young girls. Edgar Ray Killen, who orchestrated the killing of three Civil Rights activists in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964, was convicted in 2005.

The 2008 bill mandated that the FBI report to Congress on the cold cases it is investigating. The new law continues that mission, and encourages federal law enforcement to collaborate with "activists, advocates and academics working on these issues," like the Southern Poverty Law Center. Since 2006, the FBI has used a list from the SPLC to pursue more than 100 civil rights cold cases.

Whether or not it directly leads to more convictions, the new law comes at a crucial time. A massive spike in hate crimes took place immediately following Donald Trump's election last month. While the pace has since slowed, that outbreak of hateful violence-particularly against immigrants-was a reminder that chaotic times and the empowerment of fringe elements spell danger for society's more vulnerable groups. The so-called "Till Bill 2" promises that, even if it takes decades, racist violence and hate crimes will be met with justice, as long as we have the collective will to pursue it.

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The bill also arrives at a time when ideas of history and objective reality themselves are under attack. Both before and since election day, Donald Trump and his surrogates have attempted to create their own information vortex, where anything is true if enough people believe it. That culminated with Scottie Nell Hughes' gobsmacking declaration that "there's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts."

Photo credit: Rolis Pressundefined

That's an effective strategy to quash inconvenient details about the present, but also to divorce the present from the past. That's how you conclude that racism is over, so we no longer need a robust Voting Rights Act to protect the rights of people of color in historically oppressive areas. That's how you spawn the now-widespread conservative belief that calling someone racist is worse than doing or saying racist things. It's how a lukewarm defense of blackface appears in the opinion pages of The Washington Post the day after Christmas in 2016.

The new Till Bill, it should be noted, was introduced by Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina. That's an encouraging sign at a time when his party and its organizing ideology hold that racism ended long ago. (The Senate will also be the only realistic check on the next administration, which, as it stands, will have Jeff Sessions at the helm of the Justice Department.) The bill doesn't just acknowledge the country's ugly history on race. In expanding the window for investigations, it acknowledges that some of the worst of that history is more recent than we'd like to think. It also reminds us that while most things have a statute of limitations, the struggle to atone for our nation's original sin is pretty much eternal.

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Shutterstock/Facebook

At the turn of 2017, millions of people will resolve to spend less time on Facebook. Like so many resolutions, its a fine idea but most people will fail before January 31. Our New Years proclamations are notoriously hard to keep.

If your resolution is Facebook related, wed encourage your to steel yourself  as more and more scientists have started to believe that spending time on the platform is outright bad for you. To be fair to Facebook, its a vast social experiment that not even its creators realized they were building. Nobody really knew what would happen when we began using computers to build social connections. Whats starting to come into focus, as the science community studies Facebook, is that it has to be used smartly, instead of as a social crutch.

Before you ask, yes, Facebook can be addictive, although there have yet to be any of the huge gold standard studies that generally firm up scientific consensus on an issue. Many studies on Facebook are small, less than 500 participants or even less than 100 in many cases, and are overwhelmingly focused on college students and young adults. Still, so far, the research does indicate that Facebook can be addictive  in the sense that you use it so much it negatively impacts your life. The literature so far offers a fairly clear trend: If people are awkward in person, or have trouble interacting in person, Facebook can be an incredibly useful tool; we all know the thrill of logging in and seeing a huge number of notifications. But, like anything else, there can be too much of a good thing; Facebook can twist around on you and make your mood worse, not better.

How, though? The basic idea is that when youre on Facebook, youre subconsciously, or perhaps consciously, comparing yourself to everybody on your feed, and usually coming up short  something found repeatedly like in this 2014 study or one from 2013. Its a bit more complicated than just Facebook is bad across the board. A lot depends on your outlook in life: A 2016 study found that goal-driven people found Facebook inspiring and offered them something to reach for, while those who werent goal driven simply felt left behind.

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Studies are showing its also a matter of how you use Facebook. A new study from the University of Copenhagen tracked 1000 participants and found that passive scrolling through Facebook and reading statuses was indeed more likely to encourage negative emotions, but that if you used Facebook to talk to people and to form personal connections, you were okay. In other words, the better you know people on Facebook, the less likely you are to be brought down by the fact theyre on vacation while youre working on Christmas Eve. Similarly, research into Facebook and self-esteem points to the idea that sharing those vacation photos and weight-loss statuses might help how you view yourself, although just how Facebook and your personal self-perception interact is still a matter of debate.

Finally, theres who you connect with. Everyone has stalked their ex on Facebook, and it turns out, to nobodys surprise, thats an absolutely terrible habit which disrupts your emotional recovery and well-being  no matter what happens. While there doesnt seem to be much literature on the stress of having to mute your racist aunt or getting pinged by high school friends who just so happen to be selling Beachbody, one doubts having to navigate the sometimes choppy waters of Facebook etiquette does much for your mental health, either.

So, where does that leave those of us thinking about ditching Facebook this year, or at least interacting with it in a more healthy way? There are a few crucial takeaways from the science. The first is pretty straightforward; just idly scrolling through Facebook to kill time probably isnt healthy. So, set that aside: Delete the app off your phone, change your browsers landing page, and consider downloading an extension that only lets you stay on Facebook for a set amount of time. And if you use it primarily for Messenger, thats a separate app anyway, and not one you need Facebook for.

Secondly, look at how you use Facebook overall. How often are you engaging with people? What are you talking about? When youre done using Facebook, in a given session, ask yourself how you feel. If the answer is Not good, then why keep doing it? Or why keep doing it the same way?

Next, look at your list of friends. Keep in mind, you can be friends with a person on Facebook, but never see a single thing they post. So if people are bringing you down, just limit which of their posts you see, especially if theyre the friend of a friend. Be honest: Do you care about the new job that guy youve met at a few parties just landed?

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Finally, dont be shy about telling your Facebook friends you want to see them outside of Facebook, whether over email, or in person, or by text. Weve got a lot of ways to meet new people, communicate, and enrich each others lives; if you see Facebook as a tool in the toolbox, not the be-all end-all, youre certain to end up happier.
Vladimir Putin

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security released a joint report Thursday on Russian "malicious cyber activity" that included a thorough list of code names for the malware used by Russian hackers.

The joint analysis report  which refers to the Russian activity headlined by its efforts hack into US government and political organizations as "GRIZZLY STEPPE"  included a list of code names used for software the reported actors associated with the Russian military and civilian intelligence service who engaged in various phishing schemes aimed at foreign targets used in the process.

Some of those absurd names included "SEADADDY," "HAMMERTOSS," "Energetic Bear," and "Carberp." Many of the names include "duke" or "bear," such as the more well-known "Fancy Bear."

The "alternate names" as listed in the report, were created mostly by American companies. The two groups of Russian hackers were labeled APT28 and APT29.

Here's the full FBI/DHS list of code names:

Screen Shot 2016 12 29 at 2.53.46 PM

The report was released shortly after President Barack Obama announced new sanctions against Russian officials, which includes the removal of 35 Russian intelligence officials currently in the US, in addition to sanctions from the Treasury Department against two other Russian individuals.

In a Thursday statement, Obama said the actions were "not the sum total of our response" and that his administration would provide a report to Congress in the coming days related to Russia's "efforts to interfere in our election, as well as malicious cyber activity related to our election cycle in previous elections."

Russia swiftly responded, assuring that Washington would "receive an answer" if "new hostile steps" were taken.

"This applies to any actions against Russian diplomatic missions in the United States, which will immediately backfire at US diplomats in Russia," Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in a statement. "The Obama administration probably does not care at all about the future of bilateral relations, but history will hardly forgive it for this apres-nous-le-deluge attitude."

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Recent public revelations showed that US intelligence tied the election-related hacking of Democratic political organizations and operatives such as Clinton campaign chair John Podesta to senior Russian officials. The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the US election to try to tip the scales toward President-elect Donald Trump, though other agencies haven't gone as far in their assessments.

Both Republicans and Democrats have called for action to be taken against Russia for its role in the hacking. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona have been two of the loudest voices on that front.

Meanwhile, Russia has repeatedly denied its involvement, and Trump has refused to acknowledge that Russia had involvement in election-related hackings. He said on Wednesday that "we ought to get on with our lives."

"I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly," he told reporters outside his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. "The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on."

In a Thursday statement, Trump again insisted it was time to move on to "bigger and better" things, but that "nevertheless" he would meet with intelligence officials to discuss the matter.

Correction: This article previously referred to the list of names as those the FBI and Department of Homeland Security claimed were secret code names used by Russian hackers. The list of names were actually alternate names to label the malware used by the groups of Russian hackers, who were known as APT28 and APT29.

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More From Business Insider


* FDA asks for bigger study

* Drug's label will likely be restrictive, if approved

* Cempra will probably halt development of drug - analyst

* Shares nearly halve in premarket trading (Adds analyst comment)

By Natalie Grover

Dec 29 (Reuters) - Cempra Inc said on Thursday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had rejected its antibiotic for community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CABP), citing inadequate data on the drug's impact on the liver and manufacturing issues.

The company's stock tumbled 48.3 percent to $3.15 in premarket trading.

The FDA did not ask for further data on solithromycin's effectiveness in treating CABP, Cempra said.

An independent FDA panel narrowly backed the drug, solithromycin, in November, although a preliminary staff review by FDA scientists highlighted a potentially concerning rise in liver enzymes associated with its use.

The elevations were transient in Cempra's trials and data showed no cases of acute liver injury.

Solithromycin, designed to be administered intravenously and via capsules, is descended from Ketek, a controversial drug made by Sanofi SA that was approved by the FDA in 2004.

It was later linked to dozens of serious or fatal liver problems, and eventually discontinued.

Solithromycin is a next-generation version of a class of oft-prescribed antibiotics called macrolides, which are used to fight pathogens that cause CAPB.

The FDA's rejection letter noted that the available 920-patient dataset on solithromycin was too small to fully understand the potential risk of liver injury.

The agency recommended an additional 9,000-patient study to rule out the risk, Cempra said.

Even if there is no such event in the new study, the drug's label will include a warning of the potential for liver toxicity and the drug's use will be limited to patients with few options.

Given the size and cost of the proposed new study, and likely restrictive labeling, Cempra will probably not continue to develop solithromycin, Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Berens said in a client note.

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Cempra revealed in October that there were quality control issues with its main manufacturer, India's Wockhardt Ltd .

The FDA also cited deficiencies in recent inspections of manufacturing plants owned by Wockhardt and Pfizer Inc's Hospira unit, and said the issues must be resolved before solithromycin can be approved.

Cempra, whose chief executive and founder Prabhavathi Fernandes retired earlier this month, has found another manufacturer in India-based Vivimed Labs Ltd's Spanish business, Uquifia.

About half of the most common bacteria, the pneumococcus that cause chest and other infections, are resistant to macrolides, making the quest for new antibiotics pressing.

Unrestrained overuse of current antibiotics, often when they are not needed, and widespread use in livestock, have contributed to the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

(Reporting by Natalie Grover and Akankshita Mukhopadhyay in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Ted Kerr)
BEIJING (Reuters) - Attackers drove a vehicle into a government building in China's unruly far western region of Xinjiang, setting off an explosive device and using knives to kill two people before all three of the assailants were shot dead, state media said on Thursday. Hundreds of people have been killed in recent years in resource-rich Xinjiang, on the borders of central Asia, in violence between the Muslim Uighur people who call the region home and ethnic majority Han Chinese. The government has blamed the unrest on Islamist militants, though rights groups and exiles say anger at Chinese controls on the religion and culture of Uighurs is more to blame for the unrest. China denies any repression in Xinjiang. The Xinjiang government said in a short statement on its main news website the incident occurred just before 5 p.m. (0900 GMT) on Wednesday in Karakax county, deep in southern Xinjiang's Uighur heartland. It said "thugs" drove a vehicle into a yard at the county Communist Party offices and detonated an "explosive device". The official Xinhua news agency, citing the Ministry of Public Security, later said all three of the attackers were shot dead, but not before they killed a security guard and a government official and wounded three others. Xinhua described the incident as a "terrorist attack", and said the attackers also used knives. The Xinjiang government previously said there were four attackers and that they had only killed one person. It is difficult for foreign journalists to report in Xinjiang, making it almost impossible to reach an independent assessment of security there. Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the exiled group the World Uyghur Congress, said he doubted the official account."I strongly doubt the casualty toll and reason for the incident from official reports, which lack transparency," he said in an emailed statement. The government has delayed reporting some previous incidents. An attack on a coal mine in September last year, in which at least 16 died, was not reported by the government until two months later, when it announced its security forces had killed 28 of the "terrorists" involved. Xinjiang had generally been quiet this year, with no major reported attacks or other violent incidents. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Alison Williams and Paul Tait)
Public life in the Turkish coastal city Mersin was brought to a standstill on Thursday, December 29, after torrential downpours caused major flash flooding.

Turkish media, citing local authorities, said residents were warned to avoid leaving their homes as the majority of the city was inundated. One woman reportedly died in the flooding.

A local community page in Mersin streamed this footage of flooding in the main street, Cemal Pasa Caddesi . Credit: Facebook/Mersin via Storyful
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Flooding this week in the Democratic Republic of Congo port city of Boma killed at least 50 people and left another 10,000 homeless, authorities told Reuters on Wednesday. Torrential rain on Monday night caused the Kalamu River to overflow, flooding two districts of the southwestern city, said Therese-Louise Mambu, health minister for Kongo Central province. "The damage is very serious," she said. "We continue to look for other bodies." Resident Jeanne Nzita told Reuters: "Everything was taken away  the windows and the doors. All that remains of our house is the walls and the roof." Scientific models predict that climate change will bring increased rainfall to central Africa over the course of this century. Central and western parts of the Congo Basin are expected to be worst hit. Dozens died late last year in the capital Kinshasa as it recorded unusually heavy rains during the rainy season. (Reporting By Amedee Mwarabu Kiboko; Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
The Chicago Tribune recently talked to Flume ahead of his big performance at the city's Reaction music festival this weekend. The Australian superstar had a huge 2016, with the release of his second album Skin, which featured some big vocal collaborations. The producer spoke about his work with rapper Vic Mensa on "Lose It:"

"It was in my hometown of Sydney. He was playing a festival, and I was a fan of what he was up to. I hit him up, and we go in the studio together, and he played some of his ideas he was working on and I played him some of my stuff. There was a particular idea of mine that I was working on that he was really excited about, and that became (Skin track) 'Lose It.'"

He also opened up about his work with alt-folk Grammy winner Beck:

"One day I got a call from my manager and he was like, "Hey, do you want to go to Beck's house today?" I caught an Uber to his house and I knocked on the door, and there he is, it's Beck, welcoming me into his house. It was kind of surreal, to be honest. I was wearing pink board shorts and a backpack and a cap, and I realized I looked like some kind of kid, just walking into this legend's house, but he was really down to earth."

When the Chicago Tribune asked about working with such large personalities, Flume commented that for him, the music is all the personality he needs:

"For me, it's not about the personality. For me it's about the music. I think the music I make has a unique style, and that's my brand. I actually try to keep my face off a lot of things, like album covers. I would never have my face on an album cover. For me, it's all about the sonic identity."

Read the full interview via the Chicago Tribune.
Year Ender 2016: Half-hearted Peace

Absence of transformative change, even a decade after the peace process, threatens to prolong social unrest
Police say a St. Augustine, Florida, woman killed herself with her boyfriends gun six years ago  but her relatives say they have proof she was murdered. Subscribe to PEOPLE now or pick up this weeks issue, on newsstands Friday, for more on this case.

In the years since Michelle OConnells death from a gunshot wound that severed her spinal cord, her family and friends have battled with investigators over what they claim is a failure to prove the truth: that OConnell was murdered.

A St. Johns County, Florida, sheriffs investigation, as well as investigations by three state attorneys, have all concluded that OConnell killed herself in September 2010. Authorities have further dismissed allegations that OConnells boyfriend at the time  Jeremy Banks, a St. Johns sheriffs deputy  was involved, citing a lack of probable cause. OConnells family has said she was preparing to leave Banks the day she died.

Through his attorney, Banks has also denied involvement.

But OConnells family believes they have proof of what they claim. Earlier this year, they asked a private forensic pathologist in Orlando, Dr. William Anderson, to perform a post-exhumation autopsy of OConnells body. He says he discovered she had a broken lower jawbone never mentioned in the original medical examiners reports.

They mentioned relatively significantly less serious injuries above the eye, but did not mention the broken mandible, Anderson tells PEOPLE in this weeks issue.

He says other potential evidence revealed in his autopsy include signs of hemorrhaging on the outer surface of the mandible, the retracted position of OConnells tongue and blood flow patterns pictured in death scene photos.

Shortly after Andersons results were released, the St. Johns County medical examiner issued a statement dismissing claims of new evidence in Andersons findings.

Based on what has been reported, they do not appear to contain any new evidence not documented in the first three examinations, including the fractured mandible, Dr. Predrag Bulic said  though he had yet to see a copy of the report.

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But a thorough review of the original autopsy report reveals only that the third cervical vertebra is shattered and makes no specific mention of the broken jawbone.

Except as associated with the gunshot wound, there are no fractures or notable deformities, the report reads. A handwritten note on his report does read, No clear-cut threat of suicide.

 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.

Though OConnells manner of death was initially ruled a suicide, the medical examiners office changed it to homicide  before a prosecutors investigation closed the case as a suicide.

There was an area of the bone that had stark coloration that consistent with a hemorrhage. But the reason we dont see that in autopsy is that they didnt open that area to see if there was a hemorrhage, Anderson tells PEOPLE. If they had recognized the fracture, they should have further looked to see if there was hemorrhaging. Nobody took sections of that area at all.

My exam suggests strongly that the individual was hit twice in the face, once breaking the jaw, fell to the floor, the gun was inserted into her mouth while she was on the floor and fired, Anderson says. This explains the position of the body, the flow of the blood, the retraction of the tongue. Ive never seen a suicide like this where theres evidence of potentially incapacitating trauma that occurred prior to the gunshot wound. So, in my estimation, this is a homicide.

It Could Be Homicide or Suicide

PEOPLE asked forensic pathologist Michael Baden  formerly with the New York State police, noted for his work investigating high-profile deaths and hosting HBOs Autopsy, who is unconnected to the case  to review the competing conclusions, drawn from the autopsy reports, autopsy photos and death scene photos.

His opinion was mixed.

I think Dr. Anderson was correct in pointing out that there was a fracture there that was missing in the text of the first autopsy, Baden tells PEOPLE exclusively. But I cant say thats enough to indicate that was struck first and then the gun discharged.

Asked about Andersons conclusion that, if she had killed herself, OConnells tongue would have been under the muzzle and laying straight rather than pushed back into a U-shape, Baden says, Ive seen it both ways.

Its hard to get into the mind of somebody in that situation, he says. Certainly, if somebodys going to put the gun in the mouth, they can be very distraught and upset and push the tongue back. They often dont know exactly what theyre doing at the time. The mind is clouded at the time.

Theoretically, it could be homicide or suicide, he says. I wouldnt rule out homicide, but I cant say for certain just on the basis of the autopsy. In doing an autopsy, the history and circumstances and all kinds of other things would come into play.

Thats where forensic psychiatrist Dr. Harold Bursztajn, a senior clinical faculty member at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of the Program in Psychiatry and the Law at the schools Beth Israel Medical Center Psychiatry, says the medical examiners office made another mistake.

I am amazed that there was no forensic psychiatrist conducting a forensic psychiatric autopsy, Bursztajn, who is unconnected to the case, tells PEOPLE. Its a difficult process trying to disentangle all the questions between suicide, accident and homicide and there are a good number of people work in the specialized area of forensic psychiatry.

 Pick up PEOPLEs special edition True Crime Stories: Cases That Shocked America, on sale now, for the latest on Casey Anthony, JonBenet Ramsey and more.

Any Errors Didnt Change the Outcome

When there is a reasonable doubt as to what the cause or manner of death is, you bring in a psychiatrist in connection with the forensic pathologist, Bursztajn says. Its a completely different specialty and thats why a forensic pathologist will ask a forensic psychologist or psychiatrist to join them.

And while Dr. Carole Lieberman, another noted forensic psychiatrist and frequent expert witness in legal cases, tells PEOPLE she has questions about the initial 911 call in OConnells death  made by Banks, who discovered her body  investigators dismiss that as wild speculation.

If I put people in jail based on their demeanor at crime scenes, Id be wrong almost half the time, Howard Cole, the sheriffs commander of central investigations, tells PEOPLE. People act differently confronted with the same situation. To me, sounded like someone genuinely distraught.

We have made the statements to the errors that weve made, says sheriffs spokesman Chuck Mulligan.

He notes that scrutiny of the case has prompted improvements at the sheriffs office, including boosting the number of investigators from four to 12, doubling the size of the forensics unit and developing in-house DNA screening capabilities.

Although there were missteps, they didnt change the outcome of the decision, he says.




For a former Bachelorette star, 2016 proved to be a fruitful and emotionally fulfilling year.

Jillian Harris, who was a contestant in American reality TV series The Bachelor in 2009, recently became engaged to her long-time boyfriend, Justin Pasutto. The Canadian actress, who starred in Season 5 of The Bachelorette, received a proposal from him on the morning of Christmas. The star happily accepted and then shared her first meal  a hearty breakfast  in bed with her fiance.

Earlier this year, Harris welcomed her first child, Leo, with Pasutto.

Harris was previously engaged to Ed Swiderski, who she chose as the winner of The Bachelorette. They broke up in 2010. She then started dating Pasutto.

The 36-year-old British Columbia resident took to Instagram to share an adorable photo of baby Leo complete with a sailor cap and brown shoes. She then posted a photo of her and Pasutto looking at each other lovingly against the backdrop of a cafe. She flaunted her engaged ring in this photo.

A few hours ago, Harris posted a photo of all her makeup. She dolled herself up for date night with her fiance.

Harris spent Christmas Eve with her parents and then headed to Vancouver to spend the holidays with her fiances family. Their dog and Leo accompanied them for the trips.

Apart from being a reality star, Harris is also an interior designer. She is the host of Candian TV series Love It Or List It Vancouver. It airs on W Network in Canada and HGTV in the United States. In the show, she faces rival and real estate agent Todd Talbot. She has to redesign family homes in the hopes that they will chose to stay in their exisiting house rather than sell it to the agent.

Jillian Harris

Photo: Getty Images/Vivien Killilea

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Four million people in Damascus have been without safe drinking water supplies for more than a week after springs outside the Syrian capital were deliberately targeted, the United Nations said on Thursday. Water supplies from the Wadi Barada and Ain al-Fija springs which serve 70 percent of Damascus and its surroundings had been cut, the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said. OCHA said in a statement that supplies had been cut because "infrastructure was deliberately targeted and damaged", without saying who was responsible. The Wadi Barada valley is a rebel-held pocket of territory northwest of Damascus that the Syrian army and its allies have been trying to recapture in an offensive that started last week. A resident and rebels in the area said air strikes had damaged a water pumping station. The government accused rebels of polluting the springs with diesel, forcing authorities to cut the supplies on Friday and use reserves instead. A Damascus resident said each neighborhood only gets water for about two hours a day and bottled water prices had increased dramatically on the open market to more than double the cost at state-subsidised grocery stores. "The U.N. is concerned the water cut could lead to diseases transmitted through dirty water, especially in children, in addition to the extra financial burden for families," OCHA said. "(People) are having to purchase water from private vendors, where prices and water quality are unregulated," it said. Wadi Barada lies on a road from Damascus to the Lebanese border that is a supply line for the powerful Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, which is heavily involved in fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's army. Government forces have been bombing the area heavily for a week, though the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there was a lull on Thursday before the air strikes resumed. The rebels in Wadi Barada have allowed government water authority engineers to maintain and operate the pumping station and supply Damascus since they took control of the area in 2012. Fighters have, however, cut water supplies several times in the past to put pressure on the army not to overrun the area. The U.N. called on all sides to reach a peaceful settlement to reduce civilian suffering and avoid targeting infrastructure. OCHA said 15 million people needed help accessing water across Syria after nearly six years of conflict and households were spending up to a quarter of their income on water. (Reporting by Lisa Barrington; editing by David Clarke)
Eric Bolling and Kimberly Guilfoyle, co-hosts of Fox News Channels The Five, dont think 2016 was so bad, no matter what members of the liberal media say about it.

I must have missed the memo because I think 2016 was fabulous, Guilfoyle told TheWrap. What a fantastic year. What an incredible presidential election. We loved covering it on The Five, and we had front-row seats to American political history.

Bolling agrees with his co-host, but thinks it depends on your perspective and realizes he probably enjoyed 2016 more than some cable news competitors.

Also Read: 23 Most-Watched Cable News Hosts Of 2016, From Don Lemon to Megyn Kelly (Photos)

For us, we spent the summer covering the election  as Kimberly points out  accurately and our ratings have done nothing but skyrocket and weve held our ratings in the post-election world where some others are probably a bit envious of what weve been able to continue to do, Bolling told TheWrap. I think 2016 was great.

Bolling and Guilfoyle clarified that they were not referring to the notable celebrity deaths of 2016, a year that has claimed the lives of Prince, David Bowie, Muhammad Ali, Glenn Frey, Nancy Reagan, Phife Dawg, Harper Lee, Carrie Fisher, George Michael, Garry Shandling and a ton of other stars and political figures. Instead, the duo focused on what it considers newfound hope for Americans.

If you look at all the consumer sentiments and optimism, there is a new poll out that says 55 percent of America thinks that 2017 is going to be a better year than 16. I think there is a whole new change in D.C. and in the media with the Donald Trump presidency, Bolling said. I think there is a bunch of optimism coming in with it.

Also Read: Fox News Is Most-Watched Cable Network of 2016

Guilfoyle said she is really excited to see what happens to the country when Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20.

Its a great time to work at Fox News and be able to cover all this every day, Guilfoyle said.

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Guilfoyle and Bolling will host the networks New Years Eve coverage live from Times Square in New York City with All-American New Year, something that has become an annual gig for the pair.

Last year we were broadcasting from atop the Knickerbocker hotel above Times Square. This year were down right in the middle of the action, Bolling said before Guilfoyle chimed in: We love to get down and talk to the fans  we like to be down there with everybody.

Also Read: Short Hair, Don't Care: Why Tucker Carlson Is Fox News' Latest Star (Exclusive)

Despite finishing the year as the most-watched network in all of cable, 2016 wasnt completely flawless for Fox News. Former CEO and co-founder Roger Ailes stepped down in disgrace last summer amid sexual harassment allegations, but Bolling called the transition to a post-Ailes era seamless for the network.

The post-transition Fox News has been, really, extremely strong. Thats a testament to the management from the Murdochs [down]  the management kept the vision, Bolling said. They kept the ship in the right direction and were benefiting from that on the backside of the transition.

Bolling said The Five hasnt changed under the new regime because nobody has ever told us, even at the beginning, before or after the transition, what kind of content we should be covering.

Thats part of the beauty if it, Guilfoyle added. They dont micromanage us.

All-American New Year kicks off at 11 p.m. ET on New Years Eve , but Fox News Channel coverage begins at 8 p.m. with Jesse Watters and Lisa Kennedy Montgomery hosting before handing off to Guilfoyle and Bolling.

Related stories from TheWrap:

Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Says 'Hollywood Is Going Out of Business' (Exclusive)

Fox News Is Most-Watched Cable Network of 2016

Short Hair, Don't Care: Why Tucker Carlson Is Fox News' Latest Star (Exclusive)
N'Djamena (AFP) - French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Thursday warned troops stationed in Africa's Sahel region that they should "prepare for a long war" against jihadists.

He also promised Chad, where French troops have been stationed since 2014 under Operation Barkhane, his nation's financial support.

"Our country must continue to make clear and ambitious budgetary decisions in support of our armies," Cazeneuve said on his first overseas visit as prime minister.

The Barkhane forces' mission is to target jihadist groups that are active in the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert.

The operation was launched after French military interventions in Mali and Chad.

"We must prepare for a long war in an environment that has undergone dramatic shifts," Cazeneuve said.

The French military is currently battling jihadists in two regions -- in the Middle East against the Islamic State group, and in the Sahel where it has deployed 4,000 soldiers as part of the Barkhane force.

Operation Barkhane covers five nations: Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad.

Cazeneuve hailed troops fighting on fronts "thousands of kilometres away from their homes".

"You risk your lives to save others'," he said.

Four French troops have been killed in Mali this year.

Barkhane forces are working alongside Malian troops in the search for Sophie Petronin, a French aid worker who was kidnapped last weekend.

The prime minister also pledged France's help for poverty-stricken Chad.

"France will always help Chad surmount its difficulties," said Cazeneuve after a meeting with President Idriss Deby.

Like its neighbour, oil giant Nigeria, Chad has been undergoing a severe financial crisis as a result of a several months-long slump in the price of crude.

While the world's major oil producers have agreed to cut back on production in order to bring prices back up, the impact of the change remains to be seen in the worst-affected nations.

The opposition in Chad is also critical of the political situation under Deby's iron-fisted rule.
By Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican advocates for drug reform are voicing alarm about the country's widening gap with the United States on marijuana legislation, as criminal violence surges again south of the border. Tens of thousands have been killed over the years in Mexico, on the front line of a U.S.-led war on drugs. The country's prohibitionist approach to marijuana is increasingly at odds with the United States, where liberalization is advancing. California in November became the first state on the U.S.-Mexico border to vote for comprehensive cannabis legalization, further pressuring Mexican legislators to change policy. Earlier this month Mexico's Senate duly passed a limited medical marijuana bill. But it has yet to be approved by the lower house and critics say it is still far too little. "It's a teeny, tiny reform for an enormous problem in the country," opposition leftist senator Mario Delgado said during the discussion of the medical marijuana bill. "It's absurd that on this side of the border we continue with the violence, the deaths; and on the other side ... this same drug is considered legal for recreational use." Driven by widespread gang violence, murders are on track to breach the 20,000 mark in 2016 for the first time in four years, adding to more than 100,000 gang-related deaths in the decade since the government began a military-led crackdown on drug cartels. Many thousands more have disappeared. Pena Nieto said in 2014 that Mexico could not pursue diverging paths with the United States on marijuana. Earlier this year, he submitted a bill to close the gap on U.S. legislation. But his own lawmakers have been reluctant to follow his lead. Starting with Washington and Colorado in 2012, U.S. states have begun to legalize recreational use of marijuana, and many more now permit medicinal use, as does Canada. California, which has an economy roughly twice the size of Mexico's, was widely seen as a bellwether for a shift in policy. Mexico's Supreme Court last year set the ball rolling in a landmark case, granting four people the right to grow and consume weed, and inspiring hope for change. In April, Pena Nieto proposed decriminalizing possession of up to 28 grams of marijuana for personal use, and said it would allow people jailed for holding up to that amount to go free. But senators in his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) put the initiative on ice, saying it "requires a greater analysis," and only backed medical marijuana use. The PRI blamed heavy losses in state elections in June on Pena Nieto pushing a liberal agenda, notably his bid to legalize gay marriage, said Lisa Sanchez, drug policy director at the organization Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia. "They immediately transferred that discussion into the drugs issue by saying, 'If we go too liberal, we might lose more elections,'" Sanchez said. Opinion polls show that while there is public support for medical marijuana use, Mexicans are still resistant to the idea of an outright liberalization of the drug for recreational ends. While Congress procrastinates, some people are even taking advantage of the U.S. opening, said Jaime Andres Vinasco, a doctoral student at university Colef in Tijuana, a border city synonymous with Mexican drug traffickers selling to U.S. buyers. In Tijuana, moneyed consumers enjoy medical marijuana brought over from California dispensaries that is more potent and of higher quality than local weed, said Vinasco, who has spoken to users and dealers for his research on the reverse flow. "The cannabis from California, for the Tijuanenses, or residents of Tijuana, has become, for the great majority, a luxury item," he said. "Quite a paradoxical phenomenon." (Reporting by Joanna Zuckerman Bernstein; Editing by Dave Graham and David Gregorio)
Carrie Fisher may have been a mega star, but her dog, Gary, was no slouch in the fame department either.

The actress and prolific writer, 60, suffered from bipolar disorder, and the adorable French bulldog acted as not just her furry pal but also an emotional companion. Gary has been a red carpet staple since 2014, frequently stealing the show from his famous mama, and even has his own Twitter account that boasts over 61,000 followers.

EXCLUSIVE FLASHBACK: Carrie Fisher on What Advice She Would Give Her Younger Self

The dog's tweets are witty and irreverent, just like his mom was, but since Fisher's death on Tuesday after she went into cardiac arrest on a plane from London to Los Angeles, the posts have been heartbreaking.

Shortly after the news broke, Gary wrote the tweet heard around the world that turned us all into a collective ball of tears: "Saddest tweets to tweet. Mommy is gone. I love you @carrieffisher."

Saddest tweets to tweet. Mommy is gone. I love you @carrieffisher  Carrie Fisher's Dog (@Gary_TheDog) December 27, 2016

RELATED: Remembering Some of Carrie Fisher's Best, Most Prolific Quotes

That was followed in quick succession by even more tearjerking sentiments, including a photo of Gary staring out the window alongside the caption, "I'll still be waiting for you.......," as well as a collage capped off with a poignant tribute: "I was always by your side but best of all you were always by mine."

I'll still be waiting for you....... pic.twitter.com/ef461OcqKJ  Carrie Fisher's Dog (@Gary_TheDog) December 27, 2016

I was always by your side but best of all you were always by mine. #RIPCarrie pic.twitter.com/QgeOYdmmH2  Carrie Fisher's Dog (@Gary_TheDog) December 28, 2016

Love knows no season, It haunts the soul eternally.  Carrie Fisher's Dog (@Gary_TheDog) December 28, 2016

Coolest dog ever posing with the coolest human ever #RIPCarrie #CarrieFisher pic.twitter.com/dl1kx5iTAK  Carrie Fisher's Dog (@Gary_TheDog) December 28, 2016

RELATED: Todd Fisher Says Mom Debbie Reynolds Missed Daughter Carrie Fisher and 'Wanted to Be With Her'

The dog's sense of humor stayed intact, however. After he found out that Fisher's daughter, Scream Queens star Billie Lourd, would now be taking care of him, Gary tweeted, "Dear Billie, I like a bacon flavor everything."

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Then on Wednesday, Fisher's mother, famed actress Debbie Reynolds, died, and all of our hearts broke with Gary and the extended Fisher family.

"Mommy's mom is gone now. :( RIP #DebbieReynolds," he wrote, adding, "If Carrie was here I bet she would make a joke that it was just like her mom to upstage her even in death. #FindingHumorInTragedy."

Mommy's mom is gone now. :( RIP #DebbieReynolds  Carrie Fisher's Dog (@Gary_TheDog) December 29, 2016

If Carrie was here I bet she would make a joke that it was just like her mom to upstage her even in death. #FindingHumorInTragedy  Carrie Fisher's Dog (@Gary_TheDog) December 29, 2016

Then came what we've all been thinking after the last 36 hours:

I think this photo of #DebbieReynolds sums it up for us all. pic.twitter.com/t0iPNgSnmD  Carrie Fisher's Dog (@Gary_TheDog) December 29, 2016

WATCH: Mark Hamill Mourns 'My Beloved Space-Twin' Carrie Fisher

Gary had been by Fisher's side for the last several years. In 2013, when the bulldog was just a year old, the Star Wars actress told the Herald-Tribune, "My mother says Gary is a hooligan. Gary is like my heart. Gary is very devoted to me and that calms me down. He's anxious when he's away from me."

He's even gone to a number of high profile events, including the Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiere and after-party in London last December and the White House Correspondents' Dinner (where he hung out with Tom Hiddleston!) this past April.

Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

WATCH: Carrie Fisher's Half-Sisters Joely and Tricia Express Heartbreak Over Actress' Death

The precious pup also made appearances on Good Morning America and the Late Show With Stephen Colbert (both his morning show and late-night debuts, respectively).

Fisher and Gary had a very special bond, and that won't easily be forgotten. Click through the gallery below to check out some of their sweetest moments.

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Gary Fishers official Instagram just shared a heartfelt post for his mom, Carrie

Two days ago, when Carrie Fisher passed away due to complications from a heart attack she had last week on a flight from London to Los Angeles, we collectively wondered how this year could get any worse. Last night, we got the answer when Carries mother, legendary actress Debbie Reynolds, passed away. Since the news of their deaths, theres been an outpouring of support for the Fisher family  for Todd Fisher, the son of Debbie and brother of Carrie, Billie Lourd, Carries daughter, and Gary, Fishers beloved support dog.

Early this morning, the official Instagram for Gary Fisher broke its silence for the first time since the passing of Carrie.



I miss her soooo much, she was the BEST mOm eVeR!! I u and Ms. Debbie too. #garyloveshismom #garyloveshisfans #garyfisher #garyissad A photo posted by Gary Fisher (@garyfisher) on Dec 28, 2016 at 11:06pm PST

Accompanying the photo of the makeshift star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame fans made for Fisher was the caption,

I miss her soooo much, she was the BEST mOm eVeR!! I u and Ms. Debbie too. #garyloveshismom#garyloveshisfans #garyfisher #garyissad

Gary, a four-year-old french bulldog, became a social media sensation last year due to his appearances on-screen with Carrie during her press tours for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens and for her new book The Princess Diarist. One of his most memorable appearances was during Carries Good Morning America interview for Star Wars where Carrie bragged about his Twitter popularity and Gary was visibly bored and fell asleep in the chair.

Din/date night with mom #garyinitaly2016 #garytravelstheworld #garyloveshismom A photo posted by Gary Fisher (@garyfisher) on Oct 29, 2016 at 1:24pm PDT

Gary who was on the plane with Carrie when she suffered her heart attack, will reportedly be taken in by Billie, per Carries wishes. While were heartbroken for the Fisher family in the losses of Carrie and Debbie, we believe that Billie and Gary will be a great source of comfort for each other as they process the difficult losses.

The post Gary Fishers official Instagram just shared a heartfelt post for his mom, Carrie appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Replacing defunct IC notes: India to make special arrangement for Nepal

With the deadline set by the Indian government to exchange old notes in the denominations of 500 and 1,000 expiring on Friday, India is preparing to make a special arrangement for Nepal to replace the demonetised bills, Indian officials have said.
With oil market indicators showing prices per barrel not seen since the summer of 2015, consumers may worry that filling up the gas tank could soon make a dent in their wallets. While such concerns arent totally unfounded, they may be a bit exaggerated, according to experts.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Nov. 30 decision to cut its collective oil production by 1.2 million barrels per day, or 4 percent, to 32.5 million has sent Brent crude, an international benchmark, soaring nearly 20 percent, to more than $56 per barrel as of Wednesday from around $47 in mid-November. West Texas Intermediate, a U.S. benchmark, rose nearly 25 percent, to nearly $54 per barrel from around $43 over the same period. The cartel's move was an attempt to normalize prices after two and a half years of significant declines, from more than $100 per barrel for both Brent and WTI in mid-2014.

U.S. gasoline prices have followed suit, rising a few cents per week since OPEC confirmed the deal, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. On Nov. 21, for example, the nationwide average $2.269 per gallon. As of Dec. 26, it was $2.419a six-month high.

OPECs deal wont even take effect until Sunday, Reuters reported. Already, not only have OPEC members Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Oman signaled their commitment to production cuts, but non-members like Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Mexico and, most recently, Venezuela have as well.

Still, the output cut may be all talk and no action. As the Wall Street Journal noted, the cartel has backed out of its promises to cut production 17 times over the past three and a half decades, as individual members have cheated on their commitments to lower output.

If compliance is typical, then the actual cut would be a fraction of what was agreed to, Journal editor Spencer Jakab wrote in a Dec. 23 column.

Some members have already maintained the longtime tradition of cheating, a move that could render the agreement worthless, as an influx of supply by one member into the market could drive down the price by meeting or exceeding importers demand. On Wednesday, for instance, Asian imports of oil from Iran, an OPEC member, more than doubled that of last year for the second consecutive month, Reuters reported. Earlier in December, Iraq increased sales of the commodity to China, India and the U.S., and even expanded a contract with a major Chinese refiner.

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On Jan. 13, a compliance committee consisting of five representatives from both OPEC and non-OPEC nations will convene in Abu Dhabi to discuss ways of maintaining the Nov. 30 agreement. Whether the nations will effectively comply, and send oil prices up in the process, remains unclear.

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Berlin (AFP) - German anti-terrorism experts believed Berlin truck attack suspect Anis Amri was unlikely to commit an assault, even though he was a known Islamist who had volunteered for a suicide attack, a report said Thursday.

Minutes before Amri allegedly rammed the hijacked truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, he sent an SMS, saying: "My brother, all is well, according to God's will. I am now in a car, pray for me my brother, pray for me."

The message, as well as a selfie taken in the truck's cab, was likely sent to a 40-year-old Tunisian arrested in Berlin on Wednesday, said the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily.

Investigators seeking to discover if Amri had accomplices said the detained Tunisian suspect "could have been involved in the attack".

Counter-terrorism officials have a detailed file on Amri, they knew he was tightly linked to Germany's radical Islamist network and had looked up instructions online on how to build pipe bombs, the newspaper reported.

The latest version of their file on Amri, which included information on his eight different identities, was updated on December 14 -- just five days before he allegedly killed 12 people in the Berlin attack.

Duesseldorf police deemed Amri a Salafist and radical fundamentalist, while Dortmund police had rated him a sympathiser of the Islamic State group.

Amri had been a regular guest at a religious school in a Dortmund apartment run by a notorious radical known as Boban S. that was believed to be a recruitment ground for jihadists.

Nevertheless, on an eight-point scale assessing an individual's potential danger, with "one" the highest threat, counter-terrorism experts rated him a "five" -- meaning they considered an attack possible but unlikely.

Amri's phone was recovered from the site of the truck attack.

Citing Berlin government sources, the newspaper said the lorry's automatic braking system activated on impact, possibly saving lives.

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The truck had ploughed into the crowd but swerved to the left after 60 to 80 metres (200 to 260 feet), crashing through a stall before coming to a halt.

Shortly after the rampage, authorities admitted that counter-terrorism services had been watching Amri, suspecting he may have been plotting an attack.

But surveillance was dropped in September, as police thought he was primarily as a small-time drug dealer.

Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered a sweeping review of the security apparatus after the attack, so that any necessary reforms could be agreed and implemented quickly.
A longtime Republican congressman says that Russias leak of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clintons campaign during the U.S. presidential election was a public service.

If Russia succeeded in giving the American people information that was accurate, Arizona Rep. Trent Franks said Thursday afternoon on MSNBC, then they merely did what the media should have done.

Franks comments came shortly before the Obama administration announced sanctions against Moscow for interfering with the U.S. election.

Im all for doing whats necessary to protect the election here, Franks said. But theres no suggestion that Russia hacked into our voting systems or anything like that.

Rep Franks:"If Russia succeeded in givinginfo that was accuratethey merely did what the media should've done" https://t.co/NSZqUJz81Q  Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) December 29, 2016

In October, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian hacking of American political organizations like the Democratic National Committee was an attempt to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system. In a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill earlier this month, the Central Intelligence Agency concluded that it was quite clear that electing Donald Trump was Russias goal.

Related: Paul Ryan welcomes Obamas overdue Russia retaliation

Trump dismissed the assessment, calling it a card being played by the Democrats to undercut his stunning election victory.

Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card, Trump tweeted on Dec. 12. It would be called conspiracy theory!

Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016

Are we talking about the same cyberattack where it was revealed that head of the DNC illegally gave Hillary the questions to the debate? Trump tweeted on Dec. 16.

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Are we talking about the same cyberattack where it was revealed that head of the DNC illegally gave Hillary the questions to the debate?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2016

On CNN, Sean Spicer, Trumps incoming White House press secretary, also suggested to Jake Tapper that the media did not scrutinize the DNCs lack of adequate cybersecurity.

At what point is it incumbent upon you guys in the media to ask the DNC what measures do they take to protect this? Because it seems to me theres a lot of talk about the DNC not doing what they should have done to protect their own network servers, Spicer said. Im not saying in any way shape or form, to be clear, any attempt to hack or to do anything nefarious is wrong and illegal. At some point, the question hasnt even been asked of the DNC, Did you take basic measures to protect the data that was on there?'

But Franks praise of a foreign actors alleged cyberattack against the United States ignited a backlash on social media.

It's good to know what side he's on: when it comes to American citizens v Russia, Franks chose Russia https://t.co/lV25RNMyAI  Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) December 29, 2016

Its good to know what side hes on, Neera Tanden wrote on Twitter. When it comes to American citizens v Russia, Franks chose Russia.
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - The discovery of a burned-out car in Rio state with a body inside has sparked fears that it might be that of the Greek ambassador to Brazil, missing since Monday.

Rio police were examining the corpse and scene but could not say whether it was that of the envoy, 59-year-old Kyriakos Amiridis.

"The information that we can confirm right now is that we have found a car in (the district of) Nova Iguacu with a body and it is being investigated," a source in the homicide squad told AFP.

The source would not say whether the license plate of the car was from the rental the ambassador was using, nor when DNA results on the body would be back.

Amiridis had been on vacation with his family in Rio de Janeiro's northern Nova Iguacu area since December 21.

He was due to fly back to Brasilia on January 9, a Greek embassy official told AFP.

But he went missing on Monday night, after going out of the apartment they were renting and taking the car, according to Brazilian media. His Brazilian wife formally declared him missing on Wednesday.

The Brazilian news website published photos of the burned car found on the slope of a busy suburban thoroughfare. It reported that police "suspected" the body inside to be that of the ambassador.

The Greek foreign ministry had earlier issued a statement saying that after Amiridis was declared missing, "the full mobilization of all the competent Brazilian authorities was requested."

Amiridis was named ambassador this year. He had previously served as Greece's consul general in Rio from 2001 to 2004.

He served as Greece's ambassador to Libya from 2012 to 2016.

He is married and has a daughter, according to the embassy in Brasilia.
Congratulations are in order for Greys Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo and husband Chris Ivery. The couple welcomed their third child together  a baby boy.

Pompeos rep confirmed the good news in a statement to Us Weekly, telling the publication that she, the baby and the rest of the family were doing great. Pompeo, 47, shared the first photo of her little bundle of joy on Thursday, showing her hubby cuddling up to his first son. In her caption, the esteemed actress revealed the name that she and Ivery chose for their baby boy  Eli Christopher. Additionally, Pompeo joked that her husband just fell a notch, telling fans there was a new man in her life.

Days before her sons birth, the Greys Anatomy star found herself at the center of social media controversy involving her children and her use of black emojis. The drama began on Dec. 22, when Pompeo praised A&Es decision to rename their Ku Klux Klan docuseries, which has now been canceled. In the tweet, the actress used a black thumbs up, which drew mixed emotions from followers.

One Twitter user suggested that it was not fair to see a privileged white woman use black emojis for the heck of it, adding that it made her appear really obnoxious. Pompeo fired back, calling her critic a hater and adding that racism is a problem that must be tackled by people of all colors. Her response was met with more controversy, at which point the actress pointed out that she has a black husband and black children. Some felt that Pompeo was using her family as props to aid in her argument, which wasnt helping.

Drama aside, Pompeo and Ivery have been happily married since 2007. The pair had two children together prior to welcoming their son. Their daughters Stella Luna and Sienna May are 7 and 2 respectively. Pompeo gave birth to Stella in 2009 and made the decision to have her second daughter via surrogate. She was open about the process throughout. During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! she called it an incredible thing to do, adding that she was forever grateful.

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Ellen Pompeo, Chris Ivery

Photo: Getty Images

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Washington (AFP) - Russian intelligence agencies over the last two years blanketed Democratic Party targets with malicious emails and have likely continued such efforts after November's elections, a US federal law enforcement report showed Thursday.

The report's release coincided with an array of measures unveiled by Washington as retribution for what American officials have described as Moscow's malicious efforts to tip the vote in favor of President-elect Donald Trump by stealing embarrassing information from Democratic Party operations and senior party members before releasing it to the news media.

The report, produced jointly by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security, traces the routes allegedly taken by hackers to infiltrate party operations, using targeted campaigns of "spearphishing," or fraudulent emails designed to cause the recipients to reveal passwords and other information, and then stealing large volumes of email.

US officials refer to the Russian hacking efforts collectively as "Grizzly Steppe," it said.

The report corroborated or matched much of what had already been revealed by news media, which pointed to broad-based hacking by outfits such as APT 28 for "advanced persistent threat" tied to the Russian military intelligence body known as GRU, and APT 29, which may be associated with the FSB, or Russian federal security service.

"This activity by Russian intelligence services is part of a decade-long campaign of cyber-enabled operations directed at the US government and its citizens," DHS and FBI said in a joint statement with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the sprawling US intelligence community.

US intelligence officials in October formally accused Russia of responsibility for the hacking but have since reportedly been at pains to provide evidence without compromising their own intelligence collection.

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The report contained technical specifications and IP addresses that the authors said network administrators could use to identify malicious activity as well as a set of recommendations for hardening networks against attack.

According to the report, in mid-2015 APT 29 used legitimate internet domains from US educational institutions and other organizations to host malware and send spearphishing emails to more than 1,000 accounts, including some belonging to US officials, successfully stealing email in bulk from several accounts.

In the spring of 2016, APT 28 also attacked, tricking victims into changing their emails on a fake website hosted by APT 28.

The New York Times reported this month that APT 28 stole emails belonging to John Podesta, then the chairman of Democrat Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, and also penetrated computers used by the Democratic National Committee as well as the campaigning arm of Democrats in the House of Representatives.

"The US government assesses that information was leaked to the press and publicly disclosed," Thursday's report said.

"Actors likely associated with (Russian intelligence services) are continuing to engage in spearphishing campaigns, including one launched as recently as November 2016, just days after the US election."
It was one of the earliest promises President Barack Obama made after entering the White House in 2009, one that had also been made often on the campaign trail: to close the U.S. Detention Center at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a military prison he called a "stain" on a nation whose founding principle is the rule of law.

So just days after taking office, Obama ordered a study on how to close Gitmo, as it is known. Its existence and reputation for abuse, he argued, was a recruiting tool for terrorists and, therefore, a threat to national security.

But as his groundbreaking administration fades into history, Gitmo is outliving Obama's good intentions.

Nearly a year ago, the president again vowed to close the center, submitting the latest among several failed plans to Congress. As expected, it again fell prey to political realities -- opposition from lawmakers, the Pentagon and leaders within his own party.

"This is about closing a chapter in our history," Obama said in February 2016, repeating the same idealistic arguments he's made since he announced his first White House campaign nine years earlier: It's expensive, unnecessary and contradicts U.S. ideals.

"Keeping this facility open is contrary to our values. It undermines our standing in the world," he told reporters gathered in the White House's East Wing. "It is viewed as a stain on our broader record of upholding the highest standards of the rule of law."

On cue, House Speaker Paul Ryan, the top Republican in Congress, poured a bucket of cold water -- again -- on Obama's plan to bring Gitmo's remaining inmates, ones who can't be repatriated or stand trial, to the U.S.

"After seven years, President Obama has yet to convince the American people that moving Guantanamo terrorists to our homeland is smart or safe," Ryan said in a statement. "It is against the law -- and it will stay against the law -- to transfer terrorist detainees to American soil. We will not jeopardize our national security over a campaign promise."

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Though there was plenty of partisan topspin in his statement, experts say Ryan's response encapsulates why some repressive regimes Washington has criticized, including Russia, say Gitmo is synonymous with American do-as-I-say hypocrisy. It's also why experts say the world's most infamous prison will probably exist for years, perhaps decades, beyond Obama's tenure.

The president's crusade to darken Gitmo, a facility that costs U.S. taxpayers nearly half a billion dollars each year, is hamstrung by a complex web of conflicting priorities. That includes wary lawmakers and anxious voters more worried about threats from locking up suspected terrorists in U.S. prisons -- no matter how secure -- than they are about Guantanamo as a beacon for anti-American terrorists.

The hurdles, however, also include the facility's ugly legacy of detainee abuse -- actions that all but invalidate criminal evidence against some of them -- and its unstable, built-on-the-fly justice system, which can't guarantee speedy trials or meet constitutional standards of jurisprudence.

Others, however, say the president's failed promise to close Gitmo stems from nearly a decade of backbiting within segments of the Obama administration -- including the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department -- as well as Obama's internal battle among his ideals, his duties as commander in chief and his reluctance to use political muscle on an unpopular decision.

"It's absolutely insane," says Chris Anders, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington Legislative Office, ticking off arguments for closure, including Guantanamo's $455 million annual bill for taxpayers and Russian President Vladimir Putin's use of it as a rebuttal to U.S. criticism of totalitarian states like his own.

"There are good reasons to close it. It hasn't closed because of political infighting and score-settling," Anders says. "It's basically a question of political will and courage."

But the administration says closing Guantanamo is an imperative that has bipartisan support.

The White House "worked for several months" to examine options "and finalize a comprehensive plan to responsibly and securely close the detention facility," says Emily Horne, a White House National Security Council spokeswoman, in an email interview. "As the president said in his remarks in February, keeping this facility open is contrary to our values. It undermines our standing in the world. It is viewed as a stain on our broader record of upholding the highest standards of rule of law."

Situated on a 45-square-mile U.S. naval base on land leased from Cuba since 1903, Guantanamo was initially intended to become a facility for "the worst of the worst": men captured on the post-9/11 battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighters considered too dangerous for transfer to federal prisons.

They include Mohammed al Ansi, described as Osama bin Laden's former bodyguard; Khalid Ahmad Qasim, a suspected al-Qaida subcommander; and Salman Yahya Hassan Muhammad Rabeii, who has "expressed hatred for the US" and "has expressed an interest in becoming a martyr," according to a military assessment.

Almost immediately after Gitmo opened, however, there were problems.

Human rights advocates said the center violated the Geneva Conventions for prisoners of war. Civil liberties groups argued that indefinite detention without charge, standard operating procedure at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was unconstitutional. Dozens of inmates were found to have either been handed over to the U.S. military by warring third parties or were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time; others reported military guards and CIA interrogators tortured them into confessions of hostile or terrorist acts.

As the wars ground on, the detainee population grew to 780 by the mid-2000s. What had been an open-air prison camp in the Caribbean was subsequently transformed into a hardened permanent facility, more like a standard, high-security prison than a military installation.

White House attorneys and top Pentagon brass scrambled to create a justice system for inmates like suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- men who weren't traditional POWs or members of an armed force. They came up with military tribunals, a jury of three to seven armed-forces officers hearing evidence with a presiding judge, also in uniform.

Under the procedures, a defendant "would receive many, but not all, of the due process protections" guaranteed in a U.S. court, according to the Constitutional Rights Foundation. While they include the presumption of innocence and the right to defense counsel, the tribunals are closed to the public, the prosecution needs only convince two of three fellow military officers for a conviction and a defendant's right to appeal is sharply limited.

Critics say the commissions are slow and ineffective, taking an average of eight years to conclude. Military prosecutors and defense lawyers wrestle over mountains of classified evidence, including statements made under torture. Just three detainees have been convicted in 13 years, while Mohammed has been on trial, on and off, since 2007.

By comparison, Richard Reid, the so-called "Shoe Bomber," and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate an underwear bomb, both were tried and convicted in federal court not long after their arrests. Though many of his Muslim comrades in arms ended up in Gitmo, John Walker Lindh, an American captured in Afghanistan fighting with the Taliban, is doing time in a federal prison under a plea deal.

"The problem is [military commissions] are a broken system -- it's a made-up form of justice," the ACLU's Anders says. The military judges "are doing their best" to ensure fair trials, he says, but they, the defense lawyers and the prosecutors all are navigating uncharted legal territory that may not survive a Supreme Court challenge.

Under pressure, the Bush administration cleared and released more than 500 inmates, pushing through objections in Congress and negotiating with other countries to accept former detainees when their home countries, fearing terrorism, refused. And when he succeeded President George W. Bush in 2009, Obama moved to make good on his promise of closing Guantanamo with all deliberate speed.

But when the new president proposed transferring some Gitmo detainees into the same system that dealt with Reid, Abdulmutallab and Lindh, Congress balked -- including most Republicans and many Democrats, including Sen. Harry Reid, a top Obama ally.

Bravo, said voters. A CNN/ORC poll conducted early this year, just after Obama submitted his latest plan, found that 56 percent think closing Guantanamo Bay is a bad idea, while 40 percent support it. But overall support tilts to one side, with 83 percent of Republicans saying it shouldn't be closed -- up sharply from 76 percent in 2015. Meanwhile, the already-low odds that Congress would go along with Obama and shut down Gitmo sank to almost nil when the GOP won the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014.

Adding to the opposition was a new intelligence report late last year that found some repatriated inmates had returned to the battlefield.

Reacting to the news, the House in September voted to block the president from transferring any of the remaining Guantanamo Bay detainees out of the facility, even banning him from sending them to foreign countries that have agreed to take them. The bill probably won't go far, but it was another public reminder that Obama's pledge to close Gitmo had been, in the most favorable analysis, an uphill battle with few political allies.

The report in question comes from the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which confirmed that two detainees released since Obama took office have returned to "terrorist activities." Further, the report says, nine of 161 inmates released since January 2009, whose identities are classified, are now supporting terror groups, and 11 are "suspected" of fighting U.S.-led forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

But Horne, the White House spokeswoman, says that's the exception, not the rule. Releases happen, she says, only after "the best judgment of U.S. Government experts, including counterterrorism, intelligence, and law enforcement professionals" determine that the detainee isn't likely to become a threat.

"Since President Obama signed Executive Order 13492, less than six percent of former detainees have been confirmed, and less than seven percent of former detainees are suspected of reengaging in terrorist activity," Horne says. "The rigorous interagency review process put in place by this Administration has resulted in a measured, responsible, and thoughtful approach to transfers that places the safety of Americans paramount."

Nevertheless, there are at least 43 inmates who pose the thorniest challenge: Intelligence reports declare they're too dangerous for release, but they can't be legally tried for various reasons -- including evidence against them that was obtained through torture, inadmissible in court.

Though indefinite detention violates both the Geneva Conventions and the Constitution, the Bush administration argued that it didn't apply to Guantanamo: Rather than POWs from a national army, the camp houses stateless "unlawful enemy combatants" who aren't considered prisoners of war and aren't on U.S. soil.

It's clear, however, that the "forever detainees" probably aren't going anywhere: the military is preparing to care for Gitmo's remaining population over the long haul, and Obama has quietly acknowledged they may never be freed.

"There's going to be a certain irreducible number that are gonna be hard cases, because we know they've done something wrong and they are still dangerous," he told CNN in 2014. "But it's difficult to mount the evidence [against them] in a traditional [federal] court. So we're going to have to wrestle with that."

In September, a Guantanamo spokesman told The Miami Herald that the base is spending $2.6 million renovating its infirmary to include cardiac equipment, an MRI unit and a dialysis machine. With 10 detainees between ages 50 and 60, the spokesman said, the investment is an attempt to answer the "broader questions raised by an aging population" that can't be treated in America.

Last summer, an investigation by Connie Bruck, a reporter for The New Yorker, found that, on election night in 2008, elated prisoners and staff chanted Obama's name and held an impromptu party. But a recalcitrant Congress, White House divisions and high-ranking Pentagon skeptics quickly quashed the new administration's plan for an orderly, bipartisan shutdown.

"The attempt to close the prison has entailed tense negotiations with foreign officials, heated confrontations during meetings in the White House Situation Room, and, especially, a long-running fight with the Pentagon, which outplayed Obama for years," Bruck wrote. "For those who worked to implement his policy, often without support, the frustrations were acute. 'You need White House backing,' a senior Administration official told me. 'If something went wrong, the risk was all ours. Gitmo was a potential career-ender.'"

But the ACLU's Anders says the buck also stops with Obama: He didn't quash the West Wing infighting, didn't use his commander-in-chief powers to bring the Pentagon to heel and -- when faced with annual military funding bills in which lawmakers inserted language blocking Guantanamo's closure -- the veto pen stayed in his pocket.

"That's why it has stayed open," Anders says, "and I think that it will survive his presidency."

Obama also came to understand that Gitmo -- which one government attorney described as the legal equivalent of outer space -- will do serious damage to his legacy. White House officials are scrambling to meet the deadline of Jan. 20, Obama's last day on the job, and Obama himself is mindful of his own missed opportunities

Last March in Cleveland, a seventh grader "asked what advice [Obama] would give himself if he could go back to the start of his Presidency," Bruck writes in the New Yorker. "Obama said, 'I think I would have closed Guantanamo on the first day.' But the politics had got tough, he said, and 'the path of least resistance was just to leave it open.'"

Joseph P. Williams is a news editor with U.S. News & World Report. E-mail him at JWilliams@usnews.com.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)  Haiti has delayed publication of the final, certified results of its disputed presidential election.

Electoral authorities said late Wednesday that they will release the results on Jan. 3. A preliminary tally gave a big victory to Jovenel Moise, the candidate backed by Haiti's previous president. He topped his closest challenger by more than 385,000 votes in the Nov. 20 election redo.

Only 21 percent of Haiti's voters participated in the election, which was called after an October 2015 election was annulled when a special commission reported finding what appeared to be significant fraud and misconduct. Moise also finished first in that vote count.

Officials said the results of legislative races will be published starting on Thursday.
This is what can happen to your period when youre traveling abroad

Aside from a few minor inconveniences like jetlag and long customs lines, international travel is one of lifes best experiences. But, nothings perfect (not even that trip to your favorite European city)  and if youve noticed changes in your menstrual cycle during international excursions, its not a fluke  theres a scientific explanation for the changes to your period when youre traveling abroad.

According to research scientist Anna Druet, crossing time zones influences the regularity of our periods because international travel disrupts our sleep schedule.

But, what does that have to do with our periods? As it turns out, our menstrual cycles and sleep cycles are linked  so when our sleep is disrupted, our period follows suit.

When we travel across time zones, we suddenly become exposed to light at different times of the day. This above all throws off our circadian rhythms, Druet explained to Broadly. Research has shown that even a small amount of dim, artificial light triggers hormonal changes in the body.

According to Health, those of us who cross time zones frequently are most likely to experience menstrual changes when we travel, but all women should be prepared for period disruptions. And, of course, we never know quite what to expect  our period may arrive early, late, or we may skip it altogether. It may be lighter or heavier than usual, and the cycle could be shorter than our normal one (yay!)  or last longer (not cool).

So, when we pack our bags to embark on an international adventure, its a good idea to pack an extra box of tampons  and then we can hope and pray that we fall into the group of women who simply skip their periods when crossing time zones.

The post This is what can happen to your period when youre traveling abroad appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Japan pledges Rs 1 billion for medical kit, food security

The Japan government has pledged an assistance of around Rs 1 billion to Nepal government for the executions of Project for Improvement of Medical Equipment at the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH)
HBO invites you to revel in the biting wit of the late Carrie Fisher with an encore broadcast of Wishful Drinking, the cablers 2010 adaptation of the Hollywood vets autobiographical stage show.

RELATEDCarrie Fisher Dies: Mark Hamill Devastated, Plus More Reactions

Airing this Sunday, Jan. 1, at 9/8c, Wishful Drinking finds Fisher telling the intoxicating tale of her life, combining her raucous one-woman stage performance, interviews with family and friends, and archival footage.

The special earned two Primetime Emmy Award nominations in 2011, including for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special.

RELATEDCarrie Fisher Set to Appear in Two New Family Guy Episodes

Fisher passed away on Dec. 27, after suffering a heart attack during a flight from London to Los Angeles. Her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds, died of a stroke the following day, on Dec. 28.

Launch Gallery: Carrie Fisher's Best TV Roles

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TOKYO (Reuters) - The president of Dentsu Inc, Japan's largest advertising agency, will step down over the "death by overwork" of a young employee, a suicide which has prompted official probes and fresh hand-wringing over Japan's overtime culture.

Matsuri Takahashi, a promising graduate of Japan's top university, leapt to her death in December 2015, leaving behind a trail of grievances over relentless days. She clocked 105 hours of overtime in October 2015, before becoming depressed.

Her death, deemed by the government to be "karoshi" or death by overwork, has prompted raids on Dentsu offices, but has also been followed by Japan's first white paper on the issue.

That study found that in a country that imposes few limits on employers regarding overtime hours and pay, more than a fifth of companies had staff that worked more than 80 hours of overtime in a month - the government threshold.

"It is extremely regrettable that we could not prevent overwork by a new recruit," Dentsu President Tadashi Ishii told a news conference.

"In order to take full responsibility, I would like to resign as president at a board meeting in January."

Ishii said Dentsu and a company employee had been referred to prosecutors by the Japanese labour ministry's Tokyo labour bureau on suspicion of violating labour standards law.

Dentsu said it had not yet decided on a replacement for Ishii.

Ishii's resignation comes as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing a wide-reaching campaign to reform Japan's employment laws, which could include tighter overtime regulation.

Hard work and sacrifice have long been synonymous with Japan, and strong social expectations make it difficult for employees and unions to aggressively push for reforms.

Workers often feel a debt of gratitude for being hired and are reluctant to quit even if conditions are bad. Others, especially new hires, feel they have to work longer hours than their colleagues to get promoted.

"The problem is not with Dentsu alone," the Asahi Shimbun, the country's second-largest newspaper by circulation, said in an editorial on Thursday.

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Noting that the newspaper itself had received an overwork warning from the government this month, the Asahi described the matter as "a difficult issue but a theme that relates to raising employees' morale and productivity and improving companies' profitability."

Takahashi's mother, Yukimi, said in a statement released to media by her lawyers on Sunday, that she wanted to "change the consciousness of every working person in Japan." The statement was released on the one-year anniversary of her daughter's death.

In recent years, the government has revised labour laws to encourage shorter working hours, but critics say these steps have relied too much on self-regulation.

Japan officially recognises two types of karoshi: death from cardiovascular illness linked to overwork, and suicide following work-related mental stress.

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Additional reporting by William Mallard; Editing by Clara Ferreira Marques and Sam Holmes)
The main idea behind the scam is over at least 10 years old, only the methodology has changed. Pose as a hit man, tell someone he or she is the target, but offer to let the person live in exchange for a large sum of money.

The FBI warned about the scam in a press release almost 10 years ago, when it was being perpetrated through emails. And in a Twitter post Wednesday, police in the southeastern state of Alabama warned about the same scam being played out over text messages.

In a Facebook post on the same issue, Bill Partridge, chief of police in Oxford, Alabama, went a step further and added that the messages also contain a virus, a contention that could not be verified.

But that does nothing to take away from the fact that the messages are hoaxes, and are designed to swindle people out of their hard-earned money by playing on their fears. There is no real danger from a hit man, the only danger is losing money to a scammer.

According to Snopes.com, a website dedicated to busting urban legends and rumors, the hit man scam likely originated in Russia before making its way to inboxes in the United States in December 2006, following which the FBI issued its warning.

If you receive such a message, you can choose to ignore it, and if you feel any actual threat to your life, approach law enforcement instead of paying the ransom. The chief threat from the messages is not against you, it is to your bank account.

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2016 has been such an unpredictable year that you might not even blink an eye at reports that Joaquin Guzman, the Mexican drug lord known as "El Chapo," again escaped from prison this week.

But you should. Despite articles claiming the contrary, El Chapo remained Wednesday in Cefereso 9, a jail in Ciudad Juarez near El Paso, Texas, according to local NBC affiliate KTSM.

The confusion arose when El Diario, a Spanish-language newspaper, published a story with the headline "El Chapo is gone again!" The article went on to detail the gang leader's alleged jailbreak, which involved him walking to a window, tying a blanket to the rails, landing on the ground and jumping in a waiting helicopter. His escape, according to the story, triggered a manhunt.

The report wasn't so far-fetched: After all, El Chapo has escaped authorities twice  in 2001, by hiding in a laundry cart, and in 2015, via an underground tunnel  while serving time for drug trafficking charges. But Wednesday was Dia de los Santos Inocentes, which in Mexico is celebrated with pranks and jokes a la April Fools' Day.

The El Diario article's final line confirmed the article was fake, noting that "on this day, in no man should you trust."

KTSM summed it up as such: "You got punked."

This wasn't the first time news of an El Chapo escape has gone viral. This past July, Mexican interior secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong had to tweet a photo of the kingpin in a prison cell in order to quash rumors of another jailbreak, Univision reported.

Meanwhile, in real news, El Chapo was due to be extradited to the United States within the first two months of 2017  coinciding with the one-year anniversary of his capture. However, his lawyers have fought back against this deadline, claiming "that's not enough time" for his appeals to be processed in Mexico, Reuters reported.

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A long time ago  I realized that I loved to sing, dance, and make people laugh, Debbie Reynolds said in 2002. The trick is finding something that you like and sticking with it. The Oscar-nominated star from Hollywoods Golden Age stuck with what she loved for more than 60 years, until her death Wednesday evening at the age of 84.

Reynolds death comes the day after her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher, died unexpectedly at age 60. Reynolds was at Fishers estate Wednesday when she suffered a possible stroke and was rushed to the hospital. Her son, Todd Fisher, confirmed her death to multiple outlets including Variety, TMZ, and the Associated Press. She wanted to be with Carrie, he told Variety. Reynolds released a statement about Fishers death on Dec. 27, thanking fans for their support and for embracing the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter.

Born Mary Frances Reynolds in 1932, she got her first break at 16, when Warner Bros. signed the newly crowned Miss Burbank as a contract player and gave her the stage name Debbie. The bubbly, wholesome actress quickly became Americas Sweetheart, appearing in Singin in the Rain (1952) and marrying pop idol Eddie Fisher, with whom she had two children. Fisher left Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor in 1958, setting in motion a messy divorce and public relations scandal that Carrie Fisher would later liken to the Aniston-Pitt-Jolie saga of the 21st century. Reynolds was the Jennifer Aniston in the scenario, the apple-cheeked All-American Girl wronged by love.

Reynolds earned her first and only Oscar nomination in 1964 for the musical comedy The Unsinkable Molly Brown and went on to star in her own short-lived NBC sitcom, The Debbie Reynolds Show. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, she worked primarily on the stage  in 1974, she earned a Best Actress Tony nomination for the musical revival Irene  but returned to top form on the big screen in 1996 when Albert Brooks cast her as the acerbic title character in Mother, a role that earned her a Golden Globe nomination. In 2000, she won an Emmy for her recurring role as Debra Messings feisty mom on NBCs Will and Grace.

In her later years, Reynolds toured the country with her successful nightclub act. In 2010, she starred in her own West End show, Debbie Reynolds: Alive and Fabulous. A lifelong collector of movie memorabilia, she was to oversee the relocation of the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Motion Picture Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. But those plans were scrapped in 2009 when the developer went bankrupt. Instead, Reynolds auctioned off much of her collection, including Marilyn Monroes white subway dress from The Seven-Year Itch. In 2013, Reynolds released a memoir, Unsinkable, and appeared that same year in the HBO movie Behind the Candelabra, playing Liberaces mother. In 2015, she was honored with the SAG Life Achievement Award, which was presented by her daughter.

She has been more than a mother to me, not much, but definitely more. Shes been an unsolicited stylist, interior decorator, and marriage counselor, Fisher said. Admittedly, I found it difficult to share my mother with her adoring fans, who treated her like she was part of their family. She has led two lives, public and private, sometimes concurrently, sometimes not.

Reynolds, accepting that award, told the crowd that her all-time favorite role was Singin in the Rain and made reference to her turn in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. In that movie, I got to sing a wonderful song I Aint Down Yet,' she said. Well, I aint.
DETROIT (AP) -- Honda Motor Co. is recalling 633,753 Odyssey minivans in the U.S. because the second-row seats could move unexpectedly.

The recall involves Odysseys from the 2011 to 2016 model years. They were made between Aug. 1, 2010, and Oct. 1, 2015.

The vehicles have a second-row seat lever that moves the outer seats forward to access the third row. Honda says the release lever may remain in an unlocked position, which could allow the seats to move unexpectedly.

Honda says the problem was identified through warranty claims. There are no reports of injuries or accidents related to the issue.

Honda will notify owners about the recall next month. Dealers will repair the seat levers for free.

The recall was posted Thursday on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's web site.
HONG KONG -- With a daily schedule that includes catwalks, commercials and acting lessons, 58-year-old Regina Chan appears to lead a glamorous life.

"It's a rewarding job, not in terms of monetary rewards, but to me it's ... fulfilling ," she says of her job.

Chan says she worked in the fashion business for more than 20 years, so moving into modeling was fairly easy. She wants to encourage people growing old to take the leap of trying new things. "The changes begin from [within] ourselves."

[ Best countries for aging populations.]

The passing of Chan's parents is one of the reasons she says she took up modeling. She said that as soon as they stopped being active they started to lose memory and her father eventually developed Alzheimer's disease. "I don't want my children to see me grow old lying in bed, or can't even remember their names."

Growing old in Hong Kong is increasingly a challenge. The Chinese territory's residents rank comparatively poorly in the world for elderly income security. The findings are in the Global AgeWatch Index, a study that ranks how aging populations are faring around the world and conducted by the HelpAge International non-governmental organization.

[ The age-old dilemma of long-term care.]

Using the methodology in the Global AgeWatch Index, researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong ranked Hong Kong 79 th out of 97 countries and territories in terms of the elderly population's psychological well-being.

Despite the challenges facing Hong Kong residents, happiness in a person's later years is still possible, says the founder of the modeling agency that Chan works for.

[ Across Scandinavia, grandma goes hi-tech.]

"The ultimate vision of OHH Dear is to promote the message that aging can be cool," says Zip Cheung, founder of Ohh Dear Communications. "It has nothing to do with whether you're wealthy or not, educated or not. It depends on how you think, how you'd like to grow old."

OHH Dear currently has a team of 30 models, the oldest being 93 years old.

Shen Xinmei is a master's degree candidate at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre.
As previously reported, The Weeknd's "Starboy," featuring Daft Punk, rises to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (dated Jan. 7, 2017), marking The Weeknd's third Hot 100 No. 1 and Daft Punk's first.

More action abounds on the Hot 100, as Drake ties Lil Wayne for the most appearances among soloists in the chart's history and Wham!'s holiday classic "Last Christmas" makes its first-ever visit to the survey.

Who else makes notable moves on the latest Hot 100?

Amine, "Caroline"

The track jumps 16-11, hitting a new high in its 16th week on the Hot 100. It returns to the Streaming Songs top 10 at a new peak (13-7), up by 1 percent to 15.1 million U.S. streams in the week ending Dec. 22, according to Nielsen Music. It also hits the Digital Song Sales top 10 (16-10), gaining by 23 percent to 41,000 sold. The track retreats 36-40 on Radio Songs, but bumps by 7 percent to 31 million airplay audience impressions.

The Portland, Oregon, rapper, 22, gave "Caroline" notable buzz last month when he performed it on NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (Nov. 15), adding a new verse directed at Donald Trump: "You can never make America great again / All you ever did was make this country hate again."

Zayn / Taylor Swift, "I Don't Wanna Live Forever (Fifty Shades Darker)"

After debuting at No. 6 on the Dec. 31-dated Hot 100, the collab drops to No. 18 in its second week. On Digital Song Sales, it tumbles 1-7 (48,000, down 75 percent). Conversely, it bounds 26-19 on Radio Songs (46 million, up 17 percent) and, following its arrival on Spotify Dec. 16, roars onto Streaming Songs at No. 19 (8.7 million, up 151 percent).

"Live" is the Greatest Gainer on the Pop Songs airplay chart, where it advances 19-15, and Adult Pop Songs (21-15). It's also the highest debut, at No. 36, on Rhythmic Songs.

Rae Sremmurd, "Swang"

Although the duo drops to No. 2 on the Hot 100 after six weeks on top with "Black Beatles," featuring Gucci Mane, it adds its 10th entry on the chart, as "Swang" starts at No. 99. (It also enters Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs at No. 40.) Streaming primarily drives the debut, as the song drew 4.3 million U.S. streams (up 3 percent) in the tracking week.
Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia (Photo: Lucasfilm)

I got in character and I never got out again  and really, Ive tried everything.  Carrie Fisher on Good Morning America, 2015

In the wake of Carrie Fishers passing, many a tribute has reminded us that she was more than just Princess Leia. And its true: She was a prodigiously gifted writer and performer, accomplishments that are all the more impressive in light in her tabloid childhood, her addictions, and her bipolar disorder. But Princess Leia was much more than a series of uncomfortable costumes and comical hairdos from Fishers youth. The actress went to great (and sometimes futile) lengths to transform Leia from a two-dimensional cartoon into someone sympathetic and heroic. And when Fisher realized that she would always be remembered first and foremost as Princess Leia, she embraced that thorny legacy  and re-shaped it, telling the story of Star Wars in her own inimitable way. Through her hilarious anecdotes and penetrating observations, the making of Star Wars became its own legend  a story that seemed to tell itself, even as Fisher was doctoring the script.

Related: How the Famous I Love You/I Know Scene From The Empire Strikes Back Really Came Together

Carrie Fisher was 19 when she was cast in Star Wars, and was so nervous about her first big movie role that she remembered keeping her head down and agreeing to everything. I kept thinking they were going to realize their big mistake soon about hiring me, she told J.W. Rinzler in an interview for 2007s The Making of Star Wars. After the first film opened and Star Wars mania tore through the land, making instant celebrities of Fisher and her co-stars, she became more assertive. In the behind-the-scenes recordings taken by the publicity department during the shooting of the second film (as documented in Rinzlers The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back), she expressed her frustration that Leia was not a fully developed character.

She is more of a caricature and is somewhat one-dimensional, Fisher said in a videotaped interview from 1979. Its not really possible to write out a list of Princess Leias likes and dislikes. I do know her favorite color, though  its white. She wears white all the time. But that doesnt help me much.

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Fisher tried to give her character more nuance, but it wasnt easy, in part because director Irvin Kershner apparently didnt think Leia was that important. This is abundantly clear from a fly-on-the-wall audiotape, recorded during the shooting of one of the films big scenes: the one in which Han Solo is encased in carbonite. Rinzler transcribed the tape, which shows how Kershner rewrote the scene in collaboration with Harrison Ford right before they were scheduled to shoot (resulting in the famous I love you/I know exchange). When Ford came to Fisher with the changes, she was incensed  understandably so, because Ford had been given the opportunity to rework Han Solo and Leias parts, and Fisher hadnt been granted the same courtesy.

You wrote this other part without me Theres nothing Leia can bargain for. Theres nothing I can do, Fisher complained. She asked for more agency (I could slap Lando or something) but her suggestions werent treated with the same seriousness as Fords. (Ironically, as alluded to above, Fisher would later become one of Hollywoods most in-demand script doctors. Ford would not.) The biggest slap in the face came out of earshot; later, as Kershner was describing the situation to first Assistant Director David Tomblin, he said, Carrie went crazy.

This is what Fisher was up against, as the only woman with a leading role in the original trilogy (and one of the only women on set, period). She was the first person to take Princess Leia seriously, and managed to convey that in her performance despite being constantly shut down, treated  as she told Kershner  like the bimbo.

Related: The Star Wars Cantina Scene: The Out-of-This-World Story Behind the Galaxys Favorite Dive Bar

When Jedi went into production, she gave it another shot, urging George Lucas to give her some sort of drinking problem.

I said, Leia lost her parents and planet in the first film and in the second a very close friend lost his hand and her first boyfriend was frozen, she recalled in The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. By the third movie, I must be totally exhausted. Ive been chased for who knows how many years. I figure Im ready to go, Hey, guys, I cant do this anymore. Im going to get my hair done. You handle it. And I book myself into a convent.

The anecdote is funny, but her intention was sincere: To give Leia some battle scars, to show how the rebellion has changed her. (These issues would be addressed, years later, in The Force Awakens and the accompanying Leia novels and comics.) Compare that to Jedi director Richard Marquands intentions for Leia, as quoted in the same book: In the last movie, the princess became such a bitch, she really was a drag. It became very boring, Marquand said before filming began. Im sure there was a lot more depth that we could use and more comedy, too. Turn her into more of a woman.

Fisher was miserable with the changes Jedi brought to her character: stripping her down (and worse, rendering her speechless) for the scenes in Jabbas palace, then turning her into an affectionate Ewok earth-mother for the Endor scenes. All of a sudden I was someone who loves you and, you know, all that stuff; my hair was down and Im wearing this hippie dress I felt like a Barbie doll, she told Rinzler. And I got insecure. I felt really uncomfortable.

Her attempts to rewrite lines, once again, were not taken seriously. So the actress found other ways of battling these changes. One was to make the most of the Jedi scene she did love  My favorite moment in my own personal film history, shed write in 2016s The Princess Diarist  the one in which Leia strangles Jabba the Hutt with her own slave chains. Fisher insisted on foregoing a stunt double and killing Jabba herself. Another was that she decided to become a writer, to make sure that she was never caught mute in a bikini again.

Fishers subsequent accomplishments as a screenwriter, novelist, and memoirist now have been well documented, but whats more subtle is how she rewrote her own Star Wars role, after it had been filmed. Take the aforementioned scene at Jabbas palace. In the mid-90s, pop culture developed an obsession with slave Leia  there was that Friends episode, and the fan site Leias Metal Bikini, among other examples. The rebel princess was cast as an image of a generations sexual awakening.

But rather than accept this reductive view of Princess Leia, Fisher told the story her way. She talked openly about how uncomfortable and awkward that costume was (what supermodels will wear in the seventh ring of hell, as she described it in Newsweek)  and not just that costume, but her original white gown, worn with gaffer tape over her nipples because George Lucas insisted there was no underwear in space. Then she shifted the focus of the conversation from Leias passive, dialogue-free scenes to the moment of her revenge. When a controversy erupted in 2015 over the continued merchandising of slave Leia toys, Fisher said she found peoples objections stupid.

The father who flipped out about it, What am I going to tell my kid about why shes in that outfit? Tell them that a giant slug captured me and forced me to wear that stupid outfit, and then I killed him because I didnt like it, she told the Wall Street Journal (via io9).

At the same time, Fisher  who by this time had shot The Force Awakens  made sure that her Star Wars successor would not be sexualized as she had been. You should fight for your outfit. Dont be a slave like I was, Fisher told Daisy Ridley during an Interview magazine conversation. You keep fighting against that slave outfit. Ridley agreed, on the record.

Fisher was constantly doing that: Changing the Star Wars conversation, tilting George Lucas universe in a more inclusive direction. Though the Star Wars creator was meticulous about documenting every spaceship and special effect in his original trilogy, Fisher brought humor and a much-needed human touch to Lucas legend. Her stories  many of which appear in her memoir Wishful Drinking  are invariably the most entertaining, and the most relatable. She told them over and over, never the same way twice: The reason she briefly had a British accent in A New Hope. The story behind the hairstyle that shed refer to as hairy earphones. The crazy merchandising of her character (as described in Wishful Drinking: A shampoo bottle where people could twist off my head and pour liquid out of my neck. Paging Dr. Freud!). Her stunned amusement at learning Leias true parentage (she compared it in The Making of Star Wars to somebody saying, Carrie, your dad isnt Eddie Fisher. Hitler is.) Let other peoples nostalgia-drenched, making-of-Star Wars anecdotes make you wish you were there; Fisher was the only one who could make you feel like you actually were there.

One of the joys of seeing The Force Awakens arrive in theaters was watching Carrie Fisher on the press tour, delighting in the opportunity to show an aging-but still in-charge Princess Leia to the world.

At that point, shed donned the Leia wig for her one-woman show and the cover of two memoirs. She talked candidly about how the role of Leia had defined her, and she had defined it in return, with all the ridiculousness and responsibility that entailed. When a Rolling Stone writer asked her in 2016 if she ever has the urge to tell overzealous fans that Theyre just movies! she replied, I dont. Over the years Ive considered that theyre not just movies Ive totally embraced it.

Fisher frequently joked about how her obituary would run alongside a photo of Princess Leias 20-year-old head sandwiched between two buns. It would be absurd and perfect, the logical end to the story shed been telling her whole life. Who do I think I wouldve been if I hadnt been Princess Leia? she asked in her introduction to The Princess Diarist. Am I Princess Leia, or is she me? Split the difference and youd be closer to the truth. Carrie Fishers version of the truth has always been, and always will be, the one we want to hear.

Carrie Fishers Memorable Film Roles:
Kidney racket busted in Kathmandu, 3 held

Metropolitan Police Crime Division on Thursday arrested three individuals involved in organ-trafficking from Kathmandu Valley.
Several towns in Cook County, Illinois are balking at a minimum wage hike that will require local businesses to nearly double baseline salaries and provide paid sick leave for workers, FOX Business Networks Jeff Flock reported Thursday.

The measure, approved last October by the Cook County Board and set to take effect in July, will gradually raise minimum wage from $8.25 at present to $13 per hour by 2020. Opponents argue that a mandated wage hike will make it more difficult for Cook County businesses to operate and deter others from opening stores in the affected area.

The minimum wage hike is particularly divisive in Barrington, Illinois. The Cook County line runs through the center of town  businesses on one side of the line will pay the old rate, while businesses on the other side adhere to the new regulations. Rather than enforce two sets of rules on the same community, Barrington leaders say they will opt out of the law entirely.

We cant have two sets of rules for the business community, Barrington Village President Karen Barch told Flock.

Barrington isnt the only town considering an opt-out. The nearby communities of Palatine and Elgin are also weighing their options, according to Flock.

While local towns are within their rights to reject the wage hike, such an action could have consequences. County officials could cut funding in key areas, such as local infrastructure, for communities that choose not to adhere to the measure.

Several cities and states across the country have had similar debates on minimum wage in recent months. Proponents say wage hikes are necessary to support workers and combat the rising cost of living.

In November, voters in Arizona, Maine and Colorado approved an increase to a $12 minimum wage by 2020. Washington state passed an increase to $13.50 over the same timeframe.

Andy Puzder, the CKE Restaurants CEO and President-elect Donald Trumps nominee for Secretary of Labor, opposes federal mandates on minimum wage and job benefits.

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States have every right to decide what the minimum wage should be, Puzder said during an appearance on Mornings With Maria in November.

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ROME (Reuters) - Implementing an emergency decree to prop up Italy's struggling banks will be a long and complicated process, Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said on Thursday.

The government approved a decree last week to bail out its third-largest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS.MI) and pledged to protect the savings of around 40,000 retail investors.

"Putting this into practice will be long and complicated, we aren't hiding that, but it is a strategic and fundamental decision," Gentiloni told a news conference.

(Reporting by Giselda Vagnoni, writing by Isla Binnie)
(Recasts with confirmation from Infraero)

SAO PAULO, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Brazilian state-run infrastructure company Empresa Brasileira de Infraestrutura Aeroportuaria (Infraero) said on Thursday it plans to establish partnerships to run certain Brazilian airports.

The plan to create subsidiaries is preliminary, Infraero said in response to a report in newspaper Folha de S.Paulo that the company was mulling a joint venture with Germany's Fraport AG to explore running some of Brazil's busiest airports.

"The negotiation strategy and all calculations related to the initiative will be announced in due course," Infraero told Reuters in an emailed statement.

The Infraero-Fraport joint venture could list shares on the stock market as early as next year, according to the newspaper, which cited unnamed authorities involved in the project.

Brazil's busiest airports currently operated by Infraero include Santos Dumont in Rio de Janeiro and Congonhas in Sao Paulo.

Fraport said the company remains interested in projects involving Brazilian airports.

"Currently, however, there are no new developments in this respect and, in particular, no contractual cooperation with any partner in Brazil." a spokesperson told Reuters in a statement Thursday.

(Reporting by Ana Mano; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
The deaths of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher over the past 48 hours have left the team behind the upcoming HBO documentary on the mother and daughter reeling from shock.

Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds is a chronicle of the extraordinary bond that mother and daughter forged over six decades in the unrelenting glare of showbizs spotlight. Documentary vets Fisher Stevens and Alexis Bloom directed the film, which screened in October at the New York Film Festival and before that in May at Cannes.

Its a love story, said HBO Documentary Films president Sheila Nevins told Variety Wednesday night after the news broke of Reynolds death at the age of 84.

Carrie wanted to make Bright Lights for Debbie and Debbie wanted to make it for Carrie, Nevins said. The sudden loss of the two women only magnify the importance of Fisher and Bloom capturing the material for the movie when they did.

Fisher died unexpectedly Tuesday at the age of 60 following complications from a heart attack suffered during a flight from London to Los Angeles. The twin blows have been overwhelming to all of those involved in Bright Lights, Nevins said. If this was a Hollywood script, no one would believe it, she said, fighting back tears. They just loved each other so much. The bond was just unbreakable.

A formal premiere date has not yet been set. HBO will carefully consider the appropriate timing given the tragic developments, Nevins said.

Much of the footage for Bright Lights was shot about a year ago. The movie depicts the intensely close relationship that mother and daughter maintained through all their personal and professional ups and downs. Fisher in the movie is candid about her recent battles with mental illness.

Its life with Carrie and Debbie. Its about both of them trying to stand upright, both having their frailties  age on the one hand and mental illness on the other. Its a love story about a mother and daughter  they happen to be Carrie and Debbie.

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Fishers goal with Bright Lights was to document for a younger generation Reynolds legacy as an entertainer  from her wholesome image as the star of the Tammy films to musicals such as Singin in the Rain to her cabaret and comedic chops. She wanted to preserve all of that for her mother, Nevins said.

Nevins became friendly with Fisher a few years ago when they worked together on the HBO adaptation of Fishers one-woman Broadway show Wishful Drinking. The HBO docu chief spoke to Fisher by phone just last week.

HBO will air an encore presentation of Wishful Drinking in Fishers honor on Sunday at 9 p.m. The film tells the story of Fishers life, combining her raucous one-woman stage performance, interviews with family and friends, and archival footage.

Fisher had planned to fly from London to New York to do some work with HBO on Bright Lights, Nevins said, but she changed her mind and headed straight to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with Reynolds and other family members.

Nevins last spent time with Fisher in London in June. She was in good spirits and racing to finish her latest memoir, The Princess Diarist, about her experiences on the first three Star Wars films. There was already talk of turning that book, published last month, into another one-woman show and HBO special, Nevins said.

Carrie wanted to be well even when her mind didnt let her be well, Nevins said. She was perfectly brilliant.

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There Could Be No 'Artist,' No 'La La Land' Without Debbie Reynolds
In the fall of 2004 Rachelle Waterman shared a family life that appeared anchored and happy  until murder shattered that facade.

Her dad, Carl Doc Waterman, was a a real estate agent and president of the school board in small-town Craig, Alaska. Her mom, Lauri, was a special education teachers aide who volunteered with her church and other civic groups. Rachelle, then 16, was a student-athlete who sang in the school choir, played volleyball and competed in an academic decathlon.

But as revealed in the next episode of People Magazine Investigates, airing Monday night on Investigation Discovery, beneath the surface of Rachelles life there was tension.

Lauri, 48, went missing in November 2004 and her remains were found in her minivan, which had been abandoned in the woods and set on fire. Investigators then began sifting through clues  settling on mother-daughter conflict as a motive for her killing and advancing a startling theory:

Rachelle was arrested on charges that she had her mother murdered by her older boyfriend and his friend. She was found guilty of negligent homicide and sentenced to three years in prison. She was released from prison in 2015 and remains on probation.

Key evidence of the plot was provided by Rachelles online journal, titled My Crappy Life, which described the struggles with her mom.

A lot of the ramblings and rantings on the blog are pretty typical teenage girl stuff, PEOPLE Executive Editor Kate Coyne explains on Mondays PMI episode. But if you scratch the surface a little bit, there seems to be a current of anger that maybe goes beyond just your typical adolescent ranting.

 Watch our new true crime show, People Magazine Investigates, which airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery.

Well, Im grounded, Rachelle posted on June 14, 2004, five months before Lauris killing. Last night my mom went psycho b- on me. I even got to fly down the stairs, she wrote, suggesting shed been pushed and describing her then current mood as sore.

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Two months earlier, on April 6, 2004, Rachelle listed her mood as angry, writing, I had a bad night, and a bad day. This is my warning to all of you. If you piss me off, you die.

Rachelles world was undermined by feelings of isolation she had begun to feel in Craig, a tiny town of 1,400. She wrote that her mother was critical of her weight. For a time she dressed all in black, with black nail polish to match, and when she picked out a black velvet dress for prom, her mother told her I couldnt pull it off, she wrote.

Some of Rachelles friendships also attracted her mothers notice.

Around age 15 or 16, Rachelle met and briefly dated Brian Radel, who was then in his early 20s. Concern about the age difference led Radel to end the relationship  but not before he introduced Rachelle to his friend, Jason Arrant, who was about the same age at Radel.

The relationship took off between Rachelle and Jason, a janitor at a local high school who lived in his mothers basement.

 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

Its not surprising Lauri was not thrilled with this being her daughters boyfriend  a guy who is nearly a decade older, who doesnt seem to have any real goals for the rest of his life, Coyne says.

The alleged conflicts with her mother that Rachelle related to Jason, who then shared his concerns about Rachelles safety with his friend Brian Radel, planted the seed for Lauri to be kidnapped and killed while her daughter and husband were away, according to prosecutors who brought all three suspects to trial.

Arrant and Radel pleaded guilty to murder and testified against Rachelle.

The People Magazine Investigates episode on Lauris death, The Darkest of Nights, airs Monday night (10 p.m. ET) on Investigation Discovery.




Baghdad (AFP) - Iraqi forces advanced Thursday after declaring a new phase in their offensive on eastern Mosul, stepping up efforts to reclaim the Islamic State group's last major stronghold in the country.

Elite forces have reconquered several parts of eastern Mosul since beginning the massive operation to recapture the northern city from the jihadists on October 17, but IS still occupies the city's west.

Security chiefs said several neighbourhoods had been taken, with the bodies of IS fighters seen lying on the streets and drone footage showing others retreating.

Retaking Mosul could effectively end the jihadist group's days as a land-holding force in Iraq and deal a death blow to the "caliphate" IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed in the city in June 2014.

"The second phase of liberating the left bank in Mosul was launched, and our forces began advancing toward Al-Quds neighbourhood," said Staff Lieutenant General Abdulghani al-Assadi, a senior officer in Iraq's Counter-Terrorism Service.

"Our forces clashed with the enemy and there is resistance," he told AFP, adding forces on the northern and southern fronts were also advancing.

Mosul, now the last Iraqi city in which IS still holds significant territory, is split by the Tigris River, with the east side referred to as the left bank and the west as the right.

Iraq's federal police commander, Raed Shaker Jawdat, said "the enemy's line of defence has fallen back" inside the city.

"The streets of the Al-Salam, Al-Intisar, Al-Wahda, Al-Falestin and Al-Quds neighbourhoods are strewn with the bodies of Daesh fighters," he said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

Police had also entered deep into the district of Jadida al-Mufti.

The commanding chief of the offensive, Staff Lieutenant General Abdulamir Yarallah, late Thursday announced "the liberation of the Al-Quds 1 district".

- US probes 'civilian casualties' -

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The commander said police drones had spotted IS fighters retreating to the city's western side via a pedestrian bridge badly damaged in the fighting.

Centcom, the US military command in the Middle East, said the US-led coalition fighting IS had disabled "the last bridge crossing the Tigris river inside Mosul" this week at the Iraqi government's request.

It said meanwhile that an investigation had been opened after a US-led air raid on an IS van during the Mosul operations on Thursday struck "what was later determined to be a hospital compound parking lot resulting in possible civilian casualties".

A Mosul inhabitant who requested anonymity reported hearing many explosions and said residents were holed up indoors.

The new push in the battle for Mosul comes after progress slowed to a crawl in the past few weeks.

After two months of fighting, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi last week said the army had decided to review battle plans and pause to reduce losses.

The fighting has been all the more devastating as it has been happening in a city amid civilians.

IS has targeted the army with car bombs on at least 900 occasions in the streets of Mosul since October 17, according to Abadi.

IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained much of the territory they lost to the jihadists.

Abadi had pledged that Mosul would be recaptured by year's end -- a goal that is now out of reach, as operations in western Mosul have yet to begin.

The Iraqi prime minister also said this week that three months were needed to eliminate IS in the country.

High-ranking officials believe the battle against IS could drag on, and the Sunni Muslim extremist group continues to carry out attacks in areas from which it had been dislodged by the government offensive.

Last week, an IS triple car bombing on a market in Gogjali a few kilometres (miles) east of Mosul killed at least 23 people.

The army had retaken Gogjali from the jihadists in early November after more than two years of IS occupation.
Baghdad (AFP) - Iraqi forces launched the multi-pronged "second phase" of the battle to retake eastern Mosul from jihadists on Thursday, a top commander said.

Iraqi forces punched into eastern Mosul after the massive operation to recapture the northern city from the Islamic State group was launched on October 17, but progress slowed to a crawl.

"The second phase of liberating the left bank in Mosul was launched, and our forces began advancing toward Al-Quds neighbourhood," Staff Lieutenant General Abdulghani al-Assadi, a senior officer in Iraq's Counter-Terrorism Service, told AFP.

Mosul, now the last Iraqi city in which IS still holds significant territory, is split by the Tigris River, with the east side referred to as the left bank and the west as the right.

"Now our forces clashed with the enemy and there is resistance," he said, adding that forces on the northern and southern fronts were also advancing.

Iraqi forces north and south of Mosul had so far remained outside the city, with the brunt of the fighting inside it being carried out by the CTS.

IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained much of the territory they lost to the jihadists.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had pledged that Mosul would be recaptured by year's end -- a goal that is now out of reach, as operations in western Mosul have yet to begin.

Abadi also said earlier this week that three months were needed to eliminate IS in Iraq.
By Isabel Coles and Stephen Kalin NEAR MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces on Thursday began the second phase of their offensive against Islamic State militants in Mosul, pushing from three directions into eastern districts where the battle has been deadlocked for nearly a month. Since the offensive to capture Mosul began 10 weeks ago, U.S.-backed forces have retaken a quarter of the jihadists' last major stronghold in Iraq in the biggest ground operation there since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. More than 5,000 soldiers and federal police troops, redeployed from Mosul's southern outskirts, entered half a dozen southeastern districts, while counter-terrorism forces advanced in al-Quds and Karama districts after reinforcements arrived. Other soldiers pushed simultaneously toward the city's northern limits. U.S. military advisers were seen watching operations as coalition aircraft circled overhead. "At 0700 this morning, the three fronts began advancing toward the city center. The operation is ongoing today and tomorrow and until we liberate the eastern side of the city completely," Lieutenant General Ali Freiji, who was overseeing army operations in the north, told Reuters. Iraqi forces have taken around half of the eastern side of Mosul, which is bisected by the Tigris river, but have yet to enter the western side, where 2,000-year-old markets and narrow alleyways are likely to complicate any advance. The fall of Mosul would probably spell the end for Islamic State's ambition to rule over millions of people in a self-styled caliphate, although the militants would still be capable of waging a traditional insurgency in Iraq, and plotting or inspiring attacks on the West. A U.S.-led coalition backing the Iraqis said Thursday's operation had opened two new fronts inside Mosul and limited Islamic State's ability to raise fighter numbers, move them or resupply. The U.S. military later said a coalition air strike that hit a van in the parking lot of a hospital compound on Thursday may have killed civilians, highlighting the challenge of targeting an enemy embedded within the civilian population. DEEPER U.S. ENGAGEMENT One elite Iraqi unit encountered sniper and machine gunfire as it advanced alongside federal police in Mosul's Intisar district, an officer said. A plume of white smoke, likely to be from an air strike, rose from a southeastern district while heavy gunfire was audible on the northern front and a commander there said nine suicide car bombs had been disabled. State TV said Islamic State defenses were collapsing in the areas of Salam, Intisar, Wahda, Palestine and al-Quds and that fighters' bodies filled the streets there. A military statement later said forces had raised the Iraqi flag in al-Quds. The government's accounts are difficult to confirm as the authorities have increasingly restricted foreign media's access to the battle fronts and areas retaken from Islamic State in and around Mosul. They have given no reason. The battle for Mosul involves 100,000 Iraqi troops, members of the Kurdish security forces and Shi'ite militiamen. U.S. commanders have said in recent weeks that their military advisers will embed more extensively with Iraqi forces. An army colonel said Iraqi forces had suffered few casualties so far. "The orders from the senior commanders are clear: no halting, no retreat until we reach the fourth bridge and link up with counter-terrorism units," he said. Coalition forces bombed the last remaining bridge connecting east and west Mosul late on Monday in a bid to block Islamic State's access across the Tigris River. "The enemy is currently isolated inside the left (eastern) bank of Mosul," military spokesman Yahia Rassol said on state TV. "In the coming days, Iraqi forces will liberate the entire left bank of Mosul and after that we will tackle the right." TRAPPED CIVILIANS The United Nations has expressed concern that destroying the bridges could obstruct the evacuation of civilians. As many as 1.5 million are thought to still be inside. Residents of eastern Mosul reached by phone described fierce clashes that included explosions, air strikes and bombardment by helicopters. "My family and I cannot leave the room we are sitting in. We have sealed the windows for hours, but in the afternoon the Iraqi forces arrived and we saw them," one al-Quds resident said. Civilians in western Mosul said clashes were audible from the opposite bank of the river. One of them said Islamic State was boasting in radio broadcasts of attacking areas retaken by Iraqi forces, where many civilians are trapped. Three residents emerged from a northern village on Thursday, including an elderly man who sat down in the road and sobbed. He said his wife had been shot dead by Islamic State a day earlier as she collected water. Iraqi forces searched the civilians and let them continue to a nearby village. Mosul, the largest city held by Islamic State anywhere across its once vast territorial holdings in Iraq and neighboring Syria, has been held by the group since its fighters drove the U.S.-trained Iraqi army out in June 2014. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who had pledged to retake Mosul by the end of the year, said this week it would take three more months to rout Islamic State from the country. The operation has been slowed by concern to avoid casualties among civilians, who despite food and water shortages have mostly stayed in their homes rather than fleeing as had been expected. More than 114,000 have been displaced so far, according to the United Nations. About 200 civilians who left villages north of Mosul on Thursday, many still with the full beards required by Islamic State, were taken by Kurdish security forces to a nearby camp. (Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Saif Hameed in Baghdad; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Nepal, China agree to manage Rasuwagadhi-Kerung border point

Nepali and Chinese officials have agreed to manage Rasuwagadhi-Kerung border point to ease the trade, heighten cross-border security, and repair the boundary pillars.
Israels Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman urged all Jews in France to leave the European country as a sign of protest against an upcoming conference hosted by Paris that is looking to restart Israel-Palestine peace talks.

Representatives from 70 countries will gather in Paris for the Jan. 15 peace talks, which Israel said it will not attend.

Perhaps its time to tell the Jews of France, This isnt your country, this isnt your land. Leave France and come to Israel, Lieberman reportedly said Monday.

He also described the upcoming conference as a new Dreyfus trial. Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish army captain, was wrongly convicted of espionage and treason in 1894. His trials divided the French society until he was cleared of all charges and reinstated in the army in 1906. His trials and conviction are viewed as a symbol of injustice and the anti-Semitic views in France at the time.

This is not a peace conference. Its a tribunal against the state of Israel, a conference whose whole point is to harm the security of Israel, its good name -- a trial against Israel, Lieberman said. Its a Dreyfus trial in a modern version, what they're preparing there in Paris for January 15, with one difference. Instead of one Jew being on trial, it will be the entire Jewish people and the state of Israel.

Through the January conference, France is hoping to revive the stalled peace talks while showing its support for the two-state solution, Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official and former peace negotiator, reportedly said.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said last week that France is determined to hold the conference despite setbacks. He added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will be invited to meet separately at the end of the peace talks. The two leaders will also be invited to discuss the proposals presented at the conference with French President Francois Hollande.

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France is still determined to hold a conference in Paris to reaffirm the necessity of a two-state solution, Ayrault said. January 15 is the date that has been fixed and 70 countries are invited. We are not going to give up now.

Liebermans comments come days after the United Nations passed a resolution condemning Israel for constructing settlements on Palestinian land. Israels biggest ally, the U.S., abstained from voting.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in a speech Wednesday, backed the two-state solution, saying: If Israel goes down the one state path, they will never have true peace with the rest of the Arab world. I can say that with certainty ... The two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians.

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Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel's right wing on Thursday dismissed US Secretary of State John Kerry's speech on the conflict with the Palestinians as a parting shot of little consequence, especially with Donald Trump soon taking office.

One minister repeated his assertion that a Palestinian state will be "off the agenda" once expected ally Trump takes over, while others from what is seen as Israel's most right-wing government ever mocked Kerry.

"Palestine will be taken off the agenda," Education Minister Naftali Bennett of the hardline Jewish Home party told the Ynet news site.

He repeated his call for Israel to annex most of the West Bank, which would destroy any hope for a two-state solution -- long the basis of negotiations and which Kerry passionately defended Wednesday.

Kerry's speech included forceful criticism of Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem, warning that it was helping put the two-state solution in "serious jeopardy".

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he still supports a two-state solution, but he has also described his government as Israel's most pro-settlement, leading many analysts to question his sincerity.

Religious nationalists such as Bennett who see the West Bank as part of Israel, pointing to the Jewish connection to the land from the biblical era, hold heavy sway in Netanyahu's government.

Netanyahu hit back immediately following Kerry's speech, calling it biased against Israel and more focused on settlements than Palestinian violence.

He has lashed out at US President Barack Obama and Kerry in particularly harsh language, blaming them for orchestrating last week's UN Security Council resolution demanding a halt to settlement building.

The United States abstained from the vote in a rare move, with the resolution passing 14-0.

Netanyahu and other Israeli officials fear a French-organised international Middle East peace conference set for January 15 could result in further moves against the country.

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They are concerned any new measures could then be taken to the Security Council for approval before Trump takes office.

- 'Guarantee of stability' -

Speaking Thursday at a military ceremony, Netanyahu said: "I want to work with the next American administration to reinforce the security of our two countries."

"A powerful Israel is an asset for the United States and a guarantee of stability in the Middle East," he said.

After Trump tweeted ahead of Kerry's speech "Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!" Netanyahu responded with a tweet of his own.

"President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!" he wrote.

The United States is Israel's most important ally, providing it with more than $3 billion per year in defence aid, but Obama's administration has become increasingly frustrated with settlement building.

There had long been speculation that he or Kerry would seek to influence the future direction of the stalled peace process in the last weeks of their administration.

While Kerry's speech broke little new ground, it included unusually stern criticism of Israel from an American leader.

Kerry said: "The settler agenda is defining the future in Israel. And their stated purpose is clear: They believe in one state: greater Israel."

Israel occupied the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967. It later annexed east Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community, and Israel now describes the entire city as its "eternal capital".

Culture Minister Miri Regev, from Netanyahu's Likud party, mocked Kerry's comments on Jerusalem, suggesting he should divide Washington instead.

- 'His own legacy' -

His speech was however not dismissed across the board in Israel, with opposition leader Isaac Herzog saying it "expressed a real concern for the security and future of Israel".

Others defended Kerry against charges he was biased, quoting from the parts of his speech where he expressed his warmth and deep concern for the country.

Indeed, Kerry and Obama have described their criticism of settlements as stemming from their worry that Israel is essentially on a suicide mission.

On Wednesday, Kerry spoke of a "fundamental reality."

"If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic - it cannot be both - and it won't ever really be at peace," he said.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said after the speech he was ready to resume peace efforts with Israel if settlement activity stops.

But even among those in Israel who supported Kerry's speech, some questioned the timing.

"John Kerry spoke last night to one person: to himself, to his own legacy," columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth.

"Benjamin Netanyahu, who rushed to respond, also spoke to one person: to Donald Trump."
ROME (Reuters) - Italian police have searched three houses in and around Rome, where the man suspected of killing 12 people last week at a Christmas market in Berlin may have spent time, a judicial source said on Thursday. Anis Amri, a Tunisian, first arrived in Europe by boat to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2011, and was shot dead by police in Milan four days after the Dec. 19 attack in Berlin. The searches focused in the capital and nearby Aprilia, where he was thought to have stayed after leaving a detention centre in Sicily in 2015, the source said. Police are investigating whether he was seeking to stay in Italy or trying to reach another country. On Thursday, during an end-year news conference, Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Amri was probably radicalised after arriving in Europe in 2011, but added that the government had no evidence Amri had "particular networks" in Italy. "Five years ago he was not a jihadist ... In desperation, in isolation, in alienation, he found the conviction to follow the path of radicalisation," Italy's anti-terrorism chief Franco Roberti was also quoted as saying in an interview with la Repubblica newspaper on Thursday. Roberti said lone-wolf attackers like Amri needed the help of small-scale criminal networks, such as those in Italy and Spain, for logistical support including acquiring false documents. "From this point of view, Italy and Spain are the cradles," Roberti said. Amri's undetected passage to Italy, via France, from Germany after the attack, has prompted eurosceptic parties to call for the reintroduction of border controls that were removed by the continent's open-border Schengen pact. Italy tried to deport him to Tunisia after he completed a four-year jail term for attempting to set fire to a building, but Tunisian authorities refused to take him, so he was released from the centre. (Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Alison Williams)
Rome (AFP) - The Italian state will foot 6.6 billion euros of the 8.8 billion euro ($9.2 billion) bill for bailing out struggling Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS), the country's central bank said Thursday.

The European Central Bank, citing the need for recapitalisation, on Tuesday raised the total capital required by more than three billion euros than had been judged necessary just one month ago.

Explaining the higher cost of the bailout, Italy's central bank in a statement said the public rescue plan was costlier than the original "market solution" directed at private investors.

The former plan was calculated at 5 billion euros, of which about 3 billion euros was meant to cover losses deriving from the sale of BMPS's bad loans and 2 billion euros was to protect against an increase in "the coverage ratio of the unlikely-to-pay loans".

However in the case of Monte dei Paschi di Siena "the immediate cost to the state" under the public option would amount to about 4.6 billion euros, it said.

"To this must be added the subsequent compensation of retail subscribers (about 2 billion euros) for a total of about 6.6 billion euros."

The statement added: "The cost to entities other than the Italian state will be about 2.2 billion euros. Accordingly, the total cost amounts to 8.8 billion euros."

Italian media had reported the likely cost to taxpayers as being around six billion euros.

BMPS came last in the ECB's bank stress tests this summer. It has been forced to raise capital twice since 2014 and its share price has plunged 80 percent since the start of the year, meaning it faced an uphill battle to win over investors.

Founded in Siena in 1472, BMPS has been in trouble for years. Weakened by the disastrous purchase in 2007 of the Antonveneta bank at twice the estimated value, it drifted into scandal when its management team was accused of fraud and misuse of funds.

The European Commission, meanwhile, announced late Thursday that it had given the go-ahead for a six-month extension -- until 30 June 2017 -- of a bank guarantee scheme, covering "liquidity support measures in favour of solvent credit institutions in Italy for use in case of need".

"This means that regardless of circumstances banks will have no difficulties in funding their operations and deposit access will be ensured at all times," a Commission spokesman said.
By Silvia Aloisi and Balazs Koranyi

MILAN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Italy's economy minister has said the European Central Bank should have explained more clearly why it nearly doubled its estimate of the capital shortfall for the ailing bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS.MI), which is being bailed out by the state.

In unusually critical comments of the euro zone's banking supervisor, Pier Carlo Padoan told a newspaper that the ECB's new capital target was the result of a "very rigid stance" in its assessment of the bank's risk profile.

"It would have been useful, if not kind, to have a bit more information from the ECB about the criteria that led to this assessment," Padoan told the financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.

Monte dei Paschi, Italy's third biggest lender and the world's oldest, said on Monday the ECB had estimated its capital shortfall at 8.8 billion euros ($9.20 billion), compared with a 5 billion-euro gap previously indicated by the bank.

The higher capital requirement substantially increases the cost of the bank's rescue by the government after it failed to raise the 5 billion euros on the market.

The Bank of Italy said in a statement later on Thursday that based on its own calculations the Treasury may have to put up around 6.6 billion euros to salvage the lender, including 2 billion euros to compensate around 40,000 retail bond holders.

The size of the state intervention has raised concern that Italy's newly created 20-billion-euro bank bailout fund may not have enough money for other weak banks. The government says the fund is sufficient.

The rest of the money Monte dei Paschi needs will come from the forced conversion of its subordinated bonds into shares, in line with European rules on bank crises. The lender fared the worst in EU-wide banking stress tests published in July.

Padoan said he expected the capital increase to take place in two to three months.

The ECB told the Italian treasury of its decision in a letter, which Padoan said was just five lines long and which has not been made public.

Story continues

It irked the Rome government and has quickly turned into a political issue. A group of lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Party asked Padoan and Italy's foreign minister on Wednesday to explain in parliament what had happened.

"I was a bit surprised to receive the news, out of the blue and on Christmas day," Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni told a press conference.

"It's important that the reasons behind this assessment are shared and that there is a dialogue because we need to handle this issue together ... We will stick to our guns."

The ECB has declined to comment on its rationale for the larger capital shortfall.

The Bank of Italy said in its statement that Monte dei Paschi's estimate of a 5 billion euros capital gap was based on the results of the stress test, conducted on end-2015 data, and included assumptions such as the sale of its whole portfolio of defaulting loans - a key part of its plan to raise money privately.

Given that plan's failure and the bank's worsening balance sheet over the past year, the central bank said the 8.8 billion euro capital requirement was justified by the need to reach an 8 percent Common Equity Tier 1 (CET 1) ratio - a key measure of financial strength - in an adverse scenario.

A source said the ECB had wanted to ensure that Monte dei Paschi had enough capital to safely meet that requirement, so it would be able to restore investor and customer confidence. The source also said the ECB had offered to explain its stance to both the Italian treasury and Monte dei Paschi.

At 8 percent under the adverse scenario, Monte dei Paschi would still be below the average of the ECB's stress test, in which banks would see their CET 1 ratio fall to 9.4 percent from 13.2 percent.

The 8 percent threshold in the adverse scenario was also a requirement the ECB set for ailing Greek banks in a 2015 review.

Padoan said the exact amount of capital Monte dei Paschi will have to raise will be determined once it presents a new business plan to the ECB and the European Commission, but he played down the bank's problems.

"The bank is in optimal condition and will have great success," he said.

(Additional reporting by Giulia Segreti and Agnieszka Flak in Milan and Giselda Vagnoni in Rome; Editing by Adrian Croft, Larry King)
By Silvia Aloisi and Balazs Koranyi

MILAN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Italy's economy minister has said the European Central Bank should have explained more clearly why it nearly doubled its estimate of the capital shortfall for the ailing bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena <BMPS.MI>, which is being bailed out by the state.

In unusually critical comments of the euro zone's banking supervisor, Pier Carlo Padoan told a newspaper that the ECB's new capital target was the result of a "very rigid stance" in its assessment of the bank's risk profile.

"It would have been useful, if not kind, to have a bit more information from the ECB about the criteria that led to this assessment," Padoan told the financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.

Monte dei Paschi, Italy's third biggest lender and the world's oldest, said on Monday the ECB had estimated its capital shortfall at 8.8 billion euros ($9.20 billion), compared with a 5 billion-euro gap previously indicated by the bank.

The higher capital requirement substantially increases the cost of the bank's rescue by the government after it failed to raise the 5 billion euros on the market.

The Bank of Italy said in a statement later on Thursday that based on its own calculations the Treasury may have to put up around 6.6 billion euros to salvage the lender, including 2 billion euros to compensate around 40,000 retail bond holders.

The size of the state intervention has raised concern that Italy's newly created 20-billion-euro bank bailout fund may not have enough money for other weak banks. The government says the fund is sufficient.

The rest of the money Monte dei Paschi needs will come from the forced conversion of its subordinated bonds into shares, in line with European rules on bank crises. The lender fared the worst in EU-wide banking stress tests published in July.

Padoan said he expected the capital increase to take place in two to three months.

Story continues

The ECB told the Italian treasury of its decision in a letter, which Padoan said was just five lines long and which has not been made public.

It irked the Rome government and has quickly turned into a political issue. A group of lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Party asked Padoan and Italy's foreign minister on Wednesday to explain in parliament what had happened.

"I was a bit surprised to receive the news, out of the blue and on Christmas day," Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni told a press conference.

"It's important that the reasons behind this assessment are shared and that there is a dialogue because we need to handle this issue together ... We will stick to our guns."

The ECB has declined to comment on its rationale for the larger capital shortfall.

The Bank of Italy said in its statement that Monte dei Paschi's estimate of a 5 billion euros capital gap was based on the results of the stress test, conducted on end-2015 data, and included assumptions such as the sale of its whole portfolio of defaulting loans - a key part of its plan to raise money privately.

Given that plan's failure and the bank's worsening balance sheet over the past year, the central bank said the 8.8 billion euro capital requirement was justified by the need to reach an 8 percent Common Equity Tier 1 (CET 1) ratio - a key measure of financial strength - in an adverse scenario.

A source said the ECB had wanted to ensure that Monte dei Paschi had enough capital to safely meet that requirement, so it would be able to restore investor and customer confidence. The source also said the ECB had offered to explain its stance to both the Italian treasury and Monte dei Paschi.

At 8 percent under the adverse scenario, Monte dei Paschi would still be below the average of the ECB's stress test, in which banks would see their CET 1 ratio fall to 9.4 percent from 13.2 percent.

The 8 percent threshold in the adverse scenario was also a requirement the ECB set for ailing Greek banks in a 2015 review.

Padoan said the exact amount of capital Monte dei Paschi will have to raise will be determined once it presents a new business plan to the ECB and the European Commission, but he played down the bank's problems.

"The bank is in optimal condition and will have great success," he said.

(Additional reporting by Giulia Segreti and Agnieszka Flak in Milan and Giselda Vagnoni in Rome; Editing by Adrian Croft, Larry King)
Tokyo (AFP) - The president of Japan's biggest advertising agency said he plans to step down, a year after an employee suicide linked to allegations of extreme overwork at the company.

The announcement came as Japanese authorities referred Dentsu and one of its executives to prosecutors on suspicion of violating Japan's labour law by forcing the 24-year-old employee to work illegally long hours.

Matsuri Takahashi, a graduate of the prestigious University of Tokyo, committed suicide on Christmas Day 2015 at a company dormitory.

She had worked more than 100 hours of overtime every month having joined the company in April of the same year, Japanese media reported.

She had posted on Twitter a wish to die and said she "would be happier" if she did.

Hundreds of deaths from overwork -- known as "karoshi" in Japan -- due to strokes, heart attacks and suicides are reported every year, along with a host of serious health problems.

The phenomenon has sparked lawsuits and calls to urgently tackle the problem.

Tadashi Ishii, Dentsu president, announced late Wednesday he would leave his post next month.

"An excessive amount of work should never happen," he told reporters. "I deeply regret and feel responsible for this.

"I will take full responsiblity and resign as president at January's board meeting."

Ishii however said the company should not prevent employees from doing their best.

"But I deeply regret that I couldn't put a break on (excessive workloads) and that I couldn't set a certain standard," he added.

The socially influential agency is notorious for its demanding work culture, but has come in for harsh criticism since Takahashi's death.

While the popular image of Japanese salaried men and women toiling long hours for the company before taking the last train home is changing, many still spend far more hours at the workplace than their counterparts in other modern economies.

According to a government survey released in October, more than one in five Japanese companies have employees who work such long hours they are at serious risk of death.

The survey was part of the nation's first white paper on "karoshi" endorsed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet.
At 83 years old, Japanese Emperor Akihito is ready to retire.

The royal, who has held the throne since 1989, has battled prostate cancer and undergone multiple surgeries in recent years. In August, he released a video expressing his desire to abdicate the throne in favor of his son, Naruhito, the Crown Prince of Japan. Naruhito is 56  nearly the same age as his father was when he succeeded his own father.

But theres a catch: In Japan, a monarch isnt legally allowed to abdicate. In the video, he issued a plea of sorts to parliament to allow him to resign and hand over the reins to his son.

Fortunately, I am now in good health, he said in the address. However, when I consider that my fitness level is gradually declining, I am worried that it may become difficult for me to carry out my duties as a symbol of the state with my whole being.

Now, it appears hes going to get his wish.

A Japanese government panel, set up in response to Akihitos video, is expected to announce that they have decided that he should be allowed to abdicate through the implementation of a special, one-time-only law.

However, a friend of Akihitos said that he wants not just a pass for himself, but for future emperors, too.

Members of the panel and some of the public are wary of allowing any emperor the ability to abdicate. Many worry that it would crumble the foundation of the monarchy, and would lead to an heir to the throne refusing to take over, or abdicating after a short period.

Most of the public seems to be in favor, though: According to a poll by Jiji press, 61 percent of those asked support a permanent law that would allow for abdication.




TOKYO (AP)  Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, just back from a visit to Pearl Harbor, has visited a Tokyo shrine that honors Japan's war dead, including convicted war criminals.

The visit Thursday, and one by another Cabinet minister the day before, drew rebukes from neighboring South Korea and China.

Earlier this week, Inada accompanied Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his visit to Hawaii's Pearl Harbor, where he offered condolences to those who died in the Japanese attack there in 1941.

Japan's Asian neighbors harbor bitter memories of the country's atrocities before and during World War II, when it colonized or invaded much of the region. So visits by top Japanese leaders to the shrine often draw complaints from countries such as China and South Korea that see them as attempts to whitewash that history of wartime aggression.

Since drawing complaints when he visited Yasukuni in December 2013, Abe has instead sent gifts of money and religious ornaments.

Japan's Kyodo News service reported that Abe, who was golfing outside Tokyo, refused comment when asked about Inada's visit.

The defense minister doffed her shoes on her way into the shrine, and afterward told waiting journalists, "Regardless of differences in historical views, regardless of whether they fought as enemies or allies, I believe any country can understand that we wish to express gratitude, respect and gratitude to those who sacrificed their lives for their countries."

China's CCTV news and its official Xinhua News Agency remarked on the timing of the visit, just after Inada's return from Hawaii.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry said it was "deplorable" that Inada had visited a shrine that "beautifies past colonial invasions and invasive war and honors war criminals."

The ministry also called in Kohei Maruyama, a minister at the Japanese Embassy in South Korea, to lodge protest over the Yasukuni visit, to protest over the Yasukuni visit.

Story continues

The country's Defense Ministry expressed "serious concern and regret."

Inada's visit was her first since becoming defense minister last summer, though she has regularly visited it in the past. A lawyer-turned-lawmaker with little experience in defense, she is one of Abe's proteges and backer of his long-cherished hope to revise Japan's Constitution. She has said parts of the war-renouncing Article 9 should be scrapped, arguing that they could be interpreted as banning Japan's military.

Inada has defended Japan's wartime atrocities, including forcing many Asian women into sexual servitude in military-run brothels, and has led a party committee to re-evaluate the judgment of war tribunals led by the victorious Allies.

Her link to a notorious anti-Korea group was acknowledged by a court this year in a defamation case she lost. Inada also was seen posing with the leader of a neo-Nazi group in a 2011 photo that surfaced in the media in 2014.

Masahiro Imamura, Japan's disaster reconstruction minister, went to Yasukuni on Wednesday, drawing criticism from Beijing.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, said his visit "reflects the Japanese government's unhealthy attitude toward its past transgressions."

___

Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul contributed.
Nepal, China to conduct first ever joint military drill

Nepal and China will hold their first joint military exercise early next year, China's Ministry of National Defence (MOD) said.
* Expectations for U.S. economic boost pushes up equities trading

* Increased business activity to benefit Nomura -CEO

* Any protectionism under Trump not good for global economy -CEO

* "Considering options for every scenario" for Brexit -CEO

* No.2 brokerage Daiwa studying post-Brexit move -Daiwa CEO

By Thomas Wilson and Emi Emoto

TOKYO, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Nomura Holdings Inc sees opportunities in the pro-business stance of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, though his protectionist tilt brings uncertainty to the global economy, said the chief of Japan's biggest brokerage and investment bank.

Japanese shares have gained since the New York billionaire's Nov. 8 election, spurred by Wall Street where investors are betting Trump's support of deregulation and infrastructure spending could boost the U.S. economy.

"The market expects business and economy-friendly policies," CEO Koji Nagai told Reuters. "Clients will have to rebalance portfolios, in both Japan and America. That's a chance for us."

Investors shifting funds to riskier assets such as shares would be a boon for Nomura's equity trading arm, while increased business activity will benefit its advisory and equity and bond underwriting divisions, Nagai said.

Nomura earned over half of April-September overseas pretax profit in the Americas, where it is shifting focus to client-oriented services from market-based trading.

TRUMP BARRIERS

But Trump has spoken of measures to protect U.S. businesses at the expense of foreign interests, including pulling the U.S. out of the North American Free Trade Agreement and Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, and imposing tariffs on some imports.

Any such measures could have a detrimental effect on trade, Nagai said - something likely to limit opportunities for financial firms such as Nomura.

"If the U.S. adopts a protectionist trade policy, it won't have a good impact on the global economy," Nagai said.

While it is difficult to gauge the costs of policies that impede cross-border trade and investment, Trump's protectionism could have an adverse impact on Japan's export-heavy economy, a Reuters poll showed this month.

Story continues

BREXIT MOVES

In Europe, Nomura and its peers face the possibility of losing so-called passporting rights that allow them to provide services across the European Union (EU) from bases in Britain following the latter's vote to withdraw from the bloc.

Some are considering shifting operations to EU cities such as Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin and Amsterdam.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc, Japan's third-largest banking group, last week said it was studying sites for a new banking headquarters in Europe.

For Nomura, Nagai said such moves would be costly, and that he was "considering options for every scenario".

Daiwa Securities Group Inc, Japan's second-biggest brokerage by revenue, said it was examining setting up a base within the euro zone should it lose passporting rights.

Daiwa's European arm accounts for only a small share of its overall business, so any Brexit impact would be small, it said.

"We are studying various things, including establishing a new base on the continent," CEO Takashi Hibino said, citing locations such as Frankfurt, Dublin and Paris.

($1 = 117.4500 yen) (Reporting by Thomas Wilson and Emi Emoto; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
By Thomas Wilson and Emi Emoto

TOKYO (Reuters) - Nomura Holdings Inc sees opportunities in the pro-business stance of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, though his protectionist tilt brings uncertainty to the global economy, said the chief of Japan's biggest brokerage and investment bank.

Japanese shares have gained since the New York billionaire's Nov. 8 election, spurred by Wall Street where investors are betting Trump's support of deregulation and infrastructure spending could boost the U.S. economy.

"The market expects business and economy-friendly policies," CEO Koji Nagai told Reuters. "Clients will have to rebalance portfolios, in both Japan and America. That's a chance for us."

Investors shifting funds to riskier assets such as shares would be a boon for Nomura's equity trading arm, while increased business activity will benefit its advisory and equity and bond underwriting divisions, Nagai said.

Nomura earned over half of April-September overseas pretax profit in the Americas, where it is shifting focus to client-oriented services from market-based trading.

TRUMP BARRIERS

But Trump has spoken of measures to protect U.S. businesses at the expense of foreign interests, including pulling the U.S. out of the North American Free Trade Agreement and Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, and imposing tariffs on some imports.

Any such measures could have a detrimental effect on trade, Nagai said - something likely to limit opportunities for financial firms such as Nomura.

"If the U.S. adopts a protectionist trade policy, it won't have a good impact on the global economy," Nagai said.

While it is difficult to gauge the costs of policies that impede cross-border trade and investment, Trump's protectionism could have an adverse impact on Japan's export-heavy economy, a Reuters poll showed this month.

BREXIT MOVES

In Europe, Nomura and its peers face the possibility of losing so-called passporting rights that allow them to provide services across the European Union (EU) from bases in Britain following the latter's vote to withdraw from the bloc.

Story continues

Some are considering shifting operations to EU cities such as Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin and Amsterdam.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc , Japan's third-largest banking group, last week said it was studying sites for a new banking headquarters in Europe.

For Nomura, Nagai said such moves would be costly, and that he was "considering options for every scenario".

Daiwa Securities Group Inc , Japan's second-biggest brokerage by revenue, said it was examining setting up a base within the euro zone should it lose passporting rights.

Daiwa's European arm accounts for only a small share of its overall business, so any Brexit impact would be small, it said.

"We are studying various things, including establishing a new base on the continent," CEO Takashi Hibino said, citing locations such as Frankfurt, Dublin and Paris.

(Reporting by Thomas Wilson and Emi Emoto; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on Tuesday about the United States policy toward Israel, following Americas decision to abstain from a United Nations vote that condemns Israeli settlements.

Kerry defended the U.S. belief in a two-state solution, saying it is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and added that the U.N. vote was about preserving the two-state solution.

Nir Barkat, mayor of the Israeli city of Jerusalem, joined the FOX Business Network to weigh in.

Israelis are appreciative of the security alliance Israel has with the United States, and naturally, in spite of where we are right now, were best friends, Barkat said. The problem is the policy this administration has taken in the last eight yearsits the wrong policy. It failed in Syria, it failed in Iraq, in Libya, it failed with the Egyptians. Unfortunately, its failing between Israel and the Palestinians.

The mayor also had advice for President-elect Trump, who assumes office on January 20, regarding U.S. policy toward the countrys Middle Eastern ally.

My recommendation to President-elect Trump is to move the embassy immediately to the City of Jerusalem. Align interests with all the moderate Arab states against radical Islam and work to improve the economyeconomic ties.

He added: This is his approach, this is Prime Minister Netanyahus approach. Its the right approach. And I commend them just to do what they say.

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29 Dec - JM de Guzman, who previously took time off from showbiz due to his health condition, recently assured fans that he is doing well.



According to Rappler, the actor shared his well-being with fans on Instagram earlier this week, saying, "Merry, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I'm fine, I'm doing good, I'm recovering, well and happy. Be back soon."



He also wished a Merry Christmas again with a photo of his family.



In a previous interview, de Guzman's father shared that the actor has been receiving a lot of support from both his fans and showbiz friends alike.



The actor earlier made his first appearance online by sharing a clip of his performance of the song "Not While I'm Around" from the musical "Sweeney Todd".



de Guzman took a break from acting last year, admitting that he was dealing with depression and anxiety. His relationship with then girlfriend Jessy Mendiola also ended around the same time.



(Photo source: instagram.com/1migueldeguzman)
Getting dumped sucks  but if anything can make it all okay, its John Stamos.

On Tuesday, the Fuller House star made his annual visit to a childrens hospital for the holidays, and its just about as heartwarming as you might expect.

PEOPLE can exclusively reveal a video of the actors visit to Long Beach Memorial Hospital with his Grandfathered costar Josh Peck. In the clip, one patient was just broken up with by her boyfriend  and Stamos, 53, decided to take matters into his own hands and call up said ex-boyfriend.

John, are you calling the ex-boyfriend? said Peck, 30, filming the scene. This will go well. This is definitely going to go well.

Jorge didnt end up picking up, but Stamos left a message anyway.

Jorge, this is John Stamos, he said into the phone. Im with Amanda, my new girlfriend. Apparently you guys broke up and I swooped right in. So, your loss, Jorge  your loss, because Amanda is a great gal.

Lo and behold, Jorge ended up answering mid-voicemail.

We heard you broke up with Amanda so we got our asses down to the hospital and now were all dating and we dont need you, Jorge, said Stamos, playfully teasing the guy as the room exploded with laughter and Amanda looked on gleefully.

I think you made a big mistake, Stamos continued. But its nice to meet you, pal.

As for Jorge? Well, needless to say he probably wont be forgetting that phone call for a while.




Three months after CBS aired its true-crime docuseries The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey, the slain girls older brother is suing the network for $750M over the program that laid blame for the killing on him.

Burke Ramsey, who was 10 when his 6-year-old beauty queen sister was found dead in the familys Boulder, CO, home at Christmastime in 1996, also is suing production company Critical Content and a number of consultants involved with the program. Saying his reputation was destroyed by the three-part program, he is seeking $250M in compensatory damages and twice that in punitive damages.

When contacted by Deadline, CBS had no comment on the suit, which was filed today in a Michigan court.

The lawsuit claims CBS and its team of experts planned to conduct a sham reinvestigation of JonBenets death with the preconceived the story line that Ramsey killed the girl and conspired with his parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, to cover it up.

The accusation that Burke Ramsey killed his sister was based on a compilation of lies, half-truths, manufactured information, and the intentional omission and avoidance of truthful information about the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the lawsuit says.

In October, Burke Ramsey filed a separate $150M suit against Dr. Werner Spitz, who appeared on The Case Of giving an interview to CBS Detroit in which he said of Burkes involvement in the killing, If you really, really use your free time to think about this case, you cannot come to a different conclusion.

The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey reunited the original investigators in one of the highest-profile unsolved murders in recent history to re-examine the tragic case 20 years later. The docuseries was among multiple TV projects this year about the infamous case, including Lifetimes original movie Who Killed JonBenet? and Investigation Discoverys JonBenet: An American Murder Mystery. There also is a feature in the works titled Casting JonBenet, directed by Kitty Green and produced by James Schamus Symbolic Exchange.

Story continues

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Secretary of State John Kerrys speech Wednesday laying out the U.S. vision for Israeli-Palestinian peace offered little that was new. Kerry endorsed common-sense positions that have long been considered the answers to the conflicts most divisive issues  he endorsed two states for two peoples based on the 1967 lines with land swaps, Jerusalem as the capital of both states, compensation for Palestinian refugees in lieu of a right of return, and a demilitarized Palestinian state to account for Israeli security needs.

Although the substance of the speech may have been humdrum, its circumstances and timing are notable  and provide a window into the state of the Israeli-Palestinian issue following eight years of Barack Obamas presidency.

Although Kerry deserves credit for his efforts to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace, the timing of this parameters speech was odd, to say the least. Not only are Israelis and Palestinians unlikely to sit back down at the negotiating table; American credibility and leverage with both sides have rarely been lower.

The speech is in line with Kerrys previous efforts in this arena, where his desire to get something done has been out of whack with the prevailing political winds. The Kerry-led peace talks in 2013 and 2014 were a prime example of this dynamic, where neither Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seemed particularly motivated to sit down at the table and only did so after much cajoling from Kerry. The end result was a collapse of negotiations, the hardening of positions on both sides, waning support for a two-state solution among Palestinians, and more settlement expansion by Israel.

Of course, Kerrys speech precedes the inauguration of Donald Trumps administration, which is unlikely to make peace negotiations a priority, and comes on the heels of the U.S. abstention on a U.N. Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. For these reasons, Kerrys speech is unlikely to prod either Israel or the Palestinians to make any movements toward peace. In fact, it has the potential to make things worse as both sides reject his parameters and dig in even further.

Story continues

Two factors seem to be driving Kerrys urge to give this speech now, in the waning days of the Obama administration. The first is the Trump variable: Say what you will about the wisdom of Obama and Kerrys efforts to wade into the Israeli-Palestinian morass, but on the big picture  the crucial preservation of the two-state solution  there is no doubt that they got things right. They both recognized from the start that having two states was the only way to preserve an Israeli future that is both Jewish and democratic, and their messaging has consistently reinforced that point.

Although this has been an uncontroversial bipartisan view for years, Trumps election carries the risk that this policy may be abandoned. His team scrubbed all language about a two-state solution from the Republican platform at the convention this past summer, and his nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is an outspoken two-state foe. Jason Greenblatt, Trumps new envoy for international negotiations, has also suggested that a one-state solution would not only be best but be embraced by Palestinians as well.

Kerrys speech, with its focus on the importance of preserving a two-state solution even in the absence of an environment conducive to negotiations, is an attempt to marshal the influence of his pulpit during the remaining days of his tenure to bind the Trump administration to a policy that it may otherwise be inclined to ditch. This is not President Bill Clinton attempting to forge a lasting peace in his final days in office but simply an attempt to hold the line against an oncoming deluge.

The other factor driving Kerrys timing is the abandonment by the Israeli government of any pretext toward restraining settlements. Since Trumps election in November, Israeli cabinet ministers have publicly called for the government to annex parts of the West Bank, declared the end of the era of a Palestinian state, and most saliently have passed what is known as the Regulation Bill, which would legalize every existing Israeli town and structure in the West Bank built illegally on private Palestinian land.

It is impossible to overstate what a dramatic step this bill represents. Israels high court will almost certainly strike it down; Netanyahus own hand-selected attorney general has declared it illegal under both Israeli and international law and refused to argue before the court on its behalf. Although many on the right are convinced that Obama has been out to get Israel from day one and bided his time until there would be no adverse electoral ramifications, it beggars belief to think that the Regulation Bill played no part in Kerrys calculus to lay down parameters. Anyone who has spent any time talking to State Department officials during the past four years knows their belief that Israeli settlement expansion is destroying the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank is genuine. The Regulation Bill is a nuclear bomb in this regard.

The irony is that Kerrys speech  which was dropped by Israeli television channels after 20 minutes and which Netanyahu immediately decried as biased against Israel  was doomed to fail with Israelis irrespective of its content, largely because of the ongoing fury over the American abstention at the U.N. Security Council last week. However, Kerrys parameters were a notable improvement over the passed resolution. Unlike the Security Council resolution, Kerrys parameters explicitly acknowledged that Israel is expected to keep settlement blocs and Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem in any future peace deal, strongly called out Hamas for its violent intransigence, and stated flat out that settlements are not the core issue driving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This raises the question of why the United States did not veto the resolution last week and then have Kerry present this vision. It would have been a lot harder for the Netanyahu government to angrily dismiss Kerrys words following an American veto. It also raises the question of why this speech was not given years ago when it had a chance of being translated into policy rather than now, when it is unlikely to have a tangible effect.

Perhaps the Obama administration simply miscalculated or was reluctant to do anything to upset the balance required to get the Iran deal through Congress. Whatever the reason, this particular intervention in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy is likely too little, too late. Kerry should be applauded for his effort, but the current state of politics in Israel and the West Bank means that his parameters will not move the parties an inch.

After eight years, the recurring theme on Israel is the same: The Obama administration sees the big picture remarkably clearly but is unable to read the politics or master the intricacies to get where it wants to go.

Photo credit: ZACH GIBSON/Getty Images
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's Middle East speech on Wednesday was biased against Israel. In a statement in English issued by the Prime Minister's Office, Netanyahu said: "Like the Security Council resolution that Secretary Kerry advanced in the U.N., his speech tonight was skewed against Israel." The Israeli leader said Kerry "obsessively dealt with settlements", which the United States strongly opposes, in the speech. Netanyahu accused Kerry of barely touching upon "the root of the conflict - Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries".
As the year ends very much as it began  with political turmoil and shocking celebrity deaths  many are making clear they cannot wait for 2016 to come to an end. Yet there are far from any guarantees 2017 will be any better.

While there is, of course, no way of predicting the deaths of beloved famous people, there is reason to think the increase experienced in 2016 could become the norm. It is now 50 years since the rise of celebrity culture following the advent of the television age and birth of pop music, as the BBC pointed out recently. Whats more, with the advent of social media, there is now a collective grieving that only amplifies the scale of the loss.

But if celebrity deaths cant be predicted, a number of people and organizations have been theorizing what may happen politically. Certainly, there are a number of key dates in 2017 that could shape the global political and social climate in the year ahead.

Jan. 20: Donald Trumps Inauguration



While Donald Trumps election victory may have been the biggest, and arguably most shocking, event of 2016, the reality of his presidency will only begin in January 2017. There will, of course, be much attention on his inaugural address and to what degree he attempts to remedy the divisiveness of the election and some of his cabinet appointments. But there will also be plenty of focus on events around the Inauguration and specifically the numerous protests that are planned.

Donald Trump

Photo: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Early 2017: Will Britain Trigger Article 50?



Arguably the event that set the tone for a series of populist uprisings in 2016 was Britains vote to leave the European Union in June. But the wrangling over the stunning decision has continued since, with heated debates over how it will be done and the exact timeline. Prime Minister Theresa May has said she wants to trigger Article 50, officially starting the process of leaving the EU, by the end of March. However, the Supreme Court is set to rule in January on whether she has sufficient authority to trigger it without consulting Parliament.

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March 15: Dutch Election



The first of a series of elections in Europe that will determine whether the continent takes a further rightward turn toward anti-immigrant, anti-EU platforms will come in Netherlands. And of all the elections, this is the one most likely to result in a populist candidate coming to power. Geert Wilders, who was recently found guilty of inciting discrimination for saying the Netherlands would be safer with fewer Moroccans, has also made a series of inflammatory comments about Islam and immigrants. But his Party for Freedom also has been leading the polls ahead of Marchs election, meaning he could well become the countrys new prime minister.

March 26: Hong Kong Chief Executive Election



The coming year will see the 20-year anniversary of Hong Kongs return to China from Britain and the beginning of the one country, two systems framework. The tone for the festivities could well be set by the election for Hong Kongs chief executive, the head of the citys government. The unpopular Beijing-siding Leung Chun-ying has announced he will not run for re-election; however, his replacement will be decided not by the people but by an Election Committee appointed by the Chinese government. Following the Umbrella Revolution protests of 2014, there could be more unrest depending on which candidate is chosen.

Marine Le Pen

Photo: Reuters/Charles Platiau/File Photo

April 23: French Presidential Election



Ever since Brexit and the rise of Trump, an eye has been cast toward the 2017 French presidential election and the possibility of Marine Le Pen coming to power. The leader of the far-right National Front Party has said she is opposed to a multicultural France and to the European Union. After a rise to prominence in recent years, she is one of the leading candidates to replace Francois Hollande after the deeply unpopular president announced he will not run for a second term. The battle is set to be between Le Pen and the candidate currently leading in the polls, former Prime Minister Francois Fillon of the center-right Republicans. The two could well go into a run-off May 7.

May 19: Iran Presidential Election



Iran is already a country to watch in 2017, given President-elect Trump has called the Iran nuclear deal a disaster and vowed to dismantle it. Amid the uncertainty over the deal, Irans rial hit a record low against the U.S. dollar this week, providing a further blow to the hopes of President Hassan Rouhani winning re-election in May. The moderate conservative was a surprise winner of the last election four years ago and initially stabilized the economy. But if a member of the countrys hardline faction seizes power, it could further threaten relations with the U.S. and beyond.

Oct. 22: Germanys Federal Election



German Chancellor Angela Merkel, long the stabilizing, unifying force in European politics, is suddenly under pressure heading into Octobers federal election. Seen by many as an example to follow for her stance on accepting large numbers of asylum seekers at the heart of the refugee crisis in 2015, she has come under growing criticism even from within her own Christian Democratic party. While still favored to win a fourth term, as her poll numbers have declined, the populist far-right Alternative for Germany party has seen a huge boost in popularity and now promises to be a wildcard in the election.

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North Korea's Kim Jong Un has killed hundreds of government officials since taking office five years ago, Korean media reported Thursday. In all, he has killed 340 North Koreans while defending his control over the reclusive nation by threatening to attack Seoul and Washington with a fledging arsenal of nuclear weapons.

His victims vary from high-ranking officials to members of his own family. In one instance that made global headlines, Kim ordered the death of his uncle-in-law Jang Song Thaek in a public execution for trying to overthrow the government. In another instance, Defense Minister Hyon Yong Chol was killed suddenly in 2015 in front of his family.

Kim is a third-generation ruler. He took the reigns in North Korea on Dec. 30, 2011, after his father's death. He rules the Korean Workers' Party with an authoritative grip, according to reports.

"There were 3 [purged or executed] in 2012, more than 30 in 2013, greater than 40 in 2014, and more than 60 in 2015," Yonhap reported. "The numbers show a rapid increase."

Roughly 140 of those killed were senior government officials, according to the South Korean think-tank the Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS). One official, for example, was killed in August with an anti-aircraft gun on Kim's orders after he fell asleep in a meeting.

Bruce Bennett, a defense analyst from the RAND Corporation think-tank, told CNN Kim had demonstrated an "extreme" level of brutality while in office.

"For example, in the five years he has served as leader of North Korea, he has purged his defense minister five times, while his father changed his defense minister only three times in his 17 years. And two of those changes were because they died of old age, he said.

At the same time, Kim has directed mass amounts of the impoverished nation's budget toward nuclear and missile development. He has spent roughly $300 million on weapons development.

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Kim also likes to remind North Koreans of his absolute power. He earmarked $180 million in spending toward the construction of 460 statues or monuments honoring his family's regime.

"Kim is continuing to replace the old guard of his fathers regime with loyalists," said Robert Kelly, a political science professor at South Koreas Pusan National University, in August. "The charges are obviously trumped up, and this is how promotion or demotion often works in totalitarian states without legitimate venues for opposition."

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London (AFP) - Reports linking Liverpool with a January move for Arsenal midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain are "nonsense", the Merseyside club's manager Jurgen Klopp said on Thursday.

British media reports suggest Liverpool will make a move for Oxlade-Chamberlain, who has been in and out of the Arsenal first team, when the transfer window opens next week.

But Klopp said he had no interest in the 23-year-old England international.

"I don't usually say anything about transfer rumours, but I can make an exception. Nonsense," he said.

"This kind of thing I think a lot about, but I say nothing because it is really not interesting what I think about this.

"You (the media) are already on a path so do with it what you want, but from our side nothing else to say about it."

Klopp was speaking ahead of his side's home game with Manchester City on New Year's Eve, which pits second against third in the Premier League table.

"If I didn't sit on the bench I would buy a ticket for this game, 100 percent," said Klopp, whose side trail leaders Chelsea by six points.

The German confirmed that neither centre-back Joel Matip nor playmaker Philippe Coutinho will be able to play due to ankle injuries.
South Korea's ambassador to France was grilled by investigators Thursday over allegations that the government blacklisted thousands of cultural figures deemed critical of impeached President Park Geun-Hye.

Ambassador Mo Chul-Min, who served as senior presidential secretary for education and culture from 2013 to 2014, returned home Wednesday following a summons from a special prosecutor probing a corruption scandal that led to Park's impeachment.

The summons came as former culture minister Yoo Jin-Ryong told a radio talk show this week that the presidential Blue House maintained a blacklist of prominent poets, novelists, painters and film makers.

The alleged list, which contained more than 9,400 names including this year's Man Booker International Prize winner Han Kang, was allegedly used to clamp down on left-leaning artists, prevent them from securing government subsidies and bar their creations from public display.

Yoo said he first saw the list in June 2014.

The Blue House has denied the existence of such a list.

Mo, one of the officials who allegedly delivered copies of the continually-updated list to the culture ministry, did not respond to journalists' questions as he met with prosecutors investigating a scandal that has seen Park charged with multiple violations -- ranging from bribery to abuse of power.

The alleged list also included artist Hong Sung-Dam whose painting depicting the tragic 2014 sinking of Sewol ferry had to be withdrawn from South Korea's largest contemporary art festival, the Gwangju Biennale, allegedly because of pressure from the Blue House, which was criticised for its handling of the disaster.

Critics say censorship, which was losing ground following the country's restoration of democracy in 1987, has crept back under Park, daughter of late dictator Park Chung-Hee.

In its latest World Press Freedom index published in April, the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked South Korea 70th in the world -- down 10 places from 2015.

Park is awaiting the Constitutional Court's ruling after the National Assembly voted to impeach her on December 9.

The court has up to six months from this date to decide whether to approve the impeachment.
By Fatos Bytyci

PRISTINA (Reuters) - A German investment company that was thwarted in an attempt to buy Kosovo Telecom in 2013 is seeking up to 400 million euros (342 million pounds) in compensation in an international arbitration court, two sources close to the matter told Reuters.

The sum of between 200 and 400 million euros represents 10-20 percent of the landlocked Balkan country's 2017 budget and would be the latest blow to the Pristina government arising from the former state-owned telecoms operator.

Kosovo's parliament blocked the planned sale of Kosovo Telecom to ACP Axos Capital Gmbh for 277 million euros in 2013.

Prime Minister Isa Mustafa's government said it would contest the claim, but declined to give details.

In a separate case last week, an international arbitration court ordered the state-owned telecoms firm to pay 29.6 million euros to local mobile telecoms service provider Z-mobile for breach of contract.

Once valued at a billion euros, Kosovo Telecom last year saw net profit drop 63 percent to 6 million euros. Trade Minister Hykmete Bajrami has said it is now a loss-making company.

Kosovo Telecom employs some 2,300 people and is the country's biggest mobile phone services provider with 54 percent market share.

Independent for only nine years, Kosovo is one of Europe's poorest countries. One-third of its workforce is unemployed.

The republic of 1.8 million people has not been able to attract foreign investment to combat poverty. Corruption, organised crime and political instability are cited by foreign companies as the main obstacles.

(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci; Editing by Georgina Prodhan and Mark Potter)
Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fishers deaths over the span of two days have left the world reeling  and mothers, grandmothers and daughters everywhere are shocked and saddened by the news.

The Hollywood tributes have been steadily pouring in, and on Thursday Kris Jenner took to Instagram to share an emotional post honoring the two icons and mourning the tragic loss.

Absolutely heartbreaking and unimaginable, she captioned a picture of Fisher, Reynolds and Reynolds son Todd Fisher in 1972.

As a mother I cannot imagine the pain and heartbreak of losing a child, she continued. A loving and devoted mother, grandmother and a true Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds, you will be forever missed but never forgotten!! My love and prayers are with Debbie and Carries family

Reynolds was rushed to the hospital from her home in Beverly Hills Wednesday afternoon for treatment of a possible stroke. The star, who was 84, died several hours later.

Reynolds death came just one day after Fisher died on Tuesday. The star had previously suffered a massive heart attack while flying from London to Los Angeles on Friday.

On Tuesday, Reynolds had taken to social media to thank fans for their support in the wake of her daughters death.

Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter, she wrote on Facebook. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop.




La La Land director reveals the one scene where they hired a hand double for Ryan Gosling but never used him

This movie just keeps getting more and more interesting! In a new interview, the La La Land director revealed which scene had a hand double for Ryan Gosling, but was never needed. Its sounds totally random, but movie magic is SO interesting.

Earlier this month, The Hollywood Reporter co-hosted a screening and panel discussion for the musical movie in London and the publication uncovered a few secrets about the film.

The movies director talked about the use of a hand double  yes its a real thing  being used for Ryan Goslings piano playing scene and were even more impressed with the actor now. Damien Chazelle revealed that they hired someone to play the piano  well they hired his hands  but in the end Gosling surprised everyone and learned to play himself.

But he wasnt needed, because Gosling learned how to play it all himself, Chazelle told The Hollywood Reporter and U.K. panel attendees.

So, the Notebook hunk really is as impressive as weve always thought he was? Well, thats just another reason to love Gosling now isnt it?

Chazelle also opened up about J.K. Simmons role in La La Land dubbing him his lucky charm after he appeared in both this film and the directors debut Whiplash.

The big difference between his role in Whiplash and the Los Angeles based musical is that he actually hates jazz in La La Land, and it just makes us love the actor more.

We actually shot his scene in the bar first, and we thought it was funny that he goes from a jazz band leader in Whiplash to playing a club manager who totally hates jazz, Chazelle recalled.

Emma Stone, who plays the lead female, Mia, in the film was also on the panel and she joked about her on-screen love and we are SO jealous.

She laughed as she said she was tired of hooking up with Gosling  this is their third film together  but she was obviously joking. Stone later added that it was a pleasure to learn all the different dancing styles with Gosling since he was someone you already know so well.

Come on, how do we get this gig? Kissing Ryan Gosling? Dancing? Listening to him actually play piano? Its like every girls dream!

The post La La Land director reveals the one scene where they hired a hand double for Ryan Gosling but never used him appeared first on HelloGiggles.
On Dec 28, we issued an updated research report on Burlington, NC-based Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings LH or LabCorp. The company is a major player in the healthcare diagnostics space, providing comprehensive clinical laboratory services and end-to-end drug development support.

Over the past six months, LabCorps shares have been consistently trading above the Zacks classified Medical - Dental Supplies industry mark based on fundamental strength. The company lost 1.4% over this period, much narrower than the 4.7% decline of the industry. The company has recorded a 5-year revenue CAGR of 11.9%, reflecting its strong fundamentals.

In the recently concluded third-quarter report, LabCorp observed revenue growth in Covance Drug Development. It reported a 4.8% rise in net revenues to $701.1 million. According to management, the company has been able to compete in a growing addressable market worth approximately $200 billion. It is expected that the combined revenue growth from a broader platform, increased scale and synergies along with strategic deployment of cash flow will create significant long-term shareholders value.

Meanwhile, LabCorp continues to add complementary capabilities through meaningful acquisitions. Management believes that the recently completed buyout of Sequenom will boost the companys women's health test menu. The inclusion is also expected to expand the companys geographic reach both domestically and internationally.

As part of its three strategic plans to drive growth, LabCorp is working on innovation in order to gain traction in the potential lab testing market with its advanced assays and tools. The company is focusing on extending its core testing capabilities such as Bode Cellmark Forensics, its leading DNA testing solutions business. Simultaneously, the company is collaborating with leading companies and academic institutions to come up with a wider portfolio of tests. Recent instances are the strategic partnerships with Interpace Diagnostics, a developer of molecular diagnostics tests, alliance with Japan-based Sysmex Corporation  a leading clinical laboratory services provider  and Roche, the world's leading biotech company.

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On the flip side, LabCorp operates in an intensely competitive space. Management also anticipates the reimbursement cut to impact LabCorps operations in the near term.

Unfavorable foreign exchange continues to be a major dampener for the company. LabCorps third quarter has been weak with respect to organic volume growth at LabCorp Diagnostics. Also, economic uncertainty marked with a challenging volume environment for testing laboratories and weak utilization are looming concerns.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

LabCorp carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Better-ranked medical stocks are NxStage Medical Inc. NXTM, Align Technology, Inc. ALGN and Haemonetics Corporation HAE. NxStage Medical and Align Technology sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) while Haemonetics carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

NxStage Medical gained 14.4% over the last one year compared with the S&P 500s 9%. The company has a four-quarter average positive earnings surprise of 46.3%.

Align Technology rallied 47% year to date, way better than the S&P 500s 10.1%. It has a trailing four-quarter average positive earnings surprise of 23%.

Haemonetics recorded a 23.7% gain year to date, better than the S&P 500. It has a trailing four-quarter average positive earnings surprise of 0.82%.

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Lamborghini Urus

The new Lamborghini Urus will be a different type of Lamborghini.

Although it won't be the first SUV to emerge from Sant'Agata, it will be the brand's first hybrid when it arrives sometime in 2018.

In an interview with Autocar, Lamborghini R&D chief Maurizio Reggiani confirmed that the upcoming Urus will be offered with a plug-in hybrid drivetrain.

According to Reggiani, Lamborghini purists need not fear, for hybridization will not spread beyond the Urus SUV.

Rumors of a production Lamborghini hybrid have been floating around the industry from some time.

At the 2014 Paris Motor Show, the Italian supercar maker teased the public with the hybrid Asterion concept.

In a 2015 interview with Business Insider, then-Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann ruled out the hybridization of the brand's supercars, but hinted at the possibility of a hybrid Urus.

Lamborghini URUS

In the interview, Winkelmann, who left Lambo to become the new boss at Audi Sport earlier this year, called the Urus the "supercar of SUVs" that is designed with passenger comfort and usability in mind.

The idea of a hybrid Lamborghini isn't as far fetched as one might think. The Urus will be built on VW Group's MLB-evo platform. The award-winning modular platform also underpins, among others, the Audi Q7 SUV which is already available in plug-in hybrid guise.

In addition to the hybrid, the Urus will also offered with a 4.0 liter, twin-turbocharged V8 sourced from parent company Audi.

The production variant is not expected to stray very far from the Urus Concept that made its world debut at the 2012 Beijing Motor Show.

Upon its arrival, the Urus will become the latest entrant into the new ultra-luxury SUV segment. Others in the segment include the Bentley Bentayga  a fellow MLB-evo platform vehicle and Rolls-Royce's upcoming Project Cullinan.

NOW WATCH: We took a ride in this $261,000 Lamborghini Huracan  here's what it's like





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JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP)  The largest Hispanic-owned food company in the country has committed to donating 125,000 pounds of food to an agency dedicated to serving the less fortunate in northern New Jersey.

Jersey City-based Goya Foods will send 10,000 pounds of food each month to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Newark, which will distribute the goods to shelters in Essex, Hudson, Bergen and Union counties.

The company has also pledged a one-time donation of $10,000 to the archdiocese that will benefit Hope House in Jersey City and St. Rocco's Family Shelter in Newark.

Catholic Charities CEO John Westervelt says the funds will pay for renovations to recreational spaces at the facilities as well as additional food and clothing for homeless families.
Shares of LATAM Airlines Group S.A. LFL gained 1.69% by close of business on Dec 28, driven by the news that the Qatar Airways had acquired 10% stake in the company. The transaction, completed through a rights issue, was valued at $608.4 million. Per reports, the purchase consideration translates to over 60.8 million shares worth $10 each.

The deal had been agreed upon by the two parties in July this year. In November, Brazilian regulatory authority, Cade, gave approval to the investment. Notably, LATAM Airlines was formed in 2012 after Chiles LAN joined forces with Brazils TAM airlines.

Market Conditions

The Latin American economy has been struggling due to a slowdown over the past couple of months. This has resulted in lower revenues for airlines as well. One of the major reasons for the economic slowdown is low oil prices. However, growth of tourism in the country still provides opportunities. Moreover, improvement in the business climate could see a surge in business travelers. We note that the Middle Eastern airlines have been actively competing with some of the biggest names in the U.S. airlines industry. Speculations are rife that these airlines have also eaten into the market share of several industry leaders, especially with respect to intercontinental, long-haul flights. U.S. airlines view Latin America as a growing region and consequently several new flights have been introduced by these airlines to the region. There have also been reports of possible collaborations between Latin American and U.S. airlines. Thus, with growing competition for market share, Qatar Airlines investment could draw additional attention to airlines in this region.

Zacks Rank and Stocks to Consider

LATAM Airlines currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Other popular airlines in the Latin American region include GOL Linhas Aereas Inteligentes S.A.GOL, Copa Airlines S.A. CPA and Avianca Holdings S.A. AVH.

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Performance of the Stock

The companys stock has underperformed the Zacks categorized Transportation-Airline industry over the past three months. Shares of the company have gained 3.95%, while the industry gained 23.12% over the same period.

Zacks' Top Investment Ideas for Long-Term Profit

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One arrested with gold worth Rs 30 million from Kalanki

Police have arrested a person in possession of gold worth Rs 30 million from Kalanki in the Capital on Thursday.
KEARNS, Utah (AP)  The Latest on a 9-year-old Utah boy who was shot in a drive-by shooting (all times local):

4:50 p.m.

Police say a car reported in the drive-by shooting of a 9-year-old Utah boy has been found abandoned in Salt Lake City.

Unified Police Detective Ken Hansen says the car was found about 15 miles away from the shooting in a neighborhood in the nearby town of Kearns. Hansen says police are searching for the suspect or suspects involved, but he did not have details about their descriptions.

Hansen says the boy was critical condition at a hospital and expected to be in surgery for several hours.

He says the boy was in backseat of a car next to other children when he was hit.

Police say they believe the shooting may be gang-related and someone else may have been the target.

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3:25 p.m.

Utah police say a 9-year-old boy is in critical condition after he was shot in the head during a drive-by shooting.

Unified Police Detective Ken Hansen says the boy was shot Wednesday afternoon in the town of Kearns, Utah, and was flown about 15 miles away to a Salt Lake City hospital.

Hansen said the boy was in the backseat of an SUV parked on the street near an intersection. A Black BMW sedan driving on a cross street fired at least one shot as it passed. The bullet went through the SUV's windshield, hitting the boy.

Hansen says police believe the shooting may be gang-related and someone else was the target. Hansen did not have further details, including whether anyone else was nearby.

He says police are interviewing witnesses and searching for the BMW.
BEIRUT (AP)  The Latest on the conflict in Syria, and the Russia-Turkey-brokered cease-fire agreement (all times local):

Midnight:

A cease-fire agreement between Syria's government and the country's mainstream rebel groups has gone into effect in the war-ravaged nation.

The truce was brokered by both Russia and Turkey, who support opposing sides in the war. It took effect at midnight Thursday.

The agreement is a potential breakthrough in the six-year civil war that has left more than a quarter-million people dead and triggered a refugee crisis across Europe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says that if the truce holds, it will be followed by peace talks next month in Kazakhstan between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and opposition groups.

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8:45 p.m.

Syria's foreign minister has welcomed the cease-fire agreement and said there is a "real chance" for a political settlement.

In comments made to Syrian TV Thursday, he said the Syrian government will attend peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana "with an open mind," but suggested it would not be willing to compromise on the fate of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"Everything is negotiable except national sovereignty and the people's right to choose its leadership."

He lashed out at Turkey, calling it an "aggressive country and an occupier of parts of the Syrian territories."

He also said Turkey was not mentioned in any of the documents that were signed, adding that Turkey was not a partner and "we didn't negotiate with it."

Russia's president called Assad Thursday to discuss the cease-fire agreement and upcoming talks in Astana, the Syrian presidency said on its Instagram page.

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8:30 p.m.

Turkey's prime minister says the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish militia won't take part in peace talks that could take place if a nationwide Syrian cease-fire agreement succeeds.

Binali Yildirim told reporters Thursday: "No group that we regard as a terror organization will sit around the negotiating table and we regard the PYD as a terror organization." He was referring to the Democratic Union Party, which Turkey considers to be an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

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An adviser to the U.N. envoy for Syria has said the peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition could be held in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan before the new U.S. president is sworn in on Jan. 20

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8:15 p.m.

The Kremlin says Syrian President Bashar Assad is committed to abiding by a cease-fire deal as well as a sit down for talks with the opposition.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Assad spoke on the phone to discuss the nationwide cease-fire deal that the Syrian government and Russia announced earlier on Thursday, the Kremlin said in a statement.

The Kremlin said Assad told Putin he is "committed to implementing" the cease-fire agreement and prepared to join the peace talks with opposition rebels that will follow the deal.

Vitaly Naumkin, who advises U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura, said in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency that talks in the Kazakh capital Astana could be held before the new U.S. president is sworn in on Jan. 20.

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7:45 p.m.

A Kurdish official says Kurdish groups and their Arab and Christian allies have approved a document that would act as a constitution in their autonomous region in northern Syria.

Nawaf Khalil, an official with the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, said the document known as the Social Contract was approved Thursday during a meeting in the northeastern Syrian town of Rmeilan.

Syrian Kurds run their self-declared, largely autonomous area, called Rojava Kurdistan or western Kurdistan.

The new document removed the word Rojava, in an apparent move to appease Arab and Christian groups that are part of the autonomous region.

Despite the large Kurdish presence in northeastern Syria, many towns and villages in the autonomous region are predominantly Arab or Christian.

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7:30 p.m.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Turkey will press ahead with its military offensive to clear a border area in northern Syria from Islamic State militants, saying the cease-fire agreement does not comprise terror organizations.

Erdogan on Thursday labeled the cease-fire agreement a "window of opportunity that should not be squandered" and called on all sides to abide by its terms.

In an apparent reference to Iran, Erdogan said all countries with influence over groups fighting in Syria should also contribute to the cease-fire process.

Speaking at a news conference alongside the president of Kosovo, Erdogan said the peace talks set to be held in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, were not meant to replace the peace process in Geneva but rather "complement" it.

Erdogan said the Turkish military operations "against terrorist organizations, including Daesh, will continue until the security of the Turkish citizens is completely guaranteed. There can be no concessions on this issue." He was using an Arabic acronym for the IS group.

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7 p.m.

Russia's foreign ministry says a mortar round has exploded inside the Russian embassy compound in the Syrian capital Damascus.

Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement Thursday that the mortar fired from a rebel-controlled suburb of Damascus fell near the entrance of the embassy's consulate department. The ministry reported "insignificant material damage" and no injuries.

It is the second mortar attack on the Russian embassy in as many days. The foreign ministry said Wednesday that a mortar round had landed in the embassy courtyard without exploding, and that another had also fallen in the vicinity.

Zakharova on Thursday linked the attack to a cease-fire deal in Syria that the government forces and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced earlier in the day.

Russia is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who since 2011has been battling a revolt against his family's four-decade rule.

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6:30 p.m.

U.N. envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura is welcoming the agreement on a cease-fire in Syria and says he hopes it will pave the way for "productive" talks between the parties to the country's civil war.

A statement from de Mistura's office in Geneva on Thursday said he hopes that the accord will save civilian lives, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance across Syria and allow for useful talks in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

The statement added: "The special envoy is of the view that these developments should contribute to inclusive and productive intra-Syrian negotiations to be convened under UN auspices on Feb. 8, 2017."

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6:15 p.m.

Egypt has welcomed the nationwide cease-fire in Syria that will go into effect at midnight Thursday.

In a statement Thursday following a meeting with a Syrian opposition leader, Ahmed al-Jarba, the Foreign Ministry says it is of "critical importance" that Syrian forces develop a common vision to resolve the country's crisis and begin serious talks about the future of Syria.

The cease-fire, which will be observed by Turkey and Russia, who are to follow the situation on the ground to ensure that it holds. It will include all parts of Syria, including the eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus.

Excerpts of the cease-fire agreement obtained by The Associated Press say the truce will include all areas where the "moderate opposition" has a presence, including those where al-Qaida's branch in Syria exists.

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6 p.m.

An adviser to the U.N. envoy for Syria says peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition could be held in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan before the new U.S. president is sworn in.

Vitaly Naumkin, who advises U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura, said in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency that talks in the Kazakh capital Astana "should take place in the nearest future."

"All of this will happen before Jan. 20," he was quoted as saying, adding that U.N.-sponsored talks in Geneva will be held afterward, when Donald Trump is sworn in as the U.S. president.

Naumkin's remarks came several hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Syrian army said that a nation-wide cease-fire agreement has been reached with opposition rebels, and that it will be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition, without specifying a date.

___

5:15 p.m.

A spokesman for the main moderate Syrian opposition groups says they have agreed to abide by the nationwide cease-fire that will go into effect at midnight Thursday.

Osama Abu Zeid has told reporters in Turkey that the truce will be followed by peace talks in Kazakhstan that will focus on finding a solution for Syria's crisis.

He said 13 armed opposition factions have signed the five-point agreement.

Abu Zeid says the peace talks will be based on the Geneva 2012 declaration that called for a transitional governing body with full executive powers to run affairs in Syria during the transitional period.

He said "this means that there will be no presence for (President Bashar) Assad in the future."

He said the truce excluded the Islamic State group and the main Kurdish militia that Turkey considers a terrorist organization.

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4:30 p.m.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman says the Turkish and Russian leaders have discussed the cease-fire agreement as well as a planned peace process for Syria during a telephone conversation.

Ibrahim Kalin said Thursday that Turkey considers the cease-fire "an important step to resolve the Syrian conflict."

"The arrangement aims to expand the cease-fire in Aleppo to other parts of Syria, secure uninterrupted humanitarian assistance and revitalize the political process," Kalin said.

Kalin said Erdogan would "continue to work toward the success" of peace talks scheduled to take place in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana.

___

4:15 p.m.

Turkish media reports say Russian war planes have targeted the Islamic State group in northern Syria, providing support to a Turkish offensive there.

The pro-government Sabah newspaper and other media said Thursday that the Russian jets bombed IS targets in the al-Bab region late on Wednesday. If confirmed, it would mark the first instance of Russian support to the Turkish operation in northern Syria.

The reports were based on unnamed Turkish military officials and came after Turkey complained about a lack of aerial support from the U.S.-led coalition for its operation to capture al-Bab from the extremist group.

The reports said Russian warplanes hit targets south of al-Bab.

___

4 p.m.

The cease-fire that will go into effect in Syria midnight Thursday will include all parts of Syria including the eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus.

Excerpts of the cease-fire agreement that were obtained by The Associated Press say the truce will include all areas where the "moderate opposition" has a presence, including those where al-Qaida's branch in Syria exists.

It says the opposition will be given the right to name its delegation to peace talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana.

The talks will begin within a month from the time the cease-fire goes into effect. It says the peace talks will be in accordance with December 2015 U.N. Security Council resolution 2254 which endorsed a road map for a transitional period that includes parliamentary and presidential elections within 18 months.

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2:30 p.m.

A main Syrian opposition group says it supports a nationwide cease-fire set to go into effect at midnight and that moderate rebel factions will abide by it, but defend themselves if attacked.

Ahmad Ramadan of the Syrian National Coalition said the truce reached Thursday includes a halt to airstrikes and shelling.

Ramadan said in text messages sent to The Associated Press that members of the Free Syrian Army, a loose alliance of several moderate rebel factions, will abide by the truce but retaliate to violations by government and allied forces.

The Syrian army said the truce does not include al-Qaida's branch in Syria and the Islamic State group, two of the most powerful armed factions.

___

2:10 p.m.

Turkey has welcomed a Syrian cease-fire set to come into effect at midnight.

The Foreign Ministry says groups regarded as terror organizations by the U.N. Security Council will be excluded from the cease-fire, in which Turkey and Russia will act as guarantors.

It was apparently referring to the Islamic State group and the al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front.

It says the government and the opposition have agreed to halt attacks, including aerial attacks, and not to expand territories under their control in a way that would be detrimental to each other.

Turkey and Russia would closely follow the situation on the ground to ensure the cease-fire holds. The statement calls on all sides wielding influence on the warring parties to provide the necessary support to halt hostilities.

___

2 p.m.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to scale down its presence in Syria, where it has provided crucial support to Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces.

Putin spoke Thursday, as a Syrian cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey was set to begin at midnight.

Putin didn't say how many troops and weapons will be withdrawn. He said Russia will continue "fighting international terrorism in Syria" and supporting Assad's military.

Putin also said that the Russian military will maintain its presence at both an air base in Syria's coastal province of Latakia and the naval facility in the Syrian port of Tartus.

The cease-fire is to be followed by renewed peace negotiations to end the nearly six-year conflict.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Egypt will be invited to join the process, and that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan could eventually join as well.

___

1:45 p.m.

The Syrian army has announced a nationwide cease-fire as of midnight.

In a statement carried by state news agency SANA on Thursday, the military command "declares a comprehensive nationwide cessation of hostilities as of midnight."

State TV says the cease-fire paves the way for reactivating negotiations to end the conflict.

It says the cease-fire comes after the "successes achieved by the armed forces," an apparent reference to the capture of rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo earlier this month.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia and Turkey will guarantee the truce. Russia is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, while Turkey supports the opposition.

___

1:30 p.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says a Syrian cease-fire agreement has been reached with Turkey.

Putin said Thursday that Russia and Turkey will guarantee the truce, which is set to begin at midnight. He says it will be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition, and that the Syrian parties would take part in talks to be held in Kazakhstan, without specifying a date.

Syria's military said it had agreed to a nationwide cease-fire starting at midnight.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu says the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria, and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that that President-elect Donald Trump's administration will be welcome to join the Syrian peace process once he takes office.

Russia is a key ally of Assad, while Turkey is one of the main backers of the opposition. Several previous attempts to halt the civil war have failed.

___

11:15 a.m.

Turkey says Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group should withdraw from Syria and a nationwide cease-fire should come into effect before the end of the year.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to back President Bashar Assad's forces.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with the Turkish A Haber news channel on Thursday that Ankara and Moscow are close to reaching an agreement on a nationwide cease-fire. Turkey would serve as guarantor of rebel compliance, while Russia would guarantee adherence by the government.

He says Iran stated during talks earlier this month in Moscow that it will act as a guarantor for the Syrian government as well as allied Shiite groups, including Hezbollah.
Bogota (AFP) - Colombia's Congress has passed a law granting amnesty to Marxist FARC rebels as part of the country's peace deal, a development the government hailed as "historic."

"Thanks to the Congress which in a historic vote approved the amnesty law, first step toward consolidating peace," President Juan Manuel Santos said on Twitter late Wednesday.

The measure grants special legal treatment, amnesty and pardons to members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) accused of political and related crimes.

The Senate passed the bill 69-0, after the House of Representatives approved it 121-0.

"We welcome the approval of the Amnesty Law, this is another step in the long road to bringing peace to Colombians," FARC chief Rodrigo "Timochenko" Londono said in a tweet.

Launched in 1964, FARC is about to begin handing over its weapons under a UN-monitored demobilization process.

Now "5,700 guerrillas will begin to descend from the mountain and surrender their weapons," Senate President Mauricio Lizcano said in a statement.

The five-decade conflict has killed more than 260,000 people, left 45,000 missing and forced nearly seven million to flee their homes.

The amnesty bill is part of a November 24 pact aimed at ending the conflict.

Former president Alvaro Uribe spearheaded opposition to the peace deal after nearly four years of negotiations.

The former president and his allies argue the deal grants impunity to rebels guilty of war crimes, giving them seats in Congress rather than sending them to prison.

After voters rejected an earlier peace deal by a narrow margin, the government and the FARC renegotiated it, deciding to have it ratified in Congress rather than risk a second referendum.

- Details of law -

The new amnesty law does not apply to FARC rebels accused of offenses such as war crimes, rape, torture and extrajudicial killings.

Those who confess to their crimes before a special court may avoid prison and instead receive alternative sentences.

Story continues

Others who do not confess and are convicted in court will receive sentences of eight to 20 years.

The law also provides a framework for punishing civilians and state agents who have been "convicted, tried or accused" of offenses related to the armed conflict.

Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas told the Senate that there will now be a legal process for dealing with some 5,000 state agents.

The amnesty law is set to be reviewed by Colombia's Constitutional Court, which had previously approved special fast-track procedures in Congress to implement the peace deal.

Under the deal, the FARC must demobilize and surrender their weapons within six months.

The Colombian government is still seeking to salvage talks with the country's second-largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN). The process has stumbled over the issue of hostages and prisoners.
YEREVAN, Armenia (AP)  Officials say that at least three soldiers have been killed in a border skirmish between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops.

Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Ovanissian three Armenian servicemen died in fighting Thursday. Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said one of its troops was missing in action.

Armenia and Azerbaijan blamed each other for the fighting.

Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry claimed that its forces inflicted "heavy casualties" on the Armenian intruders, while Armenia's Defense Ministry said that it repelled an intrusion from Azerbaijan, killing seven enemy soldiers. The conflicting claims couldn't be independently verified.

The two ex-Soviet nations have been locked in conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Nagorno-Karabakh is officially part of Azerbaijan, but since a separatist war ended in 1994 it has been under the control of forces that claim to be local ethnic Armenians but that Azerbaijan claims include regular Armenian military. Efforts to negotiate a settlement have failed and sporadic clashes have continued.

An outbreak of fighting in April killed about 75 soldiers from the two sides.

___

This corrects an earlier version to say that three deaths confirmed
Donald Trump

The tale went something like this: A Jewish couple was forced to pull its child out of school so the family could "flee" town over fears stemming from "fake news" stories blaming them for the cancellation of a Christmas play.

Conservative news outlets had earlier seized on local reporting that indicated some parents believed a Pennsylvania elementary school's production of "A Christmas Carol" had been shuttered over the Jewish parents' alleged complaints over its line "God bless us, everyone."

The idea the performance was canceled over the famous line  which the school denied  caused outrage and, as the story went, left the Jewish family so worried for their safety that they decided to skip town.

It hit all the desired notes for left-leaning publications and personalities. It demonized outlets like Breitbart and Fox News while supposedly putting on display the real-life consequences of "fake news."

It was everywhere.

The only problem? The story wasn't true.

The Anti-Defamation League investigated it and, after speaking with the family, determined they had not fled town over fears of retribution. What they had done was go on a "previously planned vacation for the holidays."

"News reports alleging that a Jewish family has 'fled' Lancaster County are untrue and damaging," said Nancy Baron-Baer, a regional director for the ADL.

It was a garish instance of the left gleefully jumping on a thin news story that reinforced a political point, only to later learn its basic premise was incorrect.

And it wasn't an isolated incident. It was the latest in a trend of left-leaning media outlets running with a story riddled with misinformation, incidentally walking into a "fake news" trap they have vigorously cautioned against since President-elect Donald Trump won the November election.

'Heal thyself'

Since Trump's unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee for president, many in the media have focused on the prevalence of "fake news" and how it could have swayed some individuals to vote for the Republican businessman.

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Conservatives have met the narrative with extreme skepticism. They argue that, while not fabricated out of thin air, much of the news reported by the so-called mainstream media is inaccurate or, as they characterize it, its own form of "fake news."

For instance, many incidents in which minorities said they were harassed by Trump supporters in the immediate aftermath of the election were given significant attention by the media and treated with little skepticism.

Only after such stories went viral was it revealed that some of the accusers had fabricated tales of abuse. By then, it was too late. The stories had already exhausted their time in the news cycle, and corrections almost never achieve the viral reach of an original post. Those false claims often diminish the credibility of legitimate hate-crime reports.

Screen Shot 2016 12 29 at 10.58.25 AM

Another example: Last week, many news organizations published stories about a man who claimed he was kicked off a Delta Air Lines flight solely because his speaking Arabic made other passengers uncomfortable. The story went viral.

Many outlets, however, negated to note an important fact: The individual in question was a YouTube prankster known for pulling similar viral stunts. Only after the prankster's claims were disseminated across all corners of the internet did his past enter the picture in a meaningful way. Delta eventually denied his claim.

In recent days, such incidents have caused some observers to scrutinize those on the left.

"It baffles me how anyone on the left combatting 'fake news' can turn a blind eye to the clickbaiting within its own ranks," CNN host Jake Tapper tweeted toward the end of last week. "HEAL THYSELF."

And it wasn't just Tapper. Some on the left also expressed concern with the trend of false stories being circulated in their political sphere.

Rob Flaherty, a former member of Clinton's rapid-response team, told Business Insider that he did "worry a bit about progressive media," particularly when it needs to maintain credibility if it wants to challenge Trump in the White House.

"There's a lot of places on the left that twisted reality for what I presume were clicks at various points in the election," said Flaherty, who has made his public concerns on the topic known often since the election. "They never hit the influence of the right's fake-news ecosystem, but you still run into a not-insignificant amount of people  regardless of the candidate they supported  who believed things about Hillary or Bernie [Sanders] or Trump for the matter that just weren't true, or at least were very selective tellings of what was true."

"We need left criticism of mainstream assumptions now more than ever," Flaherty said. "I just don't want the information underpinning it to be untrue."

'Chasing the viral dragon'

Not everyone is convinced, however, that the aforementioned examples of misinformation were driven by ideology. Instead, the other view goes, the misleading stories were the natural result of today's fast-paced news environment in which news outlets are competing with others for clicks and shares.

"It's about chasing the viral dragon," said Matt Waite, a professor of journalism at the University of Nebraska and developer of PolitiFact, a fact-checking website.

"If you wait for facts to ruin a good story, then you won't be in on the pageview bonanza, and your bosses want to be in on the pageview bonanza," Waite added. "So, post goes up, facts come later."

Amanda Terkel, the Huffington Post senior editor who authored the website's story on the Jewish couple fleeing town, also dismissed the notion that politics were to be blamed for the circulation of misinformation.

Terkel said it was wrong to conflate fake news articles that are wholly fabricated with stories that end up being incorrect because the reporter was operating on limited information.

"There is a difference between reporters misinterpreting a source or needing to correct a story versus what's now happening with fake news," she told Business Insider.

"There will always be corrections, clarifications, and additional reporting needed in stories as new facts come out," Terkel said. "To conflate that with fake news doesn't help the problem of real fake news."

'Facts are secondary'

Individuals on the right are far less forgiving. They firmly believe that the dissemination of such news items occurs not to inform audiences but to play up a left-leaning narrative.

If a story fits the preferred narrative, they say, the story is treated with far less skepticism and allowed to pass through into the ether. If it doesn't, it undergoes a vigorous fact-checking process that waters down its claims.

"False stories on Facebook are worrisome," Maggie Gallagher recently wrote for National Review, the nation's premier conservative magazine, "but the mainstream media's own distortion of truth is worse."

Sean Davis, a cofounder of The Federalist, a right-leaning online magazine, went as far as to tell Business Insider it's "obvious" the media isn't interested in the truth. He contended that journalists often aim to "indoctrinate, rather than educate."

"From presenting blatant hoaxes as real news, to covering up the real motives of radical Islamic terrorists, to tarring Trump voters as racists and Christians as idiots, media made it abundantly clear in 2016 that actual facts are secondary to promoting the preferred narratives of the left," Davis said.

Huffington Post office

***

So what's the solution? Perhaps newsroom diversity is key.

"Conservatives have blind spots, liberals have blind spots, but working together they can keep each other accountable," said Alex Griswold, an editor at Mediaite.

Griswold, for instance, suggested that it was difficult for members of the media to "police" fake news on the left because the press corps is largely made up of liberals. Alternatively, when it comes to fake news on the right, "there aren't many conservatives in the media to fall for it."

"There are basically no reporters who would believe Hillary Clinton killed a DNC staffer, because basically no reporters have that visceral a hatred for Clinton," he said, referring to a conspiracy theory circulated in 2016 by fringe far-right websites.

"But more than a few would buy into the idea that Trump/Putin rigged the vote in Wisconsin," Griswold continued. "As a result, only one of those zany views ended up being parroted by the mainstream and established media."

If newsrooms included reporters with more varied political perspectives, he argued, more stories would undergo greater scrutiny, a necessity in the current rapid-fire news environment.

This idea has been championed by others as well.

"Want to fix journalism?" a headline on a National Review article recently asked. "Start by bringing diversity of thought to newsrooms."

It's not just conservative journalists making the argument. Members of the mainstream press have identified newsroom diversity as an issue to address as news outlets grapple with how they misunderstood the wave that Trump rode to the White House.

The New York Times' executive editor, Dean Baquet, recently conceded that his newspaper doesn't "get religion." Carrie Brown, a professor at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, also blamed a "lack of diversity in the newsroom" for some of journalism's recent shortcomings.

And the chorus will most likely only grow louder after the recent string of misreported stories.

"I think last week was a wake-up call," Griswold said. "There's nothing wrong with the media deciding to take on 'fake news.' But when reporters fall for false or hoax reports  and the perception is that only the hoaxes that benefit the left are being passed on uncritically  we end up lacking the credibility we need to inform the public."

NOW WATCH: Trump answers reporters' questions in his longest news conference since winning the election





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We have initiated coverage on hospital operator, LifePoint Health Inc. LPNT.

Year to date, shares of the company have tanked by 21.3% compared with the Zacks categorized Medical Hospital industrys decline of 9%. The underperformance indicates the headwinds faced by the company. LifePoint Health is plagued by issues like less profitable acquisitions that have drained its bottom line, high volumes of uninsured patients increasing bad debts, earnings volatility related to seasonal trends like flu, declining levels of short-stay admissions, and reduced readmissions, to name a few.



Despite underperforming the sector, the company has delivered better performance than other players in the industry like Tenet Healthcare Corporation THC, and Community Health Systems, Inc. CYH that declined by 51.5% and 78.4%, respectively.

Established in 1999, LifePoint Health owns and operates hospitals and healthcare services in 72 non-urban communities in 22 states. The company is now focusing on strategic growth through acquisitions and integration of well-positioned hospitals in faster growing areas of the U.S. The company considers buyouts to be strong opportunities to support its communities and build upon the excellent healthcare, growing margins, and operations in attractive new markets.

The companys acquisition pipeline remains strong and it sees several potential opportunities, including hospitals, health systems, and end-market transactions to build key services. Going forward, we expect the company to undertake more acquisitions to boost its top line. Along with acquiring businesses, the company has been divesting non-core operations to focus on core growth areas.

It also boasts a strong balance sheet with ample liquidity as evident from its free cash flow that has increased every year from 2006 to 2015, except the years 2012 and 2013. The company utilizes cash for share buybacks and acquisitions to drive earnings. However, free cash flow is expected to remain under pressure due to increased use of cash for working capital, higher capital expenditures, and lower profitability (owing to declining levels of short-stay admissions and reduced readmissions).

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The company is also bothered by its expenses that have increased at a CAGR of 12% from 20062015, higher than the growth rate of revenues of 9.33% over the same time frame. If the trend persists, it will drain the companys bottom line, eroding its profitability.

The company is also suffering from the integration of less profitable acquisitions, which has been limiting its profitability.

Zacks Rank

LifePoint carries a Zacks Rank # 3 (Hold). A better-ranked stock in the same sector is HCA Holdings, Inc. HCA. The stock carries a Zacks Rank # 2 (Buy). The company has posted a positive earnings surprise in each of the last four reported quarters with an average beat of 14.01%. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here .



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In people with type 1 diabetes, the body wages a ruthless campaign of destruction against certain cells in the pancreas because it mistakes them for foreign invaders. Now, one of the long-sought triggers of this assault might have been found, according to a new study from Switzerland.

The cells that are destroyed, called beta cells, normally produce certain proteins in packages called exosomes. The new study found that, when the cells are in trouble, such as after an infection or other stressful event, these packages are decorated with chemical warning signals that may act as homing beacons that lure immune cells.

"When beta cells are subjected to stress, the exosomes are released at higher levels and now contain proteins that signal danger to alert the immune system," said study author Steinunn Baekkeskov, a biochemist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The new findings could provide a means to shut off the wayward immune system, thereby preventing the development of type 1 diabetes in people who are at very early stages of the disease, the study authors suggested.

Mysterious target

Normally, beta cells release the hormone insulin, which helps body cells take in sugar from the bloodstream. People with type 1 diabetes, whose beta cells are destroyed, must inject insulin into their bodies, or they will die. Those with the disease constantly monitor their blood sugar and take many doses of insulin each day to regulate their blood sugar.

But even with these treatments, blood sugar levels that frequently run too high and too low mean that people with the condition face an increased risk of complications such as kidney failure, heart disease and nerve damage.

In an ongoing, decades-long study, scientists have monitored the family members of people with type 1 diabetes (who are at increased risk of developing it themselves), and found evidence that the autoimmune assault begins before people show symptoms. Early on in the course of the disease, people may have high levels of certain antibodies that bind to pancreatic proteins found in the beta cells. If a person tests positive for two or more antibodies to these proteins, it virtually guarantees that he or she will develop the disease eventually, even if the person has no symptoms for years, according to a 2015 study in the journal Diabetes Care.

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These findings have raised researchers' hopes of intervening early, to shut off the immune attack in people with antibodies before too many beta cells are killed, Baekkeskov said.

"Antibody-positive individuals, who have not yet developed clinical disease, are candidates for immune preventive therapy to block beta-cell destruction and prevent the development of type 1 diabetes," Baekkeskov told Live Science in an email.

Seeds of destruction

But researchers still didn't know how these beta-cell proteins first encountered the immune cells that trigger autoimmunity.

To answer that question, Baekkeskov and her colleagues analyzed the exosomes from both human and rat beta cells. They found that the exosomes carried the beta-cell proteins recognized by the antibodies. In addition, these exosomes seemed to attract immune cells and activate them, she said.

What's more, when the cells were under stress, the exosomes were decorated with chaperone proteins, or special molecules that take newly made proteins and help them fold or travel through the cell to their final destination, Baekkeskov said.

However, in this case, the chaperone proteins were not benign; they acted as a flashing emergency light that signals danger to the immune system. From there, immune molecules flag the molecules as dangerous, the researchers hypothesized in the Nov. 21 issue of the journal Diabetes.

It's possible that inflammation, such as the response to an infection or other assault, stresses the beta cells and causes them to release exosomes marked with these warning signals, the researchers said.

At that point, the immune system launches an unrelenting assault, and the immune system's long memory makes it very hard to shut off the attack. (However, the study doesn't address whether there may be many other initial triggers for beta-cell destruction.)

The new findings suggest a way to reprogram the immune system. One possibility would be to engineer an exosome mimic that can lure immune cells to them. These exosomes could be covered with chemical signals that lure the beta-cell-killing immune cells and block or kill them, Baekkeskov said.

Original article on Live Science.



Editor's Recommendations
Oppn parties obstruct House meeting again

The opposition parties led by CPM-UML obstructed a Parliament meeting on Wednesday as part of their programme in protest of the governments registration of the constitution amendment bill at the Parliament Secretariat on November 29.
Parties one on holding local polls in new set-up

The major parties are inching closer to an agreement on holding the local polls in a new structure after the Nepali Congress, which was lobbying for conducting the election for the existing local bodies, gave a positive signal for shifting to the new set-up.
MADRID (AP)  Madrid's town hall says smog levels have dropped enough to allow the city to end unprecedented restrictions it had announced on vehicle circulation.

City environment councilor Ines Sabanes said Thursday's ban on vehicles with plates ending in an even number will not be extended. Other measures, including a ban on street parking for non-residents and reduced speed limits, will continue.

Madrid ordered the traffic limits, a first for a Spanish city, due to excess levels of nitrogen dioxide in the air.

Sabanes said weather conditions continued to be bad, mainly due to a lack of rain and wind, and authorities would continue to monitor the situation.
Counter-terrorism police have arrested a man in Sydney for allegedly making threats against New Year's Eve celebrations in an online blog, authorities said Friday.

The arrest came a week after police said they had foiled a "significant" Islamic State-inspired terror plot for Christmas Day targeting central Melbourne with explosives.

The 40-year-old man was to appear in court later in the day on charges of "making threats relating to New Year's Eve", a police statement said.

Police did not provide details about the threats.

Sydney is gearing up for the giant annual New Year's Eve fireworks party on the harbour with a crowd of more than one million expected.

Acting on a tip-off from the public, officers from the New South Wales Police Force Terrorism Investigation Squad arrested the man on Thursday at Sydney's international airport as he returned from London.

Documents and hard drives were seized after searches of a home and a storage facility in the city.

Police charged the man with possessing "documents containing threats... concerning online blogs".

He was refused bail prior to an appearance at Parramatta local Court.

"Investigations into this matter so far indicate this was an isolated incident," said Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn.

"As a consequence, we are confident that there are no current or specific threats to New Years Eve... people should enjoy the celebrations."

At least a dozen terror attacks have been prevented in Australia in the past two years, according to officials. But four have taken place, including the murder of a Sydney police employee last year.

Counter-terrorism police have made a large number of arrests since late 2014, with the youth and depth of radicalisation of many of those detained a growing concern.
ELIZABETH, N.J. (AP)  Now that Todd West has been sentenced to life in prison for the fatal shootings of three people in Pennsylvania, he faces murder charges for the deaths of four others in New Jersey.

The slayings were apparently random over three months in 2015, prosecutors say.

West, 24, of Elizabeth, New Jersey, was sentenced in October in Pennsylvania to three consecutive life sentences after pleading guilty to killing two people in Allentown and a third in Easton in July of 2015. He said at a hearing at the time that he "just wanted to kill them."

On Thursday, a New Jersey prosecutor announced that a grand jury has indicted West in the May and June 2015 shooting deaths of four people. Authorities said West will be transferred to New Jersey from Pennsylvania to be arraigned on the charges. It was unclear whether he has an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

West was charged in the 2015 slayings of his cousin, 29-year-old Michael Thompkins, at an apartment building in Elizabeth on May 18; 28-year-old Dennis Vega, of Elizabeth, in the early morning of June 25; Jamil Payne, 29, later that night; and Kelvin Nelson, 32, also that night. In addition, West is charged with attempting to murder Richard Marte, who survived an attack.

Union County prosecutor Grace Park called the killings a "horrific event." Her office said that a motive was unclear and that authorities found no evidence that drugs, gang activity or robbery played a role in the killings.

The same .38-caliber revolver was used in all four shootings.

In Pennsylvania, West admitted to killing Francine Ramos, 32, and Trevor Gray, 22, while they were riding in a car in Allentown. He said he shot Kory Ketrow, 22, in Easton, about an hour earlier because Ketrow looked "tired."
A 37-year-old man named Kenneth S. Seplak was charged Wednesday with shooting and killing a man dating the woman he was supposedly stalking in suburban Chicago, according to local authorities. Seplak allegedly followed the victim to his car Friday after seeing him attend a movie with the woman and shot him.

Seplak was charged with first-degree murder in the death of 30-year-old David E. Gorski. Associate Judge George Strickland of Lake County reportedly ordered Seplak to be held on a $3-million bond, citing evidence that he had planned the attack.

Gorski had left the movie separately from the woman Seplak had allegedly been stalking because they took different cars, a representative for the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force Christopher Covelli told local reporters.

Lake County prosecutor Lisa LeBoeuf cited GPS records from Seplaks phone in court Wednesday that show Seplak had indeed been at the movie theater at the same time as Gorski and the woman. It additionally showed Seplak visited the home of a friend after he left the location where Gorski was found dead.

When local detectives went to that residence, the friend surrendered a .38-caliber handgun along with bullets to the authorities. Forensic results revealed that the gunshot residue from the weapon was also found on Seplak.

Local police officers were dispatched near the location of the movie theater in the Chicago suburban of Libertyville in Lake County, which is roughly 40 miles north of city center, after receiving a call about a body spotted slouched over inside a car. They rushed Gorski to a local hospital after finding him unresponsive in the car, but he was pronounced dead shortly upon arrival. Garcia was killed by a single shot that went through his right arm and into his chest, according to the local coroner's office.

Police reportedly found Seplak Saturday at his home.

Police had been aware of at least one other incident in which Seplak had been accused of stalking the same woman at her house, Covelli said.

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Defense attorney Steven McCollum called Seplak a very steady guy with no criminal history in court Wednesday.

Never missed work or anything. Now, he lives with his parents, taking care of his parents. His father's got some medical problems, and so he's been helping them." McCollum said.

The city of Chicago reportedly witnessed 11 killings on Christmas Day, highlighting a year in which more than 700 homicides were reported throughout the city. Chicago hasn't seen such a deadly year since 1998 when 704 homicides were reported.

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When attorneys for Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke appealed the controversial jury verdict against the "Blurred Lines" creators, hundreds of artists rallied behind them. Now it's Marvin Gaye's family that's seeing an outpouring of support.

While a judge trimmed the jury's $7.4 million verdict down to $5.3 million, many in the industry have said the verdict's potential to stifle artists from creating works that are inspired by those who came before them is the biggest cost.

Clear battle lines are being drawn in this copyright war. On one side, artists including Linkin Park, Earth, Wind & Fire and Jennifer Hudson and legendary composer Hans Zimmer have sided with Williams and Thicke.

On the other side are Hall of Fame songwriters and world renowned composers including David Porter, Valerie Simpson, Paul Riser, Jon Lind and Sylvia Moy. The group is responsible for writing hits like "My Girl," "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love," "Dreamweaver" and "My Cherie Amour." They're joined by professors of law, music and business from across the country.

On Wednesday they, along with a separate group of musicologists, filed an amicus brief in support of the Gayes -- whose attorney, Richard Busch, last week told the 9th Circuit that the jury's verdict was just.

The Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, along with the composers and professors, argues that any fears of chilled creativity because of the ruling against Thicke and Williams is unfounded because the Fair Use Doctrine still allows for lawful borrowing. (Read the brief in full on THR.com.)

"[The Thicke parties] and their amici trot out a hypothetical, feared parade of chilling effects that this evidence-based decision might create," writes Sean O'Conner in one amicus brief. "However, that parade will not march because this decision was based on disputed evidence about protectable aspects of a particular piece of music -- not on some broad-brush protection of a whole musical genre -- and because the fair use by subsequent composers of even protectable elements from this work remains available."

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At the heart of the appeal will be whether it was proper for U.S. District Judge John Kronstadt was correct in not allowing the jury to hear the original sound recording of "Got to Give It Up." He allowed only recreations of the work based on the sheet music deposited with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Thicke and Williams argue Kronstadt properly limited the scope, but testimony from the Gayes' musicologists introduced opinions about the sound recording and allowed unprotected elements to be considered by the jury. Their lawyer, Howard King, argues to the 9th Circuit that the problem was made worse by inadequate jury instructions that failed to distinguished between protectable and unprotectable material.

The Gayes and their amici, on the other hand, say Krondstadt's decision to limit the scope and preclude the playing of the original recording favored the "Blurred Lines" duo and was in error.

"While the court below properly allowed expert interpretation of the lead sheet, the trial court also could have, and should have, allowed the Gaye parties to submit the full phonorecording of 'Got To Give It Up' to show the entire scope of the composition Gaye actually wrote," writes O'Conner. "The copyright in 'Got To Give It Up' is in the composition as it was written and performed by Gaye in the studio, not merely in the uninterpreted notations on a lead sheet, nor even in commercially released sheet music for an amateur market, that Gaye himself did not inscribe."

The other amicus brief filed by more than a dozen musicologists from Yale, Harvard and University of Chicago, among others, defends the work of the Gayes' experts Judith Finell and Ingrid Monson. It argues that their testimony analyzing the similarities between the "Got to Give It Up" lead sheet and the "Blurred Lines" sound recording are based on sound musicological principals. (Read it in full here.)

"There is nothing in the law that suggests Musicological interpretation of a lead sheet to determine what it represents is improper," writes attorney Bernard Burk. "Holding otherwise would make the musical author's rights subject to a potentially unqualified, after-the-fact transcriber, who may have limited ability to prepare transcriptions, and who must make choices of what to notate and how to notate it while under time pressure to get the copyright registration on file. Such a holding would mean that only those notes this third party chose to notate in a limited lead sheet would be protected from theft. Bluntly, this is wrong."

Another issue at hand is the idea of systemic bias against creators of aural music, as many artists like Marvin Gaye create their works without having the ability to read or write sheet music using European classical staff notation.

"Composers not fluent in this specific form of musical notation -- especially those who work in aural musical traditions, or are from disadvantaged communities or backgrounds and thus did not enjoy access to formal music education -- have been routinely discriminated against when the copyright system has been incorrectly construed to require the use of such notation," writes O'Conner. "Allowing cultural bias to categorically deny copyright protection to aural musical expression discourages the participation of marginalized creators and communities in the copyright regime. The decision below avoids such distortion of copyright and instead affirms the rights of marginalized creators to protection for their work."

This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
Vilnius (AFP) - Republican Senator John McCain on Thursday called for US troops to be permanently stationed in the Baltic states as a deterrent against Russia amid regional concerns over President-elect Donald Trump's pro-Moscow rhetoric.

"I think that permanency is important, that there will always be some American troops here," McCain told reporters in Lithuania, an EU and NATO member bordering Russia's highly militarised Kaliningrad exclave.

"Maintaining that presence is necessary to make sure that our friends here understand the United States is always with them," he added, wrapping up a three-day tour of the Baltics with fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democrat Amy Klobuchar.

Mentioning Trump's pick for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, McCain expressed concern over his "relationship with (Russian president) Vladimir Putin" but said he will be given an "opportunity to make his case about why he is qualified".

McCain and Graham also called for increased sanctions against Russia over its cyber-meddling in the US election.

"I think the sanctions need to go beyond what it is today, they need to name Putin as an individual and his inner circle because nothing happens in Russia without his knowledge and approval," Graham said.

The US deployed around 150 troops in each of the Baltic states and Poland in 2014 after tensions in the region flared over Russia's annexation of Crimea.

The outgoing administration also pledged to deploy an additional armoured brigade in eastern Europe from early next year on a rotational basis.

Linas Kojala, who heads the Vilnius-based Eastern Europe Studies Centre, said the senators' visit was reassuring after Trump's "worrisome" comments.

"For the Baltics, NATO and the presence of American soldiers in the region are key factors which distinguish us from war-torn Ukraine," he told AFP.
Washington (AFP) - A key military commander for the Islamic State group in Syria has been killed in an air strike carried out by the US-led coalition, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti died Monday near Tabqa Dam, west of the IS stronghold of Raqa, according to a statement from Centcom, the US military command in the Middle East.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, described al-Kuwaiti as the "number two military commander for IS in Syria."

The jihadi commander led battles in Iraq and Syria, and was most recently assigned to Raqa where he oversaw attacks on the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Observatory said.

The SDF, an Arab-Kurdish alliance backed by US ground and air forces, launched an offensive to retake Raqa in early November.

Al-Kuwaiti was involved in using suicide vehicles, IEDs and chemical weapons against the SDF, Centcom said.

He was previously a member of the IS "War Committee" and involved in the group's retaking of the central Syrian city of Palmyra on December 11, just eight months after the army backed by Russia drove them out.

Centcom added that al-Kuwaiti's death would impede IS's ability to defend Raqa, as well as diminish the group's ability to launch attacks in the West.
Police arrest disgraced real estate tycoon Basnet

Police arrested disgraced real estate tycoon Sudhir Basnet, who had misused millions of rupees collected from the public and evaded prison sentences, from his residence in Dhapasi late Tuesday night.
After being banned on Twitter, controversial conservative personality Milo Yiannopoulos resorted to a more traditional medium to share his views: a book. Yiannopoulos signed a deal to write an autobiographical book with an offshoot of publisher Simon & Schuster, the Hollywood Reporter said Thursday. Threshold Editions reportedly gave Yiannopoulos a $250,000 advance.

I met with top execs at Simon & Schuster earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinion, he told the Hollywood Reporter. I thought they were going to have me escorted from the building  but instead they offered me a wheelbarrow full of money.

Yiannopoulos, an openly gay right-wing commentator and outspoken critic of political correctness was permanently banned from Twitter in July after tweeting at Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones. Yiannopoulos was accused of being racist and sexist following comments he made and promptly removed from Twitter.

They said banning me from Twitter would finish me off. Just as I predicted, the opposite has happened, he told the Hollywood Reporter. Did it hurt Madonna being banned from MTV in the 1990s? Did all that negative press hurt Donald Trumps chances of winning the election?

Authors and journalists took to Twitter following the announcement of his book deal to decry Simon & Schusters choice. Some called for a boycott of the publisher altogether.

Paying a bigot to be a bigot is bigotry. Shame on you, @simonschuster, wrote author John Corey Whaley.

Yiannopoulos is also an editor for Breitbart News. He co-wrote an article for the outlet in March titled An Establishment Conservatives Guide to the Alt-Right. Yiannopoulos has a large YouTube following and is currently on a tour of colleges and universities around the country in what is called his Dangerous Faggot Tour.

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Every line of attack the forces of political correctness try on my fails pathetically. Im more powerful, more influential and more fabulous than ever before, and this book is the moment Milo goes mainstream, said Yiannopoulos. Social justice warriors should be scared  very scared.

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By Philip O'Connor Dec 28 (Reuters) - When UFC bantamweight Ronda Rousey makes her long-awaited return to the octagon on Friday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, she will have just one thing on her mind - avenging her only UFC defeat and winning back what she sees as "her" belt. Over a year has passed since a stunning knockout by Holly Holm saw her lose the title and Rousey, who has shunned the media for much of the last 12 months, now takes on current champion Amanda Nunes. "I don't care how this pay-per-view does. I don't care how much money I make. I don't care about interviews and I don't care how I look," the 29-year-old Californian said in a brief video about the UFC 207 event posted by TMZ on Wednesday. "All I care about is winning my belt back on Friday night and that's it." The most dominant female athlete in mixed martial arts and, alongside Irishman Conor McGregor, one of the most bankable stars in the UFC, Rousey's loss to Holm stunned the fight game and started a period of turbulence in the bantamweight division. Having won the title in spectacular fashion, Holm lost it just as quickly as Miesha Tate caught her in a rear naked choke at the end of a bruising five-round battle in March to emerge with the belt. Tate then fell at the first hurdle herself as Brazilian challenger Amanda Nunes swarmed all over her at UFC 200 in July before finishing the fight in the first round with the same choke Tate used to beat Holm. Rousey has said that this will be one of the last times fans will see her in the octagon, and a defeat to the 28-year-old Nunes may well hasten the retirement of the 2008 Olympic judo bronze medallist. Rousey's road to redemption is filled with danger. Both fighters have a reputation as quick starters and while Nunes, a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu, is arguably the better boxer, she will have to be wary of the judo hip toss and arm bar submissions which have become Rousey's trademark. Former champion Miesha Tate, who lost the belt to Nunes and was twice defeated in bitter battles against Rousey, has questioned Rousey's motiviation ahead of a fight that could define her legacy. "I'm not counting her out, but I am saying if push comes to shove I don't know if her heart is really in it anymore," she said in a recent TV appearance. "Amanda's is. She's in it. She's in it to win it." (Reporting by Philip O'Connor, editing by Meil Robinson)
Rabat (AFP) - Morocco has arrested five youth members of the premier's Islamist party who allegedly celebrated last week's murder of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, a party source said Thursday.

Authorities arrested the five from the youth movement of Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane's Justice and Development Party (PJD), the source said, after the assassination of Andrei Karlov on December 19.

The Akhbar Al-Yaoum daily reported a sixth person had been called in for questioning.

The PJD, whose leader has been tasked with forming a new governing coalition after winning October parliamentary polls, has yet to comment on the arrests.

But the head of the party's lawyer association, Abdessamad al-Idrissi, said he would be defending those detained.

Under Moroccan law, the crime of justifying terrorist acts can be punished by up to six years in prison and more than $19,000 in fines.

On December 22, the justice and interior ministries said they were opening an investigation after a group of people "clearly celebrated on social media the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Turkey".

In early December, Benkirane caused a diplomatic stir by criticising Russia's military intervention in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

After Moscow's envoy in Rabat expressed concern over the comments, Morocco's foreign ministry slammed the premier's remarks and said it respected Russia's role in Syria.
RABAT (Reuters) - Moroccan grains agency ONICL on Thursday announced tenders to buy 363,636 tonnes of European Union (EU) soft wheat and 363,636 tonnes of U.S. soft wheat under preferential-tariff import quotas. ONICL said in a statement it was also seeking to buy 327,273 tonnes of U.S. durum under the same agreement. The deadline for bids for the U.S. wheat was Jan. 17, with cargoes of soft wheat to arrive at Moroccan ports by Apr. 30 and durum shipments to arrive by Dec.31 at latest. In the EU tender, the bidding deadline was Jan. 18 for cargoes to arrive by Apr. 30. The North African country has agreements with the United States and the European Union to import certain types of grain at preferential tariffs, with volumes depending on the size of the local harvest. (Reporting By Aziz El Yaakoubi. Editing by Jane Merriman)
Considering the cost of homeowners insurance, auto insurance and health insurance, most Americans already feel they are spending too much money on insurance. Fortunately, every American can take full advantage of free government programs to make sure every cent in his or her bank and brokerage accounts is protected.

Most people have heard of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC. Today, few Americans pay any mind to the integrity of the U.S. banking system. The FDIC had played a big part in building that confidence over the years.

The FDIC was created in 1933, during the heart of the Great Depression. Incredibly, more than one-third of American banks failed during the early years of the Depression. Starting in 1933, the FDIC began insuring $2,500 in member bank deposits per person.

Today, that limit has been upped to $250,000 per person, per bank, per ownership category. FDIC insurance covers a wide range of deposit accounts, including checking accounts, savings accounts, money market deposit accounts and certificates of deposit.

If you have less than $250,000 in these types of accounts in U.S. banks, check the FDIC's BankFind search engine to confirm that your bank is covered. The FDIC also has a toll-free number (1-877-ASK-FDIC) if you have trouble finding your bank. If you have less than $250,000 in the bank and you have confirmed that your bank is FDIC insured, you are likely totally covered.

Upping your coverage. If you have more than $250,000 in the bank, things get a bit more complicated. However, even people with more than $250,000 deposited in U.S. banks may be fully covered if they are creative.

[See: 7 of the Best Stocks to Buy for 2017.]

The $250,000 FDIC insurance limit is on a per-bank basis. Kevin LaCroix, attorney and executive vice president of RT ProExec, says there are plenty of options for additional coverage.

"If the limit becomes an issue, banking consumers should consider either splitting their deposit funds between institutions to maintain deposit levels below the statutory limit, or they should consider investing in an investment vehicle like CDARS," LaCroix says.

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The Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service is a network of partnered banks that work together to make sure that deposits in excess of $250,000 are fully insured by splitting them up among partner banks. Once a customer signs a CDARS agreement with a single bank, he or she gets all the benefits of full coverage without the hassle of dealing with multiple banks.

Common mistakes. Even though there are plenty of options available for Americans to get full deposit coverage, not everyone takes advantage.

FDIC media relations officer Julianne Breitbeil says some depositors expose themselves to risk because they misunderstand the FDIC rules.

"One of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to FDIC insurance is assuming that the coverage is on a per-account basis," Breitbeil says. "If you have $200,000 in a checking account and $200,000 in a CD at the same bank, only $250,000 of that $400,000 is covered."

[See: 20 Awesome Dividend Stocks to Buy for Guaranteed Income.]

"Banks are also offering consumers a broad array of investment products that are not deposits products, and unlike the traditional checking or savings account, these non-deposit investment products are not insured by the FDIC," says Andrea Puchalsky, director of deposits, corporate finance, consumer banking and investing at Ally Financial.

For example, annuities underwritten by insurance companies are not covered by the FDIC. Stocks, mutual funds and U.S. Treasury bonds are also not covered.

Additional security measures. Fortunately for investors, another government program protects against losses of stocks, bonds, cash and other securities at a brokerage firm. The Securities Investor Protection Corporation provides $500,000 in total protection and $250,000 in cash protection to Americans with accounts at SIPC member brokerage firms. The SIPC has a full list of member brokerages on its website.

In addition to SIPC coverage, bank depositors also get extra layer of security from the banks themselves. For example, banks typically reimburse funds that are lost via fraud or theft.

Ally Bank offers an online and mobile security guarantee that guarantees customers will not be liable for any unauthorized online or mobile banking transaction as long as they report it within 60 days after receiving their statement, Puchalsky says.

The days of gangsters with Tommy guns staging bank stickups may be long gone, but hackers pose just as much of a threat to today's banks.

The worst-case scenario. U.S. bank failures may not be common, but they do still happen. In fact, there were five bank failures in the first nine months of 2016. In the unlikely event that your FDIC-insured bank fails, don't panic.

"Remain calm and go to the FDIC's website, where information about the receivership and the successor financial institution is posted," LaCroix says. "Among other things, the FDIC's website describes the procedure to re-establish their deposit relationship with the successor institution."

The idea of losing access to your life savings is scary, but Breitbeil says most failed bank customers won't be waiting for long.

[See: 10 Tips for Keeping a Cool Head in a Market Meltdown.]

"The FDIC must pay deposit insurance as soon as possible," Breitbeil says. "The majority of the time, payments are made within the first few days after the bank closes."





More From US News & World Report


A mother and daughter were killed after a two-storey building collapsed on December 28 in the neighborhood of Acilia in Rome. Two others were pulled out from under the rubble with serious injuries.

Local authorities suspect the building collapsed due to an explosion from a gas leak on the second floor. The video shows Italian firefighters attending the scene at Via Giacomo della Marca. Credit: Vigili del Fuoco via Storyful
A car wound up floating in a Florida swimming pool after its driver told police she had swerved to avoid a raccoon.

The shocking crash occurred Tuesday when residents of a Miami Beach apartment complex reported hearing a loud crash before a vehicle came crashing into a pool where several people were swimming.

Read: Comcast Cable Trucks Caught on Video Blocking Icy Road as Cars Crash: 'I Got Work to Do'

"It sounded like a thunder crash," witness Carlos Bamrud told WSVN. "This is the first time Ive ever seen anything like this."

According to a Miami Beach PD incident report, the vehicle swerved off the road before crashing into a fence and ultimately wound up in the pool, where it sank to the bottom.

None of the swimmers in the pool were injured.

Read: School Bus Driver Was Speeding in Crash That Killed 6 Kids, Cop Testifies

Photos taken after the 11 p.m. incident show the pool littered with debris  and the car floating in it.

The two occupants of the vehicle refused to be taken to a hospital.

Watch: 5-Year-Old Girl Saves Mom from Drowning After Having Seizure in Pool

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Debbie Reynolds, remembered for her performances in such memorable movies as Singing in the Rain and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, spent years in financial trouble, finally filing for bankruptcy in 1997.

At her death Wednesday, she was estimated to have been worth $60 million to $85 million.

Reynolds, 84, died just a day after her daughter Carrie Fisher succumbed following a massive heart attack. Reynolds suffered what was described as a medical emergency at her Beverly Hills home as she planned her daughters funeral and was taken to Cedars-Sinai Hospital.

Reynolds career in Hollywood spanned nearly seven decades. Her breakout role was as Helen Kane in 1950s Three Little Words. This year she played herself in the documentary Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.

Reynolds always said she felt closest to the character she played in The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

"In life, I'm like Molly Brown. I've had tough times along the way and gone through experiences that many women have gone through. But I ain't down yet," she told USA Today last year.

debbie reynolds

Photo: Fred Prouser/Reuters

She married and divorced three times: Eddie Fisher, 1955-56; Harry Karl, 1960-73, and Richard Hamlett, 1984-96. She blamed the failures of her marriages in a 2015 Daily Mail interview on not being a very sexual lady.

It was the second marriage that first took a toll on her finances. She spent the 1970s trying to pay off a $3 million debt and was forced into bankruptcy in 1997 when a casino venture in which she had invested failed.

Hamlett had bought the land for the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel, which hosted the Debbie Reynolds Star Theatre and housed Reynolds collection of Hollywood memorabilia, including 3,000 costumes. The hotel failed when the casino operator pulled out.

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In the years since, Reynolds finances recovered. The Richest estimated her net worth at $60 million while Celebrity Net Worth estimated she was worth $85 million.

Reynolds opened a dance studio in North Hollywood in 1979 and released an exercise video, Do It Debbies Way, in 1983.

In 2010, she replaced Ivana Trump at the weekly Globe, answering reader questions.

Born Mary Frances Reynolds in El Paso, Texas, she was signed by Warner Bros. when she was 16 and later signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

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SLMM says no to local poll before constitution amendment

The Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha (SLMM) has concluded that holding of local polls sans the constitution amendment would trigger a conflict in the country.
In a holiday tale to unite the worlds two most popular religions, a Muslim man in Indonesia has revealed he was given the name Slamet Hari Natal, meaning Merry Christmas, when he was born on Dec. 25, 1962.

Yes, thats my name, he told Indonesian newspaper Kompas from his home in the province of East Kava Tuesday. He also held aloft a copy of his identification card.

The name, he said, was chosen on the advice of the midwife who helped deliver him. A Christian, she suggested naming him after the traditional Indonesian greeting of Merry Christmas, Selamat Hari Natal. His parents, despite being Muslims, jumped on board, although with a minor alteration.

It was supposed to be Selamat Hari Natal, but because we are Javanese, it became Slamet, he said. They said they didnt want to think hard for the name, and they had that name ready, so they accepted the suggestion.

Slamet translates as safe.

Now aged 54, the festively named Indonesian said that his name has never caused a problem for him, despite East Java being overwhelmingly made up of Muslims.

No, never. We practice tolerance here, he said.

Muslims Indonesia

Photo: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images

In East Java, over 95 percent of the population practices Islam. As a whole, Indonesia is home to the largest population of Muslims in the world, with close to 90 percent of the Southeast Asian countrys near 250 million population adhering to the religion. Christianity is the next most popular religion.

Despite the overwhelming majority of Muslims, since its foundation, the country has been secular. A separation between church and state was enshrined in the constitution with the founders having opted against the inclusion of Sharia law to protect the rights of those belonging to minority religious groups.

However, the prevailing attitude of religious tolerance has been tested in recent months. The Christian governor of Jakarta is currently awaiting trial, accused of insulting the Koran. The move follows protests by hundreds of thousands of Muslim hardliners calling for his arrest.

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The decision to prosecute the ethnically Chinese politician has been criticized by Amnesty International, which said that the countrys blasphemy laws target people who belong to minority faiths and opinions.

In another move by the Indonesia's conservative Islamists to revise the country's secular legal code, a proposal has been put forward to make all sex outside of marriage illegal and punishable by up to five years in prison.

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There's no rest for Nick Cannon.

The 36-year-old America's Got Talent host spent Christmas at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center due to complications with lupus, but in a new Instagram video he posted on Thursday, he shared the good news that he's been released. Cannon revealed he underwent five blood transfusions during his two-week hospital stay.

"Honestly, I feel great," Cannon says, noting that he went straight to the studio upon his release. "We're back at it again. ... Five blood transfusions, what? Naw, it ain't nothing."

WATCH: Kevin Hart Visits Nick Cannon in the Hospital -- See the Sweet Pic!

"Stay motivated, you can do anything," he adds.

Keeping his upbeat attitude, he also jokes about his new beaded 'do.

"I see what you're talking about, making fun of my braids, saying I'm getting my Solange on ... my Venus and Serena Williams."

I broke out that joint!!!! Stuffed some pillows under the covers and ran out like the little rascals!! LOL Isaiah 54:17 "No Weapon Formed Against me Shall Prosper" #BeNcredible #NoPityParty After 2 weeks and 5 blood transfusions ... by his stripes I am healed!!! #HoldOn A video posted by LORD NCREDIBLE ALMIGHTY IkeT (@nickcannon) on Dec 29, 2016 at 4:00am PST

On Wednesday, Cannon let all his fans know that he was pumped for 2017 in another inspirational Instagram video. "I've just been sitting here, reflecting, and I can't sit here dormant no more," he said while lying down in a hospital bed. "I'm about to take it to the new level, a different stratosphere, a different mesosphere. I'm sitting here just getting stronger, just, like, Iron Man strong, Incredible Hulk type strong."

"Nietzsche said, 'What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger,'" he added. "We all are stronger because we made it through 2016, and we're gonna keep going. One love."

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WATCH: Nick Cannon Reveals How Mariah Carey Reacted to His Baby News

Cannon is certainly going to need his strength -- he's currently expecting a child with former girlfriend Brittany Bell.

"It's outstanding," Cannon told ET in November about his big baby news when we spoke with him at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in Paris. "Honestly, they say even in unexpected situations, you still embrace the beauty of bringing a life into this world, because that is what life is all about."

Watch below:

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Nick Cannon is officially out of the hospital after five blood transfusions, and were so relieved!

FINALLY, some good news this week  Nick Cannon has been released from the hospital after a two-week stay, and were so happy to hear it!

The actor was hospitalized for complications related to lupus, which he was diagnosed with four years ago. Apparently, he had five blood transfusions during his stay at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. Yikes!

Unfortunately, he spent the Christmas weekend in the hospital and probably missed out on the holiday celebrations with ex-wife Mariah Carey and their kids, Moroccan and Monroe. Nicks home and in good spirits, though, sharing an Instagram video earlier today (December 29th) to update his loved ones.

I broke out that joint!!!! Stuffed some pillows under the covers and ran out like the little rascals!! LOL Isaiah 54:17 "No Weapon Formed Against me Shall Prosper" #BeNcredible #NoPityParty After 2 weeks and 5 blood transfusions ... by his stripes I am healed!!! #HoldOn A video posted by LORD NCREDIBLE ALMIGHTY IkeT (@nickcannon) on Dec 29, 2016 at 4:00am PST

I broke out that joint!!!! Stuffed some pillows under the covers and ran out like the little rascals!! LOL [] After 2 weeks and 5 blood transfusionsby his stripes I am healed!!!, Nick captioned the clip.

Hes feeling so good, in fact, that he went right into the studio after being released from the hospital. Straight from the hospital bed to the studio. Honestly, I feel greatthis is no pity party, he said in the video.

Friends stopped by to visit him while he was in the hospital, including comedians Dick Gregory and Kevin Hart. He posted a picture with them, thanking his fans and friends for their loving messages.

We wish you all the best in your recovery, Nick!

The post Nick Cannon is officially out of the hospital after five blood transfusions, and were so relieved! appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Still in a fix

Much work is needed before amendment bill passes or elections take place
NEW YORK (AP)  The New York Police Department is now allowing Sikh (seek) officers to wear turbans in place of the traditional police cap and grow beards up to a half-inch long for religious reasons.

Police Commissioner James O'Neill announced the new rules that affect all religious members on Wednesday following a graduation ceremony for new police recruits. Officers must first get approval and the turbans must be navy blue and have the NYPD insignia attached.

Male observant Sikhs often cover their heads with turbans  which are considered sacred  and refrain from shaving their beards.

Before, Sikh officers had to fit their turbans under their department issued cap. Beards were forbidden because they interfered with wearing gas masks.

O'Neil says there are about 160 Sikhs serving in the police department.
Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama has created two new US national monuments, bringing vast desert areas under federal protection.

Bears Ears and Gold Butte National Monuments protect over one million acres (0.4 million hectares) of sacred sites, spectacular scenery, and important natural and cultural resources in the desert landscapes of Utah and southern Nevada, the White House said Wednesday.

Obama, whose term in office ends January 20 when President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated, has protected more than 550 million acres of public lands and waters, which the White House said was "more than any other president."

Gold Butte is fabled for its ancient rock art, sweeping vistas and twisted pastel-colored sandstone formations.

Environmentalists generally praise greater federal protection of land and water.

But many critics -- especially in Western areas where the government owns much of the land -- tend to see such moves as grabbing land in a way that may not be fair to all.

And in the case of Bears Ears, it will mark the first time the federal government will co-manage a national monument with Native American tribes.

The Hopi, Navajo, Uintah and Ouray Ute, Ute Mountain Ute and Pueblo of Zuni will together have responsibility for protecting an area that contains remnants of ancestral Pueblo sites dating back more than 3,500 years.

"We have always looked to Bear's Ears as a place of refuge, as a place where we can gather herbs and medicinal plants, and a place of prayer and sacredness," Russell Begaye, president of the Navajo Nation, told reporters.

"These places -- the rocks, the wind, the land - they are living, breathing things that deserve timely and lasting protection."
On Thursday, President Barack Obama announced tough reprisals against Russia, including imposing economic sanctions and booting dozens of Russian intelligence officials out of the country, in the most vigorous response yet to Moscows alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential election.

The new sanctions, implemented by executive order, target nine Russian entities and individuals in response to the Russian governments aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and cyberoperations aimed at the U.S. election, according to a statement by the president. Obama also kicked out 35 Russian intelligence operatives.

The administration also publicly described malicious software used by Moscows intelligence agencies to infiltrate computer systems; publishing that information could make it more difficult for Russian operatives to carry out similar attacks in the future.

The sanctions and diplomatic expulsions constitute the most visible attempt yet by the White House to strike back at Moscow for an unprecedented campaign against American political organizations that U.S. intelligence officials say may have boosted the candidacy of President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump has repeatedly questioned whether Russia was behind that campaign and accused Democrats of being sore losers in calling for an investigation. Its time for our country to move on to bigger and better things, he said in a Thursday statement. Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.

There may be more in store, as Obama hinted he would take covert action as well. These actions are not the sum total of our response to Russias aggressive activities, he said. We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicized.

The Obama administration has thus far been wary of retaliating in kind with a cyberattack on Russia, though, fearing escalating a conflict in cyberspace that it does not know how to definitively win. Russia has so far promised tit-for-tat diplomatic reprisals, but its unclear whether it will ramp up its cyber-campaign in response.

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A senior U.S. administration official told reporters that Russian attempts to influence elections in the United States and allied nations are likely to continue in the future and said Thursdays retaliatory measures come in response to what he called a multiyear campaign.

But independent experts have criticized what they viewed as White House inaction in the face of a well-documented Russian hacking campaign designed to benefit Trumps candidacy; Thursdays measures come seven weeks after the election and more than two months after U.S. intelligence concluded that Russia was behind the hacks. Security experts said it was unclear if the measures would be enough to deter Russia from future meddling, especially given uncertainty over what tack toward Moscow the Trump administration will ultimately take.

Deterring further Russian cyberattacks is important for more than just Washington and the departing Obama administration. Other U.S. allies, including Germany and France, worry that Russia could set its sights on their elections next. Attacks on the German government, including the lower house of parliament, have Berlin concerned that such a campaign may already be underway. On Wednesday, reports emerged that Russia may have hacked the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, an international rights and monitoring body that oversees the cease-fire in Ukraine.

The senior administration official defended the timing of the sanctions package by arguing that the coordinated measures took time to assemble and that the administration used diplomatic channels to warn Russia in the elections run-up against meddling. U.S. officials have said they warned Russia not to attack the election infrastructure, such as balloting and counting machines. In the elections aftermath, U.S. officials say they have collected no evidence that such an attack took place.

In the run-up to the election, the White House debated whether to retaliate against Moscow but decided against any public action, fearful of injecting a measure of partisanship into a geopolitical conflict.

By publicly retaliating at the tail end of his presidency, Obama may be attempting to box in Trump and constrain his ability to partner more closely with Russia, as he vowed to do on the campaign trail. Since the sanctions were implemented by executive order, Trump could theoretically reverse them in less than a month.

But political considerations  including calls from some prominent lawmakers such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for a tougher U.S. stance against Russian mischief  could complicate any efforts by the incoming Trump administration to walk back the latest measures.

Hypothetically, you could reverse those sanctions, but it wouldnt make a lot of sense, the senior administration official said on a conference call with reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Asked Wednesday whether the United States should hit Russia with sanctions, Trump dismissed the idea, saying, I think we ought to get on with our lives. He added, confusingly, I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly whats going on.

Russian officials predictably slammed the Obama administrations response.

We are tired of lies about Russian hackers that continue to be spread in the United States from the very top, Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said. The Obama administration launched this misinformation half a year ago in a bid to play up to the required nominee at the November presidential election and, having failed to achieve the desired effect, has been trying to justify its failure by taking it out with a vengeance on Russian-U.S. relations.

Russian government officials immediately promised to retaliate. You realize, of course, reciprocal steps will be made, and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and, quite possibly, the consulates will be cut down to size as well, Vladimir Dzhabarov, the deputy chairman of the foreign-policy committee in the Russian parliament, told the state-run TASS news agency.

Despite detailed evidence documenting the Russian campaign, Moscow has dismissed the accusations as American propaganda and on Thursday mocked the hapless Obama administrations measures.

The sanctions aim squarely at the Russian security establishment, including its principal intelligence agencies: the Main Intelligence Directorate  the military intelligence unit better known as the GRU  and the Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the KGB. Those organizations spearheaded the election hacks, U.S. officials say. The sanctions also target three companies that allegedly supported the Russian governments hacking operations: the Special Technology Center, Zorsecurity, and the Professional Association of Designers of Data Processing Systems.

The sanctions also target four individuals, all top GRU officials: Igor Korobov, Sergey Gizunov, Igor Kostyukov, and Vladimir Alexseyev. The measures allow for travel bans and asset freezes, but it is unclear to what extent the U.S. Treasury can punish Russian intelligence operatives.

The State Department will also declare 35 Russian intelligence officials in the United States persona non grata and shut down two Russian intelligence collection facilities, one in Maryland and one in New York, that double as recreation facilities for Russian personnel. The expulsions come in response to what administration officials describe as an unprecedented post-Cold War campaign of harassment against American diplomats working in Russia.

The Treasury Department also slapped sanctions on two Russian individuals, Evgeniy Bogachev and Aleksey Belan, under a pre-existing executive order. The White House said Bogachev and his cybercriminal associates were responsible for the theft of more than $100 million from U.S. businesses and institutions. Belan, according to the White House, compromised at least three major U.S. e-commerce companies computer networks.

The Treasury Department declined to answer questions on the record about whether Belan and Bogachev participated in the campaign against the U.S. election. Bogachev, considered one of the shining stars of Russias digital criminal underground and who appears to operate with at least the tacit blessing of Kremlin authorities, has been linked to intelligence operations.

Photo credit: NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP/Getty Images
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Add two more national monuments to President Barack Obama's conservation legacy.

On Tuesday afternoon Obama announced the designation of the Bears Ears and Gold Butte national monuments in Utah and Nevada. Just last week he announced a ban on Arctic gas and oil drilling, only a month before pro-drilling Donald Trump takes office.

SEE ALSO: Obama trumps Trump and permanently bans Arctic drilling ahead of inauguration

The newest protected areas include sacred sites important to Native American tribes who have fought for the land, water and wildlife there for generations. Bears Ears, named for geological formations in southeastern Utah, is 1.35 million acres of federal land, which includes ancestral grounds, according to the White House.

The other monument, Gold Butte, is just outside Las Vegas and is smaller at 300,000 acres. The White House noted rock art, archeological artifacts and even recently discovered dinosaur tracks from hundreds of millions of years ago as important resources to preserve.

I'm told POTUS will give his parting gift today to @SenatorReid: Designating Gold Butte, near the Land of Bundy, as a national monument.  Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) December 28, 2016

In a statement, the president said, "These monuments will protect places that a wide range of stakeholders all agree are worthy of protection. We also have worked to ensure that tribes and local communities can continue to access and benefit from these lands for generations to come."

Protecting these lands has been part of political discussions for years and hasn't come easily.

Rock formations in Gold Butte, located about 90 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

Image: Jeff Scheid /Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP

The White House said legislation to designate these areas as protected land was first introduced in 2008. The Bears Ears plans have been in discussion since way back in 1936. In more recent years, the Hopi Nation, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah Ouray, and Zuni Tribe created a proposal for the area, which was incorporated in Obama's designation.

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For those keeping track, these two monuments can be added to the list of about 25 federally protected regions added during Obama's eight years in office under the Antiquities Act. As his term ends, there's been a sense of urgency to preserve wilderness areas, natural resources and sacred spaces. It's uncertain how the Trump administration will protect the environment, considering he's been tapping many climate deniers to powerful positions and criticized Obama for establishing a national monument in Maine back in October.

Trump's pick for secretary of the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, is Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke  an avid hunter who has been criticized by several environmentalist groups.

Of course, the conservation announcement didn't come without detractors. Sen. Orrin Hatch from Utah released a statement on Twitter calling the Utah designation an "egregious abuse of executive power" that didn't involve people who actually live and manage the land. Hatch vowed under Trump to "do everything in my power to reverse this travesty."

Full Hatch Statement on #BearsEars: "An attack on an entire way of life." #utpol pic.twitter.com/7DghYCKpJJ  Senator Hatch Office (@SenOrrinHatch) December 28, 2016

Another Utah senator voiced his disapproval of the designation.

I will work tirelessly with Congress & incoming Trump administration to honor the will of Utahns and undo this monument designation. #utpol  Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) December 28, 2016

Meanwhile U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell praised the new protections.

Thanks @POTUS for protecting Bears Ears & Gold Butte  lands sacred to tribes & important to U.S. natural, cultural history.SJ pic.twitter.com/oiONeid1kl  Sally Jewell (@SecretaryJewell) December 28, 2016

Conservation groups also joined in on the praise. Nevada Conservation League's executive director Andy Maggi said in a statement about the Gold Butte National Monument, "This national monument will not only ensure that our history, landscapes and wildlife are conserved for generations to come, but will also boost our outdoor recreation economy."
By Ronnie Cohen (Reuters Health) - - Repeated or lengthy use of general anesthetic and sedation drugs in infants, toddlers and pregnant women in their third trimester might damage childrens developing brains, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned this month. Upset that the warning about pregnant women was based solely on animal studies, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or ACOG, shot back its objection. ACOG is unaware of data on pregnant women that support the FDAs claims, the group said in a practice advisory to its members. These warnings may cause patients and providers to inappropriately reject the use of these medically indicated drugs. Dr. Chris Zahn, vice president of practice activity for ACOG, said that the nonprofit, which represents physicians who care for women, and the FDA have had a close working relationship and in the past have discussed similar warnings before they were announced. But the warning about pregnant women and anesthesia was different. We were caught entirely off guard, and we are concerned about the practical applicability of this warning and its potentially negative impact on womens health, particularly pregnant women, Zahn said in a phone interview. On December 14, the FDA issued a safety announcement urging that healthcare providers, parents and patients weigh the potential benefits against the risks while considering the timing of non-emergency surgery, particularly for pregnant women in their third trimester and children less than 3 years old (http://bit.ly/2gJqhnH). The FDA based its safety advisory - and a requirement that drug manufacturers add warning labels on 11 anesthetic and sedation drugs - on both clinical human studies and animal studies. But the human studies include only children, not pregnant women. Studies have shown that more than three hours of general anesthetic and sedation drugs in pregnant and young animals caused widespread loss of nerve cells in the offsprings brains, FDA spokeswoman Sarah Peddicord said. Research showing adverse effects on behavior and brain development has been done in multiple animal species, from flatworms to non-human primates. Asked why the FDA included pregnant women without clinical evidence of a problem, Peddicord said, This is something we have been looking at, and based on the information we have, we thought it was important to get the information to the public. At the same time, the FDA announcement seeks to reassure some parents of children contemplating surgery. Consistent with animal studies, recent human studies suggest that a single, relatively short exposure to general anesthetic and sedation drugs in infants and toddlers is unlikely to have negative effects on behavior and learning, it says. The FDA and ACOG both agree that more research is needed. To that end, in 2010, the FDA and the International Anesthesia Research Society created SmartTots, a public-private partnership studying gaps in knowledge about the safe use of anesthetics and sedatives in children. About 2 million American children undergo anesthesia annually, mostly for common, non-emergency procedures, such as hernia repairs, circumcisions and tonsillectomies. Dr. Lena Sun, professor of anesthesiology and pediatrics at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, has been studying the issue in children and said she believes the FDA acted in an abundance of caution. We do not need to unduly alarm the public, but we want the public to be aware of this potential risk, she said in a phone interview. While we are pretty sure and reassured that single and brief exposures in healthy children should not raise any concerns, we cannot offer the same reassurance for prolonged and repeated exposures, she said. Sun, however, is unaware of any research in humans indicating pregnant womens exposure to anesthesia could harm the brains of theirnborn children. Dr. Maurice Druzin, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, described the FDAs inclusion of pregnant women in the advisory as unfortunate and inappropriate fear-mongering. A patient is going to say, wait a minute; I dont want to have this surgery because its going to destroy my babys brain cells, Druzin told Reuters Health. In the end, though, he said he expects the warning to have little impact on his obstetrics practice because he rarely uses general anesthetics nowadays.
Nervous about giving a big presentation? Your doctor might prescribe a blood pressure drug like generic propranolol to calm you. Cant sleep? You might leave the doctors office with a prescription for generic trazodone, an antidepressant often used for insomnia. But neither drug is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to solve these problems.

Doctors routinely (and legally) prescribe drugs off labelthat is, for conditions not approved by the FDAfor any use they see fit. Most dont tell their patients. (See our list of some drugs that are often prescribed off-label.)

The results of this practice are alarming. A recent analysis in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine revealed that more than 80 percent of off-label prescribing by doctors lacked strong scientific evidence. And patients were 54 percent more likely to experience some kind of harm as a result, compared with those taking the same drug for an approved use.

Surprisingly, many doctors may not even realize a drug is not approved for the condition theyre prescribing it for, says Lisa McGiffert, director of Consumer Reports Safe Patient Project. Its no wonder so many people are harmed.

Drug companies have been forbidden to promote drugs to consumers (and doctors) for non-FDA-approved uses since 1962. Thats when Congress strengthened the agencys regulatory power after the thalidomide tragedy, when samples of the unapproved drug were given to pregnant women in the U.S. to treat morning sicknessleading to birth defects.

But FDA rules prohibiting advertising on TV, in magazines, and elsewhere for unapproved, off-label uses could soon change. Last November the agency held a two-day hearing to gather input on whether to give drug and medical-device companies more leeway in promoting off-label use of their products. It was prompted by two recent federal district court rulings that found truthful promoting of off-label use to be a form of protected free speech.

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The pharmaceutical industry is lobbying to lift the off-label marketing ban. But a new nationally representative survey of 1,011 adults by Consumer Reports found that 84 percent of people dont want drug companies to be allowed to advertise drugs for a use that hasnt been approved by the FDA.

Relaxing the current rules would dismantle a legal firewall that has protected Americans from false and misleading drug advertising for more than half a century, McGiffert says. The consequences could be deadly.

Why Doctors Prescribe Medications Off-Label

One in five prescriptions is written for off-label use, according to a 2006 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In some cases, that off-label prescribing makes sense, says Gordon Schiff, M.D., associate director at the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston.

On occasion, a new use for a drug may be supported by good evidence even though the drug hasnt been approved yet for that use, Schiff explains. For example, a recent review by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found strong evidence that using the antiseizure drug topiramate was helpful in treating alcohol dependence. And the antidepressant amitriptyline is recognized by the American College of Rheumatology as a useful therapy for fibromyalgia. Neither drug has been approved by the FDA for those uses.

Or for practical reasons, a drug may be given off-label to children, pregnant women, or the elderly even though its effectiveness hasnt been studied in those groups.

Ultimately, though, you have to be cautious, Schiff says. Unapproved uses are typically not as well-studied and may not bring hoped-for benefits, or may increase the risk of adverse effects.

Take the use of powerful antipsychotic drugs like aripiprazole (Abilify) and quetiapine (Seroquel). Both are approved to treat schizophrenia but may be given off-label to people in nursing homes who suffer from dementia as a way to control agitation. Analysis from the FDA shows that this off-label use ups the risk of death, most often from heart failure or an infection like pneumonia. The agency has repeatedly warned doctors about this practice. But theres no universal mechanism to stop the prescribing of any drug for any use.

Whats in It for Drug Companies

Drug manufacturers and industry groups argue that easing the rules will allow them to communicate research findings about off-label drug use without going through the sometimes lengthy and expensive process of an FDA review.

As the U.S. healthcare system evolves to become increasingly focused on value, patients, payers, and providers seek more science-based safety, effectiveness, and economic information about existing and emerging treatments for patients, says Stephen J. Ubl, president and CEO of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry group. The market for medicines is changing rapidly, he adds, and the FDAs current federal regulations have not kept up.

But Nitin Damle, M.D., president of the American College of Physicians, argues that healthcare professionals dont need more information from the pharmaceutical industry. He says they already have access to reliable, nonpromotional sources of information on new research, such as peer-reviewed medical journals. And allowing drug companies to distribute off-label marketing materials to doctors or patients isnt helpful because its likely to be biased. Their ultimate aim is not to inform patients and providers, Damle says. Its to sell products.

Consumers want the FDA involved. In our survey, more than three quarters of respondents said it was extremely or very important that the FDA fully vet the safety and effectiveness of medication for a particular use. A majority (83 percent) also said that when it comes to drug ads, it was highly important to know how well a medication could be expected to work; 86 percent said it was highly important that they were told of a medications possible side effects or other risks.

Ads targeting consumers about benefits and risks can be particularly misleading. They may overstate benefits, downplay risks, or omit information on other options, Damle says.

In fact, the AMA and other medical and consumer organizations (including Consumers Union) have called for a ban on all forms of direct-to-consumer advertising, including those for FDA-approved and off-label drug treatments.

When Off-Label Promotions Are Illegal

One reason drug companies may want more freedom to market or advertise drugs for unapproved uses is to eliminate financial penalties for off-label promotions. Take Johnson & Johnson. In 2013 it agreed to pay more than $2.2 billion in criminal and civil fines to resolve charges that it illegally promoted several drugs, including the antipsychotic drug risperidone (Risperdal), approved for use by people with schizophrenia. It was also marketed to doctors for off-label use for older adults with dementia, children, and people with developmental disabilities. (No federal or medical agency routinely checks promotional claims before they appear.) Federal officials said the company knew the drug posed greater risks for those people, such as an increased risk of strokes in older adults.

In 2012 the drug company GlaxoSmithKline paid a record $3 billion and pleaded guilty to promoting the antidepressant paroxetine (Paxil) off-label to treat depression in children and adolescents, an unapproved use. The drug failed to demonstrate efficacy in patients under age 18 and was linked to dangerous side effects, including an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior.

If you can market a drug off-label for a condition, then why spend all the time and money on testing required to earn FDA approval for that use? asks Joshua Sharfstein, M.D., an associate dean at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former principal deputy commissioner of the FDA.

Sharfstein also worries that relaxing restrictions on off-label drug advertising will discourage rigorous research: Ultimately, that will undermine everyones access to safe, effective healthcare.

How You Can Make a Difference

When considering new medication, ask your doctor whether it has been approved for your condition, suggests Consumer Reports medical director, Orly Avitzur, M.D. If not, ask why he or she recommends it. Here are some other tips:

 Go to the National Institute of Healths DailyMed website, search for the drug, then click Indications & Usage to see whether your condition is listed.

 If its an off-label use, ask whether good research supports using it for your condition.

 Find out whether your health insurer covers payment for off-label use. Some may require evidence of effectiveness or failure with conventional treatments, especially if the drug is expensive.

Always make sure someone has thoroughly explained the risks and benefits of a medication to you, as well as other options, Avitzur says.

Drugs That Are Often Prescribed Off-Label

Only 6 percent of Americans say they were told that a drug they were prescribed was for a use not approved by the FDA. But research shows that one of every five prescriptions is written that way.

Drug For an FDA-Approved Condition For Off-Label Use Details Klonopin (clonazepam) To control seizures, panic disorder Restless leg syndrome, insomnia There's insufficient evidence that it's effective for RLS or insomnia.

Poses a risk of birth defects during pregnancy and to breast-feeding babies. Poses addiction risk. Qualaquin (quinine sulfate) Malaria Nighttime leg cramps Not found to relieve nighttime leg cramps. Poses a risk of severe kidney injury and organ damage. The FDA has issued black boxAA warnings against using it for night cramps. Trazodone (generic only) Antidepressant Insomnia Studies show it aids sleep for those with depression. But a black box warning says it increases suicidal thinking in children, teens, and young adults. Seroquel (quetiapine) Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder Dementia Studies show it offers little help controlling agitation in elderly people with dementia. There's strong evidence that it increases the risk of death for them. The FDA has issued black box warnings about its use by people with dementia. Propranolol (generic only) High blood pressure Stagefright It helps maintain a steady heartbeat to blunt anxiety, but there's no strong evidence that it combats stage fright.

People report feeling less nervous physically (no racing heart, dry mouth, etc.), but it doesn't stop fearful thoughts.

Speak Up in Defense of Your Safety

Last November, in a bid to urge the Food and Drug Administration to maintain its restrictions on off-label advertising, Doris Peter, Ph.D., director of the Health Ratings Center at Consumer Reports, shared the results of our survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults. It revealed that most respondents didnt want drug companies to advertise medications for off-label uses.

In addition, through our Safe Patient Project, CR included the testimony of three consumers whose family members had suffered severe or permanent injury or death as a result of off-label prescriptions.

Want your opinion to be heard on the practice of off-label prescribing and the relaxing of rules for advertising these drugs? Tell the FDA that lifting the ban on drug ads for treatments that havent been tested and approved by regulators could expose consumers to risky, ineffective, or unsafe treatments.

Sign our petition, and we will deliver it to the FDA in Washington, D.C., on Apr. 9, 2017.

Editor's Note: This article also appeared in the February 2017 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.

These materials were made possible by a grant from the state Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant Program, which is funded by a multistate settlement of consumer fraud claims regarding the marketing of the prescription drug Neurontin (gabapentin).





More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2017 Consumers Union of U.S.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Oman, traditionally on friendly terms with Iran, confirmed on Thursday that it had joined a Saudi-led coalition of Muslim countries fighting terrorism, a move praised by other Gulf Arab states as closing ranks with them against Iran. Saudi and Gulf sources reported the development on Wednesday, saying Omani Minister for Defence Affairs Badr bin Saud al-Busaidi had informed Saudi Arabia in a letter that it would join the 40-strong grouping. On Thursday, the Omani Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the move "comes within the common understanding of the Islamic countries and in particular the role and leadership of the sisterly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia". The ministry added, without elaborating, that Oman would also join hands with "brothers and friends" for regional security and peace. Although differences are rarely aired in public, Oman has long stood out among its Gulf allies. The Sultanate has worried that a wider regional confrontation between Riyadh and Tehran could threaten its own stability, and has often sought to play the conciliator. Saudi Arabia announced the formation of the coalition in December 2015 to the satisfaction of Washington, which had been urging greater regional involvement in the campaign against the militants of Islamic State, who control swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria. Although not explicitly targeted at Iran, the coalition includes neither Iran nor Iraq, whose Shi'ite-led government is closely allied with Iran. Oman has watched anxiously as rivalry between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran has grown. Riyadh and some other Gulf Arab states accuse Tehran of interfering in Arab countries to build its influence. Iran denies that accusation. (Reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo and Celine Aswad in Dubai, Editing by William Maclean and Kevin Liffey)
Riyadh (AFP) - Oman, which generally stays neutral in the face of regional disputes, has joined a Saudi-led military coalition aimed at "fighting terrorism," official media in Riyadh said Thursday.

The Gulf sultanate, which maintains good ties with rival powerhouses Iran and Saudi Arabia, becomes the 41st nation in the alliance announced last year by the Saudi defence minister, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The official SPA agency said Mohammed received a message from his Omani counterpart praising Saudi efforts in showing "leadership in the Islamic military coalition in fighting terrorism".

Oman is one of the few Arab states not to have joined a Saudi-led military coalition battling rebels in Yemen and has hosted several rounds of talks aimed at ending the conflict raging there since March 2015.

Little information has been provided on the anti-extremist alliance since Riyadh announced its formation in December 2015.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  The sultanate of Oman has announced it will join an Islamic military alliance led by Saudi Arabia.

Oman's decision Thursday comes just over a year after Saudi Arabia announced the creation of the alliance.

Oman said it joined the coalition "within the context of the importance to achieve peace, security and stability in regions dominated by armed terrorist violence."

The purpose of the coalition of over 30 countries still remains unclear a year after its founding. It appears aimed at showing Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia's importance to the region amid tensions with Shiite power Iran.

Oman, which acts as an intermediary between Iran and the West, is one of the few regional countries not to join the Saudi-led campaign against the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Editors Note: Surreal is the 2016 word of the year

The chilly month of December has often had ominous portends for Nepal. On 15 December 1960, for example, King Mahendra suspended the constitution, dissolved parliament and imprisoned B P Koirala, Nepals first democratically elected prime minister.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said that President Barack Obamas actions against Russia should have come much sooner. (Photos: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP; Susan Walsh/AP)

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., thinks the Obama administration was justified in retaliating Thursday against Russia with sanctions for interfering with U.S. institutions. But he said it shouldve been done long ago.

Far from a full-throated endorsement of Obamas actions, Ryans statement condemned the commander in chief for eight years of what he considers ineffective foreign policy that left the United States more vulnerable than it was when he took office in 2009. Nevertheless, Ryan agreed that Russia is a threat to global security.

Russia does not share Americas interests. In fact, it has consistently sought to undermine them, sowing dangerous instability around the world, Ryan said shortly after the White House announced the punishments. While todays action by the administration is overdue, it is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia. And it serves as a prime example of this administrations ineffective foreign policy that has left America weaker in the eyes of the world.

Ryans evenhanded statement is notable because President-elect Donald Trump, with whom he has had a rocky relationship, has repeatedly dismissed the U.S. intelligence communitys assessment that the Kremlin interfered in the November election. The U.S. says Russian hackers were behind the cyberattacks that led to massive email leaks from the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Hillary Clintons campaign chairman.

I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole, you know, age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly whats going on, Trump said Wednesday of the U.S. allegations against Russia.

Sen. John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham, both prominent Republicans, released a joint statement on Obamas announcement that echoed Ryans language, but they did not use the moment as an opportunity to attack the administration as harshly as Ryan had.

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The retaliatory measures announced by the Obama administration today are long overdue, they wrote. But ultimately, they are a small price for Russia to pay for its brazen attack on American democracy. We intend to lead the effort in the new Congress to impose stronger sanctions on Russia.

Obama said the Russian government had been warned multiple times in private and in public to stop violating international norms in its pursuit of harming American interests.

All Americans should be alarmed by Russias actions. In October, my administration publicized our assessment that Russia took actions intended to interfere with the U.S. election process, Obama said. These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government. Moreover, our diplomats have experienced an unacceptable level of harassment in Moscow by Russian security services and police over the last year. Such activities have consequences. Today, I have ordered a number of actions in response.

Obama issued an executive order that provides additional authority for responding to cyber activity that aims to disrupt the elections of institutions of the U.S. or its allies. With this new authority, Obama continued, he placed sanctions against nine different Russian institutions and individuals. These include two Russian intelligence services (the GRU and the FSB), four officers with the GRU and three companies that provided support for the GRU.

Furthermore, Obama said, the treasury secretary is designating two Russians for misappropriating funds and personal identity information through cyber-enabled means and the State Department is shutting down Russian compounds in New York and Maryland.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation will release declassified technical information on Russian military and civilian cyber activity to help network defenders detect and disrupt a global campaign of malicious cyber activities from Russia, according to the White House.

According to Obama, these are not all the actions that the U.S. will take to hold Russia accountable for interfering with democratic governance  some will not be publicized.

To that end, my administration will be providing a report to Congress in the coming days about Russias efforts to interfere in our election, as well as malicious cyber activity related to our election cycle in previous elections, Obama said.

Russia, which denies the hacking allegations, had previously vowed to respond to U.S. actions. According to Reuters, the Kremlin said Obamas Thursday announcement hurt the already strained ties between the two countries.

Its not clear if Trump, who has repeatedly heaped praise on Russian President Vladimir Putin, will seek to soften or reverse Obamas executive order once he takes office on Jan. 20.
Eddie Vedder has been in a generous mood this holiday season. Earlier this week he donated $10,000 to a Maryland family after the mother posted online they were not only facing eviction but also had no money for holiday gifts. Now, it has been revealed that Vedder, along with the four other Pearl Jam members, have donated even larger sums to a separate cause.

Over a decade ago, a man named Keith Baxter saved Vedder's life when he and two friends were involved in a boating accident. Now, Vedder has seized the opportunity to thank Baxter -- who was in a serious boating accident himself just last year -- in a big way.

All five members of Pearl Jam collectively donated $70,000 to Baxter's GoFundMe campaign. While four of the five donations (all for the amount of $14,000) were contributed by "anonymous," the fifth donation is credited to Stone Gossard, the band's guitarist.

"Yes, it's all true," Baxter's wife, Karen, told The Inertia via email. "Pearl Jam (Eddie, Stone, Jeff, Mike, and Matt) matched what was originally raised ($70K) through Gofundme.com."

Baxter's campaign now shows a total of over $140,000 raised, almost double the $75,000 goal.
Debbie Reynolds died on Wednesday just one day after daughter Carrie Fishers sudden death. She was 84. Before her death, Reynolds sat down with PEOPLE to discuss her illustrious Hollywood career, painful divorces, relationship with her children and more. Read the 2011 profile below:

Hello, dear, says Debbie Reynolds with a smile, offering a hug at the door of her Beverly Hills bungalow. Sunny, modest and packed with memories, her home is equal parts everyday-grandmas house and glamorous testament to Reynoldss 60-plus years in Hollywood.

See Charlie over there? she says, pointing to a ceramic statue of Charlie Chaplin sitting on a grand piano once owned by fellow silent film star Harold Lloyd.

On the way to her MGM room, which is covered in photos of stars Reynolds worked with, the 79-year-old actress pauses by a cherished photo of two A-listers dear to her heart: Elizabeth gave this to me, she says of the framed snapshot of her daughter Carrie Fisher with Elizabeth Taylor.

Taylor, of course, famously helped break up Reynoldss marriage to Eddie Fisher in 1959. But long before Taylors death this March, both grande dames had decided their friendship, like the proverbial show, had to go on.

I made mistakes, says Reynolds. Looking around her home, she adds, But this is my life. This is what I know. Ive been lucky.

Reynolds is wistful these days, following the deaths of her friends Taylor and Jane Russell. Its the end of an era with the passing of Elizabeth, she says. Now the star of Singin in the Rain, who shared the MGM studio lot with the likes of Fred Astaire, Judy Garland and Greta Garbo, is one of the last survivors of Hollywoods Golden Age.

And shes done her best to preserve that history: Her vast collection of roughly 4,000 costumes and props from classic movies, intended for a museum that Reynolds was never able to sustain, will go up for auction starting June 18 at the Paley Center in L.A.

Joe Maddalena, owner of auctioneer Profiles in History, estimates the first round of items will fetch $5 to $6 million. I want them to go to movie-lovers like me, Reynolds says.

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Reynolds herself first fell in love with movie musicals as a kid in El Paso, Texas, I would mow lawns so I could watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In 1939 her family moved to California, and, at age 16, Reynolds won the Miss Burbank beauty pageant, leading to a contract with Warner Bros. and later MGM.

That meant attending school on the lot with classmates Taylor and Roddy McDowall. Eventually, her singing talent got MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayers attention. He said, Youre going to star in a movie with Gene Kelly, Singin in the Rain. I said, I dont dance. He said, You will.' For five months Kelly and instructors drilled the teen until her feet bled. Singin in the Rain became a sensation, and Reynolds, tagged Americas Sweetheart, worked alongside her icons for the next 17 years. The lot was its own city, she says. My children were raised there. We were always playing on the trains.

Along with acting and singing, Reynolds made her mark as a party hostess. She recalls one blowout whose guests included Bette Davis, Jimmy Stewart and Groucho Marx, who wore a T-shirt with his face on it. While Lana Turner and Ricardo Montalban tangoed, Broadway stars Ann Miller and Gower Champion jumped off the roof into the swimming pool. At another party, her son Todd had a surprise run-in with Davis. Bette was sitting in my sons bathroom, she says, laughing. Todd walked in, and she just kept talking to him, asking, So how do you like your new home? What grade are you in? Nothing shocked my son after that.

Life on the A-list wasnt all a party. When Fisher left her for Taylor, Reynolds recalls, it was a very difficult time. I was left to raise the children. Later, with Reynolds remarried to businessman Harry Karl, and Taylor to Richard Burton, the women made amends on the Queen Elizabeth cruise ship. But I had more pain to go, she says, referring to Karl, who left her over $10 million in debt, and third husband, developer Richard Hamlett, with whom she owned a failed Las Vegas hotel and casino.

Her relationship with daughter Carrie has also endured ups and downs. It took 30 years for Carrie to be happy with me, says Reynolds. She wanted a mother who baked and did embroidery. I was in show business and didnt do that. In part to pay the storage bills for her costume collection, Reynolds still sings 42 weeks a year around the country, and shell be back onscreen next year as Katherine Heigls grandmother in One for the Money. She says shell slow down once her beloved costumes are solda bittersweet moment. Its the end of the golden era for me, she says. Im delighted I lived when I livedand Im still here. Ive had a wonderful life.




MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened corrupt government officials with the prospect of being thrown out of a helicopter mid-air, warning he has done it himself before and would do it again. The fiery-tempered former prosecutor said he once hurled a Chinese man suspected of rape and murder out of a helicopter. "If you are corrupt, I will fetch you using a helicopter to Manila and I will throw you out. I have done this before, why would I not do it again?" Duterte told typhoon victims in a speech on Tuesday, a clip of which is posted on a video feed of the president's office. Duterte's latest threat came a few weeks after he admitted killing people during his 22 years as a mayor of Davao City, sometimes riding a motorcycle looking for "encounters to kill." Some senators have warned Duterte he risks impeachment over his comments. The United States, a long-time Philippines ally which has expressed concern about Duterte's war on drugs and his anti-American rhetoric, said it was aware of his statements about the helicopter. "As we have stated previously, we are deeply concerned by reports of extrajudicial killings by or at the behest of government authorities in the Philippines," State Department spokeswoman Anna Richey-Allen said in an emailed response to a Reuters inquiry. Duterte has repeatedly said those killings were part of legitimate police operations, including a hostage incident, and those killed were criminals, not suspects. It was not immediately clear when or where the helicopter incident Duterte spoke of took place. In an interview on Thursday with Philippine news channel ABS-CBN, Duterte was non-committal when asked about the incident. "Helicopter to throw a person?" he asked. "And if that is true, I will not admit it." His spokesman, Ernesto Abella, suggested earlier the story was an "urban legend." Duterte also said six people arrested last week during a seizure of more than half a tonne of methamphetamine, known locally as "shabu", were fortunate he was out of town. "They were lucky I was not in Manila that time. If I had known there were that much shabu inside a house, I would definitely kill you," he said. "Let's not make any drama, I will personally gun you down if nobody else will do it." The United Nations' top human rights envoy has called for an investigation into Duterte's claims of killing people, to which Duterte last week responded by calling him "stupid," an "idiot" and a "son of a bitch" who should go back to school. (Reporting by Martin Petty and Neil Jerome Morales in Manila and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Nick Macfie and Richard Chang)
By Martin Petty and Neil Jerome Morales MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte derided U.S. ambassadors as "spies" on Thursday, responding to a media report of an alleged American plot to destabilize his government, a job he said some envoys were appointed solely to do. The volatile former mayor said though had received no intelligence reports of any U.S. plan to undermine his presidency, he believed most ambassadors were in cahoots with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which had a track record of meddling in other countries' affairs. The Manila Times newspaper on Tuesday reported a former U.S. ambassador to the Philippines had prepared a "blueprint to undermine Duterte", citing a document it had received from a what it described as a "highly placed source". (http://bit.ly/2hhzEGk) The U.S. State Department has described the allegations as "false". "Most of the ambassadors of the United States, but not all, are not really professional ambassadors. At the same time they are spying, they are connected with the CIA," Duterte said in a television interview. "The ambassador of a country is the number one spy. But there are ambassador of the U.S., their forte is really to undermine governments." Duterte has made no secret of his grudge against the United States and has a particular disdain for President Barack Obama, who he has told to "go to hell", mostly over Obama's concern s about Duterte's deadly drugs war. He has made repeated threats to abrogate security treaties with the United States and vented almost daily about U.S. "hypocrisy" and "bullying". On Thursday, Duterte said he would honor those treaties and that he liked U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and was keenly waiting for him to take office. The Manila Times said Philip Goldberg, who recently ended his term as ambassador in Manila, had outlined various strategies over an 18-month period to destabilize Duterte. That would include supporting the opposition and co-opting the media, the military, neighboring countries and senior government officials to turn against Duterte and isolate him economically. Duterte has a dislike for Goldberg and has previously called him a "gay son of a bitch". He referred to him in three successive live television interviews on Thursday, calling him Washington's "superstar" with a track record of trying to undermine governments. Goldberg was expelled as ambassador to Bolivia in 2008 by then President Evo Morales, who accused him of siding with his rightist opponents and of orchestrating street protests. The United States rejected that and said his expulsion was a "grave error". "Maybe he will deny it but it's not good," Duterte said of Goldberg's alleged blueprint, which he said was plausible because of Goldberg's history. He added: "You might be able to oust me, but I will give you a bloody nose." Attempts by Reuters to reach Goldberg this week were unsuccessful. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Daniel Russel dismissed the Manila Times report. "No such blueprint exists," he said in a statement on Tuesday. "The United States respects the sovereignty of the Philippines and the democratic choices made by the Philippine people." (Editing by Robert Birsel)
* Gentiloni says wants to reform labour rules, help south

* Gives no hints on how long his government will last

* Says will not propose new electoral law

By Giselda Vagnoni

ROME, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Italy's new prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, said on Thursday that he aimed to restore unity and cohesion following a divisive referendum, and continue the economic reforms begun by his predecessor, Matteo Renzi.

Speaking at the prime minister's traditional year-end news conference, Gentiloni, 62, who took office less than three weeks ago, said he would try "to mend the many lacerations that are threatening our social fabric and our cohesion".

The former foreign minister took over when Renzi resigned after almost three years in power after his constitutional reform plan was rejected in a Dec. 4 referendum.

Renzi, who leads the ruling Democratic Party, wants to make a comeback and is pushing for an election in the spring, a year ahead of schedule, but Gentiloni avoided giving any hints on how long his own government would last.

"We will stay in office as long as we have the confidence of parliament," he said.

In a two-and-a-half hour news conference, Gentiloni said he aimed to "complete the reforms" begun by Renzi, focusing on labour rules and helping under-developed southern regions.

He said tax credits that Renzi introduced to encourage investment in the south did not seem to be working, and he promised to curb the use of so-called job "vouchers".

These vouchers, worth 10 euros each, are a form of payment that gives workers no rights to sick pay, holidays or leave. Their use has shot up in recent years and trade unions have called for a referendum to abolish them.

The timing of the next election may depend on how quickly Italy can reform its electoral law.

There are two different systems in place for the two houses of parliament, which means elections would be unlikely to yield a clear result. But while all the parties agree on the need for reform, there is no consensus over a new law.

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Using understated tones in sharp contrast to Renzi's exuberant and often confrontational style, Gentiloni said his government would encourage the parties to reach a deal but make no proposal of its own.

The electoral system pushed through by Renzi in 2015 is unusable because it assumed the upper house Senate would no longer be directly elected, as envisaged by his constitutional reform which was thrown out in the referendum.

(Writing by Gavin Jones; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Warsaw (AFP) - Poland's culture ministry on Thursday bought a private art collection worth an estimated two billion euros that includes Leonardo da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine".

The 15th-century portrait of a young woman holding a white ermine, a kind of short-tailed weasel, is one of just four known paintings of women by the Renaissance master. Another is the Mona Lisa.

"Ladies and gentlemen, as Polish citizens, we are now all owners of the Czartoryski collection," Culture Minister Piotr Glinski said to applause at the signing ceremony at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

Sitting alongside him among marble columns and chandeliers and under a fresco was Prince Adam Karol Czartoryski, president of the foundation that sold the collection.

"I am basically just following my ancestors who always worked for the Polish nation," the 76-year-old prince, who lives abroad, told the audience.

Glinski said the country paid 100 million euros (dollars) plus tax for the tens of thousands of items, "a small fraction of the market price".

In addition to the Da Vinci, which is insured for about 350 million euros ($365 million), the collection's other big names include a Rembrandt, drawings by Renoir and Chopin's letters.

When asked by reporters why he was willing to accept such a low sum, Czartoryski said: "Listen, in life you do the things the way you feel like it. I felt like making a donation and that's my choice."

His ancestor Princess Izabela Czartoryska founded the collection in 1801 to preserve Polish and European works while her country was partitioned by neighbours Austria, Prussia and Russia.

The culture ministry in turn has said it wants to ensure the collection never leaves the country, which was a possibility as long as it was owned by the Princes Czartoryski Foundation.

The transaction was not without controversy, as the foundation's Polish board of directors quit last week in protest, saying the negotiations were conducted without their knowledge.

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- 'First modern portrait' -

"Lady with an Ermine" is among only 15 Da Vinci paintings in the world, according to art expert Janusz Walek.

"If we compare that to other painters, like Titian or Rembrandt, then that really isn't a lot," said Walek, author of a book on Da Vinci's portraits of women.

The Italian master painted the revolutionary portrait, measuring 54 by 39 centimetres (21 by 15 inches), between 1488 and 1490.

The small oil painting on wood depicts Cecilia Gallerani, the multilingual teenage mistress of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan and one of Da Vinci's patrons.

The Italian nobleman, who commissioned the portrait, makes his own cameo in the painting, as art historians believe the ferret-like animal in Gallerani's arms is an allusion to him.

"The ermine, a symbol of purity, was in the duke's emblem," said Grazyna Bastek, curator of Italian painting at the National Museum in Warsaw.

Gallerani is believed to have held onto the painting till her death in 1536 but what happened to it over the next 300 years remains a mystery.

The Czartoryski family bought it in Italy around 1800 and took it to Poland, where the invading Germans looted it in 1939. But it was restituted after the war.

"For many, many years the painting was not very well-known. It was only when it began to tour the world in the 1990s that its value rose," Walek said, citing exhibitions in places like Italy, Sweden and the United States.

"This is really the first modern portrait in European painting," he added, explaining that it is not a mock-up but an incredibly lifelike representation that even manages to convey Gallerani's inner thoughts.

Glinski said the state treasury will transfer the Da Vinci painting and the rest of the collection to the National Museum in Krakow for all the world to see.
NEW YORK (AP)  Police have arrested a suspect in the random stabbing of a tourist in New York City earlier this month.

Twenty-three-year-old Connor Rasmussen, of Puyallup (pyoo-AL'-up), Washington, was stabbed in the back of the head on Dec. 18.

Police announced the arrest Wednesday of 20-year-old Steven Tlapanco on charges of attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

Rasmussen was attacked in the early morning hours, just blocks from popular tourist spots including Rockefeller Center and Grand Central Terminal.

Rasmussen said his assailant stabbed him without saying a word. He required eight stitches.

Police arrested Tlapanco after releasing surveillance photos and video footage from the attack.

It's not clear if Tlapanco has an attorney who can comment on the charges.
Berlin (AFP) - German authorities are beefing up security for New Year's eve celebrations in Berlin on Saturday after last week's truck attack, deploying police with machine guns and securing the festive zone around the Brandenburg Gate with concrete slabs.

"This year, what's new is that we will place concrete blocks and position heavy armoured vehicles at the entrances" of the celebration zone, a Berlin police spokesman said.

While the number of police officers deployed will remain close to last year's figure of around 1,000, this year, "at least some of them will be standing there with machine guns," he added.

Germany had already put in place heightened security measures during last year's celebrations, following the November 13 attack in Paris.

Revellers will once again not be allowed to bring in backpacks or large bags.

All forms of pyrotechnics and potentially dangerous objects such as glass bottles will also be banned at this year's event where hundreds of thousands of people are expected.

Questions surrounding security are high on the agenda after the December 19 attack, when Tunisian national Anis Amri allegedly hijacked a truck and drove it into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people.

Amri, 24, went on the run and was the focus of a four-day manhunt before being shot dead by police in Milan, northern Italy, after opening fire first.

The Berlin rampage was claimed by the Islamic State group, which released a video last Friday in which Amri is shown pledging allegiance to IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, police officers armed with machine guns were seen patrolling the streets in downtown Berlin.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An air strike by the U.S.-led coalition near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul hit a van in a hospital compound parking lot and could have killed civilians, the U.S. military said on Thursday. A van carrying Islamic State fighters was targeted and hit in the air strike, the Combined Joint Strike Force said in a statement. "The van was struck in what was later determined to be a hospital compound parking lot resulting in possible civilian casualties," it said. (Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Photo credit: The Washington Postundefined

From Esquire

Let us pause for a moment on this Day of Days (For unto you on this day in the city of Worcester was born, a blogger. Also, some time earlier, on this same day, Galileo saw Neptune for the first time. I should start charging for this stuff.) and give great thanks to that lion of the Senate, George Norris of McCook. In 1932, Norris presented to the Congress and to the states the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, which changed the date of the presidential inauguration from the beginning of March to the end of January, thereby eliminating the ridiculous four-month gap between the election of a new president and the swearing in. Let us all praise Missouri, which was the state whose vote to ratify the 20th was the one that put it over the top.

Let us all praise them both and give them great thanks because, but for their work, we'd have another three-and-a-half months of this crapola.

Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT! - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016

We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but....... - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016

not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching! - Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016

Of course, conversely, if not for them we would have had three-and-a-half more months of being entertained by the spectacle of the current president driving the president-elect even further off his trolley, so old George Norris handed history a double-edged sword, I guess.

Man, enough of this guy, you know? We're all going to have to put up with him starting in less than three weeks. Now, he's screwing with things he doesn't understand-which is to say, everything in the world-and he's getting cheered on by his good pal in Moscow, and by the insufferable Bibi Netanyahu, who's moved on from being an international public nuisance in Congress to whispering about plots being concocted at the UN between the current president and his fellow Muslierthe other nations in the Middle East. Which is just the kind of thing that El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago likes to hear, because it's the only thing that gets the voices in his head singing in harmony.

Photo credit: undefined

(By the way, Netanyahu is unfriending a lot of countries these days, according to CNN: "The officials said that business with the embassies of those countries-Britain, France, Russia, China, Japan, Ukraine, Angola, Egypt, Uruguay, Spain, Senegal and New Zealand-will be suspended." He's gotten particularly salty with New Zealand, for reasons that elude me. Of course, one thing all those countries have in common is that none of them sent Israel a couple billion worth of military hardware. But getting tough with Senegal is the important thing.)

I've been reading Harold Holzer's book about the four-month period between the election of Abraham Lincoln and his inauguration in 1861. On December 3, 1860, incumbent President James Buchanan sent his final State of the Union message to Congress; nobody could stop him and, besides, he was constitutionally required to do so. By then, of course, the country was falling apart. South Carolina already had committed itself to treason.

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related%20Story" customtitles="Everything%20Trump%20Freaked%20Out%20About%20Over%20Christmas" customimages="" content="article.51863"]

Buchanan, the Father of American Indecision, waved goodbye.

The Southern States, standing on the basis of the Constitution, have right to demand this act of justice from the States of the North. Should it be refused, then the Constitution, to which all the States are parties, will have been willfully violated by one portion of them in a provision essential to the domestic security and happiness of the remainder. In that event the injured States, after having first used all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the Government of the Union.

The victorious Republicans went up the wall. William Seward explained that Buchanan believed a state had no right to secede, unless it wanted to. Back in Illinois, president-elect Lincoln was fuming. Buchanan had handed him the beginnings of a civil war and seemingly had lined up on the other side. But he kept still. He was encouraged by one influential Republican congressman from Illinois to engage in "masterly inactivity," and he did. As Holzer writes:

If the sitting president's pandering valedictory message could arouse such indignation North as well as South, what chance did a minority president-elect have to mollify both regions with anything he might venture to say before his inauguration?

And this was at a moment in which the country actually was coming apart. Now, we're only battling our way through five years of job growth. But, for our current president-elect, there isn't a china shop on the planet that he won't bull his way through. He has calculated his intellect by his bank balance and found the rest of the silly world lacking by comparison. And he's not even president yet. What fresh hell will come with the turning of the year?

Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page.

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On Thursday, President Obama announced a series of sanctions against Russia in response to hacking during the 2016 presidential election that includes the closing of two diplomatic Russian compounds in the U.S. and expelling dozens of Russian officials. President-elect Trump has downplayed the controversy surrounding the Russians, and said on Wednesday that Americans should "get on with their lives."
President Obama just made two new national monuments, and heres why that matters for the environment

As his final term as president comes to an end, President Obama proves hes concerned about the future of the environment. As a result, Obama just designated two new national monuments in a sacred tribal site in Utah and in the Nevada desert, NPR reports. The creation of these new national monuments should help protect the land from development and to honor sacred lands, and were *so* here for it.

In Utah, there will be a new Bears Ears National Monument. As The Washington Post notes, its especially important because its the first time that Native American tribes (the Hopi, Navajo, Uintah and Ouray Ute, Ute Mountain Ute and Pueblo of Zuni) will collaborate to protect a national monument and offer input on how they should be managed. Were cheering!

Russell Begaye, the president of the Navajo Nation, told The Washington Post,

We have always looked to Bears Ears as a place of refuge, as a place where we can gather herbs and medicinal plants, and a place of prayer and sacredness. These places  the rocks, the wind, the land  they are living, breathing things that deserve timely and lasting protection.

Hell to the yes.

In Nevada, the Gold Butte National Monument will help protect 300,000 acres of land. Like, whoa.

President Obama said in a statement,

Todays actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes. Importantly, today I have also established a Bears Ears Commission to ensure that tribal expertise and traditional knowledge help inform the management of the Bears Ears National Monument and help us to best care for its remarkable national treasures.

Gold Butte national monument proposal vs. Bundy Ranchers; Oregon trial reaction.

Of course its not without criticism, as local politicians argue that at least some of the land should have been available for development. People are also unsure of how long these protections will last, considering how determined these politicians are to fight the monument status.

Still, we think its important to highlight President Obamas continuing legacy as a protector of the environment, especially as the future of our Environmental Protections Agency is looking less than bright.

The post President Obama just made two new national monuments, and heres why that matters for the environment appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Dec 29 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

The Times

* Ministers are preparing to tackle overpriced electric car charging amid fears that it can cost as much to run a green vehicle as a conventional diesel. Rules will be introduced early next year to make roadside pricing for electricity more "consistent and transparent", so that motorists are not driven away from buying environmentally friendly cars. http://bit.ly/2hOGp3p

* Whitehall is investigating the nuclear regulator after the Times revealed that several serious accidents had been dismissed as posing no safety risk. http://bit.ly/2hpTShp

The Guardian

* 36 child asylum seekers who previously lived in the Calais refugee camp have issued a legal challenge to the home secretary. They claim Amber Rudd acted unlawfully in the way she handled their applications. Of the 36, 28 have had their applications refused, while another eight are awaiting decisions from the Home Office. http://bit.ly/2ifruAq

* Online fashion retailer Boohoo.com Plc is lining up to buy the rights to the Nasty Gal fashion label after the U.S. internet business fell into bankruptcy last month. http://bit.ly/2htQbKz

The Telegraph

* The bid battle for cherry-picker supplier Lavendon Group Plc stepped up again on Wednesday with European industrial equipment supplier Loxam SAS raising its offer for the UK business. http://bit.ly/2is63vC

* Prime Minister Theresa May will put plans to pull out of the European Court of Human Rights at the heart of her campaign for the 2020 general election campaign, after ministers conceded that reform plans have been delayed by Brexit. http://bit.ly/2hq5pNs

Sky News

* Britain's ambassador to the United States, Kim Darroch, has attempted to mend fences with Donald Trump after the President-elect backed Nigel Farage for the job. http://bit.ly/2hxAeol

* New research reveals the government has misled the public by claiming it provided "new money" for social care, according to Labour's Andy Burnham. The former health secretary, who is now Labour candidate for mayor of Greater Manchester, claims one in three councils is facing cuts in government funding next year. http://bit.ly/2ifzzVF

The Independent

* Former cabinet minister Michael Gove has stoked Brexit anger after arguing that the discredited claim that leaving the European Union would mean 350 million pounds-a-week ($428 million-a-week) more for the NHS is still trustworthy. http://ind.pn/2iiZM8B ($1=0.82 pounds) (Compiled by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Photo credit: undefined

From ELLE

Londoners can get ready for a lot more royal family sightings-and likely way more traffic jams, too. According to E! News, Prince William and Kate Middleton are planning to move to London, just in time for Prince George to start school.

Prince George will likely attend the all-boys Wetherby school, a pre-prep school that Prince Charles, Prince William, and Prince Harry attended. David and Victoria Beckham's boys also went there, the Huffington Post notes. That will likely be a big change from his Montessori preschool in Norfolk, near the family's current residence. The family still hasn't made an official decision about the school. If they move back to London, they would likely make Kensington Palace their new home.

According to The Telegraph, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are apparently considering the move so they can perform more royal duties. William is apparently even considering leaving his career as a helicopter pilot once his contract ends in March. They want to help lighten the Queen's workload as she gets older, and also want to support more charitable causes.

Vanity Fair reports the family initially moved to Norfolk to shy their children away from the harsh spotlight. With a move to London comes a return to the media frenzy, but perhaps it's inevitable when your family contains two future kings.

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On Dec 29, we issued an updated research report on The Procter & Gamble Company PG  a branded consumer products company which has presence in more than 180 countries.



Procter & Gamble has been struggling to boost sales over the past few quarters. Significant negative foreign exchange impact, weak volumes, divestures and slowing market growth have been impacting sales.



Moreover, the companys current quarter has seen seven estimates go south over the last two months compared to no estimate moving higher, while the current year estimate has seen five downward revisions and none upwards in the same time period. The consensus estimates have dipped for the current quarter and year by 0.9% and 0.5%, respectively, justifying the Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).



Procter & Gamble operates in a challenging and volatile macro environment. Market growth rates have been persistently decelerating, mainly due to slow growth in developing markets, which is in turn hurting sales.



Procter & Gamble has been struggling over the past few quarters to boost market growth. The companys market share growth trends in developing markets constituted around 35% of its global sales as of fiscal 2016, down from 38% recorded in fiscal 2015. In fact, the company lost global market share in four of its five reporting segments in the first quarter of 2017.



Foreign exchange is a major headwind for the company with around 60% of the business coming from outside North America. Foreign exchange hurt the companys revenues by 2% in fiscal 2014 and 2013 and 6% in fiscal 2015 and 2016.



However, Procter & Gambles five-year productivity and cost savings plan to reduce spending across all areas is encouraging. Including divestitures, the company expects to reduce non-manufacturing or overhead roles by about 35% by the end of fiscal 2017.



Though Procter & Gamble expects core earnings to grow in mid-single digits in fiscal 2017 as against the fiscal 2016 core earnings of $3.67 per share, the combined foreign exchange headwind and minor brand divestitures are likely to reduce sales by about 1 percentage points in 2017.



Key Picks



Better-ranked stocks in the consumer staples sector include B&G Foods, Inc. BGS, Dean Foods Company DF and Lancaster Colony Corporation LANC.



B&G Foods and Dean Foods sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



For full-year 2016, B&G Foods EPS is expected to grow 42.2%.



Dean Foods 2016 EPS is expected to improve 31.3% in 2016.



Lancasters  a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock  earnings are expected to grow 8.4% in fiscal 2017.



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By Humeyra Pamuk ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Prominent Turkish journalist Ahmet Sik was detained on Thursday on suspicion of spreading terrorist propaganda, state media and an opposition lawmaker who spoke to the reporter said. Sik works for the daily Cumhuriyet, one of the few dailies still critical of the government as Turkish authorities have purged tens of thousands, largely from the state apparatus, in the wake of a coup attempt last July. Prosecutors could not be reached for comment but Sik himself tweeted that he was being taken to the prosecutor's office. The state-run Anadolu news agency said Sik was accused of spreading terrorist propaganda and insulting the state, the judiciary, the military and the police through several tweets and his work on Cumhuriyet. Anadolu cited more than half a dozen tweets. Most were about the state's fight against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels, while one was about this month's killing of the Russian ambassador in Ankara. Baris Yarkadas, a lawmaker for the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), tweeted that Sik had told him he was being accused of spreading terrorist propaganda. Separately, a court in Istanbul ordered the release, pending trial, of award-winning novelist Asli Erdogan and linguist Necmiye Alpay, Alpay's lawyer said. The two had been in jail since August on charges of belonging to a terrorist organization and harming national unity. They are among a total of nine defendants who worked for a pro-Kurdish newspaper closed by authorities, some of whom face possible life sentences. Alpay and Erdogan, who is not related to the Turkish president, both pleaded 'not guilty'. JOURNALISTS IN JAIL The PKK, which has been fighting for three decades for autonomy for Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, is considered a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States as well as Turkey. At least 81 journalists are imprisoned in Turkey, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and more than 130 media outlets have been shut since July. Most of the detained journalists and writers are accused of spreading terrorist propaganda. Over 110,000 civil servants, police, academics and others have been detained, suspended or dismissed over suspected links to Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based cleric accused by Ankara of orchestrating the coup. Around 40,000 have been formally arrested. The scale of the crackdown has alarmed Turkey's Western allies and foreign investors, but Ankara says it is justified by the threat posed by Gulen's network, which it says is a terrorist organization. Gulen, who lives in the United States, denies the charges. Sik himself is a long-standing critic of Gulen. In 2011 he was jailed for a year over a biography of the cleric, one of hundreds of imprisoned soldiers and journalists who said they had been the victims of Gulenist judges and prosecutors. The convictions were later overturned and the cases thrown out. (Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)  Puerto Rico's government has bought its own air ambulance months after the U.S. territory was left without one as a result of the administration's financial crisis.

Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla said Thursday that his administration spent $8 million to buy a helicopter for the island's health department. The announcement comes seven months after the only air ambulance company then operating in Puerto Rico suspended its services because of an unpaid multimillion-dollar government debt.

Since that service suspension, a handful of private air ambulances have started, reporting a combined average of around 50 trips a month. But the governor said he didn't want the island to risk being left without an air ambulance again.
Two policemen injured in firing from across Indian border

Two police personnel were injured in firing from across the border at Jhandenagar of Krishnanagar in Kapilvastu district along Nepal-India border on Thursday.
Beirut (AFP) - Syria's army and key ally Russia Thursday announced a nationwide ceasefire to take effect at midnight, in a potential major breakthrough after nearly six years of civil war.

The deal was brokered by Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides in the conflict, but does not involve Washington, which has negotiated previous ceasefires with Moscow.

The agreement, hailed by Syria's government as a "real opportunity" to find a political solution to the war, comes a week after the regime recaptured second city Aleppo in a major blow to rebel forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who announced the deal, said Damascus and the "main forces of the armed opposition" had inked a truce and a document expressing a readiness to start peace talks.

"Several hours ago, the event occurred that we have not only been waiting for but been working so much to hasten," Putin said in a meeting with his defence and foreign ministers.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the agreement as a "historic opportunity" to end the Syrian conflict, which has killed more than 310,000 people and forced millions from their homes.

Syria's army said it would halt all military operations from midnight (2200 GMT on Thursday) and a leading opposition body, the National Coalition, voiced its support for the truce.

Putin said he would also reduce Moscow's military contingent in Syria that has been flying a bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad since last year.

The Kremlin strongman, however, said Russia would continue to fight "terrorism" in Syria and maintain its support for the regime.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said seven opposition groups, including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham, had signed the deal and those who failed to adhere would be considered "terrorists".

Erdogan indicated Turkey would press on with its four-month incursion into Syria against Islamic State group (IS) jihadists and Kurdish militia.

Story continues

- Astana peace talks -

Syria's army said the deal did not include IS and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fateh al-Sham Front.

That could cause complications in areas like Idlib in northwestern Syria, where Fateh al-Sham is allied with rebel groups that have signed on to the deal.

Syria's political opposition and rebels confirmed their backing for the truce, saying it applied to all parts of the country.

"The agreement is for all of Syria and contains no exceptions or preconditions," said Osama Abou Zeid, a legal adviser to rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.

The agreement comes after Turkey and Russia brokered a deal to allow the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians and rebel fighters from Aleppo.

Moscow and Ankara are now pushing for peace talks between Damascus and the rebels to start soon in Kazakhstan's capital Astana.

"Now we need to do everything for these agreements to come into force, for them to work, so that the negotiating teams that have been or are being formed promptly and as soon as possible arrive in Astana," Putin said.

UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura said he hoped the agreement would "pave the way for productive talks" in Kazakhstan, but also reiterated he wants negotiations mediated by his office to continue early next year.

- 22 killed in rebel areas -

Russia and Turkey have both said the peace talks they will supervise are meant to supplement UN-backed peace efforts, rather than replace them entirely.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia, Turkey and Iran were arranging for the talks and pressing for other key international players to get involved.

Lavrov said Moscow would invite Egypt and try to attract other regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Jordan.

He added Moscow would seek to involve US President-elect Donald Trump's administration once he takes office in less than a month, but the process does not appear to involve outgoing President Barack Obama's administration.

The US State Department called the ceasefire deal a "positive development" and said it hoped it would lead to fresh negotiations on Syria's political future.

Abou Zeid confirmed the truce deal was intended to pave the way for new talks in Astana, with the High Negotiations Committee that has represented the opposition at previous negotiations expected to participate.

Turkey has long backed Syria's opposition, and its relations with Russia soured last year after Ankara shot down a Russian warplane.

But the two countries have worked closely of late on Syria, and Turkey was conspicuously quiet as Assad's forces retook Aleppo.

In the hours before the ceasefire was to take effect, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, reported at least 22 civilians, including 10 children, were killed in air strikes and artillery fire on rebel-held territory near Damascus.
After the U.S. abstained from the United Nations vote condemning Israeli settlements, there have been mounting allegations that the Obama administration actually had a role in advancing the resolution through the U.N. The Israel Warrior author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach weighed in on the future of U.S. relations with Israel.

The Middle East goes to hell in a hand basket. You have three genocides in Syria, Yazidis are being slaughtered, Christians and Sunnis at the hands of Alawites and Shia and with all of that happening, with children being cluster bombed and attacked with sarin gas and mustard gas, hes [Secretary of State John Kerry] concerned about Jews building apartments in East Jerusalem, Boteach told the FOX Business Networks Sandra Smith.

But Boteach was hopeful that President-elect Donald Trump could help mend Americas relationship with Israel.

Im optimistic that President-elect Trump will be a far greater friend to Israel than President Obama has been.

According to Boteach, this is not the first time President Obama has caused tension with Israel.

The fact is that President Obama has had eight years of unremitting hostility towards the Jewish state. Hes done good things, so lets be fair, he has increased military and intelligence cooperation. And yet hes demonized Israel little by little with things like the U.N. Security Council resolution.

Boteach viewed the resolution as another example of how the United Nations has strayed from its original purpose.

The United Nations was set up as a security apparatus to protect vulnerable countries from this kind of aggression and now its being used to condemn those countries. What happened to American values, of us protecting democracies, countries that espouse our values of freedom and openness and the right to congregate? The Palestinians have none of that.

Despite the nuclear deal, Boteach views the U.S. as Irans major enemy, not Israel.

Lets not forget that Israel is the canary in the coal mine. When you say to fund terror were not just talking about Israel, which Iran threatens with annihilation a few times a week. [Iranians also threaten] death to America, death to America. You know, we have to remember that Irans ultimate enemy is, Iran sees Israel as a client-state of the United States  the great Satan is America.

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HELSINKI (AP)  A Finnish court has sentenced a former Helsinki narcotics police boss to 10 years in prison for running a drug ring while in office  a rare case of corruption among the country's civil servants.

Helsinki's District Court says Jari Aarnio was guilty of official misconduct and aggravated evidence tampering.

The court said Thursday that Aarnio, who pleaded innocent, played a key role in importing from the Netherlands nearly 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds) of hashish, which was distributed in 2011-2012.

An accomplice, a local top criminal, was also given 10 years.

After 30 years on the force, Aarnio was arrested in 2013. In September, he was convicted of fraud and corruption for an ownership interest in a company that sold surveillance equipment to Finnish police.
Raytheon Company RTN has won a contract from the U.S. Navy to procure Tomahawk Block IV All-Up-Round vertical launch system missiles and spares.



Details of the Contract



The contract is valued at $303.7 million. It was awarded by the Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, MD.



Per the contract, Raytheon will procure214 missiles and spares for the Navy and spares for the UK government. It consists of99% purchases for the Navy and the remaining 1% for the UK under the foreign military sales (FMS) program.



Work is scheduled to be complete by Aug 2018. Majority of the work will be carried out in Tucson, AZ, while the rest will be executed in various locations across the U.S. The contract will use fiscal 2015 and 2016 weapons procurement (Navy); and FMS funds.



A Brief Note on Tomahawk Block IV



Tomahawk is a long-range, all-weather,subsoniccruise missilenamed after theNative American axe.Interestingly, the Block IVvariant uses a two-way satellite data-link, which allows it to change course mid-flight to reprogrammed targets.The missiles can be launched from surface ships with aVertical Launch System (VLS) as well as fromsubmarines with a Capsule Launch System (CLS).Note that General Dynamics Corp. GD has manufactured some of theTomahawk missiles.



Tomahawk has become an important weapon in the U.S. defense arsenal for its precise capability to take out high-value targetsfrom long distances. These missiles have a range of 1,000 nautical miles (1,150 statute miles).



Our View



Raytheon is one of the best-positioned companies among the large-cap defense players due to its non-platform-centric focus, as well as its strong order bookings and order backlog of more than $35.81 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2016.



Revenue and earnings growth continue to be driven by its strong presence in the areas of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR); air & missile defense systems; border security; air traffic management; training and homeland security; and cyber security. Meanwhile, its non-platform centric business model insulates it from cancellation or deferral of any specific platform programs.



Price Movement



Raytheons stock has gained about 12.8% in the last one year, underperforming the Zacks Categorized Aerospace-Defense Equipment industrys gain of 14.6%. This could be because Raytheons dependence on the U.S. government for military contracts and tough competition are putting pressure on its stock price. The company has also put up a weak show in comparison to other major players in the same space like Ducommun Inc. DCO andSpirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. SPR, all of which have outperformed the industry.

Story continues





Zacks Rank



Raytheon currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 (Strong Buy) Rank stocks here.



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Donald Trump really did win the presidential election and voting machines aren't to blame. After recount efforts in Michigan and Pennsylvania were dropped absent evidence of fraud, an independent review of final voting results across the country concluded that Hillary Clinton was not, in fact, the true winner of the 2016 campaign, even if liberal voters were still having a hard time accepting the outcome.

The recount conducted by two computer scientists from the University of Michigan did find, however, that the U.S. political system is vulnerable to a cyberattack, though the academics concluded there was no funny business this time around. The recount paid for by crowdfunding looked at results in counties and precincts challenged after the election. The professors, J Alex Halderman and Matt Bernhard, said they were certain Trump really did win enough votes to solidify his Electoral College victory.

The recounts support that the election outcome was correct, Bernhard told the Chaos Communications Congress cybersecurity convention in Hamburg, where he and Halderman discussed their findings, the Guardian reported Wednesday.

In Wisconsin, Trumps victory increased by 131 votes, while in Michigan, incomplete data found a possible difference of 1,651 votes, but no evidence of an attack, Bernhard said. I can sleep at night knowing that Trump won the election.

But Halderman warned that companies that load election machines could be susceptible to a hack. What we need in the U.S., quite badly, is some specific reform to the election process, Halderman said. Even if the 2016 election wasnt hacked, the 2020 election might well be; were facing increasingly powerful and successful state attackers. We need some defense.

Halderman suggested states strengthen their voting technology and require paper records of each vote.

Im pretty sure my undergraduate security class could have changed the outcome of the presidential election, Halderman said. It really is that bad.

Story continues

It isn't all bad news for Clinton. She did win the popular vote, with 65,844,610 votes. Trump, who will be sworn in on Jan. 20, only received 62,979,636 votes.

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HONOLULU (AP)  It took eight years of backbiting and pretending they got along for relations between President Barack Obamas administration and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus government to finally hit rock bottom.

Though theyve clashed bitterly before, mostly notably over Iran, the two governments seemed farther apart than ever after a speech Wednesday by Secretary of State John Kerry and last weeks United Nations resolution.

The key question for the Obama administration, newly willing to air grievances with Israel on live television, is why now?

We cannot, in good conscience, do nothing and say nothing when we see the hope of peace slipping away, Kerry said in a speech that ran more than an hour.

Yet in just over three weeks, Obama will no longer be president, Kerry will no longer be secretary of State, and the U.S. will have a new leader under no obligation to embrace any of what Kerry said. President-elect Donald Trump has assured Israel that things will be different after Jan. 20, when hes to be inaugurated, and lamented how the Jewish state was being treated very, very unfairly.

Kerry took pains to voice Americas staunch commitment to Israels security and support for its future, and to detail U.S. complaints about Palestinian leadership and its failure to sufficiently deter violence against Israelis. He laid out a six-point framework for a potential peace deal that it will be up to the next U.S. government to try to enact, if it chooses to do so.

The White House has portrayed Obamas decision to break with tradition by abstaining  rather than vetoing  a U.N. Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements illegal as a reaction forced by other countries that brought it up for a vote.

The White House has also acknowledged that Obama had long considered the possibility of taking some symbolic step before leaving office to leave his imprint on the debate. For much of the year, his staff pored over options that included a U.N. resolution outlining principles for a peace deal and a presidential speech much like the one Kerry gave Wednesday. Yet there was reluctance to act before the U.S. election, given the way it would have thrust the Israeli-Palestinian issue into the campaign.

Story continues

Kerry acknowledged Trump appears to favor a different approach. Yet frustrated by years of Israeli actions he deemed counterproductive for peace, Obama appeared to have decided it was better to make his administrations views known while still in office, even if it risked a blockbuster clash with Americas closest ally.

In his speech, Kerry tore into Israel for settlement-building, accusing Netanyahu of dragging Israel away from democracy. He defended the move to allow the U.N. vote, the spark that set off an extraordinary and deepening diplomatic spat between the U.S. and its closest Mideast ally.

If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both, and it wont ever really be at peace, Kerry said

Shortly after, Netanyahu appeared on camera in Jerusalem and suggested he was done with the Obama administration and ready to deal with Trump. The Israeli leader faulted Kerry for obsessing over settlements while paying mere lip service to Palestinian attacks and incitement of violence.

Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders, Netanyahu said.

Trump wouldnt say whether settlements should be reined in. But he told reporters Israel was being treated very, very unfairly by a lot of different people.

In a nod to Netanyahus concerns that Obama would take more parting shots, Kerry seemed to rule out the possibility Obama would support more U.N. action or, even more controversially, recognize statehood.

The U.S, the Palestinians and most of the world oppose Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians for an independent state. But Israels government argues previous construction freezes didnt advance peace and that the settlements  now home to 600,000 Israelis  must be resolved in direct talks Israelis-Palestinian talks.

While Israels Arab population has citizenship rights, the roughly 2.5 million Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank do not, and most in annexed east Jerusalem have residency rights but not citizenship.

Kerry said a future deal would have to ensure secure borders for Israel and a Palestinian state formed in territories Israel captured in 1967, with mutually agreed, equivalent swaps. He said both countries must fully recognize each other, ensure access to religious sites and relinquish other existing claims. Kerry also called for assistance for Palestinian refugees.

___

Lederman reported from Honolulu. Associated Press writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Vivian Salama in Palm Beach, Florida, contributed to this report.
President-elect Donald Trump is working on the first draft of his inaugural address with top aides, his incoming press secretary said Thursday.

Sean Spicer told reporters on a daily transition conference call that Stephen Miller, Trumps aide and speechwriter, is taking the lead on the speech, with key senior advisers Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus contributing as well. The group is expected to continue working on the speech at dinner Thursday night, Spicer said.

But according to the Washington Post, Trump  who has contributed such phrases as big league, sad! and drain the swamp to the political lexicon  told several visitors to his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday that he is taking a crack at writing the first draft, drawing inspiration for the speech from Presidents Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy.

During a lunchtime visit to a table that included presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, Bloomberg columnist Margaret Carlson, Democratic lobbyist Thomas Quinn and Newsmax chief executive Christopher Ruddy, Trump reportedly expressed his admiration for Reagans style and JFKs famous 1962 speech setting the goal of reaching the moon.

He went on and on about Reagan and how much he admires him, a person familiar with Trumps comments told the Post. But it wasnt all about Reagan. He spoke about Kennedy and how he was able to get the country motivated, to go to the moon. Hes thinking about both men as he starts to write the speech, which is something hes now taking the lead on.

After their discussion, Brinkley told reporters outside Mar-a-Lago that Trump was very interested in a man going to the moon and the moon shot, so we were talking a little bit about that.

Brinkley said they also discussed a sort of history of the presidency and past inaugurals and the way other inaugurations have been.

We talked about JFK and Reagan and about how William Henry Harrison caught pneumonia after giving too long of an inaugural speech, Brinkley told the Post.

Story continues

He doesnt want it to be long, Brinkley said on CNN. He would like it to be a shorter one. He doesnt want people standing out in the cold.

During his campaign, Trump became known for delivering off-the-cuff speeches at his freewheeling rallies, particularly during the Republican primary. But during the general election, he frequently used a teleprompter  part of an effort by his GOP advisers to keep him on message.

Reagan was the last president not to use a teleprompter for an inaugural address.

According to Brinkley, Trump was amused by an anecdote he shared about how before the advent of the microphone, attendees at presidential inaugurations would whisper the speech through the crowd so that people in the back could know what was being said.

Related: Donald Trump just addressed questions swirling around his administration

Earlier this week, Politico reported that early discussions of the framework for his Jan. 20 address have focused on education, infrastructure, border security, the military and the economy.

They will be talking about uniting America, bringing America together, Boris Epshteyn, a spokesman for Trumps inauguration committee, said Tuesday. We are now in the post-politics, post-campaign season, and thats the messaging around this inaugural.

Most if not all presidents have used speechwriters to draft their inaugural remarks.

When George Washington delivered the very first inaugural address, on April 30, 1789, Slate notes, he was reading from a reworked draft composed by his friend and frequent ghostwriter James Madison.

Kennedys 1961 inaugural address was constructed by Ted Sorensen, his longtime legislative aide and speechwriter, and included contributions from several people, including Kennedy himself. Sorensen, who died in 2010, would never reveal who wrote the speechs most famous line  Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country  and destroyed the handwritten first draft at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy.

I recognize that I have some obligation to history, Sorensen said in the book Sounding the Trumpet: The Making of John F. Kennedys Inaugural Address. But all these years I have tried to make clear that President Kennedy was the principal author of all his speeches and articles. If I say otherwise, that diminishes him, and I dont want to diminish him.

Reagans 1981 inaugural address was written by Ken Khachigian, his chief speechwriter. He recently told Politico that he had his first meeting with Reagan about the speech in mid-December and wrote a rough draft before the new year.

Its exciting. Its stressful. Its a high bar, Khachigian said. The most important thing is you dont want to let the president down.
MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's Economy Minister said on Thursday that the ECB's recent request to Monte dei Paschi (BMPS.MI) to plug a capital shortfall of 8.8 billion euros will lead the lender to be "hyper-capitalised" but not "over-capitalised", in an interview with Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore.

Pier Carlo Padoan said the government's rescue of the country's third biggest lender will set an example for future similar banking problems in the rest of Europe.

He added that the a delisting of the bank was not on the agenda and hoped that its shares - suspended from trade last week - would resume trading as soon as possible.

Padoan said that the ECB's decision on Monday to raise the ailing bank's capital shortfall to 8.8 billion euros ($9.2 billion), up from a previous 5 billion euro gap estimated by the bank, could not be contested.

But he added that it would have been "useful, if not kind" if the criteria used by the central bank to make the assessment had been explained in more detail.

Following the government-led recapitalisation - whose timing would be dictated by the lender's industrial plan - Padoan said that Monte dei Paschi's board would be reconsidered, but that no questions would be raised over the role of Chief Executive Marco Morelli.

($1 = 0.9561 euros)

(Reporting by Giulia Segreti, editing by Isla Binnie)
Unexpected tax kills jute exports to India

Exports of jute products to India have come to a complete halt for the last two weeks after Indian customs authorities abruptly imposed a 12.5 percent excise duty on goods made of natural
An Arkansas city shocked by the unsolved shooting death of a toddler last month has upped a reward to make sure the culprit sees justice.

On Wednesday, the City of Little Rock announced it would increase the amount of a reward in the November murder of 2-year-old girl Ramiya Reed to $40,000.

Read: Man Suspected of Killing 3-Year-Old Boy During Road Rage Incident Turns Himself In

Ramiya was riding with her mother and others in the vehicle on November 22 when shots were fired.

No suspects have been identified, and the investigation is ongoing.

"We will not let this tragic death of an innocent child go unsolved," City Manager Bruce T. Moore said. "The City of Little Rock is grateful for the outpouring of support and assistance from the community.

"It is our hope that someone will come forward with information that leads to the conviction of the person responsible for this senseless act of violence."

A week after the unthinkable death of Ramiya, loved ones, who lovingly called her "Tinkerbell," gathered to mourn at Little Rock's Mercy Church.

Among the dozens of shell-shocked family and friends was Ramiya's aunt, Raquel Reed.

"We still want justice for my niece," Reed told KARK. "So we just ask everyone to just come forward."

According to a news release, the original reward amount of $20,000 was made by a private donor who wishes to remain anonymous.

Read: Police Release Grandmother's Frantic 911 Calls After Grandson, 3, Was Killed in Road Rage Shooting

The city matched the amount and has now contributed an additional $20,000, making the reward $40,000.

In an unrelated but similarly tragic story out of Arkansas just this month, 3-year-old Acen King was shot and killed by a driver while riding with his grandmother in what police have called a deadly incident of road rage.

Watch: Mother Allegedly Beat Her 2 Young Sons for Opening Their Christmas Presents Early

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Rob Kardashian was hospitalized on Wednesday night.

The 29-year-old reality star's fiancee, Blac Chyna, and his mother, Kris Jenner, arrived separately to the emergency room, with Jenner showing up with her boyfriend, Corey Gamble, at the emergency room near Hidden Hills, California, where the family lives, around 9:45 p.m., according to TMZ.

Chyna was not seen with her and Kardashian's newborn daughter, Dream, but had posted Snapchat photos and videos of their baby earlier in the evening.

Snapchat

This time last year, Kardashian was also hospitalized and reportedly diagnosed with diabetes. In an October episode of Rob and Chyna, however, he revealed that his nutritionist told him that he was "completely free of diabetes."



"That's like the best news I've heard all year, literally," Kardashian told Chyna at the time.



EXCLUSIVE: Blac Chyna Says She Thinks Rob Kardashian Will Be an 'Overprotective' Dad

The apparent medical emergency comes just days after the Jenner-Kardashian family attended their 61-year-old mother's annual Christmas Eve party. Chyna, 28, and Kardashian were not in attendance.



They did reunite for the holidays following a massive blow-up that led to Rob documenting Chyna moving out a week prior. Instead of attending Jenner's party, the two both posted to Snapchat a selfie of them cozying up to one another on Christmas Eve. Kardashian is seen giving his fiancee a kiss on the head while she used Snapchat's deer filter on her face. "Happy holidays," Chyna captioned the PDA pic, adding a red heart emoji.

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Please let it all be included on the Blu-Ray.

Actor Ben Mendelsohn, who plays Orson Krennic in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, told Collider in a recent candid interview that, yes, there were a lot of reshoots for the film, which made for a completely different flick.

We knew quite a few reshoots happened, but Mendelsohn better explained what it all meant to the story and how it changed, apparently altogether.

"We did have multiple, multiple ways of going at any given scenario, we had multiple readings of it," Mendelsohn told Collider. "So should they ever decide to, there would be a wealth of ways of approaching these different things. And I know from having seen sort of the crucial kind of scenes throughout it, I know there's vastly different readings of at least four of those scenes.

He continued that there are "enormous differences within, I would've said 20 or 30 of the scenes. There really would be. There would be enormously different renderings."

And that is not at all hard to believe, especially when the first trailer are compared to the final product. (Where was Jyn running across the beach holding the plans?!)

The Hollywood Reporter in May reported that Disney ordered reshoots, and the production underwent several weeks of that process.

All we can hope at this point is that everything, including the galactic kitchen sink, will be thrown at the home disks.

Read the full interview at Collider.
After four and half years of marriage, Ben Mendelsohn and Emma Forrest are calling it quits.

Forrest filed for divorce from the 47-year-old actor at the Los Angeles Superior Court on Dec. 23, citing "irreconcilable differences," ET confirms.

RELATED: 'Rogue One' Review: The First 'Star Wars Story' Is a Bumpy Ride That's Worth It in the End

Mendelsohn's latest film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, premiered earlier this month. Forrest, a writer, did not join the actor at the movie's premieres throughout the last few weeks. The couple was last seen at a public event together at Vanity Fair's 2016 Oscars after-party in February.

Getty Images

PICS: See All the Stars at the 'Rogue One' L.A. Premiere

According to court documents obtained by ET, Forrest lists the date of separation as Dec. 1, 2016, and is asking for joint legal custody and primary physical custody of their 3-year-old daughter, Carolina, with visitation for Mendelsohn.

Forrest is also asking the court for spousal support, and asks for attorney's fees to be paid by the actor. Communal assets will be divided at a later date. Mendelsohn has 30 days from the date of Forrest's filing to issue a response.

EXCLUSIVE: 'Rogue One' Star Ben Mendelsohn on Darth Vader's Return to the Big Screen After 11 Years

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* Turkey says it and Russia will guarantee ceasefire

* Islamic State, ex-Nusra Front militants excluded from deal

* Free Syrian Army rebels to abide by deal

By Denis Pinchuk and Tulay Karadeniz

MOSCOW/ANKARA, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a ceasefire between Syrian opposition groups and the Syrian government starting at midnight on Thursday.

The parties were also prepared to start peace talks, Putin said, after Moscow, Iran and Turkey expressed readiness to broker a deal to settle the nearly six-year-old Syrian war.

The Syrian army announced a nationwide halt to fighting but said Islamic State and ex-Nusra Front militants and all groups linked to them would be excluded from the deal. It did not say which unnamed groups would be excluded.

A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, a loose alliance of rebel groups, said it would abide by the ceasefire, due to come into force at 2200 GMT, and take part in future talks.

It was the third nationwide ceasefire agreed in Syria this year. The previous two, negotiated by Washington and Moscow, collapsed within weeks as warring sides accused each other of violations. The current deal does not involve the United States or United Nations.

The latest ceasefire deal follows a major defeat for the anti-Assad rebellion in Aleppo, where the Russian air force and Iranian-backed ground forces played a critical role helping the government drive rebels from eastern parts of the city.

It also follows a thaw in ties between Russia and Turkey.

While Ankara has been a big sponsor of the rebellion, Assad's removal has become a secondary concern to combatting the expansion of Kurdish influence in northern Syria. The chances of Assad's opponents forcing him from power now seem more remote than at any point in the war.

One rebel commander expressed optimism that this deal would be more effective. "This time I have confidence in its seriousness. There is new international input," said Colonel Fares al-Bayoush, an FSA commander, without elaborating.

Story continues

Talks on the latest truce picked up momentum after Russia, Iran and Turkey last week said they were ready to back a peace deal and adopted a declaration setting out principles for an agreement.

Putin said opposition groups and the Syrian government had signed a number of documents, including the ceasefire, measures to monitor the truce, and a statement on readiness to start peace talks.

"The agreements reached are, of course, fragile, need a special attention and involvement... But after all, this is a notable result of our joint work, efforts by the defence and foreign ministries, our partners in the regions," Putin said.

He also said Russia had agreed to reduce its military deployment in Syria, where its support has turned the tide in favour of President Bashar al-Assad in a war that has killed more than 300,000 and forced more than 11 million to flee their homes.

Putin spoke by phone to Assad who said he was committed to observing the ceasefire, the Kremlin said.

Turkey said it and Russia would guarantee the ceasefire.

"This window of opportunity should not be wasted," Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said.

ISLAMIC STATE

Three rebel officials told Reuters the deal excluded Islamic State, but did include the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group, formerly al Qaeda's Syria branch, the Nusra Front - appearing to contradict the Syrian army's statement.

The Free Syrian Army spokesman said the ceasefire also does not include the Kurdish YPG militia, which has mostly avoided conflict with the Syrian government. The YPG could not immediately be reached for comment.

Russia's defence ministry said insurgent groups that signed the agreement included the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, which operates primarily near Damascus, and Jabha Shamiya, one of the main Turkey-backed FSA groups that had operated in Aleppo.

However, a spokesman for Ahrar al-Sham said it had reservations about the agreement and had not signed it.

The United States has been sidelined in recent negotiations and is not due to attend the next round of peace talks in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, a key Russian ally.

Its exclusion reflects growing frustration from both Turkey and Russia over Washington's policy on Syria, officials have said.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the United States could join the peace process once President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month. He also wanted Egypt to join, together with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Jordan and the United Nations.

Washington said the news of a ceasefire was a positive.

"We hope it will be implemented fully and respected by all parties," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

The United Nations Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, welcomed the ceasefire announcement and hoped it would save civilian lives, enable the delivery of aid and lead to productive peace talks in Astana.

The deal should also help U.N. negotiations on Syria to be held in February, de Mistura's spokeswoman said.

CIVIL WAR

Talks on the ceasefire reflect the complexity of Syria's civil war, with an array of groups and foreign interests involved on all sides.

Turkey and Russia support different sides in the war. Ankara has insisted on the departure of Assad, who is backed by Russia.

Likewise, demands that troops from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement leave Syria may not please Iran, another major supporter of Assad. Hezbollah troops have been fighting alongside Syrian government forces against rebels opposed to Assad.

"All foreign fighters need to leave Syria. Hezbollah needs to return to Lebanon," Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

Sources have told Reuters that, under an outline deal between the three countries, Syria could be divided into informal zones of regional power and Assad would remain president for at least a few years.

Syria's foreign minister said Syria would participate "with an open mind" in the peace talks in Astana.

Meanwhile, disagreements remain between big powers.

Ankara supports the Free Syrian Army and some of the rebel groups in the alliance in operations in northern Syria designed to sweep Islamic State and Syrian Kurdish fighters from its southern border.

The United States is backing the Syrian Kurdish YPG in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, a move that has infuriated Turkey, which sees the YPG as an extension of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Ankara fears that advances by Kurdish fighters in Syria could inflame militants at home.

Turkey's Erdogan has accused the United States of supporting terrorism in Syria, including Islamic State, comments that Washington has dismissed as "ludicrous".

(Additional reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, John Davison, Humeyra Pamuk, Daren Butler, Lisa Barrington, Tom Perry, Ellen Francis, Vladimir Soldatkin, Maria Tsvetkova, Andrey Ostroukh, Peter Hobson and Katya Golubkova; Writing by David Dolan, John Davison and Giles Elgood; Editing by Anna Willard)
By Denis Pinchuk and Tulay Karadeniz

MOSCOW/ANKARA (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a ceasefire between Syrian opposition groups and the Syrian government starting at midnight on Thursday.



The parties were also prepared to start peace talks, Putin said, after Moscow, Iran and Turkey expressed readiness to broker a deal to settle the nearly six-year-old Syrian war.



The Syrian army announced a nationwide halt to fighting but said Islamic State and ex-Nusra Front militants and all groups linked to them would be excluded from the deal. It did not say which unnamed groups would be excluded.



A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, a loose alliance of rebel groups, said it would abide by the ceasefire, due to come into force at 2200 GMT, and take part in future talks.



It was the third nationwide ceasefire agreed in Syria this year. The previous two, negotiated by Washington and Moscow, collapsed within weeks as warring sides accused each other of violations. The current deal does not involve the United States or United Nations.



The latest ceasefire deal follows a major defeat for the anti-Assad rebellion in Aleppo, where the Russian air force and Iranian-backed ground forces played a critical role helping the government drive rebels from eastern parts of the city.



It also follows a thaw in ties between Russia and Turkey.



While Ankara has been a big sponsor of the rebellion, Assad's removal has become a secondary concern to combating the expansion of Kurdish influence in northern Syria. The chances of Assad's opponents forcing him from power now seem more remote than at any point in the war.



One rebel commander expressed optimism that this deal would be more effective. "This time I have confidence in its seriousness. There is new international input," said Colonel Fares al-Bayoush, an FSA commander, without elaborating.





For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.

Talks on the latest truce picked up momentum after Russia, Iran and Turkey last week said they were ready to back a peace deal and adopted a declaration setting out principles for an agreement.



Putin said opposition groups and the Syrian government had signed a number of documents, including the ceasefire, measures to monitor the truce, and a statement on readiness to start peace talks.



"The agreements reached are, of course, fragile, need a special attention and involvement... But after all, this is a notable result of our joint work, efforts by the defense and foreign ministries, our partners in the regions," Putin said.



He also said Russia had agreed to reduce its military deployment in Syria, where its support has turned the tide in favor of President Bashar al-Assad in a war that has killed more than 300,000 and forced more than 11 million to flee their homes.



Putin spoke by phone to Assad who said he was committed to observing the ceasefire, the Kremlin said. Turkey said it and Russia would guarantee the ceasefire.



"This window of opportunity should not be wasted," Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said.

ISLAMIC STATE

Three rebel officials told Reuters the deal excluded Islamic State, but did include the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group, formerly al Qaeda's Syria branch, the Nusra Front - appearing to contradict the Syrian army's statement.

The Free Syrian Army spokesman said the ceasefire also does not include the Kurdish YPG militia, which has mostly avoided conflict with the Syrian government. The YPG could not immediately be reached for comment. Russia's defense ministry said insurgent groups that signed the agreement included the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, which operates primarily near Damascus, and Jabha Shamiya, one of the main Turkey-backed FSA groups that had operated in Aleppo.



The United States has been sidelined in recent negotiations and is not due to attend the next round of peace talks in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, a key Russian ally.



Its exclusion reflects growing frustration from both Turkey and Russia over Washington's policy on Syria, officials have said.



However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the United States could join the peace process once President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month. He also wanted Egypt to join, together with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Jordan and the United Nations.



Washington said the news of a ceasefire was a positive.



"We hope it will be implemented fully and respected by all parties," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.



The United Nations Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, welcomed the ceasefire announcement and hoped it would save civilian lives, enable the delivery of aid and lead to productive peace talks in Astana.



The deal should also help U.N. negotiations on Syria to be held in February, de Mistura's spokeswoman said.

CIVIL WAR



Talks on the ceasefire reflect the complexity of Syria's civil war, with an array of groups and foreign interests involved on all sides.



Turkey and Russia support different sides in the war. Ankara has insisted on the departure of Assad, who is backed by Russia.



Likewise, demands that troops from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement leave Syria may not please Iran, another major supporter of Assad. Hezbollah troops have been fighting alongside Syrian government forces against rebels opposed to Assad.



"All foreign fighters need to leave Syria. Hezbollah needs to return to Lebanon," Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.



Sources have told Reuters that, under an outline deal between the three countries, Syria could be divided into informal zones of regional power and Assad would remain president for at least a few years.



Syria's foreign minister said Syria would participate "with an open mind" in the peace talks in Astana.



Meanwhile, disagreements remain between big powers.



Ankara supports the Free Syrian Army and some of the rebel groups in the alliance in operations in northern Syria designed to sweep Islamic State and Syrian Kurdish fighters from its southern border.



The United States is backing the Syrian Kurdish YPG in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, a move that has infuriated Turkey, which sees the YPG as an extension of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Ankara fears that advances by Kurdish fighters in Syria could inflame militants at home.



Turkey's Erdogan has accused the United States of supporting terrorism in Syria, including Islamic State, comments that Washington has dismissed as "ludicrous".

(Additional reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, John Davison, Humeyra Pamuk, Daren Butler, Lisa Barrington, Tom Perry, Ellen Francis, Vladimir Soldatkin, Maria Tsvetkova, Andrey Ostroukh, Peter Hobson and Katya Golubkova; Writing by David Dolan, John Davison and Giles Elgood; Editing by Anna Willard)
GettyImages 628954726

New US sanctions on Russia could complicate the Trump administration's relations with the Kremlin, as the president-elect seeks to warm relations while other US officials insist on harsh punishments for election meddling.

Boris Zilberman, a Russia expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said increased sanctions from the US are "clearly ... meant to throw a wrench into next [administration's] dealings with Moscow."

While President-elect Donald Trump has seemed to cozy up to Russia, the current administration's dealings with the country have deteriorated. And politicians in Congress might not be so willing to strengthen ties with the Kremlin in light of accusations of Russia hacking the US.

"Practically speaking, [Trump] is likely to face internal administration pressures as well as pressures from Republicans on Capitol Hill who would actually like to do more to counter Russia," Zilberman told Business Insider in an email. "That is where the fight will likely be."

President Barack Obama issued new sanctions against Russia on Thursday, calling Russia's "malicious cyber-enabled activities" a "national emergency" aimed at undermining "democratic processes."

"All Americans should be alarmed by Russia's actions," Obama said in a statement, noting that Russia's "data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government."

Obama altered an executive order he issued in April 2015 that allows the US to retaliate against cyberattacks to include those "interfering with or undermining election processes or institutions."

The updated executive order authorized Obama to sanction nine entities and individuals linked to GRU, Russia's largest foreign intelligence agency, and FSB, Russia's primary security agency.

Since the sanctions were issued via executive order, Trump could in theory revoke them.

"An executive order is not codified in law so in theory, whether on Russia or Iran, an incoming administration can with relative technical ease, roll back a previous administrations executive order (such as this one)," Zilberman said.

Story continues

Obama also ordered that 35 Russian diplomats from the Russian Embassy in Washington and the Russian Consulate in San Francisco be ejected from the United States in response to what he said was Russian harassment of American diplomats in Moscow.

Other US diplomats are now likely to face increased harassment from Russia as retaliation.

"Moscow is likely to step up harassment of US diplomats in Russia and potentially expel some of our diplomats as well," Zilberman said. "[The] Kremlin spokesman has already discussed the theory of reciprocal moves in such instances."

Russia's foreign ministry issued a statement Thursday indicating coming retaliation, saying that "if Washington takes new hostile steps, it will receive an answer."

Geopolitical expert and Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer said on Twitter that US/Russia relations are at their "lowest point since [the] early 80s."

Bremmer echoed Zilberman's assessment of differences between the incoming administration and Congress on Russia.

"Republicans in Congress will break with Trump on Putin," Bremmer tweeted. "But it won't be a priority issue for most."

Bremmer said Trump needs address in some way Russia's interference in the US election. US intelligence agencies have said Russian hackers meddled in the election to help Trump win the White House.

"Trump needs to request a formal brief on Russia hacks from US intelligence directors," Bremmer tweeted. " And then make an informed policy statement."

Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.

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Allegations over Russia and Iran's deepening ties with the Taliban have ignited concerns of a renewed "Great Game" of proxy warfare in Afghanistan that could undermine US-backed troops and push the country deeper into turmoil.

Moscow and Tehran insist their contact with insurgents is aimed at promoting regional security, but local and US officials who are already frustrated with Pakistan's perceived double-dealing in Afghanistan have expressed bitter scepticism.

Washington's long-time nemesis Iran is accused of covertly aiding the Taliban, and Russia is back to what observers call Cold War shenanigans to derail US gains at a time when uncertainty reigns over President-elect Donald Trump's Afghanistan policy.

"(Russia's) narrative goes something like this: that the Taliban are the ones fighting Islamic State," top US commander in Afghanistan John Nicholson said recently, denouncing the "malign influence" of external powers.

"This public legitimacy that Russia lends to the Taliban is not based on fact, but it is used as a way to essentially undermine the Afghan government and the NATO effort and bolster the belligerents.

"Shifting to Iran, you have a similar situation. There have been linkages between the Iranians and the Taliban."

Russia has officially provided military helicopters for Afghan forces, but simultaneously propped up the Taliban with arms, official and insurgent sources say.

"We are particularly concerned about loads of Russian-made weapons recently seized from areas on the border with Tajikistan," a senior Afghan security official told AFP.

"Cross-border support for the Taliban will further complicate the security situation in Afghanistan's north."

A Taliban commander told AFP the Russian support had helped the insurgents overrun the northern city of Kunduz in October for the second time in a year.

Taliban representatives in recent months have also held several meetings with Russian officials in Tajikistan and Moscow, sources say.

Story continues

"No country should be in touch with destructive groups who are the enemies of Afghanistan. This shows disrespect towards the victims of war," interior ministry spokesman Sediq Siddiqi told AFP.

"We ask Russia and Iran to work with Afghans to defeat terrorism."

- 'Great fear' -

Western diplomats in Kabul have privately voiced alarm that Russia is quietly filling its embassy ranks with Soviet era "old-timers" well versed in Cold War tactics, as relations with Washington turn sour over the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine.

And this week Kabul vented fury over a summit between Russia, China and Pakistan in Moscow which agreed on a "flexible approach" to remove certain Taliban figures from sanctions lists.

Alexander Mantytskiy, Russia's ambassador to Kabul, insists engagement with the insurgents is benign.

"We have ties with the Taliban to ensure the security of our political offices, consulates and the security of central Asia," he told reporters this month.

Lashing out at NATO, he added the allegations against Russia were an effort to distract attention from the worsening conflict and "put the blame for their failures on our shoulders".

Some observers agree that Russian and Iranian concerns over Islamic State jihadists cannot be dismissed lightly.

"Islamic State may not have a deep presence in Afghanistan, but it has developed a profile there and its overall brand inspires great fear," Michael Kugelman, an analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, told AFP.

"We can't rule out the possibility that Russia and Iran are trying to hedge against the future possibility of a stronger Islamic State in Afghanistan by expanding their ties to the Taliban."

- Playground for superpowers -

Afghanistan has long been used as a chessboard for proxy battles -- from the 19th century "Great Game" of rivalry between Britain and Russia to the US funnelling weapons through Pakistan to Afghan rebels fighting Soviet forces in the 1980s.

It has also served as a proxy war playground for nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, which is also accused of playing a "double game" by endorsing Washington's war on terrorism while providing sanctuary to the Taliban.

Superpowers jockeying for supremacy in Afghanistan could sow further chaos amid the unpredictability of Trump's foreign policy, analysts say.

Trump has given surprisingly few details on how he will tackle America's longest war.

"Russia is waiting to see the next US move when Trump takes over," said Kabul-based analyst Ahmad Saeedi.

"If Trump chooses to scale back the US presence, then the Russians will be eager to fill the gap."

As for Iran, many in Tehran fear that a potentially hawkish White House under Trump will try to scrap its landmark nuclear deal with world powers, pushing them to retaliate by deepening ties with the Taliban.

"Foreign powers fighting for their own self interest does not bode well for Afghanistan," said Saeedi. "That only means more violence and bloodshed in the country."
Upbeat Pokhara tourism looks forward to 2017

Pokhara tourism is in an upbeat mood as it gets ready for 2017 because swelling domestic arrivals have helped it rebound from a disastrous slump.
Vladimir Putin

The Russian government responded to new sanctions from the US with a vaguely threatening statement condemning the move as "one last blow" to US relations with Russia.

"The outgoing US administration has not given up on its hope of dealing one last blow to relations with Russia, which it has already destroyed," Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in the statement.

US President Barack Obama issued new sanctions against Russia on Thursday, calling Russia's "malicious cyber-enabled activities" a "national emergency" aimed at undermining democratic processes.

He also ordered that 35 Russian diplomats be ejected from the US and closed two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland in response to what he said was Russian harassment of American diplomats in Moscow.

"Frankly speaking, we are tired of lies about Russian hackers that continue to be spread in the United States from the very top," Zakharova said in the statement.

"The Obama administration launched this misinformation half a year ago in a bid to play up to the required nominee at the November presidential election and, having failed to achieve the desired effect, has been trying to justify its failure by taking it out with a vengeance on Russian-US relations."

Obama's executive order comes over two months after the US intelligence community first accused the Russian government of orchestrating a series of cyberattacks on US citizens and political organizations, saying that "only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."

The CIA has said the Russians were working toward a specific goal when they hacked into the inboxes of Democratic National Committee staffers and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta: "to help [Donald] Trump get elected."

Zakharova said the "anti-Russian accusations" do not "contain a single piece of evidence."

Story continues

"We can only add that if Washington takes new hostile steps, it will receive an answer," she said in the statement.

"This applies to any actions against Russian diplomatic missions in the United States, which will immediately backfire at US diplomats in Russia. The Obama administration probably does not care at all about the future of bilateral relations, but history will hardly forgive it for this apres-nous-le-deluge attitude."

Here's the full statement:

"The outgoing US administration has not given up on its hope of dealing one last blow to relations with Russia, which it has already destroyed. Using obviously inspired leaks in the US media, it is trying to threaten us again with expansion of anti-Russian sanctions, 'diplomatic' measures and even subversion of our computer systems. Moreover, this final New Year's 'greeting' from Barack Obama's team, which is already preparing to leave the White House, is being cynically presented as a response to some cyberattacks from Moscow.

"Frankly speaking, we are tired of lies about Russian hackers that continue to be spread in the United States from the very top. The Obama administration launched this misinformation half a year ago in a bid to play up to the required nominee at the November presidential election and, having failed to achieve the desired effect, has been trying to justify its failure by taking it out with a vengeance on Russian-US relations.

"However, the truth about the White House-orchestrated provocation is bound to surface sooner or later. In fact, this is already happening. On December 8, US media quoted Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp as saying that the local authorities tracked down the origin of a hacker attack on his voter registration database after the election. The attack was traced to an IP address of the Department of Homeland Security. This was followed by an attempt to quickly cover up this information by a flood of new anti-Russian accusations that did not contain a single piece of evidence.

"We can only add that if Washington takes new hostile steps, it will receive an answer. This applies to any actions against Russian diplomatic missions in the United States, which will immediately backfire at US diplomats in Russia. The Obama administration probably does not care at all about the future of bilateral relations, but history will hardly forgive it for this apres-nous-le-deluge attitude."

Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.

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The Russian embassy in London lashed out at President Barack Obama on Twitter Thursday, shortly after the White House announced new sanctions against Russia over cyberattacks intended to interfere with the U.S. election.

And the tone and cadence of the tweet seemed to take a page from the playbook of President-elect Donald Trump.

A photo of a duck with the word LAME emblazoned across it was posted to the @RussianEmbassy Twitter account, along with the message: President Obama expels 35 diplomats in Cold War deja vu. As everybody, incl people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless Adm.

The jibe was a reference to Obamas lame-duck status following Trumps victory.

President Obama expels 35 diplomats in Cold War deja vu. As everybody, incl people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless Adm. pic.twitter.com/mleqA16H8D  Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) December 29, 2016

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

In a statement earlier on Thursday, Obama announced the sanctions and the expulsion of 35 Russian operatives from the U.S., as well as the closings of two Russian compounds in the U.S.

All Americans should be alarmed by Russias actions, Obama said. These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government. Moreover, our diplomats have experienced an unacceptable level of harassment in Moscow by Russian security services and police over the last year. Such activities have consequences.

Story continues

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The sanctions come after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia hacked into Democratic emails in an effort to help Trump win the election  accusations that both Trump and Russian officials have repeatedly denied.




As the remaining 150,000 trapped Aleppo residents continue an exhaustive evacuation to northern Syria and regions along the Syrian-Turkish border, families are wondering whether theyll ever be able to see their homeland again. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday a truce deal had been signed by the Syrian government, allowing peace talks to begin for a conflict that has lasted for five years and displaced over 11 million people.

But the evacuation process and path forward after civilians are removed from battlegrounds remain complicated, as several factions of rebel forces and terror organizations on the ground remain armed and opposed to the Syrian regime. Aleppo, which had previously been held by forces fighting against Syrian President Bashar Assads regime, has largely been taken over by the government after a joint-coalition backed by Russia and Iran spearheaded aerial bombardments throughout the historic city for years.

The Turkish foreign ministry announced a ceasefire would begin by Thursday at midnight, noting some forces on the ground would likely continue battling as Syrians make their way to safety. Putin backed the ceasefire efforts, also announcing Russia would participate with a "reduction" in forces on the ground.

The three documents Putin said had been signed Wednesday included a ceasefire deal brokered between the Syrian regime and the rebels, specific measures for overseeing the ceasefire and a brokered agreement to begin peace talks. The Russian president admitted each agreement was "fragile," but Moscow would comply and support a ceasefire as long as forces on the ground did the same.

RTX2VOSI

Photo: Reuters

Also supporting the ceasefire was Syrias leading opposition body, the National Coalition. A spokesman for the group told news outlets the oppositions Free Syrian Army would stand behind the ceasefire as well, but would "retaliate to violations" from the regime and allied forces.

Story continues

If the ceasefire and peace talks are successful, 2017 could prove to be a major turning point in the Syrian civil war, and possibly even mark the beginning of the end. Previous ceasefires in early December dissolved into chaos and confusion, as forces on the ground possibly backed by the regime began targeting ambulances and civilians fleeing Aleppo. Humanitarian workers reported casualties among volunteers and Aleppo residents, delaying evacuation efforts as Syrians were left stranded in subzero temperatures without essential resources.

RTX2VOP8

Photo: Reuters

As the New Year arrives, Syrias harrowing state of humanity appears somewhat less grim, as thousands safely make the exit from dangerous regions to sanctioned safe zones, where volunteers are waiting with food and water.

Meanwhile, neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia are launching fundraising relief campaigns, with the Saudi Arabian king and his family donating millions to the cause. Turkey has also allocated funding and resources to establish refugee camps for fleeing Syrians over the coming months along the border.

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London (AFP) - Russia's embassy in London on Thursday condemned the United States as "lame", arguing Washington's decision to impose sanctions on Moscow harked back to the Cold War between the two nations.

"President Obama expels 35 (Russian flag) diplomats in Cold War deja vu. As everybody, incl (US flag) people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless Adm (US administration)," the embassy's wrote on its Twitter account.

The tweet was accompanied by a photo of a duck with "lame" written across the image, referring to the phrase lame duck when describing outgoing governments.

The embassy's post followed the US's announcement earlier on Thursday of a series of measures against Russia, including expelling 35 agents.

Tough sanctions will additionally be imposed on Russia's top two intelligence agencies, while two Russian compounds in the US will also be shut down.

President Barack Obama said the measures come after private and public warnings to the Russian government, following accusations against Russia over hacking during the US presidential race.

"I have ordered a number of actions in response to the Russian government's aggressive harassment of US officials and cyber operations aimed at the US election," Obama said.

The US president will be succeeded by Republican Donald Trump, who has downplayed the accusations against Russia and earlier this week dismissed Obama's plans to impose sanctions.
Ryan Phillippe said that his celebrity status has made his dating life difficult.

In a recent interview with People, Phillippe said that hes already developed a pretty thick skin when it comes to media scrutiny. He, however, admitted that things still become a lot harder to deal with when the attention hes getting from the media starts to affect the private people around him.

I think thats when it gets really difficult, Phillippe said of living in the public eye. Of course [dating] is a challenge. When Ive been involved with people in my industry in the past, there is a little bit more of an understanding of what to expect, but I feel like when you are with someone who is not in the industry, the focus isnt there to the same degree.

Phillippe, who currently plays Bob Lee Swagger on USA Networks action drama series Shooter, was previously married to his Cruel Intentions co-star Reese Witherspoon. The two tied the knot in 1999 and split in 2006. The exes, who finalized their divorce in 2008, share 17-year-old daughter, Ava, and 13-year-old son, Deacon.

A year after his breakup with Witherspoon, Phillippe began dating Limitless actress Abbie Cornish, whom he met on the set of his war drama film Stop-Loss. The pair ended their relationship in February 2010.

The 42-year-old actor also share 5-year-old daughter Kai with Pitch Perfect star Alexis Knapp, whom he dated in the summer of 2010 before breaking up in September of that year.

Phillippes most recent relationship was with Paulina Slagter. Sources confirmed to E! News last month that the couple, who announced their engagement last December, called it quits after five years together.

Although Phillippe admitted that relationships are just not [his] territory, hes not ruling out the possibility of getting married again. Im open to it, he told People. I dont have a date or any plans set. I havent closed any books!

An all-new episode of Shooter airs on Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2017 at 10 p.m. EST on USA Network. Check out the synopsis and trailer for Season 1, episode 8, titled Red on Red, below:

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Bob Lee (Phillippe) and Nadine (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) create a plan to secure evidence of the conspiracy; Isaac (Omar Epps) looks for an exit strategy; Julie (Shantel VanSanten) and Mary (Lexy Kolker) face danger.

Ryan Phillippe

Photo: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni

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Washington (AFP) - Ten years after Saddam Hussein's execution, the ghost of the Iraqi strongman still haunts America, serving as a potent reminder of its broken ambitions to bring stability and democracy to the Middle East.

When Saddam was hung in Baghdad on December 30, 2007, then president George W. Bush already knew that the invasion of Iraq, which had already left 3,000 US forces dead, had not yielded the progress Washington sought.

"Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead. Yet the safety and security of the American people require that we not relent in ensuring that Iraq's young democracy continues to progress," Bush said at the time.

The democratic Iraq that Bush had envisioned turned out to be little more than a pipe dream, with the Americans failing to stop the deadly spiral of sectarian violence in the country.

The Sunni minority that once ruled Iraq grew increasingly resentful toward a predominantly Shiite government -- a resentment that helped fuel the rise of the ultra-radical Islamic State group that counts former Saddam military officials in its ranks.

More than 5,000 US soldiers are still on the ground providing critical support to an Iraqi army still unable to alone man a war against the violent extremist fighters.

The American public, which once gave strong support to the 2003 US-led invasion, is still recovering from the trauma of war.

The failures in Iraq heavily influenced US President Barack Obama's decision not to intervene militarily against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's bloody civil war that will soon stretch into its sixth year.

Meanwhile, Obama's successor Donald Trump built his presidential campaign in part on pledges that the United States would never again engage in "regime change" or "nation building."

Trump also said repeatedly that unlike his opponent Democrat Hillary Clinton, he was against the war in Iraq -- despite telling radio personality Howard Stern in a 2002 interview that he would support an invasion.

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- 'Clueless' -

More than a decade later, some American policy-makers are still trying to understand the reasons for the failure.

John Nixon, the first CIA analyst to interrogate Saddam after his capture in December 2003, says in a new book that US intelligence and White House officials had mistaken views of the Iraqi leader.

Far from being an all-powerful dictator, Saddam during his last years in power "seemed clueless about what had been happening inside Iraq," Nixon wrote in a recent newspaper column ahead of the Thursday release of "Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein."

"He was inattentive to what his government was doing, had no real plan for the defense of Iraq and could not comprehend the immensity of the approaching storm," Nixon said.

"Saddam was busy writing novels in 2003. He was no longer running the government."

- Complex picture -

But top US officials firmly believed that toppling Saddam's Baathist regime would lead to peace in Iraq, Nixon said.

Nixon tells a story of briefing Bush in the Oval Office in 2007, an exchange that perhaps underscores why the US was doomed to fail in Iraq.

Bush asked Nixon to describe Saddam's character.

"I told him that he was disarming at first and used self-deprecating wit to put you at ease," he said.

"The president looked as if he was going to lose his cool. I quickly explained that the real Saddam was sarcastic, arrogant and sadistic, which seemed to calm Bush down."

Bush "blamed the agency (CIA) for everything that went wrong and called its analysis 'guesswork,' while hearing only what he wanted to hear," Nixon said.

The former analyst paints a complex picture of Saddam as a brutal dictator who through methods like murder, threats and intimidation was nevertheless able to achieve an equilibrium in ethnically diverse Iraq.

"Although I found Saddam to be thoroughly unlikeable, I came away with a grudging respect for how he was able to maintain the Iraqi nation as a whole for as long as he did," according to an excerpt of Nixon's book published in Time.

"It is improbable that a group like ISIS would have been able to enjoy the kind of success under his repressive regime."
An adorable baby seal finally regained his sea legs, thanks to the kindness of a few wildlife rescuers.

The tiny harbor seal, nicknamed Frankenseal or Frank, was abandoned on the coast of Maine, alone and malnourished.

Read: 440-Pound Seal Wanders Through Neighborhood, Leaves Smashed and Dented Cars in its Wake

The poor pinniped was severely underweight and suffered from pneumonia, along with respiratory and parasitic infections.

A few locals spotted Frank terribly ill and unable to move his small, fragile body as he was stranded on the sandy beach.

Just when all hope was lost for the mammal, a team of volunteers from the National Marine Life Center rescued Frank and nursed him back to health.

We found out that he was in serious need of rehabilitation and we transported him to our center, Director of Marine Life Rehabilitation, Kate Shaffer, told InsideEdition.com

Read: Watch This Seal Narrowly Escape Becoming a Feast for a Great White Shark

After three months in their care, Frank was finally well and strong enough to be released into the ocean.

His rescuers watched the tender moment as Frankenseal reunited with the cool, refreshing waves and the distinct smell of salt-water.

He came out of the crate and slowly waddled into the ocean, said Shaffer. The dozen or so volunteers that were there said it was so inspiring to watch.

Watch: Seal Happily Scoots Back Into Ocean After Healing From Predator Bite Wound

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(Adds VTB, Credit Suisse, BNP comment, bondholder comment, details, shares)

MAPUTO, Dec 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating the sale of $850 million in bonds issued by Mozambique by Credit Suisse, Russia's VTB Group and BNP Paribas, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The southern African nation said in October its debt was unsustainable and the International Monetary Fund suspended assistance to Mozambique when evidence of $2 billion in secret loans emerged.

The bonds were sold in 2013 to finance Mozambican state-owned fishing company EMATUM's plans to develop tuna fishing in the impoverished nation, but the government later said it had also bought military equipment with the funds.

VTB Group's press office said in a statement on Thursday that it executed the transactions with Mozambique state-owned companies "in compliance with appropriate policies".

"The government of Mozambique confirmed to us that they were following the necessary internal and external legislation and that comprehensive information on the transactions was disclosed to creditors and investors," VTB said, adding it followed strict internal policies in these local deals.

Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas declined to comment.

Credit Suisse shares were down 2.1 percent at 1041 GMT, and a Zurich-based trader said the drop was likely partly related to the report about the SEC investigation.

BNP Paribas' shares were down 1.0 percent, broadly in line with the European banking sector, while VTB was up 1.1 percent.

The SEC in November asked bondholders for documents provided by Credit Suisse, VTB and BNP Paribas during the sale of the bonds, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a letter sent to bondholders.

The letter also asked investors to share with the SEC all communications with the banks related to the bonds.

Two emerging market investors told Reuters they were aware the SEC is investigating the EMATUM loan.

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"The SEC got in touch several months back, in fact in July. The SEC was looking to gather all relevant information and communication from VTB and CS to investors to Mozambique notes," a bondholder told Reuters, declining to comment further.

The SEC declined to comment to both the WSJ and Reuters. Mozambique's Ministry of Finance did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Financial watchdogs from Switzerland and Britain are also looking into Credit Suisse's and VTB's involvement.

Mozambique's state news agency said on Wednesday the country would pay government employees only half their annual bonus.

(Reporting by Manuel Mucari; Additional reporting by Joe Brock in Johannesburg, Maya Nikolaeva and Matthieu Protard in Paris, Kira Zavyalova in Moscow, Karin Strohecker in London and Silke Koltrowitz, Ruppert Pretterklieber and Oliver Hirt in Zurich; Writing by TJ Strydom; Editing by Alison Williams and Susan Thomas)
Mere weeks before the shocking deaths of her mother Carrie Fisher and grandmother Debbie Reynolds, Billie Lourd appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers, where she opened up about the trios dynamic and shared a hilarious impression of her grandmother.

Well, first of all, she gets really upset when I get called Carrie Fishers daughter,' Lourd told Meyers of her grandmother on Dec. 12, just over two weeks prior to Fishers death at 60 on Tuesday and Reynolds death at 84 on Wednesday. She wants people to call me Debbie Reynolds granddaughter. Its very offensive to her. She does not like to be cut out  not at all.

As a member of Hollywood royalty, the Scream Queens star was destined to follow in her mother and grandmothers footsteps as an actress  but the late legends made a valiant effort to dissuade Lourd from a career in front of the camera. That included Reynolds sitting Lourd down to read her diaries dating back to the Golden Age of Hollywood.

She called me down to her house and had this binder of these diaries that she had written when she first started doing Singin in the Rain. And she sat me down on her couch and said, Okay, I need you to read these, dear  in her 50s actress voice, said Lourd, 24, showing off her impeccable impression of her grandmother. I started reading them to myself, and she said, No, dear. Please read them out loud. And I started reading them and theyre all in second-person.

Lourd continued: They are somewhere along the lines of, Youre sitting in the makeup chair. Its 5 in the morning. Theyve pulled out all your eyebrows and you have no eyelashes left. Your hair is a shell of itself, and all you wanted to be was a gym teacher.'

As Meyers laughed, Lourd offered her perspective on the chat. So, I read this out loud and kind of looked at her like, Okay?' she explained. And she looked at me so earnestly, with her hands crossed in her lap, and was like, Are you sure you still want to be an actress, dear? I was like, Yeah, I think its different now. I think Im going to be able to keep my eyebrows. I dont think theyre going to put a wig on me  Ive got, like, long hair. Its fine. So Im gonna go for it.'

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The concern for Lourds future in Hollywood didnt stop Reynolds from supporting her granddaughters work. Shes a huge fan, Lourd said of Scream Queens. I mean, shes a fan of anything that involves a lot of fur. She misses that in film and TV. So the fact that were all clad in fur ear muffs and fur jackets, its her dream show.

Watch the equally touching and hilarious interview in the video below.

See how Lourds Scream Queens costars are showing support as she mourns the loss of Fisher and Reynolds here.
This article originally appeared on PEOPLE.com.

A Baltimore judge has denied bail for Adnan Syed, the subject of the popular Serial podcast who was granted a retrial after his murder conviction was vacated in June, according to court papers filed Wednesday.

Syed sought release from a Maryland prison as he awaits his new trial in the 1999 killing of ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee.

The state of Maryland is fighting the retrial and the case is now in the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.

This is obviously a setback, but in the bigger picture we are looking toward a new trial and proving his innocence, Syeds lead defense attorney, C. Justin Brown, tells PEOPLE.

If the appeals court rules in our favor, Brown says, we will be revisiting the bail issue.

Brown has not yet been able to tell Syed the news, he says.

In 2000, Syed was convicted of murdering Lee, a classmate at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, and sentenced to life plus 30 years in prison.

Years later, after Serial and other works brought national attention to the case, Judge Martin P. Welch of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City ruled to vacate Syeds murder conviction. He cited cell phone tower data in his ruling  specifically Syeds former attorneys failure to cross-examine the states cell tower expert about the reliability of cell tower location evidence that was a centerpiece of the prosecutions case.

In his denial of Syeds request for bail this week, however, Judge Welch cited the ongoing appeal by the state.

Brown, who has said it can take up to a year for the appeals process to play out, doesnt have a sense of when the appeals court will issue its ruling. It could be tomorrow it could be four months, he says.

Welch also denied Syeds request for a hearing, according to court papers.

In their request for bail, Syeds attorneys argued that he is not a flight risk or a danger to the community. He had no history of violence before his 1999 arrest for the murder of Lee and has been a model prisoner, they said.

Their motion also argued that the states case against Syed had crumbled, and that there are severe credibility issues with the prosecutions star witness, Jay Wilds.
Melbourne experienced flash flooding on December 29 as the Bureau of Meteorology issued severe weather warnings across the state.

Following a night of intense heat and humidity, heavy rainfall moved in from the north-east. Speaking with State Emergency Services, the ABC reported some areas would be receiving up to 100 millimetres of rain.

The Age reported flash flooding across Melbourne city. Credit: Facebook/Jungle Juice via Storyful
Fans used the force as they gathered in California Wednesday night to honor the late Carrie Fisher in a ceremony befitting a princess.

Read: Todd Fisher Opens Up About Loss of Mother Debbie Reynolds, a Day After Sister Carrie Fisher's Death

Instead of candles, mourners gathered in Hollywood's Downtown Disney and held a lightsaber vigil to honor the actress, who died of a heart attack Tuesday at age 60.

The event was organized on Facebook and more than 200 people came out to pay their respects to the actress who portrayed Princess Leia in the four Star Wars films.

The organizer of the event, Jeff Rowan, told KCBS: It was a random thing. I decided that we should be paying homage to her and a lightsaber was a fitting way to say goodbye to her.

Across the country, other tributes to Fisher have emerged.

In Iowa, someone used a billboard to pay their respects to the actress. The giant sign featured her as Leia with her name and epitaph, as well as the slogan: #MayTheForceBeWithYou.

Have you seen this billboard off Keosauqua Way & Crocker Street downtown? RIP Carrie Fisher. #MayTheForceBeWithYou pic.twitter.com/eSO9dsOgb0  Tommie Clark (@TommieClarkKCCI) December 28, 2016

to whoever paid for a billboard in memory of #CarrieFisher , thank you pic.twitter.com/CPkodgjsAk  cassidy horton (@cassidy_horton) December 29, 2016

In South Carolina, a company used billboards to pay their respects in the Star Wars font accompanying slogans that read: Daughter. Princess. Rebel. Another sign said: Thank You Your Worshipfulness.

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did I see a Carrie Fisher memorial billboard on 95 this morning?? was that my imagination??  emma (@DilEMMA144) December 29, 2016

Billboard owner said no one paid for the signs, they just wanted to honor the fierce princess Carrie Fisher. pic.twitter.com/u8fR08OvrN  Jodi (@jodotcom) December 29, 2016

Hollywood Boulevard. was adorned with billboards featuring tributes to Fisher.

Big crowds on Hollywood Blvd at #CarrieFisher makeshift star & #DebbieReynolds star. Mother/daughter pics alternate on digital billboard. pic.twitter.com/EHKizZviPW  Tamara Audi (@TammyAudi) December 29, 2016

Fisher, whose last film role was reprising the intergalactic princess in 2015s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, had reportedly filmed all of her scenes for the forthcoming Star Wars Episode VIII, which will premiere next Christmas, a source told Deadline.com.

Read: Debbie Reynolds Dies at 84, One Day After Daughter Carrie Fisher's Death: 'I Want to Be With Carrie'

Fisher reportedly had a much larger role in the forthcoming Star Wars chapter, a film that will also reportedly feature her daughter, Billie Lourd.

The source added that Fisher was expected to return for Star Wars Episode IX, which wont begin production for another year and is slated for theatrical release in 2019.

Watch: Friends and Family Pay Tribute to Carrie Fisher After Her Death

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Were all familiar with the inconveniences of commercial aviation: security lines, the interminable boarding process, cramped seating, and often-dicey Wi-Fi service, among others. Private flight can address these issues, but at a steep price. To bridge the divide between the two options, the charter operator JetSuite has launched its own hybrid shuttle service, JetSuiteX (x.jetsuite.com). It provides regularly scheduled flights aboard a 30-seat Embraer ERJ 135 between Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, San Jose, and Bozeman, Mt.

You pay no membership fees or fees for checked bags, and you can book a seatonline or with the companys appas late as 15 minutes before departure. The most inexpensive flight leg is $129; many cost around $200. The flights take off from the airports general-aviation terminals, so passengers avoid long security delays. Were trying to bring speed back to aviation, says Alex Wilcox, the CEO of JetSuite.

The interior of a JetSuiteX Embraer ERJ 135 feels more like an airliners business-class section than a private jet, but it offers much of what frequent fliers want, including Wi-Fi and beverage-and-snack service.

JetBlue recently made a minority equity investment in JetSuiteX. What does this mean for the company?

This is a game changer for us. JetBlue can really help us in terms of getting our product to grow. We created JetSuiteX because we wanted a product that we [JetSuites management team] could afford and that our friends could afford. Private jets are great and fun, but theyre not affordable for mere mortals.

Why would someone who is used to flying on a private jet use JetSuiteX? Or for that matter, why would someone who routinely charters one of JetSuites Phenom 300s want to use this service and fly with 29 strangers?

Some of our biggest advocates are JetSuite customers. They fly on commercial airlines routinely. Lots of millionaires and billionaires fly commercially because theyre looking for value. These are basically commercial-airline fares that we charge. Our customers love us especially for short flights. If you are going to Tokyo, who cares about spending an extra hour in the terminal. But if you are going to San Jose, an extra hour doubles your travel time.

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You note that customers have the option of booking the entire 30-seat flight. Why would someone do that?

We let you charter a 30-passenger jet for seven grand an hour. You can charter the plane and fly from Los Angeles to Tucson to watch a game, and if you fill the plane, its about $250 per person there and back. Were getting a massive amount of interest for event flights, corporate flights, even destination weddings and bachelor parties.

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Starting on Jan. 1, 2017, Singapore will take a step toward becoming a dystopian novel. The country plans to start collecting iris scans as part of its registration process for citizens and permanent residents.

According to Singapores Ministry of Home Affairs, the initiative to collect eye images will improve the "effectiveness and efficiency" of operations handled by the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA).

The ICA will start collecting iris scans, in addition to photographs and fingerprints, from Singapore residents in the new year. These identifiers will be gathered when a citizen goes to re-register an identity cardwhich Singapore has issued to all residents since 1965or applies for or renews a passport.

As iris images are gathered, the Singapore government will begin implementing iris scans at various land and sea checkpoints. The nation expects to expand the technologies at these checkpoints within the next two years.

Desmond Lee, a senior minister of state for home affairs in Singapore, explained during a speech to parliament on Nov. 10 that current identification methods are not effective enoughphotographs fade and poor fingerprint scans have caused travelers trouble when using automated clearance gates at immigration checkpoints.

"The collection and verification of iris images is similar to taking a photograph. It is convenient, contactless and non-intrusive and can be completed in seconds," Lee told parliament.

Singapore wont be the first country to implement the effective if potentially invasive means of identification. Germany began using biometric identifiers in 2005, and expanded its program to include iris scans in 2012. The eye image was required for holders of long-term work visas.

India has also made use of biometrics for its national identity program, which has collected more than 5 billion fingerprints, 1 billion iris image and 500 million face photosmaking it the l argest biometric identity platform in the world.

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While these databases represent a convenient way to check a persons identity for government organizations, there are those who believe the convenience doesnt outweigh the potential privacy concerns.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation warns on its website, Biometrics biggest risk to privacy comes from the governments ability to use it for surveillance. As face recognition technologies become more effective and cameras are capable of recording greater and greater detail, surreptitious identification and tracking could become the norm.

The privacy organization advises any government choosing to implement biometrics to limit the amount and type of data that can be stored, restrict the data to a single database, and ensure that data is stored in the most secure way possible.

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By Philip O'Connor (Reuters) - When UFC bantamweight Ronda Rousey makes her long-awaited return to the octagon on Friday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, she will have just one thing on her mind - avenging her only UFC defeat and winning back what she sees as "her" belt. Over a year has passed since a stunning knockout by Holly Holm saw her lose the title and Rousey, who has shunned the media for much of the last 12 months, now takes on current champion Amanda Nunes. "I don't care how this pay-per-view does. I don't care how much money I make. I don't care about interviews and I don't care how I look," the 29-year-old Californian said in a brief video about the UFC 207 event posted by TMZ on Wednesday. "All I care about is winning my belt back on Friday night and that's it." The most dominant female athlete in mixed martial arts and, alongside Irishman Conor McGregor, one of the most bankable stars in the UFC, Rousey's loss to Holm stunned the fight game and started a period of turbulence in the bantamweight division. Having won the title in spectacular fashion, Holm lost it just as quickly as Miesha Tate caught her in a rear naked choke at the end of a bruising five-round battle in March to emerge with the belt. Tate then fell at the first hurdle herself as Brazilian challenger Amanda Nunes swarmed all over her at UFC 200 in July before finishing the fight in the first round with the same choke Tate used to beat Holm. Rousey has said that this will be one of the last times fans will see her in the octagon, and a defeat to the 28-year-old Nunes may well hasten the retirement of the 2008 Olympic judo bronze medalist. Rousey's road to redemption is filled with danger. Both fighters have a reputation as quick starters and while Nunes, a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu, is arguably the better boxer, she will have to be wary of the judo hip toss and arm bar submissions which have become Rousey's trademark. Former champion Miesha Tate, who lost the belt to Nunes and was twice defeated in bitter battles against Rousey, has questioned Rousey's motivation ahead of a fight that could define her legacy. "I'm not counting her out, but I am saying if push comes to shove I don't know if her heart is really in it anymore," she said in a recent TV appearance. "Amanda's is. She's in it. She's in it to win it." (Reporting by Philip O'Connor, editing by Meil Robinson)
In Historys upcoming drama series SIX, premiering Jan. 18, Justifieds Walton Goggins stars as Richard Rip Taggart, a former Navy SEAL Team Six leader turned gun-for-hire whos captured by Boko Haram alongside the students and teacher of a girls school in Nigeria. As you see in the exclusive trailer debut above, the men formerly under his command, now led by his protege, Barry Sloanes Joe Bear Graves, request the rescue mission.

They lose their father figure, and in a way, the sons have to overcome their differences and be the professionals they need to be to bring him back, says David Broyles, a military special operations vet who co-created the series with his father, screenwriter William Broyles Jr. (Jarhead, Apollo 13).

But Rips in need of saving even before hes taken.

The series begins two years earlier, when Rip, still with the team, crosses a line on a mission in Afghanistan. He loses a sense of who he is and what he represents and what he was fighting for, David says. He needs to rediscover his identity.

Joe Manganiello was originally cast as Rip, but when he fell ill early in filming, Goggins assumed the role  on just three days notice. Wed structured the whole season  this was going to happen here, this was going to happen here  and Walton came in, and he brought such an electricity to the role and challenged our ideas about who Rip was and where we could go with him, David says.

As Goggins remembers, when he first spoke with David, Bill, and fellow executive producer/writer Bruce C. McKenna (Band of Brothers, The Pacific), they told him Rip had done some questionable things.

I said, Rip is a war criminal. You can say what you want to say, but thats what he is, so lets start from the truth. Lets start from that point and how did he get there, and what is his emotional state when you meet him, and ultimately where do you want to take him. For me, I want to go on a journey of personal redemption and one that takes into consideration the havoc that war has reaped on his soul,' he says. They were more than willing to go there.

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SIX (History)

As important as it was to all to honor and humanize those who serve by showing the cost of what theyre asked to do, it was equally imperative that the shows main villain  the Muslim American terrorist, Michael (Dominic Adams), seen in the trailer confronting Rip, for which he has a very personal reason  have a similar depth as the eight-episode season approaches its final hours.

Again, Goggins thinks back to his initial conversation with producers. I said to them, The story is the most important thing to me, and I can tell you right now that if Michaels journey is not just as important as Rips journey, then we have failed. It will just be another piece of propaganda. But if we can humanize the other person on the ideological spectrum, if we can look at him and treat him as respectfully as we treat Rip and the Navy SEALs, then we will have done something that very few people have the courage to do.'

SIX premieres on Jan. 18 at 10 p.m. on History.
Washington (AFP) - Telecom firm Sprint said it will create 5,000 US jobs over the next 15 months, and pledged Wednesday to work with President-elect Donald Trump to boost the US economy.

Trump first made the announcement at his luxury Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, telling reporters that Sprint called him with the news.

"We just had some very good news," he said. "Because of what is happening and the spirit and the hope, I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they are going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States. They have taken them from other countries."

Sprint, owned mostly by Japan's SoftBank, which already has announced a commitment to major US investments, released its statement nearly an hour later, clarifying that not all the jobs would come from overseas.

Sprint announced a "commitment to create or bring back to America 5,000 jobs," although it has no specific plans yet. The company expects to fulfill its commitment by the end of its 2017 fiscal year, which ends in March 2018.

"We are excited to work with President-elect Trump and his administration to do our part to drive economic growth and create jobs in the US," Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said in a statement.

"We believe it is critical for business and government to partner together to create more job opportunities in the US and ensure prosperity for all Americans."

The Sprint announcement gave Trump another chance to claim credit for job creation, and he referenced the December 19 announcement by satellite broadband firm OneWeb for 3,000 jobs over the next four years.

Those jobs are as a result of a $1.2 billion investment from SoftBank, whose chief executive Masayoshi Son met Trump earlier this month and pledged to invest $50 billion in the US economy and create 50,000 jobs.

In 2013, SoftBank paid $22 billion for 80 percent of Sprint.

"That's a new company. And it was done through Masa. A terrific guy," Trump said. "We appreciate it."

Sprint said it will "begin discussions immediately with its business partners, states and cities to determine the right locations in the US to create these jobs."

Sprint, which announced 2,500 layoffs in January, mostly in customer care, said it expects the new jobs "will support a variety of functions across the organization, including its customer care and sales teams."
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  Two weeks after officials in two dozen states asked Republican President-elect Donald Trump to kill one of Democratic President Barack Obama's signature plans to curb global warming, another group of state officials is urging Trump to save it.

Democratic attorneys general in 15 states plus four cities and counties sent a letter to Trump asking him to preserve Obama's Clean Power Plan, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, the lead author, announced Thursday.

The letter was a rebuttal to one sent this month by Republican officials from West Virginia and 21 other states and Democrats from the coal-producing states of Kentucky and Missouri urging Trump to issue a Day 1 executive order declaring the Clean Power Plan unlawful and prohibiting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing it.

The Clean Power Plan aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at existing power plants, the nation's largest source of the pollution, by about one-third by 2030. Opponents say the Environmental Protection Agency lacks authority to implement the rules. The plan is already the subject of a legal fight.

Trump has called the science showing climate change a hoax. His choice to head the EPA, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, has sued the EPA repeatedly to stop its climate agenda including Obama's sweeping power plant rules. And his nominee to run the Department of Energy, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, has questioned climate science while working to promote coal-fired power in Texas. But in a television interview this month Trump said he was "still open-minded" about the science of climate change.

Schneiderman said states like New York are "on the front lines of climate change" and have demonstrated how to cut pollution and emissions while protecting affordable and reliable electricity, creating jobs and growing the economy.

"The Clean Power Plan builds on that successful work and is a blueprint for the critical action needed to fight climate change's devastating environmental, economic and public health impacts," he said.

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Under Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Clean Energy Standard, established this year, 50 percent of New York state's electricity must come from renewable energy sources like wind and solar by 2030. New York and eight other states are part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade program that has reduced carbon dioxide emissions from electrical generation in the region by 40 percent from 2005 levels.

In California, the nation's most populous state, which also signed the letter, the goal is also to have half of its energy from renewable sources by 2030 and a 40 percent reduction of greenhouse gases.

The letter to Trump lists local impacts of climate change from fossil fuel emissions, including drought in California, catastrophic storm surge in New York City, a record deluge on Colorado's Front Range, high-tide flooding in Virginia and South Florida and diminished shellfish harvest in Oregon and Washington state.

The legal challenge, filed by 27 states that oppose the Clean Power Plan, is before a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. A decision on the plan could come at any time, but the U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily blocked implementation of the rule until the court challenge is resolved.

Still, even if Trump wants to scrap the plan, it would be a large, time-consuming task.

David Doniger, a climate policy expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council who served on Democratic President Bill Clinton's White House Council of Environmental Quality, said the Trump administration "can't make it go away unless they go through rulemaking process and unwind it."

"And that's a public process, so they'll have to hear from supporters of the plan," he said.

If Trump were to issue the executive order being asked for by the plan's opponents, since the plan has gone through a formal process to become a regulation it would still require a long, public process to undo, Doniger said.

Besides New York and California, the letter is signed by attorneys general from the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington as well as officials from Broward County and South Miami, Florida, Boulder, Colorado, and New York City.

___

Dearen reported from St. Augustine, Florida.
Los Angeles Rams

The list of road and home opponents for the Rams 2017 season is out, and from the early looks of it, some familiar challenges look to duplicate next year.

Like another home game across the pond.

One issue Jeff Fisher brought up was travel in 2016. Los Angeles seemed to play everywhere this season except in L.A. Fisher made a reasonable point from the baseline of the nomadic-like state of the team. Separate from wins and losses, its an issue that most teams would reasonably mention.

Having said all that, next year isnt a whole lot different. The Rams will travel to New York (Giants) and to Jacksonville. They also have a home game in London against NFC West rival Arizona. That game will be followed by the typical bye week. They will also play road games in Dallas, Tennessee, and Minnesota, as well as the rest of their division mates.

AROUND COVER32

QB Rankings: Whos rising as the temperatures are falling?

NFL Mailbag: Out goes Osweiler, in comes Savage

Winners and Losers:: Christmas came early for several teams this weekend

Rams Lose: Los Angeles loses to lowly 49ers

Rams A Marquee Job? L.A. maybe not a choice destination

Jared Goff: The rookie QB is in desperate need of a win to salvage his 2016

As for home games fans can look forward to, some teams that can be seen in the Coliseum may draw well.

Washington, Philadelphia, Houston, Indianapolis and the New Orleans Saints may present as really good games at home.

But ultimately, it will depend less on the visiting team on the field, and more on the team the Los Angeles Rams end up being.

Bottom line, the 2017 schedule is only an interesting projection on what might be.

For Rams fans and watchers, that didnt work out so well this season.

The post As status quo goes, Rams 2017 could look like 2016 appeared first on Cover32.
Steve Martin deleted his tribute to Carrie Fisher, following her death on Tuesday, after people criticized it for being sexist.

When I was a young man, Carrie Fisher was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, Martin wrote on Twitter before removing the post. She turned out to be witty and bright as well.

Backlash to Martins tribute came in a New York Magazine post that noted Martin focused on Fishers physical appearance instead of her talent and work. Fisher, a lifelong feminist, repeatedly spoke out against being perceived as a sex symbol and the way she was regarded physically.

On Twitter, people were divided as to whether Martins words actually were sexist, with many appearing to be on the comedic actors side.

If this from Steve Martin triggers you, you are addicted to outrage and need help. Do you really think Carrie Fisher would be offended? pic.twitter.com/DJhUYVLYnd  Martin Ward (@Writermartyward) December 29, 2016

I think Carrie Fisher would have enjoyed laughing at the whiny dudes getting mad about @landsbaumshell's good take. https://t.co/oLox5trwjO  Madison M. K. (@4evrmalone) December 28, 2016

If you were upset by Steve Martins tweet about Carrie Fisher, congratulations! You are officially addicted to outrage. Now, seek help.  Peter Cook (@_Peter_Cook) December 28, 2016

There was nothing wrong with what @SteveMartinToGo said last night I'm sorry you had to delete your tribute because of idiots  Barry Jowers (@RealBarryJowers) December 29, 2016

You're not helping anyone by jumping down @SteveMartinToGo 'a throat. Let's grieve together, not against each other. pic.twitter.com/Xuj5egFAaf  Julia Gazdag (@juliagazdag) December 29, 2016
Its nice to imagine that, in an alternate universe, Joe Dantes cult 1989 comedy, The Burbs, became a multi-film franchise to rival Star Wars. Certainly, the suburban galaxy created by Dante and the movies writer, Dana Olsen, is as richly imagined as George Lucass Jedi-filled cosmos, consisting of foreboding houses, possible murder victims, and one very nosy neighbor played by Tom Hanks in his 80s comedic prime. (The film is available to stream on Amazon Prime and iTunes.)

Related: Gremlins 2: The New Batch Turns 25: A Deep, Slimy Dive Into Joe Dantes Cult Classic

Dante grew up obsessed with the same B-movie ephemera that directly inspired blockbuster franchises like Star Wars and Indiana Jones  no real surprise for a contemporary of Lucas and a frequent collaborator with Steven Spielberg. In fact, Dantes first major success as a director, the Roger Corman-backed 1978 creature feature, Piranha, owed something to both Spielberg and Lucas. Not only is it a hilarious homage to Jaws, but Dante tapped Star Wars creature designer, Phil Tippett (who helped create the famous Chewie vs. R2 chess match aboard the Millennium Falcon) to design the titular monster fish.

When it came time to make The Burbs, Dante brought another Star Wars talisman into the fold: Princess Leia herself, Carrie Fisher, as Carol, the more sensible wife of suburbanite Ray Peterson (Hanks). As the director recalled to L.A. Weekly in a just-published interview, he and Fisher initially worked together on a segment Dante directed for the 1987 omnibus comedy, Amazon Women on the Moon. We became pretty closeand having gotten to know her I felt her personality was a great fit for The Burbs role.

Related: Stream This: Carrie Fishers Postcards From the Edge

Of course, playing a suburban wife and mother is a less revolutionary role than a three-movie stint as a galactic rebel. And the ever-candid Fisher was typically honest in her assessment of The Burbs in an online Q&A with Washington Post readers in 2008: It wasnt a really good movie, but I had a really good time with Tom Hanks. Whatever private qualms she may have had about the film or her part, though, the actress brought the fullum, force of her wry personality to bear as Carol, ensuring she wouldnt be mere window dressing in the movies Hitchcock-meets-The Twilight Zone narrative.

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Thus, while Ray and his neighbors, Mark (Bruce Dern) and Art (Rick Ducommun), slink about trying to deduce whether the neighborhoods newest residents, the Klopeks, are serial killers, Carol favors the direct approach. Leading a four-person welcoming committee armed with big smiles and baked goods, she confidently knocks on the door of the dilapidated house and keeps the conversation going through a supremely awkward getting to know you visit.

Her status as the only adult in this cul-de-sac is reinforced in another scene when Mark and Art beg Ray to join them in another juvenile escapade, only to have Carol send them away with their heads drooping. Sorry, boys, my husbands not feeling well  he has to stay in his room, she says, adding with exquisitely tart-tongued comic timing, He cant come out until he resembles the man that I married.

Related: Edward Scissorhands Secrets Revealed in 25th Anniversary Lookback

A modest success upon its initial release, The Burbs enjoys a more exalted status today as one of Dantes best studio movies and the forerunner of subsequent stylized suburban satires such as My Blue Heaven and Edward Scissorhands, both of which arrived the following year. But the movies darkly daffy vision of suburbia benefits greatly from the dose of reality that Fisher imbues in every scene shes part of. You might say shes the one who brings balance to The Burbs.

Directors Reel: Joe Dante Shares Stories About The Burbs, Gremlins, and More:
ASHLAND, Ohio (AP)  Attorneys for a man suspected of killing several women in Ohio are pursuing an insanity defense and asking a judge to have someone determine whether the man is competent to stand trial.

Lawyers for 40-year-old Shawn Grate said in a court filing this week that he is not guilty by reason of insanity. A competency hearing already was scheduled for Jan. 6 in Ashland County court.

Grate's case began in September when a woman called 911 and said she'd been held captive at an Ashland home, and responding authorities found the bodies of two other women at the abandoned property. Police arrested Grate, who also is accused of raping the woman who called police.

He is charged with 23 counts, including murder, in the potential death penalty case. Prosecutors and Grate's attorneys are blocked from publicly commenting because of a gag order.

Preliminary autopsy results showed both women, a 43-year-old and a 29-year-old, were strangled, the Mansfield News Journal reported.

Investigators say Grate also admitted killing at least two other women, though he hasn't been charged in all of the deaths.

Grate told investigators he couldn't remember the name of his first victim, a woman who was selling magazines door-to-door, but that he stabbed her and dumped her body, which was found near Marion in 2007. The woman hasn't been identified.

Authorities said Grate told them he killed another woman in June. Her body was found near Mansfield.

Police also were investigating whether Grate is connected to the 2015 death of a fifth woman, who was found in woods in Ashland County. A coroner initially ruled her death was a fatal drug overdose and found no signs of traumatic injuries, but Grate's arrest prompted police to take another look at the case.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  Swedish prosecutors say a Syrian man has been charged with war crimes for having taken part in the 2012 execution of seven government troops in Syria.

Investigator Kristina Lindehoff Carleson says the conflict then "was a non-international armed conflict between the Syrian government and a number of armed groups."

Lindehoff Carleson says the 46-year-old man had joined rebels in Syria and appeared in a May 2012 video where seven "defenseless" soldiers were executed. It was not immediately clear which rebel group he had joined.

She said Thursday the charge "should in no way been seen as an endorsement of the ongoing conflict in Syria."

The man sought asylum in Sweden in 2013 and has been held in pre-trial custody since March, according to the prosecution.
By John Davison

BEIRUT, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A nationwide ceasefire in Syria, brokered by Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides in the conflict, came into force at midnight on Friday, local time, (2200 GMT on Thursday) in the latest attempt to end nearly six years of bloodshed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, announced the ceasefire on Thursday after preparing the agreement with Turkey, a longtime backer of the opposition.

A number of rebel groups have signed the agreement, Russia's Defence Ministry said. Several rebel officials acknowledged the deal, and a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a loose alliance of insurgent groups, said it would abide by the truce.

One FSA commander was optimistic about the truce deal, the third attempt this year at a nationwide ceasefire.

"This time I have confidence in its seriousness. There is new international input," Colonel Fares al-Bayoush said, without elaborating.

It is the first ceasefire deal reached without the involvement of the United States or the United Nations.

The previous two, brokered by Cold War foes Washington and Moscow, took effect in February and September but both collapsed within weeks as warring sides accused each other of truce violations and fighting intensified.

Putin said the parties were also prepared to start peace talks intended to take place in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. Syrian state media said late on Thursday that these talks would take place "soon".

The Syrian government will be negotiating from a strong position after its army and their allies, including Shi'ite militias supported by Iran, along with Russian air power, routed rebels in their last major urban stronghold of Aleppo this month.

Moscow's air campaign since September last year has turned the civil war in his favour, and the last rebels left Aleppo for areas that are still under rebel control to the west of the city, including the province of Idlib.

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Before talks can take place, the ceasefire will have to hold.

In a sign that the latest truce could be as challenging to maintain as its predecessors, there was confusion over which rebel groups would be covered by the ceasefire.

The Syrian army said the agreement did not include the radical Islamist group Islamic State, fighters affiliated to al Qaeda's former branch the Nusra Front, or any factions linked to those jihadist groups.

But several rebel officials said the agreement did include the former Nusra Front - now known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham - which announced in July that it was severing ties with al Qaeda.

The powerful Islamist insurgent group Ahrar al-Sham meanwhile said it had not signed the ceasefire agreement because of "reservations", which it would make clear in due course.

Syria's civil war, which began when a peaceful uprising descended into violence in 2011, has resulted in more than 300,000 deaths and displaced over 11 million people, half its pre-war population.

(Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Damascus (AFP) - Syria's army said Thursday it would halt all military operations from midnight under a truce deal brokered by Russia and Turkey and supported by a leading Syrian opposition body.

The agreement was announced earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin who said the Syrian regime and "main forces of the armed opposition" had signed on.

"The general command of the armed forces announces a complete halt to all hostilities on Syrian territory from the zero hour of December 30th," Syria's army said in a statement carried on state television.

It said that the ceasefire excluded the Islamic State group and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fateh al-Sham Front.

The National Coalition, a leading Syrian political opposition group based in Turkey, confirmed its backing for the truce.

"The National Coalition expresses support for the agreement and urges all parties to abide by it," spokesman Ahmed Ramadan told AFP.

He said key rebel groups including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham and Army of Islam factions had signed the ceasefire deal, though there was no immediate confirmation from rebel representatives.

"The agreement includes a ceasefire in all areas held by the moderate opposition, or by the moderate opposition and elements from Fateh al-Sham, such as Idlib province," he told AFP.

Idlib, in northwest Syria, is controlled by an alliance of rebel groups led by Fateh al-Sham.

The group, in its previous incarnation as Al-Nusra, was designated a "terrorist" organisation by countries including the United States, as well as the United Nations.

The ceasefire agreement follows the recapture by Syria's government of the country's second city Aleppo from rebels, in the worst blow to opposition forces since the war began.

It will be the first nationwide halt in fighting since a week-long truce from September 12-19 that collapsed after several incidents of violence.

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A previous truce was implemented in February. Both of those deals were organised by Russia and the United States.

The latest agreement is the first nationwide ceasefire brokered with the involvement of Turkey, a backer of the Syrian opposition.

Russia is a key supporter of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and began a military intervention in support of his government in September 2015.

Despite backing opposing sides in the conflict, and a souring of relations after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane last year, Ankara and Moscow have worked increasingly closely on Syria.

They jointly brokered a ceasefire for Aleppo this month that allowed the last remaining rebels and civilians in the city's east to leave to opposition territory elsewhere.

More than 310,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with protests against Assad's government.

Successive bids to reach a peace deal to end the conflict have failed, but Moscow has said it is planning to convene new negotiations in Kazakhstan.

And the army statement said the ceasefire was intended to "create conditions to support the political track" in resolving the conflict.
Damascus (AFP) - A ceasefire soon to take effect across Syria is a "real opportunity" for a political solution to the nearly six-year war, the country's foreign minister said Thursday.

"There is a real opportunity for a political solution to the crisis to bring an end to the bloodshed," Walid Muallem told state television.

The ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey is due to begin at midnight (2200 GMT Thursday).
By John Davison BEIRUT (Reuters) - A nationwide ceasefire in Syria, brokered by Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides in the conflict, came into force at midnight local time on Friday (2200 GMT on Thursday) in the latest attempt to end nearly six years of bloodshed. Russian President Vladimir Putin, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, announced the ceasefire on Thursday after forging the agreement with Turkey, a longtime backer of the opposition. Monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said calm prevailed in areas across the country included in the truce shortly after midnight, and that warring sides mostly appeared to have ceased firing. Some gunfire was heard in the southern provinces of Deraa and Quneitra shortly after the ceasefire took effect, the Observatory said, and reported limited clashes east of Damascus. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the United States could join the peace process once President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20. He also wanted Egypt to join, together with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Jordan and the United Nations. A number of rebel groups have signed the agreement, Russia's Defence Ministry said. Several rebel officials acknowledged the deal, and a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a loose alliance of insurgent groups, said it would abide by the truce. One FSA commander was optimistic about the truce deal, the third serious attempt this year at a nationwide ceasefire. "This time I have confidence in its seriousness. There is new international input," Colonel Fares al-Bayoush said without elaborating. Syria's civil war, which began when a peaceful uprising descended into violence in 2011, has resulted in more than 300,000 deaths and displaced over 11 million people, half its pre-war population. The ceasefire, in the waning days of President Barack Obama's administration, was the first major international diplomatic initiative in the Middle East in decades not to involve the United States. PREVIOUS COLLAPSES The previous two Syria ceasefires, brokered by Cold War foes Washington and Moscow, took effect in February and September but both collapsed within weeks as warring sides accused each other of truce violations and fighting intensified. Putin said the parties were also prepared to start peace talks intended to take place in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. Syrian state media said late on Thursday that these talks would take place "soon". The Syrian government will be negotiating from a strong position after its army and their allies, including Shi'ite militias supported by Iran, along with Russian air power, routed rebels in their last major urban stronghold of Aleppo this month. Moscow's air campaign since September last year has turned the civil war in Assad's favour, and the last rebels left Aleppo for areas that are still under rebel control to the west of the city, including the province of Idlib. Before talks can take place, the ceasefire will have to hold. In a sign that the latest truce could be as challenging to maintain as its predecessors, there was confusion over which rebel groups would be covered by the ceasefire. The Syrian army said the agreement did not include the radical Islamist group Islamic State, fighters affiliated to al Qaeda's former branch the Nusra Front, or any factions linked to those jihadist groups. But several rebel officials said the agreement did include the former Nusra Front - now known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham - which announced in July that it was severing ties with al Qaeda. The powerful Islamist insurgent group Ahrar al-Sham meanwhile said it had not signed the ceasefire agreement because of "reservations", which it would make clear in due course. ASSAD IN STRONG POSITION The deal also follows a thaw in ties between Russia and Turkey. Talks on the latest truce picked up momentum after Russia, Iran and Turkey last week said they were ready to back a peace deal and adopted a declaration setting out principles for an agreement. Putin said opposition groups and the Syrian government had signed a number of documents, including the ceasefire, measures to monitor the truce, and a statement on readiness to start peace talks. While Ankara has been a big sponsor of the rebellion, Assad's removal has become a secondary concern to fighting the expansion of Kurdish influence in northern Syria. The chances of Assad's opponents forcing him from power now seem more remote than at any point in the war. The United States has been sidelined in recent negotiations and is not due to attend the next round of peace talks in Kazakhstan, a key Russian ally. Its exclusion reflects growing frustration from both Turkey and Russia over Washington's policy on Syria, officials have said. Washington said the news of a ceasefire was a positive. "We hope it will be implemented fully and respected by all parties," U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. James Dobbins, a former senior U.S. diplomat, said the lack of American involvement in the talks between Russia, Iran and Turkey did not preclude the United States being a major player in the region. In this case, it was frozen out because Obama leaves office in less than a month and because Turkey and Russia are at odds with the United States over its Syria policy and other issues, said Dobbins, a fellow at RAND, a research organization. Trump has said he would cooperate more closely with Russia to fight terrorism but it was unclear what that policy would look like given resistance from the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community for closer cooperation with Russia on Syria. (Reporting by John Davison; Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay in Washington; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Howard Goller)
(Adds details, comments, background.)

BEIRUT, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Syria's foreign minister said on Thursday there was a "real chance" to reach a political settlement of the Syrian conflict, after Damascus's ally Russia announced a ceasefire deal that was to take effect at midnight.

Walid al-Moualem also said Syria would attend planned peace talks in Kazakhstan "with an open mind".

"Everything is open for discussion, with the exception of national sovereignty, and the people's right to choose its leadership," he said in a live interview on state television.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a ceasefire between Syrian opposition groups and the government starting at midnight (2200 GMT on Thursday), and said the parties were also prepared to start peace talks.

No date has been announced for the talks in Astana, the Kazakh capital.

The Syrian army said fighting would halt nationwide, but that Islamic State, former al Qaeda militants and groups linked to them were excluded from the deal. Rebels said only Islamic State was excluded.

"It is the duty of the factions (rebel groups) who have signed it to distance themselves from, and declare that they are not linked to, the Nusra Front or Daesh (Islamic State)," Moualem said.

The close geographical proximity of rebel factions to former al Qaeda affiliate the Nusra Front has complicated previous ceasefire efforts.

(Reporting by John Davison and Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; Editing by Kevin Liffey, Larry King)
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A former Syrian opposition fighter has been charged with breaching international law over the execution in 2012 of seven soldiers loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, the Swedish prosecutor's office said on Thursday. The 46-year-old man, who was arrested in March, appears in a video showing the killings, the prosecutor's office said. The man, who was not named, denies any crime. "The soldiers were captured and defenseless when this happened," prosecutor Kristina Lindhoff Carleson said in a statement. "We claim that the accused's participation in the execution is against international human rights, supposed to protect incapacitated soldiers". The man, who used to live in Italy, applied for asylum in Sweden in 2013, where he has lived since. In 2015, another Syrian rebel fighter was sentenced to five years in prison for war crimes by a Swedish court for a "torture-like" assault in Syria that was filmed and posted on social media. (Reporting by Johan Sennero; Editing by Mark Potter)
By Lisa Barrington and Ellen Francis BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebel officials said on Thursday that a ceasefire deal agreed with the government included Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as the al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front, although the army said that was not the case. The Syrian army has announced a nationwide halt to military operations to begin at midnight on Thursday, excluding Islamic State as well as the former Nusra Front and all groups linked to them. But several rebel officials told Reuters the deal included the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group. A spokesman for the Jaish al-Nasr rebel faction present at the ceasefire talks told Reuters that only Islamic State was excluded. The deal is to be monitored by Russia and Turkey and includes establishing humanitarian corridors, he said. Zakaria Malahifji, head of the political office of rebel group Fastaqim, also said the truce only excludes areas under the control of Islamic State. The Jaish al-Nasr spokesman said the other side had wanted to exclude the ex-Nusra Front, and to exclude the besieged Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta from the agreement. But he said the rebel groups at the meeting refused. Fastaqim's Malahifji said: "Rebel groups said it is not about covering for (the ex-Nusra Front), but because we can't separate them out, because the territory is overlapping." Malahifji, who was not present at the talks, said rebels had agreed to three main points: one about the truce, one about how it would be monitored by Russia and Turkey and one about a political process to begin after one month of ceasefire. Several other rebel officials also said if the ceasefire holds for a month, political negotiations will begin. Mamoun al-Haj-Mousa, a member of the rebel Free Syrian Army's political council and spokesman for the Suqur al-Sham rebel group, told al-Arabiya al-Hadath television channel that rebels had asked that no group be excluded. "We saw recently how Aleppo was annihilated because of 200 fighters from Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. This is a fundamental condition for us that no group is excluded be it Fatah al-Sham or not," he said. The ceasefire deal was first announced by Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, after Moscow, Iran and Turkey said they were ready to broker a peace deal in the nearly six-year-old Syrian war. Russia's defence ministry said the insurgent groups which signed the agreement were: Failaq al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, Thuwwar al-Sham, Jaish al-Muhajidin, Jaish Idlib and al-Jabha al-Shamia. (This version of the story corrects final paragraph to show that rebel group on Russia's list is Thuwwar al-Sham not Suqor al-Sham) (Additional reporting by Mohamed el Sherif in Cairo and Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Lisbon (AFP) - The Syrian conflict "has become a cancer on a global scale", incoming UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said, while hoping Washington and Moscow overcome their differences to help end the crisis.

The war has caused "not only the suffering of the Syrian people" but also sparks "violent reactions which in some cases lead to terrorist acts", the former Portuguese premier told Portugal's SIC television channel in an interview broadcast Wednesday.

The conflict began in 2011 as an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad but quickly morphed into a civil war after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against dissent.

The war has killed more than 310,000 people and forced millions more to flee their homes.

It has since become a complex, multi-front conflict, drawing in global powers as well as militias and jihadists.

While Western powers and some regional states have backed the rebellion, Russia and Iran have thrown their full weight behind Assad's regime.

Guterres termed the conflict a "global threat" and said global powers must decide to end the conflict, something he judged could not be done without external support.
Taiwan's president on Thursday urged educators to reflect deeply on human rights and pass on those lessons to young people after a Nazi-themed parade held by Taiwanese students before Christmas sparked international furore.

The principal of Kuang Fu High School in northern Hsinchu city apologised and stepped down after photos and videos circulated online of students wearing mock Nazi uniforms while holding swastika flags and banners, some laughing and dancing.

A teacher also joined in the procession and was seen giving a Nazi salute as he stood inside a tank made of paper cartons, according to local media.

As the students marched, a compere announced: "Here comes Hitler, salute to him students, or the tank will crush you later or you will be taken to the gas chamber," according to a video posted on Apple Daily's website.

"This is not the students' fault, it is our fault as grownups," President Tsai Ing-wen told a meeting of the presidential human rights advisory committee.

She said Taiwan needed to improve education on human rights after failing to teach students "the real lessons" they needed to know.

"Everyone of us should reflect and should not allow a similar incident to happen again," a presidential statement quoted Tsai as saying.

"Our education will only be successful when... students can understand the pain other people have been through and respect other people's rights and be willing to stand up to defend justice when necessary," she said.

The incident sparked an angry reaction from Israel, with the country's Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei condemning the parade as "tasteless" and "outrageous".

"It is deplorable and shocking that seven decades only after the world had witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust, a high school in Taiwan is supporting such an outrageous action," it said in a Facebook post.

Germany's de facto embassy in Taiwan expressed shock and regret in a statement, saying the students failed to understand that the Nazi symbol stands for human contempt and oppression.

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Taiwan's education minister has also apologised over the incident and demanded the school immediately improve students' history education.

East Asian pop culture and commercial art has a long history of fascination with Hitler and the Nazis. Occasionally, Hitler turns up in Asian advertisement campaigns, and a pub called "Nazi Bar" briefly operated in Taipei in the 1990s.

In 2011, Taiwan's 7-Eleven came under fire for selling key rings and magnets sporting a Hitler lookalike, but the convenience store chain denied the images were meant to represent the German dictator.
An Arkansas teacher could be fired after he posted a racist Facebook post about first lady Michelle Obama. Trent Bennett, a high school instructor in rural Malvern, wrote on the social media network: "Michelle Obummer  Americas First Chimp."

His remarks were later taken down, but when Bennett was first challenged about his post, he replied: "Just good to see that nasty chimp and her spider monkey husband gone for good."

The Malvern School District confirmed it was investigating Bennett over his post. School officials said his comments were "inappropriate, insensitive, and used racially charged rhetoric."

The local NAACP chapter said Bennett should not be able to return to his job when school resumes after the holiday break. Others have called on parents and students to boycott Malvern High Schools sporting events until Bennett is fired.

There is no place in an educational system for someone in a public position of authority that is willing to publicly make the comments that you are alleged to have made, Arkansas State Conference NAACP President Rizelle Aaron said in a letter to the teacher.

Tabitha Hughes, who graduated from the high school in 1991, said she had never seen such ugly remarks from the school's faculty.

"We've never had this problem before," Hughes told local media. "I guess that's why it's disturbing to us." She added: "We want something done about it."

Hughes said Bennett was the teacher to her niece and nephew. A lot of kids read that. Its very heartbreaking that they are having to go into that school and feel a certain type of way now, she said.

Obama has been the target of racist social media users before. Pamela Taylor, head of the Clay County Development Corporation in West Virginia, was fired after she called the first lady in a November post an ape in heels. Beverly Whaling, the mayor of Clay, resigned after agreeing with Taylor's comments on social media. Michelle Herren, an anesthesiologist in Denver, also left her job after she claimed Obama had a monkey face and poor ebonic English.

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The crashed Russian Tu-154 plane had equipment functioning "abnormally," authorities said at a press conference Thursday, but stressed that they have not ruled out terrorism. Sergey Bainetov, the Russian Air Force's deputy head of flight safety, also said that there was no sign of explosion on board the jet, which went down into the Black Sea on Sunday.

The plane almost completely fell apart after it hit the water surface and the seabed, Transport Minister Maksim Sokolov said. The main search operation has ended and recovery efforts for the bodies of the victims are underway. After the complete examination of the crash site, over 2,000 fragments of the plane and 19 bodies and 230 body parts were found.

"Final conclusions on this tragedy will be made after all the data will be collected and examinated," Sokolov said at the press conference, adding that a preliminary report into the crash can be expected in January.

Authorities said that reports of three black boxes of the plane being found are untrue. So far, only two flight recorders have been found and retrieved from the sea floor. Decoding of the second "black box" started Wednesday, and the process may take 30 days.

Authorities said Thursday that some technical malfunction in the plane likely played a role in the crash, but conclusions cannot be made without official results of the investigation, according to Sputnik News.

"It appears that there was a technical malfunction. What is the cause of it is the issue that experts should examine, a special technical commission has been created for this purpose," Sokolov said.

Sokolov also said that the primary objective is to identify victims and that the DNA tests are already underway. However, the process of victim identification may take up to four weeks.

The plane disappeared from radar screens two minutes after taking off Sunday from Sochi in southern Russia. Authorities said that the crash site was located with the help of satellite data.

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On Wednesday, local media reports said that the last words of the pilot of the ill-fated jet hint at a wing flap fault as the possible cause of the crash.

The Life.ru news portal said it had obtained a readout of one of the pilot's last words, indicating a problem with the wing flaps. "Commander, we are going down," the pilot was reported to have said. The pilot was also heard yelling: "The flaps, damn it!"

On Thursday, Russian authorities urged media to abstain from publishing an information from unconfirmed sources until the investigation is completely over.

After retrieving fragments of the military planes wreckage, authorities determined that an explosion or onboard fire was not responsible for the crash.

"The four main versions are an engine being hit by a foreign object, substandard fuel that caused the loss of thrust on and eventually stopped the engines, the pilots mistake and the planes technical failure," Russias Federal Security Service said in a statement earlier.

Bainetov said Thursday that the crew of the crashed Tu-154 was flight-ready and their skill level was appropriate.

"We have assessed that the crew was ready for the flight and had an appropriate skill level to carry out the task. Commander Maj. Roman Volkov had a 4,000-hour flight time, including a 1,500-hour flight time on this type of aircraft," he said.

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STATESVILLE, N.C. (AP)  A text message to a friend guided rescuers to a teenager held captive in the North Carolina home where her mother was slain.

Authorities say Gary Love held the 14-year-old girl captive for days and killed her mother in a grisly crime revealed earlier this week when the girl was rescued Monday. Love is from Ohio but has been in North Carolina several months.

The sheriff announced new charges against him Wednesday, including felony sex offenses with a child, kidnapping and assault on a female. He had already been charged with murder in the mother's death.

The friend who notified authorities, 13-year-old Savannah Evans, told WSOC-TV that she woke up Monday to a text message that asked her to call 911 for help.
STATESVILLE, N.C. (AP)  A text message to a friend guided rescuers to a teen girl held captive in the North Carolina home where her mother was also slain.

Authorities say Gary Love of Wadsworth, Ohio, held the 14-year-old captive for days and killed her mother in a grisly crime revealed after the girl was rescued Monday.

The Iredell County Sheriff's Office said in a news release Wednesday that authorities were adding counts against him including felony sex offenses with a child, kidnapping and assault on a female. He had already been charged with murder in the mother's death.

The friend who notified authorities, 13-year-old Savannah Evans, tells WSOC-TV that she woke up Monday to see the unsettling text message from her friend. She said that she and her grandmother called deputies to ask for help.

One of the text messages, which Evans showed to WSOC, stated: "call 911 me and my mom need help FAST!!"

The Associated Press is not identifying the girl or her mother because the suspect is accused of sex crimes.

Savannah Evans' mother, Stephanie Evans, told the station that she's shocked by what happened.

"Can't believe this. It is something out of the movies," she said.

After the girl was rescued, the teen sent her friend a message saying she was a "lifesaver."

"That really broke my heart," Stephanie Evans said.

The sheriff's office said in a news release that deputies went to the victims' home about 7:30 a.m. Monday after receiving the call from the friend.

Love told investigators that the mother and daughter were at a funeral but fled out the back door when pressed for more details, according to the sheriff's office. He was arrested soon afterward.

Deputies found the woman's body. The daughter told deputies she had been tied up and held at the home since Christmas Eve, which was the last time she saw her mother. She was treated at a local hospital and is staying with relatives.

Story continues

Love, 47, has been in North Carolina for about 90 days, according to the sheriff. Authorities say he knew the slain woman from a time when both lived in New York years ago.

The Iredell County Sheriff's Office said that Love faces an outstanding domestic violence arrest warrant from Ohio where that victim also had a protective order against him. Love is being held in North Carolina without bond. It wasn't clear if he had a lawyer.

___

This story has been corrected to show the spelling of the suspect's home town is Wadsworth.
By Robyn Mak HONG KONG (Reuters Breakingviews) - Tencent's M&A could hit new levels in 2017. The $233 billion Chinese tech giant will probably follow its purchase of mobile-games maker Supercell with similar-sized deals abroad. A bolder move would be buying U.S. heavyweight Activision Blizzard. As well as operating WeChat, the ubiquitous chat app, Tencent is dominant in gaming at home, accounting for half of industry revenue. But it is a weakling overseas, with many games lacking global appeal: data tracker Newzoo estimates just 15 percent of gaming revenue came from outside of Asia in 2015. If Tencent is truly ambitious about long-term growth, it will need to tap gamers abroad. So far, Tencent has taken stakes in small outfits from South Korea's CJ Games to Glu Mobile in San Francisco. In June it stepped things up by agreeing to buy Supercell, the Finnish group behind "Clash of Clans", in an $8.6 billion deal. Similar buys will surely follow. Japanese-listed Nexon, with a $6 billion market value, smaller counterpart GungHo, or South Korea's NC Soft could be prime targets: all three have games that are already popular in the region, and publish these in China through Tencent. The real prize would be the $27 billion Activision Blizzard. The U.S. gaming group's stable runs from "Call of Duty", the best-selling military videogame, to mobile hit "Candy Crush". Its newest release, "Overwatch", is quickly becoming a serious contender to Tencent's "League of Legends". Tencent already owns 5 percent of Activision. The remainder, with a 30 percent takeover premium to November's volume-weighted average stock price, would cost just under $39 billion, including assumed debt. If Tencent borrowed the whole amount, that would require debt of about 2.7 times combined EBITDA, which should hit $14.4 billion in 2017, according to analyst forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters. Taking on that much debt would be a gutsy move. Alternatively, Tencent could sell fresh equity in Hong Kong to raise funds. Or Tencent could take a more cautious approach, as it did for Supercell: putting together a consortium of buyers and keeping the deal off its own balance sheet. Pulling this off would not be easy. But it would take Tencent's global reach up a level. On Twitter https://twitter.com/mak_robyn CONTEXT NEWS - Revenues in China's online gaming market will reach 221 billion yuan ($32 billion) in 2017, representing an increase of 20.8 percent, according to data from iResearch. - Hong Kong-listed Tencent is China's largest gaming company by revenue. In June, it led a consortium to buy 84.3 percent of Finnish mobile games-maker Supercell in a deal worth $8.6 billion. The deal values Supercell's equity at $10.2 billion. - For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on [MAK/] - SIGN UP FOR BREAKINGVIEWS EMAIL ALERTS: http://bit.ly/BVsubscribe (Editing by Quentin Webb and Nicolle Liu)
Augmented reality has been around for years, but it was the runaway success of Pokemon Go this year that popularized it.

What a year for tech.

For every hack, exploding smartphone or imploding startup, there were just as many memorable highlights. For the first time ever, the presidential debates were livestreamed to Twitter (TWTR) and Facebook (FB). Augmented reality went mainstream in a big way, thanks to the runaway success of a smartphone app called Pokemon Go. And Amazon (AMZN) made good on CEO Jeff Bezos pledge to deliver orders by drone.

Yahoo Finance takes a look back at some of 2016s best moments in tech.

The tech industry became more politically engaged

Donald Trump and Peter Thiel. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Silicon Valley became more politically active than ever this year.

The presidential election divided the community into two camps: billionaire PayPal co-founder and avid Trump supporter Peter Thiel, and just about everyone else. While Thiel distinguished himself from the rest of the technorati by donating to President-elect Donald Trumps campaign  and eventually securing a role on Trumps transition team  others vociferously supported Hillary Clinton through social media, hosting fundraisers, and encouraging involvement in their community.

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, for example, made their first contributions by giving $35 million in total to Democratic groups, including Priorities USA Action, the largest super PAC supporting Clinton. In August, the venture capital firm Charles River Ventures posted a blog entitled simply, F*** Trump, which declared Trumps stance on immigration to be diametrically opposed to the core values of entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, employees at more than 300 companies, including Square (SQ), Twilio (TWLO) and venture capital firm Homebrew, all gave employees part or all of Election Day off to cast their votes.

And while the presidential election results ultimately surprised many Americans, one net positive may be pledges by the technorati to be more politically active moving forward.

The debates got the full livestream treatment

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during the presidential debate at Hofstra University in New York. AP Photo/David Goldman, File

It didnt matter whether you were a twentysomething cord-cutter or cash-rich executive with money to burn on a curved 4K TV. Thanks to social media like Facebook and Twitter, which livestreamed the presidential debates for the first time ever, Americans had an unprecedented number of options to catch the verbal mudslinging between Trump and Clinton. Indeed, at least 55 million people watched live videos of the first presidential debate on Facebook, while an average of 3.2 million people caught the second debate on Twitter, for example.

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Pokemon Go popularized augmented reality

A Pokemon Go player attempts to catch a Charmander character in New Delhi, India. AP Photo/Thomas Cytrynowicz

Augmented reality has existed in some form or another for years. Googles much-hyped Google Glass, for example, promised to rock our world with software that could supplement our day-to-day lives by superimposing useful information like restaurant information or map directions atop real-world surroundings.

But it wasnt until San Francisco developer Niantic released the wildly popular Pokemon Go, that augmented reality became mainstream. The free-to-play smartphone app asks players to go to locations in the real world where they can see and interact with Pokemon and Pokeballs. The app rapidly became a global phenomenon, skyrocketing to No. 1 in the Apple iTunes free app category. Sure, the Pokemon Go craze has cooled since its launch, but theres no denying the apps importance in bringing augmented reality to the masses.

Hyperloop got a little more real

Elon Musk AP Photo/Jack Plunkett

While self-driving cars from Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Uber snagged more headlines this year, Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also deserves kudos for his ambitious Hyperloop One project. The super high-speed transportation system aims to quietly shuttle passengers and cargo at speeds rivaling airplanes  over 600 mph.

Musk first alluded to the idea in 2012 during a tech talk in Los Angeles. However, it wasnt until the following year when a preliminary design document hit, proposing a 35-minute route from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Hyperloop One, which has raised over $160 million to date from backers such as Khosla Ventures, Sherpa Capital and GE Ventures, was incorporated in 2014 with the goal of realizing Musks dream. The startup performed its first public test run Nevada this May  an early proof of concept that saw a sled accelerate to 116 mph in 1.1 seconds. While that means half-hour trips from San Francisco to Los Angeles are still a long way off, the test run helped usher Hyperloop One out of the realm of pure sci-fi fantasy into that of possibility.

Delivery by drone got serious

Amazon

2016 was the year when several businesses actually delivered (pun intended) on promises of packages dispatched by drone. Convenience store chain 7-11 partnered with drone maker Flirtey to transport over 75 orders to customers in Reno, Nev., and Google X delivered Chipotle burritos to Virginia Tech students this September, to name a couple of examples.

As for Amazon? The Seattle-based tech giant made good on CEO Jeff Bezos pledge last year to make Amazon delivery drones a reality. This December, Amazon announced a small pilot program in the UK where two shoppers  yes, two  can now order goods by drone. The first delivery: an Amazon Fire TV and a bag of popcorn, transported in just 13 minutes.

Snapchat got into hardware

Snapchat/YouTube

The successful launch of Snapchats Spectacles managed what other tech product launches this year failed to do: incite intrigue and excitement. Chalk that up in part to a brilliant marketing campaign that involved hip advertisements with models and yellow vending machines serving as temporary storefronts for the glasses, a pair of $130 eyewear which can record short video snippets that automatically save to the Snapchat app.

The launch of Spectacles proved a ballsy move from CEO Evan Spiegel, but probably not a surprise. The Venice, Calif.-based startup, which now attracts over 60 million daily active users in the US, plans on going public as early as March 2017 with a valuation of between $20 billion and $25 billion.

Amazons Echo Dot brings A.I. to the masses

The Amazon Echo dot. Source: Associated Press

Amazons voice-activated robot assistant Alexa certainly wasnt the first of its kind, but it paved the way for other less advanced competitors, like Google Home. Earlier this year, the tech giant released Amazons Echo Dot, a puck-shaped speaker powered by Alexa that puts virtual assistants within easy reach of most consumers at just $50.

For something so compact, Alexa does a lot, like answer questions, read the news, play music and set timers, alarms and alerts. But it was Alexas smart home integration that really made the so-called Internet of Things a reality, connecting and controlling disparate devices with simple voice commands. Want the lights dimmed? Have Alexa do it. How about cooling down the room a few degrees? Ditto. Now thats magical.

__

JP Mangalindan is a senior correspondent for Yahoo Finance covering the intersection of tech and business. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

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This year was far from the perfect environment for many startups looking to grow their business. But despite uncertainty here in the US and overseas, a slew of entrepreneurs took the plunge and started their own businesses. Success came to founders and investors who focused on high-growth areas. Those include the ride-sharing app Juno, which competes with big players like Uber and Lyft, as well as several companies focused on cybersecurity and virtual reality, among others.

So what will the number one startup trend be in 2017? Howard Love, a life-long entrepreneur with more than 35 years of business experience and author of The Startup J Curve, told Yahoo Finances Seana Smith in the video above that one of the most exciting opportunities is artificial intelligence.

What I see in existing startup investments that I have and other startup opportunities that Im looking at, is that the artificial intelligence market is exploding beyond what anyone is going to expect, said Love. Artificial intelligence is going to pervade almost every aspect of our lives  I think it will be the most interesting area for the next several years.

Heres why theres so much hype surrounding artificial intelligence. Many economists anticipate it will improve productivity and expand the American economy. And thats why so many big corporations invested in artificial intelligence in 2016, either by building their own divisions or acquiring startups. Among those include Microsoft (MSFT) buying AI scheduling tool Genee, Intel (INTC) acquiring deep-learning technology startup Nervana Systems and Uber purchasing startup Geometric Intelligence.

And that trend will likely continue, with many more startups looking to follow in the footsteps of Genee, Nervana Systems and Geometric Intelligence. IDC estimates that revenue from artificial intelligencebased systems will grow from $8 billion this year to more than $47 billion in 2020.
by Steven Shapiro

As the sun sets on 2016, Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric takes a look back at some of the fascinating, funny and entertaining people who shaped the conversation, in politics to pop culture and everything in between.

As part of her signature series, Couric capped the year with a trip to Moscow for a face-to-face interview with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who is living in exile after leaking highly classified government documents to journalists and exposing the NSAs surveillance program.

Other notable interviews included Vice President Joe Biden, who spoke about his decision not to run for president, Attorney General Loretta Lynch on her controversial meeting with Bill Clinton, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who called Colin Kaepernicks decision not to stand during the national anthem dumb, but said she would never prosecute someone for such an act.

Couric also hit the Great White Way and profiled Lin Manuel-Miranda, the creator of the smash hit Hamilton, along with former co-star Daveed Diggs, who spoke about the challenges of an African-American portraying Thomas Jefferson. We can love the Declaration of Independence, and Jefferson wrote that. We also have to hate that he was a slave owner, he said.

Jay Leno, James Corden and Samantha Bee provided some much-needed comic relief. Bee credited 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz with providing the bulk of her inspiration during the campaign. Couric even hit Bed Bath and Beyond for a memorable holiday shopping spree with Kate McKinnon and Vanessa Bayer of Saturday Night Live.

Legendary musicians Dolly Parton, Tony Bennett and Celine Dion all walked down memory lane with Couric. Dion recalled the untold story of her biggest hit, My Heart Will Go On, and the role caffeine played in the songs recording.

Some of the big screens biggest stars also took time out to speak with Couric this year. Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks talked about the making of the movie Sully, and the cast of Hidden Figures, Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae, discussed diversity in film. Couric also spoke with Hollywood icon Robert Redford, who got personal about his friendship with the late Paul Newman.

Stay tuned for more episodes of The Katie Couric Interview throughout 2017.

Happy New Year!
Photo credit: Chip Somodevillaundefined

From Esquire

Remember when Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, couldn't summon the guts to put a gun safety bill up for a vote, even though the bill was unlikely to pass anyway, and then the Democratic members of the House staged a sit-in right there in the chamber, and somebody brought in doughnuts, and everybody had a great time taking selfies and helping Paul Ryan look like an abject poltroon? Remember that? We should do that again some time.

(Geez, it was only last June? It seems like it took place shortly after the death of Uncle Joe Cannon.)

Yeah, well, not if Speaker Paul Ryan has anything to say about it, and all he apparently has to say about it can be pronounced, "Bwawwwk, bwawwwk, bwawwwwwwwk!" Tiger Beat On The Potomac brings us the skinny.

As part of a House rules package members will vote to approve in early January, House GOP leaders want to empower the sergeant-at-arms to fine lawmakers up to $2,500 for shooting video or taking photos on the chamber floor.

Thin-skinned pettiness is general these days, all over Washington. Of course, several flies were placed strategically in this ointment back in 1789.

"The Constitution gives the House the authority to discipline members; I have never heard of anything where an officer of the House was given that authority," said Mike Stern, a former lawyer for the nonpartisan House counsel's office and the Senate Homeland Security Committee's GOP staff. Stern, who called the proposed rule a "plausible Constitutional issue to raise," said Democrats could take the matter to court. "Their strongest argument would be: The House doesn't have the authority to give these officers the power to punish us; only the power of the House can do that, and [Republicans] have short-circuited our rights by the way they've done it.'"

It's just pure whining, as even TBOTP noticed, and which, of course, only makes the whiners look even more ridiculous.

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Republicans were incensed by the entire spectacle. For months GOP leaders met privately to craft a plan to either punish lawmakers who led the charge or write new rules to deter a similar future hijacking of legislative business. That led to Ryan's current proposal. As Democrats blasted the new rule Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and lawyers representing the Democratic minority began examining its legality. "We are reviewing this language as it appears to raise constitutional concerns," Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill told POLITICO in an email Tuesday. Some Democrats are itching for a fight over the rule. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), one of the leaders of last summer's protest, tweeted at Republicans to "bring it on" and dared them to "fine me & @HouseDemocrats all the way into bankruptcy for #gunviolence sit-in, but we will always speak for victims." "If they cut the camera feed again, I'm going to turn on my phone again," Swalwell vowed during a brief interview Tuesday.

Poor Speaker Ryan. All he wants to do is shred the safety net and cut taxes for the people who buy him his $300 bottles of wine. Is that too much to ask? Instead, the president-elect keeps using him for a dunk-tank bozo. Meanwhile, he's got to prevent the Freedom Caucus crazies from re-enacting the wedding dinner scene from Freaks on the House floor, and also keep all his various prevarications in the air at once.

[contentlinks align="center" textonly="false" numbered="false" headline="Related%20Story" customtitles="Measuring%20What%20Scott%20Walker's%20Done%20to%20Wisconsin" customimages="" content="article.51865"]

For example, there has been some interesting news these days about the Affordable Care Act, which Ryan-and, ostensibly, the next president-would like to repeal now and replace at some indeterminate time in the future, probably at half-past your grandmother's aorta. For example, as Jonathan Cohn points out in HuffPost, the repeal has to happen before people realize what it actually means in their lives, and before some recent good news has a chance to get rooted in the debate.

The Obama administration announced that the number of people signing up for insurance through HealthCare.gov, the federal website that 39 states use to administer Obamacare plans, is even higher than last year. State-run sites such as Covered California are reporting similar surges. An independent think tank, The Commonwealth Fund, published a study showing that fewer people are skipping medical care because of cost  most likely because, thanks to the health care law, so many more people have health insurance. Standard and Poor's Global Ratings reported that insurers selling Obamacare plans are seeing better financial results this year, suggesting that premiums are finally coming into line with the actual medical expenses of their customers  and that this year's big rate hikes may be a "one-time pricing correction."

In other words, the ACA remains a creaky, jerry-rigged contraption, but it's still getting people where they need to be, and where they want to go, even if they've been convinced that they're moving backwards. That's why repeal has to be done now and replace has to be done later, if at all. That's why it has to be done with minimal transparency. And no selfies.

Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page.

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Perhaps nobody is feeling the stunning losses of both Carrie Fisher, and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, more than Todd Fisher, their brother and son, respectively.

Todd took to Twitter on Thursday and posted a heartbreaking drawing of Carrie and Debbie's iconic big-screen characters -- Star Wars' Princess Leia and Singin' in the Rain's Kathy Selden -- embracing one another.

"This is a beautiful love story to witness in my 58 years," Todd tweeted. "I miss them both so much. Love is everlasting."

WATCH: Todd Fisher Says Mom Debbie Reynolds Missed Daughter Carrie Fisher and 'Wanted to Be With Her'

This is a beautiful love story to witness in my 58 years. I miss them both so much. Love is everlasting pic.twitter.com/AeIVGaGl9k  Todd Fisher (@tafish) December 29, 2016

Debbie died on Wednesday, just one day after Carrie's death on Tuesday at the age of 60. An ambulance responded to a medical call from Debbie's Beverly Hills home at 1:02 p.m. and transported the Hollywood legend to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She died shortly thereafter at the age of 84.

"She missed her daughter and wanted to very much be with her," Todd told ET about his mother's state of mind during her final hours. "She had been very strong the last several days. [There was] enormous stress on her, obviously. And this morning she said those words to me and 15 minutes later she had a stroke and virtually left."

The mother-daughter duo was admirably open about their complicated and close relationship throughout the years.

"Carrie and I have disagreements and stalemates, but we still walk away loving each other," Debbie told The New York Times in 2010.

Last month, Carrie called her mother "an immensely powerful woman" during an interview with NPR.

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"She's an extraordinary woman. Extraordinary," Carrie gushed. "There's very few women from her generation who worked like that, who just kept a career going all her life, and raised children, and had horrible relationships, and lost all her money, and got it back again. I mean, she's had an amazing life, and she's someone to admire."

NEWS: Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher's Powerful Bond -- Looking Back at Their Sweetest Mother-Daughter Moments

Carrie and Debbie are also survived by actress Billie Lourd, their daughter and granddaughter, respectively. Billie's Scream Queens co-star have shown their support for the 24-year-old star, including Ariana Grande, Lea Michele and Taylor Lautner.

Watch below:

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As the world mourned the loss of Carrie Fisher, the news that her mother, the passing of famed actress Debbie Reynolds a day later has come as nothing short of a shock.

Read: Debbie Reynolds Dies at 84, One Day After Daughter Carrie Fisher's Death: 'I Want to Be With Carrie'

She was very peaceful and quiet," Reynolds son, Todd Fisher, told ABC News. "It happened very gently."

The legendary 84-year-old actress was rushed to Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles late Wednesday afternoon after suffering a reported stroke.

The actress was with her son, Todd Fisher, discussing funeral plans for her daughter. He said her final words were: I want to be with Carrie.

Then she was gone.

I don't think she really meant it quite like that," her 58-year-old son told ABC News. "But... she went to go see her again."

He added: "She loved taking care of my sister more than anything. So, she gets to do that and that's what she wanted to do.

Reynolds death leaves many to wonder if the iconic Singin in the Rain star had died of a broken heart since mother and daughter were incredibly close.

They lived next door to each other and their relationship is depicted in the forthcoming HBO documentary, Bright Lights, which is slated to air next year on the network.

HBO Documentary Films president Sheila Nevins told Variety following Reynolds passing that the movie is a love story. She added: Carrie wanted to make Bright Lights for Debbie and Debbie wanted to make it for Carrie.

The one-two punch has devastated the Star Wars actress daughter Billie Lourd, who lost her mother and grandmother in such a short time.

Read: The Year of Loss: Carrie Fisher's Death Is Latest in a Long Line of Fallen Celebs

Fishers Star Wars co-star Mark Hamill summed up both of the stars deaths in a tweet that was captioned: #CruelCruelYear and features a man on the top of a cliff kicking the number 6 off of it as he stands next to a sign that reads: 2017.

Story continues

Watch: Friends and Family Pay Tribute to Carrie Fisher After Her Death

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Following Debbie Reynolds' death on Wednesday, her son, Todd Fisher, spoke to ET about his mother's state of mind during her final hours.

Todd told ET that his mother's last words to him were about how much she missed Carrie, who died one day earlier.

Getty Images

"She missed her daughter and wanted to very much be with her," Todd says. "She had been very strong the last several days. [There was] enormous stress on her, obviously. And this morning she said those words to me and 15 minutes later she had a stroke and virtually left."

Carrie died Tuesday morning after going into cardiac arrest aboard a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles last week. She was 60.

Reynolds took to Facebook later that day to mourn her "beloved and amazing" daughter.

READ: Debbie Reynolds Dies at 84

"Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter," she wrote. "I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop."

On Wednesday, an ambulance responded to a medical call from Reynolds' Beverly Hills home at 1:02 p.m. and transported the Hollywood icon to Cedars-Sinai Hospital. She died shortly thereafter at the age of 84.

Reynolds is perhaps best known for her roles in films such as Singin' in the Rain and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, but she was also revered for her philanthropy. In February, she was feted with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 88th Academy Awards, thanks to her founding work with the Thalians, an organization designed to increase awareness about mental health.

PICS: Stars We've Lost in Recent Years

Watch the video below for more on Reynolds' death and legacy.

Reporting by Tracie De La Rosa

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Toni Erdmann is a whacked out, heartwarming-yet-moderately perverse combination of My Father the Hero and Y Tu Mama Tambien, a father-daughter tragi-comedy thats also a comment on the generation gap and the broken promises of globalization. It manages to be both singularly German yet universal, and even across a barrier of language, work culture, and scat sexuality, it still has that unmistakable ring of familiarity. Written and directed by Maren Ade, it combines the political and the personal, the meditative and the pointed, in a film thats as funny as it is sad and as outrageous as it is relevant; its the most unique film of the year.

Peter Simonischek plays Winfried, a big-hearted old oddball who works with kids and loves to play the ham  think the non-obnoxious Patch Adams of the German school system. Winfried has a somewhat strained but loving relationship with his daughter, Ines (played by Sandra Huller), a 30-something career woman whos killing herself trying to move up in a boys club development firm. They have a child-father relationship familiar to me and probably a lot of us, where you love your parents to death even if being in the same room with them for too long will eventually drive you insane. Winfried, meanwhile, who has the soulful, mischievous eyes and expressive eyebrows of a German shepherd, seems to know where all this daughters buttons are and cant help pushing them.

She makes excuses to avoid him, and he retaliates by showing up unannounced in Bucharest, where her firm is working with the government on a development project. She always seems to be working, so instead of hanging in his hotel room or seeing the sights, he takes to crashing her work functions wearing a pair of fake teeth, introducing himself to her colleagues as Toni Erdmann, while she shoots him daggers with her eyes and tries to maintain outward composure. Shes embarrassed at first, naturally, and so shes cool and downplaying towards this buck-toothed, Tommy Wiseau-esque stranger. But when she realizes that isnt working, she starts leaning into it, trying to draw him out and poke holes in his character, sort of like when comedians realize that the same hecklers who get brave when you shush them tend to clam up when put them on the spot. Only in Ines and Tonis case, this leads to what amounts to a game of improv chicken  whos going to blink first? Their dynamic creates a humor I like to think of as especially German, equal parts lurid, unapologetically dorky, and meticulously crafted.



Toni Erdmann would be a fun watch even if it was just this grown up, role-reversed spiritual sequel to Gerard Depardieu and Katherine Heigls My Father The Hero (which I like to imagine was big in Germany, a la David Hasselhoff). And the escalating improv game, where father and daughter get to see previously hidden sides of each other (and themselves) via increasingly perverse rounds of comedic cat and mouse, would certainly be entertaining enough on its own. But the beauty of Erdmann is that Toni crashing Iness coke-fueled nightclub parties with her gropey colleagues isnt just there to create a provocative sex romp. (Ines also plays a hilarious, and again, very German, sex game with her sort-of boyfriend, involving withheld intercourse and semen-covered French confectionary.)

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Through Iness job, Toni Erdmann is also a commentary on the broken promises of globalization. She kills herself working on these big presentations pitching newer, more expensive development projects, with shiny graphs and fudged statistics, even as the clues that these projects are only delivering fugazi prosperity pile up around her  lavish malls with no customers, an oil worker covered in black grease who gets fired after Toni makes a joke about him (much to Winfrieds horror), and Iness boss, who says of Germany, I like countries with a middle class. It relaxes me.

Meanwhile, Ines inhabits this world of cokey nightclub outings and lavish me days at luxury hotels, where she treats the local workers like servants. Her social circles are hierarchical this way, with her expat globalist playboys on one level and the local collaborators on a lower rung. Her father is rightfully somewhat horrified to discover all of this, but Toni Erdmann isnt some simplistic 90s comedy where the free spirit teaches the workaholic to loosen up (by, say, throwing her cell phone into a body of water  My whole life was in there!). Because the other element of Toni Erdmann is generational.

Ines has become materialistic, but its not necessarily some personal flaw. Shes a ruthless overachiever, but thats at least partly because, for her generation, there dont seem to be many other options. You either work like hell to keep your spot in the shrinking middle class or get left behind. So when Winfried tells Ines to loosen up, hes not just dispensing helpful fatherly advice. Partly its his generation, the Boomer generation, looking down from their place of comfortable prosperity and guaranteed vacation days where you can be a clown at the local school and still afford a house and spur-of-the-moment trips to Romania obnoxiously wondering Gee, why are these Millennials so uptight?

Its a new world with more complicated conflicts, which makes a lot of Boomer platitudes frustrating and unhelpful. My friend Matt Louv has a comedy bit about this, a Star Wars parable picturing the Boomers as still drunk on memories of their victory at Endor trying to give advice to a new generation of rebels battling a much more powerful Empire: Yeah, but did you do the thing with the logs?



The film comes to a crescendo with an absurd send-up of corporate culture, specifically the corporate culture that has resulted from the collision of touchy-feely new age hippie values and prosperity doctrine. I refuse to spoil this for you at all here (you can read it in other reviews if you want), but suffice it to say, its wonderful.

There follows an absurd sequence involving Ines chasing Winfried, wearing an 8-foot tall, traditional central Asian fur costume, through a city park. The image is absolutely unforgettable, iconic in the same way as the final slow-motion tracking shot in Short Term 12, or the second-to-last scene of the Sopranos finale, with Paulie sunning himself while the cat-who-might-be-Christopher saunters by. Unfortunately, as in the case of The Sopranos, Toni Erdmann doesnt end there (you could write a book on perfect shots movies shouldve ended on  the second to last scene in No Country For Old Men also comes to mind). It goes on a bit. Being a little too long doesnt spoil the film by any means, but there wouldve been a nice symmetry to the years most singular film going out on its most unforgettable shot.

It should be noted here, just so I dont look like the Ugly American, that My Father The Hero was actually a remake of a successful French movie of the same name. Though its the American version Ade cites as an influence in this interview. (I had no idea there was a deliberate connection until I started writing this review, I thought it was just a funny parallel.)
One of the great things about the annual Consumer Electronics Show is that it helps set expectations for the technology you'll see in the coming year. At CES 2017, which kicks off January 5 in Las Vegas, we're not expecting blockbuster TV announcements, but we do think we'll see a number of developments that will keep the year interesting.



Here are details on the top TV trends we expect.

1. High Dynamic Range (HDR) Is Everywhere

Ultra-high definition TVs moved into the mainstream in 2016. All but the least expensive larger-screen sets had 4K resolution, another term for UHD. And you didn't have to pay much more for it.

In 2017, we think high dynamic range (HDR) will be the biggest buzzword, though it may be tough for consumers to understand exactly what they're getting.

"The technology is good when it's demonstrated correctly, and the consumer is well educated about HDR in terms of compatibility of content and the performance cues to look for," says Paul Gagnon, director of TV sets research at IHS Markit, a data and market analysis firm. "But there's a lot of variance in terms of how manufacturers implement HDR. It's all over the map."

HDR is about improving the contrast between the darker and brighter parts of a scene. It's also about the ability to display intense highlights, which videophiles call specular highlights, such as the glint of sunshine off a metallic object, and offering up richer, more vibrant colors.

To achieve these effects, top-performing TVs with HDR are brighter than regular sets, though HDR isn't just about increasing a TV's overall brightness. Instead, it's about being able to provide the necessary higher levels of peak brightness when the scene calls for it.

The problem for consumers in 2017 will be determining what level of HDR each TV is capable of producing. That's because more sets will be marketed as "HDR compatible," meaning they can accept content that's been mastered in HDR.

But all HDR compatible sets are not created equal. Many less-expensive sets won't have the hardware to really show off HDR to its full effect. These TVs will be able to read the HDR metadata, and they'll do their best to map the content to the TV's capabilities. But many lower- and even mid-priced sets won't have the brightness, black levels, or video processing to produce a truly dramatic HDR effect.

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"There are companies that are focused on HDR," says Gagnon. "And there are companies looking to take the HDR logo and slap it on the set somewhere without doing any enhancement of the product, hoping to confuse consumers and get a premium for a lower price product."

To address this issue, the UHD Alliance this year developed an "Ultra HD Premium" certification and logo program, so consumers would have confidence they were getting a top-performing UHD TV. But only a few companies, notably LG and Samsung, took advantage of the program. Others, including Sony and Vizio, did not, which mitigated its impact.

2. Dolby Vision Gains Traction

In 2016, Dolby Vision HDR took a back seat to HDR10, which acts as the baseline standard for HDR. Every 4K TV with HDR capability supports HDR10, but only two major TV brandsLG and Vizioalso support Dolby Vision, basically Dolby's version of HDR. And while a few streaming services, including Amazon and Netflix, offer some Dolby Vision content, there are no Dolby Vision-enabled Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray players.

"Manufacturers seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach," says Gagnon.

But at CES we expect to hear about more TV brands offering support for Dolby Vision HDR, and to see the first Dolby Vision-capable Ultra HD Blu-ray players hit the market this spring.

Gagnon notes that one of the challenges for Dolby Vision is educating consumers to ensure that each link in the chainthe content, the source device and the television itselfare compatible. "That's incredibly confusing for the consumers today."

One way Dolby Vision could get a big boost in 2017 is from a new crop of 4K Roku TVs that include Dolby Vision HDR. At CES 2017, we think we'll see the first HDR-enabled 4K Roku TVs that support both HDR10 and Dolby Vision. The likely suspects are TV brands such as Hisense, Insignia, JVC, and TCL, which have all offered Roku TVs in the past.

If these brands do launch Dolby Vision-equipped TVs, one benefit for consumers is that it will give content creators and streaming service providers a greater incentive to offer more Dolby Vision content this year.

3. LCD TVs Try to Get More OLED-Like

For the past two years, LG's OLED TVs have dominated the top slots in our TV ratings, though the gap between OLED TVs and the very best LCD TVs continues to narrow.

At CES 2017, we expect to see companies continue to push the boundaries of LCD TV technology to bring them closer to OLED TV performance.

"This year was a good example of how good LCD can be," says Gagnon. "The LCD camp continues to innovate. They're improving performance and bringing pricing levels down."

In fact, last week reports in the Korean press suggested that Samsung was heading to CES 2017 with a new quantum-dot technology that would not only offer brighter, better colors, but also help improve black levels, an LCD TV weakness. Samsung will only say that we'll learn more at CES.

Sony has introduced a new Z-series of flagship LCD TVs that utilize an innovative backlight technology called Backlight Master Drive. What makes this technology different is that in Sony's system, every single one of the LEDs in the backlight can be controlledmeaning dimmedseparately. In other LCD-based TVs, the LEDs are grouped into a number of zones that can be dimmed or illuminated.

"There were sets out there this year, and I'm thinking particularly of the Sony Z9, that showed that if you went to the expense of including that many LED zones and that much brightness output, you could really approach some of the key benefits of OLED," says Gagnon.

But there's an even newer technology on the horizon: TVs that use self-illuminating LEDs that can give off their own light, so a separate backlight is no longer required. This would make an LED TV work like an OLED TV, where each pixel in the TV could be turned on and off individually.

Early this year we reported that Samsung was working on this type of LED technology, which it dubbed "QLED." There are also reports that Panasonic was also developing this type of technology, though it wasn't clear if it was looking to use it in consumer TVs or just commercial displays.

4. Chinese TV Brands Continue Their Move

Chinese TV manufacturers have been on the rise globally for several years now. According to research group IHS Technology, both Hisensewhich will control the Sharp TV brand in the U.S. as of January 6and TCL are now among the world's top 10 LCD TV brands, trailing only Samsung, LG, and Sony. Their shares of the U.S. market are expected to climb again in 2017.

"Weve heard directly from Hisense at CES 2016 that their goal was to become a top three brand in the U.S. market within a few years," says Gagnon. "That's a pretty bold goal. That means replacing companies like Sony or LG in the brand hierarchy. How do they get there? It's difficult to define."

He adds that while the company licensed the Sharp brand, Hisense has actually seen more growth in value-priced TVs bearing its own name.



Of the two, Hisense has been the more aggressive from a technology standpoint, utilizing quantum dots in its flagship "ULED" TVs. At CES we expect the company to show off new Hisense and Sharp-branded TVs.

TCL may have similar ambitions, but it hasn't yet been able to pull it off, at least here in the U.S. Last year the company showed off a high-end flagship model called the X1it featured quantum dots, plus support for Dolby Vision HDRbut it never actually shipped in the U.S. But, like Hisense, TCL will hold a CES 2017 press conference.

5. LG May Get Company in the OLED TV Market

There have been a few rumors that a major Japanese brand would show an OLED behind the scenes at CES this year, for introduction later in the year. We also think that it's possible that a Chinese brand could make a similar move, though frankly we think that's more probably in the late 2018/early 2019 time frame than this year.

Gagnon notes that LG is selling its panels to a number of manufacturers worldwide, and that could be a key to deeper penetration of the U.S. market.

There's not much debate that OLED TVs look great. But what's still not clear is whether that stellar picture quality will be enough.

"Is OLED here to stay?" says Gagnon. "Sometimes even the best performing technology can't overcome the economic advantage of its competitors. Thats why plasma died."





More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2017 Consumers Union of U.S.
Toshiba shares dived more than 25 percent Thursday, their third straight double-digit plunge, following the company's warning of a possible one-time loss of several billion dollars over its US nuclear business.

The troubled company's stock plummeted as much as 25.55 percent during the morning session -- virtually the maximum fall permitted Thursday -- before paring losses to finish 15.43 percent down at 263.5 yen by the noon break.

On Tuesday, the troubled conglomerate said in a statement that costs linked to the acquisition last year by its US subsidiary of a nuclear service company will possibly come to "several billion US dollars, resulting in a negative impact on Toshiba's financial results".

The exact figure of the potential write-down is still being worked out, Toshiba President Satoshi Tsunakawa told reporters after the announcement.

He hinted at the possibility of seeking support from financial institutions to boost capital, while local media Thursday reported Toshiba has begun talking with its partner banks about the support.

Toshiba shares closed nearly 12 percent lower on Tuesday after media reports about the potential loss and dived more than 20 percent on Wednesday -- the most they were allowed to fall that day.

"Those who were not be able to sell are selling today," Nobuyuki Fujimoto, senior market analyst at SBI Securities in Tokyo, told AFP, referring to Wednesday's decline to the daily limit.

Toshiba said the possible loss was related to the valuation of the purchase by subsidiary Westinghouse Electric of the nuclear construction and services business of Chicago Bridge & Iron.

Analysts have said uncertainty over the exact amount of the possible write-down was fuelling investor anxiety.

After the market closed Wednesday, Standard & Poor's cut two of Toshiba's credit and debt ratings by one notch each in response to the company's announcement. S&P also placed the ratings on watch, suggesting they could be downgraded further, while a domestic agency also cut its rating.

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- 'Bigger problem' -

SMBC Nikko Securities' credit analysts Yutaka Ban and Kentaro Harada said in a report issued Thursday that the cut by Tokyo-based Rating and Investment Information in particular will "make it difficult" to raise cash through corporate bonds and other means.

Further, the possibility that banks may become reluctant to lend money is "a bigger problem".

Toshiba's latest full-year forecast is net profit of 145 billion yen ($1.24 billion), up 45 percent from an earlier estimate, on sales of 5.4 trillion yen.

But Tuesday it said it would release a revised earnings forecast as soon as possible to reflect the coming write-down.

Toshiba's nuclear woes are the latest blow to the once-proud pillar of corporate Japan.

It has been besieged by problems, most notably a profit-padding scandal in which bosses for years systematically pushed subordinates to cover up weak financial results.

In an intensive overhaul, the company has been shedding businesses and announced the sale of its medical devices unit to camera and office equipment maker Canon.

Investors had welcomed the makeover, with Toshiba shares having climbed 77.3 percent this year through Monday before the string of declines began. But the plunges have now reduced its gain for the year to just five percent.
Bringing a bit of Tokyos uniqueness and fashion back to your home country need not be costly. The abundance of 100-yen shops, vintage fashion shops, and local brands are an excellent avenue for tourists looking for bargains. This article will take you through some of the shops that are a must-go for your next trip to Tokyo!

1. Local brands for clothing

yoshiike



Already well known in Singapore and many parts of Asia, Uniqlo offers an even better deal in their Japanese outlets. The clothing chain is known to offer plenty of discounts during the changing of seasons. A shirt can cost as low as 590 yen, and legging jeans at only 1,290 yen during these discount periods. Pay at the tax-free counters to save on that additional 8% tax!

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#fashion A photo posted by GU() (@gu_global) on Dec 27, 2016 at 1:07am PST

Lesser known to tourists is the brand, GU, a sister company to Uniqlo. The brand keeps their fashion up-to-date with new designs every season, maintaining their prices low without compensating the quality. GU jeans typically range from 990 to 2,490 yen for both genders. If you are in luck, discounted prices for jeans will go as low as 590 yen each! However, unlike Uniqlo, which offers plus sizes in both their online store and a handful of branches, GU is strictly an S-XL-sized clothing chain. Just beside Okachimachi Station, Yoshiike Building houses Uniqlo on the 1st to 4th floors, and GU on 5th and 6th.

Image source

While most clothing stores carry the same design in various sizes, in Shimamura (), finding similar design clothing in a different size can be a challenge. A Japanese casual clothing chain, shirts and blouses range from 700 to 900 yen are aplenty in Shimamura. Despite Japanese fashion being notoriously unkind to plus-sized travellers, Shimamura is particularly famous for carrying plus-sized clothing at a steal. Sizes can go up to 5 XL for both genders for both tops and bottoms.

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2. Vintage (second-hand) clothing

A better name for second-hand clothing, vintage clothing shops blend in perfectly with local brands on popular shopping streets. It is good to note that Japanese keeps their pre-loved clothing in excellent conditions and is resold almost as new. These pieces are, however, priced below halved its original cost. You can easily find these vintage shops in Harajuku, Shibuya and Shimokitazawa. Amongst the numerous stores, RAGTAG and Jumble Store in Harajuku are two notably big stores that carry almost everything you need.

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Credit: Ragtag and Jumble Store official website

With its glass exterior, RAGTAG fits better with the high-end clothing brands along the streets of Aoyama and Omotesando. Likewise, most of the clothing and accessories in RAGTAG are pre-loved brand names or limited edition products. Similar to its namesake, Jumble Store carries a wide variety of brands, with inexpensive brands to pricey big names such as Chanel and Prada. At Jumble Store, it is not impossible to come across shirts as low as 200 yen! Ladies clothing and accessories are available on the ground floor while the men section is on the second floor.

RAGTAG: 6-14-2 Jingumae, Shibuya, Tokyo 150-0001

Jumble Store: 4-26-4 Jingumae, Shibuya, Tokyo 150-0001

3. Souvenirs

Cost of living in Tokyo has reduced thanks to the abundance of 100-yen shops around the city. From household to personal care products, as well as fresh food and cooked bento, these 100-yen shops have since started carrying uniquely Japanese souvenirs. Many of these shops are plainly named 100-yen shops can be found nearly everywhere in Tokyo. They will also appear when you key in 100-yen shop into Google maps, if you need to find one near you. It is also wise to look out for Lawson-100 and Daiso, the latter which we have in Singapore. Do not miss out on visiting the Daiso at Harajuku, a 3-storey (plus a basement!) pink building on Takeshita-dori.

donki

A discount chain store, Don Quijote (affectionately nicknamed Donki), is a personal favorite when it comes to shopping for souvenirs and food in Japan. Carrying everything that you might need, from a new luggage to Japanese electronics, souvenir such as keychains and Japanese fans to food (fresh and cooked), snacks and medicine; they have it all! It is also great to know that their prices are one of the lowest you can find in Japan. While the Mentholatum menthol lip-balm in 100-yen shops might be a bargain, Donki carries them at only 80 yen. Plus, a pack of matcha kit-kat typically priced between 480 to 525 yen is only 280 yen in Donki!

donkiakiba

With over 160 locations throughout Japan, it is not difficult to find one in Tokyo. The branch in Asakusa is a 24-hour, 7-storey building packed with merchandises. They had recently added a Muslim-friendly corner with souvenir and snacks that are Halal, making it easier for travellers. If you are looking for anime-related products for souvenirs, Akihabaras Donki is the place. With opening hours from 10AM to 5AM, it is just the place to do any last minute shopping before heading to the airport. Keep your eye out for the penguin mascot!

Little savings here and there will make the trip to this expensive city a lot more affordable and fun. Plan your next Tokyo trip with these little tips on where to go. You can always help fulfill requests on Airfrov while you are out on your shopping spree.

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The post Travel Tips: Where to go for Souvenir and Clothes Bargains in Tokyo appeared first on Airfrov Blog.
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP)  A co-chairman of Republican Donald Trump's New York presidential campaign who publicly insulted Democratic President Barack Obama and his wife has been asked to resign from a local school board.

Millionaire developer Carl Paladino told a Buffalo alternative newspaper last week he wanted to see Obama dead of mad cow disease and Michelle Obama living with a gorilla in Africa. He now says the comments weren't meant for publication but were nevertheless "inappropriate."

At a special meeting on Thursday the Buffalo school board voted 6-2 to ask the state education commissioner to remove Paladino if he doesn't resign within 24 hours.

Paladino didn't attend the meeting. He says he won't resign.
Palm Beach (United States) (AFP) - Donald Trump ramped up preparations for his presidential inauguration Thursday, working with aides on an historic address that will be seen as a cornerstone of his administration.

Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said the mogul-turned-politico will spend the day at his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago discussing and running through drafts of the January 20 speech with top aides.

An inaugural address is a starting gun for any US presidency and has come to define some of the men who have held the Oval Office.

It was on the inaugural stage that John F. Kennedy stridently declared that "the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans," making him the figurehead of a generational shift that defined the 1960s.

Kennedy also told Americans to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," stirring a sense of national service that remains to this day.

In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt whipped up confidence in a nation reeling from the deprivations of the Great Depression by insisting "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

And Abraham Lincoln tried to the heal the wounds of the Civil War by urging Americans to approach the future "with malice toward none, with charity for all."

To help frame his own message, Trump has called in historian Douglas Brinkley and long-time aides like controversial right-wing figure Steve Bannon.

On Wednesday, Brinkley and Trump met in Florida to discuss "a sort of history of the presidency and past inaugurals," the historian said.

There was also a discussion of some bold presidential promises.

"He was very interested in a man going to the moon and the moon shot, so we were talking a little bit about that" Brinkley said, referencing Kennedy's pledge to put a man on the moon during another speech at Rice University.

- 'Real talk' -

But Trump's speech in three weeks will not just be a measure of his policies -- it will be seen as a monumental test of his oratorical skills and of his ability to lift Americans' gaze above the horizon.

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The idiosyncratic 70-year-old property developer is often more comfortable talking about himself and rallying die-hard supporters on the fly than delivering a pre-written address.

One notable exception was his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in Cleveland, which vividly painted the world as Trump sees it.

The main author that day, and for the inaugural address, will be Stephen Miller, a young Californian and former aide to attorney general-designate Jeff Sessions.

For Trump's July nomination acceptance speech, Miller looked to Richard Nixon's address at the Republican National Convention in 1968.

What he saw was a speech that had an unvarnished -- even bleak -- view of the United States.

"As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame," Nixon said. "We hear sirens in the night."

Trump tapped that same sense of malaise in Cleveland more than four decades later, telling the party faithful that their "convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation."

"The attacks on our police, and the terrorism of our cities, threaten our very way of life," he said.

Nixon's prescription was "new leadership for America." Trump's prescription was rejecting "the same politicians" who he said had caused the damage in the first place.

"I am your voice" Trump said, "I alone can fix it."

For the inaugural address, Trump and Miller may look less to the optimism of Kennedy, Lincoln or Roosevelt and more to the "real talk" of Ronald Reagan.

In 1981, Reagan began his address by thanking his predecessor before getting down to business.

"These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions," he said, pledging to reform the tax system and unleash free enterprise -- issues that became the hallmarks of his eight years in office.

"The government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," he said.

Trump confidants say he has not yet settled on an overarching theme for his inaugural address, but unleashing business to fix an economy Trump sees as broken is unlikely to be far from the top of the list.
One of the biggest worries that critics of Donald Trump have about the incoming president of the United States is about who the soon-to-be leader of the most powerful nation on the planet listens to on specific issues. The answer, many fear, is the last person to speak with him.

That may or may not be true in general, but it appears to apply in at least one particular case: When the last person to speak with him happens to be the sitting president of the United States.

Related: How Team Trump Is Changing the Rules of the Media Game

Trump began the day on Wednesday raging on social media about President Obama.

Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016

Trump never specified the statements that were bothering him, but Obama has been peppering his public statements in recent weeks with barely veiled warnings to Trump. And in a joint appearance at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii Tuesday, he appeared to tweak his soon-to-be successor for appealing to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S.

At the memorial, accompanied by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, he said, It is here that we remember that even when hatred burns hottest, the tug of tribalism is at its most primal, we must resist the urge to turn inward...We must resist the urge to demonize those who are different.

Whether that statement qualifies as inflammatory is in the eye of the beholder, but it appeared to annoy Trump.

Related: Stock Trades by Trumps Top Health Care Reformer Raise Some Swampy Questions

And the President-elect wasnt finished. Last week he expressed his anger at Obama for instructing his ambassador to the United Nations to abstain from voting on a Security Council resolution that censured Israel for building settlements in both disputed territories and on land occupied by Palestinians. The abstention -- basically a refusal to employ the U.S. veto on Security Council matters -- allowed the measure to pass unanimously.

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He renewed his criticism Wednesday, on Twitter, as usual.

We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect, he wrote. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!

In the Trump era, the definition of shocking is regularly redefined when it comes to statements on international relations, but for a president-elect to send a direct public message to a foreign government that both criticizes the outgoing administration and makes unspecified policy promises is, at best, uncommon.

Related: Trumps Nuke Talk Could Break the Budget or Much, Much Worse

The well, it seems, had been poisoned. Trump had not only criticized his predecessor in public but had insinuated that the Obama administration had actively tried to make the presidential transition difficult.

So when reporters confronted the President-elect Wednesday afternoon and asked him about the status of his relationship with the outgoing president, there was some surprise when he said he thought things were going swimmingly.

In a brief exchange outside his residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, Trump was asked about his tweet and about how the transition was progressing. Oh, I think very, very smoothly. Very good. You don't think so? he replied.

The difference? A phone call.

He phoned me, Trump said when reporters asked whether he had spoken to the president. We had a very nice conversation.

We had a very general conversation, he added. Very, very nice. Appreciated that he called.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Donald Trump

President-elect Donald Trump responded Thursday to President Barack Obama's fresh sanctions against Russia, saying it was "time to move on" but adding that he would still meet with US intelligence officials to discuss Russian involvement in election hacks.

"It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things," Trump said in a brief evening statement.

The president-elect continued: "Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."

The statement came hours after Obama announced new sanctions against Russian officials, which included the removal of 35 Russian intelligence officials from the US, in addition to sanctions from the Treasury Department against two other Russian individuals.

Obama said in a statement that those actions were "not the sum total of our response" and that his administration would provide a report to Congress in the coming days related to Russia's suspected "efforts to interfere in our election, as well as malicious cyberactivity related to our election cycle in previous terms."

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security then released a joint analysis report on Russian hacking.

Russia swiftly responded, assuring that Washington would "receive an answer" if "new hostile steps" were taken.

"This applies to any actions against Russian diplomatic missions in the United States, which will immediately backfire at US diplomats in Russia," Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement. "The Obama administration probably does not care at all about the future of bilateral relations, but history will hardly forgive it for this apres-nous-le-deluge attitude."

Recent public revelations showed that US intelligence tied the election-related hacking of Democratic political organizations and operatives such as Clinton campaign chair John Podesta to senior Russian officials. The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the US election to try to tip the scales toward Trump, though other agencies haven't gone as far in their assessments.

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Both Republicans and Democrats have called for action to be taken against Russia because of the hacking. Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona have been two of the loudest voices on that front. Graham; McCain; Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska; Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader; and House Speaker Paul Ryan all released statements shortly following Obama's announcement that criticized Russia while calling out Obama for not going harder on the nation's government in previous years.

Russia has repeatedly denied its involvement in the hacking, and Trump has refused to acknowledge that Russia had involvement in election-related hacks. He said Wednesday that "we ought to get on with our lives."

"I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly," he told reporters outside his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. "The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on."

NOW WATCH: Trump slams Alec Baldwin: 'His imitation of me is really mean-spirited and not very good'





More From Business Insider


Donald Trump speaks briefly to reporters between meetings at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. (Photo: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.  President-elect Donald Trump is considering creating a public/private option for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a senior official on his presidential transition team.

The official briefly spoke with reporters on Wednesday and said Trump had had a meeting earlier in the day about reforming the agency, which is responsible for providing health care to American veterans.

We think we have to have kind of a  public/private option, because some vets love the VA.  Some vets want to go to the VA, the official said.

So the idea is to come up with a solution that solves the problem. And its not the easiest thing in the world because youve got all these little kingdoms out there, which is hard. You know, in the federal government its hard to break things up and start over. So those are the types of things that people are talking about, the person added.

Trump regularly discussed his desire to improve the VA during his presidential campaign. The official said Trumps meeting on Wednesday was with five people: Dr. Delos Cosgrove, president and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic; Dr. John Noseworthy, president and CEO of the Mayo Clinic; Dr. David Torchiana, president and CEO of Partners HealthCare; Dr. Paul Rothman, dean and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine; and financial consultant Marc B. Sherman.

Part the meeting too was: Do we set up an advisory committee as well with some of these pioneers as part of the committee to help us navigate through whats a very complicated process, providing health care to veterans. These are people that know what theyre talking about, said the transition team official.

The official said the five men who met with Trump on Wednesday could be a group that could make up an advisory council. However, the official noted they have not formalized anything The person described the public/private option as one of the options on the table.

Definitely an option on the table to have a system where potentially vets can choose either or, or all private, or keep it, said the official. Its definitely on the table.

Trump also met with former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson on Wednesday. The president-elect told Yahoo News that he and Thompson discussed very important things,  including the veterans.
TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisian security forces said on Thursday that they had broken up an al Qaeda-linked militant cell with 10 members that was active near the coastal city of Sousse. The interior ministry said in a statement that the group had used the Telegram encrypted messaging system to communicate with associates inside and outside Tunisia, and was plotting to carry out "terrorist operations", without giving further details. The cell had links to Okba Ibn Nafaa, an al Qaeda-linked group based in the Mount Chaambi range near the Algerian border that has claimed attacks against Tunisian security forces, the statement said. Its members were aged between 25 and 45 and included two women, it added. Tunisia has struggled to contain Islamist militancy since its 2011 uprising, suffering three major attacks last year including one in which 38 foreign tourists were killed by a gunman on a beach in Sousse. Tunisian security forces said recently that they had dismantled 160 jihadist cells in the first 10 months of this year, about 45 percent more than during the whole of 2015. (Reporting by Mohamed Argoubi; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
Tunis (AFP) - Tunisia's Prime Minister Youssef Chahed on Thursday said all jihadists returning from foreign battlefields would be immediately arrested and judged according to the country's counter-terrorism law.

"The Tunisian state has not signed any deal on the return of terrorists and the government's position on the matter is clear: it does not support the return from areas of tension," Chahed told state television El Wataniya.

"Those who do return will be immediately arrested on their arrival to Tunisian territory and will be judged. And the counter-terrorism law will be applied against them," said the premier, who met President Beji Caid Essebsi on Thursday afternoon.

Concern about the return of jihadists has risen since Tunisian Anis Amri, 24, was identified as the suspected attacker who mowed down 11 people with a truck at a Berlin Christmas market last week and also killed the driver.

Chahed said Tunisia "has lists of all (Tunisian) terrorists who are in areas of tension and who have been part of terrorist organisations. We know each and every one of them and have all the data on them."

His comments came after a ministerial meeting to decide on an action plan to tackle the issue did not take place on Thursday as planned.

Last week, Interior Minister Hedi Majdoub told parliament that 800 jihadists had already returned from the front lines, stressing however that the authorities have them on their radar.

Despite such assurances, Tunisians rallied outside parliament at the weekend to protest against allowing jihadists back into the country.

Politicians and their parties have expressed similar concerns, criticising the authorities' inaction.

The national union of internal security forces has called on the government to strip Tunisian jihadists of their nationality.

Essebsi said in early December that his country was "taking all the necessary measures" to ensure that jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq are "neutralised".

But, citing the constitution, he said the authorities could not prevent a Tunisian from returning to their country.

Since its 2011 revolution, Tunisia has faced repeated jihadist attacks, killing more than 100 soldiers and policemen, as well as about 20 civilians and 59 foreign tourists, according to official figures.
Istanbul (Turkey) (AFP) - Turkish authorities on Thursday detained a prize-winning journalist over a succession of tweets and articles for an opposition daily, state media said, as alarm grows over press freedom in the country.

Ahmet Sik was detained on accusations of making "terror propaganda" and denigrating the Turkish Republic, the judicial authorities and police, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.

It said he had been detained over tweets about the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), as well as articles for the Cumhuriyet opposition daily that criticised the Turkish secret services.

The author of several books, Sik is one of the best-known journalists in the country and had already endured a lengthy spell in jail from 2011-2012.

He has won numerous awards, including the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 2014.

Sik's books include notably one of the few full-scale investigations into the group of Fethullah Gulen, the US-based cleric who Ankara blames for the July 15 failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The book, called "The Imam's Army" and published in 2011, examines how Gulen supporters infiltrated the Turkish bureaucracy and built up an alliance with the ruling party that has now collapsed.

"I am being detained. I am being taken to prosecutors because of a tweet," he wrote in a final tweet Thursday morning.

Sik had previously been imprisoned for 375 days during the investigation into the so-called Ergenekon alleged coup plot against the government.

That case was strongly supported by Gulen. But the convictions were quashed and suspects released amid accusations Gulen had perverted the process.

Activists worry of a drastically worsening climate for journalists in Turkey, in particular amid the state of emergency imposed in the wake of the coup.

According to the P24 Platform for Independent Journalism, 118 journalists have been arrested in the state of emergency, 80 of them within the coup probe.
The Daily Beast

MANDEL NGANJeff Bezos has been hit with a racial discrimination lawsuit from his former housekeeper, who alleges she was subjected to unsafe working conditions that prioritized white workers and violated labor laws.Now, the former employee wants compensation for allegedly being retaliated against after blowing the whistle.In a complaint, Mercedes Wedaa claims Bezos and two companies he used to hire domestic workers, Zefram, LLC, and Northwestern, LLC, discriminated against her, a Latina, and mad
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey and Russia will act as guarantors of a nationwide ceasefire in Syria that is due to go into effect at midnight, Turkey's foreign ministry said on Thursday. Ankara said the ceasefire agreement excluded groups deemed as terrorists by the U.N. Security Council and noted the importance of support from countries influential on the fighting sides. "With this agreement, parties have agreed to cease all armed attacks, including aerial, and have promised not to expand the areas they control against each other," the foreign ministry said in a statement. Representatives from the Syrian government and the opposition will meet in Astana, Kazakhstan in the supervision of guarantor countries soon, the statement added. (Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by David Dolan)
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey signaled on Twitter Thursday that his company is going to let users edit their tweets in the future. Dorsey said that Twitter is thinking a lot about bringing editing functionality to tweets, and then went on to say that a form of edit was needed.

Dorsey made these remarks as part of a kind of impromptu public town hall with Twitter users, asking them for feedback on how to improve the service. The request for an edit button for tweets came up multiple times, and Dorsey seemed to signal that the company is gearing towards a time-limited window to allow for the correction of typos right after a tweet was sent.

Allowing users to edit tweets they sent hours or days after the fact would lead to a more complicated solution, Dorsey argued, including the need for a change log to give users the ability to review different versions of the same tweet.

@AnthonyQuintano edit mistakes quickly or edit anytime? Big dif in implementation. Latter requires change log as we're oft the public record  jack (@jack) December 29, 2016

Users also repeatedly asked Dorsey to step up Twitters fight against hate and harassment, which has been a major point of contention in the past. Twitter has long sided with free speech advocates, and users frequently complained that violations of the companys terms of service werent being dealt with. However, this year, Twitter did boot some high-profile right-wing extremists off its platform. Dorsey said Thursday that bringing more transparency to these efforts was a big priority for Twitter.

Dorsey also talked about some other upcoming product changes Thursday. Some of the features he endorsed as needed included easier digestible tweet storms and better threading of conversations. Dorsey also said that the company is working on customized breaking news alerts and better direct messaging. He added that Twitters team had been thinking about bookmarking functionality for tweets as well.

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BEIRUT, Dec 29 (Reuters) - One of Islamic State's top commanders in Syria has been killed in a U.S.-led coalition air strike, the coalition's spokesman said on Thursday, corroborating an earlier report.

Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti, a member of Islamic State's war committee, was killed on Monday by the Tabqa Dam, a strategic objective in northern Syria near Raqqa city, the jihadists' main stronghold in the country, the spokesman said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, had reported on Tuesday his probable death in combat as the militants sought to stave off an advance towards the dam by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Islamic State has yet to confirm Kuwaiti's death.

Kuwaiti was involved in Islamic State's retaking of the ancient city of Palmyra earlier this month and then went to Tabqa to help shore up the jihadists' defences against the SDF, the coalition said.

"Abu Jandal was involved in the use of suicide vehicles, IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and chemical weapons against the SDF ... his death will degrade ISIL's ability to defend Raqqa and launch external operations against the West," the statement said.

The SDF alliance includes the Kurdish YPG militia and is supported by U.S.-led coalition air strikes in northern Syria in its fight against Islamic State.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington; editing by John Stonestreet)
Dec 29 (Reuters) - Cempra Inc said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected its antibiotic for community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CABP), citing inadequate data on the drug's impact on the liver, and unresolved manufacturing issues.

An independent panel to the U.S. FDA in November narrowly voted in favor of the drug, solithromycin, although in a staff review, FDA scientists highlighted a potentially concerning rise in liver enzymes associated with its use.

On Thursday, the FDA did not request any further information on solithromycin's effectiveness in treating CABP, Cempra said.

Solithromycin, which is designed to be administered intravenously and via capsules, is descended from a notorious drug made by Sanofi SA called Ketek.

Ketek was approved by the FDA in 2004, but was later linked to dozens of serious or fatal liver problems, and was eventually discontinued.

(Reporting by Natalie Grover and Akankshita Mukhopadhyay in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
(Adds comment from Boehringer Ingelheim)

WASHINGTON, Dec 28 (Reuters) - German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim agreed to divest five types of animal health products to settle charges that a proposed asset swap with Sanofi would harm competition, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Wednesday.

The proposed asset swap involved Boehringer Ingelheim's acquisition of Sanofi's $13.5 billion animal care subsidiary and Sanofi's obtaining the Germany company's consumer health care business unit, valued at nearly $8 billion, plus $5.5 billion in cash, the FTC said in a statement.

Without the divestitures, the proposed swap "would harm competition in the U.S. markets for various vaccines for companion animals (pets) and certain parasite control products for cattle and sheep," the commission said.

The sale of the U.S. pet vaccine assets will occur shortly after the closing of the BI-Sanofi swap transaction, which the company anticipates to close by early 2017, Boehringer spokeswoman told Reuters in an email.

Sanofi was not immediately available for comments.

The FTC said that without the divestitures the proposed transaction would reduce the number of suppliers of canine and feline vaccines from four to three. It would combine the two top rabies vaccine suppliers.

It would also reduce competition among suppliers of products to prevent parasites in cattle and sheep, the FTC said.

In November the companies agreed to divestitures to allay European Commission concerns that the deal would harm competition and possibly result in price hikes.

"The two companies offered to divest a number of Merial's marketed and pipeline products, including its existing vaccines Circovac, Progressis, Parvovax, Parvovurax and Mucossifa and pharmaceuticals Ketofen, Wellicox, Allevinix, Genixine, Equioxx Injectable and Equioxx Paste," the EU said at the time.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; additional reporting by Gaurika Juneja in Bengaluru; Editing by Marguerita Choy and David Gregorio)
By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Law enforcement fatalities hit a five-year high in 2016 with 135 officers killed in the line of duty, including eight killed in ambush attacks in Dallas and Louisiana in July that raised nationwide concerns, a study released on Thursday said.

So far this year, 21 officers were killed in ambush-style attacks, the highest figure in two decades, according to the study from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which tracks data on the incidents.

This included five police officers gunned down in Dallas in July by a deranged U.S. Army Reserve veteran, 25-year-old Micah X. Johnson, who said he aimed to avenge the shootings of black men by police nationwide.

"Public safety is a partnership and, too often, the service and sacrifice of our law enforcement professionals is taken for granted," said Craig Floyd, president of the fund.

Firearms-related incidents were the number one cause of death, with 64 officers fatally shot, the survey said. Traffic-related incidents accounted for 53 deaths.

Among the officers killed were local and state police officers, federal border agents and corrections officers. The study did not break out the number of police officers killed.

The average age of the officers who died on duty this year was 40 and the average length of service was 13 years. Texas had the most fatalities, at 17, followed by California with 10 and Louisiana with 9, including three who were killed in July in Baton Rouge, the survey said.

A black Iraq war veteran fatally shot the three police officers and wounded three others in Baton Rouge in an ambush.

The Dallas and Baton Rouge attacks, less than two weeks apart, followed fatal shootings by police officers of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana.

There were protests nationwide this year over the killings by police of unarmed black men, incidents that raised questions of racial bias in U.S. policing.

The number of officers who died in the line of duty in 2016 was up 10 percent from the previous year of 123, the survey said.

"As we begin the new year, let us all resolve to respect, honor, and remember those who have served us so well and sacrificed so much in the name of public safety," Floyd said.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Leslie Adler)
By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) - - The number of diagnosed melanoma cases and related deaths in the U.S. has been steadily climbing for at least two decades despite widespread prevention efforts, a recent study suggests. Researchers now estimate that one in 54 Americans will develop invasive melanoma  the rarest and deadliest type of skin cancer  in their lifetime. Thats up from a 2009 estimate of one in 58. Physicians have improved their ability to identify melanomas in the past 30 years . . . but this alone likely does not explain the increased number of melanomas, said study coauthor Dr. Alex Glazer, a physician based in New York City who is affiliated with the National Society for Cutaneous Medicine. Despite public health measures and warnings people still get a high level of UV exposure from the sun and tanning beds which is likely contributing to the increased incidence, Glazer added by email. The steady rise in melanoma diagnoses and deaths in the U.S. over the past few decades mirrors trends seen worldwide, researchers note in JAMA Dermatology. For the current study, Glazer, along with coauthor Dr. Aaron Farberg of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and their colleagues, examined melanoma trends in the U.S. since 2009, when they last reported on incidence and mortality rates. During the study period, melanoma incidence rates for every 100,000 people climbed from 22.2 to 23.6, or a compound annual increase of about 1 percent. Diagnosis rates for early-stage tumors confined to the outer layers of the skin, known as in situ melanoma, rose more rapidly, with annual increases of about 3 percent a year. At the same time, after accounting for population shifts, the annual number of deaths from melanoma rose 1.5 percent a year, the researchers estimate. Because diagnosis rates arent rising as quickly as fatalities, its possible the study findings dont reflect recent efforts aimed at earlier detection and treatment of these tumors, the authors note. The incidences of melanoma in situ (the earliest form of melanoma) and thin invasive tumors are increasing at a faster rate than that of thicker tumors, and the five-year survival rates are also improving, which is likely due to more melanomas being diagnosed at earlier stages, said Dr. Elizabeth Martin, of Pure Dermatology and Aesthetics and the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine. Early detection is the key to curing melanoma, Martin, who wasnt involved in the study, said by email. Minimizing exposure to UV rays from the sun and tanning beds can largely prevent melanoma, and fatalities can often be averted with regular skin checks at the dermatologist, Farberg told Reuters Health. Adopting sun-protective behavior is still a work-in-progress, and the prior generations were already exposed to high levels of sun UV radiation throughout their lives, Farberg said by email. Indoor tanning has also led to an increase in exposure in some subsets of the population. Because older Americans may have grown up without an emphasis on sun protection and melanoma prevention, it may take time for habits adopted by younger people to influence diagnosis or death rates, said Dr. David Leffell of Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. I think sun exposure earlier in life in the baby boomer population is coming home to roost, Leffell, who wasnt involved in the study, said by email. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2hdZ3Eb JAMA Dermatology, online December 21, 2016.
VILNIUS (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's choice for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, will have to explain his relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at his confirmation hearing, senior Republican senator John McCain said on Thursday. McCain, who is chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, also called President Putin "a thug and a murderer". Speaking on a tour of the Baltic states, where there is widespread concern that Moscow wants to reassert its power across the region, McCain said he had concerns about Tillerson, who opposed sanctions on Russia after its annexation of Crimea. "I and several of my colleagues have concerns about Mr Tillerson, and some of his past activities, specifically his relationship with Vladimir Putin," McCain told reporters. "I have concerns but at the same time I'm certain we will give Mr Tillerson an opportunity to make his case about why he is qualified to be Secretary of State." Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Tillerson could face a rocky confirmation process, given worries among both Democrats and Republicans about his connections with Russia and possible conflicts of interest related to his business ties. Relations between Moscow and Washington have deteriorated following Russia's annexation of the Crimea in 2014, with the two nations also at loggerheads over Syria. The Obama administration also plans a series of retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking into U.S. political institutions and individuals and leaking information. Trump has said that the United States should move on from the controversy. McCain, however, said the United States needed to reassure voters there and abroad that elections would not be influenced by foreign powers. "I agree with president elect that we need to get on of our lives - without having elections being affected by any outside influence, especially Vladimir Putin, who is a thug and a murderer," he said. Fellow Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who is traveling with McCain, called for sanctions against Russia to be widened to target areas like energy and to be directly aimed at Putin. "I think the sanctions need to go beyond what it is today, they need to name Putin as an individual and his inner circle because nothing happens in Russia without his knowledge and approval," Graham said. (Reporting by Andrius Sytas,; writing by Simon Johnson, Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Russia and Turkey have brokered the most ambitious cease-fire to date aimed at ending the 6-year-old civil war in Syria, an ironic twist given the absence of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who spent years searching in vain for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

The cease-fire, which goes into effect at midnight local time, sets the groundwork for the end of Western and Arab support for a rebel-backed overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad and paves the way for a potential negotiated settlement, the long-stated desire of the Obama administration.

U.S. and Western powers expressed cautious optimism about the agreement, though many analysts cautioned that it could easily unravel. The accord is the third nationwide cease-fire agreed to this year. The other two, brokered by the United States and Moscow, collapsed within weeks amid violations by both sides.

Notable after years of shuttle diplomacy from Kerry was the utter absence of the United States from the latest round of talks. Some analysts said that Washingtons lack of involvement made a deal more likely, though it will also mean ceding a short-term victory to Assad and Moscow.

The absence of the United States is important because it has enabled this truce to be negotiated, said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. U.S. insistence that Assad must go, and continued, if lukewarm, support for opposition rebels, made Washington an awkward fit in this latest solution, he said. By remaining quiet and absenting itself from these talks, [Washington] is allowing an Assad and Russian victory.

The cease-fire covers 62,000 rebel fighters, as well as Syrian government forces and their allies, according to information released by the Russian and Turkish governments. Russia and Turkey will oversee the truce and coordinate through a special military hotline.

Moscow promised to end aerial bombardment and artillery shelling that has devastated the opposition and resulted in countless civilian casualties. Ankara promised full compliance by a large group of opposition forces with the cease-fire, including any type of shelling of Syrian or Russian positions.

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All sides agreed that operations against the Nusra Front and the Islamic State will continue as before, though U.S. military officials have long complained that Russian jets rarely target Islamic State fighters, instead labeling all groups fighting the Assad regime terrorists, including those backed by the United States.

There is plenty of skepticism that the cease-fire will prove lasting. Despite Turkish pledges, most of the opposition militias have not signed on to it, potentially leaving scattered pockets of resistance active against the Assad regime, which could trigger renewed hostilities by Damascus and Moscow. Its often difficult to separate one group from the other on the battlefield, and local, temporary alliances and fluid front lines have led some American military officials to describe the battlefield as marbled with Nusra units mixed amid more moderate groups.

There is also the question of the multiple Iranian-backed groups on the ground fighting for the Assad regime. Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon have suffered real losses over the past several years, and Shiite groups from Iraq and Afghanistan have joined the fight. They are recruited and supplied by their Iranian patrons, but a U.S. defense official recently told Foreign Policy that Moscow has been exercising overall command and control over these various groups, further deepening the Russian stake, and responsibility, for the Syrian endgame.

Pointedly, the cease-fire wont include the Kurdish YPG militia, which has been doing most of the fighting in northern Syria against the Islamic State. Additionally, Osama Abu Zaid, a spokesman for the Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army rebel group, said Thursday that the Syrian Kurdish PYD political party would not be part of Syria talks planned in the coming weeks in Kazakhstan.

The exclusion could mean continued flare-ups of violence between Turkish-backed groups and the American-backed YPG. The Kurdish militia has American commandos embedded in its ranks as the fighters push toward the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa. The Kurdish question has long been a point of contention between Ankara and Washington, and there is little sign that this latest cease-fire will ease tensions on that front.

On Thursday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner called the cease-fire a positive development and said the United States would work to support renewed peace negotiations in Geneva to prop up the agreement. Any effort that stops the violence, saves lives, and creates the conditions for renewed and productive political negotiations would be welcome, Toner said.

But the group that sealed the latest cease-fire seems determined to forge ahead without Washington  for now, at least. The Russian foreign ministry announced Thursday that it would work with Turkey and Iran to facilitate talks on Syria in Kazakhstan  though no timeline was given as to when those talks might begin. Turkish officials said the Kazakhstan talks would complement, not replace, ongoing efforts by U.N. special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura in Geneva.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in what seemed a pointed final shot at the Obama administration, said the United States would be welcome to take part in the accord once President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

I would like to express my hope that after the administration of Donald Trump assumes its duties, it will also join the efforts [on a workable Syrian peace deal] in order to channel this work into one direction [based] on friendly and collective cooperation, he said, according to Russian media reports.

The agreement forged between Russia and Turkey reflects a change in both countries calculus. Russia has discovered tolerance for rebel groups it branded just months ago as dangerous terrorists. Russian state-sponsored media in particular had demonized Ahrar al-Sham, which Russia Today said in September had committed various war crimes and was responsible for most of the violations of the cease-fire in Syria reported by the Russian military.

Lavrov told RT that same month Ahrar al-Sham was linked to the al Qaeda-backed Nusra Front. He added that it seems the Americans are listing a part of a terrorist structure, which is recognized as such by the U.N., as an organization loyal to them.

In April, Moscows ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, asked the international body to add Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam  both of which were fighting the Assad regime  to a blacklist that includes the Nusra Front and the Islamic State. Churkin said that the two groups are closely linked to terrorist organizations. Jaish al-Islam has also been the target of heavy Russian bombing.

Russias about-face reflects Turkeys newfound willingness to rein in rebel groups it has long supported against Assad. Turkey is putting the militias on notice that its border will be closing to them and that the world will turn its backs on the military effort to make Assad step aside, Landis said.

And that could ease the way for the political solution long favored by Assad and the Russians: an end to international support for the Syrian insurgency, allowing Damascus to end the conflict on its terms.

The regime will negotiate amnesty with militias it can deal with, and will kill or chase out of Syria all those who refuse to sue for peace, or whom it considers unredeemable or jihadists, Landis said.
By Elias Biryabarema KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda will expand a major road linking its capital Kampala with Rwanda after signing a deal on Thursday for a $151 million loan from the African Development Bank (AfDB). The 40-year loan will partly finance a new 23 km, 4-lane toll road to help de-congest traffic on an existing road, the finance ministry and AfDB said, adding the government would fund the remainder of the $192 million project. In recent years East African countries have been investing heavily in transportation infrastructure to help boost trade. A significant chunk of that investment has been directed toward upgrading sections of what is known as East Africa's northern corridor, a transport artery that loops in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, stretching eastward to the Kenyan sea port of Mombasa. Matia Kasaija, Uganda's finance minister, said at a signing ceremony that the project was aimed at "increasing overall competitiveness and creating additional wealth and employment". The project would result in "enhanced trade and regional integration, and reduction in transport costs", Kasaija added. Uganda, a prospective crude oil producer and Africa's largest coffee exporter, also plans to build a six-lane, 77-km, $1 billion expressway from Kampala to Jinja, an industrial hub in eastern Uganda. AfDB, the World Bank and the European Union provide most of the funding for Uganda's transportation infrastructure. (Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; editing by George Obulutsa and Helen Reid)
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May is acting like Tudor King Henry VIII in refusing to commit to giving parliament a vote on the deal to leave the European Union, opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said. May told lawmakers earlier this month parliament would have "ample opportunity" to discuss her plans for Brexit but she stopped short of promising lawmakers a vote on any final agreement. Corbyn told the Guardian newspaper on Thursday that any deal thrashed out between the British government and the 27 remaining countries in the European Union had to be endorsed by parliament. "It would have to come to parliament. She cannot hide behind Henry VIII and the divine rights of the power of kings on this one," he said. "The idea that on something as major as this the prime minister would use the royal prerogative to bypass parliament is extraordinary - I don't know where she's coming from." Henry VIII, who ruled from 1509 to 1547, is best known for his six wives and making himself head of the Church in England after breaking with Rome. The British government is able in theory to take executive decisions without the assent of parliament using the "royal prerogative", a concept originating in the personal power of the monarch to rule on his or her own initiative. However, under Britain's unwritten constitution, the scope of the prerogative is difficult to define and its use in specific cases has been decided by the courts. May's government is fighting a challenge to its decision to use prerogative powers to trigger Britain's exit from the European Union. The Supreme Court said earlier this month it would decide as quickly as possible whether May can lawfully invoke Article 50 without parliament's assent, the first step in the process of leaving. (Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) - Ukraine on Thursday reported its first combat death since Kiev agreed a new "indefinite" ceasefire deal with pro-Russian insurgents in the separatist east last week.

The military said the soldier was killed in fighting on Wednesday in the village of Kurti Blaka -- some 15 kilometres (nine miles) north of the militias' de facto capital of Donetsk.

The rebels did not report any casualties on their part.

The incident comes amid swelling hope that the 31-month conflict may be winding down after nearly 10,000 people have died.

The former Soviet republic accuses its neighbour Russia of launching the war in retaliation for the ouster of Ukraine's Moscow-backed president in February 2014.

Russia denies any role in the conflict.

The reported death does not necessarily mean the collapse of the ceasefire because monitors from the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have reported a "significant" decrease in fighting.

But it does mean sporadic violence is likely to continue and that shelling across the front line may go on even as the sides talk peace.

"There has been some de-escalation over the past days," said Alexander Hug of the OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission on Ukraine.

"The mission will not speculate whether this latest renewed commitment to the ceasefire will last," Hug told AFP.

The insurgents agreed to the truce last Friday -- two days after it was negotiated by Ukraine and Russia with the help of mediators from the OSCE.

The truce came after days of unusually heavy clashes that killed 10 Ukrainian troops and an unknown number of insurgents.

The Ukrainian military accused the militias of opening fire on its position 51 times since Wednesday morning.

It said the heaviest fighting focused around Donetsk and Mariupol - a Kiev-held Black Sea city that lies between separatist territories and Russian-annexed Crimea.

Mariupol also has a port and chemicals and steel industry whose capture would give the insurgents potential access to large cash flows.

The rebels accused Kiev's forces of opening mortar and grenade launcher fire on more than 500 occasions in the past day.

The number is impossible to verify and both sides regularly exaggerate the others' frequency of attack.
A new course titled "The Problem of Whiteness," to be taught at the University of Wisconsin at Madison has generated controversy after a Republican State legislator who chairs the assemblys committee on colleges and universities has dubbed it garbage and called for it to be rolled back.

Created by assistant professor Damon Sajnani in the African Studies Department, the course will explore how white people "consciously and unconsciously perpetuate institutional racism and how this, not only devastates communities of color but also perpetuates the oppression of most white folks along the lines of class and gender," according to the description.

The reading list and the inspiration behind the creation of the course include several prominent scholars who have written on racial identities and relations, such as Frantz Fanon and W.E.B. Du Bois and some more recent and contemporary thinkers and political commentators such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and George Yancy.

Perhaps most significantly, the course is being offered in a university where demographic data suggests that 2 percent of the student population identifies as black and more than 75 percent are white, according to the Washington Post.

But in a statement released by Dave Murphy of the Republican State Assembly last week, the lawmaker slammed the course for presuming that "white people are racist," and he mustered against taxpayers being "expected to pay for this garbage."







"I support academic freedom and free speechFree speech also means the public has the right to be critical of their public university. The universitys handling of controversies like this appears to the public as a lack of balance in intellectual openness and diversity of political thought on campus." he told The Washington Post.

Murphy also questioned the political positions held by professor Sajnani on Twitter, that was attached along with the statement condemning the course.

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I dont understand how a University that preaches political correctness can stand by a professor who openly condones violence against law enforcement and compares white voters to the KKK, said Murphy.









Meanwhile, in response to Murphy's questions, the University of Wisconsin defended the elective class.







"We believe this course, which is one of thousands offered at our university, will benefit students who are interested in developing a deeper understanding of race issuesThe course is a challenge and response to racism of all kinds." the school said in a statement, according to The Washington Post.

Though it is unclear at this point as to how effective the course will be for the students undertaking it, the controversy around it is reminiscent of the famous "Blue eyesBrown eyes" experiment designed by prominent educator and anti-discrimination activist Jane Elliot.

Having received mixed reactions and been described as both "Orwellian" and Evil by scholars and newspapers, the experiments legacy has been cemented by various studies on its efficacy that have been published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, among other places.

Here is a video one of the most iconic social experiment on race relations and discrimination conducted by Jane Elliott:

Related Articles
Public life in the Turkish coastal city Mersin was brought to a standstill on Thursday, December 29, after torrential downpours caused major flash flooding.

Turkish media, citing local authorities, said residents were warned to avoid leaving their homes as the majority of the city inundated. One woman reportedly died in the flooding.

This footage, shared by one resident, shows cars stranded in a flooded street and residents being evacuated in the front of an excavator. Credit: Twitter/scodelarin via Storyful
By David Ingram

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A western New York builder and former Republican nominee for governor was censured on Thursday by fellow members of the Buffalo Board of Education and asked to resign his seat for making racial slurs about President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.

The school board called a special meeting and approved a resolution demanding the resignation of Carl Paladino, a board member who ran unsuccessfully for New York governor in 2010. The resolution threatens proceedings to remove the outspoken conservative if he does not step down.

Paladino created a firestorm last week when he sent an email to a weekly newspaper saying he hoped "Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Her(e)ford."

Regarding Michelle Obama, Paladino said: "I'd like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla."

His comments were published in the holiday edition of Artvoice, which had surveyed Buffalo residents about what they would like to happen in 2017 and what they would like to see go away.

Paladino, a wealthy real estate developer and ally of President-elect Donald Trump, issued a statement on Tuesday apologizing for his comments. He also took a swipe at critics, calling them "parasites," and said Barack Obama was "a traitor to American values."

Paladino was elected in 2013 to the school board, which oversees a district with 34,000 students in the second-largest city in New York state.

During Thursday's meeting, which was broadcast online, some board members accused Paladino of acting like a bully and making remarks they would not tolerate from students.

"This level of hatred for African-Americans cannot and should not set policy for the education of African-American children," board member Paulette Woods said.

More than 70 percent of the district is non-white, according to the resolution.

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Members of the audience stood up and cheered when the resolution was approved.

Signed by six of the nine board members, the resolution says that if Paladino does not resign within 24 hours, the board will retain a lawyer to force his removal by the state's education commissioner.

The commissioner, MaryEllen Elia, is monitoring the situation in Buffalo and will review any removal request as quickly as possible, a spokeswoman said.

State education commissioners have removed four board members from districts in western New York in the past 24 years, the Buffalo News reported.

Paladino, a co-chairman of Trump's campaign in New York state, told a radio station on Wednesday that he would not leave the board voluntarily.

"I'm the agent of change. I'm the guy that exposed the underbelly of their corrupt and dysfunctional school system, and they want me gone from the scene," he said in the radio interview.

Paladino could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.

Trump's transition team has called Paladino's comments "absolutely reprehensible," USA Today reported.

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and David Gregorio)
Miami (AFP) - Amazon's connected personal assistant Alexa may have witnessed a murder. But will she talk?

Investigators in Arkansas recovered the Amazon Echo speaker infused with artificial intelligence from a murder scene, and want to know what Alexa heard, according to lawyers on both sides.

The case centers around Victor Collins, 47, who was found strangled in November 2015 in a bathtub of the Bentonville home of James Bates, who is accused of the crime.

In the investigation, an officer found an Amazon Echo device at Bates's house -- the small cylinder-shaped speaker which responds to voice commands under the name "Alexa."

Prosecutors have obtained a search warrant which would require Amazon to release any relevant data from the device, according to a statement from Benton County prosecutor Nathan Smith.

"It is incumbent on law enforcement officers to examine this data to determine if it has any relevance to the crime," Smith's office said in a statement to AFP.

The case raises questions about privacy and technology at a time when more devices are recording data about users' movements and actions.

It comes after a legal stalemate earlier this year when Apple refused to help unlock a phone used by one of the perpetrators of the attack in San Bernardino, California.

The request, reported by media earlier this week, is believed to be the first time authorities have sought such information from a smart device in a criminal investigation.

Bates's defense attorney Kimberly Weber told AFP that any evidence from the electronic device would likely be "exculpatory" but nonetheless welcomed Amazon's decision.

"We are really applauding Amazon's effort in protecting the privacy concerns of my client," Weber said.

Smith said however the case "is really about seeking justice for the victim" and that the warrant "is the constitutionally authorized means for law enforcement to conduct searches of homes, property or computer devices like the Amazon Echo."

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Amazon did not respond to an AFP request for comment.

The US online giant has not released specific sales data but said this week it sold "millions" of the connected speakers over the holiday season.

Some analysts estimate Amazon sold at least five million of the devices from the release in 2014 until the start of the holiday shopping period.

The Echo and similar Amazon devices are designed to be always on, and can respond to commands, such as queries about the weather or news, and can connect to smart appliances in the home.
Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama on Thursday ordered a series of diplomatic and economic sanctions against Russia over the hacking which US officials say was aimed at disrupting the November election.

Below is a list of the key points outlined by the US government in a raft of documents from various agencies.

Obama added that the US may take "a variety" of additional actions, "some of which will not be publicized."

- Sanctioned entities -

Economic sanctions will hit Russia's two main intelligence agencies -- the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) and the Federal Security Service (FSB) -- freezing their assets and blocking them from the US financial system.

Similar sanctions will be slapped on three other entities:

-- the Special Technology Center in St. Petersburg, said to have assisted the GRU in intelligence operations;

-- Zorsecurity, also known as Esage Lab, which provides technical research;

-- the Professional Association of Designers of Data Processing Systems, a group which provides training to the GRU.

- Sanctioned individuals -

-- Current GRU chief Igor Valentinovich Korobov

-- Deputy GRU chief Sergey Aleksandrovich Gizunov

-- First deputy GRU chiefs Igor Olegovich Kostyukov and Vladimir Stepanovich Alexseyev.

A separate US Treasury order sanctions two Russian individuals for hacking into US banks, corporations, universities and other organizations:

-- Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev, accused of stealing over $100 million from computer hacking

-- Aleksey Alekseyevich Belan, said to have led "malicious cyber-enabled misappropriation of personal identifiers for private financial gain" by compromising three US-based e-commerce companies.

Bogachev and Belan are both on the FBI's "most wanted" list, which means they could face criminal charges. A $3 million reward is offered for information on Bogachev and $100,000 for Belan.

- Expulsions -

The State Department declared 35 officials from the Russian Embassy in Washington and the Russian Consulate in San Francisco "persona non grata," requiring them to leave US soil within 72 hours.

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"They were acting in a manner inconsistent with their diplomatic status," the White House said -- diplomatic speak for the fact that they were "intelligence operatives," as Obama called them.

- Compounds shut down -

Russian diplomats will also be denied access to two Moscow-owned compounds, one in Maryland and one in New York, according to the State Department.

Obama said the compounds were being used for "intelligence-related purposes."
* Palm eases after two previous sessions of gains

* Market down on weaker soy, year-end profit taking - trader

* Palm may climb to 3,415 rgt in 3 months - Technicals

(Updates latest prices)

By Emily Chow

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Malaysian palm oil futures

eased on Thursday, dipping after two sessions of gains on

year-end profit-taking and in line with declines in rival

soyoil.

The tropical oil had risen to its highest in a

week-and-a-half on Wednesday, supported by a rebound in exports

and tight market supplies.

Benchmark palm oil futures for March delivery on

the Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Exchange were down 0.7 percent at

3,106 ringgit ($693) a tonne at the end of the trading day.

Traded volumes stood at 43,089 lots of 25 tonnes each in a

day.

"Towards the year-end there is some profit-taking after book

closures. Furthermore soy oil is also not supportive," said a

futures trader in Kuala Lumpur.

"However, the tightness is still there, production is down,

so the market is still on the upside moving forward."

Output in Malaysia, the world's second-largest producer,

declines seasonally in the last quarter of the year. It also

drops at the year-end when the monsoon season arrives, as the

fruit-harvesting process is disrupted by rainfall which

contributes to tight supplies.

Output in November fell 6.1 percent to 1.57 million tonnes,

according to government data. Traders and analysts said it could

remain weak in December.

Palm oil may retest resistance at 3,163 ringgit per tonne,

with a good chance of breaking above this level and rising more

towards the next resistance at 3,415 ringgit over the next three

months, according to Reuters market analyst for commodities and

energy technicals Wang Tao.

Palm prices are also impacted by the performance of rival

edible oils, as they compete for a share in the global vegetable

oils market.

The March soybean oil contract on the CBOT was up 0.1

percent, while the May soybean oil contract on the Dalian

Commodity Exchange fell 0.2 percent.

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The May contract for Dalian palm olein dropped 0.5

percent.

Palm, soy and crude oil prices at 1126 GMT

Contract Month Last Change Low High Volume

MY PALM OIL JAN7 3197 -17.00 3177 3197 481

MY PALM OIL FEB7 3153 -20.00 3133 3169 2975

MY PALM OIL MAR7 3103 -24.00 3084 3128 20676

CHINA PALM OLEIN MAY7 6234 -30.00 6196 6282 665960

CHINA SOYOIL MAY7 6996 -14.00 6950 7036 409550

CBOT SOY OIL MAR7 35.14 +0.06 34.82 35.19 6340

INDIA PALM OIL DEC6 582.30 +3.10 578.10 583.5 245

INDIA SOYOIL JAN7 718.7 +3.85 714.6 718.8 15610

NYMEX CRUDE FEB7 53.84 -0.22 53.46 54.07 59734

Palm oil prices in Malaysian ringgit per tonne

CBOT soy oil in U.S. cents per pound

Dalian soy oil and RBD palm olein in Chinese yuan per tonne

India soy oil in Indian rupee per 10 kg

Crude in U.S. dollars per barrel

($1 = 4.4830 ringgit)

($1 = 68.1500 Indian rupees)

($1 = 6.9542 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Emily Chow; Editing by Richard Pullin and Susan

Thomas)
BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP)  The owner of a Vermont ski resort is denying fraud allegations filed against him by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In documents filed last week in federal court in Miami, Ariel Quiros (KWEHR'-ohs) denies that he was behind a $200 million fraud at Jay Peak ski resort.

Quiros and former Jay Peak President Bill Stenger were accused by Vermont and the SEC of misusing $200 million raised from foreign investors for developments through a special visa program. Quiros was also accused of improperly diverting $50 million for personal use.

Stenger has since settled his case with the SEC.

The Burlington Free Press (http://bfpne.ws/2iFhCz4 ) reports Quiros has asked the court to dismiss the SEC's complaint in its entirety and award him his costs, including "discretionary costs and attorney's fees."

___

Information from: The Burlington Free Press, http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com
Even though Kahaani 2 couldnt fare as well as its first part, Vidya Balan with her undampened spirits is looking forward to Begum Jaan and Tumhari Sullu next year. And while the actress has already worked with a myriad of stars, Vidya recently expressed her wish to work with Ranbir Kapoor.

Recommended Read: Ranbir Kapoor to shoot a cameo for Ronnie Screwvalas next!

During an interview with a leading daily when Vidya was asked about who is that one male actor who will make a lethal combination with her on screen, the 37-year-old answered, I dont know about a lethal combination, but it will be lovely to work with Ranbir Kapoor because I really like him as an actor.

Vidya also opened up about Alia Bhatt and was all praises for her. Talking about the 23-year-olds performance in Udta Punjab she said, I loved Alia Bhatt in Udta Punjab. I didnt expect to see her in that role I think that is admirable and that really surprised me.
Spoilers abound for those who havent seen the Dec. 28 episode of Vikings.

Vikings began with Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel), but it was never just his story. There was shieldmaiden Lagertha, and Ragnars brother Rollo, and, later, his sons. Yet Ragnar bound all threads together. And now, as history  or, at least, his story  told us would happen, Ragnar is dead, cast into a snake pit by the vengeance-seeking King Aelle of Northumbria (Ivan Kaye) after being handed over by his friend (and enemy) King Ecbert of Wessex (Linus Roache). Vikings showrunner Michael Hirst talked to Variety about putting Ragnar and Fimmel through hell, and what comes next.

When did you tell Travis Fimmel this was coming? Presumably he knew just from the historical nature of the series.

Travis came to the show late because I was very unhappy about the people they were trying to cast. I didnt want a loud Viking, I wanted an intelligent, quiet, thoughtful Viking, and it took Travis quite a long time to come forward. So actually all he had was the first few scripts and the bible for the first season. Now, at the end of the bible for the first season, Ragnar dies. So as far as Travis knew, this was just a one-season job. But as soon as we saw the potential, the great actors, it became clear that Ragnar was needed for much longer.

You really seemed to put him through hell in those final scenes.

I was there that day. It was extraordinary, for everyone who was there. It was a very memorable scene. There are aspects of Ragnars death which do echo the Passion of Christ, which is why, without being gratuitous, it had to be very graphic, partly because it made the death so much more significant. You see through the torture Aelle does on Ragnar that hes trying to break Ragnar, and Ragnar cant be broken. Its a great triumph of the spirit. Just as the Crucifixion is graphic, this must be as well.

Theres also of course that human element to it, which is: a man suffering. And indeed, that was shot in Ireland in the deepest winter. It was bitter and pouring rain, and theyd been in that part of the forest shooting for days. It was a terrible mudbath.

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And finally there was the moment where Ragnar is in the cage above the pit. Travis was actually suspended in that cage for hours, and the bottom really did open, and the real Travis fell. Travis is a very laid-back Australian, and when I asked him how he felt about shooting his own death and he said, Im not worried about it, mate. But when the time came, he was deeply invested in it. We spent a long time working on the script. When he was in the cage and screaming out those words, it was really him.

When I saw it I wept, knowing that this was the end of a journey that Ragnar and I and Travis and I had been on. It was a creation of both me and Travis together. It was a very moving day. It carries a huge charge in the show, it really does pay off all the hours weve invested in him. We do death very well in Vikings, but this was a particularly moving.

It also felt so small, in a way. This wasnt a big, showy execution. It was a couple dozen people in the woods.

Its realistic and intimate, and because of that its more deeply felt and experienced. If you have special-effects armies around and a heroic death, that is essentially an empty death. It is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. You were so up close and personal here. You couldnt escape it, you couldnt look away to anything else. The most significant deaths do happen normally in history, it only becomes clear later how significant it was. I wanted it to be as intimate as possible, so we were looking into his eyes.

Whos going to be hit hardest by his death?

It has a profound effect on Ecbert. They were so close despite being so different  they felt a kinship. I always felt the two prior episodes were part of the death, really, the two-hander with Ragnar and Ecbert.

But of course it hits all the sons. Death motivates the sons, gives them a new purpose in life. It informs what happens next in the major storyline of the show.

Ive always said this was going to be the story of Ragnar and his sons. Ragnar never goes away. Weve shot nearly 25 episodes after the death of Ragnar, and were following the sons still. But Ragnar never goes away, because his presence is still there, as long as Lagertha and Floki and Bjorn are alive. He lives on through his ambitions for his people, and some of his sons pick up on that. Although hes dead, like Athelstan, he doesnt go away. Hes still part of the lives of the people.

This is a saga. This is my saga of Ragnar and his sons. Historically speaking, Ivar and Bjorn did actually become more famous than Ragnar.

How soon do Ivar and the others return for their revenge? Ivar, we know from history, was one of the leaders of the Great Heathen Army.

It starts the next episode. This is the reaction of the sons to the death of their father. And Ragnar of course had set it up himself, by taking Ivar with him to England. Hes set up the revenge plot. Bjorn will return. All the sons will be part of what was called the Great Heathen Army.

One of the most striking things about Ragnar, just before his death, is just how much older he looks than when we met him, even though in the real world its only been a few years since we first saw Travis as Ragnar.

Hes certainly weathered. Hes got all his experiences written on his face. It was very important to me  there are some shows where people never get old and nothing ever changes. And Vikings is about real people and real events. We have people who get older and die. So that process is very important. When I look myself back at that first season, my God, he looks like a young guy! He looks fresh! Its only been four years. But these are huge changes that hes gone through. Weve been on this huge journey with him. Its all written in his face  and on his head, I suppose.

Related stories

'Vikings': Alex Hgh Andersen Talks Ivar's Bloodlust, Relationship With Ragnar

'Vikings' Midseason Premiere: EP Michael Hirst Breaks Down Ragnar's Return (SPOILERS)

Leonardo DiCaprio Producing History Documentary Series 'Frontiersmen'
We want to recreate Kendall Jenners mom jean and turtleneck look ASAP!

We seriously want to recreate Kendall Jenners mom jean and turtleneck look ASAP! Its the ideal style for winter  trust us.

On Wednesday, Jenner stepped out in West Hollywood, California after grabbing lunch with friends and her style was flawless.

The 21-year-old model looked ah-mazing in a beige sweater  turtleneck style  and high-waisted jeans. Okay, they are total mom jeans and were not mad about it.

The light wash jean color paired with the slouchy sweater are the perfect winter combo. Oh, and those black booties, with lace-up detailing are to die for!

PS: If we look this good when we try on mom jeans then theres a good chance were never wearing skinny jeans again!

Despite the fact that this Jenner ensemble is ideal for this time of year, the Victorias Secret Angel has a lot of other looks that we can use for jean winter inspiration below.

You too can be a supermodel with the same killer mom jeans, a cute tee and of course a winter fur coat (ideally faux).

we're off! A photo posted by Kendall (@kendalljenner) on Nov 27, 2016 at 5:53am PST

Or, you could rock these sassy jeans with a star on the bum. Be prepared for a lot of starring at your butt, though. Its not necessarily a bad thing, but were warning you just the same.

arts n' crafts A photo posted by Kendall (@kendalljenner) on Nov 12, 2016 at 2:51pm PST

For a more laid-back look, you can rock bell-bottom pants and an off-the-shoulder top. It screams hippie!

baby surf A photo posted by Kendall (@kendalljenner) on Jul 16, 2016 at 5:36pm PDT

If youre feeling extra sassy, try Jenners star jeans by Marc Jacobs, in a bold stripped print. They are perfect for a girls night out.

look how they shine for you @marcjacobs  A photo posted by Kendall (@kendalljenner) on Feb 18, 2016 at 4:02pm PST

Which of Jenners jean looks are you going to try? Do you dare rock mom jeans and a turtleneck? We vote, yes!

The post We want to recreate Kendall Jenners mom jean and turtleneck look ASAP! appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Debbie Reynolds, who passed away on Dec. 28, just one day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher, was just 19 years old when she accepted the role of Kathy Selden in the musical Singin in the Rain. The job required Reynolds to sing, dance, and keep up with both Donald OConnor and the legendary Gene Kelly. It was the part of a lifetime that could shoot her in to super-stardom. There was just one small hurdleshe had almost no experience singing or dancing.

That small detail didnt stop Reynolds from signing on to the film. To dance with Gene Kelly and Donald OConnor in three monthswell, anyone else shouldve passed out, Reynolds told the American Film Institute in 2012. But I didnt. I just thought, well, lets get started.

While Kelly was unimpressed by the casting choice, Reynolds proved him wrong, as can be seen in this clip from the film. Turns out she may have had a little help from another dance legendFred Astaire, who found Reynolds crying under a piano and helped her practice, according to this charming anecdote in Fox News.

Reynolds was not only able to keep up with Kelly and OConnor, but danced until her feet were bloodyliterally, according to an interview in the UKs Sunday Express and then danced some more.

In retrospect, Reynolds knew that she had been naive to take the role with so little experience. I was so dumb, she told AFI. I didnt feel you could fail. I felt [the part] was me, and I marched straight ahead. As can be seen in the clip from Singin in the Rain, she resoundingly succeeded. May we all be so dumb.
One day after the death of her mother, Carrie Fisher, Billie Lourd's grandmother, Debbie Reynolds, died as well.

While the 24-year-old actress is undoubtedly going through a difficult time right now, just a few weeks ago she was in much better spirits, even demonstrating her close bond with Reynolds during a Dec. 12 appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers.

WATCH: Taylor Lautner, Ariana Grande & More 'Scream Queens' Stars Send Billie Lourd Love After Carrie Fisher's Death

The actress is receiving an outpouring of love following her mother's death on Tuesday.

"First of all, she gets really upset when I get called 'Carrie Fisher's daughter.' She wants people to call me 'Debbie Reynolds' granddaughter.' It's very offensive to her," Lourd joked to Meyers of her grandmother. "She does not like to be cut out -- not at all. She started it. It's her fault [that I'm an actress.]"

Though Lourd's family has since embraced her following in their acting footsteps, the Scream Queens star explained that Reynolds, who starred in iconic '50s and '60s films like Singin' in the Rain and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, was particularly apprehensive about her getting into acting.

"She called me down to her house and had this binder of these diaries that she had written when she first started doing Singin' in the Rain. She sat me down on her couch and said, 'OK, I need you to read these, dear' -- in her '50s actress voice," Lourd said.

"I started reading them and they're all in second person. They are somewhere along the lines of, 'You're sitting in the makeup chair. It's five in the morning. They've pulled out all your eyebrows and you have no eyelashes left. Your hair is a shell of itself, and all you wanted to be is a gym teacher,'" Lourd shared, imitating her grandmother.

Lourd, of course, decided to pursue acting anyway, and even made her film debut as Lieutenant Connix, opposite her mother's Princess Leia, in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

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See the rest of Lourd's spot-on impression of Reynolds below:

WATCH: Carrie Fisher Dies at 60: Stars React to Actress' Death

Reynolds died on Wednesday after being rushed to the hospital for a possible stroke. Her son, Todd Fisher, told ET that his mother's last words to him were about how much she missed her daughter, who died on Tuesday morning after going into cardiac arrest during a flight from London to Los Angeles last week.

"She missed her daughter and wanted to very much be with her," Todd said. "She had been very strong the last several days. [There was] enormous stress on her, obviously. And this morning she said those words to me and 15 minutes later she had a stroke and virtually left."

RELATED: Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher's Powerful Bond: Looking Back At Their Sweetest Mother-Daughter Moments

See more in the video below.

Related Articles
Debbie Reynolds died Wednesday at the age of 84, one day after the death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher. The bond between mother and daughter, members of a Hollywood dynasty and both successful actresses in their own right, was on display back in 2015 when Fisher presented her mother with the Life Achievement honor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Not only was my grandmother her mother, she is the grandmother to my alleged daughter, Fisher began her introduction. It also turns out that were neighbors.

She continued,  has been more than a mother to me, not much, but definitely more. Shes been an unsolicited stylist, interior decorator, and marriage counselor, Fisher said. Admittedly, I found it difficult to share my mother with her adoring fans, who treated her like she was part of their family. She has led two lives, public and private, sometimes concurrently, sometimes not.

After taking the stage, Reynolds playfully joked back with her daughter with a story referencing her most famous film, 1952s Singin in the Rain. I had a wonderful hairdo in the film, Reynolds said. I had a big bun. So I warned my daughter Carrie  who just got a part as Princess Leia in Star Wars  I said, Be careful of any weird hairdos. So luckily George gave her two buns.

Reynolds told the crowd that Singin in the Rain was her all-time favorite role, and also brought up her Oscar-nominated turn in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. In that movie, I got to sing a wonderful song I Aint Down Yet, she said. Well, I aint.

Watch Fisher and Reynolds at the 2015 SAG Awards above, beginning at the 1:34 mark.
The last time Debbie Reynolds, who died today at the age of 84, stood in front of her peers, accepting their love and adoration, was at the 21st annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 25, 2015, at which she was honored with SAG's Life Achievement Award.

Her health in decline, she had been nervous about attending the event - her anxiety about making such a public appearance is captured in the new documentary Bright Lights: Starring Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, directed by Alexis Bloom and Fisher Stevens, which debuted at this past May's Cannes Film Festival and which HBO is scheduled to air in March.

But once she found herself at the Shrine Auditorium and the spotlight was trained on her, ever the trouper, Reynolds rose to the occasion.

Read more: Debbie Reynolds, Mother of Carrie Fisher and Star of 'Singin' in the Rain,' Dies at 84

Her daughter Carrie Fisher was on hand to introduce her mother. "Actually, she has been more than a mother to me - not much, but definitely more," Fisher said, earning laughs. "She's been an unsolicited stylist, interior decorator and marriage counselor." She continued, "She has led two lives, public and private, sometimes concurrently, sometimes not," citing her mother's illustrious career as movie star, recording artist, Broadway performer, nightclub entertainer, best-selling author, Hollywood preservationist and co-founder of the charity group the Thalians, which has raised more than $30 million to mental health, and Fisher added jokingly, "four-and-half million of that money is allocated just for me."

Making her way to the stage amid a standing ovation, Reynolds spoke of how Singin' in the Rain was her favorite movie. "I had a good time making that picture, wearing myself out," she recounted, noting that her hairdo in the movie ncluded "an ugly bun" and so when Carrie was cast as Princess Leia in Star Wars, she warned her, "Be careful of any weird hairdo. So, luckily George [Lucas] gave her two buns. Thank you, George." Standing beside her mother, Carrie's delight in her mom's humor was evident.

Reynolds also cited another of her favorite movies The Unsinkable Molly Brown in which she sang one of her signature tunes "I Ain't Down Yet," concluding, "Well, I ain't. Thank you all very much for this wonderful award."

Read more: Hollywood Pays Tribute to "Legendary Entertainer" Debbie Reynolds
While fighting in western Syria seems to have turned in favor of dictator Bashar Assad and his allies in Iran and Russia, US-led coalition strikes on ISIS continue in the eastern part of the country.

The terror group's oil infrastructure remains a prime target, and a November 25 airstrike near Abu Kamal, close to the Iraqi border, went after several oil wellheads and a pump jack, an important piece of equipment for getting oil out of the ground.

You can see a clip of the strike below.

The US-led coalition launched three strikes near Abu Kamal on November 25, destroying four oil wellheads and an oil pump jack.

That same day, slightly west of Abu Kamal in Dayr Az Zawr, two strikes reportedly destroyed three pieces of oil-refinement equipment, three oil-storage tanks, and an oil wellhead.

ISIS has relied heavily on oil revenue to finance its operations, and the US-led coalition has put special emphasis on attacking the infrastructure needed to get that oil out of the ground and to the market.

A few weeks after the November 25 airstrikes, coalition aircraft destroyed 168 oil-tanker trucks on the ground near Palmyra, in central Syria. That destruction cost the terrorist group about $2 million in revenue, according to Operation Inherent Resolve officials.

isis oil

While the coalition has been able to target ISIS' oil infrastructure, fighting positions, and other resources from the air, progress against the group on the ground in eastern Syria has been somewhat halting.

While efforts by Kurdish militants and their Arab partners in Syria to recapture Raqqa, ISIS' capital city, have been bogged down in recent weeks, the coalition announced on December 12 that Syrian Democratic Forces had liberated 700 square miles of ISIS-controlled territory, retaking dozens of villages around the city, and were starting the next phase of their operation to isolate Raqqa.

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These developments come after Syrian government forces, backed by Iran and Russia, retook the northwestern city of Aleppo, parts of which had been held by rebels for years.

putin assad

That victory appears to have buoyed the outlook in Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus.

The recently reported outline of a deal being discussed by Russia, Iran, and Turkey would divide Syria into zones of influence for those countries, leaving Assad in power as president for at least a few years.

The purported deal appears after numerous fruitless attempts by the US and other western powers to broker a peace in Syria's bloody, over five-year-long civil war  and may in part be inspired by Moscow's desire to reassert itself on the world stage.

"It's a very big prize for them if they can show they're out there in front changing the world," Sir Tony Brenton, Britain's former ambassador to Moscow, told Reuters. "We've all grown used to the United States doing that and had rather forgotten that Russia used to play at the same level."

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, continuing a nearly two-year trend that suggests a solid job market.

THE NUMBERS: Weekly requests for jobless aid fell 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 265,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The less volatile four-week moving average for claims was 263,000.

Over the past year, the number of people collecting benefits has fallen almost 5 percent to 2.1 million.

THE TAKEAWAY: The historically low number of people seeking jobless aid is a positive sign for the economy.

Weekly jobless claims below 300,000 often point to healthy hiring levels. The low level of applications indicates that employers are holding onto workers and possibly looking to expand. Claims have stayed below 300,000 for 95 straight weeks, the longest streak since 1970.

KEY DRIVERS: Consumer spending has been strong enough to sustain job growth, even though global pressures appear to have stunted overall economic gains during the 2016.

U.S. employers have added 2.25 million jobs over the past 12 months. And in November, the unemployment rate fell to a nine-year low of 4.6 percent.
When it comes to travel, the wet season often has a negative connotation, conjuring images of unhappy, umbrella-toting tourists puddle-hopping between shuttered restaurants and closed shops under cloudy skies. Still, as counterintuitive as it sounds, sometimes it's best to travel during the wetter months and reap the benefits of off-season travel. Aside from lower prices and dwindling crowds, there are also other selling points for visiting certain destinations when they're at their wettest. From Turkey's Mediterranean islands to Oregon's Willamette Valley, here are six noteworthy destinations where precipitation enhances the experience.

[See: 10 Bucket-List Destinations That Don't Cost a Fortune.]

Costa Rica

When to go: May-November

May through November is a great time to visit Costa Rica. The country's wet season, often characterized by drizzles and downpours in the afternoon, is known as the green season. The landscape is especially lush and the rainforest is teeming with fascinating creatures that are more active at this time of year. And since there are fewer tourists on the trails, more elusive species like the jaguar are easier to spot. One of the country's premier activities, whitewater rafting, is also best experienced during these months when the rivers are raging and rapids replace exposed rocks. The Costa Rica Marriott Hotel San Jose even offers complimentary GoPro rentals to guests to capture outdoor adventures. On the Caribbean coast, Tortuguero National Park comes alive with more than 20,000 nesting sea turtles laying eggs on 22 miles of protected beach. Here, travelers can witness this surreal scene starring leatherbacks, loggerheads and the endangered Atlantic green turtle on nightly tours led by licensed guides.

Thailand

When to go: July-October

Thailand's wet season, from July through October, begins with a big party geared toward culture-minded locals and visitors. In May and June, the villages around Chiang Mai launch handmade bamboo and PVC-pipe rockets and compete in Bun Bang Fai, or rocket festivals, to usher in the wet season. The tradition started centuries ago when the Lao people believed firing rockets into the sky would trigger months of moisture for their rice paddies. Aside from partaking in the celebratory rain pleas and parades, adventurous travelers can take advantage of the higher water levels and whitewater raft in the mountains and cruise the scenic Mekong River separating the country from Laos. In the southern, coastal parts of the country, plenty of deals can be found at luxury beach resorts like Dream Phuket Hotel & Spa. What's more, the daily showers, which usually occur in the afternoon and last for a few hours, offer the perfect opportunity for a massage break.

Story continues

Turkey

When to go: October-January

Turkey is an adventurer's playground. Between the Mediterranean islands, mosque- and monument-filled Istanbul and the rugged Black Sea coastline, there are a wealth of sights to explore, even during the wetter months. October is the best time to visit the islands and visit the seaside town of Marmaris; at this time of year, average highs hover in the 80s and most of the party crowd is back in school. And November is ideal to enjoy solitary experiences like hiking amid the rolling hills along the Black Sea. January ushers in a prime time to ski at the resorts in Anatolia or enjoy sightseeing in Istanbul without hordes of visitors at your side. After all, Istanbul's city of 14 million can be overwhelming during the height of the summer tourist season; in the winter, it's much less intimidating. There may be more puddles in the streets, but they don't put a damper on touring mosques or bartering for spices in the Grand Bazaar.

[See: 8 Ethical Travel Destinations to Visit in 2017.]

Rwanda

When to go: February-May

Technically, Rwanda has two rainy seasons: February through May and October through November. But considering that the tiny landlocked country's top attraction is its primate population, the first, longer wet season is an optimal time to see endangered mountain gorillas. Because of the rain and cooler temperatures, the roving groups feed at lower elevations and are easier to locate on the trekking tours. Though the rain can make for muddier hiking conditions, drizzles and downpours usually occur first thing in the morning or late at night and only last for an hour or two. In the southwestern corner of the country, May is an ideal month for chimpanzee trekking in Nyungwe Forest National Park. The trees are beginning to bloom, and guests at the park's premier property, Nyungwe Forest Lodge, can also arrange for a guided hike to the cascading Kamiranzovu waterfalls.

Oregon

When to go: November-January

Oregon embraces its wet season (November to January) with a welcoming attitude that quickly rubs off on visitors. Each month receives about 10 inches of precipitation, yielding plenty of scenic photo ops. Amateur photographers can chase storms alongside professionals who come to capture the raging Pacific along the coast or the magnificent falls at Columbia River Gorge Scenic Area near the Washington border. Plus, there's statewide tax-free shopping at famous locations like Portland's Powell's City of Books, the world's largest bookstore. Travelers will have no trouble finding a coveted seat by the fireplace in a tasting room in one of Willamette Valley's 400-plus wineries at this time of year. Valley residents like Kristin Fintil, the innkeeper at Chehalem Ridge Bed & Breakfast, fondly refer to the rain as "liquid sunshine." While the wet season is a festive time to plan a trip, keep in mind a can't-miss celebration -- the Oregon Truffle Festival -- takes place at the end of January.

[See: 9 Ways to Save for Your Dream Trip in 2017.]

Colombia

When to go: October-November

Colombia's climate varies by region, but it's safe to say October and November are two of the country's wettest months. Since higher water levels make narrow waterways more navigable, Amazon River cruise departures during these months can get passengers further inland and up to 30 feet closer to the canopy's elusive wildlife. In the coffee-growing highlands, adventure tour operator Intrepid Travel offers Cafe Colombia tours in November so guests can learn about the planting process that takes place when the soil has the most moisture. November is an ideal wet season month to visit destinations along the Caribbean coast, especially Cartagena. Even before the dry season officially begins in December, the city celebrates more sunny days than downpours. Every second week in November, Colombians gather in Cartagena for a full week of festivities surrounding the National Beauty Pageant. Humidity is high, but so is the average daily temperature, hovering in the high 80s, so it's a good time to catch a boat taxi and cool off at the nearby island beaches.
donald trump phone

President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump spoke in what was described as a "positive" phone call on Wednesday, the White House announced in a statement.

The note undercuts earlier comments from Trump that suggested hope for a stable transition was diminishing.

"Today's call, like the others since the election, was positive and focused on continuing a smooth and effective transition," the White House said in the statement.

"The president and president-elect committed to staying in touch over the next several weeks and agreed their respective teams would continue to work together to effectuate a smooth transition of power on January 20th."

Earlier Wednesday, Trump appeared to turn on Obama over the president's comments that he would have defeated Trump in the election had he been constitutionally allowed to run for a third term.

"Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks," Trump said in a tweet. "Thought it was going to be a smooth transition  NOT!"

A day earlier, Trump tweeted once more to dispute Obama's claim.

"President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me," Trump said on Twitter. "He should say that but I say NO WAY!"

The comments were a turnaround from what appeared to be a conciliatory relationship between Trump and Obama. Since Trump began his transition to power in November, the two met at the White House, have spoken on the phone multiple times, and before this week were generally praiseful of each other.

Trump said his Wednesday phone conversation with Obama was "very nice"  further compounding the mixed signals.

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Galapagos NV GLPGis a Medial-Biomedical and Genetics company that could be an interesting play for investors. That is because, not only does the stock have decent short-term momentum, but it is seeing solid activity on the earnings estimate revision front as well.

These positive earnings estimate revisions suggest that analysts are becoming more optimistic on GLPGs earnings for the coming quarter and year. In fact, consensus estimates have moved sharply higher for both of these time frames over the past four weeks, suggesting that Galapagos could be a solid choice for investors.

Current Quarter Estimates for GLPG

In the past 30 days, 2 estimates have gone higher for Galapagos while none have gone lower in the same time period. The trend has been pretty favorable too, with estimates narrowing from loss of 38 cents a share 30 days ago, to earnings of 25 cents, a significant move.

Current Year Estimates for GLPG

GALAPAGOS -ADR Price and Consensus

GALAPAGOS -ADR Price and Consensus | GALAPAGOS -ADR Quote

Meanwhile, Galapagoss current year figures are also looking quite promising, with 1 estimate moving higher in the past month, compared to none lower. The consensus estimate trend has also seen a boost for this time frame, narrowing from loss of 80 cents per share 30 days ago to loss of 16 cents per share today, an increase of 80%.

Bottom Line

The stock has also started to move higher lately, adding 5.3% over the past four weeks, suggesting that investors are starting to take note of this impressive story. So investors may definitely want to consider this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock to profit in the near future. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2017

In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-hold tickers for the entirety of 2017? Who wouldn't? As of early December, the 2016 Top 10 produced 5 double-digit winners including oil and natural gas giant Pioneer Natural Resources which racked up a stellar +50% gain. The new list is painstakingly hand-picked from 4,400 companies covered by the Zacks Rank. Be among the very first to see it>>



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Spinelli will look a little different soon. Bradford Anderson will be recast for a few episodes of General Hospital in 2017. However, it seems the man fans love as Spinelli wont be gone from Port Charles for too long.

Anderson is leaving the ABC soap temporarily to take a role on Homeland. The 37-year-old actor is a big fan of the Emmy-award winning show, so he noted on Facebook that this job is exciting for him. However, he also revealed that the Showtime drama hired him at the last minute. There wasnt time to write Spinelli out, so General Hospital had to find a new actor.

And just wait til you see who they found... The perfect choice. I for one can't wait to watch, Anderson wrote.

Blake Berris will take over the role, TVLine reports. Hell play Spinelli for several episodes in mid-January. Days of Our Lives fans will remember that he played Nick Fallon on the NBC soap from 2006 to 2014. He also appeared on Supergirl and Pretty Little Liars this year. Anderson hopes his fans will embrace his replacement.

I know some might rush to negativity, but Id like to urge everyone to think about how unique our genre is, and how soaps truly embody the spirit of the show must go on, Anderson wrote.

The replacement is only temporary. Berris took to Twitter to assure fans that his run would be short and noted that hed have his own take on the role.

General Hospital airs weekdays on ABC.

Bradford Anderson

Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for The Hollywood Christmas Parade

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Photo credit: Instagram

From Cosmopolitan

Praepitcha Smatsorabudh's Instagram account, Rich Girl's Collection, features over 100 photos of designer handbags - Givenchy, YSL, Fendi, Celine, Balenciaga, you name the brand, she had their merch, basically. (As befits a "Rich Girl's" Insta account, photos also showed her dining out in style, traveling in style, and, well, owning a pair of high-fashion clogs.)

According to federal prosecutors, however, Smatsorabudh funded her "Rich Girl" lifestyle thanks to an elaborate scheme which saw her buy designer handbags from stores, then return fakes she had ordered from factories in Hong Kong and China. (She'd then sell most of the real-deal bags online, as well as, allegedly, more fakes too.) The Daily Mail cites an email investigators found she'd written to one factory, which reads "The best fake bag Ive ever seen! Can you send me more ... from this factory. They make bag IMPaCABLE!!!!"

Using as many as 16 different credit cards at any one time, Smatsorabudh targeted different stores, and stores' branches, to avoid detection. She most often shopped at T J Maxx, though, and at one point was reportedly the store's "biggest online customer in the world." Prosecutors say, in a period of just over a year, she returned 226 bags, with her refunds coming to just over $400,000. T J Maxx contacted police after noticing the patterns in her behavior, however, and a sting operation was set up. Federal officials later raided her house and found 572 (!!!) designer bags there, a mix of real and counterfeit items.

In court, Smatsorabudh acknowledged that her actions were "so wrong" and that she felt she "deserved" to go to jail. Her attorney argued, though, that her "compulsion" for designer handbags was borne out of "isolation and loneliness," and "became a substitute for human connection." And for what it's worth, in his sentencing - Smatsorabudh received a jail term of 30 months, and is likely to be deported to Thailand, her home country, following her release - the judge presiding over her trial offered some damning praise: "I think what you did was ingenious, he said. Its stealing, but the Internet has given us so many more ways to steal. . . . I thought Id seen everything."

Story continues

All to fittingly, the last photo Smatsorabudh shared on her Insta is not a pricy purse, but a motivational quote:

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A handbag-selling con artist cheated department stores out of a fortune and duped countless customers. (Photo: Getty)

The truth usually comes out, as one woman is learning the hard way now that her illegal money-making scam has been revealed, according to ABC News. Praepitcha Smatsorabudh of Arlington, Va., has spent years buying designer handbags  including Celine, Fendi, Givenchy, and Yves Saint Laurent  from department stores, then purchasing cheap knockoffs and returning the bogus bags for the full price she paid for the authentic ones. Then she sold the real designer accessories for thousands of dollars on Instagram.

Authorities caught on to the 41-year-olds racket, though, and arrested her last May. On Wednesday, Smatsorabudh was sentenced to 30 months in prison, according to the Daily Mail, in addition to three years of supervised release. Shes also been ordered to pay $403,250.81 in forfeiture and the same amount in restitution to her victims, the publication says. The total still doesnt amount to the sum that Smatsorabudh was able to swindle from her victims.

CBS News says that the woman received about $1 million from a single store alone, which the Daily Mail later confirmed is T.J. Maxx. In fact, the publication states that she was once the companys biggest single online customer. Neiman Marcus was also targeted. In an act of incredible gall, Smatsorabudh would take the bags she received through her online purchases, then travel to stores across across 12 states  about 60 stores in total  to make the fraudulent returns. The Daily Mail estimates that the shady shopper cost department stores about $400,000.

Bear in mind that those stores resold the returned knockoffs and sold them for the full price of designer bags, unwittingly duping their own customers. And then there were the online customers to whom Smatsorabudh sold incredibly marked up authentic merchandise.

Smatsorabudh is originally from Thailand but had been living in Arlington on a student visa, according to the Daily Mail. She was apparently buying the bogus bags she returned to department stores from suppliers in China and Hong Kong, federal authorities told the publication. In September 2014, the sinister saleswoman even emailed one of the suppliers with the message, The best fake bag Ive ever seen! Can you send me more  from this factory. They make bag IMPaCABLE [sic]!!!!, says the Daily Mail.

It was T.J. Maxx that first discovered the scam, possibly because that company was hit the hardest by Smatsorabudhs scheme. Employees from the department store contacted police, who then began investigating the situation. When they had enough evidence, an undercover Homeland Security officer posed as a buyer online and bought one of the designer bags from [Smatsorabudh], says the Daily Mail. Federal authorities raided her home and found 572 handbags, of which some were fake, court documents say.

Ready to work A photo posted by Rich Girl's Collection (@richgirlscollection) on Sep 1, 2014 at 11:03am PDT

Smatsorabudh ran an Instagram account called Rich Girls Collection, according to Cosmopolitan. The account still exists, and refers users to an eBay store as well. In addition to swindling innocent fashion lovers, Smatsorabudh also apparently had an obsessive love of sushi. The account is a curious combination of Japanese cuisine and designer handbags.

Her last, most recent post, published 43 weeks ago, is eerily prophetic. It reads, What comes easy wont last, what lasts wont come easy. Its as if she knew shed soon be caught. Her attorney tried to explain away her nefarious behavior by saying her compulsion for designer handbags was motivated by isolation and loneliness, and became a substitute for human connection, says Cosmo. But Smatsorabudh herself is making no excuses for her actions. According to the Washington Post, she had this to say after she was sentenced: What I did was so wrong. I deserve to be in jail.

The judge responded, I think what you did was ingenious. Its stealing, but the Internet has given us so many more ways to steal. I thought Id seen everything. According to Cosmo, Smatsorabudh is likely to be deported back to Thailand once shes released from jail.

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Nigeria's most senior Muslim cleric called on Nigerian lawmakers to shun any legislation that contradicts the teachings of the Quran. The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Saadu Abubakar, called on the National Assembly to protect against a religious crisis by upholding Islamic law.

Our religion is our total way of life; therefore, we will not accept any move to change what Allah permitted us to do," he said. Islam is a peaceful religion; we have been living peacefully with Christians and followers of other religions in this country. Therefore, we should be allowed to perform our religion effectively.

His remarks came during a Quranic recitation competition organized by the northwestern state Zamfara. He said Muslims would not accept any legislation that would stroke religious controversy.

His warning coincided with a debate in Nigeria's Senate over a gender equity bill that would have allowed women to share in their family's inheritance and ensure a widow could retain custody of her children even if she remarried. He said the proposal was banned under the Quran and urged Muslims lawmakers to oppose the bill. Christian lawmakers had advocated for the change to end discrimination against women.

Nigeria has over 270 ethnic groups and is roughly half Muslim and half Christian, with northern states generally referred to as the nation's Muslim region and Christians living in the south.

Nigeria's Senate previously rejected an earlier version of the bill in March because it was not consistent with Nigerian culture. But human rights activist Bukky Shonibare said opponents of the bill showed "how backward we are," BBC News reported.

Zamfara Governor Abdulaziz Yari Abubakar praised the sultan for his remarks and for being a strong leader for Nigerian Muslims. He said the state would work with religious leaders to promote peace among Muslims and other religions in Nigeria.

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As preparations for New Years Eve celebrations are underway across America, security is at the top of everyones list.

Read: From the Pulse Nightclub Shooting to Pokemon Go, Here Are the Top Newsmakers of 2016

In the wake of the terrorist attack in Germany that left 12 people dead and other 56 injured at a Berlin Christmas market earlier this month, officials around the globe are stepping up security.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have issued a security bulletin declaring concern over "unaffiliated lone offenders and homegrown violent extremists targeting" the nation's largest New Year's Eve celebration at Times Square in New York where one million people will watch the ball drop.

The bulletin goes on to state there are no specific or credible threats to the annual Times Square celebration.

Security expert Peter Moreno points out that the alert extends beyond New York City.

Well lately, the vehicle-borne attack is a big concern. Placing barriers is a way where you can have a public gathering without fear of having a vehicle penetrate that area, he told Inside Edition.

A virtually impenetrable ring of sanitation trucks, filled with tons of sand, was deployed at the recent Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade to prevent such an attack like that in Nice, France, in June during Bastille Day.

Read: Many Dead After Truck Plows into Pedestrian Christmas Market

Revelers can expect to see the same around the perimeter at Times Square as 65 sanitation trucks and 100 other "blocker" vehicles will form a protective barrier, according to NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill.

The celebrations wont end on New Years Eve. One high-profile event will be the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, where one million cheering spectators will line the five mile-plus route.

Read: Back to the Grind: Trump's Family Returns to Work After Election Win

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Those following Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte can add another fiery quote to his very long, very colorful list of controversies. During a speech on Tuesday, Duterte threatened to throw corrupt government officials out of helicopters, claiming he had done so in the past.

If you are corrupt, I will fetch you using a helicopter to Manila and I will throw you out, Duterte said. I have done this before, why would I not do it again?

But on Thursday, Duterte backed down on his claim. Kind of. In an interview with ABS-CBN television, he said Its not true that I threw people off helicopters, I do not own a helicopter to be able to do that. Does the story end there? Not quite. If it were true, I wouldnt admit it, Duterte added.

If it were true, as Duterte said, it wouldnt be the first time he admitted to killing people. On Dec. 12, the Filipino leader said he killed people in his so-called war on drugs and drug users during his time as mayor of Davao. I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also. I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill, he said.

Following the remarks, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein said the country should open an investigation into the presidents alleged killings, as Dutertes actions violate international law. This, in turn, prompted a somewhat predictable but explosive backlash from Duterte.

This guy (Zeid) is ever the joker or crazy, Duterte said in a television interview. You U.N. officials, sitting there on your asses, we pay you your salaries. You idiot, do not tell me what to doWho gave you the right?

Duterte came under fire for opening a country-wide war on drugs when he stepped into office in July, encouraging citizens to take up vigilantism and kill drug dealers. An estimated 6,000 people have been killed in the so-called drug war.

Prominent opposition politicians, including Senator Leila de Lima, have called for Dutertes impeachment. That is betrayal of public trust and that constitutes high crimes because mass murders certainly fall into the category of high crimes. And high crimes is a ground for impeachment under the constitution, de Lima said.

Add this to a long list of Dutertes bizarre and provocative actions. Hes previously called both President Barack Obama and Pope Francis son of a whore, halted joint U.S.-Philippines military exercises, and announced an intent to forge closer ties with China and Russia. He also said on Thursday he would consider challenging China in an international tribunal if it drilled for oil or gas in the disputed South China Sea region, not two weeks after declaring he would do the opposite. On Dec. 17, Duterte said he would set aside international tribunal rulings against China on its military gambit and island-building in the maritime dispute.

Photo credit: MANMAN DEJETO/AFP/Getty Images
New York (AFP) - New York police officers will be allowed to wear beards and turbans while in uniform in accordance with their religion, a measure long demanded by Sikh and Muslim officers.

Sikh policemen in New York who request to do so will now be able to wear standard-length turbans, provided they are blue. They had previously been limited to wearing small turbans that fit under regular police caps.

Sikh and Muslim policemen will also be allowed to grow beards up to half an inch (1.3 centimeters) long, instead of the one millimeter currently allowed.

"We're making this change to make sure that we allow everybody in New York City that wants to apply and have the opportunity to work in the greatest police department in the nation, to make sure we give them that opportunity," US media quoted Commissioner James O'Neill as saying in a speech to graduating recruits of the Police Academy late Wednesday.

"We want to make the NYPD as diverse as possible, and I think this is going to go a long way to help us with that."

Only a few US municipal police forces currently allow officers to have facial hair and wear turbans, including Washington and Riverside, California, according to The New York Times.

The revised policy, expected to be finalized next month, comes after a Muslim policeman filed a complaint against New York police last summer when he was suspended for wearing a beard that did not comply with regulations.

But the policeman, Masood Syed, says the new policy falls short. He wants officers to be allowed to grow beards up to two inches long, CNN reported.
second avenue subway NYC

As President-elect Donald Trump is about to take office having promised a burst of infrastructure spending, it's worth taking a look at the newest, shiniest piece of infrastructure in Manhattan and what it says about why it's so hard to get anything big built in major American cities.

On January 1, the Second Avenue subway extension will open about 100 years after it was first proposed  or at least, a little bit of it will, running from 63rd Street to 96th Street.

It's pretty and shiny, and it's also the world's most expensive subway ever built on a per-mile basis: $4.45 billion for two miles.

Manhattan, of course, is a dense place with lots of existing stuff underground that complicates the digging of tunnels. Building a subway there will never be cheap.

But infrastructure in New York isn't just expensive compared with younger, sparser cities. It's expensive compared with places like London and Paris  places that are also pretty old and also have well-compensated construction workers represented by powerful unions.

The bad news is we have been overpaying for our underground infrastructure for stupid reasons. The good news is we can avoid overpaying in the future with smarter, more strategic choices.

Why so expensive?

The main thing that seems to set apart American transit projects is engineering choices  especially choices to build bigger stations than necessary, with more complicated designs than necessary, deeper underground than is necessary.

In the case of the Second Avenue subway extension, most of the construction cost is in the stations and not the tunnels.

Of the nearly $4.5 billion price tag for the project, $2.4 billion went to build three new stations and expand an existing one at 63rd Street. Building the tunnels and track systems cost just $734 million.

About $500 million went toward design and engineering. The remaining $800 million covered the rest: construction management, real estate, station artwork, fare-collection systems and other sundry items.

Story continues

Big, deep stations cost a fortune

The enormous cost for stations reflects an engineering choice: The subway is built much farther below ground than most lines in New York. It also features capacious station layouts with full-length mezzanines over the station level, meaning the underground stations are two stories high.

The view from the mezzanine. The 96th St station of the #2ndAveSubway will be open for public viewing on Friday, December 23 from 8-10 a.m. and 5-7 p.m. A photo posted by Second Ave. Sagas (@secondavesagas) on Dec 22, 2016 at 1:40pm PST on Dec 22, 2016 at 1:40pm PST

Boring a tunnel deep below ground isn't especially expensive compared with building one close to the surface (the tunnel-boring machine just goes where you point it). But excavating very large, very deep station caverns is extremely expensive.

In some places, deep construction is necessary to avoid existing tunnels. Sometimes it's chosen for political expediency, because a deep construction process is less disruptive on the surface.

Where deep construction is necessary, there is all the more reason to choose a smaller station profile. We could have cheaper subway expansions if we used slimmer designs, for example by omitting full-length mezzanines.

Deep stations on the London Underground do not have mezzanines. They are less spacious than these expensive new ones in New York, but they work fine.

A repeated theme: Expensive projects that are overengineered

The Second Avenue subway's costs will soon be eclipsed by East Side Access, the project to bring Long Island Rail Road commuter trains into a new terminal, 140 feet below Grand Central Terminal.

When this project is finished in 2022 (or later, if it gets delayed again) it is expected to have cost over $10 billion while serving fewer riders than the new Second Avenue line.

In this instance, union labor seems to have been a significant cost driver, as Nicole Gelinas wrote last year for City Journal. That's in part because this project involves many agencies, with conflicts between Amtrak and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (and their workers' unions) adding to labor hours and project duration.

But much of the cost story is similar to that of the Second Avenue line: a very large station, built very deep underground, excavated and constructed at enormous expense.

Of course, the area around Grand Central is already full of tunnels, so if you were going to build a new terminal, it had to be deep.

But the existing Grand Central Terminal has 44 platforms and 67 tracks, more than any other train station in the world. It has more than twice as many platforms as Penn Station, and yet it serves about half as many daily passengers.

You may see where I am going with this: The new LIRR tunnel could have been connected to the existing terminal tracks, greatly reducing costs by avoiding the need to build a new station or even any new platforms.

But this would have required the LIRR to share facilities with another commuter train, the Metro-North Railroad, and the agencies produced a report insisting that sharing facilities at the world's largest train station would be so difficult that GCT had to become even bigger, adding eight more tracks, even at the cost of billions of dollars.

Building the new terminal instead of sharing the existing one was an appealing option in part because it wasn't supposed to be that expensive: As originally estimated in 2001, the terminal-construction portion of the project was supposed to cost only $700 million. The final cost (surprise, surprise) is going to be closer to $2 billion.

PATH World Trade Center station

The white dinosaur that shows why we can't have nice things

The poster creature for New York's insane transit construction costs is the new PATH terminal at the World Trade Center, which opened in 2015.

Santiago Calatrava's design for the station was supposed to evoke a bird taking flight. After engineering challenges and cost overruns that forced officials to tell Calatrava the station could not have the expensive, operable wings he wanted, the station has ended up looking like a stegosaurus  more a white dinosaur than a white elephant.

It cost $4 billion, making it the world's most expensive train station.

Back in 2014, The New York Times published a useful, detailed account of how the station became so expensive.

The decadelong saga of building the terminal is full of stories of political fights that ended in compromises in which elected officials chose to make the project more expensive rather than upset any group of constituents.

Suspend the tracks, suspend the memorial

For example, one challenge in building the new terminal for the PATH train, which connects Manhattan with New Jersey, was that the 1 subway line runs right through it, at a level higher than the main station concourse.

The simplest way to deal with this complication would have been to close the southernmost two stations of the 1 line during construction, including the one that serves the Staten Island Ferry.

This closing would have been inconvenient for some commuters  but not that inconvenient. Lower Manhattan is full of close-together subway lines, and ferry commuters diverted from the 1 could have taken the 4, 5, or R trains to get uptown.

But Staten Island was an important political constituency for the then-mayor and governor, so work had to proceed around the operating subway line  at an added cost of $355 million.

Working around the 1 train could also have been made cheaper and easier with a design change: supporting the 1 line's tracks with columns from below, standing on the floor of the new PATH station hall.

But this would have interfered with Calatrava's vision for a sweeping, column-free space. His architectural vision prevailed, and the 1 line is instead expensively suspended from the ceiling.

Other work proceeded upside down, too. The World Trade Center memorial is above the station, essentially sitting on its ceiling, so it would have made sense to build the memorial after the station.

But then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg wanted the memorial finished for the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks  so the order of work was reversed at a cost of $75 million.

Mike Bloomberg

We can build cheaply and quickly when we really care

Most gallingly, the World Trade Center PATH terminal project isn't just a demonstration of how infrastructure projects become extremely costly and take forever. It's also a demonstration of how we can build cheaply and quickly when it's really important.

The new station replaced a temporary PATH terminal that opened in 2003, just 26 months after the previous PATH terminal was destroyed in the attacks, at a cost of just $323 million.

That station had the same capacity as the new one that cost more than 10 times as much.

To my eye, it was built of sturdy concrete that could have been used on a more permanent basis, if necessary.

With design practices like this, we don't deserve nice things

Now that Manhattan has the world's most expensive subway and its most expensive train station, New York and New Jersey officials at the Port Authority are bickering over where and how to build the world's most expensive bus terminal.

They want to spend $10 billion on a bus station.

They claim it's impossible to rehabilitate and improve the existing Port Authority Bus Terminal. Given the way the Port Authority has mishandled so many other capital projects, I don't believe them.

Not only will the new terminal (if ever built) be insanely expensive, but it will also be built west of the existing terminal, meaning it will be farther away from subway lines and offices that bus commuters who use the terminal are trying to reach.

This project is bogged down in a proxy fight between Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey  and I'm glad, because the longer they fight over it, the less likely it is that our money will get wasted on another white elephant.

penn station

This should not be so hard

One maddening aspect of the problem of American transit construction costs is that the big problems are not especially ideological.

Liberals like to complain that transit is underfunded. But at least in New York, the MTA and Port Authority capital programs contain plenty of money to build lots of transit if we spent as wisely as do transit authorities in Europe.

Conservatives point to unionized construction labor, but the countries that are beating us on cost also have well-paid workers who enjoy strong labor protections.

There is no White Elephant lobby as such, and it seems as if liberals and conservatives ought to be able to get together and agree that more, cheaper, simpler infrastructure is better than a handful of shiny, incredibly expensive projects.

They could also agree that transit agencies should be expected to find ways to get more capacity out of their existing infrastructure before they dig more caverns and pour more concrete.

They should be able to get together and say, "Gee, do we really need these mezzanines?" when the cost of a single subway station approaches $1 billion.

The Penn Station test

Penn Station will also soon (well, probably not that soon, given how these things go) be expanded at great expense, even though its 21 tracks serve a similar number of commuters as Chatelet-Les Halles, a downtown station on Paris' commuter rail system with just six tracks.

The Parisians use their infrastructure smartly: Trains start far outside the city, stop at Chatelet, and then keep going, so they don't spend a lot of time sitting at a platform. By contrast, nearly every train that calls at Penn Station terminates there, requiring it to take time to turn around.

If trains started in New Jersey, stopped at Penn Station and then continued on to Long Island, New York could make more use of its existing station infrastructure instead of building more of it at great expense.

But this would require New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road (and therefore, Cuomo and Christie) to work constructively together.

That probably would be harder than scraping together the billions needed to add more tracks and platforms south of the existing Penn Station. But it shouldn't be.

NOW WATCH: 'They haven't played by the rules': Trump accuses China of 'massive theft of intellectual property' and unfairly taxing US companies





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Prosecutors say three young children in rural Pennsylvania are lucky to be alive after police recently rescued them from a locked room in their home where theyd allegedly been kept for three months  wasting away  with no heat and little food.

The door to the room was locked from the outside and the paint on the wall was peeled off at the height of the kids, Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico tells PEOPLE. We theorize theyd been peeling it off in order to eat it.

This is a horrific case that almost led to the death of three children, Marsico says.

The children  ages 4, 5 and 6  were taken from the home of Brandi and Joshua Weyant in Halifax Township, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 16 and rushed to a nearby hospital.

Two of the siblings were days away from death, authorities say.

 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter

The Weyants are being held in jail on $1 million bail and are charged with aggravated assault, conspiracy, false imprisonment, unlawful restraint and child endangerment.

The couples court-appointed attorney did not return phone calls from PEOPLE.

All three of the children were severely malnourished, underweight and, according to the court documents, their skin was covered with urine, feces, animal hair and dirt.

They were allowed to essentially waste away in a locked room without any nourishment while, at the same time, animals in the house were well fed, says Marsico, who adds that the couple is looking at years in prison if convicted of the charges against them.

 Pick up PEOPLEs special edition True Crime Stories: Cases That Shocked America, on sale now, for the latest on Casey Anthony, JonBenet Ramsey and more.

Authorities first became aware of the situation at the couples home after a social services worker visited the residence on Dec. 15 to check in on an occupant in the house. Marsico says that when the worker spotted one of the children, they immediately sensed something was wrong and the police were contacted.

Story continues

Brandi, 38, allegedly blamed the abuse on her husband, according to court documents. She told investigators that no one besides she and Joshua had seen the children since this summer, the documents allege  explaining that she couldnt leave the house with them  once they began to look as they do now.

Brandi also allegedly told caseworkers that she didnt believe any of the children are biologically related to her or her husband, even though they have their last name.

Police are currently trying to determine who the parents are, Marsico says.

When questioned by investigators, Joshua, 33, allegedly displayed no emotion of any kind after being shown photographs of the malnourished kids, according to the criminal complaint, insisting simply that he didnt want the children overfed.

The couples next court date has yet to be scheduled. It was not immediately clear if they have entered a plea to their charges.

The children, who are now being cared for by a foster parent who is a nurse, were eventually released from the hospital, but one of them had to be rushed back to the facility in order to receive further treatment.

They still have a way to go medically, physically and who knows what the developmental impacts will be on them, Marsico says. Theyre young kids, but theyre old enough to know the hell they were put through.




While Debbie Reynolds most important legacy will be the great Hollywood musicals, including Singin in the Rain and Unsinkable Molly Brown, the actress never stopped working over her six-decade career  making her the rare star who was a titan of classic Hollywood, but almost just as familiar to later generations.

Reynolds died suddenly Dec. 28 while planning a memorial service for her daughter, Carrie Fisher, who died just a day before.

In one of her final live-action roles, Reynolds made an impression as Bobbi Adler, mother to Debra Messings character, on Will & Grace. And her last, a memorable turn as Liberaces domineering mom in Steven Soderberghs Behind the Candelabra, aged and un-glammed for the role, was said to echo her own relationship with Carrie Fisher.

One of her earlier voice roles, as the titular spider in Charlottes Web, was also remembered by a generation of kids who watched and rewatched the bittersweet tale on video and television.

To millennials, she was the kindly grandma Aggie in the Halloweentown series of Disney Channel original movies  as well as Nana Possible from the 2000s cartoon series Kim Possible. In several Rugrats episodes and feature films, Reynolds was the voice of Lulu Pickles  Stu and Drews step-mother and step-grandmother to Angelica, Tommy, and Dil.

Some of her Rugrats collaborators remembered her kindness and animated personality.

I directed Debbie Reynolds on Rugrats. I will always remember how she kicked up her heels and clicked them together heading out the door.  Keythe Farley (@faronear) December 29, 2016

#RIP#DebbieReynolds You were kind, a true legend & it was an honor to be a part of the #Rugrats family with you. pic.twitter.com/d5bMmTwwzI  Julia Kato (@JuliaKato) December 29, 2016

Kim Possible co-creator Bob Schooley remembered working with Reynolds on the Disney Channel show that ran from 2003 to 2007, She was an absolute delight, he said. Its not every day that you get to work with someone who started in the business under an MGM contract. As Kim Possibles Nana, her character was a scrappy fighter like Kim in her youth, and when the script called for some martial arts grunts, she acted out the moves in the booth, and still looked classy doing it.

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I remember mentioning my mother was planning on seeing her touring show in Philadelphia and she instantly set her up with great tickets and a backstage meet and greet, Schooley said. I also remember her saying she told Cary Grant that she named her daughter after him, and then with a wink added, Of course it was a lie. It was a privilege to work with such a consummate pro and legend.

Co-creator Mark McCorkle recalled, When Debbie Reynolds agreed to play the role of Kim Possibles grandmother, we were understandably nervous about working with a legend. She instantly put us at ease and blew us away with her talent. She came prepared and did an amazing job, treating our cartoon as if it was as important as any work she had ever done. She regaled us with stories, autographed our scripts, and gave us a career highlight. It might sound like an exaggeration, but she did light up the recording booth with her spirit and enthusiasm.

Related stories

Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher to Be Honored With TV Specials This Week

'Halloweentown' Star Kimberly J. Brown Pens Tribute to Debbie Reynolds: 'I Was Always in Awe of Her Fierce Spirit'

Carrie Fisher Leaves Small, Showbiz-Pedigreed Property Portfolio
MANILA (Reuters) - Three minors were among seven people shot dead by suspected vigilantes in the Philippines at a house storing illegal narcotics, police said on Thursday, in the latest killings during a bloody and murky war on drugs. Two unknown gunmen arrived on motorcycles and entered what police called a drugs den north of the capital Manila late on Wednesday. They opened fire on those inside, killing five instantly before fleeing, according to a police report, which said two other victims died before reaching the hospital. Four of those killed were teenagers, two of them 15, one 16 and one 18. The killings come as the government of President Rodrigo Duterte prepares legislation to put to Congress to lower the age of criminal liability to nine from 15. More than 6,100 people have been killed in the past six months during Duterte's controversial war on drugs, about a third in police operations and others classified as deaths under investigation. Police say killings during counter-narcotics operations were in self-defense. The crackdown, the core plank of Duterte's election campaign, has been condemned internationally and has created tension between the Philippines and key allies and donors, among them the European Union, United States and United Nations. He has praised China for staying out of it. Duterte has hit back with stunning rebukes and says he is willing to "rot in jail" to rid the Philippines of a drugs problem he initially vowed to solve within three to six months. He says the scourge was bigger than he first thought. In a television interview on Thursday, Duterte said the drugs war would not end soon. "Until the last pusher is out of the street... until the last drugs lord is killed, this drug campaign would continue to the last day of my term," he said. Killings by vigilantes have occurred often and the authorities have been accused by rights groups of hiring assassins to kill suspects. Duterte vehemently denies police are in cahoots with vigilantes and has said drugs gangs are killing rivals and silencing informants and it was taking place long before he took office. (Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales and Martin Petty: Editing by Nick Macfie)
For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  In this edition of the Dutram Report, Eric Dutram talks with Brad Loncar, the CEO of Loncar Investments. Brad specializes in the world of immunotherapy, a technique that is revolutionizing the cancer treatment market by harnessing the power of someone's immune system to fight disease. We get to the bottom of this emerging technology in the podcast so that investors can better understand why this market may deserve a closer look in 2017.



To listen to the podcast, click the link or check out the embeded podcast below: ( https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/239360/is-immunotherapy-the-next-hot-industry-for-biotech-stock-investors )

Biotechnology can be a tough market for investors to break in to. The jargon is intimidating, the volatility is incredible, and there are political concerns to be cognizant of as well.

But in this edition of the Dutram Report, I take a closer look at this market, and in particular the immunotherapy world, in order to shine some light on this promising space for investors. In order to do this, I talk with Brad Loncar, the CEO of Loncar Investments, who developed a benchmark of such companies called the Loncar Cancer Immunotherapy Index, which is the underlying benchmark for the Loncar Cancer Immunotherapy ETF (CNCR).

In the interview, we discuss the basics of immunotherapy, and why this technique might be a real gamechanger for the treatment of cancer. The approach looks to harness the power of someones immune system in order to fight disease, which may help some patients improve their quality of life while still achieving great outcomes. This only scratches the surface though, as we discuss some of the more innovative and groundbreaking treatments under development in this market too.

We also discuss how someone might go about investing in this market with stocks, and why a broad biotechnology ETF like IBB or XBI might not get you exposure to this corner of the sector. We also take a deeper look at the Loncar index, and what exactly an immunotherapy stock means.

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In particular, I note some of the large caps which find their way into the benchmark, such as Amgen (AMGN), Merck (MRK), or AstraZeneca (AZN). But we also discuss some of the more growth-oriented names that might be more in-line with investors initial assumptions about the market, such as KITE Pharma (KITE) or Juno Therapeutics (JUNO). These all fit into the theme in their own way though, and we dive into the key trends taking place in these companies (and others) that have business in this important market.

Lastly, I also wanted to note that Loncar has partnered with the Cancer Research Institute, and will be giving part of its fee to the charity. Loncar Investments looks to give four basis points of the fee from assets under management to the CRI on a regular basis, in an effort to help support this basic research institution. This is definitely something that could be more of a trend in the future, and especially among the many socially-conscious ETFs out there.

This was certainly an informative podcast, and I definitely learned something about this often-overlooked corner of the biotechnology world. I think you will as well, so make sure to listen to this edition of the Dutram Report for additional information. And for more news and insights into the world of ETFs, make sure to be on the lookout for the next edition of the Dutram Report, and check out the many other great Zacks podcasts as well!

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LUSAKA (Reuters) - Zambia's President Edgar Lungu ordered the air force on Wednesday to join other government agencies in an emergency operation to contain the spread of pests that have invaded maize fields in many parts of the country. The armyworms, which feast on young maize plants and are capable of wiping out entire fields, have been spotted in about six of Zambia's 10 provinces, Agriculture Permanent Secretary Julius Shawa said. On Wednesday the Zambia Air Force began airlifting pesticides to the four worst affected provinces and will team up with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU) in responding to the crisis, presidential spokesman Amos Chanda said in a statement. The air force will not carry out aerial spraying of the insecticide, however. Zambia's maize production rose to 2.87 million tonnes in the 2015/2016 crop season from 2.60 million tonnes the previous season due to better than anticipated rainfall and early delivery of fertilizer and seed to farmers. "The president is concerned that if the outbreak of the worms is not controlled speedily, the crop yield for 2016/2017 may be negatively affected," Chanda said. The DMMU and the Ministry of Agriculture will conduct random checks starting on Thursday to ensure the emergency spraying operation was going well, Chanda said. (Reporting by Chris Mfula; Editing by Adrian Croft)
NELSON, New Zealand (AP)  An unbeaten maiden century by Neil Broom guided New Zealand to a 67-run win over Bangladesh in the second one-day international on Thursday and a winning 2-0 lead in the three-match series.

Broom's 109 not out held together a disjointed batting performance after New Zealand lost the toss, with the hosts scoring a modest 251.

He then held two important catches and captain Kane Williamson took three wickets in a rare bowling appearance as Bangladesh collapsed spectacularly to be all out for 184 in 42.4 overs.

Bangladesh seemed to be cruising to victory when Imrul Kayes (59) and Sabbir Rahman (38) combined in a 75-run partnership for the second wicket which lifted the tourists to 105-1 in the 23rd over.

But when Sabbir was run out at that score in an epic mix-up which left both batsman at the same end, Bangladesh's effort wilted and it lost its next six wickets for 36.

Bangladesh still has never won an ODI against New Zealand on home soil.

"In comparison to the last match the bowlers have done a really good job," captain Masrafe Mortaza said.

"On this sort of wicket to get them for 250 was pretty good, but it was obviously disappointing with the bat. To be 1-100, then to collapse is disappointing.

"If you look at the wicket I think it was a lot better than the last one and the batters should have been able to chase that total down."

Williamson seemed to have misused his bowlers when he bowled the allrounder Colin Munro ahead of the young speedster Lockie Ferguson. But he pulled off a stroke of genius when he took the ball himself and ran through the Bangladesh middle order, dismissing Shakib Al Hasan (7), Tanbir Haider (2) and Masaddek Hossain (3).

He also participated in the runout of Sabbir which broke the critical partnership of the innings and held a catch to dismiss Mortaza for 17.

Wicketkeeper Luke Ronchi also had a good day, stumping Tanbir and Taskin Ahmed (0), taking a catch to remove the troublesome Nurul Hasan (24) and contributing to the runout of Sabbir.

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Williamson finished with 3-22, Trent Boult with 2-26 and Tim Southee with 2-33.

"I was a little bit fortunate with my bowling," Williamson said. "The pitch suited the slower bowlers so I was encouraged to bring myself on and it was good that it came off.

"As a collective the bowlers bowled really, really well. It was the sort of surface on which if you could build a bit of pressure and put the ball on a good length for a long period of time then things could happen."

Broom, 32, was recalled to the New Zealand team for the current three-match series after a six year absence and his position at No. 4 in the order was far from certain when he made only 22 in the first match on Monday which New Zealand won by 77 runs.

Though he rushed through the 90s, going from 92 to 98 with a six off Mortaza, Broom faced a nervous moment when New Zealand's ninth wicket fell when he was 99. No. 11 Boult survived the last ball of the over and Broom went to his century from the first ball of the 48th over.

His innings, which included eight fours and three sixes, held together a batting effort in which the New Zealand middle order also failed. The next best score was 35 from 38 balls by Ronchi with whom he added 64 for the sixth wicket.

Bangladesh's lineup included three players on debut and of those Nurul made a good impression with his 24 and three dismissals in the New Zealand innings while paceman Subashis Roy took 1-45. Masrafe was the best Bangladesh bowler with 3-49.


Credit: Aude Guerrucci-Pool/Getty

Though Malia Obama has grown up to be a smart, graceful, and gorgeous young lady, it's clear that she'll always be Daddy's little girl. And with a father like President Barack Obama, it's no exaggeration when we say that she's very lucky.

The First Family took to one of their favorite spots to spend the Christmas holiday together: none other than the sunny state of Hawaii, where POTUS was born. On Christmas Eve, they spent the best Saturday ever together: first taking in lunch at the popular Side Street Inn in Honolulu.

After eating and ready for some adventure with full stomachs, the president and daughters Malia and Sasha reportedly took to Breakout Waikiki to master the "live-action escape room" game.

VIDEO: Michelle Obama's Beauty Transformation

The family then headed to Island Snow in Kailua. There, just when we were sure the Obamas couldn't possibly give us any more adorable moments in 2016, POTUS provided us with several jaw-droppingly sweet photos by feeding Malia some of his dessert.



Credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty



Credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty



Credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty

As he often is, the president was snapped by photographers laughing and smiling with his daughters. The Secret Service were in full force to protect the First Family, but that didn't stop POTUS--kept it casual in flip-flops and a short-sleeve white polo--from speaking to those who had gathered outside of the shop where he shook numerous hands.



Credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty

RELATED: The Obamas' Final Holiday Address Is Just What We Needed to Hear

Hopefully, the Obamas don't stay out of the spotlight for too long after they leave D.C.!


Credit: goop/Facebook

If you think that making it to the end of a hot yoga class without collapsing on the floor proves you're a wellness champion, then you have a thing or two to learn from Goop guru Gwyneth Paltrow. The ultimate wellness pro, Paltrow has built her brand's success by being her own guinea pig. She's never been one to shy away from a juice cleanse or a seven-day detox, but Paltrow has also pushed the boundaries of testing treatments by experimenting with Eastern healing techniques and putting her whole self (and we do mean every inch of herself) out there for the purpose of bringing the very best of the beauty and wellness worlds to her loyal readers. Here, a few of her most memorable--and sometimes shocking--attempts at finding balance.

Cupping

Before Michael Phelps at the 2016 Rio Olympics, there was Gwyneth Paltrow at a 2004 New York City film premiere. Paltrow single handedly put the ancient practice of cupping, used to alleviate back and muscle pain, on the pop culture map when she hit the red carpet with a pattern of red welts peeking out from her strapless gown.



Credit: Jim Spellman/WireImage

Vaginal Steaming

While cupping may have sent Paltrow fans flocking to their nearest alternative medicine therapist, this one made even her most loyal followers stop in their kale-loving tracks. In 2015, Paltrow sung the praises of the Mugworth V-Steam treatment at Santa Monica's Tikkun Holistic Spa. Goop described the infrared steam cleanse as "an energetic release that balances female hormone levels."

RELATED: How to Get a Body Like Gwyneth Paltrow

Apitherapy

Also known as "bee sting therapy," Paltrow copped to experimenting with this ancient practice in which strategically-placed stingers help get rid of inflammation and scarring. Her assessment? "Man, it's painful," she told the New York Times.

Ayurvedic Therapy

Okay, we have to admit that this one sounds pretty amazing. Paltrow has been a client of one of L.A.'s premiere ayurvedic healers, Martha Soffer, and the practice aims to create harmony among mind, body, and spirit using a blend of massage therapy, oils, and herbs to target problem areas and pain points.

Baby Food Diet

In 2011, Paltrow's longtime trainer and friend Tracy Anderson broke the Internet with rumors of using a baby food cleanse to help her celebrity clients detox. The buzz spawned a trend of followers flocking to grocery stores to stock up on pureed foods for the 14-jar-per-day plan. Though Paltrow hasn't spoken about this one herself, we're betting that some of Goop's more grown-up detox options are just as effective--and probably more delicious.
Photo credit: Facebook

From Good Housekeeping

After hitting an IED in Afghanistan in 2009, Marine Corps Sergeant Josh Bouchard thought the very worst was behind him - he'd suffered a spinal cord injury and lost his leg in the accident.

In 2013, after spending three years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C, Bouchard moved into a specially-designed house from the non-profit Homes for Troops, which builds adapted homes for injured veterans. The new home was a key factor in helping Bouchard readjust to everyday life.

"One of the more amazing things is that with his home, he has been able to concentrate on rehab," his sister, Suzanna Sullivan, told Mass Live. "He has a safe space to do that."

But on December 26, just a day after Christmas, the Granby, Massachusetts, resident was in his home when he smelled smoke. He traced the scent to his garage, where, within moments, the gas tanks for his car, lawnmower and ATV combusted. Bouchard was thrown from his wheelchair. Fire quickly spread through the house, claiming the kitchen and then the attic.

Bouchard relied on his military training to make it out alive. "[I used] a combat roll, like you're avoiding fire, which technically I was," Bouchard told WWLP, Granby's local news station. "I think my experiences in the military are completely what saved me, absolutely."

They also saved the lives of his two service dogs. After Bouchard broke down his front door, he and his dogs were safe. A quick hospital trip revealed that Bouchard, despite smoke inhalation, was going to be fine.

The same couldn't be said for his house. The fire had completely destroyed his home - as well as all three of his electric wheelchairs and his prosthetic leg, which, combined, were worth $115,000. But Bouchard's community had helped him once. They would do it again.

Local pharmacist Lee Lalonde donated a wheelchair. A Boston motorcycle club is donating all proceeds from their 2017 summer run to securing Bouchard a new pick up truck. Thanks to a GoFundMe page, set up by his sister, Suzanna Sullivan, Bouchard has received over $16,000 in donations - in just one day.

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Bouchard's home was thankfully insured, but he's not sure how long it will take to rebuild. In the meantime, he's living with his father, who is also located in Granby. If you're willing and able to help this veteran get back into his home, donations from the GoFundMe page will be used toward purchasing new wheelchairs and a prostheses. Local donors are also offering household items, like furniture and kitchenware, so that when Bouchard does move back into his house, it'll feel just like home.

[h/t WWLP]

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Prince Harry opens up about Princess Dianas death like he never has before

Our favorite royal, Britains Prince Harry (obvs), gets real tonight in a documentary airing in the U.K. on ITV. If youre stateside like we are and admiring Harry from afar, *sob*, no worries. Weve got the scoop on what he has to say. You might want to grab a tissue because TBH this documentary will really bring the feels.

The show focuses on Prince Harrys work in Lesotho, Africa, where he co-founded the charity Sentebale with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho in 2006. Sentebale provides support for kids whose lives have been affected by HIV and AIDS. Harry visits Sentebale frequently to spend times with the kids hands-on and make us melt with adorable photos like this one:

Prince Harry set up @Sentebale over a decade ago, with the aim of transforming the lives of some of the worlds most vulnerable children. pic.twitter.com/1dA1jt7sYS  Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) December 19, 2016

Oh and brace yourselves, because also THIS ONE:

For an inside look @Sentebale and its incredible work with vulnerable children in #Lesotho don't miss #PrinceHarryInAfrica at 9pm on @ITV pic.twitter.com/DwDmQybCC7  Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) December 19, 2016

UGH, OUR HEARTS!!!

Prince Harry has been really open about the inspiration for his work in Africa. Hes spoken before about wanting to do something to make his mother, the late Princess Diana, proud. Diana had a heart for children and was a pioneer when it came to helping people suffering with HIV and AIDS.

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In the new documentary, Harry opens up even more and shares what it was like to lose his mom at such a young age. The prince was only twelve years old when Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris. According to People, he tells ITV I never really dealt with what had happened. It was a lot of buried emotion. For a huge part of my life I didnt really want to think about itI now view life very differently from what it used to be. I used to bury my head in the sand, and let everything around you tear you to pieces.

Diana and Harry

This just breaks our hearts. Losing a parent at such a young age has got to be one of most difficult things imaginable. Doing so in the public eye would be just about impossible.

Now Prince Harry is channeling his grief into something positive and dealing with those feelings in a way to honor his mothers legacy. He goes on to say:

I need to make something of my lifeI was fighting the system, going, I dont want to be this person. My mother died when I was very, very young and I dont want to be in the position. Now Im so energized, fired up, to be lucky enough to be in a position to make a difference.

Making a difference indeed. Were amazed at what Prince Harry is doing Africa, and we know his mom would be beyond proud!

You can follow Harrys work at Sentebale on social media under the hashtag #PrinceHarryInAfrica.

The post Prince Harry opens up about Princess Dianas death like he never has before appeared first on HelloGiggles.
FILE - In this Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016, file photo, President-elect Donald Trump, left, accompanied by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, speaks to members of the media at Trump Tower in New York. Trump gave himself kudos for the creation of 8,000 new U.S. jobs by Japanese tech mogul Son, saying it was proof of "the spirit and the hope" stirred by his presidential win. But for those particular jobs, Trump was basically taking a bow for the second time. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

WASHINGTON (AP)  Donald Trump gave himself kudos for the creation of 8,000 new U.S. jobs by a Japanese tech mogul, saying it was proof of "the spirit and the hope" stirred by his presidential win.

But for those particular jobs, Trump was basically taking a bow for the second time. The jobs were part of a public commitment made on December 6 by Masayoshi Son upon emerging from the elevator bank at Trump Tower after a meeting with Trump. Son pledged that companies controlled by his firm SoftBank would invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 jobs.

On Wednesday, Trump celebrated the planned creation of 5,000 jobs by wireless carrier Sprint and 3,000 jobs by OneWeb_both companies where Son is a dominant investor.

Speaking from the front door of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump did not outright mention Son's previous commitment but used the opportunity once again to declare a victory for U.S. workers. Although 8,000 jobs_on their own_are unlikely to dramatically move the needle toward the faster economic growth he has promised, the Trump transition team treated the jobs as a preview of things to come.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Thursday.

Ever the dealmaker, Trump has actively courted and shamed companies. The president-elect has pushed defense contractors Boeing and Lockheed-Martin to reduce their costs via his Twitter account, while he fulfilled a campaign promise by preserving 800 jobs at the Carrier furnace plant in Indianapolis that were previously bound for Mexico.

With the Sprint and OneWeb announcement, there may be slightly less than meets the eye. There is one clear winner, though: Son, worth an estimated $19 billion. Since the presidential election, Sprint stock has soared roughly 40 percent. Son's SoftBank controls 83 percent of the Kansas-based carrier.

Here are some more facts about the SoftBank commitment.

Are all of Sprint's pledged 5,000 jobs at the company?

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No.

Of the 5,000 jobs Sprint said it would create or bring back to the United States in its upcoming fiscal year, some would be at outside contractors. The jobs will help "support" its customer service and sales teams, among other divisions at the company. Details about pay and benefits are being finalized, according to Sprint.

The company also said it will discuss with business partners, states and cities about where to create these jobs but a spokeswoman told The Associated Press that it will not receive any federal, state or local government incentives for adding these positions.

Still, Sprint will likely have fewer workers than when Son's firm SoftBank acquired a controlling stake in 2013. Sprint has shed about 9,000 employees since 2012; it now employs roughly 30,000, according to annual reports.

 What are the 3,000 new jobs at OneWeb?

Son's SoftBank invested $1 billion this month in OneWeb, which is building a network of satellites to provide broadband internet. The investment will help finance the construction of a factory in Florida that could produce 15 satellites a week, generating 3,000 engineering, manufacturing and support jobs over the next four years, according to a December 19 statement.

Son linked his investment to meeting with Trump.

"Earlier this month I met with President-elect Trump and shared my commitment to investing and creating jobs in the U.S.," he said in a statement about the investment. "This is the first step in that commitment."

 Who are the big winners from this announcement?

In addition to those who get hired for the new jobs, a clear victor is Masayoshi Son.

Trump twice praised the Japanese billionaire in December, signaling that Son might as well have a direct line to the White House. This could be helpful for Son's other business plans. Under the Obama administration, he saw a marquee deal to merge Sprint with rival T-Mobile fail. Regulators opposed combining two of the four largest mobile telecom companies in the United States. Analysts say a Trump administration would be more likely to approve telecom mergers.

The exposure with Trump has already been lucrative for Son. Before the election, Sprint stock was trading for less than it did after SoftBank acquired the company. At the current price of about $8.80 per share, the value of SoftBank's stake has risen by more than $8 billion since Trump's victory. Son founded SoftBank in 1981 and is the company's CEO, chairman and major shareholder.

 Will this boost economic growth?

The 8,000 jobs sure sounds like a lot. But the U.S. economy is so massive that the figure is basically a rounding error  representing just 0.36 percent of the 2.25 million jobs employers have added over the last 12 months. Ultimately, Trump's administration will need to introduce policies to generate faster economic growth, rather than securing promises from individual companies. Trump has said that tax reform and regulatory cuts can help lift overall economic growth to 3.5 percent annually, substantially above the 1.6 percent growth expected for 2016.

___

AP Politics Writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report from Palm Beach, Florida

___

This story has been corrected to show that OneWeb is not based in Florida.
By Greg Roumeliotis (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp's <6502.T> claim that it is owed $2.15 billion by Chicago Bridge & Iron Co NV (CB&I) hinges on how an independent auditor will calculate the net working capital of a U.S. nuclear power plant construction business that CB&I sold to Toshiba's Westinghouse unit last year. Click here to read the story: The following are the main issues at stake. WHAT IS NET WORKING CAPITAL? Net working capital is a measure of the financial strength of a business, defined as its current assets minus its current liabilities. When a company sells a business to another company, the sale agreement often includes a target figure for net working capital to ensure that the financial position of the business does not change materially from the time the deal is signed to when it closes. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT IN THIS CASE? The two companies agreed that CB&I would not be paid any money when the deal closed, and instead would receive earnouts down the line. How much CB&I stands to be paid by Toshiba, or owes to Toshiba, depends on how they calculate the net working capital of CB&I Stone & Webster Inc, the nuclear power plant construction unit that Westinghouse bought. What is more, CB&I funneled close to $1 billion to CB&I Stone & Webster between the end of June 2015 and the end of December 2015, when the deal closed, and therefore sees the net working capital mechanism as a way to be compensated for continuing to support the unit after the deal signed. The agreed target for the net working capital was $1.174 billion, so CB&I would be owed money by Toshiba if CB&I Stone & Webster's net working capital was more than $1.174 billion at the time the deal closed, while CB&I would owe money to Westinghouse if the unit's net working capital amount was below $1.174 billion. WHY IS THE CALCULATION IN DISPUTE? CB&I has calculated the net working capital to be $1.6 billion, suggesting it is owed $428 million by Toshiba. The Japanese company has calculated the amount to be minus $976.5 million, indicating it is owed $2.15 billion by CB&I. The vastly different amounts stem from four changes that Westinghouse made to CB&I's calculations. Westinghouse reduced by 30 percent an outstanding receivable on the unit's balance sheet, it adjusted it to reflect the cost of design changes in its projects, it raised the estimates of the cost to complete the projects by 30 percent, and added back a $432 million liability that CB&I had deducted. Westinghouse argued that CB&I's methodology did not adhere sufficiently to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), while CB&I maintained that it has stuck to the accounting methodology it used before and Westinghouse previously accepted. HOW WILL THE DISPUTE BE RESOLVED? The contract for the sale of the business calls for an independent auditor to resolve accounting disagreements over the value of the net working capital, and this is expected to happen in 2017. CB&I has sued to prevent Westinghouse's interpretation of the liabilities to be included in the net working capital calculations from being put before the independent auditor. Earlier this month, the Delaware Court of Chancery dismissed that lawsuit, and an appeal by CB&I is pending. ARE THERE ANY SIMILAR CASES? There have been two previous cases in Delaware where net working capital calculations have been legally challenged; OSI Systems Inc v. Instrumentarium Corp in 2006, and Alliant Techsystems Inc. v. MidOcean Bushnell Holdings L.P. in 2015. In the case of OSI, the judge found that the GAAP compliance of net working capital calculations should be the subject of legal, rather than accounting, arbitration. In the case of Alliant, the judge found that it was for the independent auditor to decide on the admissibility of the accounting calculations, because it found the language of the contract to be more prescriptive. In the case of Toshiba, the judge decided the language of the contract was more similar to the Alliant case, and so dismissed CB&I's lawsuit. HOW IS THIS RELATED TO THE WRITEDOWN TOSHIBA ANNOUNCED? The nuclear power plant construction unit's liabilities affect not just the net working capital calculations, but also the valuation of the unit. Toshiba initially estimated the goodwill resulting from the transaction at around $87 million, but said on Tuesday it could be hit by a writedown in the billions of dollars. Toshiba executives have said it could take until February to pinpoint the exact impact. Sources: Court filings (Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
Its hard to overstate the iPhones impact on the world, both from a consumer technology perspective as well as manufacturing. Foxconn, Apples trusted manufacturing partner, has come under fire several times over the years for its treatment of workers and other controversies, but as the New York Times reports, the companys job of building millions upon millions of iPhones helps to fuel an entire city.

Don't Miss: Heres what a Jet Black iPhone 7 Plus looks like after 3 months without a case

Located in the central province of Henan, the Chinese city of Zhengzhou is home to a Foxconn plant that can churn out a mind boggling half million iPhones every day. That kind of a production rate means a huge demand for factory workers, and labor is easy to come by in the city of six million residents.

Between the constantly expanding factory, over $1.5 billion in support for Foxconns infrastructure from the Chinese government, and a newly built customs facility to expedite the flow of iPhones out of the country, Apples smartphone rules the region. In fact, the iPhone is so crucial to the local economy that Zhengzhous residents allegedly call it iPhone City.

Foxconns presence in Zhengzhou means that roads get paved and the infrastructure is maintained and strengthened, but its Apples iPhone that is the real driving force. China benefits from the arrangement, and so does Apple, even though two arent direct partners. Foxconn, of course, gets the best of both worlds: Apples contract to build the iPhone and seemingly endless perks from the government to keep doing what its doing and keeping people employed.

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
Its now been more than five years since Apple first slapped Samsung with a series of patent infringement lawsuits for copying the overall look and feel of the iPhone. With Steve Jobs famously declaring that he was willing to go thermonuclear in the battle against Android, its no surprise that Apples patent suit with Samsung stretched across all corners of the globe and involved lawsuits in as many as 12 different countries.

Don't Miss: I really hate how much I love Apples AirPods

Incredibly, the epic legal battle between Apple and Samsung continues to rage on. Of course, the dispute now doesnt center on infringement, but rather on how much Samsung needs to pay Apple for previous instances of infringement. A few weeks back, the United States Supreme Court threw out a previous judgement that would have seen Samsung pay Apple $548 million in damages. While Samsung is still on the hook for $149 million, the remaining $399 million balance has been wiped out and will be recalculated in the lower courts.

One of the more interesting aspects of Apples ambitious patent suit against Samsung is that it gave us an unprecedented peek behind the curtains of Apples development process. Not only did we learn quite a bit about how the iPhone was developed, we also were granted access to fascinating iPhone prototypes, compelling deposition testimony from top Apple executives and much more.

At the same time, we also learned quite a bit about the lengths to which Samsung went to copy every single aspect of the iPhone user experience. How crazy was it? An internal document was brought to light during the trial that was nothing short of a 132-page manual teaching Samsung engineers how to copy the iPhone pixel by pixel.

So while we can argue endlessly about the merits of design patents and whether or not something like rounded corners on a tablet should warrant patent protection, its easy to forget that Samsung, in the wake of the iPhone becoming a global phenomenon, went into full panic mode and decided to rip off Apples iconic product through and through.

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In light of the aforementioned Supreme Courts recent ruling, and in light of Nokia acting like its 2009 and suing Apple once again for patent infringement, I was reminded of some of the more offending pieces of evidence that emerged during Apples first trial with Samsung back in 2012. In particular, one internal Samsung presentation from 2010 provided a step-by-step process for Samsung engineers to follow in an effort to steal so much of what made the iPhone such a unique product.

While a few of these slides have been seen before, some might be new to you. Of course, both iOS and Samsungs flavor of Android have evolved and changed quite a bit from the time this presentation was put together, but it still represents a fascinating piece of smartphone history that also helps explain why Apple was so intent on throwing the full weight of its legal might at Samsung.

Whats also incredible, as you look over these representative slides, is that it demonstrates just how much attention Apple paid to the iOS user experience from the very beginning. For larger images, you can click here.

View post on imgur.com

You can check out the full 132-page document right here.

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
Samsung will offer an S-pen accessory for the Galaxy S8, according to a new report from China.

Samsung is releasing the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus in just a few months, and according to a report from China, the company will be offering an external S-Pen accessory for the device. The S-Pen would bring similar features found on the Galaxy Note 7.

Rumored display sizes for the Galaxy S8 are starting at 5.1 and going up to 6.2, so adding a stylus makes sense. It would also make the Galaxy S8 Plus more useful and make a better replacement for the Galaxy Note 7.

Were not sure how much Samsung will charge for the S-Pen, but the current S-Pen replacement costs $21. Well officially find out more information about the Galaxy S8 and the S-Pen in April when Samsung announces the phone at an event in New York.

Samsung Galaxy S8 Spec Rumors

The Galaxy S8 spec rumors include a 5.5-inch and 5.1-inch Super AMOLED display, Snapdragon 830 or 835 chipset, Android 7.1 Nougat and 6GB of RAM.

Galaxy S8 AI Assistant

Samsung is looking to launch an AI assistant with its upcoming Galaxy S8 smartphone.

Based on a trademark filing, SamMobile says that Bixby could be the name for Samsungs upcoming AI assistant. Yes, its quirky, but at least consumers will remember it.

Samsung Will Ditch The Headphone Jack

Samsung blog SamMobile reports the upcoming Galaxy S8 will ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack for a thinner design. In addition, SamMobile says the Galaxy S8 will feature a USB Type-C port. The Galaxy Note 7 was the first Samsung phone with the USB-C, so were not surprised the S8 would have the USB-C.

Related Articles
Court and spark: Serena Williams is tying the knot.

The tennis great announced her engagement to Alexis Ohanian on Thursday, posting a poem on Reddit that she accepted the proposal of the social news website's co-founder.

Williams' agent, Jill Smoller, confirmed the engagement in an email to The Associated Press.

Ohanian wrote on his Facebook page, "She said yes."

Williams, 35, has been dating Ohanian, 33, for over a year.

Her poem:

"I came home/A little late/Someone had a bag packed for me/And a carriage awaited/Destination: Rome/To escort me to my very own "charming"/Back to where our stars first collided/And now it was full circle/At the same table we first met by chance/This time he made it not by chance/But by choice/Down on one knee/He said 4 words/And I said yes."

Williams in July won Wimbledon for the seventh time to tie Steffi Graf's record of 22 Grand Slam titles. In September she passed Roger Federer for most all-time Grand Slam match victories, winning her 308th in the U.S. Open.

No wedding date has been announced.
By Natalia Zinets KIEV (Reuters) - Hackers have targeted Ukrainian state institutions about 6,500 times in the past two months, including incidents that showed Russian security services were waging a cyberwar against the country, President Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday. In December, Ukraine suffered attacks on its finance and defense ministries and the State Treasury that allocates cash to government institutions. A suspected hack also wiped out part of Kiev's power grid, causing a blackout in part of the capital. "Acts of terrorism and sabotage on critical infrastructure facilities remain possible today," Poroshenko said during a meeting of the National Security and Defence Council, according to a statement released by Poroshenko's office. The statement said the president stressed that "the investigation of a number of incidents indicated the complicity directly or indirectly of Russian security services waging a cyberwar against our country". Relations between Kiev and Moscow collapsed in 2014 following Russia's annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, where fighting continues despite a ceasefire agreement. Among the 6,500 attacks Poroshenko said the country had been hit by, the attack on the State Treasury halted its systems for several days, meaning state workers and pensioners had been unable to receive their salaries or payments on time. Cyber security firm CrowdStrike said last week a hacking group linked to the Russian government likely used a malware implant on Android devices to track and target Ukrainian artillery units from late 2014 through 2016. Its findings are the latest to support a growing view among Western security officials and cyber security researchers that Russian President Vladimir Putin has increasingly relied on hacking to exert influence and attack geopolitical foes. Russia has repeatedly denied hacking accusations. Poroshenko's comments come as the Obama administration plans to announce retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking into U.S. political institutions and individuals and leaking information in an effort to help Donald Trump win the presidency. Trump has dismissed the assessments of the U.S. intelligence community. In December 2015, Ukrainian regional power company Prykarpattyaoblenergo reported an outage, saying the area affected included the regional capital Ivano-Frankivsk. Ukraine's state security service blamed Russia. Experts widely described that incident as the first known power outage caused by a cyber attack. The U.S. cyber firm iSight Partners identified the perpetrator as a Russian hacking group known as "Sandworm". As a result of the cyber attacks, Ukraine's security council agreed measures to protect state institutions, the statement said. It did not disclose what the measures were. (Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Alison Williams)
By popular account, 2016 has been a dismal year, with many well known - and well loved - celebrities passing away both in Ghana and abroad. At this point, one can only be thankful to have survived such a tragic year still feeling optimistic about future prospects.

So in light of this truth here's a list of some heartbreaking things that occurred during the last 365 days. Things that Ghanaians lived through and came away still feeling positive regardless of how hopeless they were.

Get the latest news on entertainment here

5. Assassination of Joseph Boakye-Danquah

READ ALSO: Corporate bodies dont get involved in political endorsements, I see myself as a corporate body - Kojo Antwi

Member of Parliament (MP) for Abuakwa North, Mr. Joseph Boakye-Danquah's death took the entire country by surprise. Death in and of itself is always a tragic thing, but to be murdered in your own home by an intruder is - at least in Ghana - both tragic and scary. Nevertheless, the fact that Ghanaians bounced back from this tragedy is a sure sign that Ghana's populace are resilient.

4. Death of Comedian Samuel Kwadwo Boaben, a.k.a. Bob Okala.

Pay Attention: Get all the latest news on yen.com.gh

Bob Okala, born Samuel Kwadwo Boaben, was a celebrated comedian that many Ghanaians - both young and old - will remember fondly. After a live performance at the Koforidua Jackson Park, in an event organized by the management of Joy Industries Limited, Bob Okala collapsed immediately after his performance. Upon being rushed to the hospital, the well known comedian was pronounced dead on arrival.

3. Death of Danny Nettey

READ ALSO: Medical and Dental Council recommends the arrest and prosecution of Ghana based cosmetic surgeon

The death of Danny Nettey, a musician and songwriter, took the entire country by surprise. Before his sudden and unexpected passing, family members say that he was in high spirits and even prayed with his family before he retired to bed. Witnesses say that he was found in the early hours on the morning of July 15th, unconscious and unresponsive. Alas, once he was rushed to a medical facility, a doctor pronounced him dead upon arrival.

2. Vibrant Fiya's Death

When a person dies while they're still at their prime, the death is felt more acutely simply because of the prospects left unexplored. Vibrant Faya's death was no different, especially considering the way he died. Born Emmanuel Kojo Quayeson, Vibrant Faya died in a vehicular accident.

1. Trade Fair gas explosion

Pay Attention: Get news whenever and wherever you go with YEN NEWS android app here

Though there are varying reports as to the cause of the explosion, most will agree that the gas explosion which occurred around 5:30 to 6:00 p.m. at the Louis Gas filling station was the worst disaster to have occurred over the past 365 days. With the official death toll at 6, with dozens of people sustaining injuries, not to mention the amount of property loss, this gas explosion without a doubt, will be remember for years to come.

Source: YEN.com.gh
The police have warned members of the general public against creation of mafia-like criminal gangs that are engaging in organized crimes across the country.

According to the Police Chief, Gen Kale Kayihura, there is a new group of criminals who are conniving with bank officials to follow up people who withdrawal huge sums of money from mainly three undisclosed banks that are under investigation.

He adds that similar trend have been identified in emerging gold trade, drug trafficking and most of victims are foreigners who come to the country for investment.

He however said that they have launched any inter-agency campaign to crack down on these criminals.
The Chief Magistrates Court in Jinja has issued a warrant for the government to produce Jamil Mukulu, the former commander of the Allied Democratic Front rebel group not later than 30th January, 2017.

Mukulu was today scheduled to appear before Chief Magistrate Francis Kaggwa, to be committed to the High Court for trail but he has failed to appear.

There was confusion in Court when his lawyers led by Caleb Alaka, the chief magistrate Francis Kaggwa and prosecution learnt that the prisons service had no plans to produce Mukulu in Court today without providing any explanation.

Mukulu and others are accused of orchestrating several murders including the killing of Muslim clerics.

Mukulu was arrested in Tanzania in April 2015, where he had been living as a fugitive.

He was extradited to Uganda in July 2015, after a Tanzanian Court issued an order to have him tried in Uganda.

ADF was created in 1995 and operated mainly in DRC-Uganda border area. In 2013 it was estimated to have strength of 1,200 to 1,500 armed fighters located in north-east Beni Territory of North Kivu province, close to the border with Uganda.

The group was dispersed in 2013 and 2014 following heavy military offensives by the Congolese army and the UN stabilization Mission

On June 30th, 2014, the UN Security council listed the ADF as a terrorist group accusing it of committing serious violations of international law including recruiting and using child soldiers.
Faced with a new battlefield threat from commercially-available drones, Marines this month engaged in realistic battlefield training that included quad-copter target practice.

The training was part of the massive West Coast exercise Steel Knight, which spanned most of a month and included five major events ranging from long-range raids to force-on-force training. During the exercise, Marines from 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion got their hands on quad-copter unmanned aerial vehicles, the kind available from many major retailers, and simulated a realistic fight.

During the live-fire portion of the exercise, they practiced shooting the drones down with M240 coaxial mounted machine guns, the commander of 1st LAR's D Company, Capt. Adam Unkle, told Military.com in an interview.

"It was like, okay, these commercial drones that any Joe off the street can buy, can we shoot them down, what does that look like," Unkle said. "Can we pick them up through our sights, and everything else like that. And we were able to."

The U.S. Military has purchased a small number of DroneDefenders, sophisticated systems that use frequency interference to take control of drones and bring them to earth unharmed. But training to eliminate the threat with conventional weapons gives the Marines additional options downrange.

Later, in a force-on-force event in which they were pitted against their sister unit, 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, and elements for force reconnaissance, the 1st LAR Marines practiced hiding out from the drones, using old-school concealment techniques to evade their mechanical eyes. Using low-tech tools including camouflage netting, local vegetation, and cheap thermal blankets, the Marines were able to hide from the drones and the troops operating them, Unkle said. In all, he said, the 1st LAR element was able to stay concealed for 36 hours in 12 vehicle and dismounted hide positions.

"So, I know [UAVs] seems like this big monster in the sky, but at the end of the day, whoevers there on the camera is still looking through a soda straw," he said. "And if he cant find you, its useless."

The idea to use thermal emergency blankets--the kind handed out to runners after long races--came from a corporal in D company, Unkle said.

"We took the cammie net that we put over the top of our positions, tied the thermal blanket on top of it, and eliminated the heat signature," he said. "Innovation-wise, that was something that wasnt in the publication that we just came up with. A cheap solution."

The concept, he said, is already being included in after-action briefs for the exercise. The use of commercial drones in this year's Steel Knight, a first for the exercise, reflects Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller's emphasis on using new technology to dominate the battlefield. At the Modern Day Marine Expo this year, he said he plans to equip all Marine infantry squads with quad-copters for reconnaissance, a cheap tool that he said will give them better awareness while deployed.

But Unkle said the exercise also gave Marines the opportunity to dust off old reconnaissance publications about old-fashioned evasion and concealment techniques that are also increasing in relevance as Marines train to counter a future, technologically sophisticated enemy.

As for the on-the spot idea to use cheap "dollar store" equipment to counter a complex threat, Unkle said that reflects the scrappy way of operating that Marines are known for.

"A corporal comes out of left field, and says, 'hey, I bought this two-dollar thermal blanket, it solves this problem,'" Unkle said. "I wouldnt say its a new way of thinking, its just the way Marines work."
Mike Krogman is doing some long-distance apartment hunting.

Hell be leaving the lakeshore house he rents in Pardeeville and heading to Iowa, probably sometime this spring.

Krogman, 48, has worked for Oscar Mayer in Madison since April 1990, first on the sanitation crew and now as union secretary/treasurer and chief steward.

But the plant is scheduled to close by the end of March 2017, so Krogman plans to transfer to Oscar Mayers factory in Davenport so he can put in the three more years he needs to earn a pension. He doesnt know what job hell get in Iowa or how much it will pay.

Id rather not go down there, but its a part of life, I guess. You have to do what you have to do, Krogman said.

Madison city officials also are trying to prepare for the unknown.

Mayor Paul Soglin said planning for the future of the longtime Oscar Mayer site at 910 Mayer Ave.  at the intersection of Packers and Commercial avenues  will get serious in 2017.

We are planning a meeting ... sitting down with some business leaders here in the city, just discussing the future of the site and what may be done with it, from a technical standpoint, Soglin said.

Thats our highest priority  to start doing some planning, he said. But the mayor said it could be 10 years before the site comes alive again, with a new identity.

Just a few months before Madisons near-century of meat production at Oscar Mayer will end, many questions remain unanswered: Questions about the hundreds of remaining workers whose jobs will disappear; questions about the fate of the 72-acre site and the 1.7 million square feet of offices and factory it houses  the place where hot dogs and processed meats began production in 1919 and where, at its peak, more than 4,000 people once worked.

One thing is certain: With the impending closing of Oscar Mayer, 2017 will see a big shake-up in the citys economic base and in the rhythm of the North Side neighborhood that is not likely to be resolved anytime soon.

Dwindling jobs

When parent company Kraft Heinz announced in November 2015 it would close Oscar Mayer operations in Madison as part of a restructuring that will shutter seven plants in the U.S. and Canada, about 1,000 people worked in the local factory and offices, including 650 union members at the plant.

Today, there are 450 employees left  fewer than half  company spokesman Michael Mullen said. Of those, 420 are union members, said Doug Leikness, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 538.

They wont be there much longer. Leikness said hes been told 42 plant workers jobs will end Saturday, and at least 44 more at the end of January.

Another 240 jobs will disappear in February when the round and square products  lunch meats such as bologna, ham and turkey  will cease production, Leikness said.

I believe some of these product lines that we have are going to start up in January in Kirksville, Missouri, he said.

Kraft Heinz officials are not offering details, but Mullen gave this emailed statement:

Kraft Heinz will end production at the Madison factory in the first quarter of 2017, and we are in the process of transitioning production to other facilities within the United States, Mullen wrote.

We continue to work with local officials and potential buyers on the sale of our Madison facility. We remain committed to keeping the community apprised of our progress. For now, the process remains ongoing. Once a decision has been reached, our employees will be the first to know.

We sincerely thank our employees for their hard work and commitment to the facility. As always, we remain committed to treating our people with the utmost respect and dignity, Mullen wrote.

Headed to Iowa

Krogman is among about 50 of Madisons Oscar Mayer workers who intend to transfer to Davenport, Leikness estimated. When they do, they will have bumping rights over the Iowa employees.

Under a clause in the unions contract, if Madisons Oscar Mayer plant closes, its employees have the right to take over a job thats held by a worker with the least seniority at the Davenport factory.

Quite a few employees, though, are choosing to retire instead, Leikness said, and some are drawing pensions of $2,000 a month or more.

Employees who are at least 50 years old and have worked for the company at least 20 years can get a double-pension, Leikness said. Some even qualify for a $750 bonus on top of that.

Those who are not eligible to receive a pension will get a separation agreement with smaller payments.

Leikness said newer Oscar Mayer employees have a 401(k) retirement account instead of a pension and wont get company-paid health insurance when they eventually retire.

Krogman, who grew up in Eau Claire and went to high school in DeForest, wound up at Oscar Mayer by accident. He had earned an associate degree in police science at Madison Area Technical College but was not able to land a law enforcement job right away. When the Oscar Mayer job emerged, he took it.

The pay at Oscar Mayer at the time was more than most police jobs, Krogman said.

Oscar Mayers been a good place to work. You can work a lot of hours and earn extra money. Ive been able to buy houses, he said.

The Davenport operation also is undergoing a big change. Kraft Heinz will close Davenports current plant and is building a new one  with the help of at least $15 million in state and local incentives  that will provide jobs for several hundred fewer employees.

Whats next

When Oscar Mayer ceases operations here, it will affect more than just the employees.

Local utilities will take a big hit:

Madison Gas and Electric Co. has told state regulators Oscar Mayer is the source of more than $3 million in revenue each year.

Oscar Mayer has long been the largest customer of the Madison Water Utility, typically using 400 million to 450 million gallons of water a year and providing the water utility with more than $1 million a year in revenue, or 2.8 percent of its total annual revenue, spokeswoman Amy Barrilleaux said.

The Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District says Oscar Mayer is the No. 2 contributor of wastewater  after only UW-Madison  and treating that wastewater has generated more than $500,000 a year in revenue for the sewerage district, on average, over the past 10 years.

Soglin said the citys 2017 budget includes $100,000 to hire a private planning consultant to help city staff develop a strategy for the soon-to-be-vacant property.

Most people agree we want a solid employment base at the site. Were not interested in housing, not interested in retail sales  which isnt to say none of that will be there. But the key has to be something that creates employment, good jobs, Soglin said.

He said the city has been in contact with Oscar Mayer officials at Krafts base in Chicago on a monthly basis.

So far, no word has been forwarded about any serious interest in buying the buildings, and no developer has approached the city, Soglin said.

They will notify us when they have a buyer. When the property was listed in the summer, I know that there was interest, said Soglin.

The citys main objective now is to get the site cleared for new development, he said. Soglin said he has told Kraft Heinz that if a developer comes forward, the city will apply for federal brownfield cleanup funds, which cannot be awarded to private companies.

Conversely, if there are no takers, we have told Oscar Mayer that if the site were cleaned up, we would take it for a dollar. But it cant come with any liabilities, Soglin said.

He estimated it would cost $10 million to $12 million to demolish the buildings, remove the materials and prepare for a grounds cleanup.

With no other business waiting in the wings to move into the location, it could take up to a decade before anything happens, Soglin said.

Impact on local businesses

In the meantime, things will slow down for area businesses that have catered to the Oscar Mayer crowd  the groceries, hardware stores, restaurants.

Those crowds already have diminished in recent years, said John Kavanaugh, whose family has owned Kavanaughs Esquire Club, 1025 N. Sherman Ave., since 1947.

With only an open field separating the businesses, Oscar Mayer workers used to congregate at the old-fashioned supper club for lunch, bowling banquets and Christmas parties. Even members of the Mayer family would come by.

When the meat processing plant traditionally closed for a holiday break at noon on Christmas Eve day, workers would stop in and hold an impromptu cocktail party at the Esquire Club, he said. That was always a very festive day for us, Kavanaugh said.

He said the closing is a concern for other members of the North Side Business Association, as well. When people dont have the money to spend, (and there are fewer) people working, it makes a difference to everyone.

Kavanaugh said at least a couple of people have suggested that Epic Systems Corp., the huge electronic health records software company in Verona, might be interested in taking over the Oscar Mayer site.

What a wonderful thing that would be  if (Epic founder) Judy Faulkner would want to put a training center in the area, close to the airport and close to the Interstate (highway), Kavanaugh said.

An Epic presence would likely draw a major hotel to the area as well, he speculated.

She certainly has the wherewithal, the funding to do that. What a great thing that would be for the North Side, Kavanaugh said.

An Epic spokesman said, though, thats not in the plan for the company, whose campus continues to grow in Verona. We are not interested in the Oscar Mayer property, Epic spokesman Eric Helsher said Wednesday.
The maker of Energizer batteries is suing the Middleton-based company Spectrum Brands, alleging that Spectrum's packaging for Rayovac batteries rips off Energizer's marketing designs.

Energizer Holdings filed the lawsuit in a St. Louis-based federal court last week. In its complaint, Energizer claims that Spectrum Brands Holdings recently changed the way it packages Rayovac batteries in an attempt to "closely mimic" Energizer batteries. More specifically, the complaint says the colors, lettering, "wavy lines," and plastic casing on Rayovac packages replicate Energizer's design scheme.

Energizer says the similarities equate to an infringement of "trade dress"  a legal term referring to a package design that's been filed as an intellectual property.

"Spectrums conduct is a clear and calculated campaign to prey on consumer confusion and thereby trade on Energizers extensive fame and goodwill," Energizer attorneys assert in the complaint.

The complaint at one point suggests that comments made by Spectrum's executive chairman at a recent shareholders meeting prove that the company had Energizer in its sights.

"The Energizer Bunny has been lying for a long time," said David Maura at the meeting, according to a transcription by the company Thomson Reuters. "Im telling you, if youre buying your kids XBOXs Energizer batteries, you are literally lighting your money on fire. And were going to get that message across, and were going to grow our business."

Added Maura: "I can't attack Duracell because there's a very smart and intelligent investor in the room. And Duracell is a great brand."

For the alleged violations, Energizer is asking a judge to make Spectrum Brands recall Rayovac batteries with the new packaging, and have Spectrum pay damages to Energizer.

Energizer Holdings did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.

Spectrum Brands' vice president of investor relations, David A. Prichard, said in an emailed statement that "we are evaluating our options and plan to vigorously protect our rights."

Rayovac batteries have been a Wisconsin institution for almost 111 years. In 2005, Rayovac Corp. changed its name to Spectrum Brands, and has become a "diversified company" making goods ranging from juicers to weed killer.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said that Rayovac battery production moved to Atlanta a six-year period. Rayovac production has actually always been in Wisconsin -- it was only Spectrum Brands' corporate headquarters that moved to Atlanta.
Karen Orr was standing outside a strip mall in La Crosse in late 2013, waiting for a friend to join her for Christmas shopping, when she was "struck with an idea from the great Lord above": A baby monitor, but for dogs that have been left in cars.

Orr, a Madison-based surgeon, had no background in technology or engineering, but she did have a desire to "end the madness" of dogs dying in overheated cars. Because of that verve, Orr is now engineering prototypes of the iMyK9  a smart device that lets owners watch camera footage of their pet on their cellphone, while monitoring temperature and humidity to boot.

The device is more than just a novel piece of technology. It's also an example of how a global, buzzword-y trend has begun to take root in Madison: the "Internet of Things."

The Internet of Things  also known as IoT  refers to the growing body of stuff in our lives that can collect data and "talk to each other" via WiFi, cellular connections or any other kind of network. It includes anything from the popular Fitbit wristband that tracks a user's workout and coffeemakers you can control via a smartphone, to DVD players, traffic cameras and weather stations.

Bob Baddeley is a serial entrepreneur who has engineered a number of IoT devices; currently, he's working on the Allergy Amulet, an IoT device that can help identify allergens in food. He says that the Internet of Things is just the next step in the history of computing.

"We started with computers that were dedicated to a whole building. Then computers were inside a room. Then we had computers on a desk. Now, the computers are everywhere," he said.

IoT is an increasingly visible phenomenon in Madison, and not just because of consumers who are buying "smart" thermostats or voice-recognizing home assistants like Alexa. There's also a growing class of entrepreneurs in town who, like Orr and Baddeley, are working on innovative devices of their own.

Propeller Health has been making waves with its smart asthma inhaler attachments, which can help people with respiratory conditions monitor their health. Weightup Solutions uses wearable technology to collect data that can help athletes with their weight-lifting routines. And just last week, the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce named OneEvent Technologies the city's "most innovative company" for its software that monitors safety conditions inside buildings via smoke detectors.

According to University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering and business professor Raj Veeramani, IoT is not just a startup trend. All manufacturers have to adjust to an IoT world if they want to stay competitive, he said.

"Every company that's manufacturing a product is coming to terms with the idea that it needs to make a connected product strategy," he said. "All of these companies need to understand what it means to be in a connected world."

Veeramani is the director of the university's Internet of Things Lab  a unique academic institution the school founded in 2013 as a "sandbox" for student and faculty experimentation within the growing field.

He said that the lab is conducting some critical research on IoT  currently, it's examining consumer perceptions of IoT technology. In addition, the lab is partnering with companies like Milwaukee's Johnson Controls to improve the ways that manufacturers can use IoT for equipment diagnostics.

"We've created a unique university-industry collaboration," said Veeramani.

Madison is also home to a burgeoning Meetup group for people interested in IoT. Jeremy Udovich is the sales director for the Atlanta-based company HiQo Solutions, which specializes in building out IoT products. He said he wanted to launch the Meetup group after seeing similar groups succeed in places like Chicago. Plus, he said he was inspired by the bright ideas he's seen in the Madison community.

"I just felt like there's got to be this ecosystem here," he said. "If we just connect a lot of people, we can make a lot of cool things happen in Madison."

Clearly, IoT has taken root in Madison  and with it, so have privacy and security concerns.

It's easy to imagine that an interconnected web of smart devices collecting troves of data could be abused. In fact, there have already been some ugly real-world examples.

In October, a massive cyberattack took down dozens of major websites, from Spotify to The New York Times. Officials said that the attack was executed via thousands of IoT devices that had been hacked.

Earlier this month, privacy groups filed a complaint against the makers of "intelligent" robotic dolls, alleging that they were illegally selling information that the dolls were collecting from young children, including voice recordings.

According to Udovich, ethics and security are "almost always" part of the IoT conversation. That much was clear at a recent Meetup at the Monona Public Library last week. When Orr and Baddely talked about their enterprises as part of a panel discussion, they ended up fielding a slew of questions on legal issues, privacy, and security.

Baddely acknowledged that with some of the products he's worked on  a sensor for hospitals and hotels to monitor noise levels during quiet hours, for example  there's the potential to collect "weird" and invasive data.

"We're just collecting the minimum data necessary," he said.

One audience member in particular, a young engineer, expressed concern over the potential for Orr's dog-monitoring camera to get hacked by bad actors. Orr said that she appreciated the concern, and that she was following security protocols to help safeguard the device. However, she acknowledged that the system was not hacker-proof.

"If people are really smart and they want to get into something, they're going to get into it," she said.

The audience member, who refused to give his name, later said he wasn't thrilled by the answer.

"These people have great intentions," he said after the event. "But even with the best of intentions, things can still go wrong."

Veeramani said that it's never possible for a system to be 100 percent secure. However, he said that security concerns shouldn't make people afraid of IoT. The potential for automation and optimization of tasks in our day-to-day lives is tremendous, he said. Plus, the predictive and self-aware capabilities of smart devices are helping make bold and innovative ideas like the self-driving car a reality.

There may be limits to the "promise" of IoT. Baddeley said he's encountered some pretty dumb IoT devices  for example, the erstwhile Egg Minder, a smart egg carton that could keep track of how many eggs were left in the refrigerator. The problem, said Baddeley, was that the signal from the device wasn't able to actually leave the refrigerator.

"You could say that, 'Oh, this is an internet-connected egg-holding device.' And you might get some press from it, because it's a ridiculous idea and the news is, 'Look, we're adding internet to everything,'" he said. "But the internet-connectedness has to add value."

Meanwhile, the "Internet of Things" continues to be a huge tech buzzword. However, it seems to be less of a recognizable phenomenon among the general public. Orr said that she doesn't typically talk about the IoT dimension to the iMyK9.

"It's too geek," she said. "I want to keep it simple."

The approach may pay off. IoT nerds and investors may look at her idea with skepticism, said Orr. Pet owners, she said, "get it instantly."
The article Ron Johnson not sold on CIA conclusion that Russia tried to tip the election to Donald Trump (Dec. 15 La Crosse Tribune) is deeply disconcerting. To not believe evidence that is deemed "very likely true," an actual classification for intelligence agencies, is an affront to all our military personnel, including our hard-working, overseas, boots-on-the-ground soldiers. It is especially scary because Johnson heads the Senate Homeland Security committee.

By disqualifying the intelligence not only from the CIA, but also from 16 other government and intelligence agencies, Johnson is sending a message to all other foreign governments and rebel groups (including ISIS) that we are a disjointed country open for cyber attacks. These signals could embolden our enemies to attack, and not just through the Internet, but through military strikes on the United States in the Middle East. Johnson needs to stop this behavior of trying to please our president-elect and start supporting his constituents in Wisconsin.

What happens when Russia, or other foreign entities (think North Korea and the Sony hack), hacks into our DMV system and has access to our names, addresses and credit card numbers? Will he disqualify that intelligence as well? If this happens, then millions of Johnsons constituents could lose their identity, their savings and their dignity. Denying firm evidence from 17 intelligence agencies is not only wrong, it is terrifying. Johnson's constituents need to let him know that his statements are unacceptable.
Bangor area residents have enjoyed the American Legion Fourth of July fireworks for many years. The fireworks have been funded by the Legion and some donations from the public. The Legion was approached with a fundraiser idea from Augie's Bar, which has been approved by the Legion. On Sunday, Jan. 29, from 2 to 5 p.m., Augie's will be hosting the first-ever Chili Cook-off to raise funds for the fireworks. Anyone interested in competing may contact Augie's at 486-1162 for more information. If you think you make the best chili, then you should be there. Cost for the chili will be $5 for all you can eat.
Hunter Smith has always wanted to live up to his name.

The first time Ive wanted to go (hunting) was two or three years ago, 12-year-old Hunter said.

Born with Type II Spinal Muscular Atrophy, hunting seemed out of reach. Holding a traditional gun is out of the question because it could possibly break Hunters bones.

Luckily for him, his father, Dan, was directed by Ray Howell of Kicking Bear Foundation to Foundation for Hope: Outdoor Adventures.

Foundation for Hope was founded in 1999 by former Detroit Lions offensive guard Tony Semple and his partner, Craig Mortz. The foundation allows youth with life-threatening or life-altering medical conditions to go hunting. Their Michigan location, Vahalla Ranch in Grayling, Mich., lets those aged 10 to 25 hunt for deer.

The Smiths drove the 9.5 hours to Michigan from their home in Holmen and spent a total of four days at the ranch.

We got in Thursday morning, and he went hunting Thursday night for a couple of hours, Dan said. We went Friday, early morning and night. We got the deer on Friday.

Those who attend the foundations camp get to hunt until they bag their deer. If they kill their deer on one of the first days, the ranch has archery and other activities for the campers. The guns used are specially made for those who would not be able to use a traditional gun.

Even someone who couldnt talk but could control their hands could do it, Hunter said.

The gun is 243-caliber and is operated on a stand by a joy stick. It is connected to an iPad that shows what would be the scope on a traditional gun. Hunter would look at the iPad and when he lined up the crosshairs, the guide would have a safety button, and he would tell Hunter to shoot.

It was really loud. It was really fun, but guns are really loud; we had headphones, Hunter said. (The bullet) went straight through the lungs and he flopped like a fish.

The deer Hunter struck was an eight-pointer. The foundation processes the animal for meat and mounts the head for the participant to take home. Hunters is being shipped currently.

Hunter, who is a seventh grader at Holmen Middle School, said that his friends were pretty jealous that he got to go out hunting.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that was a very awesome experience, Dan said. We are very appreciative with what the foundation did. They taught him how to hunt with those special guns, and they have three of them. We cant thank them enough.

The ranch currently takes in 12 kids a year, but the foundation is hoping to raise that number to 100.

Its more than anything a lack of awareness. The foundation is completely solvent, Dan said. We were treated like family, from the time we arrived to the time we left.

Hunter was given a free iPad, headphones, hats, shirts, hand and feet warmers and a duffel bag to carry all the equipment.

Next, Hunter wants to go bear hunting.

If you are interested in learning more about the Foundation for Hope: Outdoor Adventures, go to their website at http://www.tonysemplefoundation.org.
The life of a brewer or brewery owner is not as charmed as it seems from the outside, but it is in this way: If you want to drink a beer thats not available in the local market, you can make it yourself.

And that is the origin story of the Madison areas newest brewery, known as Untitled Art.

Theres a lot of styles that Im sick of waiting for. I dont know why Wisconsin breweries arent making these styles. So I guess Untitled Art will, said Levi Funk, co-founder of the new venture and the man wholl be picking these styles to be made. I dont want to say Wisconsins stagnant in its exploration or experimentation, but (Wisconsin brewers are) experimenting with tweaks on older styles.

Theres this new edge in the beer world, he said, and that will be the inspiration for Untitled Arts beer.

Funk already has his hand in arguably Madisons most unconventional beer operation: Funk Factory Geuzeria, which for three years has been selling frustratingly minuscule amounts of lambic-style beers of exemplary quality.

Funk, though, while he is a now two-time brewery owner, is not a brewer. The wort that becomes Funk Factory beer is born at other breweries, then under Funks watch is barrel-fermented and -aged, and blended, usually with fruit.

It was this arrangement that gave rise to Untitled Art. Funk sourced a batch of wort from Octopi Brewing in Waunakee, a contract brewery opened a year ago by Isaac Showaki that primarily makes beer for other breweries. As tends to happen with two beer people, Funk and Showaki started talking about beer, one thing led to another and now Showaki and Funk are collaborators in Untitled Art.

The name is more than a name, in Funks vision. Tired of beers with kitschy names and backstories and detailed tasting notes on the labels, he wants to let the beer stand up for itself.

The goal of Untitled Art is to present beer without putting words in your mouth, Funk said.

He explained the concept with the brewerys metaphor: an art gallery, with each work having a card next to it on the wall, listing its name and describing the artists intent and vision. But the sculpture in the center of the gallery  unnamed and unexplained, allowing the viewer to draw his own conclusions  is the one he falls in love with.

The only words Funk wants to put to his beers is a simple name that reflects the beers style, and the first work of Untitled Art is Juicy IPA.

Wisconsin beer drinkers may not have heard of the style, which is of course Funks point. He described it as a subvariant of the New England IPA, which is indeed one of the hottest beer styles going right now. Northeastern breweries like The Alchemist, Trillium and Tree House have made names far outside their distribution circles by tapping  or perhaps creating  the market for beers that emphasize hop aromatics and flavors far above the standard American IPAs trademark bitterness.

The techniques and ingredient variables used to attain that aroma apex lead to some, um, compromises in the beers appearance. This is to say that the beer looks pretty weird: profoundly hazy at least, milkshake-like at the most extreme. The exact composition of the stuff thats suspended in these beers is the subject of some mystery, but Funk said its just about everything that goes into them: particles of grain, hops and yeast bodies.

A juicy IPA, which trades in lush hop flavors and aromas, carries less crud than the other New England IPA variant, the aptly named hazy IPA.

Unfiltered, hazy beers such as hefeweizen are familiar to even casual beer fans, but Funk said Juicy IPAs appearance in a hop-forward beer will be a test for the Wisconsin beer market. Its polarizing, but a lot of people love them, he said.

If theres one flaw in the Untitled Art concept, it could be this Catch-22-esque conundrum: The marriage of minimal information, with the goal of allowing the drinker to draw her own conclusions, to styles that are chosen because theyre unfamiliar to the market.

Funk declined to tell me about any of the other styles he and Showaki are considering for future Untitled Art works, citing the development process and again the desire not to influence peoples opinions of a beer before its release.

In any case, people probably shouldnt get too attached to any Untitled Art beer; Funk stressed this would be a one-step-at-a-time operation without the pressures of production demands set by internal goals or thirsty distributors. (Untitled Art is self-distributing its beer.) A brew what we want, when we want kind of thing, Funk said.

The first 50-barrel batch of Juicy IPA was delivered to a few dozen Madison and Milwaukee outlets the week before Christmas and sold out quickly. Funk said the next brew day is at least a month away as he and Showaki fine-tune the transition from pilot batch to full-scale brew, which means the next batch of Juicy might not hit shelves until Valentines Day.

So until then, unless you snagged a four-pack, this review might have to tide you over for a while. Drink it in deeply.

Juicy IPA

Style: American IPA/New England IPA/juicy IPA

Brewed by: Untitled Art at Octopi Brewing, 1131 Uniek Drive, Waunakee

What its like: This is the section where I compare the featured beer to others like it in the market. But that doesnt work here, and frankly I havent had enough of the legit New England IPAs to draw a meaningful parallel. My best comp is a less intense version of the extraordinarily scarce Toppling Goliath Double Dry Hopped Pseudo Sue that hit the Wisconsin market around early December.

Where, how much: If Juicys haziness is one test of the market, its pricing is another, as four-packs of 12-ounce bottles sold for $14-$15. Funk notes thats equivalent to a $7 bomber, a price many people wouldnt bat an eye at for a high-quality IPA. Im hoping to change peoples preference when it comes to high-end IPAs, Funk said. I hope people start preferring four-packs over bombers.

The beer: Juicy pours a robustly hazy pale gold, but it doesnt have the opaque, juice-like appearance of some of the most extreme New England IPAs. I know it might look a little pretentious in public, but take a deep quaff of the aroma before sipping.

The soft, pulpy nose carries a broad spectrum of citrus, passionfruit and a touch of lemongrass. The flavor follows, with hardly any bitterness, very little malt character and a dry, citrusy finish that contrasts with the beers juiciness. All that fruitiness, its worth noting, comes entirely from the hops; no actual juice is added.

While I havent had a lot of experience with the style, the intensity of it all was more muted than I was expecting, and Im hoping the fine-tuning might amplify Juicy a bit.

Booze factor: Part of the Untitled Art approach of removing prejudicial information includes excluding ABV from the label. Funk said he was particularly comfortable with that decision in Juicys case because its ABV  6 percent  is on the low end of the range of what a consumer should expect in an IPA.

The buzz: Its worth noting that while Untitled Art is a Funk-Showaki collaboration, its not a Funk Factory-Octopi collaboration. Untitled Art will be a contract customer of Octopi, but its otherwise business as usual for those two distinct beer businesses.

That may seem like semantics, but its clearly important to Funk to have a vehicle for creativity and experimentation in clean beer thats distinct from his traditional sours.

Funk Factory is a geuzeria. We make a very, very specific style of beer and we stick in a very niche circle of exploration, he said. There are great and exciting beers and beer styles outside of what should ever show up as being produced by a geuzeria. A geuzeria should not be making a New England IPA. Point blank.

And while beer geeks may be groaning at the month-plus between batch one and batch two of Juicy, the entirety of Untitled Art, from the first conversation with Showaki to the first bottling run, took place in less than one life cycle of Funks renowned sours.

It all happened fast, Funk said. Im used to things taking two years; we can put out a batch in two weeks. Thats pretty incredible.

Bottom line: 4 stars (out of five)
Christmas morning conjures images of family members sitting around a lit-up tree as they open presents in pajamas and robes. Age does not matter, previous disagreements are forgotten and distances traveled are reminisced by the glow.

This is Christmas; these are the memories, young or old, that people keep forever.

Now, instead of imagining wrapping paper strewn across the living room floor and gifts sitting untouched after the last piece of tape was ripped off, the family is there, but they are discussing something newsomething conversation-worthy.

They know their DNA.

As a shared Christmas gift, the Baarsch family of Spring Valley took the opportunity to learn their lineage. Made up of two daughters adopted from Russia and a son adopted from Minnesota, the Baarschs, although always a family, have answered questions asked aloud or not.

We wanted to see if we look, if the girls who are Russian and our son who is American, if there is some kind of overlap in our genetics, Bob Baarsch said. Its good for us to share our genetics at Christmastime. Its a discussion point, and more so, its a missing piece for our children, more than for my wife and me. It gives them that attachment to the past.

Kathy Baarsch came across the idea when she drove through Spring Grove. It was there that she saw a sign on the sidewalk advertising DNA testing through the Giants of the Earth Heritage Center.

The $175 test administered by the center asks participants to give them about an inch of saliva. The actual DNA is tested through ancestry.com.

Jill Storlie, a volunteer at the center, convinced Kathy, Bob and two of her children to participate in the test for Christmas.

I told Kathy, Dont just get the kits and hand them out for Christmas, do it now and get the results, go over them on Christmas, Jill said. Youre doing it for the family and if theyre not in the same place; its finding out new things to discuss.

The earlier the test is done, the more likely it will arrive in time for Christmas.

We decided to do it, so we came back the next week to sign up. We had to do it at least six weeks ahead of Christmas. It didnt end up taking that long, but we didnt want to risk it, Kathy said.

According to Jill, it is not unusual for people to want to do the test for Christmas or give it as a present.

Jills boyfriend, Roar Moe, who currently lives in Norway, has bought the test as a Christmas present for his mother, Rigmor.

The Baarschs were lucky enough to find a connection in their heritages.

We all found out that we had some Scandinavian in us, Bob said. Our girls are from northern Russia and they have blue eyes and are light skinned, so we thought they would have some Scandinavian in them. It connects us.

The process

The centers genealogical research is headed by Jill Storlies brother, Johnathan Storlie, Ph.D. He received his undergraduate degree from Luther College in 1993 and has studied philosophy at Boston College, as well as received his doctorate from the University of Iowa in microbiology, with an emphasis in human virology.

My interest in genealogy really expanded when my first cousin, Pastor Rolf Storlie of Caledonia, asked me to continue the familys genealogical research. He wrote a book, Storlies in America, John said. Ive married my interest in science with the expansion of his work through the genealogical research weve done.

Pastor Rolf Storlie passed away in 2005, and John accepted his position at the heritage center in 2009.

John has pushed his research into genealogy to a new level with those of Norwegian descent in Spring Grove and the surrounding areas. He has helped create a digital Bigda Booka traditional Norwegian genealogical bookand has traced 65,000 people who are no longer living.

We had to draw the line somewhere; the cutoff wasnt going to be Adam and Eve, he said. We stopped at the 1400s.

The centers research team is made up of John and his assistant, Stacy Wold. They send DNA to ancestry.com, then they go over results with clients and John will sit down upon request to go over potential health issues.

Thinking past generations, DNA is a great tool to have in the tool box to accomplish our goals, he said. We just had a family in here that has suffered from a variety of genetic disorders for generations. Going over their DNA, we saw a deficiency in an enzyme. Less than 1 percent of society has this enzyme and doctors have always misdiagnosed them.

Johns work brings in about 12 clients a week. He will sit for a few hours with each client and help them begin to build their family tree online.

The informative health review, like the ancestry review, is currently free to the public, although the center does accept donations.

Its such a joy to work with people and to hear their stories, and to help them, he said. It gives a sense of history to people, which empowers them to believe in themselves. If they think, My ancestors made a difference in the world, then that can inspire their lives.
When I was a junior in college, I had the opportunity to take a class that specialized in refugees. We learned what categorizes someone as a refugee, what it is really like to live in refugee camps, and the legal process of coming to a country like the United States.

In this class, I had the opportunity to meet with a refugee family once a week and help their children perfect their English, as well as work on their homework.

The family I was put with was wonderful. They had just come to Chicago in the past few months. The mother was pregnant with what would become the first son in the family, and they had three daughters: a 12-year-old, a 7-year-old and a 2-year-old. I mostly worked with the 7-year-old with her homework and coloring.

She was so smart. By the end of the semester, we were working on multiplying and dividing fractionssomething that I did not do until I was at least in the third grade, and by then (and even now), Im not that great at it.

The family was Muslim from the minority group called Rohingya. The Rohingyas are originally from Myanmar and have fled to countries like Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia to avoid persecution in Myanmar. They are forced to live in ghettos and refugee camps in Myanmar and do not have the right to leave.

The family I volunteered with was living in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. They were not allowed to legally work in Bangladesh or leave the camp past certain curfews.

Inside the camp, violence and disease was widespread. The mother had given birth to the three daughters in the camp, where doctors and medical staff are little to none.

In class, we watched a documentary about pregnant Rohingya women in these camps dying because the guards refused to bring them to hospitals, even in situations like a breached baby.

It is amazing to me that this kind of treatment of humans is happening in todays world. It is more amazing to me that the kids, who have been through so much, are so resilient. They would light up when we would come and crowd around the new games we would bring.

The eldest daughter wanted to become a doctor and the 7-year-old wanted to get straight As.

The mother would make us food when we would visit. We would help the mother with driving test questions so shed be able to pass her driving test.

The reason I share this story is in hopes that a change happens. The BBC has reported that the Rakhine State in Myanmar (where the Rohingya population lives) has put together an advisory commission.

Myanmar is taking the steps to ask for outside assistance on what to do for their Rohingya population.

Kofi Annan is heading the commission and hopes to take a new look at Myanmars problems with the Rakhine State.

This is significant progress and can mean relief to so many peoplepeople like the family I met in the midst of their first winter, learning to drive and speak English in Chicago.
WEST SALEM  Harley R. Meyer, 88, of West Salem died Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2016, at his home. Memorial services followed by military honors will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at Presbyterian Church of West Salem. Visitation will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday, and 10 a.m. to time of service Saturday, both at the church. A complete obituary will follow. Jandt-Fredrickson Funeral Homes and Crematory, Jostad Chapel, West Salem, is in charge of arrangements.
LA CRESCENT, Minn.  James Fogarty, the new conservation officer for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, has always wanted to be a game warden.

I thought I would fit well in that role so I went for it, Fogarty said. It took me 13 years to get there.

Three years in LeSueur County as a correctional officer while working simultaneously as a dispatch part-time patrol deputy led to 10 years in Carver County. It was there Fogarty worked his way up from patrol deputy on the west side of the county to detective in Chanhassen, Minn.

It used to be you had to have five years of experience in law enforcement jobs, thats how you get your foot in the door, he said. I started from the bottom and had to work my way up, like all jobs.

Fogarty, 35, who grew up in Belle Plaine, Minn., has always loved the outdoors. Although his immediate family were not hunters, Fogarty has hunted, fished and worked with Pheasants Forever since his childhood.

I stopped hunting things that I dont like to eat, he said. When youre a young hunter youre excited to hunt everything. When youre older you dont have as much time to hunt everything. People like myself with three little kids, a full-time job and a healthy marriage, theres just less time.

Fogarty likes to fish in open water and ice fish, as well as elk hunt in Colorado and New Mexico, and fish and hunt pheasant in North Dakota. He has three children aged three and under.

Fogarty applied to the conservation officer position at La Crescent Station three times.

Third times the charm, he said.

La Crescent Station spans the area east of Minnesota Hwy. 76 in Houston County and Winona County south of Interstate 90.

His work in standard law enforcement has taught Fogarty valuable skills to use for conservation law enforcement.

Working as a correctional officer, I would recommend it because you learn how to deal with people, Fogarty said. When I worked as a detective it was fun, I like to dig and find everything I can. I am very detail-oriented. The couple pages report you would submit as a patrol deputy turns into an 18-page narrative. You get to close cases as a detective.

When Fogarty accepted the position, he was sent to a 12- to 14-week training academy that followed with 16 weeks of field training.

I lived out of a duffel bag for 16 months, he said. My wife was a single parent for that time, I only got four days off out of 14. I would have to drive six hours to two-and-a-half depending on where I was staying, but thats a sacrifice you make for this job. If you want the job you have to go through the training.

The conservation officer training emphasized skills needed specifically for conservation law enforcement. Fogarty learned things like how to check in on hunters, the paper process after seizing evidence like deer or fish and firearm training.

After training, Fogarty was thrown into the fire, starting his new position almost immediately. He began work on Nov. 15 right after gun season started for deer hunting.

Fogarty works alone, although he is always out talking to those enjoying the outdoors.

This is my dream job. I get to be out talking to people who love the same things I love, he said. It hasnt felt like a day of work yet.

After selling their home in Belle Plaine in a five-day period, Fogarty and his wife are renting in Caledonia.

Its amazing because Ill be going around to the taxidermist or snowmobile training and Ill meet someone who grew up in the next town over (from Belle Plaine) and theyve been down here for 15 years, he said. They tell me that youll be down here for a year and never want to leave.

Fogarty is looking for people in the community to teach ATV operation classes. Feel free to contact him with questions or concerns at 507-312-3290, or james.fogarty@state.mn.us.
CHICAGO  In 13 years as a professional hairstylist, Christine Walker has listened to clients vent about all sorts of personal drama: work stress, trouble with teenagers, extramarital affairs.

But starting Jan. 1, Walker, who works at Belle du Jour Salon in Lemont, Ill., will be required by law to have special training on how to handle conversations about domestic violence and sexual assault.

Under the new measure, signed into law by Gov. Bruce Rauner last summer, the states 88,000 licensed beauty professionals must take an hourlong course designed to teach them to recognize signs of domestic violence and ways to address it. Stylists will be required to complete the course while applying for a new license, and then as an additional hour added to the 14 hours of continuing education required for license renewal every two years. The law includes barbers, cosmetologists, aestheticians, hair braiders and nail technicians, and will be enforced by the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.

Illinois is the first state to adopt such a mandate, according to Illinois state Rep. Fran Hurley, who sponsored the bill that led to an amendment in the Barber, Cosmetology, Esthetics, Hair Braiding and Nail Technology Act of 1985. Hurley and other legislators worked closely with Chicago Says No More, a nonprofit organization that works to combat domestic violence and sexual assault, to develop the law.

Theres an openness, a freeness, a relationship that last years or decades between the client and the cosmetologist, Hurley said. Theyre in a position to see something that may or may not be right.

Although the measure does not require stylists to report incidents to authorities, advocates hope the training will ultimately help lower incidents of domestic violence by making more people conscious of the problem, and offering victims one more place they can turn for help, especially when many do not seek help from authorities, said Kristie Paskvan, founder of Chicago Says No More.

According to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, there were 103,546 domestic violence offenses reported to law enforcement in Illinois in 2015. Thats up from 99,795 offenses reported the year before.

And from July 1, 2015, to this past June, there were 49 domestic violence-related deaths in Illinois, including three children, according to the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

By learning signs of domestic abuse, statistics about its prevalence and the resources available, hairstylists and other cosmetologists will be able to help victims trying to navigate difficult and sometimes dangerous situations, Paskvan said. The group also is considering future efforts to have other occupations, such as bartenders, included in domestic violence training.

This is a person who is literally grooming you, so its a relationship thats kind of special, Paskvan said. Just getting people the information gives them a different perspective.

But not all hairstylists are eager to have the added responsibility.

Analie Papageorge, owner of the Steven Papageorge Salon and Beauty Academy in Evanston, Ill., said the training puts enormous pressure on stylists, who did not get into their line of business to be on the lookout for crime.

You could make or break somebodys family, she said. Its heavy on the heart.

Charles Ifergan, owner of three salons in the Chicago area, said he, too, was concerned about the added responsibility being required of his 120 employees. Ifergan, a veteran stylist, said relationships between stylists and clients have evolved over the decades. In the 1960s, 70s an 80s, clients came once a week to have their hair blown out. Today, clients and stylists may see each other only once every few months because people tend to care for their own hair at home, he said.

You do not have the in-depth relationship that we used to have, Ifergan said. Its hard for me to believe that a client would report (domestic violence) to a junior stylist.

But Walker, the hairstylist in Lemont, Ill., said she could see why a hairstylist could be an ideal person to turn to during domestic violence situations. While a victim may not feel comfortable turning to a close friend, he or she may feel safe sharing troubles with someone more removed from the situation.

Walker is looking forward to the extra training, she said.

We always say were not just hairdressers, she said. Were your therapist, sometimes your doctor; we have a lot of different hats.
A La Crosse man is accused of extorting money from another man in order to keep secret a photograph of the victim in womens underwear.
If sitting around and staring at a hole in the ice doesnt fit with your idea of fishing, take heart  theres an open-water alternative even in the coldest part of the year.

Winter trout fishing opened on Jan. 1 and continues through Friday, April 7, on about 750 miles of trout water in southeastern Minnesota.

Fed by groundwater, many streams there remain relatively ice-free all winter, and the trout living in these streams more often than not cooperate with anglers to provide excellent winter fishing opportunities, said Vaughn Snook, Lanesboro area assistant fisheries supervisor with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

The winter southeast stream season is catch-and-release only, and it applies to all designated trout streams in Dodge, Fillmore, Goodhue, Houston, Mower, Olmsted, Wabasha and Winona counties.

Winter trout fishing may require the angler to experiment with different tactics, Snook said. As water temperatures drop, so does fish activity. Anglers may want to carry a thermometer with them. Fish are most active at temperatures of 38 degrees and above.

Other tips that could increase an anglers success:

Fish slow and deep. Trout are most often out of the main current flow.

When fly fishing, effective patterns include scuds, midge pupa/larva, and small pheasant tail nymphs. Fly anglers should watch for midge hatches that can increase trout feeding activity.

For spinning and spincasting equipment, keep your reel cranking by using a Teflon lubricant thats not affected by cold. Single hooks on spinners help keep fish handling to a minimum. Clipping one hook off of a treble also helps.

With winter trout waters often crystal clear, trout grow wary, so keep a low profile. Its often best to stay out of the water.

Look for springs flowing into streams, where the water often is warmer. Ground water is typically around 48 degrees Fahrenheit.

While the trout are willing to bite, the weather can bite as well this time of the year, so Snook advises people to make safety a priority when fishing open water in the winter. Dont take any chances with shelf ice that may form along stream banks. If you stay dry, youll stay warm. Let someone know what youre up to and where you are going.

More information on trout fishing is available at www.mndnr.gov/fishmn/trout.
A third deer infected with chronic wasting disease has been discovered in southeastern Minnesota, according to the Department of Natural Resources.

A hunter harvested the deer in mid-November about five miles north of the two previously reported infected deer, which were killed about four miles west of Lanesboro. An area taxidermist later provided a sample for testing to the DNR.

Chronic wasting disease is a fatal brain disease to deer, elk and moose but is not known to affect human health. Prior to the recent discovery near Lanesboro, the only other wild deer with the disease found in Minnesota was harvested near Pine Island in 2010.

The discovery will not change the current boundaries of the disease management zone, which is designated deer permit area 603. A special hunt began Dec. 31 in the permit area and concludes Sunday, Jan. 15.

Resident and nonresident hunters and landowners can use any unfilled Minnesota deer license during the special hunt. Permits for those who dont have unfilled licenses are available from any DNR license agent for $2.50.

We strongly encourage landowners to participate in the special hunt that begins Dec. 31, said Dr. Lou Cornicelli, the DNRs wildlife research manager. When the landowner shooting program begins Jan. 16, theyll be allowed to take additional deer.

This latest case will affect the disease control zone for farmed deer and elk. The Minnesota Board of Animal Health regulates farmed deer and elk in the state and has created a 10-mile disease control zone around this latest positive case, said Dr. Paul Anderson of the Board of Animal Health. There is one additional deer farm within the new zone and movement restrictions have been placed on the herd. These restrictions can be removed if double fencing is constructed on the farm.

For more information, including a map of the disease management zone, landowner information, special deer hunt information, deer feeding ban, common questions and answers and hunter information, go to the DNRs CWD website at www.mndnr.gov/cwd.
Globe University is pulling out of its Wisconsin and South Dakota locations by the end of the year.

The announcement, which can be found on the Globe University website, states the company will cease operations at those campuses at the end of the month. Globe, which operates a campus in Onalaska, will transfer administration of those campuses to Utah-based Broadview University, and students will have the option to complete their program at the campus or online through an agreement approved with Broadview.

This holiday season will not be so happy for the thousands of students forced to complete their programs elsewhere, the hundreds of employees losing their jobs, or the communities that depend on a skilled workforce, according to a statement on the Globe website. We will continue to work with regulators to seek more reasonable actions and for our other programs to continue.

According to the most recent federal numbers, the Onalaska campus enrolled more than 170 students and had an average annual tuition of $18,756. Nearly 75 percent of students received an average of $4,200 in Pell Grants, and more than 80 percent receive an average of $7,100 in federal student loans.

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swansons office filed a lawsuit against for-profits Globe and the Minnesota School of Business in 2014, claiming the institutions used deceptive practices to enroll students in criminal justice programs. In the aftermath of the judges ruling in favor of the suit, state officials took steps to close the Minnesota campuses of Globe University and its sister institution Minnesota School of Business.

More recently, the U.S. Department of Education revoked access to federal student aid programs, a decision which globe officials have said they are appealing. In a statement, education department officials said the university preyed on those looking to become public servants and abused taxpayer funds.

Western Technical College officials have reached out to former Globe students about opportunities to continue their studies at the public two-year college. Details about transferring, including registration, can be found on Westerns website, and questions can be directed to Enrollment Services and registration assistant Lacey Hemmersbach at hemmersbachl@westerntc.edu or 608-785-9884.
The turn of the calendar to 2017 brings us hope for better prospects in our public affairs. I am particularly inspired this season for the many who wrote with solutions to problems facing our state.

The many letters from readers give me optimism for a coming bloom of civic mindedness. Certainly your notes and letters bring a fresh approach to lingering problems.

I do see signs on the horizon that our state may be stumbling.

Deep budget cuts have affected the forward progress of our University of Wisconsin System. Faculty have left UW and taken their research dollars with them. For the first time in 45 years UW-Madison does not rank in the top five universities in research spending according to the National Science Foundation.

A second trouble spot is the low number of start-up businesses in Wisconsin. For the second year in a row, Wisconsin ranked last in the nation in start-up business activity according to a Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation report.

Investment in research at the UW spurs start-up businesses. Growth in new companies translates to growth in our economy. According to a report released earlier this year by the UW Center for Community and Economic Development, new businesses are the source of over a quarter of new jobs in Wisconsin.

Our economy is sputtering. Wisconsin lagged compared to the national economy in recovering from the 2008-09 recession. Our state took six years to gain back all the jobs lost in the Great Recession  a whole year after the nation recovered and two years after Minnesota recovered.

Another trouble spot is the lack of teachers and students going into education. Schools of education are reporting fewer graduates and local districts are reporting fewer applicants for open teaching positions. Future budgets must invest in K-12, technical college and the UW to assure us of our needed talented and trained workforce.

Competing with education funding in coming budget debates will be transportation needs. Our road fund is basically bankrupt. Spending has outpaced revenue for several years. Now nearly a quarter of every dollar must be used to pay off debt.

Even the general fund  used to pay mostly for schools and colleges, health care, local government and corrections  has financial struggles. Earlier this year the governor refinanced debt  kicking the can down the road  to free up cash for the new budget.

Other signs of trouble include late, altered and missing financial reports. Most recently the state missed the mid-December deadline for the release of the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.

Troubles on the horizon will, fortunately, be met with insights gained from new knowledge. Soon the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau will release an audit of the Department of Transportation. Later this spring a report from the LAB on the operations of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation will help us understand the agency responsible for state efforts to create jobs.

The best solutions for our problems come from the ingenuity of the people of our great state. Thanks to people who wrote with ideas for new legislation. Many of you wrote with ideas for fixing roads and funding schools.

Several people wrote me asking to limit state money going to private schools. Kathleen of Arcadia suggested new money for private schools be only from new funds and never taken out of public schools. Mary wanted to use money going to private schools to pay for road construction.

Others wrote of improving broadband, lowering health insurance costs, protecting water resources and restoring local control.

Still others wrote about fixing our political system including the drawing of new nonpartisan legislative districts, more civic education, and a brighter light shown on who is writing new legislation.

I support these ideas. I am also hopeful nonpartisan redistricting may happen as part of a pending court case.

The new year will bring new faces to the legislature. But a familiar face wont be seen in the Assembly Chambers. Our denate district sends a big thank-you to Representative Chris Danou. My heart is filled with profound appreciation for the tireless advocacy Rep. Danou provided us in western Wisconsin.

Wishing a happy and prosperous New Year to you, dear reader.
There once was a little girl named Septima Ultima Klerck. She was born in Elvenes, Norway, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, on Jan. 30, 1868. Her name was given to her by the doctor attending her delivery. Because she was premature and not expected to survive, the doctor suggested seventh and last to be her name. But he was wrong because the family grew by six more children, and she was known as Ulla for the next 90 wonderful years.

Ullas father, Magnus, was a forester and administrative official, or sheriff, appointed by the king. He collected taxes, settled foreclosures and helped Laplanders with problems because he spoke their language. Magnus and his wife, Christiane, entertained Norways new King Oscar II and his queen, Sophia, who visited northern Norway in 1873. The king presented all six of Magnus daughters with beautiful silver spoons engraved with the Kings crest. Many English lords and other dignitaries, whom Magnus entertained, came in the summers to go salmon fishing. It appears that Ullas family was blessed with economic and intellectual fortune.

Growing up with the northern lights, looking at the land of Russia, Ulla had a wonderful and privileged childhood. She was a talented and intelligent young girl who taught herself how to play on the first piano brought north of the Arctic Circle, by boat from Christiania (Oslo). In the early 1890s, Ulla went to Oslo to vocational school, where she studied painting and music, and graduated in nursing obstetrics from the Oslo State Hospital midwifery program. Then, as Ullas daughter, Laila, wrote in their family history, after graduation, Ulla came to the United States in 1896 because of her adventuresome spirit.

Ullas brother-in-law, Pastor Frederick Schreiner, married to her youngest sister, Alette, was instrumental in Ulla traveling to America. He had a brother living here in Westby, Dr. Johann Schreiner, who could make use of Ullas midwifery education. Dr. Schreiner must have completely trusted Ullas abilities because the first child she delivered in Westby was his very own daughter. Ullas reputation immediately grew and it is said that she went on to deliver 75 babies in Vernon County in just one year.

Soon after moving to Westby, Ulla was introduced to Dr. Johann Schee. John had graduated from pharmacy school in 1889, from medical school in 1892 and was practicing in Blanchardville, Wis. He knew Dr. Schreiner because, during summers while attending medical school, John worked as a pharmacist in Cashton and Viroqua. John and Ulla were an excellent match. He played violin and piano, though not as proficiently as Ulla, and spoke seven languages. They married on Jan. 4, 1898, at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Schreiner. Three years later, John and Ulla moved to Westby when John became a partner with Dr. Schreiner in his medical practice.

Ulla and John were married for 39 years. They built a beautiful home in Westby and raised five children (where current Vernon County Sheriff John Spears now lives). Those five became musicians, teachers, artists and business owners. Ullas grandchildren would receive books as Christmas gifts and there was always music in her home. She was described at sweet, charming and loved by all in the community. According to her obituary, Ulla was in very popular demand as a pianist and organist at churches and other social functions. Imagine, moving to her daughters home in her later years, Ullas last public appearance as a piano soloist was in May of 1958, when she was 90 years old, at their Milwaukee churchs mother-daughter banquet. Ulla, who at birth wasnt expected to survive, outlived all of her 12 brothers and sisters. She died in September 1958 in La Crosse at the home of her son Eric.

A wonderful and idyllic life it seems to be. But in a conversation with Ullas grandson, Tom Schee of Westby, he disclosed a bit of family lore that seemed of interest as more than a footnote to Ullas life. Ullas adventuresome spirit that moved her to Westby was perhaps facilitated by a big push from her parents wish to remove her from a less than favorable situation over a young Laplander man, someone her parents felt was not suitable for their daughter. Ulla probably left Norway with a very broken heart. As a midwife, she certainly had the burden of attending to women with problem pregnancies, seeing family tragedies and helping mothers deal with devastating loss. Ullas medical background most certainly made her an easy sounding board for her husband, listening to his anxieties about his patients medical ailments, his friends in this small community. And Ulla and John suffered their own loss burying an infant daughter.

Nothing is ever promised, and no life is ever perfect, but the Arctic Circle baby who wasnt supposed to survive was quite a wonder. She had many memories, maybe a few regrets and countless opportunities to rejoice. Every life has some of these. As 2016 comes to an end, perhaps you will rejoice, maybe fondly recall, and, hopefully, only slightly regret. New Years Eve can bring belief, anticipation and wonder. We hope you find that in 2017!

Our next meeting will be Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2017, at 1 p.m. at the Thoreson House Museum. We hope you will join us.

Note: For those of you who read Michele Michelet Boyers two part article on the Michelets first Christmas on Coon Prairie, we want you to know that the original Michelet cabin/home is located at Norskedalen in Coon Valley.
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(7) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (7) Feb 03 (9) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (9) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (6) Jan 29 (5) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (6) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (6) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (5) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (6) Jan 14 (7) Jan 13 (7) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (8) Jan 07 (11) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (7) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (8) Jan 01 (8) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (6) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (7) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (5) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (5) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (6) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (6) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (5) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (6) Dec 02 (4) Dec 01 (5) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (6) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (4) Nov 25 (4) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (7) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (6) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (5) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (6) Nov 11 (6) Nov 10 (8) Nov 09 (8) Nov 08 (7) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (6) Nov 03 (5) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (2) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (5) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (6) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (5) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (7) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (2) Oct 07 (7) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (8) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (6) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (4) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (5) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (3) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (3) Sep 11 (3) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (5) Sep 04 (2) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (4) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (4) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (5) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (4) Aug 07 (3) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (3) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (4) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (5) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (3) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (4) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (5) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (4) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (5) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (3) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (5) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (5) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (3) May 30 (5) May 29 (3) May 28 (4) May 27 (5) May 26 (7) May 25 (4) May 24 (4) May 23 (4) May 22 (6) May 21 (4) May 20 (3) May 19 (5) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (5) May 15 (4) May 14 (4) May 13 (5) May 12 (4) May 11 (5) May 10 (6) May 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Workers recently lined up outside a camp in northern India to open bank accounts.

The line formed at a traffic stop in the center of Gurgaon, in Haryana State.

One of the workers was Ishwari Lal, a daily wage laborer. He is like millions of migrant laborers across India. They work in small factories or businesses, at building projects, or as security guards, drivers and servants.

Lals wages were always paid in cash and he spent the money carefully. He sent some of it to his family. He used the rest to make rent payments for his one-room home and buy food or supplies.

But Lal has only been paid one-fourth of his wages since severe cash shortages began affecting the country. Six weeks ago, the Indian government banned high-value bank notes of 500 rupees ($7.50) and 1,000 rupees. The move was aimed at finding and seizing large amounts of illegal cash.

Lals employer asked him to put his wages in a bank. He is doing that now, but worries that getting the money back from the bank will be difficult.

Banks see shortage

Since the ban was announced, many Indians have stood in long lines at banks to get money. And, banks are not giving customers the amount they demand as the banks run out of money faster than it is replaced.

If I need 10,000 rupees, I get 2,000 rupees. How can I manage in just this much money? I have faced massive problems, Lal said. He wonders how he can buy food, pay for medicines, or send money home to his children.

Some employers are also facing cash shortages and [are] beginning to give out checks to pay wages.

In India, hundreds of informal sector workers are opening bank accounts. The informal sector is a part of the economy that is not taxed and not regulated by the government.

According to some estimates, nearly 480 million Indian nationals earn cash in the informal sector. That represents 80 percent of the countrys work force.

As the cash shortages continue, the informal sector is slowing down. This is affecting economic growth in one of the worlds fastest-growing economies.

Companies have reduced employees as business drops sharply and factories have laid off workers after having to slow down production.

Exodus of migrant workers

Wages are either not being paid on time or are being paid in old bank notes. This has led some migrant laborers in big cities to return to their villages. The ones who have stayed in cities are struggling to get paid.

Harsh Singh is a self-employed driver in New Delhi. Singh says he has not been getting calls from his regular riders since cash shortages began to get worse.

He said his work has decreased by at least 50 percent. And his passengers only make part of the payment. So I have to go back to get my money, he said.

He is thinking of opening a bank account to accept online payments, even if they sometimes amount to less than $10.

Several economists, however, say the currency ban will have good long-term effects. They say it help improve controls on small businesses and factories. And it will help bring poor people into the banking industry.

Millions in India have no ties to banks and cannot get financial services, credit or insurance.

Effect on Economic Growth

While it is too early to know the exact effect of the currency ban on economic growth, economist N.R. Bhanumurthy said informal jobs have suffered. He works at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy

Bhanumurthy said there is an effect on the employment situation because of the general drop in economic activity. People are also spending less, but spending is the biggest driver of (the) Indian economy, Bhanumurthy pointed out.

But he expects this to be a short-term drop. He said that when spending returns, India may also see an increase in employment.

Im Alice Bryant.

Anjana Pasricha reported this story for VOANews. Alice Bryant adapted it for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

account - n. a record of money that has been paid and money that has been received

migrant - n. a person who goes from one place to another especially to find work

cash - n. money in the form of coins and bank notes

shortage - n. a state in which there is not enough of something that is needed

lay off - v. to end the employment of a worker or group of workers, usually because there is not enough work

currency - n. the money that a country uses

insurance - n. an agreement in which a person makes regular payments to a company and the company promises to pay money if the person is injured or dies, or to pay money equal to the value of something (such as a house or car) if it is damaged, lost, or stolen

customer - n. someone who buys goods or services from a business

regulate - v. to make rules or laws that control something
Gun violence is an issue in Chicago, Illinois, Americas third largest city.

The Chicago Tribune reported that 61 people were shot in the city during the long Christmas holiday weekend. Eleven of those shot died, the newspaper said. The holiday weekend ended Monday night.

The Tribune said the attacks brought the total number of shootings for 2016 to more than 4,300. The number killed in shootings this year reached 770, it said.

In 2015, 2,989 people were shot and 492 were killed in gun violence.

Chicago is not the only city in the United States to report an increase in shootings and murders.

The Brennan Center for Justice is a non-profit research group with ties to New York Universitys Law School. It reported last week that the murder rate for 2016 in Americas 30 largest cities is expected to be 14 percent higher than the rate last year.

The center blames the increase on fewer police officers working in some cities, as well as poverty and increased gang violence. But it said that two large cities -- Baltimore and Washington D.C. -- have fewer murders this year than in 2015.

Eddie Johnson is Chicagos Police Superintendent. He said 90 percent of those killed in his city over Christmas weekend had ties to gangs, criminal histories or had been identified as potential offenders or victims.

Johnson urged politicians to increase sentences for people found guilty of gun crimes.

If you pick up a gun and shoot somebody, you should go to prison, period, thats the end of the story, he said.

Some people want to give them a pass for it. I dont, he added.

Chicago is working to add police officers who more closely represent the ethnicity and races of city residents.

Rahm Emanuel is mayor of Chicago. He said, Officers come together from different backgrounds, different cultures, and different faiths for a common cause: to serve and protect the people of the City of Chicago. And this whole city will be behind our officers, rooting for their success.

Gary Slutkin is founder of a group called Cure Violence. His group has trained people to work in their communities to persuade people to choose non-violent ways of dealing with conflicts.

Slutkin said the workers often knew when a young person was planning a violent act just by living nearby. Because they have credibility with their neighbors, they often have more influence than police, or even parents, he said.

Often the issue with another young person was not that big a deal -- maybe someone spoke to his girlfriend or owes him money. His workers, Slutkin said, could persuade young people that their problem with another person was not worth a violent response.

Sometimes it is simply pointing out that if you go ahead and do it (shoot somebody), people are going to be looking for pay back against you or you might be spending 20 years or more in prison, Slutkin said.

But he said a loss of government assistance has left all but one city neighborhood without the program this year. He believes the lost funding and higher shooting rates are related.

Slutkin is a professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois School of Public Health. He said his program uses policies developed by health experts to deal with disease. It works, he said, because violence can spread just like diseases such as AIDS or tuberculosis.

His Cure Violence Program operates in 25 U.S. cities, as well as in other countries, such as South Africa, Honduras, Mexico, and prisons in Britain.

Im Ashley Thompson.

VOANews.com reported on this story. Bruce Alpert adapted the story and did additional reporting 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

gang - n. a group of criminals

potential - adj. capable of becoming real

pass - n. let people go on without penalty

faith - n. religious beliefs

root - v. to express or show support for someone

credibility - n. the quality of being believed or accepted as true, real, or honest

epidemiology - n. the study of how disease spreads and can be controlled
The only answer to this place is to be one of them whom the Nazis didnt want to survive. I wanted to look like, think like, and be like most Jews who were murdered here. from the interview

Geza Rohrig is an Hungarian poet and actor who garnered international attention for the lead role he played in the 2015 film Son of Saul. The film won the Grand Prix at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. I recently met the 49-year-old teacher and father of four sporting a yarmulka and an untrimmed beard in his Bronx home. Rafi (his Hebrew name) introduced me to his twin two-year olds, Zusha and Zelda.

Who are your twins named for?

Zusha is for Reb Zusha of Anipoli. I cherish his stories.

Zelda is for Zelda Schneerson, the poet.

You just returned from a visit to Krakow, Poland where you delivered the closing address at the Conrad Festival, which, as I understand, is one of Europes most prestigious literary/art events. What was your message to the audience?

It is hard to sum up a half-hour speech. I spoke about freedom. You need tremendous discipline to be free. Freedom is the ethos of bearing responsibility. There could be nobody freer than two lovers, correct? But love comes with commitment. Freedom is not a right; its our most fundamental duty. Without it, everything loses meaning. In short, the soul of the law is freedom, the body of freedom is the law. Where there is no freedom, there is no real order. And where theres no order, theres no real freedom.

You are well published in Hungary with eight books to your name. What is your poetry about? Who are you readers?

My first collection of poetry, Cremationbook, was published in 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the Budapest Ghettos liberation. It was published in Germany too and it received some awards. My other books are about anything and everything that falls under the human experience. I write for ordinary peopleI dont want to write coded poetry that only the sophisticated can decipher. The film has now brought more attention to my poems, so I really cannot complain about the number of my readers.

In the movie Son of Saul, you play a Sonderkommando who becomes obsessed with giving a dead boy a ritual Jewish burial. This is a very dark, depressing film. What was it about this script that appealed to you?

The idea that there is something more important than survival. Everyone wanted to escape, to break out of the hell they were in, which is legitimate. But its an animalistic move. If the house is burning, even the cat will jump from the window.

Saul goes a level higher than that. He says, Survival is not all there is. There must be something more than survival. I think thats a very Jewish belief.

What he attempts to do in those circumstances is altogether irrational.

It is. But everything that the Sonderkommandos were forced to do was irrational. Jews were being murdered on an industrial level, and their job was to move the dead from the gas chambers to the crematoria. So what kind of a response can one have to this?

He couldnt save the living. He couldnt even bury the dead. So he decides to disregard the situation. There are very few things that are, for us as human beings, simply not negotiable: to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and to bury the dead. He couldnt give the boy his bread because he was dead. It was as if he was saying, The only thing I can do for you is to bury you, to arrange a kaddish for you. This one mitzvah became his connection to sanity.

I have been with the chevra kadisha [Jewish burial society] for many years, doing tahara and shmira [washing and guarding the body of the deceased and preparing it for burial in accordance with Jewish law]. So I really connected to the script.

What made you get involved with tahara?

It began when I was a teenager in Hungary when someone from the minyan called me. They needed a third person. I now do it at least two times a week. Its transformative, in a way more than an average davening, which can become a bit mechanical at times. Every tahara is different and so personal. I think if we want to keep the right balance between humility and self esteem, death should never leave our mind entirely.

As a teenager, you started an underground punk band called HuckRebelly, and you were expelled from high school because of your anti-communist activity. Did you have any religious affiliation as you were growing up?

Not really. My grandpa was the first person who took me to a Rosh Hashanah service. It was a terrible experience. I was 14, and the rabbi said that Hitlers plan was to kill every last Jew on the face of the earth, so we shouldnt be here. Its by G-ds grace that we are here.

Then he said that now that we are here we have to earn our right to live. I thought of my non-Jewish classmates and wondered, Why do I have to earn it? Because my family members were murdered so I have to earn my right to live?

How about if G-d needs to earn my grandpas faith after all this? I was not interested in going to shul for a good while at all.

What changed?

I was in Poland studying for my masters in philosophy. It was 1987, still during communism. I had planned to go to Auschwitz but I put it off until the end of my year there because I knew it would be intense. I went there knowing exactly which barrack I would go to: Barrack 13 in Section E. I knew where my family was, and I just wanted to see it.

But instead of being upset I felt some sort of a healing going on, and I wanted to spend more time there. So I went to the closest apartment building asking people if there was a room to rent and they said, Here? Are you kidding? Who wants to come here?

But I rented a room for a month. And I went back to the lager every day.

What did you do there every day?

I davened. It wasnt the usual davening [praying]. I didnt know how to daven in Hebrew yet. But there I was, a freezing question mark, a pulsing wound. And I felt answered. I felt heard. I wasnt just in pain. I was in a dialogue.

Soon I realized that the only answer to this place is to be one of them whom the Nazis didnt want to survive. I wanted to look like, think like, and be like most Jews who were murdered here.

I might have expected it would rather make you want to disassociate with Jewish identity because of all these negative memories.

Growing up in an atheistic dictatorship I didnt have the option to open the envelope, so to speak, to get my heritage. But I was certain that I would not throw it away without knowing what it was.

Your father passed away when you were just a small child.

I lost him when I was four years old, so obviously there was an emptiness, a lack of something that was driving me. I felt like I was nobodys son. Its important to have footsteps in front of you, even if you want to go the other way. If you have your fathers footsteps at least you know where the other way is. I realized that I could not even make an intelligent decision about if I wanted to be Jewish or not until I knew what it is. So I went straight from Poland to Jerusalem.

Was it difficult for you, an accomplished poet, a writer, and a musician, to embrace yiddishkeit?

As a teenager, I had reservations about institutional religion. I never really liked hierarchy. I felt like they tried to box you in, they wouldnt be appreciative of having your own opinion or approach. And I felt that my background, my soul, my story, should be dignified because we are all different for a reason.

Then it turned out that yes, Judaism is pretty strict when it comes to practicing, but when it comes to what beliefs you hold or how you go about things, there is a plurality and theres a fantastically rich and colorful way of thinking in the Talmud. Rav A doesnt agree with Rav B and they are still respectful to each other. And even the opinions that are not followed are written and preserved and still learned because there is a value of a respectful disagreement and different views. I found that super attractive.

How did you come to Chabad?

I was interested in Chasidut but the yeshiva in Har Nof, Jerusalem that I attended did not offer Chasidut, so my rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Baruch Horowitz, of blessed memory, suggested that Chabad might be the right fit for me. In 1991 I arrived in New York where Rabbi Yechezkel Lebovic and his wife, Pearl, offered me the chance to learn in Yeshivah Tiferet Bachurim in Morristown, New Jersey.

I had a bris. I got into the mishna class and started the routine like everybody else, except I was learning stuff that generally Chabad children learn at age five, six. But I advanced pretty well. My commitment was strong.

Then I began to study Chasidut which was new to me. I was thirsty to learn. I had a mashpia ruchanit, (spiritual mentor), Rabbi Dovid Vichnin, of blessed memory. He had an academic background, having studied at Yale, so I think he really understood where we were all coming from. He gave me time every day, to ask questions and discuss whatever was on my mind.

You mention davening a number of times. How did you integrate prayer into your life?

When I first started to daven, I was slow because Hebrew was all new to me, and the people around me were doing Shemone Esrei [the Amidah] in five minutes. I had a huge struggle with the Shema Koleinu blessing because I understood that this is where you relate to Hashem with your own requests, and there was a lot I needed to ask for others. So I learned to daven faster.

But the real issue was, what should my focus be? And I realized that davening is not about begging. You daven because you are, because you woke up; you see, you move. Its about gratefulness and wonder about the complexity and the drama of the universe. Of course when you are in trouble you scream, but only then. Thats not what davening is for.

Do you believe that people change?

I dont think people should really change. Can we become more G-dly? Sure, but we dont have to jump out of our skin for that. The spark, the pintele yid is in our neshama from the get-go. We just need to connect and let it happen.

Is that a guarantee for happiness?

To say be Jewish and you will be happy is to sell Judaism cheaply and I would never do that. I believe that you have to find something in your life for which you are willing to give up your happiness. Only then will you be happy. We dont look for happiness as a goalthats a guarantee for failure. Because we were put here on this earth to serve. And joy, simcha, comes from avodah [service].

Do you feel that being an observant Jew informed the way you played your role in the film?

Absolutely. Its hard to say specifically how, but I hope that twenty years of Torah study has affected me. It wasnt like during the shooting of the movie I suddenly thought of a concrete concept. It doesnt work that way. But its in the person I have become during the years. In the everyday choices I make. Its in the fabric of my being.

The movie is difficult to watch. It is extremely intense for the viewer. With the camera on your face filling almost every frame in that hellish setting, how did you keep your sanity during the filming?

It was taxing. In the darkest momentsremember, I was playing a Sonderkommando whose job it was to escort thousands of people day after day to the gas chambers and then to burn their bodies in the crematoriumI often thought, Dear G-d, where were you? How could you allow this to happen? Why were you so deaf to the cries and the prayers of all the yidden here?

Its a question that paralyzes your faith. So Id remind myself of the living example we had in the Lubavitcher Rebbe who saw the destruction. His brother Dov Ber, perished at the hands of the Nazis so he knew, in the most personal way, what Jews went through in those years. And yet he became an energetic leader inspiring us to look forward instead of falling into the crisis, which is what happened to so many people who were haunted by the Shoah.

I often had an inclination to be depressed, to sink into despair during the shooting. It was dark. These were the times when I found myself relying on the Rebbes example. That reallyhelped me come out of it.

But your question still begs an answer.

Yes, but I dont have it. Ilu yedativ, heyitiv. If I would understand Him, I would be Him.

And that satisfies?

Im not trying to say that its ok with me, G-d forbid. Never, no. But we have to know our place. In this world of space and time we simply cant understand and we cant accept. I was with the late Elie Wiesel a few weeks before he passed away. He struggled with this question as so many others. I wish I had a magical argument to take all the doubts out of peoples minds.

But you? You are not paralyzed by it.

Im not.

Why?

I only can speak of where Im at. Its unimaginable for me to stop being who we are and to finish ourselves off as Jews. Theres this paradoxon the one hand its clear that its really impossible to come to terms with what happened. On the other hand, lets not forget that against the odds we are still here. Not only are we here, but yiddishkeit is alive. So this is exactly where I want to be.
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A Tampa man was arrested and charged Wednesday with first-degree murder in a home invasion homicide.

Tampa man charged in home invasion homicide

Parish Jordan charged with first-degree murder

Mackelle Burnett was fatally shot at his home on Wednesday

Officials said Parish Jordan, 24, and another unidentified man broke into Mackelle Burnett's apartment in Temple Terrace on Wednesday.



According to officials, a struggle ensued between Burnett and the suspects, and at some point Burnett was fatally shot. They also said Jordan was shot with non-life threatening injuries.

Both suspects fled the scene in a white Kia, according to officials.

Police were called out to Summit West Apartments around 6 p.m. for reports of a shooting, where they found the 41-year-old victim with a gunshot wound.

Burnett was transported to Florida Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Police said they were able to identify Jordan and arrest him at St. Joseph's Hospital later that evening.

He was charged with first-degree murder with a firearm, attempted armed robbery with a firearm causing death, armed burglary, and other charges.

The second suspect in the homicide case remains at large, officials said. He is described as a black, light-skinned man, thin build, short hair, and wearing a black long-sleeved hooded sweatshirt and possibly jeans. Officials say he also has tattoos on both arms.

Anyone with information is asked to the Temple Terrace Police Department at 813-989-7110.
The recipients of the Ideas Matter Fellowship Program have been announced. The program, supported by the West African Research Association and The MasterCard Foundation , supports the research of young academics in the region focusing on women, technology and entrepreneurship.

The USD$4,000 grants will allow recipients to solve some of the most trenchant health and economic challenges facing Africa today.

In this inaugural competition, the Ideas Matter Doctoral Fellowship program received 63 applications from graduate students representing 10 West African countries and fields as diverse as biology, agronomy, political science, medicine, public health, chemistry and pharmacy. While only 17 of the 63 applicants were women, the three applications which rose to the top were all submitted by young women - attesting to the growing role of women in science and technology. The three candidates selected from this rich trove of applications are:

Akomoun Blandine Kapko (Benin), Universite dAbomey-Calavi, will develop an inventory of plants used in the traditional treatment of typhoid fever, further working to identify and isolate their active properties.



Osemudiamen Anao (Nigeria), University of Benin, will explore the health effects of a toxic common component of e-waste capable of acting as an endocrine disruptor, carcinogen and neuro-development toxicant.



Gloria Tetteh-Kubi (Ghana), University of Cape Coast, will investigate measures aimed at reducing widespread pesticide use in cowpea cultivation, contributing to poverty reduction, food security and biodiversity conservation.

The Ideas Matter Fellowship Program reflects WARA and The MasterCard Foundations commitment to increasing opportunities for emerging West African scholars who are transforming ideas into active solutions to the challenges facing the region and the world at large.

Distributed by APO on behalf of The MasterCard Foundation.
New Delhi: Its not been a great year for wildlife. More tigers and leopards were poached in 2016 than in any year of the previous decade, pangolins were killed in the hundreds while thousands of marine animals perished  this, due to the debilitating effect of climate change. Yet, the good news is that the number of tigers still rose.

"Tigers have increased but in the sphere of protection, this year has been worse for animals, including pangolins," Shekhar Niraj, Head of TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network in alliance with the WWF, told IANS.

Interestingly, an RTI application revealed that the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau has no information of poachers arrested or shot, the weapons used by them, or the numbers poached.

However, IANS managed to piece together information from different independent sources. The records of the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) show that at least 129 tigers and 419 leopards died in 2016 as compared to 91 tigers and 397 leopards in 2015. Of these, at least 50 tigers and 127 leopards were poached, a record in the last 10 years.

"These numbers are not accurate, these are only those reported or caught. The actual figures would be higher," WPSI programme manager Tito Joseph told IANS.

Over 20 elephants, 18 rhinos, multiple bears (sloth, Asiatic brown and black), two snow leopards and several sea-cucumber, which are highly sought-after in Southeast Asia, were either caught being poached or their harvest such as skin and claws were seized till November 2016.

"Fifty leopards, mostly from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and at least eight elephants died in road or train accidents alone," Joseph said. He added that a large number of animals had died not just because of poaching but due to negligence in the absence of proper management plans.

Also, nature's wrath, inspired by man-induced climate change, played its part, killing at least 1,800 endangered aquatic and marine animals in first three months alone.

The year, in fact, had begun with the washing ashore of the carcases of 74 short-finned pilot whales in the Gulf of Mannar in Tamil Nadu, a Bryde's whale in Mumbai, hundreds of Olive Ridley turtles in Odisha and several Gangetic and ocean dolphins. This apart, over 250 animals, including 20 rhinos, perished in Assam's Kaziranga National Park due to floods in August.

Ironically, all this happened in the year when India hosted "Third Asian Ministerial Conference on Tiger Conservation", where Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to protect the country's feline population. The good news here is that India is now home to 2,226 tigers  70 percent of those in the wild in Asia. Prakash Javadekar, then the Environment and Forest Minister, was quoted at the conference as saying that the number could be as high as 2,500.

Meanwhile, the "17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CoP17 CITES)" held in South Africa in September barred tiger farming (or breeding) and listed pangolins in CITES Appendix I for their protection, considering that the species is now threatened with extinction.

For the pangolin, a nocturnal animal hunted for its expensive scales used in Chinese medicine, the year was ugly. Over 20 instances of the seizure of several kilos of its scales were reported across the country. In New Delhi alone, the CBI, in October, seized 86 kg of pangolin scales.

An adult pangolin produces 2-3 kgs of scales a year while the young produce about 500 gms.

Thus, it's little wonder that WWF's Living Planet Report released in October said the world may lose 68 percent of its wildlife by 2020  the possible prelude to "the sixth mass extinction".

The report says that about 41 per cent of mammals, 46 percent reptiles, 57 percent amphibians and 70 percent freshwater fish are "threatened with extinction" in India. Four of the 385 species of mammals are already extinct in India.

The United Nations Environment Programme and Interpol in June reported that the environmental crime industry  worth $258 billion  was the fastest-growing among crime syndicates.
The rift within Uttar Pradesh's ruling party, the Samajwadi Party came out in the open on Thursday with sources saying that Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is planning to give the go-ahead to his supporters to contest as rebels in the upcoming state Assembly election. The development comes a day after party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav announced announced a list of 325 contestants for as many Assembly seats for the 2017 election. Coming after the goings-on in the ruling party over the last one year, the announcement looks more of an assertion by the old guard than a reflection of change. Mulayam did not include some big names, who are incidentally pro-Akhilesh ministers and MLAs, including Ram Govind Chaudhary, Pawan Pandey and Arvind Sing Gope.

A clearly upset Akhilesh on Thursday met his supporters at his 5-Kalidas Marg residence here and later spoke to his father and party patriarch Mulayam Singh to convey his displeasure over the list of candidates from which names of his close confidants were missing, party sources said. Hectic political activities began right from the morning with party leaders gathering outside the residences of Akhilesh and Mulayam. A big crowd also assembled outside Shivpal's residence.

Party sources said the chief minister, before meeting Mulayam, met legislators and office bearers who do not figure in the list of nominees. The list, which includes 176 sitting MLAs, announced by Mulayam and Shivpal in the absence of Akhilesh, has left out several pro-Akhilesh ministers, including Ram Govind Chaudhary, Pawan Pandey and Arvind Singh Gope, and does not carry names of over 50 sitting MLAs. Besides, 10 ministers, including Shivpal, sacked by the chief minister over the past few months have got tickets. These former ministers were in open defiance of Akhilesh and it paid off.

Party sources told News18 that Akhilesh is likely to sack few others after Thursday's meeting. The incident brought back unsavoury memories of infighting in the ruling party, when the uncle and nephew sparred over crucial decisions ahead of the crucial state Assembly polls slated to take place early in 2017. The latest power-play has confused party workers because they are now unsure about the status of the list of people who will get the ticket to run in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

SP MLC Udayveer Singh told News18 that Shivpal, with help from Amar Singh, was behind the rift between Akhilesh and Mulayam. News18 reported party sources said MLAs, state ministers and office bearers who have been left out of the list of nominees attended the meeting at Akhilesh's residence in Lucknow around 11 am. Prominent leaders like Gope, Abhishek Mishra, Pandey, Balram Yadav and Dharmendra Yadav, were present at Thursday's meeting. "Akhilesh is likely to pitch for tickets to those who were not included in the list prepared by Mulayam. Chief minister will also speak to Mulayam over candidate's list," sources were quoted in the report as saying.

"The list does not include names of certain candidates who are sure to win. I will take it up with the SP chief and tell him that some of them have done really good work and they should be given tickets," an upset Akhilesh had said on Wednesday night. In a late night tit-for-tat action, the chief minister struck back sacking two Shivpal loyalists  Surabhi Shukla, vice-chairperson of UP Awas Vikas Parishad and her husband Sandeep Shukla from the post of advisor of Rajkiya Nirman Nigam. Sandeep has been fielded from Sultanpur Sadar seat.

Akhilesh met first-time MLAs at his residence on 26 December and promised them to give party tickets. On 25 December, Akhilesh defied his uncle and and party's state president Shivpal Yadav and prepared a list of 403 candidates which he handed over to Mulayam, who had then refused to accept the list. A miffed Shivpal cried foul and said that the name of 175 candidates were already finalised. He also immediately tweeted out that the MLAs would be chosen on the basis of their merit. Akhilesh, meanwhile, said that his record is the strength on which the Samajwadi Party runs.

"The party will not tolerate any indiscipline that might hurt partys image, he tweeted, at around 4pm, an hour after Akhilesh submitted his list to his father Mulayam Singh Yadav.

       ,   175         Shivpal Singh Yadav (@shivpalsinghyad) December 25, 2016

         ,         Shivpal Singh Yadav (@shivpalsinghyad) December 25, 2016

The SP supremo also made very clear his differene with Akhilesh on the issue of pre-poll alliance by ruling out any pact for a gathbandhan or maha-gathbandhan and even refused to project a chief ministerial candidate, dealing a serious blow to his son at a time when polls are to be announced very soon. Out of the 325 names announced by Mulayam, 218 tally with the panel submitted by Akhilesh to the SP chief, but 107 names do not match with the list given by the chief minister, indicating their sharp differences.

Hindustan Times also reported that Akhilesh dropped three ministers he sacked  Shadab Fatima, Om Prakash Singh, Narad Rai as well as serving minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati, from the list All these ministers were close confidantes of Shivpal. Akhilesh's confidante Pandey, however, made it to the list. Interestingly, Pandey was expelled by Shivpal.

According to a report by News 18, Akhilesh has announced his name on two seats from Bundelkhand. Reports said that the chief minister is most likely to contest from Babina and Mahoba constituency for the upcoming Assembly polls.

In his list, Akhilesh also refused to recognise the merger between SP and the Quami Ekta Dal, something he had opposed earlier too but was overruled by Mulayam and Shivpal. The Uttar Pradesh polls are scheduled to take place early in 2017, and 2016 has remained a tense year for the party. Akhilesh and Shivpal have continuously sparred with each other despite the tentative truce Mulayam brokered between the two.

With inputs from PTI
Chinas head of religious affairs said that Beijing is willing to have constructive dialogue with the Vatican but stressed that Catholics should hold up high the flag of patriotism and adapt Catholicism to Chinese society.

Wang Zuoan, the director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, made the remarks yesterday at a meeting of Chinas official Catholic Church, which includes bishops, priests and lay Catholics, state media reported.

Beijing insists that the party-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association has the authority to appoint Chinese bishops, a right that the Holy See says belongs to the pope alone. This dispute over bishop nominations is the most vexing stumbling block preventing the re-establishment of diplomatic relations.

China severed relations with the Holy See in 1951 after the Communists took over, and the officially atheistic government closed churches and imprisoned priests, some for decades. Worship is officially allowed only in state-authorized churches outside the popes authority, although many of Chinas estimated 12 million Catholics are thought to attend underground churches.

Wang said the Chinese government hoped that the Vatican can adopt a flexible and pragmatic attitude, and take concrete actions to create favorable conditions for improving relations, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. No details were given of what actions Beijing expects.

The ruling Communist Party has long feared that opposition to its rule could be spread by religious and other civic groups outside its control. In May last year, President Xi Jinping called for religions to adapt to Chinese society, which he termed the sinicization of religion.

Yesterday, Wang stressed the importance of patriotism within religion and pushing ahead with the sinicization of Catholicism.

Pope Francis said earlier this year that Beijing and the Vatican have resumed working groups on the naming of bishops issue and that he is optimistic for an agreement, but that it will take time.

Just last week, the Vatican said it was saddened that the ordination of two new Chinese bishops was marred by the presence of a bishop ordained without the popes consent.

It also said it was awaiting the outcome of this weeks meeting of the Chinese Catholic Church and hoped it would give Catholics in China confidence in the Vatican-China dialogue. Louise Watt, Beijing, AP
Thousands among Chinas middle class are signing online petitions to protest the dropping of an alleged police brutality case, representing a rare but concerted display of white-collar outrage with Beijing.

The signatories of at least two online petitions organized through university alumni networks are infuriated by the Beijing prosecutors decision last Friday to drop charges against five police over the death of Lei Yang, a 29-year old graduate of prestigious Renmin University, in police custody in May. The five police were previously accused by investigators of using improper force and covering up Leis death.

The response to the authorities handling of Leis death is the latest manifestation of simmering urban discontent in China, where Communist Party leaders are facing higher expectations  and increasing questions  from the expanding middle class over hot-button issues ranging from environmental pollution to unfairness in the judiciary.

When something occurs in society that is so dark, so impossible to accept, then its like an inner fire in our bones thats been sparked, said Yu Li, a signatory who works in the IT sector in Beijing.

The organizers of the petitions said they did not wish to take the protest to the street for fear of swift government retribution. For the same reason, they spoke on condition of anonymity. But the case has threatened to erode the legitimacy of the party among an influential social segment thats already impatient with years long social woes, including food safety scandals and widespread corruption.

The petitions, which sought a correction of the decision to not prosecute the officers, have gathered more than 2,400 signatories of former students of Renmin and some of Chinas other top universities. They range from graduates of 1980s chemistry departments to students who received graduate business degrees in the 2000s, as well as prominent academics and the current CEO of a foodstuffs company.

The list has expanded to include alumni of Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Zhejiang University and Fudan University in eastern China. Organizers of the movement said many of the signatories have gathered in more than two dozen WeChat messaging groups, where they were venting and sharing legal analyses, essays and even poetry about Leis case.

As the online campaign spiraled this week, authorities scrambled to squelch discussion. Censors blocked all searches on Chinas popular microblog site, Weibo, for Lei Yang case while propaganda authorities distributed notices against carrying the story in news outlets, according to China Digital Times, an overseas website that publishes what are believed to be official censorship orders.

In a country seemingly inured to police brutality against migrant workers or farmers, commentators say the Lei case has attracted nationwide attention precisely because of his white-collar background as an environmentalist with a state-affiliated think tank.

Zhang Wen, a well-known liberal Chinese social commentator, said China has often had cases of social justice that involved farmers or migrant workers clashing with local authorities, but because of their class status, their cases do not mobilize this mass opposition or create awareness.

But Lei Yangs case has broken through geographic or even class barriers, he said. If it could happen to him it could happen to any of us. Any of us could be Lei Yang.

Not lost on many in Chinas educated class is the fact that Renmin University  which means Peoples University  was founded by the Communist Party in its early guerrilla days. Its unusual for organized criticism to emerge from a school that boasts a long tradition of producing political thinkers, economists, and historians who join the party establishment.

Yu, the signatory from Beijing, said he never characterized himself as politically active until news of the Lei case this year stunned him.

We expected the case to be open, to be conducted according to law in due time, said Yu, who entered Renmin Universitys business school in 1996.

Instead, what we saw was that they judge cases from a political perspective with stability as the first consideration, he said in an interview. They value more the loyalty of the police force rather than the cries of the people.

The Lei case was likely to stretch on after Chen Youxi, a lawyer representing Leis family, said in a statement Sunday that if higher-level judicial authorities uphold the Beijing procuratorate decision to not prosecute the officers, the Lei family will sue the five men directly.

The family was seeking an additional eight lawyers to help take the case forward, Chen wrote, while warning prospective volunteers that the task would come with great pressure and great risk.

The statement was censored shortly after it was published Sunday, as were copies of it reposted elsewhere on the Chinese Internet.

Chen confirmed by telephone that he would lead a new lawsuit but declined further comment. The Beijing procuratorate press office did not immediately respond to a fax seeking coment.

Leis case adds to an increasing number of incidents in recent years that threaten to undermine confidence in the government among the middle class, a segment of society that Chinas Communist Leaders have traditionally counted on placating by delivering steady economic growth. Notably, in August 2015, a chemical explosion in the eastern city of Tianjin killed scores of homeowners in an area with newly built condominiums. Months earlier, countless mom-and-pop investors and private equity bosses sustained devastating losses in a stock crash that was widely believed to be mishandled by financial authorities in Beijing, prompting lawsuits against regulators.

Susan Finder, a Chinese law expert at Peking Universitys School of Transnational Law, said Leis case sparked furor among Chinas legal establishment, including corporate lawyers who normally pay relatively little attention to social justice cases.

What struck many of the establishment professionals, Finder added, was the sense that debate over a legitimate legal issue was being muzzled  a feeling many were not accustomed to. Several prominent legal professionals this week declined interviews.

You wouldnt think that the big firm lawyers would be so upset, Finder said. People feel like theres no space for any other views.

It was difficult to ascertain what online commentary was permitted. Censors took down an essay by a judge from Lanzhou city and even briefly blocked a legal analysis posted by a former Beijing government prosecutor surnamed Li, defending the citys decision to drop charges.

Li, who refused to provide AP her full name though said she was now working in the private legal sector, said her post was unblocked after a day. In a follow-up post, she expressed incredulity at how she was censored in the first place.

Did the relevant authorities hear the cries? she wrote. Freedom of speech is truly important. Gerry Shih, Beijing, AP
The Macau Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a government body under the Health Bureau (SSM), reported the confirmation of two imported cases of Malaria on December 27.

According to a statement issued by the SSM, the two infected persons aged 30 and 63 years old, are father and son and have permanent residence in Angola.

The same statement read that they had arrived in Macau on December 22 for a holiday, coming from Angola before a stop in Dubai and before entering Hong Kong, from where they have travelled to Macau.

After arriving in the territory they began to have symptoms of the infection, reporting high fevers (above 39 degrees Celsius), which led them to seek help at the emergency room of the public hospital (CHCSJ).

Tests conducted by the hospital as well as by Zhuhai Border Inspection and Quarantine Laboratory showed positive results on December 27.

The fact that the two patients had a history of travel in areas where the disease is active as well as the time when the first symptoms appeared led the services to classify the two cases as imported cases of the disease.

According to the SSM these were also the first cases of such disease reported in 2016.

The SSM did state that they will carry out a campaign for mosquitos elimination in the area where the patients had been staying, appealing for the collaboration of the residents while they adopted the anti-mosquitos measures.

At the same time, the SSM urges residents to take precautions when traveling to infected areas. RM
Ethnic Kachin rebels long at war with Myanmar troops say the government has only escalated fighting since Aung San Suu Kyi took over as leader, crushing the hopes that had led many ethnic minorities to support her party and leaving them with no confidence in the peace process that Suu Kyi has identified as a priority.

Rebels and observers say government offensives including airstrikes have increased since Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party took control in March. Suu Kyis government has said little about the attacks, and the Kachin Independence Organization accuses her of cooperating with the military.

Suu Kyi tried so hard to gain this power for many years and she needs to make deals with the military in order to sustain her power, said La Nan, the chief spokesman of the KIO.

Rebels say they have been hit with airstrikes in areas of northern Shan and Kachin states including Mongo, a Shan town that was heavily bombed and suffered an unknown number of civilian casualties. Other fighting has occurred in Hpakant, center of Myanmars lucrative jade-mining region, and Laiza, headquarters of the KIO.

Suu Kyi, who serves as state counselor and foreign minister but effectively rulesMyanmar, faces high expectations from ethnic groups and the international community. As opposition leader, the Nobel Peace laureate was held under house arrest by the former junta for years, but her landslide election victory in November 2015 ended more than half a century of military control.

Though she has called the peace process her top priority, many local and international political analysts do not see significant achievements since the National League for Democracy (NLD) came to power, and say she has failed to cooperate enough with ethnic leaders.

National reconciliation cannot be built only between the government and the military, said Yan Myo Thein, a prominent Myanmar political analyst. There must be negotiation between ethnic parties, armed groups, the military and the government.

Ethnic Burmans form a majority in Myanmar, also known as Burma, but ethnic minorities make up about 40 percent of the population. Some of those groups have fought for greater autonomy for decades.

Suu Kyi held a peace conference in late August attended by representatives of 17 of the 20 major ethnic groups, including the Kachin. The conference was intended to build on a ceasefire agreement that ethnic groups insist include a political solution to their longstanding demands. Ethnic leaders have asked for political dialogue, but the peace conference met few of their expectations, and some may drop out of the next round, expected in February. The conference was dominated by short speeches from a wide range of stakeholders, leaving little time for more significant discussion.

There was really no substance at all, said David Mathieson, a senior researcher of Human Rights Watch who has been researching civil conflict in Myanmar for a more than a decade. How can Suu Kyi expect to bring peace if she is not sitting down with Kachin and Shan leaders and when she is not taking the grievances of human rights abuses seriously?

Suu Kyis peace negotiator, Dr. Tin Myo Win, did not return phone calls from The Associated Press.

Khin Maung Myint, an NLD upper house member of parliament from a constituency in Kachin state, blamed the military and army commander Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

Min Aung Hlaing is doing whatever he wants.  They are just trying to make NLD look bad, he said. They are bullying ethnic people as well. The main problem with the military is that they dont want a federal system.  This is just the bad inheritance from the bad dictatorship. The military doesnt want to change.

Col. Wunna Aung, second secretary of the Joint Monitoring Committee on Ceasefire, defended the armys actions at a committee meeting Thursday.

We are only fighting in the ethnic region to protect our own country, he said. We want to unite the country. I dont think we have lost trust. He said the army always welcomes everyone for peace, but that the fighting happens because it is necessary.

Concerns about the prospects for Myanmars peace process were heightened further after the newly formed Northern Alliance, comprised of the KIOs Kachin Independence Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the Taang National Liberation Army and the Arakan Army, began a joint offensive in response to military attacks in the ethnic regions of northern Myanmar.

These attacks are part of more widespread increase in fighting since the Thein Sein government launched the peace process in 2011. According to Bertil Lintner, a longtime Myanmar political analyst, fighting is now the heaviest that it has been in decades.

The heavy fighting, combined with a stalled peace process, has created fears among some that the prospects for Myanmars peace process are dim.

If Suu Kyi cant start a discussion with the ethnic leaders soon enough, the tension between the military and the ethnic armed groups will go higher and the possibility of ceasefire and peace process will be less, said Yan Myo Thein, the analyst.

Linter said, It should be evident to anyone that an entirely new approach is needed that would include a genuine political dialogue, not just meetings with dozens of ethnic representatives.

Rebel groups are not optimistic.

We ethnic people are not very happy even though there is a so-called democratic government. The new government is trying to hold, gain and sustain power and to get that they make deals together with the military, said La Nan, the KIO spokesman. Esther Htusan, AP
Three Chinese hackers made more than USD4 million in illicit profits after breaking into the servers of top corporate law firms in New York, the U.S. said in announcing charges and the arrest of one of the men.

The three targeted at least seven major international law firms that had been retained by companies to advise on deals and successfully got into the e-mail accounts of senior lawyers at two of the firms, according to the indictment unsealed yesterday.

They profited on deals and speculation involving the drug maker Intermune, chipmaker Intel Corp. and business services company Pitney Bowes Inc., the U.S. said. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also sued and is seeking an asset freeze.

The case places law firms among the widening group of targets for cybercriminals seeking to profit from insider information. Last year, the U.S. broke up an international ring of hackers who allegedly infiltrated the computer servers of PRNewswire Association LLC, Marketwired and Business Wire and stole market-moving press releases before they were published. According to the SEC, the group, which included Ukrainians and a Georgian, made more than $100 million from trading on the information.

This case of cyber meets securities fraud should serve as a wake-up call for law firms around the world, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in the statement.

The three men  Iat Hong and Chin Hung, 50, of Macau, and Bo Zheng, 30, of China  worked at a robotics company that was started by Zheng, according to the government. Hong, 26, was arrested in Hong Kong on Christmas Day and is awaiting extradition. The SEC is also seeking to freeze an account registered in Hongs mothers name.

In addition to the law firms, they also hacked other robotics companies, the U.S. said. They allegedly stole schematic designs of a robot vacuum cleaner made by a U.S. company.

The three generally used the same tactics to get the information, according to the U.S. They would get the log-in credentials of an employee and place malware on a server that allowed them to access the e-mails of key people at the firms and companies, according to the indictment. In a one-day period in 2014, they took 10 gigabytes of confidential data from one law firms server, the U.S. said.

They werent always successful, the U.S. said. During one six-month period in 2015, the three men allegedly tried on more than 100,000 occasions to break into the networks of five law firms.

The law firms werent identified in the complaints. The Wall Street Journal reported in March that Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP and Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP were among the targeted law firms. Amy Fantini, a Weil, Gotshal & Manges spokeswoman, declined to comment on the charges. Cravath Swaine & Moore didnt respond to a request for comment.

The three men allegedly bought shares of Intermune based on the information gleaned from the hacked data. Though the deal didnt close, they still made money as shares rose on media reports that the company was seeking a tie-up, the U.S. said. Intermune was ultimately purchased by Roche AG. Cravath advised Intermune on the deal.

In another deal, the group allegedly bought shares in chipmaker Altera Corp. after Intel had retained one of the law firms to advise on an acquisition. They scored $1.4 million in profits on the trade amid media reports of the pending deal, and sold their shares before it was publicly announced, according to the indictment. Weil Gotshal was one of the law firms advising Intel on the deal.

Using information gleaned from a second law firm, the trio also bought shares of Borderfree, an online commerce site that was an acquisition target of Pitney Bowes, the U.S. said. They made a profit of $841,000 on the trades after the deal was announced on May 18, 2015, according to the indictment.

Prior to the Borderfree takeover, Hong and Chin bought so much of the companys stock that on certain days the two accounted for 25 percent or more of the companys trading volume, according to the SEC complaint. Christian Berthelsen, Bloomberg
In a historic pilgrimage, the leaders of Japan and the United States took to the hallowed waters of Pearl Harbor yesterday to prove that even the bitterest enemies can become allies. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not apologize, but conceded Japan must never repeat the horrors of war again.

Seventy-five years after Japans surprise attack sent America marching into World War II, Abe and President Barack Obama peered down at the rusting wreckage of the USS Arizona, clearly visible in the tranquil, teal water. More than 1,000 U.S. war dead remain entombed in the submerged ship, and in a show of respect, Obama and Abe dropped purple petals into the water and stood in silence.

As the prime minister of Japan, I offer my sincere and everlasting condolences to the souls of those who lost their lives here, as well as to the spirits of all the brave men and women whose lives were taken by a war that commenced in this very place, Abe said later at nearby Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

That was the closest Abe would get to an apology for the attack. And it was enough for Obama, who also declined to apologize seven months ago when he became Americas first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb in a bid to end the war.

It was enough, too, for Alfred Rodrigues, a U.S. Navy veteran who survived the attack. The 96-year-old said he had no hard feelings and added, War is war.

They were doing what they were supposed to do, and we were doing what we were supposed to do, Rodrigues said before the visit.

Abe, who became Japans first leader to visit Pearl Harbor with a U.S. president, said the visit brought utter silence to me. His remarks capped a day that was carefully choreographed by the U.S. and Japan to show a strong and growing alliance between former foes.

They started with a formal meeting at another nearby military base, in what the White House said was likely Obamas last meeting with a foreign leader before leaving office in January. It was a bookend of sorts for the president, who nearly eight years ago invited Abes predecessor to be the first leader he hosted at the White House.

Japanese officials said that in their talks, Abe and Obama agreed yesterday to closely monitor the movements of Chinas first and sole aircraft carrier, which has sailed into the western Pacific for the first time. Taiwans Defense Ministry reported Monday that the aircraft carrier and five warships sailed 90 nautical miles south of Taiwan, a self-governing island claimed by China. Beijing called it a routine training exercise.

In their last meeting before Obama leaves office next month, the two leaders affirmed that movements by the Chinese carrier Liaoning warrant close attention from mid-term and long-term perspectives, the officials said. Late last week, the Liaoning advanced into the western Pacific after passing the so-called first island chain, a sea defense line China unilaterally draws running from southern Japan to Taiwan, the Philippines and the southern South China Sea.

White House officials who accompanied Obama to Hawaii did not comment on the announcement from the Japanese, and in an unusual move, they didnt release a written description of the meeting.

But in Washington yesterday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. recognizes lawful uses of the sea, and the same rights apply to the U.S., China and other nations.

He said, as we often make the case with our own naval vessels sailing  in those same waters, its freedom of navigation.

Earlier this month, a Chinese navy vessel seized an U.S. Navy underwater glider that the U.S. said was conducting oceanic research in international waters off the Philippines. The U.S. called the seizure illegal and made a diplomatic protest. China returned the glider five days later.

Obama, speaking after he and Abe laid green-and-peach wreaths at the memorial, called the harbor a sacred place and said that even the deepest wounds of war can give way to friendship and lasting peace. The two leaders greeted survivors in the crowd, shaking hands and hugging some of the men who fought in the Dec. 7, 1941, battle that President Franklin D. Roosevelt called a date which will live in infamy.

Japanese leaders have visited Pearl Harbor before, but Abe was the first to go to the memorial above the sunken USS Arizona, where a marbled wall lists the names of U.S. troops killed in the Japanese attack.

For Abe, it was an act of symbolic reciprocity, coming seven months after Obama and Abe visited Hiroshima together and renewed their calls for a nuclear-free future. Still, both governments maintain that the visits were separate and not contingent upon one another.

In the years after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. incarcerated roughly 120,000 Japanese-Americans in internment camps before dropping atomic bombs in 1945 that killed some 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki.

Since the war, the U.S. and Japan have built a powerful alliance that both sides say has grown during Obamas tenure. Josh Lederman, Caleb Jones, AP
Compared to the previous month, visitor arrivals in November decreased by 3.4 percent.

Yet visitor arrivals last month were similar over the same month of 2015, at 2,588,645, including 109 visitors travelling under the cross-border yacht sailing scheme which became effective as from November 23.

Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that overnight visitors rose by 10.4 percent year-on-year to 1,374,752, accounting for 53.1 percent of the total, while same-day visitors dropped by 9.7 percent to 1,213,893.

The average length of stay of visitors increased by 0.1 day year-on-year to 1.2 days; the average stay of overnight visitors and same-day visitors was 2.1 days and 0.2 day respectively.

Visitors from mainland China decreased by 1.2 percent year-on-year to 1,705,721 in November, of which those travelling under the Individual Visit Scheme increased by 2.1 percent to 791,007.

Mainland visitors came mainly from Guangdong Province, which accounted for 716,282 visitors; Hunan Province and Fujian Province.

Both Hong Kong and Taiwanese visitors dropped by 1.4 percent, of which visitors from Taiwan recorded the first decline after 16 consecutive months of year-on-year increases.

Visitors from the Republic of Korea and Japan surged by 34.6 percent and 25.4 percent respectively.

Long-haul visitors from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom increased year-on-year, while those from Australia decreased.

Analyzed by mode of transport, visitor arrivals by land decreased by 3.1 percent year-on-year to 1,427,238; those arriving through the Border Gate dropped by five percent while those through the Checkpoint of Cotai rose by 12.5 percent.

Visitor arrivals by sea increased by 2.3 percent year-on-year to 961,480; those disembarking at the Outer Harbor and the Provisional Ferry Terminal in Taipa grew by 0.6 percent and 12 percent respectively. Visitor arrivals by air increased by 13.3 percent year-on-year to 199,927.

In the first 11 months of 2016, visitor arrivals surpassed 28 million, up slightly by 0.2 percent year-on-year; overnight visitors rose by 9.1 percent to 14,153,210 while same-day visitors dropped by 7.4 percent to 13,982,676.

The average length of stay of visitors increased by 0.1 day year-on-year to 1.2 days; the average stay of overnight visitors rose by 0.1 day to 2.2 days whereas that of same-day visitors remained stable at 0.2 day.

Visitors from Mainland China and Hong Kong decreased by 0.5 percent and 2.2 percent respectively year-on-year, while those from the Republic of Korea and Taiwan increased by 18.5 percent and 8.5 percent. Moreover, DSEC stated that visitors from the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom registered year-on-year growth.
The United States says China has the right to sail in international waters after a Chinese aircraft carrier cruised past Taiwan and into the contested South China Sea.

Taiwans Defense Ministry reported Monday that the aircraft carrier and five warships sailed 90 nautical miles south of Taiwan, a self-governing island claimed by China. Beijing says it is a routine training exercise.

China has previously accused U.S. warships of making provocative passes through the South China Sea.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said yesterday the U.S. recognizes lawful uses of the sea, and the same rights apply to the U.S., China and other nations.

He said, as we often make the case with our own naval vessels sailing  in those same waters, its freedom of navigation.

Earlier this month, a Chinese navy vessel seized an U.S. Navy underwater glider that the U.S. said was conducting oceanic research in international waters off the Philippines.

The U.S. called the seizure illegal and made a diplomatic protest. China returned the glider five days later.

Beijing claims most of the South China Sea. Five other Asian governments also claim ownership of islands and reefs there. Matthew Pennington, Washington, AP
But instead of fighting hunger, the military is making money from it, an Associated Press investigation shows. Thats what grocer Jose Campos found when he ran out of pantry staples this year. In the middle of the night, he would travel to an illegal market run by the military to buy corn flour  at 100 times the government-set price.

The military would be watching over whole bags of money, Campos said. They always had what I needed.

With much of the oil country on the verge of starvation and malnourished children dying in pediatric wards, food trafficking has become big business in Venezuela. And the military is at the heart of the graft, according to documents and interviews with more than 60 officials, company owners and workers, including five former generals.

As a result, food is not reaching those who most need it.

The U.S. government has taken notice. Prosecutors have opened investigations against senior Venezuelan officials for laundering riches from food contracts through the U.S. financial system, according to several people with direct knowledge of the probes. No charges have been brought.

Lately, food is a better business than drugs, said retired Gen. Cliver Alcala, who helped oversee border security.

The late President Hugo Chavez created a Food Ministry in 2004. His socialist government nationalized and then neglected farms and factories, and domestic production dried up. When the price of oil collapsed in 2014, the government no longer could afford to import all the country needed.

Hungry Venezuelans began rioting, and so Maduro handed the generals complete power over food. The government now imports nearly all the countrys food, and corruption drives prices sky-high, said Werner Gutierrez, agronomy professor at the University of Zulia.

If Venezuela paid market prices, wed be able to double our imports, Gutierrez said. Instead, people are starving.

In large part due to concerns of graft, the three largest global food traders, all based in the U.S., have stopped selling directly to the Venezuelan government.

One South American businessman says he paid millions in kickbacks to Venezuelan officials as the hunger crisis worsened, including $8 million to people who work for the food minister, Gen. Rodolfo Marco Torres. The businessman insisted on speaking anonymously because he did not want to acknowledge participating in corruption.

He explained that vendors like him can afford to pay off officials because they build large profit margins into what they bill the state. A single $52 million contract of his to import yellow corn last year, seen by AP, included a potential overpayment of more than $20 million, compared with market prices at the time.

Marco Torres did not respond to requests for comment by phone, email and hand-delivered letter. In the past, he has said he will not be lured into fights with an unpatriotic opposition.

Some contracts go to companies that have no experience dealing in food or seem to exist only on paper. Financial documents obtained by AP show that Marco Torres did business with Panama-registered Atlas Systems International, which has all the hallmarks of a shell company. Another government food supplier, J.A. Comercio de Generos Alimenticios, lists on its website a nonexistent address in an industrial city near Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The two companies transferred more than $5.5 million in 2012 and 2013 to a Geneva account controlled by the brothers-in-law of the then-food minister, Gen. Carlos Osorio, according to bank and internal company documents seen by AP.

Osorio, recently appointed to oversee transparency in the military, did not respond to requests for comment, but in the past dismissed charges of corruption as personal attacks from the opposition.

The socialist administration says it takes graft seriously.

The state has an obligation to root out corruption in all levels of public administration, the defense minister, Gen. Vladimir Padrino Lopez, said this fall.

And yet dirty dealing persists from the port to the markets, according to dozens of people working in Puerto Cabello, which handles the majority of imported food. Officials sometimes keep ships waiting at sea until they are paid off, according to a stevedore who spoke anonymously because he feared losing his job.

After the cargo is unloaded, customs officials take their cut, refusing to even start the process of nationalizing goods without a payment, four customs workers said, .

Its an unbroken chain of bribery from when your ship comes in until the food is driven out in trucks, said Luis Pena, a director at the Caracas-based importer Premier Foods.

If importers try to get through the process without greasing the wheels, food sits and spoils, Pena said. Rotting food is a problem even as 90 percent of Venezuelans say they cant afford enough to eat. The demands for bribes delay shipments, and state officials sometimes neglect to distribute what they import.

The corruption doesnt stop once cargo leaves the port, according to truck drivers. The military has set up checkpoints along highways to catch food traffickers, and truck drivers say they have to pay bribes at about half of them. Hannah Dreier, Joshua Goodman, AP
GOODING  A 35-year-old man was shot in Gooding just before 5 p.m. Wednesday, police said.

The man, who was not identified by police, was taken to North Canyon Medical Center and treated for his wound.

A statement from Gooding Police Chief Chris Ward did not say whether anyone was arrested but said there is no danger to the public.

The Gooding Fire Department, Gooding EMS and a Gooding sheriffs deputy also responded to the call at 235 Second Ave. E.

Police did not release more information Wednesday night.

Police asked anyone with information about the shooting to call Southern Idaho Regional Communication center after hours at 208-735-1911 or Gooding Police during business hours at 208-934-8436.
TWIN FALLS  Plans for an agricultural research center in the Twin Falls area, which stalled during the recession due to a lack of cash, are back and could pick up some serious steam next year.

Conceptually  it would be overseen by the University of Idaho, but there would be cooperation from all state schools of higher education and likely BYU Idaho, said Brent Olmstead, government and external relations director for the University of Idahos College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.

Olmstead said the center would likely cost about $45 million to get started, but that they would have a better idea in mid-January, when the strategic plan for the proposal should be done and ready to present to the Legislature. He said research topics would likely include waste management, composting, the use of water in agriculture, crops nutrient intake  pretty much anything dealing with agriculture in Idaho, he said.

While there are other major research centers, Olmstead said, such as in Iowa and at Cornell University in Upstate New York, nobody else is doing that kind of research in western agriculture, which he said is different in some ways than agriculture further east.

It would really jump-start agricultural research in this valley, said Rep. Stephen Hartgen, R-Twin Falls.

Hartgen said the idea has started to get quite a bit of traction, and he thinks the state would be willing to provide a significant amount of funding for the center if the other parties involved are willing to do the same.

In 2007, Gov. C.L. Butch Otter proposed committing almost $11 million in state money for a dairy and animal research facility in the Magic Valley. The project died, though, after the economy tanked.

It was always a good idea, we just didnt have the money, said House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley. And now, I think  were in a much better position now, and were going to kind of resurrect some of the old ideas.

Bedke was part of a group that traveled to Washington, D.C. at the time to meet with officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture about involving them. He said they were interested in the idea, especially in doing research on dairies and feedlots on the scale of the ones in this area, which are bigger than ones further east.

All the research that had been done had not been done on western-sized operations, he said.

Bedke compared the funding model to the one that was used recently to help to start a community college in eastern Idaho  the state commits some seed money, and the other groups involved, in this case the agricultural industry groups and the universities, also chip in.

Idahos the third-largest milk-producing state in the union, Bedke said. The Magic Valley is home to all of the food processing capacity, so theres a good partnership to be had out there with these animal and food science industries, and I think thats what were trying to accomplish.

Otters press office declined to comment Wednesday on whether the governor would support funding such a facility now, but some Magic Valley lawmakers and others involved in the project have met recently to discuss the idea.

That trains on the track at the point, said Rep. Maxine Bell, R-Jerome, who is co-chairwoman of the committee that would have to approve funding it. We just dont quite have a destination yet, but theres movement out there, and theres some wonderful partnerships going on.

Bell said it could take another two years to put everything together. She said she expects it would cost the state about $15 million spent over two years to get the center established.

The Idaho Dairymens Association has committed to chip in $3 million if the project comes together, executive director Bob Naerebout said. He said no location has been selected for the research center yet, but the idea is to put it within 25 miles of Twin Falls. For the dairy industry in particular, Naerebout said he would like to see an emphasis on engineering new technology to draw nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen out of cow manure so they can be used and transported out of the area for use as fertilizer elsewhere. He compared this to the uses cheesemakers have been finding for whey.

We would like to see something similar happen to manure coming from dairy cows, Naerebout said. Basically, theyre dairy products, and we need to find a way to harvest them and bring added value to that.
Wyoming, Utah and Colorado were the first states to grant women the right to vote. Wyoming and Utah were both territories when their womens suffrage laws were passed.

Idaho, in 1896, was the fourth state to give women the right to vote.

By 1915, womens suffrage was a hot topic nationally; by then only eight more states had passed womens suffrage laws and four more were planning a vote.

Arguments against womens suffrage by 1912 Nobel Peace Prize winner Elihu Root were printed in the Oct. 1, 1915, edition of Twin Falls Weekly Times.

I am opposed to the granting of suffrage to women, said Root, a former U.S. Secretary of War and Secretary of State. Suffrage is not a natural right, but is simply a means of government, and the sole question to be discussed is whether government by the suffrage of men and women will be better government than by the suffrage of men alone.

Root was a brilliant lawyer, who, after World War I, helped to develop the Permanent Court of International Justice at the Hague.

It is not that woman is inferior to man, but it is that woman is different from man, he said. Woman rules today by the sweet and noble influences of her character. Put woman into the arena of conflict and she abandons those great weapons which control the world.

Woman in strife becomes hard, harsh, unlovable and repulsive; as far removed from the gentle creature to whom we all owe allegiance and to whom we confess submission, as the heaven is removed from the earth.

In 1919, the 19th Amendment gave all woman the right to vote.
Tracie Jean O'Gorman

June 4, 1969 - December 26, 2016

TWIN FALLS - Tracie was born on June 4, 1969, to Ernie O'Gorman and Dee Anne Dee Packer in Twin Falls, Idaho. Our beautiful sweet Tracer returned home on December 26th, 2016, after a 28 year battle with various medical complications. Always the traveler, Tracie passed away on a road trip while traveling home after visiting family in Montana for Christmas. Tracie survived four liver and three kidney transplants as well as numerous joint replacements. Through it all, she never lost her smile, her faith, or her hope.

Tracie loved learning and teaching. She graduated from Twin Falls High School in 1987 then spent time abroad in Germany as a foreign exchange student living with a wonderful host family who embraced her as their own. In 2002, she graduated summa cum laude from San Diego State University, where she was voted Outstanding Student of the Year.

Had her health cooperated, she would have continued her education to become an international attorney. There wasn't anything about life Tracie didn't love: shopping, shiny shoes, traveling, being Irish, and especially teasing her big brother, Rodney.

She always had a smile (especially bright when the camera came out) and was ready to take on whatever obstacle was thrown at her, tackling it with such grace.

Tracie had a magnetic personality; she simply attracted people and gathered friends wherever she went.

Above all else, Tracie loved her family and dear friends. They were her biggest supporters, best friends, and most trusted caregivers. Throughout all her hospital stays, she never spent a night alone. The late night conversations they shared will be treasured by each of them.

Tracie is survived by her Papa, big brother Rod (Jane Hammett), mother, stepfather (Jerry), stepbrothers and sisters (Gene, Jess, Julie, and Jana), many extended family members, and innumerable friends.

She was predeceased by her grandparents, two uncles, an aunt, and other special family members.

We would like to thank all of the medical personnel who helped care for Tracie; many of you became like family.

Tracie, I've got news for you! Your family and friends miss you dearly but find comfort knowing you are no longer struggling and suffering in pain. You are loved to the moon and back. We love you a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck!

Services will be held Friday, December 30th, 2016, at 2:00pm at Rosenau Funeral Home.

Tracie's wish for those who would like to make a donation in her honor is to donate to the Liver Transplant Patient Assistance Fund at Nebraska Medical Center. An account has been opened at First Federal Bank, Twin Falls, Idaho. Donations can be made at any branch location. Call 208-733-4222 for information regarding how to make a donation. Reference the Liver Transplant Fund for Tracie O'Gorman.
Dona Fenton

BURLEY  Dona Fenton of Burley, funeral at 11 a.m. Thursday, December 29, at the Springdale LDS Church, 519 E. 200 S., of Burley. Visitation is from 6-8 p.m. Wednesday, December 28, at the Rasmussen Funeral Home, 1350 E. 16th St., Burley and 10 until 10:45 a.m. Thursday, prior to the service at the church.

Eldon Smith

KIMBERLY  Eldon Smith of Kimberly, funeral services at 12 p.m. Thursday, December 29, 2016, at the LDS church located at 3857 N 3500 E, Kimberly, Idaho. Visitation is from 10-11:45 a.m. at the church prior to the service.

Casey Hafla

IDAHO FALLS  Casey Hafla of Idaho Falls, funeral services at 2 p.m. Thursday, December 29, at Wood Funeral Home East Side, 963 South Ammon. A visitation will be held one hour prior to the service.

Madaline Crosby

AMERICAN FALLS  Madaline Crosby of American Falls, celebration of life from 4 until 6 p.m. Friday, December 30 at the American Falls Library.

Tracie OGorman

TWIN FALLS  Tracie OGorman of Twin Falls, memorial services at 2 p.m. Friday, December 30 at Rosenau Funeral Home, Twin Falls.

John C. Merrill

BURLEY  John Churchill Merrill of Burley, funeral at 11 a.m. Friday, December 30, at the Rasmussen Funeral Home, 1350 E, 16th St., in Burley. Military honors will be provided by the Mini-Cassia Veterans Organization.

Helen J. MacDonald

BURLEY  Helen J. MacDonald of Burley, funeral at 2 p.m. Friday, December 30, at the Rasmussen Funeral Home, 1350 E. 16th St., in Burley, where family and friends may call from 6-8 p.m. Thursday, December 29, and one hour prior to the service on Friday.

Verna Carrico

TWIN FALLS  Verna Carrico of Twin Falls, graveside service at 1:30 p.m. Friday, December 30, at the Elmwood Cemetery in Gooding. A celebration of life will be held in the spring.

Kyle Woods

BUHL  Kyle Woods of Buhl, funeral service at 11 a.m. Friday, December 30, at the Orpheum Theatre, Twin Falls. Arrangements are under the care of Farmer Funeral Chapel.

Donald Glavin

TWIN FALLS  Donald Glavin of Twin Falls, services at 1 p.m. Saturday, December 31 at Immanuel Lutheran Church with a viewing 1 hour prior to the service.

Vinnie Standley

TWIN FALLS  Vinnie Pearl Standley of Twin Falls, Celebration of Life from 2-6 pm Sunday, January 8, 2016 at the Turf Club in Twin Falls. Funeral Arrangements are under the direction of White Mortuary Chapel by the Park.

Patty Jarolimek

FILER  Patty Jarolimek of Filer, memorial mass at 11 a.m. Tuesday, January 3, at St. Edwards Catholic Church, Twin Falls. A luncheon and special slide show will follow at St. Edwards parish hall. Arrangements are under the direction of Parkes Magic Valley Funeral Home.
GOODING  A 62-year-old Gooding man charged with shooting and killing his son-in-law told police the victim was abusive to the mans daughter and the shooting happened accidentally during an argument over the abuse.

Jimmie E. ONeal Sr. was arraigned Thursday in Gooding County Magistrate Court on a felony count of second-degree murder.

Prosecutors say ONeal killed his son-in-law, 34-year-old Steven Lawrence, with a .38 special handgun in a slaying that was willful, unlawful, deliberate, and with malice aforethought, but without premeditation. He faces 10 years to life in prison if convicted.

ONeal and other witnesses told police Wednesday that Lawrences wife showed up to ONeals house with snow covering her pants after Lawrence pushed her over during an argument, court documents said. Angered by the abuse, ONeal said he went to Lawrences house to kick his ass.

ONeal said that he was tired of his daughter being abused and that this was the final straw, a detective wrote in a sworn affidavit. ONeal said that he had full intentions of going over to kick Stevens ass but that he did not intend to shoot him.

At the Lawrences home, ONeal found the door to Lawrences bedroom locked, and the two men began arguing through the door, with ONeal yelling at Steven to come out of the bedroom so that he could kick his ass, court documents said. ONeal said that Steven told him more than one time to get out of his house.

ONeal told police he ended up forcing his way through the door and saw Lawrence standing by the bed pointing a black pistol at him, court documents said. ONeal told police the gun was a black Taurus 9 mm he recognized because he gave Lawrence the money to buy the gun.

But police later discovered that Lawrence pawned a gun matching that description about a month ago, and police did not find another gun at the scene, though his wife said that during their argument, he did have a small silver handgun in his pocket.

ONeal told police that as he forced his way inside the bedroom, he raised his own pistol and his pistol went off.

ONeal said that he thought he had shot to the right of Steven and didnt think that he hit him, the Gooding detective wrote the affidavit. ONeal said that Steven had fallen across the bed and then got right back up and that is when he noticed blood on Stevens left shoulder. ONeal said that Steven told him to call 911 and that Steven went by him and downstairs to the couch.

Downstairs, Lawrences son called 911 and then handed the phone to his grandfather.

ONeal said that as he was speaking with the 911 operator he was also holding a towel on Stevens shoulder to try and stop the bleeding, court documents said. ONeal said that when law enforcement arrived, he told them that the pistol was in his coat pocket and that law enforcement removed it from his coat pocket.

Lawrence was taken to North Canyon Medical Center, where he later died from the gunshot wound. ONeal was also taken to the hospital after experiencing chest pain.

During interviews at the hospital and later the police station, ONeal told police what happened, and his daughter and grandson told police similar stories of Wednesdays events.

ONeal was represented at Thursdays hearing by the public defenders office and is being held in custody at the Gooding County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bond. A preliminary hearing is set for Jan. 5.
My birthday is near Christmas. As a kid, my folks never short-changed me of gifts. My twelfth year is especially memorable. I got a telescope for Christmas and a 0.22 rifle for my birthday. Wow!

Some aunts and uncles were unblushingly stingy. Theyd write for Christmas and your birthday on a single gift. My parents aimed a mean stink eye at me if my thank you showed any hint of ingratitude.

That conditioning, though, made me sensitive (cynical?) regarding the meretricious slight-of-hand common among politicians. You know, that talent some have for selling a scam as doing you a favor?

Idahoans treasure nature, hunting, fishing, wildlife and access to our public lands. Across the West, including Idaho, issues involving public land ownership, access, management (and costs), hunting and fishing rights and licensing have begun swirling in a single vortex. It threatens becoming a tornado that could destroy the architecture of our outdoor heritage.

The Idaho Wildlife Federation exposed a starkly elitist approach to hunting-tag sales. Legislation was co-authored in 2010 by prominent Republican Doug Sayer, one time GOP Chair candidate, and chairman of The Wild Sheep Foundation. The bill created an option for Idahos Fish and Game Commission to auction prized tags to the highest bidders. The Commission has wisely resisted that option, consistently citing its rich-privilege implications.

In 2016 Steve Bair R-Blackfoot, Chairman of the Senate Resources and Environment Committee, joined forces with Mike Moyle R-Star, House Majority Leader, to sponsor a bill amping-up the 2010 language from allowing to requiring auction of prize hunting-tags. Strong opposition from wildlife and hunting groups and former Fish and Game Commissioners Mark Doerr and Will Naillon killed the legislation in committee.

Sayer shared his displeasure about that with Governor Otter. Emails obtained by the Idaho Wildlife Federation revealed dark  some might say Machiavellian exchanges regarding membership changes on the Fish and Game commission. Specifically, Doerr and Naillon are no longer commission members.

Idaho is becoming notorious for its lack of transparency, inadequate conflict of interest disclosure/recusal requirements and unflattering patronage climate in government. Designing access to hunting that manifestly favors, not just the well-to-do, but arguably the ultra-rich, is at the least creeping elitism. If, in addition, wealthy interests have privileged access to or sway over elected and appointed members of government, it smacks of cronyism.

A lot of Reverse-Robin-Hoodism powers that tornado I mentioned. Every taxpaying Idahoan contributes at the state and federal levels to stewarding our outdoor heritage. Yet, theres a concerted effort afoot to force commoners to cost-share while ceding special benefits to the rich and connected. You see, a prized game hunt requires a broader pyramid of support than just tag revenues. Managing wildlands, forests, water, fires, access roads, predation, invasive species, poaching prevention, wildlife, ecosystem health, etc. involves dozens of interacting state and federal agencies.

The auction rationale claims megabucks for a few tags will reduce that burden from your taxes, enhance management, and increase game populations and hunter opportunity. But the truth is it wont.

Why? Because politicians, whose campaigns are funded by special interests, industries and developers, will always set the goals and assign the privileges. If public lands revert to the states, huge tracts will be sold off. Extravagant resorts and private game reserves will sprout up while game available to the average Joe diminishes. The 89,000 acre Valles Caldera experiment in New Mexico was a management and financial failure; and they actually tried taking an even-handed approach.

Republicans, seeing the mounting backlash by Idahoans, have started making verbal assurances, that the scenarios Ive suggested above were never envisioned or planned. They just want state control.

Sure.

If thats the case, why not amend Idahos Constitution outlawing any future reduction of total area or access to state or acquired federal public lands?

Idaho amended its constitution in 2012 guaranteeing hunting rights to all citizens. From that I would have expected nullification of the 2010 legislation allowing tag auctions as violating the constitutional egalitarian hunting right. Instead Bair and Moyles 2016 bill sought further encroachment on citizens hunting rights. Bair and Moyle would have Idaho abandon the North American Model of egalitarian hunting access to spread the failed concept of tinkle down economics to Idahos cherished outdoor tradition. Cater to the gilded huntsmen and loose change falling from their pockets will fund Idahos outdoor culture.

Sure.

Don Peasy, founder of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, an organization that benefited so generously from Utahs distribution of tag fees that some hunters accused Utah of corruption, mocks egalitarian permitting as socialism. Youre a socialist if you expect fair access to your tax-supported wildlife resources.

So, the GOPs vision of a combined Christmas/birthday gift to Idahoans looks like this: Constitutional hunting right, wrapped in tag-auction legislation reducing your access to prime tags. It has a bow fashioned of preferential income tax-breaks and sales-tax-exemptions to corporations and the rich, making it easier for the well-off to afford hunting tags and buy up public lands once the state wrenches them away from the Federal government. Idaho will be Americas billionaire hunting-resort mecca.

How about just recognizing Idahos critical needs for education, health, infrastructure etc.? Quit cutting income taxes preferentially for those that least need help, hoping for the tinkle down that never happens. Eliminate sales tax exemptions for special interests so we can all have lower sales taxes on all of our purchases. Impose a modest increase in sportsmens licenses and tags so everyone can have a fair shot at what we cherish about Idaho. Tell the Fish and Game, and Environment and Resources Committees what you think.
With the passing of Carrie Fisher  one more blow to our collective psyche  it is easy to think 2016 has been the worst year ever. Not by a long shot.

Consider just a few awful years:

1347: The Black Death, which would claim about 50 million lives in the next few years, begins.

1814: The British burn Washington.

1861: An early defeat for the Union at Bull Run signals that there would be no quick end to the Civil War.

1918: The slaughter in Europe continues in the form of trench warfare, punctuated by use of chemical weapons. Meanwhile, the flu epidemic, which would eventually kill 675,000 Americans (roughly the same as the Civil War) and infect about one-third of the worlds population, breaks out.

1929: The stock market crashes, and we are sent spiraling into the Great Depression that will not fully abate until the ramp-up to World War II (which will kill more than 60 million people).

1941: Speaking of world war, Germany bombs Britain and invades Russia; Hitler begins mass extermination of Jews, the disabled and other undesirables  and then the United States is attacked at Pearl Harbor.

1968: Assassins kill Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Riots rage across the United States. North Korea seizes the American surveillance ship USS Pueblo. The Tet Offensive begins.

1973: America leaves Vietnam in defeat. The Watergate scandal is in full swing. Vice President Spiro Agnew is forced to resign. Israel is attacked in the Yom Kippur War and teeters on the brink of destruction. OPEC retaliates with the oil embargo, sending gas prices soaring.

Weve had years (1941, 2001) in which the homeland was attacked. We have experienced years in which the president was assassinated (1865, 1881, 1901, 1963). Weve lived through years of Jim Crow, the AIDS pandemic and economic recession.

So, do you feel better about 2016? In all seriousness, some cultural icons did pass away, but there is no world war or untreatable epidemic threatening one-third of the planet. We held a peaceful election in which there was virtually no inkling of fraud. A peaceful transition is underway to a president of a different party. Unemployment is at 4.6 percent, wages are slowly rising and we are growing, albeit sluggishly.

Part of the collective shudder we are experiencing is the fear of the unknown  2017:

- Will Donald Trump be a madman, setting off wars and eviscerating American institutions, making bargains with the Russian devil at the expense of allies? (Maybe he will be not as horrible as we anticipate and/or Congress will be more resolute than it now appears in checking him.)

- Will the Islamic State be eradicated, or will the war drag on? (A final push to free major cities in Iraq does seem within grasp.) Will the Syrian bloodbath, President Obamas moral stain, ever end?

- Will right-wing governments take hold in Europe, tearing at the fabric of Western democracy and Europes alliance with the United States? (Perhaps Europeans will take a deep breath, realize the consequences of descent into nationalistic, nativist politics and correct course.

You are thinking, So things could get a lot worse?! Thats about right. But those stunned and dismayed by Trumps election, Russias mendacity, Republicans spinelessness, Trumpkins (some, certainly not all) overt racism and anti-Semitism, and Democrats disarray should remember that we remain in control of our own destiny. We have agency. Americans can protest, organize, vote, petition their government, contribute in the private sector, educate our fellow citizens and work for causes and candidates at the local and state level.

To be sure, 2016 was pretty rotten, but by no means the worst year in history, not even recent U.S. history. Surely we can individually and collectively strive to make 2017 as painless as possible, no?
Using annual data from 1850 to 2010 for Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA, this paper examines the impact of immigration and the immigrants educational and cultural background on unemployment. Instruments for 27 emigrating countries are used to deal with the feedback effects from unemployment to immigration. The results show that educated immigrants, in particular, and immigrants from Protestant countries significantly reduce unemployment, while poorly educated and non-Protestant immigrants enhance unemployment.
The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD), a government-owned entity, said it is examining new development projects proposed by the Moroccan government.

The proposed initiatives of the Moroccan government will contribute to driving socio-economic growth across all key sectors and create new job opportunities. This latest round of talks highlights ADFDs commitment to facilitating the UAE governments grants to meet Moroccos development goals, The Emirati news agency (WAM) quoted Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, the director-general of ADFD, as saying.

Al Suwaidi is leading a delegation of the Fund on a visit to Morocco as part of the 2013 UAE government grant contribution of AED4.6 billion (US$1.25 billion) to the Gulf Development Fund, a grant program from the Gulf Cooperation Council member countries to finance development projects in Morocco over a five-year period.

On the occasion of this visit, Moroccan officials from the ministries of finance, higher education, scientific research, agriculture and fisheries and highway authority offered an overview of key projects in the field of sustainable development in their respective sectors

Since 1974, ADFD has successfully channeled the UAE governments grants totaling $1.49 billion in support of 55 projects in Morocco.

The ADFD manages grants offered by the UAE government. To date, the Fund has funded 488 projects in 83 countries.
Mozambiques Renamo opposition party on Tuesday announced that it will cease its military attacks against government forces for the next 7 days.

Speaking at a Maputo press conference, which he addressed by telephone from his military headquarters in the central district of Gorongosa, Renamo leader said the truce will begin at midnight on Tuesday and will last for the next seven days.

I announce the provisional cessation of military hostilities across the country as from midnight Tuesday, he told reporters over the phone.

I took the initiative; I called the President of the Republic, Filipe Nyusi, and gave him the possibility to offer this provisional truce.

Renamo, led by Alfonso Dhlakama, waged a 16-year bloody war against the ruling Frelimo government that ended in 1992. The war claimed an estimated one million lives.

Mediated peace talks collapsed earlier this month but Dhlakama said that he was willing to continue to dialogue with Nyusi following Mondays productive phone call.

The main item under debate has been decentralization  by which Renamo means seizing control of the six provinces where it claims, untruthfully, to have won the 2014 general elections.

Frelimo has said that Renamo must disarm before any agreements can be reached.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A new University of Liverpool study published today in Neuropsychology shows that it may be possible to detect neurodegenerative disorders in artists before they are diagnosed.

Psychologist Dr Alex Forsythe from the University's School of Psychology and her team, working with Dr Tamsin Williams of Tees, Esk, and Wear Valleys NHS Trust, Vale of York and Maynooth University, Ireland, examined 2092 paintings from the careers of seven famous artists who experienced both normal ageing and neurodegenerative disorders.

Of the seven, two had suffered from Parkinson's disease (Salvador Dali and Norval Morrisseau), two had suffered from Alzheimer's disease (James Brooks and Willem De Kooning) and three had no recorded neurodegenerative disorders (Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet).

Fractal analyses

The brushstrokes of each of the paintings were analysed using a method of applying non-traditional mathematics to patterns known as 'Fractal' analyses to identify complex geometric patterns.

Fractals are mathematical characterisations of self-repeating patterns often described as the 'fingerprints of nature'. They can be found in natural phenomena such as clouds, snowflakes, trees, rivers, and mountains. This method has also been used to determine the authenticity of major works of art.

Although painters work within a different style or genre, the fractal dimension in which they operate should remain comparable.

Patterns of change

The results were examined to see if the variations in an artist's unique 'fractals' in their work over their career were due to them just increasing in age or because of ongoing cognitive deterioration.

The study showed clear patterns of change in the fractal dimension of the paintings differentiated artists who suffered neurological deterioration from those aging normally.

Dr Alex Forsythe, said: "Art has long been embraced by psychologists an effective method of improving the quality of life for those persons living with cognitive disorders.

"We have built on this tradition by unpicking artists 'handwriting' through the analysis of their individual connection with the brush and paint. This process offers the potential for the detection of emerging neurological problems.

"We hope that our innovation may open up new research directions that will help to diagnose neurological disease in the early stages"

More information: Alex Forsythe et al, What paint can tell us: A fractal analysis of neurological changes in seven artists., Neuropsychology (2017). Journal information: Neuropsychology Alex Forsythe et al, What paint can tell us: A fractal analysis of neurological changes in seven artists.,(2017). DOI: 10.1037/neu0000303
A new study indicates that many women with advanced kidney disease are not receiving recommended breast or cervical cancer screening, even though they face a higher risk of developing cancer than women in the general population. The findings appear in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN).

Cancer is a significant cause of illness and death in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), with an approximately twofold higher prevalence than the general population. The increased risk appears to be specific for urinary tract, viral-related, digestive, and breast cancers. Therefore, breast and cervical cancer screening is especially important in women with CKD.

A team led by Germaine Wong, PhD, (The University of Sydney, in Australia), Jade Hayward, and Danielle Nash, PhD (Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, ICES Western facility, in Ontario, Canada) examined patterns of breast and cervical cancer screening in women based on CKD stage and age. The retrospective study included information from 2002 to 2013 from the Ontario, Canada administrative healthcare databases. For their analyses on breast cancer screening and cervical cancer screening, the investigators included 141,326 and 324,548 women, respectively.

Older women with co-morbidities and with advanced stage kidney disease requiring dialysis were less likely to undergo routine breast and cervical cancer screening compared with younger women with early stage CKD. The two-year cumulative incidences of breast cancer screening were 61% among women without CKD, 54% for those with CKD stage 3, 37% for CKD stages 4 and 5, and 26% for women with kidney failure who were on dialysis. Similar patterns were observed for the three-year cumulative incidences of cervical cancer screening. Older age, greater comorbidities, and lower income were associated with a lower rate of screening.

"These results reflect the inherent healthcare priorities of dialysis patients: older women on dialysis may not have the capacity to deal with the complexity of dialysis management and may have potentially neglected less imminent issues such as preventive healthcare and early cancer detection," said Dr. Wong. "Given that cancer screening has the potential to improve cancer outcomes, targeted strategies to inform shared decision making in screening is critical."

In an accompanying editorial, Deidra Crews, MD, ScM and Waseem Khaliq, MBBS, MPH, (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) noted that "enhanced coordination of care between nephrologists, general practitioners and women's health care providers may serve to promote cancer screening among women with CKD. Ultimately, however, nephrologists may forge long-term trusting relationships with kidney patients that will afford them the greatest opportunity to engage in shared-decision making together and select the cancer screening plan that is most appropriate for the patient's individual health status and personal priorities."

More information: "Patterns and Predictors of Screening for Breast and Cervical Cancer in Women with Chronic Kidney Disease," December 29, 2016, "Patterns and Predictors of Screening for Breast and Cervical Cancer in Women with Chronic Kidney Disease," December 29, 2016, DOI: 10.2215/CJN.05990616
Looking at before-and-after photos, plastic surgeons and nurses can't tell whether breast augmentation surgery was done using conventional round implants or newer anatomically shaped implants, reports a study in the January issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

At least in the specific group of patients studied, the results of breast augmentation using round versus shaped implants are indistinguishable, according to the new research, led by Dr. Carlos Rubi of The IMED Hospital Department of Plastic Surgery, Valencia, Spain. The results suggest that routine use of increasingly popular "teardrop-shaped" implants is not justified.

No Visible Difference in Results between Implant Types in Before-and-After Photos

In the study, 30 plastic surgeons and plastic surgery nurses reviewed preoperative and postoperative photos of 30 women who had undergone breast augmentation with round or anatomically shaped implants15 patients in each group. The two groups were otherwise similar: all procedures were done using silicone implants, placed under the muscle (subpectoral), with an average implant size of about 300 cc.

For each set of photos, the surgeons and nurses judged whether the procedure was done using round or shaped implants. The goal was to determine if the aesthetic results of round versus shaped implants could be differentiated from each other.

For all observations, there was about a 50-50 chance that the surgeons and nurses could correctly identify the type of implant used. There was a lack of agreement not only between different raters, but also for individual raters comparing the same images several weeks later.

Plastic surgeons performed slightly better than nurses in identifying the type of implantpossibly because they could deduce which type would likely be recommended, based on the "before" photos.

Introduced recently, teardrop-shaped implants have become increasingly popular for breast augmentation surgery. "A widespread idea is that the anatomically shaped implants give more natural results than the round implants," Dr. Rubi and coauthors write.

But the new study shows that even plastic surgeons and plastic surgery nurses cannot tell the difference between the final outcomes of breast augmentation with round versus shaped implants, in a group of patients with otherwise similar characteristics. The results add to a previous study that showed similar outcomes with the two implant types used for breast reconstruction.

The inability to tell the difference between implant types for breast augmentation questions the preference for shaped implantsespecially since they cost more and carry a risk of complications related to implant rotation, compared to round implants. "The systematic use of anatomically shaped implants is not justified," Dr. Rubi comments. "Natural results are achieved with both types of implants."

More information: "Comparing Round and Anatomically Shaped Implants in Augmentation Mammaplasty: The Experts' Ability to Differentiate the Type of Implant" Journal information: Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery "Comparing Round and Anatomically Shaped Implants in Augmentation Mammaplasty: The Experts' Ability to Differentiate the Type of Implant" DOI: 10.1097/PRS.0000000000002896
Her water tasted like rusty pennies; the pepperoni pizza like metallic cardboard.

The more chemotherapy sessions Monica Faison-Finch got, the faster her taste buds gave out. Over time she became thinner and thinner as her appetite diminished. Everything that touched her tongue was tasteless.

But then, a miracle happened.

"When I tried the miracle fruit before my meal, my life changed," said Faison-Finch, who was being treated for cervical cancer. "It was like the first time I had tasted food in about five or six weeks. It was like I was having my first meal."

Miracle fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum), which grows on a small emerald tree, is a red berry native to Ghana. People have known for centuries that eating the tiny tropical fruit, the size of a large jelly bean, affects the way food tastes. Scientists say the fruit binds the taste receptors on the tongue. After eating just one berry, the flavors of the food a person eats within the next hour are greatly enhanced.

Lemons taste like lemonade, strawberries as if they were on steroids.

Homestead brothers Erik and Kris Tietig, owners of the Miracle Fruit Farm in Redland in South Dade, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of miracle fruit to cancer patients at local hospitals, charity organizations and research universities since 1972.

Over the decades, as the fruit became more popular, more people began to request it and the orders became too voluminous to handle. That's when the brothers, who grew up on their parents' farm, Pine Island Nursery, built a separate farm to cultivate, sell and donate the fruit in larger quantities.

"We are called and visited by people in one of the hardest times of their life," said Erik Tietig, 40. "When we're able to help them with the miracle fruit, mask that metallic sensation and actually enjoy a meal, it's really a small victory."

The fruit itself doesn't have much nutritional value. It's the unique glycoprotein called miraculin that conceals undesirable flavors and intensifies the natural flavors of the food.

"One of the most common complaints nowadays with our patients is the very strong, metallic taste that occurs in the mouth of the patients undergoing treatments," said Dr. Mike Cusnir, director of medicine at the Mount Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center in Miami Beach.

Cusnir said one of his patients introduced him to the fruit in his office. He said he was shocked that researchers were not doing much with the revelation that the fruit can improve taste, which"has been such a common complaint of our patients for decades."

After losing a family member to cancer a few years ago, the Tietigs were determined to help people battling the illness. They came face to face with the reality that patients often suffer extreme nausea and aversion to eating and as a result, struggle with unwanted weight loss.

"Miracle fruit is not a fad. It doesn't cure cancer or even help prevent cancer," Erik Tietig said. "But what it does do is help alleviate terrible symptoms of chemotherapy in a very real and a very immediate way."

Although the Tietig family had been donating miracle fruit from Pine Island Nursery since 1972, the Miracle Fruit Farm didn't come into existence until 2012.

"People knew we had it through word of mouth, but over the years, we went from people calling in a dozen times a year to dozens every day," Erik Tietig said.

The farm sits in Redland, Miami-Dade County's agricultural district. The Tietigs asked that the exact location not be disclosed. The family farm grows, packs and ships the fruit four days a week for both retail and wholesale customers. Right now, the farm has about 7,000 trees, which live in a shade house. In January, another 7,000 miracle fruit trees will be planted.

The berries, which are in season year-round, are sold for 50 cents to $1 each. The majority of the farm's production gets donated.

"The fruit is available for purchase because it's the farm's primary source of business and income," Erik Tietig said. However, he said the farm consistently donates the fruit to local hospitals, cancer centers and universities. This year, recipients included the University of Florida, Miami Cancer Institute and the Soroptimist of Homestead, an international organization that aids women and girls in need. A few local hospital systems have received hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fruit for their patients.

"The objective of cancer care is to add life to the years more than years to the life," Cusnir said. "Anything we can do to keep the quality of life to the patient, so that we can keep the patient on the treatment by itself, it's going to be beneficial, and it becomes a win-win situation."

But it hasn't been that easy.

Because the fruit is difficult to harvest, it took the brothers years to discover how to produce the fruit in large quantities

"The fruit itself goes bad anywhere from one to three days after being picked off the tree. Most farmers had shunned the berry, because it has no commercial viability and is highly perishable. Consequently, patients were having a tough time finding it," Erik Tietig said.

"You don't realize how important a meal is until that satisfaction is taken away from you. And the miracle fruit has the ability to restore that. We were determined."

Adamant that they would make it possible, the brothers invested their own money and built the miracle fruit farm themselves.

After years of research and trial and error, the brothers found a way to get the plant to mature quicker, a process they are keeping secret.

"We learned that we can grow them from cuttings," Tietig said. "We developed ways to clone them without altering its DNA and then grow them in a controlled environment."

In the last six months, the brothers even rolled out miracle fruit tablets, designed to have a longer shelf life than the fruit.

Their success in bringing the fruit to South Florida has broken barriers. Cancer patients swear by the fruit, saying it has brought new life during their toughest times.

Faison-Finch was able to tolerate the smell of food again; her husband didn't have to cook outside. Lynne Guadamuz of Homestead said she was able to drink water and get the nutrients she needed. Carol Sheppo of Vero Beach said spaghetti and meatballs tasted like they were supposed to taste - like spaghetti and meatballs.

"It just opened up the whole flavor of food again, and life," Sheppo said.

2016 Miami Herald

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The News in Brief

Vice Presidents of NBG Appointed



The Board of the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) appointed Archil Mestvirishvili and Murtaz Kikoria as its Vice Presidents, the bank reported on December 23.



Archil Mestvirishvili has retained this position after being elected in the Board on December 1 for the second seven-year term. Murtaz Kikoria, who served as CEO of the Bank of Georgia till September 2016, was also elected as a member of the Board on the same day.



The appointment of the Vice Presidents came after Parliament approved amendments to the Law on the National Bank of Georgia on December 16, according to which the President of Georgia was deprived of the right to appoint the NBGs Vice Presidents. According to the new rule, the Vice Presidents are appointed by the NBG Board upon nomination of the NBG President.

(Civil.ge)







Norms envisaging imprisonment for marijuana use now null and void in Georgia



Georgias Constitutional Court has declared that imprisonment for use of small amounts of marijuana, as well as imprisonment for its purchase, retention and production for personal usage, is unconstitutional.



In accordance with this ruling, the Court announced that respective norms of Georgias Criminal Code and Code of Administrative Offenses were now null and void.



These norms were challenged at the Constitutional Court by Georgias Public Defender Usha Nanuashvili.



"Use of small amount of drugs, as well as purchase, retention and production of drugs for personal usage is punished by deprivation of liberty, which is irrelevant, too strict and degrading punishment," the Public Defender said.



The Court shared his opinion and satisfied his appeal.



In October 2015, Georgias Constitutional Court delivered a historic verdict, saying the norm of Georgias Constitution about imprisonment for personal use of marijuana was too strict and needed to be relaxed.



Despite this, the norms envisaging imprisonment for this offence still remained in other legislative documents of Georgia, in particular in the Criminal Code and Administrative Offenses Code. Yesterdays decision meant these norms were now removed from these legislative documents too.

(Agenda.ge)







Patriarch: Weve had difficult years, but thanks to God, we survived



Catholicos-Patriarch of all Georgia, Ilia II, has hosted the Patriarch of the Ukrainian Church.



Ilia II thanked his guest for visiting Georgia.



"Weve had very difficult years. Thanks to God and the Virgin Mary, we survived. I cordially greet you and I want you to feel like you are at your home," said the Patriarch.



In turn, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Patriarch thanked Ilia ll and expressed his satisfaction over the opportunity to take part in the celebrations of the 39-year anniversary of the Georgian Patriarchs enthronement.



He noted that the Ukrainians love the Georgian Patriarch very much as the defender of belief and everything sacred.

(IPN)







Special regimes imposed on several passages of Georgias road



Traffic restrictions have been imposed on several passages of Georgias roads because of heavy snow and ice.



According to the Roads Department of Georgia, the restrictions concern the Kutaisi-Tkibuli-Ambrolauri road (35-65 km), Zugdidi-Jvari-Mestia-Lasdili road (30-188 km) and Kutaisi-Tskaltubo-Tsageri-Lentekhi-Lasdili road (88-125 km).



The restrictions have also been imposed on the Batumi-Akhaltsikhe road (87-106 km).

(IPN)




@JeremySWallace

Republican Party of Florida chairman Blaise Ingoglia says endorsements from 10 state senators for his re-election as party leader is evidence that the GOP is far more unified than his critics contend.

Ingoglia on Wednesday morning released a list of new endorsements that includes Senate-president-in-waiting Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton.

The fact is that I, as well as the RPOF, have a great working relationship with our Florida Senators and their leadership, Ingoglia said.

But Ingoglias rival for the RPOFs top spot says those endorsements do little to change what has happened over the last two years. Sarasota Republican Christian Ziegler said when Ingoglia, who is also a state representative from Hernando County, won the chairmanship, the Florida Senate pulled out $800,000 out of the RPOFs accounts. Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, responded similarly, pulling $600,000 out of the RPOF.

They pulled their money out and have worked independently of the RPOF, Ziegler said Wednesday.

Zeigler has made the need to re-unify the party a big part of his campaign to unseat Ingoglia. The two face a Jan. 14 vote among RPOF activists to decide who will lead the party over the next two years.

On a weekly basis Ingoglia has rolled out endorsements from RPOF activists, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, 11 members of Congress from Florida, Floridas elected CFO Jeff Atwater and now the 10 state senators.

I am committed to working collaboratively with the Florida Senate, the Florida House, our Congressional delegation, the Governor and the cabinet to advance our shared goals of making Florida the best state in the nation! Ingoglia wrote in a letter sent to voting members of the Republican Executive Committee.

Ziegler said the endorsements mean little to him because the vote is ultimately a secret ballot and just because people are publicly supporting Ingoglia doesnt mean they will actually vote for him. He said Senators might largely be supporting Ingoglia to offer and olive branch to the Florida House as they prepare for the 2017 legislative session, given Ingoglia is an ally of House Speaker Richard Corcoran.

Ziegler said if the Senate Republicans really supporter Ingoglia they will park their money back with the RPOF, something they have not done.

The Senators who backed Ingoglia on Wednesday included: Sens. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland; Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island; Frank Artiles, R-Miami; Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala; Travis Hutson, R-Jacksonville; Debbie Mayfield, R-Vero Beach; Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples; Greg Steube, R-Sarasota; Dana Young, R-Tampa, and Galvano.
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a sloping hillside within the "Murray Buttes" region on Mars. (IMAGE CREDIT: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS)

@JeremySWallace

Turmoil with Russia and uncertainty with how Donald Trump will refocus the U.S. space program is having no effect on NASAs goal of getting humans to Mars, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is telling anyone who will listen.

During a recent stop in Tallahassee, the lone statewide elected Democrat in Florida, chided reporters for not asking more about the space program and the nations efforts to explore Mars.

It is my interest to see that NASA doesnt miss a beat, under the Trump administration, Nelson told reporters. He re-affirmed plans to get humans to Mars by 2033 and another to have a new American rocket to take U.S. astronauts to space within the next two years.

Were well on our way, said Nelson, who is the highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee with jurisdiction over NASA.

His comments come as National Geographic Channels docudrama Mars sets rating records for the typically low profile cable network channel. The $20 million mini-series co-produced by director Ron Howard pulled in more than 1 million views nationally and 15.5 globally during just its first week on air.

It is not a shocker that Nelson, who flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1986, would be an ardent backer of NASAs mission. But Nelsons comments come during a time of increasing distrust with Russia of their interference in the U.S. presidential election and Trumps victory in November.

But Nelson said America and Russia are still working on the international space center together well despite the tension. And he said he is hopeful the Trump administration will also be committed to heading to Mars.

During the campaign, Trump said NASA needed reforms but said he supported space exploration, like a mission to Mars.

Under a Trump Administration, Florida and America will lead the way into the stars, he told a rally in central Florida in October.
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As most of us put the finishing touches on 2016 and look forward to next year, a couple of recent outdoors news stories have put a question mark on 2017 for sportsman and women.

The resignation of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks director Jeff Hagener caught me and just about everyone I spoke with by surprise, as did the detection of larvae of invasive aquatic mussels in Montana waters.

Brett French reported in a story in the Billings Gazette that Hagener had grown tired after a total of 12 years of service. That is understandable considering all the issues that come into play when managing FWP. It will be interesting to see who Gov. Steve Bullock picks to replace Hagener. He was very well-liked by the staff of FWP and always had an open-door policy for his employees.

I also believe that Hagener had a hand in improving not only FWP-landowner relations but the sportsman-landowner relationships that were beginning to getting better under his watch. The elk shoulder seasons, taking place in 43 hunting districts, are also helping landowners. In return hunters are getting a chance to fill their freezers, after mild weather in November resulted in a decrease in elk harvested.

The director job also will become more challenging due to the detection of the larvae of invasive aquatic mussels at Tiber Reservoir. Tiber remains the only water body in which multiple sample results showed mussel larvae, after test results from 182 water bodies in Montana.

These test results have turned up no new detection of invasive mussels, according to the Montana Mussel Response Team. This is very good news. No mussel larvae, or veligers, were found in any of the remaining samples, said Mussel Response incident commander Matthew Wolcott. This gives us a much clearer picture of what were dealing with, and where we will focus our efforts going forward.

Maybe Bruce Farling the executive director for Montana Trout Unlimited, summed it up best in the story publish in the Gazette by French, Next to the governor, (Hagener's) is the most difficult job in the state, said Farling. Montanans are passionate about this stuff.

If you plan on ice fishing on Tiber make sure you clean your ice-fishing equipment before you head to another body of water, and destroy any unused minnows after the trip.

In other outdoors news:

The wolf trapping season is well underway and trappers are having some success. Nine trappers succeeded in trapping wolves in Montana as of Christmas Day. The states wolf hunters are still doing their part, as 130 wolves have been killed by hunters so far.

Ice reports are starting to come in. Here is the latest on Flathead Lake from Dick Zimmer: "The ice is finally consistently good from 4 to 8 inches. The perch are where they were last spring (maybe a little closer to shore), weed beds definitely being the major key to finding a good number of fish. From Ducharme access, it is about a mile walk. Of all the jigs Ive tried, a Double Treble Trilobite baited with one fish eye per treble works best and it has a tendency to catch larger fish.

"The ice in front of the East public dock at Polson is at about 4 inches and 50 yards beyond (North) of the dock. Because the higher water and more flow, the numbers of lake trout in Polson Bay are higher than Ive seen in the past few years. A whole fish or a large tube jig are good bets for these fish."
When people play in the woods, wildlife reacts.

While that sounds like a discovery from the Department of Obvious Conclusions, a new study on outdoor recreation around the world actually shows how much more work needs to get done.

I think whats really important for people to realize is that recreation and conservation dont always completely go together, said Courtney Larson, a doctoral student at Colorado State University who reviewed 274 research projects looking at recreations impact on wildlife.

We cant just protect lands and say our job is done. We need to think more carefully about where we put trails, how we manage visitor flows, and keep better track of how many people use trails," Larson said. "We need to see where people are going and get a sense of what impacts are happening.

Thats an important question in Montana, where outdoor recreation provides about $1.5 billion a year in wages and salaries, $5.8 billion in consumer spending, $403 million in state and local tax revenue and 64,000 jobs, according to surveys by the Outdoor Industry Association. Whether its watching buffalo on the National Bison Range, hunting elk in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, or fishing on the states rivers and lakes, wildlife draw millions of tourists to the state every year.

Larsons overview found that when humans hike, snowmobile, boat or ride into wildlife habitat, animals respond nine times out of 10, and that reaction is negative reaction about two-thirds of the time. They may stop feeding, spend energy moving away, act nervously or lose weight, among other effects.

But Larson and co-author Sarah Reed, an associate conservation scientist at CSUs Wildlife Conservation Society, pointed out that conclusion has some serious limitations.

What I would say is although this is a growing area of research in wildlife, its still relatively small in the whole body of research on wildlife, Reed said. Its growing rapidly, but theres still a lot more that we need to know.

For example, more of the projects Larson and Reed reviewed showed non-motorized activity like hiking reported negative impacts on animals than studies of motorized activity did. But they warned that doesnt mean motorized activity has less impact than non-motorized pastimes.

A lot of motorized studies in my pool of studies were aquatic  things like whale-watching and dolphin-watching, Larson said. We found very few studies that directly compared motorized and non-motorized activity, like cross-country skiers and snowmobiles on wildlife in (the) same area.

The projects also usually had apples-to-oranges comparison problems. For example, while motorized and non-motorized activity both made animals change their behavior, there was no good way to compare the size of the impact.

You have to think about the area involved, Larson said. Motorized activity covers a larger amount of land than hiking, and that wasnt something we were able to account for. So impacts might be less frequent but over a larger area.

A big slice of the projects were done in wealthy parts of the world like North American, Europe and Australia. The United States alone produced 27 percent of the studies.

Much less work was done in the developing world, Reed said. And theres good evidence thats where global tourism and visitation is growing most rapidly. Its important to align research agenda there, because thats where its needed the most.

That could inform how Forest Service recreation officers manage campgrounds or trail use, how National Park Service rangers open or restrict places where animals den or graze; and, it could involve more comparisons not only of competing activities, but activity vs. no activity in a sensitive place.

It may be the most important decisions we can make is whether to open a site to recreation in the first place, Reed said. And we need to recognize the effectiveness of any policy is only as good as its enforcement. The best path forward is to think about how to balance these goals across large landscape.

That's a regular challenge for agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, which oversees millions of acres of public land in Montana alone. Forest Service Region 1 spokesman David Smith said wildlife interactions are a regular part of any analysis of a new or continuing activity in the woods.

"When we look at something like over-snow travel for a travel management plan, we're always looking for the best available science," Smith said. "There's always a need for more. You can never know it all."

Larson and Reed also cautioned their work doesnt indict outdoor recreation as bad.

We think this shows recreation of all kinds has important effects in shaping wildlife communities, Reed said. Recreation will continue to be important in protected lands. There are lot of benefits to human health, local economies, shaping peoples connection to nature and support of conservation. But we must balance our goals where they are in conflict.
Dan Gallagher, an influential veterans advocate in Missoula, died Monday from a heart attack at St. Patrick hospital.

Gallagher, 69, dealt with heart and stomach problems throughout his life after inhaling Agent Orange during his 1967 tour of duty in Vietnam. His heart attack came after he was hospitalized the day before Veterans Day; he had heart surgery over the Christmas holiday.

One of his close friends and fellow Vietnam veteran Mike Halligan talked with Gallagher a few days before his death and he said he was weak, but in good spirits. All business, they talked about veterans affairs in Montana.

That was what he knew and that was what he was going to go out with, Halligan said. Same old Dan.

There probably is no one I know who has dedicated more of his life to veterans issues.

The two met at Missoulas Old Post 101 in the late 1970s.

Gallagher started the post with a couple of other local veterans in the Joseph Dixon house downtown after realizing he wasnt the only veteran who struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, then known as delayed stress.

It was visceral to him that the public treated Vietnam veterans with so much disdain, said Halligan, director of government and corporate relations for the Washington Corp. He matured over the years as he saw the publics attitude change toward veterans, because they were separated from the politics of the war.

Gallagher also started, organized and emceed the Veterans Day event held at the Doughboy statue in front of the Missoula County Courthouse.

Money was tight in the early days of the veterans post, Halligan said, and they couldnt afford a public address system.

So Gallagher would bring a little battery-powered cassette player to broadcast the national anthem while he raised a flag.

Everybody had to get real close, Halligan said. But that was Dan. He was going to run it and wasnt going to question it.

One year, on a below-zero morning, the batteries froze and they recited the Pledge of Allegiance instead, Halligan said, before an impromptu 20-minute speech by then-Mayor John Toole froze everyones toes, forgoing plans for other speakers.

For the first time this year, Gallagher was unable to plan and host the event, due to heart troubles.

A few of Gallaghers children organized and set up the event and Halligan stepped in to replace Gallagher, which he said was an honor.

Kerry Gallagher, his daughter, said theres been tremendous support from people after her fathers death, far more than she and her siblings were ready for.

He had a big impact on people, she said. This huge outpouring made us realize.

A few of his siblings still live in Montana, Kerry said, but none in his hometown of Charlo, where hes going to be buried.

In a video interview from October 2015 with the Missoulian, Gallagher laid out his time in the army, return from Vietnam, struggles with delayed stress, and his start in veterans advocacy in Missoula.

Gallagher, the youngest of 13 children, felt there was an understanding in his family that he would serve in the military when it was his turn.

His father served in World War I and two older brothers served in World War II and Korea. Naturally then, Gallagher enlisted at the start of the Vietnam War.

Anybody who goes to war, especially at the age of 19, you experience the destruction, the death, he said. It has a life-changing effect on you. All the negatives, all the trauma one associates with that.

While he never got used to the death and awfulness in war, he understood that was what he signed up for. Serving as a combat engineer, Gallagher was tasked with blowing up bridges, dismantling enemy mines and planting his own.

One day he met two 10-year-old girls going through the garbage looking for food. He gave his heart to them, deeply sad when his platoon left the area and the girls.

Years later when UNICEF did a report on the number of casualties after the war that were people that had been killed or hurt by mines left by the Americans, it was in the vicinity of 50,000, he said. I thought about how I had planted a lot of mines in Vietnam and that came back, thinking about the kids.

The struggle for Vietnam veterans was their relationship with others  everyone from peaceniks to WWII vets looked down on them after returning to the states, Gallagher said, which confused his peers. Theyd grown up with servicemen being praised and celebrated.

PTSD came to Vietnam veterans not so much because of what we saw in the war, but because of the reception and what we didnt have when we came back home, Gallagher said. There was that feeling of being in no mans land.

That feeling led to a low point in around 1975, Gallagher said, when he began seeing a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with post-Vietnam disorder.

He began writing papers on veterans issues for some of his classes and worked to organize Old Post 101, giving veterans a place to gather and talk about their experiences.

In 1983 he started sharing his thoughts on veterans affairs on Montana Public Radio as a monthly commentator.

Former news director Sally Mauk said Gallagher was one of the first and the longest-running commentator on MTPR, from the early 1980s until the station stopped airing commentators in 2014.

I know he fretted about them, trying to get them just right, she said. I appreciate all the care he put into it. It showed.

Commentators were monthly or bimonthly contributors who got five minutes to share their opinions, in a researched and informative manner, on the air.

Gallagher spoke about veterans, his last post from June 2014 touching on the replacement of the secretary of veterans affairs and on the investigation into how U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl came to be held by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

He spoke with, obviously, a very personal voice, Mauk said. We were very honored to have him on our station.

Betsy Mulligan-Dague, the Jeannette Rankin Peace Centers executive director, met Gallagher for the first time around 2006, when she started attending the Veterans Day ceremonies. She ended up speaking at the ceremony in 2011, as part of her own efforts and Gallaghers to bridge the divide between the peace community and veterans.

The two became fast friends during the filming of Beyond the Divide, a documentary released in 2014 about the peace sign painted on Waterworks Hill and the fracture that followed between anti-war and military establishment supporters in Missoula

Part of the documentary chronicles their friendship and the work between the peace center and veterans community, work that 40 years after the peace sign was painted still brought up bitter feelings in the two groups.

Gallagher had seen a lot of animosity and misunderstanding between them since he returned from Vietnam, and felt the two had more in common than not.

Most veterans, Mulligan-Dague said, are fighting to bring peace  a fact that Gallagher put into words time and time again during the Veterans Day memorials.

She and Gallagher found common ground through their strong-willed Irish fathers.

We both had pretty similar memories of them teaching us to argue, she said, though it was argument with a purpose.

Gallagher espoused the idea that even if two people vehemently disagree on a subject, they can still respect each other.

It was time to get over any division we felt, Mulligan-Dague said. It was no small thing, to bring two communities together.
On Jan. 5, 2017, the Honorable Linda McCulloch will conclude an eight-year run as Montanas secretary of state. Recognized as the states first woman to hold the office, McCullochs career in public service is marked by accomplishments in elections, business services and education, among others.

Of particular note, during her two terms she has compiled a long list of achievements for the states 20,000 notaries public that protect the transactions, identities and property rights of more than 1 million Montanans every day.

Her commitment to notaries and their important role in consumer protection became evident in 2009  her first year in office. One of her initial official acts as secretary of state was to spearhead legislation that required new and certain renewing notaries to complete an education course. The same bill included a vital mandate for all Montana notaries to maintain a record of their notarizations.

Just 10 months later, in October 2009, the new requirements took effect and Montana took a major step in ensuring its citizens received quality notary services, and that notaries kept accurate records of every notarization. Secretary McCulloch made it crystal clear within her very first month of office that Montana notaries would be a priority as long as she was secretary, and she proved it.

Despite her early victory, the battle was not over. In 2011, the Legislature voted to repeal the journal requirement because it was deemed to be excessive, anti-business regulation. But McCulloch fought back and convinced then-Gov. Brian Schweitzer to veto the measure, which was sustained when the legislature lacked the votes for an override.

(The repeal of the journal requirement) would be bad for consumers, would increase civil litigation, and would vastly increase the potential for fraud, identity theft and the bilking of elderly people, Schweitzer said in his veto statement. The journal entry serves as a trustworthy, contemporaneous account of exactly what took place at the time that the document was notarized  and they serve as proof in courts of law that a contract was signed in front of the Notary, and that the document was signed without coercion and with mental competence.

McCullochs commitment to notaries did not end with these initial legislative efforts. She launched the first-ever Montana Notary Public Conference in the summer of 2012  with subsequent conferences held in 2014 and 2016. Hundreds of notaries from across the state attended these events, which sent an important message that lifelong learning is an essential element of public service and promoting the public welfare.

And in 2015, McCulloch supported the states enactment the Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Actswhich retained and solidified the use of a journal, and added an examination requirement for new and renewing notaries. The legislation also took a bold step into the future by including provisions for remote webcam, notarizations, making Montana the second state to allow certain document signers to appear before a Montana notary by means of audio-video communication.

While McCullochs career in public service is marked by achievements in education, jobs, transportation and other public policy issues, her commitment to professionalizing notaries shines through.

She truly believes in what notaries do to protect consumers and build trust in commerce, and she was deeply committed to overseeing Montanas notaries and empowering them to be the best public servants possible.

We owe her a debt of gratitude for her leadership and resolve.
The state of Oklahoma made use of the death penalty for the first time in nearly seven years on Oct. 28, 2021, with the execution of John Mari
HELENA -- Authorities arrested two suspected burglars Wednesday after one of them was wounded in a shootout with the owner of a cabin north of Helena.

The owners of the cabin on the 4000 block of Little Wolf Creek Road arrived around 2 p.m. to find a black sport-utility vehicle outside and their house being burglarized. The suspects then confronted the homeowners, officials reported.

"During the exchange or skirmish ... shots were fired," Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said. "It's still too early to say who fired first."

After another armed homeowner called 911 to report the uninjured suspect trying to break into a vehicle on Recreation Road, the man was apprehended in a snowbank following a short foot chase with officers about three hours after the shooting. The man was not armed at the time of his arrest. He is described as a Native American or Asian man in his early 20s. His name has not been made public, but Dutton said the man is wanted probation absconder with a warrant out of Great Falls.

Officers later located and negotiated with the injured suspect near the cabin. He has not been named but is described as a white man in his early 20s. He was transported to St. Peter's Hospital in Helena for treatment of his injuries, the extent of which has not been released.

The sheriff's office used its new K-9 to help apprehend the suspects. The local SWAT team and troopers with the Montana Highway Patrol also assisted.

As part of the investigation of the incident, authorities will process the cabin for evidence and work to determine how many shots were fired and who fired them.
Richard Spencer seeks prominence for his National Policy Institute  but he said Wednesday he doesn't want the spotlight on the mountain city of Whitefish because of his own white nationalist platform.

And he said he didn't believe a proposed armed march through Whitefish, touted by a white supremacist website, would happen next month.

"I didn't move to Whitefish for politics. I don't take part in local (Whitefish) politics," said Spencer, who has said he's considering running for Congress if U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana is confirmed as President-elect Donald Trump's Interior secretary.

Spencer, head of the institute "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States," has been in the midst of an anti-Semitic firestorm  and ensuing pushback  in Montana since Trump's election.

Last week, a website called The Daily Stormer with a tab called "The Jewish Problem" asked readers to "TAKE ACTION" against Jewish people in Whitefish. A post claimed the "vicious, evil race" had harmed the business interests of Spencer's mother and were harassing her, and it posted pictures of people in town and urged an internet "troll storm" against them.

Some of the Whitefish residents named as targets are involved in Love Lives Here, a group that fights ethnic, racial, gender and religious discrimination.

The Daily Stormer said an armed march, with "skinheads bused in from California," would take place in Whitefish the second week in January. Wednesday, it said interest from representatives of "at least three European nations" in attending the march showed support for "global white racial solidarity against the international Jewish agenda."

Spencer, though, said he didn't believe such an event would take place: "There's not going to be a pogrom in Whitefish. It's just ridiculous to think that."

Literature disparaging Jews and citing the American Nazi Party has appeared elsewhere in Montana since November's election. The Montana Human Rights Network and Southern Poverty Law Center have attributed the increase in anti-Semitic actions at least in part to the election of Trump, although the Republican president-elect has publicly said "stop it" to perpetrators of hate crimes.

This week, Montana politicians and tribal leaders said Montana will not be a place that tolerates threats and intimidation by white nationalists. One letter signed by U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines, U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, Gov. Steve Bullock, and Montana Attorney General Tim Fox, offered Jewish people full support and said people who hold anti-Semitic views will find "no safe haven here."

A "Love Not Hate" gathering is planned in Whitefish on Jan. 7 to counter white supremacist views.

Spencer, who is in Montana and spoke with the Missoulian over the phone, said he will not be bullied into leaving Whitefish, where he likes to spend summer and part of winter and has a right to live in peace. He also said his opponents won't be able to push around his family.

"How did I damage the Whitefish community? Please explain to me how I did that."

In fact, he said his only interaction with Andrew Anglin, who runs The Daily Stormer, has been a telephone conversation, and he has no power over Anglin. Anglin's website includes an explicit disclaimer stating it opposes violence, but the call to "TAKE ACTION" might be interpreted as an implicit directive to take action beyond trolling.

"I do not think he is explicitly or implicitly calling for violence," Spencer said. "Now, of course, there might be some nut who does something. But you can't really hold anyone accountable for that. There's some nut who will attempt to murder Ronald Reagan to impress Jodi Foster."

Spencer said he does not consider the phrase white supremacy  "a scare word," he said  a euphemism for white nationalism, and he does not intend to back down from people affiliated with Love Lives Here, including rabbis.

"I'm not going to obey them, and just the notion that they are trying to run me out of town is ridiculous," Spencer said. "And I'm not going to do anything at their behest. Anything.

"I might stay here to piss them off. I'm dead serious."

***

The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified the National Policy Institute as a hate group.

Last month, a video of a National Policy Institute conference showed some participants raising their arms in a Nazi salute, and Spencer, at the podium, said "Hail, Trump." He said Wednesday that Trump has already disappointed him, but he said the participants were being cheeky with the salutes at the time, and he himself did not salute, but was just raising a glass.

The conference took place just after the election, and people felt celebratory, Spencer said. And he said whenever "there's any authentic movement for identity," those involved get labeled as Nazis or Ku Klux Klan members.

"I think at some level, people just wanted to throw that back in their face. It was a big eff you, in a way. That was the motivation," Spencer said.

He said white supremacists want to rule over other races, but white nationalists are different: "I don't want to do that. That is supremacy. Nationalism is a much different concept. It is about valuing one's own and becoming who you are, having a sense of one's self  at least nationalism properly understood."

Although participants at the annual conference were reveling in Trump's win last month, Spencer isn't as enthused about the president-elect as he was during the campaign. Trump as a potential presidential candidate was "very exciting," Spencer said, but as the real estate mogul prepares to take the reins, he's been disappointing.

A lot of his cabinet picks have been letdowns, including Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and Goldman Sachs alum Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary, he said. The latter, Spencer said, "seems to be going against everything he (Trump) was running for."

"I've become far more skeptical of Donald Trump over these last couple months. He's disappointed me pretty greatly, to be honest," he said.

He also said the West was not won on the basis of diversity and tolerance, and he described the joint statement by Montana politicians in support of tolerance as "obviously stupid."

"They might as well hold hands and sing Kumbaya," Spencer said.

He places the blame for the focus on Whitefish at the feet of people with Love Lives Here. Spencer said they thrive on drama, and the only reason a problem exists is because that group and the Montana Human Rights Network claim some ideas are bad and hateful.

"I have their best interests at heart, and people like Love Lives Here don't. Love Lives Here just wants to stir up trouble," Spencer said.
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THEFT FROM GOLD MINE

Police said the Highlands Mine yard south of Butte was broken into sometime between Dec. 23 and 27. The mine is still under development. Police said the yard gate's lock was cut and the front door of the office building kicked in. Mine employees are still doing an inventory of the property, but said a computer was stolen from the office, as well as at least $3,000 in tools from the garage and a six-seat Polaris Ranger valued at around $18,000. Police said they have no suspects at this time.
Anaconda Police Chief Tim Barkell said Thursday that police have identified the body of a victim found yesterday in the Hearthstone Apartments as tenant Victoria Lynn Smith, age 49.

Barkell said Smith was stabbed fatally in the neck, and they are investigating the death as a homicide. The body has been sent to the state crime lab.

Police are still reviewing video surveillance footage and interviewing neighbors and relatives, but have arrested Smith's ex-boyfriend, 35-year-old David Richmond, who Barkell said was the last person to leave Smith's apartment.

Barkell said Richmond is not speaking with police. Richmond was arrested on Nov. 6 for vehicle theft, disorderly conduct and partner family member assault. Barkell said Smith was not the victim of that assault.
If you keep your head up, you may see more walkers and bicyclists around Butte, if state and local planners get their way.

Despite the occasional curb that needs adjusting and sidewalks that need extension or repair, Butte could become more easily accessible for everyone.

That is the overall plan, eventually.

Reflecting a nationwide trend to make communities more walkable, bike-able and livable, a state group and a local committee are advancing slowly but surely on those objectives.

On Jan. 5, 2017, the Building Active Communities Initiative (BACI) starts taking applications for a three-day training and networking workshop set for May 16-18 in Butte.

It will follow a 45-day public review of the Butte Transportation Coordinating Committee action report, which includes potential biking and walking improvements.

Hopefully, there is a BACI team from Butte, said Cathy Costakis, a Built Environment senior consultant bringing her considerable experience from Bozeman to town to share. Wed love to see an application from Butte.

Costakiss staff will select six teams from across the state to attend the training for free.

We want a multi-sector of teams representing different disciplines, added Costakis. Maybe a planner, public works director, health department, hospital, business, nonprofits, schools  those are the types of people we want on the team.

After the training is done, this is for people who will make things happen in the community. We totally expect them to go out and increase their team once the training is over.

Cassie Wick, Montana Independent Living Project independent living specialist, has taken the BACI training previously in Helena and plans to work with whoever is selected.

Its really, really cool, said Wick, who is part of a separate Walk and Roll Butte campaign that promotes bike events, safety and awareness through events like the Pub, Pedal and Crawl. We split into groups and assessed the walkability in Helena. Its cool just to see your community from a sidewalk view, because the more you walk around, the more you see the barriers.

For instance, poorly designed or dangerous curbs, the lack of auditory alerts for the blind at stop lights or cracks in the sidewalk can throw many citizens off-balance who are trying to navigate a city without a vehicle.

One possible solution: putting out temporary barriers, like hay bales, to experiment with a roundabout at a four-way intersection, as Whitefish tried.

Called a walking audit, the training calls for participants of all ages  including children  to walk a neighborhood and notice what's present and what may be missing along a potential biking or walking route: safe sidewalks to get to a school, well-marked pedestrian crossings, enough litter receptacles.

Its a mentality shift, said Wick, who bikes regularly from her house on Mercury Street to destinations on Harrison Avenue.

Dave Schultz, Butte-Silver Bow public works director, said folks determined to drive everywhere must realize that it takes time and planning to develop safer sidewalks and curbing for walkers and bicyclists around town.

Some residents want to make sure the county fills all potholes before expanding such amenities.

But Schultz says that may not be practical. Were the same as every other town. If we were to wait until every pothole was filled, we wouldnt get around to  these amenities.

An increasing number of bicyclists, including families, appreciate the dedicated marked bike lanes, like the ones on Montana Street.

Jon Sesso, BSB city planner and state senator, said the Butte Transportation Coordinating Committee is currently reviewing feedback the public has left in a comments portal on the county website concerning transportation wishes and suggestions.

There was a lot of input by pedestrians and bicyclists asking for a lot of emphasis and development of trails. There have been a lot of comments associated with the progress weve made so far. People can still chime in on the website.

BSB Assistant Planning Director Lori Casey said the public clearly "would like to see more protected bike lanes.

By Jan. 11, the committee will release the findings for public review via kiosks at the BSB Courthouse and the Butte Civic Center so that the major initiatives outlined in the plan are shown to people. Then there will be a 45-day public comment period, followed by formal adoption of in front of the county commissioners.

Safe biking infrastructure is important to the community, Schultz added. We want to promote an active lifestyle, not just for kids, but for everybody in the community."

Costakis said the purpose for the BACI training is to educate, set priorities in each community, provide technical assistance and resources and become inclusive.

If the community feels more walkable, our kids will participate in it more, said Wick. She added that if the disabled are able to get around town freely without barriers, then everyone will.

Costakis asks workshop participants: what kind of community do you envision?

Just because you drive a car, its okay, but there are people who ride a bike, so should they be at risk? You need to make it equitable and safe for everyone.

The Community Action Team of Butte  formerly known as the Suicide Prevention Team  is considering such healthier changes to encourage healthier behaviors in children and all citizens.

The more walkable a community is, the healthier it is, added Wick, a CAT member.
Several months ago, a like-minded group of volunteer Butte folks began brainstorming an additional way to pay tribute to the 168 miners who died in the Granite Mountain/Speculator Mine fire on June 8, 1917. This tribute will take place during the centenary commemoration of that disaster, which today is still the largest hard-rock underground mining disaster in U.S. history.

We were and are fortunate to be led by a man from Florence, Montana, who loves Butte, our people and our history -- Dr. Gary Funk. Collectively, we have worked hard to plan and develop "No Greater Love," an original, locally produced, three-act storied musical to premier at our beautiful Mother Lode Theater on June 9 and 10, 2017.

We have been accepted by the Headwaters RCD organization to operate under its 501(c)3 umbrella of the IRS allowing donations to be tax-deductible per IRS rules for individual/business situations.

Our intent is to accomplish the following:

1) Complement the 20+ years of very hard work of Gerry Walters, her board and volunteers at the Granite Mountain Memorial on "the hill" along with the ongoing efforts of the Butte-Silver Bow Archives and the World Museum of Mining;

2) To hand down this history to the students in Butte schools, public and private, through contests in art, essay and poetry. It is, after all, the young people of Butte who will be responsible long after we're all gone to ensure the legacy of this tragic event is never forgotten;

3) To provide Butte area citizens a memorable evening of history and music that undoubtedly will evoke emotional reactions to this live stage performance;

and 4) To have tickets reasonably priced to ensure Butte and area theater-goers can afford to attend our production.

Over the past several weeks, we have submitted grant applications and solicited pledges from businesses and individuals and are encouraged by the initial support. We are nearly half-way to our financial goal of $135,000. However, due to the cost of developing an original production -- special effects, professional directors, libretto and music development, construction of sets and props, it's imperative we reach our budgeted goal. We won't know the results of the grant applications for several weeks.

Monetary donations will be gratefully accepted and can be sent via check to: No Greater Love c/o Headwaters RCD and mailed to No Greater Love, P.O. Box 83, Butte, MT 59703 or dropped off at Granite Mountain Bank on Dewey Boulevard. Pledges are also still being accepted until we reach our goal. Being Buttians, our motto is "failure is not an option!"

In January 2017, we will schedule auditions for some of the roles along with seeking more volunteers to assist with several project areas. We want to ensure a quality production Butte will be very proud of. Thank you for your support!

-- "No Greater Love'' volunteer board of directors: Jerry Sullivan, CEO, Granite Mountain Bank, president; Janice Downey, journalist, vice president; Sandra Anderson-David, electrical engineer, secretary; Mary McMahon, former Butte-Silver Bow County clerk and recorder, treasurer; Gary Funk, producer; Ellen Crain, Butte-Silver Bow Archives.adviser; Irene Scheidecker, Butte-Silver Bow Archives; Mike Duffy, retired mine safety attorney. members at large.
4 people injured in gas explosion

BOZEMAN (AP)  Authorities say four people, including three children, were hospitalized after a gas explosion at a home in West Yellowstone.

Shane Grube, chief of the Hebgen Basin Rural Fire District, tells The Bozeman Daily Chronicle that firefighters were called to the mobile home Tuesday morning. He says the explosion caused a fireball that blew itself out.

Two people suffered severe injuries and two were moderately injured. All of the victims were taken to a hospital in Rexburg, Idaho.

The fire district is investigating with help from the state fire marshal's office.

No other details were released.

State wants input watercraft use

HELENA (AP)  A series of public hearings will begin next week on a proposal to limit motorized watercraft use on nearly 50 western Montana river and stream segments.

The Independent Record reports that the proposal comes from the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers' Quiet Waters. The group cites advancements of motorized technology for bringing the initiative forward.

Under the proposal, there would be several seasonal and horsepower restrictions on motorized watercraft use as well as the closure of several small tributaries.

Some of the proposed changes would affect the Yellowstone, Flathead, Stillwater, Missouri and Whitefish rivers.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is gathering feedback on the group's plan during six public meetings in January, with the first held Tuesday in Kalispell.

Man charged for not paying restitution

MISSOULA (AP)  A 52-year-old Missoula man is charged with failing to pay restitution for the theft of brass from an ammunition reloading business in Stevensville.

The Missoulian reports John Michael Frenn made an initial appearance in Ravalli County Justice Court on Tuesday after being charged with two counts each of theft and forgery.

Frenn received a 10-year suspended sentence in July 2011 and was ordered to pay $25,000 in restitution. Ravalli County put a lien on his vehicle to guarantee payments.

The court ordered his vehicle forfeited in August after he fell behind on his payments, but it had been stripped of parts and was damaged.

Court records say Frenn told the officer the vehicle had been in several accidents and he filed $12,000 in insurance claims, but didn't use the money to repair the vehicle or pay restitution.

Prosecutors have also filed a motion to revoke his suspended sentence.
Richard Spencer seeks prominence for his National Policy Institute  but he said Wednesday he doesn't want the spotlight on the mountain city of Whitefish because of his own white nationalist platform.

And he said didn't believe a proposed armed march through Whitefish, touted by a white supremacist website, would happen next month.

"I didn't move to Whitefish for politics. I don't take part in local (Whitefish) politics," said Spencer, who has said he's considering running for Congress if U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana is confirmed as President-elect Donald Trump's Interior secretary.

Spencer, head of the institute "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States," has been in the midst of an anti-Semitic firestorm  and ensuing pushback  in Montana since Trump's election.

Last week, a website called The Daily Stormer with a tab called "The Jewish Problem" asked readers to "TAKE ACTION" against Jewish people in Whitefish. A post claimed the "vicious, evil race" had harmed the business interests of Spencer's mother and were harassing her, and it posted pictures of people in town and urged an internet "troll storm" against them.

Some of the Whitefish residents named as targets are involved in Love Lives Here, a group that fights ethnic, racial, gender and religious discrimination.

The Daily Stormer said an armed march, with "skinheads bused in from California," would take place in Whitefish the second week in January. Wednesday, it said interest from representatives of "at least three European nations" in attending the march showed support for "global white racial solidarity against the international Jewish agenda."

Spencer, though, said he didn't believe such an event would take place: "There's not going to be a pogrom in Whitefish. It's just ridiculous to think that."

Literature disparaging Jews and citing the American Nazi Party has appeared in elsewhere Montana since November's election. The Montana Human Rights Network and Southern Poverty Law Center have attributed the increase in anti-Semitic actions at least in part to the election of Trump, although the Republican president-elect has publicly said "stop it" to perpetrators of hate crimes.

This week, Montana politicians and tribal leaders said Montana will not be a place that tolerates threats and intimidation by white nationalists. One letter signed by U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines, U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, Gov. Steve Bullock, and Montana Attorney General Tim Fox, offered Jewish people full support and said people who hold anti-Semitic views will find "no safe haven here."

A "Love Not Hate" gathering is planned in Whitefish on Jan. 7 to counter white supremacist views.

Spencer, who is in Montana and spoke with the Missoulian over the phone, said he will not be bullied into leaving Whitefish, where he likes to spend summer and part of winter and has a right to live in peace. He also said his opponents won't be able to push around his family.

"How did I damage the Whitefish community? Please explain to me how I did that."

In fact, he said his only interaction with Andrew Anglin, who runs The Daily Stormer, has been a telephone conversation, and he has no power over Anglin. Anglin's website includes an explicit disclaimer stating it opposes violence, but the call to "TAKE ACTION" might be interpreted as an implicit directive to take action beyond trolling.

"I do not think he is explicitly or implicitly calling for violence," Spencer said. "Now, of course, there might be some nut who does something. But you can't really hold anyone accountable for that. There's some nut who will attempt to murder Ronald Reagan to impress Jodi Foster."

Spencer said he does not consider the phrase white supremacy  "a scare word," he said  a euphemism for white nationalism, and he does not intend to back down from people affiliated with Love Lives Here, including rabbis.

"I'm not going to obey them, and just the notion that they are trying to run me out of town is ridiculous," Spencer said. "And I'm not going to do anything at their behest. Anything.

"I might stay here to piss them off. I'm dead serious."

***

The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified the National Policy Institute as a hate group.

Last month, a video of a National Policy Institute conference showed some participants raising their arms in a Nazi salute, and Spencer, at the podium, said "Hail, Trump." He said Wednesday that Trump has already disappointed him, but he said the participants were being cheeky with the salutes at the time, and he himself did not salute, but was just raising a glass.

The conference took place just after the election, and people felt celebratory, Spencer said. And he said whenever "there's any authentic movement for identity," those involved get labeled as Nazis or Ku Klux Klan members.

"I think at some level, people just wanted to throw that back in their face. It was a big eff you, in a way. That was the motivation," Spencer said.

He said white supremacists want to rule over other races, but white nationalists are different: "I don't want to do that. That is supremacy. Nationalism is a much different concept. It is about valuing one's own and becoming who you are, having a sense of one's self  at least nationalism properly understood."

Although participants at the annual conference were reveling in Trump's win last month, Spencer isn't as enthused about the president-elect as he was during the campaign. Trump as a potential presidential candidate was "very exciting," Spencer said, but as the real estate mogul prepares to take the reins, he's been disappointing.

A lot of his cabinet picks have been letdowns, including Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and Goldman Sachs alum Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary, he said. The latter, Spencer said, "seems to be going against everything he (Trump) was running for."

"I've become far more skeptical of Donald Trump over these last couple months. He's disappointed me pretty greatly, to be honest," he said.

He also said the West was not won on the basis of diversity and tolerance, and he described the joint statement by Montana politicians in support of tolerance as "obviously stupid."

"They might as well hold hands and sing Kumbaya," Spencer said.

He places the blame for the focus on Whitefish at the feet of people with Love Lives Here. Spencer said they thrive on drama, and the only reason a problem exists is because that group and the Montana Human Rights Network claim some ideas are bad and hateful.

"I have their best interests at heart, and people like Love Lives Here don't. Love Lives Here just wants to stir up trouble," Spencer said.
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IOWA CITY, Iowa  Kamp Kaleidoscope is a one day camp designed to provide support and education to grieving school aged students. The goal of Kamp Kaleidoscope is to help children understand more about grief and to normalize their feelings in a caring, supportive atmosphere.

The camp will offer participants the opportunity to share how they feel among others who have experienced a similar loss. There will be a variety of activities throughout the day including small group discussions, music, memory making as well as a closing ceremony that will include family members.

Kamp Kaleidoscope will be facilitated by Iowa City Hospice bereavement counselors and trained volunteers. The camp will be held on Saturday, January 28, 8:30 a.m.  3:30 p.m. at River Community Church, 3001 Muscatine Ave., Iowa City. Registration is required. Contact Julie Bockenstedt at 319-351-5665 or julie.bockenstedt@iowacityhospice.org for more information or to register.

Iowa City Hospice is a community-based not-for-profit organization that offers care to patients, families and their loved ones throughout the dying and grieving processes. Grief support services, including this camp, are available, free of charge, to anyone who resides in the seven-county service area of Johnson, Cedar, Iowa, Linn, Louisa, Muscatine and Washington Counties. The person who died need not have been an Iowa City Hospice patient.

Additional information can be found at www.IowaCityHospice.org.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  A local couple has ventured into the world of restaurants, opening a business the whole family is behind.

Lifelong Muscatine residents Paul and Cindy Tillie, or "Papa" and "Grandma" as they are known by their 11 grandchildren, own Papa's Paradise Campground in Wapello, opened around four years ago, and now Grandma Cindy's Kitchen, which opened in August.

Their grandchildren, Cindy said, helped them choose the names for both of their businesses, and because they had a business named for Paul, they felt the restaurant should be named for Cindy.

"So we wanted something that was Papa and Grandma," she said.

The couple's four daughters, Cathy Ribbink, Paula Rohr, Tabitha Bieri and Bridget Estrada all work at the restaurant in some capacity, as well as one of their grandchildren. They are used to helping with their parents' businesses, Cindy said, and they worked at the campground when it first opened as well.

"They were all in on this adventure," she said.

Cindy also used to run a daycare, and several of the children she used to care for now have grown and also work at the restaurant.

It sort of goes on with the grandma thing, she said.

She also has employees who are siblings, and a mother and daughter that work at the restaurant as well.

So it's just a big family-type restaurant, and that's what we wanted it to be is a place you could take your kids, your grand-kids to, and have an enjoyable time, Cindy said.

Grandma Cindys Kitchen, at 5900 Highway 61 in Muscatine, is housed in the building that was formerly the home of the Good Earth Restaurant, which closed several years ago. Every time she drove past the empty building, Cindy thought well, somebody should do something with that.

"It just kept calling my name," she said.

When she began, Cindy said she only wanted to cook. She said she soon learned she needed to be more involved in other aspects of the business as well, and now she does "a little bit of everything."

After receiving feedback from customers, Cindy said she began to train her staff to work together and improve their efficiency. In the around five months since the restaurant opened, Cindy said she and her staff have come a long way.

I learned a lot, when we first opened you think you've got everything down pat, she said.

The customers and staff, Cindy said, are her favorite thing about being in the restaurant business.

"It's a pleasure to get up and come in in the mornings, she said.

Grandma Cindys Kitchen serves homestyle meals, with pies, cookies, and brownies made from scratch. Winter hours are 6 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday-Wednesday, and 6 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. For more information, visit www.facebook.com/cindysdiner/ or call 563-263-6138.
MUSCATINE, Iowa - Want to eat delicious, healthy, food  and save money at the same time. Try eating more pulses. A pulse is an edible seed that grows in a pod. Beans, lentils and peas are pulses. Pulses are nutrition dynamos  inexpensive, low-fat sources of protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals  that may reduce your risk for heart disease, diabetes and certain types of cancer.

Want to learn more healthy living secrets? Januarys "Fresh Conversations" will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 10, at the Senior Nutrition Center located in the Towers, 106 East 6th Street in Muscatine, and at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 12 at the Senior Nutrition Center located in the Clark House, 117 West 3rd Street in Muscatine and will include a fun activity where participants can share their favorite December physical activity.

Trying new foods is a highlight of every "Fresh Conversations" program. Participants will sample green lentils in tacos, hummus and learn the best ways to cook them. These recipes are a simple, delicious ways to enjoy the complimentary flavor of beans, peas and legumes.

New members are welcome and new sites are added periodically. "Fresh Conversations" is a free program offered by Milestones Area Agency on Aging at their nutrition centers and designed to promote sharing and peer support. The monthly nutrition discussions, in-home exercise and food samplings can help seniors stay independent and healthy.

If you are interested in staying for the Milestones Nutrition Center meal of Chicken breast and mixed vegetables, contact Roberta at 563-264-8766 a day before to reserve a lunch.

 Lynda Murray, Fresh Conversations Coordinator
Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes []
PALM BEACH, Fla.  President-elect Donald Trump accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of throwing up inflammatory roadblocks during the transition of power and his administration of treating Israel with total disdain, further straining the veneer of civility between the incoming and outgoing leaders.

Although Trump didnt detail his complaints in his morning broadsides on Twitter, the president-elect has made it clear that it didnt sit well with him when Obama recently boasted that he would have won the election if hed been running. Trumps largely respectful tone about Obama since the election evaporated in his latest tweets.

Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks, Trump tweeted. Thought it was going to be a smooth transitionNOT!

Trump also took direct issue with the Obama administrations decision to let a U.N. Security Council resolution critical of Israel pass.

We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect, he said in a two-part tweet. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but ... not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!

Trump and his team have until now been largely complimentary of the way Obama and his people have handled the transition. The president-elects complaints about the treatment of Israel came a few hours before John Kerry was to make his final speech about Mideast peace as secretary of state  remarks that some Israeli officials panned in advance. The administrations decision not to veto the U.N. resolution aggravated an already strained U.S.-Israel relationship.

Trumps newly appointed press secretary, Sean Spicer, played down tensions between Trump and Obama.

As the inauguration gets closer, both the current president and the team have been very generous with their time as far as the actual transition, the actual mechanics of the transition have gone and I expect them to continue to speak fairly regularly, Spicer said during the daily transition briefing, though he could not say exactly how often the two have spoken.

Still, he said, Trump intends to bring change to this country starting on Day 1.

A dispute erupted Monday between Obama and Trump, spurred by Obamas hypothetical musings that had he run again, he would have been victorious. Obama suggested he still holds enough sway over the coalition of voters who elected him twice to get them to vote for him once again. Trumps response to that was NO WAY!

On Tuesday, Trump tweeted: President Obama campaigned hard (and personally) in very important swing states, and lost. The voters wanted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Obama swept most key swing states in his two bids for the White House, but Trumps Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, fell short.

Later Tuesday, Trump thanked himself for a surge in a key gauge of consumer confidence. He wrote on Twitter that the Conference Board had reported that its consumer confidence index had climbed to 113.7 in December.

Trump noted thats the highest the index has climbed in more than 15 years, then added, Thanks Donald!

Trump was expected to deliver an economic development message later Wednesday. He resumed his busy schedule of meetings following a brief lull for the holidays.

Trump first met with David Rubenstein, head of the Carlyle Group investment firm. He also met former California Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado and former Texas A&M president Elsa Murano  two candidates for agriculture secretary.

Maldonado was chairman of the California Senates agriculture committee; Cuban-born Murano was an agriculture undersecretary in George W. Bushs administration.
AMERICAN CANYON  This south county city has extended its temporary ban on outdoor cultivation and other activities related to recreational marijuana, giving city planners  and possibly others in Napa County  time to decide on a collective way to address the issue.

The City Council last month approved a 45-day emergency moratorium following the passage of Proposition 64, which legalized recreational use of marijuana in California. Prop. 64. The measure permits personal use now, but the state will not begin issuing retail sales licenses until 2018.

With that short-term ban set to expire at the end of December, the council approved a longer, 10-month moratorium on outdoor cultivation, processing, manufacture, distribution, testing and sale of marijuana.

The action was approved, council members said, so City Hall has more time to fully study how best to limit recreational marijuana, and to see if other leaders in the Napa Valley want to sit down and talk about working together on this matter.

Belia Ramos, who is stepping down from the council to join the Board of Supervisors next month, said she foresees the issue coming up at the county level.

My caution will be to allow these discussions to take place at a regional level, Ramos told her colleagues at her last council meeting on Thursday. Having a 10-month ban would allow time for that to happen, she said.

Its a discussion that should be explored with other cities in the valley, said Ramos, to consider collective zoning to address some of these ordinance issues.

Councilmember Mark Joseph concurred with Ramos, saying a countywide approach might make sense.

The council heard both support and opposition to banning recreational marijuana during the public comment period.

James Hinton, an activist who has run for Congress and the Board of Supervisors, urged the council not to go against the will of residents who voted for Prop. 64.

We have an opportunity to end the war on drugs, said Hinton. Quit banning; thats draconian. He added that the federal government was insane for continuing to oppose marijuana and related products.

Resident Lisa Lindsey, who represents American Canyon on the Napa County Board of Education, said she considers herself very liberal, but didnt vote for Prop. 64 because of concerns over how marijuana can harm youth.

She raised the issue of THC levels, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the chemical in marijuana that generates the high in people, after attending a presentation on the drug at the NCOE.

This is not your grandmothers marijuana, said Lindsey. The THC levels in the current marijuana is much higher and is very detrimental to the education of minors and interferes with their learning ability.

Mayor Leon Garcia said the moratorium made sense, given how new the issue of recreational marijuana is in light of Prop. 64 being passed only last month.

He likened the challenge of regulating the drug and figuring out the complexities behind the issue to building an airplane while trying to fly it.

The new moratorium on recreational marijuana will last 10 months and 15 days, unless a permanent ordinance is adopted sooner.

It does not stop individuals from growing up to six plants within their homes, a provision allowed under Prop. 64.

Editor's note: This story has been modified from its original form to clarify that Proposition 64 goes into effect in stages.
Napa County is still trying to build a new facility to replace the aging downtown jail, though it has once again shifted the size and funding method.

County voters declined last June to pass Measure Y, meaning the proposed quarter-cent sales tax will not be available to help pay for a $103 million, 256-bed jail on the county owned property along Highway 221 near the Syar quarry.

So now comes Plan B.

The thing is, we still need a new jail, Deputy County Executive Officer Helene Franchi said.

The county is seeking to build a 64-bed unit with core facilities such as laundry area, kitchen and administrative offices for an estimated $66 million, though Franchi said this price is a moving target. This would be phase I of a new jail.

A 64-bed first phase wouldnt be big enough to replace the 264-bed downtown jail. The county would operate both the new jail and the old jail until it could raise more money for a second phase at the Highway 221 complex.

But first things first. The county still must find enough money to build the $66 million first phase.

Franchi said Napa County has come up with about $58 million through savings, property sales and $22.8 million in contributions from the state. That leaves a gap of about $8 million to $12 million, depending on the final price tag.

Financing the gap with a loan is a possibility, but that could mean making regular payments to cover the principal and interest out of the countys general fund. The Board of Supervisors will wrestle with such topics perhaps next spring.

Well be talking to the board together with our financial adviser to see if theres a way to make all of this happen, Franchi said.

This Plan B is familiar to supervisors. It is actually the original plan they had in 2015, before they decided building a bigger initial phase of a new jail funded by a Measure Y sales tax hike would be a better approach.

They wanted a bigger first phase in part because providing duplicate services at both a 64-bed, first phase new jail and the existing, downtown jail is expensive. County staff said in June 2015 the county could need another 50 to 60 jail staff members at a cost of $5 million to $6 million annually.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Alfredo Pedroza supports returning to the 64-bed, phase one approach, but is also open to a Plan C, should one emerge. He said hes willing to explore the need for new jail space on a regional level, possibly partnering with Solano County.

Under one regionalization scenario, a county such as Solano might house long-term inmates and Napa County might house inmates in need of mental health services.

I think the future is collaboration and more regionalization of services without compromising the way you deliver services, Pedroza said.

Newly elected Supervisors Belia Ramos and Ryan Gregory have both said they are open to the regional jail idea. Both will sit behind the supervisors dais for the first time at the Jan. 10 Board of Supervisors meeting.

I am a strong proponent of collaboration with other jurisdictions, Ramos said. Great things happen then.

Ramos mentioned the impacts of Californias 2011 move to shift some felons who previously would have gone to state prisons to county jails. The county must look at more than incarceration, she said.

While we do need to have a commitment to improving our detention facility, it needs to be done in a meaningful way that can provide rehabilitative services and break the cycle of criminal activity, Ramos said.

Napa Countys existing, downtown jail was criticized by the 2014-15 grand jury. The grand jury cited overcrowding and a jail design not suited to deal with how various inmates must be grouped, such as those with mental health problems.

The countys long-range plan is to replace and knock down the downtown jail, freeing up a key piece of downtown Napa property for redevelopment. The downtown jail was built in 1976 and has a 1989 addition. On top of an antiquated design and aging infrastructure, the old jail suffered extensive damage in the 2014 earthquake, much of which remains unrepaired, rendering some cell blocks unusable.

Meanwhile, the county is moving ahead with plans to build a $17.2 million, 72-bed jail re-entry facility at its Highway 221 jail complex site. This facility would help inmates about to be released with counseling and other programs in an attempt to keep them from re-offending. The state is paying $13.5 million of the cost.

Construction of the re-entry facility could begin in spring and take 15 months, county officials said. But they say that building the re-entry facility doesnt take away the need for a new jail.
Napa County Supervisors Keith Caldwell and Diane Dillon saw Porto, Portugal put on its best face for the recent 2016 Great Wine Capitals conferenceperhaps too good of a face.

Caldwell said he wishes they could have seen more of the problems that city faces. Hed like to learn how other international wine destinations deal with traffic, a lack of affordable housing and homelessness.

They really went out of their way for us not to see some of the negatives, Caldwell said.

Caldwell is ready to go beyond talks on winery tourism and marketing. Hes ready to talk about trouble in paradise.

Government officials attending the annual conferences could do such things as share information on how to ease traffic jams caused by commuting workers, he said.

What I think we could do is have an international dialogue about, What are you doing, Porto, to address homelessness?  Caldwell said.

Caldwell and Dillon represented Napa County at the Great Wine Capitals conference in Porto, Portugal in November. They reported on the trip to the county Board of Supervisors on Dec. 20.

Great Wine Capitals is a group of nine regions and encourages travel, education and business exchanges among members. Members include Adelaide, South Australia; Bilbao/Rioja, Spain; Mendoza, Argentina and Cape Town/Cape Winelands, South Africa.

The United States member is San Francisco/Napa Valley. Since 2006, Napa County government has sent a contingent to the annual conference in the various host cities, with the cost budgeted at about $17,500 in taxpayer money.

Dillon, Caldwell and county Agricultural Commissioner Greg Clark made this years 5,500-mile trip to Porto, Portugal. Other local figures attended, though not at taxpayers expense, among them Rex Stults of Napa Valley Vintners and Clay Gregory of Visit Napa Valley.

Its a wonderful learning opportunity for us to see what the rivals are doing, Dillon said. But its also sort of all-ships-float-higher in terms of sustainability.

She and Caldwell attended various meetings during the conference. They saw a cork-making operation and the Sandeman winery operations.

Caldwell said the Sandeman facility is very modern, even though it dates to the 1700s. Many Napa wineries have wine tanks cleaned by people making what Caldwell called a hazardous entry. He showed a photo of Sandeman tanks that can be cleaned without people going inside them.

The Great Wine Capitals conference included a gala dinner for members in the courtyard of a former convent founded in 1598. The courtyard now has a lightweight roof installed over the top  a great adaptive reuse of buildings, Dillon said.

Dillon and Caldwell explored such issues such as how Porto brands itself. The city has a cartoon-like depiction of its skyline that appears on buildings and even police cars.

The theme or the brand is ever-present, Dillon said.

Meanwhile, at least some of that dialogue that Caldwell wants on the challenges faced by wine country destinations has begun.

Caldwell said that Australia is interested in learning more about Napa Countys workforce proximity housing program that provides loans to help local workers buy local homes. Officials there will contact Napa County about getting documents on the program.

Australias wine region has the same affordable housing issues as Napa Valley, Caldwell added.
Napa County residents spoke during 2016 at the ballot box in Board of Supervisors races and various city council contests, voting for some newcomers but also reelecting many incumbents.

In the year of Donald Trump and national political upheavals, Napa County remained relatively stable. No winds of drastic change swept through the entire county, only eddies here and there.

The Napa City Council in November saw challenger Doris Gentry win one of two seats up for grabs in a three-person race, along with incumbent Scott Sedgley. Sedgley received 39 percent of the vote and Gentry 34 percent, while incumbent Mary Luros lost with 27 percent.

I won, I won, I won! I worked so hard for this! an exuberant Gentry shouted on Election Night during her victory party.

The win by the former Southern California businesswoman, 27-year Napa resident and long-time local volunteer reshaped the City Council, if only a little.

Hopefully her interests are for the benefit of the community and we can work together as a council, Sedgley said on Election Night. And I believe she will.

Mayor Jill Techel, who has been on the council for 20 years and has been mayor since 2005, ran unopposed.

Napa County had three of five Board of Supervisors seats on the ballot in 2016. Incumbent Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza and newcomers Ryan Gregory and Belia Ramos claimed victory.

The battle for the 4th District seat in the June primary offered stark choices. Pedroza was opposed by Diane Shepp, a Napa Vision 2050 member, and by Chris Malan, a long-time local environmentalist.

Pedroza stressed taking what he called a balanced approach. He said Napa Countys quality of life built by people in the past should continue into the future.

This is not about choosing between do you want a healthy economy or do you want a healthy environment, Pedroza said.

Shepp and Malan both voiced strong concerns about winery growth and vineyards targeted for hillsides. Both criticized donations that Pedroza received from the wine industry that helped swell his campaign coffers to more than $200,000, far more than his opponents.

A vote for Pedroza was a vote for the status quo, Shepp said on Election Night as she awaited returns.

Its more of the same-old, same-old, she said.

Pedroza won the race, receiving 56 percent of the vote, compared to 30 percent for Shepp and 13 percent for Malan. He called the results humbling and rewarding and said he would work hard to listen to his constituents.

The 2nd District race saw the candidates calling for more drastic changes in county policies  Derek Anderson and James Hinton  fall in the June primaries. That left a November runoff between five-term incumbent Supervisor Mark Luce and Gregory.

Gregory, a local civil engineer, prevailed 54 percent to 46 percent. He captured a wide range of endorsements, from three county supervisors to every Napa City Council member to the Napa County Farm Bureau to Winegrowers of Napa County to the Chamber of Commerce.

In my career and my community work for 20 years, Ive been getting ready for this, to serve at this level, Gregory said during the campaign. Its my calling and my time to do it.

The 5th District race proved to be no race at all. Ramos ran unopposed. She had the endorsement of incumbent Supervisor Keith Caldwell, who didnt run for re-election. She also had endorsements from every other county supervisor.

Im running to ensure we maintain a quality of life that is sustainable for all of us, Ramos said during a candidates forum.

American Canyon saw newcomer Mariam Aboudamous and incumbent Kenneth Leary win City Council seats, with incumbent Joan Bennett losing. Mayor Leon Garcia easily retained his seat over one challenger.

St. Helena saw challengers Mary Koberstein and Geoff Ellsworth unseat incumbents Sharon Crull and Greg Pitts for City Council. Mayor Alan Galbraith ran unopposed.
I was bemused (amused with a beef) by guest editorialist Jonathan Bernstein, Trump is like Woodrow Wilson(Dec. 3, 2016).

Given the title, which hangs like a door aslant, Id looked forward to an enlightening satire of the two personagesdespite the fact that Trump has yet to serve, despite his pre-inaugural kicks at the stall (No Abe Lincoln patiently holding the reins to Old Bob) and Wilson, though partially incapacitated by a series of strokes from 1919-1921, served a full eight years. (Why not use William Henry Harrison who had the shortest term in office of any American president: 32 days for comparison?)

Bernsteins The straw doggrd (no reference intended to The Donalds forelocks) fallacy of presidential comparison extends to comparing Trump to Tammany, and using George Washington Plunkitts adages (Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Wm. Riordan 1963) to prove by nullity: Trump is not like Tammany, therefore he must be like Wilson.

But I ask, how many buildings in New York state were built by Tammany ? The famous Tammany Memorial Auditorium is not all that far from a Trump accommodation and honest graft, which was not limited to New York, but, according to Lincoln Steffens in The Shame of The Cities, enjoyed quite freely within the states and territories of the USA. (Let us not forget Ida Tarbell or Mother Jones). Boss Ruff rebuilt San Francisco employing a card table upon the earthquake rubble and a vast network established originally by a gaff good old honest graft.

Returning to the projected likening of Donald Trump to Woodrow Wilson:

1. Both were presidents of prestigious universities, Trump and Princeton, although Trump University has yet to produce any Nobel Laureates.

2. Both had oppressive fathers who, inter alia, queried them intently at the family dinner table about parentally assigned books. Wilson was required to bring Noah Websters Dictionary with him at all times during the discussion of the current dinner table agendas ( including history tomes or famous debates such as Haynes vs Webster.) It is yet to be verified (as with everything else) that young Trump was assigned The Letters of Lord Chesterfield to His Son, The Rise of Silas Lapham (repeated until redundant ), Spencers Social Darwinism and a lexicon of contract terms (title unknown.)

3. Both were accused of being bigoted because of race. Wilson ( whose college chum wrote The Clansman) allowed for a private screening of Birth of A Nation in the White House, and actually endorsed the film. He required black staff to eat at separate table from white staff, and when attending staff meetings the seating was partitioned racially. Reports and public transmittals of Trump's discriminatory approaches to certain protective class members of society are clearly more expansive even universal than those of Wilson (whose apologists diminish, as students at Princeton University are clamoring to remove his name from facilities and school programs because of his sordid and extended legacy on race.)

Students of Trump University are reportedly after Trump for his emptiness of curriculum, hollowness of character and usury of tuition. Trump might allow the screening of a bigoted flick at the White House, but may charge a royalty for admission, subject to waiver for endorsement. After all, the venue was once called the Executive Mansion (A mansion once occupied by none other than Millard Fillmore, who proved to have been a closet Know Nothing when he ran for a full term under its surrogate, The American Party. But he did fix the plumbing.)

4. Wilson admittedly swooned over women  he described his sensuality as a riotous element in my blood  and became helplessly besotted with a Washington, D.C. widow after his first wife died. As in the foregoing Trump has proved more universal in his swooning and closely related matters. Hamilton was besotted with a woman, but Burr took care of that.

5 .Wilson was outspoken with his disdain for immigrants, exposing his bigotry against men of the lowest class from Italy and of the meaner sort from Hungary and Poland, as men out of the ranks where there was neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence. Trump is regarded as being outspoken about most everything, even nuances, and seeks to either rendition or deport most immigrants who are not of legal status within this country, possibly holding Muslims in comfortable gulags, due process notwithstanding.

6. Certain members of the polity and medical practitioners have expressed concern about president-elects capacities, parallel to concerns about president Wilson (who was incapacitated for some 1  years of his second term). Certain sections of the 25th Amendment regarding presidential succession provide guidance for incapacity. So far its too early to tell which pages of the DSM V might be subject to attachment.

Bob Austin

Napa
This course Read more [...]
(Natural News) The founder of online retail behemoth Amazon is a Russia propagandist and agentdid you know that?

Sure he is, by the logic of his own newspaper, the Washington Post.

So are the employees of the Internal Revenue Service, the St. Louis Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Census Bureau.

Confused? Baffled? Shocked? Well explain.

Twisted logic of the insane Left

As noted by Zero Hedge, the three entities above were added to a sham list of about 200 news and information sites put together by a shady, never-before-known group of anonymous experts who spoon-fed the bogus story to the Washington Post, which wound up having to print a sort-of retraction explaining how its reporter couldnt really verify anything in the original story. It was so bad, in fact, that reliably Left-wing site The Intercept even chastised the paper for shoddy reporting in agreeing to publish the story.

In case you missed it, the premise of the story was that a shadowy group, PropOrNot, published the list and claimed all of the sites on it were willingly publishing Russian propaganda, in an effort to help Donald J. Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. This is where the fake news narrative is coming from; this story.

But since the 200-website list is completely bogus, that means the Posts story is nothing short of the kind of fake news it accused those same sites of publishing.

Now, understand that the methodology behind the discredited list is guilt by association. If youre on that list, there is no need for there to be any actual proof that the site you work for (Natural News was included on the list, by the way), was a purveyor of Russia-supplied fake news propaganda. You dont have to actually publish the propaganda yourself, as an individual reporter for one of the aforementioned sites, but because you work there, you are guilty by association and subject to arrest by the state-owned secret police.

Understand, mind you, that neither the Washington Postwhich has a journalistic (and legal) obligation to verify information and/or claims before publishing it/themnor the PropOrNot organization combed through any of the tens of thousands of pages on our site (or anyone elses) and found actual stories that had been force-fed to us by Russian intelligence operatives.

And the reason why this did not happen is because there are no such stories on the site.

Because we dont work for or with Russian intelligence.

Heres how you might consider the Posts owner a Russian propagandist

But this is how totalitarian logic works. Now, lets take it a step further: Is it possible that Jeff Bezos is a Russian double agent or propagandist, simply because he allows a t-shirt that features Russian President Vladimir Putin in a favorable light to be sold on Amazon.com?

Or, how about this Professional Russian tee?

Or waitif Donald Trump is associated with Russia because he has spoken of mending fences with Putin, what does that make Bezos for actually setting up shop in Russia with Amazon?

In reality, the FBI looked into that, specifically. And the bureau found no Trump connections to Russia, and certainly not the level of Bezos companys association.

Even U.S. government agencies are Russian plants

Now, as for the Census Bureau, IRS and St. Louis Fed, Zero Hedge notes it published a pair of reports that relied on information from one or more of those agencies. It added:

Sorry, U.S. Census Bureau, I.R.S. and St. Louis Federal Reserveyoure issuing Russian propaganda according to The Washington Posts shoddy fake news methodology. Your data enabled oftwominds.com and other independent journalist sites to issue content that was skeptical of official claims that are endlessly parroted by a bought-and-paid-for corporate media.

OfTwoMinds.com was on the Posts fake news report about fake news spreading Russian propaganda.

And of course, what counts among the U.S. establishment media as Russian propaganda? Any factual data or viewpoint that differs or refutes their Left-wing ruling elite and corporate-media shills. Because theyre so smart, anything that does not align perfectly with their views has to have come from what President Ronald Reagan once called the Evil Empire.

Sources:

ZeroHedge.com

TheIntercept.com

TechCrunch.com

NYTimes.com
Wednesday, December 21, 2016 by: Robert Jonathan Tags: insecticides , neonicotinoids This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author

(Natural News) Neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides in wide use, may be more destabilizing to agriculture than previously presumed, according to a new study from Penn State.

The teams research challenges the previously held belief that neonicotinoid seed coatings have little to no effect on predatory insect populations, ScienceDaily summarized.

The findings suggest that more work needs to be done to work the bugs out, as it were.

As Natural News has outlined, seeds are coated with neonicotinoids before planting instead of being sprayed on growing crops. Thus, a plant absorbs the entire insecticide component.

The seven different chemicals that make up the neonicotinoid family are reportedly known to be extremely toxic to the environment despite being promoted as a safer alternative to traditional pyrethroid pesticides.

The dysfunctional family includes acetamiprid, clothianidin, imidacloprid, nitenpyram, nithiazine, thiacloprid, and thiamethoxam.

Resembling nicotine, neonicotinoids exert an impact on the central nervous systems of insects and are sometimes called neonics for short. They are commonly deployed for crops such as corn, soybeans, and cotton.

In 2013, the European Union imposed a temporary, multi-year ban on neonicotinoids out of concerns for the harm to the bee population through nectar and pollen. Earlier this year, Maryland became the first state to ban neonicotinoids, as of January 1, 2018, while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched a review project that is due to report its findings in 2018.

In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on an incremental basis ended its use of neonicotinoids because of concerns over the global decline in pollinators such as bees and butterflies.

In the newly published Penn State study, researchers performed a statistical meta-analysis of about 1000 observations from 20 field studies in North America and Europe that evaluated the effect of neonicotinoids on predatory insects.

The results suggest that neonicotinoids may have a disruptive effect ecosystem, explained co-author Margaret R. Douglas. Predatory insects contribute billions of dollars a year to agriculture through the elimination of crop pest insects. We have found that neonicotinoid seed coatings reduce populations of these natural enemies 10 to 20 percent.

This result suggests that neonicotinoids are reducing populations of natural enemies at least partly through their toxic effects rather than simply by reducing the availability of their crop pest foods, she added.

As published in the PeerJ journal, the researchers wrote that Our finding that insects were more strongly affected by seed-applied neonicotinoids than were non-insect groups (mainly spiders and mites) suggests that toxin exposure is at least partly responsible for the overall negative effect we observed, and raises the question of how insect natural enemies are being exposed to these seed-applied toxins.

The study seemed to suggest that neonicotinoids and pyrethroids had about the same effect on native predators, but that more research is necessary in this area.

Co-author John F. Tooker proposed that farmers adopt an integrated pest management strategy that takes a combination of techniques into consideration, with insecticides possibly included as an option, depending on the circumstances.

The researchers note that their results may help farmers and pest management professionals better weigh the costs and benefits of neonicotinoid seed treatments versus alternatives, Science Daily explained.

IPM is the best chance we have of conserving beneficial insect species while maintaining productivity in our agricultural systems, the professor noted.

In a prior study published in 2014, the same researchers similarly concluded that neonicotinoids may reduce crop yields by wiping out native predators of crop pests.

Some 800 scientific studies previously reached the conclusion that neonicotinoids pose an ominous DDT-like threat to wildlife and the ecosystem. Plants treated with neonicotinoids have also been shown to poison birds and fish in addition to insects.

Sources:

ScienceDaily.com

PeerJ.com
(Natural News) It likely seems Orwellian to most Americans, but apparently some Japanese are okay with it: One city in the Asian nation has launched a unique program to help keep track of senior citizens who have a tendency to become losttagging their fingers and toes with scan-able barcodes.

As reported by Agence France Presse, a firm based in Iruma, located north of Tokyo, developed minute nail stickers, each one carrying a unique identifier that helps concerned families locate missing loved ones, according to the citys social welfare office.

The QR-coded, adhesive seals for nails, which are part of a free service that has only recently been launchedand is a first in Japanmeasure only one centimeter (0.4 inches) in size. Being able to attach the seals on nails is a great advantage, one city employee told AFP. There are already ID stickers for clothes or shoes but dementia patients are not always wearing those items.

If authorities find an elderly person wandering about, they will contact the local city hall, its telephone number and the wearers identification all placed within the QR code. The chips stay attached for about two weeks, even if they get wet, according to the company, citing recent field trials.

As Japans society grows older, governments face unique probless with dementia and other age-related health problems

In November, Japanese police started providing noodle discounts at local restaurants for elderly citizens who voluntarily agreed to give up their driver licenses. That offer was the result of a series of deadly accidents involving elderly drivers; its a huge problem because there are 4.8 million people 75 years old or older who hold drivers licenses.

Japan is struggling with a rapidly aging population. Demographers believe that by 2060, an astounding 40 percent of Japanese will be over the age of 65, as the countrys birth rate slips to about 1.41 children per woman.

As reported by the Japan Times, experts have described Japans birth rate situation as catastrophic because its society is aging as sexless couples are having fewer and fewer children. At present, in fact, the birth rate is below the death rate, meaning Japans population is slowly dying off. That said, the figures dont tell the full story; in fact, demographers say that the situation is reversing itself, the Times noted.

As for the tracking device, that is an idea that seems like an innocent solution to what appears to be a mounting problem in Japan. And it could just be an idea that only works in certain societies. But rest assured, the globalist ruling cabal likes authoritarian rule, and would love nothing more than to be able to track every human being on the planet.

There are those who would love to track every human on the planet

In fact, thats very nearly the case as it is, and we have done it to ourselves willingly, with technology. Our cellphones serve as miniature tracking devices. Automobiles equipped with satellite-fed featuresradio, emergency contact systems, remote start/shut-down systemsalso serve to track us wherever we go.

Then there are devices for the home that essentially keep track of us; virtually everything that is connected to the Internet or is satellite-linked. Even our smart electrical power meters are treasure troves of data that can indicate when we are at home, establish patterns of behavior and so forth.

Some societiesdictatorships, communist countries, and even some socialist-leaning nations in the European Unionwould either have little choice or may voluntarily agree to allowing themselves to be tracked by the government 24/7/365. That wouldnt work so well in the United States, however, with our constitutional privacy protections, though clearly there are even those in our own country who would love to circumvent those protections or have them overturned.

Sources:

Yahoo.com

JapanTimes.com

FreeBeacon.com
17:13

PM Modi at the launch of Bhim App: Babasaheb's contribution is come to the centre stage. This app is very simple.





You can use it on smartphones, on Rs. 1000-1200 feature phones, it is not necessary to have internet.





There is a new feature being tested, and when it comes, the power of BHIM will know no bounds.





You won't need any app, any smartphone or internet. Your thumb print will be enough.





This is such a big revolution. There was time when illiterates used to be called angootha chhaap. And this angootha (thumb) will become the basis of all transactions.





No matter how far a country has gone, even for them, they have to go to Google, ask Google Guru what is BHIM.





At first they will see Bhim from Mahabharat. If they dig deeper they will find Bharat Ratna Bhimrao Ambedkar.





This was the goal of his life, to empower the poor. And this is what the app will do. This is the poor's treasure.





This will empower the poor, the farmers, the tribal people. And that is why this is named after the man who dedicated his life to the downtrodden.





There are some prosperous countries in the world. When they find out that there are crores in India who vote by pressing buttons and start getting results in 2 hours. They are stunned because it takes them weeks to do the same.





The country which is considered illiterate by some is an example to the world in this digital revolution.





There are some people who wake up in disappointment and go to bed in disappointment. They can keep doing so, there is no cure for that yet.





Some people don't realise billions are already traded digitally in share markets.

They think Modi has brought digital transactions, there must be something wrong with it.





Some intellectuals come up and say the country is illiterate, poor, how can they do digital transactions?





I have no cure for such pessimism. But I have solutions for the optimistic.





BHIM is not an ordinary thing. It will be a common platform. This is the best vision for 2017.





3 years ago, the news was how much we lost in 2G, coal scam... Now the news is about how much has come back.





PM Modi targets Congress on notes ban criticism: I am surprised. One neta said, "You dug a ditch to find a little bird I wanted to find that bird, it eats away everything from within."





I'll take this time to thank the friends in the media. When they decide something, it gets done. They campaigned against the red lights, netas hesitate to use them today. They campaigned for seat belts, people started wearing them. They campaigned for wearing helmets, people started wearing them. This is not a small service. They have taken up the Swachhata campaign.





I am a positive person, I see only the good in the media. In the coming days, media can do a great service.





The fact that media raised the issue of highlighting not everybody has smartphones made the government think that BHIM should work on feature phones. Soon, they will start asking people if they are using BHIM.





India used to be the golden bird, it became a poor country for our own mistakes. But it still has the potential to become that golden bird once again.





The country wants to run on the path of honesty, we must encourage that.

India's greatest strength is ability to fight against its own evils. What we have seen after November 8, proves it. Some people brought these evils upon us, some gave it way. But it spread like termites. But people want the path of honesty.





It wasn't a small feat, 86 per cent currency gone away in one move. And the country is still moving ahead, the world was stunned. This is the power that will take India ahead.





The poor have the first right to the country's resources. You cannot fight poverty with slogans.





The country in which one party fought the 2014 elections on how many subsidised cylinders to give 9 or 12.





There comes a government which asks people to give up the subisidies. And see what happened. 1.2 crore families have given away the subsidy.





I want to tell each one of you to do at least 5 digital transactions. It will then become a habit.


The website apparently was hacked by one 'Faisal 1337x', who put the photo of the famous joker from Batman movie "Dark Knight" in the garb of McDonald's mascot Ronald McDonald on its page.

A message posted on the page read "Pakistan Zindabad" and "You don't know the power of Pakistan hackers".

"I came to know sometime in the morning from students that the site was hacked," IIT Madras spokesperson Venkatraman told IANS.

"The site overall worked fine, except the hacked pages," he added.

The pages were restored after some time, and started working as usual.

--IANS vn/vd

( 134 Words)

2016-12-29-23:12:08 (IANS)
The Shunglu Committee investigated the alleged irregularities committed by the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) governmnet of Delhi.

The President on Thursday appointed Baijal as the new Lt. Governor of Delhi and also accepted the resignation of his predecessor Najeeb Jung, who put in his papers on December 22.

Welcoming Baijal's appointment, Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken said that he hoped Baijal would be "impartial in his dealings".

"We expect Anil Baijal to release Shunglu Committee report on corruption of AAP government soon after taking over!" Maken said in his Twitter post.

Jung set up a three-member committee to study alleged irregularities of the AAP government following an August 4 Delhi High Court ruling that accorded primacy to the Lt. Governor in Delhi's administration.

The committee, headed by former Comptroller and Auditor General V.K. Shunglu, had submitted its report to the Lt. Governor on November 27.

A day after Jung's resignation, Maken alleged that a deal was struck between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the AAP not to make the Shunglu Committee report public, which led to the LG's resignation.

The Congress leader also said: "Had the report been released, the CBI would have filed cases against the AAP government as there are irregularities in over 200 files."

--IANS aks-and/in/vt

( 258 Words)

2016-12-29-13:22:07 (IANS)
"Our team has been conducting a search operation in Paras Mal Lodha's bank account in a public sector bank's branch at Ballygunj Park road area. The team has been verifying the transactions in the account," the official said.

The official said that the agency had also conducted a search operation on Wednesday in one of his bank account with another public sector bank.

Lodha, a leading businessman with interests in real estate and mining, was intercepted by a team of ED sleuths at the Mumbai airport in last week while he was trying to flee to Malaysia.

The city-based businessman was arrested for allegedly converting over Rs 25 crore demonetised notes linked to industrialist J. Sekhar Reddy and Delhi lawyer Rohit Tandon into new currency.

The ED booked Lodha under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

--IANS bdc/vd

( 173 Words)

2016-12-29-17:26:07 (IANS)
A group of 50 Congress activists painted tattoos proclaiming "Our PM is Corrupt" to mark the 50 days of demonetisation here on Thursday with plans to intensify their agitation over the next few days. Mumbai Congress President Sanjay Nirupam claimed that last week the party's national Vice-President Rahul Gandhi had exposed the corruption details of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Gandhi had provided details of how Modi had allegedly received kickbacks nine times from two corporate houses and proof had been submitted to the I-T Department which failed to take any action in the matter, he added. "This amply proves that our Prime Minister Narendra Modi is corrupt and takes bribes. Today, 50 of our activists protested by painting tattoos on their hands to this effect," Nirupam told a packed media gathering. When asked whether the tattoos were of permanent ink, Nirupam shot back: "When the PM is not permanent, how can the tattoos be permanent? This is the start of our agitation against the corrupt activities of the BJP and protesting against demonetisation." From January 6, the Congress will stage a 'gherao' of all collectorate offices in the country, including Mumbai's two collector offices in Churchgate and Bandra. On January 8, Congress women activists will pray at Mahalaxmi Temple "to give wisdom" to the government and roll-back demonetisation, followed by a rolling pad-rolling pin (banging velan-thali) agitation "to wake up the government" to the plight of the masses, Nirupam said. He said last Saturday, during Modi's visit to Mumbai, the Congress was prevented from staging a peaceful, mute demonstration in the Bandra Kurla Complex, while he (Nirupam) and another 400 activists were virtually placed under house arrest. "We wanted to ask Modi only two questions: 'Have you taken bribes or not? And, when will public's misery end after demonetisation?' However, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis acted high-handedly by preventing our peaceful agitation," Nirupam alleged. He reiterated that after the decision to spike Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination currency notes was "forced" on the masses, people across the country are suffering, especially in the rural areas and the farmers. "All trade, commerce and business activities have come to a standstill, the country's economy is in crisis, businesses have shut down. The Prime Minister had asked 50 days from the people, which is getting over tomorrow, but the sufferings continue and will worsen," Nirupam stated. --IANS qn/pgh/bg ( 406 Words) 2016-12-29-19:36:07 (IANS)
A court here on Thursday sent to ED custody, till January 2, hawala trader Paras Mal Lodha who was arrested for converting demonetised notes worth Rs 25 crore linked to industrialist J. Sekhar Reddy and lawyer Rohit Tandon into new currency. Duty Metropolitan Magistrate Ashok Kumar allowed the Enforcement Directorate to quiz Lodha till January 2. Special public prosecutor Vikas Garg had sought extension of custody, saying that Lodha is required to be confronted with documents and other articles recovered during investigation. He told court that a hard disk and computers were seized from Lodha's office at Delhi and Kolkata. Lodha's defence counsel opposed the plea, saying that arrest was illegal and the plea seeking further custody is without any basis as the plea does not disclose any fresh ground. Lodha was presented after expiry of his seven-day police custody. The Kolkata-based businessman was arrested on last Wednesday after hours of questioning by the ED officials and booked under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Lodha, a leading businessman with interests in real estate and mining, had been intercepted by a team of ED sleuths at the Mumbai airport on Wednesday while he was trying to flee to Malaysia. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had earlier this month arrested Reddy, a former Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam Board Member, and two others from Chennai for money-laundering after Income Tax (IT) department recently seized 177 kg of gold, Rs 96 crore in old 500 and 1,000 rupee notes and Rs 34 crore in new currency from their premises. Cash amount of Rs 13.65 crore, including Rs 2.60 crore in new currency notes, was seized from the office of Tandon in south Delhi's Greater Kailash-I area during a raid conducted by Delhi Police on December 10. Sources said that Reddy had executed a lot of work for the Tamil Nadu government. In connection with the case, IT officials raided 12 locations in the southern state including the house of Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary P. Rama Mohana Rao. ED officials earlier on December 1 raided multiple hawala operators across the country involved in illegal conversion of old currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 to valid legal tender since November 8 demonetisation announcement. --IANS akk/vd ( 391 Words) 2016-12-29-22:02:11 (IANS)
The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday arrested a Delhi-based lawyer on charge of converting Rs 60 crore in demonetised currency into new notes in connivance with a Kotak Mahindra Bank manager. A city court later sent him to ED custody till January 2. Tandon was arrested after grilling by ED officials for almost a week and booked under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The ED officials produced Tandon before a Saket court and sought his 14-day custody to unearth the conspiracy behind the money trail, recover and ascertain the proceeds of crime and identify the beneficiaries. Duty Metropolitan Magistrate Ashok Kumar however sent Tandon in ED custody till January 2. "Tandon has converted over Rs 60 crore in demonetised currency in connivance with Kotak Mahindra Bank Manager Ashish Kumar and hawala trader Paras Mal Lodha into new notes," an ED official told IANS. The ED officials arrested Ashish on Wednesday and Lodha on December 21. ED sources said Tandon gave Rs 1.5 crore as commission to Ashish, posted at Kotak Mahindra Bank's Connaught Place branch, for converting his Rs 34.93 crore demonetised high-value currency into new notes. The ED officials informed the court that Tandon knew persons who might have laundered their proceeds of crime through him. "There can be other persons involved in the case," the officials said. While questioning Tandon, the ED officials reportedly learnt that he took the help of Lodha, 62, a businessman with interests in real estate and mining, to convert his high-value demonetised notes totalling over Rs 2.6 crore into new currency. Lodha was intercepted at the Mumbai airport while trying to flee to Malaysia. Cash of Rs 13.65 crore, including Rs 2.6 crore in new notes, was seized from Tandon's office in Greater Kailash-I area of south Delhi during a raid by Delhi Police on December 10. Tandon's T&T law firm and residence, before this operation, were separately searched by the Income Tax Department, which said he had declared undisclosed income of over Rs 125 crore. The agency has sent two mobile phones, allegedly seized from Lodha, for forensic examination as they contained some WhatsApp conversations between him and Tandon. ED officials on December 1 raided multiple hawala operators across the country who were involved in illegal conversion of old currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 demonetised on November 8. --IANS akk-rak/tsb/vm ( 409 Words) 2016-12-29-22:14:07 (IANS)
There has always been a direct relationship between the popularity of a star and the brand endorsements they have. It is not just films, but also brands that add to the total net worth of an actor in a big way. Brands take the help of these stars to create awareness of their products among the masses, and thereby, increase sales. The year 2016 has seen a lot of actors more visible, not just because of their film release, but also because of their multiple brand endorsements. The stars who have ruled the space of brand endorsements this year with high number of brand endorsements are Deepika Padukone, Hrithik Roshan, Ranveer Singh, Kangana Ranaut and Alia Bhatt. Deepika Padukone : With being one of the top most followed celebrities on social media, Deepika Padukone is one of the most popular names in the brands' circuit. The actress is the face of a lot of big brands such as Nike, Tanishq, Parachute, Axis Bank, Asian paints, Britannia, Gillette, Kelloggs, Vistara, Tissot, Coke, Lodha real estate, Ace real estate, Lux, Vogue eyewear and a clothing line with Myntra called All About You. Hrithik Roshan: Hrithik Roshan, the heartthrob of the nation has charmed millions with his personality. The Greek God with a massive fan following is a very brand friendly face. He has been tied up with brands like Mountain dew, luxury watch brand Rado, Adamantino diamond accessories, Dctex furnishings, OPPO, Rupa macroman, Emami HE, Emami Fair and handsome, Nirma advance, RMD boards, J hampstead, VIP luggage and Flairpens. He is also associated with his own fitness apparels brand, HRX. Kangana Ranaut: The actress has Reebok, Himachal Pradesh Tourism, Tata Sky, Myntra, Melange by Lifestyle, Lavie, Voylla Jewellers and Emami (Boroplus) connected with her. Ranveer Singh: Ranveer Singh continues to surprise the audience both in his cinematic as well as endorsement choices. Currently the actor is tied up with brands such as Jack and Jones, Chings noodles, Marico's Set Wet, Vivo-phone, innerwear-rupa frontline, adidas originals, Royal Stag, Head and Shoulders, Maruti Suzuki Ciaz, Make my trip, Quikr and Durex Alia Bhatt : Alia Bhatt is truly one of the most promising actors in Bollywood. The new generation - young actor is already endorsing brands like Philips, Caprese, Gionee, Make my trip, Maybelline, Cornetto and Cadbury Perk. (ANI)
Southern actress Pranitha Subhash, who has mostly featured in commercial films so far in her career, believes audiences have evolved and that has enabled "other kind of films" to be accepted and appreciated. "When I started my career, I thought only commercial films work. Lately, I have realised that audiences have begun to accept and appreciate other kind of films (non commercial) too. This has given me the confidence to try films in other genres," Pranitha told IANS. Having made her acting debut with 2010 Kannada actioner "Porki", she's been part of well-known films such as "Baava", "Mr. 420", "Attarintiki Daredi" and "Brahmotsavam". After a gap of two years, she has returned to Tamil filmdom with Jai-starrer "Ennaku Vaaitha Adimaigal". "It's a very situation-driven film unlike the commercial ones I have done. Even the situations related to friendship and romance are very relatable, which makes the film likable," she said, adding that her faith in other kind of films convinced her to accept this offer. The other factor was the way her director narrated the story. "Usually, directors narrate the story from the point of view of the actor. My director just told me the story for 45 minutes and that got me excited," she added. She plays Jai's love interest in the film, which is gearing up for release around the Pongal festival. Proded about her absence from Tamil industry after working with stars like Karthi and Suriya, she said she's been choosy. "People always ask why my pace of signing films is slow. I try and pick the best among the offers I get. Being away from one industry doesn't mean I have been idle, because I had commitments in other industries," she said. She does admit the result of "Saguni" and "Masss", her last two films, did affect the flow of offers. "They did to an extent, and it's quite natural," she said. In Tamil, she has a yet-untitled project with Atharvaa in her kitty. --IANS hp/nv/vt ( 340 Words) 2016-12-29-13:08:07 (IANS)
Looking sexy in a crisp white shirt and black trousers, SRK is making us go weak on our knees as he poses on the cover of the January issue of the magazine.

The official Instagram account of Femina India recently shared the picture and wrote alongside, "@iamsrk has us swooning so hard! Check out #KingKhan as he graces the cover of our New Year issue."

On the professional front, King Khan is gearing up for the release of 'Raees' that hits the big screens on January 25, 2017. (ANI)
The unprecedented cash crunch after demonetisation has impacted a number of private hospitals in Kolkata which have lost a substantial number of foreign patients who were unable to exchange currency. On November 8, following an announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the central government demonetised Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 currency notes, but permitted their use in a few government sectors, including hospitals. However, the private medical facilities, which treat a large chunk of foreign patients, were left out of the bracket. As a result, while most private hospitals in Kolkata saw a drop in the number of foreign patients, they rolled out initiatives like mobile ATM counters and cheque payments. The payment in foreign currency has also increased manifold since demonetisation. "Our hospital witnessed an almost 15 percent drop in foreign patients in the first 20-25 days of demonetisation," Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals Chief Executive Officer Rupali Basu told IANS. "Several initiatives like mobile ATM counters and increased acceptance of cheques from patients have restored normalcy," Basu added. Prior to the ban, the hospital's foreign currency counters saw very few transactions. But the scenario has undergone a sea change ever since. "We always had a counter for accepting foreign currency but there was not much of a demand as patients used to pay in Indian rupees. But since demonetisation, the deposit of foreign currencies like the US dollar and the Bangladeshi taka have dramatically increased. "We are presently accepting all foreign currencies as a large chunk of our patients are from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and Myanmar," said Basu. Hospitals that limit cashless payment facilities to Indians also witnessed a downslide in the footfall of foreign patients. "The cheque or online payment facilities in the hospital are solely meant for Indian citizens while the foreigners have to pay by cash. Though we have been accepting foreign currency even prior to demonetisation, there was a stark drop in the number of foreign patients as they were not getting cash," AMRI Hospital CEO Rupak Barua told IANS. According to Barua, the chaos increased due to the patients' apprehensions after the vastly circulated currency notes were banned overnight. "The patients were a bit apprehensive about the situation after the sudden demonetisation. The situation is slowly becoming normal with the circulation of new currency," he said. The problem got magnified for foreigners as money changers in the city were unable to procure adequate rupees from the banks for buying foreign currency due to the acute cash crisis in the initial days after demonetisation. Many of them downed shutters for quite a few days. The Peerless Hospital in the city's southern outskirts, that receives a sizable amount of Bangladeshi patients for surgeries and daily check-ups, also witnessed a significant drop. "There was a drop in the number of patients after demonetisation as the patients were not able to exchange their currency at the money exchange counters outside," Peerless Hospital Managing Director Sujit Kar Purakayastha told IANS. The problems for them compounded as the hospital carried on with its policy of not accepting any form of foreign currency from patients. "We maintain a policy of not accepting any foreign currency at the cash counter. In case the foreign patients want to pay in their currency, that has to be deposited through a bank. Foreign patients who want to pay by cash have to exchange their respective currency from outside and pay in Indian currency," Purkyastha said. "Hopefully the situation would improve as the re-circulation of the new currency will be in full flow," he added. (Milinda Ghosh Roy can be contacted at milinda.r@ians.in) --IANS mgr/ssp/vm/sac/ky/tb ( 611 Words) 2016-12-29-13:06:07 (IANS)
Another shepherd who was seriously injured in the accident was admitted to nearby Government Area Hospital for treatment, Pulivendula Inspector Prasad told UNI.

More than 100 sheep were also killed in the accident. The APSRTC bus on its way to Pulevendula from here when the accident occured.

A case has been registered and investigation is on, Mr Prasad added.UNI VV CS 0957

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Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has declared that his government was committed to increase quota of reservations to the poor Muslims and Scheduled Tribes. In this context, he has instructed the officials concerned to begin the constitutional process of increasing the quota of reservations to the poor Muslims and the STs. Since the Courts have stated that the reservations should not cross 50 per cent, the officials should accordingly plan out a strategy. At a review meeting here last evening, the Chief Minister said "In Telangana, BCs, SCs, STs and minorities are in majority and a majority of them are backward on the socio-education and economic front. They need to be pushed on par with others. Backwardness, social inequality and economical backwardness among youth in these categories pushing them to disappointment and despair. This led to several agitations in the past, which caused many a death. The situation in the Telangana state, which was realised by people through their prolonged struggle, should change for the better. The state government should help the poor and underprivileged sections. Reservations should be made in proportion to their population strength. One should work with commitment to increase the quota of reservations. The entire reservation process should be done in such a way that no Court should object it and no one should question it," the Chief Minister explained. "Justice should be common to everyone and all state governments. In Tamil Nadu, based on the population figures, there are about 69 per cent of reservations in vogue. But in other states, Courts say that the reservations should not exceed 50 per cent. In Telangana, we have to increase the reservations quota. First Muslims and STs should get reservations based on their population figures in the State. We will pass a resolution in the Legislative Assembly and sent it to the Centre. An officials' team will visit Tamil Nadu to study on how they have implemented 69 per cent of reservations to the weaker sections. If need be, I will also go to Chennai and discuss with the officials concerned and the legal experts. We don't want a situation where we implement reservations and the courts will strike it down. Our increase in quota of reservations should be implementable without any hitch. Under United AP State, based on the population of STs, 6 per cent reservation was made. But in Telangana, STs constituted 9 per cent of the population. Muslims too are facing poverty. They need to get opportunities in every field, and they too need rise in reservation quota.'' ''Mr Rao said the TRS in its election manifesto had promised that quota of reservations to both Muslims and STs will be increased and we will fulfill it". UNI VV CS 1004 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-1085325.Xml
In his quest to position himself as strong candidate for top post in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar rolled out a new excise policy imposing complete liquor ban inthe state and made nationwide campaign for total prohibition across the country but more than ten ruling grand alliance leaders and legislators caused much embarrassment to him in 2016 as they were booked for a number of criminal cases, when his government claimed to have succeeded in establishing rule of law. Mr Kumar, who had succeeded in leading grand alliance comprising JD(U), RJD and Congress to landslide victory in Bihar Assembly polls held in October-November last year, despite aggressive campaign by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and battery of cabinet ministers for NDA candidates, lost no time in working on his agenda to project himself as potential candidate for top post of country and announced on November 26, 2015 to enforce liquor ban in state with effect from April 1, 2016. In first step to ensure direct intervention of Mr Kumar in national politics to bolster his pan India image, Sharad Yadav relinquished the post of JD(U) president, paving way for him to lead the party from the front. Mr Kumar, who first enforced ban on country liquor from April 1, also imposed complete ban on all types of liquor four days later, making Bihar, a complete dry state. The Chief Minister addressed a first conference in Dhanbad in neighbouring Jharkhand state on April 10, in his quest for strongly pitching for liquor ban across the country. Encouraged with support from people, particularly from women, he also addressed meetings in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and at other places, appealing people to launch agitation for complete liquor ban in their respective states.MORE UNI KKS RL CJ SV 1017 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1085123.Xml
"A taxi last evening met with an accident on Gulabgard-Ishtyari road in Padder area of Kishtwar District," police spokesman here said.

He said that the passenger taxi met with an accident near village Thumb some 150 KMs from Kishtwar.

He further added that due to poor road connectivity the police team could not reach on time for rescue operation.

The vehicle had plunged into 900 metres deep gorge, they added.

The deceased however, were identified as Manoj Kumar, son of Mohan Lal, resident of Ongaie (driver), Narinder Kumar, son of Gyan Chand, resident of Tham,Sunil Kumar, son of Sahab Singh, resident of Tham, Aman Singh, son of Devan Chand, resident of Swash, Dharminder Singh, son of Kartargh, resident of Bastaun, Rohit, son of Roop Singh, resident of Swash and Rangail Singh, son of Bodh Raj Resident of Swash.UNI VBH RSD 0415

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The launch of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious 'Clean Ganga' programme and of the Smart Ganga City Scheme, besides removal of final hurdle in Ken-Betwa river linking project and inauguration of the Afghan-India Friendship Dam (Salma Dam) were among the achievements of the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation this year. However, the year also saw controversial issue of Cauvery water flaring up, forcing the Centre to intervene. The agitating states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were finally brought to the dialogue table. The Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation also constituted a high-level technical team headed by GS Jha, Chairman, Central Water Commission (CWC) to visit the Cauvery basin area to assess the ground realities in the basin. During the year, first installment of Rs 1,500 crore was released to the states as central assistance for 99 prioritised irrigation projects under Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Program (AIBP). Under the Namami Gange Programme, several projects were launched at various locations in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Haryana and Delhi. The Ministry also constituted a committee under the Chairmanship of Madhav Chitale to prepare guidelines for desiltation of river Ganga from Bhimgauda (Uttarakhand) to Farakka (West Bengal). Besides, a committee was also formed to prepare draft Ganga Act which would be headed by Justice Girdhar Malviya (Retd). The Committee has been asked to prepare a Draft Act on Ganga ensuring wholesomeness of the river. The Act should have provisions to ensure cleanliness (Nirmalta) and uninterrupted e-flow (avirlta) of Ganga. As part of Namami Gange programme, the government had set up Clean Ganga Fund for encouraging contributions from Resident and Non-Resident Indians, Persons of Indian origin, institutions, and corporates towards Ganga Rejuvenation and as on March 4, Rs 87.69 crore contribution has been received. Another major initiative was the Smart Ganga City Scheme. The scheme was launched by Union Ministers--Uma Bharti and M Venkaiah Naidu-- in ten cities of Haridwar, Rishikesh, Mathura-Vrindavan, Varanasi, Kanpur, Allahabad, Lucknow, Patna, Sahibgunj and Barrackpore. More UNI NY-RBE SV 1125 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0099-1084115.Xml
Two security personnel were injured when militants attacked a search party today in north Kashmir district of Bandipora, official sources said here. However, the militants gave a slip and operation has ended now, official sources said. The sources told UNI that following specific information about presence of some militants at Shahgund Hajin in Bandipora, the Army and Special Operations Group (SOG) of Jammu and Kashmir launched a joint search operation in the area. However, when security forces were moving towards a particular area, the militants fired at them with automatic weapons. The forces also retaliated, ensuing an encounter, in which two security personnel were injured, the sources said. Additional security forces from nearby camps were rushed to the area to further tighten the cordon to foil any attempts by the militants to escape. However, the militants managed to escape, the sources said, adding that the operation has now ended. UNI BAS VS SV 1218 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-1085468.Xml
The boys aged under 15 aboard the Kolkata bound Uttar Banga express were rescued by the GRP while they were on routine check up last night.

The GRP during routine inspection found the boys without their guardians and after some queries they revealed that some men had made arrangements for them to go to Kolkata to find suitable jobs for them.

The GRP contacted the local administration which arranged for their stay before producing them in a local court.

Police said they were investigating to nab the agents/touts allegedly involved in children trafficking rackets. UNI XC-PC AD1334

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Maharashtra Election Commission has directed Aurangabad District Collector to file anFIR against BJP state Unit President Raosaheb Danve for violating Model Code of Conduct, while campaigning for a local body election rally at Paithan in Aurangabad district, official sources said here today. While addressing the rally on December 17, Mr Danve had said, "If 'laxmi' (money) comes to your house, do not refuse it, accept it and vote for BJP". The EC had asked Aurangabad District Collector to file FIR against the BJP leader for violation of the MCC. Earlier, the Commission had served a show-cause notice to Mr Danve who had defended himself, saying he did not mean money when he referred to "Laxmi". Congress and AAP had complained to the EC demanding action against Mr Danve. UNI ST VS-SDR SV 1330 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-1085331.Xml
From the golden era of Satyajit Ray to a phase of commercial and masala films, and more recently the co-existence of art and commerce, the Bangla film industry has undergone a sea change in the last few years, thanks to the advent of independent film making, international collaborations, organic marketing and innovative distribution. The chequered history of Bengali cinema, which spans roughly a century, has many notable triumphs. The period between the 50s and the 70s were probably the Golden Era of the Bengali film industry, with films by veteran directors like Ritwik Ghatak and the Oscar-winning Satyajit Ray dominating the Bengali film space. The industry nosedived during the 80s and has now risen like a phoenix again. Just like the Bollywood film industry, Bengali films are now being tagged with two distinct labels commercial films that fetch revenues from single screens vis--vis content-rich, multiplex films. The present time is basically a very interesting period for Bengali cinema. Genuine efforts are put in to compose more engaging and contemporary content. But the shrinking regional market over the years, the lack of innovation in film distribution and the rising buoyancy in investment has strongly affected the prospects. Renowned filmmaker Goutam Ghose, while commenting on the future of Bengali cinemas, remarked, ''There are ups and downs in every industry and Bengali cinema is no exception. However, I do not think proper research and survey has been done to unleash the potential of Bengali cinema in terms of identifying new markets. I have seen tremendous interest for collaborative projects from abroad but we lack specialised bodies or companies who can handle these collaborations properly.'' ''Although, the number of productions might have gone up but the producers are not getting back their money. We need to identify the immense potential of Bengali film lovers all over the world besides West Bengal and Bangladesh,'' he said. ''Shankhachil'', the latest film by Goutam Ghose, released in this year is an Indo-Bangladesh co-production that won the Best Bengali film award at the 63rd National Awards. The acclaimed filmmaker describes the film as a metaphor for freedom and shared how the film's release in India and Bangladesh served as a radical move in the Bengali film industry after a long time. "This will open new frontiers for filmmakers of both West Bengal and Bangladesh who equally suffer due to limited audiences and geographical barriers," said Prosenjit Chatterjee, the main lead of the Goutam Ghose directed Sankhachil and one of its producers. "There could be further scope for joint collaborations for tapping each other's market and simultaneous or almost simultaneous releases," Prosenjit said before Sankhachil's premier on April 15.MORE UNI BM SJC VS SV 1301 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0212-1085086.Xml
Owaisi, his brother Akbaruddin Owaisi and 21 others were booked under IPC sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion), 147 (rioting) and 186 (obstructing public servant).

The case is related to a protest carried out by the AIMIM to prevent government officials from demolishing a mosque on Hyderabad-Mumbai highway at Muttangi village near Patancheru town in Medak district.

In 2005, the revenue officials with the support of Muslims demolished three mosques and one shrine to widen a highway. However, when the demolition process reached the fourth mosque, it saw wide opposition from local Muslims and AIMIM leaders.

The situation got tensed leading to day-long rioting and protests.

The then chief minister, late Rajshekhar Reddy, ordered a probe into the matter and the AIMIM leaders were also booked at the same time. (ANI)
Union Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar on Thursday hit out at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for constantly attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi over demonetisation. Javadekar said it shows the frustration and disappointment of the grand old party. "The people will yet again teach them a lesson. First, they were 404 which reduced to 44 and now only four will be left," Javadekar said in a sarcastic tone. "When we levelled allegations against them in the 2G scam, CWG, the court found them correct and the allotment was cancelled. And the allegations which they are putting against us have been already been dismissed by the court and hold no relevance," he added. Hailing the decision of the Prime Minister to demonetise high-denomination notes of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000, Javadekar said no matter what happens the opposition won't be able to incline people against the government. "The nation has openly welcomed the Prime Minister's decision to ban Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes. The people have belief that this is a big step taken against black money, corruption and terrorism. Opposition tried so much to incite people, but they could not. People have stood by the decision, but the opposition is failing to understand this," he told ANI. Meanwhile, Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Ahir also struck the same chord and asked Gandhi not to waste his time by levelling baseless charges against the government. "It is the opposition's work to hinder the government's work, but I think Rahul Gandhi ji is wasting his time. We have received acceptance from the people of India. The Prime Minister has taken the decision taking into consideration everything," Ahir told ANI. "Prime Minister Modi's government showed the courage to take such a decision. What Rahul Gandhi is portraying of himself is not even acceptable by the people. His attempt to unite the entire opposition also failed," he added. Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of protecting black money hoarders and demanded that the names of Swiss account holders be revealed to the nation. (ANI)
The promulgation of an ordinance to helpextinguish the Reserve Bank of India's liability towardsdemonetised currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 on November 8 bythe union government was 'dangerous' and could be misused againstcitizens of the country. Speaking to reporters here, CPI national secretary D Raja saidPresident Pranab Mukherjee should not give his consent to theordinance, just like any other ordinance, as it is very serious issue. He said the ordinance itself was an admission that the decisionto demonetise higher value currency had no backing of any'authority of law'. ''The President, himself being a former FinanceMinister, should have a close look at this proposal made by the Modigovernment on how this will help the common people and the nation'seconomy.'' He said the government's claim that through this ordinanceReserve Bank will be safeguarded from several criticisms holds nowater. It was RBI that gives promises to citizens about currency,but Prime Minister made this announcement (on demonetisation) on hisown. There are many lacunae in the decision announced by Mr Modi, he charged. Mr Raja said demonetisation process had plunged the country intounprecedented financial turmoil and financial chaos. Agriculture,cooperative, SME and other sectors were adversely affected and ithad ruined the livelihood of millions of working people, leavingthem jobless and subjected them to misery. It had also resulted in150 deaths. He said Mr Modi's claim that he would unearth black money and endcorruption proved to be false promises as he himself was promoting corruption. ''Corruption rate went up due to neo-liberal policy push by thecentre and we condemn the disinvestment in PSUs by the governmentunder the advise of Niti Ayog,'' he said. On IT and CBI raids unearthing huge amount of new currencystockpiled by individuals, he supported the Bank employeesorganisations demanding a CBI inquiry into it. ''Why Prime Ministeris hesitating to bring out the truth. Why he did not bother tospeak on the floor of the Parliament and never took the house, in ademocratic system, before taking such steps,'' he asked. He also expressed concern over emergence of RSS, which wascommunal and fascist. How could such organisation which was divisivein nature speak against Constitution he wondered. ''RSS propogatesHindu Rashtra. Dr B R Ambedkar had said if it happens it will be acalamity to the nation. But it is what is happening now,'' he added.UNI RS CNR CS 1524 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0287-1085740.Xml
The Congress Party on Thursday took a jibe at the Narendra Modi government, saying that a time will come when the hardworking people will be standing in queues to pay the dues of the corrupt. "Ramchandra keh gaye siya se aisa kalyug aayega, mehnatkash khada hoga line mein aur beimaan ka karz chukayega," Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said. Slamming the government on its digital economy push, Surjewala said, "Modi ji you talk about digital payments even for tea then why was Rs. three crore transferred to your UP party office in cash?" Talking about the incident, the Congress leader said, "Recently in Ghaziabad, Rs. three crore was seized from two people in a car. Police took the car to the police station. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ashok Monga reached there with letter on behalf of party president Amit Shah that the money was sent by BJP Headquarters to BJP Lucknow office." The BJP-led NDA Government, which has come under sharp criticism post the November 8 demonetisation drive, will roll out a massive canvassing campaign beginning with Prime Minister Modi's address to the nation on December 31. (ANI)
Lashing out at the BJP for countywide demonetisation, All India Congress Committee General Secretary and In-charge J&K Affairs, Ambika Soni, today said that the people of Jammu and Kashmir were still waiting for the 'achhe din' for which they voted BJP to power in the state. "BJP at the Centre had led to calamity in the country with demonetisation announcement. There are no 'achhe din' for the people of Jammu and Kashmir with BJP in power in the state,'' Ms Soni here told the mediapersons. On the issue of allegations levelled against two J&K BJP ministers on 'black money', she said, "we have sought full enquiry into the issue by the Modi-led Government.'' She said that Congress had been demanding for the formation of Joint Parliament Committee (JPC) on 'black money issue' for which the centre had not agreed. Ms Soni, however, said that the J&K Congress would make demonetisation as medium to aware people about the failures of BJP in the upcoming Panchayat Polls in the state. Panchayat Polls will be held in the month of March 2017 in Jammu and Kashmir. "We were not against the recovery of black money and also assured full support to the Government for their on claim that demonetisation would curb the terrorism but unfortunately the common man especially the daily wagers were affected '' she added. "Its almost 50 days since demonetisation but there is no relief in the hardships being faced by the common people," she said adding that 125-crore people of the country are in distress. "Government says that they were making people habitual of going cashless but more than 80 percent of the works cannot be accomplished without paying cash,'' she added and said that AICC Vice-president Rahul Gandhi wanted to speak in the Parliament on the issue but was not allowed. On the Foundation Day of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi had asked five questions to the Government besides five demands. "Mr Modi sought 50 days to bring life to normal but still there is no hope. We had asked Prime Minister few questions for which he had to answer,'' she stressed. "Almost all Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes were returned but it is questionable how much black money was recovered,'' she added and said that there was at least 2 percent of downfall in country's GDP due to demonetisation. There was total economical imbalance, she claimed. She said that unemployed had increased especially the daily wagers, who used to earn on daily basis, have suffered the most. "We want to be the voice of the daily wagers and the questionnaire is being published in every language to make people aware of demonetisation effects,'' she added. Agriculture sector had suffered, what about compensation to those who died of cardiac arrest while standing in queue, she questioned.UNI VBH PS SNU 1610 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0421-1085837.Xml
The Bombay high court has rejected the plea for release on furlough of 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blast terror convict Rubina Suleiman Memon, sister-in-law of prime accused Tiger Memon. A division bench of Justices V K Tahilramani and A M Badar held that the court is not inclined to release the petitioner (Rubina) on furlough as she had been convicted by a TADA court for her involvement in terrorist activities and her release will disturb the law and order situation. Rubina, one of the conspirators of the 1993 bomb blasts, was sentenced to life imprisonment along with three other family members by the designated TADA court in 2006, while her husband Sulieman wasacquitted due to lack of evidence. Her brother-in-law Yakub was sent to the gallows on terror charges. Rubina, currently lodged in Pune's Yerwada prison, had applied to jail authorities for furlough leave on January 22, 2015. However, her plea was rejected on January 15, this year. Aggrieved, she filed an appeal which was also dismissed in May this year. Thereafter, she again moved the high court by a writ petition seeking furlough leave, which was rejected recently. Rubina's lawyer Farhana Shah argued that the three co-accused, who have also been convicted under TADA in the same case, have been released from jail on temporary leave. The other co-accused are Sardar Shahwali Khan, who was released on furlough on June nine, 2014; Nasir Abdul Kadar, who was given furlough leave on June 27, 2014 and Isa Abdul Razak Memon, whowas also released on furlough on June 10, 2016, Ms Shah said. As the three co-accused, who were similarly placed with Rubina in the 1993 bomb blasts case, had been given furlough leave, the petitioner should also be given the same facility, that is furlough leave, she argued. Additional public prosecutor H J Dedia, while opposing the application, submitted that Rubina's application for furlough was rejected under Rule 4(4) of the Prisons (Bombay Furlough and Parole) Rules, 1959. The rule states that prisoners whose release is not recommended by Commissioner of Police or District Magistrate on the ground of public peace and tranquillity, shall not be granted furlough.UNI AAA SS NP RP1653 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-1085871.Xml
Hospital Supers and BMOs of 20 hospitals across the state will be felicitated tomorrow for their contribution. 20 doctors and 50 nurses will be awarded too.

Among the hospitals to be awarded tomorrow are Barasat Zilla Hospital in North 24 Parganas, M R Bangur Hospital in South 24 Parganas, Jangipur Mahakuma Hospital in Murshidabad, Katwa Mahakuma Hospital in Bardhaman, Islampur Mahakuma Hospital in Uttar Dinajpur, Kontai Mahakuma Hospital in Purba Medinipur, State General Hospitals in Gabberia, Howrah, Shanitipur, Nadia and Birpara in Alipurduar. Ten Primary Health Centres and Rural Hospitals will also be felicitated

A special committee under the Health Department had been judging the works done in different hospitals throughout the year. The committee has been instrumental in picking up the best hospitals according to their performances.

The Chief Minister will also launch a health coverage scheme 'Swasthya Sathi' on tomorrow's programme.UNI SJC KK

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Two lawyers were killed in road accident today when a truck crushed their two-wheeler in Adalhat area of Mirzapur district. Police sources said Ramashraya Biyar (35) and Murari Biyar (35) were returning home from work when a speedy truck crushed their vehicle. Sources said that the injured lawyers rushed to the nearby hospital, where they were declared brought dead. In another fatal accident, a speeding truck rammed two persons on two-wheeler in Manduvadeeh area of Varanasi district in killing both of them on the spot. Police sources said Aman and Prince were returning home last night when a speeding truck crushed their vehicle near Chandanpur area in which both of them died.UNI XC-JDM MB PS SNU 1747 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0421-1086060.Xml
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today said the ensuing polls in the state would be a direct fight between the 'development-oriented' SAD-BJP alliance and the divisive forces led by the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Addressing the public gatherings during Sangat Darshan programme in Shutrana Assembly segment here, the Chief Minister said the wise people of the state would have to make a choice between the pro-Punjab SAD-BJP alliance and the anti-Punjab Congress and AAP. He expressed hope that people of the state would out-rightly reject the Congress and AAP, paving way for the formation of alliance Government in the state for the third consecutive term. Exhorting the people to exercise their franchise carefully, he said the elections were decisive, as they would make or mar the future of the coming generations. Taking the Congress to cudgels, Mr Badal said Punjabis could never forgive the party for its sins committed against Punjab. Congress has irrelevantly meddled in the social, political, economic and even religious affairs of the state, Mr Badal alleged, adding that Congress Governments at the Centre had deliberately denied the state of Punjabi-speaking areas, its capital Chandigarh and even its legitimate share in river waters. He said that no true Punjabi could ever forgive Congress for sins like Operation Blue Star and the killing of innocents in the 1984 anti-Sikh carnage. He further said that Congress was the perpetrator of a deep-rooted conspiracy to deprive the state of its waters by constructing the Satluj Yamuna Link (SYL) canal. This canal was aimed at ruining the state by snatching its only available natural resources from the state. However, with the historic initiative of the state government to give the land acquired for SYL back to its owners, the issue was closed for all times to come, Mr Badal added. Slamming the AAP, the Chief Minister said that this party wants to push the state backward by creating anarchy. He listed the major pro-people initiatives taken by the SAD-BJP Government. Later interacting with the mediapersons, the Chief Minister announced that after forming the Government in the state for the third consecutive term, the SAD-BJP alliance would formulate a separate master plan for every town, to give further fillip to its development. Mr Badal said he would ensure that every district, town and Assembly segment was developed on scientific lines by equipping it with ultra modern basic civic amenities.UNI DB RJ SNU 1832 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0098-1086159.Xml
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) probing the hawala trader Paras Mal Lodha's black money across India today searched his accounts in a city bank and seized huge quantity of diamonds, gold and incriminating certificates worth crores of rupees. A five-member ED officials first searched Lodha's office at Behala and home in Ballygunj and finally in a bank and recovered manyvaluable ornaments and incriminating documents, which were now under investigation. They said the investigation would continue since some papers relatedto a Swiss bank account were being probed by the experts. The ED officials, who arrested the hawala trader from Mumbai airport last week before fleeing to Malaysia, have been searching office, residence and bank accounts of Lodha. Lodha has huge and varied business interests, including promoting apartment, developing land, and real estates and has huge connectionwith people in power, both at the Centre and state. Lodha was arrested for allegedly converting more than Rs 25 crore demonetised notes linked to industrialist J. Sekhar Reddy and Delhi lawyer Rohit Tandon into new notes. The ED booked Lodha under the provisions of the Prevention of MoneyLaundering Act.UNI PC SJC -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-1086148.Xml
Agriculture Minister Pratthipati Pulla Rao said that input subsidy would be disbursed to the farmers on January 2, during Janmabhoomi programme. After releasing a diary at the Acharya N G Ranga Agriculture university here today, he said that despite 29.6 per cent deficit rainfall, the production of paddy and cotton was good. The government had purchased 13 lakh metric tonnes of paddy from farmers and disbursed their money by depositing in banks. He said that Rs.605 crore worth input subsidy for the year 2015-16 was granted to the farmers. Moreover, Rs 75 crore arrears of the previous year was also granted which would be disbursed on January 2, during Janmabhoomi programme, he said. The Minister informed that Rs.434 crore had been released for the disbursement of farmers, who cultivated groundnut crop and incurred losses in the four Rayalaseema districts. The government is committed to extend all kind of help to farmers and encourage farming, he added. The Polavaram Project, being constructed across the River Godavari, would provide irrigation water to 14 lakh acres and drinking water 550 villages, he said. The Centre had granted Rs.1,980 crore for the construction of project in the first installment, he said and added that the project would be completed by the end of 2018.UNI DP CS 1840 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-1086147.Xml
The Government of Assam has undertaken necessary steps for exhibition of the Brindabani Bastra, a rare piece of textile reflecting some important aspects of the Vaishnavite traditions in the state, which is currently housed at museums in London and Paris. Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal today directed the Cultural Affairs Department to take all measures to hold the exhibition of the Brindabani Bastra in October next year. This unique piece of textile that stands as a catalyst to the Vaishnavite traditions in the state, will remain on display for three months from October to December, 2017, and for this purpose the Government will set up a special state-of-the-art Exhibition Hall at Srimanta Sankardev Kalakshetra fulfilling all requirements needed for proper conservation of the Bastra. The Brindabani Bastra is currently in possession of British Museum in London, Guimet Museum in Paris, New Ark Museum in New Jersey, Museum of Venice and Calico Museum of Textile in Ahmedabad. This divine cloth housed in the British Museum is the largest in size.The Guimet Museum has two Bastras in its possession. They are made of pure silk with double layered weaving. All these pieces reflect the textile skill of different ages. Adding that the Brindabani Bastra is a piece of cloth with divine touch which highlights the skill of Assamese weavers and showcases Sankardev's hardowrk and artistic temperament, Sonowal asked the Cultural Affairs Department to coordinate with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, New Delhi under Ministry of Culture, Government of India, for bringing the Bastra to Assam for display and also to make necessary provision of fund in the ensuing State Budget for the same. Earlier in the meeting, MLA and state BJP president Ranjeet Das informed about the verbal confirmation received from the museums in London and Paris during his recent visits to the nations for lending the Brindabani Bastra for exhibition in the State. Sonowal lauded the role played by Das and asked the Cultural Affairs Department to act on holding the Exhibition, adding that the Brindavani Bastra has spiritual attachment for the people of Assam and its display will fulfil a long pending demand of the people of the State. Meanwhile, the chief minister has also directed the Cultural Affairs Department to take immediate steps for revamping the State Museum located at Ambari in the city. Sonowal also underlined the need for drawing up a roadmap for making Dighalipukhuri front as a prime tourist location. The chief minister further asked the Cultural Affairs Department to prepare a Master Plan outlining symmetrical design covering all the buildings from District Library to Ravindra Bhavan and develop the same as a Heritage Zone. He also directed to install ornamental lights on the periphery of Dighaliphukhuri to boost up its tourism potential.UNI SG KK -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-1086284.Xml
Police have arrested couple of youths fromDhansar Police Station area of this district for demanding extortionfrom a coal outsourcing firm posing as members of Pandey gang. Dhanbad SSP Manoj Ratan Chouthe today told reporters here thatfrom the project manager of BGR outsourcing company these men haddemanded the extortion of Rs 15 lakh via sms following which healerted the police. Later they also threatened him on phone. The SSP said that a team comprising police jawans and officials ofDhansar and Nirsa was constituted alongwith members of technical cellwhich nabbed the two culprits from Sahnapahari village. The arrested have been identified as Ranjeet Chouhan (28) andKundan Chouhan (24), the SSP said adding that the third accused PremChouhan would also be nabbed soon. He said that Ranjeet and Kundanalso have criminal past.UNI XC-AK SJC -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-1086325.Xml
In the wake of demonetisation, Rs 1,20,25,000 in the denomination of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500, were appropriated in Bastar Division from Maoists and their collaborators. "The rebels' urban network is severely affected as a consequence of demonetisation. A couple of Hyderabad-resident advocates and a professor are among seven people who are part of this gird and against whom a case was filed. On the pretext of making Aadhaar cards, human rights advocate Shalini Gera and some others used to have panchayat buildings and schools opened sans permission in Palnar and Matnar. Subsequently, they spoke a pro-ultra language to villagers and organised meetings against demonetisation and the Government," Inspector General (Bastar Range) SRP Kalluri told mediapersons here today. In this regard, one Vinod Pande lodged a written complaint to police. After one such gathering, Gera and her team met outlaw 'Commander' Aaytoo that evening, reached here with devalued notes amounting to approximately Rs 10 lakh and stayed at a choultry. "A total 186 encounters took place this year, 134 guerrillas' corpses were seized besides 272 improvised explosive devices, 150-kg ammonium nitrate, 2,167 detonators, 200 weapons and 742 cartridges. Five extremist camps were destroyed, 900 insurgents placed under arrest and 1,200 capitulated. Thirty-eight personnel attained martyrdom and 111 sustained injuries whereas 51 villagers were killed," the officer averred.UNI XC-AC SHS SNU 1920 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-1086272.Xml
The burglers had burgled gold and silver jewellery collectively worth Rs 7,53,500. They had entered the shop by opening the door with a duplicate key in the night of November 12 and decamped with the booty, police said.

Acting on a tip off, a team of the Kopri Police zeroed in on the alleged accused from Rajasthan this week and nabbed them from Udaipur, Rajsambandh and Haldi Ghat.

The team has recovered around seven kilogram out of total 15 kg of stolen silver as well as 150 gm out of 300 gm of stolen gold collectively worth around Rs 2.90 lakh from the accused.

The arrested accused have been identified as Kamlesh Mohanlal Nai, Bhavani Shankar Vardishnakar Nagda, Bhavani Singh Shankar Singh Rajput and (employee) Bhairu Singh Bhava Singh Dasana.

Of them, Bhavani Singh had opened the shop with the duplicate key and helped others in, police said.

Police are now on the lookout for two more people who are said to be a part of the gang.

An offence under sections 457, 380 and 34 of Indian Penal Code has been registered by the Kopri police station against the arrested accused, sources added.UNI XR SS SHS VN2052

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The Congress has formed a national campaign core committee to assist the existing party structure to implement a pan-India campaign activities at the grassroots to highlight "the plight of the nation caused by the anti-people policies of the BJP-led government". This was decided during a meeting of Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi with state unit chiefs and state leaders on December 26. "In addition more than 200 perty leaders have been identified and will be deployed as campaign coordinators to help the party's campaign at the district level," documents accessed by IANS showed. The party has also decided to form state-level implementation committees. "The total members of the committee may not exceed the total number of divisions in the state, presidents of frontal organisations will be ex-officio members of the committee," it added. The party also decided to form district campaign committees entrusted with the responsibility of carrying out the campaign in the districts. "The President of District Congress Committees (DCC) shall be the coordinator of the campaign committee," it added. There will be 7-9 members in a district-level implementation committee, which would comprise senior party leaders of the district. According to the documents, the district-level implementation committees will serve as the operating arm of the district campaign committee. According to the programme schedule proposed during the meeting, on December 29-30 there will be state press conferences, on January 2 there will be district-level press conference by state leaders along with leaders of the district. On January 5, there will be gherao of collectorates by Congress persons at district level and on January 8, there will be a 'thali' demonstration by women party members. --IANS sid/lok/vm ( 287 Words) 2016-12-29-21:50:07 (IANS)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today dismissed all criticism of his decision of demonetisation, as the drive completed 50 days, a time sought by him to set things right after the unprecedented move. ''If you act with clarity and with the purest of motives, the results will be there for any to see. Whatever my critics may say, I seek no personal benefit from all this, only the greater good,'' Mr Modi said in an interview to India Today. He said that the decision was so huge that even the country's best economists remain confused in their calculations. The Prime Minister said India's 1.25 billion citizens had welcomed it wholeheartedly and supported it even in the face of hardship, because they intuitively understood its impact and importance. He said the withdrawal of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes had struck at the root of the activities of the corrupt, bringing out black money irrespective of whom it belonged topolitician, bureaucrats, businessman or the professionals, and neutralising the cash held by terrorists or Maoists. "You must understand that we took the decision on demonetisation not for some short-term windfall gain, but for a long-term structural transformation. Our objective clearly was to clean our economy and society of the menace of black money, purging the distrust, artificial pressures and other ills that came with it," he said. Warning the hoarders of black money, the Prime Minister said the Government will not allow them to walk roughshod over its guidelines. ''Let me assure them that no such thing will happen", he said. On the criticism of the Government over frequent modification of its guidelines, Mr Modi said there must be a difference between policy and strategy. The policy of demonetisation was very clear, but the strategycould be changed ''to stay a step ahead of the enemy.''UNI NAZ ADG -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0091-1086554.Xml
Blaming the Congress for the non functioning of Parliament during the recently concluded Winter session, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said there was a concerted attempt by the opposition party to derail the functioning of both the Houses.''The government tried its best to keep Parliament functioning. I was keen to speak in both the Houses. Yet, there was a concerted attempt by the Congress to derail the functioning of the Houses rather than have a proper debate,''the PM said in an interview to a TV channel, his first after the announcement of demonetisation of old currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000.Describing the protests by the Opposition against demonetisation as an act of desparation. Mr Modi, in the interview to India Today, said, '' I pity some of our opponents, especially the Congress leadership, for the desperation they have been exhibiting. On the one hand, they say I took this decision for political dividends, and on the other, they say the people have been troubled and are deeply unhappy. How can the two go together?''Expressing his determination to remove corruption in politics, Mr Modi said,''this fashion of reducing any talk of corruption to politics is a dangerous trap. It creates a cover for the many others guilty of the same to get away with it. But, this doesn't mean I condone corruption in politics.''Welcoming the Election Commission's initiative to explore the possibility of simultaneous assembly and parliamentary elections, the PM said,''. I have also repeatedly expressed concern about how our current system of multiple elections not only raises political expenditure, thereby hurting the economy, but also results in the nation perpetually remaining in election mode, stalling governance. I welcome the Election Commission's initiative to explore the possibility of simultaneous assembly and parliamentary elections.''The PM's interview came even as the demonetisation drive, announced on November 8, completed 50 days this week.UNI AR ADG 2104 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0092-1086528.Xml
The warmth in the relations among the members of the first family evaporated in the winter chill as Samajwadi Party is on the verge of split after Akhilesh Yadav released a separate list of candidates tonight. Though the 235 candidates list of Akhilesh was not issued officially and it was put in the public domain through social media, but the act has put the future of the Samajwadi Party in the stake. Of the candidates list issued by the CM, 171 are sitting SP legislators and rest 64 are other nominees. Yesterday, Mulayam had issued a list of 325 candidates with denying tickets to several close associates of Akhilesh including three of his ministers. In the CM list there are several seats which have the same candidate in both lists but all the three ministers who were not given ticket by Mulayam were made candidates in CM list. But after the Akhilesh list came in public, Mulayam has summoned his son to his residence tonight and a meeting was underway at present in which Shivpal was also present. However there are still effort underway for an amicable solution between Mulayam and Akhilesh . Earlier, when SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav refused to give tickets to Akhilesh Yadav loyalists including three ministers prompting Chief Minister to ask his supporters to go to their constituencies and contest election on different symbols. "We have been asked to contest election as talks with Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) have failed. We are Akhileshwadi and contest the next election on the name of Bhaiya (Akhilesh Yadav). I will return to assembly that's my promise," said Pawan Pandey, Forest Minister in Akhilesh Yadav government who has been denied ticket. He is among three ministers including Arvind Singh Gope and Ram Govind Chaudhury who have been denied ticket. Pandey, a known Akhilesh Yadav loyalist, was expelled from the party after he roughed up a SP leader. Pandey said that Akhilesh Yadav might release a separate list of over 160 candidates. "Wait for next scene of this political drama it will unfurl very soon," he quipped outside 5, Kalidas Marg, the official residence of Chief Minister. With his political survival in perils Akhilesh Yadav was forced to take this intransigent stand after his long meeting with Mulayam Singh Yadav and Shivpal Singh Yadav failed to yield any result. SP legislator Udayveer Singh Yadav told reporters that Chief Minister was preparing himself for a long political battle. He also did not rule out Amar Singh behind the rejection of the tickets to Akhilesh supporters. The high voltage drama in Lucknow found its echo in Moradabad where Samajwadi Yuvjan Sabha has cancelled rath yatra. President Yuvjan Sabha Vikas Yadav announced cancellation of Yatra in support of Akhilesh Yadav. Earlier, there were reports that Mulayam could accommodate a couple of the ministers, who were denied ticket but later SP president conveyed to his son that there was no question of any "reconsideration" of the names. The trio- Mulayam- Akhilesh- Shivpal Singh Yadav-- had a close door meeting at the residence of Mulayam this afternoon which lasted for about an hour in which Akhilesh pleaded to accommodate some candidates including ministers in his government who can win election. The crisis in the party aggravated after release of the candidates' list on Wednesday where close confidants of Shivpal were given prominence while Akhilesh's supporters were given cold shoulder. Reports suggest that of 325 candidates 162 are hand picked by Shivpal Singh Yadav. (Eds:Pick up from earlier takes)UNI MB ADG -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1086600.Xml
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today said the State government will explain position of the state on Mahadayi river water dispute to Prime Minister Narendra Modi duringthe meeting with him at New Delhi tomorrow. Speaking to mediapersons here, he said he had high hopes on the Prime Minister impressing on the riparian states, especially Goa, besides Maharashtra on the plight of the people of parched districts of Mumbai-Karnataka to supply 7.65 tmc of water for drinking water by diversion of Kalasa-Banduri canal project. He recalled similar river water sharing cases where former Prime Minister late Indira Gandhi and Atal Behari Vajpayee intervened in the Telugu-Ganga project as well as the dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Mr Siddaramaiah reiterated his demand that Mr Modi should intervene in the Mahadayi issue. Citing the National Water Policy, which provides first priority for drinking water projects in sharing of river waters, Mr Siddaramaiah expressed his displeasure at the Prime Minister for not responding to Karnataka's earlier pleas to mediate between the three states to resolve the issue. After the states did not agree for mutual agrement, the Centre had formed the Mahadayi Water Dispute Tribunal. Citing the National Water Policy, which provides first priority for drinking water projects in sharing of river waters, the Chief Minister expressed his displeasure at the Prime Minister for not responding to Karnataka's earlier pleas to mediate between the three states to resolve the issue. When asked about the agenda that he will discuss with the Prime Minister tomorrow, the CM said that Mahadayi and prevailing drought in the State would occupy centre stage.UNI BSP RS SHS AN2311 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1086595.Xml
Social activist Rahul Salve started his unto death hunger strike on December 26 to press for his demand.

It has come to light that all 14 Municipal Councils in the district have not utilized Rs 60.51 crore meant for different welfare schemes of the physically-handicapped persons since past two years.

As per the government directive three per cent fund has been reserved for utilizing various schemes meant to uplift the physically-handicapped persons, but the amount of Rs 60.51 crore has remained unutilized in all the 14 Municipal Councils during the past two years.

Of the total amount, Rs 5.90 crore were for the last year and Rs 54.61 for 2014-15.

This has affected implementation of the welfare schemes for the physically-handicapped persons.

Similarly, the Zilla Parishad has also not utilized this reserve fund of Rs 1.47 crore for the last three years from 2012 to 2015.UNI XR SS SHS AN2309

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Wake up to a chilly morning and sense a bit of rain! That's the exact feeling one will have as soon as he/she starts working on Google today, as it is celebrating the 250th birth anniversary of Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh, inventor of the waterproof material, which led to the making of modern raincoat. Dedicating the doodle today to Macintosh, it shows an animation, where he is seen standing wearing a raincoat and rain droplets all around. Describing the doodle, Google wrote on its website, "It's a wonder how the weather-beaten Brits coped before Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh invented his eponymous waterproof coat. His invention, patented in 1823, came about as he experimented with coal-tar naphtha and rubber and realised they could be fused together with fabric to create a waterproof surface. These days in the U.K., it's common to call any type of raincoat a "Mac"." "Today's Doodle shows Macintosh enjoying a Scottish rain shower whilst testing his ingenious invention," it added. Born in Glasgow, was first employed as a clerk. But he devoted all his spare time to science, particularly chemistry, and before he was twenty resigned his clerkship to take up the manufacture of chemicals. (ANI)
In a statement, NASA's Earth Observatory said that the night after the winter solstice, NASA's Suomi NPP spacecraft recorded the northern lights, or aurora borealis, across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nunavut and northwest territories in Canada.

"The collision of solar particles and pressure on our planet's magnetosphere accelerates particles trapped in the space around Earth. Those particles are sent crashing down into Earth's upper atmosphere -- at altitudes of 100 to 400 km -- where they excite oxygen and nitrogen molecules and release photons of light. The results are rays, sheets and curtains of dancing light in the sky," NASA said in a statement explaining the northern lights.

The solar storms that create the stunning manifestation of the northern lights occur roughly every 11 years.

"The last cycle peak occurred in 2013, though NASA researchers reported that solar maximum was the weakest observed in a century," the report noted.

According to a report in Live Science on Wednesday, the satellite's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite captured the northern lights display from 824 km above the Earth.

--IANS qd/sana/vt

( 215 Words)

2016-12-29-13:26:07 (IANS)
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has told political leaders of various parties, including Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) that constant and repeated sit-ins will be destructive for Pakistan, and urged politicians not to create hurdles in the nation's progress. "Rise above mutual differences and work in the interest of Pakistan," the Daily Times quoted Sharif, as saying after inaugurating the Chashma-III nuclear power plant. He said an uninterrupted supply of electricity was a lifeline for the continuity of industrial activity in the country, which suffered a severe setback due to the power crisis. He also criticised the previous governments for pushing the country into darkness, and said those responsible must be questioned over their grave negligence. "They must be questioned about bringing in an era of darkness in Pakistan and giving the nation a curse of 18-hour electricity load shedding a day," he was quoted, as saying. Sharif said Pakistan is emerging out of its troubled times with the completion of development projects, improved economy and better situation of law and order. He said that since everything was going in the right direction, all the political sit-ins and agitation were simply useless. He said ending load shedding was his government's top priority and termed the completion of the Chashma-III nuclear power plant as another milestone achieved towards zero-load shedding. He said that Chashma-III project was a reflection of solid foundation of friendship between Pakistan and China.(ANI)
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has thanked China for extending cooperation in nuclear field and said the two countries are also actively cooperating in many other areas including construction of roads, motorways, airports and upgradation of Pakistan Railways. The Premier made this remark while inaugurating Chashma III, the country's fourth nuclear power plant, in Mianwali. The new power plant will add 340 megawatts of electricity to the national power grid and is a joint collaboration between the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and China National Nuclear Corporation, reports Radio Pakistan. Meanwhile, the vice-president of China National Nuclear Corporation in his speech said the cooperation with Pakistan in nuclear energy is reflective of strategic relationship between both countries. Sharif reiterated that electricity load-shedding will be eliminated, adding all efforts will be made to ensure that it becomes affordable by 2018. During his speech, the Prime Minister also slammed the opposition and said that politics of sit-ins will lead the country to nowhere, adding those doing so must refrain from it. "Have mercy on this nation, your sit-ins are proving destructive for this country," Sharif said in a veiled reference to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) protests against corruption in the wake of Panama Papers leaks. (ANI)
According to the Kathmandu Post, an integrated security plan has been put in place to check against any illegal activities and road accidents during the New Year celebrations.

The Kathmandu Post quoted Metropolitan Traffic Division Chief DIG Prakash Aryal, as saying that no programmes will be allowed on roads on December 31 and Janauary 1.

The ban on stage programmes will be implemented in coordination with Chief District Officer of three valley districts. About 2,000 police personnel will be deployed on Saturday and Sunday to beef up security in the Kathmandu Valley. (ANI)
According to the Daily Star, this aid will directly benefit 7500 newly arrived Rohingya refugees residing in coastal Cox's Bazar.

The formal announcement was made by the European Union embassy in Dhaka on Wednesday.

Roman Majcher, the Head of the European Commission's humanitarian aid department (ECHO) office in Bangladesh, was quoted as saying that the Rohingya refugees who had recently crossed the Naaf River were in critical need of humanitarian assistance.

He said that the EU-funded assistance will focus on delivering much-needed immediate relief and assistance to Rohingya refugees in terms of food and nutrition support, as well as the provision of non-food relief items such as sleeping kits, hygiene parcels and warm clothes.

Unconditional cash grants will also be distributed to the most vulnerable to help them cover their daily basic needs, and psychological support will also be provided to help them cope with post-traumatic stress and shock.

Bangladesh has witnessed a major influx of members of the Rohingya community into the south-eastern Chittagong Division over the last weeks, as a result of escalating tensions and violence in the northern part of neighbouring Myanmar's Rakhine state.

It is believed that at least 27000 Rohingya refugees have crossed the Myanmar-Bangladesh border into Bangladesh in search of safety, and more than half of them are women and children.

The EU funding is being made available via the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) through its Small Scale Response mechanism. (ANI with inputs)
Defending Washington's decision to allow a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that if the country had vetoed it then Israel would have been given a licence for "unfettered settlement construction" and end of the peace process. Framing a two-state solution as "the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians", Kerry criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for building a coalition that was "the most rightwing in Israeli history with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements", reports the Guardian. The US abstained from voting on Friday that called Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem a "flagrant violation" of international law. Since then, Israel has blasted the Barack Obama administration for its action and accused it of betrayal and underhand dealings. The speech was immediately condemned by Netanyahu, who described it as "skewed" and "obsessively" focused on the settlement issue. However, describing the decision, Kerry said: "If we had vetoed this resolution ... the United States would have been giving license to further, unfettered settlement construction that we fundamentally oppose. "It is not this resolution that is isolating Israel. It is the permanent policy of [Israeli] settlement construction that risks making peace impossible." Kerry also offered a bleak vision of the risk of the collapse of the Oslo peace process and the two-state solution, describing the alternative one-state solution in the darkest terms. "Today, there are a similar number of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea," said Kerry adding "[Israelis and Palestinians] have a choice. They can choose to live together in one state, or they can separate into two states." "Despite our best efforts over the years, the two-state solution is now in serious jeopardy, he added. "If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both, and it won't ever really be at peace," he said. Kerry outlined a series of principles which he said should form the basis of a future peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, with the likely participation of the U S, including a "secure and recognised border" between Israel and the new nation of Palestine. He also said an agreement must help the Palestinian refugees, designate Jerusalem as a capital for both states and satisfy Israel's security needs. Kerry also insisted that far from abandoning Israel, the Obama administration had been one of its strongest defenders. (ANI)
- Dai Xiaolei last saw her son in 2014 when he was 17 months old and living with her Chinese in-laws outside the capital Beijing.Her marriage was crumbling and as relations with her husband's family worsened, they blocked her from entering the house and taking him back to her home in Beijing, she said."The last time I saw my son was at the end of this alley. It's almost like a fortress," Dai, 37, said outside the home of her former in-laws in Baoding, 156 km from Beijing.Dai said the family has prevented her in all subsequent attempts to see her son. Reuters was unable to independently verify her account.Her husband, Liu Jie, filed for divorce, arguing that their marriage had fallen apart due to "conflicts in character, ideas and living habits," according to the court ruling seen by Reuters.Dai pushed for custody, but in April a judge dissolved the marriage and ruled that it was best for the boy's "healthy physical and mental growth" to be raised by his father, the court ruling said.Liu Jie, a movie stunt coordinator, and his family declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.As China's divorce rates rise, so too have calls by lawyers for an application of a new domestic violence law that would clamp down on aggressive tactics used by some parents to take and retain possession of children to gain the upper hand in custody battles.Lawyers say judges tend to favour the parent who has physical possession of the child, creating an incentive for a father or mother to take their child to gain an advantage in court.Dai appealed the April ruling to get custody of her son and lost. In its rejection of the appeal issued on Nov. 30, the court said the child's living environment was relatively stable and any change to this would not be beneficial to his upbringing.There are currently no laws against one parent taking sole possession of a child against the wishes of the other parent, lawyers say, reflecting a traditional view that conflicts between family members are considered private matters.The Supreme People's Court, China' highest court, declined to comment on specific cases when contacted by Reuters, but it said "maximising benefit to the child is the basic principle by which custody decisions are made."JOINT CUSTODY RAREChina's divorce rate since 2002 has more than tripled to 2.8 per 1,000 people last year, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. This is higher than the most recent official estimates for the European Union at 2.1 divorces per 1,000 people in 2011 and catching up to the United States at 3.2 in 2014 as increasingly individualistic aspirations compete with traditional notions of marriage.While official data is not publicly available, Yan Jun, a judge in Beijing's Haidian court, estimates that children are taken from spouses in 60 percent of cases where both parents are seeking custody."The data tells us that divorce cases where husbands and wives snatch children from each other are by no means in the minority," Yan wrote in an article posted on the court's website in March.Under Chinese law, parents are rarely granted joint legal custody, as is the case in some countries where both parents share the responsibility of raising the child after a divorce.Instead judges give one parent "direct custody", often preferring to maintain the status quo living arrangement for a child between two- and ten-years-old, some lawyers say.A lawyer at a Beijing family law firm, who declined to be identified, said child snatching often takes place before divorce proceedings commence, by which point the parent can argue the child has a stable living environment with them.EMOTIONAL DAMAGELi Ying, a Beijing-based lawyer and advocate for parental rights, said aggressive snatching tactics should be prosecuted under China's new domestic violence law enacted in March.Under these laws, beatings, frequent verbal abuse, and threatening behaviour are considered forms of domestic violence. Some family law lawyers argue that preventing a child from seeing their parent is restricting the child's physical liberty, while preventing a parent from seeing her child could be considered a form of psychological abuse.Even when judges rule in their favour, some mothers complain about a lack of enforcement and sometimes take matters into their own hands. One mother, who did not want to be named because her dealings the court are ongoing, said she hired a private detective who found her son living under a fake name with an aunt of her ex-husband in a northern city in China. The court had awarded her custody but when she complained months later that the order had not been enforced, a court official was blunt."She told me 'don't just depend on the courts. Are you working hard enough yourself or are you just depending on us to get your child back?" Reuters was unable to independently verify her accountreuters cj RK0937 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-1085301.Xml
US President-elect Donald Trump suggested that the United States and Russia lay to rest the controversy over Moscow's computer hacking of Democratic Party computers, saying, "We ought to get on with our lives."Trump has cast doubt on the findings of US intelligence agencies that Russian hackers took information from Democratic Party computers and individuals and posted it online to help Trump win the election.The Obama administration plans to announce on Thursday a series of retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking into US political institutions and individuals and leaking information, two US officials said yesterday.Asked by reporters if the United States should sanction Russia, Trump replied: "I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what's going on."Trump made his remarks at Mar-a-Lago, his seaside Florida resort where he is spending the Christmas and New Year's holidays while also interviewing candidates for administration jobs.Trump said he was not familiar with remarks earlier yesterday by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who said Russia and President Vladimir Putin should expect tough sanctions for the cyber attacks."We have speed. We have a lot of other things but I'm not sure you have the kind of security that you need. But I have not spoken with the senators and I certainly will be over a period of time," he said. REUTERS RSD 0743 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0435-1085285.Xml
Days after U.S. President Barack Obama signed a counter-propaganda bill into law, Chinese media has warned that with such a move China and the U.S. might be heading towards or more accurately slipping back into an ideological war. An article in the Global Times said that many observers consider the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act a response to China and Russia's growing soft power. "Although China is only mentioned once in the act, there is no doubt the future rival of the US is included as a target," it said. American Senators Rob Portman and Chris Murphy, architects of the legislation, insinuated that the billions China spends investing in foreign propaganda efforts are worrying, and claimed that China uses disinformation to seize the initiative in moves such as land reclamation in the South China Sea which "catches the US and its allies off guard." It said that ideology used to be a bone of contention in the Cold War but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its significance in international relations decreased and peace and development has become the main topics of the world. Major powers have also cast aside ideology from being an essential element in their interactions, and now focus their attention on the economy and geopolitics. It added that even yet ideology has never been abandoned. The end of the Cold War has always been praised by the Western world as a victory for their values. With this act, the U.S. has, once again, revived the road to an ideological war. To some extent, the U.S. is resurrecting McCarthyism, creating antagonistic emotions in and out of the U.S. The current will breed more splits in US society and more distrust between China and the U.S., it said. The article warned that to bring up ideological weapons is not a wise choice saying it is a deceit by which the U.S. still wishes to contain China's rise. Washington should understand the old mind-set of overwhelming one ideology with another will only lead the world into Cold War again. (ANI)
One of Islamic State's top commanders in Syria has been killed in a US-led coalition air strike, the coalition's spokesman said today, corroborating an earlier report.Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti, a member of Islamic State's war committee, was killed on Monday by the Tabqa Dam, a strategic objective in northern Syria near Raqqa city, the jihadists' main stronghold in the country, the spokesman said.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, had reported on Tuesday his probable death in combat as the militants sought to stave off an advance towards the dam by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).Islamic State has yet to confirm Kuwaiti's death.Kuwaiti was involved in Islamic State's retaking of the ancient city of Palmyra earlier this month and then went to Tabqa to help shore up the jihadists' defences against the SDF, the coalition said."Abu Jandal was involved in the use of suicide vehicles, IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and chemical weapons against the SDF ... his death will degrade ISIL's ability to defend Raqqa and launch external operations against the West," the statement said.The SDF alliance includes the Kurdish YPG militia and is supported by US-led coalition air strikes in northern Syria in its fight against Islamic State.REUTERS PY PM1427 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-1085678.Xml
Russian flights to Egypt will resume soon, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in a phone call today, Sisi's office said in a statement."President Putin affirmed Russia's intention to resume regular flights between Moscow and Cairo in the very near future," the statement said.Flights to Egypt from Russia were suspended after a Russian plane was blown out of the sky over Sinai in October 2015. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.REUTERS PY BL1627 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-1085885.Xml
Italian police have searched three houses in and around Rome where the man suspected of killing 12 people in Berlin in an attack 10 days ago may have stayed in 2015, a judicial source said today.Anis Amri, a Tunisian, first arrived in Europe by boat to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2011, and was shot dead by police in Milan four days after the December 19 attack in Berlin.The searches focused on places he was thought to have stayed after leaving a detention centre in Sicily in 2015, the source said. Police are investigating whether he was seeking shelter in Italy or trying to reach another country.His undetected passage to Italy, via France, from Germany after the attack, has prompted eurosceptic parties to call for the reintroduction of border controls that were removed by the continent's open-border Schengen pact.Italy tried to deport him to Tunisia in 2015 after he completed a four-year jail term for attempting to set fire to a building, but Tunisian authorities refused to take him, so he was released from the centre after 60 days.Italian anti-mafia and anti-terrorism chief Franco Roberti warned in an interview today that would-be militants needed the help of small-scale criminal networks such as those in Italy and Spain, partly to help provide false documents."From this point of view, Italy and Spain are the cradle," Roberti told La Repubblica newspaper.He added that Amri had been radicalised in jail in Italy. "Five years ago he was not a jihadist ... In desperation, in isolation, in alienation, he found the convictions to follow the path of radicalisation." REUTERS PY BL1712 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-1085978.Xml
Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that Syrian opposition groups and the Syrian government had signed a number of documents including a ceasefire deal that would take effect at midnight on the night of December 29-30.He also said that Russia had agreed to reduce its military deployment in Syria.REUTERS PY BL1732 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-1086004.Xml
US President-elect Donald Trump's choice for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, will have to explain his relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at his confirmation hearing, senior Republican senator John McCain said today.McCain, who is chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, also called President Putin "a thug and a murderer".Speaking on a tour of the Baltic states, where there is widespread concern that Moscow wants to reassert its power across the region, McCain said he had concerns about Tillerson, who opposed sanctions on Russia after its annexation of Crimea."I and several of my colleagues have concerns about Mr Tillerson, and some of his past activities, specifically his relationship with Vladimir Putin," McCain told reporters."I have concerns but at the same time I'm certain we will give Mr Tillerson an opportunity to make his case about why he is qualified to be Secretary of State."Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Tillerson could face a rocky confirmation process, given worries among both Democrats and Republicans about his connections with Russia and possible conflicts of interest related to his business ties.Relations between Moscow and Washington have deteriorated following Russia's annexation of the Crimea in 2014, with the two nations also at loggerheads over Syria.The Obama administration also plans a series of retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking into US political institutions and individuals and leaking information.Trump has said that the United States should move on from the controversy.McCain, however, said the United States needed to reassure voters there and abroad that elections would not be influenced by foreign powers."I agree with president elect that we need to get on of our lives - without having elections being affected by any outside influence, especially Vladimir Putin, who is a thug and a murderer," he said.Fellow Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who is travelling with McCain, called for sanctions against Russia to be widened to target areas like energy and to be directly aimed at Putin."I think the sanctions need to go beyond what it is today, they need to name Putin as an individual and his inner circle because nothing happens in Russia without his knowledge and approval," Graham said.REUTERS PY BL1734 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-1086026.Xml
Erdogan accused the US of supplying weapons to Kurdish fighters in Syria.

"NATO allies must stand by their partner Turkey in Syria, not the terrorist groups," said the Turkish President, referring to the People's Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Xinhua reported.

"You sent arms to terrorist organisations, then said 'we sent ammunition, not arms,'" Erdogan said. "We're not buying it, nor accepting it."

"Despite our NATO alliance, you support terrorist organisations, instead of us," the Turkish president said. "Are the terrorist organisations your partners in NATO?"

"If we are NATO strategic partners, then you should support us," Erdogan said, addressing the US administration.

"Terrorist organisations will eventually attack nations supporting them too," he warned.

--IANS ahm/bg

( 160 Words)

2016-12-29-18:56:09 (IANS)
A Free Syrian Army-affiliated rebel official said today rebels had agreed to a nationwide ceasefire plan backed by Russia and Turkey.Zakaria Malahifji, head of the political office of rebel group Fastaqim, told Reuters the truce excludes areas under the control of Islamic State only. The Syrian army earlier said the ceasefire excluded Islamic State, the group formerly known as the Nusra Front and all groups linked to them. REUTERS PY AN1812 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-1086118.Xml
Serbia agreed today to buy nine helicopters from Airbus Helicopters to bolster its defences, part of a wider modernisation plan that also includes the procurement of aircraft and equipment from Russia.Serbia's military, including its air force, was depleted during the wars of the 1990s and most of its existing aircraft are nearing the end of their lifetime.Without specifying the price or timeframe for delivery, the Defence Ministry said in a statement the contract with Airbus was for the purchase of nine H145M light helicopters with spares and tools, to be used by both military and police.Serbia's military budget for 2017 is set at 494 million euros around 1.4 per cent of national output.The deal also involves a transfer of technology for maintenance of the aircraft and training for pilots and land crews."With this procurement, the Air Force as well as the Helicopter Unit of the Interior Ministry will be equipped with the latest generation of helicopters," the statement said.Earlier this month, Russia donated six MIG-29 fighter jets to Serbia, on condition Belgrade pays for their overhaul. In June, Serbia also bought two Russian Mi17 utility helicopters for 25 million euros.Serbia is balancing its relations with Russia, a traditional Slavic and Orthodox Christian ally, with a push to join the European Union and foster ties with NATO, though it wants to remain militarily neutral.On December 15, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said that in addition to the purchase of nine Airbus Helicopters aircraft, another four could be donated. REUTERS PY AN1833 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-1086176.Xml
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said today that Russia was always ready for wide-ranging dialogue with the upcoming leadership in the United States, but without forcing events. "We are open to dialogue at any time in a variety of formats, but not forcing events." Lavrov said in an exclusive interview to RIA Novostim news agency. He said it was important for US President-elect Donald Trump to focus on the task of forming his cabinet, but welcomed the upcoming head of state's pro-Russian stance. "Of course, we reacted positively to Trump's position in favor of establishing normal cooperation with Russia, as he declared during the campaign," Lavrov said. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump underscored the need to "rectify the currently very poor state of Russian-US relations" in a November 14 phone conversation, he said. Lavrov noted that Russia was ready to cooperate with Trump's administration on counter-terrorism, including in Syria. "With regard to our work with Trump's team, we are ready to cooperate in the fight against terrorism,"he said, stressing that Moscow's readiness includes and extends beyond Syria. Lavrov also said that possible Putin-Trump meeting needed careful preparation. "The same applies to organizing the summit, in any event requiring careful preparation. We should wait when the new president takes office on January 20, 2017, and when the channels of dialogue with the Republican administration start fully working," Lavrov said.UNI XC PS SNU 1809 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0421-1086114.Xml
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan had a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart today to discuss the ceasefire in Syria due to come into effect at midnight, Erdogan's spokesman said in a statement.The leaders also discussed upcoming talks about Syria due to take place in the Kazakh capital Astana, spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said in the statement.Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a ceasefire between Syrian opposition groups and the Syrian government starting at midnight today. The Kremlin statement came after Moscow, Iran and Turkey said they were ready to broker a peace deal in the nearly six-year-old Syrian war. REUTERS PY NS1930 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-1086396.Xml
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a ceasefire between Syrian opposition groups and the Syrian government starting at midnight today.The parties were also prepared to start peace talks, Putin said, after Moscow, Iran and Turkey expressed readiness to broker a deal to settle the nearly six-year-old Syrian war.The Syrian army announced a nationwide halt to fighting but said Islamic State and ex-Nusra Front militants and all groups linked to them would be excluded from the deal. It did not say which unnamed groups would be excluded.Several rebel officials told Reuters they had agreed to the ceasefire, due to come into effect at 2200 GMT today.It was the third nationwide ceasefire agreed in Syria this year. The previous two, negotiated by Washington and Moscow, collapsed within weeks as warring sides accused each other of violations. The current deal does not involve the United States or United Nations.One rebel commander expressed optimism that this deal would hold: "This time I have confidence in its seriousness. There is new international input," he said, without elaborating.Talks on the latest truce picked up momentum after Russia, Iran and Turkey last week said they were ready to back a peace deal and adopted a declaration setting out principles that any agreement should adhere to.Putin said opposition groups and the Syrian government had signed a number of documents, including the ceasefire, measures to monitor the truce, and a statement on readiness to start peace talks."The agreements reached are, of course, fragile, need a special attention and involvement... But after all, this is a notable result of our joint work, efforts by the defence and foreign ministries, our partners in the regions," Putin said.He also said Russia had agreed to reduce its military deployment in Syria, where its support has turned the tide in favour of President Bashar al-Assad in a war that has killed more than 300,000 and forced more than 11 million to flee their homes.Turkey said it and Russia would guarantee the ceasefire."With this agreement, parties have agreed to cease all armed attacks, including aerial, and have promised not to expand the areas they control against each other," the Turkish foreign ministry said.Three rebel officials told Reuters the deal excluded Islamic State, but did include the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group, formerly al Qaeda's Syria branch, the Nusra Front - appearing to contradict the Syrian army's statement.Russia's defence ministry said the insurgent groups that signed the agreement included the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, which operates primarily near Damascus, and Jabha Shamiya, one of the main groups that has operated in Aleppo.WASHINGTON SIDELINEDThe United States has been sidelined in recent negotiations and is not due to attend the next round of peace talks in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, a key Russian ally.Its exclusion reflects growing frustration from both Turkey and Russia over Washington's policy on Syria, officials have said.However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the United States could join the peace process once President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.Talks on the ceasefire reflect the complexity of Syria's civil war, with an array of groups and foreign interests involved on all sides.Turkey and Russia support different sides in the war. Ankara has insisted on the departure of Assad, who is backed by Russia.Likewise, demands that troops from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement leave Syria may not please Iran, another major supporter of Assad. Hezbollah troops have been fighting alongside Syrian government forces against rebels opposed to Assad."All foreign fighters need to leave Syria. Hezbollah needs to return to Lebanon," Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.Sources have told Reuters that, under an outline deal between the three countries, Syria could be divided into informal zones of regional power and Assad would remain president for at least a few years.Meanwhile, disagreements remain between big powers.Ankara supports the Free Syrian Army, a loose alliance of rebel groups, some of which it is backing in operations in northern Syria designed to sweep Islamic State and Syrian Kurdish fighters from its southern border.The United States is backing the Syrian Kurdish YPG in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, a move that has infuriated Turkey, which sees the YPG as an extension of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Ankara fears that advances by Kurdish fighters in Syria could inflame militants at home.Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has accused the United States of supporting terrorism in Syria, including Islamic State, comments that Washington has dismissed as "ludicrous"."We, as Turkey, have been calling on Western nations for some time to not distinguish between terrorist organizations and to be principled and consistent in their stance," Erdogan said in a speech on Thursday."Some countries, namely the United States, have come up with some excuses on their own and overtly supported the organisations that massacre innocent people in our region."REUTERS SHS AN2223 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1086599.Xml
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said today that the window of opportunity presented by the Syrian ceasefire should not be wasted.Erdogan thanked Russia for its efforts on the ceasefire, which he said included air strikes. He said planned talks on Syria in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, would not replace separate talks in Geneva, but complement them."This window of opportunity should not be wasted," Erdogan said at a news conference in Ankara. "I thank all sides including Russia for the ceasefire."REUTERS SHS AN2241 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1086628.Xml
Hackers have targeted Ukrainian state institutions about 6,500 times in the past two months, including incidents that showed Russian security services were waging a cyberwar against the country, President Petro Poroshenko said today.In December, Ukraine suffered attacks on its finance and defence ministries and the State Treasury that allocates cash to government institutions. A suspected hack also wiped out part of Kiev's power grid, causing a blackout in part of the capital."Acts of terrorism and sabotage on critical infrastructure facilities remain possible today," Poroshenko said during a meeting of the National Security and Defence Council, according to a statement released by Poroshenko's office.The statement said the president stressed that "the investigation of a number of incidents indicated the complicity directly or indirectly of Russian security services waging a cyberwar against our country".Relations between Kiev and Moscow collapsed in 2014 following Russia's annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, where fighting continues despite a ceasefire agreement.Among the 6,500 attacks Poroshenko said the country had been hit by, the attack on the State Treasury halted its systems for several days, meaning state workers and pensioners had been unable to receive their salaries or payments on time.Cyber security firm CrowdStrike said last week a hacking group linked to the Russian government likely used a malware implant on Android devices to track and target Ukrainian artillery units from late 2014 through 2016.Its findings are the latest to support a growing view among Western security officials and cyber security researchers that Russian President Vladimir Putin has increasingly relied on hacking to exert influence and attack geopolitical foes.Russia has repeatedly denied hacking accusations.Poroshenko's comments come as the Obama administration plans to announce retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking into US political institutions and individuals and leaking information in an effort to help Donald Trump win the presidency. Trump has dismissed the assessments of the U.S. intelligence community.In December 2015, Ukrainian regional power company Prykarpattyaoblenergo reported an outage, saying the area affected included the regional capital Ivano-Frankivsk. Ukraine's state security service blamed Russia.Experts widely described that incident as the first known power outage caused by a cyber attack. The US cyber firm iSight Partners identified the perpetrator as a Russian hacking group known as "Sandworm".As a result of the cyber attacks, Ukraine's security council agreed measures to protect state institutions, the statement said. It did not disclose what the measures were. REUTERS SHS AN2343 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1086651.Xml
The Turkish President denounced the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that have not offered the minimum support to Turkey against terrorist organisations. In a speech delivered in capital Ankara on the war against the Islamic State terrorist organisation on Thursday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: "Today, we do not see the slightest support for our operation from either NATO or allied nations that have power in the region." Additionally, Erdogan condemned the "lies" claiming that Turkey is supporting IS and wondered how that is possible if Turkey is the most affected country by the terrorist organisation, Efe news agency reported. During the speech, the President denounced the aid from the US to the Syrian Kurdish forces of the People's Protection Units (YPG). Regarding Wednesday's statement by the US embassy in Ankara, in which Washington denied delivering weapons to the YPG, Erdogan said that Ankara considers this militia a terrorist organisation, but Washington thinks otherwise. He added that several studies, which he did not identify, show that the YPG is a Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is also included on the lists of designated terrorist organizations in the US and the EU. --IANS vgu/ ( 210 Words) 2016-12-30-01:26:07 (IANS)
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri makes a statement at the parliament in Beirut, capital of Lebanon, on Dec. 28, 2016. Lebanon's government headed by Prime Minister Saad Hariri won the parliamentary vote of confidence after 87 legislators voted in favor, four members of parliament (MPs) against, and one abstention on Wednesday. (Xinhua/Hassan Ibrahim)

BEIRUT, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's government headed by Prime Minister Saad Hariri won the parliamentary vote of confidence after 87 legislators voted in favor, four members of parliament (MPs) against, and one abstention on Wednesday.

Kataeb MPs Sami Gemayel, Nadim Gemayel and Samer Saadeh, and MP Khaled Daher voted against while the only al-Jamaa al-Islamiya MP Imad al-Hout, abstained.

Only 92 out of the 126 legislators attended the voting session.

Hariri responded to the MPs' remarks on Tuesday during the debate over his government's policy statement, saying "We thank the Lebanese army and security forces for the sacrifices they made. I hereby vow that the government will follow-up on the issue of the detained servicemen until they return safely to their homes."

"I confirm that there some contentious issues similar to the arms issue" he said referring to Hizbullah's arms without directly mentioning it.

"We want a new electoral law. Each one of us has a role in that regard," he added.

Hariri also pointed out "I believe no one objects to women's parliamentary quota. We have stressed our commitment to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL). The STL was primarily established to achieve justice."

Hariri was tasked with forming the first government of President Michel Aoun's term, who was elected Lebanon's thirteenth President on Oct. 31.

Lebanon endured a two-year presidential vacuum since the end of former President Michel Suleiman's six-year tenure on May 25th, 2014.
BEIJING/ZHENGZHOU, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- China opened a third and fourth Circuit Court of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) in eastern Jiangsu Province and central Henan Province on Wednesday.

The Third Circuit Court in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu, will mainly handle major administrative, civil and commercial cases that should be heard by the SPC in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces, and Shanghai Municipality.

The fourth court in Henan provincial capital Zhengzhou will cover the four provinces of Henan, Shanxi, Hubei and Anhui.

According to the SPC, the two courts will help meet local demands in the two densely populated regions.

Zhou Qiang, the SPC president and the country's chief justice, said on Wednesday that the circuit courts should play a pioneering role in judicial reform.

Hailing the establishment of circuit courts as an important measure to advance rule of law and safeguard judicial fairness, Zhou urged the circuit courts to solve local disputes and facilitate litigation, so as to "let people feel fairness and justice in every case".

Circuit courts should vigorously advance judicial reform and provide courts nationwide with experience in judicial reform and contribute to exploring court management and operations suitable to China's actual conditions.

First opened in 2015, circuit court judgments, orders and decisions are equal to those of the SPC.

The first two, in southern city of Shenzhen and northeastern city of Shenyang, have helped in cases that involve more than one administrative region since January 2015, providing easier access for the general public, said the SPC.

Also on Wednesday, a revised judicial interpretation on circuit courts was published by the SPC and went into effect, setting out plans for a fifth and sixth circuit courts in Chongqing Municipality and Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi Province.

Cases from Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong and Inner Mongolia will be handled directly by the SPC.

The Fifth Circuit Court will cover Chongqing, Tibet Autonomous Region and provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan. The Sixth Circuit Court will handle cases in provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
BEIJING, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- China has handed over control of Ziyuan III 02, a new civilian high-resolution mapping satellite, to its user.

Control of the satellite was passed to its main user, the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation (NASG), on Monday, after it had been in orbit for more than 200 days since it was launched on May 30 from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.

It will be used mainly for collecting 3D mapping information within Chinese territory.

The satellite will join its predecessor Ziyuan III 01, a research satellite launched in January 2012, to capture high-definition 3D images, said NASG deputy director Li Pengde.

Together, the two Ziyuan III satellites boast a "revisit time," the time elapsed between observations of the same point on Earth, of around three days, down from five days when Ziyuan III 01 was operating alone, according to Li.

Their operation will double the efficiency of image formation and reduce the period of global coverage by half, Li said.

He said the two satellites could provide stable, high-resolution and high quality 3D image data for the country's surveying and mapping development.

"In terms of online map and navigation services, our real-time image services could enable companies, such as Map World, Amap, NavInfo and Baidu, to greatly reduce the update period, improve accuracy, and cut costs of their map data," said Sun Chengzhi, deputy head of the NASG Satellite Surveying and Mapping Application Center.

Li said the NASG began the approval process for Ziyuan III 03 and 04 in the second half of this year.

By 2020, China should have launched Ziyuan III 03 and a Gaofen-7 high-resolution remote sensing satellite. By 2025, the country plans to put Ziyuan III 04 and a second Gaofen-7 satellite into orbit.
by Xinhua writers Lou Chen and Ai Fumei

YINCHUAN, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- History likes to repeat itself, perhaps more so in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region than other parts of China.

In 214 BC, China's first emperor Qinshihuang deployed military forces along the west bank of the Yellow River, including what became Ningxia.

In the following dynasties, migrants continued to arrive to drive away barbarian tribes, farm and build. Migration continued through feudal societies to modern times.

During 2011 to 2015, over 329,000 people in Ningxia left their ancestral homes to live in areas with better land, transportation and more water.

Most were from Xihaigu, a region of six counties in the south of Ningxia, historically and even internationally known for its harsh environment.

"Its bitterness and infertility is the worst under heaven," Zuo Zongtang, a Qing dynasty general said.

"Live in places where there is water and grass." This is a popular saying among farmers eager to escape environmental degradation, climate change and the shackling life of mountains after mountains.

Thus, relocation continues. According to a five-year plan for Ningxia (2016-2020), about 80,000 poverty-stricken people are expected to move.

TREES DIE, BUT PEOPLE LIVE ON

"If you move trees, they die. If you move people, they live on," An Yanlong, a Xihaigu farmer, cited the common saying. He just bought a new home in the suburbs of regional capital Yinchuan, five hours of drive away.

An's old home in Xiangwafu village was spacious cave house. "The bad thing about it is inconvenience. To buy salt or soap, I had to walk five kilometers to the nearest shop," he said.

An spent 12,800 yuan (1,969 U.S. dollars) in 2014 on a 54-square-meter apartment in Binhejiayuan, now home to 16,800 migrants. "I had to build a kitchen and a room for my parents in the yard, It is crowded here," he said.

An's new job keeps him from worrying over the troubles of a small house. Working a raspberry farm, his monthly salary of 3,600 yuan is more than he had hoped for. Raspberries is a trendy but costly topping for cake fans. One small box, containing 20 berries, can sell for 20 yuan at a Beijing fruit market.

"My kids can go to play in the city on weekends and, it is convenient for my parents to go to hospitals, so it is not too bad," said An, 44 years old.

Not all new migrants have desirable jobs, though.

"Moving is the first step, to get out of the poor houses. The second step is to get rich," said Hao Xifen, director of poverty relief office in Yinchuan City.

Hao is canvassing textile companies, dairies and flower growers. In Yinchuan, annual disposable income of these migrants grew from 2,300 yuan (353 U.S. dollars) in 2012 to 6,086 yuan (1,217 U.S. dollars) in 2015.

LARGEST RESETTLEMENT IN CHINA

Seventeen years ago, Hongsibao was a gigantic training ground for the military. Today, it is the largest resettlement area in China, housing 230,000 people from eight counties, of whom 62 percent are ethnic Hui.

Ma Rong, 27-year-old Hui woman, came to live at Hongsibao in 2002. She left for college and came back to work at the Ningxia Immigration Museum in Hongsibao.

"Migration goes back to Qin dynasty, and there are many types of it, but the moving never stopped," she told visitors. "There is organized resettlement by governments and there are voluntary relocations."

Yan Shenglong was one of the voluntary migrants. His village was not listed for relocation.

"Back at the old home, there was no road, no tap water, only one hill to climb after another. Who would want to stay there?" Yan asked.

The farmer in his fifties considers himself visionary. In 2003, he spent all his savings -- 7,000 yuan -- on a parcel of land for farming. "There used to be 300 people in my village, now only 60 remain, mostly old men," he said.

Uprooting is not easy. It took Yan four years to earn enough money to build a two-room house. "I had no money left. I had to earn brick by brick," he said.

A new home brings new hardships, but Yan is undaunted. "At least there is hope and good life at the end of the road," he said.

Yan made some money growing grapes five years earlier. Now there are too many vineyards, and grape prices have fallen. "I'm growing lily roots between the furrows," he said, while plowing.

Yang Guowen, 67-year-old Communist Party chief of Zhongquantang village at Hongsibao, does not regret the decision to bring all his fellow villagers to Hongsibao in 2001.

"Eight hundred and four families migrated here. In the first two years, there were many complaints. After three years I hardly heard any. People stopped complaining when they started to make money. Now they are growing grapes, goji berries and working as forest rangers," said Yang.

"There is no wrong in the policy of resettlement. It is the right way," he said.

LESS LAND TO LIVE ON

Yan Shenglong thinks he was lucky to have made the decision to migrate 13 years earlier. "Farmers must have land, but there is less and less land," he said.

Yan went to visit his relatives at Binhejiayuan, and saw hardship in their new life.

"Their allotted land is much smaller than mine. The land has been leased to agriculture companies, and they don't even know which section is theirs," he said.

"Eighty yuan for a day?! you can't get a man at such a low price here in our community," Yan said after being told their daily pay at part-time jobs.

Zhang Yaowu, a researcher in migration in Ningxia Academy of Social Sciences, said local governments should foster and develop more land for the new migrants and create commercial opportunities to help people get rich.

"Simply resettling them is not enough. It is important to help them develop," he said.
CHENGDU, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- It is the best of jobs, it is the worst of jobs.

Many people told Wei Hua, a panda keeper in southwest China's Sichuan Province, that were jealous seeing him playing with the cute cubs, but no one saw the moment when the 41-year-old had both wrists broken by a panda.

Holding a master degree of wildlife protection, Wei quit work in the zoo of Nanning, capital city of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, three years ago.

He then became a keeper in the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda.

Wei's job was to train pandas in Wolong National Nature Reserve so that they could survive when released into the wild.

"I like Wolong, where I have more chances to take part in wild panda research and protection," he said.

The Tiantai Mountain training center where he worked was 2,500 to 3,100 meters above sea level. The work is not as easy as some panda lovers had imagined.

Wei was usually wet through with sweat after cleaning pandas' shacks. In rainy days the excrement of pandas could make him smelly. When the weather was bad, Wei and his colleagues stayed in the forest all day long, eating cold bread and drinking water from the stream. The reserve is also prone to disasters such as landslides.

"But my efforts paid off when I saw the cute animals grow up healthy," he said with a smile.

One of his favorite pandas there is Ximei, a female panda sent for training a fortnight ago.

"She is graceful and smart," Wei wrote in his diary. "She loves playing with water, and she likes to be pretty."

His work every day was to keep records. In the following two days, Wei didn't see Ximei's daughter Baxi.

"Could she have been involved in some accident?" he wondered.

On Dec. 17, he decided to go into training area to find Baxi.

After searching, they finally found her monitor signal. "So you are here," said the delighted Wei while he was approaching the panda. "I have been worried about you for two days. Don't hide from me again."

As they were about to leave, Ximei appeared all of a sudden. In a bid to protect her daughter, she attacked the keepers.

When Wei Hua was rescued, his hat and glasses were gone. He had a deep cut on the head, a broken finger bone was visible, and his trousers were wet with blood.

In the hospital, doctors found the tendon on his foot as well as his wrists were broken. He also had a third of his left palm bitten off.

"The first question he asked when he saw us was 'are the pandas all right?'" his colleague Qiu Yu said.

Wei is one of the four panda keepers in the training center. "Where there are pandas, there are panda keepers," Qiu said. "They monitor the pandas' condition, and collect first-hand data. In the depths of mountains, they pave the way for pandas to go back to the wild."
by Ronald Ssekandi

SEMBABULE, Uganda, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Revered for its long horns, the Ankole cattle are sacred animals in rural western Uganda and parts of neighboring Rwanda. The status of an individual among the tribesmen depended on the number and beauty of the cattle they possessed.

"They are very beautiful to look at especially when they are very big in number. They are seen as wealth," Fidel Ruzindazi, a 70-year-old cattle keeper in the central Ugandan district of Sembabule told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Among the Bahima tribesmen, the Ankole longhorn cattle functioned as dowry, and were used to strengthen friendship, resolve conflicts and cleansing sins. Their hides were used for making clothes, mats and beddings. The horns were used to make beads and trumpets among others.

Their urine was used to clean containers for churning milk and keeping yogurt. Their milk, according to scientists, has high fat content and the meat is low in cholesterol which makes them healthier and more nutritious to consume compared to exotic breeds.

The ghee from the cows is served as a special sauce and the Bahima used to make bread and gravy from the cows' blood.

Over time, however, it is becoming increasingly hard to keep the longhorn cattle as they graze in large areas. The increasing human population, among other factors, has reduced the grazing land available for the herders.

Many of the herders have been forced to sell off some of their Longhorn cattle and switch to grazing smaller herds of exotic and hybrid breeds. The exotic breeds produce more milk, meat and need less land to graze on, thus bringing in more income.

"Even those who traditionally liked the cows are now losing that hope because the grazing land is getting smaller," Ruzindazi said.

Experts are however warning that if this breeding program continues, it will lead to the extinction of the indigenous breed. Along with the loss of the breed, cultural traditions and indigenous knowledge about animal breeding are likely to disappear.

CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS

The persistent harsh climate change effects that have hit Uganda in recent years have perturbed herders on whether to continue with the exotic breeds or return to the longhorn cattle that can withstand the effects.

The persistent long dry spells come with diseases that exotic breeds cannot withstand. This has forced farmers to resort to using antibiotics and acaricides to treat their exotic breeds. This reduces their profit margins.

Ruzindazi argues that this has forced some herders to resort to crop farming instead of rearing cattle.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, himself a cattle keeper, has favored keeping the longhorn cows as opposed to exotic breeds, noting that the indigenous breeds can survive on poor quality vegetation and live off limited amounts of water in times of long dry spells.
Greek Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas speaks during a press briefing in Athens, Greece, Dec. 28, 2016. Greek government pledged on Wednesday to improve living conditions for refugees stranded in the debt-ridden country in 2017. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos)

by Maria Spiliopoulou

ATHENS, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Greek government pledged on Wednesday to improve living conditions for refugees stranded in the debt-ridden country in 2017.

During a press briefing in Athens, Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas elaborated on the progress achieved in recent months and the plans for the new year regarding the management of the refugee crisis.

The Greek official acknowledged shortages and mistakes and underlined the solidarity Greek society has demonstrated to the more than one million people who fled war and poverty and landed on Greek shores since 2015.

Mouzalas promised efforts from the Greek side to provide more aid to the 62,000 refugees and migrants trapped in Greece after the closure of the Balkan route to central Europe last winter, urging other European countries to offer more support and share the burden with the countries at the frontline of the crisis.

With a few exceptions, most refugees and migrants will spend this winter in decent accommodation centers with heated containers, prefabricated houses or hotel rooms and apartments under a UNHCR program, he stressed.

Last winter, thousands of people stayed in tents in makeshift camps or organized facilities with no sufficient food or medical care.

Currently the refugees and migrants are accommodated in 36 organized sites nationwide with average capacity of 600-900, the minister noted, recognizing that the situation remains difficult for those trapped on the northern Aegean Sea islands in overcrowded hot spots.

Under the European Union-Turkey agreement reached in March to stem the refugee influx, all new arrivals remain on the islands until the asylum bids are assessed. Those who were not eligible for asylum were returned to Turkey.

Although the number of arrivals has dramatically declined in recent months compared to 2015, due to delays in the asylum procedures, the hotspots on Lesvos, Chios and other islands are currently hosting 15,500 people, almost doubling their capacity.

Mouzalas promised on Wednesday that in early 2017 the understaffed Asylum Service will be strengthened and new small detention centers will be created on the islands to decongest the existing facilities and ease tensions in the hotspots.

In addition, in springtime the Greek government plans to replace the free meals offered to refugees with a 400 euros (415.65 U.S. dollars) per family monthly allowance. Electronic identification cards will be issued for all migrants and refugees living in Greece, the minister announced.

Speaking to reporters, the Greek official put emphasis on the issue of the unaccompanied minors, vowing more hard work to create more special facilities for this vulnerable group of refugees and migrants and tackle the challenge.

Out of the some 20,000 underage refugees and migrants currently stranded in Greece, approximately 2,200 minors are unaccompanied. Due to the lack of adequate special facilities in several cases, they are accommodated in closed areas within hot spots or in police custody for their own protection.

"The facilities for unaccompanied minors are special facilities. There should be 20-30 minors hosted in each one. They receive special support. Old tools are insufficient. We are trying to create new tools, such as the safe zones inside the existing camps," Mouzalas said.

"We believe that as long as the EU-Turkey agreement is still valid by Easter time, perhaps a little later, we will have addressed also this issue of the unaccompanied minors in Greece," the minister said, reiterating Athens' commitment to the deal.
TEHRAN, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Iran concluded a three-day large-scale military exercise on Wednesday by test-firing myriad of missiles.

On Wednesday, Iran's air defense forces "successfully" test-fired its long-range surface-to-air S-200 missile system in the military exercise in southern Persian Gulf region, Press TV reported.

Besides, various other medium-range missile systems, including Mersad (Ambush), were deployed to annihilate mock aggressive aircraft.

On the day, the Iranian forces carried out the first operational test of Sayyad-3 (Hunter-3) missiles by Talash (Struggle) homegrown system to hit high-altitude targets, Tasnim news agency reported.

Capable of intercepting targets within a range of 150 km in high altitudes, Sayyad-3 has been paired with Talash missile system which also launches Sayyad-2 missiles against targets at medium altitudes.

The paired air defense system is also equipped with locally-manufactured fire control radar, dubbed Ofoq (Horizon), Tasnim said.

It was also announced here on Wednesday that since Monday when the drills began, the Iranian air defense warned several fighter jets and drones belonging to the U.S. navy not to approach the airspace of the military exercise.

Over the past three days, the air defense has given warnings to 12 aircraft of trans-regional countries to stay away from the country's airspace, Abbas Farajpour, the spokesman for the war game, was quoted as saying by Tasnim.

On Tuesday, Iran also tested a number of high-precision missiles as well as radar operations in the military exercise, according to Press TV.

On the day, the low and high-range missile defense systems of Mersad and Ya Zahra-3 stationed at Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)'s Khatam al-Anbiya air defense base reconnoitred, intercepted, and destroyed mock airborne targets, the report said.

In the radar operators by Iran's army and the IRGC, the long-range aerospace telecommunications system named Aseman (Sky) provided sustainable contact among the elements of the drill over a range of over 150 km.

Among the objectives of the maneuver on Tuesday was detection and interception of the hypothetical enemy's unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with homegrown missile systems, Tasnim reported.

On the first day of the drills on Monday, various defensive apparatuses were "successfully" scrambled to designated positions in record time, the report said.

Also, the drills on Monday focused on intelligence gathering during reconnaissance missions and capturing aerial footage from designated targets in the sea using reconnaissance drones.

According to the reports, the Iranian air defense also employed a broad range of equipment, including tactical radars, mobile watch posts, and ground-based and air-based eavesdropping systems in the drills.

The exercise set a record in the tactical mobility of armed forces, after the rapid deployment of radar and missile systems, artillery units, as well as communication and electronic warfare systems to the operation zone, Tasnim quoted military official as saying.

Code-named "Defenders of Velayat Skies 7," the war game covered the Persian Gulf provinces of Hormozgan and Bushehr along with the southwestern province of Khuzestan.

According to the official IRNA news agency, Iran's Air Defense Commander Brig. Gen. Farzad Esmaili said that the drill was held in an area covering 496,000 km.

Participants in the drill included the air defense forces of both the Iranian army and the IRGC, navy support units, the army and IRGC's ground forces artillery units, Esmaili said.

The exercises, which included around 17,000 military personnel members, simulated intense and large-scale electronic warfare.

The maneuvers sought to hone coordination among the different divisions of the armed forces employed to defend the country's airspace.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivers remarks on Middle East peace at the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C., the United States, on Dec. 28, 2016. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday only two-state solution can achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday only two-state solution can achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

By describing his thoughts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "candid," Kerry issued one of the Obama administration's most outspoken criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu five days after the United States in a rare move let pass a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement on occupied Palestinian territory.

"Despite our best efforts over the years, the two-state solution is now in serious jeopardy," said Kerry here at a press conference. "We cannot, in good conscience, do nothing, and say nothing, when we see the hope of peace slipping away."

Though the 70-minute speech covered a sweeping range of elements of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the incitement of violence, Kerry made it clear that his focus was the Israeli settlement.

"The Israeli prime minister publicly supports a two-state solution, but his current coalition is the most right-wing in Israel history with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements," said Kerry.

"The result is that policies of this government, which the prime minister himself just described, as more committed to settlements than any in Israel's history are leading in the opposite direction. They are leading towards one-state," he added.

In a sharp jab at Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition, Kerry pointedly pushed back the Israeli rational behind settlement activity that settlement expansion was important for Israel's security.

"Leaders of the settler movement are motivated by ideological imperatives that entirely ignore legitimate Palestinian aspirations," said Kerry.
by Jamal Hashim

BAGHDAD, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi army has launched a campaign for more than two months to retake Mosul, the second largest city in the country, from Islamic State (IS) group. However, the terrorist group is not giving up a fight.

Since early November, the Iraqi commandos of Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) fought fierce street-to-street battles inside Mosul and managed to free some 40 districts from IS militants in the early weeks of the battle, while the army's 9th and 1st Divisions recaptured six more districts, according to official statements.

The troops at the beginning made rapid advance inside the city, but later the extremist militants showed stiff resistance after the IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urged his fighters not to retreat from Mosul.

He called on the militants "to confront the enemy (security forces) and transform their blood into rivers, their days into dark nights," according to the recording which could not be authentically verified.

Abdulllah al-Obeidi, a political expert, told Xinhua that al-Baghdadi's message dramatically changed the group's usual tactic of withdrawing from the cities and towns after a few days of heavy and sporadic clashes.

"Many observers believed that the group's militants would do it again and withdraw suddenly after showing some resistance, but al-Baghdadi's audio recording turned the table. Yes, they (IS) have been defeated and withdrew from some positions, but their defeat was never without heavy cost," Obeidi said.

Over the past two and a half years, the IS militants have dug an extensive network of tunnels and trenches to transport equipment and fighters, and rigged roads and bridges with bomb.

One of the most difficult hurdles facing the Iraqi forces is the presence of over one million civilians, who are still living in the city and the extremist group is using them as human shields.

However, during the past few weeks, the front lines in Mosul have barely changed and the increasing casualties among the Iraqi forces and civilians have pushed military and political experts to warn that the battle inside Mosul has settled into a grinding war of attrition.

The ferocity of the battles forced the Iraqi forces to seek support to avoid the long battles and heavy casualties.

According to Obeidi, seeking support would entails Abadi, as the commander-in-chief of Iraqi forces, looking into available options: traditional army forces, the predominantly Shiite paramilitary Hashd Shaabi units, and the U.S.-led international coalition.

"Except for the U.S.-trained and equipped forces of CTS, the mission for the traditional Iraqi forces is difficult, because they are not well-trained on street-to-street battles," he said.

The 9th armored Division made initial advance in six districts in southeastern Mosul in the early days of Mosul battles but could not made further progress, while the army could not enter Mosul from the northern part of the city.

"The predominantly Shiite Hashd Shaabi units are not welcomed neither by the residents of the Sunni heartland in Mosul, nor by the U.S. officials who refuse to cooperate with the Iranian-backed units, for fear that their presence will provoke sectarian strife that may encourage many Sunni civilians to join IS group rather than being humiliated or killed by the Shiite paramilitary," Obeidi said.

However, the third option is to expect the international coalition troops to embed more extensively with Iraqi forces in an attempt to accelerate the anti-IS campaign which has slowed after quick initial advances, he added.

More than 5,000 U.S. troops are on the ground in Iraq as part of an international coalition that is advising local forces in a bid to recapture the areas that IS group seized in 2014 when Iraq's army and police dropped their weapons and fled.

A U.S. commander told media in an interview that the U.S. troops are stepping up their involvement to act closer with the Iraqi military units; like small U.S. special operations teams embedding with larger indigenous forces to help build capacity.

"We are deepening our integration with them (Iraqi forces), and we are now pushing that into more of the Iraqi formations," according to the U.S. Army Colonel Brett G. Sylvia.

As battles continue, civilians of Mosul in eastern and the western sides of the city are the most affected by the conflict.

Many of the civilians have been killed or wounded in crossfire, by IS snipers and deadly suicide truck bombings, let alone the suffering of famine, lack of medicine, water and fuel in the harsh winter weather inside the city and at the camps.

According to a recent report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, up 116,490 people have fled their homes in Mosul and its adjacent districts since the beginning of military offensive in October to reclaim the IS largest stronghold in Iraq.

"If Abadi orders to facilitate the departure of residents, there would be a massive humanitarian crisis," Obeidi said.

"This is a challenging and compound equation, may we will need shocking surprises at the size of the dilemma; like the deployment of the U.S. troops, death or capture of al-Baghdadi that might lead to the collapse of the extremist group inside the city," Obeidi concluded.

All in all, the brutal urban fight for Mosul is succeeding, although slowly and costly, but is proving to be tougher than expected.

Earlier in the year, Abadi promised the Iraqi people and the world that IS will be eliminated in Iraq by the end of 2016. However, he told reporters on Tuesday that the Iraqi forces will need three months to eliminate IS group.

"In Iraq, I believe that conditions indicate that it needs three months to eliminate Daesh (IS group)," Abadi said in a press conference in Baghdad.

Abadi's comment came in response to the U.S. general commanding coalition forces in Iraq who predicted, in an interview, two years of battles to clear IS group from its twin capitals of Mosul and Raqqa, and then to fight the remnants who will likely flee to the vast empty desert between Syria and Iraq.

Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been under the 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.
UN Secretary-GeneralBan Ki-moon(C, front) is seen during a meeting held by theUnited NationsSecurity Council to pay tribute to him at the UN headquarters in New York, Dec. 14, 2016. The UN Security Council on Wednesday paid tribute to outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, acknowledging his contribution to international peace, security and development. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

by William M. Reilly

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, after racking up the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has been lavished with praise in the last days of his 10-year tenure although he has been also criticized on other fronts.

The 72-year old former foreign minister of South Korea steps down Dec. 31, after serving the maximum two terms of five years each. He will be replaced by a former prime minister of Portugal, Antonio Guterres, 67, who headed the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) for 10 years, ending last year.

Ban's departure does not necessarily mean his disappearance.

It is widely speculated he may be the next president of South Korea and only the other day Ban indicated he will consider upon retirement involvement in South Korea politics which he described as in "turmoil" after impeachment of scandal-wracked President Park Geun-hye earlier this month.

The 193-member UN General Assembly and the 15-nation UN Security Council recently passed resolutions honoring his work. Representatives of regional organizations and member states lauded his tenure.

Ambassador Maythong Thammavongsa of Laos, speaking on behalf of Asian and Pacific countries in the Assembly, praised Ban as a "secretary-general who has displayed such great professional and personal qualities and who has contributed, through many initiatives that have been welcomed by all, to helping the Organization to make progress towards modernization and democratization."

The praise also was extensive outside UN Headquarters, with personal congratulations ringing from leaders such as U.S. President Barack Obama to Mayor Bill De Blasio of the City of New York, UN Headquarters host city, who proclaimed Dec. 13, 2016 as "Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Day."

The UN chief was widely praised more inside UN headquarters than he was afield where his ratings were mixed.

"The recent outpouring of praise for Ban is well intentioned but rather excessive," Richard Gowan, UN expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Xinhua News Agency last week. "Ban certainly deserves credit for his hard work, and his commitment to fighting climate change in particular."

The Paris accord calls for limiting the global temperature rise this century to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Also, the 17 SDGs that nations agreed to in 2015, under Ban's stewardship, seek to "leave no one behind" in sustainable development by 2030.

Gowan said Ban "struggled with significant parts of his portfolio, and was especially weak when it came to crisis management."

One such scandal was sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers, particularly in the Central African Republic (CAR).

However, Gowan said the secretary-general has been "commendably frank about some of his own errors," particularly the UN failure "to respond effectively to the mass killings that took place during the end of the Sri Lankan war in 2009," and the Haiti Cholera crisis where Ban "only just apologized for the UN's role in mismanaging the Haiti cholera outbreak" in 2010 that killed some 10,000 people.

The world organization blamed the outbreak on poor sanitary conditions at a Nepalese camp of UN peacekeepers. Victims were helped and programs initiated to prevent new cases but Ban didn't admit responsibility until only last August.

The sticking-to-his guns trait surfaced again after he said, during a visit to a camp in Western Sahara, that it appeared under "occupation."

That upset Morocco which annexed the region after the colonial power Spain surrendered it in 1975.

While he expressed regret through spokesman Stephen Dujarric at the "misunderstanding," there was no retraction.

Jonathan Tepperman, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, writing in a New York Times opinion piece during Ban's seventh year in office said, "The U.N. under Ban's stewardship has managed to get some things right: (generally) providing effective relief to refugees, (generally) doing a decent job on peacekeeping."

But criticism continued to come down on the world organization over Syria.

Ban did assign three personal envoys to handle the crisis -- the first two resigned in hopelessness.

The Security Council, divided over the Syrian conflict, has been ineffectual.

In his speech during the high-profile annual General Debate in the UN General Assembly this past September, Ban lamented an even longer-running problem, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Ten years lost to illegal settlement expansion," said the UN chief. "Ten years lost to intra-Palestinian divide, growing polarization and hopelessness. This is madness. Replacing a two-state solution with a one-state construct would spell doom: denying Palestinians their freedom and rightful future, and pushing Israel further from its vision of a Jewish democracy towards greater global isolation."

He immediately met vociferous Israeli opposition to that statement.

Citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Ban has been a champion of equality, regardless of gender and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning or queer and intersexual orientation.

He oversaw the establishment of UN Women, putting UN agencies affecting women under one umbrella for women's empowerment, appointed the first envoy for youth, focused more on prevention of natural and man-made disasters, advocated stopping the flow of illegal arms as the world faced mass migration.

"Ban has at least been willing to criticize his own performance, and he has improved as secretary-general over time," Gowan told Xinhua.

Ban, a South Korean national who loves Chinese classic philosophy and calligraphy, visited China for 11 times as the UN chief, and met on various occasions with Chinese leaders, who lauded his active role in enhancing the cooperation between the United Nations and China over the past decade.

Ban is leaving, not unusually, a host of unsolved issues for his successor. In addition to the aforementioned, they range through conflicts, mostly in Africa, and most recently the bloodshed in South Sudan, to terrorism, xenophobia, the seemingly endless quest for UN reform, demanded by the membership, which sometimes thwarts its progress because of special interests.

Asked at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York earlier this month what his biggest problem was, Ban replied, "The lack of empathy and lack of compassion of the world leaders," blaming them for "focusing on their very narrow personal or regional interests."

People express their grievances and leaders react by using "military and police forces," he said.

For Guterres, Ban has published a briefing book, for his new role. It's 345-pages long.
JERUSALEM, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday slammed the United States State Secretary John Kerry's Middle East policy speech, denouncing Kerry as "obsessed" and "biased."

Speaking in a televised statement, Netanyahu said that "Kerry deals obsessively with the settlements instead of touching on the root of the conflict."

The hardliner politician said he was "disappointed" and "surprised" by Kerry's speech. "Is that what the foreign minister of the world's largest power has to focus on?" he asked sarcastically.

Netanyahu also said he looks forward to working with the President-elect Donald Trump administration to "repeal" Friday's resolution by the United Nations Security Council, which condemned Israel's continued expansion of the settlements.

In his 70-minute speech, only weeks before the end of the Obama administration term, Kerry warned that Israel's construction of settlements was imperiling the chance of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel and achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

A few hours before the speech, Trump sent a message of support to Israel, telling the Jewish state to "stay strong" until Jan. 20 when he takes office.

In a response tweet, Netanyahu wrote: "President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!" adding with Israeli and U.S. flags and tags of Trump's children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr..

The historic UN resolution demands Israel to stop the settlements construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and denounced the settlements as a "flagrant violation" of international law.

About 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands that Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast War and has been controlling them ever since, despite international condemnations.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a statement to the press at his Jerusalem office on December 28, 2016, in response to a speech by the US Secretary of State. (AFP/Xinhua)

JERUSALEM, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday slammed the United States State Secretary John Kerry's Middle East policy speech, denouncing Kerry as "obsessed" and "biased."

Speaking in a televised statement, Netanyahu said that "Kerry deals obsessively with the settlements instead of touching on the root of the conflict."

The hardliner politician said he was "disappointed" and "surprised" by Kerry's speech. "Is that what the foreign minister of the world's largest power has to focus on?" he asked sarcastically.

Netanyahu also said he looks forward to working with the President-elect Donald Trump administration to "repeal" Friday's resolution by the United Nations Security Council, which condemned Israel's continued expansion of the settlements.

In his 70-minute speech, only weeks before the end of the Obama administration term, Kerry warned that Israel's construction of settlements was imperiling the chance of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel and achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

A few hours before the speech, Trump sent a message of support to Israel, telling the Jewish state to "stay strong" until Jan. 20 when he takes office.

In a response tweet, Netanyahu wrote: "President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!" adding with Israeli and U.S. flags and tags of Trump's children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr..

The historic UN resolution demands Israel to stop the settlements construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and denounced the settlements as a "flagrant violation" of international law.

About 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands that Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast War and has been controlling them ever since, despite international condemnations.
BUENOS AIRES, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- An angry mob on Wednesday threw rocks at Argentine President Mauricio Macri's vehicle, breaking windows, but causing no injuries.

"A group of about 10 people threw rocks at the vehicle taking President Mauricio Macri to the inauguration of a ... Tourism Information Center in Villa Traful, breaking two windows," the president's office said in a statement.

Villa Traful is a small lakeside resort in the south-central province of Nequen.

Officials searched a local residence, detained seven people, and impounded two cars and a motorbike, state news agency Telam said.

Nicolas Lagos, president of the Villa Traful Promotion Commission and the most senior local official, told the agency 1,200 residents lived in the village and another 500 had come to see Macri, "because in the town's 80 year's, 'no president or minister had ever visited.'"

The president's agenda "is continuing normally," his office said.

During the inauguration of the center, Macri made an oblique reference to the incident, saying "it doesn't do any good to attack one another or to be divided, when we have to be united to reduce poverty, confront drug trafficking, improve security."

According to Lagos, the stone throwers were members of the local chapter of the State Workers Association (ATE), presumably expressing their anger at government policies.

The incident marks the second time Macri's vehicle has come under attack since he took office in December 2015.

On Aug, 12 in the seaside resort of Mar del Plata, 400 km southwest of Buenos Aires, Macri had to be escorted out of a ceremony unveiling new residences in the Belisario Roldan district, after protesters booed him. They then threw stones at his vehicle.
by Juan Manuel Nievas

BUENOS AIRES, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- While those in the northern hemisphere associate Christmas and New Year with snow, cozy fires, hot drinks and winter sports, the holiday in south of the equator looks and tastes very different.

Sociologist Josefina de Rosa, 33, told Xinhua that "Christmas is a more family-centered celebration, with religious ties," while the New Year is more rooted global celebration.

On the New Year Eve, each person attending the family gathering will traditionally bring their family's signature dish, a "recipe that has been handed down from one generation to the next," she said.

"We eat cold dishes, due to the high temperatures," said De Rosa, though Argentineans also incorporate classic holiday fare, such as dried fruit, nougat and baked food like panettone.

"There are lots of fireworks, and after midnight, neighbors go out onto the sidewalks to watch them," though that tradition has been curbed in recent years "due to greater awareness of the impact (of the explosions) on babies, children with disabilities, and pets," said De Rosa.

Julia Berti, 30, a chemical engineer, living in Mar de Plata, a resort town located 400 km southeast of the capital Buenos Aires, said her family's New Year dinner always includes "roasted suckling pig, all kinds of salads, stuffed chicken and vitel tone," a cold dish typically served in the country on both Christmas and New Year.

Vitel tone, which takes its name from the original Italian vitello tonnato, basically meaning meat with tuna added to it, features sliced veal in a mayonnaise sauce flavored with tuna and anchovy.

Berti has adopted the habit of wearing white for the occasion, "a recent custom imported from Brazil," and embraced by many Argentine families, especially the women, she said.

Representing peace and purity, the color seems apt for welcoming a new year and a new beginning, "clean and (ready) to receive the best energy," said Berti.

Matias Carugati, chief economist at consulting firm Management & Fit (M&F), told Xinhua, "if in 2016 the economy influenced politics, in 2017 it will be the other way around."

He predicted "in 2017, midterm legislative elections will take center stage."

Retiree Susana Guerrero, 67, said she will welcome the New Year with a special wish. "We deserve to take off as a country, to have peace, dialogue and tranquility for the well being of all."
WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama called his successor Donald Trump Wednesday in what was described as a positive conversation, as tension over Israel and transition started to build.

"Today's call, like the others since the election, was positive and focused on continuing a smooth and effective transition," a statement from the White House said.

"The President and President-elect committed to staying in touch over the next several weeks and agreed their respective teams would continue to work together to effectuate a smooth transition of power on Jan. 20," it said.

Trump told reporters outside his Florida home that he and Obama had a "very nice" and "general" conversation.

The phone call came after an abstention vote on an Israel-related resolution from the United States prompted Trump to question the decision on Twitter.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but..." read a Trump tweet early Wednesday.

Trump also tweeted that the transition process is not smooth. He pledged to do his best to "disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Though it was going to be a smooth transition-Not!"

The harsh words may be connected to an earlier remark from Obama that he could have beaten Trump if they went against each other in an election.
Skua (Xinhua)

ANTARCTICA, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- It is very lucky for us to have captured the images of the small and quick seabirds on the land of ice and snow while we are heading all the way west from Zhongshan Station to the expedition's next stop -- Changcheng Station-- on the research vessel and icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon.

It has been nearly two months since the research team departed from Shanghai on November 2 for China's 33rd Antarctic expedition, which is scheduled to last six months.

Skua (Xinhua)

There are more than 50 species of seabirds in the Antarctica. The gull-like skua is the only recorded species that has been spotted at the Geographic South Pole, the southernmost point on the Antarctica.

Skuas are regarded as the Antarctica's "robbers," for they never build their own nests. Instead, they take others'. As the natural enemy of penguins, skuas always try to "steal" the eggs or chicks at the breeding colonies of penguins for a good meal.

Skua (Xinhua)

They are often seen "stealing" food around the research stations, tearing apart boxes and taking away whatever they need.

Like most seabirds, skuas can be found in both the North Pole and the South Pole. They can live as long as 30 years, mainly living off other birds' carcasses, eggs and chicks.

Snow petrel (Xinhua)

Snow petrels are generally recognized as one of the most beautiful bird species in the Antarctica, even given by some a more beautiful name: the fairies of the south. Its whole body is pure white, except the eyes, beak and claws.

Snow petrel (Xinhua)

Snow petrels normally feed on krill, tiddlers and cuttlefish. They sometimes seek carcasses for food, just like skuas.

Snowy sheathbill (Xinhua)

Snowy sheathbills are the Antarctica's garbage cleaners. They eat anything you can or cannot imagine, from seaweed scraps, broken eggshells and carcasses, to seals' snot and faeces, and even engine oil leaked from research stations and abandoned batteries.

Antarctic petrel (Xinhua)

Antarctic petrels are what we see most frequently as we sail across the Southern Ocean. They like to fly together with other bird species and prey on fish and shrimps alongside whales.

When not flying, they prefer standing on icebergs to rest for a while.

Antarctic prion (Xinhua)

You won't fail to notice the Antarctic prion, with black eye lines and a bluish grey "coat" marked by a capital "M," when you set foot on this continent. They can be found in a vast area, stretching from southern Australia to coastal areas of South America.

(Photos are provided by Miao Xing, a researcher with China's 33rd Antarctic expedition, and Mu Lianqing, a researcher with China's 32nd Antarctic expedition.)
People take part in a march against the outcome of the recent EU referendum, in London, Britain, July 2, 2016. (Xinhua)

by Xinhua writers Gui Tao, Larry Neild

LONDON, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Britain's historic referendum on Brexit after being a member of the European Union (EU) for 43 years has brought along a spate of game-changing issues that could reshape the global political landscape forever.

With a close margin of 52 percent against 48 percent in favor of exit, the British voters' decision to leave the EU preceded other "black-swan events" around the world, including the surprising win of U.S. Donald Trump and the unexpected resignation of former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi after losing in a referendum on constitutional reforms.

Some observers closely watching the coming elections in France and Germany next year compared the Brexit vote to the first falling domino.

BEHIND BREXIT

Amid the surging populist waves across the Atlantic, experts said Brexit was the culmination of the world's long-running financial crisis. Many said the economic turmoil has destroyed the credibility and legitimacy of ruling elites.

British economist and writer Martin Wolf said that the financial crisis has adversely affected those unskilled and semi-skilled male workers in the West, who were once significant beneficiaries of industrialization.

Wolf, an associate editor and chief economic commentator of the London-based daily Financial Times, believed that the rising role of the financial sector, the increasing imports of labor-intensive goods, and the surging immigration are behind the Western public anger.

Other experts said the EU's alleged disfunction has also spurred wide-spread Eurosceptic sentiments in Britain.

"When you go to the core issues, the EU has not delivered on what it should have done in its most ambitious goals," said a leading economist Jim O'Neill.

In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, O'Neill, who won global fame for coining the acronym BRIC in 2001 to describe a group of newly emerging economies, said the 28-member trading bloc failed to create a single market of goods, services, labor and capital as it was supposed to.

"In fact, many European governments have deliberately tried to stop it," he noted.

In Britain's Boston, one of the country's most Eurosceptic towns where nearly 75 percent of voters backed Brexit, immigration was the real issue behind the biggest margin.

Residents complained about the East European immigrants that have swarmed to their hometown over the past years and caused social problems including rocketing house rents and job shortages.

But officials said that some of these claims were just myths made up by social media.

Patrick Minford, once an economic adviser of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, also said the situation of ordinary households in Britain has never been better, with disposable incomes rising at more than 3 percent and the employment rate souring to a record high.

UNCERTAINTIES AHEAD

In the early hours of June 24 when the dawn brought news that the country voted Leave, Britain was plunged into a state of shock. Its future path to exit and beyond has remained unclear even till now.

Shellshocked Prime Minister David Cameron resigned within hours, and was replaced within days by former Home Secretary Theresa May.

One of May's first priorities was to rebuild the Conservative front bench team. There was also a shakeup in the main opposition Labor Party, mainly over what has been seen as a half-hearted effort by its leader Jeremy Corbyn to campaign for "remain."

May, who had supported "remain," insisted that "Brexit means Brexit" and vowed to bring Britain out of the EU in her term. But Members of Parliament (MPs) argued that they must be in the Brexit driving seat.

Their stance was backed by a group of ordinary, but very wealthy citizens, who hence took the fight to the British Supreme Court.

The High Court later ruled that politicians at Westminster should be involved in the Brexit process, which May has steadfastly challenged. She even vowed to trigger the process of leaving the EU by the end of March next year.

Under such circumstances, it remains to be seen whether May's ambition will be hampered by Scottish Nationalist Party leader and Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Sturgeon, who wanted Scotland to stay in the EU single market to protect the economy, has threatened a second independence referendum for Scotland, paving the way for a breakup of the United Kingdom.

Experts said the British political landscape in 2017 will be dominated by Brexit, and it seemed that the gloves have been off already on both sides for one of the biggest battles in more than one generation.

The next year will start with the Supreme Court announcing whether May's government or MPs will be in the driving seat over Brexit.

Her biggest fear is that if she needs a parliamentary act to advance Brexit, the people's will would be delayed or even sabotaged by pro-remain MPs and their peers in the House of Lords.

Financial experts like Wolf predicted that the full effects of Brexit on Britain's trading relations may not be resolved in 20 years.

"Brexit negotiation -- narrowly defined -- will be over in two years; but the creation of a post-Brexit environment... is going to take, certainly, far longer," he said, warning exit from the EU was merely the first step on the journey.

The British media also predicted that Brussels will act tough toward Britain during the coming talks to prevent Brexit-style revolt from engulfing Europe, where populists are targeting the next domino.

Related:

Interview: Brexit, populism wake-up calls to European integration

BRUSSELS, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- Brexit and the rise of populism across Europe are wake-up calls to European integration which is already under the converging challenges of stagnated economy, anti-immigrant sentiment and terrorism, a veteran official of the European Parliament told Xinhua in a recent interview.
TOKYO, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada visited the notorious war-linked Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Thursday, a day after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned from his non-apology trip to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Inada said she put down "Defense Minister Tomomi Inada" as her name in the visitor's log of the shrine, though meanwhile claiming that she went there as "a citizen of this country."

This was Inada's first visit to the notorious shrine since she entered Abe's Cabinet in early August. Her visit to Djibouti in Africa this August prevented the hawkish figure from visiting it on the 71st anniversary of the end of World War II on Aug. 15.

Inada, known for a close ally of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a supporter of revamping Japan's pacifist constitution, regularly visited the notorious Yasukuni Shrine on the Aug. 15 anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II before assuming the post of defense minister.

Earlier, Masahiro Imamura, Japan's disaster reconstruction minister, visited the notorious shrine on Wednesday, shortly after Abe attended a memorial at Pearl Harbor.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Wednesday that China is firmly opposed to the visit to the Yasukuni Shrine by Masahiro Imamura.

"We once again seriously urge Japan to squarely face and deeply reflect upon the history of invasion and deal with the issue with a responsible attitude to win the trust of its Asian neighbors and the international community through concrete acts," Hua said.

The notorious Tokyo war shrine, which honors 14 Class-A convicted war criminals among 2.5 million Japanese war dead from the WWII, is regarded as a symbol of the past Japanese militarism.

The Japanese government billed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor as a tour of reconciliation. However, except to offer his "sincere and everlasting condolences" to the souls of the Americans killed by troops of the Japanese imperial empire, no apology from Abe was issued.

As many as 2,403 Americans were killed, about 20 U.S. vessels were sunk or damaged and over 300 U.S. aircraft were damaged or destroyed when more than 350 Japanese warplanes launched stealth attacks on Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.

Japan's Asian neighbors have called on Abe to visit places in Asia which suffered heavily from Japan's barbaric militarism during the war.
BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said three rioters who carried out a terrorist attack in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Wednesday killed two people.

At around 4:50 p.m. Wednesday, the rioters entered the yard of Moyu County Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in a vehicle, attacked workers with knives and detonated an explosive device, the MPS said in a statement on Thursday.

The attack killed an official and a security worker and injured three others.

The ministry said the three rioters were shot dead at the site and the case is now under investigation.

Previous reports said the attack was carried out by four people, causing one innocent person's death.
SEOUL, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- South Korea on Thursday deplored Japan's defense chief visiting a notorious war shrine that symbolizes Japan's past militarism, summoning Tokyo diplomats in Seoul to lodge complaint against the provocative move.

South Korea's foreign ministry said in a statement that it was very deplorable for one of main Japanese politicians to pay homage to the Yasukuni Shrine that beautifies the war of aggression and the colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula while honoring war criminals.

The Korean Peninsula was colonized by the Imperial Japan from 1910 to 1945. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has yet to apologize for Japan's wartime crimes, bluntly revealing his militaristic ambition to become a country capable of waging a war through controversial security legislations.

Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada visited the war shrine earlier in the day, where 14 class-A convicted war criminals during World War Two and 2.5 million of war dead are enshrined.

Inada, who took office in August, became the first sitting Japanese defense chief to visit the symbol of militaristic Japan, enraging neighboring countries such as South Korea and China.

The Seoul ministry stressed that Japan can win trust from the international community only when the country shows its sincere repentance and reflection over its wartime past through concrete actions.

South Korea's defense ministry also issued a statement, expressing deep concerns and regrets over the Yasukuni visit in defiance of Seoul's repeated calls to build future-oriented relations between South Korea and Japan by squarely facing the history.

Both foreign and defense ministries of South Korea summoned Japanese diplomats in Seoul, lodging their strong protest against the provocative move.

The Japanese defense minister's visit to the war shrine can be considered more serious than other right-wing Japanese politicians as the Abe-led cabinet is pushing to amend its pacifist constitution and become a country capable of waging a war.

South Korea signed an accord with Japan on Nov. 23 to directly exchange military intelligence on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) nuclear and missile programs despite parliamentary and public opposition.

The bilateral military pact is seen as part of the U.S. Pivot to Asia strategy by combining military assets and intelligence among South Korea, Japan and the United States.
A new train stops at a railway station in suburban Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Oct. 1, 2016. The Chinese-built Ethiopia-Djibouti railway is expected to help landlocked Ethiopia improve access to the sea and speed up a burgeoning industrialization process. (Xinhua/Sun Ruibo)

NAIROBI, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- From electrified railways to hydro power plants, a number of Chinese projects continued to spring up and boost development in Africa this year amid blossoming Sino-African cooperation.

The following is a Xinhua review on major Chinese-built or Chinese-funded infrastructure projects that began or finished construction in sub-Saharan Africa in 2016:

ETHIOPIA-DJIBOUTI RAILWAY

Ethiopia on Oct. 5 launched its first electrified railway linking its capital and Djibouti, with officials hailing the Chinese-built rail as the latest testament to the Sino-African friendship.

The 752.7-km Ethiopia-Djibouti railway, also known as Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, will avail landlocked Ethiopia a faster access to the sea (via Djibouti port), reducing travel time from seven days on roads to about 10 hours.

The railway was hailed by Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang as the "Tazara railway in a new era," referring to the railway linking Tanzania's Dar es Salaam with Zambia's Kapiri Mposhi that China sent over 50,000 workers to build in the 1970s despite its own economic difficulties.

Constructed by China Railway Group and China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation, the railway features the use of a complete sets of Chinese equipment and standards. It is also the second trans-national railway built by Chinese in Africa, following the Tazara.

NAIROBI-NAIVASHA RAILWAY

Kenya on Nov. 19 launched the Nairobi-Naivasha Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) Project, being built by China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) and funded by China's Exim Bank.

The project is the phase A of Nairobi-Malaba SGR Project and an extension of the Nairobi-Mombasa SGR. The 120.4-km line starts from the Kenyan capital city to Malaba, a border city between Kenya and Uganda.

Speaking at the launch ceremony, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said the modern railway line would catalyze Kenya's industrial transformation and position the country as an investment hub.

ABUJA-KADUNA RAILWAY

The Abuja-Kaduna standard gauge railway, linking Nigeria's capital Abuja and the northwestern state of Kaduna, was open for commercial operation in July.

The 186.5-km line was built by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation with nine stations and a designed speed of 150 km per hour.

The railway is part of the railway modernization initiative by Nigeria to replace the existing narrow gauge system with the wider standard gauge system, while allowing high-speed train operations on the railway network.

NYERERE BRIDGE

Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam added a new urban landmark on April 19 when the Chinese-built Nyerere Bridge, or Kigamboni Bridge, opened to traffic as the largest cable-stayed cross-sea bridge in East Africa.

The 680-meter-long, six-lane bridge now offers a shortcut from Dar es Salaam's CBD to the Kigamboni district. Prior to its opening, many local residents have relied on wooden boat ferry to cross the creek separating the two places.

Tanzanian President John Magufuli has named the bridge Nyerere in recognition of the country's founding leader -- Julius Nyerere.

It was built by China Railway Construction Engineering Group in a joint venture with China Railway Major Bridge Group.

GIBE III HYDRO POWER PLANT

Ethiopia on Dec. 17 inaugurated the Gibe III hydro power plant, which will further enhance the country's reputation as a hydro powerhouse in East Africa.

The Gibe III project boasts a generating capacity of 1,870 MW, which will raise Ethiopia's power generation capacity to more than 4,260 MW.

Located in the Southern Regional State, Gibe III has been contracted by Salini Impregilo of Italy for the civil works, and Dong Fang Electric Corp. of China for the electromechanical works. A loan from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) financed 60 percent of the cost.

VICTORIA FALLS AIRPORT

Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls International Airport, upgraded and expanded with support from China, was commissioned on Nov. 18 with the hope of ushering in more tourists to the country.

The upgraded airport can now handle 1.5 million passengers per year, up from 500,000, and boasts new facilities including a new international terminal building, a new 4-km runway, extended parking areas for aircraft and new road networks.

The airport is the gateway to Victoria Falls, a world heritage site.

The project was done by China Jiangsu International and financed through a 150-million-U.S.-dollar-loan from China EXIM Bank.

TEMA PORT AND KOTOKURABA MARKET

Ghana's eastern port of Tema on Nov. 16 began expansion, undertaken by the China Harbor Engineering Company, amid a drive to become a more efficient gateway to Africa.

Under the project, a total of 120 hectares of land would be reclaimed from the sea. The project will also see the upgrading of the two-lane Tema-Accra Expressway into a six-lane road to ease traffic flow.

Ghana on Nov. 29 commissioned the new Kotokuraba market, whose construction was financed by China EXIM Bank and undertaken by China Railway Construction Engineering Group.

The market in the ancient capital Cape Coast features modern facilities including a 200-capacity parking lot, a solar system for emergency lighting and CCTV security cameras.

The market renovation and construction is expected to ease congestion in the former Kotokuraba market, which had suffered two major fires with heavy losses.

BURUNDI'S DIGITAL TV MIGRATION

Burundi on Dec. 19 inaugurated a digital television project by Chinese media company StarTimes after its construction completed. The project has helped Burundi to become the first in the East African Community to achieve a complete migration from analog to digital television.

The project will allow broadcasting of high-quality images and sounds and a wider national, regional and international coverage of the Burundi national television.

On the same day, Chinese tech giant Huawei also marked the completion of its metropolitan area network project in Burundi, which involves laying 220 km optical fiber in the capital Bujumbura.
A cheetah cub sleeps in the embrace of its mother at the Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya, Nov. 23, 2013. (Xinhua/Meng Chenguang)

WINDHOEK, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- The Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), based in Namibia, has called for the upgrading of cheetahs' status from vulnerable to endangered, as the big cat's population shrinks dramatically.

Dr. Laurie Marker, CCF founder and executive director, said in a statement on Tuesday if nothing is done now to protect the cheetah the world may lose the iconic big cat.

"We are sounding a loud warning cry, otherwise we may lose the species during our lifetime," Dr. Marker said in the statement released after the publication of a report titled Disappearing Spots: The Global Decline of Cheetah and What It Means for Conservation, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Marker and Dr. Anne Schmidt-Kuentzel co-authored the paper that estimates the remaining population of cheetahs in Africa at 7,000 with a small number estimated to be less than 50 in Iran.

About a 100 years ago, the report said, the cheetah population was estimated to be 100,000.

According to the report, the main reason for the dramatic decline of the cheetah population is human encroachment, change in land tenure, large scale fencing, political instability and the insufficient protected area systems.

Dr. Marker also said in Zimbabwe, for example, cheetah population declined by 85 percent in 15 years due to land redistribution.

Dr. Schimdt-Kuentzel, CCF research geneticist and assistant director of animal health and research, said in the statement that cheetahs can reduce in numbers very drastically over a short period of time.

"This fact needs to be taken into consideration when assessing the cheetah's status," Dr. Schimdt-Kuentzel said.
ANKARA, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized its NATO allies on Thursday, particularly the U.S., for not supporting Ankara's struggle against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Syria's al Bab region.

Once more, Erdogan accused the U.S. of supplying weapons to Kurdish fighters in Syria.

"NATO allies must stand by their partner Turkey in Syria, not the terrorist groups," said the Turkish president, referring to the People's Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"You sent arms to terrorist organizations, then said 'we sent ammunition, not arms,'" Erdogan said. "We're not buying it, nor accepting it."

"Despite our NATO alliance, you support terrorist organizations, instead of us," the Turkish president said. "Are the terrorist organizations your partners in NATO?"

"If we are NATO strategic partners, then you should support us," Erdogan said, addressing the U.S. administration.

"Terrorist organizations will eventually attack nations supporting them too," he warned.
NAIROBI, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- The UN refugee agency said it has repatriated some 38,159 Somali refugees in Kenya since the return exercise began in December 2014.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in its bi-weekly update received in Nairobi on Thursday that some 1,743 returnees were supported to voluntarily return to Mogadishu, Kismayo and Baidoa by flight between Dec. 1 and 15.

"In total, as of Dec. 15, 38,159 Somali refugees had returned home since Dec. 8, 2014, when UNHCR started supporting voluntary return of Somali refugees in Kenya, out of which 32,058 were supported in 2016 alone," the UNHCR said.

The agency said the number of flights has been significantly increased as it remains the only means of transportation to Somalia.

Kenya in collaboration with the UNHCR are working on a program that will ensure a smooth and voluntary repatriation of over 300,000 refugees living in five camps at Dadaab, which Nairobi has planned to close.

The UN agency has said it expects the majority of the remaining refugee population to return to Somalia throughout 2017 and possibly into early 2018.

Kenya said it had put solid measures in place to fast-track repatriation of Somalia refugees and their re-integration in their native country.

The East African country on Nov. 16 announced that it would delay by six months the closure of the Dadaab camp, the world's largest.

UNHCR has supported people's returns from Dadaab for years and in June, it worked with Kenya and Somalia to devise an action plan to that effect.

A survey between August and October found that 283,558 refugees were living at Dadaab, 58,000 fewer than in the past.

The UNHCR has since called on Kenya to be flexible in terms of a return time frame in order to meet the different elements of the plan that was devised earlier this year, citing concerns that rigid time frames would be difficult to meet.
DAMASCUS, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian army on Thursday declared a nationwide cease-fire that will go into force as of midnight Friday, Dec. 30, state TV reported Thursday.

The cease-fire will exclude the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and the Islamic State (IS) group, both designated as terrorist groups by the United Nations, said a Syrian army statement.

The cease-fire came after the successes and victories achieved by the Syrian army on several fronts, the statement said.

It wasn't the first time that a nationwide cease-fire was agreed in Syria, but earlier ones eventually failed.

The first intermittent cease-fire was declared last February and was renewed for some time.

The Syrian army's declaration of cease-fire on Thursday reflected an agreement reached Wednesday between Russia and Turkey for a nationwide cease-fire in Syria, whose details are yet to be made public.

Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on Thursday that an agreement has been reached on a Syrian cease-fire, noting that Russia and Turkey will act as its guarantors.

Related:

Turkey says Syria approaches permanent ceasefire

ANKARA, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Wednesday that a permanent ceasefire and a political solution to the Syrian crisis is close, local media reported.

Cavusoglu's comments came after reports of an agreement between Turkey and Moscow for a general ceasefire deal in Syria. Full story

Iran urges exclusion of Saudi Arabia from Syria peace talks

TEHRAN, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Iran's defense minister said Wednesday that Saudi Arabia should not be part of Syria peace talks, Tasnim news agency reported.
BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- The United States is irresponsible in putting Chinese companies on a list of "notorious marketplaces," the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Thursday.

China hopes the United States will objectively evaluate China's work on IPR protection, said MOC spokesperson Shen Danyang at a press conference.

Given that the United States trade representative's office was ambiguous in its descriptions of Chinese companies, its report did not represent the U.S. government's analysis, according to Shen.

China has been negotiating with the United States on "notorious marketplaces," Shen said.

China hopes the United States will improve its own transparency and evaluation processes in an impartial way.
Russia's Head of Flight Aviation Security Service of the Russian Federation Armed Forces Sergei Bainetov (C) attends a press conference on the crash of the Defense Ministry's Tu-154 plane in Moscow, Russia, on Dec. 29, 2016. Russian rescuers have finished the main stage of the search operation at the plane's crash site. (Xinhua/Bai Xueqi)

MOSCOW, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Preliminary results of the investigation into the Russian military Tu-154 plane crash will be announced in January, and a terror attack possibility cannot be excluded, a special government commission investigating the incident said Thursday.

"After decoding the first flight data recorder, we came to the conclusion that there had been no explosion on board. I can say that for sure," Sergey Bainetov, chief of the aviation security service of the Russian Armed Forces and a commission member, told a press conference.

But he added that currently a terrorist act cannot be ruled out.

"A terror act does not necessarily mean an explosion, it could be a physical impact," he said.

Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov, also the head of the commission, told the briefing that a terrorist attack "is not considered as a main version."

The plane crash might have resulted from a malfunction of the plane's equipment, he said, warning journalists not to make hasty conclusions based on unofficial data but to wait for preliminary results of the official investigation expected in January.

The Tu-154, en route to the Hmeimin air base in Syria, crashed shortly after takeoff from the Black Sea resort city of Sochi early Sunday morning.

Ninety-two people, including 84 passengers and eight crew members, were aboard the plane. Most of them were members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, a renowned choir of the Russian Armed Forces, as well as nine Russian journalists. They were heading to the air base for New Year celebrations.

According to Bainetov, at least 10 days were needed for a detailed study of the collected aircraft data and analysis of its performance, while no less than 30 days were needed for drawing conclusions.

Sokolov said that the main part of the search operation at the crash site had been completed, but some 18 ships and 50 divers continued working there.

So far, most of the aircraft fragments have been found and recovered, including the plane's flight recorders, he added.

Nineteen bodies and over 230 body parts have been sent to Moscow for identification, Sokolov said.

Only one passenger has been identified and buried, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov said at the press conference.

All Tu-154 aircraft have been temporarily grounded pending the results of the investigation, Bainetov said.
BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday voiced firm opposition to Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada's visit to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine, saying China will lodge solemn representation to Japan on the issue.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying announced the opposition at a daily press briefing.

Hua said that it was the ultimate irony that Inada on Thursday morning visited the war shrine, which honors 14 Class-A convicted war criminals among 2.5 million Japanese war dead from WWII, only a day after her visit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Pearl Harbor, which has been dubbed by Tokyo as a "tour of reconciliation."

Some reports suggested that Abe's recent visit to Pearl Harbor is no more than a political show aiming to strengthen the Japanese-U.S. alliance.

Other than offering his "sincere and everlasting condolences" to the souls of the Americans killed by troops of the Japanese imperial empire, Abe issued no apology.

Hua said Inada's move once again reflected that a number of Japanese people were being bullheaded by straying from the historical truth, and that such activities would only make the international community more cautious toward Japan.

"We once again urge Japanese leaders to squarely face and deeply reflect upon the history of invasion," said Hua, calling on Japan to deal with issues regarding its attitude toward shouldering responsibility, both for history and the future.

Noting that a man cannot survive without credit, Hua urged Japan to fulfill its promises and commitment, and sincerely listen to the voice of justice from its domestic society and the international community.

The notorious Tokyo war shrine is regarded as a symbol of past Japanese militarism.

Hua on Tuesday said that Japan can never turn the page without reconciliation with countries in Asia, including China.

China was one of the main regions to suffer in the Asia-Pacific during the World Anti-Fascist War, with the Chinese people making major contributions to the victory.

Chinese military and civilian casualties totaled approximately 35 million, accounting for one-third of all deaths in WWII.

Related:

China's military voices firm opposition to Japanese DM's war shrine visit

BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Yang Yujun on Thursday voiced the Chinese armed forces' strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.
by Xinhua writers Wang Zhuolun and Wang Huihui

BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- In the final two weeks of 2016, Chinese diplomacy has scored an impressive hat-trick: normalization of relations with Norway, Mongolia's commitment not to allow Dalai Lama visits, and restoration of diplomatic ties with Sao Tome and Principe after the country cut relations with Taiwan.

This diplomatic treble was no accident. The seemingly unrelated cases share a similarity: recanting perceived challenges to China's core interests. They sent a strong signal to the world that the appeal of good Chinese diplomatic relations is rising and that respecting China's concerns is not empty talk.

The one-China principle, which concerns China's core interests and the feelings of its 1.3 billion people, is the unshakable basis for China to develop relations with other countries.

After Norway reaffirmed its commitment to the one-China principle and respect for China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, China agreed to resume free trade negotiations and to promote investment in the Nordic country.

The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize award to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese criminal convicted of inciting subversion of state power, was an infamous decision by the Norwegian Nobel committee and resulted in China-Norway ties being frozen for six years.

Mongolia, learning lessons from the Dalai Lama's visit in November, promised never to allow such visits again, just one month later. Mongolia's move rings alarm bells for any countries that have contact with this political exile who attempts to split Tibet from China under the cloak religion -- such a move will severely jeopardize ties with China.

The big strides prove that while China advocates mutual respect and win-win relationships when dealing with foreign countries, any country with a keen interest to develop relations with China needs to do the same.

China's international engagement has become increasingly proactive and pioneering. From garnering support of over 90 countries and 230 political parties on the so-called South China Sea arbitration to hosting the Hangzhou G20 Summit that gathered more than 30 world leaders, China is increasingly confident on the world stage and reaped a bumper diplomatic harvest in 2016.

Nonetheless, Westerners who cannot get accustomed to China's rising international status find China's diplomatic triumphs hard to swallow.

The claim that China uses economic leverage to achieve diplomatic successes makes no sense. Take the case of Sao Tome and Principe: Taiwan poached it from China with a considerable financial package in 1997, before that the African country had established diplomatic relations with China in 1975.

However, checkbook diplomacy is not at work in the resumption of China-Sao Tome and Principe ties. China has made it crystal clear that it will never trade on the one-China principle with money. China knows that lavishing money will not lead to the long-term development of the poor island country.

As the saying goes, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

After establishing a liaison office in Sao Tome and Principe in November 2013 for trade and cultural exchanges, China started to help improve the country's infrastructure. It now aims to help the country develop its economy through cooperation in tourism, agriculture and fishery.

Facts speak louder than words. Anyone who dares challenge China's red lines, especially the one-China principle, will pay the price. Countries with an ambiguous position are better off adopting a sober attitude rather than making a rod for their own backs.
BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- China will maintain fiscal support for supply-side structural reform next year, according to the Ministry of Finance (MOF) on Thursday.

The MOF will help cutting industrial capacity, reducing the housing inventory, lowering leverage and cutting corporate costs, said a statement released after a meeting chaired by Finance Minister Xiao Jie.

Redundancies and loss-making "zombie companies" were highlighted in the statement.

The meeting agreed on support for the real economy, agricultural reform, poverty alleviation, technological innovation and manufacturing upgrades in 2017.

The MOF reiterated China's proactive fiscal policy and said it will expand expenditure to help hold the economy within a reasonable range.

More tax breaks and less administrative fees will be extended for businesses, the statement said.

Other issues discussed included taxation reforms, management of local government debt and international cooperation.
MOSCOW, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Russia is ready to cooperate with the new U.S. administration in various fields, including the fight against terrorism, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday.

"We are open to dialogue at any time in a variety of formats, but we are not forcing events," Lavrov was quoted as saying in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency.

He explained that Moscow has no intention to speed up events, as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is currently preoccupied with forming his administration.

Lavrov said Moscow reacted positively to Trump's position in favor of establishing normal cooperation with Russia, which has been declared during his election campaign and in an earlier phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia is ready to cooperate with Trump in the fight against terrorism in Syria and beyond, he added.

He also said that a possible meeting between Trump and Putin required meticulous preparation and would only be possible after Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017, when "all the dialogue channels with the Republican administration start working to the full."
Fireworks light up the sky above the West Lake in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Sept. 4, 2016. The 11th G20 summit opened here on Sunday. (Xinhua/Li Xiang)

BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Xinhua has selected the top ten news events happened in China in 2016. Following are the events in chronological order.

1. INTRA-PARTY CAMPAIGN TO IMPROVE SELF-DISCIPLINE AND SOCIALIST VALUES

On Feb. 28, 2016, the general office of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee released a plan to launch an education campaign among all Party members to reinforce their study on the Party rules and values.

The campaign, which is "a major political task" according to the plan, focuses on the study of the Party Constitution and rules, as well as remarks made by General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Xi Jinping.

The campaign also required the Party members to improve themselves, ensuring themselves to be qualified as members of the CPC, which includes thinking and acting in conformity with the CPC Central Committee's policies and guidelines, and working hard to serve the people and make contribution to social progress and economic development.

Following the plan, the campaign has been launched in local Party committees around China, with various study activities being held and a number of outstanding Party members being reported by media.

2. "STAY TRUE TO THE MISSION" CALL AT CPC'S 95TH FOUNDING ANNIVERSARY

On July 1, 2016, the 95th founding anniversary of the CPC, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, called on CPC members to "stay true to the mission" taken up by the CPC 95 years ago.

In his speech, which was made at a rally marking the anniversary, Xi summarized the major accomplishments of the CPC over, and called on his comrades to "uphold the fighting spirit" of the Party's founding members and their commitment to the people.

The phrase "stay true to the mission," which was stressed repeatedly in Xi's speech, soon became a catchphrase in China and has been widely used by media and public.

3. CHINA HOSTING G20 FOR FIRST TIME

From Sept. 4 to 5, China held the 11th summit of the Group of 20 (G20) in the eastern city of Hangzhou.

It was the first time for China to hold the G20 Summit. The summit is also one with the highest level, largest scale and greatest influence among all summits that China held in recent years.

Starting with the theme of "Toward an Innovative, Invigorated, Interconnected and Inclusive World Economy," the summit has reached consensus on a wide range of important topics and ended with a string of outcomes, including the G20 Leaders' Communique of the Hangzhou Summit and the G20 Blueprint on Innovative Growth.

4. PUNISHMENT ON LIAONING ELECTION FRAUD

On Sept. 13, a National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee session confirmed to disqualify 45 deputies from northeastern Liaoning Province for electoral fraud.

The 45 NPC deputies were elected from the Liaoning Provincial People's Congress with methods of vote buying and bribery during the election in 2013. A total of 523 deputies to the Liaoning Provincial People's Congress, who had either resigned or had their qualification as deputies terminated, were implicated in the case.

The case was the first of its kind to take place at provincial level since the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded. China's top legislator Zhang Dejiang said that zero-tolerance approach would be taken toward any offences in elections.

5. 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF LONG MARCH VICTORY

From October 1934 to October 1936, Chinese Red Army soldiers left their bases and marched through raging rivers, frigid mountains and arid grassland to break the siege of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) forces and continue to fight the Japanese aggressors. Some of them marched as far as 12,500 kilometers.

After 80 years, in 2016, activities have been held around China to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Long March.

At a commemorating gathering, President Xi hailed the Long March as an "epic, human miracle," and called for efforts to realize the "two centenary goals" and the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation in "a new Long March."

6. SIXTH PLENARY SESSION OF 18TH CPC CENTRAL COMMITTEE

From Oct. 24 to 27, the sixth plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee was held in Beijing, approving new efforts to strengthen the Party governance.

The session approved two documents, which are the norms of political life within the Party under the new situation and a regulation on intra-Party supervision, aiming at stricter governance inside the Party.

Also according to a communique issued after the session, all CPC members are called on to "closely unite around the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core," which confirmed the leading core in the Party.

7. INTERPRETATION TO BASIC LAW OF HONG KONG SAR

On Nov. 7, China's top legislature adopted an interpretation to Article 104 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), following some legislators-elect's behavior.

While Article 104 requires members of the legislative council to swear to uphold the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR of the PRC when assuming office, a handful of legislators-elect violated the stipulation by publicly advocating "Hong Kong Independence" and insulting the Chinese nation during swearing-in.

The interpretation of Article 104 stressed that oath taking is a legal prerequisite and required procedure for public officers elected to office, and that an oath taker must take the oath sincerely and solemnly.

The oath, which includes "will uphold the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR of the PRC, bear allegiance to the Hong Kong SAR of the PRC," is required to be accurately, completely and solemnly read out, according to the interpretation.

According to a spokesman with the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, the interpretation demonstrates the central government's firm determination and will against "Hong Kong independence," and underscores the authority of the Basic Law and the rule of law in Hong Kong.

8. GUIDELINE ON BETTER PROTECTION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

On Nov. 27, China released a guideline on better protection of property rights, the first time for China to issue a guideline of state level on protection of property rights.

Issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, the guideline pledges to provide equal, comprehensive and law-based protection to all kinds of property rights.

The guideline, which also encourages the participation of the public in the process and requires to solve major problems concerning property rights and to build a long-term mechanism, is regarded as an effort to shore up social confidence and promote social justice.

9. WRONGLY EXECUTED MAN ACQUITTED 21 YEARS AFTER EXECUTION

On Dec. 2, Nie Shubin, a man convicted of raping and murdering a woman on the outskirts of Hebei provincial capital, Shijiazhuang, had his conviction overturned by the Supreme People's Court (SPC), 21 years after he was executed.

Nie was executed at the age of 21 in 1995, while in 2005 another man Wang Shujin, who was given the death sentence in unconnected rape and murder cases, admitted his guilt and said Nie was innocent.

In 2014, the SPC ordered reinvestigation on the case, and based on the investigation, the retrial in 2016 ended with the verdict that the previous conviction was based on insufficient evidence and unclear facts.

A number of wrongful convictions have been publicized and revoked in recent years, including the famous case that an 18-year-old man named Huugjilt was executed for rape and murder in 1996 but acquitted in 2014. The overturn of Nie's conviction is regarded to be of "major historical and realistic significance," and also an implementation of rule of law and a demonstration of social progress and judicial justice.

10. SEEKING PROGRESS WHILE MAINTAINING STABILITY

From Dec. 14 to 16, the Central Economic Work Conference was held in Beijing, confirming "seeking progress while maintaining stability" as the main theme for China's development in 2017.

As China's economy has entered the "new normal," the country has launched a series of new policies with a focus on the supply-side structural reform. While slowed from its previous double-digit growth, the Chinese economy expanded 6.7 percent steadily in the first three quarters and is ending 2016 on a firm footing.
BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- China is opening more sectors to foreign investment along with measures to level the playing field.

The State Council's executive meeting on Wednesday chaired by Premier Li Keqiang approved a new guideline to further attract foreign investment and advance China's opening up.

"We should take measures with great effectiveness in attracting foreign capital," Li stressed.

According to the new guideline, foreign investment access hurdles will be dropped in a number of manufacturing sectors, including rail transportation, motorbikes, ethanol fuels. Foreign capital will have access to energy, water conservancy, environmental protection and utilities via franchise agreements.

Catalog for industrial access for foreign investors will be amended to match the new measures. Foreign capital will be encouraged to enter high-end manufacturing industry, as well as manufacturing related services, such as industrial design and modern logistics.

"China's economy develops as we continue our opening-up strategy. Besides advanced technology and experience in management, China also need capital investment from overseas," Li said.

Accounting and auditing, architecture design and rating services will be open to foreign investment for the first time. Foreign funded firms will be cleared to join the national science and technology program as equally as domestic firms, and enjoy favorable policies designed for the "Made in China 2025 Strategy".

The new guideline emphasizes equal treatment for foreign investors, and no additional restriction is allowed.

Li emphasized that government at all levels should further streamline administration to reinforce the implementation of existing policies in attracting foreign investment and reduce institutional cost.

The new guideline highlights consistency in policies designed to attract foreign investment. Better protection of IPR for foreign investors is also covered.

The government will work to provide more convenience to help foreign investors and experts live and work in the country. In central and western part of China, foreign investment in the "encouraged category" will enjoy financing, land and taxation incentives.
Syrian workers remove rubble from a rooftop on December 27, 2016 as they clean up the water station in Aleppo's Suleiman al-Halabi neighbourhood. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

DAMASCUS, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- The upcoming nationwide ceasefire in Syria could be a prelude to broad peace negotiations in the war-torn country, if the concerned parties abide by it, analysts said Thursday.

The Syrian army declared on Thursday that a nationwide cessation of hostilities will go into effect as of midnight Friday.

The ceasefire will exclude the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and the Islamic State (IS) group, both designated as terrorist groups by the United Nations, it added.

The Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Coalition, a political coalition of Syrian opposition groups, have announced their acceptance to the ceasefire.

The Syrian army's declaration of ceasefire reflects an agreement reached Wednesday between Russia and Turkey for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria, with both countries acting as guarantors to rein in their respective allies in the country.

Osama Danura, a political analyst, told Xinhua that the ceasefire comes as a result of the victories of the Syrian army, particularly in Aleppo in northern Syria, as the entire city has fallen back under the government control since last week, when the rebels all withdrew toward the countryside of the city.

Another reason, Danura said, is the Russian-Iranian effort to push Ankara to reach common ground with the two countries.

"The new agreement means that Turkey is now onboard with Russia, and its pledge to guarantee the implementation of the ceasefire on the rebel side is a positive thing," said Danura. "This means that the main obstacle that was hindering the political settlement to Syria's crisis has been largely surmounted."

If the rebels shift toward pointing guns on and severing ties with terrorist groups, it will be a right prelude to the upcoming Syrian political talks, the expert said.

Danura pointed out that the new ceasefire will also serve as a test to the true intentions of rebels and Turkey, as the latter has always been the "umbilical cord feeding the rebels in northern Syria with arms, fighters and logistics."

It wasn't the first time that a nationwide ceasefire was agreed in Syria, but earlier ones eventually failed.

The new ceasefire involving Turkey has greater chances of success, as it is generally thought that a political solution to the conflict in Syria needs a shift in the regional and international stance toward the leadership of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Given that Turkey is the staunch ally of the opposition, its alliance with Russia on the ceasefire has fed a strong sentiment that Syria could see a respite from a nearly six-year conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the ceasefire will be followed by peace talks between the Syrian government and the opposition in Kazakhstan, without specifying a date.

He, however, noted that the agreement is "fragile" and needs "special attention and involvement."

"But after all, this is a notable result of our joint work, efforts by the Defense and Foreign ministries, our partners in the regions," Putin said.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the ceasefire will cover 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria, adding that Russia and Turkey have established a hotline to monitor the truce.
SANAA, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Yemen's dominant Houthi group said its forces on Thursday shot down a Saudi military Apache helicopter inside the Saudi border region of Najran, the group-controlled state Saba news agency reported.

"The defense air force of the national army and popular forces fired a guided-missile toward the enemy Apache helicopter while flying over the border area, hitting and downing the Apache accurately," Saba quoted an unnamed military spokesman as saying.

The agency also cited the Houthi-allied military official as saying that "the operation occurred when the Saudi aggression Apache hit the (Houthi-allied) Yemeni army and popular forces' sites inside the (Saudi) region."

The report provided no further details, and the Saudi-led military coalition has yet to comment on the report.

Meanwhile, the Houthi-controlled Saba news agency also reported that "two Yemeni civilians were killed and four others wounded when the US- Saudi aggression fighter jets waged two air strikes on Hamadan district northwest of the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa on Thursday."

On Dec. 24, the Saudi-led air strikes killed at least seven children and two women when the fighter jets targeted their home in Yemen's southwestern province of Ibb, according to rescuers and residents of the area.

Houthi fighters have been fighting Saudi Arabia on borders since the Saudi-led military coalition intervened in the Yemeni conflict since March 2015 via an air campaign.

The campaign is attempting to restore power to expelled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Some 10,000 Yemenis have been killed, with three millions displaced.
DAMASCUS, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Thursday that Russia's strong guarantees to the Syrian government were behind the government acceptance of the imminent cease-fire in Syria.

In an interview with the state TV, just hours ahead of the commencement of the cease-fire, al-Moallem said the recently-reached nationwide cessation of hostilities in Syria is a real chance for ending the Syrian war and bringing an end to the bloodletting in the war-torn country.

Earlier in the day, the Syrian army declared that a nationwide cessation of hostilities will go into effect as of midnight Friday.

The cease-fire will exclude the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and the Islamic State (IS) group, both designated as terrorist groups by the United Nations, it added.

The Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Coalition, a political coalition of Syrian opposition groups, have announced their acceptance to the cease-fire.

The Syrian army's declaration of cease-fire reflects an agreement reached Wednesday between Russia and Turkey for a nationwide cease-fire in Syria, with both countries acting as guarantors to rein in their respective allies in the country.

The cease-fire comes after the Syrian army and its allied fighters retook the city of Aleppo in northern Syria, after dealing a big blow to the rebels, said al-Moallem.

He noted that the new cease-fire is distinct from the previous failing ones due to the "strong Russian guarantees," saying that Russia is a partner in fighting terrorism, and Russia has guaranteed that "every breach will be confronted."

The head of the Syrian diplomacy said that the new cease-fire was declared by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.

Al-Moallem said there were communications on several levels between Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"This agreement comes after Aleppo victory, so it reflects the trust of the Syrian state, and the army in the victory," he said, adding that "the liberation of Aleppo is not like before so we need to invest in that victory, and the first investment is in the cessation of hostilities."

"There will also be monitoring mechanism to the cease-fire and no breach would be allowed," he said.

Regarding the Turkish role, as one of the guarantor of the cease-fire, al-Moallem made it clear that his government doesn't trust Ankara, saying that there is no document "that we have signed on that mentions Turkey (role in the cease-fire)."

"We told our Russian and Iranian partners that we don't trust the Turkish side," he said.

Meanwhile, the foreign minister said that the cease-fire was not forced on the Syrian government.

"Nothing was forced on us. There was an understanding on which the agreement was made," he said.

He said that by the cease-fire, the Syrian state has offered a chance in response to the aspiration of the Syrian people, adding that "this chance is real, so whoever needs the interest of the Syrian people must seize this opportunity and embark on the political process."

He also mentioned that the topic of the presidency is an internal Syrian affair, not accepting it to be discussed at any conference or meeting.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the cease-fire will be followed by peace talks between the Syrian government and the opposition in Kazakhstan, without specifying a date.

Al-Moallem said his country will take part in the Kazakhstan talks, adding that all topics can be negotiated except the presidency of Assad.
MOSUL, Iraq, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi security forces on Thursday recaptured a neighborhood and two villages, killing up to 200 militants of extremist Islamic State (IS) group, as troops launched the second phase of offensive to drive out IS militants from their major stronghold in the city of Mosul, the Iraqi military said.

Members of the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) attacked the front lines of IS militants in several neighborhoods in eastern side of Mosul, and managed to retake control of al-Quds neighborhood, while heavy clashes continued in other nearby neighborhoods, a statement by the Iraqi Joint Operations Command said.

In northern front, the soldiers of the army's 16th Division freed the villages of al-Sada and Tawiyla and raised the Iraqi flag over their main buildings after fierce clashes with IS militants, the statement said.

In southeastern Mosul, the federal police teamed up with the soldiers of the 9th armored Division and attacked the front lines of IS militants in the three neighborhoods of al-Entisar, al-Salam and al-Shaimaa, sparking heavy clashes with IS militants during the day, the statement added.

The troops made limited progress inside the three neighborhoods, which already were battleground of fierce clashes between the troops and IS militants in the past weeks, according to the statement.

On the other side, the extremist group carried out several counter-attacks against the attacking troops in an attempt to foil the troops' operations and to inflict heavy casualties among them.

Dozens of IS militants, backed by booby-trapped cars and a number of suicide bombers, attacked the federal police and the 9th Division soldier in southeastern the city, but the troops repelled their attacks, killing some 103 militants and four suicide bombers wearing explosive vests, according to the statement.

The troops also destroyed 24 booby-trapped cars, including several suicide car bombs, in addition to destroying two vehicles carrying heavy machine guns, it said.

Another IS attack was repelled by the 16th Division soldiers when the extremist militants attacked their positions in the northern edge of the city, leaving some 50 IS militants killed and 12 car bombs destroyed, the statement said.

Meanwhile, Abu Hudhaifa, a prominent IS leader of Mosul's northern front was killed by an airstrike conducted by the U.S.-led coalition aircraft, it added.

In eastern Mosul, the elite CTS forces fought back an IS counter-attack during the day, leaving 35 IS militants killed and destroying two suicide car bombs and a vehicle carrying a heavy machine gun and four militants aboard, it said.

The battles in Mosul came as the elite CTS forces, army troops and federal police launched in the early morning the second phase of a major offensive to free Mosul, and the troops made their new push into several neighborhoods in the eastern side of Mosul, locally known as the left bank of the Tigris which bisects the city.

In the past few weeks, the battles in Mosul were slowed amid grueling fighting inside Mosul with extremist militants, who used the city's civilians as human shields, carried out brutal counter attacks in small groups moving quickly throughout the districts, and resorted to suicide car bombs, in addition to mortar and sniper attacks.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Oct. 17 announced a major offensive to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city.

Since then, Iraqi security forces, backed by international coalition forces, have inched to the eastern fringes of Mosul and made progress on other routes around the city.

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.
Griffith slams watering down of crime policies

Unfortunately all we have seen is a further dismantling of crucial policies that contributed, not just to crime being reduced, but the reduction of the fear of crime by citizens through the National Operations Centre (NOC), Rapid Response Unit (RRU) and the Highway Patrol just to name a few.

These units worked in tandem with each other providing the necessary checks and balances and ensuring that units were made accountable and performance measured. Griffith also slammed governments decision to move the NOC as a sub-unit under the Ministry of National Security under the Strategic Services Agency (SSA), saying that the decision has caused a lack of coordination among agencies and has also made it difficult to gauge the performance of units under the ministry.

This is what the NOC was designed for. But what is needed is to acquire the feel of technology such as police vehicles equipped with GPS (Global Positioning System) devices to ensure that police operate within their range of responsibility and can be evaluated to ensure that they act towards distress calls. Asked about the fate of vehicles issued to the CCP, Griffith said the vehicles were leased by a private security company and the vehicles would now be returned to the company.
Nurses under attack

Stewart said the biting incident had never been reported in the media.

It was not a psychiatric patient but a female patient who was going through certain things and who was a little unstable, he related.

The nurse and the doctors tried to restrain her and she bit the nurses finger. Stewart lamented that there is no compensation for such injuries.

The RHAs (Regional Health Authorities) tell you to seek workmens compensation but that sum is woefully inadequate and it is a long, drawn-out process.

He said nurses treating psychiatric patients at the St Anns Hospital suffer frequent assaults by patients. Stewart recalled the plight of one middle-aged nurse who was thrown to the ground by a psychiatric patient resulting in her injuring her back and was fired from the job as medically unfit. She doesnt yet qualify for a pension, and the RHA is tardy in giving her backpay of increments which she is still waiting on. So she has no income coming in. Likewise, Stewart lamented the plight of nurses who are exposed to a host of microbial diseases in their daily course of work on hospital wards. When a nurse contracts chicken-pox on the ward she is sent home for 14 days and so she loses a part of her salary because she has gone over her sick-leave time. He said such a nurses boss will typically deny any liability. They will say, We are not sure that you acquired it on the wards because it could have been anywhere.

Nurses dont even have health insurance, unlike security guards.

Stewart also bemoaned that nurses who are injured while accompanying their patients in inter- hospital ambulances are not covered by the vehicles insurance policy which chiefly covers the drivers. A number of nurses and attendants have been injured on the job in these ambulances, he related. Not only dont they get compensation by any insurance coverage, he said, but they may then be penalised by the RHAs for exceeding their sick-leave allocation in recovering.

Sometimes they will look to board you, that is, to pronounce you as medically unfit and terminate you.

Stewart wants nurses to be treated as fairly as members of the protective services such as police and fire officers. For example, when police and fire officers are injured on the job they are given priority access to medical treatment at public hospitals, unlike nurses who must join the line just like any other citizen. Further, if the officers injuries cannot be treated at a public hospital, the Government pays for them to be treated privately, but such a facility is not extended to nurses, said Stewart.

Saying that foreign jurisdictions put one nurse in charge of just a handful of patients - such as a one to-one ratio at an Intensive Care Unit - he lamented that a TT nurse typically takes care of 30 or 40 patients at any one time.

Yet the public expects us to give our best. He also lamented the insecure tenure of many nurses, saying logic dictated they should instead all be permanent so as to ensure continuity in the system. All nurses in Tobago are contract workers, Stewart lamented. Other RHA areas began their nurses as temporary but they then were made permanent.

Nursing educators have been on one and two month contracts, he revealed. These are the very persons you are relying on to motivate new people into the profession to give of their best!.
Fire guts Phillipine home

Sooklalsingh, 36, was asleep after a day of work when he was awakened by his neighbours at about 1.20 am on Tuesday to lime with them under the shed just opposite the now destroyed house on Solomon Avenue, Phillipine, near San Fernando. While under the shed, one of his neighbours told him that they saw fire running across a high-tension wire connected to the house. I thought them was joking, you know, but when I start running upstairs, I saw all the smoke, Sooklalsingh said. Sooklalsingh said he ran upstairs to inspect further, but the fire had already spread throughout the upstairs of the two-story house rendering it impossible for him to enter.

Sooklalsingh shared the house with another man and they both worked as welders and fabricators for the owner of the house, Teemull Dubar, 57, who operates as a small contractor. The second man was asleep in a room downstairs when the fire broke out, completely unaware of what was happening until he was forced to jump through the window to escape the flames.

I lost everything except the short pants and vest I had on and the cellphone in my hand, Sooklalsingh said. He added, I called the fire service and all we could have done after that was watch as the whole house burned down. Right now I staying by a friend and we trying to not talk about what happened because I still really shaken up about it. The owner of the house, Dubar, estimates that he has lost at least $700,000 in property and equipment damage, which includes jack hammers, circular saws and drills. The floor of second storey of the house also caved in and destroyed a Ford Ranger that was parked under the house. Dubar speculated that the wooden floors of the five-bedroom house could be the reason why the fire spread quickly.

Dubar said that Fire Officers from the Mon Repos Fire Station reached the scene about 25 minutes after they were called. Their investigations into the cause of the fire are continuing.
Autopsy backlog in Tobago being addressed

These included families of Junior Charles, Trevaughn Noray, Keylon Chapman, Quincy Daniel, Darron Boyce, Tezeria Holder, Carolyn Isaac and Hollison Wright.

On December 15, Charles of Mason Hall was found dead at his Belmont Road home. On December 18, Noray, Chapman and Daniel were involved in a vehicular accident along the Claude Noel Highway.

Noray and Chapman died upon impact while Daniel died the following day at the Scarborough General Hospital.

On December 22, four year-old Tezeria died after complaining of feeling unwell, while on December 26, Black Rock resident Boyce fell some 50 feet when he went to retrieve a trapped kite in a tree.

On Tuesday, former KFC supervisor Isaac was found hanging at her Mt. Grace home and the body of Wright was found at his Moriah home partially decomposed.

Alexandrov conducted the autopsies following a request made by National Security Minister, Edmund Dillon on Tuesday evening.

In an interview with Newsday yesterday, Alexandrov alleged that the backlog has occurred because one man is refusing to do his job.

Describing the mortuary compound as a scene, Alexandrov said this is the first time he has ever seen so many families awaiting autopsies to be conducted in Tobago.

A pathologist has refused to conduct autopsies in Tobago and thats an absolute crazy idea, Alexandrov said.

One man does not want to do his job holding the entire nation on ransom. Alexandrov said that due to his sympathy over the grief being experienced by relatives of the dead, he agreed to forego his vacation for two days, yesterday and today, to complete the autopsies.

My family is here including my grand-daughter. They came from the United States for ten days so I took a brief vacation to spend some time with them. Instead, yesterday (Tuesday) I got a call from the Minister of National Security. I am supposed to be on my brief vacation with my loved ones but instead I would spend my time here in the mortuary, he said.

One family member who did not want to be identified said that the turmoil endured during the past few weeks, not knowing when they would be getting some closure, caused an unbearable pain.

The burden seemed heavy to carry. All we want is the autopsy conducted and to bury our loved ones. This is not good enough. You know how long we have been trying to get this autopsy done in order to bring some sort of closure and just bury our deceased? They have been giving us a set of run around as they said that it was either a pathologist come from Trinidad to do the autopsy or we carry our dead to Trinidad do the autopsy and return and we blatantly refused the latter, the family member said.

How are families in Tobago to feel when you have loved ones just there waiting on autopsies and it seems as though they are not been taken seriously. You cannot even make funeral arrangements in the interim because you really not sure when something will be done. She called on the authorities to address the matter with some level of urgency so that there would not be a repeat of the situation.

Meanwhile, President of the Public Services Association (PSA) and Political Leader of the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP), Watson Duke, was also at the mortuary to give comfort to the hurting families.

Duke said the families have been grieving for far too long as they awaited closure.

Based on the rules of the TRHA (Tobago Regional Health Authority), every Friday between 11am and 4pm, a pathologist is supposed to be here but that has not happened for a couple Fridays, Duke said.

These families were further incensed when they got a call to take their families to Trinidad for the autopsies and bring them back. We are already going to Trinidad for food items, school books, clothes, ID cards, every living thing, now they telling us when they die take them to Trinidad and bring them back. Meanwhile, Secretary of Health and Social Services Assemblyman Claudia Groome-Duke said that the TRHA board is looking into the hiring of a resident pathologist.

As related with the Ministry of Health, we have visiting pathologists coming to the island in terms of treating with this issue. Weve had the challenges in terms of recruiting, but they have been working assiduously and I have been in discussions with the board and they are working on ensuring that we do have a resident pathologist on the island. The idea of bodies being flown to Trinidad was a recommendation, but the board decided that it would not happen and it did not happen, she said
No UNC caucus

This was in contrast to an erroneous report in another media outlet that had purported to cite UNC chairman, David Lee, as announcing such a meeting to discuss the state of the Sangre Grande Regional Corporation (SGRC). At the SGRC a tie in the recent Local Government Elections saw the Peoples National Movement try to invoke its incumbency as a tie-breaker, a move that the UNC stoutly rejected as thuggery and hinted at possible legal action to refute. Yesterday both Opposition Senator Khadijah Ameen and Tabaquite MP Dr Suruj Rambachan each separately confirmed to Newsday that no UNC caucus was due.

I dont know where that information came from, said Ameen.

We had never planned to caucus. Rambachan said that by today the party would have a clearer idea of any caucus.
Cleanliness next to godliness and the law

The meeting was held at the San Fernando City Corporation complex.

Al Rawi who is the parliamentary representation for San Fernando West, said, You know they say cleanliness is next to godliness? Well, it is also next to the law. He announced that there would be a grace period which would encourage citizens across the country to inculcate a habit of cleaning their surroundings. When that period ends, Al Rawi said, the laws will be applied and very stringently, after the clean-up campaign has begun.

Al Rawi said that the fines for unkempt lots and derelict vehicles were increased earlier this year to show the seriousness with which the country must tackle the scourge of the Zika and dengue viruses caused by the breeding of the Aedes Egypti mosquito.

Al Rawi, in appealing to citizens to take responsibility for their surroundings, said, Drains year after year find themselves flooding over. Not because the State has failed to spend money on it, but because people have fridges and stoves and vehicles inside their drains and it didnt come there other than by way of citizens input. The National Clean- Up Campaign is carded to begin in the second week of January and is expected to run for at least one week. Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Rural Development and Local Government, Desdra Bascombe, said a detailed budget has not been assigned to the project as yet.

She said due to financial constraints, the model of volunteerism used for San Fernandos clean-up campaign under Hosein while he was mayor ofthe city, would be employed.

The Mayors, Chairmen and CEOs present praised the initiative and pledged their support for its success.
Rowley reshuffles Cabinet

CABINET RESHUFFLE Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley undertook his first major Cabinet reshuffle on November 1. Peoples National Movement (PNM) deputy political leader Rohan Sinanan - the man credited by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley with bringing home the 2015 general election for the party - was announced as the new Minister of Works and Transport

Kazim Hosein, who a few weeks ago was spearheading the San Fernando City Corporations disaster relief campaign for Hurricane- ravaged Haiti, in his capacity as San Fernando Mayor, is Minister of Rural Development and Local Government

Stuart Young, was made a full Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM). Previously, he was a Minister of State in the OPM in addition to being a Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs

Young later assumed chairmanship of the Cabinets Finance and General Purposes (FGP), allowing Finance Minister Colm Imbert greater room to handle several substantial matters on his plate. Rowley later said there is no set rule for the finance minister to chair the FGP

PNM MPs Nicole Olivierre (La Brea) and Ancil Antoine (DAbadie/OMeara) were shown Cabinets exit door as they were stripped of their posts of Energy and Public Utilities Ministers, respectively. PNM chairman and former Urban Development and Local Government Minister Franklin Khan was shifted to the Energy Ministry, while former Works and Transport Minister Fitzgerald Hinds is the Public Utilities Minister

NOT TRUE CARMONA Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley on September 29 denied ever giving his approval for a September 5 meeting called by President Anthony Carmona and attended by National Security Minister Edmund Dillon and the heads of different arms of the protective services. Rowley declared there was no leak of confidential documents from the Office of the Prime Minister to the Office of the President, pertaining to this meeting

In providing a detailed response to claims made by President Anthony Carmona during an address to reporters at the Office of the President in St Anns, Rowley made it clear during a post-Cabinet news conference that at no time did he exercise powers outside of his constitutional remit. He was also adamant he will maintain the working relationship which he and Carmona must have under the Constitution. In a recap, Rowley said he was in Tobago on September 5 when he received a phone call from Dillon indicating he was requested by the President to attend a meeting that day. Dillon did not know why the President wanted to see him. I then thought it might be something personal or something to do with his (Carmona) family or his immediate security, Rowley said

He told Dillon, well then, find out. Rowley said he had no further conversation with Dillon on the issue and Dillon left the country the following day for a trip that had been arranged prior to their discussions

Dillon returned home on September 12 and subsequently gave the Prime Minister a written statement on the meeting with the President. Rowley said he became alarmed and concerned on September 11, when he read in the newspapers about, a major national security meeting involving the Chief of Defence Staff, the Acting Police Commissioner and Minister Dillon, which was chaired by the President

While awaiting direct communication from Dillon, Rowley said he discovered a 30-point document on national security sent to him from the President

Rowley said he was concerned about a phrase in Carmonas letter, in which the President said, he had the consent of the attendees to tell me, what happened at this meeting. Rowley sought advice from a Senior Counsel with respect to the line of reporting and communication between the Minister, Prime Minister and President on this specific matter. He said the legal advice received showed his concerns, were well founded. The Prime Minister said through the Head of the Public Service, he wrote the President on this development. Rowley told Cabinet about the legal advice and Cabinet reaffirmed the constitutional requirements relating to government ministers reporting to the Prime Minister and/ or President

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley on September 2 said Government and the Opposition have agreed to use the Joint Select Committee (JSC) on National Security as a mechanism to collaborate on the passage of effective anti-crime legislation in the Parliament. Indicating this mechanism will evolve as Parliament resumes its sittings from September 9, the Prime Minister said both sides have agreed to collaborate on legislation pertaining to the abolition of preliminary inquiries (PIs) and trials by jury

He also said Government and Opposition will have further talks regarding implementation of the death penalty

Addressing a news conference, following a meeting between Government and the Opposition, Rowley was optimistic that both sides have, set the framework for future effective cooperation to deal with crime in TT. He said after 90 minutes of dialogue, Government and Opposition agreed to cooperate more effectively in the Parliament. To this end, Rowley said Government will relinquish chairmanship of the National Security JSC to an Independent Senator, so as to ensure that the political acrimony that may exist between Government and Opposition may not form part of the chairing of this committee. This JSC was chaired in the Tenth Parliament by then Independent Senator Dr Rolph Balgobin. Works and Transport Minister Fitzgerald Hinds is the current chairman of that JSC now in the Eleventh Parliament

Rowley said the National Security JSC will literally be, meeting on what the country needs to do...what legislation needs to be addressed..

to be created to be amended...where are the disagreements and do that behind closed doors before we come to the Parliament. He said Government has also committed to alert the Opposition about legislation before the Legislative Review Committee and then go forward when legislation takes shape, into committee and then to the Parliament floor. Rowley said there was also consensus on the need for greater resources at the Parliament and Opposition Leaders Office to facilitate more effective passage of legislation
Fuad: Patients need timely health services despite income

In a release, Khan said, it was pleasing to have witnessed such compassion and commitment by fellow colleagues in the medical fraternity, who offered their services to members of the public free of charge in the true spirit of the Christmas season. For this season Dr Ronnie Bhola gave free surgeries for 25 cataract patients and Dr Vijay Naraynsingh provided 100 patients from the public health sector with free surgeries by a team of 21 surgeons of Medical Associates private hospital.

Khan in the release commented: While they would have been constricted by the time frame in which they chose to conduct this exercise, it was satisfying to know that at least a few dozen people in our nation are now better able to navigate their lives through the assistance of these medical treatments.

He continued: While it is easy to get caught up in the excitement of this generosity however, it must not be overlooked that our public health institutions are still overburdened with persons who require free medical treatment on a more regular basis.

For this reason, while it is commendable that these doctors have demonstrated such exuberance in this instance, one can only hope that they will transfer this same energy into their practice at the public health facilities in 2017 to reduce the waiting time that patients are forced to endure and ease the burden on their colleagues.

Khan recalled that in 2012 an audit into the Ophthalmology departments at national health facilities indicated that many doctors were under-performing, which resulted in these patients seeking treatment at private hospitals, where they would be charged considerable amounts of money to perform the very services that could have been received free of charge.

In other instances, there have been specialists in various fields who have shied away from their public practice in an effort to profit from their expertise, despite the fact that there were many who required the treatment but unable to meet the financial requirement in the private sector.

While doctors do have the right to earn a living based on their profession, there must be ethical conduct that guides them to ensure that no patient is forced to suffer as a result of their ambition, he stressed.

Khan said that as a former Minister of Health it his my intention to create a system that would incorporate both private and public institutions to deliver the best and timely health services to the entire nation, despite anyones income bracket.

As doctors we have also sworn an oath to protect and preserve the lives of our fellow human beings, and this should take precedence in the way that we carry about our duties and conduct our practices.

So, as wonderful as their actions of these few doctors during this Christmas season has been, the significance of their generosity would have been undercut had the public health system been able to care for these patients in the manner in which they were intended, he stressed.

The question we need to ask therefore, is whether we prefer a system wherein a charity event can rescue a handful of patients from the public health facilities and be lauded as a result, or one in which each and every patient is treated in a timely and efficient manner and can all enjoy a healthier life together with the rest of the nation.
Seven dissidents, journalists, and rebels who defied Authoritarian regimes in 2016

2016 was a difficult year in many parts of the world for those who sought to be different under authoritarian regimes. Whether Communists, Islamists, or the religious intolerance of their own families, these individuals took a stand and, in some cases, paid the ultimate price to advocate for freedom.

Article by Frances Martel

They are not the only ones who took a stand, but theirs are stories of resilience and commitment to freedom in a world beleaguered by threats to individual rights and liberties.

Venezuela: Lilian Tintori

The wife of Popular Will opposition party leader Leopoldo Lopez has traveled the world seeking justice for her husband and Venezuelas other political prisoners, arrested for refusing to bow to the nations socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro. Lopez was sentenced to 13 years in prison in September 2015 for organizing peaceful protests against Maduro in 2014. He lost an appeal in August and has remained in isolation in the countrys notorious Ramo Verde prison for much of his detention, subject to what international human rights courts have deemed torture. Tintori, too, has been subject to degrading treatment at Ramo Verde, forced to strip naked before guards and groped by police guards.

Tintori, meanwhile, has continued to help organize the protests that landed Lopez in prison. She has taken her case from the Huffington Post to the Mexican Senate to the Vatican this year, chaining herself to the gates of St. Peters Square. Pope Francis did not meet with her, though he met with Maduro earlier this year.

Turkey: Selahattin Demirtas

The head of the center-left Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), which made headlines last year by denying the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) of a legislative majority, tested the free speech rights of his country by calling the AKP an extension of ISIS and accusing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of attempting to establish a caliphate. Erdogans rule has been marked by an increase in the number of prosecutions against individuals for insulting the president and an alarming crackdown on opposition media.

Erdogan repeatedly accused Demirtas and his party of an alliance with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a U.S.-designated Marxist terrorist group. Demirtas promised to resign if the government could prove the allegation. It never did  instead, Erdogan ordered the arrests of Demirtas, his co-chair Figen Yuksekdag, and dozens of other HDP politicians. The few HDP politicians who have yet to be arrested protest that Demirtas is being kept in isolation in prison, which they claim is a form of torture. He remains in prison on unspecified charges of terrorism.

North Korea: Kenneth Bae

Kenneth Bae was the longest-held American in captivity in North Korea when he was released in 2014. His boldest acts of defiance arguably occurred long before then, when he opened a travel agency designed to introduce North Koreans to Christianity by simply exposing them to outsider tourists. For his transgressions he was arrested, forced to work in a labor camp, and ultimately freed after significant diplomatic efforts.

Rather than return to a quiet life, however, Bae felt compelled to tell the story of how Jesus Christs presence in his prison cell in North Korea saved his life and kept hope for freedom alive. He released his book, Not Forgotten, this year, where he candidly discusses feeling the Holy Spirit holding his hand and attempting to explain the concept of God to a North Korean prison guard.

The book was not published without risk for Bae, who says his family is originally from North Korea  whose capital, Pyongyang, was once known as the Jerusalem of the East for its large Christian population. North Korea responded to his vivid descriptions of the horrors of its Communist autocracy by calling Bae Judas and demanding he commit suicide for dishonoring dictator Kim Jong-un.

The threats have not stopped Bae from his missionary work; he continues to travel the world telling his story of faith.

Cuba: Danilo Maldonado Machado, El Sexto

Danilo Maldonado Machado spent most of 2015 behind bars, after Cuban police arrested him for attempting to put together an art installation depicting dictators Fidel and Raul Castro as pigs, an homage to George Orwell. Freed in October 2015, he told reporters, I am not afraid of going to jail again, and promised to continue defying the government. In February, he was allowed to travel to Miami to display his art installation, now titled Pork.

By March, he was arrested protesting with the Ladies in White, a pacifist anti-Communist group, shortly before President Barack Obama landed in Havana. Cuban police ultimately freed Maldonado again, periodically detaining him as he continued his art and continued marching with the Ladies in White, throughout the year.

In November, however, Maldonado ran afoul of the government yet again, this time being arrested, sent to a maximum security prison, and only heard from through a notebook smuggled into his isolation ward since. On the day dictator Fidel Castro died, Maldonado spray-painted the words hes gone on a Havana wall and recorded a Facebook live video of himself celebrating in public and urging other Cubans to express joy that Castro had died. He remains imprisoned without charges today, with family stating he has been beaten severely and denied medical attention for his chronic asthma.

Pakistan: Qandeel Baloch

26-year-old Qandeel Baloch was not a politician, or even by traditional definitions an activist. She was a woman who sought to create a sexually liberated public persona in Pakistan and refused to bend down to the strict Islamic authorities that rule the country. She paid the ultimate price for her transgressions. Her brother Waseem Baloch confessed to being proud to have honor killed his sister during her final visit home. I am proud of what I did. I drugged her first, then I killed her, he told police. Baloch became popular on social media for posting photos of herself in revealing outfits, sans hijab, earning her the nickname Pakistans Kim Kardashian. While her apolitical photos did arouse concern among conservative Pakistanis, she did not publicly express fear for her life until she met with an influential Islamic leader, Mufti Abdul Qavi, and took a selfie with him in a hotel. Following the meeting, she called Qavi a hypocrite and accused him of being sexually forward with her and drinking Coca-cola, a violation of the Ramadan fast. He lost his government position following the affair. Baloch demanded publicly for the government to protect her following the incident. Her brother told police the Qavi incident prompted his planning of her murder. Before she died, Baloch told the newspaper Dawn that her family forced her to marry a man who threatened to burn her face because she was cute, never supported me, and that her online career was revenge on Pakistan as a whole for its oppressive culture. Following her murder, Pakistan passed a law that now prevents family from forgiving the murderer in an honor killing, which previous annulled the charges against the killer automatically. China: Cardinal Joseph Zen Cardinal Zen, while retired, is the highest-ranking Catholic clergyman from China in the world, and he has repeatedly defied the Communist Party in his country by continuing to profess his faith and joining anti-Communist protesters when possible. In 2014, at age 82, he took to the streets of Hong Kong to support the independence protests there, following a crackdown on local government there from Beijing. Having served a Bishop of Hong Kong, he has remained largely out of the way to the aggressive persecution of Christians on the mainland, but continuously vocal about their plight. In 2016, Zen became one of Chinas loudest critics of the Vatican, in an era where Pope Francis has repeatedly reached out to authoritarian regimes in the hopes that they will soften their chokeholds over their own people. Pope Francis has no real knowledge of communism, Zen said in November, responding to news that the Vatican may attempt a similar diplomatic approach with China to that it has adopted with Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran. Im sorry to say that in his goodwill he has done many things which are simply ridiculous. You cannot go into negotiations with the mentality we want to sign an agreement at any cost, then you are surrendering yourself, you are betraying yourself, you are betraying Jesus Christ, he later said of the proposed deal with Beijing. Turkey: Can Dundar We return to Turkey because minority politicians did not incur all of Erdogans wrath this year  journalists have become a prime target for attacks through the court system. Can Dundar, now in exile in Europe, suffered not only legal persecution but became the survivor of an assassination attempt as he was waiting for the verdict on his case in May. Dundar served as the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, the last remaining bastion of secularist, center-left opposition media in Turkey. Cumhuriyet has become such a target for police persecution that even its cafeteria cook has been arrested for insulting the president, but under Dundar, it dared to accuse the Turkish intelligence agency MIT of illicitly shipping weapons into Syria. Erdogans government arrested Dundar and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul for approving the publication of the story. Both faced life sentences. While awaiting the verdict in his case in May, a gunman stormed up to Dundar and shot in his direction, shouting you are a traitor! The gunman missed, his attack caught on camera, and Dundar was ultimately freed. He stepped down from Cumhuriyet shortly thereafter and made his way to Europe, where he was granted citizenship in Paris in November. He has since published a book about his experience at Cumhuriyet and in prison.

Read more at: breitbart.com

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Would love to work with Dhanush: Iswarya Menon

Tamil Nadu,Cinema/Showbiz,Southern Cinema, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Chennai, Dec 29 (IANS) Actress Iswarya Menon, who is making her debut as a lead with upcoming Tamil actioner "Veera", says it's on her wish list to work with Dhanush.

"I have many role models in Tamil filmdom, and I look up to all those who made it from scratch, as it needs a lot of perseverance, patience and hard work. But I would love to work with Dhanush because he amazes me with his extravagant performance on screen," Iswarya said in a statement.

Although Iswarya has been a part of a few Tamil films in the past, those have been supporting roles. "Veera" marks her debut in a leading role.

"'Veera' will be a powerful launch for me. I'm already in talks for a few Tamil projects, but it's too early to talk about them," she said.

Directed by Rajaraman, "Veera" stars Kreshna, Rajendran and Yogi Babu.

--IANS

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EC slaps case on Maharashtra BJP chief Danve

Bihar,National,Politics,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Aurangabad, Dec 29 (IANS) The Maharashtra Police has booked state Bharatiya Janata Party President Raosaheb Danve for violating the election code of conduct, under the directive of the State Election Commission, an official said here on Thursday.

Danve has been booked under Indian Penal Code Section 171-B, and Section 20(I) of the Maharashtra Municipal Council, Nagar Panchayat and Industrial Township Act, in an FIR lodged by the Paithan police.

The police action was initiated late Wednesday night following instructions from the Aurangabad collectorate after directions from State Election Commissioner (SEC) J.S. Saharia's office, the official said.

Danve is accused of allegedly violating the Model Code of Conduct for the ongoing civic body elections in the state and luring voters in Paithan on December 17 to accept "Goddess Laxmi" if it came to them before the next day's civic elections there.

Goddess Laxmi symbolises and is revered as the embodiment of wealth in India.

Following the statement, videos of which went viral on social media networks, the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party had demanded stringent action against Danve for his statement on the eve of the December 18 elections to civic bodies in Aurangabad, Nanded, Bhandara and Gadchiroli districts.

Later, the SEC demanded an explanation from Danve in which, among other things, he claimed to have been quoted out of context, but was not satisfied with his defence.

In the first video Danve says: "Today is December 17 and tomorrow is December 18, the voting day. The eve of election is important, as suddenly you get 'darshan' of (Goddess) Laxmi. If such Laxmi comes to your door, please welcome it."

In his reply to the SEC notice, he said that poll-eve is important and suddenly in the night there will be obeisance to Goddess Laxmi, and if Goddess Laxmi comes the voters must ensure she does not return empty-handed.

--IANS

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Ericsson demonstrates IoT solutions in Andhra village

Delhi,National,Technology, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS) Swedish communication technology firm Ericsson on Thursday demonstrated at Mori village of Andhra Pradesh its Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for creating smart and sustainable villages in the state.

Both projects -- Connected Aquaponics and Smart Water Grid Management -- were demonstrated in the presence of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, after a three-month pilot.

Ericsson earlier this year signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Andhra Pradesh government and the University of California - Berkley to help improve lives of farmers in and around Mori.

"The 'Connected Aquaponics' and 'Smart Water Grid Management' IoT solutions being demonstrated here will help improve harvest and optimise water distribution. It has the potential to provide an improved life for millions of farmers in the country," said Anand Varadarajan, head of Ericsson Research, Chennai, at Ericsson India, in a statement.

The Connected Aquaponics integrates aquaculture and hydroponics for reuse of the ammonia-rich waste water from aquaculture for organic farming and recycle the water back to the aqua farm.

"Using wireless sensor network and Ericsson's AppIOT platform, we enable the monitoring of the aqua farm 24x7, thereby enabling the farmers with real-time information," the company said.

This enables the farmers to increase the yield as well as bring down the production cost with optimum use of the raw materials and repeated use of water.

The 'Smart Water Grid Management' solution has been designed to enable efficient use of natural water resources in the Godavari basin through use of sensors and actuators.

The sensors measure the quality of water, flow of water and level in the water storage tanks across the village.

--IANS

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Frequently Asked Questions related to the withdrawal of Legal Tender Character of the old Bank Notes in the denominations

New Delhi, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 NI Wire

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on withdrawal of Legal Tender Character of the Old Bank Notes in the denominations of Rs 500/- and Rs 1,000 and replies there to.

Following are the Frequently Asked Questions (FQAs) related to the withdrawal of Legal Tender Character of the old Bank Notes in the denominations of Rs 500/- and Rs 1000/- and replies there to:

(Updated as on December 27, 2016)

1. Why is this Scheme introduced?

The incidence of fake Indian currency notes in higher denomination has increased. For ordinary persons, the fake notes look similar to genuine notes, even though no security feature has been copied. The fake notes are used for antinational and illegal activities. High denomination notes have been misused by terrorists and for hoarding black money. India remains a cash based economy hence the circulation of Fake Indian Currency Notes continues to be a menace. In order to contain the rising incidence of fake notes and black money, the scheme to withdraw has been introduced.

2. What is this Scheme?

The legal tender character of the existing bank notes in denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 issued by the Reserve bank of India till November 8, 2016 (hereinafter referred to as Specified Bank Notes) stands withdrawn. In consequence thereof these Bank Notes cannot be used for transacting business and/or store of value for future usage. The Specified Bank Notes can be exchanged for value at any of the 19 offices of the Reserve Bank of India and deposited at any of the bank branches of commercial banks/ Regional Rural Banks/ Co-operative banks (only Urban Co-operative Banks and State Co-operative Banks) or at any Head Post Office or Sub-Post Office.

District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) can allow their existing customers to withdraw money from their accounts up to Rs 24,000 per week. No exchange facility against the specified bank notes (Rs 500 and Rs 1000) or deposit of such notes should be entertained by DCCBs. The Reserve Bank has accordingly advised all banks to permit withdrawal of cash by DCCBs from their accounts based on need.

3. Does the Scheme apply to pre 2005 banknotes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000?

Yes, specified banknotes (SBN) include pre 2005 banknotes in the denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1000. Banks should accept deposits of pre-2005 bank notes in the denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 under the scheme. However, these notes can be exchanged at RBI Offices only.

4. How much value will I get?

You will get value for the entire volume of notes tendered at the bank branches / RBI offices.

5. Can I get all in cash?

The Scheme does not provide for it, given its objectives. You can use balances in bank accounts to pay for other requirements by cheque or through electronic means of payments such as Internet banking, mobile wallets, IMPS, credit/debit cards etc.

6. Can I get cash in exchange for specified banknotes over the bank counter?

No. Over the counter exchange (in cash) of SBNs is not permitted from November 25, 2016. Members of public who approach the banks for over the counter exchange of SBN are encouraged to deposit SBNs into their bank accounts. Banks have been advised to facilitate opening of new accounts for unbanked people.

7. What if I dont have any Bank Account?

You can always open a bank account by approaching a bank branch with necessary documents required for fulfilling the KYC requirements.

8. What if, if I have only JDY account?

A JDY account holder can avail the deposit facility subject to the caps and other laid down limits in accord with norms and procedures.

With a view to protect the innocent farmers and rural account holders of PMJDY from activities of money launders and legal consequences under the Benami Property Transaction & Money Laundering laws, it has been decided to place certain limits, as a matter of precaution, on the operations in the PMJDY accounts funded through deposits of Specified Bank Notes (SBNs) after November 09, 2016.

As a temporary measure, the banks have been advised that:

(1) Fully KYC complaint account holders may be allowed to withdraw Rs 10,000/- from their account, in a month. The branch managers may allow further withdrawals beyond Rs 10,000 within the current applicable limits only after ascertaining the genuineness of such withdrawals and duly documenting the same on banks record.

(2) Limited or Non KYC compliant account holders may be allowed to withdraw Rs 5,000 per month from the amount deposited through SBNs after November 09, 2016 within the overall ceiling of Rs 10,000.

9. Where can I go to exchange the notes?

The exchange facility has been stopped at bank branches with effect from November 25, 2016.

10. Should I go to bank personally for deposit or can I send the notes through my representative?

Personal visit to the branch is preferable. In case it is not possible for you to visit the branch you may send your representative with an express mandate i.e. a written authorisation. The representative should produce authority letter and his / her valid identity proof while tendering the notes.

In case you want to go to a branch of any other bank where you are not maintaining an account, you will have to furnish valid identity proof and bank account details required for electronic fund transfer to your account.

11. Can I withdraw from ATM?

The ATMs are progressively getting recalibrated. As and when they are recalibrated, the cash limit of such ATMs will stand enhanced to Rs 2500/- per day. This will enable dispensing of lower denomination currency notes for about Rs 500/- per withdrawal. Other ATMs which are yet to be recalibrated, will continue to dispense Rs 2000/- till they are recalibrated.

Banks have also been advised to increase the Business Correspondents limit of dispensing cash to Rs 2500/- for withdrawal from bank accounts.

12. What will be the levied ATM charges?

It has been decided that banks shall waive levy of ATM charges for all transactions (inclusive of both financial and non-financial transactions) by savings bank customers done at their own banks ATMs as well as at other banks ATMs, irrespective of the number of transactions during the month. This waiver is applicable on transactions done at ATMs from November 10, 2016 till December 30, 2016, subject to review.

13. Does the limit of Rs 24000 withdrawal apply to withdrawals from bank account of one bank from another bank?

These limits are not applicable to cash withdrawal from a bank account by one bank from another bank, Post Office, Money changers operating at International airports and operators of White Label ATMs. The branches maintaining Currency Chests have been advised to accommodate the requests from other branches in their vicinity  linked or otherwise  for supply of cash.

14. Can I withdraw cash against cheque?

Yes, you can withdraw cash against withdrawal slip or cheque subject to a weekly limit of Rs 24000/- (including withdrawals from ATMs and over the counter) from the bank accounts.

Business entities having Current Accounts which are operational for last three months or more will be allowed to draw Rs 50,000/-per week. This can be done in a single transaction or multiple transactions. This facility has been extended to Overdraft and Cash Credit accounts and traders registered with the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) markets or mandis. Accordingly, holders of current / overdraft / cash credit accounts, which are operational for the last three months or more, may withdraw up to Rs 50000 in cash, in a week. Such withdrawals may be disbursed predominantly in Rs 2000 denomination bank notes. This enhanced limit for weekly withdrawal is not applicable for personal overdraft accounts. Farmers are allowed to draw up to Rs 25000/- per week in cash from their loan (including Kisan Credit Card limit) or deposit accounts subject to their accounts being compliant with the extant KYC norms.

15. Can I withdraw a higher amount for the purpose of my wards wedding?

With a view to enable members of the public to perform and celebrate weddings of their wards it has been decided to allow a cash withdrawal of maximum Rs 250000/- from their bank deposit accounts till December 30, 2016 out of the balances at credit in the account as at close of business on November 08, 2016 to meet wedding related expenses.

This is subject to the following conditions:

i. Withdrawals are permitted only from fully KYC compliant accounts.

ii. The amounts can be withdrawn only if the date of marriage is on or before December 30, 2016.

iii. Withdrawals can be made by either of the parents or the person getting married. (Only one of them will be permitted to withdraw).

iv. Since the amount proposed to be withdrawn is meant to be used for cash disbursements, it has to be established that the persons for whom the payment is proposed to be made do not have a bank account.

v. The application for withdrawal shall be accompanied by following documents:

An application as per the format

Evidence of the wedding, including the invitation card, copies of receipts for advance payments already made, such as Marriage hall booking, advance payments to caterers, etc.

A detailed list of persons to whom the cash withdrawn is proposed to be paid, together with a declaration from such persons that they do not have a bank account, where the amount proposed to be paid is Rs 10,000/- or more. The list should indicate the purpose for which the proposed payments are being made.

Banks may keep a proper record of the evidence and produce them for verification by the authorities in case of need. The scheme will be reviewed based on authenticity/ bona fide use thereof. Yet, banks should encourage families to incur wedding expenses through non-cash means viz. cheques /drafts, credit/debit cards, prepaid cards, mobile transfers, internet banking channels, NEFT/RTGS, etc. Therefore, members of the public should be advised, while granting cash withdrawals, to use cash to meet expenses which have to be met only through cash mode.

16. What is being done for the farmers?

Farmers are allowed to draw up to Rs 25000/- per week in cash from their loan (including Kisan Credit Card limit) or deposit accounts subject to their accounts being compliant with the extant KYC norms. Specified banknotes in the denomination can be used for making payments towards purchase of seeds from the Centres, units or outlets belonging to the Central or State Governments, Public Sector Undertakings, National or State Seeds Corporations, Central or State Agricultural Universities and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, on production of proof of identity.

Towards ensuring unhindered farming operations during the Rabi crop season, NABARD would be utilizing its own cash credit limits up to about Rs 23,000 crore to enable the DCCBs to disburse the required crop loans to PACS and farmers. Banks with currency chests have been advised to ensure adequate cash supply to the DCCBs and RRBs. Adequate cash supply should also be ensured for rural branches of all commercial (including RRBs). Bank branches located in APMCs may also be given adequate cash to facilitate smooth procurement.

17. Can I deposit Specified Bank Notes through ATMs, Cash Deposit Machine, cash Recycler and bank branches multiple times?

Yes, Specified Bank Notes can be deposited in Cash Deposits machines / Cash Recyclers or at bank branches more than once till December 30, 2016. At bank branches, customers should use separate pay-in-slips for depositing specified bank notes and other legal tender bank notes.(If a depositor has a mixed bunch of SBN and legal tender notes, he has to segregate them and submit two separate Pay-in slips).

18. Can I make use of electronic (NEFT/RTGS /IMPS/ Internet Banking / Mobile banking etc.) mode?

You can use NEFT/RTGS/IMPS/Internet Banking/Mobile Banking or any other electronic/ non-cash mode of payment. In order to meet the transactional needs of the public through digital means, additional measures have been introduce by way of special dispensation for small merchants and enhancement in limits for semi-closed Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPIs).

PPIs issuers can issue PPIs to such merchants. While balance in such PPIs cannot exceed Rs 20,000/- at any point of time, the merchants can transfer funds from such PPIs to their own linked bank accounts up to Rs 50,000/- per month, without any limit per transaction. Merchants only need to provide a self-declaration in respect of their status and details of their bank account.

The limit of semi-closed PPIs issued with minimum details has been enhanced to Rs 20,000/- from the existing Rs 10,000/-. The total value of reloads during any given month has also been enhanced to Rs 20,000/-.

Extant instructions for other categories of PPIs remain unchanged. Full KYC PPIs with balance upto 1,00,000/- can continue to be made available by authorised PPI issuers. The above measures will be effective from November 21, 2016 till December 30, 2016, subject to review.

Relaxation in Additional Factor of Authentication (AFA) for payments upto Rs 2000/- for card network provided authentication solutions has been permitted for the Card Not Present (CNP) transactions. For details please refer RBI DPSS circular dated December 6, 2016.

19. I am right now not in India, what should I do?

If you have Specified banknotes in India, you may authorise in writing enabling another person in India to deposit the notes into your bank account. The person so authorised has to come to the bank branch with the Specified banknotes, the authority letter given by you and a valid identity proof (Valid Identity proof is any of the following: Aadhaar Card, Driving License, Voter ID Card, Pass Port, NREGA Card, PAN Card, Identity Card Issued by Government Department, Public Sector Unit to its Staff)

20. I am an NRI and hold NRO account, can the exchange value be deposited in my account?

Yes, you can deposit the Specified banknotes to your NRO account.

21. I am a foreign tourist, how much Indian currency can I get after the announcement of withdrawal of legal tender status for specified banknotes?

Foreign citizens will be permitted to exchange foreign currency up to Rs 5000 per week. Necessary entry to this effect will be made in their passports.

22. I have emergency needs of cash (hospitalisation, travel, life saving medicines) then what I should do?

Exemptions for the use of specified banknotes have been discontinued with effect from December 16, 2016

23. Can I deposit the Specified banknotes to my account?

Deposits of Specified bank Notes into all types of deposit/loan accounts of Public Sector Banks/ Private Sector Banks / Foreign Banks/Regional Rural Banks / Urban Cooperative Banks/ State Cooperative Banks is allowed subject to CTR/STR reporting. Certain restrictions have been imposed on deposits of SBNs into non KYC compliant bank accounts as indicated below:

Tenders of SBNs in excess of Rs 5000 into a non KYC compliant bank account will be received for credit only once during the remaining period till December 30, 2016. The credit in such cases shall be afforded only after questioning tenderer, on record, in the presence of at least two officials of the bank, as to why this could not be deposited earlier and receiving a satisfactory explanation. The explanation will be kept on record to facilitate an audit trail at a later stage.

Even when tenders smaller than Rs 5000 are made in a non KYC compliant bank account and such tenders taken together on cumulative basis exceed Rs 5000 they may be subject to the procedure to be followed in case of tenders above Rs 5000, with no more tenders being allowed thereafter until December 30, 2016.

The above restrictions shall not apply to tenders of SBNs for deposits in KYC compliant account and deposits under the Taxation and Investment Regime for the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, 2016

The equivalent value of specified bank notes tendered will be credited to an account maintained by the tenderer at any bank in accordance with standard banking procedure and on production of valid proof of Identity.

The equivalent value of specified bank notes tendered may be credited to a third party account, provided specific authorisation therefor accorded by the third party is presented to the bank, following standard banking procedure and on production of valid proof of identity of the person actually tendering, as indicated in Annex-5 of our circular DCM (Plg) No.1226/10.27.00/2016-17 dated November 08, 2016

Anybody depositing more than Rs 50,000/- in cash in their bank account has to submit a copy of the PAN card in case the bank account is not seeded with PAN.

24. Can I deposit SBN to Small Savings Scheme?

Government of India has decided that subscribers of Small Savings Schemes may not be allowed to deposit SBNs in Small Savings Schemes. Banks have been advised not to accept SBNs for deposits in Small Saving Schemes with immediate effect. However deposits into Post Office Savings account are permitted

25. What is proof of identity?

Valid Identity proof is any of the following: Aadhaar Card, Driving License, Voter ID Card, Pass Port, NREGA Card, PAN Card, Identity Card Issued by Government Department, Public Sector Unit to its Staff.

26. Where can I get more information on this scheme?

Further information is available on our website (www.rbi.org.in) and the website of the Government of India (www.finmin.nic.in)

27. What steps have been taken for queue management?

Banks have been advised to make arrangements for separate queues for Senior citizens and Divyang (disabled) persons. Similarly, separate queues should also be arranged for those who come to exchange SBN for cash and those who come to deposit into bank accounts.

The last date for submission of the annual life certificate for the government pensioners which is to be submitted in November every year has been extended upto January 15, 2017 to facilitate.

The Reserve Bank assures members of the public that enough cash in small denominations is also available at the Reserve Bank and banks. The Reserve Bank urges that public need not be anxious; need not come over to banks repeatedly to draw and hoard; Cash is available when they need it.

Also see:

All You wanted to know from RBI about: Withdrawal of Legal Tender Status of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 Notes

28. If I have a problem, whom should I approach?

You may approach the control room of RBI by email or on Telephone Nos 022 22602201/022 22602944

29. Can payments towards tax, penalty, surcharge and deposit under PMGKY be made in SBNs?

The Central Government has decided that up to 30.12.2016, the payment towards tax, surcharge, penalty and deposit under the Pradhan Mantri Garib KalyanYojana (PMGKY), can be made in Old Bank Notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination issued by the RBI. The Taxation and Investment Regime for Pradhan Mantri Garib KalyanYojana (PMGKY), 2016 has commenced on 17th December, 2016 and is open for declarations upto 31st March, 2017. The payment of tax, surcharge and penalty under the Scheme is to be made through challan ITNS- 287 and the deposits are to be made in the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Deposit Scheme, 2016. The notifications relating to PMGKY are available on the website www.incometaxindia.gov.in

Source: PIB
Putin confirms 'fragile' ceasefire in Syria

Russian Federation,Defence/Security,Terrorism,Diplomacy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Moscow, Dec 29 (IANS) Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday confirmed that a "fragile" agreement was reached on a ceasefire in Syria and the start of peace talks.

"This agreement we've reached is very fragile, as we all understand. They require special attention and patience, professional attitude, and constant contact with our partners," Putin said at a meeting with Russian foreign and defence ministers.

The agreement, which was previously announced by Turkey, was detailed in three documents, Putin said.

"The first was signed by the Syrian government and the Syrian opposition to stop hostilities in the territory of Syria. The second one was a set of measures to control the ceasefire. The third document was a declaration of intention for Syrian settlement," the Russian President said.

The truce was supported by seven major armed opposition groups that have over 60,000 fighters in their ranks, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu said.

He added that if the agreement holds, it would allow Russia to scale down its military presence in Syria.

Putin said that such a pullout would not mean a stop to Russia's international anti-terrorist effort.

He added that he will contact his Iranian and Turkish counterparts to discuss further steps in the Syrian peace process.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the three nations were preparing a meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan to pave the way for peace talks on Syria.

Ankara has called on all parties that can exert influence on armed groups to support the ceasefire deal.

Damascus has confirmed that it will observe the ceasefire starting December 30 midnight.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said that Turkey and Russia will act as guarantors of the truce, which does not include groups designated as terrorists by the UN.

--IANS

ahm/bg
Peace unlikely in region till Kashmir issue is resolved: Pakistan

Pakistan,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Politics,Diplomacy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Islamabad, Dec 29 (IANS) Pakistan on Thursday said it wanted to "amicably" resolve all outstanding issues with India, including those related to the Indus Waters Treaty and Kashmir, as there can be "no peace" in the region unless the Kashmir issue was resolved.

Radio Pakistan quoted Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria as saying during his weekly media briefing that the government was assessing "India's activities" within the framework of the water sharing agreement between the two countries.

Zakaria said the treaty did not allow unilateral abrogation of the agreement and "Pakistan is keeping an eye on the evolving situation and would follow its strategy in case of any violation".

"There is an arbitration mechanism to resolve the dispute regarding implementation of the treaty and many IWT disputes were resolved amicably in the past," the state-run radio quoted Zakaria as saying.

"Pakistan is pursuing the policy of peaceful neighbourhood."

Zakaria said Pakistan invites India for a dialogue to resolve all outstanding issues.

He urged the international community to play "its due role" in resolving the longstanding Kashmir issue.

Zakaria accused India of continually violating the UN Charter, saying a country that does not abide by international law should not be granted membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

He said that India trespassing Pakistan's sea boundaries was a violation of the UN Charter, and added that Pakistan was observing the situation.

The IWT was signed in 1960 to allocate the three eastern rivers of the Indus basin -- the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej -- to India, while 80 per cent waters of the three western ones -- the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab -- were allotted to Pakistan.

India has recently said it would fully utilise its 20 per cent share of the Indus waters and that the proposed water projects would not be in any violation of the treaty. Pakistan has disputed India's contention and sought a World Bank intervention.

Zakaria said the Kashmir dispute was a "bone of contention between Pakistan and India" and urged the international community to "play its role" in resolving the issue.

--IANS

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Iraq resumes anti-IS offensive in Mosul after 2-week lull

Iraq,Defence/Security,Terrorism, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Baghdad, Dec 29 (IANS) Iraqi troops backed by US-led airstrikes pushed deeper into besieged Mosul on Thursday in a multi-pronged assault after a two-week lull in a bid to retake the Islamic State-held city.

A number of militants were killed after the elite forces declared the start of a second phase of operations to clear the eastern section of Mosul from the group, a police official was quoted as saying by Iraqi News.

The militants were trying to pass from the western region to the east using Al Nasr district bridge, according to Federal Police commander, Lt. Gen. Raed Shaker Jawdat, who said that artillery forces bombed an IS gathering and killed five militants at Jadidat al-Mufti neighbourhood.

Stiff resistance by the militants, civilians trapped inside their houses and bad weather have slowed advances in the more than two-month-old offensive to recapture Iraq's second largest city, the group's last urban bastion in the country.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in statements on Tuesday that defeating the IS needs three extra months. He had previously hoped the battle would wrap up before the end of 2016.

His comments were more optimistic than US coalition commanders who envision victory within two years.

Iraqi generals have said they now control a quarter of Mosul, but the extremist group still bombs and launches suicide attacks on liberated areas.

The IS remains in control of some areas of the western section, which is adjacent to its strongholds in Syria.

The battles for Mosul have forced 137,000 people to leave their homes for refugee camps, according to the latest count by the Ministry of Migration and Displacement.

The IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014, when it swept across much of northern and central Iraq, and the group's leader declared the establishment of its caliphate from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque.

The city is still home to around a million people, according to the UN.

--IANS

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President of India on the occasion inauguration of the 77th Session of Indian History Congress

New Delhi, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 NI Wire

Excerpts of speech by the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee on the occasion inauguration of the 77th Session of Indian History Congress

We must keep in mind that there is no conflict or contradiction between the promotion of regional history and the pursuit of the history of our country as a whole. Indeed, the more we know about our regions, the more we enrich the history of the whole country. My first Masters degree is in the subject of History. Kolkata, where I studied, has been home to some of our great historians like Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Professor R. C. Majumdar, Professor N. K. Sinha, Professor D. C. Sircar, Professor B. N. Mukherjee and others. They doubtless wrote on Bengal but their eyes were also set on India as a whole. Professor N. K. Sinha authored a detailed work on the economic history of colonial Bengal. Yet, he also compiled the standard biography of the famous Haidar Ali of Mysore, since he held Hyder Alis resistance to the expansion of British power in India near to his heart.This larger concern for the history of the whole of India was shared by prominent historians from other parts of the country as well. The great authority on South Indian history S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar published important studies of the Guptas and Gurjaras of Northern India.

Whether we focus on regional or national history, what is needed the most in our approach to History is that we should be as objective as possible. This is of course true with respect to all subjects of enquiry and academic activities. Behind many professions of impartiality may lie deeply rooted sentiments of prejudice or an innate sense of superiority.

It is useful in this regard to recall Edward Saids influential work of 1978, Orientalism, whether he critically scrutinised the claims to objectivity of writing in the west on Asian culture and history. It will be unfair to deny that western orientalists introduced a broader conception of history and a more critical attitude towards historical evidence than our own traditional analysts. Orientalists deciphered our early scripts, they discovered Ashoka for us and tracked as well as translated an enormous amount of source material. They deserve our gratitude for all the valuable work they have done. However, Edward Saids work serves as a warning against the intrusion of personal prejudice into historical interpretation. In my view, every branch of knowledge, whether it be one of the so-called exact sciences or belongs to the spheres of humanities and social sciences, prospers only when clinical objectivity is maintained. It is often the case in history that evidence is either so scarce that the room for speculation is extremely wide, or is so massive that the historian is unable to explore more than a small part of the available data. Personal proclivities of scholars such as loyalties to nation, region, religion, etc. can influence their choice when evidence suggests not a single occurrence but a range of possibilities.

How should one guard oneself against temptation in such a situation? I would venture to recommend that reason and moderation alone should be our guide. It is natural to love ones country and see as much glory in its past as one can detect. But patriotism should not result in blinkered approaches to interpreting history or a compromise with truth in order to justify an argument of choice. No society is perfect and history must be also seen as a guide on what went wrong and what were the contradictions, deficiencies and weaknesses of the past. The study of history will be of use to us in shaping our conduct today only if undertaken with objectivity and my impression is that mainstream Indian historiography has been quite conscious of this responsibility.

An objective pursuit of History, such as our best historians have attempted, requires an impartial mind of a judge and not the mind of an advocate. We must keep our eyes open for unfamiliar ideas and be ready to consider a range of different inferences or assumptions. This necessarily bars intolerance of contrary opinions or judgements. There has been an unfortunate tendency in our country from time to time to take umbrage at the expression of any view perceived to be hostile to our social or cultural institutions, past or present. Similarly, critical appraisals of our heroes and national icons of the past have been met with hostility and sometimes even violence. The freedom to doubt, disagree and dispute intellectually must be protected as an essential pillar of one democracy. Nothing should lie outside the realm of reason, and therefore of discussion and argument. Such freedom is vital for progress in any field, especially a calling and a craft like History.

It is my firm conviction that Indias pluralism and social, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity are our greatest strength. Our traditions have always celebrated the argumentative Indian not the intolerant Indian. Multiple views, thoughts and philosophies have competed with each other peacefully for centuries in our country and freedom of speech is one of the most important fundamental rights guaranteed by our Constitution.

The Indian History Congress has a creditable record of standing up for freedom of expression and asking historians to be faithful to the cause of reason. It has often taken cudgels against distortions of history. I hope the Indian History Congress will continue to remain alert and vigilant in the cause of an objective study of history.

I am very happy to learn that the Indian History Congress regularly publishes its annual Proceedings, containing a large selection of papers submitted at its annual sessions. I am sure that these papers faithfully represent the current level of serious historical research in India. I congratulate you on the high standard that has been maintained by the volumes so far published of The Comprehensive History of India, brought out under your organisations auspices. I hope this series can be completed within a reasonable amount of time, so that an authoritative historical work of reference is made available to our scholars.

I compliment both the State Government of Kerala and the University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, for hosting this session of the Indian History Congress. I understand that during the last two decades Kerala has already hosted three sessions of the Indian History Congress. Most delegates at this session will not therefore be strangers to Kerala. Whatever be the occasion, those who visit Kerala from any other part of India soon realise that Kerala has a message for them. They are visiting a state which occupies the top position in the human development index despite limited economic resources. It has the highest literacy rate and the lowest infant mortality rate in the country. Its institutions of higher education are the pride of India. The state was amongst the first to implement land reforms, which even critics regard as among the most equitous in the country. There is much that the rest of the country can learn from Kerala. I congratulate you, Mr Chief Minister and through you, the people of Kerala on your States impressive achievements.

I wish this session of the Indian History Congress all success.

Thank you

Jai Hind

Source: PIB
Dalai Lama prays at Bodh Gaya ahead of Kalachakra puja

Bihar,National,Politics,Religion, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Patna, Dec 29 (IANS) Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama offered prayers at the Buddhist holy shrine of Bodh Gaya on Thursday, a day after he arrived there to attend the Kalachakra puja in early January, officials said.

"The Dalai Lama offered prayers at the 1,500-year-old Mahabodhi Temple," said an official of the Kalchakra arrangement committee at Bodh Gaya, about 110 km from Patna.

The spiritual guru reiterated that India is his 'guru' and he is proud to stay in the country -- the "land of religions".

According to police officials in Bodh Gaya, the Dalai Lama will inaugurate the 34th Kalachakra puja on January 2.

Officials said foolproof security has been arranged for the Dalai Lama at Bodh Gaya as he faces a serious threat to his life.

Nearly two lakh devotees from all over the world are likely to attend the 10-day-long puja to hear a discourse by the Dalai Lama. Thousands of Tibetans have already arrived at Bodh Gaya.

He arrived in Patna on Wednesday and visited Budha Smriti Park along with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and participated in a tree plantation drive.

The Dalai Lama has been living in India in self-imposed exile since 1959 when he fled his homeland after Chinese Communist troops took over Tibet.

--IANS

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PM to address nation on New Year's Eve

Delhi,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS) Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to address the nation on New Year's Eve, informed sources said on Thursday.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to address the nation before the dawn of the New Year. The address is likely at 7.30 p.m. on December 31," the sources said.

Modi last addressed the nation on November 8, when he announced demonetisation of the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.

The Prime Minister may speak on demonetisation in his December 31 address, as the 50-day period sought by him to ease out cash crunch situation across the country gets over on December 30.

After demonetisation, Modi had said: "... help me for 50 days and I will give you the India you desired".

Opposition parties have attacked the government over the implementation of the demonetisation decision, with a few choosing to oppose it altogether.

The winter session of Parliament from November 16 to December 16 was almost a washout over the issue, as the opposition demanded a debate along with voting in the Lok Sabha and the Prime Minister's presence in the Rajya Sabha during the discussion.

The demonetisation debate was taken up in the upper house, but could not be concluded, while in the Lok Sabha, only A.P. Jithender Reddy laid a statement on the table of the house on the debate initiated under Rule 193, which is for a short duration discussion.

Reddy was not allowed to speak in the Lok Sabha amid a ruckus by other opposition parties, prominently the Trinamool Congress and the Congress.

While the Prime Minister did not speak in Parliament, he addressed more than a dozen rallies where he spoke on the benefits of demonetisation, promising to rid the country of black money.

Meanwhile, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, who too said he was not allowed to speak in Parliament, also took to public rallies to oppose the government on demonetisation.

In his national radio address 'Mann ki Baat' on December 25, the Prime Minister spoke extensively on demonetisation and encouraged "cashless transactions".

--IANS

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Cash withdrawal cap may not be necessary from Jan 1: Gangwar

Delhi,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS) The cap on cash withdrawal may not be necessary from January 1, as 250-300 million currency notes were being printed on a daily basis, Minister of State for Finance Santosh Gangwar has said.

"I have been told that 25-30 crore notes are being printed on a daily basis. Continuing with the withdrawal cap is not necessary from January 1," Gangwar told CNBC TV18 in an interview here on Thursday.

"Inconvenience of limited withdrawal will lessen after December 30. Improvements can be seen in the transaction process in the last few days," he added.

The central government had demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes on November 8, sending the whole nation into a tizzy. Long queues outside banks have been a daily occurrence since then because enough currency notes are not available with the banks.

Gangwar said that sufficient quantities of new currency could not have been printed earlier as it would have leaked the news of demonetisation which was intended to be a surprise. This is particularly true for the new Rs 500 notes, printing of which, presumably, started after November 10.

"Could not print currency earlier as the news would have leaked," he said.

There are four currency printing presses -- one each in Nashik (Maharashtra), Dewas (Madhya Pradesh), Salboni (West Bengal) and Mysuru (Karnataka).

The first two are owned by the central government through the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd. The other two -- in Salboni and Mysuru -- are part of the Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Pvt. Ltd. (BRBNMPL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

If all three shifts run, the four presses would be able to print 40 billion notes a year, irrespective of the denomination.

The government had earlier said that it had no intention of printing new notes worth the entire demonetised currency i.e. Rs 15.44 lakh crore.

The requirement of the cash will be measured and according to that, it will be pushed into circulation, the Finance Ministry had said.

According to estimates, the government would have put about 50 per cent of Rs 15.44 lakh crore in circulation by December-end.

Gangwar said that post-demonetisation, the government wants to move towards a less-cash society and not completely cashless society.

"We are not talking about cashless but less-cash," he said.

On the government receiving flak for its decision of allowing only one-time deposits of amounts of over Rs 5,000, Gangwar said that it was rolled back after receiving people's feedback.

"There's nothing wrong in rolling back some decisions. We are answerable primarily to the common man more than the opposition party. We have rolled back certain decisions after receiving feedback," he said.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal in an interview to CNBC TV18 on Thursday said that once the entire process of demonetisation is over, consumption and investment levels will pick up and improve the GDP by 2 per cent.

He said that the tax base will also increase post-demonetisation.

The total cash that comes back to the banking sector will be disclosed at the right time by the central bank, he added.

--IANS

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Portronics launches new Bluetooth speaker at Rs 2,499

Delhi,National,Technology,Business/Economy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS) Domestic digital solutions provider Portronics on Thursday launched new Bluetooth speaker "DOME" at Rs 2,499.

The water resistant speaker can play up to six hours of non-stop music with an in-built rechargeable lithium-ion 2000 mAh battery.

Users can enjoy both wired and wireless music using either a 3.5 mm audio jack or Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity. It can also act as a speakerphone allowing you to take phone calls with its in-built microphone, the company said in a statement.

"DOME" is available in grey and brown colours across leading online and offline stores, the statement said.

--IANS

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No jail term in ordinance on old notes, only penalty: Official sources

Delhi,National,Business/Economy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS) There will be no jail term for holding demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, according to the ordinance that was approved by the Union Cabinet on Wednesday, official sources said.

However, a penalty of upto Rs 50,000 would be imposed on those who hold more than ten of the banned notes.

At the same time, the provision of depositing old high denomination currency with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would continue till March 31, 2017.

Even as the sources said the ordinance would come into effect from December 31, it was not clear when the penalty clause would be applicable, keeping in mind the deposit window available with the RBI.

Earlier reports had said the ordinance called for a jail term for violators who possessed old notes beyond March 31.

The ordinance -- called "The Specified Bank Notes Cessation of Liabilities Ordinance" -- is still awaiting the presidential nod after which the exact details would be made public, sources said.

The deadline for deposits of the banned currency notes in commercial banks ends on Friday (December 30).

The person seeking to deposit old notes with the RBI after December 30 will have to give an explanation as to why he or she could not deposit them earlier. A government source told IANS that the discretion to accept the explanation would remain with the central bank.

The ordinance, approved during the cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeks to amend the Reserve Bank of India Act, aimed at extinguishing the liability of the government towards bearers of such notes.

The ordinance also seeks to ensure that no one pays workers or others in old notes after the deadline.

--IANS

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Google Doodle honours father of the raincoat

Delhi,National,Science/Tech,Technology, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS) Google has honoured the inventor of waterproof material, Charles Macintosh, with a Doodle on Thursday to mark what would be his 250th birthday.

The Scottish chemist's invention, which led to the modern raincoat, is to be credited for making it a lot more convenient to go out in the rain.

The Doodle shows Macintosh enjoying a Scottish rain shower while testing his ingenious invention.

"His invention, patented in 1823, came about as he experimented with coal-tar naphtha and rubber and realised they could be fused together with fabric to create a waterproof surface," Google said in a statement.

In Britain, it is now common to call any type of raincoat a "Mac".

Born in Glasgow, Macintosh's contribution is, however, not limited to the invention of waterproof fabrics. He also figured out a way to make blast furnaces more efficient and also invented a bleaching powder.

--IANS

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Assam opposition leader demands action against RSS workers

Assam,National,Politics, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Guwahati, Dec 29 (IANS) Leader of Opposition in the Assam Legislative Assembly Debabrata Saikia has sought the intervention of Union Minister Mahesh Sharma over the chanting of religious slogans by the RSS cadres at Kareng Ghar, an important historical monument, a few days ago.

Saikia referred to the fact that the RSS had recently organised a training session at Kareng Ghar, a historical monument dating back to the Ahom Kingdom, located in Upper Assam's Sivsagar district and protected by the ASI, a few days ago and said that it is a violation of set norms by the RSS cadres.

"Since the monument is one of the very few centrally protected monuments in Assam and a symbol of Assam's secular identity, there has been widespread reaction over the action of the RSS cadres," Saikia said in his letter sent to the Union Minister of Culture on Thursday.

He said that the monument had earlier been damaged by the British forces after 1826 and also subsequently due to natural calamities. "The monument is already in bad shape due to lack of maintenance and the act of the RSS workers had further damaged it," he said.

Saikia also requested the Union Minister to invoke Article 49 of the Constitution of India which has provided for Protection of Monuments and places of National importance and appealed him to initiate proper legal action against the action of the RSS workers.

--IANS

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Manmohan's 'organised loot' reference must have been for UPA: Modi

Delhi,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said his predecessor Manmohan Singh's reference to "organised loot" during his speech on demonetisation in Parliament must have been in the context of his own government.

"Regarding Manmohan Singh ji, it is interesting that the words 'monumental mismanagement' came from a leader who has been at the helm of India's economic journey for around 45 years," Modi said in an interview to India Today.

"His reference to organised loot was perhaps a reference to the unending string of scams under his leadership... From the coal scam, to 2G and CWG scam. Demonetisation on the other hand is an unprecedented step to confiscate the loot of the corrupt," he said.

Manmohan Singh, participating in a debate on demonetisation in the Rajya Sabha called demonetisation a "monumental management failure" and "a case of organised loot and legalised plunder". The debate that started in the upper house could not be concluded amid disruptions, and the winter session was almost a washout.

Modi announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8.

--IANS

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Congress against full statehood if Delhi loses national capital status: Ajay Maken (Interview)

Delhi,National,Politics, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS) The Congress has said it is opposed to full statehood to Delhi if it were to lose the status of national capital and that its pros and cons need to be explained to the people of the national capital.

"The pros and cons of full statehood should be explained to the people of Delhi; that is what I strongly feel. If full statehood means losing the national capital status, then the Congress is opposed to it," former Union minister and Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken told IANS in an interview.

Full statehood to Delhi was mentioned in the poll manifestos of both the AAP and the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the the 2015 Delhi assembly elections. The BJP has since made a U-turn on the demand.

Delhi Chief Minister Minister Arvind Kejriwal has been at loggerheads with the Centre to demand full statehood, to gain control over Delhi Police, land and public order.

Explaining the reason for opposing the idea of full statehood to Delhi, Maken said: "Delhi Police comes under the central government. So the central government spends around Rs 6,300 crore per year on it and not Delhi's taxpayers."

The former Union Minister of State said Delhi, being the national capital and not being an Indian state, means it has three central universities -- Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia and Jawaharlal Nehru University -- on which the money is spent by the Centre.

The Centre takes care of all expenditure on the three varsities, which will not be the case in case Delhi were to gain full statehood.

The Congress leader pointed out that the Delhi government at present spends no money on university education.

Elaborating further, the Congress leader said: "First, since Delhi is a national capital, for projects like the Metro, the Delhi government needs to spend just 14 per cent of the total project cost. No other state gets to spend this much money on such a project."

"If Delhi gets full statehood, why would the Centre spend that much amount?" Maken asked.

"The money obviously has then to come from the pockets of the people of Delhi," he added.

Highlighting the number of multi-specialty hospitals in Delhi, the Congress leader said: "The maximum number of multi-specialty hospitals are in Delhi -- it has got All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Safdarjung Hospital which all are run by the central government."

"Does any other state have so many such hospitals? Every state wants one AIIMS?" he pointed out.

"So, thousands of crores are spent by the central government on Delhi," Maken said.

"Hence, before discussing full statehood, all these things need to be told to the people of Delhi."

(Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in)

--IANS

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Google will not censor 'Pied Piper of Jihad'

United States,Defence/Security,Technology,Terrorism, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Washington, Dec 29 (IANS) Google is refusing to censor the rants of Al Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who reportedly influenced the attackers who committed the 7/7 London bombings.

Dubbed the "pied piper of Jihad," al-Awlaki's hateful teachings were, according to RT online, easily searchable using Google's enhanced search function and are believed to have inspired jihadist terrorists and radicalised many more.

When users search al-Awlaki's name, Google's autocomplete function - which uses algorithms based on what others have searched before - suggests they view his "quotes" and "lectures," a media report said.

An easily found downloadable PDF urges: "Martyrdom operations; we must refrain from calling it what the West labels it, 'suicide bombings,' since suicide is haram in Islam; and shahada [martyrdom] is not suicide."

The top hit for "Anwar al-Awlaki quotes" was a website that includes comments from the preacher such as: "Jihad is still flourishing like a blessed tree sprouting through an earth of waste and pollution."

Al-Awlaki, who is an American and Yemeni imam who was implicated in the planning of several Al Qaeda attacks, lived in London for 18 months before moving to Yemen in 2004, where he was a leader of the group.

He was killed in an American drone strike in 2011, but lives on in many YouTube videos.

The prompting of these extra search terms has been described as "incredibly dangerous" by terrorism experts.

Julie Shain of the Counter Extremism Project told the Times: "This incentivizes people to search for these things and suggests it's normal to do so.

"In combination with the thousands of videos and pages calling for attacks on the West, it's incredibly dangerous."

Google recently changed its algorithms to prevent autocomplete suggesting anti-Semitic and misogynist searches. The company has also moved to prevent white supremacist and Holocaust denial websites from appearing in high or top results for certain searches.

Google's director, Matt Brittin, told Radio 4's Today programme the company works "very hard" to remove hateful and illegal content, but said autocomplete does save people time.

"It's algorithmic, and I think people understand that these are suggestions based on what other people are searching for.

"So we can always improve that and we work hard to do that, but I think people are smart and they realize that not everything you find on the internet is accurate and there's a range of opinions there.

A YouTube spokesman said: "YouTube has clear policies prohibiting content intending to incite violence and we quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users."

--IANS

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Demonetisation not politically motivated: Modi

Delhi,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said the November 8 demonetisation was "not a politically motivated move", adding that he pitied a few of his opponents, especially in the Congress.

In an interview to India Today magazine, excerpts of which were telecast in text form on India Today TV, Modi took on his predecessor Manmohan Singh's reference to "organised loot" during the latter's speech on demonetisation in Parliament and said it must have been in the context of his own (UPA) government.

The Prime Minister said he would not have taken the decision to scrap old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes if he was guided by short-term electoral politics.

"I pity a few of our opponents, eespecially the Congress leadership, for the desperation they have been exhibiting. Congress leaders are entirely preoccupied with only one thing -- elections. There is nothing political in the demonetiastion," Modi said.

He said it was interesting that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a well-known economist, called demonetisation a "monumental mismanagement".

"Regarding Manmohan Singh ji, it is interesting that the words 'monumental mismanagement' came from a leader who has been at the helm of India's economic journey for around 45 years," Modi said.

"His refereence to organsied loot was perhaps a reference to the unending string of scams under his leadership... from the coal to 2G and CWG (2010 Commonwealth Games) scams. Demonetisation, on the other hand, is an unprecedented step to consficate the loot of the corrupt," he said.

Manmohan Singh, participating in a debate on demonetisation in the Rajya Sabha, called demonetisation a "monumental management failure" and "a case of organised loot and legalised plunder".

The debate in the upper house could not be concluded amid disruptions, and the winter session was an almost washout.

The Prime Minister said: "It was a tough decision taken to clean our economy and our society. If I were guided by short-term electoral politics, I would have never done so."

In the interview, aired on the eve of expiry of the December 30 deadline to deposit demonetised currency in banks, the Prime Minister urged citizens not to regard digital transactions as a short-term substitute for cash payments.

"Digital transactions should not be viewed as short-term substitute for cash payments," Modi said.

"Digital transactions facilitate formal accounting and sizing of the economy," he said.

"They also deliver greater tax compliance," he added.

In the wake of demonetisation, the government announced a series of measures to promote digital payments to move towards an economy making less cash transactions.

"Digital payment is a way of cleaning the economy in the long run," the Prime Minister said.

--IANS

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Pakistan has successfully defeated terrorism: Gen. Bajwa

Pakistan,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Defence/Security,Diplomacy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Islamabad, Dec 29 (IANS) The Pakistani Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, said on Thursday the country had successfully defeated terrorism and was now in a consolidation phase.

Gen Bajwa was visiting the Bahadur Ranges near Attock to witness the "Fajr-ul-Sharq 1," Pakistan-Jordan joint exercise, the military's Inter-Services Public Relations media wing said.

Gen Bajwa said that the armed forces were fully trained and ready for a response to the full spectrum of threats, adding that the country's achievements in counter-terrorism operations were being taken as successful case studies.

"Fajr-ul-Sharq 1" is a two-week joint counterterrorism training program that seeks to share the experiences of both armies.

Gen Bajwa said that the nature and character of war has changed, with direct conflict now becoming a less preferred means of waging war.

"Pakistan's armed forces are fully trained and ready for response to [the] full spectrum [of] threats, [and] our achievements in counter terrorism operations are being taken as successful case studies," he said.

--IANS

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Nigerian state culls 9,000 birds to curb bird flu

Nigeria,Health/Medicine, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Abuja, Dec 29 (IANS) A total of 9,000 birds have been culled in Nigeria's Kano State as authorities move to curb the spread of bird flu which resurfaced two weeks ago in the state.

Shehu Bawa, an official at the state's ministry of agriculture and natural resources, said on Thursday the disease was detected in two local farms in the northern state, Xinhua reported.

Bird flu, or avian flu, is an influenza that spreads among birds and can affect humans.

Bawa told Xinhua the birds were killed as part of the measures being taken by state authorities to contain the resurface of bird flu in the state.

According to the official, 500 birds were killed in one farm, while 8,500 were killed in the other.

The virus was first detected on a local poultry in the state on December 15. Authorities said they were earlier prompted to kill all the birds there to prevent an outbreak.

Bawa said government would continue to take proactive measures to ensure the influenza did not spread to other farms.

He said local poultry farmers have been urged to report any sign of the virus on their farms to the authorities.

Early this year, at least 80,000 birds were killed in 45 farms following an outbreak of avian influenza in the state.

--IANS

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Demonetisation a tough but apolitical decision: Modi (Roundup)

Delhi,National,Politics,Business/Economy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS) Prime Minister Narendra Modi has strongly defended his widely-criticised demonetisation move, calling it a "difficult" but apolitical decision that was taken to rid the Indian economy and society of the "menace" of black money, corruption, and terrorism.

In his first interview after his November 8 demonetisation announcement, Modi told weekly India Today that India was standing at a "watershed moment" and the move to scrap 86 per cent of the currency in circulation was to cleanse the nation "from all forms of filth".

He shrugged off all criticism against the move as he spoke about the impact of the demonetisation of high-value currency notes of Rs 500 and 1,000 on the economy, the government's future action plan and how he saw Opposition's protest against the note ban.

He said the money that was with terrorists, Maoists, and human traffickers "has been neutralised".

"Black money has all been forced out into the open, whomsoever it may belong to -- whether it is corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen or professionals. Counterfeit notes, which our intelligence agencies had reported to be available in high volumes with our enemies, have been instantly neutralised."

Regarding frequent modifications in government decisions after the decision, Modi said it was done strategically to nullify any attempts to convert black money into white.

"You must be able to distinguish between niti (policy) and ranniti (strategy). Our strategy, however, needed to be different."

He said the decision, which has caused an unprecedented cash crunch in the country and disrupted economic growth, was taken "not for some short-term windfall gain, but for a long-term structural transformation".

"There is nothing political in the demonetisation decision... it was a tough decision taken to clean up our economy and our society. If I were guided by short-term electoral politics, I would have never done so," Modi said.

"Our objective clearly was to clean our economy and society of the menace of black money, purging the distrust, artificial pressures and other ills that came with it."

He took a dig at former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over his reference to "organised loot" during his speech on demonetisation in Parliament and said it must have been in the context of his own UPA government.

"Regarding Manmohan Singhji, it is interesting that the words 'monumental mismanagement' came from a leader who has been at the helm of India's economic journey for around 45 years," Modi said.

"His reference to organised loot was perhaps a reference to the unending string of scams under his leadership... From the coal scam, to 2G and CWG scam. Demonetisation, on the other hand, is an unprecedented step to confiscating the loot of the corrupt."

He said the decision was so big that even "our best economists remain confused in their calculations".

But "India's 1.25 billion citizens, however, have welcomed it wholeheartedly and supported it even in the face of great personal difficulties, intuitively understanding its impact and importance", he said, referring to cash chaos that followed the move.

He said he pitied his opponents, especially the Congress leadership, for their criticism of the move.

"On the one hand, they say I took this decision for political dividends, and on the other, they say the people have been troubled and are deeply unhappy. How can the two go together?

"If one does an unbiased, objective evaluation of my government's programmes and priorities over the past two and a half years, the one thing that will unambiguously emerge is the centrality of the poor, downtrodden and marginalised."

--IANS

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476 infants die in Pakistan Tharparkar in 2016

Pakistan,Indo-Pak/Pakistan,Health/Medicine, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Islamabad, Dec 29 (IANS) At least nine more infants died due to malnutrition and outbreak of the various diseases in Thar district of Pakistan's Sindh province during the last two days, taking the toll to 476 this year.

With the death of nine more children, the toll rose to 476 during past 12 months of the outgoing year, Dawn quoted health officials as saying. However, according to the unofficial details gathered from various independent sources, the toll rose to 606 this year.

The health officials, however, were not sure if the more than than 690 children who were referred to hospitals in Hyderabad and Karachi died or survived.

District Health Officer Chandal Lal claimed that sincere efforts were being made to provide maximum facilities in all the health units of the district. He held early-age marriages responsible for most of the deaths.

Another official Shaikh Tanweer Ahmed urged the government to focus on the nutrition of children and pregnant women in Thar to avoid more fatalities in the vulnerable region.

Member of National Assembly from Thar Ramesh Kumar Vankwani flayed Sindh government for its alleged apathy over the unabated deaths of the kids.

He claimed that most of health units and the dispensaries in the remote villages of the desert were still lying closed despite the tall claims of Sindh government.

He said that over 2,000 children had lost their lives during past three years but the functionaries were least bothered to overhaul the healthcare system in the province.

--IANS

ahm-vd
'Incarnate': Fails to thrill (IANS Review, Rating: **)

Delhi,Cinema/Showbiz,Hollywood, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Film: "Incarnate"; Director: Brad Peyton; Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Carice van Houten, Cataline Sandino Moreno, David Mazouz, Keir O'Donnell, Matt Nable, John Pirruccello; Rating: **

With minimalistic scares and a passive, complex plot, "Incarnate" lacks the chutzpah of a scare-thriller. In fact, it is a cheesy supernatural-horror film, which is neither impressive nor does it leave a lasting impact.

It is a tale that takes place over a period of three days, but seems like ages. The tale begins after a single mother Linsday (Carice van Houten) witnesses terrifying symptoms of demonic possession in her 11-year-old son Kevin (David Mazouz).

The Vatican representative, Camilla (Catalina Sandino Moreno) calls a wheelchair-bound scientist Dr. Seth Ember (Aaron Eckhart) to rid Kevin of the evil spirit.

The Doctor scorns organised religion as a whole and refers to what he does as the "eviction of parasitical entities". He says, "I evict them from inside."

He does this, with the aid of his two assistants, who lower his heart rate so that he can be as close to death as possible. From that point, he enters the victims' subconscious state and convinces them that they are living in an illusion. And he leads them to break this illusion.

While he is on his mission with Kevin, he realises that the powerful demon Maggie, who he is trying to evict, is actually pursuing him.

The screenplay by Ronnie Christensen has layers. As the tale unfurls, the plot, which is unfocused, seems convoluted, bizarre and unconvincing. The characters as well as the exposition are purely passive. They fail to elicit drama or explain what is going on. It is all a wild jumble of half-baked derivatives that borrow material from numerous sources and the most obvious inspiration is of course "The Exorcist".

The cast, though sincere, are unable to enliven their characters. They emote perfunctorily and are incapable of injecting palpable emotions.

Overall, with moderate production values, "Incarnate" is a suspense-free horror drama that will appeal only to crazed horror genre fans.

--IANS

troy/rb/vt
Non-commercial films are being accepted, says Pranitha

Tamil Nadu,Cinema/Showbiz,Southern Cinema, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Chennai, Dec 29 (IANS) Southern actress Pranitha Subhash, who has mostly featured in commercial films so far in her career, believes audiences have evolved and that has enabled "other kind of films" to be accepted and appreciated.

"When I started my career, I thought only commercial films work. Lately, I have realised that audiences have begun to accept and appreciate other kind of films (non commercial) too. This has given me the confidence to try films in other genres," Pranitha told IANS.

Having made her acting debut with 2010 Kannada actioner "Porki", she's been part of well-known films such as "Baava", "Mr. 420", "Attarintiki Daredi" and "Brahmotsavam".

After a gap of two years, she has returned to Tamil filmdom with Jai-starrer "Ennaku Vaaitha Adimaigal".

"It's a very situation-driven film unlike the commercial ones I have done. Even the situations related to friendship and romance are very relatable, which makes the film likable," she said, adding that her faith in other kind of films convinced her to accept this offer.

The other factor was the way her director narrated the story.

"Usually, directors narrate the story from the point of view of the actor. My director just told me the story for 45 minutes and that got me excited," she added.

She plays Jai's love interest in the film, which is gearing up for release around the Pongal festival.

Proded about her absence from Tamil industry after working with stars like Karthi and Suriya, she said she's been choosy.

"People always ask why my pace of signing films is slow. I try and pick the best among the offers I get. Being away from one industry doesn't mean I have been idle, because I had commitments in other industries," she said.

She does admit the result of "Saguni" and "Masss", her last two films, did affect the flow of offers.

"They did to an extent, and it's quite natural," she said.

In Tamil, she has a yet-untitled project with Atharvaa in her kitty.

--IANS

hp/nv/vt
Israel PM blasts Kerry for Middle East policy speech

Israel,Diplomacy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Jerusalem, Dec 29 (IANS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the United States State Secretary John Kerry's Middle East policy speech, denouncing Kerry as "obsessed" and "biased."

Speaking in a televised statement on Wednesday, Netanyahu said that "Kerry deals obsessively with the settlements instead of touching on the root of the conflict", Xinhua news agency reported.

Netanyahu said he was "disappointed" and "surprised" by Kerry's speech. "Is that what the Foreign Minister of the world's largest power has to focus on?"

The Prime Minister also said he looks forward to working with the President-elect Donald Trump administration to "repeal" Friday's resolution by the UN Security Council, which condemned Israel's continued expansion of the settlements.

In his 70-minute speech, only weeks before the end of the Obama administration term, Kerry warned that Israel's construction of settlements was imperiling the chance of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel and achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

A few hours before the speech, Trump sent a message of support to Israel, telling the Jewish state to "stay strong" until January 20 when he takes office.

In a response tweet, Netanyahu wrote: "President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!"

The historic UN resolution demands Israel to stop the settlements construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and denounced the settlements as a "flagrant violation" of international law.

About 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands that Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast War and has been controlling them ever since, despite international condemnations.

--IANS

vgu/
Centre charts roadmap to complete 99 irrigation projects

Delhi,National,Business/Economy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS) The Union government on Thursday charted out a roadmap for the early completion of 99 irrigation projects under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefits Programme (AIBP) and Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY), an official release here said.

Of the 99 projects, the maximum 26 are in Maharashtra, eight in Andhra Pradesh and one in Gujarat.

Of the identified projects, the Centre aims to complete 23 by 2016-17 and 31 other projects (Priority-II) by 2017-18.

The remaining 45 projects (Priority-III) are to be completed by December 2019, the release said.

National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has released Rs 3,274 crore for the projects, including Rs 1,981 crore to Andhra Pradesh, Rs 830 crore to Maharashtra and Rs 463 crore to Gujarat.

The Union Cabinet approved the pan-India PMKSY in July last year with an outlay of Rs 50,000 crore in five years.

All eight Andhra Pradesh projects are in priority-II category whereas in Gujarat, Sardar Sarovar is the lone project in the priority-III category. It is likely to be completed by 2018.

Funds required to complete all the 99 identified projects are an estimated Rs 77,595 crore, with an estimated central assistance of Rs 31,342 crore. The likely potential utilisation of land through these projects is estimated to be 76.03 lakh hectare.

"Keeping in view the budgetary constraints, it has been decided to borrow central share/assistance from NABARD as per year-wise requirements which could be paid back in 15 years along with a grace period of three years. Further, the proposal envisages that the state governments may borrow funds from NABARD for the state share," the release added.

--IANS

rs/tsb/vt
With so much going on in the world, it feels nearly impossible to keep up with the top stories and breaking headlines. But is it really worth the trouble? Some argue that it causes unnecessary stress, while others simply dont see it as a priority. However, such an attitude prevents people f
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The recent statements on Mauritanias territorial integrity made by the Istiqlal party Secretary General reflect only a personal point of view and are not in line with the permanent features of Moroccan diplomacy, said Head of the Government Abdelilah Benkirane who had been received Wednesday by President Mohammed Ould Abdelaziz of Mauritania.

Benkirane was dispatched by King Mohammed VI to Mauritania to dispel any misunderstanding following the irresponsible remarks made by the Istiqlal party Secretary General, Hamid Chabat, last weekend.

Benkirane expressed to the Mauritanin Head of State King Mohammed VIs determination to consolidate the Kingdoms relations with Mauritania, strengthen dialogue between the two countries in various fields and step up bilateral relations to an exemplary partnership in all areas.

He also reiterated the firm position of the Moroccan King and Government regarding the respect of Mauritanias sovereignty, its international borders and its territorial integrity.

On Tuesday, King Mohammed VI had a phone conversation with President Mohammed Ould Abdelaziz during which he renewed his attachment to the neighborliness and solidarity relations between the two countries, insisting that his country recognizes the territorial integrity of Mauritania in conformity with international law.

During the phone talk, the two Heads of State voiced their determination to preserve this relationship against any attempt seeking to undermine it, the royal office had said in a statement.

At its weekly meeting held the same day, the Government Council expressed total support to all the measures undertaken by the King to address the impact of Chabats statements on Mauritania.

The Moroccan Foreign ministry had also issued a strong-worded statement describing Chabats remarks as irresponsible and dangerous.

The Istiqlal Party, the oldest political party in the country, founded in 1944, has apologized to Mauritania for the unwise comments made by its Secretary General.

The Istiqlal Party offered its apology to the Mauritanian people and government in an editotial published Thursday by Alam newspaper, the partys mouthpiece.

The editorialist said that the sound relations binding the brotherly Moroccan and Mauritanian peoples are greater than any plots and that the two countries good and solid historical ties have weathered many storms; have always come out victorious and more powerful.

Several senior members of the Istiqlal Party have also slammed the politically incorrect remarks made by Chabat.

In this vein, members of the Istiqlal Partys Council of Elders, including Mhamed Boucetta and Abbas El Fassi, both former Secretary Generals of the Istiqlal Party, convened a meeting with Chabat on Monday evening and harshly rebuked him for his unfortunate statements. They challenged him to find any reference where the party contested Mauritanian territorial integrity.

On his part, Taoufiq Hejira, the President of the National Council of the Istiqlal Party, the second decision-making body of the party after the General Congress, said that the statement of the Secretary-General on Mauritania was eminently personal and that neither its choice, timing nor content have been reviewed and approved by any institution of the party.
Syrian youths collect wood from rubble to be used for heating and cooking, on December 27, 2016, in the rebel-held, eastern suburb of Damascus, Zamalka. Photo: AMER ALMOHIBANY/AFP/Getty Images

A nationwide cease-fire deal will go into effect in Syria at midnight between the Syrian government and rebel groups. Russia, which is allied with President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government, and Turkey, which had been supporting the rebels, both backed the truce, which comes a week after a fitful evacuation in Aleppo ended and brought the major city back under the control of Assad.

Peace talks will follow the cease-fire  if it holds. Past nationwide truces, hammered out between Russia and the United States, have quickly collapsed. But the Americans did not get a seat at the negotiating table this time around, left out as Turkey, Russian, and Iran (which also backs Assad) worked out the terms of the deal. Beyond that, circumstances have changed drastically in the past weeks: Assad and his allies bombardment  and eventual recapture of  Aleppo dealt a decisive blow to the already depleted and fractured Syrian opposition.

Syrian workers remove rubble from a rooftop on December 27, 2016, as they clean up the water station in Aleppos Suleiman al-Halabi neighborhood. Photo: GEORGE OURFALIAN/AFP/Getty Images

The Syrian government and certain Syrian rebel groups  about 60,000 fighters  signed onto the deal. Jihadist organizations such as ISIS  which still controls territory in Syria and Iraq  al Qaeda affiliates, and other radical insurgent groups are not party to the agreement, so its unlikely that fighting will completely stop in the beleaguered country.

Syrian state-run media said the deal had been reached after pro-government forces victories and advances. Russian president Vladimir Putin was a bit more circumspect, calling the agreement fragile, adding that it consisted of three components: the actual cease-fire between the rebels and the Syrian army, the terms to monitor the truce, and the plan to start peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan, though no specific date was given. Putin also signaled a draw-down of Russias military commitment in Syria, though he said the Kremlin would maintain its support of Assad and its fight against terrorism.

This cease-fire likely puts Assad one step closer to keeping power for good, and, in turn, appears to mark a win for Russia, which, in addition to its burgeoning friendship with Turkey, has now brokered a peace deal without the United States and major western powers  although a U.S. invitation might be forthcoming in a few weeks. I would also like to express my hope that when the administration of Donald Trump assumes its responsibilities, said Russian foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov, they may also join these efforts in order to work toward this goal in a friendly and collective manner.
Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald on Fox News, December 19.

One of the great meetings of journalistic minds took place last week, when left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald appeared on Fox News with Tucker Carlson. The segment was devoted to their purportedly strange agreement over the Russian hacking story (which is not actually strange at all, given their mutual antipathy for the center-left). Greenwald has long dismissed the charge that Russia manipulated WikiLeaks publication of Democratic party emails as a smear, mocking suspicions of misbehavior by what he referred to in sarcastic capitalized words as The Russians; he called it typical of the Democrats alleged tendency to use false attacks against Russia to discredit its adversaries (So WikiLeaks has become an enemy of the Democratic Party, and they seem to have one tactic with their adversaries and enemies, which is to accuse them of being Russian agents). On Carlsons program, Greenwald attacked the Washington Post for reporting that the CIA and the FBI believed Russias hacking was intended to help Trump win. It is a remarkable segment that merits close reading.

Should we believe that assessment? asked Carlson. We should be extremely skeptical of it for multiple reasons, replied Greenwald. These are assertions that are being made unaccompanied by any evidence whatsoever.

An enormous amount of public evidence supports the conclusion that Russia conducted the email hacks. Experts from 19 intelligence agencies, as well as those from the private sector, have endorsed this finding, and evidence of Russian involvement has been laid out publicly in excruciating detail, both by the government and the news media. Its true that intelligence agencies have not published evidence for their findings that Russia conducted the hack in order to elect Trump, for fear of exposing their sources and methods. But Russias motive is the least mysterious aspect of the entire episode. The Kremlin has literally spent months broadcasting its preference for Trump, both on its outward-facing and inward-facing propaganda outlets. Given Putins well-documented habit of intervening in foreign elections to benefit nationalistic parties and to harm parties favoring hawkish policies against Russia, it would be extremely strange if his interference in the election were not intended to help Trump.

Yet, Greenwald and Carlson, having established to their mutual satisfaction that reports of Russian interference in the election should be viewed with extreme suspicion, moved on to the question of just why it was that the Post would publish such a scurrilous report. It is so weird that Russia is the focus   mused Carlson, and yet, all of a sudden, Russia seems to be villain number one. Why is that? It seems strange. The obvious response  Russia is the focus because it interfered with an American presidential election  had already been dismissed, so Greenwald supplied a different explanation for why Russia was suddenly the object of tough coverage in the media. Greenwald explained that Democrats ginned up hostility to Russia entirely for political reasons:

One of the really interesting things is, in 2012, when Mitt Romney ran against Barack Obama, the Democrats mocked Romney mercilessly for depicting Russia as the number one geopolitical threat [] And throughout the Obama presidency, he tried accommodating Putin, he didnt arm anti-Russian factions in Ukraine, he tried cooperating with him in Syria, it was really an election-year political theme that the Democrats manufactured out of whole cloth, that the Russian, that Putin posed some existential threat to the United States, that theyre our enemy []

It is true that, in 2012, the Republican Party had staked out a more hawkish stance on Russia than the Democrats. But the Democrats were hardly praising Putins regime. The dispute between Obama and Romney was a relatively narrow one centering on whether Russia was literally Americas number-one enemy, or whether that distinction belonged to Al Qaeda. In his 2012 convention speech, Obama said, You dont call Russia our number-one enemy  not Al Qaeda, Russia [Laughter.]  unless youre still stuck in a Cold War mind warp.

Greenwald presents Obamas chilly relationship with Russia as nothing but an election-year ploy. He omits any mention of the event that changed the tenor of U.S.-Russia relations: the Russian attack on Ukraine. Obama responded to the invasion by imposing sanctions on Russia in 2014. That event, not some election-year need to gin up a foreign bogeyman, is what generated tension between Obama and Putin. For Greenwald to depict the administrations chilly stance toward Russia as an election-year political theme that the Democrats manufactured out of whole cloth is a complete fantasy.

Carlson agreed that there was only a political motivation to explain Obamas criticisms of Russia.

After this point was agreed upon, Greenwald went beyond merely questioning the certainty of the Posts reporting and denounced wild, elaborate conspiracy theories. To sit here and sort of suggest that Vladimir Putin lurks behind every American problem, to concoct these wild, elaborate conspiracy theories, to try and convince Americans that Russia is this grave threat to the United States   he explained, I think its incredibly dangerous.

Note that, at the beginning of the segment, Greenwald was just asking questions about how solid this reporting really was, and by the end of it, had described the Posts reporting of a finding shared by the CIA and FBI as conspiracy theories.

Thats the way it seems to me! agreed Carlson. So, its great to hear you say that, it makes me feel less crazy. And the creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already, it was impossible to say which was which.
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Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

As part of an effort to maximize recruitment, the NYPD will permit its officers to wear religiously mandated turbans and beards. Were making this change to make sure that we allow everybody in New York City that wants to apply and have the opportunity to work for the greatest police department in the nation, said Commissioner James ONeill in a Wednesday announcement.

Until now, the department has prohibited non-uniform headwear and facial hair, though some cops were allowed to sport one-millimeter beards  otherwise known as a five oclock shadows  for religious or dermatological reasons. The restrictions posed a conflict for the forces observant Muslims, whose faith calls for longer beards, and Sikhs, who are supposed to wear both beards and long hair under a turban. (Per the New York Times, some Sikh cops have managed to follow both their religion and NYPD policy by stuffing their unshorn hair into turbans that fit under department-issued caps, which doesnt sound very comfortable.) But under the new rules, those who are given a religious accommodation by the departments Equal Employment Opportunity Office will be able let their beards grow up to half an inch. The office can also grant cops permission to swap their police hat for a navy-blue turban emblazoned with an NYPD shield.

We want to make the NYPD as diverse as possible and I think this is going to go a long way to help us with that, said ONeill. The department currently has around 1,000 Muslim officers and 150 Sikhs.


Bears Ears is sacred to Native Americans. Photo: Education Images/UIG via Getty Images

On Tuesday, President Obama created two new national monuments out of sacred tribal lands in Utah and large tracts of desert in Nevada. The move, which puts an end to years of wrangling over the spaces, seems likely to further inflame passions in the West, where opinions over the federal governments management of public lands has become something of a flashpoint.

Obamas creation of Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah is especially history-making. The federal government already owns about two thirds of the land in Utah, and the new monument will put another 1.35 million acres under its care.

BREAKING: @POTUS designates two new national monumentsprotecting over a million acres in Utah and Nevada: https://t.co/XCam0s1OIn pic.twitter.com/C2aEbrq7G0  White House Archived (@ObamaWhiteHouse) December 28, 2016

Obama designated the monument at the behest of five Native American tribes with historic ties to the area. The land includes sacred sites, along with well-preserved Pueblo settlements that date back more than 3,500 years. For the first time in the countrys history, Native American tribes will share the responsibility of managing the lands with the government: the Hopi, Navajo, Uintah and Ouray Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Pueblo of Zuni will work together to oversee the massive monument.

Most Utah politicians are strongly against Obamas move. Republicans in the state have struggled for more than three years to draft a bill that would both protect the land and allow for development. Upon hearing about the monument, Utahs Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz told the Washington Post that he was outraged and called the designation a slap in the face.

It does not have the support of the Governor, a single member of the states Congressional delegation, nor any local elected officials or state legislators who represent the area, he said.

Obamas new monument in Nevada is even more controversial. The new Gold Butte National Monument  which is also home to important Native American sites, including rock paintings  uses land that has been at the center of a conflict between an ever-expanding Las Vegas and conservationists for more than a decade.

Disagreement over Nevadas federal lands is what brought the Bundy family  whose ranch is just next to the new Gold Butte National Monument  into the public eye in 2014, leading to a widely publicized armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management. Some of their followers are still awaiting trial for their role in the dispute.

While some see the monuments as examples of federal overreach, Obama clearly believes his actions will help solidify his legacy as a conservationist president in the model of Teddy Roosevelt. Tuesdays announcements mark the 28th and 29th times that Obama has used his executive authority to designate new monuments, extending federal protection to a further 548 million acres of land and water during his presidency.

In a statement, Obama said his decision would protect some of our countrys most important cultural treasures, including abundant rock art, archaeological sites, and lands considered sacred by Native American tribes. Todays actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes.

Politicians have vowed to fight to repeal the actions once Donald Trump is president, and Trumps Interior secretary pick, Ryan Zinke, is reportedly in favor of changing the law  the 1906 Antiquities Act  that allows the president to designate monuments without the approval of congress.

Utah Senator Orrin Hatch had strong words for the president on Wednesday, calling his move an attack on an entire way of life and an astonishing and egregious abuse of executive power.

In the next Congress under President Trump, he warned, I will do everything in my power to reverse this travesty.

Meanwhile, the vice-president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, Kristen Brengel, hopes that the next administration will leave the new monuments and the existing law alone. Its a wonderful law that allows the president to make quick decisions to protect areas when they need it, Brengel said in an interview. Why would we want to destroy that?
Sometimes it seems like a love for Benjamin Netanyahu is the only thing Republicans fully agree on in foreign policy. Photo: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

It is entirely unsurprising that congressional Republicans, along with some Democrats, have jumped with both feet on the last-minute dispute between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government over the latters defiant settlements policy and the formers willingness to let the U.N. Security Council condemn it. But already there are signs of an overreaction to the dustup that tell us a lot about the strangely central role Netanyahu plays in the GOP version of foreign policy.

The most predictable part of the brouhaha is the GOP backlash against the United Nations for this latest incident in its long history of antagonism to the Israeli occupation of Arab lands. The U.N. has been a perennial target for conservatives of almost every hue, and thus a point of unity for people who dont agree on much of anything else. For President-elect Donald Trump, the U.N. is the obvious symbol of international restraints on U.S. freedom of action. The Security Council resolution is thus an easy pretext for a fight that was going to happen anyway, as Richard Gowan observed at Politico:

Donald Trump likes attacking soft targets, and the United Nations is about as soft as they come. Over the past two months, U.N. officials have been bracing for an entirely inevitable clash with the next U.S. administration. Their only question has been exactly what would set off the showdown. Would it be climate change? Torture?

Now they have their answer. The president-elect is gearing up to do battle with the U.N. even sooner than expected, and his casus belli is a classic sore point in U.S.-U.N. relations: Israel. Trump not only tried to stop the U.N. Security Councils recent resolution condemning Israeli settlements, but also suggested the U.N. itself will face consequences once he is president, tweeting, As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th.

The conservative Washington Free Beacon reports that sentiment for retribution against the U.N. via a funding cutoff is very high among congressional Republicans. But theres also strong interest in going beyond the U.N. and disrupting traditional alliances with countries that are not willing to defer to the current Israeli governments drift toward permanent occupation and perhaps even annexation of the occupied territories:

Other punitive actions by Congress could include  scaling back ties with foreign nations that voted in favor of the controversial [U.N.] measure, according to multiple sources who spoke to the Free Beacon about the situation both on and off the record.

This broader offensive would presumably follow Israels own decision to suspend normal diplomatic relations with countries that voted for the Security Council resolution, including France, Russia, Britain, France, Russia, China, Japan, Ukraine, Angola, Egypt, Uruguay, Spain, Senegal, and New Zealand.

Think about that for a minute. Britain and France are two of Americas oldest, strongest allies. Japan has long been the fulcrum of U.S. policy in East Asia. Russia and China are strategic competitors with whom the U.S. must deal on a broad range of diplomatic, economic, and security issues. Egypt has been nearly as important to U.S. Middle East policy as Israel itself. All those vital relationships  including a rapprochement with Russia that Donald Trump seems to want so badly  could be subordinated to a desire to back up Bibi Netanyahus desire to punish countries that take a position on the Israeli occupation that is largely shared by nearly half the Israeli population and the opposition parties that represent them.

The identification of U.S. foreign policy with Israel, and the identification of Israel with Netanyahu and his coalition partners who make no bones about wanting to annex the occupied lands, is by now an old story in the GOP. It was certainly manifest in 2012 when presidential nominee Mitt Romney repeatedly said: [W]e will not have an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally Israel. The idea that there might be U.S. interests distinct from Netanyahus has been almost entirely lost in some conservative policy circles.

The reasons for this strangely Bibi-centric view of the world are familiar and manifold: the Christian Rights peculiar and apocalyptic form of Zionism; the rise of Islamophobia among conservative base voters; a sort of Bibi-envy over right-wing Israeli flouting of international law and political correctness; and the desire to split the Democratic Party from its supposedly Jewish intellectual and donor base.

But there are two very particular reasons for Republicans to amp up their rhetoric on Israel and the U.N. at this exact moment: First, its the last chance to take a shot at Barack Obama (and for that matter, John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee whose speech on the two-state solution has inflamed right-wing Israeli and U.S. opinion nearly as much as the U.N. vote), and second, its an opportunity to close ranks with Donald Trump on one of the rare foreign-policy issues where he and they entirely agree.

In that respect, whatever you think of the merits of the Obama administrations actions toward Israel during the last few days, it has provided a late holiday gift to its domestic opponents, and arguably to Netanyahu, who could well be planning to use the brouhaha as an excuse to formally abandon the two-state solution and expand settlements or even begin annexing occupied turf in big chunks. If thats the case, its all the more perverse, but fascinating, to watch U.S. conservatives express a willingness to turn U.S. foreign policy upside down in the rush to dry Bibis crocodile tears over the insults he has had to endure via a toothless U.N. resolution abetted by a lame-duck president and secretary of State.
Which Donald Trump will preside over America at any given moment? Nobody knows for sure. Photo: Getty Images

Presidential transitions are always a time for guessing games, with the precise shape and direction of the new administration invariably subject to doubt and debate. Would Bill Clinton really govern as a different kind of Democrat or as a conventional liberal? Was George W. Bushs compassionate conservatism just a shuck? How serious was Barack Obama about transcending partisanship, and if he was deadly serious, would Republicans give him a chance to show it?

But compared to the uncertainty surrounding the upcoming administration of the 45th president of the United States, these recent transitions have been easy to understand, practically coming with paint-by-numbers instructions. At this point, we do not know if the Trump presidency will become a vehicle for the achievement of the conservative movements longstanding dreams dating back to Barry Goldwater, a strange hybrid of left and right impulses, or something entirely unprecedented, at least in this country. We also dont know for sure if the Republican politicians in Congress, who are presumably putting together a 2017 legislative agenda they hope Donald Trump will sign into law, are working hand-in-glove with Trumps people or are in the dark like the rest of us.

Sorting through the possible range of actions, the New York Times Ross Douthat tries to impose order on our shaky expectations, which he validates by arguing that anyone who is certain they know what Trump will do is either bluffing or a fool.

What we can do, for now, is set up a matrix to help assess the Trump era as it proceeds, in which each appointment and policy move gets plotted along two axes. The first axis, the X-axis, represents possibilities for Trumpist policy, the second, the Y-axis, scenarios for Trumps approach to governance.

The policy axis runs from full populism at one end to predictable conservative orthodoxy on the other []

The second axis, the possibilities for how Trump governs, runs from ruthless authoritarianism at one end to utter chaos at the other.

As Douthat acknowledges, Trumps appointments and signals so far are all over the place from the perspective of both policy and governance. Looking at his cabinet and White House staff from one perspective, its the most rigidly ideological and plutocratic crowd (e.g., Puzder, Mnuchin, DeVos, Pruitt) since at least the Harding administration. But from another perspective, there are people (e.g., Bannon, Flynn, Friedman, maybe Tollerson and Ross) no respectable conservative administration would allow past the White House security gate. The different impressions of what the Trump administration will actually be like extend to governance issues as well. The tweeter-in-chief often makes authoritarian noises while also giving the impression he is totally winging it.

And so, we could wind up with very, very different scenarios.

A populist-authoritarian combination might seem natural, with Trump using high-profile deviations from conservative orthodoxy to boost his popularity even as he runs roughshod over republican norms.

But you could also imagine an authoritarian-orthodox conservative combination, in which Congressional Republicans accept the most imperial of presidencies because its granting them tax rates and entitlement reforms they have long desired.

Or you could imagine a totally incompetent populism, in which Trump flies around the country holding rallies while absolutely nothing in Washington gets done  or a totally incompetent populism that ultimately empowers conventional conservatism, because Trump decides that governing isnt worth it and just lets Paul Ryan run the country.

But you have to imagine all these trajectories because the evidence is so mixed, and thus Douthat throws up his hands and makes no predictions at all other than the likelihood of extremism in some form.

There is one other possibility that Douthat does not quite address, but that Hungarian writer Miklos Haraszti deals with in a meditation for the Washington Post based on observations of his own countrys right-wing populist Viktor Orban, along with Russias Putin, Turkeys Erdogan, and now Trump: Unpredictability is what we can expect from now on.

Call me a typical Hungarian pessimist, but I think hope can be damaging when dealing with populists. For instance, hoping that unprincipled populism is unable to govern. Hoping that Trumpism is self-deceiving, or self-revealing, or self-defeating. Hoping to find out if the president-elect will have a line or a core, or if he is driven by beliefs or by interests. Or theres the Kremlinology-type hope that Trumps party, swept to out-and-out power by his charms, could turn against him. Or hope extracted, oddly, from the very fact that he often disavows his previous commitments.

If you recognize among Harasztis false hopes for putting a populist leader in a box some of the standard ways of explaining Trump, raise your hand. I see: Everybodys raising their hands! If these efforts to figure out such leaders are all off-base, then whats the real key? The terrifying possibility is that there isnt one.

Populists govern by swapping issues, as opposed to resolving them. Purposeful randomness, constant ambush, relentless slaloming and red herrings dropped all around are the new normal.

If that is true with respect to Trump  and it is very consistent with his much-stated principle of remaining unpredictable in foreign policy  that should make for an interesting few years, not just for journalists trying to get a fix on this strange man voters have elevated to the presidency, but for his ostensible allies and enemies. What will it be like to be a conservative Republican member of Congress, with a decades worth of detailed plans for shifting power and money from the takers to the makers, knowing that it could all be blown up by a sudden tweet? Or a Democrat trying to anticipate the administrations next steps to counter them and realizing theres no way to figure out where they lead? Or most terrifyingly, a top military officer or diplomat with no idea what the next call or cable might portend?

Haraszti suggests the one thing you can always count on with a right-wing populist is corruption.

It is the publics moral indignation over nepotism that has proved to be the nemesis of illiberal regimes. Personal and family greed, cronyism, thievery combined with hypocrisy are in the genes of illiberal autocracy; and in many countries betrayed expectations of a selfless strongman have led to a civic awakening.

That sure sounds like a good tip.

Being rational creatures who desire stability for ourselves and our country, most of us will hold out hope that Trumps unpredictability will prove to be a temporary illusion, and that he will quickly expose himself as occupying some fixed point in Douthats matrix. Im personally still expecting him to be the authoritarian-but-otherwise-orthodox conservative who rewards Republican constituencies with reactionary economic and cultural policies in close cooperation with GOP leaders in Congress. But I dont even pretend to know where Trumps Jacksonian instincts  themselves a reflection of conflicting impulses toward a self-absorbed peace and insanely destructive war  will take us. And if I were a card-carrying member of Trumps own party, Id stop endlessly chortling over the discomfiture and fear Trump has inspired among liberals and become a bit uncomfortably fearful myself. No one knows for sure what comes next.
Obama aint Putin up with this. Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

The White House took aim at the Kremlin on Thursday, expelling 35 Russian intelligence officials from the United States and placing sanctions on Vladimir Putins top intelligence services, in retribution for Russias alleged attempts to influence the 2016 election through a series of hacks.

Among those sanctioned are four top Russian intelligence officers whom the Obama administration has accused of coordinating the attacks on the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.

The sanctions were paired with the release of a report from the Department of Homeland Security and FBI that detailed the methods Russian civilian and military intelligence services have (allegedly) used to to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. government, political and private sector entities.



The Obama administration is expected to release a more detailed report on related intelligence within the next three weeks, the New York Times reports. The question of whether to make such intelligence public has been a subject of debate in the White House. On the one hand, doing so risks revealing methods and sources; on the other, the move demonstrates to other hostile nations that their cyberactivities can and will be tracked.



All Americans should be alarmed by Russias actions, Obama said in a statement Thursday. In October, my administration publicized our assessment that Russia took actions intended to interfere with the U.S. election process. These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government  these actions are not the sum total of our response to Russias aggressive activities.

The Obama administration has repeatedly suggested it plans to take covert actions that will be more conspicuous to Putin than to the public. Its possible that these secret acts of retribution will provide more effective deterrence than the explicit ones.



On their face, the new sanctions appear largely symbolic. The presidents executive order bans four top Russian intelligence operatives from the United States, while freezing any assets they might hold in U.S. banks. But its unclear how many GRU officials will actually be affected by such restrictions.



But for Obamas successor, the sanctions will have real teeth. Donald Trump has signaled his interest in renewed cooperation with Russia, particularly on matters of counterterrorism. And the president-elect has repeatedly expressed his skepticism about Russias culpability for the hacks of the DNC and John Podesta. Asked about rumors of impending sanctions Wednesday night, Trump argued that the whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on, and so we ought to get on with our lives.

But absolving Russia of responsibility for the attacks by sitting on ones hands is far less politically difficult than taking the proactive step of lifting sanctions  especially when said sanctions appear broadly popular with the congressional GOP.

New @SpeakerRyan statement calls the Russia sanctions "overdue" and "appropriate." pic.twitter.com/GOm9TY7B4Z  Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) December 29, 2016

And unless Trump lifts those sanctions, cooperation between Russian and American intelligence agencies over counterterrorism will be compromised.

Perhaps biggest deal here is FSB & GRU on the SDN list; Trump'd have to overrule his own intel to set up an anti-terror alliance with Russia  max seddon (@maxseddon) December 29, 2016

Thus, in one fell swoop, Obama has managed to slap Putins wrists and tie Trumps hands.
During a chat with reporters outside Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump once again encouraged the world to just forget about the very strong possibility that Russian hackers meddled with the presidential election, saying, I think we ought to get on with our lives. The Obama administration is reportedly close to announcing retaliatory measures for the alleged hacking, while Republican senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain on Wednesday called for the incoming administration and congress to impose much tougher sanctions on Russia. Noting that Graham ran against me in the GOP primary, Trump said that he hadnt discussed sanctions with the senators, though he added that he certainly [would] over a period of time.

Trump  who, for extra flair, spoke with an American- and Israeli-flag-wielding Don King at his side  blamed the whole controversy on the confusing nature of computers. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of the computer has made it where nobody knows exactly whats going on, he said. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but Im not sure we have the kind of security we need.

Here's the clip. "The whole age of computer." https://t.co/di1bKOoz0M  Eric Geller (@ericgeller) December 29, 2016

The president-elects statement makes more sense when you remember that he has no idea how to use a computer or even the word cyber.
Smooth transition  NOT! Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Donald Trump lacks many of the characteristics that one might want in a commander-in-chief. But punctuality isnt one of them. In fact, the president-elect has taken the unprecedented step of showing up for his new job 11 weeks early.

Since triumphing on November 8, Trump has comported himself as though he were already ensconced in the Oval Office, hosting a meeting with the prime minister of Japan; cancelling two of the U.S. militarys most expensive projects; attempting to dictate Americas actions at the United Nations; and, most ambitiously, speaking with the president of Taiwan by phone and then publicly questioning the wisdom of respecting the One China policy  an action that threatens to transform Americas relationship with the worlds second-greatest power and which was taken without the consultation of the Obama White House or State Department.

And yet, despite all these signals that Trump is ready to take things from here, Barack Obama has carried on as though he were still the president of the United States. Obama has even had the audacity to use the power of his office to shape federal policy.

This behavior has irked Trump, according to transition officials who spoke with Politico:

Obamas decisions to permanently ban oil and gas drilling in portions of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, to eliminate dormant regulations requiring males from certain largely-Muslim countries to register with immigration authorities, and to issue pardons and commutations have also raised eyebrows around the president-elect.

But Obamas disrespectful decision to pardon some nonviolent drug offenders was only the tip of the iceberg, apparently.

Above all, the president-elect was incensed by Obamas suggestion that he (a politician with a 64-percent approval rating) would have likely defeated Trump (a politician with a 37-percent approval rating) had they campaigned against each other.

And shortly after taking a shot at Trumps political prowess, Obama seemed to deride the president-elects political philosophy. Per Politico:

Trump was also irritated by Obamas comments at Pearl Harbor on Tuesday afternoon in which he said, even when hatred burns hottest, even when the tug of tribalism is at its most primal, we must resist the urge to turn inward. We must resist the urge to demonize those who are different. These felt to Trump like direct criticism of the president-elect, according to two people close to Trump.

All these slights led Trump to begin his Wednesday morning by tweeting:

Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016

Following this statement, Obama and Trump spoke over the phone, and, somehow, the president-elect found it in his heart to forgive the president.

By Wednesday night, Trump was telling reporters that the transition was going very smoothly.

Our staffs have been getting along very well, and Im getting along very well with him, Trump said, other than a couple of statements that I responded to and we talked about it and smiled about it and nobody is ever going to know because we are never going to be going against each other.

Peace has been restored. And, by all accounts, the transition really is going smoothly. Current cabinet members are giving their prospective replacements the lay of the land. Obama has repeatedly defended the legitimacy of Trumps election and suggested that he will avoid criticizing his successor in the early days of the new administration.

Still, theres a decent chance that relations between the two men will sour again before Inauguration Day. On January 10, Obama will deliver a farewell address in which he is expected to suggest that his administration did many great things and that Trump would be wrong to undo them. Whats more, the president is reportedly seeking to publish a report on Russias role in the 2016 election, even though Trump has made it clear that he doesnt want to hear any more about that stuff because he finds the whole age of the computer very confusing.
Call me a Luddite, a technophobe, or a helpless nostalgic, but I dont use an online calendar. Perhaps its my lack of confidence in the cloud (who trusts clouds?!) but most likely its because having a planner is like having a journal without having to, you know, keep a journal.

My first planner was a bright-pink Hello Kitty book, filled with angsty eighth-grade musings and the occasional homework assignment. I then graduated to the Moleskine weekly planner, choosing between the red, green, and black covers each year. Ive saved each one in a special part of my bookcase, and, when Im feeling curious, I flip through these personal archives, remembering vacations (the best), ideas (rarely worth it), bad dates (god help me), and grocery lists.

Last year, when I was gifted a monogrammed Smythson Soho agenda, I knew Id achieved planner nirvana. Smythson, the eternally chic British leather brand, has been around for over a century  the Queen has endorsed it with her seal, and with good reason.

Larger than a pocket calendar, which affords little writing space, and smaller than a desk diary, which is like lugging around a textbook, the Soho is the ideal size. The weekly agenda devotes a sizable square to each day, and theres a weekly to-do list on the opposite page. Theres a healthy amount of lined notepaper, essential for an inveterate doodler and list-maker such as myself. And the paper. I could wax rhapsodic about the classic light-blue Smythson featherweight pages, which are half the thickness and weight of normal pages, but suffice to say, they make for easy writing with no ink bleeding through.

It may not be cheap, but the Soho agenda makes every appointment and illegible note just a bit more glamorous. My 2017 edition is on the way.
Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher. Photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Debbie Reynolds, whose role in the iconic film Singin in the Rain earned her a spot in American film history and who went on to become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood during the 1950s and 60s, has died. She was 84. Multiple news outlets confirmed her death on Wednesday, citing her son, Todd Fisher.

On Wednesday afternoon in Los Angeles, Reynolds was hospitalized after suffering an apparent stroke, her son Todd told TMZ. Reynoldss death comes one day following the death of her daughter, actress and author Carrie Fisher, who died at age 60 after suffering a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles. Reynolds and Fisher had a conflicted relationship over the years but eventually reconciled, and their mother-daughter story served as the basis of Fishers book Postcards From the Edge. That book was later adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine, in 1990. A documentary about the two is also set to air on HBO in the New Year, according to the Washington Post.



Todd Fisher told TMZ that, at the time of Reynoldss stroke, he and his other siblings were making funeral plans for his sister, Carrie Fisher.

Shes with Carrie, he told TMZ.


Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Debbie Reynolds was just 19 when she landed a leading role in the iconic film Singin in the Rain alongside Gene Kelly and Donald OConnor. It was a role that jump-started the ingenues career in Hollywood  a career lasting several decades  which included an Oscar-nominated performance for her role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Reynolds, however, was much more than an entertainer in Hollywood. She was also, in a way, Hollywoods enthusiastic and self-appointed art historian, helping preserve costumes from many of the most iconic films in the industry after studios had long forsaken them.

As news of Reynoldss death circulated late on Wednesday evening, following the unexpected death just a day earlier of her daughter and fellow actress Carrie Fisher, fans poured out their admiration for the late entertainer. After all, throughout her career, Reynolds was among industry legends, and the public knew a lot about her personal and romantic life, particularly after having been a part of one of Hollywoods most famous love triangles involving her first husband, Eddie Fisher, and Elizabeth Taylor. And, while its her roles in Hollywood films of the 1950s and 60s that Reynolds will undoubtedly be remembered for, its also worth acknowledging her tremendous efforts to preserve iconic film costumes, props, and other memorabilia. My lifetime dream has been to assemble and preserve the history of the Hollywood film industry, Reynolds told the Las Vegas Sun in 2011. Hollywood has been an enormous part of my life, as I know it has been for countless fans all over the world.

For decades, Reynolds made it her personal mission to ensure that the history and magic embedded within the finely crafted clothing and designs featured in films from Hollywoods Golden Era were not lost in the shuffle of studio downsizing. To put it more succinctly, that the red ruby slippers Judy Garland wore as Dorothy are still around, along with Audrey Hepburns dress from My Fair Lady or Charlie Chaplins distinct bowler hat (and thousands of other film pieces), is owing to Reynoldss valiant efforts. Her collecting began in earnest in 1970, after MGM was bought out and consolidated, according to a 2011 article in The Wall Street Journal. She immediately offered to buy MGMs costumes, songs  everything  but it was sold to an auctioneer instead. Per the Journal:



So every day for three weeks, she waded through more than 300,000 items. She ended up purchasing a large, but carefully selected, array of costumes and furniture. Over the ensuing years, she added items through smaller auctions and individual purchases. When [the Journal] compliment[ed] her prescience, she sighs and says, Its not so much that I had vision, its that they had none.



Reynolds had harsher words about the matter in 2014, when the last of her collection was sold off in private auction. They literally threw away our history and I just got caught up in it, Reynolds told The Hollywood Reporter. The stupidity and the lack of foresight to save our history. Oh yes, they gave them away if you came up and said that you have something you had to offer. It was no matter about the history. Reynolds, for one, did care about the history. A lot. She tried for years to find a permanent home for her collection in a museum and came close seven times before the rug was pulled out from under her.



While the scattered memorabilia saddened Reynolds, she did keep one piece: an original statuette of a Maltese falcon from the film by the same name, according to The Hollywood Reporter. After three marriages, she told the publication, Im keeping him. Hes mine. Its one man that did not get away.
Francois Hollande. Photo: LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/Getty Images

In 2012, Frenchwoman Jacqueline Sauvage killed her husband, Norbert Marot, with a hunting rifle. She said that he had been violent toward her for 47 years, while her three adult daughters claimed that they too had been abused, sometimes sexually. Still, she was sentenced to ten years in prison for his murder, as her self-defense plea was not accepted.

Sauvages case has since caused a national outcry, so much so that French President Francois Hollande gave her a partial pardon that would have made her eligible for parole last January. But criticism over her treatment only grew when she was denied parole twice, and over 400,000 people signed a petition calling for her release. On Wednesday, Hollande issued Sauvage a full pardon, freeing the now-69-year-old woman from prison.

An official statement read: The place of Ms. Sauvage was no longer in prison, but with her family. In response to the pardon, Sauvage attorney Nathalie Tomasini said it was a very strong message sent by Francois Hollande to all women victims of domestic violence.
Judith Butler. Photo: Getty Images

Mother Jones recently reported a fascinating saga about a professor squatting in another professors Berkeley home after it was rented out on an academics-only house-sharing website. While teaching a semester abroad, Elizabeth Abel, an English professor at Berkeley, rented her home to David Peritz, a political-science professor at Sarah Lawrence, only to discover that he wasnt planning to leave without a fight.

The story has all the elements of a great niche drama: interdisciplinary feuding, legal battles, reflections on the sharing economy, strongly worded emails from noted scholars. By far, the best part of the saga is an email sent to Peritz by famed gender theorist and pop celebrity Judith Butler, one of Abels colleagues.

Per Mother Jones, Butler was one of many within Abels circle who contacted Peritz to try and get him to leave, penning two epic, eviscerating emails. The first began:

I have recently become aware of your scurrilous behavioreffectively squatting in the home of my colleague, Elizabeth Abel. If you are not out of that apartment within five days time, I will write to every colleague in your field explaining the horrible scam you have committed.

A judge eventually got Peritz to move out, but not before Butler threatened to use every inch of her academic might to make his life a living hell. As she wrote in a second email, titled your miscalculation:

Please accept the fact that you have painted yourself into a corner, and that you have to leave promptly, and with an apology and a payment plan, in order to avoid any further destruction to your professional and personal world. Your itinerary of self-destruction is a stellar one.



Moral of the story: Its good to have Judith Butler in your corner.
the inside game

The Most Important Senate Race Is Also the Most Ignored

The Most Important Senate Race Is Also the Most Ignored
Photo: Sara Shepherd/AP

Kansas University (not to be confused with Kansas State) introduced a new program through its library system in which students are given free buttons that feature the students preferred gender pronouns. A sign at the KU library reads, Each person has the right to identify their own pronouns, and we encourage you to ask before assuming someones gender. Pronouns matter!

The library system had started a marketing campaign called You Belong Here, and the buttons have become a major part of the effort. Kevin Smith, the libraries dean, told the Associated Press, A commitment to support the voices of marginalized people is part and parcel to the libraries commitment to the values of the First Amendment.

Workers at KUs libraries can choose to wear the buttons, and according to Rebecca Smith, the library systems chief of communications and advancement, demand has been so high that the buttons have already had to be reordered.
Sportsgambler.com - The Ultimate Sports Betting Guide

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Sportsgambler.com has the most popular sports and leagues covered irrespective of where you are based. This includes Premier League and Champions League football, Indian Premier League cricket, while we showcase ATP and WTA tennis all year round. We also focus on American sports including NFL, NBA basketball, NHL ice hockey and MLB Baseball.

Responsible Gambling is Very Important

It nearly goes without saying that Sportsgambler.com is committed to responsible gambling. Several of our team have worked for various bookmakers and understand that sportsbook customers should only bet with money that they can afford to lose. Readers should also know that when the fun stops, they should stop betting.

Every online bookie is now obliged to give bettors the chance to set deposit limits when they open an account. Existing customers can also log into their account and set these limits at any stage, with daily, weekly or monthly limits available and we recommend everyone doing so.

We believe that online gambling should be a fun and entertaining experience. No bettor is going to win with every bet they place, although by following the advice on this website and using the various information and tools at your disposal, you will give yourself a stronger chance of doing well with your online bets.

As youll see from the bottom of our website, we are Gamble Aware and encourage anyone experiencing gambling problems to seek immediate help and ensure that they become self-excluded with any betting site where they hold an account.
Post is missing queen of Australia, Delta Goodrem

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You mean Kylie?

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specially not with Kylie's recent "music" specially not with Kylie's recent "music"

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unless its being hosted during december, kylie isnt interested!

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omg Delta?

what's she released in the last ten years?

nothing worth remembering..

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Is New Zealand also participating?

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Nah. The show doesn't really feature here.

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But y.



You're neither in europe, nor in the european broadcasting union. This is so veird to me.

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mte

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They're big fans of Eurovision, so I guess it's an honorary kind of thing.

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I mean, I knov.



I vas being more like and old bigoted man yelling "Get these foreigners off of my Europe and some almost kinda Asian countries".



Edited at 2016-12-29 11:37 am (UTC)

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Mte. It's like Rock in Rio taking place in Lisbon

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Mte. I don't care that they're big fans, if they're allowed to participate other countries should be allowed to as well. Either everyone or no one.

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eh, i don't mind tbh, they're kind of honorary europeans lol. /euro

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as long as it's not america i'm cool with whoever participating lol

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We are Europe and Asia, you are in denial.

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for some reason it's HUGE here. Like... everyone really gets into it.

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Lorde isn't Australian, she's a New Zealander.

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Stealing from New Zealand is a thing we do.

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And don't you forget it.

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No lies detected. I still remember when Aussie tried to claim Sir Edmund Hillary.



You can have Russell Crowe, tbh.

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we also reserve the right to give ppl back on the occasion that they embarrass us.

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idk what a 'New Zealand' is. is it a state of mind? a feeling? a spice?

Lorde is australiam.idk what a 'New Zealand' is. is it a state of mind? a feeling? a spice?

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she's not proud of her address. don't remind her.

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She is ANZ, Australia and New Zealand, a mutual hybrid...

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Australia has been thirsting for Lorde to be Australian

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She was born in Auckland which is Australia's second capital so

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I want to visit New Zealand. I just watched Hunt for the Wilderpeople the other day.

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i'm pretty sure they wouldn't let lorde up there even if she was Australian..

She only has one song and the rules state it must be a new one and not one released a hundred years ago..

oh and also she is shit like delta..



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same same but different friend

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Also Lorde is not Australian, nov is she?



Edited at 2016-12-29 11:03 am (UTC)

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I'm not mad about this. It's nice that they're so enthusiastic about Eurovision.



I loved Dami Im's performance last year and I was rooting for her.

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Yeah it's fun that they're so into it.

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Dani Im was really good. I was rooting for Russia but her song was a close second.

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I really liked Russia's song as well. I'm usually not here for Russia because of political reasons, but since the contestants have very little to do with their country's politics, I tried to get over that.



Although I still think that "Eurovision isn't political" is a myth. Of course it's political, it has always been. The participants just try to be subtle about it.

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They should embrace the true spirit of Eurovision and send something super campy this year

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Mte, that is my main fear with letting in new countries like australia/US, that they take it too seriously and send actual good artists.



We always get drunk and do eurovision bingo (explosions, glitter, stilts, capes, weird background videos, crying, out-of-tune singing etc. etc.) and it's like one of my favourite things, I'm weirdly protective of it lol.

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Yeah same, I don't want Eurovision to become too serious because the whole point is to be a campy mess.

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this. i don't mind some non euro countries participating but either they get into eurovision's true spirit or they gtfo.

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I did bingo this year too! It was hilarious

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it's weird cause campy is why Australia loves Eurovision..

we do kind of send our shit artists but that's not the same..



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Eurovision hit peak boring this year with the snoozefests the countries sent. I don't think I remember any of the entries, the only true exciting moment was the new voting system.



Australia better send something fun or idc.

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it hits peak boring every year after the addition of juries.

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lmao I love that we muscled our way into Eurovision by the sheer force of our love for it - I only wish we'd been in it when the Bee Gees were in their prime so we could send them!

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they could have sung for england tho? did they ever?

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I remember feeling that Dami Im was robbed and pissed off at whoever actually won lol





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Lol it was Ukraine. I'll never forget because it was so political because everyone just wanted to be like fuck you russia because of crimea. I felt robbed but that part was kinda fun. Russia totally thought they had it.

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i thought this began as a different country entering each year? i feel like i remember hearing china were supposed to participate one year

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Just send Dami Im again since she was robbed

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Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ

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LMAO sure

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Wow. He hasn't been in the news for a while. I'm surprised he isn't a trump fan.



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He was actually making fun of him on Graham. I think there's clips of it but I didn't search for the whole episode.

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im not surprised but i didnt know either, but other people have been posting receipts

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I'm not surprised he doesn't like Trump. Charlie has HIV and Trump probably still thinks that's a gay disease

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Why did you link HIV and Gay? Charlie Sheen isn't gay

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I know. My wording is kind of off now that I re-read my comment, but what I meant was Charlie is probably worried healthcare will get worse when Trump's in office and I wouldn't be surprised if Trump is also ignorant about STDs still.

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I don't think you read that right...

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I get you tho. I am a gay half black man and I don't have HIV+ and I'll bet you that everyone who met me or knew me would always assume that I'm HIV+. Oh well.

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Yesterday after my dad found out about Debbie Reynolds he just paced around the house going "how does tr*mp continue to live"

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omg bb

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it's always the evil ones that outlive the good. they're like roaches. :(

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it explains dick cheney

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My coworker said the same thing yesterday. Evil doesn't die unfortunately, not until they've ruined other people's lives first.

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bless your poor pops <3

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evil people live forever, the Simpsons got that one right as well with Mr. Burns

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2016, REDEEM YOURSELF

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Trump: Making Hell Great Again

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don't we all

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If Trump dies, I wonder if we'll get some self-righteous ONTDers lecturing us how we shouldn't be celebrating* bc someone died, it's in poor taste, blah blah. It happened with Kim Jong Il, so....



* tbh we shouldn't celebrate bc it just means that Pence will take over, but you know what i mean.

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People did the same thing for osama bin laden

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I remeber the post and it went back and forth, but i think most people were like wtf. Cares cos he was a terrorist

Then the general consensus was"not celebrating a death but not mourning him~"

Scalia was straight up opposite where people didnt care anymore

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Celebrating deaths of foreign leaders feels different to me bc even though they're awful ppl, there's a weird tinge of American racism hanging over it. White Americans love accusing and harassing brown people of being terrorists so the connotations of white Americans celebrating that a Middle Eastern person is dead.. ik in this case he was an actual terrorist, but it just felt very off. It would've felt very different had it been Muslim-Americans celebrating.



I think that's why people expressing happiness over Scalia's death, a white American justice, didn't bother anyone on ONTD



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I vote make it a national holiday and we all celebrate.

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it also happened with Margaret fucking Thatcher of all people

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I hate that. Someone dying doesn't mean they weren't a POS when they were alive.

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the ONTD of old would never



fucking nuONTD

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There would be, there always are, like when people were outraged about the jokes about the attack that did not happen against Ryan Lochte, if there was an uproar for something that did not even happen I don't want to know what some houlier than thou people will say if Trump dies and we celebrate tbh.

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If Trump dies in these final days of 2016, I will not only thank God, but also Jesus.

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When it was posted that Rush Limbaugh died I was living for it, until people started shaming everyone for being happy. Ugh, the shame.

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I plan to bake celebratory cupcakes.

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I remember when osama died and the celebration felt really uncomfortable to me. Idek why now maybe something around the circumstances of it. But I have no problem now with terrible people being taken.

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Maybe they'll die together. 2017 may be the hero we deserve.

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even tho pence is terrible i have faith that he would avoid starting a nuclear war unlike tr*mp tbh

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You just know ONTD's republicans will crawl out of the sewers they live in to talk about how evil democrats truly are

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this is taking me back to the wild ride that was those joan rivers posts

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If Trump dies, I'm poppin champagne bottles. We're gonna party in the streets. I wanna see parades with marching bands, balloons, floats, Trump's head being carried on a spike.... I want to feel like I'm at the Macy's Day Parade combined with V-E Day.

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* And also because the white nationalists will go nut @ the death of their Fuhrer

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the antonin scalia death party post was amazing tho

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I got so much of this from colleagues (inc. my boss) with Margaret Thatcher. Drove me up the wall. She was a completely evil person and I don't think it's wrong to celebrate her death.

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The guy that played ALF died.



Come on, 2016. I'm actually agreeing with Charlie Fucking Sheen. Do yr thing, death.



But lbr, even death doesn't want him.



Edited at 2016-12-29 05:11 pm (UTC)

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Too true

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he died in june

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Fucking news outlets. I knew he had has a stroke, but I don't remember hearing about him passing away. Media outlets are saying he died today.

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I'll selfishly suggest Putin 2 go first

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lmfao

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get the guys frm Nip/Tuck on this case

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maybe his horse will kick him in the head



'put your fucking shirt on, guy!'

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Lmao

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These are the causes of death we can all get behind.

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omg, your icon! <3 I never thought I'd see VDB on ONTD lol.

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I wonder how many assassination attempts have been made on his life? There has to have been a few people poisoned after taste-testing his food. I agree that he needs to go. The world isn't safe with him in power.



ETA: for anyone reading this needing a book recommendation, check out "The Man Without a Face" by Masha Gessen, a biography on Putin. It is one of the best books I've ever read (any genre) and is absolutely crazy.



Edited at 2016-12-29 05:52 pm (UTC)

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lol @ your icon xD

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Same, I hate him more. Plus he's far more dangerous to my country than Trump.

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if he dies russia will prob just get body doubles to pretend he's still alive for awhile longer

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Yup I can't wait to party when it happens

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Not even Satan wants him 

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I always hoped that Putin would die while wrestling a bear to prove to masculinity or something

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trump & pence & all of the GOP wiped out in some devastating act of god

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Like a designated survivor type of scenario

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who would be that person though Chris Christie?

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smite them!

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Hoping God takes a break from the bible belt and focus his attention on something worthy.

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yaasssssssssss

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but I want Mitch McConnell to go slowly and painfully.

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I'd pull an Anne Rice if they all got wiped out.

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I can hear the angels singing...

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I honestly would sacrifice my life and tribute myself into a volcano for the greater good of America for this to happen.

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I imagine the entire T*ump administration on a private jet that gets struck by lightning and it goes down in literal flames <3

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Yes, I need Cersei to do her thing and wipe all of them out with wildfire while at their next meeting, and have Hilary watching in the building over drinking wine.

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Lmaooo

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perfect gif XD

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I meannnnn



countnessvaughn.jpg



Edited at 2016-12-29 05:13 pm (UTC)

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This year hates us so Trump dying will never happen.



Fingers crossed, 2017.

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yup this year hates us the most, i just read that 2016 will have an extra second added to the end of it

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A beloved celebrity will definitely die in that last second of it.

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Ya, 2016 is without a doubt an evil year so Trump and the likes of him will survive and thrive.



I personally am hoping the pressure of the job gets to him and he has a massive breakdown before having a heart attack.

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pence scares me just as much so unless all the gop gets wiped, im not sure what to wish for

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pence is the worst.

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I don't think we'd have to worry about international crises caused by twitter, at least :\

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i was talking to someone about that and had to comment, "at least pence knows that nukes are bad???"



such high standards these days

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Yea he's just as bad if not worse domestically but I don't think he's as bad internationally.

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exactlyyyyy

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mte I used to think Pence would be worse but he'd be more diplomatic and not as ego-driven

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He also doesn't have the same cult like following trump has

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mte

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Pence is just as bad but I don't think he'd destroy the country over Twitter. His conventional GOP evil is easier to fight than Drumpf's "unpresidented" chaos.

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i think pence is far worse in terms of social issues

BUT he seems to actually understand the gravity of the job, has a working knowledge of our allies and enemies, knows how to conduct himself, isn't more concerned about a real estate deal than the presidency, etc.



so i think we'd be less endangered with pence as a county.

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mte

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What if lightning strikes their podium when they're taking office together? It hit the vatican when that jerk from the inquisitors made it in, so it could happen! We could pray that whoever is swearing them in is wearing rubber souled shoes and just Pencie and Trump in their bespoke leather shoewear get the hammer! ....I'm maybe thinking too hard about this.

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If Trump dies, we get Pence please realize this. Somebody should just package it as 2016 redeem yourself by getting Trump and Pence.

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But then we get Ryan.

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Then that means President Pro Tempore of the Senate has to be included. Fourth in line is the Secretary of the State, I'm totally okay with John Kerry. Fuck, if we could get Loretta Lynch as President via the succession line that'd be amazing.

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I am shamefully attracted to him.

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The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States has a lot of implications for a lot of different segments of the economy  coal may not be one of them. The uphill battle for coal in the U.S. appears to be getting even steeper with Western States starting to increasingly look to natural gas and renewable energy for power consumption rather than coal. Moreover, the change is being driven by economics rather than regulatory requirements or concern over the environment.

President Trump will have a lot of power  power to enact new rules, power to push new legislation, and power to remove old regulations. None of that will help to change the fundamental economics of coal which are increasingly pointing to more mine closures. Renewable power is consistently becoming cheaper, and the glut of natural gas continues to make it one of the most affordable power generation sources available.

Appalachian coal has been in trouble for years because it is relatively expensive to extract that coal from the ground. In comparison, the Powder River Basin coal in Wyoming is comparatively cheap to mine. Wyoming has vast deposits of easily accessible, low-sulfur coal, and that has historically been a significant source of power generation for many of the Mountain West states. In 2015 for instance, roughly half the regions power generation was coal-fired. A decade ago, those states got nearly two-thirds of their power from coal. Related: Natural Gas Drillers Rush To Hedge Production As Prices Soar

Now to be fair to coal, it may be dying, but it is still a powerful dying giant. Today coal is still responsible for nearly 33 percent of energy production. Wyoming in particular is still a major producer, and it has closed fewer mines than West Virginia or Kentucky. In 2014, Wyoming produced 40 percent of the nations coal. In contrast, the entire Appalachian region produced only 27 percent of the countrys coal. Thats largely because of low mining costs  Powder River Basin coal sells for roughly $10 per short ton compared to $45 per short ton for coal from places like KY and WV.

Yet at the same time, the fact that so much economic angst has come from the shrinking size of coal should be frightening. Coal has only lost a small part of its dominance  it has ceded perhaps 20 percent-30 percent of its generation share. That means that if the black rock continues to lose ground, 70 percent to 80 percent of the pain is still to come.

(Click to enlarge)

Trump can do little to change the structural advantage that Wyoming has over the Appalachian miners, and he cant change fundamental supply and demand. Indeed two of Trumps proposals may even hurt coal production; reduced regulations on fracking (including natural gas), and an import tariff.

Reduced regulation on fracking will help lower costs for unconventional producers of oil and natural gas. The latter is particularly important because it is the primary competitor for power generation share versus coal. There is a lot of talk around renewables, but the reality is that roughly 90 percent of power generation still comes from conventional sources. Natural gas is coals most serious enemy rather than solar. The removal of EPA regulations will help coal, but it will also help natural gas which means that coal could continue losing share.

Equally importantly, there has been a lot of talk about new tariffs (or border adjustments) being put in place in the U.S. If that occurs, other countries will almost certainly respond in kind. That in turn could make it harder to export U.S. coal. Coal exports represent roughly 8 percent of production with the largest consumers being the Netherlands, India, and Brazil. If new tariffs are put in place, that could disrupt those exports turning off an important source of demand overnight.

The bottom line is that while President Trump may have a lot of power, and he may be able to help the economy as a whole and the energy sector in particular, the outlook for coal itself is still quite grim.

By Michael McDonald of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
As an apparent wave of populism sweeps through the world, Theresa May prepares to trigger Article 50, and fears of a trade war between China and the U.S grow, financial markets are on edge. But alongside this uncertainty, there has been some good news for markets as well, with oil markets moving towards rebalancing. The recent OPEC production cut agreement, and the additional cuts by non-OPEC countries caused oil prices to touch a post-2014 high. But Saudi Arabia and Russia, among other oil producers, are now in the limelight, as the world waits to see how true to the agreement each country will remain. Perhaps more important at this point are those countries who were never part of the agreement, or who were absolved from it.

One such country is Libya; its rising oil supply can easily offset the effect of the proposed production cut. Recently, oil exports from Libya's key oil terminals Es-Sider and Zueitina were resumed. This could bring 270,000 bpd back to the market, which is just a taste of how Libya, if peace prevails, could increase its production. The addition of 270,000 barrels alone accounts for almost a quarter of the OPEC production cut.

Related: Natural Gas Drillers Rush To Hedge Production As Prices Soar

The second country is Iraq. Iraq fought hard to be exempted from any sort of cut or freeze, arguing that it needed money to fight ISIS, and while it eventually accepted a cut, the risk of this huge oil nation cheating on the deal is significant. Iraqs output has grown at an alarming rate this year and the recently signed a deal with Lukoil, the Russian energy giant, to tap into the West Qurna-2 reservoir adds to the concerns.

Then there is Iran. Iran was not exempted from the deal but agreed to a production freeze at 3.8 million barrels per day. Like Iraq, Iran has also been busy signing deals with oil giants to ramp up its production. On December 7th Iran and Shell signed a deal to explore three oil and gas fields. Saudi Arabia has always seen Iran as a rival, with Iran being the key reason that Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman refused to sign the deal as put forward earlier in the year. This time around things were different, and matters has grown increasingly serious for Saudi Arabia.

The Kingdom had already borne the brunt of its decision in 2014 to not to cut production. We saw how the countrys masses, accustomed to government largesse in the shape of subsidies, extravagant pay and the leisure of not working, turned against the countrys gerontocracy when pay was slashed, holidays curtailed and subsidies removed. Also, the Foreign Exchange reserves of the Saudis were being depleted at an unprecedented rate. These factors explain the display of flexibility by the Kingdom at the Vienna conference on the 30th of December. On the other hand, prospects for Iran are just opening up after the Obama administration signed the controversial nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. As the sanctions are being lifted gradually from Iran, it now sees the whole world opening up as a potential market - a temptation that may prove very hard to resist.

The Putin Factor: The appointment of Mr. Rex Tillerson as secretary of State and the various insinuations by the President-elect to lift sanctions could be symptomatic of greater production from Russia. Russia has recently claimed that it will beat 2016s estimated oil production total of 253 million tons in 2017.

"Supposedly 253.5 [million tonnes of oil are expected to be exported from Russia] this year, which is 4.8 percent more than in 2015. In 2017, we will have a little more than this," Molodtsov said.

Finally, Nigeria. As of now it is busy fighting Boko-Haram and attempting to strike some kind of political deal with the Niger Delta Avengers. Exempted from the oil deal, its production stands around 1.6 mbpd. President Buhari has vowed to increase the production to 2.2mbpd, a statement that will not be welcomed by fellow OPEC producers.

If any of these countries do significantly increase production, then the euphoria that has yet to reach its peak may begin to fade.

By Osama Rizvi for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
OPEC is currently pumping crude at a record rate yet has managed to fool algos and "experts" into bidding up crude to multi-month highs on "promises" it will cut a little over 1 million bpd in output starting in 2017. Alongside this "agreement", which Russia and other Non-OPEC nations may or may not join depending on whether OPEC states comply with the cuts (Russia has made it very clear it won't start cutting for a while in the new year), a problem OPEC has long hoped to avoid mentioning, let alone addressing, has emerged. We are talking, of course, about U.S. shale, the biggest marginal swing producer in the world.

The problem, in a nutshell, is one of clean balance sheets (those companies which had to file bankruptcy, have done so by now, and as a result most now have a far lower All-In Production Cost, not to mention far less debt, and re-energized management teams) as well as one of rising efficiency due to drilling technological advances. Nowhere is this more evident than in this excerpt from Bloomberg:

[A]t 8.8 million barrels a day, the U.S. is already pumping almost as much crude as two years ago, with just a third of the rigs it operated at the peak, data from Baker Hughes Inc. and the Energy Information Administration show.

(Click to enlarge)

And while drillers have added about 200 rigs since May, taking advantage of rising prices as talk of an OPEC supply cut circulated, one wonders what will happens to U.S. oil production once the number of rigs returns to its recent historical levels between 1,800 and 2,000?

One thing we do know is that after two years of quietly avoiding the spotlight, the shale industry is ready to return with a bang, and according to Reuters, "U.S. shale drillers are set to ramp up spending on exploration and production next year as recovering oil prices prompt banks to extend credit lines for the first time in two years."

The credit increase is small, but with major oil producers worldwide aiming to hold down production in 2017, U.S.-based shale drillers are looking to boost market share to take advantage of higher prices, and greater availability of capital will make that easier.

North America-focused oil and gas producers are expected to increase capital investments by 30 percent in 2017, according to analysts at Raymond James. A number of shale producers including Pioneer Natural Resources, Diamondback Energy and RSP Permian have forecast bigger budgets and increased output for next year.



Every six months, oil and gas producers negotiate credit with banks based on the value of reserves in the ground. Through the latest round of talks in the fall, 34 companies had their available credit lines raised an average of about 5 percent, or more than $1.3 billion, according to data compiled by Reuters. The combined bank credit for the companies stood at $30.3 billion, compared with $28.9 billion at the end of spring 2016. Related: Oil Price Roulette: Investors Bet On $100 Oil

The industry's available credit had been cut by 40 percent over the past three reviews as it contended with a two-year price rout. "The 'animal spirits,' seem to be coming back to the exploration and production market, albeit slowly," said Reorg Research analyst Kyle Owusu, referring to the human emotion that drives confidence.

Of the 34 companies, 12 saw increases of 5 to 90 percent, while 10 companies had their borrowing bases cut in the latest round, and 12 companies' credit limits were left unchanged.

Curiously, despite the recent renaissance within shale, overall U.S. crude oil production is forecast to fall to 8.8 million barrels per day in 2017 from 8.9 million bpd this year, according to the DOE. But, according to many analysts, shale output could increase from 200,000 to 500,000 bpd in 2018. Furthermore, according to a Citi report, if oil prices jump by another $10 from the current level of ~$50, shale output could quickly rise by a further 500,000 barrels.

Still, some such as SocGen head of commodities research Mike Wittner, believe that shale companies could struggle to revive output quickly enough to disrupt the re-balancing of the oil market. Its going to take them a while to gear up, Wittner said. The investments got to gather pace, the drillers and the fracking contractors also need time. Its a gradual process.

And then there are those like commodity expert Ritterbusch & Associates who believe that U.S. shale will be able to return to recent output levels far faster than consensus, and certainly OPEC believes.

According to a recent report by Ritterbusch, U.S. drillers are returning to work at a pace that will threaten the tenuous agreement among OPEC and other major producers to cut output. "It appears OPEC is already furthering a U.S. shale recovery despite the fact that OPEC cuts have not even begun," Ritterbusch & Associates writes, pointing to the rapidly rising rig count and increased output from U.S. fields.

As a result, and taking a contrarian stance to the consensus, Ritterbusch now expects U.S. oil production to rise to 9 million bpd as soon as the end of Q1 in 2017, from 8.8M currently. Related: Can U.S. Shale Add 1 Million Bpd In 2017?

Such an accelerated return to production would not only allow U.S. producers to grab "a significant portion of OPEC's market share," but more importantly would cause the OPEC production cut agreement to break apart as early as next spring, Ritterbusch says, as Saudi Arabia once again panics and scrambles to recapture market share lost not to Iran and/or Iraq this time, but to a newly resurgent U.S. shale industry, which as a reminder, is what caused the historic OPEC cartel breakdown on Thanksgiving 2014 which sent the oil price crashing and from which it has yet to recover.

As a reminder, all this excludes the all too high likelihood of a surge in production from previously mothballed regions like Nigeria and Libya, both of which are aggressively ramping up output to recapture long lost market share, and are willing to aggressively underbid the competition in the process.

If Ritterbusch is right, buy lots of 6 month Brent/WTI puts, because today's high price will be a fond memory once the latest OPEC agreement collapses as it becomes every oil producer - and shale - for himself.

By Zerohedge

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
A while back, I posted an illustrated collection of some of the "little landmarks" I enjoy most in Milwaukee. That list led to requests for more. Next, I discussed these posts with Nate Imig at Radio Milwaukee, which led to still more requests.

So here are six more little Milwaukee landmarks  according to me. You may recognize some of them, while others may not seem as familiar, but I'm guessing they'll help jolt your memory into thinking about some of your favorite places that might not qualify as full-on Milwaukee landmarks, but are definitely notable places in town.

Share your favorites using the Talkback feature at the bottom and if possible, add a link to a photo.

In no particular order...

1. Campbell Row

This row of brick townhouses in the shadow of the Allen-Bradley Clocktower on the near South Side has always piqued my curiosity because it is in a backyard behind a pair of wood frame houses, the back running along the alley. I've been unable to find architects for the front houses in this tract, but the row houses were designed by Andrew Elleson and were built in 1883. The first frame house (the one to the north, 1409 S. 3rd St.) went up in 1889 and the one that's now called 1411 S. 3rd St. followed two years later. All were built (perhaps as investment properties because it's not clear he lived in any of them) by George G. Campbell, hence the name, Campbell Row. In addition to registering numerous patents for things like early diving equipment, Campbell's Oregon Street foundry (Gardiner Campbell & Sons -- George was one of the sons) made the bell for City Hall.

2. Milwaukee Fire Dept. high-pressure pumping station

Most of us likely think of this place in terms of its most recent iteration: Horny Goat Hideaway brewpub and restaurant, 2011 S. 1st St. This lovely Charles Malig-designed Art Deco building (Malig also did the Deco police station on 47th and Vliet Streets and the Deco bridge house at Cherry Street) opened in January 1932 as Milwaukee Fire Department's high pressure pumping station. Here, three Allis-Chalmers pumps could supply 2,500 gallons per minute, with a staff of three.

According to MFD Deputy Chief and historian Jim Ley, "The idea of a high pressure station was to boost water pressure in the area because of a poor water system after a large fire on Aug. 14, 1929. There had been similar stations out east." A historic designation report notes, "The singular purpose ... was the replacement of Fireboat No. 17 in a heavy industrial area, where the streets and river were crossed several times by bridges and railway tracks."

The Depression quashed plans to build a second such station on the North Side of town. Anyway, by 1948, Ley says, the station was only used to fight seven fires and so it was closed in 1950 and, after selling the pumps, used for training. In 1962, MFD gave the building back to the city and 19 years later it was designated a National Historic Landmark. At the moment, it is empty.

3. Milwaukee News Building

The two buildings at 216-22 E. Mason St. are remnants of a block that used to be called Newspaper Row. Across the street, the old Milwaukee Sentinel building also still stands. The three-story Victorian Gothic building to the east was built for the Milwaukee News  as the sign up top notes  in 1879 (five years after influential local writer and publisher William George Bruce got his start with the paper). The News was one of more than a dozen newspapers and magazines once headquartered on the block, hence the Newspaper Row name. The Journal of Commerce and the Milwaukee Daily Journal each also occupied the building for a time.

The building to the left in the photo was erected in 1884 for lawyer Samuel Howard, and the Wisconsin Legal News was briefly headquartered there. It originally had a first-floor walk-up over an English basement, which survives. The buildings  conjoined in 1970  sold a couple years ago for just under $300,000.

4. St. Vincent Infants Asylum

It's pretty hard to miss Charles A. Gombert's Gothic Revival home for the St. Vincent's Infant Asylum, 809 W. Greenfield Ave., erected in 1879 for the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent De Paul, which was founded two years earlier and previously housed at 413 Virginia St.

The large building, which appears to have had at least three additions (1890, 1894 and 1900 and at least one  most likely the eldest  drawn by Edward Townsend Mix, who died in 1890) was home to as many as 500 children, whose parents were unwilling or unable to care for them, at a time. The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has records of the many "inmates" of the asylum, which became the St. Vincent Group Home in 1959. Today, the beautiful cream city brick building is home to La Causa's Early Education and Care Center.

5. Zion Evangelical Church

This one, 1418 W. Greenfield Ave., is a bit of a personal landmark, as my grandparents lived a block west of here and as a kid, driving in from New York for family visits, I'd wake up groggy right as we'd exit 94 at Greenfield Avenue and first I'd see the A-B Clocktower and, I'd know we'd arrived when I saw the distinctive white steeple of this old clapboard church and school. Nowadays, I can see it from my office and it takes me back every time.

At that time, I had no idea that my great-grandparents were confirmed and married there, and my grandfather  like his mother  baptized there, too.

According to "Memoirs of Milwaukee County: From the Earliest Historical Times," published in 1909, "In 1884, Rev. Heinrich Noehren organized on the south side an Evangelical church (in the German Evangelical Synod of North America) which later came to be known as Zion church. The society first erected a schoolhouse on property it had purchased on Greenfield avenue between Ninth and Tenth avenues, and used the building for services until its resources allowed the erection of the present church edifice."

The balloon-frame Zion Evangelical Church was erected in 1887 and additions were made in 1905 and 1908. The school, mentioned above, just west, pre-dates the church by four years and it, too, had an addition in 1905, and again in 1948. Today, they are home to the Pentecostal Church of God.

6. 3809 W. North Ave.

I haven't found much about this attractive vernacular storefront on 38th and North, but I always admire the small glass squares that make up the broad arched window above the entrance and display windows and the Mediterranean tiled roof motif, as well as the stone pilasters between the windows in the flat above. I especially like the way they terminate over the flanking windows in the center trio. Built in 1923 by Luebtow Realty, this has served as a music shop, a grocery store, a furniture store, a restaurant and a hair salon during its lifetime. Currently owned by the City of Milwaukee, it appears to be vacant at the moment.
From Consortium News



U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, flanked by Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria 'Toria' Nuland, addresses Russian President Vladimir Putin in a meeting room at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on July 14, 2016.

(Image by [State Department Photo]) Details DMCA



The neocons and their liberal-interventionist chums never seem to think through one of their "regime change" schemes. It's enough that they wrote the plan down in some op-ed article or reached a consensus at a think-tank conference. After that, all there is to do is to generate the requisite propaganda, often accompanied by intelligence "leaks" and maybe some heartbreaking photos of children, to rile up the American people so they can be easily herded into the next slaughterhouse.

We've seen this pattern play out over and over again, from Iraq to Libya to Syria to Ukraine. You could even go back to the 1980s and the project for arming Afghanistan's mujahedeen and a collection of international jihadists led by Osama bin Laden, a project enthusiastically supported by both Republicans and Democrats.

The one consistent in these bloody follies is that the neocon/liberal-hawk plans never work out as they were drawn up. Time and again, it turns out that the great idea -- looking so good on the op-ed page or sounding so smart at the think-tank conference -- wasn't all that great or smart after all.

Remember how the Iraqis were going to welcome U.S. troops with flowers and how neocon favorite Ahmed Chalabi would be hailed as Iraq's new leader; or how the murder of Muammar Gaddafi would be followed by the flowering of Libyan democracy; or how enforcing the "must go" edict on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would be accomplished pretty quickly; or how overthrowing democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych was sure to put a stop to Ukraine's endemic corruption.

Instead, the people in those countries were left bloodied and battered while the areas around them became destabilized, too, now with those social and economic disruptions extending all the way to Europe, which not that long ago was one of the world's bastions of stability. And, oh, yes, the Afghan operation from the 1980s gave us the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

No Accountability

The neocon/liberal-hawk elitists never seem to get anything right but they are so well-connected that they never are held accountable. They just keep coming up with new gambits, expressed with the same confidence and certainty -- all beautifully explained in the next round of op-eds and at the think-tank conferences.



President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney receive an Oval Office briefing from CIA Director George Tenet. Also present is Chief of Staff Andy Card (on right).

(Image by (White House photo)) Details DMCA



When the new scheme arrives, it's as if the earlier disasters hadn't happened. Across the ideological spectrum, the mainstream media's star reporters act as if the only proper reaction toward the latest brilliant idea is to show undying credulity. The only questions that get asked of politicians are why they aren't intervening faster and going bigger, whether the new plan is to blast the targeted country in a "shock and awe" display or ship weapons to some proxy force which may include jihadists and neo-Nazis or sabotage a country's economy so the people will support a coup out of hunger and desperation.

Time and again, the unhappy country at the receiving end of America's latest "regime change" project ends up wallowing in pools of blood as the international circle of chaos widens. But the U.S. public's attention quickly goes elsewhere, like a child bored with a broken Christmas toy. The targeted country is mostly forgotten, except for the occasional op-ed or think-tank complaint that if only the politicians had started the wars earlier or had dispatched a bigger military force or had kept U.S. soldiers there indefinitely or had done more to undermine some demonized leader, then the neocon/liberal-hawks scheme would have worked out just perfectly. Which sets us up for the next grand idea.

Dropping the Big One

But the next grand idea arguably could be the last one. After several years of intensifying anti-Russian propaganda, the United States reportedly is ready to escalate the New Cold War with Russia by inflicting new punishments in retaliation for the still-unproven allegation that President Vladimir Putin authorized the hacking of Democratic emails and then released them to the American people via WikiLeaks.



Russian President Vladimir Putin answering questions from Russian citizens at his annual Q&A event on April 14, 2016.

(Image by (Russian government photo)) Details DMCA



Though the Obama administration has yet to provide any public evidence to support the charges, mainstream news outlets -- particularly The Washington Post and The New York Times -- have lapped up their own leaks from the Central Intelligence Agency, which appears to have been operating under instructions from President Obama to discredit President-elect Donald Trump's victory.

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Who We Are - Permanent Forum on International Pharmaceutical Crime

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Both South Korean consumer groups and politicians have been for quite some time calling for mandatory GMO labeling, which, starting in February, will be the enforced law.

Because the article that this article is about was in Korean in the original, I will post the translation with a brief comment of my own.

In view of the fact that the Trump FDA Commissioner will be even more manipulated by corporate interests than prior administrations, not much at all is going to get done over the next four years in the realm of protecting consumers.

I say that because of the demonstrated record thus far of appointing 4 climate change deniers to Cabinet positions. I am all for giving a new regime a chance to prove themselves, but in this department, that of the FDA, I hold out no hope at all.

The mainstream media and the alternative media in the USA are difficult to submit articles that educate consumers, so I have entirely shifted all of my efforts to other nations. The most significant involves my presenting my initial evidence to the Health Minister of India requesting him to ban Aspartame.

India has done this sort of thing before, most notably about 40 years ago when the Health Minister, Dr. Sripati Chandrasekhar, issued an order that banned both Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola for seven years. He told me in person that he did this entirely by edict, without parliament, for reasons of protecting the health of Indians; that it last only seven years until he left office to come to the United States to teach at five different universities, and that the companies simply bribed there way back into the market, and that in his opinion, it was no more than a strong statement against American corporations, because what the Indian corporations replaced Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola with was in fact worse than the usual mixture of food coloring, phosphoric acid, loads of sugar, and many secret ingredients that aren't even patented, what the rest of the world drinks when it consumes Coca Cola or Pepsi Cola.

I made this request partially in memory of my friend, Dr. Chandrasekhar, with his 40 honorary degrees and his life of brilliant public service. He was trained as an Economist and his Ph.D. was from Columbia University, where he later was a professor.

I chose India for two other reasons: 1) it is the world's largest democracy 2) many Indians speak and read English, 3) a great deal of competent journalism has already been read in the very aggressive news media there, which doesn't hesitate to expose the truth like so many in the United States, and 4) because with 1.25 billion people, India has always been sensitive to the genocidal issues involving junk food and toxic food additives.

I have been very busy with this effort, as there are a great many newspapers in India and in the rest of the world, which, unlike America, really does care about these matters. I will occasionally submit articles like this to OEN which will be less often than my efforts in the past.





So this news from Korea, although in a different context, is quite encouraging:

click here

Food items will require GMO labels in Korea

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From Other Words

While the world has been transfixed on the epic tragedy in Syria, another tragedy -- a hidden one -- has been consuming the children of Yemen.

Battered by the twin evils of war and hunger, every 10 minutes a child in Yemen dies from malnutrition, diarrhea, or respiratory-tract infections, UNICEF reports. And without immediate medical attention, over 400,000 kids suffering from severe acute malnutrition could die, too.

Why are so many of Yemen's children going hungry and dying?

Since 2014, Yemen has been wracked by a civil war -- a war that's been exacerbated by intervention from Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally. Since 2015, the Saudis have been pounding this nation, the poorest in the Middle East, with cluster bombs and explosives.

And the U.S. has been helping, selling the Saudis advanced weapons and providing intelligence and logistical support.

This nearly two-year-old bombing campaign has killed thousands of innocent Yemenis and sparked a severe humanitarian crisis. A desert country, Yemen imports 90 percent of its food. But thanks to a Saudi naval blockade and the bombing of the country's main port, imports have dried up.

Subsequent shortages have led food prices to soar. Meanwhile, the war has left millions of people unemployed and displaced. Unable to buy the high-priced food, they're forced to depend on humanitarian aid for their survival.

UN and private relief organizations have been mobilizing to respond to the crisis, but a staggering 18.8 million people -- out of a population of 25 million -- need assistance. The situation is only getting worse as the war drags on and the winter cold sets in.

At the same time, the UN Refugee Agency has received less than half the funds it needs.

The nation's health system is also on the verge of collapse. Less than a third of the country's population has access to medical care, and only half of its health facilities are functional. Diseases such as cholera and measles are spreading, taking a heavy toll on children.

The only way to end the humanitarian crisis is to end the conflict. That means pushing harder for a political solution and calling for an immediate ceasefire. Until that happens, the United States should stop its military support for the Saudi regime.

Despite the repressive nature of the Saudi regime, for decades U.S. administrations have supported the Saudi government both diplomatically and militarily. Under Obama alone, weapons sales to the Saudis reached a whopping $115 billion.

Concerned over the high rate of civilian casualties, on December 12 the White House took the rare step of stopping the sale of 16,000 guided munition kits. This is a great step forward, but it represents only a small fraction of total U.S. weapons sales to the Saudi regime.

In fact, at the same time the White House announced it was blocking this $350 million deal, the State Department announced plans to sell 48 Chinook cargo helicopters and other equipment worth 10 times as much.

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Saudi Arabia,India are largest arms buyer among developing nations

NEW DELHI: A report commissioned by the United States (US) Congress has placed India as the second largest arms buyer among developing nations, and the claim looked vindicated on Wednesday when outgoing Indian Air Force chief Arup Raha said the country needed 200 Rafale-type war planes instead of the 36 the country had purchased from France.



Saudi Arabia was the leading developing world arms purchaser from 2008-2015, with agreements totalling USD 93.5 billion. India was the second largest developing world arms purchaser from 2008 to 2015, making arms transfer agreements totaling USD 34 billion during these years [in current dollars], the report prepared by the Congressional Research Service was quoted by Press Trust of India as saying.



Titled Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations 2008-2015, the CRS report reflects the military modernisation efforts by India. CRS reports are not considered official reports of the US Congress.



The report highlights recent Indian efforts to diversify its procurement of arms, of which the US has been a major beneficiary.



It is notable that India, while the principal Russian arms customer, during recent years has sought to diversify its weapons supplier base, purchasing the Phalcon early warning defence system aircraft in 2004 from Israel and numerous items from France in 2005, in particular six Scorpene diesel attack submarines.



In 2008, India purchased six C130J cargo aircraft from the United States, CRS said.



In 2010, the UK sold India 57 Hawk jet trainers for USD 1 billion. In 2010, Italy also sold India 12 AW101 helicopters.



In 2011, France secured a USD 2.4 billion contract with India to upgrade 51 of its Mirage-2000 combat fighters, and the US agreed to sell India 10 C-17 Globemaster III aircraft for USD 4.1 billion, it said.



This pattern of Indian arms purchases indicates that Russia will likely face strong new competition from other major weapons suppliers for the India arms market, and it can no longer be assured that India will consistently purchase its major combat systems, CRS said.



Indeed, India in 2011 had eliminated Russia from the international competition to supply a new-generation combat fighter aircraft, a competition won by France.



In 2015, Russia and India agreed to a contract in which India would procure at least 200 Ka-226T helicopter, the report said.



With India reducing its reliance on Russia on arms purchase, Moscow is looking for other options, it added.



Raha told a media briefing on Wednesday that the 36 Rafale warplanes ordered from France for $8.7 billion were not enough and India needed to buy at least 200 such fighter jets to sharpen its military edge.



Raha, who retires on Dec 31, also said the IAFs Russian-origin Ilyushin-78 tanker fleet was plagued by maintenance problems and more midair refuellers were a strategic requirement to extend the range of fighter planes.



He said the IAF would require the 200 medium-weight fighters in the next five to 10 years, stressing the need for setting up a new production line in the country.



The Rafale is an excellent aircraft and it will prove its worth in any campaign. We have signed only 36  we require more aircraft in the medium-weight category, The Hindustan Times quoted Raha as saying in his last media briefing as IAF chief.



India and France signed the Rafale deal on Sept 23, 2016, ending long-drawn-out negotiations that began after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the deal during a Paris visit in April 2015.



The paper said that the planes, equipped with latest weapons and tailored for Indian needs, will be delivered to the IAF between September 2019 and April 2022.
USA tightened its grip on LeT

WASHINGTON: The United States on Wednesday further tightened its grip on Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) by adding yet another of its aliases to its terrorists list.



In a separate notification, also issued on Wednesday, the US Department of Treasury also added two senior LeT leaders  Muhammad Sarwar and Shahid Mahmood  to its list of declared terrorists.



In a statement the US State Department recalled that it in December 2001, it designated LeT as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation. Since the original designation occurred, LeT has repeatedly changed its name and created front organisations ... to avoid sanctions, the statement noted.



Soon after the group assumes a new name, the State Department adds it to its list of terrorist outfits. To that effect, Al-Muhammadia Students (AMS) is the student wing of LeT. Founded in 2009, AMS is a subsidiary of LeT and has worked with senior LeT leaders to organise recruiting courses and other activities for youth, said the latest notification.



The notification puts a prohibition against knowingly providing, or attempting or conspiring to provide, material support or resources to, or engaging in transactions with this organisation. It also blocks all property and interests the group or the individuals might have within the US jurisdiction.



In the other designation, the US Treasury Department identifies Muhammad Sarwar as a senior LeT official in Lahore for over 10 years who has held various leadership roles in the group, including his current position as LeTs emir for Lahore.



Sarwar maintains relationships with LeTs most senior leaders. Between 2012 and 2013, Sarwar worked with LeTs foreign affairs chief Hafiz Abdul Rahman Makki, and in early 2013, Makki asked Sarwar for money to pay for his travel within Pakistan.



The US notification pointed out that Sarwar has been directly involved in LeT fundraising activities and uses the formal financial system in Pakistan to raise and move funds on behalf of LeT. In 2008, Sarwar led delegations of businessmen to LeT facilities for the purpose of soliciting donations, and as of mid-2009, Sarwar was one of two officials who headed LeTs finance wing in Lahore.



The notification identifies Shahid Mahmood as a longstanding senior LeT member based in Karachi. He has been affiliated with the group since 2007 and between June 2015 and June 2016, Mahmood served as the vice chairman of Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), a humanitarian and fundraising arm of LeT. FIF has been designated as an alias for LeT by the State Department as well as by the UN committee for counter-terrorism. In 2014, Mahmood was the leader of FIF in Karachi.



The Treasury claimed that since 2012, Mahmood has routinely travelled overseas and worked with international organisations on behalf of LeT to conduct business for the group in FIFs name. In 2012, Mahmood travelled to Bangladesh to distribute funds to a Burmese migrant camp for the purpose of facilitating LeT recruitment. In August 2012, Mahmood, while in charge of the Sindh chapter of FIF, led a LeT delegation to Myanmar, and in mid-2014, he travelled to Syria and Turkey and was subsequently appointed to lead FIF efforts in both countries. Mahmood has also travelled to Gaza.



Mahmood was previously part of LeTs overseas operations team led by Sajid Mir. In August 2012, the State Department put Mir on its terrorists list. While part of LeTs operations team, Mahmoods areas of responsibility included Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh.



In August 2013, Mahmood was instructed to forge covert links with Islamic organisations in Bangladesh and Myanmar, and as of late 2011, Mahmood claimed that LeTs primary concern should be attacking India and America.
Of course. You would have to be be barking mad to want to bring this rabble to NZ. But then socialists are mad by definition. It's not as if we don't have...
The hazy harmattan weather that has engulfed Ghana for the past two days has compelled international and domestic airlines to temporarily suspend their flights due to poor visibility.



Passengers who were scheduled to travel outside the country were stranded at the departure terminal of the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) in Accra on Wednesday.



With regards to domestic flights, while some passengers resolved to wait until the haziness cleared, others resorted to travelling by road.



The dense fog arising out of the harmattan intensified in Accra on Tuesday.



Many flights were redirected to neighbouring Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire and Lagos in Nigeria on Wednesday.



A Delta Airlines flight which was coming to Accra Wednesday morning from JFK in New York was redirected to Lagos.



The Delta flight originally scheduled to depart from Accra at 10am was re-scheduled twice to 12pm, 1:30pm and later to Thursday December 29 at 6pm.



Some of the checked-in passengers were put at hotels whilst others returned home.

Source: Daily Graphic









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The Office of Amass Ghana wish to extend its Christmas and New Year greetings to the good people of Ghana, home and abroad.



Not forgetting the priesthood, the Muslim community, traditional authorities, CSOs, individuals and various political parties for their enviable role in the just ended general elections.



Amass Ghana over the years bought into your ideas of observing peace as a tool for togetherness and business-ridden in our society and such efforts cannot be downplayed.



Even when Ghanaians were pregnant with fear of violence at the time when the populace were prepping themselves to elect a president for the fourth republic. Notwithstanding, such anxieties were not succumb prior to the D-day because of the love we invested in ourselves as a nation.



Going into yet another new year with new government, expectations are weighing high but patients should be our hallmark.



We have demonstrated ourselves remarkably to the world's diaspora that democracy has gone down well with us and must continue to be observed in all times.



For this reason, Amass Ghana will continue to prosecute its peace and security mission with a call on the next government to institutionalize a private body that will focus mainly on peace building and security.



-----Signed-----



Mr. Benjamin Asalimba



Secretary



0243 358 644



www.amassgh.org

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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A Ghanaian couple have started a social media Bring Back Our Son campaign after their son was fraudulently taken away from them by a woman working with some white people who capitalised on their illiteracy to cart Jeff away to Slovenia.



According to the couple, Kofi Benjamin and Comfort Authur, one Maa Lizzy promised them passage to America Toronto alongside their one and a half year old son named Jeff. However, after a winding process in which they also paid Ghc 4,400, they were asked to sign some papers, and being illiterates, they could not ascertain the documents was leading to their child being taken to Slovenia and not where they thought.



In distress, they have started a campaign to mount pressure on Maa Lizzy and the white people who took part in abducting their son to return the little boy to them.



I live with my wife and kids at Tema Dawhenya and we trade in Apketeshie. Kofi recounted the issue on Hot Fm.



One of our numerous customers by name Paa Kwesi aka Old Soldier told us that his mother by name Maa Lizzy is in the business of helping people seek greener pastures abroad; America Toronto. so hell tell her to help us. At the time, my wife had given birth to our second son Jeff, so I asked if it will be possible for us to go with our son.



He called his mum and she said it was possible. Maa Lizzy told us that she has some white friends who take people abroad and are even interested in people with kids. The arrangement was for us to work eighteen years abroad. I wanted to tell my parents about it, but she told us not to tell our family because she doesnt allow third parties in her business.



She told us that since I am an electrician, I will pursue that career and my wife will be do house work on our arrival, Kofi continued.



At this point, they were supposed to go to a court in Swedru to sign the relevant documents. Kofi was told not to come but that only his wife and Jeff were supposed to go along . At the signing, they were told only Jeff would be taken outside before they would later join.



After going to the court,the woman deceived us by telling us that,they would like to go with only our son Jeff before later they would let us join our son.She took GHC4,400 from us that they would use it to facilitate our documents but the white people would take care of our sons documents.



After that, more documents were brought to sign. They gave it to a friend to read for them, who was unable to see the documents indicated Jeff was being taken to Slovenia and not America Toronto as they had thought.



Despite making a report to the Tema Police station, nothing has happened and thus they are now planning to use the power of social media to get their son back.



Maa Lizzy, who took the child and handed him to the Slovenians, has refused to help them retrieve their son, only paying back the Ghc 4,400 they paid to her.

Source: ghanacelebrities.com









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It was very laudable to learn that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration has launched the Online Passport Application for Ghanaians who desire to obtain travelling documents.



The people who were present at the launch of the Online Application project expressed excitement when they heard the news.



It was indeed refreshing to know that the Ministry had not rejected the pilot project carried out by the National Information Technology Agency started in August 2015.



It is not surprising that Ghanaians are happy about the project, which would relieve them of the hassle they go through in acquiring a document every citizen is entitled to in the first place.



The ritual takes many shapes and forms. It is not unusual for one to wake up early in the morning and join a long queue just to submit documents for a passport.



Madam Hannah Serwaa Tetteh, the sector Minister in her keynote address at the launch in Accra on Tuesday, December 20, said the online application process would run concurrently with the manual system for a four- month period after which the paper system would be discarded.



Main Concepts of the Application and the process



The main idea of the Online Application Service is that one can sit in the comfort of his or her home and apply for a passport by logging in via the Personal Computer, Tablet or mobile phone.



All that is needed is the relevant information provided in the application process as it exists now. Nothing has really changed in terms of details, but the improvement of the system of application.



Whoever needs a passport should initially visit passport.mfa.gov.gh or passports.mfa.gov.gh to open the interface or the website. On the website, one will see two options popping up indicating Existing User? Login Here or New user? Register Here.



If that is the first time one is one is trying the Online Application he or she will have to register as a new user with a valid and active mobile number as well as email address optional- to enable him or her to have an account with the platform.



This account can only be created only once by an individual. A parent can have a single account and use it to apply for a passport in the name of the other members of the family.



In creating the first time account, one has to generate a password, which would assist him or her to always log in as a preventive measure to prevent the invasion of personal accounts or personal information.



After the registration of the account, the applicant would then have to select one of the partner banks of the service to transact payment with. The banks include Ecobank Transnational Incorporation, GCB Bank, and Zenith Bank.



The applicant would then be led to select the payment channel where he or she would indicate to use one of the available options as to using VISA, MasterCard, MTN Mobile Money, and or Airtel Money. Vodafone Cash is expected to be added sooner per the Minister delivery.



The applicant would then be required to complete the passport form after, which he or she would be required to select a preferred passport application centre (PAC) from the available list. The PAC is the place one would like to go to the next step of the process.



The role of PACs will be limited to checking applicants details already captured in the system by delivering the supporting documents of applicants, in addition to capturing the bio data of applicants for the passport, Madam Tetteh said.



There are currently six established PACs, which are in Accra, Kumasi, Sunyani, Tamale, Ho and Takoradi. The Ministry is looking at establishing a PAC in Tema and also holding consultations with Regional Administrative Officials in Cape Coast, Koforidua, Bolgatanga, and Wa.



As part of the process and for authentication reason, one would have to visit PACs for capturing bio-data and also the presentation of the original of some of the document an applicant claim to possess.



The available dates would pop up for an applicant to select the day that would be favourable for one to present the relevant document and also for the verification.



When an appointment slip is ready for printing one proceeds to the final stage.



The final stage of the application is a visit to a selected PAC on the date of appointment with an appointment slip and relevant original documents to complete the process.



It is at this stage that the applicant would have to wait for 10 working days or a maximum of 15 working days for the regular applicant and five working days or a maximum of 10 working days for the express applicant to receive a passport to enable the pursuance of any documentation for travelling purposes.



Something that must be noted about the service is that it only accepts the application from Monday to Thursday and it does not work on public holidays.

Source: GNA









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Weather-wise, it had been a fairly typical November day, two days before Thanksgiving, in the western Cumberland County agricultural community of Stow Creek Township - mostly sunny, with a bit of a nip in the air.

Then, all of a sudden, it was raining dead birds.

And by the time the brief "shower" was over, as many as 200 red-winged blackbirds littered the ground in a small housing development off Frank Davis Road surrounded by vast farm fields.

"They just fell from the sky," said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

It was the second time in less than three weeks that a die-off of blackbirds had occurred in the same rural neighborhood; the first time, a couple of dozen dead birds were found. A similar incident had happened in a North Jersey farming area earlier in the year, Hajna said.

After county agricultural agents had been notified by homeowners, the DEP's Division of Fish and Wildlife arrived in Stow Creek and removed the birds, collecting some of them to be sent to a state lab for necropsy, toxicology, and histopathology tests.

But the results of all the tests were inconclusive, Hajna said last week.

"We did ascertain that the birds suffered trauma and internal bleeding from hitting the ground," Hajna said. "But what made them fall from the sky in the first place ... we can't say for certain."

Even wheat seed from a nearby farmer's field was collected and tested for chemical compounds by the University of Pennsylvania. The farmer told the DEP's Bureau of Pesticides that the seed had been treated with the fungicides difenoconazole, mefenoxam and sedaxane, and the insecticide imidacloprid. None of those compounds is considered harmful to birds and none of the chemicals was found to be among those that are sometimes used by farmers to control "nuisance" species like blackbirds, Hajna said.

And while animals falling from the sky is not a usual occurrence, it does happen across the globe: Besides birds, fish and frogs seem to be the most common.

In 1998, about 10,000 birds, all Lapland longspurs, rained down and died on fields in Minnesota and Iowa after they became disoriented in a snowstorm. Fish can sometimes get caught up in whirlwinds and in meteorological waterspouts and can be carried great distances, such as in 2010, when some striped bass ended up in a Massachusetts backyard about 20 miles from the seacoast.

While it is not illegal in New Jersey for farmers to attempt to protect their crops and control populations of such species as blackbirds, crows, grackles and magpies, agriculturists must follow certain protocols in using such chemical compounds so that the usage does not damage crops, contaminate feed for livestock, create groundwater hazards, or in any way effect endangered and threatened species of animals and plants.

Populations of red-winged blackbirds are robust, and they are not considered a threatened or endangered species. They are therefore exempt from state and federal regulations that protect some migratory birds, officials said.

Birding officials said habitat loss globally poses a much greater threat to all bird species than do incidents of bird die-offs.

Hajna said the state ultimately ruled out that the kill-off was caused pesticide poisoning because of the "highly localized nature" of the mortalities. The bird deaths also were not likely caused by compounds reported in wheat seeds planted in an agricultural field, nor were they the result of infectious disease.

"We have determined that the deaths were not caused by pesticides commonly known to be toxic to wildlife and not likely caused by compounds reported in wheat seed planted in an agricultural field," Hajna said.

A similar die-off occurred in nearby Millville in 2012, and it was later determined that a farmer had legally used a chemical to keep blackbirds from his crop. About 300 birds were reported dead in that incident, Hajna said.

But the dead birds falling from the sky here last month has left some residents here worried about the cause.

"Out in the country like this, you find dead stuff lying around all the time ... but this was kind of weird," said resident Debbie Hitchner, 32, who said she found a half-dozen of the dead blackbirds in her Frank Davis Road backyard after the incident was reported. "My dog just kept finding them, one after the other."

2016 The Philadelphia Inquirer

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Thousands of fish have died in recent days in the Gunpowder and Bird rivers in eastern Baltimore County, and officials believe a toxic algae bloom is to blame.

Maryland Department of the Environment investigators believe a toxic algae known as Karlodinium venifecum is to blame for killing about 10,000 yellow perch, largemouth bass, bluegill sunfish, pumpkinseed sunfish, carp, black crappie, gizzard shad, spottail shiner and channel catfish. Officials had previously estimated the toll at 6,000 fish, but revised that figure Wednesday afternoon.

Investigators are waiting for lab results to confirm that high levels of the algae are present. They do not believe pollution was a factor in the fish kill.

Fish kills are more common in the summer, when warmth and sunlight fuels algae blooms that, when they die and decompose, can also create "dead zones" with little or no oxygen in the water. But such kills can be caused by a variety of factors and occur any time of year, MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said.

2016 The Baltimore Sun

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The study by Alessia Uboni was published in PLos ONE. Credit: Alessia Uboni

Exploitation of natural resources, such as forestry or gas and oil extraction, and management practices may have faster and greater impacts on reindeer populations than does climate change, a study finds. However, climate change should not be forgotten or underestimated, since reindeer are adapted to cold temperatures and therefore susceptible to temperature increases.

"By understanding what drives fluctuations in reindeer numbers, we can develop informed regulations and management programs and work on preventing or at least reducing the impacts we generate on the natural world", says Alessia Uboni, postdoctoral researcher at Umea University at the time the study was conducted.

"Moreover, we can protect the traditional livelihood of many indigenous peoples, who rely on reindeer for their subsistence. An Arctic without reindeer would not be the true Arctic anymore".

Reindeer stocks have been claimed to collapse around the Arctic, as presumptively driven by climate change. This notion is now rebutted by researchers from several Nordic universities. They found that reindeer numbers in Europe and Russia are only partially controlled by climate. Instead, local-scale and short-term factors are likely influential in controlling the status of reindeer populations and may have faster and more dramatic effects than climate change.

"Some examples are forest exploitation, oil and gas extraction, mining and dam construction, to mention just a few. All of those activities reduce the available area where reindeer can find their food or travel comfortably", says Alessia Uboni.

A reindeer on spring pastures. Credit: Alessia Uboni

From Norway to Kamchatka, numbers of both wild and domesticated reindeer have varied considerably during the last decades, with patterns differing greatly among populations. In Russia, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent end of government support to farming programs drove some domesticated herds close to extinction. Some wild populations suffered as well, since people turned to hunting as their main source of subsistence. On the contrary, some populations have strived during the same period.

"Climate had little or no role in those changes. Both in Europe and Russia, national management policies and an increased use of Nordic ecosystems, either in terms of tourism or extraction of natural resources, have likely contributed to influence reindeer numbers.", says Alessia Uboni.

Many would expect that climate is the driving force of the number of animals and plants populating northern ecosystems. Indeed, those areas are very sensitive to climate change, because all creatures inhabiting them are adapted to cold environments.

More information: Alessia Uboni et al. Long-Term Trends and Role of Climate in the Population Dynamics of Eurasian Reindeer, PLOS ONE (2016). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0158359 Journal information: PLoS ONE
A succulent discovered in Mexico more than 20 years ago by San Diego State University botany students may look small, but its name evokes a towering figure in music.

Mark Dodero, a senior biologist with the environmental consulting firm Recon, was listening to Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child" while driving with fellow students Kim Marsden and Scott and Brenda McMillan in 1995 when they pulled over to investigate a mesa in the Colonel Peninsula, about 70 miles south of Ensenada.

Having already discovered one new succulent species a few years earlier, Dodero said he saw something about the terrain that made him think he might find another.

He sensed his hunch was right after he hiked up the mesa and came upon a little plant that didn't look like other Dudleya, a genus of succulent.

Twenty one years later, his discovery was recognized in a paper recently published by the California Botanical Society's publication Madrono. University of California, Santa Cruz professor Stephen McCabe, a co-author of the paper, "re-discovered" the plant in the same area after Dodero's original discovery.

They named the plant Dudleya hendrixii, or "Hendrix's live forever," in honor of the late guitarist.

SDSU professor Michael Simpson, Dodero's teacher at the time of the discovery and another co-author of the paper, said it's unusual to name a plant after a popular musician, but there's no rule against it.

While Dodero said he wasn't thinking of it at the time, naming the plant after Hendrix has had some residual benefits in the publicity he's already received.

Simpson welcomes the attention.

"This has been an opportunity to promote what we do," he said. "And also, we have an opportunity to promote the need for preserving these plants."

The Dudleya hendrixii is in an undeveloped area that the Mexican government has considered as a site for the largest port in the country. If developed, Dodero said more than 200,000 people could move into the area within the next 20 years.

Dodero said he never got around to publishing a paper on the plant until this year because work and life got in the way. He was sparked to action because of recent efforts to help preserve the area.

"It's a very tiny town with one traffic light," Dodero said. "It would have been a major development down there. Hopefully, this gives some impetus for preserving this portion of the mesa."

Dodero has been working with Terra Peninsular, a conservation group that is trying to buy land in the peninsula to keep it from being developed.

Simpson said that although the plant is only known to exist on two acres, it may be difficult to get the Mexican government to identify it as endangered.

"I just talked to a colleague who said that's very difficult to do," he said. "There's a lot of bureaucracy."

The plant also could be listed as rare and in danger of extinction by the California Native Plant Society, and some botanists in Mexico are working at starting their own chapter of the organization, Simpson said.

Dodero said he believes the plant and surrounding land are worth saving.

"You never know," he said. "They find medicine in plants. We want to preserve biodiversity. Plus, it's a beautiful place."

New plant discoveries don't happen regularly, but aren't uncommon. Simpson said about two are discovered each year in California, and the Dudleya hendrixi is one of three new species reported in the latest Madrono.

Dodero and Simpson previously had discovered a new species, Dudleya crassisolia, which they also wrote about in Madrono.

Still a Hendrix fan, Dodero said he thinks the guitarist would appreciate having a plant named after him and the efforts to preserve the land it is on from development.

"You listen to his words, and a lot of times he's talking about the environment and how it's getting messed up," he said.

2016 The San Diego Union-Tribune

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Protein droplets appear as white dots as a cell is exposed to light from a laser. Credit: Princeton University

A tool that uses light to manipulate matter inside living cells has begun to explain how proteins assemble into different liquid and gel-like solid states, a key to understanding many critical cellular operations.

Marvels of complexity, cells host many thousands of simultaneous chemical reactions. Some reactions happen inside specialized compartments, called organelles. Certain organelles, however, lack any membrane to wall themselves off from the rest of the matter floating within cells. These membraneless organelles somehow persist as self-contained structures amidst a cellular sea of water, proteins, nucleic acids and other molecules.

Scientists at Princeton University have developed a new tooldubbed optoDropletthat offers unprecedented access to manipulating and understanding the chemistry that allows membraneless organelles to function.

"This optoDroplet tool is starting to allow us to dissect the rules of physics and chemistry that govern the self-assembly of membraneless organelles," said Clifford Brangwynne, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Princeton and senior author of a paper published online in Cell on Dec. 29. "The basic mechanisms underlying this process are very poorly understood, and if we get a handle on it, there might be a hope for developing interventions and treatments for devastating diseases connected with protein aggregation, such as ALS."

Previous research has demonstrated that membraneless organelles assemble within the cell by a process known as a phase transition: examples of familiar phase transitions include water vapor condensing into dew droplets or liquid water freezing into solid ice. Studies over the last several years by Brangwynne and colleagues have revealed that altering the concentration of certain proteins, or modifying their structure, appears to trigger a phase change that allows proteins to condense into droplet-like organelles.

To date, though, most studies have used purified proteins studied in test tubes, and researchers have had few methods to study phase transitions in the frenetic dynamos that are living cells. OptoDroplets will help scientists learn about when phase transitions go awry, yielding solid-like gels and crystalline aggregates of proteins implicated in diseases including Alzheimer's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Protein droplets appear as white dots as a cell is exposed to light from a laser. Credit: Princeton University

OptoDroplet relies on a technique called optogenetics, involving proteins whose behavior can be altered by exposure to light. (Cells are mostly water and thus essentially transparent.) The researchers showed that they could induce phase transitions and create membraneless organelles by switching on the light-activated proteins. They also could undo the transitions by simply turning the light off. Increasing the light intensity and protein concentrations allowed the researchers to further control the transition. By changing those inputs, they can determine when condensed liquid protein droplets form, as well as solid-like, protein aggregates, possibly linked to diseases.

"OptoDroplet provides us a level of control we can use to precisely map what we call the phase diagram in living cells," said Brangwynne. "With that, we're beginning to understand how cells use their natural machinery to move through this intracellular phase diagram to assemble different types of organelles."

The lead author of the paper is Yongdae Shin, a postdoctoral fellow in Brangwynne's Soft Living Matter Group, part of Princeton's Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. Co-authors Joel Berry and Mikko Haataja of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering helped develop mathematical models for understanding the intracellular phase behavior, while Nicole Pannucci and Jared Toettcher of the Department of Molecular Biology are experts in optogenetics and helped guide the molecular design of the optoDroplet proteins. The work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Using mouse and human cells, the research team spliced in a gene for a light-sensitive protein from a plant called a mouse-ear cress (or Arabidopsis thaliana,) a relative of cabbage and mustard that is a mainstay of genetics research. Blue light exposure causes the protein to self-associate, scrunching up on itself.

The light-sensitive tag was fused to protein components thought to drive phase transitions in living cells. Using the light, the researchers found that they could induce the proteins to huddle up, mimicking the condensation process that naturally occurs in cells. "To use the analogy of water vapor, you can think of what we did as using a laser to locally change the temperature of some area of the air so that water droplets would condense out of it," said Brangwynne.

The team repeatedly prompted the proteins to condense and then dissolve by turning the light on and off. The process proved fully reversible, even after many cycles. However, with high-intensity light or high concentrations of proteins, the researchers created semi-solid gels. Those gels were initially reversible, but over time they solidified to form irreversible lumpy aggregates, similar to those found in some diseases.

Protein droplets, appearing as white dots, increase in number as intensity of a laser shining on the cell increases. Credit: Princeton University

"We've shown with optoDroplet that we can readily assemble and disassemble phase-separated liquids, and they do not appear to cause any problem for the cell," said Brangwynne. "But the gel-like assemblies appear to be more problematic, since over many cycles, they develop into persistent aggregates that the cell can no longer deal with and that can start to gum up healthy biological processes."

One example is the protein called FUS. The FUS protein is critical for the cell's operations; it helps produce other proteins and repair damaged DNA. But scores of genetic mutations can cause the FUS protein to become too sticky, leading to ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. A neurological condition in which patients lose the ability to voluntarily control their muscles, ALS is marked by clumps of protein accumulating in nerve cells. Those clumps might stem from FUS or other proteins pathologically aggregating, instead of staying as dynamic fluid droplets. Huntington's disease and Alzheimer's also involve clumps of proteins clogging up cells, again suggesting that abnormal phase transitions in cells are closely connected with these conditions.

Edward Lemke, a researcher at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, who was not involved in the Cell study, noted the promise of optoDroplet.

"The proteins targeted by optoDroplet are an important constituent of phase-separating proteins, many of which are also associated with infamous diseases," Lemke said. "The optoDroplet system gives access to modulating the state of these proteins inside the cell in a minimally invasive and highly controlled fashion, so it can provide new insights on how they carry out their function."

Brangwynne and colleagues look forward to continuing to experiment with optoDroplet to better understand cells' complex behaviors.

"This is fundamental science we're doing, answering basic questions about phase transitions in cells," Brangwynne said. "But we're hoping these insights will reveal not only how healthy cells work, but also how they can become diseased, and maybe eventually cured."
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GLENS FALLS  When Guy Savio heard about plans to demolish the former United Methodist church in Fort Edward, he started working the phones.

Savio, a retired state trooper who runs All In Glass Studios Too, Inc. in The Shirt Factory, had previously saved the stained glass windows from St. Alphonsus Church and later installed them in a church in Pennsylvania.

I immediately thought about the windows, and I called Irving Tissue, and I called the demolition company, Savio said Wednesday. They were very cooperative, and we went down and pulled 10 of the windows. We even worked over Christmas to get it done.

Total Wrecking & Environmental, a Buffalo-based firm, started tearing the church down Wednesday and hopes to be finished by Friday.

Savio said the windows are now encased in foam at his studio.

Ill have to go over them and see what needs to be done to get them ready to use again, he said. Once I do that, then I will help Irving sell them if I can, like I did with the St. Alphonsus windows.

Irving Tissue purchased the church from a previous owner, who had converted it into the residence. That owner took some of the stained glass windows out but left others.

When I saw the story in The Post-Star, I immediately called Irving to find out if they had an plans to take out the glass windows, Savio said. They didnt, so I offered to do it. I talked to Jeff Mancil at Total Wrecking and Environmental, and we worked things out so we could take them.

The windows that were left had historical value, so I offered to take them out, said Savio, whose son works with him on the windows.

He said there were some windows left in the church that did not have historical significance, but hopes he can get the 10 he saved out to other people who will appreciate them.

I already had a woman approach me about one of the windows, he said. She was talking about putting it in her home. We have done that, we have made tables with lights shining through them, and we have put them back in churches. Its all about saving the windows.

Savio said he is hopeful Fort Edward residents might be interested in the windows as well.
LAKE LUZERNE  Hadley-Luzerne school facilities are being scrubbed down to remove any germs in light of two suspected cases of whooping cough diagnosed in Hadley.

Were sterilizing the high school right now, sterilizing the elementary school to make sure were good, said Superintendent of Schools Beecher Baker.

Whooping cough, which is known formally as pertussis, is a bacteria that releases toxins that line the part of the upper respiratory system. It can cause severe coughing, with a distinctive whooping noise or vomiting, turn a person blue or make it difficult for people to catch their breath, according to a fact sheet on the districts website.

The disease is spread through coughing, sneezing or being in close contact with another person. People are most contagious up to about two weeks after they begin coughing. The illness is treated with antibiotics.

Baker said because of the school vacation, there was a breakdown in communication between Saratoga County Public Health officials and the district. They did not contact the school because they believed that people would not be available, according to Baker.

While students are off, Baker said staff is working.

It was a product of timing. I knew nothing of the situation, he said.

The custodial staff is cleaning surfaces such as lockers, railings, doorknobs and anything else students can touch, according to Baker.

He has drafted a letter to parents to be mailed home and posted information on the districts website.

The number of cases fluctuates over the years. Although there is a vaccine, it is not 100 percent effective.

Health officials encourage people to be vaccinated to build up the herd immunity in a community and protect populations including the elderly and people with compromised immune systems.

Students should receive four doses of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTaP) vaccine between 2 to 18 months of age and another dose before starting school, according to the fact sheet. A booster shot for people more than 7 years old may provide added protection.

The district said if parents see their children developing the systems of pertussis, they are asked to call Saratoga County Public Health Services at 584-7460 or Warren County Health Services at 761-6580.












2016 has been a sumptuous year for the anti-Semites at the United Nations. The UN Security Council just targeted the only democracy in the Middle East: the State of Israel . The outgoing Obama Administration reportedly orchestrated what even Haaretz called a "hit and run" campaign in UN to denigrate the Jewish State and leave it to a fate where only conflict and hate loom. This is a cultural genocide that is no less dangerous than terror attacks. It is based on anti-Semitic lies and creates the atmosphere not for achieving "peace", as disingenuously claimed, but for perpetuating war.









UNSC Resolution 2334 is the culmination of a dizzyingly fruitful year for anti-Semites. Last November, committees of the UN General Assembly in a single day adopted 10 resolutions against Israel , the only open society in the Middle East. How many resolutions have been approved against Syria? One. How many against the rogue state of North Korea? One. How many against Russia when it annexed Crimea? One.









Not a single resolution was approved for those states which really abuse human rights, such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela, China or Cuba, not to mention many virtual tyrannies throughout Africa. Only one resolution was approved for the "Palestinian refugee properties", but not even a single mention for the property of the Iraqi Christians in Mosul.





Another resolution in this racist banquet of the United Nations concerned the "application of the Geneva Convention in the occupied territories". There are hundreds of territorial disputes in the world, from Tibet to Cyprus, but only Israel deserves to be called out?





According to the liars at the United Nations, the most evil country in the world is Israel. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad, and Jordan's Prince Zeid al Hussein are sponsoring even now a " blacklist " of international companies that have ties with Israeli companies in Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, to facilitate boycotting Israel in the evident hope of economically exterminating the only democracy and pluralistic nation in the region: the Jewish State.









The UN women's rights commission condemned Israel as the world's only violator of women's rights. Not Syria, where Assad's forces use rape as a tactic of war, or the Islamic State, which enslaves women from religious minorities. Not Saudi Arabia, where women are punished if they do not wear the Islamic full-covering clothing in scorching temperatures, or drive a car or even leave the house. Not Iran, where "adultery" (which can include being raped) is punishable by being stoned to death. And if Palestinian men beat their wives , it's Israel's fault, argued UN expert Dubravka Simonovic with a straight face.













Canadian law professor Michael Lynk was then appointed as the UN's "impartial" investigator of alleged Israeli human rights violations despite his long record of anti-Israel lobbying , including his board membership on many pro-Palestinian organizations, including Friends of Sabeel and the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations. exist until the seventh century, hundreds of years later -- pretended, with the villainous complicity of the West, to Last October, the UN cultural agency, UNESCO -- by magically declaring ancient Biblical Jewish sites "Islamic", even though Islam did not historicallyuntil the seventh century, hundreds of years later -- pretended, with the villainous complicity of the West, to erase the Jewish-Christian roots of Jerusalem









It is a dreadful manipulation to try erase all Jewish and Christian history, to make believe that all the world was originally and forever only Islamic. It is a jihad. That is what a jihad looks like. It is not just orange jumpsuits, beheadings and slavery. If one can erase and rewrite history, one can redirect the future. If you do not know where you are coming from, what values will you defend or fight for?









keffiyah, a symbol of the "Palestinian resistance" (read terrorism). This is simply the continuation of the cultural obliteration of Israel, which is supposed to justify next its physical obliteration. Last month, the President of the UN General Assembly, Peter Thomson , sported the famous checkered scarf, thea symbol of the "Palestinian resistance" (read terrorism). This is simply the continuation of the cultural obliteration of Israel, which is supposed to justify next its physical obliteration.









The United Nations' war on the Israel's Jews is, at heart, a war against the West. The UN and its backers are briskly paving the way for the European Caliphate.

































In a speech that lasted well over an hour, Kerry described settlements as an important obstacle to achieving an agreement between the sides and charged that Israeli actions in the West Bank were putting the two-state solution, which he said was the sole path to peace, in serious jeopardy. Kerry argued that settlement construction in the West Bank was being strategically placed in locations that make two states impossible and said the the status quo is leading toward one state, or perpetual occupation.





But the prime minister said Kerry drew a false moral equivalence between construction in Jerusalem and Palestinian terrorism, and accused him of only paying lip service in his condemnation of terrorism. He noted that the controversial UN resolution, while condemning incitement, did not even attribute that incitement to the Palestinians. References to suicide bombers and millions of Israelis forced into bomb shelters by rocket attacks should not be throwaway lines in an address like this, he said..









Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by world leaders, Netanyahu said. No one wants peace more than the people of Israel. Netanyahu said he looks forward to working with the incoming administration of Donald Trump to repeal the UN resolution. I wish I could be comforted by Kerrys promise not to seek further UN action, but the US said the same thing before the resolution passed, the prime minister noted.





He speculated that other countries could advance another UN resolution while the US directed from behind the scenes. France might take it up, he suggested. Or Sweden, which he described as no friend of Israel.





























About half an hour into John Kerrys valedictory lecture from the State Department on Wednesday evening, Israels most popular television station, Channel 2, stopped broadcasting it live and switched to other programming. The countrys two other main TV stations, Channels 1 and 10, had already electronically left the building. Given that Kerrys anti-settlement and anti-occupation address was primarily directed at the Israeli public, the ratings-conscious schedulers impatient transition to other material rather encapsulates the climate in which the secretarys extensive remarks were being received here.





Kerry spent very little of his speech dealing with Palestinian violence and terrorism against Israel, and much of it assailing the settlements  continuing the assault he had begun at the Saban Center earlier this month. He also defended that resonant American abstention at the Security Council last Friday. He appeared to have realized that the resolution the US could not in good conscience veto has determined all parts of Jerusalem captured in 1967  including, that is, the Western Wall and the Temple Mount  to be occupied Palestinian territory.





Ultimately, as he himself acknowledged in everything but the word, Kerrys speech on Wednesday was an admission of failure: his failure to advance peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. At the end of a term in which he tried indefatigably to strong-arm Israelis and Palestinians into an accord, he finally concluded that it cannot be done now, and may not be possible for quite some time. He would have had more chance of success  or at least of creating a climate in which prospects of progress would be brighter  had he focused more of his attentions on the toxic climate among Palestinians. They are relentlessly educated on the illegitimacy of Israel, with that narrative hammered home over social media, by their political and spiritual leadership, sometimes in their schools. He never strategically attempted to tackle that process of indoctrination. Easier to place overwhelming blame on the settlers rather than the Palestinians. Or, heaven forbid, on yourself. Its been a difficult road, these past eight years. And in these final days, the depths of frustration and anger between Washington and Jerusalem have been laid bare. Last Fridays vote at the UN represented the most glaring instance in eight years of the president putting daylight between the United States and Israel, as he reportedly warned that he would back in 2009 . Kerrys speech on Wednesday pulled back the curtains all the way.

































US Republican leadership dismissed on Wednesday Secretary of State John Kerrys speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, vowing a change in policy after President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan disparaged Kerrys authority, tweeting that after allowing this anti-Israel resolution to pass the UN, Secretary Kerry has no credibility to speak on Israeli-Palestinian peace.





Miami Senator Marco Rubio said that Kerry had decided to cater to the demands of freedoms enemies and devote and entire speech to disparaging a country that is one of our closest allies. I look forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming team to restore our relationship with Israel to its proper place, Rubio said in a statement. Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks accused the administration of playing the Jewish community for fools.

By claiming this speech is a framework for peace in the Middle East, President Obama and John Kerry are playing the Jewish community for fools, Brooks after the speech.





Their recent actions at the United Nations did nothing more than allow President Obama to take a parting shot at Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu, while at the same time creating new roadblocks to peace. True peace in the region cannot be achieved by isolating Israel in the international community, but rather can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.









Trump himself had disparaged Kerrys speech before the secretary took the podium in Foggy Bottom, reiterating, in a series of tweets, his commitment to change policy one he takes office. We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the US, but not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! the president-elect posted.

































Secretary of State John Kerry sharply criticized Israel in a speech characterized as a lecture by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , but he got much worse criticism from social media users who excoriated his tirade:









Bill Kristol  @BillKristol John Kerry entered public life 45 years ago slandering his fellow American servicemen. He leaves it slandering America's finest ally.





Frank Luntz  @FrankLuntz John Kerrys Israel speech sums up Obama foreign policy of the past 8 years: Be tougher on our allies than we are on our enemies.









John Podhoretz  @jpodhoretz Hi. I'm John Kerry. I stood by as 500,000 Syrians were killed. Now let me tell Israel what to do, because I am a moral midget.





Gov. Mike Huckabee  @GovMikeHuckabee Now Susan Rice will have to go on all the Sunday talk shows and blame an Internet video for Kerry's speech.









Yes John Kerry, if only this orange sliver was smaller there would be peace.













Katie Pavlich  @KatiePavlich Kerry spending double the time condemning Israel and Israelis than he did to Hamas/Palestinian terrorists





Ben Shapiro  @benshapiro I liked the part when Kerry said Jews couldn't live in Palestinian territory because JEWS wouldn't accept it. Yeah, that's the problem.













Dan Bongino  @dbongino John Kerry's embarrassing speech will surely be judged by history as a permanent stain on the failed Obama administration. # StandWithIsrael









Seth Mandel  @SethAMandel Reminder: last round of talks failed because Kerry lied to both sides and got caught.









Tennessee GOP @TEN_GOP "Israel can be Jewish or democratic. It cannot be both." ~ John Kerry.

But a Palestinian state can be Islamic? You can't make this up!





DPRK News Service @DPRK_News Quest of mule-headed imbecile John Kerry for Middle East peace ends as it began: in futility, emptiness, and self-congratulatory onanism.

































Just when you thought it was safe to turn Twitter down from '11', president-elect Donald Trump unleashes a triple whammy tweet-storm against the Obama administration, "shocking" the mainstream media with his frankness. First, he took direct aim at Obama, assuing the outgoing president of hobbling the transition to the Republicans administration by unspecified "inflammatory" statements and "roadblocks," as tensions between the two men spilled into the open less than a month before Inauguration Day.





Then unloaded a double-tweet aimed at the treatment of Israel. As a reminder, last week, Obama ordered Samantha Power to abstain from a vote on a resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal, allowing the measure to pass. Obama also said in an interview published by CNN on Monday that he would have beaten Trump, had he run for a third term.













Donald J. Trump  @realDonaldTrump We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but.......





not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!









As Bloomberg adds , the recent theatrics override the attempt by the two to mend relations: "after years of insults between the two men predating Trumps run for the presidency, the real estate developer met with Obama shortly after the election and praised his character while promising to retain some initiatives, including portions of Obamas signature health-care law. Both men have said theyve spoken by phone more than once after that meeting. But their relations, at least in public, appear to have recently broken down." And, as Obama ends his 'reign' with scorched earth tactics - somehow aimed at protecting his legacy - we suspect Trump's first 100 days will be spent busily unscrambling these eggs.





























The formula proposed by Secretary Kerry is impossible and does not correspond with reality. For 25 years Israel tried similar formulae but instead of peace we got islands of terror, said Hotovely in a statement emailed to Breitbart Jerus alem.









At the end of the day a resolution wont be reached through speeches or unilateral moves at the UN. The Jewish People wont give up its land for a terror state, she said.
























































































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The Minister for Health Alex Segbefia who made the presentation said this was in fulfilment of governments promise after the he visited the victims in the various hospitals.

The hospitals presented with the money and other medical supplies are the 37 Military hospital, La General Polyclinic, Korle-bu Teaching hospital and the Police hospital.

READ ALSO: Mahama sends condolence to explosion victims

Segbefia said the government will do its best to provide more if it is required.

Lt Col Richard Atara on behalf of all the facilities expressed their appreciation to the government, the Ministry and other stakeholders that have supported them since the accident.

He said more assistance will be welcomed by the facilities since there is no timeline for offering help.

We still need more assistance. Disaster has no timeline so the assistance is welcome at any point in time.

Accra on Thursday was hit by yet another major fire at a gas station near the Ghana International Trade Fair Centre which has claimed nine lives so far and injured many.

The National Petroleum Authority says the explosion was caused by 'irresponsible human error'.
At a ceremony held at the Du-Bois centre in Accra President Mahama welcomed them and asked them to help develop the country in the best way they could.

These 34 people from the Caribbean who are only coming home to take back what belongs to them.

READ ALSO: Road traffic accidents increase in 2016

He described the slave trade which saw Africans moved to other continents and countries as slaves as evil.

"The slave trade still remains the most evil act ever perpetuated on mankind by another mankind"

"When you stand at the Cape Coast or Elmina castle at the archway, you will realise that no sense of human imagination can capture the gravity of horror placed in these forts and castles which made families separate from each other forever".

On his part, the minister of the interior, Prosper Bani expressed joy that the 34 have chosen to return home especially for choosing Ghana as their preferred home.

I wish to assure you that the ministry of the interior would give you the needed assistance in the acquisition of your passports if the need arises, he said.

Bani urged them to be law-abiding citizens who will contribute their quota to the development of the country.

The ambassador of the African Diasporan community, Erieka Bennett also asked them to show that you are not an African because you are born in Africa, you are an African when Africa is born in you".
Presiding Elder of the church, Opoku Sarkodie who confirmed this said the suspect unlawfully entered the church premises after the church had closed from a convention Tuesday dawn.

According to him, the suspect stole musical instruments, three amplifiers, two microphones and one double equalizer valued at GH10,000.

READ ALSO:

Elder Sarkodie further indicated that the suspected robber told a taxi driver he picked after the robbery that he was a pastor at the Pentecost church and was only conveying the instruments to another location.

After closing from convention Tuesday, this fake pastor broke into our church and stole our instruments. He subsequently boarded a taxi after the robbery where he lied to the driver that he is actually the pastor and wanted to convey the things to the other church. He was, however, arrested upon a tip-off the Presiding Elder told Accra-based Adom FM in Twi.

He said the suspected robber has been arrested but the items stolen are yet to be retrieved.
The president was speaking at the 2016 memorial day of the police service which was observed in Accra.

President Mahama explained that his government, in recognizing the dangers facing police personnel in the daily discharge of their duties has over the last four years resourced them in order for them to combat crime effectively.

Protective gears, vehicles, increase in recruitment numbers, enhanced remuneration, capacity building and minimizing of risk to our police officers have been the focus of our plans in establishing a world-class police service, he said.

"As president, I have remained committed to ensuring that the security of our beloved nation is safeguarded in order to promote investment and economic development." explained President Mahama

READ ALSO: Road traffic accidents increase in 2016

He described the country as a very safe, secure, stable, hospitable, investor and tourism friendly country.

Inspector General of Police, John Kudalor in his address also underscored the need for personnel to be selfless in their duties to the nation. He said the sacrifices of personnel who fell during the year will not be forgotten.

READ ALSO: 34 diasporans granted Ghanaian citizenship

The names carved on this monument, never wanted this spotlight, but always put the welfare of humankind, especially citizens of our beloved country above themselves.

They felt a sense of duty and they decided to dedicate their lives to the course of that duty. Our heartfelt condolences go out to the families of these brilliant and gallant men who have fallen, He added.
"I inherited a peaceful and stable country from my predecessor, the late President John Evans Atta Mills and will also hand over a peaceful and stable government to my successor, the President-elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo."

The Bishops were at the Presidency to commend him for his demonstration of statesmanship after peacefully conceding defeat in the December 7 elections.

They were led by their President; the Metropolitan Archbishop Philip Naameh, of the Tamale Metropolitan Archdiocese and Archbishop Palmer Buckle, Vice President and Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra.

He said the intercessory prayers of the religious bodies in Ghana could not be taken for granted and called on the Catholic Bishops to offer the same support they offered him to the incoming government to ensure the perpetual growth of the country.

Ghana, he added, would continue to be respected by her peers and the international world for her respect for democracy and constitutional rule and called on Ghanaians to unite for their common development goals.

Archbishop Naameh, President of the Conference, said Ghana would forever remember President Mahama for his numerous infrastructural developments dotted throughout the country.

He pledged the prayer of the conference for him even in his life after the Presidency and urged him to continue to offer any other suggestions that could move the country forward.
He said the Krobos have nothing to fear under his presidency.

Addressing chiefs at Manya Krobo on Wednesday in the Eastern region as part of his 'thank you tour, Nana Addo said "For many years propaganda of our opponents especially among the Krobo people who are living among the Akyem areas was that if I came, they will be in jeopardy. I want to tell you before the entire Krobo people that they should all feel secured, no danger is going to come to them in Akyem because of me. Not at all."

He added: he is "determined to work with all the people of our counry to improve the economy of our nation and bring prosperity to all parts of Ghana. And for that to happen I need peace and unity in our nation. I am not the one coming to disturb anybody wherever they are in Ghana. The people of Krobo in Akyem are secure, safe and they will continue to be safe and live dignified lives there."
Addressing chiefs of the Central regional House of Chiefs, Nana Addo said the time for has come for the election of DCEs and that it cannot be delayed since it is the only way to bring accountability to local government.

DCEs across the country are appointed by the president subject to approval by the assemblies.

"I have to thank you for voting massively for the NPP which resulted in our winning of 19 parliamentary seats including two diehard seats of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for the party," he said.

Critics have dismissed the idea of electing DCEs.

Read also: Nana Addo pays courtesy call on Rawlings

The Constitutional Review Committee recommended the election of DCEs but a government white paper rejected it, proposing that the president appoints five people who would be vetted by the Public Services Commission for competence after which three nominees would contest in a public election.

The idea of electing DCEs has become a thorny issue. Both the NDC and NPP have in the past promised to make the position electable but failed to implement it when they came into power.
The sheer scale of land required is having an impact in Gabon, Cameroon and the Congo Basin, environmentalists say.

With financing coming from American, European and Asian agri-businesses, palm bunches are cultivated then cut from trees and sent to factories where oil is extracted by hot pressing.

But the production process accelerates deforestation, contributes to climate change and threatens fauna and flora in vulnerable areas, opponents argue.

However the companies say that palm oil is not only less expensive than soya or sunflower oil but requires much less land to produce and provides much-needed jobs.

Gabon -- where forest covers 80 percent of the territory -- is feeling the brunt.

Brainforest and Mighty, two environmental groups, investigated the activities of Olam, an agri-business from Singapore, which said it has planted 58,000 hectares of palm trees in Gabon.

"It is estimated that Olam has deforested 20,000 hectares in its Gabonese concessions of Awala et Mouila since 2012," the groups said in a report released in mid-December. "Investigators on the scene witnessed and filmed bulldozers knocking down huge trees en masse."

Olam said palm trees had been planted on 25,000 hectares of land which had previously been forested, but that this had been "highly logged and degraded secondary forest" and represented just 0.1 percent of Gabon's forests.

In response to the report Olam published advertisements touting the almost 11,000 jobs it has created, the 1,100 hectares of food crops planted and 251 kilometres (150 miles) of roads built.

A wider impact

But the impact appears wider. In their report, the environmental groups expressed fears that the Congo Basin, considered the lung of Africa, could go the same way as forests in Sumatra, Indonesia and on Borneo.

"A few decades ago, these places were almost entirely covered with forests, a paradise for orangutans, rhinos, elephants and exotic birds. Today, only 20-30 percent of the forest cover exists."

The report was released in Libreville when an environmental film festival honoured the French documentary "Et Maintenant Nos Terres" (And Now Our Land).

Its directors, Julien Le Net and Benjamin Polle, chronicled how villages in Cameroon and Senegal were being affected by what they called "land grabs" by multinational companies.

In southwest Cameroon 244 farmers have filed a trespassing complaint against a company that intends to plant 20,000 hectares of palm trees.

Hearings in the case against Sustainable Oils Cameroon, formerly a subsidiary of American company Herakles Farms, were postponed after reports of unrest in the area in November.

Greenpeace has asked Cameroon not to renew the company's concession which expired at the end of November, and it cited "six years of illegal foresting, trampling of locals' rights, unfulfilled investments and destruction of forest".

A petition signed by 180,000 people against renewal of the contract was sent last week to Cameroon President Paul Biya, Greenpeace said.

The government has not yet made a decision but Greenpeace said it hoped it would hear the voices of "thousands of Cameroonians".

Meanwhile the plantations of Socapalm, a subsidiary of the Luxembourg company Socfin in which the family firm of French businessman Vincent Bollore owns a large minority stake, were targeted by protests in November.

"No to pollution and massive environmental destruction" read one banner, while another urged the company to open a dialogue with residents.

"More than 5,000 hectares has been used," a resident called Ebeneser Ekango told AFPTV at the time, complaining there wasn't enough land to plant the staple crop cassava. "What do we eat?"
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According to Punch reports, the two suspects who specialized in trailing and dispossessing unsuspecting banks and customers of their money were paraded by the command at the State headquarters in Owerri, the state capital after they were nabbed during an operation.

The suspects were arrested by the police after they had allegedly attacked a new generation bank and carted away a huge sum of money.

While speaking during their parade, Nnaji who is said to be the leader of the gang, said the Christmas and New Year was a time they intensified their operations so they could make enough money to enjoy like the rich always do within the period.

Nnaji also pointed out that the money they made from menial jobs was always not enough for them to live big like wealthy people, adding that they had been in the business of robbing bank customers for a long time.

We do it in every festive period, especially Christmas and New Year, to also celebrate the period lavishly like others, who have made money.

The menial jobs we do would not make us be in line with others during the celebration.

While parading the suspects, the State Commissioner of Police, Taiwo Lakanu, said that Nnaji, a native of Oboro Amurie in Isu Local Government Area of the state, and Mgboji, a native of Obudi Agwa in Oguta Local Government Area also in the state, were apprehended after robbing a Fidelity Bank customer in the Ikenegbu area in Owerri.

The CP, who stated that the alarm raised by the victim attracted operatives of the police on a patrol duty and they were immediately given a hot chase and were apprehended.

CP Lakanu added that their loot was instantly recovered as they tried to escape, while the two suspects who have confessed to the crime, will soon be charged to court.
We sincerely apologise for the f*ck boys out there who seduced and manipulated you. We are sorry for their behaviour.

We also apologise for the way the Nigerian society treats the girl and the woman. We can do much better. Patriarchy is deep in our society and we know it is a major stumbling block for gender equality.

We have heard the cries and pains of our sisters, girlfriends and mothers. It would be a lie to say we understand what you go through but we do acknowledge that the society you live in has been unfair and it has shackled you from achieving your dreams telling you to be servants to men instead of equals.

To all these things, we say "we can do better."

Not trying to trivialize the pain you all go through, Nigerian men too face a lot in the hands of women and the society as well. They might not be equal to what women go through, but men have to deal with a whole lot the same.

In love and dating in Nigeria, a lot of relationships are transactional which crudely means "no money, no love." Many men have had to break the bank just to meet up with the demands of his girlfriend which normally revolve around money for hair, money for a new phone or just general upkeep money.

In majority of the relationships here, men are ATMs. There are many Nigerian women who have the mindset that once they get a new boyfriend they can start 'taxing' him for money.

Sister, you might be reading this and say you don't act like this. You might be independent financially but remember majority of Nigerians don't live up to ideal Twitter standards. There are many Nigerian women who believe it is their boyfriend's right to financially provide for them.

Guys might not talk because we have been taught to complain in public, but once a guy starts dating a new chick he knows he has a new set of bills on his neck. On most dates, he would be the one to foot the bill. On her birthday he has to buy something. On Valentine's Day, he has to buy her a present. On Christmas Day, hell would be let loose if he does not get her something.

There is no equality when it comes to relationships in Nigeria. The guy does all the buying and the women do all the blushing. Because of this mindset, Nigerian women suck at buying their men gifts. They are not used to it. Society has never placed this demand on them to be the benefactor.

This also happens in the bedroom too. If the sex is bad it must be the man's fault. If the sex is trash, the guy doesn't know how to knack. Oh, only if you could listen to guys talk and complain about women who don't know how to sexually please a man. Men do not complain in public because we have been trained not to.

Sex is a 50-50 thing. I please you and you please me. In Nigeria, it is expected that the man does all the work. A lot of women don't step up and deliver. Yes, we can say society frowns on a woman who is good in bed but like I have written the Nigerian society has held back women...and men too.

This letter here is not to bash but to make it clear that some demands placed on men in Nigeria are unrealistic. A man shouldn't be a sugar daddy because he has a new girlfriend.
The incident happened a few days towards Christmas in Ile-Ife, Osun State.

Punch News reported that the undergraduate was rushed to the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex where he gave up the ghost.

This was after a short period in coma. He passed away on Sunday, December 25, 2016 according to Punch News.

Abiodun Olanrewaju, the Public Relations Officer for OAU confirmed the incident as a sad one which has devastated the family of the deceased and indeed the institution.

"It is really sad and there is the need to curb the recklessness on the part of some drivers because Nigeria has lost many promising lives to their negligence and we cannot continue this way.

I want to appeal to motorists especially those who are fond of speeding, they sould have it at the back of their minds that speed thrills but it kills as well.

The OAU management sympathises with the family, relations and friends of the student. We also sympathisers with the College of Health Siences and the entire university on this loss.
Thaina da Silva Pinto, 21 and her husband Fabio Luiz Lima, 22 have been married for 3 years but couldnt have children because of cysts in the wifes ovary.

However, they pretended to friends and family that she was pregnant and even went as far as posting photos of her swollen tummy on social media. Thaina then joined a Whatsapp group for people wanting to donate baby items where she then got access to pregnant women in need.

It is believed that she had contacted other poor pregnant women under the guise of offering them charity, but upon discovering they planned to show up with friends she cancelled the meeting. Mirror UK reported.

They were able to successfully lure 22-year-old Rayanni Christini Costa to their home under the pretense of donating baby items to her. She went there alone to collect the non-existent items after dropping her daughter off at the creche, only to meet her end.

CCTV footage showed Rayanni meeting her abductor, Thaina, at the Central do Brasil train station in Rio before Thaina convinced her to follow her back home where her husband was waiting. The police have disclosed that a knife was found in a room in the couples home and there were pools of blood in more than one room.

The charred remains of what is believed to be Rayannis body and her babys was also found in the home of the couple in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Mirror UK added.

The couples have been arrested and charged to court.
According to a Daily Post News report, the suspect planned on using the money to complete his father's house in Rivers State.

Ifeanyi was paraded alongside other criminals on Tuesday, December 27, 2016, at the state police command in Asaba.

He said, I left Rivers for Delta state to plan my kidnap so that I can collect money from my uncle to complete my fathers house in the village.

The gang began to threaten me when my uncle refused to pay the ransom so I had to run away.

I was apprehended while running away from my other accomplices."

ALSO READ: Man kidnaps his nephew for ransom
Punch reports that the deceased had left her school campus on Thursday, December 22, 2016, for a religious programme at Ikoyi town, off the Ife-Ibadan Expressway, but was declared missing when nobody could locate her afterward.

However, her corpse was later discovered on Friday, December 23, while the police have started an investigation to unravel the cause of the death and those behind it.

A family member of the deceased, said everybody in the family, as well as her colleagues, were worried, adding that the discovery of her corpse confirmed their worst fear.

The Commissioner of Police in the state, CP Fimihan Adeoye, who confirmed the incident, has assured the family that the police were working hard to unravel the cause of the death of the young student.

No arrest has been made, but the police will get to the root of the matter and prosecute whoever is culpable.
Asian Digest reports that the woman had gone shopping in the city market without her husband or any male relative, an act which is seen as a crime in that country.

According to the report, the village of Latti is under Taliban control and a provincial Governor in Afghanistan revealed that the people who murdered the woman were Taliban fighters.

Under the Taliban rules, women are not allowed to go alone to public places without any close male relative accompanying them.

Although the identity of the woman is yet to be revealed, officials say the reason why the victim went to the market alone was because her husband was away in Iran and they do not have any children.
Dr Shehu Bawa, the Director in the states Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Kano.

He said that the birds were killed in two poultry farms that had been infected with the disease in the state.

He added that as I am talking to you now, only two farms were hit by the disease and the farms had since been depopulated.

We killed 500 birds in the first farm, while 8,500 were killed in the second farm.

Bawa said the ministry would intensify surveillance and disinfection of other farms to check the spread of the disease, and would continue to sensitise farmers on the need for them to ensure clean environment.

He urged Federal Government to pay compensation to farmers who lost their birds in 2015 as the affected farmers were yet to receive anything from government.

He emphasised the need for government to compensate the affected farmers in view of the economic situation in the country.

The payment will greatly assist in checking the spread of the disease as they (poultry farmers) will promptly report outbreak of the disease to government since they know they will get compensation.
Biafra Independent Movement, BIM, and the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, yesterday stated that the long standing agitation of the Igbo people will abruptly come to a logical end as soon as the Republic of Biafra is separated from the Nigerian nation, as reported by Vanguard.

In a statement issued in Abakaliki, the leader of MASSOB (BIM), Ebonyi South zone, Mr. Sunday Ezaka, stressed that the only panacea to lasting peace and political stability of the nation is for the Federal Government to allow the sovereignty of the Biafra nation to come into existence.

The statement read in part: The entire members of BIM/MASSOB in Ebonyi South zone, Ebonyi State supports Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, the leader of MASSOB (BIM) and Chief MASSOB/BIM leader, S.O Chukwu, for their vision for the Igbo and Biafran nation. They have done marvelously well more than any other group in the country.

Today, Biafra has come to be a reality and very soon, it will be open and clear to everybody. The only thing that will bring peace to Nigeria and Biafra is for the Federal Government to stop opposing the full existence of the Biafran nation.

It continued, if Biafra stays on its own, it will help a lot. We have all the mineral resources and endowment that will help us develop and be independent for life. It will bring peace as Biafra will develop without bounds. The Federal Government is not helping matters and we blame them for the death of our members since the agitation began in the country.

We sincerely thank the Ejele-Ndi Igbo, Eze Igbo Gburu Gburu, Chief Uwazuruike, for job well done for the Biafran people, the statement read.
The spokesman for the AMAC Marshal, Kingsley Madaki, on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 said that the suspect identified as Usman was arrested at at 4.30pm at Utako Market.

According to the spokesman, the suspected Boko Haram militant was nabbed with a Quran and a chaplet on his neck while trying to lobby people in the market.

The suspect allegedly confessed that there are so many of his colleagues out there in the city who are out to unleash mayhem on innocent residents.

The AMAC enjoined residents of the FCT to be vigilant and report any suspicious movement and individuals to security operatives.

The Nigerian Army has warned that fleeing Boko Haram members were entering into leaving Sambisa forest and entering into states and some terrorists were reported arrested in Lagos few days ago. Nigerians are therefore warned to vigil and report any suspicious persons and activities.
The group wondered how the sect could successfully carry out a bomb attack if they have been defeated as claimed by the Federal Government.

According to Daily Post, the National Publicity Secretary of the group, Ibrahim Sani Ringim, in a statement said We were elated by the news that the deadly and notorious hideout of the dreaded Boko Haram Terrorist has been cleared by the men of the Nigerian Army. This news is indeed a sign of great relief for many Nigerians, especially the Nigerian Wailers who want the good people of this country to enjoy genuine peaceful coexistence under a democratic Nigeria.

Ordinarily, we would have issued a Press Statement to this effect since days ago, to expressly congratulate the President for this laudable achievement in the dreaded Sambisa Forest.

Unlike the opposition, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who went ahead to salute the President, we were restrained by the lack of independent source to corroborate the government claims.

More so, that some things were not so clear to us, and needed more clear explanations from the presidency, which of course were not forth coming.

As the news broke out that Sambisa has fallen and as such insurgency has ended, we were happy even without any credible source of verification and independent confirmation. But unfortunately, the next day, the same defeated Boko Haram detonated Bomb that claimed the lives of many Nigerians in Borno State.

Our expectations were that for the Presidency to have put out such information declaring the fall of Sambisa and an end to Boko Haram, there should be no more Bombing. We have become very skeptical of Buharis administration by virtue of its antecedents.

From the start of this government, there have been a lot of controversies, which revealed the governments preference for half truth, Propaganda, blatant lies and misinformation as clearly indicated in the N180m budget set aside for their social media thugs who are fond of spreading lies in their dealings with Nigerians.

These are why we are critical of anything the Buhari administration says about any progress they claimed to have made. Recall that When Buhari came to power, he told the whole world that he met empty treasury which was later proved to be a clear lie to Nigerians.

The same empty treasury was where Buhari doled out huge sum as bail-out to States, especially the APC controlled states. But, we know this was compensations for the billions spent on Buharis election from these states resources. Monies they should have put to good use to serve their people, but was diverted to support Buharis election in 2015

The same Buhari told Nigerians that the last administration did not buy any arms for the fight against Boko Haram; that also turned out to be a very big lie. The countries where arms and ammunitions were purchased came out to say that the last administration did bought arms with evidences

Till date Buhari has not answered the question of which ammunition were the armies used and are still using to fight against the Boko Haram or whether they are using their bare hands to fight? In the 2015 budget, which was implemented by Buhari and the 2016 budget, there is no trace or evidence that Buhari purchased any new arms and ammunitions. That is since he resumed office on May 29th, 2015. But he is fond of misinforming Nigerians that our armies were dying because of lack of ammunition. So, if he now claimed that Sambisa has fallen, which ammunitions did the army used to achieve that feat or did Sambisa fall by the use of sorcery powers?

Recall that two separate videos of army officers starving of foods, waters and medics were circulated few days ago online.

If that was the reality, does anyone think with such conditions, the army will be able to face the Boko Haram? Again, we were made to believe that the kidnapped Chibok girls were camped in Sambisa Forest. The expectation was that all the girls should have been rescued upon the fall of Sambisa Forest.

But that is not the case today, which poses a big question on the FGs claims. At one time, same Buhari who said the girls had been dispersed came up later with another claim that they are still held captive by the Boko Haram in Sambisa forest. The double tongue is also a source of worry for us as a group. The press Statement issued by the Presidency claiming end of Boko Haram and fall of Sambisa was later recalled and reversed, when Boko Haram bombed Maiduguri few days later.

We are now asking if President Buhari and his ruling APC are unsure of the true state of happening on the issue of Boko Haram insurgency and Sambisa or they are being mischievous just to have an achievement recorded as the year gets to the dead end?

President Buhari was quoted by news media in 2014 to have said that Boko Haram should not be killed. He went further, as quoted, saying that the war against Boko Haram is a war against the north.

This could only suggest that President Buhari might not be unaware of the creation of Boko Haram, by all his public remarks.

Interestingly, Boko Haram members once named him as their representative in the amnesty and dialogue panel constituted by the last administration. We are also aware of the famous line of President Buhari The Dog and Baboon will soak in Blood if he is not declared winner of election

We are calling on President Buhari to be sincere on the issue of Sambisa and the purported end to Boko Haram menace in Nigeria. A genuine victory against Boko Haram is a victory for all Nigerians, but the President must be honest to let Nigerians know the true position, efforts being made, and progress so far in ending the scourge.

There were accusations that President Buhari has gagged the Main Stream media from reporting the activities of Boko Haram. But he must know that, under reporting their activities will do no good to Nigerians, because we have heard in the news that in addition to Sambisa, the terrorists have set up other camps around Bauchi, Kaduna and other Northern states.

The government must be open and transparent to allow citizens to collaborate with the security forces when and where necessary.

Nigerians should not be made to celebrate a mere relocation of Boko Haram insurgents from one location to another when in the true sense the ugly scourge is still very much active in Nigeria, when Shekau has not been captured, Chibok girls has not returned, the issues of many factions of Boko Haram that spread all over the North has not been resolved, e.t.c.

We are desperately hoping for an end to all the internal security threats such as Boko Haram, Fulani Terrorism, Niger Delta militancy and other forms of security threats around the country. But the President must be sincere in all his effort towards ending them.

We dont want sponsored newspapers and TV adverts reporting of ending them, while in reality Boko Haram, Fulani Herdsmen that went on rampage days ago to massacre the peace loving Southern Kaduna People and other insurgence are still on their killing sprees and wasting the bloods of innocent Nigerians.

The Nigerian Army raided and crushed Boko Harams camp on Friday, December 23, 2016, at about 1: 35 pm.
The Army onslaught against Boko Haram gained momentum, leading to the capture of many sect members and their hideout in Sambisa forest.

According to Daily Post, the Governor issued a statement saying that the insurgents are on the run from ground zero which has been defeated and they are running to hide in communities of the state to continue their nefarious activities of killing innocent people.

We will take steps including encouraging them to settle in villages; we will collaborate with all stakeholders to make sure that between now and January 30th, everyone has left the camp.

ALSO READ:Sambisa has fallen please report fleeing Boko Haram fighters to the security agencies

The Adamawa state Government also announced that it will close all Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps in the state in January 2017.
The details were given by Theatre Commander of Operation Lafiya Dole, Major General Leo Irabor, in Maiduguri, Borno State on Wednesday, December 28.

Irabor said, while briefing journalists, that the operation was executed by a combination of ground attacks and air assaults.

Read the full press briefing below:

Ladies and Gentlemen, in continuation with the weekly live update of our activities in Operation LAFIYA DOLE, this afternoon I am glad to welcome you to Headquarters Theatre Command for this interaction.

Recall that during our last meeting, I told you to take particular note of Camp Zairo in Sambisa Forest. Our gallant troops of Operation LAFIYA DOLE have cleared the location which is the last stronghold of Boko Haram Terrorists (BHTs) deep inside Sambisa Forest.

For the purpose of emphasis, let me re-orient you to Sambisa Forest before giving you the detailed account of the operation as well as other activities undertaken in the past one week as shown.

On 22 Dec 16 at about 0800hrs, own troops commenced advance for the capture of CAMP ZAIRO which was the main BHT enclave suspected to be holding high value persons in Sambisa Forest.

The Air Component and Artillery were effectively employed during the operation before the final assault by the troops. Our troops made contact with the BHT and successfully cleared the camp after some resistance from the insurgents.

On sighting of our troops and having been overpowered in the fire fight, most of the BHT fighters fled in all direction. The gallant troops subsequently carried out search for any abductees and equipment. Our troops also raided and destroyed other camps and hideouts around Camp Zairo. At the camp, our troops destroyed several BHT logistics as shown.

The gallant troops also dismantled the official BHT flag at Camp Zairo signifying the capture of the insurgents Headquarters. The flag would be officially presented to me by the GOC 7 Div. Later, same would be conveyed to COAS for further action to the C-in-C.

During the operation in Sambisa, ISR coverage indicated that the BHT were in disarray. The clip is as shown. Our troops have conducted some fighting patrols during the period under review:

On 20 Dec 16 at about 1730hrs, own troops deployed at MIYANTI conducted patrol along road MIYANTI-BANKI Junction. Contact was made with the BHTs at one of their crossing points and one of them was killed in action while another was wounded. Items recovered during the patrol include 3 bicycles, a basket of kola nuts, 2 cartoons of Omo detergent, 92 sachets of cowbell milk, 7 measuring cups of sugar, 15 bars of duck soap, 10 packets of matches and 8 packets of Diclofenac tablet.

On 22 Dec 16 at about 0843hrs, own troops in conjunction with vigilantes conducted fighting patrol along road KATARKO  GONIRI -BULTURAM KURA  BULTURAM KWANA  MELERI  NGAMMA and YURAMTI village. The patrol team apprehended 15 suspected BHT members comprising 5 men and 10 family members in YURAMTI village. The suspects were relocating from ZINDIYA and BUK villages in DAMBOA LGA of Borno State to GONIRI town. All suspects are in custody undergoing investigation.

On 23 Dec 16 at about 0801hrs, own troops embarked on fighting patrol to KALARI village to deny BHT freedom of action. The patrol recovered one HK21 machine gun during search of a suspected location and there was no any contact with BHT.

Ambush Operation. We equally conducted ambush operations during the period under review:

Between 19 21 Dec 16, own troops in conjunction with CJTF embarked an ambush operations at suspected BHT crossing point in MADA general area where they laid in wait for 2 days. During the process, a suspected BHT member Ali Bulama (53 years) was arrested in MOMADU BUKUMIRI village around MAINOK general area in KONDUGA LGA of Borno State. The suspect has been undergoing interrogation.

On 23 Dec 16 at about 0845hrs, own troops deployed at MAULI on admin patrol to Alagarno ran over an IED along the road and while attempting to salvage the situation, they came under escaping BHT attack. Sadly, 4 soldiers were killed in action while 2 others were wounded. One canter truck was damaged. The wounded soldiers have been stabilized while the bodies of Killed in Action (KIA) troops had been deposited at University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) mortuary.

During the period, our troops arrested some suspected BHT in different areas. These BHT fled Sambisa Forest during our operations.

On 20 Dec 16 at about 0530hrs, own troops deployed at ZABARMARI arrested one Abdullahi Yakine at DANGE in MAFA LGA. Preliminary investigation revealed that the suspect is from BURKINA FASO. Suspect in our custody undergoing further investigation.

On 24 Dec 16, own troops arrested a suspected BHT leader who was traced to Lagos. He has been undergoing investigations.

On 25 Dec 16, own troops deployed in POTISKUM arrested a suspected BHT member Musa Abdullahi at FIKA. He is in custody undergoing interrogation.

On 26 Dec 16, following a tip-off, our troops arrested 2 BHT members who sneaked into Maiduguri. Their accomplice has also been arrested and is undergoing interrogation.

On 26 Dec 16 at about 0815hrs, some civilians within Kasuwan Shanu in MAIDUGURI sighted 2 suicide bombers trying to infiltrate the cattle market. The suspects were challenged by CJTF from a distance but one of the 2 suicide bombers panicked and attempted to run into the crowd to detonate the suicide vest strapped on her.

The vest detonated partially killing her while the other attempted to run but was killed before detonating the suicide vest her. Only the 2 suicide bombers died during the incident. No other casualty was recorded. The Nigeria Police and its EOD team recovered the unexploded suicide vests.

Warning. Given the situation of the BHT who are currently in disarray, the public is hereby warned to be weary of individuals coming to hibernate in and around their homes. Also, we would like to warn that failure to report the presence of BHT members in your home is tantamount to support to the BHT. All are therefore, to report such presence to troops and other security agencies.

Going Forward Expectations. At this stage, mop-up operations would be intensified. Road construction will also continue deep into the forest to enhance domination. Other stakeholders are expected to repair roads, bridges and carryout massive reconstruction across the Theatre.

Contributions by way of equipment support for construction and re-building of infrastructures and communities would be appreciated from corporate organizations and well-meaning Nigerians. Care for the IDPs should equally be intensified.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have won the war. We need to win the peace. You have a role. Our collective destiny lies in our hands. You have what it takes to contribute selflessly to this cause. I therefore urge members of the public to remain vigilant and report any suspicious movement of persons and objects to the military or to the nearest security agencies.

On this note, on behalf of all troops in Operation LAFIYA DOLE, I wish to sincerely thank the Commander-in-Chief for all the support and encouragement. I also thank the Chief of Defence Staff, the COAS as well other Service Chiefs for all their leadership and support to our operations in the Theatre.
Sen. Ali Modu Sheriff, the Chairman of a faction of the party, gave the commendation in Makurdi, when he led other national officials of the party on a working visit to PDP supporters in Benue state.

Sheriff explained that the commitment of the armed forces had exposed his political enemies, who had accused him of sponsoring the group.

I am the number one victim of Boko Haram.

I lost relatives, aides, political associates in the crisis and someone accused me of funding the sect.

The commitment of our armed forces has exposed my political enemies and I urge the Nigerian people to congratulate them for this victory.

Their capture of Sambisa forest alone is a victory and we cannot thank them enough for this achievement, he said.

The former governor of Borno State said he was an intrepid politician, whose main agenda as the PDP national chairman was to return the party to the electorates.

He disclosed that Prof. Jerry Gana had no voter card and had never won any election in his life, adding that his political arena was the television and newspapers.

Sheriff also disclosed that the main problem in the PDP was impunity, adding that four governors in the party wanted to hijack the party upon his assumption of office.

When PDP leaders came and begged me to take-over the party, I gave them one condition on which to return the party to the people, which I am doing.

So, when four governors out of the twelve PDP governors wanted to take-over the party and destroy it, I told them no, it could not happen.

That was the beginning of all the noise you hear everyday.

But as far as the PDP constitution is concerned, there is no room for a caretaker committee that will stay beyond three months.

So, what they did in Port Harcourt was the continuation of the impunity they had planted in PDP over the years, he stated.

Earlier, state chairman had disclosed that Benue PDP was happy with the Sheriif-led leadership of the party, adding that they were proud of him.

Also, Pinot Ogbaji, national-ex officio of the party, disclosed that the outcome of the 2015 election in the state was a demonstration of the peoples anger.

He stated that the people, who worked for the success of the party over the years, are living from hand to mouth.
That is why we did not engage them from the air. We had always believed and hoped that going into the Sambisa Forest would afford us the opportunity to get the remaining Chibok girls. What we cant tell is whether those women we can see were the Chibok girls, he added.
The revelation was made by Theatre Commander of anti-terrorist squad, Operation Lafiya Dole, Maj. Gen. Lucky Irabor on Wednesday, December 28.

Irabor also showed journalists a video taken during the operation in which terrorists were seen moving with women and children.

The haggard fighters were just using them as a shield, Irabor said during a press conference in Maiduguri, Borno state.

That is why we did not engage them from the air. We had always believed and hoped that going into the Sambisa Forest would afford us the opportunity to get the remaining Chibok girls. What we cant tell is whether those women we can see were the Chibok girls, he added.

The Army took over Sambisa Forest on Friday, December 23, leading to widespread jubilation across the country.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the President was scheduled to be in Bauchi (today) Thursday, Dec.29 and residents of the state had prepared to receive him.

NAN also reports that this is the second time the visit had been postponed, the first as a result of his trip to Gambia over the leadership crisis in that country.

The State Governor, Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar, told newsmen on Thursday that the latest postpone was communicated to him.

He said the president had extended his apology to the people of the state over the postponement.

The postponement of the visit of Mr President is due to the bad weather condition in Abuja.

Lots of such postponements had happened elsewhere; Mr President has called to extend his apology over the postponement, he said.

The governor thanked the people for coming out in large numbers for the purpose of welcoming the president.

Abubakar noted that the president had the good people of the state in his mind, hence his apology over the unavoidable postponement.
In a statement, the President's spokesperson, Garba Shehu, said the itinerary of his principal in Bauchi would have included "commissioning an Air Force medical facility and a number of other projects by the state government".

The President would also have used the Bauchi visit "to thank the people for their relentless support in all his political undertakings".Parts of Shehu's statement reads further: Uncooperative weather which has been the bane of air travel in the current harmattan season, leading to the delay and cancellation of flights, reared its head in Airport this morning, preventing the take-off of the Presidents plane for the trip to Bauchi.

The commander of the Presidential Air Fleet, said that the Presidential Aircraft was in perfect condition, the weather in Bauchi was alright, but that the problem was in Abuja.

ALSO READ: Why President postponed his trip to Bauchi

We make our plans, God makes His own plans, said the President.

The statement added that: President Buhari thanked the Government and people of Bauchi State and the Nigerian Air Force for the studious and elaborate preparations made to receive him, and assured that he is going to visit the state at a more auspicious time".

To express how very sorry he is for not making the trip to Bauchi, Buhari sat before a camera and recorded this video in Hausa:

It was a genuine act of contrition from the nation's number one citizen for cancelling an important visit to one of the federating units, through no fault of his.

So, we can chip in our rounds of applause, right?

Not so fast.

When on June 2, 2016, a certain President Muhammadu Buhari cancelled a much publicized trip to Ogoni in Rivers State and sent his Vice President to represent him instead, there were no apologies or remorse via video or press statements.

Nada. Zilch.

Six days ago, Buhari refused to show up at a security summit in Enugu. The organisers were stunned that a President who parrots security as one of his goals, wouldn't show up at a talk-shop where security sat atop the agenda.

The organisers were left wondering why Buhari wouldn't show up in Enugu--one of the States where Fulani herdsmen had wrought destruction on farmlands, killing indigent farmers as they grazed along, all the time armed with guns.

The Presidency only explained why Buhari didn't visit Enugu after the media had launched withering attacks on Aso Villa for the Enugu no-show.

In this piece I penned on Christmas eve, I stated why President Buhari messed up by not visiting Enugu.

I still feel that way. That piece now looks like a vindication in light of latest events.

At the time of writing, President Buhari hasn't sent out a video message in anger to condemn the killings in Southern Kaduna.

A President who wants to unite a country this fractured will treat the 97 percent who voted for him exactly the same way he'll treat the 5 percent who didn't vote for him.

A President who wants to unite a polarised country will shoot videos to explain why he didn't show up in any part of the country--if shooting videos has become his new means of communication.

You don't shoot videos for Bauchi and suddenly become camera shy before the people of Rivers State.

This President just can't conceal how very sectional, divisive and clannish he is. And those are very worrying traits for a leader to possess.

The President has to realise that the vibes he gives off to all parts of the country; especially those who genuinely feel marginalised, are just as important as what he says or doesn't say.

Body language still counts for something in leadership. Just when we thought Buhari was the body language merchant.

This President still doesn't get it.
In a statement issued in Abuja by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr Femi Adesina, the President offered deep condolences to Prof. Onitiris family as well as the academic community.

President Buhari noted that Onitiri, a consummate and erudite scholar, would be fondly remembered not only for his dedicated services to his nation, but also to regional and international organisations including ECOWAS, the Commonwealth and the United Nations.

He lauded the deceaseds seminal research works and contributions to global discourse on strategies for equitable trade and economic relations among developed and developing countries.

According to him, Onitiri has left a worthy and commendable legacy for the academia, development experts, civil societies and governments to build upon.

The prolific academic, renowned for preparing the economic blueprint for the transition of Zimbabwe from an Apartheid regime to an independent black nation, will be honoured for his life-long efforts to advance Nigerias economic growth through his timely, patriotic works and counsel to past governments.

The President prayed that almighty God would grant Prof. Onitiri eternal rest and comfort the deceaseds family, friends and well wishers.
The President gave the assurance when he received the Prime Minister of Guinea Bissau, Umaro El-Mukhtar Sissoco-Embola, at the State House, Abuja.

The President expressed satisfaction with the gradual return of normalcy to the West African country.

While assuring the visiting Prime Minister of Nigerias continued support for political stability in Guinea Bissau, Buhari urged the leaders to work hard to reach a lasting solution to the political crisis in the country.

The President congratulated the new Prime Minister on his appointment and urged him to put the interest of the country and its people ahead of everything else.

Sissoco-Embalo described President Buhari as his role model, adding that his country would continue to thank the government and people of Nigeria for standing by them in their moment of crisis.

He also pledged his countrys commitment to improved ties with Nigeria.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that Guinea-Bissau has been in the throes of a power struggle since August 2015, following the removal of Prime Minister Domingos Pereira by the countrys President Jose Vaz.

Vaz replaced Pereira with 44-year old Embalo, retired general who had served in previous administrations.

NAN also recalls that ECOWAS leaders at their just concluded 50th Ordinary Session of the Authority of Heads of State and Government, held in Abuja, took note of the political misunderstanding in Guinea-Bissau.
In a report by Daily Trust, the senate has commenced the process of amending section 308 of the 1999 Constitution which gives immunity to the office holders after Senator Ovie Omo-Agege sponsored a bill to that effect.

It was reported that the bill sponsored by the Deltan lawmaker has been referred to the Senate Committee on Constitution amendment chaired by the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu.

Speaking on the bill, Omo-Agege said: They are not entitled to immunity from litigation for actions not germane to their work. For example a president or governor who buys a car for a child and refuses to pay can be taken to court while in office, he began.

Continuing, he said: Also like in the US, there should be no immunity from criminal investigation or prosecution for crimes committed either before or while in office.

Recall that Mr. Spiro Agnew while a sitting VP under President Nixon was tried and convicted for tax evasion while in office. Bill Clinton as a sitting president was hauled before a grand jury by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr for perjury (lying under oath) while in office as president.

Finally, Elliot Spitzer as a sitting governor of New York was tried and convicted for illicit solicitation of sex, Omo-Agege who expressed optimism in the bill said accountability, transparency will be key.

Specifically, the bill seen in the National Assembly journal proposed the substitution of subsection 308(2) that presently reads,  the provisions of subsection (1) of this section shall not apply to civil proceedings against a person to whom this section applies in his official capacity or to civil or criminal proceedings in which such a person is only a nominal party with a new section.

The proposed amendment reads, the provisions of subsection (1) of this section shall not apply to, (a)  civil proceedings against a person to whom this section applies in his official capacity or to civil or criminal proceedings in which such a person is only a nominal party

It (b) part reads, criminal proceedings connected to, related to or arising from economic and financial crimes.
This information is contained in a statement issued in Abuja by Malam Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President.

According to Shehu, the bad weather conditions experienced at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, on Thursday morning prevented the take-off of the Presidents plane for the trip to Bauchi.

Uncooperative weather, which has been the bane of air travel in the current harmattan season leading to delay and cancellation of flights, reared its head in Abuja Airport this morning, preventing the take-off of the Presidents plane for the trip to Bauchi.

Technical information received from the weather station showed that visibility as at this morning was 600 meters, 200 metres short of the 800 metres minimally required for a safe aircraft take-off.

According to the information available, the visibility was expected to drop to 300 metres before improving to permissible limit later in the day.

The commander of the Presidential Air Fleet, Air Commodore Hassan Abubakar, said that the Presidential Aircraft was in perfect condition, the weather in Bauchi was alright, but that the problem was in Abuja, Shehu stated.

President Buhari was quoted as expressing regret over the disruption caused by the bad weather.

In a recorded audio and video message, President Buhari said he looked forward to the visit in the course of which he was to commission an Air Force medical facility and a number of other projects by the state government.

He said he also intended to thank the people for their relentless support in all his political undertakings.

We make our plans, God makes His own plans, the President said.

President Buhari thanked the Government and people of Bauchi State and the Nigerian Air Force for the studious and elaborate preparations made to receive him.

According to him, he is going to visit the state at a more auspicious time.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Presidents visit to Bauchi was initially postponed on Dec. 13 due to his trip to Gambia aimed to settle the political stalemate arising from President Yahya Jammehs refusal to accept the result of the countrys presidential election.

Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Aviation, Sen. Hadi Sirika, has said that the Federal Government is planning to upgrade the Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) at the countrys major airports for efficiency.

Sirika said this while reacting to the cancellation of the Presidential flight to Bauchi on Thursday.
The 21 were among more than 200 mostly Christian schoolgirls released in October after being snatched by jihadist Boko Haram gunmen in April 2014 in a kidnapping that sent shockwaves across the world.

The group had been brought back to Chibok on Friday under heavy escort to spend Christmas at home but family and relatives said that instead they had been kept inside the house of a local parliamentarian for several days.

"What is the point of bringing them home if we as their parents can't see them?" said one of the fathers, who asked not to be identified.

A mother accused the government of "deliberately breaking our hearts in this festive period".

"We are a community and we take these girls as ours whether they are related to us or not," said local resident Ayuba Alamson.

A spokesman for the presidency Garba Shehu said in a statement late Tuesday that the officers in charge of protecting the girls had misinterpreted their instructions.

"There were some hitches arising from a lack of understanding of the objective of the trip on the part of some security operatives," he said, adding that instructions have "been given from headquarters for access by the parents to be eased".
The Ekit Governor also slammed the Department of State Services (DSS) for allegedly tapping his phone.

This is coming on the heels of a leaked phone conversation between Fayose and the Governor of Rivers, Nyesom Wike, where they reportedly talked about committing murder.

The Ekiti Governor also called on the Federal Government to provide food for poor Nigerians who are hungry, instead of coming after him.

He also accused the DSS of editing the phone conversation and leaking it to Saharareporters, adding that the news platform has become the propaganda machine of the Federal Government.

According to Punch, Fayose said It is better for the president to resign because he appears not to have capacity for positivity. If all the presidents that ruled before Buhari had behaved like he is behaving now, he himself will be in jail.

He also added that They (DSS) should even go beyond taping of my lines and come to live with me in Ekiti government house so that they can do per second live recordings of whatever I say because in the year 2017, by the grace of God, I will still say more without apology.

The Governor also said If the President and his hatchet men in the DSS, EFCC and other federal government agencies do not know what to do other than to record phone conversations of their perceived political foes, they should just resign and save the country from this harrowing experience.
LEDAP said LEDAP is appalled that the earliest social duty of Governor Obaseki upon assumption of office was execution of his citizen on death row. We reiterate that all prisoners, including those sentenced to death, retain all the fundamental rights endowed on all citizens by the 1999 Constitution. This was re-emphasised by the Court of Appeal in the case of Peter Nemi v Attorney General of Lagos State in 1994. The Supreme Court of Nigeria also held in Nasir Bello v Attorney-General of Oyo State that a prisoner cannot be legally executed while his case is pending in court.
Adebule, who is also the state Commissioner for Education, made the call at the end of the year programme for Lagos State Primary Schools Head Teachers organised by the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) in Lagos.

She said also urged them to make school improvement the first and foremost responsibility, to improve education standard.

The government appreciates all your contributions to the development of primary education and has decided to approve teachers promotion with all financial benefits. Running cost to school managers has also been increased.

Im appealing that we continue to do what is right, be dedicated, disciplined and shun all forms of malpractice in the profession so that the state government can do more for our teachers.

Always be reminded that the duty of moulding leaders who will make or mar our nations future, is in your hands,Adebule said.

Also speaking, the Wife of the State Governor, Mrs Bolanle Ambode, urged teachers to be disciplined, dedicated and to double their efforts in moulding and preparing the students for leadership roles in future.

Your dedication and improved attitude to work earned our primary education the best in the country.

The reward for hard work is more work. I appeal that you continue to adhere to the ethics of your profession so that Lagos State will continue to be a pacesetter in the countrys education sector,  Ambode said.

In his address, Dr Ganiyu Sopeyin, Executive Chairman, Lagos SUBEB, said that in spite of the economic recession, the state recorded huge improvement in the education sector.

The states education sector has experienced infrastructural upgrade, regular training of teachers, improved welfare packages for teachers. All these improved teaching and learning performance in our schools.

These achievements would not have been possible without the immense support and efforts of the Gov. Ambode-led administration; I urge our teachers to continue to support governments efforts, he said.

Mr Adesegun Raheem, Chairman, Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), Lagos State Wing, urged the state government to sustain the improvement in the sector.

The year 2016 was a good year for Lagos as it recorded labour-friendly activities and the state won the best in primary education, Raheem said.

Mrs Oluwatoyin Edu, Chairperson, Association of Primary School Head Teachers of Nigeria (AOPSHON), Lagos State Wing, commended the state government for improving education at all levels in the state.

We recorded increased population of students in our public schools as well as improved academic performance due to enhanced school development.
The CASAF Coordinator in the state, Hajiya Zuwaira Gambo, disclosed this while launching the distribution exercise in Maiduguri.

Gambo said apart from the 300 widows, persons living with disabilities and other vulnerable people and Internally Displaced Persons(IDPs) had also benefited from the exercise.

The beneficiaries drawn from MMC and Jere were given Foodstuff such as cooking oil, bag of rice, salt, Maggi and carton of sachet tomatoes.

CASAF decided to extend its outreach to the less privileged as part of its activities marking its fifth year anniversary.
The Police Public Relations of Officer of the command, Mr Ebere Amaraizu, who confirmed the incident, said the fracas broke out late on Wednesday.

He explained that one of the dead men had during a quarrel, stabbed the other to death, prompting a mob to descend on him.

Amaraizu said that the person who was severely beaten by the mob later died in hospital.

Two persons were confirmed dead yesterday in the course of a clash between the two over an alleged misunderstanding that arose among them in the evening at Gariki Awkunanaw Market.

Security has been beefed up in the area to avoid escalation of the fracas and to check breakdown of law and order in the market.

Investigations have commenced into the incident to unravel what really happened and those behind it, the spokesman stated.
The CPC Chairman, Alhaji Farouk Abdallah, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) via telephone on Thursday in Dutse, that the trader was also arrested and prosecuted.

Abdallah said the suspect, who was arrested when the committee paid unscheduled visit to the market, was later taken to court.

He explained that the trader, one Murtala Jikai, was sentenced to eight months imprisonment with an option of N20,000 fine by a Sharia Court in Suletankarkar .

Abdullahi warned traders in the state against engaging in unwholesome practice to defraud consumers, adding that anyone found would be prosecuted.
The suspects were paraded by the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Department of Operation, Habila Joshak, in Kafanchan Police Area Command.

Joshak noted that seeming peace has returned to crisis-affected areas of Goska, Dangoma and Bakin Kogi in Jemaa local Government Area after the deployment of security personnel in the southern area of Kaduna.

Speaking on his ordeal, one of the suspects, a 48-year-old Nelson Kpok, admitted to dealing in arms but but further said he had denounced the business since 2015 and he has been arrested after his name was mentioned by one of his old customers.

On his part, Yakubu Dangana, said he only possessed a gun to defend himself after several attacks at his house by armed robbers.
In the past days, certain centers where the LAKE rice ought to be available for purchase have been faced with a scarcity of the rice and insufficient supplies.

According to Suarau, As from Wednesday, December 28, 2016, all designated retail outlets and centers will have enough supply of the product to meet growing demands of residents.

The product, which is packaged in 50kg, 25kg, and 10kg bags, is being sold at N12, 000, N6, 000 and N2, 500 respectively. Whilst defending the method of distribution, Suarau made it known that the major reason for distributing the rice based on senatorial districts is to ensure availability and to prevent people from diverting the products or selling it illegally.

The Commissioner further provided the list of available locations for the purchase of the rice. The product will also be on sale at the following locations in Lagos West Senatorial District; Lagos State Agricultural Development Authority (LSADA)/Farm Service Centre, Oko-oba, Agege; Lagos Agricultural Inputs Supply Authority (LAISA), Ojo; Farm Service Centre, Marina-Badagry; and Ikeja Grammar School, Bolade, Oshodi.

It should be recalled that the LAKE rice is a result of the alliance between Lagos State and Kebbi State to ensure the development of agricultural commodities like rice, wheat, groundnut, onions and maize.

Government officials and Nigerians, in general, have lauded the initiative. President Muhammadu Buhari was reported to have said that what both states have done, Is an evidence of a new base being laid for the Nigerian economy, founded and propelled by agriculture, away from substantial dependence on oil and gas for national revenue.

It gladdens my heart to get reports of our citizens rushing to purchase this cheaper local rice to enable them and their families enjoy the Christmas and New Year celebrations, the President said.
In a report by Vanguard Newspaper, the transferred officers have complained bitterly against what they referred to as a lopsided transfer that attracts no incentives.

It was reported that a signal by AIG Abdul Bude from Force Headquarters, Abuja, dated December 24, 2016 with reference No CB 4770/FS/FHQ/ABJ/Vol. 5/232, mandated the affected policemen to assemble in Kaduna on January 4, 2017 for further directives.

The report also insinuated that one of the reasons the affected policemen are unhappy with the transfer is that such transfer done in 1997, 2003 and 2015 had recorded heavy casualties among the policemen from the South West due to inadequate facilities.

Hence, the reluctance that has been witnessed since the signal by AIG Bude from the Force Headquarters on Christmas eve.

ALSO READ: Force promotes 64 officers

A Vanguard source was quoted as saying: Since they started the transfer, lives of several policemen of South West extraction have been wasted because when they transfer them, the authority would not provide necessary facilities such as money, accommodation which make them prone to attacks by the insurgents.

We are not happy at all. This transfer was earlier stopped by the National Assembly and a powerful politician from the South West in 2015. It is the same policemen that are being transferred now. We knew this because their transfer letters bore their former ranks under the former Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase.
Senator Okpozo, aged 81, from Ozoro in Isoko North Council Area in Delta, died on Monday in Benin City, the Edo State capital.

Ibori reacted through a press statement on Wednesday signed by his media aide, Tony Eluemunor, eulogizing the late senator as a tireless fighter for the betterment of the Niger Delta.

We can all recall that during the last national confab, Pa Okpozos voice was strident in calling for increased derivation percentage for the oil producing states, even as he warned of the consequences of the injuries that would be done to Nigeria if fiscal federalism was not made a reality in the country.

Since then, he always remained a voice of reason whenever serious national issues was being discussed, he said.

Ibori added that the legacies and good examples of Senator Okpozo would not be forgotten.
This was disclosed by Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina during an interview.

The President told the Niger Delta elders that visited him that it was important we get these militants under one umbrella because after you might have talked to this group, another group will come up, Adesina told AIT.

With this kind of arrangement, you wont get to know the real people. This is why the President has given an assignment to certain people to determine how many these groups exist.

They should speak with the leadership and ascertain what they want and how government can meet with them. The President has given out that assignment.

Do not forget that there was a major meeting with Niger Delta elders and leaders, traditional rulers and the second day after that meeting, there was sabotage of pipeline.
It should be recalled that the Labour union sent a proposal to the federal government since May 2016, to ensure that the minimum wage for public officials is N52, 000 naira.

The General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Dr. Peter Ozo Eson has demanded for a supplementary budget by the Federal Government, one that would include the new national minimum wage. In his words, It is not strange to us that there is no provision for a new minimum wage in the 2017 Federal Government budget because there is no agreement on it. What is urgent is for government to set up a tripartite committee to negotiate and agree on a new minimum wage immediately.

Once this is done and agreement is reached and it is passed into law by the National Assembly, if the government thinks it cannot accommodate a new salary increase, it will send a supplementary budget to accommodate it. So, it is not surprising to us.

Like the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria (NUTGTWN) has expressed their distaste on the matter. The President of the NUTGTWN, John Adaji, and the General Secretary, Isa Aremu were reported to have said that: We note that the critical missing link in the 2017 budget is the provision for new minimum wage. The government must make immediate provision for supplementary budget to address this concern.

We call on the federal government to ensure a holistic implementation of the National Industrial Revolution Plan, NIRP, launched in February 2015.

They went further to state that there is a need for an urgent review of the national minimum wage since the only way to expand the output of the Nigerian economy is to increase workers; salaries.

We, hereby, call for an urgent review of the National Minimum Wage. The federal government should immediately constitute the tripartite committee for a review of the National Minimum Wage. The point cannot be overstated. The only way to reflate the economy is to increase the wages of workers.
He claimed that the move was to encourage education among his people.

I located the Eastern Palm University at Ogboko, and the Police College in the area, to encourage my people to be interested in education.

All these efforts are aimed at making education popular and attractive in the area as well as attracting Federal Government attention to the area.

He also stated that My administration has invested heavily in education and infrastructure because the two sectors are key to the development of any state or nation.

Governor Rochas Okorocha further advised youths who paid him a visit from his hometown to embrace education and shun crime and violence.

Youths should love one another and shun all forms of crime. What you need now is education and not money. Some of the youths in the area do not show interest in education, he said.
According to Punch, a leader of one of the security organisations in the country, added that the agencies, including the Department of State Services, had started the second phase of the war against Boko Haram by dispatching their men after fleeing members of the sect.

The security source further stated that the Federal Government and law enforcement agencies were worried about the desperation of politicians and their disposition to violence.

He believed that politicians were more dangerous than the Boko Haram terrorists.

Politicians are taking politics to a dangerous terrain. Many of them are more dangerous than Boko Haram. They are acquiring weapons and sharpening their knives ahead of the 2019 elections.

Security agencies will continue to investigate and check them because there is no country we can call our own. The media should assist in checking the politicians, he added.

The security chief also said Nigerias war against Boko Haram had yielded positive results.

He added that between five and seven nations consulted law enforcement agencies, particularly the DSS, for assistance, as reported by Punch.

According to him, it was through such assistance that the security agencies were able to burst an impending terrorist attack on the US six months ago.

He said the United States President, Mr. Barrack Oboma, commended the agencies and the country for the achievement.

He stated, Six months ago, we burst a terrorist attack on the US. The US President wrote to commend us.

The US embassy could not be reached for comment on Tuesday as it did not respond to official inquiries on public holidays.
I think as a party, we should not undermine the strength of this much-talked-about mega party, whether it is a rumour or not. I think we should do everything possible to defeat the move through genuine reconciliation within us, Frank said on Wednesday, December 28, according to Punch.

We must remember that this is how the PDP took the APC for granted during the formation stage, and the likes of Bamanga Tukur were busy saying no vacancy in Villa, PDP will rule for 60 years; but where are they today?

So, our national chairman should learn to reconcile aggrieved members instead of offending them the more. It has shown today that even ruling party could lose election; so, we should stop talking arrogantly because we are in power, he added.
The Deputy National Chairman of the Senator Ali Modu Sheriff faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Cairo Ojougboh has said that the main opposition party would come out stronger from the internal crisis bedeviling it.

During the interview, when asked whether PDP would bounce back, he said, of course, some lessons were learnt in Ondo and Edo states especially in Ondo.

In Ondo, it was clear that the masses, the people sent a message to the PDP in Ondo that never again will any governor adopt a candidate and not allow for a free contest.

He continued, number two lesson, never again will somebody come from another party and then you give him the entire structure of PDP; it should not happen again because as soon as Mimiko returned to the party, every member of the PDP left and they left with Oke.

Oke secured 125,000 votes in the last election, PDP secured 155,000 votes, APC scored 250,000. The votes given to Oke are all PDP votes. If Oke didnt leave and Mimiko was able to manage his coming back into PDP as a sportsman, we wont be where we are. So, that is the lesson learnt there.

And again, things have to get worse for it to get better.

According to Daily Sun, he further said that, APC as I have always said, is not a party yet. There is only one party in Nigeria and that is PDP because if you were to put APC in a basket, you can very easily in the basket pick out CPC, pick out ACN, pick out the APGA faction and pick out the PDP inside the APC in the basket. But PDP still remains one; that is what you have to see.

So luckily, until APC is able to become homogenous, until they are able to become a party, it is not expected that they will give serious challenge to the PDP, he said.
In the tape, released by Sahara Reporters, a voice alleged to be Fayoses is heard praising Wike for his bravery against the Nigerian Army during the December 10 rerun elections in Rivers.

A voice alleged to be Wikes then responds proudly saying that you must kill everybody you can kill.

Wike had earlier been accused of bribing officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and threatening to killdefaulting officials after a similar audio tape leak.
This time, we are going all the way back to when Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye declared his 2016 prophetic message, which was divided into three.

On January 1, 2016, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God made the following declarations:

Prophecies for individuals

1. Some families will trace the beginning of their generational blessings to this year.2. Some will obtain help from unexpected sources.3. Grateful hearts will have more causes to be grateful.4. For many, the pendulum of life will generally be on the upward swing.5. A chosen few will receive blessings so large they can hardly contain them.

Prophecies for Nigeria6. Things are likely to get tougher before they get better, but things will get better before the end of this year.7. What He started last year He will finish this year, provided we dont rejoice too soon.

International prophecies8. Natural disasters, floods, fires, earthquakes are likely to get progressively worse, until governments realize that these are part of Divine Judgements against those who pass ungodly laws. If a government will repent of disdaining Christ and His Church, He will help them win the fight against terrorism.9. A major war will be averted this year.10. A new sexually transmitted disease will surface this year.

Pastor Adeboye has not released his prophecy for next year yet.

However, this has not stopped religious critic and OAP, Daddy Freeze, from coming after him.

In an Instagram post, tagged, '#temporary post,' he called on the Man of God to do better with his 2017 prophecies.

His caption read, "I sincerely hope we don't get these type of vague prophecies for 2017 or is it that we don't understand the meaning of the word prophesy? Or are we so gullible and blinded by our 'religiousness' that we can't see that these prophecies are as accurate as saying "someone in lagos is going to receive a chieftaincy title in 2016?"

Here are the prophesies made by pastor Adeboye on the 1st of January, 2016. what do you think? Because earthquakes didn't increase in 2016, no new venereal diseases were discovered and things didn't improve towards the end of the year in Nigeria oh well what do I know? There are still 4 days left this year for those things to happen if we pay our tithe

For those of you saying Zika virus is the new STD

The virus was first isolated in April 1947 from a rhesus macaque monkey that had been placed in a cage in the Zika Forest of Uganda, near Lake Victoria, by the scientists of the Yellow Fever Research Institute."

It should be noted that natural disasters, floods, fires, earthquakes got progressively worse in 2016, just like Pastor Adeboye predicted.

ALSO READ: 5 scary prophecies that came to pass
China has gone cuckoo for the cartoonish pastiche -- complete with orange pompadour -- of the billionaire politician in Taiyuan, capital of the northern province of Shanxi.

The scowling statue is one of many roosters popping up around the country as it prepares to celebrate the lunar new year at the end of January.

With its tiny wings parroting Trump's distinctive hand gestures, replicas of the bird are available on the Chinese shopping site Taobao for as much as 12,000 yuan ($1,700) for a 10-metre version.

Trump has captured the Chinese imagination, and riled its authorities, with his threats to talk turkey about massive tariffs on Chinese exports.

With his crowing tweets on Twitter, including attacks on China's foreign and economic policy, it is no surprise that the Chinese internet wants to give the strutting American leader the bird.
After the attack, Amri went on the run -- with stops in the Netherlands and France, police believe -- before he was killed in a shootout with Italian police early Friday in the northern city of Milan.

The Berlin rampage was quickly claimed by the Islamic State group, which then released a video Friday in which Amri is shown pledging allegiance to IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Here is what investigators have pieced together so far about the attack, the escape and Amri's possible accomplices -- and the questions that remain unanswered.

-- Attack and escape --

Monday, December 19: Amri overpowers Polish truck driver Lukasz Urban and hijacks his 40-tonne lorry, carrying a load of steel beams, in an industrial zone in northwestern Berlin.

Around 1900 GMT, he steers the vehicle through the Breitscheidplatz Christmas market, killing 11 people and wounding dozens. German media reports quoting government officials say the truck stopped because an emergency braking system was activated.

German magazine Focus quoted unnamed security sources as saying Amri had been texting messages and sending photos to "Islamist friends" only 10 minutes before the attack.

He escapes, leaving behind the corpse of Urban in the passenger seat, with a gunshot wound, his face swollen and bearing traces of stab wounds.

Police initially follow a false lead, a Pakistani man who had been running to catch a subway train and who was later let go.

- Tuesday, December 20: A day after the attack, police find Amri's wallet with identity papers and cellphone in the cabin of the truck, where they later also discover Amri's fingerprints. That night, they issue a non-public alert to European police forces.

- Wednesday, December 21: Police issue a public alert and reward for Amri, warning he is likely armed and dangerous.

That night Amri heads by bus from Nijmegen, a Dutch city near the German border, to Lyon, France. It remains unclear how he travelled through Germany to the Dutch border town.

- Thursday, December 22: Amri is filmed by surveillance cameras at Lyon railway station, from where he travels by rail to the French Alpine town of Chambery and then on to Milan.

- Friday, December 23: At around 3:00 am local time, Amri is stopped by two police officers for a routine identity check near Milan's Sesto San Giovanni station.

Amri pulls his pistol and shoots, wounding one officer, before the second shoots him dead, according to the interior minister.

-- Possible accomplices --

After Amri's death, German federal prosecutor Peter Frank said "It is very important for us to determine whether there was a network of accomplices... in the preparation or the execution of the attack, or the flight of the suspect".

On Wednesday, German police detained a 40-year-old Tunisian they believe "could have been involved" after searching his Berlin home and work premises.

The man's number had been found saved on Amri's cellphone, they said, cautioning that "the extent to which the suspicions against the detained person can be confirmed remains subject to further investigation".

Tunisia's interior ministry said Saturday Amri's nephew and two other suspects, aged between 18 and 27, were detained a day earlier and were members of a "terrorist cell" connected to Amri.

It made no direct link between the trio and the Berlin assault.

The ministry said Amri had sent money to his nephew so he could join him in Germany, and had allegedly urged him "to pledge allegiance to Daesh (IS)".

The unnamed nephew had also claimed Amri was the leader of a jihadist group based in Germany, known as the Abu al-Walaa brigade.

-- Amri's radicalisation --

Amri fled Tunisia after the 2011 revolution, evading a prison term for theft, and headed by boat to Italy.

There he served a four-year sentence for setting fire to a refugee shelter -- a prison stint during which he was radicalised, security sources believe.

He arrived in Germany in July 2015, amid the chaos of a mass migrant influx, where he went on to frequently change residence and identities.

He was in contact with the German Salafist and jihadist movement, including Iraqi Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A., also known as Abu Walaa, who was arrested in November as a suspected IS recruiter.

Berlin police monitored Amri from March to September 2016 for a suspected attack and planned break-ins to buy arms, but dropped the investigation thinking he was mostly a small-time drug dealer.
Police listed 600 kilogrammes (1,320 pounds) of cocaine intercepted by the French navy off Tahiti, 500 kilogrammes seized on Christmas Day in Sydney and 32 kilogrammes of heroin in Fiji -- all destined for the Australian market.

"The size of that seizure collectively -- 1.1 tonnes -- makes it the largest cocaine seizure in Australian law enforcement history," said Australian Federal Police acting Assistant Commissioner Chris Sheehan.

The street value of the cocaine, shipped from South America to the South Pacific, was estimated at Aus$360 million (US$260 million).

"The criminal syndicate that we have dismantled over the past few days was a robust, resilient and determined syndicate," he said.

"It's a significant hit... the entire group has been taken out," added NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Jenkins.

"It's quite a chunk out of the cocaine economy... over one tonne of drugs has been prevented from reaching the streets ... and harming the community."

The investigation began more than two years ago following a tip from a member of the public.

"We have ongoing inquiries, particularly in South America and other parts of the world, to look at who they were dealing with to bring those drugs from those countries to Australia," Jenkins said.

Police released video footage showing several men being arrested aboard a fishing boat and led away in handcuffs.

Sydney's Daily Telegraph said several were fishermen, one a former rugby league star, another a Bondi businessman.
Part of the 11-person team chosen for the task has experience in corruption probes against officials in the government of former president Ricardo Martinelli, a statement said.

Panama on Tuesday said it was barring Odebrecht from bidding for future public tenders, and was seeking to remove the company from projects it was already involved in.

They include a new line of Panama City's metro system, a fourth bridge over the Panama Canal and plan for a hydroelectric dam that would now be scrapped.

Three Panamanian prosecutors are in the United States this week seeking information about the alleged Odebrecht bribes.

The US Justice Department recently reported that Odebrecht had paid bribes worth hundreds of millions of dollars to obtain contracts in nine Latin American countries.

It said the construction company paid more than $59 million in bribes to Panama between 2010 and 2014 to obtain contracts valued at $175 million.

Two sons of Martinelli have denied Brazilian newspaper reports that they had received $6 million intended as a bribe from Odebrecht for their father.
Moscow and Tehran insist their contact with insurgents is aimed at promoting regional security, but local and US officials who are already frustrated with Pakistan's perceived double-dealing in Afghanistan have expressed bitter scepticism.

Washington's long-time nemesis Iran is accused of covertly aiding the Taliban, and Russia is back to what observers call Cold War shenanigans to derail US gains at a time when uncertainty reigns over President-elect Donald Trump's Afghanistan policy.

"(Russia's) narrative goes something like this: that the Taliban are the ones fighting Islamic State," top US commander in Afghanistan John Nicholson said recently, denouncing the "malign influence" of external powers.

"This public legitimacy that Russia lends to the Taliban is not based on fact, but it is used as a way to essentially undermine the Afghan government and the NATO effort and bolster the belligerents.

"Shifting to Iran, you have a similar situation. There have been linkages between the Iranians and the Taliban."

Russia has officially provided military helicopters for Afghan forces, but simultaneously propped up the Taliban with arms, official and insurgent sources say.

"We are particularly concerned about loads of Russian-made weapons recently seized from areas on the border with Tajikistan," a senior Afghan security official told AFP.

"Cross-border support for the Taliban will further complicate the security situation in Afghanistan's north."

A Taliban commander told AFP the Russian support had helped the insurgents overrun the northern city of Kunduz in October for the second time in a year.

Taliban representatives in recent months have also held several meetings with Russian officials in Tajikistan and Moscow, sources say.

"No country should be in touch with destructive groups who are the enemies of Afghanistan. This shows disrespect towards the victims of war," interior ministry spokesman Sediq Siddiqi told AFP.

"We ask Russia and Iran to work with Afghans to defeat terrorism."

'Great fear'

Western diplomats in Kabul have privately voiced alarm that Russia is quietly filling its embassy ranks with Soviet era "old-timers" well versed in Cold War tactics, as relations with Washington turn sour over the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine.

And this week Kabul vented fury over a summit between Russia, China and Pakistan in Moscow which agreed on a "flexible approach" to remove certain Taliban figures from sanctions lists.

Alexander Mantytskiy, Russia's ambassador to Kabul, insists engagement with the insurgents is benign.

"We have ties with the Taliban to ensure the security of our political offices, consulates and the security of central Asia," he told reporters this month.

Lashing out at NATO, he added the allegations against Russia were an effort to distract attention from the worsening conflict and "put the blame for their failures on our shoulders".

Some observers agree that Russian and Iranian concerns over Islamic State jihadists cannot be dismissed lightly.

"Islamic State may not have a deep presence in Afghanistan, but it has developed a profile there and its overall brand inspires great fear," Michael Kugelman, an analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, told AFP.

"We can't rule out the possibility that Russia and Iran are trying to hedge against the future possibility of a stronger Islamic State in Afghanistan by expanding their ties to the Taliban."

Playground for superpowers

Afghanistan has long been used as a chessboard for proxy battles -- from the 19th century "Great Game" of rivalry between Britain and Russia to the US funnelling weapons through Pakistan to Afghan rebels fighting Soviet forces in the 1980s.

It has also served as a proxy war playground for nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, which is also accused of playing a "double game" by endorsing Washington's war on terrorism while providing sanctuary to the Taliban.

Superpowers jockeying for supremacy in Afghanistan could sow further chaos amid the unpredictability of Trump's foreign policy, analysts say.

Trump has given surprisingly few details on how he will tackle America's longest war.

"Russia is waiting to see the next US move when Trump takes over," said Kabul-based analyst Ahmad Saeedi.

"If Trump chooses to scale back the US presence, then the Russians will be eager to fill the gap."

As for Iran, many in Tehran fear that a potentially hawkish White House under Trump will try to scrap its landmark nuclear deal with world powers, pushing them to retaliate by deepening ties with the Taliban.
Turning the ship before it hits the iceberg
ROH ON COMET REPORT: TELEVISION TITLE MATCHES AND TAG TITLE MATCH FROM REACH FOR THE SKY TOUR

This week, Ring of Honor presents a special television episode with a look at some of the matches from the Reach for the Sky tour of the United Kingdom.

Kevin Kelly is in the studio and he tells us about what we will see on this weeks show.

We start off in Liverpool with a look at the ROH Television Title Match between Bobby Fish and Will Ospreay.

Your announcers are Nigel McGuinness, Steve Corino, and Kevin Kelly.

Match Number One: Bobby Fish versus Will Ospreay for the Ring of Honor Television Title

Fish goes for a kick but Ospreay avoids him. Fish goes for the legs and Ospreay moves out of the way. Ospreay with a side head lock and Fish with a rollup for a near fall. Fish with a back heel kick and he floats over into the cross arm breaker but Ospreay gets to the ropes. Fish with a wrist lock and he goes for the arm. Fish with a kick to the arm and he gets a near fall. Fish with a knee drop to the arm to weaken it for the cross arm breaker. Fish with a wrist lock.

Ospreay tries to get to his feet but Fish keeps him on the mat. Ospreay with a series of kip ups and he sends Fish to the mat. Ospreay with an arm drag and a springboard arm drag into a drop kick. Ospreay teases a dive and he springboards back into the center of the ring.

We go to commercial.

We are back and Ospreay with a handspring corkscrew plancha but Ospreay appears to have hurt his knee when he connected with the move. Ospreay rolls Fish back into the ring and Ospreay with a rolling thunder into a swinging neck breaker for a near fall. Ospreay goes to the apron but he takes a lot of time to go up top and Fish with a head butt to the midsection to stop him. Fish goes for a superplex and Ospreay blocks it. Fish with a punch and Ospreay punches back. Ospreay with a head butt to the upper chest and Fish goes to the mat.

Ospreay stays on the turnbuckles and Fish with a kick to crotch Ospreay. Fish runs Ospreay into the turnbuckles and then he suplexes Ospreay into the turnbuckles for a near fall. Fish goes for a suplex but Ospreay counters into a cutter. Ospreay with a running shooting star press and then he goes for a Phoenix Splash from the middle turnbuckle but Fish gets his knees up. Fish with a dragon screw leg whip. Fish puts Ospreay on the turnbuckles and connects with a forearm.

Fish goes for a superplex but Ospreay escapes and he hits a super kick into the turnbuckles and Ospreay gets a near fall when Fish grabs the ropes. Ospreay with a spinning round kick. Ospreay with a handspring moonsault but Fish counters with a knee bar. Ospreay tries to get to the ropes and then Ospreay bridges for the three count.

Winner: Will Ospreay

After the match, Fish and the referee have some words before Fish gives the title belt to the new champion.

We go to commercial.

We are back with a look at what was billed as a Dream Tag Team Match when The Young Bucks faced ROH Television Champion Will Ospreay and Marty Scurll.

Match Number Two: Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson versus Marty Scurll and Will Ospreay for the Ring of Honor Tag Team Titles

The match is joined in progress with Scurll and Matt in the ring. Marty with a hammer lock and side head lock take down. Scurll goes for the chicken wing but Matt escapes and they go to a stalemate. Matt with a thumb to the eyes during a too sweet. Marty responds with a thumb to the eyes. Matt and Marty are unable to see where they are going and they almost tag in their opponents before making the desperation dive across the ring to tag in Nick and Ospreay.

They lock up and Nick with a wrist lock. Nick starts a please dont tap chant before Ospreay kips up and then he sends Nick to the mat with an arm wringer. Nick with a springboard arm drag but Will lands on his feet and he hits a drop kick. Matt comes in and hits Will with a forearm before knocking Scurll off the apron.

Matt and Nick fall victim to a springboard double arm drag and then Will teases a dive to the floor and handsprings into the center of the ring to pose. Scurll teases a dive to the floor but he poses next to Ospreay. Nick trips on the ropes when he tries to go after Will and Marty. Matt tags in and Marty with a drop toe hold and Ospreay with a knee drop to the back of the head. Will with a forearm and then he connects with a jab before tagging in Scurll. Marty with a forearm and head butt followed by a slam. Marty with a surfboard and Will tags in and he knocks Nick off the apron and then Will hits a drop kick. Will gets a near fall. Matt with elbows to try to get out of the corner, but it does not work.

Matt lands on his feet on a belly-to-back attempt three times and Nick tags in and he connects with forearms and hits a springboard drop kick to Will. Nick with a shoulder to Marty and a springboard X Factor followed by a moonsault onto Will. Nick goes up top and then he lands on the mat when Marty moves. Matt with a head scissors and Nick with a drop kick to send Marty to the floor.

Matt and Nick set for dives and they hit them.

We go to commercial.

We are back and Nick punches Will and Will with a forearm. They go back and forth. Nick with a back heel kick to Will and a super kick to Marty. Will sends Matt over the top rope and then Will goes to the apron. Matt gets Will on his shoulders and Nick with a super kick to send him to the floor. Matt with a springboard DDT onto the apron and then Nick goes up top and hits a 450 splash. Matt gets a near fall. They set Scurll for the Indie Taker but Will with a springboard forearm to stop Nick and Scurll counters into a tombstone position on Matt. Scurll hits a tombstone and Ospreay with a shooting star press and then he goes up top and misses a moonsault but he hits a shooting star followed by a Phoenix Splash but Nick breaks up the cover.

Nick and Matt punch Marty and add in some extra gestures between punches. Scurll grabs their hands and he hyperextends the fingers. Matt and Nick go for a double super kick on Scurll but he moves and the referee goes down.

Scurll with a double low blow and he goes to the umbrella at ringside. Will tells Marty not to use it. Marty gives the umbrella to Ospreay and he thinks about using it and he misses Matt and Nick and hits Scurll with it. Matt and Nick with a double super kick. Matt and Nick hit More Bang for Your Buck but Ospreay breaks up the cover. Ospreay is sent to the floor and Nick kicks Will. Matt with a buckle bomb and enzuigiri combination.

Matt calls for the Meltzer Driver and Ospreay counters with a springboard rana but he sends Nick towards Matt for the Meltzer Driver and the three count.

Winners: Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson

We go to commercial.

We are back and we see Scurll challenging Ospreay for the Ring of Honor Television title.

Match Number Three: Will Ospreay versus Marty Scurll for the Ring of Honor Television Title

The match is joined in progress and Scurll with a take down. Ospreay with a wrist lock and Marty with a reversal. Will with a reversal of his own. Marty with another reversal. Scurll with a take down and Ospreay with a side head lock take down. Scurll with a head scissors and Will escapes. Scurll with a side head lock take down and Ospreay with a head scissors. Scurll escapes. Scurll with a leg sweep for a near fall. Ospreay with a leg sweep of his own for a near fall.

Ospreay with a head scissors take down followed by a springboard arm drag but Scurll with a head scissors take down that sees Ospreay landing on his feet after a cartwheel. Ospreay misses a round kick and shooting star press. Ospreay misses a series of kicks and Scurll goes for a chicken wing but Ospreay with an arm drag and both men pose in the center of the ring.

Scurll with a kick and chop followed by an elbow. Ospreay with a drop kick and he mocks Scurll. Ospreay with a chop and forearm.

Ospreay with an octopus and he works on the arm and gets a near fall with a rollup. Ospreay with a European uppercut. Ospreay with a cartwheel to avoid a charge by Scurll and Marty goes to the floor. Ospreay with a running shooting star press off the apron and both men are down. Ospreay with a European uppercut and forearm. Ospreay sends Scurll back into the ring. Scurll goes to the floor and then he goes under the ring to confuse Ospreay. Scurll emerges and hits a clothesline and then he does a victory lap.

We go to commercial.

We are back and Ospreay with a head butt and both men are down. Ospreay goes for a Rainmaker but Scurll grabs the hand and goes after the fingers. Ospreay sends Scurll into the turnbuckles when he misses a charge into the corner. Ospreay sets for the super kick but Scurll escapes and kicks Ospreay away. Scurll goes for a suplex but Ospreay counters with a stunner and hits a shooting star and then follows with a triple jump moonsault into a shooting star press and a Phoenix Splash.

Scurll catches Ospreay on a springboard move with a cross face chicken wing but Ospreay bridges and gets a near fall. Ospreay with an enzuigiri but Scurll with a power bomb and clothesline for a near fall. Marty with a flip DDT into a small package and he gets a near fall. Scurll goes to the floor and he looks at the title belt but he grabs his umbrella. The referee warns Scurll about what will happen if he hits Ospreay with it. Ospreay shows Scurll what he thinks about him with a finger gesture so Scurll rearranges the fingers two times. Scurll with a knee and then he stomps on Ospreays head. Scurll with a cross face chicken wing and he applies a body scissors and Ospreay has to tap out.

Winner: Marty Scurll

We go to credits.

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Joy Povich may be the proverbial canary in the mine shaft, when it comes to attracting and retaining retail businesses that appeal to women shoppers in downtown Bettendorf. She owns Knit and Knot, a yarn shop, located on State Street.

The store was located at Devils Glen Road near Coffee Hound for four years, and had become a destination business, drawing customers from as far away as Peoria, Muscatine and Galesburg. But a lack of space constrained the products and services Joy offered. Additionally, she hoped to home-school her children while working, and that goal required more room.

Povich discussed her needs with a real estate agent, who recommended a large, well-kept house on State Street in downtown Bettendorf.

The State Street property offered twice as much space, and visibility, with 30,000 cars a day passing through the State and Grant streets area, plus the potential of tourist traffic generated by the Waterfront Convention Center and the Isle Casino. That all made the downtown seem like "a happening place," she said.

More than a year later, Povich has learned lessons about doing business downtown. Traffic on Route 67, speeding by her building, doesnt necessarily bring customers to the door. The area also lacks complimentary businesses that would encourage women to browse in the area, and narrow and crumbling sidewalks, coupled with a lack of crosswalks, do not encourage walkability. The rundown appearance of some of the buildings in the corridor creates a tired look and the re-aligned streets can be confusing. Some patrons of a nearby store discard litter and bottles near her parking lot, creating an unsightly appearance which leads some of her customers to question the area's safety. Perception can count as reality in the retail world, and the surrounding environment may be as critical a factor in a business's success as the products offered.

With business down, Povich has reduced hours to three days a week and feels she works twice as hard to keep the doors open.

Long-time Bettendorf resident Pat Kirkland began shopping for yarn at Knit and Knot on Devils Glen several years ago and now works in the shop. She describes Joy as kind, knowledgeable, generous and sweet, and says the shop is a nice place for women to gather and express themselves creatively through knitting, crocheting and other related craft projects.

Knitting offers an almost spiritual experience for many women, Kirkland says. Its like praying or doing yoga.

Women gather on afternoons in knitting circles at the shop and a sense of community develops.

Attracting women to the downtown requires thought and effort. Brigette Brennan runs a national marketing firm that studies how to market and sell to women. Women and men each grow up within a culture of their own gender," she says. "Female culture should be studied with the same focus that studying a foreign market requires. Cultural differences dictate language, behaviors and perceptions. This marketing insight applies to Knit and Knot and ought to guide the city's strategy for the revitalization of its downtown district.

Attracting more women to the area could pay off. A year ago a Main Street Iowa study determined $315 million dollars in annual retail sales leak from Bettendorf. Those dollars could have been spent with city retailers, but were spent out-of-town. Additionally, a Mass Mutual Financial report found women across all demographic categories make 85 percent of buying decisions. A downtown that ignores women sells itself short.

That a shop like Knit and Knot struggles on State Street does not bode well for maintaining and attracting more women customers and businesses downtown, The economic revitalization of the State Street corridor requires a coherent, thoughtful and effective retail strategy, which it presently lacks.
A North Liberty man faces felony charges in a murder-for-hire scheme.

Justin DeWitt, 36, has been charged with three counts of attempt to commit murder, according to a news release from Muscatine County Attorney Alan R. Ostergren. Each charge is a class "B" felony punishable by imprisonment for a term not to exceed 25 years.

The criminal complaints allege that DeWitt sought the murder of three individuals: an Iowa Department of Public Safety special agent, an adult male, and an adult female.

The incident occurred while DeWitt was an inmate in the Muscatine County Jail where he is being held on behalf of the Johnson County Sheriff.

DeWitt is being held on four counts of attempt to commit murder and four counts of solicitation to commit murder. His Johnson County charges were filed June 27, 2016. The criminal complaints in that case allege that DeWitt sought the murder of two adults and two children.

DeWitt made his initial appearance in court this morning. Bond was set at $750,000. The court scheduled a preliminary hearing for 9 a.m., Jan. 9.

He remains in the Muscatine County Jail where he has been placed in administrative segregation.

The most recent charges against DeWitt were the result of an investigation by the Iowa Department of Public Safety, Division of Criminal Investigation and Division of Narcotics Enforcement.
Scott County Sheriffs investigators arrested four people Wednesday in connection with a heroin investigation.

Amber Marie Hall, 33, of 1445 W. 7th St., Davenport, is charged with two counts of possession of a controlled substance-heroin with the intent to deliver. Each of the charges is a Class C felony under Iowa law that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

Jessica Lynn Reeves, 30, of 221 Washington St., Davenport, is charged with possession with the intent to deliver a controlled substance-heroin. She also is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit a non-forcible felony, a Class D felony that carries a prison sentence of up to five years, and possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor.

Amanda Kay Meier, 30, whose address was not provided by authorities, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit a non-forcible felony.

Dennis James Cook, 39, whose address was not provided by authorities, was arrested on a Davenport Police Department warrant accusing him of first-degree theft, a Class C felony, and a conspiracy charge. Scott County authorities added charges Wednesday of conspiracy and possession of drug paraphernalia.

According to an arrest affidavit filed by Scott County investigators, at 10:48 a.m. Wednesday, investigators served a search warrant at Reeves home in connection with a heroin distribution investigation.

Meier and Cook were at Reeves home at the time investigators made their search. Cook was arrested on the first-degree theft charge and was found in possession of a used syringe. Meier was arrested on a conspiracy charge.

According to statements made by all three, Cook and Meier had picked up Reeves and drove Reeves to Halls residence where Reeves purchased $80 of heroin, according to the arrest affidavit. The three then returned to Reeves home where they used heroin.

Reeves referred to herself as a middleman and admitted to officers she had purchased heroin from Hall hundreds of times, according to the affidavit.

At 2:26 p.m., officers went to Halls home to serve a search warrant. Before they went into Halls home, they saw two men leave the residence at different times, according to the arrest affidavit.

Officers then served the search warrant.

Hall was found to have heroin hidden in her bra and money from selling heroin, according to the affidavit. She said she sold Reeves $80 worth of heroin early in the morning.

Hall also stated she was selling heroin to support her heroin habit, according to the affidavit.

Hall and Reeves were being held Thursday in the Scott County Jail on $50,000 bond each.

Meier was being held Thursday in the Scott County Jail on $5,000 bond.

Cook was being held Thursday in the Scott County Jail on $10,000 bond for the first-degree theft charge and $5,000 bond for the drug conspiracy charge.

Hall is currently on probation for peddling heroin. She was sentenced Aug. 17 to two years on probation with two years deferred judgment for possession with the intent to distribute heroin.

When deferred judgment is entered, it means the court is deferring the adjudication of guilt of the person. It gives the person a chance to avoid having a record of a criminal conviction, provided the person successfully completes the terms of probation. However, the court can enter a judgment of guilt and impose a sentence if the person does not comply with conditions set by the court.

Reeves currently is serving 18 months on probation after pleading guilty to a charge of unauthorized use of a credit card under $1,000, an aggravated misdemeanor that could carry up to two years in prison. During her sentencing Feb. 5, Scott County District Judge Nancy Tabor gave Reeves a suspended jail sentence of 364 days. That suspended jail sentence could be imposed by Tabor based on the new charges against Reeves.
The eastern gateway into downtown Davenport got a boost Thursday, following a property donation by Russell Construction, the real estate development and property management company based in the city.

President/CEO Jim Russell and his wife, Michelle, have donated the former Gemvision location, at 706 E. River Drive, to the Scott County Family Y.

"We own 13 acres of land there, and the donation on the corner allows us to develop the Y more toward the east," said Brad Martell, Scott County Family Y CEO.

In addition, the donation will help the First Bridge project, championed by River Action Inc. Davenport.

Kathy Wine, River Action's executive director, said the original embankment of the first bridge across the Mississippi River in the U.S. is owned by River Action. Future plans are to build a replica of the bridge on the site.

When the land donation started, River Action requested an easement so builders could easily work on the project.

Fortunately, Wine said, Jim Russell realized the need for an easement and made it work as part of the transaction. "We are very grateful; we needed that," she said.

Construction of a new downtown Davenport Y is years down the road, Martell said. Right now, there is a market research survey going on. After that, a feasibility campaign will begin, and that will be followed by a capital campaign to raise the necessary funds.

"There's lots of work to be done, mainly, raising contributed dollars to develop the site," he said.

While plans are on the horizon, the Russell gift allows for better planning, he said.

What was once known as the C.W. Crossen Tool Co. property was acquired in 1998 by S.J. Russell L.C., a forebearer of Russell Construction. Neither Jim or Michelle Russell were available to speak Thursday about the donation.

In a prepared news release, Jim Russell said he is happy to donate the land to an organization like the Y. "We are excited to see this property get a new life and purpose," he said.

Wine, at River Action, is moving along on the First Bridge project. She has a grant request pending with the Iowa Department of Transportation, for state and federal funds. Wine hopes for news about the grant in February.

A scale replica of the bridge is in the parking lot near the River Action agency, 822 East River Drive.

As for the new Y complex, it will be built north on the bluff behind the Y's Early Learning Center. There are tremendous Mississippi River sight lines on the bluffs behind the center, Martell said.

He appreciates the gift from the Russells, "on a lot of levels," he said. "This will allow us to build a tremendous gateway to downtown Davenport from the east."
Emma and Jackson topped the list of most-popular baby names in the Quad-Cities for 2016, chosen as No. 1 at Genesis BirthCenters in Davenport and Silvis, as well as at Trinity Moline, according to news releases from the hospitals.

At Trinity Bettendorf, the top names were Ava and Aiden.

At Genesis, 15 baby girls went home with the name Emma, which also was No. 18 nationally in 2016, according to babynames.com.

Nationally the No. 1 choice was Amelia. Twelve baby girls born at Genesis were named Amelia.

Amelia was not among the top names at Trinity.

Jackson was the No. 8 boy's name nationally, but was by far the most popular choice at Genesis. A total 23 boys birthed in Genesis BirthCenters were named Jackson, Jaxon or Jaxson.

Jackson also was first at Trinity Moline, but did not rank at Trinity Bettendorf.

A surprise among popular boys' names at Genesis in 2016 was Owen with 15 babies. Owen was No. 4 nationally, according to babynames.com.

Unusual names reported at Genesis were Zimyah Nishae (girl); Ya Zier (boy); Tymarjay (boy); Aboubacar (boy); Aboulhaleek (boy) and Dajerminiq (girl).

Unusual names reported by Trinity Moline were Winter, Blessing, MacArthur, Syncere, Brighton, Treasure, Goodness, Tempest, Serenity and Galena.

Olivia has become a traditional naming favorite at Genesis. In the past six years Olivia was No. 1 three times (2015, 2014, 2012) at Genesis and No. 2 in 2013 and again this year.

Evelyn is down the list nationally, but has been near the top on the Genesis list the past two years.

The influence of the World Champion Chicago Cubs was not notable, although there was one Wrigley (a girl) and one Rizzo (a boy) born at Genesis in 2016, according to Craig Cooper, senior communications specialist.

Wrigley Field is the home field of the Chicago Cubs and Anthony Rizzo is the popular first baseman of the Cubs.
A holy man and faith leader from India, Sri Chinna Jeeyar Swamiji, will speak in Davenport on Saturday to celebrate the new year in the Quad-Cities.

The Hindu leader is featured at a public appearance at the Hotel Davenport, Bix Convention Center, 5202 Brady St., Davenport. Activities begin at 2:30 p.m.

In addition, Jeeyar Swamiji will ring in the New Year on Jan. 1 at the Quad-City Hindu Temple, 9801 14th St. W., Rock Island.

The visit this weekend is especially auspicious for the local community, Arun Pillutla said, as Jeeyar Swamiji will share his views of 2017 with his many followers from his weekend base in the Quad-Cities.

Organizers expect up to 250 people to hear the words of the faith leader, and the visit is sponsored by the Jeeyar Educational Trust in the United States.

He will bring messages of peace and respect for others and urge people on a spiritual path of choice, according to Pillutla, Bettendorf. A business professor at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Pillutla is a former member of the Hindu temple's board of directors and is helping to arrange the monk's visit.

"We did invite people of the Hindu faith, but it's a public event, and others are very welcome," Pillutla said.

Jeeyar Swamiji is to discuss the Bhagavad-Gita and Sri Krishna Pooja, according to organizers. The Bhagavad-Gita is a 700-verse Hindu scripture, and Sri Krishna Pooja is the worship of Lord Sri Krishna, whose word is in the scripture.

His current tour continues through January. The Quad-Cities is the smallest metropolitan area in the itinerary; he also is to visit St. Louis, Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, as well as Los Angeles, Phoenix and major cities in Texas.

The holy man travels the world to spread his messages of one-ness, Pillutla said.

He embraces many causes and uses his resources to promote health care for Indian women and educational outreach to tribes in India, as well as schooling for the blind. He founded a school for Hindu scholars and also responds to disasters, such as the earthquake in Nepal.

He is known for reviving interest in a Pushkara, a Hindu event that occurs every 12 years. According to tradition, followers bathe in several rivers in India, believing their sins will be washed away by the fresh purified waters.

Reports show that hundreds of thousands of pilgrims will attend a Pushkara, and Jeeyar Swamiji's organization provides facilities for people to participate in the bathing ritual safely, as well as accompanying traditions, Pillutla said.

"I'm looking forward to his event in the Quad-Cities," Pillutla said. "It's very exciting for our community."
"Spare us the kissy-face."

It was June 2001 and I was covering President George W. Bush's trip to Slovenia, where he had just met Vladimir Putin for the first time. I and others were struck by Bush's praise for the Russian leader as "trustworthy." Said Bush: "I was able to get a sense of his soul."

But back in Washington, my editor had no interest in such talk. He rewrote my lede with other news -- a tidbit about missile defense -- and he moved the "kissy-face" stuff about Putin's soul down to Paragraph 18.

In retrospect, that moment in Slovenia defined the Russia relationship for years to come. Putin had seduced Bush, who only slowly came to understand he had misjudged this adversary's soul. Putin opposed Bush in Iraq and was unhelpful with Iran. He shut down independent television, sent business leaders who criticized him into exile and prison, ousted democratic parties from government, canceled the election of governors and invaded Georgia.

The kissy-face happened all over again when President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to "reset" relations. Russia responded by working against the United States in Syria, sheltering Edward Snowden, invading and occupying parts of Ukraine, and hacking and meddling in the U.S. election to defeat Clinton.

Now it's Donald Trump's turn for kissy-face, and the president-elect is practically groping the Russian dictator. After Putin gloated Friday that Democrats need to learn "to lose with dignity," Trump tweeted Putin a sloppy kiss: "So true!" he said of Putin's comments.

Trump also celebrated a letter he received from Putin calling for more collaboration between the two countries. "His thoughts are so correct," Trump said.

Trump's blush-inducing embrace of the strongman has included repeated praise of Putin's leadership, deflected questions about Putin's political killings and disparagement of U.S. intelligence for accusing Russia of election meddling.

In three weeks, Trump will assume the presidency, and we'll learn what his embrace of Putin really means. Perhaps Trump is just a dupe and he'll realize over time that Putin is no friend. The alternative, supported by Trump's choice of Putin-friendly advisers Michael T. Flynn and Rex Tillerson, is that Trump really is pro-Putin and will grant the Russian dictator more latitude internationally and will emulate his autocratic tendencies at home.

The former would require us to endure some policy failures as Putin proved himself again to be an adversary. The latter would test the limits of our democratic institutions.

In either case, it would be useful for Americans to have at least a cursory sense of the man our new president proposes to embrace. Here's a quick glimpse into Putin's soul to get us started:

Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was killed outside the Kremlin as he walked home one night last year. Putin's regime blames Chechens, but Nemtsov's is one of a dozen high-profile murders of opponents widely thought to have been sanctioned by Putin's government.

Another Putin opponent, Alexander Litvinenko, was killed in London by polonium poisoning in 2006. The British government said Putin "probably" approved the hit. That same year, opposition journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot and killed outside her apartment.

Among the many business leaders imprisoned or ousted under Putin are Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was head of the oil giant Yukos, and associate Platon Lebedev. The Russian human rights group Memorial says there are 102 people held in Russian prisons for their political or religious beliefs.

The Kremlin has provided funding and training for far-right nationalist parties in Europe, and it used its state media and an army of hackers and social-media trolls to spread disinformation in the United States, in continental Europe and in Britain before the Brexit vote. The goals: to weaken European unity and the NATO alliance and to keep Europe dependent on Russian energy.

Russia also used disinformation to destabilize the Ukrainian government as Russia annexed Crimea. In Syria, where Russia propped up the Assad regime with indiscriminate bombing in Aleppo and elsewhere, Britain, France and the United States have blamed Putin's government for the mass slaughter of civilians.

An Amnesty International summary of Putin's rule leaves no doubt about his totalitarian state: "Journalist Killed  Human Rights Lawyer Killed  Gay Rights Protesters Attacked  Repressive Laws Enacted  Fines for 'Promoting Homosexuality' Imposed  President Putin Signs Law to Re-criminalize Defamation  USAID Expelled  Federal Treason and Espionage Act goes into effect  Moscow Authorities Detain Protesters and Opposition Party Members."

This, Mr. President-elect, is the man you are embracing. Please spare us the kissy-face.
Five hundred-thousand dead in Syria. Millions of refugees fleeing war, hunger and despair. North Korea advancing its nuclear weapons programs. Ancient Christian communities being exterminated in the Middle East. Russia forcibly annexing its neighbors. Radical Islam threatening the world. Iran continuing to be the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism.

Yet for President Barack Obama, Jews living in Jerusalem are apparently the greatest threat to world peace.

That is the only conclusion I can draw as to why Obama secretly orchestrated and allowed the passage of a one-sided, anti-Israel resolution at the United Nations Security Council, attacking Israel's settlements.

For whatever one might think about the settlements, the United States and Israel have agreed for decades that the settlement issue would be resolved only through direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians -- not through the dictates of a hypocritical, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic United Nations.

American presidents, whether Democrat or Republican, have promised to protect Israel's back.

On Dec. 23, at the U.N. Security Council, Obama broke that promise, big time.

During my 20 years in the U.S. Army, I learned all about good leadership, bad leadership, and no leadership.

As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I learned all about betrayal.

What we have just witnessed is a personal, petty and back-stabbing "parting shot" by Obama against Israel just before he leaves office. It's a clear demonstration of bad leadership and a betrayal of one of America's most staunchest and dependable allies.

And significantly, Obama has very possibly just set back any hopes of a return to the Israel-Palestinian peace process for years -- maybe decades -- and even increased the threat of additional conflict.

Why should the Palestinians negotiate directly with Israel when Obama proved to them they can get whatever they want -- which is ultimately the destruction of the Jewish state -- through the corrupt and amoral United Nations?

As columnist Charles Krauthammer has correctly stated, the United States under Obama has now "joined the jackals at the U.N. "

But I am not alone in criticizing Obama. Virtually every mainline Jewish organization as well as many members of Congress have also condemned Obama's actions. Locally, we are awaiting comments from Rep. Cheri Bustos and Rep. Dave Loebsack.

History will be the judge as to whether Obama will go down in history as a good or a bad President.

For many in the Jewish community, we already know that answer.
CANNON BALL, N.D. | Police arrested five Dakota Access pipeline protesters for criminal trespass Tuesday as the effort to block the pipeline continues despite wintry weather in southern North Dakota.

The arrests were made around 1 p.m. after 11 protesters crossed the frozen Cannonball River to Turtle Island, a hill on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land which the tribe considers sacred. Police say they told the protesters not to cross and arrested the five people when they disobeyed.

Joye Braun, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, said she heard from people still staying at the Oceti Sakowin camp after months of protests of the 1,172-mile crude oil pipeline crossing the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation that they had originally gone to Turtle Island to pray. Braun said she was not at the camp yesterday as she has been traveling back and forth between the camp and her home in Eagle Butte, S.D.

These initial arrests were the only ones to take place despite protesters entering what Morton County law enforcement has deemed no-trespass areas three other times.

An hour after the arrests, police say another group of about 20 protesters and two vehicles went onto Backwater Bridge  a bridge barricaded with razor wire and concrete barriers  which has been closed since October after numerous clashes between law enforcement and police.

Law enforcement pushed back from guarding the bridge earlier this month after reaching an agreement with protest organizers who said they would remain off the bridge while it was inspected for fire damage caused during an October clash between police and protesters. The inspection took place last week.

The sheriff's department said officers observed protesters "tampering with the wire barricade," and crossing to the north side of the bridge. Protesters allegedly broke the lenses of a light tower on the bridge.

Then, around 3 p.m Tuesday, officers again observed approximately 80 protesters at Turtle Island. The group left about an hour later.

Finally, at 5:45 p.m., about 100 protesters went to Backwater Bridge and interfered with barricade wire, "pulling on it with ropes and attempting to cut it," according to the sheriff's department. The sheriff's department said officers used "three sponge, less-than-lethal munitions" on the bridge after protesters disregarded their orders to stop.

Some protesters allegedly stole a state Department of Transportation "no trespassing" sign, carried it back to their vehicle and drove away. The sheriff's department released a video of protesters walking away with the sign.

The crowd dispersed around 7 p.m.

The arrested protesters were transported to the Morton County Detention Center.
Of five options proposed for a city-owned lot on a prime corner of downtown real estate, Mayor Steve Allender would like to find a developer for it.

Other options for the former President's Plaza site, at the corner of 5th and St. Joseph streets, include doing nothing and selling it.

The options were discussed briefly by the Legal and Finance Committee of the Rapid City Council at their meeting Wednesday. They ultimately decided to send it to the city council without a recommendation. The council is expected to discuss the options at its next meeting, which will start at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

But before the committee voted, Alderman Steve Laurenti said he'd rather see the city sell the lot. He said too much government involvement was the problem with the previous agreement.

In September, the city ended an agreement with a local developer for a $40 million, 15-story mixed-use development that included a 500-stall parking garage.

"I believe the city needs to extract itself from the process and let private industry do its thing," Laurenti said.

Alderman Jerry Wright said he preferred to wait until the full council meeting to debate the options, but noted the lot was leveled in the 1970s.

In a letter to the council dated Dec. 23, Allender explains his preference for the option that has the city solicit proposals from developers. He asserts that city staff and city council members are more experienced and better prepared than they were in the past for such an agreement.

"Today, the city is armed with a good comprehensive plan as well as a downtown master plan that will enable us to view proposals on a future project through a new lens," Allender wrote.

A letter from city attorney Joel Landeen laid out the five options with the pros and cons of each.

The mayor's preferred option, No. 4, is for the city to issue a new Request for Proposal seeking developers to design and build a project on the site.

This option outlines the need to market the request for proposal nationally to potentially receive plans from developers in the Denver, Minneapolis or Kansas City, Mo., markets. It also states the need to hire a consultant with expertise in projects of this type to have better success than the city had with the President's Plaza agreement.

The benefits of this option are that it allows the city to have the most input into the final product while also generating tax revenue and potentially addressing the need for downtown parking.

The drawbacks are that it could be the option that takes the longest  one year before construction can begin. There is also the potential that none of the proposals received will be acceptable, Landeen wrote.

The other options, as Landeen presented them:

 Leave the site as is. Upside: It would cost nothing and is the easiest course of action. Plus, the $2,072,000 in Vision Funds allocated to the project could be redistributed. Downside: Missing an opportunity to add property tax revenue and make a positive impact on the downtown area that aligns with the master plan.

 The city could build a publicly owned parking ramp. Upside: It could provide needed additional parking downtown and the process would be quicker than working with a developer. Downside: The cost would exceed the $2.07 million allocated for the project, the market would not support lease rates to make it profitable, and the option doesn't address concerns over whether a parking ramp is the best use of the property.

Landeen also cautioned there is little data to support the argument that this is where parking is needed downtown.

 Declare the lot surplus and list it with a real estate agent or sell it at public auction. The fair market value for the property is about $1.09 million. Because the revenue from the parking lot would be lost, the city would have to find a way to pay off the 2014-15 refinancing of the parking bonds. The balance left on the bond is $1.86 million. There is a 1 percent penalty plus any accrued interest if the bonds are paid off before May 31, 2021.

Upside: It appears to be the fastest way to get something built on the property and return it to the tax rolls. Landeen wrote that the city could maintain a limited degree of control over what would be built by deciding whom to sell it to. Downside: Limited control over the development and that the potential profit from selling the property might be lost in paying off the bonds or replacing the lost revenue. Still, the $2.07 million in Vision Funds allocated to the project could be a source to pay off bonds.

 Approach a few specific hotels, businesses or developers to partner with the city, cutting out the Request for Proposal process. Upside: It is potentially faster and could free the city council from a lengthy proposal review process. Downside: It could have the appearance of impropriety and choosing "favorites," Landeen said.

Next week's council meeting was moved from Monday night because of the legal observance of New Year's Day.
RAPID CITY | Alfred W. Dymock Jr. died peacefully Dec. 27, 2016, at the Fort Meade Hospice.

He was born May 26, 1926, in Phoenix, AZ, graduating in 1944 from Grants Pass, OR. He served in the Korean War as a jet fighter pilot, flying over 100 combat missions.

He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Maureen; their three children, Karine (David) Carpenter, Rapid City, Blaine Dymock, Hillsboro, OR, and Douglas (Jeanette) Dymock, Boise, ID; as well as five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

There will be a small family prayer and communion service today at the First Congregational Church presided over by Rev. Kathleen Batchelder.

Kinkade Funeral Chapel in Sturgis is assisting with arrangements.
Bankruptcy claim against Carlo Pazolinis owner to be reviewed in February

MOSCOW, December 29 (RAPSI)  The Moscow Commercial Court has set hearings in the bankruptcy claim filed by ATB Bank against founder of Carlo Pazolini shoe retailer, Ilya Reznik, for February 13, court documents read on Thursday.

Earlier, the court has granted a motion filed by ATB Bank to include 738.8 million rubles ($12 mln) of debt owed by Firma Anta company, the owner of Carlo Pazolini, in the creditors demands list.

On August 9, the Moscow Commercial Court has granted a motion of Alfa Bank over introduction of supervision procedure against Firma Anta company.

Debt of the company to Alfa Bank is estimated at 862.5 million rubles ($13 million).

On August 3, UniCreditBank filed a claim with the Moscow Commercial Court seeking collection of 1.4 billion rubles ($21 million) from Firma Anta.

Earlier, Alfa-Bank, filed a lawsuit demanding to recover $11.01 million in debt from Carlo Pazolini Trade Limited, Carlo Pazolini Participations and Carlo Pazolini (Switzerland) SA under a loan agreement signed on December 10, 2012. Firma Anta is named as the third party in the case. The claim also includes demand to recover jointly from the companies EUR 8.4 million in debt. The court will consider the lawsuit on April 4 of 2017.

Moreover, Alfa Bank has lodged a bankruptcy claim against Firma Anta.

Carlo Pazolini trademark was created in 1991. There are more than 180 company stores on Russia, Italy, China, Greece, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova, according to the retailers website.
Moscow courts to deploy electronic filing system in 2017

MOSCOW, December 29 (RAPSI)  An electronic filing system that allows filing of documents at Moscow Courts of General Jurisdiction online will be available to the legal community and the public in 2017, spokesperson for the Moscow City Court Ulyana Solopova told RAPSI on Thursday.

Users of the service should have an electronic signature for their verification. Otherwise, they wouldn't be allowed to use the service, according to Solopova.

The service would be launched at the platform of a unified information system of Courts of General Jurisdiction that integrates 36 Moscow courts. The system became operational on December 28.
In the afterglow of the holiday season, following an increase in coal production at the end of the year, an industry knocked to its knees in 2016 is showing budding optimism.

The story of the year for coal was bankruptcy: falling in and climbing out.

Three of the nations largest coal producers were operating merrily in Wyomings Powder River Basin when coal took a turn for the worse, caught up in a street scrap where low prices, competition with cheap natural gas and tremendous debt each pummeled the industry.

Worries about an aging fleet of coal-fired power plants and impending federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions were buffeting the coal industry as well.

Alpha Natural Resources actually began 2016 in bankruptcy. It was the first company to file for Chapter 11 protection, in August of last year.

In early 2016, Arch Coal, which owns the Black Thunder mine near Wright, and Peabody Energy, an international coal giant that operates the North Antelope Rochelle mine south of Gillette, followed Alphas lead. The two companies laid off hundreds of coal miners from their ranks in the spring.

The heaviest blow came on the morning of March 31, when 235 miners for Peabody and 230 for Arch were let go, gutting the strength of coal communities like Gillette and Wright.

Two of the three companies have emerged from bankruptcy so far.

Alpha exited bankruptcy in July, split into two companies. Alpha retained much of the companys eastern mining operations, while a newly formed company, Contura Energy, acquired the Belle Ayr and Eagle Butte mines in Campbell County.

As part of its restructuring plan, Alpha promised to replace its controversial self-bonds  money for cleanup backed up by a companys financial strength. The move, which came after significant federal pressure, appeased environmentalists in Wyoming. They hoped Alphas plan would set a precedent for other bankrupt coal producers.

Arch came next, emerging in October. The company also promised to replace its self-bonds. Peabody is set to submit its bankruptcy exit strategy to the courts by January, but has yet to announce how its bonding obligations in Wyoming may change.

But despite companies getting back on their feet, much of 2016 saw money pouring out of the companies pockets.

The turnaround for coal was its third-quarter production numbers. From summer to fall, coal production in the entire Powder River Basin suddenly almost doubled.

The numbers still fell short of 2015, when coal producers dug almost 100 million tons of coal from state soil.

Many doubt that coal will rise to its former heights. Though the debt accrued by companies like Alpha and Peabody is greatly reduced, the competition of natural gas, the decline in coal-fired power plants and the stigma of greenhouse gas emissions still threaten the coal industry.

Those threats led many in Wyoming coal country to pledge their votes to Donald Trump in November. Trump had promised to unleash the nations energy and championed the idea of clean coal at his rallies before the election.

Some companies fared better than the big three.

Gillette-based coal producer Cloud Peak Energy started the year free of the burdensome debts of its competitors.

The company announced late in the year that it would return to exporting coal to Asian markets.

The trend of increased coal shipments industrywide is expected to continue as the nation sinks into a cold winter. Natural gas prices, coals menace, have already begun to rise.

Though the future of regulations, politics and production are uncertain, the end of 2016 has been far better than the beginning for coal.
Hieronymus Park in Hamilton was filled with shrieks of laughter of youngsters enjoying the slow easy sledding trails through the six inches of powdery white, Wednesday afternoon. The prediction is for much colder temperatures starting Monday.

Peggy Tonan was at the park with her guests from Hong Kong, the Laud and Wong family. Mannie Laud was Tonens exchange student 1995-96 with AFS, formerly the American Field Service, a nonprofit organization offering student exchange programs.

Laud was back visiting her host family and said Hamilton has changed.

I cannot recognize the town now, she said.

Laud returned to show nature to her husband, Brian Wong, and son, Sam, 5, who were seeing stars and experiencing snow for the first time.

Theyve only seen it in the movies, Laud said. It is a new experience for them and they are having so much fun.

The guests, here for a two-week visit, were bundled in the right winter gear for their sledding session.

They dont experience changing seasons in Hong Kong, Tonen said. They were wearing shorts in Hong Kong before coming to Montana.

Sam said he was surprised that snow was cold and slippery.

Tonan said Sam loves the snow.

He has been helping shovel and is really enjoying the snow, she said. He is an amazing little boy; he speaks Mandarin, English, Cantonese and is learning to speak Japanese.

The park was suddenly quiet when over 30 snow geese flew low overhead honking their delight to have a sunny day in the Bitterroot Valley.

Enjoy the sun while you can because the National Weather service has predicted snow, blowing snow and dangerous wind chills for Sunday and Monday with extremely cold temperatures for Jan. 3-7.

Bob Nester, senior National Weather Service meteorologist, said snow then cold is coming.

Sunday and Monday well have a nice little winter snow with three to four inches of snow possible, Nester said. Then an arctic system will start to impact the region. It will move into the area with northeast winds across the Bitterroot Valley with wind chill of 10 to 15 below zero.

Nester said that even colder air will settle in to the region all next week.

Were looking at low temperatures by Monday then the real cold air settles in, he said. Tuesday and Wednesday its going to struggle to get up to zero for a high. Right now our extended models show it continuing through next weekend.

Nester said there may be some snow showers but he is not expecting this to be a big precipitation event.

Protect those livestock and keep your car plugged in, he said.
BILLINGS  If congressional Republicans scrap Obamacare, Montana cannot in good conscience end the health coverage it offers 60,000 people through a heavily subsidized Medicaid program, said state House Speaker Austin Knudsen.

The Culbertson Republican recently told The Gazette that state lawmakers would have to figure out a way to dial back the states Medicaid program humanely. More than 60,000 people have signed up for Medicaid since the 2015 Legislature voted to offer Medicaid to more than 70,000 working Montanans who at the time couldnt afford insurance but were too far above the poverty level to qualify for Medicaid.

That expansion depends on a federal subsidy that covers nearly all of the programs cost, which this year is $201 million, according to the state Department of Public Health and Human Services. The state cant afford the expanded program, Knudsen said, but it cant rip the healthcare coverage away from participants.

Youre going to tell me that were going to put 100,000 people on the Medicaid rolls and then when the federal government takes the money away were just going to jerk the rug out from under them? I dont see that as being a realistic answer, Knudsen said. The state of Montana is going to have to look at trying to help keep those people covered. Whether I like the bill or not, it passed. It was signed into law. We covered a whole bunch more people.

Medicaid expansion passed largely on the votes of Montana Democratic lawmakers with enough Republican support to get it approved with a narrow margin of support. The program was officially offered for the first time in January 2016. By mid-November 60,123 newly eligible Montanans had signed up for Medicaid, according to DPHHS.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to scrap the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, which congressional Republicans have been attempting to repeal for years, calling it unaffordable and a drag on the economy.

U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., is a vocal critic of the Affordable Care Act. He told The Gazette that legislation to repeal the ACA will come early next year, but that it may take two to three years to end the healthcare program, which Republicans plan to replace with something else, although what that would be is only being conveyed in broad brushstrokes.

Republicans are going to have to bake time into their replacement healthcare proposals, Daines said.

We need to provide a two- to three-year glide path, Daines said. We will have a transition that clearly assures that the Montanans that are on Medicaid arent harmed on this transition.

Republicans have discussed replacing healthcare subsidies, for things like Medicaid, to states with block grants that would allow states more freedom in how the money was spent. Those block grants would certainly be worth less than the amount of current subsidies.

The ACA hasnt worked as planned, Daines said. He points to the number of insurance companies getting out of state organized health exchanges for the uninsured as proof the ACA is failing.

If the first repeal actions to ACA were to come within two years, Montana could be caught without a plan for dealing with the transition. The state Legislature meets every other spring and creates a budget for the coming two years. The budget crafted in the first four months of 2017 will set state government spending through June 30, 2019.

If Congress hasnt acted by the end of the 2017 state Legislature, special action might be needed, Knudsen said. But he said there isnt a practical way to plan without knowing first what the federal government might do. Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, said the same.

It would be grossly irresponsible to rip healthcare away from tens of thousands of Montanans and millions of Americans without presenting a real and viable alternative that patients, providers, states and insurers can all plan around, Bullock said in an email. Republicans in Congress have had six years to think about and plan for fixes, replacements, and alternatives. We cant speculate on a state response until those plans are clear.

Bullock recently wrote U.S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., asking that ACA not be repealed before an alternative has been created.

Since 2013, changes under the Affordable Care Act have decreased the rate of uninsured Montanans from 20 percent to 7 percent, Bullock told McCarthy. Rural hospitals that have lost money serving the uninsured and underinsured have been better compensated.

There are 52,000 Montanans younger than 65 with pre-existing conditions that could lose coverage if the ACA mandate that everyone qualify for insurance be eliminated.

When the Montana Legislature approved Medicaid expansion in 2015, it wrote into the law that the coverage would end if the federal subsidy fell below 90 percent. That doesnt seem responsible now, Knudsen said.
BILLINGS - Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is offering a reward for information about a white-tailed buck that was illegally killed along Billings' Alkali Creek on Monday, then left to waste.

Game warden Courtney Tyree said someone shot the buck with an arrow next to Alkali Creek, just west of its intersection with Aronson Avenue, on Monday. The poacher removed the head and antlers, but left the rest of the animal to waste. No deer hunting seasons are open in the area.

Anyone with information about the illegal kill is encouraged to call Tyree at 247-2940 or 860-7841. A person also can call FWPs 24-hour tip line at 1-800-TIP-MONT (800-847-6668) and qualify for a cash reward of as much as $1,000 for information leading to a conviction of the people responsible for the illegal poaching.
America must return to conservative principles of less government,reduced taxes, less spending and a balanced budget! Cut,cap and balance!
Bruce Walker

The United Nations is a grand failure that has never worked and will never work. The idea of the U.N. was invented during the Second World War, when the term "United Nations" actually meant the wartime alliance of certain nations against other nations.

From the very beginning, the fact that the "United Nations" included the Soviet Union, which had conspired with Nazi Germany to begin the Second World War and which engaged in aggressive war and genocide just like Nazi Germany, was a sick joke. Our Soviet "ally" let us fight Japan alone until the end of the war, and it occupied and enslaved those very nations in Eastern Europe that Britain and France had gone to war with Germany to protect.

The structure of the organization was set as a part of the peace following the Second World War, with all the macabre features of that uneven peace. The permanent members of the Security Council were, and are, the Big Five of America, Britain, France, China, and Russia. China meant Free China, but now it means Communist China. Russia was the Soviet Union, but today Russia is only half the size of the old Soviet Union.

Japan and Germany were not permanent members of the Security Council, although in any sane world, these two nations, the third and fourth largest economies in the world and both peaceful democracies, ought to be permanent members. Yet the legacy of the Second World War, when these two nations were the foes of the "United Nations," remains. India, which gained independence after the United Nations was formed, also ought to be a permanent member of the Security Council, but it is not.

The United Nations was created primarily to preserve peace, but it has never succeeded in that at all, nor has it prevented the genocides that so horrified the civilized world after the Second World War ended. The reasons why are pretty clear. Most of the "nations" represented in the United Nations are little more than brutal ruling gangs, who suppress captive peoples like the Kurds and Tibetans and who routinely deny the most basic human rights to those they rule.

The United Nations provides a facade for these thugs to don the mantle of moral legitimacy and to even lecture other nations about how to behave. Two recent examples of this perversity were reminders of the wicked telling the good that they are bad.

In the whole of vast region of Asia stretching from Suez to Sakhalin, there are a total of very few nations considered free, according to Freedom House. Japan ranks highest with a ranking of 96 on a scale of 0 to 100. Taiwan is the next freest, with a rating of 89, and Israel has a rating of 80, behind only Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Mongolia, and dramatically higher than any of its neighbors.

Taiwan is not even a member of the United Nations, despite having one of the largest economies in Asia and being a free democracy, because it is formally considered part of China. Israel is a member of the United Nations, but it is treated like a pariah and routinely condemned for taking actions reasonable for survival and safety.

If all of Asia had governments like Taiwan and Israel, there would be no need for a United Nations, because the civil wars and other conflicts would end, and both freedom and prosperity would rise dramatically in this two-continent region. Yet these two model nations are pariahs within the United Nations, while Freedom House grimly notes that over the last thirty years, freedom among those nations within the United Nations has been declining significantly.

What America ought to do is call for a new organization, inviting as members any nations that are free, democratic, and peaceful. This would include about fifty nations  nearly all of Europe, most of South America, most of the Pacific Rim, India, Israel, and seven nations in Africa.

This new organization should not feign real authority to act through sanctions or war, but it should rather be a public forum for the leaders of these free nations to state to the world their intentions and to reach a general understanding on issues that affect the world.

What of the United Nations? America should give it no money, give it no offices in New York, pay it no heed, and leave it where it belongs  in the dustbin of history.
Speaker Onsari Gharti Magar

Kathmandu, Nepal: Speaker Onsari Gharti Magar has issued a three-day ultimatum to major political parties to forge a consensus to end the obstruction in the parliament.

Speaker Gharti issued such an ultimatum while receiving a memorandum handed over by Reporters Club on Thursday.

Though Speaker Gharti did not elaborate if the parties failed to meet the deadline, she expressed her optimism that the parties will forge an accord within the deadline.

Speaker Gharti had also been consulting with the parties in a bid to forge consensus with the parties to end the obstruction in the parliament.

The opposition parties in the parliament including the main opposition CPN UML has been obstructing the parliamentary proceedings since three weeks to protest the constitution amendment bill registered in the parliament.
KATHMANDU, Dec 29: The United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF) has concluded that holding of local polls sans the constitution amendment would trigger a conflict in the country.

A meeting of the Front that took place at its central office, Bijulibazar on Thursday ended with the conclusion that the local poll should not be conducted before amending the constitution.

Briefing the media about the meeting, Party Vice-Chair Brishesh Chandra Lal said the party hoped that its demands would get addressed to some extent by the constitution amendment and it wanted this to happen before the local polls.

The meeting discussed about the current political imbroglio in the country, as said by the party vice chair. "The UDMF wants the enforcement of the constitution and has adopted flexibility to create a base for so," he added.

The meeting, accusing the Local Body Restructuring Commission of failing to work in line with the spirit of the constitution, ended with the decision of meeting tomorrow again and unveiling its decisions tomorrow itself through a press meet. RSS
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For the first time, Chinas lone carrier entered the Western Pacific. What does the Chinese Navy have in mind?

The Chinese Peoples Liberation Army-Navys (PLAN) sole operational carrier group has had a busy Christmas weekend.

Liaoning, Chinas sole carrier, accompanied by five other PLAN vessels, made its way south and  perhaps more significantly  east. After conducting exercises in both the Bohai and Yellow Seas , the, Chinas sole carrier, accompanied by five other PLAN vessels, made its way south and  perhaps more significantly  east.

Liaoning  approach the Miyako Strait on December 25. The Japanese Ministry of Defense released a statement acknowledging that its surveillance aircraft tracked six vessels in total  including the approach the Miyako Strait on December 25.

According to the Japanese Ministry of Defense, the Liaoning was accompanied by the PLAN Linyi and PLAN Yantai, Jiangkai-II-class (Type 054A) frigates with the PLANs North Sea Fleet, and the PLAN Zhengzhou, PLAN Haikou, and PLAN Changsha, Luyang-III-class (Type 052D) destroyers. The Changsha and Haikou are part of the PLANs South Sea Fleet while the Zhengzhou is part of the East Sea Fleet.

For the first time ever, the Liaoning, on Sunday, entered the Western Pacific, transiting the Miyako Strait  a strategically significant international waterway south of the major Japanese island of Okinawa. The Liaonings current training expedition is the first to incorporate live-fire drills including the carriers air wing.

After spending some time in the Western Pacific, the Liaoning group navigated southward, entering the strategically significant Bashi Channel, which runs between Taiwan and the Philippine island of Luzon, separating the South China Sea from the Western Pacific.

Liaoning passed 90 nautical miles south of Taiwans southernmost point. The Liaoning group, According to the Taiwanese Defense Ministry, which observed the Chinese carriers passage through the Miyako Strait and Bashi Channel, thepassed 90 nautical miles south of Taiwans southernmost point. Thegroup, as of Monday , December 26, is in the South China Sea.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying cautioned against making too much of the Liaoning groups activities. Our Liaoningshould enjoy in accordance with the law freedom of navigation and overflight as set by international law, and we hope all sides can respect this right of Chinas, she noted.

Despite Huas statement, theres plenty of context  both old and new  that serves to underline just how significant the Liaonings passage into the Western Pacific is.

Diplomat readers may recall that the PLAN and Peoples Liberation Army-Air Force (PLAAF) have given particular attention to the Bashi Channel and Miyako Strait in recent months. I wrote on incidents prompting Japanese concern in Regularreaders may recall that the PLAN and Peoples Liberation Army-Air Force (PLAAF) have given particular attention to the Bashi Channel and Miyako Strait in recent months. I wrote on incidents prompting Japanese concern in September November , and earlier in December this year. (The PLAN held an exercise in the channel in the summer of 2015 as well.)

None of this was accidental. Since at least the 1980s, under the strategic tutelage of former PLA Navy commander and Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Liu Huaqing, Chinese military planners have placed great importance on being able to dominate the geographical features that comprise what strategists refer to as Asias first island chain  a string of islands running from the Kuril Islands off Russias Kamchatka peninsula, to Japan, to Taiwan, to the Philippines, and ending in Indonesia.

Chinas interest in being able to successfully project power across the first island chain has grown more acute in recent years. In particular, last year, its 2015 defense white paper emphasized Beijings interest in a more global and expeditionary role for its navy:

It is necessary for China to develop a modern maritime military force structure commensurate with its national security and development interests, safeguard its national sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, protect the security of strategic SLOCs and overseas interests, and participate in international maritime cooperation[]

Weve seen the ideas outlined in that white paper expressed elsewhere, such as in Beijings construction of its first overseas military base in Djibouti and its conduct of submarine patrols in the Indian Ocean. Closer to home, Beijing needs its modern maritime military force structure to be able to successfully traverse and operate across the first island chain.

Lioanings role in enabling a more global and expeditionary PLAN may not be as great as some originally thought. Liaoning is Chinas only operational carrier at the moment and was Thes role in enabling a more global and expeditionary PLAN may not be as great as some originally thought. As I noted earlier this month , while theis Chinas only operational carrier at the moment and was boldly declared combat-ready in November, it wont form the basis of Chinas maritime power projection  at least not by itself.

Beijing is making steady progress on its first indigenously designed and constructed carrier that will likely play a more significant part in its naval power projection. Moreover, a second planned home-grown carrier could incorporate more advanced technologies enabling high sortie rates for the PLANs carrier-based Shenyang J-15 fighters, including a catapult assisted take-off but arrested recovery (CATOBAR) launch system.

The Liaoning, in the meantime, may serve primarily as an important training platform for Chinese sailors and naval aviators to rack up hours of experience in non-littoral carrier operations.

A refurbished and retrofitted Admiral Kuznetsov-class Soviet Navy carrier, the Liaoning wont be single-handedly enabling far-flung military victories for China anytime soon. That doesnt mean its insignificant.

Liaoning  suggests that Chinese naval patrols in the Western Pacific, potentially pushing up against significant U.S. territories, including Hawaii and Guam, may be forthcoming in the 2020s and beyond. (Global Times that makes a case for continued operations in Americas near seas.) The PLANs clear interest in mastering control of the Miyako Strait and Bashi Channel  including with the suggests that Chinese naval patrols in the Western Pacific, potentially pushing up against significant U.S. territories, including Hawaii and Guam, may be forthcoming in the 2020s and beyond. ( China maritime watcher Ryan Martinson flagged a fascinating anonymous op-ed in Chinas hawkishthat makes a case for continued operations in Americas near seas.)

Finally, given the timing of the Liaonings passage across the first island chain and entry into the South China Sea, one is inclined to ponder if China is sending a message to the incoming U.S. administration of Donald J. Trump.

Given all Ive outlined above, it may be a mistake to see the Liaonings transit of the first island chain as a tactical move designed to signal forthcoming Chinese aggression to the incoming U.S. administration. In the weeks leading up the U.S. election, both the PLAN and PLAAF had carried out significant exercises in the Miyako Strait and Bashi Channel.

However, for the incoming U.S. administration, the Liaonings activities in December will be read as an important signal of intensifying Chinese assertiveness in East Asia  and not without reason. Per the latest available reports, the Liaoning was still in the northern South China Sea, but is traveling southwest, potentially toward the Spratly Islands.

A show of force involving the Liaoning group in the Spratly Islands would send a troubling signal to the incoming U.S. administration and emphasize Chinese intent to project power from the South China Sea, where it possesses four airstrips capable of accommodating military aircraft.

Come what may, most signs point to a deterioration in U.S.-China ties under the incoming U.S. administration and the Liaoning groups activities in December suggest that China  even if just realizing long-planned milestones in power projection  wont be the first to back down.
US-Saudi aggression warplanes continue raids on Yemen

SANA'A, Dec. 29 (Saba)  The US-Saudi aggression warplanes continued bombing Yemen's provinces during the last few hours, targeting citizens and their properties.



A military official said that two people were killed and two others injured in US-Saudi aggression bomb on their car in Bait Maghz village in Hamdan village in Sana'a province.



The official added two people were also killed and two others injured in a Saudi air raid on al-Khukha district in Hodeida province.



Meanwhile, the US-Saudi aggression warplanes waged three raids on a farm in al-Maeedh area in Baqem district of Sa'ada province. The aggression used cluster bombs in the two raids, causing four people injured, including two children and a woman, the official said.



The US-Saudi aggression warplanes bombed al-Asha area in Baqem with two cluster bombs, the official added.



The official said that the US-Saudi aggression warplanes waged fives raid on Nehm district in Sana'a province, targeting al-Rabbah areas, Aqabat al-Senani, Naqeel Bin Ghailan and Bait Dahra village in the district.



The aggression also waged an air raid on a water digger in Bait Maghz in Hamdan district and another an air raid on Harad district in Hajjah province, he added.



The US-Saudi aggression warplanes launched three raids on Haid Bin Aqeel area in Osailan district of Shabwa province, two raids on Serwah in Mareb province and three raids on Hodeida airport in Hodeida province.



The aggression also dropped flash bobms on the Red Mount in al-Zaher district of Jawf province and two raids on the eastern area of al-Amri area in Thubab district in Taiz province.



The US-Saudi aggression warplanes waged three raids on Khaled military camp in Mawzaa district in Taiz province.



Meanwhile, a house was burnt by one of the Saudi-paid mercenaries in al-Jahmalia area in Taiz city.



HA

Saba

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[29/December/2016]
Army continues achieving field victories during the past hours

SANA'A, Dec. 29 (Saba)  The army and popular committees continued achieving field victories, targeting Saudi enemy sites and its mercenaries as well as their military vehicles in several fronts in response to the continuous aggression against Yemen.



A military official said that the army and popular committees fired a barrage of Katyusha rockets on Rajla military camp in Najran region.



A Saudi military vehicle was destroyed by an anti-tank missile of the army and popular committees in the west of the camp.



Five Saudi enemy soldiers were killed in al-Qeyadha military site in Najran and an Abrams tank was burnt, its crew was also killed in the same site.



A Saudi solider was shot dead in al-Shabaka military site in Jizan by a sniper unit of the army and popular committees.



Meanwhile, the artillery force of the army and popular committees targeted al-Masfofah and al-Shabaka sites, targeting Saudi enemy soldiers near al-Qarn Control.



The army and popular committees fired a barrage of Katyusha rockets on Aleb border crossing. A Saudi solider was shot dead in the west of al-Hager Control in Aser region.



At least ten Saudi-paid mercenaries were killed in the 40th street in Taiz province.



The army and popular committees pounded Saudi-paid mercenaries' gatherings at al-Askari area in Sala district and in the south of Thubab district in Taiz province, causing killed and injured among them.



In addition, a number of Saudi-paid mercenaries were killed or injured when they tried to advance towards al-Manarah Mount in Nehm district.



In Amran province, Many Saudi-paid mercenaries were killed, including a military leader of al-Islah party in Amran province Mohammed Hamood al-Hadrani.



A military vehicle of Saudi-paid mercenaries was burnt in the areas adjacent to al-Madfon area in Nehm district, killing all its crew.



Some Saudi-paid mercenaries' leaders were killed when they tried to advance towards Nehm district.



A number of Saudi-paid mercenaries were killed when they tried to advance towards sites of the army and popular committees in Osailan district in Shabwa province for the second day.



Three other Saudi-paid mercenaries were killed in al-Safra area in Osailan district by the army and popular committees.



The artillery of the army and popular committees targeted gatherings of Saudi-paid mercenaries in Karesh area in Lahj province.



The artillery of the army and popular committees also targeted mercenaries' gatherings in the north of Midi desert in Hajjah province.



The artillery of the army and popular committees also pounded Safr al-Hanaya area in al-Moton district of Jawf province.



Around 15 Saudi-paid mercenaries were killed and others were injured as well as some others were besieged by the army and popular committees when the mercenaries tried to advance towards al-Makhdra in Serwah district of Mareb province.



Three military vehicles of the mercenaries were destroyed in the failed attempt towards al-Makhdra and a military vehicle was also destroyed in al-Matar hill in the same district.



The army and military committees repulsed an attempt to advance towards Hailan Mount in Serwah district, killing or injured among them.



Seven Saudi-paid mercenaries' leaders were killed in Serwah district in Mareb,



HA

Saba

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Debbie Reynolds, one of the few remaining icons from Hollywood's studio era, passed away yesterday after suffering a severe stroke. This comes only one day after the sudden death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher.

Born in Texas, her family moved to Los Angeles when she was a child. At age 16, she won the "Miss Burbank" contest; there, she was spotted by a talent scout for Warner Bros. studios, who signed her to a contract. Reynolds had only a few small parts and eventually got a new contract with MGM. It was there that when she won the role of Kathy Selden in Singin' in the Rain, a role (which she said was the most difficult one she's ever done) that would become her signature part for her entire career. She conveyed an image of lovable sassiness in many of her early roles, including in How the West Was Won, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Divore, American Style and The Singing Nun. She had her own variety show in the late 1960s, and voiced the spider Charlotte in the wonderful animated film Charlotte's Web.

She disappeared from much of film and television in the 1970s, resurfacing in the late 1980s in guest starring roles. Her and Fisher's loving (if sometimes difficult) relationship was immortalized in Fisher's book Postcards from the Edge, made into a film in 1990 with Shirley MacLaine playing the fictional version of Reynolds.

Reynolds made a great comeback in Albert Brooks' 1996 fantastic film Mother, and had a recurring role as Grace's overbearing mother in the TV series Will & Grace, and appeared in other shows such as Rugrats, Family Guy, and Roseanne.

She was a consumate performer, full of joy and so enjoyable in everything she did. She also, quite evidently from her roles, had a very wicked sense of humour, and according to those who worked with her, was a wonderfully sarcastic wit. I remember teaching a seminar on Singin' in the Rain when I was a TA; I thought that the 18-year-olds in the class would be bored. On the contrary, all of them loved it, and it was mainly due to Reynolds, who could easily hold her own with her older, more experienced co-stars. One of those student went on to write a great paper about Reynolds' early career and her work as a feminist model for actresses.

Reynolds was also a great philanthropist. She was long involved with Thalians, an organization aimed at raising awareness and providing treatment and support for those suffering from mental health issues. She also amassed a huge collection of classic Hollywood costumes, intended for conservation and museum display.

She became something of tabloid fodder when her first husband Eddie Fisher (Carrie's father) left her for Elizabeth Taylor, though later the two women would become friends again. Indeed, Reynolds, along with Taylor, was one of the first Hollywiood celebrities to bring attention to the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s, when even politicians wouldn't acknowledge the disease or those affected by it.

According to her son Todd Fisher, who was at her bedside, her last words were that she wanted to be with her daughter.

Below is one of the best scenes in American cinema, "Good Morning" from Singin' in the Rain, featuring Reynolds, Donald O'Connor and Gene Kelly. Watch it, remember her well, and have some tissues handy.

Our thoughts are with her son and granddaughter.

Below is a video from ScreenAnarchy's Jason Gorber on one of our national networks, with a look at Reynolds' life and career.
Seguin, TX (78155)

Today

Cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low 72F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low 72F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
 New York Times made yet another editorial pitch for judicial abolition of the death penalty | Main | Dylann Roof tells federal judge he does not plan to present any evidence at penalty phase of his capital trial 

December 28, 2016

Former Deputy AG Phil Heymann makes full-throated pitch for Justice Department to address Rubashkin case

Last month via this Wall Street Journal commentary, two former Justice Department officials Charles Renfrew and James Reynolds advocated for clemency for Sholom Rubashkin in a piece headlined "Obama Should Pardon This Iowa Kosher-Food Executive: Prosecutors overstepped, interfered with the process of bankruptcy and then solicited false testimony." This week via this Washington Post commentary, LawProf and former Deputy AG Philip Heymann is making the case for Rubashkin while calling out the Justice Department's failure to address these matters. The piece is headlined "107 former Justice officials think this case was handled unjustly. DOJ must act." Here are excerpts:

You dont just try to hammer everybody for as long as you can, because you can, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates told the New York Times. That is the right attitude for someone tasked with the fair administration of justice. Unfortunately, Yates and Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch have, for the past year, rebuffed efforts by me and many other former senior Justice Department officials to even discuss another prosecution in which justice fell far short: the case of Sholom Rubashkin, a Brooklyn-born rabbi who was sentenced to 27 years for bank fraud. Rubashkin, a 57-year-old father of 10, has already served seven years for the crime, which ordinarily merits no more than three years. Worse, his sentence was based on perjured testimony and prosecutorial misconduct. If even a few highly respected prosecutors think a particular case was handled unjustly, resulting in a vastly excessive sentence, the departments representatives should be prepared at least to discuss the reasons. In Rubashkins case, 107 former Justice Department officials, including five former attorneys general, six former deputy attorneys general (myself included), two former FBI directors, 30 former federal judges and other leading jurists, have sought to meet with senior officials of the department we once served. The only response: a form letter from an assistant attorney general stating that no meeting could take place while Rubashkin was also pursuing his case in court. Meanwhile, Kevin Techau, the U.S. attorney in Iowa (where Rubashkin was prosecuted), has suggested that Rubashkin used his financial resources to buy the support of so many prominent justice officials. Not only has Rubashkin lost everything he owned in this case, his wife and children now depend heavily on the support of their community for their needs. Moreover, all 107 of us are working on this pro bono. Among other things, former deputy attorneys general Larry Thompson, Charles Renfrew and I have traveled to distant meetings and volunteered considerable time to this matter, all on our own nickel. The facts are clear: Rubashkin was vice president of Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking plant based in Postville, Iowa. In May 2008, more than 500 federal immigration agents raided the plant and arrested hundreds of undocumented workers. The raid resulted in the company declaring bankruptcy. Rubashkin was arrested a short time later and charged with bank fraud. And this is where things went terribly wrong. The sentence for bank fraud depends on the amount of the loss to creditors. In this case, the prosecution deliberately increased the amount of the loss  and thus the length of Rubashkins sentence.... I am saddened by the unwillingness of the departments senior leaders to even discuss the injustice that more than 100 of their predecessors and former judges find evident in the Rubashkin case. Experienced former prosecutors and career Justice Department officials view this case as a stain on an institution created to uphold the law. If the departments leadership refuses to act, I hope President Obama pardons Rubashkin and ends this tragedy. The alternative is a display of either blind self-righteousness or frightened defensiveness that is inconsistent with the Justice Department we all have served and respected.

December 28, 2016 at 03:40 PM | Permalink

Comments

The writer notes: "I am saddened by the unwillingness of the departments senior leaders to even discuss the injustice that more than 100 of their predecessors and former judges find evident in the Rubashkin case. " It my experience it is always former federal prosecutors, rarely current ones, who understand the injustice of draconian sentences and the need for mercy to temper justice.

Posted by: Michael R. Levine | Dec 28, 2016 10:00:26 PM

I believe that the Judge who handled the trial & sentenceing went down to the 8th circuit court if appeals and substituted in his absence, on this very case. Dah, it dont take Wiley E Coyote Super Genius to determine thats a conflict if interest. Go down and fill in on the case that you gave more than the railroad prosecutors were asking for and rule on the appeal. oh boy, nothing wrong there right. ( thats right railroad is what happened)

Shack couldnt do a slam dunk any better than Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Oh well, the federal govt won Nd thats all thst counts, right. Dont matter how.

Posted by: MidWestGuy | Dec 28, 2016 11:06:51 PM

This is typical of most federal cases. He has a big voice, but this is essentially the way we prosecute and sentence offenders.

We have thousands of nonviolent offenders serving life or de facto life sentences in federal prison. They should all have their sentences commuted.

I wish that advocates for individuals who are harshly prosecuted and sentenced could broaden their scope and see that irregularities in investigation and prosecution are not singular or rare, but have become standard operating procedure. On appeal, they become harmless error.

You're correct Michael, it is always "former prosecutors" who see the injustice. Once the trial is over and sentencing is done - the bar is high. There is a nonviolent marijuana offender who received a sentence of life without parole whose prosecutor - now in private practice - wrote his petition for clemency. His commutation was denied.

Of course, Sholom Rubashkin's sentence is egregious along with thousands of others.

Posted by: beth | Dec 29, 2016 10:34:17 AM

It would seem that there is political or career pressure in the DOJ/USA office to not only convict but max the sentence on all or most defendants. It certainly happens in state DA offices, especially in high-profile cases, but doesn't seem to be as rampant a practice.

Posted by: Fat Bastard | Dec 29, 2016 11:11:40 AM

I suspect that DOJ is pretty inured to the effect of letters and amicus briefs from former prosecutors. Often, many of the former prosecutors served decades ago, and are not seen as having a particularly valuable contemporary perspective. Typically, many of the former prosecutors may have spent short times as prosecutors (say, the politically appointed U.S. Attorney for whatever district) without substantial prior prosecutorial experience -- and spent decades of their subsequent career in the defense bar. Current DOJ prosecutors therefore view their perspective as inherently more aligned with the defense than as signalling that even prosecutorially-minded people hold a particular view. A similar dynamic is at work with briefs signed by former judges. Often, they're known as very liberal former judges, and DOJ prosecutors' response is to say that those judges got a lot wrong on the bench and that their views are not particularly interesting to the prosecutors in retirement.

Finally, I wonder whether DOJ is concerned about appearing to subvert regular procedures merely because someone or other has high-powered backing. It's no secret that there's an amicus network in DC that works to get support for these kinds of efforts. How they choose their cases may have something to do with powerful private-sector people's sense of injustice. It also has something to do with pressure from law firm clients. (General Counsel or private client says, "Hey - I'm very concerned about this case. Would you take a look at it and see if you want to do an amicus brief?" The answer is likely to be "Yes.") Or the particular interests of particular partners. In general, DOJ is sensitive to the danger that flows from granting only some requests for private meetings -- particularly meetings with counsel for non-parties to discuss a particular case. And that's a legitimate concern -- although again, one can argue about whether it ought to control in all cases, or whether there should in fact be a policy of allowing open meetings.

Posted by: Probably | Dec 29, 2016 12:49:55 PM

Prosecution is further corrupted because of asset forfeiture. Assets are seized and the defense is disabled. The most troubling thing about forfeiture is that it feeds the circuit and district where it occurs. There is great monetary incentive to charge and prosecute to the max and never waver and never risk the validity of the forfeiture that occurred prior to trial.

Posted by: beth | Dec 29, 2016 12:50:22 PM

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The renowned Chinese-American artist Sarah Sze has withdrawn her proposal for a public artwork in Chinatown, a clear favorite among a hundred that were considered. The problem: two groups were at odds over the use of the space, an extension of St. Mary's Square at the corner of Pine and Kearny Streets, which was essentially promised to them both.

A piece in the Examiner tries to sort out the kerfuffle that resulted in the loss of Sze's work, something that Chinese Cultural Center representative Abbey Chen tells the paper is lamentable. Sarah Sze is a world-renowned artist. Were definitely saddened she has withdrawn," Leung reportedly said. "It is a loss to not just Chinatown but to San Francisco."

The developer of the St. Mary's Square Extension, 500 Pine Street Company, LLC, had agreed to use the space to highlight a work selected by the nonprofit Chinese Cultural Center with community input, which was one of the terms of them landing the development contract in the first place. Sze's proposal had been selected as of May. In Time out New York, Paul Laster writes that Sze is prized by contemporary arts museums for her "sprawling arrangements of throwaway materials" that contrast "the geometric with the organic, the industrial with the natural, and the domestic with the wild."

Unfortunately, the site of the St. Mary's Square extension was also approved by the Mayor to be the home of a memorial for the women who were sexually enslaved by the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII, a group known as "comfort women." Retired judges Julie Tang and Lillian Sing are the co-chairs of the Comfort Women Justice Coalition, a group leading the memorial effort. The Board of Supervisors approved its installation last year, though at the time, the Richmond's Lincoln Park, Portsmouth Square in Chinatown, and other locations were under consideration. Eventually the extension of St. Mary's Square in Chinatown was promised in June, as the publication Nichi Bei Weekly reported at the time.

And time was also of the essence according to advocates of the "comfort women" memorial. "A lot of the comfort women are dying, Sing, who was a Superior Court Judge in San Francisco, told Nichi Bei. We cannot wait. The Comfort Women Justice Coalition was still raising funds for the memorial at the time of that piece.

Sing told the Examiner that the Comfort Women Justice Coalition and the developer had discussed sharing the site and thought it was a good idea. They say that the Chinese Cultural Center should have known that their small "comfort women" memorial would occupy the space too, and that the Chinese Cultural Center should have disclosed that fact to Sze.

The Chinese Cultural Center disagrees. The spot, they say, was granted by them to Sze in May, but they didn't hear about the "comfort women" memorial until July from the Arts Commission.Chinese Cultural Center artist director Abby Chen told the Examiner that politics trumped the community process.

The official word from Sze and her people: Unfortunately, after the selection and before entering into contract, weve been informed about significant changes in the original conditions of the project as set by the developers, her wrote in an email to the Examiner. "This information was not given during the process of the competition. After discussing with SFAC and the developer, we were unable to restate the original conditions."

The "comfort women" memorial will still be installed in the space, along with the runner-up to Sze's work, which was not well-received by the Chinese Cultural Center according to the Examiner. its a huge unfortunate situation thats occurred, Arts Commissioner Dorka Keehn told the Examiner.

Related: Osaka Mayor Continues Feud With SF, Objects To Proposed 'Comfort Women' Memorial
Pass the beer bong, bro. Despite the high cost of living, San Francisco just got named the top "major metro" for college students by the American Institute for Economic Research. According to the report, which was picked up by The Examiner, the honor is based more on students' future job prospects and quality of life than any particular institute of higher learning.

The location you choose to go to college determines where you will likely spend the next four years of your life, and possibly where you will start your career," explained Amanda Knarr of AIER. "Our ranking reflects the characteristics that make cities attractive to the average college student.

Denver, Austin, and Portland, Oregon, take the top three spots for mid-size cities. Ann Arbor, Tallahassee, and Durham came in at 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for smaller cities.

San Francisco beat out Boston, D.C., Minneapolis, and Seattle  which came in at 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th, respectively  for the title. Interestingly, we were benefited in the rankings by our proximity to San Jose. "For the purposes of this study, San Francisco is a different city than San Jose, Calif.; nonetheless, it has a strong tech sector and legions of Silicon Valley workers who commute from San Francisco and Oakland," the study finds. "All of this means that college students who are looking for internships, jobs, and networking opportunities in tech will find opportunities in the San Francisco region."

In other words, San Francisco is great for students who want to work in tech (and can afford to live here in the first place). If they do (and can), then they'll likely fit right in  as Twitter's 2015 frat-themed office party made clear.

Related: Supes Vote To Make City College Free
While SFist commenters this morning appeared to mourn the remodel of San Francisco's iconic Mr. Bing's into a "clean, normal bar," another reader was less pleased with our coverage of the changes that we noted were likely "necessary to keep the place up to code," and swiftly wrote to take us to task.

Please tell me you are not this fucking stupid. Bings was a FAILING bar. It was falling apart and on its way to financial ruin. Do you actually know just what the hell was wrong with the establishment? Why it was closed for a month? Repairs from the previous owner's neglect. God forbid, Peter Cooper cleaned HIS BAR up. And this is wrong? Your article is not original. You are jumping on the hate bandwagon and like those clowns, you are 100% wrong. One dickhead called him a techie. Others have put blame on him for the gentrification of The City. Unbelievable. In the future, before you start spouting off about the city I was born, raised and still reside, maybe give me shout and learn a thing or two. Then you'll be showing some responsibility in your writing, hack. -- Kevin Wade

A quick Google search suggested that our correspondent was a former Ireland's 32 bouncer who in 2008 diffused a dangerous situation at the bar when he convinced an allegedly gun-wielding patron to leave the establishment. In a subsequent email exchange, the correspondent confirmed that he no longer works at that venue, which is owned by Mr. Bing's new owner, Pete Cooper.

"I no longer work for Cooper and I do not speak for him. Even if I did work for him, would that matter?" Wade wrote. "I am just speaking facts to your false story. Tell me, do you even know the process of ownership change in regards to an establishment such as Bings? Even if Cooper wanted to have it remain as the decrepit shit hole that it was, not possible due to city codes and permitting. Again, I speak for nobody but myself. I call out bullshit when I see it."

Wade raises some good points  while my esteemed colleague Caleb Pershan is not a hack, and it's unclear what is false in his report, as the bar was indeed renovated, what could we have expected Cooper to do?

Can we ask people who purchase bars that are, as anyone who's been to Bing's knows, pretty divey, to risk their investments by retaining their illicit state? Is there a way to renovate a beloved icon to safety and still keep its character? One might argue that Ken Friedman and April Bloomfield did exactly that when they revamped Bing's neighbor Tosca Cafe...but I've also gotten emails damning me for suggesting that the new Tosca is just as grand as the old one, so who knows.

If we, as intelligent people, agree that the old Mr. Bing's was likely in violation of health, safety, and various other codes, where does the bullshit Wade fears truly lie? With the renovator, who scrubs the patina and character from his new acquisition, or with those of us (like Bing's eulogizer Tony Bourdain, who's certainly had a hand in a renovation or two) mourning that patina's legally-required passage?

Previously: Mr. Bing's Destroyed Into Clean, Normal Bar
The strange weird bad smell of unclear origin that had residents causing a stink of their own yesterday is back. They were crying foul in neighborhoods as far apart as the Bayview, the Tenderloin, Nob Hill, the Marina, SoMa, the Mission, and the Outer Sunset and Richmond, but now it's just Tenderloin and Nob Hill residents calling SFPD to make note of the mysterious, sulfurous odor, which KTVU writes is affecting the 800 O'Farrell block and the 900 Mason block near the Fairmont Hotel.

The odiferous events of yesterday had fingers pointing: PG&E said it had nothing to do with the smell, the Fire Department didn't have the answers, and the Coast Guard said no spills in the Bay, that they knew of, had occurred to cause the stench. But now Bay Area Air Quality Management District spokesperson Lisa Fasano tells KQED that a Chevron facility all the way in Richmond could be to blame. We're investigating the Chevron flaring incident to determine if it could be the potential source, Fasano said.

Came home to my apt smelling like rotten eggs and sulfur! Apparently the whole city can smell this too  #sanfrancisco #sf  Libby K. Arinintia (@libbywibby) December 29, 2016

Chevron, KQED writes, did not report the flaring incident initially but later acknowledged it had occurred. They don't, however, think they have anything to do with the smell in San francisco

We experienced some minor flaring, Chevron spokeswoman Leah Casey said in an email. Our initial investigation shows no connection between the flaring incident and the odors recently detected in San Francisco.

Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services, also expressed skepticism to KQED. "The distance is about 11 miles and it would have been very diluted," said Null.

And yet, another round of complaints were received by PG&E last night after 11 p.m. hours after a second incidence of flaring at Chevron. The air district is reportedly investigating that incident, too.

One further possibility that KQED floats is that the West Contra Costa Sanitary Landfill is to blame. "There have been odor complaints the last few months coming from the landfill, Randy Sawyer, the county's chief environmental health and hazardous materials, wrote in an email to KQED. They have material that is composting and has turned anaerobic. This becomes very odorous.

Previously: San Francisco Beset By Mystery Stench
Getting Sunday brunch in San Francisco is never a quick or easy proposition. Getting Sunday brunch in San Francisco when its New Years Freaking Day  which this Sunday happens to be  will be a line-waiting horrorshow of slow-drip hangover torture. Seating will be in high demand as many restaurants are closed for the holiday, restaurants that are open will be packed with low-functioning hipster zombies, and wait staff will be understandably not operating at full power. So weve listed New Years Day brunch hotspots with reputations for seating quickly and efficiently, for you traditional walk-in warrior brunchers who do not have the party weekend foresight to make advance reservations and are not keen on any the of the 900 completely redundant food delivery apps currently available to you.





While it is impossible to anticipate the number of walk-ins that will appear at a given restaurant on New Years Day, we can identify some reliable indicators of short wait times. Some places employ seating strategies that are particularly friendly to impulse visitors, like same-day only phone reservations or amply tabled food truck gatherings. In other cases, Ive data mined the Yelp comments of four-star-reviewed brunch spots and picked out those with the highest ratios of positive reviews mentioning short wait times compared to negative reviews mentioning long wait times.

The short wait-time criteria will exclude the most popular San Francisco brunch spots. But these greasy spoons and backwoods gems are open on January 1, and are among your best bets for getting your grub quickly and heading back to bed  or to bed in the first place?  on New Years Day.



Image: Simon C via Yelp

NoVY Restaurant

Noe Valleys NoVY scored best on the Yelp review wait time assessment formula, with a nearly 6/1 ratio of short-wait praise to long-wait complaints. Whats key here is that NoVY lets you call ahead to put your name on the list (they also take normal reservations) and it helps if youre willing to accept counter seating. And if youre capable of looking at fluorescent lighting on New Years morning, their cheese grater light fixtures are a rather adorable gas.

4000 24th Street between Noe Street and Castro Street (10 a.m. - 4 p.m. New Years Day)



Image: Emily C via Yelp

B Star Bar

B Star Bar seems to exist solely to handle the overflow of people who dont want to wait in line at Burma Superstar, their immensely popular sister restaurant located just a block away. And it works  getting seated at B Star is exponentially quicker. The menu is a little more Asian fusion, but they do serve the celebrated tea leaf salad of Burma Superstar fame. B Star Bar is indeed open for brunch hours, and theyve got a sweet enclosed and heated back patio to accommodate more seating.

127 Clement Street between Second Avenue and Third Avenue (10 a.m. - 3 p.m. and 5 - 9 p.m. New Years Day)



Hookt Donuts, Image via SPARK

SoMa StrEat Food Park and SPARK Food Truck Rallies

You can literally bring your dog for hair of the dog at two different food truck brunch meetups on the New Years Day menu, both good options for people who want to watch sports, play games, or dance to DJs. The SoMa StrEat Food Park has 12 food trucks and DJ Reeact scheduled to attend, while its new Mission Bay sister venue SPARK currently has eight trucks attending plus giant versions of Jenga and Connect Four. Both events will be jugged up with bottomless mimosas and sangrias, but both are kid and dog-friendly.

SoMa StrEat Food Park: 428 11th Street between Harrison Street and Bryant Street (10 a.m. - 5 p.m. New Years Day, free before 11 a.m. and $5 after)

SPARK: 601 Mission Bay Boulevard North between Fourth Street and Merrimac Street (10 a.m. - 5 p.m. New Years Day, free all day)



IMage: Jini K. via Yelp

Bernal Star

Bernal Star is another case here where the restaurant slashes wait times thanks to a large back patio. But in this case there are no patio enclosures or heaters, so youre really hoping it doesnt rain. This is the former Liberty Cafe, now specializing in gourmet burgers and, at brunch, fish tacos, American egg dishes, and the beignets pictured above.

410 Cortland Avenue between Bennington Street and Wool Street (9 a.m. - 3 p.m. and 5 - 10 p.m. New Year Day)



Ling N. via Yelp

New Village Cafe

Nob Hills New Village Cafe is not a particularly fancy place to eat. Its eccentric collection of houseplants, old-school coffee mugs and theme breakfasts will remind you more of Grandmas house than House of Prime Rib. Its your standard, breakfast-all-day hole in the wall, but you can go berserk on the side dishes because theyre all $4 or less.

1426 Polk Street between Pine Street and California Street (7 a.m. - 3 p.m. New Years Day)



Nal Q via Yelp

Pork Store Cafe on 16th Street

Here we must distinguish between two different Pork Store Cafe franchise locations. The newer Mission District Pork Store Cafe location has a larger seating capacity and shorter wait times than the original Pork Store on Haight Street. The 16th and Valencia version also has a nicer interior with that wild lampshade arrangement seen above, but both locations have a Make Your Own Bloody Mary bar to delight you prior to seating.

3122 16th Street between Valencia Street and Guerrero Street (8 a.m. - 4 p.m. New Years Day)



Image: Sarah H via Yelp

Chow

Th Chow location at Church and Market has never been known for its short wait times, but instead its comfortably boozed-up wait times at the next door Pilsner Inn where the wait staff will just come grab you when your tables ready. But this Chow location, as well as the Park Chow on Ninth Avenue, now both use a same-day table reservation system that allows you to simply call ahead and show up. The Church Street Chows back patio has tarps and heating lamps while the one on Ninth Avenue has a roofed upstairs patio, so new arrivals do get seated a little more quickly regardless of weather.

215 Church Street between 14th Street and 15th Street (8 a.m. - 10 p.m. New Years Day)

1240 Ninth Avenue between Lincoln Way and Irving Street (8 a.m. - 9:30 p.m. New Years Day)



Related:When Did We Start Calling It 'Brunch,' And When Did It Become A Thing?




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LE MARS, Iowa  A nursing home that has operated in Le Mars for 45 years will be forced to close Feb. 1 as a result of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services terminating its contract with the home, where investigators found a "history of serious quality issues."

It's the first time since 2009 that the CMS has decertified an Iowa nursing home, said Sara Throener, an executive officer for the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals. Since March 2014, CMS -- the federal agency that runs Medicare, the health care program for the elderly, and works with states to administer Medicaid, which serves low-income and disabled residents -- has denied payments to The Abbey six times.

The Abbey, the Iowa Department of Human Services, the Inspections and Appeals department and other "stakeholders" are working to find alternative housing for the facility's 23 residents, Throener said.

Don Butcher, director of The Abbey, a for-profit residential care facility, met with the residents Wednesday to notify them of the CMS decision. He released a statement thanking the residents, staff and partner agencies for their years of service, and briefly addressed the closure.

"Unfortunately, due to a changing regulatory landscape, The Abbey of Le Mars finds it impossible to continue to operate," he wrote. "We wish all our residents and their loved ones, and our staff the best in the coming year."

He declined further comment.

CMS, which found numerous violations in two surveys conducted on its behalf by the state Department of Inspections & Appeals Health Division in July and November, will cut off funding on Feb. 1 to The Abbey, 320 First Ave. S.E. The state agency conducts its surveys in conjunction with the federal surveys and files separate reports that address each agencies' concerns.

One incident cited in the November survey resulted in a $10,000 state fine against The Abbey. An unidentified resident was found dead by an unidentified certified nursing assistant on Oct. 15. The resident had a significant respiratory change and increased phlegm, which required assessments and interventions, including needed services at a hospital, prior to the death, according to the report.

Inspectors found the facility failed to assess and provide timely interventions when a resident has an onset of adverse physical conditions." The 15-page long citation report was on based on record reviews, staff and physician interviews and a review of the facility's policy and procedures.

The survey cited another incident in which an unidentified resident was injured when staffers bumped his or her head against a window sill, which resulted in the resident developing a 2-by-2 inch area of swelling on the right eyebrow with a "walnut sized goose egg with a scabbed area (gash) in the center."

In another incident, the facility was cited for failure to "provide adequate supervision and assistive devices to prevent accidents for a slightly impaired resident at risk for falls.

The report also said the facility "failed to prevent the development of pressure ulcers and failed to assess pressure ulcers to ensure and promote healing for residents."

When asked if the cited incidents were the basis for CMSs decision to terminate its agreement with the home, Throener said there was more to it than that.

I dont think there is a tipping point, I think its the totality of everything taken together, she said.

The Abbey has been on CMS's Special Focus Facility list since October 2014 based on recommendations from the agency and the state Department of Inspections and Appeals. That decision was based on the federal government's five-star rating system, which grades staffing, survey history and number of complaints against a nursing facility, on a scale of one to five, with five being the highest level of care. The Abbeys current rating is a two, according to the CMS.

The SFF was created as a "special program to stimulate improvements in their quality of care," according to the CMS.

Prior to having its Medicaid and Medicare funding cut, The Abbey had been on the SFF list for 29 months.

Once they are on the Special Focus Facility (list), we survey them every six months, Throener said. From October of 2014 to November of 2016, they didnt have a survey that didnt have a high level citation  thats the issue. Somebody could be on it for a long time if they had some surveys that didnt have high level deficiencies.
SIBLEY, Iowa | The Osceola County Sheriff's Office is investigating vandalism to several band instruments at Sibley-Ocheyedan Middle School.

The sheriff's office reported that sometime between 11 p.m. on Dec. 23 and 9 a.m. on Dec. 27, an unknown number of individuals entered the middle school and destroyed several band instruments.

Other items were also damaged.

A $300 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of the person or persons responsible.
YANKTON, S.D. -- A South Dakota Highway Patrol trooper was justified in shooting a Yankton man earlier this month during a traffic stop, the state's attorney general has determined.

A report released Thursday says Trooper Kayne Weaver shot 58-year-old Curtis Adams Sr., of Yankton, on Dec. 3 after a car chase that ended in a Yankton lawn.

The report says Weaver shot 10 rounds into the vehicle after Adams fired from inside. Authorities say one of Weaver's shots hit Adams, who also shot himself in the neck.

"It is my conclusion as attorney general that Trooper Kayne Weaver was justified in firing his weapon and using lethal force," Jackley said in the release.

Adams, who was taken to a Yankton hospital for treatment of his wound, survived and faces charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault against an officer and aggravated eluding. His attorney declined to comment.

The attorney general's report says the chase started after Adams made an illegal U-turn near the intersection of Highways 50 and 52 west of Yankton. Authorities say Adams' urine tested positive for methamphetamines, amphetamines, cannabinoids and opiates.
SIOUX CITY | Twenty years ago, Trygve "Trig" Olund signed on as a member of the Abu Bekr Shrine Hospital Dads Unit. Ten days later he transported a child to the Shriners Hospitals for Children -- Twin Cities, for the first time.

That was 290 trips ago.

Olund, according to Noble Roger Merrill, rates as "one of the 'most unforgettable Nobles' ever encountered at the Abu Bekr Shrine Center." To that end, Merrill nominates his 86-year-old driver for the Shrine's Spotlight Award.

There can't be too many people who pick up a working avocation nine years into retirement and stay with that duty for 20 years.

"I'm not special, please don't make it sound that way," Olund says during an interview at Perkins Restaurant on Gordon Drive in downtown Sioux City. "I'm merely one of about 20 drivers. I'm much more humbled by the kids we take. Really, I consider it a privilege."

Drivers affiliated with the Abu Bekr Shrine Hospital Dads Unit are often contacted a week to several days in advance when an area family needs assistance in getting a child to and from the Shriners Hospitals for Children in the Twin Cities. Families, who reside roughly from Beresford, South Dakota, to Council Bluffs, Iowa, are not charged for this service. A driver such as Olund will often meet the child and his or her parents in Sioux City and then depart for the long drive north. He often returns with the traveling party the following day.

"We used to go up and back in the same day, but that got to be an awfully long day for everyone," Olund said.

Olund attempts to warm children up by showing magic tricks and telling jokes. He also has activity books for children to read while the Abu Bekr van he's driving zooms north on Highway 60.

"It's a long enough trip for us," Olund said. "Can you imagine how long it might seem for a child who knows he's seeing a doctor once we get there? It probably seems like an eternity. I do what I can to make them feel comfortable and to enjoy it."

According to Horst Zittlau, a member of the Hospital Dads Unit, several children have come to ask for Olund as their driver. "He has a such a way of making them feel special," Zittlau said.

"By the time that the child patients with their parents have ridden in the van for the five-hour trip to get to the hospital, 'Trig' will have bonded with them and put them at complete ease," Merrill said.

At the same time, Merrill noted, Olund will have shown a fellow driver the easiest route, with alternatives for rush hour. He seems to know the best locations at which to refuel, both the vehicle and the driver, as in eateries and motels.

Zittlau was trained as a driver by Olund several years ago, a job that likely grew as a result of Olund's military duty; he ran a flight simulator to train pilots with the Iowa Air National Guard for 25 years of his 36.5-year military career. Olund, who enlisted in 1950, was called to active duty during the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The 40-plus year member of the American Legion retired from military duty in 1987.

Olund, who, with wife, Mary, plans to celebrate a 60th wedding anniversary in the upcoming year, gives thanks that their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have enjoyed their health and haven't needed the caring touch of doctors and medical staff members who make up the healthcare system of 22 Shriners Hospitals for Children. Olund also remains thankful he has the capacity to lend his hands, his time, and his sense of humor to others in need.

"He's like a godfather to these kids," Merrill concluded. "He keeps track of them like they're a family member."

Olund said it's rewarding to see children progress through the steps of care. "I'm amazed and humbled by what these children can do before and after the treatment they receive," he said.

"People often think of the Shriners as just being involved with the Shrine Circus," he added. "I tell people about the medical care and they're surprised. They ask me, 'You Shriners have hospitals?'"

Yes, and thanks to "Trig" Olund and 20 Abu Bekr Shrine drivers like him, children from all over the region have gotten to and from the facility's every floor.
KINGSLEY, Iowa | An 88-ton house-moving project crept 20 miles on Wednesday, ending 100 yards shy of its finish line.

Mother Nature, which worked well in allowing the effort to proceed on a late-December day, warmed the ground just enough early in the afternoon, preventing movers from getting the necessary traction to get the home atop its newly poured cement foundation on a 7.5-acre parcel southeast of Merrill, Iowa.

"There were no issues with wind," said Orville Vant Hul, president of Berghorst & Son, Inc., of Hull, Iowa, which moved the home. "We had 3.5 miles of gravel, which was very good. But the site itself, when it gets above freezing, gets slippery on top. It's now sitting on a rock driveway 100 yards from the foundation."

Vant Hul hoped that a cooler evening would freeze the ground, allowing his crew to finish the job Thursday morning.

Battling winter conditions amid holiday schedules can make a project like this a bit tricky. That said, Vant Hul's company worked with four utility companies (North West REC, MidAmerican Energy Co., Wiatel and Frontier Communications) and dozens of local businesses and residents in getting the Kingsley United Methodist Church's former parsonage from its site next to the church to its new surroundings.

"We were probably without power for 45 minutes," said Roger Schmid, of Kingsley State Bank in Kingsley. "We have bank branches, but our main computer is here, so we had to logistically shut everything down. (MidAmerican Energy) gave us ample warning before cutting off the power and we got through it."

"The power wasn't off long at all," said Belinda Holdcroft, owner of Bink's Diner in Kingsley. "And they let us know it was going to happen."

Much of the downtown sector in Kingsley watched the three-bedroom home creep south down Main Street before turning east on East Second Street at the main intersection. It was certainly a case where wide streets, thoroughfares that allow parallel parking in the middle of the street, made a challenging endeavor less difficult.

The house, which measures 28 feet by 50 feet, was purchased by Brett and Stacey Hoss, of Le Mars, Iowa. The couple paid a deposit of $2,500 to the church, of which they expect to get $1,000 back. The rest of the deposit will be used by the church to clean up the hole left where the home stood.

The church started advertising for someone to move the house several years ago after purchasing a more modern parsonage in a different part of town.

Terms of Wednesday's house-moving project were not disclosed by Brett Hoss or Orville Vant Hul. Such moves typically run several thousand dollars.

Brett Hoss followed the proceedings throughout the day, watching as officials with Berghorst & Son relocated "No Parking" signs and waited as professionals with utility companies took down or raised overhead power lines. Dozens of residents stood on sidewalks and in storefronts, taking video and photos of the effort.

While no move like this can be considered customary, Vant Hul has been through it thousands of times, having been associated with the company since 1964. This project was permitted for 176,000 pounds, he said, far shy of the company record, a 920,000-pound task that involved moving an electrical transformer from a rail car to a factory.

Brett Hoss, owner of Royal Iron, Inc., of Sioux City, was effusive in his praise for the house and its movers.

"One of my customers told me this summer that they were basically giving away a house in Kingsley," Hoss said. "My wife and I decided to look at it and she couldn't hardly get through the front door without saying, 'I love this house!'"

Stacey Hoss, unlike locals in and around Kingsley, didn't watch the spectacle on Wednesday. Rather, she waited for her husband to deliver good news.

"I followed it the whole way," he said. "I called to tell her it was in our driveway and she came out to see it. She was happy to see it in one piece.

"The movers have a very good reputation and they live up to it," he added. "They did a very good job."

Brett and Stacey Hoss plan to remodel the kitchen and bathrooms before moving in early this summer, thereby making this old parsonage their new home.
2016 was nothing if not memorable in the political sphere. From a wildly unpredictable presidential election to a dramatic Republican shift in Iowa, there was plenty to talk about for political reporters. Here's just a sampling of some favorite memories from the year in politics.

On Iowa Politics is a weekly news and analysis podcast which re-creates the conversations that happen when Iowa's political reporters get together after deadlines have been met. This week's show features James Q. Lynch, Bret Hayworth, Erin Murphy, Christinia Crippes and Todd Dorman.

This week's show was produced by Richard Pratt and the music heard in the podcast is courtesy of PastMasters. Chat with us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @OnIowaPolitics, and subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. Know an Iowa musician who should be on our show? Send their band sound files to oniowapolitics@gmail.com
SIOUX CITY | It was nigh impossible to escape that a presidential election played out in 2016, as Northwest Iowa was front and center in campaign appearances by Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton right before the important Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses and the Nov. 8 general election.

Trump and Clinton turned up in convention centers, theaters, colleges and union halls, drawing both confirmed supporters and Siouxlanders who were mulling how to vote in the race to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

The Journal's No. 2 story of the year was the big election year, when besides the presidential contest there were congressional, state legislature and county races in not only Iowa but also Nebraska and South Dakota.

In November, Trump easily won all three Siouxland states on his way to amassing enough electoral votes in states to become the president-elect, as he readies to take office on Jan. 20. Prior to that Trump and Clinton made a combined more than 10 stops in Siouxland over the election cycle, with Trump drawing the biggest crowds of the year.

Roughly 24 hours before Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses, a combined 2,200 people turned out Jan. 31 to see Clinton at the Sioux City Convention Center and Trump at the Orpheum Theatre. The two events, which were four blocks away, overlapped by a few minutes. Trump finished second to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in a 14-candidate field on the GOP side, while Clinton narrowly edged Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic race.

Trump also made Sioux City his last fall campaign stop in Iowa, with an event at the Sioux City Convention Center two days before the Nov. 8 election. The high number of stops in Siouxland and Iowa were by virtue of the state being one of about 10 battleground states nationally.

However, once ballots were counted, the race in Iowa wasn't as close as polls had shown. In Northwest Iowa, all 14 Journal area counties turned a deeper shade of Republican red, playing a big role in pushing the brash billionaire businessman toward winning Iowas six electoral votes.

Trump claimed at least 65 percent of the vote in 11 Northwest Iowa counties, and at least 70 percent in seven counties. Voters in Lyon and Sioux each gave Trump 81 percent of their support, making the adjacent counties two of the most Trump-centric counties in the nation.

Additionally, U.S. Rep. Steve King easily won an eighth term after surviving a first-ever primary challenge from state Rep. Rick Bertrand, R-Sioux City, in June. King won the Iowa 4th congressional district seat over Kim Weaver, a Democrat from Sheldon.

In Woodbury County, voters also shifted the balance of the county board of supervisors. For the first time in 34 years, Republicans control a majority of seats on the board. Two incumbents, Democrat Jackie Smith and Democrat-turned-independent Mark Monson, lost their races. Two Republican challengers, Keith Radig and Rocky De Witt, surged to victories. Republicans nearly made it a clean sweep, as a third candidate, Brian Miller, narrowly lost to Democrat Marty Pottebaum by 355 votes.
SIOUX CITY | A stalled pickup truck rolling down a hill jumped a retaining wall and crashed into gas meters and power lines attached to a Sioux City apartment building Wednesday.

Sioux City Police Sgt. Jay Hoogendyk said a woman driving a blue 1992 Chevy pickup was backing out of her driveway at 307 West St. after 4:30 p.m.

"The vehicle stalled out and the brakes weren't working and she rolled backwards downhill and ended up going off the retaining wall into the side yard," he said.

Hoogendyk said the truck never struck the unoccupied apartments in the 1600 block of West Third Street, but the vehicle was sitting on top of gas meters and power lines.

"She is not injured at all," he said, "just kind of shocked by the sudden drop-off."

Hoogendyk at 5 p.m. said crews with MidAmerican Energy were on their way to assess how to properly remove the truck.

"Nothing is leaking from what we can tell. We just want to get (MidAmerican) here since it is sitting on top of everything," he said. "We just want to make sure we get the vehicle out of here safely... Thankfully it turned out a lot better than it could have been."

Hoogendyk said he did not know whether the woman would be cited for the accident, but suggested it may be a matter for her and the property owner to figure out insurance-wise.
Recent terrorist attacks in Ankara, Turkey, and Berlin, Germany, add to a growing list of incidents that are becoming increasingly difficult to remember. Does one begin the list with the plane hijackings in the '60s and '70s, or the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, or the USS Cole attack in 2000, or the second World Trade Center attack in 2001, or Ft. Hood, San Bernardino, Orlando, Paris or Nice? And that's not all of them, nor will it be the end of them, if we don't have a better response.

During the great wave of immigration in the early 20th century, the United States barred those afflicted with tuberculosis, venereal disease, trachoma and other serious diseases from entering the country. Now a different kind of infection is invading Europe and increasingly the United States. It's called radical Islamic terrorism. The West continues to admit people from terrorist countries, people who have been infected with this killer disease, seemingly fearing the affliction less than being labeled intolerant.

How is that working out? So afraid of being charged with Islamophobia, German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted more than 1 million refugees in 2015 from nations that breed terrorists. It was inevitable that some would come to destroy rather than assimilate.

Mounting evidence that many of these people are time bombs waiting to explode still fails to open eyes that have been deliberately shut.

Take the case of a 24-year-old Tunisian named Anis Amri, the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack, shot dead by authorities on Friday in Milan, Italy. Amri was one of a number of suspected terrorists who have come from Tunisia, a country that has reportedly sent more fighters to Syria than any other. The Charlie Hebdo attacker was Tunisian, as was the man who drove a truck into a crowd in Nice on Bastille Day, killing 86 people. ISIS had urged similar attacks be made and, apparently, the Berlin suspect obeyed.

The UK Daily Mail reports Amri was jailed four years ago in Italy for burning down a school. He also was arrested three times in Germany before giving police the slip earlier this month. German authorities reportedly were in touch with Tunisian officials to get Amri a passport so he could be deported. But Tunis rejected the request, saying it had no record of his ever being a citizen.

Was this a lie, or was he a plant? We may never know.

Chancellor Merkel's response to all of this is a case of too little, too late. She wants to ban Muslim women from wearing full-face veils. That is a political move, not a strategic one. It will not deter terrorists from their mission, as more enter Germany hidden among legitimate refugees.

Responding to the latest terrorist attacks, President-elect Donald Trump said he has been proved "100 percent correct" when it comes to his plans to curtail Muslim immigrants from nations that spawn terrorists. Given the number already in Europe or those who have been self-radicalized and allowed into the U.S., it may be too late.

The West can either acquiesce or fight back. Trump wants to fight back. It's better than waiting for the next attack, hoping we're not the target.
I am proud of the new Nebraska license plate which, I believe, is a good representation for our sesquicentennial year.

First, it is a nod to a wonderful piece of art and its creator. Lee Lawrie, the creator of the Sower Statue, wanted to represent families trying to make a living on the Great Plains. He actually saw farmers spreading grain over the fields when he was a youth in Illinois. Throughout his lifetime, he created many statues, including the Atlas Statue at Rockefeller Center.

Next, it is a nod to the colors of our state flag, blue and gold.

Lastly, it's a nod to the immigrants who struggled to make a home on the prairie. Lawrie immigrated to the U.S. from Germany at age four.

I love the mountain lions and the Cornhuskers, but I feel that this plate is good for this historical year. It represents our history. - Linda Healy, South Sioux City, Neb.
SOUTH SIOUX CITY | South Sioux City is taking another step to reroute industrial sewage away from a neighborhood that has been plagued by sewer gas for the past three months.

The city will begin a $60,000 project at 39th Street and Dakota Avenue this week that will keep waste originating from two industries -- Archer-Daniels Midland Animal Nutrition and Bimbo Bakeries -- from going east along 39th Street.

After about two blocks-worth of line is adjusted, the sewage will instead go north, returning to the sewer lines it had flowed through until the city performed a multi-million-dollar sewer project in August that rerouted the sewage to the east.

"This is just putting this wastewater back the way it's been running for decades," said Bob Livermore, South Sioux City's public works director.

In October, residents in the five-block area along 39th Street near Red Bird Lane and Lemasa Drive were driven from their homes due to potentially toxic hydrogen sulfide gas. About 10 families are still staying in hotels ever since.

The gas was originally tied to Big Ox Energy, a renewable fuels plant that shares a sewer line with the residences and went online around the same time the odors developed. Big Ox stopped sending waste into the sewer lines shortly afterward, and city officials say tests show hydrogen sulfide levels are back to normal in the lines and manholes. But both the city and the affected residents acknowledge strong odors persist.

The city's latest hydrogen sulfide testing, taken Dec. 24 at various points along the line, suggest Big Ox may not be the only culprit.

"Sampling results have shown H2S odors from other sources than the Roth Industrial Park (where Big Ox is located). Further investigation is underway to determine the source and extent of the issue," the city said in the report.

A news release Wednesday from the city of South Sioux City said work on changing the direction of the industrial sewage is expected to start this week and will take approximately 10 days. The city has hired South Sioux City engineering firm Olsson Associates, the same company that performed the sewer work in August.

The release said the city added test points along Dakota Avenue Wednesday to monitor hydrogen sulfide gas to create a base point for the levels in this area.

Once the line has been redirected, the city will continue to monitor the area, especially near homes along Red Bird Lane, the release said.

The city has been adding hydrogen peroxide, which Livermore said is a common way to treat hydrogen sulfide gas, into the line.

Another effort to redirect industrial sewage in the area concluded about two weeks ago, Livermore said, when a new force main went online that redirects sewage from the Roth Industrial Park away from the affected neighborhood. But, as odors persist in the homes, Livermore said the city is doing the latest project to continue separating the residential area from industrial sewage.

Regarding the new project, displaced South Sioux City resident Mike Klassen said the residents' desire is for the industry waste to go on separate lines from the residential sewage, and he wants to be sure that the city does not simply push the problems on to a different group of homes.

He said his concern is that there may be other harmful gases in his home.

"Im not convinced that I have any H2S in my house, but Im convinced that theres something horrible when I go in there," he said.

About one dozen displaced residents approached the South Sioux City Council Tuesday with a proposed agreement stating that residents would find temporary housing after Jan. 31 and pay for it out of their pockets for six months if Big Ox or the city would pay for the expenses while the house is vacant. On the form, the residents filled out how much their mortgages, insurance and utilities cost a month.

City officials have not publicly commented on the proposal.
You gotta fight... for your right... to huff paint

STORM LAKE, Iowa -- I don't think this is what his mom meant when she wanted him to go back to church.

Police say a Storm Lake man huffed paint in a church and then got into a fight with his family because of it before being arrested Friday.

Alejandro Vargas-Lopez, 18, was arrested and charged with criminal mischief and huffing, both misdemeanors.

Police say a staff member at St. Mary's Church, 320 Seneca St., reported that someone entered the church and spilled silver paint on the tile floor, carpeting and chair.

On Saturday, police were once again called to St. Mary's Church after a staff member saw a man leaving the building who appeared to have been huffing paint in the church.

At 7:42 p.m. on Sunday, officers responded to 129 Seneca St. for a domestic disturbance. There, the police discovered Vargas-Lopez arguing with family members because he had been huffing paint.

Police said in a release that he appeared to be intoxicated from huffing chemicals.

The paint, police said, matched the color that was spilled on the floor of the church the day before.

Vargas-Lopez was arrested and transported to Buena Vista County Jail.

Hamburglar seeks new career

SIOUX CITY | Hey, that chicken is hard to resist.

Deputies have made an arrest in connection to the burglary at a Northwest Iowa restaurant in June.

The Cherokee County Sheriff's Office last Thursday arrested Matthew Templeman, 21, of Pierson, Iowa. A sheriff's office release said Templeman was arrested on a felony burglary charge for his actions in a June 18 incident at Pizza Ranch in Marcus, Iowa.

Officers received information in October that led them to arrest Templeman. He is being held in Cherokee County Jail.
1. Acoustic All-Stars

Acoustic sets can be some of the most enjoyable live music experiences to witness. The natural sound and simplistic setup leaves artists vulnerable, which often helps them to deliver intimate and memorable performances. Local musicians will exude their raw talent during Hard Rock's Sioux City Acoustic All-Stars show. Artists include: Ben Grillet, Heath Davis, Johnny Vee, Mitch and Emily Martin and Bryan and Tiffany Jurries. Enjoy a night of cover songs and originals by some of the finest talent the city has to offer. The show begins at 8 p.m. Thursday (Dec. 29) at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sioux City.

2. Hardy har har

Midwest comedian Don Reese is back in town for a night of laughter. This stand-up comic has performed in more than 40 states during his career, delivering his own brand of comedy he describes as "stand-up comedy for people who are tired of stand-up comedy." Quite the slogan, right? See the hilarious show at 8 p.m. Wednesday (Jan. 4) at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sioux City.

3. Manifest the flow

Erin Kuehl of Evolve Yoga & Wellness will host a workshop at 7 p.m. Friday (Dec. 30) that focuses on manifesting your life and the experiences within it. The workshop begins with a lecture and a discussion with a guided candlelight flow afterwards. Connect your thoughts and dreams to the physical body.

4. Art & poetry

Ah, the perfect pair. The art and poetry exhibit titled "Intrepid Coalescing" is a collaboration by artist Brian Joel Damon and writer Paula Bosco Damon of South Dakota. The display features 19 paintings and prints alongside select poetry pieces. The exhibition is open at North Sioux City Community Library from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays; 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Thursdays; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturdays; closed Sunday.

5. Ice fight

The weather may be cooling down but the action is just starting to heat up at the Tyson Events Center. Our very own Sioux City Musketeers are scheduled to take on the Omaha Lancers at 7:05 p.m. Saturday (Dec. 31). Grab your Muskies gear and cheer on your favorite players during this icy cold bout. Go Muskies!

6. New Year's shenanigans

Holy crap. We just realized something: New Year's Eve is on a Saturday. Hell yeah, baby! Time to party it up! Uh, responsibly, of course. Bars around town have armed themselves with bottles upon bottles of champagne in celebration of the New Year. With a couple shots here and there, we can all forget 2016 and hope for the best in 2017.
By the time the New Year arrives and tables are speckled with champagne foam, Buffalo Alice can rest easy knowing its survived another year. Despite the national grievances dotted through 2016s timeline, the Sioux City bar stands strong at 40 years of age.

We like to think the bar has been celebrating its birthday every day since Jan. 1, 2016. Customers continue to fill up the Historic Fourth Street bar and restaurant, hankering for a large pizza and beer. Buffalo Alice offers simple pleasures in an environment thats different than any other place in town.

Tiffany Nettleton has owned Buffalo Alice for the past four years, but has been working at the establishment for nearly 20 years. The Weekender spoke with Nettleton about BAs 40-year accomplishment and its continued popularity.

How does it feel to have the bar around for that long?

When I thought about it, I thought, Well thats kind of cool. Its still, at times, exhausting, but its something Ive worked at ever since I was younger. So it feels normal to me. With as many restaurants and bars that you see come and go, it means something to people in Sioux City because people often talk about coming back.

Were pretty lucky. There are a big handful of those places, not just Buffalo Alice, that people come home to. So it feels cool to be a part of something thats a Sioux City staple.

Since youve worked there for quite a while, what sort of things have changed about the bar?

Theres a lot of things that have changed and there are a lot of things that have stayed the same. Its been an uphill battle. When I first started, a lot of us were just mean. When youre younger theres a fine line between mean and funny that maybe I wasnt aware of. Thats something we have worked towards changing as well as the ability to help people that we work with.

What would you say Buffalo Alice's identity has been like? What kind of place is it?

Just the right amount of wrong. That's the exact way to describe it. It's laid-back, you know. I don't know how this place has even survived this long, but it's just that awesome that it just does. It just works and the customers love it.

It's the customers that actually kept this place open. We have the best -- I just got goosebumps right now -- the best customers. You couldn't find them anywhere else. Everyone just gets it. I am so lucky with not only the customers but the staff that I work with.

What is the reason Buffalo Alice has been able to stick around for as long as it has?

I would say, for starters, high quality food. We use fresh dough every day, we use fresh product every day. And it's just not that serious. It's just Bud Light and pizza. People have real problems and this isn't a f***ing problem. It's just pizza and beer. And I think people get that.

There are real friendships here. I know that happens at every restaurant, but I want to feel like it happens a lot here. We're fun people. Life's too short not to have fun.

I think that what makes it so successful is how much my employees and myself just love each other. That is probably the main reason.

To what would you attribute Buffalo Alice's popularity?

I have no idea! If I could figure that out, I would bottle it up and become a millionaire. I have no idea why this place works, because everything that says it shouldn't, it shouldn't but it does.

What do you value most about Buffalo Alice?

The opportunity to work with so many different people. All the kids that are in high school and have graduated college and the people that have worked here for years. And also the customers and the in-house family we have. Whether you're on payroll or the other side of the bar, it's a real family unit. I can't even find words for it.
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Ltd., Alere Medical Pakistan (Private) Limited, Alere Medical Private Limited, Alere North America LLC, Alere Oy Ab, Alere Philippines Inc., Alere Phoenix ACQ Inc., Alere Pte Ltd, Alere S.A., Alere S.r.l., Alere S/A, Alere SAS, Alere San Diego Inc., Alere Scarborough Inc., Alere Spain S.L., Alere Switzerland GmbH, Alere Technologies GmbH, Alere Technologies Holdings Limited, Alere Technologies Limited, Alere Toxicology AB, Alere Toxicology Inc., Alere Toxicology S.r.l., Alere Toxicology Services Inc., Alere Toxicology plc, Alere UK Holdings Limited, Alere UK Subco Limited, Alere ULC, Alere US Holdings LLC, Alere s.r.o., Alisoc Investment & Co, Amedica Biotech Inc., Ameditech Inc., American Generics S.A.S., American Medical Supplies Inc., American Pharmacist Inc., Antares S.A., Apica Cardiovascular Limited, Aquagestion Capacitacion S.A., Aquagestion S.A., Arriva Medical LLC, Arriva Medical Philippines Inc., Arvis Investments Limited, Atlas Farmaceutica S.A., Avee Laboratories Inc., Axis-Shield AD III AS, Axis-Shield AD IV AS, Axis-Shield AS, Axis-Shield Diagnostics Limited, Axis-Shield Ltd., BBI Animal Health Limited, BBI Diagnostics Group 2 Public Limited Company, Banco de Vida S.A., Bioabsorbable Vascular Solutions Inc., Bioalgae S.A., Biohealth LLC, Biosite Incorporated, Bosque Bonito S.A., Branan Medical Corporation, Brandex Europe C.V., British Colloids Limited, CFR Chile S.A., CFR Interamericas EL Salvador Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, CFR Interamericas Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, CFR Interamericas Panama S.A., CFR Pharmaceuticals, California Property Holdings III LLC, CardioMEMS LLC, Caripharm Inc., Cephea Valve Technologies, Cephea Valve Technologies Inc., Colibri Medical Aktiebolag, Comercializadora y Distribuidora CFR Interamericas Honduras S.A., Concateno South Limited, Concateno UK Limited, Consorcio Tecnologico en Biomedicina Clinico-Molecular S.A., Continuum Services LLC, Cozart Limited, Dextech S.A., Diagnostik Nord GmbH, Distribuciones Uquifa S.A.S., Domesco Medical Import-Export Joint-Stock Corporation, Duphar International Research B.V., Endocardial Solutions, Epocal (US) Inc, Esprit de Vie S.A., European Chemicals & Co, European Drug Testing Service EDTS AB, European Services S.A., Evalve Inc., Evalve International Inc., FARMINDUSTRIA S.A., Fada Pharma Paraguay Sociedad Anonima, Fadapharma del Ecuador S.A., Farmaceutica Mont Blanc S.L., Farmacologia Em Aquicultura Veterinaria Ltda., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV Ecuador S.A., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV S.A., Fernwood Investment S.A., First Check Diagnostics LLC, Focus Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Forensics Limited, Forestcreek Overseas S.A., Fournier Pharma Corp., Fournier Pharma GmbH, Fournier Pharmaceuticals Limited, Framed B.V., Gabmed GmbH, Garden Hills LLC, Global Analytical Development LLC, Globapharm & CO LP, Glomed Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Golnorth Investments S.A., Gynocare Limited, Gynopharm Sociedad Anonima, Gynopharm de Centroamerica S.A., Gynopharm de Venezuela C.A., Hi-Tronics Designs Inc., IDEV Technologies Inc., IG Innovations Limited, IMTC Finance B.V., IMTC Holdings B.V., IMTC Technologies Inc., Ibis Biosciences LLC, Igloo Zone Chile S.A., Igloo Zone S.L., Inmobiliaria Naknek S.A.C., Innovacon Inc., Instant Tech Subsidiary Acquisition Inc., Instant Technologies Inc., Instituto de Criopreservacion de Chile S.A., Integrated Vascular Systems Inc., Inverness Canadian Acquisition Corporation, Inverness Medical (Beijing) Co. 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C.V., NeuroTherm LLC, Normann Pharma-Handels GmbH, North Shore Properties Inc., Novamedi S.A., Novasalud.com S.A., Nutravida S.A., OJSC Voronezhkhimpharm, Omnilab Iberia Sociedad Limitada, OptiMedica, Orgenics France SAS, Orgenics International Holdings B.V., Orgenics Ltd., PBM-Selfcare LLC, PDD II LLC, PDD LLC, PT Alere Health, PT. Abbott Indonesia, PT. Abbott Products Indonesia, Pacesetter Inc., Pantech (RF) (PTY) LTD, Pembrooke Occupational Health Inc., Penagos S.A., Pharma International Sociedad Anonima, Pharmaceutical Technologies (Pharmatech) S.A., Pharmatech Boliviana S.A., Polygon Labs S.A., Quality Assured Services Inc., RF Medical Holdings LLC, RTL Holdings Inc., Ramses Business Corp., Recben Xenerics Farmaceutica Limitada, Redwood Toxicology Laboratory Inc., Rich Horizons International Limited, SC VEROPHARM, SJ Medical Mexico S de R.L. de C.V., SJM International Inc., SJM Thunder Holding Company, SPDH Inc., Saboya Enterprises Corporation, Salviac Limited, Scanax AS, Sealing Solutions Inc., Selfcare Technology Inc., Shandong Abbott Dairy Product Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Medical Devices Science and Technology Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Shanghai Si Fa Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Sinensix & Co., Spinal Modulation LLC, St. Jude Medical, St. Jude Medical AB, St. Jude Medical ATG Inc., St. Jude Medical Argentina S.A., St. Jude Medical Asia Pacific Holdings GK, St. Jude Medical Atrial Fibrillation Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Brasil Ltda., St. Jude Medical Business Services Inc., St. Jude Medical Cardiology Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Colombia Ltda., St. Jude Medical Coordination Center, St. Jude Medical Costa Rica Limitada, St. Jude Medical Europe Inc., St. Jude Medical Export Ges.m.b.H., St. Jude Medical GVA Sarl, St. Jude Medical Holdings B.V., St. Jude Medical India Private Limited, St. Jude Medical International Holding, St. Jude Medical LLC, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings II, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings NT, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings SMI S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings TC S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Mexico Business Services S. de R.L. de C.V., St. Jude Medical Middle East DMCC, St. Jude Medical Operations (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., St. Jude Medical Puerto Rico LLC, St. Jude Medical S.C. Inc., St. Jude Medical Systems AB, St. Jude Medical Turkey Medikal Urunler Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Standard Diagnostics Inc., Standing Stone LLC, Swan-Myers Incorporated, TC1 LLC, Tendyne Holdings Inc., Tendyne Medical Inc., Thoratec Delaware LLC, Thoratec Europe Limited, Thoratec LLC, Thoratec Switzerland GmbH, Tobal Products Incorporated, Topera GmbH in Liquidation, Topera Inc., Tremora S.A., Tuenir S.A., TwistDx, UAB Abbott Laboratories, UAB Abbott Medical Lithuania, Union-Madison Realty Company Inc., Unipath Limited (dba Alere International/aka Cranfield), Unipath Management Limited, Unipath Pension Trustee Limited, Veropharm, Veropharm Limited Liability Partnership, Vida Cell Inversiones S.A., Vida Cell S.A., Vivalsol, W&R Pharma Handels GmbH, Western Pharmaceuticals S.A., X Technologies Inc., Yissum Holding Limited, ZonePerfect Nutrition Company, eScreen Canada ULC, eScreen Inc.,      ( ), and Abbott Laboratories Baltics.

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Cardinal Health, Inc. operates as an integrated healthcare services and products company in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and internationally. It provides customized solutions for hospitals, healthcare systems, pharmacies, ambulatory surgery centers, clinical laboratories, physician offices, and patients in the home. The company operates in two segments, Pharmaceutical and Medical. The Pharmaceutical segment distributes branded and generic pharmaceutical, specialty pharmaceutical, and over-the-counter healthcare and consumer products. The segment also provides services to pharmaceutical manufacturers and healthcare providers for specialty pharmaceutical products; operates nuclear pharmacies and radiopharmaceutical manufacturing facilities; repackages generic pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter healthcare products; and offers medication therapy management and patient outcomes services to hospitals, other healthcare providers, and payers, as well as provides pharmacy management services to hospitals. The Medical segment manufactures, sources, and distributes Cardinal Health branded medical, surgical, and laboratory products and devices that include exam and surgical gloves; needles, syringe, and sharps disposals; compressions; incontinences; nutritional delivery products; wound care products; single-use surgical drapes, gowns, and apparels; fluid suction and collection systems; urology products; operating room supply products; and electrode product lines. The segment also distributes a range of national brand products, including medical, surgical, and laboratory products; provides supply chain services and solutions to hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, clinical laboratories, and other healthcare providers; and assembles and sells sterile, and non-sterile procedure kits. The company was incorporated in 1979 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ohio.
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The following companies are subsidiares of Molina Healthcare: Aetna & Humana - Medicare Advantage, Affinity Health Plan, AmericanWork Inc., Better Health Network, Camelot Care Centers Inc, Children's Behavioral Health Inc., Choices Group Inc., College Community Services, Dockside Services Inc, Family Preservation Services Inc., Family Preservation Services of Florida Inc., Family Preservation Services of North Carolina Inc., Family Preservation Services of Washington D.C. Inc., Family Preservation Services of West Virginia Inc., Florida NetPASS LLC, Hclb Inc., Magellan Complete Care, Maple Star Nevada Inc., Maple Star Oregon Inc., Mercy CarePlus, Molina Clinical Services LLC, Molina Healthcare Data Center Inc., Molina Healthcare of Arizona Inc., Molina Healthcare of California, Molina Healthcare of Florida Inc., Molina Healthcare of Georgia Inc., Molina Healthcare of Illinois Inc., Molina Healthcare of Iowa Inc., Molina Healthcare of Louisiana Inc., Molina Healthcare of Maryland Inc., Molina Healthcare of Michigan Inc., Molina Healthcare of Mississippi Inc., Molina Healthcare of Nevada Inc., Molina Healthcare of New Mexico Inc., Molina Healthcare of New York Inc., Molina Healthcare of North Carolina Inc., Molina Healthcare of Ohio Inc., Molina Healthcare of Oklahoma Inc., Molina Healthcare of Pennsylvania Inc., Molina Healthcare of Puerto Rico Inc., Molina Healthcare of South Carolina LLC, Molina Healthcare of Texas Inc., Molina Healthcare of Texas Insurance Company, Molina Healthcare of Utah Inc., Molina Healthcare of Virginia Inc., Molina Healthcare of Washington Inc., Molina Healthcare of Wisconsin Inc., Molina Holdings Corporation, Molina Hospital Management LLC, Molina Information Systems LLC dba Molina Medicaid Solutions, Molina Medical Management Inc., Molina Pathways LLC, Molina Pathways of Texas Inc., Molina Youth Academy, NextLevel Health Illinois, Pathways Community Corrections Inc., Pathways Community Services LLC, Pathways Community Support of Texas Inc., Pathways Health and Community Support LLC, Pathways Human Services LLC., Pathways of Arizona Inc., Pathways of Delaware Inc., Pathways of Idaho LLC, Pathways of Maine Inc., Pathways of Massachusetts LLC, Pathways of Oklahoma Inc., Pathways of Washington Inc., Providence Community Services, Providence Human Services, Raystown Developmental Services Inc., The Game of Work LLC, The RedCo Group Inc., Total Care Medicaid plan, Transitional Family Services Inc., Unisys -Health Information Management, and YourCare Health Plan.

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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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Pediatrix Medical Group, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides newborn, maternal-fetal, pediatric cardiology, and other pediatric subspecialty care services in the United States and Puerto Rico. It offers neonatal care services, such as clinical care to babies born prematurely or with complications within specific units at hospitals through neonatal physician subspecialists, neonatal nurse practitioners, and other pediatric clinicians. The company also provides maternal-fetal care services, including inpatient and office-based clinical care to expectant mothers and unborn babies through affiliated maternal-fetal medicine subspecialists, as well as obstetricians and other clinicians, including maternal-fetal nurse practitioners, certified nurse mid-wives, ultrasonographers, and genetic counselors. In addition, it offers pediatric cardiology care services comprising inpatient and office-based pediatric cardiology care of the fetus, infant, child, and adolescent patient with congenital heart defects and acquired heart disease, as well as adults with congenital heart defects through affiliated pediatric cardiologist subspecialists and other related clinical professionals; and specialized cardiac care to the fetus, neonatal and pediatric patients. Further, the company provides other pediatric subspecialty care services through pediatric subspecialists, such as pediatric intensivists, pediatric hospitalists, pediatric surgeons, and pediatric ophthalmologists, as well as pediatric ear, nose, and throat physicians; and support services in the areas of hospitals, primarily in the pediatric emergency rooms, labor and delivery areas, and nursery and pediatric departments. As of February 17, 2022, it operated a network of approximately 2,700 physicians. The company was formerly known as MEDNAX, Inc. and changed its name to Pediatrix Medical Group, Inc. in July 2022. Pediatrix Medical Group, Inc. was founded in 1979 and is based in Sunrise, Florida.
Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, provides telecommunication services in Taiwan and internationally. It operates through Domestic Fixed Communications Business, Mobile Communications Business, Internet Business, International Fixed Communications Business, and Others segments. The company offers local and domestic long-distance telephone, broadband access, and related services; information and communication technology and VAS services; and interconnection with its fixed-line network to other mobile and fixed-line operators. It also provides mobile; HiNet Internet, data communication, and cloud; Internet data center; and international long-distance telephone and data services. In addition, the company distributes and sells mobile handsets, data cards, electronic materials, and computing and business machinery equipment and software; designs, develops, manufactures, sells, and services semiconductor testing components, printed circuit boards, and electronic components and finished products, and automatic license plate recognition software and hardware products. Further, it offers real estate development and property management; system, network, and communications integration; intelligent buildings and energy network; digital information supply and advertisement; property and liability insurance agency; family education; computing equipment installation; management consultancy; data processing; telecommunication engineering; Internet identify; and information and communication solution services. Additionally, the company provides software design services, and Internet contents production and play services; motion picture production and distribution; and energy saving solutions and international circuits, and services for electronic parts and machinery processed products. The company was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Taipei City, Taiwan.
War/Peace  December 29, 2016  Judith Deutsch

The enormity, complexity and fall-out of the Syrian war calls for urgent attention. Current events in Aleppo bring to the fore the unreliability of information and dichotomous political positions that contribute to obstruction and paralysis in the antiwar movement. Conflicting reports make unclear the number of civilians and fighters who have been evacuated, their condition, their political beliefs, their situation as refugees in Idlib, the civilian toll perpetrated by all sides. Instead of verifiable facts and pertinent history, much that is said about Aleppo is speculation about the future, about whether the re-taking of rebel areas of Aleppo will consolidate Bashar al-Assads hold or whether it will engender even worse violence. There is much second guessing of the imperial and geopolitical aims of international players.

Perhaps one significant difference as of December 20th is that Russia and China have not vetoed UN Security Council Resolution 2328 (2016) Demanding immediate, unhindered access for observation of monitoring civilian evacuations from Aleppo. Since the onset of the war, Russia vetoed six and China vetoed five Security Council resolutions. Also, Iran, Russia, and Turkey have just agreed to guarantee Syrian peace talks but have been unwilling to include other parties in their planning.

Debating the Syrian War

In October, Bassam Haddad wrote in The Nation ,

The Debate Over Syria Has Reached a Dead End, that two warring narratives now dominate discussions  and neither is

sufficient. Haddad argued that the heart-wrenching news from Syria have [has] been saturated with data, analysis, information, and misinformation on developments and that both sides have adopted hypocritical stances regarding intervention.

The binary positions leave out the effects of recent history, especially the impunity accorded to nation states acting in violation of international law: the UN Iraq sanctions that starved a half million

Iraqi children, the sieges of Fallujah and Gaza, the uses of unconventional weapons, the Saudi, U.S., Israeli, Syrian attacks on health facilities and on civilians, and the atrocities perpetrated against civilians and their essential infrastructure by most modern states. Gilbert Achcar writes of this same hypocrisy and narrowness in Arab political opinion with no third side condemning bombing in itself as criminal. One side condemns the Syrian/Russian bombing of Syrian cities but keeps silent about the Saudi bombing of Yemeni cities and rural

areas, and vice versa. He writes that both these powers and their allies aim to crush the revolutionary process.

There is much division on the Left. At one pole is the U.S.-based United National Antiwar Coalitions (UNAC) full support of the Assad regime. Richard Fidler summarizes and critiques a range of other positions of the Western Left noting a division regarding Syria on (1) whether to focus on an antiwar movement targeting all factions or only to fight against your own governments drive to war, or (2) whether to support the Syrian people against the forces of imperialism and authoritarianism. Fidler disagrees with this dichotomizing in that building mass antiwar movements is precisely the clearest and most direct way to express solidarity with the victims of imperialist war and the democratic and revolutionary forces on a global scale.

The current French antiwar movement, for example, is at least actively demanding an immediate end to the bombing in Syria, departure of foreign militias and occupation armies, international prosecution of war criminals, French government assurance of protection of Syrian people who do not have the necessary means to defend themselves against the air bombing, access to the besieged and starving populations in coordination with elected local councils, and the freeing of all political prisoners. However, these demands leave out some of the crucial details that beleaguer effectiveness: what are the necessary means of defense against bombing, and what will the French actually offer to the besieged population?

Recent History

From Samer Abbouds Syria (Polity, 2016), often neglected points about the political economy and recent history can be summarized.

Abboud traces the history from the Ottoman governance through the French mandate, the Baath era socialist policies, and the severe effects of neoliberal reorganization up to the uprising. Neoliberal restructuring led to mass internal migration from farms to rural

slums: from the 1990s on, the Syrian government withdrew seed and fertilizer subsidies, shifted from cooperative models to implementing new land laws that reoriented ownership and usage rights away from the cooperative models of the previous two

decades, and encouraged strategic crops over subsidized diverse production. By the late 2000s, around 20 per cent of the total Syrian population lived in some sort of slum village (p. 38).

slums: from the 1990s on, the Syrian government withdrew seed and fertilizer subsidies, shifted from cooperative models to implementing new land laws that reoriented ownership and usage rights away from the cooperative models of the previous two decades, and encouraged strategic crops over subsidized diverse production. By the late 2000s, around 20 per cent of the total Syrian population lived in some sort of slum village (p. 38). Throughout the Arab world, neoliberal restructuring led to a more militarized, sectarian, and repressive authoritarianism (p. 78).

The Bashar al-Assad regime tolerated some civil society groups during the period of marketization as a means of alleviating some of the social hardships. The 2005 Damascus Declaration was a product of highly diverse individuals and groups who were committed to

nonviolence, democracy, oppositional unity, and democratic change. However, the Syrian regime suffocated political activity and the signatories were never able to translate their cooperation into sustained pressure against the regime or into an institutional

arrangement that could take collective leadership of the opposition. Currently, civil society groups are not yet cohesive at a national level and are caught between the violent opposition rebel forces and the brutal government alignment.

Moreover, these civil society groups are dependent on armed groups to procure goods through the war economy. Perhaps the largest challenge facing Syrian civil society is in being taken seriously as a political actor in the uprising. The militarization of the

uprising has deflected attention away from civil initiatives and the resiliency of nonviolence in Syria (p. 72).

nonviolence, democracy, oppositional unity, and democratic change. However, the Syrian regime suffocated political activity and the signatories were never able to translate their cooperation into sustained pressure against the regime or into an institutional arrangement that could take collective leadership of the opposition. Currently, civil society groups are not yet cohesive at a national level and are caught between the violent opposition rebel forces and the brutal government alignment. Moreover, these civil society groups are dependent on armed groups to procure goods through the war economy. Perhaps the largest challenge facing Syrian civil society is in being taken seriously as a political actor in the uprising. The militarization of the uprising has deflected attention away from civil initiatives and the resiliency of nonviolence in Syria (p. 72). Abboud covers the failure of UN negotiators Kofi Annan, Lakhdar Brahimi, and de Mistura to bring about a political settlement. 4.8 million

Syrians have fled, and 6.1 million are internally displaced. 2.7 million are in Turkey, 1.5 million in Lebanon, and 1.2 million in

Jordan. Canada has taken in 36,000 Syrians, Russia 5,000, and the U.S. has accepted 16,000 people.

Syrians have fled, and 6.1 million are internally displaced. 2.7 million are in Turkey, 1.5 million in Lebanon, and 1.2 million in Jordan. Canada has taken in 36,000 Syrians, Russia 5,000, and the U.S. has accepted 16,000 people. Abboud reviews the failures to deal with the continued use of chemical weapons. Following the agreement between Russia and the U.S. on

Syrias chemical weapons, there were as many as 78 documented breaches. Barrel bombs deliver chlorine gas and are randomly tossed

on populated areas. Without any significant political pressure exerted by the UN on any of the warring sides, the security and political elements of the resolutions rang hollow (p. 149).

Syrias chemical weapons, there were as many as 78 documented breaches. Barrel bombs deliver chlorine gas and are randomly tossed on populated areas. Without any significant political pressure exerted by the UN on any of the warring sides, the security and political elements of the resolutions rang hollow (p. 149). Armed factions include the Free Syrian Army, networked rebel groups, Islamist groups, and the regime coalition: The question of whether to arm rebels has been in the West a question of ensuring that weapons are controlled by moderate rather than

extremist forces. Yet, as the rebel landscape beyond ISIS demonstrates, such distinctions are false ones and do not accurately reflect realities and the fluidity of alliances on the ground and the levels of cooperation between rebel groups. The dispersed and

fragmented structure of the armed opposition is such that no brigades or unit exercise autonomy from one another [U]nraveling their ideological and political affinities and interests [is] virtually impossible. The external alliances are equally fluid

and, many of the more hardline groups have received their support from private donors (pp. 120-161).

Phyllis Bennis calls for stopping the Global War on Terror. In her October, 2016 article in The Nation , The War in Syrian Can Not Be Won. But It Can Be Ended, Bennis contended that the left is profoundly divided over the [Syrian] conflict, but we should at least agree on a set of principles to end it. She proposed:

You cant defeat terrorism with war, so stop killing people and destroying cities in the name of stopping others from killing people  that means stop the airstrikes and bombing, withdraw the troops and Special Forces, make no boots on the ground real. Work to achieve a full arms embargo on all sides, challenging the U.S. and global arms industry. Stop the train-and-equip programs. Stop allowing U.S. allies to send weapons into Syria, making clear that if they continue they will lose all access to U.S. arms sales. Convincing Russia and Iran to stop arming the Syrian regime will become more realistic when the United States and its allies stop arming the other side. Create new diplomatic, not military, partnerships involving outside powers and those inside Syria, including regional governments and other actors. Real diplomacy for ending war must be at center stage, not fake diplomacy designed to enable joint bombing campaigns. All must be at the table, including Syrian civil society, women, and the nonviolent opposition as well as armed actors. Support UN efforts toward local cease-fires and new diplomacy. Increase U.S. support for refugees and other regional humanitarian needs. Make good on all pledges to UN funds, and vastly increase money and aid to UN agencies as well as the number of refugees welcomed for resettlement in the United States

The Global Arms Race

The U.S. military industrial complex extends to over one thousand overseas bases; U.S. arms flow directly or through proxies throughout

the Middle East. Any effective action to end the Syrian war, must also take on U.S. involvement and its military. The Stockholm

International Peace Research Institutes figure for overall 2016 military spending is over $1.2-trillion. The Institute for Economics and Peaces Global Peace Index more comprehensive estimate of the economic impact of violence was $13.6-trillion in 2015.

The arms trade also includes the black market with its ties to offshore banking, arms captured from government supplies or left over by the

U.S. in Iraq and Libya, and arms provided particularly by Saudi Arabia. Andrew Feinstein,

in his The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade (2011), researched the constant flux of arms networks in which the

ready availability of small arms and mobile weapons systems is undoubtedly a consequence of some of this violence, it is also a precipitating cause (p. 435).

The Vietnam antiwar movement differed significantly in its breadth and persistence from current antiwar efforts. It followed the repressive

McCarthy era and the Cuban missile crisis. Eventually the movement reached a wider public and military personnel, and it linked together

opposition to war, racism, poverty, and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. A massive education and research component exposed

colluding corporations, universities, and at times  humanitarian aid. Not known then was the extent of government deception which led to millions of deaths.

In contrast to war spending are the dramatic reductions from member states to UN aid programs. Total donations from member states to the UN World Food Program fell by 96 per cent

in 2014. Donations in 2016 were approximately $5-billion. At present, there are seventy walled borders worldwide and 65.3 million refugees.

Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey have taken in millions of refugees while liberal democracies incarcerate refugees in detention centers and send them back to violent regimes.

The Antiwar Movement in Canada

Neoliberal democracies including the United States, Canada, and Israel, use lawfare to rationalize illegal military and policing

interventions. Principles like the Responsibility to Protect and Least Possible Evil are used by authoritarian leaders and

elite national security bureaucrats to perpetrate illegal interventions and war crimes.

Canada participates with a hypocritical veneer of peacekeeping and liberalism. In reality, Canada is now the 2nd largest arms exporter to the Middle East, having just sold $15-billion worth

of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Canada is the 6th largest arms exporter worldwide. The Trudeau government has further weakened arms export regulations to countries with gross human rights

violations. Canada was one of the only non-nuclear weapons states this last October to vote against a UN resolution to eliminate

nuclear weapons and has secretly contributed to U.S. missile defense. The Trudeau government is upping military deployment in questionable

and provocative NATO missions encircling Russia. Canadian pension funds invest heavily in Canadian, American, and Israeli weapons. Like

other western neoliberal democracies, military spending increases, the extractive industries expand, while social programmes suffer big cuts.

Syria is still treated as a distant reality. Psychotically, Syria will likely not disrupt holiday cheer, while ominous dark clouds loom over

the new year. The global war against the people

(as Jeff Halper refers to militarized neoliberalism) is being fought with political impunity and with increasingly horrific technology. It

demands an antiwar movement in Canada and the U.S. that is unrelenting in its opposition to the global arms trade, to

militarization and austerity regimes, to resurgent racialized nationalism and closed borders, and to ineffectual international institutions. 
BALTIMORE

(Dec. 28, 2016)Advanced C4 Solutions, Inc. agreed today to pay $4.535 million to the United States to settle allegations that it submitted inflated invoices to the government for work performed at Joint Base Andrews.The settlement was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Brigadier General Keith M. Givens, Commander Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI); Special Agent in Charge Robert Craig of the Defense Criminal Investigative ServiceMid-Atlantic Field Office (DCIS); and U.S. Small Business Administration Inspector General Peggy E. Gustafson."Federal authorities will vigorously investigate and prosecute defense contractors that cheat the government," said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. "The Justice Department works closely with defense agencies to safeguard taxpayer dollars."Advanced C4 Solutions, Inc. (the "Company") is a Florida-based company that was operating as a certified "small business" under Section 8(a) of the Small Business Act. On June 10, 2010, the Company was awarded a contract, DO27, to supply project management and labor services for an Air Force technology project. The contract was awarded by the U.S. Navy's Space and Warfare Systems Command ("SPAWAR"), which was administering the contract in support of the United States Air Force. Among other things, DO 27 required the Company to design, construct, and implement certain local area network and wide area network systems that would be utilized by Air Force personnel and other components of the U.S. Armed Forces on Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. The DO 27 contract required the Company to accurately provide invoices to the United States for work performed under the DO 27 contract, including work by subcontractors. Labor costs were required to be billed according to the job classifications set forth in the contract and the number of labor hours worked by personnel at each job classification. The DO 27 contract also provided that the Company could only utilize pre-approved subcontractors. Pursuant to this provision, the Company entered into subcontractor agreements with several entities, one of which was Superior Communication Solutions, Inc. ("SCSI").Advanced C4 Solutions and its subcontractors began work under the DO 27 Contract in June 2010. Andrew Bennett was the Company's project manager who was tasked with overseeing the work performed by the Company and its subcontractors under the DO 27 contract. In this capacity, he was responsible for verifying the accuracy of all invoices submitted by subcontractors to the Company and, in turn, all the invoices submitted by the Company to SPAWAR.The settlement resolves allegations that Bennett, while an employee of the Company, knew that SCSI created false invoices that charged for labor hours that were not actually worked, and charged the United States at job classification rates for personnel that did not have the requisite credentials to be billed at those rates, and yet submitted those SCSI invoices to the government for payment anyway. SPAWAR subsequently paid these invoices not knowing they were false.In related cases, Andrew Bennett, age 52, of Tampa Florida, James T. Shank, age 68, of Perry, Georgia, and a third individual were indicted on federal criminal charges related to their actions in this matter. Bennett and Shank pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for their conduct related to the DO 27 contract. The third defendant is scheduled for trial beginning on January 30, 2017.United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended Air Force OSI, DCIS, and SBA for their work in the investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason D. Medinger who handled this case.
What is left of Apt. 214 at Morningside House of St. Charles four-story assisted living facility at 70 Village street in Waldorf after a fire on Dec. 27. (Photo courtesy of Fire Marshal's office)

CHARLES COUNTY, Md.

CHARLES COUNTY, Md.

(December 27, 2016)Deputy State fire Marshals investigated an accidental fire that occurred at the Morningside House of St. Charles four-story assisted living facility at 70 Village street in Waldorf. The property is owned and operated by the Senior Lifestyle Corporation.The 11:47 p.m. fire activated the smoke detection system and fire sprinkler system allowing occupants of forty apartments on the second and third floors to evacuate without injury. Occupants on the first and fourth floors were safely sheltered in place. Nearly 50 firefighters from Charles and Prince George's Counties assisted the Waldorf Volunteer Fire Department at the scene. The fire was contained to the malfunctioning wall mounted heating and air conditioning appliance inside apartment #214.The damage to the structure and contents was confined to fire and smoke damage to the apartment of origin and water throughout the second floor. Occupants of the second floor are being temporarily relocated elsewhere in the facility during clean-up. Damage estimates were limited to $40,000 to the structure and contents.(December 28, 2016)Investigators from the Maryland State Fire Marshal's Office, along with members of the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force, have successfully located and apprehended Eric White, age 40. White was linked to an arson fire located at 6706 Coati Court in Waldorf which occurred on December 15th. Information received after the fire determined White had fled to North Carolina. On December 27th at 2:30 pm, White was taken into custody at his parent's residence in Hickory, North Carolina. He is currently being held at the Catawba County Detention Center with a bond of $500,000. White is awaiting his initial court appearance and extradition hearing at this time.The fire was intentionally set in his own home while his family was inside the residence, which caused approximately $35,000 in damages. White faces charges of First Degree Arson, Attempted Second Degree Murder, First Degree Malicious Burning and Reckless Endangerment.
WASHINGTON

(Dec. 29, 2016)The U.S. Department of Defense recently announced the following contract awards that pertain to local Navy activities., is being awarded acost-plus-fixed-fee contract for system software and engineering services in support of the MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned air system. This effort includes software design and system integration, qualification testing, cyber security activities as well as engineering services. Work will be performed in San Diego, California, and is expected to be completed in December 2017. Fiscal 2016 and 2017 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy); fiscal 2017 aircraft procurement (Navy); and fiscal 2017 operations and maintenance (Navy) funds in the amount of $17,077,218 are being obligated at time of award, $14,456,731 of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. The, is the contracting activity (N00019-17-C-0033)., is being awardedfor modification P00062 to a previously awarded fixed-price-incentive-firm target contract (N00019-13-C-0023) for systems engineering and program management support associated with the production and delivery of UH-1Y and AH-1Z aircraft. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas, and is expected to be completed in December 2017. Fiscal 2017 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $13,641,555 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The, is the contracting activity., is being awarded afirm-fixed-price contract for the procurement of 214 Tomahawk Block IV All-Up-Round vertical launch system missiles and spares. 214 missiles and spares for the Navy and spares for the government of the United Kingdom. Work will be performed in Tucson, Arizona (25 percent); Walled Lake, Michigan (15 percent); Camden, Arkansas (11 percent); Gainesville, Virginia (8 percent); El Segundo, California (5 percent); Glenrothes, Scotland (5 percent); Clearwater, Florida (4 percent); Fort Wayne, Indiana (3 percent); Dublin, Georgia (3 percent); Midland, Ontario (3 percent); Spanish Fork, Utah (2 percent); Ontario, California (2 percent); Vergennes, Vermont (2 percent); Berryville, Arkansas (2 percent); Middletown, Connecticut (2 percent); Westminster, Colorado (1 percent); and various locations within the U.S. (7 percent), and is expected to be completed in August 2018. Fiscal 2015 and 2016 weapons procurement (Navy); and foreign military sales funds in the amount of $303,749,820 are being obligated at time of award, $71,085,081 of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract combines purchases for the Navy ($300,866,222; 99 percent); and the government of the United Kingdom ($2,883,598; 1 percent), under the Foreign Military Sales program. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. The, is the contracting activity (N00019-17-C-0034)., is being awarded amodification to a previously awarded cost-plus-incentive-fee contract (N00019-06-C-0081) for the procurement of aircraft support, training, reviews, and data associated with the CH-53K system demonstration test article. Work will be performed in Stratford, Connecticut (70 percent); and Marine Corps Air Station New River, Jacksonville, North Carolina (30 percent), and is expected to be completed in December 2019. Fiscal 2016 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $1,000,000 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The, is the contracting activity., is being awarded afirm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to procure a maximum quantity 20 AN/APX-117A(V) identification friend or foe (IFF) transponders and 20 AN/APX-118A(V) IFF transponders for the Navy, 545 AN/APX-123A(V) IFF transponders for the Navy (245), Army (221), and the governments of the United Kingdom (60), Japan (9), Greece (6), and Canada (4). In addition, this this contract provides for procurement of 19 Mode 4/5 remote control units for the Navy (15), Army (2) and the government of Japan (2); 79 IFF mounting trays for the Navy (74) and the government of Greece (5); 20 single board computers for the Navy (10) and Army (10); 2,294 signal processors for the Navy (2,248) and Army (46); and 20 mode 4/5 with crypto shop replaceable assemblies (SRA) for the Navy (5) and Army (15). The award will also procure 1,295 mode 5 change kits, 28 integrations of mode 5 change kits, 20 receiver/transmitters, 20 power supplies, 20 mode 4 chassis, 20 mode 5 chassis, 20 mode 4 with crypto shop replaceable assemblies, six AN/APX-117A(V) IFF transponder repairs, 17 AN/APX-118A(V) IFF transponder repairs, 50 AN/APX-123A(V) IFF transponder repairs for the Navy and 636 RT-1912 to RT-1912A conversion kits for the Army. Work will be performed in Greenlawn, New York (85 percent); and Austin, Texas (15 percent), and is expected to be completed in December 2019. No funds are being obligated at time of award. Funds will be obligated against individual delivery orders as they are issued. This contract combines purchases for the Navy ($18,666,503; 47.3 percent); Army ($17,329,801; 43.9 percent); and the governments of the United Kingdom ($2,607,180; 6.6 percent); Japan ($420,955; 1.1 percent); Greece ($264,373; .7 percent); and Canada ($173,812; .4 percent), under the Foreign Military Sales program. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302.1. The, is the contracting activity (N00019-17-D-0003)., is being awarded aadvance acquisition contract for long-lead components for the manufacture and delivery of six Lot 22 CMV-22 tiltrotor aircraft for the Navy. Work will be performed in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania (50 percent); Fort Worth, Texas (25 percent); and Amarillo, Texas (25 percent), and is expected to be completed in December 2017. Fiscal 2017 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $15,674,000 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. The, is the contracting activity (N00019-17-C-0015)., is being awardedfor cost-plus-fixed-fee task order 0008 against a previously issued basic ordering agreement (N00421-15-G-0001) to utilize the automatic carrier landing system (ACLS) architecture study to upgrade and develop ACLS antenna pedestals AB-XXXX/SPN-46(V). This order also includes the procurement of two 2400 antenna control input/output circuit card assembly prototype replacement boards, two 2800 single board computer processor replacement boards, and two AN/SPN-46(V) transmitter modulator and power supply replacement prototypes for the Precision Approach and Landing System. Work will be performed in Sparks, Nevada (80 percent); Saint Inigoes, Maryland (10 percent); Syracuse, New York (5 percent); and Lynchburg, Virginia (5 percent), and is expected to be completed in August 2019. Fiscal 2017 working capital funds (Navy) in the amount of $540,000 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Theis the contracting activity.
The transgender community  locally and abroad  suffered a major loss this week when Diana Hemingway, a local activist and artist who has touched countless lives, took her own life on Dec. 20, 2016.

Hemingway, 46, was known for her relentless activism around trans/queer issues, sex worker rights, disability rights, economic justice, racism, and issues impacting the kink community. She exuded selflessness and compassion, particularly toward other trans and queer individuals who existed alongside and outside of the margins. In the days following her death, an outpouring of love came from the community, including those who said that Hemingway was many things to many people.

Some said that she had saved their lives and was there for them when nobody else was. Others are angry and shining a spotlight on the fact that as a community, we failed her.

Hemingway was born in 1970 to an Irish Gypsy family who traveled across the U.S. while working in the carnival business. Through this experience, she developed an early mastery of folk and indigenous jewelry making. Her family later settled in Fort Lauderdale, where she eventually began working for Greenpeace. In 1989, she left for college to study photography, and got to work alongside famous landscape photographer Michael A. Smith. She began to face new hardships, and left the art scene to explore other career paths.

Hemingway was proud of the diversity of her lived experience throughout her 20s, 30s, and early 40s  prominent environmental activist, ordained minister, master auto technician, code enforcement officer, thrift store operator, and eventually, director of a local HIV testing program created to specifically serve the most marginalized of the transgender community.

Sadly, Hemingways exploration of her sexual orientation and gender identity (especially as a genderqueer transfeminine person), caused her to lose several families and to encounter job discrimination. This drove her back in the direction of art and activism. In her own words, her photography and her art, as well as the way she lived her life, was meant to connect the intersections of gender identity, sexuality, disability, feminism and sex work, and to advance understanding and empathy for the multiple oppressions that she and others faced.

In recent years, Hemingway struggled greatly with unemployment and underemployment.

Though she had decided to embrace and utilize her gifts in sensuality (which she referred to as her greatest art), and had created her own business as a trans escort and fetish provider, Hemingway was fraught with trying to make ends meet every month for almost two years.

She continued applying and interviewing for jobs in the non-profit sector on a regular basis, especially in the last year. However, she was also very open on social media (and even in job interviews) about her history of sex work, her struggles with depression and suicidality, and her life as a neuroatypical person on the autism spectrum. Despite wanting desperately to work again, she found that she simply could not get hired.

Those who knew Hemingway have shared that she was a brilliant mind, full of knowledge, trivia, and history. She was a nuanced thinker and someone who sought constant stimulation.

In 2016, Hemingway shared with her partner, Landon Woolston, that she felt like she was deteriorating from the inside out as a result of not having access to gainful employment and health benefits.

Despite feeling despair around no longer being valued by her community  the very community that she had fiercely supported and worked so hard to become a visible part of, she soldiered on. At the urging of her partner and friends, she had begun working with a reputable therapist and taking antidepressants; she told others in recent months that she was feeling the best she had ever felt, but she also expressed that it was too little too late.

After several crushing job rejections from local LGBTQ organizations in 2015 and 2016, Hemingway had deemed herself unemployable, noted that she was running out of resources, and saw herself facing homelessness again in 2017. Hemingway also developed what she believed to be a bowel obstruction just a week prior to her suicide. She told Woolston that she was worried not only about the medical procedures involved, but also the associated costs of treatment for the obstruction, as Hemingway did not have health insurance.

Woolston, a prominent queer/trans activist and LGBTQ youth worker in Miami-Dade, began blogging about this devastating loss almost immediately as a means of catharsis. He shared not only his grief but also his frustration with the failures of multiple systems and organizations to support Hemingway  especially when she openly expressed on social media her need for formal employment and desire to leave sex work, and was capable and hopeful that she could contribute to our community again.

Woolston said in his blog on Dec. 24, 2016, If youre wondering what pushed her to leave us, know that the primary reason was fear of losing the life she had worked so hard to build (per her suicide note). Woolston later wrote a blog entry entitled Raging Pain that further addressed the struggles that transgender people, disabled people, and/or sex workers often face in trying to access employment -- even through organizations that purport to serve these very communities. He said, If Diana had gotten a job in the last six months, and especially one with benefits, I really do not think she would have taken her life, and I feel like if this loss doesnt teach our local community the importance of hiring trans people (especially in the non-profit sector), nothing  and I mean NOTHING  will.

Hemingway signed her suicide note to Woolston, Yours forever, In Love That Never Dies. To read more about their intimate partnership and to stay abreast of our communitys sweeping reaction to Hemingways suicide, visit Woolstons blog at: https://inlovethatneverdies.wordpress.com/

To get the most up-to-date information on the upcoming Celebration of Love event(s) for Hemingway, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/events/376053699429596/

If you wish to make a donation in Hemingways honor, please visit www.ProjectSAFE.info to donate to Project SAFE, a collaborative program founded by Pridelines and The Alliance for GLBTQ Youth to support LGBTQ youth experiencing or at-risk of homelessness in Miami.
The roster includes a reverend that accused Marvels X-Men of making kids gay and an archbishop that claimed gay marriage will turn people Asian, among others.

Donald may not have Elton John when hes sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America  but instead hes taken up four antigay pastors to speak.

One of the speakers is Rev. Franklin Graham, who has previously referred to gay people as the enemy. He also supported a constitutional amendment in North Carolina, which would have banned same-sex marriage.

He also freaked out when Marvels X-Men revealed a gay character, Ice Man.

This is another attempt to indoctrinate our young people to accept this destructive lifestyle, he wrote on Facebook at the time. God's Word says homosexuality is a sin, and we are to be on guard against all sin. God calls us to repent, turn from our sins, and put our trust in His Son Jesus Christ who died and rose again to pay the penalty for sin.

Alongside the reverend will be Dr. Samuel Rodriguez from The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. He once claimed homosexuality is a sin against god and marriage equality is the legal catalyst for the marginalization of Americans who embrace a biblical worldview.

But thats not all. Cardinal Timothy Dolan will speak at the inauguration. Queerty reports that Dolan, Archbishop of New York, once claimed gay marriage will turn people Asian.

Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America  not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to redefine rights, relationships, values, and natural law, Dolan said in 2011. There, communiques from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of family and marriage means.

Pastor Paula White will also be in attendance, though not much is known about her LGBT record.

There is only one non-Christian speaker  Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. He runs Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance, which recognizes persecution of the LGBT community.

There are no representatives from the Islamic faith thus far.
Le Collectif Cheikh Yassine a organise un certain nombre dactivites et de festivites pour les enfants de Gaza sous le theme  La joie des enfants de Gaza pour lAid . Ces activites ont commence le premier jour de lAid et continue jusquau 4eme jour de lAid dans la bande de Gaza.



Plusieurs activites, ont ete organisees parmi lesquelles : des competitions recompensees par des prix, des jeux, des animations et des chants presentes par un groupe ainsi que des distributions de cadeaux et daides financieres.




VAB SLS Platforms NASA

New work platforms being installed in Kennedy Space Centers Vehicle Assembly Building will provide access for testing and processing NASAs Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

The rocket will launch an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1) from Launch Pad 39B at the agencys Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SLS will be capable of launching crewed missions to deep space destinations, including the journey to Mars.
Post Time with Mike and Mike presented by BetAmerica has announced that their best of 2016 show is coming up on Thursday night (December 29).

The co-hosts along with Jessica Otten have picked some of their favourite moments from 2016 and those interviews and parts of episodes will be played this Thursday. The pair will also feature some of the bloopers from the show that have happened over the last 365 days.

Gabe Prewitt from Pompano Park will be on the show to talk about what is going on in South Florida. One item of topic will be the track's Jackpot Super Hi-5, which has been hit by a single person multiple times this season.

The pair will also interview John Polvinale, who has a Facebook page about Harness Racing History with more than 17,000 likes. Polvinale is a long-time horse owner in the business and will discuss some of his memories of how he got into the sport.

Make sure to check out the show at posttimewithmikeandmike.com or on the BetAmerica Radio Network at betamerica.com/BARN.

(With files from Post Time with Mike and Mike)




ORLANDO, Fla., Dec. 28, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- Christian college-age students from 23 colleges are preparing for a life-changing adventure in Israel to grow and develop their leadership potential on January 2, 2017. Led by Covenant Journey , a non-profit organization founded by Liberty Counsel, Christian millennials will be touched by a rich blend of biblical history, Jewish history, and Israel's global technological innovations and current geopolitical challenges. These trips have already had a profound impact on the Christian faith and perspective toward Israel of students from about 170 colleges and universities. Many of these young Christian leaders have found that this journey connects them to the roots of their Christian faith and they will never read the Bible or think about Israel the same.

"The impact of a Covenant Journey experience in Israel is beyond description. Many of these students are just beginning on their leadership path and yet I already see the huge impact their deeper understanding of Israel is having around the world. Many Covenant Journey alumni say this experience has had a greater influence on them than anything else thus far," said Mat Staver, Founder and President of Covenant Journey.



One Covenant Journey alumni, Jennifer Sullivan, was the youngest female ever elected to the Florida House of Representatives at age 23. She faced four candidates in the primary, some of whom mocked her young age and the fact that, during college, she lived at home with her parents. Her freshman year in the House, she sponsored a major pro-life bill that was signed into law in 2015. Then in January 2016, Jennifer was able to travel to Israel on the seventh Covenant Journey experience. Returning to the States on January 7, 2016, Jennifer was back in the Florida Legislator on January 11, where she helped lead the effort in Florida to pass a pro-Israel Resolution that opposed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.





One student, Alexis, described her experience this way, "Not only is this trip a spiritual awakening, but it is also a political and social awakening to the trials of the Israeli people. This trip allows me the opportunity to speak on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people. The resilience and courage of this nation needs to be shared with the world and I intend to share it." Giovanni, whose public speaker blog is ranked 24 of the top 50 on the internet, said he experienced Israel in "a more powerful way than I could have imagined." Megan said, "I knew this trip would be a great experience, but I had no idea how much it would impact the way I read the Bible and the way my life should look as a follower of Jesus."



The Covenant Journey tour accepts applications from college-age students who (1) are Christians, (2) have leadership potential, and (3) have some level of support for, or interest in, Israel. College students selected for the tour pay only a $500 registration fee. Everything else is covered by Covenant Journey, including flights from the United States to Tel Aviv, hotel, three meals a day, luxury bus, experienced tour guide, speakers, and all entrance fees. The next journey begins on January 2, 2017.



"The impact of Covenant Journey on the lives of Christian millennials is far beyond what we imagined. It is hard to describe. You just have to experience it," said Staver.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn Named Operation Rescue's 2016 Pro-Life Person of the Year

Contact: Troy Newman, President, 316-683-6790 ext. 111; Cheryl Sullenger, Senior Vice President, 316-516-3034; both with Operation Rescue, info.operationrescue@gmail.com



WASHINGTON, Dec. 29, 2016 /Standard Newswire/ -- Operation Rescue is pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2016 Pro-Life Person of the Year Malachi Award is Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) for her work as Chairman of the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives.



The Malachi Award is given by Operation Rescue every year to recognize individuals who sacrificially work to advance the cause of protecting the pre-born.



"Operation Rescue is grateful to Chairman Marsha Blackburn for her courageous willingness to investigate the shadowy illegal underworld of trafficking in aborted baby remains by Planned Parenthood and others. We know that she underwent constant attacks from the opposition, which wanted desperately to cover up these crimes," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.



Under Blackburn's leadership, the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives made 15 criminal and regulatory referrals to state and federal authorities, seeking further investigations and possible prosecutions of five Planned Parenthood organizations, three organ procurement companies, the University of New Mexico, and three other late-term abortion facilities.



"Her Panel's work provided vindication for Center for Medical Progress journalists, which first brought evidence of Planned Parenthood's participation in the illegal sale of aborted baby remains to the public in 2015," said Newman, who served as a founding CMP board member.



In addition, Blackburn boldly investigated other abuses related to illegal late-term abortions and the murder in infants born alive during abortions.



As a result, her Select Investigative Panel referred Texas late-term abortionist Douglas Karpen to the U.S. Department of Justice and Texas Attorney General for further investigation and possible prosecution for the alleged murder of late-term babies born alive during abortions at his Houston abortion facilities. The Karpen criminal referrals included numerous additional violations that placed the lives of women in danger.



Operation Rescue had filed formal a complaint against Karpen in 2013, prompting a grand jury investigation that went nowhere due to political corruption within the county prosecutor's office.



"The criminal referrals made by Chairman Blackburn and her team reveal disturbing evidence of abortion-related crimes that must not be ignored. Her work should help change our culture so that such atrocities never occur again," said Newman. "This makes her a deserving recipient of the 2016 Pro-Life Person of the Year Malachi Award."



About Operation Rescue

Operation Rescue is one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation and has become a strong voice for the pro-life movement in America. Click here to support Operation Rescue.
The essential component of totalitarian propaganda is artifice (het toepassen van kunstgrepen. svh) . The ruling elites, like celebritie...
A multi-million dollar mineral terminal in Woodland is one step closer to fruition now that project backers won a major permitting appeal.

The Shorelines Hearings Board in November upheld Columbia River Carbonates permit to build a calcium carbonate terminal on the Columbia River in the Woodland bottoms. The company still has to receive other permits, including an in-water permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The project would represent a $10 million to $15 million private investment, the company said, and would help maintain about 70 jobs in the city. Opponents to the terminal say it will damage fish habitat and impede beach and recreational fishing access, and generate significant noise in the quiet, rural area near an R.V. park.

The Woodland-based company processes white limestone into a fine powder that can be used in construction, papermaking, agricultural work and other industries. In 2013, the company applied for a permit to build a marine terminal about 2.25 miles away from its manufacturing site.

If built, the marine terminal would receive shipments of calcium carbonate stone by barge from an Alaska quarry. The grapefruit-sized stones would be offloaded and transported to a stockpile area offshore, via a conveyor system in an enclosed 12-foot diameter tube. Then the raw material would be loaded in dump trucks and brought to Columbia River Carbonates manufacturing site on Pekins Road. Up to two barges would be unloaded per month.

Currently, the company is shipping its raw material from Alaska to Portland, and then trucking it about 35 miles to Woodland. Three trucks run continuously for eight hours hauling cargo back and forth from the Portland terminal to Woodland every day, said Reed Sherar, general counsel for Columbia River Carbonates.

Having the terminal would eliminate the need for those long-distance trips and cut back on diesel air emissions, Sherar said. It will also help reduce company costs and secure existing jobs.

Without this project, our future is uncertain at best, Sherar said.

An environmental review of the project found it would result in shading and fish habitat loss at the terminal itself, as well as 0.8 acres of riparian habitat loss. However, Columbia River Carbonates plans to mitigate that by creating an off-site nature refuge nearby with built-in trails and public access. The 6.3-acre refuge is nearly twice the size of the 3.75 acre project site. The company would also install large woody structures and take other measures for mitigation at the project site itself.

Any impacts from this project are being minimized. If you look at a lot of piers along the river, youll see hundreds of pilings going out. We dont have that. We have designed it to have minimal impact, Sherar said. The project would have two breasting dolphins and two mooring dolphins; that will require six pilings each and a grated walkway between them.

Yet those mitigation plans dont satisfy a group of 45 opponents, led by an adjacent R.V. park, who have formed Citizens Against the Barge Terminal to try to stop the project. The group has twice challenged decisions from the county and state that found that the project met the requirements for a shoreline permit and that its environmental impacts could be mitigated.

Opponents argued that the the state underestimated the environmental impacts of the terminal and didnt provide sufficient mitigation.

However, the hearings board found the projects impacts to fish, critical, habitat and recreational were fully identified and mitigated for in the permit. Both the terminal and the R.V. park are zoned for heavy manufacturing, the board pointed out.

Citizens Against the Barge Terminal said they would continue to be active on the issue, but declined to comment further on what their next steps would be. They already have missed the deadlines to take further legal action to try to stop the shoreline permit, Sherar said.

The company said it hopes to receive its permit from the U.S. Corps of Engineers sometime in 2017, so that it can begin construction in 2018.

Port of Woodland commissioners have approved a letter of support for the project. Port Executive Director Jennifer Keene said the development could offer indirect benefits to Port of Woodland by providing more interest in the nearby Martins Bar area.

A clean industry, such as Columbia River Carbonate, improves our ability to attract like-minded businesses to our area, Keene said.
It is expected that the search engine giant Google will announce something to be in sync with the Startup India and Digital India initiatives. As the country is considered as the developing era of startups and the firm is looking forward to focus the digital operations of small and medium business enterprises in the year 2017.

Sundar Pichai will meet Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and some of Googles topmost executives including Google India head Rajan Anandan in New Delhi on January 4 at 11:00 am to focus upon Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). For the same, he has already announced cloud regions in the country, which will include data centers spread around the country.

As per the invite sent to various local media channels including Indian Express, Small and Medium Businesses are the backbone of the Indian economy and are powering the next wave of the countrys growth. At Google, we are excited about partnering with businesses to help them unlock exponential growth through the power of digital. We invite you to join Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and other senior leaders from Google as they shine spotlight on how digital can be a game changer for Indian SMBs.

It is assumed that Pichai will talk about Googles Digital Unlocked platform  the online learning tool for small businesses and startups. It is a Google certified training course, in association with Indian School of Business, which encourage emerging businesses to go online.

Pichai will also visit IIT Kharagpur on January 7 at 10:30 am. The institute scheduled the event to offer an opportunity to students to chat with one of the most sought after alumnus- Google Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai.

Pichai has completed his graduation in B.Tech in Metallurgical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur and noted that this is the first time when he is visiting the campus after being appointed as Googles CEO. His chat session with students called Back on campus with Sundar and he is one of the favorite recruiters among the students.

After pursuing B.Tech from IIT KGp he then went on to pursue an MS in Engineering and Materials Science from Stanford University and an MBA from the Wharton School.

ET reported that a Google spokesperson has confirmed the reporting team that Pichai will visit IIT KGP on January 5 to meet the dean, other professors, and students as part of the trip.

While, IIT KGP confirmed that the session with the students will take place at IIT Kharagpurs Tagore Open Air Theatre. The institute also recalled that last year Pichai was the recipient of distinguished alumni award and as on its part it has invited students to come back to campus on time after the winter break to be able to listen to Googles CEO.
tech2 News Staff

The now famous Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is just around the corner and we are already seeing companies starting to announce their plans for the grand event. Scheduled to be held in Las Vegas from 5 - 8 January, CES 2017 will see all the major technology companies participating.

As has been the trend in the past, a lot of companies have their keynotes one or two days before CES begins. It is no different this year. So if you are looking forward to the show and do not want to miss out on the announcements as they happen, we have a calendar ready just for you.

Intel

https://twitter.com/intelnews/status/809072088333942784

Intel is expected to unveil its latest generation processor parts to help "unlock potential, connect us to our passions, our curiosity, our need to express ourselves, and to make amazing experiences possible." From Intel's CES 2017 announcement page it is clear that the company will also be focussing on IoT and 5G and related end-to-end solutions. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich is expected to host a unique keynote using virtual reality, to show how consumer electronics isn't just about gadgets but also touches upon other aspect of our lives as well as industries.

US Date and Time: 4 Jan at 4PM to 4.45PM

India Date and Time: 5 Jan at 5.30AM to 6.15AM

Qualcomm

https://twitter.com/Qualcomm/status/814238275665797120

Qualcomm is all set to unveil its latest flagship chipset  the Snapdragon 835  on 3 January at CES. The San Diego-based chipmaker is already teasing its announcements on its Twitter page, hinting at improvements in the battery and camera areas. We already know that the Snapdragon 835 will be made on the 10nm process node in partnership with Samsung, and that it will support Quick Charge 4 technology. Rumours are already flying around that a Snapdragon 835 chipset will be seen in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8, Xiaomi Mi 6 and Oppo Find 9. We will find out more details on Snapdragon 835 on 3 Jan. In addition to this, there will be a keynote address by Qualcomm CEO Steven Mollenkopf on 6 January.

US Date and Time: 6 Jan at 9AM to 10AM

India Date and Time: 6 Jan at 10.30PM to 11.30PM

Nvidia

https://twitter.com/nvidia/status/814273715437305856

Nvidia founder, president and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is expected to give his maiden CES keynote address. The graphics card maker is expected to show off its latest Shield Android TV set-top box along with a bundled controller supporting Bluetooth LE and improved battery optimisations. Another rumour hints at the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080Ti unveiling which will focus on 4K gaming. Apart from this, announcements are also expected on what Nvidia is up to on the deep learning, artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, virtual reality and the gaming front.

US Date and Time: 4 Jan at 6.30PM to 7.30PM

India Date and Time: 5 Jan at 8AM to 9AM

Huawei

Chinese smartphone and telecom equipment maker Huawei is expected to be present at CES 2017. Huawei's CEO of the consumer business group Richard Yu is expected to give a keynote address on 5 January. According to the invites sent out, there is no clear indication as to which product will be launched. But the release mentions that Huawei will be touching upon its "global model of innovation, which taps into the strengths of each country and region and encourages collaboration with the adoption of the latest technologies and techniques. Through his keynote, attendees will learn about Huaweis plans for the future of mobile  one that integrates the latest in artificial intelligence, virtual reality and connected technologies and pairs them with elite global partnerships and sustainable product development."

https://twitter.com/nbc_net/status/813147491931566080

Huawei's smartphone brand Honor is expected to unveil a new smartphone, which will be available for the global market. This phone will launch on 3 Jan.

US Date and Time: 5 Jan at 2PM to 3PM

India Date and Time: 6 Jan at 3.30AM to 4.30AM

Samsung

https://twitter.com/SamsungNewsroom/status/813927469589762049

Samsung will be present at CES, but there isn't a clear indication as to the product that will be announcing. We know for a fact that it will not be the Galaxy S8, as that would be revealed at the Unpacked 2017 event closer to the Mobile World Congress in February. The company will be having a CES press conference on 4 January. Online speculation hints at a new range of TVs as well as home appliances. Samsung is expected to introduce an Ultra High Quality audio standard, release a 4K Blu-ray player, a quantum dot curved monitor, a wind-free wall mounted AC, a robotic vaccumm cleaner which is compatible with Amazon Echo and more.

US Date and Time: 4 Jan at 2PM to 3PM

India Date and Time: 5 Jan at 3.30AM to 4.30AM

Lenovo

https://twitter.com/lenovo/status/812301240646385664

Lenovo is a regular presence at CES. The company already has an events page up on its site counting down the days to CES. It turns out that Lenovo does not want to wait till the event begins, and has already announced a new range of ThinkPad family members with the 7th gen Intel processors. Products unveiled so far include, ThinkPad Yoga 370, ThinkPad T470, T470p, T470s, T570, ThinkVision P27h monitor, ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 dock, ThinkPad USB-C dock. 2016 has been good for Lenovo and we saw some innovative products from the company such as the Lenvo Phab2 Pro, Lenovo Yoga 910, Lenovo Yoga Book and on the Moto side there were the Moto Mods. This tweet hints at around 8 new device launches at CES 2017. We will have to wait and watch.

Xiaomi

https://twitter.com/xiaomi/status/814167617283891200

Chinese smartphone and consumer electronics company Xiaomi is making its debut at CES 2017. While Xiaomi has not announced which product it will be releasing, it has been tweeting out some teasers. So far, we know that there will be something in the Smart Home segment that will be announced. One teaser shows a graphic of a living room with many gadgets, hinting at the 'many sides of Mi'. Yet another teaser shows an outdoor scene with one guy on what seems like an electric bike and another guy on a Ninebot mini with a part of the tweet saying 'It's going to be a fun ride', and so on. There are rumours that Yi 4K+ action camera will be launched. We will have to wait toll 5 Jan to see what's in store.

US Date and Time: 5 Jan at 11AM onwards

India Date and Time: 6 Jan at 12.30AM onwards

Asus

Asus is planning to hold its Zennovation event on 4 January where it is expected to launch its new devices. While not much was known till now, but it seems like Qualcomm may have leaked the start product of the Zennovation event launch - Asus ZenFone AR. The Asus ZenFone AR will be powered by Qualcomms Snapdragon 821 chipset and it will support Project Tango as well as Google Daydream. This makes the ZenFone AR the second Tango smartphone after Lenovo Phab2 Pro and the first phone outside the Pixel lineup to support Daydream VR platform. We shall know more tomorrow. Asus has already started a countdown on its website.

US Date and Time: 4 Jan at 11.30AM onwards

India Date and Time: 5 Jan at 1.00AM onwards

LG

South Korean giant LG has already starting announcing products that will no doubt be seen at CES 2017. We already know about the levitating speakers and on the neck speakers. It is expected to reveal a range of smart home appliances with deep learning capabilities, which will help them observe your behaviour and adapt their tasks accordingly. Just like Samsung, LG is also expected to release a robot vaccumm cleaner as well, a refrigerator, washing machine, air conditioner, 4K OLED TVs, new projectors and so on. Each of the home appliances will have some intelligent machine learning systems associated with them. In terms of smartphones, there hasn't been much speculation online. Just like Samsung, maybe LG is saving the smartphones for MWC in February. LG has to yet update its product launch schedule for CES. We will update accordingly.

HTC

Rumours are suggesting that HTC will be launching a Wireless Vive 2 at CES 2017. The Vive 2 is expected to come with a wireless transmitter to connect to the PC and it will house two 4K displays with a refresh rate of 120Hz instead the 90Hz used on the current Vive. On its Twitter page, HTC has no updates regarding CES 2017, but this tweet hints at some new product launch on 12 January. There is no keynote or event schedule for HTC up yet.

Faraday Future

https://twitter.com/FaradayFuture/status/813897484204437508

Electric car startup Faraday Future has been teasing a camouflaged vehicle on its Twitter page. This will be revealed on 3 January and you can catch the live streaming of the unveil on ff.com. Recently, there was news hinting at how Faraday Future backer and LeEco founder Jia Yeuting was running out of cash to fund the Faraday Future plant. Faraday Future has called it negative press pessimism, and has claimed that it will only strengthen its resolve to 'redefine sustainable mobility'.
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Swedish communication technology firm Ericsson on Thursday demonstrated at Mori village of Andhra Pradesh its Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for creating smart and sustainable villages in the state.

Both projects -- Connected Aquaponics and Smart Water Grid Management -- were demonstrated in the presence of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, after a three-month pilot.

Ericsson earlier this year signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Andhra Pradesh government and the University of California - Berkley to help improve lives of farmers in and around Mori.

"The 'Connected Aquaponics' and 'Smart Water Grid Management' IoT solutions being demonstrated here will help improve harvest and optimise water distribution. It has the potential to provide an improved life for millions of farmers in the country," said Anand Varadarajan, head of Ericsson Research, Chennai, at Ericsson India, in a statement.

The Connected Aquaponics integrates aquaculture and hydroponics for reuse of the ammonia-rich waste water from aquaculture for organic farming and recycle the water back to the aqua farm.

"Using wireless sensor network and Ericsson's AppIOT platform, we enable the monitoring of the aqua farm 24x7, thereby enabling the farmers with real-time information," the company said.

This enables the farmers to increase the yield as well as bring down the production cost with optimum use of the raw materials and repeated use of water.

The 'Smart Water Grid Management' solution has been designed to enable efficient use of natural water resources in the Godavari basin through use of sensors and actuators.

The sensors measure the quality of water, flow of water and level in the water storage tanks across the village.

IANS
tech2 News Staff

Mohit Goel, the managing director of Ringing Bells, the company that offered to sell a smartphone in India for just Rs 251 has quit the company. His wife, Dharna Goel, a director in the company, has also quit.

The companys owners have apparently shut shop and have are heading another company called MDM Electronics.

The Times of India (TOI) reports that the Ringing Bells offices have been closed for over two weeks now.

Speaking to dealers, TOI also discovered that a number of them are still owed lakhs of rupees and that there has been no word from Ringing Bells owners regarding the same.

Ringing Bells stirred India into a frenzy when it announced that it would sell a 4-inch smartphone for just Rs 251. However, there were problems from the very beginning, starting with the fact that the company could never satisfactorily explain how it would deliver on that promise.

The company has since taken customers on a roller-coaster ride of sorts, claiming that phones will be sold on a lottery system and that it has already delivered 70,000 smartphones. In the middle of all this, the company even attempted to launch a range of budget televisions.
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Giving its digital economy drive a shot in the arm, the government through its outreach campaign 'DigiDhan Abhiyan' has enrolled over 1 crore rural citizens for digital methods of payment since its launch earlier this month, an official statement said here on Wednesday. Over 3 lakh merchants have started offering digital payment options to rural customers across many districts and blocks in rural India, the statement said.

"The rapid pace at which rural citizens are adopting digital methods of payment demonstrates their support and enthusiasm to be a part of the digital transformation story of our country. It is very encouraging to see our Prime Minister's dream of honest and transparent digital governance turn into reality," said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister for Electronics & Information Technology.

On November 8, the Modi government demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes across the country. Since then the government has been planning to convert the country's economy into a more digital one. Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have recorded the highest number of enrolments with citizen enrolment crossing 15 lakh and 12.5 lakh respectively, the statement said.

Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh have recorded the highest number of merchant enrolments crossing 60,000 merchants each, it added. The common service centres (CSC) and the village-level entrepreneurs have reached out to citizens innovatively to impart digital literacy. The DigiDhan Abhiyan aims to cover 2 lakh CSC across the rural areas and enable them to become Digital Financial Education centres. The CSCs will train people about the various digital financial solutions and also enable them to use various modes of electronic payment systems (EPS). The campaign also aims to sensitise merchants and vendors on the use of EPS.

"The DigiDhan Abhiyan outreach in rural India through the common service centres reflects citizen's willingness to go digital and the acceptance of new methods of digital transactions which are convenient and easy to access or use," said Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY). "We will continue to leverage newer technologies to build smart digital tools for easy use to enable this massive digital transformation," she added.

IANS
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The Odisha government on Wednesday urged the Centre to improve telecom infrastructure, banking services and internet penetration in rural areas for cashless transactions and digital payments in the state. Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi represented Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at the Chief Ministers' Committee meeting on digital payments through video conferencing on Wednesday.

"Banking infrastructure and internet connectivity in the state, more particularly in rural areas, should be improved substantially from the present level for effective implementation of digital payment system," said Padhi. Participating in the discussion, Finance Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said that though the banks are connected with 3G/4G and high-speed broadband services for their card swiping machines, the internet speed is less than 100 kbps.

"This occurs even in some pockets of the large cities like Bhubaneswar due to problems of connectivity. It is difficult to restore link all the time, as a result of which people are facing problem to do transactions though swiping machines, micro ATMs and point of sale (PoS) devices," said the Finance Secretary. About 60 per cent of the rural banking sub-service areas do not have adequate internet connectivity for supporting 3,900 Micro ATMs and mobile POS machines.

The failure rate of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) transaction on feature phones in rural areas has been reported to the extent of 60-75 per cent, he added. Banking presence in remote areas is also quite insufficient. In Odisha, nearly 4,401 Gram Panchayats of the total 6,802 do not have any bank branches.

IANS
tech2 News Staff

Apple was the first to introduce a digital assistant when it acquired Siri and baked it into the OS. The makers of Siri went on to create Viv, a realisation of their original vision for Siri. Viv was acquired by Samsung this year.

Despite the initial head start with Siri, Apple lost ground over the subsequent years by being very secretive about its research. As Apple employees were not allowed to publish research, the best talent was not attracted to the company. All that changed with the hire of prominent Carnegie Mellon University researcher Russ Salakhutdinov earlier in the year. Apple has already gone ahead and published its first research paper.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google remarked on the onset of a remarkable new disruptive technology at the October hardware event by Google. Every ten years or so, a transformational technology comes along that changes everything. In the mid 80s this was the desktop computer, in the mid 90s, this was the internet, in the mid 2000s, the smartphone revolution began. We are in the mid 2010s, and the next big change will come about because of Artificial Intelligence.

US President Barack Obama said in an interview that it was necessary to imbibe artificial intelligences with human values. Humans have to make harsh decisions, and Obama raised the question of whether machines should be allowed to make such decisions. For example: Can a self driving car be trusted to decide between running over a pedestrian or involving the passengers of the vehicle in a fatal crash? The International Convention on Conventional Weapons meet for a review conference, where they agreed to regulate lethal autonomous vehicle systems (LAWS), or killer robots. The White House said that it was tweaking policy to handle the huge number of human jobs that are now going to be done by machines.

The year saw the growth of an all new product category called smart speakers. The Echo by Amazon was a pioneer in this category, with a voice controlled digital assistant hardware for living spaces. The Amazon Echo Dot was introduced this year and Google made its debut in the smart speaker space with Google Home. Microsoft hinted at a high-end smart speaker by Harman Kardon. According to analyst firm, Gartner, smart home speakers are expected to be a $2.1 billion industry by 2020.

AI was the talk of the town at the ReCode tech conference, with discussions around AI by IBM, Google, Microsoft and Facebook. Elon Musk even suggested that human brains should be hooked up to computers with neural laces so that mankind can keep up to machines. Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet unit Google, Facebook Inc, IBM and Microsoft have teamed up to create a non profit organisation that hopes to increase the awareness about aritificial intelligence in the minds of the public. Here is a look back at the biggest artificial intelligence stories of the year.

Google

Facebook

Microsoft

Amazon

IBM
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The Obama administration plans to announce on Thursday a series of retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking into U.S. political institutions and individuals and leaking information in an effort to help President-elect Donald Trump and other Republican candidates, two U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

Both officials declined to specify what actions President Barack Obama has approved, but said targeted economic sanctions, indictments, leaking information to embarrass Russian officials or oligarchs, and restrictions on Russian diplomats in the United States are among steps that have been discussed.

One decision that has been made, they said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, is to avoid any moves that exceed the Russian election hacking and risk an escalating cyber conflict that could spiral out of control. One example of an excessive step might be interfering with Russian internet messaging.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency and Office of Director of National Intelligence agree that Russia was behind hacks into Democratic Party organizations and operatives ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. There is also agreement, according to U.S. officials, that Russia sought to intervene in the election to help Trump, a Republican, defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Russia has repeatedly denied hacking accusations. Trump has dismissed the assessments of the U.S. intelligence community. Obama, in an interview earlier this month with NPR, said, "We need to take action and we will" against Russia for interfering in the U.S. election. Trump seemed to suggest the United States should not impose sanctions on Russia.

"I think we ought to get on with our lives," Trump told reporters in Florida on Wednesday when asked about remarks by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who said Russia and President Vladimir Putin should expect tough sanctions for the cyber attacks. Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, promised retaliation on Wednesday against Washington in the event of new economic sanctions.

Jim Lewis, a cyber security expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said further sanctions may be an effective U.S. tool in part because they would be difficult for Trump to roll back and because Russia "hates" dealing with them. "For the rest of the world, its like having 'scumball' stamped on your forehead," Lewis said.

How to respond to the growing problem of cyber attacks carried out or sponsored by foreign powers has bedeviled Obama, whose eight years in office witnessed a torrent of major hacks against the U.S. government and private organizations that were attributed to China, North Korea, Iran and Russia.

In past cases, administration officials have decided to publicly blame North Korea and indict members of Chinas military for hacking because they decided the net benefit of public shaming  and increased awareness brought to cyber security  outweighed potential risks.

But determining an appropriate response to Russia's actions has proven more complicated in part because Russia's cyber capabilities are more advanced and due to fears about disrupting other geopolitical issues, such as the civil war in Syria. Obama may choose to invoke an April 2015 executive order that empowered him to levy sanctions in response to cyber attacks perpetrated by foreign groups targeting infrastructure, such as transportation, or done for economic purposes.

One option, said a U.S. government official who has participated in discussions on possible retaliation, would be leaking material on Russian officials or actions that the United States already has obtained in a way that would parallel what the Russians did, but be impossible to prove.

The official compared that option to Russian military and civilian intelligence agencies providing hacked material to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and trying  unsuccessfully, the official said  to cover their tracks.

Another option would be further economic sanctions against Russia. Washington has already sanctioned Russia over the past two years to punish Moscow for its role in annexing Crimea. But former U.S. officials say the existing measures leave Washington plenty of room to slap new, tougher sanction on Russia in response to cyber intrusions.

The Ukraine sanctions were narrowly tailored to hurt specific sectors of Russian industry, such as the energy sector, without causing the nation's economy to tank, said Juan Zarate, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes.

The United States took a more measured approach, in part, to reserve tougher measures in case the situation worsened, said Zarate, chairman of the Financial Integrity Network, a private consulting firm that advises on financial threats.

The United States is still unlikely to impose blanket embargoes against Russia because of the danger it could harm the economies of Western Europe, said Peter Harrell, a former senior State Department official who worked on sanctions policy. Instead, the United States may target specific Russian intelligence officials or military divisions believed to be involved in the cyber intrusions. The Russian defense sector would be fair game, Harrell said.

Looming over any action the Obama administration takes against Russia is whether Trump will seek to reverse course once he takes office on Jan. 20. In addition to casting doubt on the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community about the hacks, Trump has repeatedly praised Putin and nominated people seen as friendly toward Moscow to senior administration posts.

Reuters
tech2 News Staff

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X was recently in the news pointing that the company is planning to launch a Snapdragon version of the budget smartphone. Today we are hearing that the smartphone has officially got the TENAA certification in China.

The listing for TENAA shows the image of the smartphone which looks similar to the Redmi Note 4. It also points to increased RAM and storage of the device. This means that we could see a 4GB RAM variant arriving in 32GB as well as 64GB storage options. Rest of the specifications on the listing seems to be similar to the Redmi Note 4, a 5.5 full HD display, a Mediatek Helio X20 deca-core processor along with 2 GB, 3 GB, 4 GB of RAM, 13MP rear camera with PDAF and a 5MP front camera, a 4100 mAh battery and a fingerprint scanner.

A previous leak suggested that Redmi 4X could feature a new Snapdragon 653 SoC which is a minor update to the Snapdragon 652 offering a faster X9 LTE modem, a higher clock speed of 1.95GHz (up from 1.8GHz), and support for dual-cameras and up to 8GB RAM.

We have our hopes high on the Snapdragon version as the smartphone is expected to launch soon in India, and Xiaomi usually launches Qualcomm chipset equipped smartphones for the country. Of course, we could be wrong and see the MediaTek equipped Redmi Note 4X with the high-end storage and RAM variant launch in January for Indian consumers.
Kerry says settlements endanger peace, Israel hits back

John Kerry warned that Israel\'s building of settlements was endangering Middle East peace.

Reuters, Washington :

US Secretary of State John Kerry warned on Wednesday that Israel's building of settlements was endangering Middle East peace, expressing unusually frank frustration with the long-time American ally.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shot back at Kerry and accused him of showing bias against the Jewish state.

In a 70-minute speech just weeks before the Obama administration hands over to President-elect Donald Trump, Kerry said Israel "will never have true peace" with the Arab world if it does not reach an accord based on Israelis and Palestinians living in their own states.

His remarks added to strain in the US-Israeli relationship-characterized by personal acrimony between President Barack Obama and Netanyahu-after the United States cleared the way for a UN resolution last week that demanded an end to Israeli settlement building.

"Despite our best efforts over the years, the two-state solution is now in serious jeopardy," Kerry said at the State Department. "We cannot, in good conscience, do nothing, and say nothing, when we see the hope of peace slipping away."

"The truth is that trends on the ground - violence, terrorism, incitement, settlement expansion and the seemingly endless occupation - are destroying hopes for peace on both sides and increasingly cementing an irreversible one-state reality that most people do not actually want."

Kerry condemned Palestinian violence which he said included "hundreds of terrorist attacks in the past year."

His parting words are unlikely to change anything on the ground between Israel and the Palestinians or salvage the Obama administration's record of failed Middle East peace efforts.

In a statement, Netanyahu said Kerry's speech "was skewed against Israel." The Israeli leader said Kerry "obsessively dealt with settlements" and barely touched on "the root of the conflict - Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries".

The Israelis are looking past Obama and expect they will receive more favourable treatment from Trump, who takes office on January 20. The Republican used his Twitter account on Wednesday to denounce the Obama administration, including its UN vote and the nuclear accord it reached with Iran last year.
Iraqi forces launch fresh advance against Islamic State inside Mosul

Iraqi security forces launched a fresh advance on Thursday against militant Islamic State (IS) group fighters in several southeastern districts of Mosul, where the fight had been stalled for about a month, Interior Ministry officials said.

Reuters, Baghdad :

Iraqi security forces launched a fresh advance on Thursday against militant Islamic State (IS) group fighters in several southeastern districts of Mosul, where the fight had been stalled for about a month, Interior Ministry officials said.

"Our troops now are advancing. In the first five or 10 minutes they took 500 meters. Just now they are starting to shoot," said an officer from the rapid response forces, an elite Interior Ministry unit.

Those forces were advancing in Intisar district, while thousands of federal police troops redeployed from Mosul's southern outskirts two weeks ago were expected to push into a nearby area, he said.

The battle for Mosul, involving 100,000 Iraqi troops, members of the Kurdish security forces and Shia militiamen, is the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003.

Elite Iraqi soldiers have retaken a quarter of Mosul, the militants' last major stronghold in Iraq, but their advance has been slow and punishing. They entered a planned "operational refit" earlier this month, the first significant pause of the campaign.

The upcoming phase appears likely to give US military advisers, part of an international coalition fighting IS, a bigger role as they embed more extensively with Iraqi forces.

Mosul, the largest city held by IS anywhere across its once vast territorial holdings in Iraq and neighbouring Syria, has been held by the group since its fighters drove the US-trained Iraqi army out in June 2014.

Its fall would probably end the group's ambition to rule over millions of people in a self-styled caliphate, but the fighters could still mount a traditional insurgency in Iraq, and plot or inspire attacks on the West.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who previously pledged to retake Mosul by the end of the year, said this week it would take another three months to rout IS in Iraq.

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces on Thursday began the second phase of their offensive against Islamic State militants in Mosul, pushing into some eastern districts where the battle has been in deadlock for nearly a month. Thousands of federal police troops who redeployed from Mosul's southern outskirts two weeks ago also pushed into a handful of southeastern districts, state television reported. "This is the second phase of the operation to liberate Mosul conducted by the special forces, the federal police and us on this front," General Nejm Jabouri, a senior army commander, told Reuters in a village just north of Mosul.

Since the offensive to capture Mosul began nine weeks ago, counter-terrorism forces have retaken a quarter of the city, the militants' last major stronghold in Iraq, but their advance has been slow and punishing.


Human Rights seminar at CUB

A view of the seminar dubbed as \'Human Rights: Can the UN Help?\' held at Canadian University of Bangladesh on the occasion of World Human Rights Day recently.

Campus Report :

School of Law, Canadian University of Bangladesh (CUB) organized a seminar on 'Human Rights: Can the UN Help?' on the occasion of World Human Rights Day. Chowdhury Nafeez Sarafat, Founder and Chairman, Canadian University of Bangladesh conferred vote of thanks in the event. Dr Syed Sharfaraj Hamid, Associate Prof and Head, School of Law conducted the seminar.

Dr Uttam Kumar das, Advocate, Supreme Court of Bangladesh and Program Director, Social Dialogue and Industrial Relations (ILO), Barrister Jennifer Ashraf, Senior Consultant (Legal Expert) of World Bank and Ministry of Environment, Bangladesh, Rowshon Ara, Project Director (Naripokkho), Strengthening of State and Community Initiatives for the Prevention and Reduction of Violence Against Women Project and Barrister M Kamruzzaman Shadhin, Advocate, Supreme Court of Bangladesh were the speaker of the seminar.

Among others, Prof Dr James Gomez, Pro-Vice Chancellor, SM Arifuzzaman, Associate Prof and Head, School of Business and Tusher Nabi Khan, Coordinator, School of Communications and Lecturer, Program of Film and TV of Canadian University of Bangladesh were also present on the occasion.


BD-India district level confce begins

Chittagong Bureau :

The district level bilateral conference between Bangladesh and India began in port city on Wednesday. The Divisional Commissioner of Chittagong Ruhul Amin inaugurated the conference as Chief Guest in the morning.

Sources said, the bilateral conference of district level representatives of Bangladesh and India is taking place with bordering districts of two countries.

The DC and DM level representatives will highlight 10 issues including strengthening security system at border areas, avoiding border conflict and stopping smuggling through border.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony, Ruhul Amin said, the bilateral relation between Bangladesh and India is increasing day by day. The present government has taken a number of steps to cooperate with neighbouring India for strengthening security system at border area, avoiding border conflict and stopping smuggling through border, he pointed out. He said, "We are working for the development of two nations. We will reduce border crimes soon. The friendship among the people of both countries will help us to solve any sorts of border crisis by discussion."

The Assistant High Commissioner of India to Chittagong Shomnath Haldar also delivered speech at the inaugural ceremony. Addressing the function, he said, "The friendships between two countries are an old history.

The culture and many rituals are same in India and Bangladesh. Therefore, the cooperation for development of Bangladesh will continue."

The Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Bangladesh and District Magistrate (DM) of India and top officials of Border Guard Bangladesh, representatives of Police and high officials of both countries are participating in the conference.

DC of Khagrachari Muhammad Wahidur Rahman is leading Bangladesh delegation while P R Bhattachariya, the DM of Unakati district of India is leading the Indian delegation at the conference. Addressing the conference, P R Bhattachariya said, "I hope that the steps of both governments will be continued for a sound law and order situation at border sides of two neighbouring countries."

He said, "We will uphold the friendship in future and also increase our relationship." Muhammed Wahidur Rahman said, "We will discuss on 10 agendas in the conference.

The conference will discuss on survey of land at the border area, stopping child and women trafficking and smuggling of drugs, intensifying the vigilance of both BGB and BSF at the border areas." Several agreements and memorandums were are signed yesterday.




Baam Morcha threatens movement if gas tariff hiked

Ganatantric Baam Morcha (LDF) activists dispersed by the law enforcers in front of the Secretariat while they were going towards Ministry of Power and Energy to submit memo to stop gas price hike on Thursday.

UNB, Dhaka :



Ganatantrik Bam Morcha, a platform of left-leaning parties, on Thursday threatened to wage a movement if the government hikes the gas tariff.

The leaders of the platform issued the threat while staging a demonstration near the Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry in protest against the government's move to increase the gas price.

The leaders and activists of Bam Morcha took out a procession towards the ministry at 12 noon to register their protest against the gas tariff-hike move, said a press release. As the procession reached near the ministry, police intercepted them, forcing them to stage a demonstration there.

In August, Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company proposed increasing the gas price for domestic users by around twofold while Petrobangla proposed raising bulk gas price from Tk 6.29 per cubic metre to Tk 10.29. Later, Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) assured that the price would be adjusted after a series of justified calculations and the decision would be made within the next 90 days. But, BERC is yet to come up with its final decision in this regard.

Speaking at the gathering, Bam Morcha leaders said there is no logic to give any proposal for raising the gas prices when all the gas companies are making huge profits. They alleged that the government is trying to raise the gas prices to create scope for corrupt people to indulge in plundering.
The threat to global banking standards

Howard Davies :

The financial crisis of 2008 gave a big boost to the global standard-setters. Suddenly, the Basel Committee (which sets the standards for international banking supervision) was leading the financial news. Dinner parties in Manhattan and Kensington were consumed with the finer points of Basel II and the evils of procyclical capital requirements. Governments that had been suspicious of international interference were eager for tougher global rules to prevent banking crises from spilling across borders and infecting others, like bouts of Asian flu.

The concrete consequences of this enthusiasm were the creation of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), born out of the ashes of the Financial Stability Forum, at the G20's London summit in April 2009, and inclusion of representatives of all G20 members among the key rule makers in Basel and elsewhere. The G7's domination gave way to the hope that broader membership would produce more comprehensive buy-in and stronger political support for increasing the banking system's capital.

All this change has worked, up to a point. The Basel III regulations, for example, more than doubled the capital an individual bank should hold, and enhanced the quality of that capital. The system looks somewhat safer as a result. But now there are dangerous signs that the commitment to stronger global standards - indeed, to any common standards - may be on the wane.

Many predicted this trend, but for the wrong reason. Skeptics warned that it would be far harder to reach agreement among 20 or more countries than it had been among the dozen pre-crisis Basel Committee members (mainly European countries, with only the US, Canada, and Japan representing the world beyond).

In practice, that has not turned out to be a major problem. Basel III was agreed far more quickly than Basel II was. Political pressure from finance ministers, expressed through the FSB, proved effective.

In fact, recent tensions have been more old-fashioned, pitting the US against the eurozone, with the UK and others stuck in between. The US has been pressing for tighter controls on banks' internal models, and for a limit on how much a bank's models can reduce its assets on a risk-weighted basis. Agreement on these so-called output floors has so far proved impossible.

The Europeans argue that their banks' corporate lending is inherently less risky. After all, EU banks lend more to higher-rated large companies, which access US capital markets, rather than borrowing from banks.

They also hold more low-risk mortgages on their balance sheets, in the absence of a European equivalent of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (America's two quasi-public mortgage banks), which hoovered up securitized US mortgages.

At its meeting in Santiago, Chile, in November, the Basel Committee conspicuously failed to agree on a solution, and kicked the issue upstairs to the committee of Governors and Heads of Supervision, which will try again in January.

They will probably find a way to thread this particular needle.

But the future for global standards looks more uncertain than it has for some time. Since the 2008 crisis, many countries, while ostensibly supporting the development of tighter global rules, have been taking other measures to protect their own financial systems.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers and others showed, in former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King's memorable phrase, that big banks are "global in life, but national in death." In other words, when a global bank crashes, the host-country regulators must pick up the local pieces. That's why requirements to establish local subsidiaries, with local capital, have been adopted.

Gone are the days when banks could set up branches all over the planet, with support from the parent's balance sheet. Subsidiarization is now the rule.

And, looking ahead, we can see that the two biggest players in the FSB and Basel have other preoccupations. Donald Trump's incoming US administration has already signaled its suspicion of foreign entanglements and international commitments. Making America great again is not likely to involve new enthusiasm for more intrusive rules made in Basel.

Those who advocate rolling back much of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-reform legislation, in favor of a higher leverage ratio, as promoted in a bill advanced by Representative Jeb Hensarling, envisage a "Made in the USA" version of banking regulation. But, while the idea has some merit, it would not sit easily within the current Basel framework.

Europe faces other worries. Regulators there are now keenly focused on the implications of Brexit, which will require complex arrangements to manage a new relationship between London and the eurozone.

The top priority for the European Central Bank must be to preserve the integrity of the EU banking union, which is under pressure from both Brexit and the crisis gripping Italy's banks.

Against this background, it will be a challenge to retain the primacy of global standards and to secure continued buy-in to the Basel process. The Bank for International Settlements' new general manager, Agustin Carstens, a former governor of Mexico's central bank, will have a key role to play, as will whoever replaces Mark Carney (the current Governor of the Bank of England) next year as Chairman of the FSB. It is likely, too, that there will soon be a new Chair of the Basel Committee itself. Stefan Ingves of Sweden is due to step down next June.

These three new leaders will need all of their diplomatic skills to navigate treacherous political waters. The stakes are high. If the commitment to global standards wanes, everyone will suffer in the long run. Countries will impose incompatible local requirements, which will reduce the efficiency of capital utilization and make the system less robust in the event of renewed financial instability.



(Howard Davies, the first chairman of the United Kingdom's Financial Services Authority (1997-2003), is Chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland).

Courtesy: Project Syndicate


RMG owners in BD dismiss 1,500 workers

Al Jazeera News :

Police in Bangladesh say garment manufacturers have dismissed at least 1,500 workers after protests over pay led to a week-long shutdown at dozens of factories, which supply clothes to top Western brands.

Police described the protests as illegal and said that they had arrested 30 workers, including seven union leaders, as well as a television reporter covering the unrest, the AFP news agency reported on Wednesday.

Tens of thousands of workers walked out of factories in the manufacturing centre of Ashulia, a

suburb of the capital Dhaka, that make clothing for brands such as GAP, Zara and H&M earlier this month, prompting concerns over supply during the holiday season.

"All the factories have resumed their operations. Some 90 percent of the workers have joined work," said Nur Nabi, assistant superintendent of police. "Around 1,500 workers have been sacked [by the owners]. The owners have filed five cases against the unruly workers."

However, the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation put the number of dismissed workers at 3,500, adding that dozens of protest organisers had been forced into hiding.

Babul Akhter, head of the federation, accused authorities of using a controversial military-era law to shut down the protests. "They used [the] Special Powers Act to detain union leaders and workers," he told AFP. "Up to 3,500 workers have been sacked and 50 leaders have gone into hiding."

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association has rejected the workers' demand for their pay to be trebled from the current minimum monthly wage of 5,300 taka ($67).

The police chief of Ashulia said only those involved in violent protest had been arrested.

The protests were the latest blow to the country's $30bn garment industry, which provides employment to millions of people in this Asian nation of nearly 160 million.

Garment manufacturing makes up 80 percent of Bangladesh's exports and a prolonged interruption would have a major impact on the economy.

Bangladesh's 4,500 garment factories have a woeful history of poor pay and conditions for their four million workers, and protests occur frequently.

They gained intensity after the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in which 1,130 workers were crushed to death.

The tragedy prompted international outrage, forcing US and European clothing brands to improve deplorable safety conditions at their supplier factories.
50 killed in Congo floods

Mail Online :

Floods triggered by heavy rains and a river bursting its banks have killed at least 50 people and left thousands more homeless in southwestern Congo, a provincial governor said Thursday.

Torrential rains caused the Kalamu river, which flows through the city of Boma into the River Congo, to overflow for two hours before the waters receded, washing some of the victims across the border into Angola.

The waters left parts of the city, Democratic Republic of Congo's sole Atlantic port, covered in up to a metre of mud and a search was under way to dig out more bodies that may be buried.

"The rains on the night of Monday to Tuesday in Boma have caused at least 50 deaths," Jacques Mbadu, governor of Kongo Central

province told AFP. "We buried 31 bodies on Wednesday and we expect to get about 20 more bodies back today that ended up across the border in Angola," Mbadu added.

Mbadu said the waters hit a peak of two metres (six feet) above their usual level, destroying at least 500 homes and leaving several thousand people homeless. Boma, which lies near the mouth of the River Congo around 470 kilometres (300 miles) southwest of Kinshasa, is home to between 150,000 and 200,000 people.

"This is a cyclical phenomenon which happens every 10 years. It last happened in January 2015 but with climate change it's now happened again in December 2016," Mbadu said. Locals told AFP that two of the city's three districts were still covered in mud, up to a metre deep in some places, and described tragic scenes as the waters rushed dramatically into their houses. "I lost my two children, carried off by the waters, which rose up to three metres like a tsunami. I could only watch them as they were washed away," Faustin Lutete, a government employee, said. Fisherman Jean-Marie Kola said he just had time to "run far away, as our house was showing signs of fragility. It collapsed later." Provincial governor Mbadu said the authorities were encouraging those left homeless by the floods to seek shelter with relatives, rather than putting them in reception centres.

He said he had been working with a Dutch company to reduce the risk of the Kalumu flooding.

Congolese towns and cities are typically built up in a haphazard fashion and government services to deal with natural disasters are practically non-existent.

Floods in Kinshasa in December 2015 left more than 30 people dead and 20,000 families homeless, most of them in the capital's slums, where residents were left to battle with their bare hands through noxious mud, slime and fecal matter. Despite its vast mineral wealth, Congo is classed among the world's poorest countries and two thirds of its 70 million inhabitants get by on less than $1.25 a day.
Relocation of ICT still uncertain

Gulam Rabbani :

The International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) has not been relocated yet despite the Supreme Court's (SC) repeated instructions.

The SC in its last letter on December 4 asked the Law Ministry to relocate the ICT by December 31 from the old High Court building.

However, the Law Ministry sent counter letters to the SC, saying that relocation of the ICT may create outrage among the people and the Apex Court would be controversial.

Although yesterday was the last working day of the current year the SC's order is still a far cry.

Meanwhile on Thursday the Law Ministry sent the second counter-letter to the SC. The letter signed by Kazi Mushfiq Mahbub Robin, Senior Assistant Secretary (Administration) Law Ministry, has been sent to SC yesterday, Law Ministry sources said.

Earlier on August 18, the SC sent its first letter asking the government to relocate the ICT from its premises.

In the letter SC Registrar General asked the Law Ministry to relocate the ICT from the Old High Court building. The SC letter cited accommodation problem.

Replying to the first letter, the Law Ministry sent a counter letter on October 30, saying that relocation of the ICT would not be a correct decision.

The SC in its second letter said as some very important and sensitive cases are now being conducted amid tight security at the lower courts, there should be no problem if the ICT is relocated.

In the last letter, the SC also said it was failing to accommodate its 2500 officials due to want of secure space. In many cases two or more officials share a single desk. As a result administrative work of the SC is being hampered. The last letter of the Ministry said that old High Court building is a historical infrustructure. Many war criminals have been procecuted after the tribunal started.

This is why the importance of the building has been increased. The people of the country want that the trial proceedings of the war criminals be continue in this building.
Govt, ADB ink $167 m deal for gas sector

Staff Reporter :

The government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) signed on Thursday a loan agreement for $167 million to improve infrastructure and operational efficiency of the country's gas sector.

Senior Secretary of the Economic Relations Division (ERD) Mohammad Mejbahuddin and ADB Country Director Kazuhiko Higuchi signed the loan document on behalf of their respective sides.

The total cost of the project will be $453 million, of which the government will finance $226 million from its own source. The Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (ADB) is expected to co-finance the project with an additional $60 million.

Last month, the ADB approved the loan amount to promote sustainable economic growth and reduce poverty in Bangladesh by improving production efficiency of a key gas field north of the capital Dhaka and by expanding transmission infrastructure.

The state-owned Bangladesh Gas Transmission Company Limited (BGTCL) and Bangladesh Gas Fields Company Limited (BGFCL) also inked two project loan deals with the ADB. Under the agreement, the ADB will finance the "Natural Gas Infrastructure and Efficiency Improvement Project".

The project aims at improving efficiency in natural gas production by installing seven wellhead gas compressors at Titas Gas field and expands natural gas transmission pipeline capacity by constructing a 181-kilometer long and 36-inch parallel gas transmission pipeline from Chittagong through Feni to Bakhrabad.

Chittagong area sometimes suffers from a gas supply shortfall due to full capacity attainment of the existing 175 km long and 24-inch Bakhrabad-Chittagong gas transmission pipeline.

It is expected that increasing gas production of Titas Gas field and installing the new gas transmission pipeline will help improve gas supply to the country's prime port city and its adjoining areas.
Probe `shifts gaze` on IT technicians

Police's investigation in the Bangladesh Bank cyber heist has shifted its gaze on some IT technicians of the central bank, Reuters reported.

Citing Deputy Inspector General Shah Alam, who heads the probe, it reported investigators suspect some IT technicians of hooking up transaction systems to public internet to give hackers access. The report quoted Alam as saying they were focusing on a 'password token' for the SWIFT transaction network that was left inserted in the SWIFT server for months.

"It is supposed to be removed and locked in a secure vault after business hours each day," reads the Reuters report. Alam told the news agency that failure to remove it allowed hackers to enter the system to infect it with malware and then issue fake transfer orders. It was not known who was responsible for leaving the token that was supposed to protect the SWIFT system inserted in the server, Alam added. At least half-a-dozen bank officials share responsibility for safekeeping of the token, he said. Reuters said in its report that it could not independently confirm Alam's claim. "No one has been arrested and Alam did not provide any further evidence to back up his assertions," says the report. It quoted the senior police officer as saying that any arrest in the central banks is yet to be made as the probe was incomplete and that he was waiting for "specific information."

Reuters said, Bangladesh Bank spokesperson Subhankar Saha declined comment on the investigation as well as the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and SWIFT. Hackers used stolen credentials to try to transfer nearly $1 billion from Bangladesh Bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York through the SWIFT transaction system. Many of the transfer orders were blocked or reversed, but $81 million was sent to accounts in a branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) in the Philippines.

The money eventually went into the sprawling casino industry in the Philippines, with most of it remaining untraced. DIG Alam's comments follow months of assertions by authorities that central bank officials were guilty of nothing more than negligence in the heist. Bangladesh police had previously blamed contractors hired by the SWIFT transactions network for making its system vulnerable, a charge denied by the Belgium-based cooperative. "There were a number of other things, which if the Bangladesh Bank people had not done, the hacking would not have been possible," Reuters quoted the senior police officer saying.

Alam told Reuters he believed IT technicians connected the central bank's SWIFT network to the public Internet last year while linking the network to the bank's domestic payments system, the Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS). Linking it to the Internet made the highly secure network accessible from any outside computer. The work on linking SWIFT to the RTGS was supervised by SWIFT contractors but carried out by Bangladesh Bank technicians, Reuters said quoting Alam and a bank official.
Myanmar envoy summoned again

Staff Reporter :

The government on Thursday summoned Myo Myint Than, Myanmar Ambassador to Dhaka and strongly protested against his (Myint Than) country's navy's firing on Bangladeshi fishermen in the Bay of Bengal.

"We expressed our deep concern over Myanmar navy's firing on Bangladeshi fishermen, and in a letter with strong language protested against the attack. We have also urged the Myanmar government to investigate the incident and compensate injured fishermen," Kamrul Ahsan Secretary (Bilateral and Consular), Ministry of Foreign Affairs told journalists at his office yesterday afternoon.

He also handed over a protest note to the Myanmar envoy at that time. Myo Myint Than came to Foreign Ministry office at about 1am, a source close to the Foreign Ministry said.

On Wednesday morning, Myanmar Navy opened fire on a Bangladeshi fishing trawler in the Bay of Bengal near St. Martin's Island in Cox's Bazar, leaving 4-6 fishermen injured.

Kamrul Ahsan also urged Myanmar to give due consideration to the demand from international community to conduct impartial investigation into the alleged indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force and human rights violation during the ongoing military operation in the Rakhine State. According to ministry sources, the government also handed over a formal letter to the Myanmar Ambassador to request his government to take back all Rohingyas immediately.

The Myanmar government has been asked to take back its all registered and non-registered Rohingya citizens from Bangladesh.

Around 41,000 Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh in recent years so far despite tight border measures since October 9.

Thousands of the fleeing refugees have been sent back to Myanmar by Bangladeshi border guards. More than 2,30,000 Rohingya are already living in Bangladesh, most of them illegally, although around 32,000 are formally registered as refugees. Thousands of distressed Myanmar citizens including women, children and elderly people continue to cross border into Bangladesh despite Border Guard's sincere effort to prevent the influx.

Earlier on November 23, Bangladesh government had summoned the Myanmar envoy to express concerns over the influx of Rohingyas fleeing persecution in the Rakhine State of Myanmar.

Meanwhile, the European Commission is allocating  300 000 (BDT 24,941,382) in humanitarian aid fund to provide emergency humanitarian assistance to Rohingya refugees who have recently fled from Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh.

The aid will directly benefit 7 500 newly arrived refugees in the coastal district of Cox's Bazar. "Most of the Rohingya families who have recently crossed the Naaf River have arrived with nothing, and are therefore in critically need of humanitarian assistance", in a statement Roman Majcher, Head of the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO) office in Bangladesh said. "The support from the European Commission will not only ensure that their urgent needs are addressed, but will also contribute to help them cope with what they have just gone through by providing them with psychological support". The EU-funded assistance will focus on delivering much-needed immediate relief and assistance to Rohingya refugees in terms of food and nutrition support, as well as the provision of non-food relief items such as sleeping kits, hygiene parcels and warm clothes. Unconditional cash grants will also be distributed among the most vulnerable to help them cover their daily basic needs, and psychological support will also be provided to help them cope with post-traumatic stress and shock.

Bangladesh has witnessed a major influx of members of the Rohingya community into the south-eastern Chittagong Division over the last weeks, as a result of escalating tensions and violence in the northern part of neighbouring Myanmar's Rakhine State.

It is believed that thousands of Rohingya refugees have crossed the border into the country in search of safety, more than half of whom are women and children.

Many are in dire condition, both physically and mentally, and many children have arrived showing signs of malnutrition. The sudden increase in the number of refugees has prompted urgent needs for shelter, clothes and other relief items.

The EU funding is being made available via the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) through its Small Scale Response mechanism.
Juniors shine

93.06 pc in JSC and JDC; 98.51 pc in PEC, 95.85 in Ebtedayee pass exam results

Students of Holy Cross School and College celebrating their results of JSC\'s examination on Thursday.
End human crisis of Rohingyas

Nobel Laureates' open letter to Security Council President, member countries: Int'l probe demanded

Thirteen Nobel Laureates, including Professor Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, in a joint open letter to the President of the Security Council and member countries of the council called for ending the human crisis of Rohingyas in Myanmar.



Apart from the Nobel Laureates, there are also former prime minister, minister, educationists and other distinguished professionals. In the letter, signed by a total 22 dignitaries and issued on Thursday, they said 'a human tragedy amounting to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity is unfolding in Myanmar.'



"Over the past two months, a military offensive by the Myanmar Army in Rakhine State has led to the killing of hundreds of Rohingya people. Over 30,000 people have been displaced. Houses have been burned, women raped, many civilians arbitrarily arrested, and children killed," the letter said.



Crucially, access for humanitarian aid organisations has been almost denied, creating an appalling humanitarian crisis in an area already extremely poor. Thousands have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, only to be sent back. Some international experts have warned of the potential for genocide. It has all the hallmarks of recent past tragedies - Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Kosovo.



"We urge the United Nations to do everything possible to encourage the Government of Myanmar to lift all restrictions on humanitarian aid, so that people receive emergency assistance. Access for journalists and human rights monitors should also be permitted, and an independent, international inquiry to establish the truth about the current situation should be established," the letter said.



"Furthermore, we urge the members of UN Security Council to put this crisis on Security Council's agenda as a matter of urgency, and to call upon the Secretary-General to visit Myanmar in the coming weeks as a priority. If the current Secretary-General is able to do so, we would urge him to go; if not, we encourage the new Secretary-General to make it one of his first tasks after he takes office in January."



"It is time for the international community as a whole to speak out much more strongly. After Rwanda, world leaders said "never again". If we fail to take action, people may starve to death if they are not killed with bullets, and we may end up being the passive observers of crimes against humanity which will lead us once again to wring our hands belatedly and say "never again" all over again," the letter added.



The head of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR] on the Bangladesh side of the border, John McKissick, has accused Myanmar's government of ethnic cleansing. The UN's Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar Yanghee Lee has condemned the restricted access to Rakhine State as "unacceptable."



"The Rohingyas are among the world's most persecuted minorities, who for decades have been subjected to a campaign of marginalisation and dehumanisation. In 1982, their rights to citizenship were removed, and they were rendered stateless, despite living in the country for generations. They have endured severe restrictions on movement, marriage, education and religious freedom. Yet despite the claims by government and military, and many in society, that they are in fact illegal Bengali immigrants who have crossed the border, Bangladesh does not recognise them either," the letter said.



Their plight intensified dramatically in 2012 when two severe outbreaks of violence resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands and a new apartheid between Rohingya Muslims and their Rakhine Buddhist neighbours. Since then they have existed in ever more dire conditions.



This latest crisis was sparked by an attack on Myanmar border police posts on the 9th October, in which nine Myanmar police officers were killed. The truth about who carried out the attack, how and why, is yet to be established, but the Myanmar military accused a group of Rohingyas. Even if that is true, the military's response has been grossly disproportionate. It would be one thing to round up suspects, interrogate them and put them on trial. It is quite another to unleash helicopter gunships on thousands of ordinary civilians and to rape women and throw babies into a fire.



According to one Rohingya interviewed by Amnesty International, "they shot at people who were fleeing. They surrounded the village and started going from house to house. They were verbally abusing the people. They were threatening to rape the women."



Another witness described how her two sons were arbitrarily arrested: "It was early in the morning, the military surrounded our house, while some came in and forced me and my children to go outside. They tied my two sons up. They tied their hands behind their backs, and they were beaten badly. The military kicked them in the chest.



I saw it myself. I was crying so loudly. When I cried, they [the military] pointed a gun at me. My children were begging the military not to hit them. They were beaten for around 30 minutes before being taken away". She has not seen them since.



"Despite repeated appeals to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi we are frustrated that she has not taken any initiative to ensure full and equal citizenship rights of the Rohingyas. Daw Suu Kyi is the leader and is the one with the primary responsibility to lead, and lead with courage, humanity and compassion," the letter said.



The signatories are: 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, 1996 Nobel Peace Laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, 1976 Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, 1976 Nobel Peace Laureate Betty Williams, 1984 Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 1987 Nobel Peace Laureate Oscar Arias, 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams, 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Tawakkol Karman, 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee, 2014 Nobel Peace Laureate Malala Yousafzai, 1993 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine Sir Richard J. Roberts and 2009 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine Elizabeth Blackburn.



Besides, former Italian Foreign minister Emma Bonino, Founder and Editor of The Huffington Post Arianna Huffington, Business Leader and Philanthropist Sir Richard Branson, Business Leader Paul Polman, Entrepreneur and Philanthropist Mo Ibrahim, SDG Advocate and Film Director Richard Curtis, SDG Advocate and Voice of Libyan Women Alaa Murabit, Business Leader and Philanthropist Jochen Zeitz, Human Rights Activist Kerry Kennedy and Former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi signed the open letter.
Big fall in remittance to seriously affect the nation

IT appears quite unusual as some study reports highlighted that the number of migrants in 2016 rose by 35 percent but our remittance instead of growing proportionally has drastically fallen by more than 25 percent this year over the last year. Outward migration hits 7.5 lakhs number this year as compared to 5.55 lakhs last year. But the devastating fall in remittance to US$ 12.65 billion this year from $15.31 last year is something that showed quite an unusual situation that calls for careful weighing as to whether there is any statistical error, or the study was based on misleading data supplied by govt agencies. There may also be other serious issues undermining the growth in migration by diverting remittance to third country destinations. We must be careful if organized groups are doing any mischief in this case.



The July figure of remittance at $1.0 billion appears quite shocking this year when such monthly figure often stayed above $ 1.25 billion in recent years. Bangladesh continues to be among the top 10 remittance recipient countries for sometime, but its recent abysmal slide losing one notch in position is quite dismaying. Bangladesh has over 8 million expatriate workers abroad and the setback in the volume of their earnings as they sent money regularly home puts an ominous sign.



It is true that our workforce is less skilled at many places and are facing hazardous working environment including low pay. But looking at the plummeting remittance figure there seems to be something unusual at work. We know that most Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait are facing recession from a sharp fall in oil revenue and impact of regional war when they have scaled back much of their development work. So earnings of Bangladeshi workers have also sharply declined.



Moreover, we don't have also a clear homeward migration figure as many workers returned home this year and recent years because of low earning that hardly cover livelihood cost in host countries. So we need a holistic calculation to ascertain the real situation influencing movement of our migrants and their remittances.



We must say that the figure presented by Migratory Movement Research Unit of Dhaka University has surely used credible inputs to assess the situation. Moreover, the declining remittance is capturing national headlines in recent months. But as it appears the real situation is horrific and our banks, which collect remittance and the government, must take objective stock of the situation to stop the leakage. Continued fall in remittance is poised to hit the rural economy and the overall well-being of the nation.






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.
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Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
I don't know how many young women come to this blog or how many are parents of teenage or young adult women, but here are some safety tips from Kelsey's Army:

T

I

P

S

1. Trust your instincts - If something feels wrong then something probably is wrong.2. Know your surroundings - know who and what is around you.3. Always have a plan for where you would go and what you would do if a situation arises.4. Be willing to make a scene in order to be noticed.5. Let someone know where you are going and when you will be back.Remember the acronym TIPS:ake Chargenform others of your whereaboutsrepare for any situationurvival Mentality (role play situations so you will respond should they happen)For more information, go to Kelsey's Army
The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now.

Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market.

In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender.

India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex.

Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted.

But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted?

Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner.

If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems.

I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now.

I want more variation in masturbation

I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own.

If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end.

What is sex toys for Indian?

Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation.

It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms.

They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable.

Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner.

The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner.

It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past.

In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping.

Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order.

In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing.

Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome.

Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own.

But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance.

More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around.

Sextoy situation in India

Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years.

In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India.

Mumbai

Kolkata

Bangalore

Delhi

Chennai

Hyderabad

These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India.

In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well.

If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too.

If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it.

What are Sextoys for beginner?

Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms.

Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy.

I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion.

I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy.

If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma.

Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it.

Advantages of using sextoy for Indians

There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians

You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways.

Can have stimulating sex

Can develop new sexual zones

If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern.

However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways.

You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation.

Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever.

There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure.

This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it.

When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems.

It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms).

For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles

[Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou...

Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India.

Sextoy for beginner men in India

So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners.

For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men!

The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men

Masturbator

Cock rings

Love Doll

Sex Lubricants

Toys for the prostate

Lets check each one in detail.

Masturbator

The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products.

It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands.

Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands.

They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.)

Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much.

Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! !

Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa   SEXToys India PR  (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018

Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood.

If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here

Really pleasant male masturbation and how to do it Are you in a rut with your daily masturbation routine? I'm going to show you five ways men masturbate that you might ...

[For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien...

Cock Ring

A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis.

It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow.

It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber.

In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection.

Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction.

It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it.

Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time.

Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function.

Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy.

You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect.

[Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat...

Love Doll

Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex.

There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women.

Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price.

The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true.

You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste.

There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice.

You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls.

If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here

Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to...

Sex lubricants

Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules.

It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution.

Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse.

There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent.

Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent.

If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here.

What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many...

Toys for the Prostate

Another sextoy for men is prostate toys.

The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line.

Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men.

Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men.

What is the prostate?

The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm.

You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus.

By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms.

Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.)

The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation.

Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure.

sextoy for beinner women in India

The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy.

The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy.

Vibrator.

Dildo

Electric Masserger

Lets check out what each one is in detail.

If you want to check out womens toys, click here.

[BEST25]Sex Toys for Women in IndiaThat Can Help You Have an Orgasm There are many women who pretend to feel orgasm during sex. But don't worry, you don't have to pretend to feel orgasm...

Vibrators

A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator.

Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy.

It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy.

Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women.

For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators.

Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex.

Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself.

This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual.

Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men.

When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons.

Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most...

Dildo

A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis.

It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass.

A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it.

They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well.

It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device.

A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo.

Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands.

For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis.

This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one.

To learn more about dildo, please click here.

What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th...

Electric Masserger

A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores.

It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low.

Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels.

Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation.

It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure.

For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm.

It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out.

If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager?

To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here.

What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th...

How to choose a sextoy for Indian

Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one.

Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points:  Does the size fit you (the partner)?

Does the size fit you (your partner)?

Is the environment able to produce sound without problems?

Price range

First of all, the choice of size is quite important.

Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women.

For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage.

Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems.

Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise.

If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level.

Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it.

Finally, there is the price range.

The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest.

Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy.

Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy?

I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance.

For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics.

If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out.

How to buy sextoys in India

The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping.

For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below.

Sextoy is one of them.

Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping.

SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India.

They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry.

Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card.

To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy.

ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal.

Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on.

Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture.

Cautions for Indians using sextoy

When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind

Keep sex toys clean

Watch out for electrical leakage

Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy

As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone.

Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there.

It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case.

In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness.

Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful.

If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it.

You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly.

Summary

What did you think?

In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India.

The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future.

As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values.

However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health.

If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try?

Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women.

I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it.
Longbranch Cafe & Bakery will be hosting an exhibit by local artist Polly Winkler-Mitchell from Jan. 3 through Feb. 6, with a reception from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6.

Winkler-Mitchell, who was cited in Early American Life's list of 200 outstanding artists, is an artist of Scherenschnitte, which translates in German to scissors cutting, according to a news release from Elaine Ramseyer of Longbranch Cafe & Bakery. Using black silhouette paper and delicate surgical scissors to create fanciful designs on paper, Winkler-Mitchell's designs are all done free hand.

"Often based on traditional themes, and frequently incorporating folk motifs, her work has blossomed into brightly colored American primitive folk art, much of it centering around historical events in our community and nostalgic memories from her childhood in Southern Illinois," Ramseyer stated.

Longbranch Cafe & Bakery is located at 100 E. Jackson St. in Carbondale.

 The Southern
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 28, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan attended on December 28 the reception at the Foreign Ministry of Armenia on the occasion of the New Year and Christmas.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Armenian Presidents Office, Serzh Sargsyan congratulated and extended warm wishes to the staff of the Ministry and all the diplomats, as well the Ambassadors accredited in Armenia on the occasion of the coming holidays. In his speech the President spoke about Armenias main foreign policy achievements in the passing 2016 year, the still existing problems and challenges, the works done thank to Armenias active involvement in integration processes and international organizations, Armenias diplomatic efforts for Nagorno Karabakh conflicts settlement.

The passing year was symbolic for us. Armenia marked the 25th anniversary of independence. 25 years ago our diplomacy was just starting to make its first steps like our newly independent state.

Today Armenia presents itself to the world with a constructive, balanced, reliable and principled diplomacy.

Whoever is familiar with our diplomatic handwriting should know that Armenia is guided by the principle for the sake of, but not against, President Sargsyan said in his speech pointing our t a number of examples of Armenias constructive involvement in various international activities, such as peace keeping missions or participation of integration processes.

Armenias positions and opinions are rather clear and comprehensive for the international community due to our consistent and principled foreign policy, due to your principled foreign policy.

The results of the Vienna and St. Petersburg summits following the April aggression unleashed by Azerbaijan prove my words. The statement issued by the foreign ministers of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chair states in Hamburg at the end of the year evidently demonstrated to what extent the Azerbaijani rhetoric over Nagorno Karabakh conflict have nothing to do with the reality President of Armenia said, adding that at the same time the statement showed how much our approaches in harmony with those of the international community.

Speaking about the options for Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement, President Sargsyan once again reaffirmed that there is no other document on the negotiation table apart from the Madrid principles. I am not an experienced diplomat, but most probably diplomacy is the art of reaching reciprocal concessions, he stressed.

Referring to the issue why they do not share all the details on the talks with the public, Serzh Sargsyan pointed out two main reasons, When preparing for negotiations one cannot expose his tools, tactics or strategies, because in the contemporary world when you say something in Yerevan, it immediately becomes a public knowledge in Baku, Washington, Moscow, Paris. This is first. Everybody knows that there is a well-known principle  nothing is agreed if everything is not agreed, Serzh Sargsyan said. He added that the fact is that since 2007, the adoption of Madrid principles as the basis of the negotiations, Armenia has pursued only one goal, which is defining the final status of Nagorno Karabakh by the people of Nagorno Karabakh and we will never abandon this principle.





Our diplomacy introduced to the international community the April aggression against Artsakh by Azerbaijan and the gross violations of international obligations and humanitarian law. The Republic of Armenia, together with the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chair countries continues to make efforts for establishing peace. Armenia is a peace campaigner. We comprehend well enough the value of peace, the Armenian President stressed.

President Sargsyan also touched upon the issue efficient governance. In this context he highlighted the parliamentary elections in 2017 as a key point for bringing into life efficient governance. I am glad we witnessed in the passing year an example of political maturity, when the parliamentary political forces were able to reach a consensus over the control mechanisms aimed at ensuring legitimacy to electoral processes, he said, expressing gratitude to international donors for financial and advisory assistance. Serzh Sargsyan assured that the leadership of Armenia is determined to hold elections in line with the legislation and international standards, hoping that they will become the best elections of the 25 year history of Armenias independence.

The President of Armenia once again congratulated all the present and extended warm wishes to them asking the foreign Ambassadors accredited in Armenia to convene his warm wishes to the leaderships and peoples of their countries.
CARBONDALE  A new partnership between the City of Carbondale and the state of Illinois is intended to simplify local liquor inspections.

The Illinois Liquor Control Commission announced the Carbondale Liquor Inspection Pilot Program in a news release issued Wednesday. Under the agreement, local officials with the Carbondale Fire Department and Carbondale Services Division will carry out standard liquor inspections on behalf of the state.

There are 68 establishments with liquor licenses in Carbondale. Previously, both city and state inspectors have had their own programs to perform routine checks of license holders.

That arrangement often led to redundancy, said ILLC spokesman Terry Horstman.

There were certain things the state was looking for, and certain things the city was looking for. As you can imagine, there are a limited statewide number of inspectors versus local inspectors, so this certainly ensures that weve got all licensees inspected, Horstman said.

The ILCC will provide financial assistance and training for designated local inspectors and will pay the city $75 per establishment each year to cover the annual checks. If the city wishes to conduct multiple inspections within one year, it may do so using its own funds, Horstman said.

Inspections will focus on areas of local concern, such as health and sanitation, license and insurance verification, and deceptive advertising practices. The partnership will allow state commission officials to focus on statewide issues, such as illegal importation of alcohol, trade practice violation and sale of alcohol to minors.

City officials completed ILCC training in December. Under the terms of the agreement, they will be required to report their findings to state officials after they perform inspections.

The state commission formed a similar partnership with Naperville in 2015. Since then, it has partnered with about 25 cities, counties and towns in Illinois.

The Carbondale pilot program will continue through June 30, 2017. At that point, the state will decide whether to turn the agreement into an annual, permanent partnership, Horstman said.

The program is not seen as an expansion, but rather reallocation of state resources to better serve the local government and the people of Illinois, Horstman said.
COBDEN  Although the Old Feed Store always seems to have some activity inside, folks around Cobden may have noticed a lot more commotion than usual.

Ray and Rose Hogan, who live in the upstairs apartment and own and operate the venue, are moving. The Hogans have lived above the store for six or seven years and owned the building even longer. Now, new owner Brooke Miller will take over Jan. 1.

Miller is working with Ray Hogan to learn the ropes of the business. The Hogans son, Joe, will work with Miller.

On our end, its time for a hand-off, Ray Hogan said.

The feed store has a long and storied past. Robert J. Bally Basler acquired the business just after the Great Depression. According to Cobden legend, the business was not doing well, and bills were piling up. Basler was owed back wages and took the business as payment for his work.

When fruit farms began to be profitable in Union County, they added a line to make baskets. A veneer shop was located across the alley. The barn was added just after World War II.

Many men and women worked as teenagers making berry baskets upstairs, Rose Hogan said.

They were quite the operation, Ray Hogan added.

Robert M. Mike Basler bought the business from his father. He owned and operated Basler Feed Store until his retirement in 2002.

The building was sitting empty and the Hogans hate to see old buildings deteriorate. The couple was living in Anna at the time, and their two sons had hit college age. They decided to buy the feed store in 2007.

During the first year of renovations, efforts targeted stabilizing the building. The second year, new wiring and plumbing were installed.

At this point, the Hogans said they had just finished clearing out the building  it had a lot of debris in it. They decided to put their Victorian home in Anna on the market and move to Cobden. They said they love the sense of community in Cobden, and had lived in town when they first moved to the area.

It is probably one of the most diverse communities in Southern Illinois, Ray Hogan said.

Their third year was spent building an apartment above the feed store to live in temporarily after their home sold. Renovations to the brick building were finished their fourth year and the barn was rebuilt their fifth year.

It has become a popular music venue, as well as home to several community events and celebrations, such as activities for the Peach Festival, Colorfest, Christmas in Cobden, Hello Neighbor Festival and Purhepecha Festival.

I love music, Ray Hogan said. At the event center and venue, youre able to cross over within different communities [within Cobden].

Ray Hogan says the first time the Old Feed Store hosted the Purhepecha Festival, dancers were a little stressful. There were 35 dancers in full costumes with wooden shoes on the new polyurethane-sealed wood floor in the barn. It was a little nerve-wracking for him, but the floor was fine.

The acoustics are incredible in the back room, Rose Hogan said.

Chris Jones and the Night Drivers out of Nashville recorded a live album here, Ray Hogan added.

Many local bands have had album release parties at the Old Feed Store, including The Swamp Tigers and The Bankesters. They have drawn some bigger names, too, such as Tommy Talton, a founding member of southern rock band Cowboy, and Jeff Black.

First, Ray and Rose have started something really dynamic here, and I want to learn and continue that, Miller said.

She said the venue is home to everything from a weekly farmers market and live music to corporate dinners and weddings. She wants to learn what Ray and Rose Hogan have done, grow that. Then, maybe expand to house a coffee shop in the old brick part of the building.

Miller said Basler Feed Store was a hub of the community. Farmers would gather there and share the news about the community and its people. She believes the Old Feed Store is once again a hub of the community.

The events Ray and Rose have started are great, Miller said. You have to invest in the community.

Miller is also thrilled to get to raise her children in Cobden. She is mom to two boys, ages 9 and 6.

Were pretty excited that we will have a little more free time, and were excited that Brooke is going to continue the music, Ray Hogan said.

It will look familiar to those whove come here before. Hopefully, it will be a really smooth transition, Miller said.
Les Winkeler Sports editor Les Winkeler is sports editor and outdoors writer for The Southern Illinoisan. Follow Les Winkeler Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

Its never too early to panic.

Thats a running joke I have with my wife. She tends to expect the worst.

Conversely, I try to maintain a glass half-full perspective.

Having said that, Im worried about the hard right environmental turn the country is taking. Environmental concerns dont appear to be on Americas radar these days. The plight of the air we breathe and the water we drink has taken a back seat to four-letter words like jobs and cash.

The situation was already looking bleak before Donald Trump was elected president. Even citizens casually concerned with environmental integrity should be worried.

Some of his cabinet picks are openly hostile to the Environmental Protection Agency and general environmental concerns. Ryan Zinke, Trump's nominee for Secretary of the Interior, has a three percent rating from the League of Conservation voters. Scott Pruitt, Trump's appointee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, is a climate science denier.

Exacerbating the situation is the rising price of oil. New drilling in the United States, including Illinois, had been put on hold because of the oil glut.

Now, with OPEC holding back production and an administration willing to perforate the earths crust for every last nugget of coal or drop of oil, it is open season on the environment.

Trump rode to the presidency with the slogan Make America Great Again. Thats a noble, not to mention lofty, aspiration. Unfortunately, it appears his vision of a path to greatness involves looking in the rear view mirror, not out of the windshield.

One of the cornerstones of his patch to greatness is the resurrection of fossil fuels.

Dont get me wrong, Im a realist. Fossil fuels are going to be a part of our lives for the near future. However, it makes no sense to pretend that coal and petroleum are the fuels of the future.

America rose to greatness by looking to the future, by being innovative. In the early 20th century, automotive pioneers knew the day of the horse and buggy were numbered. The Wright Brothers may not have foreseen the future importance of air travel, but they were intent on innovation.

Sure, there were naysayers throughout modern history. There were people who thought computers were a fad, that space travel was an impossible dream.

But, the technological strides weve made in the past couple decades are remarkable. As a young adult, I had boxes of record albums and a stereo system with speakers the size of a small refrigerator. Now, I can carry my entire music collection, and a stereo system, in my shirt pocket.

So, it rings quite hollow today when representatives of the fossil fuel industry point out the shortcomings of solar and wind energy. Yes, they are correct: given todays technology, the country cannot operate solely on renewables.

However, it truly takes a leap of faith, or perhaps more accurately a complete lack of faith, to think that wind and solar technology wont make rapid advances. Perhaps we are just one laboratory breakthrough from an energy source we havent even considered.

If the goal is to make America the envy of every other country, the path is in front of us, not behind us. We should be pouring money into research and innovation instead of being willing to ravage the environment for short-term gain.

We did horrible things to the earth in the 1960s and 70s. President Richard Nixon signed the Clean Water and Clean Air acts as a result.

The results were amazing. The Great Lakes restored themselves. The bald eagle, once on the brink of extinction, flourished again.

Apparently, as a civilization we dont learn from our mistakes. That makes me think its not too early to panic.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijani forces made over 40 ceasefire violations in various directions of the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan line of contact, the defense ministry of Nagorno Karabakh told ARMENPRESS.

The ministry issued a statement, saying: Overnight December 28-29 Azerbaijan violated the ceasefire regime in various directions of the line of contact over 40 times, firing more than 750 shots from small arms. More intense violations occurred in the eastern (Akna) direction of the line of contact.

The Defense Army of Nagorno Karabakh did not take countermeasures. The situation is under complete control of the Nagorno Karabakh forces.
Five months after becoming president, James Clark reports that South Carolina State Universitys finances and enrollment are improving.

Now hes looking to make improvements in areas that have been neglected, especially in information technology and deferred maintenance.

S.C. State Board Chair Charlie Way says Clark has proven himself.

Hes made a lot of changes and I think hes exactly what we needed for S.C. State, Way said. I think James has done a fantastic job.

Clark was previously vice president of a $1 billion division of AT&T. He converted it from a money-losing division into the most profitable division in AT&Ts computer business.

He became affiliated with S.C. State in 2015, after lawmakers decided to remove the existing board following years of financial and accreditation problems. He was one of seven people named to a temporary board created to stabilize the institution.

The temporary board began a presidential search in February at the urging of members of the legislature. They agreed to hire a president by December.

But after discussion, trustees decided to follow another avenue, Way said.

They had two options, he said. They could carry out an expensive and time-consuming search or hire Clark.

Continuing the search would have meant bringing in a president without a deep understanding of the universitys problems, Way said. It would have taken the new president at least year to catch up with what was going on.

Clark was unanimously named president at a special called meeting on June 29. The boards decision came almost immediately after the university announced his resignation from the board of trustees.

Some community members and at least one legislator protested the action, saying the board failed to follow regular procedures in hiring a president.

Clark reports there have been improvements since he became president.

Enrollment had been declining for years. In November, Clark told trustees that the university more than met its goal for the fall semester.

Finances are also looking better, he said.

Through various means, including a 20-day furlough and an increase in student costs, the institution is operating with a balanced budget.

In addition, the school recently refinanced bonds on the Hugine Suites that will save $11 million over the life of the loan, Clark said.

Clark reported that work on the universitys sidewalks and streets will be underway by the end of the year.

Since the institution is gated and through traffic is not allowed, it gets no public funding for the upkeep of its roads. However, the City of Orangeburg has granted the institution $1 million for upgrades and the county has promised some $800,000 in kind.

Clark said thats enough to do the work.

In addition, once repairs are complete, the university will be able to call in $2.8 million in federal grants to redo the Russell Street entrance into the Clyburn Transportation Center.

The funding has been available to the university for a number of years and no matching funds are required, he said.

Its money thats just sitting there until we get the other things together, he said.

Looking toward next year, Clark is asking the state for $5.5 million to carry out needed information technology upgrades.

S.C. States IT systems are abysmal, Clark said.

Theres bigger call for internet access across the campus than the university can supply with its current software, he said. Students and employees need faster, more reliable access that works all the time.

The finance department is unable to complete its work on time because the network moves so slowly. Staff has to work overtime.

Weve been working a few people to death, he said. We cant have people working 80 and 90 hours a week.

He also wants to address deferred maintenance.

For example, Truth Hall, which could house 400 students, has reached the point where it will cost more than $8 million to update, Clark said.

Clark also plans to build bridges with other institutions of higher education.

For example, he and Denmark Technical College President Dr. Leonard McIntyre recently signed an agreement making it easier for Denmark Tech students to transfer credits to S.C. State. Under some conditions, they will be able to transfer to the university as juniors.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijani forces attempted a sabotage infiltration in the Armenian state border, south-east from Chinari village of Tavush province in the early morning of December 29.

The defense ministry of Armenia told ARMENPRESS the Armenian Armed Forces have neutralized the Azerbaijan attacks. Azerbaijani forces were pushed back, suffering losses and WIAs, including in the military positions.

Unfortunately, the Armenian side also suffered losses during the combat. During the battle for defending the Armenian state border, Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh M. Melikyan, Private Edgar G. Narayan and Private Erik G. Abovyan were killed.

The defense ministry of Armenia shares the grief of loss and extends condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers.

The defense ministry possesses irrefutable evidence and proof of the Azerbaijan violation in the Armenian state border. The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan is fully responsible for the instigation, the ministrys statement says.
I make it a point of not missing the annual Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy, and this year was/is no different as it's a street pho...
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YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. Political scientist Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan says all border positions of Tavush province are well equipped and safe, he posted a note on Facebook commenting on the sabotage infiltration attempt launched by the Azerbaijani forces in Tavush province on December 29, reports Armenpress.

He said the common position in Tavush province is prevailing over the Azerbaijani forces, thus they have long prepared for conducting that sabotage infiltration attempt at this direction.

I have visited all positions in Tavush province. I can surely state that we have the best equipped and safe positions. And the common position prevails over the enemy. Thus, we can conclude, that the Azerbaijanis have long and in-detail been prepared for launching sabotage infiltration attempt here. The enemy is now pushed back suffering great losses. According to my information, the situation is relatively calm now. But this doesnt mean anything. Rather, it means one thing, that there is only one way to push Azerbaijan back, that is the weapon. And all other types of dreams of peace are vain and empty, the political scientist said.

Azerbaijani forces attempted a sabotage infiltration in the Armenian state border south-east of Chinari village, Tavush province in the morning of December 29. The Armenian Armed Forces engaged in a battle with the Azerbaijani forces. Sniper and mortar fire are being used. The Armenian Armed Forces have neutralized the Azerbaijan attacks. The Armenian Armed Forces fully control the situation  preventing the encroachments of Azerbaijan.

The Armenian side also suffered losses during the combat. During the battle for defending the Armenian state border, Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh M. Melikyan, Private Edgar G. Narayan and Private Erik G. Abovyan were killed. Azerbaijani forces were pushed back, suffering losses and WIAs, including in the military positions.
By Azertac





A social rehabilitation center for visually impaired minors, social shelter for persons over 18 years of age, as well as s social shelter and rehabilitation center of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population have today been inaugurated in Sabunchu settlement, Zabrat, Baku.





President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, his wife Mehriban Aliyeva, and daughters Leyla and Arzu attended the opening of the facilities.





The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the opening of the complex.





Minister of Labour and Social Protection of Population Salim Muslumov informed President Ilham Aliyev and his wife Mehriban Aliyeva about the conditions created at the complex.





The Azerbaijani President and his family members viewed the complex.








By Trend

Russian embassy in Syria was shelled by terrorists again, according to the statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Sputnik reported.

Russia's embassy in Damascus has come under mortar fire again, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.

"On December 28, at 13:00 and 13:19 Moscow Time, the Russian embassy in Syria was shelled by terrorists again. One mine, which luckily did not explode, fell in the courtyard of the compound of the Russian diplomatic mission's administrative buildings. The second [fell] in the immediate vicinity of its territory. Sappers were involved to clear the unexploded ammunition," the statement said.

Expressing concern over the persistent terrorist threat to the Russian embassy and diplomats, the ministry said all terrorist groups entrenched around Damascus must be eliminated as soon as possible.

"This confirms the urgent need to eliminate such terrorist hotbeds as soon as possible," the statement said.

The ministry added that attacks on the Russian embassy in Damascus must be strongly condemned by all who counter terrorism in deed.
The Syrian government and armed opposition groups have reached an agreement on a ceasefire on Syrian territory and on readiness to start peace talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on December 29, Sputnik reported.



"It was just reported that today a few hours ago an event occurred, which we have not just been waiting for long, but which we worked a lot to make closer. Three documents have been signed," Putin said at a meeting with the foreign and defense ministers.

"The first document signed by the Syrian government and the armed opposition is on the ceasefire in the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic," he said. "The second document is a set of measures to monitor the ceasefire regime and the third document is a statement of readiness to start peace negotiations on the Syrian settlement," Putin said

The president added that the agreements on Syria are fragile, and require special attention and patience, as well as constant contact with partners.

Vladimir Putin earlier said that Russia and Turkey had agreed to an earlier proposal to bring together representatives of the Syrian regime and opposition in Kazakhstan.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has expressed his "readiness" to provide a platform for talks in Astana to solve the long-standing crisis.

Syria has been locked in a devastating civil war since early 2011. Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-torn country, according to the UN.
By Azernews

By Laman Ismayilova

The 4th meeting of the All-Russian Azerbaijani Congress was held in Moscow on December 28.

The meeting was attended by Azerbaijani President`s Assistant for Public and Political Affairs Ali Hasanov, Chairman of the State Committee on Work with Diaspora Nazim Ibrahimov, Ambassador Polad Bulbuloghlu, more than 200 delegates from Russian districts, as well as state and government officials of Russia and Azerbaijan.

Opening the Congress, Ali Hasanov read out President Ilham Aliyev`s congratulatory letter to the event participants, Azertac reported.

The official highlighted national leader Heydar Aliyev`s services in diaspora building. Hailing the work done by the All-Russian Azerbaijani Congress, Ali Hasanov said the Congress has become an influential public organization which contributes to the promotion of multicultural traditions, spread of true information about Azerbaijan, and the strengthening of friendly relations between the two countries.

The Azerbaijani President`s Assistant noted that the All-Russian Azerbaijani Congress joins the charity events and carries out projects in the fields of education and culture.

Hasanov also spoke of Azerbaijan-Russia relations, stressing that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin attach special importance to expanding the bilateral cooperation and strengthening partnership between the two countries.

Chairman of the State Committee on Work with Diaspora Nazim Ibrahimov, in turn, said the meeting will assess the work done by the Congress over the past years and determine the priorities of future activities.

He noted that the State Committee remains committed to the policy of national leader Heydar Aliyev, which is continued by President Aliyev.

Azerbaijan`s Ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbuloghlu described the participation of high-ranking Azerbaijani officials in the Congress as manifestation of the importance attached by President Aliyev to the diaspora.

Bulbuloghlu hailed the attention of the Russian Representative Office of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and Azerbaijani Youth Union of Russia, which are headed by the Foundation`s Vice-President Leyla Aliyeva, to Azerbaijanis living in Russia.

Executive director Ilgar Hajiyev presented a report of the Congress, and highlighted the issues on the agenda.
Port Services Corporation (PSC) has agreed the terms of a deal with the government to continue the operation and management of Port Sultan Qaboos in Muscat for an additional year beyond the expiry of the current licence on December 31, said a report.



The announcement came in a filing to the Capital Market Authority (CMA) yesterday (December 28), added the Oman Daily Observer report.



It follows a meeting convened at the corporations headquarters in Muscat yesterday to discuss the terms of an agreement whereby PSC would rescind its recent decision to go into liquidation and continue to operate the port during 2017, it said.



Citing resolutions adopted at the meeting, the corporation said the Ministry of Transport and Communications acceded to its terms and conditions for running the port for an additional period of 12 months through to December 31, 2017.



These terms have been set out in the Corporations letter to Dr Ahmed bin Mohammed al Futaisi, Minister of Transport and Communications, dated December 25, 2016, added the report.
State-owned Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic) has major plans to strengthen in-country-value (ICV) and local employment, while building its mega Liwa Plastics Industries project, with a total capital expenditure of $6.5 billion, said a report.



The ICV and procurement teams have begun a new practice to ring-fence a number of tenders who are suitable to small and medium enterprises, in terms of their capabilities to ensure 10 per cent allocations to local businesses, Christiaan van der Wouden, chief operating officer of Orpic, was quoted as saying in a Times of Oman report.



He added that the company has allocated a certain scope for either SMEs or local suppliers for those scopes, which are currently being undertaken by international suppliers.



The companys ICV strategy is to support business development, human capability development, and productivity stimulation in the Omani economy through the retention of maximum in country value.



In order to achieve this, the ICV department aims at reaching authentication (made in Oman) of the materials procured by Orpic and development of human capital in all Orpic projects, by ensuring at least 30 per cent Omanisation across all categories and levels.



Sustainable development of Omani small and medium enterprises (SMEs) will be assured through the support of those directly linked to Orpics business.



Local small and medium enterprises are expected to immensely benefit from the business opportunities, which include sub-contracting works, purchase orders, and support services available from major contracting firms.



Orpic has already awarded four major packages to multinational contracting firms for building Liwa Plastics Industries, at a total cost of $4.5 billion.



The Orpic COO said that the LPIC project is expected to create about 900 direct, and some 12,000 indirect jobs, during the project lifetime.



Upon commissioning in 2020, Liwa Plastics Industries Complex will transform Orpics product mix and business model, double company profits, create new business opportunities, generate significant employment opportunities and support the development of a downstream plastics industry in Oman.
Dulsco, a regional leader in human resource solutions and waste management services, and Port of Fujairah together hosted a training session on Safety Leadership for industry professionals across the UAE.



Industry leaders from the port and leading names across the industrial and manufacturing sector came together for the session which enabled them to collectively gain the desired knowledge on spearheading safety practices and standards in their organisations, a statement said.



Moreover, the training also provided them with the correct tools to further enhance industrial safety standards. Over 45 industry leaders from different emirates joined the event.



Mohamed Hassan from Port of Fujairah, said: This was a great platform to upgrade ones knowledge on safety practices and network with professionals from the industry in Fujairah.



Port of Fujairah is pleased to be associated with this important safety initiative. We are hopeful that the new ideas discussed at the session will not only benefit the industries and its employees but also the other companies in the region, he said.



This event will ensure that excellent safety procedures are being implemented in employees day-to-day duties and we look forward to conducting such events in the future along with Dulsco, he added.



The practice of safety brings physical, emotional, environmental and financial benefits to the table. The safety training workshop was conducted by distinguished consultant Colin Moffat of the International HSE Council.



The session on Safety Leadership was well received by the participants who were awarded certificates on successful completion of the programme.



The session gave participants insights on the leaders responsibility to set standards, implement safety plans and build a positive safety culture.



Prakash Parab, director HR Solutions, Dulsco, said: Last year, our company joined hands with the Port of Fujairah to host an event highlighting safety at worksites where industry leaders shared best practices in safety to encourage peer learning.



After the overwhelming success of the Fujairah Industry meet last year, we are pleased to host the current event without partners, he said.



As leaders, the responsibility of the employees safety lies in the organisations hands. This thought had influenced many partakers to join the training session and discuss and address safety issues within the working environment, he added.



Dulsco also organises its QHSE (Quality, Health, Safety and Environment) Week every year. With over 300 events ranging from fire drills, quiz, safety talks and other initiatives. The event successfully addresses the importance of QHSE amongst Dulscos 12,000 employees across UAE and Qatar.



Mahdi Mohamad, director - institutional support and government and corporate affairs at Dulsco, said: We are part of the human resources and environmental solutions industry sector. Our company considers the safety of its employees of utmost importance.



The company recognises the importance of a safe environment and constantly strives to protect the health and safety of its employees at all times and in all circumstances, he said.



We were pleased to have Moffat for the training session. He is a highly respected and experienced Health and Safety Consultant. He has been in the safety profession for over 30 years providing consultancy services and running a diverse range of health, safety and environmental courses to oil and gas, industrial, manufacturing, hospitality and various other sectors, he concluded.  TradeArabia News Service
Iranian oil officials recently visited a 5,000-acre site for in Brazil for the proposed construction of an oil refinery and petrochemical plant, a report said.



Mohammad Ali Qane'zadeh, Iran's ambassador to Brazil, said in an interview that his government is "very much interested" and "ready to put money and energy" into the project, Iran Daily reported, citing Bloomberg.



The area already has a deep water port for tankers and its location would provide relatively easy access to the Pacific and Asia via the Panama Canal.



The project would help Brazil address its dependence on refined fuel imports and could provide a boost to the local economy, Jose Reinaldo Tavares, a federal lawmaker, said in an interview.



The project would require investment of at least $2.5 billion, according to the legislator, who recently travelled to Tehran and New Delhi as part of an official delegation from the Brazilian state of Maranhao.



He added that the main obstacle to the deal is US banking sanctions.



Engineers India, a top engineering company, is participating in the discussions but its involvement will depend on financing conditions, the report said, citing people in India and Brazil familiar with the talks.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. The ministry of foreign affairs of Armenia is taking appropriate measures regarding the Azerbaijani sabotage infiltration attempt in Tavush province, Tigran Balayan, spokesman of the minister of foreign affairs told ARMENPRESS. Appropriate steps are taken based on the situation, Balayan said.

Azerbaijani forces attempted a sabotage infiltration in the Armenian state border south-east of Chinari village, Tavush province in the morning of December 29.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan, spokesman of the defense ministry of Armenia, said Armenian Armed Forces engaged in a battle with the Azerbaijani forces. Sniper and mortar fire were used. The Armenian Armed Forces fully control the situation  preventing the encroachments of Azerbaijan.

The defense ministry of Armenia told ARMENPRESS the Armenian Armed Forces have neutralized the Azerbaijan attacks. Azerbaijani forces were pushed back, suffering losses and WIAs, including in the military positions.

The Armenian side also suffered losses during the combat. During the battle for defending the Armenian state border, Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh M. Melikyan, Private Edgar G. Narayan and Private Erik G. Abovyan were killed.
Citizens of the UAE can now travel to the Commonwealth of the Bahamas without prior entry visa and can stay for a period not exceeding 90 days, the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation (MOFAIC) has announced.



According to Ahmed Saeed Al Dhahiri, assistant undersecretary for consular affairs at the ministry, the UAE and the Bahamas have signed a memorandum of understanding on mutual visa waiver, which allows Emirati citizens with diplomatic special, mission and regular passports to enter the territory of the Bahamas without prior entry visa requirement. This has become effective from December 27, a Wam news agency report said.



"This decision shows the evolving relations between the UAE and the Bahamas, and will contribute to further solidifying joint co-operation in the future," the foreign ministry official added.
Meet award-winning artisans and buy their products at Kerala Arts and Crafts Village
In a reassuring sign for regional air service, passenger capacity on flights from Casper to Denver will increase by 30 percent starting in mid-February.

The boost is a result of United Airlines decision to begin using a larger airplane with room for 70 passengers, up from the current 50.

The 50-passenger aircraft are on their way out, said Casper-Natrona County International Airport Director Glenn Januska. Maintenance problems and pilot contracts have led the shift to larger aircraft, he said.

Our hope was to make sure that our market was going to be large enough and strong enough to accommodate larger airplanes without losing frequency.

United did not respond to a request for comment by press time, but the companys decision to start using a larger aircraft may have been incidental.

GoJet Airlines, which will begin operating United Express service from Casper to Denver in February, exclusively uses the 70-seat Bombardier CRJ700 aircraft for United flights, according to GoJet representative Stacey Ross.

Januska said the fact United was comfortable using larger planes without reducing the number of flights on the Casper to Denver route is a good sign.

We can support the larger airplanes and get those integrated in our market which is what were thrilled about, he said.

Despite downturn, Casper airport plans to grow The new 10,000-square-foot hangar sits to the left of the main terminal at Casper-Natrona Co

That apparently remains the case despite an 11 percent decrease in passenger totals at the Casper airport over the last year due to the economic downturn.

Were thinking weve probably seen the bottom in terms of what were experiencing at the airport, Januska said, noting that the decrease has stabilized over the last few months.

Maintaining the four daily Denver flights with the larger aircraft will likely accommodate passengers better than combining multiple flights using smaller planes into a single flight with more seats, Januska said.

Frequency matters, he said.

Januska highlighted business travelers, who rely on the flexibility of being able to fly out in the morning, afternoon or evening depending on meeting schedules.

When the new planes are fully incorporated into United service out of Casper, Januska said most days would see three Denver flights using the 70-seat plane and one flight using the 50-seat plane.

United is the only airline providing service to Denver. Delta Air Lines currently uses 50-seat planes for its flights to Salt Lake City and Allegiant Air uses a 166-seat plane. He added that Allegiant was likely going to upgrade its aircraft in the next year, though the number of seats would remain the same.

The new United planes will offer first class and economy-plus seating, a first for Casper.

Ross, the GoJet representative, said the companys aircraft will have six first-class seats at the front of the plane, sixteen economy-plus seats and 48 United Economy seats.

Gone will be the days of forcing oil executives, ranch hands and students to sit side-by-side, folded into cramped airplane seats, for the short hop to Denver.

But Januska said that multi-class seating will help bring Casper in line with larger markets by allowing airlines to offer customers who purchase a first class or business class ticket enhanced service beginning in Casper.

If youre a business passenger, or fly first class, airlines want to make sure you have the same experience from that first airplane you get on all the way through, Januska said.
The Casper City Council may ask the state to study whether the current cap on liquor licenses hurts the local economy.

Council members plan to consider a resolution at their Tuesday meeting that would ask the governors office to form a committee studying the economic impact of the states current system.

Current council members have opposed a state law that caps the number of full liquor licenses a municipality can distribute based on population.

Liquor laws took center stage for Casper, cities group Wyomings liquor laws stem from legislation passed in 1935 following the end of Prohibition 

Judging from the discussion at Tuesdays work session, where the current council met along with the four newly elected members, several of the new members appear to also support reform efforts.

Councilman-elect Todd Murphy repeated concerns voiced by local real estate developer Randy Hall at a previous work session. Hall said that corporate chain restaurants had decided not to open in Casper after realizing they could not secure liquor licenses that fit their needs.

We lose Chilis and Ruby Tuesdays out here on the west side because of the liquor laws, Murphy said. Thats bad.

While cities have no direct control over state law, the Wyoming Association of Municipalities has asked the Legislature, which will meet in January, to holistically review the current liquor laws.

Wyoming cities group: Remove caps on liquor licenses A group representing Wyoming cities has proposed a dramatic overhaul of the states liquor l

The city council resolution appears to be in the same vein and if passed would represent the first tangible action taken since complaints about the licensing system first sprang up in July.

One issue is the type of licenses available to businesses in Wyoming. Retail liquor licenses, which allow both packaged sales and full bar service, are the most coveted and can sell on the secondary market for up to $300,000.

As mayor pledges change, council extends inactive liquor license City Council extended one of Caspers parked liquor licenses at a recent meeting amid ques

The Natrona County Liquor Dealers Association has argued that while some entrepreneurs and corporate chains insist they need a retail liquor license, they could use a restaurant liquor license, which allows alcohol to be served but comes with restrictions on where drinks can be prepared and sets a limit on what proportion of sales can come from alcohol.

Amanda Huckabay, who unseated Mayor Daniel Sandoval, speculated at the work session about changing the type of licenses that stores like Albertsons and Wal-Mart use. They hold retail licenses to sell packaged alcohol but do not take advantage of the additional ability to operate a bar or restaurant with that license.

(Changing) that would free up nine of them, Huckabay said.

City Manager V.H. McDonald made a passing suggestion that when Casper receives permission to grant a new retail license based on population growth, the city could simply grant itself the license for the $1,500 processing fee and sell its existing license for a six-figure sum.

We own a license, he said. We could sell our license.

Theres more than one way to balance the budget, departing vice mayor Steve Cathey said to laughs.

Following the meeting, McDonald said his suggestion was unofficial and he did not know whether such an action would be possible.

Liquor dealers say uncapped licenses would sink local bars Casper-area liquor dealers are increasingly anxious that the Wyoming Legislature will remove

The resolution prepared for council asks Gov. Matt Mead to form a committee to study and report on three specific issues:

The economic impact... of the current liquor licensing structure to the development of diverse local economies in Wyoming. Possible changes to liquor laws if it is found that the current structure hurts local economies. The impact that changes to liquor laws would have on current license holders and appropriate remedies.

The resolution came out of a Dec. 13 work session where both Hall and Matt Galloway, on behalf of the liquor dealers association, spoke about potential liquor license reform.
A group of lawmakers recently suggested consolidating school districts, cutting money for student activities or increasing sales tax as a way to help solve the states more than $700 million education deficit.

The ideas are part of a report by the Joint Education Committee subcommittee. They identify five general areas where the Legislature could address the funding shortfall Wyoming faces in the next two-year budget cycle. Those areas would ideally yield $80 million in savings or revenues a year. The five areas are:

Cutting or changing funding for school districts and examining how much state agencies receive from the education account

Tapping into the Legislatures rainy day fund and the School Foundation Program Reserve Account

Examining existing funding streams, like the percentage of federal mineral royalties that pay for Wyoming education

Identifying spending policies, like changing the balance of education accounts to guarantee more investment income

Finding revenue enhancements, like increasing the sales tax, to balance revenue shortfalls

The report stresses that any cuts could be instituted gradually, a concern for many superintendents who have expressed anxiety over having to contend with large cuts on short notice.

The report comes nine days after the co-chairmen of the Joint Education Interim Committee, Republicans Sen. Hank Coe of Cody and Rep. David Northrup of Powell, decided not to bring before the committee three bills that would cut education and increase class sizes. Instead, education lawmakers decided to form a subcommittee to begin looking at the funding crisis from all angles, rather than examining pieces of the funding model.

Northrup said Wednesday that the suggestions for cuts in the report exist outside of the model thats used to determine education funding for districts. Lawmakers wanted to stay away from tinkering too much with that system, which was built in the wake of a landmark Wyoming Supreme Court in the 1990s.

For more than a decade, public education in Wyoming has been paid for through the evidence-based model. But for years, legislators have been funding above the level that model guarantees for each district, adding ornaments to a Christmas tree, as Coe has described it.

The energy downturn has hit education funding hard, though, and a report released to lawmakers in November estimated a $1.8 billion shortfall by the end of the 2022 fiscal year.

Gov. Matt Mead and lawmakers have said the crisis is so significant that the state cant cut its way out. The subcommittees report gives a variety of options to address the problem. Northrup said that these are suggestions by lawmakers. He added that a primary goal of releasing the report is to get feedback from educators, districts and even teachers. At various points, the report suggests:

 Consolidating Wyomings 48 school districts into 23, one per county, with no schools being closed. The report estimates $7.5 million in annual savings. In the past, legislators have had a lukewarm response to consolidation, fearing it would lead to school closures. But Coe has stressed in the past that such a move would consolidate only administrative functions.

 Cutting central office administrative salaries by 10 percent would save $3.4 million per year. Many districts, including Natrona County School District, are already in the process of shrinking; superintendent Steve Hopkins has said Natrona Countys central office has eliminated more than 20 jobs recently.

 Halving funding for student activities, sports and the arts, and increasing fees to balance activity budgets. Such a move could save $15 million annually, the report says. Northrup said much of the activities discussion centered around sports, including whether people should be charged money to attend sporting events.

 Reducing the number of professional development days from 10 to five, which would cut the number of school operation days to 180. That was the number of days prior to 2006-07. Such a move could save $21.6 million annually.

 Eliminating the instructional facilitator program, which would save roughly $22 million a year. Northrup said instructional facilitators are like lead teachers who help schools institute a different teaching style.

 Increasing mill levies assessed for education, which could yield an additional $20 million per mill per year.

 Increase the statewide sales tax, which would bring in $150 million per cent increase annually.

Northrup acknowledged that passing a tax in Wyoming is difficult, and should any tax increase be instituted, it would likely not go into effect until cuts in education were implemented. That way, Wyomingites could see that educators are doing their share before new taxes are instituted.

The report should educate other legislators, education officials and others about what steps lawmakers are examining to solve the crisis, Northrup said. He stressed that legislators want feedback on the report and that the feedback will play a role in crafting a bill early in the upcoming legislative session.

He said the House Education Committee will sponsor the bill, with hopes that the committees Senate counterpart will co-sponsor it. Lawmakers are trying to be as open as possible in this process, he said.

Its going to be hard for everybody, you know? he said.
Local law enforcement arrested a number of people accused of high-profile crimes in 2016, including five suspected in violent crimes against children.

An arrest is just the beginning of the lengthy legal proceedings common in many felony cases, however, and many of the cases that began in 2016 wont be resolved until 2017.

Despite the attention some of these cases have attracted, the rate of reported violent crimes in Casper remained steady between 2012 and 2015, the most recent year for which FBI crime statistics are available.

David Chavis

For more than three hours on Aug. 5, Casper police negotiated with Chavis while he held a 51-year-old man hostage at knife point in an office building. Chavis later surrendered to police, and the victim was unharmed.

Court documents later revealed that Chavis was in the Aspen Creek office building demanding files about himself that he believed the government had. Prosecutors charged Chavis with kidnapping, aggravated assault and possession of a deadly weapon with unlawful intent. He faces up to life in prison.

Chavis told a Natrona County Circuit Court judge that he had a mental illness and was homeless. The judge ordered he complete a mental health evaluation.

Joshua Winters

Casper police arrested Winters in July on suspicion of kidnapping and molesting a 5-year-old boy whom he met at the El Mark-O bowling alley. Winters was working for a food vendor at a carnival at the Natrona County Fairgrounds.

The boy told police that Winters led him down to the riverbank and then touched him inappropriately, according to court documents.

Prosecutors charged Winters with kidnapping, first-degree sexual abuse of a minor and second-degree abuse of a minor.

Winters pleaded not guilty by reason of mental illness to the three felonies in September. If convicted, he could face up to life imprisonment.

Brandtly Bedsaul

Casper police arrested Bedsaul, 19, in September after family members reported he had raped and strangled a young girl in the front yard of the Casper home where he lived. A detective later said the teen appeared to be under the influence of drugs when he was arrested.

Prosecutors charged Bedsaul with attempted homicide, first-degree sexual abuse of a minor, aggravated assault and aggravated child abuse. If convicted, Bedsaul could face life imprisonment.

He entered a mental illness plea on Dec. 6, and a judge ordered a competency evaluation to be performed at the state hospital in Evanston.

Justin Thomas Ross

Ross is suspected of beating his 2-year-old daughter and throwing her against a wall while caring for the child for a week in October.

The girl was admitted to the hospital with a fractured skull, broken ribs and severe bruising. Ross told police the girl caused most of the injuries herself by falling.

Prosecutors charged Ross with aggravated child abuse, a felony with a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He was released from jail in lieu of $50,000 bond.

Shakeel and Lyn Kahn

After a months-long investigation, federal agents arrested the Casper doctor and his wife in December for allegedly selling prescriptions for painkillers.

According to court documents, Dr. Shakeel Kahn and his wife, Lyn Kahn, sold prescriptions for Oxycodone for profit for more than five years. Some of the couples customers would then take the pills and sell them on the street in other states, the documents say.

Federal prosecutors charged the pair in the U.S. District Court of Wyoming with conspiracy to distribute Oxycodone.

They could each face up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine. Both were released in lieu of bond.

Lenard and Sonya Smiley

Police arrested the Casper couple in December on suspicion of grooming a teenage girl to perform sexual acts for them.

The Smileys manipulated the girl and forced her to give Lenard Smiley oral sex, according to court documents. They also made her perform sexual acts that caused her serious physical pain.

Prosecutors charged Lenard Smiley with five counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor. Sonya Smiley was charged with one count of accessory to second-degree sexual abuse of a minor and three counts of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor.

For each of the five charges against him, Lenard Smiley faces a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. Sonya Smiley faces up to 20 years in prison for the charge of accessory to second-degree sexual abuse of a minor and up to 15 years for each of the three charges of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor.
During one of Wyomings colder Decembers in recent years, dozens of Casper residents have taken to social media to complain about their electric bills.

A post in the Facebook group Casper Classifieds attracted hundreds of complaints from people who say their electric bills spiked beyond reason.

Alisha Hanson, the woman who started the conversation, said her bill shows seven times more electric usage in December than in November  leading to a $575.95 bill.

Everyone expects the bills to go up, Hanson told the Star-Tribune. If it was up $100, it wouldnt have bothered me, but $500 is a big jump.

Other people from Casper and around the state commented on the post citing bills that doubled or quadrupled.

Rocky Mountain Power spokesman David Eskelsen said the company was aware of the Facebook thread and that several of the people commenting had also reached out to the company.

Eskelsen encouraged customers with complaints to contact Rocky Mountain Power and said that the company could conduct meter checks to verify electricity usage was being measured properly.

Payment plans and equal pay bills, where customers pay a flat rate every month, averaged from their usage the previous year, were also options, he said.

But Eskelsen said that the company had not identified any systematic issues with December bills.

In most cases its related to extra high usage because of the very cold weather in December, and November was a pretty mild month all over our system, he said. Its particularly an issue with all-electric homes that use electric for space heating, electric water.

Hanson said the company had told her the higher bill was simply a result of more electricity being used at the home, but she doesnt find that credible.

For them to claim that its all on our end  theres too many of us with the same problems, she said.

Eskelsen said that Rocky Mountain Power offers financial incentives for people making major home improvements to lower their electric usage, including weatherizing doors and windows and installing additional insulation.

He acknowledged it might seem counterintuitive for an electric company to be encouraging customers to use less power, but Eskelsen said that the less power residential homes require, the easier it is for Rocky Mountain Power to balance output and input across the grid.

Other things users can do to lower their electrical bills during winter include:

Setting their thermostat, if using electric heat, to the lowest comfortable temperature

Cleaning air vents and heating system filters

Closing drapes and blinds at night

Washing clothes with cold water

Using compact fluorescent light bulbs and dimmer switches where possible

Placing refrigerators away from heaters and stoves

Some commenters on the Facebook post hinted that they believed Rocky Mountain Power was intentionally overcharging customers.

But Eskelsen noted public utilities in Wyoming are tightly regulated with rates set by the Wyoming Public Service Commission, which also examines company financials to ensure customers are not being overcharged.

If they dont believe the company, and they dont believe that state agencies that regulate the company, are doing a good job, I dont know that there is a response to that, Eskelsen said.
LARAMIE  The University of Wyoming is looking to boost enrollment by increasing transfer students.

Outreach School Interim Dean Alyson Hagy said at a public listening session regarding the school's five-year strategic plan that there's been a considerable dip in the number of transfer students attending UW in recent years.

Transfer student numbers peaked in 2010 with 1,159, but that number steadily dropped before bottoming out in 2015 at 930. Of 12,366 students accounted for on the fall 2016, 967 were new transfer students.

Though UW's student population has been adequate for its size, UW President Laurie Nichols said enrollment for the last nine years has been flat, with little to no growth.

Hagy said UW needs to focus on recruiting from community colleges across the state.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. Armenias General Department of Civil Aviation is holding talks with more than 40 foreign airlines aimed at attracting them to the Armenian market, reports Armenpress.

During the Governments session on December 29, Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan asked Head of the General Department of Civil Aviation Sergey Avetisyan how many airlines they have applied to with a proposal and whether there is any result.

We have applied to more than 40 airlines, mainly to those located in Europe, as well as from Asia and the Middle East. At the moment we have responses from 3-4 airlines. They are planning to hold closer technical discussions in near future, and we have expressed our readiness, Avetisyan said.

The PM urged to set control on this direction since the issue is strictly important for the Government.
Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems has been awarded a $303.7 million contract by the U.S. Navy to produce 214 Tomahawk Block IV cruise missiles and spares for the U.S. Navy and the United Kingdom.

About a quarter of the work is to be performed in Tucson and is expected to be completed in August 2018, the Pentagon said in a contract notice.

The contract combines a $301 million purchase by the Navy and a $2.8 million procurement by the U.K. under the Foreign Military Sales program, the Defense Department said.

The Pentagon two years ago proposed bringing production of the long-range Tomahawk to a halt, citing a large inventory of the missiles. The latest Tomahawks cost about $1.5 million each and are used against high-value targets.
A top-ranked Tucson resort is facing a wrongful-death lawsuit from an Indiana woman who says her husband died as a result of being over-served at the bar, documents show.

On Nov. 19, 2014, Gregory Shipley was staying at the JW Marriott Tucson Starr Pass Resort and Spa during a business trip, according to a lawsuit filed in Pima County Superior Court.

Shipleys wife, Sherry, says that her husband was drinking at one of the resorts bars, and was obviously intoxicated. Upon information and belief, (Shipley) had been slurring his words and falling asleep at the bar, the lawsuit says.

After Shipley left the bar to go back to his room, he fell and injured himself, and hotel workers helped bandage his wounds and get him back to his room, according to the lawsuit.

Shipley fell again when he got back to his room, striking the back of his head against the wall and losing consciousness. His body was found the next day, the lawsuit says. Shipley was found lying in the same place and position where he had struck the wall with his head, the suit says.

An autopsy revealed that Shipleys blood alcohol was 0.294, nearly four times the legal limit.

Sherry Shipleys lawsuit says the hotel employees had reason to know that her husband was extremely and obviously intoxicated before he left the bar, and failed to stop serving him alcohol.

The staffs recklessness caused the injuries and resulting harm to Shipley, and by continuing to serve him while he was obviously intoxicated, the staff violated state law, the suit says.

The lawsuit alleges that the staff failed to protect Shipley and after he injured himself, abandoned him during his time of need.

Sherry Shipley is requesting general and punitive damages, reimbursement for funeral and burial costs and Gregory Shipleys future loss of income.
PHOENIX  Business interests are making a last-ditch effort to keep hundreds of thousands of Arizonans from getting a big wage hike Sunday.

Attorney Brett Johnson, representing the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and other business groups, is telling the state Supreme Court that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Daniel Kiley was legally wrong last week in refusing to block Proposition 206 from taking effect. He hopes to get the justices to eventually overturn that ruling.

But his more immediate aim is to keep the minimum wage from going up to $10 an hour Sunday as voters mandated. So Johnson is asking the justices for what amounts to an emergency order blocking what voters approved until they hear the full arguments.

With just days until the measure takes effect, the justices will need to rule on that by Friday, the last business day of the year.

Foes have an uphill fight. To get an injunction they need to show not only hardship but also both a likelihood of success after a full-blown trial as well as how halting the law would be in the public interest.

Kiley found against the business interests on all counts. But Johnson told Capitol Media Services on Wednesday this is precisely the kind of case where an injunction is appropriate.

While the Supreme Court is dealing with this issue, theres going to be significant ramifications for employees, for employers, he said.

Those all need to be taken into context, Johnson said, because if the justices ultimately conclude the measure is unconstitutional those hardships cant be undone. Anyway, he said, no one is harmed if the law is put on hold until a trial occurs.

A guy whos making minimum wage on Dec. 31 will still make minimum wage on Jan. 1, he said. Thats maintaining the status quo  and the whole reason why you get a preliminary injunction.

But Kiley, in his ruling, saw the issue differently.

In the courts view, delaying the promised pay raise would impose a significant hardship on low-wage workers, he wrote. And he said its irrelevant that they might be able to get a check for the difference months  or years  later if the courts eventually uphold the legality of the pay hike.

The heart of the battle is a state constitutional provision that says any voter-approved measure that mandates the spending of state funds must also have a separate dedicated revenue source to pay for it.

Johnson cited pleadings submitted by two state agencies that claim that boosting the minimum wage will force them to spend more.

In the case of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the states Medicaid program, the issue is the contracts it has with private firms to provide things like nursing home and in-home care, contracts built on the current minimum wage of $8.05 an hour. AHCCCS officials said they are planning to increase payments by close to $50 million to help contractors who say they may go out of business if they have to pay their workers more but the state reimbursement rate remains the same.

The Industrial Commission of Arizona, which polices the states labor laws, contends the change in the wage and the new mandate for paid time off will require, at the very least, new signs. It also claims it will have to hire more workers to enforce the personal leave policy.

But Kiley said nothing in Proposition 206 actually forces either agency to increase its budget. Thats backed up by AHCCCSs own legal filings which conceded that an increase in payments to providers is not automatic but is based on several factors, only one of which is what contractors pay their workers.

But Johnson said its irrelevant that Proposition 206 itself does not tell state agencies to increase funding.

What theyre saying is, We may not have to because of these different workarounds, Johnson said. The reality is that they have no choice, he said, including to comply with federal Medicaid law that requires the state to have an adequate network of outside providers.

Both state agencies being used by Johnson to make his case are run by directors appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey who opposed Proposition 206. But press aide Daniel Scarpinato said the filings are not part of any effort by his boss to undermine the initiative but are merely providing all the information the court asked for in a factual manner.

Hanging in the balance is the take-home pay of about 770,000 Arizonans, the number that Proposition 206 organizer Tomas Robles said are currently making less than $10 an hour under the states current $8.05 minimum. Even more will be affected by 2020 when the initiative mandates a $12 minimum.

But Proposition 206 has something that was not in the original measure.

Beginning July 1, it requires companies with fewer than 15 employees to provide 24 hours of paid sick time per year to each worker. Larger firms have to give workers 40 hours of leave.

Foes of the initiative are not relying solely on that question of whether Proposition 206 actually will result in increased state spending. Attorney Tim LaSota is advancing a separate argument that the pay hike and the sick time are two distinct issues that should have been presented in separate ballot measures to voters.

But Kiley said there are flaws to that argument.

He said any such challenge should have been made before the issue got on the ballot and was approved.

Anyway, the judge said, requirements for separate amendments apply only to constitutional provisions. Proposition 206 only deals with state laws.

And even if none of that were true, Kiley said the two provisions are sufficiently interrelated to be two parts of a single plan.

An increase in the minimum wage and the establishment of mandatory sick leave are topically related to the subject of minimum conditions of employment, he wrote.

Foes of Proposition 206 face more than just initiative supporters.

Attorney General Mark Brnovich interceded with the express goal of defending not only what was approved at the ballot with 58 percent of the vote but also the constitutional provisions that allow voters to make their own laws.
Reporter

Carmen started at the Star in 1981 and covers diversity and inclusion. She wrote Mamas Santos: An Arizona Life, a book about the Mexican and Mexican-American experience in the Southwest through stories about her family. It won 11 awards.
A woman believes the city should pay her $250,000 because she was injured when she tripped on an uneven sidewalk at the Tucson Convention Center.

Sondra Swank and her husband, Michael, stated in documents that she is suffering after falling face-first into the concrete walkway while at the TCC in June.

Sondra has suffered a great deal of pain due to the injuries she sustained. In addition to the medical problems, it should be obvious that Sondra is experiencing a significant amount of physical pain and discomfort along with emotional anxiety and frustration because of her injuries, wrote Danelle Perata, an attorney representing the couple.

Perata stated in the claim that her client recently had reconstructive surgery to set her fractured nose and help improve breathing.

A claim is a precursor to a formal lawsuit and the couple has offered to settle the matter with the city for $250,000.

A summary of her medical bills  including an $11,459 charge for an emergency room visit to St. Marys Hospital  was included in her claim against the city.

In total, the two-page document lists nearly $16,000 in medical bills, although Perata said more medical bills are coming.

Additionally, Swank has trouble with even small activities.

Simple activities such as housework, carrying groceries, or even walking is very difficult for her, he wrote.

Perata did not respond to the Stars request for comment.

Glenn Grabski, the general manager for the convention center, declined to comment and referred all questions to City Attorney Mike Rankin.

Rankin said Wednesday that the complaint is under review.
PHOENIX  The National Rifle Association is claiming that Tucsons policy of destroying seized and surrendered firearms is designed to deliberate suppress legal gun ownership in Arizona and will likely lead to an increase in violent crime and harm public safety.

Attorneys for the group are asking the Arizona Supreme Court to side with Attorney General Mark Brnovich who contends the city policy is a violation of state law. Brnovich wants the justices to order the city to rescind the policy or forfeit more than $115 million a year in state aid.

In adding its weight to the lawsuit, the NRA hopes to convince the high court that the right of the state to declare that operable firearms be sold and not destroyed outweighs any claim by Tucson that its disposition of property is strictly a matter of local concern. And attorney Michael Rusing is using the Second Amendment right to bear arms to make the point.

Tucson has been destroying guns since adopting an ordinance in 2005. It did not stop even after the Legislature voted in 2013 to declare such actions a violation of state law as city attorneys said Tucsons status as a charter city trumps state law.

What changed the dynamics is a new law that requires the attorney general to investigate any time a lawmaker claims a local government is ignoring state laws. Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, made such a complaint earlier this year to Brnovich.

Brnovich concluded the Tucson ordinance likely conflicts with the 2013 law. And now he is obligated by that 2016 law to ask the Supreme Court to affirm that conclusion and, if Tucson does not comply, withhold all of its state aid.

Tucson responded by asking a Pima County Superior Court judge to declare its right to destroy guns a matter of local concern protected by the state constitution. And it wants the 2016 law giving Brnovich the right to try to withhold state aid voided.

In the interim, though, the Supreme Court has to decide whether to allow Brnovich to make his case and, if so, whether the 2013 law overrides a state constitutional provision giving Tucson, as a charter city, the right to enact the gun destruction policy.

Thats the position being taken on Tucsons behalf by the League of Arizona Cities and Towns.

Attorney Paul Eckstein said courts have ruled charter cities can decide for themselves how to dispose of property without having to get permission of lawmakers.

In other words, whether the property at issue is real or personal, guns or butter, if it is owned by a charter city, its use or disposition is a matter in which the Legislature is constitutionally proscribed from interfering, he wrote.

Rusing, in his legal brief siding with Brnovich, has a different take. He told the justices theres an even greater issue than the rights of charter cities: the right of citizens to keep and bear arms for self-defense.

Tucsons ordinance implicates this right because it impedes, at the margin, the law-abiding citizens ability to lawfully acquire a firearm, he wrote.

In essence, Rusing is arguing that allowing Tucson to destroy firearms reduces the supply both in Tucson and around the state. That, in turns, makes them more expensive and difficult to acquire particularly for lower-income individuals that may already have difficulty affording a reliable firearm.

The only purpose of the program can be to keep as many firearms as possible out of private hands or, put differently, to deliberately suppress the number of people keeping and bearing arms within Tucson and throughout the state, Rusing wrote.

And Rusing claimed a mountain of empirical evidence supports the Legislatures judgment that Tucsons efforts to eliminate as many lawful firearms as possible would ultimately increase the rate of violent crime.

How much difference the citys policy has had on gun availability and prices is up for debate: City records show 4,820 guns have been destroyed since the beginning of 2013.

But Rusing said the policy, implicates both federal and state constitutional rights.

The right to keep and bear arms is meaningless, of course, without the ability to obtain them, Rusing said.

He is contending that the city ordinance proves a hostility by Tucson to those rights.

The way Rusing sees it, if the city did not require guns to be melted down they would be sold to licensed firearms dealers at a profit.

That money could be used to provide goods and services to the citys residents or, at the very least, to lessen their tax burden, he wrote. What that means is the policy not only the naked suppression of the right to keep and bear arms but also amounts to Tucson effectively making its citizens food the bill for the wasteful ideological crusade against the Second Amendment.

Then theres the link the NRA claims between more guns and less crime.

Rusing said the number of firearms in private hands grew from about 192 million in 1994 to more than 350 million now.

Yet the rates of homicide and other violent crimes have steadily declined by over two-thirds during this period, from about 80 violent crimes per each 1,000 residents 12 years or older in 1994 to just over 23 today, he said. Even at this most basic level, then, there are strong reasons to doubt Tucsons simplistic more guns, more crime syllogism.

Rusing conceded there are some studies that claim to link high rates of gun ownership with high rates of homicide. But he dismissed them, saying even if there is such an association no causal link has been demonstrated.

And he said that fewer  and more expensive  firearms hurts the people who need it most.

A high-income individual will be able to comfortably purchase a firearm regardless of Tucsons efforts to artificially restrict the firearm supply, Rusing said.

But the price increase indirectly caused by Tucson may effectively prevent those individuals who are financially less fortunate from pursing a safe, reliable firearm for self-defense, he continued. And because the crime rates in Tucson are significantly higher in economically disadvantage neighborhoods it is these lower-income individuals who have the greatest need to defend themselves and their families against crime.
Cody Allen, 15, has a forklift.

And its a big deal.

Cody, a Salpointe Catholic High School sophomore, got the idea to start Codys Friends Charity as a fifth-grader inspired by the John F. Kennedys quote Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

And ask he did.

After some 10-year-old soul-searching, Cody decided he wanted to help children and animals.

It began simply in 2010. On the first Saturday of the month, he and mom Amber Allen would cruise Tucson, picking up donations for kids and pets left on front porches. Then they would then hit rescue adoption events at pet stores, delivering the food, beds and other necessities they had received. They delivered the childrens items to local charities.

As the effort grew, Codys older sister offered to make him a website and Facebook page in 2014, attracting the attention of a local law firm that volunteered to make Codys Friends a nonprofit organization.

For about five years, the Allen family sacrificed its living space and garage to store donations.

It overwhelmed the house and we hand-delivered everything to rescue events at Petco and PetSmart, Amber says.

They drove 65 miles on a typical Saturday, she adds.

Not to mention the smell. Just imagine  hundreds of pounds of pet food. Fragrant.

Last fall, Codys Friends moved into a building his parents owned on Flowing Wells Road. Now rescue groups come to them the two days theyre open each week and during emergencies.

In the last year, supplies have increased to fill most of the building with dog and cat food, leashes, harnesses, beds, bowls, treats, toys and other pet essentials.

Plus that forklift, donated recently by the Bonnie Kay Charitable Fund at the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona.

Having its own forklift means the charity doesnt have to fork out a couple hundred dollars each month to rent one.

Earlier in 2016, the Rescue Bank in Houston  an organization modeled like a food bank  began sending pet food donations to Codys Friends so he could serve the rest of the state. At that point, Cody began to prioritize pet rescues, although he still does receive donations for children. Last year, Codys Friends sponsored a family for Christmas. The charity also became a partner of the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona this year.

The trucks from the Rescue Bank arrive with as much as 45,000 pounds of food and treats for Arizonas dogs and cats each month.

Hence the forklift.

Codys Friends now distributes food and other essentials to as many as 80 animal rescue groups around the state. This year, the charity has supplied more than 350,000 pounds of food , says Codys dad, Mark Allen.

Last year, they gave out about 700 blankets to rescues, low-income families, homeless pets and the Pima Animal Care Center. The effort has grown enough to keep 10 to 12 volunteers busy.

In 2017, Cody and his family want to distribute 40 donation boxes around town. That eliminates the Saturday collection drives to pick up donations.

Food from Codys Friends goes to the Humane Society of Southern Arizona, the Tucson Fire Department, the Tohono Oodham and San Carlos Apache reservations and Silver Sea Jewelry for the homeless to pick up.

The list goes on and on, Amber says.

For the rescue groups, not having to pay for food and other pet supplies lets them spend their money on medical care.

We have 70 dogs in our care, and our medical cost is extremely high because we take in seniors and hospice dogs, says Terri Goddard, a founder of Tucson Cold Wet Noses. Were doing dentals and bloodwork and that adds up, so this is something that is really kind and has helped us greatly.

The Allens have five rescue dogs of their own, and when Cody started Codys Friends, he imagined helping local kids and animals.

I just wanted to help rescue animals, he says. I never expected trucks of food.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. Electronic scales will be used in Armenias customs checkpoints until the end of April, 2017, under the governments decree approved in the December 29 Cabinet meeting.

Vardan Harutyunyan, Chairman of the state revenue committee mentioned that the draft suggests extending the period of the e-scale centralized system services from January 11 to April 30. The extension of the period is due to the delay of modernization of the checkpoints in the Armenian-Georgian border, Harutyunyan said.
Dale Berman/Getty Images for MTVJudah & the Lion has reached the number-one spot on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart with their single "Take It All Back." The young Nashville band dethrones fellow Music City rockers Kings of Leon, who topped the chart with their single "Waste a Moment."

"Take It All Back" is a single from Judah & the Lion's new album Folk Hop N' Roll, which was released earlier this year.

Next year, Judah & the Lion will be an opener on Twenty One Pilots' 2017 Emotional Roadshow tour, which kicks off January 17 in Providence, Rhode Island.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. As of this moment, the situation in the Armenia-Azerbaijan border is calm. The Azerbaijani forces suffered up to 7 losses, defense ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said.

Search and clearance works are carried out by the Armenian Armed Forces. Armenian forces have no wounded. Spreading disinformation about losses of positions and others is at least..a bad thing, Hovhannisyan said.

Azerbaijani forces attempted a sabotage infiltration in the Armenian state border south-east of Chinari village, Tavush province in the morning of December 29.

The Armenian Armed Forces have neutralized the Azerbaijan attacks. Azerbaijani forces were pushed back, suffering losses and WIAs, including in the military positions.

Unfortunately, the Armenian side also suffered losses during the combat. During the battle for defending the Armenian state border, Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh M. Melikyan, Private Edgar G. Narayan and Private Erik G. Abovyan were killed.

The defense ministry of Armenia shares the grief of loss and extends condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers.

The defense ministry possesses irrefutable evidence and proof of the Azerbaijan violation in the Armenian state border. The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan is fully responsible for the instigation.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. The Human Rights Defenders Office of Armenia condemned the sabotage infiltration attempt conducted by Azerbaijan near Chinari village of Armenias Tavush province on December 29, press service of the Office told Armenpress.

The statement says: According to the press release by Armenias Ministry of Defense, Azerbaijani forces launched a sabotage infiltration in the vicinity of Chinari village of Armenias Tavush province, early in the morning of December 29. Due to the attack the Armenian side suffered losses: two private soldiers and an officer were killed. The attack hadnt stopped as of 12 p.m. in areas including the vicinity of Chinari village.

The attack launched by the Azerbaijani armed forces is obviously in breach of all international norms protecting the right to life. Depriving a person, including a military serviceman of life under circumstances where there is no probability of an attack by the latter, is unacceptable and should be a mandatory matter for condemnation. Launching a military action in the vicinity of a civilian settlement should be a mandatory matter for condemnation; not to mention that the attack was launched in morning and noontime thus making real the possibility of damaging the locals of the village and revealing such intention by the Azerbaijani armed forces.

The representative of the Human Rights Defenders Gegharkunik regional office has urgently departed for Chinari Village, Tavush province, to carry out on-site examination into circumstances under which rights, including the right to life were violated, as well as to conduct necessary fact-finding activities. Based on the results of the fact-finding activities, substantiated judgment will be given to the incident with the aim of presenting the judgment to relevant international organizations.

Armenias Human Rights Defender extends his condolences to the relatives of fallen soldiers over their grievous loss.






Game situation on 18 January, 2017.

1. Following Task Force Suheil's crushing victory over advancing jihadi reinforcements on the M5 axis east of the Takhtanaz airhead, the task force was loaded on the HETs and other trucks that had followed it and transported back through Aleppo past the Kurdish YPG held Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood at the north end of the city and up through the Syrian Government and Kurdish controlled territory to the north on their way to the Minagh military airfield which was in the control of the Efrin Kurds. This cooperation was made possible by the Assad Government's indication to the Syrian Kurds that some degree of autonomy for them would be granted in a post-war Syria. This route allowed the Suheil Task force to reach Minagh without further fighting and casualties. At Minagh the Suheil Force went into national and area reserve to refit and rest. From this position they could move in several directions to influence future outcomes. Soldiers' families have been flown to Minagh for family time.

2. Some 5th Assault Corps units and the Syrian Marines invested Iblid City to control jihadis trapped within while negotiations are conducted for their surrender.

3. 5th Corps minus those units by-passed Idlib City to the east and relieved Takfaya and al-Fu'a village while being supported from the Taftanaj airhead with artillery and air support to include SU-25 Frogfoot.

4. As soon as the 5th Corps relieved the Shia pocket, the Russians launched an assault in echelon of two battalion tactical groups (BTG) from Taftanaz towards Al Dana some 30 km to the north. The high ground along the Bab al-Hawa Highway just south of Al Dana was taken by a battalion from the uncommitted airborne regiment of the 106th inserted by helicopter. All this was preceded by intense reconnaissance-sabotage activities of Spetsnaz teams of the 45th Brigade. The aim of the operation was to screen the flank of the 5th Assault Corps final push to the Bab al-Hawa crossing and to prevent any jihadi reinforcement of the crossing from northern Idlib and Aleppo provinces. The lead BTG reached Al Dana in less than 24 hours. The Russian airborne troops let unarmed refugees and jihadist supporters stream towards the border, even assisting them at times. Armed jihadists attempting to move north with the refugees were dealt with quickly and lethally. As soon as this operation was completed, Russia Today began broadcasting high quality footage of dramatic military action of the BMD-4M airborne assault vehicles, 2S9 Nona-S self-propelled mortar systems and Night Hunter attack helicopters interspersed with images of Russian paratroopers aiding civilian refugees. Correspondents reminded their viewers of the words of the incoming American Secretary of Defense, No better friend, no worse enemy.

5. Syrian 5th Corps proceeded to the north pushing irreconcilable jihadis and their supporters before them like herding cats. From Idlib the Bab a-l-Hawa crossing into Hattay, Province, Turkey is about 20 miles as the crow flies (ATCF) or 30 mile by the route to Al-Dana. In response to this oncoming flight of AQ connected jihadis the Turks tried to close their border except for emergency medical attention in Antakya (ancient Antioch) Syria has announced that it will allow the creation of refugee camps under UN supervision and sealed off by the SAA.

6. In the period of this turn Iran with the consent of the Iraqi government relieved Deir-al Zor from the east with a large Iranian task force. The US objected but was ignored. The Iranians then moved NW toward Raqqa and west to link up with the R+6 west of Palmyra.

7. By 18 January the situation in western Syria has been consolidated by the SAR with minor pockets of resistance being mopped up.

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When you come in from the field in a US Army field exercise, the first thing you do is take your vehicles to the motor pool to wash all the mud or dust from them. The officers go to the motor pool with the men and usually stand around watching the work and discussing the just finished field problem. It is thought that it is best to get fresh impressions while memories are still "wet." Formal reports and analyses are written later.

Points:

1. The long cherished mantra and childish belief of the Poly/Sci/IR/State Department/NSC (Borgist) establishment that war does not provide an answer is incorrect. All of American history: War of Independence, Civil War, Spanish American War, US War Against the Filipino People, WW1, WW2, Vietnam, etc. all demonstrate that war is often decisive in history. For someone to believe that it is not is simply either a refection of what might be called over-education or a lack of knowledge of actual history.

2. The 29 December cease fire in Syria does not affect our game play since it does not apply to IS generally and AQ connected jihadis in western Syria.
The 2017 Grammy Awards look set to pitch singing superstars Adele and Beyonce directly against each other in the three main categories. Both divas have been nominated for the best album, song and record of the year, with the annual music extravaganza bursting on to CBS live from the Staples Center in February.

Successful year for both

With both globally acclaimed artists having enjoyed hugely successful years, their plethora of nominations is well deserved: Beyonce has been rewarded with a staggering nine Grammy nominations on the back of the success of her somewhat controversial album Lemonade; while Adele isnt far behind on five, as she contemplates her remaining tour dates in 2017 before looking to have more children.

Glastonbury highlight

Adele has both amused and entertained fans with her honesty and undoubted talent during her world tour, with her stand out appearance at Glastonbury being particularly well received. Her album 25 continues to fly off the shelves after more than 50 weeks on the UK chart listings.

Controversial album Lemonade

Lemonade is the sixth studio album to be released by Queen Bey and its eclectic selection of musical genres seems to have appealed to a wide audience. Main single Formation mirrors the name for Beyonces world tour which has welcomed more than two million fans to the sparkling show.

James Corden builds on his Stateside success

Early indications suggest that both stars will be invited to perform live on February 12th as the 59th edition of the Grammy Awards takes place in Los Angeles.

James Corden will host the event, as the British celebrity continues to build on his own reputation on the back of his hosting of The Late Late Show in the States.

Rivalry between the two stars?

As for any anticipated rivalry between Adele and Beyonce, Grammys executive producer Ken Ehrlich told Billboard that we all love a good horse race. It's a fine line: We love the competition aspect of it, but it's really more - here's the cliche - the family of music.
carrie fisher, best known for her role as Princess Leia in Star Wars has tragically passed away aged 60. The American actress was taken to hospital in Los Angeles after falling ill on a flight from London. She died in the early hours of Tuesday morning, 27th December only two days after Christmas Day and two days after the death of Wham star George Michael.

Family statement

Simon Halls, the spokesman for Carrie Fisher's daughter Billie Lourd released a statement on the grieving daughter's behalf.

"It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55am this morning.

She was loved by the world and she will be missed profoundly. Our entire family thanks you for your thoughts and prayers."

Mother Debbie Reynolds released a small statement on her Facebook page.

"Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop."

Star Wars co-stars Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford have always broken their silence on death of their colleague. Ford said Fisher "lived her life bravely" and described her as "one-of-a-kind" whilst Hamill tweeted "No words #devastated".

Star Wars

Carrie Fisher is known worldwide as Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise and reprised her role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first of Disney's trilogy.

It is unknown as of yet how Fisher's death will impact the upcoming films, with Lucasfilm confirming that Carrie Fisher has completed her work on the yet untitled next instalment of the franchise. Unless Princess Leia has been killed off joining Han Solo has a casualty of the new triolgy, her character will have to endure an off-screen death, perhaps the final film will have to be re-written to accomodate the tragedy of her death.The original Star Wars, released in 1977 transformed Fisher into a pop culture legend.

Revealing to the Daily Mail back in 2011, that she didn't expect George Lucas' production to become as popular as it did.

"It exploded across the firmament of pop culture, taking all of us along with it. It tricked me into becoming a star all on my own."

Of course Star Wars is not her only appearance in show business with Fisher also voicing Angela in the animated sitcom Family Guy.

Also appearing in When Harry met Sally and working on scripts for films such as Sister Act. She was also a successful writer publishing novels and memoirs with her last, The Princess Diarist, containing details of a relationship between herself and co-star Harrison Ford in 1976. The world has clearly lost an extremely talented woman who impacted lives across the globe and will be dearly missed.
When the Dept. of Defense was created by The National Security Act of 1947, part of the law included this, anyone who has within ten years been on active duty as a commissioned officer in a Regular component of the armed services shall not be eligible as Secretary of Defense." This was part of the long-standing constitutional idea that civilians would have control of the military.

That rule was soon waived by Congress to let George C. Marshall serve but he had held several post-military government jobs. Therefore there is a precedent that Congress can waive the restriction on Mattis serving as Sec.

of Defense, the question is whether Democrats are going to be interested in going along with that and, if not, whether they can do anything about it.

Democrats opposed

Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has stated publically that although she has great respect for retired General Mattis and his long service in uniform, she will oppose his nomination on the grounds that he is too closely tied to the military to be considered a civilian yet.

Change in law

In 2008 the congress changed the 10 year rule to 7 years as the time a military person has to wait before being named civilian head of the Department of Defense. However, General Mattis only retired in May of 2013 so he doesnt qualify even under the modified rule unless Congress again waives the rule entirely.

Gen. Mattis stand on Iran

One reason Democrats may oppose Mattis appointment, besides the existential fact that it is against the whole concept of civilian control of the military, is that he opposes the iran Nuclear Deal. In fact he opposed it so vocally that it is rumored that he was forced to retire 5 months earlier than expected because he was so publically at odds with President Obama on the Iran deal.

This April Mattis told the Center for Strategic and International Studies, that Iranian regime is still the most dangerous threat in the Middle East. The Iranian regime, in my mind, is the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East, Mattis said, according to a report in The Military Times. For all the talk of ISIS and Al Qaida everywhere right now theyre a very serious threat.

But nothing is as serious in the long term enduring ramifications, in terms of stability and prosperity and some hope for a better future for the young people out there, than iran.

Trump knows more about ISIS than the generals

Many people recall that Candidate trump once famously told an interviewer that he knew more about ISIS than the generals which makes it seem a bit peculiar that he keeps looking to the military for his staff. Of course he has also looked to Goldman Sachs Steven Mnuchin for Treasury Secretary to help him drain the swamp," as President Elect Trump keeps saying.
The decision by the United States (US) to abstain from the recent United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has caused great anger and surprise within the Jewish state. But the questions to ask are, not only why has the United States gone down this road, what does it mean for the special relationship between the US and Israel and what now going forward?

Background information

Before we proceed, let us provide some background to the situation. On Friday 23rd December 2016 the UNSC passed a resolution which as stated above condemned Israel's settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as reported by CNN.

However what caused most concern within Jerusalem and beyond was the fact that the United States abstained on the resolution. This is significant as, for most of the time in recent history, the US has vetoed such resolutions which in turn prevents its passage. As a result fourteen countries including Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela voted in favour of the resolution with none voting against the measure. However, it is the fact that the United States did not support Israel and instead abstained which is why there is so much discontent within Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

Why did the US abstain?

The first question to ask is, why did the US and in particular President Obama abstain in the first place?

It is clear that the US have become frustrated by the actions of Israel. Continuing to act without a thought of the international community was a key driving force behind the US's decision to abstain. It is largely due to this slightly narrow minded behaviour by Israel which led to what the Algemeiner website stated, was sometimes a "hostile relationship" between Obama and Netanyahu.

However, although the official line as stated by the US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power that the current policy of settlement building would "destroy the two-state solution", there seems to be more to it than that. Since the passage of the resolution there have been numerous criticisms levelled at President Obama. The Hot Air website stated that Obama acted as a form of payback due to his relationship with Netanyahu and that with only three or so weeks left in office, wanted to leave, as the Washington Post noted, "a dangerous parting shot" to Israel.

Born out of frustration also, it may be.

What about the special relationship?

With regards to where it leaves the special relationship between the countries, it is actually likely to improve greatly. This is the case not only for the fact that Obama is leaving but crucially because Donald Trump is the next president. There is no hiding the fact that Trump is a major Israeli supporter. As reported on the Times of Israel website, his intentions to move the US embassy to the "eternal capital" Jerusalem, his desire to "dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran", the fact that he wants to "work closely" with Netanyahu and his statement that Israel will "forever exist as a Jewish state" illustrates that.

What this demonstrates is that, if anything, the relationship should grow going forward.

What now going forward?

With regards to the final question, what now going forward, a few things are clear. It is clear that Israel will have the support of the US. Donald Trump will definitely see to that. But even so, they cannot ignore the growing concerns within the international community to the building of further settlements in the occupied territories. Although having the help of the US is extremely helpful and beneficial, it is simply not enough. Netanyahu must wake up and see the reality in front of Israel. They cannot continue to act without thinking of those around them. It is not a viable solution. If they do, the problems will only persist, it will only lead to greater isolation and will surely lead to further trouble with the UN in the future.
Ishqbaaz aired on Star Plus in India is becoming interesting by the day with new twists after Shivaay (Nakuul Mehta) gets blackmailed from the Kapoor sisters to give divorce to Anika, (Surbhi Chandna) and marry Tia.

The Wednesday, (December 28, 2016) episode

The show begins with Shivaay rushing to the hospital to meet his ailing grandmother. When he goes there, even Mrs. Kapoor (Tia's mother) is also present beside his grandmom. His grandmother reveals a bitter truth to him by saying that Tej Singh Oberoi's son Omkara is his illegitimate child.

Om is not the real brother of Shivaay.

Mrs. Kapoor explains to him that Tej Singh wanted an heir to take care of his vast business empire and that his wife Jhanavi was not able to conceive at that time. So he took the help of his mistress and Omkara (Kunal Jaisingh) was born. Shivaay can't believe what he is hearing.

Rudra is the illegitimate child of Tej Singh

Later Mrs. Kapoor blackmails Shivaay that if he wants this news to remain a secret he needs to act fast, give divorce to Annika and remove her from the Oberoi house and marry her pregnant daughter Tia as soon as possible. Shivaay can't believe that he is being threatened this way.

He straight away goes home and asks Jhaanvi to bring her passport and he finds that she was away in London for one year in 1990.

He asks her why was she away.

She tells him that they were setting up new business and even Omkara was born this time. It was unexpected and they had to accept the reality. Shivaay recalls what Mrs. Kapoor had told him.

Anika signs divorce papers

He then goes to Anika, gives her the divorce papers and asks her to sign.

The shocked Anika asks him what made him take this abrupt decision?

Shivaay forces her to sign the papers, when Anika refuses, he threatens her that how he had brought her to the Oberoi house, the same way he will throw her out too. The crying Anika signs it as Tia comes in and taunts her that her game is over.

The manager checks the papers, but before he could ask him some questions, Shivaay asks him to go away.

He takes the papers and goes. The episode ends.

Did Shivaay really sign the divorce papers?
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. Armenias Ministry of Foreign Affairs has strictly condemned the sabotage infiltration attempt launched by Azerbaijan in the Armenian state border on December 29 which resulted in human losses, press service of the MFA told Armenpress.

The MFA issued a statement which says:

We strictly condemn the sabotage infiltration attempt conducted by Azerbaijan today in the Armenian state border that resulted in human losses. We extend our deepest condolences to the relatives and co-servicemen of the fallen servicemen.

In conditions when the serious damage, caused to the settlement process due to the Azerbaijani aggression against Artsakh in April, is still not overcome, Baku goes on new adventure by strictly violating the agreements reached in the Vienna and St. Petersburg Summits, the commitment to settle the conflict through peaceful means. Baku responds in such way to the concrete demand stated by the Foreign Ministers of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairing countries in Hamburg to unconditionally maintain the 1994-1995 ceasefire agreements.

The international community, through the three Co-Chairs, has repeatedly urged to respect the ceasefire especially during the Holidays. By conducting the military sabotage on the eve of New Year and Christmas, Baku stands against to the universal values.

The international community, first of all, the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairing countries, must awaken their calls and demands through immediate steps directed to the Azerbaijani leadership who insolently ignore them, take countermeasures and who have lost the sense of reality.
Two Canadian women have been arrested after attempting to extort a Nigerian billionaire. Jyoti and Kiran Matharoo, originally from Toronto, have been held in custody in Nigeria over allegedly blackmailing oil tycoon Femi Otedola. Toronto Star reports that the married Otedola was being threatened with his infidelity being exposed online if he did not pay them.

$1.8 billion net worth

With a net worth of $1.8 billion, Forbes lists 54-year-old Otedola as the third richest person in Nigeria for 2016 and as the 16th richest person in Africa in 2015.

Court documents issued on December 20th detail the accusations against Jyoti and Kiran.

They are said to have blackmailed several wealthy men by threatening to release footage of the sisters and the men having sex with each other. The Matharoo sisters have reportedly admitted to sleeping with almost 100 men and are alleged to be escorts.

They are also facing accusations of being involved in running now-defunct website NaijaGistLive, as well as using several social media accounts to cyberbully 274 people that are "mostly based in various regions of Africa".

Kristine Racicot of Global Affairs Canada confirmed that the sisters are being provided with consular assistance, declining to release further details.

Life of luxury

The Matharoo sisters appeared in a Lagos court on Friday December 23, where they signed statements confessing to being responsible for NaijaGistLive.

They also signed an agreement to leave Nigeria after the trial has ended. The pair will remain in custody until their next court date, which is scheduled to take place in January 2017.

Jyoti and Kiran are well-known for their flashy social media posts which depict them living a life of luxury. Displays of cash, expensive watches and exotic locations are among a few pictures that can be found on their Instagram accounts, racking up almost 50,000 followers altogether on the social media site.

Their extravagant lifestyle has often been compared to that of the Kardashian family, due to their wide-reaching social media presence.
Vonage Appoints New Member to Board of Directors

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By Alicia Young

Web Editor By Alicia YoungWeb Editor

Vonage (News - Alert) Holdings Corp. is a provider of unified communications services for businesses. The company is dedicated to transforming the way people work and businesses operate through a portfolio of cloud-based communications solutions. These solutions are meant to enable internal collaboration among employees, while also keeping companies closely connected to their customers no matter which device they are using.





Since it provides such important UC services, its important for Vonage to have the right people on its Board of Directors. Thats why the company has decided to elect Hamid Akhavan as the Boards newest member.

Akhavan was an obvious choice for the appointment due to his 30 years of Telecom, Media and technology (TMT) experience. He is no stranger to leadership positions, with both CEO and Board of Director experience under his belt at a variety of organizations. He has held leadership roles in large public corporations, private equity-funded companies, and even start-ups. With the addition of Akhavan, Vonage's Board will be composed of nine diverse, highly qualified directors, six of whom joined the Board in the last five years and eight of whom are independent.

Currently, Akhavan is a partner at Long Arc Capital, a private equity firm specializing in disruptive technology investments. In this role, he has been focusing on innovation and new services in cybersecurity, FinTech and other high growth areas. Prior to this position, he was CEO of Unify, Inc., a $2 billion private equity-backed joint venture between the Gores Group and Siemens (News - Alert). There, he took charge of restructuring efforts to reposition the company from a traditional PBX manufacturer to a cloud-based provider of enterprise unified communications solutions.

Vonage is looking forward to Akhavan joining the Board of Directors, with Alan Masarek, Vonage Chief Executive Officer, saying, We are thrilled to welcome Hamid to the Vonage Board of Directors. His deep and versatile technology, enterprise and communications experience will add significant strategic insight to our boardHamid's proven ability to find new sources of growth and to look ahead for new opportunities in the rapidly evolving communications industry will serve Vonage well as we continue on our journey to become the global leader in cloud communications for business.

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Edited by Maurice Nagle
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the United States in supporting terrorist groups in Syria, the Turkish T24.com reported.

During an event in Turkey, Erdogan said: You support terrorist groups with all kinds of weapons and then you say you dont assist. We wont leave it like this. We cannot accept it. If you are our strategic partner, you must stand next to us.

Earlier FM Mevlut Cavusoglu also made accusations against the United States in an interview to Turkish TV, saying the US supplies weapons to Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union party (PYD). The PYD is considered to be a terrorist organization by Turkey.

The US Embassy in Turkey issued an announcement denying the reports in Turkish press about the US assisting the Islamic State and supplying weapons to the PYD.
A woman works at a clothing factory in Xiayi county, Henan province, Nov 20, 2016. [Photo/IC]

ZHENGZHOU - One could never imagine that exquisite sweaters by well-known luxury labels such as Armani could be produced in China's inland areas. But they are.

Xiayi County in central China's Henan province is astonishing the world with its emerging textile and clothing industry.

In the plants of Jierui Clothing Company in Xiayi in the city of Shangqiu, workers produce cardigans for Spanish clothes company Zara.

Jierui Clothing Company is authorized to produce clothes for many world-renowned brands, and its products are exported to more than 20 countries and regions, including the United States, Germany, Italy and Spain.

"With 300 workers, the company produces an average of 5 million pieces of clothing annually for brands such as H&M and Zara. For Armani, we produce about 20,000 products each year. Though it is not a big order, the profit is three times that for ordinary orders," said Dai Liangwei, the company production manager.

Chen Bin, deputy director with the county's industrial cluster district administrative committee, said that seven or eight years ago there were only two or three small spinning factories in Xiayi.

Thanks to the transfer of industry from developed coastal regions to central inland regions, the county has started to see textiles and clothing emerge as its leading industry.

A total of 93 textile and garment enterprises were based in the county, and income from the industry surpassed 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) in 2015, according to the county government.

Jierui Clothing Company is a production base for Armani, which has strict standards for product quality, and shows the improvement of workers' quality and skills, said Liang Wantao, chief of the county's Communist Party Committee.

The clothing industry has created jobs for more than 30,000 locals. Han Cuihua of Beiling Township is one of these workers, and works for Henan Dayang Yarn. She was rewarded with a 100-square-meter flat for her excellent performance this year.

"The new flat is only a 10 minute walk from the plant. I have a home in the county now," Han said.

The county built residential communities for these workers. So far, more than 500 such flats have been sold to workers, at a cheaper than average price as part of a rewards system.

The county has also issued preferential policies to ensure employees in the textile and clothing industry can enjoy pensions, education for their children and medical treatment.

Xiayi's clothing industry has a competitive edge in the international market. It has not only created jobs for local farmers but also helped transform them into industrial workers, boosting urbanization in the county, said sources with the China National Textile and Apparel Council.

China's State Council passed a plan in early December to boost development in the country's central regions for the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020).

The speedy rise of central regions is of great importance in supporting China's medium-high economic growth. China will guide and support industries in southeastern coastal areas that meet environment standards, as well as production bases for well-known brands, both foreign and Chinese, to move to central regions.
A clerk counts yuan bank notes and US dollar bills at a branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in Huaibei, East China's Anhui province, Nov 28, 2012. [Photo/IC]

China's central bank issued a statement overnight, condemning irresponsible media reports that onshore renminbi against the US dollar dropped down below the 7 key defensive line.

The PBOC confirmed the rate of the Yuan in the domestic inter-bank foreign exchange market remains stable between 6.95 and just below 6.96.

The bank says it retains the right to hold the related media outlet to account.

The people's bank issued the statement shortly after a Bloomberg's system showed the decline of the Chinese currency, shocking the market.

But it was later verified as untrue by Reuters.

Bloomberg has also confirmed there was problems with its information publishing and that the exchange rates in its system have now returned to normal.

It also said it was checking what information its staff had published.

It has been speculated in the market that the yuan would face further devaluation pressure in the short-term given the seesaw nature of the yuan-dollar relationship.
A UnionPay employee introduces new bank card services to a visitor at a show in Beijing. [Photo/Xinhua]

68 million UnionPay cards have been issued in over 40 countries and regions by the end of November.

15 million are newly issued this year. China's Hong Kong and Macau, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, and the Belt and Road markets are all major issuing markets.

From January to November this year, the number of transaction of overseas-issued UnionPay cards in the Chinese mainland grew by about 50 percent.

China's outbound tourism has been developing rapidly for many years, and now, inbound tourism is picking up steam. According to the data released by China's National Tourism Administration, in the first six months of 2016, the number of inbound tourists reached 67.87 million, growing by 3.8 percent year-on-year; that is 8.84 million more than the outbound tourists. It is estimated that the number of inbound tourists in the second half of this year will mark a year-on-year growth of 4 percent or more.

"With more people visiting China, UnionPay is facing new opportunities and challenges," CEO of UnionPay International, Cai Jianbo, said. "We not only provide payment convenience to Chinese people to go abroad, but also endeavor to optimize inbound tourists' payment experiences to support the personnel exchanges between China and the rest of the world."

UnionPay International has taken several measures. Firstly, to promote the large-scale issuance of UnionPay cards in markets outside the Chinese mainland. Secondly, to build special business circles in the Chinese mainland cities and to improve trade settlement services. Thirdly, to offer exclusive offers and value-added services for overseas-issued UnionPay cards.

Thanks to UnionPay's extensive acceptance network in the Chinese mainland, more and more customers like to bring UnionPay cards when visiting China. From January to November, the transaction volume of Korea-issued UnionPay cards in the Chinese mainland grew by about 50%. The transaction volume of UnionPay cards issued in Pakistan and Nepal grew by about 2 times, and that of UnionPay cards issued in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia and Mauritius also grew by about 50 percent.

More exclusive privileges are offered for UnionPay cards issued outside the Chinese mainland. Now, VIP service is offered to UnionPay cardholders at 10 Chinese Visa Application Service Centers in South Korea, Singapore and Australia. Banks in Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea and Singapore have offered exclusive cashback for local UnionPay cardholders.
A woman uses Uber Technologies Inc's car-hailing service via an electronic screen in Tianjin.[Photo provided to China Daily]

That figure refers to a loss in just one financial quarter of the year, meaning that the company's full year loss could be in the region of over $2 billion.

Many Uber users will be surprised to learn that the company is not currently profitable. After all, the firm has low overheads and is effectively just a middle-man, connecting a driver with a customer, and taking a percentage fee for this service.

However, as Uber has needed to compete with incumbent taxi firms in cities all over the world, it has often effectively subsidized rides via incentives to customers. It has also invested heavily in expansion and in driverless technology.

In August, it was reported that Uber would merge its Chinese business with local rival Didi in a deal worth as much as $35 billion.

The two companies had been involved in a costly battle against each other, and Didi invested significantly in the worldwide Uber company as part of the deal.

That Uber has been unprofitable despite that deal will undoubtedly be received with caution by investors.
When you go to a fast-food restaurant, it's usually with the intention of stuffing your face rather than having it read.

Now Chinese search-engine giant Baidu and fried chicken king KFC China have teamed up in a new "smart restaurant" in Beijing that uses facial recognition technology to recommend food orders by gauging a patron's age, sex and expression, according to techcrunch.com.

A Baidu press release said that the technology could tell "a male customer in his early 20s" to order "a set meal of crispy chicken hamburger, roasted chicken wings and Coke for lunch", while "a female customer in her 50s" would get "porridge and soybean milk for breakfast".

The endeavor has generated some quips on social media site Weibo:

Virgo July: "What if it scanned my face and came out a combo for middle-age?"

123 symbol: "Next time it scans your face, it's necessary to have some make-up, in case your age is discovered."

Shilegefei: "It would be awesome if you look younger than your age, then you would be served a kid's meal."

The device also has built-in recognition, so it can recall customers' previous orders.

So far it's being used only at the one location, though Baidu has worked with KFC on a pilot smart restaurant in Shanghai, where a robot listens for and recognizes customer orders.

Once primarily the domain of law enforcement and government, facial recognition technology appears poised for regular commercial usage in the US.

In June, the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) finalized its "Privacy Best Practice Recommendations for Commercial Facial Recognition".

Under the Department of Commerce, the NTIA is the executive branch agency responsible for advising the president on telecommunications and information policy issues.

In summing up how commercial establishments should make consumers aware of the facial recording, the NTIA said:

"Generally, policies or disclosures should describe, if applicable, and/or in the appropriate context: the reasonably foreseeable purposes, or examples, for which the covered entity collects and shares facial template data or uses facial recognition technologies; the covered entity's data retention and de-identification practices; and, if the covered entity offers the ability to review, correct, or delete facial template data, the process to accomplish such actions."

It also included this caveat: "These best practices do not apply to security applications, law enforcement, national security, intelligence or military uses, all of which are beyond the scope of this document."

In November, Baidu unveiled facial-recognition technology that it claims is up to 99.77 percent accurate and able to recognize people better than human beings can.

Baidu is starting with a program at the Wuzhen Hotel in the Xizha Scenic Area near Shanghai. The resort gets 8 million visitors per year, and tickets are required to enter parts of it.

Andrew Ng, chief scientist of Baidu Research, at the Silicon Valley branch of the tech company in Sunnyvale, California, told fastcompany.com that the technology could be used to deter ticket scalpers. Someone buying a ticket would have to look into a webcam or smartphone camera so the system could match up the face.

It would prevent bots from buying up blocks of tickets the minute they go on sale, he believes.

Ng also sees the technology being used in security situations, such as passport checks at airports.

Ng, who is also the director of the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Lab, told fastcompany.com that Baidu is also working with a company to make facial-recognition door locks for houses.

As for the KFC face scan, whatever it determines, I'd pass on the porridge and order the extra crispy.

Hong Xiao contributed to this story.

Contact the writers at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com
WASHINGTON -- US President Barack Obama called his successor Donald Trump Wednesday in what was described as a positive conversation, as tension over Israel and transition started to build.

"Today's call, like the others since the election, was positive and focused on continuing a smooth and effective transition," a statement from the White House said.

"The President and President-elect committed to staying in touch over the next several weeks and agreed their respective teams would continue to work together to effectuate a smooth transition of power on Jan. 20," it said.

Trump told reporters outside his Florida home that he and Obama had a "very nice" and "general" conversation.

The phone call came after an abstention vote on an Israel-related resolution from the United States prompted Trump to question the decision on Twitter.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the US, but..." read a Trump tweet early Wednesday.

Trump also tweeted that the transition process is not smooth. He pledged to do his best to "disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Though it was going to be a smooth transition-Not!"

The harsh words may be connected to an earlier remark from Obama that he could have beaten Trump if they went against each other in an election.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. CSTO considers the sabotage infiltration attempt made by Azerbaijan near Chinari village of Armenias Tavush province as a provocation, CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha issued a statement, reports Armenpress.

The CSTO Secretariat is strictly concerned about the information received in connection with the armed incident that happened near Chinari village of Armenia. We consider such actions within the territory of the CSTO member state as a provocation, in particular, against the backdrop of quite a serious incident in Nagorno Karabakh Republic in April of this year during which heavy armored equipment was applied. It seemed that the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement process would eventually move forward due to the efforts made by both sides, as well as a number of countries. However, recently the information received from the region on the ceasefire violations, as well as the December 29 incident, that killed servicemen, create a serious concern, Nikolai Bordyuzha said in a statement.

Azerbaijani forces attempted a sabotage infiltration in the Armenian state border, south-east from Chinari village of Tavush province in the early morning of December 29.

The Armenian Armed Forces have neutralized the Azerbaijan attacks. Azerbaijani forces were pushed back, suffering losses and WIAs, including in the military positions.

Unfortunately, the Armenian side also suffered losses during the combat. During the battle for defending the Armenian state border, Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh M. Melikyan, Private Edgar G. Narayan and Private Erik G. Abovyan were killed.

The defense ministry of Armenia shares the grief of loss and extends condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers.

The defense ministry possesses irrefutable evidence and proof of the Azerbaijan violation in the Armenian state border. The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan is fully responsible for the instigation.
Houston police are investigating the fatal shooting on Monday night of a young woman who worked for PetroChina.

HPD Homicide Division Senior Police Officer Sheila Spivey and Detective Tom Ferguson said that about 10:30 pm on Monday witnesses reported hearing a gunshot in Camden Holly Springs, a gated apartment complex on Sam Houston Parkway South.

Bystanders found the victim in the complex and attempted to provide medical assistance. Houston Fire Department paramedics arrived a short time later and pronounced her dead.

According to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, the victim, believed to be in her early 20s, sustained gunshot wounds to her chest and neck. She was identified on Tuesday, but her name has not been released pending notification of next of kin.

PetroChina International (America) Inc confirmed that the woman was one of its employees. The company said it was "very saddened" over her death but declined to provide any further details. PetroChina employs more than 100 people in Houston.

HPD said it is looking for a suspect. Anyone with information in the case is urged to contact the HPD Homicide Division at (713) 308-3600 or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.
While some have claimed the recent elections heralded the death of conservatives and the tea party, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper does not share their enthusiasm, and is asking outside gun control groups to stay out if a third state recall election occurs against another anti-Second Amendment lawmaker.

In September, state residents organized a grassroots recall against a pair of Democratic state senators who voted in favor of several party-line votes over a series of gun-control bills that were among the strictest in the nation.

Displaying their outrage, citizens in Pueblo and Colorado Springs launched a first-ever recall election against Senate president John Morse and Sen. Angela Giron. The recall was the first in the states history.

Recognizing the ramifications politicians being recalled would have on future attempts to restrict firearms ownership, gun control groups sprang into action, spending large sums of money to support the legislators targeted for recall.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg personally donated $350,000 to Taxpayers for Responsible Government; an issue committee that attempted to help the legislators retain their seats was formed by Julie Wells, a Democratic fundraiser from Kentucky. Los Angeles billionaire Eli Broad contributed $250,000 to Wells organization, which then gave $420,000 to the two defense committees.

The Washington, D.C.-based Sixteen Thirty Fund gave $35,000 to help Giron fight the recall while Citizens for Integrity and Mainstream Colorado, both Denver-based organizations donated $20,000 and $15,000 respectively. Additionally, the American Federation of State, Federal and Municipal Employees union, based in Washington, D.C., contributed $3,500.

However, the gun control groups did not get a good return on their investment. In September, voters voted to recall the pair, leaving Democrats with a slim, one vote majority in the state senate.

However, even that lead could evaporate as residents are now attempting a third recall.

When the idea for the recalls first began, among the legislators targeted for recall was Evie Hudak, a two-term Democrat in a suburban district north of Denver. However, gun rights citizens initially decided against a recall against Hudak, fearing that three simultaneous campaigns would dilute their grassroots resources too much, choosing instead to focus on Morse and Giron, who they felt were more vulnerable.

Residents have until Dec. 3 to collect 18,900 signatures in order to initiate a recall election against Hudak. If Hudak were to befall the fate of her colleagues, the senate would swing back to a Republican majority, which would be able to prevent a repeat of the last legislative session where a host of liberal causes became law on issues including civil unions, abortion, and gun control.

While Hickenlooper would prefer the recall not take place at all, if it does there is something else he wants to prevent from repeating itself. The Democratic governor has asked Bloomberg and other outside gun control groups to sit this one out if Hudak were to face the voters in a recall.

Colorado is a state that people like to be themselves and solve their own problems, the Democratic governor said in an interview with Capital Download, USA TODAYs weekly video newsmaker series. They dont really like outside organizations meddling in their affairs, and maybe the NRA gets a pass on that.

But (it is) probably not a bad idea for gun-control groups to stay out of the Hudaks recall if enough signatures are gathered.

During the Virginia governors race, Bloomberg spent $1.1 million to help Democrat Terry McAuliffe squeak out a victory against conservative Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli. McAuliffe has called for an assault weapons ban, long a goal of Bloomberg in the state and nationally.

While the expenditures were able to help McAuliffe achieve victory, it was far closer than expected, with his winning by only three percentage points. The Libertarian candidate received 7 percent of the vote, much of which would have probably gone to Cuccinelli, who would have won the election.

Following the recall of Mores and Giron, legislators have been skittish about pushing gun control legislation for fear of a similar thing happening to them.

I think there are a lot of indications that lawmakers are quaking in their boots over the Colorado recall, Erich Pratt, director of communications for Gun Owners of America said. It was time for another wake up call. We had one in 1994 and again 2000 where Lieberman said it was the gun issue that cost them the election. It seems as if every few years ago the Democrats need to have some of their scalps nailed to the wall to remind them that this is a losing issue despite what the pollsters say.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who was a House member representing Newtown at the time of the Sandy Hook shooting said, The results of the recall were not good news.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md) said while speaking at POLITICOs Morning Money Breakfast in Washington following the shooting at the Naval Yard in Washington DC that he expected the shooting to renew the discussions over gun control, but he believed the recall elections in Colorado would prevent any new gun control measures from being enacted.

It does not bode well for asking people to vote for legislation similar to that which went down in the Senate just a few months ago, he said.

If voters were to achieve a third victory against a gun control legislator, it would further set back the issue for advocates.

[yop_poll id=2]

Thanks for the correction, Larry!
'There is a serious cash delivery issue in the system due to inferior planning and poor judgement on the part of the RBI as well as the finance ministry.'

'How else would the RBI justify the various new restrictions it unleashed day after day without respecting the November 8 notification?'

In the concluding part of his investigation into the discrepancies in the demonetisation policy, James Wilson explains why Indians are destined to silently suffer the cash shortage for half a dozen more months.

So when did the printing of the new currency start (yes after the so-called meticulous planning, selling of an amazing idea and getting a nod from high echelons to go ahead with the 'surgical strike')?

Many theories have been floated about the meticulous planning in the initial days, by a certain section of cheerleader media and court-jester journalists. I am not ready to buy any of them.

We learnt from media reports that the printing of the new notes was confined to the RBI's BRBNMPL (Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited) presses at Mysuru and Salboni.

Neither the Nashik nor Dewas presses of the SPMCIL (Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Limited) were in the loop, perhaps due to the secrecy involved in the mission.

Another reason may be that both these presses were already assigned with the printing of lower denomination notes (from Rs 100 downward) in huge quantities as per the annual indent of the RBI for FY 2016-2017.

Considering all these constraints, let me put a rational date before you.

In response to a RTI query, the RBI disclosed that it had 2,473.2 million (247.32 crore) Rs 2,000 notes in stock for disposal as of November 8.

With the printing capacity of 43.84 million (4.38 crore) per day at the Mysore and Salboni presses together in two shifts, it will take 57 days to print the 2473.2 million notes (247.32 crore) -- that is if it started on September 12.

Take another possibility: If the RBI took an effort to enhance printing to three shifts, then they can print 65.76 million/day; it will take 38 days. This would mean that the printing started only on October 1.

I was really shocked to find that there was not a single Rs 500 note with the RBI when they unleashed this demon over the nation!

It had just 32% of the total Specified Bank Notes or SBN in circulation -- that too with a less-mobile Rs 2,000 note stock!

This despite being aware that they can't print the rest of the SBN within the 50-day window.

I then looked for patterns of disbursal of currency at various dates, which was inferred from the data provided through the RBI's press releases.

The table (left) shows that there was a substantial increase in the disbursal of currency between November 27 and December 5 from Rs 12,589 crore per day to Rs 20,548 crore.

This was definitely due to the disbursement of salaries on the first of December.

Thereafter, the disbursal dried up substantially in the succeeding period to Rs 16,000 crore a day.

If we take the first 31 days of demonetisation, the average daily release from November 10 to December 10 is Rs 14,871 crore a day.

If the money is disbursed as per the above daily average, over the next 20 days another Rs 297,420 crore can be disbursed.

Hence, the government may be able to disburse a total of Rs 758,420 crore or a maximum of Rs 8 lakh crore by December 30.

This means that just 52% of the total SBN will be disbursed to us. But even this quantity is doubtful considering the present printing woes, which we will examine later.

There is a serious cash delivery issue in the system due to inferior planning and poor judgement on the part of the RBI as well as the finance ministry.

How else would the RBI justify the various new restrictions it unleashed day after day without respecting the November 8 notification?

It is quite depressing to see that even the address to the nation by the prime minister is not honoured!

Then I came across another shocking finding. The RBI published a transcript of the statement given by Deputy Governor R Gandhi on December 7 on its Web site. But soon enough the RBI purged it. The video of the press conference is still available on the Internet (external link). This made me curious.

What was the information in the transcript that forced the RBI to delete it from its Web site, even sacrificing the very institutional credibility?

What was there to hide from the public which the video coverage of 5th bi-monthly monetary policy press conference missed?

To RBI's dismay, it could not wipe out the cached version of Gandhi's transcript. So a friend on Twitter grabbed that information and shared it with me.

Look at the highlighted information (below).

Wondering what the relevance of the information was?

It can lead you to the printing volume of new notes disbursed by the RBI as on December 10, which they have refused to divulge so far.

Note that the total value of the lower denomination notes disbursed by RBI is 19.1 billion (refer to the transcript above). That amounts to just Rs 1.059 lakh crore!

This means that the higher denominations notes were worth Rs 2.75 lakh crore (Rs 3.81 lakh crore minus Rs 1.059 lakh crore).

As the RBI has not given the volume of high denomination notes, I was unable to decipher the possible numbers of them.

But in the next press conference on December 13, Gandhi claimed that the supply of lower denomination notes had been increased from 19.1 billion on December 5 to 20.1 billion on December 10.

He also claimed that the RBI had disbursed 1.7 billion higher denomination notes of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500.

As the amount of the total cash disbursed is Rs 4.61 lakh crore, it turned out to be a simple mathematical problem to solve.

There is a limit for the lower denominations to fluctuate, as we know that denomination-wise 19.1 billion notes are in circulation.

And if 19.1 billion lower denomination notes increased to 20.1 billion, the scenarios that emerge:

If the entire 1 billion volume increase is of Rs 100 note, then total value will increase by Rs 1.159 lakh crore (a Rs 100 billion increase).

If the entire 1 billion volume increase are of Rs 10 notes, then total value will be increased by Rs 1.069 lakh crore. (a Rs 10 billion increase)

This simply means that the value of higher denominations notes will be in a range of Rs 3,451 crore to Rs 3,541 crore.

This also means if all high denomination notes are of Rs 2,000, its volume will fluctuate between 1.7 billion to 1.8 billion.

If Gandhi would not have given the exact volume-wise distribution of each lower denomination in the December 7 transcript, we would not have been able to emulate these scenarios.

My strong feeling is that it is the very reason why the RBI later deleted the said transcript from its Web site.

You can't introduce over a couple of million Rs 500 notes into this equation -- in that case the volume of higher denomination notes will go up higher than 1.7 billion!

Even after a month after unleashing demonetisation, the RBI has not able to disburse any substantial quantity of Rs 500 notes into circulation.

It's shameful for the RBI to flash a couple of million Rs 500 notes in metro cities and major urban centres before the 24x7 electronic media, to flaunt on WhatsApp forwards and re-tweets on social media!

It is really sad to see that a reputed professional organisation like the RBI is letting down the nation with such cheap tricks rather meeting pressing demands!

In his December 7 press conference, Gandhi said that the RBI had provided 19.1 billion lower denomination notes since demonetisation, which he claimed was a record as it was more than what it had provided in last three years to the system.

The indent and supply for the last financial year shows that around 16 billion lower denomination notes were printed then.

This financial year too, the RBI gave an indent to print 16.6 billion lower denomination notes and if the presses print as per their capacity, there would be new 12.5 billion notes till December 10.

Along with this quantity, there will be soiled notes, collected to dispose during this financial year (Kindly note that, last year alone around 13 billion lower denomination soiled notes were disposed off), pushed back to circulation.

Also note that the total number of lower denomination notes in circulation as on March 31 was 56.6 billion.

It is interesting to note that Gandhi never claimed that RBI has printed 19.1 billion notes.

Instead, he only made a tall claim that these notes were a record volume!

The media never asked any questions, and Gandhi spoke in glory! I am sorry, but I can't digest this all-time record claim of attention-diversion by twisting facts!

Now let us come back to the figure of 1.7 billion high denomination notes disbursed by December 10. This information is quite perplexing when we compare the printing press capacities.

The RBI had a stock of 2.473 billion Rs 2,000 notes as on November 8 itself. So if these printing presses were working at least two shifts/day, there would have been another 1.4 billion pieces of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 with the RBI by December 10 (32 days x 43.84 = 1,403 million).

To completely replace the Rs 1,000 notes by Rs 2,000 notes, the RBI needed to print 0.956 billion (3.429 billion minus 2.473 billion) notes. So the RBI should have completed this printing by December 10.

I hope and pray that the RBI did not go ahead with another short shrift solution of printing more Rs 2,000 notes to replace Rs 500 notes for it will completely disrupt the mobility and balance of the currency in circulation.

Why is the RBI holding on to the remaining 1.729 billion of Rs 2,000 notes (3.429 billion minus 1.7 billion=1.729) without disbursing to the public?

Also, from the above we can find that a quantity of 0.444 billion Rs 500 notes (1.4 billion minus 0.956 billion) printed after are with the RBI, but a few millions have only been disbursed to the public.

It is really perplexing that why the RBI is not distributing these Rs 500 notes in substantial quantities?

This is quite baffling because the RBI through its press releases informed that they disbursed Rs 500 notes with the following series numbers:

* without inset

* with E as inset

* with L as inset,

* E and star as inset and

* with R as inset.

This indicates that various printing presses are put to the task of printing the Rs 500 notes. However, since we don't enough notes in circulation, it is feared that some issues could have cropped up during its printing.

Remember media reports on Rs 500 notes of two different designs cropping up and the RBI's bizarre explanation?

The RBI, as on December 10, claimed to have disbursed 1.7 billion high denomination notes. This will definitely be 1.7 billion Rs 2,000 notes and a few million Rs 500 notes, as I have shown above.

Also relying on the above printing calculations and RTI disclosure, we can very well conclude that the RBI may have had a stock of at least 1.7429 billion Rs 2,000 notes and 0.444 billion Rs 500 notes as of December 10.

So then how much time will the RBI take to print the remaining 16.721 billion pieces (17.165 million minus 0.444 million)?

I give you three possible scenarios:

First Scenario

Mysuru and Salboni (3 shifts/day) and Nashik & Dewas: At 88.82 million/day will need 188 days or June 16, 2017.

Second Scenario

Mysuru and Salboni (3 shifts/day) and Nashik: At 81.64 million/day will need 204 days or July 2, 2017.

Third Scenario

Mysuru and Salboni (2 shifts/day) and Nashik: At 59.73 million/day will need 280 days or September 16, 2017.

Looking at these dates will make anyone shudder.

Remember, our prime minister on November 8, sought a few days to restore normalcy.

This will give you an idea about the planning prowess of the mandarins in the RBI and the finance ministry.

There is no magic wand here to create miracles; we are destined to silently suffer this onslaught for half a dozen more months.

As to when we can expect SBN to come back to the banks, the table, left, helps explain why the government and the RBI are panicking and imposing new restrictions like questioning people depositing over Rs 5,000 into their KYC accounts.

(Under which legal or Constitutional provision do the government and the RBI arbitrarily give this police power to the bank authorities to abuse us?)

Here's a look at the various scenarios that could unravel on December 30, 2016:

* With an average daily inflow of Rs 15,000 crore, the entire SBN valued Rs 15.44 lakh crore will return to the banks.

*With an average daily inflow of Rs 12,800 crore, total SBN valued Rs 15 lakh crore will return to the banks.

* With an average daily inflow of Rs 10,300 crore, total SBN valued Rs 14.5 lakh crore will return to banks.

My strong belief is that SBN valued around Rs 15 lakh crore will most probably return to the system; the rest will be trapped in Nepal, Bhutan and other countries for the time being.

If Rs 15 lakh crore SBN returns, it would totally shatter and tear away all the mighty claims made by the government and the RBI that only a maximum of Rs 11 lakh crore to Rs 12 lakh crore of SBN will be returned.
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YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. Political scientist Alexander Manasyan thinks Azerbaijans aggressive behavior is linked first of all with the pre-holiday period, when several international structures are busy with their work.

They are attempting to transform the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan conflict into a direct Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, and thats the most dangerous of all. At the same time its dangerous for them, because it is obvious for the international community that the so-called disputed areas do not refer to Armenia. There is also another factor, which can be included in those arguments which Azerbaijan is guided by. Its the Hamburg announcement of the foreign ministers of co-chairing countries, which was almost openly anti-Azerbaijani. Im not saying by statutory way, but the entire context was against Azerbaijan, and it can anger them and lead to desperate actions, the political scientist told ARMENPRESS.

Azerbaijani forces attempted a sabotage infiltration in the Armenian state border south-east of Chinari village, Tavush province in the morning of December 29.

The Armenian Armed Forces have neutralized the Azerbaijan attacks. Azerbaijani forces were pushed back, suffering losses and WIAs, including in the military positions.

Unfortunately, the Armenian side also suffered losses during the combat. During the battle for defending the Armenian state border, Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh M. Melikyan, Private Edgar G. Narayan and Private Erik G. Abovyan were killed.

The defense ministry of Armenia shares the grief of loss and extends condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers.

The defense ministry possesses irrefutable evidence and proof of the Azerbaijan violation in the Armenian state border. The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan is fully responsible for the instigation.

As of this moment, the situation in the Armenia-Azerbaijan border is calm. The Azerbaijani forces suffered up to 7 losses, defense ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. The word Nagorno Karabakh Republic stated by CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha in his statement is not accidental. It is a warning to Azerbaijan, political scientist Sergey Minasyan said in an interview with Armenpress.

The word the Nagorno Karabakh Republic is mentioned in the statement in order to show Azerbaijan what steps the organization can take, as well as, certain member states of the organization, including Russia. It is a warning to Azerbaijan that such actions in the border can lead to certain legal, political consequences, he said.

Commenting on the provocative actions that took place in the border of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Sergey Minasyan said Azerbaijan uses the holiday season and tries to show that the tension in the border continues, peace is not maintained, military threats still exist.

Azerbaijani forces attempted a sabotage infiltration in the Armenian state border, south-east from Chinari village of Tavush province in the early morning of December 29.

The Armenian Armed Forces have neutralized the Azerbaijan attacks. Azerbaijani forces were pushed back, suffering losses and WIAs, including in the military positions.

Unfortunately, the Armenian side also suffered losses during the combat. During the battle for defending the Armenian state border, Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh M. Melikyan, Private Edgar G. Narayan and Private Erik G. Abovyan were killed.

The defense ministry of Armenia shares the grief of loss and extends condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers.

The defense ministry possesses irrefutable evidence and proof of the Azerbaijan violation in the Armenian state border. The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan is fully responsible for the instigation.






YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian government granted customs duty exemption privileges to Armenia Wine.

This privilege will contribute to the import of technical equipment, as well as their components and accessories, raw materials and other items, Suren Karayan, minister of economic development and investments said, adding the production volumes under the program comprise 1 billion 846 million drams.

According to Karayan, the sales of the production comprise 2 billion 593 million, in which 1 billion 738 million in Armenia, 742 million in other EEU states and 131 million in third countries.

The minister stressed the company has invested 4 billion 737 million drams.
Increased growth, reduced spending and less debt guarantees are the solutions as rising public debt and its repayment exerts a lot of pressure on the Government, ang uc Anh, a senior official with the Ministry of Planning and Investment, tells Vietnam News Ageny (VNA).

What is the status of Viet Nams public debt?

According to the Government, the value of Viet Nams public debt in 2016 will edge close to 65 per cent of the countrys gross domestic product (GDP)  the ceiling allowed by the National Assembly. The value of Governments debt could be 53.1 per cent of the GDP, higher than the ceiling.

These numbers are estimated upon economic targets set by the Assembly and the Government at the beginning of the year. But macroeconomic results, on which the public debt is calculated, are lower than initial predictions. Therefore, unless the Government takes serious actions, this years public debt will surpass the ceiling level of 65 per cent.

Why has Viet Nams public debt kept increasing, rising by three times the annual GDP growth during 2011-2015?

Three broad reasons can be identified. Firstly, we know that all targets on budget income, budget expense and public debt are calculated on the GDP forecast. If the Government sticks to borrowing and spending based on the initial GDP growth, when it is lower than expected, public debt will grow at higher pace than actual GDP growth.

Secondly, the Governments overspending rose in 2011-2015 as the gap between spending and income widened. Budget income in 2011-2015 declined in comparison to 2006-2010. The ratio of Government income over GDP was 21-22 per cent in 2011-2015, lower than the 26-27 per cent ratio during the previous five-year period. Reduction in Government spending did not match the reduction in income.

We can also see that in Viet Nams current budget spending structure that the portion of regular spending is becoming bigger while the Governments income is only sufficient for regular spending and paying debts. Therefore, the Government needs to increase borrowings for socio-economic development, leading to a significant rise in public debt.

Besides, in order to maintain sufficient funding for socio-economic development, the Government has reversed its loans, which means the due date of the loans will be extended. When the Government implements loan reversion, previous loans and new ones will be accumulated and the total value of debt will increase.

The National Assembly has approved the national 2016-2020 five-year plan. The resolution states that annual public debt cannot exceed 65 per cent of the GDP, Government debt not exceed 54 per cent and overseas debt does not exceed 50 per cent of GDP. What can the Government do to meet these targets?

We need to focus on three solutions.

First, we need to implement more strongly the solutions stated in the National Assemblys economic restructuring plan 2016-2020 to make sure the growth rate in this period is between 6.5 per cent and 7 per cent per year.

Secondly, we need to reduce Government overspending in the middle and long-term and reallocate the budget expenditures to increase spending for socio-economic development to 25-26 per cent. We also need to reduce regular spending, pay debts on schedule and reverse the loans less frequently.

Thirdly, we should reduce the issuing of Government-backed loans to local authorities and companies, and keep a close eye on borrowings made by local governments.

How can the market meet the Governments borrowing demands and how can the Government manage its loans?

Besides considering its capacity for debt repayment, the Government needs to make loans at a reasonable pace in comparison with economic growth. The Government also needs to reduce its overspending, make sure the capital is used efficiently and heighten the responsibility of those who utilise the loans.

The finance ministry has tried to change its mechanisms from distributing official development assistance (ODA) to lending it to local governments. I think this is a good move to improving efficiency and the ministry should promote this solution in the near future.

Improving public debt management mechanisms has been considered a key solution. What should we prioritise or focus on?

We need to focus on policies, instruments and the structure in order to make sure public debt is managed comprehensively.

In the future, the Law of Public debt management should be re-assessed and amended to match international standards. Viet Nam also needs to develop its own ceiling level of public debt for each kind of debt, including Government debt, Government-backed loans and local government loans.

Another issue that needs attention is the restructuring the loan due-date, which will extend the due date and reduce repayment pressure on the Government. The Government also needs to consider lending to local authorities and companies instead of distributing the loans as is being done now.

Lastly, we need to re-structure the organisation and obligations of Government agencies so that the management of public debt is implemented by a transparent agency and others work together effectively.  VNS
HA NOI  Nearly 15,500 cases of smuggling and trade fraud have been uncovered this year, the General Department of Viet Nam Customs reported.

These statistics were released at a meeting held on December 28 by the department to summarise results of the fight against smuggling, trade fraud and illegal transportation of goods across the border in 2016.

The smuggled goods were estimated to be worth nearly VN416.5 billion (US$18.3 million). More than VN171.2 billion was contributed to the State budget during this period through seizure of smuggled goods.

Among the violations, customs agencies detected 31 cases related to illegal trade in wild animals, plants and their products, including some notable cases involving large quantities, such as the illegal traffickings of 137.5kg of ivory and products made of ivory from Angola to Ha Nois Noi Bai International Airport and more than 9,000kg of tortoise shells, over 1,300kg of gecko and 16kg of living tortoise from Indonesia to Hai An Port in northern Hai Phong City.

Regarding the illegal transportation of oil, gas and minerals, 13 cases of violations were discovered. Nearly 12,300 tonnes and 6,500 litres of petroleum were seized.

At the meeting, Nguyen Phi Hung, head of Viet Nam Customs Anti-Smuggling Investigation Department, said smuggling of fake goods was getting more complicated as smugglers were using sophisticated techniques.

He added that the main areas of smuggling included Ha Noi, HCM City, Quang Ninh and a Nang, as well as the border provinces of Lang Son and Lao Cai and some central and southern provinces.

The most common illegally trafficked products are drugs, weapons, documents and wild animals, as well as wood, gold, foreign liquor and oil, along with minerals, cigarettes, automobiles and machinery, in addition to refrigerators, food and many other types of goods, Hung said.

In an effort to fight this crime, authorities are reinforcing patrolling teams and inspection in key areas such as border lines, Hung said, adding that they had also strengthened the investigation and assessment capacities in hotspots of smuggling and trade fraud and were imposing strict penalties on smugglers.

Hung added that customs agencies had increased the use of high-tech equipment to efficiently and timely support the tracking and identification of smuggling activities on a larger scale.  VNS
HA NOI  VPBank Finance Company Limited (FE CREDIT) on Wednesday announced that it has completed a syndicated loan procedure with Switzerlands Credit Suisse Group.

The loan contract will supply FE CREDIT with a much-needed flow of working capital and broaden its ability to meet its clients financial demands.

Credit Suisse AG Singapore acted as the intermediary for the signing of the loan contract, as well as the credit agent and legal representative for the loan.

The capital flow from the syndicated loan will give FE CREDIT liquidity based on its commercial loan results, and serve to fulfil its plans to lead the Vietnamese commercial financial market, said Kalidas Ghose, FE CREDITs CEO and director of retail banking and consumer finance.

The loan will allow participating entrepreneurs to improve their financial capability and boost business operations, he said, adding that it reinforces the trust in FE CREDIT by global banks, courtesy of its returns and business models, and vision for sustainable development of international standards.

We are honoured to be a partner with FE CREDIT in their journey to success and development, as well as a supporter for Vietnamese entrepreneurs and provider of creative financial solutions for Vietnamese consumers, said Rehan Anwer, managing director of investment banking and capital market at Credit Suisse Group AG Singapore.

Viet Nam has been a major market for Credit Suisse in Asia, and we are committed to bringing clients the best service through the investment banking and capital mobilisation system, Anwer said.

Ghose said Credit Suisse received positive responses from international partner banks for joint capital mobilisation after a period of careful research and consideration.

Founded as the consumer finance division of Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VPBank), FE CREDIT became an independent company within six years of being established. It was awarded for being Viet Nams best commercial finance company by the Global Banking and Finance Review in 2016.

Credit Suisse, one of the largest global financial services firm in Viet Nam, has around US$7 billion invested in contract values with domestic businesses and organisations. It ihas been recognised as the best foreign investment bank in Viet Nam by many international financial magazines.  VNS
Saigon Acoustic will host a metal concert featuring international rock stars on January 9.

The performing bands will include Hiss From The Moat from Italy, Revenge and Borock from Indonesia, and Onslave and Mephonic from Viet Nam.

The show will start at 6pm, with tickets priced at VN50,000 for women and VN250,000 for men available at www.ticketbox.vn. Saigon Acoustic is at 104 Hai Ba Trung Street, District 1. VNS
By Mai Khuyen

When we, or our loved ones, have to undergo a surgery, we wish and pray that things go well.

Our anxiety is greater when its a major surgery, for instance, one that involves the eyes, brain, heart or spine.

Our prayers become more intense and we step up efforts to find the best doctor and best hospital possible.

Once this is done, we place our trust, and our fates, in the hands of our doctors and surgeons. Knowingly or otherwise, we give them a power that has to be wielded with utmost care and responsibility.

We also accept that being a doctor is to be part of one of the noblest professions. They are in the business of saving lives. Of course, they cannot save every life, and they are not held responsible for deaths that happen because a disease has progressed too far, or burns or other injuries are too critical.

In such cases, we accept that inscrutable fate has played a hand in taking our loved ones away.

However, such an acceptance cannot be extended to the sudden deaths of two patients on Sunday morning at the prestigious private Tri uc General Hospital in central Ha Noi.

A 34-year-old man and a 37-year-old woman, reportedly died of anaphylactic shock (life-threatening allergic reaction) within 30 seconds of being anaesthetised.

Neither of the patients were undergoing emergency surgery for a life-threatening condition.

A few minutes before he was wheeled into the operation theatre, the male patient, who was about to have his tonsils removed, told his loved ones not to worry, that it was a very simple operation that would be over in no time.

The womans case was a bit more serious. She had a tumour in her thyroid gland. But she and her relatives expected that she would be home soon after getting it surgically removed at this prestigious hospital with highly qualified medical personnel.

When two people die at the same time while being anaesthetised, we cannot just wring our hands, say it was fate, grieve, and move on. We need to be objective and find out what happened.

Initial investigations reportedly show that two anesthetists in the teams of doctors, nurses and technicians that performed the surgery on the two patients were not on the hospitals staff list. Their names are Pham Thi Huong and Bui Thi Kim Oanh.

We do not know much more about what happened and it is too early to say if it was the inclusion of these two anesthetists that was instrumental in the patients death.

We do know, however, that this is not the first time that the citys healthcare sector has been criticised over the qualifications and ethical standards of medical staff.

In July, a patient had his wrong leg operated on at the Viet uc Hospital. It was found that the surgeon in charge was not an employee, but a lecturer from the Ha Noi Medical University sent as a tutor for students practicing at the hospital. The doctor was not qualified to take part in such an operation.

In this instance, it was not just inefficiency, but an ethical breach that had occurred.

The day after the sudden deaths of the two patients, Health Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien told the press that despite efforts to innovate and improve the attitude of medical staff, a number of health facilities had not fulfilled their responsibilities and allowed medical errors to occur, affecting the reputation of the whole sector.

Tien also pledged strict punishment under the law for those found responsible.

Whatever the final findings are, it is clear that Tri uc Hospital put its patients lives at risk with poor policies, not just in personnel hiring, also in terms of taking the utmost care in providing treatment.

Tragically, two patients paid for the hospitals mistakes with their lives.

However, the issue goes beyond one hospitals carelessness or the incompetence of a few medical staff.

One important lesson that needs to be taken away from this episode is that private clinics are not panacea for all healthcare ills in Viet Nam, although the rhetoric may indicate otherwise.

We have been hearing a lot about how the private sector will help reduce overloading at federal hospitals, bring in advanced technology and lift the standard of healthcare in the country.

It is foolish to assume that commercialisation and market-oriented reforms will improve things every time.

We have to imagine what will happen when doctors and nurses and other medical staff start focusing on maximising their earnings, and healthcare is treated as a business with the main focus on maximising profits.

In fact, we do not have to imagine this. We can look around and see what is happening here and in other countries.

In that Mecca of all things market, the United States, things are pretty bad in terms of healthcare access, while they are amasing in poor Cuba.

For now, city police have sealed the operating room at the Tri uc Hospital, and the cases are still under investigation.

Sadly, nothing can save the lives of the two patients. But to save other lives, to provide decent healthcare as a human right to all citizens, we cannot let the invisible hand of the market guide or decide things.

We have to take the fate of our nations healthcare system into our hands. -- VNS
Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has urged higher resolve and more drastic actions to better prevent and fight corruption, wastefulness and negative phenomena.  VNA/VNS Photo VNA/VNS Photo Tri Dung

HA NOI  Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has urged higher resolve and more drastic actions to better prevent and fight corruption, wastefulness and negative phenomena.

He made the request at the 11th session of the Central Steering Committee on Anti-Corruption in Ha Noi yesterday.

While recognising the committees efforts, the Party chief, who is also head of the steering committee, pointed out that many shortcomings remain, particularly the slow pace of the investigation, prosecution and trial of some serious corruption cases and the small amount of assets recovered from corruption cases. State agencies failed to uncover corruption within their apparatus, and most of those cases were brought to light by the media or the public.

The Party General Secretary emphasised that while the central government has taken strong actions against corruption, local governments have not enough.

He asked the committee to put more serious or delayed corruption cases under its supervision and pay more heed to the fields of natural resources, environment, taxation, customs, and the private and foreign invested sectors.

It must take measures to prevent corruption suspects from escaping and step up inspection and examination of the responsibility of the heads of agencies when corruption occurs.

It is also necessary to increase information dissemination on activities fighting corruption and the implementation of the Politburos Directive 05 on studying and following Ho Chi Minhs ideology, morality and lifestyle, and the resolution of the 12th Party Central Committees fourth session on Party reinforcement, he added.

Reviewing the committees performance in 2016, participants at the meeting said the investigation, prosecution and trying of serious corruption cases have been improved substantially.

Many big corruption cases have been handled strictly and on schedule such as the cases involving Pham Cong Danh, ex-Chairman of the Vietnam Construction Bank, and Ha Van Tham, ex-Chairman of the Oceanbank Boards of Directors.

Among the cases monitored by the committee, eight cases with 121 defendants have been brought to the first-instance court while six other cases with 55 defendants have been brought to the court of appeal in 2016.

The examination, supervision and auditing activities serving the fight against corruption have also been intensified, participants said.

Through inspections, the steering committee has put forwards 11 groups of recommendations on changes in the leadership of Party and Party committees at all levels of anti-corruption work, personnel work, anti-corruption institutions, and State management in the tax and customs sectors.

As of present, all 63 Party committees of centrally-governed cities and provinces have issued their plan of actions to implement the Politburos Directive 50 on strengthening the Partys leadership of anti-corruption work. They also took up supervision of the investigation and handling of 436 corruption-related cases and crimes.  VNS
TRA VINH  The Tra Vinh Province Peoples Committee has approved a plan to develop 20,000ha of specialty fruits from now through 2020.

The plan, to be implemented by the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, targets 70 per cent of the 20,000ha being farmed using good agriculture practices for exports.

Each hectare will yield an annual income of VN170 million (US$7,700).

The lands for the specialty fruits, mostly orange, mango, grapefruit and banana, will be zoned in Cau Ke, Cang Long, Chau Thanh, and Tieu Can districts.

In Cau Ke, situated on the Hau River and with fertile soil and freshwater all year round, about 4,000ha of specialty fruits will be developed and also be used for tourism services.

Tran Trung Hien, director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the province would raise around VN620 billion ($28 million), including from private investors, to carry out the plan.

The money would be used to build infrastructure and technical facilities for fruit production and sales, he said.

The province would also offer incentives for investing in production of high-quality fruit seedlings as well as purchasing, processing and exporting fruits, he said.

The Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta province of Tra Vinh has around 6,800ha of orchards, including 1,150ha under mango, 1,830ha under king orange, 880ha under grapefruit, 1,650ha under longan and 1,630ha under banana, according to the department.

Most fruit orchards in the province are planted by individual farmers.

But there is little investment in infrastructure and application of advanced farming techniques while production linkages are insufficient.

Therefore, output and quality have not been steady, especially amid climate change, high tides and salinity intrusion, which have all affected fruit trees.

Drought and salinity at the end of last year and in the early part of this year reduced yields by 10-30 per cent on 3,700ha of fruits, according to the department.

In the last five years fruit orchards have yielded an average income of VN100-120 million ($4,500  5,400) per hectare a year.

The provincial fruit growers association has helped farmers renovate nearly 3,900ha of low-yielding orchards and convert 1,000ha of poor rice fields into fruit orchards in recent years.

In Cau Ke District, for instance, many farmers have turned their low-yielding rice fields into king orange orchards.

The district now has more than 1,900ha under king orange, including 945ha in Tam Ngai Commune.

Phan Van Biet, who has 1,000 king orange trees in a 5,000sq.m orchard in Tam Ngai, said they have yielded fruits for the last three years.

Earlier he had grown rice, but with the land being situated at an elevation, it was not suitable for growing rice.

After attending a training course run by commune agriculture officials Biet turned his rice field into the orange orchard.

It takes a grafted king orange seedling around two years to mature and bear fruit.

Cau Ke farmers said they have an income of more than VN100 million ($4,500) per hectare per year from king oranges.

On the other hand rice farmers earn VN39 million ($1,700) from three rice crops a year, according to the Cau Ke District Agriculture and Rural Development Bureau.  VNS
Authorities seize fake goods in HCM City. This year market management teams have uncovered nearly 5,400 cases of trading and possession of banned, smuggled and fake goods.  Photo vietq.vn

HCM CITY HCM Citys market management authorities should closely monitor the production and trading of goods for Tet (Lunar New Year) to keep out contraband and fakes, Le Van Khoa, deputy chairman of the city Peoples Committee, said.

Speaking at a seminar on Tuesday, he said they should also urge businesspeople to choose quality goods to sell.

The New Year falls on January 28.

This year market management teams have uncovered nearly 5,400 cases of trading and possession of banned, smuggled and fake goods, according to the Market Management Division.

They seized more than 39,000 bottles of imported alcoholic drinks and energy drinks and 6,656 bottles of expired juices and green tea.

They also found nearly 50 tonnes of Aone monosodium glutamate made in China and Thailand but labelled as made in Viet Nam.

They fined the offenders around VN134 billion (US$6 million), more than 40 per cent up from last year.

Cigarette smuggling from neighbouring provinces is rife and done Binh Chanh District which borders Long An Province and Cu Chi District which borders Tay Ninh. The contraband is sold in Hoc Lac Market in District 5.

Authorities from various city agencies have strengthened co-operation to eradicate smuggling hotspots.

Nguyen Thanh Binh, deputy director of the Market Management Division, said the division should be extremely vigilant in its fight against smuggling and commercial fraud by focusing on goods that are in high demand during Tet, including candy, soft drinks, beer and liquor, he said.

Next year the division would try to anticipate market trends and become more professional in monitoring airports, roads, trains, waterway traffic and markets, he said.

It would seek to improve its efficiency in preventing smuggling and other unauthorised transport of goods into the city, he said.  VNS
A NANG  The central city of a Nang will commence construction on a tunnel under the Han River  the first of its kind in the city and the central region  in 2018 following a final decision taken at the citys peoples council meeting on Tuesday night.

Director of the citys transport department, Le Van Trung told the Viet Nam News that the tunnel will be built with investment of VN4.7 trillion (US$208 million) from the State Budget and the citys Property Development Fund.

Trung said the project, which was proposed with initial funds of VN4.1 trillion (US$181 million) during a meeting last week, will cover the cost of resettlement for 210 households living on both sides of the Han River.

He said the citys Peoples Council eventually decided a plan of a straight axis tunnel rather than a Z shape design, connecting ong a street in Hai Chau District and Van on Street in Son Tra Peninsula.

The 1.3km tunnel project  of which 900m will go under the Han River, will help connect with the citys future Metro, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), monorail or mass public transport routes.

It will be the first traffic route under the river and a landmark tourism hub in central Viet Nam.

Last year, Bridge&Tunnel Consultants (BRITEC), who was assigned to develop some key tunnels in Viet Nam by the transport ministry, proposed the 6-lane tunnel.

Despite many concerns raised by experts and managers, the city has persisted with the millenary landmark.

Also at the meeting, the last in 2016, the citys Peoples Council decided to reserve the old administrative building in Bach ang street as a new location for the citys museum.

The city said the current a Nang Museum, which was built on the location of ien Hai Citadel (the National Historical monument), will be removed in order for the old citadel to be restored.

The city also said the citadel was first constructed as a military outpost in the 12th year of King Gia Longs reign (1813), near the mouth of the Han River.

The decision to preserve the 100-year-old building on the Han River bank also dismissed the rumour that the city would reserve the building for Chinese Consulate in a Nang.

a Nang has invested a great amount in urban development in order to make it the largest city in the central region  and with the aim of making it a green city by 2025  with funds from the World Bank.

The city, with a population of 1 million, is forecast to develop an urban area for a population of 2.5 million by 2030.  VNS
HA NOI  The Old Quarter of the capital city of Ha Noi is a built-up area featuring a labyrinth of narrow alleys that put it at heightened risk of fire.

Just on Tuesday, in the city, two fires occurred, one at the Institute of Energys apartment blocks in alley No 43, Chua Boc Street, ong a District, and the other on Phung Hung Street, Hoan Kiem District.

The two incidents fortunately did not result in any casualty; however, they could be considered a wake-up call, bringing, once again, the risk of fire in these crowded areas into sharp focus.

Currently, many streets in the Old Quarter or in its vicinity, such as Hang Ma St, inh Le St and ao Duy Tu St, boast several deep alleys with width of 2-4m. In addition, the area is densely packed with buildings that are utilised by their residents as business and trade venues.

The pavements of Hang Vai St or Lo Su St are taken up by local people as an extension of their clothing and footwear shops  very flammable materials. The houses are mostly dilapidated and outfitted with equally rickety extensions.

The combination of these conditions make it difficult to put out fires, Ha Noi municipal Fire Department told Nguoi Lao ong newspaper (The Labour).

When fires broke out, the firefighters are forced to employ "manual" methods, i.e. getting too close to the incident site and using fire extinguishers or pulling water pipes to douse the fire directly. Not only do these methods prove to be ineffective in case of raging fires, but the lives of the firefighters are also endangered.

The department said it can only hope to raise public awareness to minimise the risk of fire in the first place.

The department has recommended that all shops and stores in the city must carefully observe fire safety guidelines.

Besides this, the electrical system must be placed under comprehensive review and assessment, especially with stores and shops trading in easily flammable materials.

According to Fire Protection Police Unit 1 of Hoan Kiem District, district-wide, there are 1,700 alleys and 30 streets inaccessible by fire trucks.

Pham Tuan Long, deputy chairman of Hoan Kiem Districts Peoples Committee, said the district planned to suspend activities of all stores, restaurants, karaoke bars and other venues which failed to implement fire protection measures, until these regulations were fully met.  VNS
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan signed a decree on holding the regular election of the Parliament on April 2, 2017, press service of the Presidential administration told Armenpress.

The decree enters into force on the day following its official publication.
The year 2016 has seen many religious events held across the country, attracting large numbers of followers and visitors, and religious organisations have actively joined in charity and humanitarian work to help natural disaster victims.  Photo btgcp.gov.vn

HA NOI  The year 2016 has seen many religious events held across the country, attracting large numbers of followers and visitors, and religious organisations have actively joined in charity and humanitarian work to help natural disaster victims, it was reported at a conference on State management of religious affairs in Ha Noi yesterday.

Vice Chairman of the Government Committee for Religious Affairs Bui Thanh Ha said authorities at all levels took care to attend and convey congratulations to all major religious conferences and ceremonies, which reflected the consistent policy of the Party and State on respecting and ensuring the right to freedom of religion and belief.

The State has facilitated the construction, repair and upgrade of religious training and worship establishments.

Ha emphasised that the majority of religious dignitaries and followers back the Party and States internal and external affairs, and religious followers actively join patriotic emulation movements, contributing to socio-political stability and economic growth, while the relationship between the State, all-level authorities and religious organisations has grown closer.

The Government Committee for Religious Affairs has maintained ties with counterpart agencies in Southeast Asia, the US and several western countries, as well as boosted ties with the Vatican during the year.

Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Nguyen Trong Thua, however, admitted that collaboration among sectors in the settlement of complex religious issues remains loose.

He asked the committee to play an active role in the process of drafting two governmental decrees guiding the enforcement of the Law on Belief and Religion, which is slated to take effect on January 1, 2018.

Deputy Minister of Public Security Pham Dung, for his part, suggested the Government Committee for Religious Affairs put forward short, mid and long-term policies on State management in religious affairs as well as advise the Party and State on the field.  VNS
HA NOI  The police force has stamped out more than 1,000 criminal rings that operated under the cover of businesses in 2016.

Colonel General To Lam, Minister of Public Security, announced the data at an online meeting between the Government and 63 provinces and cities held this morning, the Voice of Viet Nams online newspaper has reported.

The rings were hired for varied activities such as to collect debts, foreclose, for mining minerals, intervening in bidding activities among businesses and in the transport service business, Lam said, adding that the rings had affected the healthy competitive environment among businesses.

The police have also dealt with around 16,800 violations related to economic management, 224 corruption cases and 17,000 environmental violations this year.

The ministry has removed 25 administrative procedures and simplified 193 others to create favourable conditions for both people and businesses to follow government policy, he said. For instance, the time taken to grant a passport was reduced from 15 days to eight, and the visa duration for a foreign investor in Viet Nam has been increased from one year to five years, he said.

At the meeting, Lam proposed that the government tighten the management of migrants, especially in industrial zones and big cities, to ensure that development and stability go hand in hand.  VNS
HA NOI  The Ministry of Healths Medical Examination and Treatment Department will verify a mans complaint in which he alleges doctors at a hospital left a 15-cm scissor in his abdomen.

He claims the scissors were left inside following a surgery in 1998 at the Bac Kan General Hospital.

On December 25, Ma Van Nhat, 54, went to the Thai Nguyen Iron and Steel Hospital for an ultrasound scan following a traffic accident. The scans result showed there was a scissor-shaped object inside his abdomen.

Two days later, he took another ultrasound scan at the Bac Kan General Hospital and got the same result.

Nhat said in June 1998, he suffered injuries to his right rib due to a traffic accident. He was taken to the Bac Kan General Hospital where doctors performed surgery on him.

Nhat said he did not remember the medical crew who performed the surgery.

He said he continued with his daily life following the operation and never felt any pain.

Nhat has sent his complaint to the hospitals director board, which said the complaint is under consideration.

Luong Ngoc Khue, head of the Medical Examination and Treatment Department, last night told the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper It is unusual for a person to remain healthy after a scissor-shaped subject is left inside his abdomen.

However, the department will clarify the case soon, he said.  VNS
Woman who freed minks pleads guilty

SAN DIEGO (AP)  An animal rights activist who vandalized a fur store and journeyed around the country freeing thousands of minks from farms has pleaded guilty to a federal charge in San Diego.

Nicole Kissane pleaded Tuesday to a charge of conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Prosecutors are expected to recommend an 18-month sentence.

Shes agreed to pay more than $420,000 in restitution.

Man forced to eat

cat litter, killed

The Washington Post  The brutal and bloody final moments of Delvin Mendoza-Chaparros life were right there on Snapchat, visible to any of his friends  and ultimately to police.

One man forced him to the floor and made him eat cat litter, according to a criminal complaint. Another man urinated on him.

A Snapchat video shows him lying on the floor, barely conscious, the complaint says.

Devin Katzfey, 20, Branden Katzfey, 19 and Sarah Zakzesky, 20, are all charged with murder, according to prosecutors. They are still being held in Milwaukee County Jail. It was unclear whether they had hired lawyers.

9-year-old shot in drive-by shooting

SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  A 9-year-old Utah boy was hospitalized Wednesday evening after he was shot in the head in a drive-by shooting, police said.

Unified Police Detective Ken Hansen said police the boy was shot Wednesday afternoon while sitting with several other children in the backseat of a car in suburban Salt Lake City.

Hansen said the car was parked in front of a house in Kearns where the boy or family members lived, not far from an intersection. Someone in a black BMW sedan on a cross street fired at least one shot as the car passed. The bullet went through the SUVs windshield, hitting the 9-year-old in the head. Hansen said at least two men were in the BMW.

Police believe the shooting may be gang-related and someone else was the target. Hansen did not have further details, including whether the target was someone related to the boy.

2 killed in military

helicopter crash

LA PORTE, Texas (AP)  Texas Army National Guard officials say two crew members aboard an Apache helicopter on a routine training mission have died when their aircraft crashed in Galveston Bay just off the shoreline about 25 miles southeast of Houston.

Chief Warrant Officer 5 Glen Webb says names of the victims are being withheld until their relatives are notified.

The helicopter was based at nearby Ellington Field.

Witnesses said the aircraft broke apart in the air late Wednesday afternoon.

Charges dropped in Missouri homicide

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP)  Prosecutors have dismissed four first-degree murder charges against a Missouri man less than two weeks before his trial had been scheduled to begin.

Prosecutors anticipate refiling charges against 49-year-old Scott Goodwin-Bey of Springfield after additional testing is complete, according to the Springfield News-Leader.

The killings happened in November 2014 at an Economy Inn in Springfield. Court documents filed earlier allege Goodwin-Bey believed the victims had told police about his drug use. Three victims died at the scene and the fourth died several days later.

Goodwin-Bey was convicted of a federal gun charge in October and will remain in custody.
CEDAR FALLS  The Cedar Falls Police Department now has a body camera for every one of its officers, thanks to a community fundraising effort.

The city recently took delivery on 42 body cameras, in addition to 15 previously on hand, said Public Safety Director Jeff Olson.

The additional cameras cost $68,000, including an $18,000 warranty to ensure repair or replacement of damaged cameras. The department raised $34,000 from the general public for the project. Olson said he will find savings to come up with $16,000 this year and pay the $18,000 warranty to cover replacement costs after July 1.

The cameras allow an officers body camera to be coordinated with a squad car dash camera video and allow for easy and timely downloading, Olson said. Cameras also will start recording as soon as officers turn on light bars on top of squad cars. The cameras also will pick up audio and serve as officers body microphone.

Theyre pretty pricey, but, boy, do they have the abilities, Olson said. The officers are pretty excited about these. Theyre really a high-quality camera, and the officers sure rely upon them for two reasons: Great evidence and their own safety, including protection from false accusations.

Initially the city had purchased enough cameras for one shift, waiting for improvements in technology to buy more. However, that caused complications with officers on multiple shifts sharing cameras. They might not be fully charged between shifts, for example, and malfunctions were not readily detected, having been dismissed as a camera being insufficiently charged.

Off-duty officers summoned to crime scenes in emergencies also were without body cameras. Police also noted more cameras were needed for special events where extra staffing is required, such as the annual Sturgis Falls and University of Northern Iowa Homecoming celebrations.

Because of all those factors, officers requested each one of them have a camera. Meanwhile, the technology improved with the new cameras.

As soon as theyre operational everyone will have their own camera, Olson said.

Officers will be equipped with the new cameras in January. After they have been in use a week or two, Olson said, police plan a thank-you reception with donors and the general public where the cameras will be demonstrated.

Ill tell you what: We certainly appreciate everything the public has done for us, Olson said. We had more than 100 individual donors.

Waterloo police and Black Hawk County deputies have body cameras for every officer.
IOWA CITY (AP)  A sheriff says the death of an inmate from Iowa in a Wisconsin prison cell appears to have been self-inflicted.

Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt said Thursday his office is investigating the death of 26-year-old Justin Kestner at the Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin.

But he says "there's no foul play involved" by any other inmates and the death "seems that it was self-inflicted."

Authorities announced last week that Kestner was found unresponsive in his cell on Dec. 21, and was soon pronounced dead. His family said in an obituary that the northwest Iowa native died "unexpectedly."

Kestner had been transferred to Wisconsin in November after causing major problems for Iowa prison officials, including a July 2015 escape from the maximum-security prison in Fort Madison.

EARLIER STORY

Iowa inmate found dead in Wisconsin prison

IOWA CITY (AP)  An inmate from Iowa with a history of violence toward guards and one notorious escape has died in a Wisconsin prison one month after he was transferred there, authorities said Thursday.

Justin Kestner, 26, was found unresponsive Dec. 21 in his assigned cell at the Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wis., the Iowa Department of Corrections said in a statement. Prison staff responded and initiated lifesaving measures that were unsuccessful.

Prison officials and the Dodge County sheriff said Thursday that they are investigating the death, and that no additional information on the suspected cause or manner was available. A medical examiner said autopsy results haven't been completed.

Kestner made headlines on July 4, 2015, when he became the first inmate in a decade to escape from Iowa's historic maximum-security prison in Fort Madison. An investigation found that he removed screws from the shower to gain access to a narrow pipe chase  an enclosed space that houses the prison's pipes. He was able to climb up until he reached the attic, then crawled through a vent to reach the roof.

He descended by climbing down the building's downspout and landing outside a prison fence. He timed his escape to coincide with holiday fireworks in the hopes that guards would be distracted, and left in his bed a dummy made up of milk cartons and insulation to try to fool them into thinking he was sleeping. Kestner stole a car after his escape but was captured within hours near Geneseo, Ill.

Kestner was serving time for robbing gas stations in Sioux City in 2009. A judge in February extended his original 20-year sentence by 15 years after Kestner pleaded guilty to the escape and vehicle theft.

Sometime after the escape, Kestner was transferred to the penitentiary in Anamosa. In October, authorities said that Kestner managed to get out of a health services room before he assaulted a correctional officer with a crude piece of metal. The officer suffered multiple contusions to the face that required medical treatment.

Kestner, who had previously attacked guards in Fort Madison, was placed in segregation after that incident. On Nov. 21, he was transferred to Wisconsin through the Interstate Commission for Adult Offender Supervision, which governs the movement of offenders from state to state.

Dodge Correctional is Wisconsin's intake facility for all new inmates, who are later assigned to specific prisons. Wisconsin Department of Corrections spokesman Tristan Cook said the agency is conducting an internal investigation into the death.

Iowa prisons spokesman Fred Scaletta said it took several days to announce the death because authorities in Iowa and Wisconsin needed to work together to notify Kestner's family and victims.

Funeral services were held Tuesday for Kestner in his hometown of Rembrandt, Iowa, a small town near Sioux City.

Kestner, who graduated from Midland Park High School in 2007, was "a very passionate young man and his special interests include his love for others, drawing, being outdoors and animals," according to an obituary published in the Storm Lake Times newspaper. The obituary said he died unexpectedly and will be buried at a later date.
SUMNER -- A Sumner man was arrested for sexual abuse of two young children after an 18-month investigation by police.

Phillip Matthew Hamby, 31, of Sumner, was arrested Dec. 16 and charged with two counts of second-degree sexual abuse of two minor girls, according to the Sumner Police Department.

Hamby is currently being held on a $50,000 bond in the Bremer County Jail.

According to officials, Hamby is accused of inappropriately touching two girls beginning in 2013 and 2014 and continuing through July 7, 2015.

The girls were ages 4 and 6 when the abuse began, according to reports. Hamby is accused of inappropriately abusing them while others in the home were asleep.

The girls reported the abuse in July of 2015 to the Iowa Department of Human Services, who forwarded the information on to the Sumner Police Department.

Second-degree sexual abuse carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison per count.
The U.S.-Israel friendship has been tested mightily over the past 68 years yet remains solid. When other nations were walking away, Israelis knew this nations readiness to defend them politically as well as militarily was always without question. This remains the case, despite the U.S. failure to veto a controversial Security Council resolution last week. The resolution called Israels West Bank settlements a flagrant violation under international law.

Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, stated in her remarks Dec. 23 that successive U.S. administrations going all the way back to Ronald Reagan have criticized the establishment of Jewish settlements beyond Israels pre-1967 borders. Successive Republican and Democratic administrations have consistently pressed all sides to the Arab- Israeli conflict to settle their differences peacefully while insisting that the acquisition of territory by force is unacceptable under international law.

The entire world order depends on adherence to this principle, which applied to Russias unlawful occupation and annexation of Ukraines Crimean peninsula in 2014 as well as Iraqs invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Israel acceded to this principle when it embraced Security Council Resolution 242 following the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel took military control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The 1978 Camp David accords led to Israels withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel seized from Egypt during the 1967 war. Israel also unilaterally evacuated 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza in 2005 and ceded full control to the Palestinians.

Theres solid legal and ethical logic underlying those precedents. The logic only breaks down when it is applied to some actors but not to others. Arab states have gambled and lost in their repeated wars to destroy Israel. Palestinians have failed to respect Israels sovereignty while insisting that Israel acknowledge theirs.

A lack of recognized borders further muddles the question of whos right. West Bank settlement expansion is proceeding apace, largely because no one can claim territorial sovereignty there.

Palestinians hope eventually to have their own state in the West Bank and Gaza, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he supports that goal. The big question is how viable a Palestinian state would be if Jewish settlements keep eating away at the available territory.

The icy personal relationship between President Barack Obama and Netanyahu no doubt influenced last weeks U.S. decision not to veto the resolution but label it as counterproductive. Obama also appears to be thumbing his nose at Donald Trumps incoming administration, which appears to favor easing restraints on new settlement activity.

Its heartbreaking and frustrating to see diplomacy taking a back seat to grudge-settling. Netanyahu was correct when he responded last week that friends dont take friends to the Security Council. Friends do, however, organize interventions when its time to steer loved ones away from a reckless course.
Grout singers

DON HANSEN

WATERLOO  One cant win them all, or so they say. I attend a military veterans meeting most Wednesdays at the Grout Museum. There can be as many as 10 attending. I like old popular songs, even those that go back to the early 1900s. Many of my songs were found on the Lawrence Welk show. (We have a granddaughter who asks: You watch that show?)

Anyway, I think I can carry a good tune and that I can harmonize quite well. Have always wanted to sing and have collected titles of about 1,200 popular songs of which I can at least hum 97 percent. I showed the list to 10 vets a couple of weeks ago and  no response whatever! The idea was to form a quartet, trio, duo or someone who could a sing a solo. I even concocted a title for a group, The Grout Grinch Group! Warning! I cannot read a note of music!

Pack your ego

CHRIS SIMENSON

DUNKERTON  This past week, President Obama had another mic drop moment. He had his ambassador to the U.N. abstain on a resolution condemning settlements in the West Bank, thus allowing the measure to pass.

A final in your face to Benjamin Netanyahu with whom he has had a contemptuous relationship. Israel, a bastion of democracy in a sea of lunacy, sits precariously on the edge of annihilation. A land of laws and sanity adjacent a region where political moderation and compromise results in assassination. This president needs to talk to Holocaust survivors, some of whom fled the horrors of Europe to make a home in Israel and proclaimed never again.

They survived attacks in `48, `56, `67, and `73. They kept their cool when Saddam Hussein attempted to derail the fragile U.S. coalition to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait by launching missiles indiscriminately toward their civilian population. The presidents actions, including the disastrous Iran Nuclear Treaty, have made the region more dangerous and pushed Israels doomsday clock closer to midnight.

Israel will never let that happen and will take whatever measures necessary to ensure their survival. That is the real world Mr. President. Pack your ego and leave, please.

Never in Iowa

DAVE GIBSON

CEDAR FALLS  Mohenjo Daro was a city on the Indus River that reached its height 2,500 years ago in what is now Pakistan. It was built of fine and elaborate brickworks, including a 39- by 23-foot watertight great bath. It had advanced sewer systems that included flush toilets. Other cities in the valley were built of bricks, all of a uniform size.

Evidence suggests Mohenjo Daro was flooded repeatedly. It has been posited that trees were cut down to fire the brick kilns, and rain water ran off the deforested ground, flooding the river.

After one bad flood, they said it couldnt happen again. The city was built higher with more bricks and more trees were cut to fire the kilns. Rain water ran off faster and the floods continued. Whole and partial bricks were used as fill to build higher. Flooding continued in the vicious cycle.

But that is ancient history. Something like that could never happen in Iowa.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. The defense ministry of Armenia finds Azerbaijani reports on Armenian reconnaissance actions to be ridiculous, the ministry told ARMENPRESS.

The ministry issued a statement, saying: After its provocation this morning, the Azerbaijani side delivered an announcement after hours of silence, where it tries to put the responsibility on the Armenian side, with an absurd style typical to it. Once again we are announcing that the Armenian Armed Forces possess irrefutable evidence on the Azerbaijani attacks.

The defense ministry officially announced that the Azerbaijani side suffered losses during the provocation. Armenian servicemen were killed in their service location. On this background, the Azerbaijani allegations on an Armenian reconnaissance unit and the missing Azerbaijani soldier become ridiculous.

The defense ministry of Armenia reiterates its stance regarding the necessity of introducing international investigative mechanisms, with the purpose of preventing such provocations and ensuring the supervision of strict compliance of internationally assumed obligations of the ceasefire.
Governor: Kentucky on course for record budget surplus again
By The Associated Press Dec. 28, 2016 | 09:32 PM | BEVERLY HILLS, CA

Debbie Reynolds has died after being rushed to the hospital Wednesday, her son told The Associated Press. She was 84.

Reynolds lost her daughter, Carrie Fisher, on Tuesday. Fisher died at a Los Angeles hospital days after suffering a heart attack on a plane last week. She was 60.

"She's now with Carrie and we're all heartbroken," Reynolds' son, Todd Fisher, said from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where his mother was taken by ambulance earlier Wednesday.

He said the stress of his sister's death "was too much" for Reynolds. Earlier in the day, TMZ and the Los Angeles Times said she suffered a medical emergency.

"She said, 'I want to be with Carrie,'" her son said. "And then she was gone."



TMZ said Wednesday morning Reynolds was at Fisher's home in Beverly Hills planning her daughter's funeral and may have suffered a stroke. The outlet reported Reynolds had been distraught since Fisher's health declined last Friday.

The Los Angeles Times also reported Reynolds was rushed to the hospital, adding that she complained of breathing problems.
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By The Associated Press

Dec. 28, 2016 | WASHINGTON, D.C.

By The Associated Press Dec. 28, 2016 | 04:08 PM | WASHINGTON, D.C.

Secretary of State John Kerry is blasting Israel for expanding its settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.



In a farewell speech at the State Department, Kerry accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of dragging Israel away from democracy. He warned that Israel's continued construction of settlements is undermining hopes for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.



Kerry defended the U.S. decision last week to allow the U.N. Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal, while rejecting the notion that America has abandoned Israel. He said the United States "did not draft or originate" the UN resolution condemning the settlements, "nor did we put it forward" in the UN.



Kerry also outlined a series of principles he said could form the basis of a future peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, with the likely participation of the United States.
Courtesy Deborah Randall(WASHINGTON)  The man accused of killing a Washington, D.C., yoga teacher told police that she was suicidal and killed herself, according to new documents filed in the case.

Adrian Duane Johnson was arraigned in D.C. Superior Court Wednesday afternoon. He is accused of killing Tricia McCauley, 46, who was reported missing over the Christmas holiday. McCauley was found strangled in her car early Tuesday morning.

Johnson, who was charged with first-degree murder, appeared at his arraignment in gray sweatpants and pink slippers. Johnson's defense said the government was rushing to judgment and requested a preliminary hearing and speedy trial. A judge ruled that Johnson be held until his next court appearance, citing a "probable case of murder." Johnson will next appear in court on Jan. 13. He did not enter a plea.

At one point during the arraignment when Johnson's attorney requested that his client be released pending his next court appearance, a man shouted from the back of the room: "What? He's an animal. He stole my friend from me." The man was escorted out by security.

Police said McCauley had texted friends at 4:30 p.m. on Christmas Day that she was on her way to their holiday party. But she never arrived.

According to police, Johnson said that he met McCauley on or around Christmas Day and she offered him a ride. Johnson said that she offered to have sex with him, and that they had sex on a curb but he couldn't remember exactly where, according to charging documents. He told police that McCauley then became emotional and fatally hung herself while he was standing outside of the car, documents said. He then told police that he drove her car around D.C., used her credit card and picked up a prostitute, but also thought that McCauley was sleeping and might wake up, documents said. The prosecution did not respond to those allegations in court.

At 2:40 p.m. on Monday, a D.C. police officer reported seeing a car matching McCauley's in northeast D.C. being driven by a man. Hours later, police got a call from a tipster saying they had spotted McCauley's 2013 Toyota Scion iQ; police found the car parked in front of a CVS. Johnson was found inside the store and handcuffed, the documents said.

While Johnson repeatedly asked for a lawyer, he also told police he had sex with the owner of the car, according to documents. Johnson told police "that after he and the woman had sex, she was suicidal and hung herself in the car." Later the defendant spontaneously asked, "If someone is suicidal and gives you all their stuff is that illegal?" according to charging documents.

Johnson was asked if he knew where McCauley was, and he replied "she is in there," nodding toward the car, according to documents. Police found the car key in his pocket, and inside the car they found McCauley "under the rear folded back area of the vehicle on the vehicle's rear floor board wedged between the rear and the front seat." There were several items on top concealing her, the documents said.

The charging documents said that people associated with Johnson later arrived on scene and yelled at him, to which he responded, "she killed herself."

The medical examiner found blunt force trauma to McCauley's back, ligature marking on her neck and what appeared to be evidence of a possible violent sexual assault. The cause of death was ruled as "ligature strangulation" and blunt force trauma.

McCauley, a yoga instructor and actress, was a stand-in on the 2006 Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan Tatum movie Step Up, according to People magazine.

Deborah Randall, McCauley's friend of nearly 25 years, told ABC News McCauley was "vibrant," "organized" and "always looking for the next challenge."

"It's hard not to be very angry. I was furious. Because it was so violent and unnecessary. And then it just keeps making me think of our conversations, about always looking for the positive," Randall said.

"She never held a grudge, she was never bitter toward anyone," she continued. "I just felt really torn because there's just a part of me that wants to rage. But I feel that would dishonor her so much. For me it was just about trying to stay in the light that she was constantly shining on all of us."

McCauley's friend Dean Hively told ABC News that "Tricia was a wonderful juggler of jobs and interests, teaching yoga, consulting as a nutritionist, making herbal remedies such as lip balm and lotions, and acting with the Washington Stage Guild."

She was an "avid biker" and a "very good friend," Hively added.

McCauley's brother told ABC Washington affiliate WJLA-TV she had prepared a dish for a friend's Christmas party but never arrived at the celebration. He said the dish was left on her kitchen counter.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. Armenias Ministry of Energy Infrastructures and Natural Resources presented 400-500 million USD investment projects package in the field of solar energy, reports Armenpress.

The Government approved the Investment program for construction of solar panels, which aims to attract investments aimed at constructing solar panels.

The Spanish Aries Engineering consulting company has already made and presented technical-economic explanations for the two of the selected sits for the construction of solar panels, and they are preparing for presenting explanations for four sites. The project aims at providing mechanisms for the state policy on solar energy development and its implementation, Minister Ashot Manukyan said, stating that the Ministry is planning to hold possible investors forum at the end of January during which the opportunities and possibilities of attracting investments will be discussed.

Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan attached importance to the project and said the reports of Ministries, agencies will be summarized starting since early January, as well as the actions for 2017 will be outlined.
UNITED KINGDOM  Every year, the sleepy little market town of Tenbury Wells, near the border of England and Wales in the county of Worcestershire, hosts an annual Mistletoe Festival. Mistletoe is an important product in this corner of England, due to its numerous apple orchards. Worcestershire and neighbouring Herefordshire mark the start of cider and perry country, which covers most of South West England).

As Suzanne Thomas of the Mistletoe Foundation states: Viscum album, the English mistletoe is such an amazing plant. It has a wonderful energy and to see it growing in the trees locally is just so lovely. I love autumn, when the leaves fall and the mistletoe is revealed again.

The festival is a remnant of the old holly and mistletoe markets, which took place for years at the local livestock market. However, that market was disbanded in 2004 and much of the mistletoe sold in UK was now imported. Not wanting to see their own local traditions die out completely, locals birthed the Mistletoe Festival.

The event is a celebration of the mistletoe plant  and of viscum album, the white berried plant, in particular. Viscum cruciatum, the red berried variety, is only found in Southern Europe.

The annual mistletoe festival begins with a blessing ritual hosted by local Druids, and also features plays, music, ceremonies, and parades. A crowning of the Mistletoe Queen provides the climax.

Thomas says, (The festival) honours the harvests of the Teme Valley [a colloquialism for the wider region around Tenbury Wells], the hops, the apples, and the mistletoe. When the mistletoe has been Awened and the beer and apple juice poured over it, the mistletoe (both male and female plants brought together) were given to the River Teme, to send the magic around the world.

The festival is hosted in the beginning of December to coincide with National Mistletoe Day, Dec. 1.

Mistletoe has a long and fascinating history in Europe. It was regarded as a sacred plant not only by Druids, but also by the ancient Greeks. The Druids had a special ceremony to gather the plant whereby the mistletoe would be harvested on the sixth night after the New Moon following the winter solstice. The mistletoe was then caught in a broad piece of cloth as it was regarded as sacrilege to let it fall to the ground.

Most people today are aware of its history as the Kissing Bough, under which people kiss during Midwinter or Yule celebrations. This tradition goes back beyond modern times to when mistletoe was regarded as a peace plant. The Anglo-Saxons, for instance, believed that mistletoe came from the Goddess Freya, and it was a popular custom to get married under the plant.

In addition, married couples experiencing difficulties were expected to kiss and make up beneath it. This tradition can be traced to the story of the Norse god Balder being slain by an arrow crafted from mistletoe. He was restored to life, but the care of the plant was given over to the goddess Freya, to show the plant was now a plant of peace.

The Kissing Bough also predates the Christmas tree in terms of popularity in the UK. The Christmas tree is a German import from Victorian times.Queen Victorias husband, Prince Albert, was German, and many of the UK traditions associated with this time of the year are actually German in origin. Prior to that time, a mistletoe garland decorated with apples, candles, and coloured paper was usually suspended from the centre of a room and was far more typical.

When Christianity came to the UK, the Church attempted to banish mistletoe by tarnishing its reputation as a healing plant and branding it sinister and pagan. However, the influence of the sacred plant proved to strong, as with many other popular pagan customs. Therefore, it ended up being co-opted into the newly established religious traditions. For example, York Minster cathedral in Northern England used to have a mistletoe ceremony in which criminals would be called to come and be pardoned under the mistletoe.

In recent years, mistletoe has also been used in various medical trials due to its health properties. Although it was a staple of the old apothecary, it is only in the past couple of decades that the plant has been scientifically investigated for its healing potential. In central Europe it already forms a significant part of cancer treatment and has been known to help fertility and cardiovascular issues.

On another note, the acknowledgement by the Tenbury Mistletoe Festival of the Druidic connection with the plant demonstrates the changing attitudes in Britain towards Druidry and Paganism. Being included in such an event is a real demonstration of how Paganism has been accepted as part and parcel of a multi-faith UK.

As Thomas says, When the Mistletoe Foundation held the ceremony it was a multi-faith thanksgiving ceremony, and the whole community was involved. It brings people together. Thats why its important.

When asked why mistletoe is important to Druids, and Thomas replied, Mistletoe is magic. It grows between the worlds, it has a male and female plant, thats the important bit that most people miss.

The male plant has the pollen, without it and without the fruit flies pollinating it in February/March, there would be no berries on the female plant, yet people cast aside the male, which is actually a very beautiful plant.

Mistletoe is often referred to as the Golden Bough, first coined by the Roman poet Virgil in the Aeneid. In the poem, Aeneas, the hero of the tale, uses mistletoe under the guidance of his mother Aphrodite to protect himself as he journeys to Hades. The Golden Bough becomes a gift of summer light for Persephone, queen of Hades. In fact, lines from the Aeneid which refer to mistletoe have been used as parts of the ritual at Tenbury.

Through this growing festival, a plant, which has long beend heralded as sacred, is now being given the modern recognition it deserves both in Tenbury and further afield.
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By John Stanton

And so it came to pass that on the 1st month of the 20th day in the year of our Lord 2017, Emperor Twitteritus Trumparonious, born in the 6th month of the year of our Lord 1946, improbably snatched the reins of the glorious American Empire from Queen Hilliarious Clintoniosis whom the empires military commanders, media propagandists, and many citizens hoped would rule over them. Queen Clintoniosis was guaranteed victory by all the most powerful soothsayers of the land and the court jesters of the day variously known as comedians and journalists.

So it is recorded.

The political philistines labeled Trumparonious a buffoon, sorely lacking the appropriate temperament and manners to govern the most powerful Empire the Solar System has ever seen. Trumparonious had emerged from the dingy swamps of New York Citys real estate underworld, conniving his way to fame and fortune. The Emperor fell hard too. His fame and fortune crumbled under him and he loathed having to meekly appeal, through his legal counselors, to the powerful money changers for credit.

But alas! The Emperor arose from the ashes, denounced his naysayers and joyfully entertained the Empires citizens through television shows making many millions aware of the Trumparonious brand prior to his divine run for the seat of the American Empire.

Master

Little known to Queen Clintoniosis was that the Emperor was a master of the communications medium in all its forms and had many millions of followers who eagerly flocked to him. Experts in the seats of power in Washington, DC, and New York City would come to decry these citizens as uncivilized and racist troglodytes who were best left to rot in West Virginia; Detroit and Flint, Michigan; and the baleful hinterlands of the Empire.

But, oh! Emperor Trumparonious came to the suffering in their hour of need and promised them rebirth and rejoicing if they would place their souls in his hands and elevate him to the throne. Those same souls had previously given themselves over to the Obamites, Busholites and to the Queens husband, Emperor Billious.

And look! How Queen Clintoniosis, proconsuls, the rich and legions of the Empire did underestimate the Emperor Trumparonious. He now rules the land and the world!

And it came to pass that once on the throne, all of the Emperors scurrilous enemies and vengeful experts came to kiss his feet and ring at his tower kingdom in New York City. See how they endear themselves to him now, to serve the one they mocked as a fool. Who, now, has the last word?

Look at his disciples! How pure they are! Disciples worth billions and millions and some of the finest former military commanders from the Empires legions now follow, work for him. Nay, the wealthiest should govern, should they not? Is this now not the world of Plato on whom the Emperor is the expert? And see how the Emperor is troubled by Platos 5 regimes. He seeks Oligarchy but knows that the benefits of Tyranny are many, particularly law and order.

Would not Crassus rise from his grave if he could and praise the Emperor? Would not Crassus tell Emperor Trumapronious to turn on the disillusioned precariat of the land and crush them as he did to Spartacus and his minions?

Beast 666

The facts are these: The Emperor was born in the 6th month of the year in the 6th year of the 1940s. When in oration he moves his forefinger to the thumb making a circle with the other three digits in a vertical position revealing the 3rd six completing the beastly number 666. Further the Emperor was born on the 14th day of the 6th month of 1946, a day marked by a total lunar eclipse.

No one in the Empire dared utter the words, The Emperor is the anti-Christ and his disciples the anti-Disciples. The foolhardy journalists who have questioned the Emperors beliefs and judgement have come to a bitter end or have vanished.

And woe unto those who say that Putinious of Russia contributed to the Emperors ascendancy! Look how the political philistines in the US Senate and House play their treacherous anti-Putinious game. A pox on their houses!

The Emperor is wise, indeed. Hundreds of gold plated statues of the Roman God Jupiter now dot city parks and community centers around the land. In 2017, Trumparonious decreed that Jupiter should be the state religion as it was through much of the Roman Empire. So it was written and so it was done.

But there were troubles and whispers of plots and conspiracies during the Emperors rule. Perpetual wars and class, economic, and cultural fragmentation weighed on the minds of the citizens. But know this! The Emperor Trumparonious is studious and knows well of Caesars end.

And it is said that someone with indestructible words caused the Emperor and his disciples to tremble in fear.

The one who said centuries ago, Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God, returned.

It is not known how the Emperor fared and history flowed on.

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer.

* * * * *

Hee Hee, I like it!

WtR
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. The reports by the Azerbaijani media spread on December 29 which say that as a result of the shelling launched by the Armenian armed forces at direction of Akna (Aghdam) one of houses of Ahmedaghal village of that region was burned, is nothing more than a simple propaganda trick to mislead their own and the international public, the NKR Defense Ministry told Armenpress.

The Ministry informs that despite the regular provocative actions launched by the Azerbaijani side in the frontline, the Defense Army forces yesterday and today as well didnt take countermeasures from any weapons.

The NKR armed forces adhere to the ceasefire regime and confidently conduct their military tasks. Currently the situation is calm in the frontline, the statement said.
Staying out of debt is easier said than done, I know. However, its something you can do, and its something you should be practicing everyday. As Christians, we are in this world, but we are
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. OSCE Minsk Group American Co-chair James Warlick extended condolences to the families of the Armenian soldiers killed on December 29 on Armenia-Azerbaijan border.

"We deeply regret the casualties which occurred along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and extend our sympathy to the families. These renewed clashes demonstrate the importance of working towards a negotiated settlement that can bring lasting peace to the region. As we have said before, there is no military solution to the conflict", Warlick told Armenpress.

Azerbaijani forces attempted a sabotage infiltration in the Armenian state border south-east of Chinari village, Tavush province in the morning of December 29.

The Armenian Armed Forces have neutralized the Azerbaijan attacks. Azerbaijani forces were pushed back, suffering losses and WIAs, including in the military positions.

Unfortunately, the Armenian side also suffered losses during the combat. During the battle for defending the Armenian state border, Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh M. Melikyan, Private Edgar G. Narayan and Private Erik G. Abovyan were killed.

The defense ministry of Armenia shares the grief of loss and extends condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers.

The defense ministry possesses irrefutable evidence and proof of the Azerbaijan violation in the Armenian state border. The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan is fully responsible for the instigation.
Dec 29, 2016 | By Julia

In stark contrast to the Westernized corporate culture so often seen in the additive manufacturing industry, Iranian-American artist Morehshin Allahyari creates 3D printed pieces of forgotten goddesses, or jinns, from Middle Eastern mythology. Striking statues and glimmering talismans illuminate the nooks and crannies of her solo exhibition at Brooklyn gallery TRANSFER, as part of an ongoing artist residency at the art-meets-tech organization Eyebeam.

"Huma and Talismans" by Morehshin Allahyari

Unlike iconized figures such as Athena and Isis, Allahyaris goddesses recall sinister, lesser-known deities of the Arabic cannon. Smiling maternal images are nowhere to be found in the exhibition She Who Sees the Unknown.

Im not interested in the motherly goddesses, explains Allahyari. Im only interested in the dark ones and the monstrous ones; and the cruelty of each of their powers that will take over something.

As an Iranian born artist who lives and works in the US, Allahyari is keenly aware of the power imbalances between men and women, and East and West. Her work speaks candidly to these dynamics, as well as the personal experiences of being an immigrant and a minority in todays culture.



Take the jinn Huma, for example: a three-headed demon who possesses humans and causes fevers. Huma is the first finished sculpture of Allahyaris exhibition, 3D printed in gleaming black resin, and poised atop a gallery pedestal surrounded by 3D printed talismans. Allahyari connects the deitys warming powers to global warming; the sculpture represents those excluded from Western-dominated debates around climate change. Behind Huma, a projection displays different parts of the sculpture, as Allahyari recounts her version of the dark goddesses powers. She restores myth and histories, the untold and the forgotten, the artists says. She is a monster, and should be.

Other jinns will continue to inform residency. Examples include the Moroccan deity Aisha Qandisha, who creates openness in men by cracking their bodies. Allahyari likens her rebirth to a stand against patriarchy, and the dominance of the white male in tech culture.

Allahyaris production methods are as much a part of her artistic sensibility as the subjects she portrays. For Allahyari, 3D printing is a feminist weapon which allows her to assert her own creative agency. Whereas numerous 3D printed works attempt to rescue cultural heritage, Allahyari notes that heritage is typically laced with neo-colonial ideals. She explains that the artefacts at stake are often exclusively Western. Middle Eastern artifacts that do receive attention in the 3D printing industry are usually reduced to simple reconstruction efforts, with little invested in their historical significance. Thus for Allahyari, crafting the 3D printed pieces in She Who Sees the Unknown represents a decolonizing act.

3D models of "Huma"

The exhibition also includes a reading room with feminist texts that inspired Allahyari. Image files of rare text illustrations are readily browsable as well, in an effort to make the Farsi and Arabic texts more accesible.

Allahyaris residency will eventually culminate in about a dozen 3D printed jinns and accompanying talismans. Next up, she plans to create an online archive devoted to dark female figures from the Middle East who are frequently neglected in history.

research figures from the Kitab al-Bulhan, or Book of Wonders

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Dec 29, 2016 | By Benedict

Alexey Yakovlev, head of the Institute of High Technologies at Tomsk Polytechnic University in Russia, has just given an update on the groundbreaking Tomsk-TPU-120, a fully 3D printed CubeSat that will be placed into orbit in 2017.

Back in April 2016, a group of scientists at Tomsk Polytechnic University had huge cause for celebration. The Tomsk-TPU-120, an incredible 3D printed micro-satellite developed by those scientists, had just arrived safely at the International Space Station, having been carried there aboard the Progress MS-02. In May, the 3D printed satellite sent test messages down to Tomsk Polytechnic to celebrate the universitys 120th anniversary. All was going to plan.

Half a year on, and the Siberian scientists behind the Tomsk-TPU-120 satellite are preparing for an even more exciting prospect: deploying the 3D printed CubeSat into orbit. According to the group, the satellite will be sent into the atmosphere during a spacewalk by Russian cosmonautshence the prominent handle on the devicesome time in July 2017. And if everything goes to plan, the Russian space experts may then create several more 3D printed satellites.

According to Alexey Yakovlev, head of the Tomsk Polytechnic University's Institute of High Technologies, the 3D printed satellite is something of a landmark for additive manufacturing, being the first example of a fully 3D printed satellite: The Tomsk-TPU-120 is the first such project in the world, in which the entire casing of a satellite is fully 3D printed using dynamic modeling, Yakovlev recently told Sputnik. The combination of these technologies can significantly reduce the development time and the number of full-scale tests, find new engineering solutions, and reduce the project's cost.

In addition to its cost-saving potential, additive manufacturing has also enabled the Tomsk scientists to eke out further advantages from the Tomsk-TPU-120. For one, the 3D printed materials have made the satellite lightweight, robust, and able to resist vibrations. And secondly, those material advantages have opened up practical opportunities for the satellite: Yakovled has revealed that the 3D printed CubeSat could yet become part of a huge group of similar satellites that could be used to monitor agriculture, forest fires, climate change, and natural resources. The current project is just the first stage of a long-term project to develop and create small, multi-purpose satellites, Yakovled said.

The 3D printed satellite is now almost ready for its July 2017 deployment, but getting to that stage has required a great deal of time and effort from the Siberian satellite expertsand from other helpful contributors too. After experiments with the satellite were conducted not only on board the ISS, but also on the ground, the Tomsk scientists were able to depend upon friendly collaborators from across the world to give updates on the satellites broadcasting status. Many radio amateurs from all across the world were able to catch a satellite signal on their radio stations, and posted videos of it on the Internet, Yakovled reported.

Although the Tomsk scientists are hopeful that their 3D printed satellite will prove advantageous for the entire scientific community, they have also recognized that the deployment of the 3D printed capsule will be a difficult and expensive task, one that will need to be preceded by repair or modernization of the outer surface of the ISS. After being put into orbit, however, the CubeSat will be in free flight for around six months, eventually entering dense layers of the atmosphere where it will be destroyed.

As July 2017 approaches, well be sure to keep a close eye on the progress of the Tomsk-TPU-120.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Dec 29, 2016 | By Benedict

Russian scientists are planning to install and operate a 3D bioprinter aboard the International Space Station, according to an official source. They believe that microgravity conditions could actually improve the bioprinting process.

Roscosmos could send a 3D bioprinter to the ISS

3D bioprinting and 3D printing in space. On paper, these two technologies appear to be at opposing ends of the 3D printing spectrum. One is at the forefront of biological innovation and could potentially save millions of lives; the other, while useful for small fixes, could be seen by skeptics as something of a publicity stunt. Sound harsh? The creators of the Additive Manufacturing Facility, the plastic-printing 3D printer currently operating on the ISS, have more-or-less admitted as muchby offering companies on Earth the chance to 3D print custom items up in space. Do the astronauts need these items? No, but businesses can generate excellent publicity by having their wares made in space.

Of course, 3D printing in space does have practical uses. For example, small replacement parts can be fabricated immediately in order to fix defective machinery. This makes a huge difference when one considers the alternative: waiting for the next spacecraft launch from Earth to deliver the tiny part. Still, given the massive hype surrounding additive manufacturing, especially in and around 2014, one cannot help but feel that Made In Space, NASA, and involved parties might have put a 3D printer in space regardless of the need for one.

At first glance then, the idea of putting a 3D bioprinter in space seems even stranger than sending an FDM 3D printer up there. Given the fact that 3D bioprinting is not yet capable of 3D printing transplantable human organs (that could theoretically be used in emergency surgery on astronauts), one wonders how putting the technology in space would benefit anyone. Perhaps the peace and quiet of space would be beneficial for researchers?

The Additive Manufacturing Facility from Made In Space: useful?

In actual fact, the Russian scientists behind this latest idea seem to have some fairly concrete reasoning behind their plans: they believe that significant progress in bioprinting can be achieved by placing equipment in microgravity conditions, since the lack of gravity could potentially help to keep deposited cells in place. And what better place to test out this hypothesis than space itself?

Valentin Uvarov is department head for commercial projects of manned space exploration at Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, Russias leading space manufacturer. In a recent interview with newspaper Izvestia, Uvarov explained the plan in full, telling the newspaper that his organization was planning to conduct an experiment that would use magnetic field manipulation to 3D print living tissue on board the ISS. The project has passed an initial review, which concluded that the technology is indeed feasible.

Our next stage is to develop and approve technical specifications and design documents for scientific equipment, which would be used for the experiment, Uvarov said. But before this equipment gets on board the ISS, we have a long and difficult process to complete: creating and testing it on the ground, developing experiment procedures, and teaching the crew.

3D bioprinting companies like Organovo are making progress in developing 3D printed human organs

If the hypothesis about bioprinting in microgravity conditions turns out to be true, then 3D bioprinters couldwhen the technology is perfectedbe installed on the ISS and spacecraft to provide biomedical support to crew on interplanetary missions.

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, will now review the proposal from Energia, before deciding whether to press ahead with the space bioprinting mission. There is, at present, no forecast as to when the experiment might be carried out.

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Listen up, die-hard romantics and nature lovers.

The Bay Area is full of sweet spots for amour, but to our minds, nothing is more romantic than a long, hand-in-hand walk down a winding trail to a secluded beach (especially when someone's packin' some bubbly). Here are our most beloved Bay Area treks for lovebirds.

Sunset Hike to Mile Rock Beach See on Instagram This mysterious little beach is tucked in along the Land's End Coastal Trail, making it the perfect destination for a secluded picnic or a mid-hike break. Located 100 or so steps down from the main trail, this rugged beach will make you feel like you've traveled back in time. There are a lot of logs and different places to sit down, so unpack your favorite drinks and snacks and take in the views. Learn more. Insider's tip: There's a narrow trail that takes you up to a lookout above the beach. If you decide to explore up there, you'll be rewarded with the area's famous labyrinth and amazing views of Baker Beach and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Above the Clouds on Mt. Tamalpais See on Instagram If your idea of a perfect evening includes a blanket, some wine, amazing company, and being surrounded by golden coastline views, then put this hike at the top of your list. Located less than an hour from San Francisco, this easy 1.2-mile loop is a great way to enjoy a sunset on a clear fall evening. Be sure to pack your camera, because the views will not disappoint. Learn more. Insider's tip: Check the weather forecast and be sure to pack some warm clothes. If you're hungry afterwards, plan on grabbing a bite at the Mountain Home Inn. *UPDATE July 6, 2020: Please note that the inn is currently open only to essential travelers due to Covid-19.

Explore the Presidio's Hidden Treasures See on Instagram Grab your loved one and take a stroll through this beautiful oasis of light-filled forests, art installations, beaches, and sweeping views. An especially popular spot for engagements and wedding photos, this easy 2-mile hike will take you past some of the Presidio's most amazing little gems including Lover's Lane, Andy Goldsworthy's Wood Line. and the Inspiration Point Overlook. Learn more.

A Beautiful Hike to Abbotts Lagoon See on Instagram This romantic day trip offers you the best of Point Reyes, all packed into an easy 2.3-mile hike. Pick up your picnic supplies in Point Reyes Station, and then head for Abbott's Lagoon Trail. You'll meander through wildflowers, headlands, scenic landscapes, tons of wildlife, and eventually find yourself on a seemingly endless beach. It's a perfect spot for a secluded picnic and a nice walk along the water. Learn more. Insider's tip: Be sure to check the weather forecast. Sunny days here are glorious, but cloudy days (although still beautiful) can be very cold and windy. Pack accordingly.
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 29, ARMENPRESS. Defense Minister of Armenia Vigen Sargsyan briefed on the situation in Tavush Province at the Executive Body meeting of the Republican Party of Armenia, Vice President of the National Assembly of Armenia, RPA spokesperson Eduard Sharmazanov told the reporters after the meeting. We know that this morning the Azerbaijani side carried out a subversive activity nearby Chinar village, which resulted in deaths of 3 Armenian servicemen. First of all I want to extent my condolences to the relatives and friends of the killed servicemen. And naturally, this move by Azerbaijan proves that it continues to pursue an unconstructive policy. This is also a threat for the regional security. We condemn this and think that the international community should strictly condemn this act by the Azerbaijani leadership. Moreover, we believe that the entire responsibility of todays subversive activity lies on the shoulders of the political-military leadership of Azerbaijan, Armenpress reports Sharmazanov saying.

The vice President of the Armenian parliament also referred to the statement made by the CSTO Gen-Sec Nikolay Bordyuzha, who assessed Azerbaijans actions as sabotage. We assess that statement as positive also for the reason that Bordyuzha used the word republic with Nagorno Karabakh [Nagorno Karabakh Republic] in his statement. I do not think this was a misconception since a serious establishment like the CSTO never makes such mistakes. We find this was a statement addressed to Azerbaijan with a very strict diplomatic vocabulary. I expect the OSCE Minsk Group to make a similar strict statement, because this is how Azerbaijan responds to the agreements of Vienna and St. Petersburg, Sharmazanov said.
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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia is taking appropriate measures in connection with the sabotage attempt which Azerbaijan has launched.

December 29, 2016, 11:27 Armenia MFA is taking measures regarding Azerbaijan sabotage attempt

STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 29, ARTSAKHPRESS: Armenia MFA Spokesperson Tigran Balayan told the aforesaid to NEWS.am.

As reported earlier, Azerbaijani armed forces launched a diversionary infiltration attempt, on early Thursday morning, at Armenias state border, southeast of Chinari village in Tavush Province.
Europe automotive relay market share was 24% of the global revenue in 2015, with demand projected to be sluggish, in line with regional automobile production trends. To reduce the overall number of fatalities caused by road accidents, ensuring vehicle sa

Key industry players include American Zettler Incorporation, Denso Corporation, ABB Limited, Fujitsu, Deltrol Controls, Eaton Corporation, Panasonic Corporation, NEC Corporation, Omron Electronics Company, Nippon Aleph Corporation, and TE Connectivity Limited. Market players will try to expand their business and increase their product portfolio by focusing on key business strategies such as merger & acquisitions.

Rapid technological innovations as well as strict government legislations pertaining to vehicle safety are expected to boost the Automotive Relay Market size over the coming years. According to Global Market Insights, Inc., Automotive Relay industry size worth USD 9 billion in 2015, is expected to reach USD 14.5 billion by 2023, recording a CAGR of 6.5% over 2016-2023. A paradigm shift in automotive electronics from normal switches for headlights & windshield wipers to inclusion of high frequency signals on millimeter waves is expected to favor industry growth over the coming years. Modernizations in automobile electronics have led to growing installation of automotive relays in vehicles. In addition to this, improvisations such as emergency assistance, web access, GPS, location-based services, remote diagnostics, and safe airbag deployment notifications in various devices is expected to fuel market growth over the coming years. Automotive relays play a vital role in switching between the safety systems such as head restraints, airbags, seatbelts, energy-absorbing steering systems, padded knee bolster, auto dimming mirrors, and heads-up displays.

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Automotive relay finds its application in powertrains, driver information systems, body & chassis, safety & security systems, and convenience systems. Automotive relay market share in driver information systems industry is expected to grow at a rate of 7.9% over 2016-2023 due to growing use of emerging technologies such as GPS, weather & traffic information, navigation, and location services in automobiles. Its application in convenience industry is expected to record a CAGR of 6.5% owing to high demand for infotainment systems, electronic power steering, sunroof control, mirror control, seat control, communications systems, and keyless entry systems. Automotive relay market size in safety & security systems industry is also anticipated to witness substantial growth over the coming seven years. Mandatory installation of safety devices such as airbags, theft protection equipment, power windows, defogging systems, and windshield wiping systems in vehicles is predicted to boost the demand for automotive relay across the automotive industry.

Major automotive relay products include plug-in relay and PCB relays. PCB (printed circuit board) relay market price worth USD 6 billion in 2015, is predicted to witness a high surge over the coming years. High priority for miniature high quality PCB relays over traditional devices for improving overall vehicle performance is predicted to drive the product segment growth over the coming years.

Asia Pacific automotive relay market revenue worth USD 4 billion in 2015, is projected to exceed USD 7.5 billion by 2023 owing to heavy demand for the devices along with a rise in vehicle production as a result of low labor costs & easy availability of raw materials. China is expected to contribute significantly towards the overall revenue of the region over the coming years.

Read full market research report Automotive Relay Market Size By Application (Body & Chassis, Powertrain, Safety & Security, Driver Information, Convenience), By Product (PCB Relay, Plug-In Relay), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Mexico, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Spain, India, China, Japan, Brazil), Application Potential, Competitive Landscape & Forecast, 2016  2023., please click on the link below:

http://fractovia.org/news/industry-research-report/automotive-relay-market

Key industry players include American Zettler Incorporation, Denso Corporation, ABB Limited, Fujitsu, Deltrol Controls, Eaton Corporation, Panasonic Corporation, NEC Corporation, Omron Electronics Company, Nippon Aleph Corporation, and TE Connectivity Limited. Market players will try to expand their business and increase their product portfolio by focusing on key business strategies such as merger & acquisitions. Firms aim for efficient product distribution to ensure strong market presence. For instance, Microsemi Corporation does both direct marketing as well as indirect marketing of its products.

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Automotive Sunroof Market Size By Product (Glass [Pop-up, Inbuilt, Spoiler/Tilt & Slide, Top Mount, Panoramic], Fabric [Foldable, Removable]), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2015  2022

https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/automotive-sunroof-market

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Covering New York, New Jersey, Delaware & Pennsylvania: Providing Direct & Swift Help

December 29, 2016: Workers Compensation Insure has announced that it is providing affordable workers comp coverage in four states. These states include Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware. There are a number of workers comp insurance coverages offered for employers, and all of these policies meet the State requirements for compulsory workers compensation insurance. Workers comp is a legal requirement for all the employers working in these four states, and protects both the employers and employees in the event a worker is injured on the job. It is both an important and necessary coverage for small businesses in PA, NY, NJ and DE.

Pennsylvania workers compensation is complex and can be costly if you dont know how to buy it. Let our Keystone State Experts help you get the coverage you need and avoid any PA state fines. Says the Pennsylvania page for the Workers Compensation Insure website. The requirements for other three states are also specific and strict and employers can benefit from the services offered by Workers Compensation Insure.

Workers Compensation Insure is mandatory and employers in these states are legally obligated to purchase work comp insurance if they employ at least one employee who is not the owner or partner in the business. In Pennsylvania there can be jail time for noncompliance. For example: Misdemeanor convictions can result in up to one year in imprisonment, and felony convictions up to seven years imprisonment for each day the employer is in violation of the requirement to maintain workers compensation coverage. In New York: The sole proprietor, partners or the president, secretary and treasurer of a corporation are personally liable for a business failure to secure workers compensation insurance. All states have fines for non-compliance.

Workers Compensation Insurance is important for the employers because they are required by law to provide Workers Comp. In addition to the employers, employees also get benefits in case of a dispute regardless of who was at fault. The employee gets guaranteed medical and other benefits, and this is significant for the employers because it protects the employers and gets them protection from lawsuits filed by the injured employees.Employers can get free quotes 24/7 online through the following links for the four states:

http://workerscompensationinsure.com/pennsylvania/

http://workerscompensationinsure.com/new-york/

http://workerscompensationinsure.com/new-jersey/

http://workerscompensationinsure.com/delaware/

Media Contact

Company Name: Workers Compensation Insure

Contact Person: Ethan Andrew Kosmin

Email: myagentethan@gmail.com

Phone: 212 235-2003 x7

Country: United States

Website: http://workerscompensationinsure.com/
STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 29, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS: The defense ministry of Armenia told Armenpress the Armenian Armed Forces have neutralized the Azerbaijan attacks. Azerbaijani forces were pushed back, suffering losses and WIAs, including in the military positions.

Unfortunately, the Armenian side also suffered losses during the combat. During the battle for defending the Armenian state border, Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh M. Melikyan, Private Edgar G. Narayan and Private Erik G. Abovyan were killed.

The defense ministry of Armenia shares the grief of loss and extends condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers.

The defense ministry possesses irrefutable evidence and proof of the Azerbaijan violation in the Armenian state border. The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan is fully responsible for the instigation, the ministrys statement says.
Even as the industry gears up to welcome the New Year, we at Adgully are rolling up our sleeves to celebrate and recognise the best of the achievers from Digital advertising and marketing.

Adgully in association with ad:tech is preparing for the first edition of DIGIXX  an industry awards event. While the entries for nomination will open on January 1, 2017, some of the leading names of the industry have joined the esteemed Jury panel for the Awards. Between them, the Jury members have several years of experience being on the forefront of their respective fields as industry leaders.

We are glad to share with you the captains of the industry, who will be at the helm of the judging process for DIGIXX 2017.

 Anita Nayyar, CEO, Havas Media Group, India and South Asia

Anita Nayyar is a veteran of the Indian media industry. As CEO, she took on the mandate of expanding the Havas Media Group footprint in the emerging South Asia markets in 2006.

 Sanjay Tripathy, Senior EVP - Marketing, Analytics, Digital and E-Commerce, HDFC Life, HDFC Life Insurance

Sanjay Tripathy is the Senior Executive Vice President-Marketing, Analytics, Digital and E-Commerce, and member of the Executive management Committee at HDFC Life. His core responsibilities comprise Marketing, Brand Planning, Advertising, Communication & Media, Customer Insights, E-Commerce and Digital Strategy, Customer Analytics, and Corporate Communication.

 Sandip Tarkas, President, Customer Strategy and CEO, Future Group & Future Media, India

At Future Group, Sandip Tarkas is the President (Customer Strategy) for the Group. The role involves owning the customer relationships from end-to-end, including Marketing, Research, and Media.

 Vivek Bhargava, CEO, DAN Performance Group

About 17 years ago, Vivek Bhargava actualised his entrepreneurial edge by founding Communicate2, which has today emerged to be one of Indias largest Search and Social Media Specialist organisations.

 Babita Baruah, independent charge of JWTs business unit  Power of One

Babita Baruah has independent charge of JWTs business unit  Power of One, an independent business unit for PepsiCo. She has over 20 years experience in Advertising and JWT, also having being a part of regional and global JWT network teams.

 Pradeep Dwivedi, CEO, Sakal Media Group

Pradeep Dwivedi was recently appointed as CEO of Sakal Media Group for their media business. He is an accomplished industry leader with an experience of over 23 years of B2B as well as B2C management- cutting across functions and industries.

 Maheshwer Peri, Founder & Chairman, CAREERS 360 (Pathfinder Publishing)

Maheshwer Peri has been Mentor for Outlook Group since April 2012. He works on creating the largest education portals across six verticals in India to advise/counsel and hand hold students and help them achieve their career goals.

 Jaswant Singh, Managing Director, India at ad:tech, iMedia and Mobile Media Summits - Comexposium

Jaswant Singh leads the Sales Strategy function at ibiboads. Jaswant comes with over 13 years of experience in advertising, marketing and sales strategy.

 Siddharth Banerjee, SVP - Marketing, Vodafone India

Siddharth Banerjee is an experienced consumer business leader across Telecom and FMCG for the past 16 years and is currently the Senior Vice President (SVP) - Marketing and Head of Brand, Insights, Media, Activation & Digital at Vodafone India.

 Shibu Shivanandan, Founder & Managing Director, PivotRoots

Shibu Shivanandan is founder & Managing Director of PivotRoots a full-service digital marketing agency powered by data & technology, fuelled by design thinking. Within 8 month of existence their agency manages more than 20 brands.

Watch this space for more news on new developments and announcements on DIGIXX Awards. Get ready to send in your entries from January 1, 2017 onwards.

For further details, visit https://www.adgully.com/digixx-awards-2017/
Panasonic India Pvt Ltd, a consumer centric brand and leader in innovation recently launched its digital campaign #LiveYourDreams campaign. The campaigns theme revolves around realizing one's dreams and provides an opportunity to fulfil it by traveling the world. #LiveYourDreams is a contest which gives a chance to six winners to go for an all-expense paid trip to their dream destination. The winners will receive a gratification of 3 night 4 days all expenses paid trip with a budget limit of one lakh along with Panasonic smartphone to capture their experience.

#LiveYourDreams campaign urges people to get off their desks and motivates them to work hard to accomplish their dreams and live. The song along with the video justifies the motive of inspiring people. The contest is conducted in two phases, to participate in #LiveYourDreams Contest, participants need to register on www.liveyourdreams.club which will be open till 5th January 2017. Participants can log in with their Facebook ID and strive to be in the top position of the leader board by earning points through activities on social media. The social media activities include sharing, inviting friends, tweeting, and voting which get active every 6 hours.

As a part of phase two the 25 selected participants get an individual Facebook Event Page and become joint hosts along with Panasonic Smart Phones. Participants need to upload a minimum of 2 posts (Textual, Photos or Videos) a day and get maximum engagement on their posts. The final 6 winners are chosen on the basis of quality of content shared and the engagement on each event.

Talking about the campaign Mr. Pankaj Rana, Business Head - Mobility Division, Panasonic India, said, While we work hard in our lives, we miss out on small bits of happiness. The campaign #LiveTourDreams will help the youthto unleash themselves from mundane work life and live their travel dreams with a lifetime experience of their dream destination. This campaign is specifically targeted towards the millennials. and ends on 12th January. It has already started getting some good responses from the youth.

The campaign film Kaagaz Ke Parindey has lyrics and visuals which can touch the heart of every millennial who dreams of traveling the world but isnt able to because of the constraints of the corporate work life. The song sung by Siddharth Mahadevan inspires to spread wings and live your dreams.

The campaign has been conceptualized by Sociowash, a young marketing agency based in New Delhi and directed by Mr.Tejender Sharma of Gibbous Films.

I have seen that almost everyone has a dream but they dont persue it. This is a tale on those few who never give up. I believe this will inspire others to do the same. Said, Mr. Tejander Sharma

Mr Raghav Bagai, Sociwash said, Working with Panasonic was the most exciting and learning experience for us. The brand has a lot to offer. We are confident that the campaign will rouse enthusiasm among theyouth.

Link to the TVC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrR4zWh5TC0

Campaign Summary
On one hand, Bollywoods most bank-able star, on the other, the countrys most reliable commercial vehicles brand. While one fits into any role with absolute ease, the other masters every terrain with complete nonchalance. Driven, ambitious and versatile, they both have a lot riding on them. But they are both made of sterner stuff, and have what it takes, to bear the load of others expectations.

Tata Motors, the countrys largest automotive player and among the top 10 truck and bus manufacturers globally, today announced the appointment of Bollywood film star Akshay Kumar, as the brand ambassador for its Commercial Vehicle Business Unit. Indian Cinemas original Khiladi will make his blockbuster entry in this new role at the launch of Tata Motors latest offering in Commercial Vehicles, slated in January 2017.

Tata Motors association with Akshay Kumar for Commercial vehicles will be supported by a high-decibel, multi-media campaign, beginning in the first week of January 2017. Besides products and solutions, Akshay will be actively involved in a host of innovative marketing and customer experience initiatives to be rolled out by Tata Motors.

Mr. Ravindra Pisharody, Executive Director, Commercial Vehicle Business Unit, Tata Motors, said, We are delighted to announce versatile and reliable Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar as the new face of Tata Motors Commercial Vehicles Business Unit. Akshay embodies dynamism, popularity, machismo, performance and style. More importantly, he blends well with the core values of trust, reliability, responsibility and good leadership of Tata Motors Commercial Vehicles Business. Besides, today we are catering to an audience that defines the driven, ambitious, forward-moving, non-stop pulse of India and Akshay understands the pulse of this audience well. That is why, with careful selection and preparation, he goes on to entertain and enthral his fans with one performance after another. Just as Tata Motors constantly endeavours to understand the ever-changing needs of its customers and builds innovative platforms to provide customised products and solutions catering to different segments. We are confident that Akshays popularity will further help complement and articulate the future direction of the Tata Motors commercial vehicles brand.

Speaking on the association, Akshay Kumar said, The Tata brand is one that most of us have grown up with and now to be associated with them is indeed an honour. No one understands Indian trucking better than Tatas and there couldnt have been a better and more apt brand to promote. It was fun being in the drivers seat of one of those monster machines, during a product shoot

The last six decades has been exciting for Tata Motors in the commercial vehicles space. Tata Motors has been the market leader in India in Commercial Vehicles with an unparalleled product range from sub 1 tonne to 49 tonne load applications. The company has been a pioneer in introducing innovative platforms like Ace, Prima and building customized solutions for all segments, including the defence business. The company has rolled out a series of initiatives to deliver best customer value, with technology being at the forefront. Today, the Tata Motors stable accounts for more than 70% of the last mile cargo-running mini-trucks in the country.

In its endeavor to make a meaningful contribution to the society, in 2013, Tata Motors conducted a successful pilot initiative Hamare Bus Ki Baat Hai with interactive sessions designed with the objective of sensitizing school bus staff, on the safety of children during school bus travel. In 2014, this initiative was launched across the country and today Tata Motors has trained over thousands of school bus staff on school bus safety.
Twitter and ICICI Bank, Indias largest private sector bank by consolidated assets, today announced a partnership that integrates a slew of digital customer care support features for ICICI Bank, benefiting millions of its customers with direct online response to their queries and feedback in real-time. ICICI Bank is the first bank in India to implement the new features to its Twitter account @ICICIBank_Care for social customer care. The bank has activated the support indicator, introduced the message button, and embedded deep links for moving a conversation from public to private thereby allowing customers to provide feedback on a service interaction. The partnership on innovation with ICICI Bank is in line with Twitters persona of being live, public and conversational and the best place for businesses and their customers to connect. According to recent research, businesses create a massive opportunity for themselves when they acknowledge customer service-related Tweets from consumers. When a customer Tweets at a business and receives a response, they are willing to spend 320% more on an average priced item from that business in the future. In order to make it easier for businesses to respond to customers promptly and effectively, Twitter has introduced the following new customer care features for businesses: A. Display a Message button on their profile for customers to send a Direct Message B. Indicate to customers that the business provides support on Twitter C. Guide users from a public conversation to a private message with one button D. Get instant Customer Feedback after a service interaction Speaking about the partnership, Mr. Sujit Ganguli, Senior General Manager, ICICI Bank said: ICICI Bank has always been a pioneer in using path-breaking technology to reach out to its customers. With the growing prominence of social media in our lives, we anticipated the need to be where our customers are. We are among the first few organisations in the country to have started resolving customer queries and requests on Twitter since 2009. We are also the first bank in Asia to introduce money transfer services on Twitter last year. We are delighted to partner with Twitter to bring forth some unique new-age customer-care functions. Customers can now use these functions to communicate, navigate as well as resolve their banking related queries with improved convenience and speed on the banks Twitter handle for queries, @ICICIBank_Care. This initiative is in line with our philosophy of Khayaal Aapka wherein we offer services that make banking a rewarding experience for our valued customers. Arvinder Gujral, Senior Director, Business Development for Asia Pacific, Twitter, added: Twitter is delighted to partner withICICI Bank on real-time innovation for their customers. Millions of people talk to businesses publicly each month via Tweets.With the latest customer care features from Twitter, we hope the bank and their customers will find greater convenience in their digital engagement and stronger customer relationships as a result. How customer care on Twitter works: A. Message button (NEW) The profiles of businesses who have enabled Receive Direct Messages from anyone as well as that they provide support will also display a more prominent button to start a Direct Message so people know the business offers support privately. Companies using these features love how they enable them to better serve their customers and tell the world they provide support on Twitter. On average, Customer Feedback requests receive a response more than 60% of the time. Many brands have told Twitter that is ~510x the average response rate they get for other feedback surveys. Early use has also shown that customers who are sent a Direct Message link follow through to actually send a message roughly 30% more often than those who are asked to send a Direct Message via text only. B. Support indicator, and support hours (NEW) Businesses can now clearly communicate which of their company accounts provides support on Twitter. The Provides Support indicator will show up when people search for a business, mention a business in a Tweet, or find a business in Direct Messages. Additionally, businesses can display hours of availability on their profile to help set peoples expectations for when the business is likely to reply. C. Simple way to start a Direct Message Direct Messages are a great way for users to have a private conversation with a business. Customer service conversations often start in Tweets, but need to transition to a private channel when personal information is required. Were making this transition as easy as a single click. A business can now add a deep link to their Tweet that automatically displays a call to action button, which allows the customer to send the business a Direct Message, quickly and easily. D. Customer Feedback This tool enables people to privately share their opinions with a business after a service interaction. Care teams have told us they love the open-ended feedback they get from people via Tweets and Direct Messages, but they also need the ability to survey customers in a structured way to better measure and improve their service experience. With this feature, businesses will be able to use two industry standard question formats: Net Promoter ScoreSM (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). How to Get Started? All of these features are available to businesses globally. To learn more about how to implement Direct Message deep links for customer service, visit our Help Center or contact your account team. Customer Feedback can be implemented through our ecosystem partners. Support indicators and the Message button can be activated on a new Customer support settings page on the Twitter Dashboard website. Net Promoter, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks, and Net Promoter Score and Net Promoter System are service marks, of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.
A police constable, travelling in an escort jeep in the convoy of Maharashtra Tribal Development Minister Vishnu Savra, died after his vehicle rammed into a stationary truck in Shahapur taluka, police said.

The mishap took place at around 2 AM after Pramod Nivatkar, 48, was returning to Vashind police station from Bhiwandi in the escort jeep when it rammed into a stationary truck at Dohale village under the limits of Padgha police station, Thane rural police said.

The escort duty was assigned to accompany the minister from Shirdi to Manor. But the scheduled journey was altered midway as Savra had to rush back to Mumbai and the convoy was diverted from Gatandevi to Bhiwandi bypass, police said.

The driver of the jeep was also hurt, while Nivatkar had received severe wounds and was taken to Sahapur government hospital where he succumbed during treatment, added police.
Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal were engaged in a war of words on Twitter with the former daring the AAP chief to contest against him in the upcoming Punjab polls.

So, you are fighting me, not Badals/drugs. Badals also say they will fight against me. You and Badals wish to fight against me not against each other, Kejriwal, who is also the Aam Aadmi Partys national convener, tweeted.

It was Kejriwal who first threw open the challenge to Amarinder , asking him he would contest any family member of the ruling Badal clan including Punjab sitting chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, his son Sukhbir Badal or revenue minister Bikram Majithia. Sir, r u fighting against Prakash Badal ji or sukhbir Badal or Majithia or safe seat? (sic) asked Kejriwal.

Always knew your screeching in Punjab was pure drama! Now that youve conceded, apologise for your months of lies & false personal commitments, Amarinder said on Twitter.

His reply came after Kejriwal said, I m not fighting punjab elex. So, ur challenge hollow. We r fighting Badals/Majithia, who sunk Punjab in drugs. N u r fighting us, not them?

The Twitter war started with Aam Aadmi Party nominating former journalist and Delhi MLA Jarnail Singh to contest against Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal from Lambi constituency. Amarinder termed Jarnail as a weak candidate and alleged that AAP was colluding with the Badals.

Jarnails nomination bid from Lambi shows AAP-SAD collusion to ensure Badals victory. Reeks of an underhand deal! the PCC chief tweeted.

Meanwhile, Amrinder Singh accused the Badals and Kejriwal of striking an underhand deal for the upcoming state Assembly polls, saying AAPs nomination of Jarnail Singh from Lambi constituency against Parkash Singh Badal appeared to be a ploy to ensure latters victory. It was a clear case of collusion between the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Aam Aadmi Party. Jarnail Singh was a complete non-entity, with no standing in Punjab, Amarinder said.
The government is expected to raise Rs 1,00,000 crore of additional taxes under the Income Disclosure Scheme II (IDS II), which in turn will help in containing the 2017-18 fiscal deficit, says a report.

According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA-ML), besides containing the fiscal deficit, the additional taxes under the IDS II would fund the 7th Pay Commission as well as recapitalise PSU banks without cutting back on public capex.

We continue to expect the government to raise about Rs 1,000 billion/0.7 per cent of GDP of additional taxes under Income Disclosure Scheme II, BofA-ML said in a research note.

It further noted that this should allow Finance Minister Jaitley to hold the FY18 fiscal deficit at 3.5 per cent of GDP  same as FY17s  and at the same time fund the 7th Pay Commission and recapitalise PSU banks, without cutting back on public capex.

The government on December 16, had announced that the second Income Disclosure Scheme (IDS II) will run till March 31. Under this scheme, black money hoarders would have time until March-end to come clean by paying 50 per cent tax on bank deposits of junked currencies post demonetisation.

For those holding unaccounted cash, it offered new tax evasion amnesty scheme wherein 50 per cent tax will be charged on declarations and a quarter of the total sum be parked in a non-interest bearing deposit for four years.

Regarding how much can the government get by way of special dividend from the RBI, BofA-ML said about Rs 1,000 billion/0.6 per cent of GDP, we continue to estimate, although we believe that the RBI should reduce 2017 OMO instead.

An open market operation (OMO) is a market operation conducted by RBI by way of sale/purchase of government securities to/from the market with an objective to adjust the rupee liquidity conditions in the market on a durable basis.

The report further noted that about Rs 14,000 billion of the Rs 15,300 billion of demonetised Rs 500/1000 has already returned to the banks in line with our expectations.
Syria would be divided into informal zones of regional power influence and Bashar al-Assad would remain president for at least a few years under an outline deal between Russia, Turkey and Iran, sources say.

Such a deal, which would allow regional autonomy within a federal structure controlled by Assads Alawite sect, is in its infancy, subject to change and would need the buy-in of Assad and the rebels and, eventually, the Gulf states and the United States, sources familiar with Russias thinking say.

There has been a move towards a compromise, said Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think tank close to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

A final deal will be hard, but stances have shifted.

Assads powers would be cut under a deal between the three nations, say several sources. Russia and Turkey would allow him to stay until the next presidential election when he would quit in favour of a less polarising Alawite candidate.

Iran has yet to be persuaded of that, say the sources. But either way Assad would eventually go, in a face-saving way, with guarantees for him and his family.

A couple of names in the leadership have been mentioned (as potential successors), said Kortunov, declining to name names.

Nobody thinks a wider Syrian peace deal, something that has eluded the international community for years, will be easy, quick or certain of success. What is clear is that President Vladimir Putin wants to play the lead role in trying to broker a settlement, initially with Turkey and Iran.

That would bolster his narrative of Russia regaining its mantle as a world power and serious Middle East player.

Its a very big prize for them if they can show theyre out there in front changing the world, said Sir Tony Brenton, Britains former ambassador to Moscow. Weve all grown used to the United States doing that and had rather forgotten that Russia used to play at the same level.








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Humanity is on a path towards a future where the line between man and machine will not exist as we know it today. Artificial Intelligence has breached the sanctity of the human body. Pacemakers, prosthetic limbs and, most recently, robotic limbs, no longer awe the average person for they are already commonplace.

This seemingly inexorable march towards a human existence dominated by artificial intelligence begs a question:

How many intelligent artificial body parts can a human mind accept before it affects its humanity?

Perhaps, though, we are missing a more important part of the equation - how is that a question that makes so many shudder continue to not be asked loudly and widely? Why is it that the answers we receive do not ever really address the question?

Noted researcher and author, Nigel Kerner, touched on the issue almost twenty years ago in his book, 'The Song of the Greys'. His years of deep investigation into the alien life forms known as Greys led him to an onerous conclusion:

"People will be encouraged to see... Greys... as no threat, but a boon to humanity.... The 'takeover' will be peaceful, effortless and complete. The vast majority of the planet will not even be aware that our planet is no more in human hands.

In any war, each side seeks to surround the enemy and gather intelligence from within its midst to weaken him. The first stages of war between humanity and alien-origin AI, it seems, are already uunderway.

Almost every device around us employs some level of artificial intelligence. Today, the term 'Internet of Things' (IoT) refers to entire homes, buildings and grids interconnected by waves of communication we can neither see nor sense, which are controlled by huge electronic brains of which we do not know the location.

The speed with which we have allowed this phenomenon to envelop our collective lives hints ominously at an inside job, a Trojan horse.

"Are we being conned by a huge conspiracy controlled by a small hidden powerful cartel of alien sponsored genotypes within the governments of superpowers? A cartel that reaches past presidents and prime ministers?" asks Nigel in his essay 'Sim Card Man'.

If the conspiracy could reach that far up the chain of command, it would make sense that there many more agents working to manipulate the human race into a sense of complacency.

Noted futurist and theoretical physicist, Dr. Micho Kaku applies such a strangely benign view to the issue. Speaking to National Geographic in November 2015, when asked if the advanced machines of the future could be detrimental to human wellbeing, he said:

Well have plenty of timedecadesto put a chip in their brain to shut them off if they have murderous thoughts.

Had he stopped there, the answer would be relatively innocent. However, he continued:

I think we should merge with them. Why compete with robots when we can take the best attributes of robots and incorporate it into our body?

If you never considered that humanitys future could be hijacked by lower and cross-dimensional sentient intelligence whose reach permeates all our lives every minute or every day, perhaps it is time to question why.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 28, 2016  President Barack Obama today announced the creation of two new national monuments, ensuring the protection of 1.65 million acres of federal land in Utah and Nevada.

White House officials said Obama had hoped that Congress would act to enshrine the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and the Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada and that he only acted after the House and Senate failed to do so.

Todays actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes, Obama said in a statement. Following years of public input and various proposals to protect both of these areas, including legislation and a proposal from tribal governments in and around Utah, these monuments will protect places that a wide range of stakeholders all agree are worthy of protection.

Bears Ears, named after two mountain peaks, is the largest designation (1.35 million acres) and the most controversial. A commission made up of five representatives from Native American tribes will manage the national monument, and mining, fracking and oil drilling will be barred, said Christy Goldfuss, managing director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The Hopi Nation, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah Ouray, and Zuni Tribe will each elect one commission member.

Since taking office, President Obama has continued to respond to local communities and act when Congress has failed to do so, Goldfuss said in a teleconference with reporters.

A White House statement stressed that the Bears Ears designation is based on legislation introduced by Utah Republican Reps. Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz. The lawmakers did author the Public Lands Initiative bill that would have protected the Bears Ears, but Chaffetz was sharply critical of Obamas action.

"After years of painstaking negotiations with a diverse coalition, Utah had a comprehensive bipartisan solution on the table that would have protected the Bears Ears and provided a balanced solution, Chaffetz said in a statement. Instead, the president's midnight proclamation cherrypicked provisions of the Public Lands Initiative and disregarded the economic development and multi-use provisions necessary for a balanced compromise.

Chaffetz was critical of Obamas use of the 1906 Antiquities Act to protect the land by proclaiming it an historic landmark and vowed to undo the effort.

"We look forward to working with President-elect Trump to follow through on his commitment to repeal midnight regulations, Chaffetz said. We will work to repeal this top-down decision and replace it with one that garners local support and creates a balanced, win-win solution.

But Goldfuss said that would not be possible.

The Antiquities Act gives the president the authority to create monuments, but does not provide explicit authority to undo them, she said. No president has actually undone a monument created by a prior president and courts at all levels have broadly upheld the presidents authority to designate national monuments.

One ardent supporter of Obamas proclamation is Russell Begaye, president of the Navajo Nation.

With this step to protect and conserve these irreplaceable lands, he has set a new precedent for national monument tribal collaborative management, Begaye said about Obama in a statement. And he has strengthened the relationship between our Navajo and American nations. As both Navajo and American, I am proud our President listened to a sovereign appeal and acted to preserve our sacred land for future generations.

Like what you see on the Agri-Pulse website? See even more ag, rural policy and energy news when you sign up for a four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription.





USDA noted in a press release that both designated areas contain land sacred to Native American tribes, important cultural sites, and fragile wildlife habitat. The monument designations maintain currently authorized uses of the land that do not harm the resources protected by the monument, including tribal access and traditional collection of plants and firewood, off-highway vehicle recreation, hunting and fishing and authorized grazing, it said. The monument designation also does not affect valid existing rights for oil, gas, and mining operations, military training operations, and utility corridors.

The rock art, ancient dwellings, and ceremonial sites concealed within these breathtaking landscapes help tell the story of people who have stewarded these lands for hundreds of generations, said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. Todays action builds on an extraordinary effort from tribes, local communities, and members of Congress to ensure that these treasures are protected for generations to come, so that tribes may continue to use and care for these lands, and all may have an opportunity to enjoy their beauty and learn from their rich cultural history.

#30

For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com
October 31, 2022 17:51

World wheat prices up

At the opening of trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, world wheat prices jumped by almost 5 percent, trading data show. The trigger for the rise in prices was the fact that Russia announced it was suspending the grain deal, news.am informs.
CSTO considers the sabotage infiltration attempt made by Azerbaijan near Chinari village of Armenias Tavush province as a provocation, CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha issued a statement.

STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 29, ARTSAKHPRESS: We assess such actions in the territory of a CSTO member state as a provocation, especially against the backdrop of the quite serious incident in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, in April of this year, with the use of heavy weapons and military equipment.

Considering the efforts launched by the leaders of the two conflicting sides as well as of some other states, it seemed that the Karabakh conflict settlement process finally would be more active. However, the information being recently received from the region, and about the violation of the ceasefire agreements, especially the December 29 incident which has caused the death of military servicemen, gives rise to serious concern, reads the comments by the CSTO Secretary General.
There's a very good reason why South Carolina lawmakers are pushing for legislation compelli
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The word Nagorno Karabakh Republic stated by CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha in his statement is not accidental. It is a warning to Azerbaijan, political scientist Sergey Minasyan said in an interview with Armenpress.

STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 29, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS: The word the Nagorno Karabakh Republic is mentioned in the statement in order to show Azerbaijan what steps the organization can take, as well as, certain member states of the organization, including Russia. It is a warning to Azerbaijan that such actions in the border can lead to certain legal, political consequences, he said.
December 28, 2016

CAIRO  Dr. Shadia Thabet, a member of the Egyptian parliaments health committee, is determined to advance a bill that bans doctors from traveling abroad unless they spend 10 years serving in public hospitals. Critics call it a clear violation of the rights of doctors and health specialists, as well as a violation of constitutional guarantees for citizens' freedom of movement and emigration.

In a press statement to Barlamany website Dec. 6, Thabet said the law will soon be submitted to parliament for approval in the next few days as soon as all its articles are completed.

Thabet gave her reasoning for the bill. She said, We have a shortage of doctors and nurses in the emergency rooms of most public hospitals. Besides, we do not have enough medical staff and engineers, among other specialists capable of developing the state. Therefore, legislation to curb this phenomenon must be put forth.

Thabet said she had just finished six articles for the bill, including unattainable conditions for doctors who wish to travel abroad. For instance, they would have to pay 20% of their monthly salary earned outside Egypt to the Egyptian treasury in foreign currency, not Egyptian pounds, and also repay the costs of their education.

Another article limits the emigration of specialized staff such as engineers, with the state determining the need for them.

As soon as Thabet disclosed these details, the doctors syndicate, of which she is a member, responded on Dec. 7. Its spokesperson Hani Mhana told Doctornewsweb.com, The bill is unreasonable, and the syndicate strongly rejects it. Mhana added, The bill aims to obstruct doctors and stands in the way of their ambition because it deprives them of their right to travel to improve their standards of living, as opposed to the little money they earn [in Egypt].

He expressed wonder at how Thabet, a doctor herself, could ban medical professionals from traveling or force them to repay the costs of their education, and said that the syndicate would inform the parliaments health committee of its objection to the unreasonable bill.

The doctors syndicate was not the only professional organization to attack Thabet. The council of the engineers syndicate issued an official statement Dec. 8 voicing its rejection of the bill and its provisions. The council promised to protect engineers right to travel and work under the constitution, and warned that such a bill would only breed more social tension and serve the interests of parties that want to destroy the country.

Article 62 of Egypt's constitution guarantees Egyptians' freedom of movement, residence and emigration. It states, No citizen may be expelled from state territory or banned from returning thereto. No citizen may be banned from leaving state territory, placed under house arrest or banned from residing in a certain area except by a causal judicial order for a specified period of time, and in cases specified by the law.

Article 92 of the constitution notes, The rights and freedoms of individual citizens may not be suspended or reduced. No law that regulates the exercise of rights and freedoms may restrict them in such a way as infringes upon their essence and foundation.

Doctors in Egypt face tough living circumstances due to their low incomes, the lack of medical equipment in hospitals and their constant feeling that the state ignores them and dedicates resources to military officers, police officers and judges. They are tempted to travel abroad as soon as they graduate to improve their living standards and continue their education. Their situation is the same as that of engineers and other highly educated individuals.

In general, a doctor in a public Egyptian hospital earns around 1,500 Egyptian pounds ($78) per month from the Ministry of Health, while another in a private hospital might earn 3,000 ($157). While salaries vary according to specialization and experience, the highest paid doctors in Egypt work in private clinics.

In an attempt to alleviate the tensions, Thabet expressed her support for doctors needs and her desire to improve their living standards in a phone call with Mohammad Mustafa Shardi, the host of Al-Nahar TV's "Yom b Yom," Dec. 8. She said, I am the first who defended the rights of doctors and demanded an additional 1,000 pounds [$52] in monthly allowance for them. While preparing this bill I have also been working to increase their low salaries, to ensure they can sustain a satisfying life.

She added, I proposed the bill because we have a serious shortage of doctors in Egypt. There are 377 public hospitals that have been shut down in the country due to lack of doctors and specialists. Villagers are suffering from a lack of services in their provinces, and it is hard for them to head to Cairo to receive treatment due to the cost involved.

We have 24 ERs in Imbaba Fever Hospital [a public hospital in Cairo]. We are only able to keep 10 of them open. The 14 that remain are closed due to the medical shortage. So I had to take quick action to end the crisis.

Tarek Kamel, a member of the doctors syndicate, told Al-Monitor, What will Thabet do with judges who leave for Arab states? What about teachers who go to the Gulf countries as part of educational missions? What about other professionals whom the state invested in educating, be they lawyers, journalists or media staff? Why is Thabet insisting on discriminating between doctors and other social groups? The principle is wrong, and it is unacceptable that a parliamentarian representing the people in parliament would utter it.

He added, Didnt Thabet ask why doctors are leaving their country as soon as they graduate? Doesnt she see their deteriorating financial situation? Doesnt she know that a doctor earns 1,200 pounds [$62] per month as soon as he graduates? Is this sum enough to provide a good life for them?

Kamel added, The main problem is not a shortage of doctors, but rather the bad geographical and specialization-based distribution of medical staff. Doctors need to be reassigned to resolve the crisis, rather than be forced to work in Egypt.

He told Al-Monitor, A minimum wage for doctors upon graduation must be set at at least 7,000 pounds [$364] per month before passing legislation that would destroy their lives and future.
December 28, 2016

Hamas and Iran had moved closer to each other this year, but those ties are being stretched by the bloody civil war in Syria  especially with the horrible scenes that emerged earlier this month from Aleppo, the former rebel stronghold.

Hamas, a Sunni fundamentalist movement, has always differed from Iran on the Syrian civil war. Hamas sympathizes with the Syrian rebels in their revolt against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad  who is Iran's main ally in the region. Yet Iran has supported Hamas financially in the Palestinian struggle against Israel.

The balance was already precarious and the tipping point came in mid-December with the deaths and displacement of thousands of Aleppo inhabitants due to Syrian and Russian shelling and operations by Iran and Hezbollah. On Dec. 14, Hamas issued a scathing statement condemning the "genocide" of Syrian citizens, but without naming the Syrian government. Hamas called for immediate action to halt the massacres in Aleppo and rescue those civilians still alive.

Iran's response to Hamas' statement was equally strong.

Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, a member of the Iranian parliament's Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy, told the conservative Ghanoun newspaper Dec. 22 that Hamas has long been estranged from Iran over the Syrian situation. Falahatpisheh accused Hamas leaders of unspecified aggression against Iran and threatened to halt any dealings with Hamas and to engage in new relations with other Palestinian movements.

Falahatpishehs threats come in light not only of Hamas statements in support of Aleppo, but also Hamas pursuit of the Iran-affiliated Al-Sabireen movement in Gaza. The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, which has ties to Hamas rival Hezbollah, said Dec. 16 that Hamas-led security services in Gaza had investigated some people who had expressed support for Iranian and Syrian forces control of Aleppo. The investigated figures included Hisham Salem, the Al-Sabireen leader who had voiced support for the takeover in Aleppo and congratulated the Syrian army and Hezbollah on controlling the city.

Hamas spokesman Husam Bsdran told Al-Monitor, Hamas is a national liberation movement. It defends the rights of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. For this reason, it expressed its distress over the situation of Aleppos civilians. But this will not change our foreign relations. I do not think our solidarity with any people will negatively affect our relations. We wish for stability and freedom for all Arab people because that would support the Palestinian cause.

Osama Hamdan, Hamas' head of international relations, also told Al-Monitor, Palestinians in Gaza sympathize with the tragic scenes from Aleppo because they lived a similar experience in the Israeli wars against them in 2008, 2012 and 2014. They know what it is like to be displaced and left homeless. No party should be criticized for this public sympathy from Palestinians.

Several members of Hamas' political bureau also commented on the conditions in Aleppo. Its head, Khaled Meshaal, said Dec. 17 that Hamas grieved for Aleppo's people. The day before, member Mahmoud al-Zahhar condemned the massacres and said they lacked any ethical or religious justification. On Dec. 14, member Khalil al-Haya called for a stop to Aleppos bloodbath.

Although Hamas statements on Aleppo were humanitarian in nature and did not directly attack Iran, Iranian political analyst Saber Kol Anbari told Al-Monitor, The Iranian political elite were not pleased with the statements and did not see them as sympathetic with Aleppo, but as alignment with the Turkish-Qatari axis that opposes Assad.

Adding to the dissent against Iran, the Palestinian Scholars Association, which is close to Hamas, staged a demonstration Dec. 17 in Gaza in solidarity with Aleppo and said the crimes committed against the city amounted to aid for the Israeli enemy. Association members warned against deliberate provocations between Sunnis and Shiites and rejected what they said was the Russian armys call to murder Syrians. The Hamas Womens Movement staged a demonstration in Gaza on Dec. 15. In Lebanon, Hamas canceled its Dec. 15 anniversary celebrations in solidarity with Aleppo.

Qassem Qaseer, a Lebanese politician close to Hezbollah, told Al-Monitor that while Hamas' public comments and actions did bother Iran and Hezbollah, the Iran-Hamas relationship is not in jeopardy. "Hamas could have kept silent about the incidents in Syria, because it must think about its political interests and maintain all the support it can get, rather than react emotionally. But the relationship between Hamas and Iran still stands despite its twists and turns.

Anbari, the Iranian analyst, also thinks the relationship will survive. He said, The status quo in Syria, Iraq and Yemen will affect relations between Hamas and Iran. I do not think it will reach a boycott because the relations have not been completely cut off and [communications] between both sides are ongoing, despite their fluctuations and although Hamas and Iran do not see eye to eye on several regional affairs.

The Israeli press is heavily covering the dispute between Hamas and Iran. Yuni Bin Manahim, an Israeli commentator on Arab affairs, noted on the News 1 website Dec. 18 that Hamas doesn't want to endanger the financial support it enjoys from Iran, but the Syrian developments might have a negative effect.

A Lebanese official who is well informed on the relations between Hamas and Iran told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, Hamas recent stance regarding Aleppo might trigger the anti-Hamas conservatives and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps inclination to halt their support for the movement, which has been going against Irans stances in the region, especially in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

There are no verifiable figures available on Irans financial support for Hamas, but Al Jazeera estimated in July 2015 that the amount exceeded $250 million per year between 2006 and 2012, before decreasing due to the dispute over Syria.

Adding to the tension, there is division among Hamas members over which path to follow.

Khaled Safi, a political science professor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, told Al-Monitor, The disputes between Hamas and Iran regarding Aleppo stem from the presence of two currents within the movement  one calling for distance from Iran to avoid angering the Muslim Brotherhood involved in the Syrian revolution, and another calling for embracing Iran to maintain its military and financial support. For this reason, Hamas does not have a unified stance vis-a-vis Iran. Therefore, their interaction is unstable and marked by many fluctuations.
December 29, 2016

On Dec. 22, 30 exiled Iranian dissidents penned an open letter to US President-elect Donald Trump, urging him to impose fresh sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the supreme leaders financial empire and direct the US Treasury to strongly enforce them.

The dissidents further urged Trump to form an international coalition to pressure the Islamic Republic of Iran and force the regime to cease its pursuit of long-range ballistic missiles.

Describing the Islamic State (IS) and the Islamic Republic as two sides of the same coin, the dissidents added, During the presidential campaign, we and millions of Iranians followed your forthright objection to the nuclear agreement reached between the Obama administration and the Islamic Republic of Iran. We sincerely hope that with your election, the new administration and the United States Congress will have the opportunity for the first time to review the regional and international outcomes of that disastrous agreement without any reservations, as was promised to the voters.

Given that most Iranians in Iran welcome the lifting of sanctions under the July 14, 2015, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the letter backfired, leading to serious criticism among both social media activists and politicians.

Iranian conservatives have used the letter to attack Reformists, referring to the signatories of the document as Reformists living abroad.

The hard-line Raja News wrote Dec. 25, The reason behind the writing of this letter in 2016 and the behind-the-curtain pressures in 2009 [in the aftermath of Irans disputed presidential election] to apply more sanctions on the Iranian people by the foreign-based Reformists do not need any analysis, because doing business at the price of sanctions on the Iranian people and receiving financial aid to set up anti-Iranian media and sites are part of the projects that they have been engaged in during the past decade, and for sure, the decrease in sanctions against our country will take the bread out of their mouths.

On Dec. 27, under the headline 30 Traitors, conservative Sobh-e-No newspaper described the authors of the letter as the same supporters and active directors of the 2009 protests. Of note, the disputed presidential election that year led to widespread unrest.

Meanwhile, Reformists have in turn slammed conservatives for linking the exiled dissidents to their camp. They further argue that their hard-liner foes and the signatories to the letter are equally damaging Iran.

Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari, who served as interior minister under former Reformist President Mohammad Khatami, said Dec. 26, The action of these 30 individuals was [designed] to help the 'worried ones' current. Reformists assess the JCPOA as a diplomatic action that is supposed to help solve problems, but those abroad who seek to cause trouble for the country, and these 30 individuals efforts, are [carried out] in order to portray the JCPOA as ineffective, just like what the 'worried ones' are doing inside the country.

Of note, the term "worried ones" refers to a group of hard-liners who vehemently opposed the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the six world powers between 2013 and 2015 and also the landmark accord that the talks produced.

Mousavi Lari added, Thus, the worried ones current, which is opposed to the government and questions the JCPOA, should be careful not to join the traitors based abroad.

Moreover, prominent Reformist Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, who served as government spokesman under Khatami, said Dec. 26, The action of these 30 individuals is nothing but treason.  Right now, the people based abroad who seek an overthrow [of the Islamic Republic] and the worried ones are  moving to damage Iran.

According to Kalame, the official news site of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi (who has been under house arrest since 2011), more than 300 social and civil activists have released a statement describing the letter of the 30 dissidents as "anti-national and shameful."

Furthermore, describing the letter as pathetic and full of gaffes," Hamid Reza Jalaeipour, a prominent professor of sociology at Tehran University and a member of the central council of the dissolved Reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, also wrote on his Telegram channel Dec. 26, I am a Reformist and know democracy is the path to save Iran, and I do not hesitate to [engage in] any kind of civil and legal activity and go to jail for this cause. But if Iran and the lives and security of Iranians are put in danger, I will go to battle under the command of [Supreme Leader] Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei.
December 28, 2016

On Dec. 27, Shahrvand daily ran an article that shocked ordinary Iranians and officials alike. The piece, titled Living inside the grave, reported on how a group of homeless people had taken shelter in a cemetery close to Shahriar, a town in Tehran province.

Its been a month since the cold led the homeless to settle in the big cemetery of Nasir Abad in the suburbs of Shahriar. Some are living inside the cemetery and the pre-prepared graves, and a few families are [residing] around the cemetery, Shahrvand reported.

According to the daily, Inside the cemetery, there are 300 pre-prepared graves, 20 of which have been occupied by at least 50 homeless people. One person or sometimes three or four people live inside each grave.

Shahrvand continued, These graves are mostly used for sleeping and are vacant during the day, while [these] people are away to collect waste products or beg in order to make money for drugs and food.

The guard of the cemetery told Shahrvand, The first days they came here, we forced them out, but the number of them is high, and they have no other place to go.  Some of them were taken to [a drug rehabilitation] center, but many of them escaped the center and returned here. He added, Almost all of them are addicts.

The report prompted many reactions. Asghar Farhadi, the famous Oscar-winning director, wrote a damning open letter to President Hassan Rouhani on Dec. 27, saying, Today, I read the shocking report on the lives of men, women and children who are living inside graves of a cemetery near Tehran.  I read it and Im completely choked with shame right now.

Noting the hard-liners possible plans to use the controversy as a political tool, Farhadi continued, I suggest that at least to create diversity in terms of writing todays history  which will shock [those in] the future  sometimes officials [should] walk anonymously among the people without any entourage.

Moreover, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a deputy of former Reformist President Mohammad Khatami, wrote on his Instagram account Dec. 27, The grave sleepers report shook Iran.  Injustice and poverty should be the concern of all officials and sides. All Iranian officials are equally guilty for the social crises, poverty and corruption. I wish the sensitivities of the senior clergy, top managers and officials of the administration, the judiciary and parliament to marginal issues be replaced by [focus on] the peoples problems.

On Dec. 28, Rouhani, while giving a speech at a meeting involving the supervision of government, said, I read the letter of one of the artists yesterday that was very painful. Some live in [cardboard] boxes or under bridges due to poverty, but I have heard less about the grave sleepers.  How can the honorable nation that sacrificed its life for the Prophets [Muhammad] household tolerate seeing some of its countrymen take shelter in graves to escape the cold weather? This is intolerable for the government and the people.

On the same day, the office of public outreach of the president announced that it would pursue the matter of the grave sleepers to address their dire situation.
December 28, 2016

TEHRAN, Iran  While Iran may be known for its massive oil and natural gas reserves to many people around the world, it is also known to some for its top-quality pistachios. Production of the nut in Iran dates to the fifth century B.C. For the last Iranian calendar year (ending March 20, 2016), Iran produced 261,000 tons of pistachios, 50% of which was exported. According to official figures, Iran earned as much as $1.2 billion from the export of 130,000 tons of pistachios last year, making it the biggest source of income in the agricultural sector.

Iran was for a time the unrivaled, leading producer of pistachios, with southeastern Kerman province being the hub of production for so-called green gold. That, however, changed in recent years. In 2012, the United States for the first time became the largest producer and exporter of pistachios, as production declined in Iran, mainly due to water shortages triggered by climate change and uncontrolled use of underground reserves.

Climate change has caused a nationwide drought in Iran, leading to 85% of the country being classified as arid or semi-arid. The decline in annual average rainfall and resulting shortage of surface water has forced farmers to dig more wells to pump water from underground reserves. Nearly half of the 750,000 water pumps on Iranian farms are illegal, which illustrates why the unconstrained use of underground water in agriculture is the main source of water waste in the country.

The situation is grim in Kerman province, which accounts for 70% of the countrys pistachio production. Mohsen Jalalpour, the former chairman of the Iran Chamber of Commerce, is one of the many experts who has repeatedly warned about the danger to pistachio production. Kermans pistachio industry will last no more than 10 years, he told the business weekly Tejarat-e Farda in November.

According to Jalalpour, who is also a former chairman of Irans Pistachio Association, the drought is taking its toll on Kermans pistachio farms, with 12,000 to 15,000 hectares of farms dying from a lack of water every year.

Ali Ahmadian, a pistachio grower from Kerman, confirmed Jalalpour's general concerns, telling the Iranian Students' News Agency on Oct. 8, Unfortunately, pistachio farms are drying out because of water shortages. In addition, he identified another, related problem, stating, The quality of the water has also suffered, because the level of underground water has been going deeper, now at 300 to 400 meters [984 to 1,312 feet].

Ahmadian also complained about the lack of government support and the high cost of pistachio production, Unlike other agricultural products, such as wheat, that are bought by the government, pistachios are purchased by middlemen.

Seyed Mahmood Abtahi, the chairman of the board of Irans Pistachio Association, told Al-Monitor that water consumption from underground sources is much higher than the input from rainfall. There is currently a plan under discussion about developing a water market under which  if approved and implemented  a greater amount of the existing water will be dedicated to those areas that have a higher yield rate of production, he told Al-Monitor.

The Iranian pistachio industry has also been affected by yearslong nuclear-related sanctions. The industry was not directly targeted, but sales of pistachios to foreign markets, including Europe, were hindered because of the banking and shipping restrictions imposed as part of the punitive measures.

Despite the domestic hurdles and foreign challenges, Iran is still among the top global producers and exporters of pistachios. After relinquishing the top ranking to the United States in 2012, it regained it in 2015 as a result of better access to international markets due to the removal of sanctions and a drop in US production.

Iran and the United States together account for 70-80% of global pistachio production and have been competing for the top spot as both the biggest producer and exporter over the past several years. Also recently, Australia, Turkey and Spain have increased production, thereby allowing them to join the export market, yet another factor that could exacerbate the problems of the Iranian pistachio industry in the near term.

Several plans have been formulated to reduce the impact of the water shortage, some of which have already been implemented with success. These include measures aimed at managing the use of water to help maintain underground reserves.

In addition, the government wants to encourage water conservation by allocating funds to farmers to help them buy modern irrigation equipment to replace traditional systems. Many experts advocate developing farms in regions with better soil and water resources, along with using modern cultivation methods and new types of pistachios with higher resistance to failure and disease.

Other than the above mentioned measures, experts also say Iran could increase its exports by further improving the quality of its pistachios, such as through better cultivation. Removing customs duty restrictions, establishing banking enterprises to connect producers and exporters and providing support to exporters for long-term contracts are among other measures that could boost the Iranian pistachio industry.

Despite the hurdles and threats the industry faces, the latest statistics indicate that Iran exported more than 40,000 tons of pistachios worth in excess of $381 million in the first half of the current Iranian year (beginning March 21, 2016). The figures show a 22% increase in terms of weight and a 20% jump in terms of value over the previous year. As a result, Iran is expected to export more than 136,000 tons of pistachios by the end of the current Iranian year (ending March 20, 2017).

With the Iranian government successfully moving toward reducing its reliance on oil revenues in recent years, it is expected to dedicate a good deal of attention and resources to the pistachio industry to maintain its lion's share of the global market. Data released by the US Department of Agriculture is a clear indication in this regard, suggesting that Iran will remain the worlds biggest pistachio producer for the 2016/17 crop year.
December 28, 2016

The long-awaited Citizens Rights Charter promised by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was finally unveiled Dec. 19. After the signing ceremony of the charter, a text message from the president was sent to millions of cellphones in Iran. It read, Noble people of Iran, lets get more familiar with our rights and powerfully protect them.

The charter was one of Rouhanis key campaign promises during the 2013 presidential elections. Following his victory in the polls, Rouhani tasked Elham Aminzadeh, the current presidential adviser on citizenship rights, with drawing up the charter. Within 100 days of taking office, on Nov. 26, an initial draft of the document was made available to the public through the governments official website. The idea, according to Rouhani, was that the public and experts would review it and contribute their ideas.

The initial draft was, however, met with much criticism, the most important of which were its lack of enforceability and the fact that it was a collection of laws already found in Irans legal system that related to citizens rights, but were too dispersed and never heeded  critiques that are still being made after the publishing of the final draft.

To alleviate these concerns, Rouhani issued a statement to governmental organizations on Dec. 19. He called for the precise implementation of the charter, saying, [I] have prepared the necessary bill regarding citizens rights and will present it to parliament. I am confident that other [legislative and judicial] powers will cooperate to prepare the grounds for its implementation. But what is the significance of Rouhanis Citizens Rights Charter, which according to experts is merely a collection and adaptation of existing laws and lacks any guarantee of being enforced?

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Iranian lawyer Nemat Ahmadi highlighted that the document was neither a law passed by parliament nor an executive bill passed by the Cabinet. Ahmadi said, It is called a charter and does not need to be enforced. Its goal is to be informative, which it has been. Also, it is good for laws to be reiterated so that people can see what rights they have based on the constitution and  which [of their rights] are not being implemented.

Iranian law, and particularity the constitution, has always been attentive to the issue of citizens rights. However, the term citizens rights was only first used in Irans legal system on April 8, 2004, by then-judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi who issued a 14-point Charter on Citizens Rights of his own.

The measure, which was aimed at protecting the natural rights of accused individuals, preventing different forms of torture or mistreatment by judiciary officers, and observing the law during interrogations, arrests, confiscation of property and unwarranted seizure of the accused individuals finances was communicated by Shahroudi to the judiciary, police and intelligence officials. On May 4, 2004, it was ratified by parliament under what came to be known as the Law on Respecting Legitimate Freedoms and Protecting Citizens Rights. The day after, it was approved by the Guardian Council.

Yet this measure was also criticized for its lack of executive guarantees and for limiting individuals rights to a lawful trial. It also came under fire for never being truly observed. In fact, the judiciary  which is the organization tasked with implementing the law in Iran  had come up with the initiative due to concerns expressed by civil and political activists in Iran regarding the violation of citizens rights. Given the governments limited powers over the judiciary, these concerns remain  even following the announcement of the new charter.

Ahmadi, however, believes that the primary organization that is guilty of violating citizens rights in past years is in fact the executive branch. He said that "the governments subordinate organizations are responsible for these violations, but that some citizens rights are also being violated by the judiciary branch.

Yet he emphasized, But at this moment, when we have no power over the judiciary, security and intelligence organizations, it is the best opportunity to hold the government accountable. For example, the violation of rights regarding the formation of unions and their activities or the continued shutdown of the press association of Iran, and so on  have nothing to do with the judiciary or legislature. These are part of the executive branchs responsibilities. In fact, this charter is a great pretext to question the administration about whether citizens rights are abused by governmental organizations. We have to use this charter, and when necessary, ask the government if it accepts its own Citizens Rights Charter.

With parliaments ratification of Iran's fourth Economic, Social and Cultural Development Plan on Sept. 1, 2004, the drawing up of a Citizens Rights Charter was declared as one of the governments responsibilities. Indeed, Article 100 of this law charges the government with formulating such a charter and having it approved by the relevant authorities in order to enhance human rights, lay the foundation for growth and advancement, and to create a feeling of personal and social security in society.

During the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013), no attempt was made to draw up such a charter and the only thing his governments legal department did in this respect was to prepare a booklet with a collection of laws and regulations on citizens rights.

Ahead of the 2013 presidential vote, the drawing up of a charter  one of the key demands of Rouhanis supporters  became one of the incumbent presidents main election promises: a pledge that took three years to fulfill and only months before his bid for re-election. As such, the timing of the unveiling of the charter has led to speculations about whether the move is merely propaganda.

However, according to Ahmadi, the Citizens Rights Charter is nonetheless an edited and beautiful text that is seen as one of the Rouhani administrations positive achievements. On the one hand, by announcing this charter through a widespread text message, Rouhani familiarized people with their rights and I hope that the people will demand their rights. In this vein, I see this as a positive step. On the other hand, throughout the history of the Islamic Republic, Rouhani has either been part of the power structure or in the security apparatus and thus knows the intricacies of working in Iran as well as the relevant responsibilities and restrictions. The reason for writing this charter is to remind the powerful but yet divided sources [of power] in the country that they need to be aware of peoples rights, he said.
December 29, 2016

Israel went to war Dec. 23. Yes, war. That was the term Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used to describe the campaign waged against Israeli settlements at the UN Security Council in New York.

Haaretz reported that Netanyahu threatened New Zealands foreign minister, Murray McCull, telling him, If you continue to promote this resolution, from our point of view it will be a declaration of war. Netanyahu probably wasn't intending to launch long-range missiles at Wellington, so one could assume that the prime minister was referring to a diplomatic war on New Zealand. Thus the day after the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 affirming the illegality of Israeli settlements, Netanyahu set out for diplomatic battle  and not just against New Zealand's far-off islands. Netanyahu embroiled Israel in a diplomatic world war.

Even Netanyahus harshest critics agree that he was blessed with keen intelligence. He is undoubtedly aware of the heavy price Israel is paying, and will keep on paying, for his settlement policy. One cannot accuse Netanyahu of inexperience. With Shimon Peres recent passing, there isnt a single Israeli politician who has accrued richer diplomatic experience. This leaves one to seek an explanation in the realm of mental health for the prime ministers bizarre conduct. A former top official who requested anonymity said that in a conversation about the conflict with the Palestinians, Netanyahu told him that he actually likes conflict. Thats where Im in my element, he was quoted as saying.

In a 2001 article based on long, in-depth observation of the prime ministers actions and pronouncements, Shaul Kimhi, of the Department of Psychology at the Tel-Hai Academic College, diagnosed Netanyahu as having a narcissistic personality. The renowned political psychologist  Kimhi is a member of several prominent international research organizations  noted that narcissistic leaders are characterized by megalomaniacal behavior, perceive themselves as saviors of their people from tragic mistakes and are lacking in interpersonal skills and credibility. They come across well in the media, are good at manipulating people, lack commitment toward partners and aides, have a limited capacity for empathy (if at all), are constantly busy going after rivals from within and are devoid of democratic values, which they regard as a mere necessary evil in order to get elected. In addition, such leaders promote a public image of themselves as strongmen who know how to command respect and mercilessly attack their enemies (real and imagined, alike).

Sticking with the war analogy, the prime ministers behavior since the Security Council's action can be compared to that of the leader of an allegedly democratic, law-abiding state that orders a full-scale military assault on all of its neighbors without any advance discussion with his military command or Cabinet. These days, it is not hard to find politicians, including in the Likud, expressing emotions ranging from amazement to panic over Netanyahus behavior. Everyone does so, however, in a whisper, after getting journalists, including yours truly, to swear that they will not mention them by name.

Their behavior is a clear symptom of the diagnosis offered by former Minister Avi Gabai of Kulanu about his former Cabinet colleagues. In a Dec. 26 interview on the investigative TV magazine Uvda, Gabai said, They mostly work at getting re-elected. Gabai did not exclude his friend, Kulanu Chairman and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon or his colleagues in the young party, which was formed ahead of the 2015 elections.

Indeed, even politicians who recently served in the top echelons of the defense and diplomatic establishments, such as Construction and Housing Minister and Maj. Gen. (Res.) Yoav Galant, and former Israeli Ambassador to the United States and Deputy Minister Michael Oren, have not felt it incumbent upon themselves to react to Netanyahus ravings. The most articulate opponents of international boycotts against settlement products lost their voices when the prime minister instructed them to boycott state leaders, sever ties with UN agencies and lash out at a serving US president. The veteran politician, Shas leader and Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, who 25 years ago fought tooth and nail against fellow government ministers who demanded that Israel bomb Iraq, has also become tongue-tied.

Israeli foreign service officials are walking around these days with their heads hanging. Netanyahu, who holds the foreign affairs portfolio, is not interested in their opinions, having always maintained that the Foreign Ministry is teeming with leftists. A senior Israeli diplomat who asked not to be identified told Al-Monitor that he luckily does not have to explain the prime ministers lunatic conduct, given that all the politicians, foreign service officers and journalists in the country where he is posted have left for lengthy Christmas vacations. In any event, how can anyone explain the behavior of a leader who warns one day that the proposed regularization bill to legalize unauthorized Israeli settlements could result in an investigation of Israeli leaders by the International Criminal Court in The Hague and several days later votes in favor of the legislation? Then after that, Netanyahu attacks states that took heed of his warning and decided at the Security Council that the settlements are, indeed, illegal.

Kimhi warned in his article that in adults with a narcissistic personality, such as Netanyahu, the traits become accentuated over time. This explains the radicalization of the prime ministers behavior. A minor threat by US President Bill Clinton led to Netanyahu signing the Hebron Protocol (for an Israeli redeployment in Hebron) 20 years ago, in 1997. Eight years ago, all it took was President Barack Obamas Cairo speech for the prime minister to commit to a two-state solution and a temporary freeze on construction in the settlements. On Jan. 21, 2017, his ideal president will move into the White House. It will be interesting to see how these two conflict aficionados get along.
December 28, 2016

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman was not about to be left out of the offensive launched by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against the states that on Dec. 23 supported UN Security Council Resolution 2334, condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as a violation of international law. On Dec. 24, Liberman instructed Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, who heads the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), to sever ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and avoid working sessions with its senior officials on civilian-diplomatic matters.

COGAT, the military unit tasked with ensuring the smooth daily routine of the Palestinian population in the West Bank (and also in the Gaza Strip), deals with a variety of issues, such as transferring goods and raw materials into the West Bank, providing energy, developing infrastructure, coordinating with the PA, issuing transit permits for Palestinians traveling to and from the West Bank through Israel, allocating permits for Palestinians wishing to work in Israel, handling humanitarian issues, and more. The office of the coordinator deals with matters intrinsic to the daily lives of the more than 1.5 million Palestinians residing in the West Bank under PA control.

Libermans instructions do not relate to COGATs activities in the territories per se, but will make carrying them out more difficult, cumbersome and inefficient. To prove to the Israeli public that he, too, has the authority to retaliate and the punitive measures with which to do so, Liberman is acting against the Israeli defense policy of maintaining routine life for the Palestinians in order to ease tensions and reduce security threats to Israel.

In light of the lessons learned from the second intifada, which rocked Israel between 2000 and 2005, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) opted to avoid collective punishment in the West Bank during the recent wave of terror that swept Israel, in order to prevent large swaths of the Palestinian public from joining in the violence. The pervasive approach was and remains to pinpoint perpetrators of terror and act against them in the West Bank, while at the same time relaxing restrictions on other Palestinian civilians, making their lives easier.

Despite the concern over potential terror attacks, no new roadblocks were erected in the West Bank, and transit points into Israel were not sealed. On the contrary, defense authorities encouraged the issuance of tens of thousands of permits for Palestinians to work in Israel in order to ease their financial straits and thereby lessen the motivation of young Palestinians to engage in terror activity.

This policy, which senior IDF officials describe as a soft and wise hand, according to a military source speaking on condition of anonymity, was advocated primarily by the IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot. The head of Central Command, which holds jurisdiction over the West Bank, Maj. Gen. Roni Numa, was also on board.

The latest wave of terror attacks has almost been suppressed, but Liberman, motivated by political considerations, has chosen to shake things up and put spokes in the wheels of the civil administration. Whereas Netanyahus controversial retaliatory moves in the wake of the Security Council resolution could result in a deterioration of Israels international standing, Libermans actions endanger the security of the countrys inhabitants.

The Defense Ministrys instructions are to sever ties with the PA on civilian-diplomatic matters but to maintain security coordination on the West Bank, but the two cannot be separated. Coordination on civilian and security affairs are intertwined. Economic pressure and sanctions against the PA have in the past proven to be precursors to outbreaks of violence.

Taking security cooperation with the PA for granted is a conceptual mistake. A senior Palestinian defense source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that Liberman will very quickly realize his error if he thinks he can undermine the PAs civilian affairs and still maintain security coordination as usual. The source said there is tremendous pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to cancel security cooperation that only serves Israel, but he has so far staunchly resisted and refused to undermine cooperation.

In light of Libermans instructions, Abbas will now have to decide whether he is willing to keep quiet about every provocative Israeli move in the West Bank, according to the source. We are currently trying to understand what the decision means, he said. Will it really have any effect on the ground, or is it just talk for political needs? But even if we find out that these are just words designed to appease the Israeli right, this game cannot continue. You cant come and say, Keep on with the security coordination, because we find it convenient, and it protects our security, and at the same time slap Abbas in the face and portray him as a malleable partner. This cannot go on, and it cannot work this way.

According to the Palestinian source, Israeli civil administration officials have expressed their displeasure with the order handed down by their boss. He added that Abbas will not rush to annul security coordination, but could choose other, less radical steps, which he declined to identify.

The Israelis know exactly what we can do and how it can harm them, he said. Liberman and Israel arent the only ones who have tools. We do, too. The difference between us is that we are not playing with fire. We are not taking populist measures in order to get applause.

After years of disappointment in the Palestinian president, even the skeptics and harshest critics of his leadership now concede for the first time that the diplomatic path he chose to follow is proving itself. This in no way, however, lessens, even a little, the pressure of Palestinian public opinion on him and on top PA officials to not give Liberman the other cheek.
December 28, 2016

BAGHDAD  Miad Jubouri, an Iraqi mother of five who joined the ranks of the Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State (IS), has been participating in the battle as part of the Lions of the Tigris faction for the past two years. In a patriotic and conservative Iraqi society, Jubouris fight alongside the male-dominated Iraqi security forces has caught the attention of both the community and the media.

While Jubouri's participation on the battlefield is striking due to the conservative nature of Iraqi society, this phenomenon is on the rise. The number of women who have joined the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) have increased, totaling roughly 3,000 women. In this context, Fatima Sultani, a PMU trainee, told Al-Monitor that women in the PMU provide service, media and medical assistance, in reference to womens roles in the security forces being mostly limited to logistical support.

A report issued on June 28, 2014, on Kurdish female peshmerga fighters who battled IS in Taza Khormato town and Bashir village, near the northern city of Kirkuk, highlights the participation of Kurdish and Yazidi women in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) who fought on the front lines and were engaged in direct combat with IS.

In this regard, member of the parliamentary Security and Defense Committee Abdul Aziz Hassan told Al-Monitor, There is a womens regiment in the KRG's Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, and its members have rights and duties, equal to those of peshmerga fighters.

He said, The experiments on the battlefield that included female fighters showed that women fought courageously and took on heroic roles, particularly in Sinjar and the northern Ninevah Plains.

However, the role of the Yazidi women in taking up arms and fighting remains the most prominent in the fight against IS. This was clearly visible in the liberation of Sinjar in November 2015, after IS killed many residents and captured many women.

Speaking to Al-Monitor, activist and author Suad al-Khafaji explains the reasons why Iraqi women, especially Yazidi and Kurdish women, rush to join the security forces in the areas occupied by IS in northern Iraq. She said, Women in northern areas occupied by IS were captured by this extremist group and transported to Raqqa, which IS considers as the capital of its caliphate, where Yazidi women were sexually exploited in the most heinous of ways.

This point of view was reinforced by Meredith Tax, the author of the book A Road Unforeseen; Women Fight the Islamic State, who wrote Aug. 8, [Some of these Yazidi women] know what horrors await those captured by IS.

Meanwhile, the special representative and head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, Jan Kubis, said Nov. 29, during a conference in Baghdad on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, The UN stands in solidarity with women who have fallen victim to IS crimes, and we insist on holding the group accountable for the horrible crimes it has committed.

Such concerns also reveal the motives behind making some 500 Kurdish women undergo intensive training in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah in August 2014, in preparation for any future battles. In addition, womens participation in the fight against IS is a response to the groups ability to recruit women and use them in its fights, media events and for logistical support, even though IS extremist ideologies state that women should be housewives and mothers. In addition, IS considers 9-year-old girls to be of legal age to marry IS fighters.

IS uses women in sexual jihad as a means to attract new members, given how this is legitimate from a religious point of view. In this context, an Iraqi woman killed an IS leader near the IS-occupied city of Mosul on Sept. 7, 2015, to take revenge for forcing her into sexual slavery. Previously, al-Qaeda had also used sexual jihad to attract girls to join its ranks.

In the same context, Umm Sayyaf, the wife of an IS leader, who was caught by US forces in Syria on July 6, 2016, said that women are recruited to help attract new members, to spy, for sexual exploitation and to give birth to a new IS generation.

Arshad al-Salihi, a member of the parliamentary Human Rights Committee, told Al-Monitor the fact that IS recruited women to fight on the frontlines was a motive for Iraqi women to join the security forces, the police and the PMU.

Most Iraqi women are fighting IS for personal revenge, such as Umm Hady who said that she carried a machete to cut off the heads of IS members to avenge her husband and brothers whom IS had killed.

However, Salihi said, These are individual cases. Generally speaking, Iraqi women are fighting in the ranks of official organizations, under military command, which makes their mission noble. They are fighting to defend their country, not for personal revenge or terrorist motives, as is the case of women recruited by IS.
December 29, 2016

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeated his accusation that Turkeys Western allies  especially the United States  supported terrorist groups in Syria. Speaking at an award ceremony for the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey on Dec. 29, Erdogan lashed out at past claims in the Western media that Ankara had supported the Islamic State. He said by not backing Turkeys Operation Euphrates Shield (along with Ankaras ally, the Free Syrian Army) in their efforts to capture the city of al-Bab from IS, the West was basically tipping the scales in favor of the fanatical group.

Erdogan then steered the conversation to a safer issue: US support for the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the Peoples Protection Units (YPG). Since the rise of IS in 2014, the Barack Obama administration has cooperated with the PYD in Syria. In the run-up to the PYDs operation at IS capital, Raqqa, the United States gave air support as well as logistical and intelligence backing to the PYD-led Syrian Democratic Forces. With Russias military intervention in Syria and Russian overtures to Kurdish groups fighting IS, Washington tried hard to keep its Syrian Kurdish partners happy.

But instead of Russia, Erdogan wagged his finger at the United States: If you provide all sorts of weapons aid to terrorist organizations, then provide a cover for it and say no we do not provide weapons, only ammunition, sorry, we wont buy that. Turkey considers the PYD an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought Ankara for independence and autonomy in southeast Turkey since 1984.

In a press statement Dec. 28, the US Embassy in Ankara denied the Turkish governments allegations: The United States government has not provided weapons or explosives to the YPG or the PKK  period.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu elaborated on Erdogans position and kept the focus on the PYD. During a live TV interview Dec. 29, Cavusoglu said, The coalition that includes America, for a while, has not provided air support to our Operation Euphrates Shield. Turkeys top diplomat also added, clearly in response to the US Embassys statement, The United States of America is giving weapons to the YPG, PYD  period.  It is absolutely clear: The USA has given weapons to the YPG with the pretext of fighting [IS]. They know this well. We know this well. We have documents. Everyone around the world knows it. Thus, more than anything, we need to be honest. [If the Americans] are saying we did give weapons so far; that was a mistake, thats fine.

During the live interview, Cavusoglu provided additional details on the impending agreement between Turkey and Russia for a comprehensive cease-fire in Syria. He said Ankara and Moscow plan on implementing the truce before the new year. According to Sabah, Russia will act as the guarantor of the [Syrian] regime, while Turkey will act as a guarantor on behalf of the moderate opposition.

Meanwhile, pro-government Yeni Safak quoted Cavusoglu as saying it is out of the question that Turkey will hold talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He added, All foreign fighters in Syria, including Hezbollah, need to leave the country.
December 28, 2016

Did the Turkish government bargain with the putschists on the night of July 15? Who was involved in the political aspects of the coup? A parliamentary commission was supposed to answer these and other critical questions still hanging over the attempted coup, which has had dramatic consequences for the country. Earlier in December, however, the investigative commission abruptly wrapped up its work at the behest of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The commission of lawmakers from all four parties in parliament began its work in October, with heated arguments between members of the opposition and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Representatives of the main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP) insisted that Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar and head of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) Hakan Fidan be summoned to answer questions about the afternoon of July 15 and the momentous night that followed. But though the two were at the heart of the events, the AKP members rejected the demand.

The government has blamed the botched coup on US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers in the military, rebranding the community as the Fethullah Gulen Terror Organization. Many aspects of the putsch remain murky, with the government reluctant to discuss them publicly. The Gulen community was the AKPs chief ally until December 2013, when massive corruption probes implicating Cabinet ministers and Erdogans family rattled Ankara. The government blocked the probes, arguing they were trumped up by Gulenist police and prosecutors in a bid to topple the AKP. The close relationship between Gulen and the AKP prior to the fallout is another topic the government is averse to discussing today.

To dilute debate on such inconvenient issues, the AKP members of the investigation commission followed a particular strategy. They invited a plethora of retired politicians and military officers to flesh out their thesis that Gulenists had been backed by all governments in the past four decades, which saw Gulen become a prominent figure in the country. The strategy, however, often backfired. Former police chief and Interior Minister Mehmet Agar, for instance, asserted that no Gulenist was promoted to a senior position during his tenures in the 1990s, blaming the Gulenist entrenchment in the police on the AKP. Former Chief of General Staff Hilmi Ozkok said top military commanders had warned the AKP government at a National Security Council meeting in 2004 that the Gulenists had become too powerful in the state and proposed an action plan. We monitored what was being done, but frankly we didnt see much, he said.

As the AKP appeared increasingly cornered in the commission, Erdogan made a surprise statement Dec. 9, urging the panel to wrap up its work.

The AKP members, who held the majority in the commission, quickly heeded the call, and with a similar speed penned a draft report of conclusions. The draft, leaked to the media Dec. 22, echoes the partys strategy to water down its responsibility for the Gulenist entrenchment in the state. It asserts the Gulen community was strengthened by all the governments that preceded the AKP since the 1970s. The report claims the Gulenists were backed by the MIT as well as the United States and the CIA. The relationship between Gulen and the United States is discussed at length, including claims that children of President Barack Obamas relatives in Kenya had been admitted free of charge to Gulenist-run schools in the African country.

The only mention of the AKPs own ties with Gulen is limited to a statement that Gulen sought to project an image of someone close to the government after the AKP came to power in 2003. Yet the report contains some scandalous admissions as well. The main financial sources of Gulens organization, for instance, are listed as government incentives, public tenders and municipal grants. Many public tenders are said to have been awarded to businesspeople who paid racket money to Gulen. According to the document, Gulens followers, who used to be called the community, should be defined as a terrorist organization after 2013, when Erdogan and Gulen fell out. This definition is the main argument that could help the AKP save its skin in the upcoming trials.

The report fails to offer any information beyond what the media has reported on the violence perpetrated by the putschists.

CHP members slammed both the draft report and the commissions methods, arguing that the work remained incomplete without hearing Fidan and Akar. In press conferences and on social media, they insisted that the events of July 15 are still a mystery and accused the AKP of a cover-up.

A military officer, for instance, testified that the MIT had been tipped off at 11 a.m., hours before the first soldiers appeared in the streets in the evening. Another officer, who is currently behind bars, had said that Fidan was at the General Staff headquarters up until 8 p.m. The commissions CHP members have unanswered questions for Fidan and Akar: When did they learn of the coup plot? What precautions did they take? Was there any bargaining between the government and the putschists? Had the coup been foiled earlier than it seemed? Could it be that the 249 victims of the putsch were knowingly sent to their deaths?

The coup leaders, who called themselves The Peace at Home Council in a statement issued on the night of July 15, had reportedly prepared a list of names who would assume duty after the coup. The list included the names of would-be mayors, but top posts such as the president and the prime minister were left empty. The commissions CHP members had asked to visit prisons to speak to arrested generals about who had planned to assume the presidents, the prime ministers and ministerial posts, whether the coup leadership included politicians and whether any bargaining took place or was still taking place with the government. But this request, too, was turned down by the Justice Ministry.

According to Aykut Erdogdu, one of the commissions CHP members, The AKP seems to fear the exposure of certain truths about the coup. They seem to be hiding certain truths and appear very fearful that they could come to light. Whether Erdogdu is right is hard to say, but the AKPs move to close down the commission speaks of its reluctance to provide answers to many questions that remain unanswered.
December 28, 2016

Al-Bab means gate in Arabic. It is also a name for a relatively small town in Aleppo province. Al-Bab is located 40 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of Aleppo, 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the Turkish border, and it had a population of 63,069 in 2004 who were mostly Sunni Muslim Arabs.

From the military point of view, this strategically unimportant town has become the location where the Turkish army has suffered heavy casualties. The casualties inflicted upon the Turkish Armed Forces has surpassed those of the Americans and Russians, who had militarily engaged much earlier than Turkey and in a much wider zone.

The difficulties faced by the Turkish military led President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to accuse the United States and the coalition of supporting terrorist organizations. Speaking in Ankara, he said, We have now encircled the terrorist Daesh [the Islamic State (IS)] from all four sides at al-Bab. The coalition sources, unfortunately, are not keeping their promises. Even in that, we will not change our course. It is impossible for us to retract. They [the United States and the coalition] were accusing us of supporting [IS]. Now they support terrorist groups including [IS], YPG [People's Protection Units] and PYD [Democratic Union Party]. It's very clear. We have confirmed evidence, with pictures, photos and videos.

When asked about Erdogans accusations in a Dec. 27 press briefing, US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, Its ludicrous, to be honest. No basis for truth, as you can all imagine.

A journalist asked Toner, The point is al-Bab. Hes criticizing the coalition for not supporting the Turkish armed forces offensive in al-Bab.  Do you have any reason why the coalition is not supporting Turkey in this operation?

Toner responded, We have supported their efforts along the border to clear it of [IS]. Were in dialogue with them about possible next steps we can take in terms of al-Bab  and we certainly dont want to see them enter into al-Bab without sufficient support.

Another journalist asked, Doesnt that relate to Turkeys attacks on the US  the US ally, the YPG, as in Manbij, and at that point there were all sorts of tensions developed between the United States and Turkey, and the US military let it be known that Turkey had gone past what was authorized in al-Bab? But the core of it was Turkish attacks on the US ally, the YPG, fighting in northern Syria and around Manbij and other areas. Wasnt that the core of the problem? Another journalist followed up and asked, In the past, very recent past, you defined these Turkey moves around al-Bab as uncoordinated and not constructive. Do you still see the al-Bab offense as uncoordinated and not constructive?

Toner tried to evade the questions and stressed the importance of Turkey as an ally against IS and alleged that American officials are in constant contact with their Turkish counterparts.

However, nothing can conceal that Turkeys newfound alliance on the Syrian battleground is with Russia, and Ankara is involved with the trilateral (Moscow, Tehran and Ankara) initiative to resolve the Syria question.

Turkey cooperated with Russia for Aleppo and signed the Moscow Declaration, which acknowledged the legitimacy and the rights of sovereignty of the Bashar al-Assad regime. This was an admittance of the defeat of Turkeys 5-year-old Syria policy that prioritized the removal of Assad. It was also a 180-degree about-face.

With an apparent policy failure impossible to cover up, Turkey sought a face-saving success story for its Syria policy: the fixation to move into al-Bab and to cleanse it of IS.

After the fall of Aleppo to the regime (with Ankaras assistance), taking al-Bab from IS serves as a pretext for preventing the establishment of the Kurdish corridor adjacent to Turkeys border with Syria.

Turkeys nationalist decision-makers, in the wake of the fall of Aleppo and the assassination of Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov in Ankara, seemingly lost their way in their Syria policy. Without much thought, preposterous statements on al-Bab followed one after another.

Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli, speaking in his hometown of Giresun, a town on Turkeys Black Sea coast, said, The defense line for Giresun should be set at al-Bab. The security of Ankara is synonymous with the security of al-Bab. If those areas cannot be controlled, one cannot defend Ankara, and also cannot defend Giresun.

From al-Bab, in the vicinity of Aleppo, one needs to cross the entire landmass of Asia Minor to reach the Black Sea coast. For the first time ever, a strategic calculation was established between al-Bab and Giresun.

A similar assessment came from Devlet Bahceli, the chairman of the Nationalist Action Party and Erdogans foremost political ally. He said, If we return empty-handed from the al-Bab operation, we will put Diyarbakir into risk, we will jeopardize the security of Ankara.

Al-Bab, which until recently was an unheard-of northern Syrian town, has become the source of never-heard strategic assessments. The underlying reason for the focus on al-Bab is more about the Kurdish PYD and YPG rather than IS, which still holds the town.

In the wake of Russias political-military supremacy from cleansing eastern Aleppo of Turkish-supported rebel elements and Ankaras drifting toward Moscow for diplomatic efforts to resolve the Syria question in addition to Erdogans growing resentment of American support to the YPG around Raqqa, Turkeys Syria policy transformed to an unwarranted, irrational obsession for al-Bab.

The fears that Turkey, with no exit strategy, can be dragged into a Syrian quagmire are being verified.

Al-Bab, which was once no more than one of the gates to Aleppo, has thus become the gate to Turkeys Syria blunder.
Downtown Birmingham's iconic Redmont Hotel signs are ready for their closeup once again.

The Roof at the Redmont, the newly renovated rooftop lounge and bar atop the historic Redmont Hotel, opened mid-October 2016. The opening capped a multi-million dollar renovation of the historic 14-story hotel.

Take the hotel elevators to the penthouse and you'll find a stylish and sophisticated space that beckons you to pause before taking in serene views of Birmingham's skyline from the rooftop terrace. You can grab drinks from the cozy interior bar or step outside to the outdoor bar that features a large tv and has room for three bartenders in warmer weather.

The Redmont Hotel Birmingham was one of dozens of properties that was revitalized using Alabama's historic tax credit. It opened in early 2016 after an extensive renovation. The hotel's interior, designed by Natalie Toy, blends vintage fixtures with glamorous updated decor.

The Redmont Hotel first opened to guests in 1925 and is considered the oldest Birmingham hotel still in use. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

The Roof at the Redmont is hosting its first New Year's Eve party. It's one of our 31 ways to ring in 2017 in style in Alabama. The Redmont Hotel Birmingham is located downtown at 2101 Fifth Avenue North, Birmingham, AL 35203. To book a room, visit the Redmont Hotel Birmingham, Curio Collection by Hilton website here.
A Centre man faces multiple charges after authorities say he wrecked his car crashing into a tree while fleeing a deputy.

Cherokee County Sheriff Jeff Shaver said Adam Kane Wright, 18, faces multiple charges including attempting to elude, drug possession, possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, tampering with physical evidence, possession of an altered firearm, possession of a firearm by a violent felon, criminal mischief and some traffic violations.

Shaver said Wright was driving a 2003 Nissan Altima Wednesday when a deputy attempted to stop him. He fled, crashing his vehicle into a tree and a fence.

Authorities found methamphetamine, other drugs and a firearm in the vehicle.

Wright is being held in the Cherokee County Detention Center.
D Dipasupil/FilmMagic(NEW YORK)  President-elect Donald Trump is connecting the strength of the economy to his election, though it is unclear how accurate that connection is.

Trump boasted about the Consumer Confidence Index on Twitter on Tuesday, correctly noting that the index has reached its highest point in more than a decade and a half.

"The U.S. Consumer Confidence Index for December surged nearly four points to 113.7, THE HIGHEST LEVEL IN MORE THAN 15 YEARS! Thanks Donald!" he wrote, prompting social media users to start the hashtag "#thanksdonald." The hashtag trended worldwide for a time, spawning more than 83,000 tweets as of just before 5 p.m. Wednesday.

The U.S. Consumer Confidence Index for December surged nearly four points to 113.7, THE HIGHEST LEVEL IN MORE THAN 15 YEARS! Thanks Donald!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016

Tuesday's tweet wasn't the only time in the past week that Trump credited himself with boosting the economy.

The world was gloomy before I won - there was no hope. Now the market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016

But Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody's Analytics, a company focused on providing insight to global financial markets, says it is too soon to tell if the bump is tied to Trump or not, his self-congratulatory tweets aside.

"It may be his supporters being happy that he won -- it's possible," Zandi told ABC News. "It may be that people are just relieved that the election is over. It was a pretty emotionally trying election."

He added: "These survey numbers go up and down and all around, and one month does not make a trend."

The Conference Board, which produces the Consumer Confidence Index, said that the surge in optimism was "most pronounced among older consumers."

"Looking ahead to 2017, consumers continued optimism will depend on whether or not their expectations are realized," Lynn Franco, the director of economic indicators at The Conference Board, said in a statement Tuesday.

David Wessel, a senior fellow in economic studies at The Brookings Institution, a research group based in Washington, D.C., said that the surge in consumer confidence and the stock market post-election could rightly be attributed to Trump and the GOP as a whole.

"It seems fair to give Mr. Trump and (importantly) the Republican Congress credit for that -- though it's stretch to say that already has translated into consumer spending or business investment," Wessel told ABC News by email.

"Of course, the risk that Mr. Trump runs by taking credit for the upswings is that he will be blamed for the downturns if, for instance, he cannot deliver on his vow to bring back factory jobs or if Congress fails to enact legislation fulfilling all his tax promises," Wessel added.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Following news reports that Uber drivers are illegally operating in at least two New York counties, the Upstate Transportation Association is urging the state attorney general to investigate the activity.

In a letter sent to state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Upstate Transportation Association President John Tomassi referred to a Times Herald-Record story published Wednesday featuring an Uber driver, "Jean k," who operates in Orange County.

Ridesharing services are allowed to operate in New York City, but regulations aren't in place for Uber, Lyft and other companies to pick up fares in other parts of the state.

Uber drivers may transport passengers to other counties, such as Orange or Westchester, if the trip begins in New York City. They may pick up passengers in these counties, but the trip must end in the city.

"As (Gov. Andrew Cuomo) and state lawmakers consider allowing Uber to operate statewide, New Yorkers deserve to know just how many times the company has already broken the law and violated the public trust," Tomassi wrote.

An Uber spokesperson didn't provide information about how many rides the company has provided in Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties in 2016, according to the Times Herald-Record report. Uber said there were "inconsistent regulations across the state" for ridesharing services.

Ridesharing is expected to be one of the top items on the legislative agenda in 2017. Gov. Andrew Cuomo supports allowing Uber and other companies to operate in other parts of New York.

Tomassi and his organization have been critical of proposals to allow ridesharing in other parts of New York, particularly upstate. The Upstate Transportation Association believes drivers for ridesharing companies should be fingerprinted.

The UTA doubled down on its position Wednesday after a Lyft driver in Boston allegedly stabbed a passenger. The driver had a criminal record, which should've prevented her from being able to drive for Lyft.
Brenden Long

A second person has been charged in the shooting death of a 17-year-old McCalla boy killed during an illegal gun transaction and robbery attempt in Hueytown earlier this week.

Hueytown police on Thursday announced a felony murder charge against 18-year-old Brenden Jordan Long, also of McCalla. Long, held since Tuesday night, was booked into the Jefferson County Jail at 1:31 p.m., jail records show. His bond is set at $75,000. His mugshot wasn't immediately available.

Long is charged in the Tuesday shooting death of Colt Coggins. Under Alabama law, a person commits felony murder when "in the course of and in furtherance of the crime" another is killed. The charge is a Class A felony.

Already charged is Deion Dewayne Jones, 21, of Dolomite. Jones, believed to be the shooter, is charged with two counts of capital murder in Coggins' death. The charge against Jones is capital because the killing happened in the course of a robbery, and because the shots were fired into a vehicle. It appears, said Hueytown police Chief Chuck Hagler, that Jones was planning to rob Coggins during the gun deal.

Jones surrendered to the Jefferson County Jail Wednesday evening. He was booked in at 5:16 p.m. and is being held without bond. He refused to answer detectives' questions following his arrest.

The shooting happened about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday in the 500 block of Carver Avenue in Hueytown. Hagler said the victim and several other juveniles were in a car on the dead end street "There was an illegal transaction involving a firearm,'' the chief said. "And during the course of the transaction, Mr. Jones shot the victim in the head." He did not say whether Coggins and Jones and Long previously knew each other.

Coggins' friends then panicked, and drove him back to Coggins' home on Huggins Drive in McCalla, right off of Tannehill Parkway in Tuscaloosa County. The teen was pronounced dead in the car at the Huggins Drive home.

Hagler said Hueytown officers responded to the shooting on Carver Avenue, but arrived to find everyone had scattered, including the victims and the suspects. They set up a perimeter and began searching for two suspects, both black males, and also issued a lookout bulletin for the car that fled the scene with the victim inside.

While they were searching in Hueytown, they received word from the Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit that the teen had been brought back to Tuscaloosa County and was in a car matching the description of the lookout bulletin. Once they determined the shooting had happened in Jefferson County, the Jefferson County Coroner's Office and other investigators responded to that scene.

The friends of the slain teen were taken in for questioning, and the chief said detectives determined they weren't involved in the homicide.

Hueytown police, joined by Pleasant Grove police and the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, continued their hunt for the shooters. Long was taken into custody about 9 p.m. in McCalla.

Coggins' death is Hueytown's first homicide of 2016. The western Jefferson County city averages about one homicide every 18 months or so.

On Wednesday, the chief noted at that neither the victim nor the suspects lived in Hueytown. "Nobody involved in the crime lives here,'' he said, adding that crime knows no boundaries. "Crime in the metropolitan area will reach out and touch all of us."

"Once again, we have a senseless crime involving a bunch of kids that are way too young to be getting killed or killing people,'' he said. "It's a sad commentary."
Two suspects - including a teen - are in custody after authorities say they used a truck and tow strap to pull the front doors off of a Forestdale store in an early-morning burglary attempt.

Jefferson County sheriff's deputies responded about 1 a.m. to a convenience store in the 2800 block of Cherry Avenue, said Chief Deputy Randy Christian. A witness told them they had attached the tow strap to a moving van and were backed up to the store's door.

When the suspects realized they were being watched, Christian said, they got into the moving van and drove away. A description of the orange and white box van with the rental company logo was broadcast to responding deputies. A short time later, the deputy spotted the van on Minor Parkway near Highway 78. As the deputy pulled up behind the van, the driver pulled away running a red light in the process.

The deputy then activated emergency lights and tried to stop the truck. The driver refused to stop, Christian said, and a chase ensued. The pursuit traveled along Minor Parkway to Lexington Street and into Wylam. The driver stopped the van at 10th Avenue and Huron Street in Wylam and both he and the passenger bailed from the van and fled on foot.

Police officers from Birmingham, Adamsville and Hueytown joined in the hunt. They set up a perimeter and brought in tracking dogs to assist in the search. Both suspects were captured a short time later.

Derrick Dewayne Thomas, 36, of Wylam, is charged with attempting to elude, resisting arrest and public intoxication. He is also facing additional charges of burglary and criminal mischief. His bond is set at $900.

The second suspect is a 17-year-old juvenile from Birmingham. He faces charges of burglary, criminal mischief, and attempting to elude in juvenile court. His name is withheld due to his age.
capital on november 28 2016.jpg

(Mike Cason/mcason@al.com)

Lawyers for the Alabama Council for Excellent Government, a nonprofit organization set up last year at Gov. Robert Bentley's request, have asked a judge to dismiss ACEGOV as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Bentley's former security chief, Wendell Ray Lewis.

In a three-page motion filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court, lawyers Richard Raleigh and Christopher Lockwood say Lewis' claims are frivolous and intended to "humiliate and embarrass" the people named in the lawsuit.

John Saxon, a lawyer for Lewis, disputed that today and said the claims are relevant and appropriate.

Last month, Lewis sued Bentley, former Bentley advisor Rebekah Mason, ACEGOV and others, alleging invasion of privacy, defamation and other claims.

The lawsuit says the defendants essentially forced Lewis to retire early and interfered with his efforts to obtain work after his retirement. Lewis asked for compensatory and punitive damages to be determined by a jury.

Lewis claims Bentley and Mason had an affair and that Mason interfered with Lewis' work and wanted him removed from his job because he would not facilitate the affair. Lewis claimed that he warned Bentley about using state cars and planes to transport Mason when she was not a state employee.

Bentley and Mason have denied having an affair. Bentley apologized for speaking inappropriately to Mason after recordings of his provocative phone calls became public. Mason resigned.

Bentley has denounced Lewis' lawsuit as a "smear" and said it's "based on worn out internet rumors, fake news and street gossip."

In the motion filed today, attorneys for ACEGOV say that Lewis fails to state a claim on which the court could grant relief against ACEGOV.

They say that ACEGOV did not learn about Lewis' allegations until they received a solicitation for a settlement from the plaintiff.

And they say that Lewis, while claiming he was defamed, showed no regard for the reputations of those named in his lawsuit.

"In absence of any meritorious claims, Plaintiff opted to fill his complaint with salacious details of the Governor's alleged extramarital affair with Rebekah Mason, none of which are relevant to his claims, and none of which implicate ACEGOV," the motion filed today says.

Saxon, an attorney for Lewis, was asked if Lewis solicited a settlement.

"Mr. Lewis gave all defendants an opportunity to consider resolving this matter before filing suit," Saxon said in an email.

As for the assertion by ACEGOV's lawyers that Lewis' claims are frivolous, Saxon said, "We believe we can justify every fact in the complaint as relevant and appropriate to our legal claims. "

Former Bentley legal advisor Cooper Shattuck incorporated ACEGOV in February 2015. Shattuck said the purpose was to promote the governor's initiatives, including his effort to raise taxes at that time.

Lewis' lawsuit includes a claim in a footnote that ACEGOV was set up to as a way to pay Mason. In their motion today, ACEGOV's lawyers say that is false.

Mason has said that ACEGOV paid her $15,000 in 2015 for consulting work.

Lockwood said today in an email that Mason has not received any more money from ACEGOV.

He said ACEGOV has never had anyone on its payroll, including Mason.

Lockwood said ACEGOV's board has stopped all activities and is winding down the company.

"Our firm has been retained to handle the wind down process along with the other legal matters which need to be addressed in order to dissolve the company," Lockwood said.

Lewis' lawsuit echoed some of the claims made by former Alabama Law Enforcement Secretary Spencer Collier, who also accused Bentley and Mason of having an affair.

Collier has filed a wrongful termination suit against Bentley, Mason and others.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ensley Building

A 10-story building in downtown Ensley west of Birmingham, Alabama known as the Ramsay McCormack building on the corner of Avenue E and 19th Street was completed in 1929. (Frank Couch/fcouch@al.com)

(Frank Couch)

Four weeks after Mayor William Bell's public announcement, Birmingham City Council members say they still haven't seen a plan for the proposed public safety municipal complex in Ensley.

This $40 million plan, as presented by the mayor at a Nov. 30 press conference, includes moving the police and fire headquarters and municipal court out of downtown Birmingham and in to downtown Ensley. The centerpiece of the plan would be the rehabilitation of the 87-year-old Ramsay McCormack building.

City councilors interviewed by AL.com are divided about the project, with most saying they couldn't comment because they haven't seen a comprehensive plan from the mayor's office.

"The mayor hasn't communicated with the council any plans for that property," Council President Johnathan Austin said. "The council is supportive of any activities that would revitalize the western side of Birmingham.

"For us to comment on specific plans without having the specifics, would be premature," he added. "We just don't know.

City Council President Pro Tem Steven Hoyt also said he supported the revitalization of Ensley, but couldn't comment on whether the supported the mayor's plan because he hasn't seen one.

He questioned, though, why the mayor's office wants to build a new structure for the police headquarters when the existing building hasn't been remodeled and still has space to grow into.

The second story of the six-story police headquarters hasn't been built out.

The mayor's office said the Council will be presented with an official plan for the complex sometime in January.

Birmingham has been discussing building a new police and fire complex for a number of years.

The City Council rejected a proposal in January 2009, under Mayor Larry Langford, to lease the former Social Security building for 25 years at a total cost of $91 million.

At least five companies, submitted proposals to create a joint Birmingham police and fire headquarters in 2014. The lowest proposal then involved buying floors in the office tower near the Birmingham Jefferson County Civic Complex for $50 million.

Hoyt said the Council needs a comprehensive plan that would include a funding source, an operations budget, perpetual maintenance budget, streetscapes and roadway improvements, zoning issues and housing.

"It is a bigger issue than what meets the eye," he said. "You have to clean it up going to Ensley," such as the streetscapes and blight. "It is more than just saying we are going to dump some money over here.

"Once we get a comprehensive plan, I don't think there will be anyone who votes against doing anything in Ensley."

Councilor Kim Rafferty said the consolidation of police, fire and municipal has been discussed for at least seven years, but no mayor has been transparent about what this means.

"Until we have a needs assessment, then I can't support anything that the city throws out there," she said.

Rafferty said moving police and fire headquarters and municipal court to Ensley would be a mistake.

"As far as the location in Ensley, I think it is totally wrong," she said. "Public safety should be centralized in the city and not thrown off the beaten path into another area just to invigorate another area."

Councilor William Parker said he supported the mayor's plan and would be voting yes.

"We understand that there is a need for it," he said. "I think it will be great for the Ensley community. It will be catalyst for the Ensley community."

Council Jay Roberson said he supports the mayor's plan "wholeheartedly.

"I commend the mayor for his due diligence to work with his departments to assess that building to make sure it could be revitalized," he said. "I think that is the shot in the arm that Ensley needs.

"We are taking about an area that has lost life for 40 plus years, and now we have an opportunity to restore a building that the city already owns to be a life-saver for this community," Roberson added.

Additionally, he said the police and fire chiefs have expressed over the years that they are out of room and need a more functional space for operations.

Roberson also noted that the mayor's plan also a public-private partnership that will bring commercial, retail and possibly more housing to downtown Ensley.

The Bethel Ensley Action Task, Inc. (BEAT) has plans to raise $24 million for a mixed-use development to include residential, retail and office space adjacent to the public safety complex.

According to the mayor's office, the public safety complex would include the rehabilitation of the 10-story, 50,000-square-foot Ramsay McCormack Building located at 508 19th Street in Ensley for use by municipal court. New buildings will be constructed for Birmingham police and Fire and Rescue headquarters.

A parking structure, park and a mixed-use development would be a part of the overall plan.

In a press conference, Bell said the development would help revitalize Ensley and spur residential and retail growth there. It would also solve the problem of trying to find a new location for the police headquarters in booming downtown Birmingham, he said.

Following a 2012 lawsuit by several Ensley business owners, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Michael Graffeo's ordered on Dec. 2 that the Ramsay McCormack be demolished.

The building has stood empty since 1986.

After learning of the renovation plans, plaintiffs in the lawsuit asked the judge to reconsider his order and allow the city to renovate the Ramsay McCormack building.

Graffeo did just that and issued a new order on Dec. 8, stating the city must announce a request for bids on the renovation by Feb. 7, 2017.

"If there is any effort to save the (Ramsay McCormack) building, I am for it," Hoyt said. "Whether or not it would satisfy the needs of public safety, I am not sure.'

The demolition of the Ramsay McCormack building should be the last resort, he said, adding that the art deco building should be the centerpiece of the "renaissance" of Ensley and west Birmingham and complement an upcoming mixed-use development at the nearby Birmingham Crossplex facility.

Councilors Marcus Lundy and Lashunda Scales declined to comment for the article because they haven't seen a plan. Councilors Sheila Tyson and Valerie Abbott couldn't be reached for comment.
A new regulation will prohibit insurance companies from refusing to provide coverage to New York businesses that employ people with criminal convictions, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

In a press release, Cuomo announced that insurance companies will no longer be allowed to deny commercial crime coverage to businesses that hire people with a criminal record in New York state. The effort, which is the first of its kind in the nation, will make it easier for businesses to hire formerly incarcerated individuals.

"This first-in-the-nation action will further break down artificial barriers that prevent previously incarcerated New Yorkers from obtaining work and turning their lives around," Cuomo said, noting that 2.3 million people have a criminal conviction in New York. "We are taking one more step to restore fairness and dignity to our society while also increasing public safety by providing opportunity and reducing recidivism."

The new regulation will now ensure employers are able to obtain coverage for any loss or damage caused by an employee with a criminal record. Still, there are multiple factors for businesses to consider when hiring formerly incarcerated individuals, including whether the offense is related to the duties that the employee will perform, the time that has passed since the conviction and evidence of good conduct.

"It is simply inexcusable for an insurer in New York to exclude a potentially valuable employee from insurance coverage just because he or she has a criminal conviction," Superintendent Maria Vullo said. "So long as every business owner follows the letter of the law, we should encourage more companies to hire prospective employees rather than punish someone for a mistake in the past."
Hundreds of people have been buried outside Zarzis, Tunisia, after drowning while attempting to cross the sea.

Zarzis, Tunisia  Ill sometimes get a knock on my door at night when a new body has been found, says Chemseddine Marzoug. Autumn and winter, when the winds are stronger, is when most of the bodies wash ashore.

Marzoug stands on a hilly wasteland outside the city of Zarzis in southern Tunisia. The sand is spotted with small bushes and pieces of rubbish, and in the distance are plantations of olive trees.

There is nothing to indicate that this is a cemetery, where hundreds of people have been buried after drowning while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Italy. One of the latest victims, an African woman in her 30s, was found on the beach in Zarzis without any documents after floating in the sea for about a month.

More than 4,400 people have died or gone missing this year while trying to make the deadly crossing, according to the International Organization for Migrations Missing Migrants Project. Most bodies are never found, but the largest number wash ashore in Libya or Italy and are buried there.

READ MORE: Why Al Jazeera will not say Mediterranean migrants

Marzoug, 51, has assisted with burying unknown refugees in Zarzis as a volunteer for the Red Crescent for the past two decades. The father of five, who earns his living as a fisherman and sometimes as a taxi driver, points towards a slight mound in the sand as the wind whips around him.

He was around 32 years old, buried in March, he explains. A few steps further along, he points again: A man without a head. None of the graves are marked.

Nobody knows how many people have been buried here exactly, although Marzoug estimates that there have been at least 200 in the past six years. In the late 1990s, as more people started to cross the sea, those who drowned were initially buried in a separate corner of the main cemeteries of Zarzis and Ben Guerdane  but as their numbers grew, some locals started protesting.

Some argued that these people were not Muslims or believers. It made me angry. Arent we all human beings? Marzoug says.

The municipalities later allocated special burial locations: a former site for depositing rubbish south of Zarzis and a piece of land at Port el-Ketf outside Ben Guerdane. As the sea currents tend to bring most bodies to the shore near Zarzis, the majority of bodies are buried there.

Whenever a new body is found on the shores of Zarzis, the National Guard or the municipality calls Marzoug and a Red Crescent volunteer doctor, who must confirm that the person is dead. In many cases they have been in the sea for months, so then its just a skeleton without any flesh, Marzoug says.

He looks over the hilly wasteland. Doesnt it look terrible? We have been trying to get funds for 15 years to make this cemetery look decent and to arrange more respectful burials.

Improvements such as a fence, numbered graves and a paved road leading to the site are among the needed changes, he says  along with an archive and DNA bank.

INTERACTIVE: Why on earth would anyone do this?

Unfortunately, we dont have the money and equipment to take DNA, Marzoug says, citing the need for international aid organisations to step in. Its hard to get money from Tunisians in the current crisis, and if people have money, they would rather give it to poor children than to a cemetery for dead strangers.

Over the past few years, a number of Syrians have come to Zarzis to ask about their loved ones, says Marzougs Red Crescent colleague, Dr Mongi Slim. But under current circumstances, none of the bodies can be identified. Last month, Slim recalled receiving a phone call from a Syrian man who had been rescued in Italy and was looking for his wife and daughter.

He sent me photos by email to ask if I had seen their bodies, Slim says. Of course I didnt recognise them. Its heartbreaking.

There are usually no identification papers found, either because refugees have lost or discarded them, or they have disintegrated after spending months immersed in water. If we find a passport, that doesnt always mean it belongs to the person who has drowned, Slim adds. Once we found the passport of a Syrian girl, and later we discovered she was alive in Sweden.

The people who end up here had hopes and dreams like you and me ... Their families may still be waiting for a postcard or money from them. by Chemseddine Marzoug, Red Crescent volunteer

In cases where a large number of bodies wash ashore, more volunteers are asked to help with burying the deceased.

You really need a strong heart for it, Marzoug says. Im used to it now, although when my mother died last month, I couldnt bring myself to attend the washing. I am used to the sight of dead bodies, but not of someone I know.

He is silent for a moment, and then adds: Some things I cant forget, like the man without a head, or the woman we found in the summer of 2014, who had a two-year-old child tied to her body. After we buried them, my colleague and I just sat on the beach and cried  The people who end up here had hopes and dreams like you and me, people who were so unlucky that they had to run away from poverty or war. Their families may still be waiting for a postcard or money from them.

Later, Marzoug sits at a table inside the Fishermens Association in central Zarzis next to his colleague, fisherman Salah Eddinne Mcharek, who draws a map of Tunisia, Libya and Italy.

This triangle between Tripoli, Zouara and Lampedusa is the black zone, with so many corpses floating around that nobody wants to fish there any more, he says. Besides, Libyan smugglers steal our boats and make us pay 2,000 dinars [$860] to get them back. We dont dare go near there any more and are now only catching 25 percent of the fish we caught last year.

The smugglers usually throw the migrants overboard close to the Doctors Without Borders boats and return to get more people, he adds. They put up to 100 people in plastic boats made for a maximum of 20. The boats are lighter, so when people are not rescued, the boats usually wash ashore first. In the following days, when the tide is high, you can expect the bodies to arrive one by one.

Follow Thessa Lageman on Twitter: @thessalageman
Refugees, rights groups, aid organisations say empathy towards refugees is fading even as deaths in Mediterranean soar.

The number of refugees who drowned in the Mediterranean this year rose to an annual record.

More than 5,000 people lost their lives at sea as they took on perilous journeys to escape war, poverty, and persecution  often all three. In 2015, some 3,771 refugees died while crossing the Mediterranean, up from 3,279 deaths the year before.

In short, 2016 has not been an easy year.

A toddler was the first refugee to die in the Mediterranean in the deadliest January on record. In March the Balkan route was permanently shut, trapping tens of thousands of asylum seekers in Greece and slowing Aegean Sea crossings to a trickle. In May Kenya declared it would close Dadaab, the worlds largest refugee camp. In June Britain voted to leave the European Union, thanks in large measure to a campaign run by the anti-immigration United Kingdom Independence Party which stoked fears over incoming refugees. In August, a leak revealed that refugee children were being sexually assaulted at Australias Nauru prison camp. Deportations of Afghan refugees from Pakistan swelled this year, with 100,000 repatriated in September alone. In October the EU cleared a deal to deport an unlimited number of Afghan refugees from Europe, and in November the United States voted for Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate who consistently berated refugees during his campaign.

However, the refugee crisis is now often spoken of in terms of economics and security  especially during election season  as opposed to empathy.

Al Jazeera asked refugees, human rights organisations, experts working with refugees, and those who attempt to make dangerous passages a little safer, what the year 2016 meant for refugees around the world and what they should expect from 2017.

Aboud Shalhoub, Syrian refugee in the Netherlands

For me 2016 was okay. I am living safely and peacefully with my family in Europe; we now have a normal life. But thousands of homeless families remain locked at borders.

They are forced to live in tents in poor conditions. Thats because some political decisions have led to banning undocumented immigration in any form  closing borders, using of violence, tear gas, and arrests  to stop the refugee flow.

But at the the same time on the news, we see how much Europe and the world sympathises with refugees. They campaign to bring food and clothes to refugees under the banner of humanitarian aid. They give you food and clothing but at the same time tell you, just dont cross the borders or go back to your home. It was our homes being devastated by wars, famine or violence, that forced us to leave our countries.

In 2017, I hope to see something really simple: real action for humanity, not just talk as we have so far seen. I dont mean opening borders and campaigning. I mean making different political decisions to solve the refugees crisis.

We became refugees because we have war in our countries. The solutions for our crisis are to stop dictatorships, stop the fighting groups, stop sending weapons and stop displacing people.

Rami, Syrian refugee in Athens

The world got bored with refugees in 2016. Politicians wanted to stop refugees coming. Islamophobia and the problems that happened because of the refugees  fascists used these things in a bad way. The situation got worse. There are still people on the left who fight till the end, because they believe in no borders, and solidarity.

Detaining people in Greece or Italy is a first step to stop refugees from coming. Europe has said it doesnt want any more Muslims or refugees, but a lot of people need protection because people are living in bad conditions in Syria or Iraq. In Syria, you have two bad options  a [] dictator or Islamists. When you see your kids bodies shaking while they sleep because they are dreaming of death or violence  its not normal.

If I could say something to everyone, it would be: Stop killing people. Stop violence.

Preethi Nallu, Refugees Deeply editor

With global displacement continuing at unabated levels, triggered by inextricably linked reasons, from conflict and climate change to economic deprivation and statelessness, 2016 challenged our understanding of the term refugee.

Against the cacophonous reports of droves of people trying to enter Europe, we must press the reset button. We must ignite global collective consciousness towards this new era of migration. It is the defining issue of our time.

The year 2016 proved that militarising the Mediterranean and fortifying borders are not tenable solutions. With mutating smuggling networks that extend from the Logar villages of Afghanistan to the depths of the Sahara, combating the illicit migrant trade is not as simple as shooting smugglers on sight or erecting new barriers.

While the EU-Turkey deal has thwarted arrivals to Greece for one season, it is merely a bandage on an infection. Italys new record this year, with more than 171,000 arrivals by sea, is proof that such deals simply shift the routes.

Irregular, illegal, clandestine, migrant, refugee, asylum seeker  barring reductive definitions, the media must explore and connect the conditions that are driving millions of people across the globe to cross borders and embark on life-risking journeys.

Over 2017, I hope to see panic-stricken reports outnumbered by realistic acknowledgement of what it will take to absorb those who are already in our communities. The only way forward is to explore pragmatic ways of changing our economic systems, political priorities, social identities and unparalleled levels of consumption that have led to the so-called unprecedented levels of displacement.

MSF Sea, Doctors Without Borders Mediterranean team

In 2016 the world catastrophically failed millions of people fleeing war, persecution and despair. Calculating politics and egocentrism won out over moral and legal obligations to offer protection and assistance to those in need. Countries across the world implemented harmful migration and asylum policies  increasing the suffering of people on the move by routinely denying them humanitarian assistance and any form of dignity.

Like a contagious disease, walls, fences and restrictive border measures disseminated all over the world with deadly consequences: 7,200 people died at borders globally, with more than 5,000 in the Mediterranean Sea alone.

States continued to look for cynical measures to keep people in need out of sight, signing agreements with third countries conditioning development aid on a border control agenda. The EU-Turkey deal is perhaps the most reprehensible, as it has shown the world that you can outsource the responsibility to offer protection while dangerously restricting the right to seek asylum.

2017 must be the year where we choose to re-embrace human dignity and the value of human life. If not, the world will continue in failing to provide protection for the most vulnerable, instituting more suffering on those that deserve far more than the indignity they have been subjected to.

Bill Frelick, Human Rights Watchs Refugee Rights programme director

There is no sugar-coating how bad 2016 was for refugees  But the largest and nearly unnoticed mass forced return was by Pakistan, which forced about 400,000 Afghan refugees and another 250,000 unregistered Afghans to return to their still dangerous and unsettled homeland.

Little wonder hardly anyone paid attention. The EU was busy brokering a deal with Afghanistan to accept back rejected Afghan asylum seekers and to work with the EU to deter others from fleeing westward. It wasnt about to criticise Pakistan or to defend the rights of Afghan refugees.

The wealthiest countries chose to ignore the deteriorating conditions in 2016 that caused the number of internally displaced people in Afghanistan to grow by more than half a million, the highest number of newly displaced people since 2001, on top of the 1.5 million internally displaced people recorded in Afghanistan at the end of 2015. Most of the returnees from Pakistan joined the ranks of the displaced, increasing everyones misery and contributing predictably to more destabilisation in the year ahead.

Will anyone care? Those with the power to make a difference from the United States to Australia seem more intent on building their own walls than in defending the right of people fleeing for their lives. Perhaps the tipping point will come in 2017 when cumulative knowledge of trapped civilians in places like Aleppo multiplied many times over will transform the privileged from their me-first mentality and finally bring a sense of a common humanity. But as 2016 closes, that feels like a faint hope at a heavy cost.

Alarmphone (activist network providing hotline for refugees in distress at sea)

European governments reacted violently to the historic migration movements of 2015, making unauthorised migrant journeys lengthier, costlier, more dangerous and deadly  The Dublin laws are being forcefully re-installed, and mass deportations are looming large for 2017.

We believe that a world without borders is possible, in which both Frontex and the smugglers would then have disappeared by Alarmphone

The sea was further militarised, with EU forces now even training the Libyan coastguards in how to intercept precarious travellers from escaping a war-torn place. And the death toll keeps rising.

Nevertheless, people still do make it across: This year, more than 350,000 people arrived in Europe via the sea.

We will continue to support these disobedient movements in 2017. In the year to come we will struggle on to make sea crossings a little less dangerous, as we have done in the past two years, when we supported more than 1,750 boats. We are determined to speak up against those who show hostility towards the newcomers, who preach hatred and seek to divide us.

We will welcome those who had to risk their lives to find protection in a new community, a trans-border community that is inclusive and open, based upon the principles of global justice and the freedom of movement for all.

We believe that a world without borders is possible, in which both Frontex and the smugglers would then have disappeared.

Milena Zajovic, Are You Syrious? (aimed at keeping refugees informed) spokesperson

2016 confirmed a crisis of humanity. Unfortunately, this isnt a new phenomenon. Many of us in Are You Syrious? grew up in the middle of the ex-Yugoslavian war. I was a refugee in the 90s. My sister, who also volunteers, was born during bombing. Some of us survived sieges and torture camps.

And we all remember how we hoped for the international community to help, and how betrayed we felt when we realised theyd simply stopped caring. After the horrors of Vukovar, Sarajevo, and Srebrenica, so many said never again. But we are now facing almost identical horrors, just on a larger geographical scale.

I feel ashamed of Balkan countries where most know how war felt. Unfortunately, political decisions to close borders push victims of war, poverty or political persecution into the hands of smugglers. It pushes them out of reach of many humanitarian groups, strips them of their right to international protection, first aid or legal support. This time last year, we were greeting the refugees in transit camps. Now we find them beaten in the fields.

I just hope refugees will find strength in their hearts to forgive us for all the additional trauma and the betrayal they felt when they asked for international help.

Ramy Abdu, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor chairman

The year 2016 was indeed a nadir for refugees, with not only the highest number of deaths at sea so far, but also a growing xenophobia. The latter boosted the popularity of right-wing politicians and saw some governments build expensive, divisive walls as they sought other ways to simply turn back refugees, rather than deal with root causes and humanitarian implications.

Likewise, the oldest group of warehoused refugees  the Palestinians  lived for the tenth year under occupation, and every measure of their oppression increased.

However, there is reason for optimism as well, with surveys showing the majority of people welcome refugees and are increasingly backing action to support Palestinian rights, such as boycotts. This points to governments and politicians being clearly out of touch not only with the humanity of their citizens but also with the long-term benefits immigrants offer, including refugees.

Unfortunately, the situation for refugees may get worse before it gets better, depending on the results of some upcoming elections. As external powers wage proxy wars in countries such as Yemen, Syria and Iraq, terrorist acts also will continue to occur on their soil, and asylum seekers and immigrants will be blamed. It is the responsibility of those of us who work with refugees to do a much better job of giving visibility to the significant contribution made by these individuals historically and today.

Simon Cox, migration lawyer

2017 will see five trends continue:

Refugee self-determination. People under threat fighting to reach safety and stay there. Solidarity. Ordinary people organising outside current failed structures to rescue, support and defend refugees. Exporting control. Rich countries demanding poor countries obstruct and accommodate refugees. Monetisation. Corrupt regimes such as Afghanistan and Niger taking Western money and charging more bribes for border crossers. Circular refugees. Research suggests three out four of Afghans sent home make their way back to Europe.

The missing piece? Serious conversation about these three failed tactics.

Follow Anealla Safdar and Patrick Strickland on Twitter: @anealla, @P_Strickland_
Iraqi Sunni and Shia political leaders are in the midst of negotiations in an attempt to reach common ground for a post-ISIL reconciliation plan.

Representatives from the biggest Sunni bloc in Iraqs parliament, the National Forces Alliance, recently met Amar al-Hakim, who heads the ruling Iraqi National Alliance, an umbrella group of Shia parties. The meeting came after the National Forces Alliance rejected a reconciliation plan prepared by Hakim and instead proposed its own vision for governing a post-ISIL Iraq, aiming to remedy the chronic political and sectarian fighting that has plagued the country since the 2003 US-led invasion.

Details of the competing plans were still being worked out, and have not been made public. As the battle for Mosul drags on, Sunni and Shia leaders have not ironed out a timeframe for reaching an agreement.

According to Mohammed al-Karbouli, a member of the National Forces Alliance who has been involved in the discussions, his bloc had agreed to write and propose a paper with a vision on how to govern the Iraqi state, especially in crucial areas such as the de-Baathification law [which bans members of Saddam Husseins ruling party from serving in government], the amnesty law and the federal regions. Karbouli was referring to a long-standing Sunni demand for the release of Sunnis held under the countrys notorious anti-terrorism law, which they believe targets them unfairly, and for an equitable power-sharing agreement.

READ MORE: Battle for Mosul  I miss everything there

We will hand the paper to the representative of the UN envoy to Iraq in the first or second week of the new year, Karbouli told Al Jazeera. There were many initiatives in the past. The important thing is the implementation. I think I would rely on [a reconciliation plan succeeding] by 25 to 30 percent. It all depends on the concessions made by the ruling [Iraqi] National Alliance to accept others.

Reconciliation efforts took a hit last month when the Iraqi parliament approved a law legalising the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a group of powerful Shia militias. Sunni Iraqi politicians were outraged at the move, accusing the militias of committing sectarian attacks against Sunnis during their campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).





Hakim remained adamant that the new law would not hinder reconciliation efforts. The PMF act has a humanitarian aspect to ensure the rights of the martyrs, Hakim told a gathering of Iraqi youth and activists earlier this month, referring to the compensation owed to families of fighters who have died.

The National Settlement [reconciliation plan] is a strategic necessity to maintain the unity of Iraq, and it is a reassuring comprehensive project for all Iraqis  It is backed by the United Nations, which will promote the project inside and outside Iraq, he added.

Although details of the Shia proposal have not been officially announced, leaks widely circulated in the Iraqi media suggest that it includes a call for armed groups to take part in negotiations, provided that they formally recognise the political process and the Iraqi constitution. Both ISIL and the Baath Party, which ruled Iraq during Saddams era, would be excluded from the process.

The initiative is said to include clauses to end Iraqs sectarian quota system, adopt political power-sharing reforms, denounce all forms of violence and terrorism, rebuild the states institutions and rid them of corruption, ensure a fair distribution of wealth and bring weapons under the governments control.

But some analysts say the proposal is not feasible and would face many challenges.

There are too many noes in this initiative. Those who wrote it have the mentality of someone who is the victor and controls the reins of power, without regard for the others, said Mouayad al-Windawi, an analyst at the Amman-based Iraqi Centre for Strategic Studies.

The National Alliance wants the weakest Sunni groups to sit and talk, while it excludes the others. Where are the forces who are opposed to the political process, or the armed groups, or the liberals or the Baathists? he asked. The political process needs to be reconsidered. There have to be concessions made by the relevant parties to build a state and unite the society. But such men do not exist in Iraq.

READ MORE: Battle for Mosul  ISILs innocent victims

Leaked excerpts from the draft proposal state that once all parties agree on the initiative, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) would work to deliver a final draft for the national settlement. This would require the blessing of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest Shia religious authority in Iraq, as well as the approval of the Iraqi parliament and government.

At this point, there is no UN draft or UN initiative. It is still an Iraqi national initiative, UNAMI spokesman Samir Ghattas told Al Jazeera. The UN role is that of a facilitator in line with UNAMIs mandate to advise and assist the government  on a number of issues, including advancing inclusive political dialogue and national reconciliation.

Although ISIL has lost large swaths of territory in Iraq, the group has not been wiped out and could remain lethal even if it is forced out of its Mosul stronghold. The government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the ruling Shia alliance have cited a need to build on recent military victories against ISIL across the country.

Iraq became a project of killing of all Iraqis, and after declaring victory, we have to have a new road map thats different from the past, said Habib al-Tarfi, a member of the Iraqi National Alliance. We want a settlement with nationalist Iraqis, not those who are nationalist in the morning and turn terrorists at night. This settlement is our saviour  we have no option but to reconcile. Is the Iraqi blood that cheap?
Ecuadors Shuar say mining project in Cordillera del Condor threatens their livelihood and encroaches upon their land.

Morona-Santiago, Ecuador  The death of a police officer during a standoff between military and indigenous Shuar people in a takeover attempt of a mining camp in Ecuadors southern Amazon on December 14, catalysed a government mobilisation of armed forces in the region.

With a 30-day state of exception imposed across the entire Amazonian province of Morona Santiago, the government has reportedly mobilised up to 1,000 military and police personnel to protect the mining camp and hunt down what top officials have called an illegally armed group that they say does not represent the Shuar nation.

Under the emergency decree, which has suspended rights such as freedom of expression and the inviolability of the home, reportedly five Indigenous Shuar and four mestizo men have been arrested and sentenced to 90-day preventive incarceration.

Human rights observers and Indigenous leaders have reported the arbitrary use of tanks, helicopters, rifle blasts and house raids by the military in what they say is an unprecedented witch-hunt against those threatening mega-mining projects in the Amazon.

Most notably, the imprisonment of Agustin Wachapa, President of the Interprovincial Federation of Shuar Peoples, and the closure of environmental activist group Accion Ecologica for allegedly inciting public disorder in their calls for solidarity protests with the Shuar people, have attracted condemnation from rights groups.

READ MORE: Amazon  The final frontier?

Fighting to keep ancestral territory mining-free

Shortly after a SWAT team was seen patrolling the streets of Gualaquiza, a small town two hours south from the conflict hotspot, Raul Ankuash expressed his fear. I have to disappear, they are looking for me, he said.

Upon receiving information that he appears on the governments blacklist, Ankuash pondered the same strategy as other fellow Shuar leaders who have gone into hiding following the military manhunt.

The Ministry of Interior has said it will pay up to $50,000 for any verifiable leads that can identify those responsible for the police officers death.

Among the militarys most wanted are the 40 to 60 people who make up the militant base of Indigenous Shuar according to Raul, whose father Domingo Ankuash is one of the most vocal Shuar leaders in the anti-mining movement in the Amazon.

This base coordinated the recent attack that resulted in the casualty at the mining camp in Nankintz, territory where Chinese company EcuaCobres SA (EXSA) has begun advanced exploration for gold and copper extraction.

Shuar leaders and government officials have blamed each other for the death, but neither have offered concrete evidence to sustain their claim.

When asked about the evidence, an Interior Ministry spokesperson told Al Jazeera the case was still under investigation.

READ MORE: Ecuadors indigenous lead anti-government protests

Conflicts over the mining camp have arisen over the 41,000 hectares of land conceded to EXSA across the uniquely biodiverse Cordillera del Condor, a mountain range connecting Ecuadors southern Andes with the Amazon. Of these concessions nearly 50 percent are on ancestral Shuar territory .

These concessions are completely illegal and unconstitutional, Ankuash said, there was no consultation with the Shuar communities during these concessions, a violation of the constitution and a total abuse of power by the government.

According to Shuar rights lawyer Tarquino Cajamarca, the government holds no obligation to consult landowners for concessions since technically they own the land, but not the subsoil.

A concession is a property title over a subsoil for mining operations, Cajamarca told Al Jazeera, and it is the state that owns the subsoil, as well as the rivers, the mountains, etc.

In an email correspondence with Al Jazeera, ExplorCobres SA countered the allegation that they have not engaged affected community members in their project, saying it counts with all of the support of the communities in its zone of influence.

We cannot go back when the majority of the people in the area are waiting for us with open arms in the face of a group that is opposed to progress, their statement added.

EXSA, has a history of conflict since settling up its mining camp in Nankintz, from where it will exploit the subsoil.

Nankintz used to be communal Shuar territory but ended in the companys hands as private property because of agrarian policies in the 1990s, when the state started selling any land thta had no houses or cultivation to mestizo settlers.





The incursion of the foreign mining company, then Canadian, was met with widespread opposition from Shuar and mestizo farmers. In a show of unity together with Accion Ecologica, they succeeded in expelling EXSA from Nankintz in 2006.

To keep the area mining-free, a group of 32 Shuar settled on the 90 hectares of land until they were forcibly evicted in August this year by military troops for illegally occupying land belonging to EXSA.

They want to get into Warints, Banderas, Kuangos  all Shuar communities  to disband the people and carry out mining there, Ankwash said, Nankintz was there to defend these communities because it is from there that you can access them.

If fully operational, EXSAs Panantza-San Carlos Project would be the worlds second largest copper mine and generate an estimated $1.2bn in annual profits.

Paying with lives

Despite leading the bold and innovative concept of the Rights of Nature in its 2008 Constitution, President Rafael Correa defended the new mining projects, arguing that the most important thing about nature continues to be the human being and the primary ethical and moral duty is to defeat poverty.

Correas fully fledged military operation to protect mega-mining on the one hand, and the steadfastness among some Shuar to defend their territory on the other, make peaceful resolution of the conflict an unlikely possibility.

Ankuash says he is determined to continue defending his territory, but admits young Shuar people like him are afraid.

He mentions the death of Jose Isidro Tendetza in December 2014, a Shuar leader who is speculated to have been assassinated for opposing the Mirador Project, Ecuadors first large scale copper mine in neighbouring province Zamora Chinchipe.

To proceed with the opencast pit mining operation there, up to 16 families in the rural parish of Tundayme were forcibly evicted from their homes and land a year later.

Two other Shuar men have died in mining-related circumstances: Bosco Wisum in 2009 and Freddy Taish in 2013 .

This is the beginning of a fight to exterminate the Shuar people because we are the only nation that have strongly defended our territory, Ankuash said. If they have to exterminate us, they can do it. Maybe then they can go on with the mining. But until then we will continue to defend the land they have conceded to the mining companies.

IN PICTURES: Long wait for justice in Ecuador oil pollution case

Panantza: a farmers village under military siege

Sitting between heavy rain clouds and the luscious green mountains that make up the Cordillera del Condor, the small agrarian village of Panantza has been under military siege since the state of exception was issued.

Its location only 20 minutes from the EXSA mining camp makes Panantza its nearest village and consequently a strategic military outpost.

The area remained largely inaccessible to the media for more than a week, during which Regional Foundation for Human Rights Advisory reported cases of property destruction, abuse, arbitrary raids and arrests at the hands of the military.

A woman in her early 20s, who spoke in anonymity, alleges that the military burned down her familys farm house because they suspected Shuar fighters were using it as a base during their take-over attempt.

We were two families, 12 people, who lived there. We lost everything in the fire. We dont even have our clothes, the Panantza native told Al Jazeera.

Then they raided my fathers house, broke the windows and turned everything upside down because they thought we were hiding weapons to help the Shuar.

Any suspicion or evidence hinting at an anti-extractivist position has meant trouble in a village where farmers fear the open-cast mining project will contaminate their rivers and destroy the cloud forests they depend on for agriculture and cattle.





A lot of us are afraid that with the mine there will be nothing left for us campesinos. Some people agree because they promised work, an 80-year-old Panantza local told Al Jazeera in anonymity.

But look at Tundayme, there are no jobs there. They gave them to the Chinese. And the rivers are contaminated so no one can farm there any more.

Theres no way to protest against the mine because they will just send you to jail. Look, they have put up cameras everywhere and the police come and go, he added.

President and Vice-President of Panantzas parish board, Danny Marin and Milton Reinoso, have represented these concerns and long been vocal opponents of the mining project.

They were also the first ones to be taken from their homes during the military operation and handed down a 90-day preventive incarceration sentence for attempted murder against the police.

First they want to sow fear so that no one rises up, Severino Sharupi, leader of territories and natural resources of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, told Al Jazeera.

Then they want to imprison some of the main spokespersons of the resistance so that there cannot be any opposition in the territory. This is why they arrested Danny Marin, who has been one of the key mestizo figures in the resistance. The state needs to have an authority there that gives permission to the company and allows them in, Sharupi added.

The Interior Ministry has denied any restriction on freedom of expression on behalf of the military.

People in Morona Santiago are free to publicly disclose their stance in favour or against the mining industry, Maria Cristina Zuniga, director of the ministrys communication department, told Al Jazeera.

If people are afraid to talk, it is rather due to the tense environment following the criminal attacks of December 14, Zuniga added.

The Interior Ministry further countered any allegations of unlawful misconduct on behalf of security forces in the region, adding that in fact campesinos are showing their gratitude for the deployment of police units that are keeping them safe from the sought-after armed group.

READ MORE: Life under an active volcano in Ecuador

Solidarity protests

Since the escalation of the conflict in Morona-Santiago, solidarity protests with the Shuar struggle have flared up across the country.

In Quito, environmentalist activists and national Indigenous leaders have held joint demonstrations in front of the presidential palace and improvised assemblies to map out further resistance strategies.

We are building new alliances between the city and the countryside, mestizos and Indigenous. It is events like these that help activate a new consciousness and build a larger platform, Luis Corral, a leading environmental activist, told Al Jazeera.

According to Corral, this represents a significant shift from the Yasunidos initiative, an urban youth movement that tried but eventually failed to keep the Correa government from drilling oil in Yasuni, one of the most biodiverse rainforests in the Amazon.

The solidarity mobilisations have spread to other cities such as Latacunga and Cuenca where protesters linked the Shuar struggle to local concerns over ongoing conflicts with large mining projects and water privatisation.

The protest wave comes in the aftermath of an Indigenous uprising that shook the country in the summer of 2015, when a myriad of Indigenous struggles over largescale resource extraction projects across the Andes and Amazon took to the streets to demand the resignation of President Correa.

Pablo Orellana contributed additional reporting for this article.
One person was killed in a two-car crash in the town of Sennett Thursday morning.

According to New York State Police, the accident happened shortly after 7 a.m. on Route 34 between Manrow and Highbridge roads, about midway between Auburn and Weedsport.

Investigators remained at the scene of the crash for several hours Thursday, and all lanes remained closed until around 1:30 p.m. as accident investigators reconstructed the scene.

State police Thursday evening said that further information about the accident would not immediately be made available.

The victim's identity has not yet been released. The cause of the crash is still under investigation.
Chiang Mai, Thailand Every year in northern Thailand, groups of men gather to take part in a unique activity: beetle fighting. Some men come to fight beetles and gamble, while others come simply to meet and socialise with friends. The fights are organised once a year and offer a break from the daily routine in small, agrarian villages.

Participants are typically low-income farmers, but there are also wealthy competitors.

Locals capture the rhinoceros beetles in the jungle during the beetle mating season in September. An average beetle can be sold for about 50 baht ($1.40), but a champion-caliber insect can go for as much as 3,000 baht ($84).

The owners bring their beetles to the small arenas where the fighting takes place. They match the beetles by size and character and when two similar beetles are found, bets are placed and the competitors will head onto the fighting stage  a log of wood, crafted with holes wherein a female, pheromone-secreting beetle is trapped. The two male beetles are thus motivated to fight over the female beetle.

They lift and push their opponents with their huge horns; the victorious beetle will break its opponents horn or cause it to flee.

Matches are broken up into rounds each time the beetles lock horns. If a match continues for 12 rounds, the contest is declared a draw. Bets, which can range from 100 baht ($3) to as much as 50,000 baht ($1,400), add drama to the occasion.

The losing beetle is typically returned to the jungle, while winners are kept on pieces of sugar cane to fight again.

READ MORE: The animal smugglers
Fuel for financial and political gain, fake news is used for a lot more than the fun of Macedonian teenagers.

The legacies of the year 2016 include the introduction into the popular lexicon of the term fake news.

To be sure, fake is a more than apt description for media content fabricated by Macedonian teenagers looking to exploit the United States market for sensational nonsense.

Ditto for news items such as the alleged campaign by Democratic congresspersons in Florida to implement Islamic law  a fiction regurgitated by president-elect Donald Trumps nominee for national security adviser.

But as The Intercepts Glenn Greenwald recently pointed out, The most important fact to realise about this new term is that those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.

Indeed, the ongoing hullabaloo in US mainstream media over the notion that the Russians hacked the election in Trumps favour via a sinister campaign of mass disinformation would itself appear to be a strong contender for the fake news category.

The fake news spectrum

In a write-up of the findings of a December 2016 survey about fake news, the Pew Research Centre reports that 64 percent of American adults say fabricated news stories cause a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current issues and events.

Meanwhile, 23 percent claim to have either wittingly or unwittingly shared a fake news item.

Amid all of the uproar over fake news, Facebook  itself a principal news source for much of the global population  pledged to crack down on the phenomenon by permitting users to flag potentially phony stories. Flagged items will then be passed along to third-party fact checkers.

But just how effective can efforts to curb the proliferation of fake news be when the very function of the US establishment media is so often to peddle untruths?

One of the more spectacular contemporary examples of this function is, of course, Judith Millers reporting for The New York Times  one of the supposed pillars of real news  regarding Saddam Husseins alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The enduring danger of hyper-militarisation, of course, is that we'll end up accidentally obliterating ourselves in the interest of financial gain by

While cases such as Millers are generally written off as the exception to the rule, however, spin journalism is in fact par for the course. Its hardly rocket science: Mainstream editorial lines reflect the interests of political and economic elite, and journalists are by and large reduced to doing the bidding of those elites under the facade of a free press.



READ MORE: Facebook finally gets serious about fighting fake news

Obviously, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the like dont traffic in the variety of fake news that features Democrats waging jihad on Florida.

But there are also plenty of elements of fakeness in typical mainstream content promoting, for example, Israel as a beacon of democracy and reason  or Iran as a predatory terrorist nation intent on subverting the world order.

All too real

In light of the present huffing and puffing over Russias suspected complicity in fake news dissemination, its worth revisiting US behaviour during the Cold War  a solid reminder that the fake news industry is nothing new.

Consider the testimony of John Stockwell, former CIA intelligence officer and chief of the Angola Task Force in the mid-1970s, which recounts how the CIA continuously manufactured false news stories to feed to major media outlets in Britain and the US. Among these widely reported fabrications, Stockwell notes, was that Cuban soldiers were raping Angolan women.

Further back on the Cold War timeline, meanwhile, the 1953 CIA coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was facilitated by attacks on Mossadegh in the Iranian press.

According to former New York Times foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer, most of these tirades were either inspired by the CIA or written by CIA propagandists in Washington. One of the propagandists, Richard Cottam, estimated that four-fifths of the newspapers in Tehran were under CIA influence.

Fast-forward to 2016 and the resurrection of the Russian menace on the international scene  where Vladimir Putin is said to be rigging US elections and sponsoring all manner of media propaganda in between pursuing an ever more apocalyptic capacity for military devastation.



OPINION: The Kremlin and the US election

In a recent article for Harpers Magazine, Washington editor Andrew Cockburn argues that the new Red Scare has proved a predictable boon for US defence spending, despite the fact that Russias defence budget is roughly one tenth of Americas, and that its military often cannot afford the latest weapons Russian manufacturers offer for export.

Reality, however, has little bearing on the profit-oriented logic of the military-industrial complex or the priorities of the US armed forces  thanks to which, Cockburn writes, actual defence needs take second place to more urgent concerns, such as the perennial interservice battle for budget share.

In other words, it seems that Macedonian teenagers arent the only ones capable of turning a profit from fake news.

The enduring danger of hyper-militarisation, of course, is that well end up accidentally obliterating ourselves in the interest of financial gain  a prospect that appears ever more plausible given the impending US presidents insistence that the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability.

Unfortunately, some news is all too real.

Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin magazine.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Abubakar Shekau appears in new video to say fighters are safe, rebutting victory claims by Nigerias president and army.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has appeared in a new video to challenge a claim by the Nigerian president and the army that the armed group had been routed from its last stronghold of Sambisa Forest .

Shekau last appeared in a video in September where he disputed a claim by the Nigerian military that he had been wounded in battle.

We are safe, he says in the 25-minute video, flanked by masked armed fighters, which appeared on Thursday.

We have not been flushed out of anywhere. And tactics and strategies cannot reveal our location except if Allah wills by his decree.

WATCH: Boko Haram  Behind the Rise of Nigerias Armed Group

Referring to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who said on Christmas Eve that Boko Haram had been defeated and driven away from the forest, its last known bastion, Shekaku says: You should not be telling lies to the people.

If you indeed crushed us, how can you see me like this? How many times have you killed us in your bogus death?

It was not immediately clear where the new video was shot, but Shekau, who spoke in both Hausa and Arabic, said it was filmed on Christmas Day.





He pledged to continue fighting on until an Islamic state was imposed in northern Nigeria.

Our aim is to establish an Islamic Caliphate and we have our own Caliphate, we are not part of Nigeria, he says.

Buhari had announced that a sustained military campaign in the 1,300sq km Sambisa Forest in northeastern Borno state had led to the final crushing of Boko Haram terrorists in their last enclave in Sambisa Forest.

The government in Abuja and the military frequently claim victories against Boko Haram.

Nigerian army claims

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Tuesday , Brigadier-General Victor Ezugwu, a Nigerian army commander, said his soldiers had made significant gains against Boko Haram.

The army has claimed victory over Boko Haram in its stronghold, having captured the Sambisa Forest in the countrys east over the weekend.

We are on top of the situation, all hands are still on deck, Ezugwu told Al Jazeera. This defeat is final and it [Boko Haram] will not spread to other parts of West Africa.

Boko Harams campaign began in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, though it has since spread beyond Nigerias borders to Chad, Cameroon and Niger.

Nearly 15,000 civilians have been killed since the armed rebellion was launched in 1999. The insurgency has forced some 2.6 million others to flee their homes since 2009.

The violence has led to a dire humanitarian crisis in the region, with thousands of children facing the risk of famine and starvation.
Cairo court yet to issue final ruling but agreement to transfer two islands already sent to parliament for ratification.

Egypts government has approved a controversial deal to hand over two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, according to state television.

The agreement has been sent to parliament for ratification, according to reports on Thursday, despite a legal dispute in Egyptian courts over the plan.

In June, the Higher Administrative Court ruled that the deal was void, saying Egyptian sovereignty over Tiran and Sanafir could not be ceded.

The Egyptian government filed an appeal shortly afterwards.

Earlier this month, an Egyptian state advisory body recommended that the Cairo court uphold the ruling that annulled the agreement.

The court is due to issue its final verdict on January 16 and is not obliged to follow the advisory bodys report.

READ MORE: Is Sisi losing his grip on Egypt?

Reuters news agency quoted Khaled Ali, a lawyer who filed the June lawsuit to annul the deal, as saying that the governments latest move shows the collapse of the state of law and the constitution in Egypt.

The decision that parliament is going to issue is void and the people should defend their land with all legitimate means against this tyrant regime that doesnt respect either law or judiciary, Ali said.

However, Nabil al-Gamal, a member of the legislative and constitutional committee in parliament, said there was absolutely no conflict in sending the agreement to parliament for ratification before the courts final ruling.

I expect the parliament not to vote  on the agreement before the judiciary rules, so that there wont be any conflict between them, he said.

Rare protests

The initial deal was made public in April during a visit to Cairo by Saudi Arabias King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, during which he announced an aid package to Egypt.

The announcement set off rare protests and outrage by Egyptians who said the two uninhabited islands belonged to Egypt.

Following the protests, 71 people were sentenced to two years in prison.

Egypt says the islands had always belonged to Saudi Arabia and that it had merely administered them while on lease since the 1950s.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a former army chief who overthrew his predecessor in 2013, has been accused by activists of tolerating no dissent.
Asli Erdogan, along with Necmiye Alpay and Zana Kay, freed on first day of their trial in Istanbul on terrorism charges.

A court in Istanbul has ordered the release of an award-winning Turkish novelist along with two others after more than four months in jail, while a prominent journalist has been arrested in a separate case.

Asli Erdogan, along with linguist Necmiye Alpay and Zana Kaya, editorial director of a pro-Kurdish newspaper, were ordered to be released on Thursday, the first day of their trial on terrorism-related charges.

The three are, however, barred from leaving the country, with the next hearing scheduled to be held on January 2. The detention of one of the defendants was extended.

Alpay and Erdogan both pleaded not guilty.

Erdogan and eight others, some of whom face possible life sentences, have been charged with membership in the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Turkey and the US consider a terrorist organisation.

She worked for a pro-Kurdish newspaper, Ozgur Gundem, closed by authorities.

Investigative journalist arrested

In Thursdays other judicial development, Ahmet Sik of the daily Cumhuriyet newspaper was arrested on suspicion of spreading terrorist propaganda, according to state media and an opposition legislator.

Cumhuriyet is one of the few dailies still critical of the government.

Turkish authorities have dismissed tens of thousands of employees from the government machinery following a July coup attempt.

Prosecutors could not be reached for comment but Sik, himself, said on Twitter that he was being taken to the prosecutors office.

The author of several books, Sik spent a spell in jail from 2011-2012.

He has won numerous awards, including the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 2014.
Authorities in Sydney arrest 15 men allegedly involved in smuggling of contraband worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Australian authorities have seized more than a tonne of cocaine worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to police who described it as one of the countrys largest drug seizures.

Police listed on Thursday 600kg of cocaine intercepted by the French navy off Tahiti in March and 500kg seized on Christmas Day in Sydney  all destined for the Australian market.

Fifteen men, including commercial fishing operators, were arrested over the past few days for allegedly importing the cocaine from South America.

The arrests followed a two-and-a-half year investigation into fishermen who were allegedly using trawlers to move cocaine from South America to Australia.

Police said the secret operation culminated in arrests on Christmas Day at Sydney Fish Market when a trawler docked that had allegedly been used to meet a mother ship, which police told The Telegraph had travelled from Chile.

The authorities released video footage showing three men being arrested aboard a fishing boat and led away in handcuffs.

Another 12 men were arrested over the past few days.

This is a very significant organised crime group, said New South Wales Police Force Assistant Commissioner Mark Jenkins.

Chris Sheehan, the federal police acting assistant commissioner, said that investigations were continuing in South America to find the suppliers of the contraband.
Backed by Russia and Turkey and accepted by Assad and opposition groups, truce to be followed by peace negotiations.

A ceasefire across Syria has gone into effect after the government and some armed opposition groups accepted a truce agreement brokered by Russia and Turkey.

Thursdays ceasefire began at 12am local time (22:00 GMT), and, if it holds, will be followed by peace negotiations in Kazakhstans capital Astana within one month.

Turkey and Russia have pledged to act as guarantors to the cessation of hostilities.

Previous UN-backed attempts to end the Syrian civil war, which started as a largely unarmed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, have failed and often led to fierce fighting.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group (formerly al-Nusra Front) have been excluded from the ceasefire, according to reports.

Inside Story: Syria war crimes probe  Will anyone be charged?

Al Jazeeras Charles Stratford, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish border with Syria, said: There are high hopes that this [truce] might work, but there are huge potential problems with it. The biggest seems to be this group  Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

There are fears that if there are air strikes targeting Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which has often fought alongside a number of signatories to the agreement, then there may be some casualties among those factions as well.

A statement carried on Thursday by Syrias state news agency SANA said the truce agreement excluded ISIL, also known as ISIS; Jabhat Fateh al-Sham; and groups linked to them.

Earlier in the day, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that an agreement had been reached on a countrywide ceasefire for Syria.

Though the ceasefire is being described as nationwide, fighting could very well continue in the areas under the control of ISIL and the other groups excluded from the ceasefire  Idlib, in the northwest, and the outskirts of Damascus, for instance.

Trilateral agreement

Russia launched its air war in support of Assads forces in September 2015, marking a major turning point in the Syrian governments fight against armed opposition groups.

Al Jazeeras Natasha Ghoneim, reporting from Moscow, said three different documents were signed as part of a trilateral agreement involving Russia, Turkey and Iran.

The first document lays out an agreement between the Syrian government and opposition groups on the ground, she said.

The second document includes measures designed to control the ceasefire, and the third lays out what needs to happen next in order for there to be peace talks.

The Turkish foreign ministry confirmed the news of the ceasefire and called on countries with influence on the groups fighting in Syria to provide the necessary support for the ceasefire to last.

Russia and Turkey strongly support the truce and will monitor it together, the ministry said.

Speaking in the Turkish capital Ankara later on Thursday, representatives of Syrias High Negotiations Committee (HNC) said the rebels would abide by the truce but would retaliate against violations by Syrian government forces and their allies.

The HNC is an umbrella group representing Syrias political and armed opposition factions, including the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

No direct talks

Usama Abu Zeyd, FSAs spokesman, said the rebels had held no direct talks with the Syrian government or Iran during the truce talks and insisted that Assad would have no place in the future of Syria.

The ceasefire covers all the territories of Syria and it extends to include all the groups fighting under the Syrian armed opposition, he said, adding that the rebels had agreed to start peace talks.

Abu Zeyd confirmed that the truce excluded ISIL and the main Syrian Kurdish armed group, the Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG), but did not specify whether Jabhat Fateh al-Sham was also excluded.

Syrian government forces and allied paramilitaries entered the eastern part of Aleppo city a week ago after the last residents and opposition fighters were evacuated from the enclave under a Turkish-Russian deal.

The pull-out gave Assads forces full control over Aleppo, which had been divided between his government and opposition fighters since 2012.





In his announcement from Moscow, Putin sounded a cautionary note, making it clear that the ceasefire deal was a work in progress.

The agreements reached are, no doubt, very fragile and they demand special attention and follow-up in order to keep them and develop them, he said.

Now we need to do everything for these agreements to work, so that negotiators would come to Astana and would begin to work on real peace process. I call on the Syrian government, armed opposition, all countries involved to support these agreements.

Nour Hallak, a civil-society activist based in Idlib, said there is some hope among Syrians because the latest ceasefire includes all the factions.

READ MORE: Idlib overwhelmed by influx of Aleppos wounded

When we started to hear about the ceasefire, we felt that it may be for real this time, he told Al Jazeera by Skype, alluding to the previous failed truce attempts.

In a statement on Thursday, Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy to Syria, said he welcomes the ceasefire deal and expressed hope that it will will save civilian lives, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance across Syria, and pave the way for productive talks in Astana.

De Mistura estimated in April that more than 400,000 Syrians had been killed since 2011.

Calculating a precise death toll is difficult, partially owing to the forced disappearances of tens of thousands of Syrians whose fates remain unknown.

Almost 11 million Syrians  half the countrys prewar population  have been displaced from their homes.
Obama defends expulsions, calling action a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm US interests.

The United States has expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian compounds in a response that Barack Obama says was necessary and appropriate against efforts to harm US interests.

Obama, whose term as as US president ends next month, said on Thursday that actions against Russia are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm US interests in violation of established international norms of behaviour.

The move against the diplomats from the Russian embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco is part of a series of actions announced on Thursday to punish Russia for what the official said was a campaign of intimidation of American diplomats in Moscow and interference in the US election.



Secrets and hacks: Russias role in the US election

Obama said a report by his administration about Russias efforts to interfere in the 2016 election would be delivered to Congress in the coming days.

The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation are releasing declassified technical information on Russian civilian and military intelligence service cyber activity, Obama said in a statement.

Al Jazeeras Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington DC, said that the US administration had not provided any proof of Russias involvement other than the flat accusations that 17 US intelligence agencies say so.

A senior US official told Reuters news agency that the Russian diplomats would be given 72 hours to leave the country and access to the two compounds [in New York and Maryland], which are used by Russian officials for intelligence gathering, will be denied as of noon on Friday.

These actions were taken to respond to Russian harassment of American diplomats and actions by the diplomats that we have assessed to be not consistent with diplomatic practice, the official said.

Today, Treasury sanctions two individuals for malicious cyber-enabled activities. https://t.co/c4LKHoEhwZ pic.twitter.com/0M24mshs0f  Treasury Department (@USTreasury) December 29, 2016

Our correspondent said: The White House is calling this a national emergency. This is one of the strongest responses weve ever seen from the US against what it says was a state-sponsored cyberattack.

She said sanctions have been imposed on two Russian intelligence services, including four military intelligence officers, that the White House believes may have directly ordered the hacking that took place over the summer.

The US official declined to name the diplomats who would be affected, although it is understood that Russias ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, will not be one of those expelled.

Harassment of diplomats

Obama said that all Americans should be alarmed by Russias actions, adding that data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government.

Obama also said the US diplomats have experienced an unacceptable level of harassment in Moscow by Russian security services and police over the past year.

The state department has long complained that Russian security agents and traffic police have harassed US diplomats in Moscow, and John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has raised the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.

WATCH: Are Russia and the US entering a new Cold War?

The developments come less than a month from the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has called for better relations with Russia.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the new round of US sanctions against Russia would harm relations between the two countries.

He said Putin would order an appropriate retaliation to the sanctions.
Iraqi forces launch the second phase of the battle to retake eastern Mosul from ISIL.

Iraqi troops backed by US-led air strikes have pushed deeper into eastern Mosul after a two-week lull in the operation to retake the city held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

Staff Lieutenant-General Abdulghani al-Assadi, a senior officer in Iraqs counterterrorism service, said the second phase of the operation, now in its third month, began on Thursday.

He told the AFP news agency that forces began advancing towards the Quds neighbourhood.

Now our forces clashed with the enemy and there is resistance, al-Assadi said, adding that forces on the northern and southern fronts were also advancing.

READ MORE: Battle for Mosul  I miss everything there

Special elite forces also pushed into the Karama neighbourhood, while army troops and federal police advanced into nearby Intisar, Salam and Sumor neighbourhoods, the AP news agency reported.

Smoke rose across the city as explosions and machine-gun fire echoed through the streets.

The counterterrorism forces, also known as the Golden Brigade, captured about half of the Quds neighbourhood by early afternoon.

Stiff resistance by ISIL fighters, together with civilians trapped inside their houses and bad weather have slowed advances in the offensive to recapture Iraqs second largest city, the armed groups last urban bastion in the country.

A statement by the US-led coalition said Thursdays offensive opened two new fronts in eastern Mosul, increasing pressure on ISILs dwindling ability to generate forces, move fighters or resupply.





It said that, at the request of the Iraqi government, coalition warplanes had re-struck two bridges over the Tigris River in Mosul on Tuesday, and a day earlier disabled the last bridge crossing in the city.

The strikes were conducted to reduce enemy freedom of movement, and to further disrupt ISILs ability to reinforce, resupply, or use vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices in East Mosul, said the statement.

Another coalition statement said an air strike on Thursday that targeted a van used by ISIL fighters in Mosul was later determined to have been located at a hospitals car park, resulting in possible civilian casualties.

The coalition, it added, takes all allegations of civilian casualties seriously and this incident will be fully investigated and the findings released in a timely and transparent manner.

It was not immediately known how many, if any, were hurt by the air strike.

Biggest operation

It is the biggest Iraqi military operation since the 2003 US-led invasion.

ISIL overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces, backed by US-led air strikes, have since regained much of the territory they lost to the group.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had pledged that Mosul would be recaptured by years end. That goal that is now out of reach, as operations in western Mosul have yet to begin.

Abadi said earlier this week that three months were needed to eliminate ISIL in Iraq.

However, Lieutenant-General Stephen Townsend, the general commanding coalition forces in Iraq, predicted that it would take two years to clear ISIL from Mosul and Raqqa, and then to burn out the remnants of the group.
Truce aims to cover entire Syria but fighting could continue in areas controlled by groups not included by agreement.

The government of Syria and some opposition groups have signed a ceasefire deal and agreed to start peace talks, expected early in the New Year.

It remains to be seen if the agreement would take effect and hold, with Russia and Turkey pledging to guarantee the ceasefire, which was due to begin at Thursday midnight local time.

Previous UN-backed attempts to end the Syrian civil war, which started as a largely unarmed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, have failed and often led to fierce fighting.

Al Jazeeras Charles Stratford, reporting from Gaziantep in Turkey near the Syria border, said: There are some serious questions being asked about one opposition group in particular that is considered a terrorist organisation  Jabhat Fateh al-Sham  which has been very successful in its battles against the Syrian regime.

Inside Story: Syria war crimes probe  Will anyone be charged?

Earlier in the day, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that an agreement had been reached on a countrywide ceasefire for Syria, with Russia and Turkey to act as guarantors.

He said the truce would begin at midnight on Thursday (22:00 GMT) and be followed by peace talks between the Syrian government and the opposition in Kazakhstans capital, Astana.

Sergei Shoigu, Russias defence minister, said the ceasefire would include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria.

Russia launched its air war in support of Assads forces in September 2015, marking a major turning point in the Syrian governments fight against armed opposition groups.

Trilateral agreement

A statement carried on Thursday by Syrias state news agency SANA said the truce agreement excluded the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the group formerly known as al-Nusra Front, and groups linked to them, without specifying who these groups are.

Al Jazeeras Natasha Ghoneim, reporting from Moscow, said that three different documents had been signed as part of a trilateral agreement involving Russia, Turkey and Iran.

The first document lays out an agreement between the Syrian government and opposition groups on the ground, she said.

The second document includes measures designed to control the ceasefire, and the third lays out what needs to happen next in order for there to be peace talks.

The Turkish foreign ministry confirmed the news of the ceasefire and called on countries with influence on the groups fighting in Syria to provide the necessary support for the ceasefire to last.

Russia and Turkey strongly support the truce and will monitor it together, the ministry said.

Speaking in the Turkish capital Ankara later on Thursday, representatives of Syrias High Negotiations Committee (HNC) said the rebels would abide by the truce but would retaliate against violations by Syrian government forces and their allies.

The HNC is an umbrella group representing Syrias political and armed opposition factions, including the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

No direct talks

Usama Abu Zeyd, the FSAs spokesman, said the rebels had had no direct talks with the Syrian government or Iran during the truce talks and insisted that Assad would have no place in the future of Syria.

The ceasefire covers all the territories of Syria and it extends to include all the groups fighting under the Syrian armed opposition, he said, adding that the rebels had agreed to start peace talks.

Abu Zeyd confirmed that the truce excluded ISIL, also known as ISIS, and the main Syrian Kurdish armed group, the Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG), but did not specify whether Jabhat Fateh al-Sham was also excluded.





Though the ceasefire is being described as nationwide, fighting could very well continue in the areas under the control of ISIL and the other groups excluded from the ceasefire  Idlib, in the northwest, and the outskirts of Damascus, for instance.

Al Jazeeras Hashem Ahelbarra, also reporting from Gaziantep, said excluding Jabhat Fateh al-Sham could create some problems and further undermine the ceasefires chances of holding.

The group has presence in areas where moderate rebel groups are operating  around Aleppo, Idlib and on the outskirts of Damascus.

If the Russians and the Syrian government decide to target the positions of [Jabhat Fateh al-Sham], the potential for casualties among other groups is going to be high.

Syrian government forces and allied paramilitaries entered the eastern part of Aleppo city a week ago after the last residents and opposition fighters were evacuated from the enclave under a Turkish-Russian deal.

The pull-out gave Assads forces full control over Aleppo, which had been divided between his government and opposition fighters since 2012.

Cautionary note

In his announcement from Moscow, Putin sounded a cautionary note, making it clear that the ceasefire deal was a work in progress.

The agreements reached are, no doubt, very fragile and they demand special attention and follow-up in order to keep them and develop them, he said.

Now we need to do everything for these agreements to work, so that negotiators would come to Astana and would begin to work on real peace process. I call on the Syrian government, armed opposition, all countries involved to support these agreements.

Nour Hallak, a civil society activist based in Idlib, said there is some hope among Syrians because the latest ceasefire includes all the factions.

READ MORE: Idlib overwhelmed by influx of Aleppos wounded

When we started to hear about the ceasefire, we felt that it may be for real this time, he told Al Jazeera by Skype, alluding to the previous failed truce attempts.

In a statement on Thursday, Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy to Syria, said he welcomes the ceasefire deal and expressed hope that it will will save civilian lives, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance across Syria, and pave the way for productive talks in Astana.

De Mistura estimated in April that more than 400,000 Syrians had been killed since 2011.

Calculating a precise death toll is difficult, partially owing to the forced disappearances of tens of thousands of Syrians whose fates remain unknown.

Almost 11 million Syrians  half the countrys prewar population  have been displaced from their homes.
When Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino was campaigning against Andrew Cuomo for governor of New York, it was revealed that Paladino had sent sexually explicit and racist emails to friends. He was criticized by both the Republican and Democratic Party chairs, the latter of which said that the emails "disqualify him completely from public service."

He was not "disqualified" from the race, of course, but he did go on to lose it badly, even though he apologized to anyone that he may have offended.

Fast-forward six years and Paladino is a member of the Buffalo School Board. And he still has a habit of fostering racism, having crossed any thinking person's line of decency last week when he hurled sexist and racist insults at the first lady of the United States and said that he wished that President Barack Obama would contract a fatal disease.

Again, he apologized, sort of, calling his remarks "inappropriate" and saying that he never intended to hurt the Obamas.

Paladino was the co-chair of President-elect Donald Trump's campaign in New York and claims that he is still actively involved with Trump, though a Trump spokesperson called Paladino's remarks about the Obamas "absolutely reprehensible."

The Buffalo School Board has called a special meeting "to discuss board member conduct," but only the state education commissioner can remove a school board member from office. But rather than fight to keep his position, it's our hope that Paladino will resign.

Perhaps people Paladino actually listens to  such as the president-elect  could convince him to step down. After all, Paladino's stated purpose for remaining on the school board is so that he can help implement education reforms under the new president.

But anyone who speaks the vile language Paladino does isn't fit to serve any public position.
Opposition bloc tells Al Jazeera it has yet to receive a draft of a truce plan agreed by Russia and Turkey.

The fate of a nationwide truce for Syria remains unclear with the Syrian National Coalition, the countrys main political opposition bloc, telling Al Jazeera that it has still not received a draft plan from either Turkey or Russia.

Turkeys state-run Anadolu news agency had reported on Wednesday that a ceasefire plan had been submitted to Syrias rival parties and could come into force as early as midnight.





But the coalition, which represents the Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups fighting across the country, told Al Jazeera that it was yet to receive a draft of the document.

Labib Nahhas, the foreign relations head of the powerful Ahrar al-Sham rebel group, said the faction was aware of ongoing discussions between Russia and Turkey about a nationwide ceasefire.

He said rebel factions had not been presented with any official proposal.

Russia wants to exclude Eastern Ghouta from the ceasefire, which is not acceptable, he told the AFP news agency, referring to a rebel-held area outside Damascus.

Meanwhile, sources told Al Jazeera that a new meeting was planned in Ankara on Thursday, this time between Syrian rebels, Turkey and Russia.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkeys foreign minister, told broadcaster A Haber in an interview that Ankara was aiming to establish the ceasefire before the new year.

Al Jazeeras Charles Stratford, reporting from Gaziantep in neighbouring Turkey, said it remained unclear which opposition groups had been taking part in previous negotiations.

A senior official from the Free Syrian Army says that the FSA has rejected a proposal by Russia that Douma, one of its strongholds near the capital Damascus, would not be included in the ceasefire agreement, Stratford said.

OPINION: Who are we to say the Syrian revolution is dead?

On Wednesday, a source requesting anonymity had told Anadolu that terrorist organisations would be excluded from the deal.

This would most certainly exclude the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the group formerly known as al-Nusra Front.

If successful, the latest proposal could form the basis for upcoming political negotiations between Damascus and the opposition, overseen by Russia and Turkey in the Kazakh capital Astana, Anadolu added.

Ankara has hosted a succession of closed-door talks between Russia and Syrian opposition rebels over the past weeks.

Ankara and Moscow have been on opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, with Turkey seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Russia and Iran.

The Syrian civil war started as a largely unarmed uprising against Assad in March 2011, but quickly developed into a full-on armed conflict.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy to Syria, estimated in April that more than 400,000 Syrians had been killed since 2011.

Calculating a precise death toll is difficult, partially owing to the forced disappearances of tens of thousands of Syrians whose fates remain unknown.

Almost 11 million Syrians  half the countrys prewar population  have been displaced from their homes.
Main rebel groups join countrywide truce that begins at midnight Thursday, with Russia and Turkey to act as guarantors.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says an agreement has been reached on a countrywide ceasefire for Syria, with Russia and Turkey to act as guarantors.

He said the truce would begin at midnight on Thursday (22:00 GMT) and be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar al-Assads government and the Syrian opposition in the Kazakh capital Astana.

The agreements reached are, no doubt, very fragile and they demand special attention and follow-up in order to keep them and develop them. Nevertheless, this is a notable result of our joint work, efforts by the defence and foreign ministries, our partners in the regions, Putin said.

READ MORE: Fate of Syrian ceasefire plan remains unclear

Now we need to do everything for these agreements to work, so that negotiators would come to Astana and would begin to work on real peace process. I call on the Syrian government, armed opposition, all countries involved to support these agreements.

Putins announcement followed a statement carried by Syrian state news agency SANA, which said the agreement excluded the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the group formerly known as al-Nusra Front, and groups linked to them, without specifying who these groups are.

Al Jazeeras Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish border with Syria, said excluding Jabhat Fateh al-Sham could create some problems and futher undermine the ceasefires chances of holding.





The group, he said, has presence in areas where moderate rebel groups are operating  around Aleppo, Idlib and on the outskirts of Damascus.

If the Russians and the Syrian government decide to target the positions of Nusra [Jabhat Fateh al-Sham], the potential for casualties among other groups is going to be high.

Sergei Shoigu, Russias defence minister, said the truce would include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria.

The Turkish foreign ministry confirmed the agreement and called on countries with influence on groups fighting in the country to provide the necessary support for the ceasefire to last.

Russia and Turkey strongly support the truce and will monitor it together, the ministry said.

Reporting from Moscow, Al Jazeeras Natasha Ghoneim said three different documents had been signed as part of a trilateral agreement involving Russia, Turkey and Iran.

The first document lays out an agreement between the Syrian government and opposition groups on the ground. The second document includes measures designed to control the ceasefire and the third lays out what needs to happen next in order for there to be peace talks.

Russia to scale down

Details of the agreement remained hazy, our correspondent said, and it was unclear which opposition groups had been involved in the negotiating process.

Just a day ago the negotiating arm of the largest group of rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army said they had yet to be in contact with anyone and had not been invited to participate in talks.

In his announcement, Putin said the Russian military had been ordered to scale down its presence in Syria, where it has been providing crucial support to Assads forces.

He did not say how many troops and weapons would be withdrawn, but said Russia would continue fighting international terrorism in Syria and would maintain its presence at both an airbase in the coastal province of Latakia and the naval facility in the port of Tartus.

The Syrian conflict started as a largely unarmed uprising against Assad in March 2011, but quickly developed into a full-on armed civil war.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy to Syria, estimated in April that more than 400,000 Syrians had been killed since 2011.

Calculating a precise death toll is difficult, partially owing to the forced disappearances of tens of thousands of Syrians whose fates remain unknown.

Almost 11 million Syrians  half the countrys prewar population  have been displaced from their homes.
After attempting to buy  and then stealing  a security guards dog Monday, an Alachua man stabbed the guard in the neck, Gainesville Police said.

Jose Amaya, 37, was on duty at an apartment in the 1400 block of SW 18th Place when the attacker  Zain Zamorano, 32,  took his white pit bull, a witness told police, according to an arrest report.

Zain Zamorano

Amaya immediately reported the theft to police, but officers did not arrive in time.

Zamorano returned just before 7 p.m. and began to argue with the guard, eventually stabbing him in the neck and arm, according to the report. Amaya survived the attack, but he was left with an inch-deep puncture wound on the right side of his neck and another on the upper part of his left arm.

Emergency Medical Services on the scene told police one of the wounds was about an inch away from his carotid artery.

After his arrest, Zamorano told police Amaya tried to stab him and that a knife police recovered at the scene belonged to Amaya, according to the report.

Police arrested Zamorano on a charge of aggravated battery. Authorities took him to the Alachua County Jail where he remains, as of press time, in lieu of a $50,000 bond.

Speaking through a translator Wednesday, Amaya said he is still recovering from the stabbing with his dog by his side.

I cant move my arm a lot, Amaya said. It hurts a lot.

@merylkornfield

mkornfield@alligator.org

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After a night out at Midtown on Wednesday, a UF student broke into a house and fell asleep with a broom, Gainesville Police said.

At about 5:10 a.m., Christian Chambers Kobes, 20, used the broom to break a window pane at the home, located in the 1700 block of eighth avenue, according to the police report.

Christian Chambers Kobes

Police responded to the homes alarm and found Kobes asleep with the broom, according to the report.

Kobes, a UF food and resource economics student, began taking classes in Fall, John Hines, the UF public records and public affairs coordinator, wrote in an email.

Police confirmed the broom was used to break the window and enter the home, according to the report. The damage is estimated to be $100.

When approached by officers, Kobes did not comply with commands and continued gripping the broom, according to the report. Police used a K-9 unit to apprehend Kobes.

The owner of the home said no one had permission to enter his home, and the broom was moved from where it was originally left outside, according to the report.

Kobes told officers he was drinking in Midtown earlier that evening and had no memory of breaking into the house, according to the report.

Kobes was arrested on charges of burglary, criminal mischief and resisting an officer without violence. Authorities took him to the Alachua County Jail where he remains, as of press time, without bond.

mkornfield@alligator.org

@merylkornfield

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Following a plane crash into a Tennessee mountainside Monday, two adults and a child from Bradford County, Florida, are believed to be dead, pending the identification of the bodies found at the scene.

The single-engine airplane crashed at the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and a search began Wednesday after a reconnaissance flight by the Tennessee Army National Guard found the small plane, the National Park Service said in a press release.

The passengers recovered from the wreckage Wednesday night are believed to be David Starling, 41, Kim Smith, 42, and Hunter Starling, 8, from Bradford County, located about 30 minutes from Gainesville.

Jamie Sanders, an executive assistant from the National Park Service, said the bodies were recovered from the wreckage by the Tennessee Army National Guard at 5 p.m. Wednesday using a Blackhawk helicopter.

The small plane, a Cessna 182 fixed wing single-engine aircraft, was flying from Florida to Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge Airport in Tennessee when it went missing at about 4:01 p.m. Monday, the National Park Service said.

A GPS device in the plane and the McGhee Tyson Airport tower radar determined the locations ground teams would search, but some areas were inaccessible due to the rough terrain.

A single Blackhawk helicopter spotted the wreckage on an unnamed ridge between Cole Creek and Bearpen Hollow Branch at 4:43 p.m. Tuesday, the National Park Service said.

Paramedics on the helicopter were lowered to the crash site and confirmed there were no survivors, the National Park Service said. The Tennessee Army National Guard began to extract the victims from the steep, heavily-wooded terrain.

The plane is positioned on a very steep mountain side and could be at risk of sliding further down into the drainage, said Great Smoky Mountain National Park Chief Ranger Steve Kloster in a press release Wednesday.

The National Transportation Safety Board has begun investigating the cause of the crash. Eric Weiss, a spokesperson in Washington, D.C., said the NTSB will release a preliminary report in five to 10 days.

(NTSB) is in the process of the on-scene investigation, Weiss said.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates

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@merylkornfield

mkornfield@alligator.org
The financial services industry is pushing hard for Congress to change the single director Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into a multimember commission under the guise of "good government." Let there be no mistake what this is really about: the proposal for a commission structure is a backdoor attack on the very existence of the CFPB as an agency.

The financial services industry doesn't have the courage to attack the CFPB, an immensely popular agency, directly. So instead, the strategy is to try to render it ineffective by changing it from a single-director structure to a five-member commission.

Commission proponents make three principal arguments. All are specious. First, commission proponents argue that a multimember commission is more accountable than a single director. This is illogical. With a multimember commission, accountability is diffuse; it's easy for commission members to point fingers at each other and mutter about necessary compromise. With a single director, it's clear where the buck stops.

Second, commission proponents argue that a commission will be less likely to undertake arbitrary actions or abuse its power because commission structures encourage dealmaking and compromise. This ignores the reality of bipartisan commissions. These commissions operate according to majority rule, and the partisan majority (especially in the current environment) will simply ignore and roll the minority. Minority commissioners are not a meaningful check on partisan majorities abusing power or acting in an arbitrary manner. The real check on agency overreach is the courts.

The idea that commissions foster compromises and dealmaking also ignores the Government in the Sunshine Act, which requires that any discussions between more than two commissioners be held in public. This open meeting requirement effectively precludes deliberative discussion within a commission and impedes negotiated compromises. But even if commissions could engage in dealmaking, that would actually result in suboptimal, arbitrary compromises, rather than the substantively right policy.

Third, commission proponents argue that a commission furthers policy stability. A commission with staggered terms might add marginally to policy stability, but the biggest assurance of policy stability is the Administrative Procedures Act. The APA bars rulemakings from being issued or repealed willy-nilly. They must go through a formal notice-and-comment process and be supported by substantial evidence. An agency cannot simply repeal or change an existing rule because it doesn't like it politically. The APA's adjudication provisions, the principle of binding precedent and judicial review of adjudication similarly adds policy stability on enforcement actions.

The arguments for a multimember commission ultimately miss the point. The whole reason for congressional delegation to agencies is effective policy implementation. The Congress itself is incapable of implementing and administering the nitty-gritty details of policy. Congress delegates these responsibilities to agencies because it wants the policy directives it legislates to be carried out. Single-director agencies, like the CFPB, Federal Housing Finance Agency and Office of Comptroller of the Currency, have been much more effective at implementing policy than squabbling, multimember commissions.

Consider the effectiveness of multimember commissions. The poster child for commission dysfunction has got to be the poor Federal Election Commission, which has a 3-3 partisan deadlock so bad that its own chair has stated, "People think the FEC is dysfunctional. It's worse than dysfunctional."

Agencies with odd numbers of commissioners can also end up deadlocked if a commissioner has to recuse herself, as Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White often had to do. Indeed, some have even suggested that businesses might deliberately exploit this situation by hiring her husband's law firm in order to ensure White's recusal and a subsequent partisan deadlock.

And even when multicommissioner agencies lack partisan deadlocks, they are often ineffective. The SEC, for example, has still not completed several of its Dodd-Frank Act rulemakings, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has yet to finalize a critical position limits rulemaking. In contrast, the single-director CFPB completed all of its Dodd-Frank rulemakings on time even while simultaneously staffing up an agency from scratch.

Indeed, under a commission structure, there is no guarantee that all the seats on a multimember commission will even be filled, raising the specter of either a lack of quorum or a lack of partisan representation on one side. The National Labor Relations Board did not have five Senate-confirmed commissioners from 2003 until 2013, and lacked even a quorum from 2007 to 2009 and again in 2011. Similarly, the Federal Reserve Board has had two vacancies since 2013, and has never filled the position of vice chair for supervision. Committee-structured agencies wither through congressional inaction, but vacancies at single-director agencies are immediately filled by fully empowered acting directors.

The push for a commission structure at the CFPB is about ensuring less-than-effective consumer financial protection regulation. A commission structure would ensure an ineffective, feeble CFPB, while avoiding the political backlash of a direct attack on an agency that has in the course of five years returned over $11.7 billion improper fees and charges to consumers, in addition to the savings that consumers have garnered from fairer financial institution practices and more transparent markets. Congress should let the CFPB keep doing its job.

Adam J. Levitin is a professor of law at Georgetown University. He is a former member of the CFPB's Consumer Advisory Board.
Fed Talent Refurb: The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, like most places, has a gender gap among other diversity gaps that it has worked hard to close in the last four years. Mary C. Daly, senior vice president and associate director of research at the San Francisco Fed, recently took to Medium to tell the story of how it did that, emphasizing that where there were stark gender imbalances (80% male research associates versus 20% female RAs, for example), they held the power to erase the habits perpetuating the problem. "As a gay woman working in a male-dominated profession, I'm acutely aware of the need for diversity and the importance of being included. And yet, I've made excuses," she says. "The biggest change was in our mindset. We acknowledged that we were not victims of a backwards world but rather causalities of our own excuses." She says they also learned that committing to diversity goes beyond hiring Ph.D.s to growing the pipeline of future graduates. "We are as responsible as anyone for building the bench of new Ph.D. economists, and we can begin by committing to diversity among RAs."

Mentorship Management: Wendy Papworth, director for global diversity and inclusion at Barclays UK and Barclaycard, gave an interview recently following a report that a third of British businesses have no female senior managers (surprise, surprise). Change doesn't happen overnight, which means that so-called commitments to long-term gender balance have to be sustainable at all levels. That means organizations need interventions at every stage, she said; "ensuring diverse hiring panels and slates, running programs that encourage women who have put their careers on hold back into the workplace at all levels and fostering strong employee diversity networks that provide support, networking and opportunities for development." She also discussed the importance of mentorship, but warned, "make sure you manage and own the relationship. They are giving you the gift of their time and experience, use it wisely."

Online Lending Is Blind: For women small-business owners, the online lending movement appears to be opening doors. Female entrepreneurs who apply for loans online and are evaluated by an automated system get a bigger share of online credits than they do traditional in-person bank loans. It could be a sign that automated credit decisions are fairer. About 30% of loans made through SmartBiz Loans go to women-owned businesses; at Fundera, one in four applicants are women and 25% of loan recipients are women. Just 18% of Small Business Administration 504 and 7(a) loans were made to women-owned businesses in fiscal year 2016, the SBA said. "Everyone has bias. It's not intentional a lot of times," said Erin Andrew, associate administrator for the SBA's Office of Capital Access, who until recently ran the agency's women-owned business program. With online lending, "You're looking at the numbers, you're not looking at me. When lending is blind, you see the borrower based on what they have to bring to the table, what the business looks like  you don't see them based on gender."

Millennial Means: Centric Bank in Harrisburg, Penn., has formed a Millennial Advisory Board, partnering with the 1,500-member Harrisburg Young Professionals, to help it tap into the needs and preferences of "the largest population in the U.S. workforce" when it comes to "what type of relationship [they] want to have with their bank, what financial services they need, and how we can connect with them more authentically," said the bank's CEO Patti Husic. Each member of the 16-person board will serve a two-year commitment representing either the Harrisburg Young Professionals or Centric Bank, and will meet quarterly. "We want the customer to dictate what the banking relationship should look like, and we'll respond by meeting those needs," she said. "Excellent customer service invites a two-way conversation with your audiences. We are not relying on statistics alone or third-party market studies. We want our primary source to be the potential customers who represent our demographic."

Time Is Money: When the financial services industry started paying attention to blockchain technology, many companies, seemingly as a reflex, sought patent protection for their ideas. Simply pursuing them, however, can be a drag on innovation, since time and money are spent on an effort that, at best, just slows down other firms. Caitlin Long, president of blockchain technology vendor Symbiont, can attest to that from her experience filing patents when she worked at Morgan Stanley. She says patents aren't that valuable and may not even be relevant by the time the patent office gets through the process. She also warned against investing money in trying to shut out potential rivals. "In these complex systems all you have to do is change one important term and then the patent doesn't apply, so there's an awful lot of money being spent by players in this industry," she said. "If you raise too much money, you spend it too fast. If you spend all your money filing patents you slow yourself down. At this point the race is on to build production-ready software. That's what we're focusing on as a company."

Wall Street's Next Top Cop? Ex-U.S. attorney Debra Wong Yang is a top contender to replace Mary Jo Whiteas head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The appointment would make her the second consecutive former federal prosecutor to lead Wall Street's top regulator, emphasizing the agency's role in investigating corporate wrongdoing rather than policy-making. According to the Bloomberg article, Yang, a partner at law firm Gibson Dunn, lacks experience in securities regulation, which could present challenges when it comes to rolling back rules stemming from Dodd-Frank, a priority of many Republican lawmakers.

Year in Review: It's Mary Mack, Kathie Andrade and Nandita Bakhshi to watch going into 2017. In case you missed it, Mack became head of community banking for Wells Fargo after Carrie Tolstedt's retirement, which was conveniently scheduled around the time she was asked to resign following the bank's phony-accounts scandal, which erupted in her department. Andrade is CEO of retail financial services at TIAA, which agreed this year to buy EverBank in Jacksonville, Fla., in this year's biggest all-cash deal. And Bakhshi became CEO of Bank of the West, which is counting on her to reverse some of its metrics, like lagging returns on assets and equity. Check 'em out in our end of year slideshows: 10 Who Had a Rough Year, 10 to Watch in 2017 and Top M&A Deals of 2016.

Role Call

U.S. Bancorp has hired Karen Wimbish, a former Wells Fargo executive, to oversee the bank's wealth management products. Wimbish replaces Ann Senne, who left the bank last month for another firm.

Carver Bancorp's chairman and former CEO, Deborah Wright, will leave to join Citigroup's board of directors on Jan. 1.

U.S. Bancorp has promoted Beth McDonnell to chief marketing officer. She was previously head of brand strategy and reputations.

Susan Black, former CEO of Pinnacle Bank in Gilroy, Calif., has been appointed executive vice chairman. Black, who had been CEO since 2008, will remain a director for the bank.

Beyond Banking

Gender Revolution: National Geographic is featuring its first transgender person ever, an eight-year-old transgender girl named Avery Jackson, on the cover of the 128-year-old magazine's January issue, a special edition devoted to the gender revolution. "The story of gender plays out all around us," said Susan Goldberg, editor in chief of the magazine. "More and more, celebrities are shining a spotlight on the subject. But more quietly, our children, parents, teachers, medical professionals, and officials every day confront an array of issues with gender at the center. Everywhere we looked, in the U.S. and around the globe, individuals and organizations are fighting to redefine traditional gender roles and find their true identity elsewhere on a gender spectrum."

Serious Journalism: Teen Vogue has provided sharp, praiseworthy political coverage throughout this year that many have found surprising and baffling. But "women's" publications have long offered substantive, worthwhile political pieces often overlooked or underappreciated  a measure of how "women's issues" have been segregated from business and politics. Check out Quartz's brief history of "women's" news and the rise of the feminist blogosphere. "It's crucial that we banish the idea that there is a boundary between 'women's journalism' and 'serious journalism' once and for all The feminist-blog movement, and the women's media revolution that followed, has trained the exact press corps we need for this moment in history. Now we need to stop feigning shock at the women and girls who are running circles around mainstream publications' political coverage, and start listening to what they have to tell us."

RIP Carrie Fisher: Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the earliest films in the Star Wars franchise and later General Organa, died this week. In her role as Leia, Fisher showed her audiences that a woman can lead a rebellion on her own, that they aren't damsels in distress. As the daughter of Hollywood royalty and one of the most iconic characters in film, Fisher made certain she used her influence to help women own their flaws and find their voices and became an important advocate off screen for people with bipolar disorder. "Stay afraid, but do it anyway," she once advised, telling people suffering mental illness that it shouldn't hold them back. "What's important is the action. You don't have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow." She also opened up about ageism in Hollywood when she was asked to lose weight for the 2015 Star Wars film, The Force Awakens. "I'm in a business where the only thing that matters is weight and appearance. That is so messed up," she said. "They might as well say get younger, because that's how easy it is." Fisher died Tuesday by drowning in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.
Faster ACH payments are taxing banks' ability to check for fraud and criminals are taking notice.

As of September, credit-based ACH payments are now being settled within the same day. These are transactions where one person or entity is pushing money from their bank account to another person or organization, using the automated clearinghouse. Examples include direct deposit, payroll, person-to-person and vendor payments.

Where before banks had two to five days to analyze suspicious transactions, now in some cases they have only two hours. Banks haven't quite caught up with the shorter time frame for checking red flags, some say, and fraudsters have jumped on this opportunity.

"Recently we've seen more evidence of incidences of ACH fraud than we have in the past," said Andrew Davies, a vice president at Fiserv who helps financial institutions worldwide spot potentially illegal transactions.

Davies has seen recent cases of malicious software tampering with ACH files to perpetrate fraud. For instance, hackers are manipulating payroll files and adding themselves as fake employees to collect money. Some of the cases have been in the U.S.

Some banks' systems don't sufficiently scrutinize ACH files.

"A lot of their fraud filters will not necessarily have the wherewithal to break out all the transactions, look at history of the accounts on the incoming and outgoing side, look at the batches within the file, and then look at the behavior associated with the overall file from an ACH perspective," Davies said.

Money lost this way will be difficult to recover.

"Anytime you push money out, it's really hard to pull it back," said Ruston Miles, founder and chief innovation officer of Bluefin Payment Systems, a payment processor. For instance, "if it's a payroll file, the money has been pushed out, and you can't go out to the customer and pull it back."

A lot of fraud monitoring is still done manually, Miles said.

"Most banks have electronic fraud detection systems that catch transactions that don't look right and put them in an exception bin, and these banks employ floors of people who inspect the flagged transactions," Miles said. "With same-day, all that time gets crunched down, so you either have to add more people or you have to open the floodgates on your fraud detection systems or you've got to get more picky about fraud detection."

Along with faster settlement, the increasing interconnectedness of international payment systems taxes fraud investigators' skills and resources. The fact that dozens of countries are increasing the speed of payment transactions brings an increased level of risk.

"If you're settling transactions between financial institutions more frequently or in shorter time frames, and you have too many false positives or you have a limited amount of resources to remediate unusual activity, the funds  may well have moved on to South Korea in a relatively short time frame, and you're still sitting on an alert you haven't had a chance to look at," Davies said.

"I wouldn't say banks are scrambling but there's increased focus and understanding of the elevated risks associated with those transactions," Davies said.

In a way, this problem isn't new. There have long been different speeds for ACH payments. Also, in some cases you can pay to expedite ACH or bill payments.

"Many financial institutions have found that if criminals can pay a fee for expedited processing, they don't mind paying the fee, and you see a shift in many cases to these quicker mechanisms," said David Pollino, deputy chief security officer for Bank of the West.

He points out that there's an upside: Now banks have a way to risk-stack their products, knowing that the faster services are inherently more attractive to criminals.

Jane Larimer, executive vice president of ACH network administration at Nacha, said she is not aware of increased fraud over the network.

"We have not heard that at all," she said. "It's been amazingly quiet." Bank members worked to make sure they had robust risk and fraud systems during the 16-month lead-up to the faster credit payments.

"They did that work and they were ready to go on phase 1," Larimer said.

Banks aren't required to report ACH-related fraud to Nacha. "But if there was some upswing, we do hear things," Larimer said.

Pollino is also unworried about the threat of fraudsters breaking in and changing ACH files, because doing so takes a lot of work. Phishing attacks are still the biggest fraud concern at Bank of the West.

"Why hack into a system, understand a complex financial package, figure out where that file is and then change the file if you can just email the person and ask them for the money?" he said.

Next Challenge: Same-Day ACH Debits

Same-day ACH debit payments, which go into effect Sept. 15, 2017, will be even trickier for fraud prevention teams.

ACH debit transactions typically take two to three days to clear and settle, noted Steve Mott, principal of BetterBuyDesign, an advisory firm in Stamford, Conn. And banks' fraud systems take full advantage of that window.

"Some would say it's a lazy way, because it takes advantage of the time to say, 'OK, I don't have to check this stuff until I come in on Monday morning,' " Mott said.

The banks' fraud systems, controls and secondary and tertiary checks all assume the bank has plenty of time to perform those checks. Those will need to be updated.

"What's happened historically is that none of the financial institutions have wanted to change much in the way they did faster and more secure stuff through the pipes until they absolutely have to," Mott said.

Power of the Bank Account Number

In a faster-ACH-payments world, the bank account number becomes more powerful because it can be turned into cash more quickly.

To date, bank account numbers have been worth less than credit card numbers in the black market because they've been harder to use.

With same-day settlement, fraudsters will be able to use bank account numbers to make real-time purchases, such as software, movie and song downloads, and receive the items before a bank can stop them.

"If fraud starts really going there and merchants start losing, merchants will either have to add anti-fraud detection systems themselves or they may turn away from ACH payments for any real-time or near-real-time transfers, because they can't be assured of the funds," Miles said.

Americans are fairly casual about writing and sending checks, which have our full account number printed at the bottom, to anyone because of the built-in protections of time, Miles said. I recently sent a yearend tip by check to the person who delivers my newspaper. This is someone I've never met, who lives in a town I've never been to, and for all I know she could be a petty criminal. Now she has my checking account number and my bank name and routing number, as well as my address and signature.

"Now we're taking out that time buffer, making this twice a day, same day, meaning that it's more convenient and easier for fraudsters to capitalize on the account numbers."

But account numbers printed on checks are unlikely to be a large-scale problem, Miles pointed out.

"Hackers want to automate these attacks; they don't want to dig through the trash all over the country to steal a million check numbers," he said. "They want to open their laptop and see that 10,000 bank account numbers were found over the past week, through automated attack tools. So that's the big threat."

Miles suggested the banking industry needs to develop security standards like PCI. "The best way to fix the problem is to not have the fraudsters get their hands on the bank account numbers in the first place, and that comes through data security and not through authentication," Miles said. For instance, the PCI data security standard requires that payment card data be encrypted at all times; this same rule could help protect bank account data. Tokenization of account numbers could also help, he said.

Continual Improvement

As ACH payments continue to get faster, along with FedWire, Chips, and other types of payments, banks are going to have to step up their fraud analytics and security efforts accordingly. Those processes will need to be continually improved, too, Pollino said.

"As soon as you're happy with your controls, the criminals will get happy with them as well because they'll figure out a way around them," he said.

Nacha members have been upgrading their risk processes and procedures, Larimer said. "Same-day is the tipping point," Larimer said. "We're the first movement in faster payments. So they're starting here and I don't think this is the end of it."

She also noted that faster payments can lower transaction risk, especially credit and operations risk.

"And the faster you can settle things on the system, that lessens the systemic risk," she said.

One thing banks need to do is understand how the criminal rings that target them work, Pollino suggested.

"Are they looking for the small, quick score or are they looking for the larger, long-term payoff?" he said. "Criminals looking for the quick, small score might be drawn toward this type of product." The bank's fraud analytics and fraud detection strategies need to be tuned to that.

Third-party data sets become increasingly useful to help vet the parties to a transaction, Pollino said. Names, phone numbers, email addresses and account numbers can all be checked against databases run by Early Warning Services, LexisNexis, Experian and others.

"It's becoming more and more important to understand where this money is going, who's at the other end of the transaction," Pollino said. "Does your customer know who's at the other end of the transaction? What personal information is included in a transaction?"

Editor at Large Penny Crosman welcomes feedback at penny.crosman@sourcemedia.com.
Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the first edition of the Skaneateles Journal on June 21, 2006, the West Onondaga County Journal wasn't the only entity marking a major milestone during the year.

From 200-year-old churches to decade-long efforts, plenty of community institutions and businesses around the area honored their traditions as they reached milestone anniversaries this year.

Among the many institutions and businesses around west Onondaga County that celebrated another year this year, here are a few of the milestones.

St. James' Episcopal, Marcellus United Methodist mark bicentennials

Following an extensive renovation project that lasted throughout 2015, St. James' Episcopal Church in Skaneateles started off 2016 by celebrating its bicentennial and planning one event each month to mark the anniversary as the church honored its past and prepared for its future.

At the same time, Marcellus United Methodist Church started its own 200th anniversary celebration when in November 2015 church trustee Peg Shields discovered a pamphlet from the 1966 sesquicentennial and realized the church's bicentennial was coming up.

Baltimore Woods Nature Center looks back during golden anniversary

Founded in 1966 as Onondaga Nature Centers that also included Beaver Lake Nature Center in Baldwinsville and Cayuga Nature Center in Ithaca, Baltimore Woods Nature Center in Marcellus celebrated its 50th anniversary by looking at its past, present and future as an organization.

After starting off the celebration with an exhibit in its art gallery from John Weeks, whose name adorns the interpretive center, Baltimore Woods held a trail run in August that included a 5K run and a 1K fun run, cross country-style through the nature center's property.

Sailboat Shop celebrates four decades of boating under three owners

After turning to the Sailboat Shop in Skaneateles for help as he refurbished a wooden Comet hull in his workshop and learned the ins and outs of the craft, John Jablonski eventually became the owner of the boating supply business and celebrated the business's 40th anniversary this year.

Attending the Central New York Boat Show, the Sailboat Shop teamed up with Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville to offer prizes that include two tickets to a Jimmy Buffett concert with pre-show party passes, a Margaritaville Key West concoction maker or a Margaritaville prize back to those who visited the business at the show.

Vermont Green Mountain Specialty Co., Dave Pirro Ford reach 25 years

Vermont Green Mountain Specialty Co. owner Kay DiNardo marked her shop's 25th Valentine's Day in the community in February as a candy shop with coffee or a coffee shop with candy, depending on the customers. She said she loves her shop and her customers that make every day a new adventure.

When Dave Pirro Ford in Skaneateles received recognition from the Ford Motor Company for its 25th anniversary in September, General Manager Peter Kuhns noted the dealership's longevity is due to its employees' longevity  five of the 21 employees have been there more than 20 years, 11 have been there more than 15 years and 15 have been there more than five years.

The decades: Milfoil eradication, Steadman House, The Athenaeum

In the 10th year of its milfoil eradication project, the Skaneateles Lake Association noted in July that between 6 and 12 large patches of the invasive plant remain in the lake rather than 250 or more that would be present without the effort.

Offering a tour of the Steadman House in July, Marcellus Historical Society President Doug Nightingale said the historical society acquired Lewis and Alma Steadman's home through their donation of it in November 2006 and opened in its new location in September 2007.

The Athenaeum assisted living facility in Skaneateles hosted a gathering for its 10th anniversary that honored the residents and the employees as part of its honoring Assisted Living Week in September.
Mainstream media is rife with news about Iran sealing multibillion-dollar deals with Airbus and Boeing to purchase more than 100 passenger planes.

Unfortunately, Iran is no ordinary buyer. It's a mistake for anyone to rejoice over such a deal or boast about it improving economies and creating jobs. This is a regime designated as the leading state sponsor of terrorism.

The U.S. Treasury Department has identified Iranian commercial airlines as linked to the regimes lethal and nonstop support for terrorism. With its numerous campaigns in support of Shiite militias and dictators, Iran has actively used its aging air fleet to shuttle hired mercenaries and arms to Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon.

Iran Air and Iran Air Tours were both designated as terrorist-related in 2011. According to the U.S. Treasury Department these airlines are known to disguise and manifest weapons shipments as medicine and generic spare parts to Syria. They are known to airlift missiles and rocket components.

Mahan Air, an Iranian airline in close relations with the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and its Quds Force (QF), is known to provide airlifts to IRGC-QF personnel flown between Iran, Syria, and Iraq for military training.

Mahan Airs close coordination with the IRGC-QFsecretly ferrying operatives, weapons and funds on its flightsreveals yet another facet of the IRGCs extensive infiltration of Irans commercial sector to facilitate its support for terrorism, emphasized David S. Cohen, former U.S. Treasury Department undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. Following the revelation about the IRGC-QFs use of the international financial system to fund its murder-for-hire plot, todays action highlights further the undeniable risks of doing business with Iran.

Mahan Air eased the covert transfer of IRGC-QF officers by bypassing normal security procedures, such as excluding specific data on flight manifests in order to eliminate records of the IRGC-QF travel.

Eyebrows are raised as European and Asian countries provide legitimacy to IRGC-linked Mahan Air by permitting flight rights to relevant commercial routes. Furthermore, one can also argue that the revenue from these flights are used to fuel Irans support for extremist ends.

By letting Mahan in, the Europeans are forgoing a critical pressure tool they have in their arsenal of non-military coercive measures to pressure Iran and Assad, explained Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance at the bipartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Representatives in the U.S. Congress from both sides of the aisle have been very clear in their positions about the nature Irans air fleet.

Instead of more actions to ground these planes, said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA), adding, the White House agreed to lift an Interpol notice.

In the same hearing, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) demanded answers over how the Obama administration intended to ground the airline of choice for the [IRGC] and Quds Force to go into Syria and kill people.

Analysts have cited concerns over Irans airlines continuing to ferry materiel to fighters in Syria. A notable case in September involved an Iran Air flight scheduled to depart Tehran for Damascus which made a suspicious stop in Abadan -- an Iranian port city located around 960 miles off route that also acts as a major IRGC logistics hub.

Here are further suspicious flights reported by Forbes:

On June 9, an Iran Air aircraft flew to Damascus from Abadan using the Tehran-Damascus flight number, and on June 8 and 15 from Tehran while using the now-defunct Najaf-Tehran number. Since then, the airlines flights to Damascus have multiplied in number and frequency, with the most recent one leaving from Yazd but broadcasting a Tehran-Damascus flight number, on July 29.

The main Iranian opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has a history of unveiling Irans support for terrorism and exporting extremism across the region. Mahan Air provides multiple daily flights from Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Abadan to Damascus. These flights use Iraqi air space and carry weapons, equipment and Revolutionary Guards for war against the Syrian people. Three daily direct flights from Abadan airport to Damascus is mainly done by Mahan Air, as explained by a Nov. 12 NCRI statement.

State Department spokesman John Kirby assured that the Obama administration would certainly not neglect Iran's support of terrorism following the nuclear deal, describing the notion as completely without merit. However, no serious action has been taken to this date, other than the Iran Sanctions Act passed by Congress, which U.S. President Barack Obama refused to sign.

By signing the Iran nuclear accord, also known as the JCPOA, Obama set the grounds to delist five of Tehrans designated airlines despite the knowledge that they also facilitated terrorism through logistical and financial support.

The JCPOA has itself directly given the green light to Irans support for Shiite militias across the region, as forecast by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry even prior to the deal.

The atrocities in Aleppo also showed the lack of will in the Obama administration for any meaningful action against Iran. The regime continues to airlift fresh recruits and supplies to Assad's armed forces, the Lebanese Hizballah and the IRGC, all considered staunch U.S. adversaries. This notorious trio is also heavily supporting Assads ruthless regime in the near six-year war claiming the lives of half a million people.

The new Airbus/Boeing signings, placing economic interests before those of international security and morality, will most likely pave the path for Iran to further expand its efforts to support terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism.

Advocates of these deals may argue Iran will not use planes such to shuttle forces to Syria due to its desperate need to replace its aging fleet. Considering Tehrans ongoing interest in supporting extremism across the Middle East, it is quite hard to imagine any obstacle can be placed to prevent Iran from continuing its illicit airlifts throughout the region.
The United Nations is a grand failure that has never worked and will never work. The idea of the U.N. was invented during the Second World War, when the term "United Nations" actually meant the wartime alliance of certain nations against other nations.

From the very beginning, the fact that the "United Nations" included the Soviet Union, which had conspired with Nazi Germany to begin the Second World War and which engaged in aggressive war and genocide just like Nazi Germany, was a sick joke. Our Soviet "ally" let us fight Japan alone until the end of the war, and it occupied and enslaved those very nations in Eastern Europe that Britain and France had gone to war with Germany to protect.

The structure of the organization was set as a part of the peace following the Second World War, with all the macabre features of that uneven peace. The permanent members of the Security Council were, and are, the Big Five of America, Britain, France, China, and Russia. China meant Free China, but now it means Communist China. Russia was the Soviet Union, but today Russia is only half the size of the old Soviet Union.

Japan and Germany were not permanent members of the Security Council, although in any sane world, these two nations, the third and fourth largest economies in the world and both peaceful democracies, ought to be permanent members. Yet the legacy of the Second World War, when these two nations were the foes of the "United Nations," remains. India, which gained independence after the United Nations was formed, also ought to be a permanent member of the Security Council, but it is not.

The United Nations was created primarily to preserve peace, but it has never succeeded in that at all, nor has it prevented the genocides that so horrified the civilized world after the Second World War ended. The reasons why are pretty clear. Most of the "nations" represented in the United Nations are little more than brutal ruling gangs, who suppress captive peoples like the Kurds and Tibetans and who routinely deny the most basic human rights to those they rule.

The United Nations provides a facade for these thugs to don the mantle of moral legitimacy and to even lecture other nations about how to behave. Two recent examples of this perversity were reminders of the wicked telling the good that they are bad.

In the whole of vast region of Asia stretching from Suez to Sakhalin, there are a total of very few nations considered free, according to Freedom House. Japan ranks highest with a ranking of 96 on a scale of 0 to 100. Taiwan is the next freest, with a rating of 89, and Israel has a rating of 80, behind only Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Mongolia, and dramatically higher than any of its neighbors.

Taiwan is not even a member of the United Nations, despite having one of the largest economies in Asia and being a free democracy, because it is formally considered part of China. Israel is a member of the United Nations, but it is treated like a pariah and routinely condemned for taking actions reasonable for survival and safety.

If all of Asia had governments like Taiwan and Israel, there would be no need for a United Nations, because the civil wars and other conflicts would end, and both freedom and prosperity would rise dramatically in this two-continent region. Yet these two model nations are pariahs within the United Nations, while Freedom House grimly notes that over the last thirty years, freedom among those nations within the United Nations has been declining significantly.

What America ought to do is call for a new organization, inviting as members any nations that are free, democratic, and peaceful. This would include about fifty nations  nearly all of Europe, most of South America, most of the Pacific Rim, India, Israel, and seven nations in Africa.

This new organization should not feign real authority to act through sanctions or war, but it should rather be a public forum for the leaders of these free nations to state to the world their intentions and to reach a general understanding on issues that affect the world.

What of the United Nations? America should give it no money, give it no offices in New York, pay it no heed, and leave it where it belongs  in the dustbin of history.
For reasons beyond my comprehension, friends of the Jewish state both here and in Israel are shocked and dismayed over last Fridays U.S. veto abstention at the UN. But hold the presses. If Israels claims, which they profess to be ironclad, are true, the passage of UNSC resolution 2334 is just the tip of the iceberg in the ever-widening breach of American/Israeli relations.

The real story may be that the Obama administration orchestrated the resolution and colluded with New Zealand and such democratic stalwarts as Malaysia, Senegal, and Venezuela to present it to the Security Council. If this proves correct, it will confirm what many on the right have been saying for years: Obama is malevolent toward Israel and intends to apply this animus both here and in the UN. With only three weeks to go hell be working at breakneck speed to make as big a mess as possible for incoming President Trump.

Love him or hate him, Obama has never hidden his disdain for Israel in general, or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular. So whats the surprise? The surprise is: Democrats so programmed to kiss the ring of the emperor for the past eight years are now up in arms.

Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said it was "extremely frustrating, disappointing and confounding" that the Obama administration failed to veto the UN's vote. He went on to say that the U.N. is a "fervently" anti-Israel body, since the days of "Zionism is racism.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, another Democrat from Connecticut, called the U.S.'s abstention from the vote unconscionable." Sen. Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, stated he was "deeply disappointed" that the Obama administration allowed such a "one-sided" resolution to pass and that "actions like this will only take us further from the peace we all want to see. In the same vein, Sen. Mark Warner, Democrat from Virginia, wrote: "I am dismayed that the administration departed from decades of U.S. policy by not vetoing the UN resolution regarding Israeli settlements.

In the House, the ranking Democratic member on the Foreign Affairs Committee Eliot Engle said he was "very disappointed" by the U.S.'s "acquiescence to a one-sided, biased resolution at the United Nations Security Council. He went on: "I have always believed that Israel cant get a fair shake at the U.N.

Why these seasoned long-time Democratic members of Congress and long-term supporters of president Obama are so astonished at this betrayal beats me. Although admittedly dismayed, Im far from astounded. To understand why, lets take a trip down memory lane.

From his first days in office, President Obama has been intent on creating distance between the United States and Israel because he viewed the closeness of the relationship as bad for American foreign policy. Meeting with Jewish leaders in 2009 hes on record saying: Look at the past eight years. During those eight years, there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.

Interesting quote: what did we get from that? A close friend, a loyal ally, Israel is not a vassal state. As a supposed impartial arbitrator, he should not expect to get anything from that. Some might call it chutzpah to expect the democratically elected government of Israel to forego their own security so the U.S. could maintain credibility with the Arab states. Would we do that? Would any sovereign nation do that facing a contumacious enemy showing no sign or willingness to negotiate a compromise peace deal?

In 2012, Israel had a viable option for a preemptive military strike against Irans budding nuclear capability. Unfortunately, the Obama's administration, seeking to quash this option, repeatedly leaked vital covert Israeli information, including which countries Israel had effected a deal with to fly over their territory for an attack on Iran. Where was the outrage from the aforementioned then?

For that matter, why didnt Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti Defamation League and other Jewish leaders who condemned the veto vote offer any pushback when Obama cajoled Netanyahu to return to the indefensible and suicidal pre-1967 armistice lines?

Confronted with a recalcitrant foe whose malevolence knows no bounds, this president, like none other, has placed the onus for stalemated peace talks, not where it belongs on Abbas and his intractable PA, but has instead censured, reprimanded, and excoriated Israel throughout his tenure in office. Why? For the blame he affixes to Netanyahu for failure to accede to the debunked policy of land for peace. A policy bereft of peace but not of war.

One enigma will remain for many years to come. Why with all thats going on in the world, much to his making, Obama has this obsession with Israel and their right to build housing in their ancestral homeland? its inexplicable.

Likewise inexplicable is seeing outrage from many among the 70% of the American Jewish electorate and mainstream Jewish organizations other than the ZOA which sat by for eight years and were silent during:

Hillary Clinton's 43-minute pillorying of the prime minister for announcing already approved construction in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem.

David Axelrod asserting that President Obama considered the housing approval an affront, an insult, and very, very destructive.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates calling Israel an ungrateful ally.

Defense Secretary Leon Panettas chastising Israel to get back to the damn negotiating table.

Obama shoving PM Netanyahu out the White House back door, no dinner, no joint statement.

Pushing Israel to apologize for intercepting the terrorist Gaza flotilla.

Obamas speech sandbagging Netanyahu just before he arrived in Washington, calling on Israel to retreat to the 1949 Armistice line as a starting point for negotiations?

In answer to the question, there was no outrage. Except for false platitudes, by word and deed Obama has never hidden his bitterness toward Israel. Except to the willfully blind, the record clearly indicates rather than acting as an impartial arbiter, his actions have encouraged Palestinian intransigence and in effect extirpated any chance for a peace deal. Taken in this context, last weeks veto abstention and todays accusation of complicity should be no surprise to anyone.
Obama has been perceived for the better part of the past eight years by many of the world's leadership as a spineless and weak leader, never feeling comfortable or really knowing how to implement the art of statesmanship. Obama caved in to Putin, the leader of Russia, and caved in to Assad, the embattled leader of Syria. China, Iran, North Korea, and Libya have all exhibited nothing but contempt for Obama, who always backed down, stood down, and generally did nothing more than wag his presidential tail.

And then there was Israel.

The objective of the recent Obama-concocted Security Council resolution against the State of Israel is nothing less than a betrayal of the U.S.-Israel alliance and a message to Trump. The Security Council's resolution, which brands the Jewish presence in any part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) or in parts of Jerusalem as illegal, will also make the 800,000 Jews in these areas international outlaws.

This betrayal of Israel is actually Obama's lame-duck way of signaling to the new Trump administration that he has no intention of letting President-Elect Trump, the democratically elected president, revoke the so-called "transformation" Obama has set for America over the past eight years.

Obama's action in the U.N. comes from his longtime distaste for Israel and from his newly found distaste for Trump and everything Trump stands for. Obama has a lot of "unfinished business" and primal anger concerning Trump's victory, exposing the Democratic Party and its leader for what they are: hated by Middle America and totally detached from the traditional values of so many Americans.

Trump's greatest sin other than actually winning the election has been that he has exposed the true legacy of Obama. Trump, the unapologetic, wealthy champion of Middle America, is everything Obama is not. Trump embodies Obama's worst nightmare and is an antithesis to how Obama envisions America upon leaving the White House, knowing full well that President Trump, in Obama's own words, will "reverse progress" of his presidential period.

Trump has successfully shared with all Americans the true Obama domestic legacy: BlackLivesMatter, cop killings and violence in the streets, transgenderism, the failure and bankruptcy of Obamacare, unrestricted immigration , terror attacks on American soil, and a ten-trillion-dollar increase in national debt. Obama has generally corrupted all three branches of government through the use of presidential directives, ignoring the authority and constitutional mandate of Congress and the Senate, and by empowering government agencies such as the IRS to selectively hound organizations that did not adopt Obama's vision of America.

Internationally, Obama's legacy has been even worse: allowing the Islamic terror genie out of the bottle; half a million dead in Syria; the Muslim refugee invasion of Europe, which could lead to the breakup of the EU; the rise of Iran as a conventional power that is devouring one Sunni country after another; the diminution of American power and prestige; enabling Russia to invade and conquer neighboring countries; and finally, legitimizing the BDS movement and the criminalization of Israel by encouraging the Security Council of the U.N. to make Israel a pariah state.

This showdown between Obama and Trump has been in the making since day one ofTrump's declaration to be elected president. In the same manner that the liberal elite and intelligentsia have failed in shoving down Middle America's throat their vision of what America should be, Obama has not yet internalized that his vision, his eight years of empty promises and the attempted transformation of America, has come to an end, with little to show for his efforts.

In the coming three weeks of what remains of the Obama presidency, President-Elect Trump and the State of Israel should prepare for the worst and expect Obama to take revenge against American voters who chose Trump and against Israel for standing up to Obama for the past eight years  exposing his nothingness, his empty beliefs, and his empty panaceas that have failed one by one. Obama will continue with his political carnage until his last day in office in a manner unbefitting the office of the president.

Obama is fond of quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.'s line: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." The Republican Party controls all three branches of government, to the detriment of everything Obama has achieved in the past eight years. President Trump will build an American tent that will include all and be a beacon to the world. Israel will succeed in rescinding the Security Council decision sooner rather than later and continue to build coalitions with neighboring Sunni nations in the coming years and maintain her expanding relations with most nations of the world. Obama will fail in his last-ditch efforts to forge his vision of a brave new world, leaving nothing more than a memory of a mouse that roared.

The writer, a 25-year veteran of the IDF, served as a field mental health officer. Prior to retiring in 2005, he served as the commander of the Central Psychiatric Military Clinic for Reserve Soldiers at Tel-Hashomer. Since retiring from active duty, he provides consultancy services to NGOs implementing psycho trauma and psycho education programs to communities in the North and South of Israel. Today Ron is a strategic adviser at the Office of the Chief Foreign Envoy of Judea and Samaria. To contact: medconf@netvision.net.il.
Diane Ravitch, a guru of educational practice and philosophy, recently summarized many of the negatives of privatizing some or all of our public schools. She attributes Trumpian enthusiasm for this to (1) the influence of the rich in the top 1% (she does not specify what they would hope to gain by this move on life's chessboard), (2) the influence of Pres. Obama with his Race to the Top moneys, (3) the initiatives of certain wealthy visionaries who anticipated both big profits and higher levels of student achievement, and (4) the influence of various wheeler-dealers who hoped to make a quick buck, even if it meant having the schools opened for only a short time, which would have been enough time to line their pockets (in other words, cynical exploitation of children and their real educational needs).

She clearly states the shortcomings of the charter school/privatizing movement. Although these issues need to be addressed if privatizing goes forward, as Donald Trump says he will do, they are hardly decisive reasons for not privatizing. Ravitch indicates that financial rip-offs have taken place, teacher turnover has often been great owing to excessive demands on their time and energy, selectivity for admissions has enabled the charter and private schools to exclude some of the more difficult to teach students, and the vision of the common good is disrupted.

But what about the negatives in the public sector that have made the "school choice" movement seem increasingly attractive? Ravitch addresses none of these. For example, financial waste and corruption of billions of taxpayer dollars has much to do with the increased momentum of the privatizing movement. Take the New York City schools. Each school now has to have a financial report called a "Galaxy Report" online along with that school's testing statistics. However, these reports are far from self-explanatory, and a citizen could understand them only with some exhaustive research, which the average parent of a school-age child has neither the time nor the inclination to do. Therefore, these "reports" of school finances or school test results merely provide charades of transparency.

Nobody is privy to actual shifts of funds by the principal from one line of the budget to another, nor are audits of the individual school's books, if indeed there are audits, ever made public. This former teacher never once in over 20 years of teaching saw any audit of the funds of any high school published by the NYC Dept. of Education. The assistant principals for organization in the high schools typically have never had even one accounting course in their years of education, yet they are often, along with the principals, the key players in superintending the revenue flow allocated to the school

School construction for the repair, renovation, and building of schools is to this observer a racketeering enterprise. This writer in the 1990s taught in an NYC high school being renovated. In 1988, the bid for the job when it started was $28 million, but by 1995, the "cost overrun" (laughable terminology) had the job at $97 million. And when the job was completed, the roof still leaked, the tiles of the floors were scuffed and ugly after one year, and the doorknobs had been broken off or stolen from the doors of the music wing. The high school was declared a failing school by N.Y. State and, under the brilliant leadership of Joel Klein, eliminated as a comprehensive high school and broken into three "academy schools." A few short years later, these three schools were in turn declared failed, phased out, and replaced with four new schools. This corrupt farce was in only one high school in our great metropolis. Multiply this scenario by dozens of high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools, and we can begin to see the true impetus for the charter and privatizing movement.

Prof. Ravitch insists on seeing the privatizing movement as a scheme to make money by individuals and corporations that already have too much money. At the same time, she chooses to ignore the phenomenal profits of various educational corporations such as Houghton Mifflin, Cengage, and Pearson from their relationships with the public schools. Add to this the College Board, which provides all the SAT and AP exams for the public schools, and the vast bureaucracies needed to run all the educational programs and to service the vast data collection that is at the heart of Common Core, and we see more than a little pecuniary stake in having "business as usual" in the public schools. Robert Weissberg in his many books and articles as well as Bruce Deitrick Price, both frequent contributors to American Thinker, have documented how bogus and wasteful the programs supposed to improve education have actually been.

Yet there is another problem with the public schools that Prof. Ravitch fails to discern. She expresses concern that privatizing will detract from the "common good" served by the public schools. This observation begs the question  namely, what is the common good? It is obvious to all discerning citizens that the public schools increasingly exist in a moral vacuum. The Ten Commandments can no longer be displayed, prayer is prohibited under the false doctrine of "separation of church and state," and displays of creches, for example, at Christmastime are also not allowed. Ironically, and as a well kept "open secret" at one high school where I taught, Muslim students were allowed to use classroom space for times of prayer.

One NYC high school for years had a Mr. and Ms. High School contest (school name omitted to protect the guilty), where the girls competed in bikinis and the boys got to flex their muscles while wearing jock straps or the smallest skivvies. Additionally, the textbook in a sex ed class in that high school said that some people believe that you should wait until marriage to have sexual intercourse, and those few people who believe that way "should be tolerated." Another page in the same book told the studious teens that while some believe that the size of the male organ is important, that is a mistaken belief in terms of sexual satisfaction. It is rewarding to know that this kind of information is being made available in a college preparation curriculum.

Under the great progressive leadership of schools chancellor Joel Klein and NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, a leadership academy was set up to seek and train promising individuals for principalships. One young woman in her twenties spoke to potential candidates and openly thanked her mother, who already was a principal in New York, for this wonderful opportunity. She did not even realize that in doing so, she was admitting the nepotism that won her the spot as a principal despite almost no experience. Another young man in his late twenties or early thirties, politically correct but also without much experience, was the principal of a middle school for social justice in the Bronx, one of the subdivisions of New York City.

Social justice has become a code word for the "cultural Marxist" agenda. In another high school where this writer taught, the Star-Spangled Banner was never sung, but under the rubric of "social justice," a different song, "Lift Up Your Heart and Sing" was regularly sung. It's referred to as "the black national anthem."

Thus, just based on this anecdotal evidence about official school policies regarding sexual activity and sexual identity, about finding inexperienced but compliant, left-wing know-nothings for leadership positions, and about pandering to identity politics rather than the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of Almighty God, we must question Ravitch's assumption that the public schools are serving the common good. The common good denotes not only unity, but an ideal of the moral and upright individual linked by mutual respect to others in an extensive, righteous, caring, responsible, freedom-loving, and unified community. The failure of the public schools, especially in our cities, to do this is the key reason why we must support the privatization of our educational system.

E.J. Ludwig's book The Catastrophic Decline of America's Public High Schools: New York City, A Case Study is available at Amazon.com.
For 10 years, Raul has benefited a lot from having Fidel around. Fidel always showed up at the big celebrations or wrote a column.

Forget that. It won't be pretty in 2017, as we see in this report from the AP:

Castro must manage these twin economic and diplomatic challenges during a year of transition. The 85-year-old general has promised to hand over the office in early 2018 to a successor, widely expected to be Miguel Diaz-Canel, a 56-year-old official with neither the Castro name nor revolutionary credentials. The change will occur without Castro's older brother Fidel, the revolutionary leader whose largely unseen presence endowed the system he created with historical weight and credibility in the eyes of many Cubans before he died last month at 90. "Even if those two events hadn't taken place -- Trump's victory and Fidel's death -- 2017 was going to be a very difficult year for Cuba," said Cuban economist Omar Everleny Perez, a visiting professor at Keio University in Tokyo. Cuba publishes few credible economic statistics, but experts expect the country to end this year with gross domestic product growth of 1 percent or less. It maintained a rate close to 3 percent from 2011-2015.

By the way, it's nice to see an analyst admit that Cuba produces very little credible economic data. This is why so many have been skeptical of health care or literacy gains boasted by Cuba.

Back to the economy.

Indeed, there are tourists, but it does not seem to help the Cuban economy. This is because Cubans have very little to gain from these hotels and restaurants where tourists are spending their dollars.

Add to this the mismanagement of Cuba's economy, and you have profits that end up in the Castro accounts rather than the pockets of the Cuban people.

We are not saying this is new. Cuba has always been for the benefit of Castro and the gang that protects him. However, this is the first time that they are going to do without a USSR subsidy, EU loans, cheap Venezuela oil, or a U.S. president willing to go around the embargo.

It will be Raul vs. reality in 2017, and the Cuban elites don't have a clue of what will hit them. There is no one waiting to bail them out anymore.

P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
The only thing D.C. Democrats control is the media (and their dominance of this last bastion is slipping away). There is not much they can do to obstruct the Senate confirmation of Donald Trumps cabinet, barring scandalous revelations. So stand by for a lot of pointless confirmation hearings theatrics following the inauguration of Donald Trump and formal nominations of his cabinet.

The point the Democrats think they will be making is demonization and de-legitimization of the Trump administration. They are transparently putting partisan advantage above the national interest. If our side has the wit, this can be made to backfire.

First of all, the left is doing an excellent job of defining itself as deranged with hate over Trump. The harassment of Ivanka Trump, the death wishes for the new president from celebrities, and the comparisons to Hitler do not win the sympathy of the 70-80% of the public not trapped in the liberal bubble. The Trump hysteria of the left is now a meme with a name: Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Second, the nominees most likely to encounter flak are not, for the most part, shrinking violets. Politicians learn how to squirm and evade as career skills, but CEOs for major corporations have a different set of career skills to draw on.

Third, the GOP Senate needs only 51 votes thanks to Harry Reid. In critical votes, such as for Energy and State, Joe Manchin of West Virginia is likely to join the GOP, and the GOP senators are unlikely to defect. See points one and two.

Fourth, the country wants to move on and fix the problems that have heavy majorities seeing the country as on the wrong path. Rush Limbaugh ran into a media buzzsaw in early 2009 for hoping Obama fails in his policies. Nearly everyone on the left castigated him for harming the national interest because Obama was president of all Americans.

Those video clips live on and will be deployed.

Fifth, there are currently 23 Democrats slated to stand for re-election in 2018, many of them in states Trump carried. They all suspect (correctly) that Trump could come to their states and campaign against them if they cause a key cabinet appointment to fail confirmation.

Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics summed it up yesterday, speaking to Ed Henry on Fox News.

I look forward to Democrats continuing to define themselves as cranks, interested in their own advantage, not in the national interest. There is more downside than upside for them in the Senate confirmation hearings.
Who is to blame for the recent debacle in the U.N.? We shall not rehash details of Obama's and Kerry's ambush, nor of perfidious Albion's tradition of genteel anti-Semitism. Nor shall we discuss the peculiar case of one of the resolution's principal sponsors: New Zealand. How much are the indigenous Maoris enjoying their "legal occupation"? En passant, we will point out the absurdity of the Jewish prime minister of Ukraine ordering his ambassador to vote in favor of a resolution condemning Jewish possession of the Wailing Wall.

Instead, I blame Benjamin Netanyahu and every single one of his predecessors in the prime minister's office. There have been more than enough blood libels perpetrated upon Jewish state, from the infamous "Zionism is Racism" resolution in the 1970s to the recent outrages at the UNESCO, at the U.N. Human Rights Council, etc. to justify suspension, if not outright withdrawal, of Israel from the U.N. membership.

Advantages of such an action are numerous.

Israel would no longer be subject to Security Council resolutions: no one would be able to accuse Israel of being in non-compliance with Resolution X and General Assembly condemnation Y.

All U.N. personnel would be deprived of diplomatic status in Israel and could be summarily removed. This would be particularly gratifying in the case of UNRWA, which has been caught in activities supporting terror on numerous occasions. Nor would a U.N. diplomatic passport serve as an enabling mechanism to interfere with security activities of Israeli police and the IDF.

The leftists would scream about Israel cutting itself off from the "community of nations." To this our reply should be simply: "'Community of nations' is a Newspeak phrase to describe four wolves and a sheep voting on who is to be dinner, and we are tired of being a sheep."

It is time for Israel to get rid of the self-imposed burden of U.N. membership. It should have been done 40 years ago, but better late than never.
One of the biggest lies about the Israeli-Arab conflict is that Israel is taking lands from "Palestinians" (a name for a people without their own language or any prior claim to statehood) and "colonizing" them as "settlers." The truth is that Jews have lived in what is called the West Bank for thousands of years.

It is commonly known that when Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, Jews started to move there and establish communities. But what many people don't know is that prior to 1948, Jews had been living in the West Bank for a long time. After 1948, none were left to be found, because they had all been killed or driven out by the Arabs.

Let me repeat that. Arabs (specifically, the Jordanians and their local helpers) ethnically cleansed the West Bank of Jewish people in 1948. Thousands were driven from their homes. Jewish people who moved back in 1967 were not the occupiers; they were the victims, trying to reclaim their land.

Would anyone think Jews trying to reclaim their homes in Germany and France after the Holocaust were "settlers"? No, but descendents of massacres in the West Bank are called precisely that by John Kerry and Barack Obama, who view them as the aggressors and the descendents of the Arabs who drove them out as the victims.

For simplicity's sake, I have been calling this disputed territory the "West Bank," but to Jews it is called "Judea," as in the Jewish name "Judah." Isn't it a coincidence that Jews, who supposedly have no connection to this territory, have a name for this territory that is thousands of years old?

Some historical facts:

In Hebron, the Jewish community existed throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule, until the massacre during the Arab rioting of 1929. Such settlements as Neve Ya'acov and the Gush Etsion block were established under the British Mandatory Administration, which allowed Jewish settlement in these areas. Even though British Mandate Authorities, particularly in the latter period of the Mandate, were not sympathetic to the Zionist cause, they nevertheless permitted the establishment of Jewish settlements in all areas west of the Jordan River, implementing the League of Nations Mandate. There had been Jewish communities and dwellers in the West Bank long before 1967 or even 1948. In, for example, Hebron and Gush Etzion, both sites of massacres by Arabs in which large numbers of Jews were killed. Kfar Etzion and other villages in the Jerusalem-Bethlehem corridor, fell to Arab forces in May 1948 and those captured were massacred. Sons and daughters of Jews who lived there until 1948 were the first to return after the 1967 war. The land belonged to Jews. Near Jerusalem, for example, Palestinians describe Gilo as a neighborhood built on "West Bank land annexed to Jerusalem" that they consider an "illegal Jewish settlement". Suddenly Gilo, an integral part of Jerusalem proper for years, seems subject to negotiation, at least in the public mind. As to the "illegality" of Gilo, the vacant land in the Gilo area was purchased, before World War II, by a group of young Jewish lawyers, including Dov Yosef, who later became one of David Ben Gurion's most important advisors and government ministers. When the land was taken back from the Jordanians in 1967, it was returned to its owners.

Another myth is that Jews are kicking Arabs out of their homes in the West Bank. Nothing could be farther from the truth. For the most part, Jews have created communities on completely empty land.

The Jewish settlements have been established only on: Land in pre-existing Jewish communities, or

Land that was unowned (that is, was previously controlled by Jordan and had no private owner), or

Land purchased from established owners. The propagandistic idea of Palestinian Arabs being "forced out" is not the case. Much land was still empty or underutilized. Many Jews bought the land or dwelling they moved to. When public land was involved, Israeli settlements were established only after an exhaustive investigation process, under the supervision of the Supreme Court of Israel, designed to ensure that no communities were established on private Arab land.

John Kerry knows this. Barack Obama knows this. All the members of the Security Council who voted to condemn Israel for moving back into territory Jews had once inhabited know this. There can only be one explanation: anti-Semitism. No other land dispute has so gripped the attention of the United Nations; conflicts where tens or hundreds of thousands of people are dying get only a fraction of the attention that democratic, peace-loving Israel does.

Obama's obsessive Jew-hatred must really be eating him up inside. He's going to be president for only three more weeks, and this is his last chance to strike out at the Jews. What an awful, evil man.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.
Obama has decided what is best for Israel. Israel must stop settlements on the land that the U.N. and Obama view as "occupied land" to save the two-state solution. Obama abstained on the U.N. resolution to put pressure on Israel to stop the settlements because Obama believes that it is in the best interest of Israel to agree to two-state deal, and the settlements may make the two- state deal more difficult. Obama did not consult with the elected representatives of Israel, and specifically not with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He did not consult with the U.S. Congress, nor with the president-elect, Donald Trump.

Obama did this after the November election so it would not alienate Jewish voters and contributors, especially in battleground states like Florida and Pennsylvania. If he really believed that ending the settlements is in the best interest of Israel, and that a U.N. resolution would spur Israel, he would have orchestrated the resolution in 2009. But he was more concerned about his re-election in 2012, and Hillary's election in 2016, so he did it now.

The Washington Post reported on December 28, 2016:

Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Wednesday offered a harsh and detailed assessment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying their growth threatens to destroy the viability of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the United States was obliged to allow passage of a U.N. resolution condemning the activity in order to preserve the possibility of peace.

Whether the settlements pose a threat to a genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians is an issue for Israel to decide, not Obama. We are not an imperial power dictating policy to a subservient state. Israel is the only democratic state in the Middle East. Its citizens can vote for representatives to carry out what they believe is best for Israel. If the Israelis disagree with the settlement policy and agree with Obama, they can elect representatives to end the settlement policy.

Israel fought major wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973, and has fought terrorists from 1948 to the present, to protect itself. It does not need lectures from John Kerry, whose primary legacy is that he compared the U.S. military in Vietnam to Genghis Khan and the U.S. military in Iraq to terrorists. It does not need lectures from Obama, whose foreign policy record consists of Benghazi, a nuclear deal allowing Iran to have nuclear weapon, and withdrawal from Iraq, which led to ISIS.

Obama should have stated his views privately with the Israeli leaders, vetoed the resolution, and allowed President Trump to deal with the matter based on Trump's discussions with the Israelis. Instead, Obama decides and has Kerry lecture in his speech:

[W]e have to be clear about what is happening in the West Bank. The Israeli prime minister publicly supports a two-state solution. But his current coalition is the most right-wing in Israel history with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements. The result is that policies of this government, which the prime minister himself just described, as more committed to settlements than any in Israel's history are leading in the opposite direction. They are leading towards one state.

Obama has Kerry use the same language Obama uses to attack Republicans who disagree with him: "right-wing ... extreme elements." If you disagree with Obama, then it is because you are "right-wing," which is wrong and bad.

Obama's unilateral decision to abstain on the U.N. vote, allowing the resolution to condemn Israel, is similar to how he has governed by agency regulations and executive orders. He decides and ignores Congress. On the settlement policy, he decides and ignores Israel.

Obama decides unilaterally. He does not need or listen to Congress or Israel.
President-Elect Trump is implementing a new paradigm to guide U.S. policy in the Mideast: what is best for America. Supporting Palestinian anti-Semitism and terrorism out of political correctness is not in Americas interest.

With his appointment of David Friedman as U.S. ambassador to Israel, Trump is breaking the cycle of Middle East policy insanity  doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result  and trying something new. He is telling the Palestinians, regardless of what the U.N. does, that the train is leaving the station. Under no Israeli government has there ever been the suggestion that the western side of Jerusalem would ever be in anything but Israeli hands. So implementing the move of the embassy to Jerusalem, as legislated in the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, is an important symbolic step showcasing the new pragmatic attitude.

David Friedman has the right detractors. He is being attacked by so-called pro-Israel organizations like the New Israel Fund and J Street, who applauded the December 23 U.N. vote condemning Israel and the U.S. abstention. Many so-called leaders of Jewish organizations boycotted the Hanukkah party co-hosted by the Embassy of Azerbaijan and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations because it was held in a Trump-owned hotel. Donald Trump is going to be the 45th president of the United States, and if these so-called leaders feel they have to boycott him, then they cannot be the Jewish community leaders. They should go take positions in the Democratic Party.

Friedmans real crime, however, is to say that the two-state solution is not a solution. As with other positions on the left, this has become dogma, a religion, and one is beyond the pale if one does not accept it. But with the Middle East in flames, with radical Islamist terrorists spreading throughout the world, it would be insanity for Israel to turn over its longest border to an unstable group of terrorists who will quickly be replaced by Hamas, a terrorist organization, as happened in Gaza.

Trump said we are out of the work of nation-building. We want stable governments. There is no more stable government in the Middle East than our ally, Israel.

The infamous vote in the U.N. on December 23 is the last gasp of a dead policy. Trump reacted to the vote by saying that after January 20, things will change.

We need a new paradigm  one that frames the question as Trump has so famously said: what is best for America. And another unstable terrorist state on the border between Jordan and Israel is not in Americas interests. That is what David Friedman is telling the world.

Carol Greenwald is chairman, Jews Choose Trump.
Twenty years ago, the world's first Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996, that prohibits nations from conducting any kind of nuclear tests, either for civilian or for military purposes, was approved by the United Nations. At that time, more than two-thirds of the General Assembly's members supported it. That number has now grown to 183. Although the support was strong, some doubted whether the treaty could actually be enforced. After all, what prevents a nation from signing the treaty and then secretly conducting underground nuclear tests?

Licorne nuclear test  French Polynesia, 1970

To prevent nations from violating the treaty, the United Nations decided shortly after the treaty was approvedto embark on an ambitious engineering feat of creating a global network of sensors that could detect illegal nuclear tests. This global surveillance network is known as the International Monitoring System, and comprises of 337 monitoring facilities spread across the world that uses a variety of methods to detect evidence of nuclear testing. These include seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound and radionuclide detecting stations. These are some of the most sensitive instruments on the planet. Over the years they have recorded not only nuclear tests but earthquakes, rocket launches, supersonic airplanes breaking the sound barrier, the songs of whales, meteors entering and exploding in the atmosphere, the sounds of icebergs breaking and much more. Like a giant sniffer dog, the International Monitoring System looks, listens, feels and sniffs for irregularities on the planet.

Negotiations for nuclear disarmament began as early as 1963 with the signing of the Partial Test-Ban Treaty (PTBT), which prohibited all nuclear tests in the atmosphere and water, out of concern of radioactive fallout, but left out those conducted underground. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union was willing to adopt a comprehensive test ban that will put an end to all nuclear tests, including those underground, out of fear that either nation will find ways to circumvent any test ban and secretly leap ahead in the nuclear arms race. The United States worried that the Soviet Union would try to covertly conduct underground tests during a test ban, which were more difficult to detect than above-ground tests. Without a system for detecting illicit tests, a comprehensive test ban on nuclear weapons eluded the world for nearly four decades.

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the international community got together once again and started to negotiate for a comprehensive ban on nuclear tests. The success of the negotiation depended, in no small part, on the development of a system that could monitor the earth, water and the air for possibly policy violations.

The United Nations created an international body, formally known as the Preparatory Commission for the CTBTO, and tasked it to develop a verification regime" consisting of instruments, personnel and protocols to detect, verify and report potential evidence of nuclear tests to member states.

Twenty years later, the International Monitoring System is 85 percent done. When completed, it will have 337 stations including: 50 primary and 120 auxiliary seismic monitoring stations to detect seismic waves generated by underground nuclear tests; 11 hydroacoustic stations to detect acoustic waves in the oceans; 60 infrasound stations to detect very low-frequency sound waves in the atmosphere; 80 radionuclide stations to detect radioactive particles released from atmospheric explosions; and 16 radionuclide laboratories for analysis of samples from the radionuclide stations.

Data from all the stations are transmitted to the CTBTO International Data Centre (IDC) in Vienna via a satellite link. With more than half of the planned IMS stations transmitting, the data center receives 10 to 15 gigabytes of data every day, which are then analyzed by the staff.

In 2006, CTBTOs sensors picked up signs of an underground nuclear test conducted by North Korea. The totalitarian state conducted two more tests in 2009 and 2013, all of which were detected by CTBTO.

The meteor that streaked across the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 was the largest event picked up to date by the IMS's infrasound network. Photo credit: Alex Alishevskikh/Flickr

But shockwaves of nuclear detonations arent the only signals these highly sensitive detectors have been picking up. On February 15, 2013, the CTBTO's infrasound monitoring stations detected signals made by a meteor that disintegrated in the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia. The data recorded by the sensors helped scientists to locate the meteor, measure the energy release, its altitude and size. Similarly, when Fukushima nuclear power plant blew up in 2011, the infrasound stations detected the explosion and later, the atmospheric sampling sensors were able to monitor the spread of radioactive particles around the globe. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake off Japan's coast was detected by the seismic stations and the ensuing tsunami was well predicted based on data from the hydroacoustic stations.

The International Monitoring Systems extremely sensitive ears have found many uses in a variety of civil and scientific areas such as tsunami warning and weather forecasting, storm tracking, studying of volcanoes, monitoring drifting icebergs in shipping lanes, following migratory habits of birds, the effects of climate change on marine life and many more.

Although the surveillance system has been working for years now, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is still not in force, which means that the international community cannot legally impose sanctions or penalties on any nation that break compliance. For the treaty to enter into force all 44 countries, the so-called "Annex 2 States" that possess some form of nuclear technology, not necessarily weapons, (for example, nuclear power reactors) has to ratify it. Of those, eight have not: China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the United States have signed but not ratified it, whereas India, North Korea and Pakistan have done neither.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty is currently stalled but the surveillance system it created continues to be used in ways its creators never envisioned.

View of infrasound station array at infrasound station IS49, Tristan da Cunha, U.K. Photo credit: CTBTO Preparatory Commission

Infrasound array at infrasound station IS39, Palau. Photo credit: CTBTO Preparatory Commission

Primary seismic station PS21, Tehran, Iran. Photo credit: CTBTO Preparatory Commission

Array at infrasound station IS50, Ascension, U.K. Photo credit: CTBTO Preparatory Commission

Performing maintenance at infrasound station IS55, Windless Bight, Antarctica (USA). Photo credit: CTBTO Preparatory Commission

An expert examines radionuclide station RN20 in Beijing, China. Photo credit: CTBTO Preparatory Commission

Radionuclide Station RN68 Tristan de Cunha, UK. Photo credit: CTBTO Preparatory Commission

Sources: Wikipedia / CTBTO / Earth Magazine / Phys.org / WNYC
Its hard to believe that 2016 almost gone, but in just a few days it will be 2017 and the tech world will start to look forward to what shows up at the biggest consumer electronics trade show in the country  CES. As CES is in the new year and will bring with it many new products that will launch in 2017 and beyond, weve rounded up all of the best of the year devices from 2016 which the readers have chosen as their favorites. The polls have been up for quite some time now at this point and the totals have all been collected, and now were presenting the winners of each category as directed by your picks. Of course, the top picks and favorites of the readers may not be what we chose here at Android Headlines, but this is about you, the readers, and what you all collectively voted for and thought were the best products of the year, so lets just jump into it.

Best Smartphone of 2016  Google Pixel/Pixel XL

There were a lot of great smartphones that were launched in 2016, and there were a few of them that seemed to score pretty high with you all. It might not come as a surprise, though, that out of all the options on the table, Googles Pixel and Pixel XL were the top choice for best phone of the year. This was also by a pretty big margin as they took 41% of the votes. The next closest pick were the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge which acquired 20% of the votes. While the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge are excellent devices, they just couldnt hold up to Googles latest offering, it seems. Of course, you might be surprised to find out that the OnePlus 3T edged out a lot of the other flagships, including the likes of the Moto Z, the LG G5 and others, taking home about 16% of the votes for best smartphone of the year. This is a testament to how great of a device OnePlus is capable of producing. Overall, the top choices this year put into perspective that even a couple of the unexpected companies can put out some great hardware and come out on top, which will likely make for a more exciting 2017.

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Best Value Smartphone of 2016  OnePlus 3T

While devices like the Google Pixel came out the victor for best smartphone of the year, its also a fairly high-priced device, and not everyone will want to spend that much on a phone. This is why value smartphones, devices which offer a lot on the hardware side but cost considerably less than many flagships, have a place in the world. They provide value beyond just a low cost, and in this particular category the OnePlus 3T was voted as the best value for money when it comes to smartphones in 2016. Its easy to see why, too. The phone comes powered by Qualcomms Snapdragon 821 CPU with an Adreno 530 GPU for graphics, it has a great camera, a lot of internal storage, lots of RAM, and its stylish. This was a landslide win and the likes of the latest Moto G, the Honor 8, and the ZenFone 3 just couldnt live up to the standards. The OnePlus 3T took away 67% of the votes as the top choice, while the Honor 8 came in second with 15%, the Moto G at 10%, and finally, coming up last was the ZenFone 3 from ASUS with just 8% of the votes. Now, this doesnt mean those three devices arent solid options. In fact, theyre all great phones, but compared to whats on offer with the OnePlus 3T, there was just not enough to compete.

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Best Camera Smartphone of 2016  Google Pixel/Pixel XL

This should really come as no surprise at all, seeing as how the camera on the Pixel and Pixel XL was rated as the best camera on a smartphone to date by DxOMark. That being said and with that highest rating aside, the camera on the Pixel really does take amazing photos. Picking up a total of 57% of the votes for having the best camera, its closest competitor was the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, another duo of devices which carry the same camera on each device, just as the Pixel and Pixel XL do. While it may not have won the best camera smartphone of 2016 award, it did come in second with 27% of the votes, and it too takes awesome quality pictures, so owners of either device should still feel proud to have one, and before the Pixel and Pixel XL were released, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge were on top in the camera department. Quite easily, too. The next best device was the Huawei Mate 9 which garnered 10% of the votes, while the LG V20 had just 6% of the votes, and coming up last was the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro with only 1% of the votes. The readers have certainly spoken, and the Pixel phones will likely have the best camera for a little while.

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Best Chinese Smartphone of 2016  OnePlus 3T

Coming out on top again is the OnePlus 3T as the best Chinese smartphone of the year. While the device is available globally, the device is made in China and comes from a Chinese company, which is what puts it in this particular list. With that said, that left little chance for some of the other Chinese devices to come out as the favorite. This is because the OnePlus 3T is just an amazing device for a low cost, and its hard to compete with a device that has top of the line specs and hardware, a sleek looking design, and wont hurt your wallet too much. In total the OnePlus 3T garnered 67% of the votes making it another landslide victory. The next closest device was the Xiaomi Mi MIX with a total of 17% of the votes. This too is a good device, but also a sort of concept phone and it isnt available everywhere. Third place was snatched up by Xiaomi Mi Note 2 with 9% of the votes, while the Xiaomi Mi 5 and the Meizu Pro 6 came in with 6% of the votes and 4% of the votes respectively. In the end, the OnePlus 3T was just too much of a good buy to pass up it seems, which is why it sits at the top of the pile as the best Chinese smartphone of 2016.

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Best Battery Life of 2016  Google Pixel/Pixel XL

This one seems a bit surprising, but it would appear that the Google Pixel and Pixel XL were chosen as the smartphone with best battery life of 2016, moving past other top notch devices in the battery life department like the Moto Z Play and Galaxy Note 7. While the Google Pixel/Pixel XL do come out as the winners here, it wasnt by a massive margin like on some of the other polls. Instead it cleans up with 42% of the votes for best battery life smartphone of the year, but the Moto Z Play wasnt too far behind with 30% of the votes, and despite all its issues with the battery, the Galaxy Note 7 still cleaned up with quite a few votes itself, coming in with a total of 22% of the votes. Bringing up the rear is the LG G5, which only swung 6% of the votes for best battery life. Of course, being awarded the best battery life doesnt necessarily mean that it will have the best battery life for everyone, and how good the battery life is will depend on how you use the phone, too.

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Best Tablet of 2016  Lenovo Yoga Book

Lenovo may not have won with the best camera on a smartphone this year, but they do literally stomp all over the competition in the tablet category. Android tablets have certainly been more scarce in 2016, so it may not have been too challenging for Lenovo to win this one, but that shouldnt take away from how great their recently released Yoga Book is, which is what snagged the most votes for the best tablet of 2016. It has a very sleek design and it oozes with functionality. Its a bit pricey, sure, but it definitely is a great tablet so its easy to see why it picked up a total of 53% of the votes. Coming in second place was the Samsung Galaxy Tab A, which picked up just 24% of the votes, and while this is a great tablet as well, it doesnt have nearly the amount of function as the Yoga Book. Plus, its lacking that cool light up digital keyboard. Third place was picked up by ASUS ZenPad 3S 10 with 15% of the votes, while the list is rounded out by the Huawei MediaPad M3 with just 8% of the votes. With a device like the Yoga Book now on offer it will be interesting to see how Lenovo does next year and what they have to bring to the table, and whether or not they will be able to outdo themselves with something greater than the Yoga Book. Time will tell.

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Best Chromebook of 2016  Acer Chromebook R 14/Samsung Chromebook Pro

This one is a tie, and while the Samsung Chromebook Pro ma not yet be available, it should be soon and it has a nice little series of features and hardware coming along with it that people look to be extremely excited about. With that said, both it and the Acer Chromebook R 14 have a tie with 22% of the votes each. There were quite a few followers though, as there were a lot of Chromebooks this year, and all of them pretty great options. Coming up in second place was HP Chromebook 13, which only just barely misses out on the win with 21% of the votes. Next up was the Lenovo ThinkPad 13 Chromebook with 14% of the votes, followed by ASUS C301SA, then the Acer Chromebook R 13, and finally the HP Chromebook 11 G5 Touch brings up the rear. The interesting thing here is that the Samsung Chromebook Pro may very well be the best Chromebook of 2017 as it now likely wont launch until then, even though it was thought to be getting launched this year. In either case, it should end up providing a great user experience thanks to the features that it looks to have, but for now, the best Chromebook of 2016 which you can actually buy is the Acer Chromebook R 14, and you wont be disappointed given Acers track record of putting out great Chromebooks, as well as the stylish metal design that was used on this machine.

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Best Fitness Tracker of 2016  Fitbit Charge 2

With the new year approaching, many people will be looking to get in some exercise and if you dont already own a fitness tracker, it would be a good idea to invest in one. If youre already considering that, then you may want to look at the best trackers of 2016 as theyll start to go on sale when the new models for 2017 hit. If you want the absolute best, look no further than Fitbits Charge 2 which has a whole host of features, including an integrated heart rate sensor, a larger display than last years model of the Charge and Charge HR, and a new stylish design which is modeled after the Fitbit Alta. While not a complete landslide win here, the Fitbit Charge 2 does come in with a total of 45% of the votes which is almost half, and the next closest tracker is the Samsung Gear Fit2 with 26% of the votes. Sadly for the rest of the trackers in the poll, which are the Amazfit Arc, the Fitbit Alta, the Misfit Ray, Xiaomi Mi Band 2, and the Garmin Vivosmart HR+, there was just not as much love. Although the Xiaomi Mi Band 2 did manage to score about 20% of the votes which is nothing to scoff at. In fact, its actually quite impressive given that it comes in at a lower cost than the top two choices here. In the end, any of these trackers would be a great decision if youre looking to invest in one.

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Best Smartwatch of 2016  Samsung Gear S3

Smartwatches, like fitness trackers, have offered up quite a few choices for consumers in 2016, but it was the Samsung Gear S3 which took the top spot as the favorite of the readers. With a new stylish design that was refined from 2015s Gear S2, and a suite of some new features to go along with the already existing ones, the Gear S3 wins by a pretty large margin with 54% of the votes, compared to the ASUS ZenWatch 3 which came in third place with just 23% of the votes. Compared to the rest of the watches, which includes the Nixon Mission, the Pebble 2 (which you can unfortunately no longer buy, straight from Pebble at least), Fossil Q Marshall, and the Michael Kors Access, the Gear S3 is a cut above, offering a great all around experience at a decent price. Its customizable too, and it works with more than just Samsung devices which surely helped to make it the winner here. The bottom line, if youre looking for a smartwatch and are looking at models from 2016, the Gear S3 is your best bet.

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Best Carrier of 2016  Project Fi

Whether or not you agree personally, the majority vote feels that Googles Project Fi was the best carrier this year, and as someone who uses their service, I can agree with the votes here and say that Im particularly happy with what they offer. Of course, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless were a close second and third, but since Project Fi not only makes setting up and managing service easy, but also utilizes towers from T-Mobile, Sprint, and US Cellular to provide coverage when Wi-Fi isnt available, it shouldnt too much of a shock to see why its the peoples choice. The service works, and it works pretty well, and it can be rather affordable. Perhaps its only drawback is the fact that it only has a few devices which officially work with it, but despite this drawback, it still came out on top with 33% of the votes. Whether or not Google and Project Fi can do it again next year is uncertain, but its not unlikely.

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Best Game of 2016  Pokemon GO

Pokemon GO is undoubtedly and unsurprisingly the winner in this category, and when youre a game that excites the likes of old fans as well as new players, and at a rate so rapid the world over, there is no denying supremacy. Apparently the readers agree as Niantics latest game is anything but dull. Providing users with hours upon hours of fun out in the real world and giving longtime fans the opportunity to do something they have been waiting to do for years  catch Pokemon, Pokemon GO comes out on top with a whopping 57% of the total votes. Of course, Clash Royale is a great game too, and its also wildly popular, but it seems its just not as popular as Pokemon GO as it only garnered 13% of the votes, which is quite a bit lower. One thing is for certain, all of these other games are actually quite fun and theyre all worth at least giving a try. When youre not trying to become the very best trainer there ever was, of course.

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Best App of 2016  Prisma

Not everyone uses apps, but many smartphone users do and many of them take a lot of pictures, which makes it less surprising that Prisma is the top app choice for readers. It offers up some really cool ways to jazz up your photos with special looks and essentially turn them into works of art, and if you thought your pictures were cool before, Prisma is only going to make them look cooler. There are also a huge list of different art styles so there is plenty of variety, too. This is why it snagged a total of 41% of the votes. Coming in second place was a tie between Googles Allo chat app an the Daydream app, both having 19% of the votes each, while apps like Letgo brought up the rear with only 3% of the votes. When it comes down to it, there are some really great apps out there and if you havent already given the likes of Prisma a try, you should.

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2016 was a quiet but pretty productive year for Android Auto. They, as do most industries, started things out at CES 2016 in January with a slew of great head units being announced. Then the Android Auto team had a number of announcements at Google I/O, even though they didnt make it into the keynote speech. And they are ending the year on a high note, so to speak. By bringing the Ok Google hotword functionality to the car, a feature that should have been available quite a while ago.

Ford & Chrysler Jump on the Android Auto Bandwagon at CES 2016

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Android Auto actually had more announcements at CES than Google I/O, but these were all from their partners. Ford and Chrysler announced at CES 2016 that they would be bringing Android Auto to their lineup of vehicles. They were some of the last big name auto makers in the Open Automotive Alliance to announce their plans for Android Auto implementation. Ford announced that Android Auto would be available in all 2017 models, while Chrysler was a bit tight-lipped. We still dont have any confirmation on what models from FCA will have Android Auto just yet.

Pioneer & JBL Announce Android Auto Head Units at CES 2016

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Ford and Chrysler may have been the only auto makers in Las Vegas announcing Android Auto, but they werent the only announcements there. Pioneer came to the show with three brand new head units to show off, all of which featured Android Auto. These sported better audio, better controls and an improved touch screen over their predecessors. But JBL is what stole the show. JBL announced the Legend CP-100 head unit. This one stole the show because it was the cheapest head unit available, and it still is nearly a year later. This is because the head unit is basically just radio and support for Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, while others from Pioneer and JVC Kenwood all feature SiriusXM satellite radio, cameras for reverse parking and much more.

Hyundai Elantra Announced with Android Auto Support at NAIAS 2016

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January is a busy month for car tech. The week after CES, everyone heads to the Motor City for the North American International Auto Show, which is where Hyundai debuted their next Android Auto-compatible vehicle, the 2017 Elantra. Thats not all that Hyundai had to announce in 2016 as far as Android Auto is concerned though. They also began sending out OTAs to compatible vehicles that would bring Android Auto to their cars. Most cars that are model year 2015 or newer with their 8-inch touch screen got the update. Which immediately brought more people into the Android Auto world.

Chevy Starts Android Auto OTA

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Chevrolet was the first auto maker to go all in with Android Auto. They had announced in 2015 that every single vehicle in their lineup would have Android Auto starting with the 2016 model year. However, at that time, some 2016 models were already in dealer lots being sold. Which meant that they needed to push out updates to their myLink system, which they began doing in the second quarter of this year. Users were able to download the update and install it in their vehicle.

Android Auto Arrived in 18 Additional Countries

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Many thought that Android Auto was available everywhere, but that was not the case. In April of this year, Android Auto made its way into Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Switzerland, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Panama, Peru, Paraguay, Russia, Uruguay, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. That was in addition to the US, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain and the UK.

Android Auto Apps from Auto Makers

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Google didnt have much to say about Android Auto at Google I/O this year, in fact it didnt even make it into the keynote. But one of the bigger features they announced was the fact that auto makers will be able to create their own apps for Android Auto. The image you see above is from Hyundai  who was the first partner to actually roll out Android Auto. This example shows that Hyundai could show users their driving stats, including how many hard brakes and hard accelerations they had (more of these means lower fuel economy). There are other ideas floating around out there as well.

As of December 2016, these apps have not made it to Android Auto and we have not heard much else about them since Google I/O. Which could mean a few things, but it likely means that there is still more work to be done. Thats not surprising, since Google does want to be sure whatever they add to Android Auto wont distract the driver. As they are looking to prevent accidents, and not cause them.

Standalone Android Auto App

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One of the reasons that Android Auto was such a niche product was the fact that you either needed a car that supported it (which was mostly 2015 and later models), or to buy and install a third-party head unit. Which could cost you at least a grand. So Google sought to change that in 2016. At Google I/O they announced that you would soon be able to use Android Auto on your smartphone. Just jump in the car, dock your phone and youll be using Android Auto. That version of the app launched later on in the fall, and it was actually done quite nicely.

Acura, Kia, Lincoln, Maserati & Mercedes Jump on the Android Auto Bandwagon

We already had plenty of car makers jumping into Android Auto before 2016. But this year we heard plans from Acura, Kia, Lincoln, Maserati and Mercedes-Benz. And in fact, Mercedes-Benz was not part of the Open Automotive Alliance until around April of this year. However they all have models with Android Auto available right now. Acura only has it in the 2017 NSX though, while the others have it in multiple models.

Kia, like its sister-brand Hyundai, also began pushing out an OTA update to a number of their models for Android Auto. Users were able to either go into their local Kia dealer and have the update installed free of charge, or they could opt to install it themselves. It was a pretty simple update, and over the course of a few months, they were able to add a ton of new cars to the list of Android Auto compatible vehicles. Which is a big deal, knowing how slow the auto industry can be.

Wrap Up

It has been a pretty quiet year for Android Auto, but that doesnt mean that Android Auto did nothing in 2016. Quite the contrary. The Android Auto team has been hard at work at Google, but evolving an operating system that involves cars is not an easy thing to do. Considering most people upgrade their phone a lot more often than their car, most people still dont have a car that has Android Auto (until now, with the newest update to the Android Auto app), so the market is still quite small.

This year was a big year for Android Auto, and with January right around the corner, theres bound to be a slew of new announcements coming in the next few weeks. With CES kickstarting the year in Las Vegas, followed by the North American International Auto Show in Detroit the following week. This is the largest auto show in the US, so theres bound to be plenty of announcements from Android Auto there. 2017 is going to be a pretty interesting year for Android Auto, and its going to be exciting to see what happens with the platform.
Samsungs Galaxy S7 is one of the most premium smartphones on the market, and is a serious competitor for phone of the year on many lists, which likely makes it all the more surprising that a decent number of people who own the Galaxy S7 are reporting that the glass over the camera lens is breaking for no reason. According to The Consumerist, a reader reached out to them to tell them about a situation that they faced with their phone; their Galaxy S7 unit, which had lay untouched in a protective case for a while, was found to have had its back camera glass inexplicably shattered in a circular shape, resembling a hit from a BB gun or similar pellet. According to the user, however, Samsung refused to replace the glass for free, and insisted that the user had wrecked the phone themselves. The issue is that this user is far from the only one with such an experience under their belt.

Samsungs forums had reportedly been choked with threads describing frighteningly similar occurrences since April; the back camera glass shatters, always in a fairly circular pattern that seems similar to a BB gun hole, and Samsung refuses to do anything for the user, even those whose phones are still under warranty against manufacturer defects. Carrier plans that normally cover just about anything but accidental damage normally wont cover the issue, either, at this point. This leaves users to simply find their own way to repair the defect, but the kicker is that even after repairs, and in some cases after replacements, some users are seeing it happen again.

This does not appear to be happening to a massive subset of the Samsung Galaxy S7 owner community, but the number of cases reported on Samsungs forums alone are more than enough to cause some concern. There is reportedly a law firm investigating the issue, and a few handsets have made their way back to Samsung for them to conduct their own investigation. For the time being, however, it seems that users who suffer this apparent defect have no recourse except to either fix it themselves, or pay to have it done by a professional or through an applicable warranty plan.
The HTC Vive 2 will not be unveiled at the upcoming CES 2017 event. The latest information is said to come directly from HTC by way of a statement provided to UploadVR. If correct, this announcement puts an end to the rumor that the Taoyuan-based company is planning to debut a revised version of its VR headset during the latest iteration of the annual consumer electronics tradeshow. Apart from denying that the HTC Vive 2 will be announced next week in Las Vegas, HTCs latest statement also asserts how the company is currently focused on growing its VR ecosystem for all of the existing and other potential owners of the HTC Vive.

While the CES unveil speculation now seems to have been premature, it wasnt completely unfounded  as HTC has showcased the Vive Pre developer kits at previous CES events. Regardless, given how its only been eight months since the firm launched its first commercial VR headset, HTC apparently believes its too early for a new reveal. That isnt to say HTC wont be present at CES 2017 as the Taiwanese company already confirmed its attending the trade show. In fact, its likely that the Taoyuan-based consumer electronics manufacturer will use this opportunity to announce new VR software and initiatives, so the HTC Vive 2 could be the only thing thats missing from its booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center.

As for the device itself, the HTC Vive 2 is rumored to sport two 4K displays boasting a refresh rate of 120Hz. Apart from that, another major improvement thats been heavily rumored about is a wireless receiver thats allegedly supposed to replace HDMI and USB cables currently used for connecting the original HTC Vive to ones computer. Regardless of what the company is planning for the HTC Vive 2, it seems consumers will have to wait for more than a week to find out more details about the second generation of HTCs VR headset. The companys decision to postpone the HTC Vive 2 reveal coincides with recent studies suggesting that the VR industry is in for another relatively slow year due to a weaker consumer demand and numerous issues with suppliers. So, HTCs decision to focus on VR software instead of hardware, in the short-term may prove to be the correct one.
Environmental news in 2016 centered on the Grand Canyon, a fitting trend considering this year was also the National Park Services centennial, spurring a surge of visitation to and attention on national parks across the country. Grand Canyon rode the visitation wave and in mid-December announced it had reached a new record of 6 million annual visitors.

The year started off on a much lower note for the park with the release of a federal report detailing findings of sexual harassment and workplace discrimination in Grand Canyon National Parks river district. The findings led to the retirement of superintendent Dave Uberuaga, the elimination of the river district and a series of investigations into the treatment of women at other national parks that revealed that harassment and discrimination is widespread within the agency.

Opponents of a massive commercial and housing development near the Grand Canyon cheered a March decision by Kaibab National Forest Supervisor Heather Provencio to reject a road easement necessary for the project to move forward. Provencio said the development was opposed locally and nationally, would stress Grand Canyon National Park and have significant impact on surrounding tribal and national park lands.

Conservation groups also celebrated a ruling by a federal judge requiring the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to update its decades-old recovery plan for the endangered Mexican gray wolf. The plan needs to lay out specific steps to create a self sustaining population of the wolves in their historic range in the Southwest.

In April, the arrest of a Havasupai tribal member on animal mistreatment charges whipped up a firestorm of attention on the treatment of pack horses used to haul tourists gear the 10 miles to and from the popular waterfalls on the tribes reservation in Grand Canyon. The tribe has since implemented a new system of evaluating the horses and prohibiting those in poor condition from packing, though some are doubtful that the system is actually being implemented and enforced.

Environmental groups and tribes continued to press for a national monument designation for 1.7 million acres around Grand Canyon National Park to protect old growth trees, wildlife corridors and sacred tribal sites and permanently ban new mining claims. One bipartisan national poll commissioned by the groups found that more than 80 percent of voters support the proposed monument.

On the eastern rim of Grand Canyon, Scottsdale-based developers are attempting to move forward with a proposal to build a tramway to the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado River. Legislation paving the way for the Grand Canyon Escalade project, located on the Navajo Nation, was introduced to the Tribal Council in August and is being heard by various committees before a full council vote.

Several Escalade opponents drew parallels between their work and the massive protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Many tribal members from Arizona traveled to North Dakota to participate in the protests.

This to me is another reinvigoration of that compassionate spirit of native people in defense of the land, said Brandon Benallie one of those who made the trip.
Motorola have released a second software update for the Moto Z flagship device running Android 7.0 Nougat. This update, which consists of a 540 MB download, is available for those devices that were updated to Android 7.0 Nougat as released in November 2016 and fixes the low notification volume bug that many customers have reported. Motorolas new software build version is NPL25.86-17-3, succeeding the November update to Android 7.0, which carries build number NPL25.86-15. Disappointingly, Motorola have not updated the version of Android to 7.1 Nougat although this was perhaps optimistic given that Android 7.1 Nougat has only recently been released. However, of more disappointment is that the new software does not include Googles December (or even January 2017) security patch updates: it still carries the November security patch date. As with other software updates, if your device receives the notification, it is recommended that you both have a fully or near-fully charged device and it is plugged into the charger before starting the update process, which can be expected to take some time.

For customers running Motorolas November release of Android 7.0 Nougat for their Moto Z devices, the new software update will automatically arrive. However, for the impatient, the device may be prompted to check for updates using the Settings and About menu option. It typically takes several days or sometimes a couple of weeks for software updates to be rolled out across a device family as manufacturers deliberately stage the rollout to avoid overloading the download servers and also so that should a critical bug be discovered, fewer devices may be impacted before the update can be stopped at the server source.

In the past, Motorola have explained that they will not be carrying out regular, monthly software updates for the Moto Z family of devices but will instead be combining updates into a less frequent, but more substantial, schedule. It appears that the Motorola software development team are being encouraged to instead concentrate on the bigger software updates as we have recently seen Android Nougat being released for the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus devices. This approach differs from other manufacturers, such as BlackBerry and Samsung, where they work on releasing monthly security patches and more major updates take longer.
Following a couple of Nokia smartphone render leaks, the Nokia E1 just got certified in China. The Nokia E1 and Nokia D1 leaked a couple of days ago, and now the Nokia E1 got certified by the 3C authority in China. Nokia TA-1000 paid a visit to the 3C certification authority, and it seems like were looking at the Nokia E1 here. This listing did not really reveal all that much info when it comes to the phone, but it does reveal that the phone will ship with 5V / 2A charging, so it seems like fast charging wont be a part of this package.

According to previous rumors, the Nokia E1 will sport a 5.5-inch display, and this will be the companys entry-level smartphone it seems. Previous rumors also said that the device could be fueled by one of Qualcomms entry-level chips from the Snapdragon 200 series, and the device will, allegedly, ship with only 1GB of RAM. Android 7.0 Nougat will come pre-installed on this smartphone, if rumors are to be believed, and the device will ship with three capacitive buttons below the display, back, home and overview (multitasking), respectively. Based on some design leaks, the phones physical keys will be placed on its right-hand side, and the bezels will be quite noticeable. This phone might not sport great design, or specs, but it seems like it will be extremely affordable, almost certainly the most affordable smartphone Nokia plans to release next year.

As many of you know, HMD Global now has rights to release Nokia-branded smartphones, after they purchased such rights from Microsoft a while back. The company had confirmed recently that they intend to introduce Android-powered smartphones next year, and we could see new devices hit the market in the first quarter of 2017. Nokia will focus on budget devices, but chances are well see a Nokia-branded flagship hit the market next year as well. Were only guessing at this point, well just have to wait and see what happens, of course. New Nokia leaks are expected to land soon, so stay tuned for that, well make sure to keep you in the loop, as per usual.
Samsung will use enhanced soft keys for the Galaxy S8 for the entirety of the device according to a new rumor. While Samsung uses capacitive keys for the navigation controls, and employs hardware buttons for things like the volume up, volume down, power, and home button, this new rumor asserts that the physical home button and capacitive buttons will be forfeited and the company will instead use soft keys for those functions. Things like the power button and volume rocker would of course remain the same.

In regards to the enhancements, the soft keys are rumored to have a functionality that is similar to 3D Touch, which essentially allows users extra actions for a certain button based on how much pressure they put on that button when interacting with it. Its not too unlike Googles new App Shortcuts for devices running on Android 7.1 Nougat, which, allows users to initiate multiple actions for apps on the homscreen, so long as they support the Shortcuts API. What Samsung is planning to enable with this feature for their soft keys on the Galaxy S8 is currently unclear, but having all of these buttons enabled to complete multiple actions could come in very useful for people who are constantly multitasking, and it would certainly be more efficient.

For example, simply tapping on the recents button could allow users to bring up the menu and see all of their most recently used apps, while giving it a little bit more pressure could initiate a clear all functionality without actually having to open the menu up. Whats more, is that getting rid of the capacitive keys alongside the hardware buttons will give the Galaxy S8 loads of screen real estate. Its also rumored that Samsung may end up making the soft keys configurable, meaning they would be letting users customize the 3D Touch-like function for each button or certain buttons, although it wasnt mentioned how deep that customization would go if it ends up being implemented. One last bit of detail states that Samsung will not be placing the fingerprint sensor on the front of the Galaxy S8, which makes sense if theyre getting rid of the physical home button, yet there was no mention of where it will end up exactly.
Sprint has promised to create or repatriate 5,000 American jobs over the course of 2017. One of the United States carriers made the announcement in a form of a press release explaining that the American jobs would be across the company, including the Sales and Customer Care divisions. The carrier will start negotiations with key important business partners, state and city departments in order to determine the right locations for the new jobs. Sprints promise runs through the whole of 2017 and the company has promised to provide additional details as soon as it is able to. Sprints Chief Executive Officer, Marcelo Claure, explained: We believe it is critical for business and government to partner together to create more job opportunities in the U.S. and ensure prosperity for all Americans. Sprints announcement is good news for the American market and may help persuade customers to join the carrier as it is seen to be supporting the domestic workforce. Claure also said that [Sprint] are excited to work with President-Elect Trump and his Administration to do our part in order to drive economic growth and create jobs in the U.S.

Sprints announcement follows what appears to be some political maneuvering earlier in December when President-elect, Donald Trump, and Sprints parent company, Softbanks Chief Executive Officer, Masayoshi Son, made an announcement that Softbank were to invest $50 billion into the North American market. One of the rumors at the time was that Softbank were preparing to combine Sprint with T-Mobile US or at least to create an additional 50,000 North American jobs. Son explained that Softbank would never do this if President-elect Trump had not of been elected.

Sprint were relegated to Americas fourth largest carrier in late 2015 when T-Mobile US claimed higher subscriber numbers. However, Sprint has been working hard to both be competitive with T-Mobile US and the two larger carriers, AT&T and Verizon Wireless. The announcement about US jobs shows that Sprint is keen to explain to Americans that not only does it have a credible and competitive cellular network, built on a different blend of frequencies and spectrum as compared with its competitors, but that it is also supporting the local jobs market.
Reports have surfaced recently saying that TSMCs 10 nanometer manufacturing processes for mobile CPUs are falling behind schedule and resulting in lower than expected yields, but TSMC has come forward personally to say that is not the case, and their 10 nanometer manufacturing is producing the expected yield at the expected pace. Reports had even gone as far as to suggest that TSMC missing their target in 10 nanometer manufacturing may cause significant delays with customer products, like new phones an tablets. According to TSMC, not only is the 10 nanometer lineup fully in step with expectations, but it stands to actually begin contributing to their bottom line as soon as the first quarter of 2017.

TSMCs senior director of corporate communications, Elizabeth Sun, said that the companys 10 nanometer process will only account for roughly 1% of their total revenue when it first hits the spreadsheet in the initial quarter of 2017. This is due in part to Samsung securing the manufacturing contract for Qualcomms Snapdragon 835 mobile processor, which will be based on Samsungs 10 nanometer process. Qualcomm tends to go with Samsung for their processor manufacturing, but TSMC reportedly snatched up the contract for Qualcomms Snapdragon 830 because of Samsungs own delays, and is in the running for scoring other contracts in their race against Samsung and Intel, and rumors are floating around that they may get the contract from Apple to manufacture the chip for the newest version of the popular iPad tablet.

These developments fit nicely within the business plan for 2017 that TSMC came up with regarding 10 nanometer manufacturing. Reportedly, their plan was to use 2017 as a transition period, phasing out their 16 nanometer lineup entirely to make way for 10 nanometer products. Going beyond 10 nanometer manufacturing, TSMC plans to reach 3 nanometer manufacturing by 2022, with 7 nanometer manufacturing beginning in 2017 as a stepping stone, and moving to 5 nanometer processes in 2019 and onward. With the ability to shrink the die in a conventional manner steadily heading towards a plateau, movers and shakers in the industry have been working on more unconventional chip geometry to allow more components to fit on a smaller die, as well as to allow further die shrinking even as component sizes plateau. This is the track that TSMC will be taking toward 3 nanometer chip manufacturing.
The following editorial appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Monday, Dec. 26:



The criminal charges against a growing number of defendants in the Flint, Mich., water scandal should send two powerful messages to officials at all levels of government. Their primary duty is to protect their constituents, and improvements to the nations infrastructure are urgently needed, especially in communities left bereft by deindustrialization.

Flints water wasnt treated for lead between April 2014 and October 2015, after officials switched water sources and began using the Flint River to supply homes and businesses. The failure to properly treat the water exposed consumers to unhealthy levels of lead, which is especially dangerous for children, and also has been implicated in an outbreak of Legionnaires disease, which killed 12 people. Making matters worse, when consumers began reporting illness and complained about the color and smell of the water, officials were slow to respond.

So far, 13 people have been charged for the crisis that, when it came to light, caused widespread panic and a run on bottled water. The latest charges came last week against four former officials, including Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose, who were emergency managers appointed by the state to oversee Flints fiscal difficulties in 2014 and 2015. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has alleged that a fixation on finances and balance sheets overrode concern for the public health in Flint.

While it is easy to deride officials incompetence or indifference, the larger issue is deindustrialization, including the loss of the Buick manufacturing complex that sustained Flint for decades.

When a citys tax base goes, so does money for infrastructure projects, such as upgrading the water pipes. Instead, officials put long-term projects on the back burner and start scrounging the couch cushions for change. Just keeping the police employed, lights on and parks open is a challenge. Flint officials once bought water from a Detroit system but decided to go another route to save money.

As in many parts of the country, Flints water system relies on aging pipes that can contribute lead to the water supply. Communities need to improve their drinking water infrastructure as much as they do their crumbling highways, bridges and water navigation systems. Such investments will keep Americans safe, put them to work and keep the economy humming.

Recently, President Barack Obama signed the $10 billion Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, which authorizes hundreds of improvement projects nationwide, including replacement of three locks and dams on the Ohio River and $170 million for infrastructure upgrades and other aid to Flint. But much more is needed.

Consider the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Parts of the toll road havent been touched since the 1940s, for example, yet the agencys 10-year, nearly $5.8 billion capital budget calls for less spending than occurred under the preceding 10-year plan.

The next Congress should make sure infrastructure development is a national priority. Flints calamity is a clarion call for change.
Weve praised the way the nonprofits and umbrella charities in the Flagstaff region have come together to leverage individual contributions and foundation grants in a system that is both responsive and accountable. Food, families, education, shelter and health care all seem to get much of the attention they need, thanks to coordination and a boatload of local volunteers. The United Way of Northern Arizona and the Arizona Community Foundation of Flagstaff each use different fundraising models, but between the two they manage to distribute more than $2 million a year to more than a hundred worthy causes.

Now well address how well government agencies and their taxpayer dollars serve the goals of that system. The city of Flagstaff and Coconino County are the major players and they also use two very different models -- but not with two satisfactory outcomes.

The city for the most part works through the existing umbrella nonprofits like United Way and the Flagstaff Arts Council (formerly Flagstaff Cultural Partners) to coordinate and distribute social service and arts funding. They solicit bids and designate where and how the citys money should be spent. They rely on the umbrella nonprofits to audit and monitor the grant recipients, which submit a report to the city each year.

In addition, the Flagstaff Unified School District receives a major city grant for its after-school FACTS program, which is a federal Title I program that requires its own annual audit. In all, the city spends more than a half-million dollars a year on social services that are provided by area nonprofits.

Coconino County relies on its five elected supervisors, acting separately, to receive grant applications from nonprofits in their districts, then advance the ones they recommend to the full board for approval -- you vote for mine and I'll vote for yours.

The supervisors act as the coordination and oversight agency, although both functions appear to be independent of the county Community Services Department and the umbrella nonprofits mentioned above.

Each supervisor is allotted $40,000 a year to earmark for nonprofits, so the total pot of $200,000 is not insignificant. But without coordination and because each district appears to be treated equally from a financial standpoint regardless of need or nonprofit capacity, the results are uneven, at best.

For example, three supervisors, Liz Archuleta, Mandy Metzger and Lena Fowler, spent more in operating expenses for their offices than they did on community grants. Metzger and Fowler said they hadnt received many applications because their districts have fewer nonprofits. Archuleta, who went $15,000 over her district operating budget, said she was reserving about half of her $40,000 for three future grants  the reasons for the delays were unclear.

Archuleta defended her office spending, saying much of it went to lobbying trips to Washington on behalf of Schultz fire remediation funds. To their credit, supervisors no longer fund travel out of the same pot as community grants, which is a good thing since several regularly exceed their district office budgets out of which travel spending comes.

Compared with the city, the county grants system smacks of political patronage that even Congress has sought to minimize with the elimination of budget earmarks for their districts. Perhaps the Page-Lake Powell Chamber of Commerce really does need $3,000 for a good cause and the Flagstaff Biking Organization $16,000. But theres no question that members of those groups will look favorably on the granting supervisor at the next election, putting any non-incumbent at a distinct disadvantage.

Supervisors contend they know best the needs of their districts. That may be true, but countywide, not all needs are equally pressing. Supervisor district boundaries are set up only to assure equal populations, and some districts have more than $40,000 worth of needs a year, some less. Like the city, the county should farm out social welfare spending to broad-based groups that can prioritize the highest needs and deliver funds and services in an accountable fashion. At the least, supervisors should give up their hold on funds that are more about re-election than responsive resource allocation. If Congress can put a lid on its earmarks, so can the Coconino County Board of Supervisors.
iStock/Thnkstock(SALT LAKE CITY)  President Barack Obama designated two national monuments Wednesday at sites in Utah and Nevada that have become key flashpoints over use of public land in the U.S. West, marking the administration's latest move to protect environmentally sensitive areas in its final days.

The Bears Ears National Monument in Utah will cover 1.35 million acres in the Four Corners region, the White House said. In a victory for Native American tribes and conservationists, the designation protects land that is considered sacred and is home to an estimated 100,000 archaeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings.

It's a blow for state Republican leaders and many rural residents who fear it will add another layer of unnecessary federal control and close the area to energy development and recreation, a common refrain in the battle over use of the American West's vast open spaces.

In Nevada, a 300,000-acre Gold Butte National Monument outside Las Vegas would protect a scenic and ecologically fragile area near where rancher Cliven Bundy led in an armed standoff with government agents in 2014. It includes rock art, artifacts, rare fossils and recently discovered tracks.

The White House and conservationists said both sites were at risk of looting and vandalism.

"Today's actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes," Obama said in a statement.

His administration has rushed to safeguard vulnerable areas ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. It has blocked new mining claims outside Yellowstone National Park and new oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean.

Obama's creation and expansion of monuments covers more acreage than any other president.

But Trump's upcoming presidency has tempered the excitement for tribal leaders and conservationists, with some worrying he could try to reverse or reduce some of Obama's expansive land protections.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah, who opposes the Bears Ears Monument, has suggested presidents have the power to undo monuments, though it has not been done before.

A coalition of tribes pushed for the creation of Utah's eighth national monument, though they asked Obama to make it about 500,000 acres larger than the monument he named Wednesday.

Tribal members visit the Bears Ears area to perform ceremonies, collect herbs and wood for medicinal and spiritual purposes, and do healing rituals.

Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye called it an exciting day for his tribe and people of all cultures.

"We have always looked to Bears Ears as a place of refuge, as a place where we can gather herbs and medicinal plants, and a place of prayer and sacredness," Begaye said. "The rocks, the winds, the land  they are living, breathing things that deserve timely and lasting protection."

The Navajo Nation is one of five tribes that will get an elected official on a first-of-its-kind tribal commission for the Bears Ears monument. The panel will provide federal land managers with tribal expertise and historical knowledge about the area, federal officials said.

Tucked between existing national parks and the Navajo reservation, the proposed monument features stunning vistas at every turn, with a mix of cliffs, plateaus, towering rock formations, rivers and canyons across wide expanses covered by sagebrush and juniper trees.

Opponents agree the area is a natural treasure worth preserving but said the federal designation would create restrictions on oil and gas development as well residents' ability to camp, bike, hike, and gather wood.

No new mining and oil and gas development will be allowed within the monument boundaries, said Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Members of Utah's all-GOP congressional delegation had backed a plan to protect about 1.4 million acres at Bears Ears, while opening up other areas of the state for development.

To many residents in the small, predominantly Mormon town of Blanding that sits near the new monument, the proposal is a thinly veiled, repackaged push from environmental groups who recruited tribes after previous attempts at the designation fizzled out.

In Nevada, retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Harry Reid has pushed for protections at Gold Butte, a remote area northeast of Lake Mead, but GOP members of the state's congressional delegation have been vocal opponents.

Bundy is one rancher who does not recognize federal jurisdiction in the area. He was accused of illegally allowing his cows to roam there after failing to pay more than $1.1 million in fees and penalties.

He has pleaded not guilty to charges in the 2014 standoff with U.S. agents trying to round up his cattle.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
(ANSA) - Rome, December 29 - Government stability must not stand in the way of the need for Italy to hold a general election as soon as possible, Premier Paolo Gentiloni said at his end-of-year press conference Thursday.

Stability is all very well but it cannot "block democracy", Gentiloni said, stressing that elections must not be seen as a "threat". He said the government would work with all parties on a new electoral law and the government would remain in charge "as long as it has the confidence of parliament".

Gentiloni said that his government would spur a debate on a new electoral law. He said "rapidity" was a systemic need, and is not related to the duration of the executive".

It would be a mistake to cancel the good work of the previous government led by Matteo Renzi, Gentiloni said. "To cancel or consign it to oblivion would be a mistake," said Gentiloni, who was foreign minister in Renzi's administration.

Gentiloni said that "for me the key words are jobs, the South and young people." He said his government would build on the structural reforms of the previous government of Matteo Renzi. "Full steam ahead on reforms, we haven't been joking," he said.

Gentiloni stressed the importance of the "continuity" of his government team with that of Renzi's previous executive, but the political "discontinuity".

Gentiloni said widely abused vouchers for occasional work "are not the virus sowing black labour, they don't have the copyright of black labour" but "we must correct their abuse". He said the government would act swiftly and said a review was underway on "what is very clearly wrong, without turning this into the mother of all the problems and woes of the labour market".

Gentiloni said that "the economy has grown, steady jobs have grown, around 700,000 jobs more" but "there is enormous work to be done in the under-40 age bracket".

On another economic priority, saving Italy's third-biggest and the world's oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), Gentiloni said that with the government's 20-billion-euro fund for banks including MPS "we have made savings safe". But he said the enactment of the decree would be "long and complicated". He added: "However, a decision has been made and it will be strategic".

On French giant Vivendi's bid to take over Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset, he said the government was keeping a "watchful eye" on the case but it had no 'golden power' it could wield, while acknowledging Mediaset's importance to the Italian economy.

In other remarks, Gentiloji expressed "pride" in Italy's stopping the Berlin Christmas market killer, Anis Amri, who was shot by police near Milan. He also said he saw signs of growing cooperation from Egypt over the case of Giulio Regeni, an Italian student tortured and murdered in Cairo earlier this year.

On Italy's duty presidency of the Group of Seven, he said Italy would use it for two goals: "the centrality of the Mediterranean, which cannot be a 'mare nullius', that is a sea of no one; and to use the G7 for different relations with Russia. "It doesn't mean renouncing principles but a return to Cold War logic is wrong, it makes no sense today".


(ANSA) - Rome, December 29 - Premier Paolo Gentiloni said on the Giulio Regeni case Thursday that "there is a path the government has been seeking to follow, that of firmness and requests for cooperation. "Lately I have seen very useful signs of cooperation from Egypt, I hope they will develop and the government will work for that". He said "the collaboration between Rome prosecutors and Cairo prosecutors has produced results". The possible involvement of the head of the Cairo street vendors' union had been "anticipated" by Egypt's prosecutor-general in Rome talks, Gentiloni noted. Saying that he had been in touch with Regeni's parents on Christmas Day, the premier said: "I have nothing to add on the gravity of the affair, to what I have been saying for 11 months.

"I know that it is one of the affairs that rightly has most struck our public opinion".

Cambridge doctoral student Regeni, 28, went missing on January 25, the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that ousted former strongman Hosni Mubarak, and his tortured and maimed body turned up in a ditch outside Cairo six days later, on February 3.

Egypt has denied speculation its security forces, who are frequently accused of brutally repressing opposition, were involved in the death of the Cambridge doctoral student.

Several concocted explanations of Regeni's death have been rejected, from a car accident to a gay quarrel turned ugly to a kidnap for ransom that went wrong.


(By Denis Greenan).

(ANSA) - Rome, December 29 - The government will continue the reform process of its predecessor led by Matteo Renzi, Premier Paolo Gentiloni said at his end-of-year press conference Thursday, stressing that jobs, the South and young people were its priorities.

Government stability must not stand in the way of the need for Italy to hold a general election as soon as possible, the former foreign minister said.

Stability is all very well but it cannot "block democracy", Gentiloni said, stressing that elections must not be seen as a "threat". He said the government would work with all parties on a new electoral law and the government would remain in charge "as long as it has the confidence of parliament".

Gentiloni said that his government would spur a debate on a new electoral law. He said "rapidity" was a systemic need, and is not related to the duration of the executive".

It would be a mistake to cancel the good work of the previous government led by Renzi, Gentiloni said. "To cancel or consign it to oblivion would be a mistake," said Gentiloni, who was foreign minister in Renzi's administration.

Gentiloni said that "for me the key words are jobs, the South and young people." He said his government would build on the structural reforms of the previous government. "Full steam ahead on reforms, we haven't been joking," he said.

Gentiloni stressed the importance of the "continuity" of his government team with that of Renzi's previous executive, but also underscored the need for "discontinuity" with the verbal violence, much of it on the Web, that marked the referendum campaign ahead of Renzi's defeat and resignation.

Gentiloni said widely abused vouchers for occasional work "are not the virus sowing black labour, they don't have the copyright of black labour" but "we must correct their abuse". He said the government would act swiftly and said a review was underway on "what is very clearly wrong, without turning this into the mother of all the problems and woes of the labour market".

Gentiloni said that "the economy has grown, steady jobs have grown, around 700,000 jobs more" but "there is enormous work to be done in the under-40 age bracket".

On another economic priority, saving Italy's third-biggest and the world's oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), Gentiloni said that with the government's 20-billion-euro fund for banks including MPS "we have made savings safe". But he said the enactment of the decree would be "long and complicated". He added: "However, a decision has been made and it will be strategic".

Gentiloni said he had been taken aback by the "abrupt" Christmas Day news of the European Central Bank's saying a capital hike for MPS bank should be raised from five billion to 8.8 billion euros. "These are assessments by the oversight (body). Since it will be a very long process, several months, there will be dialogue and talks. It can't be solved by communications. That's why we made our own assessments, voiced by (Economy Minister Pier Carlo) Padoan, and we will collaborate with the utmost possible constructive spirit".

Gentiloni voiced the hope for "fruitful and useful talks" on the rescue of MPS with the EU. He said a 20-billion-euro save-bank decree was not the end of the affair, but it would entail "months of talks with European oversight bodies". "I hope it is a productive and effective dialectic otherwise it will be a more difficult discussion," he said. Gentiloni said the government would do it utmost to make sure "safeguarding savers is at the centre of all this process".

On French giant Vivendi's bid to take over Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset, he said the government was keeping a "watchful eye" on the case but it had no 'golden power' it could wield, while acknowledging Mediaset's importance to the Italian economy.

Gentiloni said the government was monitoring Vivendi's bid because it was "aware of the importance of Mediaset in Italy". But he stressed "there are no golden powers to be exercised in this sector". Gentiloni said "the government does not want to activate instruments, there are watchdog structures and authorities which may raise the issue if they want". He said "it is a very important sector for the government and the fact that it is the target of a takeover bid does not leave us indifferent".

In other remarks, Gentiloni expressed "pride" in Italy's stopping the Berlin Christmas market killer, Anis Amri, who was shot by police near Milan. He also said he saw signs of growing cooperation from Egypt over the case of Giulio Regeni, an Italian student tortured and murdered in Cairo earlier this year.

On Italy's duty presidency of the Group of Seven, he said Italy would use it for two goals: "the centrality of the Mediterranean, which cannot be a 'mare nullius', that is a sea of no one; and to use the G7 for different relations with Russia. "It doesn't mean renouncing principles but a return to Cold War logic is wrong, it makes no sense today". Gentiloni said Italy's relationship with the United States, no matter what administration, "remained the cornerstone" of its foreign policy.

He said the Mideast crisis could only be resolved by a two-State solution.


LONDON - A group of minors who lived in the migrant tent camp known as the Jungle in Calais have taken legal action against the British government for alleged irregularities in the handling of their asylum requests in the UK, The Guardian reported on Thursday. The lawsuit has been brought by 36 minors aged 14 to 17 against the Home Secretary Amber Rudd. The newspaper reports that 28 minors have already seen their applications rejected, while the others are awaiting a response from the Home Office. They mostly come from Eritrea, Afghanistan and Sudan and are currently staying in migrant reception centres across France. The legal action is the latest indication of the tardy and poor support given to child migrants by the government of Theresa May.
(by Francesco Cerri)

MADRID - Nobody could have forecast a stable end of 2016 for Spain, still led by Mariano Rajoy, with enviable economic data compared to the rest of Europe.



The year 2016 was difficult for the country, an 'annus horribilis', the most destabilizing since the country returned to democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco 40 years ago.



The 'never-ending' Spanish political crisis started with national elections held on December 20 last year, which had brought the end of the bipolar Pp-Psoe rule that had governed the country since the end of the regime, with the arrival of 'new' parties Podemos and Ciudadanos.



Chaos reigned for 300 days. It was impossible to form a new government in spite of new elections in June, with a divided Parliament, two failed attempts to elect a premier, growing discontent and populism amid corruption scandals and internal rifts in parties.



The turning point was on October 29 when the Socialist party changed course of action and said that, for the good of the state, it enabled Rajoy's election, abstaining from the vote and avoiding fresh elections that would have been the third of the year.



The political situation has normalized since then. It is a 'new' context where 'old' schemes have returned.



Rajoy now leads a minority government , not an absolute majority anymore, but does it mainly thanks to deals with the Socialists who are formally in the opposition. The two parties representing novelty have been set aside, Podemos is weakened by internal rifts between leader Pablo Iglesias and his 'number two' Inigo Errejon.



Ciudadanos, which had forged a pact with Rajoy, is marginalized by the dialogue between the two 'old' bipolar leaders, the Ps and Psoe. The situation benefits both. Abc reported that the pact makes ''everybody happy''.



Rajoy governs without excessive shakeups, the Psoe obtains relevant social measures, gains time to build strength and recover from rifts under the Sanchez leadership by avoiding possible early elections that polls had forecast as disastrous for them with Podemos 'humiliatingly' overtaking them on the left.



Several analysts have said Spain looks again like an oasis of stability in a stormy EU. Out of the five major European countries gathered by Angela Merkel in Berlin last month for the last summit with Barack Obama, it is the only one with a stable outlook after the fall of Matteo Renzi after a referendum this month and as France and Germany are gearing up for key elections in 2017 and London has a foot near the door.



Madrid will certainly have to deal next year with the hot issue of Catalonia's drive for independence. But for ''Rajoy the survivor'' - as he was described by El Mundo - one of the first Europeans to talk with Donald Trump after his victory, the time has come to get back on the front seat in EU politics.
MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said the Syrian government and opposition forces have signed a deal for a truce in Syria and to start peace negotiations soon.



''The agreements are fragile and need patience and special attention'', Putin was quoted by Tass as saying.



The truce in Syria will come into effect starting at midnight on December 30, said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu but the Syrian army has announced that the ceasefire for the whole country starts from midnight today.



Shoigu added that the ceasefire was signed by units including 60,000 effective members.



President Putin said he agreed with the minister's proposal to reduce the Russian military presence in Syria.



Russia, Turkey and Iran - Putin was also quoted as saying by Tass - take responsibility to guarantee the success of the peace process.



According to the statements released by Putin, who met with Defense Minister Serghei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, three documents have been signed.



The first document was signed between the Syrian government and the armed opposition on the ceasefire in Syria; the second concerns a system of measures to control the truce; the third is a statement concerning the availability to start peace talks to solve the conflict.
Spain returns oasis of stability Only one in EU out of electoral turbulence

(by Francesco Cerri) (ANSAmed) - MADRID, DECEMBER 29 - Nobody could have forecast a stable end of 2016 for Spain, still led by Mariano Rajoy, with enviable economic data compared to the rest of Europe.



The year 2016 was difficult for the country, an 'annus horribilis', the most destabilizing since the country returned to democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco 40 years ago.



The 'never-ending' Spanish political crisis started with national elections held on December 20 last year, which had brought the end of the bipolar Pp-Psoe rule that had governed the country since the end of the regime, with the arrival of 'new' parties Podemos and Ciudadanos.



Chaos reigned for 300 days. It was impossible to form a new government in spite of new elections in June, with a divided Parliament, two failed attempts to elect a premier, growing discontent and populism amid corruption scandals and internal rifts in parties.



The turning point was on October 29 when the Socialist party changed course of action and said that, for the good of the state, it enabled Rajoy's election, abstaining from the vote and avoiding fresh elections that would have been the third of the year.



The political situation has normalized since then. It is a 'new' context where 'old' schemes have returned.



Rajoy now leads a minority government , not an absolute majority anymore, but does it mainly thanks to deals with the Socialists who are formally in the opposition. The two parties representing novelty have been set aside, Podemos is weakened by internal rifts between leader Pablo Iglesias and his 'number two' Inigo Errejon.



Ciudadanos, which had forged a pact with Rajoy, is marginalized by the dialogue between the two 'old' bipolar leaders, the Ps and Psoe. The situation benefits both. Abc reported that the pact makes ''everybody happy''.



Rajoy governs without excessive shakeups, the Psoe obtains relevant social measures, gains time to build strength and recover from rifts under the Sanchez leadership by avoiding possible early elections that polls had forecast as disastrous for them with Podemos 'humiliatingly' overtaking them on the left.



Several analysts have said Spain looks again like an oasis of stability in a stormy EU. Out of the five major European countries gathered by Angela Merkel in Berlin last month for the last summit with Barack Obama, it is the only one with a stable outlook after the fall of Matteo Renzi after a referendum this month and as France and Germany are gearing up for key elections in 2017 and London has a foot near the door.



Madrid will certainly have to deal next year with the hot issue of Catalonia's drive for independence. But for ''Rajoy the survivor'' - as he was described by El Mundo - one of the first Europeans to talk with Donald Trump after his victory, the time has come to get back on the front seat in EU politics. (ANSAmed)
Egyptian union leader says he reported Regeni to authorities Abdallah claims he recorded Jan 22 call, sent it to ministry

(ANSAMED) - ROME, DECEMBER 29 - The leader of an Egyptian street vendors' union that tortured and slain Italian national Giulio Regeni had been in contact with has said he reported the visiting scholar to the interior ministry before he was abducted, tortured and murdered earlier this year.



"Yes, I reported him and handed him over to the interior" ministry as "every good Egyptian would have done in my place", Mohamed Abdallah told the Arabic-language edition of the Huffington Post in an interview quoted by the online edition of Italian magazine Espresso.



"Giulio and I met a total of six times", Abdallah claimed in the interview.



"He was a foreign young man who asked strange questions and spent time with street vendors, questioning them on issues that concern national security", he also said.



"The last time I spoke with him on the phone was on January 22, I recorded the call and sent it to the interior ministry".



Egyptian security sources in August were first quoted as saying by Reuters that Abdallah was a frequent visitor of one of the headquarters of homeland security in Cairo.



A friend of the researcher, Hoda Kamel, a researcher at the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights also claimed in an interview published in March by Rome daily La Repubblica that the street vendors' union was "infiltrated" by secret services.



Regeni had been in contact with the street vendors' union and participated in several of their meetings, the last one on December 14.



The researcher, 28, went missing in Cairo on January 25, the heavily policed fifth anniversary of the uprising that ousted former strongman Hosni Mubarak, and his severely tortured, mutilated body was found on February 3 in a ditch on the city's outskirts.



Egypt has denied speculation its security forces, who are frequently accused of brutally repressing opposition, were involved in the death of the Cambridge doctoral student.



(ANSAmed).




Kerry attacks Netanyahu on settlements, clashes with Trump 'The solution is two States'. Tycoon tells Israel to resist

(by Serena Di Ronza) (ANSAmed) - NEW YORK, DECEMBER 29 - The two-State solution is ''the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians'', US Secretary of State John Kerry has said, noting there are ''no alternatives''. However, he warned that the two-State solution, ''despite our best efforts over the years'', is in ''serious jeopardy'', also due to settlements Israel insists on building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.



Kerry rejected Israeli criticism of the US on a UN vote and attacked Premier Benyamin Netanyahu, also re-opening a confrontation with President-Elect Donald Trump.



And the president-elect, shortly after the secretary of State's intervention, reassured Israel and attacked Barack Obama. With a series of tweets, the tycoon denounced what he described as challenging statements of the president, also criticizing the transition.



Israel for its part accused the White House of treating its ally with ''total disdain and lack of respect''.



Trump called on Israel to ''stay strong, January 20th is fast approaching''.



In his last speech as secretary of State, perhaps the most delicate of his career, Kerry responded to attacks against the Obama administration.



In an address to the American people that lasted one hour and 10 minutes, Kerry said there was no US plot at the UN. He rejected criticism that Washington had abandoned Israel with the UN vote, referring to criticism after its abstention on a resolution condemning settlements in the West Bank.



He attacked settlers who are ''deciding the future of Israel''. Although he said that they are not the main obstacle to peace, he noted that peace is more difficult with an increasing number of settlements, defining the coalition led by Netanyahu as ''the most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements''.



''They're leading towards one State''.



Kerry continued saying that friends tell each other the truth, even the most difficult one, and respect one another. He insisted that the threat posed by settlements to peace could not be ignored.



He also warned Trump, saying that the Obama administration was the one that had done the most for Israel, supporting it even in the midst of an economic crisis.



He said the upcoming administration has signaled it could change approach and it was up to it to decide, while urging not to lose hope for peace in the Middle East, a peace that must not be imposed and can only be reached through direct talks.



''The incoming administration has signaled that they may take a different path, and even suggested breaking from long-standing US policies on settlements, Jerusalem -- and possibly the two-state solution,'' Kerry said. ''That is for them to decide. That's how we work.'' Kerry then listed the six key principles for peace, including Jerusalem as capital of the two States, to abandon a status quo that goes towards one State and a perpetual occupation, he said.



The secretary of State warned that if the choice will fall on one State, Israel will need to be aware that it will be a Jewish or a democratic State but it can't be both, he said.



Netanyahu responded saying he was ''deeply disappointed'', describing Kerry's speech as ''skewed against Israel'' and cited evidence of the fact that the US was behind the UN resolution.



From Ramallah, Palestinian President Abu Mazen stated, ahead of a January 15 conference in Paris, that he is ready to resume peace talks if Israel freezes the construction of new settlements. (ANSAmed)
Russia to present Syria ceasefire deal to UN SNC backs accord but says moderate groups 'to defend themselves'

(ANSAmed) - MOSCOW, DECEMBER 29 - The Syrian ceasefire agreement will be presented to the United Nations Security Council for potential approval, Russian Foreign Minister Serghei Lavrov said on Thursday.



"We will inform the Security Council members about our work and answer their questions," said Lavrov of the Turkey and Russia-backed agreement between the Syrian government and rebel groups announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier in the day. Seven groups have adhered to the ceasefire: Faylaq Al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam, Suwar Agi Sham, Jaysh al-Mujahideen, Jaysh Idlib and Jabhat al-Shamiyah, the Russian defence ministry said in a statement. Defence Minister Serghei Shoigu said the "most influential commanders of the armed opposition took part in the two-month negotiations, enabling the rebel-held areas to be identified".



From now on, "those who do not put down their weapons" will be considered terrorists along the lines of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra which are excluded from the agreement, he added. The seven groups include at least 51,000 people, according to ministry figures. The Syrian National Council (SNC), a major opposition coalition, has said it is in favour of the ceasefire but that 'moderate' armed groups are ready to defend themselves if attacked.



Meanwhile, at least 15 people including five minors are reported to have died in "heavy bombing" by Syrian government forces against rebel areas in eastern Ghuta on the outskirts of Damascus, just a few hours before the start of the ceasefire at midnight. (ANSAmed).




Syria: Putin announces truce between Assad, rebel forces Starting today or tomorrow. Russia, Turkey, Iran guarantee peace

(ANSAmed) - MOSCOW, DECEMBER 29 - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said the Syrian government and opposition forces have signed a deal for a truce in Syria and to start peace negotiations soon.



''The agreements are fragile and need patience and special attention'', Putin was quoted by Tass as saying.



The truce in Syria will come into effect starting at midnight on December 30, said Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu but the Syrian army has announced that the ceasefire for the whole country starts from midnight today.



Shoigu added that the ceasefire was signed by units including 60,000 effective members.



President Putin said he agreed with the minister's proposal to reduce the Russian military presence in Syria.



Russia, Turkey and Iran - Putin was also quoted as saying by Tass - take responsibility to guarantee the success of the peace process.



According to the statements released by Putin, who met with Defense Minister Serghei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, three documents have been signed.



The first document was signed between the Syrian government and the armed opposition on the ceasefire in Syria; the second concerns a system of measures to control the truce; the third is a statement concerning the availability to start peace talks to solve the conflict. (ANSAmed)
Two-State solution for Mideast - Gentiloni Open to innovative ideas

(ANSAmed) - ROME, DECEMBER 29 - Premier Paolo Gentiloni said Thursday Italy's stance on the Mideast "is that a path has been identified by the international community, the two-State path, and that is Palestine and Israel co-existing in mutual security.



This path has bogged down in the last few years".



Answering a question on a possible change in US policy under Donald Trump, Gentiloni said there would be an openness to "innovative ideas, if they come". But, he stressed, "the negotiation must restart on the basis of the negotiation".



(ANSAmed).




ROME - Only talks at the United Nations can pave the way for a solution to the Syrian crisis, Premier Paolo Gentiloni said Thursday. The only "credible" way forward, he said, "can only be opening serious talks on the transition handled by the UN. "It is very hard to imagine a different solution, we have to get there and I hope Russia helps arrive at this solution: the UN, transition, and dialogue between Bashar al-Assad and the oppositions". Gentiloni said "certainly we have behind us dramatic months and months of diplomatic failures, to be frank.



"The tragedy of Aleppo has highlighted this difficulty. I am among those who does not think a more aggressive response on the military level is the right one".



Gentiloni said "we had a format born in February in Munich and which seemed very promising, 18 countries including Italy around the table, at the head were Lavrov and Kerry and around it Iranians, Turks, Saudis, the different subjects we had to involve to reach peace.



"This operation initially produced results...but then what happened? I must say that many worked against this US-Russian collaboration".




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Airbus re-confirms the target to deliver around 12 A380s per year from 2018 as announced earlier in July 2016.

Further fixed cost reduction initiatives will be accelerated so the impact on break-even in 2017 is minimal.
A team from the Turkish carrier was in Pakistan last week regarding the proposed contract. Earlier this year, PIA issued a Request For Proposals (RFP) to all eligible parties for the wet-lease of four aircraft for three months (extendable) with 275 guaranteed block hours per month from December onwards.

Bid evaluation documents indicate that Pegasus Airlines' proposal - B737-800s was named the preferred bid, followed by Corendon Airlines, Travel Service Airlines, AtlasGlobal and Bulgaria Air.

The evaluation of an RFP for the dry-lease of four similarly configured narrowbody aircraft on six-year contracts beginning in 2017, has yet to be released.
At a time when a number of airlines are downsizing, Qatar Airways continued to see strong growth and inaugurated 14 new destinations across its global network and welcomed 19 new aircraft to its fleet, taking the count to 192, as well as placing a record aircraft order to power future growth. Qatar Airways has made a number of strategic investments in other airlines and airline groups, while investing heavily in the continued evolution of its own passenger experience. Lauded for its success, Qatar Airways received a number of awards throughout the year, confirming it as one of the worlds leading carriers for business and leisure travel. Fans or followers can enjoy a video created by the airline, highlighting its most special moments here.

The airline also celebrated its strong financial performance, having finished the 2016 fiscal year with an operating profit of more than QAR 3 billion  the best yet for the Qatar Airways Group.

Qatar Airways Group chief executive, Akbar Al Baker, said: I am extremely proud of the success that Qatar Airways has achieved together with our employees and partners in 2016. Id like to extend my sincere gratitude to all staff for their discipline and tireless pursuit for excellence. Id also like to extend my gratitude to our loyal passengers for their continued support. Our passengers will see a continuation of our commitment to providing the very best travel experiences in the year to come. This past year has truly been an exceptional year and, and as we turn to 2017 to celebrate Qatar Airways 20th Anniversary, I look forward to celebrating future successes with our employees, partners and passengers in the years to come as we go places together.
In June this year, Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen, announced a new technical assistance agreement with iGA Havalimani Isletmesi AS (IGA), the developer and operator of Istanbul New Airport in Turkey.

The announcement sparked renewed interest in modelling systems for air traffic management and airport operations.

Through the agreement with IGA, Jeppesen will provide its total airport and airspace modeller (TAAM) solution to assist the Turkish airport authorities  the General Directorate of State Airports Authority (DHMI).

Airspace and airport modelling tools are used to create and analyse virtual, simulated scenarios to test various air traffic management (ATM) theories.

Tony Weatherington, Jeppesen TAAM product manager, refers to these systems simply as simulation and modelling. Within this paradigm, a computer model of a given scenario is created in which a user is able to build and form a world in which ATM operations are governed by a certain set of rules, procedures, and settings, he explained.

This model is then simulated using a simulation engine, such as Jeppesens TAAM solution. The simulation moves traffic through the world model, and the user is ultimately able to analyse how that particular model performs in relation to other models, said Weatherington.

For example, he described a scenario where a user may choose to compare a today version of an airports infrastructure and standard operating procedures to a master plan depiction of the airport in 20 years time to analyse the potential benefits of implementing the master plan. By attempting to utilise the same flight traffic schedule for both models, the user receives a quantitative comparison of the manner in which each option is able to cope with the traffic demands being placed upon it. In this way, stakeholders can make more informed decisions regarding projects, ranging from major infrastructure upgrades, such as runway and taxiway construction or airspace reconfiguration, through to minor changes, such as taxiway path reconfiguration or revised route assignments, Weatherington elaborated.

Jeppesen believes that any entity wishing to better understand the world in which they operate, and plan for the future, should be using simulation to analyse available alternatives to present conditions.

The companys TAAM solution is used by three types of entities: civil aviation agencies (CAAs)/air navigation service providers (ANSPs), airlines, and airports.

The most common usage of TAAM, especially within todays environment, is to better understand how to best utilise existing infrastructure, said Weatherington. Because TAAM allows for unlimited what-if scenarios, airports, airlines, and ANSPs can test different operational scenarios utilising the infrastructure currently at hand and compare those options to future expansion plans, or future operational shifts due to implementation of advanced technologies.

Looking closer at the solution, TAAM is also used by entities seeking to expand their operations, whether it is an airport planning a major infrastructure upgrade, an airline looking to significantly increase its scheduled operations, or an ANSP seeking to mitigate the impact of an increasing traffic forecast.

The virtual what-if environment of the simulation allows for experimentation that otherwise could not be done in real time, or would cause significant negative impact upon a real-time operation should the alternative prove to be untenable.

The implementation process for acquiring a product such as TAAM is fairly basic. Weatherington said: Once an airport chooses to move forward with a software license or licenses, Jeppesen provides a basic training course to airport staff in order to familiarise them with the basic functionality of the software. Advanced courses may also be arranged on an as-needed basis.

Following training, it would be possible to construct a model of the airport from scratch and begin performing analysis as needed.

Weatherington said the largest investment for a new user is simply time. Time must be allotted to training users and to allowing those users to construct and analyse simulations.

For airports that do not have dedicated staff to perform simulation tasks, Jeppesen can provide end-to-end simulation consulting services, where its staff perform a complete analysis, or it can provide partial project assistance.

Weatherington explained: Many customers will contract Jeppesen to create the initial model of their airfield and to work side-by-side with their staff on the first simulation project undertaken. Following such a joint project, data files are handed off to the airport so that it may continue on with its own studies independently of Jeppesen.

Back in Istanbul, the Jeppesen TAAM analysis tool will be used with the IGA and DHMI teams to conduct studies that would potentially maximise Istanbul New Airport runway operations and overall airspace capacity and efficiency. Maintaining safety and minimising airspace conflict within the regional Istanbul terminal control area is another key aspect of the project.

Several operational procedure alternatives will be simulated and analysed by TAAM to assist the new airports airspace and runway optimisation process. Both IGA and DHMI personnel will be trained to use the TAAM solution, allowing active participation in the project, as well as the ability to conduct their own continuing analysis projects, following the delivery of Jeppesens analysis. The project is currently on-going.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is fuelling $100 billion in airport expansion and construction projects on the back of a projected annual surge in travellers over the next 20 years. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is projecting that Middle East passengers would grow by 4.9% per year to 2034.

Airports in the Middle East ought to prepare and not become a victim of their own growth. As airports begin to get busier, airport operators will, no doubt, be seeking a means of maximising the overall efficiency of their airports and planning for the future.

TAAM allows them to do both, Weatherington suggested. It is an ideal platform for analysing every possible potential scenario for utilising existing infrastructure at an airport, providing a consequence-free environment for testing all possible ideas for maximum utilisation, whether those ideas are related to gate usage parameters, taxiway patterns, runway sequencing, or full-on construction or reconfiguration options.

Its clearly imperative that systems such as these are able to provide airport operators with a quantitative view of how all possible outcomes will potentially perform, as well as a graphical depiction of the given scenario. When the time comes to plan for major future projects, TAAM can assist in providing valuable insight into how those future systems are likely to perform.

Weatherington feels simulation at the start of any major project can potentially save millions of dollars, as the consequence-free environment of the simulation is such that airports can identify infrastructure that will be underutilised or counterproductive before going to the expense of construction and implementation of real-world operations.

Airports embarking upon major master plan projects spanning many years can definitely benefit from this analysing all possible scenarios for overall throughput, delay, and conflict numbers in order to choose the best possible solution for their individual demand requirements, he added.

An increasingly congested airspace over the Middle East could cost the region $16 billion over the next 10 years if the issue remains unresolved, according to air traffic management company NATS.

These will primarily be in terms of significant traffic delays and fuel costs.

It seems the overarching problem in the Middle East is a lack of regional coordination in airspace management, due to concerns over sovereignty issues and also political involvement.

Organisations such as NATS support the concept of a regional ATM solution, as many of the issues being faced by GCC states cannot be completely addressed within their own borders. If one state invests heavily in new systems and training for its people to raise the capacity of its airspace, it will not fully achieve the benefits unless enhancements are coordinated with its neighbour.

Weatherington acknowledged the problem but noted that airspace congestion was not an issue exclusive to the Middle East region, though with the rapid rise of the Gulf carriers in recent years, it is being felt quite rapidly and acutely.

ANSPs and airports face similar problems, in that both are asked to process a given number of aircraft at specific times. Unlike airports, airspace is a much more finite resource, he said.

Its obvious that the volume of airspace available cannot be changed, so it must, therefore, be used more efficiently. Refining and validating airspace design becomes more and more significant as demands upon airspace increase.

Airspace must, therefore, constantly be re-evaluated as technology advances and the means develop to process more aircraft through the same volume of airspace.

New surveillance technologies, such and aircraft navigational functionality, are allowing for more densely utilised airspace while maintaining an acceptable level of safety.

Weatherington concluded by saying Jeppesens airspace solutions team specialises in the evaluation and design of airspace, from individual procedures to complete systems. Utilising this expertise in conjunction with simulation, a complete picture can be provided of airspace performance before and after any refinements or updates are made, he said.


As the Sunland prepares to welcome in 2017 this week, the mayor of Beatrice discussed the previous year and some of the high points for the city.

Mayor Stan Wirth said 2016 was a positive year for Beatrice, largely due to economic development efforts that are bringing new businesses to town.

I think economic development really took center stage with what has happened in the community over the past year, he said. There were a number of individuals wanting to invest in Beatrice and Gage County. Theres quite a list form retail to industrial to manufacturing that I think has really kind of put southeast Nebraska and Gage County on the map.

The DaVita dialysis center, future Cornerstone Church, Tall Tree Tastings, Rare Earth Salts and Scooters Coffee are all companies that either located to or announced plans to grow in Beatrice this year.

Wirth also said a major get for the area was an announcement that Hybrid Turkeys is building a location north of the industrial park, despite no initial plans by the company to locate here.

Specifically, Hybrid Turkeys is one we worked on almost a year now, a company that Beatrice was not even on their radar, he said. Through perseverance we were not only on their radar screen, but it all came to fruition for our industrial park and thats a company that will open and be in operation sometime next year.

Real estate was sold to Hendrix Genetics, the company that will build and operate Hybrid Turkeys LLC, in November. The 30,000-square-feet site is expected to add 10-15 jobs.

While Wirth is excited about the new business prospects in the area, he was quick to point out that taking care of existing businesses and supporting their needs has also been a top priority.

We dont want to overlook those companies that are already here, he explained. Those are integral parts of our economy.

Wirth also commended Landmark Snacks of Beatrice for being a winner in the 2016 Third District Excellence in Economic Development Awards after the company far exceeded its employment expectations.

In addition to new and expanding business in Beatrice, Wirth said a major step taken in 2016 was the completion of a housing study that identified the need for 446 housing units, including 283 owner and 163 rental units. A downtown Beatrice housing initiative included in the report targets up to 22 new housing units in the downtown area.

The 145-page study also includes goals, action steps and a five-year housing action plan identifying specific housing development initiatives.

The housing study was completed and we have developers interested in exploring housing opportunities in this area, Wirth said.

The study included examination of population, income and economic data and a housing stock analysis, among other factors.

Wirth added that several individuals and groups, including Main Street Beatrice, the Beatrice Area Chamber of Commerce and the NGage economic development group, have played crucial roles in enhancing Beatrice this year.

Weve had an inordinate amount of people working together, Wirth said. it isnt just one person, its not a small group of people, its a large group of people working together every day to make this community, make Gage County better. Its with that help and knowledge that all of this is possible.
In addition to writing about theater and the other arts for a living, I also blog in this space purely for my pleasure. Here are ten of my favorite posts from the year almost past:

 February 8 Turning sixty, Im told, is a big deal. I cant say that it feels especially big, though, nor do I feel nearly as old as I am, save on the too-frequent occasions when I have trouble pulling a name out of my hat.

 March 28 Ive loved Esplanade, in which [Paul] Taylor blends walking, running, hopping, sliding, and the music of Bach into a plotless explosion of pure choreographic delight, ever since I first started looking at the dance three decades ago.

 April 18 This morning I fly back to New York from Winter Park, Florida, where I attended the premiere of Music, Awake! on Saturday night.

 May 16 I am now officially a professional stage director.

 June 1 You dont have to be, or have been, a TV star to know how fast stardom fades. I wonder whether [Andy] Warhol ever thought about that: what happens when your fifteen minutes are up? Even more interesting, what happens when you outlive your fifteen minutes byoh, fifty years?

 June 14 Never before have I felt so strongly that Americans are talking past instead of to one another. It is, I fear, our future and our fatewhich is why I have come to believe that I will live to see Red and Blue America negotiate a soft disunion.

 June 27 I do suffer grievously from the sin of impatience, not with myself but with other people, as well as with such inanimate objects as elevators, stoplights, and toasters.

 November 21 As I walked into the kitchen to throw away an apple core, my eye happened to fall on one of the two dozen pieces of art that hang on the walls of our New York apartment.

 November 28 The point, I think, is that you must not be afraid to fall on your face if you want to get anywhere in life, and most especially if you want to try doing something new late in life. And if you are awareintensely, consumingly awarethat the clock is running and time may be short, youre less likely to be stymied by the fear of falling on your face in front of an audience.

 December 27 If my family had any dark secrets, they went to the grave with my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. But like all families, we did have a few subjects of which we preferred not to speak save in hushed tones, foremost among them the fate of my Uncle Paul.
When I wrote two recent seasonal posts hereabout art-related Christmas/Chanukkah presents and about the Star Trail at the National GalleryI had forgotten about an exhibition whose notice I had saved. It came in a press release dated Sept. 1, and I just turned it up in a bout of cleaning out emails.

Since Oct. 12, the Liebieghaus Sculpturen Sammlung in Frankfurt has been exhibiting Holy Night: The Christmas Story and its Imagery. Since the nativity of Christ is one of the most explored subjects in art, why is this notable? For me, the subject is fascinatingas an expert in Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, but an agnostic, once told me, comparing the many images of, say, the Annunciation is a rewarding exercise for any art-lover. You dont have to be Christian to love Christian art, even in this age of increasing secularization in the United States.

The Liebieghaus exhibition focuses on art of the Middle Ages, supplemented with Early Christian and with Baroque images. You can read more details in the press release. Since I have not seen the exhibition in person, I can only repeat that it offers an impressive demonstration of the surprising diversity of pictorial themes related to the Christmas story.

In addition to well-known motifs such as the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Magi, many stories and images that have meanwhile all but fallen into oblivion await the visitor: episodes such as Josephs Doubt and the Circumcision or the miracles on the flight into Egypt.

It is displayed chronologically, from the Annunciation to the return from the Flight into Egypt, and continues through Jan. 29.

Im posting a few images that, I hope, are new (or newish) to youof the circumcision of Jesus by the Master of the Tucher (c. 1440-50), a sculpture of a pregnant Mary from Swabia, early 16th C, and a sculpture of the Magi from the Upper Rhine, late 15th C. (top to bottom), all courtesy of the Liebieghaus.

You can see more images and installation photos here.

Theres another reason this is interesting. The Liebiehaus, as you will remember, was until recently headed by Max Holleinnow the director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Hollein has said he wants the two museums he oversees, the DeYoung and the Legion of Honor, to organize more of their own exhibitions.

If this is the kind of show Hollein green-lights, I am hopeful that he will also approve a great variety of exhibitions in San Francisco.
Projects aimed at boosting fitness and volunteerism, and sharing Nebraska history and stories will help celebrate the state's 150th anniversary next year.

First lady Susanne Shore unveiled the efforts Wednesday at the Capitol, alongside Gov. Pete Ricketts and others helping to prepare for the sesquicentennial.

"We looked at coming up with projects that would bridge communities, connect Nebraskans and enhance state pride," Shore said.

More efforts will be announced later; the four unveiled this time are all internet-based. They include:

* Nebraska Impact encourages each Nebraskan to volunteer 150 hours or more in 2017.

A new website, NebraskaImpact.com, allows people to sign up for volunteering teams, compete against other teams and find volunteer opportunities around the state.

"Nebraskans have a long history of service, and really take great pride in volunteering," Shore said. "Whether that's in the church or their school, or helping the neighbor next door, we're always there for each other."

The state regularly ranks among the highest nationally for volunteerism, she said: "And I think for our sesquicentennial, we should try to be No. 1."

* NE150 Challenge asks people to complete 150 miles or more of physical activity next year.

People register through the website NE150Challenge.com, log their miles, compete with other teams and convert miles for non-distance activities such as yoga or weight-lifting.

"I did my 18 on my bike today, just so you know," Gov. Ricketts joked.

* Now You Know Nebraska will feature 150 short videos with random facts about the state and its history. New videos will be posted online every school day in 2017, with the first five videos available beginning Jan. 8.

Shore called the project a personal favorite of hers.

One video features the governor describing how one of Abraham Lincoln's last acts as president was related to Nebraska. Right before his assassination, Lincoln signed a document reinstating Alvin Saunders as Nebraska's territorial governor. The document was found on Lincoln's desk after he died.

* I Am Nebraska will solicit people's stories about the state, and will include videos of select stories. People can also submit their own videos.

Stories can include family histories, memories from trips across the state, observations about how the state has changed through the years, or other topics.

"You just tell us what Nebraska means to you," Shore said.

Organizers hope all four projects announced Wednesday, which are paid for primarily through private contributions, will continue beyond 2017.

"We've got the best place in the world," Ricketts said. "This is a great opportunity for us to celebrate it and really share that with the rest of the world."
The actor is not just performing in the film but is also co-producing it with friend Bunty Walia.

Abhishek Bachchan is all set to start the shoot of his next film, Lefty, in mid-January. The actor is not just performing in the film but is also co-producing it with friend Bunty Walia. It will be directed by Prabhudeva.

The leading lady, however, is yet to be finalised. Word is that star actress and Abhis wife, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is willing to slip into the role, but Abhishek is insistent on a younger actress featuring in the film.

Says a source, Since its a home production, Ash was keen on doing the film. But Abhi has instructed his team to look for a fresh, young face to play the leading lady. He thinks Ash may be too mature for the role.

The sci-fi thriller will see Abhishek playing the role of a left-handed person (he is left handed in real life) blessed with special powers that help him sense trouble. He sets out on a mission to save his city. The story, penned by Kona Venkat, who has previously written Ready and Boney Kapoors Mom, is set in Hyderabad.
Arjun Kapoor allegedly converted his flats terrace into a personal gym.

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has issued a notice to actor Arjun Kapoor for illegally constructing a gymnasium on the terrace of his seventh floor residence at Raheja Orchid, Juhu. The BMC has decided to will demolish the illegal extension. Mr Kapoor is the third celebrity to have received a notice from BMC over illegal constructions in the past year. Earlier, the civic body issued notices to actor Irrfan Khan and comedian Kapil Sharma for constructing illegal extensions in their their respective homes in Juhu and Versova respectively. The notice issued to Mr Kapoor earlier this week asks him to allow BMC officials to enter his premises and demolish the structure.

Parag Masurkar, assistant municipal commissioner of the K West ward, under whose jurisdiction Mr Kapoors house falls, said, We have issued the final notice to Kapoor and we will demolish the illegal extensions on his terrace by this weekend. According to BMC, Mr Kapoor has constructed a 30 by 16 square feet concrete room and a metal sheet roof housing a gym, on the terrace of Raheja Orchid apartments in Juhu, where he has a house on the seventh floor, without the requisite permissions.

The BMC first issued a show-cause notice to Mr Kapoor earlier in March, asking him to demolish the room, but the actor had not responded to the notice. The first notice only asked for Mr Kapoor to pull down the alterations. However, since the actor took no action, the BMC recently issued another notice stating that it will demolish the terrace structure itself.

The BMC will now demolish the structure and reimburse the cost of the demolition from the actor. Mr Masurkar said, We will co-ordinate with the police and send ward officials to carry out the demolition. BMC officials inspected the premises of Mr Kapoors building following complaints from a local activist. On noticing the unauthorised extensions, it issued a notice to Mr Kapoor. Despite attempts to contact Mr Kapoor, he remained unavailable for comment.
The youngster and his former girlfriend Sonia Ben Ammar were holidaying in Maldives.

Brooklyn Beckham sparked off rumours of reconnecting with his ex when he contacted her on social media. The 17-year-old reportedly connected with upcoming French model Sonia Ben Ammar on Instagram when he landed in Maldives, where he and his family are currently holidaying, reported Dailymail.co.uk. Incidentally, Sonia too happened to be holidaying there.

The two who dated for five months, had apparently first met in Maldives itself and so, the island holds special memories for them.

According to reports, Sonia had made quite an impression on Beckhams parents and they were happy about the two. However, after their breakup, Brooklyn went on to date Hollywood actress Chloe Grace Moretz, before breaking up with her in August.
As New Years eve approaches, we get telly stars to reveal one thing they would like to give up in 2017.

Shashank Vyas: Ill try to drop the late lateef (late comer) tag that I have earned infamously, by virtue of landing up late everywhere. I will strive to be Mr Punctual and reach on time when I commit to friends. I am not a party animal, but I will be celebrating in Mumbai, only with my close childhood friends, while binging on everything without worrying about calories.

Rashami Desai: I want to give up on being over sensitive in 2017. I tend to get affected by things at the drop of a hat. I want to be totally detached from all sorts of drama and focus only on my career. The upcoming year will be special because my new show Dil Se Dil Tak will launch. I can say that the coming year will bring in lot good things in my life along with it.

Sudeepa Singh: This year, I want to give up being emotional and trusting people blindly. I have also decided to never look into the past and stop over thinking. Apart from that I also want to travel all over the world and explore different cultures and cuisines. My first stop will be Maldives. I will be ushering the New Year there along with my family.

Muskan Mihani: Im very vulnerable emotionally and I dont like to be in situations, that cant be managed easily. This year, I want to stop being over-friendly, since people tend to take advantage of your goodness. I would also like to give up forming an impression of people on face value. I am off to Goa with a large group of friends to ring in the New Year.

Ssharad Malhotraa: Procrastinating is something that I would like to give up in the coming year. My to-do list is unending and I end up postponing things, so once it is taken care of lot of things will be sorted on their own. I want to have an adventurous New Year and will be celebrating it in Kasauli with my close friends.
Kejriwal said so far Amarinder and Parkash Singh Badal with tactical understanding have been nominating weak candidates against each other.

Chandigarh: The Aam Aadmi Party has fielded AAP MLA from Delhi Jarnail Singh as the candidate to contest elections against Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal. AAP national convenor and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday proposed candidature of AAP MLA Jarnail Singh at a political rally at Mr Badals home turf Lambi.

Mr Kejriwal announced candidature of Mr Singh and asked the people if he would be the right candidate against veteran Akali leader and Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal. Mr Kejriwal said so far PPCC president Amarinder Singh and Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal with tactical understanding have been nominating weak candidates against each other, so that their opponents could pose easy wins.

However, this time we will not let Parkash Singh Badal, Sukhbir Singh Badal and Amarinder Singh to have a walkover in the elections. That is why we are fielding our strongest candidates against Amarinder, Badal, Sukhbir and Majithia in order to give them a taste of political dust, Mr Kejriwal added.

The AAP national convenor while giving instances of tactical understanding between Badals and Captain Amarinder said that the candidate who was nominated by Mr Amarinder Singh against Mr Sukhbir Badal from Jalalabad could not even save his deposit, similarly, Mr Amarinder Singh also fielded a weak candidate against Majithia in the 2017 Assembly polls, who could merely get 7,000 votes.

Both Mr Amarinder Singh and Mr Badal not only jointly contest election to facilitate each others win but also share business interests such as of sand and gravel, transport, liquor and above all backup candidates, who have been embroiled in drug trade in Punjab.

Mr Kejriwal said for instance, senior Akali leader Sarwan Singh Phillaur, who had to step down from the Cabinet after his and his sons name cropped up in drug trade, Mr Amarinder Singh welcomed him in the Congress with open arms.

Mr Kejriwal said Inderbir Singh Bolaria, Akali MLA, who was the right hand man of Bikram Singh Majithia too was welcomed by Captain Amarinder Singh in Congress fold, this clearly showed both Badal and Captain Amarinders families have joined hands to ruin Punjab turn by turn.

Jarnail Singh while speaking on the occasion challenged Badal to have an open debate with him on superficial development; the Akali Dal has been talking about.

Thousands of farmers have committed suicide, youngsters have been dying due to drugs, transport, liquor and cable businesses have been captured by Badal family, is this the model of development, Badals were boosting off?, Jarnail quipped adding that let Badal choose venue and time for open debate of his choice.
IAF needs 200-250 Rafales to maintain edge, says Raha

New Delhi: Close on the heels of arrest of former Air Force Chief S.P. Tyagi on charges of alleged corruption in the Agusta Westland VVIP chopper deal, current Air Force head Arup Raha said on Wednesday that multiple agencies were involved in the procurement process and no one can pin the blame on one particular organisation or service.

Mr Tyagi, who was granted bail recently, too has maintained that it was wrong to blame him as all decisions were taken collectively.

The outgoing IAF Chief also made it clear that just 36 Rafale fighter jets would not suffice as India needs about 200-250 more fighters to maintain its combat edge over adversaries. Underlining that the teeth of any air force is the combat fleet, he said that the country needs another production line besides the Tejas.

Praising the role of the Air Force in government's efforts to ease out casg crunch, the IAF chief said that the force transported 610 tonnes of new currency notes after the November 8 demonetisation. So far, IAF aircraft, including C-130s and C-17s, have carried out 35 sorties to transport the cash from four mints across the country, he said.

When asked about corruption charges in defence deals IAF Chief Raha said that despite investigations into the alleged scams over the decades, not much could be achieved by agencies probing them to bring to justice people involved in corrupt practices.

If these corruption charges are proved, it is bad for the armed forces, or whoever is involved. It is not just the armed forces that are involved in the procurement. There are so many agencies that are involved. Therefore, you cannot pin the blame on one particular organisation or service, Mr Raha said while talking to the media just days before his retirement December 31.

He also stated that till the time a person is convicted, I think we should give him due but once proven guilty, there will be no sympathy for him.

A former Air Force Chief is like a family member, extended family member. If anybody in my family goes through a rough patch, I think we should stand by that person. And if the charges are proved, then we have no sympathy for him. Whatever charges are proved, whatever convictions are there, we will abide by it, he said.

While commenting on the appointment of Lt. Gen. Bipin Rawat, who superseded two officers, as the next Army Chief, Mr Raha said there are merits and demerits to the principle of seniority when it comes to selecting service chiefs.

Mr Raha, who happens to be the senior-most of the service chiefs and is also the Chairman, Chief of Staff Committee, claimed that in the past also governments have done selections based on merit or based on whatever consideration they had.

Each has it merits and demerits. Be it seniority principle, merit or requirement principle of government. We have had selections, deep selections based on merit or based on whatever consideration of the government in power. They have to make the decision. They have taken decisions in the past as well, having over ruled the seniority principle, Mr Raha added.

The Air chief said while there will always be people who will speak for it and against it, Mr Raha said once a decision has been, everyone should go along with it.

He also brushed aside Chinas reaction on the test firing of long-range nuclear capable missile Agni-V, saying India should carry on with its task of building deterrence capability.

Underlining that India is only building up its deterrence capability, Mr Raha said one should not talk about someone else doing something unless it is prohibited like nuclear proliferation and went on to add that it is ``common knowledge as to what is happening in this region in terms of collusion, transfer of technology which is forbidden.

``In order to strike deep into adversarys heartland which will act as a deterrent. I think in international diplomacy, normal diplomacy or military diplomacy, these posturing and signalling will always be there. So we should just go about with our task, meet our own requirements, security challenges, Mr Raha said.

The Air Force chief clarified that India was ``obviously building up capability not to actually fight a conflict as it believes in peace and tranquillity. ``But we also know we have been drawn into conflicts several times in the past. So going by historical experience, we have to build our capability. Capability to deter. How do we deter an adversary who is strong? We have to build up capability in order to strike deep into adversarys heartland, take on targets effectively which will hurt the adversary, he added.
Except Uttar Pradesh, which may go for a seven-phased election, the other states could have elections on a single day.

New Delhi: In an indication that schedule for Assembly polls in five state Assemblies could be announced soon, the Election Commission of India has asked the Centre and state governments to implement the model code of conduct as soon as the schedule is out. Sources in the Election Commission said Assembly polls in these five states could be announced by January 4. Except Uttar Pradesh, which may go for a seven-phased election, the other states could have elections on a single day.

Sources stated that the instructions came in a letter by the poll panel to the cabinet secretary and chief secretaries of the poll-bound states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur and Punjab. The commission has compiled a set of instructions issued in the past to drive home the point that model code should be implemented effectively with the announcement of poll schedule.

The list of dos and donts issued by the EC includes prevention of misuse of public place, avoiding use of official vehicles for campaigning, removing pictures of political functionaries from state government websites and a bar on use of public money for advertisements to help the ruling party.

The poll panel has also reminded political parties to approach the Media Certification and Monitoring Committees at district and state level, for pre-certification of their political advertisements proposed to be issued in the electronic media.

While the term of the Uttar Pradesh assembly expires on May 27, the terms of four state assemblies end in March. In Uttar Pradesh, SP will fight with Mayawatis BSP, Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to retain power.

Punjab will witness three-corner fight among ruling Akali Dal and BJP alliance, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Goa will also witness a triangular contest among ruling BJP, Congress and AAP.
PM Modis announcement of his radical monetary reform to a stunned nation scrapped Rs 15.44 lakh crore overnight.

The notes withdrawn from circulation on November 8 to fight black money and corruption are being deposited at banks till December 30.

New Delhi: Holding a large number of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes beyond March 31 will attract a fine of Rs 10,000 or five times the cash held, whichever is higher, as the Union Cabinet approved on Wednesday the promulgation of an Ordinance to make the same a penal offence.

Sources said the proposal put to the Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also included a four-year jail term for offenders, but it was not immediately clear if it was approved. While there was no immediate clarity on the number of old notes that can be legally held, a news agency report said that their possession would only be permitted for research and numismatics.

The notes withdrawn from circulation on November 8 to fight black money and corruption are being deposited at banks till December 30. After that there will be a window till March 31 to deposit them at Reserve Bank of India (RBI) branches. As per the Ordinance, furnishing wrong information while depositing the old currency between January 1 and March 31 will attract a fine of Rs 5,000 or five times the amount.

The Specified Bank Notes Cessation of Liabilities Ordinance will be sent to President Pranab Mukherjee for his assent. It is expected to be replaced by a law in the Budget session of Parliament, likely to begin by the end of January.

The Ordinance would also amend the RBI Act to extinguish the governments and the RBIs liability  to pay the bearer of the scrapped notes the value promised. Similar laws were enacted in the past after the demonetisation of Rs 1,000, Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 notes in 1978.

PM Modis announcement of his radical monetary reform to a stunned nation scrapped Rs 15.44 lakh crore overnight. Of this, about Rs 14 lakh crore has been either exchanged or deposited at banks. Some of the remaining scrapped cash in circulation has also been destroyed to escape scrutiny.

While the high-denomination currency ceased to be a legal tender, a mere notification was thought to be not enough to avoid future litigations. The RBIs pledge on the scrapped currency can be nullified only by legislation after giving due opportunity to everyone to return old notes.

Targeting the Modi government for taking the ordinance route to impose penalty for possessing the scrapped notes, the CPI(M) said it employed the backdoor method as it was afraid of facing Parliament.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi sought a white paper on demonetisation and placed a charter of demands including lifting of all restrictions on cash withdrawal, and compensation to farmers, traders and the poor who have suffered due to the note ban.

Starting tomorrow, the Congress will hold a series of programmes including press conferences and demonstrations across the country on the issues of demonetisation and personal corruption of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Opposition said that it has become a habit of this government to bypass Parliament and promulgate Ordinances.

CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury interact with media as the party leader Mohammed Salim(L) looks on, at party headquarters at Alimuddin street in Kolkata. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: The Opposition on Wednesday once again hit out at the Narendra Modi government after the Cabinet approved an Ordinance criminalising possession of demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes after the deadline of March 31, 2017 is over.

The Opposition said that it has become a habit of this government to bypass Parliament and promulgate Ordinances.

CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said that the government should have brought the law before the Parliament during the Winter Session.

It was inevitable for the government to bring the Ordinance or else demonetisation move would not be legal... in actual practice, they should have amended the law concerned when Parliament was in session (to validate the December 30 deadline), he said.

Mr Yechury added that the government is scared to face Parliament. There is no need for taking Ordinance route. But, afraid of law like this facing Parliament during Winter Session, the backdoor method has been employed by the Modi government.

The Congress was also critical of the governments habit of taking the backdoor route instead of facing Parliament. Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said, It is bizarre that an Ordinance is coming out like this. It clearly shows that the government is afraid of facing Parliament.

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved promulgation of an Ordinance to impose a penalty, including a jail term, for possession of the scrapped `500 and `1,000 notes.

Modi doesnt face parliament where representatives of the people can question him on behalf of the vast masses. He doesnt take any questions from the media... He doesnt answer any serious questions from the public which come through the RTI. Why is Modi so scared of questions? One, he clearly doesn't have answers. And two, he has a lot to hide, he said.

In the recently concluded Winter Session, the combined Opposition had accused the PM of snubbing the Parliament.

They had demanded that the Prime Minister be present during the discussion on demonetisation. This had ensured that the entire session was virtually washed out.
The RBI has been criticised for a lack of preparedness and U-turns that contributed to the chaos following demonetisation.

Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) approved the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes less than three hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modis announcement on national television on November 8.

According to a report in Bloomberg, the RBI said in response to queries under RTI that information on how many members of the RBI Board of Directors approved the move is not on record.

However, it said that the decision to demonetise old notes was taken at 5:30 pm on November 8, in a meeting of the banks board.

The bank's board consists of Governor Urjit Patel, 3 deputies - R Gandhi, SS Mundra and NS Vishwanathan  and a host of eminent personalities including the Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das.

Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal had on November 16 told lawmakers that a 10-member board of the RBI came up with the idea of demonetisation.

After Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes were banned, the government introduce fresh tender of Rs 5000 and also Rs 2000. However, lack of availability of new currency at banks and in ATMs led to chaos throughout the country.

The RBI has subsequently been criticised for a lack of preparedness and numerous policy U-turns that contributed to the chaos following demonetisation. Earlier in December for example, the central bank issued an order prohibiting deposits of over Rs 5000 in old notes more than once till December 30. The order provoked outrage, forcing the RBI to withdraw it eventually.

Questions have also been raised by the Opposition and some sections of the public about the central bank's independence and communication policy under the leadership of new governor Urjit Patel.

In its response to the RTI query, the RBI did not reveal as to how many new 2,000 and 500 rupee notes were being printed each day in its mints, or the number of hours each day the printing presses were working in the month leading up to the November 8 announcement.

"The RBI top management must communicate more through the media and speaking opportunities," former Deputy Governor of RBI Usha Thorat wrote in a news daily on Wednesday. She said it was necessary to do so in the interest of transparency and credibility.

50 days have passed since old notes were banned, but many ATMs are still out of cash. Meanwhile, thousands of crores in new notes are being seized across the country in Income Tax raids, raising doubts about the effectiveness of demonetisation.
Govt made a U-turn on 4-year jail term but will continue with the plan to impose a fine of up to Rs 50,000 for holding Rs 500/1000 notes.

The government on Thursday announced that there would be no jail term for holding demonetised notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 beyond March 31. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: Government has made holding of more than 10 junked Rs 500/1000 notes a penal offence punishable with a minimum Rs 10,000 fine, but the harsher four-year jail term has been dropped.

The Specified Bank Notes Cessation of Liabilities Ordinance, approved yesterday by the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, allows individuals to hold no more than 10 notes of the old currency. It allows 25 such currencies to be held by research scholars.

Top sources said the ordinance, which will be sent to the President for his assent shortly, will come into effect from December 31.

It provides for making holding of old 1,000 and 500 rupee notes after March 31 a criminal offence that will attract a fine of Rs 10,000 or five times the cash held, whichever is higher.

Furnishing wrong information while depositing the old currency between January 1 and March 31 -- a window provided only for exigencies -- will attract a fine of Rs 5,000 or five times the amount, whichever is higher.

The ordinance also provides for amending the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act to provide legislative support for extinguishing the demonetised banknotes that are not returned.

The 50-day window for depositing the old notes in bank accounts and post offices expires tomorrow.

While the high-denomination currency ceased to be a legal tender from midnight of November 8, 2016, a mere notification was not thought to be enough to end the central bank's liability and avoid future litigations.

Currency notes carry RBI's promise to pay the bearer the amount of the value of the note, a pledge that can be nullified only by legislation after giving due opportunity to everyone to return old notes.

Sources said the proposal for a four-year jail term for anyone possessing large number of demonetised currency after March 31, 2017 was not approved.

The ordinance, which will have to be converted into proper legislation by passing of a law in Parliament within six months, makes possession, transfer or receiving an amount of over Rs 10,000 in the now-demonetised 500 and 1,000-rupee notes a punishable offence.
Sources in the disgruntled camp said Akhilesh had even prepared a list of 167 candidates to be pitted against SP's official nominees.

Lucknow: Ruling Samajwadi Party on Thursday appeared to be headed for a vertical split, with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister releasing a parallel list of 235 candidates for the upcoming Assembly elections.

Sources in the disgruntled camp said Akhilesh had even prepared a list of 167 candidates to be pitted against SPs official nominees.

Unhappy with the list released by his father and SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav on Wednesday, the Chief Minister held a meeting with his loyalists, including MLAs, who have been denied tickets. Afterwards, SP MLA Indal Singh said, "Akhilesh is likely to announce his own list of candidates."

These candidates were likely to contest on a separate symbol, other than SPs Cycle symbol, paving the way for a wide split in the party grappling with dissensions and unprecedented feud at a time when the crucial polls were knocking at the door.

Todays showdown, the worst in the last few months, reached a flashpoint after Mulayam publicly snubbed his son by announcing a list of candidates that created bitterness in the pro-CM camp, prompting the upset chief minister to take up the matter with the SP supremo to convey his strong displeasure over the choice of names.

"The Chief Minister called us. He instructed us to go to our respective constituencies and prepare for the elections," Indal Singh, SP MLAs from Malihabad, said after Akhilesh today met legislators denied ticket.

On a day of hectic political developments, Akhilesh met the disgruntled MLAs at his 5-Kalidas Marg residence in the morning and drove straight to Mulayams residence to convey the belligerent mood of those who did not get re-nomination. Akhilesh was again closetted with his close confidants soon afterwards to decide the next course of action, while Mulayam summoned Shivpal to gauge the mood of rebels. "We will go to our constituencies, work hard, and again make Akhilesh our CM," said another MLA, Pawan Pandey, whose ticket was cut.

Pandey, although expelled from SP, continues to be a minister in the Akhilesh government.

"We will contest the upcoming elections, come what may," said a defiant MLA Atul Pradhan.

"The Chief Minister has done a lot for the development of the state and we will contest and win in his name," he said.

In a new twist to the day-long high drama, Mulayams cousin and SP General Secretary Ramgopal Yadav said many in the party do not want to see Akhilesh as chief minister again.

"But, the fact remains that people of the state want him back as CM," he claimed. The factional feud in the Samajwadi Party came out in the open a day after Mulayam declared candidates for 325 of the 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh and ruled out projecting Akhilesh as the Chief Ministerial candidate.
The trust deficit between the judiciary and the executive started on August 12 when CJI T.S. Thakur came down heavily on the NDA government.

New Delhi: Harmony among the three pillars  the judiciary, executive and the legislature  is the hallmark of Indian democracy. However, in the year 2016, the tussle between an assertive judiciary and a reticent government, each trying to stress their independence in relation to their roles and responsibilities, has consequently ushered in an unprecedented chaos never before witnessed in recent years.

The wrangling between the government and judiciary over delay in judicial appointments came out in the open resulting in accumulation of arrears of cases in the higher judiciary. The Memorandum of Procedure relating to judicial appointments could not be finalised even after one year after the apex court quashed the law on National Judicial Appointments Commission and asking the Union law ministry to finalise the MoP in consultation with the Chief Justice of India.

The trust deficit between the judiciary and the executive started on August 12 when CJI T.S. Thakur came down heavily on the NDA government and threatened that the apex court would be constrained to judicially intervene if the Centre failed to soon fill up the vacancies in the various high courts and if no action was taken to process the recommendations already made. Soon after this outburst, the CJI in his speech on August 15 faulted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not uttering a word about judiciary in his Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red Fort.

If the people of India have utmost faith in one institution, it is the judiciary, and the Supreme Court, which is the top court, came to the rescue of the people of all walks of life and has proved that only an independent and efficient judicial system can create confidence in the society which it serves.

It was during this year that several politicians, such as former Delhi chief minister Arvin Kejriwal, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, BJP leader Subramanian Swami and DMDK leader Vijaykanth got relief in defamation cases. The court heard for over four months the appeals by Karnataka government and the DMK general secretary K. Anbazhagan challenged the acquittal of former Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa in a corruption case and judgment is expected early next year.

Raps BCCI

The court rapped the BCCI and ordered the cleaning up of the board. The court appointed a three-member committee comprising former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha as chairman and retired apex court judges Justice Ashok Bhan and R.V. Raveendran gave its report to streamline the working of the BCCI. The court, while accepting the recommendations, has given a time frame for implementation.

Delhi air pollution

Taking note of the dangerous pollution levels in the capital, which have gone beyond the human permissible levels, the Supreme Court called upon the Centre to come out with a common minimum graded response to deal with the problem. The Centre, in consultation with the Central Pollution Control Board, has submitted a report and the court asked the authorities concerned to work in tandem to address the problem.

Hindutva

The Supreme Court reserved its verdict on a batch of petitions on whether religion can be used to garner votes in an election and whether it will amount to a corrupt practice warranting disqualification of the winning candidate. The court is concerned with the interpretation of the phrase ground of his religion, race, caste, community or language occurring in Section 123 (3) of the Representation of the People Act.

Cauvery

The Cauvery river water dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka became bitter when Karnataka refused to honour the directions of the Supreme Court to release water to Tamil Nadu. There were clashes in Karnataka and in some areas in Tamil Nadu and the court came down heavily on both the states for politicising the judicial order. Karnataka received a partial victory when the court deferred its decision on setting up of the Cauvery Management Board to assess the ground realities in the Cauvery river basin.

Blow to Tatas

In a severe blow to the Tatas, the Supreme Court held as illegal the acquisition of about 1,000 acres of land in 2006 in Singur in West Bengal for the Nano small car project and quashed the said acquisition.

The court held that the acquisition was a colourable exercise of power and a fraud on the people. It directed the West Bengal government to return the lands to the farmers.

Blow to Modi govt in Arunachal Pradesh

In a severe blow to the Narendra Modi government, the Supreme Court restored the Congress-led Nabam Tuki government in Arunachal Pradesh. This verdict which is a slap on the face of the Modi government cames two months after the apex court put in place the Congress government in Uttarakhand.

The court strongly indicted then governor J.P. Rajkhowas decision to advance the session of the Legislative Assembly from January 14, 2016 to December 16, 2015 and held that the governors action was illegal and unconstitutional. Further, the governor cannot direct the Speaker as to how the proceedings should be conducted and fix the agenda for the House, viz to take up the resolution for removal of Speaker as the first item.

NEET for MBBS

Despite resistance from several states, the Supreme Court ordered the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for medical admissions from this academic year, observing that it will save the students the trouble of taking multiple common entrance tests and save their parents large sum of money on fees for taking these tests.

Fiat to Mallya

The Supreme Court directed industrialist Vijay Mallya, who fled to the United Kingdom, to disclose the details of assets and all movable and immovable properties, including shareholdings in various companies held by him, his wife and children both in India and abroad for a meaningful and negotiated settlement for his dues to the tune of `9,000 crores. Earlier, the consortium of 17 banks, led by the State Bank of India, rejected a proposal given by Vijay Mallya towards settlement of his dues.

Temporary relief to Modi

In a temporary relief to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Supreme Court refused to order a probe into the alleged huge pay offs to politicians, including Mr Modi during his tenure as Gujarat chief minister on the basis of Sahara diary. The court termed the documents, produced by lawyer Prashant Bhushan representing an NGO Common Cause, as zero, fictitious and not authentic to order a probe.

The court has given Mr Bhushan time till January 11, 2017 to file additional documents and said if the court finds the documents authentic and credible, then it will consider his prayer for a probe. With more and more people knocking at the doors of justice, it remains to be seen what is in store for the people in 2017.
Sources claimed that as the required information was not coming forth from Tandon, he had to be taken into custody.

Delhi lawyer Rohit Tandon, arrested in connection the money laundering case, is taken away from Enforcement Directorate office in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday arrested controversial Delhi-based lawyer Rohit Tandon in connection with the ongoing money laundering case against him.

According to sources, Tandon, who was being questioned by the ED sleuths for the last few days, has been arrested under the stringent provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The agency suspects Tandon was instrumental in the illegal conversion of demonetised currency worth about Rs 60 crore in purported connivance with Kolkata-based businessman Parasmal Lodha and arrested Kotak Mahindra Bank manager in Delhi Ashish Kumar.

Immediately after his arrest, Tandon was produced before a Delhi court on Thursday which sent him to four-day custody of the ED.

Lodha  who was arrested by the ED on December 21 and later sent to seven-day ED custody on December 22  was also sent to a four-day custody of the probe agency on Thursday.

Advocate Vikas Garg, appearing for the ED, moved two applications before the court seeking 14-day custodial interrogation of Tandon and seven days extension of Lodhas custody. However, the court only allowed four days of custodial interrogation for both of them.

With Tandons arrest, the agencies have now nabbed some of the major players of the two high-profile black money rackets unearthed post note ban.

While J Shekhar Reddy was recently arrested by the CBI in Chennai, Lodha and Kumar have already been arrested by the ED.

The ED has recovered a stash of diamonds, rubies and jewellery from a bank locker allegedly belonging to Lodha in Kolkata. The locker, located in a public bank branch in Alipore road of the state capital, was opened on Wednesday by a team of ED sleuths and the agency is now trying to evaluate the exact price of the recoveries.

Sources claimed that as the required information was not coming forth from Tandon, he had to be taken into custody.

Tandons case pertains to an operation of Delhi Polices crime branch and the income-tax department earlier this month when the agencies had seized Rs 13.6 crore, of which Rs 2.6 crore was in new currency, allegedly from a law firm here. After that, the ED had registered a PMLA case against Tandon.
Highly-placed sources in the panel said the questionnaire has so far received over 40,000 responses.

In an accompanying questionnaire, the Commission had asked whether the existing personal laws and customary practices need codification. (Representational image)

New Delhi: Responding to the Law Commission of Indias contentious questionnaire for a Uniform Civil Code, most Opposition parties have dubbed the move to refer the matter to it as part of the BJP governments political agenda, with some of them even questioning the timing of it ahead of Uttar Pradesh polls.

The Congress, BSP and TMC are learnt to have refrained from saying as to whether they support a common civil code or not. However, they dubbed the decision of the government to refer the matter to the law panel as trying to further its political interests, sources said.

Responding to the law panels request to answer the questionnaire, BSP said the party is attaching a press statement issued by Mayawati on October 25 in Lucknow.

Asaduddin Owaisis All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is learnt to have opposed a common code and has supported its stand through certain court orders.

The NCP is learnt to have opposed the practice of instant triple talaq but has, by and large, supported separate personal laws.

Highly-placed sources in the panel said the questionnaire has so far received over 40,000 responses. While the deadline to send the responses ended on December 21, the law panel said it would continue to entertain responses.

Uniform Civil Code is one of the important projects before the Law Commission. The responses/replies received by the Commission are being processed. The response/replies received, if any, after the date may also be considered, it said in a brief statement.

Amid a raging debate on Uniform Civil Code, the Law Commission had, on October 7, sought the publics response to 16 questions related to the practice of triple talaq, whether Uniform Civil Code should be optional, and whether family laws need to be reformed.

In an accompanying questionnaire, the Commission had asked whether the existing personal laws and customary practices need codification.

The Commission had said its objective was to address discrimination against vulnerable groups and harmonise the various cultural practices even as it assured people that norms of no one class, group or community will dominate the tone and tenor of family law reforms.

The All Indian Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) had slammed the questionnaire and dismissed the commissions assurance that it was not against plurality of laws, and that its aim was to address social injustice.
The scramble for cash caused a string of deaths, prompting an unrelenting Opposition attack on the government.

New Delhi: Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday credited demonetisation for a sharp jump in tax collections, and claimed that the effects of the 50-day drive were not as adverse as predicted by some critics.

Of course, there would be areas which would be adversely impacted. But in the long term, the changes coming about in the system will mean a much larger and cleaner GDP, he said.

As the deadline to deposit the scrapped high-value bills ends on Friday, he said that the critical phase for the economy was over, and the situation would only improve in coming weeks and months. He said that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would take a call on when to ease the curbs on cash withdrawals.

The remonetisation process has substantially advanced, significantly without a single incident of unrest anywhere in the country. The RBI has very large amounts of currency available to meet the demand, he said.

The minister said that there had been a 13.6 per cent increase in income tax collection till December 9, while indirect tax collection went up by 26.2 per cent till November 30. He also said that demonetisation boosted sectors such as life insurance, tourism, petroleum, mutual funds and agriculture.

Mr Jaitley also said that a lot more money had come into the banking system, but refused to hazard a guess on Indias GDP growth or the possible impact on tax proposals in his February Budget.

Prime Minister Narendra Modis announcement on November 8 to scrap Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes  86 per cent of the cash in circulation  to fight black money and fake currency led to a crippling cash crunch, hitting Indias largely cash-based economy and clouding growth forecasts.

We are extremely grateful to the people of India who have in very large measure supported the move, Mr Jaitley said. He said the paper currency should shrink, and a large part of businesses should be done electronically or through cheques.

The government said that as many as 60 lakh individuals and firms made large deposits totalling an astonishing Rs 7 lakh crore in old notes during the period, and warned that every penny of tax would be extracted as people cannot turn black money into legal currency by merely putting it in banks. These are big cash deposits.

RBI governor Urjit Patel also said that demonetisation would have far reaching changes towards a transformative effect on the economy, despite some short-term disruptions and public hardship.

There was little room for complacency and it is important to guard against sporadic volatility in financial markets, he said in his foreword to the half-yearly financial stability report.

The scramble for cash caused a string of deaths, prompting an unrelenting Opposition attack on the government and disrupting an almost entire Parliament session.

While announcing his radical monetary reform, Mr Modi had promised to restore normalcy by the end of the year, but queues have stayed outside low-on-cash banks and ATM kiosks.

The Congress demanded that PM Modi should apologise to the nation for the suffering caused to the people by the note ban, and vowed to hold countrywide protests from January 6.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said that the PM was good at making announcements that are far from reality. Even after 50 days of demonetisation step, normalcy has not been restored. PM Modis demonetisation move has turned out to be Deshbandi (lockdowbn of country), he said.
Antara Das, 21, was attacked with a sharp weapon near on the outskirts of Pune on Friday night, barely 500 metres from her workplace.

A youth from Bengaluru has been arrested in connection with the murder of a young woman IT professional in Pune. (Photo: PTI/Representational)

Pune: A youth from Bengaluru, who was detained in connection with the murder of a young woman IT professional in Pune, has been arrested, with police suspecting it to be a case of one-sided affair.

Santosh Kumar, 25, was arrested late on Wednesday night, days after he was detained for questioning, police said on Thursday.

"During investigation, it was revealed that Santosh Kumar had very smartly planned the murder. The accused claimed that he was present in Bengaluru on the day of the incident," Additional Superintendent of Police Rajkumar Shinde said.

Antara Das, 21, was attacked with a sharp weapon near Kanbay Chowk in Talawade on the outskirts of Pune on Friday night, barely 500 metres from her workplace. She was declared dead upon arrival in a hospital.

Her parents had alleged that a youth was stalking and harassing her for some time.

The ASP said it was found that Kumar, who hails from Bengaluru and is also an IT professional, had tasked someone to execute the attack.

A search is on to nab that person, he said.

"We have arrested Kumar under IPC sections 302 (murder) and 120(b) (criminal conspiracy) and he will be produced before court today," Shinde said.

The accused had provided CCTV footage to the police, claiming that he was in Bengaluru on the day of the incident.

Shinde said it was suspected to be a case of one-sided affair from Kumar's side. The victim, however, treated him just as a friend.

"There are messages between them which showed that Kumar was forcing her to have a relationship with him. However, she was non-responsive and even reprimanded him for harassing her. We are looking out for the other person in this connection and the manhunt has been intensified," he said.
Congress leader says Modi practising politics of fear and sacrificing the poor in yagya against graft.

New Delhi: Continuing his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over demonetisation, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, on the partys 132nd foundation day, put forward a charter of demands before the PM.

While addressing the party workers, Mr Gandhi accused the Prime Minister of practising politics of fear and anger and told the Congress cadres that his ideology must be defeated.

Mr Gandhi said, On November 8, Modiji said he is performing a yagya against corruption and black money. In every yagya someone is sacrificed and every yagya is done to benefit someone. The demonetisation yagya is for 50 families of the countrys 1 per cent super rich. It is the poor, farmers, labourers, middle class and small shopkeepers who are being sacrificed in this yagya

Mr Gandhi sought a list of all those who deposited above Rs 25 lakh in the six months preceding November 8, while asking for relief to those badly affected by the Centres sudden decision. He demanded that Centre deposit Rs 25,000 in the bank account of at least one woman from each BPL family.

Mr Gandhi said, We want that the Prime Minister should explain some things to the country. After November 8, how much black money has come out and how much economic loss has the country suffered due to the move. How many people lost their lives and whether any compensation has been paid to them.

He asked what was the process of consultation and preparedness followed prior to the implementation. He added, The Prime Minister should also tell whom he consulted before taking the decision and spell out the names of experts consulted.

Continuing his list of demands, he said that all restrictions on withdrawal of money be lifted with immediate effect and if not, a special interest at the rate of 18 per cent per annum be given to all till the time these restrictions are in place. He also said that all charges on digital transactions should be waived off.

Income tax and sales tax rebate of 50 per cent should be given to small shopkeepers and businesses. The number of guaranteed work days and the wage rate under MGNREGA should be doubled for a period of one year, he said.

Mr Gandhi also demanded that the government should organise a special drive to identify and register those who lost their jobs since November 8 and provide them compensation at the applicable minimum wage rate for a period up to March 31.

Hitting back at Mr Gandhi, the BJP on Wednesday said he should first name the beneficiaries of several scams that took place during the UPA regime, asserting that he had done nothing against black money and graft.

BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma said, Rahul Gandhi has been asking a lot of questions and levelling baseless allegations repeatedly under the impression that his lies will be taken as truth if spoken daily and loudly. He should also answer who in the UPA government were beneficiaries of 2G, CWG and VVIP chopper scams running into Rs 1.86 lakh crore, Rs 72,000 crore and Rs 3,200 crore respectively.
Singh demanded an apology from him for making false personal commitments.

New Delhi: A Twitter war has once again broke out between Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal with the former daring the AAP chief to contest against him in the upcoming Punjab polls.

Mr Kejriwal said he was not contesting Punjab elections and was fighting the Badals and state minister Bikram Singh Majithia to help free the state from the menace of drugs, following which Mr Singh demanded an apology from him for making false personal commitments.

Always knew your screeching in Punjab was pure drama! Now that youve conceded, apologise for your months of lies & false personal commitments, Mr Singh said on Twitter.

His reply came after Mr Kejriwal said, I m not fighting punjab elex. So, ur challenge hollow. We r fighting Badals/Majithia, who sunk Punjab in drugs. N u r fighting us, not them?

It all began with the AAP nominating former journalist and Delhi MLA Jarnail Singh to contest against Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal. Mr Singh termed Mr Jarnail as a weak candidate and alleged that AAP was colluding with the Badals.

Mr Kejriwal replied, Sir, r u fighting against Prakash Badalji or Sukhbir Badal or Majithia or safe seat? Amarinder then dared Mr Kejriwal to contest against him and tweeted, Badals story is over. You tell me where youre contesting from and I will come fight you there! The AAP chief retorted, So, u r fighting me, not Badals/drugs. Badals also say they will fight against me. U n Badals wish to fight agnst me not agnst each other.

The former Punjab chief minister shot back with a tweet saying, Ive defeated Jaitely-Majithia combine when you didnt even know a thing about Punjab. But tell us, why are you so scared of fighting me? Mr Kejriwal then replied that he was not contesting Punjab polls and was only seeking to free Punjab from the menace of drugs mafia allegedly patronised by the present dispensation.

Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal were engaged in a war of words on Twitter with the former daring the AAP chief to contest against him in the upcoming Punjab polls. Mr Kejriwal said he was not contesting Punjab Assembly elections and was fighting the Badals and state minister Bikram Singh Majithia to help free the state from the menace of drugs, following which
The Mahila Congress will take out a Thali Rally to highlight the problems being faced by housewives.

New Delhi: With the name of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi figuring in the Sahara and Birla diaries, the Congress has decided to go all guns blazing against the PM and the BJP government for maximum political mileage.

Congress has already formed a committee of senior leaders to chalk out programmes to take on the government. The planning process is on and the first programme will be held in New Delhi as part of the Kisan Hunkar Rally on January 6. The Congress has been emphasising on the fact that the farmers and the farm workers have been severely affected by demonetisation.

The Mahila Congress will take out a Thali Rally to highlight the problems being faced by housewives.

The Congress has decided to pursue the strategy aggresively after the government planned to go on an overdrive to take positives of demonetisation to the people. All state presidents of the Congress have been told to organise agitations and protests in their states. Press conferences by senior leaders of the Congress will be held in all state capitals. It is also being planned that after press conferences of central ministers the Congress leaders will counter them.

The plan also entails to target specific groups in specific areas and states  be it farmers, daily wage labourers, farm workers or small scale industry workers. Emphasis will be in the election-bound states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa.

The Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has been addressing rallies in several states demanding answers from the Prime Minister on Sahara and Birla diaries. He has also asked the government to bring out a white paper on the demonetisation scheme of the government.

Apart from protests and press conferences, the Congress will also organise public meetings of senior leaders.

In the coming days, Mr Rahul will be at the forefront of the Congress onslaught. The offensive of the Congress will go on till the Budget session of Parliament slated for early next year.
Surjewala asked the PM to apologise to the people for causing huge inconvenience and loss of human lives.

Jaipur: Toeing the party line, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala attacked the BJP in Jaipur on Thursday and put forward various demands for the poor in the state, who, he claimed, have been most hurt by the demonetisation drive.

He said that food grains distributed through public distribution system under food guarantee act be given at half the rate, while asking for special onetime bonus of 20% over and above the MSP for all rabi crops.

He further demanded that Rs 25,000 be deposited in the account of at least one women member of a BPL family. Also, number of work days and minimum wages for MNREGA should be doubled for a year.

In addition, the government should pay allowance to all those who lost jobs between November 8 and March 6, he added.

The congress also wants 50% rebate in income tax and sales tax for small traders and enterprises while asking the central government to compensate the states for the loss of revenue on this account.

He also compared the Prime Minister to Rs 2,000 note saying, Modi ji is like the new Rs 2,000 note, very colourful, looks good also, but just doesnt work.

Mr Surjewala asked the PM to apologise to the people for causing huge inconvenience and loss of human lives. Alleging that some BJP leaders have been caught with stashes of new currency notes, Mr Surjewala demanded a high-level inquiry.

Ordinary people are standing in bank lines to withdraw money, but a parallel black market flourishes in converting black money into white by charging commission up to 30 per cent commission, he alleged.

Congress attack comes on the back of reports of Rs 500 crore allegedly deposited in a cooperative bank in Ahmedabad just two days after demonetisation of currency was announced. As per the banks website, Amit Shah is one of its directors.

As the Centres 50-day deadline to end demonetisation woes comes to an end, the Congress has finally begun to make sense of its approach against demonetisation. On the penultimate day of the demonetisation, the party not only asked pertinent questions but also played smart by putting forward demands just two days before Prime Ministers expected address to the nation. It will also launch a nationwide agitation against demonetisation and other issues on January 6.

Hoping to reap political benefit either ways whether the PM accepts, rejects or partially accepts; the Congress has demanded removal of all restrictions on withdrawal of money. Besides asking 18% interest for the time period the restrictions remain in place. It has also asked the government to abolish charges on digital transactions.

Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala who was in Jaipur to address the media as part of nationwide strategy said that food grain through PDS under food guarantee act to be given at half the rate. At the same time, he asked for special onetime bonus of 20% over and above the MSP for all rabi crops.

Rs 25000 should be deposited in the account of at least one women member of a BPL family, Mr. Surjewala said. Also, number of work days and minimum wages for MNREGA should be doubled for a year. In addition, the government should pay allowance to all those who lost jobs between November 8 and March 6.

The congress also wants 50% rebate in income tax and sales tax for small traders and enterprises while asking the central government to compensate the states for the loss of revenue on this account.

It is a clever move as the PM is expected to make some announcement to provide relief to the people for their sufferings of 50 days. Particularly as assembly elections in five states including crucial Uttar Pradesh are round the corner. The PM obviously cant accept these demands in toto but whatever announcement he makes the congress can claim that it was due to its pressure.

Apart from that, the Congress is now also asking relevant questions and its attack is also much focused now. Its statements and slogans carry enough punches. After naming RBI Reverse Bank of India to make light of daily changing rules, the congress spokesperson today came up with another impressive punchline: Ramchandra keh gaye siya se aisa kalyug aayega, mehnatkash khada hoga line mein aur beimaan ka karz chukayega. He also compared the PM to Rs 2000 note saying, Modi ji is like the new Rs 2000 note, very colourful, looks good also, but just doesnt work. He asked the PM to apologies to the people for causing huge inconvenience and loss of human lives.

Alleging that some BJP leaders have been caught with stashes of new currency notes, Surjewala demanded a high-level inquiry.

Ordinary people are standing in bank lines to withdraw money, but a parallel black market flourishes in converting black money into white by charging commission up to 30 per cent commission, he alleged.

Congress attack comes on the back of reports of Rs 500 crore allegedly deposited in a cooperative bank in Ahmedabad just two days after demonetisation of currency was announced. As per the banks website, Amit Shah is one of its directors.

Earlier, cash worth Rs 10 crore in old currency was found in a private car in Maharashtra in a case where state ministers Pankaja Munde, Subhash Deshmukh and MP Pritam Munde are allegedly linked.

Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of maintaining double standards, Surjewala said, Modi ji you talk about digital payments even for tea, then why Rs 3 crore was transferred to your UP party office in cash.
Speculation ran rife that Akhilesh had got in touch with the Congress and the RLD.

New Delhi: Humiliated, marginalised and left with no option, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav rose in rebellion against his father and party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and announced his own list of candidates for the forthcoming Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh late Thursday night.

Even as he released his list of 235 candidates, of whom 64 are new faces, speculation ran rife that Akhilesh had got in touch with the Congress and the RLD and that talks about a possible alliance between the three have been initiated.

On Wednesday, while he was touring Bundelkhand, Mulayam Singh Yadav flanked by his brother and state unit chief Shivpal Yadav, announced a list of 325 candidates in which a majority of Akhileshs candidates did not find a mention. In a clear snub to his son, all those sacked by Akhilesh from his Cabinet and candidates with criminal records he was opposed to were given party tickets.

The chief minister has asked all his loyalists who have not been given tickets to contest on their own or under different, available symbols. Their posters will clearly say Akhilesh samarthak (Akhilesh supporter). These candidates will use Akhileshs photographs in their campaign and the chief minister is likely to campaign for them. Akhilesh is expected to release a second list soon.

Besides being on the verge of a split, SP will also face internal sabotage during the polls. Akhileshs rebellion is expected to antagonise Mulayam Singh and there were murmurs in Delhi and Lucknow that the SP patriarch could be forced to take action against his son.

Late Wednesday night, striking back, the chief minister had sacked two Shivpal loyalists  Surabhi Shukla, vice-chairperson of UP Awas Vikas Parishad and her husband Sandeep Shukla from the post of adviser to Rajkiya Nirman Nigam. Sandeep had been fielded for the Sultanpur Sadar seat by Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Thursday morning, Akhilesh met his loyalists at his residence, 5, Kalidas Marg, Lucknow, including the ministers who were denied tickets. Among them were Pawan Pandey, Ramgovind Chaudhary and Arvind Singh Gope.

The list does not include names of certain candidates who are sure to win. I will take it up with the SP chief and tell him that some of them have done really good work and they should be given ticket, Akhilesh had told his loyalists then. After this he met his father to discuss ticket distribution. It seems talks between the two failed.

Samajwadi Party MLA Indal Singh, speaking to the media in Lucknow said, We are blessed to be Akhileshwadi. Mulayam is our role model, he is our leader but today people of Uttar Pradesh need Akhilesh. And there have been some conspiracies against him.

Ramgopal Yadav, Akhileshs uncle and member of the anti-Shivpal camp, also spoke of a conspiracy by a group of people who dont want Akhilesh to return as chief minister.

Another MLA Brijlal Sonkar said, The chief minister has asked us to campaign in our respective constituencies... We all are Samajwadis not opportunist... We dont want ticket but we want party to win and want to make Akhilesh the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and in 2019. We will take Akhilesh Yadav to Delhi as Prime Minister of our county.
There's a chance that the egg cells have been fertilised by sperm other than that of the intended father.

Washington: A fertility clinic made a shocking revelation to several couples who trusted them with their fertility treatments. A single mistake by In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) clinic means that women's eggs may have accidentally be fertilised with the wrong sperm.

Mix-ups have previously led to people accidentally having children with people they'd never met IVF is a way of allowing people who might otherwise not be able to conceive to do so. It is done by collecting mature eggs from a woman's ovaries and fertilising them with sperm, all in a laboratory, and those eggs are then implanted in the uterus with the hope that they grow into a baby.

After a "procedural error" at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht that happened between mid-April 2015 and mid-November 2016, as many as 26 couples may have had egg cells fertilised with sperm cells from another couple, said the centre, as reported by The Independent.

"During fertilisation, the sperm cells from one treatment couple may have ended up with the egg cells of 26 other couples," a statement from the centre said.

"Therefore there's a chance that the egg cells have been fertilised by sperm other than that of the intended father," it explained.

Stating that the chance of the mistake that happened is small and may not have happened to all of the 26 couples, but the possibility "could not be excluded", it added.

All of the affected couples have been informed, it said and has launched an investigation to give more information about what might have happened.

Half the women who underwent treatment have already become pregnant or given birth. Others may have embryos frozen at the clinic that have all been fertilised by sperm from someone else. Similar mistakes have led to serious mistakes in the past.

In 2012, a Singapore mother alleged that her clinic had mixed up the sperm intended for the father - she had noticed that something appeared to be wrong when her child had a markedly different skin tone from her caucasian husband, according to news reports.
Former Union home secretary was always frontrunner.

New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee finally accepted former lieutenant general Najeeb Jungs surprise resignation and gave his ascent for the appointment of former Union home secretary Anil Baijal as the 21st L-G of Delhi.

While Mr Jung had been appointed as the L-G during former Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs Congress-led regime, Mr Baijals appointment comes at a time when the Central government is led by the BJP, which is likely to face stiff competition from the Aam Aadmi Party in the next years Assembly elections in the neighbouring state of Punjab, Gujarat and Goa.

Mr Baijal, who enjoys the confidence of some top BJP leaders, will have a difficult task ahead in deciding on those files, which the AAP Cabinet had approved without seeking prior approval of Raj Niwas. The recent Delhi high court judgment ruling that the L-G is the administrative head of the state could further exacerbate the conflict.

The 1969-batch Indian Administrative officer of the Union Territories Cadre will have to take a call on several contentious policy decisions over which his predecessor Mr Jung had several run-ins with chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. The Delhi CM had time and again accused Mr Jung of trying to run the city administration by proxy on behalf of the Prime Ministers Office and BJP supremo Amit Shah.

Though Mr Baijal has the experience of serving the city in the capacity of the vice-chairman of the Delhi Development Authority, he will now have to navigate complicated jurisdictional issues that arise out of Delhis unique position as a union territory acting as the national capital.

The former bureaucrat was also on the executive council of the think-tank Vivekananda International Foundation, several of whose former members have been appointed to senior positions by the Modi government including National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. Soon after the President cleared Mr Baijals name, Union external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, who too had served as the Delhi CM for a brief stint, congratulated him on Twitter.

Mr Baijal, who had worked as the Union home secretary in the NDA government under former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was removed from the post when the UPA government assumed power in May, 2004.
ABIR SULTAN / Stringer(JERUSALEM)  On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a firm rebuke of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerrys condemnation of Israeli settlements and defense of the two-state solution.

Netanyahu slammed Kerry and expressed his deep disappointment in what he says is a radical shift in U.S. policy toward the Palestinian territory despite the Palestinians decision to walk away from peace and their refusal to negotiate peace with Israel.

How can you make peace with someone who rejects your very existence? Netanyahu asked.

Its a shame that Secretary Kerry does not see this simple truth.

Netanyahu also dismissed the Obama administrations framework for resolving the conflict in the Middle East, saying there should be a one and only Jewish state, a sovereign nation that is the master of its own fate.

At the U.S. State Department earlier today, Kerry laid out the administrations final attempt to resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians stemming from decades of religious, ideological and territorial warring.

This is a time to stand up for what is right, Kerry said. We have long known what two states, living side by side, in peace and security looks like. We should not be afraid to say so.

But Netanyahu rejected the plea.

We do not need to be lectured, Netanyahu said in a stern reprimand to Kerry and the Obama administration.

He added the speech was almost as unbalanced as the anti-Israel U.N. resolution from last week, referencing the recent U.N. vote condemning Israeli settlements, for which the United States abstained.

I dont seek applause, Netanyahu said. I seek the security and peace and prosperity and the future of the Jewish state.

With the Obama administration winding down, Netanyahu pointed to a glimmer of hope in his path to a one-state solution.

Israel looks forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump and with the American Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, to mitigate damage that this [U.N.] resolution has done and ultimately to repeal it, Netanyahu said.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The Benjamin Neytanyahu drama, fabricated by the Amateur Obama Administration, is just another roadblock to Barack Hussein's presidential legacy. For the Israli Prime Minister, he only struggles for his miniature nation to survive. Between the two world leaders, there are few similarities, few consensus motivations, only similar, but separate ambitions; one to succeed, the other to survive.Amateur Obama fully understands that his scandal ridden legacy will be forever enhanced if he can broker even a terrible nuclear enrichment deal to delay the Iranian acquisition of a capability for deliverable nuclear warheads. Amateur Obama believes that his many abysmal failures in foreign policy, will be glossed over by this one foreign policy endeavor with the many middling-minded Liberals, still well overpaid, to consider the current events of today to write the history of tomorrow's yesterday. Hussein Obama believes that this false narrative will succeed to paint his administration in a far more effective hue, but now with the advantage of free informational dissemination on the internet, I fully doubt its success.Regardless of future perceptions of historians, The Amateur, as Candidate Obama running for presidential office in 2007, promised no preconditioned negotiations with Iran, and now struggles on to throw the rouge state of Iran a lifeline for their negotiations to continue before The Amateur leaves office in less than two years. No deal, means his legacy will only exist as: surrender in Iraq, and to a lesser extent Libya and Syria, and soon Afghanistan; a misguided economy that has organically failed American citizens; a failure in dealing with congress; significant scandals heaped upon expanding scandals; an abhorrence of the Constitution and the division of powers; escaping certain impeachment only because of a co-dependent Mainstream Media of many pathetic minds; losing badly the War on Terror; more than doubled the national debt to further his Socialism for votes strategy; and his signature legislation - ObamaCare - built on lies to the People of America and the Supreme Court. No deal with Iran means that the sophistry of Amateur Obama, and his sycophant minions, of a middling intelligence, will stand for Barack Hussein's presidency, and its eight years of successive failures. It is a 'Hail Mary' to reconcile this poor president's posterity, which may speak worse for the Simple People who elected him. With the peace of this world in the balance, Barack Hussein chooses the redefining of his administration's history, with this one ambiguous success rather than setting the stage for real peace for this generation and future generations.Let us Remember back to the Mir Hossein Mousavi election as Iran's president that was fraudulently reversed to keep the radical mouthpiece of Iran's theocracy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in his place as president. When the riots and civil unrest developed in June of 2009 in the streets of Iran, as a result of that illegitimate election, Amateur Obama did nothing to help foment the peaceful revolution into a productive movement, one of sweeping change rather than one that was summarily crushed. What if The Amateur had worked to end Iran's theocracy of antisemitism and anti-freedom, rather than his concentration on his confession of apology for American exceptionalism to the Muslim community, while working on his Democrat inspired surrender in Iraq. Maybe Amateur Obama would not be giving away so much to retain so little.Chief on that list of gaining nothing from Iran to limit nuclear enrichment is the safety of Israel, which Iran has promised 'to push into the Mediterranean Sea'. Can anyone with a full working brain blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Neytanyahu for advocating with the United States Congress for the survival of Israel?
From Pachauri to director Mahmood Farooqui to AAPs Sandeep Kumar, several well-known faces came under the lens for crime against women.

New Delhi: A debatable amendment in juvenile law paved the way for prosecution of children between 16-18 years as adults for heinous offences with a 17-year-old rape accused becoming the first such offender to be tried in 2016 by one of the city trial courts, which acted tough in dealing with crime against women.

From renowned climate scientist R K Pachauri to "Peepli Live" director Mahmood Farooqui to sacked AAP minister Sandeep Kumar, several well-known faces came under the lens for crime against women, as courts dealt with several cases of betrayal of relationships.

"These are the times when gruesome crimes against women have become rampant and courts cannot turn a blind eye to the need to send a strong deterrent message to the perpetrators of such crimes. Such offences require exemplary punishment," Additional Sessions Judge Sanjiv Jain remarked in his verdict in one of the cases.

While the maximum punishment of death for two was pronounced in the Jigisha Ghosh murder case of 2009, the progress of a case which was keenly watched globally was the 2014 case of gangrape of a Danish national in which five vagabonds were sentenced to life.

Several offences against women and children by their trusted friends or family members and persons in authority also shocked the conscience of the nation, with courts acting tough on the accused and saying perpetrators of such crimes do not deserve any sympathy.

Courts "cannot and should not give a licence to those who keep on looking for opportunities to exploit the sentiments and vulnerability of girls", Additional Sessions Judge Anuradha Shukla Bhardwaj said in another order.

A widely-reported case was the award of seven-year jail term to Farooqui for raping an American friend at his residence.

Pachauri, the ex-TERI boss, was under constant media glare in a case of sexual harassment lodged by his former colleague and continued to remain on bail. However, he was allowed to go abroad several times by various courts.

While some activists criticised the latest amendment in the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 for treating offenders aged between 16-18 years as adults for heinous offences like rape and murder, a juvenile board this August transferred a rape case against a 17-year-old for prosecution by a regular court under the penal law.

Among other such cases, two men were sentenced to life term and 10 years -- one for raping a step-daughter and the other for violating his daughter and making her pregnant, with judges observing that the "sacrosanct relationship" of father and daughter was "demolished" and the children could not be given a safe environment.

While a teacher was sent to jail for six months for sexually harassing a girl student in 2013, one of the Delhi courts sent JNU student, Anmol Ratan, to custody for betraying the trust of a fellow student who was allegedly raped by him after spiking her drink.

Several Delhi courts dealt with over half-a-dozen cases of crime against women involving AAP leaders and MLAs including that of sacked minister Sandeep Kumar who spent two months in jail in a rape case after a CD of an alleged sex scandal surfaced.

AAP members also faced prosecution in cases of crime against women ranging from sexual assault, molestation, attempt to murder, domestic violence, threat and abetment to suicide with controversial Okhla, Narela, Sangam Vihar and Deoli MLAs -- Amanatullah Khan, Sharad Chauhan, Dinesh Mohaniya and Prakash Jarwal -- respectively cooling their heels in Tihar jail for sometime in connection with one or the other offences against women.

Former AAP minister Somnath Bharti's encounter with law was far from over as the case lodged by his estranged wife for alleged domestic violence continued in a trial court.

Another AAP worker Ramesh Bhardwaj, allegedly involved in abetting suicide of a woman party worker, was given bail by a court here after he remained in jail for some days.

Cases of stalking and voyeurism affecting privacy of women were also dealt with sternly as the perpetrators got varying jail terms by courts which stressed the need for "zero tolerance" to crime against women and asked the government to formulate policies to sensitise youth towards gender equality.

"Whether it is a public transport system or public place or shopping malls or multiplexes, women find themselves vulnerable to the threat of stalking everywhere," a court observed.

Even women, who lodged false rape cases, were not spared by the courts which pulled them up and directed initiation of perjury proceedings against them for misusing laws meant to protect them, with a court observing in one such case that a woman had humiliated the accused and "made a mockery of the judicial system".

A court here also felt it was time now to have laws to protect and restore the dignity of men charged with false rape cases "as everyone is just fighting to protect the honour of women", and it has to be examined whether a person acquitted of rape charges be considered as a "rape survivor".

So was the position in a domestic violence case in which the court imposed a cost of Rs 10,000 on a woman for lodging a false case against her second husband and condemned it saying if she was spared, "a wrong message would go that laws to protect women are being misused."

To sum up the courts' role in dealing with crimes against women, another judge observed "the increasing trend of crimes against women can be arrested only once the society realises that any form of deviance against women would not be tolerated and more so in extreme cases of brutality".

"Hence the criminal justice system must instill confidence in the minds of people, especially women."
Two men who were spotted delivering Bansals suicide note at a courier office in Laxmi Nagar yet to be identified.

New Delhi: Three months after senior bureaucrat B.K. Bansal and three of his family members tragic death, the Central Bureau of Investigation on December 28 acted against its deputy inspector general (DIG) Sanjeev Gautam by removing him from the Bansal suicide probe.

A source said that Mr Gautam, a 1995 batch Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officer (Customs & Excise), has finally been sent back to his parent cadre. The tragedy struck the family when Satya Bala Bansal (58) and her daughter Neha (28) were found hanging inside their house at Neelkanth Apartment in East Delhi on July 19, within days of her husband B.K. Bansals arrest by the CBI on corruption charges. And within two months, on September 27, the father-son duo  B.K. Bansal (59) and Yogesh (28)  was also found hanging in the same flat.

Bansal was a former director-general in the ministry of corporate affairs. The mother and daughter had left a suicide note blaming CBI officials for harassing the family during the raid and Bansals arrest. The father-son duo had also, in a suicide note mailed to the then CBI chief and media houses, accused a senior CBI officer for harassing them. Bansal had even named a top politician of the ruling BJP for getting the bribery case lodged against him. However, the police is yet to make any headway in the case.

The senior bureaucrat had in his suicide note mentioned that his family was tortured by Mr Gautam and his team members. He had named several persons, including Mr Gautam, superintendent of police Amrita Kaur, deputy superintendent of police Rekha Sangwan and investigating officer Harnam Singh, apart from an unnamed head constable, for making his familys life hell.

The Supreme Court had earlier in November issued notices to the Centre and the CBI on a PIL seeking a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the controversial suicide case.

However, the police is yet to make any headway in the case. Two men who were spotted delivering Bansals suicide note at a courier office in Laxmi Nagar havent been identified too. The police has not even filed an FIR in the case. While the Delhi police is yet to summon the CBI officers for questioning, the CBI is said to have conducted an internal inquiry against the team that had arrested Bansal and is accused of harassing him. The police says the inquest proceeding report is yet to be received, depending on which an FIR could be filed.
The Congress has decided to make the note ban an issue in the upcoming BMC polls also.

Mumbai: Following completion of 50 days of the demonetisation decision, Congress has lashed out at the BJP government saying there is no change in the plight of the people. Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) president Ashok Chavan Wednesday said his party would launch a statewide stir from the first week of January to protest against the fact that the hardships of the common man have not reduced since demonetisations.

Mr Chavan addressed party workers at a function to mark the 132nd foundation day of the Congress. Fifty days have passed since demonetisation and despite assurance from Prime Minister Narendra Modi that peoples hardships will ease, the ground reality is different. The people cannot withdraw their own money. There is no option but fight the battle with the government on roads, Mr Chavan said.

Attacking the Prime Minister, Mr Chavan said he should answer the questions posed by party vice-president Rahul Gandhi regarding allegations of bribery. Mr Gandhi had said that the demonetisation was not a surgical strike on corruption and black money as projected by the PM and his ministers, but was an economic robbery and firebombing on Indias poor.

Mr Chavan said the demonetisation decision was taken without giving much thought to the repercussions. The demonetisation is causing lots of inconvenience for farmers, labourers, women and working classes. The farmers are not getting (the right) price for their agriculture products. The rural economy has come to a standstill, he said.

The Congress has decided to make the note ban an issue in the upcoming BMC polls also. The party would be holding agitations at various places to raise the voice of the people.
BMC approached the Powai police and got a FIR filed against the owner for illegally plying the boat in the lake.

Mumbai: Following last weeks houseboat mishap where three persons died of drowning in Powai Lake, leader of opposition in BMC, Pravin Chheda, has blamed the civic body for not having data on the boat that ventured into the water without permission on Friday night. In a point of order introduced in the standing committee on Wednesday, Mr Chheda accused BMC of failing to monitor traffic in the lake, especially at night.

Speaking to The Asian Age, Mr Chheda said, What is the point of registering private boats and their owners, if traffic in the lake is not monitored in the night. The owner of the boat and the operator did not have permission to ply it in the lake at odd hours. BMC should have a mechanism for monitoring which boats ply in the lake."

Mr Chheda said that boats can sail only in certain parts of the lake, that too never after dark. Houseboats are not allowed at all. The owner N. Mandal did not have the requisite permission from BMC to operate houseboats in the lake at night.

A houseboat with eight youth on board capsized in Powai Lake late night Friday after it collided with a bamboo stick in the water. Five of the eight boys were rescued but three bodies were recovered late on Saturday morning after extensive search operations. BMC approached the Powai police and got a FIR filed against the owner for illegally plying the boat in the lake.

Mr Chheda said, What was the BMC doing? Why were there no security guards to ensure no one entered restricted areas in the night? Meanwhile, Lok Sabha MP Kirit Somaiya visited the spot earlier this week and wrote to municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta to ban use of boats in the lake and take strict action against organisers of the houseboat liquor party.
Londons Metropolitan Police launched a search on Mon saying 21-year-old Isabel Gayther was last seen at her student residence on Sat.

London: A British university student reported as missing after skipping a family Christmas has apparently sent Facebook posts saying she is alive and well and just embarrassed that her mother called the police.

Londons Metropolitan Police launched a search on Monday saying 21-year-old Isabel Gayther was last seen at her student residence on Saturday and had not visited her familys home on Christmas Day as planned.

This is extremely out of character for her and officers and her family are extremely concerned for her safety and wellbeing, the police said on Monday. It is believed Isabel has her phone with her but it is unreachable, the police statement added. Facebook posts on the account used by Gayther, under the name Isabela Mishele, appeared on Tuesday.
The mother-of-four will follow in hubby David's footsteps, 13 years after he received his nod from the Queen.

The former Spice Girl shot to fame in 1994, as one-fifth of the chart-topping band (Photo: AFP)

London: This Christmas was very special for the Beckhams, after Victoria Beckham revealed that she has been named on the Queen's New Year's Honours list.

Expecting an OBE for her fashion empire and body of charity work, the mother-of-four will follow in hubby David's footsteps, 13 years after he received his nod from the Queen, reports the Daily Mail.

According to sources close to the family, the 42-year-old business woman was "delighted and humbled for the recognition." Victoria's eponymous line made a modest debut at New York Fashion Week in September 2008.

The former Spice Girl shot to fame in 1994, as one-fifth of the chart-topping band alongside Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm, Emma Bunton and Geri Halliwell.
Escalating xenophobia in the West, including Germany, has ensured that all brown men of any religion are considered suspect.

It was the week before Christmas and, like all cities in the Western world, Berlin was lit up, the air was cold and the mood festive. At the Christmas market near the Zoologischer Garten train station, people milled about shopping and enjoying themselves.

A short distance away, a Pakistani man named Naved B sat in a park. Twenty-three years old, Naved lived at the old Berlin airport, which had been converted into a refugee centre. He had arrived by way of the Balkans, making it to Germany a year earlier, and was granted a temporary visa when no translator could be found for the dialect he spoke. His life would soon be altered forever.

Around 8.00 pm, a semi-truck barged through the Christmas market nearby, crushing all those in its path. When the casualties were counted, 12, including the actual driver of the hijacked truck, were dead and nearly 48 injured. In the pandemonium that followed the attack, an eyewitness claimed to have seen the assailant, who had jumped from the truck and fled after it came to a stop, near a church. The eyewitness claimed that he saw the man, followed him and called the police. It was this call that led to the arrest of Naved B, who had at the time been hanging out around the Victory Column monument in the park. Within minutes, it had been conveyed to the media that the suspect in the gruesome attack was a Pakistani male.

It would take almost 24 hours for the Berlin police to finally admit that the brown, immigrant Muslim man they had apprehended was not the brown, immigrant Muslim man that had carried out the attack.

The German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that the eyewitness on whose testimony the arrest had been made had actually lost sight of the attacker between the time he spotted him and then saw Naved B in the park. The police did not find gunpowder residue or blood on his clothes as they had expected to, given that the truck driver had been killed. It was over a day after the attack when they finally admitted that Naved B, the man they had arrested, was not the perpetrator of the attack, that the real culprit was still at large.

The set of misunderstandings that led to the arrest of Naved B are not particularly surprising. Escalating xenophobia in the West, including Germany, has ensured that all brown men of any religion are considered suspect. In the logic of the terrified, there seem to be too many of them, dark and skulking in parks and around markets, representing always the threat of crime.

There is little empathy for these men, or any appreciation as to how the festivities of others may sting and burn those who are far from home, from all that they have loved, and unwelcome where they are. In their desperation, they all seem the same. Punishing one man for the sins of another may be a gross inequity if the subjects are white and Western; it is perhaps less so when they are brown or black and desperate.

Naved B may have been an actual victim of mistaken identity in the minutes after the Berlin attack. Many more Muslim men, Pakistani and otherwise, are likely to pay the price for the actual perpetrator of the ghastly massacre.

The Muslim faith and immigrant status as somehow special, worthy of notice and suspicion, means a heightened visibility. They may not be terrorists yet, but they are all potential terrorists, men who will at some point blow up train stations, drive trucks into crowds of people, or blow themselves up.

It is undoubtedly an onerous and unfair burden. Pakistani men applying for visas for study or work in any Western country will face the consequences of all the terrorist acts committed by Muslim men anywhere in the West. To end this cycle of collective punishment, they must work as vigorously as possible to stem the tide of intolerance and extremism in their own countries.

Sadly, rejections by the West, whether they are in the languages of visas denied or for those that have managed to get there, arrests and suspicion, are likely to prevent them from doing just that. Anis Amri, the actual murderer, evaded capture and was shot to death before he could be apprehended. All the other Muslim men are, because of him and assassins like him, collective captives, guilty until proven innocent.

By arrangement with Dawn
Founded in 2009, AMS is a subsidiary of LeT and has worked with LeT senior leaders to organise recruiting courses and activities for youth.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or Army of the Pure, is an anti-Indian militant group with historical ties to Pakistans top spy agencies. (Representational Image)

Washington: The United States on Wednesday announced it was adding the student wing of the Pakistan-based militant organisation, Lashkar-e-Taiba, to its list of foreign terrorist organisations.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or Army of the Pure, is an anti-Indian militant group with historical ties to Pakistans top spy agencies. It has been accused of orchestrating numerous attacks, including a 2008 assault in Mumbai that killed 166 people.

The state department move against the student group, Al-Muhammadia Students, came as the treasury department added two LeT leaders to the US list of specially designated global terrorists, subjecting them to US sanctions.

LeT was banned by the Pakistani government in 2002 but it has continued operating through front organisations, according to US officials, and their leaders conduct public rallies and interviews.

The state department announced that it amended the designation of LeT as a foreign terrorist organisation to include what it called the groups student wing.

Since the original designation occurred, LeT has repeatedly changed its name and created front organizations in an effort to avoid sanctions, the state department said, adding that the student group aided senior LeT leaders in recruiting and other activities.

The action subjected the student group to sanctions, including a ban on Americans providing or attempting to provide it with material support.

The treasury department said it was adding Muhammad Sarwar and Shahid Mahmood to the US list of specially designated global terrorists, freezing any US property or other assets they hold and banning Americans from doing business with them. Both are involved in fund-raising activities, it said.

Sarwar, the department said, is the LeT leader in Lahore and Mahmood is a senior LeT leader in Karachi and has routinely traveled outside Pakistan on the groups behalf.
The post said Shermeyer felt she had been slowly dying inside and that the only thing she had to live for was the boy.

In her Facebook post, Sheri Shermeyer told her husband that he didn't deserve to have a son. (Photo: Facebook)

Glen Rock: Authorities in Pennsylvania believe a woman posted a lengthy suicide note on Facebook, telling her husband "you don't deserve to have a son, to have a legacy," shortly before suffocating her one-year-old and fatally shooting herself.

State police said they found the bodies of Sheri Shermeyer, 40, and her son, John, inside their home on Monday afternoon after being alerted by a friend who saw the Facebook post.

The York County coroner said it's believed Shermeyer composed the 600-word note about two hours before police found the bodies in Glen Rock, about 80 miles west of Philadelphia. Police called the deaths an apparent murder-suicide pending autopsies on Wednesday.

The post said Shermeyer felt she had been slowly dying inside and that the only thing she had to live for was the boy.

"And even now, all I can think about is leaving this world," the note said.

Directing her anger at her husband, she writes: "You don't deserve to have a son, to have a legacy. Why should you have your name carried on?"

People replying to the post expressed concern and then talked of notifying police.

Her husband did not appear to be on Facebook or have a listed phone number.

Coroner Pam Gay said state police showed the post to her office.

Shermeyer's page describes her as a stay-at-home mother, originally from Anderson Creek, North Carolina.
If it lives up to the potential, its a great thing. If it doesnt, its a waste of time and money, Mr Trump said.

Palm Beach: US President-elect Donald Trump launched a fresh salvo of accusations against the United Nations Wednesday, saying the world body had not lived up to its potential and failed to solve global problems.

The UN had such tremendous potential. (It is) not living up to its potential, Mr Trump told reporters at his Florida holiday resort Mar-a-Lago.

When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They dont. They cause problems.

If it lives up to the potential, its a great thing. If it doesnt, its a waste of time and money, Mr Trump said. Incoming UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said he wants to meet Mr Trump as soon as possible and is determined to establish a constructive dialogue with the new US administration.

I had an excellent working meeting with President Putin and I hope this will also be the case with Donald Trump, he told Portuguese television channel SIC in an interview Wednesday.

It is certainly in my interest to visit him as soon as possible, said the UN diplomat who replaces Ban Ki-moon.
As I write this, the balloting isn't yet over in North Carolina. But here's an election result I can forecast with absolute confidence: most North Carolinians, like most Americans, will be dissatisfied with the outcome.I don't just mean that roughly half the voters will end up supporting losing candidates for president, governor, U.S. Senate, and other statewide contests. For months, it has been clear that North Carolina would be a tightly contested battleground. We were also a tightly contested battleground for president, at least, in 2008 and 2012, so this is nothing new.What really is new - perhaps even unprecedented in American political history - is that both major-party candidates for president have higher disapproval ratings than approval ratings. Outside of hard-core partisans, voters across the ideological spectrum dislike and distrust Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It seems likely the next president will enter the White House cloaked in suspicion and dogged by scandal.Here in North Carolina, the contest between Richard Burr and Deborah Ross rates as one of the nation's roughest Senate races, according to the Wesleyan Media Project , with 65 percent of the ads aired attacking the other candidate and only eight percent offering a positive agenda. And either Pat McCrory or Roy Cooper will win one of the most brutal and expensive races for governor in state history. It is the second-most-negative gubernatorial contest this year, according to the Wesleyan dataset, with 59 percent of the ads rated as negative and 19 percent as positive.I share the concerns of many North Carolinians, again across the spectrum, about how the 2016 cycle has played out. I share their disappointment with the actions of many candidates, party leaders, political activists, and media figures. But I haven't yielded to pessimism.Indeed, I still see reasons for optimism - about the Tar Heel State, anyway. Look, there's not much chance of anything good oozing from our toxic-waste dump of a presidential race. But at the state level, the past few months have produced a groundswell of interest in promoting civil dialogue and elevating the standards and practices of competitive politics.Early this year, a new project called the North Carolina Leadership Forum made its debut. Affiliated with Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy and encompassing a broad range of current and emerging leaders, NCLF has given liberals, conservatives, centrists, and libertarians a valuable opportunity to develop personal connections, explore complex sets of data and arguments, and better understand how people with good intentions and shared goals can form entirely different opinions about what government should do.NCLF is funded by the Duke Endowment and two charitable foundations whose grantees usually find themselves diametrically opposed on matters of public policy - the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and the John William Pope Foundation , for which I serve as president. Reynolds and Pope are also jointly funding several other projects and initiatives at the moment - including the N.C. Institute of Political Leadership , the news service EducationNC , and the education group BEST NC - and even compared notes recently about disaster relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew.These efforts aren't about trying to converge to some kind of moderate consensus. That's unrealistic and unnecessary. North Carolina is a large and growing state of diverse people and varying viewpoints. As should be obvious by now, I have strong opinions. I like talking about them, trying to persuade others I'm right, and then adjusting my thinking to new information or good arguments as warranted. The goals should be to debate our differences more constructively, seek agreement where possible, and lift the conversation above vicious ridicule and character assassination.I don't mean to diminish the coming challenge. The blades of 2016 cut deep wounds. It will take discernment, diplomacy, and diligence to bind them up and begin moving forward. We will stride and we will stumble. But both will be steps in the right direction. That's what healthy politics looks like. Perhaps North Carolina can model it for a nation yearning for something better.
Life says the faulty flaps led the pilots to lose control as the plane was at a critical angle, according to the BBC.

Moscow: Pro-Kremlin news website Life said on Wednesday that the Tu-154 airliners wing flaps might have caused the crashed. The main flight recorder, recovered on Tuesday, revealed that faulty flaps were not moving together, a source close to the probe told the private Interfax news agency.

The flaps are panels on the wings that help lift an aircraft. Life says the faulty flaps led the pilots to lose control as the plane was at a critical angle, according to the BBC. It also quoted the crews last words, including, The flaps, hell... ! According to the transcript one pilot shouted Commander, were falling. The latest findings come from a cockpit conversation stored on the flights main black box data recorder, according to the BBC.

Meanwhile, Russian rescuers trawling the Black Sea on Wednesday found the second black box from the Syria-bound military plane. The ageing Tu-154 airliner came down off the Russian coast with the loss of all 92 passengers and crew. On board were 64 members of the famed Alexandrov military music ensemble, as well as one of Russias best-known humanitarian figures, Yelizaveta Glinka. The plane was heading to Russias air force base in Syria where the choir was due to perform at a New Years concert.

The Soviet-era jet, whose passengers included more than 60 members of an internationally renowned Red Army music troupe, was heading to Russias military airbase in Syria on Sunday when it went down off the coast of Sochi shortly after take-off from a refuelling stop at the airport. Russias FSB security service has said it is looking into four main suspected causes: pilot error, technical failure, faulty fuel and a foreign object in the engine. The FSB added that so far, there are no indications to suggest terrorism was behind the crash, but did not rule it out entirely.

The discovery of the second black box comes as searchers scramble to recover bodies and remaining debris from the aircraft in a major operation involving deepwater machines, helicopters and drones. The defence ministry told Russian news agencies that so far, 15 bodies and 239 body parts from those onboard the ill-fated aircraft have been found. The loss of the plane has shocked Russia at a time when the Kremlin was celebrating the recapture of Syrias Aleppo.
Turkey may have been chosen as a target because it has backed rebels in Syria against Islamic State.

People offer their respect near the crime scene in Berlin, Germany. (Photo: AP)

Berlin: A pro-Islamic State group on Wednesday urged supporters of the jihadists to carry out attacks on targets such as markets and hospitals in Europe over the Christmas holiday period and urged Muslims to stay away from Christian celebrations.

The threat came as European authorities have stepped up security following an attack claimed by Islamic State in which a truck ploughed into crowds in a Berlin Christmas market and killed 12 people this month.

The Nashir Media Foundation, which backs Islamic State, posted its message online, accompanied by images of fighters with guns and knives, Santa Claus, reindeer and a Christmas tree, according to the according to the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant groups online.

"Their celebrations, gatherings, clubs, markets, theatres, cinemas, malls and even their hospitals are all perfect targets for you," the online message to Islamist "lone wolves" in Europe said.

It said Islamic State would "replace their fireworks with explosive belts and devices, and turn their singing and clapping into weeping and wailing".

The message reminded Islamic State supporters of a call earlier this month by the group's new spokesman, Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajer, who said they should also attack Turkish consulates and embassies.

Turkey may have been chosen as a target because it has backed rebels in Syria against Islamic State.
Mr Corbyn told the Guardian newspaper on Thursday that any deal thrashed out between the British government.

London: Britains Prime Minister Theresa May is acting like Tudor King Henry VIII in refusing to commit to giving Parliament a vote on the deal to leave the European Union, opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said.

Ms May told lawmakers earlier this month Parliament would have ample opportunity to discuss her plans for Brexit but she stopped short of promising lawmakers a vote on any final agreement.

Mr Corbyn told the Guardian newspaper on Thursday that any deal thrashed out between the British government and the 27 remaining countries in the European Union had to be endorsed by parliament.

It would have to come to Parliament. She cannot hide behind Henry VIII and the divine rights of the power of Kings on this one, he said.

The idea that on something as major as this the Prime Minister would use the royal prerogative to bypass Parliament is extraordinary  I dont know where shes coming from.

Henry VIII, who ruled from 1509 to 1547, is best known for his six wives and making himself head of the Church in England after breaking with Rome.

The British government is able in theory to take executive decisions without the assent of the British Parliament using the royal prerogative, a concept originating in the personal power of the monarch to rule on his or her own initiative.

However, under the United Kingdoms unwritten Constitution, the scope of the prerogative is difficult to define and its use in specific cases has been decided by the courts.
Rizieq Shihab, leader of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), has led the charge against the Christian governor of Jakarta for blasphemy. Now the Indonesian Catholic Students Association (PMKRI) has filed charges against him for statements he hade on Christmas Day.

Jakarta (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Rizieq Shihab, leader of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), has been accused of blasphemy by Catholics under section A of Article 156 of the Constitution. He faces up to five years in prison.

On Christmas Day, Rizieq was videotaped as saying, "If God had a son, then who was the midwife?" The footage of his speech was posted online. When the Indonesian Catholic Students Association (PMKRI) saw it, it decided to take him to court.

PMKRI president Angelius Wake Kako said Rizieq was charged along with two other people who posted the video. The religious feelings of Christians, he added, "have been hurt and humiliated."

Every Indonesian, said the Catholic leader, "should respect diversity and not interfere in the private affairs of other religions. Only Christians know the Christian faith. It is better for all those who do not have that knowledge to be silent."

Rizieq defended himself saying that the accusations of blasphemy are misguided and that the prosecution's matter (religious dogma) is not sufficient for a police report.

He admitted that anyone can sue another citizen if he has evidence, "But these must be complete and not made up."

For months, the Islamic leader has been at the forefront in criticizing and accusing the Christian governor of Jakarta, Basuki Purnama Tjahaja, known as Ahok, of blasphemy of Islam.

Together with the FPI, he has organised several mass demonstrations to demand the politicians conviction.

For the past two weeks, Ahok has been on trial and two days ago the court rejected the defense request to throw out the case because of too many irregularities.
by Shafique Khokhar

Most of the victims were Christians, who died consuming homemade liquor. Muslims are not allowed to consume alcoholic beverages in Pakistan. Only members of minorities and tourists are exempt from the ban. Tight controls and poverty lead to homemade solutions that often include methanol.

Toba Tek Singh (AsiaNews) - The National Commission for Justice and Peace of Pakistan (NCJP) has expressed deep sorrow for the death of 43 people, mostly Christians, from tainted homemade liquor at a Christmas party.

The incident occurred in Toba Tek Singh, a district in Punjab province. In addition to the dead, at least another 120 people have been hospitalised in critical condition in various hospitals in the province.

NCJP president Mgr Joseph Arshad, bishop of Faisalabad, visited the relatives of the victims and expressed to them the condolences of the entire Christian community.

"This tragic event, he said, turned the joyous festivity of Christmas into mourning with many lives still hang in the balance due to critical conditions of many patients.

The prelate visited the hospital in his city, and prayed for a quick recovery of the sick and for the souls of the departed and for their families.

"Life is uncertain, he explained, but such untimely and terrible death is hard to cope with. May God grant you the strength to overcome this terrible loss," he told patients and relatives.

"A judiciary inquiry needs to be conducted to bring the perpetrators to justice, said Mgr Arshad on behalf of the Commission, together with Fr Emmanuel Yousaf and Cecil Chaudhry, respectively the national director and executive director of the NCJP.

All three also appealed to government authorities to provide compensation to the victims families.

Most of the dead were Christians, including the people who brought the tainted liquor.

In Pakistan, a country with a Muslim majority, Muslims have not been allowed to consume alcoholic beverages since 1977.

Only members of the countrys minorities and tourists are allowed to purchase liquor, wine and beer from authorised dealers.

Given the extreme poverty of the population and tight controls, many people brew their own liquor, which sometimes contains harmful substances such as methanol, which is used in antifreeze and fuel.

"Most Christians do not have enough money to buy good quality liquor, tested and approved by the authorities, said Aneel Thomas, a Christian activist.

The result is that they prefer another route to alcoholic beverages, and use alcohol used for medical purposes, which has adverse effects on health, and can, in some cases, cause death."

"We demand a ban on substandard liquor and alcohol in Pakistan, he added.
by Wang Zhicheng

The emphasis on "independence" and "autonomy" does not bode well for dialogue between China and the Vatican. The Religious Affairs Bureau asks the Holy See for "flexibility and pragmatism." The Assembly is like a theater in which all the scripts are already written. The participating bishops confuse the red of their skullcaps - the blood of the martyrs - with the red of the regime's ideology.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - Skepticism towards the true "bosses" of the Assembly; bitterness at the lack of positive signs towards the Vatican; pain for participating bishops, who have "sold out" to the Chinese Communist Party. These are the immediate reactions of some Chinese priests from both the official and underground community in China, shared with AsiaNews, to the Ninth Assembly of Chinese Catholic Representatives being held in Beijing from December 26 and concluding this afternoon.

The Assembly is "incompatible with Catholic doctrine," according to Pope Benedict XVI and according to Pope Francis. The Vatican had asked bishops not to take part in the last Assembly. This time, while reaffirming in a "note" the irreconcilable position, it did not pose any ban on participation reserving the right to judge the Assembly on the basis of "concrete facts" and waiting for "positive signals" from the government to help build trust in dialogue between the civil authorities and the Holy See ".

In speeches to the Assembly, those of bishops were filled with slogans of "independence", "autonomy", "self-management", in line with the rhetoric of the Party and the Patriotic Association that wants to build a Church "independent" of the Holy See.

The culmination of such statements was the speech given by Wang Zuoan, director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA). Yesterday, speaking to the Assembly, he reiterated the need for the Vatican to be "flexible and pragmatic", accepting the current situation in which SARA and the PA decide the appointment of bishops and the general policy of the Church under their control.

Fr. Joseph, a priest of central China, after noticing that in the election of the new leadership of the Assembly, there has been "no significant change" and that the principles of "independence" and "autonomy" continue to be defended and proclaimed, adds: "it 'clear that the hoped-for positive signal from the Vatican has not appeared and that what SARAs Wang Zuoan said, his hope that the Vatican prove' flexible and pragmatic', is the response to the declaration of the Holy See made before the Ninth Assembly".

Another comment from Fr. Peter, North China, sees the Assembly as a theater where everyone plays a part. He questions "who is" the true weaver and puppeteer. It must be said that in fact, the Ninth Assembly was held on the back of the insistent wishes of SARA the United Front and the PA which have been preparing the meeting for months, visiting bishops and other representatives, preparing the candidates for the elections.

"At the beginning - said Fr. Peter - I did not have much to say on the Ninth Assembly: outside and inside the everything seemed to be a staged theatrical representation, and those on stage or off it are the actors. Everything was very well planned: the assignment of roles, their scripts, the well-chosen audience, who raised their hands to vote and approve content, the media coverage ... Everything was like a perfectly executed show staged by an "office manager." But people wonder: Is this 'office manager' not that entity which is called the 'Catholic Church in China'? For my part I say: They may have spent the money from this entity, but the driver and those making the decisions are not from the Church in China".

A priest of the underground Church is critical of the bishops who participated in the Assembly, given the "note" "irreconcilable with Catholic doctrine". "I wonder - he says - if their consciences do not feel remorse. In the first three days after Christmas, the Church's liturgy celebrates martyrs and witnesses [St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, the innocent martyrs]. In Beijing, did they celebrate mass and meditate on the readings of the liturgy? The color of a bishops skull cap is red, and symbolizes their readiness to shed blood for their flock. Do they think the red of their skull is the same red of the Chinese regime and has the same meaning? ".
by Elizabeth Li

Bishops and laity met Yu Zhengsheng, a permanent member of the Politburo, Liu Yandong, the State Council, Sun Chunlan, director of the United Front. Video of the meeting. The Assembly ended today with Eucharistic adoration. Masses during these days presided by legitimate and illegitimate bishops; some bishops did not celebrate.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - Catholic representatives of the Ninth Assembly were received today by Yu Zhengsheng, a member of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee. Yu is also chairman of the national Committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference , which includes some Catholic bishops. The meeting took place in the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square.

As reported by Xinhua, the new leadership of the Patriotic Association (PA) and the Council of Bishops (CB), as well as several participants, were well received by Liu Yandong, vice-premier of the State Council and member of the Politburo and Sun Chunlan, also a Politburo member and director of United Front Work Department of Communist Party, and heads of relevant departments also attended the meeting.

Yu said over the past six years since the Eighth Assembly, the Patriotic Association and Bishops Council assisted the authorities to implement their religious policy and to contribute the national economic social development.

Yu cited the Xi Jinping speech on religions, held last April, in which the president stressed the urgent need to join and develop religious theories on socialism with Chinese characteristics and raise the level of religious commitment, supporting the formation of religious groups and personnel. Yu expressed the hope that the new leadership of the Catholic community will hasten a new situation for the Church in China.

The event was filmed and broadcast by Central State television (see here).

Immediately after the Catholic representatives headed to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Nan Tang) for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and at the conclusion of prayer. The adoration and the blessing was presided by Msgr. Ma Yinglin, an illegitamte bishop of Kunming and president of the Council of Bishops.

AsiaNews sources have indicated that in each of the three days of the Assembly Masses were celebrated. The presiders of the three celebrations were respectively Msgr. Fang Xinyao, Msgr. Ma Yinglin, Msgr. Shen Bin of Haimen. Some bishops did not concelebrate.

Yesterday the statutes of the PA and Council of Bishops were also amended, but the amendments have not been made public.
The Russian President confirms that the Syrian regime and the armed opposition have reached an agreement. Three documents were signed with a truce taking effect at midnight tonight over the entire territory." The Islamic State and other Jihadi groups are excluded. Moscow and Ankara reiterate peace talks in Astana, but Assads future remains the Gordian knot.

Damascus (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Russian President Vladimir Putin today announced a cease-fire agreement between the Government of Syria and armed opposition groups.

"Three documents have been signed," said Putin, the first of which is between the Syrian government and the armed opposition" over "entire territory" of Syria. The Russian leader specified that two other documents concern peace talks scheduled for the coming weeks.

The Syrian army also announced a total end of military operations," starting midnight tonight. However, the truce does not cover the Islamic State and other jihadist groups, including the ex al-Nusra Front.

Turkey and Russia have been working for some time on a countrywide ceasefire in Syria before the start of the new year, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday, but none of the key players in the conflict offered an immediate confirmation.

The ceasefire could be in place "at any moment", Cavusoglu said a few hours before Putins announcement. Until now the two countries were on opposite sides in the five-year conflict.

The minister said that if the ceasefire was successful, political negotiations between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and the opposition would take place in the Kazakh capital Astana.

But he insisted that the Astana talks, overseen by Turkey and Russia, were not a rival to UN-backed talks that have been taking place on-and-off in Geneva in recent years.

the latter have failed so far to produce any result in a war that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people, creating a serious humanitarian crisis.

"This is not an alternative to Geneva. It is a complementary step," said Cavusoglu. "The talks in Astana will be under our supervision," he added, noting that which groups will take part remains under discussion.

In spite of the nice diplomatic words, it is increasingly clear that an attempt is underway to shift the centre of gravity of the Syrian conflict from Europe (and the United States) to the East, to the heart of Asia.

In this interplay of talks and alliances, Russia will act as "guarantor" for the Syrian government, whilst Turkey will play the same role for the rebels.

This is a further step forward in diplomatic and strategic rapprochement between Moscow and Ankara, after a period of tensions followed the downing of a Russian fighter on the border between Turkey and Syria in November last year.

Cease-fire conditions must be submitted to the warring parties, but "terrorist groups" are excluded, the Turkish news agency said.

Russian sources confirmed Moscows intention to cooperate with Turkish authorities for a lasting peace in Syria, the details of which should be discussed at the meeting in Astana.

Iran, an ally of Syrian President Assad, will be present at the talks. However, Tehran has vetoed the participation of Saudi Arabia and Qatar (which are close to the opposition and rebel groups, including some Jihadi militias).

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the talks should include Saudi Arabia and Qatar, because they have "shown goodwill and given support" to Syria.

For Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, Saudi Arabia should be excluded from the peace talks because of its insistence that Assad step down, and be excluded from the countrys political transition.

For Tehran, Assad is the legitimate president and must be able to participate in the next elections if he wants to.
Kerry said in his last speech that the two-state solution "is the only way to peace." And the settlements are "a threat". Netanyahu replies: "prejudiced" speech and "unbalanced words ". President elect Trump on Twitter: "Israel hold on." The Jerusalem municipality has postponed the vote for the go-ahead for 492 new homes in the east.

Jerusalem (AsiaNews / Agencies)  The rift between the leadership of the Israeli government and the Obama administration in the United States, now close to the end of its mandate, is becoming increasingly deep. A relationship that had already began to show cracks in recent months and which reached its peak last week, when Washington did not oppose a UN Security Council resolution condemning the colonial policy of Israel in the Occupied Territories.

In his last speech as US Secretary of State John Kerry he said that "the two-state solution is the only way to peace in the Middle East". The settlements, he added, "pose a threat".

The outgoing head of US diplomacy did not spare criticism of the Israeli government  which heretofore has always been a historical ally of the White House in the region - "the most rightwing of all time" and proponent of expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The UN condemnation of settlements, concluded Kerry, is "consistent with American values."

In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  under judiciary investigation for suspected corruption and fraud - condemned the Kerry speech calling it "biased". According to the Israeli leader the words of the head of US diplomacy were "unbalanced" and "obsessively focused" on settlements.

According to Netanyahu, the US government has made a "service to the incessant Palestinian terror campaign" against Israel and fueled the Palestinian position that refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. "Quite simply - he concluded - Kerry does not see the reality of the facts."

US president-elect Donald Trump immediately came out in defense of Israel, entrusting his position on the matter to twitter. Trump recalled the "great friendship" between Israel and the United States and added that "Israel cannot be treated with such contempt and disdain". Finally, he called on the authorities in Israel to hold on because "January 20 [the date of his inauguration] comes soon." The reply, again via tweet, Netanyahu thanked Trump for "warm friendship and the clear support."

Also yesterday, a few hours ahead of the beginning of Kerry's speech, on request of Prime Minister Netanyahu the Jerusalem municipality postponed the vote on granting building permits for 492 new homes in East Jerusalem. December 23 the UN Security Council condemnation referred directly to this latest proposal.

Under the Netanyahu government there has been a considerable increase in Israeli settlements. In 2015 at least 15 thousand new settlers have moved into the West Bank.
by Melani Manel Perera

The packages were handed out on 24 December. The parish, which is part of the Archdiocese of Colombo, is home to 2,500 families. Parishioners chose the beneficiaries, people who find it hard to hide their poverty.

Colombo (AsiaNews)  Saint Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Wewala, in Sri Lankas Western Province, donated Christmas hampers to the parishs poor and needy families in order to share the joy of Jesuss birth because "only when we share can we be happy and fully Catholic."

"How could we celebrate Christmas, knowing that in our community there are many needy? We could not close our eyes to their call for help, Fr Sumith Kumara told AsiaNews.

The bags contained different kinds of food: rice, coconut, dhal (red lentils), powdered milk, tea, coffee, spices, soups, salmon, onions and toothpaste worth 2,000 rupees (about US$ 14). In addition, the parish donated 500 rupees (US$ 3.50) to each family to buy fresh meat.

The Wewala Parish, which belongs to Archdiocese of Colombo, includes 2,500 families, 139 of whom live in extreme poverty.

Many of them "are struggling to put together two meals a day, Fr Kumara said. Some are totally dependent on rations the church hands out once in a while."

The beneficiaries were chosen by parishioners, like the Nihal, Concy, Nirmalee and Costa, who noted no outsider knows "their real economic difficulties. We know about it only because we are always and constantly close" to them.

The packages were handed out on 24 December, after the morning prayer.

"For us, it is an immense gift, said a Catholic mother who received a hamper. We are really grateful to Fr. Kumara and to those who made us happy."
One key consequence of the 2016 elections in North Carolina was that the state's court system drew a great deal of attention. You can expect that attention to continue, and perhaps to lead to constructive change, during the coming year.Four election stories had the effect of turning the political spotlight to the judicial branch. Democrat Mike Morgan outpolled Bob Edmunds, an incumbent Republican on the North Carolina Supreme Court, thus shifting the partisan balance on the state's officially nonpartisan high court from a 4-3 Republican edge to a Democratic one. At the same time, Republican candidates won all of the elections for Court of Appeals, making that 15-member body strongly Republican.With Democrat Roy Cooper narrowly defeating GOP Gov. Pat McCrory and Republicans retaining their supermajorities in the General Assembly, the partisan atmospherics grew stormy. Republican lawmakers concluded they had inadvertently produced Morgan's victory by the following convoluted process: 1) establishing a "retention election" for the Edmunds seat in 2016, rather than a truly competitive one; 2) then losing the subsequent court case about it; 3) then watching the Supreme Court race revert to the previous "nonpartisan" system and not intervening to put party labels back on the ballot, as they had for the Court of Appeals races; and 4) then watching Morgan's name get placed first on the ballot, the position GOP candidates held in other races, thus leading Republican voters to think they were choosing the GOP candidate when they voted for him.If you look at vote totals across conservative-leaning counties, you can see why this explanation is the most plausible one. Edmunds got many fewer votes in those counties than did comparatively obscure Republican candidates for appeals court. It strains credulity to assert these voters made such careful distinctions among the Republican judges.But what was the proper remedy? A few Republicans toyed with the notion of creating two more openings on the Supreme Court and allowing outgoing Gov. Pat McCrory to fill them, with subsequent partisan elections to be held in 2018. But McCrory himself and most other Republicans never thought this was a defensible remedy for the errors that led to Morgan's win.What happened instead was that lawmakers resurrected an old idea Roy Cooper himself had proposed while serving in the North Carolina Senate. Both the state and federal appeals courts handle most of their cases as three-judge panels. But the federal courts also occasionally hear cases "en banc," meaning before all the judges of a circuit. During a post-election special session, the North Carolina legislature authorized a similar process for the state appeals court.Why do this? Because Democrats are about to attempt to re-litigate every court challenge they've made against Republican-enacted policies (the ones they didn't already win before a Republican-majority Supreme Court, I mean). An en banc hearing before the full Court of Appeals may add another step to the process.Whatever you think of this change, it does signify that Republican lawmakers are willing to consider changes in the structure and operation of the state courts. Well, they are about to get many more proposals for change. The North Carolina Commission on the Administration of Law and Justice , a panel created by Chief Justice Mark Martin in 2015, will publish its final report in 2017.I serve on the commission. Our findings and recommendations address every aspect of the justice system in North Carolina, from civil litigation and criminal procedure to technology upgrades and judicial selection. During our work, we found that while most North Carolinians have confidence in our state courts and the judges who preside in them, they are also concerned about the time and money it takes to litigate cases, the independence of judges, and the treatment of juveniles, racial minorities, and low-income people, especially those who represent themselves in judicial proceedings.The commission's report will offer legislative leaders and the new Cooper administration an opportunity to work together on important issues of mutual interest. Here's hoping they seize it.
Hi,



I am in need of your help to clarify a few issues my partner and I are facing before applying for the onshore partner migration visa. I am a permanent resident here in Australia. I recently got married in Bangladesh and returned to Sydney with the hope that my wife will join me soon.



After my wife's previous marriage ended, we have been dating for quite a while. Few months ago she applied for a visitor visa and stayed here in Sydney for a month. Then we both went back to Bangladesh and got married. After our marriage we went to see a migration agent to talk about the onshore partner visa application process. It was the same migration agent who lodged her visitor visa application. During our visit we discovered that she had miscommunication with the agent and he filled out her marital status as never married instead of divorced during her visitor visa application. To make the matter worse my wife didn't notice the mistake when the agent sent her a final filled up version of the application before submitting it.



As her visitor visa is multiple entry and doesn't have a no further stay condition, we are planning that she will come to Australia on her visitor visa and will apply for the onshore partner visa. Now:



a) should she submit a form 1023 to correct the wrong information while in Bangladesh or after coming to Australia?



b) usually how long DIBP takes to make a decision based on the new information provided in form 1023?



c) how much trouble is she going to be in for this mistake she made on the visitor visa application? Will declaring this mistake reduce her chances of getting the partner visa?



d) Can you suggest the best way to answer the reason for this mistake? I mean I have already explained the reason for this mistake in this post but is there a better way she can explain herself so that things go in her favor?



e) do you have any suggestions regarding the way this issue should be dealt with?



Thanks in advance.
With the Midterm Elections less than one week away: What do you consider the top issues that you will be voting on to be corrected by your better representation?

Education Crime Big Government getting Bigger Biden /Democrat controlled Spike in Energy Cost Inflation created by Legislation of Majority in Power Gender Reassignment Corrupted Bureaucratic /Service (DOJ, FBI, etc.) Institutions Abortion Discredited Legacy Media Ending the Corruption of Dishonest Politicians Corruptive Influence of Social Media Wide Open Southern Border
Hi Guys,



I am new to the forum!



I am going to start a Working Holiday in Australia at the end of February. My nationality is Italian,



I found a very cheap flight from Italy to Australia with a layover in Bangkok.



As I have to change airline there, i'd like to stop for 3 or 4 days in Bangkok to visit the city. Once landed in Australia, may i encounter any problem with the Australian Immigration when they notice that i have spent the previous 3 days in Bangkok? Could they ask me to do any medical test?



thanks in advance!
Hi,



Can you please help me to choose an area/suburb which is best for a Bengali muslim couple to live in Darwin?



I am actually doing a research on Darwin and need your suggestions on the popular areas for muslims/Bangalis.



Thanks in advance.

Kazi
I have worked in SA. I had initially travelled on a tourist visa which eventually got converted into a work permit. This was so since obtaining a work permit from within SA was a much easier process.



My queries are,



1) I hope this doesn't jeopardise my PCC?

2) What is the process of obtaining a PCC from outside of SA?



I no longer reside in SA. My duration of stay for close to 2 years. I was on a tourist visa for the initial few months.
Hi,



How many months bank statement to provide as cash evidence for QLD state sponsorship?



Is it possible to deposit the A$ 15K on a day to take out the statement? Please anyone went through this process kindly advise.



Inaddition, how to get the market valuation for the property and gold etc.



Thank you
Until Ford unleashes the 2018 Tourneo Courier in its showrooms and on the streets, the Blue Ovals engineers are testing it in winter conditions. Our spy photograpers were on the lookout at what appears to be a remote gas station in Sweden, where several other prototypes were spotted within the past few weeks.This model was first spied in October , while it was on a trailer in Germany, when the car was probably being transported between two divisions of the Ford Motor Company. Since then, the camouflage has not changed dramatically, but it has been adapted for road use.Just like the previous prototype, significant aesthetic changes are not visible, which leads us to believe that Ford was experimenting with mechanical components that cannot be seen with the naked eye.Instead of making an extremely subtle facelift, which is still a possibility in this segment, Ford is probably hiding more changes for the Tourneo Courier, but the examples that were spied were not wearing those modifications.Most likely, the carmaker has revamped a few of the underpinnings of the Tourneo Courier, which have been optimized for increasing efficiency and comfort. Expect modest changes to the suspension, steering, and braking systems. Do not imagine dramatically improved performance, but rather optimizations to bring increments in all important aspects.In case you do not acknowledge what a Ford Tourneo Courier does in the Blue Ovals range, we explain. This model is the smallest people carrier in this brands portfolio, and it focused on utility and interior space, all at the detriment of exterior design.Specifically, this models silhouette is sacrificed to make more room on the inside, but that does not mean it did not get the brands signature front grille.As you can imagine, Courier denotes something in the Tourneo range. Instead of being called Tourneo Crew, or something similar, the vehicle is the passenger-oriented version of the Tourneo, which can also be ordered in a freight-specialized trim. The plain Tourneo is a five-seat version that tries to carry passengers and some freight.
Happy Christmas to everyone. Except the Tierra Del Fuego people of Argentina. You lot can sod off.  Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) December 24, 2016

It would take too long to remember everybody who the former Top Gear and current Grand Tour presenter has offended over the years. In fact, if you haven't been insulted by Clarkson so far, you're probably related to the man without knowing or something.This facet of his personality is what lead to the break-up with the BBC. It wasn't Clarkson punching the producer in the face over cold food, it was the constant trouble that he got the British Broadcasting Corporation into. The situation had reached a point where the top executives thought having him around did more harm than good and got him off the show he's been presenting for so many years.They were wrong, of course, and the Chris Evans fiasco proved it beyond doubt. These days, Clarkson is Amazon's problem so the BBC top brass can only look at all the tomfooleries he's doing and be glad his name isn't connected to their corporation anymore.You probably remember the situation in Argentina a little over two years ago when Clarkson and Co. had to be ushered out of the country under the risk of the locals lynching them. It was all because of the license plate on Jeremy's Porsche that could have been interpreted as a nod to the Falklands war.Well, if that incident left some room for interpretation - even though the coincidence was simply too great for anyone to buy BBC's story that it wasn't intentional - Clarkson's latest row witht he Argentinians was as blunt as they come.Overwhelmed by the Christmas spirit, the British TV man wrote a Twitter message wishing everybody a "Happy Christmas." He then remembered Argentinians celebrate this holiday too, so he added "Except the Tierra Del Fuego people of Argentina. You lot can sod off.Even if you never plan on going to their country again, insulting a whole nation is never a smart thing to do, and that's because it shows ignorance. It's the same as calling Americans "stupid" or Mexicans "lazy." Then again, we've already established that Clarkson is a troll that feeds on controversy, so...Argentinian newspapers instantly reacted, and they weren't kind with Jezza. The Mirror quotes Argentinian voice artist, Albert Canil: Jeremy Clarkson has needlessly insulted Argentines with his vulgar Twitter that made the headlines today. The electronic media have already reproduced the offensive message and, as the day progresses, this un-Christmas tirade continues to spread sowing ill not only against Clarkson, but against Britain. What a disservice this buffoon has rendered to the UK.To which Clarkson replied: "Nom, nom, nom" (not really).
SUV

Despite Toyota and mostly Honda making a lot more waves at the time, Hyundai was actually the first brand to offer a fuel cell car in the North American market. The hydrogen-powered Tucson was first introduced midway through 2014 and is still on sale, even though you wouldn't be surprised to know it isn't going too well.The problem with the Tucson is two-fold. First of all, the liquid hydrogen tank only provides enough fuel for 265 miles (426 km). That's less than what most Tesla models offer, and while refueling might take less than recharging, the number of stations providing liquid hydrogen isn't that great. There are definitely not enough to go cross-country, something the Tesla can do.The second problem is that the fuel cell Tucson continues to be built on the old model of the Korean. Whether it's ugly or not is up for anyone to decide, but it definitely is date, and especially so on the inside. So anyone interested in the Tucson Fuel Cell basically has to settle for an older-looking model that's confined to a certain area because of its short range and the penury of refilling stations.In early 2018, though, Hyundai is expected to launch the new generation. Apart from new looks, the range aspect will also be addressed with an increase of 30 percent to the current 265 miles. That would bring the SUV's maximum range to a still not very impressive 344 miles (22 short of that of the current Honda Clarity Fuel Cell).The report from Nikkei suggests the new vehicle will boast a $50,000 asking price, even though fuel cell vehicles are almost exclusively leased. Still, by comparison, the Toyota Mirai has a base price of $57,500 before incentives.
Since HRC re-emerged onto the off-road rallying scene after a twenty-three-year absence, Termignoni  the Italian exhaust systems manufacturer  has been united with the official HRC factory team. This year is no exception with the two parties reaching an agreement that will see their collaboration in the forthcoming Dakar Rally 2017.Thanks to the work of the Italian firms Research & Development department, the new Termignoni exhaust will help boost the Honda CRF450 Rallys overall performance. All bikes running for Monster Energy Honda Team will be fitted with new state-of-the-art silencers made from either stainless steel, aluminum, carbon, titanium or Inconel.The new pipes offer less weight while offering better performance along with a marvelous sound that will thrill bike racing fans everywhere. To top it off, it also looks cooler, giving the bikes rear end a more industrial, menacing look.The passion for two wheels that has driven Termignoni since 1969 has been a key element for the Italian brand in its return to the world of rally-raids. Consequently, the company has clinched top honors at the Dakar Rally on two previous occasions.The Italian exhaust expert company has been the constant companion of Honda HRC since the team made its comeback into rallying. Furthermore, Termignoni equips other HRC factory teams as well, including the MotoGP squad.Only a few days remain until the big rally commences, as the Dakar Rally 2017 gets underway on January 2nd from the Paraguayan capital Asuncion. After a 9,000 kilometer hardcore session across Bolivia (with a rest day in La Paz), the riders and crew will head on to Argentina where the race will finish in Buenos Aires on Saturday 14th.
Hondas research and development subsidiary has entered talks with Waymo  formerly known as the Google self-driving car project  about a potential collaboration, according to Honda.

Waymo, a unit of Google parent company Alphabet, is focused on further advancing autonomous vehicle software and sensor technology. Googles autonomous vehicle technology development dates back to 2009.

Honda R&D Co. and Waymo are negotiating a potential collaboration in which Honda would provide Waymo with vehicles modified to accommodate Waymos self-driving technology. These vehicles would join Waymos existing fleet, which is currently being tested across four U.S. cites  Austin, Texas; Kirkland, Wash.; Mountain View, Calif., and Phoenix.

If both parties agree to enter into a formal agreement, Honda R&D engineers based in Silicon Valley, Calif. and Tochigi, Japan would work closely with Waymo engineers based in Mountain View, Calif. and Novi, Mich., Honda said.

Honda previously announced plans to put production vehicles with automated driving capabilities on highways sometime around 2020.

"In addition to these ongoing efforts, this technical collaboration with Waymo could allow Honda R&D to explore a different technological approach to bring fully self-driving technology to market," Honda said in a released statement. "These discussions are an initial step that will allow Waymo and Honda R&D to further explore the potential of a broad range of automated driving technologies."
Sedans would likely remain as the top vehicle choice for patrolling built-up urban areas. But for suburban and rural areas, SUVs are getting popularity.

Julie Furlotte, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's national mobile assets manager, said in an interview with Automotive News that they are dealing with the same issue with police vehicles. According to her, the cars are getting smaller and yet there is still demand for more gadgets and equipment to be put into those cars. This makes it always a bit of a tradeoff and a challenge to make everything fit in.

The Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP), for example, operates a formidable law enforcement armada. It buys an approximation of 1,800 and 2,000 police vehicles a year. Its current fleet has 1,200-1,300 police-package sedans and 1,600 utility vehicles. Police authorities, like civilian drivers, also like the bigger vehicles' higher-up seating position and ease of entry and exit.

Sgt. Michael McCarthy of the Michigan State Police (MSP) precision-driving team - whose annual evaluation of pursuit-related police vehicles is the standard reference of annual evaluation of pursuit-related vehicles for police fleet purchases - told Automotive News that the larger the guy is, the harder it is to get into a smaller car. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is also buying a larger percentage of SUVs than they are of sedans. SUVs, he said, are very capable, have a fairly short turning radius, and are deceptively fast. And since automaker pursuit designations are a gray area, the MSP trials provide benchmark figures for acceleration, top speed, braking, and handling.

Police vehicle evaluation for model year 2017 can be found in Open Michigan's website. You may check if your favorite car brand and model is there. Included in the list are the following SUVs: 2017 Chevrolet Tahoe 5.3L RWD, 2017 Chevrolet Tahoe 5.3L 4WD, Ford Police Interceptor (PI) Utility 3.7L AWD, and Ford PI Utility 3.5L EcoBoost AWD.
Tom Campbell

How do you feel about Roy Cooper being the Governor-Elect of North Carolina? I have optimism that Roy Cooper will enact positive change for the State, and offer quality leadership. I am unsure of how a Roy Cooper governance will impact North Carolina. I am concerned with the direction which Roy Cooper will lead our State. Who is Roy Cooper? Hillary told me to vote for Ray Cooper. 45 total vote(s) What's your Opinion?



The best word to describe the year 2016 is unsettling. We barely had time to break our New Year's resolutions before the year crashed down on us.We knew it was going to be unusual when the General Assembly, hoping that our state could play a larger role in naming the presidential nominees, moved Primary Elections to March 15th, but things started unraveling on February 5th, when a federal court ruled that North Carolina's Congressional districts were racially gerrymandered and new districts must be drawn. Two weeks later Charlotte passed the LGBT ordinance that triggered a special March legislative session and HB2.Rapidly following were a plethora of court decisions, reactions from HB2, divisive and ugly elections, Hurricane Matthew, western wildfires, a spate of special and controversial legislative sessions and seemingly endless protests, all causing disequilibrium and preventing us from finding a new normalcy.There were bright spots, namely the passage of a statewide $2 billion Connect NC Bond referendum and an improving economy, but few will mourn the end of 2016.So let's look to 2017. Republicans hold political control of our state and will continue to flex their muscles. Look for frequent disagreements between the legislature and Governor Roy Cooper but lawmakers will override gubernatorial vetoes. We do expect some compromise on HB2, likely not a full repeal, but an attempt to stem the economic and image damage done our state. The legislative session will feature drawing new legislative districts, regulatory reforms, perhaps some minor tweaking to tax codes and putting more money into reserves to stave off the next recessionary period.Governor Cooper will push for Medicaid expansion but the legislature will balk. He will urge more increases in teacher pay but don't expect big movement; instead pay increases for principals will be enacted. Cooper will also advocate for a large Transportation bond package. It has some legislative support but is problematic for a referendum in 2017.Newly elected Republican Council of State members will assert themselves. Treasurer Dale Folwell will move quickly to reduce management fees and improve earnings on public investments. His biggest challenge is the state health plan, particularly the $30 billion unfunded liability and rising premiums. New Commissioner of Insurance Wayne Causey will face pressure from insurance companies to allow more flexibility and profitability. Most will be watching newly elected Superintendent of Public Instruction, Mark Johnson, armed with more powers than has been seen since "education czar" Craig Phillips.Court decisions will be prominent. Appeals courts will likely uphold the redrawing of legislative districts, however they might back away from requiring new legislative elections this coming fall. We will also see further actions on elections laws and separations of power cases. Court reform will become a big topic; expect legislative action.Look for big changes in Healthcare. The Trump administration and Congress are determined to repeal and reform Obamacare and federal changes will require state responses. The legislature is likely to ease Certificate of Need laws and relax regulations on Direct Primary Care, nurse practitioners and physician assistants.Our economy will continue improving, but gaps between urban-rural areas and among some demographic groups will grow wider. North Carolinians, wanting some respite from the tribal politics and ugly, partisan rhetoric, may find little relief in 2017. At the least we hope it will not be a repeat of 2016.
The recently appointed head of the State Revenue Committee (SRC) pledged on Thursday to crack down on what he called widespread tax evasion in Armenia and remove many corrupt officials from the tax collection agency.

Vartan Harutiunian said most of the countys 521 largest corporate taxpayers engage in tax fraud that costs the state budget some 42.5 billion drams ($90 million) in revenue annually. He said they hide almost have of their taxable earnings.

According to our monitoring, there is tax evasion in these 296 enterprises, he told a news conference. We are going to bring them into the tax field as a result of [better] tax administration or, if that doesnt work, through strict measures.

Harutiunian was careful not to accuse his predecessors of having turned a blind eye to tax evasion. He said he will not be looking into what happened in the SRC in the past.

Corruption within the Armenian customs and tax services has long been endemic. Many senior SRC officials are thought to have extensive business interests because of that.

Harutiunian said he plans to to fire corrupt and unhealthy elements from the SRC and hire at least 2,000 new tax officials. He cautioned, however, that the latter will be paid only between 50,000 and 70,000 drams a month.

I expect to find between 2,000 and 2,500 patriotic people in our country who will be motivated by a desire to change something in the country and build a better future for their children, rather than just to receive a salary, added the official.

A figure close to Prime Minister Karen Karapetian, Harutiunian was named to run the SRC in early October following a government reshuffle initiated by President Serzh Sarkisian. He until then managed Armenias national gas distribution network owned by Russias Gazprom energy giant. Karapetian was the Gazprom-Armenia companys chief executive from 2001-2010.

A source of frequent complaints by Armenian businesspeople, the SRC has a strong influence on the countrys business environment.

Karapetian has repeatedly vowed to improve the investment climate since he was appointed as prime minister on September 13. Meeting with the leadership of a leading Armenian business association on September 28, he said tackling the informal sector of the economy is critical for addressing Armenias economic problems.

Harutiunian confirmed on Thursday that the SRC will fail to meet its tax revenue target set by the 2016 state budget. He said the shortfall will total roughly 60 billion drams ($125 million). He blamed it on slower-than-expected economic growth.
29 December 2016 16:23 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

When the new prime minister took office in September, the Armenian government described then state of the economy as disastrous.

The social-economic situation in Armenia was certainly depressing, but the main intention of the authorities in this recognition was to fool their citizens and artificially create a positive image of the new government in the future. Thus, the authorities hoped to make the public consider every, and even the most minor economic change as an achievement of the government.

The member of the Armenian National Congress (ANC) opposition faction, economist Vahagn Khachatryan, says that the change of government was nothing more than a political ploy that had nothing in common with the economy.

The government needed to record a low base to start showing high numbers from 2017, said Khachatryan.

He noted that entrepreneurs talking to him complain that their sphere of activity observed no positive changes. Khachatryan is sure that Armenia's economy is now in recession as the negative dynamics can be seen during over the past two quarters.

The Armenian experts and economists note that it is necessary to ensure at least 7-8 percent of GDP growth to avert the coming default in the country. However, the realities show that the government did not manage to reach even the promised 2 percent of growth this year  it stands at almost zero point.

Secretary of the ANC Aram Manukyan in his speech in Parliament said that there are deposits in the amount of about $4 billion in Armenian banks.

This means that the Armenian rich people do not invest in business because they are afraid. If ten or twenty percent of these money would be aimed to business and trade, our economy would rise," he noted. However, the rich people understand unreasonableness of investing in the Armenian economy which is heading towards default.

The countrys only booming sector of economy is the shadow economy. Small and medium businesses are being eradicated by high taxes or bribery. Industrial enterprises have long ago turned into the victims of corruption, while the survivor ones are in the hands of foreigners.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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29 December 2016 14:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Alan S. Blinder

The United States, supposedly the worlds beacon of democracy, is practicing a strange form of it nowadays. One presidential candidate won nearly three million more votes than her opponent, who, with a big assist from a hostile foreign power, was nonetheless declared the winner. Anywhere else on earth, such an event would be called a coup detat. Here in the US, we call it the Electoral College.

It gets stranger. A Pew Research opinion poll conducted between November 30 and December 5, after the election had cast the usual victors glow on Donald Trump, indicated that only 37% of Americans thought Trump was well-qualified for the presidency, just 31% deemed him moral, and a mere 26% viewed him as a good role model. On the other hand, 62% thought he had poor judgment and 65% considered him reckless. And this man won?

Perhaps, despite his appalling personal attributes, Trumps positions on key issues resonated with the electorate. As an economist, Ill leave aside Trumps positively frightening foreign-policy views and concentrate on the economic issues that many pundits claim put him in the White House. In fact, judging by Trumps own statements and his cabinet picks, hes on the wrong side of almost every one. Its a sobering inventory.

Climate change: Only one economic issue poses an existential threat to life on earth. Yet Trump branded it a hoax during the campaign, and has picked a climate-change denier, Scott Pruitt, to head the US Environmental Protection Agency, which Pruitt, the attorney general of oil- and gas-producing Oklahoma, has frequently sued. This is not the policy the American public wants. On the contrary, polling data show that Americans concern with global warming is now at or near all-time highs. Americans really dont want Miami Beach or lower Manhattan to be underwater.

Labor standards: Trumps choice for Secretary of Labor, Andrew Puzder, is a CEO in the fast-food industry. Never mind that he uses crass sexual imagery to sell hamburgers. Whats more germane is that he prefers robots to human workers, doesnt want to raise the minimum wage, and opposes the Department of Labors attempt to raise the salary level below which companies must pay extra for overtime.

The public could not disagree with him more. Raising the minimum wage has been winning in polls consistently for decades, and by wide margins  generally even among Republicans. And when the labor department proposed its overtime rule in May, respondents told pollsters that the overtime threshold should be set even higher.

Health care: Repeal Obamacare became the Republican Partys mantra as soon as Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010. So, naturally, that was the position Trump adopted while vying for the Republican nomination. Now, as president-elect, he has picked Representative Tom Price of Georgia, an avowed enemy of Obamacare  and you might say of Medicaid and Medicare (which provide coverage to the poor and elderly, respectively)  to run the Department of Health and Human Services. Unfortunately for Republicans, they havent figured out how to replace Obamacare, so their current policy is repeal and delay. In other words: Call us back in two or three years.

Public opinion on the ACA is difficult to discern. Polling the name often gets slightly negative reviews. But thats misleading. For example, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted after the election found that 26% Americans favor outright repeal, while only 19% favor keeping the law as is. So does the public reject Obamacare?

Well, no. Among the remaining 47% who expressed an opinion, far more wanted to see the scope of the law expanded than scaled back. Even the Republicans know that many of the ACAs key provisions, such as ensuring that people with pre-existing conditions can buy health insurance, are extremely popular. I suspect that many critics of Obamacare are really RINOs: repealers in name only.

Tax cuts: One of the most consistent findings in American public opinion polling for decades is that people want higher taxes, not lower, on the rich and corporations. The Republican catechism, however, has long enshrined lower taxes on both, and this became one of the few concrete policies that candidate Trump ran on.

In fact, Trumps position is more popular than its polar opposite on only one economic issue: globalization. And on that one issue, Trumps embrace of trade protection, hostility toward immigration, and prevention of outsourcing to foreign countries is bad news for the entire world.

Nowadays, a narrow majority of Americans seems to side with Trump, rather than with traditional Republican internationalism, on these issues. Forty-nine percent of respondents in an April 2016 Pew poll said that US involvement in the global economy is bad, because it lowers wages and costs jobs, while 44% said that globalization is good, because it opens new markets and creates opportunities for growth. Close, but here Trump is on the right side of the electorate.

Thats the public opinion scoreboard on the big economic issues. Unless you put almost all the weight on hostility to globalization, Trump seems to be on the wrong side of every one. So how did the candidate who is personally disrespected by most Americans, and who takes the unpopular side on most issues, win the election?

One plausible answer, offered by Clinton and many others, focuses on the role of Russian cyber operations and FBI Director James Comeys unconscionable announcement (of what amounted to nothing) just days before the vote. Putin got what he wanted. Comey? I dont know.

Copyright: Project Syndicate: The American public against Trumphttps://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-economic-positions-unpopular-by-alan-s--blinder-2016-12

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29 December 2016 11:55 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Delegations of aviation administrations of Azerbaijan and Israel held talks on December 26-27 in Tel-Aviv on the proposal of the Israeli side.

The parties agreed the draft Air Services Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Government of State of Israel, Azerbaijans State Civil Aviation Administration reported on December 28.

The delegations further discussed the issues of bilateral cooperation in the field of air transport and reached agreement on operation of the scheduled passenger and cargo flights of the designated airlines of both countries.

The meeting was attended by representatives of the airlines of both Azerbaijan and Israel.

Azerbaijan is one of the few Muslim countries, which has deep political, diplomatic and economic ties with Israel. In this context, Azerbaijan plays a special role for Israel.

The two countries cooperate not only in trade and economic sphere (Israel imports Azerbaijani oil through the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline) but also had broad interaction in military and military-technical spheres.

During the recent visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in mid-December, the two countries signed agreements on standardization, double taxation and agricultural cooperation.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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29 December 2016 13:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

High-ranking officials of Azerbaijan and the Islamic Republic of Iran discussed the expansion of bilateral relations in various economic spheres within the official visit of the Iranian delegation led by country's Communication and Information Technology minister Mahmoud Vaezi.

Energy cooperation between the two resource-rich neighbor countries was high on agenda during a meeting of the Iranian delegation with SOCAR head Rovnag Abdullayev.

The sides spoke about the recent expansion of bilateral relations in various economic spheres, strengthening cooperation between oil and gas companies of the two countries, as well as an important role of reciprocal visits in this process.

Abdullayev said that oil and gas cooperation would continue to contribute to the economic development, mentioning that bonds among the oil industry experts of the countries are deepening.

Vaezi pointed out a rich experience of the two countries in the in the field, adding that the experience created great potential for the development of economic cooperation between the countries.

Irans Deputy Oil Minister for International Affairs Amir Hossein Zamani Nia earlier said that the Islamic Republic may pump its gas to the underground gas storages of Azerbaijan in the nearest future. The Iranian gas is expected to be pumped to the gas storage facilities of Azerbaijan (Garadag and Kalmaz). Gas consumption in Iran significantly increases in the winter season, therefore storage of Iranian gas in the gas storages of Azerbaijan is considered to be an interesting offer for Iran.

Besides, the two countries are implementing swap operations in the gas industry. Azerbaijan is supplying gas to Irans Northern provinces in exchange for Iranian gas to Azerbaijans autonomous Nakhchivan Republic. Also, the countries may resume the same scheme in the oil industry.

The intention of the sides to deepen cooperation in all areas was also reiterated during a meeting with Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.

The sides expressed their satisfaction on the successful development of cooperation in all areas, as well as the growth of trade turnover and investments, fruitful progress in the fields of agriculture, transport, tourism, industry and other spheres.

During the meeting the two ministers spoke about the construction of the North-South transport corridor and its importance. Noting the importance of trilateral meeting of the Head of States of Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia held in Baku on August 8, 2016, the sides discussed the next meeting which will be hosted by Iran in this format.

Trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Iran amounted to $175 million in January to November 2016, $130.13 million of which accounted for the import from Iran, according to the State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan. The country's exports to Iran almost doubled to $14.4 million in the first quarter of 2016, while imports increased from $19.4 million in 2015 to $27 million in 2016.

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29 December 2016 14:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The protraction of solution to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict will further weaken Armenia, the leader of the Armenian National Congress (ANC), Armenia's first President Levon Ter-Petrosyan said on December 28.

He noted that since 2007, and most intensively during the last years, the Armenian authorities conduct negotiations on the Madrid-Kazan-Lavrov version, which, in essence, doesnt differ from the phased variant of 1997.

Ter-Petrosyan said the Armenian authorities are negotiating on this variant with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries, in particular with Russia.

The politician noted that in accordance with this version, in the first stage the Armenian side returns to Azerbaijan five of the seven occupied regions. In the second phase, peacekeeping forces are deployed in the region. In the third stage the intermediate status of Nagorno Karabakh is proclaimed, said Ter-Petrosyan. In the fourth phase the blockade of Armenia ends, and communication with Azerbaijan and probably Turkey gets restored.

As for the position of the ANC, Levon Ter-Petrosyan said his party supports the implementation of this plan as the prolongation of the solution to the conflict will further weaken Armenia and the next solution will be worse than this one.

At the recent meeting of his party, the politician noted that Armenia is in a dire situation  poverty and migration grows, the army decays and economy collapses.

Ter-Petrosyan is sure that the Armenian authorities by all means try to preserve the status quo in Karabakh [the occupied region of Azerbaijan]. This, of course, isolates Armenia from the world, and even more harms the peoples wellbeing.

Azerbaijan and Armenia for over two decades have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenian territorial claims. Since the 1990s war, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal, but they have not been enforced to this day.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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29 December 2016 10:35 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

The 4th meeting of the All-Russian Azerbaijani Congress was held in Moscow on December 28.

The meeting was attended by Azerbaijani President`s Assistant for Public and Political Affairs Ali Hasanov, Chairman of the State Committee on Work with Diaspora Nazim Ibrahimov, Ambassador Polad Bulbuloghlu, more than 200 delegates from Russian districts, as well as state and government officials of Russia and Azerbaijan.

Opening the Congress, Ali Hasanov read out President Ilham Aliyev`s congratulatory letter to the event participants, Azertac reported.

The official highlighted national leader Heydar Aliyev`s services in diaspora building. Hailing the work done by the All-Russian Azerbaijani Congress, Ali Hasanov said the Congress has become an influential public organization which contributes to the promotion of multicultural traditions, spread of true information about Azerbaijan, and the strengthening of friendly relations between the two countries.

The Azerbaijani President`s Assistant noted that the All-Russian Azerbaijani Congress joins the charity events and carries out projects in the fields of education and culture.

Hasanov also spoke of Azerbaijan-Russia relations, stressing that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin attach special importance to expanding the bilateral cooperation and strengthening partnership between the two countries.

Chairman of the State Committee on Work with Diaspora Nazim Ibrahimov, in turn, said the meeting will assess the work done by the Congress over the past years and determine the priorities of future activities.

He noted that the State Committee remains committed to the policy of national leader Heydar Aliyev, which is continued by President Aliyev.

Azerbaijan`s Ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbuloghlu described the participation of high-ranking Azerbaijani officials in the Congress as manifestation of the importance attached by President Aliyev to the diaspora.

Bulbuloghlu hailed the attention of the Russian Representative Office of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and Azerbaijani Youth Union of Russia, which are headed by the Foundation`s Vice-President Leyla Aliyeva, to Azerbaijanis living in Russia.

Executive director Ilgar Hajiyev presented a report of the Congress, and highlighted the issues on the agenda.

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29 December 2016 11:32 (UTC+04:00)

A marionette performance of Leyli and Majnun mugham opera by well-known Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyli was demonstrated at the Marionette Theatre in Baku on December 28.

Azerbaijan`s First Lady, President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Mehriban Aliyeva, Vice-President of the Foundation Leyla Aliyeva and Arzu Aliyeva watched the performance.

Marionette Theatre was built in neoclassical style in 1880 using antique images and motives. It has operated under the Icherisheher State Historical-Architectural Reserve Administration since 2013.

Complex measures were taken to expand the activities of the theatre through support of President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Mehriban Aliyeva.

Marionette Theatre was first established in the mid-1980s in Azerbaijan at the initiative of director and artist Tarlan Gorchu.

Arshin Mal Alan (The Cloth Peddler) operetta, and Leyli and Majnun opera are major highlights of the repertoire of Marionette Theatre.

The theatre successfully premiered Arshin Mal Alan in France in 1990, then traveling to a number of other countries. Today, the theatre's tour map includes Germany, the U.S., Russia, Poland, Switzerland and other countries.

The opera Leyli and Majnun became a founder of the unique new genre in musical culture of the world, which synthesizes oriental and European musical forms, resembling a dialogue of two musical cultures of East and West.

This opera has been shown more than 20,000 times at the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater as well as in other countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Turkey, Georgia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

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29 December 2016 15:06 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Establishment of ASAN service was a revolution in the area of social service and social relations.

President Ilham Aliyev made the remark as he attended on December 28 the opening of ASAN Kommunal Center No 1, established to optimize management and enhance transparency in providing services to the population in utilities.

This itself is a massive progress and great novelty, added the president.

ASAN Service center was created by the presidential decree in 2012. The Service which already has 11 centers across the country provides venues for state agencies to render their services in a uniformed and coordinated manner.

The service could reduce extra expenses and loss of time for many citizens, upgrade the level of professionalism, ensure a larger use of electronic services and increase transparency and strengthen the fight against corruption.

The head of state noted that the effect of ASAN service is not confined to services provided at the centers.

In general ASAN service brought novelties into the relations between citizens and civil servants, said President Aliyev. It gave us even more strength in the struggle against corruption. It showed that it is possible to fight corruption and win. This is the essence and importance of ASAN service.

Citizens approve this service and expect such centers to open in their regions, noted the president.

We will do this gradually. In accordance with our plans, ten centers will be launched in our country, I mean in the regions, in 2018, added President Aliyev. This process will then move even faster.

ASAN service is also a social project as it provides services to citizens, the president said emphasizing that so far ASAN has got 13 million appeals.

Talking about the recent innovation concerning the issue of visa to foreigners -- ASAN Visa, President Aliyev hailed the factors characterizing the new service and its advantages, adding that creating the service was in fact a necessity.

"We are trying to attract more tourists to Azerbaijan, both for getting familiarized with the country and having right information about it. At the same time this is a huge contribution to the country's economy. Both hotels and public places are working, and this means currency is coming to the country," he said.

The head of state underlined that getting a visa to visit Azerbaijan was once a huge problem.

"We could not be satisfied with the situation regarding visas. There were not only lots of irregularities, but also groundless demands were put forward. In general, to visit Azerbaijan people needed to stand in a queue for months, they should appeal to the embassies and consulates of our country in other cities and it was not yet clear whether they would be given visas or not. Therefore, "ASAN Visa" was created in order to address this issue once and for all," said the president.

President Aliyev noted that the number of tourists visiting Azerbaijan increased by about 10 percent this year.

"The number of visitors from some countries has increased by 30-40 times. In 2017, this process will go even more rapidly," he added.

Citizens of 81 countries will be able to take advantage of ASAN Visa system, which will make life for many foreigners wishing to visit Azerbaijan easier. Visas will be issued online within three days without applying to state organizations.

The only thing to do, instead of going to the diplomatic mission and talking with foreign officials, is to enter requested details onto "ASAN Visa" and pay the proper stamp duty.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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29 December 2016 16:02 (UTC+04:00)

The leadership of the Azerbaijan-Japan Friendship Center in Tokyo met with Deputy Director of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Professor Akira Matsunaga to discuss issues of mutual cooperation, Azertac reported.

Chairman of the Japan-Azerbaijan Friendship Center, member of the World Azerbaijanis Coordination Council, renowned scientist in the field of electronics Khalil Kalantar spoke of establishment of diaspora organization by Azerbaijanis living in Japan, in March 2016.

He said that one of the main challenges of the organization was to establish relations with brain centers operating in Japan.

Kalantar noted that the situation in modern history, a number of important geopolitical processes happening in the world are the main factors stipulating strengthening of cooperation and sustainable development between Azerbaijani and Japanese peoples. He also highlighted the important role of joint action in providing real information to Japanese community about the Armenia-Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

He further said that the creation of the Department of Azerbaijani language at universities in Japan, establishment of joint library reflecting the ancient and rich Azerbaijani literature and implementation of other joint ideas could benefit to close cooperation between the two nations.

Matsunaga, in turn, hailed that cooperation between Azerbaijan and Japan intensified significantly in recent years.

He stressed that Japan is interested in further development of cooperation with Azerbaijan, which successfully celebrated the 25th anniversary of restoration of independence of his country.

Highly appreciating the suggestions put forward by the newly-established diaspora organization, Matsunaga expressed readiness of Sasakawa Peace Foundation for the realization of these ideas.

Matsunaga handed newly published book "The Turkic world" to the head of the diaspora, informing about his article in this book dedicated to Azerbaijan.

The sides exchanged views on areas of mutual cooperation.

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29 December 2016 17:38 (UTC+04:00)

The Children's Rehabilitation Center of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of Population was inaugurated after renovation in Baku.

President Ilham Aliyev, his wife Mehriban Aliyeva, and daughters Leyla Aliyeva and Arzu Aliyeva attended the event.

Minister Salim Muslumov informed the head of state of the work done here. The Children's Rehabilitation Center has been operating since 2003. The reconstruction work started here in 2015.

President Aliyev and his wife Mehriban Aliyeva viewed conditions created at the Children's Rehabilitation Center.

On the same day, a social rehabilitation center for visually impaired minors, social shelter for persons over 18 years of age, as well as a social shelter and rehabilitation center of the Labour and Social Protection Ministry were inaugurated in Sabunchu settlement, Zabrat, Baku.

President Aliyev, Mehriban Aliyeva, and daughters Leyla and Arzu attended the opening of the facilities.

The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the opening of the complex.

Muslumov informed President Aliyev and Mehriban Aliyeva about the conditions created at the complex.

The Azerbaijani President and his family members viewed the complex.

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29 December 2016 18:02 (UTC+04:00)

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is ready to consider an investment in the implementation of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project together with other partners, a source in EBRD told Trend on December on 29.



It is premature to go into any further details at this stage, said the source.



Earlier, EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti said that TAP pipeline project is of great interest as it will help the regions energy security and is deemed environmentally sustainable.



In the energy sector, the EBRD is well aware of the need to secure energy for Europe which is affordable and acceptable from the point of view of climate change, noted Chakrabarti. In this context, we are positive about the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, a project that develops the three characteristics of energy security, energy access and environmental sustainability.



TAP is a part of the Southern Gas Corridor which is one of the priority energy projects for the EU.



TAP project envisages transportation of gas from the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas and condensate field to the EU countries.



The pipeline will be connected to the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) on the Turkish-Greek border, run through Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in Italy's south.

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29 December 2016 09:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Russian embassy in Syria was shelled by terrorists again, according to the statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Sputnik reported.

Russia's embassy in Damascus has come under mortar fire again, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.

"On December 28, at 13:00 and 13:19 Moscow Time, the Russian embassy in Syria was shelled by terrorists again. One mine, which luckily did not explode, fell in the courtyard of the compound of the Russian diplomatic mission's administrative buildings. The second [fell] in the immediate vicinity of its territory. Sappers were involved to clear the unexploded ammunition," the statement said.

Expressing concern over the persistent terrorist threat to the Russian embassy and diplomats, the ministry said all terrorist groups entrenched around Damascus must be eliminated as soon as possible.

"This confirms the urgent need to eliminate such terrorist hotbeds as soon as possible," the statement said.

The ministry added that attacks on the Russian embassy in Damascus must be strongly condemned by all who counter terrorism in deed.

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29 December 2016 13:12 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The Parliamentary Constitutional Committee of Turkey approved a number of articles in the countrys draft constitution, a source in the Turkish Parliament told Trend on December 29.

The approved articles increase the number of seats in the Turkish Parliament from 550 to 600.

The draft constitution proposes to allow Turkish citizens to run for the post of the MP from the age of 18. Currently, the lowest age limit for this is 25.

One of the approved articles also offers to hold parliamentary elections every 5 years. Currently, the parliamentary elections are held every 4 years.

A Turkish citizen not younger than 40 and with higher education can become president of Turkey, according to the draft constitution. The Turkish president will also have the powers to appoint ministers and replace them.

The newly approved articles stipulate that the president-elect is not obliged to be a non-party nominee.

All the above mentioned proposals approved by the Constitutional Committee must be submitted to the Turkish Parliaments General Assembly. The constitutional amendments would then be discussed at two parliamentary sessions of the General Assembly.

During the first session, the four political parties in the General Assembly and the government would discuss the proposals as a whole and the articles separately, as well as any motions for amendment. The second session would be devoted only to the discussion of motions on amendments to articles.

If the draft constitution gets more than 367 votes, it can pass directly without the need for a referendum. However, the AK Party, the ruling party in Turkey, has said it will hold a referendum even if none is needed.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emphasized that he will push for a referendum even if the draft is approved by a two-thirds majority in the Parliament.

The changes to the constitution require a 50-percent vote in favor in a referendum.

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29 December 2016 14:55 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Working to boost its output and export levels to regain its market share, Iran is keen to increase its supplies to the worlds energy majors -- Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum.

The national oil company of the resource-rich Islamic Republic (NIOC) signed new spot oil export contracts with the companies to provide them with oil and gas condensates, while the talks on the conclusion of long-term contracts are currently underway.

NIOC director of international affairs Mohsen Ghamsari said that the company works to increase the level of supplies, adding that the first cargo of gas condensate and crude oil was sold to the companies earlier this year. So far, several batches with the total volume of nearly 1 billion barrels were sold to each company.

Commenting on the increase of oil sales to Shell and BP, the official said that he was optimistic about the outcome of the talks, adding that there are no limitations to reach the objective.

The country earlier offered some 52 new oil and gas development projects to be developed by foreign investors with local partners. The worth of the projects, which are offered under the new IPC format (Integrated petroleum contract), is estimated at some $30 billion.

Long-standing international sanctions cut Iran's oil exports by more than half to around 1.1 million barrels per day from a pre-2012 level of 2.5 million bpd.

The current level of production is close to 4 million barrels per day, almost the same as before sanctions were imposed.

The exception of the country from the recently-reached oil reduction deal by OPEC and several non-cartel producers became an oil diplomacy victory for the country. Irans oil production increased by 18.8 percent to 3.92 million barrels per day in January-September 2016, while its September output was the highest since late 1980s, according to US Energy Information Agency.

--

Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNews
29 December 2016 15:38 (UTC+04:00)

The Syrian government and armed opposition groups have reached an agreement on a ceasefire on Syrian territory and on readiness to start peace talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on December 29, Sputnik reported.



"It was just reported that today a few hours ago an event occurred, which we have not just been waiting for long, but which we worked a lot to make closer. Three documents have been signed," Putin said at a meeting with the foreign and defense ministers.

"The first document signed by the Syrian government and the armed opposition is on the ceasefire in the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic," he said. "The second document is a set of measures to monitor the ceasefire regime and the third document is a statement of readiness to start peace negotiations on the Syrian settlement," Putin said

The president added that the agreements on Syria are fragile, and require special attention and patience, as well as constant contact with partners.

Vladimir Putin earlier said that Russia and Turkey had agreed to an earlier proposal to bring together representatives of the Syrian regime and opposition in Kazakhstan.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has expressed his "readiness" to provide a platform for talks in Astana to solve the long-standing crisis.

Syria has been locked in a devastating civil war since early 2011. Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-torn country, according to the UN.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
29 December 2016 16:18 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

The candidates for the presidential election in Turkmenistan have started their pre-election campaigns.

The election is scheduled for February 12, 2017.

The countrys Central Election Committee (CEC) has registered nine candidates, who were nominated by political parties and the citizens initiative groups.

The Democratic Party nominated the incumbent head of state Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs of Turkmenistan nominated chairman of the Commercial Bank Rysgal, Bekmyrat Atalyev, and the Agrarian Party nominated Durdygylych Orazov.

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has been elected twice as the countrys president. During the presidential election in 2012, 97.4 percent of voters cast their ballots for Berdimuhamedov.

Turkmen president is elected for a period of seven years, according to new amendments to the countrys Constitution.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
29 December 2016 17:46 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Irans Industrial Development and Renovation Organization (IDRO) and South Korean shipbuilder Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Company (DSME) signed a MoU on the cooperation in the sphere of shipbuilding.

The document envisages cooperation in the development of Irans shipbuilding industry, as well as in complete overhaul of the ships.

Besides, the document stipulates establishment of a joint venture. IDRO is expected to provide financial resources, as well as primary materials and equipment for the JV.

Daewoo earlier signed a business agreement on operation and technology instruction for Iranian state-run shipbuilder Iran Shipbuilding & Offshore Industries Complex Co. (ISOICO). Under the deal, the Korean company will transfer technology and conduct consignment management on the Iranian shipbuilder.

Iranian Shipping Lines (IRISL) previously finalized a contract with another South Korean shipbuilding giant Hyundai Heavy Industries Company to buy 10 ships worth $650 million and develop technical cooperation on shipbuilding. The contract became the first one to purchase ships from South Korea after the implementation of the nuclear deal and lifting of sanctions.

Following the lifting of international sanctions Iran spared no efforts to develop a series of grand projects in partnership with major shipbuilders. The country has been seeking to cooperate with South Korean shipbuilders to modernize its aging dockyards.

Iran possesses a developed shipbuilding industry, chiefly devoted to constructing of oil tankers and container ships as well as offshore structures.

--

Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNews
A new 57,000-square-foot grocery store complex with a drive-through pharmacy and other retail space has been proposed for the corner of Grand Avenue and 54th Street West in Billings.

The Billings City Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Miller Building, 2825 Third Ave. N., on the proposal for the northeast corner of the intersection on the West End.

The eight-acre property is currently an empty field in front of a residential area in a growing part of town. The new Ben Steele Middle School is being built nearby at 56th Street West on Grand Avenue.

The city is requiring a special review of the proposal because of the drive-through window and potential for added traffic.

Residents in the neighborhood reported receiving notices this week of the upcoming public hearing.

In a letter to the city, Ron Isackson of CTA Architects wrote that the property owner, Bishop Fox Co. of Billings, intends to build screening around the drive-through on the eastern side of the store.

The drawing for the grocery store complex includes space for three other retail buildings and a gas station.

The special review permit did not indicate which grocery store was seeking to build at the spot, but the building design and other features are similar to Albertsons, the largest grocer in Billings.

Kathy Holland, spokeswoman for Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons, said the company is currently looking at a few different site locations for a possible new Albertsons store in Montana but declined to confirm where.

She added the company, which operates six stores in Billings, would release more information as details become final.

Isackson referred questions to property owner Bishop Fox Co., which could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

Albertsons last built a new store in Billings in 2006 at 511 Central Ave. The company expanded its store at 3137 Grand Ave., in 2008. That location was a Buttrey when it opened in 1992.

Wal-Mart built its first Billings store at 2525 King Ave. W., in 1993. It added its Heights store at 1649 Main St., in 2001.

Natural Grocers, in the former 12th Planet building in front of Rimrock Mall, opened in June 2012.

Lucky's Market at 1603 Grand Ave., was added to the West Park Promenade in 2014.
There are a few new fishing regulations for Wyoming anglers come Jan. 1. One that is most notable to me is that the minimum size that a tiger muskie can be kept will increase from 30 to 36 inches. Also, the creel limit will be reduced from three tiger muskies a day to just one.

In visiting with public information specialist, Bud Stewart, the rationale for the changes were based on statewide consensus of the fishery managers that tiger muskies were introduced into various water in the state to help control panfish populations. Removing the muskies by harvesting them, stifles the control efforts and helps the panfish to continue stunting, Stewart said.

If you are not familiar with the tiger muskie a little background information might be helpful. The tiger muskie is a sterile hybrid; the result of crossing a male northern pike with a female muskie. This hybrid has typical vigor and grows more quickly than either of its parents. Tiger muskies feed heavily on other fish.

Healy Reservoir northeast of Buffalo has received plants of tiger muskies since 2012. (Other waters that have received plants include Kleenburn Ponds, Buffalo Wetland Pond, and Ranchester Pond). It was the purpose of the plants to reduce the numbers of yellow perch in the reservoir, but there are anglers who doubt that the tigers have done much good at all. It seems that the yellow perch are just as dinky as ever, if not even smaller on the average.

My intuitive thoughts on this problem are diverse, but one thought is that the large muskies in Healy Reservoir will tend to feed on larger fish  what few large perch are in the reservoir, largemouth bass, and suckers  and ignore the hordes of small yellow perch swimming about.

That thought process is faulty, however, because there are five different age classes of tiger muskies in the reservoir. It would seem that the muskies introduced in 2014 and 2015 would be preying heavily on the small perch. Are those smaller sized tigers being wolfed down by the older tigers? That's possible, I suppose.

Oh well, onward and upward to other regulation changes.

Another change in the regs involves northern pike. Starting in 2017, aside from Keyhole Reservoir, anyone catching a northern pike in any other Wyoming waters is required to kill it. Again, this regulation is aimed at preventing this highly aggressive predatory fish from becoming established in any other waters in the state. Wyoming is hoping to avoid the problems that Montana has encountered with illegal introduction of northern pike into waters where northern pike weren't native.

Stewart also mentioned that anglers are required to kill any walleyes that they catch in Buffalo Bill Reservoir and any ling (burbot) in Flaming Gorge.

Another regulation that should be brought to light is the use of artificial beads on the line. Some fly fishers use a bead on the leader just above a nymph of some sort. According to the regulation, an angler can have such a bead on the leader as long as it is two inches or closer to the eye of a hook. If the bead is more than three inches away, it is considered snagging.

Suffice it to say, the regulation changes are not that earth-shaking so don't stay up nights worrying about them. One regulation that hasn't changed is you must have a current license in order to fish in Wyoming. Your season fishing license expires at midnight, Dec. 31.

Get your 2017 license before you head out to fish on New Year's day.

By the by, here's hoping you have a great new year; may 2017 be your best year so far.
Three days after his 19th birthday, Francis Crilley was killed in the Battle of Sugar Loaf Hill on Okinawa. The date was May 20, 1945.

Francis Crilley was raised in Mauch Chunk, Pa., now named Jim Thorpe. His brother-in-law, Stewart Miller, spent the majority of his life in Billings. Miller wrote home to his wife while serving in World War II that he visited her brother's grave, located in a graveyard lined with white crosses in Okinawa.

Fran Snyder of Laurel has kept her father's letters and some of the material about the uncle she never knew but whom she was named for.

In The Billings Gazette's "World At War" series, most of the recollections and words come from soldiers who survived the war and returned home. This is the story of one Marine who came home in 1949 in a coffin to be buried in Long Island National Cemetery.

Arrival overseas

Dec. 27, 1944

Hello Elinor,

... I want to thank you for the very nice letter you sent me. Also for the card. I'm glad you liked the bracelet I gave you, they have beads around here, but the natives like to become rich on everything they sell you. They are far from stupid when it comes to money.

... Well Elinor, I hope you had a nice Christmas. They made a tree over here out of coconut palms and decorated it with red and green tin cans. It at least gave us the idea of a tree anyway. Sorry I can't hurry home, but with plenty of luck, I may be able to get there by next Christmas. I hope so anyway!

Must sign off now as it is getting dark. I hope you do good in school and all the family is well. So long and take it easy.

Francis

Killed in action

WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM

June 4, 1945

Mrs. Harriet N. Crilley, Mother

Deeply regret to inform you that your son private first class Francis Crilley USMCR was killed in action 20 May 1945 at Okinawa Island Ryuku Islands in the performance of his duty and service of his country. When information is received regarding burial you will be notified. To prevent possible aid to our enemies do not divulge the name of his ship or station. Please accept my heartfelt sympathy.

A A Vandegrift, General USMC Commandant of The Marine

10:10 PM

'Met his death bravely'

July 17, 1945

Chaplain's Office, Fourth Marines Sixth Marine Division

Dear Mrs. Crilley:

I trust you will understand and excuse this long delay in writing to you about your son, Francis. The campaign was a long one and our regiment a busy one throughout. I understand your grief and I pray that these few words may bring you some degree of comfort in your sorrow.

Your son met his death very bravely during the fierce struggle on Sugar Loaf Hill. At night, his company was under an enemy counter attack. A boy called for help in the next foxhole. Francis left his position to go to his aid, thus exposing himself to rifle fire. He was killed instantly, while in the act of helping a fallen comrade.

Like all of his comrades killed in action, he was buried with full Catholic ceremonies in the Sixth Marine Division Cemetery on the island of Okinawa. It is beautiful, overlooking the East China Sea. The graves are marked with white crosses and the names of the men are inscribed. A full military and memorial ceremony was held on July 4th to honor these men who were so brave.

Francis was a splendid Catholic boy. He attended mass and Holy Communion regularly before the operation and at every opportunity he had during it. I know that he was well prepared and the reward of his sacrifice is great.

His officers and all his buddies praised him highly and liked him very much. He was always friendly, cheerful, did his work well and was an example of a good Catholic and a good Marine.

I offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for him and shall continue to offer Requiem Masses for him. I shall remember too, in my prayers, you and his loves ones that God may strengthen and comfort you under this burden of sorrow.

The officers and men of our regiment join me in expressing our deepest sympathy.

Sincerely,

William F. O'Neill, Chaplain

'A darn good man'

Francis's brother, Hadley, who was part of the Omaha Beach invasion, wrote to the Marines in Okinawa, wanting to know how his brother had died. On July 17, 1945, the same day as Father O'Neill had written Harriet Crilley, Sidney S. Secrist wrote to Hayden Crilley:

Dear Hayden:

Our commanding officer has passed your letter to me as I am one of the few left out of the old Third Platoon which, by the way, happened to be Frank's platoon. He was a Browning Automatic Rifle man in my squad and I might add a darn good man.

As to how he was killed, Frank was shot through the heart on the reverse slope of "Sugar Loaf Hill" which you no doubt know to be one of the most bitterly contested pieces of terrain on Okinawa.

It was about midnight of May 20 or 21st when we caught our infiltration attack from Jap troops, which we had bypassed earlier that day. It was during this attack that Frank left his foxhole for more ammo and grenades from the platoon.

When he returned, he found two of the enemy in his foxhole. His foxhole buddy Clarence Grey had been wounded shortly before Frank had returned. Frank opened up about four feet from his hole, killing one of the enemy. The other one got him. We got the Jap.

Frank was a quiet and very well liked fellow by everyone who knew him. Frank was the type of man who we will never get a replacement for.

He was buried in the Sixth Division Cemetery alongside many more of our boys. The cemetery was dedicated with full military honors on July 4, 1945. I had the privilege of being there and I also saw Frank's grave.

Hoping this letter has given you all the information you desired.

Okinawa burial

A few months later, Stewart Miller, Crilley's brother-in-law, visited the grave and wrote home:

A week ago yesterday, I had the opportunity to go ashore at Okinawa ... While I was there I had one thing uppermost in mind  that was to go to Frank's grave. I was really surprised to see the lovely place the Marines put up in memory of all our boys who died in that battle. We had a few pictures taken and hope to show them to you all someday.

For the few days while in Yokohama, we had liberty and that gave me a good chance to look that place over, and it's just one helluva mess. Saw plenty of worthwhile things, and I guess plenty that I or plenty other fellows won't forget too soon. Someday I hope to tell you all about them.

Return home

Feb. 16, 1949

WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM

Mrs. Harriet N. Crilley:

Please be advised remains of the late PFC Francis Crilley are en route to the United States. Our records indicate you wish remains buried in Long Island National Cemetery, Farmingdale, New York. We cannot give a definite delivery date but superintendent of national cemetery will notify you by telegram giving date and hour funeral services will be held in sufficient time to permit your attendance at your own expense. It is expected that an interval from five days to four weeks will elapse before funeral can take place. Military escort will accompany remains to national cemetery. Payment of seventy-five dollars interment expense allowance is not repeat is not authorized in cases where burial is in a national cemetery. Appropriate joint military honors and religious services will be provided at graveside by veterans organization or naval personnel. Please confirm above delivery instructions within forty-eight hours of receipt of this message or submit new delivery instructions by telegram collect to distribution center one New York Port of Embarkation. We regret it will be impossible to comply at government expense with changes in delivery instructions received after expiration of the forty-eight hours. Include full name of deceased in reply telegram.

G.H. BARE, Colonel Quartermaster U.S. Marine Corps, 2:42 P.M.

Honored burial

March 17, 1949

WESTERN UNION TELEGRAM

Harriet N. Crilley:

Funeral services for the late PFC (Private First-Class) Francis Crilley scheduled for 10:30 A.M. sharp 5 April 1949 at Long Island National Cemetery, Pinelawn Long Island. Please advise religion. Please reply by telegram collect advising whether you will attend or not. There is no authorization for payment for travel at government expense to attend funeral services in national cemetery. Flowers permitted.

Metzler, Supt.
Having spent weeks learning to manipulate metal through the application of extreme heat, 10 inmates at the Montana Womens Prison graduated from the prisons introductory welding program on Wednesday night in an emotional ceremony that suggested something else had been forged in the workshop.

I know I can succeed because Ive seen the success. I've seen success on the faces of the other inmates in the program Erin Gravelin, an inmate and program graduate, said during the ceremony. I can show you the success in my weld.

The course began in late October and involved multiple four-hour lessons a week, many taught by Great Falls College Montana State University instructor Bob Baker. Inmates learned a variety of welding techniques, including oxy-fuel cutting, gas metal arc welding, flux core arc welding and shielded metal arc welding.

The pilot program was a collaborative effort between Montana State University Billings City College, Great Falls College Montana State University, the U.S. Department of Labor and Industry, the Montana Department of Labor and Industry, Montana Correctional Enterprises, Billings Adult Education and the Montana Women's prison.

At the programs conclusion, welds were examined and all samples presented by inmates passed inspection according to industry standards, Baker said.

"They just put their helmets down and went after it, he said. They were a great class, they really were. They really wanted it.

One of his students, Misty Cockrill, said that the ability to go out into the workshop trailer and focus all her thoughts on welding allowed her to forget her status as an inmate and feel a sense of freedom.

You feel like youre actually doing something good for yourself, she said.

Cockrill said the physical labor brought back positive memories of her youth growing up on a farm and said she hopes to continue her education in welding through a pre-release program.

For Gravelin's part, she said she never saw herself learning to weld before the class and ultimately went into it thinking she could use it to make jewelry. She said she's now less interested in jewelry and more interested in learning more about the craft.

"A person's weld is like their signature, it says a lot," she said.

Both she and Cockrill said they hoped the class would be offered for other inmates in the future because of the personal growth and feelings of self-confidence they experienced through the class.

As Gravelin described it, welding is a complex process that requires lots of information processing and problem solving. "You definitely have to be able to see as a whole," she said.

As he stood up to deliver a speech to the graduates, Baker began to tear up. "We made it," he said. "I was hoping I could get up here and not get emotional...I wouldn't trade it for anything, seriously."

Baker told the audience  made up mostly of inmates  that he believed the key to the class's success was the women's ability to feel good about themselves. "They had to start feeling good about themselves. All the books, the things we gave you, weren't going to work unless you began to believe in yourselves. That was the greatest thing I saw," he said.

"Now when you get out, you can wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and say 'There's one amazing woman right there.'"
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Last year, I stood in the middle of Browning High Schools cafeteria taking questions from earnest juniors and seniors. These government class students grilled me on my views of national current events, local policy issues, and even how they could influence decisions made in their own school.

The toughest question came from a young woman who asked how I got to where I am today, and how she, too, could build a bright future. I explained that I showed up for school every day, worked hard, and relied on support from my family and teachers who were always there to steer me in the right direction.

Montanas educators are some of the best in the nation. That was true when I was a high school student, and its true today. When students from all over the state are thinking critically and asking reflective questions, I see proof of dedicated educators.

Its our educators who have worked alongside me for the last eight years to make sure students have the foundation necessary for future success. Its because of the long hours, tough work and passion of Montanas educators that I get to say more students are graduating from high school than ever before, and theyre better prepared than any previous generation.

Together we can tout these successes because weve raised the academic bar for all students. Weve expanded learning opportunities for teachers, so they can learn and share innovative ways of reaching students. Weve developed technology tools that allow educators to identify students who might be slipping behind, and catch them before they fall.

Together weve emphasized college and career readiness by offering the ACT free for all juniors, expanded career and technical student organizations, and supported work-based learning opportunities so students get real-world experience while theyre still in school.

Together weve expanded school nutrition programs by serving more breakfasts, lunches, and summer meals to students who may not know when theyll get a good meal at home. Weve expanded Montanas Farm to School efforts so students not only have access to healthy options, but local schools are supporting our local farmers and food producers.

Together weve worked to address bullying and mental health crises in our schools and provided educators with more tools to help students who might be desperate for support. I can say without question that our educators have not only saved lives, but have given students a renewed sense of hope when theyve needed it most.

Together we have protected and enriched all public schools, a place where all students are welcome and will receive a high-quality education, no matter their race, gender, sexual orientation, economic status or heritage.

As I end my tenure as state superintendent, I thank Montana educators for their tireless commitment to making our state a better place and ensuring the next generation is ready to lead. Because of their work, Ive had the distinct pleasure of waking up each day over the last eight years excited about what our future holds.

Going from a student at Browning High School all the way to leading Montanas 821 public schools, Ive never been more proud of what weve accomplished together.
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The edges of Johnny Edwards' bass drum still shine silver, though most of the reflective covering that decorated the set of the drummer for the legendary Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys has since faded and turned green.

The thin design that snaked around the rim of his snare drum is tarnished but still visible, and the foot pedal on the hi-hat stand still works, though no cymbals remain to clash.

Johnny Courville III, Edwards' grandson, runs his hand over the bass drum's shell, pointing out the burns from where Edwards sometimes rested a cigarette while he played.

Those drums, which Courville has kept in Beaumont since his grandfather died in 1989, will be under a spotlight again soon, after being shipped to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville last month.

There, they will be put on display alongside other artifacts telling the stories of western swing, which Bills and band popularized.

"I think the world needs to see that," said Courville, a drummer himself in the Beaumont-based band Image 6.

He and his wife, Christina, sent three of the drum shells, Edwards' drumsticks and pictures of the band signed by members to Tennessee on Wednesday.

The next time he sees the drums he grew up watching his grandfather play, they will be in a glass-encased exhibit. That made donating them a hard decision, Courville said.

But after being stored in a shed at Edwards' home in Vinton, Louisiana, where he lived until his death, and then weathering two hurricanes in Beaumont, "they need to be taken care of," Courville said.

Edwards used the drums when he played with the band from 1938 to 1947, Courville said. "Those guys were rock stars," he said.

Their music "synthesized ragtime, traditional fiddling, New Orleans jazz, blues, Mexican songs and big band swing," and sold hundreds of thousands of recordings from the 1930s to the 1950s, according to the Hall of Fame and Museum.

Songs such as "Faded Love" and "San Antonio Rose" "are considered standards of country and pop music," according to the museum's website.

Wills was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1968, seven years before his death.

Wills and His Texas Playboys "were hugely influential on country artists who came later," curator Mick Buck said. "People sort of worshipped at the altar of Bob Wills."

The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, where they were praised for having "forced country music to open up in its acceptance of electric instruments" and ultimately influencing rock and roll with their "freewheeling spirit of stylistic recombination."

Edwards "was a hellion," Courville said, and not prone to talking about his past - his own grandson didn't know how famous he was until he was 13 and heard from friends at school.

Edwards told his family the occasional story about life on the tour bus or celebrating birthdays with the band in Wills' limousine, and while he didn't teach his grandson to play the drums, he offered suggestions and an example.

"I watched him play as a kid, so that's what I've done," he said.

In one of the pictures that Courville sent to Nashville, Wills sits on a horse with a cigar in his mouth.

His signature marks the bottom left corner - "Johnnie, my friend, I hope you keep this picture a long time. Bob Wills."

Now, Courville is ensuring it will be kept even longer.

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.comTwitter.com/LizTeitz
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After raising nearly $10,000 and the bulk of the supplies needed for his Eagle Scout project in just four months, Harris McGrade knew he was going to have money left over to put to good use.

McGrade, whose project was to refurbish the Beaumont Police Department's SWAT obstacle course, donated $3,635 on Wednesday to the Bryan Hebert Memorial Fund.

The 17-year-old's gift is the single largest donation made to the foundation, which was created to carry on the legacy and memory of 36-year-old Beaumont Police Officer Bryan Hebert, a 10-year veteran killed in the line of duty on July 8, 2011.

"Police are going through a lot right now, and I thought it felt right to give back in a different way," said McGrade, speaking both about his project and donation.

The West Brook senior decided on his project when a retired SWAT officer joined his troop as an assistant scout master.

McGrade said he had been brainstorming an idea for a year and a half before he landed on the course renovations. He and other Boy Scouts worked on the project from February to April, said McGrade.

"It's a tremendous honor, and so heartwarming that someone, especially an Eagle Scout, is willing to give back to the community - especially our foundation," said Holly Hebert, Bryan Hebert's sister, at the donation ceremony on Wednesday.

The foundation awards scholarships to cadets who wish to attend the police academy at Lamar Institute of Technology.

Sgt. Bobby Anderson, a founding member of the foundation's board, said because of the support and generous donations received over the years, the foundation is able to give back to the community in many other ways, including sponsoring Eagle Scout projects.

The foundation will sponsor Eagle Scout projects as long as they are dedicated to at least one of the 17 Beaumont police officers killed in the line of duty since 1881, he said. Anderson said nine have been commemorated so far.

Because of donations like McGrade's, Anderson said the foundation even has enough money to send Vidor Police Officer Jeff Courts, a bagpiper who has played at first responders' funerals for two decades, to Washington D.C. to play at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial.

In addition to his donation to the foundation, McGrade donated $4,000 to Camp Urland in Woodville, a Three Rivers Council campsite.

SFlores@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/_saraeflores
HELENA  Authorities arrested two suspected burglars Wednesday after one of them was wounded in a shootout with the owner of a cabin north of Helena.

The owners of the cabin on the 4000 block of Little Wolf Creek Road arrived around 2 p.m. to find a black sport-utility vehicle outside and their house being burglarized. The suspects then confronted the homeowners, officials reported.

"During the exchange or skirmish ... shots were fired," Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said. "It's still too early to say who fired first."

After another armed homeowner called 911 to report the uninjured suspect trying to break into a vehicle on Recreation Road, the man was apprehended in a snowbank following a short foot chase with officers about three hours after the shooting. The man was not armed at the time of his arrest. He is described as a Native American or Asian man in his early 20s. His name has not been made public, but Dutton said the man is wanted probation absconder with a warrant out of Great Falls.

Officers later located and negotiated with the injured suspect near the cabin. He has not been named but is described as a white man in his early 20s. He was transported to St. Peter's Hospital in Helena for treatment of his injuries, the extent of which has not been released.

The sheriff's office used its new K-9 to help apprehend the suspects. The local SWAT team and troopers with the Montana Highway Patrol also assisted.

As part of the investigation of the incident, authorities will process the cabin for evidence and work to determine how many shots were fired and who fired them.
Here are 30 updates for ASC leaders to note from the month of December.

Shriners Hospitals for Children prepares for relocation plans featuring 2 ASCs

Los Angeles-based Shriners Hospitals for Children will participate in the Rose Parade on Jan. 2, 2017, as the hospital prepares for its new Shriners for Children Medical Center in Pasadena, Calif. The new location will include two ASCs, 20 outpatient clinic examination rooms and three fitting rooms for prosthetics and orthotics.

Aetna-Humana, DOJ attorneys stand behind arguments as antitrust trial wraps up

The antitrust trial over the proposed Aetna and Humana deal is coming to a close, with both parties' attorneys reaffirming their claims for and against the deal.

171k clinicians face Medicare penalties in 2017

CMS will penalize several clinicians in 2017 for not complying with meaningful use requirements demonstrating EHR use in 2015. The agency reported 171,000 physicians, nurse practitioners and other clinicians face a 3 percent pay cut from Medicare because they didn't meet MU requirements in 2015.

3 senior Olympus executives utilized their right to invoke the Fifth Amendment during questioning over internal company emails

In July 2016, news broke over Olympus' internal emails revealing the company told U.S. executives not to issue a broad warning to hospitals regarding a deadly infection from tainted scopes that was later linked to numerous deaths at major hospitals. The executives employed their Fifth Amendment right during depositions on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, 2016, during a civil case against Olympus.

Northwell Health completes 7th ASC JV; Acquires 70% stake in Suffolk Surgery Center

Great Neck, N.Y.-based Northwell Health purchased a majority stake in Shirley, N.Y.-based Suffolk Surgery Center, marking the health system's seventh joint venture of this kind. The ASC's nine physician owners maintain a 30 percent share in the center and Northwell Health bought a 70 percent stake.

CMS creates new Medicare-Medicaid ACO model

CMS created a Medicare-Medicaid ACO model to improve the quality of care and lower costs to the programs' beneficiaries. The model mirrors the Medicare Shared Savings Program, and advances efforts to collaborate with states to "transform" healthcare delivery systems.

SCA partners with The Surgery Center at Doral

Deerfield, Ill.-based Surgical Care Affiliates entered into a partnership with The Surgery Center at Doral (Fla.). The Surgery Center at Doral includes 10 physicians focused on orthopedics, podiatry, spine, pain management and general surgery.

Nobilis Health voluntarily delists from Toronto Stock Exchange

Houston-based Nobilis Health is voluntarily delisting from the Toronto Stock Exchange. Nobilis will delist its shares at the close of the markets on Dec. 30, 2016. The TSX delisting will not impact Nobilis' listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

Tenet Healthcare pens deal with Centene, renews contract with UnitedHealth

Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare signed a deal with Centene as well as renewed and extended its contract with UnitedHealth Group. Tenet's deal with Centene allows Centene members access to Tenet's ASCs, hospitals and employed physicians in 18 states. UnitedHealth Group commercial and Medicare Advantage members have access to Tenet's hospitals, ASCs and employed physicians.

Physicians Endoscopy acquires majority ownership in ACCESS Surgery Center

Jamison, Pa.-based Physicians Endoscopy is joint venturing with ACCESS Surgery Center physicians to acquire a majority stake in the ASC in Egg Harbor Township, N.J. Through the partnership, ACCESS Surgery Center is PE's 42nd ASC and fifth partnership in New Jersey.

Parkview Medical Center unveils multimillion-dollar expansion plans featuring surgery center

Pueblo, Colo.-based Parkview Medical Center is planning a multimillion-dollar expansion which includes building a surgery center. The nonprofit hospital also plans to double the size of its emergency room and build an employee parking lot.

ACA enrollment surges to 6.4M

Despite news swirling about an ACA repeal, nearly 6.4 million Americans purchased coverage under the ACA. This year, 400,000 more Americans bought coverage, compared to 2015.

ACA premium subsidies to total $42.6B next year, up $9.8B

A Center for Health and Economy analysis found premiums may reach double-digits in 2017. The study estimated premium subsidies under the ACA will increase by $9.8 billion, increasing from $32.8 billion in 2016 to $42.6 billion next year.

Physicians Surgery Center in Tennessee to add 14k square feet

Jackson-based West Tennessee Bone & Joint Clinic partnered with Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Physicians Surgery Center to expand the ASC. The expansion will add 14,000 square feet to the facility, creating a 25,000-square-foot, dual-use facility when the project is complete.

Mayo Clinic shows overlapping surgeries can work at a high volume referral center

A new study published in the Annals of Surgery examines overlapping surgeries at a high volume referral center. The researchers examined overlapping surgeries at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Envision Healthcare's physician services division acquires Alabama Neonatal Medicine

Greenwood, Colo.-based Envision Healthcare's physician services division acquired Alabama Neonatal Medicine in Montgomery. The deal will compliment Envision's current neonatal programs throughout the state in Huntsville, Mobile and Dothan.

President-elect Donald Trump picks Seema Verma to serve as CMS administrator & Dr. Tom Price to lead HHS

President-elect Donald Trump selected Seema Verma to head CMS as administrator and Rep. Tom Price, MD, (R-Ga.), to lead the HHS. Pending Senate confirmation, Dr. Price will be the second physician to lead HHS, following Louis Sullivan, MD, during the George H. W. Bush administration. An Indiana resident, Ms. Verma played an active role in vice president-elect Mike Pence's ACA Medicaid expansion model, Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0.

AMA endorses Dr. Tom Price's HHS secretary nomination, not all physicians agree

The American Medical Association endorsed President-elect Donald Trump's appointment of Tom Price, MD, as the new HHS Secretary, but not all physicians share that enthusiasm. STAT reports the AMA received several "furious tweets" on Twitter in response to the endorsement and 3,600-plus physicians signed an open letter published online titled "The AMA Does Not Speak For Us." The Clinician Action Network wrote in the letter.

The Joint Commission to lengthen ASC surveys, add survey team members in 2017

The Joint Commission will make changes to the Medicare-deemed ASC surveyor process for 2017. The accreditation body will update its guidelines to align with the CMS surveyor guidelines by lengthening the survey and adding members to the accreditation team.

ASCA applauds President Obama signing 21st Century Cures Act

President Barack Obama signed the 21st Century Cures Act, with the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association applauding the decision to pass the law that features two provisions impacting ASCs. Under the first provision, Section 4012, HHS will create a website allowing Medicare beneficiaries to compare their out-of-pocket costs and expenses for different procedures in ASCs and hospital outpatient departments. Section 16003, the second provision, provides protection for those physicians practicing in ASCs from possible penalties linked to the Medicare meaningful use program.

Global ASC market to grow at 4.4% CAGR to 2020

A Technavio report found a rise in minimally invasive surgery cases is driving the ASC market. The global ASC market could grow at a 4.36 percent compound annual growth rate through 2020.

Frontier Healthcare opens new multispecialty ASC in the Bronx

New York-based Frontier Healthcare partnered with ASMC physician group to open a new ASC in New York City. The multispecialty ASC opened on Dec. 5, 2016, with specialties including gastroenterology, orthopedics and pain management.

VA final rule allows APRNs to practice without clinical supervision; excludes CRNAs

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs issued a final rule that grants three types of advanced practice registered nurses full practice authority. The rule applies to certified nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists and certified nurse-midwives. However, the VA did not include certified registered nurse anesthetists in this list.

Premier ranks 1st in healthcare management consulting report

Charlotte, N.C.-based Premier, a healthcare improvement company, ranked as the top organization in KLAS' "2016 Healthcare Management Consulting" report.

PhyMed names Dr. Sam Nussbaum to board

PhyMed Healthcare Group appointed endocrinologist Sam Nussbaum, MD, to its board. Dr. Nussbaum has extensive experience in population health, quality, health outcomes, care management, data analytics, provider contracting as well as medical and pharmacy policy.

UnitedHealth Group to offer bundled payments for hip, knee & spine

UnitedHealth Group will participate in bundled payments for spine surgeries as well as hip and knee replacements in 2017. UnitedHealth Group plans to offer these bundled payments in more than 40 markets by the end of 2017.

Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act

Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act, which aims to promote biomedical research, but may also impose less stringent reporting requirements concerning industry payments to physicians. The 966-page bill features provisions that would lessen various requirements imposed under the 2010 Physician Payments Sunshine Act.

Statin drugs may improve surgical outcomes

UC San Francisco researchers found statins may yield better patient outcomes. Among patients exposed to stains, researchers noted a significant reduction in 30-day all cause mortality.

Baylor University taps Dr. Hashem El-Serag to be chief of medicine

Waco, Texas-based Baylor University selected Hashem El-Serag, MD, to be the next chair of its college of medicine. Dr. El-Serag is a professor of gastroenterology and hepatology at Baylor.

Anesthesiology Consultants, US Anesthesia Partners partner for anesthesia care in Las Vegas

Las Vegas-based Anesthesiology Consultants entered into a partnership with Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based U.S. Anesthesia Partners. Anesthesiology Consultants is an independent anesthesiology practice in Las Vegas.
Ransomware isn't a new phenomenon, but its growth throughout 2016 has made its prevalence known throughout the healthcare industry.

In fact, a July 2016 report showed the healthcare industry is hit significantly harder by ransomware than any other sector  approximately 88 percent of attacks hit hospitals.

Here are 12 healthcare-related ransomware attacks reported by Becker's Hospital Review this year, beginning with the earliest.

1. In January, Mount Pleasant, Texas-based Titus Regional Medical Center was hit with a ransomware attack that prevented the hospital's access to computer files. Read more



2. In February, hackers shut down the IT systems of Hollywood (Calif.) Presbyterian Medical Center and demanded a ransom. Initial reports claimed the hackers demanded the hospital pay 9,000 in bitcoin, equivalent to $3.6 million. Read more



Nearly two weeks later, Hollywood Presbyterian ended the electronic standoff by paying $17,000 to hackers. Hospital President and CEO Allen Stefanek claimed reports of a $3.4 million ransom were false. Instead, Mr. Stefanek said the amount of ransom requested was 40 bitcoins, equivalent to approximately $17,000. Read more



3. Two hospitals in Germany were victims of ransomware campaigns in February. Neuss-based Lukas Hospital did not have email access and was conducting business using pencils, paper and fax machines. North Rhine-Westphalia-based Klinikum Arnsberg hospital was also affected by a ransomware attack. Read more



4. In February, the Los Angeles County health department identified traces of ransomware on five of its computers. Read more



5. The Ottawa Hospital in Canada suffered a ransomware attack in which four computers became inaccessible to hospital administrators. No patient information was affected by the cyberattack. Read more



6. In March, Henderson, Ky.-based Methodist Hospital was hit with a ransomware virus that limited its use of electronic web-based services and prompted it to declare an internal state of emergency. Read more



After five days, Methodist Hospital emerged from the state of emergency and regained control of its computer systems. The hospital did not pay the ransom. Read more



7. Auburn, Ind.-based DeKalb Health suffered a ransomware attack that temporarily disrupted the health system's administrative computer system and forced it to divert patients to other hospitals. Read more



8. After hackers locked files at Kansas Heart Hospital in a ransomware attack, the Wichita-based hospital paid the ransom. But hackers didn't fully unlock the computer files, and they demanded more money to do so. Read more



9. A ransomware attack on Reston, Va.-based Professional Dermatology Care affected approximately 13,237 patient records. Read more



10. Keck Medicine in Los Angeles, part of University of Southern California, reported two servers were hit with ransomware in August, encrypting files and making them inaccessible to employees. The hospitals did not pay any ransom. Read more

11. After being hit with a ransomware attack, a failed backup system caused Marin General Healthcare District and Prima Medical Group to lose clinical information collected in a two-week window at the Greenbrae, Calif.-based district's nine medical centers. The incident affected 2,292 patients of Marin Healthcare District and 2,934 patients of physicians with Prima Medical Group who work with Marin General Hospital. Read more



12. A ransomware attack on Grand Prairie, Texas-based Rainbow Children's Clinic in early August reportedly affected 33,638 patients. An investigation later proved a number of patient records had been deleted. Read more



More articles on health IT:

New Hampshire psychiatric patient accused of breach affecting 15k

$15k in electronic, computer items stolen from Pennsylvania outpatient hospital

Cerner purchases Kansas City manufacturing plant
St. Ignace, Mich.-based Mackinac Straits Health System named Karen Cheeseman succeeding CEO to Rodney Nelson.

Here are five things to know about the transition.

1. Mr. Nelson will vacate his position after serving as MSHS CEO for 17 years. He plans to retire in July 2017.

2. Ms. Cheeseman will leave her role as MSHS' COO to become CEO in summer 2017.

3. She has 19 years of management experience, 16 of those years spent with MSHS. She was involved with directing MSHS' affiliation with Munson Healthcare in Traverse City, Mich.

4. Ms. Cheeseman earned a bachelor's degree in human resource management from Michigan State University in East Lansing and a master's degree in organizational management from Spring Arbor (Mich.) University.

5. She serves on the Michigan Health and Hospital Association Small and Rural Council.
Tupelo-based North Mississippi Medical Center filed a lawsuit against Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealthcare one week after the two organizations reached a temporary agreement over an ongoing payment dispute, Daily Journal reports.

NMMC said the lawsuit will not affect the interim agreement. Rather, NMMC's filing of the lawsuit in the Lee County Circuit Court is one of many actions the hospital is taking against UnitedHealthcare over the payment disputes, according to a statement the hospital released Tuesday to Daily Journal.

The temporary agreement, effective until May 31, will allow more than 50,000 UnitedHealthcare policyholders to access NMMC services at in-network prices. Under the agreement, UnitedHealthcare agreed to reimburse NMMC at in-network rates, while NMMC will accept the payer's payments in full sans balance billing.

In early October, the health system revealed its plans to sever ties with UnitedHealthcare over the payer's "failure to accurately and fairly reimburse" member services as agreed upon in its provider participation agreement.
Arlington-based Texas Health Resources and Richardson-based Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas signaled a thawing of their contract dispute as the two organizations agreed on a rate increase ahead of their contract's Dec. 31 deadline, The Dallas Morning News reports.

THR and BCBS of Texas have disagreed over THR's ask for a 5 percent reimbursement increase. BCBS of Texas said the increase would amount to $57 million a year, a cost the insurer said will affect consumers, according to the report.

While the two parties agreed on an undisclosed rate increase, THR and BCBS of Texas are still in negotiations about contract wording regarding a termination clause. If no resolution is reached, the impasse could leave 150,000 north Texas residents searching for in-network providers.

More articles about payer issues:

Study: Medicaid expansion linked to greater employment among people with disabilities

How Big Bang Health Mission Control is tackling healthcare's inefficiencies: 5 key thoughts

S&P predicts ACA marketplace insurers will see results improve in 2016-17
Following CDC guidelines and a national trend, several hospitals in and around Indianapolis are warning more than 8,000 patients of infections related to heater-coolers, a device used during heart surgeries.

Heater-coolers are medical devices used during some cardiac surgeries. In October, the CDC warned hospitals that the Stockert 3T heater-cooler devices made by LivaNova were spreading bacteria to patients and could cause nontuberculous mycobacteria infections. Officials urged hospitals that use the specific type of device to warn potentially affected patients they might be at risk.

WTHR reports the following hospitals are notifying patients of infection risks:

IU Health  6,500 patients at its Methodist and University campuses in Indianapolis and its Arnett (Ind.) and Bloomington (Ind.) hospitals

Roudebush VA Medical Center  430 patients

Franciscan Health  800 patients at its Indianapolis, Lafayette and Crown Point hospitals

Community Health Network  600 patients

Several other hospitals in the U.S. have issued similar warnings.

No patients in Indiana have been diagnosed with an NTM infection, the state department of health told WTHR.
Accreditation issues, antibiotic resistance and CMS' hospital star ratings piqued the interest of infection control readers in 2016.

The following are the 10 most popular stories published by Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality in 2016.

1. 10 top patient safety issues for 2016

The Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality editorial team chose 10 patient safety issues for providers to consider in 2016, based on the events and trends of 2015.

2. Joint Commission denies Virginia Mason full accreditation after discovering safety issues

The Joint Commission issued a preliminary denial of accreditation to Seattle-based Virginia Mason Medical Center in May after a surprise review revealed noncompliance with 29 standards. That investigation then triggered an investigation by state and federal regulators. The hospital regained full accreditation again in September.

3. Patient body left in shower for 9+ hours at Fla. VA hospital, report finds

The body of a deceased veteran was left in a shower for more than nine hours at the Bay Pines (Fla.) VA Health Care System.

5. CMS releases overall hospital star ratings: 12 things to know

CMS released its Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating program in full in July, assigning a one through five star rating to thousands of hospitals. In the first release, 102 hospitals earned five stars, while 129 hospitals earned one star, the lowest rating possible.

4. Untreatable superbug makes its way to US for first time: 6 things to know

A strain of E. coli resistant to colistin  the antibiotic of last resort  was identified for the first time in the U.S. in April, marking "the emergence of a truly pan-drug resistant bacteria," according to a study in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

6. CDC warns US hospitals of emerging, deadly yeast infection: 7 things to know

The CDC issued a clinical alert to healthcare facilities in the U.S. in June about an emerging, multidrug-resistant yeast called Candida auris that has caused invasive, highly deadly infections across the world.

7. CMS proposed rule for hospitals: Reduce antibiotic use or exit Medicare

In June, CMS released a proposed rule change to its Conditions of Participation , which would, among other changes, require hospitals to implement antibiotic stewardship programs to participate in Medicare and Medicaid.

8. Healthgrades names 2016 Best Hospitals: 4 things to know

Healthgrades, an online resource for information on physicians and hospitals, named its list of America's 50 and 100 Best Hospitals for 2016 in February.

9. Fourth UPMC patient with mold infection dies after outbreak

Che DuVall, who contracted a fungal infection after undergoing a double lung transplant at Pittsburgh-based UPMC Presbyterian, died in February. All total, four transplant patients at UPMC suffered fungal infections, and they are all now deceased.

10. Wrong-patient surgery risks Massachusetts hospital's Medicare funding

Worcester, Mass.-based St. Vincent Hospital was put in immediate jeopardy status with CMS in October after patient identification issues led clinicians to remove a healthy kidney from a patient earlier in the year. The hospital, owned by Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, submitted a correction plan to the state and CMS, which was accepted in November, meaning the hospital's Medicare funding is no longer in jeopardy.
HELENA  A 23-year-old probation absconder from Great Falls faces a charge of attempted deliberate homicide following a shootout during an interrupted burglary near Wolf Creek.

Prosecutors say Kaleb Edward Daniels tried to shoot the owner of the home he was burgling Wednesday afternoon. Daniels pointed a handgun at the victim and pulled the trigger, but the gun did not fire, according to court documents filed Thursday afternoon. He then reportedly tried to chamber another round.

The homeowner then shot Daniels' accomplice, Jory Russell Strizich, in the leg, authorities said. Strizich, 26, is hospitalized for a gunshot wound to his right shin. An arrest warrant has been issued for him on a felony charge of aggravated burglary.

The cabin owner shot Strizich, who was approaching him in a threatening manner while Daniels attempted to rack his gun, court documents state. The victim said he fired a warning round into the ground just before shooting again, striking Strizich.

The incident began when a husband and wife arrived at their cabin on the 4000 block of Little Wolf Creek Road to find an unfamiliar sport-utility vehicle parked outside and two men inside burgling the residence, authorities said.

Authorities launched into a manhunt after receiving a report of the shooting at 2:16 p.m. Wednesday.

After another armed homeowner called 911 to report Daniels trying to break into a home on Recreation Road, Daniels was apprehended in a snowbank following a short foot chase with officers about three hours after the shooting. He was not in possession of a handgun when he was apprehended.

Strizich was still on the loose at this time. While being questioned by detectives, Daniels said officials weren't "looking very hard" but declined to elaborate. Daniels also denied any involvement in a burglary or shooting, court documents note.

Meanwhile, members of the local SWAT team were called to assist in the manhunt along with a sheriff's deputy with a K-9.

Around 6:30 p.m., authorities found Strizich, who had broken into a cabin about a half-mile from the victim's residence. The SWAT team made contact with Strizich, who said he had been shot and needed help, court documents say. Strizich told officers he had been shot at the victim's cabin.

Daniels also faces a felony charge of aggravated burglary. He's being held on $100,000 bond.

Authorities had been searching for Daniels, who was wanted on two warrants out of Great Falls. He is on probation for convictions of theft and criminal possession of dangerous drugs, also out of Great Falls.

Strizich was not currently under supervision, but served time in prison for felony theft.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis voted unanimously to overturn a ruling from a chief federal judge in Minnesota that threw out a case against Medtronic related to its spinal fusion material Infuse, according to a Star Tribune report.

Here are five things to know:

1. Three plaintiffs accused Medtronic of securities fraud, according to the report, alleging the company took part in a scheme to hide the safety risks associated with Infuse and mislead investors. The chief federal judge in Minnesota threw out the case last year on procedural grounds, but the St. Louis court has revived it.

2. Lawyers for the plaintiffs, including West Virginia Pipe Trades Health & Welfare fund, Germany-based asset manager Union Asset Management and the State of Hawaii Employees' Retirement System, are pushing forward with the case, although Medtronic released a statement that it "believes the shareholder litigation is without merit."

3. California-based attorney with Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd Shawn Williams is representing the plaintiffs. His firm also represented the plaintiffs in class action shareholder litigation against Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth Group.

4. Both sides report a settlement isn't likely, and Medtronic released a statement affirming its commitment to "winning the case in court."

5. An appeals court in St. Louis also ruled earlier this month in a separate matter that allegations against Medtronic for fraudulent marketing of Infuse should go to trial. However, Medtronic moved to settle while denying liability in this case.
Volunteers from five continents came together to establish World Spine Care, an organization dedicated to providing evidence-based spine care to low- and middle-income countries. The organization aims to use resources and care integrated with the local culture, according to an article published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.

The organization's research committee approves and oversees projects that serve the underserved populations around the world and provides education to prevent spinal disability in the future. The article published in JBJS examines four WSC projects.

Medical mission trips have traditionally been short term trips that included surgeons and other medical professionals that completed independent projects. However, there is a "lack of sustainable evidence-based model of care."

Here are the four projects:

1. Establishing spine surgery expertise in Botswana, Africa: The project's goal was to find opportunities to advance the spine surgery training for orthopedic and neurosurgeons in sub-Saharan Africa as well as describe challenges for a Botswana-specific spine surgery program. There are few spine surgeons in the region and limited opportunities for surgeons to gain training in the future.

The project found the next generation of spine surgeons needs training and mentors as well as funding to complete spine surgery fellowships outside of Africa. One surgeon who went through the mentorship and fellowship process abroad returned to Botswana and opened the first spine center in the Botswana Ministry of Health's public healthcare system.

2. Case series of patients in the Dominican Republic: The case series aimed to describe patient characteristics in Moca, Dominican Republic and how spine pain can affect the quality of life. The researchers found navigating the country's ethics review board and the timeline of the project challenging. The cultural differences between the patient and physicians were also a challenging.

The study was paperwork intensive for the clinical staff, but they were able to establish a baseline of information about the patient population that can result in improved clinical protocols.

3. Culturally relevant patient-reported outcomes for low literacy populations: The WSC aimed to create and test patient-reported outcomes questionnaires for low-literacy populations, as they didn't perform as well on the traditional patient-reported outcomes questionnaire. The new questionnaire was given to 57 patients at two clinics in Botswana and conducted a follow-up after eight treatments or until they were discharged from care.

The researchers found patients were able to complete the questionnaire with relative ease and responded to symptom and physical function changes. The organization also developed an adverse effects questionnaire.

4. Musculoskeletal disorders in rural Botswana: This project's goal was to examine musculoskeletal conditions for people living in rural Botswana. The researchers visited Botswana three times in three years and were able to establish relationships for collaboration in the future.

The project hired, trained and retained a "small cadre of villagers" to participate in data collection.

"To date, the lessons learned include the importance of incorporating stakeholder perspectives, understanding knowledge transfer activities in other cultures and ensuring optimal organizational and mutual collaborative relationships among researchers, clinicians, local governments and local leaders," the study authors concluded. "With cooperation and funding, it is possible to conduct the research necessary to provide sustainable spine care programs that have the potential to improve the public's health and quality of life."
Church of Scotland of Rev Dr John Ross, a key figure in the re-opening of churches in the area then known as Manchuria, China, as a fragile handwritten public proclamation which has cast fresh light on the impact of a bloody rebellion on Scottish Presbyterians in China more than 100 years ago.

A fragile handwritten public proclamation has cast fresh light on the impact of a bloody rebellion on Scottish Presbyterians in China more than 100 years ago.

The striking document - about two feet long and written in calligraphy - was issued by the Court of Emperor Kuang Hsu after the Boxer Rebellion ended in 1901.

Described by the Church of Scotland as a priceless document with "considerable historic significance", it appeals for peace between religious believers and civilians, authorises the resumption of Christian evangelism and states that all churches in the north-east of the country should be reopened.

The proclamation, which is as delicate as tissue paper, warns "ignorant gangsters" that they would be arrested, tried and "severely punished without mercy" if they failed to return occupied properties to Christians.

The document, which effectively ordered the government of north east city Liaoyang to protect Christian activities, was uncovered in an archive at the Church's central offices in Edinburgh last month.

More than 300 Protestants and thousands of Chinese Christians were killed by a secret organisation called the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, who were opposed to the spread of Western and Japanese influence, during the 1899-1901 rebellion.

Protestant missions to China had begun in earnest following the Opium Wars of the 19th century, which forced the nation to open to western trade.

The rebels - known as Boxers because they performed exercises they believed would help them withstand bullets - killed western and Chinese Christians and destroyed foreign property during their anti-foreign uprising.

The peasant uprising ended when an international force of around 20,000 troops from eight nations overwhelmed the rebels.

Sandy Sneddon, Asia secretary of the Church of Scotland's World Mission Council, said: "When the document from the Court of Emperor Kuang Hsu came to light, we immediately knew it was something special.

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"The beautiful calligraphy is striking and when we had it translated, we realised this was of considerable historic significance. Our partners in China explained that the proclamation showed the respectful relationship the Scottish missionaries had built up with the Chinese authorities. After the violence and destruction of the Boxer Rebellion, the missionaries were free to resume their work of sharing the Gospel."

One of the key figures in the reopening of churches in the area then known as Manchuria was Rev Dr John Ross, a Church missionary from Balintore in Easter Ross.

He founded Dongguan Church in Shenyang in 1889, which was destroyed during the Boxer Uprising. It was later rebuilt and is one of the largest in north east China, with 30,000 members.
Googles Matt Brittin is confident his company will stay in the UK

Business and banking leaders have offered further commitments to the UK post-Brexit after growth in companies fell to a four-year low.

Google executive Matt Brittin and Barclays chairman John McFarlane praised the country's expertise in technology and financial services, saying this gave businesses a great reason to stay here.

The intervention came as just 39% of UK firms - the lowest figure since 2012 -surveyed by the Chartered Management Institute said they experienced growth following June's referendum.

Of the 1,118 business managers questioned, 65% were pessimistic about the country's economic prospects over the next 12 to 18 months.

Some 49% expect Brexit to have a negative impact on growth over the next three to five years.

Around 35% of bosses polled said they also "lack confidence in current leadership and management's ability to capitalise on post-Brexit opportunities".

However, Mr Brittin, who heads up Google's business and operations in Europe, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that the software company was looking to focus on "big trends" amid the ongoing uncertainty, such as getting more people access to the internet.

"The UK is starting with a lead in this area (and is a) world leader in e-commerce," he added. "So for us, there's great talent here in the UK.

"We announced an intention to create 3,000 more jobs in a big new investment in our facilities here.

"That's only because the UK is so good at the internet that we can support companies here in that growth agenda."

Mr McFarlane said it would make sense for the both the EU and the UK to keep a number of City of London services in their current location.

He added: "The City of London is here because of its competitive advantage and therefore that is the reason why people are here."

He added that Barclays was increasingly focusing on the UK and US markets.

In the Chartered Management Institute survey, three-quarters of those polled said skill investment would be even more important after the UK left the EU.

However, 20% claimed they did not receive the training and development needed to "perform their job effectively" this year.

Despite the gloom, only 25% were pessimistic about prospects for their businesses, in line with levels recorded by the Chartered Management Institute over the past year.

Some 57% were positive about their business's performance in the year ahead.
We continue our look at 2016, with a surprise in the US election and shoppers from Ireland flocking over the border

The Belfast Telegraph reveals that Bombardier, which employs around 5,000 staff in the city, is moving some of its operations to cheaper countries, including Mexico and Morocco.

Coffee and cakes firm Patisserie Valerie says it may open 20 shops across the island of Ireland, all supported by the bakery in the basement of its first Belfast store on Donegall Square West.

The European Commission orders Ireland to recoup 13bn (11.1bn) from Apple over a sweetheart tax deal.

Curran Court Hotel goes into administration and is placed on the market.

Mascott Construction - one of the most recognisable names in the local trade - goes into administration. It is quickly acquired by M&M Contractors, which fulfils the remainder of the contracts the company held.

Small businesses around Northern Ireland are feeling the head from post-Brexit currency swings, according to Conor Devine, the head of GDP Property Partnership.

Ulster Carpets announces record sales for the past year, while also warning of a degree of uncertainty because of the EU referendum.

Business Telegraph reveals the BP terminal at Airport Road in the city is going on the market. It is one of four terminals through which oil products enter Northern Ireland.
Sales are expected to have slowed at discounters Lidl and Aldi

Britain's biggest supermarkets are expected to have fought back strongly in the battle for Christmas shoppers as sales momentum at rivals Aldi and Lidl slows.

City analysts predict Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and Asda - the so-called big four - have all performed better than in previous years, when they have taken a hammering from the German upstarts.

Clive Black, of Shore Capital, said: "What will be more established as a trend to our minds is the better performance overall from the majors as a collective, with Tesco and Morrisons set to lead the way with possibly positive like-for-like sales whilst Sainsbury's will have Argos in tow - the former could be negative, the latter positive.

"Asda may just be showing signs of turning the corner after a tough 30 months."

Tesco is in recovery mode as boss Dave Lewis attempts a clean break with the shambolic reign of his predecessor Philip Clarke, while Morrisons is in the midst of a barnstorming turnaround under chief executive David Potts.

Asda, meanwhile, has had a torrid 2016, reeling off a series of shocking sales figures culminating in the departure of boss Andy Clarke.

Retail analyst Nick Bubb noted that trading performances have been reflected in share prices this year.

He said: "The Tesco and Morrisons share prices have done pretty well (up 38% and up 55% respectively), reflecting the recovery in their trading momentum, which has coincided with slowing momentum for Aldi and Lidl."

The German pair have in recent years notched up a series of record trading performances over the festive period, wiping the floor with the established players, and have continually seized market share from the majors.

But Mr Black said: "We think it (Christmas trading) will be a little less spectacular for Lidl in particular than the last few years as the chain has seen a big deterioration in sales momentum in recent months.

"For Aldi, it has had falling like-for-like sales in the UK for some time now, indeed Christmas 2015 was probably negative. Accordingly, it has a more favourable comparative than Lidl and so should come out a little better of the two.

"Both fascias continue to open stores apace and this new space is the driving force of their sales momentum."

Mr Black also expects Iceland and the Co-op to have had Christmas crackers, while upmarket favourite Waitrose may have run out of steam.

"Surprisingly, perhaps, the Co-op and Iceland may be amongst the stars of Christmas 2016. We also expect Marks & Spencer to do well overall although it has tough multi-year comparatives on a like-for-like basis. Waitrose may be losing a bit of puff," he added.
Lloyds Banking Group is believed to be preparing plans to ensure that it retains access to the European payment system and maintains its German and Dutch retail clients

Lloyds Banking Group is reportedly setting up a subsidiary in Europe to maintain access to the single market after Brexit.

The group is believed to be preparing plans to ensure that it retains access to the European payment system and maintains its German and Dutch retail clients, according to a report by the Financial Times.

Lloyds is the only major high-street lender without any subsidiary in an EU country, as it is heavily focused on the UK, but the bank has offices in Frankfurt and Amsterdam. It is understood the group is considering converting one of these two branches into a subsidiary. Lloyds declined to comment on the report.

The group has a mortgage branch in the Netherlands with around 8bn of loans, while it also has an online bank in Germany with some 12bn of customer deposits.

Financial services firms have been drawing up contingency plans amid fears the Government's Brexit negotiations will see the UK lose crucial passporting rights. These allows UK-based financial companies to access clients across the 28-nation EU. The rights have seen London become a hub for global firms looking to do business in the European Union.
Donald Trump after winning the US vote.

We continue our look at 2016, with a surprise in the US election and shoppers from Ireland flocking over the border

The victory of left-field Republican candidate Donald Trump sparks fears for US investment in Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Virgin Media completes its 10m (8.5m) deal to buy UTV Ireland, bringing the channel under the same ownership as rival TV3.

Ballymena-based pork business Dunbia is taken over by Cranswick in a multimillion-pound sale.

Former housebuilding tycoons Michael and John Taggart are found liable for an additional 4m (3.4m) personal guarantee to Ulster Bank as part of long-running legal proceedings.

Finance Minister Simon Hamilton announces that Invest NI will expand its global reach, with up to 10 new offices being set up over the next year as part of the Northern Ireland International Trade Plan.

The Sirocco site in east Belfast - due to be developed in a 300m project - is finally being sold to a new UK buyer, the Belfast Telegraph reveals.

A huge 30m revamp of Junction One is announced by new owners the Lotus Group, with the potential to create 500 jobs.

The closure of television company Irish TV's Northern Ireland office is branded a sad loss by one of its best-known stars, Malachi Cush, known for appearing on Fame Academy. Irish TV ended its operations in Co Tyrone after the parent company entered interim examinership in the Republic.

Supermarket giant Tesco says it has contributed 5.7bn to the Northern Ireland economy since setting up here 20 years ago.
People travelling from London Heathrow to Northern Ireland are to save 10 per flight under a cost-cutting plan. Heathrow said it was reducing passenger charges on domestic trips and claimed the measure would amount to a 60m saving over the next two decades.

Among the flights to benefit will be the eight return trips from the London hub to Belfast each day with British Airways, and a further three with Irish carrier Aer Lingus.

Earlier this year, it was claimed that giving the green light for an 18bn third runway at Heathrow would bring a significant boost to Northern Ireland's economy and could also lead to new connections from local airports.

Heathrow's new domestic charge of 19.10 a passenger is more than a third cheaper than it was throughout the year.

It proposed extending the discount until 2037 "as long as it is in the public interest and there is a justification".

Heathrow's chief executive, John Holland-Kaye, said: "Earlier this year, Heathrow promised to do more to help Britain's economy grow stronger. This morning, I'm delighted that we're able to come good on that promise with our new 10 domestic discount.

"Putting over 500m back into the pockets of British families and businesses will help to spur growth in every part of the UK."
CHEYENNE, Wyo.  The Wyoming Supreme Court says the public can be barred from the meetings of a Cheyenne panel discussing city employee pay.

The Wyoming Tribune Eagle reported Tuesday the court ruled the meetings are not covered by the state Public Meetings Act because the panel is a temporary body established by a City Council resolution, not an ordinance.

The Tribune Eagle had filed a lawsuit seeking to allow public access. A lower court ruled in March the city could close the meetings, and the Supreme Court upheld that decision.

The panel is called the Employee Investment Study Implementation Team. It was formed in 2013 to develop a new plan for a city pay structure.
Liam Neeson has lent his support to plans to build a 75 million film Hollywood style studio on Dublin's Poolbeg Peninsula.

The 200,000 sq ft Dublin Bay Studios would directly employ some 1,800 people and would exceed the size of the 40,000sq ft studio space at Ardmore Studios and 45,000sq ft at Ashford as well as the 70,000sq ft at the new Troy Studios facility in Limerick.

The proposal is currently being considered by Dublin City Council as part of the Poolbeg West SDZ and if it gets the go ahead would bring the number of sound studios in Ireland up to 25.

Neeson believes building Dublin bay Studios would enable Ireland to compete with the UK and US film industries.

The proposal also has the backing of Cillian Murphy who said most of his contemporaries were forced to emigrate due to the lack of opportunities.

Liam Neeson has lent his support to plans to build a 75 million Hollywood-style film studio on Dublin's Poolbeg Peninsula.

The 200,000 sq ft Dublin Bay Studios would directly employ some 1,800 people and would exceed the size of the 40,000 sq ft studio space at Ardmore Studios and 45,000 sq ft at Ashford as well as the 70,000 sq ft at the new Troy Studios facility in Limerick.

The proposal is currently being considered by Dublin City Council as part of the Poolbeg West SDZ and if it gets the go ahead would bring the number of sound studios in Ireland up to 25.

Ballymena-born Neeson believes building Dublin Bay Studios would enable Ireland to compete with the UK and US film industries.

The proposal also has the backing of Cork actor Cillian Murphy, who said most of his contemporaries were forced to emigrate due to the lack of opportunities.
Rachel Dean checks out the style in Victoria Square, Belfast

Kirsten McKenna (17)

Student, Cookstown

Monthly spend: 100

Wore what? Jumper, 40, jeans, 40, both Topshop; coat, 40, New Look; shoes, gift; bag, 40, River Island.

Why? I follow trends to make sure my look isnt outdated. My style is very girly, with lots of prints and patterns.

Who? I absolutely love all of the Kardashians, especially Kourtney. They take risks with what they wear and it works.

Megan Loughran (23)

Student, Ballynahinch

Monthly spend: 300

Wore what? Shirt, 60, body warmer, 100, both Jack Wills; jeans, 40, Topshop; scarf, 20, New Look; boots, 50, Next; bag, 120, Kurt Geiger.

Why? Autumn/winter style is my favourite. I love how lots of red and green comes back into fashion.

Who? Kim Kardashian has great style and she dresses so well for her body shape. I definitely get a lot of style inspiration from her.

Sarah Curran (22)

Student, Fermanagh

Monthly spend: 100

Wore what? Jumper, 15, H&M; skirt, 15, Warehouse; boots, 45, Zara; bag, 400, Michael Kors.

Why? My style is always very feminine and very relaxed.

Who? Millie Mackintosh has to be my style crush. Her look is cool and modern.

Judith Baird (21)

Student, Annalong

Monthly spend: 150

Wore what? Jumper, 16, jacket, 199, Barbour; trousers, 25.99, Mango; boots, 80, bag, 28, Ted Baker.

Why? My style is classic and simple. I love autumnal colours  I include a lot into my outfits.

Who? Blake Lively is classy and sophisticated. She is so feminine, shes the perfect style icon.

Lauren Hughes (19)

Student, Magherafelt

Monthly spend: 100

Wore what? Jumper, 30, Urban Outfitters; jeans, 42, River Island; hat, gift; scarf, 20, Fresh Garbage; shoes, 50, Dune; bag, gift, Prada.

Why? I follow seasonal trends and I love the cosy winter look at the moment  jumpers are so comfortable and casual.

Who? I admire Emma Stones street style, especially in the winter. She just looks so comfortable and laid back.

Jenna Bowen (24)

Paralegal, Larne

Monthly spend: 300

Wore what? Top, 12, Primark; coat, 30, Mango; jeans, 40, boots, 40, both Topshop; bag, 25, H&M.

Why? I would describe my style as cute and feminine. I like wearing colourful prints, especially floral.

Who? I really like Fearne Cottons street style  its simple and casual, but pretty, too.

Toni Middlesworth (17)

Student, Ballywalter

Monthly spend: 100

Wore what? Dress, 40, coat, 85, both Topshop; boots, 50, ASOS; bag, 35, Next.

Why? I would say my style is very relaxed but a little bit edgy, too. I usually wear a lot of black.

Who? I think Bella Hadids look is different. Even when shes dressed casually, she looks good.

Jenni Bonner (16)

Student, Letterkenny

Monthly spend: 50-60

Wore what? Top, 20, jeans, 40, bag, 45, all River Island; coat, 100, TK Maxx; shoes, 40, Vans.

Why? My look is casual, but still quite stylish  I shop at a lot of the top high street stores.

Who? I really love Rihannas look because its so out there. Shes so brave with fashion and doesnt care what anyone thinks.
For years, Deirdre Devlin has been telling those she meets outside Northern Ireland that she's from Narnia. No, she's not bonkers. The broadcast producer is simply proud to come from the same city as CS Lewis, who took inspiration from the east Belfast landscape of his childhood for his classic children's book, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

In turn, Glengormley-raised Deirdre has been inspired by Lewis, as well as the evening mists on her travels in Ireland, for her own children's fiction, The Fogmakers, and its upcoming sequel.

"I love children's literature best of all, as most children's books spark the imagination and take the reader to a completely different place," she says. "When you're young, you're totally open to this. The books I've loved best all my life are the Narnia books by CS Lewis. I remember being absolutely lost in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

"I've always found it inspiring to think Lewis came from Belfast and I've walked the streets he walked. I'm very proud he was a Belfast man and have been delighted to see his memory honoured, among other places, in the east of the city where he lived as a young boy. I think that's something we should all be proud of."

A youthful 50-year-old, brown-eyed Deirdre trained as a journalist in London after graduating from Queen's University in Belfast with a degree in psychology and a masters in political science. She began her broadcasting career in Belfast in 1990 as a reporter and worked her way up to the post of executive producer, looking after a wide range of factual content mainly from the independent sector.

"It was the right job for me; journalism is endlessly fascinating, meeting different people each day, being involved in different stories and meeting lots of interesting people," she says. "There was always an adrenaline rush to meet deadlines, which I really liked.

"But I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I remember. It would be a joy if I could ever make a living by writing books."

Like quite a few from her generation, Deirdre could read before she started St Bernard's Primary School in Glengormley. She grew up with her younger sister Orla (44), a former sales and training manager now training as an audiologist. Her mother Monica looked after the home while her late father Joe worked as a telecoms engineer.

"My mum and dad read to me from a very early age - these are some of my earliest memories and I have always loved reading as a result," she recalls. "There were always loads of books in the house. The very young books that were read to me by mum and dad have long gone but I always asked for books for Christmas and birthdays, and scoured jumble sales for more as I got older.

"I also inherited books when they were outgrown from various older cousins, so the collection grew. It was a wide and random selection but I loved them all. The first book I remember reading by myself and loving as a child was one of the Famous Five by Enid Blyton. Later on, I remember loving Little Women by Louisa M Alcott and shedding a few tears over Black Beauty."

Deirdre was in primary five before she discovered The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. She has read the entire Narnia series many times since and the influence is evident in her own well-written fiction, with its clear narrative and vivid sense of place.

In Fogmakers, mysterious creatures generate dense mist as a means of sneaking about on Earth, creeping into people's homes, "pretending to be shadows if anybody comes" and pinching knick-knacks to bring back to their secret kingdom, to teach their young about humans.

The action begins when some of the creatures turn out to have bad intentions. The idea for the book came to Deirdre while driving through Donegal at dusk.

"It was the time of year when a spooky looking mist hangs about 10ft above the ground," she remembers. "It struck me this would be exactly the right kind of cover for creatures to creep about unseen. The first day I sat in front of the keyboard to write Fogmakers, I wrote the title half a dozen times, then backspaced, then started again.

"It felt like the first dive off a high diving board and I was nervous about starting. I'd sketched out a rough idea and had a fair idea about the characters. But I knew I'd never do it unless I actually started so I just took a deep breath and dived in.

"The writing came surprisingly easily but you do have to write, then re-write, then re-write again. I knew before I started how the book would begin and end, but the fine detail came to me as I wrote."

Deirdre's keen eye for detail has resulted in a tale with a lush cinematic sweep. At one point, her young (human) protagonists find themselves in a huge, beautiful ice cavern with giant stalactites and stalagmites and sparkling white rock walls, but as they look more closely, the cavern takes on a more sinister air.

"It was as if I was watching a spooky film as I typed, as I didn't know what lay behind the columns either," the author explains. "When I write, I try to think how I might behave if I'm being faced with the strange, wonderful and terrifying things experienced by the characters in the book. I'm not sure I'd have been as brave as they were in the end however.

"Often, I was just as surprised as the characters. As the story flowed and the pace quickened, the process became easier but I was still constantly surprised by what popped into my head.

"It's harder thinking about sitting down to write than actually doing it - there are always hundreds of reasons to do something else. The most difficult bit is walking to the keyboard but once I start, I quickly become immersed totally in the world I am creating so writing comes fairly easily."

James Joyce, another literary hero of Deirdre's, didn't always find it easy to get his writing to flow, once complaining to a friend that he'd only managed seven words in one day, and that he didn't know what order to put them in. Deirdre first discovered Joyce while studying the Dubliners short story collection for her English A-level. He cropped up again when she took English Literature as part of the first year of her degree course at Queen's.

"That's where I first read Ulysses, which was a much more challenging novel," she admits. "Joyce was a genius and I'm proud he was from Ireland. Nowadays, I read a wide selection of books, mostly fiction.

"I'm currently reading two: Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel and The Versions Of Us by Laura Barnett. Like many people, I read when I have the time and love sinking into a great book with memorable characters and a strong storyline. Anything with a sinister mystery always works for me."

Deirdre named two of the characters (Holly and Emma) in Fogmakers after the children of two of her friends, and used elements of their personalities in her characterisation. She believes it's vital to lure kids away from social media and get them interested in fiction as a way to develop their imagination.

She says: "It must be so difficult for parents now with so many distractions for children. I'm not a parent myself so it's difficult to give advice, but I guess one idea might be to find out what your children are liking and following, and find a great book for their age group on that subject.

"The parent could then suggest if they love that subject they could learn more about it from the book and be better able to come up with interesting things to post about afterwards on social media."

She has recently completed Terror In The Kingdom, the "scarier" sequel to Fogmakers, which was well received on Amazon. This time, the writing process came with more ease.

"I knew my way around the creepy medieval world of the kingdom fairly well by that stage," she says. "What works best for me is setting aside a time that I 'must' write. It doesn't actually matter where I am. I use an iPad with a blue-tooth keyboard so the venue is immaterial. I have worked in the house, in cafes or in hotels if I'm away.

"The second book flowed much more easily than the first and there's a lot more action and definitely more weird and dangerous beasts in the forest.

"All the original characters are back; they're a little older and wiser now but pretty much the same as they were first time around.

"There are a few new Fogmakers, too, but readers of the first book will find plenty of the old ones."

Terror In The Kingdom is currently with a literary agent, who is pitching it to publishers. Meanwhile, for 2017, Deirdre's one wish is to make a living from writing full-time, a dream for so many fledgling authors.

"One of my friends once asked would I not be lonely doing that as I am a big people person. I answered truthfully that it's impossible to be lonely when writing as the characters are as real to me as my family and friends," she concludes. I think if you are blessed with a supportive partner and family and have great friends, which I do, then writing full-time would be a joy and a privilege.

"The feedback from readers has been the most important thing of all. To be able to write something that a child loves is just the most amazing feeling in the world and if I could keep on doing that, it would be quite something."
A heartbroken widow said she hopes speaking about her husband's experience will encourage more cancer sufferers to research other treatments aside from what the ones they're being offered.

Robbie Ryan (48) from Ballinderry, Co Tyrone, died two days before Christmas following a long battle with an inoperable and aggressive brain tumour.

Robbie, his wife Nuala and their young family were preparing for the worst after they discovered the tumour had grown back when pioneering medical treatment failed to work.

"He knew himself from October that this was going to happen, but we got to spend precious time with people that we needed to," Nuala said.

"He did go off peacefully, and he didn't really suffer."

Robbie, a keen cyclist and walker, was diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma brain tumour in September 2015.

Months after he went through lifesaving brain surgery at Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital, they discovered the tumour had grown back even larger.

The couple began tirelessly campaigning to raise 200,000 for costly immunotherapy treatment not available on the NHS.

Nuala became aware of the treatment after reading a story about Nicki Waterman, a fitness expert who was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and was in remission after receiving immunotherapy.

The pair flew to London in April this year to meet Dr Paul Mulholland, an oncologist at the Macmillan Cancer Centre at University College Hospital.

Each treatment costs around 30,000 and can usually take four attempts.

By July Robbie had undergone a number of treatments and the family remained hopeful when a scan revealed the tumour had shrunk. However, after he went through the final course of the immunotherapy drug Ipilimumab in August the tumour grew back, and the family were left with no further options.

Robbie died at his home on Friday surrounded by his loving family.

"It was two days before Christmas, but then when is a good time?" Nuala said.

"We've had our Christmas decorations up from the beginning of December and I was able to go to the kids' plays on that week.

"He died on the Friday, but we decided that the kids deserved Santa, and we did have Santa and we had a lovely day.

"Throughout all of this it was important for Robbie and I that our family wasn't affected by this.

"We made life as normal as possible and we got to do stuff as normal."

Speaking about the heartbreaking moment she and Robbie told their family that the treatment had not worked, she said: "I remember we sat the family down at the table and we told them what was going to happen.

"He sat there through that and I just thought: 'This is hard for me but it's bound to be even harder for you'.

"But he was gracious, as he was in everything that he did.

"We went on holidays and all the rest."

The couple had raised over 30,000, and now Nuala wants any funds left over to go to cancer charities.

"We have contributed to research in that we have made people more aware in Northern Ireland that there are other options out there.

"That is the legacy we would like Robbie to have - for people to realise that whenever they are told they have cancer and there is little available to them, that they can research and see what's out there and what other countries are doing.

"They shouldn't just accept what they are told.

"That is the message that we would like to get out there - that there are other options.

"We also can't commend highly enough the doctors and health professionals and all those who were involved.

"We have funds left over for his treatment and we're probably going to give these to charities which are related, such as brain tumour research, Marie Curie and the hospice - a lot of people have been there for us," Nuala said.

Robbie's funeral took place on Monday at St Patrick's Church, Ballinderry.
A man wanted for allegedly attacking and threatening to kill his ex-wife was found hiding in a wardrobe, the High Court heard today.

Police spent four days searching for Martin Dundon amid claims of two separate violent outbursts and trashing the woman's home.

The 43-year-old accused, of Glen Road, in Belfast, denies charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, burglary, criminal damage, theft, threats to kill and common assault.

During a bail application prosecution counsel alleged that he went into his estranged wife's home in the city on November 11 and started accusing her of having a boyfriend.

Dundon punched her twice to the face and caused 100 worth of damage to an intercom set before being arrested by police called to the scene, it was claimed.

Crown lawyer Kate McKay said he was released but returned to the flat later that month to launch a second assault as the woman made dinner.

She claimed Dundon grabbed her by the hair and throat, punching her to the back of the head before their teenage daughter managed to pull him away.

A TV stand and glass cabinet were among 900 worth of furniture smashed, the court heard.

Dundon, who allegedly stole house keys before leaving, was circulated as wanted for arrest.

"Four days later he was located at his sister's house in Ballymena, hiding in a wardrobe," Mrs McKay disclosed.

Both the alleged victim and her daughter have since withdrawn their statements of complaint.

Madam Justice McBride was told they felt it was not in their culture, as members of the Traveller community, to go to court.

Defence barrister Damien Halleron argued that Dundon should be released because of the withdrawals.

He claimed that if the alleged victim is not prepared to go to court the case against his client is "going nowhere".

But even though Dundon denies being at the flat, it was disclosed that fresh blood found at the scene has been confirmed as his.

Adjourning the bail application, Madam Justice McBride directed the Public Prosecution Service to confirm within even days if it plans to pursue the case.
A Labour peer from Belfast has accused Jeremy Corbyn of "helping to destroy" her party.

Baroness May Blood also criticised the Labour leader for blocking Northern Ireland members from standing for election.

"When you raise issues pertaining to Northern Ireland, you can almost see red mist coming down," the peer told a Radio Ulster interview, adding she "didn't think much" of London MP Mr Corbyn.

"He may be a decent man, but personally I believe he's helping to destroy the Labour Party, and that would be a sad day for this country," she explained.

Claiming the party was becoming a "victim of itself", Baroness Blood added: "Even before Corbyn, it was all about whether you were a Blairite, a Brownite, a whatever-ite, tearing each other apart. They deserve what happened to them, but we've got to pull ourselves back.

"If Theresa May was to call a snap election, Labour would have a lot of work to do."

The peer also attacked Mr Corbyn for failing to repeal regulations that prevent people running under a Labour ticket in Northern Ireland.

"Jeremy Corbyn will slowly come to realise we've got to be recognised," she said. "If we were able to put people up for Belfast City Hall (council elections), that would at least be a breakthrough where people are putting real ideas forward, rather than old mantras of 'here's the flag, vote for us'."

When asked about how she thought the Lords would vote on Brexit, Baroness Blood replied: "The outcome will be different. If Brexit goes through, there is the possibility that people try to do away with the House of Lords, which I think is rather silly.

"People think it's a talking shop, but it does tremendous work and I don't think the public really gets a hold of that.

"Worldwide, people are so fed up with politics and politicians. I often say, even about politicians here, that a whole lot of them speak for us, but very few of them speak to us."

But the peer stopped short of agreeing that a people's revolution was under way.

"I think people are just so disgusted by the system that when they get the chance to give it a good kick, that's exactly what they do," she said.

Baroness Blood was the first Northern Ireland woman to be given a life peerage. She is also the president of the Labour Party in Northern Ireland.
North Belfast MLA Nichola Mallon said that the cut will leave those suffering physical and mental ill health with virtually no specialist support during the complex appeals process

A plea has been made to Belfast City Council to continue funding an advice service that is believed to have helped thousands of people keep their benefits.

The Belfast Citywide Tribunal Service (BCTS) is set to close its doors on December 31, when its funding comes to an end.

Eight members of staff will lose their jobs when the organisation is forced to shut.

The service has been funded by Belfast City Council, with support from the former Department of Social Development (now the Department for Communities), since June 2013. It is based at the Ligoniel Improvement Association building in the north of the city.

The BCTS was established in anticipation of welfare reform to address the impact cuts would have on people in receipt of benefits, including disability living allowance and employment support allowance.

It also hoped to help those affected by the introduction of personal independence payments, which will replace disability living allowance by 2020.

The service provides support and assistance to clients appealing decisions by the Social Security Agency and can be accessed by anyone living in the city through any of the 21 council-funded advice programmes.

Gerry Tubritt, who chairs the Belfast Advice Group, said the body had provided representation at 3,203 appeals, helping people secure benefit entitlement totalling 9.6m.

"The funding that Belfast City Council has provided for this service has really benefited Belfast citizens, and we are very grateful that the council took the initiative to help meet this need," Mr Tubritt added.

"Many of those accessing the service are vulnerable, with a range of health problems, as well as physical, mental and learning disabilities.

"The service we provide helps make this (appeals) a much less stressful experience, and ensures that where possible the evidence to demonstrate that people remain entitled to benefit is gathered and presented to those making decisions."

Mr Tubritt also warned that the number of appeal hearings was set to dramatically increase between now and 2020. The Appeals Service, which administers the process, estimated there would be more than 32,000 such cases in 2017/18, and around 41,000 the following year as the process of reassessing the 125,000 disability living allowance claimants across Northern Ireland gets into full swing. In parts of Belfast one in five people receives this benefit.

SDLP MLA Nichola Mallon called on the Communities Minister Paul Givan and Belfast City Council to urgently reinstate funding for the service.

Ms Mallon said: "From 31st December, funding to provide specialist Appeal Tribunal support and advice across Belfast is to be cut completely. Over the course of the last three years, this vital service has protected over 9m for vulnerable people across this city that would otherwise have been withdrawn and have left many unable to provide for their families through no fault of their own.

"As a result of the cruellest aspects of welfare reform, which the SDLP stood steadfastly against at the Assembly and Westminster, the Communities Minister has revealed to me that appeals are expected to increase from 12,000 in 2017 to 41,000 in 2019. Despite that huge increase in appeals, the Communities Minister and Belfast City Council have still decided to completely cut funding and close the doors of the vital Belfast Tribunal Service.

"The net result is that many vulnerable people suffering physical and mental ill health will be left to navigate a daunting and complex appeals process without specialist support. That is unacceptable.

"All of this is at a time when taxpayer's money is being used to fund the 490m RHI black hole and the 13.1m Social Investment Fund overspend. Public money is being used to plaster over the incompetence of this Executive and the most vulnerable are the ones bearing the brunt of it.

"Before Christmas I urgently wrote to the Communities Minister asking him to outline what support he will make available to keep this vital specialist support service going. I, along with the thousands who need this service, await his reply."

The funding of the service was discussed at the meeting of Belfast City Council's People and Communities committee earlier this month. Councillors agreed then that a letter would be sent to the Department for Communities seeking a meeting with the minister to be attended by a cross-party delegation from the committee.

The matter is likely to be discussed at the next full meeting of the council on January 7.

People Before Profit councillor Matt Collins proposed a motion calling for the council to recognise "the important role the service plays in helping people across this city and understand that faced with the coming changes surrounding welfare reform, this service is needed now more than ever".

Cllr Collins' motion also urges the local authority to continue funding the service until other sources of money can be secured.

This motion is expected to be referred to the city council's strategic policy and resources committee.
The rescue operation at Cavehill after joggers David McCrum and Richard Lamont raised the alarm to help save a German student

Joggers David McCrum and Richard Lamont (right) raised the alarm to help save a German student

Belfast Lord Mayor Brian Kingston is to congratulate two young men who helped rescue a German student who fell on Cavehill in November.

The 20-year-old survived an horrific overnight ordeal in the freezing cold before she was discovered after plunging from Napoleon's Nose.

The men who spotted her and alerted the rescue services are to be officially recognised.

The Queen's University student had an emotional reunion with the two in hospital, who praised her as the true hero for surviving the trauma.

She was airlifted to hospital after being found by the duo, who were out jogging on Wednesday, November 23.

She told her rescuers that she had been lying there since around 3pm the day before.

It is understood the student was swept off the well-known landmark by a sudden gust of wind while taking photographs.

The alarm was raised after Richard Lamont and David McCrum found a handbag in the area.

Richard took the bag home so he could find out who it belonged to and return it.

After finding a student card, he contacted Queen's. It quickly got back with its concerns, as she hadn't turned up for lectures that day.

David then went back up Cavehill to where they found the bag, and found a coat and hat. To his astonishment, when he called out he heard a voice, and the rescue operation was launched.

Belfast City Council is now to officially recognise the two local heroes.

Ulster Unionist Sonia Copeland proposed to fellow councillors that the Lord Mayor forward a letter "commending them on the significant role" they played in the drama. The council agreed unanimously to the proposal at its last full meeting in December.

Now Mr Kingston will write to the men on behalf of the council and the people of Belfast expressing thanks for their actions.

Speaking previously after the pair met the student in hospital, an emotional David said "she now had a brother for life".

"She was in a hole which, I imagine, saved her life as that kept her from going into hypothermia," he said.

"She said a gust of wind took her. The cold air was passing over the top. She was lucky."

He added admiringly: "She is a true warrior with mental strength that is a credit to her.

"She survived 28 hours of hell. She is my hero." David said that it was the young woman's incredible mental resolve that helped get her through a freezing night on the mountain.

"Looking into the eyes of someone fighting for their life touches you," he told the Belfast Telegraph.

"I could not get that image out of my head until I saw her safe and well in the hospital."
A man charged with drugs offences relating to the discovery of an alleged 'cannabis factory' in Co Antrim is expected to be extradited from Spain on foot of a European arrest warrant, a prosecutor told Ballymena Magistrates Court on Thursday.

John Edward Bartlett (32), of Belfast Road, Comber, faces six charges relating to a drugs find at Raloo village near Larne on November 20 this year.

The charges include: possession of cannabis; cultivating cannabis at Raloo; being concerned in the supply of cannabis; producing cannabis; criminal damage to a ceiling and floor of a property and dishonestly causing electricity to be diverted at Raloo.

In the accused's absence, a police officer said he believed he could connect him to the charges and the case was adjourned to March.

No further details were given to the court but previously police said they recovered over 240 plants from a 'cannabis factory' in Raloo on November 20.
CASPER, Wyo.  On Nov. 8, Wyomingites went to the polls, and two out of three of them voted for Republican Donald Trump for president.

In fact, the share of Wyomingites who voted for Trump  just over 70 percent  was the highest in the country.

Trump won largely because workers in coal, oil and natural gas  the bread and butter of the states economy  were convinced that President Obamas environmental regulations were hurting the extractive industry. While most of America has prospered under Obama, Wyoming felt forgotten.

Wyoming is rural America, said Republican strategist Kristin Walker. And I think that that affected us at the national, the state and the local level, the feeling of being left behind. It shows in our energy industry, where we feel like our coal, oil and gas industries are getting left behind. I think this left-behind applies to our lifestyle, our values.

But Wyomingites didnt just elect a conservative president. They chose Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, for the open U.S. House seat. Cheney broke fundraising records and won a competitive GOP primary in August before defeating Democrat Ryan Greene in November.

Wyoming voters also chose a legislature with more men and Republicans than the previous one.

Perceptions about Democrats in Washington hurt Wyoming Democrats, said Sen. Chris Rothfuss, the Democratic leader in the Wyoming Senate.

A minority voice is essential to the democratic process, he said. And its unfortunate that national-level politics once again leads to these state and local results and a skewing of the caucus and representation, which is vastly disproportionate to state demographics.

Legislature

The Democrats lost one seat in the 90-member Wyoming Legislature, bringing them down to 12.

There will also be two fewer women than the current 12.

While the Democratic Party found 61 people to run for House and Senate seats, an increase over the last two election cycles, the GOP was able to raise more money and spent $150,000 on 17 targeted races.

Some prominent lawmakers were defeated.

Rep. Rosie Berger of Sheridan, the second-ranking Republican in the Wyoming House, was defeated in an aggressive primary in August by political newcomer Bo Biteman. Berger was going to run for the speaker position, and if successful, she would have been the first female speaker of the House in decades.

Rep. Mary Throne, the leader of the Democrats in the House, was also defeated in the general election by Jared Olsen.

Both women were accused of being too liberal.

One exception

Teton County was a notable exception to Wyomings political veer further to the right. The western Wyoming county was the only place where Clinton won the presidential election. The county picked Obama in the last two elections.

Support of Clinton helped other Democrats: An outgoing Republican legislator was replaced by a Democrat. Two new Democrats were elected to the Teton County Commission, resulting in the commission having four Democrats and one Republican. The town of Jackson selected a more left-leaning mayor. Mayoral races are nonpartisan.

Its the first time in years that local and state government in the county heavily weighted to Democrats, said Walker, the GOP strategist, who lives in Jackson.

I think we have more moderate, even liberal Republicans in this part of the state than in anyplace else, she said. In Teton County, we tend to think were more isolated from the energy economy than the rest of the state, even though thats not the case.
Nurses in Northern Ireland are now monitoring all pregnant women to establish if they have been the victims of genital mutilation.

An increasing number of women from countries where the barbaric practice is the norm are giving birth here.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a procedure where the genitals are deliberately cut, injured or changed.

It is carried out for cultural rather than medical reasons, usually on young girls between infancy and the beginning of puberty, and is illegal in the UK.

Women who have had the procedure can become dangerously ill during childbirth, so midwives here are now asking all expectant mums whether they are victims of FGM to ensure lifesaving precautions can be put in place.

Their answer is recorded in their medical records and care and advice provided accordingly.

However, the number of women affected by FGM is not recorded centrally by the Department of Health, and the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) has called on the Government to introduce a system to allow this to happen.

Breedagh Hughes, the director of the RCM in Northern Ireland, said: "It would be helpful for us to ascertain exactly how many women here are victims of FGM so we can decide whether a specific service is required.

"If a doctor has trained in England they are more likely to have come into contact with women affected by FGM than those in Northern Ireland.

"However, we are seeing more women here with FGM, and midwives are now trained to deal with that.

"Women are asked at their antenatal booking appointment whether they have been cut.

"It is important that this is done as early as possible because you don't want a woman coming into the hospital in established labour and finding out this has been done to them.

"It's not something you want to find out at the time of delivery.

"It can lead to a dangerous situation for both mum and baby.

"You might have a midwife encountering something they have never seen before in their life."

Not only do the midwives need to know how to provide proper medical care, but they also offer emotional support to women.

Ms Hughes added: "There are various grades, and if a woman is badly disfigured then she will require a procedure to allow her to be able to give birth.

"Midwives explain to the women and their husbands that they will not be put back the way they were after they give birth.

"It is illegal here, but some women can find that very upsetting, and it may cause difficulties within their families."

A Department of Health spokeswoman said officials were working with the Public Health Agency, examining the possibility of collecting FGM data from patients' maternity records.

Last summer Northern Ireland produced FGM protection orders.

They prevent travel by young girls who are thought to be at risk of being taken abroad to undergo the procedure.
A five-year-old who died on Christmas Day has been described as a "sweet boy" whose smile would light up the darkest of rooms.

Odhran Varney, from Glengormley, Co Antrim, died suddenly after becoming unwell on Sunday.

The youngster was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where he died.

Although Odhran had underlying health problems, his death came as a shock for the wider family.

His parents Nicole Gillen and Phil Varney are now preparing for his funeral on New Year's Eve.

The cause of his death has yet to be established. Odhran, who had Down's syndrome, was a pupil at Hill Croft School in Newtownabbey.

The school posted a tribute to the youngster on its Facebook account.

"The whole Hill Croft family mourns the sudden loss of this sweet boy," it said.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with his mum and dad and the whole family circle at this terrible time.

"Odhran was a pleasure to have in school.

"His smile would light up the darkest of rooms and would lift the spirits of anyone.

"He would come in every morning and have a wee sit down before taking Gillian's hand and sitting to work hard on whatever was placed before him.

"He started using his signs more and more.

"At Christmas when the singing Christmas tree came out 'tree' was his favourite sign to get the tree singing and dancing again.

"His roll book job was done with business like precision, at first with adult help, but in recent days very independently.

"We are all so proud of all his achievements.

"Words cannot express how much we will miss him."

His mum posted a poignant picture of herself with little Odhran smiling on her social media account.

Hundreds of people also posted heartfelt messages of sympathy.

One friend wrote: "So sorry to hear of your loss, Nicole.

"Thinking of you and your whole family at this time, my thoughts and prayers are with you all.

"Such a brilliant, beautiful boy."

His funeral will take place on Saturday at 9.30am in St Bernard's Church, followed by burial in Carnmoney Cemetery.
University College Dublin, which counts poet Anthony Cronin among its former students

The writer, critic and poet Anthony Cronin has died.

The Arts Council paid tribute to the influential cultural commentator and arts adviser to former taoiseach Charles Haughey, who died aged 88.

Cronin was a noted poet and critic while still a student in University College Dublin.

He went on to publish 14 volumes of poetry, the classic memoir of literary Dublin in the mid-20th century, Dead As Doornails, acclaimed biographies of Flann O'Brien and Samuel Beckett, the novels The Life of Riley and Identity Papers and books of essays.

He was described by the Arts Council as an iconic figure in Irish letters, an impassioned and incisive commentator on politics and culture and one of the most influential of Irish writers during a long and varied life.

Sheila Pratschke, chair of the Arts Council, said: "Tony Cronin was a rare example of the public intellectual in Irish life - committed, fearless, rigorous in his thought, and unashamedly forthright in his advocacy of what he thought right and good."

Cronin was central to the establishment of Aosdana by Haughey, the affiliation which recognises achievement by artists in all disciplines.

He was conferred with the high honour of Saoi by the organisation in 1993, joining the likes of Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, Sean O Faolain, Mary Lavin, Tony O'Malley and Brian Friel.

Ms Pratschke said: "Unfailingly courteous and generous in his dealings with others, and particularly kind to emerging younger writers, Cronin held himself to the highest standard in his literary production.

"The poems were ever and always at the heart of his work, being unashamedly modernist in their rigour, sometimes bleak, but always forgiving and always passionately humane."

Cronin was b orn in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford in 1928.

He was editor of The Bell magazine and also literary editor of the London journal, Time and Tide.

He wrote an Irish Times column Viewpoint from 1973 to 1980, which dealt with political, literary and social topics and has since been regarded as often prophetic.

The Arts Council said: "He believed in a Republic worthy of the Irish people, and was unstinting in his contributions to the public life of a country that often infuriated him but never lost either his love or his allegiance."

Cronin is survived by his wife Anne and daughter Sarah.

Heather Humphreys, Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, paid tribute to his writing and journalism and his work on fellow artists' welfare.

" Anthony loomed large in Ireland's cultural life, both as a prolific poet and an acclaimed author," she said.

"However, it is perhaps for his cultural activism and his work as an advocate for the artists of Ireland that he will be best remembered."

Ms Humphreys said the creation of Aosdana was a concern "typical of a man who continued to make a significant contribution to the public life of this country throughout his life".

Publisher New Island Books said: "The passing of Anthony Cronin is a great loss. We're proud to have worked with him for many years. RIP."

President Michael D Higgins said Cronin made an immense contribution to Irish life and sensibility.

"His version of the Republic was as one of a republic of ideas, international, informed and not bound by a single language," he said.

Mr Higgins praised his work as a critic and poet, introducing a new generation to "iconic and often eclectic neglected works of immense beauty."

"Sabina and I offer our deepest sympathies to his wife Anne, to his many friends in the community of letters, and all those who will miss his generous wit, contestatory humour and capacity for life in all its contradictions," he said.
Russborough House, seen here after a fire in 2010, was visited by more than 100,000 people this year

One of Ireland's best-known stately houses, threatened with closure last year, is to get an upgrade after securing half a million euro in funding, it has been announced.

Heritage Minister Heather Humphreys said she was giving 250,000 euro of public money to Russborough House, overlooking Blessington Lakes in Co Wicklow.

The grant to Russborough owners Alfred Beit Foundation is being matched by the Apollo Trust in the UK.

The foundation warned last year the house was threatened with closure unless it could create a 15 million euro fund to secure its long-term viability.

A controversial sale of "Old Master" paintings from its collection earlier this year is believed to have raised 7 million euro, staving off the threat.

Ms Humphreys said: "This is the first time in a number of years, thanks to the improving economy, that my department has been in a position to provide capital support towards the house.

"Russborough is itself emerging from a difficult financial situation and I would like to pay tribute to the efforts made by the Alfred Beit Foundation to put the operations of the house on a more sustainable basis."

More than 100,000 people visited Russborough and its 200-acre estate this year. The owners are planning to develop the attraction as a centre for education in the arts.

Reputed to be the longest house in Ireland, Russborough was built from 1741 to 1755 for Joseph Leeson, 1st Earl of Milltown.

It was left in trust to the people of Ireland by art collectors Sir Alfred and Lady Beit and is run by the Alfred Beit Foundation.
Dog walkers make their way through the heavy fog in Epping Forest, Essex.

Foggy conditions and sub-zero temperatures are set to hit parts of the country overnight after a day of travel disruption.

A hazardous combination of poor visibility and icy roads made for potentially "lethal" driving conditions on Thursday, the AA said, while airports in the South East suffered fog-related delays.

Flights were held up at Heathrow Airport and London City Airport because of poor visibility while Luton faced disruption after a technical issue in relation to air traffic control.

Temperatures are set to drop again overnight - to below freezing in some parts - and fog will thicken across central and south England, the Met Office said.

Forecaster Oli Claydon said: "We are expecting there to still be some fog, particularly in south eastern and East Anglia areas.

"Potentially not as widespread as last night in terms of geographical area and probably hence why there's no warning at the moment, but obviously keep an eye on that in case that changes.

"The South East corner and East Anglia are likely to see some fog over this evening that could be slow to clear tomorrow through the morning."

Elsewhere, conditions will be fairly cloudy and dry for most, the Met Office added.

Tunbridge Wells and Margate could see the mercury plummet into the minus numbers on Thursday night while London could see temperatures below 4C (39.2F).

Mr Claydon said there was a "chance" of icy road conditions on Friday - but the Met Office has not issued an ice warning, nor repeated Thursday's "yellow" fog warning.

On Thursday, temperatures dipped to freezing levels in areas such as Suffolk, Gloucestershire, Cumbria, Devon and northern Scotland, the Met Office said.

It follows a fatal pile-up on the A40 in treacherous conditions on Wednesday morning which left one woman dead and many injured.

The AA urged "extreme caution" for those heading out on the roads, adding that extra time should be allowed, tyres properly inflated and screens adequately de-iced.

Spokesman Ian Crowder said on Thursday: "We have got the worst possible conditions really, of fog and icy roads, and that can be lethal.

"I think the message is extreme caution and to prepare for the worst and make sure all windows are clear."
The family of a Bangor man beaten to death in Myanmar have said they are outraged that no international arrest warrant has been issued for his suspected killer.

Gary Ferguson (47) was working as a teacher in the city of Yangon when he was killed on November 5.

The suspect is a teaching colleague, 25-year-old Harris Binotti from Dumfries in Scotland.

It's alleged Binotti killed Mr Ferguson in his flat after an argument.

That evening the two had been for a night out at a hotel with Mr Ferguson's wife Supatchaya Sichompor and Binotti's girlfriend Elsie Devolder.

It's since been reported that although local police named him as their prime suspect, they have yet to issue an international warrant for his arrest.

Nearly two months on from the murder Mr Ferguson's brother Martin (50) said the family were desperate for answers.

"It's all going agonisingly slow," he said from his home in Holland.

He also revealed that his family were too distressed to attend Gary's funeral service.

"Gary was cremated, as he wanted to be done in a Buddhistic way. If anything ever happened to him, that was his wish," he said.

"At the time me, my mum and sisters thought because Gary was so bruised, and they do the cremation in an open casket, we couldn't handle that. We're having his ashes sent to Holland. Some of them will also go to another island there in Thailand where he previously lived. The rest of his ashes, we are bringing them to Northern Ireland in the summer. We're thinking about the seafront in Bangor, where we're from."

Gary leaves behind his Thailand-born wife and their four-year-old son Jeremy.

"We're trying to help his wife as much as we can," added Martin.

"She's finding it hard without Gary being there. He was the main provider.

"She's basically on her own now (in Thailand) and will have to find a job to take care of their son. We can only do so much, but we expect a little more from the British Government to get this here on the rails.

"It's almost seven weeks, we've (had) to go through Christmas without him, and it hasn't developed in any way."

The family have since offered a reward for information on Binotti's whereabouts. A fundraising page has so far raised 1,450 (1,234).

A spokeswoman for the UK Foreign Office said yesterday: "We continue to do all we can to help and support the family of Mr Ferguson at this difficult time.

"We are in contact with the Myanmar authorities responsible for the investigation."

With the case in the hands of police in Yangon, the British Government is unable to interfere or offer assistance in the investigation unless invited.

A spokesman for Myanmar's Embassy in London commented: "We have been told that the British Embassy in Yangon had been officially informed about this case."
Iraqi troops have pushed deeper into Mosul after a two-week lull in the operation to retake the Islamic State-held city.

Backed by air strikes, Iraqi special forces, army troops and federal police launched a push on five neighbourhoods.

Smoke rose across the city as explosions and machine gun fire echoed through the streets.

Stiff resistance by the militants, civilians trapped inside their houses and bad weather have slowed advances in the offensive to recapture Iraq's second largest city, which is the extremist group's last urban bastion in the country.

Earlier this week, Lt Gen Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, commander of the special forces in eastern Mosul, said his forces have been bolstered by reinforcements.

He said his forces are now less than two miles from the Tigris River, which slices the city in half.

A US-led coalition air strike this week destroyed the last remaining bridge over the river.

On Thursday, elite special forces pushed into the Karama and Quds neighbourhoods, while army troops and federal police advanced into the nearby Intisar, Salam and Sumor neighbourhoods.

It is the biggest Iraqi military operation since the 2003 US-led invasion.

The special forces, officially known as the Counter Terrorism Service, have done most of the fighting, pushing in from the east.

But regular army troops on the city's south-east and northern edges, as well as militarised federal police further west, have not moved in weeks, unable to penetrate the city.

The troops have faced gruelling urban fighting, often house-to-house against IS militants who have had more than two years to dig in and prepare.

Even in districts that have been recaptured, Iraqi troops have faced surprise attacks, shelling and car bombs. The extremists have launched more than 900 car bombs against Iraqi troops in and around Mosul. Lt Gen al-Saadi said 260 targeted his men.

He said he expected Iraqi forces would drive IS from Mosul and the rest of Nineveh province within three months. Iraqi leaders had previously vowed to drive the extremists from Mosul by the end of the year.

IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014, when it swept across much of northern and central Iraq, and the group's leader declared the establishment of its self-styled caliphate from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque.

The city is still home to around a million people. Some 120,000 have fled since the operation began on October 17, according to the United Nations.

AP
US President Barack Obama speaking at the White House in Washington, DC on December 16, 2016 and Vladimir Putin speaking in Moscow on December 23, 2016. AFP/Getty Images

US president Barack Obama has expelled 35 Russian diplomats and ordered more sanctions against Russian officials and intelligence services in response to alleged 'election hacking'.

The US will also close two Russian compounds allegedly used for intelligence-gathering in Maryland and New York.

"All Americans should be alarmed by Russias actions. These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government," Obama said.

"Moreover, our diplomats have experienced an unacceptable level of harassment in Moscow by Russian security services and police over the last year.

"We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicised."

The diplomats will be given 72 hours to leave US soil.

"These actions were taken to respond to Russian harassment of American diplomats and actions by the diplomats that we have assessed to be not consistent with diplomatic practice," an unnamed official told Reuters.

Russia responds

Russia's foreign ministry said the moves were counterproductive and will harm the restoration of bilateral ties.

Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said: "In our point of view such actions of the US current administration are a manifestation of an unpredictable and even aggressive foreign policy.

"We regret the fact that this decision was taken by the US administration and President Obama personally. As was said before, we consider this decision and these sanctions unjustified and illegal under international law.

Mr Peskov warned that the restrictions wont go unanswered by Moscow promising adequate, reciprocal reaction that will deliver significant discomfort to the US side in the same areas. However, he added that "theres no need to rush".

Putin has previously denied the hacking claims and called on Obama and his administration to either provide evidence or stop making accusations.

The move ensures action before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The move also puts Mr Trump in the position of having to decide whether to roll back the measures once in office and could potentially cause difficulties for his nominees during their confirmation hearings in the Senate, where support for sanctioning Russia is strong.

"We have to sanction Russia for these cyber attacks (and) send a clear message to the incoming administration that there is a lot of bipartisan support in Congress for going after this," Senator Amy Klobuchar told the Associated Press (AP) by phone from Latvia while on a trip to discuss security issues, including cyber security, with eastern European allies.

She said politicians on both sides were in favour of quick action.

Ms Klobuchar joined Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham on their visits to the Baltic states, Ukraine and Georgia - all Russian neighbours - as well as Montenegro.

Russia responded angrily in anticipation of the announcement and suggested it might retaliate against US diplomats.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called it a last blow by President Barack Obama to US-Russia relations, and added: "We are tired of lies about Russian hackers that continue to be spread in the United States from the very top."

"If Washington takes new hostile steps, it will receive an answer," Ms Zakharova said in a statement.

"This applies to any actions against Russian diplomatic missions in the United States, which will immediately backfire at US diplomats in Russia."

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Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusation that the Russian government was involved at the highest levels in trying to influence the US presidential election.

A secret CIA report concluded that Russia's goal was to help Mr Trump win - an assessment Mr Trump has dismissed as ridiculous.

The claims previously drew a rebuke from Trumps transition team, which said in a statement: "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."

Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory! Trump tweeted previously.

Mr Trump rejected the CIA's conclusion that Russia tried to interfere with the presidential election and blamed "very embarrassed" Democrats for the public release of the assessment. The Washington Post first reported the CIA finding on Friday.

"It's ridiculous," Mr Trump said of the CIA's assessment. He added, however, that he does not necessarily oppose President Barack Obama's order for a review of campaign-season hacking. "If you're going to do that, I think you should not just say 'Russia'. You should say other countries also, and maybe other individuals."

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The US has already sanctioned Russia over Crimea and the conflict in Ukraine.

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange has denied that emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta were hacked and leaked to his organisation by the Russian government.

In an interview with Sean Hannity he was asked: "So in other words, let me be clear...Russia did not give you the Podesta documents or anything from the DNC?"

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The Australian founder of the whistleblowing website, who has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for over four years, responded: "That's correct."

Assange said: "Were unhappy that we felt that we needed to even say that it wasnt a state party. Normally, we say nothing at all.

"We have ... a strong interest in protecting our sources, and so we never say anything about them, never ruling anyone in or anyone out.

"And so here, in order to prevent a distraction attack against our publications, weve had to come out and say no, its not a state party. Stop trying to distract in that way and pay attention to the content of the publication," he told Hannity.

Assange also revealed that WikiLeaks received "about three pages of information to do with the [Republican National Committee] and Donald Trump [during the campaign], but it was already public somewhere else."

Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, also dismissed the CIA's claims that Russia was the source of the emails as "bulls***".

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The accounts by Murray and Assange directly contradict the story advanced by the CIA.

The Washington Post reported on a 'secret assessment' by the CIA, which concluded that Russian intelligence hacked the Democratic National Committee's servers and that of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta, specifically to help Trump win the presidency.

Mr Murray said: "I know who leaked them. Ive met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. Its a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.

If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIAs statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.

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America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and its not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.

He then revealed to Dailymail.com that he had flown to Washington DC for a secret hand-off with one of the sources in September.

He said that he met an intermediary in a wooded area near a US university to retrieve a package.

Intelligence assessments

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which oversees the 17 agency-strong US intelligence community, has not embraced the CIA's assessment, sources have told Reuters.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose standards require it to make cases that can stand up in court, also declined to accept the CIA's analysis.

In an angry letter sent to ODNI chief James Clapper on Monday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said he was dismayed that the top US intelligence official had not informed the panel of the CIA's analysis and the difference between its judgment and the FBIs assessment, Reuters reported.

"ODNI is not arguing that the agency (CIA) is wrong, only that they can't prove intent," one of the officials told the news agency. "Of course they can't, absent agents in on the decision-making in Moscow.

The ODNI was formed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

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'Thin reed'

[It was] a thin reed upon which to base an analytical judgment, another official said in response to the speculation. He stressed that the judgment based on the fact that Russian entities hacked both Democrats and Republicans and only the Democratic information was leaked.

Republican Senator John McCain said on Monday there was "no information" that Russian hacking of US political organisations was aimed at influencing the election.

"It's obvious that the Russians hacked into our campaigns," McCain said told Reuters.

"But there is no information that they were intending to affect the outcome of our election and that's why we need a congressional investigation."
Russian president Vladimir Putin said a Syrian ceasefire agreement has been reached with Turkey.

Mr Putin said Russia and Turkey will guarantee the truce, which is set to begin at midnight.

He said it will be followed by peace talks between Syrian president Bashar Assad's government and the opposition, and that the Syrian parties will take part in talks to be held in Kazakhstan at a later date.

Syria's military has agreed to a nationwide ceasefire, starting at midnight.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria, and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance.

Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said US president-elect Donald Trump's administration will be welcome to join the Syrian peace process once he takes office.

Russia is a key ally of Mr Assad, while Turkey is one of the main backers of the opposition.

Several previous attempts to halt the Syrian civil war have failed.

In a statement carried by state news agency SANA, the Syrian military command "declares a comprehensive nationwide cessation of hostilities as of midnight".

State TV said the ceasefire paves the way for reactivating negotiations to end the conflict.

It said the ceasefire comes after the "successes achieved by the armed forces", an apparent reference to the capture of rebel-held neighbourhoods of Aleppo earlier this month.
Police arrested five Dakota Access Pipeline protesters for criminal trespass Tuesday.

The arrests were made around 1 p.m. after 11 protesters crossed the frozen Cannonball River to Turtle Island, a hill on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land that the tribe considers sacred. Police say they warned the protesters not to cross and arrested the five who disobeyed.

Joye Braun, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, said she heard from people at the Oceti Sakowin camp that they had gone to Turtle Island to pray. Braun said she was not at the camp that day as she has been traveling back and forth between there and her home in Eagle Butte, S.D.

Protesters have been encamped there for months in opposition to the 1,172-mile crude oil pipeline crossing the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

An hour after the arrests, police said another group of about 20 protesters and two vehicles moved onto Backwater Bridge, which has been closed since October after numerous clashes between law enforcement and police. It is blocked with razor wire and concrete barriers.

Law enforcement pulled back from guarding the bridge earlier this month after reaching an agreement with protest organizers, who said they would stay off the bridge while it was being inspected for fire damage caused during an October clash between police and protesters. The inspection took place last week.

The sheriff's department said officers observed protesters "tampering with the wire barricade" and crossing to the north side of the bridge. Protesters allegedly also broke the lenses of a light tower on the bridge.

Then, around 3 p.m Tuesday, officers observed approximately 80 protesters at Turtle Island. That group left about an hour later.

Later, at 5:45 p.m., about 100 protesters went to Backwater Bridge and interfered with barricade wire, "pulling on it with ropes and attempting to cut it," according to the sheriff's department. Sheriff's officials said officers used "three sponge less-than-lethal munitions" on the bridge after protesters disregarded their orders to stop.

Some protesters allegedly stole a state Department of Transportation "no trespassing" sign, carried it back to their vehicle and drove away. The sheriff's department released a video of protesters walking away with the sign.

The crowd dispersed around 7 p.m.

The five who were arrested were transported to the Morton County Detention Center.
A Tunisian man has been arrested on suspicion of being involved in last week's truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin. File image

A Tunisian man has been arrested on suspicion of being involved in last week's truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin.

German federal prosecutors said the 40-year-old was detained during a search of his home and business.

Officials said the man's number was saved in the mobile phone of Anis Amri, a fellow Tunisian believed to have driven a truck into the market on December 19. They said further investigations indicate that the man "may have been involved in the attack" in which 12 people died.

Prosecutors have until this evening to determine whether the case against the man holds up to the extent they can seek a formal arrest warrant, which would allow them to keep him in custody pending possible charges.

Investigators are trying to determine whether Amri had a support network in planning and carrying out the attack, and in fleeing Berlin. They are also trying to piece together the route he took from Berlin to Milan, where he was killed in a shoot-out with Italian police.
President Barack Obama has sanctioned Russian intelligence services and their top officials, kicked out 35 Russian officials and closed down two Russian-owned compounds in the US in a sweeping response to election hacking.

It was the strongest action the Obama administration has taken to date to retaliate for a cyber attack.

"All Americans should be alarmed by Russia's actions," Mr Obama said in a statement released while he was on holiday in Hawaii.

He added: "Such activities have consequences."

Mr Obama ordered sanctions against two Russian intelligence services, the GRU and the FSB, plus companies which the US says support the GRU.

The cyber security firm hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate the theft of its emails determined earlier this year the hacking came from the Fancy Bear group, believed to be affiliated with the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency.

The president also sanctioned Lt Gen Korobov, the head of the GRU, and three of his deputies.

Other individuals sanctioned include Alexei Belan and Yevgeny Bogachev, two Russian nationals who have been wanted by the FBI for cyber crimes for years.

Mr Obama said the hacking "could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government" , a contention the US has used to suggest Russian president Vladimir Putin was personally involved.

Although the White House announced at the same time it was kicking out Russian officials and closing facilities, it said those were responses to other troubling Russian behaviour: harassment of US diplomats by Russian personnel and police.

The 35 Russian diplomats being kicked out are intelligence operatives, Mr Obama said.

The state department said they were being declared "persona non grata", and they were given 72 hours to leave the country.

The two compounds being closed down are recreational facilities owned by Russia's government, one in Maryland and one in New York, the US said.

The White House said Russia had been notified that it would be denied access to the sites starting at noon on Friday.

Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusation that the Russian government was involved at the highest levels in trying to influence the US presidential election.

US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia's goal was to help Donald Trump win - an assessment Mr Trump has dismissed as ridiculous.

The move puts the president-elect in the position of having to decide whether to roll back the measures once in office.
Google's Matt Brittin said it is 'our job to make sure that we observe the laws everywhere we operate'

A Google director has said the internet giant has more to do to tackle illegal content, but urged people to make their own judgments should they encounter unsavoury material online.

Matt Brittin defended the company's efforts to remove hateful and harmful content from the search engine, as well as its auto complete function, which has been accused of diverting people towards racist and other discriminatory search terms.

The president of Google Europe also called for a simplification of UK tax rules, as he insisted the company paid the corporation tax it was asked to by the Government.

Reports earlier this year suggested Google's auto complete options were automatically loading offensive search terms, based on what people had been searching for online.

Mr Brittin told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the tool did help save time, adding: "But it's algorithmic, and I think people understand that these are suggestions based on what other people are searching for.

"So we can always improve that and we work hard to do that, but I think people are smart and they realise that not everything you find on the internet is accurate and there's a range of opinions there.

"I think you see people researching that well. We always have to do more, but I think people understand this is a world of choice.

"People have got more choice and more access to information than ever before, and they can therefore be better informed and make their own judgments."

Mr Brittin said more effort was also needed to tackle illegal content linked to by Google.

He said: "It's our job to make sure that we observe the laws everywhere we operate, and we help to remove hateful and harmful and illegal content, and we work very hard on doing that both with technology and of course with people - you can't always use algorithms to solve these things.

"It's an ongoing investment of energy, working in partnership with governments and others, to try to ensure that the internet is an overwhelmingly positive force for society, which I think generally people will accept that it is.

"We always have to work harder on those things."

Google is one of several multinational companies to have been accused of avoiding tax, in spite of making billions of pounds of sales in Britain.

Mr Brittin said: "We think Google should pay its fair share in tax and everything else.

"The best way for us to do that is to pay exactly what the tax authority asks us to do, which we do, and also call for a simplification of the rules, because we don't want to be in a situation where people think we're not paying our fair share when we're paying exactly what the Government does.

"The best way for us to make the biggest possible contribution in tax is to grow the size of our operations here, so 3,000 more people, a growing business means that we will be more successful and be a bigger contributor to the economy."
Bangladesh police officers stand guard outside a three-story house in Dhaka during a raid of a suspected Neo-JMB hideout, Dec. 24, 2016.

Bangladeshi police on Wednesday announced the arrests of five members of the banned militant group Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), claiming they were planning to carry out New Years Eve attacks in Dhaka.

The suspects also planned robberies to raise funds to build up their network, according to Monirul Islam, chief of the counter terrorism unit of the Bangladeshi police.

They planned to attack on New Years Eve, he said.

He said the five were members of old JMB, a branch of the group that is allied with al-Qaeda, as opposed to Neo-JMB, which embraces ideology of the so-called Islamic State.

We have recovered 30 kilograms of different explosive materials (liquid and powder), bomb-making materials and extremist books from their possession, Islam told reporters following a press conference on Wednesday.

They came to Dhaka with those explosives. Some of the explosive materials were very powerful. Their motive was to commit robberies in different places by exploding bombs and cocktails, Islam said, pointing out that the old branch of JMB has been trying to regroup.

So, they need more arms, explosives, funds and workers. That is why they planned different attacks, he said.

Recruitment involves money

A Wednesday press statement from the Dhaka Metropolitan Police said the counter terrorism unit arrested the five JMB members from Dhakas Darus Salam neighborhood on Tuesday night.

They were identified as Md Reaz alias Engineer alias Rakib; Md Abu Bin Sayem alias Bappi alias Opu; Kazi Abdullah Al Osman alias Ahsan; Md Shohag alias Chairman; and Md Mamun alias Heemel.

During the primary interrogation, they confessed that they were active members of the old JMB. They procured explosives according to the instruction of Zia, Haider and Shahidullah, said the statement, identifying the three as fugitives in charge of JMBs Rajshahi region, in northwestern Bangladesh.

JMB was born in Bagmara, Rajshahi, and made its existence known by staging bombings in 63 of Bangladeshs 64 districts within a half-hour period on Aug. 17, 2005.

The network fell apart after the 2007 executions of its top leaders including founder Shaikh Abdur Rahman and military wing chief Siddiqul Islam.

It began regrouping in 2009 but has split into factions since then, including Neo-JMB, reportedly led by Tamim Chowdhury, the Bangladesh-born Canadian mastermind of the IS-claimed terrorist attack on a Dhaka cafe in July 2016 that left 29 dead. Chowdhury was killed in a firefight with police in late August.

Retired Brig. Gen. Sakhawat Hossain, who wrote several books on terrorism, told BenarNews that the JMB  be it old or Neo  has turned to robbery to raise money because the government has cracked down on money laundering schemes.

The IS looted banks in Mosul to collect funds and here the JMB and the Ansar al Islam have looted banks in Ashulia to collect funds. They think the bank robbery and plundering wealth from the apostates or infidels is justified for a greater cause, he said.

Recruitment involves money. They must provide funds to militants to carry out terrorist activities. They even provide money to the family members if a militant is killed, he said.
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State Auditor-elect Josh Gallion says he plans to use audits to find savings for the cash-strapped state government.

These audits are a resource, a tool, he said.

Gallion said taking office during a time of tight budgets will provide an opportunity to review operations and ensure best practices as well as generating new ideas to better provide services.

Hes expressed interest in beefing up the agencys performance audit division staff in order to increase the frequency. Gallion said he knows its an uphill battle with a tight budget situation this session.

Its something that Ill want to put on the table, Gallion said.

He said one concern he has is the reduction of the auditors office staff by six positions in former Gov. Jack Dalrymples 2017-19 budget proposal.

Gallion said hell want to talk to Gov. Doug Burgum about it, adding that he agrees with the new governors vision on finding new and better ways to provide services. He said the auditors office is a key place in helping find those efficiencies, a case hell need to make to the governor and Legislature.

I just question why would you cut so many people from an agency, Gallion said of the budget proposal.

Gallion is transitioning away from his position at the North Dakota Public Service Commission to take office in his first elected post. Hes been serving as the PSCs accounting manager as well as the program director for the agencys weights and measures program.

He said hes spent his time during the transition getting up to speed on office procedures, reading recent audits and meeting with outgoing State Auditor Robert R. Peterson, a fellow Republican.

You always want to make sure you take care of first things first, Gallion said.

Gallion received 76.6 percent of the vote in November.

During his term in office, Gallion said one area hell push is being visible personally during the audit process when possible. He wants to change the mindset of state agencies from fear or anxiety over audits to being more accepting of them as an important tool in improving operations.

Peterson said the transition has gone well and Gallions professional and educational background lends itself well to being successful in the role.

Hes been involved in state government for some time now, so he understands state government, so that helps, Peterson said.

He said the tight budget will be the immediate issue to contend with.

Its a more difficult challenge, Peterson said. Hell do a good job.

Gallion is a Spokane, Wash., native. He came to North Dakota as a member of the United States Air Force and was stationed at Minot Air Force Base. There, he met his wife, Becky. They have two children.

Prior to joining the PSC, Gallion spent nearly three years at the Drivers License Division of the North Dakota Department of Transportation. There, he worked as a program manager and financial officer.

Gallion earned his bachelors degree from Dickinson State University and his masters degree in business administration from the University of North Dakota.

Once he takes office Gallion will be the first state auditor without the surname Peterson in decades. Peterson was first elected to the office in 1996; his father Robert W. Peterson held the office for 24 years prior.

Gallion said when he was first considering launching his campaign he joked with his wife about changing his last name.

My wife axed that idea, Gallion said with a laugh.
Roz Leighton resigned as executive director of the North Dakota Republican Party earlier this month to take a job with the committee overseeing the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Leightons new role as Cabinet affairs liaison with the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee involves coordinating events, travel logistics and ensuring that theres a clear line of communication between the  committee and the stakeholder groups, she said Thursday.

Leightons tenure with the North Dakota Republicans saw the party assume an even stronger majority in the state Legislature. During this years state Republican convention, the state was the focus of some brief national attention over the partys presidential candidates scramble for delegates, prompting a visit from former Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz.

It was an incredible experience, Leighton said.

Leighton previously worked as a staffer for U.S. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and for the Home Builders Association of Fargo-Moorhead. She was also assistant to House Majority Leader Al Carlson (R-Fargo) and the House GOP caucus during the 2015 legislative session.

The state Republican Party is accepting applications through Jan. 6, according to a post on its website. The job description includes working with the partys district leadership, fundraising and overseeing the partys operations and finances.

There has been pretty strong interest in the position, Leighton said.
High wind and deep snow put Montana emergency workers to the test in the past couple of weeks. They were out in the icy, zero-visibility clearing roads and helping those stranded and wrecked. Among those public servants are the Montana Highway Patrol officers. They are on duty 24/7 to make travel safer in our great big state.

We ask lawmakers to keep those facts in mind when they consider Senate Bill 57, which proposes to update a critical source of funding for Montana Highway Patrol operations. With Sen. Mark Blasdel, R-Kalispell, as chief sponsor, co-sponsors include Sen. Ed Buttrey, R-Great Fallls; Senate Minority Leader Jon Sesso, D-Butte; Rep. Kim Dudik, D-Missoula; Rep. Ron Ehli, R-Hamilton; and Rep. Vince Ricci, R-Laurel.

SB57 would raise an annual vehicle registration fee from the present $5 per vehicle to $10.

This fee was instituted by the 2005 Legislature in response to the MHP's continual loss of officers to other Montana law enforcement agencies that paid much better. The fee is deposited in a special account to be used on for MHP salaries and operations. The law requires that MHP salaries be set every biennium based on the average of sheriff's deputy salaries in Silver Bow, Cascade, Yellowstone, Missoula, Lewis and Clark, Dawson and Flathead counties.

The fund worked well for years, but a dozen years later, it is not keeping up with costs. A major factor is that the Legislature subsequently exempted many vehicles from annual registration. For example, RVs, motorcycles and many older vehicles now can be permanently registered, so there is no $5 annual fee being collected.

Last year, the fee raised $5 million, according to the Department of Justice. If the increase is approved as SB57 proposes, additional money must be used to maintain salaries that help recruit and retain excellent MHP officers.

MHP Col. Tom Butler talked to lawmakers about the predicament and convinced Blasdel that SB57 is a way to maintain the fund's viability. The bill is one of Attorney General Tim Fox's top legislative priorities, according to Eric Sell, DOJ spokesman.

"This fund's been a success," Blasdel told The Billings Gazette by phone last week. "Citizens hope they can get Highway Patrol there when they need help.

"I'm usually one that votes against fee increases, but this is one I can get behind."

All our lawmakers who are concerned about travel safety should get behind this bipartisan bill to update a good, 12-year-old solution. The state budget is tight, but SB57 offers a common-sense way for road users to support the patrol officers they depend on 24/7.

 Billings (Mont.) Gazette
The Bible has been under attack in the western world for over 200 years but never more intensely than today. These attacks have taken different forms and have come from many different corners of the academic world, from philosophers, to scientists, to textual critics. In the specialized world of archaeology the attacks have increased dramatically in the past 50 years. Once a specialization filled with Bible believing individuals, the field of archaeology is now overrun with atheists and skeptics, agnostics and those committed to the destruction of the Bible as a source of true historical information.

These attacks on the Bible are a part of a sweeping movement in western culture. Spearheaded by academic elitists in the university and the public educational system, the news and popular media, and the entertainment industry, these revisionists cloak themselves with supposed objectivity, purity of motives, and the superiority of science over the "uninformed", "unscientific", religious community.

They regularly mock those who question their world-view and their conclusions by name-calling and the worst forms of anti-Bible and anti-Christian propaganda. They have powerfully infected the church by turning Bible believing Christians against the very Scripture which is the foundation of truth and life in this world. Instead of contending for the Bible, Christian academics, pastors, and lay-persons are making egregious accommodations to these destroyers of faith and truth.

In these days of intense spiritual battle, God has called ABR to step into the gap to contend for the truth and to assist the church in this critical hour. ABR is a non-profit ministry dedicated to demonstrating the historical reliability of the Bible and to give answers to questions being asked by believers and non-believers alike. We do this by using original archaeological fieldwork and research along with studies in other apologetic disciplines. We take on the bold claims of skeptics and critics. We challenge the bizarre anti-biblical propaganda that is purveyed upon the public as gospel through television and print media. We uphold the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is God's message for the salvation of all mankind!
TOKYO: Toshiba shares dived more than 20 percent on Wednesday in their second straight double-digit plunge, as the company said it may book a one-time loss of several billion dollars over its US nuclear business.

The stock price dropped by 20.42 percent to 311.60 yen, the largest fall allowed for a single day, about 30 minutes after the opening bell, as the company failed to ease investor worries over the potential risk. It finished the session at that level.

On Tuesday the Tokyo-based conglomerate said in a statement that costs linked to the acquisition last year by its US subsidiary of a nuclear service company would possibly amount to "several billion US dollars, resulting in a negative impact on Toshiba's financial results".

The exact figure of the potential write-down is still being worked out, Toshiba president Satoshi Tsunakawa told reporters after the announcement, apologising for "causing concern".

Lucian Milasan via 123RF

The company statement suggested the figure would be released soon, citing an end-of-year deadline for settling the valuation of the nuclear deal.

The announcement came after Toshiba shares closed nearly 12 percent lower on Tuesday on media reports about the potential loss.

Analysts said uncertainty was fuelling investor anxiety.

"Concerns have yet to be cleared away as they said they didn't know the figure," Yukihiko Shimada, senior analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities, told AFP.

SMBC Nikko credit analysts Yutaka Ban and Kentaro Harada said in a report that investors "can't be optimistic about the situation" even though the total write-down may not end up as big as the 500bn yen ($4.3bn) reported by local media.

Nomura Securities analyst Masaya Yamasaki said in a report issued late Tuesday that the expected loss "is negative for the company as its financial standing is fragile".

Tsunakawa at the press conference answered in the affirmative when asked if Toshiba is considering boosting capital.

Chief financial officer Masayoshi Hirata said that after the figure is confirmed the company will "explain and seek support" from financial institutions.

Toshiba said the possible loss was related to the valuation of the purchase by subsidiary Westinghouse Electric of the nuclear construction and services business of Chicago Bridge & Iron.

Westinghouse and Chicago Bridge & Iron have turned to an independent accountant to resolve a dispute over differences in asset valuations, Toshiba said earlier this year.

Toshiba said Tuesday the potential write-down would "far exceed" the $87m first expected, resulting in a "far lower asset value than originally determined".

Toshiba's latest full-year forecast is for annual net profit of 145bn yen ($1.24bn), up 45 percent from an earlier estimate, on sales of 5.4tn yen.

But Tuesday it said it would release a revised earnings forecast as soon as possible to reflect the coming write-down.

Toshiba's nuclear woes are the latest blow to the once-proud pillar of corporate Japan.

It has been besieged by problems, most notably a profit-padding scandal in which bosses for years systematically pushed subordinates to cover up weak financial results.

In an intensive overhaul, the company has been shedding businesses and announced the sale of its medical devices unit to camera and office equipment maker Canon.

Investors had welcomed the makeover, with Toshiba shares having climbed 77.3 percent this year through Monday.

Tsunakawa was appointed president earlier this year to steer Toshiba past the accounting scandal that has dented its reputation.

Source: AFP
The Kenyan government has been challenged to take over the responsibility of paying salaries of the striking doctors from the counties.

Tana River governor, Hussein Dado, said it was the ministry of health that signed the controversial collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with doctors in 2013. He said the national government should, therefore, take the bold step of paying them the eye-watering 300% salary increment and end the strike.

This comes as Tharaka-Nithi County said it will not pay striking doctors December salaries.

Addressing journalists at Oda Health Centre during an Islamic Maulid celebration, Dado accused the ministry of sidelining counties when signing the CBA.

"It sounds like a deliberate move to transfer the problem to county governments, because we were not party to that agreement despite doctors being county employees after devolution of health services," he said.

However, counties did not have the money for the pay rise that the ministry agreed to implement.

Saying Tana River is one of disadvantaged counties, where lack of private hospitals has complicated the situation, he said: "I have pleaded with my doctors and nurses to understand the situation and continue to assist patients until the matter is resolved."

The governor praised health workers in the county for their actions during the recent cholera outbreak in Tana Delta sub-county, where six people died and more than 30 were treated and discharged.

"I am happy with their good gesture and, as the county government, we shall do our best to facilitate them to improve the health of our people," he added.

He said the cholera situation had been contained following a massive health campaign mounted by the county's medical team, Kenya Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders.

He, however, denied that his government had neglected health services, saying it spent millions of shillings on procurement of medicines and equipment and improving health infrastructure.

Cholera outbreak

The governor was responding to a complaint by doctors and nurses that lack of adequate resources from the county government had made it difficult for them to contain a cholera outbreak that had killed about 35 people and seen more than 683 treated and discharged over the past year.

"We have done our best but it is common to hear people complaining that we have not done much," said Dado. "We have allocated enormous resources to revamp the health sector and we will increase funds in order to address all the grey areas."

On Wednesday, Tharaka-Nithi governor Samuel Ragwa told the Nation newspaper that the county's doctors, who had boycotted duty for 23 days, paralysing main services, especially surgical and consultation, will not be paid a coin.

"The strike is illegal as far as counties are concerned and the doctors will be treated as having absconded duty for nearly a month," said Ragwa. The governor said he will convene his cabinet and health department stakeholders today to decide on the way forward.
Algeria has adopted a 2017 budget that will see taxes raised to compensate for falling revenues from its key oil sector, officials said on Wednesday.

The budget, signed by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, is calculated on an oil price of $50 per barrel.

Oil is the main source of revenue for the North African country. The budget announced Wednesday outlines raises in value-added tax and duty on alcohol and tobacco, petrol-based products as well as real estate and stamp duties.

The budget forecasts an income of $51bn and spending of $63bn.

Despite cuts, it will spend $14bn on welfare including subsidies on basic products, housing and health care support.

It also allots $10bn for defence in a country facing instability from armed Islamists who have been active in the country since a devastating civil war in the 1990s.

The budget ruled out recruiting further civil servants or raising the public payroll.

The government has also begun reforming the pension system to save it from "bankruptcy".

In 2011, high oil revenues allowed Algeria to massively increase wages and subsidies, helping it to weather the Arab Spring.

But the 2014 collapse in crude oil prices has forced Algiers to cancel investments and find ways to cut public spending.
A severe drought, the likes of which were last seen three decades ago, is gripping 15 villages in the Eastern Cape. Residents have no water to drink, animals are dying in numbers and dams are parched.

The villages are less than 50km from Bhisho. According to the residents, more than 50 cattle have died in 10 villages in the last three months due to starvation and dehydration.

In the Tamarha Administrative Area, dry, brittle grass covers the landscape, which is normally a lush green at this time of the year. In some areas, the taps have run dry.

Zolile Qaza, from the traditional council in Shushu village in the Tamarha Administrative Area, said in just one village alone 27 cattle had died last month. "Water is becoming a scarce commodity and we really don't know where to run to get help," he said.

Qaza said a drought of this severity had last been experienced in 1983. "If there is no relief in the next six months all these cattle will die," he said.

Kalana, Qawukeni, Shushu A, Shushu B, Tamarha location and Mabhongo village were the hardest hit in the area.

Lunga Macala said his family had lost 10 cattle. "Its painful to lose your prized livestock because of this drought," he said.

Sandile Tshantshi, of Mabhongo village said, it was the first time he had experienced a drought of this magnitude. "When something like this happens, you don't know what to do because we were never prepared for it," he said. Tshantshi said many people now had to buy lucerne and milk formula for the remaining calves. "If you don't have that money you will painfully watch your cattle die," he said.

"We need intervention from the government to assist us."

The area falls under the Ngqushwa Local Municipality, which is part of the Amathole District Municipality. Yesterday, Amathole said the Qwaninga River, which served the Mnquma Local Municipality, had run dry and it was organising tankers to cart water to the villagers.

Bulelani Eli, of Shushu A, said his family had lost two cattle. "Having cattle means you have money, and if they are dying, you are literally running out of money and your family will stay hungry," Eli said

OR Tambo District Municipality spokesman Ayongezwa Lungisa said the dams feeding the area were at 31% of capacity. "We are now depending solely on the Mthatha Dam," he said.

Rural Development and Agrarian Reform MEC Mlibo Qoboshiyane said his department was sourcing animal feed and had sent vets to areas affected by drought. "An amount of R14-million is being expended to mitigate the effects of the drought," he said.

"We are going to intervene in Tamarha, Xesi, Sarah Baartman and areas of Addo and surrounds. The Chris Hani and Joe Gqabi areas are still suffering."

Lucerne, hay, and mineral licks, together with water tanks, were being provided.

"We now intend to develop our own Eastern Cape feeder bank by having plantations of feed through our irrigation schemes and working in partnership with farmers," Qoboshiyane said.

Source: Herald
Someone once said that a good restaurant must make a singular connection between food, family, and friends. For the last 20 years, Balducci at the V&A Waterfront has based their food on the Italian notion that the best food is found at home.

Excellence in food and wine

Balducci has a simple philosophy: to provide a memorable experience by redefining the essence of good home cooked food and continually upping the standards with its understated European elegance, delicious menu, stunning views and professional service in a trendy yet stylish environment. The emphasis is on providing good quality food that is simple, fresh, filled with passion and served in style. Food invariably requires wine. You may get lost in the pages of the wine list, but as at any family table, there is always someone who knows just what to order. Just speak to one of their experienced sommeliers.

They are, of course, devotees to what the doyen of Italian food, Marcella Hazan, described as the Italian art of eating, which requires generosity patience... and the best raw materials. Balducci sources only the best produce for the table.

It is this connection, passion and continual culinary crusade for excellence and innovation over 20 years that has earned Balducci a loyal following and many awards, including 2016 Excellence Awards from both TripAdvisor - for memorable dining experiences, and Wine Spectator Restaurant Wine List Awards - for their outstanding dedication to wine.

The menu

Balduccis friends return time and time again just to share Balduccis Antipasti Platter or eat a plate of the famous Balducci Pastaa classic dish of pasta turned in a light Parmigiano cream with sundried tomatoes, olives, chili, and garlic. Or they hunger for the Dalla Griglia Smoked BBQ Pork Ribs or A-Grade Grainfed Beef supplied by sister restaurant Belthazars master butcher.

Others visit only for the Mozambican Prawns or Asian noodles and tapas, swearing that the popular Chicken with Soy and Ginger and Salmon Teriyaki are unmatched. Or claim that they cant leave the table without a plate of the Balducci Japanese Salad, paired perhaps with a Portofino Pizza from their wood-fired oven. Expect the same intimate sense of celebration to end the meal where favourites include White Lindt Chocolate Cheesecake, Tiramisu or a Formaggi selection served with habanero sweet chili jam and melba toast.

New soon-to-be-favourites added to the menu include:

 Salmon or Tuna Tartare  freshly chopped and served with caviar, avocado, micro greens and a lemon mustard dressing on a bed of sushi rice

 Crunchy Rolls - Inside out rolls of spicy tuna and crispy onion bits

 Lemon Salmon Rolls - Inside out rolls of fresh salmon, red onions and a zesty lemon mayo

 Cheese Burger Pizza - a Margherita with a sliced 200g grilled patty, topped with cheddar and caramelised onions, dressed with lettuce, pickles and drizzled with their famous #6 secret sauce

 Mafia Pizza - mozzarella, gorgonzola, roast chicken and jalapenos with a drizzle of Tabasco

 Prawn, chicken, beef or vegetarian Asian pizzas

 Bistecca Bordelaise - a 250g sirloin topped with brie, avocado, and a red wine sauce

Balducci has also recently introduced a Banting menu, offering Banting Lasagne, a Banting Burger, a selection of Banting Pizzas and more.

Renovated and restyled

Recently renovated by global award-winning architect Stefan Antoni, Balducci is now poised to once again set the scene for many years to come. Restyling to bring Balducci in line with a contemporary take on classic decor and design while incorporating modern African graphics, raw industrial finishes, luxurious leather, and bleached wood - the cutting-edge design saw Balducci shortlisted for the international Restaurant and Bar Design 2014/15 awards.

Be sure visit their newly renovated Asian Tapas, Noodle and Sushi Bar adjacent to Balducci. Reputed to be the best on the Waterfront, this little gem has also undergone a major revamp by architect, Stefan Antoni, and typifies a small signature designed Japanese and Asian Restaurant and Bar. The sushi there is the Real McCoy.
Dubai's appeal lies in its larger-than-life personality, its ability to cater to all types of travellers, and it's multicultural makeup. A new generation of Dubai denizens are reimagining this urban landscape, and so, Dubai's must-sees and must-does are also taking new courses.

For explorers who enjoy going off-script and delving beneath the surface, weve put together a list of the essential dos and dont's that will allow visitors to see the city in a new light.

Do eat local and like a local

For epicures used to discovering new destinations through its cuisine, Dubai is a gastronomic playground, with restaurants by Michelin-starred chefs from around the world. The usual suspects  Bread Street Kitchen by Gordon Ramsay, Junoon by Vikas Khanna, Stay by Yannick Alleno and Nobu by Nobu Matsuhisa  feature high on most must-visit lists but Dubai also has a vibrant line-up of Emirati options.

A new generation of city-based culinary maestros are cooking up a storm, blending Emirati culinary heritage with global inspiration. For visitors, this has opened up a world of new flavours and dishes such as Harees, Thareed, Ouzi and the ubiquitous Karak Chai all prepared in Emirati kitchens such as Al Fanar, Klayya Bakery And Sweets, Bait 1971 and Milas. Local favourite Frying Pan Adventures also offers a Middle East Food Pilgrimage that covers Emirati, Palestinian, Lebanese and Iranian specialties. Priced at AED 415, the tour features a 2.8 km walk spanning 4.25 hours with opportunities to sample regional treats and purchase saffron, baklava, Arabic cookies, Iranian dates, pomegranate molasses and nuts.

For the dedicated gourmand, there are also fun cooking classes  such as the one at Culinary Boutique, where Emirati cuisine is on the menu. The daily class schedule ranges from 1.5 to three hours, with prices starting at AED 475.

Dont just admire art, create it

A stroll down Alserkal Avenue is a must for any visiting aesthete. From works by contemporary artists to collectors fairs to art house screenings, this creative hub is brimming with all sorts of artistic creations and inspiration. For those looking for a more immersive creative experience, amid the numerous galleries, there is also the opportunity to grab a paintbrush and canvas for a DIY painting session at thejamjar.

With an unlimited supply of paint, your own canvas and a relaxed environment, the space is conducive to having fun and creating a piece of art that you can take home  making for a great alternative Dubai souvenir. The painting packages are priced between AED 110 and AED 350, last between 2 and 4 hours, and are inclusive of all supplies.

For those with theatrical inclinations, the Courtyard Playhouse is the perfect platform to check out local talent, who stage improv sketches and stand-up acts.

Use local transport for the best view

Visitors to Dubai will not be short on vantage points to take in the citys epic landscape  from the worlds tallest building to the upcoming observation wheel, Ain Dubai. But there is something about discovering the city through its state-of-the-art metro, bus and taxi systems, and watching the different cityscapes whizz by.

Kjrajesh via Wikimedia Commons - abra boats on Dubai Creek

The city has taken its passion for linking people and places to a new level by creating area-specific shuttles  traditional abra boats on Dubai Creek, a tram line in Dubai Marina, a monorail on Palm Jumeirah and an old-fashioned trolley line in Downtown Dubai. These offer visitors a chance to take in the sights and sounds of these popular areas at leisure. With transport options like the Art Bus, which plies during Art Season, Dubai also offers a stress-free mode to take in the best shows and spots along with informed guides.

There will soon be yet another high-speed way to view Dubais alluring skyline and vistas  the revolutionary Hyperloop One, the super-speed pods that will be able to cover a distance of 99 miles in 12 minutes once developed, is expected to pilot in the city ferrying passengers between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. However, for visitors yearning for something truly traditional and exceptional, a trip to the desert can include a camel ride to take in the glorious view of the golden sands touching the blue sky.

Do go Fashion Forward

Fashionistas will know that Arabs are injecting their unique sense of style into the mainstream. From modest fashion staples to beautifully designed lines of abayas that are versatile and beautiful enough to be incorporated into any wardrobe, Arab designs are adding a unique richness to the fabric of global fashion, and Dubai has emerged as a hub, having cultivated a crop of labels that celebrate the citys part-vibrant, part-demure style sensibility.

For those looking to veer away from the tried-and-tested global brands, local designers such as Ayten Al-Khayat (Raw by Ayten), Yasmin Al Mulla (YNM), Huda Al Nuaimi (Huda Al Nuaimi), Ahmad Al Sayed and Saleh Al Banna (House of Nomad) offer fashionable fare that is Middle Eastern in identity yet global in attitude.

Dont just settle for standard accommodation

From underwater suites to Versailles-inspired penthouses, Dubai is in top form when it comes to extravagant domiciles. Featuring helipads and waterparks, Dubais hospitality scene packs in a lot of activity and luxury, but for those looking for a more subtle and authentic experience, the XVA Art Hotel, brings to life the art, architecture and traditions of Dubai, all in the citys oldest neighbourhood. Just a stones throw from the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding, which facilitates cultural conversations and excursions, XVA offers visitors a great base from which to launch their discovery of Dubai. On the other hand, those who like to wake up to a different view every day, RV rentals through Airbnb offer the best deal of all  a vista of your choice and a road trip adventure that could take in not just Dubai, but the whole of the UAE as well.
Corporate packages will be part of the measures considered for companies dependent on street parking in parts of the central area of Port Elizabeth, where a new parking system could be rolled out.

The new parking system is being mooted by the Mandela Bay Development Agency (MBDA). It could see motorists forking out up to R5 an hour to park in the streets selected for the parking system pilot project. The system, which will replace the old coin-operated metering system, will be piloted at 1,329 parking bays.

MBDA spokesman Luvuyo Bangazi said business owners had themselves first proposed corporate packages.

"The corporate packages are meant to alleviate the financial burden on employers and employees while still honouring our civic duties, like paying for services rendered," he said.

But many eateries in Richmond Hill and Central feel the mobile parking system will destroy their businesses. "The whole point of organising and publishing public participation meetings is to hear the views and opinions of those likely to be affected," Bangazi said. "We appreciate the views we received and we assured them that these issues will be seriously considered when the programme is put out for implementation."

He said most businesses in Richmond Hill had given the pilot project the thumbs-up at public meetings in June. "Richmond Hill businesses voted by a show of hands to allow the MBDA to pursue the project. They gave us the green light to move the process forward.

"We will take into account the operating times of the system for each unique area.

"The inner CBD and Stanley Street are clearly different and require differentiation in application because the shopping patterns differ significantly.

"This means we can never have a one-size-fits-all approach."

Bangazi said the MBDA had merely prepared the proposal, which included all concerns raised in the public meetings with affected businesses. It is now up to the Nelson Mandela Bay council to give the pilot project the green light.

Source: Herald
Debswana Diamond Company and Majwe Mining Joint Venture have signed a two-year contract extension to cover the period 2017 and 2018.

The minister of mineral resources, green technology and energy security, Sadique Kebonang said this in response to a question from MP for Jwaneng/Mabutsane, Shawn Ntlhaile in parliament last week.

He said the first Debswana Diamond Company and Majwe Mining Joint Venture contract started in 2011 and was initially scheduled to be completed at the end of this year.

"So far, approximately P7bn has been spent on this contract," he said.

Kebonang explained that the project was initially planned for completion by end of 2016, however the rate of mining had to be slowed down to align it to the slowdown in the diamond market.

"As such, the completion date for the project has been extended to the end of 2018. First ore from cut 8 is scheduled to be delivered to the plant on time, starting in early 2017," he said.

The minister further noted that the extension was not expected to negatively affect any sub-contractors already involved in the project.

According to Kebonang, the total number of jobs lost at Majwe Mining Joint Venture since January 2015 stands at 246, mainly due to reduced mining rates which necessitated a reduction of employees.

Parliament was also informed that the number of employees still awaiting terminal benefits at Majwe Mining Joint Venture stands at 14, most of whom are still finalising employment clearance process.
FARGO  A $1 million cash bail was set Wednesday at a hearing for Timothy Lynn Porter, 31, of Fargo, who was charged with murder in the death of another Fargo man who died from a stab wound Christmas Eve morning.

Cass County District Court Judge Steven McCullough also appointed a public defender for Porter, who appeared in court via closed-circuit television.

According to court documents, police responded to a report of a stabbing about 4:19 a.m. on Saturday at Porters home at 1321 17th Ave. S.

Porter told police he and his girlfriend were having drinks with the victim, Derek Lynn Bjarnason, 26, when Bjarnason said something about Porters girlfriend and their baby daughter that offended him.

Porter said when he confronted Bjarnason about the comment, Bjarnason attacked him.

Porters girlfriend also told police that Bjarnason attacked Porter while the two were sitting on the couch. She said Bjarnason struck Porter in the upper body with closed fists.

Porter said he curled up into a ball on the couch and was scared of what Bjarnason would do to him and his family.

He said at that point he reached for a long knife he described as a small sword about 14 inches long that was between the cushions of the couch and stabbed Bjarnason one time, according to court documents.

Bjarnason was alive when police arrived, but did not speak. He was taken to the hospital after the incident and was later pronounced dead.

Court documents said it appeared Bjarnason received one laceration through the heart, which was a fatal wound.
Scatec Solar, Africa50 and Norfund have signed a joint development agreement (JDA) into the investment of the 100MW (DC) Nova Scotia power plant in northern Nigeria.

(Left to right) Alain Ebobisse, CEO, Africa50, Ibrahim Hassan Hadejia, deputy governor of Jigawa State, Terje Pilskog, executive vice president, Scatec Solar, Brge Brende, the Norwegian foreign minister and Mark Davis, investment director, Norfund.

The project has the potential to significantly contribute to the state of Jigawa's authorities' plan to attract $2bn worth of investments into the region and implement Nigerian president Muhammadu Buharis plans to provide jobs and economic opportunities especially for the country's youth.

The JDA signing ceremony was held in the presence of Brge Brende, the visiting Norwegian foreign minister, barrister Ibrahim Hassan Hadejia, the Jigawa deputy governor as well as officials from the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) among others.

Clean energy generation in Nigeria

New local power generation capacity is a key element to attract sizeable investment into the state and region, especially into new industries such as light manufacturing and agricultural processing, said the deputy governor.

The formation of this consortium is a strong symbol of the Norwegian and Nigerian commitment to invest in clean energy in Nigeria. With the Norwegian government taking a direct investment role through Norfund, significant regional and Nigerian ownership through Africa50, and the track-record of Scatec Solar, this offers one of the most solid partnerships for solar PV projects globally, said Scatec Solar executive vice president, Terje Pilskog.

I am pleased that Africa50 is already making its first investment, which fits in squarely with our priority to light up and power Africa, said Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB) and chairman of Africa50s board of directors. Africa50 has been created by African governments, including Nigeria, the African Development Bank and institutional investors to mobilise the private sector for funding infrastructure projects on the continent.

Alain Ebobisse, Africa50s CEO noted: Access to reliable energy is one of the most critical needs in Africa, including in Nigeria, where it is a government priority. I look forward to deepening the relationship with the authorities of Nigeria, one of our key shareholder countries, and to supporting more projects in this and other infrastructure sectors.

Apart from the three equity investors, the American Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Islamic Development Bank and the African Development Bank are expected to be senior debt providers for the project. International finance institutions say the key to successful investment is the Nigerian states issue of project documents that provides necessary investor confidence and the formulation of a clear roadmap to sustainability in the energy sector.

Improving energy generation, reducing effects on climate change

With an estimated investment of $150m, a production of 200,000MWh of electricity per year and 120,000 tons of CO 2 emissions avoided annually, the Nova Scotia solar plant will help Nigeria rapidly increase its generation capacity, provide economic opportunities, fight desertification caused by climate change, and contribute to fulfilling Nigerian President Muhammadu Buharis commitments to develop renewable energy as part of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

In July, the Nova Scotia project signed a 20-year PPA with the NBET. Located on 200 hectares of land, the project has strong fundamentals with high solar resources and direct access to the transmission grid through a simple connection route. The consortium will continue to work with CDIL, a Canadian renewable energy development company focused on Africa, and BPS, a Nigerian strategic consulting, to move the project from 'pipeline' and achieve financial close in 2017 and commercial operations in 2018.

With Nigerias per capita electricity consumption at 155kwh, one of the lowest in the world, there is a huge need to increase power production in order to expand and diversify the Nigerian economy.
WASHINGTON: The Washington Post, purchased three years ago by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, will turn a profit in 2016 and expand its newsroom, defying the downward trend in the newspaper industry.

A memo to staff this month from Post publisher Fred Ryan, obtained by AFP, said the newspaper has been helped by its digital efforts and will be launching new "initiatives" in the coming year.

"Thanks to the incredible work of the entire team, the Washington Post will finish this year as a profitable and growing company," Ryan said in the memo.

"In addition to reinforcing our belief that there is a viable business model in quality journalism, this will provide additional funding for several new initiatives that build upon the successes of this year."

The newsroom was "larger this year than last year, and it will grow even more next year," he added.

The newspaper will create a new "rapid-response investigative team" to add to the investigations team, and hire more staff for video, breaking news and other areas.

The Post is likely to add at least 60 positions to boost its newsroom to around 750, as it aims to compete with the New York Times and its staff of 1,300, according to a Politico article by media analyst Ken Doctor.

The paper's growth comes as much of the traditional newspaper industry remains mired in a deep slump as readers migrate to digital platforms and advertising and subscription revenue declines.

Ryan's memo said the Post showed its value during the 2016 election campaign, bringing in more readers online even as it drew fire from the victorious Republican Donald Trump.

"The Washington Post shattered all traffic records over the past year, passing traditional competitors and the largest digital sites," the memo said.

"With monthly unique visitors pushing 100 million in the US alone and 30 million more from around the world, our traffic has increased by nearly 50 percent in the past year, extending the reach of Washington Post journalism to a broader national and global audience."

Subscription revenue has more than doubled in the past year, he added, with a 75 percent increase in new subscribers since January.

The Post has ramped up its technology under Bezos to allow its website to perform better, with improved analytics that gauge how readers are responding and deliver relevant advertising.

It has also made its articles more widely available through social network news services operated by Facebook and Google, and boosted its own social media efforts.

Ryan said earlier this year that the Post was now "a media and technology company" and that Bezos "has given us runway to experiment with new ways to engage with readers and the resources to expand our newsroom and our engineering team."

Source: AFP
FARGO  The Diocese of Fargo has joined a group representing Catholic employers in a lawsuit opposing federal health care coverage requirements that they say include gender transition surgery and abortion, violating their religious beliefs.

The diocese, the Catholic Benefits Association and Catholic Charities North Dakota have asked the court to block the rules scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, according to a motion filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in North Dakota.

We ask only for the freedom to serve consistent with our conscience and our Catholic faith, Bishop John Folda of the Fargo Diocese said in a CBA news release. While we do not discriminate against individuals because of their orientation, our Catholic values will not permit us to pay for or facilitate actions that are contrary to our faith.

According the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act prohibits discrimination in health care on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability and sex, including discrimination based on pregnancy, gender identity and sex stereotyping. For example, it said, women cannot be charged more than men for health insurance.

The rule affects health insurers, hospitals, and health plans administered by or receiving federal funds from HHS.

Officials from the Diocese of Fargo, CBA and HHS could not immediately be reached for comment.

The CBA, which represents employers such as Catholic parishes and hospitals, including the Fargo Diocese and Catholic Charities, said the rules contradict Catholic values. The group said Pope Francis has reiterated Catholic teachings opposed to abortion and theories that gender is mutable or fluid.

Archbishop William Lori, CBAs chairman, said in a news release that Health and Human Services has overstepped its authority. Congress and courts have long agreed the term sex means biological sex, he said.

Defendants try to disguise these rules as mere nondiscrimination provisions, but the rules establish a full-throated mandate that coerces Plaintiffs and other CBA members into performing, providing, paying for, covering, and facilitating access to health services for gender transition and abortion -- services that violate CBA members considered medical judgment and sincerely held religious beliefs, CBA and its fellow plaintiffs said in an emergency motion filed with the court.

They asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order declaring that the rule will not prohibit them from offering health care plans that exclude gender transition surgery and abortion. If not, they said they feared they would suffer immediate irreparable injury.

Many of the CBAs members will become subject to penalties, liability, and potential loss of federal funds on January 1, 2017, when their health plans renew, they said in the court filing.

HHS is also being sued by other Catholic organizations over the rule. Among them are the Fargo-based Sisters of Mary of the Presentation Health System and the University of Mary in Bismarck, which joined the state of North Dakota and the Alma, Mich., based Religious Sisters of Mercy in a lawsuit in November.
Police say a Grand Forks woman shot by her adult son before he took his own life has died of her injuries. Authorities say 53-year-old Jennifer Harrison died at Altru Hospital days after she was found in her home with multiple gunshot wounds to her torso and head. According to officials, 21-year-old Tyler Harrison shot his mother Wednesday at the home they shared in Grand Forks. Police say he turned the gun on himself and was found dead in their driveway. Officials say the shooting was domestic-related, but that their investigation is continuing.
Electric company crews had brought hundreds more customers back online by early Wednesday afternoon, and Bismarck lifted its emergency storm and no-travel advisories.

All of the city's emergency routes and arterial roads had been plowed by Wednesday.

"We have two-fifths of the residential areas cleared of snow and expect to have that done Saturday or Sunday," said Jeff Heintz, director of city service operations.

In some areas, snow emergency routes are narrowed by the volume of snow, and the city continues to work on widening the streets. Drivers should use caution when crossing an intersection where snow blocks their view and be aware of other drivers.

Homeowners are asked to shovel a safe path for mail carriers to make deliveries.

After a heavy coating of ice slowed progress on restoring electricity to portions of North Dakota and South Dakota, some 1,400 Montana Dakota Utilities Co. customers remained without power as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.

"By the end of the day, we anticipate we will still will be working to restore electrical service to 560 customers," Tony Spilde, spokesman for MDU Resources, said Wednesday afternoon.

In South Dakota, nearly 80 power poles are down in Hoven, Tolstroy and Onaka, where 430 customers weren't expected to get their power back until Saturday, he said. Also, because of extensive damage, it will be multiple days before service can be restored to Zealand and Burnstad's 130 customers.

Repair crews were able bring back power to to 900 customers in Eureka, Hillsville, Hosmer, Fullerton, Monango, Fullerton, Mound City and Pollock by Wednesday afternoon.

"We continue to have crews out making repairs to service lines throughout the impacted areas, and we will keep working until all power is restored," Spilde said.

"The freezing rain that came down during the first part of the storm built up on the conductors almost like an airplane wing.  Winds are lifting and dropping the conductors, so in some cases the heavier-than-normal lines are breaking off again as soon as we can fix them," he said. "That has slowed our progress, but we have been able to get several towns back on, and expect by the end of the day (Wednesday) to have service restored to several more areas."

He expected power to be restored Wednesday to Napoleon, Hazelton, Braddock and Kintyre on the North Dakota side, if wind conditions allowed. At 4 p.m. a woman from Hazelton said they were still without power in that town of 280.

She and her family has been without power since 1:30 a.m. Monday. They managed to purchase a generator for $2,000.

"We've been lucky we were able to wear our snowsuits," she said.

By 5 p.m. Wednesday, 60 KEM Electric Co-operative customers near Napoleon, Zeeland, Ashley and Lehr remained without power, said Gary Hulm, line superintendent for the company, but he expected the majority of those to be back on by morning.

"The biggest thing is blocked roads now. It's nice compared to the last two days," he said of repair conditions.

He estimated 15 power lines toppled during the Christmas blizzard. Contractors were hired to help, adding 20 people to the repair effort, Hulm said.

Slope Electric Cooperative has restored power to all customers in southwestern North Dakota, according to Lawanna Wilhelm, its chief of staff.

Western Area Power Administration reported it was helping to bring back power in South Dakota through a federal grid that supplies bulk power to local utilities and distributors in the Summit, S.D., area. WAPA anticipates facilities will be back online in a few days.

Emmons County Sheriff Gary Sanders said "the first storm educated people" for travel, and this time they either stayed home or adjusted their travel plans. Stranded motorists were "a minimal issue" during the Christmas blizzard, he said.
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BLACK REPUBLICAN BLOG - The Republican Party is the party of civil rights and the four Fs: faith, family, freedom and fairness. The Democratic Party is the party of the four Ss: slavery, secession, segregation and socialism (Quote By Author Michael Scheuer).
American Birding Podcast #2: Scott Somershoe on Prairie Bird Conservation

American Birding Podcast Episode 2 is available now!

My guest this time around is Scott Somershoe, Land Bird Coordinator for the US Fish & Wildlife Service, whose recent work has him surveying populations of our 2016 Bird of the Year Chestnut-collared Longspur and other shortgrass species in Colorado and Montana. We send off our 2016 Bird of the Year by talking about why this habitat is so important, what we need to find out about these birds, and what birders can do to help.

Plus, Greg Neise and Ted Floyd discuss identification of Canada and Cackling Geese, with some tips you might be able to apply to your Christmas Bird Count.

Subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play, and if please leave a review if you are so included! It definitely helps people find us. You can also suggest names for our final segment in the comments section here.

Thanks for listening!
Final Days to Win Trips to Panama, Trinidad, and the Zeiss Victory SF Binocular

We are in the final days of our membership recruitment contest. There is still plenty of time to get your friends to sign up in the ABA and win one of these fantastic prizes! One of our top three recruiters for 2016 will be heading to Canopy Tower in tropical Panama for a week of birding, another will be spending 5 nights at the Asa Wright Nature Centre in Trinidad, and another will be the owner of a new Zeiss Victory SF binocular!

Update: December 31, 2016 (4:00 pm ET) in order of who reached the high number first:

1st Place  15 new members recruited (Andrew D.)

2nd Place  15 new members recruited (Sharon S.)

3rd Place  15 new members recruited (Wesley H.)

Runner Up  10 new members recruited (Tracy W.)

The deadline for this contest is December 31, 2016 at midnight. Get your birding friends and family to sign up at https://www2.aba.org/bigyear-membership and win one of these prizes! They must indicate in the comment field that you referred them.

These prizes will be awarded to the top three recruiters:

ABA Big Year 2016 Membership Contest page: http://www.aba.org/bigyear16/

Contest Rules: http://www.aba.org/bigyear16/rules.html




JAMMU (PTI): Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag has visited the Northern Command Headquarters at Udhampur and forward areas of White Knight Corps and interacted with the troops and addressed officers.



He was accorded a warm farewell by officers and men during his visit to all the locations on Wednesday, a defence spokesman said.



The Army Chief in his address complimented the soldiers of Northern Command for their professionalism, selfless commitment and dedication to the nation.



He also appreciated their role during the recent unrest, ceasefire violations and in counter-terrorist operations.



He exhorted the troops to continue to work with zeal and dedication to overcome the numerous challenges.




Picture of Mars captured by India's Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft. An ISRO photo

BEIJING (PTI): China aims to reach Mars by 2020, to catch up in the space race with India, the US, Russia and the EU which have succeeded in sending probes to the Red Planet.



China aims to launch a Mars probe around 2020 to carry out orbiting and roving exploration, followed by a second mission that would include collection of surface samples from the Red Planet, an official white paper "China's Space Activities in 2016" said.



The Mars mission has become a prestigious subject for China's multi-billion dollar space programme which has made several advances, including landing a rover on the Moon, several successful manned missions as well as ab advanced programme to set up its own space station.



China's attempts to send an exploratory probe to Mars called Yinghuo-1, in a Russian spacecraft in 2011 failed as shortly after the launch it was declared lost and later burnt during re-entry into Earth.



Beijings focus on the Mars mission picked up after ISROs Mangalyaan Mars mission was accomplished with a low budget of US$ 73 million with India reaching the Red Plant well ahead of China.



Zhang Rongqiao, chief architect of the Mars mission told media in August this year that China plans to send a spacecraft to orbit Mars, land and deploy a rover in July or August 2020.



The 2020 mission will be launched on a Long March-5 carrier rocket, the work horse for China's space missions.



It will be launched from the Wenchang space centre in south China's Hainan province.



The lander will separate from the orbiter at the end of a journey of around seven months and touch down in a low latitude area in the northern hemisphere of Mars where the rover will explore the surface.



China also displayed the rover which has six wheels, powered by four solar panels, two more than the rover sent to the moon.



Before that China will launch a lunar probe in 2018 to achieve world's first soft landing on the far side of the moon to showcase its space prowess.



China has already landed a rover on the moon in the past but wants to explore the dark side of the lunar surface to carve out a niche for itself as this has not been done by any other country.


As we come near to the end of another year, we want to thank readers of PowerBlog for reading, commenting, and sharing our posts over the past twelve months.

If youre a new reader we encourage you to catch up by checking out our top ten most popular posts for 2016:

1. Work is a gift our kids can handle

Joseph Sunde

The abundant prosperity of the modern age has brought many blessings when it comes to child-rearing and child development, offering kids new opportunities for education, play, and personal development. Yet even as we celebrate our civilizational departure from excessive child labor, we ought to be wary of falling into a different sort of lopsided lifestyle.

2. No, John Oliver Did Not Give Away $15 Million. You Did.

Joe Carter

Oliver didnt top Oprah nor was he involved in one of the largest giveaways ever on TV. The actual amount of money that Oliver gave away wasnt that significant  $60,000  but he was able to fool people who dont know much about economics into thinking he actually gave away $15 million.

3. Alexis de Tocqueville Vs. Bernie Sanders

Sarah Stanley

What exactly is the kind of socialism supported by Bernie Sanders and many other Americans? Hes said that its not Marxism and that he supports private business. Its a soft socialism Gregg explains.

4. How to understand Snowpiercer (Posted in 2014)

Joe Carter

Snowpiercer is the most political film of the year. And likely to be one of the most misunderstood.

5. Explainer: What You Should Know About the Flint Water Crisis

Joe Carter

The crisis has been blamed on a failure of government at all levels.

6. Explainer: What You Should Know About Presidential Primaries

Joe Carter

Political parties are independent organizations that choose who will be their candidate at a presidential nominating convention.

7. Pokemon GO is the Sweet, Successful Fruit of Failure

Dylan Pahman

In a weekend, Pokemon GO has already taken our smartphones by storm. But where did it come from?

8. Understanding Trump: The Deal-Maker as Artist

Joe Carter

In the history of American politics, there has never been a candidate quite like Donald Trump.

9. Explainer: What You Should Know About The Syrian Refugee Controversy

Joe Carter

Recently more than half the nations governors27 stateshave expressed opposition to letting Syrian refugees into their states. Many lawmakers in Congress are also considering legislation that would suspend the Syrian refugee program. Here is what you should know about the current controversy.

10. A Guide to Laudato Si: A Section-By-Section Summary of Pope Francis Encyclical on the Environment (Posted in 2015)

Joe Carter
[Brain Damage note: The author of this piece will be the narrator of the concert, so has a personal perspective on this, giving some insights into what to expect with the show...] In Sweden, a curious production of Pink Floyd songs, related visuals, and storytelling, has travelled the country leaving a trail of glowing reviews. The band is P-Floyd and they are known to spare no efforts in presenting a show with strong sonic and visual impact. The new production is an interesting approach of how to tell the Pink Floyd story, including many of the bands twists and turns, playing pertinent songs to follow the storyline. All this has been adapted to fit the classic concept of the seven deadly sins, with a narrator taking the stage between songs and seamlessly fitting stories and visuals into the overall musical concept. Seven Deadly Sins offers P-Floyd in an audio-visual production intertwining with contemplation of the fatal weaknesses that make us the people we are  and particularly as they relate to the front figures of Pink Floyd. The audience can expect large investments in sound, lighting and theatrical elements, but above all a unique Pink Floyd experience from one of the world's foremost concept bands. In Sweden, the newspaper reviews have talked about absolute top class, the total Pink Floyd experience, best concert of the year. Thanks to such reception, the show is now scheduled for an arena tour next autumn, including the Ericsson Globe arena in Stockholm. During their twenty years as a band P-Floyd has played many sold out concert halls in Scandinavia. The most important events however are the ones played in the open pit mine converted into a concert arena, Dalhalla, a stage used for opera music and also by the likes of Neil Young and Sting. For this they have been awarded Live Act of the Year at the Dalecarlia Music Awards. Their shows there are filled with lasers, video, theatre, pyrotechnics, stunt flying and even mountaineering - treating Pink Floyd's musical heritage as if it were their own, never afraid of innovation. On October 27th this year, P-Floyds Jan Stumsner (guitars) and Peter Holmstedt (bass) joined Men On The Border and a full symphony orchestra in celebrating Syd Barrett, at the Cambridge Corn Exchange, the location of his last ever concert. Now the full band is coming over to present their work to a London audience, having now announced a unique one-off performance of Seven Deadly Sins at the Union Chapel, London on Friday May 26th 2017. Depending on how well this is received, and tickets are selling well, more UK shows may be on offer in the future. Tickets can be purchased through Eventim UK.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/12/2016 (2135 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Carberry teenager Paren Anderson, 17, is in the midst of a tumultuous week as a federal backbencher, representing the Ontario-based Bay of Quinte electoral district at the Manitoba Legislative Building.

Its Andersons second year with the Youth Parliament of Manitoba  a non-partisan, non-denominational corporation and registered charity that this week is in the midst of a model parliament session in Winnipeg.

All the stops have been pulled for this years 67 youth participants from throughout Manitoba, who have found themselves taking residence at the Manitoba Legislative Building to debate federal laws and policies.

Submitted Leslie Kretai and Paren Anderson are two rural Manitoban teenagers in Winnipeg this week for the Youth Parliament of Manitoba's model parliament sittings.

There, youths have found themselves surrounded by like-minded people they can act out real-life scenarios alongside, Anderson shared.

Theyre all very interested and diverse and generally its just an open community and place to learn better speaking skills and get better at talking in front of a big group situation.

While she notes that a handful of interesting bills have come up thus far, the one shes looking forward to is still on the horizon for later this week, when they debate a proposal to repeal laws that prohibit multiple marriages.

I think its a great idea to allow more freedom to marry who you want, she suggested.

Reflecting on his first day as federal minister of rural development, 17-year-old Leslie Kretai of Warren said that wielding the full force of democracy felt pretty good.

When you go into an election, you vote for them to make decisions, but if youre in the chair making votes on decisions thats a whole different thing, he explained. I just find it so much fun to have more of a say in whats going on.

While the youths share a professional atmosphere most of the time and adhere to strict dress codes and other such formalities associated with parliamentarians, Anderson said that there is a lighthearted spin to everything.

They even debated Pokemon, she explained with a laugh.

While neither Anderson or Kretai are considering careers in politics, both agree that their involvement with Youth Parliament of Manitoba have helped in their understanding of Canadian democracy.

Further to that, Kretai said that he has learned to respect politicians, who are occasionally faced with difficult situations.

On Tuesday morning, Kretai spoke against a new constitutional right for Canadian citizens to have access to a healthy environment  a cause he believes in but whose bill carried flaws in its execution.

You can criticize something without being against or in favour of something, he explained  a message thats often lost in messages dissemination to the public.

Now that Ive talked to some politicians  I realize that most of them are just everyday people who are trying to represent their constituents, Kretai said. Theyre just trying to help their constituents.

Youths will continue playing the part of elected officials at the Manitoba legislature throughout the week, capping things off with a closing ceremony on Friday evening.

 tclarke@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/12/2016 (2135 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Making their daughter proud, Stacie Robertson and husband Dan banded their workplaces together in support of Teen Challenge, whose Christian-based addictions ministry operates just outside of Brandon.

Between Stacies workplace at the Brandon Regional Hospitals Surgical Suite and Dans workplace at Brandons Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba office, the couple helped raise $750 and 20 large boxes and bags of material.

This material included food, clothing, books, bath stuff, school supplies and various items young women might need or want during their stay with the organization.

Submitted Donated items for Teen Challenge are piled up in Stacie and Dan Robertson's living room. The couple helped raise $750 and 20 large boxes and bags of material for the addictions ministry.

They also tied in some feel-good Christmas presents, Stacie said  items they hoped would make the women feel better.

Teen Challenge Brandon is an addictions ministry that houses young women during their battles against addiction.

Three of their participants recently visited the local 100 Women Who Care organization to make a plea for funding.

While 100 Women Who Care selected another organization as this years beneficiary, something about their story resonated with Stacie, inspiring her to take action.

We all see our kids making some bad decisions, however that happens, she explained. Weve all done it  I would only hope that that centre were there for my daughter if she ever needed it.

A semi-retired nurse, Stacie asked her co-workers to adopt Teen Challenge as this Christmas seasons charity, and they agreed.

Dans co-workers followed suit, and they quickly amassed a pile of donations that Stacie considers overwhelming  one that she doesnt want to take too much credit for.

It was a real combined joint effort, she said.

To find so many people band together in support of the young women at Teen Challenge has been a heartwarming experience, director of womens ministries Kim Lowes shared this week.

A huge blessing, she affirmed. The girls are always absolutely blown away  Its an absolute gift for the girls at this time of year.

Given their status as addicts in recovery, the gifts resonated particularly well, Lowes added, clarifying that addicts are more commonly shoved aside and not factored into charitable efforts such as what the Robertsons have offered.

To have other people in the community rally around the women and just say were here to help you, it blows me away, Lowes said. It really does  Its just that sense of being cared for by somebody is awesome.

This is the kind of support these girls will continue to need as they progress through the program and into the outside world.

Like most community stewards, it wasnt Stacie or Dan who alerted the media as to their efforts, who didnt do it for publicity.

Daughter Blair Robertson, 22, alerted the press, commending her parents thoughtful behaviour during the Christmas season.

Its not only her parents who deserve commendation, she added, but also those at the Brandon Regional Hospital and the Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba.

I was completely blown away with how generous the people were, she said.

Where a lot of people dont undertake such fundraising initiatives out of pessimism that they wouldnt be able to raise enough to make a difference, the Robertson couple proves that when people set their minds out to do something, even the unlikelys possible.

People are generous, especially over Christmas time, and this really, really proves it, the proud daughter noted. I just think it was absolutely incredible and I just feel their story needs to be shared.

The Brandon-area Teen Challenge currently has six students due to recent graduations, although the present capacity is eight. Theyre in the process of a significant expansion that will find this capacity double to 16 during the next year.

 tclarke@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/12/2016 (2135 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A recent Probe Research poll suggests nearly one-quarter of Manitoba adults would try marijuana at least once if it becomes legal.

But one local MLA says a lot more research is needed before it gets to that point.

To me, theres just so much that needs to be looked at yet, said Brandon East Progressive Conservative MLA Len Isleifson. But it certainly needs to be regulated somehow and strictly enforced.

Probe Research The graph above is part of a Probe Research survey conducted for the Winnipeg Free Press that asked Manitobans how likely they would be to use marijuana, should it become legal in Canada. The question above asked respondents if they had used it in the last 12 months.

Isleifson encourages Brandon East constituents to contact him with any feedback they might have, as debates on the issue begin in earnest.

So when we get to the point where we need to discuss what Manitoba is going to do, then it would be nice to have feedback from our constituents, he said.

The Probe/Winnipeg Free Press survey asked, If marijuana becomes legal in Canada, how likely would you be to use it even just once? Twenty-four per cent said they would likely use it. The most likely user group would be men between 18 and 34 (37 per cent), renters (38 per cent) and those with some post-secondary education (32 per cent.)

The provincewide survey was conducted via telephone between Nov. 29 and Dec. 11 among a random and representative sampling of 1,000 Manitoba adults. Modified random digit dialing covered both landline and wireless numbers.

Isleifson said at 1,000 respondents, it was a small sample and pointed out a majority of Manitobans (75 per cent) said they were unlikely to try marijuana.

I still think the majority of people are not inclined  whether its legal or not  to use marijuana, he said. It gets even smaller as people get older.

More men (28 per cent) than women (20 per cent) would use it, while more Winnipeg residents would try it (28 per cent) than rural Manitobans (19 per cent). Those over the age of 55 were least likely to try marijuana (15 per cent).

A quarter of respondents earning less than $30,000 a year said they would try it once, while 27 per cent of those who make more than $100,000 said they would use it. Liberal voters were most likely to use pot (32 per cent), while NDP voters came in at 26 per cent and PC supporters at 19 per cent.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus government plans to introduce legislation to legalize cannabis this spring, which has the provincial government working to get prepared.

Were looking at what the federal government released just a couple weeks ago, so its fairly new, said Brandon West PC MLA Reg Helwer. They had some guidelines and not a lot of reasoning for it. We are looking for what works best for Manitoba, both in terms of sale and enforcement.

Helwer said hes not surprised by the Probe results. What is concerning to Helwer is the fact there are no protocols in place yet for drug driving.

I think we need to have a good plan going forward with that, he said.

The results of the Probe survey show that 87 per cent of respondents have not used marijuana in the last year, while 13 per cent admitted to using.

Meanwhile, Brandon-Souris Conservative MP Larry Maguire has an online poll at larrymaguire.ca/weed, asking constituents if marijuana should be legalized.

So far weve received a tremendous amount of responses and I hope people can take a few minutes to fill out the survey and let me know where they stand. It is imperative that the voice of Westman is heard in Parliament, Maguire said.

Maguire said legalization of marijuana would not make his Top 100 list of important public policy matters facing Westman.

My efforts have been on securing funding for critical infrastructure, improving the quality of life of Westman families and seniors and creating the right business environment for private sector growth in our economy, Maguire said.

Saying that, the Liberals are moving forward on this issue, so as parliamentarians we must deal with the matter at hand. If the Liberals are going to legalize marijuana, they better make sure they get it right and dont cause more harm than good.

Maguire said the issue is far more complicated than meets the eye, and there are still many questions, including: Where should it be sold? Who sets the price? Who sets the THC level? Who will be able to purchase it? Can the police be able to easily determine who is under the influence? Should the provinces and municipal governments have final say on regulations? What tax regime will be put in place? Should individuals be allowed to grow their own plants for recreational use? Should advertising be allowed? Should edibles be allowed?

There are various opinions on those questions and lots of folks dont want to see it legalized at all. Many people would like it to first be decriminalized rather than full legalization at the outset, Maguire said.

 jaustin@brandonsun.com, with files from the Winnipeg Free Press and Erin Debooy

 Twitter: @jillianaustin
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/12/2016 (2135 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The digital divide between Canadas remote and urban populations got a little narrower recently with a welcome decision by the countrys telecom regulator to declare high-speed Internet access a basic service.

Web access is crucial to almost every aspect of life, from finding a job, succeeding in school and using government services to simply staying in touch with family and friends. U.S. President Barack Obama recognized this when he said that in the digital age, Internet is a necessity, not a luxury. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has gone so far as to call it a basic human right, like access to health care or water.

The CRTC ruling is an important recognition that the 18 per cent of Canadians who currently dont have reliable access to Internet are being unjustly disadvantaged.

The decision set minimum high-speed targets for service delivery and established a $750-million fund to build infrastructure in remote communities over the next five years. The CRTC estimates that to expand high-speed Internet into every corner of the country will take up to 15 years and may cost tens of billions of dollars. That will require sustained efforts and investments of successive governments. This is just a start, but an important one.

Still, theres another dimension of the digital divide that policymakers will have to address if they are serious about treating high-speed Internet as a basic service: lack of access for the low-income Canadians.

According to Statistics Canada, only 58 per cent of Canadian households with annual incomes of $30,000 or less have home Internet access compared to 98 per cent of Canadian households with annual incomes of $120,000 or more.

Studies have shown that low-income Canadians often take money out of their budgets for food, recreation and rent to pay for Internet services. Or they simply go without digital access, constraining their economic and educational opportunities and excluding themselves from a range of services and various kinds of civic participation.

Anti-poverty advocates have long called for a mandated $10-per-month high-speed Internet product for families and individuals living below Statistics Canadas low-income measure. (In 2013, that poverty line was $20,933 for an individual and $41,866 for a family of four, after taxes.) The CRTC could have mandated that as they did a cheap skinny cable package.

Instead, chairman Jean-Pierre Blais says the commission is relying on market forces to regulate prices and hopes that by creating sustainable competition better prices will emerge.

Thats not good enough. Clearly basic services should not be contingent on market forces.

In 2011, the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of expression called on all governments to develop a concrete and effective plan of action to make the Internet widely available, accessible and affordable to all segments of the population.

With its recent decision, the CRTC took a big step in recognizing the importance of that goal and made an initial investment in addressing availability and accessibility. But no concrete steps were taken to help the many poor Canadians whose disadvantage is compounded by their lack of Internet access.

To its credit, the commission did file a report on broadband issues, including affordability, with the federal government. Now its up to Navdeep Bains, the minister of economic development, and his government to find a way to ensure that Canadas newest basic service is truly guaranteed for everyone.

 Toronto Star
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/12/2016 (2135 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

So lets say youre a Conservative politician based in Manitoba  provincial or federal  and you see the results of a Probe Research poll published this week that suggests nearly a quarter of Manitobans would be willing to try marijuana, should the federal Liberal government make the substance legal across the country.

How do you respond?

Its a difficult situation for federal Conservatives to find themselves in. During the last federal election, the Conservatives under Stephen Harper were staunchly opposed to legalizing marijuana in Canada.

After Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau announced he would move to fully legalize pot should he be elected prime minister, Harper went so far as to suggest that marijuana is infinitely worse than tobacco, and that legalizing it would not protect Canadian children from its harmful effects.

Brandon-Souris Conservative MP Larry Maguires opinion over marijuana legalization has remained unchanged over the last three years. In 2013, during the Brandon-Souris byelection, Maguire suggested it was a non-issue for local constituents.

Theres a considerable difference between marijuana and tobacco and thats why I feel strongly, as I go from door to door to door in southwest Manitoba, legalizing marijuana is not an issue predominant in this region, Maguire said during a 2013 byelection debate.

In 2015, during the lengthy federal election, Maguire was the sole dissenting voice among the other Brandon-Souris candidates, all of whom  representatives of the NDP, Liberal and Green alike  suggested that legalization was necessary.

Im certainly more concerned about growing the economy than I am marijuana, Maguire quipped, adding that studies show the younger you start using cannabis, the more damage it leads to in the future.

In light of the Probe Research poll  results of which you can read in our paper today  the Sun attempted to speak to Maguire regarding the results, but he was unavailable this week.

Our inquiry wasnt out of idle curiosity. Over the last several weeks, Maguire has been running an online poll at larrymaguire.ca/weed, asking his constituents if marijuana should be legalized.

True to form, in a recent interview Maguire had with the Sun regarding his online poll, he said legalization of marijuana would not make his Top 100 list of important public policy matters facing Westman. He also seemed to jump ahead of any potential results from his online survey  or perhaps he was predicting them  saying that lots of folks dont want to see it legalized at all.

The kinds of non-scientific polls like Maguire is conducting, while an interesting exercise, are both distracting and questionable, if you are looking to build political policy around them. He may well have several respondents with strong opinions against marijuana legalization fill out his online survey  perhaps even a majority of them.

But that result would tend to fly in the face of more quantifiable research, such as a poll conducted earlier this year by CTB News/Nanos Research and published in June that found nearly 70 per cent of Canadians are in favour of legalization.

Another local Tory politician Brandon East Progressive Conservative MLA Len Isleifson  echoed Maguire when he said he believes that a majority of people arent inclined to try marijuana.

While that is very likely true, its worth reminding readers  and local politicians such as Isleifson  that there is a major difference between wanting to see pot legalized, and wanting to actually try it. One is a policy decision, and the other is a lifestyle decision.

To be fair to both our local MLAs and our member of Parliament, we happen to agree with them that if the Liberal government moves ahead with legalization, there needs to be strong safeguards in place to prevent underage use, and regulate those who would toke and drive.

But as weve said before on this page, public opinion on marijuana use is evolving. And while federal Conservatives have derided the Liberal push to fully legalize pot  not just decriminalize it  Tories will be on the wrong side of public opinion should they not find a way to help the process along.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/12/2016 (2135 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Honeymoons over?

Brian Pallister being away in Costa Rica for two months is going to irritate the voters.

Premier doesnt deserve eight weeks

So our premier is going to Costa Rica for eight weeks. I was a government worker. It took me 25-30 years to get eight weeks holidays. I just hope that when he gets beach sand in his computer, he doesnt expect us taxpayers to pay for it.

The bill will be more than that

So Brandon University got the Strand Theatre for a dollar. Did they really get it for a dollar? Can you imagine the heat, maintenance and electricity costs for that building for a year? Us taxpayers are going to be paying plenty for that baby.

Putting aside their own grief to help

On Tuesday, my sister and brother-in-law had to travel to Winnipeg for an appointment. It was an horrendous trip. Everything that could go wrong did. And on the way back they found themselves stalled on the side of the road. A Good Samaritan towed them into Brandon. And as bad a day as they were having, they found out this wonderful man was travelling to the Brandon hospital to be with his dying brother. What a wonderful person who can look beyond his own grief and take time to help others. Thank you for caring, and a very Merry Christmas.

Daily chuckle

To the person who wrote that the City of Brandon should identify dumpsters covered with snow with coloured flags provided by the City of Brandon, what happened to using your gloved hand to remove the snow. The City of Brandon employees must have had a good laugh!

A public shaming should be in store

Regarding husbands and fathers hold no accountability. Yes, indeed it is sad to see the number of women who are being abused in domestic violence situations. Maybe it is time for the husbands and fathers to be held accountable and be denounced in a public way of shaming. Come child tax days and social assistance days, you see all the husbands and men around pushing their kids in strollers. But other days you never see them walking around the streets like that. It is quite shameful  and shameful for them to be abusing women on a daily basis. Shame them and maybe they would think twice before continuing this behaviour.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/12/2016 (2135 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Starting in January, Brandonites will not only have the chance to taste food from around the world, but learn how to cook it, too.

Westman Immigrant Services is once again putting on a series of world cooking classes starting in January, said cultural diversity facilitator Trenton Zazalak.

(The classes) have been very successful  a lot of people ask about it every year, said Zazalak. This year, we have 11 classes for 11 different countries, hosted by 10 cooks.

Erin DeBooy/Brandon Sun Trenton Zazalak is gearing up for this year's world cooking classes, hosted by Westman Immigrant Services. There are 11 different classes teaching Brandonites how to make various dishes from various countries, such as Germany, Bolivia, China and India.

A wide variety of food cultures are covered by the classes, which include cuisines such as Chinese, German, Indian, Bolivian and Dutch foods. Participants cook their dishes throughout the three hour class, and enjoy eating them at the end, Zazalak said.

Im excited to see what my chefs are going to pull out for dishes. Were asking them to do three dishes, so an appetizer, a main course, and a dessert or a drink, Zazalak said.

The cooks are permanent residents or citizens who have come from other countries who prepare these ethnic dishes on a regular basis, Zazalak said.

Its not over the top  this is not high-end cuisine, its comfort food. Its what normal people eat on a regular basis. Its not so complex that no one can do it, Zazalak said. If you have no cooking experience and youre worried about it, come out because youre going to learn from the cook as well, not just about the food, but about their culture  which in my opinion is just as interesting as learning about the food.

The cooks try to explain the history and the reasoning behind each course, as a better glimpse into the culture, Zazalak said.

What are the differences, why is different, how is it different  we want our teachers not to only teach you how to cook, but tell you how its different and the reasons why  its to teach people and to give an appreciation of other cultures and customs and to learn about different countries.

The kitchen facility is on the smaller side, so each class only accepts about 15 people, Zazalak said. If the demand gets high enough, Zazalak said hes open to look into larger kitchens.

My vision of this is to build it bigger and better every year, said Zazalak.

File photo Kevin Huang works with fellow instructor Whitney Feng during a Chinese cuisine cooking class at Knox United Church. The class was one of a past series of ethnic cooking classes organized by Westman Immigrant Services.

Each class is $20, and participants can sign up for as many, or as few, as theyd like. The first class starts in mid-January, and registration will be available on westmanimmigrantservices.ca

Were very excited to get it goingIm anxious to get in there and start cooking, Zazalak said.

 edebooy@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @erindebooy
The Health Minister has praised the HSE's on-going three-day recruitment fair, which has seen 19 nursing jobs offered.

This number contrasts with the 1,000 nursing positions the HSE is attempting to fill, but Minister Harris said the recruitment fair was ony one initiative planned this year to reach that target.
More than $20,000 has been raised through a GoFundMe page to pay for the burial of a 10-year-old girl who died after her flight made an emergency landing at Shannon airport on Christmas Eve.

Madra Oo, who was Nigerian but living in Canada, was travelling from Toronto in Canada to London en route to Nigeria with her three older sisters to meet their extended family for Christmas.

The girls' mother had travelled on an earlier flight.

As the plane approached the Irish coast, Madra suffered a cardiac arrest. The plane landed in Shannon and Madra was rushed to Limerick University Hospital where she was pronounced dead shortly after arriving.

It was later discovered that sickle cell anemia was a major contributing factor in her death.

The young girl's family, who are living in Canada, have remained in Ireland since Christmas Eve, with Madra, as they do not have the funds to return her body to Canada and carry out a proper funeral.

A FundMePage was set up by her family to try to raise enough money to hold a proper funeral for Madra back in Canada. In just three days, more than $20,000 has been raised.

A statement on the GoFundMe page said: On Christmas Eve my 3 sisters and I left Toronto to spend Christmas with our extended family in Nigeria.

Our mom flew ahead of us. Our beautiful youngest sister Madra (10) was with us. She took ill on the plane and despite the efforts of some kind medics on board they could not save her.

We have been in Ireland since then, waiting to take our dear sister back to Canada. The Irish police and medical teams and Air Canada have been very helpful in this situation.

Our family is a single parent family of 4 children so we do not have the funds to have a proper burial for our beloved Madra.

Any help you can give will be deeply appreciated by our family during this time of devastation and grief.

Madra was the light of our lives, she brought joy and happiness to our household and we will never be the same without her, however we will keep her memory alive. Thank you.

The GoFundMe page can be seen here.
Irish emigrants home for Christmas are being urged to explore job opportunities here.

Home for Work recruitment days are being held in Cork, Athlone, Galway and Sligo today, aimed at enticing people to return to Ireland.

Roles are available in science, engineering, accountancy, IT, HR and sales and marketing.

Michelle Murphy, director of recruitment company and event organiser Collins McNicholas said: "All of our clients that we're representing today have vacancies either currently or will have in the very early new year, and it really just shows that the economy is starting to move in the right direction.

"So those talented individuals that left Ireland from years back are now in demand and we'd love to see them, if they're at home for the Christmas holidays, and to come along to meet us in the various locations."
Many of China's independent travelers - those who do not book trips with travel agencies or groups - are taking to minsu, a new study has found.

The Chinese term is used for accommodations that range from boutique hotels to homestays - and offer opportunities to experience local lifestyles. Bed-and-breakfasts are inside the purview.

Compared with 2015, the growth in demand for such accommodations was huge in the first three quarters of the year, mafengwo.cn, a prominent tourism website, said in its 2016 Hotel Reservation Report of Independent Chinese Travelers. The study was based on big data from the site's partner hotels. It didn't reveal the base figure.

The trade journal China Tourism News reported that there were more than 40,000 such accommodations in China, with the sector's market value standing at around 20 billion yuan ($2.9 billion).

They are seen in large numbers in such cities as Lijiang and Dali in Yunnan province, where prices range between 318 yuan and 801 yuan per night.

"You can stay with a local and rub shoulders with other residents of the neighborhood. Each visit gives you a different experience," Ma Yutao, head of the website's research, told China Daily.

Independent travelers also prefer to stay in a minsu because Chinese increasingly want better value for their money.

According to the website, these travelers want clean rooms and convenient locations. Many travelers commenting on the website said they expected their hosts to be "hospitable, talkative or humorous". Some said they preferred hosts who are "adept at cooking and good-looking or can drive".

"The advantages of regular hotels are their standardization and good locations," said Yu Feifei, a frequent traveler from Xiamen, Fujian province. "You know they are going to be good, but there will be no surprises."

The 31-year-old said minsu are more attractive because some provide living experiences to the average traveler, who cannot own anything like them.

"I like to stay in ancient houses with local features," she said.

China has many small boutique hotels that draw tourists with their distinct designs, such as courtyard houses. Yu said she once stayed in a wooden house in Wuyuan, Jiangxi province, that made her feel like she was time-traveling.

"Sometimes I stay in minsu because I like their delicate design and the personality of the host," said Wang Ying, an office worker from Haikou, Hainan province.

"It's the cool people you meet who make your journey cool," the 28-year-old added.

When she traveled to Milan last year, her host at a homestay was a musician and invited her to his band's public performance. Then, in Melbourne in May, a couple in their 60s hosted her in their house where she was well looked after. They took on a trip to see kangaroos.

But the minsu business has its downsides.

Ma said the costs of maintaining such properties are high, and occupancy depends on such seasons as holidays and weekends. In addition, some travelers have security concerns before arriving because they do not know what their hosts will be like. He suggested that travelers refer to other guests' comments to make the best decisions.

The report said that independent travelers generally book hotels in China only a week before their trips but usually book accommodations abroad a month in advance. The average costs for domestic hotels was 553 yuan, and foreign hotels were 1,350 yuan in the first three quarters of the year.

Chinese travelers are also spending more money on island hotels, like in Tahiti and the Maldives, where they can enjoy colorful activities such as spa visits and dining on cuisine.
A nationwide ceasefire between Syrian government forces and opposition rebels has come into effect.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier that the ceasefire, which excludes extremist groups such as Islamic State and an al Qaida affiliate, will be guaranteed by Moscow and Turkey.

It will be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition, due to be held in Kazakhstan.

The ceasefire will include all parts of Syria, including the eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus.

Syria's military said it agreed to the nationwide truce, paving the way for reactivating negotiations to end the conflict.

It added that the ceasefire comes after the "successes achieved by the armed forces", an apparent reference to the capture of rebel-held neighbourhoods of Aleppo earlier this month.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria, and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance.

Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said US President-elect Donald Trump's administration will be welcome to join the Syrian peace process once he takes office.

Moscow is a key ally of Mr Assad, while Turkey is one of the main backers of the opposition.

Several previous attempts to halt the civil war have failed, but the recent warming of ties between Turkey and Russia may prove to be crucial.

The move comes on the heels of the Syrian army retaking control of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, ending the opposition's four-year hold over parts of the city.

Mr Putin said he had ordered the Russian military to scale down its presence in Syria, where it has provided crucial support to Mr Assad's forces.
LONDON: Copper prices edged lower on Wednesday as rising expectations that China will ease COVID-19 controls next...
GENEVA: The largest pear-shaped fancy vivid pink diamond ever put up for auction could sell for up to $35 million at...
The Gautier Police Department reported the following incidents from:

Wednesday, Dec. 21

Timothy Lyons Martin, 43, Pascagoula, was arrested on an outstanding warrant for suspended driver's license.

An officer reported an incident at 1804 Timberlane Drive.

An accident was reported on John Dailey Road.

A theft was reported at 1830 Broadmoor Drive.

Robert Zachary Knox, 38, Gautier, was arrested for disorderly conduct, public drunk and resisting arrest.

A complaint was reported at 1919 Martin Road.

Thursday, Dec. 22

Terrance Lamar Hyde Jr., Gautier, was arrested on outstanding warrants for contempt of court, suspended driver's license and no insurance.

An item was found at 7310 Melody.

Percy Carter, 24, Gautier, was arrested for domestic violence simple assault first offense.

A burglary was reported at 338 U.S. 90.

Friday, Dec. 23

A complaint was reported at 7685 Pinedale Drive.

An accident was reported at 3413 Old Spanish Trail.

A theft was reported at 7205 Martin Bluff Road.

An accident was reported on Rue De Courmont.

Obscene/Harassing phone calls were reported at 2207 Sandlewood Drive.

Saturday, Dec. 24

A theft was reported at 2312 Victoria Drive.

An officer reported an incident at 2804 Dubarry Drive.

An employee reported a forgery at 2608 U.S. 90.

An employee reported a theft at 2800 U.S. 90.

An accident was reported at 5520 Gautier-Vancleave Road.

Erik Carr Alexander, 41, Pascagoula, was arrested on an outstanding warrant for the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

A complaint was reported on I-10.

A theft was reported at 5400 Highway 57.

An accident was reported on Victoria Drive.

Sunday, Dec. 25

An officer reported an incident at 1409 U.S. 90.

A domestic dispute was reported at 3217 Grouper Road.

Monday, Dec. 26

An incident was reported at 3201 Joy Lane.

An officer reported an incident at 7520 Martin Bluff Road.

Malicious mischief was reported at 7405 Meadowfair Lane.

Tuesday, Dec. 27

Bobby Ray Holmes, 47, Gautier, was arrested on outstanding warrants for no insurance, suspended driver's license and domestic violence simple assault first offense.

Obscene/harassing phone calls were reported at 2519 Calle De Feliz.

An employee reported a theft at 3005 U.S. 90.

A complaint was reported at 3517 Suter Road.

A theft was reported at 3660 Mackeral Drive.

Malicious mischief was reported at 1804 Anders Road.

An officer reported an abandoned vehicle at 3144 Soundview Drive.

A domestic dispute was reported at 1611 Westgate Parkway.
The Australian company behind red-light traffic cameras, Redflex, has escaped severe penalties in the US after striking a non-prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice over its part in a corruption scandal.

The company's US arm, Redflex Americas, has agreed to pay $US100,000 ($140,000) in restitution to the City of Columbus, Ohio as part of the non-prosecution agreement (NPA).

Redflex still faces a $500 million civil action from the City of Chicago.

The agreement means the company will not face any criminal charges from the DOJ's investigation and will not pay any fine or penalty to the US government.

Redflex still faces a civil action from the City of Chicago, which is seeking damages of $US377 million ($500 million) over the company's alleged involvement in bribing public officials to secure key contracts.
Shirley Hazzard after winning the fiction category at the 2003 National Book Awards in New York City with The Great Fire. Credit:AP Her escape into that world was made easy. In 1947, Mr Hazzard, by then an Australian trade commissioner, took his family to Hong Kong, via Hiroshima. Schooling for the Hazzard girls came to an abrupt end, but Shirley unexpectedly began a different kind of education with British Intelligence. At "a very colonial party, with lots of gimlets being downed", as she later recalled, a guest offered the 16-year-old a job with the special operations group monitoring the Chinese civil war. It was not so much her tasks (including moving map pins and delivering messages) as her colleagues that fascinated Hazzard. "The literary atmosphere of that office  British officers, linguists, young veterans who were almost innately charged with literary reference  was joyful. For the first time, I could share literature with delight and freedom." One person, an older man, was particularly fascinating. Their affair, and other aspects of Hazzard's experiences during this period, are reflected in her 2003 novel The Great Fire, which also won the US National Book Award's fiction category. (Accepting the award after a Stephen King speech that aggressively championed popular authors over literary ones, Hazzard set the room buzzing with her spirited defence of high culture.) The Great Fire concludes hopefully, but Hazzard's real romance ended with painful finality when the family suddenly moved to Wellington in 1948. After a short stay in London, they relocated to New York in 1951. Two years later, her parents separated acrimoniously and moved on, but Hazzard, who was working at the United Nations Secretariat, remained. She had applied for a secretarial position, "hoping to do good for the world, and found myself in a nest of McCarthyist persecution and intrigue". Hazzard resigned in 1960, but disillusion with the United Nations persisted. Her second book of short stories, People in Glass Houses (1967), is a thinly veiled satire of the organisation, while two works of non-fiction, 1973's Defeat of an Ideal, and 1990's Countenance of Truth, are openly critical. According to Hazzard scholar Brigitta Olubas, "she was the first writer to publish an account of the US State Department McCarthyist involvement in UN hiring of staff from its earliest years, and the first person to air claims that UN Secretary-general Kurt Waldheim had concealed details of his World War II activities".

Hazzard, who had studied Italian, was sent to the UN's new Naples office in 1956. She remained for a year, but this was just the beginning of a life-long love affair with Italy. Almost to the end, Hazzard lived there for part of every year  mostly on the island of Capri, which made her an honorary citizen in 2000. That year also saw the publication of her memoir, Greene on Capri, which fondly recalls another part-time resident, Graham Greene. The authors' decades-long friendship began in the late 1960s in a Capri cafe: Hazzard overheard Greene trying to remember the last line of a Robert Browning poem, so muttered it to him on her way out. It was during her earliest sojourns in Italy that Hazzard began writing in earnest, and in 1960 she sent her only copy of a short story to The New Yorker. It was immediately accepted for publication, as were many others subsequently. This enabled her to quit the UN, and form friendships in New York's lively literary scene. In January 1963, at a party hosted by author Muriel Spark, Hazzard met renowned American biographer and translator Francis Steegmuller. They married in December, becoming "a conjugal version of the literary high life", as academic Richard Howard later described them. According to publisher Jonathan Galassi, they represented "a particular, now historical ethos, dedicated to internationalism, liberal democracy and a broad and deep familiarity with intellectual and artistic greatness". Between Manhattan and Capri, their happy marriage continued until Steegmuller's death in 1994. His junior by 25 years, Hazzard devoted much time to Steegmuller's work during his final years. This at least partly accounts for more than 20 years passing between her third novel, The Transit of Venus (which won the US National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 1980), and The Great Fire, her fourth, and last. Hazzard rarely returned to Australia. Visiting in 1976, essentially for the first time since emigrating in 1947, she was pleasantly surprised to discover that the country of her birth had "grown up". She wrote a long, enthusiastic Letter from Australia for The New Yorker, but continued to expose the shortcomings remembered from her youth  through philistine Antipodean literary characters, in interviews, and the 1984 Boyer Lectures.
"We know very little about the universe," Rubin said in an interview for Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: The Story of the Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe. "I personally don't believe it's uniform and the same everywhere. That's like saying the earth is flat." President Bill Clinton awarded Rubin the National Medal of Science in 1993, and she was frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize. Sandra Faber, a staff astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said that Rubin, along with Margaret Burbidge, who is retired from the University of California, San Diego, was a "guiding light" for a generation of female astronomers. In a statement written for Scientific American, Faber wrote: "Rubin's happy family history raising four children, all of whom eventually earned their own PhDs, was particularly inspiring to young females." She was born Vera Florence Cooper on July 23, 1928, in Philadelphia, the younger daughter of Philip Cooper, an electrical engineer who worked at Bell Telephone, and Rose Cooper, who had also worked at the phone company but had to quit her job because of nepotism rules. The family moved to Washington when Vera was 10. She later said she had become entranced by astronomy from watching the stars wheel past her bedroom window.

She was drawn to Vassar College as an undergraduate because Maria Mitchell, the first American to discover a comet, had taught there. In a sign of the challenges to come, her high school science teacher told her that she would be fine in a career as long as she stayed away from science. She graduated in 1948, the sole astronomer in the class. That year, she married Robert Rubin, who was then a graduate student in physical chemistry at Cornell. She had hoped to get a PhD from Princeton, but the astrophysics graduate program did not admit women at the time and declined to send her a course catalogue. So instead she went to Cornell to obtain a master's degree and finished it in 1951. When her husband got a job at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, the family moved to Washington and she enrolled at Georgetown University. She earned her PhD there studying the properties and motions of distant galaxies while raising her children. Breaking into the field was never easy. One day in 1950 she drove with a month-old baby through a snowstorm to a meeting in Pennsylvania to deliver a paper with data, which she later decided was questionable, about the rotation of the universe, only to be chastised and humiliated by "senior astronomers", she said. She fled the city and the issue of cosmology. Another time, she recalled, she was excited to be summoned to a meeting with the eminent astrophysicist George Gamow, only to learn that they would have to talk in the lobby because women were not allowed upstairs in the offices.

Rubin never forgot. "Don't let anyone keep you down for silly reasons such as who you are," Rebecca Oppenheimer, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, recalled being counselled by Rubin. "And don't worry about prizes and fame. The real prize is finding something new out there." Rubin joined the Carnegie Institution, in its department of terrestrial magnetism, in 1965, after holding teaching posts at Montgomery College in Maryland and at Georgetown. Yet by Faber's account, she still had to battle for access to a 200-inch telescope on Palomar Mountain in California jointly owned by Carnegie and Caltech. When she did get there, she found that there was no women's restroom. As her friend and institute colleague Neta Bahcall later told Discover magazine, Rubin taped an outline of a woman's skirt to the image of a man on a restroom door, making it a ladies' room. By then, averse to controversy and the sharp elbows of "senior astronomers", Rubin was looking for a field of research that would keep her out of trouble. "I wanted a problem that nobody would bother me about," she said later. That was when she stumbled into the most daunting problem in modern astronomy: the discovery that most of the universe is invisible.

Teaming up with a young Carnegie colleague, W. Kent Ford Jr., Rubin set out in the early 1970s to map the distribution of mass in spiral galaxies by measuring how fast they rotated. The faster the stars were going around, the more gravity, and thus mass, must be keeping them in their orbits. They expected to find that most of the mass was where most of the starlight was, at the centres of the galaxies. In that case, stars on the outer fringes of a galaxy should have been moving more slowly than those in the inner regions  the way Pluto, on the outskirts of the solar system, takes 248 years to go around the sun, while Mercury speeds around in 88 days. To their shock, however, they found that the stars on the outskirts of galaxies were not slowing down; if anything, they were speeding up. By the laws of either Newton or Einstein, it meant that there was extra mass out there where there was relatively little light, mass that was speeding up the stars. "Great astronomers told us it didn't mean anything," Rubin said. Told to look at more galaxies, they did, and the effect persisted. In an interview in 2000 posted on the Natural History Museum website, Rubin said: "In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark-to-light matter is about a factor of 10. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance to knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about third grade."
Just as you thought this week couldn't get any more tragic, Debbie Reynolds  Hollywood great, star of Singing' in the Rain and doting mother of Carrie Fisher  has died just one day after her daughter succumbed to a heart attack.

The 84-year-old's last words before being rushed to hospital were reportedly "I want to be with Carrie."

The immense sadness of the situation has not been lost on celebrities, who have now taken to social media, again, to pay their respects to both women.

Debra Messing, who played Reynolds' daughter on Will & Grace for years, tweeted that she was "heartsick" at the double tragedy.
"What makes these honeys really interesting is that they can kill superbugs, like Golden Staph. Superbugs are bacteria that can cause life-threatening infections and are resistant to most of the antibiotics that we have available to us currently.

"We've been interested in the medicinal properties of Leptospermum [i.e. manuka-type] honeys for a while now," said UTS' Dr Nural Cokcetin, the lead author of the study, published in PLOS ONE.

The research found that wounds treated with UMF 20 honey daily for as little as 12 days healed faster than wounds treated with regular honey and untreated wounds. Credit:Stocksy

New research suggests that Australian manuka honey has the same, if not greater antibacterial properties as the famed New Zealand version and may serve as an antidote to superbugs.

"Although all honeys have some level of antibacterial activity, some honeys that are made from the nectar of Leptospermum plants have a very potent activity that we don't see in other types of honey."

While Cokcetin says researchers knew about the antimicrobial properties in certain types of honey, Australian manuka has not been extensively studied (surprising perhaps given that we have more than 80 Leptospermum species while New Zealand has just one).

For the first time, we know the Australian species have antimicrobial properties to rival those of New Zealand.

"We also show that the antibacterial activity of Australian manuka honey is long-lasting [for several years], which is in contrast to conventional antibiotics," Cokcetin says. "This has benefits for extending the shelf life of medical honey products and makes them not only an effective but also an economical treatment option for skin infections and wounds."

This is significant, Cokcetin says, as researchers look at ways to combat the "global crisis of antibiotic resistance [when bacteria become resistant to the killing effects of antibiotics, i.e. become 'superbugs', and we can no longer clear infections with the antibiotics we have currently available to us]".
GEORGE COUNTY, Miss. -- The George County Sheriff's Department has arrested a man on a drug charge on Wednesday after a joint investigation involving several law enforcement agencies.

According to Sheriff Keith Havard, the agencies executed a search warrant in the Basin community of George County.

Their search uncovered more than a pound of high grade marijuana with a street value between $8,000 to $10,000.

Officials arrested Jerry Latroy Street, 35, of George County, at a residence on Roy St. after the search warrant was executed. Street has been charged with possession of a controlled substance with the intent to distribute.

Street is also under the jurisdiction of the Mississippi Department of Corrections for violating probation after a drug conviction in Texas, according to Havard.

Street is currently being held at the George County Regional Jail awaiting his initial court appearance.
As a nation, we're pretty optimistic. We like to think things will turn out for the best, and if they don't, we usually have a back-up plan to see us through. While it's one of the traits I like most about Australian culture, optimism alone doesn't always cut it.

When it comes to financing our retirements, our optimism is leading to us running out of money.

Australia is in the top five countries for life expectancy worldwide and Australians aged 64 now can expect to spend about 20 years in retirement. Credit:Rob Homer

A survey conducted by VicSuper suggests about 30 per cent of our older retirees aged 75 to 79 will outlive their retirement savings, rising to about 50 per cent for those who have based their savings on a defensive portfolio. But it's not only today's retirees who are facing a crisis  VicSuper's latest research shows that 54 per cent of Australia's pre-retirees (aged 55 and over) are financially unprepared for retirement (and only 8 per cent are completely financially prepared), meaning they're already slow off the blocks. Unless we begin to identify and address the root causes of the issue, the situation is unlikely to improve for the next generation.

So why are more retirees running out of money in retirement?
Peter Abd-El-Kaddous was only meant to be in Wagga over the holidays.

Known as "Pace", the 42-year-old from Melbourne's north had travelled to south-western NSW with his wife to spend the festive season with her family.

On Wednesday, as temperatures hovered at 37 degrees, the pair decided to go for a swim to cool off. Within minutes, Mr Abd-El-Kaddous had disappeared below the surface of the Murrumbidgee River, sparking a days-long police search.

Police said locals regularly waded into the river and used the current to float down to a swimming spot known as Wagga Beach.
A woman has been rescued in dramatic fashion by Queensland's surf lifesaving helicopter after being swept out to sea by a rip on the Gold Coast.

The Westpac Rescue Helicopter was called around midday Thursday to rescue the woman in her 50s who had been swept out to sea off Burleigh.

The chopper crew successfully winched the woman to safety, and she was taken to shore without incident.

AAP
A 24-year-old man has been charged over the death of nine-year-old boy Josiah Sisson.

Adrian Murray was charged with dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death while adversely affected by an intoxicating substance, and driving a motor vehicle under the influence.

Josiah Sisson died on Tuesday, after he was struck by a car late on Christmas Day. Credit:Facebook

The Springwood man is likely to be released on bail, due to face court on February 14.

This comes after a man handed himself in to police on Thursday afternoon over the Christmas Day death.
A man has been denied a gun licence, after outing himself on Facebook as having a home-made silencer and storing his weapons in a wardrobe.

The man was appealing a Queensland Police decision from March 2016, rejecting his application to own firearms in Queensland.

A man has been denied a gun licence after outing himself on Facebook as having a home-made silencer and storing his weapons in a wardrobe. Credit:Reuters

In a Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal ruling member Robert Olding found in favour of the police, noting the man's "significant improper conduct".

The man had posted a photograph on Facebook of his four rifles and some ammunition which were placed in a wardrobe, with the caption "I wana go play [sic]".
Rail advocate Paul Pluta proudly admits he has leaked information to the media about issues within Queensland Rail as the operator grapples with its driver shortage debacle.

But who is Paul Pluta? And why is he so passionate about Brisbane's ongoing train fiasco?

Rail advocate Paul Pluta.

Technically, you could argue Mr Pluta is not a 'whistleblower', as he does not work at Queensland Rail.

But the Brisbane IT worker turned YouTube broadcaster says he has contacts who provide him with the inside scoop.
A new $440 million 6-star hotel planned for the Gold Coast is the latest new project for Queensland's tourism industry, with $13 billion in infrastructure in the pipeline.

Aquis Australia has unveiled plans for a new hotel at the site of the Pacific Point apartment complex and adjoining properties at Main Beach Parade, Surfers Paradise.

Concept image of investment group Aquis Australia's proposal for the first six-star beachfront hotel on the Gold Coast. Credit:Aquis

Under the proposal, the current tower will be demolished to make way for a 48-storey complex, including 580 hotel rooms and suites, bars, dining areas, a rooftop with an outdoor cinema and karaoke.

A development application is set to be lodged with the Gold Coast City Council on Friday.
Day three at Woodford is done and dusted. Credit:Timothy Swanston

Tash Sultana, Oh Pep! and Half Moon Run have all played their final shows, but never fear there's plenty more music to come!

On Friday, popular indie rock group Gang of Youths will be performing their one and only show of the Festival at The Amphitheatre stage at 9.20pm. Bobby Alu and Greg Sheehan will also be collaborating to bring smooth sounds to the Songlines stage at 3.30pm for their only show.

Prefer to relax and think about the world? Insightful talks will also be continuing on with the likes of Dr Gary Burke, who will be discussing modern day sustainable currency at the Greenhouse at 2pm.
Amsterdam: Twenty-six couples in the Netherlands are waiting to find out if the sperm that was used to fertilise their eggs at a reproductive technology clinic might have come from the wrong men.

The clinic, at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht, said Wednesday that a procedural error might have led to a mix-up in sperm.

IVF cycles in Australia dipped in 2017 but a bigger concern for big ASX companies specialising in the area is competition from low-cost providers. Credit:iStock

"In each of these cases there is a small risk, small but it cannot be ruled out, that during the procedure, sperm cells of the mother's own partner have been mixed with remaining sperm from a previous procedure," said Paul Geurts, a spokesman for the hospital.

In most cases, the egg will most likely have been fertilised by the intended sperm, but "we will have to see" to know for certain, he said.
courthouse.jpg

Jackson County Courthouse on Magnolia Street in Pascagoula held inmates on its fourth floor from 1950 to 1978.

(County Photo)

When the Jackson County Adult Detention Center off Kenneth Avenue opened in 1978, it was probably already too small to handle the incarceration of an evolving criminal element.

Previously prisoners were held in the jail located on the top floor of the Jackson County Courthouse on the corner of Magnolia Street and Convent Avenue. Just across the street was, and still is, Our Lady of Victories Church and the parish's schools.

When the current new jail was proposed on Telephone Road and Kenneth Avenue, there was concern about its proximity to schools. Although prisoners managed to escape from time to time from atop the courthouse jail to lower levels, there was never, to my knowledge, any problems with the schools. I suppose once escapees hit the ground, they just kept running. I seem to recall that one might have broken a leg from his fall.

This jail in the sky, so to speak, was first proposed in 1941 and was hyped as "designed for posterity, service and efficiency." Originally dedicated on June 16, 1950, it was built at an estimated cost of $1 million. It was a far cry from the 1812 jail that was a cave dug in the side of hill adjacent to the first courthouse in what is now the northwest corner of Jackson County.

Because of fires that destroyed earlier courthouses, the 1950 structure was built to be fireproof. The vaults for storage and records in the chancery and circuit clerks' offices were specially constructed with steel fire shutters on the window and sealable links which could confine a fire to inside or outside the vault.

The 1950 jail, at that time, was one of the few in the South certified by the federal government for the housing of federal prisoners. With the 1978 opening of the ADC, state prisoners were housed there.

A 1980 article in the "Mississippi Press" told of an execution chamber inside the courthouse that was designed for use in conjunction with the state's portable electric chair. Then Circuit Clerk Vertis Ramsay said in 1980 the facility was never used. It did get use elsewhere. According to a 1975 article in "True Crime," during its 15-year tenure the chair executed 73 inmates in courthouses and county jails all over Mississippi. The chair was housed at the penitentiary, Parchman, named after the first warden J. M. Jim Parchman. When the need for an execution arose, the chair was transported in a truck to the county in which the condemned had committed the crime.

Architect for the 1950 jail/courthouse building, designed by Southern Prison Company, was Carl L. Olschner. The limestone sculptures carved on the front of the building by Albert Rieker of New Orleans represent the earliest and foremost industries of Jackson County, fishing and shipbuilding. Rieker's work also adorned the War Memorial in Jackson and the Louisiana State Capitol.
Grab a taste of South Asian ice cream at these Bucks County shops

Heritage Kulfi, a South Asian ice cream business in Princeton, first launched in 2021. Their pints are now available in Bucks and Montgomery counties.
Massachusetts came in at third place for passing the nations most comprehensive farm animal protection measure that phases out the cruel confinement of veal calves, breeding sows, and laying hens, and restricts the sale of those products in the state. Photo by iStockphoto

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Each year, The HSUS releases its Humane State rankings based on a wide set of animal welfare policies  covering a total of 93 policy ideas, from protecting farm animals to prohibiting bear and cougar hunting to regulating puppy mills.

This year again, California occupies the top spot and handily so. It fortified its outstanding record by passing  among other bills  legislation to ban the captive breeding of orcas and a ban on the use of bullhooks on elephants. Two states that passed far-reaching and broadly supported ballot initiatives last month claimed the second and third positions; Oregon held onto the second position by passing an initiative to prohibit the trade in ivory and other parts of 12 rare species or taxa, and Massachusetts came in at third place, boosted after it enacted the nations most comprehensive farm animal protection measure (which phases out confinement of veal calves, breeding sows, and laying hens, and restricts the sale of those products in the state no matter where they originate). Connecticut was in fourth place, and Virginia and Washington tied for fifth place.

At the other end of the spectrum are Mississippi, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Idaho, which was among the worst performers last year, showed a slight improvement by enacting a law that makes animal cruelty and torture a felony. Alabama was also part of the bottom five. These states have poor anti-cruelty statutes and very few or no protections for farm animals and for dogs used for commercial breeding, or against egregious wildlife abuses.

These are dynamic lists, and states rise and fall depending on their annual performance. In addition to the Massachusetts and Oregon ballot measures, and Californias pro-orca measure, here are some of the most notable legislative achievements of the year:

Georgia, Alaska, and Washington passed cost of animal care laws that require perpetrators of animal cruelty to pay for the care of the animals they hurt.

California and Rhode Island became the first two states to prohibit the use of bullhooks on elephants.

Arizona banned greyhound racing and Florida passed a law requiring injury reporting at race tracks.

Idaho and Ohio made animal torture and cruelty a felony on the first offense.

West Virginia significantly increased penalties for people attending animal fights, and Ohio strengthened its anti-cockfighting law dramatically.

California and South Carolina banned the use of gas chambers for the euthanasia of shelter animals.

California, Florida, Massachusetts, Ohio, Puerto Rico, Vermont, and Virginia passed laws addressing dogs left in cars by owners on hot days.

The HSUS also helped defeat a number of bills that tried to set us back, including right to farm bills in Hawaii, Indiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, West Virginia, and Oklahoma, where we defeated a ballot measure on the subject by 20 points. We blocked ag-gag measures seeking to punish whistleblowers in Arizona, Mississippi, and Tennessee. We defeated patently unconstitutional bills in Missouri and Oklahoma that sought to restrict our fundraising practices.

In New Hampshire, Iowa, and Vermont, we defeated measures to expand bobcat hunting. In Massachusetts, we defeated an attempt to create a livestock board that would restrict the enactment of animal protection measures, and in South Carolina we worked with our coalition partners to remove language from a bill that would have limited veterinary services like low cost spay and neuter. In Kansas, we helped defeat a measure to weaken the law on the possession of exotic pets.

But despite our efforts, some state lawmakers succeeded in pushing through bills that will hurt animals or the groups that advocate for them. Missouri passed a data gag bill that will restrict access to information on factory farms and puppy mills, while Arizona and Ohio passed laws preempting local ordinances that ban the sale of puppy mill dogs at pet stores. Oregon affirmed a decision by the states fish and wildlife agency to remove wolves from the states endangered species list, while Michigan authorized wolf hunting for the fourth time, after voters and the courts nullified three prior measures. South Carolina lawmakers voted to allow a coyote bounty hunt, while Indiana passed a bill to allow the disgraceful practice of canned hunts.

Altogether, The HSUS worked this year to pass 90 laws (there were also 99 local animal welfare ordinances adopted). We helped defeat 67 harmful measures, including right to farm and ag-gag bills. While the Ohio pet store provision was a terrible disappointment, that same bill included two pro-animal provisions, including a ban on bestiality and a dramatic strengthening of the states weak anti-cockfighting law.

Were gearing up for a raft of new legislative sessions starting January, and well count on you to communicate with your lawmakers and governors to lobby for the strongest possible improvements in the legal framework for animals.

For more details on how your state did in our Humane Rankings, visit our lists below:

Alabama through Missouri >>

Montana through Wyoming >>

You can also sign up for HSUS action alerts to help your state ascend in the rankings in 2017.
Yardley Friends Meeting at 65 N. Main Street in Yardley will host the documentary Organic Roots on Friday, November 18 at 7 p.m. Join director Al Johnson for a showing of this film followed by a discussion of the last 50 years of this movement. Organic foods are part of our life today and a tool in our concern for...
FBI has 'credible information' about 'broad threat' to NJ synagogues

Law enforcement agencies as well as synagogues across the state increased security and patrols Thursday, after alerts from the FBI.
Model Anna Cleveland, Next Models Sued for Breaching Film Deal

Model Anna Cleveland  daughter of supermodel Pat Cleveland  and Next Model Management have been named in a new $350,000+ lawsuit, accusing them failing to make good on a contract that Cleveland had with Los Angeles production company All in the Works LLC (AITW) to film a documentary on the budding models life and career.

According to AITWs complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, a federal court in Manhattan, Cleveland granted AITW the exclusive motion picture, television and related rights in her life story in furtherance of the creation by AITW of a documentary film concerning her. Moreover, Cleveland allegedly agreed to be available to AITW during all option periods, to be interviewed on camera in connection with the production, assist AITW in obtaining the on-camera appearances of various third parties, and otherwise consult with AITW in furtherance of the project.

AITW alleges that while Cleveland initially cooperated with AITW with regard to the creation of the film, she became completely unavailable in September 2016, a critical period for AITW's documentary storyline, as both Ms. Cleveland and AITW were then in Europe for the Spring 2017 Paris and Milan fashion shows. It was around this time that AITW claims that Next, Clevelands agency, induced Ms. Cleveland's contractual breaches and interfered with the agreement between her and AITW.

The complaint further alleges: Through [Clevelands] utter failure to comply with her contractual obligations to AITW to make herself available for filming and other activities related to AITW's planned documentary - and by engaging in certain other conduct in blatant violation of the exclusive contractual rights granted to AITW - Ms. Cleveland, encouraged by and acting under the direction and inducement of Next, has effectively destroyed AITW's film project and caused significant damage to AITW."

As a result of the aforegoing, AITW has asserted claims of breach of contract against Cleveland, and tortious interference with contractual relations against Next, and is seeking an array of monetary damages.

Interestingly, AITW has not specifically asked the court for injunctive relief (a court order requiring a person or business entity to do or cease doing a specific action), which, in the case at hand, would require Cleveland to fulfill her contractual obligations and in short: finish the film. While courts are vested with wide discretion to fashion injunctive relief, they are bound to a balancing test that weighs the benefits that such a ruling would bestow upon the party seeking the injunction and the hardship to the party that must fulfill it.

With this in mind, court orders to compel specific performance of an act  a particularly harsh remedy  are not often favored by courts. In fact, they only rarely grant them. And when they are granted, such injunctions are generally issued to compel the removal of buildings or other structures wrongfully placed upon the land of another, and not in furtherance of compelling a party to complete a job.

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I Am a Troll:

Inside the Secret World of the BJPs

Digital Army

Swati Chaturvedi

Juggernaut Books; Rs 250; 192 pages



Heres what we know about online trolls. We know that trolls tend to be lonely or socially dysfunctional men whose own sexual inadequacies lead them to be (often violently) misogynistic. We know that all trolls like to escape the sad and solitary nature of their everyday existence by attacking (or abusing or even threatening) famous people. And we know that the anonymity provided by such social media handles as Twitter (a laboratory-grade petri-dish for the breeding of sleazy abusers) tends to embolden even the most diffident and timorous of men.
Sun Pharmaceuticals 15-year dream run of 30% compounded annual growth rate ended in 2016, with the company forecasting 8-10% now. The dream run not only made the companys founder Dilip Shanghvi Indias second richest man but also created fortunes for millions of investors. They were disappointed this year as they saw the firms stock losing 25% in 2016 to Rs 618 a share on the BSE on Thursday.
If you had told meon New Years Day, 2016that we would end the year with Donald Trump headed to the White House (at least occasionally, to govern, if not to live) with Betsy DeVos as his nominee for Secretary of Education, well... its hard to finish this sentence. Almost as hard as its been to contemplate the state of public education in the land of the free in the upcoming four years.

Im not big on year-end best of reviews, prognostications, and summaries . They tend to accentuate our focus on immediate issues and au courant editorial pieces or grant-funded reports, rather than the work of bending the long arc of the education universe. Teachers and school leaders really cant see over the horizon. Were prone to staying the course, trusting in our time-honored traditions or favored reforms, even when the results are mediocre or lousy. Like all Americans, we are hooked on novelty while simultaneously resisting fundamental change.

So, the blog title is a fudge, if best means most-read, most-commented, most visibility. I dont care much about the numbers. These represent the pieces I think are most worth a re-read (or initial read). Blogs based on emerging or settled truths in education: Charters arent the answer. Women are disrespected even in a field where theyre a huge majority. We still dont know what teacher leadership looks likeor might accomplish. Standards may shape practice, but they dont automatically raise achievement. Competition and marketing arent the answer, either. And the future of public education is in serious jeopardy.

CHARTER SCHOOLS

With our new national focus on choice, states deserve to hear the truth:And who better to share their experience than teachers and school leaders in Michigan, where charter schools are largely unregulated and largely unsuccessful?

Public Education vs. Charter Schools: A Tale of Two Cities

Seven Things I Learned from Attending a Charter School Board Meeting

Advanced-Stage Charter Syndrome: What Maturity Means to the Charter Movement

Terminal Charterism: The View from Michigan

WOMEN

Women represent some 80 percent of the teaching force. Why are they still a minority voice in leadership? Election events in 2016 caused residual anger and shame to bubble up for many women. Every woman can relate to that anger and shame. Were talking about a real thing, a core issue in American society, and American schools. Such revelations might be a silver lining in a detestable political season.

Reflections from a Nasty Woman: Whats at Risk for Women Who Come Forward ?

TEACHER LEADERSHIP

Has the expertise and energy of accomplished teachers been squandered? Pushing teacher leadership into the practice box and narrowing its scope to jazzed-up instructional strategies and measuring learning is precisely where reformers would like to lead us. Notice who is being influenced in the definitionnot policy-makers, the media or the general public. Stay in that classroom, teacher. Someone else will make the big decisions that shape your work.



Defining Teacher Leadership

Do Teachers Get to Have Dignity?

The So-Called Right to Teach

Do Teachers Read Professionally?

ISSUES OF PRACTICE



These are the core of teachers workor should be. 

We can argue about instructional, curricular and assessment issuesits my professional wheelhousebut the Common Core is not what has broken public education. Its the accountability movement and austerity funding. And maybe, in some states, a craven disregard for the children of the poor.

Missing Assignments and the Real World

Raising the Common Core Bar Until Nobody Can Get Over

Is Plagiarism Really a Big Deal?

There is No Such Thing as Social Promotion

Ten Non-Standard Ideas about Going Back to School

THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacity to think.

Amusing Ourselves into Oblivion

What is the Purpose of School? Who Knows? Who Cares?

The Year of the Lie: Fake Ed-News

The BLOG I WISH MORE PEOPLE HAD READ

I posted this blog about a week after the election, and it sank like a stone in the flood of postings about the direction the country and its public schools were headed. It was too long and too detailed for a blog to be widely shared and discussed, especially during that week. It had a boring title.

But as I was writing it, the hair on my arms started to stand up. And, about a week after it had been published and ignored, a woman on Twitter who attended elementary school in Germany sent me an extended private message, saying that the blog was accurateit reflected her experience as a child, learning about national guilt and reparations. She wrote that her relatives, living in Germany, have been urging to return. She was feeling what I was feeling.

Public education functions as a stage where Americans test and play out their deepest values and convictions. Quoting Hitler: He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.

How German Schools Teach Human Dignity and Political History
& Pharmaceuticals, which posted a net profit in the first half of this financial year after remaining in the red for 63 long years, plans to become debt-free.
Software lobby group Nasscom is looking at expanding the number of start-ups in India, incubating and nurturing them to grow at its centres. While the target is to reach 10,000 start-ups, the focus is also to build specialised start-ups in emerging technology areas.
As Patanjali Ayurved, Baba Ramdevs pet project to counter growing influence of the multinational corporates in the domestic consumer goods space, continues to bombard the market with new products, rivals are gearing up to throw a tough challenge to the challenger.
With a 'fairly profitable' year of 2016, the consumer durable industry is looking forward to maintaining the momentum by cashing in on GST, likely to be rolled out in 2017, and overcome the short-term issues thrown up by demonetisation.

The makers have plans to introduce new technologies along with premiumisation of their existing offerings, increase in localised production and retail visibility focusing on enriching consumer experience next year.

Terming the setback from demonetisation as "a short-term phenomenon", the consumer durable makers are eyeing a bigger benefit from GST as it is likely to reduce tax burden, logistical and transactional costs.

"Samsung plans to outpace market growth by making continuous investments in making products that address the distinct needs of Indian consumers. Second, we wish to increase retail visibility and focusing on enriching consumer experience," Samsung India Vice President, CE Business Rajeev Bhutani told PTI.

LeEco India COO Smart Electronics Business Atul Jain said: "In 2017, we will focus on growth and consolidation of the gains we have made in 2016. We aim to realise this through the launch of our next generation Superphones and SuperTVs. As part of LeEco's online to offline strategy, we will be launching our own branded stores."



According to the Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association, in 2016-17 (which still has 3 months to go), the industry is expecting sales "of airconditioners, refrigerators, televisions and washing machines to touch 4.10 million units, 11.13 million units, 16.5 million units and 5.27 million units, respectively."



The industry, which had almost flat growth from last two years, has a very good festive sales this year coupled with factors such as good monsoon and implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission.

"Progressive government policies had a positive impact on the overall economy augmenting the overall spending. This has resulted in an approximate CAGR of 10-12 per cent," said CEAMA President Manish Sharma.

The industry, which had almost 25-30 per cent average growth in the first seven months of 2016-17, took a hit in November by the demonetisation move. However, after having a degrowth in November and flat sales in December, it is expecting to bounce back next year.

"In the first seven months we have a good run with a 26 to 30 per cent growth, however, last two months, we have a degrowth of up to 35 per cent. October-December quarter would be flat quarter because whatever growth we had in October, will be nullified by degrowth in November and flat growth of December," said Godrej Appliances Business Head & EVP Kamal Nandi.

According to him, its effect will be felt in January also and business would normalise only from March when the sale of cooling products like airconditioner would start.

"In Q4 of this fiscal, we are expecting 15 per cent odd growth because the effect of demonetisation," Nandi said.

South Korean durable maker LG said: "Demonetisation is a short term phenomenon, with an admirable objective; GST is biggest indirect tax reform & fast implementation will certainly help in improving efficiency."



Haier India President Eric Braganza said: "Demonetisation has hit the sales in the current quarter and will impact the the upcoming quarter as well. However, with time the market will pick up and we should start seeing positive results".

In 2016, registered over 25 per cent growth in sales during the festive season, when the makers reported up to 30-35 per cent sales during 45 days window in the month of October and November.

"Year 2016, has been fairly profitable for the consumer durable industry. Continued inflow of disposable income, implementation of the 7th pay commission and a good monsoon season acted as key catalysts. This further led to a favourable festive season which for the last four fiscal years had been sluggish," said Manish Sharma, who is also Executive Officer, Panasonic Corporation and President & CEO Panasonic India & South Asia.

During the year, registered growth across all markets - metro and tier II, III & IV.

"We have experienced consistent growth across all tiers of the country,"said Sony India Head of Sales Satish Padmanabhan.

According to Whirlpool of India MD Sunil D'Souza in 2016, the company launched products "across our core categories as also new focus categories for the future and we saw a good consumer response. We saw an improvement in basic macro economic indicators for the overall economy and for appliance sales through the year which bode well for future demand."



Durable makers have expanded domestic manufacturing in 2016 after getting encouraging policy support from the government and they have plans to invest more in 2017.

The are expecting that implementation of GST would lead to demand growth as it likely to reduce taxes imposed on the goods.

"Once GST regime gets implemented, the consumer durable industry expects to see a reduction in tax burden, logistical and transactional costs, which in turn will be beneficial for consumers," said Videocon Director Anirudh Dhoot.

Besides, in 2017 the airconditioner makers will also have to gear up for the new star rating methodology called Indian Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio (ISEER) from January, 2018 as mandated by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, which would take the cost up to around 20 per cent.

The new norm will result in up to 15 to 20 per cent jump in the price and manufacturers like Godrej Appliances are expecting some help in form of counter subsidy from the power distribution firms.

"There is a table jump happening of two star in the energy efficiency level 2018, which would impact sale. This would increase burden on the consumer...As done by some discoms as Tata Power by offering discount on energy-efficient airconditioners, the government should also come forward with such offers," said Nandi.

Companies such as LeEco and Samsung would focus to enhance their retail network to extend their reach.

In 2017, the companies like Panasonic, Godrej Appliance and Haier would continue to invest in their manufacturing operations.

"Next year, we are planning to increase our capacities. Now, the washing machine and compressor capacity has been augmented and next year we are planning to enhance our refrigerator category," said Nandi.

Over investments Padmanabhan said: "India is an important market for Sony and we will continue to invest in the coming year as well."



Haier, which has announced to invest Rs 500 crore at its Pune plant said: "In 2017, we intend to hold the inauguration ceremony of the facility and commence the manufacturing process soon".

According to Dhoot: "We will upgrade and strengthen our manufacturing facilities, which will further enable us to produce technologically advanced products for customers".
Frequent interruptions over notebandi marred the Parliaments 2016 winter sessionthe least productive in 15 yearsaccording to an analysis by PRS Legislative Research, a think tank.

The loss of productivity (the hours spent without interruptions during the scheduled working hours) to the Lok Sabha, parliaments lower house, was 83%, while it was 80% in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house, according to government data.

In the 2016 winter session, 92 hours of disruption in the Lok Sabha cost the Indian taxpayer Rs 144 crore, IndiaSpend reported in December 2016.
Prime Minister has said that note ban has forced all black money to come out in the open and the decision wasnt taken for any short-term windfall gain, but for a long-term structural transformation. He has said that he can see an India that is swachh, or purged, from all forms of filth.
An encounter broke out between militants and security forces in Bandipora district of north this morning, police said.

Acting on specific intelligence input about the presence of militants in Shahgund village of Hajin area of the district, security forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation, a police official said here.

He said as the forces were conducting the search operation, the hiding militants fired upon them, triggering an encounter.

The operation is still going on, the official said.
Signing of long-pending deals including one for Rafale fighters, a logistics agreement with the US, new blacklisting and defence procurement policies besides induction of indigenous nuclear submarine were some of the achievements of the defence ministry in 2016, which was a mixed year for the armed forces.

The high point for the military was the daring surgical strike carried out by the special forces on terror launch pads across the LoC it lost a number of soldiers during the year.

Jammu and Kashmir alone saw over 80 security personnel being killed while countering Pakistan's proxy war. The army managed to eliminate about 160 militants in the state including the poster boy of militancy Burhan Wani.

Many security personnel were also killed fighting armed insurgency. Deadly attacks on the Pathankot air base, and army camps in Uri and Nagrota were a setback that led to the loss of several lives.

The armed forces also had a mixed year when it came to administration and compensation issues.

While the government drastically increased the ex-gratia for the armed forces, the 7th Pay Commission recommendations and a controversial letter on parity with their civilian counterparts for administrative duties left a bad taste.

The decision of the government to bypass the long-followed principle of seniority when it came to selecting an army also led to lot of heartburns in the military especially the Armoured Corps.

But one thing that the armed forces seemed to be most happy with was Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's push for modernisation.

Even as the government brought in a new defence procurement policy emphasising on 'Make in India' and a blacklisting policy offering a mixture of heavy fines and graded punishment rather than blanket blacklisting, the Ministry moved fast on procurements.

A lot many deals pending for years were cleared by the Defence Ministry besides giving nod to many other proposals.

The biggest deal to be struck during 2016 was the one for 36 Rafale fighter jets for 7.8 billion Euros.

The file for a medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) was first moved in 2000. The Narendra Modi-led government had in 2015 agreed to go in for 36 Rafales in a direct deal with France while terminating the original tender for 126 MMRCA.

The aircraft, equipped with latest weapons including the 150 KM range beyond visual range missile 'Meteor', can even carry nuclear bombs, will add to the strategic assets of the country.

Another big move was the induction of the indigenously developed nuclear submarine Arihant. The government has still not officially announced the induction.

The understanding between India and Russia to lease a second nuclear submarine was another important strategic move. The terms and conditions are still being worked out.

The Inter-Governmental Agreement on the purchase of S400 Triumf air defence system is also a big development even though the nitty gritty are yet to be worked out.

The decision to finally induct the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft Tejas was also a big move.

India and Russia restarted talks on the fifth generation fighter aircraft programme after a hiatus of about a year.

The contract for the purchase of M777 light weight howitzers was also welcomed by the army which will deploy most of them along the borders with China.

The M777 was the first artillery deal cleared by the Indian government since the Bofors scandal of late 1980s.

To ensure better deployment of these guns, the ministry also struck a deal for 15 heavy lift Chinook helicopters.

Giving the IAF yet another fillip to its strength, 2016 saw signing of a deal with the US for 22 Apache attack helicopters.

The signing of the much-debated logistics agreement with the US was also an important development.

The UPA government had refused to sign it but Parrikar went along after the US rewrote the agreement as per India's conditions.

Even though the Defence Ministry was not directly involved, investigating agencies carried out raids against a number of defence middlemen while cases were registered against some staying abroad in connection with alleged corruption.

Another big development that came towards the end of 2016 was the successful fourth test of the indigenously developed inter-continental nuclear capable missile Agni V that has a range to cover entire China.

The missile is now ready for user trials and eventual induction into the Strategic Forces Command.
Does the First Amendment Protect 'Assisting' in a Suicide?

Freedom of speech has its limits, and some speech can be considered criminal. Fraud, threats, and lying to the police can all land you in jail, so deciding what expression is legal and what is not can be a difficult exercise in line-drawing.

So where does providing "emotional and legal support" to people who choose to end their own lives fall on that spectrum? On the criminal end, according to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which upheld the conviction of a national right-to-die group for assisting in a woman's suicide in 2007.

Blueprint to Suicide?

The Final Exit Network, a Georgia-based non-profit, was convicted in 2015 of assisting in the suicide of Doreen Dunn. Dunn had been living chronic pain from a medical procedure for over a decade. According to CBS, prosecutors told the jury that Dunn didn't know how to kill herself until Final Exit handed her a "blueprint" to suicide:

"They go beyond simply advocating a person's right to choose," Dakota County prosecutor Phil Prokopowicz told jurors during closing arguments. "This is an organization that directly connects to its members and provides them with the knowledge and means to take their own life. And in the state of Minnesota, that is where the line is crossed."

Minnesota statutes criminalize "intentionally advis[ing], encourag[ing], or assist[ing] another in taking the other's own life," and defines assistance as physical conduct or speech aimed at giving a specific person instructions on ending his or her own life. Final Exit not only provided Dunn with "general information" about their preferred method of suicide (helium asphyxiation), but members of the group were with her at the time, may have given her instructions on setting up the helium tanks and hood, and even removed the equipment from the scene afterwards. (Dunn's husband had no idea she was planning to commit suicide, and thought she died of natural causes when he found her.)

A Constitutional Right to (Help Someone) Die

Final Exit argued that the Minnesota Statute was unconstitutional under the First Amendment, but the Minnesota Court of Appeals was unconvinced, citing a prior case that struck "advises" and "encourages" from the statute, but upheld "assists":

... the statutory prohibition on "only speech that assists suicide, combined with the statutory limitation that such enablement must be targeted at a specific individual," renders the statute narrowly tailored and linked to the state's compelling interest in the preservation of life. The statute's "assists" provision thus survives strict scrutiny and Final Exit's facial challenge to the statute.

The court therefore upheld Final Exit's conviction for assisting suicide, along with interfering with a death scene.

Related Resources:
With the expiry of 50 days of "pain" of note ban that he announced in a special broadcast on November 8, Prime Minister is all set to make an address to the nation on the New Year's Eve.
Separatist leader Masarat Alam Bhat, who has been in preventive custody under the Public Safety Act (PSA) since April 2015, was on Thursday released from Kathua Jail.

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court had yesterday ordered his release.

Bhat, the senior Hurriyat Conference leader, has been booked under the PSA several times since April 2015 and the latest order in the series was issued by District Magistrate Baramulla.

According to the order, Bhat was accused of making the ongoing agitation "successful" while in custody of the state authorities.

A case was registered against Bhat at the Baramulla Police Station on August 30, two days before the detention order against him was passed by the deputy commissioner.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday asked banks to provide additional working capital limit to medium, small and micro enterprises (MSMEs) to deal with cash crunch following the Narendra Modi-led central governments November 8 decision to demonetise high-value currency notes.
Leading technology player Ericsson on Thursday demonstrated its connected Aquaponics and Smart Water Grid Management IoT (Internet of Things) solutions in Mori village in East Godavari district as a pilot being run by government towards creating smart and sustainable villages in the state.
Making it one of the most successful social-sector projects of the Narendra Modi-led government, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) has achieved its target to give cooking gas connections to 15 million families in 2016-17.
The board of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) approved the move to ban high-denomination notes less than three hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the decision in a televised address to the nation. Information on how many members favoured or opposed the move isnt on record, RBI said in response to queries from Bloomberg News under the Right to Information Act. Power minister Piyush Goyal had told lawmakers on November 16, that it was the authoritys 10-member board that came up with the idea. Modis surprise November 8 decision ...
Riding high on mergers and acquisitions, retail players made a strong comeback this year, taking online giants head-on in doling out deals and discounts, and the trend is likely to continue next year.

However, the government's surprise move to demonetise high denomination notes last month made a huge dent in retailers' earnings, with sales falling by up to 70 per cent in early days.

Going forward, retailers expect impact of cash recall to continue for a few more months into 2017, but hope to lure customers with new brands and offerings.

After being hit hard by online retail last year, debates on e-commerce eating into the retail pie somewhat subsided this year, with heavyweights like Reliance, Mahindra and Future Group expanding their own online ventures to take on players like Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal.

In May, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail -- which had acquired Pantaloons a few years ago -- further expanded its kitty with addition of Forever 21. It bought the Indian operations from Diana Retail, promoted by DLF Brands for USD 26 million (around Rs 175.52 crore).

In another interesting deal, Future Retail acquired online furniture seller FabFurnish.Com from its owner, Bluerock eServices Private (BEPL).

Besides, Mahindra Retail merged operations of Babyoye, which had both online and offline presence, with that of FirstCry.Com -- one of the larger online players in the maternity and babycare space.

"The next couple of years will see more consolidation and a much greater maturity of omni-channel retail and sustainable retailing practices," Retailers Association of India (RAI) CEO Kumar Rajagopalan told PTI.

The Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries, which is making a significant push in telecom with Reliance Jio, also forayed into online retail with its fashion portal Ajio.Com.

However, gains made by retailers during the year came under pressure due to .

" of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes had an immediate impact on retail, with sales of retailers seeing a plunge of up to 70 per cent in the first few days. Sales of large discretionary items like electronics too plunged. However, essential consumable goods by stores that accept cards/digital money saw an uptake," Rajagopalan said.

Giving outlook for the next year, Rajagopalan said impact of will continue for the first few months of 2017.

He, however, added that demonetisation served as a wake- up call for retailers that had not adopted modern retailing practices such as accounting every sale and accepting digital payments.

"Demonetisation has opened up a host of opportunities for innovative partnerships between digital wallets and retailers to embrace digital technologies," he said.

2016 came as a delight for customers as foreign brands like Ted Baker, Scotch & Soda, Izabel London and Simon Carter announced their entry into the Indian market.

One of the biggest names in retail, Ikea, will open its door to customers in India. The Swedish firm plans to pump in more than Rs 10,000 crore over the next few years to expand its footprint in the country.

Spain's premium fashion brand Massimo Dutti also set up its first store in India in May, more than two years after it received the government's nod for FDI.

After getting nod for 100 per cent single-brand operations, German sportswear brands Puma and Adidas Group opened their own retail stores during the year. Earlier, they operated through franchisees.

"Doing retail directly will give us better insight about customer behaviour. We can also engage with our customers more meaningfully. Going forward, we will open larger, strategic stores on our own," Puma India MD Abhishek Ganguly said.

However, multi-brand retail remained a no-go zone for foreign retailers.

The silver lining during the year for foreign retailers was the government's decision to allow 100 per cent FDI in food retail.

Foreign retailers such as Walmart, Tesco and Auchan are said to be evaluating the option of entering the food retailing sector in India.

According to Food Processing Secretary A K Srivastava, a leading Brazilian poultry company has expressed keenness in joining hands with Kishore Biyani's Future group to sell products in the country. He, however, did not identify the company or give details.

As per industry experts, this can be an interesting opportunity, going forward, for foreign multi-brand retailers.

The retail sector, which is pegged to grow to USD 1.3 trillion by 2020, clocked a growth of 12 per cent during the year, despite availability of good retail space posing as a major challenge.

Looking back at the year, Rajagopalan said: "The year was one with a lot of momentum for retail. We received a clarification from DIPP on FDI (foreign direct investment) rules for e-commerce, which was a significant step in creating a level-playing field between both channels of retail - offline and online. The passage of GST Bill was another development with a huge impact on retail."



Hailing GST as an important reform for the retail sector, Rajagopalan said: "Once rolled out, GST will reduce distribution costs and wastage as cascading effect of taxes will go. The 'speed to market' will see an increase, as retailers can produce wherever and sell wherever to meet demand of consumers."



Rajagopalan added: "What's most important is the availability of products for customers will improve. However, a lot will depend on the actual rollout and adoption by states."



Another key step forward for retail this year was the unveiling of state-level retail trade policies by several states such as Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka which facilitate ease of doing business.

While announcing the annual budget for 2016-17, Finance Minster Arun Jaitley mooted the idea of allowing small, medium shops to remain open on all days.

Continuing with the trend of the previous year, predominantly online players such as Nykaa, Voylla, Lenskart and Zivame continued to expand operations through brick and mortar stores as well.
Excerpts of speech by the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee on the occasion inauguration of the 77th Session of Indian History Congress

We must keep in mind that there is no conflict or contradiction between the promotion of regional history and the pursuit of the history of our country as a whole. Indeed, the more we know about our regions, the more we enrich the history of the whole country. My first Masters degree is in the subject of History. Kolkata, where I studied, has been home to some of our great historians like Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Professor R. C. Majumdar, Professor N. K. Sinha, Professor D. C. Sircar, Professor B. N. Mukherjee and others. They doubtless wrote on Bengal but their eyes were also set on India as a whole. Professor N. K. Sinha authored a detailed work on the economic history of colonial Bengal. Yet, he also compiled the standard biography of the famous Haidar Ali of Mysore, since he held Hyder Alis resistance to the expansion of British power in India near to his heart. This larger concern for the history of the whole of India was shared by prominent historians from other parts of the country as well. The great authority on South Indian history S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar published important studies of the Guptas and Gurjaras of Northern India. Whether we focus on regional or national history, what is needed the most in our approach to History is that we should be as objective as possible. This is of course true with respect to all subjects of enquiry and academic activities. Behind many professions of impartiality may lie deeply rooted sentiments of prejudice or an innate sense of superiority. It is useful in this regard to recall Edward Saids influential work of 1978, Orientalism, whether he critically scrutinised the claims to objectivity of writing in the west on Asian culture and history. It will be unfair to deny that western orientalists introduced a broader conception of history and a more critical attitude towards historical evidence than our own traditional analysts. Orientalists deciphered our early scripts, they discovered Ashoka for us and tracked as well as translated an enormous amount of source material. They deserve our gratitude for all the valuable work they have done. However, Edward Saids work serves as a warning against the intrusion of personal prejudice into historical interpretation. In my view, every branch of knowledge, whether it be one of the so-called exact sciences or belongs to the spheres of humanities and social sciences, prospers only when clinical objectivity is maintained. It is often the case in history that evidence is either so scarce that the room for speculation is extremely wide, or is so massive that the historian is unable to explore more than a small part of the available data. Personal proclivities of scholars such as loyalties to nation, region, religion, etc. can influence their choice when evidence suggests not a single occurrence but a range of possibilities.

How should one guard oneself against temptation in such a situation? I would venture to recommend that reason and moderation alone should be our guide. It is natural to love ones country and see as much glory in its past as one can detect. But patriotism should not result in blinkered approaches to interpreting history or a compromise with truth in order to justify an argument of choice. No society is perfect and history must be also seen as a guide on what went wrong and what were the contradictions, deficiencies and weaknesses of the past. The study of history will be of use to us in shaping our conduct today only if undertaken with objectivity and my impression is that mainstream Indian historiography has been quite conscious of this responsibility.

An objective pursuit of History, such as our best historians have attempted, requires an impartial mind of a judge and not the mind of an advocate. We must keep our eyes open for unfamiliar ideas and be ready to consider a range of different inferences or assumptions. This necessarily bars intolerance of contrary opinions or judgements. There has been an unfortunate tendency in our country from time to time to take umbrage at the expression of any view perceived to be hostile to our social or cultural institutions, past or present. Similarly, critical appraisals of our heroes and national icons of the past have been met with hostility and sometimes even violence. The freedom to doubt, disagree and dispute intellectually must be protected as an essential pillar of one democracy. Nothing should lie outside the realm of reason, and therefore of discussion and argument. Such freedom is vital for progress in any field, especially a calling and a craft like History.

It is my firm conviction that Indias pluralism and social, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity are our greatest strength. Our traditions have always celebrated the argumentative Indian not the intolerant Indian. Multiple views, thoughts and philosophies have competed with each other peacefully for centuries in our country and freedom of speech is one of the most important fundamental rights guaranteed by our Constitution.

The Indian History Congress has a creditable record of standing up for freedom of expression and asking historians to be faithful to the cause of reason. It has often taken cudgels against distortions of history. I hope the Indian History Congress will continue to remain alert and vigilant in the cause of an objective study of history.

I am very happy to learn that the Indian History Congress regularly publishes its annual Proceedings, containing a large selection of papers submitted at its annual sessions. I am sure that these papers faithfully represent the current level of serious historical research in India. I congratulate you on the high standard that has been maintained by the volumes so far published of The Comprehensive History of India, brought out under your organisations auspices. I hope this series can be completed within a reasonable amount of time, so that an authoritative historical work of reference is made available to our scholars.

I compliment both the State Government of Kerala and the University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, for hosting this session of the Indian History Congress. I understand that during the last two decades Kerala has already hosted three sessions of the Indian History Congress. Most delegates at this session will not therefore be strangers to Kerala. Whatever be the occasion, those who visit Kerala from any other part of India soon realise that Kerala has a message for them. They are visiting a state which occupies the top position in the human development index despite limited economic resources. It has the highest literacy rate and the lowest infant mortality rate in the country. Its institutions of higher education are the pride of India. The state was amongst the first to implement land reforms, which even critics regard as among the most equitous in the country. There is much that the rest of the country can learn from Kerala. I congratulate you, Mr Chief Minister and through you, the people of Kerala on your States impressive achievements.

I wish this session of the Indian History Congress all success.

Thank you

Jai Hind
Speech by the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee at Inauguration of 17th National Jamboree of the Bharat Scouts & Guides at Mysuru

I am indeed happy to be present amidst you on the occasion of the 17th National Jamboree of Bharat Scouts and Guides at Mysuru, a heritage city of India and the cultural capital of Karnataka.

2. I am informed that the Karnataka State Bharat Scouts and Guides has already hosted two National Jamborees at Bengaluru in the years 1960 and 1986 and is now hosting the present 17th National Jamboree at Mysuru.

3. Jamborees are occasions when any organisation reaffirms, redeems and reorients, and I am sure that the activities in the Jamboree will help Scouts, Guides, Rovers and Rangers and other Volunteers to develop leadership qualities, co-operative spirit and moral values. I am also sure that itwill provide a good opportunity to its participants to exchange ideas and exhibit their skills and talents, and help create awareness amongst the youth about the values of national integration, service, discipline, patriotism and peaceful co-existence.

Friends,

4. India is a land of ancient civilization but young people. By 2020 India will be the youngest country. Its an asset only if they are skilled and oriented towards the service of the nation.

5. While Scouting was making rapid progress overseas, in India too a move was initiated by Dr. Annie Besant, Dr. G. S. Arundale and other leaders, who foresaw the need of Scouting for the benefit of Indian boys as well. The Scouting Movement had the blessings of great luminaries like Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Subsequently, the movement has been patronized by successive Presidents and Prime Ministers of India and Chief Ministers of States. I am informed that the Boy Scouts Associations in India and the Hindustan Scout Association were merged together on 7th November, 1950 and later the Girl Guide Association in India also joined the main stream.

6. The support and patronage of the Royal Family of erstwhile Mysuru State and other princely States of our country saw tremendous growth of the movement. Successive State Governments also extended their support and are responsible for the successful existence and growth of the Movement today.

7. I am happy to know that the Scouts and Guide Movement in India has been growing steadily from year to year and has a strength of over 5 Million Scouts and Guides today, and I am sure that this International Youth Movement will enable school going children become better citizens of our great country. The Scouts and Guide Movement has stood the test of time and is relevant to this day even after 109 years of its existence.

Today, there are over 50 million Scouts and Guides throughout the world in 216 countries and territories right from the impressionable age of 3 upto 25 years.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

8. Scouting and Guiding is a tool for enrichment of life skills through proper understanding and awareness of social and national needs. Young Scouts and Guides are valuable members of our society and are active citizens who are contributing to resolving the challenges our communities are facing today. The Scouts and Guide Movement is open to all regardless of race or creed and its purpose is to help young people develop physically, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Scouting is not mere membership of an Organisation, but a commitment to uphold truthfulness and dignity in ones own life at a very young and impressionable age.

9. In fact, as a world youth movement in a globalised world, Scouting has a global responsibility to meet the challenges of development. It has shown the world how developing countries can benefit from a non-formal education system like Scouting.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

10. I am glad to learn that Karnataka is one of the most active and leading states in the field of Scouting and Guiding in the country. Before I conclude, I would like to compliment Sri Siddaramaiah, Chief Minister of Karnataka, Sri P. G. R. Sindhia, State Chief Commissioner and his team of volunteers for organizing the 17th National Jamboree. I also convey my hearty congratulations to all the participants of Scouts and Guides, Rovers and Rangers, Unit Leaders, from our country and overseas for their participation in the Jamboree.

11. Dear young friends in the end, I appeal to all of you to dedicate yourselves wholeheartedly in the service of your motherland. May your meritorious service be the lodestar for others to follow suit in the coming years. Spread the ideals of the Movement and emulate them in your daily lives. I extend greetings to all of you and wish the Bharat Scouts and Guide Movement all success in its future endeavours.

Thank you.

Jai Hind!
US-based iPhone maker wants concessions like relaxation in labelling rules, so it doesnt have to print product info on its devices, and tax incentives in return for setting up a manufacturing unit in the country, the Economic Times reported while citing a government official. The government is deliberating on the company's request.

Citing the same official, the financial daily said that the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) had forwarded the iPhone makers request to the Department of Revenue and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeITY) in November. A group of senior officials from various ministries, including commerce and finance, will early next month deliberate on the incentives sought by .

What are the concessions has sought?

According to various reports, Apple wants to provide product related information on the product's packaging or as part of its operating system. According to the ET report, the company does not wish to tinker with its design language, which is what lends its products, in part, their distinctive edge with many consumers. Currently, Indian laws require for such information to be printed on the product itself.

In a communication to the government, the Cupertino-based technology major has asked for several tax and other incentives to enter India in the manufacturing sector. As reported earlier by Business Standard, senior trade ministry authorities in recent weeks met to discuss the matter.

What does Apple gain?

Making goods such as iPhones locally would allow Apple to open its own stores in India, helping build its brand in a country where it has just a tiny slice  less than five per cent  of a booming smartphone market.

The company sells its products through Apple-owned retail stores in countries like China, Germany, the US, the UK and France, among others. It has no wholly-owned store in India and sells its products through distributors such as Redington and Ingram Micro.

Further, next year, Indias smartphone market is expected to overtake that of the US as the worlds second-largest behind China, according to research firm IDC. For years, sales in China fuelled Apples expansion, but now growth there is slowing.

Earlier, the finance ministry in May had rejected relaxing the 30 per cent domestic sourcing norms, as sought by the iPhone and iPad maker as a pre-condition for bringing in FDI to set up single-brand retail stores in the country.

The company had sought exemption on the ground that it makes state-of-the-art and cutting-edge technology products for which local sourcing is not possible.

The government had also turned down the firm's proposal to import refurbished phones and sell them in India.

What is the government doing about it?

With regard to looking into the company's requested concessions, officials from the departments of commerce, DIPP, revenue, environment and forest, and DeITY will attend the reported meeting on the matter.

The group is likely to meet in the first week of January to discuss the issue, sources said.

However, government sources said the technology-major should set up the manufacturing unit in India without seeking additional support.

"Several in India are manufacturing mobile phones in India. Nobody is asking for additional incentives. Currently, the government provides sufficient support to boost electronic manufacturing," they added.

The government provides benefits under Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme to boost electronic manufacturing in the country.

The scheme provides financial incentives to offset disability and attract investments in the electronics hardware segment. It also gives subsidy for investments in Special Economic Zones, among other benefits.
Factory to store: The new iPhone 7 is displayed at an Apple store in Beijing. The factory in Zhengzhou can produce 500,000 iPhones a day Photo: Reuters
Secretary of State accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Wednesday of thwarting peace in the Middle East, speaking with a clarity and harshness almost never heard from American diplomats when discussing one of their closest and strongest allies.
Secretary of State John Kerry tore into on Thursday for settlement-building, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of dragging away from democracy and forcefully rejecting the notion that America had abandoned with a controversial UN vote.

Israel's government accused Kerry of a skewed attempt to blame Israel for failing to reach a peace deal.

In a farewell speech, Kerry laid out a vision for peace that he won't be in office to implement, but that the US hoped might be heeded even after President Barack Obama leaves office.

He staunchly defended Obama's move last week to allow the UN Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal, the spark that set off an extraordinary and deepening diplomatic spat between the US and its closest Mideast ally.

"If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both, and it won't ever really be at peace," Kerry said in a speech that ran more than an hour, a comprehensive airing of grievances that have built up in the Obama administration over eight years but were rarely, until this month, discussed publicly.

Breaking sharply from longstanding US policy that foreign powers shouldn't impose a solution, Kerry unveiled a six-part outline of what a future peace deal could look like.

The outline tracked closely with principles long assumed to be part of an eventual deal, and Kerry insisted he was merely describing what's emerged as points of general agreement.

Pushing back on Israel's fury at the US abstention in the United Nations vote, Kerry questioned Netanyahu's commitment to Palestinian statehood, which has formed the basis for all serious peace talks for years.

Though Netanyahu says he believes in the two-state solution, Kerry said, the government he leads is "the most right-wing in Israel's history."

"The settler agenda is defining the future of Israel. And their stated purpose is clear: They believe in one state," Kerry said.

While Israel's Arab population has citizenship rights, the roughly 2.5 Palestinians living in the West Bank do not. Israel controls their ability to move, they can be subject to Israeli military law and they do not have a right to vote in Israeli elections.

Instead, they are governed by the Palestinian Authority, which has only limited powers of autonomy.

Netanyahu planned to respond personally later today in a televised statement. His office issued a statement denouncing the speech, arguing it was "skewed against Israel."

"Kerry obsessively dealt with settlements and barely touched upon the root of the conflict: Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries," the prime minister's office said.

Israel's government was enraged after the US abstained from voting on the UN Security Council resolution last week that called Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem a violation of law.

Netanyahu accused the US of colluding with the Palestinians and helping draft the resolution. The US has vehemently denied those charges.

Kerry insisted the US "did not draft or originate" the resolution, introduced by Egypt and later by a handful of other nations.

"The vote in the United Nations was about preserving the two-state solution. That's what we were standing up for," Kerry said.
For fans of audio fiction, 2017 promises to be a year of significant change as major players from the world of publishing, broadcasting and technology move into the field. The big change over the past few years has been the development of as podcasting  audio files that can be downloaded and consumed at the listeners leisure. This has revolutionised the formerly staid world of  especially in the field of drama.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has thanked China for extending cooperation in the nuclear field and said the two countries are also actively cooperating in many other areas, including construction of roads, motorways, airports and upgradation of Pakistan Railways.

The Premier made this remark while inaugurating Chashma III, the country's fourth nuclear power plant, in Mianwali.

The new power plant will add 340 megawatts of electricity to the national power grid and is a joint collaboration between the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and China National Nuclear Corporation, reports Radio Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the vice-president of China National Nuclear Corporation in his speech said the cooperation with Pakistan in nuclear energy is reflective of the strategic relationship between both countries.

Sharif reiterated that electricity load-shedding will be eliminated, adding all efforts will be made to ensure that it becomes affordable by 2018.

During his speech, the prime minister also slammed the opposition and said that politics of sit-ins will lead the country to nowhere, adding those doing so must refrain from it.

"Have mercy on this nation, your sit-ins are proving destructive for this country," Sharif said in a veiled reference to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf protests against corruption in the wake of Panama Papers leaks.
Incoming UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he wants to meet "as soon as possible" and is "determined to establish a constructive dialogue with the new US administration".

Guterres, who met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end of last month, said he hoped for a similar outcome with the American President-elect.

The former Portuguese prime minister takes over from Ban Ki-moon on January 1 amid ongoing bloodshed in Syria and questions over the US role in the world under a Trump presidency.

"I had an excellent working meeting with President Putin and I hope this will also be the case with Donald Trump," he told Portuguese television channel SIC in an interview yesterday.

"It is certainly in my interest to visit him as soon as possible," he said. "The United States is not only the main donor of the United Nations but a fundamental element in its actions."

Trump on Friday said Washington's policies at the UN will be different after he takes office.

"As to the UN, things will be different after Jan 20th," he said on Twitter, referring to the date of his inauguration.

The tweet came after the United States refrained from vetoing the adoption of a Security Council measure calling on Israel  its closest Middle East ally  to halt settlement activities in Palestinian territory.

Guterres said he was "determined to establish a constructive dialogue with the future American administration".

Trump has not hidden his scepticism about the fight against global warming but has modified that position since his November 8 election win saying he may support global accords on climate change, and that he had "an open mind".

Asked about this, Guterres said the "new (US) government will certainly adopt a different position" than that of Barack Obama's administration.
A push by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to return 50,000 apartments to the city's stock of rent-regulated housing has fallen far short of its goal as hundreds of landlords appear to have ignored the state's plea to comply voluntarily with laws limiting rent increases.

The Cuomo administration's effort stemmed from a 2009 court decision which said landlords cannot charge market-rate rent increases while collecting a popular tax break known as J-51. Instead, the state's highest court ruled that apartments must be subject to rent stabilisation  state laws limiting rent increases  as long as owners receive the benefit.
The United Nations will soon welcome its ninth Secretary General, Antonio Guterres. The former Portuguese prime minister takes the helm of the international organisation on January 1, 2017, replacing Ban Ki-moon.


Last month, more than 200 red-winged blackbirds dropped from the sky above Cumberland County in New Jersey. It's the second time in less than a month, and the third this year. From Philly.com:

"They just fell from the sky," said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection





After county agricultural agents had been notified by homeowners, the DEP's Division of Fish and Wildlife arrived in Stow Creek and removed the birds, collecting some of them to be sent to a state lab for necropsy, toxicology, and histopathology tests.





But the results of all the tests were inconclusive, Hajna said last week.





"We did ascertain that the birds suffered trauma and internal bleeding from hitting the ground," Hajna said. "But what made them fall from the sky in the first place . . . we can't say for certain."





Even wheat seed from a nearby farmer's field was collected and tested for chemical compounds by the University of Pennsylvania None of those compounds (found) is considered harmful to birds and none of the chemicals was found to be among those that are sometimes used by farmers to control "nuisance" species like blackbirds, Hajna said.
US President-elect has hit out at the United Nations, saying the world body is causing problems instead of solving them.

"The UN has such tremendous potential, not living up to its potential. There is such tremendous potential, but it is not living up," Trump told reporters in Florida on Wednesday.

"When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They don't. They cause problems," he said.

He was responding to a question if America under his administration is considering leaving the United Nations.

In a series of tweets earlier this week, Trump criticised the world body, in particularly the Security Council for passing a resolution against Israel.

"So, if it lives up to the potential, it's a great thing. And if it doesn't, it's a waste of time and money," he said.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the US, but not anymore," Trump said in a tweet on Thursday.

"The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!" he added.
Four militants were shot dead after they attacked the ruling Communist Party of China's office in restive Xinjiang province, official media reported, one of the deadliest terror incidents reported in months.

A car carrying the attackers crashed into the yard of the office building of the local Communist Party committee in Karakax county and "detonated an explosive device", killing one person and injuring three others, the news portal of the Xinjiang government said.

Police shot and killed the four attackers, Hong Kong based South China Morning Post quoted the report as saying.

Social order had been restored, the portal report said, adding without identifying the attackers.

The attack was reported after several months of lull in terrorist violence in the province where the Uyghur Muslims were restive for years over the settlements Han Chinese in the province, bordering Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Afghanistan.

China has been blaming separatist outfit, East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), for the violent attacks in the province and the rest of the country.

ETIM was blamed for suicide blast in the Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan in September this year in which one person was killed and five injured.

In November 2015, 28 suspected militants were killed over the course of a 56-day manhunt following an attack on a colliery in Aksu two months earlier that left 16 people dead.

In March 2014, 31 people were knifed to death at a train station in Kunming, in southwestern China, with four attackers killed.

Xinjiang had generally been quiet in 2016 with no major reported attacks or other violent incidents.
surged nearly 12% to Rs 27.50 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in early morning trade, after the Indias biggest bourse - the NSE - filed its draft prospectus for a Rs 10,000-crore Initial Public Offer (IPO) of equity with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).
Navy Admiral Sunil Lanba on Thursday was appointed as the chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee.

The post is occupied by India's senior-most military officer, who advises the government and ensures jointsmanship in the armed forces.

He will take charge from Air Force Chief Arup Raha who will be superannuated on December 31.

Raha previously served as the Vice Chief of the Air Staff of the Indian Air Force and as the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) of the Western Air Command, and that of the Central Air Command.

He has also served as the Senior Air Staff Officer at Headquarters, Western Air Command and Deputy Commandant at Air Force Academy, Hyderabad.

Raha is a fighter pilot who has logged over 3,400 hours of flying experience.

Lanba is the 23rd Chief of the Naval Staff. He assumed the office on May 31, 2016 after Admiral RK Dhowan and will hold office till May 2019.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The BJP-led Assam Government will set up a department to implement Centre's Act East policy.

Assam Commerce and Industry minister Chandra Mohan Patowary said that over 25 big industries will invest nearly Rs. five thousand crores in Assam. He said that 44,000 people will get direct or indirect employment.

The minister said that state government will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the shipping ministry to dredge the Brahamaputra.

He said that a pharma hub will be set up at Darrang and three places have been identified to start Jute hub in the state.

The minister said that the new North East Industrial and Investment Promotion policy is likely to be announced by April, next year. He said that the Assam government is also set up a land bank of about five acres.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sasikala Natarajan on Thursday accepted the resolution to be the general secretary of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK).

"Chinnamma accepts the resolution as Honourable CM Thiru.O.Panneerselvam hands over a copy of it. Chinnamma accepts to take over as AIADMK General Secretary," the party's Twitter handle wrote.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam handed over a copy of the resolution to Sasikala.

The AIADMK earlier in the day passed a resolution to work under the leadership of Sasikala.

The decision was taken in the party's general body meeting.

"AIADMK adopts resolution to work under the leadership of Chinnamma," said the party's Twitter handle.

On January 2, 54-year old Natarajan will formally take over as AIADMK general secretary, a post held by late party supremo J. Jayalalithaa till she died on December 5.

After Jayalalithaa died, the party had announced that Natarajan would replace her as the chief of her party even though she is not technically qualified.

The general secretary has to have completed five years as an active member.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a shocking turn of events, the news of Debbie Reynolds' death comes just a day after her daughter Carrie Fisher (60) died of a heart attack.

"I miss her so much, I want to be with Carrie," the 84-year-old said shortly before passing, her son Todd told TMZ, reports People Magazine.

Reynolds was hospitalized Wednesday afternoon after suffering a stroke at a Beverly Hills home.

The actress became a national treasure as the star of one of the most beloved movies of all time and went on to enjoy a nearly 70-year career in film, television and theater.

A number of Reynolds' former co-stars, friends and admirers have taken to social media to share their grief over this heartbreaking loss.

"I can't imagine what Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds' family are going through this week. I send all of my love," tweeted the popular American comedian and television host Ellen DeGeneres.

Her once TV daughter Debra Messing mourned the loss of Debbie as she shared, "So heartsick. Debbie went to be with Carrie. It's such a devastating 1,2 punch. She was my "mom" for years & I loved her dearly.A legend."

Debbie will be remembered not only for her memorable role in 'Will & Grace', but for her countless others, that include 'Singing In The Rain', 'Behind The Candelabra' and 'Halloweentown'.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A team of researchers has found that a combination of a diabetes medication and hypertension (high blood pressure) drugs can effectively combat cancer cells.

The study, published in Science Advances, also reported that specific cancer cells respond to this combination of drugs.

The findings indicate the cocktail of these two drugs is effective in a wide range of cancers.

The team led by Michael Hall from the Biozentrum University of Basel in Switzerland made an unexpected discovery: The antihypertensive drug syrosingopine potentiates the anti-cancer efficacy of metformin.

Apparently, this drug combination drives cancer cells to programmed "suicide".

Metformin lowers not only the blood glucose level, but also blocks the respiratory chain in the energy factories of the cell, the mitochondria. The antihypertensive drug syrosingopine inhibits, among other things, the degradation of sugars.

At higher doses, the antidiabetic drug inhibits the growth of cancer cells but could also induce unwanted side effects. Therefore, the researchers screened over a thousand drugs for whether they can enhance the anticancer action of metformin.

"For example, in samples from leukemia patients, we demonstrated that almost all tumor cells were killed by this cocktail and at doses that are actually not toxic to normal cells", said first study author Don Benjamin.

"And the effect was exclusively confined to cancer cells, as the blood cells from healthy donors were insensitive to the treatment," Benjamin added.

In mice with malignant liver cancer, enlargement of the liver was reduced after the therapy. Also the number of tumor nodules was less - in some animals the tumors disappeared completely.

Thus, the drugs interrupt the vital processes which provide energy for the cell. Due to their increased metabolic activity and rapid growth, cancer cells have a particularly high energy consumption, which makes them extremely vulnerable when the energy supply is reduced.

"The data from this study support the development of combination approaches for the treatment of cancer patients," Benjamin noted.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan has said that his party is ready to join any grand alliance of opposition parties with regard to the Panama Papers scam.

"If opposition parties form any alliance on the issue, we are ready for it, but not for (coming general) elections," the Dawn quoted Khan, as saying.

He made these remarks during a press conference at his Banigala residence.

Responding to a question on Zardari's decision to contest a by-election, Khan said, "Like every ball is not played during batting, I am leaving this ball."

The PTI chief said that he want to see if the PPP will play its opposition role against the ruling PML-N as the two parties had ruled the country together between 2008 and 2013.

He asserted that the PTI had been playing the role of true opposition since the 2013 general elections despite having less seats than the PPP.

Khan said Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and the PPP's Punjab chapter tried to play the role of true opposition but his party will see if they do more opposition or less opposition after the return of Zardari to Pakistan.

The PTI chief said that he wanted the PPP to make the prime minister answerable to parliament.

Khan said he wanted chief justice Saqib Nisar to restore the confidence of people in the judiciary saying "This nation is yearning for justice."

Accusing Sharif of ruining every state institution, Khan alleged Sharif had damaged the institutions more than the military dictators.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Having ended up as runner-up at the Australian Open on five occasions, World No.1 Andy Murray has decided to head for Abu Dhabi to prepare for a sixth title shot at the Australian Open to be played at the Melbourne Park next month.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Murray has decided to skip the Hopman Cup to do what he called "something different" in the hope of ending his Melbourne drought.

He said that while has enjoyed playing in Hopman Cup over the last two years, he felt that he needed to do "something a little bit different this year."

The Scot won nine titles in 2016, including Wimbledon and the Olympic gold medal, and thrashed Djokovic in the final of the ATP Tour Finals to take top spot in the rankings from the Serb.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BEIJING -- China will remain a strong magnet for global capital due to its huge market potential and continued opening, a government official said on Thursday.

"The government will continue to reduce restrictions on foreign investors, pay more attention to their concerns, and protect their lawful rights and interests," Shen Danyang, spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce, said at a press conference.

China will create a fairer, more transparent and predictable investment environment, Shen added.

Responding to media reports that foreign-funded businesses have started to face more difficulties in China, Shen said such reports "failed to see the whole picture."

While acknowledging that some businesses that rely on low costs and policy support did see shrinking profits, Shen said China's business environment has actually been improving thanks to government efforts.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's report showed China is still one of the most attractive investment destinations. The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China also said more than two-thirds of EU companies' operations in China were profitable. The American Chamber of Commerce in China has said 68 percent of businesses plan to expand investment in the country.

In the first 11 months, China used 731.8 billion yuan (around $105 billion) of foreign investment, up 3.9 percent year on year and the largest among developing countries for 24 consecutive years, Shen said. Investment from the United States and the European Union increased by 55.4 percent and 43.9 percent, respectively.

Shen noted that China's huge market potential will create more opportunities for foreign companies, citing steady economic growth, robust retail sales, and ongoing industrial restructuring.

Foreign-funded businesses, plus those from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, raked in combined profits of 1.5 trillion yuan in the Jan -Nov period, up 10.8 percent from a year ago.
The Indian High Commission in has scrapped the e-token or prior appointment free visa system for Bangladeshi travelers. This will come into effect from January 1.

The decision was taken in line with its ongoing effort to 'streamline, liberalise and ease the process of securing Indian visas', reports the Dhaka Tribune.

The measure is aimed at facilitating people-to-people contacts between India and Bangladesh, said a press statement from the High Commission.

The Bangladeshi applicants seeking visas will need to have confirmed air, train or bus tickets (issued by authorised operators for Bangladesh-India bus services) with them when they apply and the date of journey should be after seven days but within one month of submission of the visa application form.

IVAC Mirpur will only receive walk-in Tourist visa applications from confirmed travellers and senior citizens from January 1.

The press statement also said the High Commission's appointment free tourist visa facility for women travellers and their immediate family members with confirmed tickets, that began on October 2016 and has been very successful, will continue at IVAC Mirpur instead of IVAC Uttara from January 1, 2017.

On the other hand, the applicants with appointment dates/e-tokens may continue to deposit their Tourist Visa applications at the following IVACs: Gulshan, Uttara, Motijheel, Mymensingh, Barisal, Khulna, Jessore, Rangpur, Rajshahi, Chittagong and Sylhet, the statement added.
No security or intelligence agency came to his rescue during his captivity, said Shahbaz Taseer, the son of slain Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer.

Shahbaz told the Dawn that he managed to escape from his militant captors with god's blessings months after his flamboyant father Salman was assassinated for siding with a blasphemy convict.

Shahbaz was abducted from Lahore on August 25, 2011 by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) when he was on his way to his office. He was rescued in March this year after being held captive for almost five years.

He said that the only politician who contacted him was Bilawal Bhutto of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), while all others distanced themselves from the Taseer family, citing that it would be controversial to be seen in their company.

"The security agencies were only involved in bringing me back from that hotel in Kuchlak near Quetta, where I reached after running away from my captors," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has now threatened to throw officials out of a flying helicopter if they misuse public funds while admitting on live television that he's done it before.

"Whoever will use this (public funds) for corruption, I will get him ride the helicopter with me going to Manila and will push him out while we are up on the air. Yes I will do that! I did that before and I can do that again," Duterte said on Tuesday.

When asked if the event actually happened and if the person killed was a kidnapper, as local media was reporting, "It happened; he said it," the CNN quoted Martin Andanar, the presidential communications secretary as saying.

This isn't the first time Duterte has admitted to killing people.

Earlier this month, he told a business forum that he personally killed suspected criminals.

Duterte had previously been accused of killing a government official with a Uzi submachine gun.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa has confirmed the death sentences of eight terrorists involved in killing of Sabeen Mahmud, security personnel, abduction of Chinese engineers besides carrying out an attack on members of Ismaili community in Karachi's Safoora Goth.

"COAS confirmed death sentence of 8 terrorists, 3 others awarded imprisonment. Convicts involved Safoora, Sabeen, Chinese engineers & LEAs," Director General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Asif Ghafoor said in a tweet.

According to the ISPR, the terrorists, tried by the military courts, were involved in killing of 90 persons and injuring 99 others. "Explosives were also recovered from their possession."

The development came less than two weeks after General Bajwa approved the death sentences of 13 militants allegedly involved in carrying out an attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsada among other terror offenses, reports the Express Tribune.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Government of Pakistan is all set to introduce a new law to provide legal cover to law enforcement agencies working against terrorism.

The Daily Times quoted interior ministry sources, as saying that the Pakistan Protection Act would be merged with the Anti-Terrorism Act and then a new law would be enacted after the approval of parliament.

The sources were further quoted, as saying that a draft of the new purposed law had been prepared and consultation process was underway at the Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights. They said that the draft law would soon be presented before the federal cabinet and then before parliament for passage.

They sources were of the view that terrorism-related cases would be forwarded to military courts, because it had been suggested that military courts should be given legal cover as well in the new bill.

After the approval of parliament, the new law would enable law enforcement agencies to keep accused in terrorism-related cases in their custody for a period of three months.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
According to a US-based arms control organisation, a draft proposal for accepting new members into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) paves way for India's entry but leaves out Pakistan.

Last week, the US media reported that former chairman Rafael Mariano Grossi had prepared a two-page document, explaining how a non-NPT state, like India and Pakistan, could join the group.

The document prepared by Grossi, acting on behalf of the current chairman Song Young-wan of South Korea, enjoys a semi-official status, reports the Dawn.

Grossi's draft note proposes that "one non-NPT member state should reach an understanding not to block consensus on membership for another non-NPT member state".

Arms Control Association executive director, Daryl Kimball, said Pakistan still has grounds to object to the formula outlined by Grossi.

He explains that the document will require Pakistan to meet the same criteria for membership as India, adding Islamabad will have to win a separate exemption from the full-scope safeguards requirement to engage in civil nuclear trade with the states.

Present NSG membership rules require a state to sign the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) before joining the exclusive club.

India remains one of only three countries, with Israel and Pakistan, to have never signed the NPT.

Earlier this year, India formally applied for membership and was followed by Pakistan. The United States and a host of other western nations back India's application, but China and some others are blocking New Delhi's membership, which requires a consensus of all members.

The proposal requires a non-NPT state to declare that it has brought into force a clear and strict separation of current and future civilian nuclear facilities from non-civilian nuclear facilities and is willing to apply this principle to future facilities as well.

The new member also needs to assure NSG that it has provided and maintains a declaration to the International Atomic Energy Agency that identifies all current and future civilian nuclear facilities.
Assam, the land of the Red River and Blue Hills tucked away in the lap of nature, is known for its rich cultural heritage and has been a gateway to the entire northeast region.

Blessed with a favourable climate and a rich biodiversity, the state has been home to the endangered one-horned rhino.

Fed by the beautiful Brahmaputra River, the numerous wildlife sanctuaries and other notable destinations like the Kamakhya Temple, Majuli - the largest riverine island, the popular Shankardev Kalakshetra make the state an insight into a mystical land of nature and a journey to a paradise of unexplored destination.

In recent times, the tourism sector of the state has been flourishing with both international and domestic tourists flocking in large numbers.

Realising the tremendous tourism potential, the Ministry of Tourism has roped in Bollywood superstar Priyanka Chopra as its brand ambassador for two years with an aim to promote Assam as a global brand.

Priyanka recently visited state capital Guwahati to address a meeting of international tour operators, where she was officially appointed as the Ambassador of Assam Tourism.

Donning the famous Assamese 'Mekhela Chador' the actress also visited the Kamakhya temple to seek blessings of 'Maa Kamakhya'

A huge crowd gathered to get a glimpse of the Bollywood diva in the Kamakhya temple atop Nilachal Hills.

Expressing her immense love for the north east and especially Assam, Chopra said that she would show to the world how awesome the state is.

"A lot of people asked me why I should be the brand ambassador of Assam, I told them that I was not born here, nor have lived here, but I am an Indian and so is every Assamese. I am extremely proud of this country and Assam is a huge part of that. I have a wonderful relationship with the north east over the years, the entire sister states, including Assam. I have visited here many a times," said the actress.

Addressing the press in the international tour operators meeting, held in the city's Radisson Blue hotel, Priyanka said that she is committed to present the incredible diversity of Assam to the outside world.

"There is so much essence in this state but we in India tend to forget about it and don't appreciate it. In abroad we do not even know about Assam and I wish I am able to introduce to the world the beauty, culture, and grace of Assam. I have always had a very wonderful welcome and really hope that along with whatever I do, I am able to show to the world how awesome Assam is," she said.

She expressed her heartfelt gratitude to the Government of Assam for have chosen her as the tourism ambassador.

When asked whether, apart from taking forward the state's tourism potential to the global market, she is looking forward to promote Assam as a filmmaking destination, she said why not.

Later, she informed that the government is taking every possible step to make it happen in the right manner and promote Assam in the global market.

The evening was also marked by a cultural evening where the famous Bihu dance performance left the audience and the star awestruck.

Such an endeavour of the state government, to appoint Priyanka as the brand ambassador of Assam Tourism, will create an array of innovative ideas to make Assam stand out in the global arena.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Pune Police on Thursday arrested a Bengaluru-based IT engineer named Santosh Kumar in connection with the murder of a 23-year-old software engineer, who was stabbed to death on the outskirts of the city on December 23.

Kumar admitted to his involvement in the crime on Wednesday.

"The local crime branch is investigating the matter. Some evidence came to light and IT engineer Santosh Kumar was arrested yesterday at around 11: 05 am. During interrogation, Santosh Kumar gave us information related to the crime. We are also collecting more information. He will be produced in the court for judicial remand," Additional Superintendent of Police Rajkumar Shinde told ANI.

"I can definitely say that we are in the correct direction. Santosh Kumar was in love with the victim and he also called off his engagement for this. Rest we are on right track. We can't share more details at this point of time," he added.

Antara Das, who hailed from Kolkata and worked with Capgemini in Talawade near Pune, was stabbed to death at KNB square at Talawade last week, barely 500 metres from her workplace.

Her parents had then alleged that a youth was stalking and harassing her for some time.

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The Foreign Ministry has said that the Russian embassy in Damascus has been shelled twice over the day.

Announcing the attack, the Foreign Ministry said, "At 13:00 and 13:19 [Moscow time] on December 28, the Russian embassy in Syria was shelled by terrorists. One mine, which, fortunately, did not explode, fell in the courtyard of the compound of the Russian diplomatic mission's administrative buildings," reports Tass.

"The second mine fell in the close vicinity to its territory. Combat engineers have been involved to defuse unexploded ordnance," it said, adding Moscow considers "this new provocation by extremists opposing the peaceful settlement in Syria as the confirmation of their intention to continue sowing terror and violence, support the atmosphere of fear among residents of the Syrian capital, delivering wicked blows from their hidden shelters under the cover of the 'human shield."

The Foreign Ministry also stated there is still a real threat to the Russian embassy in Damascus and its personnel from terrorist groups.

Those who counteract threats and challenges of terrorism should vehemently condemn the strikes on Russia's embassy in Damascus, the Foreign Ministry said.

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NurnbergMesse India, a subsidiary of NurnbergMesse, one of the world's largest exhibition companies, has appointed Sajid Desai as the CEO for its operations effective December 1, 2016.

A seasoned professional with over 25 years' experience, Desai will drive the NurnbergMesse India in its next growth phase. He will operate out of the company's offices in Delhi and Mumbai.

Desai will report directly to the Chairman of the Board and Managing Director of NurnbergMesse India, Ms. Sonia Prashar.

In a joint statement, the CEOs of the NurnbergMesse Group, Peter Ottmann and Dr Roland Fleck, said, "We are pleased to have engaged a strong professional and an exhibition industry expert in Sajid Desai. His vast experience of the local Indian market and his superior networking and skills will be a great impetus to push forward NurnbergMesse's growth strategy in India be it through acquisition or organic growth. He knows how the local exhibition market ticks, and has the specialist knowledge we require."

Sonia Prashar, Chairman of the Board and Managing Director of NurnbergMesse India added: "We welcome Sajid to the NurnbergMesse family in India and worldwide. I have known Sajid over the last few years and have witnessed his career growth. Sajid brings with him excellent client management and people skills. With his strong capabilities in partnership- and alliance-building, Sajid will be a great asset to further strengthen our India business."

Desai has extensive sales, marketing and business development experience in business-to-business (B2B) and special interest projects in exhibitions, events, media and online. His last position was Country Director of DMG Events in India. Previous assignments include the senior position of Group Director at UBM India. He has also worked as General Manager for the Indian Express Newspapers (B2B and International Division) where he was instrumental in setting up one of India's leading B2B Publishing and Trade Fair entities.

Besides growing NurnbergMesse's existing and new projects in the country, Desai and his team will be working to increase the presence of Indian exhibitors and visitors at NurnbergMesse's highly specialised trade fairs around the world.

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President Pranab Mukherjee today inaugurated the 17th Jamboree of the Bharat Scout and Guides at Mysore and said that scouting and guiding is a tool for enrichment of life skills through proper understanding and awareness of social and needs.

"Young Scouts and Guides are valuable members of our society and are active citizens who are contributing to resolving the challenges our communities are facing today," President Mukherjee said.

He said the scouts and guide movement is open to all regardless of race or creed and its purpose is to help young people develop physically, intellectually, socially and spiritually.

The President said that scouting is not mere membership of an organisation, but a commitment to uphold truthfulness and dignity in one's own life at a very young and impressionable age.

He said the scouts and guide movement has stood the test of time and is relevant to this day even after 109 years of its existence.

President Mukherjee appealed to young scouts and guides to dedicate themselves wholeheartedly in the service of their motherland called upon them to spread the ideals of the Movement and emulate them in their daily lives.

There are over 50 million scouts and guides throughout the world in 216 countries and territories right from the impressionable age of 3 upto 25 years.

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The second round of diplomatic discussions on the issue of Indian fishermen using bottom trawling method in Sri Lankan waters is scheduled to be held on January 2 next year in Colombo.

The first round of discussions was held in November in New Delhi with a view to arriving at a permanent solution to this issue.

The delegation comprised Minister of Fisheries Mahinda Amaraweera, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mangala Samaraweera and other senior officials, reports Colombo Page.

Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Radha Mohan Singh will attend the meeting representing the Indian side while Fisheries Minister Mahinda Amaraweera and Foreign Affairs Minister Mangala Samaraweera will be participating in the discussion representing Sri Lanka.

A round of high-level discussions will also be held on 29th and 30th December 2016 in New Delhi between a four member Sri Lankan delegation including the Secretary to the Fisheries Ministry, Director General of the Department and Sri Lanka Navy officers with the Indian officials.

At the first round of ministerial-level talks held in November in New Delhi, the two sides agreed for a Joint Working Group on Fisheries to meet every three months and a meeting between the Ministers for Fisheries every six months.

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Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has told political leaders of various parties, including Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) that constant and repeated sit-ins will be destructive for Pakistan, and urged politicians not to create hurdles in the nation's progress.

"Rise above mutual differences and work in the interest of Pakistan," the Daily Times quoted Sharif, as saying after inaugurating the Chashma-III nuclear power plant.

He said an uninterrupted supply of electricity was a lifeline for the continuity of industrial activity in the country, which suffered a severe setback due to the power crisis. He also criticised the previous governments for pushing the country into darkness, and said those responsible must be questioned over their grave negligence.

"They must be questioned about bringing in an era of darkness in Pakistan and giving the nation a curse of 18-hour electricity load shedding a day," he was quoted, as saying.

Sharif said Pakistan is emerging out of its troubled times with the completion of development projects, improved economy and better situation of law and order.

He said that since everything was going in the right direction, all the political sit-ins and agitation were simply useless.

He said ending load shedding was his government's top priority and termed the completion of the Chashma-III nuclear power plant as another milestone achieved towards zero-load shedding. He said that Chashma-III project was a reflection of solid foundation of friendship between Pakistan and China.

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There has always been a direct relationship between the popularity of a star and the brand endorsements they have.

It is not just films, but also brands that add to the total net worth of an actor in a big way. Brands take the help of these stars to create awareness of their products among the masses, and thereby, increase sales.

The year 2016 has seen a lot of actors more visible, not just because of their film release, but also because of their multiple brand endorsements.

The stars who have ruled the space of brand endorsements this year with high number of brand endorsements are Deepika Padukone, Hrithik Roshan, Ranveer Singh, Kangana Ranaut and Alia Bhatt.

Deepika Padukone : With being one of the top most followed celebrities on social media, Deepika Padukone is one of the most popular names in the brands' circuit. The actress is the face of a lot of big brands such as Nike, Tanishq, Parachute, Axis Bank, Asian paints, Britannia, Gillette, Kelloggs, Vistara, Tissot, Coke, Lodha real estate, Ace real estate, Lux, Vogue eyewear and a clothing line with Myntra called All About You.

Hrithik Roshan: Hrithik Roshan, the heartthrob of the nation has charmed millions with his personality. The Greek God with a massive fan following is a very brand friendly face. He has been tied up with brands like Mountain dew, luxury watch brand Rado, Adamantino diamond accessories, Dctex furnishings, OPPO, Rupa macroman, Emami HE, Emami Fair and handsome, Nirma advance, RMD boards, J hampstead, VIP luggage and Flairpens. He is also associated with his own fitness apparels brand, HRX.

Kangana Ranaut: The actress has Reebok, Himachal Pradesh Tourism, Tata Sky, Myntra, Melange by Lifestyle, Lavie, Voylla Jewellers and Emami (Boroplus) connected with her.

Ranveer Singh: Ranveer Singh continues to surprise the audience both in his cinematic as well as endorsement choices. Currently the actor is tied up with brands such as Jack and Jones, Chings noodles, Marico's Set Wet, Vivo-phone, innerwear-rupa frontline, adidas originals, Royal Stag, Head and Shoulders, Maruti Suzuki Ciaz, Make my trip, Quikr and Durex

Alia Bhatt : Alia Bhatt is truly one of the most promising actors in Bollywood. The new generation - young actor is already endorsing brands like Philips, Caprese, Gionee, Make my trip, Maybelline, Cornetto and Cadbury Perk.

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Kaspersky Lab experts have uncovered a remarkable evolution in Android OS malware

Domain Name Servers (DNS) turn a readable web address such as 'x.com' into the numerical IP address required for communications between computers. The ability of the Switcher Trojan to hijack this process gives the attackers almost complete control over network activity which uses the name-resolving system, such as internet traffic. The approach works because wireless routers generally reconfigure the DNS settings of all devices on the network to their own - thereby forcing everyone to use the same rogue DNS.

The infection is spread by users downloading one of two versions of the Android Trojan from a website created by the attackers. The first version is disguised as an Android client of the Chinese search engine, Baidu, and the other is a well-made fake version of a popular Chinese app for sharing information about Wi-Fi networks: WiFi????.

When an infected device connects to a wireless network, the Trojan attacks the router and tries to brute-force its way to the web admin interface by guessing the password, relying on a long, predefined list of password and login combinations. If the attempt is successful, the Trojan exchanges the existing DNS server for a rogue one controlled by the cybercriminals, and also a secondary DNS, to ensure ongoing stability if the rogue DNS goes down.

The attackers have built a website to promote and distribute the Trojanized Wi-Fi app to users. The web server that hosts this site doubles as the malware authors' command-and-control (C&C) server. Internal infection statistics spotted on an open part of this website reveal the attackers' claims to have compromised 1,280 websites - potentially exposing all the devices connected to them to further attack and infection.

"The Switcher Trojan marks a dangerous new trend in attacks on connected devices and networks. It does not attack users directly. Instead, it turns them into unwilling accomplices: physically moving sources of infection. The Trojan targets the entire network, exposing all its users, whether individuals or businesses, to a wide range of attacks - from phishing to secondary infection. A successful attack can be hard to detect and even harder to shift: the new settings can survive a router reboot, and even if the rogue DNS is disabled, the secondary DNS server is on hand to carry on. Protecting devices is as important as ever, but in a connected world we cannot afford to overlook the vulnerability of routers and Wi-Fi networks," said Nikita Buchka, mobile security expert, Kaspersky Lab.

The company recommends that all users check their DNS settings and search for the following rogue DNS servers:

 101.200.147.153

 112.33.13.11

 120.76.249.59

If you have one of these servers in your DNS settings, contact your ISP support or alert the owner of the Wi-Fi network. Kaspersky Lab also strongly advises users to change the default login and password to the admin web interface of your router to prevent such attacks in the future.

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Days after U.S. President Barack Obama signed a counter-propaganda bill into law, Chinese media has warned that with such a move China and the U.S. might be heading towards or more accurately slipping back into an ideological war.

An article in the Global Times said that many observers consider the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act a response to China and Russia's growing soft power.

"Although China is only mentioned once in the act, there is no doubt the future rival of the US is included as a target," it said.

American Senators Rob Portman and Chris Murphy, architects of the legislation, insinuated that the billions China spends investing in foreign propaganda efforts are worrying, and claimed that China uses disinformation to seize the initiative in moves such as land reclamation in the South China Sea which "catches the US and its allies off guard."

It said that ideology used to be a bone of contention in the Cold War but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its significance in international relations decreased and peace and development has become the main topics of the .

Major powers have also cast aside ideology from being an essential element in their interactions, and now focus their attention on the economy and geopolitics.

It added that even yet ideology has never been abandoned. The end of the Cold War has always been praised by the Western as a victory for their values.

With this act, the U.S. has, once again, revived the road to an ideological war. To some extent, the U.S. is resurrecting McCarthyism, creating antagonistic emotions in and out of the U.S. The current will breed more splits in US society and more distrust between China and the U.S., it said.

The article warned that to bring up ideological weapons is not a wise choice saying it is a deceit by which the U.S. still wishes to contain China's rise.

Washington should understand the old mind-set of overwhelming one ideology with another will only lead the into Cold War again.

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Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has convened a meeting of his party leaders on Thursday following the announcement of list of 325 candidates by his father and Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav for next year's Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.

Akhilesh had on Wednesday expressed his ire over the list released by his father and told the media in Bundelkhand that he would take it up with the party chief and tell him that some of them have done really good work and should be given tickets.

In the list announced by him, Mulayam clearly ignored the objections of Akhilesh to certain names like Gayatri Prajapati, Rampal Yadav, Sigbatullah Ansari- the brother of jailed gangster Mukhtar Ansari and Atiq Ahmed, who faces over 40 criminal cases.

The list, which includes 176 sitting MLAs, does not mention the names of several pro-Akhilesh ministers and MLAs including Ram Govind Chaudhary, Pawan Pandey and Arvind Singh Gope.
The Patiala House Court on Thursday sent all the four accused for a two-day police custody in connection with the gang-rape case of a US .

The accused were arrested on December 26, after an American tourist filed a complaint against the tourist guide and four of his associates of raping her in a five-star hotel earlier this year.

The lady in her complaint said she had arrived in Delhi on a tourist visa in March this year and was staying at the hotel when the crime took place.

"On December 3, the Delhi police registered a case in connection with the gang-rape. The complainant was kind enough to come down to Delhi, got her statement recorded before police and court and helped in collecting evidence," said Deependra Pathak, Joint Commissioner of Police, South West District.

Reports suggest that the tourist guide during her stay arrived at the hotel along with four friends one day. The men shared a few drinks in the lady's room following which they allegedly took turns to rape her.

The woman, who went back to the U.S. traumatised by the incident, had gone into depression.

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Ministry of Urban Development released Rs. 250 crore for the Lucknow Metro Rail project which is a joint venture project of central and Uttar Pradesh Governments.

The Ministry had earlier this year released Rs.300 crore taking the total assistance provided to the Lucknow Metro to Rs.550 crore.

Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh discussed the progress of Lucknow Metro with Urban Development Minister Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu and sought its speedy implementation.

The 23 km Lucknow Metro is estimated to cost Rs.6,928 crore.

Of this, central government provides Rs.1,003 crore as its share of equity, Rs.297 crore as Sub-ordinate Debt and Rs.3,500 crore as loan assistance. Uttar Pradesh has to mobilise the remaining Rs.2,128 crore as its share of equity and other means.

Central Government entered into a loan agreement with the European Investment Bank in March this year for providing a loan of Rs.3,500 crore to the Lucknow Metro Project.

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JK Tyre & Industries rose 1.83% to Rs 113.80 at 11:16 IST on BSE after the company said its board approved to raise up to Rs 1000 crore by issuing securities.

The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 28 December 2016.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was up 21.78 points, or 0.08%, to 26,232.46.

On the BSE, so far 91,000 shares were traded in the counter, compared with average daily volumes of 3.43 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock had hit a high of Rs 115 and a low of Rs 113.35 so far during the day.

The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 161.50 on 6 October 2016. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 74.05 on 29 February 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past 30 days till 28 December 2016, falling 4.69% compared with the 0.69% fall in the Sensex. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 20.69% as against Sensex's 5.81% decline.

The small-cap company has equity capital of Rs 45.36 crore. Face value per share is Rs 2.

The board of JK Tyre & Industries at its meeting yesterday, 28 December 2016, approved raising up to Rs 1000 crore by issuing securities, convertible/non-convertible, with or without warrant with right exercisable by the warrant holder to convert or subscribe to equity shares, by way of public and/or private offerings and/or qualified institutions placement, including Global depository receipts, American depository receipts, foreign currency convertible bonds, or any combination thereof, in one of more tranches.

The approval of shareholders in this connection will be obtained by way of a postal ballot.

On a consolidated basis, net profit of JK Tyre & Industries declined 13.54% to Rs 100.15 crore on 1.66% rise in net sales to Rs 1805.91 crore in Q2 September 2016 over Q2 September 2015.

JK Tyre & Industries is a leading tyre manufacturer in India.

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Held on 29 December 2016

Shalimar Agencies announced that the Board of Directors of the company at its meeting held on 29 December 2016 approved the following -

Appointment of Nishita Kalantri as Company Secretary and Compliance Officer of the Company with effect from 29 December 2016.

Took note of the order received from Regional Director, Eastern Region, Kolkata dated 13 December 2016 regarding shifting of registered office from state of West Bengal to State of Telangana.

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Reliance Industries (RIL) announced the successful commissioning of the first phase of Para-xylene (PX) plant at Jamnagar, Gujarat. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 28 December 2016.

The plant with capacity of 2.2 million metric tonnes per annum (MMTPA) is built with state-of-the-art crystallization technology from BP which is highly energy efficient and environment friendly. With the commissioning of this plant, RlL's PX capacity will more than double from 2 MMTPA to 4.2 MMTPA. On commissioning of entire PX capacity, RIL will be the world's second largest PX producer with 9% of global PX capacity and 11% share of global production.

The new PX capacity will add value to the output from refineries and improve the profitability of the Jamnagar complex. PX is the building block for the entire polyester chain. The new capacity will complete the integration within RIL's polyester value chain, leading to improved margins and also strengthen its position in polyester industry globally.

Mukesh D. Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, RIL, said the commissioning of the new PX plant marks beginning of the culmination of a series of projects including the refinery off-gas cracker, ethane import project and petcoke gasification. These projects are part of the largest contemporary investment, in excess of Rs 1 lakh crore, in Refining and Petrochemicals sector anywhere in the world. RIL's projects are on schedule and at an advanced stage of mechanical completion. The new PX capacity takes RIL a step closer to being among the top 10 petrochemical players globally, Ambani said.

Goa Carbon announced that the operations at the company's Bilaspur plant in Chhattisgarh had commenced from 27 December 2016. The company had earlier announced the temporary shut-down of this plant. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 28 December 2016.

Pratibha Industries announced that a meeting of the board of directors of the company shall be held on 4 January 2017, inter-alia, to consider and approve, the issue and allotment of shares on preferential basis to the lenders of the company under strategic debt restructuring (SDR) scheme. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 28 December 2016.

JMC Projects (India) announced that it has secured new orders worth over Rs 1457 crore. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 28 December 2016.

Vindhya Telelinks announced that the next board meeting of the company is scheduled to be held on 3 January 2017, to consider and approve proposal for issuance of bonds/redeemable non-convertible debentures (NCDs)/other debt securities on private placement basis, in one or more tranches, aggregating upto Rs 150 crore subject to approval of shareholders through postal ballot. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 28 December 2016.

Dilip Buildcon (DBL) announced that the India Rating & Research (Ind-Ra) has upgraded the company's long term issuer rating and the long term rating on its bank facilities to 'IND A' from IND A-' while resolving the rating watch positive (RWP). The outlook is stable. The agency has also upgraded the short term rating on DBL's bank facilities to 'IND A1 from 'INDA2+'. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 28 December 2016.

Kuantum Papers announced that Credit Analysis & Research (CARE) has reviewed credit ratings for the company's fixed deposits, long term and short term bank facilities and has upgraded the external rating to CARE BBB+; stable for long term bank facilities, CARE A2 for short term bank facilites and CARE BBB+ (FD); stable for fixed deposits. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 28 December 2016.

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Year End review: Department of Space

The year 2016 was very eventful for the Indian space programme which scored very prominent and significant successes in launch vehicle, satellite, applications and space exploration domains. The year saw an unprecedented seven launch vehicle missions all of which were successful. Eight ISRO satellites, four student satellites and 22 foreign satellites were launched by these missions. The year 2016 also saw two successful advanced launch vehicle technology initiatives of ISRO - the Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD) and SCRAMJET technology demonstrator - which had their maiden test flights. Additionally, the highly successful Mars Orbiter Spacecraft of India completed two years in its orbit around Mars and India's ASTROSAT multi-wavelength observatory successfully completed one year in orbit.

Launch Vehicle and Satellite Missions of ISRO:

1.1. PSLV-C31/IRNSS-1E Mission: In this flight, the workhorse launch vehicle PSLV launched IRNSS-1E, the fifth satellite of the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS) constellation, on January 20, 2016.

1.2. PSLV-C32/IRNSS-1F Mission: In this flight, which was its 34th, PSLV launched IRNSS-1F, the sixth satellite of the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS) constellation, on March 10, 2016.

1.3. PSLV-C33/IRNSS-1G Mission: In this flight, PSLV launched the seventh and the last satellite IRNSS-1G of the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS) constellation on April 28, 2016. With this, the space segment of the IRNSS is fully deployed. IRNSS signals are now available and trials with the receiver system are in progress. The Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi dedicated IRNSS to the nation as 'NavIC' (Navigation Indian Constellation). This is an independent regional navigation satellite system designed to provide position information in the Indian region and 1500 km around the Indian mainland. IRNSS provides two types of services, namely, Standard Positioning Services (SPS) - provided to all users and Restricted Services (RS) - provided to authorised users only.

1.4. Reusable Launch Vehicle - Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD): India's first winged body aerospace vehicle, RLV-TD i.e. Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), was successfully flight tested on May 23, 2016. From the peak altitude of 65 km, RLV-TD began its descent followed by atmospheric re-entry at around Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound). After successfully surviving a high temperature of re-entry, RLV-TD successfully glided down to the defined landing spot over Bay of Bengal. In this flight, critical technologies such as autonomous navigation, guidance & control, reusable thermal protection system and re-entry mission management were successfully validated.

1.5. PSLV-C34/Cartosat-2 Series Mission: On June 22, 2016, PSLV-C34 successfully launched 20 satellites in a single mission. It included India's CARTOSAT-2 series of satellite (weighing 727 kg) as primary payload and two academic institutes' satellites, namely, SWAYAM and SATHYABAMASAT and 17 satellites (total weighing 555 kg) of foreign customers from Canada, Germany, Indonesia and USA as co-passengers.

1.6. GSLV-F05/ INSAT-3DR Mission: On September 08, 2016, GSLV-F05, India's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, equipped with the indigenous Cryogenic Upper Stage (CUS), successfully launched the country's weather satellite INSAT-3DR. INSAT-3DR is a follow-on meteorological satellite to INSAT-3D. This launch is significant, considering that fact that this is the third consecutive success of the indigenous CUS, which signified the country's successful assimilation of the complex cryogenic rocket propulsion.

The satellite carries two meteorological payloads, viz., 6 channel imager & 19 channel sounder. It also carries a Data Relay Transponder (DRT) and Satellite Aided Search and Rescue (SA&R) payload to provide continuity to INSAT SA&R services. The satellite has started providing services to the weather and meteorological community in tandem with INSAT 3D that is already in the orbit. By virtue of these 2 satellites in orbit, the country gets weather updates every 15 minutes which is yet another unique service from space.

1.7. Successful Flight Testing of ISRO's Scramjet Engine Technology Demonstrator: The first experimental mission of ISRO's Scramjet Engine towards the realisation of an Air Breathing Propulsion System was successfully conducted on August 28, 2016 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota. The Scramjet engine designed by ISRO uses Hydrogen as fuel and the Oxygen from the atmospheric air as the oxidiser. This marked the maiden short duration experimental test of ISRO's Scramjet engine with a hypersonic flight at Mach 6. ISRO's Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV), which is an advanced sounding rocket, was the solid rocket booster used for the test of Scramjet engines at supersonic conditions. ATV carrying Scramjet engines weighed 3277 kg at lift-off.

India is the fourth country to demonstrate the flight testing of Scramjet Engine. The successful technology demonstration of air-breathing Scramjet engines in flight by ISRO during the year was a modest yet important milestone in its endeavour to design and develop advanced air breathing engines including engines for ISRO's future space transportation system

2. PSLV-C35/SCATSAT-1: By successfully launching SCATSAT-1 satellite carrying a scatterometer for wind vector measurement into the required polar Sun Synchronous Orbit in its PSLV-C35 mission on September 26, 2016, the PSLV facilitated continuity to Oceansat-2 Scatterometer, which completed its service in March 2014. The wind vector at sea surface information facilitated by SCATSAT-1 is used in weather prediction models and helps in accurate prediction of cyclone track. This launch of PSLV had yet another unique achievement of placing satellites in 2 different orbits and also the longest of the missions that lasted for more than 2 hrs 15 mins after lift-off. In this mission, engine multiple restart experiment of upper stage of PSLV was also demonstrated.

2.1. PSLV-C36/Resourcesat-2A: In its 38th flight, PSLV successfully launched RESOURCESAT-2A satellite on December 07, 2016 into an 822 km polar Sun Synchronous Orbit. This was PSLV's 37th consecutive success. The 1235 kg RESOURCESAT-2A is a follow on mission to Resourcesat-2 and intended to ensure data continuity to the users for land and water resources applications. The satellite is configured with three-tier imaging capability consisting of three solid-state cameras, viz., LISS-IV, LISS-III and an Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS).

2.2. GSAT-18: The 3405 kg communication satellite GSAT-18, launched on October 06, 2016 by European Ariane V, carries a total of 48 transponders in Ku-band, C-band and Ext C-band for providing continuity of services and has further augmented the transponder capacity.

3. Disaster Management Support (DMS):

3.1. Uttarakhand Forest Fire: The Uttarakhand state witnessed episodic fire incidents during the last two weeks of April 2016. Recurrence of fire incidences is common in the hilly state in summer season. Satellite data based temperature anomalies were used for the detection of active fire locations. About 1600 active forest fire locations were recorded during 24th April to 4th May 2016. The burnt area was also assessed using Satellite data. The information on a near-real time basis was disseminated to Forest Survey of India, State Forest Departments, NDMA and SMS on fire alerts were sent to the identified forest officials of Uttarakhand. All Fire alerts were also published on BHUVAN geoportal. The most affected districts were Nainital, Pithoragarh, Champawat, Almora, Pauri and Tehri Garhwal.

3.2. Floods occurred in Assam and Manipur states during 2016. Three waves of floods were reported in Assam; first during fourth week of April, 2016, second on 21st June, 2016 and third on 4th July, 2016. Lakhimpur, Jorhat, Sibsagar, Charaideo, Dhemaji and Karbi Anglong districts were affected. Heavy pre-monsoon rains lashed Manipur during the last week of April 2016 and Imphal, Thoubal and Bishnupur districts were reported to be affected. The information on flood inundation was disseminated to the Central and respective State Government departments, State Relief Commissioners and nodal Ministries.

4. Mars Orbiter Mission: India's first inter-planetary mission completed two years in its orbit around Mars. The health parameters of Mars Orbiter spacecraft are normal and all the five payloads are sending useful data. The Mars Colour Camera has produced more than 530 images so far, one of which has appeared on the cover page of the November 2016 issue of the National Geographic Magazine. The spacecraft successfully negotiated 'whiteout' geometry during May 18 - 30, 2016 using onboard autonomy. The archived data is now made public for free download and scientific research through ISRO's website. More than 1.75 Lakh hits and about 40 GB data was downloaded in just 2 weeks. ISRO has also launched MOM Announcement of Opportunity (AO) programmes for researchers in the country to use the MOM data for R&D. The success of Mars Orbiter Mission has showcased India's technical capability in exploring planetary bodies and has motivated India's student and research community in a big way.

5. ASTROSAT Mission: ASTROSAT, India's first multi-wavelength observatory has completed one year in orbit as of September 2016. An Announcement of Opportunity (AO) was made in June 2016 for Indian researchers to explore the universe using data from ASTROSAT. As a part of one year completion of ASTROSAT in orbit, a one-day workshop was organised at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune on Sept 29, 2016, to highlight the technical and scientific achievements of this satellite. The first scientific set of results and the future scope of the satellite were presented during the meeting.

6. Space technology based tools in Governance & Development: Space technology applications, derived through synergistic use of earth observation, communication & navigation satellites and complemented with ground-based observations, play a key role in harnessing the benefits of space technology for socio-economic development in the country and improving the quality of life of citizens.

Satellite-based Earth Observation is a cost effective means of obtaining essential and reliable data on our Earth. Such data on natural resources have become an integral part of planning and implementation of action plans for managing land & water resources, developing urban & rural infrastructure, monitoring weather & climate, protecting environment including disaster risk reduction. The capabilities of satellite communication are also exploited for delivering societal applications towards education & health, connectivity, skill development and livelihood sustenance. Space technology-based applications & tools are being increasingly used in governance and development for enabling planning, periodic monitoring, mid-course correction, evaluation of developmental activities and scientific decision making in various sectors right from agriculture, urban & rural planning to disaster risk reduction.

Department of Space is working closely with various Central Ministries/Departments and State Governments towards maximizing the use of space technology in the various areas viz. Natural Resources Management, Energy & Infrastructure, Disaster & Early Warning, Communication & Navigation, e-Governance & Geo-spatial Governance and Societal Services. Many flagship programmes namely, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation & Urban Transformation; Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana; Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana; National Mission for Clean Ganga, Digital India & MGNREGA are also utilizing space-based tools.

ISRO is focusing on providing assured services through data continuity, improved connectivity & location-based services and enabling proactive user engagement through institutionalisation of space applications and capacity building. In a nutshell, ISRO is enabling the space applications in tune with the requirements of Ministries/Departments to enhance functional effectiveness, facilitate planning and decision making to improve governance and development.

7. Follow-up Actions on National Meet for Application of Space Technology & Tools: Out of the 160 projects emerged as an outcome of the national meet, work was initiated in 144 projects. In about 60 projects, significant progress has been made in terms of development of methodology, web and mobile applications, training and execution of work. About 75 customised web applications and 50 mobile applications were deployed. MoUs were signed with Central Ministries/Departments as well as the State Governments. Based on the request of the Ministries/ Departments for capacity building, more than 9,000 officials were trained. Additionally, Outreach programmes were also conducted in Colleges and Schools. State Meets on 'Promoting space technology -based tools' were completed for many States.

8. International Cooperation: As part of the ongoing civil space cooperation, cooperative Agreements/MoUs were signed with UAE space agency (February 2016); US Geological Survey (July 2016); Afghanistan (September 2016); Vietnam (September 2016); Russia (October 2016) Japan (November 2016) and NASA of USA (November 2016). India hosted the two international events, viz., i) UN/India workshop on Use of earth observation data in disaster management and risk reduction: sharing the Asian experience in Hyderabad in March 2016 and ii) 10th SPIE-Asia Pacific Remote Sensing Symposium (APRS) in New Delhi in April 2016. ISRO along with French space agency hosted a meeting of heads of space agencies on April, 03, 2016 in New Delhi to highlight the importance of space inputs for climate change studies. Space Agencies of India and Mexico organised a joint workshop in Mexico on use of space technology for disaster management in July 2016. Bilateral space cooperation meetings were organised with delegations of Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands, UK and USA.

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Sunil Hitech Engineers was locked at 5% upper circuit at Rs 13.02 at 12:52 IST on BSE, with the stock extending yesterday's rally triggered by the company securing a road project worth Rs 434 crore.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 32.28 points or 0.12% at 26,242.96.

On the BSE, 15.72 lakh shares were traded on the counter so far as against the average daily volumes of 8.10 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock opened with an upward gap surging by the maximum level of 5% and currently trading at that level at Rs 13.02 so far. The stock hit a low of Rs 12.69 so far during the day.

The stock had hit a record high of Rs 23.43 on 20 October 2016 and a 52-week low of Rs 7.75 on 24 June 2016. It had outperformed the market over the past one month till 28 December 2016, advancing 35.22% compared with the Sensex's 0.53% fall. The scrip had, however, underperformed the market in past one quarter, sliding 10.14% as against the Sensex's 7.36% decline.

The small-cap company has equity capital of Rs 37.80 crore. Face value per share is Rs 1.

Shares of Sunil Hitech Engineers have rallied 10.24% in two trading sessions from its close of Rs 11.81 on 27 December 2016, after company announced securing a road engineering, procurement & construction (EPC) project worth Rs 434 crore in Arunachal Pradesh. This announcement was made after market hours on 27 December 2016. In response to this announcement, the stock had surged by the maximum level of 5% to settle at Rs 12.40 yesterday, 28 December 2016.

Sunil Hitech Engineers said it has been awarded an order worth Rs 434 crore in Arunachal Pradesh for National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation on EPC of road project. This project is in joint venture with PCL-Eagle Infra India.

Sunil Gutte, Managing Director of the company, said that the company proposes to bid for the projects worth Rs 6000 crore in the remaining period of this financial year. He further added that the company has boosted its order book in buildings sector which is surely going to be a major sector to contribute in the infrastructure development projects coming up in the country.

Sunil Hitech Engineers' net profit rose 39.7% to Rs 14.84 crore on 19.6% growth in net sales to Rs 496.91 crore in Q2 September 2016 over Q2 September 2015.

Sunil Hitech Engineers is a well established player in EPC and construction of road, bridges, building works of institutions, hospitals and housing projects, cross country pipeline, civil & mechanical works of power and steel plants, cooling towers, chimneys, etc, also in renewable sector.

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Voltas rose 1.64% to Rs 321.85 at 12:08 IST on BSE on reports that a foreign brokerage has maintained buy rating on the stock.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 32 points or 0.12% at 26,242.68.

On the BSE, 27,000 shares were traded on the counter so far as against the average daily volumes of 1.23 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock had hit a high of Rs 322.70 and a low of Rs 318 so far during the day.

The stock had hit a record high of Rs 406 on 20 October 2016 and a 52-week low of Rs 211.20 on 12 February 2016. It had outperformed the market over the past one month till 28 December 2016, advancing 5.36% compared with the Sensex's 0.53% fall. The scrip had, however, underperformed the market in past one quarter, sliding 16.96% as against the Sensex's 7.36% decline.

The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 33.09 crore. Face value per share is Rs 1.

Voltas' consolidated net profit rose 7.2% to Rs 72.11 crore on 7.6% decline in net sales to Rs 958.05 crore in Q2 September 2016 over Q2 September 2015.

Voltas is an air conditioning company and one of the world's premier engineering solutions providers and project specialists.

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Issues Corporate Guarantee worth Rs 200 crore for credit facilties availed

Williamson Magor & Company announced that the Company issued on 28 December 2016 a Corporate Guarantee amounting to Rs. 200 crore in favour of IndusInd Bank for credit facilities of Rs. 200 crore availed on 28 December 2016 by Seajuli Developers & Finance from the said Bank.

The aforesaid Corporate Guarantee replaces the Corporate Guarantee of Rs. 200 crore given earlier by the Company to the said Bank on behalf of McNally Bharat Engineering Co. (McNally) for credit facilities availed by McNally earlier from the said Bank.

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A series of bombardments carried out by Syrian government forces on the eve of a ceasefire killed at least 22 people near Damascus on Thursday, a British war monitor reported.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, among the victims were at least 14 children and three women, who indicated several others had been injured, some of them seriously, Efe news agency reported.

"At least 22 people killed, including 14 children and a woman, as aerial bombing and artillery shelling intensify in Douma and Ghouta," the Observatory tweeted.

The attack came hours before a ceasefire agreed between the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and opposition groups.

The Russian and Turkish governments had already agreed to a truce Wednesday that was to come into effect at midnight (9 pm GMT Wednesday).

The attacks primarily affected several areas in the region of Ghouta, the main bastion of opposition forces in eastern Damascus, and Douma, some 10 km northeast of the capital.

The Syrian army high command announced Thursday that a ceasefire is to come into effect at midnight (9:00 pm GMT).

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would be reducing its military presence in Syria following the ceasefire agreement with Assad.

--IANS

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As 2015 drew to a close, there were fresh expectations on India-Pakistan ties with the two sides deciding to resume their comprehensive bilateral dialogue during External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's visit to Islamabad and Prime Minister Narendra Modi making a surprise visit to Lahore on Christmas Day on his counterpart Nawaz Sharif's birthday and his granddaughter's wedding. That euphoria now seems a distant dream.

And for good reason.

Even as the Foreign Secretaries of the nations were scheduled to meet to formulate the dialogue process, terrorists of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) attacked the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot on January 2 this year resulting in the deaths of seven Indian security personnel and all five attackers. The entire peace initiative was thrown off the rails.

India demanded that Pakistan bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice and gave what it termed irrefutable proof of the JeM's involvement in the attack. Pakistan lodged an FIR against unknown persons in February.

In March, India allowed a Pakistani investigation team to visit Pathankot as part of the probe into the attack.

In the same month, Pakistan arrested an Indian national, Kulbhushan Jadhav who had inadvertently crossed over from Iran and charged him with spying. India said that Jadhav is a former Indian Navy officer. Jadhav has since been denied consular access despite repeated requests from New Delhi.

In April, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar held talks with his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry during the latter's visit to New Delhi for a meet on Afghanistan, but the government has since dismissed this as "not to be taken as a bilateral dialogue".

In June, Pakistan reportedly said that it would consider allowing an Indian investigation team to visit its territory as part of the Pathankot probe attack but with no palpable action being seen taken by Islamabad, hopes of a dialogue continued to recede though the Security Advisors of the two countries reportedly continued to remain in contact.

Things took a drastic turn for the worse with the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, the poster-boy of Kashmiri terrorism. Bilateral relations dipped to a new low with Pakistan describing Wani as "a martyr" and accusing India of human rights violations in Kashmir.

The violence sparked off in the Kashmir Valley by the killing of Wani claimed the lives of nearly 100 people, with India blaming Pakistan for inciting the violence. Sushma Swaraj, in a statement, categorically ruled out talks with Pakistan, saying that "talks and terror cannot go hand-in-hand".

Pakistan suffered further embarrassment when Bahadur Ali, a terrorist who had infiltrated from its territory was caught by Indian security forces in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistani High Commissioner Abdul Basit was issued a demarche which stated: "Bahadur Ali has confessed to our authorities that after training in Lashkar-e-Toiba camps, he was infiltrated into India."

At an all-party meeting in New Delhi in the backdrop of Kashmir, Prime Minister Modi red-flagged Pakistan's continued abuse of human rights in Balochistan province and mentioned this in his Independence Day speech as well.

Then came September 18. Terrorists, allegedly belonging to the JeM, carried out a cross-border attack on an Indian Army base at Uri in Jammu and Kashmir in which 19 Indian soldiers lost their lives.

This time, as the whole country clamoured for revenge, India retaliated with aggression by going on the diplomatic offensive of isolating Pakistan in the international community.

Then came the surgical strikes on terrorist launch pads across the Line of Control on September 29.

Just ahead of this, warning the world that "we do not know who this Frankenstein's monster will devour next", Sushma Swaraj in her speech at the UN General Assembly, said in Hindi: "If we want to defeat terrorism, there is only one way -- that we unite across our differences, add steel to our resolve and inject urgency in our response... And if any nation refuses to join this global strategy, then we must isolate it."

Modi cancelled his visit to Islamabad to attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) Summit that was scheduled in November in protest against Pakistan's state sponsorship of terrorism. Other Saarc nations like Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan too followed suit, citing the same reason.

India also said that it would revisit the World Bank-brokered 1960 Indus Waters Treaty that has withstood three wars -- drawing nervous reactions from Islamabad.

But the final diplomatic humiliation for Pakistan happened at the sixth ministerial 'Heart of Asia conference - Istanbul Process' conference on security and development of Afghanistan.

This time, it was not India but Afghanistan that named and shamed Pakistan for state sponsorship of terrorism.

Directly addressing Sartaj Aziz, the Pakistani Prime Minister's Advisor on Foreign Affairs, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, while turning down a donation of $500 million from Islamabad for development work in his country, said: "This fund, Mr. Aziz, could very well be used for containing extremism because without peace any amount of assistance will not meet the needs of our people."

As of now, the prognosis for 2017 doesn't seem too good.
Not a single "no" vote was cast on Wednesday as both houses of Colombia's Congress approved a bill granting amnesty to members of the FARC guerrilla group who lay down their arms under the peace accord signed last month.

The initiative also offers legal guarantees for police and soldiers who committed crimes in the context of an armed conflict that began in 1964, Efe news agency reported.

"With 69 votes in favour and zero opposed the full Senate approves the Amnesty Law. The bill passes now to the Constitutional Court for their review," Senate Chief Mauricio Lizcano said on Twitter.

The lower house passed the bill by a margin of 121-0.

The amnesty applies to security force members and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fighters as long as they are not accused of committing offenses classified as crimes against humanity under the UN Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

More than 6,000 FARC combatants indicted for political offences including rebellion and conspiracy are expected to benefit from the measure.

In a video message, the armed forces commander, Gen. Juan Pablo Rodriguez Barragan, expressed gratitude for congressional approval of a bill "so important" to the military.

Analysts say that once the bill is signed into law by President Juan Manuel Santos, FARC fighters are likely to have more confidence about gathering in the designated demobilization zones.

--IANS

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Looking at the world through the eyes of the Web
Leader of Opposition in the Assam Legislative Assembly Debabrata Saikia has sought the intervention of Union Minister Mahesh Sharma over the chanting of religious slogans by the RSS cadres at Kareng Ghar, an important historical monument, a few days ago.

Saikia referred to the fact that the RSS had recently organised a training session at Kareng Ghar, a historical monument dating back to the Ahom Kingdom, located in Upper Assam's Sivsagar district and protected by the ASI, a few days ago and said that it is a violation of set norms by the RSS cadres.

"Since the monument is one of the very few centrally protected monuments in Assam and a symbol of Assam's secular identity, there has been widespread reaction over the action of the RSS cadres," Saikia said in his letter sent to the Union Minister of Culture on Thursday.

He said that the monument had earlier been damaged by the British forces after 1826 and also subsequently due to natural calamities. "The monument is already in bad shape due to lack of maintenance and the act of the RSS workers had further damaged it," he said.

Saikia also requested the Union Minister to invoke Article 49 of the Constitution of India which has provided for Protection of Monuments and places of National importance and appealed him to initiate proper legal action against the action of the RSS workers.

--IANS

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Newly appointed Delhi Lt. Governor Anil Baijal will take charge of the new assignment on Saturday, an official said on Thursday.

"He (Baijal) will assume charge on Saturday, with the High Court Chief Justice administering him the oath of office on that day," an official in the Lt. Governor's Office told IANS.

President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday accepted Najeeb Jung's resignation as Delhi Lt. Governor and appointed Anil Baijal as his successor.

Baijal, a 1969-batch Indian Administrative Service officer, retired in 2006 as the Union Urban Development Secretary. Baijal was on the executive council of the think tank Vivekananda International Foundation.

In his long career of 37 years, the former senior bureaucrat held several eminent positions, including Union Home Secretary, Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Airlines, Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

Delhi Tourism and Culture Minister Kapil Mishra welcomed Baijal's appointment and said he was hopeful of cooperation from the new Lt. Governor to the government led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

"I welcome his (Baijal's) appointment. I am hopeful the new L-G will clear several development projects which have been stopped. Hopefully, the blockade will end now," Mishra told IANS.

An official statement earlier said: "The President is pleased to appoint Anil Baijal to be the Lt. Governor of the National Capital Territory of Delhi with effect from the date he assumes charge of his office."

"The President has accepted Jung's resignation as Lt. Governor of Delhi," the statement read.

Baijal's appointment came after Jung suddenly resigned on December 22, taking everyone by surprise.

Welcoming Baijal's appointment, Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken said he hoped Baijal will be "impartial in his dealings" and release the Shunglu Committee report that slammed the Kejriwal government for its alleged irregularities.

"We expect Anil Baijal to release the Shunglu Committee report on corruption of AAP government soon after taking over!" Maken tweeted.

Jung set up a committee chaired by former Comptroller and Auditor General V.K. Shunglu on August 30 and comprising ex-Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami and former Chief Vigilance Commissioner Pradeep Kumar as members to go into alleged irregularities of the AAP government after the Delhi High Court on August 4 accorded primacy to the L-G in Delhi's administration.

The committee submitted its report to the then Lt. Governor on November 27.

"We hope that being a (former) senior bureaucrat, Baijal will follow constitutional guidelines. Fight between former L-G Najeeb Jung and the AAP government was not personal," Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) National Secretary Sardar R.P. Singh told IANS.

"He (Jung) only followed constitutional steps which were opposed by the Delhi government," Singh said.

--IANS

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The Maharashtra Police has booked state Bharatiya Janata Party President Raosaheb Danve for violating the election code of conduct, under the directive of the State Election Commission, an official said here on Thursday.

Danve has been booked under Indian Penal Code Section 171-B, and Section 20(I) of the Maharashtra Municipal Council, Nagar Panchayat and Industrial Township Act, in an FIR lodged by the Paithan police.

The police action was initiated late Wednesday night following instructions from the Aurangabad collectorate after directions from State Election Commissioner (SEC) J.S. Saharia's office, the official said.

Danve is accused of allegedly violating the Model Code of Conduct for the ongoing civic body elections in the state and luring voters in Paithan on December 17 to accept "Goddess Laxmi" if it came to them before the next day's civic elections there.

Goddess Laxmi symbolises and is revered as the embodiment of wealth in India.

Following the statement, videos of which went viral on social media networks, the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party had demanded stringent action against Danve for his statement on the eve of the December 18 elections to civic bodies in Aurangabad, Nanded, Bhandara and Gadchiroli districts.

Later, the SEC demanded an explanation from Danve in which, among other things, he claimed to have been quoted out of context, but was not satisfied with his defence.

In the first video Danve says: "Today is December 17 and tomorrow is December 18, the voting day. The eve of election is important, as suddenly you get 'darshan' of (Goddess) Laxmi. If such Laxmi comes to your door, please welcome it."

In his reply to the SEC notice, he said that poll-eve is important and suddenly in the night there will be obeisance to Goddess Laxmi, and if Goddess Laxmi comes the voters must ensure she does not return empty-handed.

--IANS

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The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday scanned hawala trader Paras Mal Lodha's account in a public sector bank here, an official said.

"Our team has been conducting a search operation in Paras Mal Lodha's bank account in a public sector bank's branch at Ballygunj Park road area. The team has been verifying the transactions in the account," the official said.

The official said that the agency had also conducted a search operation on Wednesday in one of his bank account with another public sector bank.

Lodha, a leading businessman with interests in real estate and mining, was intercepted by a team of ED sleuths at the Mumbai airport in last week while he was trying to flee to Malaysia.

The city-based businessman was arrested for allegedly converting over Rs 25 crore demonetised notes linked to industrialist J. Sekhar Reddy and Delhi lawyer Rohit Tandon into new currency.

The ED booked Lodha under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

--IANS

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Swedish communication technology firm Ericsson on Thursday demonstrated at Mori village of Andhra Pradesh its Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for creating smart and sustainable villages in the state.

Both projects -- Connected Aquaponics and Smart Water Grid Management -- were demonstrated in the presence of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, after a three-month pilot.

Ericsson earlier this year signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Andhra Pradesh government and the University of California - Berkley to help improve lives of farmers in and around Mori.

"The 'Connected Aquaponics' and 'Smart Water Grid Management' IoT solutions being demonstrated here will help improve harvest and optimise water distribution. It has the potential to provide an improved life for millions of farmers in the country," said Anand Varadarajan, head of Ericsson Research, Chennai, at Ericsson India, in a statement.

The Connected Aquaponics integrates aquaculture and hydroponics for reuse of the ammonia-rich waste water from aquaculture for organic farming and recycle the water back to the aqua farm.

"Using wireless sensor network and Ericsson's AppIOT platform, we enable the monitoring of the aqua farm 24x7, thereby enabling the farmers with real-time information," the company said.

This enables the farmers to increase the yield as well as bring down the production cost with optimum use of the raw materials and repeated use of water.

The 'Smart Water Grid Management' solution has been designed to enable efficient use of natural water resources in the Godavari basin through use of sensors and actuators.

The sensors measure the quality of water, flow of water and level in the water storage tanks across the village.

--IANS

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The Congress manifesto for the 2017 Punjab assembly elections will be released soon by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose inputs were sought by the party during its drafting, a party statement said here on Thursday.

The opposition party is yet to finalise the release date for the manifesto.

Manmohan Singh is a well known economist who is credited with ushering in the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the early 1990s as Union Finance Minister in the Cabinet of then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.

All India Congress Committee in-charge of Punjab affairs Asha Kumari and Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh held a meeting here on Thursday on the matter.

"Asha Kumari and Amarinder discussed with Manmohan Singh the key points of the manifesto, which will now be given the final shape by the Punjab Congress Manifesto Committee led by former Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal," said the statement.

Asha Kumari said: "The party decided to take Manmohan Singh's views on the manifesto draft in view of his expertise on economic issues."

"The Congress does not believe in taking arbitrary decisions, without understanding the nuances of the subject, and felt it was important to involve the former Prime Minister in the manifesto's finalisation, given its impact on the people of Punjab," Asha Kumari said.

Amarinder said: "The former Prime Minister gave his valuable inputs on the manifesto -- a comprehensive document addressing issues relating to every section of Punjab's people."

He said the manifesto will be simultaneously released in key cities of Punjab to coincide with its release in New Delhi by Manmohan Singh to ensure it reaches the maximum number of people.

--IANS

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Google is refusing to censor the rants of Al Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who reportedly influenced the attackers who committed the 7/7 London bombings.

Dubbed the "pied piper of Jihad," al-Awlaki's hateful teachings were, according to RT online, easily searchable using Google's enhanced search function and are believed to have inspired jihadist terrorists and radicalised many more.

When users search al-Awlaki's name, Google's autocomplete function - which uses algorithms based on what others have searched before - suggests they view his "quotes" and "lectures," a media report said.

An easily found downloadable PDF urges: "Martyrdom operations; we must refrain from calling it what the West labels it, 'suicide bombings,' since suicide is haram in Islam; and shahada [martyrdom] is not suicide."

The top hit for "Anwar al-Awlaki quotes" was a website that includes comments from the preacher such as: "Jihad is still flourishing like a blessed tree sprouting through an earth of waste and pollution."

Al-Awlaki, who is an American and Yemeni imam who was implicated in the planning of several Al Qaeda attacks, lived in London for 18 months before moving to Yemen in 2004, where he was a leader of the group.

He was killed in an American drone strike in 2011, but lives on in many YouTube videos.

The prompting of these extra search terms has been described as "incredibly dangerous" by terrorism experts.

Julie Shain of the Counter Extremism Project told the Times: "This incentivizes people to search for these things and suggests it's normal to do so.

"In combination with the thousands of videos and pages calling for attacks on the West, it's incredibly dangerous."

Google recently changed its algorithms to prevent autocomplete suggesting anti-Semitic and misogynist searches. The company has also moved to prevent white supremacist and Holocaust denial websites from appearing in high or top results for certain searches.

Google's director, Matt Brittin, told Radio 4's Today programme the company works "very hard" to remove hateful and illegal content, but said autocomplete does save people time.

"It's algorithmic, and I think people understand that these are suggestions based on what other people are searching for.

"So we can always improve that and we work hard to do that, but I think people are smart and they realize that not everything you find on the internet is accurate and there's a range of opinions there.

A YouTube spokesman said: "YouTube has clear policies prohibiting content intending to incite violence and we quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users."

--IANS

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Unidentified assailants hurled a grenade at the house of Union Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain, who hails from Assam, in Nagaon, police said on Thursday.

"Two persons came in a motorcycle around 11.55 p.m., on Wednesday night and hurled the grenade from outside," said Nagaon Superintendent of Police (SP), D.Upadhaya.

However, the grenade that landed in the lawn did not explode, the SP said.

He said that the assailants probably wanted to create panic.

No one was present in the house at the time, except security personnel.

--IANS

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A maiden integrated policy and over 20 per cent month-on-month traffic growth gave wings to the country's civil aviation sector in 2016.

The sector reaped benefits out of a rise in domestic disposable income, lower jet fuel prices and enhanced services to the non-metro cities, which accelerated India's passenger traffic growth in 2016.

According to the latest data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), passenger traffic during January-November 2016 zoomed by 23.10 per cent to 90.36 million.

This rise and other contributing factors have led global airlines' industry body International Air Transport Association (IATA) to estimate that India will displace the UK as the third-largest aviation marketplace by 2026. It is currently at 9th.

Recently, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha elaborated that the sector has "dramatic headroom" for growth as India has only 150 million passenger trips a year as compared to China's 450 million and the US' 800 million.

In the backdrop of such high growth, the sector finally got its maiden integrated National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP).

The long-awaited policy envisages a roadmap to support 300 million air travellers in five years and steps to make flying affordable and convenient.

Broadly, the policy dwells on upgrade of airports, regional connectivity, easing of norms for flying abroad, liberalisation of the open skies regime, development of cargo hubs, chopper services, attracting investments in maintenance and ground-handling and security.

The ambitious policy did away with one of the most contentious rules of the sector known as '5/20' -- five-years operation and a 20-aircraft fleet -- to qualify for flying abroad.

The five-year wait was done away with, but airlines will need 20 aircraft or fly 20 per cent of their capacity on domestic routes.

The policy may be far away from achieving its intended target, but its showpiece sub-segment -- the 'UDAN' (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) -- is expected to become a reality from early 2017.

According to Civil Aviation Minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, the first flight under the RCS is expected to be operated by January 2017.

The Udan scheme, meant to enhance air passenger traffic in the country by stimulating demand on regional routes, will be in operation for a period of 10 years, provide air connectivity to unserved and remote routes with airfare being capped at Rs 2,500 for an hour's journey of around 500 km.

The RCS is expected to support airlines by providing direct financial support namely VGF (viability gap funding), which would be given to the interested airlines to kick off operations to an un-served or underserved airport, and also keep passenger fares affordable.

The central government is expected to provide concessions in the form of reduced excise duty and service tax, whereas state governments will have to lower the VAT (value added tax) on ATF (air turbine fuel) to one per cent or less.

Besides, the state governments would not charge on security and fire services while electricity, water and other utilities would be provided at concessional rates.

Minister of State Sinha elaborated that through Udan, the central government is also working to expand the aviation map of India from 75 to 150 airports, adding that the Kanpur and Bhatinda airports have become operational under the scheme.

Among other highlights of 2016 -- the government has initiated a trial run for "non-stamping" of passengers' baggage tags at the time of boarding the aircraft at six airports to facilitate hassle-free movement of passengers with hand baggage.

In other major developments, the government appointed B.S. Bhullar as chief of the country's civil aviation regulator, DGCA.

(Rohit Vaid can be contacted at rohit.v@ians.in)

--IANS

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Film: "Incarnate"; Director: Brad Peyton; Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Carice van Houten, Cataline Sandino Moreno, David Mazouz, Keir O'Donnell, Matt Nable, John Pirruccello; Rating: **

With minimalistic scares and a passive, complex plot, "Incarnate" lacks the chutzpah of a scare-thriller. In fact, it is a cheesy supernatural-horror film, which is neither impressive nor does it leave a lasting impact.

It is a tale that takes place over a period of three days, but seems like ages. The tale begins after a single mother Linsday (Carice van Houten) witnesses terrifying symptoms of demonic possession in her 11-year-old son Kevin (David Mazouz).

The Vatican representative, Camilla (Catalina Sandino Moreno) calls a wheelchair-bound scientist Dr. Seth Ember (Aaron Eckhart) to rid Kevin of the evil spirit.

The Doctor scorns organised religion as a whole and refers to what he does as the "eviction of parasitical entities". He says, "I evict them from inside."

He does this, with the aid of his two assistants, who lower his heart rate so that he can be as close to death as possible. From that point, he enters the victims' subconscious state and convinces them that they are living in an illusion. And he leads them to break this illusion.

While he is on his mission with Kevin, he realises that the powerful demon Maggie, who he is trying to evict, is actually pursuing him.

The screenplay by Ronnie Christensen has layers. As the tale unfurls, the plot, which is unfocused, seems convoluted, bizarre and unconvincing. The characters as well as the exposition are purely passive. They fail to elicit drama or explain what is going on. It is all a wild jumble of half-baked derivatives that borrow material from numerous sources and the most obvious inspiration is of course "The Exorcist".

The cast, though sincere, are unable to enliven their characters. They emote perfunctorily and are incapable of injecting palpable emotions.

Overall, with moderate production values, "Incarnate" is a suspense-free horror drama that will appeal only to crazed horror genre fans.

--IANS

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[image: None Of This Had To Be: The Two Paths] There are broadly two views of the situation we human are in. The first is that what is happening is just a...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the United States State Secretary John Kerry's Middle East policy speech, denouncing Kerry as "obsessed" and "biased."

Speaking in a televised statement on Wednesday, Netanyahu said that "Kerry deals obsessively with the settlements instead of touching on the root of the conflict", Xinhua news agency reported.

Netanyahu said he was "disappointed" and "surprised" by Kerry's speech. "Is that what the Foreign Minister of the world's largest power has to focus on?"

The Prime Minister also said he looks forward to working with the President-elect Donald Trump administration to "repeal" Friday's resolution by the UN Security Council, which condemned Israel's continued expansion of the settlements.

In his 70-minute speech, only weeks before the end of the Obama administration term, Kerry warned that Israel's construction of settlements was imperiling the chance of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel and achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

A few hours before the speech, Trump sent a message of support to Israel, telling the Jewish state to "stay strong" until January 20 when he takes office.

In a response tweet, Netanyahu wrote: "President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!"

The historic UN resolution demands Israel to stop the settlements construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and denounced the settlements as a "flagrant violation" of international law.

About 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands that Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast War and has been controlling them ever since, despite international condemnations.

--IANS

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The Madras High Court on Thursday cast doubts on the reason behind the sudden death of J. and asked why the late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister's body could not be exhumed.

Hearing a public interest litigation filed by an All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) member, the court referred to the media reports about the secrecy surrounding Jayalalithaa's health condition while she was in Apollo Hospitals and said it too has doubts.

The court said that after news reports about recovering well, there was the sudden news that she was dead.

The court issued notices in this regard to the prime minister and the central and state governments.

The court also said no revenue division officer saw the body nor any health report was given.

The court also asked whether the guidelines given in Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose case were followed in Jayalalithaa's case as it was the death of a person having a large public following.

was in the Apollo Hospitals for 75 days. Nobody was allowed to see her in the hospital on the pretext of risk of causing infection.

Reacting to the court's observations, Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) founder S. Ramadoss in a statement demanded a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into Jayalalithaa's death.

Citing reports about amputation of Jayalalithaa's legs, Ramadoss said if that was true, it was not known whether the permission for the surgery was obtained from her blood relatives or from the state government.

He said normally when hospitalised, a person would lose weight, but Jayalalithaa did not seem to have lost any weight.
Superstar Mahesh Babu, who has taken a break from the shoot of his next yet-untitled Tamil-Telugu outing, is currently holidaying with his wife Namrata Shirodkar and children.

According to a source close to the actor, he will be celebrating the New Year in Zurich, Switzerland.

"Mahesh, his wife and children are currently in Zurich. Mahesh's sister Padmavathi too has accompanied them on this trip. They celebrated Christmas together. Mahesh is expected to return to India in the first week of January next year," a source told IANS.

Mahesh's wife Namrata Shirodkar has been sharing pictures from the trip on her Facebook page.

In one of her posts, she wrote: "Christmas with family. Travel diaries. Zurich. Good times."

From January 7, Mahesh will resume shooting for A.R. Murugadoss's upcoming bilingual film.

Also starring Rakul Preet Singh and S.J. Suryah in the lead, the film has music by Harris Jayaraj.

--IANS

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Navy Chief Sunil Lanba will take over charge as Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee on Saturday afternoon, and has been handed over the ceremonial baton by outgoing incumbent, IAF Chief Arup Raha.

The seniormost of the service chiefs is given the charge of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.

On Thursday, Air Chief Marshal Raha handed over the baton to Admiral Lanba at a ceremony in the South Block, which houses the Defence Ministry.

Lanba will assume the charge from the afternoon of December 31, the day Raha retires.

Army chief, Gen Dalbir Singh, who also retires from service on December 31, and Principal Staff Officers of all three Services and the Integrated Defence Staff were present on the occasion, an official statement said.

Admiral Lanba assumed command of the Indian Navy on 31 May 2016. He is a Navigation and Direction specialist and has served onboard numerous ships in both the Eastern and Western Fleets.

He is an alumnus of National Defence Academy (NDA), Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), Wellington, College of Defence Management (CDM) and Royal College of Defence Studies, London.

Air Chief Marshal Raha, the outgoing Chairman, COSC had taken over as Chairman COSC on August 1, 2014, and under his stewardship, she Services received a "vital boost in jointmanship", the statement said.

"During his tenure the Defence Communication Network got operationalised and training standards of the Tri Service Institutes such as NDA, DSSC and CDM were enhanced," the statement said.

"The much awaited National War Museum got approval from the government. He was instrumental in enhancing the role of military diplomacy with friendly foreign countries. Various humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations during crisis situations both within and outside India such as J&K floods, Chennai floods, evacuation of Indian and foreign nationals from Yemen and Nepal Earthquake were successfully conducted," it said.

"He also played a pivotal role in formulation of DPP-16 thereby streamlining and fast tracking Defence Procurement which has so far been plagued by laborious procedures and long delays," it said.

--IANS

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Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has ordered a full criminal probe into Prime Minister over two separate cases involving bribery and fraud, local media reported. One of the cases was reported to have emerged newly.

The prime minister was expected to be called in by police for questioning in the coming days, the Times of Israel reports, adding that he faces allegations of bribery and fraud.

Meanwhile, Israeli TV Channel 10 reported that Netanyahu will be investigated over two separate matters. Both the Justice Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office refused to comment on the issue.

Hours before the report, lawyer and Labour Party activist Eldad Yaniv wrote on Facebook that Mandelblit "realised there was no other choice but to open an investigation" due to what he said was "weighty proof linking Bibi, as Netanyahu is popularly called, to suspicions of bribery and fraud" allegedly available to police.

Yaniv, joined by Erel Margalit of the Zionist Union, petitioned the High Court of Justice in December, demanding to clarify why the Attorney General had not opened the probe earlier.

Mandelblit's decision reportedly comes after police have obtained new documents in a secret probe against Netanyahu by special police unit Lahav 433, which was launched in June. The probe was approved by police chief Roni Alsheich, who demanded secrecy and that no details of the investigation be leaked to the media.

Earlier, it was reported that Mandelblit reportedly instructed employees in the state prosecutor's office to investigate the allegations that Netanyahu accepted ?1 million ($1.04 million) from Arnaud Mimran, a French businessman currently serving eight years in prison for committing carbon tax fraud.

Mirman claimed he donated money for Netanyahu's 2009 election campaign -- an allegation that the PM has repeatedly denied.

The subject of the second probe was, however, not known to the public, Channel 10 reported.

Netanyahu's spokesperson has lately dismissed the allegations of bribery and fraud as "nonsense".

The news reported dual probe was the latest in the string of investigations involving Netanyahu.

In November, Mandelblit opened a probe into the Prime Minister's decision to buy submarines from a German defence company, which was suspected to have been taken under the influence of a personal friend, a lawyer with alleged business ties with the submarine builder.

In May, State Comptroller Yosef Shapira issued a report criticising Netanyahu's foreign trips taken between 2003 and 2005 when he was the finance minister. At the same time, Netanyahu's wife, Sara, was accused of misusing public funds.

In July 2015, then Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein announced a criminal investigation into alleged misconduct at Netanyahu's residences.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) will now allow Sikh officers to wear turbans and beards marking another milestone for members of the to wear the symbols of the faith in security jobs.

Announcing the change in uniform policy on Wednesday, City Police Commissioner James O'Neill said: "We want to make the NYPD as diverse as possible."

Welcoming the new policy, Sikh Officers Association tweeted, "This is a proud moment for Sikh Community.

O'Neill estimated that there are about 160 Sikhs in the 34,500-strong force of the city of 8.5 million people.

Till now Sikh NY police were allowed to wear only a small head covering, the patka, under their regulation hats or caps.

"We've been working with the Sikh officers to try to make sure we get this done," O'Neill said after a ceremony for graduating class of the police academy. "I had the opportunity to make the change and I thought it was about time that we did that."

He was accompanied by a group of Sikh officers wearing blue turbans with the NYPD badges.

Two Sikhs, who were among the 557 graduates, had earlier been given permission to keep their beards but not their turbans.

In April, the US Army expanded its policy of permitting Sikh personnel to wear turbans, although it was in the nature of a waiver rather than a policy change. It restricts the wearing of turbans and beards to non-hazardous jobs.

The US Army is facing a lawsuit by a soldier alleging the ban on turbans amounted to religious discrimination.

Some other police departments, including Washington, allow their police wear turbans.

The beard policy has a significant restriction: It has to be less than half-an-inch. This change in NYPD policy on bears may also allow Muslims to keep their beards, although one of them has filed a case saying that they should be allowed to have two-inch beard because of their religious rules.

In 2012, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) which runs the city's metro and buses allowed Sikhs to wear turbans without the agency's medallion everywhere on the job settling a case against it by the Sikh Coalition and the federal government.

The MTA also agreed to pay $184,500 to eight current or former employees who had objected to wearing the MTA symbol on their turbans claiming it violated their religious beliefs.

However, New York police officers will be required to wear on their turbans the police badges -- similar to that sported by Indian police and defence forces members -- and so far Sikh officers have not objected to it.

--IANS

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Commuters will not be allowed to exit the Rajiv Chowk Station after 9 p.m. on December 31, while entry will be confined to two gates, the Delhi Metro said on Thursday.

This decision has been taken to keep the revellers away and to maintain peace in the New Delhi district area on the New Year's Eve, said the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.

Passengers will be allowed to enter the station from 'F' and 'B' gates after 9 p.m.

The Connaught Place area in central Delhi is one of the favourite night-out haunts for city residents, and in particular, sees increased footfall during the holiday season. It has a heavy police presence on the New Year's Eve to prevent any untoward incident.

--IANS

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There will be no jail term for holding demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, according to the ordinance that was approved by the Union Cabinet on Wednesday, official sources said.

However, a penalty of upto Rs 50,000 would be imposed on those who hold more than ten of the banned notes.

At the same time, the provision of depositing old high denomination currency with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would continue till March 31, 2017.

Even as the sources said the ordinance would come into effect from December 31, it was not clear when the penalty clause would be applicable, keeping in mind the deposit window available with the RBI.

Earlier reports had said the ordinance called for a jail term for violators who possessed old notes beyond March 31.

The ordinance -- called "The Specified Bank Notes Cessation of Liabilities Ordinance" -- is still awaiting the presidential nod after which the exact details would be made public, sources said.

The deadline for deposits of the banned currency notes in commercial banks ends on Friday (December 30).

The person seeking to deposit old notes with the RBI after December 30 will have to give an explanation as to why he or she could not deposit them earlier. A government source told IANS that the discretion to accept the explanation would remain with the central bank.

The ordinance, approved during the cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeks to amend the Reserve Bank of India Act, aimed at extinguishing the liability of the government towards bearers of such notes.

The ordinance also seeks to ensure that no one pays workers or others in old notes after the deadline.

--IANS

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As the Madras High Court on Thursday cast doubts on the cause behind sudden death of the then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said there was no reason to disbelieve doctor on the matter.

"The matter is sub judice and (I) should not make a comment on that. But I don't have reasons to disbelieve the cause (of death) given by the doctor," Naidu told the media here.

The Madras High Court cast doubts on the reason behind the sudden death of Jayalalithaa, and asked why the late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister's body could not be exhumed.

The court referred to media reports about the secrecy surrounding the state of her health while she was in Apollo Hospitals here, and said it too has doubts.

Filed by AIADMK member P.A. Joseph, the petition raises questions on secrecy surrounding Jayalalithaa's stay at Apollo Hospitals in Chennai, where she was admitted on September 22. She passed away on December 5.

--IANS

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National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) has alleged a New Delhi-Imphal nexus in tackling the economic blockade of Manipur, saying that sending additional central forces to the area would go against the interests of the Nagas.

"The existing problem of Manipur is simply created by Manipur Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh out of his sheer desperation. At his behest the central government is sending additional central forces against the Nagas. Where is the sincerity of the government to solve the problem," questioned a statement issued by the NSCN-IM.

Manipur is simmering due to an economic blockade called by the Nagas under the banner of United Naga Council (UNC) in Manipur.

Though the blockade started on November 1 when the state government was planning to create new districts bifurcating existing Naga dominated districts, it intensified after the government ignored the agitation and went ahead to declare Jirbam as a full fledged district.

The state government also created new districts of Kangpokpi, Tengoupal, Pharzol, Kakching, Noney and Kamjongin.

The NSCN-IM said that the creation of new districts out of Naga territory without their consent is a deliberate act to supress the rights of the Nagas.

Emphasisng that Manipur Governor Najma Heptullah has apparently the blessing of the central government as she gave the assent for the creation of the seven new dictricts, the NSCN-IM said: "It is clear to the Nagas that the central Government is instrumental in using Manipur CM Ibobi Singh all along the way to please the Meiteis at the expense of the Nagas."

"Is this now treacherous attempt to undermine the peace talks on the part of Central Government?" the group questioned.

--IANS

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Barring the BJP, opposition parties on Thursday boycotted the Telangana assembly to protest against the manner in which the new Land Acquisition Bill was passed in the House on Wednesday.

A day after the state assembly passed the controversial bill amid chaos, the main opposition Congress party, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) stayed away from the proceedings.

They wrote separate letters to Speaker Madhusudhana Chary, taking exception to the manner in which the proceedings were conducted on Wednesday.

The opposition parties said they were not given an opportunity to express their views on the bill.

The assembly passed the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Telangana Amend) Act 2016 by a voice vote even as the opposition contended that the state can't amend the Act made by the Centre.

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government argued that the bill was brought to speed up the process of land acquisition for various projects. It pointed out that some states have already enacted their own legislation for land acquisition.

Legislative Affairs Minister Harish Rao criticised the opposition for boycotting the assembly.

Speaking in the House, he said the opposition had no issue to raise as the session was being conducted in a smooth manner with the government addressing all the issues raised.

Harish Rao said during the current session the House discussed various issues for 54 hours. He said Congress party members were given 12.36 hours to speak.

--IANS

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Former RSS Goa unit chief Subhash Velingkar on Thursday accused Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and Goa Archbishop Filipe Neri Ferrao of scripting a political conspiracy ahead of the 2017 assembly polls for minority appeasement.

Addressing a press conference in Panaji, Velingkar attacked the state Bharatiya Janata Party and Union minister Nitin Gadkari, the ruling party's poll in-charge in Goa, for allegedly holding secret confabulations with the Archbishop's representative Zeferino D'Souza in a five-star hotel during Gadkari's visit to Goa last week.

"Right from 2015, the Bharatiya Bhasha Suraksha Manch has alleged that the BJP in Goa conducted its on the advice of the Goa Archbishop... the appeasement of the minority community is on the advice of the Archbishop," Velingkar said.

The RSS leader claimed that in the 2012 assembly elections, five non-party cadre Catholics were given tickets by the BJP on the advice of the Archbishop.

Ferrao is the spiritual and religious leader of Goa's Catholics, who account for around 26 per cent of the state's 1.5 million population.

Velingkar made the accusation after the Archbishop's annual reception here on Wednesday, in which top leaders from across the political spectrum, including Parrikar, Goa Governor Dr. Mridula Sinha and Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, were present.

Velingkar was sacked as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Sanghachalak for Goa for criticism of Parrikar over a period of time.

Velingkar, co-convenor of the Manch, has since floated the Goa Suraksha Manch party, which plans to contest the assembly elections.

As for Gadkari's meeting with D'Souza, Velingkar said: "It shows there is a hidden understanding between the Archbishop and the BJP. This is not right. Interference in a political system by any religious body is against secular ideals of this country and a democratic system of governance.".

Ferrao said on Wednesday: "... our institutions work under the law of the Church, but also under the law of the land. For their optimal functioning, there is need to maintain regular contact with government authorities. Regrettably, sometimes such contacts are not understood in proper context and are criticised."

--IANS

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Civil society activists have urged Pakistan's Sindh government to pass the protection of minorities bill in its present form without making any changes under pressure from religious scholars.

A consortium of civil rights organisations including the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan on Wednesday expressed disappointment at the government's decision to review the bill after some religious scholars expressed reservations over the law, terming it unconstitutional and against Islam, Dawn reported.

The bill proposed in 2015 as a private bill by Nand Kumar Goklani of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional was unanimously passed by the Sindh assembly in November. It was aimed at making forced conversion a punishable act.

Recently, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro issued a statement indicating the assembly would review any clause that went against the constitution and Sharia.

Asad Iqbal Butt, provincial vice chairperson of the HRCP, said that reservations of religious scholars were nothing but "arm-twisting tactics which they use whenever a progressive step is taken."

He said the government should not bow to the "religious might and stand firm on its decision to pass the bill without a review. The bill is fine as it is."

Pakistan Hindu Council's Mangla Sharma said the issue of passage of the law needed to be looked at from a human rights perspective and not a religious one.

--IANS

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to address the nation on New Year's Eve, informed sources said on Thursday.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to address the nation before the dawn of the New Year. The address is likely at 7.30 p.m. on December 31," the sources said.

Modi last addressed the nation on November 8, when he announced demonetisation of the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.

The Prime Minister may speak on demonetisation in his December 31 address, as the 50-day period sought by him to ease out cash crunch situation across the country gets over on December 30.

After demonetisation, Modi had said: "... help me for 50 days and I will give you the India you desired".

Opposition parties have attacked the government over the implementation of the demonetisation decision, with a few choosing to oppose it altogether.

The winter session of Parliament from November 16 to December 16 was almost a washout over the issue, as the opposition demanded a debate along with voting in the Lok Sabha and the Prime Minister's presence in the Rajya Sabha during the discussion.

The demonetisation debate was taken up in the upper house, but could not be concluded, while in the Lok Sabha, only A.P. Jithender Reddy laid a statement on the table of the house on the debate initiated under Rule 193, which is for a short duration discussion.

Reddy was not allowed to speak in the Lok Sabha amid a ruckus by other opposition parties, prominently the Trinamool Congress and the Congress.

While the Prime Minister did not speak in Parliament, he addressed more than a dozen rallies where he spoke on the benefits of demonetisation, promising to rid the country of black money.

Meanwhile, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, who too said he was not allowed to speak in Parliament, also took to public rallies to oppose the government on demonetisation.

In his national radio address 'Mann ki Baat' on December 25, the Prime Minister spoke extensively on demonetisation and encouraged "cashless transactions".

--IANS

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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday confirmed that a "fragile" agreement was reached on a ceasefire in Syria and the start of peace talks.

"This agreement we've reached is very fragile, as we all understand. They require special attention and patience, professional attitude, and constant contact with our partners," Putin said at a meeting with Russian foreign and defence ministers.

The agreement, which was previously announced by Turkey, was detailed in three documents, Putin said.

"The first was signed by the Syrian government and the Syrian opposition to stop hostilities in the territory of Syria. The second one was a set of measures to control the ceasefire. The third document was a declaration of intention for Syrian settlement," the Russian President said.

The truce was supported by seven major armed opposition groups that have over 60,000 fighters in their ranks, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu said.

He added that if the agreement holds, it would allow Russia to scale down its military presence in Syria.

Putin said that such a pullout would not mean a stop to Russia's international anti-terrorist effort.

He added that he will contact his Iranian and Turkish counterparts to discuss further steps in the Syrian peace process.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the three nations were preparing a meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan to pave the way for peace talks on Syria.

Ankara has called on all parties that can exert influence on armed groups to support the ceasefire deal.

Damascus has confirmed that it will observe the ceasefire starting December 30 midnight.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said that Turkey and Russia will act as guarantors of the truce, which does not include groups designated as terrorists by the UN.

--IANS

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Russian emergency services on Thursday concluded operations in the Black Sea where a Russian military aircraft crashed on Sunday, killing all 92 passengers and crew on board.

"The active phase of the search (for human remains and aircraft debris) has now concluded," said a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations.

Divers have managed to recover "the bodies of 20 persons and remains of nearly all the victims," explained a rescue operation spokesperson.

The aircraft impacted the water at about 510 km/hour on Sunday, Efe news reported.

According to the latest official report of the Russian Ministry of Defense, issued on Wednesday, 239 human fragment remains have been recovered and would be used to identify the victims using next-of-kin DNA.

A Russian military spokesman, who announced the conclusion of the rescue search, said, "All the debris of the Tu-154 plane has been pulled from the water."

Five days after the tragedy, the precise cause of the accident remained unknown, although rescue services have already recovered the three on-board "black boxes".

The third flight data recorder tape recovered from the Tu-154 has been damaged but may be partly deciphered.

The black box itself, located in the tail section, was destroyed.

Local media have already published the leaked flight cabin's final conversation, seconds before the impact, where the co-pilot can be heard yelling at the commander that the flaps have failed.

Experts and investigation teams have not yet discarded other possible causes of the catastrophe.

On board the doomed aircraft, apart from its crew of eight, were 64 members of the famous Alexandrov Army Choir, orchestra and dance ensemble, nine journalists, eight military members, two Russian civil servants, doctor Elizaveta Glinka, a Russian celebrity known as Doctor Liza, a humanitarian worker, a charity activist and the president of the Fair Help Russian NGO.

The Russian military song and dance ensemble were travelling Syria to perform at the Hmeimim air base of Russia for New Year's celebrations.

--IANS

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South Korean prosecutors on Thursday detained the country's former health minister who is now the chief of the national pension fund, for his alleged role in the corruption scandal involving a close aide of President Park Geun-hye.

Moon Hyung-pyo, who served as Health and Welfare Minister from December 2013 until August 2015, was put under "emergency detention" following interrogation by investigators, over concerns he could destroy important evidence, Efe news reported.

The investigators have also sought a formal arrest warrant against Moon.

In statements cited by news agency Yonhap, prosecutors said Moon admitted to having exerted pressure -- while he was minister -- on the pension fund he now heads, to secure backing for a controversial merger between two Samsung group subsidiaries last year.

It is believed the South Korean presidential office asked Moon to pressure the fund -- that held an 11.6 percent stake in one of the subsidiaries -- to support the merger, as a means of returning Samsung's favour, after the conglomerate had extended favours to President Park's friend, Choi Soon-sil, widely dubbed the "Korean Rasputin".

Among other charges, Choi is accused of having meddled in state affairs though not holding any official post, besides extorting large sums of money from Korean companies, including Samsung, and appropriating part of it for personal use.

Following the scandal, Choi was taken into custody, while Parliament recently approved impeachment of President Park, a decision that now awaits ratification by the Constitutional Court to become final.

--IANS

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The government on Thursday launched the 'Swachh Swasth Sarvatra, an initiative to achieve better health outcomes through improved sanitation, increased awareness and healthy lifestyles.

The scheme was jointly introduced by the Health, Water and Sanitation and Human Resource Development Ministries to mark the 'Good Governance Day', which is observed on December 25, the birthday of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The ministers at the event emphasised that Open Defecation Free campaign should not be limited to creation of infrastructure alone, but also change habits and mindset of people.

"Swachh Swastha Sarvatra is a much-needed programme to achieve Open Defecation Free India by 2019. This should become people's movement and that is our endeavour," said Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar.

Terming children agents of change, he said: "I believe that millions of students can become the change agents in driving ODF message in their homes, villages and districts."

He also appreciated the efforts of individuals in far-flung areas to make their environs Open defecation free.

Union Health and Family Welfare Minister J.P Nadda, who called for better collaboration between various departments in this regard, said that the initiative "will have far reaching and deep impact on the health of the citizens".

The Health Ministry also announced setting up of Community Health Centres and a grant of Rs 10 lakh each for these facilities to achieve benchmarks of hygiene and sanitation.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sikh campaigners have urged the British government to release the secret files said to hold details of its involvement in Operation Blue Star conducted by the Indian Army in 1984 to evict heavily-armed militants holed up in Amritsar's Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest shrine, a media report said.

A report in the Guardian on Thursday quoted members of the Sikh Federation as saying that the documents will point to greater cooperation between the British and Indian governments than previously acknowledged in the June 1-7 operation to establish control over the shrine and and remove militant religious leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed followers from the buildings in the complex.

Nearly 500 people, including civilians, were killed in the operation, official estimates say.

The Federation sought greater transparency over Britain's involvement in the operation against the Sikh militants, who were seeking a separate homeland.

"The public has a right to know the truth about what happened 30 years ago. We believe these files are being held back - not for security reasons but for political reasons that would prove embarrassing to the Conservative Party, since it was Margaret Thatcher and her discussions with the Indian regime (that led to Britain's cooperation)," the Guardian quoted Davinder Singh of the Sikh Federation as saying.

Whitehall correspondence released in 2014 said that a British SAS officer had been asked to plan the operation, which then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi approved, one letter said.

But an inquiry ordered by former British David Cameron found no evidence of British involvement in the operation.

The campaigners, however, believe the closed files will shed more light on the extent of Britain's involvement.

One of the four files relates to "Britain/India relations, situation in Punjab, activities of Sikh extremists", as well as a visit to Britain by Rajiv Gandhi, who took office after his mother, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards in October 1984 in retaliation for the Amritsar attack.

Another file covers meetings between Margaret Thatcher and an aide to Indira Gandhi, as well as the latter's assassination and Thatcher's visit to India to attend her funeral. The final document is entitled simply: "India: Political".

Some of the information has already been released to the National Archives, while other portions have been withheld from the public.

"The first-tier tribunal will consider this case in the new year and it would be inappropriate to comment any further," the Guardian quoted a Cabinet Office spokesperson as saying.

--IANS

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The Tripura government announced an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh and government jobs to the families of two soldiers who were killed last month in Jammu and Kashmir, a minister said here on Thursday.

"The state cabinet in its meeting on Wednesday decided to provide jobs to the wives of the slain soldiers and an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh," Tripura Finance Minister Bhanulal Saha told IANS.

He said 34-year-old Border Security Force soldier Sambhu Satmura was killed in a landmine blast along the India-Pakistan border in Poonch district on November 22.

On November 29, the Indian Army's 36-years-old Naik Chitta Ranjan Debbarma along with his six colleagues were killed in a gun battle with militants at an army camp in Nagrota, 15 km from Jammu.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

A political commentator Zexie Mashonga has said a Zanu PF United Kingdom Based official Nick Mangwana's conditions of his stay in the UK is being breached by his recent association with the murderous ruling party during the just ended people's national conference held in Masvingo.According to a Facebook post posted by Mashonga said if Nick Mangwana consider himself a British Citizen, he does not qualify by Birth, Registration, Adoption or Dual Citizenship but by Naturalisation."He was granted, obvious, subject to the discretion of the Home Office Secretary. However, the ease with which Mangwana enter and leave UK is a sign that he is not a political refugee but is among some Zimbabweans who flocked to greener pastures in record numbers," reads the post."But, what type of citizenship does he hold? What special qualifications does he hold? Qualifications that no other Briton possesses that confer him UK special status? Obviously, if Nick has British citizenship, he acquired that status through naturalisation. It is now evident that he obtained the status by means of fraud, false representation or concealment of any material fact and should be revoked. Nick enter and leave Zimbabwe with no threat whatsoever to his life."The post states that Mangwana's status allow him to enter and leave UK with no restrictions."Recently, he travelled to attend Zanu PF Conference held in Masvingo, Zimbabwe. Therefore his association and involvement with this terror group clearly breach conditions of his continued stay in the UK. It is known that Zanu PF formed Zimbabwe government since 1980. The party, led by Robert Mugabe, has been involved in terrorism-related activity that saw thousands of civilians disappearing and many more killed. But, how can a self confessed member of such a Terrorist Organisation (Zanu PF) be allowed to stay in the United Kingdom? Is it under the Human Rights Act? Does British government condone terrorism?" reads the post."Speaking at Zanu PF conference, Mangwana called for attacks on "NHUBUs" from diaspora. In a video evidently shot and uploaded on a social media, WhatsApp, by one of Zanu PF supporters, Nick Mangwana singled out two "NHUBUs", Stan Zvorwadza and Evan Mawarire. As has historically been the case, Nick's utterances endangers the lives of these two "NHUBUs". They automatically become targets for abduction, torture and killing. His remarks come at a crucial time when Zimbabwe is preparing for 2018 elections: can tigger terror attacks across the country."The post states that political refugees who were granted refugee status in the UK automatically becomes part of the UK Community."However, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 the UK Government is provided with powers to deport individuals, such as Nick Mangwana, out of the UK back to their home country when there is clear evidence that they pose a serious threat to the National Security of the United Kingdom. His return to the UK, after Zanu PF congress, is tantamount to the return of militarised jihadists and is a risk to our communities that seek protection against rogue regimes Nick support and sponsor. Nick's deportation is conducive to the public good," reads the post."Furthermore, in the video, Nick is pushing very very hard for Mugabe regime to deny millions of Zimbabweans living in foreign lands their right to vote during the 2018 general elections. Let us see first who are the Zimbabwe citizens living abroad: People fleeing the crisis (Political refugees), People who left before the crisis and Students. As a political refugee, I do not plan to return soon until there is political change. But based on the universality of the right to vote, I should decide who has to lead my country, through Ballot."The post states that while in times of need government is quick to send an SOS to its citizens in foreign lands, because it considers them as key stakeholders."But Nick referred Zimbabweans in the diaspora as "NHUBUs" and must not be allowed to vote, frustrating the efforts of those whose lives are in danger and can not travel to vote. Ladies and gentlemen, Nick is returning to ask you "NHUBUs" in diaspora to chip in resources and fund or sponsor violence in 2018 Zimbabwe elections," reads the post."Nick is also forgetting something very important: he fled the violent Zanu PF government. His claim that the internet was paralyzing Zimbabwe, is shear ignorance of high order. The naive shown in the video exposed Nick as a political lightweight fighting for recognition."The post also states that Zimbabweans across Europe, America and Australia have launched a petition, to be submitted to the Home Office Secretary."Among the many concerns weighing on the minds of "NHUBUs" is the uncertainty and fear Nick's terror groups will cause on political refugees in the UK and other European countries. It hurts me deeply that people who does not warrant protection in this country, who are terrorists but pretend to be refugees suck as Nick Mangwana benefit: Whilst deserving refugees are deported,"reads the post.
US President Barack Obama called his successor on Wednesday to have "a positive conversation", as tension over Israel and transition been build up, media report said on Thursday.

"Today's call, like the others since the election, was positive and focused on continuing a smooth and effective transition," a statement from the White House said, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The President and President-elect committed to staying in touch over the next several weeks and agreed their respective teams would continue to work together to effectuate a smooth transition on January 20," it said.

Trump told reporters outside his Florida home that he and Obama had a "very nice" and "general" conversation.

The phone call came after an abstention vote on an Israel-related resolution from the US prompted Trump to question the decision on Twitter.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the US, but..." read a Trump tweet early Wednesday.

Trump also tweeted that the transition process was not smooth. He pledged to do his best to "disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Though it was going to be a smooth transition-Not!"

The harsh words may have been connected to an earlier remark from Obama that he could have beaten Trump if they went against each other in an election.
UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura welcomed the announcement of a nationwide ceasefire between the Syrian government and the country's armed opposition groups, which is to come into effect on Friday.

The special envoy on Thursday, through a statement issued by his spokesperson, noted that a comprehensive cessation of hostilities remains a "cornerstone" for the peace process in the war-torn country, Xinhua news reports.

He wished that the implementation of the agreement will save civilian lives, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance across Syria, and pave the way for productive talks in the Kazakhstan's capital city Astana.

"These developments should contribute to inclusive and productive intra-Syrian negotiations to be convened under UN auspices on February 8 of 2017," Mistura added.

The Syrian government and the core groups of the so-called moderate opposition reached a ceasefire agreement and expressed their readiness to start intra-Syrian talks on Thursday. The Syrian army then declared that a nationwide cessation of hostilities will go into effect as of midnight Friday.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actress Iswarya Menon, who is making her debut as a lead with upcoming Tamil actioner "Veera", says it's on her wish list to work with Dhanush.

"I have many role models in Tamil filmdom, and I look up to all those who made it from scratch, as it needs a lot of perseverance, patience and hard work. But I would love to work with Dhanush because he amazes me with his extravagant performance on screen," Iswarya said in a statement.

Although Iswarya has been a part of a few Tamil films in the past, those have been supporting roles. "Veera" marks her debut in a leading role.

"'Veera' will be a powerful launch for me. I'm already in talks for a few Tamil projects, but it's too early to talk about them," she said.

Directed by Rajaraman, "Veera" stars Kreshna, Rajendran and Yogi Babu.

--IANS

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I must state upfront that I am an interested party in the tax debate highlighted in this article. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) issued a clarification on December 23, 2016, laying out under what circumstances foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) are impacted by the indirect transfer provisions (effectively the Vodafone case). The clarification says that if an FPI has more than 50 per cent of its assets in India, with a value greater than Rs 10 crore, then any investor with a greater than five per cent interest in or contribution to the assets under management (AUM) of the FPI will be covered by the indirect transfer rules and will be subject to Indian tax whenever this investor sells or redeems its shares in the FPI/fund. If these clarifications were to be implemented, it will sound the death knell for the home-grown India-dedicated fund industry. Most boutique India funds (mine included) would find it incredibly difficult to operationalise these rules.
Jayant Sinh, minister of state for civil aviation, was all praise for a free air service for the poor started by Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat. A noble service by the Uttarakhand government: free air service for poor, old and ailing in remote hill areas, Sinha tweeted without naming the CM, who is a senior Congress leader. The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre were locked in a bitter fight after Presidents rule was imposed in the state in March. The Supreme Court later restored Rawat as CM.
The AIADMK's annual general meeting has started. The meeting, which is first after J Jayalalithaa's death, is an important one since it would appoint General Secretary of the party.
After 50 days of pain will come the gain, so said Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 13 November in his public speeches in Goa and Belgaum.
As many as 12 Naxalites, allegedly involved in an attack onRanibodlipolice outpostwhich killed 55 police personnel in 2007, have been arrested in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district, police said today.

The Naxalites, against whom warrants were pending, were apprehended from various villages under Farsegarh and Kutru police stations last evening, Bijapur SP KL Dhruv told PTI.

A joint team of Chhattisgarh Armed Force (CAF) and the district police had yesterday launched a search-cum-area domination operation at Kuprel, Mukram, Kattur and Telmedri villages, around 450 kms from the state capital, during which the arrests were made acting on inputs from local informers, he added.

Pandu Vejja (25), Samlu Podiami (25), Kursam Hiriya (22), Udde Chinna (35), Chinna Telam (26), Somlu Bedja (35), Lakhmu Venjam (30), Michha Chinna (30), Mahngu Tati (26), Mahadev Kartami (35), Baman Madvi (25) and Sukhram Tati (25) -- all active as platoon and jan-militia (lower-rung) members in banned outfit CPI(Maoist) -- were apprehended, said the SP.

Preliminary investigations revealed that the accused were working with the national park area committee of the Maoists and were allegedly involved in the brutal attack at Randibodli police camp (in Bijapur district) which killed 55 security personnel on the intervening night ofMarch 14-15, 2007, he added.

Besides, they were also allegedly involved in the murder of police sub-inspector Nilesh Pandey (27) in Bijapur in 2012, said the SP.

Among those arrested, Chinna Telam and Mahngu Tati were carrying a reward of Rs 5,000 each on their heads while Rs 3,000 was announced for the arrest of Mahadev, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rs 25 lakh cash in 2,000 rupee notes were today seized from two persons at the Pune Railway Station here, officials said.

"During general checking, the police team questioned two passengers on the basis of suspicion who had come from Varanasi by the Gyan Ganga Express," said Sanjay Satav, senior inspector, Government Railway Police, Pune division.

"The team asked them what was there in their bags. Since both the passengers started giving vague and misleading answers, they were taken to the GRP police station, where they were found to be having Rs 25 lakh cash in Rs 2,000 currency notes," Satav added.

He said as per their statement, the cash belongs to a paper mill in Varanasi and they had come here to distribute salaries of some of their employees.

"We have informed the Income Tax department, who will investigate the matter," Satav added.

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News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Heal Zimbabwe trust has said there is escalating violence in Bikita west ahead of the by elections as parties jostle to replace expelled MPO Munyaradzi Kereke who is serving ten year jail term for rape.The organisation says since 2001 Bikita west has been characterized by violence during elections and even the latest polls resembles the ones that occurred before.HZT said in 2001 Bikita West Parliamentary By Election following the death of Munyaradzi Mutongi, an MDC elected MP in 2001, Boniface Pakai (MDC-T) and Retired Colonel Claudious Makova (Zanu PF) contested the seat and running up to the by-election day, violence was rife."MDC claim that some of its supporters were abducted, killed and dumped at Gonarezhou National Park while John Garandiya, an MDC activist was also shot in the leg at Nyika Growth point by suspected Zanu PF youth. Torture bases were established in areas such as Pachinhamo Shops, Bikita Fashi Secondary school, Maregere Business Centre and at Nyika Growth Point, Bengura and Mutikizizi Schools," HZT reported."The torture base at Nyika Growth Point was coordinated by former war veterans' leader, Chenjerai Hunzvi while the base at Maregere Business Centre was coordinated by Christen Mashanda and Philip Ticharava. Violence was sustained by the youths and war veterans deployed by the late Border Gezi the then Minister of Youth and Zanu PF Political Commissar. The teams were deployed to harass opposition members and created a no go area zone for the opposition."HZT states that in one incident, members of the opposition were arrested for allegedly murdering a Zanu PF supporter Bernard Gara also known as Steven Bernard Gwanda1 at Baradzanwa Business Centre on December 30, 2000.Gara who had defected from the MDC to join Zanu PF died after attacks at a time the MDC had deployed its own youths to protect its supporters."On December 17, 2000, 50 opposition members were reportedly injured during interparty clashes.3 Two MDC MPs, Rensom Gasela and Willias Madzimure were injured in some of the interparty clashes while a motor convoy was petrol bombed. Manyame Ropafadzo an MDC supporter was murdered on 6 January 2001 while Ziweni Osborn was shot and killed on 18 August 2001 in Bikita West," HZT said."In their February 2001 Political Violence Report, Human Rights NGO Forum documented 21 cases of torture during the Bikita West by-election. "..The main forms of torture involved beatings, falanga, sexual torture, suspension, hooding, suffocation, and burning with cigarettes. Falanga' refers to beatings on the soles of the feet and this is of considerable concern since this form of torture leads to pronounced disability with continuous pain..."Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada also reportedly noted that approximately 200 secret security agents and 1 800 support personnel was deployed to Bikita West ahead of the elections as part of Zanu PF elections taskforce. The organisation said on the two polling days, 300 War Veterans were stationed at Jaravaza Polling Station in the same constituency."Major violations were committed under the guard of the late Chenjerai Hunzvi, Joseph Chinotimba and Francis Zimuto (aka Black Jesus), violations were committed through beating and displacing suspected opposition members, occupying commercial farms and Bikita Minerals plant, as well as forcing people to surrender their national identity cards or confiscation. Other violations also included; threatening chiefs with removal from office, forcing people to attend night vigils and rallies, burning with cigarettes, beating with riffle buts and assault on testicles," reads HZT report."In 2005, Colonel Claudious Makova (Zanu PF) contested again for the Parliamentary seat against Alex Ziki (MDC-T). Colonel Makova won the election albeit under a violent campaign as he had done in the 2001 by election. Many houses belonging to opposition supporters were burnt and several opposition party supporters were assaulted."HZT said in 2008, violence was rife again in Bikita West, as was the case in 2005, 2001 and 2000. Heya Shoko (MDC-T) and Elias Musakwa (Zanu PF) squared off."In the run up to the election, several cases of voter intimidation were recorded in the constituency. Major General B. R. Murwira was deployed to Bikita West Constituency as part of the countrywide deployment of army personnel "to spearhead an orgy of violence while drumming up support for President Robert Mugabe ahead of the anticipated run-off presidential elections in June 27, 2008," reads HZT report."Terror bases were set up in different wards. In Ward 9, Majembere Grounds hosted a terror base in Bikita West. This base was led by Munhande (then Councillor), Phillip Dliwayo (then Zanu PF Ward Chair), and Blessing Chinondiwana (Vice Ward Chair then). In Ward 13, Mashanda, an office holder at Zanu PF Nyika Post led a terror base which was located in Nyamushiri Village Ground next to the Provincial Heroes Acre. Jeppy Jaboon (then Bikita Political Commissar) and Nhongonhema (held a position in Zanu PF at ward level) were also among the perpetrators who tormented people at this base."HZT said Police also colluded with Zanu PF to restrict freedom of political participation, assembly and expression. The organ isation said in March 2008, student activists Madock Chivasa, Hillary Zhou, Farirai Mageza, Simbai Chivasa, Tapiwa Mushati, Andrew Madziwa, and Vincent Chimwami, a Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) activist were arrested and detained at Nyika Police Station while distributing election campaign materials for a student campaign urging youths to vote."Simbai and Chivasa, Mageza and Madziwa were seriously injured and also sustained dog bites. They received medical attention at Nyika Clinic.9 In a separate incident, after elections, on 4 September 2009, Joseph Munyuki died at Masvingo Hospital after being attacked by a ZANU PF youth, Bernard Nyangara on the 8th of August 2009 in Nyangara Village," reads the report."Between 2010 and 2012, War Veterans led by Jabulani Sibanda launched a political "re-education" campaign which forced villagers to flee their community. They were reminded of the 2008 violence as Sibanda threatened that "2008 was just a piece' of what was to come and that blood will flow', and that those who sideline ZANU PF should prepare for death."HZT said intraparty violence also affected the community as Elias Musakwa battled with Munyaradzi Kereke for the seat.
Armed with information about Rs 7 lakh crore deposits made by some 60 lakh individuals and companies, the government today warned of hauling up anyone unable to show legal means saying mere depositing in bank does not convert black money into white.

Top officials said while the government will not hound any genuine depositor, it will not hesitate to litigate at any forum to catch any black money holder trying to convert illegal wealth into white.

Post demonetisation, unaccounted wealth holders have an option to avail of a tax evasion amnesty scheme Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) and pay their dues, failing which the government's long arms will surely catch them, they said.

"People are thinking that money has come into the banking system and it has all become white. This is not so. We have been getting daily information of all the deposits above Rs 2 lakh, Rs 5 lakh and the number and amount deposited and we have been collating this information with past information about the same person," a top government official told PTI.

"So, there is a huge scope for taxing now which has arisen and we do hope that people will understand that simply because they have put in bank it has become white that is not the case. We do hope that people themselves will come forward to participate in the scheme. But if they don't, they are not going to be happy," the official further said.

The tax department is armed with systems to track those with multiple banks accounts as well as those who are depositing in accounts of others and tax department will not leave anyone who is trying to evade taxes, he added.

"Even if you take deposits of more than Rs 2 lakh, we have information about more then 60 lakh individuals, companies and institutions who have deposited more than Rs 7 lakh crore of money. That's an astonishing number. We will be looking at it. For individuals the deposit figure would be Rs 3-4 lakh crore.

"We do expect a lot of revenue buoyancy because of this either in this year or in subsequent years but nobody will go scot-free," the official said.

Following the demonetisation of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes on November 8, government has come out with PMGKY under which people can disclose unaccounted cash and come clean by paying 50 per cent tax. Besides the scheme provides for a mandatory deposit of 25 per cent of such income in the zero-interest bearing Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Deposit Scheme, 2016, for four years.

PMGKY commenced on December 17 and shall remain open for declarations and deposits up to March 31, 2017.

The official said that tax department is doing data analytics. The purpose of demonetisation was to bring the money into the banking system so that there is a money trail with regard to the anonymous cash holding.

"We don't want to send any inspector to people but at least we would like people to know that we know about them. Now this is a big change. Earlier, people used to keep a lot of black money and think that nobody knows about it. Now, the entire black money has come into the banking system," he said.

The official said that at least 70 per cent of bank accounts have PAN numbers and are linked with Aadhar, and hence all deposits can be easily tracked. Besides, RBI has already asked banks within two months all accounts have to be linked with PAN or else there will be restrictions.

"It is better to disclose the deposits under the PMGKY and pay the tax rather than keep it hidden as the tax department will eventually be able to track them," the official said.

The PMGKY scheme provides an opportunity to persons having undisclosed income in the form of cash or deposit in an account maintained with a specified entity (which includes banks and post office) to declare such income and pay tax, surcharge and penalty totaling in all to 49.9 per cent of such declared income.

Besides, the scheme provides that a mandatory deposit of not less than 25 per cent of such income shall be made in the zero-interest bearing Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Deposit Scheme, 2016, for four years.

"When there is a scheme of 50 per cent tax payment available, no one should keep money at home. Unless it is a case of corrupt officer he doesn't disclose. Business people will put money in bank and relax," the official added.
As the deadlock between the Centre and the States continue over dual control over business entities under the GST, AAP backed traders association today demanded that they be brought under the purview of Delhi government.

A delegation of AAP's Traders Wing, which comprised representatives from different business bodies and chambers of commerce met Delhi Deputy Chief Minister, Manish Sisodia, who also holds the Finance portfolio and raised the issue of dual control.

AAP's Traders Wing Convenor Brijesh Goyal said traders registered under Delhi should be brought under the control of the Delhi government and not the Centre.

Sisodia said, he will flag the concerns raised by traders at the GST Council meeting on January 3 and 4.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Air India (AI) will start a flight between Leh and Chandigarh from December 31, an official said here today.

The flight will operate on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday every week, an AI spokesman said.

The flight AI-457 would depart from Leh at 0805 hrs and arrive in Chandigarh at 0900 hrs.

In the return journey the flight, AI-458, would take off from Chandigarh at 0940 hrs and arrive in Leh at 1020 hrs, he said. The flight would be operated by an A-319 Airbus.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Punjab Congress chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal were engaged in a war of words on Twitter with the former daring the AAP chief to contest against him in the upcoming Punjab polls.

Kejriwal said he was not contesting Punjab Assembly elections and was fighting the Badals and state minister Bikram Singh Majithia to help free the state from the menace of drugs, following which Amarinder demanded an apology from him for making "false personal commitments".

Always knew your screeching in Punjab was pure drama!Now that you've conceded,apologise for your months of lies & false personal commitments https://t.co/Yigu9ZlQj3  Capt. (@capt_amarinder) December 29, 2016

I m not fighting punjab elex. So, ur challenge hollow. We r fighting Badals/Majithia, who sunk Punjab in drugs. N u r fighting us, not them? https://t.co/yxtvCGv0Xo  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) December 29, 2016

His reply came after Kejriwal said on Twitter:The Twitter war started with Aam Aadmi Party nominating former journalist and Delhi MLA Jarnail Singh to contest against Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal from Lambi constituency. Amarinder termed Jarnail as a "weak candidate" and alleged that AAP was "colluding" with the Badals.

"Jarnail's nomination bid from Lambi shows AAP-SAD collusion to ensure Badal's victory. Reeks of an underhand deal!" the PCC chief tweeted.

Jarnails nomination bid from Lambi shows AAP-SAD collusion to ensure Badals victory. Reeks of an underhand deal!  Capt. (@capt_amarinder) December 28, 2016

Badals' story is over. You tell me where you're contesting from and I will come fight you there! https://t.co/rpghXJoSwo  Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) December 28, 2016

So, u r fighting me, not Badals/drugs. Badals also say they will fight against me. U n Badals wish to fight agnst me not agnst each other https://t.co/VXtZrIlgqs  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) December 29, 2016

I've defeated Jaitely-Majithia combine when you didn't even know a thing about Punjab. But tell us, why are you so scared of fighting me? https://t.co/qXKFNluReM  Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) December 29, 2016

Kejriwal replied by saying, "Sir, r u fighting against Prakash Badal ji or Sukhbir Badal or Majithia or safe seat?"Amarinder then dared Kejriwal to contest against him and tweeted, "Badals' story is over. You tell me where you're contesting from and I will come fight you there!"The AAP chief retorted as follows:The former Punjab chief minister shot back saying:Kejriwal then replied that he was not contesting Punjab polls and was only seeking to free Punjab from the menace of drugs mafia allegedly patronised by the present dispensation.

Congress, which has been in the political wilderness for a decade now after losing two successive elections at the hands of the ruling Akali Dal-BJP combine, is seeking to wrest back power. Amarinder, who is contesting his last elections, is Congress' face in Punjab, but is pitted against entrant AAP which is giving Congress a good fight.

Punjab Assembly elections are slated for early next year and the announcement of its schedule is likely soon.

Amarinder, meanwhile, hit out at Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal's 10-year "misrule", saying people of the state wanted an explanation and did not want to hear about Congress' achievements as they were already well aware of them.

Asking Badal to come out of the luxury of their "Sukhvilas", a new hotel built by the Badals in the outskirts of Chandigarh, and explain his government's "total failure" in addressing the needs of people.

He said they needed to know why they had been plunged to such depths of despair by Badal's government.

Reacting to Badal's challenge to list just one achievement of his government, Amarinder said he had disclosed not one but initially 51, and then 101 achievements in the state assembly, a long time ago and it was now time for the Badal government to talk about their failures.

Amarinder also dismissed the "fraudulent propaganda" of Badal that there was no law and order problem in the state, and Congress was merely trying to put undue pressure on Punjab Police.

He alleged that Badals had neither the imagination nor the intent to alleviate the sufferings of the people of Punjab who had allegedly been brought to the brink of ruin by SAD government's anti-people policies.

"It is about these failures of your government that the people are interested in knowing about," Amarinder said, asking Badal to refrain from wasting public time and money by making repetitive and baseless allegations.
Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu today objected to the 'resource-crunch state' tag which is often used to describe the state in official as well as normal jargon, terming it as "misleading".

"We always say, ours is a resource-crunch state. Let me tell you, it's a misnomer. See around us, we have abundant resources. Where we have failed is to tap these resources for our economic development," he explained while speaking at an award ceremony here organised by the Purvottar Janajati Shiksha Samiti, an affiliate of the Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan.

Khandu said the tag has been used so often that it has become a habit and it has come to an extent that people use it with pride.

"With bountiful resources, particularly in sectors like agriculture, horticulture, tourism, hydropower, mines and minerals, we would be insulting ourselves if we say we are resource-crunch," he said and appealed to all, especially senior leaders, thinkers, bureaucrats and academicians, to collectively evolve a sustainable policy to harness these resources.

He reiterated that the trend of complete dependence on the Centre to meet the state's requirements must be done away with.

"We cannot depend on the Centre forever. We have to harness and encash our own resources and remove the resource-crunch tag," Khandu said.

Talking about the education scenario of the state, the chief minister said the number of schools will have to be "rationalised".

He explained that the government has built too many schools and is now unable to meet their requirements.

"There are schools which do not have any student. We need to close down such schools and focus our energy on the schools that are running well," he pointed out while inviting NGOs and voluntary organisations engaged in imparting education to take over government-run schools wherever feasible.

The chief minister also expressed his reservation on the 'no-detention' clause in the Right to Education Act, claiming that it has "hurt the quality of education".

He pointed out that with the assurance that none would be detained at the primary level, students take it easy with studies and hence, get stuck at the higher levels.

"I have raised the issue with the Union HRD Minister who, in turn, revealed that similar complaints were coming from many states.

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Congress in Maharashtra today demanded judicial probe into the cases where demonetised currency worth crores of rupees was seized from persons and institutions connected to the ruling BJP.

State Congress president Ashok Chavan said scrapped notes worth crores of rupees were seized from private vehicle of Maharashtra Co-operation Minister Subhash Deshmukh. Old notes belonging to Vaidyanath Co-op Bank (controlled by BJP MP Pritam Munde) were seized in the last few days.

He also cited examples of dubious transactions allegedly involving BJP leaders in Gujarat, West Bengal and Bihar, before and after the demonetisation.

"We don't expect the government to investigate these cases. So the judiciary should take suo moto notice of the developments since demonetisation and order a probe," he said.

As the 50-day period -- which the Prime Minister had said would be needed for things to normalise -- was ending, banks should lift restrictions on cash withdrawals, he demanded.

After the demonetisation flopped, government started promoting cashless economy for the benefit of foreign firms which are in the business of digital payment, he alleged.

Government changed (cash withdrawal/deposit) rules 64 times since November 8, Chavan said, adding, "Queues outside banks and ATMs are still there, ATMs have no cash. Terrorist activities on border haven't subsided and soldiers from Maharashtra were martyred (in Kashmir)....Corporates are laying off employees; small-scale industry, farmers have suffered while loans of wilful defaulters are written off.

Congress wanted a white paper on demonetisation, giving



information about amount of black money unearthed, losses in terms of unemployment and financial setbacks, how many people died outside banks and ATMs, names of persons who deposited Rs 25 lakh after demonetisation, who did government consult before demonetisation, etc., Chavan said.

The former Chief Minister said Congress had also demanded that government deposit Rs 25,000 in the bank accounts of women from BPL category, give bonus on minimum support price to farmers and pay 18 per cent interest to bank customers.

From January 2, Congress will launch a state-wide agitation to highlight the failure of demonetisation, he said.

The program will include 'ghanta-naad' (bell ringing) agitation on January 8, while there would be a national convention in Delhi on January 11 to discuss fall-out of demonetisation and performance of Modi government, he said.

Asked whether Congress will enter into alliance for the coming Zilla Parishad and Municipal Corporation polls, Chavan said this decision had been left to local leadership.

To the question whether Congress would seek support of Shiv Sena which is also against demonetisation, Chavan said his party would consider it only if Sena pulled out of the government.

Commenting on state BJP chief Raosaheb Danve's campaign statement that voters "should accept Laxmi" before elections, Chavan said it was sufficient to establish that BJP won recent municipal council polls on money-power.
A local court has summoned Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal asking him to appear in person on a complaint alleging that he made defamatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Diphu Sub-Divisional Officer Sadar Deka Barua issued the order on Tuesday and asked Kejriwal to be present on January 30, 2017.

Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council Executive Member Surjo Rongphar filed a complaint the against the Aam Aadmi Party leader in Diphu court accusing him of making defamatory remarks against the PM on his educational qualifications.

"As the Delhi Chief Minister spoke against Modi ji, so I filed the case against Kejriwal," Rongphar, a local BJP leader, said.

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A local court has denied bail to former NCP MP and current chairman of Nashik APMC, Devidas Pingale, who was arrested by the ACB in connection with the seizure of around Rs 58 lakh from a car in October which the police suspect was unaccounted money.

The District and Sessions court here turned down Pingale's bail plea last evening. The ex-MP is now likely to move the Bombay High Court in this regard, his lawyer M Y Kale said.

Pingale was arrested on December 22 in connection with the suspicious transaction of the alleged unaccounted cash after ACB sleuths questioned him for over two hours in the agency's office. He was produced in the court next day and sent to police custody till December 25.

The NCP leader was then remanded in ten days judicial custody, during which he moved for bail through his lawyer.

ACB had seized Rs 57,73,800 from a car here on October 25 and quizzed the APMC (Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee) secretary Vijay Nikam, accountant Arvind Jain and clerk Digambar Chikhale, who were travelling in the vehicle, in this regard.

The trio had told police that the cash was the dearness allowance (DA) and the difference in dues meant for APMC employees.

Meanwhile, one of APMC directors Shivajirao Chumbhale and some employees lodged a complaint against Pingale in connection with the seizure. An inquiry was underway since then by ACB.

Pingale had represented Nashik constituency during 2004-09. He was succeeded by Sameer Bhujbal, nephew of NCP stalwart Chhagan Bhujbal, who is currently in jail in Mumbai along with his uncle in connection with the money laundering cases against them.

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West Bengal's first radar operating station, aimed at strengthening the coastal surveillance network, was inaugurated here today.

At a function, Governor KN Tripathi commissioned the remote operating station which is armed with the latest technology for surveillance, meteorological and communication facilities.

Inspector General KR Nautiyal, Coast Guard Commander, said a radar network had been set up at the Gangasagar lighthouse but because of its strategic location, Haldia was chosen as the base for setting up the remote operating station.

The project employs high-end surveillance gadgets such as frequency diversity radar, electro-optic sensors, day camera, low light TV, night camera and long-range thermal imagers, VHF sets, Met equipment on lighthouses and masts erected on lighthouse land.

The data generated by the static sensors flows over a robust hierarchical network architecture, connecting the Coast Guard district headquarters and regional headquarters with their New Delhi control room.

Nautiyal said the station was armed with latest technology for surveillance, meteorological and communication facilities.

With this, the Coast Guard will be able to prevent undetected intrusion by monitoring the movement of vessels plying along the coastline.

Officials said this would also help enhance the efficacy of search-and-rescue operations co-ordinated by the Coast Guard.

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To increase road safety and prevent accidents, the West Bengal government is gradually moving towards the idea of filtering driving licenses issued for commercial purposes and is talking to big auto-makers in this regard, it said today.

"Gradually, not all will be given driving licenses and the filtering process would start. There is also a need for corporatisation of the driving schools and the government is in talks with companies such as Maruti, Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland," state Transport Secretary Alapan Banerjee said at the inauguration of Toyota Driving School.

So far, the prime consideration of the state government has been of providing jobs to the unemployed people of the state as well as to those coming from the neighbouring states.

"But, with the increasing number of road accidents in the state claiming more than 6,000 lives annually, there is a need for proper training of drivers for which participation of the corporates is needed," Banerjee said.

He added that only those drivers trained in a structured format in good driving schools would be able to avail of the benefits of 'Gatidhara' and other schemes.

State Transport Minister Suvendu Adhikari said the government had engaged IIT Kharagpur for conducting an audit of the existing driving schools in West Bengal.

"There is a need for inspection and upgradation of the existing driving schools," he said.

The government, in association with ITIs, is also setting up driving schools across the state through a three-tier structure.

Topsel Toyota, a dealer of Toyota, would impart driving skills to the unemployed youth for free.

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News / National

by Stephen Jakes

A social media user and commentator John Bhanzi has suggested that President Robert Mugabe needs to be arrested on his return from his holiday in the far east for the abuse of state funds shared a link to the group: Democracy Advocate Initiative."Mugabe must be arrested on his return. This criminal organised theft withdrawing $600 000 each time he travel out of the country and withdrawing $6 million for his month long holiday in the Far East," he said.He said according to media reports Namibian leader, Hage Geingob received only about $50 000 in travel allowances for undertaking foreign trips to 12 cities this year.President Mugabe's allowances on the other hand runs into millions of dollars. The exact amount will never be revealed.Namibian State House statements reviewed by The Namibian show that Geingob was out of the country for a combined 49 days in 2016, visiting countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, the United States of America, France, England, Swaziland, South Africa, Cuba, Zambia, Botswana, Sweden and Rwanda.The allowances, known as S&T (subsistence and travelling) have been identified as one of the areas costing the state massively in terms of money spent and time lost from work.- Online
BJP today warned Congress of legal action over its "baseless and untrue" allegations, including that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its chief Amit Shah have links with Gujarat businessman Mahesh Shah, who is being probed for declaring unaccounted income of Rs 13,860 crore.

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also rejected Congress' charge against Amit Shah, who is one of the directors in a Gujarat bank in which deposits of over Rs 500 crore were made and asserted that the bank has over 200 branches and it will give explanation about the matter.

In a reference to Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's attack on Modi and BJP during his address at the party's 132nd foundation day, he told reporters that the party leaders and spokespersons behave like "children" and "today's Congress does not represent even a grain of its 132 year's heritage".

"We want to make it clear that our Prime Minister and party president have no links whatsoever with the person by the name of Mahesh Sharma, against whom action is going on. If Congress has any proof, it should talk about it. Otherwise, we will consider taking legal action under the law dealing with levelling of baseless allegations," the Law Minister said.

Prasad was accompanied by Power Minister Piyush Goyal, who is also the party's treasurer, as they hit out at the opposition party.

It has become the second nature of Congress to level "untrue and baseless" allegation, he said.

Attacking it, Prasad said it was "rattled" by Modi's continuous attack on those linked with black money and corruption and it thinks that its attack on him will "weaken" his fight. Action has been taken against those linked to BJP, he said, citing a case in Madhya Pradesh.

"Congress is the biggest patron of the corrupt and corruption. If it thinks that its attack will have any impact on the government, it is wrong. The government will remain unfazed and continue to act against black money and corruption," he said.

The corrupt and those with black money have long been patronised by Congress, he alleged, adding that they now "cry" before its leadership to save them from the government's action.

"I want to ask Congress chief Sonia Gandhi if the childish behaviour of her son and more childish conduct of its spokespersons is being done at her behest," he asked.
The NCP today announced the first list of 45 candidates for elections to the 227-member Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation scheduled early next year.

Addressing a press conference, party spokesman Nawab Malik said since Congress has not given any proposal for an alliance so far, NCP has decided to go ahead with announcing its first list.

He said the party plans to contest at least 200 seats adding there will be no change in the list of 45 names announced.

"As of now, there will be no alliance and Congress will go alone in the civic polls. If there is a strong candidate who wishes to contest on our party ticket elsewhere we will consider," he said.

Out of the 45, six are sitting corporators. At present NCP has 14 corporators in the civic house.

When asked about Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam's statement that Congress will not tie up with NCP in the city, Mumbai NCP chief Sachin Ahir said NCP's strength in Mumbai will be known to Nirupam in the next Lok Sabha polls.

Ahir also said that PWP leader Jayant Patil was keen to work out an alliance of secular parties in Mumbai to defeat the Sena-BJP combine.

When asked about the FIR against Raosaheb Danve, Malik said the ruling party misused power and money in the municipal council polls and plans to do the same for corporation polls.

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will mark the start of a "decade of disruption" for Britain with a slowing economy, an ageing population and volatile jobs market, a new report by a UK-based think tank warned on Thursday.

'Future proof: Britain in the 2020s' by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) concludes that Britain's exit from the European Union (EU) will have some "painful trade-offs" with lower growth and weaker public finances.

" is the firing gun on a decade of disruption. As the UK negotiates its new place in the world, an accelerating wave of economic, social and technological change will reshape the country, in often quite radical ways," says the report.

It forecasts that the economic world order will become more fragile as globalisation evolves, trade patterns shift and economic power gravitates toward Asia.

"By 2030, the effects of combined with a wave of economic, social and technological change will reshape the UK, in often quite radical ways. In the face of this, a politics of nostalgia, institutional conservatism and a rear-guard defence of the institutions of 20th-century social democracy will be inadequate," said the report's author, Mathew Lawrence.

Other factors would also disrupt Britain's future for years to come, including its ageing population, the report finds.

The number of people aged 65 and over is predicted to rise by a third by the end of the next decade, imposing new strains on an already cash-strapped system.

The report came as Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn accused British Prime Minister Theresa May of behaving in an autocratic manner like Britain's past monarchs by not allowing a Parliament vote on Brexit.

"It (a final Brexit deal) would have to come to Parliament. She cannot hide behind Henry VIII and the divine rights of the power of kings on this one," he told The Guardian.

"The idea that on something as major as this the Prime Minister would use the royal prerogative to bypass parliament is extraordinary  I don't know where she's coming from," he said.

Meanwhile, Dave Penman, general secretary of the UK's civil servants union, said the Prime Minister May's inability to talk openly about the complexity of Brexit was putting a huge strain on civil servants.

Penman, who represents 19,000 members, said: "It is pure politics that is defining the Brexit debate and forcing May to say this is not a big, difficult job, and it is all in hand. Ministers lack the political courage to admit how complex and time-consuming this will be".

"The politics around Brexit are the biggest risk to Brexit. The Government is clearly in a situation where they are trying to deny the complexity of it," he said.

The FDA also called for more resources to be devoted to civil services for Brexit related work.
A mother of four in Pakistan was allegedly killed by her brother today in a suspected honour killing in the southern Sindh province, police said.

Ghulam Hussain Gopang, the brother of the woman, was arrested following the incident in the Loung Gopang village near Kot Diji of Khairpur district, they said.

Gopang confessed to have murdered his sister, saying he was motivated to commit the crime on the suspicion that his sister was in an illicit relationship with a local man, police said.

The woman's husband, however, did not comment on his wife's murder, the Dawn reported.

Every year, hundreds of women are killed in Pakistan by their male relatives for "dishonouring" the family.

In July, a high-profile murder of social media starlet Qandeel Baloch allegedly by her brother over "honour" prompted the government to pass a bill in the parliament invoking stronger punishments for those involved in such killings.

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Having fled persecution and sectarian violence in Myanmar, Rohingya Muslims, who have been living in the only Muslim majority state in India for many years, are in the eye of a political storm over their settlement in Jammu and Kashmir.

Political parties in Jammu consider them a security threat and bat for their deportation, suspecting them to be part of a design to change the demography of Hindu majority Jammu. Kashmir-based mainstream parties, particularly NC, also wantRohingya Muslims to be thrown out of the state.

A refugee from Myanmar, Mohammed Rafiqi, 44, referring to the statements of various leaders and political parties in the state, said, "We came here in 2009. Jammu is a second home to us now. But people should not make this an issue. We want to live in peace."



"We have suffered a lot. Do not involve us in a controversy," said Rafiqi, who has five children and works as a labourer to earn a livelihood.

"No assistance is given to us. We are not citizens but Jammu is much better than our country. Here, no one has troubled us so far. We are alive, getting two square meals and have a shanty to live in," he said.

The refugees are now feeling threatened in the current situation.

Another Rohingya refugee, 46-year-old Shah Alam said, "We have come here to earn a livelihood and live in peace. We feel threatened when it is made an issue. I work at ashop and my wife, eldest daughter work as servants. We live in the shanty on payment. Some NGOs help us."



For Rohingya Muslims, the choice of settling in Jammu and Kashmir was natural due to the Muslim character of the state.

Zahid Hussain and his family were the first Rohingya Muslims who made Jammu their second home.

"We came here to earn and live in peace. There is no other aim for us here as we are not citizens and are only refugees," he said.

The state government had said last year, "1219 Rohingyas (Burmese) families comprising 5107 members are staying in the State. Out of them 4921 members are holding UNHCR cards and 186 are without UNHCR cards."



As per the state Home Ministry, one NGO and members of Jamat-e-Islamia distribute clothes, religious books, cash and goods among these families from time to time.

"There are no reports of their radicalisation. However, their children are receiving education in six madrasas in Bathindi, Sujwaan and Narwal," the ministry had said.

Migrant Maulana Shafiq, 37, runs a madarasa for Rohingya children in Narwal Bala where a sizable number of these stateless people live.

A senior police officer said Rohingya Muslims are not



living illegally here and they have work permits. They started coming to Jammu over six to seven years ago and their number has increased.

"They are mostly doing odd jobs and are ragpickers and even beg to eke out a living," he said.

However, political parties and trade organisations have termed them as security threat and called for their deportation.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad said Rohingya refugees pose a threat to the security of people in the region and should be "thrown out" of the state.

State VHP President Leela Karan Sharma said, "We oppose their settlement in Jammu. The state government should throw these foreigners out of the state. They should not be allowed to set up clusters on government or private land. It's a risk to the security of people and the army."



BJP also termed them a security threat. "There are no records regarding them and their settlement in a sensitive border state is a great threat to national security as these people can be easily used by anti-national elements," said BJP Nowshera MLA Ravinder Raina.

Jammu traders' body has alleged that the government wants to change the demographic nature of this city by allowing Rohingya Muslim refugees to "settle" here in violation of Article 370.

It accused the PDP government of adopting "double standards" when it came to having a Sainik Colony and a separate Kashmiri Pandit township in the Valley but different for settling Rohingya Muslims in Jammu.

"While the construction of Sanik Colony for the retired and serving security personnel from the state and a colony for Kashmiri Pandit migrants have not seen the light of the day because of threats from anti-nationals, the government is allowing the settlement of non-state subjects and foreign nationals in Jammu," Chamber of Commerce and Industry Jammu (CCIJ) Chief Rakesh Gupta said.

National Conference (NC) has also demanded their deportation from Jammu.

"The foreigners who have settled here are to be dealt with under foreigners act. The central government should take measures and deport them," NC Provincial President Devender Singh Rana said.
A car packed with 12 migrants crashed in Serbia today, killing two people and seriously injuring 10, including five children, police and media said.

The accident occurred around 3:40am (local time) near the town of Drazevac -- some 220 kilometres from Belgrade -- on the highway linking Bulgaria and Greece to northern and western Europe.

"Two Afghan nationals were killed and 10 others injured... When their car ... Hit a protection fence," police said in a statement.

Authorities said it was unclear who was driving the vehicle, adding there was an "intensive" search underway.

Serbian national broadcaster RTS reported that all the injured, including five children, were transferred to a hospital in the nearby town of Nis.

The migrants had "extremely severe head and limbs injuries... We are doing everything to save their lives," doctor Miodrag Lazic from the Nis hospital told RTS.

The report quoted a migrant as saying he travelled from Iraq with his family, including two children, and that the driver had driven very fast and ignored their appeals to slow down.

Serbia lies on the so-called Balkan route taken by hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa since mid-2015 on their way to western Europe.

The route was effectively shut down in March, but migrants have continued to cross the region in smaller numbers often with the help of traffickers.

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Syria and its chief ally Russia reached a cease-fire agreement with Syria's mainstream rebel fighters today, a potential breakthrough in the six-year civil war that has left more than a quarter-million people dead and triggered a refugee crisis across Europe.

The nationwide truce, set to begin at midnight local time, was brokered by both Russia and Turkey, which support opposing sides in the war, and was confirmed by a Syrian opposition spokesman, who said most major rebel groups would abide by it.

If it holds, the cease-fire will be followed by peace talks next month in Kazakhstan between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and opposition groups, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

The truce does not include the Islamic State group or al-Qaida's branch in Syria. And several previous cease-fires all collapsed, some of them in a matter of days.

Nevertheless, the deal raised hopes that a political settlement for a ruinous war that has generally defied all attempts at resolution could be reached in the coming months, in part because the landscape has significantly shifted recently.

Today's announcement comes days after the Syrian government recaptured Aleppo from rebels who had held the eastern part of the city for more than four years. Not only has the balance of power tilted in favor of Assad, but Turkey, which is fighting Kurdish and Islamic militants at home, appears more willing to strike a bargain with Russia if it means protecting its borders.

"This is a different political scene, and one would expect some outcomes to emerge," said Hilal Khashan, political science professor at the American University of Beirut. He cautioned, however, against expecting immediate results from the first round of talks.

Putin said the cease-fire will be guaranteed by Moscow Assad's chief patron and battlefield ally and by Turkey.

Turkey is a main backer of the opposition forces, who use the country's long border with Syria to cross back and forth, and has wide influence on them. The agreement was also praised by Iran, one of Assad's strongest backers.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance. Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said President-elect Donald Trump's administration will be welcome to join the peace process once he takes office.

Putin said he ordered the Russian military to scale back its presence in Syria, where it has provided crucial support to Assad's forces. Putin didn't say how many troops and weapons will be withdrawn. He said Russia will continue "fighting international terrorism in Syria" and supporting Assad's military.

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Urban Development Ministry today released Rs 250 crore for Lucknow Metro Rail project, a joint venture between central and Uttar Pradesh governments.

The Ministry had released Rs 300 crore earlier this year, taking the total assistance provided to the Lucknow Metro to Rs 550 crore, an official release said.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh also discussed the progress of Lucknow Metro with Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and sought its speedy implementation, it added.

The 23 km Lucknow Metro is estimated to cost Rs 6,928 crore. Of this, central government provides Rs 1,003 crore as its share of equity, Rs 297 crore as sub-ordinate debt and Rs 3,500 crore as loan assistance.

Uttar Pradesh has to mobilise the remaining Rs 2,128 crore as its share of equity and other means.

Central government entered into a loan agreement with the European Investment Bank in March this year for providing a loan of Rs 3,500 crore to the Lucknow Metro Project.

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The Centre has decided to set up five new universities for imparting higher education including medical to students belonging to minority communities, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi announced here today.

"We want to establish five universities with world class institutions where higher education including medical and skill development will be imparted as part of efforts to empower minorities.

"...These universities will have big campuses for residential schools, Ayurved, Unani medical education," the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Minorities Affairs said.

He said the government plans to offer 40 per cent reservation to girl students at the "world class institutions" under the proposed varsities, where, he stated, students from other than minority communities can also undertake education.

Naqvi was speaking to reporters after chairing a meeting of general body of Maulana Azad Education Foundation, he said the Ministry has approved 16 Gurukul-type schools in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Jharkhand.

On whether the varsities will hold minority tags, Naqvi said, "The committee will work out details and decide. But students belonging to other than minority communities can learn there. We will try to give 40 per cent quota to girl students to empower them. It will not be based on religion."



A high-level committee will be formed in a day or two to work out roadmap within next two months, help identify places where the universities "with world class institutions" will be established and start academic sessions by 2018, Naqvi said.

When asked about probable places where the varsities will take shape, Naqvi said the high-level committee will figure it out.

"Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has already suggested us five properties including three in Jaipur and one in Kota for the purpose," he added.

Apart from the varsities, the Ministry has, through the Foundation, decided to float 'Garib Nawaz Skill Development Centres' across the country.

The meeting also decided to offer 'Begum Hazrat Mahal' scholarships to girl students. Besides, students undertaking mainstream education at madrasas will also be offered scholarship henceforth to encourage them, he added.

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China today reportedly agreed in principle to include three infrastructure projects in Sindh province, including circular railway for Karachi, at a meeting attended by top officials of the two countries where they reviewed the progress of the USD 46 billion CPEC project.

Top Chinese and Pakistani officials reviewed the progress of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor at the 6th Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) meeting of the project in Beijing.

Pakistani delegation was led by Federal Minister for Planning & Development Ahsan Iqbal, while the Chinese team was led by Vice Chairman Wang Xiaotao.

Chinese authorities have in principle approved inclusion in CPEC of three development projects in Sindh including the Karachi Circular Railways, Keti Bandar and Special Economic Zones, Dawnreported, citing Sindh Chief Minister's office.

The additional projects were being added to address criticism within different provinces that much of the benefits of the CPEC was garnered by the Punjab province.

The project is aimed at connecting Pakistan's Gwadar port with China's Xinjiang province with a host pipelines, road and rail network through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK).

Earlier, speaking at the Peking University, Iqbal said CPEC is the biggest project under China's One-Belt One-Road initiative that will unite the entire region.

He said under CPEC, USD 30 billion worth projects have been implemented. He said that with the addition of new projects in the 6th JCC, investment in CPEC will further increase.

He said China and Pakistan together will defeat all anti-CPEC forces. The participation of high-level officials from the provinces in JCC is the symbol of national unity and commitment for the project, he said.

He said CPEC related industrial cooperation will kick-start an economic revolution in Pakistan.

CPEC economic zones will generate investment and employment opportunities for the country, he said, adding that eight industrial zones will be set up in all provinces of the country.

He said a new security force has been formed to provide the security for people working in Chinese companies involved in the project.

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Nepal and China will hold their first ever joint military exercise early 2017.

Chinese Defence Ministry Spokesperson Yang Yujun said China and Nepal had been in "initial communication" on the military exercise, and that the details would be released in due course of time.

Although Nepal has been holding joint military exercises with other countries, including India and the United States, this is the first time Nepali military would be holding such an exercise with China.

According to reports, the military drill will be held in February next year and will focus on training Nepali soldiers in dealing with hostage scenarios involving terror groups, My Republica reported.

The new development is seen as China's growing interest in the Himalayan republic since the deterioration of relations between Nepal and India due to the border blockade last year, the daily said.
China today criticised the US for putting its companies in the list of "notorious marketplaces", terming the move as "irresponsible".

"The US is irresponsible in putting Chinese companies on a list of notorious marketplaces," the Ministry of Commerce here said.

China hopes the US will objectively evaluate China's work on Intellectual Property Rights protection, the ministry spokesperson Shen Danyang told reporters here.

Given that the US trade representative's office was ambiguous in its descriptions of Chinese companies, its report did not represent the US government's analysis, Shen was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua agency.

China has been negotiating with the US on "notorious marketplaces", Shen added.

China hopes the US will improve its own transparency and evaluation processes in an impartial way, the report said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China will expand its bullet train network to 30,000 kms covering 80 per cent of its big cities as part of the country's efforts to establish a comprehensive transport system by 2020, according to a new official white paper issued today.

The white paper, titled Development of China's Transport, said China will increase the length of high-speed railways in service to 30,000 kms from the present 20,000 kms by 2020 linking more than 80 per cent of its big cities.

China had launched world's longest high speed train service. The Shanghai-Kunming line -- 2,252 km in length -- traverses five provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan and cuts travel time from Shanghai to Kunming from 35 to 11 hours.

Also yesterday, another high-speed rail line linking Kunming and Nanning, capital of southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was launched.

China also plans to renovate 30,000 kms of expressways and provide tarmac and cement roads and shuttle bus services for administrative villages with the necessary conditions, while all villages will have access to mail service, the paper said.

China will build commuting circles of 1 to 2 hours between the central cities and between central and peripheral cities, and one-hour commuting circles between central cities and key peripheral towns.

With priority focused on public transit, China will speed up the development of its urban rail and bus rapid transit, and other means of high-capacity public transport, the white paper said.

By 2020, intercity railway networks will be completed in several urban agglomerations including the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta areas, it said.

The white paper said more efforts will be made in cities with 3 million or more residents to form urban rail transport networks, and about 3,000 kms of new tracks will be added to the current urban rail transit system.

China will also move to build integrated transport hubs, promote the green and intelligent development of transport services and improve safety in the transport industry, it said.

Comprehensive transport network spreads from east to west and south to north, construct passageways that extend beyond its borders, and develop sea routes for the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road in the five-year period, it added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Union government, which holds 100 per cent stake in the Cochin Shipyard Ltd (CSL), today said the PSU will not be privatised.

Describing CSL as "a premium shipyard" in the country, Union Minister of State for Transport, Highways and Shipping, Mansukh Mandaviya said the CSL will get priority in getting government orders to build more ships for various government departments including defence.

"Cochin Shipyard is a premium shipyard -- a profit-making government-owned ship-building company. It is a 100 per cent government-owned ship building company. Cochin Shipyard will not be privatised," he told reporters here.

The Minister said this in response to questions regarding the government's plan for public offer for CSL.

The minister, who reviewed the functioning of Cochin Shipyard and had a brief meeting with officials, said the shipyard, which is the "exporter of ships to West, Europe and the US while serving the strategic interests of the Nation, is a pride of India."



He inspected India's first Aircraft Carrier under construction at Cochin Shipyard Ltd.

Mandaviya also interacted with METI (Maritime Environmental Training Institute) Trainees during his visit to "world class Ship Building Workshop" here.

The net worth of the CSL as on March 31 was Rs 1,838 crore. The profit after tax of the company was Rs 276 crore respectively.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress workers staged a protest demonstration here today demanding immediate resignation of city Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena in connection with a purported sex video and death of an engineering student.

Continuing their protest over the issue, a large number of Congress activists including workers of the party's women's wing staged a sit-in outside the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) office here shouting slogans against the Mayor.

The demonstrators also demanded a CBI investigtion into the sex clip, purportedly featuring Jena, and into the death of engineering student Asutosh Mohanty alias Rishi in May alleging that the youth had been murdered.

Claiming that the police failed to probe the matter because of pressure from the ruling party as the Mayor happened to be a General Secretary of BJD, state Congress women's wing Chief, Sasmita Behera warned that the party would intensify the stir to press for the Mayor's resignation to ensure a fair probe.

Noting that serious charges have been levelled against the Mayor, Behera said though around 15 days have elapsed since the purported sex video and its (the video's) alleged link with Rishi death case were reported, Jena continued to remain in his position.

"Investigation will be affected if he does not step down. The investigation by police is direction-less while the Chief Minister is trying to shield the Mayor," she alleged.

She said the party would continue the agitation till the Mayor tenders resignation. The Congress leaders said the case is very serious as there are allegations that the sex video had links with the murder of Rishi.

The party leader alleged Jena was being shielded by the BJD government.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress would intensify its protest against demonetisation with a series of agitations in coming days, party's Mumbai unit chief Sanjay Nirupam said here.

"Government has gone berserk by ignoring hardship faced by the people of the country, and this has escalated after demonetisation. When we want to ask questions to government, we are put under house-arrest," Nirupam said, speaking to reporters today.

"This is why AICC has decided to hold protests at collectors' offices across the country on January 6 when we would try to sensitise the government," he said.

He also demanded that RBI come forth with the latest data with regard to the money deposited in banks post-demonetisation.

"In initial days of demonetisation, RBI came up with the figures of deposited money on regular basis, but unfortunately it has stopped doing so which indicates that more money than estimated has come into the bank coffers which is definitely a sign of failure of demonetisation," he said.

Women Congress workers in Mumbai would organise 'thali-belan' protest march at Mahalaxmi here on January 8, he said. "Our women workers will try and awaken this slumbering government," he said.

Nirupam also demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi come clean on graft allegations levelled by Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi "on the basis of Income Tax documents".

"Unfortunately Modi has maintained a stoic silence and he is not responding at all over this grave issue. At least he should have come forward to deny it," Nirupam said.

He also announced launch of helpline number 9223-90-6666. "People who have gone through endless pain during last 50 days and faced the brunt of demonetisation can share their agony and anguish (on helpline)," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A police constable, travelling in an escort jeep in the convoy of Maharashtra Tribal Development Minister Vishnu Savra, died today after his vehicle rammed into a stationary truck in Shahapur taluka here, police said.

The mishap took place at around 2 AM after Pramod Nivatkar, 48, was returning to Vashind police station from Bhiwandi in the escort jeep when it rammed into a stationary truck at Dohale village under the limits of Padgha police station, Thane rural police said.

The escort duty was assigned to accompany the minister from Shirdi to Manor. But the scheduled journey was altered midway as Savra had to rush back to Mumbai and the convoy was diverted from Gatandevi to Bhiwandi bypass, police said.

The driver of the jeep was also hurt, while Nivatkar had received severe wounds and was taken to Sahapur government hospital where he succumbed during treatment, added police.

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A man and woman caused a disruption on a Delta Air Lines flight to Los Angeles, prompting the pilot to return the plane to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, airport officials said today.

The flight took off at 6:20 PM yesterday but returned at 7:35 PM, airport spokesman Patrick Hogan said. The flight crew reported the couple became disruptive and refused to follow instructions, he said. Partial police reports released today didn't give details of the nature of the disruption. Airport police arrested the pair and they were questioned by police and the FBI, Hogan said.

The police reports show Blake Adam Fleisig, 35, of Los Angeles, was ticketed for disorderly conduct involving brawling or fighting. Anna Christine Koosmann, 36, of Edina, Minnesota, was ticketed for disorderly conduct and for obstructing police. While police released Fleisig late yesterday, Koosmann was taken to the Hennepin County Jail, where she was released early today after posting USD 78 bail, the jail roster shows. She's due in court Jan 13. The charges are all misdemeanors.

Video shot by a passenger shows Fleisig scuffling with another passenger as officers removed him from the plane and Koosmann cursing as officers escorted her off.

Delta issued a statement saying the flight crew "elected to return to Minneapolis shortly after takeoff when two passengers refused to follow crew instructions, became aggressive and created a disruption in the cabin." The statement says the safety of customers and employees is the airline's top priority.

Neither Fleisig nor Koosmann has a listed phone number and an Associated Press reporter could not reach them for comment.

Hogan said the full police report on the incident isn't available because officers are still investigating.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A local court today issued an order to start a case against three policemen in connection with the alleged detention of a woman for more than 24 hours at Hanskhali police station in Nadia district.

Additional chief judicial magistrate (ACJM), Ranaghat, Sanghamitra Poddar issued the order against officer in charge (OC) Hanskhali police station Aninda Bose, second officer Shibshankar Bose (in charge of Bagula outpost) and police personnel Tapas Ghosh.

They were slapped with charges under IPC sections 341 (wrongful restraint), 384 (extortion), 511 (attempt to commit punishable offences), 166 (public servant disobeying law), among others.

The court's order followed the visit of ACJM herself to Hanskhali police station yesterday after a complaint by Gobinda Biswas of Hanskhali Mayurhat and rescue of the 22-year old victim.

In the police station, the magistrate had checked and found that no complaint had been lodged against the girl whom the cops detained from December 23-28 and took the photocopy of the pages of the general diary during the period so that no insertions could be made later on, a district official said.

She then ordered the OC to call all police personnel to stand in a row and asked the detained girl to identify those who went to pick her up on the night of December 23 and asked the OC on Wednesday to submit a report within 24 hours over the illegal detention of the woman.

The OC submitted the same at Ranaghat Court today in a sealed envelope but refused to comment anything.

The petitioner and one of her daughters, Laxmi, appeared in the court as witnesses and evidences were taken.

Laxmi stated that the detained woman had been her friend since last ten years. She alleged in the court room that the cops had demanded Rs 2 lakh from them as bribe for letting the detained girl free.

According to the counsels of Biswas, police had taken the Delhi-based woman to police station from their home on the night of 23 December without any complaint and did not release her until December 28.

The policemen allegedly did not produce her in court and flouted the law which says that police must produce a person in court within 24 hours of picking him/her up.

ACJM Poddar rescued her from police station and took to Ranaghat in her own car.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A debatable amendment in juvenile law paved the way for prosecution of children between 16-18 years as adults for heinous offences with a 17-year-old rape accused becoming the first such offender to be tried in 2016 by one of the city trial courts, which acted tough in dealing with crime against women.

From renowned climate scientist R K Pachauri to "Peepli Live" director Mahmood Farooqui to sacked AAP minister Sandeep Kumar, several well-known faces came under the lens for crime against women, as courts dealt with several cases of betrayal of relationships.

"These are the times when gruesome crimes against women have become rampant and courts cannot turn a blind eye to the need to send a strong deterrent message to the perpetrators of such crimes. Such offences require exemplary punishment," Additional Sessions Judge Sanjiv Jain remarked in his verdict in one of the cases.

While the maximum punishment of death for two was pronounced in the Jigisha Ghosh murder case of 2009, the progress of a case which was keenly watched globally was the 2014 case of gangrape of a Danish national in which five vagabonds were sentenced to life.

Several offences against women and children by their trusted friends or family members and persons in authority also shocked the conscience of the nation, with courts acting tough on the accused and saying perpetrators of such crimes do not deserve any sympathy.

Courts "cannot and should not give a licence to those who keep on looking for opportunities to exploit the sentiments and vulnerability of girls", Additional Sessions Judge Anuradha Shukla Bhardwaj said in another order.

A widely-reported case was the award of seven-year jail term to Farooqui for raping an American friend at his residence.

Pachauri, the ex-TERI boss, was under constant media glare in a case of sexual harassment lodged by his former colleague and continued to remain on bail. However, he was allowed to go abroad several times by various courts.

While some activists criticised the latest amendment in the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 for treating offenders aged between 16-18 years as adults for heinous offences like rape and murder, a juvenile board this August transferred a rape case against a 17-year-old for prosecution by a regular court under the penal law.

Among other such cases, two men were sentenced to life term and 10 years  one for raping a step-daughter and the other for violating his daughter and making her pregnant, with judges observing that the "sacrosanct relationship" of father and daughter was "demolished" and the children could not be given a safe environment.

While a teacher was sent to jail for six months for sexually harassing a girl student in 2013, one of the Delhi courts sent JNU student, Anmol Ratan, to custody for betraying the trust of a fellow student who was allegedly raped by him after spiking her drink.

Several Delhi courts dealt with over half-a-dozen cases of crime against women involving AAP leaders and MLAs including that of sacked minister Sandeep Kumar who spent two months in jail in a rape case after a CD of an alleged sex scandal surfaced.

AAP members also faced prosecution in cases of crime against women ranging from sexual assault, molestation, attempt to murder, domestic violence, threat and abetment to suicide with controversial Okhla, Narela, Sangam Vihar and Deoli MLAs  Amanatullah Khan, Sharad Chauhan, Dinesh Mohaniya and Prakash Jarwal  respectively cooling their heels in Tihar jail for sometime in connection with one or the other offences against women.

Former AAP minister Somnath Bharti's encounter with law was far from over as the case lodged by his estranged wife for alleged domestic violence continued in a trial court.

Another AAP worker Ramesh Bhardwaj, allegedly involved in abetting suicide of a woman party worker, was given bail by a court here after he remained in jail for some days.

Cases of stalking and voyeurism affecting privacy of women were also dealt with sternly as the perpetrators got varying jail terms by courts which stressed the need for "zero tolerance" to crime against women and asked the government to formulate policies to sensitise youth towards gender equality.

"Whether it is a public transport system or public place or shopping malls or multiplexes, women find themselves vulnerable to the threat of stalking everywhere," a court observed.

Even women, who lodged false rape cases, were not spared by the courts which pulled them up and directed initiation of perjury proceedings against them for misusing laws meant to protect them, with a court observing in one such case that a woman had humiliated the accused and "made a mockery of the judicial system".

A court here also felt it was time now to have laws to protect and restore the dignity of men charged with false rape cases "as everyone is just fighting to protect the honour of women", and it has to be examined whether a person acquitted of rape charges be considered as a "rape survivor".

So was the position in a domestic violence case in which the court imposed a cost of Rs 10,000 on a woman for lodging a false case against her second husband and condemned it saying if she was spared, "a wrong message would go that laws to protect women are being misused."

To sum up the courts' role in dealing with crimes against women, another judge observed "the increasing trend of crimes against women can be arrested only once the society realises that any form of deviance against women would not be tolerated and more so in extreme cases of brutality".

"Hence the criminal justice system must instill confidence in the minds of people, especially women.
BEIJING -- The United States is irresponsible in putting Chinese companies on a list of "notorious marketplaces," the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Thursday.

China hopes the United States will objectively evaluate China's work on IPR protection, said MOC spokesperson Shen Danyang at a press conference.

Given that the United States trade representative's office was ambiguous in its descriptions of Chinese companies, its report did not represent the U.S. government's analysis, according to Shen.

China has been negotiating with the United States on "notorious marketplaces," Shen said.

China hopes the United States will improve its own transparency and evaluation processes in an impartial way.
Delhi registered the highest per capita income among all states and union territories during 2015-16 at about Rs 2,80,000, over three times the national average, according to the latest official data released today.

The national capital is trailed by neighbouring Chandigarh, with a per capita income of Rs 2,42,386, while Sikkim occupied the third spot with Rs 2,27,465.

Delhi's current figure is an increase of over Rs 28,000, or 13 per cent, compared to the previous year when it was 2,52,011, a Statistical Handbook released by Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia showed.

"(The) deputy chief minister informed that the per capita income of Delhi is 2,80,142 during 2015-16 (at current prices). It has increased by 28,131 in comparison to 2014-15. The per capita income at national level is found to be 93,293 during 2015-16," an official statement said.

According to the data released by Oxford Economics in November, Delhi has emerged as the economic capital of India, pipping Mumbai as per GDP in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP).

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Stressing that every section of the society is affected by black money and corruption, Bihar Governor Ramnath Kovind today said demonetisation is a "positive effort" to free the society of the ills.

"Demonetisation is a positive effort in the direction to free the society of black money and corruption," the Governor said at the annual function of Bihar Chamber and Commerce here.

"As a result of demonetisation, weaker section of the society would get relief while the financial and trade activities would get a boost through greater transparency the measure would bring in," he said in his address as Chief Guest.

The governor stressed on branding of Bihar for industrial development of the state.

He appealed to the Chamber to present a "road map" to boost industries in Bihar to the government.

Kovind said that Bihar which primarily has an agriculture-based economy holds tremendous potential in the field of industries related to food processing.

Bihar Industries minister Jai Kumar Singh said that the government paid special attention to suggestions made by the leading trade and commerce body in drafting its "growth-oriented" Industrial policy.

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After her husband asked for a divorce, Amber Clisura gave back her engagement ring, kicked him out of the house and tossed everything that reminded her of the ruined marriage. Except for one item: a polished steel barbecue smoker that her future ex-husband had fashioned for her from an old oil drum.

"It sat there on the patio and rusted and rusted, and it became a sad symbol of the relationship," Clisura said.

The four-legged smoker had been a treasured handmade gift, but eventually Clisura couldn't bear to look at it. She considered giving it to a neighbour or selling it for scrap but then read about a call for submissions at the new Los Angeles branch of the Museum of Broken Relationships.

The original museum opened in Zagreb, Croatia, in 2010 after growing out of a touring collection that crisscrossed Europe, Asia and the US.

On display in Zagreb are artifacts from failed unions, most of them mundane under ordinary circumstances. A single stiletto heel. A wine opener. A worn old Snoopy doll. But when isolated in a glass case or hanging on a white wall and accompanied by a caption, the objects become imbued with heartache or regret. Or freedom.

In Los Angeles, there's a blue chiffon top a woman wore to a cafe where her husband told her he was leaving. An envelope of leaves mailed from Canada to San Diego so a long-distance paramour could experience changing seasons in Southern California.

A jar of pickles purchased for a first love who, the donor explained, "stopped texting before I could give it to him."



After some deliberation, Clisura, a textile artist and fashion designer from LA, decided to donate the smoker and drove it to the museum's warehouse.

"A woman met me downstairs, and as I was handing it over, I burst into tears," Clisura said, laughing now. "It felt like a weight was lifted." The museum representative offered to give her a hug.

Employees have embraced their share of brokenhearted donors eager for closure, said director Alexis Hyde at the museum's location on Hollywood Boulevard, a thoroughfare that, she noted, has been called the "boulevard of broken dreams." Hyde has been known to brush away her own tears as she opens boxes containing donations.

"It's cathartic the way a good, sad movie is cathartic," she said. "On some level, you know this person's moving on, and they've survived."



Hyde pointed out not all the fizzled unions represented in the 3,500-square-foot museum were romantic. One donor had an irreparable relationship with her father. Another split from a church. A California woman who donated a Texas license plate said she separated from the Lone Star State.

"My broken relationship was with myself," said Andree Vermeulen, whose donated items are the museum's most talked about. The actress sent in a pair of breast implants she had removed after ending a toxic relationship with a man who made disparaging comments about her body.

Vermeulen, who lives in Los Angeles, said the implants "never felt right," and since they've been out, she has "reached a place where I feel very grounded and confident." An outpouring of support on social media gave her further confidence to use the experience as fodder during storytelling performances in which she discusses body image and standards of beauty.

Vermeulen said the donation, now displayed in a glass case in the LA museum's main room, symbolized the final chapter of the relationship, and her scars "mark a story and a time in my life that taught me a lot about myself.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Evasion of central excise duty to the tune of Rs 50 crore allegedly by three leading jewellers in Tamil Nadu has come to the fore during raids at multiple locations over the last three days.

Following intelligence inputs, Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence sleuths carried out simultaneous searches at the premises of the three jewellers in nine cities between December 26 and 29, a top Central Excise official said today.

The cities where the raids were conducted included Chennai, Mumbai, Coimbatore, Thrissur, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and New Delhi and as regards one of the firms, the raids were still on, he added.

One of the leading jewellery outlets operating in Tamil Nadu with branches across the country alone has evaded central excise duty to the tune of Rs 40 crore and immediately after the raids, it paid duty of Rs 12 crore.

"The amount of central excise duty estimated to have been evaded is to the tune of Rs 40 crore by this jewellery," the official told PTI.

Probe revealed a turnover of Rs 4,600 crore between March and November this year and "no central excise duty was paid by it", he said.

It was further found out that the jewellery was registered with the Central Excise Department and "it appears that the evasion is deliberate as the internal records indicate the fact that the management is aware of the duty liability", he said.

As regards another jewellery where search operations were currently on, "(raids) indicate duty evasion to the tune of Rs 14 crore and further inputs are awaited", he said.

The third jewellery retailer had not paid excise duty to the tune of Rs 5 crore. "The duty liability is being estimated and is likely to go up further. A probe is in progress," said the official.

Articles of jewellery attract duty under the Central Excise Tariff Act as per the 2016-17 budgetary provisions and it carries duty at the rate of one per cent on the selling value of the jewellery.

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A local NCP leader, arrested here with 10 others last week with fake currency notes of face value of Rs 1.35 crore, is emerging as a 'prize catch' with the police seizing Rs 57.72 lakh from his bank accounts during investigation.

Chhabu Nagare, a former president of NCP's city unit youth wing, and 10 others were produced before a local court today which extended their police custody till January two.

Police had seized fake currencies in scrapped currency bills of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 from high-end cars in Adgaon area of the city on December 23 and arrested 11 persons.

During the investigation, police seized the equipment Nagare allegedly used for printing the counterfeit notes.

"Police have already conducted searches at the residence of Nagare in Khutwad Nagar area and impounded a scanner, two printers, a cutting machine, various types of ink and papers which he used for printing fake currency to exchange those for new bills," Adgaon police station incharge S D Sanap said today.

He said police have traced Rs 57.72 lakh in as many as 11 bank accounts of Nagare and are investigating whether he has more accounts or lockers.

"Nagare has nine accounts with a cooperative bank and two accounts with a nationalised bank. The accounts are being sealed by the police," Sanap said.

According to sources, Nagare is close to an NCP heavyweight from the district.

Rest of the accused, currently in police custody, hailed from Pune, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane.

They have been booked under relevant sections of IPC.

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Police in Maharashtra have registered an FIR against state BJP chief Raosaheb Danve for violating the model code of conduct, following his controversial remarks during a municipal election campaign.

"The FIR has been filed under section 171 B of IPC, at the Paithan police station last night," Aurangabad Rural SP Navinchandra Reddy told PTI.

The FIR was registered in response to a complaint filed by Paithan sub divisional officer K Netke, the IPS officer said.

The State Election Commission had asked Aurangabad District Collector Nidhi Panday to register an FIR against Danve for violating the model code of conduct.

Danve was seen in a video clip, telling voters in Paithan to accept 'Laxmi' if it came their way before the elections. Laxmi is revered as the goddess of wealth.

In the clip, Danve was seen telling the voters: "Today is December 17 and tomorrow is December 18, the voting day. I know all of you are impatient to go home.

"The eve of the election is important, as suddenly you get darshan of Laxmi. If such Laxmi comes to your door, please welcome it. But, whatever you have decided, stick to your voting decision."



Earlier, in response to a notice by Netke, Danve had replied that he was quoted out of context.

"I said that the night before the polls is important and suddenly in the night, there will be obeisance of Goddess Laxmi. The public in the meeting were from rural areas and are spiritual and faithful and in case Goddess Laxmi comes, voters must see that the goddess does not return empty handed. The public at large must welcome Goddess Laxmi," Danve had said, in his clarification.

Danve's reply was sent to State Election Commissioner J S Saharia, who found his explanation unsatisfactory.

Congress and NCP had asked Saharia to register a criminal offence against Danve.

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As many as six Bengaluru bound flights from different origins were diverted here due to severe fog in the Karnataka capital, causing delay in the landing of more than a dozen other fligts here.

Due to the severe fog in Bengaluru this morning, the flights were diverted here, airport officials said.

According to them, due to diverstions, it caused delayed landing of 18 other flights here.

Meanwhile, authorities said entry of visitors to the airport has been banned with immediate effect till further notice "due to security reasons."



Notices have been pasted in the airport precints about the ban on vistors' entry.

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The cheapest one came for just Rs 251 while another made global headlines for catching fire. Year 2016 has indeed been the year of smartphones  for right reasons or wrong  as these powerful-yet-affordable devices pushed India ahead of the US as the world's second-largest Internet userbase, with 2017 promising to be even better.

The year started with a little-known company called 'Ringing Bells' making global noise with its Rs 251- smartphone. While the industry was up in arms to say manufacturing such a device was not feasible even in China, customers stayed logged onto their computers for hours together in the hope of being able to register to buy the device.

Ringing Bells did manage to deliver a few of the promised handsets, but it was not without its share of controversy, with allegations that the company had merely cloaked and passed on another company's device as its own.

A trend that clearly emerged from the event was India is hungry for affordable innovation. So, it is no surprise that the sub-Rs 10,000 category forms over 50 per cent of the Indian smartphone market. The category has flourished further, with domestic majors like Micromax and Lava bringing in multiple devices.

However, this segment was also one of the worst-hit by the government's move to scrap old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. In the days that followed the announcement, companies saw their sales dipping by as much as 50 per cent, hurt by the double-whammy of cash shortage and cyclical dip that is seen post Diwali.

According to Gartner Research Director Anshul Gupta, smartphone shipment in India is expected to be a little lower at about 120 million units this year, impacted by demonetisation.

"Despite this, Indian market is growing at a healthy pace compared to 4-5 per cent growth being seen in global markets. India would continue to be one the fastest growing markets globally," he added.

Companies are hopeful that 2017 will ring in good news and sales will return to healthy growth clip like that seen in the previous year.

A gamechanger this year was the entry of Reliance Jio into the Indian market. With its promise of free calls for lifetime and data at one-fifth of the market rates, Reliance's foray sent sales of 4G phones in India skyrocketing, especially in the second half of the year.

"Over the past few years, there has been a tremendous growth in consumers' mobile data demand and consumption patterns. Digital revolution in India has further led to a paradigm shift from 3G to 4G, and to tap this trend, various mobile players are offering innovative and affordable devices bundled with offers and cost-effective VAS services," Intex Director Nidhi Markanday said.

While affordable devices have done well in terms of shipment numbers, it has been the mid and premium categories that have been the revenue drivers for handset makers.

The likes of HTC, Oppo and OnePlus have continued to focus on higher price points, bundling in better specifications and delivering more power-packed devices.

"We feel there will be a consolidation in the Rs 10,000- 20,000 segment. In 2016, the mid-premium segment jumped to 25 per cent of the category as compared to 17 per cent in 2015 which is a clear 89 per cent growth. Also, average selling prices (ASPs) will creep up in the category," Micromax co- founder Rahul Sharma said.

The ASPs were Rs 8,400 in 2015. In 2016, it crossed Rs 9,000 while the volumes stagnated.

"We clearly see this trend to continue in 2017 as well and ASPs will continue to grow upwards," he said.

Lenovo India Executive Director, Mobile Business Group, Sudhin Mathur agreed, saying even though refresh cycles have reduced to under a year now, users are comfortable shelling out more money for a smartphone with better set of features and looks.

Manufacturing in India has also gained ground with companies like Xiaomi, Lenovo, Vivo, LeEco and Coolpad now meeting a significant part of their requirement locally. While companies continue to source components from established locations like China and Taiwan, they are hopeful that government initiatives will further help in maturing of the ecosystem and support full-fledged manufacturing domestically.

A major push in this direction may come in 2017 if Apple starts manufacturing in India. The iconic iPhone maker has sought incentives from the Indian government as it views the country among its fastest growing markets globally.

The year 2016 also saw Samsung  the world's largest handset maker  in the firing line following reports of its flagship 'Note 7' devices catching fire.

What started as a few stray incidents escalated into bans on aircraft across countries like the US and India, and Samsung was forced to recall and then pull the plug on the device.

2017 will also mark the return of 'Nokia', with the smartphones being powered by Android operating system this time. Following its association with Microsoft a few years ago, Nokia had adopted Windows Phone OS and that many believed added to the decline in popularity of the brand.

While Microsoft bought the smartphone business from Nokia, the Finnish company retained the rights for the 'Nokia' brand name and has now inked a 10-year licensing agreement with HMD Global to unveil a fresh line-up of smartphones. HMD is also bringing in feature phones to ensure it does not get left behind this time.

The year was tough for iconic smartphone brand BlackBerry as well. While it continues to attempt a re-haul to revive fortunes, it will be some time before its efforts like outsourcing manufacturing and focus on software instead of hardware start bearing fruit.
Dalmia Group firm Golden Tobacco Ltd today said that it has received notice from consortium of banks led by Canara Bank for one of its property situated at Guntur.

"Canara Bank on behalf of the consortium banks issued a notice on December 28, 2016 under section 13(4) of the SARFEAESI Act, 2002 for one of the company's property situated at Guntur," the company informed BSE in a filing.

However, it further said: "The company is hopeful to resolve the same as early as possible."



Earlier, on October 4, GTC had informed that the Canara Bank, again on behalf of the consortium banks, has issued notice under section 13(4) of the SARFEAESI Act for its property situated at Vadodara, Gujarat.

Section 13(4) of the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, known as SARFEAESI Act provides the measures which creditor may take to recover its secured debt.

Vadodara-based Golden Tobacco has cigarettes brands as Panama, Taj Chhap Deluxe, Style Mini Kings, Chancellor, Platinum, Flair Kings and June Slim.

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Gujarat Government today handed over the probe of alleged rape and murder of a woman in Bhavnagar district to an Inspector General-rank officer.

The announcement came amid protests by Patel organisations including PAAS and SPG over the crime.

The middle-aged woman, who belonged to the Patel community, was allegedly raped and murdered by some persons at Mandvi village in Gariadhar tehsil of Bhavnagar district on December 1.

Minister of State for Home Pradeepsinh Jadeja announced in a statement today that government had taken the case very seriously, and decided to hand it over to Bhavnagar Range IG Amit Vishwakarma for speedy investigation.

One of the accused was arrested by police on December 2 and sent in judicial custody at Bhavnagar jail. Police had collected various samples from the crime scene and sent them for examination at forensic laboratory, said the release.

Family members of the victim had met Chief Minister Vijay Rupani a few days back, seeking justice for her.

Jadeja assured that police will also conduct lie- detector test of the arrested accused for which they had sought court's permission.

After the incident came to light, members of Sardar Patel Group (SPG) and Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) launched a statewide stir demanding quick action. They alleged that at least six to seven persons were involved in the crime.

Upon receiving the assurance from Jadeja today, PAAS members called off their proposed hunger strike.

In a statement, PAAS convener Dinesh Bambhaniya urged the government to probe the case on a priority basis and arrest all the accused.

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Haryana government today signed a memorandum of understanding with Andhra Pradesh to assist it compile a centralised database of its population to ensure efficient and effective implementation of welfare programmes.

The MoU for State Resident Data Base (SRDB) was signed by Haryana Principal Secretary, Information Technology Devender Singh and Secretary Andhra Pradesh, Information Technology, Vijayen. Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Andhra's N Chandra Babu Naidu were present during the signing of the MoU at Andhra Bhawan here.

Andhra already has a database of this sort. It's described as a comprehensive portal for managing demographic (name, gender, age, photograph and address) and biometric information for facilitating "Unique ID" based identity authentication.

The official APSRDH website describes it as an "exclusive source of information on state residents."



Providing information about SRDB, Haryana Chief Secretary D S Dhesi said the state government is preparing its SRDB with the objective to get an authentic data of state's population to help deliver benefits of government schemes to the eligible beneficiaries.

He said a government-to-government MoU was exchanged between the states. With a view to realise the vision of SRDB, database of state residents based on e-KYC through online digital survey would be prepared.

A statement from him said the data to be collected with this survey would be linked with data of various departments. This data would serve as master data for the citizens of the state and various departments. The people of the state could get efficient and effective services with this database.

Apart from this, the database would also help in effective implementation of various programmes of the government and preparedness of schemes in future.

The SRBD work would be completed in a time bound manner, he added.

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Expressing doubts over the circumstances leading to death of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, a Madras High Court judge indicated that he may order exhumation of the body after a plea before the court sought a probe by an inquiry commission or a fact-finding committee.

Justice S Vaidyanathan, who was heading a two-judge vacation bench, said the public should know what has happened.

His observations came when the bench, also comprising Justice V Parthiban, was hearing the PIL filed by an AIADMK worker P A Joseph seeking an inquiry commission or a fact- finding committee to probe the circumstances leading to the death of Jayalalithaa.

"After the demise, everybody has a right to question. I personally have a doubt.

"One day it was told that she is walking, another day you said that she will come out and suddenly what happened. Even with regard to the health of late Chief Minister MGR, video was released," Justice Vaidyanathan said.

When a special mention was made before the bench by senior counsel KM Vijayan who argued on the plea, Advocate General Muthukumaraswamy said there is no mystery in the death.

Justice Vaidyanathan asked the AG, "What is that you say. Right to live is a Fundamental Right. Public should know what has happened."



"Even relations were not allowed to see and they are also not before the court now. I personally find in case if I have doubt I may order exhumation of the body of deceased and you have not told anything when she was alive," the judge said.

Turning to counsel J Madanagopala Rao, who appeared on behalf of Union Government, the Judge said: "You went there. You have not reported anything. You know everything. But not reported anything for the reasons best known to you. You kept quiet."



The bench said, "We also saw in newspapers that the chief minister was recovering, and that she was eating, signing papers and even conducting meetings. And then suddenly she was dead."



The bench then recorded the acceptance of notice by counsel for Union Government on behalf of the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministries of Home, Law and Parliamentary Affairs and CBI and posted the matter for further hearing to January 9.

The PIL had sought a commission comprising retired Supreme Court judges to look into "questionable incidents", including Jayalalithaa's sudden hospitalisation, reported recovery and the cardiac arrest resulting in her death on December 5.

The PIL listed the sequence of events since Jayalalithaa's admission to Apollo Hospitals here on September 22 and claimed that the "secrecy" preceding her death gave rise to "grave doubts" in the minds of the people.

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Sharing people's "doubts" over the circumstances leading to the death of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, a Madras High Court judge today hinted he may order exhumation of her body on a plea seeking a high-level judicial probe into the "secrecy" preceding her demise.

The public should know what has happened, Justice S Vaidyanathan, heading a two-judge vacation bench, said, issuing notices to the Central Government, Prime Minister's office and the state government, among others.

His observations came when the bench, also comprising Justice V Parthiban, was hearing the PIL filed by an AIADMK worker P A Joseph seeking a probe by an inquiry commission or a fact-finding committee into the death of Jayalalithaa.

"After the demise, everybody has a right to question. I personally have a doubt. One day it was told that she is walking, another day you said that she will come out and suddenly what happened. Even with regard to the health of late Chief Minister MGR, video was released," Justice Vaidyanathan said.

Advocate General Muthukumaraswamy, however, contended there was "no mystery" behind the AIADMK supremo's death.

Justice Vaidyanathan, however, persisted in expressing his doubt over the circumstances leading to her passing away, saying, "Even relations were not allowed to see and they are also not before the court now. I personally find in case if I have doubt I may order exhumation of the body of deceased."



"What is that you say? Right to live is a fundamental right. Public should know what has happened," the judge asked the AG.

Turning to counsel J Madanagopala Rao, who appeared on behalf of the Centre, the Judge said, "You went there. You have not reported anything. You know everything. But not reported anything for the reasons best known to you. You kept quiet."



The judge was apparently referring to the visits by several Union Ministers to Apollo Hospitals to inquire about Jayalalithaa's condition.

The bench said, "We also saw in newspapers that the Chief Minister was recovering, that she was eating, signing papers and even conducting meetings. And then suddenly she was dead."



The bench then recorded the acceptance of notice by the counsel for the Union Government on behalf of the Prime Minister's Office, the Ministries of Home, Law and Parliamentary Affairs and CBI, and posted the matter for further hearing on January 9. The AG accepted notice on behalf of the state government.

The bench also issued notice to the Apollo Hospitals returnable by January 9.

The PIL has sought a commission comprising retired Supreme Court judges or a fact-finding committee to look into the "questionable incidents", including Jayalalithaa's sudden hospitalisation, reported recovery and finally the cardiac arrest resulting in her death on December 5.

It listed the sequence of events since Jayalalithaa's admission to Apollo Hospitals here on September 22 and claimed that the "secrecy" preceding her death gave rise to "grave doubts" in the minds of the people.
Vishwa Hindu Parishad senior leader Pravin Togadia today said they will come up with a "protection plan" for Hindus to safeguard them against "persecution" in the country.

Addressing VHP functionaries on the first day of its three-day national conclave here, he said, "We will make an action plan for the protection of Hindus as Hindus are still not protected in villages and they suffer humiliation and persecution.

"VHP will play the role of 'Jatayu' (a mythical mighty bird in Ramayana who had fought Ravana) and will fight for the protection of Hindus."



The city is hosting the annual meet of VHP's prabandh samiti (management committee) and pranyasi mandal (board of trustees) after a gap of 32 years.

"Around 20 crore Hindus in our country are still illiterate and VHP is working to make them literate, capable and prosperous," the VHP international working president said.

He said more than one lakh cows get killed in the country every year, "which is very unfortunate."



On construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya, he said, "Ram mandir is not only the concern of VHP, but it is the matter of faith for crores of Hindus. The temple will come up only after a law is passed in Parliament," he added.

VHP International Secretary Champat Rai yesterday said the resolutions on a national law against cow slaughter and for adopting uniform civil code are expected to be passed in the meet.

Over 300 VHP functionaries from country and abroad are in attendance.

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Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh today announced release of two per cent additional DA to employees from July this year, and said their demand of increasing the retirement age from 58 to 60 years will be placed before the Cabinet for consideration.

Besides announcing release of two per cent additional DA from July this year, he said capital allowance and tribal allowance will be enhanced.

Employees are the backbone of the government and they have been contributing enormously towards the development of the state. The government has from time to time accepted their genuine demands, Singh said at a meeting of Joint Consultative Committee of HP Non-Gazetted Employees Federation here today.

Chief Secretary V C Pharka said cases of anomalies, particularly in grade pay, should be sent to him through secretaries concerned for further examination and redressal.

He said the state government has filled thousands of posts in different departments in the last four years and those which are still vacant will be filled up soon for which the departments have been asked to send proposals.

Pharka directed all departments to expedite the procedure for promotion of employees.

The demand to revive 117 posts of Superintendents Grade-I in education department and joint ministerial cadre in Higher and Elementary Education will also be considered, the chief secretary said.

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A Finnish court has sentenced a former Helsinki narcotics police boss to 10 years in prison for running a drug ring while in office a rare case of corruption among the country's civil servants.

Helsinki's District Court says Jari Aarnio was guilty of official misconduct and aggravated evidence tampering.

The court said today that Aarnio, who pleaded innocent, played a key role in importing from the Netherlands nearly 800 kilogrammes of hashish, which was distributed in 2011-2012.

An accomplice, a local top criminal, was also given 10 years. After 30 years on the force, Aarnio was arrested in 2013.

In September, he was convicted of fraud and corruption for an ownership interest in a company that sold surveillance equipment to Finnish police.

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India has cautioned its nationals to be careful while travelling in Germany in the aftermath of the truck attack at a Christmas market here last week in which 12 people were killed and nearly 50 others injured.

The Indian embassy here in its advisory to the nationals also asked them to avoid crowded tourist areas during the holiday season.

"During the Holiday Season all Indian Nationals are advised due caution while travelling in Germany, particularly in view of the incident at the Berlin Christmas Market on December 19, 2016.

"It is advised to avoid crowded tourist areas during the holiday season," the advisory said.

On the evening of December 19, a truck was driven into a crowded Christmas market, killing 12 people and injuring 48 others in a terror strike which was claimed by the dreaded ISIS.

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India's first transgender college principal Manabi Bandopadhyay has submitted her resignation after about one-and-a-half years in office, expressing frustration at "non-cooperation" of a section of teachers and students of her institution.

Nadia District Magistrate Sumit Gupta today said he had received her letter of resignation from the post of Principal of Krishnagar Women's College in the district on December 27 and forwarded it to the state Higher Education department yesterday.

Manabi alleged that she started facing non-cooperation from a section of teachers soon after she took over as the principal of the well-known women's college on June 9, 2015.

On the other hand, the teachers also levelled the same allegation against the principal, resulting in a standoff.

A four-member team, led by Joint Director of Public Instruction (DPI) RP Bhattacharjee, visited the college recently on a fact-finding mission and talked to the principal and teachers.

Manabi said, "All of my colleagues went against me. Some of the students went against me. I tried to bring back discipline and an atmosphere of education in the college. Most probably, that is why they went against me. I always got co-operation from the local administration, but never got it from my colleagues and students."



She went on to say that she had been under tremendous mental pressure and could not take it anymore, forcing her to resign.

"I feel tired due to the agitation and gherao by the students and teachers. I faced a lot of legal notices from their end. I had come to this college with new hopes and dreams but I was defeated...," she said.

Manabi (51), whose earlier name was Somnath, underwent a series of operations in 2003-2004 and became a woman. In 1995, she published the country's first transgender magazine, 'Ob-Manab' (sub-human).

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Sri Lanka's former president Mahinda Rajapaksa today claimed that India was "silent" on growing Chinese influence in the island nation while it was more vocal on the issue during his administration.

"All my Indian friends were shouting against me when Chinese submarines came to Colombo port. But now they are silent like rats," he said addressing foreign correspondents.

Asked on what basis he can claim that Indians were no longer worried about Chinese influence in Lanka, Rajapkasa said, "They were openly expressing it then".

He said he stands opposed to Chinese being given 15,000 acres in his hometown of Hambantota for an industrial park.

"We welcome the industrial park but 15,000 acres would be too much," he said.

He thought India might also be waiting to see if the Trincomalee harbour or the Palaly airport in the north may be given to them by the Maithripala Sirisena government.

Rajapaksa said India, which had backed him in the war against the LTTE, was influenced by the US to work against him.

"I wanted them to come (actively support the military campaign) they did not because of the South Indian attitude," Rajapaksa said.

Rajapaksa alleged his ouster was due to a sustained campaign by the West, India's RAW and others which had stared two years before the 2015 January presidential election which he called two years ahead of schedule.

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- T. S. Eliot

Thoughts After Lambeth

"The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide."
A 26-year-old youth from Sirsa in Punjab was stabbed to death allegedly by a girl in New Zealand last week and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has stepped in to help his family bring back home his mortal remains.

Swaraj directed the Indian High Commission in New Zealand to help the family of deceased Hardeep Singh after they reached out to her on twitter.

"Deol family - Rania (Sirsa) : I hv seen report and given instructions to our High Commissioner in New Zealand," the External Affairs Minister tweeted.

According to Hardeep's grandfather Baldev Singh Deol, he had gone to New Zealand on a study visa to pursue a course in hotel management.

According to reports in New Zealand media, Hardeep suffered serious injuries during an assault on Christmas on Sunday at Cashmere house. He was taken to Christchurch Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.

Local police said a 22-year-old woman has been arrested and charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, adding the charge was likely to be replaced with a murder charge.

They said the inquiry has been upgraded to a homicide investigation.

The Minister, who is recuperating after undergoing a kidney transplant on December 10, is known for her prompt response to Indians who are in distress abroad, many of whom approach her through twitter for help.

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The South Asian Speakers' Summit will be held here on February 18-19, 2017.

"The speakers of parliaments of the south Asian nations will share their experiences and deliberate on their role in achieving sustainable development goals," Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan told reporters after chairing a meeting to review the preparations for the summit.

The speakers of nine south Asian countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, are likely to take part in the conference, she said, adding that this time, Myanmar has also been invited to take part in it.

Indore is hosting the summit for the first time.

The Speaker said this type of events are normally organised in the national capital.

"But, as per the wish of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that they should be held in other major cities too, so that the foreign delegates get an opportunity to understand the country better, we are organising the summit in Indore," she said.

To a question, Mahajan said, "Demonetisation is in the interest of the nation and it will yield good results.

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Iraqi troops backed by US-led airstrikes pushed deeper into eastern Mosul today in a multi-pronged assault after a two-week lull in the operation to retake the Islamic State-held city.

Elite special forces pushed into the Karama and Quds neighbourhoods, while army troops and federal police advanced into nearby Intisar, Salam and Sumor neighbourhoods. Smoke rose across the city as explosions and machine gun fire echoed through the streets.

Stiff resistance by the militants, civilians trapped inside their houses and bad weather have slowed advances in the more than two-month-old offensive to recapture Iraq's second largest city, the extremist group's last urban bastion in the country. It is the biggest Iraqi military operation since the 2003 US-led invasion.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, commander of the special forces in eastern Mosul, said his forces have been bolstered by reinforcements and are now less than 3 kilometres from the Tigris River, which slices the city in half. A US-led coalition airstrike this week destroyed the last remaining bridge over the river.

The special forces, officially known as the Counter Terrorism Service, have done most of the fighting, pushing in from the east. But regular army troops on the city's southeast and northern edges, as well as militarised federal police farther west, have not moved in weeks, unable to penetrate the city.

The troops have faced grueling urban fighting, often house to house against IS militants who have had more than two years to dig in and prepare. Even in districts that have been recaptured, Iraqi troops have faced surprise attacks, shelling and car bombs. The extremists have launched more than 900 car bombs against Iraqi troops in and around Mosul. Al-Saadi said 260 targeted his men.

He said he expected Iraqi forces would drive IS from Mosul and the rest of Nineveh province within three months. Iraqi leaders had previously vowed to drive the extremists from Mosul by the end of the year.

IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014, when it swept across much of northern and central Iraq, and the group's leader declared the establishment of its self-styled caliphate from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque.

The city is still home to around a million people. Some 120,000 have fled since the operation began on October 17, according to the United Nations.

Meanwhile today, separate attacks in and around Baghdad killed at least 13 people and wounded 35 others, police said. The deadliest took place in the capital's southwestern neighbourhood of Maalif when an explosives-laden vest was detonated near an outdoor market, killing seven and wounding 12, police added.

Medical officials confirmed casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to release information.

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The pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s - which left mass starvation, disease and migration in its wake - first set down roots in the US before attacking Europe, say scientists who mapped the evolution of the disease.

Researchers theorise that the pathogen arrived in Europe via infected potatoes on South American ships or directly from infected potatoes from the US.

They tracked the evolution Phytophthora infestans, the pathogen responsible for the Irish potato famine and a major cause of late-blight disease on potato and tomato plants around the world.

Researchers from the North Carolina State University in the US studied 12 key regions on the genomes of 183 pathogen samples - historic and modern - from across the globe.

The study shows that a lineage called FAM-1 caused outbreaks of potato late blight in the US in 1843 and then two years later in Great Britain and Ireland.

It was also found in historic samples from Colombia suggesting a South American origin.

FAM-1 caused massive and debilitating late-blight disease outbreaks in Europe, leaving starvation and migration in its wake.

However, FAM-1 was not just a one-hit wonder that made its mark and then quickly disappeared.

"FAM-1 was widespread and dominant in the US in the mid-to-late 19th century and the early 20th century," said Jean Ristaino, Professor at NC State.

"It also was found in Costa Rica and Columbia in the early 20th century," said Ristaino.

"FAM-1 survived for about 100 years in the US but was then displaced by a different strain of the pathogen called US-1. US-1 is not a direct descendant of FAM-1, but rather a sister lineage," she said.

US-1, in turn, has been elbowed out of its eponymous homeland by even more aggressive strains of the pathogen that have originated in Mexico. Our winter vegetable crops, grown there and imported into the US, harbor the pathogen, she said.

The pathogen's effects are not limited to the decimation of Ireland's potato crop 170 years ago.

Billions are spent worldwide each year in attempts to control the pathogen, Ristaino said. Potatoes in the developing world are particularly vulnerable as fungicides are less available and expensive.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

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Already battling headwinds of a slowing growth, the USD 150-billion Indian IT industry is staring at arguably its biggest uncertainty in recent times after Donald Trump was elected as President of the US, which accounts for around 60 per cent of its export earnings.

While artificial intelligence, digital and automation are the buzzwords this year, worrylines have started to emerge on "creeping" protectionism and negative sentiment in key markets.

IT companies, however, can take comfort from the fact that global technology spend is expected to grow 3 per cent in 2017 after sliding 0.3 per cent in 2016 and long-term targets of the industry of grossing USD 225 billion by 2020 and USD 350 billion by 2025 remain intact, at least for now.

"For 2017, the big concern areas include protectionism and anti-globalisation creeping into markets like the US, the UK and the rest of Europe, Singapore and Australia. Second, the need to update skill base we have in India and rising need for digital and consulting skills, and third, the policy initiatives like GST which can impact the industry," said R Chandrashekhar, President of software association Nasscom.

Trump, who is due to take over as the 45th US President next month, is known for his hardline stance on protectionism and anti-immigration.

While the industry has tried putting on a brave front, there are underlying concerns about tightening of visa norms that will push up the cost of doing business.

Flagging the issue of protectionism and negative sentiment around skilled worker movement in the US, Chandrashekhar argues that corporate America also needs technology services, given the shortage of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills.

"The issue is as much about what is good for the US economy. The fact is that according to US' own statistics, over one million IT-related jobs will remain unfilled in 2018... So, reality has to be kept in mind before steps are taken," he said.

Indian players like TCS and Infosys are heavily dependent on the US market.

The other big market -- the UK -- also did not bring much good for the sector this year, with the country announcing its separation from the EU.

While companies as well as industry body Nasscom said there may be short-term impact on contracts, Britain exiting from the UK holds opportunities for India over a longer term.

The IT industry, which has been a poster boy for Indian exports sector, has been battling factors like fluctuating currency and rising visa costs over the past many years.

In March this year, India filed a complaint in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against the US decision to impose high fees on temporary working visas, a move that makes Indian IT companies less competitive in that market.

This year, hurt by Brexit (Britain's exit) coupled with



global macroeconomic uncertainties, companies like Infosys and Wipro had to slash their growth forecast for the year. Nasscom, too, was forced to revise downwards the industry's export revenue growth guidance of 10-12 per cent for 2016-17 to 8-10 per cent.

According to analysts, Indian IT companies are ramping up local hiring in international markets to comply with regulations, which may impact margins.

However, companies are also investing significantly in artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate workflows for managing costs. This will also play an important role in reaching the USD 350 billion target.

2016 was also a big one for acquisitions. Be it Verizon acquiring Yahoo for USD 4.83 billion or Microsoft's buyout of LinkedIn for USD 26.2 billion, the technology world was buzzing with activity.

Indian companies were not far behind. Wipro acquired Appirio for USD 500 million while HCL Technologies announced the merger of smaller rival Geometric for USD 200 million.

Infosys invested in a number of startups like UNSILO, TidalScale, Cloudyn and ideaForge that work in areas ranging from artificial intelligence to drone.

"Developing the local market into a technology-consuming one will be a key challenge. India has made a brand for its software industry globally. We, however, are yet to be known as technology-consuming country," said Cyient founder and Executive Chairman B V R Mohan Reddy.

"Technology can play a vital role for a country like India where we can solve problems of providing access to essential services like healthcare, education, skill development and the like. Technology can be social equaliser."



Another area that was in spotlight was security. October saw the Indian banking sector witnessing the biggest-ever security breach with 32 lakh debit cards of various public and private banks being feared to have been compromised by cyber malware attack in some ATM systems.

Already, the IT ministry is on a war footing to further strengthen laws governing the digital ecosystem and is looking to review the Information Technology Act. The ministry has also informed banks that any "unusual cyber movement" should be immediately reported to CERT-In, the cyber emergency response team. Further, a technical solution in the form of 'Botnet centre' has also been created to bolster security.

The need for stronger cyber security measures is likely to become more pronounced in 2017, given the push for digital transactions in the aftermath of demonetisation.

"We expect Block chain technologies to see wider adoption in 2017. The demand is largely fuelled by increasing cyber security concerns among financial services customers," HCL Technologies CTO Kalyan Kumar said.

With India being a hub of growing smartphone penetration and now the spike in digital payments post demonetisation, it is imperative that a robust cyber security product and service industry is built in the country, say experts.

In all, countering protectionism that is creeping in different geographies, supporting government initiatives like Digital India and Skill India, and strengthening footprint in newer markets like Japan, China, Africa and Nordics will be some of the focus for the industry as well as Nasscom in 2017.

That said, much will depend on how things shape up in the US in particular with regard to outsourcing policies of the new Trump administration. Like the rest of the world, the Indian industry too will watch out for clues to that billion dollar question.
Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni said today that there are no indications the Tunisian fugitive from the Berlin Christmas market attack, who was shot dead near Milan, had any significant contacts in Italy.

Italian investigators have been trying to determine whether Anis Amri tapped a jihadi network in Italy, his European port of entry when he left Tunisia in early 2011 and the end of his nearly four-day flight following the Berlin truck attack that left 12 dead.

"No particular networks have emerged in Italy," Gentiloni told reporters in Rome ahead of a security meeting in Milan headed by his interior minister.

But the prime minister said there still is a need to enhance anti-terror measures, including making it easier to deport migrants living in the country illegally. Existing measures already permit Italy to expel foreign nationals with suspected terror ties, with 66 carried out so far this year and 152 since the beginning of 2015.

They include a Tunisian man living in the northern province of Brescia who was expelled Thursday. The Interior Ministry alleged he received instructions last month to carry out an attack in Italy "in retaliation for operations by Italy in Libya."



Interior Minister Marco Minniti said the deported man apparently had no connection with fellow Tunisian Amri and there were no indications any attack was imminent.

"But the expulsion was important because he wasn't just any character. He had a profile that was potentially interesting," Minniti said.

Authorities in Rome, meanwhile, seized cellphones during a search of two apartments where Amri stayed in 2015, the agency ANSA reported. One is home to a Tunisian currently jailed on a drug dealing conviction.

Amri died of a single gunshot wound last Friday after shooting an officer in the shoulder during a routine police stop in the working class Milan suburb of Sesto San Giovanni. He was spotted alone outside a deserted train station in the early morning hours, drawing the officers' suspicion.

Minniti said such preventative policing was key to the terror fight.

"We are facing a high level of unpredictability, and the only way of avoiding these actions is to control the territory," Minniti said.

Amri had crossed the border from France by train hours earlier, getting off in the Italian border town of Bardonecchia, then taking a regional train to Turin and another to Milan. His ultimate destination remains unclear.

Gentiloni credited good police work for ending Amri's flight, but said the government would look at further strengthening anti-terrorism measures. That would include steps "to make more efficient the repatriation mechanisms from the migrant centers," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni said today that there are no indications that the Tunisian fugitive from the Berlin Christmas market attack, who was shot dead near Milan, had any particular contacts in Italy.

Italian investigators are trying to determine whether Anis Amri was tapping a jihadi network in Italy, his port of entry in early 2011 during Arab Spring, and the end of his nearly four-day flight following the truck attack on a Berlin holiday market that left 12 dead.

"No particular networks have emerged in Italy," Gentiloni told reporters at a year-end press conference in Rome, ahead of a security meeting in Milan headed by his interior minister.

Amri died of a single gunshot wound last Friday after shooting an officer in the shoulder during a routine police stop in the working class Milan suburb of Sesto San Giovanni.

He was earlier spotted alone outside a deserted train station in the early morning hours.

He had crossed the border from France by train hours earlier, getting off in the Italian border town of Bardonecchia, then taking a regional train to Turin and another to Milan.

Gentiloni credited good police work for ending Amri's flight, but said the government would look at further strengthening anti-terrorism measures. That would include steps "to make more efficient the repatriation mechanisms from the migrant centers," he said.

Amri told authorities after his arrival in 2011 that he was a minor, winning him the right to stay, but he quickly landed in jail after setting fire to a migrant center.

Attempts by Italy to deport him after his release failed for bureaucratic reasons.

Gentiloni noted that Amri was radicalized while he was in Italy.

"We know that in most cases, the radicalization happens in our prisons, in our neighborhoods," Gentiloni said.

Italy's top anti-terrorism prosecutor, Franco Roberti, told La Repubblica that Amri "found the convictions of his radicalization path" in prison, "in desperation, isolation and marginalization.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Inland Waterways Authority of India has awarded the Rs 517 crore contract to construct multi-modal terminal at Haldia, West Bengal, to ITD Cementation Ltd.

Six bids were received from major infrastructure companies. Following a rigorous evaluation process, ITD Cementation Limited was awarded the contract, a press statement said.

To be completed by August, 2019, Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) expects 7.95 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of cargo traffic at the Haldia terminal by 2020, the statement added.

The cargo projection for 2025 is 15.59 MTPA, growing up to 24.04 MTPA in 2045. Given its location, the terminal will be used to transport coal, fly ash, chemicals, petroleum & gas, construction materials, fertilizers and edible items.

"The Rs 517-crore inland water transport terminal at Haldia, with rail and road interconnectivity, is one of the three multi-modal terminals to come up on river Ganga under the Jal Marg Vikas Project (JMVP) of IWAI. This is in line with IWAI's commitment for a time-bound completion of work on NW-1," IWAI chairman Amitabh Verma said in the statement.

The contract for multi-modal terminals at Varanasi (Rs 170 crore) in Uttar Pradesh and Sahibganj (Rs 280 crore) in Jharkhand. Were awarded earlier this year and construction works have started at both the locations.

In November, IWAI awarded Rs 359 cr contract for construction of a modern navigation lock at Farakka in West Bengal.

The Haldia terminal will be spread across 61 acres at the Haldia Dock Complex and will have facilities including berthing space for four vessels, stockyard for storing, belt conveyor system with fixed hoppers, barge loader, shore protection works, roads, ramps and parking area, and other terminal buildings.

The Government is developing the National Waterway-1 under the Jal Marg Vikas Project, with technical and financial assistance of the World Bank at an estimated cost of Rs 5,369 crore. The project would enable commercial navigation of vessels with capacity of 1500-2,000 tonnes.

Phase-I of the project covers the Haldia-Varanasi stretch.

The project includes development of fairway, three multi-modal terminals - at Varanasi, Haldia, and Sahibganj, strengthening of river navigation system, conservancy works, modern River Information System, Digital Global Positioning System, night navigation facilities, modern methods of channel marking, construction of a new navigation lock at Farakka.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Japan's defence minister went to a controversial war shrine in Tokyo today, media reports said, the day after accompanying Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a highly symbolic visit to Pearl Harbor.

The shrine honours millions of mostly Japanese war dead and has been criticised by countries such as China and South Korea which suffered under Japan's colonialism and aggression in the first half of the 20th century.

Tomomi Inada, Abe's hawkish new defence chief, visited Yasukuni for the first time since taking the key cabinet post in August, according to national broadcaster NHK, the Asahi Shimbun and Jiji Press.

The timing of the visit is likely to prove highly contentious coming so soon after Abe's pilgrimage with President Barack Obama to the site of Japan's December 7, 1941 attack on a US navy base in Hawaii that drew the US into World War II.

Defence ministry officials could not be reached for immediate comment.

Abe and Obama paid homage to the more than 2,400 Americans killed in Japan's surprise attack against the major US naval base 75 years ago.

They offered flowers and stood in silence before a memorial to those lost on the USS Arizona -- roughly half of all those killed in the assault.

The pair issued declarations about the power of reconciliation and warned against fomenting conflict.

Abe, a staunch conservative who has called for strengthening Japan's military, has himself avoided visiting Yasukuni in an apparent attempt to prevent controversy after going there three years ago to celebrate his first anniversary since being elected prime minister.

His trip there sparked fury in Beijing and Seoul and earned a diplomatic rebuke from close ally the United States, which said it was "disappointed" by the action.

He has stayed away after that, but Japanese conservatives have called on him to visit the shrine again.

Dozens of conservative lawmakers visit the shrine on the anniversary marking Japan's surrender in World War II. Cabinet members also often journey to the leafy religious site during its spring and autumn festivals.

Yesterday, Masahiro Imamura, the minister in charge of the reconstruction of northern Japan after the massive 2011 tsunami, went to Yasukuni hours after Abe paid tribute in Hawaii.

Imamura claimed his visit had "nothing to do with" Abe's trip, saying he wished to express gratitude and prayed for Japan's peace and prosperity.

Japanese media quoted him as saying the timing of his visit to the shrine was "a coincidence".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An army soldier was injured in firing along the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district.

"One jawan suffered injuries in firing along the LoC in Poonch district today. He has been hospitalised," an army officer said.

Army is probing whether the jawan was injured in sniper firing from across the LoC or speculative firing.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a unusual move, US Secretary of State John Kerry has criticised Israel's decision to build new settlements in Palestine, saying the Jewish state is currently ruled by "the most right-wing" government in its history which believes in one state solution, prompting an angry reaction from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In his hour-long major policy speech, which raised many eyebrows in both Israel and in the incoming Trump administration, Kerry said the US supports a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine conflict and believes it is the only way to achieve a "just and lasting" peace in the region.

"This is an issue which all of you know I have worked on intensively during my time as Secretary of State, for one simple reason, because the two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It is the only way to ensure Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state, living in peace and security with its neighbors," Kerry said yesterday.

"It is the only way to ensure a future of freedom and dignity for the Palestinian people, and it is an important way of advancing US interests in the region," Kerry said.

He said the US' decision to abstain from an anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution helped preserve the two-state solution.

"If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both, and it won't ever really be at peace," Kerry said



He said though Netanyahu says he believes in the two-state solution, the government he leads is "the most right-wing in Israel's history."



"The settler agenda is defining the future of Israel. And their stated purpose is clear: They believe in one state," Kerry said.

Netanyahu was quick in slamming Kerry for putting Israel and Palestine in the same basket.

"We are now celebrating Christmas. Maybe Secretary of State John Kerry didn't see that Israel is the only place in the Middle East where Christians can celebrate Christmas in security, and peace and happiness," he said in Jerusalem.

"Unfortunately, this doesn't interest the president of the United States. He makes a biased comparison between building houses in the east of Jerusalem and terror that kills innocents, and after that he talks only about Israel and only merely condemns terror," he said.

Noting that he was surprised by Kerry's speech at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department, Netanyahu said the conflict was not about houses or communities in the West Bank, Judaea, Samaria, the Gaza district or anywhere else, but about Israel's very right to exist.

"The persistent Palestinian refusal to recognise the Jewish state remains the core of the conflict, and its removal is the key to peace. Palestinian rejection of Israel and support for terror are what the nations of the world should focus on if they truly want to advance peace, and I can only express my regret and say that it's a shame that Secretary Kerry does not see this simple truth," Netanyahu said.

Kerry said in his speech that some seem to believe that



the US friendship means that America must accept any policy, regardless of its own interests, own positions, own words, own principles, even after urging again and again that the policy must change.

"Friends need to tell each other the hard truths, and friendships require mutual respect," he said.

Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations, who does not support a two-state solution, said after the vote last week it was to be expected that Israel's "greatest ally would act in accordance with the values that we share, and veto this resolution."



"I am compelled to respond today that the United States did, in fact, vote in accordance with our values, just as previous US administrations have done at the Security Council before us," Kerry said.

"They fail to recognise that this friend, the US, that has done more to support Israel than any other country, this friend that has blocked countless efforts to delegitimise Israel, cannot be true to our own values or even the stated democratic values of Israel. And we cannot properly defend and protect Israel if we allow a viable two-state solution to be destroyed before our own eyes. And that's the bottom line," he asserted.

Kerry said the vote in the UN was about preserving the two-state solution and that is "what we were standing up for".

Later, US president-elect Donald Trump said Israel had been treated very unfairly.

"I'm very very strong on Israel. I think that Israel has been treated very very unfairly by a lot of different people," he said.

"If you look at resolutions in the United Nation, they are up for 20 reprimands and other nations that are horrible places, horrible places that treat people horribly haven't even been reprimanded. So there is something going on and I think it is very unfair to Israel," Trump told reporters.

In his remarks, Kerry said it is up to Israelis and Palestinians to make the difficult choices for peace and the US can provide help.

"For the sake of future generations of Israelis and Palestinians, for all the people of the region, for the United States, for all those around the world who have prayed for and worked for peace for generations, let's hope that we are all prepared, and particularly Israelis and Palestinians, to make those choices now," he said.
: The Union Territory of Lakshadweep is gearing up to break its geographical isolation from the mainland and boost itself as a sought-after brand in the global market.

The territorial administration has drawn up an ambitious plan to market its exotic products, ranging from rare traditional delicacies to tourism products, via branding, Lakshadweep administrator, Farooq Khan told reporters here on the sidelines of the valedictory of the two-day National Municoy Festival late last evening.

He noted that the extensive branding would not only help boost the tourism prospects of the islands, but also get good outside markets for its less-expensive but quality rich products made by local islanders.

Besides tourism, the islands have immense potential in fishing also, which has not been exploited at all because of the distance involved and logical shortcomings, Khan said.

If the present plan is implemented well, the pure virgin coconut oil made by locals, the 'mass,' an exclusive dried tuna delicacy, and organic coconut besides various tourism products of the island will get global demand, he added.

"We are planning a branding of Lakshadweep and are in the process of engaging some real professionals in the field of brand projection for Lakshadweep," he said.

"Brand projection will help us not only in tourism, but also in marketing these products, which we would like to present as premium products," he added.

He said the picturesque Lakshadweep islands in the Arabian sea, may be the only islands of this country which has been kept free from all kinds of chemical fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides.

"Our land has not been affected by any chemical pollutants.

Here, we generally have organic fruit in the shape of coconuts. Its pure virgin oil, which is made here, and it also can be exported in huge quantities," he said.

People here don't use chemical poisons to kill rats which harm their coconut products, he said adding better marketing of organic products would fetch three times the price than ordinary ones.

Detailing the branding project, Khan, a former IPS



officer said, the market for these products was very limited in the islands, and the administration was keen to introduce and propagate these stuffs through social media and visual and print medias in all possible manner.

"What we require is a proper action plan for exploiting it as well as introducing it to the public," he said.

In main land India, many are unaware of the existence of Lakshadweep. So, how do they know about the organic products of Lakshadweep? he asked.

To tap the potential of tuna, the most lavishly available edible fish variety in Lakshadweep waters, Khan said the administration has already submitted a proposal to buy or arrange a mother ship on their own to help enhance tuna catch by local fisherfolk.

"We can supply catch about one lakh plus ton of tuna and other good varieties of fish from these waters ever year without affecting the ecological balance of the sea," he said.

As poor connectivity and geographical isolation is the main issues faced by the islands, the administration is planning to introduce seaplane facility in the archepalago.

"We are in the process of examining the possibility of having a seaplane operational.

So that, it would be a great advantage to the tourists as well as the people of our island for being transported from the one island to another," he said.

As those would be mostly privately operated, cost would be slightly high, he said while dismissing fears that seaplanes could harm the environment.

The administrator further said that they are in the process of going head-on with their own prospective plan for a shipping fleet.

"It has already been approved in principle by the government of India. And shortly, the orders for building these required ships would be placed," he said.

However, Khan said he was against the concept of building more small airports to improve air connectivity.

On tourism front, which is the major revenue earner of the archepalago, the administrator said his focus is on 'high-end low volume' tourism.

"The islands can take only a limited load.

And presently, we are in the process of preparing a report through professional agencies which would be decided the carrying capacity of the place," he said.

Tourism director Jitin Goyal and Kashmur tourism minister Priya Sethi, who was the chief guest during the concluding ceremony of Minicoy festivsl, were also present.
: The Lakshadweep islands will soon become a 100 per cent cashless society as part of the Centre's Digital India initiative, the Union Territory Administrator Farooq Khan said here.

He also said, steps are underway to achieve this goal and they are hopeful of reaching it soon.

"Because of communication problems, we have certain issues. But the government of India is attending to those issues," he told reporters here on the sidelines of the valedictory of two-day national Minicoy festival last evening.

"Very soon all the shops in the islands would have digital money transaction facilities.

Other mechanisms like USST are also being ensured now," he said.

Our UT will soon become a 100 per cent cashless society, he added.

On the impact of demonetisation, he said the move had caused no difficulties to the islands and had not triggered any panic among the locals.

"Our officers were upto the task of taking the challenge head on.

They were able to manage the situation in a manner that there were no long queues seen before ATMs... Banks functioned absolutely normally.. And no point of any shortage of money was reported from any side," the administrator said.

Senior central government observers were also here to monitor the situation.

"We have ensured that people keep on getting what they are legally authorised to get from the banks," Khan said.

"By and large, we had an absolute smooth transition after demonetisation," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Maharashtra government will implement the Supreme Court's verdict of December 15 that directed all the states to shut down all liquor shops and vends on national and state highways.

State Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar cited the rising number of deaths in road accidents in the state while stating that the liquor shops on state and national highways will be closed.

"Maximum number of deaths due to road accidents were due to drunken driving. The SC verdict effectively means that 12,967 liquor shops in the state that fall within the 500 meter radius will have to shut down after March 31, 2017," he told reporters here.

Asked about the contention of the liquor lobby about revenue loss, Mungantiwar said, "anyway they are not in the business of selling holy water."



The minister also said that the Maharashtra government was prepared to incur the loss in its revenue and will implement the order of the apex court.

"Out of the total 16,856 deaths in 2015-16, 13,212 deaths were road accident deaths and again out of that maximum of them were due to drunken driving," Mungantiwar claimed.

Meanwhile, officials said due to demonetisation, the department anticipates a 4.88 per cent decline in revenue between December 1 to 20.

As per State Excise departments data, the department had fixed the revenue income out of liquor for 2016 at Rs 15,343.96 crore.

The department had posted a revenue income of Rs 1,024.57 crore in November 2015, whereas the revenue income in November this year was Rs 1,027.35 crore, a rise of 0.27 per cent, shows the data.

As per the data, between December 1 to December 20,



2015, the department posted a revenue income of Rs 670.25 crore, while the revenue for the same corresponding period this December stands at Rs 637.57 crore, a deficit of 4.88 per cent.

Out of the total 12,967 liquor shops that will face closure after March 31, 2017, Pune district has maximum of 3,932 establishments, officials said.

Of these 2,499 are in Nagpur, 2,225 in Kolhapur, , 2,224 in Aurangabad, 1,480 in Konkan region and 1,347 in Nashik district, they said.

There are a total of 24,572 country liquor, wine shops, permit rooms, clubs, beer shops, beer and wine serving outlets in the state, said officials.

According to them, the government has also directed its Superintendents of State Excise not to approve One Day temporary licenses (FL-4) to clubs that come within the radius of 500 meters from the boundaries of national, state highways and service roads.
A case of cheating and forgery has been registered after a man alleged that his name figures as witness in documents used to open nine accounts in a cooperative bank in Daryaganj, without his knowledge, after demonetisation was declared, police said today.

Vinay Jain, who is mentioned as a bank member in the FIR, had on December 26 complained to DCP(central) Mandeep Singh Randhawa that his name has been used as a witness to open nine accounts at Jain Cooperative Bank in Daryaganj without his knowledge, they said.

Around Rs 9 lakh, in demonetised notes, were deposited in these accounts and close to Rs 2 lakh was withdrawn, a police officer said.

A case under sections 420(cheating), 471(forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 120B (punishment of criminal conspiracy) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of IPC has been registered and probe has been initiated in the matter, police said.

A notice has been sent to the bank to share documents which were submitted to open these accounts. Bank officials who had helped in opening these accounts have also been served notices to join the probe, a senior police officer said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 24-year-old man from Bengaluru has been arrested in connection with the brutal murder of a young woman IT professional here last week with police claiming unrequited love was the reason behind the crime.

Another youth, who police suspect was roped in by the accused to carry out the crime, is also being questioned.

Pune police said Santosh Kumar Gupta meticulously planned the killing of Antara Das, who was working with an IT major here. He was detained earlier after the deceased woman's parents expressed suspicion that he might be stalking her and was arrested last night on charges of murder and conspiracy.

Gupta originally hails from Ara district in Bihar.

Das was attacked with a sharp weapon near Kanbay Chowk in Talawade on the city outskirts on Friday night, barely 500 metres from her workplace. She was declared dead upon arrival in a hospital.

The alleged role of another youth, believed to be Gupta's friend, is emerging in the murder as the police suspect he was tasked to keep an eye on Antara by Gupta who wanted to be sure that there is no other person in her life.

Gupta, accused of conspiracy, was produced before a local court, which remanded him in police custody till January 4.

"During investigation, it was revealed that Santosh Kumar Gupta had very smartly planned the murder. The accused claimed that he was present in Bengaluru on the day of the incident," Additional Superintendent of Police Rajkumar Shinde said.

Police said Gupta met Antara in Bengaluru and after she shifted to Pune, he started harassing her by sending messages. Gupta was forcing her to enter a relationship with him.

As Antara blocked his number, he started calling her from other phones and kept on harassing her.

"There are messages between them which showed that Kumar was forcing her to have a relationship with him. However, she was non-responsive and even reprimanded him for harassing her," Shinde said.

While seeking Gupta's remand, the prosecution said the police are yet to ascertain who killed Antara and that sim cards and mobile phones used by the accused in hatching the plot are yet to be recovered.

"Since Antara was rejecting his proposal and even reprimanded him for harassing her and even complained to her parents, Gupta had asked his friend, who too was known to Antara, to keep a watch on her movement to see whether there was any other person in her life," Shinde said.

Police said Gupta's 'friend', who was keeping an aye on



Antara, later started stalking and harassing her, following which she complained to Gupta who told her to ignore it.

A senior officer said another youth's mobile tower location shows that he was in the vicinity of the crime spot on the day of the incident.

"The mobile tower location of the another person shows that he was in the vicinity of the crime spot on the day of the incident," he said, adding police are interrogating him as a suspect.

He said when Antara came to Pune in April, Gupta introduced her to his friend who later started monitoring her movements on the instructions of Gupta.

"Gupta, who too works in an IT firm in Bengaluru later started harassing her and expressed to take the relation to the next level. However, Antara remained non-responsive and told him that they are only friends," the officer said.

Police said Gupta had helped the techie in Bengaluru and Pune when she was looking for accommodation.

"However, she later started blocking Gupta's calls and even blocked him on the social media. She even complained to his sister and parents that Gupta was harassing her," said the officer.

He said the last conversation between Gupta and Antara took place on November 21.

Meanwhile, Gupta has denied his role in the murder and told police he had no reason to do so as he was in love with Antara.

"When our team had reached Bengaluru, Gupta provided the CCTV footage claiming he was in Bengaluru on the day of the incident," he said, adding Gupta was arrested on the basis of digital and technical evidence.
Former Prime Minister will release the assembly election manifesto of Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC).

Though the manifesto release date is yet to be finalised, agreed to launch the document, defining the party's blueprint for governance in Punjab, at a meeting with AICC in-charge of Punjab affairs Asha Kumari and PPCC chief Amarinder Singh here.

Singh along with Asha discussed with Singh the key points in the manifesto, which will now be given final shape by the PPCC manifesto committee led by former Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal.

Talking to media persons later, Asha said it had been decided by the party to take Singh's views on the manifesto draft before releasing it in view of his expertise on economic issues.

"Congress does not believe in taking arbitrary decisions, without understanding the nuances of the subject, and felt it was important to involve Singh in the finalisation of the manifesto, given its impact on the people of Punjab, she said.

She said the Congress functioned in contrast to that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was yet to disclose whom he had consulted on demonetisation, despite Rahul Gandhi's repeated queries on the issue.

Amarinder said Singh gave his valuable inputs on the manifesto - a comprehensive document addressing issues relating to every section of Punjab's society.

Pointing out that the Badal government had plunged the people of Punjab into a state of despair with its "ill-conceived and anti-people" policies, Amarinder said Congress manifesto was designed to bring the state back on the track of growth and progress.

The manifesto, he said, seeks to give concrete shape to the promises he had made to the people of Punjab, and which he is totally committed to realise.

The PPCC president disclosed that the manifesto would be simultaneously released in key cities of Punjab to coincide with its release in New Delhi by Singh to ensure that it is disseminated across the state, reaching out to the maximum number of people.
Authorities say a sheriff's deputy was shot and critically wounded and another man also was shot in an exchange of gunfire at a home on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Queen Anne's County sheriff's office spokesman Lt Dale Patrick said in a statement that deputies were initially called to a domestic disturbance at a Chestertown home Wednesday night.

After midnight, the woman involved in that incident showed up at the sheriff's department's headquarters.

When Deputy 1st Class Warren Hogan escorted her home to collect some belongings, Patrick says a man fired at Hogan, who returned fire. Patrick says both were struck.

Patrick says Hogan was flown to Shock Trauma in Baltimore, where he is in critical condition after surgery.

There was no immediately information on the man's condition. Patrick says Hogan is white and the man is black.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Union Home Ministry has conveyed to the Election Commission that it is ready to provide 85,000 paramilitary personnel for deployment in the upcoming assembly elections in five states, including politically crucial Uttar Pradesh.

This was conveyed to the Election Commission after it asked the Home Ministry to make available one lakh personnel for deployment during the assembly elections expected to be held in next two months.

At a high-level meeting held today, the Home Ministry has expressed its inability to provide 1,000 companies of paramilitary forces as sought by the Election Commission but committed to provide 850 companies for the polls, official sources said.

A company of paramilitary force comprised of around 100 personnel.

In addition to the Central forces, police forces of all states will be deployed for the election duties.

The Home Ministry will now accumulate 150 companies, most of which are belonging to State Armed Police forces and India Reserve Battalions, from different states for election duties.

Rest of the forces will be from central paramilitary forces, sources said.

Assembly elections in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur are expected to be held in single phase while in Uttar Pradesh it is likely to be multi-phased.

The schedule for the polls is likely to be announced by the EC within a week.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Five9 Emphasizes Importance of Customer Experience at ITEXPO

In todays competitive landscape, providing a great customer experience is more important than ever. With countless companies offering the same products within every single industry, theres really only one way to make your company stand out from the competition: fantastic customer service.

Thankfully, providing the best customer service around has become much easier than it was in the past. Solutions exist today that allow companies to multitask and find the right answers to customers questions in a timely manner.

One company working to help businesses in this endeavor is Five9. Five9 is a cloud contact center software provider that wants to transform contact centers into customer engagement centers of excellence. To do this, Five9 helps contact centers of all sizes create powerful customer connections.

Luckily for those interested in learning more about how cloud contact center software can help improve the overall customer experience, Five9 will be at ITEXPO this coming February. In fact, the companys chief marketing officer, Kevin Gavin, will be taking part in two panel discussions. The first panel, titled Customer Service, Evolved Part I will be held Friday, February 10, at 10 a.m. Meanwhile, Part II will take place at 10:30 a.m. that same day.

February is still a couple months away, so we decided to catch up with Kevin Gavin beforehand to discuss the customer experience and the importance of collaboration in the workplace. Our full exchange can be read below.

How have technology changes over the past 12 months helped businesses grow?

One of the ways that technology has helped businesses grow is that they now have the ability to use the latest customer interaction tools to improve customer service, which improves customer retention and helps build a positive brand. These tools help companies understand their customers needs and ensure a positive experience during every customer interaction. In addition, analytics provide insights that allow businesses to offer services more proactively, and ultimately leave customers more satisfied. For example, with access to purchase and support history, customer service agents have the data to determine the best way to retain customers and grow the business overall.

What does the term Collaboration mean to your business?

In the customer service industry, one form of collaboration involves multiple teams working together to best serve the customer. If a customer has a certain problem that one particular department or individual is best able to address, the team collaborates by routing the issue to the subject matter expert in order for the customer to have the best experience possible. Five9 knows its important to enable our contact center customers with the right technology and tools to allow them to collaborate internally and ensure happy customers. Another form of collaboration is directly between the customer service agent and the customer. In the past, this interaction usually involved just a voice phone call, but increasingly businesses are collaborating with customers using multiple channels. For example, an interaction might start with a text chat on a website then escalate to a voice call and then it might be helpful to add video or desktop share to make the collaboration more effective.

Are you using messaging technologies to communicate with your customers? How, or why not?

Definitely. Consumers today are becoming more mobile and modern. They often do not want to wait in long hold queues to speak with a representative, so they are turning to website, in-app, and mobile text messaging services. The same goes for business customers. We provide our contact center customers an omnichannel capability that includes messaging as a key component in order to make communication as easy as possible using the channel that the consumer prefers.

How can artificial intelligence best be used in business applications?

Customer service is an area where artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a key role. Customer interactions are becoming increasingly complex, and artificial intelligence and customer journey analytics are now enhancing the customer service process to deliver better customer experiences. Machines are learning patterns and helping businesses provide more personalized and proactive service to customers. Its also providing agents the information that they need to resolve customer issues quickly. Another area where artificial intelligence is providing value is enabling customer self-service. By leveraging a knowledge base and natural language processing, businesses are able to help customers get answers to basic questions in a simple and convenient way. But, even as AI becomes more capable in customer service, one thing will always remain true  human interactions will still be critical when dealing with complex situations because in customer service empathy is important. This makes it critical to be able to maintain context when an interaction needs to escalate from self-service to a live agent, so the agent can see the history of the interaction and not ask the customer to start from the beginning and repeat what has already been exchanged in the self-service interaction.

To what extent are you leveraging APIs to enhance business opportunities?

Five9 has always been a cloud based provider so it was one of the first to introduce a set of Cloud APIs that use web services to enable advanced software integrations. Whether its connecting to marketing, billing, ERP or even proprietary systems, Five9 can integrate into customers current processes, often without any custom coding.

To what extent are you using cloud services in your daily business processes?

Five9 is a 100 percent cloud-based contact center provider and we are also cloud-operated company, leveraging cloud SaaS solutions in our daily business processes as much as possible.

Is the cloud / MSP model a realistic one for reliable IT security?

In the contact center category, there was early resistance to moving to the cloud due to concerns about security and reliability. The reality is that a well-managed cloud solution is more secure and reliable because the cloud provider is able to invest more resources and expertise in security and reliability than most individual businesses are able to for their on-premise solutions. Now we are seeing more businesses move to the cloud because they know it is more secure and reliable than their on-premise solution.

How has your business product development evolved over the past year as a result of emerging technologies?

Five9 has consistently been on the leading edge of cloud product development leveraging a micro-services based web architecture that supports rapid innovation and great reliability. Recent examples of innovative product development include introducing customer journey analytics allowing our contact center customers to provide proactive and personalized customer service and also supporting a true omnichannel customer interaction model.

What is your session at ITEXPO about and who should plan on attending? Why should this be a must-attend session for the week?

I will be a panelist on Customer Service: Evolved, taking place Friday, 2/10 at 10 a.m. If you are interested in learning about how modern businesses are using their contact center to enhance their customers experiences, you should attend to hear insights on customer service trends, suggestions for updating customer service best practices and how businesses can take advantage of, and benefit from, the emergence of the latest advances in cloud contact center solutions.

What are you most looking forward to at ITEXPO 2017?

ITEXPO is always a great venue to get exposed to new technology and also to meet with business leaders who are on the cutting edge of innovation. I am looking forward to learning about the latest advances that Five9 can leverage to help drive enhanced customer experience and Im also looking forward to meeting customers and prospects that are interested in talking about how to improve their contact centers with true omnichannel capability to enhance the service experience they provide to their customers.

Anyone interested in hearing more of Gavins insights should REGISTER for ITEXPO, which is being held February 8-10 in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

Edited by Maurice Nagle
The ordinance on demonetised currency does not propose a jail term for those holding more than 10 junked notes, but imposes a minimum fine of Rs 10,000.

The draft ordinance, which will be sent to President Pranab Mukherjee for his assent, will come into force from December 31.

There was a proposal for prescribing a four-year jail term, but the draft ordinance does not contain any such provision.

Those keeping the junked notes for "study, research or numismatics" purposes would be exempt from penalty provided they hold not more than 25 number of such notes irrespective of the denomination.

Besides, people authorised by RBI or its agencies or those holding junked notes under directions of a court would also not be penalised, as per Section 5 of the draft ordinance.

It provides for making holding of old 1,000 and 500 rupee notes after March 31 a criminal offence that will attract a fine of Rs 10,000 or five times the cash held, whichever is higher.

According to Section 6 of the 'Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Ordinance, 2016', whoever knowingly and wilfully makes any false declarations regarding junked notes would be liable for a fine "which may extend to Rs 50,000 or five times the amount of the face value of specified bank notes tendered, whichever is higher".

The ordinance also provides for amending the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act, 1934 to provide legislative support for extinguishing the central bank and government's liability on the demonetised banknotes that are not returned.

While the deadline for the deposit of old currency in bank or post office accounts expires on Friday, there is time till March 31 for depositing them at select RBI counters with stiff conditions.

Sources said a proposal for a four-year jail term for anyone possessing large number of demonetised currency after March 31, 2017 was not approved by the Cabinet.

As per the draft ordinance, citizens who were abroad between November 9 and December 30 are entitled to deposit the junked notes till March 31 with RBI.

The government would also bring out a separate notification for "such class of persons and for such reasons as may be specified" to ensure that people are not harassed and those with genuine reasons can deposit the cancelled notes.

At the time of announcing demonetisation of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8, the government had allowed holders to either exchange them or deposit in bank and post office accounts.

According to the government, the main reason for bringing out the ordinance is to "have clarity and finality to the liabilities of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the central government" arising from the demonetisation of high value currency notes.

In case of companies found holding more than 10 junked



notes, action would be taken against the officials concerned.

Proceedings could be initiated against "any director, manager, secretary, or other officer or employee" of the particular company.

The ordinance also provides safeguard for the government and the central bank from facing any legal proceedings.

"No suit, prosecution or other legal proceeding shall lie against government, RBI or any of their officers for anything or intended to be done in good faith under this ordinance," it noted.

In 1978, a similar Ordinance was issued to end the government's liability after Rs 1,000, Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 notes were demonetised by the Morarji Desai-led government.

Sources said the legal amendments are needed every time the government decides to scrap any legal tender to put an end to its promissory note.

Of the Rs 15.4 lakh crore worth of currency that was scrapped, about Rs 14 lakh crore has been deposited in banks or exchanged.
A minor mix-up occurred causing embarrassment to dignitaries during the inauguration of the 77th session of Indian History Congressby President Pranab Mukherjee at the Kerala University campus here today.

After the national anthem and presentation of memento to the President, IHC secretary Ishrat Alam, who was compering the event, invited state Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala for his speech without the customary welcome speech.

As Chennithala began his address, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan spotted the mistake and pointed out to the Secretary to correct it.

Then the official requested Chennithala that he should discontinue his speech and called University Vice-Chancellor P K Radhakrishan to deliver the welcome address.

When Chennithala began his speech again, he said he got "an unique opportunity to address the gathering for a second time."



Later Alam said it was a mistake and "to err is human."



Governor P Sathasivam, State Ministers C Raveendranath and Kadakampally Surendran and Indian History Congress President Shireen Moosvi were among those present on the dais.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A court today permitted the police to take prominent businessman Mahimananda Mishra, arrested in connection with a murder case, on remand from January 1 to 4 in view of his health condition.

Judicial magistrate first class, Jagatsinghpur district, Digvijay Das at Kujang gave this permission after the four-day remand period, which was to begin today, was earlier put on hold because of the ill health of Mishra, Managing Director of Odisha Stevedores Limited (OSL).

Mishra and his close aide Basant Bal, both accused in the murder of a shipping company official Mahendra Swain on October 26, had been shifted from jail to Jagatsinghpur district headquarters hospital on December 27 after they complained of chest pain.

While Bal was later shifted to the SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack, Mishra was yesterday taken back to jail as his condition improved. The court had ordered police remand for both after rejecting their bail pleas on December 27.

The two, who had earlier escaped to Thailand via Kathmandu, were brought to Bhubaneswar on December 26 night and taken to Paradip.

With the arrest of Mishra and Bal, the number of persons arrested in the murder case has risen to nine. Earlier, seven persons had been arrested in connection with Swain's murder.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Signing of long-pending deals including one for Rafale fighters, a logistics agreement with the US, new blacklisting and defence procurement policies besides induction of indigenous nuclear submarine were some of the achievements of the defence ministry in 2016, which was a mixed year for the armed forces.

The high point for the military was the daring surgical strike carried out by the special forces on terror launch pads across the LoC it lost a number of soldiers during the year.

Jammu and Kashmir alone saw over 80 security personnel being killed while countering Pakistan's proxy war. The army managed to eliminate about 160 militants in the state including the poster boy of militancy Burhan Wani.

Many security personnel were also killed fighting armed insurgency. Deadly attacks on the Pathankot air base, and army camps in Uri and Nagrota were a setback that led to the loss of several lives.

The armed forces also had a mixed year when it came to administration and compensation issues.

While the government drastically increased the ex-gratia for the armed forces, the 7th Pay Commission recommendations and a controversial letter on parity with their civilian counterparts for administrative duties left a bad taste.

The decision of the government to bypass the long-followed principle of seniority when it came to selecting an army also led to lot of heartburns in the military especially the Armoured Corps.

But one thing that the armed forces seemed to be most happy with was Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's push for modernisation.

Even as the government brought in a new defence procurement policy emphasising on 'Make in India' and a blacklisting policy offering a mixture of heavy fines and graded punishment rather than blanket blacklisting, the Ministry moved fast on procurements.

A lot many deals pending for years were cleared by the Defence Ministry besides giving nod to many other proposals.

The biggest deal to be struck during 2016 was the one for 36 Rafale fighter jets for 7.8 billion Euros.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Punjab BJP chief Vijay Sampla today launched 'Vijay Sankalp Yatra' here signalling the beginning of his party's poll campaign in the state and said the Modi government is fighting for "economic freedom" of the country, but Congress is nurturing "British culture".

"Congress bred and nurtured British culture in the country. While BJP is working to transform the nation into a 'Soney Ki Chidia' (golden bird), the 'English' Congress is trying hard to convert the country into 'Sonia (Gandhi) Ki Chidia'," he claimed.

He also accused AAP of "betraying" the people of Delhi and claimed that voters of Punjab won't fall into his "trap".

After paying tributes to freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev at Martyr's Memorial here, Sampla, while addressing a gathering of party workers, said, "Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi the country is fighting for economic freedom."



"The bane of corruption, unemployment, poverty and black money has been brought upon the nation by Congress and Punjab has always been given step-motherly treatment," Sampla alleged, adding, "The party pushed Punjab into the black days of terrorism and subjected its water and farmers to loot."



Hitting out at state Congress chief Amarinder Singh, the BJP leader said, "He has no time to meet the people of his state but does have ample time to meet his friends across the border."



Sampla also accused AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal of betraying the people of Delhi, and said, Punjab's voters won't fall into his "trap".

From the Martyr's memorial here, the 'Vijay Sankalp Yatra', on its first day, proceeded towards Ferozepur with a cavalcade of motorcycles and cars rode by party workers and supporters.

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Love and desperation drove Hamid Ansari to illegally cross over to Pakistan from Afghanistan in late 2012 leading to his arrest and subsequent imprisonment.

Four years later, the desperation to hear a word from their son has prompted Hamid's parents -- Fauzia Ansari and Nehal Ansari -- to pitch a tent in the city's protest hotspot, Jantar Mantar, and knock on the prime minister's door.

"The last time I spoke to him was on November 10, 2012 when he told me that he will be back in Mumbai by November 12 and was looking forward to take up a teaching assignment," Fauzia said.

Little did she know that, "egged on by a group of people in Pakistan who may have trapped him," Hamid's false bravado would plunge the family in a state of despair, with virtually no glimmer of hope.

During this period, Fauzia has written to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, met Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj five times, so much so that "she recognises me even from a distance".

"Allow Hamid to talk to us from prison. We have not spoken to him for over four years now. Please allow him consular access denied to him till date," reads her letter to Sharif.

"Sushmaji has been extremely cooperative. Our last meeting was in August this year. She assured us that the government was pursuing the case," Fauzia said, adding that the family would submit a memorandum to the PMO.

Hamid, 31, had entered Pakistan to reportedly meet a girl he had befriended online, who was being "forcibly married" off to someone by her family, said Fauzia, a lecturer with a Mumbai college.

It was only in January this year that Fauzia and Nehal came to know from Pakistan government's submission in the Peshawar High Court, responding to Habeas Corpus petition that Hamid was in military custody.

He was arrested soon after he entered Pakistan and was tried by a Pakistani military court, which awarded him three years of imprisonment.

"Since he has been in jail since 2012, he has served this sentence already. But there is no clarity about when he will be released. What is intriguing is that a woman Zeenat Shehzadi, who tried to help Hamid, seems to have been targeted by agencies there. She has gone missing," Fauzia said.
Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu today said there was no question of the government trying to influence somebody as he dismissed reports suggesting that India had lobbied with an agency for better ratings.

"There is no question the government trying to influence anybody," Naidu said when he was asked about certain reports to this effect.

The minister, however, added that such ratings are based on the basis of information made available to these agencies.

"What is wrong if any department or ministries has made efforts to provide information available to them?" he asked.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The National Cadet Corps of Kerala can now undergo flight training as two 'Zen Air' microlite aircraft belonging to two Kerala Air squadrons, based at Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi respectively, have recommenced flying after a break of over three years.

Due to maintenance issues of engine overhaul and spares, as well as other administrative reasons, flight training for NCC cadets of Kerala has been a distant dream for over three years now.

"This dream turned into reality yesterday, as four cadets belonging to the two Air squadrons took to the sky from Naval Air Base, INS Garuda, Kochi" a Defence release said here today.

Commanding officers of the two Air Squadrons Wing Commander S K Menon and Wing Commander V Ganesh Narayanan, took the cadets on their maiden air experience in two microlite aircrafts.

The flight was preceded by a solemn prayer ceremony.

The recommencement was attended by CommodoreAnand Balakrishnan, Group Commander, NCC Group Headquarters, Ernakulam as well as dignitaries of Headquarters Southern Naval Command, INS Venduruthy and INS Garuda.

"Recommencement of flying will give a big boost to morale of NCC Cadets and will serve as a catalyst to motivate them to touch the sky with glory, as the IAF motto goes," the release added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A newly-constituted five-member panel will meet here next week to shortlist the names out of the 53 candidates who have applied for the post of Director of AIIMS, a favoured public institution for medical education.

The committee comprises Principal Scientific Adviser to the prime minister, R Chidambaram; Secretary in Department of Health Research Soumya Swaminathan; Director General of Health Services (DGHS) Jagdish Prasad; and Vice Chancellor of Delhi University Yogesh Tyagi.

The meeting of the panel - which has been approved by the Director of Personnel and Training (DoPT) - will be chaired by Health Secretary C K Mishra.

"Secretary (HFW), chairman of the search-cum-selection committee has conveyed his convenience to hold the meeting on January 6 at 11 AM in his chamber at Nirman Bhawan," read a communique sent to Director AIIMS by Rabindra Prasad, Director in the Ministry of Health.

AIIMS administration has received 53 applications, including 35 from candidates outside the institution.

"Members of the new search-cum-selection committee will shortlist a few names, which will then have to be approved by the Institute Body before being sent to the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) headed by the prime minister for final approval," a senior official at AIIMS said.

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) last week had ordered a reconstitution of the search panel based on DoPT guidelines amid allegations of nepotism.

A search-cum-selection panel under the chairmanship of Health Minister J P Nadda was previously constituted to select the new Director of AIIMS.

AIIMS was established as an institution of national importance by an Act of Parliament. The information on the institutes's website says its obejective is to develop patterns and a high standard of teaching in undergraduate and post-graduate medical education in India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Drove to Tampa today. #roadtrip #sky #skyscape #florida #tampa A photo posted by Maria Roy (@airam94564) on Aug 13, 2016 at 5:32pm PDT

It has been particularly tough getting this post generated since I have been in the doldrums most of this year. Yes I've had a few travels that spawned some of my favorite moments of this year.I welcomed 2016 in Bangladesh where I also spent the Holidays with my in-laws. You will remember about the travails of traveling home on this blog post The Christian cemetery in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, offers a peaceful oasis in the bustle of city life. The cemetery was developed mainly for European settlers. I have seen an old grave dated 1700-something. I have previously blogged about this cemetery here . I enjoy coming here to gawk at tombs unusual architecture.Bali in early January was an experience that will linger on in my memory, which is good since I don't have too many photos available presently, which is also the reason why I haven't blogged about it, because the external drive that carried my photos got corrupted. I am still hoping that I can recover the photos.Bali is a foodie paradise. Not only are the food palatable, food is very affordable. However, we couldn't pass up eating at Locavore, post here and shell out a ton of rupiahs for a epicurean adventure. Just look at the how beautiful the plate is.Temples over beaches - four days were not enough to cover it all.Nope this list is not alphabetically arranged, but chronologically arranged. Anyway, we had to go back to Cancun after a brief deliberation period. We were tired, we needed some sand on our toes and salty air and it was clear we had to go back to Cancun.My love affair with this Caribbean jewel continues to grow strong and now that I have discovered Xcaret , I have more reason to go back.Summer in Florida? Are you kidding me? Florida was a post-birthday trip that included some magic moments.moment with my husband.Finally got a taste of butter bear at theAt, our girl talk drew my gal pal and I closer. I heart our friendship.The drive from Orlando to Tampa was special. The puffy clouds and blue skies and warm breeze and chit-chatting with the husband the entire way - all made for a memorable moment.With less than a day to spend in Miami, we opted to rent a car so that we could go see the murals in the Wynwood area. Unfortunately, the day was rainy and the heavy downfall happened while we were driving around the murals. Still one of my favorite moments of the year.An email from our cruise buddies mentioned a steal of a deal (it was)on a Caribbean cruise and would we consider joining them for our biennial cruise? Our last one was in 2014 for the Greek Islands cruise. Including this one we have cruised with them a total of 4 times.. The island is picturesque, the houses are colorful, everything is green and vibrant and the beaches are definitely pretty, but walking around town and exploring the narrow alleys stood out. The town is pretty charming.The Baths National Park and Devi's Bay Trail (Virgin Gordo) are my most favorite moments of this year. Post coming up soon.Another favorite moment was quietly watching the sunset in Tortola, British Virgin Islands.Nassau, Bahamas was a surprise to me. My perception was mostly unfounded and I loved how friendly the people are, how beautiful the island was and the beaches are really pretty, although water was cold when we were there, and how yummy the food was. We enjoyed it so that we were all talking about staying for a few days next time.A leaf peeping tradition continues with a drive to Plumas County while staying in Alpine Meadows. Nothing reenergizes me more than a date with nature.What are my travel goals for 2017? I don't know yet. My wish list includes Lisbon and Utah's big 5 national parks. SKYWATCH is a weekly gathering of sky lovers and sky watchers. Join us.
authorities will deploy dozens of trucks on city streets during New Year's eve celebrations, to boost security in the wake of recent truck attacks in Europe, the police said on Friday.

About 65 sand and sanitation trucks will be placed in "strategic locations" around Times Square, where more than a million people are expected to attend the traditional New Year's Eve ball drop, police Chief of Department Carlos Gomez told a news conference.

An additional hundred or more "blocker" vehicles will be deployed elsewhere throughout the city to prevent vehicles from plowing into the crowd, he added.

"We paid close attention to events in Nice and Berlin, we have enhanced security measures," Gomez said.

The deployment will reinforce the already massive security regime adopted in recent years, including some 7,000 police and anti-terrorist forces in uniform and plain clothes patrolling the areas around Times Square and other planned festivities across the city, he added.

Pedestrians wishing to access Times Square will have to settle for carrying only small bags and passing through at least two security checks, where any objects deemed dangerous -- including alcohol and even umbrellas -- will be prohibited.

In July, a truck driven by a radicalized Tunisian man cut down a crowd gathered in the French city of Nice to mark the national Bastille Day holiday, killing 86 people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Last week, another Tunisian killed 12 people when he smashed a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin. Italian police killed the alleged perpetrator several days later after stopping him for a document check in Milan.
Nigerian police say they have thwarted a plot to bomb a key bridge in the commercial hub of Lagos, arresting the alleged mastermind and seizing a cache of arms and ammunition.

Police arrested Abiodun Amos, the suspected leader of a "militant gang", on November 2 after "painstaking surveillance and monitoring," national police spokesman Don Awunah said in a statement late yesterday.

Authorities suspect the target was the 13-kilometre 3rd Mainland Bridge, which links the swanky business district of Lagos Island with the rest of the sprawling city of some 20 million inhabitants.

The attack would have caused "devastating" damage to Lagos and Nigeria, Awunah said.

The main suspect is an "explosive expert" with skills in assembling large-scale bombs, the police said, adding that they had seized two AK 47 rifles at his hideout in the Ikorodu area of the city.

Information obtained from Amos led police to other plot members and they found two cartons of explosives and 125 detonators in the boot of a car as the alleged conspirators were en route to the bridge.

Police were now trailing fleeing members of the gang, he added.

Lagos, Nigeria's largest and commercial hub, has been on security alert following rumours of militant attacks in recent months.

Recently, the authorities demolished some waterfront communities in a bid to rid the city of criminals using them as hideouts.

Nigeria's oil-producing south has been plagued by renewed rebel attacks on oil pipelines and facilities that have crippled output at a time of global low prices, hammering government revenue.

Nigeria depends on oil for 90 per cent of foreign exchange earnings and 70 per cent of government revenue.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Barack Obama designated two national monuments at sites in Utah and Nevada that have become key flashpoints over use of public land in the US West, marking the administration's latest move to protect environmentally sensitive areas in its final days.

The Bears Ears National Monument in Utah will cover 1.35 million acres in the Four Corners region, the White House said. In a victory for Native American tribes and conservationists, the designation protects land that is considered sacred and is home to an estimated 100,000 archaeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings.

In Nevada, a 300,000-acre Gold Butte National Monument outside Las Vegas would protect a scenic and ecologically fragile area near where rancher Cliven Bundy led in an armed standoff with government agents in 2014. It includes rock art, artifacts, rare fossils and recently discovered tracks.

The White House and conservationists said both sites were at risk of looting and vandalism.

"Today's actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes," Obama said in a statement yesterday.

His administration has rushed to safeguard vulnerable areas ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. It has blocked new mining claims outside Yellowstone National Park and new oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean.

A coalition of tribes pushed for the creation of Utah's eighth national monument, though they asked Obama to make it about 500,000 acres larger than the monument he named yesterday.

Tribal members visit the Bears Ears area to perform ceremonies, collect herbs and wood for medicinal and spiritual purposes, and do healing rituals.

Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye called it an exciting day for his tribe and people of all cultures.

"We have always looked to Bears Ears as a place of refuge, as a place where we can gather herbs and medicinal plants, and a place of prayer and sacredness," Begaye said. "The rocks, the winds, the land they are living, breathing things that deserve timely and lasting protection."



Tucked between existing national parks and the Navajo reservation, the proposed monument features stunning vistas at every turn, with a mix of cliffs, plateaus, towering rock formations, rivers and canyons across wide expanses covered by sagebrush and juniper trees.

No new mining and oil and gas development will be allowed within the monument boundaries, said Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Members of Utah's all-GOP congressional delegation had backed a plan to protect about 1.4 million acres at Bears Ears, while opening up other areas of the state for development.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Oman, which generally stays neutral in the face of regional disputes, has joined a Saudi-led military coalition aimed at "fighting terrorism," official media in Riyadh said today.

The Gulf sultanate, which maintains good ties with rival powerhouses Iran and Saudi Arabia, becomes the 41st nation in the alliance announced last year by the Saudi defence minister, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The official SPA agency said Mohammed received a message from his Omani counterpart praising Saudi efforts in showing "leadership in the Islamic military coalition in fighting terrorism".

Oman is one of the few Arab states not to have joined a Saudi-led military coalition battling rebels in Yemen and has hosted several rounds of talks aimed at ending the conflict raging there since March 2015.

Little information has been provided on the anti-extremist alliance since Riyadh announced its formation in December 2015.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A UK-based Sikh campaign group today said it has launched an appeal to make public the secret files believed to hold details of Britain's alleged involvement in the 1984 Operation Blue Star that killed hundreds of people.

Sikh Federation UK's appeal with the UK's Information Tribunal will be heard in the New Year.

It centres around four files "withheld" during an official UK government inquiry ordered by former prime minister David Cameron into Britain's alleged involvement in the military action on Golden Temple in 1984.

"The first tier tribunal will consider this case in the New Year and it would be inappropriate to comment any further," a UK Cabinet Office spokesperson said.

The files include one titled "UK/Indian relations: situation in Punjab; activities of Sikh extremists; proposed visit to UK by Rajiv Gandhi in June 1985".

The other documents includea Joint Intelligence Committee file on India; one with details of then British PM Margaret Thatcher's meetings with a close adviser of Indira Gandhi; and other papers under "India: Political" related to events around Mrs Gandhi's assassination in October 1984.

Sikh Federation UK, which believes the closed files will shed more light on the extent of Britain's alleged involvement in the military operation in Amritsar, had earlier complained to the UK's Information Commissioner to make these documents public but it was decided to keep the files closed as they were "too sensitive".

The group has now issued an appeal against this decision on the grounds that the Commissioner did not take into account the "thousands of civilian casualties during the Amritsar massacre as a public interest factor in favour of disclosing the information".

It claims the decision to keep the documents secret is "political" rather than security related and that the "public has a right to know what happened 30 years ago".

Bhai Amrik Singh, chair of Sikh Federation UK, said in a statement: "This shows the lengths we are having to go to try and get to the truth and why we believe an independent public inquiry is necessary to get to the information the UK government will continue to withhold.

"We will take legal and other steps in 2017 to get to the truth of UK involvement and the ongoing conspiracy against Sikhs.Working with like-minded Sikhs in Punjab we will expose the role of Akali leaders, the Congress and BJP in the attempted genocide of the Sikhs to simply hold on to power."



In 2014, Cameron had ordered the Heywood Review into the exact nature of British involvement in the operation at Golden Temple in June 1984 after documents released previously under the 30-year declassification rule had implied British SAS commanders had advised the Indian government as it drew up plansfor the removal of militants from the Sikh shrine.

The report concluded that the nature of the UK's assistance was "purely advisory" and provided to the Indian government at an early stage of planning.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Analysing a person's painting strokes may help detect the risk of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, a new study suggests.

Researchers from University of Liverpool in the UK examined 2,092 paintings from the careers of seven famous artists who experienced both normal ageing and neurodegenerative disorders.

Of the seven, two had suffered from Parkinson's disease (Salvador Dali and Norval Morrisseau), two had suffered from Alzheimer's disease (James Brooks and Willem De Kooning) and three had no recorded neurodegenerative disorders (Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet).

The brushstrokes of each of the paintings were analysed using a method of applying non-traditional mathematics to patterns known as 'Fractal' analyses to identify complex geometric patterns.

Fractals are mathematical characterisations of self-repeating patterns often described as the 'fingerprints of nature'.

They can be found in natural phenomena such as clouds, snowflakes, trees, rivers and mountains. This method has also been used to determine the authenticity of major works of art.

Although painters work within a different style or genre, the fractal dimension in which they operate should remain comparable.

The results were examined to see if the variations in an artist's unique 'fractals' in their work over their career were due to them just increasing in age or because of ongoing cognitive deterioration.

The study showed clear patterns of change in the fractal dimension of the paintings differentiated artists who suffered neurological deterioration from those ageing normally.

"Art has long been embraced by psychologists an effective method of improving the quality of life for those persons living with cognitive disorders," said Dr Alex Forsythe from the university's School of Psychology.

"We have built on this tradition by unpicking artists 'handwriting' through the analysis of their individual connection with the brush and paint. This process offers the potential for the detection of emerging neurological problems," said Forsythe.

"We hope that our innovation may open up new research directions that will help to diagnose neurological disease in the early stages," Forsythe added.

The study was published in the journal Neuropsychology.

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The mortal remains of veteran BJP leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Sunderlal Patwa were consigned to flames with full state honours in the presence of a galaxy of BJP leaders including L K Advani at his ancestral place Kukdeshwar in the district today.

Speaking on the occasion, Advani said, "BJP was not formed just like that. In fact it was formed with the sacrifices of leaders like Patwa-ji. We should take a vow to take it to greater heights."



An emotional Advani also spoke about his meeting with the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the latter's residence a day before coming here.

"He (Vajpayee) recognised me, but was unable to speak anything," Advani said.

"When I see Vajpayee and (former Defence Minister) George Fernandes, I feel a lot of anguish that they are unable to get up and speak. The party's credibility in each and every corner of the country is only because of these leaders," he said.

The senior BJP leader said sometimes he feels like writing about the party. However, he did not elaborate.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his Chhattisgarh counterpart Raman Singh were also present.

Union Ministers Uma Bharti, Narendra Singh Tomar, Thawar Chand Gehlot and Faggan Singh Kulaste, senior RSS leaders Suresh Soni, and Madhya Pradesh Public Relations Minister Narottam Mishra, among others, were present.

Patwa's body was brought to Kukdeshwar by a special plane and kept at his ancestral place where a large number of people turned up to pay last respects.

Patwa (92) passed away at Bhopal yesterday after suffering a heart attack.

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A peon of a gram panchayat at K.Nuagaon in Odisha's Ganjam district was hacked to death by miscreants, police said today.

The body was identified as Trinath Patra(58) and it was recovered from a canal at the outskirts of the village, police said.

Trinath along with his son Shankar was sleeping in the panchayat office last night. While Shankar went back home in the morning, his father was sleeping in the panchayat office.

Family members started searching for Patra when he did not return home for a long time and found his body in the canal, police said.

The reason behind thethe murder was yet to be ascertained and efforts are on to identify the killers, said inspector in-charge of K.Nuagaon police station Bhabani Shankar Khuntia.

The police started an investigation. Sniffer dog squad was deployed and forrensic team were deployed when police started an investigation.

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Congress today demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologise to the nation for the "suffering" caused to the people by note-ban when he speaks on New Year's eve and vowed to hold country-wide protests from January 6.

Attacking Modi, who is set to address the nation after end of the 50-day period he had sought from the people to ease their problems due to cash crunch, Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said that the Prime Minister is good at making announcements that are far from reality.

"Even after 50 days of demonetisation step, normalcy has not been restored.

"PM Modi's demonetisation move has turned out to be 'Deshbandi' (lockdowbn of country). Development has come to a standstill. It is a scam and an uncalled move. It has resulted into economic instability in the country. Several people have died due to cash crunch across the country. It is a surgical strike on the country's poor and has caused them immense suffering," Surjewala said at a press conference in Jaipur.

He claimed that note ban has led to 115 deaths in last 50 days, RBI has changed its rules 126 times and it will take eight months to print the equivalent currency notes.

"Starting from January 6, we will continuously hold protests across the country against demonetisation. We demand compensation for aggrieved family members, income and sales tax rebate to traders and common man," he said.

Congress leader Meem Afzal said the Prime Minister "has so far not had a word of sympathy for the victims, forget about an apology".

"But we expect him to apologise when he speaks on the issue at the end of the 50 days he had sought," he told reporters in Srinagar.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to create two crore new jobs every year but only 1.5 lakh jobs have been created in two and half years. After announcing demonetisation last month, at least 10 crore people have been rendered jobless," he claimed.

Afzal claimed as many as 11 crore man-hours were spent every day in queues outside banks and ATMs as people struggled to withdraw their own money.

"Money was taken from people's pockets and put in the banks. 130 crore people of the country were made to queue up for their money. The time people should have spent earning their livelihood was spent in the queues," he said.

He said the Congress party demands an apology from the Prime Minister to the nation for these deaths and also compensation to the next of kin of the victims.

Afzal said the Congress party also demands that 18 per cent interest be paid to the people on the money they have deposited in the banks.

Alleging that some BJP leaders have been caught with stashes of new currency notes, Surjewala demanded a high-level inquiry.

"Ordinary people are standing in bank lines to withdraw money, but a parallel black market flourishes in converting black money into white by charging commission up to 30 per cent commission," he alleged.

Surjewala also said that PM's credibility is under cloud as his named has allegedly surfaced in Birla and Sahara dairies for receiving kickbacks when he was the Gujarat Chief Minister. BJP has rejected these charges, terming them as false, baseless and malafide.

(Reopens DEL-14)



In Jammu, the AICC General Secretary Ambika Soni termed demonetisation the biggest scam aimed at "benefiting big industrialist," and asked Modi how much black money has been recovered after the move.

"It (demonetisation) is the biggest scam, aimed at benefiting few industrialists of the country. As now the government claims that all the old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes have returned to the banks, the Prime Minister should give us an idea of how much black money has been recovered in the process", She told reporters here.

Soni said the country wants to know on whose advice the decision of scrapping the old currency notes was taken.

"The government should answer the five questions that were raised by Rahul Gandhi and let the country know who were the economists the Prime Minister consulted or was it just a dream he got and implemented, inflicting trouble on 125 crore people", she said.

She said the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said demonetisation has affected the country's growth by "over two per cent".

"The Prime Minister should tell how much unemployment it has caused," Soni said.

She said demonetisation has also affected the farming sector as the farmers are not getting seeds in time thus delaying the sowing season.

She claimed the UPA government had signed treaties with over 130 countries to facilitate the exchange of information on financial irregularities. While BJP had only made "false premises" to the people.

"Why did you (BJP) promise to bring the black money in one year and ... Put 15 lakh rupees in everybody's account, we never made such false promise... You fooled the people and now you are playing jokes and games with the economy of the country," she said.

The Congress General Secretary also asked the BJP to come clean on the entries in Birla and Sahara dairies.
Police have arrested a suspect in the random stabbing of a tourist in New York City earlier this month.

Twenty-three-year-old Connor Rasmussen, of Puyallup (pyoo-AL'-up), Washington, was stabbed in the back of the head on December 18.

Police announced the arrest yesterday of 20-year-old Steven Tlapanco on charges of attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

Rasmussen was attacked in the early morning hours, just blocks from popular tourist spots including Rockefeller Center and Grand Central Terminal.

Rasmussen said his assailant stabbed him without saying a word. He required eight stitches.

Police arrested Tlapanco after releasing surveillance photos and video footage from the attack.

It's not clear if Tlapanco has an attorney who can comment on the charges.

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Odisha Police today rubbished as "bogus" the complaint about donations being collected from people to raise funds to meet the legal expenses of arrested alleged al-Qaida operative Abdul Rehman.

Reports in a section of media caused flutter after it was claimed that a complaint was filed by one Sheikh Tahimur Ali of Sahipada village under Salepur police station of the state which alleged that some youths of his community were coercing him to cough up a hefty amount as donation to meet the legal expenses of Rehman.

However, a senior police official confirmed that subsequent probes revealed the complaint was bogus and no such exercise was taking place by anyone for the legal expenses of the alleged al-Qaida operative, who was arrested by the Delhi Police last year from his house here in Madhya Kachha area.

"The investigation so far revealed that Tahimur had some past rivalries with the youth of his village over his marital discord. In order to teach a lesson to the youth, Tahimur came up with the complaint implicating the youths for collecting donations for Rehman," Salepur SDPO P K Jena said tonight.

Jena, however, informed that Salepur police have registered a case based on the complaint of Tahimur.

In his written complaint, Tahimur named five youths and alleged that they had demanded an amount of Rs 50,000 from him as donations to meet the legal expenses of Rehman.

He further said in his complaint that the youths have threatened him and his son of dire consequences, if he did not cough up the money.

Although, no arrests have been made in this connection so far, the police are investigating into the development from all angles, Jena said.

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A Pune Magistrate's court today ordered the local police to probe a complaint alleging that film actress Sunny Leone had hurt religious sentiments of people in a movie titled 'Ragini MMS' by performing an "obscene" dance with 'Hanuman Chalisa' being played in the background.

The complaint, filed by social activist Hemant Patil in 2014, alleged that the producer of the film Ekta Kapoor had attempted to hurt the religious sentiments of the people in violation of provisions of section 295 A IPC while showing obscenity in the film.

"Perused the complaint and documents on record. It transpires to me that before passing any order in the present proceedings, an inquiry needs to be conducted under section 202 of CrPC. Hence, police is directed to carry out inquiry under section 202 of CrPC and file a report within stipulated period," Judicial Magistrate First Class J S Kokate said in the order issued today.

Wajid Khan, complainant's lawyer, said the stipulated period under the Act for holding such an inquiry is two months.

According to the complaint, the dance sequence in the film had allegedly insulted God Hanuman as Hanuman Chalisa was being recited in the background when the actress was dancing. Also, the dance is obscene, the complaint alleged.

The complaint was filed after the release of the film in 2014 and the order for a police inquiry was issued today.

According to lawyer Wajid Khan, after the inquiry report is submitted to the court and if JMFC is satisfied that a case is made out against the filmmaker and the actor, the court may issue processes against them.

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Rapper Troy Ave has thanked fans for their prayers after surviving a shooting in his native Brooklyn, New York on Christmas Day.

The 31-year-old music star was on his way to visit family for the holidays when an unidentified shooter walked up to Troy's red Maserati, while it was stopped at an intersection, and opened fire.

The hip-hop star was taken to Brookdale Hospital, where he was treated for bullet wounds, including one to the head, but he was well enough to chat with 50 Cent, who paid him a visit on Monday.

Hours later, Troy was discharged, and he took to Instagram to share video footage of himself walking out of the medical centre to continue his recovery at home, reported New York Daily .

"Shot in my head, shot in my back, GOD is Great Ya boi is back," he captioned the post. "From the bottom of my heart thank y'all 4 all the prayers (sic)."



It's the second shooting Troy Ave, real name Roland Collins, has been involved in this year. He was backstage at T.I.'s Irving Plaza gig in Manhattan in May when shots were fired, killing one man and leaving three others injured, including Troy.

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It took eight years of backbiting and pretending they got along for relations between President Barack Obama's administration and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to finally hit rock bottom.

Though they've clashed bitterly before, mostly notably over Iran, the two governments seemed further apart than ever after a speech yesterday by Secretary of State John Kerry and last week's United Nations resolution.

The key question for the Obama administration, newly willing to air grievances with Israel on live television, is why now?



"We cannot, in good conscience, do nothing and say nothing when we see the hope of peace slipping away," Kerry said in a speech that ran more than an hour.

Yet in just over three weeks, Obama will no longer be president, Kerry will no longer be secretary of state, and the US will have a new leader under no obligation to embrace any of what Kerry said. President-elect Donald Trump has assured Israel that things will be different after January 20, when he's to be inaugurated, and lamented how the Jewish state was "being treated very, very unfairly."



Kerry took pains to voice America's staunch commitment to Israel's security and support for its future, and to detail US complaints about Palestinian leadership and its failure to sufficiently deter violence against Israelis. He laid out a six-point framework for a potential peace deal that it will be up to the next US government to try to enact, if it chooses to do so.

The White House has portrayed Obama's decision to break with tradition by abstaining from rather than vetoing a UN Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements illegal as a reaction forced by other countries that brought it up for a vote.

The White House has also acknowledged that Obama had long considered the possibility of taking some symbolic step before leaving office to leave his imprint on the debate. For much of the year, his staff pored over options that included a UN resolution outlining principles for a peace deal and a presidential speech much like the one Kerry gave yesterday.

Yet there was reluctance to act before the US election, given the way it would have thrust the Israeli-Palestinian issue into the campaign.

Kerry acknowledged Trump appears to favor a different approach. Yet, frustrated by years of Israeli actions he deemed counterproductive for peace, Obama appeared to have decided it was better to make his administration's views known while still in office, even if it risked a blockbuster clash with America's closest ally.

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After accusing former chairman Cyrus Mistry of breaching confidentiality rules, Tata Sons on Thursday asked the ousted chairman to return all classified papers and sign an undertaking within 48 hours that he would not disclose such information in future.

In the second legal notice in three days, Tata Sons alleged that Mistry had "wrongfully and dishonestly" taken confidential information out of the company premises without consent.

It asked him to "immediately return to the company all confidential information" in his possession and "not retain copies" of the same.

Asking him to cease from use or disclosure of confidential information, the holding company of the $103-billion salt-to-software group also asked Mistry to sign an undertaking within 48 hours that he "shall preserve the confidentiality of all the confidential information and not use or disclose" to anyone, including affiliates, relatives and family members.

On Tuesday, it had sent a legal notice accusing Mistry of breaching confidentiality rules by attaching dozens of confidential and sensitive company documents with the petition filed by his family investment firms before the National Company Law Tribunal against his removal.

It had threatened to take legal action against him, terming his action as "reckless failure" in discharging of "fiduciary, legal and contractual duties".

In Thursday's notice served through its law firm, Tata Sons said Mistry was privy to confidential and commercially sensitive information and documents in his capacity as executive chairman and director of the company and its operating firms.

"Under applicable low, you are duty-bound to (a) preserve the confidentiality of all such information and data that you are privy to in your capacity as director and (b) not disclose or use such information for any purpose whatsoever," it said adding any breach of such legal duties would cause irreparable harm and injury to Tata Sons.

Mistry, it said, is in "possession of highly valuable information and documents" pertaining to Tata Sons and Tata Group companies, which he has "disclosed" without prior authorisation from the board.

"We have credible information that you have wrongfully and dishonestly taken movable property being Confidential Information, out of the possession of the company, from the premises of the company, without taking the appropriate consent of the company," the notice said adding such an act was an offence punishable by law.

It asked him to "immediately return to the company all confidential information" in his possession and "not retain any copies" as well as "cease any and all use or disclosure of Confidential Information".

Also, Tata Sons wanted Mistry to execute an undertaking stating that he has returned all the confidential information without retaining any copies.

The undertaking also wants Mistry to state that he will "preserve the confidentiality of all Confidential Information and not use or disclose such Confidential Information for any purpose whatsoever and shall not provide any such Confidential Information to any affiliates, relatives and family members".
Battling growing alcoholism in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the administration has announced a revised excise policy, hiking duty on liquor by up to 25 per cent to make its price at par with that in metro cities and making cashless transactions mandatory for liquor purchase.

The revised excise policy, which comes with curbs on timings of liquor sale and restrictions on the bottles than can be purchased at a given time, will come into effect from January 1, 2017.

With the administration holding that the low price of liquor brands available in the Island responsible for the growing liquor menace, Island Lt Governor, Prof Jagdish Mukhi said the revised policy will ensure significant reduction in consumption of liquor.

"As blanket ban can cause serious repercussions including rise of spurious liquor trade, the administration has decided to curb the menace of alcoholism in a methodical manner without causing abrupt unrest and to save future generations from falling to addiction," he told newsmen here last night.

As per the policy it will be mandatory for all bars in these islands to adopt cashless mode of transactions.

From January 1, 2017, cash will not be allowed for liquor business and only credit/debit cards or other online modes will be allowed in all liquor vending units. Traders in the business will be required to install POS machines to carry out such trades in future.

Some relaxation will, however, be accorded to ANIIDCO outlets, which is in the process of installing POS machines.

As per the revised excise policy all bars in Port Blair having license under B2 category will be authorised to function from 4 PM to 10 PM against the earlier timings of 11 AM to 11 PM, while those in hotels will only be open from 11 AM to 11 PM.

The timings of liquor selling units under Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation Limited (ANIIDCO) will remain unchanged from 9 AM to 12 noon and from 3 PM to 8 PM. But liquor on tourist vessels will be allowed to be served between 4 PM to 10 PM only.

"Dry days have been increased and liquor sale and consumption will be prohibited on all major religious festivals from next year. Purchase and storage of liquor by individuals from ANIIDCO retail outlet will also be restricted," he said.

As per the revised policy any individual would be able to purchase two 750 ml liquor bottles at a time, instead of existing four liquor bottles.

An individual would be entitled to purchase one bottle of 1000 ml liquor, two of 750 ml, six bottles of 650 ml beer or eight bottles of 500 ml can/bottle beer or 12 bottles/can of 330 ml beer or 12 bottles/cans of 275 ml of ready-to-drink, four bottles of 375 ml liquor and eight bottles of 180 ml liquor in a day.

Mukhi said individuals will be permitted to store



liquor/beer bottles double the specified quantity of liquors/beers they are allowed to purchase at a given time.

"Low rates of liquor brands prevailing in these islands is one of the major reasons for the growing menace of alcoholism. The revised excise policy will impose sharp hike in prices. Under it the rates will come at par with the liquor rates in major cities like Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi. The rates would increase by 20-25 per cent (approx) against the existing by increasing octroi and excise duty," the Lt Governor said.

Octroi and excise rates would be increased accordingly, he said, adding the excise policy will ensure sustained campaign to generate awareness on harmful effect of alcohol involving various agencies, including NGOs and voluntary organisations.

The Andaman and Nicobar police and the Directorate of Prohibition will launch a crackdown on illegal liquor trade to contain growing alcoholism in the islands, he added.

"Further as per the orders of Supreme Court, no liquor shops and bars will be allowed to operate from April 1, 2017 within 500 meters of national and state highways of the Islands' territory.

Licenses of existing vendors will not be renewed from January one 2017 and bar/liquor shop operators will be required to identify new premises as per the instruction of the apex court.

He asked all traders in the liquor industry to gear up for the changes and apply for renewal of licenses as per the revised excise policy and added that bureaucrats in the administration will ensure effective implementation of the revamped excise policy.

A separate Directorate of Prohibition was announced on Gandhi Jayanti this year.
The number of students enrolled in Delhi schools up to senior secondary school level increased to 44.31 lakh in 2015-16 compared to 44.13 lakh in 2014-15 fiscal, according to a report released today.

As per the city government's Delhi Statistical Handbook, 2016, the total number of schools in Delhi were 5,796 in 2015-16.

In 2013-14 and 2014-15, the total number of schools were 5,453 and 5,798 respectively.

"Around 44.31 lakh children were enrolled at different levels during 2015-16 in these schools as compared to 44.13 lakh during 2014-15.

"Out of 44.31 lakh enrolled students up to senior secondary school level, 23.56 lakh were boys and 20.75 lakh were girl students," the report said.

While in the year 2014-15, out of the total number of enrolled students up to senior secondary school level, 23.52 lakh were boys and 20.60 lakh girls, it said.

Out of 18.87 lakh enrolled students up to primary school level in 2015-16, 10.07 lakh were boys and 8.8 lakh were girls.

Out of 18.75 lakh, enrolled students up to primary school level, 10.02 lakh were boys and 8.73 lakh were girl students in the year 2014-15.

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Romania's main ruling party has proposed a regional politician as the next prime minister after the president turned down the party's first choice, an economist who could have become the country's first female Muslim premier.

Liviu Dragnea, chairman of the Social Democratic Party that won December 11 elections, today named Sorin Grindeanu, 43, to become premier. Grindeanu is chairman of the Timis county council, and has been deputy mayor of the city of Timisoara and a lawmaker.

Dragnea said he wants to pursue goals including "more money in Romanians' pockets, the freedom to think, to hope, to have a good health system."



President Klaus Iohannis rejected yesterday the nomination of Sevil Shhaideh, a relative political novice, without saying why.

Iohannis must formally endorse a nominee before Parliament's final approval.

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A day after Goa Church talked about issuing guidelines to the "faithful" to help them decide the "right candidate" to vote for in upcoming Assembly polls, rebel RSS leader Subhash Velingkar today accused its archbishop of "interfering" into state politics.

"Archbishop should stop interfering in state politics. BJP is running its government under the instructions of the archbishop," said Velingkar who had floated Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM) following severe differences with the BJP-led government.

Addressing reporters, Velingkar said the archbishop had given five candidates to the BJP during 2012 elections, who were not from the party cadre.

In his address to mark Christmas celebrations, archbishop of Goa and Daman Rev Fr Filipe Neri Ferrao had said the church will issue guidelines to the faithful to help them decide "the right candidate" to vote for in the elections.

He also said the church will not canvass for any particular party or candidate but will only guide the voters.

Clarifying his position, Velingkar said GSM is not against any community per se, "but the archbishop is interfering in a large way in state politics."



He also objected to Goa Governor Mridula Sinha attending the Christmas event.

"Why she does not attend all other religious functions?" he asked.

"Henceforth, all government heads should be barred from attending any religious functions/meetings," Velingkar said.

GSM has entered the poll fray by forging alliance with Shiv Sena.

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Allegations over Russia and Iran's deepening ties with the Taliban have ignited concerns of a renewed "Great Game" of proxy warfare in Afghanistan that could undermine US-backed troops and push the country deeper into turmoil.

Moscow and Tehran insist their contact with insurgents is aimed at promoting regional security, but local and US officials who are already frustrated with Pakistan's perceived double-dealing in Afghanistan have expressed bitter scepticism.

Washington's long-time nemesis Iran is accused of covertly aiding the Taliban, and Russia is back to what observers call Cold War shenanigans to derail US gains at a time when uncertainty reigns over President-elect Donald Trump's Afghanistan policy.

"(Russia's) narrative goes something like this: that the Taliban are the ones fighting Islamic State," top US commander in Afghanistan John Nicholson said recently, denouncing the "malign influence" of external powers.

"This public legitimacy that Russia lends to the Taliban is not based on fact, but it is used as a way to essentially undermine the Afghan government and the NATO effort and bolster the belligerents.

"Shifting to Iran, you have a similar situation. There have been linkages between the Iranians and the Taliban."



Russia has officially provided military helicopters for Afghan forces, but simultaneously propped up the Taliban with arms, official and insurgent sources say.

"We are particularly concerned about loads of Russian-made weapons recently seized from areas on the border with Tajikistan," a senior Afghan security official told AFP.

"Cross-border support for the Taliban will further complicate the security situation in Afghanistan's north."



A Taliban commander told AFP the Russian support had helped the insurgents overrun the northern city of Kunduz in October for the second time in a year.

Taliban representatives in recent months have also held several meetings with Russian officials in Tajikistan and Moscow, sources say.

"No country should be in touch with destructive groups who are the enemies of Afghanistan. This shows disrespect towards the victims of war," interior ministry spokesman Sediq Siddiqi told AFP.

"We ask Russia and Iran to work with Afghans to defeat terrorism.

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Russia's embassy in London has condemned the United States as "lame", arguing Washington's decision to impose sanctions on Moscow harked back to the Cold War between the two nations.

"President Obama expels 35 (Russian flag) diplomats in Cold War deja vu. As everybody, incl (US flag) people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless Adm (US administration)," the embassy's wrote on its Twitter account yesterday.

The tweet was accompanied by a photo of a duck with "lame" written across the image, referring to the phrase lame duck when describing outgoing governments.

The embassy's post followed the US's announcement earlier on Thursday of a series of measures against Russia, including expelling 35 agents.

Tough sanctions will additionally be imposed on Russia's top two intelligence agencies, while two Russian compounds in the US will also be shut down.

President Barack Obama said the measures come after private and public warnings to the Russian government, following accusations against Russia over hacking during the US presidential race.

"I have ordered a number of actions in response to the Russian government's aggressive harassment of US officials and cyber operations aimed at the US election," Obama said.

The US president will be succeeded by Republican Donald Trump, who has downplayed the accusations against Russia and earlier this week dismissed Obama's plans to impose sanctions.

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Russia's transport minister today said equipment on the military jet that crashed in the Black Sea was functioning "abnormally", but that it was too early to say what caused the crash.

"It is obvious that the equipment was functioning abnormally. Why that happened is up to experts to work out," minister Maxim Sokolov told journalists, adding that preliminary conclusions would likely be released in January.

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Russian warplanes have for the first time bombed jihadist targets around the town of Al-Bab in Syria held by Islamic State (IS) extremists but surrounded by Turkish forces, a report said today.

The Dogan agency, citing military sources, said the air strikes took place yesterday. The report was published after the announcement of a deal brokered by Turkey and Russia for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria.

There was no official confirmation of the report. The agency did not specify if the strikes were coordinated with Turkey.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "strikes suspected to be Russian" had been hitting Al-Bab for the last two days "in support of the Turkish operation".

There was no comment from the Russian army.

Turkey has for four months pressed an incursion against IS jihadists inside Syria in support of pro-Ankara fighters.

But they have faced stiffening resistance in the battle to take Al-Bab, taking increasing casualties.

Turkey has in the last days stepped up criticism of US-led anti-IS coalition forces for failing to back the Turkish incursion inside Syria with air support.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who this week accused Washington of backing IS jihadists, today again attacked the US for its "support" for terror organisations in Syria.

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Ten years after Saddam Hussein's execution, the ghost of the Iraqi strongman still haunts America, serving as a potent reminder of its broken ambitions to bring stability and democracy to the Middle East.

When Saddam was hung in Baghdad on December 30, 2007, then president George W Bush already knew that the invasion of Iraq, which had already left 3,000 US forces dead, had not yielded the progress Washington sought.

"Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead. Yet the safety and security of the American people require that we not relent in ensuring that Iraq's young democracy continues to progress," Bush said at the time.

The democratic Iraq that Bush had envisioned turned out to be little more than a pipe dream, with the Americans failing to stop the deadly spiral of sectarian violence in the country.

The Sunni minority that once ruled Iraq grew increasingly resentful toward a predominantly Shiite government -- a resentment that helped fuel the rise of the ultra-radical Islamic State group that counts former Saddam military officials in its ranks.

More than 5,000 US soldiers are still on the ground providing critical support to an Iraqi army still unable to alone man a war against the violent extremist fighters.

The American public, which once gave strong support to the 2003 US-led invasion, is still recovering from the trauma of war.

The failures in Iraq heavily influenced US President Barack Obama's decision not to intervene militarily against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's bloody civil war that will soon stretch into its sixth year.

Meanwhile, Obama's successor Donald Trump built his presidential campaign in part on pledges that the United States would never again engage in "regime change" or "nation building."



Trump also said repeatedly that unlike his opponent Democrat Hillary Clinton, he was against the war in Iraq -- despite telling radio personality Howard Stern in a 2002 interview that he would support an invasion.

More than a decade later, some American policy-makers are still trying to understand the reasons for the failure.

John Nixon, the first CIA analyst to interrogate Saddam after his capture in December 2003, says in a new book that US intelligence and White House officials had mistaken views of the Iraqi leader.

Far from being an all-powerful dictator, Saddam during his last years in power "seemed clueless about what had been happening inside Iraq," Nixon wrote in a recent newspaper column ahead of the Thursday release of "Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein."



"He was inattentive to what his government was doing, had no real plan for the defense of Iraq and could not comprehend the immensity of the approaching storm," Nixon said.

"Saddam was busy writing novels in 2003. He was no longer running the government."



But top US officials firmly believed that toppling Saddam's Baathist regime would lead to peace in Iraq, Nixon said.

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The head of the Sikh community in Afghanistan's restive Kunduz city was shot dead by unknown gunmen today, the second such incident within three months, triggering fear among the minority group members.

Lala Del Souz was gunned down at about 9am in the Haji Gulistan Kochi Haman area of the city, Tolo reported.

He was reportedly on his way to his shop when the shooting occurred. He died from his injuries while being taken to hospital, the report said.

According to relatives of the deceased, he had been shot five years ago but survived the attack.

Kunduz security chief Masoum Stanikzai confirmed the incident and said police have arrested three suspects.

"Investigations will however continue," he said.

Del Souz's uncle, Prem, said the deceased had been well- liked and had no enemies.

The shooting, meanwhile, sparked an outcry on social media with hundreds of people condemning the incident and sending condolences to his family.

Prem, however, called on government to thoroughly investigate the incident and make sure those responsible are brought to justice. He said if this does not happen, the few remaining Sikhs will sell up and leave the province.

Following the collapse of Kunduz to Taliban, many Sikhs left the province. Currently only three families are still there, the report said.

Sikhs have lived in Kunduz for over thirty years and at one time there were as many as 40 families in the area.

After the collapse of Kunduz city last year, Del Souz apparently moved his family to India. He stayed on in Kunduz and lived with his uncle.

Close to 99 per cent of Hindu and Sikh in Afghanistan have left the country over the past three decades.

Sikh and Hindu population numbered 220,000 in the 1980's.

It is now estimated that only 1,350 Hindus and Sikhs remain in the country, the report said.

Hindus and Sikhs suffered huge setbacks after the Taliban regime collapsed in 2001. This forced many of them to leave rural areas and move to Kabul in order to make a living.

In October, a Sikh man was abducted from his home and gunned down by suspected militants in Afghanistan's restive Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan.

Sardar Rawail Singh, who lived in Jalalabad, was abducted from his house by militants wearing military fatigues and killed in Khalis Famil area.

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Singapore has deported two Indonesians after one was found to have plans to travel to Syria, the city-state's interior ministry confirmed.

"Two Indonesians were deported to Indonesia after it was established that one of them intended to travel to Syria via Singapore with the assistance of the second individual," a spokesperson from the Ministry of Home Affairs said today.

Local media reports say that the two, a man and a woman, have suspected links to the Islamic State group, claims which were dismissed by Indonesian authorities.

"We've questioned them and it doesn't seem they want to join IS. They are just illegal workers," Sam Budigusdian, police chief of Indonesian province Riau Islands, told AFP.

The woman had previously worked as a maid in Syria and had wanted to return there for work while the man accompanying her was an illegal agent, helping her to get into the country unlawfully.

"She wants to go back to (Syria) to work there as a maid... Via an illegal agent. Because it's cheaper using the service of an illegal agent," he added.

Indonesian immigration office spokesman Agung Sampurno said the pair had been caught with an electronic plane ticket going from Singapore to Dubai via Istanbul.

In February, Singapore deported four Indonesians who were allegedly planning to head to Syria.

Last November, two Indonesian men who were planning to travel to Syria were denied entry into the city.

Following recent terror strikes worldwide, the affluent city-state's leaders have renewed warnings that an attack on the country, a staunch US defence partner, is not a matter of if but when.

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Slain journalist Rajdeo Ranjan's wife Asha Ranjan has lodged an FIR alleging threats received asking her to back out from pursuing a case against RJD strongman and former Siwan MP Mohammad Shahabuddin in connection with the killing of her husband who was a working with a prominent vernacular newspaper.

Rajdeo, who was the Siwan bureau chief of the newspaper, was shot dead on May 13 at a busy fruit market near Siwan railway station.

Mufassil police station SHO Vinay Kumar Singh said Asha filed the FIR yesterday where she alleged receiving a phone call from Dubai, threatening her to withdraw the case against Shahabuddin in the Supreme Court in connection with the killing of her husband.

She stated in the FIR, "I got a call from +671 at 12:28 am (on the intervening night of December 26-27). The caller asked me if I knew Shahabuddin. Once I replied in the affirmative, he said a lot of drama has been done and now, I should withdraw the case filed in the Supreme Court against Shahabuddin.

"I should stop pursuing the case failing which they (Shahabuddin's henchmen) would chop us into pieces, so that it would be difficult for anyone to recognise us. I am terrified. Please help me as we have repeatedly been getting threat calls. Even the security provided to our family is only on paper."



The widow of the scribe had moved the apex court seeking transfer of the probe and trial of her husband's murder case to Delhi from Siwan as she feared that a free-and-fair trial against Shahabuddin was not possible if he was lodged in a Bihar jail.

Shahabuddin is currently lodged in Siwan jail after the apex court had, on September 30, cancelled his bail after hearing the two petitions filed by the Bihar government and lawyer Prashant Bhushan on behalf of the slain scribe's family.

The Bihar government had, on May 16, within three days of the murder, handed over the probe to the central agency.

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You may need to convince a computer that you are telling the truth during future airport security checks, thanks to a new lie-detecting kiosk that can spot changes in physiology and behaviour during interviews with travellers.

The Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real Time (AVATAR) is currently being tested to help border security agents determine whether travellers coming into Canada may have undisclosed motives for entering the country.

"AVATAR is a kiosk, much like an airport check-in or grocery store self-checkout kiosk," said Professor Aaron Elkins from San Diego State University in the US.

"However, this kiosk has a face on the screen that asks questions of travellers and can detect changes in physiology and behaviour during the interview.

"The system can detect changes in the eyes, voice, gestures and posture to determine potential risk. It can even tell when you are curling your toes," said Elkins.

Passengers would step up to the kiosk and be asked a series of questions such as, "Do you have fruits or vegetables in your luggage?" or "Are you carrying any weapons with you?"



Eye-detection software and motion and pressure sensors would monitor the passengers as they answer the questions, looking for tell-tale physiological signs of lying or discomfort.

The kiosk would also ask a series of innocuous questions to establish baseline measurements so people are just nervous about flying, for example, would not be unduly singled out.

Once the kiosk detected deception, they would flag those passengers for further scrutiny from human agents.

Elkins began working on AVATAR when he was a PhD student at the University of Arizona. As the deception detection project grew more advanced and more sensors were added, more data about the interviewee was analysed.

"We've come to realise that this can be used not just for border security, but also for law enforcement, job interviews and other human resources applications as well," Elkins said.

"We continue to make improvements, such as analysing the collected data using Big Data analysis techniques that make AVATAR a potentially valuable tool across many industries," he said.

Elkins is looking for a government agency willing to utilise the technology in a real-world application.

"AVATAR has been tested in labs, in airports and at border crossing stations," Elkins noted.

"The system is fully ready for implementation to help stem the flow of contraband, thwart fleeing criminals, and detect potential terrorists and many other applications in the effort to secure international borders," he said.

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South Korean investigators today summoned the country's ambassador to France as they widened their inquiry into a corruption scandal involving impeached President Park Geun-hye to include allegations her administration blacklisted thousands of artists for their political beliefs.

The special prosecution team was planning to question Mo Chul-min over a supposed blacklist of 9,000 artists deemed unfriendly to Park's administration and allegedly denied government support. Mo served as Park's senior secretary for education and culture in 2013 and 2014.

South Korea's opposition-controlled parliament impeached Park on December 9, weeks after state prosecutors accused her of colluding with a longtime confidante to extort money and favors from companies and allow the friend to interfere with government affairs.

The political turmoil came after years of frustration over Park's heavy-handed leadership style that critics blamed for setbacks in freedom of speech. Her government pushed to dissolve a leftist party and arrested union leaders, while journalists were pressured with legal and other threats.

Artists have complained about censorship. In 2014, organizers of the Busan International Film Festival clashed with the city's mayor who unsuccessfully tried to block a documentary on a ferry sinking earlier that year that killed more than 300 people, a disaster partially blamed on government incompetence and corruption.

The mayor of another city, Gwangju, recently acknowledged he was pressured by the government to exclude a painting satirizing Park from an art fair in 2014.

Park's alleged backlist reportedly included some of South Korea's most famous cultural figures, including "Oldboy" film director Park Chan-wook and poet Ko Un, whose name frequently surfaces in discussions for the Nobel literature prize.

They had signed statements criticizing the government for its handling of the 2014 ferry disaster and supporting opposition candidates during presidential and mayoral elections, according to Do Jong-hwan, an opposition lawmaker who broke the list to the media.

Artists' groups say that the allegedly blacklisted individuals, including actors, painters and musicians, have been inexplicably denied financial support available under government programs and prevented from using state venues.

Former Culture Minister Yoo Jinryong, who stepped down in 2014 amid a fallout with Park, said in a recent radio interview that the blacklist was passed to the ministry through Mo or another presidential secretary.

Cho Yoonsun, the current culture minister who was Park's senior secretary for political affairs from June 2014 to May 2015, denied Yoo's accusation that she was involved in creating the list, telling lawmakers she has never seen such a list.

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Solar Thermal Federation of India (STFI) has urged the Centre to bring evacuated tube collector (ETC) used for making solar water heater under zero duty category in the forthcoming Budget.

"The ETC solar water heater market has 80 per cent of market share of all the solar water heaters, however noticeably the evacuated tubes are still imported largely from China. ETC tubes can be brought under 'zero' duty, irrespective of they are imported by a manufacturer or a trader, STFI said in a statement.

The body thinks that this will help small manufacturers to buy tubes from trader importers at a lesser price.

"If the above is considered, the mandatory requirement for excise registration can be discontinued for manufacturers," it added.

The Union Budget for 2017-18 is expected to be presented in early February.

"STFI wishes to express its concern on some of the issues," it said.

The body further said that since solar energy systems have virtually no taxes hence it must have the least GST slab rate.

"While we are not pursuing for zero GST we do recommend some percentage of GST is imposed for solar water heaters so that the input GST (SGST or IGST) can be recovered. In 'zero GST', manufacturers have to bear the full GST paid on imports which can be anything from 18 per cent to 22 per cent, which will increase the input costs for us," it said.

The countervailing duty (CVD) exemption available now for the parts of solar water heater (tank, stand etc) can be withdrawn, so that either imports as full solar water heater or in parts shall attract full duty, (i.E.) (Basic + CVD+cess+SAD), the body suggested.

This will come approximately 29.5 per cent. Presently, traders are taking undue advantage of this exemption by importing several parts and assembling thus making domestic manufacturing unviable, it added.

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) for solar water heaters are already in place. The various incentives may be made applicable only to BIS complaint systems thus ensure qualitative systems and keep the faith of consumers, it said.

Already, the rising raw material price in India is bleeding the manufacturing industry and it is finding tough to compete with the cheap quality imported systems. There is an urgent need to look into protecting the domestic manufacturers by imposing some protective duty on non-BIS complaint and cheaper imported systems, it added.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today said the planned ceasefire for Syria was a "historic opportunity" to end the nearly six-year Syrian conflict, saying it was a chance that could not be wasted.

"This chance absolutely should not be lost. This is a historic opportunity," he told a conference in Ankara alongside Kosovo President Hashim Thaci.

"This is a window of opportunity that has been opened and should not be squandered," Erdogan added in his first public comment on the ceasefire deal that was announced earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Erdogan reaffirmed that "terror groups" were not included in the deal brokered by Turkey and Russia which is due to come into force at midnight.

He indicated that Turkey would press on with its four month incursion into Syria against Islamic State (IS) jihadists and Kurdish militia.

"The fight against terror groups, including Daesh (IS), will continue with determination until the security of our citizens is assured."



Without naming countries, he said other states with an influence on the ground in Syria should show "the necessary sensitivity" to ensure the ceasefire is implemented.

The president confirmed that the ceasefire agreement had come about after talks between Russian representatives and the Syrian opposition hosted by Turkey in Ankara over the last weeks.

Erdogan denied that peace talks overseen by Turkey and Russia planned to be held in the Kazakh capital Astana after the ceasefire is implemented were meant as a rival to the UN-brokered Geneva process, saying they were meant to complement and support those discussions.

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A top Taiwanese intelligence official today urged the island's former agents not to travel to China, citing safety risks as relations with Beijing grow increasingly tense.

Kuo Chung-hsin, deputy director of Taiwan's National Security Bureau, told reporters in parliament that "the current atmosphere is not suitable" for former and retired intelligence officers to visit China.

"China has no statute of limitations on (prosecuting) our intelligence units and will question you whenever they have an issue with you and exercise their power of the state. So how can we ensure the safety of our people?"



His comments followed reports in Taiwanese media that the bureau sent out notices earlier this month to warn former employees against travelling to China after some complained of being questioned and harassed during their visit to the mainland.

"There are apparent risks and safety concerns concerning our national security, the protection of secrets, and the safety of our colleagues. The bureau advises that it is not suitable to enter China (including Hong Kong and Macau) at the present stage," local media cited the notice as saying.

Taiwan and China have spied on each other ever since they split in 1949 at the end of a civil war. Beijing still regards the self-ruled island as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

Taiwan's defence minister Feng Shih-kuan on Tuesday called for increased vigilance in the face of growing threats from China after Beijing's sole aircraft carrier and a flotilla of other warships passed south of the island in an exercise earlier this week.

The navy drill is seen as a show of strength by Beijing as its relations worsen with Taiwan and the United States, following a protocol-breaking telephone conversation between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and US President-elect Donald Trump.

Last year, Taipei and Beijing exchanged jailed spies for the first time ahead of a historic summit between Taiwan's then president Ma Ying-jeou and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November.

However, relations have turned increasingly frosty since Ma's successor Tsai from the Beijing-sceptic Democratic Progressive Party took office in May, with China cutting off official communication with her government.

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Tata Steel Special Economic Zone Ltd has sought more time from the government for setting up a multi-product SEZ in Odisha.

The company's proposal will be taken up in the meeting of the Board of Approval (BoA), headed by Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia, on January 6 here, an official said.

Formal approval to the developer was granted on June 18, 2007, over an area of 1,173 hectare.

The developer has already been granted seven extensions, validity period of which was up to December 17 this year.

It has "requested for further extension so as to implement the project. The request of the developer is accordingly placed before BoA for its consideration," the official added.

Besides, the board will consider other proposals including G P Realtors and Mittal Infratech which have sought more time to implement their projects.

G P Realtors Pvt Ltd has proposed to set up sector specific SEZ for electronic hardware and IT/ITES in Haryana. Mittal Infratech too wants to set up IT/ITES zone in that state.

SEZs are export hubs of the country. Exports from special economic zones logged a marginal growth of 0.77 per cent to Rs 4.67 lakh crore in 2015-16.

The exports from such 204 zones were Rs 4.63 lakh crore in 2014-15.

According to the Commerce Ministry's data, as on March 31, these zones have attracted investments worth Rs 3.76 lakh crore and have generated employment for 15.91 lakh people.

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A top Chinese military general is being probed for corruption, becoming the highest ranking serving army official to face graft probe in a massive anti-corruption campaign launched by President Xi Jinping, Defense Ministry said today.

General Wang Jianping, Deputy chief of staff with the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission headed by Xi has been put under investigation for being suspected of taking bribes, Chinese Defense spokesman, Yang Yujun told reporters here confirming that Wang has been picked for interrogation.

While he is the top serving general working directly under Xi to face corruption probe, over 40 retired and some serving officers have already faced such probes in the sweeping anti-graft campaign launched by the President three years ago.

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post had reported in August this year Wang, 62, was taken away in Chengdu, Sichuan province.

Wang's wife, secretaryand former secretary Su Haihui and now deputy director of the armed police's training department, were also held.

"Wang was arrested by military prosecutors in Chengdu while on an inspection trip. His wife and secretary were taken away in Beijing," the Post report said.

The Ministry of Defense formally confirmed it today.

Wang, the first general still in active military service to be brought down, was an ally of China's former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang, who is currently serving life sentence, the report said.

In his last speech at a key party meet, Xicited disgraced leaders like Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, Guo Boxiong, Xu Caihou and Ling Jihua who were convicted in corruption and abuse of power as examples of bad behaviour.

Guo Boxiong, then a top general and former vice chairman of the military commission was reported to have accepted bribes worth about USD 2.3 million mainly selling military ranks to highest bidders.

Guo, 74, was also stripped of his rank and forced to hand over all his assets to the Chinese government.

Two days ago, CPC removed military officials from its powerful provincial committees in a bid to reduce military's influence on party further consolidating the powers of President Xi.

Fourteen provinces have removed the position of military members in the shuffle of new standing committees, official media reported.

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Tripura government has decided to give ex gratia of Rs five lakh each and a government job to the next of the kin of the two security forces personnel killed in Kashmir while fighting terrorists, a minister said today.

"The council of ministers, in its meeting here yesterday has decided to pay ex-gratia of Rs five lakh each to the families of the two security personnel, who died in Kashmir in November.

"The government also decided to provide jobs to the wives of the slain security personnel," Information minister Bhanu Lal Saha said.

BSF jawan Sambhu Satmura and Army Naik Chittaranjan Debbarma of Tripura were killed in Kashmir last month when Pakistani terrorists attacked their camps.

The government also granted five per cent DA for employees and pensioners and increase in field wages for fixed-pay, daily rated workers and contingent employees at differential rates.

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US President-elect Donald Trump has accused Barack Obama of derailing a smooth transition of power with "inflammatory" statements and "roadblocks", intensifying his tirade against the outgoing President.

Trump made this accusation in a tweet, but did not give any details about it.

It is believed that he was apparently referring to the some of the policy decisions, including those related to Israel being taken by the outgoing Obama Administration.

"Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!" Trump said in a tweet.

Later the President-elect told reporters in Florida that he spoke over phone with Obama, who is currently on his annual vacation in Hawaii.

"He phoned me. We had a very nice conversation," he said.

"Did you bring up any of your concerns about these roadblocks?" he was asked.

"We had a general conversation. I think the secretary's speech really spoke for itself. But we had a very general conversation; very, very nice. Appreciated that he called me," Trump said.

Trump has responded on Twitter in recent days to an interview in which Obama had said he was confident he could have beaten Trump if he were able to run for a third term. Trump said he has "NOT" had a smooth transition to the office.

Trump's public spat with Obama is not his first with an American president since his election. He also recently got in a back-and-forth with Bill Clinton after the former president told a local newspaper that Trump "doesn't really know much.

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A 40-year-old Tunisian man held on suspicion of being an accomplice of jihadist Berlin truck attacker Anis Amri has been freed, prosecutors said today.

Investigations have shown that the man detained yesterday "is not the suspected contact of Anis Amri," said a spokeswoman for the prosecution. "He has therefore been released from detention.

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Turkey and Russia are planning to implement a countrywide ceasefire in Syria before the start of the New Year, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said today.

The ceasefire could be put in place "at any moment", the minister told A Haber television after reports a day earlier that Turkey and Russia had agreed a deal.

"We are planning to secure this before the beginning of the New Year," he said, adding it was the "will of the leaders" for this to happen.

Turkish state-run agency Anadolu said yesterday that Turkey and Russia had agreed a nationwide truce plan for Syria but none of the key players in the conflict offered an immediate confirmation.

Cavusoglu said that if the ceasefire was successful, political negotiations between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and the opposition would take place in the Kazakh capital Astana.

But he insisted the Astana talks, overseen by Turkey and Russia, were not a rival to UN-backed talks that have been taking place on-and-off in Geneva in recent years.

"This is not an alternative to Geneva. It is a complementary step," said Cavusoglu.

"The talks in Astana will be under our supervision," he said, adding which groups will take part remains under discussion.

He said Ankara and Moscow continued intensive efforts to secure the ceasefire.

Russia would act as the regime's "guarantor" in any deal while Turkey would also perform a similar role.

Although Moscow and Ankara are on opposite sides in the civil war with Russia supporting Assad and Turkey calling for him to go, they have begun in the last few months to work closely on Syria.

Relations between Ankara and Moscow were normalised in June after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane on the Syrian border in November 2015.

Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from Aleppo after a ceasefire earlier this month brokered by Ankara and Moscow.

Meanwhile, Turkey stood conspicuously quiet as the regime, supported by Russia, took control last week of Aleppo, dealing the biggest defeat for the rebels in the civil war so far.

But Cavusoglu said it was "out of the question" for Turkey to hold any talks with Assad.

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Turkey says Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group should withdraw from Syria and a nationwide cease-fire should come into effect before the end of the year.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to back President Bashar Assad's forces.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with the Turkish A Haber channel today that Ankara and Moscow are close to reaching an agreement on a nationwide cease-fire.

Turkey would serve as guarantor of rebel compliance, while Russia would guarantee adherence by the government.

He says Iran stated during talks earlier this month in Moscow that it will act as a guarantor for the Syrian government as well as allied Shiite groups, including Hezbollah.

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Ukraine today reported the first death of a soldier since Kiev agreed a new "indefinite" ceasefire deal with pro-Russian insurgents in the separatist east last week.

The military said the death occurred yesterday in the village of Kurti Blaka, some 15 kilometres north of the militias' de facto capital of Donetsk.

The rebels did not report any casualties on their part and the Ukrainian military did not specify how the soldier died.

The death comes amid fresh hope that the 31-month conflict may be winding down after nearly 10,000 people have been killed.

The former Soviet republic accuses its neighbour Russia of launching the war in retaliation for Kiev's ousting of a Moscow-backed president in February 2014.

Russia denies any role in the conflict.

The reported death does not necessarily mean the collapse of the ceasefire because monitors from the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have reported a significant decrease in fighting in the past two weeks.

But it does mean sporadic violence is likely to continue and that shelling across the front line may go on even as the sides talk peace.

The insurgents agreed to the truce last Friday -- two days after it was negotiated by Ukraine and Russia with the help of mediators from the OSCE.

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The UN's Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura praised a nationwide ceasefire deal announced today and voiced hope it would help aid reach civilians across the war-ravaged country.

"The Special Envoy welcomes the announcement of a nationwide ceasefire between the Government of Syria and armed opposition groups in Syria", which is due to take effect at midnight, de Mistura's office said in a statement.

The UN envoy also hopes that the deal, brokered by Russia and Turkey, "will save civilian lives, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance across Syria, and pave the way for productive talks in Astana", the statement added.

Moscow, which backs Syria's regime, and rebel supporter Ankara are pushing for peace talks to start soon in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital.

While de Mistura offered support for those talks, which would take place outside the UN umbrella, he also reiterated that he wants negotiations mediated by his office to continue early next year.

"The Special Envoy is of the view that these developments should contribute to inclusive and productive intra-Syrian negotiations to be convened under UN auspices on 8 February 2017.

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Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapati Raju today lauded the Cochin International Airport Limited for the cost effective measures taken by it for constructing its new international terminal.

"CIAL is a model for other airports in building basic infrastructure facilities," the minister said in a release issued by CIAL here.

Chairing a meeting with top airport officials here, the minister noted that Airport Economic Regulatory Authority has fixed Rs 65,000 per square meter as benchmark cost for constructing airport terminal buildings, it said.

However, CIAL could build its new terminal at a cost of Rs 62,000 per square meter, the Minister said.

Raju, who returned from Lakshadweep after attending the fifth edition of National Minicoy festival spent three hours at the airport before heading for Hyderabad, airport sources said.

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The United States today cautiously welcomed a nationwide ceasefire deal in Syria brokered by Russia and Turkey as a "positive development," saying it hoped it would lead to fresh talks on the war-wracked country's political future.

US Secretary of State John Kerry invested significant time and energy in trying to bring an end to the civil war in Syria through diplomatic means. But more than five years on, his efforts were in vain as several truce efforts collapsed.

And with just three weeks to go before he leaves office, Washington was not part of the talks that led to the agreement announced earlier today by Syria's army and Moscow. The ceasefire is due to take effect at midnight.

" of a ceasefire in the Syrian civil war is a positive development," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement.

"We hope it will be implemented fully and respected by all parties. Any effort that stops the violence, saves lives, and creates the conditions for renewed and productive political negotiations would be welcome."



Toner said Washington "fully" supports a call by the UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, for renewed negotiations in Geneva on Syria's political future. The United States has long said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go.

"The international community hopes this ceasefire will hold so a Syrian-led transition toward a more representative, united, and peaceful government can begin," Toner said.

"An inclusive Syrian-led political process between the Syrian regime and the opposition is critical for establishing a durable settlement to this conflict."



Moscow, which backs Syria's regime, and rebel supporter Ankara are pushing for peace talks to start soon in the Kazakh capital Astana.

While de Mistura offered support for those talks, which would take place outside the UN umbrella, he also said he wants negotiations mediated by his office to continue early next year.

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A senior US defense official is confirming that a top military commander has been killed by a coalition airstrike in Syria.

The official says that Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti was killed near Tabqa Dam on Monday. He was a key leader of the group in Raqqa. No other details were available.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier this week that he had been targeted by US-led coalition aircraft. And IS supporters on social media had indicated on Tuesday that he had been killed.

The US confirmation was the first official coalition acknowledgement of his death.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have been battling fighters near the strategically located dam, aided by a barrage of coalition airstrikes in the region.
Venezuela's oldest daily newspaper, El Impulso, a sharp critic of President Nicolas Maduro, is halting production because of a paper shortage, its publisher said today.

Founded in 1904, the paper will suspend publication from Saturday because the state company charged with importing paper has stopped delivering its orders, publisher Carlos Eduardo Carmona said.

"The government... Is blocking us from publishing daily, leaving us no choice but to suspend publication," he said in a statement.

The paper's editor-in-chief, Juan Carmona, told AFP it would give employees a holiday through mid-January.

If no paper is received by then, the company will shut its print edition and maintain only its website  but will not back off its critical line on the socialist government, he said.

El Impulso is a regional paper based in the western city of Barquisimeto.

It has complained about paper shortages since 2013 and warned several times it would be forced to halt publication if no supplies arrived.

The situation only worsened as shortages became the norm amid a deepening economic crisis in Venezuela, where food, medicine and basic household goods are all scarce.

"This year has been one of suffering," Carmona said. "We run out of paper, we call, they deliver it at the last minute. Last month, another newspaper lent us a few spools, but now the (import) company isn't even answering our calls."

Just one company, run by the state, is authorized to import paper in . Critics accuse the government of abusing it for political ends.

Maduro, whose popularity has plummeted during the crisis, denies accusations of censorship. But he has repeatedly accused private media of supporting the opposition.

Seven Venezuelan newspapers have axed their print editions in the last three years.
From highlighting custodial deaths to putting a spotlight on poor fire safety compliance in hospitals, the NHRC championed the upholding of human rights in 2016 and is looking ahead with a hope to earn more teeth to enforce its orders on violations.

The National Human Rights Commission, since its inception, has impacted human lives and striven for justice, liberty and equality for all, with some landmark cases, punctuating its eventful journey of over 20 years.

Chairperson of the rights panel Justice H L Dattu has pitched for vesting NHRC with "more power", and as it clocks another year, the Commission would be looking forward to move in that direction.

"Everyone wants to have more power. We (NHRC) also want to have more power," he had said on its Foundation Day celebrations in October.

Dattu had termed NHRC a "toothless tiger" that needed some teeth to enforce its orders on remedial measures in cases relating to any violations.

"In many cases, due to our active intervention, we have addressed human rights issues... And, with more power, it (NHRC) should roar like a tiger," he had told PTI.

Since its inception in 1993, the NHRC has come a long way by addressing several issues of human rights violations as well as giving inputs on key legislations impacting human rights, he said.

"Whenever an issue of human rights violation comes to the notice of the NHRC, it has to take cognisance without bothering for the permutations and combinations of electoral politics or caste and creed equations," Dattu said.

And, indeed the rights panel has taken up a whole gamut of issues, and highlighted cases of human rights violations with timely intervention.

According to NHRC, Uttar Pradesh registered highest number of cases of custodial deaths in the country between October 2015 and September 2016, with as many as 401 deaths taking place in judicial custody and 27 in policy custody.

Between October 2015 and September 2016, the NHRC has registered 1,05,664 cases on the basis of complaints, intimation from police and prison authorities etc, and on suo motu basis.

The Commission, in the wake of a devastating fire at a



hospital in Bhubaneswar in October, had also issued notice to the Odisha government, while pointing out that only three of the state's 568 hospitals have fire safety clearance.

And, while the NHRC had faced criticism from a section of civil society and NGOs for its report on the on-spot inquiry of migration issue in Kairana in Uttar Pradesh, the panel has time and again emphasised on upholding of right to life and right to dignity for citizens as enjoined in the Constitution.

The panel's chairperson in his message on the Human Rights Day on December 10 emphasised that "any well intended action, policy or law, purportedly for the betterment of the country, will render itself meaningless, if implemented without a humane face and people's co-operation."



Lending the Commission with more power has also been proposed from other quarters, including legal luminaries.

Justice P Sathasivam, Governor of Kerala and former Chief Justice of India, had on the Human Rights Day function said, "The Commission should consider approaching Parliament through the government to seek an amendment in the Protection of Human Rights Act to make its recommendation effective. It should be able to execute its recommendations."



He had also said that "excesses of laws, lack of awareness about them and inadequacies of the legal system and and the lack of sufficient support from the legal services authorities need to be focused on to ensure protection of human rights in the country."



The Supreme Court had accepted the NHRC's recommendations, like in the encounter cases of Manipur and the incident of silicosis in a state.

When asked what action the Commission takes in case a party to which a notice has been served by it does not respond within the stipulated time, Dattu said, "In case they don't, we give them one more opportunity, and even then if they don't respond, then we issue them a conditional summon to appear before us and submit the report.
Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal today appealed to people not to vote for Congress, saying it will help Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia, who is "responsible for ruining the youth of Punjab".

"Voting for Congress is like voting for Majithia. It will divide votes and help Majithia, who is responsible for ruining the youth... And must be put in jail," he said during a road show in Majithia's home turf of Majitha constituency.

Canvassing for AAP candidate Himmat Singh Shergill, the Delhi chief minister said: "The party is getting a great response in the state and people of Majitha should also join the revolution by defeating Majithia."



He claimed that Congress put up a "weak" candidate against Majithia as he is the nephew of state Congress chief Capt Amarinder Singh.

"The candidate who contested against Majithia in 2007 could not even save his deposit," he said.

The AAP chief, with Shergill by his side, said his party is going to "expose the friendly match between Majithia and his uncle. So we have fielded one of our strongest candidates from the seat".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Attacking DDA and the police for "forcibly" evicting the dwellers of Kathputli Colony in West Delhi, CPI(M) today asked the authorities to call off the eviction drive and withdraw security personnel deployed there.

A CPI(M) delegation led by Politburo member Brinda Karat said the shifting of the dwellers to a transit camp in Anand Parbat area of Central Delhi, about two kilometres away, should require and have the consent of the residents.

She expressed concerns over the residents being "forced" to abandon their homes in the middle of this winter season.

The party said proper civic facilities be ensured at the camp.

"Heavy police presence is there in this colony for the past 10 days and people are being forced to sign on parchis (slips) stating their agreement to shift to the transit camp," it claimed.

"That residents are being forced to abandon their homes in the middle of winter has made matters worse," the party said in a statement.

Its Delhi unit said the land in the colony was meant for "mixed use" as per an agreement signed between the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and a private developer.

As per this agreement, 40 per cent of the area devolves to the private developer for commercial use, while the remaining 60 per cent is for the In-situ development of the colony.

"The residents were not consulted before this agreement was signed. They are justly demanding that nobody should be forced to leave their homes against their wishes and that they should have a say in deciding the terms and conditions of their In-situ rehabilitation," the statement reads.

A Karat-led delegation today visited the area.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 38-year-old woman suffered head injuries as she fell out from a speeding auto-rickshaw while trying to save her handbag from snatchers in south Delhi's Defence Colony area.

Sharmila Rai was on her way to Connaught Place with her husband, Rakesh and his nephew Gaurav, from her home in Sanwal Nagar for shopping when three men on a motorcycle came near their auto-rickshaw around the Moolchand flyover area, police siad.

One of the men, snatched the bag and while she was trying to resist his attempts, she fell out of the auto-rickshaw and injured her head, her husband said.

The snatchers fled with the bag that contained at least Rs 7,000 in new currency notes, a mobile phone, ATM cards and some other important documents, he added.

The auto-rickshaw was speeding and when Sharmila fell out, she suffered severe injuries. When Rakesh shouted, the driver stopped the auto-rickshaw and her husband and his nephew rushed to Sharmila's aid.

Sharmila was rushed to Moolchand hospital where doctors referred her to Institute of Brain and Spine (IBS) where she underwent an operation.

Currently she is recuperating, Rakesh said.

Rakesh works as a chef in India International Centre while Sharmila works at a parlour in Nizamuddin area.

The area where the incident happened doesn't have CCTV cameras. Police have formed teams to trace the accused.

The faces of the accused weren't covered but the incident happened within a few seconds hence neither Rakesh nor Gaurav could note down details of their vehicles, said a senior police officer.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
This year I launched five startups from nowhere. Here, Ill tell you how it happened; how I ended up venture building before I knew what a venture builder was, how I manage to get through two lawsuits in the space of six months, and how I raised $7 million without telling investors what they were investing in.
LUSAKA - More refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have continued entering Zambia following political unrest in that country, the official state-run news agency reported on Wednesday.

Tensions are high in DRC following the refusal of President Joseph Kabila to step down after his term expired.

About 233 refugees have entered the northern part of Zambia after intensified political unrest in that country, according to the Zambia News and Information Service.

Ministry of Home Affairs Chileshe Mulenga said Zambia has continued to record an influx of refugees from the DRC through various border entries.

He added that the Office of the Commission for Refugees was currently working closely with other law enforcement agencies to screen all the refugees before placing them in designated refugee centers.

Last week, the Zambia Red Cross Society deployed a total of 350 volunteers at border entry points with the DRC to deal with the influx of refugees from that country.

The humanitarian agency said it has provided assistance to over 1,000 refugees from the DRC in recent weeks.
The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday night arrested Delhi-based lawyer Rohit Tandon in connection with an ongoing money laundering case.

According to reports, the lawyer had recently declared unaccounted income worth over Rs 125 crore after raids were conducted against him.

Tandon had also revealed that he had given Rs 51 crore to Kotak Mahindra Bank Manager Ashish Kumar.

Earlier on Wednesday, the ED had arrested Ashish Kumar from KG Marg branch after detecting nine alleged fake accounts with deposits worth Rs 34 crore post demonetisation.

ALSO READ: Kotak Mahindra Bank manager arrested in Delhi over fake accounts



Last week, Delhi Police's crime branch team had carried out raids at the office of his firm T&T Law and seized nearly Rs 13.5 crore, of which Rs 2.6 crore was in new banknotes.

The arrest comes days after the investigating agency arrested Kolkata-based businessman Paras Mal Lodha. Lodha was arrested in connection with the recovery of large amount in new currency notes from a company belonging to Tandon of T and T law firm in Delhi and J Shekhar Reddy of Chennai.

Tandon will be produced in court today for converting Rs 70 crore black money to white after November 8.
When the government announced the first set of Smart Cities in January, Bhubaneshwar topped the pecking order, followed by Pune, Jaipur, Surat, and Kochi. Business Today spent 24 hours in Jaipur trying to figure out its progress. It emerges that the city's quest towards smartness preceded the Central government's Smart Cities Mission by six years. It is one of the few Indian cities where a clutch of smart projects have already taken off.

There are two broad smart city movements in the city today - one headed by the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) and the second by Jaipur Smart City Limited, the SPV formed to take forward the union government's mission. Most of JDA's initiatives are independent of the proposals Jaipur Smart City Limited will undertake in the coming months, but all of them form an important fulcrum towards making the overall city smarter. JDA's smart city projects, which also includes security camera installations, among others, were worth Rs 18 crore in phase one (October 2015), Rs 24 crore in phase two (April 2016), and will cost Rs 39 crore in the third phase. While these projects are important, they appear minuscule when compared to the size of projects Jaipur Smart City Limited plans to undertake in the walled city - old Jaipur - under the Smart Cities Mission. The investment totals to about Rs 2,400 crore, but important projects, such as the one that deals with facade improvement of 16 old bazars, are at a very early stage. We will know how Jaipur has progressed on these probably a year from now. JDA, in the meantime, has pressed the accelerator on many counts.

Bikaner House, Delhi

Business Today met the Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, over lunch. "Cities becoming smart is about reacting to people and their demands. To be able to give them that makes a lot of difference to their quality of life," she says.

ALSO READ: Demonetisation impact: Note ban plays party pooper

Her first efforts with smartness started in 2007/ 08, during her first stint as the state's Chief Minister. She asked herself three questions: "What can we do that is going to be very new, very different, and very useful?" Technology was the answer. On the advice of Mohandas Pai, the former Director of IT services firm Infosys and the current Chairman of Manipal Global Education, she came up with the Bhamashah Card which is linked to a bank account and used for transferring cash benefits directly to the beneficiary, as well as for non-cash benefits of various government schemes. Like the Aadhaar programme, it preceded the Central government scheme by a few years.

"The idea was to make women responsible members of the society, and give them a certain amount of respect. So the card would be in the name of the woman," says the CM who is called "madam" by her babus. "They had to start using the card, the POS machine, the biometrics - they learnt. Today, 4.65 crore people are already on the card."

It was a state scheme but over time, Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, became smarter as well. There were Wi-Fi in public places, security camera installations, kiosks to help tourists, and more greenery.



Mahal Road, Jaipur

This is where Jaipur's first brush with smart lighting happened. A two-kilometre stretch on Mahal Road is now fitted with 320 fixtures, each with 45 LEDs. In the last three months, 97 megawatt hours (Mwh) were saved, compared to conventional LEDs. How's that? The current smart lighting infrastructure of the JDA has motion detection and dimming capabilities. In other words, the LEDs can be programmed to dim when there is little traffic movement, saving energy. Currently, if there is no 'traffic activity' on this stretch of Mahal Road for a minute, the lights dim to 20 per cent of its total luminance. There are also four video nodes attached to the fixtures that count the number of vehicles entering and exiting the road, detect traffic violations and alert JDA authorities.

"LEDs on the 1 km-stretch cost us Rs 25 lakh, whereas smarter fixtures cost Rs 49 lakh. But we can recover this money within one and a half years," says Vaibhav Galriya, Jaipur Development Commissioner. In its next phase, JDA has planned 45-km of smart lights.

JDA office, Jaipur

The smart lighting features of Mahal Road currently integrate with Cisco's 'City Digital Platform'. The platform can pull in data from different operations in a city and provide a dashboard view to the mayor, or the authority. At present, it integrates traffic, parking and environment data, apart from lighting. A map shows parking availability, environment sensors in 15 locations of the city send back data on humidity, noise, temperature, CO2, and NO2. Going ahead, this data could be opened up for start-ups to use or analyse. The environment data may facilitate policy making, too.

Inside the JDA office is also the city's Network Operations Centre (NOC). A larger NOC is under construction on the ground floor, but as of now, a smaller room on the second floor is crowded with video walls. Over its three phases, JDA has installed 350 cameras in 35 locations in the city. These are high-definition, 5-MP cameras that can zoom unto 100 metres to identify objects or people. Live feed plays on these video walls, and records are maintained for a month.

At present, the dashboard does not integrate data from these cameras. However, Cisco executives say, going ahead, the city platform could integrate data from waste management initiatives, transport, and metering solutions. Much of this data available on the dashboard will also be available to citizens soon. A citizen app will be released in January 2017. Tourist information, JDA services, information on environment and parking availability, grievance redressal and other smart city solutions are the features of this app - akin to citizen apps developed in European countries such as Barcelona.

The progress made towards being smarter has helped Jaipur join the elite list, one that includes Hamburg, Barcelona and Adelaide. It is Cisco's 'Lighthouse City' - an internal adage it uses for cities where governance, administration, bureaucracy and city plans converge well enough for it to become a smart city. The company invests resources in pilots and global knowledge sharing, among others in such cities. As part of the Lighthouse account, Cisco, along with 3M and Genpact, has set up a 'Global Centre of Excellence' in the city. That's a co-innovation lab working on Internet of Everything-based solutions. In short, it is meant to keep Jaipur ahead of the curve.
Bank of Ireland has today launched a dedicated Coming to Ireland consumer proposition that aims to make it simpler to move back to Ireland.

On a monthly basis Bank of Ireland is reactivating 500 current accounts for returning emigrants. Based on research conducted by the bank, approximately 150,000 Irish migrants are due to return to the country over the next two-three years.

Bank of Ireland is now providing dedicated services for diaspora or those moving to the country for the first time. The product offering includes the ability to set up a bank account before returning or reactivating dormant accounts through online channels.

The new iniative also offers access to the bank's expert FX team who can advise on easy transfer of money from abroad so funds are readily available upon return. For those looking to purchase property, their mortgage specialist can discuss options via Facetime or Skype appointment at a local convenient time.

Speaking about the announcement, Head of Mobile Sales Force at Bank of Ireland, Julie Ennis said, "Our Coming to Ireland proposition presents a significant opportunity for the Bank and we're proud to be first to market with an offering of this nature."

She added, "A key differentiator of this proposition is the additional support and guidance that Bank of Ireland provides to customers to help them plan their journey and settle in when they arrive. This includes support such as hints and tips on working and living in Ireland and much more."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
TV3 Group announced a new four-year partnership with Racecourse Media Group (RMG) last week to broadcast some of the biggest events in horseracing, beginning on New Years Day 2017.

TV3 and 3e will broadcast exclusive Irish terrestrial coverage of the most prestigious and lucrative horseracing events in the world across 50 days of the year from 1 January 2017, including the Cheltenham Festival, the Randox Health Aintree Grand National Festival, the Investec Epsom Derby and Oaks, and Royal Ascot.



Other highlights include the QIPCO Guineas Festival at Newmarket, Al Shaqab Lockinge Day at Newbury, Qatar Goodwood Festival, Welcome to Yorkshire Ebor Festival at York and QIPCO British Champions Day at Ascot.



TV3 Group Director of Broadcasting, Niall Cogley said, "TV3 is delighted to be working with this fantastic racing portfolio. Cheltenham and Aintree are hugely important milestones in the Irish sporting calendar every year, but this new agreement represents so much more as it spans some of the most important international racing fixtures in the world with a wonderful mix of Flat and National Hunt festivals."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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Deputies arrested a 29-year-old man in Millville Wednesday night, after he reportedly fled the scene of a traffic accident and later got into an altercation with the victim, before trying to hide from law enforcement.

Cache County Sheriffs Lt. Mike Peterson said Jeremiah Clinton was booked into the Cache County Jail on suspicion of driving under the influence, assault and 10 other offences. He is being held on $11,570 bail.

Clinton reportedly drove away after being involved in a minor traffic accident earlier in the evening. The victim of the accident followed him to a neighborhood near 300 E. 300 S. in Millville, west of the City Park.

Peterson said the two men got into a physical altercation when the victim confronted Clinton.

When deputies and Utah Highway Patrol troopers arrived on the scene, Clinton tried to flee a second time, running away on foot. A perimeter was set up and a K-9 was brought in.

Clinton was later found hiding inside a trailer and taken into custody.

Court records show Clinton is originally from Yuba City, California. Formal charges are pending an investigation.

<hr /><p style=text-align: center;>will@cvradio.com
Bishops of the Episcopal province of Bamenda L'Effort camerounais

"For almost one month now there has been a series of unrests and violence in some towns of the Northwest and Southwest Regions(1) of Cameroon occasioned by the strike of the Anglophone Lawyers and of the Teachers Trade Unions of the English Sub-system of Education. These have led to the loss of human life andto the destruction of property of some of our citizens. There have been flagrant abuses of human rights, as demonstrated by credible eyewitness accounts and by pictures on local television channels and social media."

BAMENDA PROVINCIAL EPISCOPAL CONFERENCE [BAPEC]

THE SECRETARIAT

ARCHBISHOPS HOUSE

P.O. BOX 82, BAMENDA

NORTH WEST REGION

C A M E R O O N

BAPEC/PRES/2016/30

22 December 2016

*MEMORANDUM PRESENTED TO THE HEAD OF STATE, HIS EXCELLENCY PRESIDENT PAUL BIYA, BY THE BISHOPS OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL PROVINCE OF BAMENDA ON THE CURRENT SITUATION OF UNREST IN THE NORTHWEST AND SOUTHWEST REGIONS OF CAMEROON*



Your Excellency,

For almost one month now there has been a series of unrests and violence in some towns of the Northwest and Southwest Regions(1) of Cameroon occasioned by the strike of the Anglophone Lawyers and of the Teachers Trade Unions of the English Sub-system of Education. These have led to the loss of human life andto the destruction of property of some of our citizens. There have been flagrant abuses of human rights, as demonstrated by credible eyewitness accounts and by pictures on local television channels and social media. This has led to a premature end to the first term of the school year and paralysed the court system in these regions to the detriment of school children, students, parents and the administration of justice. At the moment, it seems that the government and the striking groups have reached an impasse and it is not likely that the schools are going to open even when the second term begins for the rest of the country. These unrests are symptomatic of a deeper unease among the inhabitants of this geographical circumscription of our nation.

We, the Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda, which is coterminous with the Northwest and Southwest Regions, where we hold responsibility as Shepherds, cannot remain indifferent to this situation. The Church,in this season, celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. She has as mandate to proclaim the message of peace (Luke 10:5; Matthew 5:9), and has always stood for justice and peace, and worked for the attainment of the common good of society.Because of her role and competence, the Church is not identified in any way with the political community nor bound to any political system(2). This places her in a uniquely privileged position to provide a balanced perspective on the current problem between the government of Cameroon and the population of significant segments of the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon. It is for this reason that we have presumed to seize the moment and to make the following submission, with a view to assisting the government to seek a lasting solution to this problem and enable its citizens to live in peace and harmony.

*Historical Background of the Problem*

Most of the territory known today as the Republic of Cameroon was a German protectorate from 1884. However, German Kamerun also included British Northern Cameroons, which elected to become part of Nigeria in the plebiscite of 1961. This protectorate was divided into British and French Cameroons in 1916 and confirmed, with some slight modifications, by the Milner-Simon Agreement of 10 July 1919. British Cameroons, which was comprised of Northern and Southern Cameroons, was one fifth and French Cameroun was four-fifths of the entire territory. They were Class B Mandated Territories of the League of Nationsuntil 1946 when they became United Nations Trust Territories.

British Cameroons and French Cameroun were separate legal and political entities and historians have postulated that although this partition was said to be temporary Britain and France instituted two different administrative styles and systems which were to impact on any subsequent movement towards eradicating the provisional nature of the partition and facilitating reunification.(3) After the Second World War, the United Nations (Article 76, b) explicitly called on the British and French to administer their respective spheres of Cameroon towards self-government. It called on the Administering Authorities to promote the political, economic, social and educational advancement of the inhabitants of the Trust Territories, and theirprogressive development towards self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples

Before the London Constitutional Conferences of 1957 and 1958, three political options had emerged in British Southern Cameroons, namely independence as a separate political entity, independence in association with Nigeria, and independence by reuniting with French Cameroun. The Mamfe Conference of August 1959, which was called to hammer out consensus among Southern Cameroonians on one of the options, did not succeed to arrive at a consensus. The three political options persisted, with the most popular being independence as a separate political entity, the next being association with Nigeria and the least popular being reunification with French Cameroun.

Paradoxically, the UN General Assembly Resolution 1352 (xiv) on the British Cameroons Plebiscite of 1961, clearly ruled out the separate independence of Southern Cameroons(4), the most popular of the three options. This was thanks to the British who tactfully blocked every chance of the Southern Cameroonians voting for independence as a separate entity, convincing the United Nations that Southern Cameroon was not economically viable and could only survive by leaning on Nigeria or the Republic of Cameroon, and recklessly steering the Mamfe All Party Conference of August 1959 to ensure that the parties did not achieve consensus(5). In fact, the British wanted Southern Cameroons to gain independence in association with Nigeria. Consequently, the two questions adopted for the plebiscite were:

1. Do you wish to achieve independence by joining the independent Federation of Nigeria?

OR

2. Do you wish to achieve independence by joining the independent Republic of Cameroun?

Southern Cameroonians were apprehensive of this move and put pressure on John Ngu Foncha to lead a delegation to London in November 1960 to include the option of independence as a separate political entity. The request was rejected. Nevertheless, according to United Nations Resolution 1541(XV) Principles VII and VIII, Southern Cameroons was qualified to achieve independence either through association or integration which should be on the basis of complete equality between the peoples of the erstwhile Non-Self-Governing Territory and those of the independent country with which it is integrated. The peoples of both territories should have equal status and rights. It was with this understanding that on the 11th of February 1961 British Southern Cameroons voted to join French Cameroun while British Northern Cameroons voted to join the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The Foumban Conference of 17th- 21st July 1961 agreed broadly what the marriage between the two Cameroons was going to look like. The Yaounde Tripartite Conference of 2nd-7th August 1961 put this agreement in legal form. Worthy of note here is the fact that the draft 1961 Constitution was never presented to the Southern Cameroons House of Chiefs (SCHC) and the Southern Cameroons House of Assembly(SCHA) for deliberation and approval as should have been the case. Further, it was signed by President Ahidjo on the 1stof September 1961 as President of the Republic of Cameroon when the Federal Republic of Cameroon had not yet come into existence. Be it as it may, the two territories came together in this union as a Federation of East Cameroon and West Cameroon (1961 Constitution, Article 1-1).(6)

In September 1966, all the political parties went into dissolution to form one party in the Federal Republic of Cameroon (the Cameroon National Union), giving birth to one party rule. In 1968, Honourable Solomon Tandeng Muna was appointed to replace Honourable Augustine Ngom Jua without the required Parliamentary endorsement and in contravention of the law which did not permit Muna to handle the posts of Federal Vice President and Prime Minister of the State of West Cameroon concomitantly. Southern Cameroonians saw these moves as dictatorial and undemocratic. They had come from a multi-party democratic society where free debate, alliances, consensus, and respect for the Constitution were the accepted modus operandi.

*Referendum of 20th May 1972*

While West Cameroonians were still bracing themselves for life in a political dispensation which they regarded as imposed on them by circumstances beyond their control and struggling to cope with the manoeuvres of President Ahmadou Ahidjo, he proposed a Constitution that would make the Federal Republic a unitary state, the United Republic of Cameroon. As we all know, in those days it was politically unwise and even unsafe to hold and express views different from those of the President on any issue, and so there was no public debate on the constitution. This constitution was voted on in a national referendum organized and conducted by the Cameroon National Union (CNU), by now the sole political party in the Republic. The results show that the overwhelming majority of the electors in East and West Cameroon voted in favour of a unitary state. Looking back at what happened, many Anglophone Cameroonians now believe that this was the high-water mark of Ahidjos deceit and manipulation of West Cameroonians, and some have linked the birth of separatist movements in Anglophone Cameroon to this referendum.

*Subsequent Constitutional Amendments*

Three years later, the Constitution was amended to include the post of Prime Minister, appointed by the President. Following another amendment in 1979 the Prime Minister would be the constitutional successor of the President of the Republic.In 1984, a constitutional amendment changed the countrys name from the United Republic of Cameroon to the Republic of Cameroon. In the eyes of West Cameroonians, Law No 84-1 of 4 February 1984, was incontrovertible evidence that the original intentions of our Francophone brothers and sisters were to absorb Southern Cameroon and not to treat with it as equals. After thirty-threeyears of union, we had all ended up as citizens of the Republic of Cameroon or East Cameroon.

*The Anglophone Problem*

It should be clear, from the brief historical sketch presented above, what the crux of the so-called Anglophone Problem is. No matter what some self-appointed elite and spokespersons for Anglophone Cameroonians as well as government Ministers say in public, the participation of various strata of the population and the growing popularity of separatist movements among young and older members of the Anglophone community demonstrates that there is an Anglophone Problem. There is a consciousness among Anglophone Cameroonians that all is not well and something needs to be done about their plight.

_What it is_

The Anglophone Problem is:

i. The failure of successive governments of Cameroon, since 1961, to respect and implement the articles of the Constitution that uphold and safeguard what British Southern Cameroons brought along to the Union in 1961.

ii. The flagrant disregard for the Constitution, demonstrated by the dissolution of political parties and the formation of one political party in 1966, the sacking of Jua and the appointment of Muna in 1968 as the Prime Minister of West Cameroon, and other such acts judged by West Cameroonians to be unconstitutional and undemocratic

iii. The cavalier management of the 1972 Referendum which took out the foundational element (Federalism) of the 1961 Constitution.

iv. The 1984 Law amending the Constitution, which gave the country the original East Cameroon name (The Republic of Cameroon) and thereby erased the identity of the West Cameroonians from the original union. West Cameroon, which had entered the union as an equal partner, effectively ceased to exist.

v. The deliberate and systematic erosion of the West Cameroon cultural identity which the 1961 Constitution sought to preserve and protect by providing for a bi-cultural federation.

*The Management of the Anglophone Problem*

It is our conviction that the Anglophone Problem would have been solved, or at least mitigated, if it had been well managed by those concerned. A lack of proper management seems to be what has aggravated the problem.

_The Government and Government Ministers_

It is unfortunate to note that the government of Cameroon seems to have made every attempt to downplay or even deny the existence of an Anglophone Problem. Government Ministers (even those of former West Cameroon extraction) have denied the existence of any such problem in the media and in public speeches. Furthermore, it is widely believed in Anglophone Cameroon that government has consciously created divisions among the English-speaking elite, remunerating some allies with prestigious positions in the state apparatus previously reserved for Francophones only, and repressing all actions designed to improve on the status of Anglophone Cameroonians in the union. This seems to have been proven true in the recent unrests by the utterances of government Ministers in the Press Conference on CRTV, in the dispatch of an Anglophone Elite delegation to the Northwest Region, and in the brutal suppression of protests by certain professional groups and sections of the Northwest and Southwest Regions.

_Secessionist Groups_

In the face of this denial of the existence of an Anglophone Problem by government and the consequent deafening silence from the government to the cries and protests of Anglophone Cameroonians, certain groups have emerged in Anglophone Cameroon that call for the secession of Anglophone from Francophone Cameroon. The Southern Cameroons Youth League, the Southern Cameroons National Council, and the Ambazonia Movement are some of the most strident of these groups and are currently members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) in The Hague.

_Federalists_

There are different forms of federalism, and federalists in Anglophone Cameroon will differ as to the specific nature of the federal state they would want. However, they are all agreed that they do require a federation which recognises and preserves the regions peculiarity, as did the 1961 Federal Constitution.

_Unitarists_

Successive amendments to the Constitution up to and including the Amendments of 1996 insist on the fact that Cameroon is one and indivisible (Article 1-2, 1996). Cameroon is described as a decentralised unitary state. Unitarists believe that everything must be done to avoid federalism or secession. However, even the decentralisation announced by the 1996 Constitution has not been implemented, and government and administration have been highly centralised.

photo

Bishops of the Episcopal province of Bamenda

*Symptoms of Discontent*

What some people mistake for the Anglophone Problem are just symptoms pointing to the fact that an overwhelming majority of Anglophone Cameroonians are not happy in the union which they entered with East Cameroon in 1961. They have complained against widespread and systematic marginalisation in various areas of public life which point to the existence of a huge problem. Some of these symptoms include the following:

_Marginalisation in Human Resource Development and Deployment_

i. Anglophone Cameroonians have complained about the fact that National Entrance Examinations into Schools that develop the human resources of this country are set per the French Subsystem of Education which makes it very difficult for Anglophones and Francophones to compete on a level playing field. Majority of the membership of these Examination Boards are Francophone so that the interests of Anglophone candidates are hardly, if ever, protected.

ii. Out of the five Ministries concerned with Education, which is the means of the transmission of culture, none of the Minsters is Anglophone and none even qualifies to be a deputy or Secretary of State. This gives the impression of a calculated attempt to kill Anglophone culture.

iii. In human resource deployment, there is a gaping inequality in the distribution of posts of responsibility between Anglophones and Francophones. Of the 36 Ministers who defended the budgets for the Ministries last month, only one was Anglophone. In addition, there seem to be key ministries that have been reserved for Francophone Ministers only and Anglophones do not even qualify to be Secretaries of State under them. These include, but are not limited to, Defence, Finance, Territorial Administration, and Economy.

iv. In the 1961 Constitution, the Vice President was the second most important personality in state protocol. Today, the Prime Minister (appointed Anglophone) is the fourth most important person in State Protocol, after the President of the Senate and the President of the National Assembly. Even so, Anglophone Cameroonians believe that he wields no real authority and, like was the case with J.N. Foncha as First National Vice President of the CPDM, finds it impossible to use [his] exalted position to help in any way shape or influence the policies of the party and nation.(7) There are clearly Francophone ministers who wield more power than he does. This seems to have been proven true in the last Teachers strike. When the Prime Minister was in Bamenda negotiating with the Teachers Union Leaders, a group of Francophone Ministers were giving a Press Conference in Yaounde on the same issue, giving the impression that the negotiations of the PM in Bamenda were of no consequence.

_The Treatment of the English Language_

There have been widespread protests about the way the English Language has been treated in the public life of the nation.

i. State institutions produce documents and public notices in French, with no English translation, and expect English speaking Cameroonians to read and understand them.

ii. National Entrance Examinations into some professional schools are set in French only and Anglophone candidates are expected to answer them. Sometimes this happens even in the English-speaking regions.

iii. Visitors and clients to government offices are expected to express themselves in French, even in the English-speaking regions, since most of the bosses in the offices speak French and make no effort to speak English.

iv. Most Senior Administrators and members of the Forces of Law and Order in the Northwest and Southwest Regions are French-speaking and make no effort to understand the cultures and customs of the people they are appointed to govern.

v. Members of Inspection Teams, Missions and Facilitators for Seminars sent from the Ministries in Yaounde to the English-speaking Regions are generally predominantly French speaking, and expect to be understood by audiences which are predominantly English speaking.

vi. The Military Tribunals in the Northwest and Southwest Regions are basically French courts.

vii. Basic Finance documents which businesses and other institutions are expected to work with are all in French. Examples include the COBAC Code, the CIMA Code and the OHADA Code.

_The Flooding of Anglophone Cameroon with Francophone Administrators and Workers_

Apart from the fact that Ministers, Directors General, Heads of Parastatals, Senior Divisional Officers, Heads of Law Enforcement Institutions, etc. are disproportionately Francophone, there seems to have been a conscious effort made to flood the Northwest and Southwest Regions with Francophone Heads of Service.

i. The Magistrates in these Regions are disproportionately Francophone. So are the Senior Divisional Officers, the Divisional Officers, Commissioners, and Commandants. In the educational sectors, there are increasingly Francophone principals posted to Anglophone schools. Personnel in Hospitals, Banks and Mobile Telephone Companies (even those which originate from Anglophone countries), are predominantly Francophone. And this extends to even non-expert workers in petrol stations.

ii. The situation is aggravated by the fact that these Francophone administrators are often overbearing, very arrogant and treat people as if they were second-class citizens, and have no iota of respect for the dignity of the human person.

_Mismanagement of West Cameroon Patrimony_

Apart from neglect of infrastructure in the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon and the mismanagement and ruin of buoyant companies like Cameroon Bank, West Cameroon Marketing Board, WADA in Wum, West Cameroon Cooperative Movement, etc., oil revenues are alleged to be used by those in power to feed the bellies of their allies, and to stimulate the economy in other regions. In addition, there is also great anxiety in Anglophone Cameroon that its major agro-industrial enterprises, especially the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) and Plantations Pamol du Cameroun Ltd (Pamol), are sold or their headquarters moved elsewhere.

_The Francophonisation of the English Educational Subsystem and the Common-Law System_

The flooding of state Anglophone educational and legal institutions with French-trained and French speaking Cameroonians who understand neither our educational subsystem nor the English Common Law undermines Anglophone education and legal heritage and subverts the original intentions of the founders of the nation to build a bi-cultural nation, respecting the specificity of each region. This is the cause of the current strikes by common law lawyers and teachers.

_Admissions into State Professional Schools_

The exclusion of qualified Anglophones in admissions into state professional schools (especially Schools of Administration, Medicine and Medical Sciences and Higher Teacher Training) even in the Anglophone Regions is a glaring example of marginalisation which the Teachers Unions cited.

These, and many others, have led to the unease and discomfort of the people of the Northwest and Southwest Regions. They perceived this marginalisation as institutionalised as they have been labelled Biafrans, enemies in the house and traitors by highly placed government officials and ministers who were never reprimanded for doing so.

*Gradual Erosion of Anglophone Identity*

There has been a misleading argument from some quarters where some have argued that an Anglophone is anyone who can speak English, as a way of countering Anglophone Cameroonians who protest the issues we have enumerated above. It might be helpful, for the purposes of our presentation and future discourse, to note here that Anglophonism goes beyond the mere ability to speak or understand the English language. It speaks to a core of values, beliefs, customs, and ways of relating to the other inherited from the British who ruled this region from 1916 to 1961. Anglophonism is a culture, a way of being which cannot be transmitted by merely learning a language. In fact, as Dr. Anthony Ndi intimates, Southern Cameroonians had a distinctive outlook and way of life that went further than the mere fact that the educated ones among them spoke the English Language or a version of it. So, therefore, language could not even be the qualifying factor.(8) This Anglophone identity is the reason most Southern Cameroonians who voted to join the Republic of Cameroon in 1961 did so. It was to preserve their cultural identity as a distinct people.

Anglophone Cameroonians are slowly being asphyxiated as every element of their culture is systematically targeted and absorbed into the Francophone Cameroon culture and way of doing things. These include the language, the educational system, the system of administration and governance (where appointed leaders are sent to lord it over people who cherish elected leaders), the legal system, and a transparent democratic process where elected leaders are answerable to the electorate who put them there in the first place.

Anglophone Cameroonians have seen through this and are raising their voices in protest. The two All Anglophone Conferences (AAC I and II) of the early 1990s, the rise and popularity of the SCNC and other secessionist voices are born of the frustration of Anglophone Cameroonians of being ignored and ridiculed for asking for what they deem to be theirs by right, namely the preservation of their culture. You would remember that, in his resignation letter from the post of first Vice President of the CPDM on the 9th of June 1990, J.N. Foncha cited in point 9 of the letter, as a reason for resigning, the fact that the constitution was in many respects being ignored and manipulated.

*A Natural Reaction*

The reaction of Anglophone Cameroonians to preserve their culture can only be described as natural. Is it any surprise that the first Opposition party that forced the door open for multi-partyism in Cameroon, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), came from Anglophone Cameroon? Following the formation of the party, the architect who brought Southern Cameroonians into the union with the Republic of Cameroon, John Ngu Foncha, resigned in disillusionment as the First Vice-President of the CPDM. He explained:

The Anglophone Cameroonians whom I brought into the union have been ridiculed and referred to as les Biafrians, les ennemies dans la maison, les traitres etc., and the constitutional provisions which protected this Anglophone minority have been suppressed, their voice drowned while the rule of the gun replaced the dialogue which the Anglophones cherish very much.(9)

This is not to say that we do not see the other side of the argument. In any polity formed bytwo or more ethnic, cultural, religious, or linguistic groups, there is bound to be a majority versus minority problem. In any such situation, the wise thing to do would be to make constitutional provisions which would protect and safeguard the existence and rights of the minority, rather than trample on them. The Church teaches that not even the majority of a social body may violate these rights, by going against the minority, by isolating, oppressing, or exploiting it, or by attempting to annihilate it.(10) Cameroon prides itself as a state of law. In this area, she is at one with the Church which teaches that society should be organised on the principle of the rule of law. This is the principle in which the law is sovereign, and not the arbitrary will of individuals(11) So, apart from the plethora of issues which enhance Anglophone disaffection with the union, there is the additional problem that they are a minority in that union.

*Proposed Way Forward*

It is not for us to dictate to the Cameroonian people what form the government of this countryshould take or what solutions should be provided for the problems we have highlighted. The Church respects the legitimate autonomy of the democratic order and is not entitled to express preferences for this or that institutional or constitutional solution. Her contribution to the political order is precisely her vision of the dignity of the person revealed in all its fullness in the mystery of the Incarnate Word(12). That notwithstanding, we feel obliged in conscience as the religious and moral leaders in this part of the country, who exercise care over a people who are hurting, to propose the following lines of action which, hopefully, should lead to peace and harmony among our people.

_Honesty in the face of the Anglophone Problem_

One of the most disingenuous things any enlightened Cameroonian, talk less of educated Cameroonian of Anglophone upbringing, can do is to deny that there is an Anglophone Problem. If former French President, Jacques Chirac, the Commonwealth, the European Union, and many others have recognised that there is an Anglophone Problem and advised that the government of Cameroon and the discontented Anglophones engage in dialogue, how can Cameroonians deny that there is a problem? To play the ostrich and bury our heads in the sand is to sow disaster for the future of the nation we all love. It is to give way to extremist tendencies in the Anglophone community born of frustration at not being listened to or understood. Is it possible that the government has not heard the cries of distress of the All Anglophone Conferences which represented a broad base of Anglophone Cameroonians? Is it possible that the government has not heard the Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA), the Common-Law Lawyers, the Teachers Trade Unions, Students, and others who are not only uncomfortable but are choking under the present dispensation?

Is it possible for us to look this beast in the eye, confront it together and overcome it for the sake of peace and unity in our country? The governments continued denial of any Anglophone Problem, and its determination to defend the unitary state by all available means, including repression, could lead to an escalation of Anglophone demands past a point of no return, and this is not something any responsible citizen would wish for their country.

_The All Anglophone Conferences (AAC) of 1993 and 1994_

In May1993, the 65-member Anglophone Standing Committee established by the AAC submitted a draft constitution which would provide for major political, financial, and fiscal autonomy for the two federated states, for the provinces inside both, and for the communities inside each province. Theyproposed the usual separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judiciary, and a senate and national assembly for each federated state, as well as a rotating presidency for the Federal Republic, whereby after at most two consecutive mandates of five years an Anglophone would succeed a Francophone (or vice versa). This proposal was even reiterated for each of the federated states to ensure alternation between the provinces. This would be for us a lasting solution to the irksome Anglophone Problem, and would be acceptable to the majority of Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians.

_The Implementation of the 1996 Constitution_

We know there is never a perfect constitution and that is the reason why constitutions are amended to make them responsive to changes in time and situation. The 1996 Constitution, even though some have had issues with sections of it, is good enough as an immediate remedy for the woes Anglophones are listing and which make life together in this nation burdensome to them. As the second-best option, we recommend an urgent and immediate implementation of the 1996 Constitution. We recommend that all the institutions created by that constitution be put in place, and that those put in place be empowered with persons charged with rendering them functional. This would include the Regions, the Senate and, by extension, the constitutional council, administrative courts, the minor courts of accounting/auditing. It is important for Cameroonians, especially those who seek protection under the rule of law and of the Constitution, to know that the constitution has really been deployed as a means of regulating the political process in Cameroon. It is our firm belief that if this is done immediately, it would satisfy the majority of Anglophone Cameroonians and silence the calls for secession which have characterized this period of unrest.

_Constructive Dialogue and the Establishment of a Roadmap_

In the short term and, because the Lawyers and Teachers Strikes have paralysed our legal and school systems, it is imperative for the government to dialogue with the Lawyers and Teachers as soon as possible and agree a possible roadmap regarding their legitimate and genuine demands. We cannot solve a problem if we are unwilling to talk to each other. In the spirit of the African family, we would expect the father of the family to find out from a hurting (even if errant) child what the problem is and what they can do to alleviate their pain and suffering. There are a good number of the problems raised by our lawyers and teachers which can be solved now and there are others which can be solved later, but we need to agree a roadmap and respect it. This will enable the Teachers Unions to call off the strike and permit our children, who have already lost four weeks of schooling, to return to school. Indeed, openness to dialogue and to cooperation is required of all people of good will, and in particular of individuals and groups with specific responsibilities in the areas of politics, economics and social life, at both the national and international levels(13).

_Respect for Human Rights_

While it is the duty of administrative and law enforcement officers to maintain peace and order in their areas of jurisdiction, many of them have been unnecessarily overbearing and arrogant. Issuing orders and threats for teachers to return to school, for instance, is not the way to solve their problem. Further, the current unrests have shown up a very ugly and embarrassing side of our administrators and the forces of law and order. Without any provocation from the lawyers or students at the University of Buea (who carried placards saying No to Violence and raised their hands in the air), the forces of law and order brutalized some of them so badly and so inhumanely that seeing the pictures one would have thought they came from the Stone Age. It was shameful to see law enforcement officers drag female students in the mud, spray students rooms with tear-gas and contaminated water, and then lock some up for days just for exercising a basic human right to make their voices heard in a peaceful manner.

The Church teaches that

A just society can become a reality only when it is based on the respect of the transcendent dignity of the human person Every political, economic, social, scientific, and cultural programme must be inspired by the awareness of the primacy of each human being over society For this reason, neither his life nor the development of his thought, nor his good, nor those who are part of his personal and social activities can be subjected to unjust restrictions in the exercise of their rights and freedom.(14)

Our administrators and the forces of law and order need to be called to order. In the exercise of their duties for the common good of all citizens, they must never trample on the rights of those citizens and deal out subhuman treatment to them. Such behaviour contravenes the law and provides a seedbed for deep resentment which later manifests itself in very ugly ways.

It is in light of this that we propose that the government should immediately withdraw the forces of law and order from the streets of the Anglophone towns to which they have been deployed, open proper investigations into any abuses of human rights by the forces of law and order, and release or charge those who have been locked up as a result of the recent unrests. In this way, we would have a better climate for the negotiations which have been proposed between the government and the teachers and lawyers.

_Justice for All_

Every Anglophone group that has raised its voice in protest has chronicled a number of perceived injustices which either the group or the Anglophone community in general suffers. Again, if the government gives them a listening ear, it would become clear to all whether these perceived injustices are founded or just imaginary. As long as these people, rightly or wrongly, continue to feel that they are the victims of injustice, we cannot build the Island of Peace in Central and West Africa we have been proclaiming that we are, and we cannot develop our country without this peace either. We do not believe, in conscience, that locking up people who speak up against injustice (real or imagined) will kill dissent and bring peace. Maybe some examples will help clarify the point we are making.

On the 14th of December 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. made a statement outside a California prison where Vietnam war protesters were being held. He said: There can be no justice without peace and there can be no peace without justice.On the World Day for Peace, 1st January 1972, Pope Paul VI had as theme for his Message: if you want peace, work for justice. These great crusaders for social justice teach us that without justice, peace will be an elusive goal.

Of course, you would remember the Apostolic Visit of Pope St. John Paul II to Cameroon in August 1985. In his Address to the President, Constituted Bodies, and the Members of the Diplomatic Corps, he said:

 Devant les conflits qui demeurent ou renaissent, tout le monde doit se poser honnetement la question de leurs causes. Les injustices commises par certains regimes, concernant les droits de lhomme en general ou les revendications legitimes dune partie de la population qui se voit refuser la participation aux responsabilites communes, declenchent des soulevements dune violence regrettable, mais qui ne pourront etre apaises quavec le retablissement de la justice. 

These examples show that we need to examine, in a dispassionate manner, the root causes of the unease and unrest in the Anglophone Region of Cameroon and, if these causes are connected to injustice in any form, do all we can to root out those injustices.

*Conclusion*

Your Excellency,

We stated at the beginning of this Memorandum that it is our bounden duty as Shepherds of the people in the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon where there are unrests and dissatisfaction, to make a contribution to the solution of the problems that have been posed. We hope that you will find our contribution helpful as you try to navigate this very sensitive and delicate period in our nations history. We are aware of the gravity of your responsibility before the people of Cameroon and before History, and that is why we tried to do all we could to help. In addition, we commend you and the people of Cameroon to God in prayer, in the belief that He will give you the wisdom you need to carry out this task. We can only add that in this case, time is of the essence as some of our children have already missed school for a month.

A certain religious leader is credited to have said: There really can be no peace without justice. There can be no justice without truth. And there can be no truth, unless someone rises up to tell you the truth.What we have set forth here is what we believe to be the truth, told as part of our prophetic mission, in the hope that it will bring justice, peace, and harmony to this country which we all hold dear to our hearts.

May Mary, Queen of Peace, and Patroness of Cameroon, intercede for us and for our country.

+George Nkuo,

Bishop of Kumbo and President of BAPEC

+Cornelius Fontem Esua,

Archbishop of Bamenda

+Immanuel Bushu,

Bishop of Buea

+Andrew Nkea,

Bishop of Mamfe

+Agapitus Nfon,

Bishop of Kumba

_________

ENDNOTES

1. The territory which covers the Northwest and Southwest Regions has been called various names in the History of Cameroon: British Southern Cameroons, West Cameroon, Anglophone (English-speaking) Cameroon. These names will be used in this document as appropriate to the historical period in question.

2. Gaudium et Spes, No. 76

3. Ngoh, J. V., (2011:4), The Untold Story of Cameroon Reunification: 1955-1961, Limbe, Presprint Plc.

4. Mukete, V. E., 2013:419, My Odyssey: The Story of Cameroon Reunification With Authentic Letters of Key Players, Yaounde, Sopecam.

5. Ndi, A., (2013:6) Southern West Cameroon Revisited (1950-1972): Unveiling Inescapable Traps, Volume 1, Bamenda, Pauls Press.

6. Constitution reproduced in: Ndi, A. (2013), Southern West Cameroon Revisited (1950-1972): Unveiling Inescapable Traps, Volume 1, Bamenda, Pauls Press. See Appendix IV

7. J.N. Foncha, 9th June 1990: Letter of Resignation from the CPDM

8. Ndi, A., (2005:249-50), Mill Hill Missionaries in Southern West Cameroon (1922-1972): Prime Partners in Nation Building, Paulines Publications Africa, Nairobi.

9. J.N. Foncha, 9th June 1990: Letter of Resignation from the CPDM

10. John Paul II, Centissimus Annus, No. 45.

11. John Paul II, Centissimus Annus, No. 44.

12. John Paul II, Centissimus Annus, No. 47.

13. John Paul II, Centissimus Annus, No. 60

14. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Church, Nos 128, 133
Teachers, Trade Unionists, Strategising on Next Step Screen Capture

Members of the teachers trade unions including Cameroon Teachers Trade Union, CATTU, Presbyterian Education Authority Teachers Trade Union, PEATTU, Baptist teachers Trade Union, BATTU, Catholic Education Workers trade Unions, CEWOTU, higher Education teachers Trade Union, SYNES and Teachers Association of Cameroon, TAC have announced that schools might remain paralyzed come 2017

Members of the teachers trade unions including Cameroon Teachers Trade Union, CATTU, Presbyterian Education Authority Teachers Trade Union, PEATTU, Baptist teachers Trade Union, BATTU, Catholic Education Workers trade Unions, CEWOTU, higher Education teachers Trade Union, SYNES and Teachers Association of Cameroon, TAC have announced that schools might remain paralyzed come 2017 and will be extended to all ten regions if the government does not solve the problems raised by the teachers before resumption of school for second term. The NESG of CATTU, Wilfred Tassang reiterated that, The teachers union has resolved that if these issues are not resolved before school resumes, then the strike will be extended to other regions where Anglophone children attend school and the teachers union have reaffirm their stand for Federalism as the ultimate solution to our problems.

In a Press Conference held in Bamenda, North West region Thursday December 29, 2016, the teachers rubbished report read by Paul Goghomu, President of the ad hoc committee. They say the 11 points were cooked by the Yaounde delegation to give an impression that they have met with students and parents.

Wilfred Tassang, Executive Secretary General of CATTU said, Minister Fame Ndongo said all what we had presented as grievances are false not true, he read them and said not true so what are they coming to solve?

Among others the teachers are asking for the youths arrested in Bamenda and Kumba to be released without conditions, the redeployment of Anglophone teachers teaching in French sub system of education to that of English and vice versa.

By Wilson MUSA
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"While ensuring access to car parking therefore remains a major focus for the CFC, it should be noted that the studies predate new transport options such as Uber and light rail, and future developments such as autonomous vehicles, all of which will increase the range of options for those attending theatre," Ms Elvin said.
Investigations into the incident are ongoing and police are urging anyone with any information to contact detectives from Batemans Bay Police Station via Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or the NSW Crime Stoppers website. Information can be given anonymously.
He said he was volunteering mainly to fulfil the requirements of the Year 10 course, but he also wanted to get as much experience as possible in the community.
The signs are good. The Liberals will push for an inquiry through the parliament's public accounts committee, perhaps even with public hearings and witnesses called. It remains to be seen whether that will get traction, given the committee is locked two Liberals, two Labor, which results in the defeat of most any contentious motion. But the Liberals will seek Greens support in the Assembly to refer an inquiry to the committee, and thus force the issue. Rattenbury and Le Couteur are likely to agree. Watch for the government's damage control to manifest itself in the committee with dedicated efforts to limit the scope of any inquiry, and curtail any thoughts of compelling witnesses or canvassing some of the murkiest corners of the affair. So the detail might be less than satisfactory, but an inquiry of some shape appears likely.
Millennial Moms Review: 2022 Acura MDX is pretty close to the perfect family car

I dont know if perfect is attainable, especially considering weve got the world of options when it comes to modern vehicles. Were spoiled and, as such, we have very specific needs and wants. Driving-wise, the 2022 Acura MDX is one of my favourite ...
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing.

You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
JAKARTA -- Rescuers have recovered four bodies and are searching for scores of missing persons after a boat carrying nearly 100 people sank in waters off North Maluku province of eastern Indonesia on Thursday, local disaster agency official said.

A total of 77 people have been rescued alive and now are being treated at a nearby hospital for their injuries, Amirruddin, a senior official at the provincial disaster management agency said.

"Personnel from search and rescue office and disaster agency are searching for the missing persons now," he told Xinhua by phone.

Wooden boat KM Karamando heading for Jailolo sub-district of Halmahera Barat district capsized in waters off Tauro Island of the district after departing from a seaport in Ternate town, Amirruddin said.

"The boat suffering from engine failure when huge waves and strong winds hit the waters," he disclosed.

Ten children were among the people on board, the official added.

He said that the number of people on board exceeded the manifest of 67.
Unsurprisingly, as this seems to be the case with almost all new cars these days, the Suzuki Swift is already the subject of a rendering.



Usually, most people go for a hot version, but in this case, rather than imagining it as an Opel Corsa OPC or Renault Clio RS rival, X-Tomi chose to give us a glimpse of how it could look like as a convertible.

Apart from the losing its roof in favor of a soft top, such a version of the new Japanese supermini would come as a two-door, with reinforcement to make up for the lost chassis rigidity due to the chopped top.

Meanwhile, Suzuki is getting ready to launch the new Swift hatch in Japan on January 4, two months before it celebrates its global debut in Geneva. In its home market, customers will be able to chose from three engines: a 1.2-liter inline four, a mild hybrid version of it paired to a CVT and a 1.0-liter turbo for the sporty RSt. The first two will be available with front- or all-wheel drive, while the turbo is front-wheel drive only.

PHOTO GALLERY
The Fiat Chrysler story is one of mergers and spin-offs. And the latest rumors suggest that the Italian-American auto giant could spin off two or more additional properties currently under its umbrella.



According to a report from Forbes, FCA could sell the Alfa Romeo and Maserati brands, and potentially Magneti Marnelli as well. The rumors are spurred by reports of mounting debt dragging down the groups financial performance.

FCA closed the third quarter of 2016  the last financial quarter reported  with nearly $7 billion in debt. The companys performance has not been helped by a large number and scope of recalls, some of which have incurred large fines from government regulators in addition to their inherent costs.

In order to improve its bottom line, FCA under the leadership of Sergio Marchionne has shifted its focus recently. The company is prioritizing more profitable SUVs and trucks made and sold by the Jeep and Ram brands, while discontinuing production of less worthwhile small and mid-size sedans like the Dodge Dart and Chrysler 200. That may not prove enough to get FCA out of the hole, however, which is why industry analysts predict that additional spin-offs could be in store.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles was officially formed in 2014 through the merger of the Fiat Group and Chrysler LLC after the former rescued the latter from bankruptcy. This past January, FCA spun its Ferrari brand into a separate company.

Now competing in the lucrative crossover market with the launch of the Stelvio and Levante, both the Alfa Romeo and Maserati brands could find interested buyers on the open market. The Volkswagen Group in particular has long expressed interest in adding Alfa Romeo to its portfolio of brands, though that was before the former tightened its belt in the wake of the diesel emissions scandal.

Operating more behind the scenes of the industry, Magneti Marelli is an electronic components supplier not only to FCA brands but to rival automakers as well. It does tens of billions in business every year, and its sale could in and of itself prove enough to restore its current parent company to profitability.

Photo Gallery
As stunning as the Ferrari J50 is to behold in its own right, the special-edition Prancing Horse bears more significance than the ten examples that will be made. In fact, it could prove to foreshadow the Italian supercar manufacturers future designs.



How do we know? Because Ferrari said so itself. As our colleagues at Motor Authority rightly point out, the automaker asserted in the debut release that the J50 heralds a radically futuristic design language.

Among the limited edition models it has unveiled to date, Ferrari further stated upon its unveiling, this is clearly the one with the most fresh styling and might serve as the blueprint for future Ferrari designs.

It may not be quite confirmed, then, but the allusion tells us that the J50s design cues are more likely than not to find their way onto the next generation of supercars to come roaring out of Maranello in the coming years.

It wouldnt be the first time, after all, that an exotic automaker would use a limited-edition, rebodied version of one of its production models to preview its future design direction. The avant-garde bodywork that adorned the Murcielago-based Reventon, for example, served to foreshadow the Aventador that replaced it. And the design of the McLaren P1 heavily influenced everything the British manufacturer has made since.

So dont be surprised, in short, if the replacement for the 488 ends up bearing more than a passing resemblance to the J50  which in turn, wed add, adopted a certain stylistic flair from the Ferrari Sergio that came before it in the annals of limited-edition roadsters from the house that Enzo built.

Photo Gallery
Imported automobiles are a relatively rare sight in Japan  much less high-end supercars like Lamborghinis. Seeing a whole bunch of them gathered on the same stretch of Japanese road, then, is like witnessing an entire pack of endangered animals frolicking together in the same place. Thats what makes this video, however brief, so special.



Assembled in this two-and-a-half-minute clip is an estimated $10 million worth of SantAgatas finest. Pay close attention and youll see a smattering of Gallardos, Diablos, Murcielagos, and Aventadors. Theres a handful of Ferraris, too  including some 458s, a Dino 246, and a twelve-cylinder 456 GT.

Of course, this being Japan, few of them are left in their original factory specification. Some are decked out in neon or chrome, with one Gallardo Spyder in a dazzling purple starlight fade, and another notable Murcielago in bright orange with 24-karat gold graphics.

The combined effect is eye-catching in the extreme, but then nobody ever said Italian exotics were supposed to be subtle. Follow American YouTuber Steve Feldman as he goes behind the scenes of a supercar meet in Tokyo in the video below.

Video
It's that time of the year  New Year's resolution time.

Some people make them and some don't. Some people keep them and some don't.

We hit the streets to talk resolutions.

Share your resolutions by commenting below.
Photo: The Canadian Press

A new report from CIBC says about half of Canadians aren't taking sufficient steps to stay on top of their financial priorities in the coming year.

A poll conducted this month for the Toronto-based bank found that 48 per cent of respondents didn't plan to cut back spending on non-essential items in order to meet goals that include eliminating debt, keeping up with bills and growing their investments.

Coming in at 28 per cent, debt repayment was the top financial priority of those surveyed  with the vast majority saying their biggest concerns were credit cards and lines of credit.

Among those who incurred new debt over the past 12 months, almost one-third of those surveyed said the primary reason for overspending was day-to-day expenses beyond their monthly income.

Yet, the poll also found that only 26 per cent of the respondents said they will actually set a household budget to help them stay on track with a financial plan.

The CIBC survey was conducted online in early December among 1,507 Canadian adults who are Angus Reid Forum panellists.

Other key findings from the poll showed that keeping up with bills was the No. 2 priority among 16 per cent of those surveyed, followed by growing investments for 11 per cent.

Putting aside money for a vacation was a key financial priority for eight per cent of respondents, while establishing an emergency fund was a top goal for three per cent.

According to the latest data from Statistics Canada, the ratio of household credit market debt to adjusted disposable income crept up to 166.9 per cent in the third quarter, up from 166.4 per cent in the second quarter.

That means, on average, Canadians owed $1.67 in credit market debtmortgages, other loans and consumer creditfor every dollar of disposable income.
Photo: Bombardier

Bombardier's rail division in Berlin has signed a framework agreement with Austrian Federal Railways that could cover up to 300 trains worth up to US$1.9 billion.

The initial order is for 21 Talent 3 electric trains with a list price of US$156 million.

Bombardier didn't disclose the actual amount that Austrian Federal Railways will pay for the trains.

The Montreal-based company says the Talent 3 trains have 50 per cent more seating capacity compared with the predecessor generation.

The first trains will be delivered in 2019 for use in a rail link between rural and urban areas of Austria's Vorarlberg region and neighbouring countries.
Photo: The Canadian Press Exterior of the first Canadian McDonald's restaurant in Richmond, B.C.

The first McDonald's in Canada opened its doors nearly 50 years ago. Now, there are more than 1,400 of its restaurants in all 10 provinces and two territories (Nunavut being the exception).

Here's a look at some significant moments in the company's history in Canada:

1967: George Tidball opens the first McDonald's outside America in Richmond, B.C., at the intersection of Granville Avenue and No. 3 Road. In 1971, Tidball opened another restaurant called the Keg and Cleaver, now known as the Keg Steakhouse + Bar.

1968: The Big Mac makes its debut.

1971: Ownership of all McDonald's restaurants in the country is reorganized under McDonald's Canada.

1976: The company introduces its breakfast menu. The first offerings included the Egg McMuffin, Sausage McMuffin, hotcakes, hash browns and a danish.

1981: The company opens its first Ronald McDonald House in Toronto. Today, there are 15 Ronald McDonald Houses in Canada, offering the families a place to stay close to the hospital where their children are being treated.

1984: Chicken McNuggets first appear on the menu.

1992: McDonald's starts selling the McPizza. In January 2000, the McPizza is pulled from the menu because it takes too much time to make. CEO John Betts says the company will "probably not" ever bring it back.

1995: The first PlayPlace opens in Niagara Falls, Ont. There are now 363 PlayPlaces in Canada. That same year, the company serves its first McFlurry in Bathurst, N.B., where it was created by franchisee Ron McLellan. The desert is launched across Canada in 1997.

1996: The company attempts to appeal to grown-up taste buds with the Arch Deluxe burger, but it fails to resonate and disappears by February 1999.

2000: The McValue menu is unveiled, offering lower prices on some items each day of the week.

2004: For a limited time, adults can buy a grown-up version of the Happy Meal that comes with water, salad and a stepometer.

2008: Following the Arch Deluxe flop, McDonald's finds success with its newly released Angus Burger, which remains on the menu today. The company also begins overhauling its restaurants, remodelling its kitchens and drive-thrus.

2013: McDonald's recreates a classic Canadian dish, launching poutine nationwide.

2015: McDonald's rolls out several new food items for a limited time across the country, including the Western BBQ burger, a Nanaimo crumble sundae and the McLobster, a staple of its restaurants in Atlantic Canada. It also launches three new salads featuring kale, despite slamming the nutrient-rich vegetable in an American ad.

2016: In an effort to boost its lunch business, McDonald's releases The 12  a sandwich literally named after lunchtime. It comes with grilled or crispy chicken breast, applewood smoke seasoned sauce and other toppings on a sesame and poppy seed glazed bun.
Photo: Contributed

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of a repeat offender after he did not show up to court on Wednesday.

Erich Koenig, 55, was arrested for breach of probation on Christmas Day, after he allegedly attended an area on White Lake Road south of Kaleden.

Cpl. Don Wrigglesworth with the Penticton RCMP said that when officers made the arrest, Koenig approached them with a hammer, causing RCMP members to draw their firearms. Koenig then dropped the hammer and was taken into custody.

After a meeting with a justice via teleconference that same day, he was released on a promise to appear in court on Dec. 28. That never happened, and a bench warrant has now been issued.

Koenig has been in and out of court for the past two years on similar probation breaches.
Photo: Contributed

A mining company in northeastern British Columbia has started hiring as it prepares to reopen the Wolverine Mine on Monday.

Conuma Coal Resources Ltd. says the reopening of the mine 15 kilometres west of Tumbler Ridge is expected to create 220 jobs.

That's in addition to 170 jobs that were created when Conuma Coal restarted the nearby Brule Mine in September, just months after purchasing both properties and a third coal mine in northwestern B.C. from Walter Canada.

The Ministry of Energy and Mines says Conuma expects to have the Wolverine Mine operating at full production levels by April, exporting 1.5 million tonnes of metallurgical coal annually.

Skidding coal prices forced Walter Canada to shut down its Tumbler Ridge-area mines in 2014, barely three years after acquiring them.

Tumbler Ridge Mayor Don McPherson said the mine's reopening is welcome after hard times for the community.

"The opening of the Wolverine Mine by Conuma Coal is the best Christmas present Tumbler Ridge could have asked for," McPherson said in a news release. "We have had a tough three years, and this will put people back to work and improve our economic outlook."
India: demonetisation stalls Indian cement recovery

29 December 2016

Cement demand is unlikely to recover for another year due to demonetisation and an increase in prices for diesel and pet coke that has placed cost pressures on most cement makers, according to a report in The Economic Times.

In a survey conducted by JM Financial, cement volumes across multiple markets were adversely impacted following implementation of the governments demonetisation policy in November.

The northern and western regions witnessed a 25-50 per cent fall in sales. Some southern regions experienced a decline in the first week of December. The eastern region saw a 70 per cent demand decline in November, but demand recovered in the subsequent period to about 70 per cent of the usual levels.

Surveys indicated that companies have announced INR10-25 per bag price cuts in the northern and western regions.

While investors expect things to normalise in three to six months, the impact is enough to postpone the recovery in cement demand by another year or so, according to analysts.

We expect demonetisation to have material impact on second half of FY17 earnings of cement companies, said Abhishek Anand, an analyst at JM Financial. We expect a decline of 5-10 per cent in volume for second half of FY17 and reduce our growth expectation for FY18, as we factor in delayed recovery.

Stocks of cement companies have fallen 10-30 per cent since November 8, the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the decision to withdraw INR500 and INR1000 as legal tender.

Published under
Siam Cement predicts high demand for cement next year

29 December 2016

Demand for cement in the Asean region is expected to rise further in 2017, according to Siam Cement Group (SCG) President and CEO, Roongrote Rangsiyopash.

Rangsiyopash argued cement demand would benefit from a cyclical upturn in the petrochemical industry and the continuous growth of the construction industry throughout the Asean.

Roongrote Rangsiyopash expressed his optimism during the Thai Conglomerate's annual stockholders meeting where he disclosed a registered profit of USD404m for the third quarter of 2016, a 57 percent increase from the previous year.

Published under
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[]:2016 20161229 17:33:18 

Stock Code: 200771 Stock ID: Hangqilun B Announcement No. 2016-90







Announcement of Resolutions of the First Provisional shareholders'

general meeting of Hangzhou Steam Turbine Co., Ltd. in 2016







The Company and all members of its board of directors hereby guarantee that the content of



information disclosure is real, accurate, complete and free from any false record, misleading

representation or material omissions.



Special remarks:



1. Notice and reminder of the shareholders meeting were released on December 13,2016

with Securities Times, Shanghai Commercial Daily, Hong Kong Commercial Daily, and

http://www.cninfo.com.cn, titled Announcement 2016-82.



2. No proposal was rejected at the meeting.



3. No resolution of previous shareholders meeting was changed by this meeting.



I. Holding of the meeting



1. Time of the meeting:



(1) Time of the onsite meeting: December 28, 2016(Wednesday) 1330;



(2) Time/date of online voting: Online voting through the trading system of SSE was 9:30

11:30, 13:0015:00 December 28, 2016.Votes can be made anytime between 15:00 December 27,

2016 and 15:00 December 28, 2016 through the online voting system provided by SSE.



2. Venue: Hangzhou Steam Turbine Co., Ltd. (No.357 Shiqiao Road, Hangzhou)



Meeting Room No. 2, the Conference Center



3. Way of meeting: This shareholders meeting was held both onsite and online.



4. Convener: the Board of Directors of the Company



5. Host of the meeting: Chairman of the Company, Mr. Zheng Bin



6. The calling and holding procedures were complying with the Company Law, Rules of

Listing of SSE, and the Articles of Association.



II. Delegates at the meeting



1. Presenting of the meeting by shareholders



Totally 365shareholders and attorneys presented the meeting, representing 520,601,916

shares, accounted of 69.04 % of the total voting shares. Among them there was 1 state-owned

share holder holding 479,824,800 shares, accounted of 63.64% of the total voting shares;

B-stock 364 holders, representing 40,777,116 shares, accounted of 5.41 % of total voting

sdshares.



Totally 59 shareholders and attorneys presented at the onsite meeting, representing





501,215,750 shares, accounted of 66.47 % of total voting shares.



306 shareholders presented the meeting by online voting system, representing 19,386,166

shares accounted of 2.57 % of total voting share.



2. Presenting of other delegates



The directors, supervisors and executives of the Company, as well as the law consultant 

Zhejiang Tiance Law Firm presented the meeting.



III. Proposals and voting results



The following proposals were voted and adopted at the meeting by means of online and

onsite voting.



I. The meeting examined and adopted the Remuneration and Assessment Criteria for the 7th Term

of Directors and Executives







In favor



Objection



Waive



Number of

shares



Proportion



Number of

shares



Proportion



Number of

shares



Proportion



Domestic holder



479,824,800



100%



0



0%



0



0%



B-share holder



20,541,965



50.38%



19,847,107



48.67%



388,044



0.95%



Total



500,366,765



96.11%



19,847,107



3.81%



388,044



0.07%



Including: votes by mid-small shareholders:



(shareholders with 5% or lower of the capital shares)



Mid-small

shareholders



20,541,965



50.38%



19,847,107



48.67%



388,044



0.95%







2. The meeting examined and adopted the Allowance Scheme for the 7th Term of Independent

Directors and Supervisors







In favor



Objection



Waive



Number of shares



Proportion



Number of

shares



Proportion



Number of

shares



Proportion



Domestic

holder



479,824,800



100%



0



0%



0



0%



B-share

holder



21,038,749



51.59%



19,738,367



48.41%



0



0%



Total



500,863,549



96.21%



19,738,367



3.79%



0



0%



Including: votes by mid-small shareholders:



Mid-small

shareholders



21,038,749



51.59%



19,738,367



48.41%



0



0%







3. The meeting examined and adopted the Proposal on the Guarantee Provided by the Company

and Hangzhou Steam Turbine Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. for Hangzhou Steam Turbine Power

Group Co., Ltd.



The proposals of company's largest shareholder Hangzhou Steam Turbine Power Group Co.,Ltd.





 the related party holding 479,824,800 shares, waived from the voting process. The results of

voting by non-related shareholders are as the following:







In favor



Objection



Waive



Number of

shares



Proportion



Number of

shares



Proportion



Number of

shares



Proportion



Domestic

holder



/



/



/



/



/



/



B-share

holder



20,675,824



50.70%



19,490,600



47.80%



610,692



1.50%



Total



20,675,824



50.70%



19,490,600



47.80%



610,692



1.50%



Including: votes by mid-small shareholders:



Mid-small

shareholders



20,675,824



50.70%



19,490,600



47.80%



610,692



1.50%







4. The meeting examined and adopted the proposal to amendment draft of the Articles of

AssociationRevision 2016



The proposal is a special proposal , the effective voting rights of the total number of shares of

more than 2/3.







In favor



Objection



Waive



Number of

shares



Proportion



Number of

shares



Proportion



Number of

shares



Proportion



Domestic

holder



47,982,400



100%



0



0%



0



0%



B-share

holder



21,159,321



51.89%



19,015,103



46.63%



602,692



1.48%



Total



500,984,121



96.23%



19,015,103



3.65%



602,692



0.12%



Including: votes by mid-small shareholders:



Mid-small

shareholders



21,159,321



51.89%



19,015,103



46.63%



602,692



1.48%







IV. Legal Opinions from the Solicitors



1. Name of the law firm: Zhejiang Tianche Law Firm



2. Names of the lawyers: Du Wen, Liu Bin



3. Conclusive opinion:



In the lawyers opinion, the convening and holding procedures, the qualification of attendees,

and voting procedures of the First provisional Shareholders Annual Meeting in 2016 was

complying with the laws, regulations and the Articles of Association of the Company. Therefore

the resolutions are legal and valid.



V. Documents for Reference



1. Resolutions of the First provisional Shareholders Meeting in 2016 carrying the signatures

of the directors and secretary of Board;



2. Legal opinion issued by Zhejiang Tianche Law Firm on the shareholders meeting.





The above is for the attention of the shareholders.



This announcement is hereby made.











The Board of Directors of



Hangzhou Steam Turbine Co., Ltd.



December 28, 2016

























 Stock Code: 200771 Stock ID: Hangqilun B Announcement No. 2016-90Announcement of Resolutions of the First Provisional shareholders'general meeting of Hangzhou Steam Turbine Co., Ltd. in 2016The Company and all members of its board of directors hereby guarantee that the content ofinformation disclosure is real, accurate, complete and free from any false record, misleadingrepresentation or material omissions.Special remarks:1. Notice and reminder of the shareholders meeting were released on December 13,2016with Securities Times, Shanghai Commercial Daily, Hong Kong Commercial Daily, andhttp://www.cninfo.com.cn, titled Announcement 2016-82.2. No proposal was rejected at the meeting.3. No resolution of previous shareholders meeting was changed by this meeting.I. Holding of the meeting1. Time of the meeting:(1) Time of the onsite meeting: December 28, 2016(Wednesday) 1330;(2) Time/date of online voting: Online voting through the trading system of SSE was 9:3011:30, 13:0015:00 December 28, 2016.Votes can be made anytime between 15:00 December 27,2016 and 15:00 December 28, 2016 through the online voting system provided by SSE.2. Venue: Hangzhou Steam Turbine Co., Ltd. (No.357 Shiqiao Road, Hangzhou)Meeting Room No. 2, the Conference Center3. Way of meeting: This shareholders meeting was held both onsite and online.4. Convener: the Board of Directors of the Company5. Host of the meeting: Chairman of the Company, Mr. Zheng Bin6. The calling and holding procedures were complying with the Company Law, Rules ofListing of SSE, and the Articles of Association.II. Delegates at the meeting1. Presenting of the meeting by shareholdersTotally 365shareholders and attorneys presented the meeting, representing 520,601,916shares, accounted of 69.04 % of the total voting shares. Among them there was 1 state-ownedshare holder holding 479,824,800 shares, accounted of 63.64% of the total voting shares;B-stock 364 holders, representing 40,777,116 shares, accounted of 5.41 % of total votingsdshares.Totally 59 shareholders and attorneys presented at the onsite meeting, representing501,215,750 shares, accounted of 66.47 % of total voting shares.306 shareholders presented the meeting by online voting system, representing 19,386,166shares accounted of 2.57 % of total voting share.2. Presenting of other delegatesThe directors, supervisors and executives of the Company, as well as the law consultant Zhejiang Tiance Law Firm presented the meeting.III. Proposals and voting resultsThe following proposals were voted and adopted at the meeting by means of online andonsite voting.I. The meeting examined and adopted the Remuneration and Assessment Criteria for the 7th Termof Directors and ExecutivesIn favorObjectionWaiveNumber ofsharesProportionNumber ofsharesProportionNumber ofsharesProportionDomestic holder479,824,800100%0%0%B-share holder20,541,96550.38%19,847,10748.67%388,0440.95%Total500,366,76596.11%19,847,1073.81%388,0440.07%Including: votes by mid-small shareholders:(shareholders with 5% or lower of the capital shares)Mid-smallshareholders20,541,96550.38%19,847,10748.67%388,0440.95%2. The meeting examined and adopted the Allowance Scheme for the 7th Term of IndependentDirectors and SupervisorsIn favorObjectionWaiveNumber of sharesProportionNumber ofsharesProportionNumber ofsharesProportionDomesticholder479,824,800100%0%0%B-shareholder21,038,74951.59%19,738,36748.41%0%Total500,863,54996.21%19,738,3673.79%0%Including: votes by mid-small shareholders:Mid-smallshareholders21,038,74951.59%19,738,36748.41%0%3. The meeting examined and adopted the Proposal on the Guarantee Provided by the Companyand Hangzhou Steam Turbine Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. for Hangzhou Steam Turbine PowerGroup Co., Ltd.The proposals of company's largest shareholder Hangzhou Steam Turbine Power Group Co.,Ltd. the related party holding 479,824,800 shares, waived from the voting process. The results ofvoting by non-related shareholders are as the following:In favorObjectionWaiveNumber ofsharesProportionNumber ofsharesProportionNumber ofsharesProportionDomesticholderB-shareholder20,675,82450.70%19,490,60047.80%610,6921.50%Total20,675,82450.70%19,490,60047.80%610,6921.50%Including: votes by mid-small shareholders:Mid-smallshareholders20,675,82450.70%19,490,60047.80%610,6921.50%4. The meeting examined and adopted the proposal to amendment draft of the Articles ofAssociationRevision 2016The proposal is a special proposal , the effective voting rights of the total number of shares ofmore than 2/3.In favorObjectionWaiveNumber ofsharesProportionNumber ofsharesProportionNumber ofsharesProportionDomesticholder47,982,400100%0%0%B-shareholder21,159,32151.89%19,015,10346.63%602,6921.48%Total500,984,12196.23%19,015,1033.65%602,6920.12%Including: votes by mid-small shareholders:Mid-smallshareholders21,159,32151.89%19,015,10346.63%602,6921.48%IV. Legal Opinions from the Solicitors1. Name of the law firm: Zhejiang Tianche Law Firm2. Names of the lawyers: Du Wen, Liu Bin3. Conclusive opinion:In the lawyers opinion, the convening and holding procedures, the qualification of attendees,and voting procedures of the First provisional Shareholders Annual Meeting in 2016 wascomplying with the laws, regulations and the Articles of Association of the Company. Thereforethe resolutions are legal and valid.V. Documents for Reference1. Resolutions of the First provisional Shareholders Meeting in 2016 carrying the signaturesof the directors and secretary of Board;2. Legal opinion issued by Zhejiang Tianche Law Firm on the shareholders meeting.The above is for the attention of the shareholders.This announcement is hereby made.The Board of Directors ofHangzhou Steam Turbine Co., Ltd.December 28, 2016
After 15 years in corporate audit Michael Rogers is transitioning to manage his real estate investment portfolio, Chandler Properties. Mr. Rogers is a certified public accountant who started out at a regional CPA firm, then worked at two Chattanooga insurance companies in the Internal Audit departments. During the last three years Mr. Rogers worked part-time in his corporate position and focused on growing the fix and flip business on the side.

I am excited that I will now be able to focus on real estate investing full-time going forward," said Mr. Rogers. "Ive always had a passion for entrepreneurship and getting to do this every day is a dream come true.

"My plan is to continue to grow the house buying business as well as manage the rentals and self storage business. In the second half of 2016 we purchased four properties that we either fixed up and rented or sold. In 2017 we will focus more on marketing and growing the house buying business. We buy directly from sellers via our website www.sellmichaelyourhouse.com.

The typical house being purchased by Mr. Rogers needs quite a bit of repairs and updates. Outdated houses are more difficult to sell through a realtor. These sellers are not looking to go through the hassle of taking on a large remodeling job just so they can list the property with a reator. We come in and make a no-obligation cash offer," said Mr. Rogers. "If they are interested in selling it, we buy it 'as-is' and take on all the risks in repairing it. Ill even give the homeowner recommendations on repairs they can make to get the property ready to sell through a realtor if they dont want to take our offer."

The Chandler Properties portfolio currently owns and manages houses, multifamily, commercial, and self storage in the Cleveland and Chattanooga markets. Mr. Rogers plans to manage the daily operations of the business from their recently acquired office at 1310 South Lee Hwy.

For more information about Mr. Rogers visit sellmichaelyourhouse.com/our-company or call 614-0069.






Newscity

Study Looks to Reduce Oil Industry's Impact on Mule Deer

Researchers from Western Ecosystems Technology are conducting a study to examine the effects of oil and gas exploration in the Rosa Mesa area near Navajo Lake on deer mule populations. The seven-year, half-a-million dollar Rosa Mule Deer Study is being funded by WPX Energy. It will be conducted by the Farmington Bureau of Land Management office in partnership with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. The study will use data collected from radio tracking collars worn by the mule deer to determine habitat selection patterns, migration routes and survival rates. The data will be compared to times when oil and gas industry activity was absent. The Rosa area was chosen for the study because mule deer come down from the mountains to spend the winter in fields there that overlap with a large oil and gas industry presence. The mule deer herd in the area migrate a great distance over the year, making data gathered from this study useful for mule deer management in places as far as Colorado, the tribal lands of the Southern Ute and Jicarilla. A spokesperson for the Farmington BLM office said that the study will help oil and gas companies reduce their impact on wildlife while drilling. The study will be completed by 2018. WPX Energy is looking to place 14 new well pads in the area, with 16 horizontal wells per pad.
Re: New Anti-Crime Legislation Laws Take Effect Jan. 1

It is a pity these wanna-do-good legislators could not include DUI in their harsher sentencing, mostly burglaries. DUI is one of the most prevalent, abused, mis-judicated, deadly dangerous offenses: death at the hands of a drunk.

How many times has the Chattanoogan.com reported a death at the hands of a drunk driver with multiple convictions of DUI. Whos at fault? The judge? The DA? Possibly, but I think mandatory sentencing of habitual drunk drivers needs to be legislated and this can only be addressed by the Tennessee Legislature.

Once again, our fearsome leaders have demonstrated they cant see the forest through the trees.

Dave Fihn
This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact The Chanute Tribune office at 620-431-4100 if you have any questions
The Georgia Department of Labors LaFayette Career Center will help Nissin Brake recruit to fill more than 80 automotive assembly associate positions to work in Rock Spring. Express Staffing will also be recruiting on behalf of Nissin Brake.

The recruitment will be held on Thursday, Jan. 12, from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Fort Oglethorpe City Hall located at 500 City Hall Dr. GDOL staff will be onsite to help screen applicants.

Due to U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, all applications must be at least 18 years old.

A high school diploma, or a General Education Diploma, is not required when applying through the Express Staffing agency; however, it is required when applying directly with the employer.

The company offers training availability for applicants chosen for the position.

Salaries will begin at $10.10 an hour and benefits include dental, health and vision insurance along with six paid holidays and five paid days a year.

All applicants are encouraged to dress appropriately to improve their opportunities for jobs.

For more information about the jobs, or to apply online, visit http://employgeorgia.com/ to create an account and upload, or prepare, a resume. Having an Employ Georgia account expedites the interview process.

For more information about the event, contact the LaFayette Career Center at 706.638-5525. The career center is open to serve the public Monday-Friday from 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

Visit dol.georgia.gov to learn more about career opportunities, Employ Georgia and other GDOL services for job seekers and employers, and to connect with us on social media.
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McCallies Tornado Winds pep band has landed in the United Kingdom and will be bringing in the new year Sunday morning as part of the 31st New Years Day Parade and Festival in London.The Tornado Winds flew to England earlier this week to see some of the sights in London and prepare for their performance Sunday morning under the direction of McCallies Director of Instrumental Music Brent Alverson.In March, former Lord Mayor of the City of Westminster Duncan Sandys visited McCallies campus to formally invite the Tornado Winds to participate in this international event.This is a once in a lifetime experience; you will be surrounded by history and culture throughout your stay in London, Mr.Sandys said to the band during his visit to Chattanooga. This is something you all will carry with you all the days of your lives.The Tornado Winds will be among more than 8,000 performers from throughout the world performing for about 500,000 live spectators on the 2.2-mile parade route, with many more viewing remotely.For those unable to make the trip to London to see Tornado Winds perform in person, the event will be streamed live on the parade website at www.lnydp.com . Live coverage of the parade will begin at 7 a.m. on New Years Day and will run through 10:30 a.m.If you miss seeing the parade live, cable/satellite network RFD-TV will show LNYDP 2017 on Monday, Jan. 2, from 7-10:30 a.m. before the networks Tournament of Roses Parade coverage. Several cable and satellite systems carry RFD-TV. Check www.rfdtv.com for details about how to find RFD-TV in your area.
Due to unexpected cancelled mobile blood drives this week, Blood Assurance is requesting community support to replenish supplies needed by area hospitals. Donors are encouraged to schedule appointments by calling 800-962-0628 or via the website here.

Donate any time before the 31st to receive a free Fandango movie code.

To be eligible to donate blood, one must be at least 18 years old (17 and 16 years old with parental consent), weigh 110 pounds or more and be in good health. Donors are asked to drink plenty of fluids - avoiding caffeine - and eat a meal that is rich in iron prior to donating.

For more information on Blood Assurance, donating blood or hosting a blood drive, visit www.bloodassurance.org.










Somewhere around Charlotte, N.C., I can almost assure you two members of the search firm contracted to find us a school superintendent are scratching their heads. They wonder if the Hamilton County School Board is real, or if Wednesdays 90-minute conference call will show up on Saturday Night Live or some similar venue as rare-form humor. At a Wednesday work session, the school board was absolutely embarrassing in my view yesterday.The board was horribly unprepared for the call, since board chairman Steve Highlander assumed the eight members also received a list of the questions that would be posed.So when the board was asked about the good, the bad, and the ugly, I would have laughed at the bewilderment if it werent so dadgum disappointing.I want someone with good character, said one member, as though the search guys would throw in a couple of candidates with bad character. Im glad you said that, replied the shill on the other end of the phone. Good character is really important for a school superintendent, he added as our august panel nodded towards the stone-faced HCDE employees who were watching.What we need is leadership! said another, a comment that was bolstered by the unbelievable comment, and that means the school board must be included in the big and tough decisions. Hello? The superintendent works for the school board; it is the super who must give an accounting and to now demand the courtesy as a job prerequisite is a sterling indication roles must be redefined.The North Carolina expert pounced. You are exactly right  the board must be included to have a cohesive operation and the best opportunity, or some such pandering remarks but what slayed me was what was not said.The slick-tongued moderator wanted to know what a potential applicant would hear when conducting his own research. The school board dawdled, saying the media has presented a false impression, that it is a great board when avoiding what an applicant will truly find like a running back avoiding linebackers. It was laughable, I tell you, and the truth is undefeated. Blaming the media is a blind mans game  all of Chattanooga has clearly seen what has happened in the past year.Not one board member told the search firm that all three of the last superintendents in Hamilton County left in haste and quite prematurely, this to the tune of a half-million in buy-out money. Nobody said 60 percent of our third graders cannot read at grade level and that 65 percent of our graduating seniors must take remedial courses before enrolling in college. If you were a potential hire, might this interest you?Nobody told the search experts our buildings are falling down  one elementary school has just 30 percent of restrooms still usable. Our central office is bloated with overkill, our faculties are suffering at every school and our leadership efforts, farmed out some time ago to a non-profit with an annual payroll of $2-plus million, is in fact a tragedy.The search firm guy told an anecdotal story about how one school district in North Carolina just hired a superintendent with a law degree. Thats who we need! Between the Ooltewah rape and the Woodmore bus catastrophe, the new superintendent will deal with court schedules for years to come.Worse, the Hamilton County Department of Education will soon be invaded. Several communities within the county can take it no more, having formed feasibility committees to study breaking off and forming small but viable independent school districts within the county. There is also a very real chance the state achievement district may claim as many as seven schools, siphoning off even more state and federal funding from the HCDE. When you are finished hiding your head in the sand, the next superintendent is virtually guaranteed a dire financial realization.Everybody knows President-elect Donald Trump realizes education in America is bad. He sees an easy fix with public-to-private vouchers. Go ahead, Google what has happened in Indiana in the last three years and youll see public education  as we know  will radically change in just a few years because the horizon is changing in a huge way. America doesnt want failures, nor does Hamilton County.Now, if I know what the true story is about public education in Chattanooga, the only way the school board will lure a candidate is to buy him or her with heavy cash. Yet there is no money there. So they speak of character and leadership. Oh my mercy royexum@aol.com
MADISON, Wis.  Repeat drunken drivers will face more time behind bars in Wisconsin starting New Years Day under a law the state legislature passed overwhelmingly nearly a year ago.

The new law doesnt make the first offense a criminal violation, leaving Wisconsin as the only state that treats a first offense as a civil violation. Advocates for sober driving say lawmakers need to go further in the upcoming session, starting by expanding ignition interlock use.

(The new penalties are) just closing some loopholes that currently exist, said Frank Harris, state government affairs director for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. By the time someones a repeat offender prosecutors need every tool in the tool box.

The new law, sponsored by Rep. Jim Ott, a Mequon Republican, makes a fourth drunken driving offense a felony punishable by up to six years in prison regardless of when its committed. Right now a fourth offense is a felony only if its committed within five years of a third offense.

The law also increases the maximum sentence for fifth and sixth offenses from three years to five. Maximum sentences for seventh, eighth and ninth offenses will increase from five years to seven years and six months.

The maximum sentence for a 10th or subsequent offense will increase from seven years and six months to a decade in prison. The new penalties will go into effect Sunday.

Drunken driving has plagued Wisconsin for decades. The state Department of Transportation has tracked more than 4,000 alcohol-related crashes every year from 2012 through 2015. Eighty-five people died in alcohol-related crashes last year, according to the state agencys data.

The states drunken driving laws have been notoriously lax. Wisconsin is the only state where a first offense is treated similar to a speeding ticket. The offender can lose a drivers license but doesnt face any jail or prison time and can obtain occupational licenses allowing travel to certain destinations during certain hours.

Prohibitive cost estimates and resistance from powerful Tavern League lobbyists have scuttled attempts to create harsher penalties. The Department of Corrections, for example, projects it may have to spend as much as $129 million annually as well as another $157 million to construct a dozen drug abuse centers to accommodate the additional offenders under the new law.

Still, sober driving advocates seem to be gaining some momentum. Ott has insisted the cost estimates are exaggerated and the Tavern League registered in support of the new law. The Senate passed the measure in January on a voice vote, a procedure reserved for noncontroversial legislation, and the Assembly passed it 95-1 in February.

MADDs Harris wants more. He wants to see Sen. Van Wanggard, a Racine Republican, reintroduce a bill that would allow first-time offenders to obtain a special license allowing them to drive wherever they wish if they install ignition interlock devices on their vehicles.

The devices work like breathalyzers. The driver blows into it and if his or her breath exceeds a certain alcohol content the vehicle wont start. Under the bill, a license holder who drives a vehicle without such a device could face six months behind bars.

A fiscal estimate attached to the bill found fees for the new licenses would generate about $1.1 million annually but the measure never got a floor vote last session.

Harris said 28 other states already permit such a practice, which he called an in-car probation officer.

Wanggard said Tuesday hell bring the bill back this session, adding that the measure will encourage people to stay sober. He said he also plans to bring back a proposal to revoke a persons license permanently if he or she has five or more operating while intoxicated offenses.

Ott, meanwhile, plans to reintroduce bills that would require a minimum 18-month prison sentence for fifth and sixth offenses and a mandatory seven-year sentence for committing a homicide while driving drunk.

By working to close loopholes and strengthen sentencing, Ott spokesman Ryan Augustyn said in a statement, we send the message that OWI is a serious offense with potentially life-changing consequences.
Equity crowdfunding in Illinois didn't quite take off in 2016 the way proponents expected it to, despite new state and federal laws permitting everyday Americans to buy stakes in small companies.

Equity crowdfunding takes the Kickstarter model  in which a person or company raises money for a project in exchange for a reward  and applies it to ownership stakes in private companies.

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Under federal and various state laws, the model lets nonaccredited investors, who don't need to meet income or net worth requirements, purchase small portions of companies' equity through online portals.

In January, Elliot Richardson, co-CEO of the Small Business Advocacy Council and a supporter of Illinois' intrastate crowdfunding law, said he expected equity crowdfunding to be big in 2016.

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"I think it came out of the gate a little slower than we had hoped," Richardson said as the year came to a close this month. "There weren't nearly as many opportunities in 2016 as we had hoped would be available to potential investors and also companies trying to raise money through intrastate equity crowdfunding."

The problem, Richardson said, was that it took longer than expected for Illinois-based online portals to get up and running, which delayed the start of in-state projects. VestLo, which focuses only on local crowdfunding, and TruCrowd were two portals that went live in 2016. They launched a handful of offerings between them, none of which have yet reached their funding goals.

Some portals outside Illinois  such as SeedInvest and Republic in New York and StartEngine in California  are more mature and more active. Many of their offerings are in the technology or tech-enabled space, for companies that make products such as electric cars, smart home appliances and dating apps.

Entrepreneurs and investors in these industries may have more knowledge or understanding of the equity crowdfunding model than traditional small businesses. But Richardson suggests small businesses could find a new source of funding through this model.

He said if 2016 was about getting the portals up and running, 2017 will be about teaching business owners and potential investors about the risks, opportunities and potential rewards of equity crowdfunding.

Scott Kitun, CEO of Technori, said he disagrees with the focus on small businesses for this kind of fundraising, in part because of the education problem.

"If you go the route of small businesses  you now have to educate two people," Kitun said. "You've got to educate the investor and now you have to educate the actual companies that could actually crowdfund."

Technori partners with Republic, the New York-based portal, to curate startups on the platform and receives a fee for referring Illinois-based companies. A recent referral, Ellison Eyewear, surpassed its $50,000 funding goal earlier this month, and has more than 60 days left to raise up to $750,000.

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Kitun said he sees more of an opportunity for equity crowdfunding to be a next-generation friends-and-family round for startup founders, particularly those who historically have less access to capital  women and minorities.

He predicted that supporters of equity crowdfunding will spend the first half of 2017 touting early success stories, after which he expects to see more local activity in this space overall.

"I really think this is democratization of that early-stage investment," he said.

aelahi@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @aminamania
A St. Charles man who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and income tax evasion was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison Wednesday over actions he took after buying a Huntley trucking company, the U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday.

Christopher A. Jansen, 64, was president of Baytree Investors, which was in the business of buying trucking companies. In 2001, he learned that Huntley-based DFC Transportation was for sale. After buying the company, he arranged for DFC to use its receivables to borrow money from a bank that he ultimately distributed to himself and others for their personal use and without disclosing it to shareholders or directors, according to a news release from the Justice Department. Specifically, in March 2002, he moved $250,000 from a DFC account in Utah to a St. Charles account for the personal benefit of himself and others, without telling shareholders or corporate directors, the department said.

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Jansen, who pleaded guilty in 2008, also admitted failing to file a federal income tax return for 2002, the department said.

Jansen also received three years of supervised release and was ordered to pay $269,978 in restitution, the department said.

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In a court filing Wednesday, Jansen asked the court to release him pending an appeal that he plans partly due to "ineffective counsel" that he received earlier in the case.

"Defendant has diligently appeared at court dates for status hearings and motions related to this matter since October 2008," Jansen said in a filing.

Also since that time, he said he has been in a car accident "that has created certain mobility and pain issues that further (limit) his movement."

According to court documents, Jansen said his wife is disabled and that he provides for her care, including driving her to doctor visits.

One reason that the case dragged on was because Jansen had filed a motion to withdraw his plea.

byerak@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @beckyyerak
The Cambria hotel at 166 E. Superior St., seen Dec. 12, 2016, is one of two Cambria hotels set for downtown Chicago. About $14 million will be spent to renovate the Superior Street property, formerly the MileNorth Hotel, from February to June. A second Cambria hotel is slated to open anove the Oriental Theatre on West Randolph Street. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

Chicago will host more major conventions in 2017, but the local hotel market could still find itself tested with as many as 3,000 additional guest rooms coming online, raising concern about oversupply.

When the books are closed on 2016, the hotel occupancy rate likely will be 74.5 percent, down from 76 percent in 2015, said Ted Mandigo, director of Elmhurst-based hospitality consultant TR Mandigo & Co. It was 75.7 percent in 2014.

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The challenge: The supply of rooms has been outpacing demand, he said.

The additional rooms coming in 2017 will bring the city's total to 44,000. And the occupancy rate in Chicago hotels likely will fall again, to 72.5 percent, he said.

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The drop might be even steeper were it not for a convention market that will likely be a little stronger than it was in 2016, which had been hit by a double whammy. Reasons for the anticipated convention bounce: Convention planners generally arrange their meetings in cycles, and 2016 was an "off year" for Chicago, Mandigo said. Also, Chicago had been a bidder for the recently concluded Summer Olympics, a prospect that several years ago made convention planners wary about scheduling 2016 events but more open to holding events in the city in the following year.

There's no reason we shouldn't be welcoming 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, 5 million.  David Whitaker, chief executive of Choose Chicago

David Whitaker, chief executive of Choose Chicago, the city's convention and tourism bureau, said the city will host 35 major meetings in 2017, up from 31 in 2016.

Of those three dozen or so groups, 12 will hold their first meetings in Chicago, said Whitaker, who was hired for the job in June.

"No destination, whether it's meeting or leisure travelers, can just depend on the business they've already enjoyed," he said.

The Chicago Cubs' World Series win can only help the city's tourism efforts, he said.

Whitaker said a recently announced trophy tour will help raise Chicago's profile in those markets, which, according to the Cubs' website, include Indianapolis and Des Moines, Iowa.

The city's hotels have been averaging around 75 percent occupancy for the past several years, Whitaker said. While not as high as New York, Miami and San Francisco, that rate puts the city in the top 10 of U.S. markets with the highest occupancy, he said.

The volume of travelers to Chicago has been growing. Chicago exceeded 50 million domestic visitors for the first time in 2015, attracting 52 million overall.

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In 2012, there were about 100 hotels in what Whitaker considers the central business district, encompassing a select group of hotels in 14 ZIP codes, as far north as North Avenue, west down the Eisenhower to Kedzie Avenue, then as far south as 55th Street.

In 2017, there will be about 130 hotels, he said. Over that same time frame, the number of rooms will have climbed from 35,000 to 42,000.

"It's good for consumers and it means that developers are confident in the city, but it puts stress in the system if the pace of rooms outpaces volume," Whitaker said.

Cambria, an upscale Choice Hotels chain, entered the downtown Chicago market in November by rebranding an existing hotel. In 2017 it's opening a new property in the Loop theater district. (Becky Yerak / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

The city must attract more international travelers, which made up only about 1.5 million of the approximately 52 million travelers in 2015, he said.

"There's no reason we shouldn't be welcoming 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, 5 million," Whitaker said, noting that adding more gates at O'Hare International Airport would help.

"You'd get more airlines seeing the potential of Chicago," he said.

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Construction recently began on a new east-west runway for O'Hare that is expected to open in 2020. The city said the runway will improve on-time performance through increased capacity and flexibility, and that it will be able to handle the biggest planes  the kind that come from and go to Asia and Australia. The city also has said that major airlines have agreed to build up to nine new gates.

Chicago also has been overdependent on regional visitors, with three-quarters of Chicago visitors coming from eight neighboring states, Whitaker said.

"That's too many eggs in one basket," he said. "We're the playground of the Midwest but we need more from Boston, New York, Florida."

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has a goal of attracting 55 million visitors annually by 2020.

Reaching that milestone is critical if Chicago hotels are to achieve a healthy occupancy rate, Whitaker said.

The biggest property to open in 2017 will be the 1,205-room Marriott Marquis Chicago, which will be directly connected to McCormick Place. The hotel will include dining options and bar space on the first floor.

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"It will be a cool big space where you can be alone together," said Lori Healey, CEO of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which owns McCormick Place. "People can plug in and work and not sit in their room." It will also have a rooftop venue, she said.

Properties opening in 2017 also include a 198-room Cambria hotel above the Oriental Theatre on West Randolph Street in Chicago's Loop. Cambria is a new upscale brand from Choice Hotels, a publicly traded company whose other lines include Comfort Inn, Clarion and Econo Lodge.

Choice, along with partner Fillmore Capital, in November also converted the former MileNorth Hotel at 166 E. Superior St. into a Cambria. About $14 million will be spent to renovate the 215-room property in 2017, from February to June, General Manager Ian Heffron said.

Much of that spending will go toward the rooms, including new beds and new bathrooms in which bathtubs are replaced with walk-in showers. Also, 32-inch TVs will be replaced with 55-inchers.

Spending on technology will include a mobile app that will enable people to check in on their phones, pick their rooms and bypass the front desk.

"Your key is your phone," Heffron said.

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Space devoted to the fitness center will about double. The rooftop bar, which is enclosed during the winter, also will be renovated.

The hotel had been seeing an occupancy rate averaging 79 percent, but Choice expects it to rise to the low 80s, Heffron said.

Also being renovated in 2017 is the Talbott Hotel. About $20 million will be spent on the Gold Coast property, which closes Sunday and is expected to re-open in May. Renovations include expanding the number of rooms from 149 to 178. Improvements will also include a new lobby and guest reception area, and updated meeting and event spaces.

Many of the hotel's workers  more than half of whom have worked at the property 10 years or more  will be kept on the payroll during construction, a spokeswoman said.

Chicago-based hotel operator Hyatt, which has 24 hotels in the metro area across six brands, expects more citywide events in 2017 compared with 2016, although growth in the company's Chicago business is "expected to be modest as hotel supply has increased," said David Phillips, senior vice president of field operations. The company also will make changes to its loyalty program in 2017.

Other hotels expected to open in 2017 in Chicago include the Viceroy in the Gold Coast and the Nobu Hotel, backed by actor Robert De Niro, in the West Loop.

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byerak@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @beckyyerak
Chickamauga does not mean river of death, or bloody river, or dwelling place of the chief, or the stagnant stream. It is definitely not Cherokee, even the Cherokee themselves have always said that, nor is it likely Muskogean. It almost certainly came from the closest allies of the Cherokee in the wars of the later 18th century, the Shawnee.

The word Chickamauga has been given a variety of spellings such as Chickamaugee in the survey report of Col. Samuel Long to the Western & Atlantic Railroad on possible routes to connect with the Tennessee River beyond the Georgia state line.

Two other places in the Southeast have similar names. The village of Chicamacomico now in Rodanthe, North Carolina, on the Outer Banks near Cape Hatteras, and the Chicamacomico River near Dorchester, Maryland, both lie in areas originally inhabited by peoples who spoke Algonquin languages like the Shawnee did. In both cases, the name is translated as dwelling place by the big water, the suffix mico meaning chief, great, or big. Without the suffix, it becomes Chicamaco, dwelling place by the water.

Among the Cherokee

The first appearance of the name Chickamauga (or a variety thereof) in the tristate area or even the trans-Blue Ridge region was in late 1776 at a spot on the east side of a tributary to what the Cherokee called Egwanimaya, or Great River (the Tennessee). This settlement was later called Old Chickamauga Town by the Daughters of the American Revolution, which the Cherokee called Tsikamagi.

Since Chickamauga was Dragging Canoes dwelling place (though its headman was another man named Big Fool), the eleven Cherokee settlements in the region, four of them on Chickamauga River, or South Chickamauga Creek alone, became known as Chickamauga Towns. These were abandoned in 1782 with the relocation of their people to the (new) Lower Towns area to the west, but reinhabited after the conclusion of the Cherokee-American Wars in 1795.

In addition, many writers at the time, and even more so in later decades, referred to the people of this Cherokee resistance as the Chickamaugas as if they were an entirely separate people, which is not accurate. Some used the more precise term Chickamauga Cherokee, which gave way to Lower Cherokee after the relocation west from the Chickamauga Towns.

To reseachers and historians this can sometimes be a bit confusing, since there had for decades been a division called Lower Towns on the Tugaloo, Chattooga, and Keowee Rivers in northwest South Carolina and northeast Georgia. This original group of Lower Cherokee relocated west in 1777 to North Georgia above the Chattahoochee River and became known as the Upper Cherokee of the Upper Towns.

In 1820, the Cherokee divided their territory into eight districts for electoral, legislative, and judicial purposes, each of the districts being further divided into three precincts. All of Hamilton County (and much further) south of the Tennessee and west of Ooltewah (Wolftever) Creek became part of Chickamauga District, which had its seat at Crawfish Springs in whats now Georgia, which also served as the voting place for its first precinct. Its second precinct, voting at the home of Hunter Langley in Lookout Valley, may have been in Hamilton County, or perhaps it was in Dade County, Georgia. The rest of the county fell into Amohee District, which had its seat at Thompson Springs near Cleveland, Georgia; one of its precincts met at the home of Kalsowee in Long Savannah in the northern section of eastern Hamilton County.

Civil War

During the Civil War, for two-and-a-half days in September 1863, the Union and Confederate armies fought the bloodiest battle of the conflict in northern Walker County, Georgia, in a region the locals called Mud Flats, which gave its name for the battle to the Confederacy. The Union, however, called it the Battle of the Chickamauga, referring to the West Chickamauga Creek, but by the end of the 19th century, it became simply the Battle of Chickamauga.

In honor and anticipation of the 1889 Blue and Gray Barbeque reunion of Union and veterans who fought at the Battle of the Chickamauga/Mud Flats and the Battles of Chattanooga, the State of Georgia set aside Chickamauga Battlefield Reservation, intended as a first step of establishing the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. The larger park was chartered in 1890 and inaugurated in 1895.

Post-Cherokee Removal communities

Under John D. Gray, the Western & Atlantic Railroad (W&A) constructed its line south to Tunnel Hill, Georgia, from Chattanooga in the late 1840s. Initially, its first stop east of South Chickamauga Creek was Campbells Station. But when the post office of Chickamauga, Tennessee, began operating out of there, the depot became Chickamauga Station, and the community became Chickamauga, Tennessee.

At the same time (1850), residents of Poes Tavern, the first seat of Hamilton County abandoned in favor of Dallas (then Harrison in 1840, finally Chattanooga in 1870), voted to change their name to Chickamauga, Tennessee, but since they didnt have mail service at the time there was no conflict with the other Chickamauga on the W&A.

In 1888, the Chattanooga, Rome, & Columbus Railroad (CR&C) built a depot at Crawfish Springs, Georgia, former seat of the Chickamauga District of the Cherokee Nation. The CR&C changed the name of its depot to Chickamauga in 1891, and the community incorporated as the Town of Chickamauga, Georgia, in 1892 (and as the City of Chickamauga in 1913).

The Nashville, Chattanooga, & St. Louis Railway retained the name Chickamauga for its Tennessee depot there until the 1930s, when it finally changed to match the name of its post office, Shepherd. After that, the name Shepherd came into common local usage. Partly because of this, some have an understandably mistaken impression that Chickamauga and Shepherd refer to two different communities, but that is not the case.

After the Cherokee Land Lottery in Georgia, settlers in one section of Walker County adopted the name East Chickamauga, doubtlessly named for that branch of the greater river. The name appears on the census in 1840 and 1850. The area became part of Catoosa County in 1853, and the name East Chickamauga ceased to appear in records.

Post offices

In 1850, the post office of Chickamauga, Tennessee, was established in the Campbells Station depot, which soon also adopted the name Chickamauga Station.

Civilian postal service was disrupted during the war, at least at Chickamauga Station. When the opportunity arose in 1866 to get their own post office under the communitys name, the residents of the northern Chickamauga (the former Poes Tavern) grabbed it to become Chickamauga, Tennessee. When service was restored at the original southern Chickamauga on the W&A the next year (1867), its post office became Chickamauga Station, Tennessee.

With the coming of the Cincinnati Southern Railway through the northern community of Chickamauga, a citizen named Mel Adams offered land for a depot provided the post office there adopt his name. Thus, Chickamauga became Melville in 1878. The southern Chickamauga Station post office eventually returned the name of its post office back to Chickamauga (sans Station) in 1882.

In 1890, the post office of Crawfish Springs in Walker County became Chickamauga.

Due to confusion in mail with the post office of Chickamauga, Georgia, the post office of Chickamauga, Tennessee, changed its name to Shepherd, Tennessee, in 1898 (although Ive known that for years, it only just now occurred to me to wonder why they didnt simply change it back to Chickamauga Station, Tennessee).

When the Louisville & Nashville Railroad ceased operations at Shepherd depot in 1955, the post office of Shepherd, Tennessee, necessarily closed along with it. To replace it, Chattanooga postmaster Frank Moore located a satellite office in Brainerd Hills Shopping Center and named it Chickamauga Station. In 1984, it moved a few miles down East Brainerd Road next to where the old Rains place once stood, retaining its name.

A couple of decades before the railroad depot, the patriarch of the extensive Hixson clan in the area, Ephraim Hixson, operated the North Chickamauga, Tennessee post office 1833-1839.

Meanwhile, in Walker County, Georgia, the community of East Chickamauga hosted the first post office of Chickamauga, Georgia, 1836-1837.

Religious institutions

When the American Board of Missioners established Brainerd Mission in 1817 on the left bank of the South Chickamauga Creek across from the reoccupied Cherokee town, its missionaries named its body of worship the Church of Christ at Chickamauga.

After the Cherokee Removal, settlers in the Ocoee District (all the county south of the Tennessee River; the county north of the river was part of the Hiwassee District) established Chickamauga Camp Ground at the later Ryall Springs for religious camp meetings, used even before the Removal. Camp meetings there begat Blackwells Chapel (now Graysville) Methodist Church and West View (now Cornerstone Community) Cumberland Presbyterian Church. It also served the Baptists who regularly met at a local schoolhouse at the crossroads of the former Brainerds Road with the old stage road from Harrison; they formally organized the Baptist Church of Christ at Concord in 1848. It was still being used at the time of the Civil War.

Chickamauga Cumberland Presbyterian Church was founded in 1839 at Cumberland Camp Ground at Silverdale Spring. In 1876, it became Pleasant Grove Cumberland Presbyterian, then Silverdale Cumberland Presbyterian in 1930. The first Baptist church in the Ocoee District, Good Spring (later Tyner, now Heritage) Baptist, was organized at the camp as well in 1838, along with Houses Chapel (now Tyner) Methodist Church in 1844.

Chickamauga Baptist Church, the second Baptist church in the Ocoee District, was incorporated at Sivley, later Taliaferro, Spring, in the Kings Point area in 1838, a few months after Good Spring. The spring is reportedly located on TVAs public recreation property south of the river on the lake. In 1927, the congregation changed its name to Oakwood Baptist.

In the southern Chickamauga, Tennessee, residents organized Chickamauga Chapel Baptist Church in 1867. The congregation became Chickamauga Station Baptist in 1902, then Shepherd Baptist in 1908.

Schools and other institutions

In 1871, the Chickamauga School for black students opened its doors on Chickamauga Road a little south of the railroad village. It continued as Chickamauga Elementary School until its closing in 1987, by which time it had long been integrated. Under segregation, its students matriculated to Booker T. Washington High School in the nearby Shot Hollow community.

There was also a Chickamauga School for white students across the railroad tracks from the village and depot. Its date of establishment is unclear, but it was operating by the 1904-1905 school year. The school year 1935-1936 was its last, and given its location its safe to suggest that it fell to the expansion of Lovell Field, which it bordered to its immediate north on what used to be the Dr. J.B. Haskins farm. Its students were probably diverted to Tyner Elementary or East Brainerd, or both.

The General Assembly of the State of Georgia chartered the Chickamauga School System in 1905, including Chickamauga Elementary School and Gordon-Lee High School. Gordon-Lee Middle School was added in 1991.

Physical geography

Hamilton Countys Chickamauga Lake is the reservoir created by the eponymous dam.

The Chickamauga Hills lie immediately east of Peavine Ridge in Catoosa County, Georgia, stretching north well into Hamilton County, Tennessee. In the latter, the chain includes such heights as Bermuda Hill (overlooking Graysville, Georgia), Scrapeshin Ridge, Fuller Ridge, Julian Ridge, and several unnamed (or forgotten name) ridges, hills, and knobs. As a matter of fact, northern Catoosa County residents in this area refer to them simply as the ridges. In addition, a couple of official after-action reports on the events of 26 November 1863 use the term Pigeon Hills in reference to them.

In the survey report to the Western & Atlantic Railroad (W&A) Company in Georgia on possible routes for extension of the line to the Tennessee River from Lot 5, District 28, Section 3 of the Cherokee Land Lottery in Murray (later Walker, then Catoosa) County, Col. Long uses as a reference point the narrow opening between the northern end of Boynton Ridge to the south and the southern end of Concord Ridge to the north, now occupied by Audubon Acres, referring to it as Chickamauga Gap.

Before the gates of the eponymous dam closed, Chickamauga Island rose above the Tennessee River with its foot where the dam and Wilkes T. Thrasher Bridge now cross. On some maps it is erroneous called Friars Island, but Friars Towhead (or Island) is the much smalled islet just below the larger island. Friars Ford crossed the river over the towhead, and Rogers Ferry, dating to Cherokee times, also ran here.

Chickamauga Gulch is a ravine in the eastern escarpment of Waldens Ridge through which North Chickamauga Creek flows. Its mouth opens a couple of miles south of Daisy at the community of Mile Straight between Flipper Bend on the plateau to the south and Montlake and Grasshopper Hill on the plateau to the north.

Speaking of North Chickamauga Creek, its headwaters flow from the geographical feature known as the Double Bridges on the plateau of Waldens Ridge.

Several streams flowing through Walker and Catoosa Counties, Georgia, into Hamilton County, Tennessee bear also Chickamauga as part of their name.

According to the lastest nomenclature, South Chickamauga Creek, which flows into the Tennessee River between Amnicola and Toqua communities in Chattanooga, begins at the confluence of East Chickamauga Creek and Tiger Creek two-tenths of a mile west of the Old Stone Church just outside Ringgold, Georgia.

The headwaters of East Chickamauga Creek spring forth between Dick Ridge and Taylors Ridge in Whitfield County.

The headwaters of Little Chickamauga Creek issue a couple of miles south of the community of Catlett in Walker County, Georgia. The Little Chickamauga meets the South Chickamauga just south of Ringgold, near where Richard Taylor had his farm trading post on the Federal Road that gave the surrounding community the name Taylors Place.

The West Chickamauga Creek, along which the Battle of the Chickamauga/Mud Flats was fought in September 1863, rises in upper McLemore Cove in Walker County, Georgia. The West Chickamauga meets South Chickamauga Creek in the middle of the north side of Camp Jordan Park.

Historically speaking, the name South Chickamauga Creek is rather late. Certainly through the 19th, and probably well into the 20th, century, it was more commonly called the Chickamauga River. That was definitely the case in pioneer annals and in official reports from both sides on the Civil War. Just where the Chickamauga River actually began was in some dispute, however, with some carrying it as far upstream as the headwaters of what is now Tiger Creek. Others began it at the same confluence of East Chickamauga and Tiger Creeks as today.

Still others did not count it as the Chickamauga River until after the confluence of the West Chickamauga with the East Chickamauga just north of Camp Jordan Park. For these, the East Chickamauga extended all the way from its Whitfield County, Georgia, headwaters to the confluence with the West Chickamauga.

Also, the Little Chickamauga Creek used to be known as the Middle Chickamauga Creek, and the North Chickamauga Creek until well into the 20th century was more often called the Little Chickamauga Creek.

Chuck Hamilton

<natty4bumpo@gmail.com>
Sears Holdings Corp., the struggling retailer backed by hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert, rose the most in almost two months after lining up a $200 million letter of credit to help fund its money-losing operations.

The amount could be expanded to as much as $500 million with the consent of lenders, according to a statement Thursday. Affiliates of ESL Investments Inc. -- a firm run by Lampert, who also serves as Sears's chief executive officer, is providing the promise of funding through Citigroup Inc.

The move signals that Lampert remains committed to bankrolling Sears, even as the department-store chain suffers from dwindling sales and billions in red ink. After acquiring the once-mighty retailer more than a decade ago, he has sold off assets and real estate in a bid to return the company to profitability. The hedge fund manager, who is also Sears's biggest investor, became CEO of the business almost four years ago.

The stock jumped as much as 8.7 percent to $8.89 in New York trading following Sears statement Thursday, marking the biggest intraday gain since Nov. 14. The shares had lost more than 60 percent of their value this year before the latest rally.

Despite the stock reaction, it's a troubling sign that Lampert himself seems to be the only one willing to lend to Sears, said Noel Hebert, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

"The only person lending here is Eddie," he said. This isn't a "normal course" of action.

Lampert's firm also is helping support Seritage Growth Properties, the real estate investment trust spun off from Sears in 2015. ESL will provide a $200 million unsecured line of credit, Seritage said this week.

Earlier this month, Sears reported another huge quarterly deficit -- $748 million -- bringing its total losses to $9.35 billion in the past eight years. The company needs to raise about $1.5 billion to make it through 2017 comfortably, according to Christina Boni, an analyst at Moody's Investors Service.

Thursday's announcement of a "letter of credit" stops short of providing an actual cash infusion, Hebert said. Rather, it provides a backstop to vendors.

It also raises concerns that Sears is seeking financing right after the holiday season, which is the most lucrative time of year for retailers, he said.

"They weren't able to generate a ton of cash out of it -- if any," he said.

Sears Chief Financial Officer Jason Hollar said in Thursday's statement that the company has numerous options for financing.

"We will take actions to adjust our capital structure, generate liquidity and manage our business to enable us to execute on our transformation while meeting all of our financial obligations," he said.
President-elect Donald Trump sought credit for Sprint's commitment to create or bring back 5,000 jobs that the carrier says are part of broader U.S. hiring plans previously announced by Japan-based parent SoftBank Group Corp.

Trump said SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son was among those behind the move to add workers. The Japanese billionaire, who Trump calls "Masa," said earlier this month that he intends to invest $50 billion in the U.S. using a previously announced technology fund, creating 50,000 jobs.

"Because of what's happening and the spirit and the hope I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they're going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States," Trump told reporters Wednesday outside his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. "Masa and some other people were very much involved with that."

The 5,000 jobs in Sprint's plans are part of Son's overall 50,000-job commitment, though they'll be funded by Sprint and not SoftBank, the U.S. carrier said.

The employment will be in customer care, sales and other functions, Sprint said in a statement Wednesday. The company is still determining the location of the positions, which will be filled by the end of March 2018, Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint said. Sprint had about 30,000 employees as of the end of March, down from 38,000 in 2013, when Son acquired the company.

Trump disputed the notion that the jobs had already been announced, telling reporters later Wednesday that "I just spoke with the head person. He said because of me they're doing 5,000 jobs in this country." He referred reporters to his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, for details. She didn't respond to a request for comment, and Sprint didn't respond to follow-up questions.

Son's vow to invest in the U.S. and create jobs helped provide Trump with evidence he's producing more work for Americans. It also scored points for Sprint, which was rebuffed by the Obama administration on a previous merger attempt.

Trump also repeated an announcement earlier this month that OneWeb Ltd., a satellite startup backed by Son's SoftBank Group Corp., will create almost 3,000 jobs in Florida over the next four years. That number consists of about 1,200 jobs at OneWeb, plus about 1,800 jobs at suppliers that work directly with the startup and include Qualcomm Inc., Hughes Network Systems and Honeywell International Inc., Greg Wyler, founder of OneWeb, said in an interview.

"Masa's meeting with Trump invigorated and inspired Masa to increase investment in OneWeb and accelerate OneWeb's growth," Wyler said in an interview. In September, October and November, the U.S. economy gained an average of 176,000 nonfarm jobs a month, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Sprint shares have more than doubled this year on improving subscriber gains and speculation that the company could revisit a long-speculated merger with T-Mobile US Inc., the third-largest wireless provider, under the Trump administration. The stock rose less than 1 percent in early trading Thursday.

Sprint has struggled since 2013, when Son hinted he could try to buy T-Mobile, only to abandon the effort after signals from the Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department that they could oppose the move. While T-Mobile has rebounded, becoming the country's fastest growing carrier, Sprint has cut costs and mortgaged assets to contain its debt.

OneWeb is developing small, low-orbit satellites to provide wireless internet access in remote areas. The company raised $1.2 billion from SoftBank and others this month. The Trump administration's interest in space accelerated OneWeb's plans, said a spokesman, Charles Palmer.

Consumer and business confidence has surged since the election, reflecting optimism about Trump's pledges to boost growth, keep the labor market churning, cut taxes and ease regulations. Trump has meanwhile scored political victories as president-elect by appearing to persuade individual companies to keep or create jobs in the U.S., and by intervening in Pentagon contracts.

Trump struck a deal with United Technologies Corp.'s Carrier unit last month to keep about 800 manufacturing jobs at a furnace factory in Indianapolis. Trump had vowed during his campaign that he would force the company to abandon plans to move the jobs to Mexico. About 1,000 Carrier jobs are still leaving the state for Mexico, and the company will receive about $7 million in incentives from state taxpayers for the positions it is keeping in Indianapolis.

This month, IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty -- a Trump economic adviser -- announced just before a meeting with Trump that she planned to hire 25,000 people in the U.S. and invest $1 billion over the next four years.

Earlier this month, Trump called on Boeing to cut the price of a new version of the president's aircraft, Air Force One. Last week, he said he had asked the company to "price-out" a new version of its F-18 Super Hornet fighter that could compete with Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive U.S. weapons system ever.

The announcements have buttressed Trump's campaign-trail claims that he would use his business acumen to broker better deals for American workers and taxpayers. He's also said he will exit or renegotiate trade deals that make it easier for companies to shift production to countries with lower labor costs, and threatened to impose significant tariffs on imports.

Trump's public pronouncements sometimes exaggerate either the costs of projects he's trying to influence or his own impact. For example, he said the new Air Force One would cost $4 billion, while the Air Force has budgeted $3.2 billion so far to research, develop and purchase two of the planes. He claimed he had convinced Carrier to keep more than 1,000 jobs in Indianapolis; the accurate number is about 800. In November, the president-elect claimed credit for convincing Ford to keep an auto plant in Kentucky rather than moving it to Mexico. Ford had planned to move production of a specific model to Mexico, but did not expect to close the Kentucky plant or reduce the number of jobs there.

And while companies have expressed optimism over Trump's promise to lower the corporate tax rate, new tariffs could ratchet up the price of consumer goods.

Bloomberg's Jennifer Epstein contributed.
Alicia Mendoza was working two part-time jobs when she transferred into Northeastern Illinois University. Swamped with work, school and a daily commute, bolstering her resume with something extra was the last thing on her mind.

She thought getting good grades was enough to land her a job after graduation. Now she knows better.

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"You can have a perfect 4.0 GPA, but that does not guarantee you a job," said Mendoza, now a 24-year-old MBA student and graduate assistant in Northeastern's College of Business and Management.

Colleges and universities expend a lot of effort getting students in the doors, but there are worries there isn't enough focus on making sure their recruits land a good job after graduation. More than half of college graduates say they visited their school's career services office at least once, but only 16 percent said it was helpful, according to a recent report from Gallup and Purdue University.

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Gillian Steele, assistant vice president of the Career Center at DePaul University, is photographed at the center on Dec. 15, 2016. DePaul helps first-generation college by offering them a stipend when working at unpaid internships. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

The need for change in career services is evident, according to the report. Gallup found that barely 1 in 10 U.S. business leaders think a college education equips grads with the right skills for their business.

Career services needs to be more than just an office students visit their senior year, said Brandon Busteed, executive director of education and workforce development at Gallup. It needs to reach students when they're freshmen and incorporate mentors, internships and work experience.

"These things all need to be intricately woven in," he said.

Colleges already have been making some moves to do just that. They are becoming mindful that not everyone comes from the same background, and not everyone is heading in the same direction.

The Career Development Center at Loyola University Chicago was reorganized about three years ago to expand and better prepare students for their careers.

It partners with Greek affairs, teaches classes and makes contact at freshman orientation. It maintains some of its traditional roles  advising students, tweaking resumes  but with a twist. Advising can be done over Skype, job leads are sent out via Twitter and tips on how to dress for an interview are posted on Pinterest.

"A lot of times students engaging with us don't realize it's us," said director Kathryn Jackson. And that's a good thing, she said. Students are busy, they're overwhelmed, and they don't have the time or desire to trudge across campus in a snowstorm to get some career advice.

DePaul University psychology student Dontorrie Chatman, works at the university's Career Center on Dec. 15, 2016. Chatman, a first-generation college student, wants to become a screenwriter. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

With the hiring landscape constantly shifting, many jobs that today's students may eventually occupy haven't been created yet. Rather than being trained for one type of job, students must learn how to develop certain skills  like teamwork, problem-solving and leadership  and talk those up to potential employers, said Thy Nguyen, director of the Office of Career Services at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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"What matters to us is that they're developing the core competencies which employers are telling us are important in the workplace," he said.

UIC's Career Services ran a pilot program in which it trained on-campus supervisors to work with student employees on career planning, and helped faculty integrate those core skills into their lessons.

That "we'll-come-to-you approach" is especially important with first-generation and transfer students. Among graduates nationally, those two groups are less likely to say they visited career services as undergrads, according to the report.

"They're literally trying to pay rent," said Mendoza, herself a transfer student. "It's tough."

But those students are going to end up competing with traditional students, so they need to change their mindsets, Mendoza said. She's in Northeastern's MBA program, and works in the dean's office on the side, coordinating with the school to help students find jobs and internships. She pays close attention to the first-generation and transfer students, as well as those living in the country without legal permission.

Alicia Mendoza, left, works with student Elizabeth Bahena on Dec. 19, 2016 at Northeastern Illinois University. Mendoza, an MBA student and graduate assistant, also works in the deans office on the side, coordinating with the school to help students find jobs and internships. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

At DePaul University, nearly 1 in 3 freshmen in 2016 were first-generation students, said Gillian Steele, assistant vice president of the school's Career Center, and the school keeps that at front of mind.

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It runs a program that gives first-generation students working unpaid internships a stipend. "They're working their way through college," Steele said. "It (isn't) easy for them to leave that job."

The approach seems to be working. In 2015, a higher percentage of first-generation students did an internship during undergraduate studies than those who weren't first-generation students, Steele said.

DePaul requires all of its undergraduates to complete real-world experience, through an internship or research, for example. It runs a program that connects hundreds of alumni and other professionals with students. Mentors, Gallup found, can be a sort of lifeblood for students' job searches.

Dontorrie Chatman can attest to that. He's a senior at DePaul majoring in psychology with a minor in screenwriting. The 22-year-old planned to pursue a career in psychology, but a 20-page psychology paper his junior year made him realize it wasn't the right path. Now his sights are set on screenwriting.

"I just applied for my first job at Netflix," he said, sitting at his desk at DePaul's Career Center in the Loop. He works there part-time, helping other students. "(I'd be) mostly assisting an executive producer for original content." He is waiting to hear back from Netflix about the status of his application.

Chatman's parents did not go to college, and unsurprisingly, he knew no one in the screenwriting world when he decided to make the switch. But through the mentoring program, he connected with an alumnus who has done work at a couple of studios in New York, and was able to get some pointers.

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"Here's a news flash: Everybody can help deliver the success of college grads," said Busteed, from Gallup. "But I don't think we've made it clear that everybody can have a productive role in that."

amarotti@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @AllyMarotti
Mayor Rahm Emanuel speaks to the media at City Hall in Chicago on Nov. 16, 2016. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has swapped one of his most recent appointments to the Chicago Board of Education with a former top aide who has helped negotiate contracts with the Chicago Teachers Union.

Arnaldo Rivera will take over Dominique Jordan Turner's spot at the school board, pending what's expected to be a routine City Council approval of his appointment.

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Jordan Turner and schools officials have declined to comment about her status with the board in recent weeks. On Thursday, Emanuel's office announced Jordan Turner had "recently stepped down" to serve on the Chicago Public Library's board of directors.

"There is no doubt that Arnie's experience addressing our schools' most urgent needs makes him uniquely qualified to build on the work that our schools across the city are doing to improve our children's futures," Emanuel said in a statement Thursday.

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Jordan Turner, president and CEO of the Chicago Scholars Foundation, was formally selected for the school board in June 2015 as part of a broad mayoral makeover of its ranks. Turner has also served as a director of the Posse Foundation and the KIPP Foundation charter school organization.

Emanuel's office announced Jordan Turner would leave CPS for the library board in mid-December, saying the move would be effective in January. Jordan Turner, reached Thursday, declined to comment.

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The mayor's move to bring Rivera, a longtime schools operative, to the CPS board comes as the district stares down decisions on its turbulent finances and moves forward with plans for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of construction projects.

By the time the board meets in January, board President Frank Clark announced early this month, it would be ready to deal with what could be this fiscal year's third amended budget to account for the loss of $215 million in state help the district has banked on.

Rivera recently left a senior position at the school system to serve as an adviser to After School Matters, one of the city's most prominent education-related nonprofit organizations. Rivera has also served as an officer with the politically-connected Chicago Public Education Fund.

But Rivera's roles at the mayor's office and CPS have often put him at the center of the district's work. Emanuel's office on Thursday said Rivera had served as the "lead architect" of the city's education policy agenda, and noted Rivera's role in high-stakes CTU contract talks in 2012 and this year.

"My focus has always been, and will continue to be, on improving educational opportunities in schools today so that the district's rapid academic success can continue into the future," Rivera said in a statement distributed by Emanuel's office on Thursday.

jjperez@tribpub.com

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The ubiquity and popularity of social media have made it easier for people to keep track of one another.

"Now everybody knows everybody's family and friends," says Barbara Helm, a safe adult advocate with domestic violence shelter and victim services provider Family Shelter Service. "Social media has become such a huge part of everybody's life, and we have to let everybody know what we're doing every minute of the day."

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This has presented professionals who work with victims of domestic violence with a host of opportunities and challenges.

"The online space is real life because if I'm holding my phone checking social media before I get out of bed in the morning, that's my real life," says Cindy Southworth, executive vice president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence. "If there's a threat to my safety on social media, it's going to be the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see before I go to bed."

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While digitally disconnecting from someone you no longer want to have an interpersonal connection with is as easy as clicking a button, advocates for victims of domestic violence say that's a proposition fraught with potential peril for people in abusive romantic relationships.

"On the negative side, social media is a tool for harassment and abuse. It is a medium by which threats and intimidation are conveyed, and can be used to monitor victims' movements and activities," says Alisa Neary, clinical director at Mutual Ground, which operates a shelter and provides services for victims of domestic violence. "Ultimately, it is a vehicle by which abusers establish and maintain control over their partner."

"Social media, especially Facebook and Twitter and Instagram  things like that become a huge issue when a client is trying to leave their abuser," Helm adds.

That's because experts say the slightest digital indication that an abuser is no longer in total control of his or her partner could be enough to escalate a situation further.

"If (a victim) were to post something about 'I'm trying to leave my abuser, and I'm trying to get help,' the most dangerous time for a victim of domestic violence is when she's in the act of leaving," says Rebecca Darr, CEO of domestic violence shelter and counseling services provider Wings Program Inc. "If her abuser has no idea she's planning on leaving, they're following her posts and her social media, (and) now they know she's thinking about leaving. That's when she could be at the most dangerous point in her life."

Social networks are well aware that abusers are using their networks to contact victims of domestic violence, and they're doing what they can to make their networks safe and enjoyable for everyone.

"We've built tools  like blocking and our extensive privacy settings  to give people more control over their experience on Facebook," a Facebook spokesman said. "Our team works in the community to provide training and guides to help educate people on how to stay safe online, including specifically for survivors of domestic violence."

Facebook and Twitter have worked with the National Network to End Domestic Violence on policies and to develop online resources for victims of domestic abuse designed to keep those victims safe. Snapchat has partnered with a number of organizations to develop safety guidelines and has an area on its website where users can file a report if they are feeling unsafe.

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Twitter, which has repeatedly come under fire for its inability to snuff out harassment, unveiled an update last year designed to make it easier for users to report threats to law enforcement.

But just because you find yourself in an abusive relationship doesn't mean you should get off social media entirely.

"I have zero patience for people who tell victims of abuse that your only way to be safe is to get off the internet," Southworth says. "That is unconscionable, and it's not possible, given how technology is interwoven into all of our lives."

While harassing social media messages may strike fear in the victims who receive them, experts say those harassing messages can actually serve to build a case against an abuser in the long run.

"We encourage clients to keep records of all harassing or threatening communications," Neary says.

"In Illinois, harassment through any means, including social media, constitutes abuse, so a judge may issue an Order of Protection to prevent further abuse," adds Margaret Duval, executive director of the Domestic Violence Legal Clinic in Chicago.

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Now that there are 1.71 billion active users worldwide on Facebook and 313 million active users on Twitter, domestic violence shelters and resource centers are establishing themselves on social networks to serve as resources for victims seeking help.

Shelters have their own Facebook pages with information on how to get in touch if people feel they are in trouble; in some cases, there is a button to send a Facebook message directly to a staff member who will respond.

Domestic violence phone hotlines are monitored and answered 24/7. Facebook pages for shelters, however, are not. Yet.

"We're doing an overhaul of social media right now, so I do see that as being part of the plan, especially in light of all the issues that clients are having with social media that they're bringing to us," says Mo McGuire, a spokeswoman for Family Shelter Service. "We're trying to open up more avenues for them to reach us."

While people have reached out to Family Shelter Service's social media channels seeking assistance, it's a rare occurrence. McGuire could only recall two instances when victims contacted Family Shelter Service on Facebook, once in the form of an instant message, the other time in the form of a wall post.

But just because it's only happened twice so far doesn't it mean it won't happen more often in the future.

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"In the future, we could see an uptick in that for sure," she says. "We probably need a better mechanism in place (for social media) to make sure (messages to the page are) addressed immediately because that's not always possible with the way our organization is set up."

Darr says shelters are facing two major obstacles when it comes to social media  money and resources.

"Social media sounds great, and it's one of those things that organizations want to promote themselves, but they also need to have the internal resources and capacity to stay on top of who's posting, what they're posting and the responses," she says.

It's one thing for shelters and service providers to have a social media presence. It's totally another for them to know how each social media site works and what advice they can give to people who are in abusive relationships.

"Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of seminars and webinars around social media safety," Helm says. "Technology changes so quickly. It's a matter of staying up on that. The days of us saying I don't do Facebook, I don't do that Twitter thing  you can't do that if you're going to be involved in the lives of your clients, because if you don't know what that technology is doing, you can't help them get through it."

Matt Lindner is a freelancer.

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The Divvy bike share program is approaching 10 million rides since it was launched in Chicago in 2013. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

Since launching in Chicago in 2013, Divvy has provided nearly 10 million rides and this year broke its record for most rides on a single day.

This year through the end of November, more than 3.5 million trips were taken through the bike-sharing program, a 14 percent increase in trips over the same time period last year. The system is about 10,000 rides shy of hitting the 10-million mark since it entered the market 3 1/2 years ago. Divvy plans to give a free annual membership to the rider that hits that milestone, as well as three gift memberships to share with family and friends.

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Divvy completed its latest expansion over the summer to the South and West sides, counting more than 580 stations and more than 5,800 sky blue bikes available in the city, Evanston and Oak Park. The company does not plan to expand next year into other suburbs or beyond the current service area, according to Divvy general manager Elliot Greenberger.

There are no plans to change prices for passes and memberships. Earlier this year, Divvy increased the cost of the annual membership to $99 from $75. Currently, there are 33,600 annual members, Greenberger said.

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"Reaching 10 million trips in just three-and-a-half years is a testament to the growing popularity of biking in Chicago," Transportation Commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld said in a city news release issued Thursday. The Chicago Department of Transportation owns Divvy, a bike-share company operated by Motivate. "We hope that crossing this threshold will inspire more people to take advantage of Divvy for getting around Chicago, whether it's as annual members or using convenient daily passes."

The busiest day so far for the program was July 16, a Saturday, when there were 24,998 Divvy trips taken in the midst of summer street festivals, a Cubs game, Pitchfork Music Festival and a promotion offering free rides, Greenberger said. The number of rides that day surpassed the previous record, set last year on the Fourth of July.

The day of the fewest trips this year was Christmas Day, with 364 trips taken.

Divvy would be the third bike-share system in the U.S. to hit that 10-million-ride milestone, behind Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C., which launched in 2010, and Citi Bike in New York City, which launched a month before Divvy, the news release said.

Topping the most popular Divvy destinations this year in Chicago was Navy Pier, where a nearby station is near Grand Avenue and Streeter Drive. Rounding out the top five were stations near Grant Park at Lake Shore Drive and Monroe Street, Theater on the Lake near Fullerton Avenue and the lakefront, North Avenue Beach and Ogilvie Transportation Center.

lvivanco@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @lvivanco
Veronica Portillo Heap, a former student at the University of Chicago, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education in July 2015 that the school failed to meet its obligations under Title IX. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune) (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

After a month of struggling on her own, Veronica Portillo Heap went to her academic adviser at the University of Chicago in May 2014 and told her that she had been sexually assaulted on a date.

She wasn't looking for the university to punish her date, who wasn't a U. of C. student. She wanted advice about how to cope and to hear someone say she had been violated.

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When she didn't get either, she consulted the campus' sexual violence prevention policies and found several areas where she believed the university had fallen short of federal guidelines, including the way rape was addressed during freshman orientation. She pushed the university to change its policies, only to feel ignored and, later, retaliated against because she complained.

Believing she had no other recourse, Heap filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education in July 2015 that alleged the university's policies and procedures pertaining to sexual violence failed to meet its obligations under Title IX, a federal law that prohibits gender discrimination. The department opened an investigation in February.

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Two weeks after the federal investigation began, U. of C. announced changes to its sexual assault policies, including new prevention programs, and the creation of a website that explains the university's polices, resources and processes, as well as options available for victims. The university also redesigned training for freshmen.

A U. of C. spokesman said the campus "is committed to addressing and preventing unlawful harassment, discrimination and sexual misconduct" and continues to take "substantial steps to enhance efforts to prevent such incidents and to respond in a prompt, equitable and thorough manner whenever they occur."

But the Department of Education has not yet closed the case and it's unclear when there will be a resolution, which could require further reforms. With the Trump administration set to take over next month, the Department of Education still has 292 open cases involving sexual violence, including 14 at eight colleges and universities in Illinois.

And while President Barack Obama's administration has made addressing sexual assaults on campus a priority, it's unclear what Trump  who has boasted of grabbing women by their genitals without permission  will do. He did not specifically address the issue during the campaign, but the Republican Party platform approved during the convention calls for the federal government to reduce its role in campus sexual violence investigations.

The Department of Education still has 292 open cases involving sexual violence, including 14 at eight colleges and universities in Illinois.

"I don't know what's going to happen during the next administration," Heap said. "I'm not sure there will ever be a resolution."

Campus security experts are equally unsure about the future, given neither Trump nor his pick for education secretary has taken a public position on the issue. Their lack of a governing record also makes it difficult to predict how the next administration will view such cases.

"The overall feeling right now is uncertainty," said Karen Ibach, a Philadelphia-based attorney who works with universities on Title IX compliance issues. "No one really knows what's going to happen."

As part of its efforts to spotlight issues surrounding campus sexual assault during the past five years, the Obama administration has increased the number of investigations and taken the rare step of publicizing them. In 2011, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights issued a letter that urged colleges and universities to better investigate and adjudicate cases of campus sexual assault. That letter dictated the standards by which institutions are to handle complaints, including a 60-day deadline to finish administrative investigations.

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In 2014, the education department for the first time released a list of schools under investigation for possible violation of federal law related to the handling of sexual violence complaints. The list, which initially included 55 schools, is updated weekly and available upon request.

The department does not disclose details about the cases. The reviews are prompted by either a formal complaint or a compliance review and can take years to complete. Another U. of C. complaint, for example, is more than three years old.

The reviews typically end with an agreement between the institution and the education department. Universities that do not comply with the law can lose federal funding.

The investigations include cases opened this year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Illinois at Chicago. There are four ongoing reviews at Knox College in Galesburg, including one launched in April. The other campuses with pending investigations are Columbia College Chicago, Judson University in Elgin, Monmouth College and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

A case also was opened at the University of Notre Dame earlier this year.

U. of I. spokeswoman Robin Kaler declined to discuss the case, citing student privacy laws. The school was notified in August that an investigation had been opened.

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"Any time we learn of such allegations, we investigate them fully and take appropriate action," Kaler said in a statement. "Whenever we receive a request from the Office of Civil Rights, we take the matter seriously and respond promptly and openly."

The new investigation at U. of I. comes after the university reached a settlement with the education department in 2013 on an unrelated case. That case involved a student who accused campus officials of minimizing her sexual assault and harassment complaints after photographs and a video of the incident were passed around a fraternity house.

In its agreement with the education department, the university did not admit wrongdoing but agreed to provide better staff training on how to handle sexual misconduct complaints. It also revamped its disciplinary process for such allegations, including appointing an advocate for accusers.

The university also updated its student discipline code to prohibit engaging in voyeurism of sexual acts without the knowledge of those involved and to forbid the recording or disseminating of the activity without consent. U. of I. also paid the student more than $77,000 as part of a settlement.

UIC is facing two investigations, including a sexual violence case opened in April and a sexual harassment review that began in August. A UIC spokesman declined to discuss the cases, citing privacy concerns, but said the campus "has provided all relevant information" to the education department.

At Knox College, the most recent complaint stemmed from a student who said the college did not provide "a prompt and equitable grievance procedure" when she told campus officials about a sexual assault, according to a letter sent by the education department to the college and obtained by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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The student further alleged that the college retaliated against her.

Kim Schrader, Knox's Title IX coordinator, said the college has not heard from federal authorities since the case was opened.

During the past few years, the college has changed how it handles investigations, added Schrader's position and began providing pocket guides detailing resources in the case of a sexual assault.

Even if Trump makes Title IX cases less of a priority, Knox College officials said they plan to stay vigilant about sexual violence.

"Regardless of what happens on Jan. 20, we as an institution remain committed to being a responsible and safe community," said Megan Scott, the vice president for communications. "This is not going to change no matter what happens when a new administration takes over."

To be sure, many experts believe the revamped policies will become an enduring part of Obama's legacy. Universities nationwide have made changes to their policies and few expect the schools to backtrack because of a new president.

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"We've spent five years building in procedures and processes," Ibach said. "I don't see colleges stepping away from them in any meaningful way. These are all good changes. Nobody wants to send their child to a school that isn't doing its best to keep students safe."

The Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

His pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has not been involved in many higher-education issues, making it difficult to predict how much weight she'll give the Office for Civil Rights. However, some Republicans  including senators who will oversee her confirmation hearings  have accused Obama of distorting Title IX for political gain.

In trying to predict the next administration's stance, experts have looked at Breitbart News, the far-right website formerly run by Trump's chief White House strategist, Stephen Bannon. The site has been dismissive of sexual assault concerns on college campuses, with articles in the past year saying "militant feminist professors" are driving policies and stating that "male students (are) subject to one of the most egregious strings of miscarriages of justice in American history."

At the Republican convention this summer, the GOP accused the Obama administration of curtailing the rights of alleged perpetrators. The party particularly objects to a requirement that administrators evaluate sexual misconduct allegations using the "preponderance of the evidence" standard, meaning the alleged attack more likely occurred than not. The standard  which is used in civil matters  is lower than the "beyond a reasonable doubt" threshold used in criminal courts, where the GOP platform purports that all sexual violence complaints belong.

"Whenever reported, it must be promptly investigated by civil authorities and prosecuted in a courtroom, not a faculty lounge," the platform states.

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But while the Obama administration prioritized the standard, it did not create it. The preponderance of evidence threshold has been used as far back as 1991 and was endorsed by previous Republican administrations.

If the GOP platform is adopted, it essentially would mean schools could take action only in cases in which criminal charges are pressed and the allegations result in a conviction.

"It's contrary to common sense," said S. Daniel Carter, a longtime campus safety expert. "It's like telling a company they can't fire an employee who they think was stealing until the outcome of the court case. Colleges and universities have been administering discipline since their inception  for cheating, for stealing and other things  without having to wait for the outcome of a criminal case."

Some are doubtful that Trump would want to spend political capital on sexual violence issues. The U.S. Senate and House have bipartisan support for bills that codify a significant portion of the department's 2011 advisory letter.

"I welcome him to attempt (overriding the letter)," said W. Scott Lewis, partner at the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management. "I'd love to see how Congress would respond to that."

In the meantime, most experts predict the Trump administration will push the Office for Civil Rights to resolve the current investigations swiftly. Though officials say they're working through the backlog as quickly as possible, complainants and universities have expressed disappointment about the crawling pace.

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Nearly 22 percent of the current investigations have been open more than two years, federal records show. The department has closed 166 cases in the past three years.

Heap agrees there's room for improvement. Her investigation, for example, has dragged on for 10 months, and it can often be a lonely, bureaucratic process.

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She had filed her complaint after graduating in 2015 with degrees in history and gender and sexuality studies, so the investigation's outcome won't dramatically affect her life. Heap, now 23 and a paralegal at an immigration service nonprofit, wants to see it resolved for the sake of current and future U. of C. students.

And she wants the Department of Education to continue addressing sexual violence on campus.

"It's not something that's going to affect me so much anymore," she said. "But it's something that could help a lot of other people in the future."

sstclair@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @stacystclair
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's new point person for Chicago Public Schools is Arnie Rivera, a former district administrator and deputy chief of staff to two CPS chief executives.

Rivera, 34, takes over as deputy chief of staff for education from Beth Swanson, who resigned last week for a position with the nonprofit Joyce Foundation, which pushes for education reform.

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Rivera began his career as a teacher at Walt Disney Magnet School, and his wife is a CPS teacher. He was a CPS administrator for six years, eventually becoming former schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard's deputy chief of staff. He remained in that post under the current district chief, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, and played an instrumental role in the process to close nearly 50 elementary schools.

Last year, Rivera resigned from CPS to become chief operating officer for the Chicago Public Education Fund, which provides money for reform initiatives including those aimed at improving teacher and principal quality, as well as for innovations in charter and district-run schools.

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In his new role, Rivera acts as a liaison between City Hall and the school district, coordinating the administration's education policy agenda.

"As a former teacher, Arnie understands the critical issues facing Chicago classrooms and will help to further our efforts to ensure every student has access to a high-quality public school education," Emanuel said in a statement.

Rivera, who started at City Hall this week, said he will use his experiences as a teacher and administrator to guide initiatives such as the current push on early childhood programs.

"My main focus is to maintain a lot of the positive momentum that the city and CPS has seen over the last few years with the expansion of high-quality options, expansion of (International Baccalaureate) and STEM programs and the work with City Colleges," he said.

nahmed@tribune.com | Twitter: @nahmedullah
Congressmen Bobby Rush and Danny Davis and other prominent Chicago leaders spoke out on Thursday for a CTA jobs program for ex-offenders which could shut down due to a conflict with the rail and bus unions.

Democratic Congressmen Bobby Rush and other prominent Chicago politicians and community leaders spoke out on Thursday in support of a CTA jobs program for ex-felons, which is set to end on Saturday because of a conflict with rail and bus unions.

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Rush, a longtime labor supporter, harshly criticized the unions, saying that putting the Second Chance Program in the middle of contract negotiations was "inhumane" and "insensitive."

Rush said the nine-year-old program that provides temporary jobs cleaning buses and trains is the "only chance" for some ex-felons, victims of abuse and other hard-to-place workers.

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"Mess with Second Chance and you're messing with all of us, and we're not going to take it," said Rush, speaking at a press conference at CTA headquarters.

Also at the conference were Congressman Danny Davis (D), State Sen. Jacqueline Collins (D); State Representatives Marcus Evans, Jr. (D) and Camille Lilly (D), activist Catholic priest Father Michael Pfleger and several Chicago aldermen and social service providers.

The program has found jobs for 736 people since 2011 -- 184 of which have been hired full-time by the CTA. Close to 200 people are now employed by the program, said CTA spokesman Brian Steele.

CTA President Dorval Carter has said that the unions, who are currently negotiating four-year contracts with the CTA, balked at extending the Dec. 31 deadline for the program and are using it as leverage to talk about other issues.

The heads of the Amalgamated Transit Union 308 and 241, which represent rail and bus workers respectively, say they support the program but want the CTA to raise wages for the temporary workers from $10.50 to $15 an hour.

Local 241 President Tommy Sams said the union is continuing talks with the CTA. Second Chance workers pay union dues.

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Carter said CTA officials already have talked with the unions about raising wages, and that has not been the issue. He said the program provides more than just a job, but skills training and counseling, including free classes to qualify for a commercial driver's license.

Also speaking on Thursday was Brian Thomas, 31, of the Roseland neighborhood, who was hired as a CTA customer assistant after 18 months with the Second Chance program. Thomas has a felony drug conviction and unsuccessfully tried getting jobs at Walmart, FedEx and Kmart before he came to the CTA, he says.

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He spoke of taking his four-year-old daughter to the Field Museum on the "L."

"It felt great to take my daughter on the train of a company that I work for, and to be able to provide for her," said Thomas.

The Second Chance program was interrupted at the end of 2013 because of a dispute with Local 308 but reinstated less than two months later.

mwisniewski@tribpub.com

Twitter @marywizchicago
11/3/2022

The BLVD Project and Rossville Downtown Development Authority are teaming up again to host fall markets this Friday and Dec. 2 from 4-8 p.m. The BLVD is a grassroots organization that seeks ... more
Marc Buslik, Chicago Police Department 19th District Commander, discusses the deparment's body camera policies and demonstrates its use at the district headquarters on Dec. 28, 2016. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)

The head of the union representing thousands of Chicago's rank-and-file police officers on Thursday said he was caught off guard this week by the announcement that every patrol officer in the city will be equipped with body cameras by the end of 2017  a year ahead of schedule.

Dean Angelo Sr., president of the Fraternal Order of Police's Lodge 7, said his office had only a single meeting with police brass in the past year to discuss implementation of the recording devices, despite a prior written agreement stating both sides would meet to discuss how the body cameras would be rolled out.

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On Wednesday, police officials, along with Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office, announced a plan to equip several thousand patrol officers with body cameras in every police district by late 2017, something that could offer a closer look at interactions between cops and citizens.

The AXON 2 body cams were not slated to reach all 22 police districts until late 2018.

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"I was made aware of it through an email that one of my (FOP) board members sent me. I didn't get a call (from the department), didn't get a heads-up," Angelo said.

Dean Angelo Sr., president of the Fraternal Order of Police's Lodge 7, seen here on Nov. 8, 2016. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)

Angelo said FOP members did not oppose using body cameras  devices that police departments across the country are starting to use.

But he said officers wanted to make sure they had time to get acclimated to the new recording devices without the threat of discipline from the department for any rude or inappropriate private conversations by officers caught on a hot mic.

"We wanted to be part of this (planning) process so that nonduty-related conversations between you and I about someone walking down the street, or what was said at roll call, or about who our boss and what their experience  or lack thereof  may be (isn't) ... something that we wind up getting considered for discipline on," Angelo said.

"Those are conversations between you and I, and it's our opinion," he said.

During a police demonstration of the body cameras just after Wednesday's announcement, Town Hall District Cmdr. Marc Buslik told reporters that the department would not seek to punish officers who are recorded using "colorful language."

"It's not unusual for language to get colorful in encounters, and officers were concerned about being held accountable," said Buslik, who helped implement body cameras as a pilot program at the Police Department's Shakespeare District.

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"I certainly prefer them not to use that colorful language, but because of the fact that it was caught on video  we're not going to use that kind of thing as a disciplinary issue. That's a training issue," Buslik said.

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Chicago police did not immediately respond to Angelo's comments.

Body cameras have been championed by community activists and civil libertarians as a way of monitoring possible police misconduct.

Ed Yohnka from the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois called the expansion of the body camera program an important step toward transparency that could help bridge the gap between police and concerned communities.

"Essentially, the trust between the the police and community they serve right now in Chicago is broken and this can be an important step toward rebuilding that trustto know there is an independent set of eyes that is on police-civilian interaction and interactivity."

wlee@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @MidNoirCowboy
A Cook County judge listened to a tearful plea from a former Inverness housewife convicted in the 1979 murder of her husband and granted a small portion of the mercy she requested Thursday.

"I'm pleading with you for leniency," Jacquelyn Greco told Judge Marc Martin, weeping in front of a Rolling Meadows courtroom filled with witnesses and family members. "I loved my husband. My husband loved me"

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After listening to Greco admit she participated in a plan to kill her husband, 34-year-old Carl Gaimari  though she said she thought the plan had been called off  Martin sentenced her to 30 years in prison. Prosecutors had asked for the maximum 40 years under sentencing laws in effect in 1979.

"The defendant's admission is significant and the court takes it as a begrudging statement of remorse," Martin said. "If the defendant had not made it, the sentence would be higher."

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He noted that the 69-year-old Greco could serve only 50 percent of the sentence under good-conduct rules. He said she was a "significant cog in the course of events that led to the murder" of Gaimari and that it had caused great harm to the couple's four minor children at the time.

Greco, dressed in a blue jail scrubs, her gray shoulder-length hair styled in curls, was stoic as Martin read the sentence.

After the lengthy hearing, Gaimari's sister, Leemarie Bonk, said she wanted the maximum sentence.

"We were all devastated by this," said Bonk. "The nightmare would have been over sooner if this trial had happened when Carl was killed."

One of Gaimari's children, Becky Wykel, who found her father's body in the basement of their sprawling ranch home on April 30, 1979, testified that the murder damaged her for life.

"It was the worst day of my life," Wykel testified. "Life went on as normal but it was never normal for me."

The defense did not offer any mitigation witnesses, but submitted letters from friends and family members. Assistant Public Defender Caroline Glennon asked Martin for the minimum sentence of 20 years.

Greco was convicted by a jury in October of first-degree murder. During her trial, prosecutors portrayed Greco as a cold-hearted woman who schemed to get rid of her husband because she wanted to marry Sam Greco, then a Chicago police officer. She didn't want to divorce Gaimari, prosecutors said, because she feared she would be left with no money.

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Authorities say two masked intruders pushed their way into the family home on Turkey Trail Road in a staged home invasion in broad daylight, tied up Jacquelyn and three of her children in a closet, and waited for Gaimari to return from work before shooting him, authorities said. No one else has been charged in the case and the two gunmen remain unidentified.

Jacquelyn Greco, formerly Jacquelyn Gaimari, was arrested in 2013 after detectives in the newly established Inverness Police Department began reviewing the cold case file in the murder of Carl Gaimari.

Much of the evidence against Greco came from incriminating statements she made in a recorded conversation with her sister. The sister testified that before the murder, Jacquelyn Greco told her of a plot to kill her husband by staging the home invasion.

When Gaimari arrived home from his position at the Board of Trade, the two men used his own handguns to kill him, leaving his body in the basement, prosecutors said. The two fled, and Jacquelyn and the children were freed when another child came home from school.

Within an hour of the murder, Sam Greco, arrived on the scene as Barrington police and other agencies began an investigation, witnesses testified. He and Jacquelyn were having an affair at the time and he moved into the Inverness home within a week. Later that year, the two were married and eventually moved to California.

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The two returned to Illinois in 1987 to collect the proceeds of Gaimari's estate and invested in a bar on Chicago's Northwest Side. They divorced in 1990 and Jacquelyn Greco eventually moved to Crystal Falls, Mich.

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At her trial, witnesses testified that Jacquelyn Greco went to the offices of her husband's company the morning after the murder to get cash from his account, but was unable to withdraw any. Prosecutors said the new widow threw a pool party at her house several days after the murder and exhibited other unusual behavior.

Greco's team of assistant public defenders did not call any witnesses in her defense.

Sam Greco is in poor health and lives on the Northwest Side, authorities said.

Prosecutors said the investigation into Gaimari's murder remains open.

Carl Gaimari's last name was misspelled in an earlier online version.

George Houde is a freelance reporter.
WASHINGTON  Former Chicago Ald. Sandi Jackson, who is seeking a divorce from ex-U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., said in court filings this week that he has income of at least $10,250 a month while she is out of work and has been borrowing from friends and selling her belongings to stay afloat.

Sandi Jackson filed for divorce in Washington, while her husband filed in Cook County. The former Democratic lawmakers pleaded guilty to felonies in 2013 and later completed staggered terms in federal prison.

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A hearing in family court in Washington is set for Tuesday, while a separate proceeding is set for Wednesday in Cook County.

After 25 years of marriage, the couple is grappling with issues including custody of their children, ages 13 and 16, and her request for child support, alimony and attorney's fees. Where the matters will be heard is a key issue.

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Chicago attorney Barry Schatz, who is representing Jackson Jr., said Wednesday that Cook County is the proper venue because Jackson Jr. has been registered to vote in Illinois all his life and has an Illinois driver's license.

In addition, the couple's home in Chicago was purchased before they bought one in D.C., he said.

He said judges in deciding the jurisdiction for a divorce may consider where the couple lives, where their assets are and where their children reside.

Schatz said Jackson Jr.'s income was from disability payments, but said he could not specify the sum because he did not have the file in front of him.

Sandi Jackson, in papers filed in Washington on Tuesday, said her husband is living in a residence without a mortgage  an apparent reference to their Chicago home  and their other mortgage is in arrears.

Jackson Jr. has failed to contribute to the mortgage or any household expenses since September, she said.

Schatz refuted that, saying Jackson Jr. has been paying toward the mortgage and given money to his children.

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Sandi Jackson's attorneys could not be reached Wednesday. She plans to ask that the Cook County case be dismissed, her filings said.

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The case in Washington is before Judge Robert Okun, who ruled against Sandi Jackson's bid to seal court papers there. She had argued the couple and their children "may be exposed to unnecessary harassment" if records were public.

In denying her request, Okun said the case involves "two prominent public figures" and the materials "will be of interest to a wide audience, a factor that favors disclosure."

Jackson Jr. served in Congress from 1995 to 2012. She served on the City Council from 2007 to 2013.

They ran afoul of the law when he pilfered about $750,000 from his campaign treasury and she failed to report much of the haul on income taxes. He resigned from Congress after a leave of absence for treatment for bipolar disorder.

kskiba@tribpub.com

Twitter @KatherineSkiba
Nearly 200 new Illinois laws are set to take effect beginning Jan. 1, 2017, including an official state artifact, tougher community college oversight and more contraception choices for women. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

SPRINGFIELD  They couldn't agree on a full state budget at the Capitol, but Democrats in the legislature and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner were able to set aside their differences to eliminate taxes on the purchase of tampons and other feminine hygiene products, create more flexible sick leave rules for workers, and add wage protections for domestic workers such as nannies and housekeepers.

Those are among about 190 new Illinois laws that take effect with the new year. The state gets an official state artifact in the form of a pirogue, a canoe made from a hollowed-out tree trunk, and hairdressers will be required to undergo training to spot signs of domestic violence among their clients. Students enrolled in driver education classes will now be taught what to do if pulled over by police, and community colleges will see tougher oversight following numerous revelations about questionable spending at the College of DuPage.

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And one controversial measure that is set to take effect Jan. 1 is under review in the courts. At issue is state law that allows medical providers to decline to perform abortion procedures if they have moral objections. A change to that law would require health care providers that oppose abortion to provide patients with information about or a referral to other providers that will perform the procedure.

Supporters say the legislation is designed to give patients timely access to legal medical care. But opponents led by a group of anti-abortion pregnancy centers sued to block the law, arguing the legislation violates their free speech. Last week, a judge in Winnebago County said the state can't enforce the law against the handful of centers involved in the lawsuit while the case plays out.

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Here's a look at some of the new rules for 2017:

Tampon tax

The state will no longer collect sales tax on tampons, sanitary napkins and menstrual cups  a rare area of agreement on taxes between Republicans and Democrats who can't agree on a budget.

Feminine hygiene products are subject to a 6.25 percent state sales tax, unlike some other necessities such as shampoo. That figure can be higher depending on local taxes. For instance, before the Chicago City Council voted to exclude tampons and sanitary napkins from the city's sales tax earlier this year, feminine hygiene products purchased in Chicago were taxed at a rate of 10.25 percent.

State budget officials estimate the change could cost the state roughly $15 million a year in tax revenue.

Advocates for the repeal said it was an unfair tax that's part of a broader trend in which women continue to earn less than their male counterparts in the workplace but are charged more for everything from razors to haircuts. They often call the trend a "pink tax" because women's products are so often marketed in pink packaging.

"It's important that women know they are paying more for things," said sponsoring state Sen. Melinda Bush, D-Grayslake. "This is a necessity that women have to have, and I don't think they should have ever been taxed. It's a wrong tax, and we are righting a wrong."

Contraception choices

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Women will have more choices when it comes to contraceptive options under a new law that eliminates a complicated waiver process they must go through to get birth control medications not offered by their insurance companies.

Supporters say women should be able to choose birth control that's best for their bodies without having to pay more, contending the measure will save money by preventing more unintended pregnancies. Opponents questioned if a wider range of options would add costs to insurance companies.

Workplace changes

Nannies, housekeepers and other domestic workers will now be entitled to the state's minimum wage and various human rights protections, under legislation dubbed the Illinois Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

Employers will be required to pay domestic workers at least $8.25 an hour, above the federal minimum of $7.25. And they must get at least 24 hours of rest in each calendar week and a meal period of 20 minutes for every 7.5-hour shift, according to the new law. They will also be covered by the Illinois Human Rights Act, which protects against sexual harassment, and the Wages of Women and Minors Act, which prohibits employers from paying women and minors "an oppressive and unreasonable wage."

Advocates say the changes will help protect domestic workers who are more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

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Another measure would ban noncompete clauses between an employer and an hourly employee who earns $13 an hour or less. The law becomes effective after Jimmy John's agreed to a $100,000 settlement with the state attorney general over the company's noncompete agreements, which prevented employees from working at another sandwich shop for two years after they left a job at Jimmy John's. The attorney general's office said the rules were "highly restrictive."

Meanwhile, workers will now have more flexibility when using their sick leave. Under a new law, employees who qualify for sick leave benefits can use that time off to provide care for family members who are hurt or ill. Rauner signed the legislation against the wishes of many in the business community, who called it a mandate that limits an employer's ability to make decisions.

A new Illinois regulation is aimed at preventing traffic stops from escalating. CBS 2's Roseanne Tellez reports. (CBS Chicago)

Personal information

One measure aims to toughen the state's rules regarding data breaches and when companies, hospitals, banks, retailers and others must inform customers if their personal information has been compromised. Under the new rules, a customer must be alerted if their electronic medical information, health insurance information, claims information or biometric data such as a fingerprints have been improperly accessed. The law also requires notification if a username or email address has been compromised.

A separate law prevents employers from accessing an employee or applicant's personal online accounts. It bans employers from requesting, requiring or coercing workers into giving their username or password to any online account, or accessing that account in the presence of the employer.

Community college rules

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Community colleges will face tougher oversight under a package of laws put in place following a Chicago Tribune investigation that uncovered numerous revelations about questionable spending and lax oversight at the College of DuPage.

The measures would require schools to undergo special audits every five years to examine contracts, transparency and compensation to school leadership; require extra training for community college board members on ethics, financial oversight and fiduciary responsibilities; and limit what income can be factored into pension benefits for university and college presidents.

Currently, those officials are able to get credit toward their pension for the cash value of perks like bonuses or car allowances. Under the change, pensionable income would be limited to salaries and not other benefits.

Law and order

Police agencies across Illinois will have new regulations on how they use cell site simulators, devices commonly known as "Stingrays" that collect cellphone data and can be used to track someone's location. The devices are commonly used by police to investigate crime, but those pushing for restrictions said police also were able to collect data from people who aren't the focus of an investigation at the same time.

New rules would require police to delete all data not related to the target of an investigation at least once every 24 hours, or within 72 hours if the simulators are used to identify an unknown communication device unless there is a court order directing otherwise.

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A different law would require jails to accept cash to post bail. The measure came about after a Rockford teen was arrested for a traffic offense. When his mother tried to bail him out, the credit card machine was broken, and the Winnebago County Juvenile Detention Center had a policy to refuse cash. That meant her son was forced to sit in jail all weekend.

On a related note, it'll soon be cheaper for state prison inmates to make calls under a new law that requires the state to find a cheaper phone provider. Rates can not exceed 7 cents per minute for debit, prepaid and collect calls. The current rate is about 11 cents a minute. Supporters argue for-profit companies were gouging inmates, preventing them from staying in touch with family.

Meanwhile, police officers who are partnered with a police dog will get the first chance to adopt that dog when it's no longer fit for service. If the officer does not wish to keep the dog, other officers in the department could seek an adoption or it would go to a no-kill shelter.

Hairstylist Christine Walker works at the Belle De Jour Salon in Lemont on Friday, Dec. 16, 2016. "We always say we're not just hairdressers," she said. "We're your therapist, sometimes your doctor; we have a lot of different hats." (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

Some of the rest

Hairdressers will be required to take domestic violence and sexual violence awareness courses before they can renew their cosmetology licenses. The idea is to take advantage of the close relationship many customers have with their stylists.

Students enrolled in driver's education classes will soon be required to learn what to do if they are pulled over by police. Backers hope to prevent standard stops from escalating into violence.

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Insurance companies must now consult the federal master file to determine if a policy holder has died and whether benefits are owed. The change pushed by Treasurer Michael Frerichs is aimed at closing a loophole that led to companies failing to pay out benefits because they would not check to see if a customer had died.

Property owners will be required to notify potential renters or buyers of any lead hazards. The notice must be given in writing before a lease is signed or renewed, or before a sales contract is signed.

The pirogue will become the official state artifact, after students at a Wilmette middle school pushed for the designation for the boat made of a hollowed-out tree used by native tribes of Illinois.

Grocery stores will now be allowed to consolidate eggs in cartons. Previously, if one egg in a dozen was cracked, the whole carton had to be thrown out.

Student musicians in grades six through 12 can now be excused from school to play taps at military funerals.

Catfish are now included on the list of fish that can be killed by a pitchfork, spear gun, or bow and arrow.

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A look at the numbers behind Cook County's new soda tax. How will the tax work and how much will it cost consumers? (Phil Geib / Chicago Tribune) (Phil Geib/Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

Chicago property owners hoping for a respite from rapidly rising taxes will be disappointed in 2017, when city government and Chicago Public Schools will continue digging deeper into their pocketbooks.

Two more major property tax increases are coming. So is a new tax on water and sewer service. And some city dwellers will face other rising costs: a fee for each store-provided disposable bag and slightly higher Park District fees.

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Come mid-year, city and suburban residents will be paying a new sweetened beverage tax effective in all of Cook County, and another round of Metra fare hikes is coming soon. Here's a look at what to expect:

Property taxes

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The biggest Chicago cost hikes will show up on the second installment of property tax bills typically mailed out in late July and due Aug. 1. They are rising significantly for the second year in a row as a result of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's efforts to stabilize pension funds for city police officers, firefighters and teachers.

Property tax hikes for the city and Chicago Public Schools will total $376 million next year, down from an increase of $427 million in 2016. The owner of a home worth $250,000 can expect to pay about $348 more in taxes next year, according to county and CPS officials.

Unlike last year, when the effects of the increase varied dramatically from neighborhood to neighborhood and even home to home, the 2017 increases will be more evenly distributed. That's because they don't coincide with property tax reassessments that are a key factor in determining the bills, as they did in 2016.

New water tax

City home and business owners also will see a new tax of about 7.7 percent on their water and sewer bills in 2017. That comes to about $32 a year for the average homeowner with metered water service and about $65 for those without meters, the city estimates.

In its first year, the new tax is expected to bring in $56 million. But it will increase in each of the next four years until it rises above 30 percent by 2020, when it will generate about $239 million.

That water and sewer tax also is aimed at putting more money into underfunded government retirement accounts, with all of the money going into pension funds for city workers and laborers.

Parking and shopping

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Aldermen also approved a new 7-cent fee on each disposable shopping bag provided by a store, a measure designed to reduce the amount of plastic that gets dumped in landfills or discarded on streets. A ban on thinner plastic bags has proved largely ineffective. It's expected to raise about $13 million a year.

The bag fee  which will apply to both paper and plastic  will go into effect Feb. 1. That's one month later than initially planned, so retailers have enough time to adjust their point-of-sale systems, city spokeswoman Molly Poppe said.

Other city increases include higher parking rates at O'Hare and Midway airports, which are going up by as much as $12.25 a day but vary by lot. Add to that doubled rates to $4-per-hour at 820 meters near Wrigley Field on game and event days.

The city also is installing 460 new parking meters in the Loop and surrounding business district, along with 225 in the neighborhoods. And drivers for the first time would pay to use commercial loading zones downtown and in two nearby wards, with rates set at $14 an hour.

The pop tax

Drinkers of pop and other sugary and artificially sweetened beverages  like energy drinks, ice tea and lemonade  on July 1 will pay a new penny-an-ounce tax approved by the Cook County Board in November, when board President Toni Preckwinkle broke a rare tie vote.

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The new tax will be added to bottled and canned beverages, as well as fountain drinks. But it won't apply to drinks bought with a Link card issued to families in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, because the federal government doesn't allow additional consumer taxes under SNAP.

The sweetened beverage tax is expected to bring in $221 million a year, money intended to cover increasing county operating costs and debt payments. Preckwinkle says it also will help reduce the consumption of sugary beverages that contribute to diabetes, obesity and other health woes.

It's another major tax increase under Preckwinkle, who pushed through the County Board a penny-on-the-dollar sales tax increase that took effect at the start of 2016. Most of the $474 million a year it's raising is going to beef up contributions to the underfunded county worker pension system. Preckwinkle, meanwhile, has pledged not to increase taxes in 2018 and 2019.

Park District fees

The Chicago Park District is increasing parking, harbor and program fees. Hourly weekday parking fees at lakefront metered lots near beaches and harbors will increase by 25 cents to $2 an hour from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and $1 an hour from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m.  the same rates now in effect on weekends.

Other lots will see increases of up to $1 total. They include the Museum of Science and Industry's east lot, the Diversey Harbor South lot, the Diversey Harbor Driving Range lot and the North Avenue Beach lot.

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Program fees will go up by less than $1 an hour. For example, the average fee for six-week summer day camp programs will increase by $2 to $259. And mooring rates that run more than $100 a foot for boat slips 40 feet and longer at Belmont, Burnham and DuSable harbors will increase by 2 percent.

Metra rail fares

Metra is increasing its fares for the third year in a row, citing the need to modernize its fleet. Starting Feb. 1, monthly passes will increase by $11.75, no matter what zones, which delineate the distances traveled  they are good for.

That amounts to increases of 4 percent to 12.3 percent, with those traveling the shortest distances facing the biggest percentage increases. When implemented, the monthly passes will cost from $107 for the shortest distance traveled to $306.50 for the longest distance, compared with the currents costs that range from $95.25 to $294.75.

Ten-ride tickets will increase by $2.75, no matter the distance traveled. That's an increase of 2.9 percent to 8.9 percent on 10-rides that will range in price from $33.75 to $96.75 under the new rate structure.

And one-way tickets will increase by 25 cents, an increase of 2.4 percent to 7.1 percent, with new ticket prices ranging from $3.75 to $10.75.

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Reduced cost 10-rides and monthlies for senior citizens, disabled people and elementary and high school students will increase less, by $1.50 and $7.50 respectively.

The state

State government leaders remain at odds about Illinois' financial path forward, but there could be significant hikes if the partisan stalemate ever breaks in Springfield. Many Democrats and Republicans agree an eventual balanced budget would require higher taxes, but what form those increases would take  and whether they'd be approved  remains unknown.

hdardick@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @ReporterHal
About 40 inmates will remain in the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba when President Barack Obama leaves office. (Brennan Linsley / Associated Press)

The Obama administration has informed Congress of its plans to resettle as many as 19 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a final sprint to pare down the inmate population at the military prison, U.S. officials said.

Even if the transfers occur before Jan. 20 as planned, about 40 inmates will remain at the facility, a lasting reminder of President Barack Obama's failure to deliver on his Inauguration Day promise to close the prison and an illustration of the difficulty of following through on one of his central national security goals.

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Obama's inability to close Guantanamo after eight years in office empowers President-elect Donald Trump to keep the prison operational. Trump has said he will make it part of his counterterrorism policy and "load it up with some bad dudes."

The end to Obama's Guantanamo plans also sets up a renewed debate over the proper handling of terrorism suspects and the legality of a system that was designed to interrogate and hold al-Qaida suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

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"The bottom line is that the continuing existence of Guantanamo is a legal and moral blight," said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberty Union's National Security Project. "It is the embodiment of U.S. violations of the rule of law, unfair trials and unlawful and indefinite detentions without charge or trial."

The 11th-hour transfer plans, which would move a group of prisoners to the United Arab Emirates and additional inmates to Oman, Saudi Arabia and, possibly, Italy, culminates a flurry of resettlements that U.S. diplomats have negotiated in recent years. The planned transfers were first reported by the New York Times.

Since Obama took office, the United States has repatriated or resettled 179 prisoners, helping to winnow the detainee population from a peak under President George W. Bush of more than 700 to 59 today.

Early in his administration, Obama attempted to bring suspects to the United States for trial in the federal courts, but he abandoned those efforts in the face of stiff political resistance. Over the years, Congress has enacted tight restrictions on how and where prisoners can be resettled.

Last winter, Obama made another appeal to Congress, asking them to set aside opposition andconsider a plan for wrapping up a 15-year detention saga by bringing some inmates to the United States for imprisonment here.

But legal experts and detainee advocates fault Obama for not pushing harder for closure, saying he could have skirted congressional obstacles if he had been willing to weather the political fallout.

As Obama prepares to leave office, he leaves behind a military trial system so slow that five 9/11 suspects, including self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are not expected to be tried until 2020. Guantanamo also holds a group of "forever prisoners," whom officials say they cannot release because of security risks but who also cannot be tried because of a lack of appropriate evidence.

"History is going to judge him badly for his failure to close Guantanamo and particularly for his failure to do everything he has legal authority to do," said Wells Dixon, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents Guantanamo prisoners.

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Emily Horne, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration has continued to take "all possible steps" to move detainees out of Guantanamo and close the prison.

"The continued operation of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners and emboldening violent extremists," she said.

Some lawmakers continue to object even to transfers that arevetted by a panel of law enforcement, military and intelligence officials. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Tex., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, warned against additional transfers in a letter earlier this month to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who signs off on each resettlement.

"I am concerned that there has been insufficient due diligence prior to transfer, and that recipient nations have lacked the capability to enforce proper security measures to mitigate the risk of re-engagement," Thornberry wrote in the letter, a copy of which was seen by The Washington Post.

While a small minority of released detainees have been found to have returned to militant activity, officials say the risks have been overblown.

Although there are 23 prisoners approved for resettlement overseas, U.S. officials say they have no plans to transfer anyone beyond the 19 whose transfer has already been announced to Congress.

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Republicans have also found fault with the administration's practice of keeping secret details of security arrangements for resettled detainees and information about U.S. financial support received by released prisoners.

Articulating the new optimism felt by critics of Obama's approach, Rep. Edward Royce, R-Calif., who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote this week that "on Jan. 20, we have an opportunity to chart a better way."

While Trump has not spoken extensively about Guantanamo, he has criticized prisoner releases and identified the military prison as a "very safe place" to house suspected militants.

"I want to make sure, 100 percent sure, that if we're going to release people, number 1, they're going to be people that can be released, and it's going to be safe to release them," Trump said in an interview with the Miami Herald.

He also suggested that he would put new prisoners in Guantanamo, possibly even trying U.S. citizens there, a move prohibited by current U.S. law. The last time the United States added to the prisoner population at Guantanamo was in 2008, before Obama took office.

A spokesman for the Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

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Legal experts suggest that the continued detention of prisoners, without parallel efforts to resettle them, or efforts to bring new detainees to Guantanamo could be met with fresh legal challenges.

Laura Pitter, senior national security counsel at Human Rights Watch, said that Trump's apparent plans for the prison would feed into militant propaganda and weaken the United States' ability to speak up for human rights worldwide.

"A statement like that just shows . . . a lack of understanding of what Guantanamo means and the danger that keeping it open poses to U.S. national security," she said.
John David Wilson Sr. went from working as a Michigan-based traveling art salesman to playing a key role in the development of Navy Pier, launching the first open-to-the-public art trade show on the pier in 1980.

The exposition concept brought together art dealers from all over the world in what art critics viewed as a commercial response to the blockbuster museum exhibitions of the 1970s.

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"John had the vision to take a look at what Navy Pier offered, even though in those days, Navy Pier needed a lot of work, and John was able to envision having a large fair there, which Navy Pier was happy to house," said Chicago attorney Scott Hodes, who represents artists, dealers and collectors. "He was probably the pioneer in Chicago of building an art fair."

Wilson, 82, died of cardiac arrest Nov. 25 at his Benton Harbor, Mich., home, said his daughter, Laurie.

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Wilson was raised in Flint, Mich., and his father was an autoworker at a Chevrolet plant. When he enrolled at Michigan State University, Wilson initially envisioned a career as an engineer or architect. After a stint in the Army, Wilson returned to college and resolved to major in art and become a potter.

After graduating, Wilson took a job working as a traveling salesman for Baltimore-based Ferdinand Roten Galleries, the large original print dealer that at the time largely sold original prints to major college museums.

In 1965, Wilson and his family moved to a home in Lakeside, Mich. Three years later, he bought and restored a turn-of-the-century hotel across the street, which they also used as an arts center of sorts, complete with a printmaking shop in a former carriage house behind what is now the Lakeside Inn.

In May 1980, Wilson organized the Chicago International Art Exposition on Navy Pier, modeling it after the major commercial event each June in Basel, Switzerland. It was the first expo of its kind in the United States. More than 100 galleries from the U.S. and overseas set up shop at the annual exposition, which was open to the public and lasted about five days.

The first exposition was not a financial success, losing $127,000 and requiring Wilson to mortgage his Lakeside house, hotel and studio.

"The first year we lost everything," Wilson told the Tribune in 1984. "If I had known upfront how much money would go down the drain, I'd have cut down on the things that gave the show quality, the very things that made it a success. Good thing I didn't know."

In its second year, the art expo turned a small profit, and by the fifth year the show was squarely in the black.

"Just seeing the art  which has been chosen by experts  is educational for Chicagoans," Wilson told the Tribune in 1986. "These dealers bring the best works that are happening today, the ones setting the trends. The fair gives us the opportunity to become involved in the art and to have the experience of seeing. Besides this, experts give panels on the major art topics of the day and Chicagoans come to listen to them."

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Mark Lyman, president of The Art Fair Company, which provides equipment and services for art shows, remembered the show as a success.

"The Chicago International Art Fair was an excellent art fair. It had true value," Lyman said. "It was a major hit, and it ran unchallenged for about 10 years."

"It's not hard to use the phrase 'visionary' (for Wilson), given that he pioneered something that had never been done in the U.S.  a great international art fair model that was happening in Europe," said Tony Karman, who worked alongside Wilson and now oversees Expo Chicago.

"To have been an individual that really put Chicago on the international art world map deserves a great deal of credit. In addition, John saw great potential in Navy Pier as an extraordinary venue not just for an art fair but for other opportunities. John blazed an important trail."

Art Expo's success drew competition. In 1990, Art Chicago International began operations at Merchandise Mart. Wilson also had to relocate Art Expo to McCormick Place. And Wilson's former lieutenant, Thomas Blackman, created his own contemporary fair, Art 1993 Chicago: The New Pier Show, at Cityfront Center in the early '90s.

In 1994, Wilson returned his show to Navy Pier for what would be its final year of operations. Ultimately, Blackman's expo wound up continuing at Navy Pier and operating as a sort of descendant of the expo that Wilson had created and managed.

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Wilson also launched the Chicago International Antiques Show in 1984; that show lasted until 1990.

Although Wilson eventually retired and sold his Lakeside hotel, he remained involved in activities in southwest Michigan, his daughter said.

In addition to his daughter, Wilson is survived by his wife of 56 years, Kay; a son, John Jr.; and two grandsons.

A gathering to celebrate Wilson's life and accomplishments is being planned, likely for the spring, his daughter said.

Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
Will Tougher Sentencing Really Stop Chicago's Violent Crime Epidemic?

By Stephen Gossett in News on Dec 29, 2016 6:18PM



Getty Images / Photo: Scott Olson

Chicago will soon turn the calendar on a staggeringly violent year, with more than 770 homicides compared to 468 in 2015. As the violence has persisted, CPD Superintendent Eddie Johnson has routinely called for tougher sentencing, claiming that police are making the necessary arrests, but prison terms are too soft.

But a professor of criminology at UIC argues that such a method not only wouldnt fix the problem, but it could compound it, by exacerbating the root problem: hopelessness among young black men in underserved communities.

John Hagedorn, whos studied extensively on global homicide patterns and Chicago gang culture, told Chicagoist that the idea that mass incarceration is a solution to violence never really seems to work.

What we know about violence today, its spontaneous and situational. Its not just a few sick people, Hagedorn said, referring to targeted police approaches. Its the product of hopelessness.

The affected communities must be stabilized and invested in, Hagedorn said. Unlike in New York City, homicide rates in Chicago failed to fall in the 90s because here the city sent police into the projects whereas New York embarked on a massive public housing effort, his studies determined. Gangs were scattered by the destruction of public housing in Chicago; leaders had no control over the newly fragmented gangs; and that volatility has increased over the last two years, he said.

Race is also a key factor: If gangs were the problem then youd have as many Latino homicide offenders and victims as you do African American, he said. He mentioned school closings in predominantly black neighborhoods as a factor that contributes to feelings of hopelessness, which leads young men toward gangs.

The UNODCs Global Study on Homicides found that murder levels are directly related to lack of development, and large jumps or declines in that rate are the result of gang wars. With the black homicide of the last two yearsa different kind of gang warboth criteria apply directly to Chicago, he said.

Comparing violent crime in Chicago to cities like New York and Los Angeles also misses the point, Hagedorn said. "Chicago reverted to Midwest mean: we're not quite as high as Detroit or St. Louis; and Milwaukee had higher homicide rates last year." Chicago's rate of roughly 25 homicides per 100,000 people falls more or less in line with other cities in the region, he said.

"These places have not figured out how to provide for communities that need it most," he added.
Disability Services CEO Reuben Goodwin Sr. arrives at the Daley Center on Dec 13, 2016, for a hearing related to a state request for an order compelling his company to turn over its remaining group home residents to state caseworkers. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

Two residents who went missing from now-shuttered group homes for adults with developmental disabilities have been found.

Attorneys for the state, though, alleged in Cook County court Wednesday that an employee from the group home business, which lost its license last month, had "actively concealed" one of the residents from caseworkers trying to move her to a safer home.

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Last month, when the Illinois Department of Human Services revoked the license of the network of homes operated by Disability Services of Illinois, state officials hoped to move all 45 residents quickly to new homes. But that has not proved to be an easy task, despite the efforts of the state and pressure from Cook County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Pantle. One resident still remains missing, according to the state.

While most of the residents were relocated, a handful have been unaccounted for, leading to a series of contentious court hearings seeking more information from Disability Services CEO Reuben Goodwin Sr. and his employees.

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On Wednesday, Chief Deputy Attorney General Brent Stratton told Pantle that he planned to file an affidavit showing that the woman who turned up Tuesday had, at one point, been staying with a Disability Services employee who was hiding her.

In hearing after hearing in recent weeks, Pantle has urged Disability Services employees to assist those searching for the missing residents. Though he was not in court Wednesday, Goodwin repeatedly has said he and his employees have been cooperating. In prior hearings, Goodwin said the residents came and went from his group homes as they pleased and left with family for the holidays, though he didn't know the names or phone numbers of the family members.

In court Wednesday before the affidavit was filed, Pantle said she didn't know whether the state's latest allegation was true. But she told an attorney for Disability Services, "In the event that they are actively concealing the final two missing residents, that's got to stop."

The second resident turned up after that hearing, but a spokeswoman for Human Services had no details about where he had been or how he had been found.

Disability Services attorney Michael Kelly on Wednesday told the Tribune that the state has been leveling allegations that are untrue and reiterated that the company has called caseworkers every time it has learned the whereabouts of its former residents.

"DSI doesn't have any stake in hiding residents," Kelly said, using the company's acronym. "They're not getting funded by the state."

The Tribune's "Suffering in Secret" series last month spotlighted problems at Goodwin's group home business, which used to go by the name Southwest Disabilities Services & Supports. After the Tribune shared its findings with the head of Human Services, licensing officials inspected the group homes, found safety violations and revoked the license Nov. 28.

Debra Stanley, a director at Suburban Access Inc., a private contractor hired by the state to coordinate services at group homes, said in an affidavit filed Wednesday after court that Goodwin called Tuesday to tell her that the family of one of the missing residents had dropped her off.

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Stanley, who picked her up, wrote in the affidavit that the resident said she had been taken to a hotel for a few days, then later was told to hide in one of Disability Services' group homes. Using the resident's initials, Stanley said in her affidavit: "L.C. also stated that she was in the (group home) when the police came looking for them. She stated that she was told to hide in the closet during that time."

The resident said about a week ago she went to stay with a Disability Services staff member, who then dropped off the resident at her aunt's house a few days before Christmas, according to Stanley's affidavit. The woman told Stanley that a Disability Services employee called her at her aunt's house and asked her to come to a Disability Services location because Suburban Access needed to speak with her, the affidavit said.

The allegations in the affidavit echo those previously made about Disability Services. Caseworkers in prior affidavits have said that former residents recounted being told to turn out the lights and hide when caseworkers came searching for them.

pcallahan@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @TribuneTrish
Officials with Arlington Heights School District 25 say an improving economy has led to a shortage of subsitute teachers available to staff local classrooms, prompting them to step-up their recruitment efforts to attract potential candidates. (Karen Ann Cullotta / Pioneer Press)

Officials with Arlington Heights School District 25 say an increasing shortage of substitute teachers  something becoming more of a concern across the U.S.  is prompting them to step up their local recruitment efforts to attract potential candidates

"As the economy has improved and started humming along, we're seeing less and less interest in those who are interested in becoming a substitute teacher, which is a huge concern," said Jake Chung, District 25's assistant superintendent of personnel and planning.

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In fact, Geoffrey Smith, the founder and director of the Substitute Teaching Institute at Utah State University, says it has become increasingly difficult for school districts across the U.S. to ensure there is a sufficient supply of available substitutes to fill in for absent classroom teachers.

"It's pretty much a national substitute shortage, and school districts are all trying to get more bodies to be part of their pool," Smith said. "But we find that training is the key to success in recruiting the right kind of people who will do well in the classroom. People know better than to put themselves in a situation where they can't succeed. And everyone knows what they put their own substitute teachers through when they were in school."

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Experts say the substitute teacher shortage also is evident in Illinois, but officials at the Illinois State Board of Education said this week they are hopeful that legislation awaiting Gov. Bruce Rauner's signature may help address the issue.

The legislation would reduce the substitute teaching license fee from $100 to $50, and also would remove the requirement of passing a test of basic skills to renew the license, meaning educators only would have to register their license for it to continue to be valid, an ISBE spokeswoman said.

Still, for school district administrators like Chung in Arlington Heights, the prospect of finding enough substitute teachers to serve at the district's seven elementary schools and two middle schools remains increasingly daunting.

For example, Chung said, on a recent school day in December, the district needed 65 substitute teachers to take over for classroom teachers who were off for reasons ranging from illnesses to professional development.

But only 63 substitutes were available that morning, forcing school administrators to make special moves to ensure that all of the district's roughly 5,200 students had a classroom teacher that day.

"Buildings have to get creative," Chung said, adding that if a substitute is not secured by the start of the school day, administrators typically ask the district's teachers if they can give up their planning periods that day to temporarily cover an absent teacher's class.

As part of their contract, teachers who do so are required to be compensated for their extra duties, Chung said.

Nonetheless, asking classroom teachers to cover for an absent colleague is only a stop-gap solution, Chung said, and officials now are stepping up their efforts to increase their roster of available substitute teachers, all of whom are dispatched through an online absence management program.

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In recent months, the district has posted recruitment banners outside its schools urging people to become substitute teachers or teaching assistants. Officials also have launched a program offering free professional development workshops to the district's substitute teachers and have started hosting evening recruitment events, Chung said.

The district has expanded its outreach to include candidates who have a minimum of a bachelor's degree in any subject area, moving away from a more restrictive policy from years past, when officials would only hire substitutes who were certified teachers with a bachelor of science in education degree.

In addition, Chung said officials are having trouble recruiting candidates for a variety of part-time positions, ranging from school custodians and crossing guards, to teacher's aides and food service workers.

"There are some great opportunities for retirees to work part time, while giving back to the community," Chung said. "And for former teachers, it's a way to dip their toes back in the water and start thinking about what they want to do in the future."

Arlington Heights resident Matthew Hahn, a father of four children, said being hired in 2014 as a substitute teacher for District 25 was the perfect way for him to re-enter the workforce, after having spent a decade as a stay-at-home dad.

While Hahn said he originally pursued a career as a teacher, earning a bachelor of science in secondary education degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he said he took a job in the corporate world soon after graduation and did not return to public school teaching until recently.

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Now, his experiences working as a substitute teacher in District 25 have led to his decision to earn a master's degree in elementary education, he said.

"I think I missed my calling," said Hahn, 52, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and a deacon at St. James Catholic Church in Arlington Heights.

"When you're looking out at a classroom full of kids, you're seeing the future of our country," Hahn said. "You've got to be passionate about making a positive impact on the life of these kids."

kcullotta@tribpub.com

Twitter: @kcullotta
Shaun Ramirez spent about 16 months in prison before being paroled in December 2015.

Less than a year later, Ramirez sits in Kane County Jail on $750,000 bail accused of stabbing an acquaintance during a Dec. 21 argument in Aurora. Ramirez faces charges of attempted murder, armed violence and aggravated battery in the attack on the 46-year-old man as he sat inside a car outside Ramirez's Glen Circle home last week. The man suffered non-life threatening injuries, but required surgery.

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Police said Ramirez fled after the attack, only to be apprehended without incident at his home a few hours later.

Aurora police cited a personal dispute as a possible motive for the stabbing.

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Ramirez returns to court Jan. 6 for a status hearing before Kane County Judge Linda Abrahamson. The 34-year-old Aurora man, however, has been no stranger to Kane County courtrooms over the last decade or so, according to county and prison records.

Ramirez earned parole on Dec. 28, 2015, after serving a portion of his three-year sentence for convictions that included a 2014 aggravated battery. Prosecutors in that case said Ramirez slapped a 47-year-old woman, pulled her out of a car by her hair and then choked her after she intervened in an argument between Ramirez and his girlfriend.

In the 10 years prior to that incident, Ramirez was sent to prison for spitting on a court officer, battering a pregnant woman, fleeing police and, in 2006, for beating up a man and stealing his neck chain during an apparent road rage incident, court documents show. He also spent time in custody as a juvenile for selling drugs.

Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News
Natasha Mister has been charged with aggravated driving under the influence, according to police. (DuPage County sheriff's office / Handout)

A Maywood woman pleaded guilty Thursday to felony drunken driving for hitting a parked Illinois State Police squad car in August along Interstate 355 in DuPage County, a collision that injured the officer inside the vehicle.

Natasha E. Mister, 31, entered a guilty plea in DuPage County court to one count of aggravated driving under the influence, according to court records. She is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 25.

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In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors dropped other counts Mister faced, including a charge of driving with a suspended license.

Authorities said her blood-alcohol level tested at almost twice the legal limit of .08 after the Aug. 28 accident. Mister was driving a 2001 Ford minivan south on I-355 about 12:44 a.m. when she struck the squad car, which was parked on the right shoulder of the tollway, just north of Army Trail Road in Addison, police said.

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The collision injured the officer, who was at the scene because of an earlier incident and was waiting for a tow truck to arrive. At the time of the incident, the officer had activated his emergency lights, authorities said.

The officer was taken to a local hospital and treated for injuries that were not life-threatening. Mister, of the 1000 block of South 14th Avenue, has been held in the county jail in lieu of $200,000 bail since her arrest.

In late November, a 61-year-old Mount Prospect woman who struck a trooper along Interstate 294 in 2014 was sentenced to 13 years in prison after pleading guilty in Cook County court to aggravated DUI and leaving the scene of an accident.

The woman  a repeat drunken-driving offender  hit the trooper as he was talking to a motorist on the shoulder of I-294 near Northlake. The trooper suffered 16 broken bones and required eight surgeries.

Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter.
A car that plunged into a reservoir near Lynwood on Dec. 18 is shown after being recovered Dec. 19. (Mike Nolan / Daily Southtown)

A man whose body was recovered Tuesday from a reservoir near Lynwood has been identified as LeAndre Scott of Chicago, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Scott, 26, was found more than a week after the body of 27-year-old Christopher Stone, of Chicago Heights, was recovered from a car that plunged Dec. 18 into the Dr. Mary Woodland Reservoir, on the south side of Lincoln Highway, east of Torrence Avenue. The vehicle and Stone were pulled from the pond Dec. 19.

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The recovered vehicle had been traveling eastbound at about 12:30 p.m. Dec. 18 and traveled another 150 to 200 yards in a direct path into the pond, according to Cook County Sheriff's police, who investigated the incident.

Their investigation led authorities to believe a second person had been in the car, which was upside down on its roof and partially buried in silt, according to sheriff's police and Lynwood Fire Chief John Cobb.

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Friends of Scott said he worked at a retail store in Chicago, as well as for a moving supply firm in Hammond and was a graduate of Bloom Trail High School.

In the initial recovery of the vehicle, firefighters had to cut through ice on the reservoir to allow divers to enter the water, and because of frigid temperatures the divers could remain in the water for only a few minutes, Cobb said after the car was recovered. The reservoir is operated by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation, and Cobb said the water is 30 feet deep.

The search resumed Dec. 22 using sonar equipment.

Freelance reporter Nick Swedberg contributed.

mnolan@tribpub.com
Ambrosia Clemons, 36, of Galesburg, and Kearita Ladd, 23, of Chicago, are accused of forcing a 13-year-old girl into sexual servitude, Cook County prosecutors said. (Cook County sheriff's office)

A 13-year-old girl forced into prostitution by a couple sought help on a social media website while one of her captors was away buying clothes for her to use in strip dances, prosecutors say.

Cook County Judge Darron Bowden called the charges against Ambrosia Clemons, 36, "basically pimping" after setting his bond Wednesday at $750,000.

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Prosecutors said the Galesburg man and Kearita Ladd, 23, of Chicago, who appeared only briefly in Bowden's Markham courtroom, forced the teen to have sex with them before prostituting her to more than 10 unknown men over several days in December. They also forced her to dance at three area strip clubs, prosecutors said.

Clemons and Ladd are charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated battery and aggravated sexual servitude of a minor, according to Cook County court records.

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Ladd is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail.

On Dec 6, the girl escaped with another person from Chicago Lakeshore Hospital, a private behavioral health and addiction treatment center, prosecutors said.

The teen and the other person eventually went to a beauty supply store in Lansing and then with the two defendants to a Lansing hotel, prosecutors said. While the victim did not know either defendant, the other person did know Clemons, prosecutors said.

While at the hotel, Ladd allegedly forced the victim to have sex with her, and Clemons made the victim have sex with him, prosecutors said. The other person had left before the sex occurred, prosecutors said.

From Dec. 9 to Dec. 13, Clemons allegedly made the teenager have sex with multiple men for money, prosecutors said.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

The defendants also allegedly took the girl to local strip clubs to perform Dec. 11 to 12, prosecutors said. The victim allegedly was told by the defendants to tell strip club staff that she was born in 1998, prosecutors said.

"She lied to us about her age," Clemons claimed as he was escorted out of the courtroom.

On Dec. 12, the victim attempted to escape the hotel but was hit, choked and prevented from leaving by the defendants, prosecutors said. Video recording captured the escape attempt and the battery, prosecutors said.

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Prosecutors said the victim was able to use a phone to contact a former teacher through Facebook. On Dec. 13, the victim again contacted her mother and the former teacher through the social media site while Clemons was out shopping for stripper clothes, prosecutors said.

Both defendants were arrested as part of a joint investigation by Lansing police, the Cook County sheriff's office and the FBI, prosecutors said.

Clemons and Ladd are set to return to Markham court Jan. 20.

Nick Swedberg is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
The Illinois capitol is seen on June 29, 2016. From July 2015 to July 2016, the state's population declined by more than 37,000 people. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)

The U.S. Census Bureau released new migration data Dec. 20, and it's frightening. Illinois has a massive people problem.

From July 2015 to July 2016, the state's population declined by more than 37,000 people. That's the worst population loss in the nation, and will likely mean the loss of a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Pennsylvania, which also experienced a net population loss in the Census, is now set to overtake Illinois as the fifth-largest state. Illinois is simply sliding backward faster.

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Census data show an alarmingly rapid trend fueling Illinois' shrinkage: Illinoisans leaving for greener pastures. And Springfield has had practically no solutions for this problem.

Illinois lost more than 114,000 people to other states over this period. That's akin to losing almost the entire population of Peoria in a single year, or 1 Illinoisan every 4 minutes 36 seconds.

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Lynn Cisco is one Peorian who already left.

After moving to Indiana in 2015, Cisco said her family is saving more than $400 a month on property taxes alone.

"We felt like suckers for staying [in Illinois] for so long. That [property tax] bill affects how you structure your family," she said.

Cisco's husband works for Caterpillar as a service engineer, and was transferred to Lafayette.

"I'm convinced Caterpillar is slowly, stealthily moving out of Illinois. The world headquarters might stay in Peoria but the manufacturing is absolutely leaving," she said.

The long-term trend of Illinoisans leaving for other states is astonishing.

Since 2000, Illinois has lost 1.2 million more people to other states than it gained from other states. This is roughly equal to the 10 largest Illinois cities outside of Chicago vanishing: Aurora, Rockford, Joliet, Naperville, Springfield, Peoria, Elgin, Waukegan, Champaign and Arlington Heights.

All gone in a flash.

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Tom Paul is leaving for Arizona.

He's worked as a police officer and crime analyst in a village near the Wisconsin border for 30 years. But he won't be able to afford Lake County property taxes on a fixed retirement income. After that bill hit $5,000 a year in 2013, he and his wife began planning their escape.

"Our kids are here, our grand babies are here, but we've done the numbers on trying to maintain a home in Illinois and that math does not work at all," he said. "We've lived here all our lives so the weather wasn't really a driver. The main driver is the fixed income and zero trust in government to get these costs under control."

Some politicians refuse to believe this flight of people and wealth means anything about the state of the state. Steve Brown, the spokesman for House Speaker Mike Madigan, had this to say about Illinois' out-migration during an August interview on Chicago's AM 560:

"The important thing is to figure out the 'why.' What part of it is due to the quality of government services and what part of it is due to your grandchildren living somewhere, you're retiring, [and] you want to be in a warmer climate? Nobody's ever done that kind of qualitative analysis  of the 'why' part."

Brown was either clueless or lying.

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The Paul Simon Public Policy Institute found in October that nearly half of Illinoisans want to leave the state. Pollsters asked why. The most common response? Taxes.

And data show it isn't retired snowbirds driving the majority of Illinois' migration losses: It's working-age adults.

Kayla Williams and her young son are leaving for Minnesota.

The budget impasse has thrown her work as a legal advocate for domestic violence victims into disarray. And she pays around $3,700 a year in property taxes on a Springfield home she can't sell for $50,000.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

"We tax everything and there's still money for nothing," she said. "You can't really get much of a break in Illinois."

Good luck trying to balance a state budget in the long term while young taxpayers like Williams are leaving in droves.

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And hiking taxes on a population that's clearly had enough is a great way to accelerate that trend.

Springfield lawmakers need to take a hard look at the long-term drift that has led the state to this point. Blaming the budget impasse is convenient, but isn't grounded in reality.

Illinoisans pay among the highest property taxes in the nation, suffer under the worst manufacturing jobs growth in the region, and aren't seeing any signs of a better jobs climate or lower tax burden in the near future.

Illinoisans are holding politicians accountable for this state of affairs in the most damning way possible: mass exodus.

Austin Berg is a writer for the Illinois Policy Institute. He wrote this column for the Illinois News Network, a project of the Institute.
I can't believe the Chicago Police Department and our justice system are telling our courageous men and women of the Chicago Police Department to use less force and restraint on the psychos and career criminals and felons that are assaulting the innocent population of Chicago. Our courageous police department is constantly being assaulted every day. Now, the nitwit Sherlock Holmes politicians want to restrain our law enforcement department. Meanwhile, our courageous police still have to make split-second decisions or get shot.

Joe, Alsip

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If Chicago aldermen would add just $200 to the tax bill of landlords who rent out their basement or attic we wouldn't need another tax increase.

Don, Chicago

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I read in the newspaper where President Barack Obama is pushing for a goal to get the United States to Mars. Well, I hope he does and perhaps he would go as the first civilian to go up there. With any luck he'll take Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton with him and not return.

John

I was shocked to see the average Chicago teacher's salary is $69,000 a year. I'm happy they got their contract and the children were in school, but it seems like every other year they're dissatisfied one way or another. While watching television and looking at them preparing for the strike I saw a lot of red T-shirts reading, "Chicago Teachers Union." How much money is being taken out of each teacher's salary to be paid toward the union? Also, how much money is Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis' salary? Maybe money could be saved out of each teacher's salary by cutting those that are being paid toward union dues. What's fair for the goose is fair for the gander.

BJ, Hazel Crest

What's Speak Out?

Speak Out allows readers to comment on the issues of the day. Email Speak Out at speakout@southtownstar.com or call 312-222-2427. Please limit comments to 30 seconds or about 120 words and give your first name and your hometown.
Navy Pier Is Nation's Top Tourist Destination For Lyft Users

By Stephen Gossett in Arts & Entertainment on Dec 29, 2016 4:13PM



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In a finding that should probably surprise no one, Chicagos very own Navy Pier is the most-visited tourist destination in the countryat least according to Lyft user data. Thanks, new Ferris wheel and cheesecake!

The so-called Lyftie Awards crown winners for categories such as Most Visited Restaurant, Most Visited Bar and Most Visited Transit Stop, all based on usage information from the rideshare app in two dozen cities.

That was the only Chicago destination to rank nationally, but the Lyfties also break down faves according to local use. The local winnerssome surprising, some less sowere as follows:

Most Visited Restaurant: Parlor Pizza Bar

Most Visited Bar: Hopsmith Tavern

Most Visited Event Venue: Wrigley Field (natch)

Most Visited Train Stop: Ogilvie Station

Only In Chicago: The Second City

Trending Destination: SOHO House Chicago
In what's become an annual rite of winter, bald eagles are back along the Fox River near Elgin and surrounding towns.

Among locals who have spotted and photographed them this season is Elgin Symphony Orchestra CEO David Bearden, who has been on the lookout for the big birds for several years. He snapped his first few images of eagles in the area two years ago near the Gail Borden Public Library in downtown Elgin.

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For at least the last seven winters, the area near the library has been one of the spots people have been heading to catch glimpses of the eagles either soaring above, perching in nearby trees or standing out on frozen parts of the river.

The downtown library even has three sets of binoculars it lends out to those with library cards to birdwatch from the big windows in the Gail Borden that overlook the Fox River. Staff also takes photos of the eagles and posts them on the library's Facebook page and Twitter feed.

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With the mild 2015-16 winter, Gail Borden Public Library Public Relations Coordinator Liz Clemmons told The Courier-News in February that people at the library spotted just one eagle early that season, then went a few months until a cold spell when more of the birds were seen.

That is different from the current winter.

Library social media specialist and graphic designer Natalie Kiburg said that last week and through Monday were good days for spotting eagles near the library. Staff and patrons also have noticed coyotes along the river, she said.

On Monday morning, there were two adults and an adolescent eagle in a tree across the river from Veterans Park, which is just north of the library, Kiburg said, and in the middle of the river on ice were another adult and "teen."

"It took us about an hour to an hour-and-a-half to spot them sitting still for us to try to get a photo," Kiburg said. "We kept an eye on them, and they did hang out on that same part of the river for at least an hour, varying spots but in that same general area."

Kiburg said she went through library files, and it appears a recent photo of the five eagles is the most of the birds in any one shot the library has of its own.

This December, Bearden said he saw a Facebook post from a member of the Elgin 360 Photography Club that alerted him to the birds being back along the river.

"She mentioned she had taken several images along the Fox south of Route 20. This alerted me that people were seeing them and so I knew they were back in the area," Bearden said.

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That led Bearden to taking photos of his own including on Dec. 21, from the Village Squire parking lot in West Dundee and the area along the river there.

"Each day there seemed to be fewer spottings as the ice began to melt with the warmer weather. With the recent relatively warmer weather, the river is mostly open water from the Carpentersville Dam to the Dundee Bridge (Route 72/Main Street)," Bearden said.

The most eagles Bearden has seen at any one time so far has been this season when he observed seven eaglets perched on a branch just north of OTTO Engineering on the river in Carpentersville.

"I have named these the OTTO Eagles, since they tend to cluster on the west side of the Fox, just north of the OTTO Engineering facilities. In one day, including these seven, I counted about twelve between the dam and the Dundee bridge," Bearden said.

Bearden said the dozen eagles he spotted on Friday were the most he has seen in any one day in this area. While some people have speculated that there may be some eagles living year-round along the Fox in this area, Bearden said he has only seen the birds present in late November through early March.

"There were several eaglets along the river on (Christmas Day) when the wind was quite strong. They were zooming and chasing each other in the drafts. You could see them almost testing their moves as they took turns making passes at each other," Bearden said. "On (Christmas Eve) there was a wide slip of ice that extended almost across the river. Two eaglets landed there and were jumping and moving together as though they were playing. Of course, it is awesome when you see them fishing and feeding their young."

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As for how to photograph eagles, Bearden said, "One person I was talking to likened it to fishing. You wait several (sometimes up to 15-20) minutes for 15 seconds of sheer excitement once they are sighted and moving. Once they are out of range, you wait for the next sighting to repeat the process."

Bearden also noted the need to be wearing the right clothing for long waits outdoors in cold weather and to have at least some kind of optical or digital zoom camera for taking photos.

"Eagles are very conscious of their surroundings and tend to shy away from closeness to people," Bearden said. "Since there are so many eaglets, the adults spend some amount of time fishing and feeding these younger eagles."

According to the state's "Save Our Eagles" website, more than 3,1000 bald eagles across 27 counties call Illinois their winter home. This is more wintering American bald eagles than in any other state outside Alaska, according to the site. However, the site notes the birds typically head back north in March.

mdanahey@tribpub.com
Cellphones ruin social skills: This is a question and a concern. Do our young people learn social skills and proper manners when they are on their phones all the time? They lose those warm hugs and facial expressions. It's so rude when you are having a conversation at the dinner table and they are on their phones. When you are with a live person, treat them with respect. Share a game together or a conversation. Hopefully we will never lose respect for each other. Young people should talk with their parents to decide what are the best manners for the new world in the computer age.

Pumped about Trump: This is for all the crybabies who call Speak Out about the election. Donald Trump won. Get over it. The people spoke. Now we're free, and we will have a greater country.

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Bring country together: America is on life support. We better bring this country together, and I don't want to have to speak Russian.

Turning to Trump: Stop all the nonstop whining about Donald Trump. He's not even the president yet. He's working hard to save jobs for Americans. He will deport criminal illegal immigrants and will stop funding the big cities who hide them. He won't go abroad and criticize America like our current president did. As far as hiring millionaires and billionaires for his Cabinet, these people are excellent at what they do. If he hired an ordinary Joe, people would still complain. He will never be able to satisfy everyone. Trump will make America great again. I voted for him, and I'm waiting to see what he will do next. Sit back and enjoy the ride. If you voted for Hillary Clinton, you have nothing to brag about.

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Remark about parking: What don't people understand when they are warned ahead of time to not park on the street during a snowfall? Maybe if the city would give them a hefty ticket for not adhering to the laws, they would understand. Laws are made for everyone. If you don't respond, you will be penalized with a ticket.

Pond rescue: I was so happy to read about the lady and her dog who were rescued from that pond. The Lord and his angels were really looking down on them.

Up in smoke: Inhaling tobacco smoke is a proven cause of cancer and emphysema. Inhaling marijuana smoke, on the other hand, enhances our health and this state's financial coffers.

Offensive behavior: I would like to say Donald Trump was very offensive and is very offensive, but he will be my president. He told a lot of lies that people have not held him accountable for. I've watched this man tell lie after lie. I think he is offensive, and the people who gave him a pass are also offensive. As I said, though, I will respect him as my president until he is not my president anymore.

Shovel sidewalks: What's the policy in Aurora on the crews getting out to clean the sidewalks adjoining public parks? Do they think people don't use the parks in the winter? The condition of the sidewalks are accidents waiting to happen.

Medication justification: I'm getting sick and tired of people who are not in pain telling people who are in pain how they should react to their pain. I get pills from my doctor. I live by myself and take care of myself. The pills are the only things that allow me to function and live a decent life. Don't blame the doctors. They are just trying to help people who have pain. People are trying to figure out who is responsible for others dying of overdoses. They are a bunch of fools who can't control their needs. It's wrong to sit on people who are actually in pain and given a prescription for their pain. People should not stick their noses in. The doctors went to school. They know what they are doing. They are not giving people pain pills who don't need them.

Cabinet choices: People better take Donald Trump very seriously when he says eight years. He is a businessman. He has taken everyone out of the competition by putting them in his Cabinet. Watch what I'm telling you. To all you angry white men, people like Trump will call you white trash when they are behind closed doors. And you know what he calls blacks once the doors are closed. He feels the same way about both.

In a funk about junk mail: I keep getting these letters from credit card companies saying I've been pre-approved for credit cards. It's like they are trying to get people into getting credit they really don't need. I don't think that's fair. I don't think they should send things like that unless it's requested.

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Perplexed about theater parking: I'm tickled pink to see the new movie theater that opened in Spring Hill Mall in Carpentersville. What I don't understand is why they left an entire acre of land directly in front of it for a green grassy knoll with a sidewalk through it. The parking is on either side. That prime spot is left unavailable to park. You have to park clear off to one side or the other and then walk a couple hundred feet to the theater. Tell me if that makes good sense.

Pointing fingers: I think Linda Chapa LaVia is in true Michael Madigan form. She's pointing fingers at other candidates. There is a saying: You have to sweep off your back porch before you start throwing dirt on other people's front porches. Think about that one.

Rise in salaries: People who hate anything that looks like work demand $15 an hour. In 1958, my mom worked at one of Aurora's laundry businesses. She worked very hard for 75 cents an hour, which came to $6 a day. She quit. They offered her 85 cents an hour to come back and she did. On payday, she received $30 minus taxes. This laundry was one of the earliest concerns to employ illegal labor in Aurora.

Editor's note

Speak Out is a reader-generated column of opinions. If you see something you disagree with or think is incorrect, please tell us. Call us at 312-222-2460 or email couriernews@tribpub.com. Please include "speak out" in the subject line.
Elmwood Park officials plan continued improvements to Village Circle and the village's showpiece Avenue of Flags area in 2017. (Pioneer Press )

Elmwood Park village officials would have little trouble compiling a David Letterman-like top ten list on why a railroad underpass is needed for Grand Avenue, where it crosses the Metra commuter rail corridor in the village.

They've done a pretty good job as it is  producing a report and even a DVD to try to move state officials toward allocating funds for the project, whose total cost has been pegged at more than $80 million.

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Officials saw some movement toward that goal in 2016, learning that the North Central Council of Mayors had approved $4.2 million in federal funds to complete Phase 1 and Phase 2 engineering of the grade separation of Grand Avenue at the railroad tracks.

In 2017, the officials' goal is to secure the remaining funding to begin the engineering for the project, Village Manager Paul Volpe said.

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"Once the funding is in place, we will commence the engineering, which is a multi-year project that is a meaningful first step toward getting this project done," he said.

The Grand Avenue project is one of a number of areas on which village officials intend to focus on in 2017, Volpe said.

Others include:

 Continued efforts to revitalize the Village Circle. The work is to include completing the improvements to the Avenue of Flags, which serves as a gateway to the circular drive, as well as streetscaping the area between Westwood and Sunset drives.

"We also hope to close on the two properties we have under contract in that area," Volpe said, "and once we have closed, we will commence efforts to identify potential partners to bring vibrant businesses to those properties  both of which have been vacant for some time."

 Continued work on a street preservation program, including crack sealing, patching and pavement rejuvenation. Volpe said the work "will help us preserve the investment we made over the past three years as we resurfaced over 65 percent of the streets throughout Elmwood Park."

 The Village Board is planning to bring "a nice improvement to Central Park that will be a lot of fun for families and children," he said, saving the announcement for later.

 The village is also working with a couple of existing businesses who plan major improvements their properties he said.

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 Officials look forward to the completion of a new gas station at Diversey and Harlem avenues in early 2017, Volpe said.

"As always we look forward to a busy summer filled with special events," he said. "Each year, we do something a little more and different. This year, we look forward to bringing more concerts to the Circle and more movies to Central Park."

Elmwood Park officials are looking at securing the remainder of funding needed for engineering services on their drive for a safer crossing on Grand Avenue where it crosses the commuter rail corridor. (Pioneer Press )

He also underlined the continued work on the Grand Avenue underpass.

Officials outlined some facts in support of the project in the report put together by Angelo "Skip" Saviano, and Volpe.

Exhibit No. 1 is a Nov. 23, 2005, accident when a Metra train was unable to stop and collided with six vehicles trapped on the crossing, a 300-foot-long diagonal. The report also found that since 1956, 45 accidents have occurred at Grand with 35 involving a train hitting a vehicle and six involving a pedestrian.

The preferred concept, construction of an underpass, would lower Grand Avenue under the railroad by constructing a retaining wall viaduct and railroad bridge. The roadway would be lowered over 22 feet in a project that would require a minimum of two years of construction, officials noted.

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Construction would not require long-term interruptions of railroad service, officials said.

The crossing has made several lists ranking the state's most dangerous crossings. A 2007 Illinois Department of Transportation study found that a grade separation at Grand is feasible, and that the project would result in "reducing traffic, enhancing safety and expanding development and commerce in the region," officials noted in their report.

For schools, a major technology push in 2017

Patrick Sheridan, a social studies teacher at Elmwood Park High School for 10 years, has seen computers increasingly become a greater part of school life.

"I have a classroom website  the student can go on it and find the homework and can submit assignments by email," he said. "We do all this training to learn how to do as much of it without paper. Pretty soon, I can just picture the desk becoming computer screens instead of the top of your desk. Your computers are your desk."

Cost may be a factor in bringing that vision into reality right away, but the high school has definitely seen progress, said James Jennings, the school's principal. Teachers have already begun training on Google Classroom  a learning platform that aims to put assignments and grading on line, noted Jennings.

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"The kids' parents  everyone is online," he said. "It's growing."

Starting in late January, the district is planning to hold a series of symposiums geared to families, entitled "It's a Google, Google World: A Community Symposium."

The district plans to bring the program to all of its schools between Jan. 31 and Feb. 6. The symposiums are to explore "Google Classroom," as well as "What is Google?"

Officials are also looking to ramp up on staffing and hardware. This past spring, there was a plan to saturate district buildings with additional devices, but demand may be outpacing supply, officials indicated in a November report.

"A lot of feedback from teachers, across all grade levels, during the training was about the availability of devices," officials reported. Throughout the district, "laptops are increasingly being preferred by staff, due to their increasing interest in utilizing technology presented in the trainings, the use of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) scopes and looking at additional e-texts and the idea of not affecting their learning environment and lessons by transporting students."

Say, maybe that "computer table" idea isn't so farfetched.
Customer Alex Rankine of La Grange pays for merchandise at DeVries Grocery store just before it closed its doors. (Annemarie Mannion / Pioneer Press)

It was a year of endings for La Grange in 2016, as a beloved local store closed, a school district announced plans to leave the special education cooperative it created a half century ago and apartments within District 105 were demolished. Two police chiefs also prepared to leave their positions.

DeVries Grocery closes its doors

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DeVries Grocery, a neighborhood institution in La Grange for more than 42 years, closed its doors in October.

"I feel true sadness," said customer Chris Fagan, who lives nearby. "It is unfortunate when you have the integrity of a small store. It's the personal service versus the big box."

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Owners Wayne DeVries and his brother, Dick, said revenue continued to decline due to competition from larger, big box stores and despite trying to balance operating expenses and good customer service, the owners

"It's tough. But all things come to an end," Wayne DeVries said as customers huddled around him to tell him how much they would miss the store that was at 806 Arlington Ave.

The store was founded by Dick DeVries Sr., who died in 2008. He operated a store first in Chicago's Beverly neighborhood and then took over an existing store on La Grange's west end.

"I think I was in La Grange Hospital as a kid and a lady there told them a grocery store was closing and he should look at it," Wayne DeVries said.

He said the village of La Grange supported the business throughout its more than four decades in existence.

"They've been wonderful," he said. "This town is very pro business. They want you to succeed."

Nancy Cummings, executive director of the La Grange Area Business Association, said the store will be missed.

"It really defined the west end," she said. "When people think of the west end, DeVries was the centerpiece."

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She said the store's closing should prompt people to think about supporting local businesses.

"This is an example of what happens when people look to large stores instead of those small, mom-and-pop family stores that make your neighborhood unique," she said.

Lenzi apartments in District 105 demolished

Hundreds of residents in Hodgkins lost their homes in 2016 as the village started to demolish the Lenzi Apartments, a collection of 10 buildings that were mostly dilapidated and in disrepair.

The demolition affected La Grange-Countryside Elementary School District 105, which lost students who moved to other districts and some who still have to move, either within or outside the district.

Superintendent Glenn Schlichting said about 41 students from the apartments have moved out of the district and 38 relocated within the district. Fifty-one still have to move out of the apartments.

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Schlichting said the students who relocated out of the district moved to various places.

"Those students have moved anywhere from Joliet to Chicago," he said.

Losing the people who lived in the apartments left a hole in the community.

"The apartments have been there since the 1960s. They were part of the fabric of the community," Schlichting said.

The village in November demolished four of the buildings in the complex that was largely occupied by low-income Hispanic residents. The village had purchased the buildings over the past year.

Village attorney John O'Connell, explained that some of the buildings, especially the ones that the village bought in foreclosure at 6027, 6028 and 6029 Lenzi Avenue, were unsafe.

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The balconies were held up by a device to shore them up before they all collapse, he said. The village has set a deadline to have nearly all of the ten buildings demolished by June 2017.

Officer charged with fraud

A former La Grange police officer was charged in October in connection with exploitation of a disabled person.

Steven C. Kneifel, 47, of 165 Shadowbend Drive, Wheeling pleaded not guilty Oct. 17 to the charges of official misconduct, financial exploitation of an elderly person or person with a disability, forgery and theft, according to the Cook County State's Attorney's Office.

Kneifel is accused of committing official misconduct, along with the criminal charges filed, according to a statement from the village of La Grange.

The charges stemmed allege that Kneifel was in a position of trust or confidence with the victim and had a legal or fiduciary relationship with the victim.

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The complaint states that Kneifel made or altered checks that drew on the victim's bank accounts on a series of occasions, at various times and in various amounts that ranged from $100 to $13,000, from April 5, 2013 through Oct. 11, 2015. The complaint alleges that Kneifel withdrew a total of $65,836 from the victim's accounts at three different banks.

Kneifel was an active police officer with the village from January 1997 until November 2013, when he took a leave of absence. Kneifel was on a leave of absence when the village was made aware of the allegations against him. Kneifel never returned to service as a police officer or any other position for the village, according to the village's statement.

La Grange officials said they had reviewed records and concluded that no other public complaints of a similar nature were levied against Kneifel, and there were no other public complaints of a similar nature involving any other police officers.

"The village of La Grange does not tolerate this kind of conduct and we believe this is an isolated case in an otherwise honorable department of law enforcement professionals," said Village President Tom Livingston. "We apologize to the victim who is among our own community and will continue to work with others to pursue justice in this case."

New police chiefs for the west suburbs

Police chiefs in the villages of La Grange, Western Springs and Indian Head Park retired from their posts in 2016.

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Chief Renee Strasser of La Grange planned to retire Jan. 1 after only about a year and a half in the leadership role.

Strasser, a 27-year-veteran of the department, replaced the former chief Michael Holub, who retired in 2015 after 11 years as the top police administrator.

Village President Tom Livingston said he was pleased with Strasser's work, and that she approached the village about her desire to retire from the $121,000 a year post.

"She did a great job for us," he said. "She's going to be a full-time caregiver for her mom."

While La Grange will be looking in 2017 for a new police chief, the villages of Western Springs and Indian Head Park have already named new leaders to their posts.

The Western Springs Village Board approved the appointment in November of deputy chief Brian Budds as its new director of Law Enforcement Services, more commonly known to in the village as police chief.

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Budds was unanimously approved to replace chief Pamela Church, who planned to retire at the end of 2016. She has been with the Western Springs Police Department for almost 12 years.

Village President Bill Rodeghier said under village ordinance, village manager Patrick Higgins has authority to nominate department heads to fill vacant positions, which must then be approved by the board.

Budds has been with the department since 1996, when he began his law enforcement career, and has been deputy director since 2007. He will lead a department with 20 sworn officers that responded to more than 10,000 calls for police service in 2015, according to the 2015 Law Enforcement Services annual report.

Indian Head Park hired Robert Cervenka a retired Chicago Police officer, to be its new full-time police chief.

Cervenka started his career in law enforcement as an Indian Head Park officer in 1981, but joined the Chicago Police Department in 1985, where he moved up through the ranks to lieutenant and watch commander until his retirement in 2011.

Cervenka said he looked forward to mentoring the officers in Indian Head Park and developing a well-trained Police Department.

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Indian Head Park police Sgt. Raymond Leuser had served as acting chief since John Brooks stepped down as chief in May 2014.

District 102 moves to withdraw from LADSE

A discussion in a La Grange elementary district that started in 2016 about whether it should pull out of the La Grange Area Department of Special Education will continue in 2017.

The board of La Grange Elementary District 102 is weighing the pros and cons of withdrawing from the cooperative that provides special education services to students in 15 school districts.

The board in June gave its mandatory one-year notice of intent to withdraw from the organization, which started a process that gives the district, the co-op and other districts in the cooperative time to consider the ramifications of a withdrawal.

The school district estimated in October that withdrawing from the cooperative that provides special education services to students in member districts would save the district about $300,000 a year.

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The district needs to decide by February if it will withdraw from the cooperative that provides services including nursing, occupational therapy, vocational programs, speech language therapy and school psychology to students with special needs.

Citizens in November submitted a petition with 342 signatures to the board questioning the withdrawal and the district to perform a cost-benefit analysis.

Board President Matt Scotty said that the board will not act in haste.

"We're going to sharpen our pencils on some of the cost savings and see whether it is worth it," he said.

Lawsuit continues on Lyons Township school treasurer fees

There was no end in 2016 to litigation between Lyons Township High School District 204 and the Lyons Township School Treasurer's Office.

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"Nothing has changed. It's still in litigation. It's still in the courts," said Brian Stachacz, director of business services for the school district.

The treasurer's office filed a lawsuit against District 204 in October 2013 for $4.4 million, including $2.6 million in back fees for financial services.

LTHS officials contend an agreement was reached in 1999 in open session with the office enabling the high school to process its own payroll and accounts receivable and payable, and receive a credit from the treasurer's office to avoid paying twice for the same function. Both the high school and treasurer's office boards approved operating procedures based on the agreement every year since 2015, said LTHS Superintendent Timothy Kilrea.

The lawsuit came about the same time as strife in the school treasurer's office after Robert Healy, 56, of LaGrange Highlands, the former treasurer, pleaded guilty in 2015 to stealing more than $100,000 in school funds during his 24 years on the job. Healy had been charged in August 2013 with stealing more than $1.5 million. He is serving a nine-year sentence at the Taylorville Correctional Center..

Lyons Township school treasurer Susan Birkenmaier said her office has recovered about $1.04 million from Healy in a civil case against him.

Staff writer Kimberly Fornek contributed to this article.
Antipasti has mixed greens, salami, mortadella, capicolla, provolone, fresh mozzarella, artichoke hearts, tomato and Kalamata olives and is served with house dressing. (Shonda Talerico Dudlicek) (Shonda Talerico Dudlicek / Lake County News-Sun)

Dining at Tina's Italian Cafe and Bake Shop is like dining at a Sicilian kitchen table.

Plates are set atop handmade crocheted tablecloths, which are protected under plastic. They were made by Tina's mother, who can't speak a word of English but won't let that stop her from telling stories about her family's life back in Sicily, where she lives for half the year.

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There are family photos everywhere: in neat rows on the table near the front door, hung in the back hallway and taped to the ancient cash register that requires counting up to make change.

Comfortable and at home -- that's exactly the way Tina Tortorici wants her Gurnee cafe and bake shop to feel.

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"It's like somebody's house with 14 tables and lace crochet tablecloths and the real Italian way with plastic on the tablecloth, you know," Tortorici said. "I love my language and talk Italian a little bit to everybody so they can learn it."

She visits every table with a hearty, "Mangia!," in between cutting bread hot from the oven, making espresso and serving salads. At a back table you can find her mother, crocheting quietly.

"Yes, I have time to talk," Tortorici says in her heavy Italian accent. "My bread is in the oven."

Tortorici went to school in Italy to be a teacher, "but I never teach one day of my life," she said.

Instead, she came to America and found friends with restaurants and helped them, and later opened her own place, Tina's Italian Cafe and Bake Shop in 2001 in her new hometown.

Her recipes are handed down from her nonna. "All my recipes are homemade. I never went to culinary school. I make my own sauce, cookies, bread, dressing, nice salads and balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil, fresh strawberries and mixed berries. She teach me simple recipes, I have a few ingredients with fresh garlic, onions, oregano, basil and good extra virgin olive oil."

Daily specials are handwritten and copied for each table. "For lunch we have a nice Imbottito or nice meatball sandwich, chicken salad on focaccia. Lasagna, focaccia bread, sandwiches, meatballs, Bandiera, eggplant parmigiana, bolognese sauce. Everything. Whatever we make is popular," Tortorici said. "I like it and I will keep doing it until I am 100 years."

Pricing: Salads from $7.50 for La Casalinga to $9.99 for low-carb. Soups are $2.99 for cup or $4.99 for bowl. Sandwiches are $8.25 from provolone e verdure to panino di manzo. Specialties from $8.25 for bake shop special of half sandwich and house salad or cup of soup to $9.99 for eggplant Parmigiana. Desserts from cannoli to Tina's mascarpone brownies. Beverages from espresso to mochas. Catering available.

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Hours: 10:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday.

Tina's Italian Cafe and Bake Shop is at 5101 Washington St., Gurnee. Call 847-244-9001 or go to www.tinasitaliancafe.com

Shonda Talerico Dudlicek is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.
A 1,062-unit storage facility with outdoor storage will open in a Lake Zurich industrial district under a proposal recently approved by village board members. The developer hopes to attract CubeSmart to manage and operate the site. (Village of Lake Zurich / Handout)

A 1,062-unit storage facility is coming to an industrial district in Lake Zurich even though the project developer still is looking for a manager to handle daily operations at the new business.

Village trustees voted unanimously in late December to allow Macritchie Storage LLC to build a drive-through facility at 650 Church St.

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As part of the package, board members approved an ordinance regulating mini and self-storage warehouses with outdoor storage, including prohibiting them from fronting Route 12 or Route 22.

The 1,062 self-storage units will be offered in various sizes and spread across two floors, said trustee Jonathan Sprawka.

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The business will make outdoor storage available for cars, recreational vehicles, boats and other vehicles along the southern edge of the property, he said. The site also will feature a display space and office.

Based in Calgary, Canada, self-storage developer Macritchie Storage typically targets blighted warehouses and redevelops them into storage facilities, village officials said.

Once the project is completed, Macritchie Storage is looking to have CubeSmart operate and manage the daily activities at the Lake Zurich location, according to a village staff report prepared by associate planner Katie Williams and building services supervisor Mary Meyer.

Before final approval of the project, planning and zoning commissioners with the village asked Macritchie to add more landscaping, and encouraged them to pay attention to the colors and materials on the building's west side, which faces the street, said Community Development Director Sarosh Saher.

Macritchie agreed to add shrubs along the foundation and additional landscaping around the proposed sign of the business, as well as other changes to better screen the outdoor storage areas from surrounding property, he said.

Commissioners also agreed that the property does not require as much street-side detail as a self-storage facility that board members recently approved at 300 Route 22, which fronts a major arterial road and gateway to the community, Saher said.

Lake Zurich staff recommended prohibiting the latter thoroughfares as sites for outdoor storage since the character of Routes 22 and 12 differ from the industrial district slated to house Macritchie Storage's project, he said.

Other stipulations trustees approved in the ordinance regulating mini-warehouses and self-storage centers with outdoor storage include:

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Vehicles stored outdoors must be "in good repair and a sightly condition" and may not be abandoned or left indefinitely.

No merchandise or equipment may be stored outdoors.

Outdoor storage will be permitted only within the side and rear interior yards of a site.

The height of any items stored outdoors may not exceed the height of the principal building on the property.

The outdoor storage areas must be screened on all sides with a fence and landscaping.

Phil Rockrohr is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
Assurance employee of the year

Naperville resident Sam Davidson, an integration development specialist for Assurance, one of the country's largest independent insurance brokerages, was named an employee of the year on Dec. 3.

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Davidson was chosen for the award by company managers and accepted it at an event attended by 550 co-workers and guests.

Davidson earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Madras in Chennai, India, and a master's degree in industrial engineering from New Mexico State University.

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He is responsible for building and maintaining company-wide custom applications, enhancing Assurance websites and developing client web-based platforms.

Miami University students study abroad

Two Naperville residents who study at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, spent the summer semester studying abroad.

Bradley Bognar studied in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and Zachary Toledo studied in the United Kingdom and Senegal.

Carthage College dean's list

Several Naperville residents were among the 992 students named to the dean's list at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis., for the fall semester.

Carthage College students who achieve a 3.5 grade point average while carrying at least 14 credit hours during a semester are eligible for the list.

Naperville residents recognized include Marina Adamany, Cassidy Boyle, Ciaran Conroy, Sydney Hertogs, Stephanie Hotz, Aaron Lauth, Luke Shamrock, Peter Shamrock and Paige Varda.

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Southeast Missouri State dean's list

Naperville residents Kelsey Brown and Jacob May were named to the fall dean's list at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Mo.

The students earned at least a 3.75 grade point average on a 4.0 scale, completed at least 12 hours of standard graded credit, achieved no grade below a B and received no failing grades in enrolled courses.

Hedrick named to honors list

Naperville resident Gregory Hedrick was named to the fall honors list at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa.

Graceland University students with a grade point average between 3.65 and 3.99 are named to the list.
Nancy Goodman is an author, screenwriter, filmmaker and toy creator. And she can now add another title to her already impressive resume: Gift wrap room designer/builder.

What the very creative Goodman did to a mundane storage space in her home as a do-it-yourself project was just too good to pass up sharing. It's not only a very cool and fun idea, but it also proves that you don't have to be male to accomplish some crafty handiwork.

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She had seen pictures of gift wrapping rooms online and always wanted one, but Goodman said she just didn't have a room to devote to that. In her basement though, she had a "big ugly crawl space/furnace room," all cement walls, filled with bags and boxes.

The usable part of the room, away from the furnace, is 10 by 8 feet. Goodman had used it to store all of her holiday decorations.

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"I love entertaining for all holidays  Jewish ones and not Jewish ones  so this was the room to store everything from Passover plates to Easter Egg hunts; Christmas decor for the banister to Hanukkah menorahs, dreidels, and candles ... you name it," said Goodman. "Since all of the paraphernalia and decorations are so pretty, I decided to store them 'inside out.' All I had to do was empty the boxes!"

She enlisted the help of her housekeeper, Ula Rumin. The pair, "have a lot of fun fixing up the house and taking on projects," said Goodman.

"I come up with the ideas, and she has a knack with tools," said Goodman. "We bat ideas back and forth. We are totally inept like Lucy and Ethel, but in the end, we prevail!"

Because she's "not a handy person," and didn't want the expense of a contractor for what's basically a closet, Goodman needed to make the project easy. She also needed to avoid screws and nails because the majority of the room is concrete.

Her biggest challenge was covering five, cut out, 2-by 3-foot windows that led to the gravel crawl space. "They made the room scary," said Goodman. "I tried curtains but it looked tacky. So, I decided to give each window its own theme and 'view.' "

Goodman bought 2-by-3-foot poster board, covered it with pretty wrapping paper and lodged it in the window frames. She also had some extra shutters to her house that were stored in the shed, which she added to give a window feel.

"I bought contact paper from Target that looks like white bricks and put it on all the walls," said Goodman. "Ace Hardware had cheap shower curtain rods to hang the wrapping paper rolls.

"At Hobby Lobby, I found snow, snowflakes, etc.," said Goodman. "Michael's crafts had pretty decorations and spray paint, which I used for old free standing wire shelves I discovered in my shed. That would hold the Easter baskets."

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During this time, as a "crazy coincidence," Goodman had put her son's old wooden headboard and side rail out for The Salvation Army, but they wouldn't take anything that needed assembling. "Then I discovered I couldn't get those painted shelves down my basement stairs," she said. "So I spray-painted the bed frames and incorporated them in the room, in lieu of shelving. To block the furnace, I bought a white woven screen, also from Target."

But despite all her great ideas and hard work, Goodman's family made good-natured fun of her fancy gift wrap room.

"I think I heard one of my boys say, 'This time she's really gone insane,' " laughed Goodman. "My daughter thought it looked like a pretty store you'd see on vacation. And they all had a good time wrapping their gifts together! That made me the happiest."

Everything in the room is holiday-based or a gift wrapping tool. Goodman also bought a couple small tables, a bench, and pretty decorative things to either hold supplies or create the vision of that holiday.

And no matter what anyone says, she loves her new room!

"I can't tell you how happy it made me, knowing the kids would all be home for the holidays and that we had this new festive room to wrap our gifts in," said Goodman. "Functionally, it's easier to find what I'm looking for, or send someone down for it, rather than rummaging for things in boxes.

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"What used to be an eyesore is an unexpected delight in my home," said Goodman. "Sometimes I take a little latte down there. It feels kind of magical."

Felicia Dechter is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.
Updated: Woman Who Launched Viral, Racist Rant Reportedly Assaulted In Old Apartment

By Stephen Gossett in News on Dec 29, 2016 6:42PM

Updated 5:10 p.m.: Charges against Ramiz Bajwa were dropped in court today, a spokesperson for the Cook County Sheriff's Office told Chicagoist. We will continue to update this story with more information.

Original:

The woman who launched an infamous, racist, pro-Trump tirade at African-American clerks at a Michaels store in Lakeview last month was reportedly assaulted at her former Wrigleyville apartment last week.

Ramiz Bajwa, 29, was charged with one count of misdemeanor battery after he allegedly pushed a 29-year-old woman with his hands around 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 20 as they were both entering a building on West Cornelia Avenue, police told Chicagoist. The woman was not injured during the incident, according to police. The blog Crime In Wrigleyville + Boystown identified the woman as the same person whose racist tirade was caught on a viral video.

The blog, which sometimes gets information from anonymous police sources, also reports that court documents show Bajwa allegedly called the woman a racist bitch ass whore after he entered the apartment. Police do not typically publicize details about a crime victim beyond the person's gender and age.

Video of the woman's racially charged, pro-Trump rant in November quickly went viral, racking up over 4 millions views. The bystander who filmed the whole horrible ordeal, Jessie Grady, then started a GoFundMe "to do something to try to make it up to the employee who was the main target of this racist attack." The campaign collected over $30,000 on a $400 goal. The victim of the harangue said she planned to use the money to help support her family.

Another video surfaced shortly after the Michaels clip that appeared to show the same woman going on a homophobic rant at a Boystown Peet's Coffee in July.
Park Ridge police said they used fingerprint evidence to identify a person they believe robbed a Walgreens store in the city earlier this month.

Police said they matched a print left at the scene to Spencer Plaxico, 24, of the 8300 block of South Lafayette Avenue, Chicago.

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Park Ridge police officers said Plaxico was charged with armed robbery and was taken to Cook County Jail, where he is currently being held on $250,000 bond.

According to a city press release, a man entered the Walgreens at 800 Devon Ave. at 5:20 p.m. on Dec. 15 and demanded specific prescription drugs from the pharmacy staff with "a threat of violence."

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Investigators learned from pharmacy staff that the robber had handled certain merchandise in the store before he announced the robbery, police said.

A Park Ridge police detective who is also an evidence technician collected the merchandise and was able to isolate a fingerprint on the item that was used to identify Plaxico, police said. Park Ridge police said he was arrested with the help of the Chicago Police Department.

According to the city release, Plaxico is suspected in similar robberies, and the Park Ridge Police Department is helping other agencies with those cases.

Park Ridge police said Plaxico has a "substantial criminal history for similar offenses" and is currently on parole. Plaxico's next scheduled court date is Jan. 30.

sschering@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @steveschering
Gary

Deliverance Temple Church Of God In Christ: 3476 Virginia St. --- A New Year's Eve Night Watch Service will be at 10 p.m. Dec. 31. The church will host Miracle Week 2017 at 10 a.m. Jan. 1 and at 7 p.m. Jan. 4 to Jan. 6. Guest speaker will be Bishop Marcus Macintosh of California. Information: 219- 887-0544.

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Galilee Baptist Church: 1548 Madison Street  The United Male Chorus of Gary and the Calumet Region will celebrate its 67th annual musical at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 1. For information, call 219-886-2641.

Marquette Park United Methodist Church: 215 N. Grand Blvd. --- Senior yoga will be at noon Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Cost is $3 Tuesday and Friday and $4 Thursday, which includes lunch. First Saturday Outreach Lunch is at noon the first Saturday of each month. Sunday School is at 9:15 a.m. and services at 10:15 a.m. Information: 219-938-4106.

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St. John Lutheran Church: 2235 W. 10th Ave.  The Rev. Delwyn Campbell has been named pastor for St. John and strategic mission developer in the community of Gary. Campbell's installation will be at 2 p.m. Jan. 8. Campbell was born and raised in Gary and graduated from Wirt High School. He moved to California and spent time teaching, in radio, and in journalism in the Naval Reserves. He graduated from Concordia University Irvine, Christ College, with a master's degree in theology with pastoral certification and cross-cultural ministry. The establishment of Ascension Lutheran School on the campus of Our Savior Lutheran Church in Gary, based on a parochial school model for inner city schools, will be under Campbell's direction, according to Rev. Richard Boshoven, the Circuit Visitor for the Gary Lutheran churches.

Portage

St. Peter Lutheran Church: 6540 Central Ave.  New Year's Day service will be at 10 a.m. Jan. 1. Regular Sunday services are at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Sunday School and Bible Study are at 10 a.m. Sundays.

 Staff report
A group of women who identified themselves as family of the three children killed in an apartment fire overnight, hang teddy bears by a tree on Dec. 24, 2016, in Gary. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)

Gary police are asking the public to pass along information to the department about a fatal apartment fire that left three children dead over the holiday weekend.

"Anyone who has knowledge of the events that occurred, leading up to, during and after this tragic fire, is urgently asked to come forward," said Lt. Dawn Westerfield in a release.

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Police and fire departments continue to investigate in the days after the Christmas Eve fire in the 4400 block of West 23rd Court in Gary, with the state fire marshal called in to assist. The Gary Fire Department ruled the fire as arson earlier this week, determining it was started with an incendiary device, but the specific object was unknown to the department, according to Mark Jones, chief of operations.

"Although the State Fire Marshal has not made an official determination as to the cause and nature of the fire, all avenues are being investigated," Westerfield said in a release.

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Those with information are asked to contact Detective Sgt. Shauna Poirier-Peter of the Lake County Metro Homicide Unit at 219-755-3855 or the crime tip line at 866-CRIME-GP.

The Lake County Coroner's office identified the children who died as cousins living at the address of the fire, Yaleah Cohen, 2, Jayden Mitchell, 5, and Alaya Pickens, 4. While a preliminary determination has been made, their manners of death will not be released until toxicology reports are completed, which could take four to six weeks, said Scott Sefton, chief deputy.

Two adults, a man and woman, were able to get out of the fire, but the man was being treated for burns that covered about 20 to 30 percent of his body, according to Jones.

Indiana's American Red Cross reached out to the children's families and provided financial assistance to a few family members that can be used "for whatever they need, whether that is food or a place to stay," said Duchess Adjei, regional communication director. They also plan to check back in with the families in the coming days to offer further support, according to Adjei.

"We will be here for them," she said.

The Red Cross also contacted neighbors who may have been affected by the fire but had not heard back with requests for assistance as of Thursday afternoon, Adjei said.

rejacobs@post-trib.com

Twitter @ruthyjacobs
Jim Nowacki plans to walk from Gary to Indianapolis to bring attention to legalizing medical marijuana in Indiana (Gregory Tejeda / Post-Tribune)

Government officials in and around Gary know of Jim Nowacki, a one-time Chicago resident who lives in Gary and often is a government critic.

By sometime next week, Nowacki expects to be in Indianapolis, lobbying in the Statehouse in favor of medical marijuana.

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Nowacki, who does not own an automobile, said he plans to make the trip to Indianapolis on foot.

Planning on a pace of about 30 miles per day, Nowacki, 62, said he will leave the former downtown Gary office building of the Northern Indiana Public Service Co. on Broadway at 6 a.m. Sunday, and said he expects it could take about five days to complete the trip.

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"I'll admit it, walking there is in part to gain publicity, but the issue is serious," Nowacki said. "I think people should be able to use marijuana if there's a legitimate medicinal benefit."

Other organizations, including Higher Fellowship and Hoosier Veterans for Medical Cannabis, have plans to urge Indiana lawmakers to legalize medical cannabis. David Phipps and others with Higher Fellowship began in the spring to travel to one of Indiana's 92 counties each week to hold rallies in support of medical marijuana.

Voters in four states legalized medical cannabis in the November election, and Illinois and Michigan already passed their own programs. Ohio is in the process of setting up its own program after lawmakers legalized it in the state this year.

The Lake County Council narrowly passed a resolution, proposed by Councilman Jamal Washington, D-Merrillville, in September saying it would support the state legislature considering a law allowing medical marijuana use.

For years, state Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Portage, has drafted marijuana legalization bills, and in more recent years, she specifically has tailored them for medical marijuana. Going into the next session, Tallian said she again plans to propose a program.

Nowacki said that all too often, people in Indiana trying to gain access to marijuana for their personal relief are forced to resort to sources that have a criminal tinge.

"I don't think anyone should have to go through that kind of experience," Nowacki said, who said it has been about 35 years since he last used marijuana.

Nowacki has been walking more to Hammond, Crown Point and Hobart to build endurance, but he said he twice before walked from Gary to Indianapolis. On those occasions, he was trying to get the state legislature to intervene with the Gary Community School Corp. to retain old paintings that used to be in now-shuttered schools.

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Nowacki said he has talked about his walk with now-retired Gary Sen. Earline Rogers and newcomer Eddie Melton, both of whom he said offered to introduce him to people at the Statehouse. Nowacki also expects to run into some hostile reactions.

Common Council President Ronald Brewer, who often spars verbally with Nowacki over issues, shook his head "no" when asked if he thought Nowacki would be able to influence legislators.

"He gets so very aggressive when talking to people about his issues," Brewer said.

As for his walk, Nowacki would not specify his route, except to say it will sort of follow Interstate 65. He expects to pass through Roselawn, Rensselaer, Lafayette and Lebanon before reaching Indianapolis.

Gregory Tejeda is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Lake County Commissioner Gerry Scheub goes over railway maps in his office in April with alternate routes for the proposed GLBT Inc. freight line. (Carrie Napoleon / Post-Tribune)

After a political career spanning a little more than four decades, outgoing Lake County Commissioner Gerry Scheub says he looks back proudly at his time in government.

"I don't regret one minute of it," Scheub said. "I just regret I wasn't able to do everything I wanted to do. The hardest part being a county commissioner is all the frustration that goes with it. There is so much you want to accomplish. So many problems  There are limitations to what you can do."

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In November, Scheub, a Democrat, lost the election for the 2nd District seat to Schererville Republican Jerry Tippy by 3,333 votes.

Over the course of his elected career that began as St. John Township Assessor in 1976, Scheub, who turned 81 in October, said he dedicated himself to helping people.

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"We got some good things accomplished there," Scheub said. He successfully enlisted the help of the late Sen. Ernie Niemeyer, a Republican, to enact the Work Fair Bill, which required able-bodied township aid recipients to work for the township to receive their benefits.

The township acquired its first bus under his tenure. And again with the help of Niemeyer, the pair secured the former Indiana State Police building on U.S. 30 in Schererville for the town to use as its community center when the ISP built its new post in Lowell.

Once a county commissioner, Scheub, of Crown Point, took on state government through the county's attorneys to successfully fight an illegal Lake County-only welfare tax and to rail against the county option income tax forced on the county when the state froze its property tax levy.

Lake County Commissioner Gerry Scheub hoists Indiana's bicentennial flag in December 2015 in front of the Lake County government complex. (Kyle Telechan / Post-Tribune)

Since 2009, when the welfare tax was successfully eliminated, the county portion of property taxes has been reduced by 40 percent, he said. The move saved county property taxpayers more than $105 million a year that would have been assessed as part of the county's budget to pay for the welfare tax.

The fight against the county option income tax ended differently. Scheub, who served five terms, said when the county officials refused to enact the optional income tax, the state froze the levies of all governmental units in Lake County, forcing county officials to ultimately act on the income tax.

"They froze our levy when we didn't take the right 'option,'" Scheub said. He described the loss as a big hit to taxpayers.

Lake County was the last of Indiana's 92 counties to impose the tax when collections finally began in 2013.

Some battles taken on over the years were successful  including preventing the location of a landfill in Eagle Creek Township in the 1990s and stopping, at least for now, the proposed Illiana Toll Road  others were not. He laments not being able to prevent Singleton Stone, a division of Rieth Riley Construction, from locating a quarry in the township, not far from where the landfill was planned.

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"That is my biggest regret," Scheub said.

Fellow Commissioner Mike Repay, D-Hammond, said what struck him most about working with Scheub was his ability to see and read people and the situation and get the things he was passionate about accomplished.

"It's not a simple system to work in your favor all the time. It takes a lot of work. There is a lot of nuance involved," Repay said. "That experience helped him achieve different goals of his throughout the course of time I worked with him."

Even in disagreement, Repay said, there always was a level of respect for the way Scheub accomplished his goals, even if he found himself on the losing end.

Lake County Commissioner Gerry Scheub reads a proclamation from the Lake County Council at the Bicentennial Torch ceremony in October. (Jim Karczewski / Post-Tribune)

"He had a good knack for getting things accomplished," Repay said.

When Scheub thinks of his time in public service, he rarely speaks in terms of "I." His recollections are peppered with "we." He views his time in public office as being part of a team, one with which he is willing to share credit.

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"I think we walk away leaving county government a better place for constituents we represented all those years," Scheub said.

Ned Kovachevich, planning director, was appointed to his position by the board of commissioners in 2003 and Scheub was among the commissioners who approved the appointment. He said Scheub has allowed the office to operate professionally and present its findings on the various requests before it without bias.

"He gave me the flexibility to run the office, despite whether he agreed with my decision or not. He never interfered with our decision-making process," Kovachevich said.

He said after so many years it will be difficult to adjust to not working with Scheub, who served as Plan Commission chair. Kovachevich said you cannot work with someone closely for so long and not form a bond.

"He was a committed public servant. All the interaction, good or bad, he really enjoyed it," Kovachevich said. "I think he loved the challenge of the everyday. Nothing was static, nothing was the same every day."

Scheub said he does not know what the future will hold.

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"You don't just stop. You can't stop. I'll still be a public servant in some way," Scheub said.

Lake County Commissioner Gerry Scheub is shown at a 2003 meeting in Michigan City. (JOHN SMIERCIAK / CHICAGO TRIBUNE)

Carrie Napoleon is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
With the Valparaiso Redevelopment Commission receiving only about half of the grant money it requested, programs and finances will change from the budget plan presented earlier this month.

The Regional Development Authority has granted the city $6.8 million, said Stu Summers, commission executive director, instead of the requested $13 million.

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That means some bills will be paid in 2017 rather than this year, and the commission will no longer offer facade grants to businesses looking to improve their outside appearance, he said.

Summers will present a revised budget at the Jan. 12 commission meeting, and it is slated to go before the city council on Jan. 23.

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The estimated budget Summers presented Dec. 8 split revenues this way: 49 percent to core projects, 28 percent to previous commitments and debt service, 15 percent to quality of life matters and 8 percent to finance and administration.

The focus of the Education Challenge Grant is changing to support only technology that will last three years or more and will be limited to Valparaiso schools instead of also including those in the city that are part of the East Porter County School Corporation. The program uses Tax Increment Financing district moneywhere schools normally don't get a share of increased property taxes in a TIF district.

The redevelopment commission is backing off facade grants although the city will continue to offer them for the Historic Downtown neighborhood businesses. Instead, the commission will focus on enticing businesses with signs mounted on poles to switch to the preferred monument signs.

"We can't use a stick, but we can use a carrot," Summers said.

The $75,000 set aside will first go to Calumet Avenue businesses, and Summers foresees tough sledding initially as questions remain about signs with multiple tenants and other issues.

James D. Wolf Jr. is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Phyllis and Allen Curtis, both 73, celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary at the Oak Ridge Boys Dec. 18 show at the Star Plaza Theatre in Merrillville, with their son Robert, left. (Robert Curtis / Post-Tribune)

In 1979, Allen and Phyllis Curtis took his parents to watch an Oak Ridge Boys concert at what was then called the Holiday Star Theatre.

The special occasion at Northwest Indiana's new venue in its inaugural year was to celebrate his parents' 60th wedding anniversary. The foursome had a great time listening to a country music group that would go on to perform a holiday season concert every year since, including one earlier this month, at the Star Plaza.

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Allen and Phyllis' son, Robert Curtis, who was just 11 at the time, never forgot his parents' gesture to commemorate a special milestone in their family's history. He tucked it away in his memory vault as the years were peeled away from the family's wall calendars.

On New Year's Eve in 1966, Allen and Phyllis Curtis got married in a quiet, simple ceremony at a minister's home in Rensselaer. The couple first met at a now closed bowling alley in Shelby, located due south of Lowell.

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Coincidentally, that tiny dot on a map is where Whiteco Industries, owner of the Holiday Star Theatre, began its advertising operations decades ago.

The company first planted billboards in that agricultural hamlet before blossoming with other business ventures throughout the state, most notably at the intersection of U.S. 30 and Interstate 65.

That's where its most visible sign still flashes outside the Star Plaza Theatre, where Allen and Phyllis Curtis occasionally attended shows from their Roselawn home.

Phyllis and Allen Curtis, both 73, of Roselawn, celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary at the Oak Ridge Boys Dec. 18 show at the Star Plaza Theatre in Merrillville. (Robert Curtis / Post-Tribune)

Phyllis Curtis was raised on a Roselawn farm with no electricity or indoor plumbing, she said. She recalls waking up at 4 a.m. each day to milk the family's cows and to do her chores before going to school.

These days, Phyllis and Allen, both 73, live with their 48-year-old son, Robert. He paints a somber portrait of his parents' home life in their twilight years.

"We have always been a poor family," Robert told me earlier this month.

That sentence has stayed with me since I first heard it. In fact, I don't think I've ever been told that line during my 20 years in the newspaper business.

"My parents live on a very limited fixed income," Robert said, noting that he hasn't worked since June.

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Both of his parents have a pacemaker and a defibrillator implanted in their chests, I later learned.

"My dad is diabetic and his vision is starting to fail," Robert said. "He takes insulin three times a day and he hasn't had any feeling in his feet for years. He just mopes around, feeling useless and wishing that we would have just let him die years ago when he had his heart attack."

Again, this line rang true to me. I've heard similar comments from countless readers with elderly parents who struggle with older age and chronic health issues.

Phyllis and Allen Curtis, both 73, of Roselawn, celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary at the Oak Ridge Boys Dec. 18 show at the Star Plaza Theatre in Merrillville. (Robert Curtis / Post-Tribune)

When Robert was born on Jan. 3, 1968, his birth was heralded with public fanfare as the town's first baby born that year. His parents received gifts from different shops in the town, and a story was written in the local newspaper.

I can only imagine the couple's excitement at that moment, and their dreams for their first child.

Allen and Phyllis, both divorcees before they married each other, had two more children while living in Fargo, N.D., relocating there for Allen's job. Through the years, they raised their kids, who moved out of state, except for Robert, who helps care for them today.

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The couple's 50th wedding anniversary is Saturday, on New Year's Eve, and Robert wondered about a possible gift for his parents for their special day.

"I'm curious if you had any ideas for anything relatively inexpensive to make this anniversary a night they will never forget," he asked me.

He asked me this before Christmas, when I'm typically inundated with various requests to help needy Northwest Indiana residents. Or to make their holidays a bit more memorable.

This is the first year in a decade that I didn't host my annual Holiday Elf Fund, which accepts donations from readers for others who could use a financial lift for Christmas. The donations simply didn't come in this past month, forcing me to tell at least a couple dozen readers that I couldn't help them this holiday season.

I told Robert Curtis the same thing.

Fortunately, he had an idea already in the works.

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On Thanksgiving Day, he took his parents to his sister's home for dinner. There, the siblings called their brother on FaceTime so, together, they could reveal their wedding anniversary gift to their parents  a pair of concert tickets to one of their favorite country music groups.

Not just any group. Not just any venue. Not just any time of the year.

The siblings bought their parents tickets to see the Oak Ridge Boys at the Star Plaza Theatre for their Dec. 18 performance, the band's annual Christmas Celebration Tour. This was the group's first tour as Country Music Hall of Fame inductees.

Accompanied by Robert, they arrived extra early for the afternoon show to make sure they got there in time with no worries. The weather outside was cold. The atmosphere inside was warm and nostalgic.

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"It was wonderful," Phyllis said afterward, buying a concert T-shirt and a Christmas ornament. "It also brought back great memories of the band's 1979 concert with my in-laws."

Her husband's health woes went away, if only for a few hours, their son said.

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In early November, White Lodging announced to cheers across this area that its officials changed their mind about closing the Star Plaza. After hearing public outcry about the venue's demise, the company said it will not be torn down.

After the news broke, the Oak Ridge Boys tweeted: "It seems that the Star Plaza will not close down after all... but will remain open... YAY #tradition."

Yay, tradition, not only for the band and Star Plaza, but also for fans whose milestones mean much more than merely another holiday show. This is just as true in 2016 as it was in 1979.

jdavich@post-trib.com

Twitter@jdavich
What's Quickly? It's where readers sound off on the issues of the day. Have a quote, question or quip? Call Quickly at 312-222-2426 or email quickly@post-trib.com.

You, just like Donald Trump write daily about making America great again, but you, just like Donald Trump have no idea of a plan to make this happen. Please enlighten me and tell me how the president elect will accomplish his campaign promise of making America great again. I suspect this slogan was used because it played well during the campaign. There is nothing to back it up just like the slogans of "lock her up", "build the wall", "repeal and replace" and the mass deportations we were to see on his first day in office.

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To all you people who are still whining about the election ... STOP. Trump has not even taken the oath of office and you are condemning his every move.

The way Israel is reacting to the non-binding UN resolution condemning their flagrantly illegal settlements in the West Bank speaks volumes. With friends like Israel, who needs enemies?

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This is really sad that teachers have to go online to beg for money, to get funding, for the things they need to teach their students. What has happened to our country? We pay more than enough taxes to provide a proper education. Shame on all of the politicians that rob our children.

"The world was gloomy before I won  there was no hope," declares Donald Trump. This is just too much. Honestly, has there ever been a more arrogant egomaniac in the history of the world?

It is OK to say Trump is not my President because he is white. It is not OK to say Obama is not my President because he is black. So much for social diversity.

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You know you have a problem when you're in the middle of a conversation and you see a dog and you lose all ability to focus because all you want to do is say hello to the dog.

Today's politicians are nothing more than street punks that rob you on a dark corner.

If Obamacare is so great like a commenter suggest in a Quickly comment, then why did the American voter just vote to repeal and replace it? We don't need government-mandated insurance, where they can take your tax returns if you don't comply? It's just like what they're starting to do to your social security if you haven't payed back your student loans. Or did you think the government took over student loans to be nice?

The NRA-infested GOP leaders in Indiana want to eliminate the requirement for gun permits. What is the reason for this? The gang-bangers from Illinois already get the majority of their guns here, so let's make it easier for them.

The people with protest signs in front of the Porter County courthouse on Tuesday have once again inspired me to make a donation to Planned Parenthood.

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The Electoral Integrity Project says that North Carolina should not be classified as a fully functioning democracy. The report points to three main flaws in their political system: extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression of black and brown residents, and usurpation of power of incoming Governor Roy Cooper through hasty legislation.

Read more at www.post-trib.com/quickly
Students Nick Soto (from left), Kaitlin Lizik and Bill Murdoch get some clothing ready for the Jan. 13-14 garage sale. (Chuck Fieldman / Pioneer Press)

Lyons Township High School students Nick Soto, Kaitlin Lizik and Bill Murdoch all have had relatives affected by cancer.

And all three were back at it this year, helping to organize the 10th annual LT Winter Garage Sale, which raises funds for the LTHS/West Cook Relay For Life, an event that benefits the American Cancer Society. A year ago, the garage sale generated $6,000 toward the $65,000 total raised at LT for the 2016 Relay For Life.

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"My mom had cancer when I was born," said Murdoch, a senior who is involved with the garage sale for the third consecutive year. "She's OK, but I do this for her. It's an important cause, and it's good to help out."

Lizik, also in her third year, said her grandfather died a year ago from cancer, and she has a friend who had melanoma. Soto, in his second year of helping, has a sister who was diagnosed with leukemia.

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"We like helping to raise money for Relay For Life, and it's actually kind of fun setting this up," Lizik said.

About 20 LT students helped to set up for the garage sale, which is open to the public from 5-8 p.m. Jan. 13 and from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 14 inside The Corrral, which is just south of the LT South Campus, 4900 Willow Springs Road, Western Springs.

A special bag sale is offered all day Jan. 14, with customers being able to fill up provided bags with items for $5 per bag.

The school's transition program for special needs students will continue running the bag sale from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 17 to 19.

Donated items for the garage sale are being accepted through the rear entrance of The Corral from 5-7 p.m. Jan. 9 to 12. No electronics are accepted.

cfieldman@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter @chuckwriting
Tradition played well Wednesday when about 400 nuns from the Archdiocese of Chicago and Joliet Diocese showed up at Drury Lane Theatre and Conference Center for dinner and a performance of "Crazy For You," courtesy of the family that runs the theater.

Kyle DeSantis, president of Drury Lane Productions, has continued a holiday tradition started 61 years ago by his grandfather, Tony DeSantis, who died in 2007 at the age of 93. The DeSantis family has continued the special event to thank the nuns for their devotion and service to the community. The annual get-together has been hosted at Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace for the past 32 years.

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William Osetek, artistic director for Drury Lane Productions, said Tony DeSantis told him many years ago that the predominant reason he wanted to invite nuns as his guests was because his daughters had been taught by nuns and he wanted to thank them.

"Years later, Tony's daughter, Diane, told me that, additionally, he felt that priests often have more opportunities to attend events and get away for an evening and that there are much fewer opportunities available for nuns," Osetek said. "After Tony's death, Kyle DeSantis and his family wanted to keep the tradition alive, forever grateful for the wonderful job they have done and continue to do."

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For many of the nuns in attendance, returning to Drury Lane is a holiday experience that never gets old.

"I so appreciate the love and support that has been shown to us," said Sister Mary Lou Sterling, 86, who worked for many years at Nazareth Academy before retiring in 2000. "It means a lot seeing all of these sisters together. I've been coming to Drury Lane every year, and it's always just a wonderful time."

Sister Loretta Glanz, who is semi-retired and used to serve at St. Laurence parish in Chicago, recalls attending plays and having meals from 1962-64 at the Martinique Restaurant in Evergreen Park, courtesy of DeSantis.

"I still come almost every year now," she said. "It's a nice way to celebrate Christmas with friends. It's a nice gathering of sisters you don't see but once a year. It's a way for us to catch up on everything, the good things that are happening."

Glanz said she always enjoys the plays, the meals and the visits.

"It's all wonderful, and it's so nice of Mr. DeSantis to do this for us," she said.

Sister Jo Paolinelli, who retired in 2007 after serving her final 17 years at Notre Dame High School for Girls in Chicago, said she, too, enjoys all aspects of the annual venture to Drury Lane.

"I like the camaraderie," she said. "It's good to see your old friends."
A Long March 2D rocket carrying a pair of 0.5-meter high-resolution remote sensing satellites, SuperView-1 01/02, blasts off from the launch pad at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's Shanxi Province, Dec. 28, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

On Tuesday, the State Council Information Office issued its long-awaited White Paper on Chinese space development. The comprehensive document offers a snapshot of Chinese civilian space activity in 2016, looking back at its achievements since the publication of the previous white paper in 2011 and outlining plans for the next five years. As expected, much of the document's focus is on peaceful economic development.

The document is meant to demonstrate that the country's technological development and space prowess have progressed rapidly since the launch of its first satellite, Dongfanghong I, on April 24, 1970. That first mission's sole remit was to broadcast the song "Dong Fang Hong" (The East is Red) and announce the time during its 20 days of active in-orbit operation. In four decades, China has become an ambitious spacefaring nation with access to an impressive launch vehicle, Long March 5 (CZ-5), which can lift some 25 tons to low earth orbit or up to 14 tons to the type of geostationary orbit suitable for stable satellite communications purposes, significantly more than the 173 kg lifted by Dongfanghong I's Long March 1 rocket.

Yet, Chinese space development has not proceeded in isolation. The United States and Russia, as well as the European nations collaborating under the umbrella of the European Space Agency, have similarly developed mature space technology, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The Soviet Union's first successful launch, that of Sputnik I, preceded China's Dongfanghong I by more than 12 years, while the Americans launched their own first unmanned space mission, Explorer I, only half a year after their Soviet competitors. It stands to reason, therefore, that China's maturing space program might benefit from international collaboration.

Development of cutting-edge space technology is fiercely competitive and potentially highly lucrative, however, so few details are provided in the White Paper. Space science, and particularly deep-space exploration, has fewer commercial strings attached, meaning international collaboration in these areas is more likely to develop. Other than the Chang'e series of Moon probes, China's foray into deep-space exploration has only just taken off: Its first scientific satellite, the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) was launched as recently as December 2015.

The White Paper highlights tangible mission proposals that may get the green light to proceed to the development phase in the next five years. Preparation of space missions takes time and significant, long-term investment. The country's senior leadership clearly understands these issues; it is striking, however, that bilateral development efforts with NASA are almost non-existent. ChinaU.S. collaborations proposed in the White Paper do not go beyond risk and hazard reduction programs, including those related to space debris, space weather and coordinated responses to global climate change. This is unfortunate, since access to the vast experience their U.S. counterparts might contribute could greatly benefit Chinese space scientists and engineers, without jeopardizing alleged U.S. security interests.

However, sustained lobbying by Frank Wolf, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, led the U.S. Congress to adopt the so-called "Wolf amendment" in 2011, prohibiting the use of any federal funding for bilateral participation, collaboration or coordination with Chinese citizens affiliated with Chinese institutions. Although this legislation has been challenged repeatedly in recent years, it is unlikely that the incoming U.S. administration under President-elect Trump will repeal it any time soon.

While this state of affairs will undoubtedly drive Chinese space scientists to collaborate with international counterparts that are more open to the free exchange of ideas and coordinated development efforts, the U.S. administration's stance appears counterproductive and potentially hazardous in fostering the peaceful development of outer space. Indeed, close collaboration on space missions  and even space rescue efforts such as that portrayed in the 2015 blockbuster "The Martian"  seems a long way off and, in the present political climate at least, practically unrealistic.

It is therefore encouraging to see that the White Paper sets out a clear vision for the sustained development of China's space technology and of its goals in pursuing space science. International collaboration in areas related to unmanned space exploration  in astronomy, remote sensing, environmental and climate science, the life sciences, space weather and plasma physics  is here to stay, irrespective of the political landscape prevailing elsewhere. Collaboration rather than isolation will be of greater benefit to the planet as a whole. China's civilian space program has the potential to meaningfully contribute to this vision.

Richard de Grijs is a Dutch professor of astrophysics at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (Peking University) in Beijing. He is also Discipline Scientist at the International Space Science InstituteBeijing, which was established specifically to foster international collaboration in space science.
By Daniel Schaefer

Drones are a young and multifaceted industry that have only recently begun to show their true potential. Particularly in China, drones are now being used to change the business landscape and alter how companies conduct their operations in a wide variety of commercial sectors, from agriculture to mining to cinematography.

China is leading the rise of the drone industry, with five out of the worlds top 11 venture capital-funded drone companies residing in the country. Foreign companies are already beginning to participate in the Middle Kingdoms drone market  in August 2015, Intel invested US$60 million in Chinese drone manufacturer Yuneec. Although the regulatory environment is still developing and can be restrictive for certain usages, growth in the industry shows no signs of abating.

Commercial drone usage in China

Chinas commercial sector is well-positioned for drone use, as the country is increasingly adopting advanced technology and automation to counter rising labor costs. The agriculture sector is particularly suited for drones, and some provinces such as Henan, Zhejiang, and Hubei are encouraging companies to implement agricultural drone use by offering training sessions, licensing assistance, and financial reimbursements. Drones are more efficient than manual labor for certain tasks in the agricultural sector; according to a report by Smart Agriculture Analytics, drones can spray up to 100-130 acres of pesticides and fertilizers in one day, at only 40 percent of the cost of manual labor. With other reports stating that drones are 15-40 times more effective than human labor, it seems logical that Chinese companies will increasingly be adopting drones for agricultural operations.

However, there are still challenges preventing agricultural drone use from being implemented nationwide. Since rural farmers often lack education and are not accustomed to using this kind of technology, the cost of training them to operate drones would be quite high. Technological limitations such as battery life and carrying capabilities also pose barriers, though drone technology is rapidly improving. For example, Chinese engineers are developing solar powered drones that can stay airborne for at least a month, and according to Shi Wen, head of unmanned aircraft development at the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA), the next generation of drones will be able to carry a payload of at least 50 kg.

Drones are not being used exclusively for agriculture in China; they are also being used in the photography and filmmaking sectors, among others. Aerial photography has been given a big bump thanks to drones, with many photographers using these devices to get pictures that would otherwise be impossible to obtain. The adoption of drones for photography range from local marriage photographers to multinationals such as Intel, which has been collaborating with Yuneec to add 3D photography capabilities to their drones.

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Regulations facing drone use

Certain commercial drone uses in China can be limited, such as for companies like Alibaba that are exploring drones for delivery and fulfillment purposes. These companies face difficulties in implementing drone delivery systems due to regulations limiting their use in densely populated areas. There are still significant safety concerns over drone use, as demonstrated by an online video that went viral showing a drone crashing into a landing military jet while Alibaba was testing its delivery system.

As is the case with most regulations in China, regulations around drone use differ depending on the region. Densely populated areas such as Beijing and Shanghai will have stricter policies concerning when drones can be flown and what flight path they are allowed to take. The extent of the regulations vary for small consumer drones and larger commercial-purpose drones, as there is more freedom to operate the former. China wants to support its booming consumer drone market, but still needs to regulate it in order to avoid accidents from happening.

Additionally, in 2015, the Chinese government implemented an export limit on drones due to national security concerns. If the device meets certain requirements  such as being able to stay airborne for longer than an hour, operate in bad weather, and reach altitudes of over 1.5 km  then it will be faced with this export limit. Chinas Ministry of Commerce did not clarify how exporting this level of drones constitutes a threat to national security, but companies exporting drones that meet specifications will have to apply for a special exporting license. This rule does not apply to consumer drones, however, as they generally only have a battery life of 30 minutes, are unable to reach high altitudes, and cannot operate in strong winds. As long as the drone does not meet the aforementioned criteria, then they will be exempt from the regulation.

Takeaways

With the drone industry still in its infancy, it remains to be seen what shape it will ultimately take. However, China has already established a leading position in the industry, with Chinese company Dajiang Innovation (DJI) estimated to have accounted for 70 percent of the drone market in 2015. Given Chinas dominance in manufacturing consumer and commercial drones, and the bevy of domestic industries they could be applied to, the Middle Kingdom looks set to be at the industrys forefront for the foreseeable future. With investment increasing and leading to greater innovation, the Chinese drone market is one that should not be ignored.



About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email china@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight.



Establishing & Operating a Business in China 2016

Establishing & Operating a Business in China 2016, produced in collaboration with the experts at Dezan Shira & Associates, explores the establishment procedures and related considerations of the Representative Office (RO), and two types of Limited Liability Companies: the Wholly Foreign-owned Enterprise (WFOE) and the Sino-foreign Joint Venture (JV). The guide also includes issues specific to Hong Kong and Singapore holding companies, and details how foreign investors can close a foreign-invested enterprise smoothly in China.

Tax, Accounting, and Audit in China 2016

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Doing Business in China 2016 is designed to introduce the fundamentals of investing in China. Compiled by the professionals at Dezan Shira & Associates in June 2016, this comprehensive guide is ideal not only for businesses looking to enter the Chinese market, but also for companies who already have a presence here and want to keep up-to-date with the most recent and relevant policy changes
A woman makes a phone call in front of a WeChat QR code poster in Taiyuan, Shanxi province. [Photo/China Daily]

WeChat has eclipsed telecom carriers to become the new darling for Chinese people to make calls, a study has found.

The 768 million active WeChat usersmore than double the entire population of the United Statesmade over 100 million voice and video calls everyday via the app in 2016, its developer Tencent Group Holdings Ltd said in a report on Wednesday.

With the advent of the faster 4G network and wireless connections, the figure was 1.8 times that of last year, the report found. A typical WeChat userdefined by Tencent as in his or her 20s and 30sspent on average 65 minutes per month on WeChat-enabled calls.

That further squeezed margins for telecom operators as they worry about a dent in their revenue from over-the-top service providers, the study said.

The country's biggest carrier, China Mobile Communications Corp by revenue, for example, saw its revenue from voice services fall 16.5 percent year-on-year in 2015.

The report found that half of active WeChat users linger on the app for longer than 90 minutes on a daily basis. A typical user sent out 74 messages, up 67 percent from last year, contrasting with a double-digit percent drop in short message service revenue for the likes of China Mobile.

Tencent's all-purpose app encapsulates the functions of Facebook, Uber and PayPal, increasingly making it an inseparable part of China's rising middle class. New features from digital ads to digital wallet are also helping Tencent win new battlegrounds beyond its traditional stronghold, the study found.

For instance, typical users spend 580 yuan ($83.4) per month on distributing red packets, a play on the red envelopes traditionally used to give gifts of money during festivals in China. By doing so, Tencent is intent on cultivating customer habits to use WeChat as a payment channel and a gateway to other business scenarios it hopes to capitalize on.

The report also found that China's elderly people, aged 55 or older, have become the biggest beneficiaries of the app. Many leapt from the pre-web era straight to the mobile internet, skipping the personal computer altogether.

Data showed they spent 17 more minutes every month in audio and video chats than their younger peers, and outperformed them in WeChat Sports, a fitness tracking function that allows motion tracking to share the number of steps users take each day.

WeChat has become a life style in China, as half of its users open it more than 10 times per day, according to Li Chunyan, founder of Feida Consulting.

WeChat creator Zhang Xiaolong said it was set to revolutionize the app industry by introducing "mini-apps" which are apps that do not require installation.

"This will boost the ease of use and reliability of the app, without it becoming inconvenient in terms of storage space and clutter for the user," said Zhang during a recent developers' event in Guangzhou.

The mini apps will not be accessed from WeChat, but most likely through scanning quick response or QR codes.
A technician assembles lithium-ion car batteries at a factory in Liaoning province. [Photo/Xinhua]

A dusty village on the outskirts of Ningde, a third-tier city in China's southeast, seems an unlikely place for the headquarters of a potential global leader in future auto motive technology.

Yet China's major industrial policy decisionsmove up the value chain, clean up polluted urban skies, and shift to plug-in carshave Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) poised to go from hometown hero to national champion, and beyond.

China's answer to Japan's Panasonic Corp and South Korea's LG Chem Ltd has tripled its production capacity for lithium-ion car batteries in the past year to keep up with a surge in China's sales of electric cars.

After a second major funding round completed in October, the company's value quadrupled to 80 billion yuan ($11.5 billion), CEO Huang Shilin said last week.

CATL, which hopes to list on Beijing's over-the-counter exchange as part of plans to raise at least another 30 billion yuan by 2020, could be a dominant force globally.

It has already overtaken LG Chem in lithium-ion car battery production, and is chasing down Panasonic and Warren Buffett-backed BYD Co Ltd.

CATL plans to grow its battery capacity sixfold by 2020 to 50 gigawatt hours, which could put it ahead of Tesla Motor Inc's gigafactory in Nevada.

"We hope by 2020 we can achieve performance and price that lead the world," Huang said.

The company, founded just five years ago, is already pushing beyond China's borders, with offices in Sweden, Germany and France and plans to build a factory in Europe. Company representatives say that because of non-disclosure agreements they can only list BMW as a customer for now.

Despite the ambitious expansion, the emerging segment's dependence on government policy and rapidly evolving technology is not without risk.

A123, a US automotive battery maker, went from IPO to bust in just three years as battery costs remained stubbornly high and orders dried up.

"People think we're a big successful company, but we think we're in jeopardy every day," marketing director Neill Yang said. "The market environment and technology changes so fast that if we don't follow the trend we could die in three months."

To become a Chinese champion, a battery maker must first shed any foreign investment to be eligible for subsidies and other policy support, people in the industry say.

Before he set up CATL, Robin Zeng had started Amperex Technology Ltd (ATL), a company now majority-owned by Japan's TDK.

ATL initially had a 15 percent stake in CATL, but liquidated that holding last year, Yang said, when electric vehicle sales first started to take off. He declined to elaborate on the circumstances of that divestment.

TDK separated from CATL to focus on batteries for mobile consumer electronics, but still collects royalties on some intellectual property used by CATL, a spokesman for the Japanese company said.

"The reason is strategic and confidential. ATL still keeps a close relationship with CATL," said a person familiar with the situation, who was not authorized to speak to the media.

ATL and CATL still share a Ningde campus, although the front gate and main office bear only the ATL name.

Zeng, a Ningde local with a doctorate in chemistry, appears to be the remaining link between the two companies he founded. He declined an interview request.

While government support for electric cars has driven demand for components such as batteries, Beijing is also rolling out other policies that could benefit leading producers like CATL, by forcing smaller firms to consolidate or go out of business.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said last month it is considering a rule that would increase minimum production requirements for battery makers by around 40 times to 8 gigawatt hours.

Only BYD and CATL are roughly in line with that minimum, though Chinese media reports suggest Hefei Guoxuan High-Tech Power Energy Co Ltd and Tianjin Lishen Battery Joint-Stock Co Ltd may be close to or above that level by next year.

Yang said subsidy support for batteries is fairly modest compared to those for producing electric vehicles, which totaled $4.5 billion last year alone.

CATL has been nominated as one of three battery makerswith Guoxuan and Lishenfor incentives under China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), promising around $15 million if it can meet targets, Yang said. He noted, though, that a single production line costs $40 million.

Among national 2020 targets: to halve battery costs to below 1 yuan (14 cents) per kilowatt hour, and improve energy density by two-thirds.

To get there, CATL is ramping up spending on research and development, where it employs more than 1,000 people with advanced science degrees.

"The strength of their R&D investment is quite large," said Fu Yuwu, chief of the Society of Automotive Engineers of China, adding he hopes the company can become a global leader.

"They have such large scale and the support of China's huge market, all the more reason they should do a good job of internationalizing," he said.
From 2011 to 2014, student-teacher ratios in China's rural areas fell from 16.64 to 14.41 among primary schools and from 13.58 to 10.89 junior high schools, according to a report released Monday.

In China's rural areas, a teacher shortage for compulsory education has effectively been relieved and the student-teacher ratio has dropped, the report said.

By the end of 2015, the central government had provided over one million rural teachers in poor areas with living allowances totaling 7.37 billion yuan (1.06 billion U.S. dollars), the report said.

The income of rural teachers has continuously increased and the job has become more appealing over the years, attracting more people who have attained higher levels of education.

However, problems such as the imbalanced development of compulsory education and educational quality in rural areas have not been fully resolved, according to the report.

The report on China's rural educational development, a national research project funded by the Ministry of Education, was compiled by an institute of Northeast Normal University.
China opened a third and fourth Circuit Court of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) in eastern Jiangsu Province and central Henan Province on Wednesday.

The Third Circuit Court in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu, will mainly handle major administrative, civil and commercial cases that should be heard by the SPC in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces, and Shanghai Municipality.

The fourth court in Henan provincial capital Zhengzhou will cover the four provinces of Henan, Shanxi, Hubei and Anhui.

According to the SPC, the two courts will help meet local demands in the two densely populated regions.

Zhou Qiang, the SPC president and the country's chief justice, said on Wednesday that the circuit courts should play a pioneering role in judicial reform.

Hailing the establishment of circuit courts as an important measure to advance rule of law and safeguard judicial fairness, Zhou urged the circuit courts to solve local disputes and facilitate litigation, so as to "let people feel fairness and justice in every case".

Circuit courts should vigorously advance judicial reform and provide courts nationwide with experience in judicial reform and contribute to exploring court management and operations suitable to China's actual conditions.

First opened in 2015, circuit court judgments, orders and decisions are equal to those of the SPC.

The first two, in southern city of Shenzhen and northeastern city of Shenyang, have helped in cases that involve more than one administrative region since January 2015, providing easier access for the general public, said the SPC.

Also on Wednesday, a revised judicial interpretation on circuit courts was published by the SPC and went into effect, setting out plans for a fifth and sixth circuit courts in Chongqing Municipality and Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi Province.

Cases from Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong and Inner Mongolia will be handled directly by the SPC.

The Fifth Circuit Court will cover Chongqing, Tibet Autonomous Region and provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan. The Sixth Circuit Court will handle cases in provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
China has handed over control of Ziyuan III 02, a new civilian high-resolution mapping satellite, to its user.

Control of the satellite was passed to its main user, the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation (NASG), on Monday, after it had been in orbit for more than 200 days since it was launched on May 30 from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.

It will be used mainly for collecting 3D mapping information within Chinese territory.

The satellite will join its predecessor Ziyuan III 01, a research satellite launched in January 2012, to capture high-definition 3D images, said NASG deputy director Li Pengde.

Together, the two Ziyuan III satellites boast a "revisit time," the time elapsed between observations of the same point on Earth, of around three days, down from five days when Ziyuan III 01 was operating alone, according to Li.

Their operation will double the efficiency of image formation and reduce the period of global coverage by half, Li said.

He said the two satellites could provide stable, high-resolution and high quality 3D image data for the country's surveying and mapping development.

"In terms of online map and navigation services, our real-time image services could enable companies, such as Map World, Amap, NavInfo and Baidu, to greatly reduce the update period, improve accuracy, and cut costs of their map data," said Sun Chengzhi, deputy head of the NASG Satellite Surveying and Mapping Application Center.

Li said the NASG began the approval process for Ziyuan III 03 and 04 in the second half of this year.

By 2020, China should have launched Ziyuan III 03 and a Gaofen-7 high-resolution remote sensing satellite. By 2025, the country plans to put Ziyuan III 04 and a second Gaofen-7 satellite into orbit.
Japan's "Interchange Association," responsible for maintaining unofficial relations with Taiwan, is to be named "Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association" as of Jan. 1, drawing criticism from China.

"We firmly oppose any attempt to create 'two Chinas' or 'one China, one Taiwan', and express strong dissatisfaction with the Japanese side's negative move," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a regular news briefing Wednesday.

Hua urged Japan to adhere to the principles set in the 1972Sino-Japanese Joint Statement and its commitments to China, sticking to the one-China principle and handling the Taiwan-related issues prudently.

According to the joint statement, the Japanese government fully understands and respects the Chinese government's position on Taiwan as an inalienable part of the territory of China.

"Japan should refrain from sending the wrong messages to the Taiwan authorities and the international community or cause new disturbances to China-Japan relations," Hua added.

China has repeatedly said the one-China principle is the foundation of its relations with foreign countries and that no country should maintain official ties with Taiwan.

China resumed diplomatic relations with Sao Tome and Principe in Beijing on Monday, after the African nation cut "diplomatic ties" with Taiwan region last week.
For decades, Xie Fengzhen and her family answered the call of nature in a smelly pit toilet full of flies and maggots near her house.

"Every time I stepped outside the toilet, my clothes just gave off a disgusting smell," said Xie, 62, from the remote Maoping Village in Jinggangshan City, the heartland of the Communist Party of China's early revolutionary activities in east China's Jiangxi Province. "In winter, it was freezing cold in the ramshackle hut."

Toilets in the Chinese countryside have earned a nasty reputation, with some little more than shabby shelters surrounded by bunches of cornstalk and others just open pits next to pigsties. China's national standard requires "sanitary" toilets in rural homes to have walls, roofs, doors and windows and to be at least two square meters in size. They may be flush toilets or dry toilets with underground storage tanks.

A "toilet revolution" spearheaded by the local government has helped residents like Xie in Jinggangshan bid farewell to old latrines. The Jinggangshan government has allocated more than 30 million yuan (4.3 million U.S. dollars) for 562 villages to help renovate sub-standard rural toilets in recent years.

According to latest government figures, a total of 16,865 toilets have been upgraded so far, benefiting some 75,000 villagers.

"The rural toilet revolution is out of consideration for sanitation and rural tourism development," said Zeng Zhaojun, head of Maoping Township, which administers Maoping Village.

According to Zeng, traditional dry toilets, which were basically a pit under two wooden planks, were susceptible to mosquitoes and bugs as they were exposed to the open air for a long time. Meanwhile, they also risked polluting the water and soil.

Zeng added that in the past, people in rural China did not have enough drinking water for themselves or domestic animals.

"People used to trek mountain roads for kilometers to fetch spring water high in the mountains," Zeng said. "Under such circumstances, who would ever think about installing flush toilets to waste precious water?"

The official said that locals would use the excrement from dry toilets as fertilizer for the fields, which saved money.

But as life has improved in Jinggangshan in recent years, most farmers have switched to chemical fertilizer. Additionally, most families have tap water now. These changes have made it possible to upgrade toilets in rural areas.

Meanwhile, rural tourism in gaining steam in Jinggangshan, where visitors come in admiration of the city's revolutionary history and amazing mountain views. Last year, the city received close to 14 million tourists, creating demand for basic facilities in rural areas.

Toilets play an important part in shaping the image of a tourist spot, particularly in Jinggangshan, where a huge number of visitors come each year, Zeng said.

"To accommodate tourists, clean toilets are necessary," said Li Zhonglin, former Party chief of Bashang Village in Maoping Township. "You don't want them to have a bad impression."

The city government has demanded a toilet transformation in its villages before tourism projects are launched. It also provides subsidies to the rural population to upgrade their toilets. In 2006, the subsidy was 600 yuan for each toilet overhauled. This year, the amount has risen to 1,000 yuan.

From 2004 to 2013, China's central government earmarked 8.27 billion yuan to build toilets in rural areas. Farmers who have agreed to build new toilets are eligible to receive the funds. The amounts vary from 150 yuan in central and western China to 500 yuan in eastern and southern regions, where building materials are more expensive. Local governments with deeper pockets may also offer additional subsidies to villagers.

By Nov. 15 this year, China had built or renovated 39,393 toilets in tourist areas, accounting for 69.11 percent of the three-year target set in 2015.

According to a nationwide survey by Tsinghua University, tourists gave toilets in China's tourist areas a score of 70 out of 100. According to the survey, most of those surveyed think that the national "toilet revolution" has "basically improved toilet quality" and "met the demands of tourists."

The toilet revolution in Jinggangshan has greatly improved Xie Fengzhen's quality of life.

Her new bathroom is no more than five square meters, but it has a flush toilet, a shower and a washbasin. The room also has shining ceramic tiles.

"I am just happy that my family no longer needs to endure those nasty pits," said Xie.
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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, after racking up the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has been lavished with praise in the last days of his 10-year tenure although he has been also criticized on other fronts.

The 72-year old former foreign minister of South Korea steps down Dec. 31, after serving the maximum two terms of five years each. He will be replaced by a former prime minister of Portugal, Antonio Guterres, 67, who headed the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) for 10 years, ending last year.

Ban's departure does not necessarily mean his disappearance.

It is widely speculated he may be the next president of South Korea and only the other day Ban indicated he will consider upon retirement involvement in South Korea politics which he described as in "turmoil" after impeachment of scandal-wracked President Park Geun-hye earlier this month.

The 193-member UN General Assembly and the 15-nation UN Security Council recently passed resolutions honoring his work. Representatives of regional organizations and member states lauded his tenure.

Ambassador Maythong Thammavongsa of Laos, speaking on behalf of Asian and Pacific countries in the Assembly, praised Ban as a "secretary-general who has displayed such great professional and personal qualities and who has contributed, through many initiatives that have been welcomed by all, to helping the Organization to make progress towards modernization and democratization."

The praise also was extensive outside UN Headquarters, with personal congratulations ringing from leaders such as U.S. President Barack Obama to Mayor Bill De Blasio of the City of New York, UN Headquarters host city, who proclaimed Dec. 13, 2016 as "Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Day."

The UN chief was widely praised more inside UN headquarters than he was afield where his ratings were mixed.

"The recent outpouring of praise for Ban is well intentioned but rather excessive," Richard Gowan, UN expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Xinhua News Agency last week. "Ban certainly deserves credit for his hard work, and his commitment to fighting climate change in particular."

The Paris accord calls for limiting the global temperature rise this century to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Also, the 17 SDGs that nations agreed to in 2015, under Ban's stewardship, seek to "leave no one behind" in sustainable development by 2030.

Gowan said Ban "struggled with significant parts of his portfolio, and was especially weak when it came to crisis management."

One such scandal was sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers, particularly in the Central African Republic (CAR).

However, Gowan said the secretary-general has been "commendably frank about some of his own errors," particularly the UN failure "to respond effectively to the mass killings that took place during the end of the Sri Lankan war in 2009," and the Haiti Cholera crisis where Ban "only just apologized for the UN's role in mismanaging the Haiti cholera outbreak" in 2010 that killed some 10,000 people.

The world organization blamed the outbreak on poor sanitary conditions at a Nepalese camp of UN peacekeepers. Victims were helped and programs initiated to prevent new cases but Ban didn't admit responsibility until only last August.

The sticking-to-his guns trait surfaced again after he said, during a visit to a camp in Western Sahara, that it appeared under "occupation."

That upset Morocco which annexed the region after the colonial power Spain surrendered it in 1975.

While he expressed regret through spokesman Stephen Dujarric at the "misunderstanding," there was no retraction.

Jonathan Tepperman, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, writing in a New York Times opinion piece during Ban's seventh year in office said, "The U.N. under Ban's stewardship has managed to get some things right: (generally) providing effective relief to refugees, (generally) doing a decent job on peacekeeping."

But criticism continued to come down on the world organization over Syria.

Ban did assign three personal envoys to handle the crisis -- the first two resigned in hopelessness.

The Security Council, divided over the Syrian conflict, has been ineffectual.

In his speech during the high-profile annual General Debate in the UN General Assembly this past September, Ban lamented an even longer-running problem, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Ten years lost to illegal settlement expansion," said the UN chief. "Ten years lost to intra-Palestinian divide, growing polarization and hopelessness. This is madness. Replacing a two-state solution with a one-state construct would spell doom: denying Palestinians their freedom and rightful future, and pushing Israel further from its vision of a Jewish democracy towards greater global isolation."

He immediately met vociferous Israeli opposition to that statement.

Citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Ban has been a champion of equality, regardless of gender and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning or queer and intersexual orientation.

He oversaw the establishment of UN Women, putting UN agencies affecting women under one umbrella for women's empowerment, appointed the first envoy for youth, focused more on prevention of natural and man-made disasters, advocated stopping the flow of illegal arms as the world faced mass migration.

"Ban has at least been willing to criticize his own performance, and he has improved as secretary-general over time," Gowan told Xinhua.

Ban, a South Korean national who loves Chinese classic philosophy and calligraphy, visited China for 11 times as the UN chief, and met on various occasions with Chinese leaders, who lauded his active role in enhancing the cooperation between the United Nations and China over the past decade.

Ban is leaving, not unusually, a host of unsolved issues for his successor. In addition to the aforementioned, they range through conflicts, mostly in Africa, and most recently the bloodshed in South Sudan, to terrorism, xenophobia, the seemingly endless quest for UN reform, demanded by the membership, which sometimes thwarts its progress because of special interests.

Asked at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York earlier this month what his biggest problem was, Ban replied, "The lack of empathy and lack of compassion of the world leaders," blaming them for "focusing on their very narrow personal or regional interests."

People express their grievances and leaders react by using "military and police forces," he said.

For Guterres, Ban has published a briefing book, for his new role. It's 345-pages long.
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China created more than 13 million new jobs in cities this year as part of the efforts to stabilize a slowing economy, a Chinese official said.

Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Yin Weimin disclosed the figure at an annual ministry conference on Wednesday

The number exceeds the official target of 10 million set earlier this year.

The stable employment helped prop up economic growth and maintain social harmony, he said.

Despite the economic slowdown, the government has managed to keep a low urban registered unemployment rate, partly by employment services and support for college graduates and laid-off workers from saturated heavy industries.

Yin said the employment will remain a top priority in the next year due to lingering pressures.

In 2017, the ministry will also cautiously push forward pension funds investment, and improve the distribution of workers' salary, Yin added.
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China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said three rioters who carried out a terrorist attack in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Wednesday killed two people.

At around 4:50 p.m. Wednesday, the rioters entered the yard of Moyu County Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in a vehicle, attacked workers with knives and detonated an explosive device, the MPS said in a statement on Thursday.

The attack killed an official and a security worker and injured three others.

The ministry said the three rioters were shot dead at the site and the case is now under investigation.

Previous reports said the attack was carried out by four people, causing one innocent person's death.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday slammed the United States State Secretary John Kerry's Middle East policy speech, denouncing Kerry as "obsessed" and "biased."

Speaking in a televised statement, Netanyahu said that "Kerry deals obsessively with the settlements instead of touching on the root of the conflict."

The hardliner politician said he was "disappointed" and "surprised" by Kerry's speech. "Is that what the foreign minister of the world's largest power has to focus on?" he asked sarcastically.

Netanyahu also said he looks forward to working with the President-elect Donald Trump administration to "repeal" Friday's resolution by the United Nations Security Council, which condemned Israel's continued expansion of the settlements.

In his 70-minute speech, only weeks before the end of the Obama administration term, Kerry warned that Israel's construction of settlements was imperiling the chance of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel and achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

A few hours before the speech, Trump sent a message of support to Israel, telling the Jewish state to "stay strong" until Jan. 20 when he takes office.

In a response tweet, Netanyahu wrote: "President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!" adding with Israeli and U.S. flags and tags of Trump's children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr..

The historic UN resolution demands Israel to stop the settlements construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and denounced the settlements as a "flagrant violation" of international law.

About 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands that Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast War and has been controlling them ever since, despite international condemnations.
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U.S. President Barack Obama called his successor Donald Trump Wednesday in what was described as a positive conversation, as tension over Israel and transition started to build.

"Today's call, like the others since the election, was positive and focused on continuing a smooth and effective transition," a statement from the White House said.

"The President and President-elect committed to staying in touch over the next several weeks and agreed their respective teams would continue to work together to effectuate a smooth transition of power on Jan. 20," it said.

Trump told reporters outside his Florida home that he and Obama had a "very nice" and "general" conversation.

The phone call came after an abstention vote on an Israel-related resolution from the United States prompted Trump to question the decision on Twitter.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but..." read a Trump tweet early Wednesday.

Trump also tweeted that the transition process is not smooth. He pledged to do his best to "disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Though it was going to be a smooth transition-Not!"

The harsh words may be connected to an earlier remark from Obama that he could have beaten Trump if they went against each other in an election.
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Two troopers belonging to Indian army were wounded Thursday in fighting with militants in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said.

The gunfight broke out at Shahgund in Hajin of Bandipora district, about 38 km north of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.

"Two army men were wounded in a brief gunfight today morning at Hajin," a police official posted in Bandipora said. "The army and police personnel jointly launched cordon and search operation on specific inputs about presence of militants in the locality. However, a gunfight was triggered after the joint party came under fire."

Reports said three militants present in the area managed to break the cordon and escape from the village.

The wounded troopers were immediately evacuated to army's base hospital in Srinagar, police said.

A guerrilla war is going on between militants and Indian troops stationed in Indian-controlled Kashmir since 1989. The gunfight between the two sides takes place intermittently across the region.

Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan is claimed by both in full. Since their Independence from Britain in 1945, the two countries have fought three wars, two exclusively over Kashmir.
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The Syrian army on Thursday declared a nationwide cease-fire that will go into force as of midnight Friday, Dec. 30, state TV reported Thursday.

The cease-fire will exclude the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and the Islamic State (IS) group, both designated as terrorist groups by the United Nations, said a Syrian army statement.

The cease-fire came after the successes and victories achieved by the Syrian army on several fronts, the statement said.

It wasn't the first time that a nationwide cease-fire was agreed in Syria, but earlier ones eventually failed.

The first intermittent cease-fire was declared last February and was renewed for some time.

The Syrian army's declaration of cease-fire on Thursday reflected an agreement reached Wednesday between Russia and Turkey for a nationwide cease-fire in Syria, whose details are yet to be made public.

Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on Thursday that an agreement has been reached on a Syrian cease-fire, noting that Russia and Turkey will act as its guarantors.
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By offering selective condolences to war victims while paying tribute to Japanese war criminals, the Abe administration has showed its hypocritical and unscrupulous true colors in dealing with historical issues.

Shortly after a "reconciliation" visit on Monday by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Pearl Harbor, the U.S. port in Hawaii that suffered a deadly surprise attack from Japan during World War II, two of Japan's top officials visited the infamous Yasukuni Shrine that honors 14 Class-A war criminals, including the man responsible for the Pearl Harbor attack.

Masahiro Imamura, Japan's reconstruction minister for disaster-hit regions, and Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, who accompanied Abe to Pearl Harbor, visited the controversial war shrine separately on Wednesday and Thursday.

Unlike Germany, Japan has never fully admitted to and reflected upon its horrific war crimes against other Asian nations during WWII that killed tens of millions of civilians.

Japan's selective "reconciliation" with the United States, in comparison with the repeated denial of its wartime atrocities including the Nanking Massacre in China and "comfort women" across Asia, is shameful and aims only for geopolitical profit.

The victims and heroes of Pearl Harbor, as well as the tens of millions more innocents who perished during the war over 70 years ago, deserve sincere and genuine repentance from Tokyo.

Sadly, Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor is just a calculated move to boost the Japan-U.S.alliance through which Japan hopes to realize its ambitions of becoming a political and military power on the global stage.

At home, Abe, since he returned to power in 2012, has been pushing for revising Japan's Constitution, in particular its war-renouncing Article 9.

Steps toward this goal were first made by Abe's ruling coalition forcibly enacting the controversial security laws through its dominance in parliament and in doing so enabling Japanese troops to deploy overseas and engage in offensive military action, despite a clause in Article 9 of the Constitution prohibiting Japan from fighting overseas.

Despite domestic and international criticism, the Abe administration began the overseas implementation of the new security law since it came into force in March.

It is worth reminding that postwar Japan was able to achieve full recovery and an economic boom thanks to a peaceful and stable environment.

Yet Tokyo, under Abe's leadership and a strong right-wing influence, is embarking upon a dangerous path that could threaten regional and global peace and stability and again bring great misfortune to its people.
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US President Barack Obama(L) and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe place wreaths at the USS Arizona Memorial on Dec. 27, 2016 at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. [VCG]

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor, criticized by China as lacking in sincerity, was quickly followed by one of his Cabinet ministers visiting a Tokyo war shrine on Wednesday.

According to analysts, Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor, the target of the 1941 Japanese surprise attack on Hawaii, had hawkish intentions at heart, not pursuing peace and reconciliation. The purpose, they said, was to broaden Japan's military capabilities and curb the rise of China by strengthening the alliance with the United States.

On Tuesday, Abe and US President Barack Obama laid wreaths at the USS Arizona Memorial.

Afterward, in a speech, Abe said that Japan would never again wage war. On Dec 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor killed more than 2,400 US citizens and drew the US into World War II.

Not long after Abe spoke, Masahiro Imamura, the minister in charge of reconstruction of northern Japan after the 2011 tsunami, offered prayers at the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan's war dead, including 14 Class-A war criminals from World War II. Class-A convicts were found guilty of plotting and carrying out the war.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Japan should reflect upon its war crimes in a sincere manner rather than "make political shows repeatedly". She spoke at a regular news conference on Wednesday.

The reconciliation between Japan and victimized Asian countries, including China, must be based on Tokyo's sincere reflection on the suffering it caused, she said, adding that some Western media have used words like "shrewd" to describe Abe's visit.

In the Financial Times, writer Joji Sakurai called Abe's visit "a dovish act that masks a hawkish intent". The visit is "shrewd politics", through which Abe could defuse fears about militarism reawakening in Japan, Sakurai wrote.

"Mr. Abe's dream is to revise Japan's pacifist Constitution, drawn up by the US under postwar occupation, to allow the country to have a real army," he wrote.
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Two militants from the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch were killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen's central province of al-Bayda on Thursday, a military official told Xinhua.

"The U.S. drone targeted a vehicle carrying the militants in the Sawmaah area of al-Bayda province, killing two al-Qaida operatives at the scene," the local military official said on condition of anonymity.

The deceased militants were identified as Jalal al-Saydi and Abu Bilal al-Lawdari who both participated in several terrorist attacks in Yemen, according to the military official.

Yemen, an impoverished Arab country, has been gripped by one of the most active regional al-Qaida insurgencies in the Middle East.

The Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), known locally as Ansar al-Sharia, emerged in January 2009.

Since then it has claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks against Yemen's army and government institutions.

U.S. drones have been active over Yemen's skies for years now, launching hundreds of air strikes, killing scores of al-Qaida leaders and many other extremists.

The Arab country has recently seen a growing number of al-Qaida activities in its eastern and southern provinces.

The increased terrorist activity is due to the prolonged security vacuum as a result of the 19-month-long civil war between the exiled government and Houthi rebels who seized the majority of the country's northern territory including its capital Sanaa in 2014.

The military conflict has killed over 10,000 individuals, according to UN. statistics, displaced thousands as well as enmeshed the country's civilians in a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.
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The Thai police are hunting for 35 suspected human traffickers whose portraits are being put on display at public spots throughout the country.

Anti-Trafficking in Persons Division commander Pol. Maj. Gen. Kornchai Klayklueng announced on Thursday that the agency is yet to arrest all the 35 human trafficking suspects, mostly Thai nationals and currently at large, within next year.

A total of 10,000 copies of "Arrest Calendar for 2017" displaying the "most wanted list" of human trafficking suspects with photographs of their faces, names and other information will be distributed and pasted up at police stations, immigration units, district offices and other public places nationwide, Pol. Maj. Gen. Kornchai said.

Those who may provide police with any tip-offs which could possibly lead to the arrest of each of those human trafficking suspects will be awarded 20,000 baht (about 555 U.S. dollars) in cash, he said.

The Anti-Trafficking in Persons Division has arrested human-trafficking suspects allegedly involved in a total of 89 cases so far this year.
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Students at a Confucius Institute in Egypt [Photo: people.cn]

Confucius Institutes in Egypt are seeing a huge surge in popularity.

According to the manager at the Institute at Cairo University, they are gradually moving away from targeting students of the Chinese language, and are beginning to attract interest from different faculties, and educational establishments in other cities across Egypt.

The Confucius Institute is a non-profit public educational organization affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, whose aim is to promote Chinese language and culture, support local Chinese teaching internationally, and facilitate cultural exchanges.

"Over the past two years, we have started to receive students from non-related faculties such as engineering, antiquities, science, law and commerce, as well as tour guides who would like to learn the Chinese language for career development," said Professor Rehab Mahmoud, manager of Confucius Institute and head of Chinese Language Department at Cairo University.

The professor explains that the Confucius Institute has opened branches in many places outside Cairo University, including Pharos University in Alexandria province, Benha University in Qalyoubiya province and Fayoum University in Fayoum province, along with other branches in several high, preparatory and elementary schools across the country.

"From the next semester, we will open a branch in Misr University for Science and Technology in Cairo and another in Aswan University in Upper Egypt's Aswan province," Professor Mahmoud told the Xinhua news agency, noting also that in 2016 the institute has hosted about 1,200 students, plus some 600 students in its various branches.

The Confucius Institute was founded in Cairo University in 2007 in collaboration with Peking University. In 2017, it's due to hold a ceremony to mark the 10th year of providing a bridge for Egyptian-Chinese cultural interaction.

Mahmoud added that Chinese companies in Egypt often ask the Confucius Institute to recommend Egyptian Chinese-speaking employees for them. "We have recently recommended some for Chinese contractors working in the construction of Egypt's new administrative capital city."

Earlier in December, the institute in Cairo was awarded as a "Model Confucius Institute" during the 11th Confucius Institute Conference held in Kunming city of southwest Yunnan Province in China which was attended by some 2,200 representatives from 140 countries and regions.

"We are so proud of the award. It was really the result of massive efforts as we held a lot of activities to mark 2016 as the Egyptian-Chinese Cultural Year," she said.

Egyptian higher education top officials often refer to China's educational experience as inspiring and see academic exchange visits and cooperation with Chinese universities as necessary interaction for both countries that enjoy growing bilateral relations.
Reuters | Dec. 29, 2016

Swiss airline catering company Gategroup Holding said on Thursday it was buying Air France KLM's catering business Servair for EUR237.5 million (US$248.31 million), including debt, to create the world's leading inflight catering group.

After the deal, Gategroup will be serving more than 300 airline customers and expects annual revenue to exceed 4.4 billion Swiss francs (US$4.29 billion), the group said in a statement.

The enterprise value of EUR237.5 million is based on a 50 percent stake in Servair, Gategroup said.

Air France-KLM said in May it was entering exclusive negotiations with Gategroup's parent Chinese aviation and shipping conglomerate HNA Group to sell a stake in Servair and transfer operational control to HNA.

Gategroup said it would finance the acquisition initially through a bridge facility which would be replaced by a capital market transaction likely to be in the first half of 2017.

Gategroup said Lazard was acting as its financial adviser on the deal.

HNA Group bought Gategroup in a US$1.5 billion deal earlier this year.

Related News:

China's HNA Extends M&A Spree with US$1.5 Billion Purchase of Swiss Gategroup
By Jon Ostrower, CNN | Dec. 29, 2016

From all-new airliners made by Russia and China to a trio of twin-aisle jets from Boeing and Airbus, 2017 will bring an unusually large batch of new airplanes.

Airbus - Europe

A330neo: Airbus is expected to fly its A330neo next year. Neo stands for "new engine option." The A330, a two-decade old design, is getting a makeover with new engines and new wingtips to boost its range and fuel efficiency.

Airbus is positioning the 'neo' as a lower-cost alternative to Boeing's advanced 787 Dreamliner. The first of two planned models will fly next year and enter service in early 2018.

The #A330neo with its nice dress on! This new player offers -14% fuel burn/seat as well as the #AirspaceByAirbus cabin for ultimate comfort. pic.twitter.com/DImHTYNO2O - Airbus (@Airbus) December 23, 2016

A321neo: The second member of Airbus's revamped single-aisle family, the A321neo, will enter service in 2017. It's the largest member of the updated A320neo family.

Airbus hopes the jet, which seats up to 240 passengers, will replace the out-of-production Boeing 757, an aging transcontinental workhorse for U.S. airlines. Airbus has a significant sales lead with the A321neo, and Boeing is considering new designs to keep its customers.

A319neo: The smallest member of the A320neo family is expected to fly for the first time in 2017, but demand for it isn't great. The smallest offerings from both Boeing and Airbus have received few orders because airlines are opting for larger and more fuel efficient models.

A350-1000: The A350-1000 made its first flight in Toulouse, France in late November, and Airbus has been accelerating its testing of the plane. The 366-seat long-range airliner is the biggest twin-engine jet Airbus has ever designed and is the second member of the A350 family. It is trying to supplant Boeing's best-selling twin-aisle airliner: the 777-300ER.

Airbus is slated to deliver the A350-1000 to Qatar Airways in late 2017.

Boeing - U.S.

737 Max 8: After five years in development, the first 737 Max will be delivered to Southwest Airlines in the first half of 2017. Boeing's fourth-generation single-aisle plane has two new engines and a new tail section and winglets -- designed to cut fuel consumption by 14%.

The Max 8 is the first of four 737 Max models Boeing is designing. Boeing has thousands of orders for the 737 Max, including from China's fast-growing airlines.

787-10: Boeing will take its new 787-10 Dreamliner on its first flight in the spring. The 320-seat airliner, made mostly of fiber carbon, is coming together inside the company's plant in North Charleston, South Carolina.

It's the first time the new factory has exclusive manufacturing responsibility for a new Boeing model, a sign of its growing importance for the company. The 787-10 won't fly as far as its two smaller Dreamliner siblings because airlines preferred fuel efficiency over range.

The first 787-10 is really taking shape-- moving into the wing to body join position at #Boeing South Carolina. #Dreamliner pic.twitter.com/aIP4oRULlG - Boeing Airplanes (@BoeingAirplanes) December 19, 2016

737 Max 9: Boeing will soon follow with the 737 Max 9, the largest member of Boeing's updated single-aisle 737 Max family. The jet is slated to fly for the first time in 2017. The first test aircraft's fuselage arrived at Boeing's plant in Washington state in late December ahead of final assembly.

The aircraft can seat up to 220 passengers in a single class and is Boeing's direct rival to the A321neo.

The sun is shining on the Renton 737 factory. Our first 737 MAX 9 just rolled in right on time! #737MAX pic.twitter.com/8wSp71mkV2 - Boeing Airplanes (@BoeingAirplanes) December 16, 2016

COMAC - China

C919: China's first big airliner will be flown in 2017. The COMAC C919 is aimed to compete with the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320. Earlier this week, Comac cleared a hurdle when its engines -- made in the U.S. and France -- were approved by U.S. and European authorities.

The aircraft was originally supposed to fly in 2014, but the project has been repeatedly delayed due to China's relative inexperience in developing commercial airliners. Comac isn't expected to go toe-to-toe with Airbus and Boeing yet, but through partnering with western suppliers, China is cultivating itself as global contender for the next generation.

United Aircraft Corporation - Russia

MS-21: Russia's United Aircraft Corporation is getting ready to fly its all-new Irkut MS-21 in 2017. The project is backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who wants to elevate the country's commercial aerospace industry to complete with the Airbus and Boeing single-aisle jets that dominate routes across the world.

Embraer - Brazil

E195-E2: Brazil's Embraer (ERJ) is deep into aerial testing of its heavily revamped E190-E2 airliner, a version of which flew for the first time last year. The second member of the E2 family, the E195-E2, will fly for the first time in 2017. The jet is the largest airliner the company has ever developed, seating around 132 passengers in a single-class cabin. The E195-E2 competes with Canada's all-new Bombardier CS100, which started carrying passengers in July.
Editor's note: China has embraced digital transformation as the world's second-largest economy enters the "new normal". Foreign conglomerates are keen on seizing the opportunities and supporting the government to bring the benefits of new technologies to every sector and each region.

Here top executives of multinationals look back at 2016 and gaze into the crystal ball as we head into 2017.

Microsoft feels the pulse of China's digital transformation

"We believes that we are uniquely positioned to help accelerate China's digital transformation in line with the ambitions expressed in the 13th Five-Year Plan, which will largely be driven by cloud-based technologies." Alain Crozier Chairman and CEO of Microsoft Greater China Region Read more

Ericsson ambitious on 5G deployment in China

"A slowdown from such a rapid growth rate is to be expected but 6.5 percent GDP growth is still a comparatively high rate of growth in a low growth world and therefore highly attractive to global companies." Chris Houghton Ericsson's senior vice president Read more

China to become world's largest aviation market

"According to the 13th Five-Year Plan, about 50 new major airports will be established to accommodate the region's growth in air travel, and we estimate that six to seven percent annual growth will be seen in passenger traffic, airplane acquisitions and total flying hours in the next two decades." Steven Lien President of Honeywell Aerospace Asia-Pacific Read more

IDC sees opportunities for clients in govt-backed plans " IDC sees China as not only an important market to the world but also one that is growing in complexity with regional and global integration." Kitty Fok, managing director of International Data Corporation (IDC) China Read more

Striking a chord in new headphone market

"As China opened more to Western brands, we were already there and able to show our headphones, so we had a very strong market share in China for the small company that we are." Daniel Sennheiser CEO of Sennheiser Electronic GmbH & Co KG Read More

A true story of how to achieve more with less
BP Plc will pay A$1.785 billion ($1.3 billion) for Woolworths Ltd's network of Australian gas stations in a deal that will cement the London-based oil company as one of the nation's biggest fuel providers.

The British company will acquire 527 fuel outlets that are supplied by rival Caltex Australia Ltd, as well as 16 development sites, according to a statement on Wednesday from Sydney-based supermarket owner Woolworths.

BP already owns 350 retail locations across Australia and supplies fuel to an additional 1,000 outlets owned by independent business partners, according to a separate statement from the oil company.

BP and Woolworths also agreed to a partnership that includes the continuation and expansion of a scheme providing fuel discounts for supermarket customers.

BP has previously struck deals with retailers including Marks & Spencer Plc in the United Kingdom and REWE in Germany.

For Woolworths, the sale is part of Chief Executive Officer Brad Banducci's strategy to reverse the supermarket chain's declining fortunes. Since becoming CEO in February, Banducci has cut jobs, written off assets and slowed store openings, while sales at its Australian food division have started growing again.

The sale is "positive at the margin" for Woolworths, according to Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at Sydney-based CMC Markets Asia Pacific Pty.

"Woolworths' management were just keen to do any deal. While it is good that there's movement, this was probably the easiest to do and probably the one that makes the least difference."

Completion of the transaction is not expected before Jan 2, 2018, and is subject to regulatory approvals.

Bloomberg
BEIJING - China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) period has had a strong start and is poised to fulfill all key targets set by the central government for economic development.

The latest sign of a warming economy came on Tuesday as the National Bureau of Statistics said industrial profits expanded 9.4 percent year on year in the first 11 months, faster than the 8.6 percent rise for the first 10 months.

Although full-year statistics have yet to be released, all indicators suggest China will reach its main targets this year, including a GDP growth rate of 6.5 to 7 percent, creation of over 10 million new urban jobs, and a 3.4-percent decline of energy consumption per unit of GDP.

The GDP grew by 6.7 percent in the first three quarters. Experts expect the full-year growth rate to be near the same level as the first nine months.

As an important barometer of the overall economy, China's manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) rose to 51.7 in November from the previous month's 51.2, marking its strongest pace in more than two years.

The stronger-than-expected PMI data added to evidence that China's economy has been stabilizing and is on track to meet the government's annual growth target.

Per-capita disposable income of residents rose 6.3 percent in the first three quarters, slightly lower than the average annual target of more than 6.5 percent in 2016-2020.

With 55.75 million people still living under the poverty line at the end of 2015, China aims to lift all its poor population out of poverty by 2020 as one of the major tasks to build an "all-round moderately prosperous society."

Central and local government spending on poverty relief exceeded 100 billion yuan ($14.4 billion) for the first time, and China will fulfill this year's target of bringing 10 million people out of poverty ahead of schedule, according to a national meeting earlier this month.

Liu Yongfu, head of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, said the country will work on several fronts in 2017: promoting industrial development in poor regions; giving the poor easier access to employment services, health care and education; and improving infrastructure facilities in poor regions.

China has also met this year's targets in advance for reducing outdated capacity in the coal and steel sector, which will help improve corporate profitability, optimize structure and balance market supply with demand.

Driven by intensified efforts to protect the environment, China's energy use per unit of GDP dropped 5.2 percent in the first three quarters and total coal consumption dropped by 2 percent, resulting in better air quality.

And the list of encouraging signs goes on.

However, a complicated external and domestic economic environment has left China little room for complacency.

Weak growth momentum in major economies, flagging international trade, some backsliding on globalization and rising trade protectionism added to uncertainties for global economic recovery.

Global trade growth has been slower than world economic growth for five consecutive years and the trend is likely to continue.

At home, daunting challenges, including debt overhangs, excess capacity and a highly leveraged property market should not be taken lightly either.

Wang Yiming, deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said China should be sober-minded about the risks by taking active measures to avoid further accumulation and spread of risks.

China has made "seeking progress while maintaining stability" the main theme for economic work in 2017, pledging to push for substantial progress in supply-side structural reform, according to the Central Economic Work Conference.

By doing so, China will consolidate a foundation for steady economic growth and attain major targets in realizing an all-round moderately prosperous society.
Currently Topshop's only presence in China is a small concession in the Galeries Lafayette department store in Beijing and a handful of shops in Hong Kong. [Photo provided to China Daily]

UK fashion chain Topshop is the latest British retail company attempting to tap into China's market by opening its first standalone store in 2018.

The British high-street retailer has agreed a deal with Chinese partner and online fashion retailer Shangpin.com. The e-commerce business had already started to push Topshop into the Chinese mainland by selling the brand on Shangpin.com two years ago.

Arcadia Group, Topshop's owner company, said the first shop will open in top tier cities in the spring or summer of 2018 which could be either Beijing or Shanghai.

Media reports said if the move was successful, as many as 80 outlets could be opened.

Arcadia Group would not comment on the plans for 80 stores.

Currently Topshop's only presence in China is a small concession in the Galeries Lafayette department store in Beijing and a handful of shops in Hong Kong.

Shangpin.com is a members-only website with 30 million registered subscribers, founder and chief executive David Zhao said: "It is gratifying to be trusted by such a world-renowned fashion brand to take them further in China."

Topshop is part of retail tycoon Sir Philip Green's Arcadia Group fashion empire and he described the deal as "the start of a unique, exciting and exclusive partnership that will cement Topshop and Topman's mission of becoming truly global businesses".

Green added:"For the first time, both brands will deliver high fashion to the shop floor and beyond by opening full-scale stores in China  host to the world's fastest-growing retail economy."

The businessman was embroiled in the controversial sale and subsequent collapse of the long-establish UK department store BHS earlier this year. The high-street chain went into administration in April, less than a year after Green sold it for one pound to a consortium.

The collapse led to the loss of 11,000 jobs and a 571 million pound pensions black hole.

According to analysts, Topshop is by far the most valuable part of Arcadia Group. Sir Philip owns a 75 percent stake in Topshop after selling 25 percent to US private equity firm Leonard Green in 2012
 Flash

China on Thursday voiced firm opposition to Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada's visit to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine, saying China will lodge solemn representation to Japan on the issue.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying announced the opposition at a daily press briefing.

Hua said that it was the ultimate irony that Inada on Thursday morning visited the war shrine, which honors 14 Class-A convicted war criminals among 2.5 million Japanese war dead from WWII, only a day after her visit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Pearl Harbor, which has been dubbed by Tokyo as a "tour of reconciliation."

Some reports suggested that Abe's recent visit to Pearl Harbor is no more than a political show aiming to strengthen the Japanese-U.S. alliance.

Other than offering his "sincere and everlasting condolences" to the souls of the Americans killed by troops of the Japanese imperial empire, Abe issued no apology.

Hua said Inada's move once again reflected that a number of Japanese people were being bullheaded by straying from the historical truth, and that such activities would only make the international community more cautious toward Japan.

"We once again urge Japanese leaders to squarely face and deeply reflect upon the history of invasion," said Hua, calling on Japan to deal with issues regarding its attitude toward shouldering responsibility, both for history and the future.

Noting that a man cannot survive without credit, Hua urged Japan to fulfill its promises and commitment, and sincerely listen to the voice of justice from its domestic society and the international community.

The notorious Tokyo war shrine is regarded as a symbol of past Japanese militarism.

Hua on Tuesday said that Japan can never turn the page without reconciliation with countries in Asia, including China.

China was one of the main regions to suffer in the Asia-Pacific during the World Anti-Fascist War, with the Chinese people making major contributions to the victory.

Chinese military and civilian casualties totaled approximately 35 million, accounting for one-third of all deaths in WWII.
Carmaker BYD Co has vowed to scale up its output of new energy vehicles to cut costs, as the government gradually phases out subsidies for green energy vehicles.

The company will also boost its production of new energy vehicle batteries in order to lower production costs, it said.

The battery remains the key component of a new energy vehicle, accounting for 30 to 40 percent of its total production cost.

Considering the government's subsidy for new energy vehicles will decrease by 20 percent in 2017, the company has to cut its costs by 5 to 10 percent to compensate for this.

According to the Ministry of Finance, China will reduce the 2017-18 subsidies for new energy vehicles by 20 percent from those granted in 2016, and further cut them by 40 percent in the 2019-20 period.

All subsidies will be phased out after 2020, it said.

China started offering subsidies to boost the production of clean energy vehicles in 2009, and 33.4 billion yuan ($4.81 billion) had been earmarked by the end of 2015, said the ministry.

However, the one-size-fits-all subsidy has made some carmakers rely too heavily on the government's financial stimulus, and they are reluctant to invest in research and development, with some manufacturers even taking subsidies as a source of quick money.

According to BYD, the company has been preparing for the end of the subsidies.

It recently signed up US movie star Leonardo DiCaprio as the brand ambassador for its new energy vehicles, who will work with the brand over the course of 2017.

Ex-Alfa Romeo and Audi design chief Wolfgang Egger has been hired to take charge of the vehicles' interior and exterior design.

Zhang Zhiyong, an auto analyst based in Beijing, said ending the subsidies will have an overall beneficial effect on the industry, as it will drive out those just seeking to make a quick buck.

According to Chen Qingtai, director of China EV100, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting new energy vehicles, Chinese carmakers should focus on research and development to make themselves more competitive, as international rivals are coming up with an increasing number of products.

SAIC Motor said it would raise another 15 billion yuan for research and development of new energy vehicles, while Volkswagen AG also plans to introduce around 10 electric car models based on its electric-only Modular Electric Model lineup to the Chinese market over 10 years.

Chinese green vehicle producers Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd and Chery Automobile Co Ltd also said earlier they would focus on the research and development of electric vehicles over the next decade.
Xiaomi vice president Hugo Barra poses with a Redmi Note 3 during an interview with Reuters after a launching ceremony in Hong Kong, China March 21, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Tech giant Xiaomi Corp has allegedly been trying to cover up an incident in which one its Redmi Note 3 phones caught fire while charging, which may damage the Beijing-based company's smartphone business.

A Chinese owner of a Redmi Note 3 recently claimed that her device, which she purchased in March, caught fire while it was charging. The user then reported the incident to Xiaomi, which promised to offer a refund and an additional 600 yuan ($86) in compensation, the Beijing Morning Post reported.

However, according to the report, Xiaomi required the user to sign a confidentiality agreement to get the payment. The agreement required her not to disclose any details of the incident.

Nicole Peng, research director at Canalys, said before the final results of the investigation into the incident were released, the key issue is for the firm to handle the incident properly, otherwise it will have a negative impact on the Xiaomi brand.

"Xiaomi should use the most transparent way to reveal details of the incident and the reason why the Redmi smartphone caught fire."

Wang Wenhua, deputy dean of the Law School at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said the confidentiality agreement was invalid.

"If the fire was caused by the phone, it is a quality defect which poses great risks to consumers' personal safety and property rights. Then the manufacturer should bear civil liability and compensate the consumer accordingly.

"Now lots of smartphone makers are enhancing the capabilities of smartphone batteries, such as improvements to battery life, which may cause more safety problems than before," Wang said.

"This incident should serve as a warning. Manufacturers should not be too keen to upgrade smartphone batteries before rigorous lab tests have taken place, and they should pay more attention to the quality of their products."
A woman makes a phone call in front of a WeChat QR code poster in Taiyuan, Shanxi province. [Photo/China Daily]

App's runaway success further squeezes margins of operators as they worry about fall in revenue

WeChat has eclipsed telecom carriers to become the new darling for Chinese people to make calls, a study has found.

The 768 million active WeChat usersmore than double the entire population of the United Statesmade over 100 million voice and video calls everyday via the app in 2016, its developer Tencent Group Holdings Ltd said in a report on Wednesday.

With the advent of the faster 4G network and wireless connections, the figure was 1.8 times that of last year, the report found. A typical WeChat userdefined by Tencent as in his or her 20s and 30sspent on average 65 minutes per month on WeChat-enabled calls.

That further squeezed margins for telecom operators as they worry about a dent in their revenue from over-the-top service providers, the study said.

The country's biggest carrier, China Mobile Communications Corp by revenue, for example, saw its revenue from voice services fall 16.5 percent year-on-year in 2015.

The report found that half of active WeChat users linger on the app for longer than 90 minutes on a daily basis. A typical user sent out 74 messages, up 67 percent from last year, contrasting with a double-digit percent drop in short message service revenue for the likes of China Mobile.

Tencent's all-purpose app encapsulates the functions of Facebook, Uber and PayPal, increasingly making it an inseparable part of China's rising middle class. New features from digital ads to digital wallet are also helping Tencent win new battlegrounds beyond its traditional stronghold, the study found.

For instance, typical users spend 580 yuan ($83.4) per month on distributing red packets, a play on the red envelopes traditionally used to give gifts of money during festivals in China. By doing so, Tencent is intent on cultivating customer habits to use WeChat as a payment channel and a gateway to other business scenarios it hopes to capitalize on.

The report also found that China's elderly people, aged 55 or older, have become the biggest beneficiaries of the app. Many leapt from the pre-web era straight to the mobile internet, skipping the personal computer altogether.

Data showed they spent 17 more minutes every month in audio and video chats than their younger peers, and outperformed them in WeChat Sports, a fitness tracking function that allows motion tracking to share the number of steps users take each day.

WeChat has become a life style in China, as half of its users open it more than 10 times per day, according to Li Chunyan, founder of Feida Consulting.

WeChat creator Zhang Xiaolong said it was set to revolutionize the app industry by introducing "mini-apps" which are apps that do not require installation.

"This will boost the ease of use and reliability of the app, without it becoming inconvenient in terms of storage space and clutter for the user," said Zhang during a recent developers' event in Guangzhou.

The mini apps will not be accessed from WeChat, but most likely through scanning quick response or QR codes.
A Chinese girl wears virtual reality glasses (VR) as she sits on a roller coaster simulator at the Wantong VR Park, which claims to be China's largest, November 27, 2016 in Beijing. [Photo/VCG]

When Fang Wenxin founded a virtual reality (VR) firm in 2015, he never expected the industry would go bust so soon.

The boom in China's VR industry following Facebook's $2 billion buyout of Oculus, a US producer of VR gadgets and computer games, in 2014 has declined, with about 90 percent of start-ups in the domestic market declaring bankruptcy.

"There were about 200 to 300 firms engaged in producing VR helmets in 2015, but now no more than 10 companies remain functioning," Fang said.

During the past few months, domestic VR companies, such as Storm Magic Mirror, Miido and AlfaReal, started to downsize organizations or delay payments of employee salaries due to a diminution in venture capital.

According to the latest report issued by iiMedia Research, a third party data collector and analyst of technological digital platforms, the supply of high-end smart glasses in the domestic market has failed to lure consumers, with more than 70 percent of respondents among smart cell phone users expressing no willingness to buy one.

Taken up by gigantic tech firms, such as HTC, Facebook and Sony, the market for VR hardware has left slim chances for smaller manufacturers to slot in, so that the VR businesses of domestic manufacturers focus mostly on content production.

However, despite the increasing involvement of VR start-ups, cheap copycats have eaten up the market, blocking the channels necessary for high-end innovation to reach customers.

The slump in the VR market during the second half of 2016 in China is probably the result of deficient industrial innovations, said Wu Limei, an analyst of the iiMedia Research.

But the recent fall of the VR industry may be less ominous than a sign of industrial recession when the frenetic flows of capitals have cooled down.

Zhao Ziming, an analyst from Analysys, Ltd., an agent of data collection and analysis, said the industry will be reshuffled by the entries of big companies, like BAT and NetEase, following the bankruptcies of small companies with broken capital chains. The threshold will be elevated and the money will be spent more reasonably.

Investment in the Chinese VR industry soared to 270 million yuan ($38.9 million) in 2014, a robust rise followed by 2.4 billion yuan in 2015 and 1.54 billion yuan in the first half of 2016.
LHASA - While Tibet evokes images of ancient traditions for many tourists, out-of-towners are discovering they don't have to give up modern conveniences when they travel in the far western region.

A tourist from East China's Fujian province was pleasantly surprised to be able to pay through Alipay at a fast food chain in downtown Lhasa.

"I never thought I could enjoy the same convenience as in (eastern) cities," he said.

The restaurant opened in March, and within a month, customers no longer had to pay in cash.

"Mobile payments have not only improved efficiency, but also save tourists a lot of time withdrawing money from the ATM," said the store's manager.

Li, a 44 year-old taxi driver, worked at a construction site in Lhasa before a friend suggested he register on ride-hailing platforms to earn some extra money.

"I tried it and found the market really promising," he said. "I can earn 120 yuan (about $17) a day, and my income can triple or even quadruple during peak seasons."

Going cashless has become the new normal for Tibetans.

Restaurants, souvenir shops, and movie theaters all provide online payment services. QR codes have become common on vendor booths selling Tibetan jewelry.

Figures from the Tibet communication administration bureau indicate the number of internet users in Tibet had reached 1.639 million as of March.

An account statement from Alipay also showed that 83.3 percent of payments in Tibet were conducted via mobile phones in 2015, topping the country for four years in a row.

"This year's online transactions rose significantly compared to previous years," said Norbu, an employee at a People's Bank of China branch in Lhasa.

"Partly because more stores accept online payments, but more importantly, it shows a change in consumption and payment habits among the public in Tibet," he said.

As Jigme, a young Tibetan man, noted, "Paying online has become part of our lives."
By Cao Wei in Nanjing and Qin Xin in Zhengzhou | China Daily | Updated: 2016-12-29 07:42

Move aims to relieve burden of case hearings on Supreme People's Court, official says

Two new circuit courtsone in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, and the other in Zhengzhou, Henan provincewere established on Wednesday to improve judicial efficiency and reduce the burden of case hearings on the Supreme People's Court.

All 12 presiding judges of the Third Circuit Court in Nanjing will be from the top court. The presiding judges, with an average age of 45, each have at least 10 years of experience.

The court will hear cases from Shanghai as well as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangxi provinces. Judges specializing in finance, environmental protection and the internet have been chosen to work for the court.

The Fourth Circuit Court in Zhengzhou is responsible for hearing cases from Henan, Shanxi, Anhui and Hubei provinces.

Under the latest judicial interpretation issued by the top court on Wednesday, the current six circuit courts cover 26 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across China.

It also expanded the work of the First Circuit Court in Shenzhen, adding cases from Hunan province.

Jiang Bixin, vice-president of the Supreme People's Court and president of the Third Circuit Court, said circuit courts are responsible for 11 kinds of cases, including complicated administrative and criminal complaint cases. They also deal with letters and visitors appealing for help from the Supreme People's Court.

"Circuit courts ease the burden of the national top court," said Jiang, adding that cases within the jurisdiction of the Third Circuit Court from January to mid-December accounted for more than 25 percent of the country's total.

"They will also save time and money for litigants as they no longer have to go to the Supreme People's Court in Beijing," he said.

Jing Hanchao, president of the Fourth Circuit Court, said the establishment of circuit courts will help improve judicial credibility and maintain justice.

"Pronouncing the sentence in court will be encouraged to promote judicial credibility," Jing said. "Presiding judges and assistant judges will not be involved in cases from their hometowns."

He added that the courts will actively explore the mechanism of rational decentralization and effective supervision to ensure independent and fair verdicts.

Xie Fuzhan, Party chief of Henan, said the circuit court will help local courts to handle cross-regional cases effectively, which also benefits the judicial construction process in Henan and its neighboring provinces.

"It also reduces the cost of lawsuits," Xie said.

Jing said the four provinces in Central China recently achieved a new key stage in economic growth, which must be accompanied by judicial development.

Wang Yaxin, a professor at Tsinghua University, said the circuit courts are part of the Supreme People's Court. They aim to deal with cases with the support of the Supreme People's Court.

"It helps to improve the development of local judicial independence," Wang said.

According to the Supreme People's Court, another two circuit courts will be established in Chongqing municipality and Xi'an, Shaanxi province.

The first and second circuit courts were established in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, and Shenyang, Liaoning province, in 2014.

The First Circuit Court hears cases from Guangdong and Hainan provinces as well as the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, while the Second Circuit Court has jurisdiction over Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces.

Cao Yin contributed to this story.
Fishermen affected by the 2011 Bohai Bay oil spill have demanded 170 million yuan ($24.5 million) in damages from the oil giants behind the disaster.

Lawyers representing 205 people from Yantai, Shandong province, who are suing China National Offshore Oil Corp and ConocoPhillips revealed the compensation figure on Wednesday, according to a source at Qingdao Maritime Court.

"Seven representatives showed up at the court to exchange evidence," said Xue Wenshan, a court spokesman. "As the case has not yet entered the trial phase, there are still many uncertainties."

The plaintiffs, mainly from Yantai's Muping and Changdao counties, claim their livelihoods have been severely affected by leaks from the Penglai 19-3 Oilfield. Two spills over a period of weeks in June 2011 polluted more than 6,200 square kilometers of seawater, including 870 sq km that was heavily polluted, according to investigation reports.

The oilfield is jointly operated by CNOOC and a Chinese subsidiary of US oil company ConocoPhillips.

In April 2012, authorities fined the oil companies 200,000 yuan as an administrative punishment and ordered them to pay 1 billion yuan toward work to restore the environment and protect the Bohai Sea. However, the amount did not include compensation for fishing communities.

Shandong's fishing industry has reported huge losses in recent years, and "there is a strong correlation between this fact and the oil spills", a provincial fishery official told China Youth News.

According to Guo Chengxi, a lawyer at Beijing DHH Law Firm, also speaking to China Youth News, the fishermen have paid 2.08 million yuan to fund the litigation.

"More than 40 fishermen have withdrawn their claims in the past year because they were uncertain about whether we can win the case, or were not able to afford the legal expenses," he was quoted as saying. "Many of those still in pursuit of justice have borrowed money to pay expenses or lowered their compensation demands."

Fish farms in other provinces have filed similar lawsuits against the oil giants.

On Dec 9, Tianjin Maritime Court heard a case in which five aquaculture farmers demanded more than 1 million yuan in compensation for seawater pollution caused by the 2011 oil spills, which they say led to a sharp decrease in their fishing output. The court has yet to issue a verdict.

The devastation caused by the Bohai Bay oil leaks was to highlight the need for tougher controls on maritime pollution.

Lawmakers amended the Marine Environmental Protection Law on Nov 7 to introduce higher financial penalties for polluters, with companies now facing fines of 20 to 30 percent of the direct losses caused by their actions.

Previously, the maximum fine was 300,000 yuan.
China plans to launch at least another 15 major water conservancy projects next year, increasing targeted investment in the field to more than 900 billion yuan ($130 billion), the Ministry of Water Resources announced on Wednesday.

Having launched 21 projects in 2016, construction work is now underway at 106 projects, increasing total investment in ongoing projects to 800 billion yuan.

The latest, the Yangtze-to-Huaihe Water Diversion Project, begins on Thursday. As construction of more than half of all 172 projects proposed in 2014 is underway, the ministry plans to shift some of its focus.

"We will continue to push forward new projects next year, but we will also focus on the actual operation of these projects," said Wang Annan, head of the ministry's Planning Division.

"Six projects have been completed and major construction has finished at another eight sites, where benefits have begun to show."

In May 2014, proposals for 172 major water conservancy projects were approved by the State Council, China's Cabinet, part of attempts to increase the nation's water supplies and agricultural irrigation capabilities.

All such projects are expected to have begun construction by 2020.

"The projects are primarily to defend against flooding and to ease water scarcity," Wang said. "In addition, there are agricultural water-saving projects to safeguard the security of food production."

"We have completed high-efficiency water-saving irrigation projects covering more than 1.45 million hectares nationwide," said Wang Aiguo, head of the ministry's Rural Water Conservancy Division.

The ministry has also vowed to address weak points highlighted by this year's natural disasters, including the inability to drain floodwater in some cities and the lack of a warning system for extreme weather in rural areas.

In July, consecutive days of record-breaking rainfall and a lack of floodwater storage left Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, flooded for days. Also in July, a blockage in a river bed resulted in flash floods that killed more than 30 people in Hebei province.

"I understand that in summer the waterlogging was partly due to a lack of floodwater storage because of the high water level of the Yangtze River," said Zhou Xin, a 26-year-old living in Wuhan. "I hope effective countermeasures are taken, such as keeping lakes from commercial use."
Niu Minghui is concerned about a group of wild Asian elephants that pay surprise visits to steal crops from his backyard.

One night in June, Niu heard loud noises outside. Inching the curtains open, he saw a massive wild elephant casually munching on corn that it had stolen from next door.

"I did not dare turn on the lights, and I put my cellphone on silent," said Niu, 29, of Shiban village in Southwest China's Yunnan province.

Niu quietly called the village elephant expert who tried to use firecrackers to scare the animal away, but it didn't work. Instead, the elephant took about 40 minutes to eat its stolen corn.

"Maybe he was just too hungry," Niu said. "It is OK if the elephants steal a little food, as long as they do not attack."

Conflicts between elephants and humans are on the rise in Yunnan.

According to the provincial forestry bureau, between 2011 and last year, more than 48,000 cases involving wild elephants resulted in 18 deaths, 27 injuries and economic losses totaling about 99 million yuan ($14 million). Government compensation for the families of the victims totaled more than 98 million yuan.

Wild Asian elephants are a Class-A protected animal in China, with their population mainly scattered across Yunnan's Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture and in the cities of Pu'er and Lincang.

China's efforts to protect the ecosystem have helped wild elephant numbers grow from less than 180 in the 1990s to about 300 today, but the animals are still facing extinction, said Yang Yun, head of Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve Administration.

"In the past decade, we have tried to raise awareness to protect wild Asian elephants," Yang said. "We also worked with several provinces in Laos as part of a cross-border protection program."

Chen Mingyong, a life sciences professor at Yunnan University, said despite the growing numbers, wild elephants are still at risk of extinction in China, particularly as villagers often "take revenge on elephants for causing trouble".

Chen Yong, a wildlife protection official in Xishuangbanna, said as elephant numbers grow, conflicts between the animals and humans are inevitable.

In 2015, a pregnant wild elephant was shot dead by villagers in Yunnan after it attacked residents. Two wild elephants died the same year after eating crops sprayed with pesticides.

Li Zhao, head of the forestry bureau in Pu'er, said the city has increased investment, closed hillsides, held training sessions on elephant attacks and bought insurance to help reduce conflicts.

"The city pays out more than 16 million yuan a year for the protection of wild elephants and compensation for damage caused by the animals," Li said.

Li added that the city is considering building a national park for wild elephants.
A park crowded by rental bikes in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, on Monday. LAI LI/CHINA DAILY

To standardize the development of the online bike-sharing industry, Shenzen transport commission unveiled a draft plan on Tuesday, defining the responsibilities of citizens, government and service operators.

Shenzhen will release the nation's first regulation on bike sharing, including adding violations such as illegal parking to people's credit record.

Renting bikes through smartphones and parking the mat the users' convenience has grown in popularity. But in addition to offering a convenient option for short-distance traveling, it has also raised issues such as illegal parking.

In Shenzhen, Guangdong province, there are about 120,000 such rental bicycles operated by four companiesMobike, Ofo, Bluegogo and Xiaomingdancheand the number is expected to increase to 210,000 by the end of January 2017, according to the city transport commission. Recognizing online bike-sharing as part of the city's transportation system, the authority will integrate cycleways and bike-parking facilities with street renovation.

Illegal parking will result in a fine and be added to personal credit records, with the commission telling China Daily it may use data from bike-sharing service providers.

However, Zhang Kun, an analyst at marketing research firm iResearch, said it is difficult to collect information and such actions seem "harsh".

It is important for service operators to set strict regulations to limit violations such as illegal parking, he said.

Mobike, one of the major operators in Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai, said it will promote legal parking according to the government's guidance. The firm uses a score system, which relies on users' reports, and charges those who have been reported as parking bikes illegally more for using its bikes.

The regulation states bike-sharing service providers should cooperate with property managers to set up parking zones in private areas.

According to a report in Nanfang Metropolis Daily on Monday, a residential real estate company in Nanshan district locked up about 200 rental bikes that occupied its entrance, demanding 20,000 yuan ($2,875) in compensation from a bike-sharing service operator, which refused to pay.

A separate draft released Tuesday stated that there should be at least be 1.5 meters for pedestrians to walk past parked bikes on sidewalks.

Zhang said he believes other cities will also release regulations soon.
A suspected drug trafficker was shot dead in the street while another was detained by police in Guangzhou on Wednesday morning.

The incident took place in Dashi township, Panyu district, at about 5 am, when a police car collided with the suspects' vehicle after a road pursuit.

Drug enforcement officers from Foshan, about 20 kilometers from Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, opened fire when the men resisted arrest and attempted to run away. Police had pursued the suspects from Foshan.

The glass door of a nearby commercial building was shattered during the shootout. Police immediately blocked off the scene and nearby roads for further investigation.

The sound of gunfire attracted a large number of residents who mistakenly thought a gangster film was being shot in the area.

"The suspects did not back down when police warned them before opening fire," a witness who gave her name as Chen said.

She said the shooting "will help to deter criminals and reduce drug-related crime in the city, which has a high crime rate, particularly around the time of the Lunar New Year", which next year falls on Jan 28.

A police officer with the Guangdong Public Security Department declined to provide more details on the incident, saying that an investigation is ongoing.

The incident caused heavy traffic congestion in the surrounding area.

On Tuesday, Guangdong police announced they had busted six cross-border gun-smuggling gangs in a recent operation, detaining 200 suspects, including one from Taiwan.

More than 220 firearms, 15,000 rounds of ammunition and many raw materials used in the production of weapons were seized in the operation, which was launched in 21 cities this month.

The gangs purchased weapons from Hong Kong and sold them online to buyers across the country, according to a statement from the Guangdong Public Security Department.

The authority warned that those who own or sell weapons are in violation of Chinese law and pledged to spare no efforts in the fight against gun crime.
China will continue its high pressure against corruption next year, strengthen supervision and severely punish officials who break Party rules, according to the top leadership.

A pilot reform program for an integrated supervision system will also be on next year's anti-graft agenda, according to a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee on Wednesday.

The meeting, presided over by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, also decided that the seventh plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the country's discipline watchdog, will be held in Beijing from Jan 6 to 8.

At the meeting, members of the Political Bureau listened to the CCDI's work report for 2016 and provided arrangements for combating corruption and building up clean government next year.

The Party has gained the upper hand in the fight against corruption, and "the high pressure against graft will be maintained next year", according to a news release from the meeting.

Punishment for violators will be even harsher, it said.

Anti-graft officers are required to report in a timely manner any clues about officials who might be corrupt. If they help to conceal such information, they will be held accountable as well, according to the release.

Moreover, the meeting decided to require the reform of the supervision system to be pushed forward firmly and steadily next year to make sure that all reform targets are met.

The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the top legislature, approved a pilot reform program on Sunday to produce an integrated supervision system that will be more authoritative and efficient.

New supervision committees will be tested in Beijing as well as Shanxi and Zhejiang provinces and will gradually be expanded across the country.

According to the NPC decision, the committees will integrate the supervision and corruption prevention departments, as well as People's Procuratorate departments, for handling bribery and dereliction of duty cases or for prevention of duty-related crimes.

The committees will supervise the duty performance, integrity and ethical conduct of public servants. They will investigate and punish corruption and other job-related offenses, and will transfer cases involving suspected criminal offenses to procuratorates.

All who exercise public power will be supervised by the new committees, according to the decision.

According to CCDI statistics, in the first 11 months of this year, 50,008 Party officials were investigated for breaking Party austerity rules, 37,500 of whom received Party or administrative penalties.

No matter who breaks Party discipline, he or she should be exposed to the public, said Song Dajun, a senior official from the CCDI's Discipline Supervision Department.

CCDI figures show that so far this year, 29,100 such cases, involving more than 43,100 people, have been made public, with the officials' names listed.

Gao Bo, a political researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said, "I believe anti-graft officers will pay more attention to corrupt officials at the grass roots to make sure that all people share the anti-graft success and its benefits," he said.

Xinhua contributed to this story.
China asked Japan on Wednesday not to send a wrong message to Taiwan authorities and the international community by changing the name of its liaison organization in Taiwan.

"China is strongly dissatisfied with Japan's negative move on the Taiwan question," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news conference in Beijing, urging Japan to adhere to the one-China principle.

The Interchange Association in Taiwan said in a statement on Wednesday that it will change its name to the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association beginning on Jan 1, according to the Kyodo News Agency.

The organization was established in 1972 when Japan normalized diplomatic relations with the Chinese mainland and cut "diplomatic ties" with Taiwan.

"China urged Japan to abide by principles under the 1972 Sino-Japanese Joint Statement and the promises it has made so far," Hua said. "China's stance on the Taiwan question has always been consistent and clear. We are strongly opposed to any attempt to create 'two Chinas' or 'one China, one Taiwan'".

She added that Japan "should not create new disturbances in the China-Japan relationship".

In the 1972 joint statement, Japan said it fully understood and respected the Chinese government's position that Taiwan is part of China.

In 2014, the two sides also reached a four-point consensus - which aimed to improve the ties soured by Japan's illegal purchase of China's Diaoyu Islands in 2012 - that reaffirmed the 1972 statement.

Lyu Yaodong, an expert on Japanese foreign policy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Tokyo's "petty move" in renaming the organization in Taiwan is a signal that it is trying to further improve its relationship with Taipei at the possible expense of harming ties with Beijing.

"This will not happen if Japan honestly implements the four-point consensus. However, the move reflects a lack of sincerity in Japan's efforts to ease the bilateral relationship as it has boasted," he said.

Da Zhigang, a Japanese studies researcher at the Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, said Japan is rousing the enthusiasm of Taiwan separatists by adding the names of Japan and Taiwan to the title.

"The move, which caters to Taiwan's pursuit of more international recognition, will deteriorate the current severe situation across the Taiwan Straits after US president-elect Donald Trump's call with Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen" on Dec 2, he said.
Eight months ago, Xie Ruicong had the surprise of her life when Premier Li Keqiang visited her bookstore unexpectedly.

On April 25, Li visited the Jianshan Bookstore in Kuanzhai Ancient Street, a traditional cultural hotspot in Chengdu, Sichuan province.

During his visit, Li asked Xie, the manager, about her hometown, her income and her life in Chengdu. He also quizzed her about the store's best-selling items.

"The premier asked me the meaning of Jianshan, the bookstore's name. I told him that it means 'open the door to see the mountain and lead a simple life'," Xie said, recalling that Li bought a book and two postcards, one black and white and one color. "I remember that the premier said the black-and-white postcard represented the past, while the color one represented the future."

Li's visit resulted in a swarm of visitors curious to know what he had bought. A photo of Li in the store that Xie posted on the wall was a little out of focus, but it still attracted customers. "We sold many more books in May and June than during the same period last year," she said.

Prior to his trip to the bookstore, Li visited a supermarket, where he focused on the supply and demand of agricultural goods and price fluctuations. The supermarket provides online services, such as immediate delivery, and also conducts in-store tests for pesticide residues in food, a new model that provides safe food via convenient channels, according to Li.

On Dec 5, at an event to mark the 30th anniversary of the China Privately Owned Business Association, Li evaluated the role of small private businesses in job creation and meeting diversified demand.

During his tours, Li makes a point of visiting small stores, and although the visits may seem insignificant, they act as on-the-spot surveys that provide him with grassroots information about local business environments, incomes and net profits, the tax burden and market vitality, said Xia Xueluan, a visiting professor of sociology at Sanya University, Hainan province.

Last month, when Li visited Shanghai to chair a meeting on government processes in the city, he praised the local government's treatment of two stores as an example of a flexible approach to local problems.

Last year, the stores were issued with closure orders because they were operating out of rented premises designated as unsuitable for commercial purposes. Online media outlets reported on the story and when the local government understood the stores' value to the community, it found a way of allowing them to continue to operate.

"Some stores, run by grassroots people with a small amount of money, enjoy good public reputations and meet a number of demands," Li told the delegates.
Innovation and mass entrepreneurship were the subjects discussed most frequently at executive meetings of the State Council this year, as the central government sought to promote the national strategy to upgrade China's industrial structure and boost business startups.

The subjects were discussed 11 times at executive meetings of the State Council, China's Cabinet - far more than poverty relief, infrastructure, education and healthcare. The four other main areas of discussion were streamlining administrative services, local government inspections, industrial upgrades and the revision of regulations.

By Sunday, the State Council had discussed and promulgated decisions on 104 topics at 38 executive meetings presided over by Premier Li Keqiang, according to the central government's official website. Innovation and entrepreneurship accounted for more than 10 percent of the topics discussed by the body.

The expansion of Innovation Demonstration Zones are a good example of the government's commitment to the cause. At an executive meeting on March 30, the central government decided to establish three new zones - one in each of the provinces of Henan, Shandong and Liaoning - bringing the number to 14 nationwide.

The zones follow in the footsteps of the Zhongguancun National Demonstration Zone, which was established in 2009 as a pilot program to boost high-technology and its integration with business startups. On June 8, the State Council approved the establishment of two more demonstration zones, in Fujian and Anhui provinces, while the southwestern municipality of Chongqing was added to the list in August.

A meeting of the executive on Sept 1 gave the green light to plans to build Beijing into a national center for innovative sciences and technologies.

Other agendas to promote innovation and mass entrepreneurship included areas such as the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, the integration of the internet with the logistics industry and financial support for high-tech companies.

Innovation and mass entrepreneurship have become priorities for Li, who attended the country's first National Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation Week in Beijing last year and a related event in Shenzhen, an industrial hub in Guangdong province, in October.

According to the organizational law of the State Council, executive meetings are convened once a week to decide major issues. Chaired by the premier, the meetings usually happen on Wednesdays and are attended by vice-premiers, State councilors and the secretary-general of the State Council. Officials from relevant government departments are also invited if necessary.

Based on documents posted on the government's website, this year, the executive meetings focused on improving people's livelihoods, the transformation of government functions and prioritization of public services, deeper economic reform, boosting economic growth and structural adjustments. Among the 104 topics discussed, 28 focused on ways to raise living standards, such as improving the transportation infrastructure in rural areas.
Members of China Standby Peacekeeping Police Force attend the force's founding ceremony in Dongying, East China's Shandong province, Dec 22, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

For members of China's first standby police force of UN peacekeeping missions, English proficiency plays as important role as other skills.

With an average age of 27, the force consists of more than 300 members, who are selected from border control forces around the country. Among them, 56 have experiences of conducting peacekeeping missions.

Lyu Yanchen, selected for an anti-riot command position, said his task requires him to excel at management, communication and coordination in addition to basic physical abilities and English skills.

Bai Haitao, 41, told PLA Daily that the training is intensive: "I feel tired as I am relatively old in the force. Besides, the requirement to learn English language for peacekeeping work is highly demanding. I often do the homework until 1 am and get up again at 5 am to study."

The standby peacekeeping police force was set up in Dongying, Shandong province, last week. It is divided into two subordinate anti-riot forces.

Members of the first anti-riot force passed assessments by the UN in October. The second force is preparing for the assessments.

This is China's first standby police force for UN peacekeeping missions, after President Xi Jinping told the United Nations General Assembly on Sept 28, 2015 that China would contribute 8,000 troops for UN standby peacekeeping force.

China started sending military observers to UN peacekeeping missions in 1990. The country currently has over 2,600 peacekeeping personnel, including 173 police officers, 30 military experts and over 2,400 troops, involved in 10 UN peacekeeping operations, making it the largest contributor of personnel to UN peacekeeping forces among the five permanent members UN Security Council.

The UN does not have its own military force, and it depends on members states. More than 118,000 military, police and civilian personnel are currently serving in 16 peacekeeping operations around the world led by the UN as of July 31, 2016.

The peacekeeping troops are tasked with protecting civilians, UN staff and humanitarian workers, conducting patrols and providing security escorts.
A room for short-term home rental is ready to welcome customers in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province, December 24, 2016. [Photo/VCG]

After tighter regulations on car-hailing apps, regulators are making the Airbnb-style homestay business their latest booming internet-related target.

Zhejiang province in East China became the first provincial government to rein in the burgeoning industry, which will be worth an estimated 100 million yuan ($14.4 million) in 2017 according to a report by consulting firm iResearch.

The coastal province, home to China's internet magnet Alibaba and known for its entrepreneurial environment, will restrict the size of houses that are used in the Airbnb-style business and raise security standards.

A four-story, 15-room and 800-square meter house is the maximum size that can be used for a homestay, according to the new measure that will take effect next month.

Popular home-sharing network Airbnb has been taking customers from hotels globally by connecting landlords of affordable short-stay housing to vacationers who can then mingle with locals, a perk they seldom get in hotels.

The Chinese version, Tujia, is also riding on the same momentum, mainly catering to customers in China. In summer it bought the short-term home rental site Mayi.com. In October Tujia consolidated its status by reaching an agreement with Ctrip and Qunar to merge the vacation home rental businesses of the two Chinese online travel services.

The way this ineligible market attracted attention of regulators was reminiscent of car-hailing apps. In October mega cities including Beijing and Shanghai downsized eligible drivers working for car-hailing apps to locals whose cars have locally registered plates.

Fast-growing, tech-savvy clientele eschew traditional businesses, which could eventually lead to a revolution by making the old industry smart and internet-connected.
An aerial view shows Beipan River bridge rising high above the valley in Guizhou.[Photo/CCTV]

Infographic: Bridging the past and the present

Pictures: From the oldest to the longestChinas most famous bridges

Soaring 565 meters above a river, Beipan River bridge in Guizhou opened to traffic on Thursday, making it the world's highest bridge, CCTV reported.

With a height equivalent to a 200-storey building, the structure spanning the Beipan River Valley, is part of a highway linking Hangzhou city in East China's Zhejiang province and Ruili city in Guizhou's neighboring Yunnan province.

The bridge cuts travel time from Liupanshui in Guizhou to Xuanwei in Yunnan from around five hours to less than two.

The construction of the 1,341-meter-long cable-stayed suspension bridge started in 2013, costing about 1 billion yuan (about $150 million).
A new online hospital catering to women and children was launched in Chengdu, Sichuan province, on Wednesday.

The West China Women and Children Online Hospital of Sichuan University will partner with the Chengdu-based West China Second University Hospital to offer online medical services for patients from all parts of the country, according to Zhang Lin, president of the latter university.

West China Second University Hospital is the largest medical institution for women and children in Southwest China.

Two months ago, the Sichuan Provincial Health and Family Planning Commission signed an agreement for construction of an online hospital in Chengdu with We Doctor, an online medical service provider in China.

Shen Ji, head of the commission, said the hospital will use the internet to help people who lack access to qualified medical services in the less developed areas in Sichuan.

A total of 88 counties in the province suffer from a severe shortage of medical resources, but thanks to the new hospital, patients in these counties can now seek out medical consultations from renowned doctors in Chengdus major hospitals as well as other parts of China, Shen said.

Sichuan's Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture, which has the largest ethnic Yi population in China, is one of the least developed areas in the province. It is expected to benefit most from the hospital.

To access the service, residents need only visit a local rural clinic when they are sick. The results of their checkups will then be sent to the online hospital, where doctors will analyze the results and diagnose patients via online video conferencing.
BEIJING -- Chinese President Xi Jinping has praised a group of middle school students for their efforts in satellite design and said he was pleased with their passion and bravery in scientific exploration.

Xi made the remarks in a letter written to a group of students from Beijing's Bayi School Saturday. A small satellite designed and developed by them was launched Wednesday.

Xi said he was very pleased to know that the satellite designed by the students would be launched and called on them to become the pillars of the country.
The deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission Wang Jianping is pictured in Beijing, Oct 20, 2010. [Photo/IC]

Defense Ministry spokesperson confirmed on Thursday that the deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, Wang Jianping, was currently investigated by the military prosecutors for taking bribes.

Wang, 63, is the first serving general to fall from grace since president Xi Jinping began the anti-graft campaign in the military, according to public record.

"The military prosecutors has already been looking into his case," said ministry spokesperson Yang Yujun. "The People's Liberation Army has always upheld governing the army strictly and according to law. It would continue to carry forward the anti-graft effort, and in recent years, the military has caught many major cases."

The last three generals arrested for corruption were former vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission Xu Caihou, Guo Boxiong and former political commissar of PLA Air Force Tian Xiusi. They were all retired at the time of arrest.

Wang joined service in 1969 and spent close to 20 years in the army, according to his resume. He later transferred to the Chinese Armed Police Force in 1996 and was finally promoted to the general rank in 2014.
SHANGHAI -- President Xi Jinping has offered congratulations on the publication of the Dacihai, a grand-scale Chinese dictionary.

In a letter read at a symposium in Shanghai Thursday, marking the publication, Xi also gave his congratulations on the 80th anniversary of the publication of the Cihai, a large-scale dictionary on which the Dacihai is based.

The two dictionaries, which fully embody the excellent fruits of human civilization and systematically display the abundant achievements of Chinese civilization, have enriched people's spiritual life and brought them spiritual strength, Xi said in the letter.

While expressing his regards for the experts, scholars and comrades who contributed to the two projects, Xi called for greater belief in Chinese culture and persistent work to create masterpieces.

More should be done to foster and put into practice socialist core values, improve the country's cultural soft power and make China a socialist culture power, Xi said.

This could be achieved through major cultural projects of high quality, he said.

First published in Shanghai in 1936, the Cihai has been through six editions. The Dacihai, which has been gradually released since 2003, passed the national inspection and approval process in September this year.
JINAN -- Su Rong, former vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, stood trial Thursday on charges of corruption at a court in East China's Shandong province.

Su is charged with accepting a large amount in bribes and abuse of power that caused great losses for the state.

Prosecutors allege that Su took advantage of various official positions to offer business favors and promotions to groups and individuals, accepting bribes worth about 110 million yuan ($15.8 million) either personally or through others from 2002 to 2014.

He is also accused of holding a large amount of property from unidentified sources. Su's property and expenditures exceeded his legal income, and he could not explain how he obtained assets worth more than 80 million yuan.

Su pleaded guilty to his crimes and expressed remorse during the trial.

More than 100 people, including representatives of local legislators, political advisors, journalists and members of the public were present at the open trial.

The ruling will be announced at a later date.
BEIJING -- China's top political advisor on Thursday urged Catholics to run their church independently and better integrate it into society.

Yu Zhengsheng, chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, made the remarks when meeting with the new leaders of Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and Bishops Conference of Catholic Church of China after their latest national congresses concluded on Thursday.

The church should adhere to the principles of self-administration, run religious affairs independently and guide believers to adhere to the sinicization path of the religion, Yu said.
HEFEI -- Xu Gang, former vice governor of the Southeast China's Fujian province, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for corruption on Thursday.

Xu's personal assets worth two million yuan ($288,000) will be confiscated and his illegal gains turned over to the state, according to the ruling made by Hefei City Intermediate People's Court.

The court said Xu took advantage of various posts from 2002 to 2014 to seek benefits for others. He accepted bribes worth over 19.8 million yuan, personally or via his wife and daughter.

The court showed leniency as Xu confessed to his crimes, including details not previously known to investigators, expressed remorse and voluntarily returned his illegal gains.
HOHHOT -- Authorities in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region have made a plan to preserve their stretch of the Great Wall.

The plan includes specific protection measures on how to protect key sections and their environment and how to manage visitors.

It also asks local governments to "basically solve protection difficulties by 2020."

The Great Wall was built between the third century BC and the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The existing sections mostly date from the Ming era, with the Ming wall measuring over 8,800 kilometers.

In 2006, a regulation on Great Wall protection was released, but the sheer size of the structure posed a challenge. Statistics show that less than 10 percent of the wall is considered well-preserved, while about 30 percent has disappeared.

Inner Mongolia boasts a 7,570-km stretch, or 35 percent, of the Great Wall, spanning 11 historical periods.
BEIJING -- China on Thursday voiced firm opposition to Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada's visit to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine, saying China will lodge solemn representation to Japan on the issue.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying announced the opposition at a daily press briefing.

Hua said that it was the ultimate irony that Inada on Thursday morning visited the war shrine, which honors 14 Class-A convicted war criminals among 2.5 million Japanese war dead from WWII, only a day after her visit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Pearl Harbor, which has been dubbed by Tokyo as a "tour of reconciliation."

Some reports suggested that Abe's recent visit to Pearl Harbor is no more than a political show aiming to strengthen the Japanese-US alliance.

Other than offering his "sincere and everlasting condolences" to the souls of the Americans killed by troops of the Japanese imperial empire, Abe issued no apology.

Hua said Inada's move once again reflected that a number of Japanese people were being bullheaded by straying from the historical truth, and that such activities would only make the international community more cautious toward Japan.

"We once again urge Japanese leaders to squarely face and deeply reflect upon the history of invasion," said Hua, calling on Japan to deal with issues regarding its attitude toward shouldering responsibility, both for history and the future.

Noting that a man cannot survive without credit, Hua urged Japan to fulfill its promises and commitment, and sincerely listen to the voice of justice from its domestic society and the international community.

The notorious Tokyo war shrine is regarded as a symbol of past Japanese militarism.

Hua on Tuesday said that Japan can never turn the page without reconciliation with countries in Asia, including China.

China was one of the main regions to suffer in the Asia-Pacific during the World Anti-Fascist War, with the Chinese people making major contributions to the victory.

Chinese military and civilian casualties totaled approximately 35 million, accounting for one-third of all deaths in WWII.
BEIJING -- Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Yang Yujun on Thursday voiced the Chinese armed forces' strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.

During his recent visit to Hawaii, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not show the slightest remorse, but used the word "brave" to refer to Japanese military officers who died in the Pearl Harbor attack, said Yang at a regular press briefing.

Abe even mentioned the Japanese empire in his speech, Yang said, adding that all peace-loving people across the world should be on a high alert against such words and deeds.

"The aggression launched by Japanese militarism brought calamities to the people in related regions and countries. History is a mirror. There is no future if one cannot face the past sincerely," he said.

The notorious Tokyo war shrine, which honors 14 Class-A convicted war criminals among 2.5 million Japanese war dead from the WWII, is regarded as a symbol of the past Japanese militarism.
BEIJING -- China will maintain fiscal support for supply-side structural reform next year, according to the Ministry of Finance (MOF) on Thursday.

The MOF will help cutting industrial capacity, reducing the housing inventory, lowering leverage and cutting corporate costs, said a statement released after a meeting chaired by Finance Minister Xiao Jie.

Redundancies and loss-making "zombie companies" were highlighted in the statement.

The meeting agreed on support for the real economy, agricultural reform, poverty alleviation, technological innovation and manufacturing upgrades in 2017.

The MOF reiterated China's proactive fiscal policy and said it will expand expenditure to help hold the economy within a reasonable range.

More tax breaks and less administrative fees will be extended for businesses, the statement said.

Other issues discussed included taxation reforms, management of local government debt and international cooperation.
Turkey and Russia have agreed to a cease-fire plan for all of Syria that was expected to come into force at mid-night Wednesday, Turkish state media said on Wednesday, as Ankara and Moscow tighten cooperation to find an end to the civil war.

The plan was to expand to the whole country a cease-fire that was brokered by Turkey and Russia earlier this month in the city of Aleppo to allow for the evacuation of civilians, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

But in a speech in Ankara following the report, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made no reference to the plan, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he could not answer questions on an issue "about which I don't have enough information".
Province using song and dance to share local charm with the world

"I have tried the maglev trains in Shanghai and some other cities, but Changsha's maglev train is the quietest and the most stable," Richard Daniel Vegh, from Canada, said during his journey to Changsha, capital city of Hunan province.

"I also learned that Hunan is a major province for rail transport technology and equipment, really impressive," Vegh said.

This happened on Dec 3 during Vegh's visit to Changsha in an activity themed "I Love Changsha - Foreign Friends' Tour in Changsha", which was held by the Changsha city government and invited more than 60 foreign visitors from around the world and dozens of media representatives.

The foreigners also paid a visit to the Longping Rice Museum and the Changsha Jiandu Museum, a gathering hall of historical bamboo scripts and artifacts.

A poetry recital was held as a cultural exchange between Chinese and foreign poets and fans. The foreign visitors then took part in the 2016 citizen concert.

In recent years, Changsha has been working to become an international metropolis and establish friendly and cooperative relations with 43 cities around the world, said Li Chunqiu, deputy mayor of Changsha.

A series of "Happy Changsha"-themed activities will strengthen cultural exchanges and cooperation with other countries, and cast a new light on Changsha's happy mountains, rivers, islets and the city, Li said.

The city and Hunan province also highlighted cultural exportation around the world.

In recent years, the Hunan Provincial Department of Culture organized a series of large-scale, distinctive cultural exchange activities with prominent Hunan style.

At the beginning of 2016, Hunan held an exhibition with the theme "Here is Hunan: Hunan culture in the United Nations" at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

The exhibition showcased the beautiful mountains, folk culture and urban culture of Hunan via pictures, text, video and live performances.

During the 2016 Spring Festival, Hunan sent four groups of 103 visiting performers to Indonesia, the United States, Iraq, Jordan, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea and South Africa.

According to a government official in Hunan, a project named "Happy Spring Festival" in 2017 will send performers from the Hunan Province Song & Dance Theater, the Changsha Song & Dance Theater and other performance institutes to the US, South Korea, Tunisia, Mauritania, Thailand, and other countries and regions during Spring Festival.

The project will demonstrate Hunan culture by singing the sounds of Hunan and showcasing Hunan's unique charm.

Yan Fuchu, deputy director of the Hunan Provincial Department of Culture, said that the next five years will see Hunan integrate cultural resources all over the province with consideration of foreign visitors' tastes.

In this way, Hunan will promote its local cultural goals to let foreign culture in, so as to strengthen cultural exchanges at home and abroad, Yan said.

To date, 12 European countries have set up visa centers in Changsha.

Zheng Lihu, director of the Changsha Overseas and Foreign Affairs Office, said in the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20) that more visa centers will be set up in the Hunan capital.

"Changsha will tie knots with more foreign cities to build sister city relations with them," he said.

fengzhiwei@chinadialy.com.cn

Hunan's artists dance at a party with the audience for whom they performed traditional Chinese art in Ethiopia during the Spring Festival in 2016. Photos Provided To China Daily Some 60 foreigners take part in "I Love ChangshaForeign Friends' Tour in Changsha", a key program under the "Happy Changsha" project. Khal Imanchuk Olena, an Ukrainian woman living in Changsha for more than nine years, deliver a speech at a "Happy Changsha" event. Changsha primary school students recite a poem from The Book of Songs, the first anthology of verses in China, for foreign audiences during a "Happy Changsha" event.

(China Daily 12/29/2016 page15)
Poon choi, the main dish on Cantonese dinner tables on the eve of Chinese New Year. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

On the eve of Chinese New Year, the have-must dish on every Cantonese dinner table is the magnificent and auspicious poon choi, which contains up to 20 luxury ingredients served in a big wooden or claypot bowl. The dish literally translates to "basin feast" because the dish was originally served in a washbasin.

It was commonly believed that the dish was invented during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) to serve a young emperor when he and his army fled to the area around Guangdong province and Hong Kong. To treat them, local villagers cooked all the best food available and placed them in big washbasins for sharing.

With all the delicacies served together in a round container, the dish fosters auspicious meanings of unity and prosperity, and is served during traditional holidays and celebrations.

Cooking the dish is tedious work; it can take up to four days, including time spent preparing the ingredients. Each ingredient needs to be cooked separately, and then layered in a container and cooked again slowly with gravy.

Eating poon choi on Chinese New Year's eve is a family tradition, especially in the Cantonese-speaking regions in South China. Although today many families skip the tedious work, they don't skip the food, whether they eat out or have it delivered to their home.

We had a brief conversation with Cheng Chi Keung, executive Chinese chef at Yue, the Chinese restaurant at Sheraton Grand Beijing Dongcheng Hotel, to get to know the dish a bit more on a personal level.

A Hong Kong native, the 58-year-old Cheng has worked in Beijing for 27 years and calls himself an "old Beijinger". No matter how busy he is, he cooks this dish for his family in Hong Kong every year.
By Yang Min(Chinadaily.com.cn)

Updated: 2016-12-29

China's banking watchdog has approved the launch of Northeast Chinas first private bank, in a move to better serve the real economy and help rejuvenate the old Northeast China Industrial Base.

A statement from Rongsheng Real Estate Development Co Ltd (Rongsheng)  a real estate developer focusing on medium-sized cities across China  claimed that Rongsheng, together with another four Shenyang-based business partners had received the green light from the China Banking Regulatory Commission on Dec 23 to set up a private bank in Shenyang, capital city of Northeast Chinas Liaoning province.

The new bank, named Liaoning Zhenxing Bank, has registered capital of 2 billion yuan ($288.1 million). A Shenyang-based subsidiary of Rongsheng is the largest shareholder of Liaoning Zhenxing Bank, which holds 30 percent of its shares; and it is followed by Shenyang Sunhope Technology Co Ltd, which has a 28 percent share in the bank.

The establishment of Liaoning Zhenxing Bank is in line with Chinas strategy on the rejuvenation of the Northeast China Industrial Base. This November, the State Council released a document that requires the establishment of at least one private bank in Northeast China before June 2017, in a bid to encourage private capital into the banking sector and provide better financial services for the real economy in the northeastern region.
Taiwan's main opposition Democratic Progressive Party, DPP, Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen speaks during a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, April 15, 2015. [Photo/IC]

It is impossible for Taiwan to benefit from normal relations with the mainland while the leader on the island continues to beat about the bush over acknowledging the 1992 Consensus on one China.

Recognizing the Consensus is not a complex problem that Tsai Ing-wen needs to scratch her head over in search of an answer. Yet that is what she has been doing rather than simply acknowledging it.

However, Tsai's prevaricating and political tricks, such as her phone call to US president-elect Donald Trump, indicate she is wishing to chart a course that will navigate the island on a safe route to both prosperity and "independence".

Yet the reiteration of the mainland's immutable stance that the island is part of one China by the spokesman of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council on Wednesday, again highlights the truth that Tsai and those who support her position are deluding themselves by plotting a course to a fool's paradise on an island that can only exist in their imaginations.

The spokesman made it quite clear that the 1992 Consensus is the political foundation for both sides of the Straits to develop good and peaceful relations. It is on this foundation that both sides have built up their good relations since 2008. It is only since Tsai became the leader on the island in May that cross-Straits relations have plunged into turmoil with her equivocating over the Consensus.

The US National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 signed by US President Barack Obama includes for the first time a provision on high-level military exchanges with Taiwan. That may cause some trouble in Sino-US relations, but it is not a guarantee Tsai can count on it to reach her destination if she strays from the road of one China.

It is naive for Tsai to believe she can depend on the support of the United States or any other country to realize her dream of "independence". Indeed, the island's official ties with other economies will only suffer if she persists on the course she is taking.

She should never underestimate the mainland's determination to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Neither should she overestimate the support she will get from the US for any attempt to split the island from China.

If she continues to believe that she can gain Taiwan's de facto status as an independent nation by circumventing the 1992 Consensus, she will find herself being deserted by the people on the island as a traitor to their interests and despised by the people on the mainland as an enemy.
Two girls dressed as Santa Claus dance in a shopping mall in Beijing on the night of Dec 24, 2016. Although Christmas is not traditionally celebrated in China, shopping malls welcome the festival by organizing activities to attract shoppers and boost year-end sales. [Photo/Asianewsphoto]

"All Chinese people should cherish our traditions and boycott foreign festivals!" On Christmas Day, groups of female college students wearing traditional clothes appeared at several tourist sites in Chengdu, South China's Sichuan province, calling for people to boycott Christmas. Beijing News comments:

Every December, there are some people that call on others to boycott Christmas. They protest on the streets and some of the more radical ones even disturb the normal operations of shops. These people have one reason in common for their actions, they regard Christmas as a foreign festival and when Chinese celebrate it that's a kind of cultural invasion.

It seems these people are rather ignorant. They do not know that New Year is a foreign festival and they forget the calendar we currently use originated in the West, too. That's not a cultural invasion; instead, that's cultural interaction between the East and the West.

From the other point of view, many foreigners celebrate Chinese Lunar New Year, too, and rarely do we see anyone calling for the celebration to be boycotted.

Some people argue that Christmas is a religious festival. Not in China. Whatever others think, Chinese people make Christmas into a carnival and celebrate it by drinking, holding parties, and gathering with friends. Several surveys show that a majority of people celebrating Christmas do not know what the festival is about. All they want is an excuse to relax and there is no need to boycott that.

More importantly, traditional Chinese festivals are often a burden for many adults. For example, in order to celebrate Spring Festival, many travel thousands of kilometers back to their hometowns. Many young people working in metropolises find they are even more tired after such festivals, but other occasions such as Christmas allow people to relax and have a good time.
LUO JIE/CHINA DAILY

Cao Dewang, chairman and founder of Fuyao Glass Industry Group in Southeast China's Fujian province, recently complained that the tax rates in China are higher than in the United States. The difference in corporate taxes in China and the US is owing to their different taxation structures. China's taxation mainly consists of indirect taxes on enterprises, while the US gets its tax revenues mainly from direct taxes imposed on individuals. That's why enterprises feel the tax burden in China is heavier.

Many have accused Cao of "running away" from the country. But since many Chinese enterprises have invested in foreign countries (or are preparing to do so), it is unfair to describe Cao's foreign investment abroad as an act of "running away" from the country, especially 65 percent of his company's market is in China.

Cao has mentioned the comparatively low taxation in the US, but he has also said the cost of human resources is higher in the US. The labor cost in China may still be relatively low but it is increasing, and the country faces the challenge of an aging population, which is expected to intensify in the future. This means China's demographic dividends are diminishing. Cao's complaint should therefore prompt the authorities to deepen the taxation structure reform.

Yet it is an exaggeration to say China imposes a very high tax rate which makes enterprises difficult to survive without evading taxes. It is difficult to say whether a certain rate of tax is high or low. Even if the macroscopic tax burden is only 1 percent, one can hardly say it is low if the taxation authorities fail to provide corresponding public services. Conversely, even if the macroscopic tax burden is 40 percent or more, one cannot say it is heavy if the government provides a sound social security system and high-quality public services. By simply comparing the tax rates in China and the US, without taking public services into account, we can only show the relative tax levels, not whether the public accepts them.

Generally speaking, people tend to accept high-level taxation if a healthy percentage of the tax revenues is used to strengthen or improve public services. But other factors, too, influence the macroscopic taxation level, such as a country's ethnic composition, history and tradition.

In 2014, China's capital export exceeded capital import, making it a net exporter of capital. Fuyao Glass went global about two decades ago, which is more sensitive to the tax differences between China and other countries. And since the international tax competition is expected to further intensify, China should review its tax structure from an international perspective.

The World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers recently issued a report, titled Paying Tax 2017, saying China's overall tax rate is comparatively high among the 190 surveyed economies based on statistics till 2014. Besides, US President-elect Donald Trump is likely to cut taxes after taking office on Jan 20. So China should have a corresponding policy to cope with this change.

Although China has implemented a series of measures over the past two years to cut taxes, it needs to further reduce levies and administrative charges to ease the burden of enterprises, which cannot be done by only changing the taxation structure.

Reducing the ratio of indirect taxes will help enterprises develop in China, but taxation is not the only important factor for enterprises. For enterprises, the most significant factor is the after-tax return on investment, which is influenced not only by taxation, but also the market, production cost and other factors. This should remind the authorities to improve public services, as it will help improve China's business environment.

The author is a research fellow at the National Academy of Economic Strategy affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
A doctor is picking up the medicine.[Photo/Xinhua]

A small box of medicines to treat coryza costs 129 yuan ($18.6). If you think the price is not high, consider this: Of that amount, a medicine salesperson pays a kickback of 45 yuan to the doctor so that he/she prescribes it to patients.

This is part of the facts to emerge from an investigation by China Central TV journalists in a reputable hospital in Shanghai. The journalists stayed in the hospital for days and also video-recorded how medicine salespersons bribed doctors.

As soon as the news broke out, the National Health and Family Planning Commission said it would ask the local health authorities to investigate the case and take measures to prevent the spread of bribery. Later, the Shanghai Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission suspended the three doctors who were caught on camera taking bribes, and said it will strengthen the supervision of doctors.

Strengthened supervision is necessary, because doctors have the absolute say in the treatment of diseases. If doctors use this power to treat diseases without supervision and if they prescribe medicines according to their interests, not the patients' needs, they will increase the monetary burden of patients and harm their health.

Yet supervision alone is not enough. The average salary doctors get is less than what they deserve given the time and energy they put in to earn a medical degree, not to mention specialization in a field.

The prescription fee for public hospitals is strictly controlled: About 14 yuan for an experienced doctor in Beijing, just enough to buy a box of chewing gum. And since medical resources are rather rare, illegal agencies make appointments with doctors to "resell" them for as high as 1,000 yuan per appointment. When doctors have to sell labor at an unreasonably low price and watch illegal agencies making profit, why will they not try to increase their incomes?

We are confident that the National Health and Family Planning Commission will take effective measures to curb corruption in hospitals. But if the commission only strengthens supervision without promoting medical reform and raising doctors' salaries, we may face a shortage of good doctors as few would agree to do the risky, exhausting but poorly-paying job.

In fact, we may be staring at such a scenario, as the minimum cut-off score for admission to medical colleges fell in 2015 and 2016 because of dropping applicant numbers.

Fortunately, the country's top leadership has noticed this. A guideline on medical reform, which the State Council, or China's Cabinet, issued in March said the salaries of medical staff should be raised and the pioneering hospitals were already working on the new plan.

Hopefully, the reform will be expedited and doctors will be treated more fairly.

The author is a writer with China Daily.

zhangzhouxiang@chinadaily.com.cn
US President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lay wreaths at the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii on Dec 27, 2016. Carolyn Kaster / AP

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Barack Obama stood side by side at Pearl Harbor on Tuesday, talking about reconciliation between the World War II foes and their growing postwar security alliance. Abe hopes his visit to Pear Harbor in Hawaii will resolve the historical issue, at least between the United States and Japan.

In his nearly 17-minute speech, Abe, to no one's surprise, offered no apology for the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941, which drew a then reluctant US into World War II. Without an apology, the entire Abe speech, however emotional it was made by an interpreter, sounded hollow in essence. The speech only signaled that the sensitive but critical historical issue between Japan and the US is still unsolved.

Abe had indicated earlier that he would not have to offer an apology because Obama did not offer one in May when he visited Hiroshima, one of the two Japanese cities where the US dropped atomic bombs in August 1945.

When I pressed US State Department spokesman Mark Toner on the issue on Tuesday afternoon, he dodged my questions, refusing to say whether it's appropriate for Abe to compare the two historical issues, whether the US and Japan have settled the historical issue as Abe claimed or whether the US will still seek an apology from future Japanese leaders for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Bilateral ties between Japan and the US were dealt a blow when US president-elect Donald Trump declared he would scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement after he enters the White House. Trump has also said that he does not want the US to foot the bill for Japan's security. So, the emphasis by Abe and Obama on the alliance is aimed at reinforcing the relationship before Trump takes office on Jan 20.

The reason that Abe did not and would not offer an apology is simple. Right-wing Japanese groups, Abe's core supporters for a long time, don't want him to.

Hundreds of thousands of US soldiers died during World War II. The Hacksaw Ridge, a biographical film still running theaters both in the US and China, uses the story of Desmond Doss, an American pacifist combat medic, to show some of the sacrifices the US made to eventually defeat the Japanese fascists.

But the number of Americans who died fighting Japanese forces was much smaller than the number of people killed by the invading Imperial Japanese Army in China and other Asian countries .

Abe is notorious for his revisionist view on Japan's wartime past. That's why in an open letter to Abe last year, more than 200 Western scholars, including Ezra Vogel of Harvard University, urged him to face squarely Japan's wartime past.

But the adamant Abe refused the Republic of Korea's request in October to send letters of apology to former "comfort women", a euphemism for women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army. Just a few days ago, some former "comfort women" protested against a deal between Japan and the ROK on the issue, saying it does not cover those women from other countries.

As many as 200,000 young women from Korea, China, the Philippines, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and East Timor were kidnapped by Japanese soldiers during the war years and forced into sexual slavery.

While Abe tried to tell the world on Tuesday to not mention the infamous part of Japan's history, many Chinese are waiting to see whether he visits the Nanjing Massacre Museum to offer both "everlasting condolences" he mentioned on Tuesday at Pearl Harbor and a sincere apology.

It is puzzling why it is so hard for Abe to just say the word "apologize" to seek the forgiveness of nations and people that were victims of Japanese atrocities. This is even more surprising when one considers Germany's postwar reconciliation with other nations.

The author is deputy editor of China Daily USA. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
Xiamen's special economic zone is now 35 years old.

Approved as one of the first special economic zones in China, the Xiamen SEZ broke ground in 1981 in the Huli district and was expanded to cover the entire Xiamen Island and Gulangyu Island in 1984.

After that the SEZ never looked back. It integrated more land to pilot new investment and trade policies, and was given more options for economic planning to unleash its growth potential.

Over the years Xiamen's urban area has expanded by a factor of seven, and three of its important economic indicators - regional GDP, financial revenue and disposable personal income - have grown steadily.

On a yearly basis, Xiamen's regional GDP grew at an average of 16.4 percent, financial revenue at 20.4 percent, and disposable personal income at 15.1 percent for urban residents and 13.5 percent for rural residents.

To commemorate the tremendous progress, Xiamen's Party and government officials met with local business leaders on Dec 26 to review the achievements of the Xiamen SEZ over the past decades in pursuit of modern development, and to mobilize continued efforts in the future.
US Secretary of State John Kerry delivers remarks on Middle East peace at the Department of State in Washington, US on December 28, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday said Israel's building of settlements on occupied land was jeopardizing Middle East peace, voicing unusually frank frustration with America's longtime ally weeks before he is due to leave office.

In a swiftly issued statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Kerry of bias. He said Israel did not need to be lectured to by foreign leaders and looked forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to pursue more pro-Israeli policies.

In a 70-minute speech, Kerry said Israel "will never have true peace" with the Arab world if it does not reach an accord based on Israelis and Palestinians living in their own states.

Kerry's remarks, and Netanyahu's reply, marked the closing chapter of a bitter US-Israeli relationship during President Barack Obama's administration over differences on settlement-building and the Iran nuclear deal signed last year.

Ties reached a low point last Friday when Washington cleared the way for a UN resolution that demanded an end to Israeli settlement building, prompting Israeli government officials to direct harsh attacks against Obama and Kerry.

"Despite our best efforts over the years, the two-state solution is now in serious jeopardy," Kerry said at the State Department. "We cannot, in good conscience, do nothing, and say nothing, when we see the hope of peace slipping away."
UN Secretary-GeneralBan Ki-moon(C, front) is seen during a meeting held by theUnited NationsSecurity Council to pay tribute to him at the UN headquarters in New York, Dec 14, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

UNITED NATIONS -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, after racking up the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has been lavished with praise in the last days of his 10-year tenure although he has been also criticized on other fronts.

The 72-year old former foreign minister of South Korea steps down Dec 31, after serving the maximum two terms of five years each. He will be replaced by a former prime minister of Portugal, Antonio Guterres, 67, who headed the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) for 10 years, ending last year.

Ban's departure does not necessarily mean his disappearance.

It is widely speculated he may be the next president of South Korea and only the other day Ban indicated he will consider upon retirement involvement in South Korea politics which he described as in "turmoil" after impeachment of scandal-wracked President Park Geun-hye earlier this month.

The 193-member UN General Assembly and the 15-nation UN Security Council recently passed resolutions honoring his work. Representatives of regional organizations and member states lauded his tenure.

Ambassador Maythong Thammavongsa of Laos, speaking on behalf of Asian and Pacific countries in the Assembly, praised Ban as a "secretary-general who has displayed such great professional and personal qualities and who has contributed, through many initiatives that have been welcomed by all, to helping the Organization to make progress towards modernization and democratization."

The praise also was extensive outside UN Headquarters, with personal congratulations ringing from leaders such as US President Barack Obama to Mayor Bill De Blasio of the City of New York, UN Headquarters host city, who proclaimed Dec. 13, 2016 as "Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Day."

The UN chief was widely praised more inside UN headquarters than he was afield where his ratings were mixed.

"The recent outpouring of praise for Ban is well intentioned but rather excessive," Richard Gowan, UN expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Xinhua News Agency last week. "Ban certainly deserves credit for his hard work, and his commitment to fighting climate change in particular."

The Paris accord calls for limiting the global temperature rise this century to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Also, the 17 SDGs that nations agreed to in 2015, under Ban's stewardship, seek to "leave no one behind" in sustainable development by 2030.

Gowan said Ban "struggled with significant parts of his portfolio, and was especially weak when it came to crisis management."

One such scandal was sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers, particularly in the Central African Republic (CAR).
TOKYO - Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada visited the notorious war-linked Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Thursday, a day after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned from his non-apology trip to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Inada said she put down "Defense Minister Tomomi Inada" as her name in the visitor's log of the shrine, though meanwhile claiming that she went there as "a citizen of this country."

This was Inada's first visit to the notorious shrine since she entered Abe's Cabinet in early August. Her visit to Djibouti in Africa this August prevented the hawkish figure from visiting it on the 71st anniversary of the end of World War II on Aug 15.

Inada, known for a close ally of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a supporter of revamping Japan's pacifist constitution, regularly visited the notorious Yasukuni Shrine on the Aug 15 anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II before assuming the post of defense minister.

Earlier, Masahiro Imamura, Japan's disaster reconstruction minister, visited the notorious shrine on Wednesday, shortly after Abe attended a memorial at Pearl Harbor.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Wednesday that China is firmly opposed to the visit to the Yasukuni Shrine by Masahiro Imamura.

"We once again seriously urge Japan to squarely face and deeply reflect upon the history of invasion and deal with the issue with a responsible attitude to win the trust of its Asian neighbors and the international community through concrete acts," Hua said.

The notorious Tokyo war shrine, which honors 14 Class-A convicted war criminals among 2.5 million Japanese war dead from the WWII, is regarded as a symbol of the past Japanese militarism.

The Japanese government billed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor as a tour of reconciliation. However, except to offer his "sincere and everlasting condolences" to the souls of the Americans killed by troops of the Japanese imperial empire, no apology from Abe was issued.

As many as 2,403 Americans were killed, about 20 US vessels were sunk or damaged and over 300 US aircraft were damaged or destroyed when more than 350 Japanese warplanes launched stealth attacks on Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec 7, 1941.

Japan's Asian neighbors have called on Abe to visit places in Asia which suffered heavily from Japan's barbaric militarism during the war.
MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyp Erdogan praised in a phone conversation Thursday a ceasefire agreement in Syria reached with the mediation of the two countries, the Kremlin said.

The two leaders stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to organize intra-Syrian talks in Astana, Kazakhstana, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Both sides called for further strengthening anti-terror cooperation and noted, in particular, that the latest truce does not apply to terrorist groups in the Middle East country, it added.

Earlier on Thursday, the Syrian government and the core groups of the so-called moderate opposition reached a ceasefire agreement from midnight on Friday and expressed their readiness to start intra-Syrian talks.

Putin and Erdogan earlier agreed that such talks could take place in Astana, a proposal that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the United Nations special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura have approved.

Also on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held phone talks with his Turkish, Iranian and Egyptian counterparts respectively. The Russian foreign minister discussed with them the newly-clinched truce agreement and preparations for the talks between Syria's conflicting sides in Astana.
Beijing has denounced as "greatly ironic" the Japanese defense chief's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, which came shortly after she returned from accompanying Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on his visit to Pearl Harbor.

"This not only reflects some Japanese people's obstinately wrong view of history, it is also greatly ironic given the Pearl Harbor reconciliation trip," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Thursday at a regular news conference.

Hua was asked about Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada's visit on Thursday to the shrine, which honors Japan's 2.5 million dead during World War II as well as 14 Class-A war criminals convicted of plotting and carrying out the war. She said that Beijing would lodge a protest with Tokyo.

The visit came right after Inada returned from the trip with Abe to Hawaii. The two joined US President Barack Obama on Tuesday for the first visit by a Japanese leader and a US president to Hawaii's Pearl Harbor, to commemorate the victims of the Japanese attack in 1941.

The Chinese Defense Ministry also voiced "strong dissatisfaction and opposition" to the shrine visit on Thursday.

"I also want to add that Prime Minister Abe's speech in Hawaii bore no sense of guilt but publicly called Japanese military officers 'brave', " spokesman Yang Yujun said at the ministrys regular news briefing.

During the Pearl Harbor visit, Abe did not apologize for wartime acts, but just conceded that Japan must never repeat the horrors of war again. Yang said, Peace-loving people around the world should be very alert for such remarks and actions.

South Korea's foreign and defense ministries also deplored Inada's visit, summoning Tokyo's diplomats in Seoul on Thursday.

Zhou Yongsheng, a professor of international relations at China Foreign Affairs University, said Inada's visit to the shrine right after she returned to Japan is "apparently a deliberate plan" to clarify the Japanese government's real attitude toward history.

"Abe apparently was putting on a show in Pearl Harbor for practical reasons and hiding Japan's own strategic purposes," he said, adding it is an embarrassment for Obama.

Wang Dong, a researcher of Northeast Asian studies at Peking University, said that although Inada's visit came one day after that of Japan's disaster reconstruction minister, it can be considered more serious given her position.

"After the Pearl Harbor tour, Abe is using the defense chief's shrine visit to respond to right-wing forces," he said. "The US has stepped back again and again on the issue of Japan's history, eyeing collaboration with Japan to counterbalance China. Such an attitude is sowing uncertainty in East Asia."

Contact the writers at li-xiaokun@chinadaily.com.cn
(Photo : Getty Images) A Russian hacker claimed he hacked a Russian visa center in the US to show how weak its security system is.

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A 17-year-old Russian hacker claimed that he targeted a Russian visa center in the United States over the holiday weekend to reveal how weak its systems security is.



The hacker, who goes by the name Kapustkiy on Twitter, said he considers himself a "Grey Hat Hacker," a term that refers to a hacker who does not spill people's personal information to the public. He, however, leaked the information to the center's management to prove his point.



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The breach could affect thousands of US citizens who have applied for Russian visas and those whose personal information such as names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers are stored in the database, Yahoo News reported.



The teenage hacker said he noticed errors in the database's coding language in 2014. He attempted to contact the company then, but "No one did something so I decided to do it."



He said that the company ignored his emails. "I had to do it this way this way to let them understand it," he explained.



Kapustkiy said that he has been hacking since he was 13 and that he could teach a 6-year-old kid to use the kind of tools he utilized to get into the center's database.



The Russian visa center is managed by a contractor called Invista Logistics Services (ILS). The center's lawyer, John Shoreman, clarified on Monday that the website itself was not breached and only the center's calendar was targeted.



"ILS shares a calendar of appointments with the consulate office of the Russian embassy and apparently that's where these 3,000 names came from - it came from a calendar of appointments," Shoreman said.



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(Photo : Getty Images) Digital map maker HERE is expanding to China, thanks to its new investors, namely, China's NavInfo and Tencent, and Singapore's GIC.

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Digital mapping company Here is looking to expand in China, after a consortium of two Chinese companies and Singapore's sovereign fund GIC bought a 10 percent stake from the leading German carmakers controlling the mapping firm.



The two Chinese companies investing in Here are Tencent and NavInfo, which is already engaged in the digital mapping sector. With this new agreement, German automakers BMW, Daimler, and Audi reduced their stake in Here by 10 percent.



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The news underscored the recent trend of Chinese companies increasing their hold on high technology companies in Europe. The financial terms and conditions of the collaboration have not been disclosed yet. The deal is likely to close in the first half of 2017.



Here was initially bought by German automakers from Nokia in a $2.6 billion deal in 2015 to aid the development of self-driving cars. The acquisition of the firm not only allowed cars to use highly precise mapping system but also reduced their reliance on Google's mapping system.



The company offers 3D digital road maps, which have centimeter scale precision required by self-driving cars. Here and NavInfo are likely to form a joint venture for "the creation and provisioning of high definition mapping and location services for autonomous cars to ensure a consistent, industry-leading, global solution for a joint customer base".



It is believed that Here is looking for capital infusion for the purpose of ramping up its developmental activities. The company is reported to have talked with Bosch, Google, and Microsoft for funding as well.



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(Photo : Getty Images) China is looking to boost its tourism sector through developing rustbelt regions and initiating "toilet revolution."

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China is looking to boost its tourism sector with a number of new initiatives such as developing its rustbelt regions to enhance the inflow of tourists to these areas and upgrading public toilets.



According to the newly proposed plan, the country aims for a "toilet revolution" to improve hygiene standards in China through building or renovating nearly 100,000 public toilets between 2016 and 2020. China is believed to have taken the step after receiving numerous complaints about its toilet infrastructure.



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China is looking to allocate $290 billion worth of investments in the tourism sector in four years from 2016 to 2020. The country is especially emphasizing the promotion of tourism in the northern region of the country and authorities are planning to set up "demonstration tourist bases" in the region.



It is believed that the investments will help China in increasing tourism sector's contribution to the annual economic growth to 12 percent level by 2020. Tourism sector accounted for 10.8 percent of the annual economic growth in 2015.



According to the State Council, total tourism services purchased by the country are expected to touch the $1 trillion mark by 2020. This figure translates in to more than an 11 percent annual gain in tourism revenue. China is also looking to boost private investment in the sector as well.



The Chinese government projects that domestic travelers will undertake 6.4 billion trips a year by 2020, while foreign travelers are expected to take 150 million trips. These figures are up from 4 billion trips and 134 million trips, respectively, recorded in 2015.



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(Photo : Getty Images) China has introduced on Tuesday a formal cybersecurity review system for technology products meant for both local and foreign companies.

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China is looking to make the Internet more secure and safe for its users by implementing new stricter rules. The Cybersecurity Administration of China (CAC) released a report on Tuesday suggesting that the country may soon have a formal cybersecurity review system for technology products.



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The new regulation will be applicable to both domestic and foreign firms. It is likely to have special recommendations for overseas firms.



Earlier this year, CAC had laid out the framework for a new cybersecurity law. The regulator also dismissed foreign companies' claim that such regulation will hamper competition between overseas and domestic companies.



The CAC emphasized that the new regulations are mainly meant to counter the growing risks of cyberattacks. The regulator also said that the upcoming framework will help in combating terrorism threat.



Zhao Zeliang, director general of the bureau of cybersecurity for CAC, said that all domestic and foreign companies will be required to provide key information about their products and services. A proper review would be carried out before such products and services are considered safe to be sold or installed in the country.



Zhao said, "China will do its utmost to protect the information safety of the country and its citizens." The country is fast becoming wary of foreign companies as the global risk for cyber espionage increases multifold.



However, the regulators have emphasized that the new measures are not targeted against foreign companies. The country has also called for ramping up global cooperation against cyber threats. China stated that it is committed to open and safe cyber environment.



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Tagschina, Cybersecurity Administration of China, CAC
(Photo : Getty Images) All four attackers have reportedly been killed after detonating a bomb in a Communist party office in Xinjiang.

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Chinese police officials shot dead four people who allegedly carried out an attack on a Communist party office in Karakax county, deep in southern Xinjiang's Uighur heartland, on Wednesday, the bloodiest reported attack in months in the region.



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According to state media, the four attackers drove up to a local party office in Moyu and set off an explosive that killed one person and injured three others.



The four attackers were then shot dead by police, although it is not clear whether they were killed at the scene or later that day, according to BBC.



A statement from local authorities, however, described the assault as a "terrorist attack." China tends to use the "terrorist" label for attacks mainly carried out by the Muslim majority Uighur tribe.



Xinjiang region is the homeland of the Uighurs, an ethnic minority that accuses Beijing of discriminating them and controlling their culture and religion. The area is often the center of violent anti-government unrest.



Exiled separatist Uighur groups such as the Eastern Turkestan Islamic movement are often accused by Chinese authorities of being behind the attacks in the region. However, overseas experts are skeptical of the groups' influence. Some are of the opinion that China tends to overestimate their powers as a justification for imposing tough security measures.



In November 2015, police authorities initiated a 56-day manhunt after an attack on a Colliery in Aksu killed 28 members of a "terror" group. China also banned in October Uighur parents and guardians from encouraging their children to take part of any religious activities. The government had also previously banned Muslim men from spotting beards, and women covering their heads in line with Islamic religious tradition.



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(Photo : Getty Images) President Barack Obama will hit Russia with new sanctions before he leaves office.

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The Obama administration is expected to announce several retaliatory measures against Russia as payback for meddling with the 2016 US president election.



According to US government officials who are privy to the plan, the actions included expanding sanctions and diplomatic measures, which the Obama administration deemed are proportionate reactions to a Russian campaign that went beyond the normal hacking.



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The United States government is expected to name individuals associated with a Russian disinformation campaign. Intelligence officials said that the campaign used hacked data from mostly Democratic Party organs and officials to smear Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.



Russia promised to respond to any action that the United States may decide to take over the allegations of hacking.



Maria Zakahrova, the official representative of Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that "If Washington does really take new hostile steps, they will be answered," warning that any action the United States will initiate against Russian diplomatic missions in the US will immediately bounce back on US diplomats in Russia.



In a statement on the ministry's website, Zakahrova said that Russia is already getting tired with all the lies on Russian hackers. She further said that the Obama administration is using hacking as an excuse to cover for its own failure.



The US government's announcement comes after weeks of internal deliberations on how to best respond to a Russian cyber activity that the US law enforcement agencies have watched unfold for over one year.



US government officials have been criticized by the Democrats for not taking public action against Russia as soon as they discovered the hacks. One of the reasons given is that White House officials did not want to be seen as if they were favoring Hillary Clinton.



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TagsBarack Obama, United States, Russia
(Photo : Getty Images) A Pakistani official has revealed that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will receive additional $1 billion as a soft loan from Chinese government.

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The ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is already heavily funded by the mainland, is all set to receive further financing from China, a Pakistani official said on Tuesday.



"Hopefully, agreement will be signed between the two countries in this regard in China-Pakistan Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) meeting to be held on Dec. 29 in Beijing," Ashraf Zaman, spokesman for Pakistan's National Highway Authority (NHA), told Reuters.



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The Chinese government has reportedly agreed to give Pakistan $1 billion as a soft loan for the three new road projects, which will be located on the western route of CPEC. Zaman revealed the three new roads include roads from Raikot to Thakot, Yarik to Zhob, and Basima to Khuzdar. He claimed that the deal to fund these road projects was sealed last month.



Meanwhile, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has refused to comment on the report. Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said that she had no knowledge about the upcoming meeting or the deal but noted that the economic corridor project is critical for both countries.



China lately has been on an investment overdrive in Pakistan, whom Beijing considers its closest ally in South Asia and a critical diplomatic ally to counter India's influence in the region.



Last week, the Chinese government announced that it will set up a steel factory in Pakistan's Gwadar city, which is also a part of the CPEC project. Furthermore, partial operation of the CPEC project also kicked off last month, after Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif inaugurated the revamped Gwadar port.



The CPEC is a multi-billion dollar initiative that spans across several Chinese and Pakistani cities via sprawling road, rail, and port projects. Through these infrastructures, CPEC could connect Pakistan's Gwadar port in the insurgency-hit Balochistan with China's Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province.



Although marred with controversies, most Pakistani politician and masses expect CPEC to change the economic fate of their country.



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(Photo : Getty Images) China on Wednesday denounced Japans decision to name change its de facto Taiwan embassy.

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China did not mince any words on Wednesday as it condemned Japan's decision to change the name of its de facto embassy in the self-ruled Taiwan. The Japanese government's decision is seen by Beijing as a tactical challenge to its 'One China' policy.



Japan, which maintains an unofficial relation with Taiwan, disclosed on its official website that it will change the name of its Taiwanese embassy from 'The Interchange Association' to 'Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association'. The new name will be effective from Jan. 1, 2017.



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"We firmly oppose any attempt to create 'two Chinas' or 'one China, one Taiwan', and express strong dissatisfaction with the Japanese side's negative move," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told media.



Hua warned Japan to refrain from sending wrong signals to the Taiwanese government as well as the international community, adding that such signals may cause new disturbances in the Sino-Japan bilateral relation.



She also called on the Japanese government to abide by the 1972 Sino-Japanese Joint Statement, which categorically stated that Japan understands China's position on the Taiwanese issue and also acknowledges that the island nation is an integral part of the Mainland China.



The Chinese government has been on a diplomatic mission to pile up pressure on Taiwan ever since the pro-independent leader Tsai Ing-wen assumed office earlier this year. Tsai's consistent challenge to the 'One China' policy left Chinese leadership completely miffed, considerably straining the cross-strait relation.



Last week, China scored a diplomatic triumph on Taiwan by poaching the island nation's African ally Sao Tome. The tiny African island nation was one of the only 22 countries that officially recognized Taiwan.



The Taiwanese government accused Beijing of using "dollar diplomacy" in securing Sao Tome's support.



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The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has removed language from its public website describing the scientific consensus that human activity is the main cause of climate change, suggesting instead that the cause is uncertain.

Republicans who have controlled state government since 2011 are fighting federal efforts to reduce greenhouse gases that cause climate change, but they have mostly attacked the costs of pollution controls without publicly denying the science until now.

A Madison-based conservation activist who is pushing for the air pollution standards said spreading falsehoods about climate change was dangerous because delays in addressing the problem will worsen the climate-related health hazards faced by future generations.

The notion that this is a matter of scientific debate is ridiculous, said Keith Reopelle, policy director at Clean Wisconsin. The only people who say that are being paid by the fossil fuel industry.

A series of surveys show that 97 percent or more of working climate scientists agree humans are causing the dramatic changes in temperature and weather.

But a change this week to a DNR webpage asserts that the issue is still being debated.

Spokesman Jim Dick described the revision as part of a routine review of the website. He said DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp and other top administrators were unavailable during the holidays to discuss their views.

Language changed

As recently as October, a DNR webpage on climate change in the Great Lakes region said: Human activities that increase heattrapping (green house) gases are the main cause. Earths average temperature has increased 1.4 F since 1850 and the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 1998. Increasing temperatures have led to changes in rainfall patterns and snow and ice cover. These changes could have severe effects on the Great Lakes and the plants, wildlife and people who depend on them.

Last week, that was updated to say: As it has done throughout the centuries, the earth is going through a change. The reasons for this change at this particular time in the earths long history are being debated and researched by academic entities outside the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

On Thursday, Dick argued that the departments work is guided by science even if there is still debate amongst the general public about the causes of climate change.

We are still using science to protect the natural resources and adapting to the climate challenges that present themselves, Dick added.

Scientist positions cut

Less than two years ago while cutting 90 DNR positions, Walker and the Legislature eliminated half of the departments senior scientist positions because they researched controversial topics like climate change and pollution from mines.

DNR scientists have worked to adapt forestry and fisheries and other programs to rising temperatures and increasingly frequent extreme rain events, although former department employees say support for those efforts has declined.

The DNR is also responsible for enforcing federal limits on air pollution, although it has been cited for failing to adhere to national standards. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency once took the rare step of beginning formal proceedings to strip the states Clean Air Act powers because it wasnt holding businesses to emission standards.

Clean Wisconsins Reopelle said that Republicans who took control of state government in the 2010 elections have exhibited little interest in addressing climate change.

A state law requiring utilities to obtain 10 percent of their power from renewable sources, for example, has become the weakest among 29 states with such requirements, Reopelle said, noting that other states have set the bar as high as 40 percent.

Last year, the state cut $7 million from its renewable and energy efficiency fund, and Walker has signaled he wants to divert more from the fund and send it to internet providers to increase rural coverage.

Some climate info remains

The rewritten webpage is the first result returned in a search of the DNR website of the words climate change.

Earlier versions of the page introduced the problem in six paragraphs and included eight links to additional sources of information. The new version is two paragraphs and two links.

Dick didnt respond when asked if the DNR was revising other references to human causes of climate change on its extensive website. Several webpages still contain information about that, including a description of how landfills can release greenhouse gas and past articles on the topic written for Wisconsin Natural Resources magazine.

But seven of the first 10 results of a search of the site, including links to activity guides on climate change for teachers, now lead to the message Page Not Found.

Walkers administration has opposed federal measures to cut greenhouse gases while sidestepping questions on his views about the cause of climate change.

He issued an executive order forbidding state workers from preparing for tighter standards. Walkers office didnt respond to requests for comment on the changes to the DNR website.

Republicans skeptical

While 97 percent of working climate scientists agree that rapid climate change has been caused by human activities such as emissions from power plants and automobiles, representatives of the fossil fuel industry and some Republican politicians have sought to cast doubt on the question.

The DNR website change comes more than a year after the GOP-controlled state Board of Commissioners of Public Lands drew national attention by ordering its staff not to discuss climate change.

A nonpartisan audit in June confirmed that budget cuts were contributing to lax enforcement of clean water laws as the EPA continues its own investigation into regulatory deficiencies.

Last week, Walker disclosed a legislative proposal to scatter DNR programs among five separate departments.

The change in the DNR website was first reported by independent Wisconsin journalist James Rowan, who has tracked shortcomings in DNR information on climate change for several years.
The Obama administration continues to receive pushback regarding its recent decision not to support Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Most recently, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called out the administration, and particularly Secretary of State John Kerry.

President Obama and Secretary Kerry were involved in the recent United Nations decision repudiating Israels claim to the West Bank.

The Obama administration directed the U.S.s UN representative to abstain from the important vote, essentially standing on the side against Israel.

The official UN resolution stated that Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem are a flagrant violation under international law.

Rubio had this to say regarding the decision:

Secretary Kerry today once again decided to cater to the demands of freedoms enemies and devote an entire speech to disparaging a country that is one of our closest allies. This administrations shameful undermining of our moral standing in the world should be a warning to administrations for decades to come about the consequences of America abandoning our values. When we fail to take a stand against those that seek to deny Israels right to exist or try to question the Jewish history of Jerusalem, we hurt not just Israel but our own credibility.

Rubio went on to say that he has better hopes for how the incoming administration under Donald Trump will deal with Israel.

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz also condemned the UN decision, calling Obama one of the worst foreign-policy presidents ever.

Photo courtesy: flickr.com

Publication date: December 29, 2016
Editors note: With the BreakPoint staff off for the holidays, we are re-airing some of the most talked about commentaries of the year.

In 2007, Iowa enacted a law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The law applies to what are known as public accommodations.

Now federal law typically considers public accommodations to be facilities like restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, retail establishments, and parks.

But recently, the Iowa Civil Rights Commission added something atypical to that list: church services.

In its Providers Guide, the Commission offered an answer to the question, Does this law apply to churches? with a resounding Sometimes. What follows is troubling: Iowa law provides that these protections do not apply to religious institutions with respect to any religion-based qualifications when such qualifications are related to a bona fide religious purpose.

I say troubling because implied in that statement is that the state gets to determine what is and what is not a bona fide religious purpose.

And what follows that goes from troubling to outrageous: Where qualifications are not related to a bona fide religious purpose, churches are still subject to the laws provisions: For example, a child care facility operated at a church or a church service open to the public. Which, as the Alliance Defending Freedom rightly pointed out, encompasses most events that churches hold.

If the Commission interpretation stands, then churchesat any service open to the publicwould be prohibited from doing or saying anything that would  directly or indirectly make persons of any particular . . . gender identity feel unwelcome in conjunction with church services, events, and other religious activities.

Given the almost limitless capacity for people to take offense or feel unwelcome, this would effectively ban sermons or other religious instruction about traditional Christian sexual ethics. This is what the Supreme Court famously dubbed a chilling effect on the freedom of religion and of speech.

Now if youre wondering how is this even legal? youre not alone. Paul Gowder, who teaches constitutional law at the University of Iowa, told the Des Moines Register that any attempt to regulate the content of sermons is blatantly unconstitutional and absurd on its face.

Thats why the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), representing two Iowa churches, has filed what is known as a pre-enforcement challenge, which challenges the constitutionality of the measure before it even takes effect.

Lets hope and pray that the ADF prevails. But even if they do, its a sobering reminder of three things.

First, this didnt happen at the Supreme Court or in left-leaning Washington State: it happened in the heartland, in Iowa. Religious freedom is in a precarious condition.

Second, it shows how wrong those who insisted, Oh, theyll never make pastors do this," or "Theyll never make churches do that really were. The state of Iowa is pretending to arbitrate what counts as a bona fide religious purpose. Everything a church does should have a religious purpose, especially outreach. Thats why every church service is open to the public.

Finally, it brings to mind Martin Niemollers famous line about failing to stand for others until there was no one left to stand up for him. Too many pastors failed to stand up for the freedoms of people in the pew because, well, they werent bakers or photographers or florists. And the pastors assumed they were safe. Clearly they arent.

The unprecedented attempt to regulate religious speech in Iowa shows the lengths to which enemies of religious freedom are prepared to go, proving it was never about cakes or photos in the first place.

This column originally aired July 7, 2016.

BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on todays news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.

John Stonestreet, the host of The Point, a daily national radio program, provides thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.

Publication date: December 29, 2016
Not long ago, when reporters wrote about Robin John, the cofounder of Eventide Asset Management, a subtle snicker rumbled under the surface. One called him The Believer; others pointed out the odd language on his Boston-based mutual fund companys website: business as an engine of blessing and biblically responsible investing.

Theology as the foundation for picking stocks? Is this guy for real?

Today the murmurs seem to have faded, and for good reason. Since its launch in 2008, Eventides flagship mutual fund (a pool of money professionally invested in stocks, bonds, and other securities), the Gilead Fund, has given shareholders a 13.70 percent annualized return as of September 30, 2016, compared to 9.03 percent for the Standard & Poors 500. To put that into perspective, an investor who put $10,000 into the fund at its launch would be worth $26,050 today. The Gilead Fund has been covered as a top performer by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg, among other publications. Over the past three years, media attention has helped Eventide explode from $50 million in assets under management to nearly $2 billion.

But theres more to Robin John than a focus on profit. Challenging Milton Friedmans declaration that the only social responsibility of business is to increase profits, John says, Profit is only the byproduct of a job well done.

John, an evangelical living in Dallas, is a leader in the growing field of biblically responsible investing, which applies Christian theology and social concern to investment analysis. Eventide, founded in 2008, has garnered attention because of both its results and its uniquely faith-filled ...

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Here are CTs most-read stories about the persecuted church in 2016.

12. John Kerry: ISIS Is Responsible for Genocide Against Christians

Days after unanimous House vote, Secretary of State finally agrees with international religious freedom advocates.

11. Congrats, Frank Wolf: Obama Approves Expansion of International Religious Freedom Act

IRFA modernization gives State Department new tools to protect Christians (and others) persecuted by ISIS.

10. Compassion: 145,000 Children Could Lose Sponsorship by Christmas

Christian charity's largest country, India, no longer lets it transfer money. And now it's run out.

9. Morocco Declaration: Muslim Nations Should Protect Christians from Persecution

In Marrakesh, hundreds of Muslim leaders release modern update to Muhammads Charter of Medina.

See also: The Worlds Biggest Muslim Organization Wants to Protect Christians

8. Suicide Bomber Kills More Than 70 as Taliban Targets Christians Celebrating Easter at Pakistan Park Blasphemy ...

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Did you catch all of the most-read CT articles from 2016?

Here's a look back at what readers kept clicking this past year.

(Note: This list is a politics-free zone. For CTs top election stories, click here.)

20. What to Give Up for Lent 2016? Consider Twitter's Top Ideas

Here's the final tally of the top 100 choices of 2016, plus charts on how Lenten abstinence has changed over time.

19. Tullian Tchividjian Fired by Church, Liberate Board Members Quit

Tchividjian tells CT: 'I remain committed to that painful and progressive process' of repentance.

18. Died: Tim LaHaye, Author Who 'Left Behind' a Long Legacy

Jerry B. Jenkins: 'Thrilled as I am that he is where he has always wanted to be, his departure leaves a void in my soul.'

17. Christianity Today's 2016 Book Awards

Our picks for the books most likely to shape evangelical life, thought, and culture.

16. The CT Interview: Saeed Abedini Answers Abuse Allegations The formerly jailed Iranian ...

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Donald Trump has enlisted a larger, more diverse lineup of clergy than usual to pray him into office at his upcoming inauguration ceremony.

The groupbigger than any presidents since Ronald Reaganreflects his politics, pragmatism, and personality. It includes evangelical leaders Franklin Graham and Samuel Rodriguez, as well as spiritual advisor Paula White, the Florida televangelist credited with his rumored recent Christian conversion, and a Detroit prosperity preacher, Wayne T. Jackson.

Taken together, [Graham and White] have embodied Trumps embrace of the twinned ideologies of Christian nationalism and capitalist Christianity, Kevin Kruse, a history professor at Princeton University and author of One Nation Under God, told CT.

The two represent the type of pragmatic spirituality that Trump evoked throughout his campaign, with Graham advancing a political agenda and White a financial one, according to John D. Wilsey, author of American ...

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Rep. Marsha Blackburn Named Operation Rescue's 2016 Pro-Life Person of the Year Contact: Troy Newman, President, 316-683-6790 ext. 111; Cheryl Sullenger, Senior Vice President, 316-516-3034; both with Operation Rescue, info.operationrescue@gmail.com



WASHINGTON, Dec. 29, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- Operation Rescue is pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2016 Pro-Life Person of the Year Malachi Award is Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) for her work as Chairman of the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives.



The Malachi Award is given by Operation Rescue every year to recognize individuals who sacrificially work to advance the cause of protecting the pre-born.



"Operation Rescue is grateful to Chairman Marsha Blackburn for her courageous willingness to investigate the shadowy illegal underworld of trafficking in aborted baby remains by Planned Parenthood and others. We know that she underwent constant attacks from the opposition, which wanted desperately to cover up these crimes," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.



Under Blackburn's leadership, the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives made 15 criminal and regulatory referrals to state and federal authorities, seeking further investigations and possible prosecutions of five Planned Parenthood organizations, three organ procurement companies, the University of New Mexico, and three other late-term abortion facilities.



"Her Panel's work provided vindication for Center for Medical Progress journalists, which first brought evidence of Planned Parenthood's participation in the illegal sale of aborted baby remains to the public in 2015," said Newman, who served as a founding CMP board member.



In addition, Blackburn boldly investigated other abuses related to illegal late-term abortions and the murder in infants born alive during abortions.



As a result, her Select Investigative Panel referred Texas late-term abortionist Douglas Karpen to the U.S. Department of Justice and Texas Attorney General for further investigation and possible prosecution for the alleged murder of late-term babies born alive during abortions at his Houston abortion facilities. The Karpen criminal referrals included numerous additional violations that placed the lives of women in danger.



Operation Rescue had filed formal a complaint against Karpen in 2013, prompting a grand jury investigation that went nowhere due to political corruption within the county prosecutor's office.



"The criminal referrals made by Chairman Blackburn and her team reveal disturbing evidence of abortion-related crimes that must not be ignored. Her work should help change our culture so that such atrocities never occur again," said Newman. "This makes her a deserving recipient of the 2016 Pro-Life Person of the Year Malachi Award."



About Operation Rescue

Operation Rescue is one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation and has become a strong voice for the pro-life movement in America. Click here to support Operation Rescue.

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Court Rules Public School Can Force Pro-Life Teacher to Facilitate Planned Parenthood Contact: Alexandra Snyder,



PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 28, 2016 /



The case arose out of Mr. Diss' concerns about Planned Parenthood's involvement in Oregon's public schools, including his objection to hosting recruitment for a Planned Parenthood program in his classroom. Life Legal presented compelling evidence of the sincerity of Mr. Diss' religious objection to facilitating a program that violates his deeply held convictions. Unfortunately, the court ruled that for the school to force him to allow Planned Parenthood employees into his classroom to promote their program was in no way a burden on his religious beliefs or activities.



Life Legal attorneys plan to appeal the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. "We are honored to represent Bill Diss and we will continue to fight for his First Amendment rights," said Alexandra Snyder, Executive Director for the Life Legal Defense Foundation. "The court's ruling means that teachers such as Mr. Diss should not be afforded the full protection of the Constitution. We vehemently disagree and we look forward to pursuing his case on appeal."



The decision was issued November 22, 2016 in the Federal District of Oregon by Magistrate Judge Paul Papak.



Background:



Sometimes the cost to live out one's faith is high. Sometimes it is money. Sometimes it is convenience. Sometimes life itself. And sometimes it is a career or even a livelihood.



Life Legal client Bill Diss is a husband, father, engineer and teacher who was willing to put his career on the line when asked to violate his faith. Mr. Diss' heritage is a rich history of devotion to the Catholic faith. From the time of his upbringing to rearing his own family, he has been a whole-hearted participant in church activities, from teachings, to worship, to helping the needy.



After a career in the electronics industry, Mr. Diss transitioned to teaching at the high-school and college level. Since 2002 he has taught courses such as technology, math, computers and electronics at Benson High School in the Portland, Oregon Public School system. He also taught several classes at the community college level and obtained high accolades from students, parents, and fellow teachers. His initiative and hard work attracted outside grant funding to his school and opened greater opportunities for students.



Mr. Diss became a public figure in the pro-life movement by leading the opposition to a new Planned Parenthood mega-center in downtown Portland. He tirelessly spoke about the problems Planned Parenthood would bring to Portland. He testified before local governmental bodies, organized peaceful protests against Planned Parenthood, and led boycotts of businesses that supported the abortion facility. Additionally, he served as the state director for the Culture of Life for the Knights of Columbus and founded Precious Children of Portland, a nonprofit organization that promotes the sanctity of human life and opposes abortion. Through these activities, Mr. Diss earned himself the status of "enemy number one" with the local branch of Planned Parenthood (note this is the same Planned Parenthood caught on tape



Imagine yourself as a public school teacher with this background, this intense faith-driven passion to advocate for the life and purity of the next generation. Now imagine being asked to facilitate a program taught by Planned Parenthood. This is exactly the scenario in which Mr. Diss found himself in September, 2012 when Planned Parenthood employees came into his classroom to recruit for their in-school program, known as the "Teen Outreach Program" or "TOP."



When he realized who had come into his classroom, Mr. Diss asked to be excused from facilitating the program due to his religious convictions. The school refused his request. Benson's principal told him that he must "work cooperatively" with Planned Parenthood. Mr. Diss became the target of a concerted plan that ultimately resulted in his dismissal.



Throughout that school year, Mr. Diss continued to teach, but was met at every turn by undue scrutiny, lack of support, hostility and other forms of harassment. He did his best to follow the directives he was given, but did not abate his pro-life activities. He actively protested the insertion of Planned Parenthood into the public schools, resulting in an avalanche of public opposition to the program. The more actively Mr. Diss followed his calling to promote life and purity, the more hostility he faced at his teaching job. Finally, Mr. Diss was let go from work on March 19, 2012. He was initially placed on administrative leave, and eventually his contract was terminated on December 16, 2013.



Left with no alternative, Mr. Diss sought legal advice from Life Legal Defense Foundation attorneys and filed suit for religious discrimination in September, 2014. (



About Life Legal Defense Foundation

Life Legal Defense Foundation was established in 1989, and is a nonprofit organization composed of attorneys and other concerned citizens committed to giving helpless and innocent human beings of any age, and their advocates, a trained and committed voice in the courtrooms of our nation. For more information about the Life Legal Defense Foundation, visit

Share Tweet Contact: Alexandra Snyder, Life Legal Defense Foundation , 202-717-7371PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 28, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Portland teacher and well-known pro-life activist Bill Diss has received a ruling in his religious discrimination case against Portland Public Schools. Disappointingly, the court granted the Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment in its entirety, stating that there were no legally significant facts in dispute for the case to go before a jury.The case arose out of Mr. Diss' concerns about Planned Parenthood's involvement in Oregon's public schools, including his objection to hosting recruitment for a Planned Parenthood program in his classroom. Life Legal presented compelling evidence of the sincerity of Mr. Diss' religious objection to facilitating a program that violates his deeply held convictions. Unfortunately, the court ruled that for the school to force him to allow Planned Parenthood employees into his classroom to promote their program was in no way a burden on his religious beliefs or activities.Life Legal attorneys plan to appeal the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. "We are honored to represent Bill Diss and we will continue to fight for his First Amendment rights," said Alexandra Snyder, Executive Director for the Life Legal Defense Foundation. "The court's ruling means that teachers such as Mr. Diss should not be afforded the full protection of the Constitution. We vehemently disagree and we look forward to pursuing his case on appeal."The decision was issued November 22, 2016 in the Federal District of Oregon by Magistrate Judge Paul Papak.Background:Sometimes the cost to live out one's faith is high. Sometimes it is money. Sometimes it is convenience. Sometimes life itself. And sometimes it is a career or even a livelihood.Life Legal client Bill Diss is a husband, father, engineer and teacher who was willing to put his career on the line when asked to violate his faith. Mr. Diss' heritage is a rich history of devotion to the Catholic faith. From the time of his upbringing to rearing his own family, he has been a whole-hearted participant in church activities, from teachings, to worship, to helping the needy.After a career in the electronics industry, Mr. Diss transitioned to teaching at the high-school and college level. Since 2002 he has taught courses such as technology, math, computers and electronics at Benson High School in the Portland, Oregon Public School system. He also taught several classes at the community college level and obtained high accolades from students, parents, and fellow teachers. His initiative and hard work attracted outside grant funding to his school and opened greater opportunities for students.Mr. Diss became a public figure in the pro-life movement by leading the opposition to a new Planned Parenthood mega-center in downtown Portland. He tirelessly spoke about the problems Planned Parenthood would bring to Portland. He testified before local governmental bodies, organized peaceful protests against Planned Parenthood, and led boycotts of businesses that supported the abortion facility. Additionally, he served as the state director for the Culture of Life for the Knights of Columbus and founded Precious Children of Portland, a nonprofit organization that promotes the sanctity of human life and opposes abortion. Through these activities, Mr. Diss earned himself the status of "enemy number one" with the local branch of Planned Parenthood (note this is the same Planned Parenthood caught on tape giving a teenager advice on how to access pornography, and engage in dangerous, deviant sexual acts.) Planned Parenthood went so far as to "fundraise" in the name of Bill Diss  asking for solicitations based on the length of time Mr. Diss was present outside their facility, and then sending Mr. Diss a mocking list of the donors who contributed "in his name."Imagine yourself as a public school teacher with this background, this intense faith-driven passion to advocate for the life and purity of the next generation. Now imagine being asked to facilitate a program taught by Planned Parenthood. This is exactly the scenario in which Mr. Diss found himself in September, 2012 when Planned Parenthood employees came into his classroom to recruit for their in-school program, known as the "Teen Outreach Program" or "TOP."When he realized who had come into his classroom, Mr. Diss asked to be excused from facilitating the program due to his religious convictions. The school refused his request. Benson's principal told him that he must "work cooperatively" with Planned Parenthood. Mr. Diss became the target of a concerted plan that ultimately resulted in his dismissal.Throughout that school year, Mr. Diss continued to teach, but was met at every turn by undue scrutiny, lack of support, hostility and other forms of harassment. He did his best to follow the directives he was given, but did not abate his pro-life activities. He actively protested the insertion of Planned Parenthood into the public schools, resulting in an avalanche of public opposition to the program. The more actively Mr. Diss followed his calling to promote life and purity, the more hostility he faced at his teaching job. Finally, Mr. Diss was let go from work on March 19, 2012. He was initially placed on administrative leave, and eventually his contract was terminated on December 16, 2013.Left with no alternative, Mr. Diss sought legal advice from Life Legal Defense Foundation attorneys and filed suit for religious discrimination in September, 2014. ( Read the complaint .) As his case works its way through the court system, Mr. Diss has returned to teaching. He continues to teach at local Community Colleges and has started his own teaching and tutoring business for students of any age who wish to achieve excellence in their scholastic pursuits. He continues to be an active member of the pro-life community.About Life Legal Defense FoundationLife Legal Defense Foundation was established in 1989, and is a nonprofit organization composed of attorneys and other concerned citizens committed to giving helpless and innocent human beings of any age, and their advocates, a trained and committed voice in the courtrooms of our nation. For more information about the Life Legal Defense Foundation, visit www.lldf.org
home World Dozens of Pakistani Christians die after consuming toxic alcohol on Christmas

Dozens of Christians died and at least a hundred more fell sick after drinking toxic alcohol during Christmas celebrations in the district of Toba Tek Singh in eastern Punjab.

According to a report from Al Jazeera, at least 42 have died and 150 were taken to the clinics. Muhammad Shahbaz, a local police official, said that the authorities have already taken the alcohol sellers in the district into custody for questioning. He added that five Muslims were among the victims.

Shahbaz also revealed that the individual who was allegedly responsible for arranging the liquor at the Christmas festivities was among the dead.

Senior police official Bilal Kamyana said that the alcohol was prepared at home and sold in polythene bags for 500 rupees or about $5.00 each.

According to the DNA India, five suspects were taken into custody in connection to the alcohol poisoning. The suspects allegedly purchased 20 liters of aftershave lotion and mixed it with other chemicals before they sold it as liquor.

"The men who belong to the Christian community drank liquor on the night of December 25 and went home," said police officer Mohammad Nadeem. "Tragedy struck the next morning when many did not rise from their beds, while others got sick," he went on to say.

Legal breweries exist in Pakistan, but it is illegal for Muslims to buy or drink alcohol. Other minorities need permits to purchase liquor in restricted quantities.

Wealthy Pakistanis are able to buy foreign alcohol at the black market, but the poor often resort to homemade liquor which can contain poisonous methanol.

There have been several incidents of alcohol poisoning in Pakistan in the past. In October 2014, 29 were killed after consuming alcohol tainted with methanol during the Eid public holidays.

In March this year, at least 40 people died after drinking toxic liquor in Tando Muhammad Khan district in Sindh province. Many of the victims belonged to the Hindu Kohli community who had been drinking days ahead of the Holi festival.

Angry residents accused the police of turning a blind eye on illegal alcohol sales. Several police officers in the district were suspended for alleged negligence.
home US Franklin Graham on 2016 celebrity deaths: 'Our time on Earth is brief'

Famed evangelist Franklin Graham has taken note of several well-known personalities that have passed away in the year 2016 with a warning that death is what everyone has in common and life on Earth is brief, even for famous people.

"This week pop icon George Michael passed away at age 53, 'Star Wars' actress Carrie Fisher died at 60, and award winning Watership Down author Richard Adams died at the age of 96. From the unknown to the most well-known, we all have something in common a death," Graham wrote on Facebook.

"Our time on Earth is brief a the Bible says like 'a vapor.' And each of us will stand before Almighty God to give an account," he added.

Graham warned that there are no "VIP passes or exceptions" when the time comes to give an account to God.

"The decision that will determine where we spend eternity is whether we have believed in His Son, Jesus Christ, trusting Him as our Savior and following Him as Lord," the evangelist continued.

Graham's remarks came near the end of the year when many celebrities and cultural icons have passed away.

According to The Mirror, the figures suggest that there has been an increase in notable deaths in 2016. There have been 642 notable deaths in January this year, compared to 466 in the previous month.

Other notable celebrities that died this year include David Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, Muhammad Ali, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Leonard Cohen.

The authors of the article from the Mirror speculated that many more celebrities are dying because baby boomers are reaching an age when they are vulnerable to life-threatening conditions such as cancer and heart disease.

The article also noted that there are some famous people who have lived "wild" lifestyles. It pointed out that celebrities like David Bowie and Jefferson Airplane co-founder Paul Kanter have used drugs in the past.

The authors also surmised that the increase of celebrity deaths could be a result of the increase in the number of famous people. They also noted that the high number this year could just be a coincidence.
home World Kidnapped Kerala priest pleads to Pope Francis, Indian government for help

Fr. Tom Uzhunnalil, a priest who was kidnapped in Yemen last March, appeared in a new video asking Pope Francis and the Indian government to help secure his release.

Uzhunnalil, who hails from India's Kerala state, was abducted by suspected ISIS militants when they attacked an old people's home in the Yemeni port city of Aden on March 4. The attack left 12 elderly people and four nuns dead.

In the video, Uzhunnalil said that he is "very sad and depressed" that nothing has been done to secure his freedom.

"If I were a European priest, I would have been taken more seriously. I am from India. I am perhaps not considered as of much value," the priest said, according to Christian Today.

"Nothing has been done by Pope Francis or the Bishop of Abu Dhabi to get me released, in spite of contact being made by my captors... Dear Pope Francis, dear Holy Father, as a father please take care of my life. I am very much depressed. My health is deteriorating," he added.

He also pleaded to other Christians and bishops to come to his aid.

In response to the video, India's Minister of Exterior Affairs Sushma Swaraj said that the government is committed to secure the release Uzhunnalil.

"He is an Indian citizen and the life of every Indian is most precious for us," Swaraj tweeted on Tuesday, as reported by Gulf Times. "We have spared no effort and we will spare no effort to secure Fr Tom's release from captivity," the officer went on to say.

In April, Pope Francis made an appeal for the release of Uzhunnalil as well as the other hostages in conflict zones.

Last June, a video purporting to show the priest being beaten by off-screen assailants was posted on Twitter. Prior to the release of the video, there were rumors that the priest would be crucified on Good Friday, but no evidence was produced, and it was denied by the Indian government.

Indian government spokesman Vikas Swarup said that officials have been in contact with local Yemeni authorities and neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia to secure the safe release of Uzhunnalil.
home US Mall fights break out across the U.S. a day after Christmas

At least 15 fights reportedly broke out in malls across the U.S. the day after Christmas. The chaos resulted in the early closure of several malls and prevented some shoppers from searching for post-holiday deals and using their new gift cards.

The disturbances ranged from minor melees to mass evacuations. By night's end, 15 fights were reported in shopping centers from Connecticut to Arizona. Several police departments are speculating that the incidents were loosely organized on social media, The New York Times reported.

In Aurora, Colorado, The police got an anonymous tip that a Facebook post announced a fight at the Town Center mall.

"We haven't actually seen the post," said Sgt. Chris Amsler, a spokesman for the Aurora Police Department. "We don't know whether that's true a whether or not that exists," he added.

He said that about a 100 people were gathered at the food court just before the brawls, according to CNN. The off-duty police officers who tried to break up the fight were encircled by the people, prompting them to call for backup. Amsler estimated that 500 people were involved, and one person sustained "significant" injuries.

In Manchester, Connecticut, The Shoppes at Buckland Hills was forced to close early after it was mobbed by hundreds of teenagers. Capt. Christopher Davis, a spokesman for the Manchester police, said that so many teenagers arrived at the mall that they had to call additional city buses to take them all home. Five juveniles and two adults were detained for either fighting or interfering with police officers.

"Even the officers that were up there sensed that something was different," said Davis. "They just sensed that something was in the air, per se, that something didn't seem right," he added.

At the Hamilton Place Mall in Chattanooga, Tennesee, police rushed to the scene after receiving reports of "shots fired," but it turned out to be fireworks.

In Fort Worth, Texas, the Hulen Mall was placed on lockdown after police responded to a report of gunfire inside the establishment. The police broke up a series of fights involving at least 100 people.

Some police officers said that the incidents bear similarities to flash mobs, gatherings that are loosely coordinated on social media. Some have also speculated that the unusually warm weather in some places may have played a role.
home US Mark Zuckerberg dispels speculation that he is an atheist

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has denied being an atheist and said that he considers religion to be important.

On Christmas day, the Zuckerberg posted a message on his Facebook account greeting his followers a "Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah."

"But Aren't You Atheist?" one commenter asked. In response, Zuckerberg wrote, "No. I was raised Jewish and then I went through a period where I questioned things, but now I believe religion is very important."

According to Beliefnet, the young billionaire had listed himself as an atheist on his own Facebook page.

In October 2015, he posted a photo of himself praying at Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an China. He said that he offered a prayer for his wife Priscilla, who is a Buddhist. He described Buddhism as "amazing religion and philosophy," and he said that he is interested in learning more about it.

Business Insider reported in 2013 that Facebook has incorporated Buddhism into its business model in an effort to make it more compassionate. The initiative was launched by Facebook Engineering Director Arturo Bejar after he attended the Wisdom 2.0 conference back in 2010. He invited academics from Berkeley, Yale, and Stanford to teach the company about the Buddhist-inspired concept of compassion.

In August this year, he and Priscilla met with Pope Francis at the Vatican to give him a model of a Facebook drone that will expand internet connectivity in developing countries.

Zuckerberg expressed admiration for the Pope on a Facebook post.

"We told him how much we admire his message of mercy and tenderness, and how he's found new ways to communicate with people of every faith around the world," he wrote.

"It was a meeting we'll never forget," he continued, adding, "You can feel [the Pope's] warmth and kindness, and how deeply he cares about helping people."

The Vatican Press Office stated that he and the pope discussed the use of technology to alleviate poverty and to communicate a "message of hope."

In 2010, Zuckerberg was named as Man of the Year by Time Magazine for his contributions to technology and networking.
home World Philippine president visits victims of Christmas church attack

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte paid a visit to the victims of an explosion in front of a Catholic Church in Midsayap, North Cotabato to assure them that justice will be served.

The president arrived at Aniceto Pesante Memorial Hospital at around 4 p.m. on Christmas Day to talk briefly with the victims, Inquirer reported. Cheyserr Rosete, 28, who sustained a leg injury, revealed that Duterte gave her an undetermined amount of cash and promised to shoulder all their medical expenses.

At least 17 people, including a police officer, were injured in the blast that occurred at around 9:30 p.m. while a Christmas eve mass was being held inside the Sto. Nino Archdiocesan Shrine. Two men riding a motorcycle reportedly tossed a hand grenade under a parked police car along Roosevelt Street.

Midsayap Mayor Romeo Arania believed that the attack was not directed at the church but to the police. Supt. Bernard Tayong, the town's police chief, said that the attack could be a retaliation against the police for the ongoing anti-drug operations.

Police Superintendent Romeo Galgo Jr. said that the concluding prayers were cut short because of the commotion. An unnamed investigator told the Agence France-Presse that the church was the intended target, but the attackers were not able to get near it due to heavy security.

"It seems they wanted to get closer, but due to heavy security, they opted to throw the explosive at the police car blocking the road," said the officer.

The government said in a press release that the total number of injured was 18. Three of them were admitted to the Aniceto Pesante Memorial Hospital, and two were treated at the Cotabato Regional Medical Center. Another victim is at the Southern Philippines Medical Center, while the 12 others were outpatients.

The Midsayap local government denounced the attack as an "act of cowardice" and vowed to deliver justice to the perpetrators.

No group has claimed responsibility for the blast. Security forces across Southeast Asia are on high alert during the holidays following the arrest of suspected militants in Malaysia and the foiled bomb plots in Australia and Indonesia.
home World Pope warns that Christmas has been 'taken hostage' by materialism

During the Christmas eve mass at the Vatican, Pope Francis said that Christmas had been "taken hostage" by materialism that leaves God in shadows and people indifferent to the marginalized, especially the children.

Speaking to 10,000 churchgoers and dozens of cardinals and bishops, the pope stated in his homily at St. Peter's Basilica that people are too preoccupied with gifts and merriment that they forget the humility aspect of Christmas.

"If we want to celebrate Christmas authentically, we need to contemplate this sign: the fragile simplicity of a small newborn, the meekness of where he lies, the tender affection of the swaddling clothes. God is there," the Pope stated.

He reminded those present that baby Jesus suffered rejection and indifference. He then brought attention to similar plights experienced by many children of today, especially those born under poor circumstances, those who trapped in war-torn areas, and those who are forced to flee the comforts of their homes to become immigrants in unknown lands.

"Let us also allow ourselves to be challenged by the children of today's world, who are not lying in a cot caressed with the affection of a mother and father, but rather suffer the squalid mangers that devour dignity: hiding underground to escape bombardment, on the pavements of a large city, at the bottom of a boat over-laden with immigrants," he went on to say.

Pope Francis, who currently leads 1.2 billion Catholic Christians worldwide, also delivered his bi-annual "Urbi et Orbi" from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica on Christmas day. In his message, which called for peace, he also made special mention of children, remembering "those deprived of the joys of childhood because of hunger, wars or the selfishness of adults."

Strict security measures were implemented at the Vatican during Christmas weekend, following the news that the Italian authorities killed the suspect for the Berlin Christmas market attack that claimed 12 lives. St. Peter's Square was emptied six hours before the Christmas eve mass commenced as security procedures for those who are getting inside the church were set up.
home US Southern Baptist pastor rebukes 'lynch mob' attacking Russell Moore

Dwight McKissic, the pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, denounced other members of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) for attacking Russell Moore due to his criticism of President-elect Donald Trump.

Moore, president of Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), has come under fire from other Baptist ministers for his previous comments denouncing Trump's behavior and rebuking Evangelicals who supported him.

Some ministers considered withholding donations to the ERLC, which is the public policy arm of the SBC, while others want to remove him from his position as its president.

McKissic warned that firing Moore will lead to the creation of the "Trump Baptist Convention," and it could damage race relations within the SBC.

In his blog post published on Dec. 24, he asserted that those who are trying to get Moore fired are being influenced by Trump.

"The lynch mob in SBC life who is going after Moore are taking their cues from Donald Trump who was among the first to attack Moore with one of his infamous tweets during the primary season," McKissic wrote, referring to a Trump's Twitter message last May, in which he referred to Moore as a "terrible representative of Evangelicals" and a "nasty guy with no heart."

McKissic noted that there are people who believe that the backlash against Moore is rooted in his outspokenness on issues involving race and police brutality. He said that Moore is one of few Southern Baptists who is capable of understanding social justice issues from a minority perspective.

"Russell Moore really feels our pain," McKissic wrote. "In many ways he is being treated as a racial minority by the convention in this situation. So to fire Russell Moore is to say to minorities, you are only welcome in the SBC if you remain silent regarding your political views," he added.

Moore has since apologized for the tone of some of his remarks. He clarified in a blog post that he did not intend to criticize anyone who voted for Trump.

McKissic urged other SBC ministers to forgive Moore and move on. He said that criticizing Trump should not cause divisions within the convention.
home World Town liberated from ISIS celebrates first Christmas in two years

The ancient Iraqi town of Bartella celebrated Christmas for the first time after two years of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) rule last Saturday, but the people were devastated over the desecration of their church and destruction of their town.

Hundreds of Christians rode buses and made their way back to Bartella, which was regained by the Iraqi forces in October, following U.S. coalition's offensive in the area. These people had abandoned their homes in Bartella, a predominantly Christian town, after the Islamic State seized control of the Nineveh Plains.

A mass at Saint Shmony Church was celebrated on Saturday, with dozens of Iraqi and U.S. security forces securing the area amid ISIS threatening to attack in Bartella.

Volunteers had cleaned up at the church a few days prior to the mass, but traces of ISIS' reign are still very much visible. These are seen in the vandalized walls, bullet holes, and broken glass. A statue was also dilapidated of its head and hands.

Returning residents have mixed emotions. The town, which is only 21 kilometers away from Mosul, the largest Iraqi city being controlled by ISIS, is still too dangerous for them to live in, especially at night. They would have to return to Irbil, the town where they fled to two years ago.

ISIS terror left the town in ruins, and rehabilitation may take some time. Homes were looted and destroyed. A plastic Christmas tree in the town center offers hope that days ahead will be better.

"They tried to remove us here but we refused," said Father Sahar Qurkios, a Priest from the nearby St Mary's church, as reported by Independent. Referring to the mass being an act of defiance, he added, "It is a challenge to the ones who thought we would leave and never come back."
3 Proofs You've Really Been Born Again

Being "born again" is something that only God can do in our lives. The Lord Jesus once told a religious teacher that while flesh can only give birth to flesh, only the Spirit can give birth to spirit (see John 3:6). And just like how a person's birth is evidenced by his physical body along with a heartbeat and loud cries, a person who got born again will also show some proof of it.

The Need for Evidence

I've once heard a preacher comically point out that many try to emphasise the exact date when they met the Lord Jesus Christ, but fail to show signs of it. This preacher noted that while he does not remember what happened during his physical birth, he knows that he was born because he is alive. In the same way, he knows he got born again because there's proof of him being saved by Jesus.

Knowing this, we should also check ourselves if we've really borne fruit from the salvation that we have received in Christ Jesus. Yes, we might not see where the Spirit comes from or where He goes to just like the wind, but we do know that He came blowing towards us when we met Christ (see John 3:8).

Do you want to know if you're truly born again? Here are some pieces of evidence that the Spirit is producing life in you and that you are responding to Christ.

1. Repentance From Sin

The first thing that happens when we are born again is that we realise how sinful we are, and we'd want to repent of our sins, turning away from all of them. Those who come face to face with Christ and behold His holiness will have a response like Isaiah's:

"And I said: 'Woe is me! For I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.'" (Isaiah 6:5)

2. A Desire to Live a Righteous Life in Christ  Leaving Behind the Old, Sinful Life

Those who encounter Christ and repent of their sins will want to do what is right from that point on. For some, it will mean making things right, like how it meant to Zacchaeus:

"But Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, 'Look, Lord, I give half of my possessions to the poor. And if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I will repay him four times as much.'" (Luke 19:8)

3. A Mouth That Can't Stop Speaking the Truth of Christ's Gospel Always  Even If Opposed

Those who have truly been born again cannot stop but speak of God's goodness in Christ even if they face opposition and ridicule. After all, their lives don't matter to them anymore because Christ is now their life.

"But Peter and John answered them, 'Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot help but declare what we have seen and heard.'"(Acts 4:19-20)
5 Christian-Owned Companies With Godly Values

Christian-owned companies are diamonds in the ruff. It can be quite difficult to find a company or a store whose owner(s) shares the same ideals as you.

As you may know, companies are made with different purposes. Some business owners simply want to make money, but for others, there's a deeper purpose for it.

So if you're in the United States you probably know about In N' Out Burger and Chick-Fil-A, but there are still other Christian companies out there to support. Take a look at these 5 Christian companies with Godly values that you should know about:

1. Forever 21

Forever 21 is a one-stop-fashion shop for everyone. You will practically find everything you need here from clothes, bags, shoes and even makeup. Many are fond of shopping here because the prices are affordable and there's a wide array of fashion choices.

However, what makes F21 very special is that this is actually a Christian-owned company. The Changs are born-again Christians and Mrs. Chang, co-owner of F21 once shared that opening the store is God's calling for her. You can actually see "John 3:16" printed under the plastic bags.

2. Mary Kay

Mary Kay Ash, owner of this cosmetic brand, built the company with a goal in mind--to let all women know that they are beautiful creations of God. This has been her motivation ever since. She also attributes the success of Mary Kay to God, sharing the company is blessed because they had the right motivation behind it. So if you're planning to buy some beauty products and cosmetic, put Mary Kay on your list.

3. Interstate Batteries

At face value, Interstate Batteries may not look like a Christian company. But once you read the company's purpose and values, you'd be surprised! The mission statement reads:

Our Purpose

To glorify God and enrich lives as we deliver the most trustworthy source of power to the world.

Our Values

LOVE. Treat others like you'd want to be treated.

SERVANT'S HEART. Lead with what people need.

EXCELLENCE. Do great things with the gifts you've been given.

COURAGE. Learn, improve and boldly drive change that matters.

FUN. Work hard, laugh often.

TEAM. Together, we're better.

INTEGRITY. Be who you are and live up to your commitments.

4. Tyson Foods

John Tyson, owner of Tyson Foods, launched the Chaplaincy Program in 2000. The program aims to employ chaplains who will help motivate, encourage and pray with their team members. Currently, there are 115 chaplains employed in Tyson Foods with 113,000 team members.

5. Hobby Lobby

This arts and crafts chain store donates and ministers. Hobby Lobby donates 10 percent of its in-store discounts to school, churches and charities and can also arrange for its customers to get the discount for donations. One of the company's mission statements says "We are committed to...Honoring the Lord in all we do by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles." This is also why the store is closed on Sundays.

Not all company owners are money hungry; there are really good ones out there who uses their hands for serving God. Let's continue to watch out for Christian-owned companies and help support them and their cause.
5,000-Year-Old Painting of Nativity Scene Found in Egypt, Raising New Questions on Christian Icon

In a puzzling discovery, Italian researchers have discovered a nativity scene that was done, based on scientific calculation, 5,000 years agoabout 3,000 years before Jesus was born!

The drawing of the scene, done in reddish-brown ochre, was found on the ceiling of a small cave in the Egyptian Sahara desert during an expedition to sites between the Nile valley and the Gilf Kebir Plateau way back in 2005, geologist Marco Morelli, director of the Museum of Planetary Sciences in Prato, near Florence, Italy, told Seeker.

The researchers called the site the "Cave of the Parents."

Morelli said it is only now that his team has decided to reveal their amazing find. "It's a very evocative scene which indeed resembles the Christmas nativity. But it predates it by some 3,000 years"the oldest nativity scene ever found, Morelli said.

The drawing depicts a star in the east, a baby between a man and a woman (presumably the newborn's parents), and two animals. The woman in the drawing has a missing head because of a painting detachment.

"The discovery has several implications as it raises new questions on the iconography of one of the more powerful Christian symbols," Morelli said.

The geologist explained other details of the finding, which make it unique. He noted that the newborn is drawn high above the ground, as if being raised to the sky. Such position would have meant a birth or a pregnancy, he said.

"As death was associated to Earth in contemporary rock art from the same area, it is likely that birth was linked to the sky," Morelli said.

The drawing becomes more symbolically complex with the inclusion of other figurestwo animals and a small circular feature.

On the upper part is a drawing of a headless lion, a mythical beast which appears in several rock art drawings from the same area. Below the scene is a drawing of a baboon, while in the east, the artist appeared to have drawn a star.

"No doubt it's an intriguing drawing," Morelli said. "We didn't find similar scenes until the early Christian age."
'An Angel Saved My Life.' One In 10 Brits Say They Have Seen Or Heard An Angel

The number of British people who believe they have seen or heard an angel has doubled in six years, according to a new survey.

A Bible Society poll found one in three Brits believe in angels while one in 10 people claim to have seen or heard an angel.

This is double the number who responded positively to the same question in a survey in 2010, when just 5 per cent claimed they'd had an experience with an angel.

A third of all Brits believe they have a guardian angel.

Women are more likely to believe in angels than men, and marginally more likely to have seen or heard an angel.

A similar proportion reports seeing or hearing an angel across the country. However, those aged over 75 are far less likely to have seen or heard an angel, even though this age group is most likely to believe in them.

The research is part of Bible Society's Pass it On campaign which encourages parents and young children to engage or re-engage with the Bible's classic stories.

The society's Rachel Rounds said: "'Of course, there will be many who say it is people's 'imagination or wishful thinking', but Bible Society believe it's hard to argue that one in 10 people, in this country, claim to have experienced an angel.

"The Bible makes it very clear angels exist and so, it seems, do people in 21st century Britain. Bible Society believes it is very difficult to argue with those who claim to have experienced an angel and say what they have seen, heard or felt is wrong or a product of their own imagination."

More than 2,000 adults were polled by ICM for Bible Society.

One of those interviewed in detail was former Squadron Leader, Tom Rounds, now Mayor of Calne, who believes an angel saved his life.

As a C130 Hercules navigator in the 1980s, Squadron Leader, Rounds, was taking part in a routine low level flying exercise, 250ft above ground level, which took him and the highly experienced crew from RAF Lyneham, through Wales and the West Country.

Finally, they flew back round to Salisbury Plain, where they were due to drop a resupply load.

Down at 250ft, their flight was plagued with low cloud and rain which meant they had to keep climbing up to a safe altitude when they couldn't see well enough what was ahead. Every so often, though, there was a break in the cloud so they would descend back to 250ft.

At one point they were flying at this height, along the south edge of a valley, near Lampeter. Even though the cloud cover had been sporadic, it suddenly became impossible for them to see, so at 280mph and still at 250ft, they were flying blind.

Squadron Leader Rounds said: "At some point I felt an overwhelming urge to climb the aircraft away from our then height of 250ft. The hairs on my neck stood up. It was almost as though something was screaming in my head to take action immediately.

"I duly screamed at the pilot to initiate a hard climb and rapid turn left, as I believed our safety was to be had out over the low lying land to our north over the valley."

Just as he yelled at the crew, the radar altimeter, an electronic device that transmits constantly and tells the crew the actual height of the aircraft directly above the ground, began shrieking.

Rounds said: "We knew at that point that we were now less than 250ft from the ground despite the aircraft attitude being at over 50 degrees, banked to the left, and climbing. We were now flying parallel to the northern slope of the mountain.

"We then watched mesmerised as the indicated height on the radar altimeter continued to fall and reached at just 50ft - where it stayed. I absolutely believed the plane was about to crash straight into the mountainside and that I had now consigned us, as a crew, to the statistics book of another RAF aircraft lost on a training sortie."

For several seconds the reading remained resolutely at 50ft until, with an enormous collective sigh of relief, the figures began to increase showing that they were indeed climbing away from the mountain slope and gaining altitude away from the threat of danger.

"As we flew on, no one said a word," said Rounds, "Except for acknowledging instructions from Air Traffic Control, nothing more was said of the incident but I, for one, will never forget that flight. What might have happened had I shouted my instructions say five or even 10 seconds later?

"Was that my guardian angel who spoke to me urging I take immediate action? I don't suppose I shall really know for certain but during a quiet moment, I like to believe it was."
Brutal Rise In Persecution Of Christians Around The World Forecast In New Report

A shocking rise in violent persecution of Christians is forecast for next year by the charity Release International.

The most dramatic increase is expected to be in the Islamic world, where Christians are finding themselves at ever greater risk of persecution from both the state and Islamic militants.

Persecution of Christians is also on the rise in India, from militant Hindus, and China, where the pressure is continuing to grow on unregistered churches.

The full figures will be published next month in Release International's annual Persecution Trends report.

The findings are previewed in the January edition of the charity's magazine, release.

Paul Robinson, chief executive, said: "Around the world Christians face an increasing array of violent persecutors. These include the brutal Islamic State in the Middle East, heavily armed militants in Nigeria and Hindu extremists in India.

"Our report on the likely trends of persecution in 2017 is a wake-up call to take our prayers and practical support for our persecuted family to a new level."

In the Middle East, the ongoing conflict in Syria and Iraq continues to force tens of thousands, including Christians, to flee their homes and historic churches in or near the birthplace of Christianity 2000 years ago face the loss of as many has half their members. Some Christian leaders fear a mass exodus of all Christians from the region.

Christians who have escaped Islamic State have told horror stories of torture, sex abused and even crucifixions. With IS now on the run, experts on the ground believe the persecution will worsen as the group battles for survival.

In Iran, the clampdown on underground churches will continue with Christian leaders facing arrest, imprisonment and torture or sometimes being offered bail at $10,000 or more to avoid jail.

Attacks against Christians by Islamist militants in Egypt are continuing.

Nigeria is where Christians are suffering some of the worst atrocities with as many as 15,000 murdered by Boko Haram since 2011 and two million people displaced. Muslim Fulani militants continue to terrorise Christians and others in the north, attacking villages at night, slaughtering peoplewith knives and seizing their land.

In Pakistan, Christian mother Asia Bibi remains on death row for a sixth year on a charge of blasphemy, which she denies, Release reports.

Anyone who dares defend her or try to repeal the blasphemy law risks assassination and the Supreme Court is struggling to find judges willing to hear her appeal. "Christians in Pakistan are considered third-class citizens," says a Release partner. "In 2017 we will face more discrimination, forced conversions and forced marriages."
Christians Arrested, Accused of Belonging to 'Evil Cults' in China

Chinese authorities have begun a crackdown on "evil cults." Unfortunately, those who were arrested and accused of being cult members were Christians, the persecution watchdog group China Aid reported.

The arrests were made in October and November, but the exact number of the Christians apprehended by authorities in Yunnan province is not yet known.

"Tu Yan, a woman who began attending churches in Yunnan after she moved there for work, was returning home from a Christian gathering on Oct. 22 when she was apprehended on suspicion of 'using a cult organisation to undermine the implementation of the law,'" China Aid said in its latest report.

The woman was apparently released, but was re-arrested a month later on the same charge. Authorities accused her of being the "backbone of evil cults and organising three meetings on behalf of these institutions."

Her father denied her involvement in any cult activities but to no avail.

Tu disclosed to China Aid that four other church members were arrested on the same charge. Local Christians in the area, however, said as many as 12 people might have been apprehended.

Another eight Christians were also accused of belonging to illegal cults and arrested on Nov. 27 in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, reports said.

Chinese authorities accused the arrested Christians of belonging to a sect based in Taiwan, which China regards as a cult.

The latest arrests were part of a widespread crackdown on Christian churches being undertaken by the ruling Communist Party in China, watchdog groups said. An undetermined number of Christians and human rights activists are now locked up in jail for protesting against forced church demolitions and the arrest of other activists, the groups said.

Earlier in August, authorities arrested two Christian summer camp leaders in the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region, accusing them of trying to "brainwash" children, China Aid reported.

"Both women were accused of indoctrinating minors with superstitious beliefs. Chinese law forbids religious teaching to anyone under the age of 18, believing matters of faith to be dangerous brainwashing from which children must be protected," according to the group.

"Christian parents and church leaders can face disciplinary action from officials for involving their children in any Christian activities," it said.
Franklin Graham And Pastor Paula White Among Christian Clergy To Pray At Donald Trump Inauguration

A record number of Christian and Jewish clergy are to lead prayers at the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

The six clergy are the leading evangelist Franklin Graham, Florida New Destiny Pastor Paula White, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Bishop Wayne Jackson, the Hispanic community's Rev Samuel Rodriguez and Rabbi Marvin Hier.

They have all been invited to pray at the inauguration next month, according to The Washington Post.

Franklin Graham, who prayed also at the 2001 inauguration of George Bush, wrote on Facebook: "It is a privilege to be asked to take part in the inauguration of the next President of the United States.

"I am very thankful that prayer and reading from God's Holy Word will be a part of this important ceremony as the world watches. We need God's blessing and favor on this nation and our new president, Donald J. Trump. I'm praying for that - will you?"

Barack Obama was criticised for choosing Pastor Rick Warren in 2008 because of his traditional stance on marriage.

Rodriguez was among those who criticised Trump during the campaign because of his statements on immigration.

Rabbi Hier, whose parents fled the Nazi holocaust in Poland, told the Post: "It's a particular honor that shows the greatness of America.

"Whatever you turn to in the Torah, one can find connections and relevance to whatever period of history human beings live in. So that's not going to be a challenge."

In an interview with Christian Today after the election, Graham, who heads the evangelistic organisation founded by his father Billy Graham, said God had without question had a hand in the election of Trump and called on Americans to "come together" and unite behind their new President.

According to polls, white evangelical Christians backed Trump by 81 per cent to 16 per cent  a larger margin of the evangelical vote than was achieved by a Republican candidate in the past three elections.

Graham said Trump was a "changed man" from when he made lewd comments about women. He predicted he would put together the best team the US administration has seen for years.

The inauguration of Trump will consist of a five-day festival of balls, dinners and a parade but will culminate with a sober and serious "national prayer service" at Washington National Cathedral. This will have a focus on the Christian evangelical tradition that was key in propelling him to power.

But the presence of Rabbi Hier indicates Trump's determination to work with people of all faiths. A website has been created, along with Twitter and Facebook pages to give updates and interesting historical facts about the inauguration.
Meet Uganda's Millionaire-Making Farmer

In a region of northern Uganda where an estimated 90 per cent of people survive on subsistence farming, Acaye Genesis has a dream.

A dream to transform the lives of Gulu District's struggling farmers through chilli, ginger and bananas. And a dream to share the gospel of Christ as he helps them to meet their very real physical needs.

"In June, there is a month here called the month of hunger," says Genesis. "A typical farmer grows food crops, and that is what they always sell  but when you've done all your selling and the crops you've planted are not yet ready your family suffers."

Approximately 61 per cent of people in Gulu District are living in poverty. It is the poorest region in Uganda, with the majority of the population having spent 20 years in Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps while their homes and land were ravaged by war. People returned to reclaim their land in 2008, but after two decades stripped of any independence they'd lost their agricultural skills, and the younger generation had never learned to farm at all. Yet the only means of survival for most people in the region is to grow food.

Farmer by heart and by profession, Genesis is working with UK charity BMS World Mission to teach Gulu's farmers biblical techniques for farming, and to introduce them to cash crops that will enable them to earn enough money to send their children to school and to pay for health care.

"We are currently working on ginger, chilli and bananas," he says. "We are the pioneers for ginger in northern Uganda  but the market is here. And chilli was not grown on a commercial basis, but we are trying to introduce it to farmers here."

An average farmer in the area earns 550,000 Ugandan shillings a year  that's the equivalent of 33 pence a day. It's virtually nothing. Genesis has been heading up a project training 100 farmers in Paicho sub-county to grow cash crops to earn more money. And he has found that chilli, ginger and bananas thrive in Gulu's soil. Last month, one of his farmers was picked up by the local radio station for his success, having made two or three million shillings in the last year from growing chilli. And a few other farmers have already made a million shillings this year.

"Of course it makes me happy," says Genesis. "When you are beginning this work, you are not sure if you are going to succeed. But we are moving on. I have seen quite a number of farmers who have picked up on what we are trying to do."

A couple of million shillings is nothing in comparison to Western salaries, but it's making a huge difference for farmers like Ongaba Peter, a 42-year-old pastor and father of five. "The bananas have helped me a lot," says Peter, "just five bunches are enough to send my children to school. And I think when the ginger is ready I will have a lot more money to keep sending my children to school and to keep up with their health needs."

Before taking part in the project, Peter used to grow cassava and groundnuts, which are a commonly grown food crop in the region. "It was very hard in those days because I would have to sell a great quantity of cassava or groundnut to pay for my children to go to school," he says, "so that would mean that I have less to eat at home."

Part of Genesis' work is training the farmers to grow separate crops for cash and for food, so that they don't have to choose between food and an education for their children.

But Genesis' work isn't just about farming. "My second hope is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet the spiritual needs of the farmers," he says. "To make them understand that everything they are doing is connected to God and to the Bible."

Through the project, Genesis and the BMS-supported team have been able to share the gospel with non-Christian farmers, pray with them, and even see some of them come to faith. "It looks like agriculture, but through this work we share everything. We share the gospel. There are many times people have asked, 'come and pray with my family,' and we go and pray with them."

At least 100 families are already benefitting from Genesis' work. That's around 700 men, women and children who are reaping more hopeful harvests. In addition, the trained farmers are sharing their knowledge and success with their neighbours and communities, and more farmers are opting to diversify and try growing something new.

"Farming is part of me," says Genesis. "When I grew up, it happened that all the subjects that I loved at school were farming. So I ended up being a professional, and also a farmer myself." Genesis' passion for agriculture and for his country's struggling farmers drives him to pursue his work, and he has even bigger dreams for the future.

When asked how he feels about the success of the project so far, Genesis says, "I give God the glory. Without God, it would not have happened."
Terrorists Fire Mortar Shells in Christian District in Damascus on Christmas Day

People celebrating Christmas in Damascus, Syria faced a terrifying ordeal when three mortar shells exploded close to a French hospital on Sunday.

An unnamed police source shared the news with the Syrian Arab News Agency, saying the terrorists fired the mortars in the Christian district of al-Qassa'a in Damascus. The attack damaged both private and public establishments. Details regarding the number of casualties were not mentioned in the report.

The same publication earlier reported that militants attacked the Barada water pipeline in Kafr al-Zayt in Damascus just before Christmas. Damascus Countryside Water Establishment Director Hussam Hreidin said a similar attack took place less than a month ago, adding that they already restored the pipeline service on Friday.

However, pro-government media gave a contrasting report. According to them, the government was forced to cut the water supplies to Damascus for a few days because rebels had polluted the source with diesel. They usually get water from the al-Fija spring, which is located in a rebel-held area. This time around, the government used its water reserves.

Syria has been suffering from a state of civil war since 2011. Its government is constantly fighting opposition and terrorist groups such as the Islamic State, which is known in the region as Daesh, and Jabhat Fatah al Sham.

The government ran by President Bashar al-Assad scored a major victory earlier this month after Syrian government forces took back eastern Aleppo from rebels. Assad said defeating the rebels in Aleppo won't solve Syria's conflict, but it can be considered a "huge step" towards ending the country's devastating five-year civil war.

"It's true that Aleppo will be a win for us, but let's be realistic: It won't mean the end of the war in Syria," Assad told Al Jazeera of the victory. "But it will be a huge step towards this end."
Why Did The Holy Family Flee Into Egypt?

One of the most terrible stories in the Bible is that of the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem after the birth of Jesus. It's just one verse in Matthew's Gospel (2:16) but it contains a world of tragedy. Herod has learned about the infant Jesus from the Magi and recognises the threat the child poses to his regime. He orders the children killed  perhaps not a large number, but a dreadful thing, and one entirely in keeping with the actions of an extremely bloodthirsty ruler.

Before this, though, the Holy Family has escaped and gone to Egypt. But why Egypt, and what can we learn from their flight?

The borders of Egypt were only around 100 miles away from Bethlehem in a straight line. Another hundred miles would bring them to the river Nile in the heart of the kingdom. Egypt at this time was part of the Roman Empire and had a stable, well-run government. More to the point, it had large colonies of Jews, notably in the city of Alexandria. Of its 300,000 people, up to two-fifths were Jews. So Mary and Joseph would have been able to fit in with the community, Joseph would have been able to find work and they would have been safe from Herod.

The second reason they went has less to do with history and more to do with theology. Matthew tells us (2:15): "And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my son.'" The "prophet" is Hosea and the reference is to the first verse of chapter 11 of his book. They don't refer there to the exile of the family, but to Israel's long sojourn in Egypt before they were brought out by Moses.

But Matthew uses this bringing "out of Egypt" to Israel as a pattern for Jesus' return to Judaea: he too would enter into the Promised Land from Egypt, as the embodiment of a new Israel. He would get right in his own person what God's people through the ages had got wrong.

There is an early Church legend about the Flight into Egypt. The story is that the family was waylaid by robbers on the way to Egypt and the robber chief wanted to kill them and steal their possessions. But another of the thieves, named Dismas, refused to allow any harm to come to them. He looked at Jesus and said: "O most blessed of children, if ever there come a time for having mercy on me, then remember me, and forget not this hour." And Dismas was the thief on the cross who asked Jesus to remember him when he came into his kingdom.

It's only a legend, but the story does tell us two things. First, it speaks to us of the providence of God and the great unfolding of his salvation history as Jesus fulfilled his appointed task. But second, it speaks straight into our world today, in which millions of people are refugees, fleeing with only what they can carry, poor, hungry and traumatised. They are not always kindly received in the nations where they seek refuge. But 2,000 years ago they were Mary, Joseph and Jesus, and perhaps we should look to see their faces today.

Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
At 103 years of age, George McDowell has earned the right to live by his own rules.

He's got seven of them, a list formed about 30 years ago when he was in his 70s. A couple of his favorites  hanging out with younger people and having a cocktail every day  ended up forming the highlight of his week: a neighborhood Friday night happy hour.

A decade ago when McDowell's wife Rae died  she was 90  he invited his Meyerland neighbors over for a cocktail.

McDowell was 93 then, and admits he was the oldest person there. But it was apparent that his neighbors, all a decade or two younger, were hungry for companionship and conversation, too.

They each had a cocktail and talked about the week's events and agreed to come back again the next week. Eventually they started rotating the host home, but McDowell says the group is still going strong.

More Information 7 rules for living past 70 Stay intellectually challenged. When past age 70, associate with nothing but younger people. Exercise every day. (Hire a personal trainer if you can.) Get at least 7 hours of sleep every night between age 70 and 80. Between 80 and 90, get 8 hours of sleep. Between 90 and 100, get 9 hours and over 100, get 9.5 hours. Take a one-hour nap every day between 1 and 5 p.m. After that nap, have a bourbon old-fashioned. When leaving your doctor's office, if he doesn't shout "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it!" get a new doctor! See More Collapse

Getting around isn't as easy as it once was, and he suffers from macular degeneration, but otherwise McDowell, a retired Air Force colonel, is in good health. He broke a hip last year and suffered a minor stroke so staying at home requires the help of 24-hour caregivers.

One recent trip out of the house was to Gallery Furniture, because McDowell had worn out his favorite recliner, a soft chenille Franklin power-lift version that helps him get up more easily. His daughter Linda Novosad, said it was originally purchased 14 years ago for her mother, who needed the help it provided after she broke a hip. (When Gallery Furniture owner Jim McIngvale learned McDowell's story, he gave him the chair as a gift.)

After her death, it became George McDowell's favorite spot for watching the news on TV.

The Dallas-area native keeps his life interesting now, but his earlier years were even more so.

Born in 1913, he graduated from the North Texas Agricultural College  now the University of Texas-Arlington  during the Great Depression. Jobs were scarce, so he applied to military schools, ending up at West Point, the U.S. Military Academy, his daughter, Linda Novosad said.

When he talks about the world events he's lived through, he includes his military career, which ranged from initially being assigned to a horse-drawn artillery unit in Oklahoma to working on the staff of U.S. Gen. George S. Patton in Morocco where they planned the invasion of Africa and eventually working in London during the Cold War, installing underground ballistic missiles that were aimed at the then-Soviet Union.

"I've seen remarkable changes," said McDowell, the only living member of his graduating class and the second-oldest West Point graduate. (There's another in Florida who's 105, Novosad said.)

Of the controversial and colorful Patton  another West Point grad  McDowell said he "stayed away from him" as much as he could.

McDowell shifted into the U.S. Air Force after it was created, and retired in 1961 as a colonel, his daughter said.

She said she lived an exciting childhood, moving between Washington D.C. and various cities around the world until she went to college in Texas. She recalled living in post-war London, where her parents let her roam the city as long as she was with her older brother, Lawrence.

"Some people think if you grow up in the military that your father's a drill sergeant. Daddy wasn't that way; he was very gentle and quiet," Novosad said.

When he finally retired, McDowell and his wife moved to Houston where he helped start Clark, McDowell and Kic Inc., a real estate management company. A certified property manager, McDowell also taught classes in the subject at the University of Houston back in the 1970s.

Today he passes time by living the seven rules he wrote down years ago. He took up oil painting to stay stimulated and goes for walks two or three times a week. He gets plenty of sleep, sees his doctor occasionally and hangs out with his younger friends, who've switched to drinking beer, he says.

He's sticking by what works  a bourbon old-fashioned.
Most work places don't require a sick note if you're feeling slightly under the weather. You get an allotted amount of sick days and you use them as needed.

However, some work places are extremely particular with their sick-days policy.
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Liberty police officers donned their special blue and white Christmas hats on Dec. 21 and delivered Christmas baskets to the homes of 18 senior citizens.

The Silver Santa Project, as it is called, has been in operation since 2010 and focuses on providing gift baskets at Christmas time to elderly residents in the area who are less fortunate, according to a statement from Liberty Police Chief Thomas Claunch.
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The East Montgomery County Improvement District welcomed a new ammunition manufacturing business to the EMCID Industrial Park in New Caney with a groundbreaking ceremony Dec. 12.

The ceremony marked the start of construction on a new 10,000-square-foot building that will serve as a production facility for General Ballistics, a California-based ammunition manufacturer which will make 9 mm, .40-, .45-caliber and 5.56/.223 caliber cartridges.

"General Ballistics is an ammunition company specialized in making high-precision, high-quality ammunition," Vance Massih, founder of General Ballistics, said.

Massih chose to bring his business to Texas, where he says the reception he has encountered in regards to his business has been heartening.

"After going through the process of research, permits and everything, I found out pretty quickly that it was economically unfeasible to start the company in California," Massih said. "So, I moved to Texas. Here, I'm greeted with open arms."

In April, EMCID voted to build the approximately $1 million facility in addition to a qualification range, which will be purchased through a lease-to-own agreement by General Ballistics.

The EMCID board awarded the contract to E&S Construction during the board meeting Nov. 10.

The new building is projected to be complete in June 2017 and will sit on a 2.5-acre site at 20060 Nichols Way in the northeast end of the EMCID Industrial Park.

EMCID Industrial Park, which is located off of FM 1485 W and Gene Campbell Road, is a nearly 500-acre site comprised of improved tracts of land with infrastructure such as roads and sewer.

Approximately 15 companies, both local and from abroad, currently have facilities in Industrial Park including Keysteel and the Wal-Mart Distribution Center.

Massih believes that the EMCID Industrial Park is a good fit for General Ballistics.

"It has a very pro-business atmosphere," Massih said. "After speaking with Frank McCrady, president and CEO of EMCID, I could tell that EMCID's goal is to help businesses; not hinder them, and I wanted to be a part of that. I also chose Houston (area) specifically because it's a large market and the talent pool is tremendous. With a vast majority of my vendors here, being here decreases shipping costs and helps with logistical issues."

General Ballistics will likely hire only two or three people when the facility is first opened, but Massih is optimistic in the company's potential for growth.

"We will need people to do warehouse management and order fulfillment," Massih said. "Then as we grow, we'll need more specialized jobs. So, the number of people we hire will be dictated by the growth. With the reception we've received so far, everything indicates that growth may happen fairly quickly."

Although the addition of General Ballistics may not yield many immediate job openings, EMCID believes the addition will bring value to the county.

"Right off the bat, he's only hiring two or three people," Kelley Mattlage, EMCID director of communications, said "It's not a huge jobs creator. However, it's bringing a property value to the area. We're building something where nothing existed before, so that adds value to the county."

Additionally, the qualification range, which is planned for the 4.8-acre site behind the new facility will serve as a dual-purpose range benefiting both General Ballistics and local law enforcement.

"Frank (McCrady) had spoken to local law agencies like the Constable's Office and local police, and they didn't really have an area close by where they can go to for a qualification range, which means spending more time away from their jobs and families," Mattlage said. "We thought, 'Wouldn't it be good to do a joint-venture?' This way, General Ballistics can use it for testing and local law enforcement agencies can use it for a qualification range for training purposes."

The use of the range by law enforcement has the potential to serve as a unique and valuable resource for General Ballistics, Massih explained.

"It's not something any other manufacturer has access to," Massih said. "It's such a giant data pool. I can create a product, have law enforcement test it, get feedback and improve the product based on their use and valuation of it. That in-and-of-itself is wonderful. Having all of these people who use ammunition in their line of duty in defense of themselves and others, who know and understand the importance of quality ammunition; to tap into that pool is very valuable."

Massih, who now lives in Kingwood, expressed his gratitude to EMCID for helping to bring General Ballistics to Industrial Park.

"I just want to thank Frank McCrady and the board for going above and beyond in bringing all of this together; for attracting the right people, engineers and contractors; and for facilitating a wonderful business environment," Massih said. "I am very grateful."

For more information about the EMCID Industrial Park visit http://www.emctx.com/eco-dev/industrial-park.
This year's crop of novels featured a number of stories set in and around Houston. The action in these stories unfolded in downtown buildings, in traffic jams, in River Oaks and Montrose and the Heights. Characters danced at the gone-but-not-forgotten Shamrock Hotel, sped along Memorial Drive to clear their heads, and drove to Pearland to visit the Sri Meenakshi Temple.

Take a look at these 2016 novels, which all include scenes in and around H-town. Did we miss a book that was published this year? Email alyson.ward@chron.com and let us know.
The Laurenzo family wasn't looking to open a second Laurenzo's outpost but recently they were presented with one of those classic win-win situations in the restaurant world. And that led to the news this week that a second Laurenzo's will go into the former Republic Smokehouse space at 1910 Bagby in Midtown.

"We weren't looking but it was just one of those things that fell into our lap," said Domenic Laurenzo, executive chef of the restaurant group that owns the popular El Tiempo Cantina restaurants and Laurenzo's on Washington. "We're hoping it's going to be a huge success."
Patrons of the Sonic Drive-In at 1524 First Street E in Humble may have noticed the drive-through window has been replaced with an invitation for customers to instead try the hop-through experience, which more resembles Sonic's traditional method of serving food when carhop personally delivers the order to the car window.

This is just one of the differences people may notice at this Sonic location, as well as the location at 3806 Atascocita Road, at the corner of Will Clayton Parkway, as both businesses have recently come under new ownership.

Rex Delk is a supervising partner in the Barnett Group, a Sonic Drive-In franchise headquartered in Oklahoma. He has been with the group for 13 years. He and his wife, Danielle Buras Bloom Delk, have been in charge of the Sonic Drive-In at Highway 105 E and N Loop 336 in Conroe for several years.

Danielle is originally from the Humble area and is a graduate of Humble High School, class of 1982. The Delks' oldest daughter, Kandace Bloom Leighton, also is an Humble High School graduate, class of 2002.

When the opportunity arose to become supervising partner for two locations in the Humble and Atascocita area, the Delks were thrilled at the idea of having a Sonic presence in the community in which Danielle grew up.

Since they acquired the locations in October, the Delks are now looking to establish a relationship between the Sonic locations and the community. They encourage the local schools to reach out to the Sonic locations about potential community involvement opportunities.

"We're very involved with our schools," Delk said. "The schools here (near Conroe) we're involved with in many things like community outreach, festival sponsorship, fundraising and supporting Project Graduation."

Danielle said students come in on Wednesday nights as guest carhops, and a percentage of the sales and tips go toward Project Graduation.

"We also offer Sonic Community cards, which are the size of credit cards, and they have two rows of little coupons you pull off," Danielle said. "Kids can sell them for $5, and it's pure profit for the organization they are fundraising for because we give them the cards for free."

Now, they hope to develop a similar relationship with the local schools in the Humble and Atascocita areas.

"We believe in community," Rex Delk said. "We're just getting the ball rolling. We want to help with fundraisers, sponsorships, banners, signs, everything. That's what Sonic - to us - is all about. We're a people-run organization, and we believe in people. We try to do as much outreach as we can. We're so excited to be a part of the community and to let them know that Sonic is here for them."

As supervising partner of the Humble and Atascocita locations, Delk was able to assign operating partners to run the newly acquired locations.

Jesse Risney is now the operating partner of the First Street and Wilson Road location. Nelda Santos is the operating partner of the Atascocita Road and Will Clayton Parkway.

Both Risney and Santos began working for Rex Delk at Sonic as teenagers and were trained by him over the years to prepare for a partner position.

"They are both great," Rex Delk said. "I have trained several people that own their own drive-ins. Jesse started working for me at 16 and Nelda started as a teenager too.

"It's all about the people here. We say, 'We're in the people development business; coincidentally, we sell hamburgers.' It's all about developing young people."

The two locations are currently looking to hire people to fill carhop and cook positions, according to Rex Delk.

In addition to the change in ownership and the hop-through alternative to the drive-through experience, both locations have undergone renovations as well.

Rex Delk said the parking lot entrance from First Street to the Sonic in Humble will be widened to accommodate two vehicles in order to facilitate traffic flow, and they intend to continue setting up the locations to promote efficiency.

"We know how to set them up to make them run at an optimum efficiency, and that's what we're configuring those to be like," Rex Delk said. "Our group has some of the highest averages by volume because we're designed for efficiency.

"We build our business on a sense of urgency. They call it fast food for a reason. We have to be fast."

For more information, or to contact the First Street location about community involvement opportunities, call 281-446-1350. To reach the Atascocita Road location, call 281-312-5012.

For more information about Sonic Drive-In, visit https://www.sonicdrivein.com/.
T.L. Johnson Cigar Company and Black Patch Cigar Company have announced a merger between the two companies.

Black Patch Cigar Company is a Kentucky-based cigar company owned by Eric McAnallen. The company has owns farms in the Black Patch region of Western Kentucky and the Dominican Republic. It also produces cigars in the Dominican Republic under its Kenbano brand.

T.L. Johnson Cigar Company is owned by Terry Johnson. It is a part of T.L. Johnson Group Dominicana SRL which is a full vertically integrated operation. This includes a brand of cigars, production factory, distribution arm, as well as a growing and leaf brokerage operation.

The two companies started initial merger talks back in 2015. This past month an agreement to consolidate production and distribution was finalized.

Under the details of the merger, Black Patch Cigars will now be made at T.L. Johnsons Tabacalera TLJ factory in the Dominican Republic. Distribution will now be handled by the Colorado based T.L. Johnson of Colorado and T.L. Johnson distributors. In addition Johnson and McAnallen will now collaborate to grow tobacco in Kentucky as well as expand the T.L. Johnson & Company growing operations in the Dominican Republic.

Black Patch Cigars and McAnallens tobacco growing experience in Kentucky and the Dominican Republic are a welcome addition to the T.L. Johnson Cigar family, commented Terry Johnson in a press release.

Randy Shorman will now handle the day to day operations for the merged entity, while Ross Estabrooks will manage sales.

The new entity says that both Black Patch and T.L. Johnson branded products will continue to be available in the U.S. market as both brands have products meeting the February 15th, 2007 grandfather date imposed by the FDA.

In the past, T.L. Johnson has had past collaborative partnerships with Luis Sanchezs La Tradicion Cubana and Eddie Tarazonas Tarazona Cigars.
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin died 100 years ago, on Dec. 30, 1916, at the age of 47.

His inexplicable rise from nothing to power in the czar's court culminated in one of the oddest death scenes in recorded history.
For parents who owe large sums of money in child support, December was not a good month.

In August, Texas officials announced that they would soon be denying car registration to parents who didn't pay child support.
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GALVESTON  The second Texas Army National Guard crew member killed in an AH-64 Apache helicopter crash has now been identified.

On Thursday afternoon, officials identified the second victim as Dustin Lee Mortenson, 32, of League City. He was an aviation material officer and is survived by his wife, Ruth.

Earlier Thursday, the family of Lucas Lowe, 33, was officially notified that he had been killed in the crash, according to Olen Bush, Lowe's father-in-law.

Lowe, an aircraft maintenance officer, was from Hardin. His wife, identified as Kami Bush, was pregnant with twins, a relative said Thursday.

"There is too much pain and hurt going on and it's devastating to the entire family," Olen Bush said of Lowe, a father of two.

The attack helicopter crashed about 3:50 p.m. Wednesday into Galveston Bay a short distance from the Bayport Terminal wharves in Pasadena.

Efforts were under way Thursday to retrieve the helicopter wreckage.

A barge from Humble-based T&T Salvage LLC was moored near the wreckage, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Dustin Williams, a Coast Guard spokesman.

The 87-foot patrol boat Manowar was nearby to guard the salvage site, Williams said.

The helicopter was on a routine training flight from Ellington Airport, where the 1-149 Attack Reconnaissance Battalion is based.

The crash is being investigated by the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center at Fort Rucker, Alabama.
Tomball police have arrested a man they say robbed the same cash store twice, along with two other men who allegedly participated in the second robbery.

On Nov. 21, The Cash Store at 27676 Tomball Parkway was robbed by an armed man who can be seen on video pointing a gun at store employees as they put cash into the suspect's bag.
In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
Harris County has been sued in federal court for the third time in less than a year for yet another issue related to the county's tough arrest and pretrial detention practices.

This time, civil rights advocates allege that county officials routinely charge and jail thousands of people each month without a warrant and without ever requiring police officers to supply sworn statements taken under oath that adequately describe the crimes for which the defendants stand accused, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the Southern District of Texas.

The plaintiffs are a pair of non-violent offenders arrested and jailed over the Christmas holidays.

Read the allegations here: Lomas v. Harris County



Lucas Lomas was arrested Christmas Eve for allegedly pilfering "five DVDs and a speaker," according to a document prepared by a prosecutor and co-signed by an officer. The filing provides no details about how the arresting officer determined Lomas had stolen the items. After a video hearing that is typical in Harris County, a hearing officer found probable cause. Lomas was released after posting $15,000 bail.

Carlos Eaglin was arrested Dec. 26 for alleged possession of less than 2 ounces of marijuana. Court papers co-signed by an officer and prosecutor accuse Eaglin of marijuana possession, but do not indicate a statement from the officer about how the substance was discovered or determined to be marijuana. After his video hearing, Eaglin was jailed on a $5,000 bond - the highest amount specified for any misdemeanor in Harris County's so-called bond schedule. He remains in jail.

The lawsuit seeks to compel the county to provide all arrestees with a more detailed statements of facts that are supported by an oath or information provided by a police officer that is consistent with both state and federal law. Those documents then could be reviewed by what the case describes as a neutral magistrate.

First Assistant County Attorney Robert Soard said county officials were still studying the allegations and preparing a response to the case.

As of Jan. 1, incoming Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg will be overseeing the prosecuting attorneys who handle the intake process for both felony and misdemeanor cases. Ogg, who is not named in the lawsuit, was not immediately available for comment Thursday.

The Civil Rights Corps and other groups previously sued both the City of Houston and Harris County over other violations of the rights of criminal defendants.

Houston officials have been sued over increasing delays in the time between arrests and the time city criminal defendants first see a judge.

Harris County faces a more complex civil rights challenge to the way the county's misdemeanor judges and hearing officers set bonds for defendants accused of minor crimes - a system that has resulted in long pretrial detention, jail overcrowding and a higher conviction rate for poor people who can't afford bail.

All three lawsuits are pending.
A record-breaking Houston heat wave sent the mercury shooting up to 82 degrees Wednesday, making it the hottest Dec. 28 in well over 100 years.

The 82-degree high was a new record for the day, busting the 1996 peak of 80 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

"Of more significance, though, was that it was the fifth consecutive day that we reached 80 degrees," NWS meteorologist Charles Roeseler told the Chronicle.

"It's only happened one other time in December that we had five consecutive days at or above 80 degrees, in 1998."

NWS weather records go all the way back to 1891.

But even though the hot flash might seem a delightful belated holiday gift, don't expect it to last.

A cold front will swoop in overnight, bringing temperatures down by 15 to 20 degrees for the next few days, Roeseler said.

The New Year's Eve forecast includes a 70 percent chance of precipitation - a seemingly apt end to a year that has been, by popular consensus, pretty rough.

The first day of 2017 doesn't look much better, with a chance of precipitation around 50 percent and a low of 61 degrees.
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Denied is a Houston Chronicle investigation into Texas' special education enrollment cap, which has kept tens of thousands of disabled kids from receiving services and prompted federal action and a handful of statewide listening sessions. Read how Houston schools are systemically blocking disabled kids from special ed on our subscriber website, HoustonChronicle.com.

For the past decade, one of the Houston Independent School District's biggest goals has been to reduce the "over-identification" of African-Americans in special education.

District officials have talked constantly about how black students in Houston, as in the rest of the country, are more likely to be placed in special education services than white students.

But dozens of current and former employees said the initiative has made it difficult for them to obtain special education evaluation and placement for students of all races.

RELATED: How Texas keeps tens of thousands of kids out of special ed

African-Americans in Houston are actually less likely to receive special education services than students of any race in almost any other big city in the United States, statistics show. Houston's overall special education rate of 7.26 percent is virtually last among the nation's 50 largest cities and less than half those in Boston or New York.

HISD's focus on the over-identification of African-Americans has also been called into question, according to education experts, by recent research showing that African-Americans are more prone to disabilities because they have higher rates of premature birth, fetal alcohol syndrome, malnutrition and exposure to toxins such as lead.

And in concentrating on the over-identification of African Americans, the district hasn't addressed the lower rates among other groups, especially Hispanics, who are less likely to get services, according to district data and records.

A special education Comprehensive Program Improvement Plan completed during the 2011-12 school year included a major goal to "decrease the over-representation of African American students with disabilities."

But when it came to Hispanics, the objective in the plan was to continue to ensure there was no over-identification, which in practice meant continuing their under-representation.

"During staff meetings, we were always, always told about over-identification," said Ann Fenner, who taught special ed at Durkee Elementary in north Houston between 1991 and 2011. "Nobody ever said anything about under-identification."

The attempt to fight over-identification began in the early 2000s and was encouraged by federal officials who named special education disproportionality  over- and under-identification  as a major issues.

HISD took the issue further, in part due to a 2011 audit commissioned by then-Superintendent Terry Grier that highlighted the disparity.

HISD has focused specifically on reducing the number of black boys in the special education categories of mental illness and intellectual disability.

Recently, the expert who conducted the audit, Thomas Hehir, a Harvard University professor and former U.S. Department of Education official, acknowledged in an interview that high-poverty school districts "should probably have higher special ed rates."

HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Is your school district denying special education services? Explore the numbers with our interactive tool

More than 76 percent of HISD students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, according to the district.

HISD's fight against "over-identification" has largely failed, statistics show. Black HISD students today are 34 percent more likely to be in special education than the district average, which is not much different than a decade ago, when they were 36 percent more likely to be in special education.

But while the effort has not accomplished its primary objective, employees said that pressure to avoid "over-identification" has led schools to be overly cautious about evaluating any students, African- American or not, for special education.

"We heard very clearly about 'over-identification," said Carolyn Baum, who spent 29 years with HISD's special education department before recently retiring.

"It definitely affected things."
The Arlington Police Department is among the many social media users to repost a video of one of its officers giving a kid a break.

On Monday night, Officer Eric Ball was working an off-duty job at a local movie theater, where a teenager was smoking marijuana outside, according to the Star-Telegram.
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Federal prosecutors are stepping up their fight to have two Houston lawyers banned from representing the former head of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club in a racketeering case alleging murder, drug dealing and other crimes on behalf of an outlaw organization.

They allege in new court papers that lawyer Kent Schaffer is an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the case who furthered Bandidos operations by reviewing court papers for all members, charged in any criminal case, to root out who might be cooperating with the government in exchange for leniency.

They ask that Schaffer and his law partner, James Kennedy, be disqualified from the case.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry J. Bemporad ruled in early December that prosecutors had succeeded in showing there was a potential conflict of interest, but that they had not shown him anything that convinced him the men should be disqualified.

Schaffer has not yet responded in writing to the latest federal motion but has previously strongly denied any wrongdoing and said he was never in-house counsel for the Bandidos and never reviewed paperwork to spot informants.

"I am incredibly flattered at their latest filing; obviously this prosecutor is afraid to try the case against me," Schaffer said Thursday. "They do just want me off the case."

Schaffer said the court has already rejected the prosecution's claim.

"This is a rehash that the court already denied, but for some reason this prosecutor has a sense of desperation and so they are going back for a second bite at the apple."

An indictment contends the Bandidos, which began in the Houston area in the 1960s, is a criminal enterprise engaged in murder, attempted murder, robbery, extortion, and drug trafficking, among other crimes.

Bemporad left the door open for them to show him more evidence, which appears to be in a 20-page document recently filed by prosecutors. The judge has since set a Jan. 6 hearing on the matter.

Within the document, prosecutors contend they have recordings of conversations in which Bandidos discuss Schaffer's alleged work for the organization, including reviewing all legal paperwork to look for cooperators.

Prosecutor said that multiple Bandidos will testify at trial that members were required to turn in legal paperwork, when they were arrested, to higher-ranking members so that the paperwork could be reviewed for signs of cooperation.

"Several members will testify that Mr. Schaffer was one of the attorneys that paperwork was taken to," states the document filed by prosecutors. "Two witnesses will testify that the Bandidos (organization) maintained a retainer with Mr. Schaffer for future work in defending its leadership from criminal charges."

Prosecutors further contend that Schaffer is so intertwined in Bandidos business that he can't be permitted to represent ex Bandidos leader Jeff Pike at trial because Schaffer has previously represented at least two Bandidos who are expected to be called to the witness stand to testify against Pike.

That would put Schaffer in the position of perhaps not only trying to defend his own reputation while representing Pike, but questioning persons who had previously represented. As Kennedy is at the same firm, he would face a similar conflict, they contend.

Conroe resident Jeff Pike stepped down as leader of the Bandidos earlier this year after he and other top members of the Bandidos were charged in an indictment unsealed in San Antonio.

Philip Hilder, a Houston lawyer who is also a former federal prosecutor said the judge in the case will have to do a "deep dive" to determine exactly what is going on, including the motivations of prosecutors and whether Schaffer does indeed have too great a conflict of interest.

"You are witnessing the chess moves that are expected in a high profile case like this," Hilder said.

"I can foresee this might be a prosecution tactic to get rid of competent counsel," he said. "Schaffer has a long history of representing the organization's members and has a deep understanding of the dynamics of Bandidos and it is quite foreseeable the government is attempting to bump him from the case because he has been effective in the past in his representation. "

When authorities arrested Pike and three other members of the Bandidos, Pike was the only one who was released on bail pending trial.

Not long after an FBI SWAT team used an armored vehicle and loud speakers to arrest Pike at his home, Schaffer convinced a magistrate judge here that Pike was not a threat to the community or to flee and that he should be conditionally released.

John Portillo, who served as Pike's vice president remains in custody. Two other members, Justin Forster and Frederick Cortez have been released on bail since entering into plea agreements with the government.
Two Texas parents are facing drug and child endangerment charges after police found them passed out in their car with babies and drugs.

Austin's KVUE reports that the couple were unconscious at a Target parking lot with their 1-month-old and 1-year-old in the back seat.
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On this date in 1845, the state of Texas was officially admitted into the United States as the 28th state. President James K. Polk signed the papers welcoming Texas into the union.

Earlier that year the Republic of Texas approved annexation by the U.S., ending our time as a nation unto ourselves. Texas citizens approved annexation and a new constitution on Oct. 13, 1845.

WE RULE: If it wasn't for Texas the world would be without these amazing things

On Feb. 19, 1846 Texas President Anson Jones officially handed over the state government to Governor James Pinckney Henderson.

"The final act in this great drama is now performed; the Republic of Texas is no more, Jones declared.

Within a few months the U.S. declared war on Mexico, kicking off the Mexican-American War which lasted until 1848. No declaration of war was ever declared by Mexico though.

By the end of the war Mexico would lose nearly all of present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, spreading the U.S. all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Under the watch of President James K. Polk, the U.S. dream of manifest destiny had become a reality.

CIVIL WAR HITS TEXAS: Civil War-era maps show Texas, Gulf of Mexico in new light

Texas remained a state until it seceded from the union in Feb. 1861, against the protestations of Sam Houston, and joined the Confederate States during the Civil War.

It was not reinstated until March 1870, when the U.S. Congress readmitted Texas into the Union, although the state did not meet all the formal requirements needed for readmission.
It's been 20 years since he died, but rapper Tupac Shakur has a habit of causing controversy no matter where he turns up.

This time, the slain rapper shocked churchgoers in Sri Lanka, when his song "Hail Mary" was accidentally printed on a booklet for a Dec. 11 service. Anyone familiar with Tupac and the song knows it includes numerous profanities that are not suitable for church.
AUSTIN - A federal judge supervising the state's foster-care system has ordered child-protection officials to immediately comply with a year-old court order prohibiting foster children from being placed in group homes that lacked 24-hour supervision.

The development comes as the state has continued to downplay reports of continuing abuse and chronic staffing shortages in a system that faces the possibility of court supervision early next year, as the Legislature convenes to address a plan to increase funding for the troubled programs.

In a decision signed Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack said the state Department of Family and Protective Services "incorrectly interpreted" her injunction issued on Dec. 17, 2015 that mandated that state officials "immediately stop placing (permanent managing conservatorship) foster children in unsafe placements, which include foster group homes that lack 24-hour awake-night supervision."

HOUSE OF HORRORS: Adopted children detail alleged abuse to investigators

The Corpus Christi-based judge said the state had interpreted her injunction to allow foster children already in those homes to remain there and to only cover future placements.

"For over one year, PMC as well as temporary managing conservatorship foster children have remained in foster group homes without 24-hour awake-night supervision, in contrast to the Court's desired effect of its injunction," the new order states.

It orders an immediate halt to the continuing practice, which Jack said was discovered during a Dec. 21 conference with attorneys in the case.

There are now 10,306 foster children in permanent custody of CPS. Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Department of Family and Protective Services, said he does not know how of those children are covered by the judge's order. DFPS officials are working to determine that now, and to find alternate placements to comply with the court order, he said.

A footnote on Jack's order notes that she previously ruled that foster-care group homes without the 24-hour supervision "are unsafe placements" for either the permanent or temporary foster kids.

Testimony at an earlier trial showed that foster homes without around-the-clock supervision experienced problems with abuse not present at ones with supervision.

The state has been struggling for years to correct systemic flaws in its foster-care system, ranging from hundreds of deaths of children in state custody to chronic reports of abuse and neglect in foster placements. Moreover, hundreds of abuse reports go unchecked for months because of administrative chaos and high staff turnover.

CHANGES: Lawmakers OK millions for raises, new staff for CPS

Both Gov. Greg Abbott and DPFS Commissioner Henry "Hank" Whitman Jr. have publicly promised to curb the longstanding problems in the state's system as their highest priority. Legislative leaders have said the crisis will have top priority during the five-month legislative session, as well.

Earlier this month, legislative leaders approved more than $142 million in additional funding to hire more than 800 workers and give pay raises to 7,000 employees in its beleaguered Child Protective Services program as part of an emergency plan to address a manpower crisis that has impaired the state's ability to protect hundreds of vulnerable and abused children.

Included will be $12,000 raises for about 6,000 front-line workers and pay hikes of up to 20 percent for an additional 1,110 managers and special investigators, according to legislative leaders. The agency also got permission to immediately start hiring as many as 829 new workers to supplement the existing staff.

Attorneys for child-advocacy groups that sued the state over foster-care problems and the state could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday on the judge's new order.

Patrick Crimmins, a DFPS spokesman, said agency attorneys were reviewing the new order and planned to comply. Officials said they had no count immediately on how many foster-care children might be affected by Jack's new decision.
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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Judging by video evidence, the participants in the violent mall brawls over the Christmas weekend were overwhelmingly black teens, though white teens were also involved. The media have assiduously ignored this fact, of course, as they have for previous violent flash mob episodes. That disproportion has significance for the next administrations school-discipline policies, however. If Donald Trump wants to make schools safe again, he must rescind the Obama administrations diktats regarding classroom discipline, which are based on a fantasy version of reality that is having serious real-world consequences.

The Obama Justice and Education Departments have strong-armed schools across the country to all but eliminate the suspension and expulsion of insubordinate students. The reason? Because black students are disciplined at higher rates than whites. According to Washington bureaucrats, such disproportionate suspensions can mean only one thing: teachers and administrators are racist. The Obama administration rejects the proposition that black students are more likely to assault teachers or fight with other students in class. The so-called school to prison pipeline is a function of bias, not of behavior, they say.

This weeks mall violence, which injured several police and security officers, is just the latest piece of evidence for how counterfactual that credo is. A routine complaint in police-community meetings in minority areas is that large groups of teens are fighting on corners. Residents of the South Bronxs 41st Precinct complained repeatedly to the precinct commander in a June 2015 meeting about such street disorder. Theres too much fighting, one woman said. There was more than 100 kids the other day; they beat on a girl about 14 years old. In April 2016, a 17-year-old girl in Coney Island, Brooklyn, TaJae Warner, tried to protect her brother from a group of girls gathered outside her apartment building who were threatening to kill him; one of the group knocked her unconscious. She died four days later. At a meeting in the 23rd Precinct in East Harlem in 2015, residents asked why the police hadnt stopped a recent stampede of youth down Third Avenue. In April 2012, a group of teens stomped a gang rival to death in a Bronx housing project.

The idea that such street behavior does not have a classroom counterpart is ludicrous. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic males of the same age. The lack of socialization that produces such a vast disparity in murder rates, as well as less lethal street violence, inevitably will show up in classroom behavior. Teens who react to a perceived insult on social media by trying to shoot the offender are not likely to restrain themselves in the classroom if they feel disrespected by a teacher or fellow students. Interviews with teachers confirm the proposition that children from communities with high rates of family breakdown bring vast amounts of disruptive anger to school, especially girls. It is no surprise that several of the Christmas riots began with fights between girls. School officials in urban areas across the country set up security corridors manned by police officers at school dismissal times to avoid gang shootings. And yet, the Obama administration would have us believe that in the classroom, black students are no more likely to disrupt order than white students. Equally preposterous is the claim that teachers and administrators are bigots. There is no more liberal a profession than teaching; education schools are one long indoctrination in white-privilege theory. And yet when these social-justice warriors get in the classroom, according to the Obama civil rights lawyers, they start wielding invidious double standards in discipline.

The best solution to such alleged teacher racism, according to the Obama Justice and Education Departments, is to pressure teachers to keep unruly students in the classroom rather than removing them. This movement goes by the name of restorative justice; its result has been anarchy, adding a school-to-hospital pipeline to the school-to-prison pipeline. The St. Paul school district has been in the restorative-justice vanguard. Assaults on teachers tripled in 2015, reports Katherine Kersten of the Center for the American Experiment; one teacher sustained a traumatic brain injury, while another required staples in her head. Melees of 40 to 50 people (resembling the mall violence) are common, according to Kersten; roving packs of students attack isolated individuals. One high school issued emergency whistles to teachers. (Kersten has a full-length feature story on the St. Paul schools in City Journals upcoming issue.)

Over the last year, a Seattle school district in the throes of restorative justice experienced an alleged gang rape and several student deaths. Criminal charges, including murder, were filed against a group of students not yet out of middle school, reports the Seattle Times. Teachers unions in Fresno, Des Moines, New York City, and Indianapolis have all lodged complaints about the anti-discipline philosophy, according to Education Week. The Fresno teachers signed a petition pointing out that students are returned to class after cursing at teachers and physically assaulting them, without suffering any consequences. Fresnos teachers have been injured trying to stop fights; some are retiring because teaching where severely disruptive students cannot be dislodged has become impossible. In Des Moines, students now hit and scream at each other and their teachers, reports the Des Moines Register.

Undeterred by such news, the Obama administration has rolled out reams of material for combatting supposed teacher racism. Since 2014 alone, it has produced a School Climate and Discipline Guidance Package, a Rethink Discipline Public Awareness Campaign, a Resource Guide for Superintendent Action, a National Resource Center for School Justice Partnerships, a template for School Climate Surveys, and a Quick Guide on Making School Climate Improvements. The DOJ is investing $1 million (read: showering money on left-wing consultants) for the Pyramid Equity Project, which is supposed to establish national models for addressing issues of implicit bias in early learning programs.

Naturally, federal litigation has followed. Just this month, the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division imposed a consent decree on the Watson Chapel, Arkansas, School District, after suing it for racially discriminatory school-discipline practices. Those practices prevent students of color from reaching their full potential, according to Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta. A federal court will continue to have jurisdiction over the school until the DOJ declares it in absolute compliance with the decree, a process anticipated to take three years.

Given this threat of lawsuits, its no wonder that district superintendents dismiss the rising violence and announce that restorative justice is working. Its certainly worked to reduce expulsions and suspensionsin Seattle, by a whopping 77 percent from 2013 to 2016. Never mind that students arent learning and teachers are at risk.

The Trump administration must tear up every guidance and mandate in the Justice and Education Departments that penalize school districts for disproportionate rates of school discipline. Absent clear proof of teacher or administrator racism, Washington should let schools correct student behavioral problems as they see fit. Students in classrooms where disruption is common are far less likely to learn; that is the civil rights problem that should get activists attention. Taxpayer dollars should not be funding specious federal crusades against phantom discrimination; school districts might have more resources if their local taxpayers were not also being hit by federal levies, which are redistributed around the country in the delusional pursuit of social justice. Until the two-parent family is reconstructed, classrooms remain the only hope for socializing children and for preventing the teen violence that broke out across the country this Christmas. Schools can only accomplish that civilizing mission, however, if they are allowed to insist on strict rules, respect for authority, and consequences for misconduct.

Photo by halbergman/iStock
Shirley Franzoni started a candle business 40 years ago in a residential basement.

Not long after a natural gas explosion last month devastated downtown Canton, including her complex of retail and wholesale establishments, Franzoni appeared ready to return to the bunker. This time for good.

At one particular point, I just wanted to throw it all away and say, Im done. I cant do this anymore, the 60-year-old Franzoni said earlier this week. I saw beautiful clothing that had glass shears all over it. Christmas trees blown over. Signs, windows  it was just ridiculous.

But technology that didnt exist when Franzoni first became an entrepreneur helped bring her back to the future. On the Facebook social media platform, she posted images of broken glass on the sidewalk in front of her store on Elm Street, around the corner from the blast site on the Canton square.

About 40 people showed up to help clear debris, Franzoni said. Some were employees of her Black Crow Candle Co. and Crow Hollow Boutique, which sells womens clothing and accessories. Some of them werent.

It was kind of like Scrooge, Franzoni said in citing the sour-to-sweet protagonist of Charles Dickens classic tale A Christmas Carol. You see the people outside and theyre laughing and smiling and shoveling up stuff, and people are bringing down cookies.

Then you think, Wait, these arent just my employees, theyre my friends. They are more than a paycheck. They are people who truly, truly care about my well-being. That makes you feel really, really good.

That were-all-in-this-together approach appears to be helping Canton recover from the blast Nov. 16 at the Opera House Professional Center. The explosion killed a utility worker, Arturo Silva Jr. of Mapleton, and injured about a dozen others. It also damaged about 50 buildings.

It showed several things, Canton Mayor Jeff Fritz said from his second-story City Hall office that overlooks the square. No. 1, that people would come out and make a bad thing into a good thing and go forward. And not sit back and  I hate to say it this way  cry over their wounds.

Some physical wounds still are apparent downtown.

Not all broken windows have been replaced. Plywood covers perhaps one-third to half the display-glass spaces around the square. And not all merchants are open.

Prairieland Printing, along Elm Street just south of the blast site, wont resume regular hours until Jan. 3, according to a post on its Facebook page.

Prairieland is the only one in town that does UPS (shipping), and this is their busiest time, said Amanda Atchley, executive director of the Canton Area Chamber of Commerce. All that shipping over the holidays, and hes lost out on all that revenue.

Also still shuttered is Shandis Music & More, a record and collectibles store located next door to the Opera House. A benefit is scheduled for March 18 in Tremont to raise money for Shandis owner Bob Long.

The Spoon River Partnership for Economic Development has helped create a disaster recovery fund for Canton businesses the blast has affected and whose insurance might not be comprehensive. Last week, the fund distributed about $18,000 in grants to 10 businesses. A second distribution is to take place Dec. 28, with the amount based on donations received.

Behind the scenes, theres obviously a lot that these owners are still dealing with, Atchley said. I worry about businesses long-term staying open. Theres a big statistic that a lot of them dont reopen or stay open after a disaster like this. Our goal is to do what we can to keep them going.

The going for Franzonis business has been good, she said. Sales this Christmas season have been more brisk than last year. She attributes some of that to Canton residents making a concerted effort to shop local right now.

Mandy Kosowski, the Crow Hollow store manager, suggested part of the boost is from out-of-towners who have visited Canton to see explosion damage for themselves.

Weve been getting a lot of people from the Quad Cities, from Chillicothe, different areas where I usually dont get customers, Kosowski said. Its almost like weve gotten tourists from it.

A return to usual downtown patterns might hinge at least in part on what becomes of the Opera House. The building opened in 1891. An annex was destroyed in the blast, and the Opera House itself is not sound structurally.

The city is working with the building owner, Peoria developer Kert Huber, and his tenants to determine what to do, Fritz said. The 19,500-square-foot facility was at full occupancy.

The Opera House also sustained damage in 1975, when a tornado destroyed more than 100 downtown businesses.

That building is an icon on the square, Fritz said about the possibility of the Opera House being razed. It puts a big hole in the downtown-square area again. Were trying to do everything we can to keep it.

Fritz, who cited the communitys resiliency, said he thought it might be a month before general downtown activities approach normality. Franzoni suggested it might take until summer.

Atchley didnt appear ready to hazard a guess. When interviewed Tuesday afternoon, she said she had just spoken with a downtown resident who was home when the explosion took place.

You could tell she was still pretty upset and distraught about the situation and was trying to get her life back together as best as she could, Atchley said. Weve never had to deal with anything like this in my experience, so I would say its going to take some time. Whats reasonable, at least, is a few more months to get the buildings back to where they need to be.

Im probably selling it short.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A state district court judge in Austin has upheld the State of Texas right to regulate fees paid to air ambulances for transporting patients covered by workers compensation insurance.

This case is the first in the recent national wave of litigation to hold that the federal Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 does not wipe out state workers compensation fee caps. The Airline Deregulation Act was intended to free commercial passenger airlines, whose customers can price shop in competitive markets, from rate regulation. Air ambulance patients cannot price shop. They are not even told what the air ambulance company will charge until after the transport.

PHI Air Medical LLC was seeking court orders that the Airline Deregulation Act preempts guidelines set by the Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers Compensation regarding what insurers pay for transports of injured workers and instead requires insurers to pay its full billed charges. 345th District Court Judge Stephen Yelenosky sided with Texas Mutual, upholding the states workers compensation reimbursement rate at 125 percent of the Medicare-approved fee. Judge Yelenosky noted that the McCarran-Ferguson Act, passed by Congress in 1945 to protect state rights to regulate the insurance industry, preempts the Airline Deregulation Act as it applies to payment in the workers compensation system.

This is a great first step toward common sense in air ambulance fees, Mary Nichols, senior vice president and general counsel for Texas Mutual, said. Air ambulances charge 500 to 700 percent of their costs. These charges are often $40,000 or more versus actual costs of $7,000 or so.

This case is important for all consumers because, although the courts order specifically applies to workers compensation patients, more and more people are winding up with financially devastating medical bills from being balance billed for emergency air transport, Nichols said. Were very hopeful that this is the beginning of the end of burdening patients with bills totaling tens of thousands of dollars. Texas robust workers compensation system protects injured employees from this egregious practice, but regular insurance has not been able to similarly shield its own patients. We believe this precedent-setting case will ultimately be of great benefit to the American public.

Source: Texas Mutual Insurance Company
Ring in the New Year with a glass of Pomegranate Rum Punch! Rum, champagne, orange juice, and pomegranate mixed together make for a delightful cocktail!

Happy (almost) New Year!

Are you ready?

I must say that 2016 has been one giant blur. Do you feel the same way? One minute its January and Im hosting a fabulous Golden Globes Party with Lindt Chocolate. The next its April and Im in Portland, L.A. and Louisiana touring Avery Island with Tabasco.

All of sudden its summer and Mr. B and I are off to Scotland where I became an international fly fisher. Then I took my Mom to Napa Valley for a much needed girls weekend. Followed by attending the Cherry Festival in Traverse City, Michigan. Oh, and somehow I managed to visit Alaska, Saint Croix, and Grand Rapids before the year ended.

I am so thankful that I had the opportunity to visit every single one of these destinations. Its been a big year of growth for Climbing Grier Mountain and I am grateful to you guys for following along with me on this journey. Keeping my fingers crossed that 2017 will include even more travel and of course, delicious recipes!

Even though 2016 was a little crazy, I am looking forward to a new start. And with any new start comes a few resolutions or goals. Here is what Im proposing for 2017:

1) Recipe VIDEOS. Have effing mercy. I am the slowest person when it comes to implementing new ways of doing things. That is going change! Im on it friends, Scouts Honor!

2) Live on Instagram & Facebook. I need to connect more. Be prepared to see my mug more on a LIVE basis. Dont be scared. Ill wear deodorant.

3) Connect more with local entrepreneurs. Community is one of the biggest components of owning your own business. I want to branch out to others who are doing not just food blogging, but travel, artists, restaurant owners, magazines, etc. I think its wise to always have a third party perspective.

4) Make meals for those in need. I have a special place in my heart for those who are suffering, especially people who have loved ones in hospice care or a womens domestic violence shelter. A warm, delicious meal goes a long way when you are emotional depleted.

5) TOP SECRET. Wait. Can one have a top secret goal? I say, YES! This one has been a more recent goal, but something I cant share until the beginning of the new year. I am teasing the shit out of you right now. Sorry. BUT! I promise the anticipation will be worth the wait. Cue maniacal laugh.

Now, I cant purpose new goals for 2017 and not have a proper toast. Mark my words friends, next year will be the year of rum. Yes, bourbon will always remain a bar staple, but be prepared for tiki bars and rum mixtures.

I figured why not get the rum PAR-TAY started and make a festive rum drink. Well, this isnt a single rum drink per say. Its more like a rum swimming pool. YOU GUYS. Punch bowls are back. Why did we ever let a giant, booze filled vessel vanish from the party scene? Whatever the reason, Im glad its back.

This Pomegranate Rum Punch is great for ringing in the New Year, but also easy to make for any impromptu gathering. You know the punch drill. Pour everything, but the kitchen sink into the bowl and BOOM! Party punch in 3, 2, 1..

So, Id like to purpose a toast. Heres to 2017 and all that awaits. May we find the courage to be patient, but have enough curiosity to explore it and may our dreams become reality. Cheers, and Happy (almost New Year!)
Michal Fludra | NurPhoto via Getty Images

Europe's mainstream political parties breathed a huge sigh of relief as a far-right nationalist just lost out in a vote to become Austria's president in December yet the continent has many more testing times ahead with several crucial elections scheduled for 2017. Here are the ones to look out for:



Netherlands  Party for Freedom

JERRY LAMPEN | AFP | GettyImages

Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), is currently leading in the polls and has been for several months according to various media outlets, but faces a monumental battle in securing victory at the Dutch general election on March 15. Wilders' chances of an outright victory next spring are projected to be remarkably low, according to political analysts. A highly fragmented political system means the PVV winning a parliamentary majority looks very unlikely and overwhelmingly negative sentiment from opposing parties seems to have effectively ruled out a coalition. "If, and the probability is extremely low, Wilders is able to win then he has proposed a referendum on European Union (EU) membership," Larissa Brunner, analyst for Western Europe at think-tank Oxford Analytica, told CNBC in a phone interview. "After Brexit, polls across Europe indicate that European countries' support for the EU has actually increased It is somewhat of a cautionary tale for other nations because it is not so straight forward to leave the EU." Wilders leadership bid was complicated further in December as he was convicted of discrimination against Moroccans at a political rally in 2015 and though he did not receive any punishment, the verdict could have serious political ramifications with the election just three months away. The PVV leader described the guilty verdict as "madness" on social media and claimed he would appeal and continue to speak his mind regardless.

Germany  Alternative for Germany

Joerg Koch | Getty Images | Getty Images News

The Alternative for Germany party (AfD), led by Frauke Petry, has every chance of becoming the first far-right party to enter Germany's parliament since 1945 though a lack of viable alternatives to Angela Merkel and a fragmented political system puts the current chancellor in pole position to secure a fourth consecutive term. Merkel is the longest-serving leader of a global power, with the exception of Russia's Vladimir Putin, though her Christian Democrat party (CDU) faces mounting pressure from AfD. "There is no way AfD can win. Just, no way they can get over 50 percent of the votes needed. So it's about how you can define success for them, if they achieve 20 or 25 percent of the votes then that could result in a policy shift towards the right but no-one will go in with them to form a coalition," said Brunner. AfD supporters are passionately against Merkel's controversial open-door refugee policy which has divided voters in Germany and dented CDU's poll ratings. Even if AfD are unable to win the election outright or find a coalition partner to form a majority, the populist party appears to have a strong chance of entering government and subsequently impacting parliamentary procedures moving forwards. Merkel has described this election campaign as the most difficult since the reunification of Germany 26 years ago. The general election is due to take place between August 27 and November 27 in 2017.

France - National Front

ALAIN JOCARD | AFP | Getty Images

The French presidential election in May 2017 is set to be another test for traditional elites versus anti-establishment voters with far-right leader of the National Front (NF), Marine le Pen hoping to capitalize. Recent polls suggest Francois Fillon, former prime minister and leader of center-right Les Republicains party, would comfortably defeat le Pen, however, the dramatic upswing in support for France's NF cannot be denied. "It was just a few years ago that the National Front were getting 18 percent (of the vote) and people were worried then and now we are talking about them maybe getting enough to be the first or second party," Daphne Halikiopoulou, associate professor in comparative politics at the University of Reading, told CNBC in a phone interview. "I suppose what makes them different from other far-right parties (in Europe) are the fact that France has been particularly vulnerable to terrorist acts in recent times. The National Front has been extremely active in trying to show people a link between terrorism and immigration," she added. The anti-immigration and anti-Europe NF party describes itself as the protector of the working classes though at present, le Pen must attract much more support to mount a serious challenge for the leadership, if polls are to be believed.

Italy  Five Star Movement

Jacopo Landi | NurPhoto via Getty Images
Cramer also matches the RSI of an individual stock to something else, maybe the relative strength of its sector or a larger index, and then measure the price action historically. He looks for anomalies where strength stands out, because that is a sign that there is a pending move or a change in momentum.

Investors can determine if a stock is overbought or oversold by charting the ratio of higher closes, also known as the relative strength index, or RSI. This is a momentum oscillator that measures the direction that a stock is going, and the velocity of the move.

"Typically, when a stock gets overbought it is ripe for a pullback because overbought stocks, ones with many buyers reaching to take in supply, tend to snap back after they have gotten too far away from their longer term trend line," the " Mad Money " host said.

When you spot these highly unusual moves you may be able to strap yourself into a real moon shot.

The inverse can also be true; a stock can also fall so fast that investors should expect it to snap back because it is technically oversold. These patterns are reliable indicators that a change in direction is about to occur, and are terrific action points.

So, for investors who are debating whether to buy a stock, have done all the research and find that the stock is overbought, Cramer said to wait for the inevitable pullback that almost always happens.

Sometimes stocks can even break through all of the ceilings of traditional significant measurement periods, and then stay overbought for weeks at a time. These stocks defy the notion of the inevitable gravitational pull of the old equilibrium line and can't be contained.



"When you spot these highly unusual moves you may be able to strap yourself into a real moon shot," Cramer said.

Volume is another key tool that chartists use to find pivots. It is often said that volume can be a lie detector to tell investors if a move is real or not. When there is a small move on light volume, technicians ignore it.

Chartists use volume to determine if large money managers are starting to accumulate or distribute the stock in an aggressive way.

They also measure something called an accumulation distribution line. This involves charting whether a stock closes higher on greater volume on any given day, versus lower or low volume. Most brokerage firms offer this kind of charting on their websites.

Cramer saw this occur with Monsanto in July 2012. He didn't care for the stock of the company at the time. But the accumulation-distribution line showed that the stock had down days with light volume and up days with heavy volume. That was a sure sign that more money was flowing into the stock, rather than out of it.

It turns out that Monsanto's stock had started correlating with the price of corn , which was going higher because of new demand for ethanol engendered by government price supports. Cramer was too concerned about near-term earnings, and worries about a shortfall to recognize what was happening.

"Powerful moves can, and often do, elude those who are only focused on the underlying companies and not the action of the stocks themselves," Cramer said.
Alcoa's stock had a healthy run from winter of 2010 until February 2011, rising to $17 from $13. The stock ran to $18 on the eve of its quarterly earnings report, and Cramer thought it was a fine quarter when it reported.

"Yes, just like a human's head. That is the most frightening pattern in the chart book," the " Mad Money " host said.

Unfortunately, Cramer learned not to ignore the head-and-shoulders pattern the hard way when his charitable trust bought Alcoa , now known as Arconic, in the low teens in 2010, and ultimately took a loss because it was too early to buy.

The most simple and reliable chart pattern out there is one that Jim Cramer dreads.

Yet, what worried him was that even after an initial positive reaction, the stock dropped. So, a few days later, Cramer assumed it would take out its $18 level and went back to buy more.



Cramer was wrong  extremely wrong.

What Cramer didn't realize is that the fluctuation in price had traced a perfect head-and-shoulders pattern. And no, this isn't referring to the brand of a shampoo.



It turns out that during that period when the head-and-shoulders pattern was forming on Alcoa's chart, Europe and China began to slow down, and aluminum was in a glut. Ultimately, CEO Klaus Kleinfeld could control his own company but not the price of the commodity itself.



Likewise, if a head-and-shoulders pattern signals trouble ahead, then an inverse head-and-shoulders pattern signals the opposite  a chance for glory.

"The key with this pattern is the neckline, the line that connects the high to the two shoulders. When a stock breaks out above that line it tells a technician that you are about to witness a big move higher," Cramer said.

At the end of the day, patterns matter. So when you see a head-and-shoulders pattern, no matter how confident in the stock you might be, Cramer believes you should sell. And when the reverse head-and-shoulders develops, then consider buying it.

That is just how powerful these moves are. The chart work is more often right than most would ever think possible.
This photo taken on December 24, 2016 shows the Liaoning, China's only aircraft carrier, sailing during military drills in the Pacific. STR | AFP | Getty Images

Beijing on Wednesday warned that attempts by Taiwan to resist unification with the mainland would be in vain, as the PLA's aircraft carrier conducted drills off the coast of the self-ruled island. Beijing is facing a host of threats to its status quo as the independence-leaning leadership of Taiwan grows more vocal, protesters in Hong Kong call for complete separation from the mainland, and an incoming Donald Trump presidency in the U.S. threatens to take a more hardline stance in its ties with the world's second-largest economy. "A small group of pro-independence forces in Taiwan are colluding with Hong Kong independence advocates to divide the nation," An Fengshan, spokesman of the Taiwan Affairs Office at the State Council, said. "Their attempts will not succeed," An told a press briefing. "They will end up with their heads broken and bleeding."



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Taiwan is the "most sensitive and complicated issue in China-U.S. relations", An said, adding that Beijing's position on territorial integrity was unswerving, and the US should deal with Taiwan issues cautiously.

The PLA's Liaoning aircraft carrier this week sailed 90 nautical miles south of the island in an exercise described by Beijing as routine, but which came after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen spoke by phone with Donald Trump, who questioned whether the U.S. should continue to respect the one-China policy. More from the South China Morning Post :

China re-establishes ties with former Taiwan ally Sao Tome

Taiwan warns of rising threat as PLA warships conduct drill

Beijing warns Taiwan's investors against using 'profits earned on mainland' to support independence

The carrier was due to arrive at a naval base in Hainan province yesterday, Taiwan's defence ministry said. Taiwanese Defence Minister Feng Shih-kuan said the island was facing a growing "threat" from enemies and should remain on alert.

Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations and executive director of the China Centre for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea at Nanjing University, said the mainland, Taiwan and the U.S. were seeing how far they could test cross-strait issues. "I think the latest developments give the Tsai Ing-wen administration a warning that a deterioration in Sino-U.S. relations is not going to benefit Taiwan and that she should really think about changing her own attitudes towards the mainland."

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Japan's Takata , maker of defective air bags that have been linked to 11 U.S. deaths, could settle criminal charges with the U.S. Department of Justice before the Obama administration leaves office next month, a source briefed on the ongoing talks told Reuters on Wednesday.

Part of a settlement would include Takata pleading guilty to criminal misconduct, the source told Reuters. The Justice Department has investigated whether Takata hid information from safety regulators and issued misleading statements about the dangers posed by the air bags.

Any deal would likely include a monitor to ensure Takata's compliance with the agreement, the source said.

The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported earlier on Wednesday that a settlement could require Takata to pay as much as $1 billion and be reached as early as January.

The precise amount Takata pays could be considerably less than $1 billion and be paid over several years, the source said. Both Takata and the DoJ declined to comment.

Takata air bag inflators have been linked to at least 16 deaths worldwide, including the 11 U.S. deaths. The inflators can explode with excessive force and send metal shrapnel inside cars and trucks.

There is no guarantee the talks will wrap up by Jan. 20, when Obama leaves office, said the source.

Monitors similar to the one that could be installed for the Takata case have been appointed as watchdogs in two recent major U.S. auto safety recalls involving General Motors Co. and Toyota Motor Corp.

Regulators have said recalls would eventually affect about 42 million U.S. vehicles with Takata air bag inflators, making this the largest safety recall in U.S. history.

Takata and the Justice Department have held talks for months about reaching an agreement.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in December 2015 named a former U.S. Justice Department official to oversee the Takata recalls and the company's compliance with a NHTSA settlement. In November 2015, Takata agreed to pay a $70 million fine for safety violations and could face deferred penalties of up to $130 million under a NHTSA settlement for further violations.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Transportation said it would press the auto industry to accelerate the pace of replacements for defective Takata air bag inflators and signaled a likely widening of the industry's largest recall.
Satoshi Tsunakawa, president and CEO of Toshiba, bows as he arrives for a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Tuesday, December 27, 2016.

Toshiba was trading down 17.33 percent at 257.7 yen by 12:10 pm HK/SIN, after falling as much as 25.5 percent earlier in the session.

S&P Global Ratings also lowered its ratings for Toshiba, downgrading its long-term corporate credit to B- from B, and its senior unsecured debt ratings to B+ from BB-. The ratings agency also put Toshiba's ratings on a negative watch.

Moody's downgraded Toshiba to CAA1 on Wednesday, and placed its ratings on review for further downgrades over concerns about the sustainability of the Japanese firm's near-term liquidity and its corporate governance framework.

Japan's Toshiba nosedived nearly 26 percent on Thursday, marking a fifth consecutive session decline, after credit downgrades from both Moody's and S&P Global Ratings.

The diversified electronics conglomerate fell 20.4 percent or 80 yen to 311.6 yen a share on Wednesday morning and remained untraded for the rest of the session after hitting its daily downward limit of 80 yen on the Tokyo stock exchange.

The exchange sets limits in yen amounts under a tiered system based on the previous share price close

Since Monday, Toshiba's shares have plummeted 39.5 percent after the Nikkei business daily reported that Toshiba might have to book a one-off loss of around 100 billion yen ($850 million) on a U.S. nuclear power acquisition made by its Westinghouse operation last year.

The firm formally announced late on Tuesday that cost overruns at the U.S. nuclear business might result in "several billion dollars" in goodwill charges.

"This will result in a negative impact on Toshiba's financial resultsthough the figures are still subject to determination," Toshiba said in a statement. Further details have not been released.

Toshiba had suffered from an accounting scandal in 2015, in which profits were overstated by more than $1 billion and resulted in the resignation of its then-current chief executive and two former CEOs who had retained senior company posts. It was also fined a record amount of 7.37 billion yen ($60 million) by Japanese regulators.

The electronics conglomerate has remained on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's watch list, and will not be able to raise capital on the stock market.

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A pedestrian carries an umbrella while walking along Wall Street past the New York Stock Exchange in New York.

Check out which companies are making headlines after the bell on Thursday:

Mylan shares were up more than 2 percent in extended trade Thursday after the company launched a generic version of Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen's Concerta tablets. The pharmaceuticals company received final approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its product, which is intended to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). On Wednesday, the drug maker launched a generic version of Allergan's Zovia, a birth control drug.

Shares of Lockheed Martin were up about 0.25 percent after the company was awarded a $450 million U.S. Navy contract modification for F-35s. The modification is linked to the development and delivery of aircraft to South Korea.

Gulfport Energy saw its stock fall slightly in choppy trade after announcing its CFO, Aaron Gaydosik, will be resigning, effective Jan. 4. The board appointed the company's chief accounting officer, Keri Crowell, as the new CFO. Gaydosik is said to be resigning to pursue an external opportunity.

Reuters contributed to this report.


Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell:

Sprint  Sprint said the 5,000 U.S. jobs being brought back to the U.S.announced by President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesdayare part of a previously disclosed pledge by Japan's Softbank, which holds a stake in the wireless communications company. That pledge also included 3,000 jobs from U.S. satellite company OneWeb, also partially owned by Softbank.

Sanofi  Sanofi's $13.5 billion asset swap with German drug company Boehringer Ingelheim will see Boehringer divest five types of animal health products, following a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The original deal saw Boehringer swap its consumer health care unit to Sanofi, with Boehringer receiving Sanofi's animal care subsidiary.

Alere  Alere is appealing a decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to revoke Medicare billing privileges for the health care diagnostics company's Arriva Medical diabetes business. CMS had alleged that Arriva submitted Medicare claims for patients who had died.

Twitter  Twitter introduced 360-degree live streaming through the Periscope service.

Mylan  The drug maker launched a generic version of Allergan's Zovia, a drug used by women to prevent pregnancy.

Apple  Apple's request for incentives in India will be considered by government officials next week, according to The Wall Street Journal. Apple is said to be seeking financial incentives to manufacture its products within India for sales in that market.

Nvidia  Nvidia is poised for a second day of heavy losses, following a 10-day win streak. The graphics chipmaker's shares reversed course Wednesday after short-seller Citron Research said the stock had gotten way ahead of itself and would likely go back toward the $90 mark. Nvidia closed Wednesday at $109.25 per share.

Senior Housing Properties Trust  The real estate investment trust, which specializes in housing facilities for senior citizens, was rated "overweight" in new coverage at Cantor Fitzgerald, with a $23 per share price target. Cantor believes the company is well positioned because of strong fundamentals in the senior housing market and its leading position in that market.

Raytheon  The defense contractor was awarded a new Tomahawk missile contract by the U.S. Navy worth nearly $304 million.

Sears  The retailer secured a standby letter of credit facility for an initial $200 million, providing it with additional liquidity to fund its operations. The funding comes from affiliates of ESL Investments, the hedge fund operated by Sears Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Edward Lampert. CFO Jason Hollar said Sears is continuing to take actions to generate liquidity and adjust its capital structure.

Restaurant Brands International  The parent of Burger King and Tim Hortons will switch to chicken free of vital antibiotics in the U.S. in 2017 and in Canada in 2018.
Twitter is making a jump into the live video space by introducing 360-degree streaming through Periscope, the social media giant's live streaming app. Anyone will be able to watch, but only select users will be able to go live in 360, Twitter announced in a blog post. (CNBC)

The Food and Drug Administration released cybersecurity recommendations today for companies that manufacture internet-connected medical devices. Unsecured devices are subject to hacking and could prove fatal, the FDA said. (The Verge)

Despite their popularity on holiday wish lists, Apple and Samsung had a less-than-impressive holiday season, with phone and tablet activations in late December flat for both companies, according to Yahoo's Flurry Analytics. (CNBC)

German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim agreed to divestitures required by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission totaling $13.5 billion. The move will settle charges that a proposed asset swap with Sanofi would harm competition. (Reuters)

Shares of Kate Spade jumped over 23 percent Wednesday following reports that the luxury apparel and accessory maker is exploring a possible sale. (USA Today)

Toshiba's stock tumbled again, closing down 17 percent in Japan, after credit downgrades from S&P Global Ratings and Moody's. (CNBC)

President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Sprint would bring 5,000 jobs back to the United States from abroad and satellite manufacturer OneWeb would add 3,000 jobs. It's part of a deal with SoftBank to bring 50,000 jobs back to the United States. (CNBC)

A Trump transition team official said Wednesday that the president-elect was considering pushing the Department of Veterans Affairs toward privatization, a controversial move that veterans' groups may challenge. (WSJ)

House-flipping reached a peak in the first nine months of 2016, the highest level seen since 2007. The trend is once again becoming hot among investors and stems from rising home prices, venture-backed start-ups and Wall Street dollars. (WSJ)

The U.S.-China rivalry extends into the stock market, with Chinese tech companies split on which exchange to choose for their initial public offerings between those in New York and Hong Kong. Next year, the battle will only become more tense. (CNBC)
Main Street is feeling more optimistic post-election, with shop owners hoping a Donald Trump presidency ushers in four years of business-friendly policies. The recent increase in positive sentiment, according to a report released by the National Federation of Independent Business, is due in part to expectations of sales gains and improvement in the outlook for business conditions.

With the forecast bright on the eve of a New Year, here's what seems to lie ahead for small business owners.

DEREGULATION

Trump ran on promises of deregulation, and the bump in optimism post-election signals that Main Street is banking on him to follow through. Many companies cheered the recent halting of the Department of Labor's Overtime Rule days before it was set to kick in on Dec. 1, thanks to a decision from a federal judge in Texas. Advocacy groups are hoping for more labor deregulation in the year to come.

"Our number-one issue for the past two years is the joint employer rule," says Matthew Haller, senior vice president of Government Relations and Public Affairs at the International Franchise Association. The rule stems from a decision made by the National Labor Relations Board in 2015 that found a sanitation company called Browning-Ferris Industries and its subcontractor are joint employers of workers. It sent ripple effects down the franchising industry.

The industry preference is for parent companies and franchised locations to maintain their independence. "It will take some sort of legislative action to actually solve the changes that have been made under the Obama Labor Board. We want Congress to restore certainty to labor law as it relates to the definition of joint employment," says Haller.

Other regulations on the radar for small business include the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan Rule, which the NFIB has lobbied against, since it claims the rule will create higher costs for small companies as a result of expensive costs placed on state's electricity producers.
The correlation between high executive pay and good performance is "negligible," a new academic study has found, providing reformers with fresh evidence that a shake-up of Britain's corporate remuneration systems is overdue.

Although big company bosses enjoyed pay rises of more than 80 per cent in a decade, performance as measured by economic returns on invested capital was less than 1 per cent over the period, the paper by Lancaster University Management School says.

"Our findings suggest a material disconnect between pay and fundamental value generation for, and returns to, capital providers," the authors of the report said.

More from The Financial Times:

Scandalous past still haunts forex industry

Bid battle heats up for UK equipment group Lavendon

Williams & Glyn sale faces Bank of England review

In a study of more than a decade of data on the pay and performance of Britain's 350 biggest listed companies, Weijia Li and Steven Young found that remuneration had increased 82 per cent in real terms over the 11 years to 2014.



Much of the increase was the result of performance-based pay. But, the report's authors say, the metrics used to assess performance  such as total shareholder return and earnings per share growth  are unsophisticated and short-termist, acting against the interests of long-term investors. The research found that the median economic return on invested capital, a preferable measure, was less than 1 per cent over the same period.

The evidence is likely to be closely scrutinised by the UK government. When Theresa May took over as prime minister in the summer, she vowed to push an agenda to curb excessive pay. Last month, the government published a green paper outlining proposed reforms.

Some had been watered down compared with Mrs May's original ideas, but more frequent binding shareholder votes on pay remain likely. There would also be an enforced publication of ratios comparing chief executive pay to that of average employees.

UK executive pay is the most generous in Europe. A separate research study, by Vlerick Business School's Executive Remuneration Centre earlier in December found that the median UK chief executive earned 6.175m last year, 50 per cent more than the average counterpart in Germany, the next best paying country.
First issued in draft form last January, this guidance is more than a year in the making. The 30-page document encourages manufacturers to monitor their medical devices and associated software for bugs, and patch any problems that occur. But the recommendations are not legally enforceable  so they're largely without teeth.

Unsecured devices can allow hackers to tamper with how much medication is delivered by the device  with potentially deadly results.

Today, the US Food and Drug Administration released its recommendations for how medical device manufacturers should maintain the security of internet-connected devices, even after they've entered hospitals, patient homes, or patient bodies.

The FDA has been warning the health care industry for years that medical devices are vulnerable to cyberattacks. It's a legitimate concern: researchers have managed to remotely tamper with devices like defibrillators, pacemakers, and insulin pumps.

In 2015, FDA warned hospitals that the Hospira infusion pump, which slowly releases nutrients and medications into a patient's body, could be accessed and controlled through the hospital's network. That's dangerous to patients who could be harmed directly by devices altered to deliver too much or too little medication.

It also means poorly secured devices could give hackers access to hospital networks that store patient information  a situation that's ripe for identity theft.



More from the Verge:

President Obama creates two controversial national monuments in Utah and Nevada

Vera Rubin, who confirmed dark matter, has died at 88

These weird little dinosaurs lost all their teeth and grew beaks as they aged, new science says



"In fact, hospital networks experience constant attempts of intrusion and attack, which can pose a threat to patient safety," says Suzanne Schwartz, the FDA's associate director for science and strategic partnerships, in a blog post about the new guidelines. "And as hackers become more sophisticated, these cybersecurity risks will evolve."



The FDA issued an earlier set of recommendations in October 2014, which recommended ways for manufacturers to build cybersecurity protections into medical devices as they're being designed and developed.

Today's guidance focuses on how to maintain medical device cybersecurity after devices have left the factory. The guidelines lay out steps for recognizing and addressing ongoing vulnerabilities. And they recommend that manufacturers join together in an Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (ISAO) to share details about security risks and responses as they occur.



Most patches and updates intended to address security vulnerabilities will be considered routine enhancements, which means manufacturers don't have to alert the FDA every time they issue one.

That is, unless someone dies or is seriously harmed because of a bug  then the manufacturer needs to report it. Dangerous bugs identified before they harm or kill anyone won't have to be reported to the FDA as long as the manufacturer tells customers and device users about the bug within 30 days, fixes it within 60 days, and shares information about the vulnerability with an ISAO.



This attempt to secure medical devices is just the beginning, says Eric Johnson, a cyber security researcher and dean of the Vanderbilt University business school, in an email to The Verge. The FDA's Schwartz agrees, writing in a blog post: "This is clearly not the end of what FDA will do to address cybersecurity."
The 2008 financial crisis has changed us all.

Both businesses and households have taken a "more cautious" approach to risk decreasing the chances of another economic collapse caused by indebtedness, Berenberg private bank said.

"It may not last much longer but the western world is still in the age of caution," the bank said in an email.

"Households and businesses have been a lot more cautious since the Lehman crisis than before. They hesitate to take on excessive risk and debt. While the lack of exuberance and the absence of excesses means economic growth is less vigorous than before, it keeps the recession risk low  no more boom and bust," the bank added.
Will the sanctions and diplomatic expulsions President Obama has just ordered against Russia in retaliation for its alleged interference in the 2016 election have any effect? It depends which playing field you care most about.

Politically, this is winner for the outgoing president on a lot of levels. First, it solidifies President Obama as a hero to Democrats and liberals who believe that Russia played a big role in helping Donald Trump win the White House. This may seem like a bit of "sore loser" behavior or preaching to a left wing choir, but sometimes the choir needs music.

Second, it will endear him to quite a few Republicans and conservatives who have long been wary of Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin. And House Speaker Paul Ryan immediately commented on the sanctions, saying they were justified, (if overdue), and that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a friend of the United States.

Third, it puts President-elect Donald Trump in a tough position of having to either defend an unpopular Russian regime or abandon his calls for better relations with Moscow. After all, politics is war and just because President Obama is leaving the battlefield it doesn't mean he has to go without giving his fellow soldiers a weapon or two.

But this is where all the effectiveness ends. Diplomatically and economically, these new sanctions and expulsions won't change a thing. As noted Putin critic and Hermitage Capital Management CEO Bill Browder said on CNBC just after the sanctions were announced, this is all "too little, too late."

The Russians will simply replace the expelled diplomats with legions of others with the same worldview and allegiance to Putin. Hacking attacks will continue. And Russia will not be deterred from interfering in other ways as well.

Russia responds to strength, and that's been true of Russia during its Soviet and post-Soviet ages. Simply put, diplomatic expulsions and a few economic restrictions are not seen by Moscow as examples of strength.



Indeed, the Russian Embassy in the UK responded with this tweet.

Worse, the retaliations by the Obama team may serve to boost the myth of Russian king-making abilities worldwide. Even if we can eventually prove that Moscow was responsible for those hacks of the Democratic National Committee emails, can anyone really even name a single "smoking gun" email that sealed the deal against Hillary Clinton? Did the voters really learn any new or real damaging information?

The answers to all of the above questions are "no," but now a hack that yielded little or no information anyone really cared about has blown up into an international diplomatic incident. Yes, President Obama and the Democrats are scoring some political points right now and none of them are likely to ever have to pay a personal or professional price for these moves. But for the rest of us not running for office or worrying about our approval ratings, this is a big fat nothing.
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Speculators have been increasing their bets that oil prices will rise, setting up a punishing outcome if OPEC's production cuts disappoint, Again Capital founding partner John Kilduff said Thursday. OPEC not only faces the challenge of getting its own members to deliver the promised cuts. It must also contend with potentially weaker demand in China and the threat of rebounding U.S. production, Kilduff said.

"The boat is loaded to one side in the market right now. Shorts have covered. People have piled in from the long side, waiting for these cutbacks to come through. If they don't, there's going to be big punishment in this market," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box." Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are scheduled to begin cutting production next week, and other producers have committed to reducing their output in the first half of 2017. The producers are aiming to reduce huge stockpiles of oil that built up after a boom in production caused in large part by a revolution in U.S. drilling.

Demand may not hold up

Kilduff acknowledged that crude demand could get a boost if President-elect and congressional Republicans deliver anticipated tax breaks and government stimulus that lead to economic growth at home and abroad. However, he said he doesn't see that translating into higher demand in China, the world's second-largest oil consumer. "That's the real demand center. That's the swing place, and I still see issues there," he said. Kilduff, a longtime skeptic of OPEC's ability to deliver output cuts, has warned throughout the year that slowing economic growth in China and elsewhere in Asia is the oil market's Achilles' heel.



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He is not the only one who sees red flags in China. On Tuesday, ClipperData's director of commodities research, Matt Smith, cautioned that rising oil prices could crimp China's opportunistic buying. Throughout 2016, oil producers competed fiercely for China's business, allowing the country to hunt for bargains and fill up its strategic reserves.

The rising U.S. dollar also threatens to dent oil demand because a stronger greenback makes crude more expensive to holders of other currencies, Stephen Schork, editor of The Schork Report, told "Squawk Box" on Wednesday.

Supply is a problem too

China also presents a supply problem. Small refineries known as teapots have sprung up throughout the country, helping to boost employment in China, but also contributing to a glut of refined petroleum products like gasoline, Kilduff said. "You saw a big increase in their crude oil demand to feed those refineries. The problem is that they just turned that all right around and exported the refined product to the global market, particularly out in Asia," he said. Kilduff said there is simply too little demand on the horizon, and the figures behind forecasts that oil demand will exceed supply by the second half of 2017 don't add up.

That is partly because he doesn't believe OPEC and other oil producers will adhere to output cuts and partly because higher oil prices in the wake of that agreement are stimulating U.S. production.

He noted that U.S. output has risen in recent weeks, and steady additions to the domestic rig count signal more American crude is on its way. Schork said the oil market has likely reached a top at $53 to $55 a barrel. He noted that U.S. producers have been able to lock in $55 a barrel or more for future deliveries, a price that allows more drillers to pump profitably. Higher U.S. production puts downward pressure on oil prices because it is seen as preventing the market from burning through a global oversupply of crude.


This article is the first in a series on the "Future of Politics" that investigates the effects of election 2016 on the future of policy, parties, candidates, campaign style and the overall political environment going forward.

Verbal attacks in politics are nothing new.

Cyber-attacks are.

Indeed, election 2016 could be considered a turning point in the history of America's electoral process as brazen hacks on the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, carried out by Russia, according to the Obama administration, were "intended to interfere with the U.S. election process."

The attacks that Hillary Clinton has blamed in part on her Electoral College loss to Donald Trump raise a critical question: will cyber-attacks targeting political organizations and prominent political players become the new normal?

I fear the answer is yes.

Though Trump has so far denied Russian involvement, prominent politicians on both sides of the aisle are calling for an investigation. That's a crucial step going forward. To better prepare for the possibility of cyber-assaults on our voting outcomes, we need to understand what sort of tactics were used in past attacks and what kind of new malicious strategies might we see in future. And we must devise strategies to counter them.

In cyberspace, the past is prelude to the future. The DNC hacks are a prime example of efforts to alter election outcomes without having to tamper with voting machines themselves. This case illustrates what happens when information is disclosed that undermines the credibility of an institution, in this case the Democratic Party.

Some of the hackers behind DNC attack may have had access to the organization's network for about a year according to DNC officials, giving them ample time to hunt for the most damaging documents without fear of detection.

Now is the time to guard against subterranean attacks that could be going on in other political organizations and structures, from state capitals to the U.S. Capitol.

Creating "fake news" is another type of voter manipulation aimed at influencing public opinion. Independent researchers claim the Russians were behind the creation of a number of misleading articles with the goal of harming the Clinton campaign, including bogus pieces about Hillary's fatal health problems, using botnets, networks of websites and social media accounts to distribute them.

Facebook, a major disseminator of fake news during the election, is taking steps to limit distribution on its site. Other sites must follow its lead.
Snapchat's parent company is pitching potential IPO investors that it should be considered in a class with Apple and Facebook  that is, above Twitter , unnamed sources told The Wall Street Journal.

Bankers with Snap's IPO roadshow have cast the company's leader as an innovator, like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, who can reach beyond the company's ephemeral messaging platform to become a pre-eminent content and media company, the sources told the Journal, in an article published Thursday.

That also means that Snap hopes to grow its share price beyond the IPO, something Twitter has struggled to do. Though its disappearing images are beloved by teens, Snap must sell investors that it is worth the hype.
Soros, a major Democratic donor and Hillary Clinton supporter, contended that global income inequality and a failure to redistribute wealth led to a revolt against the established political system. But he said that those trends will help to energize leaders who have consolidated power, like Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a wide-ranging Project Syndicate column published Wednesday, the billionaire Hungarian-born financier outlined the causes of what he said "led electorates to become disenchanted with the prevailing versions of democracy and capitalism." He argued that "many people felt that elites had stolen their democracies," contributing to the British vote to leave the European Union, Trump's election and the recent Italian referendum seen as another blow to the EU .

George Soros argues that democracy "is now in crisis" and that Donald Trump 's election and anti-European Union sentiment will help to empower dictators around the globe.

Soros wrote that the U.S. will struggle to "protect and promote democracy" globally after the election of Trump, whom he called a "con artist and would-be dictator." But he expressed confidence that the American democracy would hold strong.

He wrote:

I am confident that democracy will prove resilient in the US. Its Constitution and institutions, including the fourth estate, are strong enough to resist the excesses of the executive branch, thus preventing a would-be dictator from becoming an actual one.

But the US will be preoccupied with internal struggles in the near future, and targeted minorities will suffer. The US will be unable to protect and promote democracy in the rest of the world. On the contrary, Trump will have greater affinity with dictators. That will allow some of them to reach an accommodation with the US, and others to carry on without interference. Trump will prefer making deals to defending principles. Unfortunately, that will be popular with his core constituency.

Soros said that he is "particularly worried about the fate of the EU" amid sagging economic growth and an ongoing refugee crisis. He argued that Putin will attempt to extend his influence in the region as well.

Trump's unlikely electoral victory came after the billionaire businessman's populist campaign fueled with attacks on global institutions and what he called entrenched elites. He appealed largely to disillusioned working class voters with diatribes about trade deals and illegal immigration hurting American workers.

Much of the nationalist rhetoric Trump employed echoed the statements of the British leaders lobbying to leave the EU. Soros, who gave millions to a super PAC backing Trump's opponent Clinton, was a popular Trump target on the campaign trail.

Trump has appointed several wealthy business people to his administration, as well as Wall Street veterans and donors to his election effort, making some question his commitments to the blue-collar workers who propelled him to the White House.

Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to a request to comment on this story.
Tiziana Fabi | AFP | Getty Images

Italy's interim Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni admitted Thursday that the recapitalization of the country's third largest lender would be "long and complicated" but a necessary process. Shares of Monte dei Paschi were suspended from trading last week after the European Central Bank said that the bank needs to raise 8.8 billion euros ($9.2 billion) to improve its financial position.The bank had initially forecast a recapitalization of 5 billion euros ($5.4 billion). The county's Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan argued Thursday the recapitalization should start in two to three months, but there are widespread concerns over the implications for the Italian banking system, Italy's political scene and more broadly for the euro zone.

Will the 8.8 billion euros be enough?

The ECB's calculation that Monte dei Paschi will need 3.8 billion euros more than initially forecast was due to a "rapid deterioration" in the bank's finances mainly over the last month. Italian depositors have withdrawn their money as concerns over the stability of Monte dei Paschi grew. The ECB declined to comment on the ongoing process. Padoan, the economy minister, said Thursday that the 8.8 billion euro recapitalization would make the oldest lender in the world "hyper-capitalized" but not "over-capitalized," Reuters reported. However, if authorities drag out the intervention, the stability of BMPS could be further eroded. Padoan said that delisting the bank was not an option and added that trading in the company's stock should resume as quickly as possible. The Italian government announced earlier this month that it would ready 20 billion euros to help the entire banking system in Italy, which has long been dealing with a very high level of bad loans. But at the time of the announcement, the recapitalization for BMPS was only projected at 5 billion euros. It is unclear whether the Italian government may need to use more than 20 billion euros given the higher costs associated with Monte dei Paschi. The Italian Treasury was not able for comment at the time of writing. Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing a Treasury source, that the amount earmarked should be enough to revamp the ailing banks.



State intervention is raising eyebrows in Germany

Some German politicians have voiced worries over Italy's public intervention to BMPS. Given the bank's failure to raise enough money from private investors, the Italian government is preparing to step in. The cabinet approved last week a decree that allows Monte dei Paschi to receive liquidity guarantees and a capital injection. Such intervention will be the first under new EU rules  established after the 2008 financial crisis. The Italian government needs to guarantee that BMPS' recapitalization will not be considered illegal state aid. One possible way to guarantee compliance with EU rules is to compensate retail investors for their losses. However, in Germany, there have been calls that the European Commission  which oversees whether the process is defying the rules - should be strict and not allow intervention from the state. The process becomes even more sensitive at a time when both Italy and Germany head to fresh elections.
watch now

When President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office in about three weeks, he could set American foreign policy on a course that brings U.S.-Russian relations closer and leads to progress on the war against terrorism and the Syrian crisis. Foreign policy experts suggest that a "grand bargain" could be negotiated between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which could address the global terror war and resolution of the Syrian conflict. Yet any potential agreement comes amid high tensions between the two countries, as President Barack Obama announced retribution on Russia in response to alleged U.S. election tampering.

Putin has publicly dismissed U.S. intelligence claims of political hacking, which were widely seen as a way to undermine the U.S. government. But the Russian leader also commented on the need to improve relations between the two countries, agreeing with Trump that the situation "cannot get any worse" and that "together we will think about how to make things better." "When there's a change of leadership and other interests coincide, then things can actually improve pretty quickly," said Robert English, a specialist on Russia and director of the University of Southern California's School of International Relations.

watch now

Putin looked at his economy and said, 'You know what, I just cannot afford to continue to spend the kind of money that I am on the military and foreign adventures.' Edward Turzanski Foreign Policy Research Institute national security expert

There's been a pattern of Russian relations going sour in the past three U.S. presidential administrations, both Democratic and Republican. Some experts suggest Trump and Putin exchanging pleasantries is a positive step but may not be enough to fix the relationship that has suffered from long-standing differences over geopolitical issues.

Yet during Putin's Dec. 23 news conference, the Russian leader said he wanted a "business-like" relationship with the new administration. The Russians have "a real urgency to get back to normal economic relations and get these sanctions removed," said English, who worked in the Reagan administration as a Defense department policy analyst.

Russia's economy has been under stress due to low oil prices and Western economic sanctions stemming from Russian hostilities in eastern Ukraine and the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Russia's military campaign to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad  which is at odds with U.S. interests  has also had an economic cost, as well as military casualties on the Russian side.

"Putin looked at his economy and said, 'You know what, I just cannot afford to continue to spend the kind of money that I am on the military and foreign adventures,'" said Edward Turzanski, an international policy and national security expert with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank in Philadelphia.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin Palace in Moscow, October 21, 2015. Kremlin Press Office | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

A moderate recovery in oil prices may help Russia in 2017, but foreign policy analysts suggest there are still reasons for Russians to improve ties  namely, the fight against global terrorism and the war against the Islamic State, commonly known as ISIS or ISIL. "Putin has a problem with Islamic extremists and so does the United States," said Turzanski, who worked in the U.S. intelligence community during the Reagan administration. The Russian envoy to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, was killed Dec. 19 in an attack in Ankara that Trump blamed on a "radical Islamic terrorist." The ambassador's assassin shouted, "Do not forget Aleppo," a reference to Syria's second-largest city, and the site of a bloody and lengthy campaign by the Syrian government and its Russian ally to oust rebels armed by powers including the U.S. and Gulf states.

"The battle for Aleppo is over," said USC's English. "We're not going to get what we wanted [in Syria], which was Bashar al-Assad removed. But there is a deal out there for a managed transition where we work with Russia instead of against Russia. And maybe then we can tackle some of the other problems."

A leaked Pentagon memo dated Dec. 1 from Trump's defense transition team was obtained by the publication Foreign Policy and revealed a top priority of the president-elect is to "develop a strategy to defeat/destroy ISIS."

Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin speaks with then-ExxonMobil Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson on August 30, 2011. Alexey Druzhinin | AFP | Getty Images
"We have great appreciation for the life and career of Carrie Fisher," Cinnabon said in a statement issued Wednesday.

Following the backlash it received for its Twitter tribute to Carrie Fisher, Cinnabon has issued a further apology for its picture of Princess Leia with a bun where her famous plaits should be.

"Our intention was to pay respect through an image we created in her honor for Star Wars Day 2016. We are sorry our tweet appeared disrespectful to some and it has been taken down," added in a statement emailed to CNBC.



On Tuesday, actress and author Carrie Fisher, known for her iconic role as Princess Leia in the "Star Wars" phenomenon, passed away at the age of 60, just days after suffering a heart attack.



After Fisher passed away, people from across the world paid tribute to the actress and her career.

Cinnabon had posted a tweet with a cinnamon-inspired image of Princess Leia, featuring a Cinnabon roll to represent her iconic hairstyle. The image was accompanied with a tweet saying "RIP Carrie Fisher, you'll always have the best buns in the galaxy."

The tweet however was deleted shortly after, following criticism from some online users who said it was "tacky" and in "poor taste", and the company sent out a follow up tweet saying they were "truly sorry" for causing any upset.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, seen in this 2016 BJNN file photo speaking at the Holiday Inn Syracuse-Liverpool-Exit 37 in Salina, has announced plans for regional State of the State addresses scheduled during the week of Jan. 9. (Eric Reinhardt / BJNN file photo)

ALBANY, N.Y.  Gov. Andrew Cuomo has decided to deliver his annual State of the State message in a series of regional addresses across New York.

The New York State Constitution requires an annual message from the governor to the state legislature on the condition of the state, Cuomos office said in a news release issued Monday.

However, the state constitution has no requirement on the timing or location of the governors message, according to the news release.

Cuomos 2017 State of the State addresses are scheduled during the week of Jan 9. Hell make his remarks in Central New York, the Capital Region, New York City, Western New York, the Hudson Valley, and Long Island.

Cuomos office will provide specific times and locations for the governors remarks in the coming days.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
BINGHAMTON, N.Y.  William H. Lane Inc., a Binghamtonbased construction firm, says it will oversee the renovation project for SUNY Broome Community Colleges new Culinary Arts Center.

The college in late September announced plans to locate the center in the soon-to-be renovated Carnegie Library, the former home of the Binghamton Public Library.

Constructed in 1903, the building has been vacant for years, the school said. The Preservation Association of the Southern Tier included the structure on its list of the top five endangered landmarks in the Binghamton area.

The approximately $11 million project will take 16 to 18 months to complete, with the project going out to bid early in 2017, SUNY Broome said.

The renovation work will begin in the spring.

William H. Lane will oversee the process, ensuring the creation of a proper educational facility while respecting the historical nature of the building, the firm said in a Dec. 22 news release.

Broome County has awarded $3 million in funding for the project. New York State has contributed $5 million, and the Southern Tier regional economic-development council has awarded $2.2 million for the project, the school said.

The project is also eligible for historic tax credits and the college said it will also solicit private donations toward the renovation effort.

Rochesterbased Passero Associates is designing the facility, with the guidance of Cynthia Carrington Carter, a historical architect from Renaissance Studio of Syracuse.

The redesigned facility will house the colleges new Culinary Arts program and some parts of the existing hospitality and events-management programs.

Amenities will include a fabrication lab, a fully equipped beverage lab for mixology classes, a refrigerated food preparation and storage area, production kitchens, a dining room, a computer lab, a lecture hall for cooking demonstrations, office space, lounge areas, and a proposed community education cooking studio.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
70-millimeter bronze medal captures the effects World War I had on Belgium when Germany invaded the nation in August 1914.

Numerous medals were issued during World War I that documented the horrors of the conflict.

Readers Ask column from the Jan. 16, 2017, issue of Coin World:

Upon my fathers passing some 20 years ago, I received a number of things he had collected in his lifetime, including some medals. One medal appears to be bronze and bears designs military in nature. Ive attached images to help in its identification.

Charles Howerton / Via email

The 70-millimeter gilded bronze medal is indeed military in nature. Designed, engraved and signed by Belgian engraver Pierre Theunis, its obverse and reverse designs reflect effects of Germanys 1914 invasion of Belgium during the early stages of World War I.

The obverse depicts the city of Namur as a crowned woman standing, her arms crossed in defiance, flanked by two nude female figures, seated and resting. The seated figures personify the Sambre and Meuse rivers.

Inscribed around the top border is NAMUR BRAVE LES OBUS AUTRICHIENS, which translates from French into English as Namur braves the Austrian shells. A bridge and mountainscape are in the background.

The engravers signature, P. THEUNIS, appears above the exergue, in which is inscribed 425 AOUT 1914 (August 4 to 25, 1914). A circled AM monogram below the nude at right stands for the Amis de la Medaille d Art (Friends of the Art Medal). The dates mark the Aug. 4 start of German forces shelling Namur, using heavy artillery on loan from Austria-Hungary, and the end of the bombardment Aug. 25 with the citys last fort leveled, forcing the evacuation of Belgian forces to Antwerp by way of Ostend.

On the medals reverse, in the left foreground a soldier stands while another soldier sits at right; P. THEUNIS is below. In the background, soldiers disembark from a military ship at right; the tower of St. Pauls Church of Ostend is seen at left. Inscribed around is SA GARNISON DEBARQUE A OSTENDE (Garrison landing in Ostend). In the exergue, in two lines, appears 2 ET 3 SEPTEMBRE / -1914. (Sept. 2 and 3, 1914).

Uncirculated examples of the Belgian medal have sold on eBay for under $150.
Remember that black church burned by a Trump supporter? Yeah, a black church member did it

(Bugout.news) During the recently presidential campaign cycle, the Left went apoplectic with rage upon news that a black church in Greenville, Miss., was burned and the words, Vote Trump, spray-painted on the outside. Conclusion: More proof positive that supporters of GOP nominee Donald J. Trump are racists and bigots!

Not so fast. Turns out the church burning was actually committed by a black member of the same church.

As reported by The Daily Caller:

A black man has been arrested and charged with burning an African-American church in Greenville, Miss. last month and defacing its outer walls with Vote Trump graffiti.

The Mississippi state police arrested Andrew McClinton, 45, on Wednesday and charged him with first-degree arson of a place of worship, Warren Strain, a spokesman with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety told The Daily Caller.

McClinton allegedly set first to Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church, where he is a member, on Nov. 1, a week before the election. The fire destroyed 80 percent of the church. A GoFundMe account raised more than $240,000 to repair the facility.

A week before the election Sound like something staged to rip support away from the new president-elect? You bet it does.

Incredibly, Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, who also serves as the state fire marshal, told The Associated Press he didnt believe the act was politically motivated.

Really? If this act was not politically motivated, then no act can be considered politically motivated. Sounds like officialdom in Mississippi, which went overwhelmingly for Trump, is attempting to stave off politically motivated retribution (which we seriously hope does not happen).

In any event, there is little doubt that the incident hurt Trump with at least some Americansperhaps voters who were already sitting on the fence about whether or not to support him. And honestly, that can be the only true reason why this was done.

Because thats certainly how the discredited mainstream media portrayed it, as The Daily Caller noted:

The attack, which was investigated by local and state authorities as well as the FBI, was widely attributed by media outlets to Trump supporters. The Atlantic, to cite one example, published an article entitled A Black Church Burned in the Name of Trump.

And, of course, Left-wing Democrats:

Mississippi U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, whose district encompasses Greenville, said last month that the arson and vandalism was an act of domestic terrorism.

If there is something like the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nationwe look at that as domestic terrorism, he told the AP at the time.

So while the state fire marshall doesnt believe this was politically motivated, hes practically alone.

The lesson here, of course, is that insane Leftist Democrats and their supporters are willing to go to any extreme to cause damage to Trump and his presidency, even committing false flag attacks to incite rage and create division. Lets just hope they dont cross one bridge too far and ignite a nationwide civil conflict with stunts like this.

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City receives feedback on Whitegate Park proposal

Community members had an opportunity to provide feedback on a proposal for a new neighborhood park on Whitegate Drive in Columbia.
Our Bodies, Our Voices: Columbus Women Reflect on Abortion Rights

The fall of Roe v. Wade has created a fury that is personal. These 10 essays and stories reflect how Central Ohio residents are feeling.
Kamiryn Deal was looking to get a taste of different cultures.

As an international business major at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, the 2015 Columbus High School graduate wanted to experience life overseas.

So she packed up and headed to Europe with a group of about 20 students and professors from the school to study abroad for three months through an international studies program.

She left in September and stayed in London, England, where she spent the semester learning about the culture while also taking a full course load of classes from visiting professors. Deal said students were encouraged to become immersed in their surroundings and visit historic landmarks and other countries.

Often, weekends or four-day excursions were spent traveling to places such as Iceland, France, Hungary, Austria, Germany and Ireland.

It was a lot of fun to go to different countries and speak different languages and learn different cultures, said Deal, who is also minoring in Spanish.

Students who took part in the program are majoring in various areas, like photography and theater, so they spent time studying those topics. Because she plans to go into international business specializing in professional sales, Deal, 19, visited with different company representatives to get a feel for how they operate.

She was surprised to learn how open businesspeople were to hear different opinions, especially from an American.

I did expect people to not necessarily like Americans, because that is what you always hear, Deal said.

That couldnt have been further from the truth. She said people were welcoming. The United States is in the spotlight in a lot of European countries, and Deal said she was often asked about American politics.

Two places she visited, Iceland and the beaches of Normandy in France, really stood out during the trip.

Those are places that leave a mark on you physically and mentally. Iceland has a lot of physical challenges because of the tough terrain. Normandy left a mental mark on you because you stand on a beach that is super calm but you think there were hundreds and thousands of people who died here, Deal said.

Deal, the daughter of Roger and Cheryle Deal of Columbus, said her experiences during the three-month semester will aid her in the future as she pursues her business career. She considers it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

A lot of people should think about going abroad. It shows you things you never would have seen before, she said.
Coverage of the supposed spat between Jeremy Corbyn and Barack Obama should provide an epitaph for simplistic transatlantic correlations.

During his popular bi-weekly podcast, former Obama strategist David Alexrod asked whether the President was worried about the Corbynization of the Democratic Party. The reply was that he wasnt, and that the Democrats had stayed pretty grounded in fact and reality. Corbyn was quick to respond, using the Trumpian approach of Twitter to assert that Labour & Democrats will have to challenge power to speak for working people & change a broken system that isnt delivering for the majority. He continued with a list of policy commitments, including a fully funded NHS and no illegal wars, before concluding that [f]or the establishment, those ideas are dangerous. For most people in Britain, theyre common sense  and grounded in reality.

However, Obamas references to Corbyn were minimal: a couple of prompted mentions at the end of a wide-ranging hour-long interview. More significant than any implicit criticisms of Labour, seemed Obamas keenness to play down tired and inaccurate comparisons between Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, and to state the electoral necessity of winning an emotional connection with non-typical voter bases. He also gave historical Republican Party context to the rise of Trump  a welcome alternative to the flawed ease of the American Brexit analysis.

Aside from broad basics, exact correlations are rare between the internal politics of completely individuated nations. And for all America and Britain share a united history and incomparable alliance, that truth is epitomised by the differences between these two nations, in terms of their political structures and narratives, size, demographics, and so much besides.

Moreover, unlike stricter ideological movements, conservatism is highly situational. That means that, where it is applied well, it can adapt to fit national needs and local expediency. Political movements varying degrees of adaptability is but one reason why many deem right- and left-wing descriptors increasingly insufficient  beyond use as vague markers  in delineating allegiances. With regards to British-American parallels, this is easily pointed up by Obamas support for Cameron during the EU referendum campaign. It is also exemplified by the lack of a standard frame of reference for Donald Trumps overall approach, so far.

Politics is ever complicated, and the countries of our world, for all their increased connections, remain ever varied. Overstated and unsubstantiated correlations are lazy and unhelpful. As we head into the unknowns of 2017, to face unprecedented national and international challenges and opportunities, the need only grows for nuance and carefully-directed consideration.

Corbyn has proven, yet again, that he doesnt get this. The Axelrod interview shows that Obama does. What about May?
Cllr Peter Golds is Leader of the Conservative Group on Tower Hamlets Council.

If a supporter wishes to join the Labour Party, they are asked to submit two items of verification that can be cross-matched against their address before the membership application is confirmed. This ensures veracity in elections for party officers and the selection of candidates.

When voting in a referendum, local, or national election in England, Scotland and Wales the same person is able to go to a polling station, give a name and address and will be handed a ballot paper.

The proposal for a pilot scheme whereby electors will provide a form of ID before being given a ballot paper is timely, and beyond the inevitable metropolitan bubble, uncontroversial. I am sure that it will be widely supported by the electorate.

On December 27th a caller came onto LBC to say that in the June Referendum he had cast a vote in Hackney using the name of his brother who was abroad, which goes to show there is the potential for corruption.

I have met European citizens who are entitled to vote in UK local elections, and who are surprised that ballot papers are handed over on demand and with no check. I have also met and have been contacted by UK citizens who express similar concerns.

For a number of years ID has been required to vote for elections in Northern Ireland and it has increased confidence in and the veracity of the poll; there has been no effect on turnout.

The corruption that has so often been identified in Tower Hamlets may be an exception, but it is an exception that needs to be stamped out before it spreads further.

The range of ID that people have and carry around nowadays is extensive. It includes passports, driving licences, bus passes, student cards, club membership cards, ID to gain entry to ones place of work and any amount of documentation used when dealing with the numerous organisations that citizens use on a daily basis. In Northern Ireland a voter with none of these, and this is minimal, can obtain a document from the Returning Officer which enables them to vote.

In recent elections in my borough I have seen supporters of the former disqualified Mayor outside polling stations with copies of the electoral register identifying names to be given to those entering the polling station. In October 2010, during the first Rahman election, I was present in the polling station at Christchurch, Brick Lane, when a man appeared holding his poll card from the May local elections. This card had been issued by the Returning Officer for the London Borough of Enfield and was therefore of no relevance in Tower Hamlets. He gave several variations of his name and asked the poll clerk to identify an address where a name may have fitted. After a few attempts he left and was seen speaking to those outside with the register.

Sadly, research has established the frailties of the system within certain communities. I have previously drawn attention to the Report commissioned from Manchester and Liverpool Universities by the Electoral Commission in January 2015 entitled: Understanding electoral fraud vulnerability in Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin communities in England. A view of local political activists.

It is a valuable insight into the problems that are apparent amongst some within these communities and how ruthless so-called community leaders exploit the frailties of the electoral system to promote their own interests.

This year we have had publication of the Casey Report and Trevor Phillips Race and Faith  the deafening silence. Both of these shine an often unwelcome spotlight into some communities.

This does not mean that electoral malpractice is confined to single communities. Imprisoned this Autumn was a white, former Conservative councillor on Derby City Council who submitted a false address on his nomination papers. The circumstances were similar to a number of incidents in Tower Hamlets, incidents in which the Metropolitan Police were seemingly unable to collect evidence, despite witnesses being willing and able to provide it. Had the Police undertaken investigations with evidence gathered in accordance with The Police and Criminal Evidence Act then there could well have been prosecutions. Of course, by not investigating there is no offence recorded, which makes for an encouraging statistic of, no offence. In this borough the Police have a long history of simply ignoring or not correctly following up complaints of electoral fraud.

We should all welcome proposals to tighten up postal voting. There should be no problem in expecting people to renew their postal vote application after several years.

More important will be strengthening rules into the handling of postal votes by activists. In 2012 there was a Tower Hamlets by-election; an election which showed the Rahman organisation just how far they could go, in which 14 per cent of postal votes received at the town hall were rejected because either signatures or dates of birth or both on the completed ballot were at variance with the application forms. Two years later a man was stopped in a car with several hundred photocopies of postal vote applications. These of course would include the dates of birth and signatures. The Police duly spoke to him and he went on his way.

The other matter referred to in this weeks announcement is the crowding of polling stations and intimidating voters as they enter. Significantly, Labour appear to be supportive in preventing this growing problem.

At the opening of this article I referred to Labour requiring ID for party membership. Almost as soon as the Government proposals for the pilots were announced, Katie Ghose of The Electoral Reform Society announced in a press release mandatory voter ID is a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Katie Ghose has been a much travelled seeker of a Labour parliamentary nomination. This, in her chosen party, is a process whereby members have to provide items of ID before being registered. She is very silent on that rule. If it is good enough for internal Labour elections and selections it is good enough for participation in the democratic process.
Garvan Walshe is a former National and International Security Policy Adivser to the Conservative Party, and is CEO of Brexit Analytica.

When John Kerry yesterday announced a new American Middle East peace initiative, you could tell he was angry with Israels government and settlement movement  but his forceful tone couldnt make up for the absence of forceful policy.

There are of course good reasons to wonder whether serious pressure on Israel would be the best use of American diplomatic capital: it is to the settlers good fortune that the region has numerous other crises competing for international attention. And, if the two state solution proves impossible, this failure is one for which Palestinians as well as Israelis deserve considerable blame. But Kerrys fury was understandable, because Israels settlement movement  opponents of the two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict  had outwitted him yet again.

Often presented as composed of of religious fanatics with no sense of reality, no characterisation of Israels settlement movement could be further from the truth. Since the late 1970s, when the new first outpost beyond the countrys 1967 borders was built, it has taken on the world, and each year it has won a little bit more.

However much it may use religious fervour, its leadership is intensely practical and focused, quite literally, on building facts on the ground that will be difficult for its opponents to undo. It works from the belief that conflict with the Palestinians is inevitable and justified. Inevitable, because the Palestinians cannot be expected voluntarily to accept Jewish sovereignty over areas they consider rightfully belonging to them (that would involve them giving up their dignity, so they have to be coerced), and justified because both sides were happy to join the battle  so the Palestinians shouldnt complain if the fighting goes against them. The settlers are not fair-minded men and women looking for a solution to the conflict, but partisans who want to prosecute it to final victory. Failure to understand this was Kerrys first mistake.

Peace requires the settlers defeat, but it cant be achieved directly by international pressure (extreme nationalists always thrive if they can persuade their countryfolk that wagons must be circled). It needs an an Israeli government hostile to them to take office.

Israeli society has been divided 50-50 on this issue since the 1990s, but the pro-settlement right has come out on top. This not just because Benjamin Netanyahu is a superior politician to his rivals, but also because they havent developed an alternative to a land for peace policy that is seen to have failed. Netanyahus opponents need to be able to answer his charges that when Israel gave Palestinians political autonomy, they used it to launch a suicide bombing campaign; and that, when Israel withdrew from territory without an agreement, its enemies bombarded Israel from it: assaults that could only be stopped by bloody wars in Gaza and Lebanon and which did more damage to Israels international standing than the occupation or settlements have.

While settlements indeed threaten Israels security rather than enhance it, the case needs to be made for their removal in a manner that doesnt expose Israelis to Palestinian violence. The Israeli policy that could achieve this is not difficult to imagine: remove the settlements from the West Bank beyond the security barrier but not the military occupation, to create the conditions for an agreement with the Palestinians later. Though many on the Israeli Left would consider this distasteful (it risks prolonging the occupation, just without settlements) most of its members can probably be persuaded to accept it as a step towards peace.

Kerrys six principles do nothing to advance this political change. The conflict isnt about finding the parameters for a solution  those have been clear for at least 20 years, but about domestic Israeli and Palestinian politics. So unless these change, the prospects for peace wont advance. Failing to see why this is so is Kerrys second mistake.

The reality is that the United States has neither the domestic political environment nor an administration with the necessary will to take on the Israeli settlement movement it loudly (and correctly) claims is an obstacle to peace. Kerrys combination of anger and inaction epitomises the Obama Administrations essential weakness in foreign affairs. The outgoing president may think the arc of history bends towards justice  but if youre President of the United States youre supposed to give history a good shove.
Close

Many people around the world vow to fulfill to their New Year's resolutions. Some of the resolutions will be losing weight and quitting from a habit. One of the experts' advice is to keep those resolutions realistic.

A New Year's resolution is a tradition which a person promises to improve and start a new life. According to Professor Peter Herman that New Year's resolution fails because a person is too ambitious. The person should be realistic and be more confident of achieving those on the lists.

Professor Herman revealed that the issue is between false-hope syndrome. He suggested that the cycle of failure and the repetition of the effort to achieve self-improvement may be difficult to manage.

Some of the New Year's resolutions are self-changing tasks such as gambling, smoking, and overeating. People hope to achieve full transformation which is unrealistic and as a result counterproductive. Most of the time, the person is making some false method to convince themselves that they will succeed in doing the task of their resolutions.

Author Janet Polivy published in American Psychologist that people make resolutions year after year to erase habitual vices on an average scale of ten times. Moreover, the cycle repeats and the adjustment ultimately fails.

Scientifically, the resolutions are based on the amount, speed and ease of change that the person wants to change for self-improvements. One of the most common resolutions made is to lose weight. However, when losing weight people set an unrealistic goal for almost 0.45 kilogram a week and the goal made was an elusive one.

The renewed promises of keeping the resolutions in the list are a prior failure. Resolutions are resolutions after a resolutions' failure. The self-change are on the average of five to six attempts before succeeding. Professor Herman suggested that the most modest goal a person aim it will have a great transformation and a better chance of achieving change.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
FREMONT  Fremont City Council members voted unanimously Tuesday to approve plans for a larger Costco Wholesale chicken operation.

According to plans submitted to the Fremont Planning Department, the processing plant proposed on 400 acres southeast of the city would grow from 250,000 square feet to 360,000 square feet, and an associated hatchery would grow from 75,000 square feet to 85,000. Plans also call for a 32,000-square-foot feed mill.

The expansions would increase the projected cost of the facility from $180 million to $275 million, according to the documents.

Based on the new cost, the development would be eligible for more than $18.3 million in tax-increment financing, almost $5 million more than originally projected.

According to a Fremont city staff report, the new estimate of tax base added to Fremont and Dodge County increases from $63 million to $93 million based on the new cost. The new estimate of public infrastructure improvements and impacts also increases from $180 million to $275 million.

The Fremont Planning Commission approved the plans at its Dec. 21 meeting, and recommended the city council approve the amendment.

Costco has said the proposed facility would be capable of processing 350,000 chickens a day while employing 800 to 1,000 workers. The company hopes to start construction in the spring and the facility operational by 2018.

During a public hearing Tuesday evening, proponents and opponents expressed their views, and representatives from Costco and Lincoln Premium Poultry spoke extensively.
LINCOLN  Nebraska is kicking off its 150th anniversary with four new initiatives to promote volunteerism, fitness, a sense of history and knowledge about the state, organizers announced Wednesday.

Nebraska's first lady, Susanne Shore, unveiled the programs with Gov. Pete Ricketts and organizers. The web-based initiatives are the first of 13 that will mark the state's birthday throughout next year.

Shore said the programs are designed to help unite the state.

"We looked at coming up with projects that would bridge communities, connect Nebraskans and enhance state pride," Shore said.

The Nebraska Impact initiative encourages residents to volunteer at least 150 hours next year and track their progress online.

Shore said Nebraska consistently ranks among the top ten states for volunteerism, and she hopes the effort will push Nebraska to the top spot. Last year, Nebraska ranked sixth in the nation with nearly 34 percent of the population reporting that they volunteered, said Cathy Plager, executive director of the group ServeNebraska.

The Nebraska 150 Challenge is a web-based fitness program that challenges residents to move at least 150 miles in 2017 and log their progress. Activities could include walking, running, biking, swimming, kayaking, skateboarding and other forms of exercise.

The Now You Know Nebraska program is a series of 174 short online videos with interesting facts about the state. Five videos will be released each Sunday, beginning Jan. 8, so teachers can use the content in their upcoming lesson plans.

The I Am Nebraska initiative is an effort to collect oral histories of Nebraska. Citizens of all ages are encouraged to share their experiences in the state via social media video, with the hashtag #IAMNEBRASKA. Shore said schools or families could record them as projects.

Ricketts urged all Nebraska residents to participate in the programs.

"There's going to be statewide activities and grassroots activities," Ricketts said. "There's going to be a lot of opportunity for people to get involved and really celebrate our statehood."

Nebraska became the nation's 37th state on March 1, 1867.

Online

Nebraska Impact Initiative: https://www.nebraskaimpact.com

Nebraska 150 Challenge: https://www.ne150challenge.com

Now You Know Nebraska: https://ne150.org/nowyouknow

I Am Nebraska: https://iamnebraska.com
Editor's Note : Pastor Roger Barrier's "Ask Roger" column regularly appears at Preach It, Teach It. Every week at Crosswalk, Dr. Barrier puts nearly 40 years of experience in the pastorate to work answering questions of doctrine or practice for laypeople, or giving advice on church leadership issues. Email him your questions at roger@preachitteachit.org.

Dear Roger,

Im scared for my brother. Hes turned his back on Christianity. All of us kids grew up in church and got baptized when we were children. Mom and dad took us to church every Sunday and we received great Christian training. Now he criticizes Christianity and says that he doesnt believe in it anymore.

I was doing a Bible study to see if he committed the unpardonable sin and I came across Hebrews 6:4-6 which says that if you are a Christian and reject Jesus, then you never can come back and be saved again. Does this mean that he cant come back to Christ even if he wants to?

From Anxiously Awaiting Your Answer

Dear Anxiously Awaiting,

Im scared for your brother, too. This is a frightening passage with far-reaching implications.

It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace (Hebrews 6:4-6).

Much discussion has centered around the proper interpretation of this passage. Ill try to make it simple. Of course, no one seems to have the final say about exactly what the writer meant. However, I hope my thoughts clarify some of the issues for you.

1. This book is called Hebrews because it was written to the Jews. The people described in the passage were Hebrews who were attracted to Christianity. They almost committed their lives to Jesus Christ as their Lord Savior. Unfortunately, they turned their backs on Jesus without making a commitment.

They fell away (the Greek word is apostasy).

2. What does it mean that they cannot be brought to repentance after falling away from Christ?

3. Sorting through complex Greek conditional sentences, if true Christians commit apostasy, then once they are lost, they are always lost. They cant repent and return to Christ. But the fact is, true Christians can never commit apostasy.

4. The issue in the early church was whether or not those who crumbled under persecution and committed apostasy by denying Christ could return to the church or not?

5. What does this passage imply for us today?

First, how do we know that these people who fell away, and committed apostasy were not Christians?

Its quite clear that these people experienced much of real Christianity, but they personally never truly gave their hearts to Christ. They had five great advantages; yet, they eventually exposed themselves as non-Christians.

They once were enlightened but were no more (Numbers 24:4).



They tasted the heavenly gift (eternal life), but never swallowed it.

This is a key revelation. The gift of God is not given to tasters. In John 6:50-56 Jesus said: except you eat my flesh, and drink my blood, you have no part of me. Jesus was talking about total commitment. Tasters just taste; there is no swallowing commitment (Matthew 13:20-21).

Wine tasters sniff, look at, and swirl wine in a glass. They choose whether or not to actually drink it. There is no commitment until they actually swallow.

They have shared in (tasted) the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, they were not sealed (Ephesians 1:13-14; 4:31).



They have tasted the goodness of the word of God. These people cannot say with Jeremiah, When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my hearts delight. Jesus said in John 6:46: Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and not do what I say.



They had tasted the powers of the coming age. Many were personal witnesses of the miracles of Christ. However, they were without excuse because convincing evidence was set before them with no answering faith in their hearts.

Second, what does it mean that they cannot repent and return to Christ after falling away?

Understanding this statement means that we we consider the major theme of Hebrews. Again and again the writer points out that Jesus sacrifice on the cross trumps all the sacrifices of Mosaic Law.

If you turn away from Jesus then you have no place else to go. Returning to Judaism will do you no good because Jesus sacrifice to forgive our sins is the only way to find forgiveness and entrance into heaven.

For example:

But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands... He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death (Hebrews 9:11-14)

In other words, if you dont want Jesus, theres no place else to turn.

Third, if Christians could commit apostasy, they could never return to Christ because theyve put Him to open shame. But the truth is, true Christians will not commit apostasy.

Regarding Christians, the writer to the Hebrews is not declaring, "Once lost, always lost." He is affirming just the opposite, "Once saved, always saved."

The writer is utilizing a mix of Greek conditional statements. Conditional statements come in four basic manifestations. A first class conditional statement is without a doubt, true. For example, Satan said to Jesus, "If you are the Son of God..." You could also translate this "Since you are the Son of God..." In a first class conditional statement the differences between "if" and "since" are slight.

Basically, a third class statement is true, but it can never happen. For example, if I could go to the moon tonight, I would have a lovely view of earth. Now, that is true, but it could never happen. I can't get to the moon tonight.

Hebrews 6:4-6 is understood like this. If I were to fall away from Jesus, then I could never return; but, the truth is, I can't fall away from Jesus.

The writer is making a point of just how horrible it would be if a Christian fell away and committed apostasy. Jesus would have to be crucified all over again just for them. But, since they can't fall away, Jesus does not have to suffer and die again on the cross. Such is the height, depth and width of the love and grace of God (Ephesians 3:14-19).

Fourth, one of the big controversies among the early church Christians was what to do with believers who committed apostasy while under intense persecution and torture.

While Julie and I were teaching pastors in the Ukraine we heard several stories about secret Christian meetings interrupted by the entrance of soldiers whose job it was to ferret out Christians and put them to death.

During one meeting, secret policeman broke into the room and announced that they were there to kill all the Christians. However, in a moment of grace, one of the secret policemen said that anyone who wanted to leave could do so. Several got up and left.

Comrades, we are Christians, too. We just wanted to make sure we would be safe in here.

One of the critical problems facing Christians in the early centuries was the Roman insistence on emperor worship to solidify Caesars control of the empire. Each year, everyone in the empire was required to bow before an altar, burn a pinch of incense and declare, "Caesar is Lord."

Confessing "Caesar is Lord" was an abomination to Christians. Many refused to comply and died with the words, "Jesus is Lord" on their lips. But, what about those who acquiesced? Were they Christians or not? Some wanted to forgive them and welcome them back into the church. Others wanted to deny them re-entrance on the grounds that real Christians would never turn their backs on Jesus.

Thankfully, once our Heavenly Father bestows on us the gift of salvation, nothing that we could do in the future would so surprise Him that he would cause Him to take it back.

Fifth, implications for us are far-reaching.

We must do all we can to assure that we ourselves and those we love are fully committed to Jesus Christ. If we do not have Jesus then theres no place else for us to go for forgiveness and eternal life.

Unfortunately, it seems that some people could not come to Christ even if they wanted.

One afternoon I visited a 78-year-old man in the hospital. His Christian family had shared the gospel with him for many yearsalways with a negative response. They pleaded with me to go and try one more time.

He was sitting on the edge of is bed as I frankly told him why I was there. Out of politeness he allowed me to share with him the gospel.

When I finished, I was deeply saddened by his sorrowful reply: Ive said no to Jesus so many times that I dont think I could become a Christian even if I wanted to.

This is why the writer to the Hebrews pleaded again and again with his readers, Today! While it is still today! Give your heart to Jesus while theres still time.

Finally, if someone who seems to be a Christian falls away, then that proves that they were never a Christian in the first place.

Well, Anxiously Awaiting, I hope that my thoughts give you guidance about how to proceed.

Love, Roger

Dr. Roger Barrier retired as senior teaching pastor from Casas Church in Tucson, Arizona. In addition to being an author and sought-after conference speaker, Roger has mentored or taught thousands of pastors, missionaries, and Christian leaders worldwide. Casas Church, where Roger served throughout his thirty-five-year career, is a megachurch known for a well-integrated, multi-generational ministry. The value of including new generations is deeply ingrained throughout Casas to help the church move strongly right through the twenty-first century and beyond. Dr. Barrier holds degrees from Baylor University, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Golden Gate Seminary in Greek, religion, theology, and pastoral care. His popular book, Listening to the Voice of God, published by Bethany House, is in its second printing and is available in Thai and Portuguese. His latest work is, Got Guts? Get Godly! Pray the Prayer God Guarantees to Answer, from Xulon Press. Roger can be found blogging at Preach It, Teach It, the pastoral teaching site founded with his wife, Dr. Julie Barrier.

Publication date: December 29, 2016
Getting duped online by a cybercriminal is infuriating. You let your guard down for a minute and the thieves find their way in to your machine.

And then the fun begins if ransomware is involved. Hopefully you have your data backed up, but if not now starts the dance with those who have ultimately taken you hostage. Ransomware is obviously analogous to kidnapping, and dealing with the perpetrators can feel much like negotiating with a jumper standing on the edge of high-rise roof.

Look no further for help than the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology report that in part describes how to deal with criminals when they are holding your data hostage. The report talks of what to do once a breach has been found.

ICIT says the proper response will depend on the risk appetite of the organization, the potential impact of the hostage data, the impact on business continuity, whether a redundant system is available, and the sectorial regulatory requirements.

[ ALSO ON CSO: The history of ransomware ]

Hopefully the information security team has already planned out a procedure to follow in the event of a ransomware attack. They should begin by notifying the authorities and applicable regulatory bodies. The plan identifies the organizations recovery time objective (RTO), and recovery point objective (RPO) for data breaches. In the event that a backup exists, then cyber-forensic evidence of the incident should be preserved and documented for/by law enforcement.

In the event that there are no redundancy systems or if the secondary systems are compromised, then the information security team can find and implement a vendor solution or decryption tool.

In many cases, files may be partially corrupted or incompletely decrypted. Even if a vendor solution is a simple executable, the victim may not be able to assure that their system is not still compromised by inactive ransomware, backdoors, or other malware.

Another option is to attempt to recover the data. System backup and recovery are the only certain solutions to ransomware. If you have a backup system, then recovery is a simple matter of restoring the system to a save point. Otherwise, you could attempt to recover data through shadow copies or through a file recovery software tool; however, many ransomware variants delete shadow copies and some even detect file recovery software. Since many variants infect the registry, system restore from a save point may not be possible even if the recovery point remains unaffected.

If you dont like those options, you can put your head in your hands and do nothing. In lieu of an information security team or vendor solution, options are limited to paying the ransom or accepting the loss of the system or data. If the system is backed up, and the backup remains reliable, then the victim can ignore the ransom demand and restore the system according to the backup. If there is no backup, but the ransom outweighs the cost of the system, then the victim may have to purchase a new device and dispose of the infected system with extreme prejudice.

[ ALSO ON CSO: Tricks that ransomware uses to fool you ]

In what should be a last resort: pay the ransom. If the culprit actually provides the decryption key, then paying the ransom may alleviate the immediate pressure on the organization. Some attackers may release the system after receiving payment because doing otherwise would reduce the likelihood that other victims will pay. If paying the ransom is legitimately being debated, then perform a quick Internet search on the type of ransomware holding your system. Whether or not criminals who use that ransomware are likely to release data after receiving payment is likely to show up online.

Security experts caution about this approach though as there is no guarantee that once the money is paid that the perpetrator would release the data. Also another worry is that once you pay the ransom, the cybercriminal could come back and do the same thing at a later date.

Some attackers recognize this dichotomy of trust. They recognize that if files are never unlocked then no victim will ever pay a ransom. As a result, variants such as CTBLocker (Trojan.Cryptolocker.G) have an option to decrypt a few random files as a gesture of good faith.

Another tact is if the ransom is low, say $300 for a multimillion-dollar organization, then it might make sense to adopt a hybrid approach. This could include simultaneous efforts to pay the ransom, to triage the system, and to attempt to restore from a backup server.

Organizations contemplate if system downtime is more dire than the consequences of the ransom. A hybrid approach ensures that the system will be operational in some amount of time, no matter what. To minimize the expended resources and the impact to the organization, hybrid solutions should only be attempted by a trained and prepared information security team.

The number of ransomware attack variations is limited only by the imagination and motivation of the attackers. A vigilant cybersecurity centric corporate culture that cultivates an environment of awareness is the most effective means to minimize the attack. If you do have an infosec team, it should cover: an immediate companywide vulnerability analysis, a crisis management strategy that takes into consideration all known threats, continuous device and application patching, auditing of third-party vendors and agreements, organizational penetration testing and security centric technological upgrades.
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State taxpayers and Metro-North are paying nearly $17 million to replace and repair rail cars damaged during a horrific 2013 Bridgeport derailment  the most expensive commuter rail crash in Connecticut history.

Kevin Nursick, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said the bulk of the repair money  $10.9 million  was spent to replace three M8 rail cars destroyed during a collision between a derailed train and an oncoming train. The crash injured 75 passengers and crew members.

The newly purchased cars have been returned to service on the New Haven Line, he said.

Four other cars were badly damaged and will cost $5.8 million to repair, Nursick said, adding those repairs are under way.

The four damaged cars are at Kawasakis facility in Yonkers, N.Y. pending repair, Nursick said, referring to the company that manufactured them. We dont have a schedule yet for their return to service.

Nursick said the Bridgeport crash is the most expensive accident to occur on the New Haven Line.

This appears to be the case. Nursick said. There was a prior collision on the New York portion of the New Haven Line in 1980s or 1990s. In that instance, the M2 cars were badly damaged, but never replaced.

More Information Cost of the May 17, 2103 Bridgeport Metro-North derailment: $16.7 million in total $10.9 million to replace three destroyed M8 rail cars $5.8 million to repair four heavily damaged M8 rail cars See More Collapse

Metro-North officials declined comment on the cost of the Bridgeport accident and deferred questions to the state DOT.

Under the states contract with Metro-North, Connecticut pays 65 percent of the cost of maintaining the rail fleet that operates on the New Haven Line and other branches, while Metro North pays 35 percent.

Broken track

The Bridgeport crash occurred as a northbound train derailed after hitting a broken section of track and was sideswiped by an oncoming train unable to stop. Federal investigators noted the engineer operating the oncoming train saw the crash ahead of him but was unable to halt his train in time to avoid hitting the derailed train.

Some 1,000 feet of track was torn up and overhead catenary lines were ripped apart. Rail officials repaired those damages soon after the May 17, 2013 accident.

The investigation into the crash revealed that the broken section of track had been repaired only a few months earlier, and was again found to be defective two days before the derailment. Four other trains passed over the missing section before New Haven-bound 1548 derailed and was hit by a southbound train.

It looked like the two rails were apart, Metro-North Engineer Steven Bauer told the National Transportation Safety Board during hearings on the accident.

It was definitely too late to stop or anything and then the next thing that I know, the cars behind me were on the ground, Bauer said. By the time I saw it, I was on top of it.

Numerous lawsuits have been filed over the accident but the full cost of the litigation is not yet known, although its expected to total tens of millions of dollars and easily exceed the cost of replacing destroyed and damaged equipment.

Metro North has also spent $5.2 million for new wheel assemblies but Nursick said that expenditure is not attributable to the derailment. The $5.2 million is for new wheel assemblies to be purchased as capital spares for future use, he explained.

Metro-North is buying 60 new M8 rail cars for the New Haven Line, including 10 bar cars, but those cars wont be available for a couple of years. The railroad also has an option to purchase 34 additional cars.

The cars will supplement the 405 M8 cars already in use on the New Haven Line and the other branches.
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You may not realize it, but your work environment -- from where your desk is located, the temperature, even how long you are sitting -- can all factor into how industrious and collaborative you and your team are.

Stephanie Douglas, director of workplace strategy at Teknion, a design firm that specializes in office spaces, says that going into 2017, much of the dialogue around workplace has focused on the 'things' -- space, furniture, technology, policies -- and we're seeing the conversation shift to really focus back on the employee."
Civil War Gala to be held Saturday in Somerset

The 14th annual Col. Robert Cummins Civil War Gala will be held at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Somerset Church of the Brethren, 606 Berlin Plank Road in Somerset.
Zoom Conferencing Technology Helps Pass Project ECHO Bill

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By Frank Griffin

Contributing Writer By Frank GriffinContributing Writer

Even though selfie and messaging apps get the bulk of attention in the media, there are actually people that use the developments that are taking place in ICT to do some impressive work. Case in point is Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) at the University of New Mexico Health Science Center, which was established as a model to continue education by linking together communities in rural and underserved areas with hubs of specialist teams and primary care providers and educators. These groups are brought together using Zoom video conferencing in weekly teleECHO clinics.





Project ECHO says it is a movement to, "Demonopolize knowledge and amplify the capacity to provide best practice care for underserved people all over the world," a truly inspiring goal.

When the Senate passed the Project ECHO bill, it validated the project in New Mexico, but more importantly it will boost care access for rural populations through telehealth training. The bill, called the Expanding Capacity for Health Outcomes (ECHO) Act was approved unanimously by the Senate.

Introduced Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the goal was to give rural areas access to healthcare through continuing medical education using telehealth technology.

The model at the University of New Mexico was first introduced in 2013 by Sanjeev Arora, M.D., a professor in UNMs Department of Internal Medicine. He said, Medical knowledge is exploding, but its often not traveling the last mile to ensure that patients get the right care in the right place at the right time. If we can leverage technology to spread best practices through case-based learning and mentoring of providers, we can move knowledgeinstead of patientsto get better care to rural and underserved communities across the country."

This knowledge is being moved using Zoom's video conferencing technology, which provides a platform that allows participants to share information freely and an easy to use solution that makes it possible to fully collaborate with scale and capacity that delivers high availability.

The company also provides a highly secure platform with Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption, AES 256-bits encryption and HTTPS access to ensure the information conferencing participants are sharing in telehealth is always protected.

"Zoom is proud to be a part of this important effort to reduce rates of chronic disease and improve healthcare in rural areas. We have worked with Project ECHO for years, and we're pleased that they will be able to scale their programs far and wide. It is rewarding to see our secure, easy, compliant video communications platform help this important mission," said Eric S. Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zoom.

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Edited by Maurice Nagle
Open letter from a 63-year-old former alumnus of Wetherby Pre-Preparatory School to His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge, aged 3:

My dear Prince George,

I hope that Your Royal Highness will excuse my presumption in writing to offer you tips on how to survive your new life outside the family circle after you start school in the coming year.

I am emboldened to do so because the public prints are full of speculation that you will be following your father and uncle Harry to Wetherby Pre-Preparatory School  of which I, too, am an old boy. (In my case, a very old boy, since I am 60 years your senior and left the school in 1961, the year of your late grandmother Princess Dianas birth).

Here, you will see me at the age of six or seven, flushed with health and quiet confidence, proudly turned out in my Wetherby School uniform. In the other, you will see a baggy-eyed, broken and bitter man, weighed down by the cares of existence, ravaged by a lifetime of chain-smoking and immoderate drinking. So tip number one, Your Royal Highness: Go easy on the booze and stay off the fags

Indeed, I was going to address you as my future king, until it struck me how extremely unlikely it is that I will survive to see you crowned. I should add that I fervently hope I wont live to see such a day.

This is not, I assure you, because I harbour any serious doubts about the survival of the monarchy. Still less do I question your fitness for the throne, which is your birthright.

On the contrary, it is only because I wish long life and health to your great-grandmother, grandfather and father, all of whom are ahead of you in the queue. God willing, youll have a very long wait  and youll be well over my present age of 63 before your turn comes, while I will be food for worms.

If you keep cheerful and are friendly to everyone, the House of Windsor should be secure for at least the next 100 years

This brings me to my first piece of unsolicited advice. George (if you will forgive the familiarity), I urge you most earnestly to compare and contrast the two photographs that appear at the top of this column.

In one, you will see me at the age of six or seven, flushed with health and quiet confidence, proudly turned out in my Wetherby School uniform, ready to take on the world and anything it may throw at me.

In the other, you will see a baggy-eyed, broken and bitter man, weighed down by the cares of existence, ravaged by a lifetime of chain-smoking and immoderate drinking.

Strictly between you and me, even this later photograph was taken more than ten years ago, in the week I joined the Daily Mail. Suffice it to say that updating it to show what I really look like today would be an act of cruelty to readers. It would quite put them off their breakfast porridge.

So tip number one can be summed up simply. Your Royal Highness, if you wish to remain recognisable in your 60s as the fine bonny boy you are today, dont follow my example or those set by so many of your relations, such as your great-great-aunt Margaret and your venerable step-grandmother, the Duchess of Cornwall. Go easy on the booze  and stay off the fags.

I hasten to say I dont see much danger that you will be offered such temptations at Wetherby (assuming you go there in September), where your schoolmates will be aged four to eight. But you can never be too young to be warned.

Indeed, theres something else you should know about the booze, which will make it very difficult for me to offer specific advice on coping with the trials of your new school. The truth is that alcohol plays havoc with the memory cells  and I can hardly recall a single thing about my time there.

All that sticks in my mind is the recollection of a sandpit in my classroom and a morning assembly at which we sang that haunting hymn Eternal Father, Strong To Save, which has been among my favourites ever since.

Oh, and I also remember the leaden weight of the school blazer, which was grey with red piping and seemed to be made of coarse-grained sandpaper, lined with thick cardboard.

That, at least, appears not to have changed since I moved on, more than half a century ago.

Otherwise, all Im left with is a recurring nightmare about the formidable Mrs Russell, who ran the show, and a few school reports informing my parents of my shortcomings: Tommy still loses marks because he writes his figures back to front. This is thoughtless and he must try harder; Tommy lacks control and his work is rather untidy; Tommys behaviour should be steadier and he must try to learn his homework more thoroughly.

Whatever you do, dont think youre better than everyone else simply because you have a royal title and happen to live in a palace. Dont be like great-uncle Andy

But then even if I remembered everything about Wetherby, my tips would be useless to Your Royal Highness on such matters as the best hiding places, the most challenging trees to climb and the handiest windows out of which to pour the disgusting school milk youll be offered at elevenses.

This is because ten years after I left, the school moved from its home in Wetherby Place, Kensington, to handsome premises two miles away in Notting Hill Gate.

Much else seems to have changed about it, too. The basic curriculum of my day  eight subjects (including painting, music and dancing)  has expanded dramatically to include personal, social and health education, citizenship, reasoning, design technology and drama. All very right-on.

The school even has a mission statement, unheard of in my day, listing such aims as: To create happy, well-rounded and confident learners who are respectful, thoughtful, sociable and motivated Wetherby ambassadors.

Then, of course, theres the delicate matter of the fees, which have shot up to a blistering 20,595 per year.

Theres no chance that sons of jobbing journalists, like me, could have gone there if wed been born 60 years later, like you.

But then in my childhood, it was still possible to live within walking distance of Kensington Palace and the school without being the son of a hedge-fund manager, Russian oligarch or member of the Royal Family.

I offer this next tip, however, on the off-chance that you may one day run into a playmate whose daddy has less than a few squillion in the bank: whatever you do, dont think youre better than everyone else simply because you have a royal title and happen to live in a palace. Dont be like great-uncle Andy.

You see, for someone in your position, its very important to be liked by all sorts of people.

And the best way to achieve that is to try to treat them respectfully, as equals. No one loves a snooty-pants.

But if you keep cheerful and are friendly to everyone, the House of Windsor should be secure for at least the next 100 years.

At the same time, I should warn you that even at a privileged school like Wetherby, youre likely to meet some dodgy types whom it may be safest to keep at arms length.

I note with dismay, for example, that my fellow old boys include the actor Hugh Grant, who has some very grubby habits indeed. Someone may tell you about them when youre older.

I should warn you that even at a privileged school like Wetherby, youre likely to meet some dodgy types whom it may be safest to keep at arms length. I note with dismay, for example, that my fellow old boys include the actor Hugh Grant, who has some very grubby habits indeed

You should also be wary of children who want to be your friends only because they or their parents are inordinately fond of posh people.

Here, Im thinking of another Wetherby alumnus, Downton Abbeys creator Julian Fellowes, whose knees seem to turn to jelly at the faintest whiff of a title. True friends will like you for your inner self, not your ancestry.

But thats quite enough guff from me. So Ill leave you with one last piece of advice: if you tear out this page and fold it carefully, you will be able to turn it into a paper hat or a yacht to sail in the bath. Im sure the nice teachers at Wetherby will show you how.

Have a wonderful time there  or wherever you go  in what I hope will be a very happy new year for you and all my long-suffering readers.

I remain, sir, Your Royal Highnesss most loyal and obedient servant  and, of course, your fathers fellow Wetherby ambassador,
Given the scale of the funding crisis engulfing elderly care  and the threadbare service so many older people now endure  it hardly seems possible things could get much worse.

Yesterday a bleak report by the Institute for Public Policy Research said that, by 2030, there will be a 13billion black hole in care budgets, even with significant funding increases. Disturbingly, the authors concluded: On current trends adult social care is unsustainable.

And today? In a further crippling blow, the British Medical Association warns another 5billion could be slashed from social care funds over the next four years.

Yesterday a bleak report by the Institute for Public Policy Research said that, by 2030, there will be a 13billion black hole in care budgets, even with significant funding increases. Disturbingly, the authors concluded: On current trends adult social care is unsustainable

We also have a clear indication as to how these huge gaps in funding are likely to be plugged. Not, as they should be, from the ballooning foreign aid budget  but from the pockets of already hard-pressed families paying council tax.

Tory-run Surrey County Council is planning a staggering 16 per cent increase in a single year. For the average council tax payer, this would mean their annual bill rising more than 200 a year to 1,470.

If a council in Chancellor Philip Hammonds own true blue back yard is even considering such a drastic move, others will doubtless follow suit. Indeed, bills in most areas are likely to rise by 5 per cent a year for the next two years  the most town halls can get away with without triggering a referendum.

Meanwhile, thanks to David Camerons arbitrary target, spending on foreign aid is set to increase from 12billion to nearly 16billion by 2020, with unimaginable sums wasted, funnelled off to unaccountable bodies or falling into the pockets of dictators.

As council tax payers face swingeing rises, and services for the elderly decline, how can there be any possible justification for this mindless foreign aid largesse?

Hail, Brexit recanters

First we had the historian Niall Ferguson, who  having branded the Leave camp happy morons  admitted he had been totally wrong and the EU deserved Brexit.

Now another significant figure and former full-throated supporter of Remain, Mark Boleat, of the City of London Corporation, appears to have recanted his Brexit gloom.

Having warned a Leave vote would cause considerable uncertainty, he now declares optimistically: I have no doubt, whatever happens in 2017, the City of London will remain the worlds leading financial centre.

Meanwhile, the apolitical General Medical Council warns that remaining in the single market will make it impossible to make sure foreign doctors are safe.

With this in mind, is it too much to hope more Remainers might follow suit  and end their increasingly hysterical calls for a so-called soft Brexit, which would mean one thing continued free movement of migrants.

On the subject of free movement, the list of Labour politicians who say it should be abandoned grows ever longer, now including former ministers Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham as well as dozens of councillors in marginal seats.

The notable exception? Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who says hell take on Ukip while, yes, still backing untrammelled immigration. Still in La La Land, then.

Leader Jeremy Corbyn says hell take on Ukip while, yes, still backing untrammelled immigration. Still in La La Land, then

As newly released papers from the National Archives show, Margaret Thatchers departure from office was greeted with genuine shock and sincere praise from fellow world leaders.

Even the socialist French president Francois Mitterrand praised her tremendous conviction and uncommon will.
A dog with an IQ of 142, a raccoon that can ride a bike and a border collie that has learned the names of 150 individual toys are all some of the clever animals competing for the title of Britain's Smartest Dog.

Cooper, the Shih Tzu, knows how to place shapes in corresponding holes and shot to internet fame with his unique skills, while border collie Cable shocked his owner when he started to retrieve his favourite toys solely on verbal command.

And the odd one out in this trio is Melanie the North American raccoon, whose owner Kimberly Unger has taught her pet how to ride a bike.

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Cooper the shih tzu has an IQ of 142 and might just be the cleverest dog in Britain with his impressive talents

Melanie the North American raccoon has her own particular set of skills after learning over 100 tricks

Sally Smith with her precocious pooch Gable who knows the names of every single one of his 150 toys

The talented animals all star in Channel 5's Britain's Cleverest Dog and are set to compete to take home the accolade.

Shih Tzu cooper - also known as 'the canine Einstein' - is owned by Kirsty Forrester from Lytham St Annes in Lancashire.

The pup shot to viral stardom after he displayed his genius by placing shapes in their corresponding holes in a YouTube video.

'It was pretty weird when he was getting attention at first and it was from all over the world,' Kirsty says.

'The reason why I think the shape sorting has captured so many peoples attention is that it relates to toddlers and its one of the first toys we give to human children.'

She has even got an agent for her pampered pooch who tells her that he could find himself signed up for a film, which Kirsty is only too delighted about.

Cooper's owner Kirsty Forrester has an agent for her dog and has set up a website and YouTube channel for her pet

The tiny animal with his shape box. Cooper can place each shape in its corresponding hole all by himself

Kirsty has taught Cooper different tricks. From simple things like standing on his back legs to shaking paws, he can also put his tongue in and out on command

Sally Smith has taught her dog Gable to name his toys, and the University of Lincoln this he is extremely clever after he demonstrated his talents

Meanwhile, precocious collie Gable is able to recall the entire contents of his toy box by individual name, remembering 150 different words which range from 'pig', to 'chicken' and 'twister'.

Owner Sally Smith realised her border collie was unique when, after telling him to go and retrieve a specific toy, he came back within mere seconds with the correct one.

'Id asked him to go get chicken a toy that was at the top of the stairs, I thought he would be gone for some time

'Id never actually told him the name of his toy. He applied that learning himself without being taught by me,' Sally explains of her dog's memory skills.

Dr Anne McBride, a psychology professor at the University of Southampton explains: 'Dogs make similar associations between particular words and actions and that is how young children learn as well.'

Gable (left with Sally), Melanie (middle with Kimberly) and another talented dog named Barley with his owner Laura all compete in a competition to find out who is Britain's Smartest Dog

The clever dog proves his talents when he visits the University of Lincoln and demonstrates his recall skills.

Dr Helen Zulch, a veterinary behaviourist says: Giving dogs the opportunity to problem solve on their own is important. He is very good, really impressive.'

Gable's knowledge of words means he knows the same amount as language as a three-year-old child.

Dr McBride adds: 'Gable has actually learned 300 different pieces of information, hes learned that word and to discriminate that object.'

Kimberly is convinced that her pet raccoon is as smart as any other dog but is disappointed to find out that she would need a bigger sample size to prove it

Melanie has learned plenty of tricks using her hands with Kimberly giving her treats as a reward

Raccoon owner Kimberly, from Sussex, is convinced her unusual pet is as smart as any other dog, despite the creature normally living in the wild in North America.

The biology graduate decided to take it upon herself to teach the animal over 100 tricks to prove it could be tamed.

Melanie knows how to somersault, touching her ears on command, put a ball through a hoop, play a miniature piano, ride a scooter, push a shopping trolley, and ride a miniature bike.
A cash-strapped student enjoyed more than $50,000 worth of luxury holidays this year - after wealthy men paid to fly her around the world for exotic dates.

Cassandra Jacqueline, 21, from Adelaide, South Australia, couldn't afford to travel abroad on her minimum wage as a waitress.

But after joining the dating site, Miss Travel, the single languages student has enjoyed a number of all-expenses paid trips abroad, including to Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Bali and a five-star trip to Japan.

While some people have criticised the unusual form of dating, the young singleton thinks it's the best way to date and can't imagine ever enjoying going down the conventional route again.

Life of luxury! Cassandra Jacqueline enjoyed more than $50,000 worth of holidays thanks to the rich men paying to fly her around the world for exotic dates

'In the last year I've been to places I could never have visited alone, costing at least $50,000,' she said.

'It's been amazing to enjoy new cultures with someone new by your side. Plus, they cover the cost of it all so you don't have to worry about a thing.

'Some people have made comments about how it's like prostitution, but it's not.

'I do a lot of research before I meet a guy online in a foreign country and there are ground rules. There's absolutely no pressure to have sex.'

She added: 'I've had the best holidays because of the strangers that want to take me on far-away dates. It's honestly killed normal dating for me.'

Ms Jacqueline was backpacking her way through China on a budget when she first heard about the latest trend: destination dating.

Can't do it alone: Ms Jacqueline couldn't afford to travel on her minimum wage as a waitress

Loving it: She joined the dating site Miss Travel and was soon whisked away to Asia

She said: 'When I first heard about travel dating, I thought it was too good to be true.

'I was making my way through China at the time, living on a budget of about $10 a day which was incredibly stressful.

'Then I met a couple who seemed completely loved up.

'The 'wife' later revealed that her 'husband' was in fact someone she'd just met a few days earlier and the trip they were enjoying, was their first date.

'As soon as I heard about Miss Travel, I knew it was a dating experience I wanted to be a part of. After all, I was young and single. I had nothing to lose.'

Back home in Adelaide, the struggling student joined the dating site and was soon chatting to several potential suitors.

She said: 'It was nerve-wracking at first. I'd listed on my profile that I was looking for someone to pay for my ticket and I didn't know how the guys would take it.

High life: One man flew her to Singapore where they stayed in a hotel with an infinity pool

Paid for: She flew business class to Singapore and stayed at the Marina Bay hotel (above), which costs $950 a night

Explore: While her dates spent their days fulfilling work commitments, she would go out

'But when I started talking to a businessman from Adelaide, who was going on a trip to Singapore for work and wanted company, I decided to take the plunge.

'We actually met locally beforehand and definitely clicked, so I was excited for our second date in a foreign location.

'We flew business class and stayed at the Marina Bay hotel, which costs $950 a night, and has a beautiful skyline infinity pool.

No expense spared: The 21-year-old enjoyed flying first class fight to Japan with one man

'Every day he'd go off to fulfill his work commitments and I'd stay at the hotel, using the breathtaking pool while enjoying cocktails.

'One afternoon he even paid for me to go to Universal Studios.

'I didn't mind that I was alone as I was getting to explore an exciting new country and didn't have to worry about the cost.

'In the evenings, we'd meet up and enjoy dinner and talk about our days. It was perfect.'

Although love didn't blossom for Ms Jacqueline after her first paid-for date, she wasn't deterred by the experience.

Can't complain! 'Every day he'd go off to fulfill his work commitments and I'd stay at the hotel, using the breathtaking pool while enjoying cocktails'

She said: 'I started talking to an American not long after who was working in Asia and we agreed to meet in Bali for a few days.

'We met at the airport which was a bit awkward, but because of the nature of the date, it didn't take long to relax.

'We stayed in a villa together with private rooms and unfortunately there wasn't any chemistry between us.

'But we had a great time, hiking through the rice paddies and enjoying the local cuisines.

'How can you possibly have a bad date in such an amazing location?'

And it was in October of this year that she went on her most luxury getaway to date - a month-long trip around Asia, where no expense was spared.

No going back: After her year of travel dating, the 21-year-old said she can't imagine enjoying herself on a conventional date again

'This guy really took his time to get to know me, and suggested taking me on my dream trip to Japan, followed by short stays in Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore and Thailand,' she said.

'I'd wanted to explore Japan because my favourite book is Memoirs of a Geisha and he decided to take me to where it had been set.

'He whisked me off on a first class flight which was an out of this world experience.

'From the moment we met I was smitten.

'For just over a month, we travelled through Asia together and I even got to return to Singapore, staying in the most unique and extravagant hotels.

'He'd wine and dine me each night and we had the best time visiting all the local tourist attractions.

Jet-setter: Ms Jacqueline has enjoyed a number of all-expenses paid trips abroad, including to Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Bali and a five-star trip to Japan

'There was no expense spared it must have cost at least $35,000. I felt so special.'

But though Ms Jacqueline raves about her year travelling the world, meeting potential partners, some of her friends and family are unconvinced by the process.

She said: 'I've had a few comments about it being like 'Pretty Woman' and suggesting it's essentially like being an escort. I don't feel like that at all.

'The men I've met are all in high powered jobs and find it hard to meet women. They just want company.

'Plus, before we even meet we always know we have a shared passion  travel! If love was to blossom, that's a bonus.

Geisha life: One man whisked her off to Japan 'because my favourite book is Memoirs of a Geisha and he decided to take me to where it had been set'

Off again: Although there was no chemistry with one man she met in Bali, they had a great time, hiking through the rice paddies and enjoying the local cuisines

'I've never felt under pressure to have sex with any of my dates. If something happens, it's because we feel a connection and want to explore it. Not because they've paid for my flight.'

Before accompanying men on trips abroad, she says she has ground rules, such as agreeing not to drink too much and ensures she gets to know her date first before meeting up.

She added: 'I have been offered so many amazing experiences in such a short amount of time that I can't think of a better way of dating.

'It has changed the way I look at potential partners too. A movie and dinner isn't going to cut it anymore.

'Why settle for average when you can find someone to travel the world with and share these amazing experiences?'
A woman has penned a post about the moment she confronted a mother after she left her children in the car to get a coffee.

Melinda Ayre said she was eating breakfast with a friend when a car was parked beside her with three young children inside.

The mother then went in to get a takeaway coffee and came back around 15 minutes later.

A woman has penned a post about the moment she confronted a mother after she left her children in the car to get a coffee (stock image)

'The baby was asleep, but the two other children were upset and one got out of her seat belt to sit in the front seat of the car  with the engine running. Nice work absent mum,' Ms Ayre wrote

'The baby was asleep, but the two other children were upset and one got out of her seat belt to sit in the front seat of the car  with the engine running. Nice work absent mum,' Ms Ayre wrote on 9 Honey.

'Said mother wasnt even rushing to grab her must-have latte. She was chatting to the barista and even stopped to shoot the breeze with some other ladies in the cafe. Like many things in this city  I started to get irritated watching her distressed kids.'

Ms Ayre, a mother herself, confronted the woman and said that while the air conditioning was on, it was never okay.

'If you're ducking out of the car, even for a minute  take your kids with you. "I'm just paying for petrol" or "I'm just grabbing the paper" isn't an excuse as far as I'm concerned,' she said

'A million things could happen. Mostly they don't, so lazy parents keep on doing this crap. Even more so in the holiday and Christmas season when temperatures are hot,' she concluded.

'If you're ducking out of the car, even for a minute  take your kids with you. "I'm just paying for petrol" or "I'm just grabbing the paper" isn't an excuse as far as I'm concerned.'

There are a number of strict laws in place across Australia that address leaving children in cars and while some circumstances are okay, others are absolutely not.

There are a number of strict laws in place across Australia that address leaving children in cars and while some circumstances are okay, others are absolutely not

What do I do if I find a child unattended in a car? * Look for the parents or carers * If they can't be found and the child is distressed or you are concerned for the child's health, call 000 and ask for the Fire Brigade without delay * Give your location, the vehicle registration, the approximate age of the child and the child's condition * If the car is unlocked, open the doors and shield the windows with a blanket * Wait for emergency services or safely try and remove the child from the vehicle if you are concerned - every second counts Source: KidSafe NSW Advertisement

'These laws mean if you leave a child unattended, whether it be in a car or at home, and that child is left for an unreasonable time and no reasonable provision for the supervision and care of that child has taken place, then ultimately you have committed a misdemeanour,' criminal lawyer Emma Aldersea wrote for Slater + Gordon.

'Most people may think thats harsh, but what we need to do, is give due regard to the word "unreasonable" and how it applies in each case.

'I do not think for a moment that a person who, for instance, leaves their 11-year-old child in a car in the shade at a service station for one minute while paying for the fuel, breaches this provision of the Criminal Code.

'But if a person were to leave an infant locked in an un-shaded car at a service station while they go inside to join a queue to pay for fuel, this could breach the provision.'

'If a person were to leave an infant locked in an un-shaded car at a service station while they go inside to join a queue to pay for fuel, this could breach the provision,' criminal lawyer Emma Aldersea said

Ms Aldersea also listed the things that could go wrong, including the car overheating faster than expected, the child bumping into the handbrake, another car hitting the stationary vehicle or the child being taken.

But at the same time, not all parents should be quick to judge others following a tragedy, says mother-of-two, Laura Mazza.

Off the back of a number of tragic stories this holiday period, Ms Mazza, 30, penned a lengthy post about the tragedies after seeing parents labelled 'neglectful' and 'disgusting.'

But at the same time, not all parents should be quick to judge others following a tragedy, says mother-of-two, Laura Mazza (pictured)

'To hear of a young life lost and gone so quick is a miserable waste of a precious life. I can't imagine the pain and heartache that a parent would feel losing a child,' she wrote on her blog.

'The parents, despite the situation, are also victims, so why do people victim blame? Why do we chose to blame in anger?'

Ms Mazza said that when we 'see someone fall prey to tragedy, when someone becomes a victim, suddenly our world is no longer safe.'

'If we stop and think, this could happen to us, suddenly the world isn't a "just" place. The idea that anyone can be a victim is scary, and we don't like it.

'We think, nah, those parents were just idiots. Neglectful idiots.

Ms Mazza's entire post can be read here

'But how do you know? How do you know that they weren't helicopters, hovering over their child's every move and the one time they didn't, tragedy struck.'

Ms Mazza said she is not perfect and that she has taken her eyes off her children for moments before to check the mail or tend to another child.

'Loads of things that even despite my helicopter efforts, could have been opportunities for disaster,' she said.

'I'm not telling you to not be upset. You are human, your heart feels and you are angry that it wasn't prevented because you wish it didn't happen.

'But just stop and think for a second, your whole world has just come crushing down. You lost your reason to live... the last thing you need is people telling you, you shouldn't be alive.'

'But just stop and think for a second, your whole world has just come crushing down. You lost your reason to live... the last thing you need is people telling you, you shouldn't be alive,' she said

Ms Mazza concluded her post by urging parents to hug their babies a little tighter and love them a little harder.

'Be a little kinder to those who need it... anger will never get us anywhere. Just stop and think about it for a second before you write something from a place of fear and anger that will only be read as hatred,' she wrote.

'Because as f****d up as it is, sometimes bad things do happen to good people. And only love can heal us from there.

'Save the anger for the real bad guys.'

More information about why hot cars present a risk to young children and the best action to take can be found at KidSafe NSW.
By this stage of the festive season, you might be starting to look at the remnants of your turkey, Christmas pudding or Camembert with an element of defeat.

But you needn't contemplate throwing out everything just yet - with a few tips and tricks you can still put some of your leftovers to good use.

From what to keep, what to ditch and which Christmas leftovers you can re-invent, leading food author, Lee Holmes, shares the ultimate festive leftovers guide.

Using up: With the help of leading food author, Lee Holmes (pictured), FEMAIL shares the ultimate Christmas leftovers guide - discussing what you need to keep, ditch and re-invent

THE STORAGE ISSUE

According to the experts, the key to leftover etiquette is a good storage plan.

Key: Ms Holmes says the most important thing is to store your items well in containers

'Wrapping up your food, and putting it in Tupperware or a freezer bag is absolutely key,' Lee Holmes told Daily Mail Australia.

'If you've already put your turkey or ham in the freezer, it will be fine for several months. But if you haven't, you need to eat the rest of it tonight [29 December].'

By putting your festive leftovers into clear airtight plastic containers or pieces of Tupperware, you can make them last longer.

Labels are also a good idea, so you're not constantly wondering what's in a container and when you first made it.

'When you come to de-frosting something, make sure you re-heat it fully and don't re-freeze anything after de-frosting it once,' Ms Holmes said.

Anyone for the remainder of your frozen ham in March?

What's cooking: 'If you've already put your turkey or ham in the freezer, it will be fine for a few months. But if you haven't, you need to eat it tonight [29 December],' Ms Holmes said

Tasty: 'You can also use up any leftover ham this evening in a quiche, frittata or pasta dish,' Ms Holmes said

What to use up: Sadly, not everything is created equal in the kitchen - and it is time to ditch or use up some of your Christmas Day remains - you should certainly have got rid of seafood now

TIPS FOR LEFTOVERS * If you're freezing something, freeze it in airtight plastic containers or freezer bags which are labelled. * Freeze things in portion sizes so you don't de-frost too much at once. * Turkey or ham will be fine to use if it's been in the fridge for four or five days, provided it was refrigerated within hours of being eaten. * Get creative with your leftovers - turn Christmas cake into trifle, put leftover nuts inside granola bars and make French toast with pannettone. * You can freeze cheese for five or six months if you want to. * Cranberry sauce can last for as long as ten days after Christmas. Advertisement

WHAT TO DITCH OR USE UP

Sadly, not everything is created equal in the kitchen - and it is time to ditch or use up some of your Christmas Day remains.

'You should certainly have got rid of any prawns or seafood by now,' Ms Holmes said.

'With things like turkey and ham, it all depends when you put them in the fridge. If you put them into the fridge within two hours of eating them, you could eat them tonight. If not, it's probably time to say goodbye.'

Ms Holmes recommends stirring in any leftover Brussels sprouts into a stir fry, or cooking a turkey minestrone or turkey tacos this December 29.

'You can also use up any leftover ham this evening in a quiche, frittata or pasta dish,' she said.

Top tip: You can freeze cheese (pictured) for five or six months if you think you're not going to eat it immediately - it also keeps in the fridge for three or four weeks

WHAT TO KEEP

Keeping foods for a bit longer after the Christmas period is possible, provided they are stored, de-frosted, refrigerated and recycled properly.

'There's still plenty in your fridge you can eat for a while,' Ms Holmes said.

With the weekend and the New Year coming up, you can make a really nice French toast with any leftover pannettone

Cranberry sauce will last for at least another 10 days, and makes a good tart replacement for jam for those who love peanut butter and jam on toast.

'You can also enjoy your cheese for another three or four weeks, or even freeze it if you want to keep it for five or six months,' Ms Holmes said.

'With the weekend and New Year coming up, you can make a really nice French toast with any leftover pannettone.

'If you had pork at Christmas, you've also possibly got a few more days (between five and seven) to eat it all up yet.'

How to: Keeping foods for a bit longer after the Christmas period is possible, provided they are stored recycled properly; Ms Holmes makes a granola bar (right) with leftover nuts

Boozy and delicious: You can also soften some vanilla ice cream and run your Christmas pudding through it, before freezing it again and enjoying a Christmassy twist at a later date

UNUSUAL RECIPES TO TRY

From weekend pancakes made with Stilton cheese to frittatas cooked with smoked salmon and Ottolenghi-inspired cranberry sauce cous cous salads, the Internet is awash with creative meals to try with leftovers.

But Lee Holmes is a bit of a domestic goddess when it comes to supercharged recipes.

'I made supercharged breakfast bars with leftover nuts the other day,' she said.

'I've been turning my Christmas cake into a trifle for the kids, with the addition of some yoghurt, Christmas cake and berries

'They're such an easy way to use up leftovers and entertain a crowd.'

You can also soften some vanilla ice cream and run your Christmas pudding through it, before freezing it again and enjoying a festive twist at a later date.

'I've been turning my Christmas cake into a trifle for the kids, with the addition of some yoghurt, Christmas cake and berries,' Ms Holmes said.

For the truly inventive, Ms Holmes said you can combine your Christmas cake with some charred peaches from the oven and serve as a decadent pudding.

'I also used up a whole host of berries the other day when our blender broke by putting them inside ice cubes for the kids' drinks,' Ms Holmes said.

Lee Holmes has several books, as well as an e-Book about renewable food, called The Renewable Table. To find out more about it, click here. You can also visit her website here.
At just 19 years old, Simone Biles four Olympic gold medals, international fame, and millions of dollars in endorsement deals  so it's no surprise some people are a bit jealous.

Unfortunately, some of her jealous trolls like to take their feelings out on her, posting nasty messages on her Instagram pictures and sending mean tweets.

Though Simone mostly ignores the haters, this week she hit back on Twitter, sharing a positive message about body acceptance and confidence.

Having fun: Simone Biles is on vacation in Belize and has been posting pictures of herself

Take that! She took to Twitter to fire back at a troll who criticized he

The message seems to have been inspired by a hateful comment left on a photo she posted from her vacation in Belize.

Simone has been sharing snaps of herself enjoying the sun and water, and on Tuesday uploaded a picture of herself posing in a white one-piece suit and cut-off shorts.

Though many fans rushed to compliment her, one was just plain nasty, writing: 'Ur so ugly Simone biles even I look better than u.'

The 19-year-old has met plenty of body-shamers and nasty trolls on the internet

You tell 'em! She doesn't seem to be letting them get in the way of her vacation, and she shared a body-positive message

Fans have chimed in to support her and tell her how awesome she really is

Supporters rushed to her defense, but Simone seemed to be sick and tired of being criticize and body-shamed, something she has faced a lot of since rising to fame this summer. Pushed to say something, she wrote to her fans on Twitter.

'You all can judge my body all you want, but at the end of the day it's MY body. I love it & I'm comfortable in my skin,' she said.

The tweet's now been favorited 24,000 times, and fans have tweeted back at her with words of support.

'People sending hate about your body is literally the most ridiculous thing EVER! Brb eye rolling forever,' wrote one.

Most have told her to ignore the haters, who are mostly just jealous of her success

Simone won four gold medals at the Olympics this summer and has millions in endorsement deals

'And that body got you four gold medals. I don't think anyone has any room to hate. You do you Simone,' wrote another.

Over on Instagram, though, followers were still going after the original hater who posted a mean comment. The young woman seemed to cave to the pressure, eventually apologizing and admitting she didn't mean it.

'Look, I know what I did wasn't right,' she commented later.' Clearly I was jealous of her, I mean can u blame me she is beautiful. I wish my life was like hers.'

Gabby Douglas, also of Team USA, has faced critics online too

Of course, Simone's teammate, Gabby Douglas, has also face body-shamers and social media trolls.

In November, the 20-year-old declared her Instagram account a #HateFreeZone, writing: 'OKK this needs to be addressed, I'm fed up and shutting this down. The people that want to be petty EXIT STAGE LEFT PLEASE.
Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier

Those who habitually put items in their recycling bins that don't belong there are the target of the ordinance amendment, not those who make an occasional, accidental mistake, said Public Works Director Jeff Demers.
Prince Laurent of Belgium and his wife Princess Claire were pictured visiting his mother, Her Majesty Queen Paola of Belgium, in hospital this evening.

The couple brought their three children, Prince Aymeric, 11, Prince Nicolas, 11, and 12-year-old Princess Louise, along with them, so they could visit their grandmother.

Queen Paola, 79, was hospitalised at Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc hospital in Brussels yesterday after suffering a vertebral fracture caused by a fall.

Belgian royals visit Queen Paola at Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc hospital, Brussels

The Belgian Royal Court announced her injury and hospital admission yesterday, adding that while the fracture did not cause any neurological complications, her recovery would probably take several months.

It is a much more revealing statement than those released on previous occasions.

In 2015, Queen Paola was admitted to hospital after a holiday to Italy. It was announced that she had to cancel a planned visit to the Biennale in Venice, but further information was kept private.

Some newspapers believed that the queen suffered from a stroke at the time, but this was not confirmed.

Queen Paola was hospitalised at Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc hospital in Brussels yesterday after suffering a vertebral fracture caused by a fall

Prince Laurent, 53, Princess Claire, 42, and their children looked composed on their way to the hospital, wrapped up warm to face the chilly sub-freezing temperatures.

Princess Claire and the children were dressed in navy jackets and jeans, while Prince Laurent opted for brown trousers and a black coat.

Prince Aymeric, Prince Nicolas and Princess Louise with mother Princess Claire of Belgium

Queen Paola married the then Prince of Liege (also the former King Albert II) on 2 July 1959 at the St. Goedele Cathedral in Brussels.

She was Queen of the Belgians from 1993 until her husband's abdication in 2013 in favour of their eldest child Philippe.

The couple has three children, Philippe (the current King of the Belgians), Astrid and Laurent.

Prince Laurent, Princess Claire and their children looked serious but composed
Choosing what to eat when you go out for a meal can be a difficult decision, particularly if the restaurant has an extensive menu.

But now the choice may be a little easier next time you dine out after customers and people claiming to be restaurant workers revealed the items you should never order.

And many of them are everyday dishes that appear on most restaurant menus.

Customers and people claiming to be restaurant workers have revealed the items you should never order off a menu

More than 15,000 people have viewed responses in answer to the question: 'Are there any meals that should always be avoided on a restaurant menu?' on question-and-answer website Quora.

More than two dozen people claiming to be chefs, waiters or culinary experts have waded in to share what they would never order from a restaurant.

SEAFOOD FAR FROM THE COAST

Steve Lazarus, Sean Quinn and Alex Quinn agree that you shouldn't order seafood if you're far away from the coast or not at a specialist restaurant

Steve Lazarus commented: 'Personally if I'm more than 30kms from the coast I'll avoid ordering seafood.'

Sean Quinn, who claims to be a trained chef, agreed and said: 'I also tend to avoid seafood unless Im at a place known for seafood or is a higher end place where I know theyve sourced good fresh seafood.'

It was an opinion also shared by Alex Quinn, who claims to have 12 years of restaurant experience, who wrote: 'Dont get too smart with your order. Dont order seafood in the desert.'

FOOD THAT ISN'T IN THE NAME OF A SPECIALIST RESTAURANT

Leonard Haid advises diners to avoid non-Chinese food if dining at a Chinese restaurant

Many people agreed that if a restaurant is well known for something - for example, if it's a Chinese restaurant, a pizzeria or a steakhouse - you should stick to what those eateries do best.

William Smith, who claims to be a policeman, says his rule of thumb is to stick with what a restaurant does best.

'For example, when you go to a steak house You get STEAK. When you go to a place called Malibu Fish Market You get FISH. When you go to a Trattoria or Osteria or Ristorante You get ITALIAN. When you go to a sushi place You get SUSHI.'

Leonard Haid agreed and commented: 'If youre at a Chinese restaurant, avoid the non-Chinese food. Sometimes "ethnic" restaurants put food of their adopted country on the menu, and its best to avoid that.'

Kevin Doiron added: 'Generally, if the restaurant has something on their menu that doesnt fit their self-professed specialties, dont order it. For example, if you go to "Bobs Steak and Seafood House", dont order the chicken or the pasta.'

THE 'SPECIAL'

Janera Soloven advised diners not to order the 'special' as it can be old food that the chefs are trying to use up

Janera Soloven, who claims to be a trained chef, wrote: 'One of my chef instructors in culinary school advised that you should NEVER order the "special." He said that as a rule the special is whatever old food they want to get rid of.

'On the other hand, he said that the "feature" on the menu is usually a good choice, and includes seasonal specialties.'

Tim Gordon agreed and said that you should only try limited edition specials a few days after first being introduced as the chefs may still be perfecting the dish or making adjustments.

CHICKEN

Eric Sustad advised against ordering chicken as it's usually 'the most boring item on the menu'

Eric Sustad, who said he spent 12 years waiting tables, commented: 'Chicken breast is usually the most boring item on the menu, included for indecisive people who are hungry but dont like the taste of food.'

Kristin Leitner agreed and said: 'Every restaurant I've ever ordered grilled chicken at has disappointed me.'

FISH ON A SUNDAY

Joran Karlsen warned that if you order fish on a Sunday, 'it won't be fresh'

Joran Karlsen, who claims he studied 'culinary arts,' says that if a restaurant has a good reputation, then you should be able to order anything and it will taste good.

But he did warn that if you order fish on a Sunday, 'it won't be fresh'.

In the past, celebrity chef Amthony Bourdain has said he will never eat fish on a Sunday or Monday as restaurant tend to buy in their supply of fish for the weekend on a Thursday or Friday.

ANCHOVIES

Tim Gordon advised readers not to order anchovies as it makes the kitchen behind the scenes smell of 'cat food'

Tim Gordon advised readers to take his warning 'with a pinch of salt' but said that anchovies should never be ordered at a restaurant.

The reason? It makes the kitchen stink for the poor chefs behind the scenes, apparently.

'I used to make pizza for a living,' he wrote. 'Maybe once a week or so, someone would order anchovies on their pizza. Wed open a can, use what was appropriate, then triple wrap the can in plastic and pitch it. Then wed sterilize absolutely everything involved in making that pizza except the oven itself.

'Inevitably, someone would walk in within a few minutes and declare loudly, "It smells like CAT FOOD in here!"'

FISH AND CHIPS

David Claydon advised against ordering fish and chips unless at a specialist restaurant

Unless at a specialist fish and chip restaurant, David Claydon advises not to order the fish and chips when dining out.
Pacemakers are easy targets for hackers, the US government has warned in a new cybersecurity briefing.

The small devices have been saving lives for decades, and have now been developed to send information about a patient's heart to their doctor.

The latest models can even be fixed remotely if something goes wrong.

But the U.S. government on Tuesday issued rules for addressing cyber vulnerabilities in these life-saving medical devices as well as, insulin pumps and imaging systems.

'Cybersecurity threats are real, ever-present and continuously changing,' Suzanne Schwartz, a senior Food and Drug Administration official who helped draft the new rules, said in a blog post.

Pacemakers are easy targets for hackers, US officials have warned in a cybersecurity briefing

'And as hackers become more sophisticated, these cybersecurity risks will evolve.'

US officials have been investigating flaws in pacemakers since August when a batch ran out of battery three months before they were supposed to, leading to at least two deaths.

The medical devices, made by St Jude Medical, had a rare defect that caused them to fail much earlier than expected.

After five months of investigation - with more to go - the FDA has released 30 pages of guidance about the devices' security flaws.

The allegations, which surfaced in August, underscore the need for clear government rules on identifying and mitigating the impact of security vulnerabilities in medical equipment.

The FDA has been grappling with such issues for several years in response to a surge in research on potentially life-threatening security bugs in medical devices from so-called 'white hat' hackers looking to identify flaws before they are exploited to harm patients.

The agency in 2014 issued guidance on how manufacturers should address cyber security when developing new products, though the rules did not cover equipment that was already on the market.

In 2015 the FDA advised hospitals to halt use of one of Hospira Inc's infusion pumps, saying a security vulnerability could allow cyber attackers to take remote control of the system.

The new guidelines detail how manufacturers should identify and fix cyber vulnerabilities in products that are already on the market.

The rules encourage medical device makers to establish programs to make it easy for security researchers to report new bugs.
Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard (pictured) warned of delays at GP surgeries that could be 'life-threatening' for some patients

Patients will have to wait four weeks to see their family doctor this winter, the chairman of the Royal College of GPs has warned.

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard said the delays could be 'life-threatening' for patients with possible symptoms of cancer and other illnesses.

She said GP surgeries were already 'skating on thin ice' and pressures will intensify in the coming weeks as more patients fall ill with flu and chest infections.

Professor Stokes-Lampard predicted that doctors would be so busy trying to 'firefight' the urgent cases that those with long-standing complaints could be pushed back. This could include women with a breast lump who 'may be becoming urgent' if made to wait four weeks.

The GPs' leader, who works part-time in a medical centre in Lichfield, Staffordshire, said she was 'profoundly concerned' at the effects of the pressure on surgeries for patients.

'If you've suddenly developed a lump or you've got a funny pain, you know it's not desperately urgent to see your GP today but you'd like to see a GP within a few days,' she said. 'You'd certainly like to see them within a week to ten days because you're worried.

'By the time three to four weeks has passed, the non-urgent stuff may be becoming urgent.

'With lumps or bleeding problems or things that could be signs of serious disease, my profound concern is that people will delay seeking help for things that could be life-threatening if not tackled swiftly. Extended waiting times pose a serious risk because of all those unintended consequences.

'We have a service already stretched desperately thin that doesn't have the numbers or the scale for any resilience.

'What you're left with is goodwill and professionalism being all that's left holding it together.'

Professor Stokes-Lampard said the solution was to increase the amount spent on GP services.

These receive 8 per cent of the annual NHS budget, about 9.4 billion a year, which she wants to rise to 11 per cent. Without more funding and doctors, she fears surgeries will have to slash preventative care for diabetic and heart patients.

The professor said this has helped to save thousands of lives in the last 20 to 30 years.

GP surgeries are under huge pressure from migration and the aging population, with patients becoming ill more often.

There is also a recruitment crisis with more doctors retiring early but not enough trainees coming in.

Professor Stokes-Lampard predicted that doctors would be so busy trying to 'firefight' the urgent cases that those with long-standing complaints could be pushed back. Stock image

NHS bosses this year announced a five-year plan to ease the strain, including a 2.4billion cash injection and plans for pharmacists to treat some patients.

But leading GPs said this did not go far enough particularly as they are under pressure to provide appointments seven days a week.

MP Julie Cooper, Shadow Heath Minister, said: 'There is a full-scale crisis in the NHS at every level. The truth is that they are overwhelmed by ever-increasing demand.

'Add a chronic shortage of GPs and a crisis in recruitment and the result is a service at breaking point. If the Government really cares about the NHS and patient safety, they must listen to the words of the medical professionals because when it comes to patient health and well-being, they are the experts and ministers ignore their advice at our peril.'

An NHS England spokesman said: 'Of course over the Christmas and New Year period the top priority has to be medical emergencies.
Breast implants are being given barcodes to see if it could 'revolutionise' patient safety.

Using the technology made famous in retail stores, the Department of Health hope to record replacement hips, surgical tools and medication.

Hospital staff will be able to scan each product used alongside the patient's identity wristband - also fitted with a code - to match them together.

It is hoped the system will prevent any scandals like the PIP breast implant scare of 2010 - where more than 50,000 women in the UK were fitted with faulty ones.

Using the technology made famous in retail stores, the NHS hope to record every surgical item in an attempt to save lives by avoiding human errors

As part of the Government's 12 million project Scan4Safety, each code can be scanned to show exactly which member of staff administered each treatment, at what time and where.

Early results from six pilot NHS hospitals, Derby, Leeds, Salisbury, Cornwall, North Tees and Plymouth, suggest the scheme has the potential to save lives.

While it is also hoped to save the health service up to 1 billion over the next seven years if it's rolled out thoroughly.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: 'This is a world first in healthcare  and a vital part of this governments drive to make the NHS the safest and most transparent healthcare system in the world.

'Using simple barcodes that major industries rely on every day will help to transform standards of care  before, during and after patients have treatment, at the same time as freeing up resources for care by reducing waste.'

The scheme removes human inventory errors, and registers 'use-by' dates on medicines and equipment.

Hospital staff will be able to scan each product used alongside the patient's identity wristband - also fitted with a code - to match them together

This allows for stock to be managed easily, giving patients the most appropriate medicines.

Scan4Safety can also be used to see how effective different equipment is, for example, if one type of hip replacement wears out more easily than another, improving patient outcomes and streamlining the health system.

Tim Wells, a consultant cardiologist at Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, said: 'The recent implementation of the Scan4Safety project in cardiology provides us for the very first time complete traceability of products such as implantable medical devices used with our patients.

'Knowledge is power - not only does this provide us with a level of data and insight that can be used to better challenge clinical practice and variation, helping us to reduce inefficiencies and improve patient experience and outcomes - more importantly it ultimately helps to safeguard our patients from avoidable harm.
The Angelina Jolie effect is having an effect on the number of women needlessly getting both of their breasts removed, experts say. She had a double mastectomy in May 2013

The number of breast cancer patients needlessly having both breasts removed because of Angelina Jolie is 'alarmingly high', scientists claim.

A double mastectomy - like that underwent by the Hollywood actress in May 2013 - protects those at risk of developing cancer through genetic mutations.

And thousands of cancer patients undergo a contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) each year in the hope it will halt the spread of cancer.

This procedure sees both the diseased and healthy breasts removed. However, there is no evidence that it improves survival rates.

University of Michigan experts say the surgery may not always be necessary as most patients are very unlikely to have the disease in their unaffected breast.

They found one-in-five without genetic risk factors opt for the procedure if their surgeon fails to advise against it - which is the case in most instances.

The procedure, which is believed to prevent cancer from returning, has previously been linked to major complications - including depression.

Breast cancer specialist Dr Reshma Jagsi, from the university, said celebrity exposure and recently publicity have drawn attention to the 'controversial' surgery.

Rates of the procedure are increasing - even among patients without a high genetic risk.

These women would otherwise be candidates for breast-conserving therapy.

But uptake is small when surgeons recommend women not to have it, according to the study published online in JAMA Surgery.

The researchers also found knowledge about the procedure was low - and discussions with surgeons appeared to be incomplete.

Thousands of cancer patients have both their diseased and healthy breasts removed each year in the hope it will halt the spread of cancer. But there is no evidence it improves survival rates

In their study, they questioned 2,402 patients who underwent recent treatment for breast cancer.

They were evaluated on their motivations, knowledge, decisions and the impact of surgeon recommendations.

When patients do not perceive a surgeon's recommendation against it, even patients without a high genetic risk for a second primary breast cancer choose CPM at an alarmingly high rate Study author Dr Reshma Jagsi, from the University of Michigan

Overall, nearly half of patients considered CPM but 38 per cent of these knew it did not improve their survival chances.

However, 17 per cent underwent the double mastectomy.

Of the 1,569 patients who didn't have a high genetic risk of breast cancer, only 39 per cent reported their surgeon recommending against it.

But among the others who received no guidance - 19 per cent underwent the procedure.

Dr Jagsi added: 'When patients do not perceive a surgeon's recommendation against it, even patients without a high genetic risk for a second primary breast cancer choose CPM at an alarmingly high rate - nearly one in five.

'However, CPM rates are very low among patients who report a surgeon's recommendation against it.

'Our findings should motivate surgeons to broach these difficult conversations with their patients.'

WHAT IS BRCA1? A fault in certain genes can increase the risk of breast cancer. Genes called BRCA1, BRCA2, TP53, PALB2 or PTEN are the main ones linked to a high risk of breast cancer. Everyone has these genes. If there's a fault in one of them, the risk of breast cancer is higher. Faulty BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes also increase the risk of ovarian cancer. A blood test can identify whether you have a fault in one of these high-risk genes. Having a fault in one of the high-risk breast cancer genes raises the risk of developing breast cancer to between 40 per cent and 85 per cent. Source: NHS Choices Advertisement

'These findings should also motivate efforts to inform and support surgeons in this challenging communication context, understand surgeons' perspectives more fully, and design physician-facing interventions to reduce excessive treatment.'

Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy after discovering she had a higher genetic risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer.

The A-lister was told she had an 87 per cent risk of developing breast cancer due to a defective BRCA1 gene and her family history.

Her mother, maternal grandmother and aunt all died from breast or ovarian cancer in their late 40s or in their 50s. The actress later also had her ovaries removed.

Other stars who have undergone it include X-Factor judge Sharon Osbourne and Oscar-winning actress Kathy Bates.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women with more than 50,000 being diagnosed in the UK each year.

Many women opt for the surgery not only for peace of mind, but because they feel they would look out of balance with one breast.
Legal marijuana has given rise to a bizarre syndrome that makes heavy cannabis users violently ill, US doctors warn.

Cannabinoid hypermesis syndrome triggers stomach pain and nausea. For unknown reasons, the debilitating symptoms can only be alleviated by hot baths.

Last year, a study found rates of CHS rocketed across the US between 2009 and 2015.

Now the lead authors have issued a fresh warning about the little-discussed illness since even more states have legalized the drug, making it available to patients in more than half the country.

'It is certainly something that, before legalization, we almost never saw,' Dr Kennon Heard, lead author of the study at the University of Denver, said.

'Now we are seeing it quite frequently.'

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Cannabinoid hypermesis syndrome, which causes heavy users of the drug to suffer stomach pain, nausea and vomiting, is on the rise, a doctor from Colorado warns. Lance Crowder, from Indiana (pictured), has spoken out about contracting CHS

A key issue, he warns, is that many doctors are not trained to recognize the symptoms since it was so infrequent.

It means medics often misdiagnose the illness, causing patients to return multiple times to the emergency room.

But now, with the growing number of cases, Dr Heard warns this ignorance will start to drain medical coffers.

'[Patients will] often present to the emergency department three, four, five different times before we can sort this out,' Dr Heard told CBS.

CHS was first reported in medical literature in 10 patients in Adelaide, Australia in 2004.

Recognition of the condition is increasing and doctors are now recognizing the condition in patients regularly visiting hospital with severe nausea.

One man, Lance Crowder from Indiana - where weed is not legal, said he was suffering abdominal pains and vomiting for more than two years.

Eventually a doctor asked him if he took hot baths to relieve his pain.

'When he asked me that question, I basically fell into tears because I knew he had an answer,' Crowder told CBS.

His case was hardly the first this doctor in Indianapolis had encountered.

Cannabinoid hypermesis syndrome triggers stomach pain and nausea. For unknown reasons, the debilitating symptoms can only be alleviated by hot baths (stock image)

WHAT IS CANNABINOID HYPERMESIS SYNDROME? Cannabinoid hypermesis syndrome is characterized by heavy use of the drug, triggering nausea and vomiting as well as frequent hot baths or showers. Despite studies promoting the use of marijuana's anti-emetic (anti-sickness) qualities, there is increasing evidence of its negative affect on the gastrointestinal tract, triggering CHS. Sufferers have reported frequent hot bathing helps to provide temporary relief from the nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain typical of the illness. Advertisement

In one case reported in the Journal of American Family Medicine a man 'spent three days in a hot shower while awake' to alleviate his symptoms.

His case was not the most extreme however, as researchers reported that one sufferer reported spending '300 out of 365 days' in the bath.

The findings that cannabis can cause severe nausea runs counter to a widespread view that the drug has a powerful anti-nausea effect.

Doctors in Colorado  one of the first states where cannabis was legalized medically and recreationally  suspected that some of the cases of extreme nausea they had been seeing may have been caused by chronic cannabis use.

They reviewed admission data to hospitals and found an acute rise in the condition since marijuana became legalized and widely available for medical use.

The research, in Academic Emergency Medicine, compared the numbers of people suffering from the condition from November 1, 2008 to October 31, 2009, after which cannabis use became liberalized in the state and between June 1, 2010 to May 31, 2011.

CHS was first reported in medical literature in 10 patients in Adelaide, Australia in 2004. Recognition of the condition is increasing and doctors are now recognizing the condition in patients regularly visiting hospital with severe nausea

They found 41 cases of suspected CHS  where patients had been admitted three or more times for nausea - before legalisation rose to 87 cases after legalisation at two hospitals, Denver Health and the University of Colorado.

The sufferers were predominantly female (71 per cent) and white (72 per cent) with an average age of 31, the authors note.

The authors, led by Dr Kim Howard, wrote they think that the most likely explanation for the marijuana use contributed to an increased rate of cyclic vomiting presentations.

Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit substance in the United States, the authors note, with 18.9 million users in 2012.

But they add: 'Unfortunately, there is little information on the deleterious effects of chronic use and its implications for public health.
Good relationships are the best medicine to improve a patients' health, a study has confirmed.

But experts warn too many doctors casually ignore the social factor as a non-medical concern.

Now, in an acclaimed new report, five doctors at the University of Pennsylvania have proposed a new method for incorporating friends and family into doctors' advice.

'Spouses and friends are more likely to be around patients when they are making decisions that affect their health - like taking a walk versus watching TV, or what to order at a restaurant,' co-author Dr David Asch, of Penn Medicine, explains in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Good relationships are the best medicine to improve a patients' health

'Patients are also more likely to adopt healthy behaviors - like going to the gym - when they can go with a friend.'

'Though people are more heavily influenced by those around them every day than they are by doctors and nurses they interact with only occasionally, these cost-free interactions remain largely untapped when engineering social incentives for health.

'That's a missed opportunity.'

He warns that, since doctors do not have the time or funds to offer personal support round-the-clock to each patient, friends and family are crucial to keep patients on track.

'Concerns about privacy are often the reason doctors and hospitals avoid organizing social support,' Dr Asch says.

'But while privacy is very important to some patients under some circumstances, more often patients would love if their friends and family helped them manage their diabetes, and those friends and family want to help people get their health under control.'

The authors define a ladder with escalating rungs of social support.

It ranges from no social engagement, to a system that offers economic incentives for patients to cultivate good relationships.

At the bottom of the ladder you have the current norm: when a patient is expected to take medication as part of a routine, without anyone seeing them do it or holding them accountable.

In the fourth rung, where social incentives are designed with reciprocal support, the authors point to a study in which some patients with diabetes were asked to talk on the phone weekly with peers.

The authors of a new report have defined a ladder with escalating rungs of social support that doctors could incorporate into their advice. It ranges from nothing to economic incentives

Through this technique - known as reciprocal mentorship - they saw a significant decline in glycated hemoglobin levels.

Others in the study, who received more typical nurse-led management, did not see the same declines.

'Although we don't normally think of competition or collaboration among patients are part of managing chronic diseases like high blood pressure, heart failure, or diabetes, research shows that behavior is contagious,' said co-author Roy Rosin.

'Programs that take advantage of these naturally occurring relationships can be very effective.

'Most health care interventions are designed for the individual patient.

'But there's a growing body of research that shows how health care organizations can use social engagement strategy to enhance health for patients who want to be involved in group activities or team competitions aimed at improving health.'
Book of the week

Yours Always: Letters of Longing

edited by Eleanor Bass (Icon Books 9.99)

One day in the spring of 1911, Marie Curie received two telegrams. The first informed her she had won the Nobel prize for chemistry, for discovering radium and polonium.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (who married twice, first in 1964 and again in 1975) are one couple who seem equally matched in their love/hate relationship

The second informed her that the wife of her married lover had made their love letters public.

Physicist Pierre Curie  Maries husband and the father of their two daughters  had been killed instantly when he slipped and fell under a horse-drawn cart in 1906. She had retreated behind a wall of grief until kindling a romance with Pierres former student, Paul Langevin, in 1910.

Langevins wife, Jeanne, threatened to kill Marie and accosted her in the street before finally publishing the correspondence, which saw Curie vilified in the Press and condemned by many in the scientific community.

Though her behaviour wouldnt have generated half the scandal if she had been a man, the coldness with which the 43-year-old Curie instructs Langevin to brush off the mother of his children still makes uncomfortable reading more than a century later.

Dont let yourself be touched by a crisis of crying and tears, she wrote in the summer of 1910.

Think of the saying of the crocodile who cries because he has not eaten his prey; the tears of your wife are of this kind.

It is necessary that she understands that she can expect nothing from you.

Her letter of brisk dismissal is one of many tormented outpourings in this intense collection of love letters written to and from a terrific selection of great men and women.

Everyone from Henry VIIIs desire to kiss Anne Boleyns pretty dukkys (breasts), which would cause him to break with Rome, to the snippy words photo-grapher Andre de Dienes penned to his most famous subject, Marilyn Monroe, whom he addressed as his dear turkey foot.

Dividing her book into sections on Unrequited And Unequal Love and Conflicted And Condemned Love, editor Eleanor Bass reminds readers that while romance offers the heady experiences of emotional fulfilment, sexual delight and unprecedented joy, it also opens the door to despair.

Love letters have the power to arouse, enrage, comfort and wound.

Henry VIIIs desired to kiss Anne Boleyns pretty dukkys (breasts), which would cause him to break with Rome

They can be cherished, hidden, tossed aside or lie unread for centuries, like the one found on the mummified body of a 16th-century Korean man whose wife wrote: How could you go ahead of me? Please take me where you are.

Only occasionally do we find both lovers on the same page. But Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (who married twice, first in 1964 and again in 1975) are one couple who seem equally matched in their love/hate relationship.

The couples steamy romance began on the set of Cleopatra in 1963 (with director Joseph L. Mankiewicz asking Would you two mind if I say cut? after a screen kiss lingered) and maintained its fire through the years of rows, infidelity and separations.

After they parted in 1973, he wrote: I shall miss you with passion and wild regret. The next year she reminded him that though he made her angry and jealous, she still yearned for the pure animal pleasure she felt with him, signing her letter: Anyway I lust thee.

The earliest correspondence Bass includes is lines written in the 12th century between French scholar Peter Abelard and his student Heloise.

Though Heloise lived with her protective uncle Fulbert, Abelard told a friend that: We took all opportunities to express to each other our mutual affections . . . In the dead of night . . .we improved the time proper for the sweets of love.

When Heloise became pregnant, the couple married in secret, but while she took refuge in a convent, Fulbert sent a gang of men to castrate Abelard, who then became a monk and persuaded Heloise to become a nun.

Yours Always: Letters of Longing edited by Eleanor Bass (Icon Books 9.99)

They continued to write, with Heloise frank that she is more devoted to her lover than to God, while the more conflicted Abelard gushes that he still loves her and his passion grows more furious by impotence. Religious faith also caused complications in the romance between movie stars Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young, who met in 1933.

Tracy was separated from his wife, but as he and Young were Catholics, they wrestled with guilt over their affair. In 1934, she wrote to him, heartbroken, saying it would be impossible for us to see each other unless we can truthfully and honestly be a good boy and a good girl.

After they broke up, she went on to have a child with Clark Gable and he fell for Katharine Hepburn.

Other writers simply fell for the wrong people. Winston Churchills marriage proposals had been rejected by two women when he became infatuated by the glittering society beauty Muriel Wilson.

A letter he wrote her in 1904 sees him ping-pong between magnanimity and petulance as he calls her indifference to his love a scattering of treasure. In a series of unanswered love letters to her former French teacher, the young Charlotte Bronte complains of tormenting dreams in which I see you, always severe, always grave, always incensed against me.

Oscar Wilde writes from his cell to his lover, Bosie, Lord Alfred Douglas, after their liaison led to his imprisonment for gross indecency in 1895.

Do you really think that at any period in our friendship you were worthy of the love I showed you . . .? I knew you were not. But Love does not traffic in a marketplace nor use a hucksters scales.

Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive.

Though Wilde and Bosie lived together for a few months after his release from prison, their relationship crumbled. The pressures of public scandal also ended Marie Curies relationship with Paul Langevin.
The Map and the Clock edited by Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke (Faber 20)

The Map and the Clock

edited by Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke (Faber 20)

If you were to buy just one anthology this year, it should be this magnificent, fat volume  a grand sweep of poetry chosen by the poets laureate of England and Wales.

Duffy explains that she imagines a poetry treasure hunt using a map and a clock to travel, and time-travel, these islands.

Twelve sections, each representing a chunk of time, offer a rich feast of poems from Anglo-Saxon works to an urgent and moving plea from the heart of mixed-race identity by Zaffar Kunial that ends the collection.

This is a desert island book youd never tire of  and (at less than 3p per page) stupendous value.

The Forward Book of Poetry 2017 (Forward Worldwide 8.99)

The Forward Book of Poetry 2017

(Forward Worldwide 8.99)

Novelists jamborees get plenty of attention, but spare a loud cheer for the annual Forward prizes for poets, who surely have an equal claim to the spotlight.

For 25 years, this organisation has been supporting contemporary poetry with coveted awards for single poems and collections. Through Forward, I was introduced to the work of Colette Bryce and Denise Riley (to name but two) and for that Im forever grateful.

And thats the point of the yearly anthology: to shine a light on talent old and new and perhaps lead you along pathways you had never noticed.

The latest is as rich and various as ever  essential reading for the poetry lover. So, too, is William Siegharts collection, 100 Prized Poems  choosing the best from 25 years of the prize.

Undying: a Love Story by Michel Faber (Canongate 12.99)

Undying: a Love Story

by Michel Faber (Canongate 12.99)

The twin themes of love and loss have always provided a powerful inspiration for poetry. The darkest elegies can soar to the stars, transforming grief into luminous beauty.

Michel Fabers wife Eva died in 2014 after a six-year struggle with cancer, and out of that agony, and Fabers subsequent grief and attempts to rebuild his shattered life, comes this, the novelists first book of poetry.

He wishes he had never written it, yet the reader gives thanks that these tender, devastating poems exist  to prove that love is indeed stronger than death.

This is the most moving book Ive read this year, as full of courage as grace.

A Poem For Every Night of the Year edited by Allie Esiri (Macmillan 16.99)

A Poem For Every Night of the Year

edited by Allie Esiri (Macmillan 16.99)

Former actress Allie Esiri is a crusader for poetry, creator of a poetry app for children, iF Poems, and an editor and performer.

This useful anthology is aimed at children, but I cant think of anyone who wouldnt enjoy it.

The target audience ensures accessibility (no bad thing), as well as a satisfying blend of light and shade, while Esiris introduction is a model of economy and enthusiasm.

She offers poetry for the small things in life, for the everyday  and I cant think of anything more life-enhancing than opening this book each evening to sweeten the passage of time.

Gold From the Stone by Lemn Sissay (Canongate 12.99)

Gold From the Stone

by Lemn Sissay (Canongate 12.99)

Lemn Sissay is one of the most original, challenging poets writing in Britain today, and his extraordinary, heart-breaking, courageous life story is the stuff of legend.

He always wears a silver Ethiopian cross to remind him of who he is  and I recommend you find out, too. Better still, buy this book and read his frank, autobiographical introduction to a terrific selection of poetry, written between the age of 16 and 49.

The collection showcases his breadth, his passion, his anger and humanity. Poems such as Today Will Pass and Children And Company are full of light and hope  stronger than his undercurrent of hurt and fear. A prodigious talent.

The Remedies by Katharine Towers (Picador 9.99)

The Remedies

by Katharine Towers (Picador 9.99)

Its hard to pick out a single volume from the years crop of poetry books, but Ill sing the praises of Towerss second collection.

Each of these short poems shines with soft, lyrical grace; she writes about birds, flowers and objects in clear, generous language that reaches out towards the reader, embracing and never pushing away.

The beautiful poem Murmuration, about flocks of starlings, reminds us to be humble before the miracles of the natural world: None of this is about us.
MONTPELIER PARADE By Karl Geary (Harvill Secker 12.99)

MONTPELIER PARADE

By Karl Geary (Harvill Secker 12.99)

Theres little to situate this justifiably feted, Dublin-set debut in the Eighties beyond a nod to the price of wine and a film that, while coyly unidentified, is clearly Betty Blue.

Suffice to say that the latter turns out to be more significant than the former, though its spoiling nothing to note that the signs for Gearys star-crossed lovers never look good.

Sixteen-year-old Sonny is the child of an illiterate builder; Vera is beautiful, cultured, English and very much his senior in years. But from the start, Sonny is smitten and, wronged and rebellious as he (naturally) is, the more his life disintegrates, the deeper he falls.

In lesser hands, this would have made for hackneyed fare, but Geary  who has previously worked as an actor and scriptwriter  is a genuine talent.

The sense of intimacy created by the second-person narrative is brilliantly sustained and the dialogue throughout is pitch perfect, seeming almost audibly to slice the always pregnant, often suffocatingly toxic atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Sonnys refusal to dignify either of his troublemaking older brothers with names is a masterstroke, perfectly conveying their dull, sullen lumpishness.

HOMEGOING By Yaa Gyasi (Viking 12.99)

HOMEGOING

By Yaa Gyasi (Viking 12.99)

The term epic is often used to hint that a book could have done with a trim. Not here. In a mere 300 pages, Gyasi traces the descendants of two Ghanaian sisters down three centuries, devoting each chapter to a new generation and new character.

In the process, she follows the history and legacy of the slave trade in Ghana and America.

Whats so remarkable  and Homegoing is remarkable, as the authors reported $1 million advance might suggest  is that the writing at the end of the book is every bit as vital as that at the start. Ness, born on a Southern plantation in the 18th century, is just as convincing as Marcus, a grad student in 21st-century California.

Part of this is down to Gyasis way of dropping in stand-out details  a childs runny nose, a pregnant womans swollen feet  in a manner that seems casual, though, of course, is anything but.

The agility of her narrative, which jumps decades and continents yet never loses its thread, is also hugely impressive.

Without simplifying the complexity of her subject or softening its horrors, she has produced a contemporary classic  one youll actually want to read.

EVERYBODYS FOOL By Richard Russo (Allen & Unwin 14.99)

EVERYBODYS FOOL

By Richard Russo (Allen & Unwin 14.99)

This is a sequel to Russos 1993 novel Nobodys Fool and its a sign of his confidence as a storyteller that he wastes little time helping newcomers catch up.

Its also a sign of his gifts that its not an issue: the roguish, ragtag residents of North Bath, New York, still prove a diverting lot, even if youve not previously made their acquaintance.

We open at a graveside where Doug Raymer, Baths sorry excuse for a police chief, would be paying his respects to his late wife if he werent so preoccupied with the fact that she died just as she was about to ditch him.

Raymer has no clue as to his love rival, save a garage door remote control, which bugs him only slightly more than a sense that he has no idea who he, Raymer, is either.

These themes  of identity, mortality and human frailty (if not downright folly)  are duly pursued over the course of one weekend and nearly 500 pages.
The Heart of What Was Lost by Tad Williams (Hodder 16.99)

The Heart of What Was Lost

by Tad Williams (Hodder 16.99)

In this thrilling, pitch perfect, mini epic, Tad Williams lays the groundwork for a new story cycle in his old world of Osten Ard after a 20-year absence.

The Norns, mysterious northern elves with magical powers, have failed to drive the short-lived, fecund and brutish humans from their lands and are in full retreat to their mountain stronghold of Nakkiga.

The pursuing humans, led by warlord Isgrimnur, know they have momentum and fate on their side, but are wary of the Norns magical powers and face the onset of winter.

There are bloody battles, back stories and, most interestingly, sympathetic characters on both sides to give insight into the conflict and add fascinating layers of complexity to the story.

Fans of Tad Williams will delight in this new addition to his work  new readers could not have a better introduction.

Invisible Planets edited by Ken Liu (Head of Zeus 18.99)

Invisible Planets

edited by Ken Liu (Head of Zeus 18.99)

For many of us, China represents every shade of otherness: from cliches of exoticism through to alienating modernity.

How fascinating, then, to explore how China sees itself and its own future in this brilliant sci-fi collection. Blade Runner meets Inception in Folding Beijing, a story in which the city re-folds itself throughout the day to reveal the various strata of society, but the narrative is beautifully rooted in a humble refuse workers efforts to scrabble together cash for his daughters school fees.

In The Three-Body Problem, gods come down to Earth . . . but only in order to retire, they claim.

With other stories ranging over social control, world-building rats and redundant robots who have outlived the humans who made them, this is a collection that will stimulate and delight.

The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington (Orbit 16.99)

The Shadow of What Was Lost

by James Islington (Orbit 16.99)

This is a relentless juggernaut of a book with multiple sub-plots turning like cogs to push the monster forwards.

Three main characters  Davian, Wirr and Asha  start off as fellow students at an academy for the Gifted.

They are blessed, or cursed, with the ability to control Essence: blessed because they have special powers, cursed because this makes them objects of suspicion.

But trouble is brewing in the North as ancient enemies arise and the world is faced with a stark choice: can the Gifted be trusted to use their powers without throwing off their shackles?
Snubbing his son Akhilesh Yadav, SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav has declared candidates for 325 of the 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh and ruled out alliance with any party for the upcoming polls, putting to bed prospects of a Bihar-type grand coalition.

Chief Minister Akhilesh, away on a tour of Bundelkhand, was clearly upset with the announcement made by Mulayam, along with his brother and party's state unit chief Shivpal. At a hurriedly-convened press conference he said he will talk to his father regarding the choice of candidates.

In the list announced, Mulayam clearly ignored Akhilesh's objections to certain names, like Sigbatullah Ansari, brother of jailed gangster Mukhtar Ansari, and Atiq Ahmed who faces over 40 criminal cases including of murder.

SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav has declared candidates for 325 of the 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh and ruled out alliance with any party for the polls

The list, which includes 176 sitting MLAs, has no mention on names of several pro-Akhilesh ministers and MLAs including Ram Govind Chaudhary, Pawan Pandey and Arvind Sing Gope (all ministers).

'The list released on Wednesday does not include names of certain candidates, who are sure to win.

'I will take it up with the SP chief and tell him that some of them have done really good work and they should be given tickets,' Akhilesh told reporters in Bundelkhand.

Significantly, Mulayam also ruled out projecting Akhilesh as the Chief Ministerial candidate, saying, 'SP has no tradition of projecting anyone as its Chief Ministerial candidate.

Akhilesh Yadav launched his bid to retain power in Uttar Pradesh, one of India's poorest and most populous states, in one of the most spectacular buses South Asia has ever seen

Some parties do it, and in the process bite the dust. In SP, the legislators elect their leader.

To a question, the SP chief said, 'Akhilesh was free to contest from any seat he wanted.' Names of candidates for rest of the 78 seats would be announced soon, he said.

Akhilesh, who has been involved in a power-struggle with Shivpal, had earlier asserted that he should have a say in choosing of the candidates.

Mulayam also put an end to speculation of a tie-up between his party and Congress as part of forming a grand coalition on the pattern of last Assembly elections in Bihar.

Samajwadi Party is not forming an alliance with anyone, he asserted. Akhilesh had publicly made it clear that he was not averse to an alliance with Congress and that a such a tie-up would fetch over 300 seats.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, when asked on Tuesday by reporters about the possibility of tie-up with SP, had said, 'It is a strategic issue. I cannot say anything about it in a press conference. If you come to me personally, I can whisper in your ear.'

'We received 4200 applications and after a thorough survey and root level investigations by our agencies, the tickets have been finalised.

'The list has the name of 176 sitting MLAs and we have given tickets to only candidates who have the winning potential,' Mulayam said.

Yadav's big red bus cost $730,000, although the symbol for the SP party is a bike

In a surprise move, tickets have not been given to 53 sitting MLAs as according to Mulayam, their performance was not up to the mark and there were negative inputs from their constituencies.

What surprised the media was the absence of Akhilesh and the timing of the press conference. Generally, the chief minister is always present at the time of such announcements, but the programme was scheduled on a day when Akhilesh was in Bundelkhand.

Both Mulayam and Shivpal avoided replying to queries related to this. Amongst Shivpal's favorite are Om Prakash Singh and Shadab Fatima who were cabinet ministers and were recently sacked by Akhilesh.
Finance is getting a lot of stick at the moment, with banker bashing, the global damage caused by the financial crisis  and current scepticism about the expertise of economists and central bankers.

But here Will Goetzmann, professor at the Yale School of Management, argues that civilisation as we know it would not have been possible without finance.

He explains that the need to write down who owed what in trade arrangement precipitated literacy and numeracy millennia ago in Mesopotamia.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Influence: The presence of finance has been felt from Mesopotamia to the present day

It has acted throughout history as a time machine allowing people to move money forwards and backwards through time via borrowing and saving.

The first ATM system invented by the Knights Templar during the crusades helped people to have access to money when they needed it without having to carry it through precarious environments on their journeys.

On this latest episode of the Big Money Questions, Will also tells presenter Rachel Rickard Straus what we can learn today from the mortgage crisis in Rome in 33 AD, and one of the biggest bubbles ever seen, the South Sea Bubble in the 1720s.
Flood: Restaurant owner and City grandee Andy Stewart

City grandee and multi-millionaire Cenkos founder Andy Stewart, 65, has got his Barbadian restaurant Cin Cin up and running after it was flooded before Christmas.

The fashionable boite is popular on New Year's Eve.

City types in Barbados this week include Pizza Express founder Luke Johnson, and multi-millionaire property tycoons Nick Leslau and Nigel Wray.

One absentee: erstwhile habitue Sir Philip Green, whose recent travails have persuaded him to give the Caribbean idyll a tactical swerve.

Former business minister Baroness Vadera for HSBC chairman? The scandal-hit bank's senior director Rachel Lomax, who's tasked with finding outgoing Douglas Flint's successor, is said to be keen on a female candidate.

Ugandan-born Shriti, 54, currently chair of Santander UK, won't be afraid to crack skulls.

Ex-Chancellor Alistair Darling once complained: 'Shriti appears to believe that unless there is blood on the carpet, preferably that of her own colleagues, then she has not done her job.'

Former British Chambers of Commerce director general John Longworth, who resigned in March after making pro-Brexit comments in a speech, tells the BBC his speech prompted angry texts from a 'senior Downing Street policy wonk'.

Longworth, 58, describes such aggression as 'a normal part of business' during David Cameron's premiership.

Cameron later saw fit to garland the wonk in question, 93,000 a-year adviser Daniel Korski, 38, with a CBE.

Hedge fund mogul Bill Ackman is to divorce his wife of 25 years, attractive brunette Karen Ann.

With no pre-nup in, the silver-haired financier may be forced to hand over half his 1.3billion fortune.

Like most hedgies, Ackman has endured a rotten 2016. But he does enjoy cult status  as inspiration for old Etonian actor Damian Lewis's ruthless hedge funder Bobby Axelrod in delightfully hammy Wall Street drama, Billions.

Apropos divorces, glamorous City-based 'diva of divorce' Ayesha Vardag is now entering her busiest period.

Buxom Ayesha, 48, an ex-finance solicitor at Linklaters who now bills at the rate of 750 a hour, says 'office party indiscretions, aggravating in-laws and the financial pressures of the festive season' provokes swathes of new clients beating a path to her door.
There is a tendency to regard Japan as a benign owner of British assets. Unlike China it is not intent on shoplifting intellectual property and it is a stable Western-style democracy.

It also has been a good investor in the UK, from Nissan in Sunderland to Honda in Swindon.

So when SoftBank recently reached out to buy the pride of British technology, Arm, investors and the politicians almost bit off its arm.

The impact of Japanese ownership on our free press in the shape of Nikkei's takeover of the FT has yet to be seen. But it is much less City bible now and more the voice of Davos and transnational enterprise.

Crisis: As most of the UK has been on holiday, shares in electronics and power systems giant Toshiba have gone into freefall in Tokyo

We should remember that corporate Japan operates to very different accounting and governance standards to Britain.

Five years ago the British chief executive of Olympus, Michael Woodford, was cast out on his ear when he exposed a black hole in the optical champion's accounts.

As most of the UK has been on holiday, shares in electronics and power systems giant Toshiba have gone into freefall in Tokyo.

There are fears for its survival following a warning that it may have to book billions of dollars of provisions on some of the assets of its Westinghouse nuclear operations in the US.

The Toshiba crisis is not without relevance for Britain. Recent Tory-led governments hoped Japan would be an investor in a new fleet of power stations for Britain.

In readiness for that, two years ago Spanish utility Iberdrola, owner of Scottish Power, announced it was selling a 50 per cent stake in NuGen to Toshiba with the possibility of building 3.6 gigawatt nuclear power plant near Sellafield in Cumbria.

Toshiba has increased its stake to 60 per cent but how it intends to find the wherewithal to undertake such an enterprise, when a hole has opened up in its finances, it is hard to know.

Britain's future nuclear development suffered another nuclear setback in 2012 when German utilities RWE and E.ON decided that investing in UK nuclear, when the German government had ruled out any new nuclear in their own country, made no economic sense.

Toshiba shows the foolishness of relying on foreign owners, who put their domestic agenda first, ploughing money into Britain.

Away from infrastructure, in 2012 the Japanese advertising giant Dentsu spent 3.9billion buying quoted British media outfit Aegis and announced that the Dentsu Aegis Network would be handling the Japanese group's overseas operations.

This week it emerged an architect of that deal, chief executive Tadashi Ishii, will resign in January after it was revealed the group is to be prosecuted for breaking labour laws.

Charges relate to the death a year ago of a 24-year-old woman employee who committed suicide amid allegations that she had been subjected to harassment and overwork.

A change of leadership in Japan which involves the departure of the architect of the Aegis deal cannot but have some bearing on the priority given to international operations.

More importantly it demonstrates again a gulf in culture and governance practices between Japan and Britain.

When command and control of our infrastructure, technology and creative industries is passed to decision makers far away, we all suffer.

New horizons

Shell still has some way to go in completing the asset disposals it promised when it bought BG Group. It partly has been saved from embarrassment by the recovering oil price.

The Anglo-Dutch major may find life a little difficult in 2017 if US production steps up due to Donald Trump's climate change retreat.

As fascinating, is the change in mood at BP which, having spent the last five years selling off assets to pay for the Macondo disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, is now busy investing again.

In its latest deal BP (in which I have shares) has scooped up 527 petrol stations in Australia for 1bn, adding to a portfolio down under that includes 1,400 other retail outlets, a refinery and natural gas facilities.

Full marks to Bob Dudley for peeking over the horizon to better times.

Living better

An enduring legacy of George Osborne's period as Chancellor may well be the introduction of the National Living Wage.

At the time it was seen as a piece of gimmickry, likely to cause joblessness and opposed by pub owners, including Tim Martin of Wetherspoon, for the cost pressures it imposed.

New analysis by the Low Pay Commission shows that not only has the 7.20 per hour rate helped the least well-off but it has also benefited those in the next bracket.

Yes, it may have led to a rise in cost of haircuts, cleaning and menu prices. That seems a small bill for being a more decent society where those who supply us with services are properly rewarded.

And, by the way, the jobless rate in 2016 fell to an 11-year-low of 4.8 per cent.
City law firms have been put on alert after Chinese hackers made 3.2m by breaking in to confidential computer systems to get inside information about takeovers and merges.

Three men have been charged after they allegedly targeted email accounts of top law firms which were working on high-profile mergers and acquisitions.

They profited by buying stock in American firms about to be acquired, netting huge profits when shares lifted after the deals were announced.

Now senior prosecutors have warned of further attacks across the globe.

Three men have been charged after they targeted email accounts of top law firms which were working on high-profile mergers and acquisitions

Preet Bharara, US attorney for the southern district of New York, said: 'This case of cyber meets security fraud should serve as a wake-up call for law firms around the world: you are and will be targets for cyber hacking, because you have information valuable to would-be criminals.'

It is understood that the City watchdog Financial Conduct Authority is monitoring the situation.

It has appointed a specialist team to fight cybercrime and in 2014 received five reports of cybercrime. In 2015 it received 27 and more than 75 this year.

The threat from hackers is considered one of the growing risks in the City.

In March, efforts to compromise the security of computers were detected by clients of London law firm CMS.

Other firms have reported breaches of video conferencing systems.

And last year, a ring of alleged insider trading hackers was apprehended after they were accused of netting more than 70million in illegal profits.

The group was accused of stealing sensitive financial information from wire news services before it had been published.

The latest arrests all involve trading in the US, but come as a warning for the UK markets.

Many big financial institutions have top level security systems, but those of law firms involved with big corporate takeovers, are thought to be far weaker, making them easier targets.

The three Chinese hackers were charged in an indictment filed in Manhattan federal court with conspiracy, insider trading, wire fraud and computer intrusion.

From April 2014, the men obtained information by hacking two US law firms and targeting email accounts of partners working on mergers and acquisitions.

They accessed the accounts to find out about deals before they were announced publicly.

Two of them allegedly began buying shares of e-commerce company Borderfree so aggressively they accounted for at least 25 per cent of the company's daily trading volume ahead of the announcement it was being bought by Pitney Bowes in 2015.

The day after the deal was announced, shares in Borderfree jumped 105 per cent, and the duo made 685,000. Other deals they made money from involved drugmaker InterMune and chipmaker Intel.

Antonia Chion, of the US financial watchdog the Securities and Exchange Commission in New York, said the scheme involved numerous levels of deception.

The men stole confidential information and used it for substantial personal gain. 'This action marks the end of their alleged deception and serves as a stark reminder to companies and firms that your networks can be vulnerable targets,' said Chion.
As the FTSE 100 finished at a record high, a profit warning from Bovis Homes put the property sector front and centre on the first trading day after Christmas.

The housebuilder said it had been hit by a December slowdown and would build fewer homes than expected.

Around 180 completions are being deferred into next year so the overall number of completions for the year will now be lower than anticipated, at between 3,950 and 4,000.

But average sale prices for the year are expected to be around 10 per cent higher than the 231,600 recorded in 2015.

Pre-tax profit is expected to be relatively flat at between 160million and 170million  and is around 10 per cent lower than the 184million which analysts had forecast.

Santa rally: The FTSE 100 was up 0.5 per cent, or 37.91 points, at 7106.08. Early in the day the market passed 7100 for the first time since it set a record intra-day high on October 11

It was only last month that it boasted that demand for its houses was outstripping supply, building was ramping up and that it was business as usual post-Brexit.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said: 'This profit warning is the latest crack in the house builder sector wall. The key question for investors now is whether the earnings and dividend forecasts are reliable.

'If so, Bovis and the other housebuilders' share prices look cheap. But the builders have to prove that Brexit, rising Government bond yields and bubbly house prices are not going to puncture the market.'

Bovis will report its final results in February. Yesterday, shares tumbled 5.3 per cent, or 45p, to 811p.

That was enough to drag Land Securities down 2.9 per cent, or 31p, to 1039p and British Land by 2.9 per cent, or 18.5p, to 622.5p.

The Santa rally took the FTSE 100 up 0.54 per cent, or 37.91 points, to 7106.08. Early in the day the market passed 7100 for the first time since it set a record intra-day high on October 11.

STOCK WATCH - GRAPHENE NANOCHEM Graphene NanoChem rocketed after announcing a major new contract which will see the firm tap into the burgeoning market for shale gas development in China. The deal, worth around 295,000, will see NanoChem supply 4,000 barrels of its smart drilling fluid PlatDrill to service two wells. More than 300 wells a year are expected to be drilled for the next five years. Shares had only begun trading again last week after being suspended in the summer. Yesterday, they soared 20.3 per cent, or 1.88p, to 11.12p.

That day it peaked at 7128 before easing to 7073. Its highest closing point was on April 27, at 7103.98, but yesterday the market pipped that by 2.3 points.

It was the mining giants which led the way on the day as the copper price rallied and the oil price climbed 0.7 per cent, passing $56 a barrel. Fresnillo flew 5.2 per cent, or 58p, to 1170p while Randgold Resources rallied 4.9 per cent, or 285p, to 6120p.

Activist investor Toscafund upped its sizeable stake in HSS Hire Group. The hedge fund group added 8m shares to take its position in the firm to 43.4m shares and 24.5 per cent.

The activist has been trying to forge a merger between HSS and rival Speedy Hire for months. HSS shares fell 2.4 per cent, or 2p, to 81p.

Software outfit Intercede edged up despite revenues halving to 2.8million in the six months to September 30.

The firm, which specialises in identity and credential management, said operating expenses had climbed to 6.4million from 5.7million a year ago as it invests in its infrastructure, technology and sales capacity. Intercede made a loss of 2.8million in the first half, down from a 500,000 loss a year ago.

New contracts should contribute to full year revenues but are likely to be lower than last year's record sales of 11million, it warned.

Intercede said that in light of current trading the company is unlikely to generate enough cash to continue investing in the business at the rate it has been doing.

So it has raised 5million through the issue of convertible loan notes (a type of bond which can be converted into shares) which it plans to invest in the business. Shares advanced 0.9 per cent, or 0.5p, to 57.5p.

Fenner climbed as it announced plans to appoint a new non-executive director.

The engineering solutions firm had been in talks with shareholders including Teleios, which holds a 5.5 per cent position in the company, about the appointment.

Fenner said the move would bring stability and added expertise to the board. Teleios said it welcomed the decision.
Concerns: RBS investors want a shareholder committee

RBS DEMAND About 160 investors are demanding the Royal Bank of Scotland shores up corporate governance by creating a shareholder committee to sniff out 'poor stewardship' and avoid a rerun of the bank's near-collapse in 2008.

The move would prevent RBS from repeating the chain of events that triggered the lender's crash during the financial crisis, according to investor groups ShareSoc and the UK Shareholders' Association.

The bank was taken to the brink of collapse, forcing the Government to rescue it with a 45billion bailout.

MONTE FALLOUT Italian leaders have hit back after the European Central Bank warned the crisis at basket case lender Monte dei Paschi di Siena was worse than feared.

The ECB  run by Italian Mario Draghi  this week estimated that Monte dei Paschi had a capital shortfall of 7.5billion compared with the 4.25billion gap indicated by the lender.

But Italian economy minister Pier Carlo Padoan said the ECB's new capital target was the result of a 'very rigid stance'.

The Italian treasury is now set to pump in around 4.7billion to salvage the lender.

JOBS BOOST The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell last week, well below a level associated with jobs market strength.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 10,000 to 265,000, the latest government figures showed.

It was the 95th consecutive week that claims were below 300,000.

ZERO DRAWBACK Workers on zero-hours contracts earn 1,000 a year less than other employees doing the same job, a new study reveals.

The Resolution Foundation said that people on the controversial contracts, under which they don't know if they have work from one week to the next, face a 'precarious pay penalty'.

The difference is around 6.6 per cent, or 93p an hour, but those in the lowest paying jobs receive 9.5 per cent less, research by the think-tank found.

CHINA EXPANSION The Chinese government is planning to expand the country's high-speed rail network to a total of 18,600 miles by 2020 as part of public infrastructure spending programmes.

The network would connect more than 80 per cent of China's major cities, under plans to inject 411billion into railway construction by 2020.

BEER DEAL Micro-breweries are tapping into Co-op pledge to double the number of local suppliers.

The retail giant is adding 50 local breweries to its range so locally produced ales will be sold in stores across the country.
English sparkling wine has replaced Champagne as the official bubbly of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race in a major victory over the French.

Bottles of Chapel Down  which is based in Kent and supplied wine to the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge  will be handed over to the winning crew.

Bollinger has supplied Champagne to the event for the last four years, including in 2016.

The replacement of one of the world's most famous Champagne houses by an English rival at such a high profile sporting event will come as a boost to the burgeoning UK wine industry.

'We are thrilled to be partnering the boat race, an iconic moment in the British sporting calendar,' said Frazer Thompson, boss of Chapel Down.

David Searle, executive director of The Boat Race Company, said: 'It will be fantastic to see the iconic celebration moment after the races being feted with English wine.'

He said the deal with Chapel Down  which will first be served at the 163rd clash between Oxford and Cambridge in April  reflects 'our desire to evolve as a thoroughly modern British event'.
Losses at the luxury restaurant chain founded by celebrity designer Sir Terence Conran have widened following an abandoned stock market flotation.

D&D London, which owns the Bluebird and Michelin-starred Angler, took a 2.7million hit for professional fees and other costs after scrapping an IPO.

That drove the company, which owns and operates 35 high-end restaurants and a hotel, to record a loss of 4.8million for the year to March 31, up 77.8 per cent from 2.7million a year earlier.

Losses: The D&D London restaurants group, which owns the Bluebird and Michelin-starred Angler, was founded by celebrity designer Sir Terence Conran

However it posted a 3 per cent rise in turnover to 107.8million, up from 104.9million the year before, driven by a new German-inspired cafe in London.

Des Gunewardena, chief executive at D&D, said stock market volatility early last year sparked the decision not to go ahead with the stock market listing for the time being.

'We have enjoyed a very good Christmas, with sales growth so far in December in the high single digits compared to last year,' he added.
Crisis: Shares plunged at Toshiba for the third day running yesterday

Britain's nuclear power plans have been thrown into doubt as a financial crisis grips the company behind one of the country's biggest projects.

Japanese company Toshiba owns a 60 per cent stake in the planned 10billion NuGen nuclear power project in Moorside, Cumbria, which aims to supply power for about 6million homes from 2025.

But shares plunged at Toshiba for the third day running yesterday after it warned of a multi-billion dollar write-down involving its US nuclear subsidiary.

Forty per cent has been wiped off the company's value since it said on Monday that its US nuclear subsidiary Westinghouse Electric may have overpaid by several billions of dollars for another nuclear construction and services business.

Westinghouse UK is providing the reactors for the planned project in Cumbria, the rest of which is owned by French company Engie, and would be one of Europe's largest nuclear power plants.

Moody's investor service has downgraded Toshiba's ratings and warned the writedown could affect the company's ability to pay its debts, little over a year after its finances were seriously hit by an accounting scandal.

Justin Bowden, the GMB union's national secretary for energy, said: 'It needs to be established as soon as possible whether or not the collapsing Toshiba share price, in particular in relation to its Westinghouse operation, has any implications, and if so what these are for the extremely important Westinghouse project.'

Masako Kuwahara, a Moody's vice-president, said: 'The downgrade of Toshiba's ratings principally reflects Moody's deepening concerns over the sustainability of Toshiba's near-term liquidity, as well as the substantive and rapid erosion of its equity base.

'Although Toshiba is still assessing the exact amount of the impairment loss, its financial metrics will likely deteriorate further, potentially resulting in a negative equity position.'

Moody's added that if Toshiba breached its debt obligations, its ability to stay solvent would depend on banks' support.

'The availability of such support in such a situation, is currently uncertain,' Moody's added.

Links: Toshiba owns a 60% stake in the planned 10bn NuGen nuclear power project in Moorside, Cumbria

Bankers and analysts said the latest shock could force Toshiba to trim down its businesses.

'If the company wants to survive, it needs to go through a scrap-and-build process,' said Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.

Toshiba's problems come after NuGen said it was in talks with potential investors for the Cumbria site, with a final investment decision due in 2018.

It is potentially a blow to the Government after ministers had described 2016 as a 'year for the industry to look back on' following backing for a new plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset.

Then UK energy minister Lucy Neville-Rolfe said Hinkley Point would 'trigger this country's nuclear renaissance'. But the GMB's Bowden said: 'We are one step away from the lights going out.'

NuGen yesterday declined to comment and Toshiba could not be reached for comment.
The 2million kitchen we're gathered in, said to be the most expensive in Wales, is the height of tasteful contemporary design.

Exposed brickwork? Tick. Industrial-looking stainless steel pipework suspended from the ceiling? Tick. Snowy white worktops? Tick.

From this cook's heaven a procession of delicious dishes are being churned out by chef Neil Nugent, who trained at the three Michelin star restaurant Le Moulin de Mougins in Provence. They are served to diners perched on quilted leather chairs at a huge wood table.

It is perhaps slightly surprising then that this luxurious scene is being played out on a rainswept industrial estate in Deeside.

Mission: The Iceland boss wants to make so-called 'posh' grub, like lobster, accessible to the masses

And it's staggering when you discover that the recipes being tested here are for the Iceland frozen food chain.

The firm's boss Malcolm Walker is holding court in his resonant Yorkshire tones while the food keeps on coming: small plates of buttered and brined turkey, carrot baubles, rack of lamb, sea bass, scallops. It all tastes fantastic.

Every morsel comes from the Iceland freezer chests. There isn't a prawn ring in sight  though if that's what you want, they're in a chest freezer near you for 4.

Walker, you see, is a man on a mission. He wants to make so-called 'posh' grub, like lobster, accessible to the masses. Iceland is the biggest seller of the crustacean in the UK and apparently there is a bit of a craze for it on some northern council estates.

He also wants to convince the metropolitan sneering classes that frozen food is healthy, cheap, creates less waste and, although it sounds like a contradiction in terms, fresher.

Hoping it will be a red rag to a bull, I tell him I never eat frozen food and that I only use the freezer to store my cashmere jumpers so the moths can't get them.

'Oooh, you're a middle class snob,' Malcolm squeals with glee.

'About twice a year at a dinner party someone like you will be sitting next to me and say 'Oh I don't eat frozen food.' And I will say, 'You think you don't,' and then I explain just about everything you eat has been frozen and then defrosted.

'You think you're buying fresh fish  look at the ticket, it's been defrosted.'

MALCOLM WALKER, 70 Homes: A listed Elizabethan manor house in Cheshire, a holiday pad in Mallorca and a house in Chelsea. Transport: He owns a Bentley, corporate jet and a yacht. Road not taken: 'I organised school dances and I was contacted by a guy who wanted to come into partnership with me. 'He ran a nightclub in Sheffield, it was Peter Stringfellow. My life could have been a lot more exciting.' Rise and shine: 'A lot of CEOs claim they get up at 5am. I think they are making it up. I'm incapable of getting out of bed before 9am.' Sacked: Twice (out of three jobs). Once from Woolworths, in 1970, for moonlighting by setting up a frozen food shop in Shropshire. The second was in 2001, from Iceland, amid a share dealing scandal. He was back four years later. Derring do: Reached the North Col of Everest at 23,000 feet in 2011. Hobbies: Gardening, good food and wine, skiing, sailing and shooting. Motto: Never, ever give up.

But isn't Malcolm's problem that, for us Brits, where you do your grocery shopping is a badge of social status?

C AN he really get middle-class mums into a shop that had council house princess Kerry Katona in its ads?

'We haven't used Kerry for seven years, it's just everyone thinks we have. I know there is a stigma to shopping in Iceland,' he says.

He pooh-poohs the idea that having a Waitrose in the vicinity pushes up property prices, or that an Iceland might have the opposite effect. 'Rubbish. I don't think it makes any difference,' he says.

His most middle class product, he reckons, might be zesty bean quinoa for 1.65, or a Dover sole for eight quid.

Or his favourite, clam and tomato sauce for spaghetti vongole, which comes in a frozen block costing 3.

Iceland, he says, has pioneered healthy eating for years, 'but we never get credit because we are at the bottom end of the social scale'.

The problem, he reckons, is getting middle class shoppers through the door, because they don't like the big red sign. It might be telling that his new chain called Food Warehouse, run by his son Richard, 36, only has 'by Iceland' in small letters on its logo.

Richard is the only one of Walker's kids to be involved in the business. 'Am I the heir apparent? I don't know, only if I am good enough,' he says.

Like other retailers, Iceland is facing a tough environment. Its accounts for the year to March show profits before tax fell to 66.7million from 79.3million. Underlying earnings were up at 150.5million.

Clash: Bill Grimsey took over Iceland in 2001 and slashed profit forecasts

In any event, Walker is justifiably proud of having created Iceland from nothing into a business with 2.7billion of sales  and if snobs curl their lip, then so what.

He has also made one of the most famous comebacks in British business. In 2001, he was planning to retire and jetted to the Maldives, having sold 13.4m of shares.

While away, new boss Bill Grimsey slashed profit forecasts, cutting an expected 130million profit to a 26million loss. Walker was fired and spent three years under investigation over his share sale before being cleared of wrongdoing in 2004.

This episode is recounted in his engaging memoir of 2013, Best Served Cold, a book glowingly endorsed by Sir Philip Green, which probably seemed a good idea at the time.

'I was out of the business for four years. The idiot that followed me took it virtually to bankruptcy,' he says. Does he mean Bill Grimsey? 'Yes, Bill Grimsey, the idiot.'

In 2005, Walker returned as boss. In 2012 he led a 1.5million management buyout to buy it from Iceland's government, which acquired a majority stake via its bust banks.

So does he feel vindicated now? 'If I met him [Grimsey] earlier I would have hit him, but now I would say thank you, because what happened was a blessing in disguise. It made me come back stronger.' Grimsey declined to comment.

Through all the ups and downs, Walker has been able to count on his wife Ranny  real name Rhianydd.

The couple were teenage sweethearts whose romance might have been thwarted by Mr Faires, the headmaster.

Fearing the unruly Walker would be a bad influence on studious Ranny, the head threatened to cool his schoolboy ardour with six of the best. Walker was spared the cane thanks to the surprise arrival of the local vicar and the rest is history.

The pair have been married for more than 40 years and have three adult children: Alexia, Caroline and Richard, and eight grandchildren.

Walker, whose personal fortune is estimated at 215million, revels in the trappings of wealth including a Bentley and a yacht  and why not?

But it is one of life's ironies that enjoyment of this success has been tempered by Ranny having been struck by Alzheimer's in 2010.

Walker doesn't like to talk much about it - but acknowledges that he is fortunate to be able to afford care. She currently lives at home with a full-time carer.

Walker, meanwhile, has pledged to give 10million to Alzheimer's Research UK from the 5p plastic bag charge at stores.

It was Ranny who thought of calling the company Iceland. That is now causing a bit of bother with Iceland (the country) which is suing Iceland (the company) in a trademark dispute.

Iceland (the country) is peeved because Iceland (the company) is stopping firms from the small Nordic nation from using the name Iceland. That does sound naughty, I suggest to Walker.

He says he's happy for Icelandic businesses to use the name Iceland so long as there is no confusion with his products. He just wants the two Icelands to return 'to peaceful co-existence'.

At 70, Walker could pass for at least a decade younger. He reckons he feels about 34.

'A lot of friends who sell their business got old very quickly. If you are a man and you give up work you can let yourself go. Hair grows out of your ears and nose and you get a big gut. That's not good.'
Insurance: Lloyds is reportedly planning to set up a subsidiary in Europe

Taxpayer-backed Lloyds Banking Group is reportedly planning to set up a subsidiary in Europe to maintain access to the EUs single market after Brexit.

The group is understood to be keen to ensure it keeps access to the European payment system and keep German and Dutch clients.

It is understood Lloyds is considering converting one of its offices in Frankfurt and Amsterdam into a subsidiary.

Lloyds declined to comment.

The group has a mortgage branch in the Netherlands with around 8billion of loans, while it has an online bank in Germany with some 12billion of customer deposits.
The head of a top Japanese advertising agency has resigned just 24 hours after prosecutors pressed charges against his company for the suicide of an overworked employee.

Dentsu Inc. president Tadashi Ishii told reporters he would take responsibility for the death of Matsuri Takahashi.

The resignation came a day after prosecutors demanded charges be laid against an unidentified worker for driving the 24-year-old woman to kill herself last year, after clocking up massive overtime in the first months on the job.

Dentsu Inc. president Tadashi Ishii tell reportors he will resign over the suicide of a worker who had clocked massive overtime. (Kyodo News via Associated Press image)

Mr Ishii acknowledged overtime was still a major problem with more than 100 workers still doing more than 80 hours of extra work a month.

'This is something that should never have been allowed to happen,' he told reporters at his company's Tokyo headquarters on Thursday.

Ms Takahashi started working at Dentsu in April 2015.

Her workload surged by October and she often returned home at five in the morning after working all day and night.

She was clocking up 100 hours of overtime a month before she jumped from her workplace balcony in December 2015.

Matsuri Takahashi committed suicide in December 2015, just eight months after starting work at the Dentsu advertising agency which overworked her

Labour regulators raided Dentsu last month after the company repeatedly promised to curtail overtime, suspected of being widespread.

It started turning off headquarters lights at 10 pm so workers would go home.

Dentsu acknowledged Takahashi's treatment was like harassment because her records showed monthly overtime within company regulations of 70 hours, with numbers like 69.9 hours, when she had actually been working far more hours.

Dentsu Inc. president Tadashi Ishii, pictured centre, bows with other senior executives during a media conference at the company's Tokyo headquarters (Kyodo News via AP)

She left a farewell email begging her mother to not blame herself.

'You're the best mum in the world,' Ms Takahashi wrote.

'But why do things have to be so hard?'

In September, the government ruled overwork had killed her.

Japanese advertising company Dentsu Inc. Tokyo's headquarters

The first person to be officially ruled a suicide from overwork was also a Dentsu employee.

Ichiro Oshima, 24, didn't get a single day off for 17 months and had averaged less than two hours of sleep a night.

Still, Dentsu had argued in the 1997 court case that personal troubles were behind his 1991 suicide.

Death linked to exhaustion is so common it's expressed as a special term, 'karoshi' which includes suicides from overwork.
Brothers Frankie Archuleta, 22, and Jesse Archuleta, 25, have both been arrested on suspicion of murder

He was rushed to hospital with at least one stab wound but died the same day

Father-of-four was out with his son, four, when he confronted two men playing

Tyrone Griffin Jr., 36, of Hayward, California was attacked after a confrontation with two men inside his local Target store

A father was stabbed in front of his young son while out shopping for last-minute gifts on Christmas Eve.

Tyrone Griffin Jr., 36, of Hayward, California was attacked after a confrontation with two men inside his local Target store, according to authorities.

The father-of-four was rushed to hospital with at least one stab wound at around 8pm on December 24 but was pronounced dead.

Brothers Frankie Archuleta, 22, and Jesse Archuleta, 25, have both been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Griffin had been out shopping with his four-year-old son for last minute gifts on the day he was killed.

Witnesses say he had confronted the Archuletas after they began playing inappropriate music in the store's toy section.

Griffin's wife Nicole Simmons wrote on a GoFundMe page that her husband had gone to the store to buy more presents for his children 'whom he loved dearly.'

Tyrone Griffin Jr., 36, (pictured with his family) was rushed to hospital with at least one stab wound at around 8pm on December 24 but was pronounced dead

Griffin's wife Nicole Simmons wrote on a GoFundMe page that her husband had gone to the store to buy more presents for his children 'whom he loved dearly'

Simmons' wife Nicole said that 'Christmas will never be the same for us' after his death

'Who would have ever thought these last-minute gifts would cost him his life?' she said.

She said that Griffin loved the holidays and would always go all out, with a big tree, a lit up house and plenty of gifts for their kids.

'Christmas will never be the same for us,' said Simmons, who was high school sweethearts with her husband, to Mercury News.

The widow said she had only just been able to bring herself to tell her children, aged between four and 12, what happened although they are too young to grasp what it really means.

Sgt. Ruben Pola says a fight ensued after Griffin asked the men to turn down their inappropriate music.

'My children are fatherless because of a thoughtless act of rage,' Nicole Simmons wrote on the family's GoFundMe page. 'Something that could have been totally avoided just by walking away.'
A Minnesota elementary school teacher and his husband had sexual conduct with eight underage boys, according to a police report following a four-month investigation.

South St. Paul police closed the investigation into teacher Aric Babbitt and his husband, Matthew Deyo, and released the documents this week.

The couple was found dead August 25 in an apparent murder-suicide with gunshot wounds on Lopez Island in Washington state.

Neither was charged in relation to the abuse allegations.

Minnesota teacher Aric Babbitt, 40 (left), and his husband, Matthew Deyo, 36 (right), had sexual conduct with eight underage boys, according to a police report following a four-month investigation after they were found dead in a murder-suicide in August

Their deaths came shortly after a 16-year-old boy and his parents went to South St. Paul police to report an ongoing sexual relationship between the teen and the men. Police confiscated photos and videos from the couple's home (above)

The deaths came shortly after a 16-year-old boy and his parents went to South St. Paul police to report an ongoing sexual relationship between the teen and the men.

The 134-page investigative file obtained by the St. Paul Pioneer Press shows the case went beyond the 16-year-old's allegations.

According to the documents, seven other boys came forward after the teen's allegations became public and police confiscated photos and videos from the couple's phones, computer and other media devices.

Police said that in many instances, Babbitt (above) and Deyo gave their alleged victims alcohol and marijuana

The case file says the alleged abuse took place at the home of the married couple, at Babbitt's family cabin in Crow Wing County, at Minneapolis hotels and at Deyo's parents' farm near Hastings.

Police said that in many instances, Babbitt, 40, and Deyo, 36, gave their alleged victims alcohol and marijuana and bought them phones or other devices to stay in touch.

The first accuser told police that Babbitt was his former teacher and volunteer work supervisor.

The boy said Babbitt was a mentor for him when he came out as gay to his family and that the teacher gave him gifts of underwear and yoga shorts and also asked for photos before he was 16, according to the investigative reports.

The first accuser told police that Babbitt was his former teacher at Lincoln Center Elementary (file above) and volunteer work supervisor

Court documents state that in April, Babbitt and Deyo offered to take the 16-year-old to a concert in Minneapolis and promised to 'treat him to a hotel stay' while in town.

Upon arrival, the married couple allegedly plied the teen with alcohol and marijuana until he became very intoxicated, and instead of going to the show, all three had unprotected sex, according to the records.

The boy woke up the next day in the hotel room to discover Matthew Deyo touching him, the documents state.

Later, Babbitt and Deyo asked the 16-year-old and his friend to follow them on Tumblr, where there were nude photos of the 40-year-old teacher and videos showing him pleasuring himself.

The pair also gave the teens access to their pornography subscription and created a Dropbox account for the boys for the purpose of sharing X-rated photos of themselves.

Another alleged victim told police that when he was 16 years old, Babbitt (above) and Deyo told him they had a surprise for him in the bathroom. When he entered the room, he said he found a tablet with pornography playing on it

Another alleged victim told police that when he was 16 years old, Babbitt and Deyo told him they had a surprise for him in the bathroom. When he entered the room, he said he found a tablet with pornography playing on it.

According to the account of an additional victim, when he went to take a shower at the couple's residence, Babbitt encouraged him to masturbate in the bathroom, the court documents recount.

'As a school district, we strive to provide a safe and secure learning environment for our students,' South St. Paul schools Superintendent Dave Webb said in an email to the Pioneer Press. 'This has been very hard on our entire South St. Paul community.'

Babbitt was a teacher at Lincoln Center Elementary since 2002 and was put on paid leave after the district learned of the allegations August 17.

Back in August, his sister, Sara Babbitt, revealed in a text message sent to a friend, and later forwarded to the Pioneer Press, that her brother and his husband 'felt like they didn't have an out and ending their lives was the best for them'.
French president Francois Hollande used his presidential powers to pardon a woman who shot dead her violent husband.

Jacqueline Sauvage, 69, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for fatally shooting her husband, Norbert Marot, three times in the back with a hunting rifle in 2012.

Yesterday, after more than three years behind bars, Ms Sauvage received the presidential pardon and left a prison southeast of Paris just two hours later.

In a statement Mr Hollande's office said: 'The President of the Republic judged that the place of Madame Sauvage was no longer in prison, but beside her family.'

Yesterday, after more than three years behind bars, Jacqueline Sauvage received the presidential pardon and left a prison southeast of Paris just two hours later. Pictured, an image grab taken from an AFPTV video shows a car allegedly carrying Ms Sauvage as she left prison

Jacqueline Sauvage, 69, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for fatally shooting her husband, Norbert Marot, three times in the back with a hunting rifle in 2012. Pictured, an activist holds a sign calling for the release of Ms Sauvage at a demonstration in Paris earlier this month

Ms Sauvage's lawyer Janine Bonaggiunta told BFM TV: 'It is a long battle that has just ended ... but our fight continues for all other women.'

During trials in 2014 and 2015, Ms Sauvage said her late husband had beaten her for 47 years. The couple's adult daughters also claimed Marot had abused them.

Neither Sauvage nor the daughters ever filed a complaint against him.

The three women said they were too humiliated to seek help and instead suffered violence that included sexual abuse silently behind closed doors.

The case drew widespread media attention and Women's rights advocates, politicians and sympathizers all mobilised to support Ms Sauvage.

A petition calling for her to be pardoned was signed by more than 380,000 people.

Mr Hollande had already granted Sauvage a sentence reduction in January.

French President Francois Hollande used his presedential powers to pardon Ms Sauvage yesterday. Mr Hollande, who will stand down next year, also tweeted about the decision

Nathalie Tomasini, one of Sauvage's lawyers, told RTL radio the pardon was a 'very strong message sent by Francois Hollande to all women victims of domestic violence.'

However the president of the main union of French magistrates said Hollande made a 'deplorable' decision 'to please the public and to respond to a media request.'

'It is a political decision... that challenges the functioning of our institutions,' Virginie Duval said on BFM.

In 2013, Hollande also used his presidential prerogative to allow Philippe El Shennawy, then France's longest-serving prisoner, to be freed on parole after 38 years in jail.
A popular Sydney beauty college has gone into administration despite receiving $10.4million in taxpayer funding last year.

On December 23, more than 800 students at Australasian College Broadway were left in limbo and up to 80 staff members were dismissed, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The college went into administration, according to documents lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

Australasian College Broadway is owned and run by Maureen Houssein-Mustafa (pictured), a major political donor and Order of Australia medal recipient

The college, which has been running for 22 years, is owned and run by Maureen Houssein-Mustafa, a major political donor and Order of Australia medal recipient.

In 2014 Ms Houssein-Mustafa came 29th on the BRW rich list thanks to earnings of more than $40 million.

She has donated thousands of dollars to the National Party over the years, and also co-hosted a $1,500 a head fund-raiser for former Liberal leader John Brogden.

'I had a vision; we started small and I worked very hard and my vision was all about quality training,' she told the the Financial Review in 2014 about the college.

On December 23 more than 800 students - like these pictured - attending Australasian College Broadway were left in limbo when it went into administration

The private beauty college (pictured) received $10.4million in taxpayer funded loans last year

College students (pictured) are now worried about their futures after the shock news

In a letter to employees on December 23, administrator, insolvency firm Rodgers Reidy, confirmed that all staff would be let go before Christmas Eve.

'The company has ceased trading upon our appointment and as a result your employment has been terminated,' the letter said.

The college was also part of a NSW police investigation in 2014 involving allegations hundreds of 'phantom students' were enrolled in courses they never completed.

Ms Houssein-Mustafa has strongly denied the allegations, but a NSW Police said the investigation was still ongoing.
A nine-year-old Utah boy is fighting for his life in hospital after he was shot in the head in a drive-by shooting, police said.

Unified Police Detective Ken Hansen said police the boy was shot on Wednesday afternoon while sitting with several other children in the backseat of a car in suburban Salt Lake City.

Hansen said the car was parked in front of a house in Kearns where the boy or family members lived, not far from an intersection.

Police investigate after a drive-by shooting in Kearns, Utah, which left a nine-year-old boy is in a critical condition

The child was shot in the head during the drive-by shooting and was airlifted in critical condition to a Salt Lake City hospital about 15 miles away

Someone in a black BMW sedan on a cross street fired at least one shot as the car passed.

The bullet went through the SUV's windshield, hitting the nine-year-old in the head.

The boy was airlifted in a critical condition to a Salt Lake City hospital about 15 miles away, where he was expected to be in surgery for several hours, Hansen said.

Police believe the shooting may be gang-related and someone else was the intended target.

Someone in a black BMW sedan on a cross street fired at least one shot at an SUV, while the boy was sitting in the backseat

Police believe the shooting in Kearns, Utah, may be gang-related and think someone else was the intended target

Police said at least two men were in the BMW, and added that they were interviewing witnesses and searching for suspects

Hansen did not have further details, including whether the target was someone related to the boy.

The BMW was found abandoned on a Salt Lake City street several hours after the shooting.

Police said at least two men were in the BMW, and added that they were interviewing witnesses and searching for suspects.
A Canadian man has punched a cougar in the face in a desperate bid to stop it attacking his Husky dog.

The bizarre incident took place after William Gibb, 31, from Red Deer, Alberta, let his dog out of the car for a walk in a wooded area near a fast food store in Whitecourt, central Alberta, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said on Wednesday.

Mr Gibb had stopped at a Tim Hortons outlet, a popular Canadian restaurant chain, while driving 600-kilometre (372-miles) to Grand Prairie on Monday evening.

Shortly after, Gibb heard his 80-pound (36-kg) female Husky called Sasha whimpering in pain and found a cougar pinning her to the ground.

William Gibb cuddles up with his 5-year-old husky named Sasha after rescuing her from the jaws of a Cougar, beating it with his fists and a stick, outside a Tim Hortons Restaurant

'I could see something wrapped around her and wasn't sure what it was. I ran over and punched it in what I thought was the head, and it backed off and I realised it was a cougar,' Gibb, an electrician, told Reuters.

'I stepped over Sasha and charged at it swinging and screaming and calling for my brother and buddy to give a hand,' he added.

Gibb kept the cougar at bay, which he said swiped at him a few times, as he tended to his injured dog and called the police, before getting Sasha into his truck and driving her away for medical attention.

He said the police arrived five or 10 minutes later and, after consulting with fish and wildlife officers, killed the cougar because of the risk it could attack another dog or even humans.

Gibb himself was not seriously injured, although Sasha bit him on the hand as he was trying to rescue her.

Kalis said cougar sightings were not uncommon around Whitecourt because the town is surrounded by forests, but it is unusual for them to attack dogs.

The bizarre incident took place near this Tim Hortons store in Whitecourt, central Alberta
A chance meeting in a Queensland cafe has led to a man meeting his long-lost brother for the first time.

David Anthony Lacey was adopted when he was a child and spent his entire life wondering who his biological family was before finally attempting to track them down.

Mr Lacey, from the Hunter region in New South Wales, was adopted out when he was born from an affair between a married man and the family nanny.

David Lacey (left) with his birth mother Yvonne Thorley (right) on the very first day they met

Mr Lacey said his adoptive family showed him love and gave him an extremely happy childhood but he always felt as though there was something missing.

When he went on pursuit to find his biological family, Mr Lacey said he finally discovered what he was looking for in a Queensland cafe.

'This gentleman sits down beside me and starts annoying the absolute bejesus out of me because I'd pinched all the papers and he was actually quite obnoxious,' he told the ABC.

It wasn't until the pair exchanged a few words, Mr Lacey discovered who the man sitting next to him really was.

David Lacey (pictured) said he and his brother still spoke on the phone daily, sometimes twice daily

Mr Lacey said he learnt the man's father had just died and knew his own biological father had also just died, and started to put two and two together.

'I said 'your dad's so-and-so and he's in such-and-such a hospital' and he said 'how do you know that?'' he said.

It was that moment Mr Lacey turned to the man and said: 'Because I'm your little brother'.

David Lacey as a child pictured with his adoptive mother, who he said gave him the best childhood he could have imagined

Shocked by the initial discovery, Mr Lacey also found out he and his brother had unknowingly lived in the same Queensland town, Noosa, for 18 months.

He also discovered they lived just 300 metres down the road from each other.

The brothers also shared the same first and middle names, and learned they both frequented that very same cafe every morning for breakfast, and had done for months.

Since that chance encounter more than four years ago, Mr Lacey told Daily Mail Australia he and his brother, also called David Anthony, still spoke on the phone daily.

'It's an amazing feeling to have completion, I'm just so lucky that my puzzle has been so beautiful,' he said.

Mr Lacey said that chance meeting was the final piece of his puzzle, after a long search for family members.

David Lacey (pictured) said his yearning to find his biological family grew stronger when his adoptive mother and grandmother both died

David Lacey (pictured) playing with the Singleton police boys club band when he was a child

He said his yearning to track down family grew stronger when his adoptive mother and grandmother both died.

He was just 13-years-old when his adoptive mother Yvonne Lacey grew ill, and 18-years-old he moved in with his adoptive grandmother Bel Gerner, who died not long after.

Using what connections he had, Mr Lacey began the pursuit to track down his biological family.

Mr Lacey (pictured) said he very quickly established a close relationship with his biological mother and they remained close until the day she died

David Lacey as a child with his adoptive mother Yvonne Lacey, who incredibly shared the same given name as his adoptive mother

Mr Lacey told Daily Mail Australia he remembered the first phone call with his biological mother Yvonne Thorley as if it were yesterday.

'She answered the phone and it was that moment you just know,' he said.

'I told her I just need to ask you a question, and I rattled out my birthday and asked her if that date meant anything to her.

'She immediately said 'yes I'm your mum, I'm your mum, please don't hang up!'

'We spoke on the phone for four hours that day.'

Mr Lacey also found out he and his brother not only lived in the same Queensland town, but lived just 300 metres down the road from him

From that day forward, Mr Lacey said he very quickly established a close relationship with his biological mother and they remained close until the day she died.

'She died in my arms, I feel blessed that I was able to be there for her,' he said.
A mother-of-five doused in petrol by three men who made threats to kill her family said her 'heroic' partner 'took the flame' as they tried to set her alight.

A teenage son of one of the attackers allegedly had a fight with Ms Stone's child weeks earlier and the men arrived at her Long Gully home in Bendigo, Victoria, with containers of petrol just before midnight on December 18.

Ms Stone said the men made threats to sexually assault her family before dousing her and her partner, Darren Auditori, and flicked a cigarette lighter toward them.

The terrified mother said Mr Auditori, 45, was killed after suffering horrific burns to 90 per cent of his body when he shielded her from the men, The Herald Sun reported.

Kate Stone was doused in petrol by three men who made threats to kill her family at her Bendigo home and said her 'heroic' partner Darren Auditori (both pictured) saved her life

'He put himself on fire basically by standing in front of me so they couldn't set me alight. It was meant to go for me. He saved my life,' Ms Stone said.

'He has thrown petrol all over us and was trying to light me up and then Darren took the flame for me'.

The couple's children locked themselves inside the house during the incident.

Mr Auditori, a truck driver, was rushed to The Alfred Hospital but died from his extensive injuries.

Immediately after the attack, Ms Stone and four of her children moved into a hotel for safety but have since asked for police protection out of fear the men will find them.

She said her children are in a 'safe place'.

No arrests have been made.

Mr Auditori, a truck driver, was rushed to The Alfred Hospital but died from his extensive injuries
They have been used to make countless model space rockets, fairytale castles and improvised desk tidies.

But children are being stopped from bringing cardboard toilet roll tubes into schools over fears they could spread disease.

Teachers are wrongly quoting health and safety guidelines, despite Government officials denouncing such concerns as an 'urban myth' almost a decade ago.

Dirty? Children are being stopped from bringing cardboard toilet roll tubes into schools over fears they could spread disease

The ban risks denying hundreds of youngsters the pleasure of using the tubes to fuel their imagination in craft lessons, not to mention destroying years of Blue Peter tradition.

Experts said any decision to ban loo rolls is 'absolute nonsense' and accused schools of 'wildly overreacting' to a perceived risk of contamination.

Primary and nursery school teachers across the UK have told parents in letters that they are 'unable to use' them.

A handful also say they cannot use egg boxes, another health and safety myth linked to the salmonella crisis 28 years ago.

One North London primary assistant head teacher said she is aware of several education authorities who discourage the use of cardboard rolls.

'Some boroughs and schools don't let you bring in the inner of the toilet roll. Personally I can't see the issue,' she said. 'People just need to use their common sense.'

Research by the Daily Mail uncovered evidence of teachers discouraging the use of rolls across the country.

At one nursery school in County Durham, parents were told the school does 'not use egg cartons, toilet roll holders or medicine containers'.

Health and Safety: The ban risks denying hundreds of youngsters the pleasure of using the tubes to fuel their imagination in craft lessons

At an infant school near Salisbury, Wiltshire, parents were sternly told to save 'cardboard middles  but NOT toilet tolls'.

In Ilminster, Somerset, teachers asked: 'Please do not send in any toilet rolls, or old meat packaging trays as we are not able to use these.'

And in an appeal for 'junk materials' at a primary in Chorley, Lancashire, staff said: 'We cannot use toilet rolls but love kitchen rolls.'

The edicts appear to be strict interpretations of the requirement of teachers to undertake a 'risk assessment' before any activity.

Some boroughs and schools don't let you bring in the inner of the toilet roll. Personally I can't see the issue. North London primary assistant head teacher

Similar rules appear to have been imposed at pre-schools, nurseries and churches elsewhere.

Experts said there is a low chance that toilet roll cores were contaminated.

One microbiologist said that those who remain concerned could briefly microwave the tubes or spray them with surface cleaner.

Matt Endean, of the Consortium of Local Education Authorities for the Provision of Science Services, which promotes science in primary schools, blasted the 'perennial myth'. 'It is an unrealistic response to a minimal risk,' he added.

Dr Christine Dodd, an expert in food microbiology at Nottingham University, said there is only a 'remote chance' of contamination, adding: 'There are people who have issues with anything that comes out of toilets.'

The Health and Safety Executive said stopping children from handling toilet rolls cores is 'absolute nonsense'.
Jeremy Corbyn sparked an online backlash after he recorded a Christmas message to members of the Armed Forces.

The Labour leader praised the 'courage and professionalism' of servicemen and women and paid tribute to their families in a message recorded for Forces TV.

The minute-long clip prompted a flurry of furious responses from military personnel and veterans after it was shared on the channel's Facebook group.

One user branded the MP 'Communist Corbyn, the IRA terrorists friend'.

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Christmas message: Jeremy Corbyn praised the 'courage and professionalism' of servicemen and women and paid tribute to their families in a message recorded for Forces TV, pictured

Backlash: The minute-long clip prompted a flurry of furious responses from military personnel and veterans after it was shared on the channel's Facebook group

Another comment, which has nearly 1,000 'likes', reads: 'This man is a danger to every man and woman in the Armed Forces.'

However others are supportive of Mr Corbyn, pointing to the interest and deference he showed during Remembrance Sunday commemorations.

In the recording message, Mr Corbyn said: 'I want to send my very best Christmas wishes to our forces, both at home and abroad.

'Your courage and professionalism are an inspiration to us all and we honour the many sacrifices you make on our behalf, like being away from your families at this time of year.'

He continued: 'We also think of our forces families, who day in, day out, are supporting our men and women in uniform. You, too, make great sacrifices.

'Our thoughts are with you all, especially with those families spending this Christmas thousands of miles apart from your loved ones.

'We all have a responsibility to stand up for our armed forces community and to make sure you have real support where you need it, whether it is access to housing, health care or school places, whether it is for you, your children and proper care for the veterans in our community.'

Outrage: A number of Facebook users criticised Mr Corbyn's links with the IRA

However the words failed to impressed viewers on the Forces TV Facebook page, who slammed the Labour leader.

A number pointed to Mr Corbyn's links with the IRA. This month Mr Corbyn defended his decision to hire a former Sinn Fein staffer who worked for Gerry Adams and has links to convicted IRA terrorists.

The video was posted just days after it emerged ex-paratroopers are facing prosecution for murder over the killing of an IRA commander in Northern Ireland more than 40 years ago.

Jeff Thomas wrote: 'Communist Corbyn, the IRA terrorists friend. A man who would leave this country totally defenceless if he was ever given the chance.'

Nicholas Smith added: 'Hypocrite, supported the IRA and stands by while our own soldiers are offered up as sacrificial lambs 40+ years after they were carrying out orders under fire ! Never mind what happened in the high court yesterday !

'Only one qualification for politics, you're ability to lie !'

Another added: 'This man is an imbecile. Given what is going on in NI at the moment, he would sell every member of the British Forces out for his PIRA mates!'

There was also broad criticism of Mr Corbyn's stance on the Armed Forces, with Peter Harrison writing: 'Get this two faced hypocrite of here. This man is a danger to every man and woman in the armed forces.'

However others defended Mr Corbyn. Several pointed to the politician's behaviour during Remembrance Sunday commemorations.

Kevin Jackson posted: 'Why you lot having a go , the only politician to stay behind and applaud veterans after remberance Sunday instead of going to posh meal, and wants to Help them.'
to a location 325 miles from where she was taken

Police have stopped their search for a suspect in the mysterious killing of a woman who was abducted from a rest stop in Montana and seemingly held in her own trunk for hours before being killed.

'At this time - based on the evidence gathered thus far - we are not actively seeking any suspects in this case,' FBI spokeswoman Sandra Barker said in a statement, according to the New York Post.

On September 6, Rita Maze, 47, made frantic calls to her husband Bob and daughter Rochelle, while she said she was trapped inside of her trunk after being kidnapped by a 'large man in a black hoodie' who had hit her on the head and stolen her gun while she was at a rustic Interstate 15 rest stop near Wolf Creek, north of Helena in Montana, Great Falls Tribune reports.

Rita Maze, 47, (left and right with daughter Rochelle) was allegedly kidnapped from a gas station and killed but managed to speak to her daughter and husband from the trunk of her car

Her credit cards were used twice during the trip, reports the Spokesman-Review.

Bob and Rochelle Maze called the police who were able to track her cellphone's location but by the time they finally caught up with her it was too late.

Rita's body was discovered at just after midnight in the trunk of her car near Spokane International Airport - more than 300 miles away from where she was abducted. She was shot in the abdomen.

Barker said that the FBI was waiting on the results of laboratory analysis and the investigation was still active.

Rita's version of events is being looked at closely after a gun - possibly her gun - was found in the trunk with two spent shell casings nearby. Her pocketbook and keys and a twenty dollar bill were also inside of the car.

Rita Maze said she was kidnapped at a rest stop near Wolf Creek and her body was found 325 miles away in the trunk of her car in Washington

A law enforcement official anonymously told the Associated Press that investigators so far have found no evidence of 'foul play.'

The FBI statement goes out of its way not to use the words 'kidnapping' or 'murder.'

'On Sept 6, 2016, Rita Maze, 47, was driving from Helena to Great Falls, Montana, when she failed to make it home. Her family reported her missing to local law enforcement. Mazes body was subsequently found in the trunk of her car, in Washington State,' it states.

Cops apparently were suspicious of the kidnapping story almost immediately.

Two days after her death, when asked if reporters should question the kidnapping narrative, Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich replied, 'Yes, you should.'

Previous reports that there was a suspect were 'inaccurate' said another law enforcement source, speaking anonymously.

Police were able to put an alert out on her car license plate which was seen driving near Spokane (pictured, her car is towed away after police traced it to the neighboring state)

Daughter Rochelle, however, who spoke to her as she said she was in her trunk, believes her mother was kidnapped.

'I believe she was abducted,' said Rochelle Maze said. 'She did not hit herself, stuff herself in the trunk and drive all the way to Spokane and shoot herself.'

A cousin also believes she was abducted. 'I know she didnt kill herself,' her cousin, Leanne Kaufmann, 42, told DailyMail.com. 'Her life was good, she was happy.'

'How would she have found this parking lot? She hasnt been to Spokane in 15 years. When her mom moved away, she just didnt come back. She didnt commit suicide.'

She added: 'She had no money worries  her daughters wedding was paid for. They paid in cash, upfront, years ago.'

Rochelle said her last phone conversation with her mother only lasted ten minutes before the phone went dead.

'I told her that I loved her,' Rochelle said, breaking down in tears. 'That's the last thing she heard.'

Bob Maze said he had last spoken with his wife at 11.25am before she was kidnapped. He believes she was taken soon after.

Rochelle (left, showing off her new engagement ring and right) broke down in tears as she described the final conversation with her kidnapped mother

Bob and Rochelle got one last chance to speak to Rita before she was found dead around midnight September 6

Mother-of-two Rita, pictured with her daughter Rochelle (center) and husband Bob said Rita was hysterical with fear when she spoke to her family

Rita has recently left employment to spend more time with her grandchildren Addyson, four, and Carly, one, the kids of son Michael and his wife Brianne (pictured together)

A Helena police officer was the last person to speak to Maze alive.

'She's saying she was kidnapped,' Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said.

Helena police had put out an alert to locate the vehicle and the license plate was later spotted in Post Falls, Idaho, east of Spokane.

Police were also able track her cellphone to her car at a parking lot in an industrial area in West Geiger Boulevard, near Spokane Airport. Her body was recovered from the trunk.

'We had received some information that the car may be over here in our area,' said Deputy Mark Gregory of the Spokane County Sheriff's Office. 'So basically one of the agencies started pinging the cell phone, which helped us get an area to search and locate the vehicle.'

Maze (pictured with husband Bob and daughter Rochelle) spoke to her husband several times on her cell and had a conversation with Rochelle before she was killed

Maze leaves behind her husband Bob (pictured with her), son Michael and daughter Rochelle

The Spokane County medical examiner's office said Thursday that a single gunshot wound to the chest and abdomen killed the 47-year-old.

Maze left behind her husband Bob, son Michael, a sergeant in the Air Force stationed in Germany, and daughter Rochelle.

Rita has recently decided to take time off work to spend with her beloved grandchildren Addyson, four, and Carly, one, the kids of son Michael and his wife Brianne.

Police think Rita was taken from a rustic Interstate 15 rest stop (pictured) near Wolf Creek, north of Helena in Montana
The family of an eminent doctor last night branded Bupa as appalling amid claims he was drugged to the 'brink of madness' in one of its care homes.

Dr Keki Sidhwa, 90, a retired osteopath and naturopath, was admitted to the 5,000-a-month Red Court Care Home, in Croydon, south London, while he recuperated from a broken hip.

His family had previously warned hospital doctors that he had dedicated his life to holistic medicine and didnt believe in taking prescribed drugs unnecessarily.

Dr Keki Sidhwa, 90, a retired osteopath, pictured with daughter Ruki, was admitted to the 5,000-a-month home to recuperate from breaking a hip in a fall in July

Despite this  and unbeknown to relatives - Dr Sidhwa, who was already reluctantly on drugs for Parkinsons disease, was prescribed Pregabalin  an addictive and anti-convulsant painkiller which can have serious side-effects.

His daughter, Ruki Sidhwa, 51, a television producer, said she noticed a deterioration in her fathers mental state almost immediately.

The previously independent pensioner, who went for daily walks and worked up until his early 80s, started 'talking rubbish,' became incontinent, suffered blurred vision, hallucinations and even started having suicidal thoughts.

Miss Sidhwa was baffled by her fathers sudden mental decline and repeatedly expressed concern to staff at the care home. But she was told Dr Sidhwa was only taking Paracetamol alongside his Parkinsons drugs.

Miss Sidhwa claims her fathers medication was never reviewed by a doctor, although Bupa dispute this.

Last night she said she was 'appalled' by Bupa's treatment of Dr Sidhwa and accused them of putting profit before patient care.

Dr Keki Sidhwa, pictured before he retired, has endured a sudden decline in his health

'We were paying Bupa a lot of money for my father in order for him to be cared for in a safe environment,' she said.

'But in the four weeks he was there he didnt see a doctor and, despite repeatedly voicing my fears about his behaviour and deteriorating mental state, nobody did anything.

'It was only after he had been there for nearly a month when I questioned a pill I saw being administered that they eventually told me he was on Pregabalin.

'I did a simple Google search and he had all the symptoms associated with the drug  delirium, suicidal thoughts, swollen ankles, incontinence and blurred vision. He was driven to the brink of madness by it but worryingly nobody at the home recognised the symptoms nor did anything about them.

'Its appalling, if I hadnt insisted on questioning his medication he would have been dead. Im sure that if I hadnt been on the ball he wouldnt be alive today.'

The case comes just weeks after the Daily Mail exposed the private health care provider in a series of investigations about poor care in their homes.

Dr Sidhwa, a grandfather-of-seven, was admitted to Princess Royal University Hospital, in Farnborough, Kent, after breaking a hip in a fall at his home in July.

He underwent an operation to have a metal plate inserted the following day and spent two weeks on a ward before being moved to a rehabilitation centre.

However, unbeknown to Dr Sidhwa or his family, he was put on the Pregabalin in hospital for pain relief and his condition began to deteriorate. It worsened when he was moved to Red Court and  despite Miss Sidhwa repeatedly asking managers if her father could be reviewed by a doctor - she claims he was never assessed.

Daughter Ruki said: If I hadnt insisted on questioning his medication, he would have been dead

It was only when she demanded a full list of his medication, in early September, that she made the horrifying discovery that he had been put on Pregabalin without their consent.

Miss Sidhwa contacted his Parkinsons consultant, Dr Belinda Kessel, who ordered the drug be stopped. Miss Sidhwa has since removed her father from Red Court and he is making progress with one-to-one care at home.

Miss Sidhwa has lodged a formal complaint and demanded an apology from Bupa.

She also wrote to the Local Government Ombudsman, but they refused to investigate. Instead they urged her to make a complaint against the hospital doctor that prescribed the medication, which she has done.

'As far as Bupa are concerned its not their problem,' Miss Sidhwa added. 'They say the doctor prescribed him Pregabalin in hospital, but I asked managers at Red Court repeatedly what was wrong with his mental state and was reassured three times that he was on the list to see the on-site doctor. However, in four weeks he saw no-one.

'I find it amazing that medicine reviews were not carried out regularly  neither at the hospital, the rehab unit or Red Court - particularly with his rapid deterioration and while I and other members of his family and friends continually asked how his moods and behaviour could change so dramatically.

Dr Keki Sidhwa, pictured before he retired

'After I found out what he had been prescribed I immediately contacted the home, the hospital, his Parkinsons consultant and GP and got it stopped.

'To say he had become a shadow of his former self is an understatement. If I hadnt got my father out of there Ive no doubt he would be dead by now.

'Thankfully I was there to catch it. But it needs to be highlighted.

'My dad and my family have been put through an ordeal in part by Red Court which should and could have been avoided. It cannot be allowed to happen again to someone else and their relatives.

'The public pay a lot of money for supposed care in these homes and people are just not getting the service they deserve.'

The most recent report on Red Court by watchdog, the Care Quality Commission, highlights concerns about its safety of medicines.

Miss Sidhwa added: 'Ive since been told that it could take between three and six months for the Pregabalin to clear from his system completely.

'Its affected him physically because he hasnt been able to get up and about or start trying to walk again very much.

'His muscles have given up and he is now confined in the main to a wheelchair. Its terrible. We put our trust in Bupa to care for my dad because we thought he would be safer with professionals 24 hours a day, in fact I think he would have been much better off at home with his family.'

Michalae Thomson, director of London Bupa Care Services, said: 'The health and wellbeing of our residents is always our priority. When Dr Sidhwas family raised concerns about his medication, we immediately arranged for the GP to review his prescription. We do not prescribe medication for residents.

'We understand that this has been a distressing time for Ms Sidhwa and her family, but as the Local Government Ombudsman confirmed, they need to address their complaint to the doctor who originally prescribed Dr Sidhwas medication.'

A spokeswoman for Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH), confirmed they were investigating.

'We are sorry that Dr Keki Sidhwas family had concerns about elements of his care at the Princess Royal University Hospital,' she said.
A pony was dumped dead on his owner's doorstep after he was stolen on Christmas Day.

The three-month-old miniature colt named Jake was sick and on medication when he was snatched from his owner's paddock, south of Beaudesert in central Queensland, sometime between 4pm on Christmas Day and 6am the following morning.

Following the theft, the horse's owner posted an appeal on Facebook in a desperate attempt to find him.

And after the heartbreaking message was shared online the thieves dumped the dead pony back in his paddock - prompting the family the update their story on Facebook.

The three-month-old mini colt named Jake (pictured) was sick and on medication when he was snatched from his owner's paddock, south of Beaudesert in central Queensland

'For somebody to do this is sick.... and for them to do it on Christmas... it's just not on,' one of the owners, who wished to remain anonymous, told Daily Mail Australia.

'We've had no joy over the Christmas period at all.'

The owner believes the foal might have been stolen to give to children as a Christmas present.

'A cute little foal on Christmas... it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work it out. The only reason to take it is to give to their kids,' he said.

'Miniature foals get stolen all the time because people can pick them up and put them in their car, unlike bigger horses.'

Before Jake was returned, his owner's took to Facebook in a desperate plea to find the missing pony.

'Could everyone please keep an eye out for a three-month-old silver bay mini colt with a white blaze, stolen sometime between 4pm yesterday and 6am this morning,' they wrote on Monday.

A pony named Jake (pictured) was allegedly dumped on his owner's doorstep by thieves after he was stolen on Christmas Day

'He is a very sick foal, with sand colic and severe impaction. He has been under treatment since Wednesday afternoon, and without his medication he will be in severe pain.'

In a chilling warning the owners said: 'He will die and he will die in unimaginable pain.

'You won't be able to save this foal without spending thousands on an operation on him, which they probably won't perform as his heart rate is too high, and you don't want his agony or death on your hands.'

Jake (pictured) was stolen from his owners paddock on Christmas Day

Unfortunately the owners were right. They found Jake's lifeless body in his paddock just before midday on Wednesday.

A Facebook page called Bring Jake Justice has been set up to help catch the 'cowardly' thieves.

'Dumping his body back into the paddock was a low, cowardly act, and now we want to pursue this until they are brought to account for their actions,' the owners posted on the page.
President-elect Trump is mulling the adoption of a 'public-private option' for the Department of Veterans Affairs' health care services, according to a senior presidential transition official who briefed reporters Wednesday afternoon.

Such a move would permit veterans to choose between the existing government-run system, a private health care option, or a hybrid of the two systems.

'We think we have to have kind of a ... public-private option, because some vets love the VA,' the unnamed official told journalists in a briefing relayed by a pool reporter.

'Some vets want to go to the VA,' the official said at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort club in Palm Beach, Florida, adding that 'the idea is to come up with a solution that solves the problem.'

A presidential transition official said Wednesday that president-elect Donald Trump (shown in Palm beach, Florida) is considering a Veterans Affairs Department reform that would allow veterans to seek their choice of VA care, private doctors, or a combination of both

'It's not the easiest thing in the world,' the official said, 'because you've got all these little kingdoms out there, which is hard. You know, in the federal government it's hard to break things up and start over.'

Trump repeatedly emphasized vague proposals to reform the VA as he campaigned for the White House, using news stories about veterans who died while waiting to see doctors as Exhibit A of bureaucracies that have failed during President Barack Obama's eight years in office.

Ultimately he published a 10-point plan in July that included a promise to 'ensure every veteran has the choice to seek care at the VA or at a private service provider of their own choice.'

'Under a Trump Administration, no veteran will die waiting for service,' he vowed.

Trump (L) greets veteran Louis Dorfman (R), who gave Trump his Purple Heart, during a campaign event at Briar Woods High School August 2, 2016 in Ashburn, Virginia

A Trump supporter wearing a Vietnam veteran's cap holds a sign before a campaign rally at the Stranahan Theater on September 21, 2016 in Toledo, Ohio

Trump also pledged that his solution would 'allow veteran's [sic] to be able to seek mental health care outside of the VA.'

Democrats have accused Trump for months of harboring a secret plan to completely privatize the Veterans Affairs department's medical wing, although no such plan has ever been on the table and Congress hasn't proposed one.

VA doctors, hospitals and medical facilities treat millions of Americans every year.

The agency is second only to the pentagon in its number of full- and part-time employees.

Its dysfunction burst into the public's consciousness two years ago when whistleblowers exposed a secret system of off-the-books patient waiting lists at more than 100 VA medical centers, masking long wait times for veterans.

Congress's response was a bipartisan pilot program, funded for just two years, allowing private doctors to bill the government for treating veterans under certain circumstances.

In order to qualify, veterans had to show they couldn't find care for specific conditions at VA hospitals near where they live, or that the VA failed to provide them with appointments in a reasonable timeframe.

Democrats and VA administrators have resisted attempts to expand that program, citing fears that it could lead to complete privatization and the loss of civil-service jobs.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago, Wednesday, in Palm, Beach, Florida

The Trump transition official said Wednesday that the president-elect is considering instituting a panel of advisers to help with reforming the VA, something he said would be 'a very complicated process.'

But transition officials 'have not formalized anything,' the official admitted.

'Right now, it's a conversation about how to fix the problem.'
The Government has abandoned David Cameron's idea of a British Bill of Rights on the grounds that it would cause a parliamentary battle but still leave the UK in the grip of the European Court of Human Rights

Plans to scrap the Human Rights Act have been kicked into the long grass until after the next general election in more than three years' time.

The Government has abandoned David Cameron's idea of a British Bill of Rights on the grounds that it would cause a parliamentary battle but still leave the UK in the grip of the European Court of Human Rights.

Instead, the Conservatives will campaign on a manifesto promise to leave the jurisdiction of the court, which is separate from the EU.

Ministers will try to put the content of the European Convention on Human Rights  which the Strasbourg court oversees  into British law. This would replace the Human Rights Act but with the distinction that foreign criminals, terrorists and others would have no right of appeal to Europe.

Protection could be written into the new regime to stop soldiers being hounded by lawyers over their actions in war zones.

Tory backbenchers are likely to be unhappy the promise to get rid of Labour's Human Rights Act  first made by Mr Cameron almost a decade ago  is being delayed for at least another three years.

But senior ministers say this is the best option and will achieve the ex-prime minister's aim to end meddling by foreign judges.

Under Mr Cameron's Bill of Rights plan, the European court would have continued to have a role hearing appeals. A senior source said: 'We would have been looking at a huge row with Parliament to get through the Cameron plan and might even have failed.

'A clean break is by far the best option and, if we put it in the manifesto, even Tory MPs who are squeamish about the idea will have to get behind it. A manifesto pledge also means the Lords will have to let it through eventually. All the signs are that the Prime Minister is up for this.'

Theresa May has spoken in the past of her desire to quit the ECHR, which for a time frustrated her plans to deport hate preacher Abu Qatada.

Theresa May has spoken in the past of her desire to quit the ECHR, which for a time frustrated her plans to deport hate preacher Abu Qatada. But she ditched the idea at the launch of her Tory leadership campaign, conceding she did not have the votes needed to get it through the Commons

But she ditched the idea at the launch of her Tory leadership campaign, conceding she did not have the votes needed to get it through the Commons. MPs such as ex-attorney general Dominic Grieve had made it clear they would fiercely oppose the idea.

The Government's official position is that it will seek to implement Mr Cameron's watered-down Bill of Rights plan.

But behind the scenes, senior figures have decided this is not worth the political fallout, especially as Mrs May battles to implement Brexit.

Tory MP Philip Davies, pictured, who had campaigned for reform of human rights laws, said: 'Given our slim majority, it would have been tricky to get it through'

In little-noticed comments, Attorney General Jeremy Wright recently told MPs: 'We have a few other things on our plate at the moment  I think we will have to resolve those before we can resolve the matter.'

Tory MP Philip Davies, who had campaigned for reform of human rights laws, said: 'Given our slim majority, it would have been tricky to get it through.

'I would have liked to see us do it, but my main focus is getting us properly out of the EU.

'I will cut her some slack on this provided she can make sure we properly leave the EU, ie we are not in the single market.'

But the Lib Dems vowed to fight any moves to scrap the Human Rights Act.

The party's justice spokesman Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames said: 'I am glad that the Government has put this vanity project on the back-burner,' he said.

'The Human Rights Act protects all our rights and any attempts by this Government to erode them will be met with the most robust opposition, certainly from Liberal Democrats, but also from the other opposition parties and some on the Conservative benches as well.

'So I would urge the Government to abandon these plans altogether and get on with trying to agree on a plan for our future relationship with our European partners.'

The Ministry of Justice said: 'We will set out our proposals for a Bill of Rights in due course.'
Tragic Billie Lourd is being comforted by her rumored boyfriend Taylor Lautner after losing her mother and grandmother within a few hours of each other.

The 24-year-old, who is an aspiring actress herself, was mourning the death of her mother Carrie Fisher, 60, when she was spotted with Twilight star Lautner in Santa Monica, California around 12.45pm as she moved suitcases from her home.

Fifteen minutes later, her grandmother Debbie Reynolds, 84, was taken ill and later died in hospital.

Lautner shared his support for his rumored girlfriend amid a public outpouring of grief following her mother's death on Tuesday, calling Lourd one of the strongest and most fearless individuals he has ever met.

Lourd was seen for the first time since her mother Carrie Fisher's death on Wednesday as she left her Santa Monica home with rumored boyfriend Taylor Lautner

Heartbreaking: Debbie Reynolds (center) died in a hospital hours after suffering a reported stroke just minutes after her granddaughter Billie Lourd (left) was spotted for the first time since Carrie Fisher's (right) death on Tuesday

She emerged from her home followed closely by Lautner.

Yesterday, he posted a picture of him and Lourd on Instagram, and wrote: 'This girl is one of the strongest, most fearless individuals I've ever met.

'Absolutely beautiful inside and out. I'm lucky to know you,' he wrote alongside a photograph of them on Instagram.

Lourd's appearance came minutes before as her grandmother Debbie Reynolds suffered a reported stroke at her uncle's house. Reynolds passed away hours later on Wednesday

On Tuesday, Lautner showed his support for the actress with a gushing Instagram post (above)

The 24-year-old actress confirmed her mother's death in a statement just on Tuesday afternoon

It was not the first featuring the duo to have appeared across his social media platforms in recent weeks.

Their close relationship has fueled inevitable romance rumors though neither of the young stars has confirmed them.

Lourd plays Channel Three in Scream Queens.

Lourd is Fisher's only child. She rushed to be with her mother immediately after her heart attack on Christmas Eve. She and Lautner have been rumored to have been dating for weeks

It's not clear where the pair were traveling to on Wednesday afternoon

Legendary actress Reynolds died in a hospital hours after suffering a reported stroke minutes after her granddaughter was spotted for the first time since Carrie Fisher's death on Tuesday.

The 84-year-old Reynolds was taken to a hospital in Los Angeles on Wednesday from her son Todd Fisher's Beverly Hills' house after suffering an apparent stroke.

It was said that the Oscar-nominated actress was planning the funeral for her daughter alongside her son when she suddenly took ill.

An ambulance was seen leaving the property shortly after 1pm.

Hours later, Todd confirmed his mother had died, telling TMZ: 'She's with Carrie'.

The 60-year-old Star Wars actress died in a Los Angeles hospital on Tuesday four days after suffering a heart attack on board a transatlantic flight.

The 24-year-old confirmed her mother's tragic death in a statement on Tuesday.

Fisher was in the middle of a book tour to promote her memoirs, The Princess Diarist.

She went into cardiac arrest 15 minutes for the flight's scheduled landing and received CPR from a paramedic on board.

The actress was rushed to the hospital, but never regained consciousnesses. Lourd was photographed outside the hospital immediately after her mother was admitted.

Lourd is Fisher's only child. She is seen right with her mother earlier this year and left with her mother and grandmother in 2011

Lourd's outing with Lautner came amid her uncle's comments that she would receive 'whatever she wants' from her late mother's estate.

Speaking before his mother's suspected stroke, Todd Fisher told New York Daily News: 'As far as mom and I are concerned, she gets whatever she wants.

'There is a trust set up. But we're all pretty well off. This was her mother.'

He added he was 'very proud' of his niece who by his own admission was 'very successful' in her own right.

It's not clear where Lourd and Lautner were intending to travel when they left the house with small suitcases.

Fifteen minutes later, emergency services rushed to Lourd's uncle Todd Fisher's home.

He had been planning his sister's funeral with their mother Debbie Reynolds when the 84-year-old starlet suffered a stroke, TMZ reports.
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Stunning photographs taken from inside an illegal steel factory in rural China gives a rare glimpse into the brutal working conditions that Mongolian labourers endure through the night.

The photos, taken by photojournalist Kevin Frayer in an arid region in the country's north called Inner Mongolia, capture hardened workers covered in grime and sweat as they heap coal into blazing furnaces in total darkness.

China has vowed to shut down privately owned steel, coal, and other-high polluting factories scattered across rural areas as it strives to slash its emissions of carbon dioxide.

But in many cases, factory owners say they pay informal 'fines' to local inspectors and then re-open.

Brutal: A Chinese labourer loads coal into a furnace as he works at an unauthorised steel factory in Inner Mongolia

A man working in an illegal steel factory takes a break to smoke a cigarette, covered in grime and sweat from the hard labour

China has vowed to shut down privately owned steel, coal, and other-high polluting factories scattered across rural areas

Despite its efforts to cut back on pollution, factory owners say they pay informal 'fines' to local inspectors and then re-open

Waste molten steel is seen bubbling bright red in a cooling pit at an unauthorised steel factory

In September, President Xi Jinping promised to make China a 'beautiful country with blue sky, green vegetation and clear rivers.'

The enforcement comes as the future of U.S. support for the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement is in question, leaving China poised as an unlikely leader in the international effort against climate change.

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has sent mixed signals about whether he will withdraw the U.S. from commitments to curb greenhouse gases that, according to scientists, are causing the earth's temperature to rise.

Trump once declared that the concept of global warming was 'created' by China in order to hurt U.S. manufacturing.

China's leadership has stated that any change in U.S. climate policy will not affect its commitment to implement the climate action plan.

While the world's biggest polluter, China is also a global leader in establishing renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

Harsh elements: A labourer covers his face from the heat with the side of his jacket as his glasses reflect the glare of a furnace

Pitch black: Only the bright glow of red-hot steel illuminates the workplace as labourers toil through the night

Chinese labourers walk as smoke and steam rises at a cooling pit and furnace

Work break: A labourer braving the elements stops to smoke a cigarette as steel cools in the background

Hundreds of Mongolians staged a protest in China's capital city on Monday demanding the government do more to address worsening air pollution

Despite China's efforts to cut back on pollution, hundreds of Mongolians braved frigid weather on Monday to stage a protest in the country's capital demanding that the government do more to address worsening air pollution that they fear is sickening their children and shortening their lives.

The demonstrators gathered in a public square in front of government offices, holding banners with slogans such as 'Let's give fresh air to our future children,' ''Smog is silent killer' and 'We can't breathe.'

'We are desperate and we are organising this demonstration to make authorities feel our frustration and anger,' said Purevkhuu Tserendorj, one of the protest's organisers and a mother of two.

The air temperature hovered around minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit).

While the world's biggest polluter, China is also a global leader in establishing renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power

A Chinese labourer with dirt and grime smeared across his face reaches for his tools

Sparks fly in the air from a furnace as a Chinese labourer battles the elements and works through the night

Air pollution is linked to the three diseases that have resulted in the most 'lost life-years' in Mongolia

According to UNICEF, the United Nations' children's agency, air pollution is linked to the three diseases that have resulted in the most 'lost life-years' in Mongolia.

The agency said in February that pneumonia and other respiratory infections were among the leading causes of death among Mongolian children under the age of 5.

It said that the lungs of children living in highly polluted districts of Ulaanbaatar, the capital, do not function as well as those living in rural areas, with real risks of them suffering chronic respiratory diseases when they're older.

The protesters demanded that the government increase the number of beds in hospitals that have been overcrowded with sick children and develop a plan to reduce air pollution by 80 percent by 2018.

They also urged the government to install air filters in kindergartens in the capital's slum areas, which are worst-hit by the pollution.

The lungs of children living in highly polluted districts of the capital do not function as well as those living in rural areas

On Monday, protesters demanded that the governmen develop a plan to reduce air pollution by 80 percent by 2018

There are countless unauthorised steel factories scattered across rural areas in China

Pitch black: A Chinese labourer pours out hot steel in total darkness

Photojournalist Kevin Frayer visited the illegal steel factory in Mongolia in November
Camping and alcohol have been banned around Sydney Harbour with party goers subjected to possibly the strictest New Year's Eve rules in recent memory.

More than one million people expected to line the Sydney foreshore for the world's best fireworks display.

However, more than 2000 extra police are being deployed following a terrorist attack in Berlin and a foiled Christmas Day terror plot in Melbourne.

More than 2000 extra police are being deployed for New Year's Eve with one million spectators expected in Sydney

Police are being extra vigilant this year for New Year's Eve following a Berlin terrorist attack and a foiled Christmas Day terror plot in Melbourne

Crowds wanting to see Sydney's fireworks display are being urged to look out for potential terrorists

Revellers drinking in the New Year are urged to call the National Security Hotline if they notice untoward behaviour

New Year's Eve revellers are this year banned from pitching tents around Sydney Harbour, with sun shades removed after 6pm even though it's still daylight.

Temperates are expected to top 30 degrees Celsius on Saturday making it unbearable to stay outside without shade.

At Coogee Beach in Sydney's east, alcohol has been banned for the summer after party goers trashed the area on Christmas Day, spoiling the fun for those who usually watch New Year's Eve fireworks there.

Alcohol is also prohibited at other areas of inner-city Sydney, where people gather for the fireworks.

A warning sign on Sydney Harbour warns the public to leave their tents at home if they want to grab a place outside during the day to see the fireworks

Alcohol is banned from inner-city areas of Sydney, where people gather to see the fireworks

Alcohol has been banned from Coogee in Sydney's east in the wake of Christmas Day parties

New Year's Eve party goers had better find a place in the shade if they want to wait outside during the afternoon for the fireworks

On Sydney's northern beaches, empty buses will be parked along several roads in Manly and Dee Why to prevent a crazed individual from using a truck to kill crowds of people.

This follows a terrorist attack in Berlin that killed 12 people shortly before Christmas.

With more than one million people expected to gather around Sydney Harbour, extra police are being deployed on crowded trains and parks.

The public is being urged to call a National Security Hotline if they notice anything suspicious.

Cars are being towed from around Sydney Harbour in preparation for the big night

Police guard their territory after foiling a Christmas Day terror plot planned for Melbourne city

'For events such as these we constantly review our security arrangements, assessing the current environment and determine what additional measures may be required,' a New South Wales police spokeswoman said.

'As members of the public would expect, they will see an increase of police or security officers on or around public transport, or places where large numbers of people gather.'
The Armed Forces could face more defence cuts unless the government boosts its spending on the military, it was warned last night.

Britain last year pledged to meet its Nato commitment to spend two per cent of national income on defence.

But moves to include expenditure such as pensions in this figure and the rising cost of equipment because of the weaker pound could result in a real terms cut.

The Armed Forces have been warned they could face more cuts unless the Government significantly boosts military spending (two British RAF tornado fighter jets are pictured here)

Dr Julian Lewis, the Tory chair of the Commons defence committee, last night called on the government to significantly raise its military spending.

The last time we faced a threat of this magnitude with both a terrorist campaign and a Russian threat was during the 1980s when expenditure was regularly between 4.3 and 5.1 per cent, he said.

Defence has fallen too far down the list of government priorities.

We have now got the situation with our guaranteed 0.7 per cent on overseas aid, where we are spending the same as a third of the total defence bill on helping others.

In the mid-1960s, defence was overtaken by welfare spending, which is now six times its size.

It is therefore a measure of how far our expectations had fallen that we felt it was a cause for congratulation that we had not dropped below the Nato minimum of two per cent on defence spending.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's military strategy endorses the use of nuclear weapons which could pose a serious threat

There was this famous argument about how many dreadnought battle ships we needed in the run up to World War One, and there was a huge public campaign that said we want eight and we wont wait. So I say we need three [per cent spending] to keep us free.

Dr Lewis said the Ministry of Defence has assured his committee that it had taken steps to ensure it is not disadvantaged in the short term by changes in the exchange rate.

But he warned about how expenditure on pensions and UN peacekeeping forces had been included for the first time in military spending to help the government stay above the two per cent threshold.

It is a time of great uncertainty internationally after the election of unpredictable Donald Trump in the U.S.

I think its about time the government considered in the post-Brexit environment what kind of country it wants us to be. Does it want us to be a leader in the world? he said.

We have the opportunity to reshape our defence capabilities and foreign capabilities now. Or are we going to stick to the idea of just about getting along in the world.

It would seem to me obvious that there is an opportunity for the government to grab the bull by the horns and actually say we really want to invest in defence properly.

If we are serious about remaking our capabilities and actually using this Brexit opportunity for what it is really worth, maybe we should be looking at 2.5 per cent or 3 per cent for a while just to build up our capabilities again.

One of the things Britain is most respected for around the world is its military ability and ability to project force overseas, if we are looking for a glorious independent future, this should surely be part of it.
The cost of caring for a rapidly ageing population will tip Britain's social care service into an unsustainable crisis by 2030, a report warns today.

A centre-Left think-tank claims a 13billion shortfall on an estimated care budget of 21billion will come as the population of over-65s increases by almost a third  from 11.6million today to 15.4million in 2030  and the working-age population rises just 3 per cent.

Over the same period, it has been estimated that Britain's foreign aid budget will have risen from 12billion to an astonishing 19billion, which will fuel growing demands for ministers to divert payments to overseas governments into tackling the UK's growing problems at home.

A new study says the the oldest old'  those aged over 85  will almost double by 2030. File pic

The consequences of such a massive shortfall in social care funding, despite the budget rising to 21billion from its 2016 level of 13.8billion, will also likely create huge pressure on the NHS, as it struggles to cope with delays in transfers of elderly patients from hospital into care homes and increasing numbers of A&E visits.

In its bleak report today, the IPPR concluded: 'On current trends, adult social care is unsustainable.'

It warns that the so-called 'oldest old'  those aged over 85  will almost double by 2030. At the same time, the number of people who need daily help to wash, feed or clothe themselves is also set to double to two million, while the number of over-65s with dementia will rise by 80 per cent.

Theresa May was forced earlier this month to sanction increases in council tax next year in order to stave off an immediate crisis in elderly care funding

Prime Minister Theresa May was forced earlier this month to sanction increases in council tax next year in order to stave off an immediate crisis in elderly care funding.

But in recent weeks, a string of reports by the Daily Mail have uncovered large-scale waste in the foreign aid budget.

Yet, because of the Government's pledge to spend 0.7 per cent of Britain's income on aid, its overall budget is set to continue to rise inexorably.

The warnings by the IPPR will fuel demands for a major rethink over how the UK's social care is funded. But it is also likely to prompt fresh calls for ministers to divert Britain's ballooning foreign aid budget into tackling the care crisis at home.

Last year, then-chancellor George Osborne said the UK's foreign aid budget would increase to 15.6billion by 2020. But the figure will rise significantly, hitting 19billion by 2030, if the economy continues to grow at the historic trend of 2 per cent a year.

The call to divert some of the aid budget into social care has been backed by a number of Tory MPs and the former pensions minister Ros Altmann. But ministers have resisted the calls, saying the Government will keep its 0.7 per cent manifesto pledge on foreign aid until at least 2020.

Last year, then-chancellor George Osborne said the UK's foreign aid budget would increase to 15.6billion by 2020

The IPPR study predicts the ageing population will create a 9billion funding gap for the NHS  equal to about 5 per cent of its total forecast budget in 2030.

Today's report also highlights a number of other trends that are set to transform British society over the coming decade and a half.

The IPPR says 'exponential' advances in technology, such as artificial intelligence systems, robotics and machine learning  will radically change the way people work, putting 15million current jobs at risk of automation, almost two-thirds of the total. The report cautions that the rise of the robots has 'the potential to create an era of widespread abundance, or a second machine age that radically concentrates economic power'.

It says that the change will not end 'work as we know it', but warns it will pose major challenges to politicians in finding a fair way to ensure vast numbers are not left behind.
David Cameron is being lined up as a contender to be the next secretary general of Nato.

Officials believe the former prime minister is the most likely candidate to be successful if Theresa May wants to get a Briton appointed to Europe's top defence job.

It comes with a tax-free salary of 260,624 euros (222,019), although Mr Cameron is thought to be earning up to 2,000 a minute on the lucrative speaking tour circuit after stepping down as an MP after 15 years in September.

David Cameron is being lined up as a contender to be the next secretary general of Nato

Following the Brexit vote Britain has pledged to play a greater role in the US-led military alliance.

The current Nato boss, former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, will finish his term in either 2018 or 2019.

Britain has held the position three times, with Lord Ismay serving as the first secretary general from 1952 to 1957, then Lord Carrington from 1984 to 1988 and Lord Robertson from 1999 to 2003. But advisers think Britain's best chances of securing the leadership again are to put forward an ex-PM as 'more recently former prime ministers have won out over foreign or defence ministers'.

Government allies of Mr Cameron said he is open to taking a top job on the world stage  and believe Britain would benefit from his return to frontline politics. One senior member of Mrs May's Cabinet said: 'We've got to find a role for him  he has so much to offer. We have got to get him batting for Britain again.'

Current chief: Former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, will finish his term in either 2018 or 2019.

Friends of Mr Cameron have said it is crucial for the UK to get the Nato job if it wants to 'play a greater role in European security and show EU allies that we want to play a constructive post-Brexit role on the continent'.

One said: 'The key at this stage is to flag high-level interest in leader level conversations and to show that our eventual candidate is visible and acceptable to everyone.

'That means a would-be candidate would need to start talking about the right issues and show up at various conferences such as the Munich Security Conference and Davos.'

A Nato source said Britain is in a strong position as it 'has weight as militarily the largest and most significant' country in the alliance besides the US.

He added: 'Securing the support of the US will be important to getting the post. It's not necessarily essential at the outset, but the US view in the end carries a lot of weight with other allies and the final decision has to be by consensus of all 28 allies.'

Mr Stoltenberg started his four-year term in 2014. Nato members could choose to extend it by a year or replace him in 2018.

Selection for the job, which is always filled by a senior statesman from a European Nato member country, is through informal diplomatic consultations among allies.

Britain has led the alliance three times with, Lord Carrington, right in charge from 1984 to 1988 and Lord Robertson, left, from 1999 to 2003

Countries put forward candidates behind closed doors, and a decision is then taken by consensus.

Sources close to Mr Cameron last night talked up his suitability for the role, but questioned whether he would want to take the post.

A spokesman for the former prime minister declined to comment. Last month Mr Cameron is believed to have been paid more than 120,000 for a speech to Wall Street financiers in New York that lasted just over an hour.

The 50-year-old is also penning an autobiography that is expected to be published in 2018. Publishers are thought to have been offering between 500,000 and 800,000 for the book.

Nato's secretary general is responsible for steering joint decisions made by allies, represents the alliance on the world stage and heads the staff at its headquarters in Brussels.

Officials believe Cameron (pictured with Obama at a 2014 Nato summit) is the most likely candidate to be successful if Theresa May wants to get a Briton appointed to Europe's top defence job

The top diplomatic post is always filled by a European as Nato's top general, the Supreme Allied Commander, is always an American.

In the days after the Brexit referendum, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon promised that the UK would step up its engagement with Nato.

He said: 'Nato is the cornerstone of our defence and what we'll be telling other leaders is we'll be doing more in Nato to compensate for our withdrawal from the EU.'

Britain is one of only five Nato members on target to meet their commitments to spend 2 per cent of their national income on defence.
Furious over their breakup, the ex-girlfriend of a realtor allegedly killed her former flame as the pair drove through a Philadelphia neighborhood, and now she is charged with his murder, police say.

Terrell L. Bruce, 33, was shot in the head on Tuesday as he drove along Park Line drive in the northwest area of the city's West Mt. Airy, police said, according to NBC 10.

Bruce's former girlfriend, Martina Westcott, was riding in the passenger seat at the time, as police accuse her of pulling the trigger.

Tragic: Terrell L. Bruce (left), 33, was shot in the head on Tuesday as he drove along Park Line drive in the northwest area of the city. Police say his ex, Martina Westcott (right), was riding in the passenger seat at the time, as police accuse her of pulling the trigger

Bruce, who was a realtor in South Jersey, immediately lost control of the Ford Expedition (above) he was driving and crashed into another car before the SUV flipped onto its side

Bruce, who was a realtor in South Jersey, immediately lost control of the Ford Expedition he was driving and crashed into another car before the SUV flipped onto its side.

Officials found him dead a few feet from the truck, as witnesses told police they saw woman flee from the scene after the crash.

Investigators searched the woods nearby and found a white jacket, stained with blood, but did not find a suspect.

Westcott, 27, reportedly ran from the scene to the nearby neighborhood of Roxborough to her mother's house and confessed to shooting Bruce, police sources told NBC 10.

Her mother then called Philadelphia Police's 14th District and helped her daughter turn herself in.

Bruce was found dead a few feet from the truck, as police say Westcott fled the scene and ran to her mother's house. Westcott apparently confessed to her mother about the shooting and then turned herself into police

Westcott, a University of Pennsylvania graduate who started pursing a master's degree in public health at Thomas Jefferson University, was then charged with Bruce's murder after homicide detectives questioned her.

A small caliber handgun was found near the scene of the crash by crime scene investigators on Wednesday.

It's unclear if that was the gun used in Bruce's shooting death.

Westcott (above) was charged with Bruce's murder after homicide detectives questioned her

A GoFundMe page created to help raise money for his funeral arrangements says that he worked as a real estate agent with RE/MAX in Marlton, New Jersey and was a 'selfless, hard worker, widely known for putting the interests of others ahead of his own'.

Since being created Tuesday morning, more than $12,800 has been raised towards the family's $30,000 goal.

Bruce, who studied at Drexel and LaSalle Universities, established a scholarship foundation in his deceased brother's name, Nathaniel M. Kirkland.
Mass immigration from the European Union will be inevitable if the Government shirks a so-called hard Brexit, a report warns today.

Scope to tackle runaway immigration will be extremely limited if the UK remains members of the single market, a think-tank has predicted.

Net migration from the Brussels bloc  those people arriving in Britain minus those leaving  will be unlikely to fall below 155,000 unless Ministers take back full control of the UKs borders. It currently stands at a record 189,000.

Mass immigration from the European Union will be inevitable if the Government shirks a so-called hard Brexit, a report warns today

In a warning to Theresa May, Migrationwatch said it was not possible to be part of the tariff-free trading bloc and control immigration from the EU.

But ahead of the start of Brexit negotiations, European leaders are insisting that Britain must accept free movement of workers in return for being a member of the single market.

The new report, published today, says that failing to scrap the current labour rules would mean very high levels of net migration from the EU... are likely to continue for a considerable time.

Unless Ministers seize back complete control of Britains borders, foreigners will continue to arrive in droves because of Britains booming economy, the report concludes.

Large wage disparities between the UK and Eastern Europe, where the monthly minimum pay in Poland is a third of Britains and a fifth in Romania, would contribute to the influx, despite the post-EU referendum devaluation of the pound.

Workers would also pour in from Southern Europe, including Spain, Italy and Greece, as they fled stagnant eurozone economies with spiralling unemployment.

Total international net migration  including non-EU citizens, which the UK can control  was at a near-record 335,000 in the year to the end of June. The report predicts this would only fall to 250,000 without a hard Brexit.

Migrationwatch, which campaigns for controlled borders, said the implications for the UK were hugely significant.

The paper cited an Office for National Statistics forecast from 2014 which said Britains population - currently 64million  would rise by 12.2million by 2039.

Some 75 per cent of this increase would be due to future migrants and their children.

It would mean Britain will be forced to build the equivalent of ten cities the size of Birmingham, which has a population 1.1million. The increase would be more than the entire current populations of Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania.

Pressure would also build on Britains creaking public services.

In a warning to Theresa May, Migrationwatch said it was not possible to be part of tariff-free trading and control EU immigration

The report notes: At a time when the UK government is seeking to close the budget deficit it is hard to see where the money will come from to provide the additional schools, GP surgeries, hospitals and housing, not to speak of how the countrys road and rail networks will cope with such rapid growth.

Alp Mehmet, vice-chairman of Migrationwatch, said: This research spells out the very serious consequences for our society of net migration continuing at its present scale with membership of the single market resulting in a relentless increase in our population.

An increase of anything like 12 million in just 25 years is, quite simply, unacceptable to the British public and certainly not what they voted for in the referendum.

Failure to secure restrictions on migration was a key reason millions of people voted Leave on June 23. The Prime Minister has reiterated her pledge to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands.

Brexit Secretary David Davis declared earlier this month (DEC) that Britain was not prepared to negotiate with Brussels on immigration and will take back full control of its borders.

His remarks to the Brexit select committee on the shape of a likely divorce deal suggest Britain will impose a strict visa regime, dashing Remainers hopes of a so-called soft Brexit.

They also indicated Mr Davis and Mrs May were not seeking to remain members of the single market.

Ukip immigration spokesman John Bickley said: Migrationwatch have confirmed our worst fears - remaining in the single market will not result in the UK leaving the EU. We will have to continue to accept uncontrolled immigration from the EU.

Theresa May needs to set out in no uncertain terms that when the UK leaves the EU it will also cease to be a member of the single market.
Arrested: Steven Tlapanco (pictured), 20, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly stabbing a man in the head with a steak knife in New York on December 18

A New York man has been arrested for allegedly stabbing a tourist in the head with a steak knife, just days after the victim had proposed to his girlfriend in Central Park.

Connor Rasmussen, 23, had traveled to New York city to propose to his girlfriend but their holiday went horribly awry when Steven Tlapanco, 20, left a knife embedded in the back of his head on December 18, police said.

Tlapanco turned himself in Wednesday for the gruesome assault, and Rasmussen said he was relieved to hear it: 'Now that's not going to happen to anyone else,' he told The New York Daily News.

Rasmussen was looking for a pizza joint with friends on the corner of Madison Avenue and E 46th St, in the heart of Manhattan's Midtown district, when he was attacked.

At first he didn't realize he had been stabbed, he said, but felt the handle of the blade sticking out of the back of his head, near the neck.

Only after he'd pulled the steak knife out did he realize what had happened, and began to staunch the blood pumping from the base of his skull.

Connor Rasmussen (left), 23, traveled from Washington to propose to Jordan Asher (right), 22, (pictured) in Central Park. Two days later he was left with a knife in the base of his skull

The tourist, who had proposed to Jordan Asher, 22, in Central Park two days before, ended up needing eight stitches after the attack, which occurred just four blocks from Grand Central Station.

The plucky victim returned to work as a salesman at a Washington car dealership Tuesday, and will get his stiches out Thursday.

Miraculously, Rasmussen only needed stitches for the two-inch gash. Police later released this image from CCTV footage of the suspect fleeing the scene

'It was just a half-day to see how it would go,' he said. 'My head and my neck are still sore.'

Tlacpanco, who lives in Brooklyn according to his Facebook page, has been charged with attempted murder, assault and possession of a weapon.

After removing the knife from his head, Rasmussen, handed it to police, who checked it for DNA and fingerprints.

Police released surveillance images of the suspect during the investigation in a bid to identify him.

The footage shows a Hispanic man dressed all in black, walking down a street carrying an object in his hand and entering a subway station.

Police said he fled westbound on East 46th Street.

Rasmussen had skipped a job interview to fly to New York from his home in Washington state to propose to Asher just two days earlier.

She accepted and a professional photographer was on hand to capture the emotional moment, along with 11 friends and family.

But memories of their picture-perfect engagement may have been marred by the stabbing.

Rasmussen has returned to work and will get his stitches out Thursday. Tlapanco, who turned himself in, has been charged with attempted murder, assault and possession of a weapon

The incident occurred at the corner of Madison Avenue and East 46th Street in Manhattan, just four blocks from Grand Central Station about 1.45am. Footage shows him carrying an object

Asher's grandmother Linda Colon told the New York Daily News: 'It was a 2-inch gash. If it could have been two inches or an inch on either side, from what the doctors said, it would have killed him.'

A CAT scan found the 23-year-old did not suffer any serious injuries, and he was released from Bellevue Hospital later on Sunday after receiving stitches.

Asher's brother, who was with Rasmussen at the time, expressed his shock, but said the victim remained calm and did not seem to be in much pain.

The victim's female friend also suffered scratches to her face.

'He always loved New York and my daughter said now he hates New York,' Colon told the Daily News.

'They were having a wonderful experience and now, a horrible experience. They are all very traumatized.'

Rasmussen was looking for a pizza place with friends in the typically tourist-packed area of Midtown when the attack occurred. A female friend also suffered scratches to her face

Rasmussen was walking near East 46th Street and Madison Avenue (pictured) when a steak knife was lodged in the back of his head
The ASB ruled the asterix on the 'u' did not 'obscure the meaning of the word'

But SBS argued it was part of a television series featuring rapper Action Bronson

A billboard campaign advertising SBS's show 'F***, that's delicious,' has been banned by the ad watchdog for 'obscene' language as 'young children can see it every day'.

Furious parents made complaints to the Advertising Standard Board about the campaign surrounding the Viceland show, which focuses on American rapper Action Bronson travelling to the best restaurants across Australia.

The board found the asterix on just the 'u' of the swearword failed to 'obscure the meaning of the word' and deemed it too explicit for the general public.

A billboard campaign advertising SBS's show 'F***, that's delicious,' featuring American rapper Action Bronson (pictured) has been banned by the ad watchdog for 'obscene' language

Furious parents made complaints to the Advertising Standard Board about the campaign surrounding the Viceland show, which focuses on American rapper Action Bronson travelling to the best restaurants across Australia

SBS defended the billboard campaign, saying the poster only 'alludes' to a swear word and by using an asterick, lessens the impact of the word.

'The word is used in its colloquial sense, as an exclamation of pleasure. This is in keeping with the character of the program and the presenter,' SBS said.

'The phrase is not presented in an aggressive or sexual manner'.

The station also said the posters are directed at people aged 16-39 and is 'modified' with the asterick for children.

But the Board said the meaning of the word was 'clear enough that most young children would be able to read and understand it'.

'Consistent with previous determinations, the majority of the Board considered that the language in the advertising was too explicit for a broad audience that would include children'.

The complaint was upheld and SBS assured the ASB the campaign had ended and the posters no longer existed.

The television program, 'F***, that's delicious,' follows Action Bronson as he eats at the best restaurants in Australia and has reached its second season.

The television program, 'F***, that's delicious,' follows Action Bronson as he eats at the best restaurants in Australia and has reached its second season

The complaint was upheld and SBS assured the ASB the campaign had ended and the posters no longer existed

As well as the Viceland campaign, the Advertising Standards Board also banned a 'guerilla' campaign selling Northern Territory tourism merchandise emblazoned with the a lewd slogan, 'CU in the NT'.

The website, called 'NT Official,' sells t-shirts, singlets and stickers decorated with the slogan: 'See You in the NT - The top end, different from the bottom end.'

'The advertisement had been clearly designed to highlight letters to form a strong reference to the word "c***",' the ASB ruled.

'The Board noted community standards research into language had shown that the community considered the "c-word" to be obscene and not appropriate in advertising in any form'.

As well as the Viceland campaign, the Advertising Standards Board also banned a 'guerilla' campaign selling Northern Territory tourism merchandise emblazoned with the a lewd slogan, 'CU in the NT'
Donald Trump tricked the media into crediting him with the creation of 8,000 new jobs on Wednesday even though the company creating the jobs had already rolled out its plan weeks ago without any evidence that the president-elect had a hand in it.

Trump boasted on Wednesday that telecommunications giant Sprint would bring 5,000 jobs that had been off-shored back to the US while an additional 3,000 jobs would be created by OneWeb.

On Wednesday, Trump stood in front of his Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach to announce Sprint was bringing back the jobs.

The jobs would be in a 'variety of functions' said Sprint on its website, 'including customer care and sales teams.'

But Sprint acknowledged that the jobs announced by Trump were actually part of a larger deal that had been consummated with a Japanese billionaire weeks before the election.

'The 5,000 jobs announced today are part of the 50,000 jobs that Masa Son [Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of SoftBank] announced a few weeks ago, but these jobs will be funded by Sprint,' a Sprint spokesperson told CNBC.

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Trump talked to reporters in front of Mar-A-Lago and announced the creation of 8,000 new jobs, from Sprint and OneWeb

The jobs Trump was talking about had been part of a $50 billion investment plan by Japans SoftBank Group Corp., which developed it in October, weeks before Trump's election, according toThe Huffington Post.

OneWeb plans to set up a factory in Florida to manufacture satellites to provide cheap broadband Internet access, according to NPR.

The Sprint jobs should be available by the end of 2017.

'We are excited to work with President-Elect Trump and his Administration to do our part to drive economic growth and create jobs in the US,' Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure.

Softbank owns 80 percent of Sprint and this month it invested $1 billion in OneWeb, according to USA Today.

Trump answered a variety of questions, at one point joined by boxing promoter Don King (right) who was waving an Israeli flag

Trump said it's 'very exciting' and a 'nice change' that Sprint promised to bring 8,000 jobs back to the US from 'all over the world'

Son said this was his 'first step' in his commitment to Trump.

'Because of what's happening and the spirit and the hope, I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they're going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States and taking them from other countries,' Trump said while standing in the doorway of Mar-A-Lago. 'That's very exciting.'

Trump and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son announced his company would bring 50,000 jobs to the US

'They're coming back to the United States from all over the world, which is a nice change.'

He called 'Masa' a terrific guy.

Trump also mentioned he had a 'very nice conversation' with President Obama, despite his recent sniping at him on Twitter.

Son is in the middle of raising a $100billion fund with Saudi Arabia, according to the outlet.

Even though Trump played no evident part in the job creations, his incoming press secretary continued to push the claim that the president-elect should get credit.
Three young girls who were married off to polygamist leader Warren Jeffs 12 years ago are still missing, as their sect leader in Canada is on trial for arranging the cross border wedding ceremonies.

Canada's biggest polygamist, Winston Blackmore, 59, is currently being prosecuted by the Canadian government for polygamy, as the leader of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) community in Bountiful, British Columbia has a total of 27 wives and 145 children.

The charges against FLDS Bishop Winston Blackmore came after Special Prosecutor Peter Wilson approved three 'unlawful removal of a child from Canada' charges against three members of the same polygamous community of Bountiful.

The three members, Brandon J. Blackmore, his wife, Emily Ruth Gail Blackmore and FLDS Bishop James Oler, were charged by authorities with alleged child trafficking offences that originate from 2004 and 2005 when they reportedly sent three under age girls - Millie Blackmore, Alyshia Rae Blackmore and Nolita Collen Blackmore - across the Canadian border to marry the now imprisoned FLDS leader Jeffs.

Canada's biggest polygamist, Winston Blackmore (center), 59, is currently being prosecuted by the Canadian government for polygamy. He has 27 wives and 145 children

As the sect leader in Bountiful, British Columbia, Winston Blackmore had a large amount of children (above) and is accused of helping to arrange the cross border wedding ceremonies for child brides

Brandon J. Blackmore and Emily Blackmore are now separated as husband and wife, but their charges center on the couple's 13-year-old daughter, Millie Blackmore, who was married off to a then-48-year-old Jeffs in 2004.

According to VICE, their son and her half-brother, Brandon S. Blackmore revealed the FLDS leader married Millie moments before he presided over his wedding ceremony in Colorado City, Arizona, as he was a member of Jeff's flock at the time.

Millie Blackmore is not the only sibling of Brandon S. Blackmore who was married to Jeffs, as Annie Mae Blackmore was married to the FLDS leader at an unknown date.

Apparently Jeffs sent word to their father in Canada that he also wanted to take on Millie Blackmore as a bride.

A March 1, 2004 journal entry dictated by Jeffs to one of his wives and was later confiscated by U.S. authorities in Texas apparently reveals what happened.

'I sat down with Brandon [J] Blackmore and his wife and his daughter, gave a training on the redemption of Zion in brief, in summary, and this girl was called on a mission, and they received it joyfully,' the entry reads.

'And there Mildred Marlene Blackmore, age 13, was sealed to Warren Steed Jeffs for time and all eternity.'

Millie Blackmore (above) was transported by her parents from Canada to the US to marry Warren Jeffs in 2004 when she was aged 13. Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigators are now searching for her

Alyshia Rae Blackmore (above) was also taken from the community in Bountiful to marry Jeffs when she was aged 12. Authorities are now searching for her as well

It also notes that her father witnessed the ceremony to Jeffs, as Brandon S. Blackmore had no idea she had got married the same day or even that she was in Colorado City at the time.

He explained to VICE that he didn't see Millie Blackmore for years around the Bountiful community, as people claimed that she was 'on a mission for the church.'

In 2013, investigators with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) asked Brandon S. Blackmore to listen to a recording of Jeffs having sex, as they wanted to know if the person on the tape was his teenage half-sister.

Even though her name was not said aloud on the tape, he could tell that it was his half-sister's voice and told RCMP investigators.

'He was asking her how it felt and a bunch of weird things,' Brandon S. Blackmore told VICE in an interview.

Brandon S. Blackmore shared that RCMP investigators told him the tape with Jeffs and his half-sister was recorded sometime around 2004 or 2005 at a motel in New Mexico.

Rachel Jeffs, the 32-year-old daughter from the FLDS leaders' second marriage confirmed that a series of teenage girls, including Millie Blackmore, had arrived to their household.

Rachel, who left the sect in 2015, told VICE that when she inquired about who the girls were, she was told they would be new wives for her father.

She explained that she never asked her father about why he married girls who were underage.

Millie Blackmore is not the only sibling of Brandon S. Blackmore who was married to Jeffs (above), as their sister Annie Mae Blackmore was married to the FLDS leader at an unknown date. Her whereabouts are unknown

'If you do, then you lose your place in the church,' Rachel explained.

'I wasn't so worried about losing my place in the church. I just would never get to see my family again.'

She shared that she remembered the teenage Millie Blackmore crying a lot.

Rachel added that the situation worsened when Alyshia Rae Blackmore and Nolita Colleen Blackmore arrived in December 2005 at the Yearning for Zion ranch, which is a compound for the FLDS in Texas.

'I saw her struggle emotionally a lot,' Rachel said of Millie. 'She wasn't really stable.'

Now, Mounties with the RCMP are searching for Millie Blackmore along with two other Canadian women, Alyshia Rae Blackmore and Nolita Collen Blackmore.

The other two women were also married to Jeffs when they were aged 12, as authorities believe all three of the women are now in their early to mid 20s.

It is believed that the three missing women are loyal to Jeffs, as many women apart of the sect are taught to be loyal to their husbands.

It's thought that Millie Blackmore, Alyshia Rae Blackmore and Nolita Collen Blackmore are all living on one of the many FLDS compounds in the U.S., or are being housed at secret locations that are known as 'Houses of Hiding' among members who are waiting for Jeffs to be released from prison (even though he is serving a life sentence).

The charges against Brandon J. Blackmore and Emily Blackmore are thought to be the first time that any parents within the religion have faced in relation to the reported pipeline of child brides that operated for years between the FLDS sects in Bountiful and the headquarters in Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah, according to VICE.

Oler is accused of having taken a 15-year-old girl across the Canadian border to the U.S. to marry then-24-year-old James Leroy.

Oler was also charged with polygamy along with his brother-in-law Winston Blackmore, who faced the same charge previously years ago.

In 2007, Winston Blackmore was first arrested for polygamy, but those charges were later dropped over concerns of how the special prosecutor was selected, the Salt Lake City Tribune reported.

Officials say much of the evidence for the cases against Winston Blackmore (above) and the other three members stem from the investigation into Jeffs

Winston Blackmore was charged again in 2014, and recently claimed that he and his wives are officially 'friends', adding that despite them being friends, 'they still charge us with polygamy'.

Officials say much of the evidence for the cases against Winston Blackmore and the other three members stem from the investigation into Jeffs.

All of the marriages within the FLDS have been reportedly stopped since Jeffs arrest, but it's unclear if members of the religion have continued to transport child brides across the border.

Authorities in both the US and Canada have been searching for signs of human trafficking and other crimes that could possibly be happening by members of the FLDS.

It's unclear if more charges are expected to be filed against FLDS members, as RCMP sergeant Terry Jacklin told VICE that the investigation continues into their marriages.
The man accused of killing a nine-year-old boy while allegedly drink driving on Christmas Day has been charged after handing himself into police.

Adrian Murray, 24, is accused of running over Josiah Sisson with his utility truck as he looked at Christmas lights near his Springwood home, south of Brisbane, with his family on Sunday.

On Thursday, Murray was seen leaving his home wearing dark sunglasses and it is believed he went to the police station to be charged for the incident, according to the Courier Mail.

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On Thursday, Murray was seen leaving his home (pictured) wearing dark sunglasses and it is believed he went to the police station to be charged for the incident

Adrian Murray, 24, who is accused of killing nine-year-old Josiah Sisson while dunk, has been filmed leaving his house for the first time since the crash

Murray wore dark glasses and did not speak to journalists during his brief public appearance

He was formally charged with dangerous driving causing death and driving motor vehicle whilst under the influence.

He is due to appear in the Beenleigh Magistrates Court on February 15.

On Wednesday, Murray was seen leaving his home wearing dark sunglasses and surrounded by friends and family.

Murray was escorted to the car by a pastor, who told reporters he was trying to be 'respectful' in the time of mourning, The Courier Mail reported.

In a statement issued through pastor Peter Field, Josiah's family said they are willing to forgive Murray for his alleged actions and want to 'move forward' with their lives.

He said: '[Josiah's family] want to say they believe in the power of forgiveness, as Christmas is about Jesus Christ being born and coming into the world to bring forgiveness.

'They are now processing this and they're moving forward. On behalf of the family they want to say thank you, in particular to the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital who have done an absolutely outstanding job since Christmas night when the boy was brought to the hospital.

'The service and the care they have given has been nothing short of sublime. The family now ask that their privacy be respected as they have to process the grief.

Witnesses accuse Murray of being at the wheel of a reversing ute when the engine failed, causing it to mount the pavement and hit Sisson

Josiah was looking at Christmas lights with his family on Sunday night when a reversing car is believed to have lost control and run him down

'They have another young son and they are all trying to come to terms with the loss of this young boy, as nobody would anticipate something like this could happen to you on Christmas.'

Murray's friends are thought to have been among mourners laying flowers at the spot where Josiah died on Tuesday.

The 24-year-old's friends were speaking to Josiah's family during the emotional scene as the groups cried and embraced one another.

The young boy was looking at Christmas lights with his family on Sunday night when he was struck by an out-of-control ute.

Witnesses said it appeared as if the driver was trying to reverse before the engine gave out, causing the vehicle to mount the pavement.

Josiah was transported to hospital in critical condition before his family made the decision to turn off life support on Tuesday night

Murray, who allegedly broke down in the street after hitting the boy, has not yet been charged over the Christmas Day death

The driver was said to have broken down in the street, sobbing and 'wishing they could die'.

Witnesses said Josiah's mother, who was standing nearby, also broke down over his body in the street as neighbours rushed to perform CPR until paramedics arrived.

The boy was taken to hospital in critical condition, before his family made the decision to turn off life support on Tuesday evening.
Salesman at the clothing store, Durga Prasad Yadav, was charged with assault

from Auckland was on a

while trying on dress in India

A New Zealand schoolgirl has been sexually assaulted while trying on a dress in a change room in India.

The 16-year-old student from Auckland was on Tuesday allegedly assaulted by a clothing shop salesman in Varanasi, which lies along the banks of the Ganges River in Uttar Pradesh.

The shop was inside a hotel on Mall Road, where the teenager was staying as part of a cultural studies tour.

A New Zealand schoolgirl has been sexually assaulted while trying on a dress in a change room in India (stock image)

The school group had returned from sightseeing when some of them decided to go to the clothing shop.

The alleged victim was trying on dresses when she was assaulted.

She told her friends, before hotel management was alerted.

The salesman, Durga Prasad Yadav was charged with assault or criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty, The Times of India reported.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the New Zealand High Commission in India had not been contacted for consular advice or assistance.
The sole survivor of a horrific boat accident that killed most of her family will face her fears and swim near where the tragedy occurred over three decades later.

Susan Berg was just 15 years old when the small fishing boat her family were on started taking on water in Melbourne's Western Port Bay late in the afternoon.

Leaving her parents and older brother behind to get help, Susan swam for almost four hours in freezing cold, shark-infest waters as darkness fell around her.

She reached a near-deserted Island and raised the alarm, but at sunrise the bodies of her 16-year-old brother Bill, mother and father were found floating in the water.

Now, 31 years later, 46-year-old Susan is returning to the ocean to face her three biggest fears - swimming, water and sharks.

Susan Berg, 46, will face her darkest fears and compete in a swimming race after losing three members of her family in a tragic boat accident at the age of 15

Susan (pictured left with family), was the lone survivor of a horrific boat accident in 1985 that claimed the lives of her 16-year-old brother, mother and father

In the years after her family's death, she headed down a 'path of destruction' - seeking solace in casual sex, partying and drugs

Speaking to the Herald Sun, Ms Berg said that for a number of years she had blamed herself for the death of her family.

'I never went to the beach, I avoided pools,' she said.

'I thought it was my fault.'

Abandoning her Christian upbringing, things went quickly downhill for Ms Berg as she sought solace in casual sex, partying and drugs.

'In one night I had lost my family, my home, my security  and in the months that followed, I also lost myself,' she wrote in a piece for Daily Life.

'Sad and alone I headed down a path of self-destruction.'

By the age of 16 Susan had also lost her grandmother, uncle and cousin and been raped - an incident she says left her contemplating suicide.

It took the birth of Susan's son William at the age of 20 to turn her life around, reconnecting her to the sense of family and forcing her to face her demons

She later found freedom in riding motorbikes and eventually plucked up the courage to go back into the ocean

Now aged 46, Ms Berg is training (pictured) for the Lorne Pier to Pub 1200-metre swim

It took the birth of her son William at the age of 20 to turn her life around, reconnecting her to the notion of family and forcing her to face her demons.

She found freedom in riding motorbikes, and eventually plucked up the courage to begin training for the Lorne Pier to Pub 1200m swim - the largest open ocean swim.

'In one night I had lost my family, my home, my security  and in the months that followed, I also lost myself

Joining a swimming group, she overcame paralysing fear to get back in the water.

'My anxiety levels were through the roof,' she told the Herald Sun.

'I couldn't bring myself to put my head under. The sensation of being surrounded by water was almost too much.'

In just over a week, Susan will return to the site of so much personal suffering and torment to join 4,300 other swimmers in what will be a truly special race.

To read more of Susan's inspirational story you can purchase her memoir 'The Girl Who Lived' here.

The GMBHA Lorne Pier to Pub swim will take place on January 7.

Ms Berg is also using the swim to raise money for domestic violence support service McAuley Community Services for Women.
Mohr's social media account is full of images showcasing his lavish lifestyle

He owned a cafe linked with Bondi Rescue but put it up for sale in January 2016

Police allege they tried to smuggle over a tonne of the drug on a fishing trawler

Darren Mohr, 42, was one of 15 men arrested for importing cocaine to Australia

A business man allegedly involved in a 'sophisticated' drug syndicate that tried to import more than a tonne of cocaine into Australia flaunted his wealth and extravagant lifestyle on social media before his arrest.

Darren Mohr could face life imprisonment if found guilty for his alleged involvement in a Sydney-based drug ring dismantled by police following raids on Christmas Day at the Sydney Fish Markets.

The 42-year-old bowed his head as he was pictured sitting on a Rose Bay sidewalk, in Sydney's eastern suburbs, in handcuffs and surrounded by police on Tuesday after officers found 500 kilograms on a boat in Parsley Bay.

The image was in stark contrast to the tattooed businessman's online persona, which shows Mohr tanning on remote beaches, wearing designer suits at prestigious yacht clubs during the Grand Prix in Monaco and flying high on a private helicopter.

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Darren Mohr (pictured with girlfriend Krissy Marsh) could face life imprisonment if he is found guilty for his alleged involvement in a 'sophisticated' Sydney-based drug syndicate

Images of his arrest in Rose Bay have been in stark contrast to his extravagant online persona

Mohr's social media accounts boast images of him surrounded by designer goods, relaxing on remote beaches and riding around on two differnet boats

Mohr spent Christmas in the Gold Coast with his family and girlfriend of nine months, bikini model Krissy Marsh, who documented their sun-baking sessions, restaurant visits and helicopter ride on Facebook.

The mother-of-two featured in an image with his parents and smiled with a headset on as they hovered over picturesque scenery boasting no one 'had a better day than us'.

They uploaded a playful video as they 'cooked' beside a pool in Byron Bay and another candid image at a beach in Burleigh Heads.

Ms Marsh posted a picture in early December of the day the 'stars aligned' and their eight year friendship turned into the 'best relationship' she ever had.

Mohr (left) spent Christmas in the Gold Coast with his family and girlfriend of nine months, bikini model Krissy Marsh (right)

Mohr and the mother-of-two smiled as they hovered over picturesque scenery during a helicopter tour and boasted no one 'had a better day than us'

Darren Mohr could face life imprisonment when he fronts court for his alleged involvement in a Sydney-based drug ring

Ms Marsh posted a picture in early December of the day the 'stars aligned' and their eight year friendship turned into the 'best relationship' she ever had

'You are my king... 2017 is going to be so much fun,' she wrote.

The fitness model and personal trainer posted another selfie of her and Mohr following his arrest proclaiming her everlasting love for the 42-year-old.

The happy couple were pictured donning designer garb in front of a Rolls Royce before her sister's wedding in October, with Mohr posting a touching tribute to his partner.

'All the cars bikes and boats mean nothing unless you got someone along for the ride. Always by my side.'

Ms Marsh wore a diamond encrusted Rolex believed to be worth more than $45,000, while Mohr had a Hubolt wrapped around his wrist which retails at around $17,000.

The fitness model and personal trainer posted a selfie of her and Mohr (pictured) to Facebook following his arrest where she proclaimed her everlasting love for the 42-year-old

The glamorous couple show off their designer watches as they drive to a family wedding in a Rolls Royce

She posted a video of her children jumping into the harbour from his boat (pictured), which was searched on Tuesday following his arrest

The 500 kilograms of cocaine seized (pictured) is believed to be worth more than $15 million

Ms Marsh (pictured) said she has known Mohr for around eight years and removed her Facebook account following his arrest

The couple shared an image as they made their way Bangkok for a holiday in September

She posted a video of her children jumping into the harbour from his boat, which was searched on Tuesday following his arrest.

The couple have travelled to Thailand together, while Mohr has been on a string of international trips in the last year.

He has uploaded images from beaches in Vietnam and Thailand, while he claimed to have motorcycled across the Himalayas and India in July.

Mohr also posed for a picture with friends at a prestigious Riva Lounge yacht club in Monaco and snapped a shot of his view at lunch as the boat he travelled on cruised around the harbour.

The 42-year-old posted a picture as he tanned on a beach in Phuket, Thailand

Mohr posed for a picture with friends at a prestigious Riva Lounge yacht club in Monaco

He shared images of his view as the boat he travelled on cruised around the Monaco harbour

The muscle-bound businessman has also been pictured lounging on a leather couch decked out in Versace pillows and blankets next to a large black dog and a macaw.

Mohr was a body builder and previously owned Bondi Rescue HQ cafe, where lifeguards from the famed reality television show helped run and promote the local haunt.

He announced he was selling the venue in January, which now trades as Bucklers Cafe.

Other glimpses of his luxurious lifestyle including an image of his gold Hubolt watch posted from the Gold Coast and most recently a picture of a matte Harley Davidson.

Mohr also owned a cigarette racing boat he often took out in Sydney harbour.

In October Mohr shared a picture from his boat in Double Bay, which was searched on Tuesday

Police said nothing was recovered from the boat which was moored at Double Bay

Mohr previously owned Bondi Rescue HQ cafe, where lifeguards from the famed reality television show (pictured) helped run and promote the local haunt

Mohr shared glimpses of his luxurious lifestyle including an image of a gold watch from the Gold Coast (left) and most recently a picture of a matte Harley Davidson (right)

Mohr also owned a cigarette racing boat he often took out in Sydney harbour

Mohr was denied bail in Parramatta Local Court on Wednesday, with his 14 alleged accomplices also remanded in custody.

The syndicate, which also involved former Sydney Roosters player John Tobin, was dismantled after police seized more than a tonne of cocaine they allege was destined for the Australian drug market.

Police found a $15 million haul of cocaine on an inflatable boat in Parsley Bay, which they allege the group imported on the Sydney-based fishing trawler Dalrymple.

The 500 kilograms of cocaine was wrapped in plastic and emblazoned with Armani branding.

Mohr was denied bail when his case was heard in Parramatta Local Court on Wednesday

Police made several arrests after executing a search warrant on the fishing trawler Dalrymple

Police said the raids were linked to the discovery of 500 kilograms of cocaine from an inflatable boat in Brooklyn

A plain-clothed officer carried a duffle bag from the boat $15 million worth of cocaine was found on

The $15 million haul of cocaine (pictured) was emblazoned with Armani branding

Police allege the group tried to import five shipments of cocaine and heroin from South America, including 600 kilograms of cocaine worth $197 million that was intercepted by the French Navy in Tahiti in March.

The 1.1 tonne seizure is the largest in Australian history, according to police.

A 32 kilogram haul of heroin police believe the men were trying to ship to Australia was also seized in Fiji.
The new regulations will apply to all officers who have religious requirements

The New York Police Department is now allowing officers to wear beards and grow turbans in a bid to accommodate Sikh recruits.

Sikh officers will be allowed to wear turbans in place of the traditional police cap and grow beards up to a half-inch long, which are required for religious reasons.

Police Commissioner James O'Neill announced the new rules that affect all religious members on Wednesday following a graduation ceremony for new police recruits.

Sikh officers will now be allowed to wear turbans in place of the traditional police cap and grow beards up to a half-inch long

Turbans worn by officers must be navy blue and have the NYPD insignia attached

Officers must first get approval and the turbans must be navy blue and have the NYPD insignia attached.

Male observant Sikhs often cover their heads with turbans  which are considered sacred  and refrain from shaving their beards.

Before, Sikh officers had to fit their turbans under their department issued cap. Beards were forbidden because they interfered with wearing gas masks.

Those who had a medical or religious exemption could wear facial hair only up to 1mm in length.

NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill speaks to new graduates of the Police Academy during their graduation ceremony in New York

O'Neill said there are about 160 Sikhs serving in the police department.

'We're making this change to make sure that we allow everybody in New York City that wants to apply and have the opportunity to work in the greatest police department in the nation, to make sure we give them that opportunity,' he added.

The move will also apply to Muslim recruits. Muslim women in the NYPD have been allowed to wear a hijab for several years.

At the Police Academy graduation ceremony yesterday, of the 557 recruits 33 were Muslim and two Sikh.

The Sikh Officers Association welcomed the move as 'a proud moment for [the] Sikh community'.

O'Neil said there are currently about 160 Sikhs serving in the police department

The Sikh Officers Association welcomed the move as 'a proud moment for [the] Sikh community'

The new policy comes just months after a Muslim officer brought a legal case saying restrictions on beard length were unconstitutional.

Masood Syed, a legal clerk in the NYPD who had worn a beard for years for religious reasons was told by his supervisors to shorten it.

When he refused he was suspended, but NYPD reinstated Syed in June and the department agreed to review its policies.
Kellyanne Conway may have managed to get Donald Trump to Washington, but she is finding it harder to do the same for her children.

Conway, who will serve a counselor to Trump in the White House, reportedly confided in friends about how difficult it has been to find a DC school for her children.

She was apparently telling parents at Elisabeth Morrow School in Englewood, New Jersey about the uphill battle during a student concert last week, according to the New York Post.

Conway is seen with her four children and her husband, George, at a New York Yankees game earlier this year

Conway's twins, George and Claudia, currently take classes at the exclusive private school.

'After the concert, all the parents converged on Kellyanne, congratulating and sucking up to her,' the newspaper claims an insider said.

'Kellyanne is asking everyone with connections to DC schools for help.'

President Obama and the First Lady sent their daughters Malia and Sasha to Sidwell Friends School when the family moved to DC.

Bill and Hillary Clinton also chose Sidwell for daughter Chelsea, as did Al and Tipper Gore for their son Albert Gore III, after they won the 1992 election.

Malia and Chelsea both graduated from Sidwell, and the Obamas have made the decision to stay in DC so that Sasha can finish out high school at the highly selective Quaker institution.

The 49-year-old is married to New York lawyer George T. Conway III, and the couple has four children together.

However, Conway hit back at the allegations, instead claiming she is potentially being treated unfairly due to her Trump ties.

'I would not characterize myself as "worried" so much as amused by the silence and sighs on the other end of the phone when friends and allies have made preliminary inquiries on our behalf,' she told the Post.

'Kellyanne is asking everyone with connections to DC schools for help,' a source said. Conway is pictured with her family at a Philadelphia Phillies game in 2015

Donald Trump gestures to Kellyanne Conway after addressing his supporters and celebrating his Presidential win at his election night event at the New York Hilton

Conway was tapped as a member of Trump's official cabinet last week, despite previously saying she would not join his White House team.

The transition team described her position as that of a close adviser to Trump, who would work alongside his senior leadership to 'effectively message and execute the administration's legislative priorities and actions.'

'Kellyanne Conway has been a trusted advisor and strategist who played a crucial role in my victory,' Trump said in the release.

'She is a tireless and tenacious advocate of my agenda and has amazing insights on how to effectively communicate our message,' the president-elect continued. 'I am pleased that she will be part of my senior team in the West Wing.'
The investor of arguably the most famous cup in the world has died.

Robert Leo Hulseman, who invented the Red Solo Cup, such a popular party staple it even has its own hit song by Toby Keith, died December 21 age 84 surrounded by his large family in Northfield, Illinois.

Hulseman worked at Solo Cup Company for 60 years, according to his obituary.

Red Solo Cup investor Robert Leo Hulseman died at age 84

During that time, he invented the Red Solo Cup sometime in the 1970s.

Part of the popularity of the cup, despite its eye-catching crimson color, making it stand out on a crowded table full of brown and green bottles of beer and wine - is its inside rings with 1.5 ounces for liquor, 5 ounces for wine and 12 ounces for beer.

It's not clear why the solo cup was made bright red, but Solo Cup brand manager Rebecca Bikoff told Vice in June, 'It makes sense that consumers would gravitate to this color when you think about the kind of occasions it's used at.'

While the company is best known for its square red cups, it also sells plastic and paper cups and plates of varying colors and designs.

Hulseman began working at his father's company at 18 and played various roles in the business until it was a $1.6billion a year in revenue company, according to Yahoo Finance.

The Red Colo Cup, above, a staple at tailgates and keggers, was invented sometime in the '70s

His father, Leo Hulseman, invented a solo cup, a paper cup he made in his home and sold to water companies in the 1930s. It's unclear whether this is the first party cup, but Solo Cup spokesperson Kim Healy said in 2011 it was 'one of the first,' according to Slate.

In 2004, Solo Cup acquired Sweetheart, another cup company, but founded on $1.1 billion in debt, with Moody's lowering the credit rating on its bond, according to Forbes.

In 2012, the company was acquired for around $1billion by Dart Company.

The cup has the unique distinction of having a hit song inspired by it, sung by country crooner Toby Keith. 'You're more than amazing, you're more than fantastic,' Keith sings about the cup.

Hulseman had 10 children, nine of whom survive him. He is also survived by his wife of 60 years, Sheila.

While his cups may be a familiar, even required, sight at raucous, alcohol-fueled parties, Hulseman was known as deeply religious and liked to pen poems to God.
Victoria has released a colourful new train network map inspired by the London Underground, but social media users have labelled it 'a joke'.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews called the new map a 'big reveal' when it was released on Thursday, but some Melbourne residents were quick to disagree.

Public transport users slammed the new map as 'just a pretty picture' with no real substance.

'Time for the big reveal. Victoria, meet your new-look train network map - coming to a station near you in 2017,' Premier Daniel Andrews said

'You underestimate your electorate. This new image is just that  spin with no substance,' Mr Balmer wrote on Twitter.

'It is an updated map but it doesn't represent any new lines. Just a pretty picture to hoodwink the gullible.'

Another Twitter user also argued the new colour scheme simply buried the network's lack of any real change.

'Well look who got a set of coloured crayons for Christmas and can colour between the lines. Nice,' Mr O'Grady said.

'We've all gotten used to the old yellow and blue diagram over the years, but it has its problems and it's past its use-by date,' Premier Daniel Andrews (pictured) said

Other users were less discrete about their anger saying 'big reveal my a**e'.

The colour scheme was not the main cause for concern for some public transport users though.

Hoards of Twitter users called out Premier Andrews and his team about their apparent inability to differentiate between a train and a bus.

Some people argued the SkyBus line which transports people to Melbourne Airport was presented as a rail service on the new map.

Hoards of Twitter users called Premier Andrews and his team out about their apparent inability to differentiate between a train and a bus on the new map

'Why is traffic-limited bus service masquerading as a train line? SkyBus is not an airport train,' Mr Oddie said.

'SkyBus is now classified as a train?' another user questioned.

Premier Andrews also released the map on Reddit on Wednesday night where he told users he thought they 'should be among the first to see Victoria's new train network map'.

'We've all gotten used to the old yellow and blue diagram over the years, but it has its problems and it's past its use-by date. This rework is more modern and makes clearer which trains go where,' he said.

But online sleuths argued the colour scheme didn't make the rail service any better.

One man expressed his frustration about the fact Melbourne still offered no rail service to and from the international airport.

'How is it we (are the) only major airport with no rail access?' Mr Brown said.

Premier Andrews also pointed to the map's inclusion of the regional networks, but people were quick to label that a disaster too.

'(Daniel Andrews') ploy of adding the regional lines screams 'more votes!' He's a fl*g. An inept fl*g,' Mr Seyler said.

One user even recovered a map of the Victorian train network from 1930 and argued the rail system had regressed since then.

'Here's the coverage we had in 1930. If even a few of those good lines were open still, imagine how fewer trucks would be on our overcrowded roads,' Mr Cluff said.

'And here's the coverage we had in 1930,' Caleb Cluff posted alongside a map from 1930

Victorian Minister for Public Transport Jacinta Allan said the coloured map was 'a simple change that will make it quicker and easier for people to find their way around Melbourne and Victoria'.

In a statement released after the map's unveiling on Thursday, Minister Allan said it was a new-look map intended to make it easier for passengers to decipher.

There was no mention that they intended to unveil new train lines or any changes to the current network with the new map.
Despite a mild Christmas in some parts of the U.S., winter will return with a vengeance this weekend as a blizzard batters New England and temperatures are expected to plummet across the continental states.

Temperatures are likely to drop to record lows in the first week of 2017, leaving at least some of all 48 of the contiguous U.S. at 32 degrees or under.

But before then New England will spend Thursday through Friday in the middle of blizzard conditions that will drop as much as two feet of snow on several of its states.

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Blizzard conditions: Strong winds and snow will likely fall over New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine from Thursday evening to Friday morning, dropping one-to-two feet of snow

Powder to the people: New Hampshire is likely to get the lion's share of the snow, but all states in the area will be affected. Travel is likely to be disrupted and power lines cut

Dug in: While Christmas has been milder in some parts of the country, heavy snowfall has already been seen across much of the US, such as here in Mandan, North Dakota

Blisteringly cold winds and thick snow will hit New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine Thursday evening, with most of those states receiving between one and two feet of powder.

The blizzard - which will have winds of at least 35 miles per hour - will press on to midday Friday, causing extensive travel disruptions and the threat of power outages.

Visibility could drop as low as a quarter of a mile or less for three hours, the data - provided by AccuWeather - said.

Western and central areas of Connecticut and Massachusetts are expected to receive snow too, though in less severe amounts.

Outside of New England, Boston and Providence, Rhode Island are likely to experience winds of up to 50 miles per hour - though they won't receive much snow.

In fact, rain is expected in the I-95 corridor south of Boston.

In addition to the Northeast, parts of the Northwest are also expected to receive snow

Today and Friday's snow will be concentrated in the New England states of New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, with some lake-effect snow in upstate New York and northwestern Pennsylvania

Snow is also expected to fall - though only up to six inches by Friday night - in Ohio, Pennsylvania and upstate New York.

The Cascade Mountains in Washington state and the and mountains in western Wyoming and northern Idaho are also likely to receive snow.

All of this is just a taster for next week, however, when temperatures look set to drop to below freezing across the country.

On his website, NASA climate scientist and meteorologist Dr Roy W Spencer warned that the U.S. is facing a 'widespread and persistent' cold air break that will enter through Montana and the Dakotas.

Winds: Friday will also see strong winds in the area, with gusts of 40-45mph disrupting travel. And the weather will drop into 2017, which may have the lowest opening week on record

The temperature there will drop to around -30 degrees, and the cold wave will push down through all 48 contiguous U.S. states, leaving no state untouched.

Only southeastern California and Arizona, and the southern tip of Florida, are likely to remain above freezing. Even then, they are likely to only be in the single digits.

And that is likely to continue into the second week of January as a second wave of freezing air looks set to push down from Canada, keeping temperatures down.

Ironically, one part of the U.S. that doesn't look likely to receive feet of snow before the New Year is probably also the only one that might really want it.

The North Dakota city of Bismarck is currently 2.3 inches of snow away from breaking its record, The Bismarck Tribune reported.

According to the National Weather Service, in 2008 Bismarck set a record for snowfall with 45.8 inches falling between July and December.

As of Tuesday 43.5 inches had fallen this year. 'It's getting close,' said Rick Krolak, observing program leader at the Bismarck office of the National Weather Service.

At most only a few more inches are expected. But, said Krolak, 'It's going to be an above-normal season either way.'

Snow is expected to fall in Bismarck at the start of January - however, that will be too late for the record.

Snow hope: Bismark, ND, is hoping to break its record of 45.8in of snow. It's had 45.5in this year (pictured: Mandan, five miles from Bismarck, on Dec 26)

Off the rails: A locomotive tipped off the rails 26 miles west of Boise, Idaho, Wednesday afternoon after ice built up under the rails. No-one was hurt in the incident

Icy conditions proved less fun in Idaho, where a train was detailed by ice on the track on Wednesday afternoon.

The locomotive was travelling west of Caldwell, itself 26 miles west of Boise, when ice beneath the rails caused it to tip.

The ice had built up in the the gullies beneath the rails where the wheel's flanges - the raised areas at the sides that 'grip' around the rail - ordinarily rest.

'Normally the ice would break as the train passed. But in this case, the ice was tougher than the locomotive,' said Battalion Chief Brad Carico.

The train tilted but did not fully flip over, and no-one was killed. The train's carriages were mostly empty.

National forecast through January 6, 2017
A jetskier has been hospitalised with leg and facial injuries after crashing into a wave on a busy Sydney beach.

Life saver helicopter crews winched onto the packed Congwong Beach, on the citys south-east coast, after being called to treat a 24-year-old man.

The man was treated at the scene before being rushed to hospital by NSW ambulance, where he is being treated for serious injuries.

Emergency crews treat a jetskier suffering from leg and facial injuries after crashing into a wave on a busy Sydney beach

Footage from the scene shows emergency crews treating the man on the shore as beach-goers watch on.

A NSW Ambulance spokesperson confirmed to Daily Mail Australia they treated the man for nose and lower leg injuries at the scene.

A NSW Police spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia they were called to the beach at 2.25pm.

They said the man crashed into a wave and came off the jetski, striking himself in the face with his knee.

More on this to come

Life saver helicopter crews winched onto the packed Congwong Beach with reports the jetskier crashed into a wave

A NSW Ambulance treated the man for nose and lower leg injuries at the scene before he was taken to hospital
A couple has been ordered to move or tear down their dream mansion after they built it too close to their neighbors.

A judge ruled that the home, built by Joseph and Sarah Sapienza violated housing laws in the McKennan Park Historic District of the City of Sioux Falls, in South Dakota.

The ruling is the result of a year-long feud with their neighbors, Pierce and Barbara McDowell, who complained that the Sapienzas' huge home towered over theirs, blocking out natural sunlight.

A couple has been ordered to move or tear down their dream mansion (left) after they built it too close to their neighbors

They also said that the four-bed home, estimated to be worth $215,000 by Zillow, breached the historic guidelines for housing in the area, as it was built less than seven feet from their home.

The McDowell's filed a lawsuit in 2015, demanding that the Sapienzas moved or demolished their mansion.

And this week, Circuit Court Judge John Pekas ruled that the house breached the historic standards for height and massing.

Pekas also ruled that the city of Sioux Falls - which approved the home but failed to apply the federal standards for historic districts - may have been negligent.

A judge ruled that the home built by Joseph and Sarah Sapienza (pictured) violated housing laws in the McKennan Park Historic District of the City of Sioux Falls, in South Dakota

'The court finds that a reasonable fact finder could conclude that the Sapienzas have violated historic requirements in the McKennan Park Historic District, which disrupts the character of the neighborhood and does not fit the size and space requirements under current regulations,' Pekas wrote.

If the decision stands, the Sapienzas would be forced to reduce the height of their home by more than eight feet and relocate their home, or tear it down altogether.

'The house undermines the entire historic district,' Pekas wrote in a statement seen by Keloland. 'A monetary award would not remedy this and the Sapienzas ought to conform their residence or rebuild their residence.'

Steve Johnson, a lawyer who represented the McDowells, called it a 'well-reasoned decision.'

Pierce and Barbara McDowell complained that the Sapienzas' huge home towered over theirs, blocking out natural sunlight

The judge also agreed that the McDowell's house price had been undermined by the new house.

A fire inspector had told the McDowells in 2015 they could no longer use their wood burning stove as it was within ten feet of the Sapienza house.

The couple's lawyer said the McDowells had sent a cease and desist letter to their neighbors - while construction was still going on - after learning they couldn't use their fireplace.

It warned the Sapienzas they planned to pursue legal action if they did not stop construction immediately.

The letter was ignored.

'They just blindly went forward with building this thing without any regard to anyone but themselves,' Johnson said.

The Sapienzas' lawyer Dick Travis did return reporter's request for comment.
A teen working in a grocery line was so touched by a mom's story of not being able to afford Christmas presents for her four children that she spent her entire paycheck to buy them presents.

Abby Meehan was working a double shift as a cashier at Baeslers Market in Terre Haute, Indiana on Christmas Eve when she struck up a conversation with Jacob Swetland, 10, who was in line with his mom, Cory, 39.

Grocery cashier Abby Meehan, 16, met Jacob Swetland in line and was heartbroken when he said his mom wouldn't be able to afford gifts this year

Meehan immediately went out to buy gifts for Jacob and his three brothers; her mom, Mandy, bought the family groceries

Meehan asked the rambunctious Jacob what he wanted for Christmas that's when Jacob teared up and said that his mother had 'had a conversation' with the family the night before that Santa wouldn't be coming that year, as she couldn't afford it, according to ABC News.

Due to health problems, Cory has been out of work and didn't have the spare cash for holiday presents.

Abby Meehan was working the double shift at Baeslers Market in Terre Haute, Indiana

'I felt like the worst mother not being able to do anything for my kids for Christmas, but to have a 16-year-old come in and help, its unimaginable,' she told WSPA.

Meehan was so touched she asked Cory for her phone number, and Cory, thinking that Meehan wanted to add her to the store's holiday raffle, gave it to her. But Meehan had other plans in mind.

Meehan called and asked what Jacob would like for Christmas - then she went about telling her family that her Christmas Eve would now be shopping for a family she didn't know.

Generous teen Abby Meehan posted about her Christmas Eve experience on Facebook

'She said to me as she walked out, 'Mom you didnt meet him, you dont know how I feel, this has to happen,' Meehan's mother, Mandy, told the outlet.

Meehan and her father then went shopping not only for Jacob, but for Jacob's three brothers too.

The big-hearted teen then took a trip to the Swetland's home, her arms bulging with gifts.

'You couldn't imagine the look on his face. He was jumping up and down and smiling and we exchanged at least 10 hugs that night,' Meehan told ABC News.

Mandy Meehan said she couldn't just bring over gifts, but wanted to do something else for a family in need, so the mother and daughter went grocery shopping as well.

'I think [Abby] put herself aside and I think that's remarkable. I'm very proud of her, for sure,' Mandy said.

'They were just the sweetest family, so grateful for what I brought,' Meehan told WSPA. 'I knew as soon as I walked in, I was supposed to bring those presents to them. To see the smile on his face, and all the boys faces, made it so worth it for me.'

'Waking up on Christmas morning, we always go straight for the presents but thats really not what its about at all,' she added. 'Its about giving and for me, giving that was the best Christmas present ever.'

Jacob says he got even more than presents though. He got a friend. To show his gratitude, he brought a signed card to the teen the next day.

'Now I know that Ill always have a friend and he will, and we will never forget each other,' Meehan said.

'We've been calling her our Christmas angel,' gushed Cory Swetland.
Internet giant Google will not stop its advanced search system prompting people to look for lectures by an Al-Qaeda hate preacher.

The company's search engine uses an autocomplete tool that suggests extra words to help users find what they are looking for more quickly.

But when the name of jihadi imam Anwar al-Awlaki is entered, the engine suggests words including 'lectures', giving access to speeches of hate made before his death in 2011.

Experts have described the function as 'incredibly dangerous', with al-Awlaki said to have influenced several attacks on the West in the past, including the 7/7 London bombings.

Advanced Google searches for Al-Qaeda hate preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, pictured, prompt internet users to look for his 'quotes and lectures' via an autocomplete tool

Google-owned video site YouTube also carries a similar feature, although the site does remove footage that incites violence or terrorism when flagged by users.

American Al-Awlaki, who previously lived in the UK, was at the top of the CIA's most wanted list.

He was also previously described as the 'bin Laden of the internet' due to his preachings via a blog, Facebook page and YouTube videos.

Al-Awlaki was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen, where he was thought to be leading a terrorist organisation.

Searches for his name without the extra words lead to webpages that describe his links to terrorism.

Meanwhile searches for his name with 'quotes' or 'lectures' lead to websites that include quotes such as 'fight to the last man' and 'Jihad will carry on'.

The prompting of these extra search terms has been described as 'incredibly dangerous' by terrorism experts, with around 90 terrorist plots and attacks in the West 'influenced by Awlaki material online'.

The firm said its searches use algorithms 'based on what other people are searching for' and that people are 'smart enough' to make their own choices

Julie Shain of the Counter Extremism Project, told The Times: 'This incentivises people to search for these things and suggests it's normal to do so.

'In combination with the thousands of videos and pages calling for attacks on the West, it's incredibly dangerous.'

Al-Awlaki spoke American English, and his sermons are widely available online.

His primary message was Muslims were 'under attack' and had 'a duty to carry out attacks on non-believers at home'.

Al-Awlaki lived in the UK between 2002 and 2004 and gave a series of lectures in London, warning people 'not to trust non-Muslims' and speaking of the 'rewards of martyrdom'.

It comes after Google made changes to its search algorithms to tackle misogynistic and anti Semitic searches online.

Al-Awlaki was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011, where he was believed to be leading a terrorist cell

A statement by the firm released earlier this month said: 'Autocomplete predictions are algorithmically generated based on users' search activity and interests.

'Users search for such a wide range of material on the web  15 per cent of searches we see every day are new.

'Because of this, terms that appear in autocomplete may be unexpected or unpleasant.

'We do our best to prevent offensive terms, like porn and hate speech, from appearing, but we acknowledge that autocomplete isn't an exact science and we're always working to improve our algorithms.'

Speaking to BBC Radio 4 yesterday, Google director Matt Brittin also said the company works very hard to remove illegal and hateful content.

Mr Brittin said the internet giant has more to do to tackle illegal content, but urged people to make their own judgments should they encounter unsavoury material online.

The president of Google Europe also called for a simplification of UK tax rules, as he insisted the company paid the corporation tax it was asked to by the Government.

Mr Brittin told the Today programme the tool helped save time, adding: 'But it's algorithmic, and I think people understand that these are suggestions based on what other people are searching for.

'So we can always improve that and we work hard to do that, but I think people are smart and they realise that not everything you find on the internet is accurate and there's a range of opinions there.

'I think you see people researching that well. We always have to do more, but I think people understand this is a world of choice.

'People have got more choice and more access to information than ever before, and they can therefore be better informed and make their own judgments.'

His preachings are said to have inspired the 7/7 London bombings in 2005, pictured

Mr Brittin said more effort was also needed to tackle illegal content linked to by Google.

He said: 'It's our job to make sure that we observe the laws everywhere we operate, and we help to remove hateful and harmful and illegal content, and we work very hard on doing that both with technology and of course with people - you can't always use algorithms to solve these things.

'It's an ongoing investment of energy, working in partnership with governments and others, to try to ensure that the internet is an overwhelmingly positive force for society, which I think generally people will accept that it is.
Experts have revealed just how deadly and damaging the series of earthquakes that rocked Nevada could have been if they hit a major city just 90 miles away.

The head of the University of Nevada's Seismological Laboratory said the quakes would have done more than $1 billion in damage had they been situation under a large city.

The magnitude 5.5 to 5.7 quakes that began shortly after midnight caused no significant damage where they were centered near rural Hawthorne about 100 miles southeast of Lake Tahoe.

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Experts have revealed just how much damage series of earthquakes that rocked Nevada could have done to a major city. Lake Tahoe, near where the quakes hit, is seen in the above stock image

A map (above) put out by the Southern California Earthquake Data Center shows that in the last week that have been almost 700 light-to-moderate tremors in the area

But Graham Kent said they likely would have been a '$1 billion event' with fatalities and numerous injuries if it had hit in Reno about 90 miles to the north.

Wednesday's biggest temblor - which was followed by about 20 significant aftershocks - was felt more than 200 miles away in San Francisco and Las Vegas.

Some social media user in Sacramento even reported feeling the earth move.

Others posted pictures online showing the damage done inside stores, where items were sent tumbling from shelves.

The above image is a US Geological Survey map showing areas of earthquake activity. The arrow is pointing toward the Lake Tahoe region which straddles the California-Nevada border

A reporter for KWTV News tweeted that there have been at least 28 reported earthquakes since the early morning hours in California and Nevada

Thankfully, it appeared a few broken bottles and grounded boxes were the worst of the damage.

Kent said it should serve as a reminder that Nevadans live in the third-most seismically active state in the nation behind California and Alaska.

A map put out by the Southern California Earthquake Data Center shows that in the last week that have been almost 700 light-to-moderate tremors in the area.
Friends of the family have paid tribute to the pair on social media, and offered their sympathies for parents Fleur and Robert

Robbie Manago passed away on Thursday three days after his sister also died

The twins - aged 23 months - were rushed to hospital in a

A 23-month-old boy found unconscious in his family's pool has died in hospital three days after his twin sister also perished.

Robbie Manago passed away at Westmead Children's Hospital on Thursday after he fell into the pool at his family's Kellyville Ridge home, in Sydney.

He was found unconscious underwater alongside sister Charli on December 20 by distraught mother Fleur Manago.

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Robbie (left) and Charli Manago were found unconscious at their Kellyville Ridge home, in Sydney's north west on the evening of December 20

The pair were found floating unconscious in the water by mother Fleur Manago who pulled their bodies out before medics were called

Police are preparing a file for the New South Wales coroner on their deaths.

Family friend Kathy Cosentino paid tribute to the family on social media, writing: 'Sweet Robbie has joined his sister in heaven today, they arrived together and left together, way too soon.

'May they give each other comfort and walk hand in hand to our Lords house. Please continue to pray for their parents and their beautiful family.

'Please Lord, give them all strength and courage until they meet again in your presence, Amen.'

Husband Tony Cosentino added: 'Sad Sad Sad. I'm lost for words.'

Colin Klajman added: 'So sorry to hear. Rob and I were best mates at school & my heart goes out to him and his family really just lost for words too.'

The children were transported to the Westmead Children's Hospital in a critical condition under police guard, but have both since died

Police told how mother Fleur and father Robert had taken their eyes off Charli (left) and Robbie (middle) 'for a second' before they fell in the water

Ms Manago is believed to have pulled their bodies from the water before neighbours helped perform CPR while medics rushed to the address.

A spokesman for New South Wales Amublance Service said medics assisted with CPR 'for some time' before the pair were taken to hospital in separate ambulances.

The babies were not conscious as neighbours and paramedics performed CPR before they were rushed to hospital.

'I think those with children are very aware how quickly things can change,' Chief Inspector Garry Sims told the ABC last Wednesday.

'Whatever happens in seconds is a life-changing situation for the families, and you can't imagine the grief the family are going through.'

Robert and Fluer Manago are believed to have looked away from the pool momentarily when the two children slipped under the water's surface, according to police

Ms Manago was the first to notice, with their father rushing to her side after hearing her screams for help.

A concerned neighbour also raced over to check on the family and helped perform potentially life-saving CPR on the small children before paramedics arrived and took over.

'We just kept going and going until the paramedics arrived,' neighbour Michelle Skevington told Nine News last Wednesday.

'We may have saved those children's lives... I am not sure but I hope we have,' she added.

Michelle Skevington (pictured) said she had only just done a CPR refresher course when she rushed over to the Manago household after she heard screaming coming from the back yard

Police confirmed both children were underwater when they were found.

The children were pictured sitting atop Santa's lap ahead of Christmas Day last year with their four siblings.

Another neighbour said news of the incident had rocked the community.

'Everybody was in shock because they are such lovely neighbours. They are very caring parents... it's really sad,' Elsae Susanto told Sunrise.
Russia has accused Charlie Hebdo of 'mocking' the Black Sea plane crash after publishing 'inhuman' cartoons about the disaster.

In one reference to the crash, which claimed 92 lives, the French magazine depicted a jet hurtling downwards along with words translated as: 'Bad news... Putin wasn't on board'.

Some 68 members of the Alexandrov music and dance ensemble perished when the military aircraft crashed into the Black Sea on Christmas Day.

The satirical magazine also published a cartoon showing a choir member from the ensemble making a wailing sound 'aaaaaa'. One caption reads: 'The repertoire of the army choir is expanding.'

It comes as Russian authorities investigating the crash said there was no explosion on board - but that they had not ruled out a 'terrorist act' as the cause.

Russia has accused satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo of 'mocking' the Black Sea plane crash after publishing 'inhuman' cartoons about the disaster

A third image shows bodies sinking in the sea with the caption: 'The Red Army conquers a new public'

A third image in the controversial magazine shows bodies sinking in the sea with the caption: 'The Red Army conquers a new public.'

'It is degrading for any human being to even pay attention to such a poorly-created abomination,' said the Russian Defence Ministry's spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov.

'If such, dare I say, "artistry" is the real manifestation of "Western values", then those who hold and support them are doomed - at least to loneliness in the future.'

He claimed Russians who had worn 'Je suis Charlie' - in support of the magazine after it was targeted in a terror atrocity in 2015 - have now gone quiet.

The leader of Chechnya, strongly pro-Putin politician Ramzan Kadyrov joined the criticism.

'I have said it before and will say it once again now - that the editorial policy of the magazine is immoral and inhuman.

'It has nothing to do with freedom of speech - neither directly nor indirectly.'

The tragedy was 'taken as personal grief by millions of Russians and our friends across the world,' he said.

Salvage: Black Sea rescue teams continued their work at the scene of the crash this morning

More wreckage has been dragged up from the sea bed today as investigations into the disaster continue

Pictures show the wheels of the aircraft lying across the deck of the Russian salvage ship

Experts analyse some of the wreckage of the plane, including windows salvaged from the sea bed

Yet the magazine 'mocks our national tragedy', he added.

The cartoon is published as only 19 of the victims' bodies have been found by salvage workers.

A law enforcement source said today: 'At the plane crash site, 19 bodies of the victims have been lifted up.

'Seventeen of them, as well as all body parts, have been carried by a special flight to Moscow for identification and genetic analysis.'

This is not the first time that Charlie Hebdo has angered Moscow with controversial caricatures connected with Russia.

In November 2015, the magazine published cartoons on the Russian Kogalymavia's A321 plane crash in Egypt that killed 224 people, the country's worst-ever aviation disaster.

The French Foreign Ministry has told Russian critics that the country's leadership has nothing to do with the activities of the magazine and that the employees of the weekly are free to express their own opinions.

Investogation: The plane crashed down on Sunday with all 92 passengers on crew killed

Huge pieces of the plane have been winched to the surface for inspection by aviation experts

Russian authorities continue a search operation in the Black Sea for bodies and debris of the crashed military plane

Rescuers combed the bottom of the sea for fragments of the Russian military plane that crashed, killing all 92 on board

Meanwhile Russian authorities investigating the crash say there was no explosion on board but they had not ruled out a 'terrorist act' as the cause.

The Defence Ministry Tupolev-154 was flying to Syria with dozens of Red Army Choir singers and dancers on board when it plunged into the Black Sea shortly after take-off from Sochi in southern Russia on Sunday.

Investigators have said pilot error or a technical fault were among the most likely causes of the disaster.

'The was no explosion on board,' said Sergei Bainetov, the Russian Air Force's head of flight safety who is serving on a government commission investigating the crash.

'But this isn't the only type of terrorist act ... It could have been any type of mechanical impact, so we don't rule out a terrorist act,' he told a news conference.

Bainetov said the commission was investigating around seven theories that included poor quality fuel causing engine failure and a bird getting caught up in the engines.

'There is no leading theory,' he said.

Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told the news conference that a terrorist act was not among the main theories being considered but Bainetov's comments were the clearest indication so far that it was a possibility.

Bainetov said it would take at least 10 days to decipher the aircraft's main flight recorder, which was flown to Moscow on Wednesday. He said there would be no final conclusions on the cause of the crash for at least 30 days.

Bainetov said use of the Tu-154, an ageing Soviet-era design still actively used by Russian government ministries but not by major Russian commercial airlines, would not be phased out following the crash.

It comes as Russian aviation experts are examining 'damage' to the blades of one engine of the Tupolev jet.

They will analyse whether the impairments were caused before the crash, or by impact with the water at the moment the aircraft came down.

One aviation even raised the spectre that 'counterfeit' jet engine parts could have been installed into the aircraft when it had a refit two years ago.

But the experts have ruled out damage by a flock of birds, one theory that was aired widely in the Russian media after the crash of the three-engine Tu-154, which was 33 years old.

The opened black box flight recorder which has been pulled from the Black Sea after the crash

A navy ship and a helicopter taking part in the search operation in the Black Sea on Tuesday

A Transport Ministry source cited by Life.ru news website said the 'damaged blades have been passed to engineers of the research and development centre for the use and maintenance of aviation equipment' near Moscow.

The centre is part of the Defence Ministry and the source said 'it will be possible to make an unequivocal conclusion about the reasons for the damaged of elements of the Tu-154 engine only after the experts' conclusion'.

A source told the website that the most likely causes were 'exhaustion' of the metal parts of the engine.

Sergey Krutousov, an aviation expert, said: 'It shouldn't be ruled out that counterfeit parts could have been used...

'As a result, the blades of the engine could not hold the pressure.'

Viktor Trusov, a top official in the Interstate Aviation Commission, which'probes air crashes in Russia, said damage to an engine's blades could both be a reason and a consequence of the crash.'

'Impact on water could have also damaged the blades,' he said.

Earlier attention had focuses on wing flaps after comments in the last seconds from the cockpit.

One of the flight crew said in the final seconds of the flight: 'The flaps, b****h, what the f***!'

But Life.ru said initial signs - after parts of the plane were pulled up from the sea floor that the flaps were functional.

A source close to investigation said that 'In the third minute of the flight, instead of pulling up the wheels, the second pilot could have hidden the flaps.'

Life.ru said 'it is still not clear whether they were operating at the take-off or landing mode at the moment of crash.'

The article also speculates that the flight crew made the wrong decision to push controls close to each other because of 'exhaustion' after flying through the night from Moscow region to Sochi, and then preparing for the second leg of the flight to Syria.

But a source in the military general prosecutor's office said that 'perhaps the reason of the crash of the Tu-154 during its climb could have been failure of the hydraulics system of the aircraft'.

This 'resulted in the complete loss of the possibility to manage the aircraft.
The widow of the former crack-smoking mayor of Toronto has been arrested and charged on suspicion of drink driving.

Renata Ford, wife of the late mayor Rob Ford, was detained yesterday by officers at a shopping plaza, not far from her home in Toronto.

According to Toronto Police, she was arrested as she sat in her vehicle in the parking lot of the shopping centre and was alone when officers apprehended her.

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Renata Ford, pictured, the widow of the former crack-smoking mayor of Toronto Rob Ford, has been arrested and charged on suspicion of drink driving

She was later charged with impaired driving after being accused of having a blood-alcohol reading of over 80 milligrams.

It is unclear when she will appear in court.

Mrs Ford was married to her late husband for 16 years after the pair met in high school and had two children together.

He then ran for office and was elected mayor of Toronto in 2010 but gained global notoriety after a video emerged in 2013 purporting to show him smoking crack cocaine during a drunken stupor.

Following weeks of intensifying media scrutiny Ford eventually admitted smoking illegal drugs while in office, buying the drugs and driving while drunk, but refused to resign his position.

In early 2014 Ford was believed to have checked into a treatment clinic to deal with his alcohol and drug problems, before reemerging and announcing his intention to run for re-election as mayor.

According to Toronto Police, Mrs Ford, left, was arrested as she sat in her vehicle in the parking lot of the shopping centre and was alone when officers apprehended her

Mrs Ford was married to her late husband for 16 years after the pair met in high school. He gained global notoriety after a video emerged in 2013 purporting to show him smoking crack cocaine during a drunken stupor

Shortly afterwards he was diagnosed with pleomorphic liposarcoma, a rare and hard-to-treat cancer found in soft, fatty tissue of the body, after he was admitted to a hospital with abdominal pain.

That diagnosis led to Ford calling off his bid for the mayor's seat, though he did run again for his old council seat in an election which he won.

After 27 days of radiation and five rounds of chemotherapy treatment Ford had the tumor removed in September of last year.

However just a month later doctors discovered another two tumors on his bladder, leading to another five rounds of chemotherapy.
Kremlin calls claims of hacking 'lies' and says there will be an 'appropriate' response - and its London embassy tweeted a duck with caption 'lame'

Hillary Clinton has blamed Vladimir Putin's 'personal beef' against her for the hacking of her operatives and the publication of

President Obama launched a Cold War strike on the Kremlin and its spies on Thursday, accusing them of hacking the presidential election on orders from Vladimir Putin.

He ordered 35 Russian intelligence operatives to leave the country as part of sanctions ordered for what he said where the country's attempts to 'interfere with democratic governance' and harassment of U.S. diplomatic officials in Russia.

And he launched a scathing attack on Putin's Kremlin in an official announcement of sanctions over allegations of hacking in the run-up to the presidential elections.

Obama all but named the Russian strongman in his statement - saying hacking was 'ordered at the highest level'.

That prompted an angry response from the Kremlin which promised an 'appropriate' retaliation - while its London embassy tweeted a picture mocking him as a 'lame duck'.

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Anger: President Obama's strongly-worded statement about sanctions against Russia is his most sweeping action against the Kremlin during his eight years in office

'Lies': A spokesman for Vladimir Putin rejected claims of cyber-attacking the election and said the U.S. government must put up or shut up

Crisis: Donald Trump now enters office amid the worst relations with Russia since the 1980s and his defeated rival Hillary Clinton claiming that its leader personally targeted her to hand the election to the Republican

Donald Trump took four hours to react - and did not say if he had been briefed in advance.

'It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,' he said in a statement.

'Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.'

The sanctions came after the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's secrets were published, mostly by Wikileaks, in a series of releases before Hillary Clinton's election defeat.

These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government. Obama accuses Putin of being behind hacking which led to the Democrats' secrets being published

The White House says Russia hacked the emails, and Clinton has claimed Putin acted out because of a 'personal beef.'

Wikileaks has denied Moscow was the source.

'This is not in question. There's no debate within the U.S. administration about the fact,' a senior U.S. official said Thursday, 'that Russia interfered in our democratic election. We've established that clearly to our satisfaction.

'I would never expect Russia to come out with their hands up and acknowledge what they did. They don't do that...They still deny that they are intervening in Eastern Ukraine.

Continuing the official said, 'We don't see this as a he-said, she-said situation. We see this as there are facts, and then there are things that Russia says.'

Thirty-five Russian operatives were declared 'persona non grata' in a Cold War-style move that is likely to be followed by tit-for-tat action by the Kremlin. The Russians that were personally targeted have 72 hours to leave the country and must be gone by Sunday.

Other sanctions include revealing in public exactly what technical information the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI hold on Russian hacking capabilities - something which will embarrass the Kremlin and make it easier for their targets to take precaution.

Obama also approved the shut down of two Russian compounds, one in New York and one in Maryland, which he said had been used for intelligence-related purposes.

And he introduced financial sanctions on the two Russian spy agencies, the GRU and the FSB, four named GRU officers, and three companies said to have provided 'material support' for the GRU's hacking.

Government officials warned that convert actions were on their way, too.

'This is not the sum total of everything that we are doing in response to Russia's actions,' a senior official said. 'As President Obama and others have said some of those actions will be public and some of them will not....that should not be mistaken for the sum total of our response.'

Obama linked the sanctions to hacking which saw the Democratic Party's secrets revealed as it tried to get Hillary Clinton elected - and to 'an unacceptable level of harassment' of American diplomats in Moscow by police and security services.

Mockery: This was how Russia's embassy in London responded to the sanctions announcement, mocking Obama as a lame duck president

Spy HQ: The Moscow headquarters of the FSB, known popularly as the Lubyanka, has been used for espionage for generations. It was where Stalin's purges were directed from

The most high-profile of the hacks were the embarrassing leaks from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's gmail account, which produced revelation after revelation about her family Foundation, tensions in the campaign and speeches to Wall Street which she had tried desperately to keep secret.

Another set of leaks cost the Democratic National Committee's chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, her job after they revealed how she rigged the system to get Clinton elected ahead of Bernie Sanders.

It is now certain that Russia will seek revenge with Vladimir Dzhabarov, the deputy chairman of the foreign policy committee in the Russian Duma, telling TASS news agency there would be action.

'You realize, of course, reciprocal steps will be made and the U.S. embassy in Moscow and, quite possibly, the consulates will be cut down to size as well,' he said after the White House announced its sanctions.

Dmitry Peskov, a Putin spokesman, told reporters on a conference call that Putin will order an 'appropriate' retaliation to Washington's 'unpredictable' and 'aggressive foreign policy.'

Peskov also said Moscow doubted the effectiveness of the measures, since Obama will leave office in just three weeks.

'Such steps of the U.S. administration that has three weeks left to work are aimed at two things: to further harm Russian-American ties, which are at a low point as it is, as well as, obviously, deal a blow on the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the president-elect,' he declared.

Senior administration officials said Thursday that they expected the sanctions to stick after Donald Trump takes over, however.

'These are executive actions, so if a future president decided that he wanted to allow in a large tranche of intelligence agents, presumably a future president could invite that action. We think it would be inadvisable,' one U.S. official said. 'Hypothetically you could reverse those sanctions, but it wouldn't make a lot of sense.'

Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said Obama's measures were 'appropriate and better late than never.'

But he added on Twitter that it 'can't be the end of the story -- need bipartisan independent investigation.'

Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham said the sanctions are 'a small price' for Russia to pay for interfering with U.S. elections. They promised to lead efforts in Congress to impose even stronger sanctions.

The two senators called Russian cyber attacks impacting the 2016 election a 'brazen attack on American democracy' and insisted that Thursday's measures from the White House are long overdue.

But it comes after President-elect Trump said people should 'get on with our lives' and over the hacking claims - which his defeated rival Clinton has cited as one of the main reasons for her loss.

The move also would put Trump in the position of having to decide whether to roll back the measures once in office and could potentially cause difficulties for his nominees during their confirmation hearings in the Senate, where support for sanctioning Russia is strong.

An administration official, speaking about the possibility that Trump could revoke the sanctions, said the incoming president should think twice before undoing the actions.

'These diplomatic compounds were being used for intelligence purposes. That is a direct challenge to U.S. national security. And I don't think it would make much sense to reopen Russian intelligence compounds,' the official said.

Cyber-spies: The sanctions identified the GRU - whose Moscow headquarters have been visited by Putin and which reveals in its bat logo - as the prosecutors of the hacking Obama says led to the publication of the Democrats' secrets

The 35 Russians who are being kicked out of the country are Russian intelligence agents, the official charged. 'So I don't think it would make much sense to invite back in Russian intelligence agents.

'The officials who were sanctioned were participating in malicious cyber attacks' the official added, on 'critical infrastructure and interfering in our democratic process.'

The senior official said the hacks are of 'great concern to American business.

'And so I would expect that future administration would be concerned about the threat to the America economy.'

Some of the Russian intelligence efforts are harming U.S. national security.

'I would think that future administration would be concerned about those efforts,' the high-ranking Obama administration official said. 'If they aren't then they should explain why.'

Trump on Wednesday night acknowledged speaking to Obama that day, suggesting he may have been warned in advance of the measures. He has not released a statement on Obama's actions, on Twitter or otherwise.

The first reaction from the Republicans came from house Speaker Paul Ryan, who said the sanctions were right - but a condemnation of Obama's time in office.

'Russia does not share America's interests' and has consistently sought to undermine U.S. values while 'sowing dangerous instability around the world,' he said.

He called them overdue, and 'an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia.'

Russia's interference in U.S. elections showed the Obama administration's 'ineffective foreign policy that has left America weaker in the eyes of the world', he said.

There had been a mounting clamor from Democrats for sanctions before the announcement.

The spokesman for Putin said on Thursday that a new round of U.S. sanctions against Russia would harm relations between Moscow and Washington.

Dmitry Peskov said Putin would order an 'appropriate' retaliation to the sanctions, which included the expulsion of 35 diplomats.

In a conference call with reporters, Peskov said Moscow doubted the effectiveness of the measures as the current U.S. presidential administration was stepping down in three weeks.

Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusation that the Russian government was involved at the highest levels in trying to influence the U.S. presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia's goal was to help Trump win  an assessment Trump has dismissed as ridiculous.

The U.S. has already sanctioned Russia over its annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Ukraine, but it is hitting the country even harder now through the use of an April 2015 executive order allowing for the use of sanctions to combat cyberattacks.

OBAMA'S COLD WAR WARNING The White House released a statement from the president - who is vacationing in Hawaii - in which he firmly blamed Vladimir Putin for the hacking before the election: Today, I have ordered a number of actions in response to the Russian government's aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and cyber operations aimed at the U.S. election. These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior. All Americans should be alarmed by Russia's actions. In October, my Administration publicized our assessment that Russia took actions intended to interfere with the U.S. election process. These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government. Moreover, our diplomats have experienced an unacceptable level of harassment in Moscow by Russian security services and police over the last year. Such activities have consequences. Today, I have ordered a number of actions in response. I have issued an executive order that provides additional authority for responding to certain cyber activity that seeks to interfere with or undermine our election processes and institutions, or those of our allies or partners. Showdown: Obama's statement is a strongly-worded attack on Putin Using this new authority, I have sanctioned nine entities and individuals: the GRU and the FSB, two Russian intelligence services; four individual officers of the GRU; and three companies that provided material support to the GRU's cyber operations. In addition, the Secretary of the Treasury is designating two Russian individuals for using cyber-enabled means to cause misappropriation of funds and personal identifying information. The State Department is also shutting down two Russian compounds, in Maryland and New York, used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes, and is declaring 'persona non grata' 35 Russian intelligence operatives. Finally, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are releasing declassified technical information on Russian civilian and military intelligence service cyber activity, to help network defenders in the United States and abroad identify, detect, and disrupt Russia's global campaign of malicious cyber activities. These actions are not the sum total of our response to Russia's aggressive activities. We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicized. In addition to holding Russia accountable for what it has done, the United States and friends and allies around the world must work together to oppose Russia's efforts to undermine established international norms of behavior, and interfere with democratic governance. To that end, my Administration will be providing a report to Congress in the coming days about Russia's efforts to interfere in our election, as well as malicious cyber activity related to our election cycle in previous elections Advertisement

A year after the order was issued, Democratic Party officials learned their systems were attacked after discovering malicious software on their computers.

VLAD'S 'PERSONAL BEEF' - BITTER HILLARY The Democratic loser launched a bitter attack on the Kremlin strongman earlier this month on a behind-closed-doors speech revealed by the New York Times. At a reception at the Plaza hotel in New York she told mega-donors who had funded her White House run that her defeat was helped by the FBI's announcement of fresh moves on her secret server scandal - and by Putin. 'We have to recognize ... Vladimir Putin himself directed the covert cyber attacks against our electoral system, against our democracy, apparently because he has a personal beef against me,' Clinton said. She said Putin was 'determined not only to score a point against me - which he did,' but to undermine U.S. democracy. She called it 'part of a long term strategy to cause us to doubt ourselves and to create the circumstances in which Americans either wittingly or unwittingly will begin to cede their freedoms to a much more powerful state.' Clinton's remarks also make clear her lingering resentment toward the press, which reported on Russian hacking but also delved into internal campaign and Clinton Foundation intrigue after internal emails got posted on WikiLeaks and other sites. 'As the press is finally catching up to the facts  which we desperately tried to present to them during the last months of the campaign,' she said. 'This is not just an attack against me and my campaign ... This is an attack on our country. We are well beyond normal political concerns here,' she said. Advertisement

The 2015 order covers a response to attacks on critical infrastructure, and Klobuchar called on the administration to amend it to include election systems.

A presidential policy directive in 2013 identified 16 sectors that are considered critical infrastructure, including energy, financial services and health care. The U.S. Homeland Security Department is considering adding election systems to that list.

The designation places responsibilities on the secretary of homeland security to conduct comprehensive assessments of vulnerabilities and track as well as provide information on emerging and imminent threats that may affect critical infrastructure.

More important, in this case, the designation would allow for the first use of the 2015 executive order in response to a cyberattack against election systems.

And while Trump could reverse any amended or new order allowing for the U.S. to impose sanctions on entities involved in a cyberattack on election systems, 'he would have a lot of explaining to do,' Klobuchar said. 'The executive order gives tools to respond.'

Speaking to journalists at his Palm Beach, Florida estate on Wednesday, Trump said as he responded to a question about sanctions: 'We don't have the kind of security we need.' He added: 'Nobody knows what's going on.'

Trump said he has not spoken with senators calling for sanctions but believes 'we have to get on with our lives.'

Obama has ordered intelligence officials to conduct a broad review of the election-season cyberattacks to be completed before he leaves office.

Russia's neighbors have long suffered the wrath of its hackers, whose actions have frequently complemented Moscow's political and military aims. In 2014, Ukraine's Central Election Commission was targeted by a pro-Russian hacking group.

A U.S. official said Thursday that 'Russia is not going to stop' its behavior.

'We have every indication that they will continue to interfere in democratic elections in other countries, including some of our European allies. There's no reason to believe that they will not try to interfere in future American elections,' the official said.

'There has to be a cost and a consequence for what Russia has done. It is an extraordinary step for them to interfere in the democratic process here in the United States of America, and there needs to be a price for that.
The salaries of high profile business bosses rose by more than 80 per cent in an 11 year period, new research has revealed.

Chief executives' pay went up from 1million in 2003 to an average of 1.9m in 2014.

The research by the Lancaster University Management School found that during the same period Britain's top 350 companies' performance improved by less than 8.5 per cent.

BP chief executive Bob Dudley had a salary increase of 5.7m between 2005 and 2015

Theresa May's promise to bring workers into the boardroom to have their say on bosses' pay is likely to be watered down (the pay of top chief executives between 2005-2015 pictured)

Campaigners who have called for the average chief executive pay to fall to better reflect their staff's earnings will welcome the findings.

The report, by Weijia Li and Steven Young, found there was a 'material disconnect' between pay and a company's economic prospects.

They added that the link between 'pay and fundamental value creation remains stubbornly low'.

'The research suggests the need to redirect the spotlight on CEO pay away from a focus on pay levels and broad calls for more performance-related pay arrangements, towards a more refined discussion about the type of performance measures employed,' the report said.

'We conclude that while compensation practices in the UK have come a long way over the last two decades, the journey is far from complete.'

Theresa May's promise to bring workers into the boardroom to have their say on bosses' pay is likely to be watered down. The prime minister is now expected to call for the publication of the ratio of executive pay to their workers.

The pay of Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Shell, rose from 2.4m in 2005 to 4m in 2015

Stuart Gulliver (left), chief executive of HSBC, saw his pay increase from 2.5m to 7.34m over ten years; Paul Polman, boss of Unilever, had a rise from 1.9m to 7.7m

The Times reports that the High Pay Centre found chief executives were paid 47 times their average employee's wage in 1998. By 2014 it had risen to 130 times as much.

The salaries have continued to rise despite pressure from investors and rebellions by angry shareholders.

The report's authors said short-term performance measures like total shareholder return have been responsible for the pay increases.
Peruvian villagers have been shocked at the birth of a calf with two heads that apparently died shortly after delivery.

The rare birth took place near the town of El Porvenir, in the province of Trujillo in north-western Peru, instantly raising alarm among superstitious villagers who believe the animal might have been cursed.

Some claimed it was a sign the world was about to end, or an omen for some terrible event, such as an earthquake.

The calf with two heads died shortly after being born, according to Peruvian media

But vet Martin Palacios told local media people should avoid superstition and be reassured by the fact that the calf with two heads was simply born because of a congenital malformation probably caused by genetic mutation.

He said: 'What we have here is a calf with two heads, commonly named as bicephalous. Those cases are seen infrequently but we have seen cases like this in the past, not just with domestic animals but also in nature.'

Mr Palacios said the animal had probably died because the double head was probably not the only deformation.

Vet Martin Palacious (pictured, left) said bicephalous creatures like the calf (right) were rare

He said the animal's organs were probably also mutated, meaning it died due to organ failure.

Mr Palacios said to the villagers: 'They should not be worried about it because it is not a sign of a bad omen or the foretelling of a tragedy for our region.
A group of neighbours brutally beat up a suspected thief who was thought to have stolen a woman's phone moments before.

Shocking mobile phone footage has emerged from Tucuman, Argentina of a young man being kicked, punched, and even appearing to be choked, after he allegedly stole a phone.

La Gaceta reports the man had taken the phone from a woman in a group with friends and tried to run away.

The man lying on the floor is a suspected thief, believed to have taken a mobile phone from a woman in Tucuman, Argentina

As the woman shouts and speaks directly with the man, the crowds gather around him to try to get the device back

In this still, the man appears to hand the phone back to the woman who has confronted him while he is on the ground

But he was soon apprehended by the woman's neighbours, who tackled him to the ground.

Another person whipped out a mobile phone to film what happened, as the group starts kicking and hitting the man as he lies on the ground.

The man, barefoot, is lying on his side wearing a blue top and denim shorts. He is kicked in the back as a woman holds onto his arms and speaks to him.

The man can be seen clutching his face in pain after being slapped by a man who is attacking him

Although he has given back the phone, the beating continues, with three men standing around him and one holding him down

One man punches him in the face as the group attempt to get the woman's phone back.

He is then slapped around the face before handing back the device to the woman, who leaves to give it to its rightful owner.

Despite this, the beating continues, and the man is held down by another as the suspected thief clutches his face in pain.

The man is dragged up to a sitting position only to be kicked in the shoulder and sent back to the ground by a man in red shorts, in the left picture

The man is held down and appears to be choked as a man leans on his neck with his knee. The police were called but no charges were pressed

With three men around him, the suspect is held down while the beating starts again.

The men pull him up by his wrists as a man throws a vicious kick that sends him back down to the ground.

Another man takes off his belt and starts whipping him across his back.

In the closing parts of the footage, one man puts his knee across the suspect's neck, appearing to choke him.
Man found one of the teens and helped him to shore, but Tui Gallaher vanished

Two 14-year-old cousins found themselves in trouble in water at Maroubra Beach

The mother of a 14-year-old boy who was swept away by strong currents on a Sydney beach says she will 'never be the same' after losing her son.

Tui Gallaher came into trouble while in the water at Maroubra Beach, in Sydney's east, at 8.30pm on Tuesday - the search to find him was scaled back on Thursday.

'My heart was aching so much, my heart is still aching. My family keeps telling me that I have six other babies that need me,' Tui's mother Sandra Tomano told Ten Eyewitness News.

Ms Tomano collapsed on the sand after her son was washed away.

His cousin, George Lopeti, who was in the water at the same time as Tui was saved by a passerby.

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The mother of a 14-year-old boy who was swept away by strong currents on a Sydney beach says she will 'never be the same' after losing her son

Sandra Tomano collapsed during the desperate search to find her son who vanished at a popular Sydney beach (pictured)

Tui Gallaher, 14, disappeared in rough surf at Maroubra beach in Sydney's east on Tuesday and has not yet been located

The distraught mother described Tui as 'one of a kind' and added 'anyone that he knows, he always puts them first to make sure they're alright'.

'To lose him, I don't think I'll ever be the same,' she said, holding a framed pictured of the 14-year-old.

An extensive air and sea search to find the teenager was scaled back on Thursday morning.

Tui's family still hold on to hope that the beloved teenager will be found.

'Maybe he can still be found alive and, well, maybe this is just us in denial again, but we can't give up hope,' Tui's aunt, who lives in the US, told The Daily Telegraph.

'We live so far away there is nothing we can do but wait for news, hopefully good news, and we appreciate all the search efforts and everyone involved.'

As the search resumed at first light on Wednesday, his mother sat on the foreshore watching the rescues teams search for her son

The distraught mother described Tui as 'one of a kind' and added 'anyone that he knows, he always puts them first to make sure they're alright'

The two cousins, from Guildford in Sydney's west, both began struggling in the rough evening ocean.

A 26-year-old man spotted one of the struggling teenagers and managed to help him to shore, but his cousin Tui Gallaher disappeared in the rough surf.

On Wednesday, Tui's mother collapsed on the foreshore while watching the rescues teams search for her son and she reportedly yelled: 'I just want my boy back'.

She was helped onto the life savers' buggy by lifeguards and a friend.

After the teenager was spotted, emergency services were called and the 26-year-old man swam out to try and locate Tui.

His cousin was reportedly frantic and urging they help find Tui. The pair were at the beach with their family when the surf became too rough.

Police held a media conference on Wednesday morning and said they believe to know the area the teenager vanished and are scouring the water near the shore.

Matthew Evans from Surf Lifesaving NSW said the 3-4 foot swell and a number of rips are making the search difficult.

On Tuesday, the search and rescue operation was launched involving Marine Area Command, Police Rescue, the Ambulance Rescue helicopter and SLSA Lifeguards.

But at 11.40pm, the search was suspended due to poor visibility and dangerous surf conditions.
Boko Haram militants are teaching children as young as 13 how to rape their hostages, it has been claimed.

Adult fighters tell their young recruits they will 'have fun' sexually assaulting their captives, according to a boy soldier who fled from the Nigerian jihadists.

The extremists, who have pledged allegiance to ISIS, are reportedly increasingly turning to children to boost their ranks having sustained bad losses in the last year in battles against the Nigerian military.

One boy, abducted by Boko Haram in Baga, Nigeria has described how senior fighters spent two days instructing youngsters how to carry out rapes - repeatedly attacking women and young girls they were holding captive.

Boko Haram militants are teaching children as young as 13 how to rape their hostages, it has been claimed. The jihadist group's leader Abubakar Shekau is pictured, centre

The 15-year-old, named only as Ahmed, revealed how boys were taught to subdue their victims and told not to allow women to 'overpower' them, according to Philip Obaji Jr, writing for the Daily Beast.

Ahmed said: 'The girls will scream and cry for help, but [the militants] didnt care. Sometimes theyll be slapped and threatened with guns if they didn't cooperate.'

He added that young fighters were told they would 'have fun' on completion of a successful mission.

A girl who escaped Boko Haram also told the Daily Beast how she had been raped by 'little boys' who were so little she could normally fend them off 'very easily'.

One 'looked like a 13-year-old having sex for the first time' - but succeeded because he had a gun.

The shocking details emerged as it was claimed Boko Haram fighters fleeing an attack on their base last week may have used some of the girls kidnapped in 2014 from northeast Nigeria's Chibok as human shields to prevent being fired upon by fighter jets.

Major General Lucky Irabor, theatre commander of Nigeria's military campaign against the group, showed a news conference aerial footage he said was filmed during the operation in the Sambisa forest that showed Boko Haram fighters moving with women and children.

Boko Haram fighters fleeing an attack on their base last week may have used some of the girls kidnapped in 2014 from northeast Nigeria's Chibok as human shields to prevent being fired upon by fighter jets

"The haggard fighters were just using them as a shield," Irabor told reporters in the northeastern city of Maiduguri. "That is why we did not engage them from the air."

"We had always believed and hoped that going into the Sambisa would afford us the opportunity to get the remaining Chibok girls. What we can't tell is whether those women we can see were the Chibok girls," he said.

Boko Haram militants kidnapped more than 200 girls from their school dormitories in the town of Chibok in April 2014. The first of the girls to be found said most of them were being held in the Sambisa forest, where she was discovered in May.

The group has kidnapped hundreds of men, women and children during its seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria, some of whom may also be held in the forest.

The abduction of the Chibok girls, 21 of whom were released in October, brought worldwide notoriety.

President Muhammadu Buhari said on Saturday the Islamist militants' last enclave in the forest, the vast former game reserve in northeast Nigeria that was their stronghold, had been captured.

Reuters has been unable to independently verify that the area has been captured, but the comments from the general were the first reference by a military official to the suspected whereabouts of the girls since Buhari's announcement.

Boko Haram has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than 2 million during its insurgency

The president said the capture of Camp Zero in the forest marked the "final crushing of Boko Haram" but security analysts say the group's ability to carry out attacks in neighbouring Niger, Cameroon and Chad suggests it has multiple bases.

They also say the group split this year with one faction led by Abubakar Shekau operating from the Sambisa forest and the other, allied to Islamic State and led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, based in the Lake Chad region.

Irabor said the military was pursuing those who fled, adding that 1,240 people suspected of being militants, their relatives or sympathisers had been arrested between December 21 and 28.

Boko Haram has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than 2 million during its insurgency. It controlled an area the size of Belgium in early 2015 but has been pushed back by troops from Nigeria and neighbouring countries since then.
Jeremy Corbyn has accused Theresa May of acting like Henry VIII by refusing to give Parliament a final say on Brexit.

He said it would be 'extraordinary' if the Prime Minister used the royal prerogative to bypass British MPs on the final Brexit deal she strikes with Brussels while parliaments in other European countries got to vote on the package.

The Labour leader compared Mrs May's behaviour to the autocratic 16th century Tudor monarch in a newspaper interview today following a two-hour grilling before MPs last week in which she repeatedly refused to a parliamentary vote.

The PM is facing growing pressure to put the final deal to Parliament when the eventual deal is agreed in early 2019.

Jeremy Corbyn has accused Theresa May, pictured left attending a Christmas church service in her Maidenhead constituency, of acting like Henry VIII, the autocratic 16th century Tudor monarch, right, by refusing to give Parliament a final say on Brexit

The PM has only made a vague commitment to show MPs her plan for Brexit before she triggers Article 50, the formal mechanism for leaving the EU, by the end of March.

She fears that holding a vote in Parliament after two years of negotiations could put June's Brexit vote in jeopardy and would give MPs the power to block it.

Mr Corbyn told The Guardian today: 'It [a final Brexit deal] would have to come to Parliament.

'She cannot hide behind Henry VIII and the divine rights of the power of kings on this one.'

He added: 'The idea that on something as major as this the Prime Minister would use the royal prerogative to bypass Parliament is extraordinary - I don't know where she's coming from.'

Other similarities have been drawn between Mrs May and King Henry VIII over his disagreement with the Pope that led to separating the Church of England from the Roman Catholic church.

Jeremy Corbyn, pictured left delivering his Christmas message, said it would be 'extraordinary' if the Prime Minister, pictured right attending an EU summit in Brussels, used the royal prerogative to bypass British MPs on the final Brexit deal she strikes with Brussels while parliaments in other European countries got to vote on the package

He subsequently appointed himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England  power Mrs May could only dream of.

She will hope that her own separation from Europe will end more peacefully than the English Reformation.

Mr Corbyn, 67, is set to have a makeover in the New Year to tap into the populist anti-establishment sentiment sweeping through politics.

CORBYN INSISTS HE'LL STILL BE FIT ENOUGH TO BE LEADER IN 2020 Jeremy Corbyn, a keen cyclist, insisted he is still 'fit' to be Labour leader beyond 2020 Jeremy Corbyn, 67, dismissed reports that he told friends he is ready to step down as Labour leader in 2019 because of his age. He is set to have a makeover in the New Year to tap into the populist anti-establishment sentiment sweeping through politics. Asked whether he had expressed a desire to retire in a couple of years' time, the veteran left-winger said: 'Friends is obviously a very loose term these days - I've never said that. 'I'm very happy doing my campaigning. 'This is the age of the 60s - look at Trump, Clinton, Sanders, Angela Merkel - look around you. Sixties is the new 40s, I keep fit,' the keen cyclist added. Advertisement

And in the interview today he dismissed reports he has told friends he is ready to step down as Labour leader in 2019 because of his age.

'Friends is obviously a very loose term these days - I've never said that. I'm very happy doing my campaigning,' he said.

'This is the age of the 60s - look at Trump, Clinton, Sanders, Angela Merkel - look around you. Sixties is the new 40s, I keep fit,' the keen cyclist added.

Mr Corbyn repeated his support for open door immigration despite voters expressing clear concerns in June's EU Brexit vote.

He defended the benefits immigration brings to the British economy and said there was a 'level of exaggeration' about its negative impact.

He was also critical of calls for a work visa scheme to be introduced post-Brexit, describing the proposals as 'fraught with difficulties'.

And he cast doubt over the feasibility of a system in which people could only come to Britain if they had a job.

He said: 'Well then, that will work in reverse for British people going abroad, which would be difficult to implement and maybe is counter to the principles of the European market.'

Companies such as Airbus, Nissan and Hitachi need to be free to move skilled workers around Europe and would leave Britain if Brexit mean higher tariffs to access the single market, he warned.

Rather than set targets to bring immigration down he instead stressed the need to tackle undercutting in the workplace.

He said: 'What we need to address is exploitation, undercutting and the way in which companies are trying to destroy industrial agreements by ignoring what they should be doing, which is paying people properly and not bringing people in to undercut.'

The left-winger also played down talk that Tony Blair could make a comeback to the parliamentary party.

Mr Corbyn said: 'I think the nuanced differences of opinion between me and Tony Blair are quite well known ... I don't see Tony Blair and I working together. I don't think he does either.'
Paul McGrath has been named locally as one of two men found dead in a flat in Cornwall yesterday

An investigation has been launched after the bodies of two men were found in a flat in Cornwall.

A 31-year-old, named locally as Paul McGrath, and a 22-year-old were found dead in the block of flats in St Austell yesterday afternoon.

A friend of Mr McGrath's said he had not seen him since Christmas.

The man, who asked not to be named, said: 'I hadn't seen him since just before Christmas. But I don't know what happened. It is such a shock.

'Paul was a kind, caring bloke and would do anything for anyone.

'I don't know how he knew the other man involved. He had never mentioned anything about him.

'He was openly gay but I don't know whether he was currently in a relationship.'

Police have confirmed the second man was a 22-year-old who previously lived in Plymouth, Devon. He is still yet to be formally identified and his next of kin are yet to be informed.

Devon and Cornwall Police said: 'Officers attended an address on Tregonissey Road in St Austell just after 4.30pm yesterday.

'On arrival officers found the bodies of the two men deceased inside the house. The cause of death is currently being treated as unexplained. One man, a 31-year-old from St Austell, has been identified and his next of kin have been informed.'

The spokesman added: 'The second man, thought to be in his 20s, has yet to be formally identified and his next of kin yet to be informed.

'At this time, police are conducting thorough inquiries and an examination of the scene is underway to establish the causes of death.

'A scene guard remains at the property while a forensic examination and searches are conducted.'

Police carried out searches of the area around the building today as part of the investigation

The two men were found dead in this block of flats in St Austell, Cornwall yesterday

DI Marie Ward said: 'This investigation is at a very early stage and enquiries continue to establish the circumstances around the deaths.'

The three-storey building on Tregonissey Road is owned by Ocean Housing Association and witnesses say forensic officers have been seen going in and out of the property.

Police also confirmed that a 22-year-old man was arrested at the scene on suspicion of burglary and was later released on police bail until Thursday 5 January 2017 pending further enquiries.

Amy McLinden, who lives above the flat, said police had been around to question her and told her the bodies were those of two men.

Police have taped off the scene and are speaking to neighbours as part of their investigation

She wrote on Facebook: 'I live above the flat. There's two bodies, both are male.

'Police, detectives and forensics have been here, most still are. Front and back of the building are taped up.
ISIS supporters have called for lone wolf attacks in cinemas, malls and even hospitals after releasing pictures of a knife-wielding fanatic chasing Santa Claus.

In one chilling post, fanatics warn 'disbelieving dogs' that 'as you are preparing for Christmas celebrations, we advise you to prepare your coffins as well'.

Another vows to create New Year mayhem while one picture shows a jihadist standing next to a burning numerical 2017 image.

It comes after an ISIS extremist drove a lorry through a packed Christmas market in Berlin last week, killing 12 people.

ISIS supporters have called for lone wolf attacks in cinemas, malls and even hospitals after releasing pictures of a knife-wielding fanatic chasing Santa Claus

One chilling post vows to create New Year mayhem while one picture shows a jihadist standing next to a burning numerical 2017 image

The images and threats were posted on an encrypted channel by the pro-ISIS group, the Nashir Media Foundation

According to Lisa Daftari of The Foreign Desk, the images and threats were posted on an encrypted Telegram channel by the pro-ISIS group, the Nashir Media Foundation.

One image of a fanatic with a knife chasing a Santa Claus comes with the caption: 'You disbelieving dogs which prepared for Christmas celebrations, be ready for shedding the blood scattering the shreds and funerals, for the eyes of caliphate lions are looking straight towards you and promise you with bitter deaths.'

Another caption threatens: 'We will make your New Year mayhem with bombings and trampling attacks.'

The warnings come after an ISIS extremist drove a lorry through a packed Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people

And a third warns: 'Your celebrations have become a battlefield and a fighting area. So, wait for us.'

It comes after German authorities beefed up security for New Year's eve celebrations in Berlin on Saturday after last week's truck attack, deploying police with machine guns and securing the festive zone around the Brandenburg Gate with concrete slabs.

'This year, what's new is that we will place concrete blocks and position heavy armoured vehicles at the entrances' of the celebration zone, a Berlin police spokesman said.

While the number of police officers deployed will remain close to last year's figure of around 1,000, this year, 'at least some of them will be standing there with machine guns,' he added.

Germany had already put in place heightened security measures during last year's celebrations, following the November 13 attack in Paris.

Revellers will once again not be allowed to bring in backpacks or large bags.

All forms of pyrotechnics and potentially dangerous objects such as glass bottles will also be banned at this year's event where hundreds of thousands of people are expected.

One image, showing a militant stamping on a Father Christmas hat, comes with the words: 'Our lions will have revenge in your Christmases'

Questions surrounding security are high on the agenda after the December 19 attack, when Tunisian national Anis Amri allegedly hijacked a truck and drove it into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people.

Amri, 24, went on the run and was the focus of a four-day manhunt before being shot dead by police in Milan, northern Italy, after opening fire first.

The Berlin rampage was claimed by the Islamic State group, which released a video last Friday in which Amri is shown pledging allegiance to IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The experiences of a young airman spending Christmas as a prisoner of war are among a series of revealing personal stories from people who lived through the First World War.

Graphic descriptions by a medical officer in the Somme, the account of an imprisoned conscientious objector and a female dance troupe trapped in Germany also feature among the 11 untold stories of the war in a book from the Imperial War Museums (IWM).

Herbert Ward was just 17 when he was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in June 1915 and flew reconnaissance missions over German lines before being shot down at the end of November.

A photo issued by the Imperial War Museum of Herbert Ward (left) and Hilary Champion. The experiences of Ward, a young airman who spent Christmas in 1915 as a prisoner of war, are among a series of revealing personal stories

Captain Lawrence Gameson (pictured) described the conditions at the Somme, in which he worked as a doctor, of blood, flies, effects of gas

He spent Christmas 1915 in a hospital with other injured prisoners of war, after being allowed to write a note to his squadron telling them he was 'quite all right', which was dropped over British lines by the Germans.

'On Christmas Eve, the Germans arranged for each of us to be given a present (mine was a cherished 'Koh-i-Noor' pencil), together with a Christmas card and a glass of 'champagne' which was greeted with derision by the French contingent,' he wrote in his memoirs.

Later, while being moved between camps, a group of British servicemen escaped through a half-opened train window, though the first man got wedged head downward and 'had to be given a heave which sent him crashing on to the track below'.

Herbert and a friend made a risky, hard journey to Switzerland and were returned to RFC headquarters in France, where Brigadier General Hugh Trenchard insisted: 'They must have champagne' - though there was none.

Captain Lawrence Gameson, who served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and witnessed the carnage of the Battle of the Somme, described the conditions in which he worked as a doctor, of blood, flies, effects of gas and treating 'scores upon scores of reeking, bleeding men'.

Herbert Ward was just 17 when he was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in June 1915 and flew reconnaissance missions over German lines (a letter penned by him pictured)

His memoirs record finding a dead British soldier in a village near the front, with letters on him from his wife and mother, which were 'the stuff of raw human sorrow, a very tiny fragment of the sum of suffering'.

He describes the desolation wreaked on the countryside and his living conditions: 'Walls are rotting planks. The floor is slimy with mud that stinks of the fields of death, of dung and of dead bodies. The guns are making my head ache.'

Lawrence's grandson, Paul Gameson, said his grandfather had died before he was born, but he had been strongly affected by reading his memoirs as a teenager.

'I can only imagine how he, as a doctor, felt about the injuries and death he witnessed. As a doctor, he saw first-hand the effects of trench warfare, working in appalling conditions and with limited supplies.'

And a century since the Somme, he said: 'It has almost become cliche to draw attention to 'man's inhumanity to man' during this conflict, but anything that shows that this behaviour was and remains part of our country's narrative, and also Europe's, deserves to be heard, to avoid it recurring in the future.'

Anthony Richards, head of documents and sound at IWM and author of the book, In Their Own Words, said: 'IWM holds thousands of personal accounts in the form of letters, diaries and memoirs, which are all unique, informative and significant.
These Icelandic stallions throw jabs, hooks and uppercuts as they battle it out in a paddock in Germany.

The horses were photographed as they squared up to each other in a fascinating fight to show who was the alpha male.

They reared up and lashed out with their front hooves looking for a knockout to prove they were the head of the herd.

I'm the boss: German photographer Ingo Gerlach spotted these stallions fighting it out

The fight, which lasted for 10 minutes, was captured by 63-year-old photographer Ingo Gerlach in the Westerwald region of central Germany.

He said: 'I noticed two stallions who were clearly involved in a fight for hierarchy.

'They were constantly whinnying loudly and appeared very nervous. Suddenly, they both galloped off to sort out their fight for supremacy.

The stallions bit each other and clouted each other with their hooves during the scuffle

'They barged each other with their shoulders and tried to bite the other's heels.

'One moment the stallions were kneeling on the ground to avoid the painful bites, the next they reared up and threatened each other with teeth and front hooves.

'It looked more dangerous than it actually was, but even so the attacks were powerful.'

Male bears, tigers and lions are well known for fighting for dominance in the wild but the alpha male concept is one that is also known in the horse world

Boxing clever: Unconfirmed reports said the horses were known as Rocky and Apollo
It's the last thing you would want to see when you go to the toilet.

This is the terrifying moment a snake pops out of a toilet in Thailand, and has to be caught by animal rescue workers.

As the lid of the toilet is opened, the snake slithers down into the cistern as its would-be capturer tries to entice it back to the surface of the water.

The rescue worker has been called to a house where a snake has managed to hide away in the toilet bowl

It slinks back out and the animal expert hovers with a rod and rope over the bowl.

The scary reptile can be seen poking his tongue out as he assesses the situation beyond the bowl.

The snake catcher uses a long pole with a loop on the end he can adjust to trap the reptile.

He slings it over the reptile and tightens it, to trap him and pull him out of the toilet.

The worker uses a pole with a rope loop on the end to snare the snake and pull him out of the toilet

The snake is finally captured by the rescue worker and it is believed to have been released the next day

He gets a helping hand from a bystander too, who holds onto the terrifying animal.

It is said to have been released the following day.

It is not clear when the video was filmed, but it is said to be in the city of Khon Kean in Thailand, and has been viewed 400,000 times since it was shared on Facebook.

It also attracted hundreds of comments, including one person who said: 'I always thought of that, what if that happens, I cant believe it happened!'

Another added: 'Great now I can't poop or pee for the rest of my life.'
Lawyers representing 36 teen refugees who lived in the Calais Jungle argue that Home Secretary Amber Rudd, pictured, failed to comply with section 67 of the Immigration Act - designed to protect vulnerable children

Dozens of children barred from entry to Britain following the destruction of the Jungle refugee camp in Calais have begun legal action against the Government.

In what will amount to a test case with huge ramifications for Europe's immigration crisis, solicitors representing 36 teenagers who lived in the Calais Jungle say they have been treated unlawfully.

They argue that Home Secretary Amber Rudd failed to comply with section 67 of the Immigration Act - known as the 'Dubs amendment' - which is designed to protect vulnerable children.

Under the provision the UK Government has a duty to take in a 'specified number of unaccompanied refugee children from other countries in Europe'.

Although the UK Government determines the 'specified number' campaigners and lawyers argue the Home Office have not relocated or agreed to relocate a sufficient number of child refugees.

The legislation states that the number is determined by how many unaccompanied children local authorities across the UK can accept.

The Calais teens are taking legal action despite them all being dispersed to reception centres across France after the squalid shantytown in northern France was razed in October.

At the time 1,932 youngsters were 'taken into care', with only 274 transferred to the UK, according to figures released by the Interior Ministry in Paris.

Now 36 of those left behind in France have accused Home Secretary Amber Rudd of mishandling their asylum claims.

Of that number, 28 have already had their applications rejected, while eight are waiting to hear back from the British authorities.

Dozens of children barred from entry to Britain following the destruction of the Jungle refugee camp in Calais have begun legal action against the Government. Pictured, unidentified refugees at the camp after it was cleared in October

The squalid shantytown in Calais, northern France was razed in October, pictured

Toufique Hossain, of Duncan Lewis Solicitors, told the Guardian: 'The government has rendered these children, including some as young as thirteen, to effectively be without any legal remedy until well into the New Year, which is the earliest that the relevant home office officials have agreed to give reasons for refusing some of these children.'

Mr Hossain said Labour peer Alf Dubs  who was himself a child refugee from the Nazi Holocaust  had provided an impressive challenge to the government's current policies.

His so-called Dubs amendment to the Immigration Bill allows for unaccompanied child migrants to settle in Britain even if they do not have family links, so long as they are considered to be at risk.

WHAT'S THE UK'S RESPONSIBILITY? Under section 67 of the Immigration Act - known as the 'Dubs amendment' - the UK Government has a duty to relocate a 'specified number of unaccompanied refugee children from other countries in Europe'. Lord Dubs, who fled Nazi rule on one of the Kindertransport trains in 1939, wanted the UK to commit to taking in 3,000 child refugees but reached a compromise with the Government. The Home Office determines the 'specified number' that comes to Britain and it is calculated in consultation with local authorities across the UK. So far Britain has taken in just 274 of the 1,932 youngsters that were left unaccompanied in the Calais Jungle when it was razed in October, according to figures released by the French Interior Ministry. Ministers have also said that only children who were in Europe before 20 March 2016 can be considered for relocation under section 67. The measure is to discourage more people making the perilous journey from the Middle East and Africa. The Dubs amendment is in addition to the commitment to relocate children under the Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme. Advertisement

Now many of the children currently in France say they are in a vulnerable position. They range in age from 14 to 17, and are mainly from Eritrea and Afghanistan.

According to their lawyers, the Home Office has failed in its duty of care, and should reconsider all their applications.

Their case focuses on a 'traumatised and vulnerable boy' 14-year-old Afghan boy whose father helped Nato forces in the war against the Taliban.

The family was accordingly targeted by the Islamic fundamentalists, and the boy was shot in the neck.

He then managed to escape his home country, travelling overland to France, and experiencing numerous horrors along the way.

These included being attacked by Iranian troops, and almost starving to death while living rough in Bulgaria.

Neither the French nor British governments have commented on the case.

But Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: 'It should not require legal action to force this Government to do the right thing and offer refuge to these vulnerable children.

'The camps in Calais may have been demolished, but many child refugees are still no closer to having a place to call home.

'Amber Rudd must stop using vague rules to block children seeking refuge in the UK and start living up to Britain's values of openness, tolerance and compassion.'

As thousands of refugees continue to flee the violence in Syria and other conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, Europe's migration crisis shows no signs of abating.

And today Lord Dubs warned that those seeking sanctuary in Europe will face an even more hostile environment in 2017.

He predicts that with many European governments, including Germany, Austria, France and Italy, facing elections in the coming year, they will face domestic pressure to tighten their borders amid the resurgence of anti-immigrant movements sweeping across the continent.

In what will amount to a test case with huge ramifications for Europe's immigration crisis, solicitors representing 36 teenagers who lived in the Calais Jungle say they have been treated unlawfully. Pictured, unidentified refugees at the camp after it was cleared in October
Charlie Sheen is facing a massive backlash after he took to social media to pray Donald Trump would be the next celebrity to die.

His tweet, which read, 'Dear God; Trump next, please! Trump next, please! Trump next, please! Trump next, please! Trump next, please! Trump next, please!,' was shared just hours after it was announced Debbie Reynolds had died.

The post caused fury among those mourning the actress, with users calling him a 'scumbag and a 'useless cockroach'.

Charlie Sheen attends the Snow Queen Cigar Smoker of the Year awards at Boisdale of Canary Wharf on December 12, 2016 in London, England

President-elect Donald Trump - the man Charlie Sheen wants to see die next - speaks to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday

One Twitter user said: 'A total scumbag wishing someone dead on Twitter.

'Your contribution to humanity is what, exactly, Charlie Sheen.

'Useless cockroach living off daddy.'

Another simply pointed out that the 51-year-old actor 'has no chill' while others took a more drastic stance urging police to arrest Sheen and some even returned his death wish, saying he is the celebrity that should die next.

One woman pondered how much of a backlash there would have been had Sheen wished death upon Barack Obama rather than the President-elect.

The tweet was posted an hour after news began to circulate about the death of much-loved Hollywood actress Debbie Reynolds.

Charlie Sheen's tweet came as the world was reacting to the death of Debbie Reynolds (pictured)

Debbie Reynolds, pictured in 2011, died on Wednesday after falling ill planning her daughter's funeral

She died on Wednesday a day after the death of her daughter, telling family before a suspected stroke: 'I want to be with Carrie'.

The 84-year-old was rushed from her son Todd's Beverly Hills home at around 1pm after falling ill while planning her daughter's funeral.

She died in hospital hours later.

Todd Fisher revealed on Wednesday evening how his mother had been shattered with grief since his sister's death the previous day.

On the morning of her death, she told him: 'I miss her so much, I want to be with Carrie,' according to TMZ.

Carrie Fisher, 60, died on Tuesday from complications which stemmed from a heart attack she suffered on Christmas Eve while flying to Los Angeles from London.

Sheen was accused by Craig Brittain of using the tragedy to attack the Republican.




Young father Cain Hutchinson (pictured) died after a balloon filled with ice burst in his bowel, an inquest has heard

A 21-year-old prisoner died after a balloon filled with the deadly drug ice he had swallowed burst in his bowel, an inquest has heard.

Cain Hutchinson, who was on remand at Port Philip Prison in Victoria, was found shaking and vomiting just hours before he was found unconscious after the drugs leaked into his gut.

The Coroners Court of Victoria launched an inquest into his death to determine how he died after his girlfriend managed to smuggle the drugs into the prison.

The young father had called his girlfriend to arrange for her to bring drugs into the prison for him the next day.

His girlfriend visited the prison with their baby daughter and the balloon filled with methylamphetamine on June 6, 2015.

She purchased a bag of pretzels and a drink from the vending machine to share with Hutchinson before she took their baby to the bathroom to change her nappy.

The 21-year-old inmate was on remand at Port Philip Prison in Victoria last year

She then placed the balloon in her hand while she was in the bathroom before she returned to her seat in the visiting area.

When she took some pretzels from the bag, she dropped the balloon. Hutchinson then reached into the bag and placed the balloon into his mouth before he swallowed it down with orange juice.

His girlfriend was stunned to see the mouth of juice he drank as she believed he was going to keep the balloon at the back of his throat so it would be easy to take it out once he returned to his cell.

After his family left, he grabbed dinner and returned to cell to eat his food.

On the morning of June 7, 2015, his cellmate found Hutchinson shivering on his bed.

His cellmate decided to get him breakfast to make him feel better.

When he returned with porridge, Hutchinson had locked himself in the cell and said he was on the toilet.

Concerned for his welfare, other inmates gathered around his cell as they urged Hutchinson to open up the door.

Hutchinson was initially suspected of having food poisoning because he had not mentioned anything about drugs to his fellow inmates.

The father had called his girlfriend to arrange for her to bring drugs into the prison for him

Far from getting better, Hutchinson was rushed to the prison's health unit to wait for an ambulance while other inmates were placed in lockdown.

The coroner's report found Hutchinson went into a cardiac arrest as he was being carried into the ambulance - but attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.

Following day, the autopsy found an orange balloon containing a small clear plastic bag had spilled into the gut.

Methylamphetamine was detected in his urine and amphetamines were found in his blood and also urine.

A pathologist found the 'knot came partly undone causing the drugs that were contained in a small ziplock bag to leak out into the gut'.

Hutchinson was initially suspected of having food poisoning because he had not mentioned anything about drugs to his inmates - but an autopsy later found ice had leaked into his gut

The coroner's report found that large doses of amphetamines could lead to agitation, hyperthermia, hallucination, convulsions, unconsciousness, respiratory or cardiac failure.

Two days after his death, his girlfriend called the Wyndham Criminal Investigation Unit where she tearfully confessed she had supplied the balloon filled with drugs.

During an interview with the coroner's investigator and a police officer the next day, she explained how she smuggled the drugs into the prison.

In her taped interview with police, his girlfriend said Hutchinson had told her that he would be 'knocked' or would have to 'knock' others if she did not bring drugs into the prison.

She pleaded guilty to charges of possessing methylamphetamine and introducing contraband to a prison. She was fined without conviction.
A young family have told of the callous moment they were informed of their pet dog's death at a boarding kennel where he was staying while they were on holiday.

Newcastle man Nathan Wilson told Daily Mail Australia he and his partner, Dean Bradley, were told they were only getting one of their dogs back after Christmas in front of their 11-year-old son.

The family now faces the 'impossible reality' of the death of their dog, Baron.

'The manager came out and said "your dog is dead" in front of my son  he just burst into tears, we are all so sad we are just in shock,' Mr Wilson said.

Baron, pictured, died aged three after his owners left him in the care of a boarding kennel over Christmas

Dean Bradley, left, went to pick up the dogs with his son only to find one had died. His partner Nathan Wilson was devastated by the news

Their other dog Charlotte collapsed when she got home after her play mate had died

'I don't understand why he couldn't have pulled my partner aside and told him quietly.'

The family's two dogs, Baron, 3, and Charlotte, 16, spent six days over Christmas at the resort but the young male never made it home.

Mr Wilson revealed it was particularly upsetting as the dog had been adopted shortly after he and his partner took in two young boys to be their sons.

Baron had represented their new life together.

'These boys have had a hard start  so this has really upset them  because of their background they don't handle this kind of loss and grief very well,' Mr Wilson said.

But Jane's Pet Resort owner Stephen Williams told Daily Mail Australia he was in shock which is why he blurted out the sad news in front of the child.

'I am really sad and sorry about what has happened,' Mr Williams said.

'I have been doing this for 20 years and have never had anything like this happen  I was in shock after I saw the dog so I blurted out that it had died in front of the boy and I am sorry about that.'

The men are adopting two boys and said Baron who is now dead was brought in to the family to help them bond

Baron, 3, was at the boarding kennel with Charlotte, 16, for six days

Mr Wilson said he could understand if the dogs had escaped or been attacked

Mr Wilson said he could not wrap his head around the dog's death.

'I understand that things can happen and if he had died from a snake bite or had escaped, or if he had been attacked by another dog I could understand that.'

Mr Williams said the RSPCA had been out and investigated, and while he was upset about the death he was confident his staff followed procedures.

'I saw the dogs at lunch time when I gave them a bath, I took them to the exercise area but it was pretty hot so I put them back under cover in their kennels,' he said.

'The kennels have water in them for the dogs.'

Mr Wilson said the dog had helped teach the young boys how adoption works.

An RSPCA spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia they were investigating the matter

'I was teaching them bout becoming part of a new family,' he said.

'I am so sorry this happened to Baron, I think there needs to be more strict guidelines to stop this from happening again.'

The facility's owner told Daily Mail Australia they had been getting death threats since the incident.

The family said this was not what they wanted and asked their supporters to stop with their threats of violence.

'What is really upsetting us is the threats of violence that has been made against the facility and the owners of it. These threats are incredibly distressing and misguided,' Mr Wilson said.

'Please stop sending threatening messages of retaliation for the treatment of my animal to those within this business. It's not right. Please stop.'
The former head of Helsinki police's drugs squad was jailed today for 10 years for smuggling 900 kilos of hashish - worth at least 1m - into Finland from the Netherlands.

Jari Aarnio, 59, who had denied the charges, was convicted of drug smuggling, official misconduct and tampering with evidence.

Helsinki district court found him guilty of organising a huge shipment of hashish in a barrel in 2011 and obstructing his colleagues in the police as they tried to investigate the case.

Jari Aarnio (pictured) had denied he was 'Pasila Man' the shadowy figure behind the smuggling

Aarnio, who was arrested in 2013, was sentenced in September to a three-year jail term for fraud linked to the purchase of police surveillance equipment.

Finland is considered the second least corrupt country in the world after Denmark, according to anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International.

The judge said Aarnio had ruthlessly abused his position and his actions had harmed public trust in the police.

Aarnio (pictured) had spent 30 years in the Finnish police and had an unblemished record

His 12 co-defendants included Keijo Vilhunen, head of a Finnish gang called the United Brotherhood, who was also jailed for 10 years.

Aarnio will be incarcerated at Vantaa prison, along with biker gang members and some of the drug smugglers he himself got convicted.

The Helsingin Sanomat newspaper said he had also been forced to forfeit 1.3million euros and a house in Porvoo.
Rashid Cunningham was fatally shot while walking home from a birthday party near his South Florida home, authorities say

An eight-year-old boy was fatally shot while walking home from a birthday party near his South Florida home, authorities say.

He has been named locally as Rashid Cunningham.

Rashid was known as 'Little Foot' and attended Collins Elementary School, where he was in the third grade, NBC Miami reported.

The shooting happened Wednesday evening in Dania Beach, Broward Sheriff's spokesman Veda Coleman-Wright told local media, adding two of the boy's adult cousins also were shot.

They were taken to hospitals and their conditions weren't available early Thursday.

Scroll down for video

The shooting happened Wednesday evening in Dania Beach, Broward Sheriff's spokesman Veda Coleman-Wright told local media, adding two of the boy's adult cousins also were shot

A woman who says she's Rashid's mother was distraught at the scene

Video courtesy of NBC Miami:

A different juvenile suffered a bullet graze, NBC Miami reported.

Coleman-Wright says it was the fourth shooting in the neighborhood since Christmas and added deputies believe that two of the previous incidents may be related to this one.

A woman who says she's Rashid's mother was distraught at the scene, WPLG reported.

The boy's adult cousins were taken to hospitals and their conditions weren't available early Thursday.

No arrests were reported and further details weren't immediately available.

Investigators appealed to anyone with information about the shootings to contact them.
Children have been filmed running for their lives from a school in Syria after airstrikes hit nearby homes.

The videos are reported to be from Arbin, a rebel town in the Eastern Ghouta, north-east of the countrys capital Damascus.

Young children, wrapped up in their winter coats, are seen fleeing in panic with their school bags as dust from the bombed buildings envelope the area.

At least 15 civilians, including six children, were killed on Thursday in air strikes and artillery fire on rebel-held territory near Damascus, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was not immediately possible to determine whether the strikes on the Eastern Ghouta region were carried out by the Syrian regime or its ally Russia.

Children were filmed running and screaming from a school in Arbin, near Damascus, on Thursday

Eastern Ghouta has long been a rebel stronghold, and is regularly targeted by government air strikes and artillery fire.

The Observatory, a Britain-based monitor, reported air strikes and artillery fire on the towns of Douma, Harasta, Arbin, Zamalka and Saqba in the region.

An AFP correspondent in Eastern Ghouta said warplanes had been overheard since the early hours of the morning.

The video purportedly shows school children screaming and fleeing for their lives as their town comes under bombardment

The videos are reported to be from Arbin, a rebel town in the Eastern Ghouta, north-east of the countrys capital Damascus

A cloud of dust enveloped the street after residential buildings were hit by air strikes

Opposition fighters meanwhile launched a barrage of rockets at Damascus, the Observatory and an AFP correspondent in the capital said.

Syrian state television reported seven people were wounded in the fire.

Elsewhere, the Observatory said five civilians including a baby were killed in regime rocket fire overnight in the south of Daraa city.

The violence came ahead of an announcement Thursday by Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Syrian government and rebels had signed a ceasefire deal and agreed to start peace talks.

More than 310,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

The videos also showed White Helmet rescue workers attending the to rubble
Russian President Vladimir Putin has confirmed a ceasefire will come into force from midnight in Syria, with Russia and Turkey acting as guarantors.

He also agreed to reduce Russia's military presence in Syria.

The Syrian military high command issued a statement today in which they declared a 'comprehensive nationwide cessation of hostilities as of midnight'.

Syria's opposition National Coalition agreed to the ceasefire. A spokesman, Ahmed Ramadan, said: 'The National Coalition express support for the agreement and urges all parties to abide by it.'

President Putin (pictured) is acting along with Turkey and in the vacuum caused by the handover from President Obama to President-elect Trump

Putin said today: 'Three documents have been signed. The first is a document between the Syrian government and armed opposition for a ceasefire on the territory of Syria.

'The second document is a set of measures to verify the ceasefire. The third document is an announcement of their readiness to start peace talks.'

Russia's defence minister Sergei Shoigu said the Syrian military was gearing up to halt all operations from midnight local time.

Russian jets on the deck of the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean off the Syrian coast will abide by a ceasefire in Syria from midnight (file photo)

Russian planes have been bombarding Aleppo (pictured) for months, killing thousands of civilians and eventually helping the Assad regime regain total control of the city

He said the rebel groups that have signed up to the ceasefire comprise 62,000 fighters and he said negotiations had been going on for two months to secure the truce.

Earlier Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said they were working towards a ceasefire to end the conflict, which began in 2011.

Although on opposing sides in the conflict, Turkey and Russia have been working intensively to find a ceasefire after the fall of Aleppo to the Syrian regime last week, in a process that does not include the United States.

The nationwide ceasefire follows the deal brokered by Turkey and Russia for Aleppo which allowed the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians.

Ankara and Moscow have been on opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, with Turkey seeking the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Russia and Iran.

But the two countries have recently started to cooperate more closely on Syria, especially after a deal in the summer to normalise ties battered by Turkey's shooting down of a Russian warplane last year.

A tractor removes rubble as the Syrian government starts to clean up areas formerly held by opposition forces in the northern city of Aleppo

Their warmer relationship has survived the assassination of the Russian ambassador, Andrei Karlov, by an off-duty Turkish police officer last week.

Mr Cavusoglu said if the ceasefire was successful, political negotiations between Assad's regime and the opposition would take place in the Kazakh capital Astana.

But he said the Astana talks, overseen by Turkey and Russia, were not a rival to UN-backed talks that have been taking place on-and-off in Geneva in recent years.

'This is not an alternative to Geneva. It is a complementary step,' said Mr Cavusoglu.

He said it was necessary for foreign fighters to leave Syria, including those with the Tehran-backed Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

'Hezbollah needs to return to Lebanon,' he said.

It is not clear what Iran's view is of that suggestion.

Ankara's close cooperation with Moscow comes amid rapidly increasing strains between Turkey and the United States.

Turkey launched an ambitious operation in northern Syria on August 24 in support of pro-Ankara Syrian rebels, with the aim of ousting jihadists as well as Kurdish militia from the border area.

But Ankara says it has received no support from the US-led coalition as its forces battle to retake the ISIS-held town of Al Bab, taking increasing casualties.

Mr Cavusoglu hit back at the lack of aerial support from the US-led coalition and repeated accusations Washington was arming separatist Kurdish fighters.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who this week accused Washington of backing ISIS, today attacked Washington for its 'support' for terror organisations, by which it is thought he meant Kurdish groups.
A 12-year-old girl who won the hearts of a nation with her battle against a horrific and rare genetic disease which gave her the body of a 90-year-old, has died.

Karen Ordonez suffered from progeria, a condition which makes the sufferer age prematurely so that children end up looking like old men or women.

She became famous in her native Colombia after persuading the national police force to grant her ambition - to become a fully-fledged police officer, all be it only an honorary position.

Karen Ordonez received an honorific title from police officers. She was known to be obsessed by police work and would have liked to have been a detective

Her brave fight and her cheerful attitude made her something of a national heroine and her death prompted an outpouring of grief on social media in Colombia.

Ketty Holguin Marin wrote: 'God has her in his glory, beautiful and a hero police officer' while Ramiro Castrillon said simply: 'God bless her, an angel leaves us.'

General Jorge Nieto, head of the national police, said he was saddened by her death.

Karen (pictured) was always welcome at the headquarters of the national police and its chief, General Jorge Nieto, said he was saddened by her death

The disease, sometimes known as HutchinsonGilford progeria syndrome, affects one person in eight million and there is no cure.

Karen's compatriot and fellow sufferer, Magali Gonzalez Sierra, celebrated her 15th birthday earlier this year.

Despite her condition Karen remained remarkably upbeat and in a recent interview said: 'I love to have friends and not to be alone.'

Karen (pictured) holding an honorific police officer certificate and posing with police officers

She laughed in the face of her condition and once joked that she looked like her classmates' grandparents and claimed to be their twin.

Tragically the condition meant she was born without eyelashes, which led to her eyes watering a lot but she delighted in telling school friends that she was not crying.

Progeria also gave her arthritis and heart problems which eventually claimed her life.

Karen is pictured saluting at a national police memorial (left) and during a visit to a police college (right)
Kim Jong-Un has ordered 340 executions in five years since seizing power - with almost half being senior officials from his own government, a report has claimed.

The North Korean dictator has used capital punishment to consolidate his position, according to the Institute for National Security Strategy, a South Korean think tank.

Of the 340 people he has put to death since 2011, 140 of them are said to have been senior government officials, the group claimed in a report called 'The misgoverning of Kim Jong Un's five years in power'.

Kim Jong-Un (centre) has ordered 340 executions in five years since seizing power - with almost half being senior officials from his own government, a report has claimed

In October, South Korea's spy agency reported that the despot had ordered the public execution of 64 'traitors' so far in 2016.

This sharp rise in the execution of officials is thought to have been a result of the dictator's increasing paranoia about his personal safety, the National Intelligence Service said.

It even exceeds the bloodshed of his father's early rule, they added.

Kim had shown restraint in state-sanctioned killings in recent years after reports emerged about his uncle Jang Song Thaek being executed.

In October, South Korea's spy agency reported that the despot had ordered the public execution of 64 'traitors' so far in 2016

But Kim has resumed them after the United Nations imposed more sanctions on the country following its long-range rocket launch and nuclear tests.

In April last year North Korea's defence minister was publicly executed with an anti-aircraft gun for falling asleep during military meetings and answering back to Kim.

Hyon Yong-Chol, 66, who was named head of North Korea's military in 2012, was killed in front of hundreds of bloodthirsty officials at a military camp in the capital Pyongyang.

It was not the first time a ZPU-4 anti-aircraft gun has been used for executions in North Korea.
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These incredible holiday snaps were taken by photographer who managed to swim just inches from the jaws of a deadly crocodile.

Christian Vizl captured the shots when he got up close to American crocodiles off the coast of Mexico, where a colony of about 500 of the reptiles live.

He spent a day in the water with the fearsome beasts, which can grow up to 20ft long, and can attack in a second.

But he was able to keep himself safe by being able to read the creatures' body language.

Christian Vizl captured these amazing shots when he got up close to American crocodiles off the coast of Mexico

The underwater photographer spent a day in the water with the fearsome beasts, who live together in a colony of 500

His fantastic photos show the huge jaws and sharp teeth of the powerful crocs just inches from Christian's camera lens - giving a terrifying view most people would never see.

The 43-year-old said he was so absorbed in getting a good snap he forgot to be scared.

Christian, who trained as a diving instructor and cave diver before getting in to starting underwater photography, spent the day in Chinchorro, a small atoll 30 miles off Xcalak on the southeast tip of Mexico where the colony lives and breeds.

Christian said the creatures were lured to an area with lots of sea grass above the sandy bottom because it makes it harder for them to attack there.

His fantastic up close and personal photoographs show the crocs' huge jaws and the rows of sharp teeth inside their mouths

The creatures were lured to an area with lots of sea grass above the sandy bottom, to make it harder for them to attack

He then waited for them to come close enough for him to get the perfect snap.

'A local diving company has developed a strategy and procedures to approach these magnificent animals. I went out with them and everything is done under strict safety conditions,' he said.

'The crocodiles seemed to be very calm. With the right conditions, you can be as close to them as a few inches.

'This was my first encounter this close to a crocodile and it was definitely one of the best experiences I have had underwater.

'I didn't need a wetsuit or diving gear as the maximum depth was only about four or five feet.

The crocs can attack in seconds but he managed to keep himself safe by being able to read the creatures' body language

The American crocodile, or Crocodylus acutus in Latin, is one of the larger species and males can reach lengths of 20ft and weigh up to 2000lbs

'Ideally the croc is lured to an area with lots of sea grass above the sandy bottom, since it's very hard for them to attack in this position. If they attack, they will usually do it from an upward angle.

'There is no guarantee they won't attack. It's still unchartered territory and this is an apex predator so everything must be done safely.'

Explaining how the team managed to avoid becoming prey to one of the crocs, he said: 'We had to make sure we had good visibility, work as a team and read the body language of the crocodiles.

'You have to look out for every tiny detail - how easily and confidently it approaches, if it makes any sudden movements.

'The first croc I approached seemed relaxed. I went as close as a few inches from his jaws without him making any sudden movements so I felt safe but there is no guarantee.

'In less than a second they can completely turn their whole body and grab anything that is close to them.

'I guess there is always a chance of something bad happening, but that's part of being a wildlife photographer.'

And Christian said that he was so immersed in the experience that he did not even feel afraid.

The species is one of the most widespread species of crocodiles from the Americas and lives in mangrove swamps, river mouths, fresh waters, salt lakes and can even be found at sea

The crocs are potentially dangerous to humans with attacks reported in Mexico, Costa Rica and Florida in recent years

'I was more scared before I got in the water, thinking about what could go wrong. Once I was in the water and close to one I was so absorbed by it that my fears disappeared and I just enjoyed the experience', he said.

'I try to capture sublime moments of the marine environment, the essence of being there in the presence of that particular animal, capturing their splendor and soul.

'Being underwater is like being in a magical world and the crocodiles seemed as curious of me as I was about them.

'I definitely want to go back and spend more time with them.'

The American crocodile, or Crocodylus acutus in Latin, is one of the larger species and males can reach lengths of 20ft and weigh up to 2000lbs.

It is the most widespread species of crocodiles from the Americas and lives in mangrove swamps, river mouths, fresh waters, salt lakes and can even be found at sea.

Despite their large size, American crocodiles do not regularly attack large animals, mostly feeding on fish, reptiles, birds and small mammals.
Untrained refugees were deployed as security personnel on New Year's Eve in Cologne last year, according to a secret police report.

It said many abandoned their posts and at least one was so drunk he could not work.

Last year mobs of mostly North African men sexually assaulted and robbed hundreds of women in and around the city's main railway station as police totally lost control of the situation.

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Police cars are pictured outside Cologne's famous cathedral. The authorities are taking no chances this year and are flooding the city with 1,500 police - ten times the number on duty in 2015 - to stop a repeat of the disgraceful scenes last year

On the night 59 asylum seekers were stationed on bridges across the Rhine to assist in a mammoth security operation aimed at stopping any trouble.

On September 7, 2015 authorities made the decision to give some refugees a role in the policing of the celebrations - a fact which has only just emerged.

The security firm Westturm was in charge of hiring the migrants who were told to have a 'basic mastery of the German language and to bring along warm clothing.'

Bild newspaper today published a list of those who were hired. Most came from North Africa, Syria and Afghanistan.

German police officers demonstrate a newly installed CCTV surveillance system during a press conference in Cologne, Germany today. The square in front of the city's train station is now covered by eight police cameras featuring a high-resolution zoom function

They were paid just five euros an hour (4.25) - little more than half of the statutory minumum wage in Germany.

But the city of Cologne was billed three times as much by the security agency which recruited them, said the report.

The calibre of personnel caused concern long before the fateful night.

A former senior executive of Westturm told Bild: 'Our employees collected the refugees in three initial reception centres in Ratingen and brought them in minibuses to the bridges where they were stationed.

Germans have long been sensitive about CCTV cameras, which they have seen as an invasion of privacy, but last year's events in Cologne have changed a lot of perceptions, as have recent events in Berlin

'We knew not at all exactly who these people were. They got a security vest and some radios.'

Cologne authorities are taking no chances this year and are flooding the city with 1,500 police - ten times the number on duty in 2015 - to stop a repeat of the disgraceful scenes.

The square in front of the city's train station is now covered by eight police CCTV cameras, featuring a high-resolution zoom function.

Police are particularly worried about the Hohenzollern railway bridge over the Rhine which leads into the station.

There were fears last year that there could have been a crushing incident as masses of people crossed it and trains had to be cancelled.

Refugees were stationed on it to assist in crowd control.

A police officer stands in front of the Cologne Cathedral on Christmas Eve. This year the city will not be sub-contracting out security but will be relying on 1,500 ordinary police officers

Twenty were also assigned to the Zoo Bridge and others were stationed on the Deutzer and Severnin bridges.

But things quickly began to go awry.

Five of the 20 refugees on the Zoo Bridge vanished from their posts almost immediately - but timesheets of the Westturm firm showed the city was billed five hours for each of them.

On the Deutzer bridge a guard called Arif had to quit his post because he was drunk and his replacement, a man called Suyleman, left after two hours' work.

On the Hohenzollern Bridge refugee Kemal lost his radio and then walked off the job almost immediately after starting his shift.
An elderly couple froze to death after getting locked out of their home in temperatures as low as -20F.

The bodies of Richard Ellison, 82, and Shirley Johnson, 70, were discovered by a utility worker at 10.30am on December 21 in Superior, Wisconsin.

It is unclear how long they had been outside, but they were last seen shopping three days earlier and it appears they lost their keys and could not get back inside.

Richard Ellison and Shirley Johnson's home is in a remote end of town near the famous Lake Superior (pictured) and their nearest neighbor was half a block away

In the remote area of Superior where the couple lived, pictured here in warmer climes, their nearest neighbor was half a block away

'Lots of things that could have been done that weren't done ultimately added up into a tragic situation,' Superior Police Captain Thomas Champaigne told the Star Tribune.

He said it was unclear how long they had been outside, but that a preliminary autopsy determined they had died of hypothermia as a result of prolonged exposure.

Their home is in a remote end of town near the famous lake and their nearest neighbor was half a block away.

It appeared as though they had died after searching through their own belongings and cops are not sure whether or not they had a cellphone.

It is not clear why they had not attempted to seek refuge in their car or a neighbor's house.

It is not known how long the elderly couple had been outside for, but the temperature around the lake (pictured) dipped to -20F in the days leading up to their discovery

Mr Champaigne has urged citizens to take extra caution after the tragic deaths of Mr Ellison and Ms Johnson follow an incident in Minnesota this month.

Two elderly men died after wandering from their senior care home and a number of college students have passed away in recent years because of the freezing weather.

'If you're locked out of your house,' the Superior Captain told the Tribune, 'especially in really inclement weather, call the police.

'We're going to do whatever we can for you - we're going to make sure you have shelter.'
Widows of two of the Islamic State's most notorious executioners have been seized by police trying to sneak back into Turkey.

Spanish national Asia Ahmed Mohamed, 26, and Fatima Akil Laghmich, 21, were arrested by Turkish authorities as they tried to enter the country.

Asia - also a Spanish citizen - is the widow of Mohamed Hamduch, who posed grinning with the decapitated heads of five execution victims in Syria.

He once gave his wife a suicide belt as a wedding present but died last year in the Syrian battle for Aleppo.

Spanish nationals Asia Ahmed Mohamed (left), 26, and Fatima Akil Laghmich (right), 21, were arrested by Turkish authorities as they tried to enter the country from Syria

Mohamed Hamduch, alias 'Kokito', was married to Asia and reportedly died in Syria last year

Asia was arrested with the couple's 21-month-old son, say reports.

Fatima had been married to Mourad Kadi, another dead IS terrorist, and was travelling with their three-year-old son.

Both women had travelled to Syria from Spain's African enclave Ceuta in 2014 to join the terrorist organisation.

It is understood they were trying to return to Europe following the fall of Aleppo to Syrian government forces.

Spain's Ministry of the Interior said the woman are 'extremely valued' anti-terror targets because of their extensive knowledge of IS members and supporters in Spain and Turkey.

Both women are being held in Turkey.

Mohamed Hamduch pictured with victims' heads after purportedly decapitating them
Actress Debbie Reynolds could be buried with her daughter Carrie Fisher in a joint funeral after they died within a day of each other.

The family of the mother and daughter actresses considering the arrangement as they draw up funeral plans.

Reynolds had bought a family plot for burial and left advance instructions about her funeral.

Reynolds, who was 84, suffered a massive stroke yesterday morning while discussing funeral plans for Fisher, who was 60, at the Beverly Hills home of her son Todd.

Rushed to the nearby Cedars Sinai hospital, she died a few hours later with Todd, 58, later describing her passing as 'very peaceful and quiet'.

Her last words are believed to have been about her daughter who died 24 hours earlier at UCLA Medical Center  four days after suffering a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles.

According to TMZ, Reynolds, who was left grief-stricken by the death of her eldest child, told son Todd, 'I miss her so much. I want to be with Carrie', before slipping away.

Debbie Reynolds (center) died peacefully on Wednesday, her son Todd Fisher (left) said. The 84-year-old Hollywood legend passed away the day after her daughter Carrie Fisher (right) died. Reynolds and her children are pictured above at the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Awards

It was at her son's house on Wednesday that Reynolds suffered a stroke and had to be rushed to the hospital (an ambulance outside the home on Wednesday). Her daughter Carrie died on Tuesday, three days after suffering a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles

Billie Lourd, Fisher's only daughter, will play a crucial role in deciding funeral arrangements for her mother, with Todd telling the New York Daily News that she will get 'whatever she wants'.

Speaking prior to his own mother's death, he said: 'We want her to have whatever she wants. Carrie wanted that.

'As far as mom and I are concerned, she gets whatever she wants. 'There is a trust set up. But we're all pretty well off. This was her mother.'

Fisher said his mother did not appear to be in pain after suffering a stroke at his home while planning Carrie's funeral.

'She was very peaceful and quiet,' Fisher told ABC News. 'It happened very gently.'

He also said his mother had been shattered with grief since his sister's death the previous day.

On the morning of her death, she told him: 'I miss her so much, I want to be with Carrie,' according to TMZ.

Fisher, 60, died on Tuesday from complications which stemmed from a heart attack she suffered on a flight from London to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve.

On Wednesday, Todd Fisher said he was 'heartbroken' by their back-to-back deaths. 'She's now with Carrie and we're all heartbroken,' he said.

Debbie Reynolds and her first husband Eddie Fisher welcomed Carrie in 1956. Fisher would later leave his wife for her best friend - Elizabeth Taylor

While Fisher had made no funeral provisions, Reynolds knew 'exactly' what she wanted, her son previously said.

Speaking before her death, he told New York Daily News that his famous mother had already chosen out where she would be buried and that they owned a family plot.

All of his sister's estate would be handed over to her only daughter, Billie Lourd, he said.

At the time of their deaths, Reynolds and her daughter enjoyed a happy, close relationship after years of estrangement.
Comes weeks after two quakes rocked the country and left

Twitter users have made light of a 'severe' earthquake after a 5.5-magnitude tremor rocked central New Zealand.

More than 7,000 people reported feeling the ground tremble beneath them on Thursday afternoon as the earthquake struck near the small South Island town of Seddon, at a depth of 10 miles.

But while some felt the quake from as far as Christchurch, 310 miles to the south, others played down its impact, writing tongue in cheek posts on social media.

Twitter users have made light of a 'severe' earthquake after a 5.5-magnitude tremor rocked central New Zealand. One showed a glass of beer with the caption: 'Dude you almost spilled my beer!'

One Twitter used complained that the earthquake had knocked cornflakes off his spoon

One Twitter user joked 'Not the Chanel!' along with a picture of a bottle of perfume thrown on to the floor by the force of the tremor

A severe earthquake with a 5.5 magnitude has struck central New Zealand, just weeks after two massive quakes rocked the country

The intensity and depth of the quake was described as 'severe' after it hit, 20 miles northeast of Seddon, according to GeoNet. Some residents reported feeling the ground shake for 15 seconds.

Locals were asked to remain indoors during the quake and to 'drop, cover and hold' during each tremble.

But some took to Twitter to say the quake had little impact.

One posted a picture of a glass of beer along with the caption: 'Dude, you almost spilled my beer'.

Another joked 'Not the Chanel!' along with a picture of a bottle of perfume thrown on to the floor by the force of the tremor.

The intensity and depth of the quake was described as 'severe' after it hit, 20 miles northeast of Seddon, according to GeoNet. Some residents reported feeling the ground shake for 15 seconds

More than 7,000 people reported feeling the ground tremble beneath them on Thursday afternoon as the earthquake struck near the small South Island town of Seddon, at a depth of 10 miles

Many reported the strength of the tremors - and tweeted their concern for people living in earthquake-hit areas of the country

However, many reported the strength of the tremors - and tweeted their concern for people living in earthquake-hit areas of the country.

Residents in Blenheim, French Pass, Paraparaumu, Picton, Seddon and Wellington all felt the earthquake.

'It started quite subtle, then got really intense. My mum jumped up and I quickly followed her outside,' resident Schariona Parker-Poto said from her Wellington home.

Thursday's earthquake comes just a few weeks after another massive quake struck Kaikoura (pictured)

Last month, two major earthquakes measuring 6.3 and 7.8 struck Cheviot, located between Christchurch and Kaikoura (pictured)

The November quakes left widespread damage including deep cracks in the asphalt of the road

Aftershocks are expected to hit the Seddon region later.

Last month, two major earthquakes measuring 6.3 and 7.8 struck Cheviot, located between Christchurch and Kaikoura.

More than 1000 tourists and residents were evacuated from the small seaside town of Kaikoura by a fleet of helicopters and a naval vessel after the massive quake.

The 7.8 earthquake tore apart the seabed, homes, roadways and claimed the lives of two people.
Russia has arrested seven people suspected of preparing New Year's terror attacks in Moscow on orders from ISIS in Syria.

Moscow's counter-terrorism agency, the FSB, said today it had arrested the suspects in the North Caucasus province of Dagestan.

The FSB said the suspects were preparing attacks with automatic weapons and explosives in crowded places in the Russian capital. They are thought to have been detained in Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan.

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An alleged supporter of ISIS is held at gunpoint by a Russian soldier. He is one of seven suspects accused of plotting to attack crowds in Moscow on New Year's Eve

Guns, explosives, grenades and other equipment (pictured) was shown off by FSB agents

Islamist insurgents in Dagestan have mounted frequent attacks on police and officials, and some have sworn allegiance to ISIS.

Dagestan is next door to Chechnya and many Muslim Chechens detest Moscow, especially after two brutal wars (1994-96 and 1999-2000) and occupations by Russian troops.

Russia has waged an air campaign in Syria since September 2015 in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have admitted thousands of citizens of Russia, including Chechens and others, have joined ISIS in Syria.

Two suspects are held on the floor of a house in Dagestan by a masked Russian soldier

One of the suspects is led towards a police van by a heavily armed Russian soldier

Dagestan is thousands of miles from Moscow and it would have taken the gang several days to get there by train or car
President-elect Donald Trump says it's time to move on from Russian hacking allegations.

Trump suggested Wednesday that the Obama administration should not slap Russia and its president,Vladimir Putin, with new sanctions in retaliation for the Kremlin's alleged interference in the U.S. presidential election.

'I think we ought to get on with our lives,' Trump told reporters at a spur-of-the-moment media avail.

He added: 'I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on.

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President-elect Donald Trump says it's time to move on from Russian hacking allegations: 'I think we ought to get on with our lives'

President Barack Obama (left) is poised to issue new sanctions against Russia and Vladimir Putin (right) in response to Moscow's alleged involvement in election-year U.S. hacking. Trump suggested Wednesday that he disagreed with that course of action

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (speaking) said Wednesday that sanctions would impact Putin 'as an individual'. Trump said he hadn't spoken to Graham

'We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I'm not sure we have the kind of security we need.'

Trump said he had not spoken with senators threatening sanctions like Lindsey Graham, who warned Wednesday that the punishing act would hit Putin directly.

He did speak to Obama on the phone but didn't disclose the details of their conversation.

The president-elect has repeatedly butted heads with Obama and his government on the topic of hacking. Trump has rejected assertions from the intelligence community that Russia was behind the theft and publication of emails that embarrassed Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Obama's State Department is reportedly days away from announcing a set of economic sanctions designed to punish Russia and its president for the cyber crimes.

Russia is promising retaliation against an 'orchestrated campaign' of disinformation by the United States if Obama follows through.

'To be honest, we are tired of [the] lie about the "Russian hackers," which is being poured down in the United States from the very top,' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday.

Zakharova also called reports of possible new sanctions a 'provocation directed by the White House,' suggesting that Moscow will respond.

Russia is promising retaliation against an 'orchestrated campaign' of disinformation by the United States if Obama follows through. 'To be honest, we are tired of [the] lie about the "Russian hackers," ' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday

Citing unnamed sources, The Washington Post reported Tuesday that a package of consequences could include economic sanctions, 'diplomatic censure' and a new round of retaliatory cyber operations targeting Russia.

During a press briefing, Zakharova laid into the U.S. and questioned both the Obama administration's truthfulness and its motives.

'The biggest accusation is that Russia allegedly launched cyber attacks at the US information space with a view to interfering in US internal affairs, in particular, the election system,' she said.

'Russia is being presented as a monster that is ready to encroach on the holy of the Western holies  its democratic principles. Of course, these allegations have not been supported by any facts.'

'You probably remember that we appealed to the United States to produce evidence of this at our briefings, in the Foreign Ministrys comments and in statements made by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and interviews he gave. We asked for at least something, even the smallest facts. We did this publicly and during bilateral talks,' Zakharova argued.

'You can ask our American colleagues how often Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has asked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for this evidence. In response, we heard nothing but another helping of nonsense and accusations. It was an orchestrated campaign; nothing was left to chance.'

Meanwhile, Graham, a Republican on the Senate's Armed Services Committee, warned during a trip to Latvia that Congress will back any plan to level penalties at Russia.

'You can expect that the Congress will investigate the Russian involvement in our elections and there will be bipartisan sanctions coming that will hit Russia hard, particularly Putin as an individual,' Graham said.

Russian officials have denied accusations of interference in the election, but the CIA has accused Putin's government of directing a series of hacks that exposed embarrassing secrets of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton's presidential campaign.

President Obama suggested at a news conference earlier this month that he, too, believes the Russian leader was directly involved.

'Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin,' Obama said.

Graham says 'Russia is trying to break the back of democracies all around the world,'

'It is now time for Russia to understand  enough is enough,' he added.

Trump said later in the day that he hadn't talked to Graham, an also-ran for the GOP nomination.

'I don't know what he's doing....As you know he ran against me,' Trump said, suggesting Graham's actions were linked to a grudge.

Graham refused to back Trump in the general election and encouraged other Republicans to un-endorse him.

Hacking that Obama blames on Putin plumbed computers linked with Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, and plundered emails belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta (background, center)

The Post reported that the White House's plan for Russia involves revising a widely heralded 2015 executive order designed to give Obama the power to respond to cyber attacks focused on affecting the U.S. economy or its national security.

Sanctions could include a freeze on money and other assets located in the United States, and a ban on targeted individuals from using America's banking system.

But that measure had no provision for pushing back against election interference via computer.

Obama has pledged to take some kind of retaliatory action, including secret steps that Russia will know about 'but not everybody will.'

White House insiders want Obama to put new rules in place as soon as possible so he can flex U.S. muscles before he leaves office.

The White House is also working to ensure that Trump won't find it easy to reverse what it does when he takes office in three weeks.

'Part of the goal here is to make sure that we have as much of the record public or communicated to Congress in a form that would be difficult to simply walk back,' an unnamed senior administration official told the Post.
A police officer from Arlington, Texas, is winning praise on social media Thursday after he was filmed making a teenager who smoked marijuana do push-ups instead of jail time.

Eric Ball of the Arlington Police Department was off-duty at an Arlington movie theater when someone informed him there was a teenager outside smoking pot, according to WFAA-TV.

When Ball went outside to investigate, he saw the teen throwing his joint away. The smell of marijuana, however, gave him away.

The officer then gave the teen, both of whom are black, a choice  either do 200 push-ups or go to jail.

'He could have very well arrested this teen, but instead tried to do something better,' Lt. Chris Cook of the APD told WFAA-TV.

The name of the teenager is not known, but police say he was about 17 years old. Cook said the teen was respectful toward Ball during their encounter.

Officer Eric Ball (right) of the Arlington Police Department makes a teenage boy (left) who was caught smoking marijuana do 200 push-ups instead of going to jail outside a movie theater

The teen's mother was inside the movie theatre during the incident.

Afterward, the officer found her and she gave him a hug and thanked him.

'She gave a stern warning to her son and even told the officer, "I would have made him do more push-ups",' Cook said.

A Texas resident, Raiza Paradez, posted the clip on her Facebook page. It was viewed over 128,000 times, shared over 1,500 times, and received 1,600 likes as of this writing.

A Texas resident, Raiza Paradez, posted the clip on her Facebook page. It was viewed over 128,000 times, shared over 1,500 times, and received 1,600 likes

Ball of the Arlington Police Department was off-duty at an Arlington movie theatre when someone informed him there was a teenager outside smoking pot

The officer then gave the teen a choice  either do 200 push-ups or go to jail

'Big UP's to the Arlington Police Officer that made the young black guy that decided to smoke weed on the movie theater parking lot to do push-ups then take him to jail or shoot him just Cuz,' Paradez wrote.

'We need more cops like this.'

Paredez wrote on her Facebook page that she was walking by the officer and the teen doing pushups and asked if she could record the incident on her cell phone.

Paredez and others on social media praised the officer's actions, saying he taught the boy a young lesson without ruining his life

Paredez said that she began filming the incident after she received permission from the officer

'What the officer did probably served a better purpose for that young man than putting him in jail,' wrote one Facebook user

Paredez said she is happy the post went viral because it sheds a more positive light on police officers

This Facebook commenter said that the boy was guilty of 'victimless crime' and that it made no sense to put him in jail

Another Facebook user also praised Ball, saying that the officer's actions were 'inspiring'

Others were skeptical that the widespread publicity could negatively affect the officer since he is allowing someone who broke the law to avoid punishment

'I know that officer. And what he did probably served a better purpose for that young man than putting him in jail,' wrote another user.

'Great work Eric. You know I would've done the same thing.'

Social media commenters said the prevalence of young black men going to jail for relatively minor offenses like smoking marijuana makes this incident a welcome change.

'[Shout out] to that [officer],' another Facebook user wrote. 'Knowing the petty crime of marijuana but deciding NOT to throw his life in the balance by incriminating him.'

'Man, this guy is inspiring. Good vid.'

Not everyone was as complimentary.

While acknowledging that the officer did show leniency, some commenters on Facebook noted that the officer allowed a teenager who broke the law to avoid punishment.
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Stunning photographs show two young travellers paddle boarding through icebergs on a half-frozen lake.

Adventurer Allan Dixon - known for his hilarious selfies with animals from around the world - embarked on a stand-up paddle boarding trip in the Tasman Glacier Lake Mount Cook in Canterbury, New Zealand.

Surrounded by chunks of glacier, the backpacker from Wicklow, Ireland, and his travelling companion, known only as Maria, appeared confident as they paddled out onto the icy water this month.

Capturing the mesmerising moment, Mr Dixon said 'gliding on a glacial lake' was a 'surreal experience' when he paddled through the water in front of breathtaking views.

'I started paddling three years ago with them and got hooked ever since,' he said.

'If someone told you they can make you walk on water, this is it. Well glide, but it's the closest thing. Being able to walk on water is one of the greatest feelings you can have thanks to paddle boarding.'

Allan took his first animal selfie with his dog in 2010 but a shot with a baby camel, in the Australian outback in 2013, was the first shot to cause excitement amongst his friends.

Since the camel shot, Allan, who works in marketing within the tourism industry, has gone on to take more than 40 different animal selfies, around 30 of which have been with different species.

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Stunning photographs show a young traveller paddle boarding through icebergs in a half-frozen New Zealand lake

Adventurer Allan Dixon (pictured) embarked on a stand-up paddle boarding trip in the Tasman Glacier Lake Mount Cook

The backpacker and his travelling companion Maria appeared confident as they paddled out onto the icy water this month

Capturing the mesmerising moment, Mr Dixon said 'gliding on a glacial lake' was a 'surreal experience'

Surrounded by picturesque views, Mr Dixon said paddle boarding around the lake felt like a 'walking on water' experience

Surrounded by chunks of glacier, the backpacker paddled out onto the icy water as he captured the mesmerising moment

Waving for the camera as he enjoys the spectacular views, Mr Dixon said 'gliding on a glacial lake' was a 'surreal experience'

The backpacker and his travelling companion Maria appeared confident as they paddled out onto the icy water this month

The adventurer from Ireland embarked on a stand-up paddle boarding trip in the Tasman Glacier Lake Mount Cook

Surrounded by picturesque views, Mr Dixon said paddle boarding around the lake felt like a 'walking on water' experience

Embracing the moment: The young travellers spent their trip paddle boarding around the New Zealand lake this month

Surrounded by chunks of glacier, the backpacker paddled out onto the icy water as he embraces the spectacular views
A financial manager who lost her job after she refused to bow to her Korean boss is set to win thousands of pounds after an employment tribunal ruled that she had suffered racial discrimination and victimisation.

Misook McDonald said her boss was angry at her failure to bow at the start and end of each working day before she was suddenly demoted without notice and moved to the Human Resources department.

Judges were told that when Mrs McDonald challenged Dongbu Daewoo Electronics director Ho Seung Yoo over being treated like a slave he retorted: 'Isn't that what female workers should do?'

Misook McDonald (left) has won a tribunal for discrimination after claiming she was moved jobs after refusing to bow to her boss. Ho Seung Yoo (right) denied workers had to bow

Mrs McDonald, 43, whose father is English, sued the UK headquarters of the top electronics firm for sex discrimination, age discrimination and racial discrimination.

A reserved judgement by the employment panel stated that her claims for direct race discrimination and victimisation were 'well founded and succeed.'

The tribunal, presided over by Judge Andrew Gumbiti-Zimuto, heard that the British mother, from Sonning-on-Thames, Berkshire, told the company's managing director Choong Sik Park that she was being harassed by Mr Yoo in August.

'He said Mr Yoo was very angry that I had broken protocol by not bowing to him every morning when I get to work and I do not bow to him when I leave the office at night,' she told the tribunal.

'I didn't want any opportunity for harassment to occur so I was avoiding Mr Yoo.'

The tribunal heard Mr Yoo was told he needed to reduce his staff numbers and gave her position in the accounts department to her former subordinate June Turner in a presentation to the company's CEO.

Dongbu Daewoo Electronics's UK base in Wokingham, Berkshire

After the changes were announced, Mrs McDonald wrote to the company's former financial manager Kian Tan, asking: 'Is this a fair way of telling me I am no longer in the accounts department? Do I not need to be consulted?

He replied: 'You clearly need to talk to him, as usual he thinks he can do what he wants.'

She replied: 'I have already tried to talk to him on many occasions. I cannot continue to be treated like a slave.'

A mediator for grievance hearings over her claim found 'no reason to favour one account over another' and did not uphold Mrs McDonald's complaint, the tribunal was told.

Mr Yoo, through a translator, said he was 'really sorry' for asking Mrs McDonald to make coffees but denied he asked her to bow.
A grand jury will consider whether charges are merited against an Ohio man, after his two-year-old son shot himself with an unsecured gun last week.

Brandon Hill, of Columbus, was initially charged with child endangering last week, after police said his son Jae'Son Hill apparently grabbed a firearm that wasn't properly secured and shot himself in the head on Wednesday.

Hill, 34, told authorities he'd left the weapon on a nightstand and Jae'Son picked it up, according to WCMH.

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Brandon Hill (left) was initially charged with child endangering last week, after police said his son Jae'Son Hill (right) apparently grabbed a firearm that wasn't properly secured and shot himself in the head on Wednesday

Jae'Son also leaves behind his mother Champagne Houchins and two siblings, according to an online obituary. Houchins posted this photo on Facebook

Hill flagged down an officer for help in a parking lot of a pizza parlor near his home.

Jae'Son died Friday at a hospital in central Ohio, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

The Franklin County prosecutor says the case now will be presented to a grand jury for other possible charges. Court records don't indicate whether Hill has a lawyer.

Jae'Son also leaves behind his mother Champagne Houchins and two siblings, according to an online obituary.

Brandon Hill told authorities he'd left the weapon on a nightstand and Jae'Son picked it up

The Franklin County prosecutor says the case now will be presented to a grand jury for other possible charges

Jae'Son also leaves behind his mother Champagne Houchins and two siblings

On December 20 - one day before the shooting - Houchins posted on Facebook that she'd finished paperwork for a new home, using the hashtag 'BlessingsOnTopOfBlessings'.

She wrote in a December 25 Facebook post: 'Its Like How Do You Pretend Today Ain't Christmas. Seeing Everyone With Their Family & Children , Is So Heartbreaking Knowing My Baby Was Supposed To Be Here TODAY .'

Two days later, Houchins wrote: 'Mommy & Daddy Love You Its Hard Right Now We Smiling With The Fam & Stuff To Maintain . Ya Daddy Love You , And You Know That .

'Please Help Daddy Give Him Strength Ain't Nothing Mommy Can Say To Make Him Feel Better.'

Video courtesy of WBNS-10TV
A former police officer in Guam was found guilty on Thursday of raping a woman he says advertised her services as a prostitute on Craigslist.

Paul John Santos, 49, sat stoically in the Superior Court of Guam as a jury convicted him of rape, official misconduct, bribery, and abetting prostitution after two days of deliberations, according to the Pacific Daily News.

He is due to be sentenced on April 13. The maximum penalty for a rape conviction in Guam is life imprisonment.

Santos was arrested for an incident stemming from an encounter between him and his accuser on September 1, 2014.

Paul John Santos (above on the left), 49, sat stoically in the Superior Court of Guam as a jury convicted him of rape, official misconduct, bribery, and abetting prostitution on Thursday

Video courtesy of PNC News:

According to court documents, Santos responded to a Craigslist ad posted by a woman who offered sex for money at a hotel room in Tamuning, a small township on Guams northwest coast.

Santos, who used the alias Frank Smith, had contacted the woman and set up an appointment with her for the early morning hours of September 1.

Dressed in his Guam Police Department uniform, Santos appeared at the hotel.

The woman told the FBI that Santos forced her to perform sex acts.

Santos was arrested in September 2014 for raping a woman he says advertised her services as a prostitute on Craigslist

Initially, Santos denied ever meeting the woman. After surveillance footage showed that he had visited the hotel in question, he changed his story.

Santos told investigators that he went to the hotel in a professional capacity as part of an anti-prostitution sting.

Witnesses told the jury during the course of the trial that a condom found in the trash can of the hotel tested positive for Santos DNA.

Santos then changed his story once again, telling investigators that he did have sex with the woman, but that he did not pay her.

Initially Santos denied ever meeting the woman, but surveillance footage from the hotel showed him at the scene (his police car is seen above) on September 1, 2014

Santos told investigators that he was at the hotel in a professional capacity in order to break up a prostitution ring

Santos had used the alias 'Frank Smith' to set up an appointment with the woman at the hotel, but he showed up fully dressed in his police uniform

His lawyer, F. Randall Cunliffe, argued that the woman was the aggressor and that she had 'used her sexuality' to avoid being arrested for prostitution.

The victim, who was 31 years old at the time of the incident, told the FBI that she placed ads on Craiglist offering sexual services after she had lost her job as a dancer at a local establishment, according to KUAM.

She told the FBI that that she had scheduled an appointment with Frank Smith for 2am on the morning of September 1.

When Smith arrived, she instead saw a man in full police uniform. She then reportedly broke down in tears because she had assumed she was under arrest.

The officer pulled out his cell phone and showed the woman her Craigslist ad.

Santos is seen above just outside the hotel room where the rape took place on September 1, 2014. A condom found in a trash can matched Santos' DNA

Do you know if I take you to jail right now you'll never go home and see your family, he allegedly told her.

She then continued crying as the officer searched her room.

He then told her: Well work something out.

The woman then told investigators that he forced her to perform oral sex and then raped her soon afterward.

After the rape, Santos took down her phone number and told her: I can keep you safe as long as you stay on my good side.

After the verdict, the prosecutor praised the victim for courageously reliving a traumatic experience.

For the victim to come back even after two years and face her accuser, relive her tragedy, and give a vivid account of what happened to her, truly makes her courageous, Matt Heibel told Guam News.

The Pacific island of Guam is one of five unincorporated territories of the United States  the others being Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and the US Minor Outlying Islands.

These territories fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government.

Unincorporated territories are areas where the US Constitution is applied only partially.
A man attempted to pull a 12-year-old girl off a horse as she rode alone through woodland.

The girl was out on the horse in Tottington Lines, near Manchester, at around 3pm when she was approached by a man blocking her path.

The man said he wanted to speak to her but when she tried to get away he grabbed the horse's reins, causing the animal to run off, carrying the girl to safety.

Greater Manchester Police confirmed they were investigating the incident after it was reported to them on December 22.

A man tried to grab a 12-year-old girl as she was riding alone in Tottington Lines, pictured, near Manchester

The girl's mother, who wishes to remain anonymous, revealed she believes the man was trying to pull her daughter off the horse after speaking to her about the incident.

She told the Manchester Evening News: 'It was good the horse bolted off, he didn't stop until she got back to the yard.

'She hasn't lost her confidence, but I don't think she will go out on her own again. The stable owner is not letting people go riding on their own until he is caught.

A spokesman for GMP told MailOnline: 'We were called just before 3.40pm on December 22 to reports that a 12-year-old girl had been approached by a man on Tottington Lines before he said something to her and grabbed the reigns of her horse.

Greater Manchester Police confirmed they were investigating the incident (file picture)

'The girl and the horse left shortly after and police were called.'

The attacker was described as being aged in his late 20s, around 6ft 2ins tall with dark skin and a beard and 'scratches over his face'.

He was wearing a black hoodie and said to be 'missing teeth'.
A teenager has been bitten by a shark while wearing the new shark-repelling band he got for Christmas for the first time.

Zack Davis suffered a huge bite to his arm while surfing near Avalon Beach State Park on North Hutchinson Island in Florida.

The teen was wearing a new band with magnetic technology that claims to repel sharks away from swimmers.

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Zack Davis suffered a huge bite to his arm while surfing near Avalon Beach State Park on North Hutchinson Island in Florida

The teenager was rushed to hospital where he was given 44 stitches to wound to his arm

Zack, 16, was bitten by while wearing the new shark-repelling band he got for Christmas

Speaking about his Christmas present, Zack told CBS 12: 'It was supposed to keep sharks away and the first time I wore it, and I go surfing a lot, but the first time I wore it - I get bit.'

Zack, 16, and his twin brother Zane have been surfing since they were young, but the incident was the first close encounter he had had with a shark.

The teenager said he found the incident more shocking than painful, but acted quickly to stop himself from losing too much blood.

The $80 shark-repelling band, pictured left, did not stop a shark from attacking Zack and leaving teeth marks in his arm, pictured right

Doctors said they believe that high school student Zack was bitten by a black tip shark

Zack, 16, and his twin brother Zane have been surfing since they were young, he has never been attacked by a shark before

'I felt it hit because my hand was on the sand and I was getting turned by the wave and I felt it grab on like two to three seconds and I came up out the water and was like "I just got bit",' Zack said.

'It was shocking. It wasn't really painful. Honestly I wasn't really in pain I was just like "oh my gosh I need to do something with this quick", so I just took my leash from my board and wrapped it around my arm because I didn't want to lose any blood.'

He was rushed to hospital where he was treated for the wound, and given 44 stitches.

Doctors said they believe that the Vero Beach High School student was bitten by a black tip shark.

Zack's mother said she plans to ask the company to refund the $80 cost of the band.
Angry parents have demanded a primary school in Holland changes its curriculum after a video showing children learning how to pray in a mosque emerged.

Local media said the mosque in question is believed to be the Ghulzar e Madina in the city of Zwolle, which has previously been visited by radical preachers from Pakistan.

Among them was M Anas Noorani Siddiqui, who promoted the death penalty for those who insult the Prophet Muhammad and once said 'non-Islamic Dutch behave like dogs and b*****s.'

The children, who are mainly from Christian backgrounds, are shown how to pray by an imam

The video shows an imam explaining to the children how Muslims pray, with all boys forced to stand on one side of the room while the girls are on the other side.

The children, most of whom are thought to be Christians, are told to put their 'elbows on the ground' and 'hands close to your ears'.

The video was reportedly taken last year but it has emerged after a Dutch MP spotted it and called for schools not to participate in similar 'politically correct activities.'

The girls are shown how to prostrate themselves when praying. They were taught separately from the boys, as is the Muslim tradition

Harm Beertema, 64, an MP for Geert Wilders' far-right Freedom Party, urged parents: 'Refuse to allow your child to participate in such "away-with-our-culture" excursions. You are deciding, not the school.'

On social media hundreds of parents reacted, some sharing their own stories of 'politically correct school curriculums'.

One parent said: 'I recently found out my son was forced to sing "welcome, welcome refugee" instead of Christmas songs.'

The teachers are shown in the background overseeing the lesson. Some parents have reacted furiously to the video, claiming it is political correctness gone mad

One teacher said his school was visited by education Inspectors who questioned why the Year 4 classes had not 'visited a mosque yet'.

The Dutch national curriculum says children have to 'learn the main points about the religions which play a big role in the multicultural Dutch society'.

In July angry parents slammed officials after discovering in a video that a class of primary school children at a Catholic school in the town of Dongen visited a mosque in Rotterdam as part of their school curriculum.

The Netherlands is holding a general election in March and the Freedom Party and Geert Wilders is expected to do well, partly on the back of such politically correct blunders which do not play well with ordinary Dutch voters.
Donald Trump's roller coaster relationship with President Barack Obama took another sharp twist on Wednesday evening.

The president-elect told reporters he's 'getting along well' with his predecessor in impromptu remarks after claiming earlier in the day that Obama was handicapping his administration with 'roadblocks.'

A phone call from Obama seemingly prompted the change of heart. Trump said they had a 'very, very good talk' that 'covered a lot of territory.'

'We are never going to be going against each other,' he proclaimed.

A-OK! Donald Trump 's roller coaster relationship with President Barack Obama took another sharp twist on Wednesday evening. The president-elect told reporters he's 'getting along well' with his predecessor

Earlier in the day he complained that Obama was handicapping his administration with 'roadblocks' and trashed the outgoing president's behavior toward Israel

A feud broke out last week between their politically diametrical governments over a United Nations resolution condemning Israel that burned red hot on Wednesday when Trump accused Obama of 'total disdain and disrespect' for the U.S. ally.

Obama ordered his U.N. ambassador to sit out on a vote last week on a resolution denouncing Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had urged the U.S. to exercise its veto power, as it has in the past, as did Trump, at the Israeli government's request.

Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that the settlement building put the two-state peace process in 'serious jeopardy' by creating a 'Swiss cheese' like parcels of land that will make it difficult for the Palestinians to create a contiguous state.

If Israel wants to see peace in the region, it must move out of the territories its been occupying since the 1967 war, he said.

Netanyahu said in response that his country didn't need to be 'lectured' by foreign governments on peace, chiding the Obama administration official for 'unbalanced' remarks that failed recognize that the main stumbling block to an accord is Palestinian terrorism.

The Israeli leader further stated that he had 'absolute incontestable evidence' that the U.S. was working against Israel to get the U.N. resolution passed, reiterating charges the White House has rejected.

Israelis officials are claiming Obama engineered the vote as a parting shot at Netanyahu. The foreign leaders have been on frigid terms for years.

'STAY STRONG': Trump defended Israel in a series of pointed tweets, saying the ally 'used to have a great friend in the U.S., but not anymore'

The Israeli government says it will present evidence of its claims to the new administration and let Trump decide what to make of it.

Trump urged Israel to 'stay strong' in a tweet, reminding the country that he'll soon be inaugurated.

He said in another tweet, 'Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks,' he wrote. 'Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!'

Obama seemed to take a swipe at Trump on Tuesday in remarks at Pearl Harbor when he told Americans that 'even when hatred burns hottest, even when the tug of tribalism is at its most primal, we must resist the urge to turn inward, we must resist the urge to demonize those who are different.'

Trump hit back at him on Twitter the next morning before Kerry's speech.

'We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect,' he wrote in a follow-up to his accusatory tweet about roadblocks. 'They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but not anymore.

'The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!'

He said later in the day, after his chat with Obama, that Israel is generally being treated 'very, very unfairly by a lot of different people.'

By mid-afternoon Trump had backed off his assault on Obama personally, telling a pool reporter covering his Mar-a-Lago retreat on behalf of the broader press corps the transition was going ' very, very smoothly.'

'Very good,' he said. 'You don't think so?'

Less than two hours later he said he'd talked to the Democrat. 'We had a very nice conversation.'

'We had a general conversation. Very very nice,' he added.

Later that evening Trump indicated that he and Obama had buried hatchet and wouldn't be fighting - at least not in public - anymore.

'Our staffs have been getting along very well, and I'm getting along very well with him other than a couple of statements that I responded to, and we talked about it and smiled about it,' Trump said, 'and nobody is ever going to know because we are never going to be going against each other.'
Jeremy Corbyn defied warnings from northern Labour councillors today by rejecting calls for imposing controls on immigration after Brexit.

He repeated his support for the EU's free movement rules despite voters expressing clear concerns in June's Brexit vote.

The Labour leader insisted immigration brought net economic benefits to Britain and claimed there was a 'level of exaggeration' about its negative impact.

Jeremy Corbyn defied warnings from northern Labour councillors today by rejecting calls for imposing controls on immigration after Brexit

He insisted that rather than setting targets to reduce immigration the Government should tackle undercutting of pay and conditions in the workplace, saying Britain must not become a 'bargain basement economy'.

But his comments flew in the face of warnings from his party's councillors in northern England who are under threat from a resurgent Ukip under its new Liverpudlian leader Paul Nuttall.

He is targeting traditional Labour voters in the north by supporting strict immigration controls and a 'hard' Brexit that would end the EU's free movement rules.

Mr Corbyn told the Guardian today: 'We should recognise that European workers in Britain do contribute massively to the health service, education, manufacturing industry, care work, agricultural sector.

'We'd be in quite a difficult place if they all went.

'We have to recognise that people do move around the continent, do move to work, do move to pay taxes and to benefit the economy that they come into.

'They don't have unfettered access to benefits the day they arrive in Britain, they don't have unfettered access to housing the day they arrive.'

New Ukip leader Paul Nuttall, pictured, is targeting traditional Labour voters in the north by supporting strict immigration controls and a 'hard' Brexit that would end the EU's free movement rules

He added: 'What we need to address is exploitation, undercutting and the way in which companies are trying to destroy industrial agreements by ignoring what they should be doing, which is paying people properly and not bringing people in to undercut.'

But in interviews with the Financial Times more than two dozen Labour councillors warned that Labour is heading for disaster at the next general election if Mr Corbyn refuses to back down on his enthusiastic support for immigration.

CORBYN INSISTS HE'LL STILL BE FIT ENOUGH TO BE LEADER IN 2020 Jeremy Corbyn, a keen cyclist, insisted he is still 'fit' to be Labour leader beyond 2020 Jeremy Corbyn, 67, dismissed reports that he told friends he is ready to step down as Labour leader in 2019 because of his age. He is set to have a makeover in the New Year to tap into the populist anti-establishment sentiment sweeping through politics. Asked whether he had expressed a desire to retire in a couple of years' time, the veteran left-winger said: 'Friends is obviously a very loose term these days - I've never said that. 'I'm very happy doing my campaigning. 'This is the age of the 60s - look at Trump, Clinton, Sanders, Angela Merkel - look around you. Sixties is the new 40s, I keep fit,' the keen cyclist added. Advertisement

Kathy Graham, a Labour councillor, told the newspaper: 'A lot of locals aren't going to vote for me because of Jeremy Corbyn. Mention Jeremy Corbyn and they all go mad.'

Even Labour councillors in the south said he was facing major problems with voters due to Mr Corbyn backing free movement when the public had rejected it in June's EU referendum.

Peter Chand, a councillor in Dagenham and Rainham east of London, said: 'The feeling on the doorstep is mainly about migration.'

He called on the leadership to back 'some kind of cap' to ease voters' concerns.

Responding to the Labour councillors' criticism of Mr Corbyn, Tory MP Luke Hall said: 'Labour have descended into open war over immigration, and the one thing that's certain is that the Labour leadership is completely out of touch with ordinary working people.

'The British people voted to leave the European Union and for controls over immigration.

'Only the Conservatives can make a success of Brexit and build a country that works for everyone.'

Mr Corbyn, 67, is set to have a makeover in the New Year to tap into the populist anti-establishment sentiment sweeping through politics.

And in the interview today he dismissed reports he has told friends he is ready to step down as Labour leader in 2019 because of his age.

'Friends is obviously a very loose term these days - I've never said that. I'm very happy doing my campaigning,' he said.

'This is the age of the 60s - look at Trump, Clinton, Sanders, Angela Merkel - look around you. Sixties is the new 40s, I keep fit,' the keen cyclist added.

Mr Corbyn also hit out at Theresa May today over her refusal to give Parliament a final say over Brexit and even compared her to King Henry VIII.

He said it would be 'extraordinary' if the Prime Minister used the royal prerogative to bypass British MPs on the final Brexit deal she strikes with Brussels while parliaments in other European countries got to vote on the package.

The Labour leader compared Mrs May's behaviour to the autocratic 16th century Tudor monarch in a newspaper interview today following a two-hour grilling before MPs last week in which she repeatedly refused to a parliamentary vote.

The PM is facing growing pressure to put the final deal to Parliament when the eventual deal is agreed in early 2019.

Jeremy Corbyn has accused Theresa May, pictured left attending a Christmas church service in her Maidenhead constituency, of acting like Henry VIII, the autocratic 16th century Tudor monarch, right, by refusing to give Parliament a final say on Brexit

The PM has only made a vague commitment to show MPs her plan for Brexit before she triggers Article 50, the formal mechanism for leaving the EU, by the end of March.

She fears that holding a vote in Parliament after two years of negotiations could put June's Brexit vote in jeopardy and would give MPs the power to block it.

Mr Corbyn said: 'It [a final Brexit deal] would have to come to Parliament.

'She cannot hide behind Henry VIII and the divine rights of the power of kings on this one.'

He added: 'The idea that on something as major as this the Prime Minister would use the royal prerogative to bypass Parliament is extraordinary - I don't know where she's coming from.'

Other similarities have been drawn between Mrs May and King Henry VIII over his disagreement with the Pope that led to separating the Church of England from the Roman Catholic church.

He subsequently appointed himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England  power Mrs May could only dream of.
Israel's top envoy to the United States said Thursday that he doesn't blame President-elect Donald Trump for inserting himself into the global debate about last week's anti-Israel vote in the United Nations Security Council.

Benjamin Netanyahu's government, it turns out, asked him to.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer said on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' program that he personally tried to persuade the Obama administration to veto a resolution condemning the continued construction of homes for Israeli Jews in the contested West Bank region.

When he was given the brush-off, Dermer explained, Israel's next move was to stop dealing with the outgoing White House and focus exclusively on the incoming president.

Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer said Thursday that Donald Trump only commented on last Friday's anti-Israel UN vote because Jerusalem got the cold shoulder from the Obama White House and then asked Trump to weigh in

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just one area where the president and the president-elect part ways, but the vote to condemn Israeli Jewish homebuilding in the West Bank has been their most public clash

'We went to the White House before this resolution  I personally was in the White House speaking to senior administration officials, asking them not to go ahead with this. Because we knew what was going on,' Dermer explained.

'And we said, "Don't do this. We will oppose it. We will oppose it forcefully. And you will force us into a position where we're going to have to reach out to a president-elect and ask him to weigh in into this." We told this to the White House before. Unfortunately they went ahead, and now we are where we are.'

Dermer noted that Trump has been criticized for weighing in  including by the Obama White House, which has thrown rhetorical elbows at him for wading into foreign policy before he takes office on January 20.

'I know that a lot of the talk in the press for the first few days was how outrageous it was for the president-elect to weigh in, and to breach this policy of "one president at the time",' he said.

'But what I actually think is outrageous [is] for an outgoing administration, in the waning days of its presidency, to radically shift U.S. policy without the knowledge or the support of the incoming administration.'

Dermer said Israel's goal would be to work with a bipartisan group of supporters in Congress, along with Trump and his team, 'to see how we can mitigate the damage of the resolution and hopefully ultimately repeal it.'

He also reiterated Israel's claim that it has 'iron-clad evidence' that the UN vote 'was orchestrated by the U.S. administration'  but it doesn't trust Obama enough to share it with him.

The United Nations Security Council pass a resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction on Friday when Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, abstained instead of vetoing the measure

Trump fired off a pair of angry tweets defending Israel and reminding the United Nations that his inauguration is just weeks away

'We have the proof, and like we said, we will present it to the incoming administration. It's sensitive information that we obviously would share with the U.S. administration. We can't share it with this administration because they're behind it to begin with,' said Dermer.

'The prime minister does not make such a charge on international television without it being based 100 per cent on evidence,' he added.

Dermer contends that the Obama administration has misunderstood the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the start, seeing Jewish settlement-building as the root cause of tensions and the conflict itself as the greatest threat to Middle East stability.

'You have Syria collapsing, Iraq, Yemen, Libya. You have chaos throughout the whole Middle East,' he said Thursday.

'The one place, you know where you don't have chaos? It's Israel and the Palestinian areas. And guess what? We don't have peace. But that seems to be the most stable place.'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clobbered the U.S. on Wednesday after Secretary of State John Kerry defended the UN vote

Kerry delivered a 72-minute speech painting the U.S. as Israel's savior in a conflict whose solution has been blocked by Israel's intransigence

He also said Palestinians' refusal to acknowledge Israel's right to exist  not homebuilding in the West Bank  is the biggest impediment to peace.

'We have to start dealing with the root of the conflict, which is the persistent refusal of the Palestinians to recognize a Jewish state,' Dermer said.

He painted a picture of a Palestinian Authority playing a decades-long waiting game, hoping to wear Israel down while empowering the UN to weaken it.

'The Palestinians feel, basically, that they can avoid negotiations with Israel, blame Israel, internationalize the conflict, and simply wait for the international community to deliver Israel on a silver platter,' Dermer charged.

'Actually, Israel going about living their lives, continuing to live their lives, continuing to build in these areas that are in dispute, may one day convince the Palestinians  "You know what? You should come to the table to actually negotiate with Israel. Because if you don't do that, Israel's just going to go on with their lives. They're not going to freeze life because you've decided not to negotiate peace".'
Via CIDRAP, Lisa Schnirring writes: Florida reports more local Zika cases, FDA warns of possible IgM test problems. The report also includes news about early Zika microcephaly in Hawaii and Brazilian women avoid pregnancy. Excerpt:

In the latest Zika virus developments, the Florida Department of Health (Florida Health) today announced three more locally acquired Zika cases, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a few days ago warned health providers against relying solely on IgM antibody tests when making patient management decisions.

In recent research developments, researchers say babies born with Zika-linked microcephaly may have occurred in Hawaii as far back as 2009, based on tests on stored blood samples, and Brazilian researchers who surveyed child-bearing age women said more than half are avoiding pregnancy.

Florida investigates three more local cases

In its update today, Florida Health said the three new local cases involve Miami-Dade County, and investigations are underway to determine where exposure occurred. However, it added that Florida still doesn't have any identified active transmission areas. The investigation of each case involves sampling close contacts and community members to detect other potential infections, and the department said it would notify the media and the public if it finds active transmission evidence.

Officials said they expect to see isolated cases of local transmission, "so it is important for residents and visitors in Miami-Dade County to remain vigilant about mosquito bite protection."

The illnesses are the first to be reported since Dec 21 and lift Florida's local case total to 256, Florida Health said in today's report.

Health officials also announced two more Zika infections in Miami-Dade residents who also had exposure overseas in areas with ongoing active transmission. The state now has 19 cases that involve undetermined exposure to the virus.

Meanwhile, Florida's number of travel-related cases is still growing, with three more reported today, two from Polk County and one from Palm Beach County. The state now has 1,011 travel-linked Zika infections.

FDA probing root of false-positive tests

The FDA in a Dec 22 statement warned health providers and pregnant women potentially exposed to Zika virus that Lab Corporation of America, a commercial testing facility, has reported some false-positive results for the ZIKA Detect IgM Capture ELISA, made by InBios International. It said it's not clear yet if the false-positives are related to the ZIKV Detect test or the commercial testing facility. "It is important to remember that IgM tests remain useful in ruling out Zika exposure but require confirmation testing," the FDA said.

In August the FDA authorized ZIKV Detect as the first commercially available Zika serological IgM test, and several commercial labsincluding LabCorp-- have switched from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) serological test to ZIKV Detect. After LabCorp made the transition, it observed higher than expected false-positives, and the CDC confirmed less than half of the presumed positive results.

The FDA said both CDC and ZIKV Detect serological tests report only presumptive positives and require confirmation by a qualified lab or the CDC, which can take a week to a month.
A disgruntled laundry shop customer has led a gang to smash the store after they had allegedly destroyed his Louis Vuitton cardigan.

The incident was captured by a CCTV camera in the laundry shop in Deyang city, China's Sichuan Province, on December 26, according to Chinese media.

The suspect gang leader turned himself in on December 27 and his four accomplices were arrested too.

The footage shows the five suspects, getting off a black car before smashing the store

The surveillance footage, posted to QQ.com, shows the five suspects, getting off a black car.

All wearing masks and holding clubs, the group smashed the glass door to get into the shop.

After they destroying the counter and some clothing, they left the store.

Staff of the laundry recalled they had previously had a dispute with a male customer surnamed Yang, reported thepaper.cn.

The group smashed the glass door before destroying the shop counter and some clothing

On December 26, Yang complained that his black Louis Vuitton cardigan had been ruined by the shop, said Yang.

The staff also said that the customer demanded for compensation yet the laundry rejected his request.

It is not stated what damages the cardigan had got. Price of the cardigan was not disclosed, either.

The laundry store immediately reported the incident to local police.

A man can be seen smashing the counter of the laundry shop in Deyang city, Sichuan Province

Later that day, the furious customer returned to attack the store with four other men, according to the police.

On the following day, Yang turned himself in. His four accomplices have been arrested by the police.

Investigation is still ongoing.

A staff member (right) was seen holding the Louis Vuitton cardigan owned by Yang
A starving dog who was left tied up with heavy chains was so hungry she ate her own puppies.

Hernando County Sheriff's Office was called to an address in Leonard Street, Brooksville, to reports of a man being bitten by a pit bull.

Animal enforcement officers arrived to find three dogs who were tied up, without water and badly malnourished and arrested their owner, Deandre Goodson, 21, who is facing animal cruelty charges in Florida.

Chi Chi, who was found with mutilated ears and multiple injuries, was so hungry she ate her own two puppies before being rescued

Chi Chi was so weak she was unable to walk on her own and was covered in scars

One of the dogs, named Chi Chi, was found in distress at the side of the house covered in scars and with her ears mutilated.

Deandre Goodson, 21, who is facing animal cruelty charges

She had eaten her own puppies and was so weak she was unable to walk.

Hernando County Sheriffs Office said in a statement: 'Authorities were able to contact Goodson by phone who agreed to meet deputies at the Hernando County Animal Services offices in Brooksville.

'Goodson said a friend, Breon Wyatt, had given him the dog about a year ago.

'He indicated the dog got out of the yard a couple of months ago and he had only recently found Chi Chi and brought her back home.

'Goodson confirmed Chi Chi gave birth to two puppies about two week ago, but she had eaten them.

'Goodson said he feeds Chi Chi regularly and wasnt sure why the dog was so skinny.

'He also stated the dogs injuries were the result of the other two dogs attacking her.'

Goodson said Chi Chi's injuries were the result of the other two dogs attacking her

Goodson told officers he decided not to seek medical attention for his pet, and Chi Chi was transported to Animal Services for immediate treatment.

After she was examined, the veterinarian said she had numerous injuries and was suffering from neglect.

Goodson was charged with one count of animal cruelty.
The Turkish assassin of the Kremlin's envoy in Ankara had been involved in a sexual relationship with a Russian woman who could have been planted by Western secret services, according to a sensational new report.

Ambassador Andrey Karlov was gunned down in Ankara by 22-year-old police recruit Mevlut Mert Altintas who shouted 'Allahu Akbar' and 'Don't forget Aleppo' as he murdered the respected diplomat before he was shot dead.

And now there are claims in Turkish media that Altintas had a lover from Russia or another associate, who may have brainwashed him into committing the murderous act last week.

A new report has claimed that Mevlut Mert Altintas who gunned down Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov in Ankara, may have been involved in a sexual relationship with a Russian woman

A Turkish report which has been seized on by Russian media said: 'It is very important to understand who the woman is: from intelligence, FETO or mafia.

'The Russian woman could have been a staff (agent of) Western intelligence staff.'

Altintas' sister Seher Ozeroglu, believed to be in her late 20s, is reported to have said it was as if her younger brother 'was guided by someone' when he killed the ambassador.

She implied this was a shadowy man known only as 'S' who her brother met in Ankara after he left the family's provincial home.

The alleged Russian woman - whose name, age and picture have not been revealed so far - is reported to be undergoing questioning by Vladimir Putin's security services.

Altintas's sister Seher Ozeroglu,pictured, is reported to have said it was as if her younger brother 'was guided by someone' when he killed the ambassador

According to Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Today, she left Ankara long before the assassination and travelled to Moscow, where she admitted they had a relationship.

There has been no direct comment from the Kremlin, which is working with the Turkish authorities in a major investigation to understand the motives behind the death of the 62-year-old diplomat.

The newspaper also claimed she could be a Western intelligence plant, or an alleged terrorist working for a grouping called FETO which is seen as opposing Turkish president Tayyip Recep Erdogan, or have links to the mafia.

There were also claims that the 'relationship' was based on payments from the assassin to the woman, but the report also suggested Altintas could have been coaxed towards becoming a killer, knowing he would die for what he did.

Turkish media claimed the woman involved with Altintas could be a Western intelligence plant, or an alleged terrorist working for a grouping called FETO. Pictured is the Turkish policeman moments after he shot the ambassador

A Turkish report which has been seized on by Russian media said: 'It is very important to understand who the woman is: from intelligence, FETO or mafia.

'The Russian woman could have been a staff (agent of) Western intelligence staff.

'Using her sexuality she might have established a relationship with a Turkish assassin who could have directed him towards suicide.'

Yet no evidence has so far been given that this was the case.

Russia has sent an 18-strong group of representatives from the Foreign Ministry, secret services and Investigative Committee, equivalent of the FBI, to Ankara to investigate the murder.

Andrey Karlov, pictured left, just moments before he was shot dead, right, at the art gallery in Ankara by Altintas

A key question is whether - as the Turkish authorities have claimed - he is linked to so-called FETO and supporters of Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen who is accused of having orchestrated a coup that was suppressed by the Turkish authorities in July.

Altintas moved out of his flat and into a luxury hotel before gunning down the ambassador. Hotel Best is a 4-star hotel located on Ataturk Boulevard in Cankaya district of Ankara.

The 48-room hotel is described as being 'in the heart of Ankara' and all guest bedrooms 'are equipped with a private balcony, providing far-reaching views' across the city.

The killer shaved and dressed in a suit and tie before walking 150 metres to the art centre where he used his police ID to enter the premises.

A metal detector alarm went off because of his firearm, but he was waved through because of his assumed police status.
These are the crude battle trenches being used by Ukrainian troops on the front line in the fight against pro-Russian rebels.

In scenes reminiscent of the Second World War battle for Stalingrad, a soldier crouches down for shelter in the icy ditch near Luganske village in the east of the country.

Another image shows a fighter using the walls of the man-made trench as protection as he fires off rounds from a machine gun.

Flashback: Ukrainian troops are using First World War-style trenches in the battle against pro-Russian rebels

Striking similarities: American soldiers dig into a captured German trench in February 1945

In scenes reminiscent of the Second World War battle for Stalingrad, a soldier crouches down for shelter in the icy ditch near Luganske village in the east of the country

Tried and tested: Dutch frontier guards take aim over a trench on the German border in 1940

Tens of thousands were killed in the Battle of Stalingrad between August 1942 and February 1943 in which Nazi Germany fought the Soviet Union for control of the southern Russian city.

Photos released today show Ukrainian servicemen digging in to their position 11 miles north of Debaltseve in the Donetsk area, with pro-Russian militants having launched a counter attack.

The pictures emerged as it was reported that exchanges of fire between Ukrainian and pro-Russian fighters had increased in recent days.

Ukraine yesterday reported its first combat death since Kiev agreed a new 'indefinite' ceasefire deal with pro-Russian insurgents in the separatist east last week.

The military said the soldier was killed in fighting on Wednesday in the village of Kurti Blaka - some nine miles north of the militias' de facto capital of Donetsk.

The rebels did not report any casualties on their part.

The incident comes amid swelling hope that the 31-month conflict may be winding down after nearly 10,000 people have died.

The former Soviet republic accuses its neighbour Russia of launching the war in retaliation for the ouster of Ukraine's Moscow-backed president in February 2014.

The pictures emerged as it was reported that exchanges of fire between Ukrainian and pro-Russian fighters had increased in recent days

Russia denies any role in the conflict.

The reported death does not necessarily mean the collapse of the ceasefire because monitors from the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have reported a 'significant' decrease in fighting.

But it does mean sporadic violence is likely to continue and that shelling across the front line may go on even as the sides talk peace.

'There has been some de-escalation over the past days,' said Alexander Hug of the OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission on Ukraine.

'The mission will not speculate whether this latest renewed commitment to the ceasefire will last,' Hug told AFP.

The insurgents agreed to the truce last Friday - two days after it was negotiated by Ukraine and Russia with the help of mediators from the OSCE.

The truce came after days of unusually heavy clashes that killed 10 Ukrainian troops and an unknown number of insurgents.

The photos show Ukrainian servicemen trapped in their position 11 miles north of Debaltseve in the Donetsk area, with pro-Russian militants having launched a counter attack

The Ukrainian military accused the militias of opening fire on its position 51 times since Wednesday morning.

It said the heaviest fighting focused around Donetsk and Mariupol - a Kiev-held Black Sea city that lies between separatist territories and Russian-annexed Crimea.

Mariupol also has a port and chemicals and steel industry whose capture would give the insurgents potential access to large cash flows.

The rebels accused Kiev's forces of opening mortar and grenade launcher fire on more than 500 occasions in the past day.
Two brothers and their female friend have been arrested in Milwaukee and charged with torturing and beating to death a 20-year-old man, whose killing was then posted on his own Snapchat account.

According to criminal complaints, Delvin Mendoza-Chaparro spent his final moments being forced-fed cat litter and feces, urinated on and punched more than two dozen times before his assailants dumped him next to some garbage cans in an alley in 14-degree weather on the night of December 19.

The trio of suspect in the brutal killing, identified as Devin Katzfey, 20, Branden Katzfey, 19, and Sarah Zakzesky, 20, have each been charged with first-degree reckless homicide.

Trio charged: Devin Katzfey, 20 (left), Branden Katzfey, 19 (center), and Sarah Zakzesky, 20 (right), have each been charged with first-degree reckless homicide in the beating death of a Milwaukee man on December 19 that was posted on social media

Brutalized: Delvin Mendoza-Chaparro, 20, spent his final moments being forced-fed cat litter and feces, urinated on and punched more than two dozen times

Charging documents cited by the station Fox 6 Now allege that the Katzfey brothers and Zakzesky attacked Mendoza-Chaparro because they suspected him of trying to steal drug paraphernalia from them.

Through interviews and review of video evidence, the younger Katzfey brother has been identified as the main aggressor. In the Snapchat videos, he was being referred to as 'Superman.'

The incident began unfolding at Zakzeskys apartment in the 400 block of West Rogers Street in Milwaukee where the three man and woman had spent the night smoking marijuana together.

The 20-year-old woman said she was going in and out of consciousness. At one point, she woke up and had sex with Branden Katzfey. At the time, she noticed that Mendoza-Chaparro was asleep on the living room floor.

Sometime later, Zakzesky said she was awakened by Devin Katzfey, who told her that Mendoza-Chaparro had tried to steal a bong, a pipe and other related items.

Despite his repeated protestations of innocence, the 20-year-old man was dragged by his feet into the kitchen, where according to the complaints, the three suspects took turns pummeling him.

Drug-fueled attack: The incident began unfolding at Zakzeskys apartment in the 400 block of West Rogers Street in Milwaukee (pictured) where the three man and woman had spent the night smoking marijuana

Suspected thief: The Katzfey brothers and Zakzesky allegedly turned on Mendoza-Chaparro because they believed he had stolen a bong and other paraphernalia from them

It was later determined that the man was struck 25 times until he passed out. While he was unconscious, he was punched and kicked some more. Mendoza-Chaparro ultimately died from blunt force trauma to his head.

Zakzesky told police the victim didn't even [have] a chance to raise his fists and fight man to man, according to a complaint. The woman allegedly admitted to punching the 20-year-old in the face five times and kicking him three times because she was angry at him for stealing.

In the course of the ordeal, Devin Katzfey allegedly forced Mendoza-Chaparro to eat kitty litter along with cat excrement, while his younger brother allegedly relieved himself on the 20-year-old man.

Mendoza-Chaparro's killing was captured in three separate Snapchat videos, the first of which showed him lying on the floor in a state of semi-consciousness. A man's voice can be heard off camera: 'This is what happens when you steal... You got knocked the f*** out, b****. Don't ever come and steal.'

A second video posted on the social media app reportedly showed the victim lying motionless and covered in blood. Again, a man's voice says, 'That's what happens when you try to steal.'

'Ringleader': Police identified Devin Katzfey, seen here in court, as the main aggressor

The third and final video depicted a bloodied Mendoza-Chaparro sprawled on the kitchen floor next to a box of kitty litter. At one point, he makes an attempt to get to his feet but is kicked to the ground.

Sarah Zakzesky repeatedly urged the Katzfey brothers to take Mendoza-Chaparro to a hospital, but Devin refused, according to court documents.

Instead, the trio of accomplices drove an unconscious Mendoza-Chaparro to an alley near 6th and Hayes streets and dumped him in a snowbank.

Zakzesky recalled that the 20-year-old man could not stand or sit up on his own.

When he was found by police, he was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, which were pulled down. He had no shoes or socks on, despite the frigid Wisconsin weather.
The mother of a missing RAF airman believes his disappearance is linked to a 'suspicious' car which was spotted 17 miles from where he was last seen.

Corrie McKeague, 23, has been missing since vanishing after a night out in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, on September 24.

The gunner, based at RAF Honington, has been described by his mother, Nicola Urquhart, as a 'social hand grenade' who would get into a stranger's car and place himself at risk.

The mother of an RAF serviceman, who went missing on a night out three months ago, has vowed to continue searching for him until he is found

Corrie McKeague's (right) family, along with Suffolk Lowland Search and Rescue Team and public volunteers began scouring King's Forest, in between Barton Mills and Honington, Suffolk

Mrs Urquhart also believes a car which was seen 17 miles from Bury in Blo Norton could prove crucial in the desperate search.

Suffolk police said a bystander thought three men were trying to set the car alight whilst parked in a layby on September 25. The vehicle was later driven off but a rag which smelt of petrol was discovered.

Later the force received a call on November 4 from a local who believed the incident was linked with Corrie's disappearance.

Mrs Urquhart has called the incident 'highly suspicious'.

A police spokeswoman told MailOnline: 'Around 1.25pm on 25 September a member of the public called police saying that they had seen three men acting suspiciously near a vehicle parked in a layby at Blo Norton, near Diss.

'The three had driven off in the vehicle. The member of the public said they had then found a rag that had smelt of petrol in the layby and that they thought they may have been trying to set light to the vehicle. Details of the vehicle were taken.'

'Checks were made and, at this time, there is nothing to link this to the enquiry, however police are aware and continue to investigate all lines of enquiry as part of the ongoing work being done to trace Corrie.'

Mrs Urquhart's comments were made in a Facebook Live question and answer session, from her home in Dunfermline, which was watched by more than 37,000 people on Wednesday night.

Actor Tom Hardy appeared in the video appealing for help to find missing serviceman Corrie McKeague

Describing her son Mrs Urquhart said: 'He's not so much a social butterfly, more a social hand grenade who absolutely lives for the moment.

'He will make choices and decisions that are sometimes reckless that other people might not.

'Would he get into a stranger's car? Yes. Would he go to a stranger's house that he's never met before that he's met on a social dating site? Yes.

'He would put himself at risk because Corrie believed he could handle himself.'

Corrie was last seen on security camera walking alone in Bury at about 3.25am on the morning of his disappearance.

Last sighting of missing RAF serviceman Corrie McKeague (pictured) in Bury St Edmunds

Despite widespread searches across the area no trace of the serviceman has been found.

During the broadcast Mrs Urquhart also criticised the ongoing police investigation.

The mother-of-three, who is a serving police officer, said 'basic door-to-door inquiries' were not made and the opposite side from where Mr McKeague was last seen had still not been searched.

She said she wanted a man seen walking along Cornhill Walk in the town at 3.35am on the morning of his disappearance to be identified.

Corrie was last seen in a 'horseshoe' area in the centre of Bury St Edmunds.

Mrs Urquhart explained how four vehicles had entered this area on the day and she believes one of them did not have a legitimate reason for being there.

The 23-year-old was last seen in the early hours of the morning on September 24 in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

She said it was 'imperative' for six more people who have been spotted on CCTV to be identified.

Suffolk police have said they are treating the case as a missing person inquiry but the level of resources has been on par with a murder investigation.

Last week it emerged that actor Tom Hardy joined the campaign to search for Corrie.

In a video, the 39-year-old said: 'Serviceman Corrie McKeague went missing on September 24 this year at approximately 3.20am in the morning in Bury St Edmunds.

'Nobody has seen or heard of him since and his family is extremely worried and desperate to find him before Christmas or as soon as possible.

'Nobody has given or volunteered any information of his whereabouts.

'So if you have any information at all about his whereabouts please contact the number provided, either to the family themselves, or to the police on the number on the poster below.
A stranded Washington grandmother was picked up from the airport by a friendly police officer after her family got in a car accident.

The grandma made it home for the holidays thanks to Renton Police Officer Cassidy Steed, who responded to the accident on Christmas Eve.

Malia Baker and her three children had been involved in a traffic crash in front of a Safeway grocery story around 7.40am that morning.

Renton Police Officer Cassidy Steed (right) and Michael Thompson (left) helped Malia Baker and her children after a car accident and then picked up her stranded mother at the airport

No one was hurt, but the family revealed they were on the way to the SeattleTacoma International Airport to pick up grandma for a Christmas visit.

Officer Steed 'knew immediately that there was no way they were going to the airport,' the Renton Police Department said in a Facebook post about the incident.

Steed then contacted Officer Mike Thompson and asked him to drive to the airport and pick up grandma so they could reunite the family.

Baker and her children had been involved in a traffic crash around 7.40am that morning and Steed knew they wouldn't be able to pick up grandma themselves

'Without hesitation Officer Thompson responded to the airport to pick up Grandma!' the department wrote in the sweet Facebook post.

'Happy holidays to the family and hope your day turned out to be fabulous!'

The department also posted a picture of Officers Steed and Thompson posing with Baker and her children.

It received dozens of comments from residents thanking the police department for the kind gesture.
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Shocking pictures showing homeless people in Iran taking shelter in empty graves in freezing temperatures have prompted a public outcry - and criticism from the country's president.

Iran's ability to handle poverty and addiction has come under fire after the photographs were published.

Those forced to shelter in the graves have reported that they have been shunned by Iranians, with one woman saying she had rocks thrown at her.

A man looks up from a grave in which he is taking shelter 12 miles from Iranian capital Tehran, in pictures which have shocked the country

It has been claimed that up to four people huddle together in the graves as they seek shelter from the cold

The pictures by photographer Saeed Gholamhoseini were taken in Shahriar, which is around 12 miles west of Tehran.

Newspaper Shahrvand reported that around 50 men, women and children live in the cemetery.

In an open letter to President Hassan Roujhani, Oscar-winning film director Asghar Farhadi said government officials should put on disguises and go into communities to see what life it really like.

A man pictured living in an empty grave to escape freezing temperatures in Iran, where unemployment stands at around 12 per cent

Newspaper Shahrvand reported that around 50 men, women and children live in the cemetery, which is close to Iranian capital Tehran

A homeless man is one of the estimated 50 to be living in the cemetery, in pictures which have shocked Iran

Describing the images of people living in graves near Tehran, Farhadi - who directed Academy Award-winning film A Separation - wrote: 'Now I am full of shame and have tears in my eyes.'

A nationwide debate on Iranian media and online between individuals, officials and several institutions has yielded proposals ranging from forced sterilisation of addicts to free deliveries of hot food and rehabilitation programmes.

'Who can accept ... that fellow human beings who suffer social ills have to take refuge in graves because of homelessness?' President Hassan Rouhani asked in a speech shown live on state TV.

A woman living in the cemetery, captured in a series of images which have shocked Iranian citizens

A woman emerges from a grave, in a cemetery where around 50 homeless men, women and children are living, according to reports in Iran

And the president continued: 'I have heard about people in western countries who sleep on cardboard under bridges out of poverty, or those who sleep in metro stations, but not in graves.

'To solve these issues we must all unite and leave aside partisan issues and differences and address the basic problems of the country.'

Welfare officials have given details of shelters available across the capital for the homeless and said many avoid them because the centres do not allow drug use.

It has been claimed that around 50 people are living in a cemetery close to Tehran - with some having lived there for a decade

President Hassan Roujhani said: 'To solve these issues we must all unite and leave aside partisan issues and differences and address the basic problems of the country'

Special buses are also provided for addicts to sleep in overnight, when temperatures are often below freezing, the officials said.

'They brought us food a few nights ago, but they wanted to fool us and take us to the (rehabilitation) camp,' a woman sleeping in a grave told Shahrvand, which claimed some people had been living in the cemetery for a decade.

'Other people bother us or throw rocks at us ... Aren't we human beings?'

Iran's official unemployment rate currently stands at 12.7 per cent - an increase from 10.6 per cent two years ago.

A man crouched above a grave in the cemetery 12 miles from Tehran, in images which have sparked an outcry in Iran

A man living in an empty grave close to Tehran, in images which have caused an outcry in Iran
Blood on his hands: Homeless alcoholic Kieran Kelly was convicted of two killings but could be linked to as many as 29 others

Staring out from a photograph, this could be the face of one of Britain's most prolific serial killers of all time.

Kieran Kelly was convicted of killing two men but could be linked to the deaths of some 29 others over more than three decades, a former police detective has claimed.

After moving from Dublin to London Kelly, a homeless alcoholic, allegedly stalked victims on London Underground platforms before pushing them to their deaths.

Others were reportedly mutilated with broken wine bottles before being left to bleed to death.

The claims are the result of extensive research by Geoff Platt, a former acting detective constable who led the 1984 police investigation into Kelly.

Mr Platt has since published a number of books on the killer, including London Underground Serial Killer: The Life of Kieran Kelly which offers insight into Kelly's life and the chilling catalogue of his suspected crimes.

Kelly was born in Rathdowney, Co Laois, in 1923 before moving to Dublin aged 10.

Mr Platt believes Kelly was homosexual but was taught growing up that same-sex relationships were a 'terrible sin that led to hell fire and damnation'. This internal struggle would go on to shape Kelly's life and influence his crimes, Mr Platt claims.

Violent: The killer may have pushed victims to their deaths under London Underground trains. Pictured, the Northern Line at Euston station in 1968, when Kelly was still active

In 1953 Kelly travelled to London with his best friend, Christy Smith, to watch the Queen's Coronation. One night Mr Smith made a passing comment about Kelly being unmarried at 30. Kelly took this to mean Mr Smith suspected he was gay.

Later, after a night out with two women, the men were standing on a Tube platform when Kelly had what he would later describe to Mr Platt as an 'epiphany' and pushed Mr Smith on to the tracks.It was, he would say, a 'solution' to his problem.

Over the next three decades, Kelly was charged with eight counts of murder by eight different police forces. Each appeared to be an open-and-shut case - including one in which three different witnesses testified to seeing Kelly pushing a man under an Underground train - but Kelly was acquitted of all eight charges.

It was not until 1983 that Kelly finally admitted to killing a man - a vagrant named William Boyd whom he strangled to death in a police cell for snoring too loudly.

During the police interview Kelly confessed he had killed not only Mr Boyd, but 15 others over the last 30 years. As a result of the information provided in the police interviews, Mr Platt built 16 different cases to submit to the director of public prosecutions. It was decided the Crown would proceed with just five.

The following year Kelly was convicted of the manslaughter of Mr Boyd and the murder of a second victim, Hector Fisher, who was found stabbed to death in a churchyard in Clapham, south London, on Christmas Day.

Chilling: During his first weeks in the capital Kelly allegedly pushed his friend Christy Smith under a Tube train. Pictured, Baker Street Underground station in London in the 1960s

He was sentenced to life in prison. Kelly died behind bars in HMP Frankland, County Durham, in 2001.

Mr Platt, who spent much of 1983 and 1984 interviewing Kelly, believes that Kelly could have been linked to some 31 deaths over 30 years, including several suspected suicides on the London Underground Northern line.

Police records show Kelly was witness to what Mr Platt describes as an 'astonishing' number of apparent suicides on the Tube. In each case Mr Platt believes Kelly nudged his victim on to the track before waiting to speak to police officers. He would recount how the apparently troubled man had confided in him about marital or money problems before stepping in front of the train.

Since Mr Platt first published a book on Kelly in 2015 the family members of seven further potential victims have come forward to the British Transport Police, believing cases of suspected suicide might have been the work of Kelly.

Mr Platt claims Kelly targeted three different groups of people - gay men, police informants and men who reminded him of Mr Smith, his first victim - and used different methods to kill each.

Remains have also been recently unearthed at a property owned by Kelly in Dublin, Mr Platt said.

If he was responsible for the 31 deaths to which he has been linked, Kelly would have been one of Britain's most prolific serial killers.
MD Harmon (above), longtime newspaper columnist for the Portland Press Herald, died of a gunshot wound on Wednesday

A conservative Maine newspaper columnist who was known for his gun rights advocacy was fatally shot in his home while he was showing a teenage boy his firearm.

The incident occurred late Wednesday afternoon at the Sanford, Maine, home of Portland Press Herald columnist MD Harmon, according to the Portland Press Herald.

Police say that Harmon, 71, was entertaining two guests  a man and his 16-year-old son from nearby North Berwick  at his home at 7 Brunelle Avenue in Sanford, according to WCSH-TV.

The teen was holding Harmons gun when it discharged, killing Harmon.

An investigation is ongoing.

Harmons wife told the Press Herald on Thursday that her husbands death was a result of an accidental tragedy.

Harmon had worked in the newspaper business for 41 years before his retirement in 2011.

Even after retirement he continued to write a weekly column for the Press Herald.

He was a mainstay conservative voice on the editorial pages of the Press Herald and the Maine Sunday Telegram.

Police say that Harmon, 71, was entertaining two guests  a man and his 16-year-old son from nearby North Berwick  at his home at 7 Brunelle Avenue in Sanford (above) on Wednesday

Most recently he advocated against Question 3, a measure that would have required background checks for almost all gun transfers and sales in Maine.

The measure was voted down in a referendum during the recent November 8 election.

Mainers have always been jealous of their civil rights regarding firearms, he wrote in a September 2 column.

Are the same voters going to diminish their gun rights at the behest of a group backed by out-of-state activists and financed by gun-hating billionaire Michael Bloomberg (whose bodyguards, by the way, carry guns for his protection)?

The state medical examiner's office is scheduled to perform an autopsy.

Police said the case will also be reviewed by the state attorney general's office.
An astute Uber driver helped lead police to arrest two female sex-traffickers and help rescue the 16-year-old runaway they were pimping out.

The incident happened Monday night, when driver Keith Avila picked up the unidentified teen and two women for a journey to a hotel in Elk Grove, California.

During the ride, Avila overheard the women - identified as 25-year-old Destiny Pettway and 31-year-old Maria Westly - giving the teen sex tips and became suspicious, so he called 911 after dropping them off.

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Uber driver Keith Avila drove a teen and two older women to a hotel in Sacramento, California Monday night, and grew suspicious when the women started giving the teen sex tips

Video courtesy of KRON 4 News:

While the tip helped lead police to the pimps, they weren't fast enough to stop the teen from sleeping with the 20-year-old John who had organized to meet up with her.

Nevertheless, they arrived in time to arrest the man, identified as Disney Vang, and charged him with having sex with a minor. Pettway and Westly were charged with pimping and pandering.

Avila, who has only been driving for Uber for a month, described the bizarre car ride in several interviews with local news stations.

Avila reported the threesome, and police discovered that the two older women - 31-year-old Maria Westly (left) and 25-year-old Destiny Pettway (right) - were pimping the girl out

Disney Vang, 20 (pictured), was arrested for having sex with the minor

He said the thing that stuck out to him first was the extremely short shirt the girl was wearing, and how he thought she looked too young to be wearing something so risque.

'She had a really short skirt,' Avila told KCRA. 'So, you could see all her legs, and it struck me as odd because she was so young and she was dressing like that.'

Avila estimates that the car ride was probably only 13 minutes, but in that time, the two women were feeding a lot of information to the girl.

'She starts coaching and saying OK when we get there the first thing you're gonna do is give the guy a hug and you're gonna ask if he has any weapons,' Avila told KXTV.

The woman then instructed the teen on how to pat down the John as she gave him a hug.

This conversation, combined with the girl's clothing and young appearance caused Avila to become concerned.

'I looked at her in the eyes. She had this face of innocence, and like insecure,' he told KTRK.

So as soon as he dropped the three off at the Holiday Inn Express in Elk Grove, he called police to report them.

Police praised Avila's actions, which led to the arrests. The teen, a runaway from Sacramento County, has been put in protective custody

When asked why he decided to get involved, Avila said: 'Honestly I didn't think about it. They said what they said, and it's one of those things that you just do.'

Police arrived at the hotel and arrested Pettway, Westly and Vang. The girl, a runaway from Sacramento County, was placed in protective custody.

Pettway and Westly are being held on $500,000 bail. Vang posted bail on Tuesday.

Police praised the Uber driver's response to the situation
An Indiana woman accused of fatally smothering her two young children told a judge in a handwritten letter that she's guilty and ready to accept life in prison.

Amber Pasztor, 29, of Fort Wayne, faces two counts of murder in the September 26 killings of seven-year-old Liliana Hernandez and six-year-old Rene Pasztor.

The children were killed after abducted from their custodial grandparents' home.

Amber Pasztor, 29 (left), is accused of fatally smothering her two young children, six-year-old Rene Pasztor (center) and seven-year-old daughter Liliana Hernandez (pictured together, right)

Pasztor told a judge in a handwritten letter that she's guilty and ready to accept life in prison

Her attorneys are seeking to present a defense of mental disease or defect, saying they believe she cannot fully understand the legal proceedings or help prepare her defense.

Pasztor has also admitted to fatally shooting her neighbor, 65-year-old Frank Macomber, and taking his car

But in the letter, Pasztor said she was competent and would refuse to see another doctor for mental health evaluations.

'I made a lot of bad decisions in my life but this one really did it,' she wrote. 'I am guilty and I accept my consequences thank you so much for your time.'

Pasztor has also admitted to fatally shooting her neighbor, 65-year-old Frank Macomber, and taking his car.

She has not been charged in his death, but prosecutors have said she is a suspect.

Investigators believe Macomber was shot the same day the children were killed. His body was found the next day in a wooded area near Fort Wayne.

Pasztor's letter to Elkhart Circuit Court Judge Terry Shewmaker was dated December 14 but filed with the court on Tuesday, local media reported.

According to investigators, Pasztor parked a car outside the Elkhart Police Department hours after the children were abducted and told an officer her children's bodies were the back seat. Elkhart is about 70 miles northwest of Fort Wayne.

Pasztor (pictured) parked a car outside the Elkhart Police Department hours after the children were abducted and told an officer her children's bodies were the back seat

According to investigators, Pasztor parked a car outside the Elkhart Police Department hours after the children were abducted and told an officer her children's bodies were the back seat. Elkhart is about 70 miles northwest of Fort Wayne.

Pasztor said in an October jailhouse interview with WANE-TV that she decided to kill her children after hearing an Amber Alert for them. She said she killed the children so they would be safe in heaven.

Pasztor, a drug addict, said: 'My kids are in a better place...They don't have no worries no more.'

The children's bodies were found in the back of a car five hours after authorities issued an Amber Alert following their abduction from their grandparents' home, saying they were 'believed to be in extreme danger'.

Pasztor said in an October jailhouse interview with WANE-TV that she decided to kill her children after hearing an Amber Alert for them. Rene and Liliana are pictured here

But Pasztor told WANE-TV the Amber Alert did not save their lives, but did the opposite - she panicked and killed them.

Pasztor told the TV station she also she shot her neighbor Frank Macomber and took his car. She said she arranged to have sex with him in a wooded area and then shot him with his own gun and dumped the gun in a Michigan river.

Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence without parole for Pasztor.

Pasztor has a third child that she left behind.

Her father, Ricky Green, has said: 'I want to say to my daughter who did this, that she is not my daughter any more. I want her to burn.'

Video courtesy WANE

Pasztor allegedly broke into her father's home in Fort Wayne at around 6am on September 26 and kidnapped Rene and Liliana

Her mother, Leanna, has said that she was not surprised to learn of the charges against her daughter, whom she labeled 'evil.'

'We thought she was crazy,' she's said of her daughter, who had lost custody of her two children more than a year ago due to drug addiction.

'I think her thought was, "If she can't have them, nobody can."'

Pasztor's trial is scheduled for January 23, according to The Goshen News.
The UK Government today launched an unprecedented attack on the US, its closest ally, over John Kerry's condemnation of the Israeli regime as the 'most right-wing in history'.

In a highly critical speech on foreign policy yesterday the US Secretary of State criticised Irsaeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu for undermining the two-state solution with his settlement policy in the West Bank.

Britain backed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to Israel's construction of settlements in the hotly-disputed region but Mr Kerry went further with his strongly-worded personal attack on Mr Netanyahu and his government.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said it was inappropriate of Mr Kerry, America's top diplomat, to attack the make-up of the democratically-elected Israeli government  a key ally of both the US and Britain.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May, pictured left, said it was inappropriate of US Secretary of State John Kerry, right, to attack the make-up of the democratically-elected Israeli government  a key ally of both the US and Britain

Downing Street also rebuked Mr Kerry for focusing on the single issue of Israeli settlements and not the whole conflict.

Intervening in the increasingly hostile international dispute today, a spokesman for the British Prime Minister said: 'We do not... believe that the way to negotiate peace is by focusing on only one issue, in this case the construction of settlements, when clearly the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so deeply complex.

'And we do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically-elected government of an ally.'

'The Government believes that negotiations will only succeed when they are conducted between the two parties, supported by the international community.'

It echoes Mr Netanyahu's riposte yesterday when he accused the US Secretary of State of being skewed against Israel' and talking 'obsessively' about settlements.

President-elect Donald Trump also weighed in to defend the Israeli government.

In his speech yesterday Mr Kerry, who is leaving his post next month along with President Barack Obama, said the only way to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East is through a two-state solution to the disputed West Bank.

'That future is now in jeopardy,' the US Secretary of State said.

In a highly critical speech on foreign policy yesterday the US Secretary of State John Kerry, pictured, criticised Irsaeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu for undermining the two-state solution with his settlement policy in the West Bank

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pictured accused the US Secretary of State of being skewed against Israel' and talking 'obsessively' about settlements

President-elect Donald Trump weighed in to the dispute to defend the Israeli government

He added: 'The Israeli prime minister publicly supports a two-state solution, but his current coalition is the most right-wing in Israeli history with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements.

'The result is that policies of this government, which the prime minister himself just described as more committed to settlements than any Israel's history, are leading in the opposite direction. They are leading towards one state.'

Downing Street insisted it still opposed Israel's 'illegal' construction of settlements in the West Bank and said its criticism was expressing unease at his comments attacking the make-up of the Israeli government.

A spokesman said: 'The British Government continues to believe that the only way to a lasting peace in the Middle East is through a two-state solution.

'We continue to believe that the construction of settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is illegal, which is why we supported UN Security Council Resolution 2334 last week.

'But we are also clear that the settlements are far from the only problem in this conflict. In particular, the people of Israel deserve to live free from the threat of terrorism, with which they have had to cope for too long.'

The US State Department hit straight back, pointing out that nine other major nations had backed Mr Kerry's condemnation of Mr Netanyahu.

A spokesperson said: 'We are grateful for the strongly supportive statements in response to Secretary Kerry's speech from across the world, including Germany, France, Canada, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and others.

'We are surprised by the UK Prime Minister's office statement given that Secretary Kerry's remarkswhich covered the full range of threats to a two state solution, including terrorism, violence, incitement and settlementswere in-line with the UK's own longstanding policy and its vote at the United Nations last week.'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu derided U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's speech yesterday on Mideast peace process as 'unbalanced' and warned him against additional provocation in the 'waning days' of the Obama administration

Benjamin Netanyahu called the Kerry speech 'unbalanced' and mocked President Obama by posting a picture to his Facebook page of him as a presidential candidate in 2008 visiting the Western Wall and noted that the US is now calling it 'occupied Palestinian territory. 'Seriously?' he wrote

Mr Kerry's speech sparked a major diplomatic war of words between the US and Israeli governments.

Mr Netanyahu called the speech 'unbalanced' and said that 'Israelis do not need to be lectured on the importance of peace'.

He posted a picture to his Facebook page of Mr Obama visiting the Western Wall in 2008 when he was a presidential candidate and noted that the US is now calling it 'occupied Palestinian territory. 'Seriously?' he wrote.

Mr Netanyahu also penned a note of thanks to Mr Trump for his 'clear-cut support' for Israel.

The social media post came after Trump tweeted his own message of support for Israel.

Mr Trump and the outgoing Obama administration are now entirely at odds over Israel, with the president-elect accusing the lame-duck White House of 'disdain and neglect' for the country.

Donald Trump and the outgoing Obama administration are now entirely at odds over Israel, with the president-elect accusing the lame-duck White House of 'disdain and neglect' for the country

The Republican President-elect took to Twitter to say Israel had been treated 'very, very unfairly' by the Obama administration and maintained that countries that are 'horrible places' never get reprimanded.

He refused to directly answer a question about whether Israel should stop building settlements, saying he is 'very, very strong on Israel'.

Mr Trump said Israel is 'up for 20 reprimands' at the United Nations, whereas nations that are 'horrible places, that treat people horribly, haven't even been reprimanded.'

His comments follow the United Nations' condemnation of the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Donald Trump's chosen White House secretary press secretary on Thursday urged the Obama administration to show its cards if it has solid proof that Russia was behind a series of election-year computer hacks that may have cost Hillary Clinton the presidency.

Trump has shrugged off the suggestion that Moscow engineered the cyber attacks, but Sean Spicer told reporters during a morning conference call that his position could change in the face of evidence.

'If the United States has clear proof of anyone interfering with our elections, we should make that known.' Spicer said.

'Right now we need to see further facts,' he added.

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Sean Spicer, the incoming White House press secretary, said Thursday that the Obama administration should release any 'clear proof' of Russia's involvement with election-year computer hacking in the United States

President-elect Donald Trump says the Obama White House 'should do the best they can' to release any intelligence that might point a finger at Russia

President Barack Obama (left) is poised to issue new sanctions against Russia and Vladimir Putin (right) in response to Moscow's alleged involvement in hacks that may have cost Hillary Clinton the presidency

Spicer expanded his position on CNN, telling Jake Tapper that 'if we're going to make such broad, sweeping claims about the involvement of anybody in the legitimacy of an election and the integrity of our election systems, then I think we need the intelligence community come forward publicly and on the record and make it clear exactly how this happened and who was responsible for it.'

'But right now we continue to get unsourced media accounts for what the activity is,' he said. 'And I think that's not acceptable.'

'If truly there is someone to blame, then I think that we should have Congress notified, go through the appropriate congressional hearings, but get the Intelligence Committee, as they did in October, come out very publicly with the findings that they have.'

Sean Spicer: The intelligence community needs to disclose their findings on Russian hacking https://t.co/6OZtrfIwim https://t.co/HAEfI083x1  CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) December 29, 2016

Russia promised retaliation on Wednesday against an 'orchestrated campaign' of disinformation by the United States if the allegations lead the Obama administration to level new economic sanctions against Moscow.

'To be honest, we are tired of [the] lie about the "Russian hackers," which is being poured down in the United States from the very top,' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday.

On Thursday, Spicer also framed talk of a Russia-assisted election victory as an 'unfortunate' concerted effort to throw cold water on Trump's unexpected triumph.

'I think you have a lot of folks on the left who continue to undermine the legitimacy of his win,' Spicer said.

Speaking with reporters Wednesday night at his Mar-a-Lago resort club in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump said the Obama White House 'should do the best they can' to release any intelligence that might point a finger at Russia.

Obama's aides should 'figure it all out,' he said.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (speaking) said Wednesday that sanctions would impact Putin 'as an individual'

'To be honest, we are tired of [the] lie about the "Russian hackers," which is being poured down in the United States from the very top,' Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday

But Trump's overall position is that Americans should move on and focus their attention forward.

'I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on,' he said.

Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, called reports of possible new sanctions a 'provocation directed by the White House,' suggesting that Moscow will respond if the Obama White House tries to punish the Kremlin.

During her Wednesday press briefing, she laid into the U.S. and questioned both the Obama administration's truthfulness and its motives.

'The biggest accusation is that Russia allegedly launched cyber attacks at the US information space with a view to interfering in US internal affairs, in particular, the election system,' she said.

'Russia is being presented as a monster that is ready to encroach on the holy of the Western holies  its democratic principles. Of course, these allegations have not been supported by any facts.'

'You probably remember that we appealed to the United States to produce evidence of this at our briefings, in the Foreign Ministrys comments and in statements made by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and interviews he gave. We asked for at least something, even the smallest facts. We did this publicly and during bilateral talks,' Zakharova argued.

'You can ask our American colleagues how often Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has asked US Secretary of State John Kerry for this evidence. In response, we heard nothing but another helping of nonsense and accusations. It was an orchestrated campaign; nothing was left to chance.'

The Obama State Department could be just days away from announcing a set of sanctions designed to punish Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin.

Citing unnamed sources, The Washington Post reported Tuesday that a package of consequences could include economic sanctions, 'diplomatic censure' and a new round of retaliatory cyber operations targeting Russia.

The outgoing Obama administration is focused on making sure incoming president Donald Trump can't easily roll back new sanctions against Russia and Putin

The hacking that Obama blames on Putin plumbed computers linked with Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, and plundered emails belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta (background, center)

Meanwhile, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham warned during a trip to Latvia that Congress will back any plan to level penalties at Russia.

'You can expect that the Congress will investigate the Russian involvement in our elections and there will be bipartisan sanctions coming that will hit Russia hard, particularly Putin as an individual,' Graham said.

Graham also said Russia 'is trying to break the back of democracies all around the world.'

'It is now time for Russia to understand  enough is enough,' he added.

Trump said Wednesday night that he can't comment on Graham's position.

'I don't know what he's doing. I haven't spoken to Senator Graham,' the president-elect said, adding: 'As you know, he ran against me.'

Russian officials have denied accusations of interference in the election, but the Obama White House has accused Putin of orchestrating a series of hacks that exposed embarrassing secrets of the Democratic national Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

The Post reported that the White House's plan involves revising a widely heralded 2015 executive order designed to give Obama the power to respond to cyber attacks focused on affecting the U.S. economy or its national security.
A two-member parole panel has delayed making a decision on whether to release her in the latest parole hearing

Patricia Krenwinkel, 69, has been denied parole 13 times since her conviction in the 1969 Manson Family

A two-member parole panel has delayed making a decision on whether to release Patricia Krenwinkel, an accomplice of cult killer Charles Manson and the longest-serving female inmate in California.

The decision to delay Thursday by the panel came after the 69-year-old Krenwinkel was previously denied parole 13 times, most recently in 2011.

Krenwinkel helped kill pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six other people at the urging of Manson 47 years ago.

The hearing was held at the California Institution for Women, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, where Krenwinkel is imprisoned.

She has a clean record behind bars, earned a bachelor's degree and taught illiterate inmates to read.

Gov. Jerry Brown has the power to block the release of inmates if parole is granted. He previously stopped the parole of two other Manson followers.

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Pleading for her freedom: Charles Manson disciple Patrica Krenwinkel, pictured left in 1970 and right in 2014, appeared before a parole board Thursday, 47 years after the 1969 murders

Two lives cut short: Krenwinkel has been denied parole 13 times since her conviction in the slayings of actress Sharon Tate, who was eight and a half months pregnant

Combo image shows the five victims slain the night of August 9, 1969 at the Benedict Canyon Estate of Roman Polanski. From left, Voityck Frykowski, Sharon Tate, Stephen Parent, Jay Sebring, and Abigail Folger

The body of actress Sharon Tate is removed from her Benedict Canyon home in August 1969

Krenwinkel acknowledged during her trial that she chased down and stabbed 26-year-old Abigail Ann Folger 28 times at Tate's Benedict Canyon home.

Tate, the 26-year-old wife of director Roman Polanski, was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with the couple's first child when she was slaughtered along with her three friends by Manson and his 'Family,' among them Krenwinkel.

Sharon Tate's sister, Debra Tate, said the parole officials told her the hearing was likely to be postponed about six months while they research to see if Krenwinkel meets the criteria for having battered women's syndrome.

Krenwinkel's attorney, Keith Wattley, did not immediately return telephone and email messages.

'She totally minimized her action and blamed everything on other people the whole hearing,' Tate said.

Tate said she didn't buy the concept that Krenwinkel was a victim because she was free to leave at any time and participated in murders two nights in a row.

'We all have to be accountable for our actions. I don't buy any of this stuff. She was there because she wanted to be there. Nobody held a gun to her head,' Tate said.

Cult leader: Krenwinkel was 19 when she met Charles Manson at a party. The photo on the left shows the mass murderer in 1970 and the one of the right was taken in 2014

Stephen Parent was a fifth victim that night - he had driven to the property to see if caretaker William Garreston wanted to buy his AM/FM Clock radio and had stayed on for a beer at the guest house.

He was shot multiple times when he wound down the window at the electric gate as he left.

The following night, Krenwinkel helped kill grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in their home in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles County prosecutors say Krenwinkel carved the word 'war' into Leno LaBianca's stomach, then wrote 'Helter Skelter' in blood on the couple's refrigerator and 'death to pigs' on the wall.

Krenwinkel's attorney, Keith Wattley, successfully petitioned the state to hold the hearing a year early at the California Institution for Women, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, where Krenwinkel is imprisoned.

'Ms. Krenwinkel is fully aware of the difficulty she faces,' Wattley told The Associated Press in an email. 'But California law officially recognizes a person's capacity to change and to address the factors that contributed to their previous behavior so that they can safely be paroled.'

Krenwinkel contended at her previous parole hearing in 2011 that she is a changed woman.

No mercy: Sharon Tate's younger sister, Debra Tate (pictured), said that killers such as Krenwinkel cannot be rehabilitated

She has a clean disciplinary record, earned a bachelor's degree behind bars, taught illiterate inmates to read and trained service dogs for disabled people.

Anthony DiMaria, the nephew of victim Thomas Jay Sebring, said a Los Angeles County prosecutor who attended the hearing told him that the parole officials want to research whether Krenwinkel was a victim of intimate partner battery.

'For this investigation to be initiated at this point is mind-boggling,' said DiMaria, who attended the hearing but left before a decision was postponed.

'I don't understand where we go from a murder, the killing of eight people (including Tate's unborn child) to an intimate partner battery victim. It's absurd....It seems like the world is turned upside down. How do you kill eight people and now you're the victim?'

Jean Guccione, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, said prosecutors would not comment until the parole panel makes its recommendation after the investigation.

Merry murderesses: In this August 20, 1970, file photo, Charles Manson followers, from left: Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten, walk to court

Debra Tate, said before Thursday's hearing that killers such as Krenwinkel cannot be rehabilitated.

'She was a very prolific killer,' Debra Tate said recently. 'They may behave well in a controlled environment, but we cannot trust that, given the pressures of life, that they will be able to remain straight' outside prison.

Krenwinkel was a 19-year-old secretary when she met Manson at a Manhattan Beach party in 1967 along with fellow followers Lynette Fromme and Mary Brunner.

She testified at her previous parole hearing that she left everything behind three days later to pursue what she believed was a budding romance with him.

She wept and apologized, saying she became a 'monster' after she met Manson.

'I gave up all that was good and accepted all that was bad and allowed that to be me.

'I committed myself fully to him. I committed myself to the act of murder,' she said then. 'I was willing to sacrifice others' lives for my own.'

Spared: Krenwinkel (center) was initially sentenced to death, but the California Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty in 1972

This year, Gov. Jerry Brown overturned recommendations to free Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, 67, pictured left laughing as she walks to court in Los Angeles for sentencing on March 29, 1971, and right in March 2015

Prosecutors say the slayings were an attempt to ignite a race war after which Manson and his followers would rise from the rubble to rule the world.

Krenwinkel was initially sentenced to death in the gas chamber, but the California Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty in 1972. If the parole panel recommends release, Gov. Jerry Brown could still block it.

Earlier this year, the Democratic governor overturned recommendations to free Manson followers Leslie Van Houten, 67, and Bruce Davis, 74.

Krenwinkel became the state's longest-serving female inmate when fellow Manson follower Susan Atkins died of cancer in prison in 2009 after being denied a compassionate release.

Anthony DiMaria, the nephew of victim Thomas Jay Sebring, said Krenwinkel's age and long stint in prison should have no bearing on the parole board's decision.

DiMaria noted that Krenwinkel has lived a long time but denied that opportunity to her victims.
'Predator': Christopher Dean Martin, 33, of California, has been charged with lewd and lascivious acts with a child under the age of 16 for allegedly luring an underage girl on Snapchat

A 33-year-old California man has been arrested for allegedly having sex with an underage girl he met on Snapchat while pretending to be a teenage boy.

Christopher Dean Martin, of Roseville, was taken into custody on Wednesday at his home in Roseville and charged with lewd and lascivious acts with a child under the age of 16, as well as possession of marijuana and methamphetamine for sale

According to investigators, Martin was posing as an 18-year-old boy on the social media app when he met the victim on Snapchat and became friends with her, reported the Sacramento Bee.

Eventually, Martin allegedly convinced the teen to meet with him in person for sex over the summer.

Police became aware of the suspected tryst between the man and the teenage girl only recently.

In the course of an investigation, police found out that Martin allegedly tried to contact other teens in the Sacramento area through Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram.

Police say they have found out that Martin tried to contact other teens in the Sacramento area through Snapchat (pictured), Facebook and Instagram

On Wednesday, officers executed a search warrant at Martin's Roseville home, where they allegedly found evidence of drug sales.

The 33-year-old man was ordered held in the Placer County Jail on $110,000 bail.
An increasing number of pet owners are fraudulently claiming that their animals are support pets in order to avoid paying airlines the $125 carrier fee when flying, thus making it harder for travelers genuinely in need of the animals' guidance, advocates for the disabled say.

The practice has become more widespread and airlines who are legally required to accommodate passengers who claim support pets can't do much to combat the trend, according to the Detroit Free Press.

'I see more violations than legitimate use of service dogs in public,' said Brian Skewis, the executive director of the California State Board of Guide Dogs for the Blind.

'A drastic majority of what I've observed in airports is misuse of the service dog law.'

Advocates of the disabled say that a greater number of Americans are exploiting federal law by claiming the need for support pets in order to avoid paying airlines the pet carrier fee. Above is a stock image of a man in a wheelchair with his pet dog

Pet owners can easily obtain letters and credentials stating that they are 'disabled' either physically or psychologically and are thus eligible for emotional support animals.

Federal laws also make it illegal to deny anyone with a support pet access to housing or other service even if the establishment places restrictions on pets.

The Department of Transportation requires airlines to accommodate pet owners who fly with support animals.

While most support pets are dogs, critics say that a greater number of people have been boarding flights with cats and exotic creatures like peacocks.

The practice has become more widespread and airlines who are legally required to accommodate passengers who claim support pets can't do much to combat the trend

Normally, airline passengers who wish to bring their pets aboard must pay a fee to have the animals stored in the luggage compartment.

On average, the fee for a domestic flight is $125 each way, according to PetTravel.com.

Now pet owners looking to avoid paying can simply buy a $40 service vest online and have their dogs wear it when they check in.

Airline personnel are simply not equipped to know the difference between a real support pet and a phony, and companies do not want to risk legal entanglements that would surely arise if an unhappy passenger is turned away because of their animal.

'The law is so ambiguous the airlines don't know what side to come down on,' said Rod Haneline, the chief programs and services officer for Leader Dogs for the Blind, which is based in Rochester Hills, Michigan.

Instead of paying $125 to store your dog in the luggage hold, travelers can simply order a $40 vest (like the one seen above) online and claim that their animal is a support pet

'Everyone is afraid of the ramifications of not allowing someone equal access,' Haneline said.

'It's the Wild West,' Haneline said.

'Animals are much more connected to our daily lives, and the last thing people want to do is put their dog into a pet carrier and put them in the hold of an airplane. This is kind of an easy way to (avoid that) without paying.'

There is also a great deal of gray area when it comes to which pets are permitted on board.

Aside from dogs, miniature horses, which are also known as guide horses, can be trained to perform many of the same tasks as canines, like pulling wheelchairs or guiding blind people.

So airlines are forbidden from denying a disabled person access to a guide horse by dint of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

While airlines are exempt from allowing animals like snakes, ferrets, rodents, and spiders, they are required to evaluate other unusual pets like miniature horses, pigs, and monkeys on a case-by-case basis.

Weeding out those who exploit the law is difficult given that there is little regulation of the training and accreditation of support animals.

Nonetheless, experts say that it is easy to spot which pets brought on board are genuine support animals and which ones are the impostors.

'We know there is fraud because our clients see it very frequently when they travel,' said Deb Davis, the community outreach manager for Paws with a Cause, a non-profit group which pairs dozens of specially trained with disabled people.
An appellate court in Oregon threw out a conviction of a man who was found guilty for driving under the influence while operating his motorized wheelchair, it was announced on Thursday.

The Oregon Court of Appeals found that James Richard Greene, who was struck by a pickup truck on October 16, 2012 while intoxicated and under the influence of drugs, should not have been charged with DUI since his wheelchair rendered him a pedestrian by law.

Greene stood trial in June 2013 and was found guilty by a jury after prosecutors successfully argued that a motorized wheelchair was akin to a car, bicycle, or boat, according to The Oregonian.

James Richard Greene (above) of Waldport, Oregon, was struck by a pickup truck on October 16, 2012 while operating his wheelchair intoxicated and under the influence of drugs

Oregon law states that a vehicle is any device in, upon or by which any person or property is or may be transported or drawn upon a public highway and includes vehicles that are propelled or powered by any means.

The appeals court, however, reversed the verdict on Thursday.

Greenes attorneys convinced the three-judge panel that the original law did not intend to define wheelchair users in crosswalks as drivers.

Last year, a Florida man in a motorized wheelchair was charged with driving under the influence after blocking lanes of traffic on a bridge.

Ronny Scott Hicks, 54, received his third DUI in less than three years after police arrived at the bridge in Palm Bay and detected a strong odor of alcohol.

Also last year, cops in Georgia arrested a man for drink driving after an SUV crashed into his motorized wheelchair outside a grocery store.

Danny Wayne Mitchell was driving his Rascal 300 scooter outside a Kroger supermarket in Conyers, Georgia when the collision happened.
A North Carolina hunter narrowly survived a bear attack - and he's got the scars to prove it.

Mike Wilson was bear hunting with friends and tracking dogs when he turned around and came face to face with a 390lb bear.

Wilson said the bear was coming up a hill as he was going down it. When he saw the animal, his first instinct was to shoot it.

North Carolina hunter Mike Wilson came face to face with a 390lb bear and just narrowly survived the attack

The bear scratched at Wilson's face and neck, only just barely missing his jugular vein

But trouble arose when he tried to get another shell into his gun.

'It just overrun me and knocked me down the hill,' he told WLOS.

The bear scratched at Wilson's face and neck, only just barely missing his jugular vein.

It then injured two of the group's tracking dogs and killed another before it ran into a hole to hide.

Another hunter in Wilson's group then fired the fatal shot to finally put the bear down.

Another hunter fired the fatal shot that finally killed the bear, and the group skinned it

This is the bullet that finally put the bear down, after it also killed a tracking dog

Wilson's friends took him to the hospital about 30 minutes away in Spruce Pine, and he was released after receiving 30 stitches.

The group then hung and skinned the bear, whose pelt went to the man who shot the bear last.

Wilson left the hunting trip empty-handed, but his cousin Calvin Wilson did come up with a song just for him.

'Grandma got run over by a reindeer. Mike got run over by a bear!' he gleefully sang after it was clear his cousin would be alright.

Calvin said he had never seen any such attack happen in his 50 years of bear hunting.

'Never,' he said. 'Never even heard of it.'
A man has been charged with terror offences after police allege he made threats online in relation to an Australian New Years Eve celebrations.

Counter terrorism officers arrested the 40-year-old man as soon as his flight from London landed at Sydney Airport on Thursday.

Police seized documents and computer hard drives when they executed a search warrant at the man's home in Chippendale, an inner Sydney suburb, and a storage unit in the inner west.

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A man has been charged with terror offences after police allege he made threats online in relation to an Australian New Years Eve celebrations

A police spokesperson said counter terrorism team will allege the man made threats relating to New Years Eve celebrations on an online blog, but could not specify where in Australia the man intended to target.

He was charged with possessing 'documents containing threats contrary to Section 31 Crimes Act 1900 concerning online blogs' at Mascot Police Station.

The man was refused bail and is expected to appear at Parramatta Local Court on Friday.

New South Wales Police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn has assured the public that the threat was 'isolated' and had been contained.

The man was arrested at Sydney Airport when his flight from London landed on Thursday

He was charged with possessing 'documents containing threats contrary to Section 31 Crimes Act 1900 concerning online blogs' at Mascot Police Station (pictured)

'Investigations into this matter so far indicate this was an isolated incident.

'As a consequence, we are confident that there are no current or specific threats to New Years Eve and, while we ask people to remain vigilant, people should enjoy the celebrations.

'The community should be also reassured that we will take swift action to ensure the ongoing safety of the public,' Deputy Commissioner Burn said.
A pervert teacher who groped female pupils and asked one if she was still a virgin has been banned from the classroom for life.

Paul Coxon, 53, gestured at his penis when talking to one girl and told her to 'come and sit on it' before saying 'I bet you are good at sucking things', a hearing was told.

The National College of Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) panel said he made 'sexually motivated and inappropriate comments to two pupils'.

Coxon, who taught at Thornhill School in Sunderland, was found guilty of unacceptable professional behaviour and sexually motivated conduct which could bring teaching into disrepute.

Coxon, who taught at Thornhill School in Sunderland, was found guilty by the teachers' disciplinary panel of allegations brought against him

The claims were made by shocked pupils who said he crossed professional boundaries between 2001 and 2012, reports Chronicle Live.

The panel in Coventry, West Midlands, was told that Coxon looked at a girl's chest and said 'Oh I like that'.

He also said: 'The things I want to do to you, you wouldn't believe'.

And the panel heard he groped another girl and touched her intimately, according to the website.

He reportedly told the girl that he wanted 'to be the first one to have sex with you' before asking her: 'Here's a question. Do you do oral sex?'

Coxon was said to have squeezed another girl after folding his arm across her chest which made her 'feel uncomfortable'.

The panel said the girls were 'convincing and reliable' and judged Coxon to be 'unreliable and inconsistent' when he provided his evidence.

They said: 'Mr Coxon repeatedly made sexually motivated and inappropriate comments to two pupils.

'His behaviour was on several occasions offensive. Furthermore, he touched pupils on intimate areas on numerous occasions.'

Alan Meyrick, deputy director of the NCTL, imposed the lifetime ban on behalf of Education Secretary, Justine Greening.

He said: 'Mr Coxon repeatedly made sexually motivated and inappropriate comments to two pupils.

'His behaviour was on several occasions offensive, and he touched pupils on intimate areas on numerous occasions.'

The National College of Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) panel in Coventry (pictured) said he made 'sexually motivated and inappropriate comments to two pupils'

Following the decision, Coxon can appeal to the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court if he wants to challenge the order.

John Hallworth, executive headteacher, of Thornhill and Washington Schools' Federation, said all the required checks and procedures had been completed before Coxon's appointment.

He added that Mr Coxon has not worked at the school for a number of years and said the behaviour was a 'serious breach of the professional standards that are expected'.
A Georgia woman has died several days after she was shot in the eye at a gun range just a day after Christmas.

Sarah Bonner, 24, had been on life support for three days before she died Thursday morning in South Carolina.

Bonner had been with family when she was shot at the Skip J Range in Anderson on Monday around 2pm. She was in the area to visit for the holiday weekend.

Authorities are investigating whether the shooting was accidental.

Sarah Bonner, 24, has died three days after she was shot in the eye at a gun range while visiting family in Anderson, South Carolina for the holiday weekend

Bonner's mother Ginger posted this heartbreaking photograph of her daughter's final heartbeat on Thursday to announce her death

Ginger Hansborough, Bonner's mother, posted a picture of her daughter's last heartbeat in a devastating post to announce her death.

'Her final heartbeat and the end of my world,' Hansborough wrote in the Facebook post.

'Not sure how I am supposed to leave this hospital without her...Mommy loves you my sweet Lifesaving Angel.'

Bonner's friend Mattie Smith said she was killed 'doing what she always loved' in an 'unfathomable accident that no one will ever be able to explain'.

The bullet will be removed from Bonner's head so investigators can determine which gun on the range it was fired from, Anderson County Coroner Greg Shore told .

All guns that were used at the range have been accounted for and are being examined in the investigation.

Authorities said members of the range were target practicing at the time when Bonner was shot.

Skip J Range owner Jerry James believes the shooting was an accident, and said its the first the private pistol and rifle club has seen in its 24 years.

James said the range has 'serious' safety protocols in place and that accidents shouldn't occur if they are followed.

Bonner (pictured here celebrating her mother's final round of chemotherapy) was on life support for several days before she passed away

Authorities are investigating whether Bonner's shooting was accidental. All guns that were used at the range have been accounted for and are being examined in the investigation

Each person and group are given their own shooting bay and members are not shooting with each other, James said.

The range consists of 10 shooting bays that all have dirt berms down both sides, along with an impact berm, according to its website.

Those with a membership at the range, which costs $165 a year, can use it without supervision as they are given the combination to the gate lock.

The range is open from 9am to dark every day except Sunday.

Skip J reopened for business a day after Bonner's tragic shooting.
Two individual hackers were singled out on Thursday, as President Obama announced a new round of sanctions against Russia for the country's alleged meddling in the U.S. election.

Evginey Mikhailovich Bogachev, 33, and Aleksey Alekseyevich Belan, 29, are said to have made millions by selling financial information they obtained in hacks.

Both have been wanted by the FBI for years, but have not been brought to justice because they both live in Russia, which doesn't have a extradition agreement with the U.S. and is usually ambivalent to aiding American law enforcement.

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Evginey Mikhailovich Bogachev, 33, and Aleksey Alekseyevich Belan, 29, are two individual hackers who were hit with economic sanctions by the U.S. government on Thursday

It's uncertain whether the sanctions will even affect the two. The president's sanctions will include a travel ban and freezing U.S.-based bank accounts for those named in the executive order.

But both Bogachev and Belan are unlikely to travel to the U.S. in the first place, since they are already wanted criminals. And it's unclear whether they have any U.S.-based bank accounts.

Last year, the FBI announced that it was offering a $3million reward for information leading to Bogachev's arrest - the most the agency had ever offered for a single cyber-attacker.

Bogachev is said to be the hacker behind the malware called GameOver Zeus, which infected more than a million computers and caused the financial loss of more than $100million.

The two men have been wanted by the FBI for years, for separate schemes that involved selling Americans' financial information. Above, the wanted poster for Evgeniy Bogachev

It's unclear whether the economic sanctions will have any effect on the two. Neither are likely to travel to the U.S., since they are already wanted criminals, and it's uncertain whether they have U.S.-based bank accounts the government could freeze

Computer users were tricked into downloading the malware which then stole financial information off the device like bank account numbers, passwords, PIN numbers and other information to steal money from victims. He is also believed to be behind a different program called 'ransomware' that would freeze a victim's computer files and threaten to delete them unless a ransom was paid.

U.S. financial institutions, Fortune 500 firms, universities and government agencies are among the victims of Bogachev's schemes, the White House said.

For these attacks, Bogachev faces several charges in federal court including conspiracy, wire, bank and computer fraud and money laundering.

Belan, meanwhile, as a $100,000 bounty from the FBI for a different set of hacks. Authorities say that Belan hacked three major American e-commerce companies to steal financial information from their customers which he then sold to other criminals online. The companies are not named, but he faces charges connected to the hacks in Nevada and California courts. It's also unclear just how much Belan profited from the illegal scheme. He faces charges including fraud and aggravated identity theft.

EVGENIY MIKHAILOVICH BOGACHEV AGE: 33 HAIR COLOR: Brown EYE COLOR: Brown HEIGHT: Approximately 5'9' WEIGHT: Approximately 180 pounds RACE: White OCCUPATION: Bogachev works in the Information Technology field ALIASES: Yevgeniy Bogachev, Evgeniy Mikhaylovich Bogachev, 'lucky12345', 'slavik', 'Pollingsoon' REWARD: $3million Advertisement

ALEXSEY ALEXSEYEVICH BELAN AGE: 29 BIRTHPLACE: Riga, Latvia HAIR COLOR: Brown EYE COLOR: Blue HEIGHT: 6'0' WEIGHT: 175 pounds RACE: White OCCUPATION: Computer/Network Engineer and Software Programmer NATIONALITY: Latvian ALIASES: Aleksei Belan, Aleksey Belan, Aleksey Alexseyevich Belan, Aleksey Alekseyevich Belan, Alexsei Belan, Abyr Valgov, 'Abyrvaig', 'Fedyunya', 'Magg', 'M4G', 'Moy.Yawik' REWARD: $100,000 Advertisement

While the men have become two of the most wanted cyber criminals in the U.S., they are apparently becoming popular in their home country thanks to a new wave of anti-Americanism.

In 2014, residents in Bogachev's hometown of Anapa praised his hacks that targeted the U.S.

'What a talented guy,' a 23-year-old man named Mikhail - who said he recognized Bogachev - told the Telegraph. 'Sitting at his computer at home, he broke into our enemies' camp, but did not harm his fellow Russians.'

'What a great dude,' Vazgen Atanasov, a taxi driver, added to the newspaper. 'Judging by what Americans do to other people, what Bogachev is said to have done to them serves them right.'




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This haunting image shows just how lucky a British pro surfer is to be alive after he narrowly escaped being crushed by a monster 30 foot wave in Portugal.

Tom Butler, 27, is seen here covered in bruises as he staged a recovery in hospital from a split ear, bruised ribs and a lung injury last week.

The pro surfer admits that while his injuries were bad, it could have been much worst after he had the spectacular fall during the World Surf League event near Lisbon on December 20.

Recovering in hospital: Tom Butler said 'It's all about staying calm quite relaxed and just trusting your training' after his fall

Instagram: The surfer wrote on an Instagram post that he had just arrived back in the UK and was 'feeling stronger than this time last week.'

He told BBC Radio Cornwall: 'I feel very grateful to not be hurt worse.'

Butler watched a video of his own accident and saw pictures taken shortly afterwards which show blood dripping down the side of his head.

He said: 'A square cubic metre of water weighs a tonne, so anyone watching the video will see quite a few tonnes coming down on my head.'

The surfer, from Newquay, Cornwall, fell on the 30 foot wave during the competition in Portugal earlier this month and was almost crushed by the waves.

He was just one of the wave riders that gathered at Praia do Norte in Nazare, around 80 miles north of Lisbon, to take on swells as high as five storey buildings.

He said: 'It knocked the wind out of me and tumbled me for some time but I've been in that situation before when a big wave has landed on me.

Rescued: British surfer Tom Butler is seen here being rescued from the water after falling from a huge wave in Portugal

Spectacular: Tom Butler is pictured on an orange surfboard on top of a huge wave before being thrown off

Surfer: The surfer (pictured) from Newquay, Cornwall, fell on the 30 foot wave during the competition in Portugal earlier this month

'It's all about staying calm quite relaxed and just trusting your training,' he continued.

'I also wear a vest which inflates, which I can pull to bring myself up to the top.'

'Under water I was fine. The contest vest got in the way a bit, inflating the vest but eventually I surfaced.'

'I think the initial impact on the surface of the water actually hurt my ribs. I don't know what split my ear maybe the board maybe the leash? I rolled in after a few waves on the head super dizzy and disorientated.

Hospital: Tom Butler (riding an orange surf board) was rushed to hospital after the dramatic fall earlier this month

Nazare's giant waves are increasingly attracting surfers from around the world, as it becomes part of the World Surf League Big Wave Tour.

However, Butler, who is ranked 37 in the world said that he is still in pain following the accident earlier this month.

'My ear feels fine...my rib is sore but I'm able to move a bit and can do most everyday movements okay just a bit slower with a tiny bit of pain.'

Accident: The 27-year-old is staging a recovery after the drama at the competition in Portugal which nearly cost his life

But he can still see the bright side. And hasn't ruled out competing again.

'A crash like the one above can only make you stronger,' he said.

'Looking forward to being back on the horse and back at the rodeo with all you cowboys soon,' he added.

The surfer wrote on an Instagram post this week that he had just arrived back in the UK and was 'feeling stronger than this time last week.'

Surfers: Butler was among a group of professional wave riders who gathered at Praia do Norte in Nazare, north of Lisbon

Waves: The British surfer (with the orange surf board) had caught many waves before being thrown off and badly injured
Dozens of beachgoers have been marched from Coogee Beach under a blanket ban on alcohol triggered by an out-of-control Christmas Day rave.

Police have been 'confiscating and pouring away alcohol' as they send boozy revellers packing from the beach and surrounding parks, a Randwick Council Spokesperson told The Daily Telegraph.

The ban was brought into effect to tackle anti-social behaviour over the festive season after more than 10,000 revellers left 15 tonnes of rubbish in their wake.

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Police have been 'confiscating and pouring away alcohol' as they send boozy revellers packing from Coogee beach

The ban was brought into effect to tackle anti-social behaviour over the holiday period after more than 10,000 revellers left 15 tonnes of rubbish

Tim Yan was pictured departing from the beach at 4pm with a case of Corona, telling the publication he was 'completely unaware' of the ban and had gone to the beach for a 'drink or two.'

He had only just arrived when the police told him to move along or face a fine, Mr Yan said.

However the Randwick council said the ban did not include fines for beach-boozers.

It comes hot on the heels of the shock blanket bank, which Randwick Mayor Noel D'Souza confirmed in place for the rest of the summer.

'We will be enforcing a total alcohol ban in public places in Coogee for the rest of the summer.'

Randwick Council had previously introduced new rules to limit drinking between 12 noon and 4pm on December 31, but the move will not mean new police will be on duty on New Year's Eve.

The blanket ban on alcohol came after 15 tonnes of rubbish was left on Coogee beach during a Christmas Day Rave

An impromptu dance party began on Sydney's Coogee Beach as thousands of people continued their Christmas Day celebrations into the evening

But the party took its toll on the area that was left thrashed with rubbish afterwards

Bottles and rubbish were left strewn across the beach and on the pavements in Coogee

'We have police down at Coogee for an operation over New Year's Eve every year,' she said.

'This year will be no different. Most places like Coogee where there are fireworks are very busy every year but we will not be having an extra patrols in place.'

The party appeared to kick off on Sunday in the late afternoon as the crowd of revellers at the eastern suburb beach continued to grow throughout the day.

Video footage captured thousands of people, many dressed in bikinis and Santa hats, dancing in the simmering temperatures.

The party appeared to kick off on Sunday in the late afternoon

The crowd of revellers at the eastern suburb beach continued to grow throughout Christmas Day

The music can be heard pumping in the background as the camera pans the wall to wall people and bright blue water behind them.

Woman can be seen cheering as they sit on friend's shoulders and sway to the music.

Others were spotted dancing on top of trailers and roofs.

It was reported many members of the crowd were European  who are known to enjoy a hot Christmas Day on one of Australia's many beaches.

Revellers were spotted dancing on roofs of nearby trailers

Women could be seen cheering as they sat on friends' shoulders and swaying to the music

It was reported many members of the crowd were European  who are known to enjoy a hot Christmas Day on one of Australia's many beaches
The affair came to light when girl's mother found lewd photos of the teen on her new phone

, and he allegedly said he loved her and wanted to marry her

Victim told police she and Gonzalez had sex on 20

for 18 years, allegedly began affair with his girlfriend's child in September, and it ended a week before Christmas

Gonzalez, who has been in law

Cop charged: Jesus Gonzalez, 42, a reserve officer with the Elmendorf Police Department, has been charged with first-degree continuous sexual abuse of as child

A veteran Texas police officer has been arrested for allegedly carrying on a sexual relationship with his girlfriends 13-year-old daughter and asking the child for racy photos of herself.

Jesus Gonzalez, 42, a reserve officer with the Elmendorf Police Department, was taken into custody on Tuesday while dressed in full uniform and armed; he was charged with first-degree continuous sexual abuse of a child.

According to an arrest warrant cited by the station KSAT, Gonzalez, who has been working in law enforcement for various local agencies for 18 years, began abusing the girl in September, and their affair lasted until the week before Christmas.

The cop and the victims mother have been in a relationship for more than a year and a half.

When interviewed by police, the 13-year-old claimed that she and Gonzalez had more than 20 sexual encounters, including while on vacation, according to the warrant.

Gonzalez and the girl communicated through Instagram and the social media app Kik, and the officer allegedly had the victim send him sexually explicit photos and videos of herself.

One recording showed the child dancing in a provocative manner, reported San Antonio Express-News.

The warrant stated Gonzalez told his underage paramour that he loved her and wanted to marry her.

The suspected abuse came to light when the victims mother found a lewd photo depicting her daughter on a new cell phone while transferring contact information, and she then called police.

Behind bars: Gonzalez was ordered held at the Bexar County Jail on $75,000 bond

Records indicate that Gonzalez had previously served as an officer with the Alamo Community College District for more than 14 years. He was terminated in 2014 for 'failure to report for duty.

The station KENS5 reported that between 1998 and 1999, he worked as an officer with the Natalia Police Department.

In October of this year, Gonzalez was hired by the Elmendorf Police Department, where officials confirmed that he resigned in the wake of his arrest this week.

Earlier this month, Gonzalez also quit his side job as a juvenile detention officer while facing disciplinary action stemming from his attendance record.
Man found one of the teens and helped him to shore, but Tui vanished

Two 14-year-old cousins found themselves in trouble in water at Sydney beach

The mother of the missing teen collapsed on the sand as the search took its toll

search for a teenager who vanished off Maroubra Beach continues

A body has washed up near Maroubra beach in Sydney, close to where 14-year-old Tu'ipulotu 'Tui' Gallaher went missing while swimming earlier this week.

Police reported a body had been found on the southern end of the beach just after 7.15am on Friday. They have yet to formally identify the body, but the search has now been called off.

Tui got into trouble as he swam with his cousin off Maroubra Beach in Sydney's east at 8.30 on Tuesday night.

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Tui Gallaher, 14, disappeared in rough surf at Maroubra beach in Sydney's east on Tuesday

Police were searching the southern end of Maroubra beach on Friday morning

During a nightmarish time for the family, on Wednesday his distraught mother Sandra Tamano collapsed on the foreshore while watching the rescues teams search for her son.

She was helped onto the life savers' buggy by lifeguards and a friend.

On Thursday rescue crews believed that the chances of finding the teenager alive were 'slim'.

An extensive air and sea search was scaled back with beachgoers returning in their hundreds as temperatures hit the high 30s.

Police confirmed on Friday morning that the search has now been called off

A beachgoer alerted the police about a body in the water off Maroubra beach on Friday

The mother of the teenage swimmer, Sandra Tamano, collapsed as the desperate search continued on Wednesday (pictured)

Lifeguards rushed to her aid (pictured) when she collapsed onto the sand after keeping a vigil there since Tuesday

A friend was seen holding the mother of the missing teenager upright as lifesavers rushed over to help

An extensive air and sea search was scaled back on Friday by authorities

Surf life saving crews and police have been searching for the missing 14-year-old

The two cousins, from Guildford in Sydney's west, both began struggling in the rough evening ocean on Tuesday.

A 26-year-old man spotted one of the struggling teenagers and managed to help him to shore, but Tui disappeared in the rough surf.

After the teenager was spotted, emergency services were called and the 26-year-old man swam out to try and locate Tui.

His cousin was reportedly frantic and urging they help find Tui. The pair were at the beach with their family when the surf suddenly became rough.

Matthew Evans from Surf Lifesaving NSW said the three to four foot swell and a number of rips was what was making the search difficult.

A registered nurse spotted one of the teenagers as she walked past and managed to help him to shore, but his cousin had disappeared
William Spingler has been accused of groping his dementia-suffering mother-in-law while visiting her at her nursing home

A long-serving Pennsylvania politician has been accused of groping his disabled mother-in-law during visits to her nursing home.

William Spingler was reported to police by staff at Wayne Nursing Home after being allegedly caught massaging the 103-year-old's breasts on three separate occasions.

The 75-year-old is the former commissioner for the town of Radnor and served in local politics for 30 years before retiring in 2015.

Spingler, who is facing three counts of indecent assault, has not commented on the allegations. His mother-in-law suffers dementia and requires round-the-clock care, according to staff at the home.

On December 15, Spingler was seen planting a kiss on the elderly woman's lips he greeted her in the dining hall at the start of their visit, police allege.

He was then apparently seen massaging her right breast with his hand under a blanket by staff he did not know were watching him.

The politician was allegedly seen doing the same thing on two separate occasions.

In a police complaint obtained by The Smoking Gun, the attending officer said the touching could 'not be misconstrued as anything but inappropriate'.

When Spingler noticed staff were observing him, he is accused of going red in the face then leaving after asking her.

Spingler was visiting the woman, whose identity is being protected, at Wayne Nursing Center in Pennsylvania (above) when the alleged attacks took place

Two different staff members reporting seeing him abuse the woman. Both of Spingler's two wives are dead.

In the complaint, police described his mother-in-law as 'unable to defend herself'.

' (She) is 103 years old and is diagnosed with dementia, unspecified lack of coordination, muscle weakness, anxiety disorder and difficulty walking.
An elderly horse named Bubbles staged a swift escape from a kill lot that would make any action hero proud when he tried to hide himself in a pack of mini donkeys.

Bubbles was destined for slaughter in Mexico when Becky's Hope Horse Rescue rolled up to rescue a few of the mini donkeys also being kept at his Texas kill pen.

The horse, who is believed to be near 30 years old, ignored a number of the lot's employees and strolled right up to the trailer, which he knew would take him to safety.

'He was intent that this was his ride out there,' Becky's Hope Horse Rescue wrote in a post about Bubbles on their Facebook page.

This elderly horse named Bubbles who was destined to be slaughtered in Mexico saved himself from a Texas kill lot when he tried to hide in a pack of mini donkeys

Becky's Hope Horse Rescue rolled up to rescue a few of the pen's mini donkeys and Bubbles strolled right up to the nonprofit's trailer and tried to mix in as if he belonged

'We stood there staring as this old guy with crumbled ears from frostbite waited patiently for the group of mini donkeys to catch up so he could jump on the "freedom trailer" out of there'.

Sue Chapman, president of the nonprofit, said she believed Bubbles thought no one would notice him if he mixed in with the mini donkeys.

'He's like "I'm just one of them"'. Got on the trailer with them, stood there like "you don't see me", and kept his head kind of down,' she told CBS DFW.

Bubbles quickly won the hearts of Chapman and volunteer Lari McConegly, who couldn't bear to leave him behind.

'This sweet, old man won our hearts the minute he decided it was the perfect time to escape the kill lot,' the Facebook post read.

'I couldn't have slept that night, there's no way I could have driven away without him,' Chapman later added in a Facebook video she posted with Bubbles.

Bubbles quickly won the hearts of president Sue Chapman and volunteer Lari McConegly, who couldn't bear to leave him behind. They took him to the organization's 120-acre ranch in Frisco

The women (pictured) paid $450 so that Bubbles could live the rest of his days on the ranch

McConegly (pictured with Bubbles) said several employees at the kill lot tried to make Bubbles turn around, but he completely ignored them and headed for the trailer

The women paid $450 to keep Bubbles and brought him to the 120-acre ranch in Frisco.

Bubbles adapted instantly to his new home, where he still continues to hang out with his mini donkey cohorts.

'He is adjusting so well, its as if he knew that this rescue was where he belonged all along,' Becky's Hope spokesperson Sarah McGregor told The Dodo.

'He loves attention, loves grazing and getting special treats.'

Chapman said there will be an 'uphill climb' helping Bubbles get more weight on, but she hopes to soon have him hanging out with the other senior horses.

Bubbles adapted instantly to his new home, where he still continues to hang out with his mini donkey cohorts (pictured at Becky's Hope ranch)

Meanwhile, Bubbles' incredible story has quickly gone viral and touched hearts all around the world.

More than 5,000 people liked the nonprofit's original Facebook post about Bubbles and donations have been pouring in for the organization.

'Ive never had that happen,' Chapman said.

'People from all over the world are sending five dollars from Japan, five dollars from Germany, fifteen dollars from England the other day.'

The additional money has already been used to rescue two horses like Bubbles.
The other pilot killed in the crash has not yet been named by the National Guard

He leaves behind his two children and his wife who is

Two Army National Guardsmen have died in a helicopter crash in Texas - including a 33-year-old whose wife is pregnant with twins.

Lucas Lowe, 33, was killed when the AH-64 Apache helicopter went down during a routine training flight from Ellington Airport, in Pasadena at just before 4pm on Wednesday.

The other soldier has not yet been identified by the Army National Guard. Authorities are investigating the cause of the crash.

Lucas Lowe, 33, (pictured with his wife Kami, who is pregnant with twins) was killed when the AH-64 Apache helicopter went down during a routine training flight from Ellington Airport, in Pasadena at just before 4pm on Wednesday

Lowe, pilot based out of the 1-149th Attack Helicopter Battalion at Ellington Field, leaves behind his two children and his wife Kami, who was pregnant with twins.

The family of Lowe, a veteran who served in Iraq in 2008, have been notified about his death.

'It is with our deepest sympathy we tell you both service members on board the aircraft are deceased,' said Glen Webb, the Chief Warrant Officer with the Texas Army National Guard. 'Our thoughts and prayers are with their family.'

A rotor found along fencing near the Bayport Terminal may be their first and best clue as to what went wrong. The Texas Army National Guard says the AH-64 Apache Unit is part of the 1-149th attack helicopter battalion. The two men were on a routine training flight that took off from Ellington Field.

Crashed: A Texas Army National Guard Apache helicopter similar to this one crashed into the water just off Galveston Bay, Texas, on Wednesday

Broken up: Witnesses said they saw the helicopter breaking up in the air, and the rotors coming off. One rotor (pictured) was found in a field near the crash site

Sunk: The helicopter landed just off the coast of Galveston Bay (left). All that could be seen of the vehicle was its wheels (right) poking out of the water

'All we know if that our pilots are highly trained, highly qualified veterans who have been flying this aircraft for many years,' said Master Sgt. Sean Cowher, with the Texas Air National Guard.

One witness told ABC 13 that he heard a 'pop' and then saw 'rotors flying in the air' before the helicopter crashed into the water 25 yards from the shore at around 3:50pm.

'Turned around and looked, and the helicopter - parts were going everywhere and we saw it going just straight down,' he said.

One of the helicopter's rotors was seen lying in a field close to the crash site. It had been based in nearby Ellington Field.

It had been flying unusually low prior to the explosion, witnesses - who were used to seeing military vehicles in the vicinity - said.

Lowe, pilot based out of the 1-149th Attack Helicopter Battalion at Ellington Field, leaves behind his two children and his wife Kami, who was pregnant with twins

The Texas Army National Guard said the AH-64 Apache, which is part of the 1-149th attack helicopter battalion, had been on a routine mission when the crash occurred.

The helicopter itself landed in the water and was almost completely submerged, with only its wheels poking above the water, which had been affected by an oil slick.

A Coast Guard helicopter was seen hovering over the wreckage, lowering dive teams into the water.

The army would not say whether a black box had been recovered from the wreckage, Click2Houston reported.

'Since we do not know the cause of the accident, we can't speculate on anything like that,' Master Sergeant Sean Cowher said.

'All we know is our pilots are highly trained, highly qualified veterans that have been flying this aircraft for many years.'

The wreckage was recovered on Thursday.
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security determined in a report released Thursday that Russian state actors were behind computer hacks this year that exposed some of the Democratic National Committee's secrets.

America's intelligence community, the report reveals, code-named the effort 'Grizzly Steppe,' and referred to specific hackers or groups of hackers by pet names including 'CosmicDuke,' 'COZYBEAR,' 'CrouchingYeti,' 'Energetic Bear,' 'Fancy Bear,' 'OnionDuke,' 'Sandworm,' 'SOURFACE' and 'Tiny Baron.'

The report was released as the Obama administration and Moscow traded barbs over a raft of new White House sanctions against Russian government actors the White House says are tied to election-year computer hacking in the U.S.

President-elect Donald Trump said in a statement late Thursday that '[i]t's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.'

'Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.'

President Barack Obama's intelligence agencies released a report Thursday that seemed to back his decision to level new sanctions against Russia, while President-elect Donald Trump called for America to 'move on to bigger and better things'

The FBI and Homeland Security Department nicknamed the Russian cyber attack operation as 'Grizzly Steppe,' and illustrated its techniques in a report issued Thursday

Groups of hackers that the FBI and DHS refer to as 'APT28' and 'APT29,' they said, infiltrated the Democratic National Committee for more than a year, and didn't stop until after the November 8 presidential election

Evidence is strong, the FBI and DHS concluded, tying Russia to the DNC hack, which unmasked an intra-party plot to promote Hillary Clinton's primary candidacy while marginalizing her main opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The report makes no reference, however, to the more explosive leaks of emails hacked from the personal account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The 13-page document's main purpose is to educate government and political IT professionals about how to protect their computer systems from future cyber attacks.

But its most volatile statements concern intelligence findings that establish the involvement of Russian military and civilian intelligence agencies in past hacking.

Those services found ways to 'compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. Government, political, and private sector entities,' Thursday's report concludes.

THE LIST: U.S. gov't nicknames for Russian cyber attackers A report released by the FBI and Homeland Security Department disclosed a list of 'alternate names' for Russian hacking groups thought to be targeting American political parties, universities, government agencies, corporations, and other institutions in a program nicknamed 'Grizzly Steppe': APT28 APT29 Agent.btz BlackEnergy V3 BlackEnergy2 APT CakeDuke Carberp CHOPSTICK CloudDuke CORESHELL CosmicDuke COZYBEAR COZYCAR COZYDUKE CrouchingYeti DIONIS Dragonfly Energetic Bear EVILTOSS Fancy Bear GeminiDuke GREY CLOUD HammerDuke HAMMERTOSS Havex MiniDionis MiniDuke OLDBAIT OnionDuke Operation Pawn Storm PinchDuke Powershell backdoor Quedagh Sandworm SEADADDY Seaduke SEDKIT SEDNIT Skipper Sofacy SOURFACE SYNful Knock Tiny Baron Tsar Team twain_64.dll VmUpgradeHelper.exe Waterbug X-Agent Advertisement

Mockery: This was how Russia's embassy in London responded to the new sanctions from the Obama administraitoin on Thursday, mocking the outgoing president as a 'lame duck'

The two agencies had already released a statement in October attributing the attacks to Russia, claiming they were an attempt to 'interfere' with America's presidential election.

The new report does not expand on that specific allegation or provide new evidence to support it.

The two main Russian entities identified on Thursday include a hacking group known as APT29, tied to Russia's Federal Security Service  the FSB, one of sevreal successor agencies to the infamous KGB which Russian President Vladimir Putin once led.

That group is thought to have infiltrated the DBC's computers for more than a year, pulling out documents regularly.

Spy HQ: The Moscow headquarters of the FSB, known popularly as the Lubyanka, has been used for espionage for generations. It was where Stalin's purges were directed from

The FBI and DHS tied another group of hackers, known as APT28, to Russia's military intelligence service, known as the GRU.

Some security experts have written that APT28 was the entity behind the hack of Podesta's emails, but Thursday's report is silent on that claim.

APT28, The Hill reported Thursday, is thought to be the responsible for providing stolen files and emails from both hacking operations to WikiLeaks, which published them online.

The attackers, the two U.S. intelligence agencies reported, executed 'spearphishing' operations that lured computer users to click on links inside emails which led to malicious addresses.

Some of those online destinations fed malware into the victims' computers, which then allowed the code to migrate into the DNC's servers, providing the hackers with long-term access.

The result, the FBI and DHS concluded, was 'the exfiltration of information from multiple senior party members.'

'The U.S. Government assesses that information was leaked to the press and publicly disclosed,' the report declares.
A Donald Trump supporter claims he was verbally attacked by his anti-Trump neighbors because he was wearing one of the president-elect's T-shirts.

Nathan Morton posted a video on YouTube on December 3, which he says was shot in the communal area of his apartment building in California.

'Backstory: the neighbors above me agitate constantly so i (sic) hang out in the clubhouse to get work done,' he wrote.

'This is a particularly clear example of the kind of nonsense hostility I deal with on a regular basis. I'm wearing a #buildthewall print T-shirt. MAGA.'

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Nathan Morton (pictured), a Donald Trump supporter, claims he was verbally attacked by his anti-Trump neighbors all because he was wearing one of the president-elect's T-shirts

The video, which was posted online earlier this month, starts when a woman - who Morton says lives in the same building - asks: 'are you racist? You have a shirt that says "build the wall".'

Morton is then heard asking a man, 'can I film this?', before the man responds: 'film it, go for it... you're the f***ing d**khead wearing a hashtag build the wall shirt.'

Morton then asks the two people to leave him alone, but both continue to pepper him with accusations.

'You say you want to build the wall, are you a racist? the woman asks. 'I'm Mexican, so just wondering, are you racist?'

Morton then is heard saying he would rather not discuss anything with the people, which prompts the man to reply: 'well of course you don't, you're the one wearing a f***ed up shirt, man. Don't wear s*** like that around here.

'You live here, among a bunch of different people from a bunch of races, different religions, do you really think you're going to make friends wearing a shirt like that around here.'

Morton posted a video on YouTube on December 3, which he says was shot in the communal area of his apartment building in California. He says his shirt read: '#buildthewall'

The video, which was posted online earlier this month, starts when a woman (left) - who Morton says lives in the same building - asks: 'are you racist?'

Morton is then again heard saying he does not want to talk about the shirt. He also does not give either of the people his name when asked.

The woman is seen over the next few minutes continuing to film Morton, who remains seated on the couch.

'This is what racism looks like,' the woman is heard saying. 'I wonder when was the last time he got laid, that's the problem... he's never gotten laid in his life.'

The video ends when another man comes inside and convinces the woman to leave. Before making their way out the door, the man is heard saying: 'He's got his own damn opinion, let's go.'

'Film it, go for it... you're the f***ing d**khead wearing a hashtag build the wall shirt,' the man in the video is heard saying to Morton

'You live here, among a bunch of different people from a bunch of races, different religions, do you really think you're going to make friends wearing a shirt like that around here,' the people filming said to Morton in the video

At no point in the nearly 10-minute video is Morton's alleged offensive shirt shown.

Some social media users claimed the clip was a hoax, however Morton said it was real.

The footage has been watched more than 456,000 times.

The Trump supporter regularly posts confrontational videos to his YouTube channel, including one where he claims Hillary Clinton works for a 'global terror network', and another where he says President Obama will get 'virtually lynched'.

He also accused the President of stealing two elections.

'This is what racism looks like,' the woman is heard saying. 'I wonder when was the last time he got laid, that's the problem... he's never gotten laid in his life,' she said before leaving

Many commenters on Morton's Facebook page and YouTube account celebrated his ability to keep calm during the incident.

'You have the patience of a saint. In Arizona the right to carry state. I'm pretty sure she would of been shot,' Warren Canady wrote.

'You kept your cool for sure. I hope you won't be forced to move because of this,' Jillian Durham said.
This week the Mail has asked leading thinkers to analyse major global events of the year  from Brexit to Russian belligerence  and predict what might happen next. Today, historian Max Hastings addresses the terrifying problems engulfing the Middle East.

Foremost among the images of 2016 have been the anguished faces of children in stricken Aleppo. They stumble amid the rubble of what was once a Syrian city of two million people, which I can testify from my own remembrance was once among the historic wonders of the world.

Now, it has all but gone, and its victims have touched hearts and consciences across the world. The cry has gone up: How could we allow this to happen! Nor is misery confined to Aleppo. Conflicts across the Middle East create swathes of desolation and tens of thousands of corpses, yet, despite the ceasefire announced yesterday, seem further than ever from long-term resolution.

Conflicts across the Middle East create swathes of desolation and tens of thousands of corpses, yet, despite the ceasefire announced yesterday, seem further than ever from long-term resolution

For years, the Western powers have pursued the wholly incompatible ambitions of simultaneously fighting Isis and toppling Assad

The aspirations of the U.S. and Russia have collided, because the West is obsessed with removing Syrias President Assad, the client of President Putin.

The Russian leader knows exactly what he wants, and is indifferent to the human cost of getting it, while President Obama has proved a ditherer. Thus, the Middle East is widely perceived as a theatre for Russian success and Western failure.

The scale and depth of the tragedy are beyond dispute. The Bush-Blair 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq proved the catalyst, though not cause, of many horrors that have occurred since.

Having said that, it is much harder to agree on what the Western powers should now be trying to do about North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and for that matter, Israel and the Palestinians.

In Syria, President Assad will almost certainly continue to dominate shrunken dominions to the west, with rebels controlling the outlying areas

This is not a series of single dramas or problems, but instead a hopelessly entangled cats cradle for which no one should fool themselves that there is a solution

This is not a series of single dramas or problems, but instead a hopelessly entangled cats cradle for which no one should fool themselves that there is a solution.

Take Syria. Last week, three former British ambassadors published a joint letter deploring our Governments eagerness to depose Assad in favour of what they dub the so-called moderate opposition.

They wrote: Civilians in many parts of Syria fear that [the fall of Assad] will create a political vacuum, providing a dangerous opportunity for ISIS-related Islamist extremists.

We therefore urge the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to respect the right of the Syrian people as a whole to choose their own future.

I believe those ambassadors are right. For years, the Western powers have pursued the wholly incompatible ambitions of simultaneously fighting Isis and toppling Assad.

No one doubts that the Syrian regime and its Russian sponsors have committed ghastly crimes  but so have the rebels. That is why no faction properly deserves Western support

No one doubts that the Syrian regime and its Russian sponsors have committed ghastly crimes  but so have the rebels. That is why no faction properly deserves Western support

No one doubts that the Syrian regime and its Russian sponsors have committed ghastly crimes  but so have the rebels. That is why no faction properly deserves Western support.

Our Government and most of the media doggedly ignore the evidence that many Syrians prefer to stick with Assad, the devil they know, rather than see the triumph of the rebels, who are mostly Islamists.

If one good thing comes out of the Trump presidency, this would be a reset of American Middle East policy, abandoning our hopelessly bungled attempts to promote democracy, whether in Libya, Egypt, Syria or anywhere else.

Our objective should instead be to promote stability, the greatest good for the largest number of people, and defence of Western interests.

Our efforts to assist democracy across the Middle East have won us no friends whatsoever. We face repeated acts of terrorism in Europe, committed by disaffected Muslims, while last weeks murder of Russias ambassador in Ankara was only the recent Muslim attack on the butchers of Aleppo.

Our efforts to assist democracy across the Middle East have won us no friends whatsoever

In the Middle East, Putins brutal pragmatism has had more impact than our clumsy moralism, and sooner or later the West will have to make terms with him there. Elsewhere in the region, a major consequence of the Wests struggle against Islamist terrorism is that, despite last weeks UN vote condemning Israels illegal settlement building in the West Bank, effective diplomatic pressure on Jerusalem to implement a two-state deal with the Palestinians is almost non-existent.

Israeli expansionism in the Occupied Territories has increased apace, and Trump has nominated a U.S. Ambassador to Israel who enthuses about new settlements.

Professor Azar Gat, a strategy guru at Tel Aviv University, suggests that we are entering a global age of walls  to keep unwanted people out.

It is well known that President Trump proposes a barrier across the Mexican border, but in the Middle East there are serious advocates of walling the entire frontier of Israel, to protect it from terrorists.

On a 20 or 30-year view, it may be that Israel will live to regret its ruthless policies towards the Palestinians. In the short term, however, the Trump presidency signals a much more active alliance between the U.S. and Israel  which could include the sort of military action against Iran that hardline prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long favoured.

Here is a key flashpoint for the world: Trump and Netanyahu have repeatedly denounced Obamas deal to lift economic sanctions on Iran, in return for a temporary shutdown of its nuclear weapons facilities.

It is well known that President Trump proposes a barrier across the Mexican border, but in the Middle East there are serious advocates of walling the entire frontier of Israel, to protect it from terrorists

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticised the Obama regime over its lifting of sanctions in Iran

The Iranians are the Middle Easts foremost mischief-makers, indeed outright menaces. They support Hezbollahs terrorist attacks from Lebanon into Israel, and the Assad regime in Syria.

They cherish ambitions to dominate Iraq, and already exert huge influence there. Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers play key roles in directing the Iraqi offensive against Isis. Some frightful atrocities against Sunnis in Iraq have been attributed to Iranian Shia militiamen.

Irans imperial ambitions across the region are almost boundless. In pursuit of these, it conducts a shadowy surrogate war against its Sunni enemies, the Saudis, in Yemen.

Trump and Netanyahu have repeatedly denounced Obamas deal to lift economic sanctions on Iran, in return for a temporary shutdown of its nuclear weapons facilities

We cannot guess just how tough a Trump administration will be with the mullahs of Tehran, but Washington could support military action to enforce a permanent shutdown of their nuclear activities.

This may sound a good idea. But such an initiative would dramatically raise tensions with Russia and China, Irans friends.

Military geeks on both sides of the Atlantic believe that Irans underground plants can be effectively attacked only with the U.S. Air Forces nuclear bunker-busting bombs, which would breach a threshold uncrossed since Hiroshima.

One of Britains most respected strategists said to me a couple of years ago: The only thing worse than the Iranians building nuclear weapons would be the sort of Western military action necessary to stop them.

A critical trend of the past year and the next is fragmentation of Arab states. Their frontiers had few roots in history, being instead colonial constructions of the past century.

It is unlikely that Libya, Syria or Iraq  to name but three  can again be governed as unitary states

Families, tribes and sects have always mattered more in Arab loyalties than nations. Now, this is acutely the case. It is unlikely that Libya, Syria or Iraq  to name but three  can again be governed as unitary states. Libya has dissolved into a cluster of fiefdoms ruled by rival factions and warlords.

In Syria, President Assad will almost certainly continue to dominate shrunken dominions to the west, with rebels controlling the outlying areas.

The Kurds of Iraq have for centuries demanded their own state, and are unlikely again to acknowledge Baghdads sovereignty over them. Yet another huge factor in this maelstrom is the Kurdish minority in Turkey, 12 million strong.

Kurdish extremist terrorism has risen in step with violent repression by the government of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He will fight to the last ditch to prevent a Kurdish state coming into being in northern Iraq, which would become a magnet for his own disaffected Kurds.

Our Government and most of the media doggedly ignore the evidence that many Syrians prefer to stick with Assad, the devil they know, rather than see the triumph of the rebels, who are mostly Islamists

One of the most frightening developments of 2016 has been Erdogans growing authoritarianism, which has worsened since the failed army coup against him in July.

A few years ago, Turkey and its 75 million people seemed on the march towards becoming a modern Western state, eager to join the EU.

Today, it is chilling to see large parts of this huge country embrace Islam, renouncing the secularism that has prevailed since Kemal Ataturks revolution almost a century ago. Democracy is in retreat, with 40,000 arrests since the coup, including many judges and teachers.

Little more than a year ago, in November 2015, Turkeys relations with Russia hit rock-bottom when one of Erdogans F-16 fighters shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 that had infringed upon Turkish air space while bombing Syrian rebels. Today, in a dramatic volte-face, Russia and Turkey embrace one other in an alliance of convenience.

One of the most frightening developments of 2016 has been Erdogans growing authoritarianism, which has worsened since the failed army coup against him in July

Where once the Turks supported rebels fighting against Assad, now Turkish troops are engaged against the Kurds. Further afield, Turkish support alone holds together the tiny, tottering gulf state of Qatar.

Erdogans behaviour in cosying up to Vladimir Putin signifies his rejection of the Wests preoccupation with freedom, human rights and liberal values.

He is throwing in his lot with Russia, China, Iran and others to promote a new order of authoritarian states. Its success or failure is a matter of historic importance.

Americas incoming president seems likewise committed to the promotion of spheres of influence and national interests, heedless of the domestic conduct of foreign governments. The consequences for the Middle East, and for the world, are unpredictable but huge.

The cry has gone up: How could we allow this to happen! Nor is misery confined to Aleppo

We shall see the fragmentation of some states, and increasingly ferocious domestic repression and military activism abroad by others. Can tyranny still prevail against the forces of personal expression unleashed by social media?

It is hard to overstate their impact upon the politics of the Middle East. Everywhere, minorities, factions and fanatics have been empowered to link arms against foes, in a fashion that is already changing the course of history.

Islam is today the cult of repressed people in many nations, as was Marxism in the 20th century. Jihadist recruiting videos skilfully weave together a narrative that suggests to second and third-generation Muslims in Europe that their experiences of alienation and exclusion are part of the same phenomenon as Israeli repression of the Palestinians, and the Western invasion of Iraq.

When Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson publicly rails against Syrias President Assad, he speaks as the newspaper hack he once was, not as a would-be statesman

Thus, in the words of Islamism expert Peter Neumann, a young Muslim in a Parisian suburb and an Iraqi insurgent all become part of one and the same struggle.

The important Western interest in the years ahead is to break this mythological link.

President Obama anguished aloud about the Middle East in a recent valedictory interview: Was there some move that is beyond what was being presented to me, that maybe a Churchill could have seen, or an Eisenhower might have figured out?

The almost certain answer is no. Donald Trump is right about one big thing: the lesson for the West since 2003 is that our military interventions in the Middle East have been almost unfailingly disastrous.

It can be right to weep for the stricken innocents of Aleppo, while believing that there was little of any use that the West could do to prevent this.

It can be right to weep for the stricken innocents of Aleppo, while believing that there was little of any use that the West could do to prevent this

Our governments have made too many futile gestures, too few hard-headed calculations. When Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson publicly rails against Syrias President Assad, he speaks as the newspaper hack he once was, not as a would-be statesman.

We should stop using peace as our watchword and all-embracing goal, for none of those who mouth the word can credibly explain what it means. This is not on offer.

Instead, the Wests aim should be to promote stability in the most turbulent region on Earth  which means recognising that some horrible people will hold power there, as they always have done.

Our priorities should be to defend ourselves against terrorism and its sources  which means containing Isis  while avoiding making gestures that make things worse on the ground. We need fewer emotional words from our leaders, and more serious-minded policy.
Residents in a Chinese city were shocked yesterday when they saw porn being broadcast on a public screen for more than five minutes.

The video was played after a screen tester connected a personal computer to the device then went away, leaving the computer on autoplay, according to People's Daily.

The incident took place on a busy street in Ningbo, a major city of nearly eight million people in eastern China's Zhejiang Province.

Cover your eyes! Explicit content was played on a big screen in Ningbo, China, yesterday

The explicit content was shown on a big screen outside a shopping mall called NingboTianlun Square at around 10am on December 28, according to the report.

Local police said the clip had been saved in the personal computer of a property management worker who was testing the screen at the time.

The worker then went away leaving his computer unattended, which led the big screen to broadcast the porn.

A muzzed video posted on Chinese social media has captured the embarrassing incident.

Pedestrians, security guards and the staff of the nearby shops were shocked to watch the video being played.

One security guard told a reporter from Qianjiang Evening News: 'The content of the video was really...I am too shy to talk about it...'

The case was reported to the local police immediately.

Pedestrians, security guards and nearby shopkeepers were shocked to watch the video

On December 28, Yinzhou police confirmed the incident in a statement on its social media account.

The worker was brought to the local police for investigation.

The worker's gender has not been specified.

The shopping mall also issued an apology for broadcasting distasteful videos on the same big screen today.

Local police said the clip had been saved in the personal computer of a property management worker who was testing the screen at the time

The incident had sparked wide discussions on Weibo, China's microblogging platform.

Web users found the incident quite funny in general.

One user said: 'Why would the staff use a personal computer at work? It was so risky.'
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An enormous mountain overpass standing at a whopping 565 metres high (1,854 feet) opened to traffic today in south-west China.

The Beipanjiang Bridge, which reportedly cost 1.023 billion yuan (120 million) to build, overtook the 560-metre-high (1,837 feet) Sidu River Bridge, also in China, to become the highest bridge in the world, according to People's Daily Online.

At 1,340 metres (4,396 feet) long, the four-lane structure links two of China most remote provinces, Yunnan and Guizhou.

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Highest bridge: The vertigo-inducing Beipanjiang bridge, opened today, is built over a deep gorge in south-west China

Don't look down! At 1,340 metres (4,396 feet) long, the four-lane structure is billed as the world's highest bridge in the world

What a view! The enormous mountain overpass standing at a whopping 565 metres high (1,854 feet) opened to traffic today

Dizzying height: The Bridge, reportedly cost 1.023 billion yuan (120 million) to build, is hailed to be the highest in the world

Spectacular: At 1,340 metres (4,396 feet) long, the four-lane structure is suspended over a huge gorge in south-west China

Now it's open: It's a part of a national highway linking Hangzhou in southern China with Ruili on the China-Myanmar border

Suspended over a deep gorge, the Beipanjiang Bridge is built at a height nearly twice as much as that of The Shard, a 95-storey skyscraper in London.

Engineers joined the last set of decks on September 10, marking the completion of the structure which has cost three years to build.

Named after Beipan River, the waterway it crosses, the incredible structure has a 720-metre-wide span (2,363 feet) and is a part of the Hangrui Highway, a 3,405-kilometre-long (2,115 miles) national motorway linking Hangzhou city in southern China with Ruili city on the China-Myanmar border.

The newly opened project is not to be confused with another Beipanjiang Bridge on Guanxing Highway, which stands at 363 metres high (1,200 feet) and opened in 2003.

Scenic area: The bridge, situated in the sparsely populated Guizhou Province, enjoys beautiful natural surroundings

Engineers joined the last set of decks on September 10, marking the completion of the bridge which took three years to build

Named after Beipan River, the waterway it crosses, the incredible structure has a 720-metre-wide span (2,363 feet)

Impressive structure: China has opened a mountain overpass, which stands at a whopping 1,854 feet high

We've made it: The last set of decks were joined on September 10, marking the completion of the bridge in southern China

The completion of the ambitious project means that eight of the world's 10 highest completed bridges are now located in China - almost all are situated in remote mountainous provinces, according to highestbridges.com.

Among the top ten, the other two bridges are in Papua New Guinea and Mexico, claimed the same website.

The Beipanjiang Bridge overtook the previous record holder, Sidu River Bridge, situated in central China's Hubei Province.

Sky-high ambition: The 120 million structure, built at over 1,850 feet high, links two of China most remote provinces

Nearly done: The Beipanjiang Bridge took the Chinese bridge experts three years to build and was completed on Saturday

Remote location: The breath-taking structure is located on the border of Guizhou Province and Yunnan Province

The vertigo-inducing Sidu River Bridge, completed in 2009, is built between two mountains over a 486-metre-deep (1,627 feet) valley - though some media claim it's 557 metres (1,830 feet) high.

Besides Beipanjiang Bridge, Chinese engineers are also building what's set to be the world's second highest bridge, Jinshajiang Bridge.

The massive traffic link stands at an impressive 512 metres high (1,680 feet) and spans across the raging Jinsha River in southen China's Yunnan Province. Ground was broken last year and the bridge is expected to be completed in 2021.

SKY IS THE LIMIT: THE WORLD'S TOP 10 HIGHEST BRIDGES (IN FEET) 1. Beipanjiang Bridge Duge, China 1,854 feet (2016) 2. Jinshajiang Bridge, China, 1,680 feet (2021) 3. Sidu River Bridge, China, 1,627 feet (2009) 4. Puli Bridge, China, 1,591 feet (2015) 5. Yachi Bridge, China, 1,444 feet (2016) 6. Qingshuihe Bridge, China, 1,332 feet (2016) 7. Hegigio Gorge Pipeline Bridge, Papua New Guinea, 1,542 feet (2005) 8. Baluarte Bridge, Mexico, 1,280 feet (2013) 9. Balinghe Bridge, China, 1,214 feet (2009) 10. Beipanjiang Bridge Guanxing, China, 1,200 feet (2003) Source: Highest bridges Advertisement

World's highest bridge: Named after Beipan River, the incredible bridge has a 2,363ft span and is a part of Hangrui Highway
A Chinese wildlife caretaker who was seriously injured after being bitten by a female panda he looked after is slowly recovering.

Wei Hua, 41, suffered severe wounds on his arms, legs and head including slashed ankle, broken bones and muscle loss, a report from People's Daily Online stated.

The man also lost a third of his left palm and sustained injuries on both wrists during the assault.

Wei's left hand is severely injured, with broken elbow and a loss of one-third of his palm

Panda Attack: He was being brutally thrashed on the ground and ripped by Xi Mei the panda

Panda Xi Mei, 16, attacked her keeper at a panda centre in Wolong, south-west China, on December 14.

Captive-born Xi Mei and her daughter Ba Xi had been sent to the Tiantaishan Wild Training Centre, Sichuan, to undergo outdoor living training before they are to be released back to the wild.

Wei and two other caretakers had not been able to locate the mother-daughter pair in the training zone for two days.

So, they decided to go to the wild to find them.

The picture shows Wei Hua before he was attacked by panda Xi Mei earlier this month

Due to a poor signal reception in the training centre, the tracking system failed to locate the pandas' location accurately, according to the report.

When they managed to find baby panda Ba Xi, Xi Mei appeared from their back.

With three years of experience working in a Wolong National Nature Reserve, Sichuan and a masters degree in Wildlife Conservation, Wei did not panic and fed Xi Mei a bamboo.

Xi Mei , a 16-year-old female panda and a mother of two

But Xi Mei got angry and ran towards him.

Wei's left palm was seriously bitten and being mauled to the ground.

Wei recalled the horrific scene when he was thrashed by the mother panda: 'I can feel my left palm, both of my arms, my head and my legs are tearing apart.'

'For about five minutes, my colleagues throw a T-shirt out to draw her attention and that's when she stopped,' he added.

Wei then was sent to a local hospital immediately and received a blood transfusion of 4000cc, according to the report.

The doctor told Chengdu Business Daily that Wei has lost about one-third of his left palm, and two broken elbows and slashed ankles.

'Most of his leg muscles are being ripped off,' he added.

The doctor suggested Wei to eat high-protein food such as eggs and meat

Wei said he has already forgiven the panda and hoped to recover as soon as possible

He Xin, a panda keeper at the Foping Panda Valley, said it was not unusual for a panda to attack people.

He, who looks after the worlds only brown panda Qizai, told MailOnline he had been bitten in the past.

According to He, pandas could turn aggressive when they are hungry or in heat.

Keepers could be bitten when they feed pandas and the pandas are too hungry, so they would turn aggressive, he said.
When they're not curing cancer or saving the world from global warming, scientists work tirelessly to answer mankind's most pressing questions.

And now, thanks to science, we finally have an answer to the age-old conundrum: Which breasts do men like best?

And the results may be a surprise. According to the study, it's not all about size.

Researchers found that men prefer shapely, perkier boobs to those that are the largest, and therefore sag with gravity.

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Kim Kardashian (centre) is known for her large breasts, but recent research suggests that shapely, perky boobs, like those of actor Jennifer Lawrence (left), are preferred by most men. Small breasts, such as those of model Kate Moss (right), were deemed the least attractive

Scientists from Prague's Charles University set out to discover what female form appeals most to men.

They were interested in how the female form may have evolved to encourage successful breeding.

The team said of their recent study: 'Cross-culturally, males are hypothesised to prefer breast morphology that indicates both high potential and residual fertility.'

Large breasts are typically associated with fertility in women, and a plumper chest has long been tipped as the key to the male libido.

To test this hypothesis, the scientists quizzed 267 men from four different countries on their breast preferences: Brazil, Cameroon, the Czech Republic and Namibia.

They showed the test subjects two sets of images of varying breast size and firmness.

Before the new study, experts believed that large breasted women, such as pop star Katy Perry (left), were seen as more fertile than smaller breasted women, such as actress Salma Hayek (right). Large breasts were therefore deemed naturally more attractive to men

The authors wrote in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior: 'Individual preferences for breast size were variable, but the majority of raters preferred medium sized, followed by large sized breasts.

'In contrast, we found systematic directional preferences for firm breasts across all four samples.'

SIZE REALLY DOES MATTER FOR MEN A 2012 study found that penis size does matter when it comes to pleasing a woman in bed. The good news is that it only matters for some women and some types of orgasms. The research found that women who have frequent vaginal orgasms are more likely than other women to say they climax more easily during intercourse with men with larger penises. Advertisement

According to the researchers, the shape and size of human female breasts is unique among primates due to their permanent fat deposits.

It has previously been suggested that female humans' odd breast morphology arose as a result of male sexual selection.

'This is supported by evidence showing that women with larger breasts tend to have higher estrogen levels,' the researchers say in their paper.

'Breast size may therefore serve as an indicator of potential fertility.

'However, breasts become less firm with age and parity, and breast shape could thus also serve as a marker of residual fertility.'

And the scientists suggest that this loss of perkiness alongside fertility with age could drive men's breast preferences towards medium sized, firm breasts.

The researchers' results are published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.
Conspiracy theorists claim that ancient artwork could hide signs that aliens have visited the human race.

Several centuries-old paintings, cave drawings and tapestries contain symbols and shapes that resemble UFOs and extraterrestrials.

But art experts say that these are simple misreadings of religious symbols or figures.

MailOnline explores some of the most famous examples of UFO or alien-like symbols in ancient artwork.

This alter piece was painted by Italian artist Carlo Crivelli. Conspiracy theorists suggest that the ring depicted in the top left shining light onto Mary is actually a UFO spacecraft

The Annunciation with Saint Emidius, 1486

The 'Annuciation with Saint Emidius' is an alter piece painted by Italian artist Carlo Crivelli in 1486.

It was crafted to commemorate Angel Gabriel's announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would give birth to Jesus.

Conspiracy theorists suggest that the ring depicted in the top left, shining light onto Mary, is a UFO spacecraft.

But art experts say that it simply shows a small collection of angels gathered around a circle of clouds.

The ring and light represent the holy spirit descending towards the Virgin Mary.

Illustration from 'Ume No Chiri', 1844

Urobune refers to a mysterious, unknown object that was found drifting off the coast of Eastern Japan's Hitachi province in 1803.

The object is depicted in three different Japanese texts: Toen shosetsu (1825), Hyoryu kishu (1835) and Ume-no-chiri (1844).

This illustration depicts the UFO-like object, which Hitachi sailors discovered floating in the ocean.

According to the notes alongside some illustrations of the craft, the object was made from steel and glass, and was just large enough to fit a small human inside.

Within the craft, the sailors reportedly found a strange script which they could not decipher.

Urobune refers to a mysterious, unknown object that was found drifting off the coast of Eastern Japan's Hitachi province in 1803. This illustration from 'Ume No Chiri' depicts the UFO-like object, which Hitachi sailors discovered floatinf in the ocean

Glorification of the Eucharist, 1600

This 17th century work by Italian artist Ventura Salimbeni features God and Jesus looking out over God's kingdom.

But the strange, rounded object sat between the two resembles Russia's Sputnik satellite, launched over 350 years later in 1957.

Conspiracy theory YouTube channel Strange Mysteries made the odd connection between the two in a video posted in 2014.

They claim in the video: 'This just looks a little bit too uncanny for symbolic reference.

'If the sphere is said to represent the universe, why did the painter not include any stars or other celestial objects?'

This 17th century work by Italian artist Ventura Salimbeni features God and Jesus looking out over the universe God created. But the strange, rounded object sat between the two resembles Russia's Sputnik satellite, launched over 350 years later in 1957

Saint Wolfgang and the Devil, 1475

Famous 15th century Austrian Renaissance painter Michael Pacher created this work around a legend that Saint Wolfgang tricked the devil into building a church.

Saint Wolfgang was the Bishop of Regensburg in Bavaria during the 10th century.

Conspiracy theorists claim that the figure depicting the devil in the painting could be a representation of an alien that visited Earth.

But the theory is a weak one, as the devil has been represented in a wide variety of strange forms throughout the long history of religious artwork.

Famous 15th century German Renaissance painter Michael Pacher created this work around a legend that Saint Wolfgang tricked the devil into building a church. Conspiracy theorists claim that the figure depicting the devil in the painting could be a representation of an alien

The Baptism of Christ, 1710

Art experts suggest that this painting is a reference to a religious passage: 'The heavens opened, and the Spirit descended like a dove and (put) lighting upon him'.

It was painted by Dutch artist Aert De Gelder in the 18th century.

UFO hunters suggest that the disc-like object, shown shining light onto John the Baptist and Jesus, could be a UFO.

'This scene has been illustrated by many artists,' says internet UFO conspiracy theorist TheAncientAliens.

'However, this scene is particularly interesting because of the flying saucer hovering over the scene with beams of light shining down and illuminating the event.'

'Considering De Gelders reputation as one of the elite artists of his time, it is likely this work was intended to be taken seriously and meant to communicate that Jesus had ties to aliens and perhaps was of alien origins.'

Art experts suggest that this painting is a reference to a passage: 'The heavens opened, and the Spirit descended like a dove and (put) lighting upon him'. UFO hunters suggest that the disk-like object shown shining light onto John the Baptist and Jesus could be a UFO

Peruvian Hill Carving, 6th Century

Ancient Peruvians, such as the Nazca people, are famed for their centuries-old carvings in the Peruvian desert.

Many were dug into the South American landscape between the first and sixth centuries.

This image shows a 6th century Peruvian hill carving that appears to depict an alien-like figure.

It's theorised that local inhabitants carved these messages into the floor to signal to aliens that they valued their visits.

But the carvings are just as likely to have been messages to ancient Peruvian Gods.

Ancient Peruvians, such as the Nazca people, are famed for their centuries-old carvings in the Peruvian desert. This image shows a 6th century Peruvian hill carving that appears to depict an alien-like figure

THE MYSTERY OF PERU'S NAZCA LINES Nazca Lines are geoglyphs first spotted in 1939 when a pilot flew over the Nasca planes of the Peruvian coastal highlands. They were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 and the area stretches more than 50 miles (80km) between the towns of Nazca and Palpa, about 400 km south of Lima. Some 700 geoglyphs are thought to have been drawn by the ancient Nazca people between the first and sixth centuries. The Nazca Lines are drawn into lighter coloured strata which contrasts with darker gravels on the plain. Advertisement

The Madonna with Saint Giovannino, 15th Century

In this painting, Italian Renaissance artist Domenico Ghirlandaio depicts Mary mother of Jesus looking down on two children.

The artwork hangs in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy.

To the right of Mary's head, a strange flying object can be seen in the background, which some UFO hunters think is an alien spacecraft.

A Shepard can be seen shielding his eyes from the sun as he points toward it.

The object is interesting to conspiracy theorists because it has no other context in the painting.

UFO conspiracy theorists CoolInterestingStuff discuss a possible reading: 'Upon closer inspection, the man seems to be looking away from the UFO, behind him and over his shoulder.

'Or, more likely, the notably out of place object may be imagined floating above the ground between them.'

From either perspective, could Mary be seen as blocking the two babies from the flying saucers view?'

But art experts say that artwork of this era often depicted clouds shining divine lights as religious symbols.

They suggest that in the case of Madonna with Saint Giovannino, this common biblical symbolism has been misread.
Finally, Philae reunited with Rosetta was deemed the 5th achievement for 2016

The team also lists the discovery of Proxima Centauri and the Starshot project

The achievements of astrophysicists this year were as groundbreaking as they were varied.

From reuniting a lander with a mothership on a comet, to seeing the most extreme cosmic events with gravitational waves, 2016 was truly out of this world for science.

Here are some of the highlights of the year that was.

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The discovery of gravitational was made using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and represents a fundamentally new sense of how we see the universe. It was the end of a century-long quest to prove Einstein's final prediction

1. Gravitational Waves

The spectacular announcement that ripples in the very fabric of spacetime itself had been found (and from surprisingly massive black holes colliding) sent similarly massive ripples through the scientific community.

The discovery was made using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and represents a fundamentally new sense with which to see the universe.

GRAVITATIONAL WAVES DEFINED Scientists view the the universe as being made up of a 'fabric of space-time'. This corresponds to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, published in 1916. Objects in the universe bend this fabric, and more massive objects bend it more. Gravitational waves are considered ripples in this fabric. They can be produced, for instance, when black holes orbit each other or by the merging of galaxies. Gravitational waves are also thought to have been produced during the Big Bang. If found, they would not only confirm the Big Bang theory but also offer insights into fundamental physics. For instance, they could shed light on the idea that, at one point, most or all of the forces of nature were combined into a single force. In March 2014, a team operating the Bicep2 telescope, based near the South Pole, believed they had found gravitational waves, but their results were proven to be inaccurate. Advertisement

The gravitational waves cause one arm of the LIGO detector to stretch relative to the other by less than a thousandth of the width of a proton in the centre of the atom.

Relatively speaking, that's like measuring a hair's-width change in the distance to the nearest star.

This discovery was the end of a century-long quest to prove Einstein's final prediction that these gravitational waves are real.

It also allows us to directly 'see' that famously and fundamentally invisible entity: the black hole (as well as definitively proving its existence).

The fact that the two black holes collided 1.3 billion years ago and the waves swept through Earth just days after turning the detector on only add to the incredible story of this discovery.

2. SpaceX lands (and crashes) a rocket

The year started so well for SpaceX with the incredible achievement of sending a satellite into orbit, which is no mean feat itself at such low cost, before then landing that launch rocket on a barge in the ocean.

A seemingly unstoppable sequence of launches and landings made it appear that a new era of vastly cheaper access to space through rockets that could be refuelled and reused was at hand.

SPACEX'S CHECKERED HISTORY Founded in 2002 by PayPal founder Elon Musk, SpaceX has been one of the driving forces behind the efforts by commercial companies to venture into space. Previously the domain of government-sponsored national agencies like Nasa and Russia's Roscosmos, launching spacecraft into orbit was seen as being prohibitively expensive. SpaceX, however, became the first privately funded company to launch a rocket powered by liquid-propellant into orbit in 2008 with its Falcon 1. It later became the first to launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft. With the end of the Nasa's Space Shuttle program, SpaceX has also stepped in to allow the US to continue to send supplies to the International Space Station. In 2012 the company was the first private firm to send a spacecraft packed with cargo to resupply the space station. This year alone it has achieved eight launches carrying supplies to the ISS and a number of satellites into orbit. But SpaceX's journey has been hit with setbacks and problems. Perhaps its worst accident to date occurred on June 28 2015 one of its Falcon 9 rockets carrying an unmanned Dragon capsule filled with cargo for the ISS exploded just minutes after launch. An investigation into the explosion revealed a failed strut on the helium pressure vessels broke as it accelerated out of the atmosphere, allowing a catastrophic escape of gas. The year started so well for SpaceX with the incredible achievement of sending Falcon 9 (pictured) into orbit. However, a few months later the two-stage rocket burst into flames - the firm is set for another launch in early January Part of SpaceX's model for reducing the cost of space travel is to reuse its rockets. But this has been beset with a series of accidents that saw the rockets topple over and explode during these landing attempts. It lost two rockets after they failed to land safely before it managed to successfully land the first stage booster at Kennedy Space Centre on December 21 2015. Freezing fog that caused a landing leg to fail to lock caused another rocket to topple over on a barge in January 2016 on landing. Since then the company has managed to land four of its Falcon 9 launch rockets on floating barges at sea. But on 15 June this year another of its rockets toppled over and was destroyed after managing to touch down on a barge. The company has also had problems while in orbit. In March 1 2013 a Dragon spacecraft suffered thruster issues due to a blacked fuel valve leaving it unable to properly control itself before docking with the ISS. On this occasion engineers were able to remotely clear the blockages and the craft docked with the ISS one day later than scheduled. Advertisement

Unfortunately, with the explosion of a Falcon 9 on the launchpad, the company was grounded, but apparently hopes for a resumed launch in early January.

Add to that the visionary plans to settle Mars outlined by Elon Musk, albeit not without some audacious challenges, and it's been a year of highs and lows for SpaceX.

3. Closest star may harbour Earth-like world

Proxima Centauri is our Sun's nearest neighbour at just over four light years away, and it appears that its solar system may contain an Earth-like world.

Until this year, astronomers weren't even sure that any planets orbited the star, let alone ones that might harbour the best extrasolar candidate for life that spacecraft could visit within our lifetime.

Proxima Centauri is our Sun's nearest neighbour at just over four light years away, and it appears that its solar system may contain an Earth-like world. The planet, creatively named 'Proxima b', was discovered by a team of astronomers at Queen Mary University in London

WHY IS THE PLANET SO UNIQUE? Distance: This is the closest Earth-like planet we could ever find. Orbiting our nearest star, the planet is only four light years away. Missions to send spacecraft to the planet to examine for signs of life are already in planning, and could happen within decades. Composition: The planet is rocky and a similar size to Earth. Temperature: It lies in the 'habitable zone' of its star, which means there could be liquid water on its surface - a key ingredient for alien life. The temperature on the surface of the planet could be between -90 and 30 Celsius (-130 and 86 Fahrenheit). Atmosphere: If Proxima b has an atmosphere, the simple ingredients - water, carbon dioxide, and rock - that are needed for the formation of biochemical cycles that we call life, could all be present and interacting on the planet's surface. Advertisement

The planet, creatively named 'Proxima b', was discovered by a team of astronomers at Queen Mary University in London.

Using the light of Proxima Centuari, the astronomers were able to detect subtle shifts in the star's orbit (seen as a 'wobble'), which is the telltale sign that another massive object is nearby.

While Proxima Centuari is barely 10% the size of our Sun, Proxima b's orbit is only 11 days long, meaning it is very close to the star and lies just within the so-called habitable zone.

However, follow-up with either Hubble or the upcoming James Webb Space telescope is necessary to determine if the exoplanet is as well suited for life as Earth.

4. Breakthrough Listen listening and Starshot star-ted

With a potential Earth twin identified in Proxima b, now the challenge is to reach it within a human lifetime.

With the breakthrough initiative starshot, which has been funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and endorsed by none other than Stephen Hawking, lightweight nanosails can be propelled by light beams to reach speeds up to millions of kilometres an hour.

BREAKTHROUGH STARSHOT The project involves deploying thousands of tiny spacecraft to travel to our nearest star system and send back pictures. If successful, scientists could determine if Alpha Centauri, a star system about 25 trillion miles away, contains an Earth-like planet. The catch: It could take years to develop the project, dubbed Breakthrough Starshot, and there is no guarantee it will work. The small light-propelled vehicles will carry equipment like cameras and communication equipment. Scientists hope the vehicles, known as nanocraft, will eventually fly at 20 per cent of the speed of lightt. 'The thing would look like the chip from your cell phone with this very thin gauzy light sail,' said Nasa's Pete Worden 'It would be something like 10, 12 feet across.' He envisions sending a larger conventional spacecraft containing thousands of nanocraft into orbit, and then launching the nanocraft. If they reach the star system and succeed in taking photographs, it would take about another four years to transmit them back. Advertisement

Such speeds would allow a spacecraft to arrive at Proxima b in about 20 years, thus enabling humans to send information to another known planet for the first time.

However, there are many challenges ahead, such as the fact that the technology doesn't exist yet, and that high-speed collisions with gas and dust between stars may destroy it before it can reach its target.

But humans have proven to be resourceful, and key technology is advancing at an exponential rate. Incredibly the idea of sailing to another world is no longer science fiction, but rather an outrageously ambitious science project.

With the breakthrough initiative starshot, which has been funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and endorsed by none other than Stephen Hawking, lightweight nanosails can be propelled by light beams to reach speeds up to millions of kilometres an hour

Perhaps, aliens are already sending out their own information in the form of radio transmissions. In another breakthrough initiative called Listen, also championed by Hawking, astronomers will be searching the habitable zones around the million closest stars to try to detect incoming radio transmissions.

Involving Australia's very own Parkes telescope (as well as the Green Bank Telescope and Lick Observatory at visible wavelengths of light), observations have been running through 2016 and the search for alien signals will continue for the next decade.

5. Philae reunited with Rosetta

In 2014 the Philae lander became the first space probe to land on a comet, and even though its crash landing dictated that its science transmission would be a one-off, its recent rediscovery by Rosetta has allowed it to continue to contribute to analysis of comet 67P.

Philae's crash location, as well as the orientation of the doomed probe, has allowed astronomers to accurately interpret data taken by Rosetta regarding the composition of the comet.

PHILAE'S BUMPY LANDING Rosetta's Philae lander bounced three times on the surface of the comet 67p after its harpoon failed to tether it to the surface. After a four-billion-mile (6.4 billion km) journey from Earth, the lander successfully detached from the Rosetta spacecraft to travel at 3.3ft (one metre) a second relative to the comet. The probe initially touched down at a site now known as Agilkia before bouncing in what became a nine hour journey across the surface of the comet. The lander's first bounce saw it become airborne for seven hours before it bounced to become airborne for another two hours. It finally settled in a hollow beneath a cliff at its new location, called Abydos. Now, scientists have created an animation to visualize the data from the lander's journey from Agilkia to Abydos, two sites named for ancient Egyptian locations. Advertisement

While Philae has literally been living under (crashed on) a rock for the past two years, Rosetta has been the busy bee, taking numerous images, spectroscopy and other data of the comet.

In fact, data taken from Rosetta's spectrometer has been analysed and revealed that the amino acid, glycine, is present in the comet's outgassing, which breaks away from the surface of the comet as it becomes unstable from solar heating.

Rosetta (pictured) joined its lander Philae on comet 67P (top right), which bounced to a rest beneath a cliff face on the surface of the comet in 2014

Glycine is one of the fundamental building blocks of life; necessary for proteins and DNA, and its confirmed extraterrestrial confirms that the ingredients for life are unique to Earth, and that we may have comets to thank for providing our microbial ancestors with those crucial ingredients.

Outlook for Down Under

The future for astrophysics in Australia in 2017 looks particularly bright, with two ARC Centres of Excellence: CAASTRO-3D studying the build of atoms over cosmic time; and OzGRav exploring the universe with gravitational waves; as well as SABRE, the world's first dark matter detector in the Southern Hemisphere, installed by end of the year.
The Hubble Space Telescope has caught a glimpse of a remarkable galaxy thats more exciting and futuristic than most.

Known as IRAS 16399-0937, the galaxy spotted more than 370 million light-years from Earth is home to a megamaser, a process that amplifies light to create intensely bright beams.

These objects are 100 million times brighter than the masers found in other galaxies, like the Milky Way, turning its host into a massive astronomical laser.

Known as IRAS 16399-0937, the galaxy spotted more than 370 million light-years from Earth is home to a megamaser, a process that amplifies light to create intensely bright beams

ABOUT MEGAMASERS A megamaser is a process that involves some components within the galaxy, like gas, that is in the right physical condition to cause the amplification of light. In this case, that is microwave rather than visible light. These objects are 100 times brighter than masers, which can be found in other galaxies, like the Milky Way. With the megamaser, the galaxy acts like an astronomical laster. Advertisement

In the case of IRAS 16399-0937, the beams emitted are microwave rather than visible light.

There are also some components of the galaxy that are not involved in the maser process, according to NASA.

The image from the NASA/ESA Hubble telescope combines observations captured across various wavelengths by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS).

With this data, scientists discovered the galaxy contains a double nucleus, with two separate cores thought to be in the process of merging.

These two bodies, IRAS 16399N (the northern part) and IRAS 16399S (southern), are more than 11,000 light-years apart.

But, the objects are interacting and lie within the same swirl of cosmic gas and dust, contributing to the galaxys unusual shape.

While the southern nucleus appears to be a starburst region, with new stars rapidly forming, the northern object is a Low Ionization Nuclear Emission Region (a LINER nucleus), where emission largely come from weakly-ionized or neutral atoms of particular gasses.

This nucleus is also home to a massive black hole, roughly 100 million times the mass of the sun.

It isn't the first time masers have made headlines this year.

This past summer, Nasa revealed a mysterious object buried deep in the Milky Way may still be in the embryonic stage of its existence.

It has shown signs of being both extremely young and extremely old, leaving astronomers baffled over the true nature of a distant celestial body since it was first detected nearly two decades ago.

Its shown signs of being both extremely young and extremely old, leaving astronomers baffled over the true nature of a distant celestial body since it was first detected nearly two decades ago. The oxygen-rich star, pictured, is known as IRAS 19312+1950

THE CASE FOR A 'PROTOSTAR' While it was previously thought that the object was an older star, new research suggests it could be a protostar - a young star still in the process of forming. The analysis found numerous characteristics of a young star, including the smorgasbord of chemicals in a large material cloud surrounding it. It is now much brighter than it first appeared, and gives off roughly 20,000 times the energy of the sun. The astronomers also observed a dense, collapsing cloud surrounding the star, which happens when a growing star pulls in material. Along with these findings, the team also detected fast wind speeds in two jets of gas spewing from opposite poles of the star. The researchers measured speeds at least 200,000 miles per hour, which is typically seen in a protostar. Advertisement

The oxygen-rich star, known as IRAS 19312+1950, is roughly 10 times the size of the sun and could still be in the process of forming, creating a collapsing cloud around it as the star pulls in material.

The age-defying star is located more than 12,000 light-years from Earth, and early cues after its detection around 2000 first suggested it was very old.

These signals came in the form of intense radio sources called masers, which occur when the molecules of some gasses are revved up, and emit a lot of radiation over a limited range of frequencies, according to Nasa.

Astronomers recognized this object as noteworthy around the year 2000 and have been trying ever since to decide how far along its development is, said Martin Cordiner, an astrochemist working at Nasas Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the paper.

One of the masers associated with IRAS 19312+1950  the silicon oxide maser  is found almost exclusively with late-stage stars.

Thousands of these beacons have been detected, but astronomers have only found a few exceptions associated with young stars.

The astronomers also found a hydroxyl maser, one which is especially strong at a frequency of 1612 megahertz when associated with an elderly star.

And, thats what they found with IRAS 19312+1950.

The star is located more than 12,000 light-years from Earth, and early cues after its detection in 2000 suggested it was very old. But using the ESAs Herschel Space Observatory and data from Nasas Spitzer Space Telescope, researchers reconsidered the age of the mysterious star

Despite these clues, the object also showed characteristics of a young star, including the smorgasbord of chemicals in a large material cloud surrounding it.

These areas are typically associated with the birth of new stars.

Using the ESAs Herschel Space Observatory along with data from Nasas Spitzer Space Telescope, researchers reconsidered the age of the mysterious star.

These telescopes provided new insight on the gases, dust, and ices in the cloud around the star, leading the researchers to determine that it may actually be in the very early stage of its formation.

It is now much brighter than it first appeared, and gives off roughly 20,000 times the energy of the sun.
Dear Editor:

Despite the perception that President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party stand with the working class, the actions they will be taking on health care will have the greatest negative impact upon working-class citizens, and the greatest positive impact upon the wealthiest Americans.

First, it appears as if the House, led by Speaker Paul Ryan, will soon privatize Medicare. Pennsylvania has an elderly population that is larger than the national average, many of whom receive Medicare benefits. Under Ryans plan, Congress and Trump will change Medicare to a program where the federal government provides citizens with vouchers to purchase policies in private insurance markets.

Second, those private insurance markets are about to get extremely expensive because Republicans have committed themselves to repealing the Affordable Care Act. Many voted for Trump because he promised to repeal Obamacare, but repealing this law will cost health-care providers and insurers huge sums of money. It will also create tremendous uncertainty in the insurance markets. Consumers can expect to pay for these costs.

Certainly, there have been problems with the insurance market exchanges under Obamacare. Yet ironically, the changes that Ryan and the Republican Congress propose for Medicare would throw health care for elderly Americans into national exchanges very much like the most problematic components of Obamacare.

While these changes to health care policy will give working class Pennsylvanians the shaft, the very wealthy will receive a gold mine. Republicans in Congress and Trump promise to give the wealthiest steep tax cuts.

I would encourage everyone to contact U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta and Trump and tell them that if they really want to support the working class, they will not take away health care to pay for steep tax cuts to the wealthy.

John Bloom

Carlisle
Hundreds of drones are expected to hit the Singapore skies in the near future, but with limited airways and a dense population, many question how they will safely fly over the city.

Now, researchers have unveiled a traffic management system, which is much like the traffic laws and infrastructure cars have on roads.

Named Traffic Management of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, this initiative would designate air-lanes and use virtual fences to reroute drones around restricted geographical locations.

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Named Traffic Management of Unmanned Aircraft Systems would designate air-lanes and use virtual fences to reroute drones around restricted geographical locations - it is similar to the traffic laws and infrastructure cars have on roads

TRAFFIC CONTROL Traffic Management of Unmanned Aircraft Systems is the brainchild of Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. The team has been studying different ways for drones to fly efficiently and safely - even with hundreds in the sky. Their system is much like the infrastructure and laws implemented on the road for cars. It consists of designated air-lanes and block. Geofencing, which sets up virtual fences avert drones around a restricted geographical location such as the airport will also be added. Advertisement

The work comes from a team at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, who has been studying different ways for drones to fly efficiently and safely - even with hundreds in the sky.

The team has been working on their research for a period of four years  the initial phase of conceptual design and software simulation is expected to be complete by 2017.

ATMRI is a joint research Center by NTU and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS).

It aims to research and develop air traffic management solutions for Singapore and the Asia Pacific region, including unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) traffic management which is one of its key programs.

Leading the research is professor Low Kin Huat, an expert in robotics and UAVs from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and ATMRI Senior Research Fellow, Mohamed Faisal Bin Mohamed Salleh.

Low said it is highly important that a traffic management system is setup in Singapore, as the country is set for a boom in the number of drones that will hit the skies over the next decade.

'At NTU, we have already demonstrated viable technologies such as UAV convoys, formation flying and logistics, which will soon become mainstream,' explained Prof Low.

'This new traffic management project will test some of the new concepts developed with the aim of achieving safe and efficient drone traffic in our urban airways.'

'The implications of the project will have far reaching consequences, as we are developing ways for seamless travel of unmanned aircraft for different purposes without compromising safety, which is of paramount importance.'

Open fields could be used for landing and take-off and just uses buildings as emergency landing sites. Geofencing could also be used, which sets up virtual fences where UAVs can be automatically routed around a restricted geographical location such as the airport

Professor Louis Phee, Chair of NTU's School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, said the UAV research at NTU is a natural progression, with the school's deep expertise in autonomous vehicles and robotics developed over the last decade.

'This research will pave the way for appropriate rules and regulations to be implemented amidst the rapid growth of UAVs. The findings can help improve safety and address security concerns, which are especially important given today's climate of uncertainty.'

To ensure that traffic is regulated across the whole of Singapore, a possible solution is the establishment of coordinating stations for UAV traffic.

This will allow these stations to track all of the drones buzzing in the air, schedule the traffic flow, monitor their speeds and ensure a safe separation between the devices.

Faisal, the co-investigator of the program, said the team will test a range of scenarios using computer simulations and software to optimize UAV traffic routes, so as to minimize traffic congestion.

AMAZON'S DRONE HIGHWAY Amazon wants a section of airspace above our cities to be dedicated to hundreds of thousands of high-speed delivery drones. Its vision, which is in line with that of Google's, is for tracked drones to communicate their positions to a centralized computer system available to all operators, similar to aviation airspace. The move toward a 'drone superhighway' is the next step in Amazon's ambition plans to deliver packages via drone within 30 minutes. Amazon is also thinking about traffic safety for its drones, as it wants a section of airspac (pictured) above our cities to be dedicated to hundreds of thousands of high-speed delivery drones There would be a slow lane for local traffic below 200 feet (60 meters) and a fast lane for long-distance transport between 200 (60 meters) and 400 feet (120 meters). Altitudes between 400 (120 meters) and 500 feet (152 meters) would become a no-fly zone, and anything above that is already against FAA regulations. In cases when aircraft would enter drone flyways, drones would automatically give way, he said. The vehicles much also be capable of communicating with each other. A centralized computer system of known flight hazards, such as towers and high ground, would be developed and shared with drone users, allowing them to automatically avoid these areas. Long-range drones must also give notice when and where they intend to fly, and they have to be connected to the internet, he added. Drones capable of flying long distances must also have sensors that can detect birds and other hazards not in the centralized database, Amazon claims. This would prepare the airspace for a future in which thousands of drones fly over cities delivering parcels. Advertisement

'We will also look into proposing safety standards, for instance how high UAVs should fly and how far they should be flying above buildings, taking privacy concerns and laws into consideration, and to suggest recommended actions during contingencies,' he said.

The team has proposed using open fields for landing and take-off and just uses buildings as emergency landing sites.

Researchers are set to tests several concepts in the near future.

This includes a strategy called geofencing, which sets up virtual fences where UAVs can be automatically routed around a restricted geographical location such as the airport.

Another important research area will be collision detection. UAVs will need to have sensors that enable detection and avoidance of collision with another UAV.
But a Trump spokesperson said data was 'manipulated to appear meaningful'

He says A-listers now stay at Greenwich Hotel, the Bowery or the Mercer Hotel

A New York paparazzo says he's spotted far less VIP

Bookings at Donald Trump's hotels fell by as much as 58 per cent on some American travel websites in 2016 as he campaigned for the US presidency.

And according to one paparazzo, the reality star tycoon's fellow celebrities are among those deserting his businesses.

One New York-based photographer is claiming that the Big Apple's Trump Soho Hotel in particular has seen a sharp drop in VIP customers in recent months.

According to reports, the Trump Soho Hotel, run by Donald Trump (left) has seen a sharp drop in VIP customers in recent months, with stars preferring hotels like the Greenwich Hotel, owned by Robert De Niro (right)

The pap, who makes his money from photographing celebrities entering and leaving hotels, says Hollywood clientele are shunning the luxury establishment in favour of Robert De Niro's Greenwich Hotel a few blocks away.

According to the snapper, star guests have been few and far between over the past six months.

He told Manhattan-based newspaper The Villager: 'Almost nobody has stayed there for the past six months at least - most A-listers now stay at the Greenwich Hotel owned by [Robert] De Niro, the Bowery Hotel or the Mercer Hotel.

'It's possible some celebs are staying [at Trump Soho], but not the usual numbers who were before.'

The accounts are backed up by data findings from the online travel company Hipmunk, which released a report in August that compared the number of bookings at Trump Hotels' most-booked locations this year on its site to bookings the previous year.

It revealed that the share of bookings at Trump Hotels had decreased 58.46 per cent.

A New York-based paparazzo claims to have seen very few celebrity guests staying at the Trump Soho Hotel over the past six months

The Trump Hotel collection, which runs the Trump Soho Hotel, runs 10 hotels around the world in places like Las Vegas, Miami and Chicago, with a further hotel planned for Vancouver.

According to one real estate brokerage firm, building complexes with Trump in the name had also lost some of their appeal among buyers.

Nela Richardson, chief economist at Redfin told Luxury Daily. 'Our study carefully controlled for many factors in order to compare Trump-branded condos to other luxurious homes to ensure we were not comparing apples to oranges.

'We did, in fact, find that there was a Trump premium prior to his campaign and that it vanished in the first five months of 2016.'

The paparazzo claims that most A-listers now stay at the Greenwich Hotel (pictured) owned by Robert De Niro, the Bowery Hotel or the Mercer Hotel

The findings were also echoed by Foursquare - the local search-and-discovery service app - which found that foot traffic had decreased to Trump hotels and casinos over the summer of 2016, compared to the previous year.

In September 2016, visit share to Trump properties was down 19 per cent versus September 2014, which rose to 21 per cent in what they considered 'blue states'.

A Trump Organisation spokesperson has spoken out in the past against the FourSquare findings, telling the Washington Post: 'The data that has been reported by sites such as Foursquare is manipulated to appear meaningful, when, in reality, the information is inconsequential and does not provide an accurate representation of our performance.

'We encourage all businesses to exercise caution in reporting and interpreting these figures.'
Forget the flashy reputations of Monaco or Macau, a striking new infographic has revealed the worlds most expensive cities, with a few surprises.

Despite the extravagant lifestyles of urbanites in Asia and the Middle East, Bermudas capital, Hamilton, is the costliest city on Earth, followed by San Francisco and New York.

The fascinating infographic has also lifted the lid on what locals spend their money on including rent and restaurants. Plus the staggering difference in the cost of everyday items in these pricey locations is highlighted.

The cost of living in the 20 most expensive cities in the world has been revealed in an infographic based on data from Numbeo

Hamilton in Bermuda is the most expensive city in the world. The median monthly cost of living is an eye-watering $4,769 (3,895) in the financial hub

Travel agent The Crazy Tourist used recent stats from crowd sourced data site Numbeo to create the handy illustration of the 20 most expensive cities.

Numbeo found that while Bermuda may look like a relaxed location, visitors and locals alike must ensure theyre carrying their wallets in their colourful shorts in Hamilton.

The median monthly cost of living is an eye-watering $4,769 (3,895) in the financial hub, which has a tiny population of just over 3,000 people.

Financially squeezed San Franciscans might be surprised to discover that their Californian home is the second most expensive city in the world with the cost of living a staggering $4,612 (3,767) per month

Rather than residents of these expensive hubs splashing their income on the highlife and attractions that their home city has to offer, for many the biggest expense is rent

Financially squeezed San Franciscans might be surprised to discover that their Californian home is the second most expensive city in the world with the cost of living a staggering $4,612 (3,767) per month.

Rounding out the top three ranking is economic powerhouse New York, which costs residents $4,207 each month for the privilege of life in the Big Apple.

London was rated sixth on the list costing locals $3,228 (2,637) each month just ahead of Dubai in seventh place with monthly expenses totalling $3,006 (2,455).

Rounding out the top three ranking is economic powerhouse New York, which costs residents $4,207 each month for the privilege of life in the Big Apple

In stylish Geneva, the fourth most expensive city in the world, residents are able to lavish 15.4 per cent of their living costs on dining out at restaurants

Sydney also made the top 10 list, with locals spending $2,888 (2,359) on their living costs each month.

The illuminating infographic revealed that rather than residents of these expensive hubs splashing their income on the highlife and attractions that their home city has to offer, for many the biggest expense is rent.

On average San Franciscans spend a whopping 72.7 per cent of their cost of living each month on rent. Locals in New York are similarly cash-strapped, forking out 69 per cent of their living costs on lodgings.

One of the most staggering findings from the study was how the same item can cost significantly more in one city than another. The cost of high speed internet access is $27.82 (22.73) in Hong Kong and an eye-watering $140 (114) in Hamilton, Bermuda

Hong Kong is the fifth most expensive city in the world with 65.4 per cent of local's living costs each month set aside for accommodation

Followed by Hong Kong and London where locals set 65.4 per cent of their living costs each month aside for accommodation.

However, in stylish Geneva, the fourth most expensive city in the world, residents are able to lavish 15.4 per cent of their living costs on dining out at restaurants.

Hamilton locals were also found to spend 12.1 per cent of their living costs on eating out.

One of the most staggering findings from the study was how the same item can cost significantly more in one city than another.

London was rated sixth on the list with locals spending $3,228 (2,637) each month on the cost of living

While beer generally hovers around $6 (4.90) in San Francisco, New York and Geneva, it is marginally cheaper in London and Hong Kong.

But in Hamilton pub goers will need deep pockets as it costs $9 (7.35) to quench your thirst with a beer there.

A trip to the cinema varies significantly, with tickets in Hong Kong costing $11.60 (9.48) but for the same viewing, moviegoers must fork out $19.34 (15.80) in Geneva.
A 1million loch-side Victorian mansion has gone up for sale in 'one of the most gorgeous and unspoiled places in Europe', that is bound to get fishing fans hot under the sou'wester.

The Highland lodge, called Croiscrag, is an angler's paradise with direct access to the banks of Loch Rannoch, near Schiehallion, Perthshire. It's surrounded by woods and mountains, which have been captured in amazing drone images by the estate agent Knight Frank.

It has 13 bedrooms and 6.5 acres of land, which runs down to the loch without any need to even cross a road, with 750 feet of loch frontage.

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This Highland lodge, called Croiscrag, is an angler's paradise with direct access to the banks of Loch Rannoch

It has 13 bedrooms and 6.5 acres of land, which runs down to the loch

The property is located in a National Scenic Area and an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

The property, which is located in a National Scenic Area and an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, comes with a stone jetty and fishing rights to Loch Rannoch.

The loch is one of the very few places in Scotland where all three varieties of the cold water fish Arctic Char can be caught.

Estate agent Michael Jones of Knight Frank, who is seeking offers over 950,000, said: 'There are very few properties in that area which don't have a road running between them and the loch.

'It is one of the most beautiful locations in the country. The location is key with this property - it's private and has a lot of scope.'

The mansion boasts five main reception rooms, including a drawing room, dining room, sitting room, library and games room

The five reception rooms all have period detail, open fires or wood burning stoves

Most of the receptions rooms are placed to take advantage of the exceptional views over the gardens

The mansion boasts five main reception rooms, including a drawing room, dining room, sitting room, library and games room, all with open fires or wood burning stoves, plus three cottages that have been let for self-catering holidays.

Loch Rannoch is famous for its fishing and held the UK record for the largest Ferrox Trout caught until 1993, with weights of more than 20lbs having been recorded.

Croiscrag, about 28 miles west of Pitlochry, is just a few miles from Schiehallion, one of Scotland's best-known Munros.

The kitchen is fitted with base and wall units with a 'Range' style cooker and space for a breakfast table

On the first floor there are five bedrooms and two bathrooms with two extra toilets
Celebrities have taken to social media to express their heartache after Debbie Reynolds death on Wednesday.

Ellen Degeneres was among many to pay tribute to the fallen star on social media.

The 58-year-old chat show host took to Twitter to talk about the iconic actress who passed away at 84 along with her daughter Carrie Fisher who had died just the day before at 60.

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Sending their love: Many paid tribute to Debbie Reynolds (pictured with her late daughter Carrie Fisher in 2014) after her death on Wednesday

Touching: Ellen DeGeneres shared her feelings about the tragic loss

Ellen wrote: 'I can't imagine what Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds' family are going through this week. I send all of my love.'

As her late daughter Carrie's dog has his own Twitter feed, the person controlling it reacted to the sad news by writing: 'Mommy's mom is gone now. :( RIP #DebbieReynolds.'

Debbie played Debra Messing's mother on Will and Grace the heartbroken 48-year-old said they had a mother-daughter relationship in the industry.

On Twitter she wrote: 'So heartsick. Debbie went to be with Carrie. It's such a devastating 1,2 punch. She was my "mom" for years & I loved her dearly.A legend.'

Debra Messing, who said Debbie Reynolds was her TV mom for eight years

She added on Instagram that Reynolds and her daughter would now be together again.

'Debbie went to be with Carrie,' she wrote.

'She always worried about her. Carrie left too soon and now they are together again.

'My heart is literally broken. For eight years she was my mom.

'She was pure energy & light when she came on stage. She was loving, and bawdy, and playful - a consummate pro-old school and yet had the work ethic and investment in her craft of a new fiery up and comer.

'She was always running off to Vegas or somewhere else on the road to be a hoofer, to sing and dance and make people laugh.

'She performed 340 days out of the year. An inspiration on every level.

'A legend of course, the epitome of clean cut American optimism, dancing with Gene Kelly as an equal, a warrior woman who never stopped working.

'A devoted mother and grandmother, and aunt and great aunt, and friend.

'I lost my mom a few years ago.

'She loved that Debbie was my TV mom.

'I hope they find each other and hug and kiss and my mom says, "I got you, Debbie. Carrie's waiting for you.".'

She signed off the tribute with RIP Bobbi Adler- Debbie Reynolds' character in Will and Grace.

Best friend: Carrie Fisher's dog's account also posted a few tributes to the legendary actress

Several other A-listers expressed their condolences including Bette Midler, Zoe Saldana, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dwayne Johnson and Brie Larson.

This comes just hours after TMZ claimed Debbie suffered a possible stroke while talking funeral plans for daughter Carrie Fisher - who passed just one day earlier - with her son Todd Fisher at his Beverly Hills home on Wednesday.

At the time news of Debbie's health sparked thoughts, prayers, and love from the likes of Mia Farrow, George Takei, and William Shatner.

Paying tribute: Anna Kendrick, Bette Midler and Zoe Saldana were among those who took to social media to pay their respects

'Wishing Debbie Reynolds health and recovery. My heart goes out to her and her family,' wrote George.

Mia, meanwhile, tweeted, 'Sending love and every good thought to @DebbieReynolds1.'

William Shatner wrote, 'I heard about Debbie Reynolds. Let's pray that it's nothing serious.'

Outpouring: Many other celebs expressed their feelings over the tragic news

Lea Thompson took to Instagram to post a photo of her with Carrie, as she expressed her sadness at the death of the Star Wars actress and the news of Debbie's health.

'For some reason I wanted to post this. My heart is sad for #debbiereynolds #carriefisher and the rest of her family. 2017 has got to be better. #faith,' she captioned the snap.

Carrie's half-sister Joely Fisher shared a photo of her with Debbie on the red carpet.

'God speed mama,' she tweeted.

'My heart goes out to her and her family': George Takei expressed his sympathy for Reynolds and her loved ones

'Sending...every good thought': Mia Farrow tweeted her well wishes to the star

'Let's pray that it's nothing serious': William Shatner expressed his concern

'My heart is sad': Lea Thompson expressed sadness for both Debbie and her daughter Carrie

In her thoughts: Lea Thompson expressed her sadness at the death of Carrie Fisher and news of Debbie's health on Instagram

Debbie was taken to hospital in Los Angeles on Wednesday from her son Todd's Beverly Hills house, TMZ reports.

The pair are said to have been planning Fisher's funeral when Reynolds took ill. An ambulance was leaving his home shortly after 1pm.

Reynolds is understood to have been in a 'fair to serious' condition when she was hospitalized, adds the website.

Carrie, 60, died in a Los Angeles hospital on Tuesday four days after suffering a heart attack on board a transatlantic flight.

Memories: Carrie's half-sister Joely Fisher shared a photo of her with Debbie on the red carpet
They were both dumped unceremoniously by controversial Bachelor star Blake Garvey in 2014.

And Laurina Fleure has sent her condolences to Sam Frost this week following her split from construction manager Sasha Mielczarek.

Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail Australia, Laurina, 33, expressed sadness at hearing the news, saying: 'That's so devastating that they split- they seemed to have so much potential to go the distance.'

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'That's so devastating that they split': The Bachelor's Laurina Fleure has sent her condolences to Sam Frost this week following her split from construction manager Sasha Mielczarek

While genuinely saddened by the news, Laurina did concede that cracks appeared to show in Sam and Sasha's relationship four months ago, when Sam jetted to Italy and France with without her man.

'It was definitely concerning that Sam went on a Euro holiday without Sash,' the raven-haired model said.

'I think the seed was planted back then that everything may not have been as peachy as we would've like to believe.'

End of the line: Sam and Sasha announced their split earlier this week by issuing a joint public statement

Did they split earlier this year? Laurina said that cracks appeared to show in Sam and Sasha's relationship fourmonths ago, when Sam jetted to Italy and France with a female pal rather than Sasha

She went on: 'It's a lot of pressure operating a relationship under such close media watch and scrutiny. It ruins a lot of relationships.'

Laurina herself has suffered a break-up in recent months, having confirmed her split from boyfriend-of-one-year Lewis Romano in October.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at the time, the I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here alum explained their age gap was a reason for the split, and she plans to date 'an older gentleman' in the future.

Heartbreak: Laurina herself has suffered a break-up in recent months, having confirmed her split from boyfriend-of-one-year Lewis Romano in October

Laurina said: 'We're not together anymore. I haven't actually publicly released it yet. I was hoping to maybe work things out, but it's not possible.'

'We'll always be friends,' she continued. 'I love him. I had one of the happiest years of my life. We're just on different paths.'

She also claimed she was 'very much' enjoying being single but had not started dating again.

No chance: Laurina said: 'We're not together anymore. I haven't actually publicly released it yet. I was hoping to maybe work things out, but it's not possible'
When it comes to looking older, natural beauty Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't plan on fighting back the clock.

The 44-year-old actress said that believes that she feels more beautiful than ever now that she's gotten older in an interview published by People on Wednesday.

The mother-of-two said: 'I think its incredibly sexy.  And I wouldnt want to erase years off my face or to travel back in time for anything.'

'Of course I have wrinkles': Gwyneth Paltrow got real with reporters explaining everything about growing up, including her wrinkles and grey hairs

The Oscar winner was also very blunt about her own signs of age saying: 'Of course I have wrinkles [and] gray hair. But I genuinely love it. This is who I am.'

It took time for the platinum blonde beauty to embraces herself though.

The Iron Man lead said she was 'a mess' during her 20's and didn't find true confidence until much later in life.

Fresh faced! The 44-year-old actress and author explained that she is 'so blessed... [to] have the wrinkles to tell the story' of her life

'I really believe that when a woman turns 40, she gets a software upgrade. I have never been happier,'

These days, the mother of two is focused on her family as well as the star's much-loved lifestyle site Goop.

This week the site welcomed the release of their first beauty book: Goop Clean Beauty.

Clean beauty: The lifestyle guru and mother of two just released her fifth book, Goop Clean Beauty

The Royal Tenenbaums star says she 'feel[s] so blessed that I have the wrinkles to tell the story' of her life.

The California-born star continues to tell the story of her life with no signs of slowing down in 2017.

Next year, Gwyneth stars in the biopic 33 Dias about artist Pablo Picasso and his fraught relationship with Guernica collaborator and lover Dora Maar.

She'll also hit the silver screen in the made-for-TV movie One Hit Wonders directed by Glee's Ryan Murphy.
She shared the cutest Snapchats of herself and her new beau as Santa's reindeer complete with ears, antlers and red noses on Christmas Day.

And Britney Spears and Sam Asghari cemented their relationship by going on a date night on Tuesday.

The hitmaker and her hunky man opted for sushi at the very upscale Nobu Malibu near her home in the semi-rural neighbourhood of Calabasas in Los Angeles County.

They're an Item: Britney Spears and her new beau Sam Asghari cemented their relationship by going on a date night to upscale eaterie Nobu Malibu on Tuesday

The couple arrived in Sam's white BMW and were later seen leaving together with the model and personal trainer gallantly holding Britney's white handbag.

The 34-year-old showed off her slender figure in a black lace mini-dress and black high-heeled sandals.

And Sam, who sported a trimmed beard, showed off his pecs and six-pack in a tight black T-shirt and ripped black jeans.

Britney and Sam met when he appeared in her saucy new Slumber Party music video last month.

Nice wheels: The 34-year-old hitmaker and the model-personal trainer arrived in a white BMW

Interesting first date: The couple met when Sam appeared in her saucy new Slumber Party music video last month

In the promo, Britney crawled along a table in a skimpy outfit and over-the-knee boots towards Sam, who is sitting at the end looking sharp in a suit and tie.

She then suggestively licks spilt milk off the table in front of him.

Since then Sam and the mother of two, who shares sons Sean, 11, and Jayden, 10 with her ex-husband Kevin Federline, have been seen out together twice.

Seasons greetings: Sam and Britney spent Christmas Day together and the star posted this Snapchat image of themselves with a cute teindeer filter

The duo were spotted heading for a romantic meal at Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ restaurant in Canoga Park on December 18.

The new couple seem to share a love of Asian food - their previous date a few weeks earlier was at a sushi restaurant.

Sam shared an Instagram snap of the two cosied up, but then swiftly deleted it when followers began claiming they were romantically involved.
He is the genetically-blessed son of acting legend Clint Eastwood.

And Scott Eastwood certainy got the attention of the bikini-clad babes at Sydney's Bondi Beach on Wednesday.

The 30-year-old hunk's torso and bulging biceps were on display as he was seen chatting to mystery women at the shoreline.

The ladies love him! Hollywood hunk Scott Eastwood displays his torso in board shorts as he chats up bikini-clad babes at Bondi Beach on Wednesday

He wasn't shy when it came to approaching one slender brunette in the surf, who he shared a brief chat with.

It appeared he spotted her from a distance before striking up a conversation with the orange bikini wearing broad.

The actor also seemingly waved at other beach goers while splashing around in the ocean with his mates.

Confident! He wasn't shy when it came to approaching one slender brunette wearing a orange bikini in the surf, who he shared a brief chat with

Introductions: The buff actor also seemingly waved at other beach goers while splashing around in the ocean with his mates

Beach babe! Scott is currently Down Under filming Pacific Rim

Popular! Scott also spoke with another brunette in a cleavage-baring graphic print one-piece

Scott also spoke with another brunette in a cleavage-baring graphic print one-piece.

The American actor stripped down to a pair of black and grey camouflage board shorts for his off-duty look.

Flashing his toned frame in the dark swimmers, he also bonded with a friend as he splashed around in the water.

Sun's out, guns out! Flashing his body in the dark swimmers, he also bonded with a friend as he splashed around in the water

Baywatch style! Scott ran along the beach, which highlighted his torso and bulging biceps as he tensed

The Hollywood star appeared to share banter with his tanned friend, as they laughed and smirked at each other.

On multiple occasions, it appeared Scott gave playful hand gestures as the pair conversed.

The Suicide Squad star soon after retreated from the water's edge to towel off his wet body and damp hair.

Beachside banter! The Hollywood star appeared to share banter with his friend, as they laughed and smirked at each other

Cheeky! On multiple occasions, it appeared Scott gave playful hand gestures as the pair conversed

Had enough sun? The Suicide Squad star soon after retreated from the water's edge to towel off his wet body and damp hair

The model and actor has recently returned to Australia to continue filming his newest project, Pacific Rim: Maelstrom, which began production in mid-November.

Filming is believed to be occurring at the Fox Studios in Sydney, as well as some location shooting in Queensland.

He is set to play opposite Star Wars' actor John Boyega, who will play the son of Idris Elba's character, who sacrificed himself at the end of the first Pacific Rim movie.
She is best known for her portrayal of doting mother Julie Rafter in the family-oriented hit TV series, Packed To The Rafters.

But it was Rebecca Gibney's turn to spotlight her off-screen family this week as she took to Instagram with a gushing tribute on Sunday.

The 51-year-old Logie winner heralded the festive season by uploading a smiley snap of herself, her husband Richard Bell and their son Zachary, 12.

'All I want for Christmas I already have.': Rebecca Gibney took to Instagram on Sunday to share this festive season snap and a message about her picture-perfect family life

Beaming in front of a Christmas tree, the doting mother wrote in the caption: 'All I want for Christmas I already have. A family I love with all my heart. A husband I have adored for nearly 17 years and continue to adore today without question.'

She continued: 'A son that is kind, funny, clever, loving, (did I mention kind?). My health which for the most part has been great ( apart from a reminder I'm not as young as I used to be!).'

'A beautiful home loaned to us by beautiful people. Old friends I cherish and new ones that feel like home. A life that is blessed in more ways than one,' she cooed.

Supportive fans: The fair-haired show-woman went on to wish her fans a merry Christmas and to thank them for their 'inspiring uplifting posts'

The fair-haired show-woman went on to wish her fans a merry Christmas and to thank them for their 'inspiring uplifting posts.'

Rebecca has maintained a busy schedule this year, both staring and producing the new TV drama Wanted.

Her husband Richard is also working on the show in the role of production designer.

New project: Rebecca has maintained a busy schedule this year, both staring and producing the new TV drama Wanted

'I've had an incredible career as an actor but I'm also getting to an age now where I like the idea of creating things for other women,' she told the Daily Telegraph in September.

'My husband is a production designer and we started a production company 10 years ago.'

'It really unlocked a part of my brain I hadn't ever exercised before, just the idea of creating different shows or genres and thinking 'What's the show I'd like to see on TV?'
Miranda Kerr has jetted into Sydney to watch her little brother Matthew, 31, get married to long-time boyfriend, James Wright.

The supermodel and her fiance Evan Spiegel were guarded by Federal Police at Sydney airport on Thursday morning, according to the Daily Telegraph.

The brunette beauty, 33, returned for the nuptials a day before the big day, which is believed to be Friday, December 30.

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Special homecoming! Model Miranda Kerr jets into Sydney with billionaire beau Evan Spiegel on Thursday ahead of brother Matthew's wedding to boyfriend James Wright on Friday

Miranda voiced her excitement for the upcoming nuptials, telling the publication: 'I'm part of his wedding party, it should be so nice.'

The airport was said to be thoroughly prepared for the high-profile couple's arrival, with police officers guarding an exit door for hours prior.

She was later spotted at a Sydney helicopter base with her private aircraft ready to ferry her and her beau to their next destination.

Jetsetters! The supermodel and her fiance Evan Spiegel were guarded by Federal Police at Sydney airport on Thursday morning, according to the Daily Telegraph

Fancy flyer! Miranda was later spotted at a Sydney helicopter base with her private aircraft ready to ferry her and entrepreneur partner to their next destination

The Australian model looked effortlessly chic in an all-black ensemble, sporting ripped black jeans, a black top, which flaunted her toned stomach, and a jacket draped over her shoulders.

She accessorised with sunglasses, and a black handbag filled to the brim with multiple items and black heels.

Miranda placed her short locks into a low ponytail during the hot Sydney day, while adding red lipstick to the glam look.

Supermodel style! The Australian model looked effortlessly chic in an all-black ensemble, sporting ripped black jeans with heels, and a black top which flaunted her toned stomach

Stunning! Miranda placed her short locks into a low ponytail during the hot Sydney day, while adding her signature red lipstick to the glam look

The former Victoria's Secret Angel is set to attend her brother's special day as part of the wedding party in an intimate ceremony to be held north of Sydney on Friday.

Matthew has been engaged for less than two years to his life partner, who is seven years his senior.

Miranda is yet to reveal what role she will play on the big day as part of his 'wedding party' or how long she will stay before jetting back to her current home-base in America.

Special day! Matthew (right), the brother of the former Victoria's Secret model, has been engaged for less than two years to his life partner, who is seven years his senior

Sibling love: Miranda originally voiced her excitement for the upcoming ceremony saying: 'I'm part of his wedding party, it should be so nice'

Celebrations: While the Model didn't appear to return home for her little brother's engagement party in 2015, she did return home in June to celebrate his bucks party in Sydney at The Ivy penthouse with friends and family

'I want to get married and I think, 'Why should two people that love each other not be able to have that, right?'' Matt previously told WHO magazine.

Miranda also showed her support for same-sex marriage, saying: 'Obviously I support gay marriage, I have a gay brother.'

While the model didn't appear to return home for her little brother's engagement party in 2015, she did return home in June to celebrate his bucks party in Sydney at The Ivy penthouse with friends and family.

Family time: Miranda will likely spend some quality time with her mother, father and brother as part of her visit

In a post on her Kora Organics blog, she shared a video promoting marriage equality.

'I just wanted to share this video with you. Having a gay brother myself, its something that is very close to my heart and which I totally support in every way. Its time for Marriage Equality,' she declared.

The pair have been together for almost two years and they celebrated their engagement with a lavish party at Sydney's Blackburn Park in January 2015.
Noni Janur recently shared the stunning results of her 28-day fitness challenge.

Now, The Bachelor star has reveled in her newfound confidence, posting a very revealing bikini body snap on Instagram.

The brunette bombshell's ample cleavage and pert posterior spilled out of a tiny black G-string bikini in the image.

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Confidence! Noni Janur posted a very revealing bikini body snap on Instagram Thursday, as her ample cleavage and pert posterior spilled out of a tiny black G-string bikini

Noni's luscious locks spilled over her glowing face, which she covered with large round-rimmed sunglasses.

Her thin, strappy swimwear barely covered her chest area.

'36 degrees here in Sydney today and I'm feeling summer ready.' She wrote in the caption.

'thankyou @culturebarandco for my new blonde hairrr blondes have more fun (sic).'

Challenge complete: On Wednesday, The Bachelor star took to Instagram to post a photo from before and after she undertook a 28-day fitness challenge.

On Wednesday, The Bachelor star took to Instagram to post a photo from before and after she undertook a 28-day fitness challenge.

Displaying a toned torso, trim waist and pert derriere in the most recent photo, Noni declared her transformation 'amazing'.

She said: 'Wow what a difference! Just finished the @fitazfk 28 day challenge. I feel amazing, full of energy and the program was so easy to follow (sic) just in time for summer.'

A portion of her 47,000 followers failed to see a marked difference between the pictures, while others congratulated her on her new physique.

The 26-year-old's arms appear to have gained muscle while her torso and legs look to be more toned in the latest pic.

Transformation: The Bachelor star took to Instagram to post a photo from before and after she undertook a 28-day fitness challenge

Cheeky! Another previous image shared to Instgram saw the socialite gazing back at the camera with a sultry expression, while showing off her pert derriere

Noni's new bikini body is ready just in time for her upcoming holiday, which she recently announced on social media.

The reality star took to Instagram on Tuesday wearing a floral off-the-shoulder top to reveal she is heading back to her 'island home'.

The bronze beauty was glowing as she updated her followers on her plans to visit Bali in the near future.

'Count down to Bali': Noni poses in a floral top flashback on Instagram on Tuesday as she updated her followers on a visit to her 'island home' in the coming weeks

She captioned the image, in part: 'Cannot wait to get back to my island home... count down to Bali.'

The reality star radiated a healthy glow, as she displayed her freckled complexion with the use of minimal makeup.

Noni smiled as she looked down at her pink smoothie, in which she appeared to be stirring with a celery stick from within a cafe.

Longing for the Island life: In her recent post she claimed she 'Cannot wait to get back to my island home' after previously sharing a photograph last week from a trip to Indonesia

Her slender shoulders and decolletage were left bare, as her thick hair was placed into a high ponytail that fell forwards towards her face.

She had previously shared a photograph from a trip to Indonesia, in which she participated in the well-known Blue Lagoon cliff jump into the clear blue water.

On Friday, she showed off her very shapely derriere and offered a glimpse of sideboob in a revealing one-piece leotard bikini.

'Fit as f**k for Christmas': Noni took to Instagram on Friday, flaunting her shapely derriere and offering a glimpse of sideboob in a racy snap that saw her laying suggestively on a bed in a skimpy khaki leotard and pair of Nike trainers

The snap captioned with the hash-tag 'fit as f**k for Christmas', saw the brunette laying suggestively on a bed in a skimpy khaki leotard and pair of Nike trainers.

'Not much else to do on days like these,' Noni said in the caption accompanying the image.

'Home workout done. Now just to lie here like so,' she continued, alongside the hash-tag hashtag 'fitazfk4xmas'.

The racy image saw Noni flaunting her plump posterior in just a skimpy khaki leotard, that also showed off a significant amount of sideboob.

Positioning herself on a bed provocatively, a pair of grey and white Nike trainers finished off the look.
Media personality and Balinese princess Lindy Klim always turns heads on the red carpet.

And it seems equally so in a tiny bikini.

The mother-of-three, 39, flaunted her washboard abs in a black two-piece as she holidays in the idyllic Byron Bay, sharing a flawless shot to Instagram.

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Hot mama! Lindy Klim posted a bikini-clad image to Instagram while holding her hands up shield her face from the sun but it also showed off her engagement ring from fiance Adam Ellis

In the black and white image, Lindy holds her hands up to her face and shows off her engagement ring from fiance Adam Ellis.

She has her dark locks tied into a high bun and wears dark tinted sunglasses, as she stares down the camera.

Lindy also shared another image of herself in a striped dress, lying down on a sunbed.

Legs for days! Lindy also shared another image of herself in a striped dress, lying down on a sunbed

'Oh Byron... so good to be back!,' Lindy captioned part of the image.

She also tagged her man, presumably as he is with her during her stay.

This week, Lindy revealed to WHO Magazine that she works out everyday for both her physical and mental well-being and heads to the gym.

'Oh Byron... so good to be back!' The couple are enjoying an end of year vacation together

'I go to the gym in the mornings after I've dropped the children at school,' Lindy told the publication.

'It's a small section of my day that's just for me and I find this time really important to keep me balanced both physically and mentally.'

She also revealed her beauty regime, saying she uses oils to beat dry skin.

New love: Lindy became engaged to British property developer Adam in October, with the pair being based in Bali (seen last month)

'In Australia, my skin can get a bit drier so I might add some oils to my regimen,' The Milk and Co co-founder said.

Lindy became engaged to British property developer Adam in October, with the pair being based in Bali.

It comes after she split with former swimmer Michael Klim, 39, in February, after ten years of marriage.
Australian actors Toni Collette and Hugh Sheridan have taken to Instagram to share their grief over the death of Hollywood legend, Debbie Reynolds.

Debbie died Wednesday, aged 84, of a stroke, just one day after her daughter, Carrie Fisher, passed away from a heart attack, aged 60.

Actress Toni Collette expressed her dismay at losing Debbie, who she appeared with in the 2004 film Connie and Carla.

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Australian co-star: Toni Collette (second right) took to Instagram on Thursday to express her dismay at losing legendary actress Debbie Reynolds (far right), whom she appeared with in the 2004 film Connie and Carla (pictured)

'This is too much now': Toni Collette expressed her sadness at the news of Debbie's passing in a heartfelt Instagram post

'2016 needs to end. This is too much now. It was such a pleasure and an honour to meet and work with the legendary Debbie Reynolds,' Toni wrote.

The Muriel's Wedding star also paid tribute to Carrie Fisher and sent love to Debbie's family.

'Carrie was a true renegade. They both inspired me from a young age. Thank you. LOVE LOVE LOVE to their family and friends,' Toni added.

Thinking of the family: The Muriel's Wedding star (pictured) also paid tribute to Carrie Fisher and sent love to Debbie's family

'Another legend of 2016 joining the stars we can see in the night sky': The screen veteran passed away just one day after her iconic daughter, Carrie Fisher passed away

Silver screen darling: The Hollywood legend was best known for her breakout role in Singin in the Rain and went onto appear in a number of classics, including The Singing Nun and How The West Was Won

Meanwhile, House Husbands star Hugh, shared an Instagram post in which he recalled waiting outside the Sydney Opera House to meet the Singin' in the Rain star.

'I met Debbie at stage door of the Sydney opera house when I was just a kid, she was so impressed that I had waited (about 90 minutes after her concert),' he wrote.

'Today I'm grateful I had the sense to wait. Another legend of 2016 joining the stars we can see in the night sky,' he concluded the emotional post.

'Today I'm grateful I had the sense to wait': Hugh Sheridan took to social media also with a touching tribute to the actress, whom he met as a child

Reminiscing: The House Husbands actor (pictured) waited 90 minutes for the movie star to appear from the stage door at the Sydney Opera House

The legendary actress was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital on Wednesday afternoon, but died shortly after.

According to reports, she was at her son Todd Fisher's home in Beverly Hills where she was planning her daughter's funeral.

Todd told CNN of his mother's final conversation, saying, 'She spoke to me this morning and said she missed Carrie. She's with Carrie now.'
A Christmas of family and fun in the sun is about as Australian as it gets, and so it was for the gorgeous Jennifer Hawkins.

The Miss Universe winner grabbed a snap with her siblings in front of the Sesion motor yacht with the stunning Sydney Harbour in the background.

Jen then shared the snap with her fans on Instagram this week, and said she hoped everyone had enjoyed a happy time over the Christmas week.

Happy Hawkins: The Miss Universe winner grabbed a snap with her sister Kirsty Vitnell and brothers Brad and Michael in front of the Sesion motor yacht with the stunning Sydney Harbour in the background

Stunning in a sleek cream crop top and skirt, with matching collar, Jen posed with her sister Kirsty Vitnell and brothers Brad and Michael.

While Jen is the only blonde of the four, the two sisters have near identical smiles on very similar faces, demonstrating beauty clearly runs in the family.

'Loved hanging out with my whole family over the past week.. especially these guys (ma sister & bro's)!' wrote Jen in her post, 'I hope you all had a beautiful Christmas. x'

Smiling sisters: While Jen is the only blonde of the four, she and sister Kirsty Vitnell have near identical smiles on very similar faces, demonstrating beauty clearly runs in the family

The Hawkins kids love a group photo by the waves and over the years Jen has shared shots of them all by the water in the heat and by the water in the cold.

As well as one shot of the family away from the water but not without a drink.

The shot is only the most recent Jen has taken in front of the Sesion yacht, named for her premium tequila brand, releasing a handful of shots of her celebrations around and aboard the vessell last week.

One we prepared earlier: The Hawkins siblings smiling on the water front in March, 2015. A casual shot on a more casual occasion captioned 'such a beautiful wkend w the whole family!'

Jen and her brrrrr... others: Jen smiling with brothers Brad and Michael by the waterfront, back in September. She wrote 'Pontoon chill'n with two of my favourite humans. My brothers!'

Flashback fun: Jen shared an old family photo in August last year with the caption 'this was a fun night with my number 1's! Family is everything.'

The 32-year-old was joined by her husband and business partner Jake Wall, and the Sesion team last week to toast the spirit's one-year anniversary.

Wearing a long black dress paired with a straw hat and natural makeup, the blonde bombshell snuggled up to her handsome partner while toasting to the good life.

The budding tycoon and her husband launched Sesion last year.

Living it up: Jennifer Hawkins took to Sydney Harbour on Monday with her husband Jake Wall and a group of friends for a spirited Christmas party

Power couple: The 32-year-old enjoyed her well-deserved success when she celebrated the one year anniversary of her premium tequila brand Sesion with her husband

After being in business for four months, the brand's Mocha version won a gold medal at the prestigious San Francisco World Spirits competition.

'We find that if we have tequila, the night takes unexpected turns,' she told Gourmet Traveller last year. 'It's more spontaneous and fun. It kind of elevates you.'

The Newcastle-born beauty is wisely building an impressive portfolio of businesses.

Loving life: The model only had eyes for her husband, who posed for a snap on the boat that she captioned 'Yum'

Bottoms up! Sesion won a gold medal at the prestigious San Francisco World Spirits competition, earlier this year

In addition to Sesion, she owns a burgeoning property development company with Jake.

She's also the founder and CEO of two successful brands, Cozi by Jennifer Hawkins swimwear and the Jbronze tanning line.
She's appeared in numerous lingerie campaigns for Gossard.

And Olympia Valance oozed confidence while showcasing her ample assets in a bikini during an outing with close friend Karlose Papastergiou on Wednesday.

The 23-year-old took to Instagram document her day out in Melbourne with the hairdresser, which involved tequila, tacos and dancing.

Neighbours star Olympia Valance stuns in bikini while drinking tequila shots at restaurant during day out in Melbourne with close friend Karlose Papastergiou on Wednesday

The Neighbours favourite, who plays Paige Smith, bared her cleavage and toned stomach in a white crocheted bikini top and blue floral skirt.

They appeared to have dined at restaurant Cicciolina in St Kilda, according to location tags on the pairs' Instagram posts.

While Olympia simply captioned the image 'LOVE him', Karlose cheekily shares the snap with the with: 'Restaurant crawl no.5.'

'Danger': Olympia also took a pre-shot photo with the tequila, salt and lemon ready on the table as she described the situation as 'danger'

'Me on paper': The model and actress shared a receipt from their catch up, which clearly displayed the purchase of two tequila drinks and an assortment of tacos

The model and actress shared a receipt from their catch up, which clearly displayed the purchase of two tequila drinks and an assortment of tacos.

Olympia also took a pre-shot photo with the tequila, salt and lemon ready on the table as she described the situation as 'danger.'

Leaving their afternoon together in what appeared to be an Uber or taxi, the friends donned sunglasses and complained about the sweltering 37 degree heat.

Feeling hot! Leaving their afternoon together in what appeared to be an Uber or taxi, the friends donned sunglasses and complained about the sweltering 37 degree heat

The Australian star cosied up to her pal as they lip-synced and danced from the backseat of the car.

She captioned the snaps from within the car: 'Holidays with @Karlosehair.'

The brunette beauty was seen last week in Byron Bay with her mother on holiday, before travelling back to Melbourne.
Ellen Pompeo and Chris Ivery have added to their family.

On Wednesday they were seen on a hike in Los Feliz, California, with a small child. Later her rep confirmed the baby was theirs.

And then on Thursday, the Grey's Anatomy actress, 47, shared a photo of Chris, 49, holding the child.

The blonde beauty captioned the photo: 'Eli Christopher Chris Ivery just fell a notch.. I've got a new guy.'

A third child! Ellen Pompeo shared this image of her husband Chris Ivery holding their baby who they have named Eli Christopher

Chris is wearing a red shirt as he smiled while the baby rests on his chest.

Her rep told UsWeekly: 'Family and baby are all doing great.'

During the hike, the actress held hands with her seven-year-old daughter Stella while Ivery carried a newborn baby.

Pompeo and Ivery also have a two-year-old daughter Sienna who they welcomed in 2014 via surrogacy.

Baby duty: DailyMail.com noticed the child was being carried by Chris on Wednesday. Later her confirmed the news that they had added to the family, saying: 'Family and baby are all doing great'

Family hike: Ellen held hands with her daughter Stella during the hike in Los Fleiz

The family has a history of being quiet about adding to their brood.

The Grey's Anatomy star kept Sienna's birth a secret for two months to protect the privacy of her surrogate.

The Massachusetts native and Ivery were married in 2007 by then New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and she kept that secret for five days.

Pompeo during the family hike looked sporty in black leggings and trainers.

She dressed in layers with a white V-neck T-shirt under a cream hoodie along with a black sweatshirt wrapped around her waist.

Pompeo had her blonde hair up in a high ponytail and accessorised with black sunglasses.

She sweetly held the hand of Stella during their outing in the Los Feliz area.

Mother and daughter: Ellen and Stella stuck together during the hike in the Los Feliz area

Holding hands: Mother and daughter sweetly held hands while walking together

Stella was styled like her mum and donned a white tee, tie-dye leggings and had a white sweatshirt wrapped around her waist.

She carried a walking stick and her dark curly hair bounced off her shoulders.

Ivery wore a white Nike jacket, black sweatpants and black Nike trainers while carrying a baby in a front-facing harness.

The family outing followed a Twitter spat over Ellen's recent use of black emojis.

Embroiled: Pompeo, shown in September in Los Angeles, was caught in a Twitter brouhaha after using black emojis in a tweet

In defense: Pompeo, shown with daughters Stella and Sienna, reminded her 1.23 million followers that her husband Chris Ivery is black, and that they're parents to biracial children. The family was snapped in NYC last June

The s candal erupted on Friday in the wake of a brouhaha involving the actress - who's played Dr. Meredith Grey on Shonda Rhimes' ABC hit the past 12 years - and the A&E Network over an upcoming series the cable channel is set to broadcast on the Ku Klux Klan.

Pompeo, who called for a boycott of the network, was pleased when it renamed the aforementioned special from Generation KKK' to 'Escaping the KKK: A Documentary Series Exposing Hate in America.'

She tweeted thanks at the network 'for caring enough to make changes,' accompanying said sentiment with emojis of blacks hands clapping and giving a thumbs-up sign.

That's when Pompeo found herself on the defensive, as a number of users took offense to the notion of her using the symbols.

Flashpoint: Many Twitter users were irate that the wealthy TV star sought to use said emojis

Happy in love: Pompeo and Ivery, 49, were snapped at an Italian film festival last year

Firing back: The outspoken actress vigilantly defended herself from critics amid the discussion

One user, who has since put their profile on private, complained that 'its not fair to see a privileged white woman use [ethic] emojis just because you can,' adding 'It comes off as really obnoxious.'

The TV actress shot back, 'Don't be a hater I do it because racism is not just a black problem it is all of our problem get it???'

That opened the floodgates for more irritated users to address the actress on the touchy topic, though Pompeo stood her ground, explaining in a series of detailed tweets why she took the tack she did.

Appetizing: The couple, who exchanged vows in 2007, were spotted in Las Vegas in May

'What's crazy is how angry everyone is... this is all about emojis people. It was a really positive thing a&e did... now that's not the focus ..my fault for responding,' she wrote. 'But sad to see racism is still alive and well on all sides.'

When a user told her that white people cannot experience racism, she responded, 'Ummm I've been called a white b---- and countless other things 50000 times today what would you call it?'

After another user wrote to her, 'SHUT UP, WHITE LADY,' Pompeo reminded her 1.23 million followers that her husband Chris Ivery is black, and that the pair are parents to two biracial daughters.

Shocked: The starlet started her horrified Twitter rant after stumbling upon a tweet that announced the new docu-series

'That's white lady with a black husband and black children to you babe,' she said, later adding, 'You do realize...being married to a black man and having black children can make you a target from racist white people right? That's a thing.'

Amid multiple back-and-forths over whether or not it was appropriate for her to address the issue, Pompeo stood her ground.

'I'm not embarrassed and I'm not contradicting myself it's a very complex issue and one I care about so ... I engage,' she wrote.

Call to action: The Grey's Anatomy starlet called for a boycott of the network

'We are smarter!' Ellen took the opportunity to plug her show, Grey's Anatomy, during the rant

Ka-ching: The actress said she thought the A&E Network's decisions were financially-based

The social media storm came two days after Pompeo initially expressed her ire at the A&E special, which aims to give viewers a look into the lives of families headed by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

A furious Pompeo told the network, 'Shame on you,' before calling for a boycott in a series of tweets.

'Hey I have an idea...why don't we all never watch ANYTHING on A&E again who's with me????' she wrote, adding, 'So I guess A&E stands for ...we will try to put Anything and Everything on tv...because we are a bunch of desperate pathetic tv execs.'

You don't say: Pompeo criticized the 'timing' of the show, precedes the presidential inauguration by 10 days

A&E eventually responded to the star, telling her that the program is based on people leaving the historically hateful organization, adding that they had received an endorsement from the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent and respected group focused on countering Anti-Semitism and other forms of hate.
The Church Of Scientology accused A&E of 'hypocrisy' for cancelling their Ku Klux Klan docuseries while still airing Leah Remini: Scientology And Its Aftermath.

A&E announced on Saturday that it was scrapping its eight-part KKK documentary after learning some participants of the hate group were paid for their participation in the series.

The network dropped Escaping the KKK: A Documentary Series Exposing Hate In America a day after discovering that 'nominal' cash payments were given by third-party producers.

Cable docuseries: The Church of Scientology in a letter from its lawyer accused A&E of 'hypocrisy' for cancelling its KKK docuseries while still airing Leah Remini: Scientology And Its Aftermath

Scientology in a letter sent from its lawyer to A&E on Tuesday claimed that 'two on-air accusers/participants' in Remini's docuseries 'received substantial cash payments for their participation, in violation of the same standards,' according to an article on Wednesday by TMZ.

The letter from Scientology attorney Gary S. Soter also claimed that others on the Remini series have received 'in-kind payments in the form of free advertising and promotion for anti-Scientology books they have published'.

The letter also claimed that Scientology has received hate mail and dozens of threats directed at church leadership since the series started airing.

'A&E has applied its policies and practices in an invidious and discriminatory manner. We can think of no justification for A&Es hypocrisy,' the letter said.

Critical series: Remini, shown in January in Las Vegas, is an executive producer and presenter of the docuseries Leah Remini: Scientology And Its Aftermath on A&E

'The Church of Scientology respectfully demands fair and equal treatment. There is no reason for A&E to depart from its stated ''policies and practices'' with regard to the Remini program,' the letter added.

An A&E official told TMZ there was a distinction between the two shows pointing out that Remini is an executive producer and 'not the member of a hate group.'

Remini, 46, was raised as a Scientologist and has become a vocal critic since her departure. She's been hosting the new nine-part series Leah Remini: Scientology And Its Aftermath.

Critic: The actress, 46, made the remarks during an interview on Friday with Larry King as she promotes her A&E documentary series Leah Remini: Scientology And The Aftermath

Remini during a recent appearance on Larry King Now defended herself from criticism levelled by Scientology.

'The church calls your reality show ''a scripted, rehearsed, acted and dramatized work of fiction featuring liars who have, for a profit, been telling differing versions of the same false tales of abuse for years, many reviewed and discredited in courts of law'',' King told her.

'They're saying you [are] liars,' he added.

Tell all: Remini , shown in November 2015 in New York City, was raised in Scientology from the age of nine and left the organization in 2013. Last year she published a memoir Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology

Remini who left Scientology in July 2013 after being a member since age nine took their stance in stride.

'Then they should sue us. It's as simple as that,' Remini told King.

'They say this on every outlet they can. They have said that about every single person who's spoken out, and not one lawsuit has been brought to anybody,' continued.

'This is not a group that is scared of a lawsuit. They're a litigious group. If that were true, they would simply sue us. And I welcome them to do that,' she added.

In addition to her A&E docuseries, Remini last year also published the memoir Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology.

Remini in the same interview was asked by King if she thought actor Tom Cruise is 'delusional' for being a member and prominent proponent of Scientology.

The King Of Queens star said that she did believe he was delusional, in the same way that she was delusional while a believer.

'I could say that about myself at the time,' she explained.

'I didn't want to look. I didn't want to believe that what I've been involved in my whole life was a lie, that it was damaging and hurting people,' she said. 'Yeah, you can say I was delusional.'

Devout: Tom Cruise, pictured at the inauguration of the Church of Scientology in Madrid in September 2004, has been a Scientologist for 30 years. In October, he told ITV News that he considers it 'a beautiful religion' and is 'very proud' to be a member

Back in October, Cruise, who has been a Scientologist for 30 years, praised his faith. calling it 'a beautiful religion.'

In a rare comment about Scientology, the 54-year-old actor told ITV News at the Jack Reacher 2: Never Go Back premiere in London: 'It's something that has helped me incredibly in my life,

'It's something, you know, without it, I wouldn't be where I am,' he continued. 'So it's a beautiful religion. I'm incredibly proud.'

Larry King Now airs on Ora.TV and Hulu.
They've been soaking up the sunshine on their Maldives getaway.

But Victoria Beckham revealed her family had been caught out in the rain on Thursday as she shared a sweet snap of daughter Harper, five, looking out over the ocean as the weather turned.

Appearing to pay tribute to Debbie Reynolds - who died on Wednesday afternoon - the designer, 42, captioned the snap: 'Singing in the rain'.

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'Singing in the rain': Victoria Beckham revealed her family had been caught out in the rain on Thursday as she shared a sweet snap of daughter Harper, five, in Maldives

Debbie - who famously starred in Singing in the Rain - died from a suspected stroke aged 84, just one day after her daughter Carrie Fisher died of a heart attack.

In the tribute picture, Harper is seen huddled under an umbrella as she perches on a chair on the patio.

The snap came as her older brother Brooklyn also took to Instagram to share a picture of his hand with dad David's as he revealed they had 'matching rings.'

Family fun: Victoria uploaded the snap of her youngest child as the Beckham clan shared more photographs from their family break on the island

Tribue: Victoria's post appeared to be in tribute to Debbie Reynolds who famously starred in Singing in the Rain. She died from a suspected stroke aged 84 on Wednesday

Despite the rain, the family's spirits are no doubt still on a high with the news that Victoria is to be made an OBE.

The former Spice Girls star has been named on the Queen's New Year's Honours list, she revealed to her family this Christmas.

Expecting an OBE for her fashion empire and body of charity work, the mother-of-four will follow in David's footsteps, 13 years after he received his nod from the Queen.

Matching: The snap came as her older brother Brooklyn also took to Instagram to share a picture of his hand with dad David's as he revealed they had 'matching rings'

Sources close to the family told MailOnline that Victoria was 'delighted and humbled for the recognition'.

The insider revealed: 'Victoria is incredibly proud of the fashion brand she has built and ever thankful for her amazing team.'

Victoria told her family - Brooklyn, 17, Romeo, 14, and Cruz, 11, along with Harper - during the festive period whilst on holiday.
They've been spending time abroad since announcing their engagement in October.

Now back home, Charlotte Goodlet, 24, and her AFL star fiance Kieren Jack, 29, are taking time out to enjoy a wine tasting holiday with the model's parents, Meredith and Brad.

Taking to Instagram on Thursday, Charlotte shared a snap of the soon-to-be family, taken from what is believed to be the famous Hunter Valley region in NSW.

'Di-vine!' AFL star Kieren Jack and his fiancee Charlotte Goodlet are enjoying a wine tasting holiday with the model's parents, Meredith and Brad

'Di-viiiiinnnnneeeeee,' she captioned the photo, adding the hashtags 'wine tasting,' 'vine time' and 'really grape day.'

Holding a cluster of grapes to her beau's mouth, Charlotte flashed a broad smile as she held the camera for the snap.

Taking to Instagram in October to announce their engagement, Charlotte shared a loved-up photo of the couple with their British bulldog, Nelson.

'I love you so, so much': In October, Charlotte announced their engagement by sharing a loved-up photo of the couple with their British bulldog, Nelson

'I'm so excited to spend the rest of my life with you and our sad looking dog. I love you so, so much,' the 24-year-old bikini model and TV producer gushed.

Later, Keiren, a Sydney Swans veteran, shared a snap and a heartfelt message of his own.

'The emotional moment very shortly after...thank you @charlottegoodlet my love for you is never ending,' the AFL star wrote.

Christmas spirit: Charlotte and Kieren spent Christmas Day at Bondi Beach with Kieren's brother, Brandon

The pair boarded a plane to the US just a few days later to enjoy a romantic post-engagement holiday.

The couple's announcement came after a tumultuous year which saw a bitter family feud thrust into the public spotlight.

According to reports, Kieren is bickering with his family over his relationship with the blonde beauty.

Time away: The pair enjoyed a holiday to the US just days after announcing their engagement

The falling-out came to light after Kieren's mother Donna revealed on Twitter he had banned his parents from attending his milestone 200th AFL game.

'So sad ... you 200 AFL & you don't want us there, your parents. No appreciation for all the yrs helping you get there,' Donna wrote in a post that was later deleted.

Feud: Kieren's parents weren't offered club-issued flights and accommodation for the 2014 Grand Final but Charlotte's parents were
Union Cabinet approves ratification of International Solar Alliance

Published: December 29, 2016

The Union Cabinet gave its approval to the proposal of Union Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) for ratification of International Solar Alliance (ISA) Framework Agreement by India.

The Agreement was opened for signature on the sidelines of 22nd Conference of Parties (CoP) meeting United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Marrakesh, Morocco.

The Agreement invokes the Paris Declaration on ISA and encapsulates the vision of the member nations. Till now, 25 nations have signed the Framework Agreement. World Bank and UNDP also have announced their partnership with the ISA.

About International Solar Alliance (ISA)

ISA was launched jointly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President of France Francois Hollande in November, 2015 at Paris on the side-lines of the 21st CoP meeting of UNFCCC.

It is brainchild of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is also Indias first international and inter-governmental organization comprising 121 Countries.

ISA strives to bring together more than 121 solar resource rich tropical nations lying fully or partially between two tropics for coordinated research, low cost financing and rapid deployment.

Its headquarters are located in Gwal Pahari, Guragaon in Haryana. The institutional structure consists of an Assembly, a Council and a Secretariat (to be located in India).

Its members will take coordinated actions through programmes and activities that will aggregate demands for solar finance, solar technologies, innovation, R&D and capacity building.

India has already committed the required support of operationalization of ISA. It will put India globally in a leadership role in climate and renewable energy issues.

For more details: International Solar Alliance (ISA)

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2016

Topics: Cabinet Decisions  Enviornment  International Organisations  International Solar Alliance  National  Solar Energy

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They confirmed their romantic reunion in May after five years apart - and a two-and-a-half-year marriage to a rapper on her part.

And loved-up Millie Mackintosh and Hugo Taylor proved they had more than just their love of holidays in common as they soaked up the sun in Cape Town, South Africa, on Thursday morning.

Taking to their respective Instagram pages, the former Made In Chelsea co-stars showcased their tattooed backs in envy-inducing social media snaps as they enjoyed a relaxing day at the beach on holiday number 18 of the year.

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Puppy love: Bikini-clad Millie Mackintosh and Hugo Taylor proved they had more than just their love of holidays in common as they showed off their tattooed backs in Cape Town

Dog-lover Millie, 27, seemed to be in her element as she perched on the sand, while surrounded by adorable pooches.

Stroking one of her canine companions as she grinned away, the reality star turned fashion designer displayed a pretty butterfly inking on the small of her back as she posed in a aubergine-coloured bikini.

The fitness enthusiast appeared make-up free and wore her auburn locks hanging in loose tendrils around her shoulders.

She captioned the snap: 'I made some new friends at the beach.'

Millie's boyfriend Hugo, 30, gave her a run for the money in the tattoo department, showcasing his tanned, heavily-inked back, which featured four large etchings, as he strolled towards the sea in another snap.

Inked up: Hugo, 30, gave Millie, 27, a run for her money in the tattoo stakes as he showcased four etchings on his back in snaps from the couple's post-Christmas break in South Africa

Although it's been a turbulent year in terms of Millie's personal life - announcing her split and subsequent divorce from rapper husband Professor Green, 33, in the early part of 2016 - she's taken her mind off things with plenty of exotic holidays.

The statuesque beauty left her Instagram followers positively green with envy as she revealed she was on her 18th holiday in 12 months on Wednesday, by posting a snap from glorious Cape Town.

Perfect blue seas and rolling waves proved to be the ultimate back-drop for a gratuitous bikini picture as she strolled towards the camera.

She simply captioned the picture: 'Trying to act natural when the sea is bloody freezing.'

In search of sun: The statuesque beauty left her Instagram followers green with envy as she revealed she was on her 18th holiday in 12 months on Wednesday

Holiday glow: Although it's been a turbulent year in terms of Millie's personal life, she's taken her mind off things with plenty of exotic holidays

Millie's surroundings weren't the only source of envy because the brunette looked like a swimwear model in her tiny black two-piece.

Toned at her middle and lithe of leg, the reality star's superfit figure proved to be the ultimate reward for her months of hard graft in the gym.

Millie and sunglasses entrepreneur Hugo flew Business Class to South Africa in the evening of Christmas Day following a low-key yuletide in London.

This time last year, Millie was celebrating her second Christmas married to rapper Pro Green.

They closely followed it up with a 'make or break' trip to Florence, Italy, in February, which turned out to be their last holiday together.

Christmas looks very different this year: Millie was waking up to beau Hugo and 'the breakfast of dreams' on Christmas Day, following her split from husband Professor Green in February

Quite the contrast... This time last year, Millie (centre with ex-husband Professor Green) was celebrating her second Christmas with her now-ex-husband, her parents and grandfather

The couple announced their separation later that month, two years and six months after tying the knot.

The ill-fated vacation in Florence was to be only Millie's first trip of 2016, since her fairytale reunion with beau Hugo has taken her globe-trotting to Monico, Mauritius, Greece and Antibes, since May.

In fact, by the time Millie and Pro Green's divorce was finalised that month, she was kicking off a string of jet-set vacations with a celebratory trip to Monte Carlo on Hugo's 30th, which came just two days after the paperwork was completed.

Millie and Hugo previously dated back in 2011 when they met on E4 reality show, Made In Chelsea.

Jet-setter: Millie and sunglasses entrepreneur Hugo flew Business Class to South Africa in the evening of Christmas Day following a low-key yuletide in London

Make-up free Millie: The former Made In Chelsea let fans know that she was happily watching the sun rise in South Africa on Tuesday

But the union was not to last and ended rather dramatically when Millie discovered Hugo had cheated on her with her friend, Rosie Fortescue.

At the time, Millie claimed she would always love Hugo, saying in an interview: 'I loved him - those feelings dont disappear  but I just always have to remind myself why were not together.

'I do think that, for the rest of my life, every time I see him, Ill get that feeling in my stomach. I dont think I could ever not get that butterfly feeling.'

Millie and Pro Green announced their split in February after just over four years together. Their two-and-a-half-year marriage was dissolved in just 30 seconds in May.

Full steam ahead! Millie's string of jet-set getaways sped up in May, when she took a break to Monte Carlo for Hugo's 30th birthday just two days after her divorce was finalised

In a statement at the time, they said: 'It is a mutual decision, we still care deeply about each other and would like it to be known that it is on amicable terms and we wish each other well.'

They were granted a decree nisi at Central London Family Court with Millie citing 'unreasonable behaviour' as the reason for their split.

Millie and Stephen started dating in November 2011 after the rapper saw her on the cover of men's magazine FHM.

The rapper contacted Millie through her agent and they had their first date at the Groucho Club in Soho.

They went public at the Brit Awards in February 2012, with Stephen proposing on holiday in Paris just over a year later.

The sweet life: One of her most luxurious holidays was a trip to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius with a large group on a shoot for Hugo's sunglasses brand, Taylor Morris

The couple tied the knot in a lavish ceremony at Babington House in Somerset in September 2013.

Pro Green recently lashed out at Millie in his new track Eye On The Door, rapping about their lack of sex life, drug use and hinting that cheating was to blame for their split.

But in spite of his very public bashing of his ex-wife, the musician admitted last week that splitting from Millie felt like experiencing 'a death.

He told the i newspaper: 'Of course whether youre happy somethings finished or not, it doesnt change the fact that it does still feel like theres been a death.

'An energy thats always been in your presence is suddenly no longer there and youre an idiot if you think thats not going to affect you.'

The rapper has since moved on with model Fae Williams.

Romantic: While her year of holidays began with an ill-fated trip to Florence with husband Pro Green, Millie was ending 2016 with boyfriend Hugo
His St Barts bachelor pad is typically a hot spot for romancing the woman in his life between Christmas and New Year.

But Spencer Matthews was strangely solo on Thursday, when he hit the golden sands near his parents' luxury Eden Rock hotel.

Despite being head over heels with model Morgane Robart since April, the blonde bombshell seemed noticeably absent during his shirtless stroll along the beach.

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Suddenly solo? Spencer Matthews enjoyed a beach walk alone on Wednesday, near his parents' beach hotel in St Barts

Former Made In Chelsea hunk Spencer was the picture of holiday bliss in a pair of photographic-print board shorts, with a top-to-toe golden tan.

A tribute to his posh stock, Spencer carried a linen shirt and coloured loafers all the way back to his plush beach pad.

Spencer is the younger brother of Pippa Middleton's fiance James and the couple have also previously spent sun-soaked weekends at a time at the Eden Rock hotel, which is owned by their parents.

It's a spot where notorious Lothario Spencer typically entertains the company of his female friend of the moment during the festive break.

Where's the girl? Spencer has been blissfully loved-up with Morgane Robart since April but there were no signs of the blonde bombshell abroad

The annual festive break: Spencer is known for taking his latest female friend away to the romantic hotspot for Christmas

Known for his womanising ways, Spencer spent 2013 in the hotspot with Leonardo DiCaprio's ex Emma Miller and 2014 with long-term partner Lauren Hutton.

In 2015, the hunk was recovering from an addiction to steroids which saw him drop out of the I'm A Celebrity jungle, however that Christmas, he is said to have met and hooked up with Morgane during his annual trip to the Caribbean.

This year would have therefore been their reunion at the Eden Rock hotel after months of relationship bliss.

Loved-up: Morgane and Spencer confirmed their relationship in April after reportedly meeting at Eden Rock in late 2015

A representative for Spencer Matthews has been contacted by MailOnline for comment.

Spencer confirmed his relationship with 'upper crust' Morgane in April after a fleeting romance with Geordie Shore reality star Vicky Pattison.

The jungle queen is said to have 'friend-zoned' the reality star and eventually called time on their budding relationship after an Easter break in ultra-glamorous Monaco.

After being dumped, Spencer told ITV's Loose Women that he was 'deeply embarrassed' though he didn't seem it when he was spotted unwinding with Morgane at a Chelsea pub days later.

Spencer last shared a social media snap with Morgane at Halloween on October 31, despite previously littering his feed with loved-up pictures with the blonde.

In May, Spencer returned to Monaco with Morgane as he double dated with former MIC co-stars Hugo Taylor and Millie Mackintosh, who were celebrating his 30th - and her divorce from Professor Green - with a jaunt to the Monaco Grand Prix.

Elsewhere, Spencer is due to fly to Austria for the latest season of reality competition The Jump in the new year.#

He will join TOWIE's Lydia Bright, disgraced gymnast Louis Smith, Brian McFadden's ex-wife Vogue Williams and Jake Quickenden on the dangerous Channel 4 show.
It wouldn't be Christmas for the Lineker clan without an escape to the sun.

So it was no surprise to see Gary's eldest son George and his mother, Michelle Cockayne, enjoying the sun and sand in Barbados on Wednesday.

Heading out for a stroll on one of the island's famous white beaches, the 24-year-old entrepreneur looked to be enjoying some quality time with Michelle away from his younger brothers.

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Tanning with mum: it was no surprise to see Gary Lineker's eldest son George and his mother, Michelle Cockayne, enjoying the sun and sand in Barbados on Wednesday

Clearly enjoying the sizzling heat sweeping over the island, the mother/son duo paddled through the sea as they chatted away.

George - the eldest of Michelle and Gary's four sons - looked the spitting image of his father, as she sauntered along the white sand.

Wearing nothing but a pair of neon pink swimming shorts, the entrepreneur showed off his gym-honed body.

Life's a beach: Heading out for a stroll on one of the island's famous white beaches, the 24-year-old entrepreneur looked to be enjoying some quality time with Michelle

Having taken a dip in the sea to cool off, presumably following a tanning session, George sported messy wet locks.

His mother Michelle, whose 20 year marriage to Gary ended in 2006, flaunted her lithe figure in a tropical teal two piece.

The 50-year-old former WAG showed off her tanned and toned body in a plunging halter-neck top and matching bikini bottoms.

Wearing nothing but a pair of neon pink swimming shorts, George - the eldest of Michelle's four sons with Gary - showed off his gym-honed body

A family affair: Also enjoying island life is George's younger brother Tobias, 19, who shared a sweet snap of him cuddling up to his mother on the island earlier this week

A spot of sight-seeing? Gary and Michelle's eldest has been keen to document his star on the island, and has been sharing snaps throughout his festive getaway with his 29,000 followers

Having also cooled off in the sea, the ombre-haired beauty swished her hair off of her face and let her damp lock tumble down past her shoulders.

Keeping her beachy look chic and simple, Michelle donned a pair of mirrored aviators, whilst she also sported an ankle bracelet.

Also enjoying island life is George's younger brother Tobias, 19, while it is also though that Michelle's other two sons with Gary, Harry, 21, and 17-year-old Angus, are also on the holiday.

Gary and Michelle's eldest has been keen to document his star on the island, and has been sharing snaps throughout his festive getaway with his 29,000 followers.

George, who battled leukaemia as a baby, has recently made a name for himself in the music industry - starting a social networking site for aspiring musicians to help them gain exposure.
She is thought to be homeless and out of a source of income after a tumultuous approach to Christmas.

But Danniella Westbrook may have been compounding her money woes with gambling on Wednesday, when she was spotted at a bingo hall in Runcorn, Cheshire.

With her head bent over a calling card, the 43-year-old former EastEnders actress seemed to set her sights on the jackpot.

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Nowhere else to bin-go: Danniella Westbrook was pictured at a bingo hall in Runcorn on Wednesday after reportedly losing her house before Christmas

Proving she meant business, the troubled actress was dressed in a smart blazer, chinos and a blouse.

She tipped dark-rimmed reading glasses on the end of her nose, but they did nothing to disguise her from Cheshire's soap fans.

Fellow players seemed astonished to see the television actress playing amongst them and took pictures, including one where Danniella is seen posing against a promotional poster for 100, 200 and 500 wins.

Gambling: Dressed smartly in a blazer and chinos, the former EastEnders actress seemed to be spending a night gambling away her money

A representative for Danniella Westbrook has been contacted by MailOnline for further comment.

Danniella is currently said to be staying with friends and family after failing to make payments on her car and home, this December.

She was pictured dragging a large suitcase through Liverpool earlier this month, while sources claimed she was 'staying here, there and everywhere' over the festive period in a bid to find somewhere suitable to settle up North in the new year.

Things went from bad to worse when it was later claimed that she had been fired from her teeth whitening job.

Counting on the jackpot: Pictured in front of the promotional posters, Danniella seemed to have set her sights on the jackpot

Danniella reportedly maintained the job for just one day because her personal hygiene was not up to standards.

The shop's owner Nicole Francis, who simultaneously accused the star of being late on her first day, said that Danniella had left bloodied tissues around the Lip Couture practice in Liverpool.

Danniella's septum famously collapsed in the year 2000 due to her excessive use of cocaine.

At the height of her drug abuse, it was reported she had taken up to five grams of cocaine a day, blowing close to 250,000 on the drug.

Party girl: Danniella was snapped putting her money woes to one side earlier this week as she partied with Geordie Shore's Gaz Beadle

Danniella confirmed the bad news on Twitter, announcing: 'Just so everyone is aware I WILL NOT BE DOING TEETH WHITENING AT LIP COUTURE.

'Apparently due to my septicaemia & multiple operations clients dont want to look at me or have me treating them.

'SO Nicoles mum Suzanne will be doing the treatments Wishing the girls all the best & happy Christmas all x.'

Take a seat: Danniella was full of festive spirit during a night out in Liverpool, just 10 days ago

Further to this, Lip Boutique's Nicole insisted that their decision had been nothing to do with Danniella's appearance.

The star's recent money woes haven't stopped the star from enjoying the festivities this Christmas, none the less.

She put the dramas to one side to enjoy a night out with Geordie Shore party boy Gaz Beadle at her management's annual festive bash.

That weekend, Danniella had seemed full of festive spirit when she slipped into a sexy Santa costume to head out for an evening on the tiles in Liverpool.
She's the Instagram sensation, who isn't shy about sharing sultry snaps with her 1.6 million followers.

And Thursday was no different for Pia Muehlenbeck, who took to the social networking site to debut a new hairstyle after a trip to Fiji.

'Long hair is back,' the 26-year-old captioned the image, that saw her pouting and offering just a glimpse of her ample chest.

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'Long hair is back': Instagram sensation Pia Muehlenbeck, 26, took to Instagram on Thursday, debuting a new hairstyle, after returning from a trip to Fiji

The close-up snap saw Pia drawing attention to her new hairstyle, that appeared to be several shades darker and with added volume through the use of extensions.

Wearing what appeared to be a red top with a plunging neckline, the Sydney-based star offered a glimpse of her generous cleavage.

Pouting for the camera, Pia also highlighted a flawless complexion, defined brows, lashings of mascara and a touch of highlighter on the apples of her cheeks.

Beach body on point! Pia flaunted her ample cleavage in a sexy swimsuit snap, taken during her recent holiday in Fiji

The post comes shortly after Pia shared a number of sexy swimsuit shots from her recent trip to Fiji.

A snap posted to Instagram on Tuesday saw the slender brunette donning a grey bikini, while standing next to turquoise water.

Pia's ample bust, taut torso and trim pins were on full display, as she held a nutritious shake in one hand.

'Starting the day right, with a quick dip,' she captioned the photo.

Orange is the new black! Standing in the doorway of her Fijian villa, Pia wore a skimpy vibrant one-piece and a daring gold choker around her neck

While another picture posted later that day, saw the blogger wear a skimpy orange one-piece, that flaunted her impressive cleavage.

Standing in the doorway of her Fijian villa, Pia accompanied the look with a daring gold choker around her neck.

Meanwhile in October, Pia revealed to Daily Mail Australia how she quit her job as a corporate lawyer in Sydney, in order to start her own activewear brand and blogging venture.

'I'm living my dream,' Pia gushed.

'I used to work super long hours when I was a lawyer, and it was so tiring. These days, while I'm working super hard - and it's not all lounging about on a beach - I am doing something which I love. I wouldn't swap it for anything,' she continued.

Thanks for following! Pia shared a very sultry picture of herself in cheeky-cut underwear and a sheer white crop top to celebrate reaching 1.5 million followers on Instagram

Happy to be home! The Grazia market editor shared a picture of herself by the pool after returning home to Sydney ahead of Christmas
Her down-to-earth Northern charm helped to bag her the crown earlier this month on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!

But Scarlett Moffatt was worlds away from the jungle as she unveiled her three stone weight-loss - achieved in just six months - in a leggy new cover shoot.

Taking to Instagram on Thursday, the Gogglebox star, 26, shared a sultry snap of herself in a skintight leotard as she graced the cover of Sunday's upcoming Fabulous magazine.

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Goggle fox! Scarlett Moffatt looks a far-cry from her time in the jungle as she unleashes her saucy side for a new cover shoot

Alerting her 1million followers to the fact she'd be gracing the pages of the mag, Scarlett announced that it was a 'new year' and a 'new me'.

Unleashing her sexier side for the eye-catching shoot, Scarlett was seen flaunting her incredible figure in nothing but a skin-tight leotard and a pair of heels as she showcased her weight-loss.

Posing with one leg cocked in the air, the Gogglebox favourite's lithe limbs were highlighted to the max.

The form-fitting one-piece also allowed the Northern lass to showcase her incredible three stone weight-loss, with Scarlett parading her trim and slim figure after dropping five dress sizes.

Confident: Taking to Instagram on Thursday, the 26-year-old Gogglebox star shared a sultry snap of herself in a skintight leotard on the cover of Sunday's Fabulous Magazine

Wearing her long, thick raven locks swept over into a carefully teased waterfall of hair, the Durham-born star continued to channel a foxy look.

Throwing her best sultry stare into the camera, the star certainly looked the picture of confidence.

Having beaten Joel Dommett to the jungle crown earlier this month, Scarlett has since been busy doing the rounds in the wake of her victory.

Before and after: Scarlet has used the shoot and recent Instagram shots to showcase her incredible three stone weight loss

She was one of the bookies' favourites to win the reality competition from the outset, though she faced stiff competition from the 33-year-old comedian and Emmerdale star Adam Thomas.

However, Scarlett has also just released a fitness DVD, Superslim Me Plan, which reveals the secret to how she dropped five dress sized in just six months.

Aside from her work commitments, the relaity favourite has also been enjoying some quality time with her boyfriend, Luke Crodden, over the festive period.

Queen of all TV? Having beaten Joel Dommett to the jungle crown earlier this month on I'm A Celebrity, Scarlett has since been busy doing the rounds in the wake of her victory

All loved-up: Aside from her work commitments, the relaity favourite has also been enjoying some quality time with her boyfriend, Luke Crodden, over the festive period

She recently admitted her relationship is moving at such speed that she's already left her native County Durham and moved into a London with her man.

'It sounds a bit crazy but we moved in together after a month!' she told OK! 'Were moving into a flat in London together in time for Christmas! I want us to have a tree in our new home for our first Christmas together'.

The couple originally met four years ago in York before reuniting in a Newcastle bar in January 2015 - after which they were smitten.
It's been six months since they met and fell in love on reality TV.

But Cara De La Hoyde and boyfriend Nathan Massey looked like they never left Love Island as they put on a smitten display by the sea in Florida recently.

Nathan couldn't keep his hands off the petite brunette, who looked flawless in her skimpy bikini even when he scooped her up in his arms.

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Knight in shining armour: Love Island winner Nathan Massey pretended to struggle as he scooped up petite girlfriend Cara De La Hoyde in the sea in Florida recently during their break

The pair, who won the show in July as a couple, were captured in the midst of a romantic stroll along the sea front, stopping regularly for passionate kisses and cuddles.

At one time, reality show hunk Nathan swept the brunette up into a lift as if he was carrying her over a threshold.

She was, after all, a sight for sore eyes in her patterned two-piece which featured ties at the sides with ornate gold design details.

This Christmas will mark their first as a couple, and even though they were enjoying some winter sun this December, they were back in the UK for the festivities.

Kisses: Cara and Nathan stopped for regular kisses along the shoreline

Bikini babe: Cara looked stunning in her teeny bikini, which featured gold design details

She's done this before: The model was an old hand at sexy beach shoots

Too cold? Their winter sun break marked their first Christmas together

Nathan and Cara opted to split their 50,000 prize fund between them when they took first place on Love Island, five months ago.

But their dedication to reality TV hasn't stopped there because they recently joined the cast of The Only Way Is Essex on ITVBe.

Taken under the wings of reality TV regulars Tommy Mallett and Georgia Kousoulou, Nathan and Cara have proved to be a hit with the loyal viewers.

And last week, asked if they would happily join the show on a permanent basis, Nathan told new! magazine: 'Wed consider it, we are strong enough.'

Cheeky: They were almost matching in their patterned swimwear

Can't keep away: The pair were extremely hands-on during their beach day

Romantic: It was a romantic trip to the sun before a long, cold winter

Their whirlwind romance saw them move into an Essex home together, three months into their relationship, in September.

So smitten was the duo that they were also planning a family, saying that their six and a half weeks on the show felt like about a year.

But Nathan recently conceded that they have their ups and downs as a couple, continuing in the same interview: 'Theres been arguments.

'Im not the easiest person to live with. But you forget weve only known each other for 6 months.'

Reality star: Following their stint on ITV2, the pair joined the cast of TOWIE and they're now thought to be joining permanently

Double trouble: They seem to be ending the year happier than ever, together

Curve queen: Confident in her curves, the star returned to her bikini after the Love Island stint

Smitten: The pair split their 50k earnings, earlier this year

Romantic: The trip came just before a special festive period for the duo

At ease: Now six months into their relationship, the pair are blissful in each other's company

Matching: Cara and Nathan were splashing around in their green swimwear

Hulk: Nathan proved his strength as he scooped up his sweet girlfriend

Giddy: Cara and Nathan were positively giddy together
She's a doting mother to her daughter Nelly, two, and also has a bundle of joy on the way.

And Billie Faiers was glowing as she attended the launch of her sister Sam's book My Baby and Me at The Savoy Hotel in London, before celebrating nephew Paul's first birthday on Thursday with afternoon tea.

The TOWIE star, 26, flaunted her blossoming bump in a chic turtleneck jumper and matching skirt as she attended the family event.

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Maternity chic: Pregnant Billie Faiers, 26, showed off her bump at the launch for her sister Sam's book My Baby and Me at The Savoy Hotel in London

The Essex beauty looked sensational as she showed off her figure in the sleeveless number, which featured red fluting at the end.

Donning a matching skirt which flared out flirtatiously, Billie accentuated her height in a pair of sexy knee-high boots.

The blonde bombshell sported immaculately styled waves, which complemented her chiselled cheekbones and glossy pink pout.

The expectant mother looked thrilled as she posed alongside her fiance Greg Shepherd, daughter Nelly Shepherd, sister Sam, Paul Knightley snr. and baby Paul Tony.

Stylish: The TOWIE star flaunted her blossoming bump in a chic turtleneck jumper dress as she attended the family affair in support of sister Sam, 25

Family affair: The Essex beauty looked sensational as she showed off her figure in the sleeveless number as she was joined by her daughter Nelly, two

Radiant: The blonde bombshell sported immaculately styled waves, which complemented her chiselled cheekbones and glossy pink pout

And stunning Billie is undoubtedly pleased about adding to the brood of children in the Faiers household

The reality star confirmed she was expecting a boy last month, telling OK! magazine: 'We cant stop smiling. Greg got quite emotional, but hes over the moon.'

But despite expecting a little one soon, Billie focused on her little girl Nelly as they celebrated Christmas together.

Discussing her festive plans ahead of time to Reveal magazine, she enthused: 'Im going to sit on the sofa this year and be waited on hand and foot. I cant wait!

Growing group: The expectant mother posed alongside her fiance Greg Shepherd, daughter Nelly Shepherd, sister Sam, Sam's boyfriend Paul Knightley - and baby Paul Tony

Make a wish! The Essex based sisters looked in high spirits as they posed in front of a cake for birthday boy Paul, one

Billie admitted that little Nelly was going to be treated to Frozen-themed presents this year because she's such a big fan of the animated Disney film.

She also discussed her forthcoming new arrival, gushing: I cant wait for us to be a four.'

Billie has always been open about wanting a second child before she gets hitched to ticket broker Greg, who she got engaged to in February 2014.

Now her baby boy is well on his way, the reality star will be focusing on her wedding plans.

'I cant wait for us to be a four': The fashion boutique owner has previously gushed about her impending new arrival and revealed she is expecting a boy

The blonde said: 'Were definitely going to do it abroad  were thinking September, but were not sure where yet because of monsoon seasons.

Meanwhile her sister Sam, 25, looked thrilled as she doted on her cherubic youngster at his birthday tea party on Thursday.

She was also busy celebrating his big day on Instagram, where she documented gifting him with a personalised toy Range Rover.
She may be celebrating her son Paul's first birthday.

But Sam Faiers has proved there is no rest for the wicked as she launched her new book My Baby and Me at the Savoy in London, surrounded by her family and adorable tot.

The 25-year-old stunned in a biscuit coloured statement coat that highlighted her petite hourglass figure with a waist cinching belt.

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Adorable: Sam Faiers has proved there is no rest for the wicked as she launched her new book My Baby and Me at the Savoy in London, surrounded by her family and adorable tot Paul

Looking sensational, she layered her eye-catching jacket over a cream sheer chiffon blouse as she cuddled her cute son.

Parading her toned pins, Sam slipped on a pair of figure-hugging high waisted dark denims for her monumental occasion.

Adding inches to her diminutive height, she adorned her feet with a pair of fashion forward beige heels with fur detailing.

Sam kept to her usual glamorous look, styling her chestnut locks into a soft curl as she accentuated her dazzling peepers with a smokey bronze eye.

Family affair: The 25-year-old posed for pics with Gaynor Knightley, boyfriend Paul Knightley, son Paul Jr. and her mum Suzanne Wells (L-R)

Picture perfect: Sam got a snap with her sister Billie, her daughter Nelly and fiance Greg Shepherd

Granny time: Paul Jr. was all smiles as he posed for an adorable snap with his grannies Gaynor (L) and Suzanne (R)

High spirits: The couple appeared in high spirits alongside their beloved mothers and one-year-old son

Making it an occasion not to forget, the Mummy Diaries star was keen to get a number of pics with her boyfriend Paul as well as his mother Gaynor and her own mother Suzanne.

Baby Paul was sure to steal the limelight at the event as he coordinated his parents in a darling beige knit short suit.

Wearing a smile, the tot completed his charming ensemble with a pair of knee high socks and festive red shoes.

Spotlight: Baby Paul was sure to steal the limelight at the event as he coordinated his parents in a darling beige knit short suit

What a cutie: Wearing a smile, the tot completed his charming ensemble with a pair of knee high socks and festive red shoes

Happy out: Sam was all smiles alongside her long-term love Paul and their charming baby boy

Close knit: The trio looked picture perfect as they coordinated their looks for the outing

Like father, like son: Paul Snr. showcased the similarities between him and Paul Jr.

Mini-me: Paul Jr. matched his dad in a similar biscuit coloured knit ensemble

New chapter: Sam and Paul toasted to her new release

The trio were also joined at the literature event with their families, including Paul Sr's mum Gaynor Knightley as well as Sam's sister Billie and mother Suzanne Wells.

Relishing their grandmother duties, both Gaynor and Suzanne stopped for a number of pics with their grandson as former reality star Billie took a moment with her nephew.

Pregnant with her second child, Billie, 26, looked radiant as she slipped into a sleeveless black knit dress alongside her sweet daughter Nelly, two.

Finishing her look, she exhibited her slender pins in a pair of grey suede over-the-knee boots that teased at her thighs.

Sister, sister: Pregnant with her second child, Billie, 26, looked radiant as she slipped into a sleeveless black knit dress alongside her sweet daughter Nelly, two

Pincredible: Finishing her look, she exhibited her slender pins in a pair of grey suede over-the-knee boots that teased at her thighs

Celebrations: Sam enjoyed a tea party with her family to celebrate her new book and Paul Jr's first birthday

Glam gals: The former TOWIE stars were a picture of glamour as they smiled alongside an eye-catching blue celebration cake

Helping hand: Despite being pregnant Billie helped serve everyone at the launch with a silver platter of treats

Meanwhile, baby Paul was lavished with presents by proud mummy and daddy as he turned one on Thursday morning.

The cherubic birthday boy looked utterly delighted as he was seen spinning around the family's living room in a personalised toy Range Rover in an Instagram video posted by the Mummy Diaries star.

'Well done daddy for setting up baby Paul's Range Rover,' Sam referenced her property developer beau as she gave her 1.8million followers a closer look at the lavish dark blue vehicle, which was decorated with a big pink bow.

Cool rider: Sam Faiers posted an adorable video of delighted baby Paul Knightley whizzing around in a personalised Range Rover as he celebrated his first birthday on Thursday

Happy family: The reality star posted a series of sweet snaps of her cherubic son and property developer beau Paul Knightley to celebrate the tot's first birthday

A second Instagram clip showed the giggling youngster driving forward in the car - which boasted a personalised Baby Paul number plate - while Sam egged him on.

The former TOWIE star also shared a lovely throwback snap to when the youngster was first born to mark his special day.

Sam wrote alongside the heartfelt post: 'Happy 1st birthday my beautiful baby. This has been the most amazing time of my life. You are our world. I can't describe in words my feelings for you.

Taking it for a spin: The Mummy Diaries star couldn't contain her joy as she shared a clip of the adorable youngster taking his first ride in a toy Range Rover

'Well done daddy': Sam praised her beau for getting the gift to work as she gave her 1.8million followers a closer look at the toy vehicle - which boasted a personalised number plate

'You are the happiest, cuddliest, cutest baby I know. Thank you for making us so proud Paul.

'From the moment you was born we haven't spent a moment apart. We are best friends you make us laugh everyday. Mummy & daddy love you so much.' (sic)

Always keen on documenting first-time mummy duties with her little boy, the Minnie's Boutique owner rounded up her favourite Instagram snaps for a fun birthday collage.

The beauty captioned the adorable collection of snaps: 'Happy 1st birthday our beautiful baby Paul.'

'You are our world': The former TOWIE star also shared a lovely throwback snap to when the youngster was first born to mark his special day

'Our beautiful baby': Always keen on documenting mummy duties with her little boy, the Minnie's Boutique owner rounded up her favourite Instagram snaps for a fun birthday collage

He's a lucky boy! Baby Paul Tony was also treated to numerous cuddly teddy bears and a blue heart-shaped balloon when he woke up on Thursday morning

The doting mother ensured to document her preparation for little Paul's first birthday and even shared a clip of a memory book she had made, and a big blue balloon.

Sam's sister Billie Faiers, 26, also posted a sweet video montage in tribute to her little nephew.

Alongside the video, aunt Billie wrote: 'Happy 1st birthday my beautiful nephew baby Paul.

'you are so special to us, we love you so much and you truly are our little sunshine and I am so proud to be your aunty ... can't wait to celebrate with you my little darling.'

Sam and big Paul met in an Essex bar in 2014, shortly after she quit TOWIE, the show that propelled her to fame in 2010.
She's been through a tough and trying time this year thanks to her turbulent relationship with ex-fiance, Egor Tarabasov.

But Lindsay Lohan was keen on spreading the message of love as she reflected on the past year, sharing a tranquil selfie of herself at the Zaya Nurai Island beach resort in Dubai on Thursday.

The actress, 30, who is in the sun-kissed country to host a New Year's Eve party at Zero Gravity, sported a blue bikini in the snap.

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Reflecting: Lindsay Lohan, 30, was keen on spreading the message of love following a turbulent year with ex-fiance Egor Tarabasov as she shared a tranquil selfie of herself in Dubai on Thursday

'#zen spread #love and #serenity not war #2017 #breathe,' the former Parents Trap star captioned the snap which also featured two praying hands emojis and a blue heart one.

A personalised gold necklace, as well as another matching chain scattered down between her bosoms as she reclined on a sun-lounger.

She sported no make-up, closing her eyes while lifting the camera to capture the peaceful moment.

The Mean Girls star began the year in a relationship with Tarabasov, though it unravelled around August when the duo had a highly publicised fight in Mykonos, Greece.

Romance gone wrong: The Mean Girls star began the year in a relationship with Tarabasov, though it unravelled around August when the duo had a publicised fight in Mykonos, Greece

'He broke into my house': Speaking on Russian TV, the actress detailed her former lover's behaviour

Speaking on Russian TV, the Mean Girls star also said of her ex-fiance, 'I went to bed and he broke into my house. He started strangling me. I feared that Egor may splash acid in my face.'

Egor strenuously denied the claims, however, accusing the star of starting a 'smear campaign' against him.

He elaborated: 'There were numerous attempts to discredit my name by inaccurately portraying the nature of our relationship, publishing distorted facts, and making false accusations.'

The public spat effectively signalled the end of their relationship and engagement.

Later that month, the international socialite was snapped with Dennis Papageorgiou, who was the redhead's shoulder to cry on in the wake of her relationship with Tarabasov, according to The Sun.

Over: Their public spat effectively signalled the end of their relationship and engagement in August

Moving on: Later that month, Lindsay was snapped with Dennis Papageorgiou, who was allegedly her shoulder to cry on. She has since dismissed any romance between the two

'Lindsay says they are very serious and she's been referring to him as the man who saved her from Egor,' the source said in September.

'It's a weird scenario to meet in but they're taking things seriously.'

However, Lohan later denied any romance with Papageorgiou, claiming they were working together.

Meanwhile, the beauty was recently witnessed being 'affectionate and holding hands' with a suitor described as 'tall, dark and handsome' while enjoying the nightlife in the United Arab Emirates at the Iris lounge in Dubai, The New York Post reported.

The Hollywood veteran 'was very well-behaved' albeit a bit flirty in her interactions with her mystery man, a witness told the newspaper.

New man? Lindsay was recently witnessed being 'affectionate and holding hands' with a suitor described as 'tall, dark and handsome' while enjoying the nightlife in the United Arab Emirates

The pop culture princess 'enjoyed a few drinks with him and a group of friends,' and 'they were also dancing together,' according to the witness.

A separate source told the paper that the man described might have been the Liz & Dick star's 'manager,' and that the sweet nothings might have been just that - nothing.

Meanwhile, Lindsay has revealed that she plans to return to Turkey, where earlier this year she volunteered with refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria.

She told Page 6: 'I am deciding now if I will head back to do more work in refugee camps in Turkey and Antep during or after the New Year.'

Lindsay continued: 'The dates are not set yet. It depends on how Turkey feels after the recent terrorist attack in Istanbul. Not that any attack has or will ever stop me from helping those suffering, those who need our help the most.'

Doing an Angelina: The former child star intends to return to Turkey to help Syrian refugees. She is pictured here in Gaziantemp, Turkey in October




Viral V Acharya appointed as RBI Deputy Governor

Published: December 28, 2016

The Union Government has appointed Viral V Acharya (42) as new Deputy Governor at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). He will have regular three-year tenure.

His appointment was cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi.

He will fill the post that fell vacant after Urjit Patel after he was made RBI Governor to succeed Rajan with effect from September 2016. The existing three Deputy Governors of RBI are S S Mundra, R Gandhi and N S Vishwanathan.

About Viral V Acharya

He is an alumnus of IIT, Mumbai, with a degree of BTech in Computer Science and Engineering in 1995 and PhD in Finance from NYU-Stern in 2001.

He was with London Business School (2001-08) and served as the Academic Director of Coller Institute of Private Equity (2007-09) and Senior Houblon-Normal Research Fellow at Bank of England (2008).

He also has served as Director, NSE-NYU Stern Initiative on the Study of Indian Capital Markets. He also was member of SEBIs International Advisory Board.

Prior this appointment, he was serving as the C V Starr Professor of Economics in the Department of Finance at the New York University Stern School of Business (NYU-Stern).

He is known for his research in theoretical and empirical analysis of systemic risks of the financial sector, its regulation and genesis in government-induced distortions.

His research areas also span across agency-theoretic foundations, credit and liquidity risks as well as their general equilibrium consequences.

He also has co-authored in the past at least three papers with the former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan. He had once called himself poor mans Raghuram Rajan.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2016

Topics: ACC  appointments  Banking  deputy governor  National  Persons in News  RBI  Viral V Acharya

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Selena Gomez has new music on the way.

Mexican pop diva Paulina Rubio, 45, announced earlier this week that her forthcoming album features collaborations with the 24-year-old international pop star.

Speaking to Vanidades magazine, the Si Te Vas songstress revealed that her album will be released in 2017 and will spotlight Gomez, who is of Mexican descent.

Girl power: Mexican pop diva Paulina Rubio, 45, announced that her upcoming album will feature Selena Gomez, 24

The mother-of-two - who has already released three songs from the upcoming album - said: 'My new album is like another member of the team, or the family.

'It will be a true warrior, has something from all genres, from band to pop, collaborations of DJ Snake and Selena Gomez.

'I tried to keep a key element: That the music is danceable.'

Gomez has previously collaborated with DJ Snake - who's also behind ex boyfriend Justin Bieber's Let Me Love You - herself for Major Lazer's song Feel Good.

Teasing fans: Songwriter Justin Tranter posted this photo of Selena, leading fans to speculate the duo was working on new music

Just last week, songwriter Justin Tranter posted a photo of Gomez with the caption 'Music and love,' leading fans to speculate the two are working on new music together.

Tranter and fellow songwriter Julia Michaels have worked with Selena to create several hits such as Hands to Myself and Good For You.

Selena's last album was 2015's Revival, her second studio album.

She's back: Her first public appearance since rehab was at the AMAs, where she accepted an award with a heartfelt speech about self-acceptance

The former Disney Channel starlet began the Revival Tour in support of her album in May 2016. She's set to tour until mid-March 2017.

The star took a four-month hiatus from social media while on tour, likely giving her plenty of time to work on new music.
The holidays really do bring people together.

And the Kardashian-Jenners family was no exception, as Kris Jenner's annual 'Kristmas' bash saw several reconciliations.

Kourtney Kardashian shared a photo on her blog of former spouses Kris, 61, and Caitlyn Jenner, 67, smiling together and looking chummy.

Two-gether: Former spouses Caitlyn Jenner, 67, and Kris Jenner, 61, look as if they've mended their strained relationship as they posed at Kris's Christmas bash

The ex couple had a strained relationship in the past as they clashed publicly over just how much Kris knew about Caitlyn's transgender identity.

But it seems all's well that ends well as the two women - both wearing red designer gowns - posed together for a photo, leaning towards each other with smiles on their made-up faces.

Kris, who is now dating 36-year-old Corey Gamble, held a glass of champagne in one hand and had a black fur thrown over her shoulder, while Caitlyn covered up in a white cardigan.

Kandyland: Kris is known for her over-the-top holiday decor

Almost as impressive as the women's reunion was Kris Jenner's extravagant 'Kandyland-chic' themed holiday decor.

In her post-Christmas 'Inside the party' blog post, the oldest Kardashian sister flaunted her mother's elaborately decorated entrance hall, complete with an oversized Christmas tree, pine garlands and twinkling lights, and a giant red metallic bear sculpture.

According to Architectural Digest, the bear was created especially for Kris by Parisian designer Michel Amann.

A photo posted by Kris Jenner (@krisjenner) on Dec 20, 2016 at 7:32am PST

Artistic director Jeff Leatham, who helped design Jenner's Christmas wonderland, said of the bear: '[It's an] actual piece of art.

'We've never had one of these in the United States. It was important for us that people saw the bear and saw the tree at the same time, they're an instillation together.'

Jenner told the magazine that her seven-year-old grandson Mason, Kourtney's son, named the bear Christmas, and 'decided it's a boy.'

In the blog, Kourtney also shared a stunning photo of herself in her all-white outfit.

White Christmas: Kourtney Kardashian, 37, poses with two-year-old son Reign

She held onto her youngest, two-year-old Reign who was handsomely dressed in a suit and black boots, and posed in front of a snowy, chicly decorated mantel that featured huge white stockings and all-white reindeer statues.

Aside from Caitlyn and Kris, another famous celebrity fallout was mended at Kris's gathering.

Frenemies Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian were seen celebrating together after the two reportedly followed each other on Instagram following Kim's Paris robbery.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house...reality stars partied together and put aside their petty fights.
Kris Jenner may be braving tough times with her son Rob Kardashian's diabetes taking a turn for the worse, sending him to the ER in Hidden Hills, California on Wednesday evening.





But the reality mogul managed to take a break from looking after the Rob & Chyna star to express her condolences to the families of Carrie Fisher, 60, and Debbie Reynolds, 84. The daughter and mother passed within a day of each other this week.

In the touching Instagram post, Kris shared a 1972 picture of Debbie, Carrie and Reynolds' son Todd with the caption: 'Absolutely heartbreaking and unimaginable. As a mother I cannot imagine the pain and heartbreak of losing a child.'

Touching tribute: Kris Jenner took time to post an emotional Instagram tribute to the late Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher, who both passed this week. Kris is currently braving a family crisis of her own with son Rob's health in serious shape

She continued: ' A loving and devoted mother, grandmother and a true Hollywood legend... Debbie Reynolds, you will be forever missed but never forgotten!!

'My love and prayers are with Debbie and Carrie's family.'

Earlier she paid tribute to Carrie's passing with a photo of her as Princess Leia from Star Wars.

The importance of family is certainly weighing on the Kardashian matriarch's mind right now, with her son Rob's health in serious condition and much.

TMZ claimed his diabetes flared up after a large weight gain stemming from his fights with fiancee Blac Chyna.

Health scare: Rob Kardashian was rushed to the hospital Wednesday night after an 'alarmingly large amount of weight' caused the star's diabetes to dramatically flare up

Together they have daughter Dream.

Last night Blac Chyna and Jenner were seen rushing to the emergency room of a Hidden Hills, California hospital

It was alleged that he 'checked himself into the hospital.

Time to heal: The reality stars appear to have patched things up. On Christmas the parents of Dream Kardashain were seen being affectionate. Rob has credited the former stripper with helping him through the difficult weight loss

The TV star is still in the hospital as 'doctors try to stabilize him,' it was also claimed.

Rob's battle with diabetes began exactly one year ago to the day, when he was rushed to the emergency room after falling ill.

It was then that he learned he had type 2 diabetes.

A big change: The reality star in 2011, left, and in 2014, right. He has said on Rob & Chyna he is embarrassed to go out in public due to his weight gain

Afterwards he vowed to get healthy as he was near 300 pounds.

With the support of Chyna, Rob was able to shed the weight but when she became pregnant with their first child, however, the reclusive star gained the weight back.

His struggle with his weight and his health has been documented on the couple's reality show Rob & Chyna.

The saga continues: In addition to Rob's health scare, he and on-again-off-again love Chyna are not living together at the moment. The two were involved in a nasty Instagram feud earlier this month

Furthering the drama, it was noted that Rob and Chyna are currently estranged and not living together at the moment.

The two were involved in a nasty Instagram feud earlier this month with him accusing the former stripper of using the Kardashian family, but they appear to have patched things up. Blac Chyna was quick be be by Rob's side at the hospital.

This weekend, Chyna and Rob were conspicuously missing from Kris' lavish Christmas Eve party in Hidden Hills where Kim, Kanye, Khloe, Kourtney, Kylie and Kendall appeared.
She's no stranger to busting out yoga poses in the most unlikely places.

And Hilaria Baldwin took it up a notch on a rooftop in New York City as she balanced with one leg while wearing black stiletto boots.

The 32-year-old wife of Alec Baldwin posted the picture via Instagram on Wednesday in celebration of her new health and wellness book launch, The Living Clearly Method.

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Impressive! Hilaria Baldwin stroke a yoga pose on a rooftop in New York City while balancing in stiletto heels; she was celebrating the launch of her new book, The Living Clearly Method

The mother-of-three showed off her yoga-honed figure in an all-black look wearing tight leggings, a V-neck top and a fitted leather jacket.

Her shiny black boots covered her entire calf as she held one leg up with her hand behind her body as the other was planted to the ground, supporting the pose.

Hilaria allowed her brunette locks to fall down on the side of her face as she accessorized with layered gold pendants.

There's mommy! The 32-year-old wife of Alec Baldwin visited the bookstore recently with her three kids, Carmen, three, Rafael, one, and four-month-old Leo, as well as Alec as they caught a glance of her book

The fitness fanatic also shared with her Instagram fans her partnership with eBay for Charity, which will allow for 60 people to attend a special yoga class with Hilaria in NYC on January 11.

She wrote: 'To celebrate the launch of my new book, The Living Clearly Method, Im partnering with eBay for Charity to invite you to attend a special yoga class with me in NYC on January 11. Im auctioning off 60 tickets to the class and a bunch of my favorite goodies, and 100% of proceeds benefit @bentonlearning, a nonprofit I work with that brings yoga into inner city schools. Visit eBay.com/HilariaBaldwin for more info! (Tap the pic to see the collaborators!).'

Hilaria's book recently hit the shelves on December 27, which the family-of-five visited recently.

Holding forth: On Tuesday, Hilaria released her new book The Living Clearly Method, in which she opened up about 'long simmering struggle with anorexia and bulimia'

'We took a field trip to the bookstore to see it with our very own eyes!!! How are you liking it so far? #366daysoflivingclearly #hilarialcm (you can buy it on amazon both in the USA and in other countries),' the brunette beauty wrote on social media.

In the book, Hilaria revealed a dark time in her past, which People quoted, was 'a long simmering struggle with anorexia and bulimia,' while she studied at New York University.

She added: 'Without realising it, I started drifting away from the playful connection to movement Id enjoyed as a young child and into a different and darker kind of dynamic: pushing my body to its limits and commanding it to perform through pain or fatigue.'

It wasn't until Hilaria had to recover from her leg bone that detached from her hip where she began to treat herself right saying: 'The imbalances that had been there for much of my life returned to balance, and I looked and felt a hundred times better as a result.'
She deleted her Instagram account, just four months after former flame Justin Bieber temporarily did.

Hailey Baldwin, who also recently deleted her Snapchat, appears to have deactivated her Instagram on Monday.

Three days later, the 20-year-old model shared a sweet photo while cradling a baby to her Twitter account, adding: 'Hope everyone's enjoying their holidays.'

So sweet: Hailey Baldwin deleted her Instagram account but took to Twitter to share a sweet photo while posing with an infant

In the Twitter picture she posted on Thursday, the former blonde beauty shows off her darker 'do while cradling an infant; she changed her hair color earlier this month.

She appears to have hinted on why she decided to step back from Instagram in a tweet she posted the same day she erased her account.

Hailey wrote: 'Hope everyone steps into the New Year feeling refreshed and renewed. Take time for you. It's important! God Bless. xx hb.'

The runway star may have just deactivated her Instagram, which means she can re-activate it at any time and not lose any content or followers.

She still has an active Facebook account as well as Twitter.

Strike a pose: The 20-year-old model, who recently darkened her hair, also deleted her Snapchat earlier this year

Hailey has not been shy about her desire to reduce her social media use.

In December, she revealed to Elle Magazine Australia that she deleted her Snapchat account.

In a recent interview with Sun Herald, the blonde beauty explained that 'Social media can take a lot out of you, it makes you really distracted sometimes.'

She added that: 'I've recently come off of Snapchat, I'm not Snapchatting anymore. I don't have Twitter on my phone.'

Fans of the cover girl are not surprised though; the account Hailey Baldwin News wrote: 'This step is no surprise to us, so please don't question Hailey's decision and rather support her!'

True to herself: Hailey has not been shy about her desire to reduce her social media use; pictured with her best friend Justine Skye

The fan account added: 'Hailey may be back on Instagram after New Year's Eve after all because she recently posted a hint in her IG Story.'

Her ex Justin Bieber deleted his Instagram in August after fans started bashing his then girlfriend Sofia Richie; his ex Selena Gomez commented on his Instagram picture to tell him 'to stop posting pictures of your girlfriend' if he 'can't handle the hate.'

Kendall Jenner followed his footsteps in November; however, she deleted her account for even less time.

Hailey's close friend Kendall, 21, re-opened her Instagram less than a week later.

Last week, Hailey celebrated Ashley Benson's 27th birthday with model friend Marianne Fonseca.

Happier times: Her ex Justin Bieber deleted his Instagram in August but reactivated it just two weeks later; Hailey and Justin pictured last year

Beaming: Last week, Hailey celebrated Ashley Benson's 27th birthday with model friend Marianne Fonseca

The beauty wore an oversized cover up with the hood pulled over her head while beaming besides a pink haired Ashley and Marianne, who stuck her tongue out.

The star, who is the January cover girl for Harper's Bazaar Spain with model Jon Kortajarena, is often snapped spending time with Marianne.

The twosome enjoyed a beach holiday to Turks And Caicos together in November.

Besties: Marianne posted of a picture in a pool with Hailey, adding: 'With my bb;' They were on a beach holiday to Turks And Caicos together in November

Marianne posted of a picture in a pool with Hailey, adding: 'With my bb.'

Earlier this month, she headed to the Bahamas to promote the Fyre Festival.

She was on the tropical getaway with Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, Alessandra Ambrosio and also Elsa Hosk.

Sun and surf: Earlier this month, she headed to the Bahamas to promote the Fyre Festival; pictured: (from l to r) Hailey, Emily Ratajkowski, Bella Hadid, Elsa Hosk and Rose Bertram
Nick Cannon has been sent home from the hospital after a two-week stay and 'five blood transfusions' from Lupus complications.

The 36-year-old television personality shared his recovery with Instagram fans on Thursday as he posted a motivational video from his studio.

He told his followers: 'See where I'm at? I'm in the studio. Straight from the hospital bed to the studio, getting it in...Five blood transfusions, what? Naw, it ain't nothing.'

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Back at it: Nick Cannon shared an upbeat video on Thursday to his Instagram page after being released from the hospital after a two-week stay due to Lupus complications

The America's Got Talent Host checked himself in two weeks ago at Cedars-Sinai in Beverly Hills, California and spent Christmas at the hospital.

But Nick was upbeat upon his return, just before New Year's Eve, as he wrote in the caption: 'I broke out that joint!!!! Stuffed some pillows under the covers and ran out like the little rascals!! LOL.'

The ex-husband of Mariah Carey even quoted a passage from the Bible writing: 'Isaiah 54:17 "No Weapon Formed Against Me Shall Prosper."'

In the studio: The 36-year-old host told his Instagram fans that he had 'five blood transfusions,' but is not being held back

'No pity party:' The America's Got Talent host also pumped up his fans by teasing new projects on the horizon for 2017 such as new music, television shows and a film

Stronger than ever: The father-of-two sported a black jacket, red head-piece and beaded braids as he spoke to his Instagram followers

Nick - who appeared adamant on moving past the hospital scare saying 'no pity party' - also spoke about the new things on the horizon for 2017 such as new music, a Showtime series, more stand-up and a new film.

The father-of-two, who is expecting a baby boy with ex-girlfriend Brittany Bell, also took to Instagram on Wednesday with another positive message.

'I'm sitting here just getting stronger,' he said from the hospital bed. 'Iron Man strong, Incredible Hulk type strong.'

Adding: 'Thank you for all the love, care and prayers. Lets Go!! We are all Ncredible!!!'

It'll be okay: The ex-husband of Mariah Carey revealed last week on Instagram that he checked himself into Cedars-Sinai over his illness

'Iron Man strong:' The rapper said his strength is increasing to the point where he'll become like a superhero; pictured here Wednesday

While his ex-wife was on vacation in Aspen, Colarado with his kids Monroe, 5, and Moroccan, 5, he was lucky enough to have good friends visit him.

Comedian Kevin Hart stopped by along with 84-year-old critic and civil rights activist Dick Gregory.

The 37-year-old actor wrote on his Instagram: 'So happy to see my brother @nickcannon getting back to himself. Nothing but love for you man..... #GetWellNick #Ncredible.'
She was one of the world's most prolific actresses, with a career spanning decades.

And the star of Hollywood's Golden Age, Debbie Reynolds, also had an expensive hobby - a passion for collecting Hollywood film memorabilia which would eventually make her millions.

In over 50 years, the actress, who passed away on Wednesday at age 84, amassed a collection of around 3,500 treasured items ranging from Marilyn Monroe's Subway Dress to an original Maltese Falcon.

Avid collector: Debbie Reynolds amassed a fortune from auctioning off her Hollywood memorabilia, acquired over a 50-year span, before her death at 84. Pictured 2011

In the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Awards where Reynolds accepted the 51st Lifetime Achievement Award presented to her by her daughter, Carrie Fisher - who passed away on Tuesday, just one day before her mother - described her mom to the audience.

'This is an extraordinarily kind, gifted and funny woman who would give the shirt off her back if Vivien Leigh hadn't once worn it in Gone With the Wind.'

The Singin' In The Rain starlet began seriously collecting in 1970, emptying her bank account to buy everything she could when MGM held its legendary 1970 prop and costume auction.

Proud: She poses with the silk gown she wore in the film The Unsinkable Molly Brown, which was sold for around $5,000 in 2011 at a preview of her collection

Spending around $600,000, the Hollywood icon began what may be the greatest collection of its kind.

'They literally threw away our history and I just got caught up in it,' Reynolds told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014, lamenting 'the stupidity and the lack of foresight' to save film history.

Debbie spent years attempting to get a museum to hold her collection together, to no avail.

She even opened up her own in the Nineties in her Las Vegas hotel, but it went bankrupt by 1997.

Treasure: Arguably the most famous item in her impressive collection was the Subway Dress, worn by her good friend Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch

Debbie Reynolds shows her collection of iconic Hollywood memorabilia on 'Good Morning America' in 2011

Dresses from 'There's No Business Like Show Business' and worn by Marilyn Monroe were exhibited in Beverly Hills, 2011

A dress from 'Gentleman Prefer Blondes' the classic film starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell

From 2011 until 2014, Reynolds reluctantly sold her treasures in three separate auctions that collected tens of millions of dollars - making $26 million in the final auction alone.

Arguably the most famous item in her impressive collection was the Subway Dress, worn by her good friend Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch.

It was reportedly priced at $2 million in the first 2011 auction and ultimately sold for a whopping $4.6 million.

Legendary: Judy Garland's original blue and white dress and ruby slippers from Wizard of Oz were also a part of the legendary actress's collection

Judy Garland's ruby slippers from the 1939 film 'The Wizard of Oz' are pictured at a preview of actress Debbie Reynold's vast Hollywood costume and prop collection in Beverly Hills June 6, 2011 - the slippers fetched $690,000 at auction

Judy Garland's original blue and white dress and ruby slippers from The Wizard Of Oz were also a part of the legendary actress's collection, and the ruby slippers alone fetched $690k.

A car driven by Laurel and Hardy was showcased at the Reynolds memorabilia exhibit in 2011

Reynolds also owned two headdresses worn by Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, and in 2011 she posed proudly in front of the display - despite her former friend and neighbor's betrayal.

Debbie's first husband and Carrie's father, Eddie Fisher, left Debbie for Elizabeth in 1959.

The ceremonial headdress was priced at over $50k and the red crown at $12k.

Bygones: Reynolds also owned two headdresses worn by Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra despite her former friend and neighbor's betrayal

Reynolds owned Charlie Chaplin's signature bowler hat from numerous productions such as 'The Tramp'

Reynolds proudly shows off her collection in 2011. The red-brown jumpier with the white blouse was worn by Julie Andrews in the 'Do-Re-Mi' scene from the 1965 film 'The Sounds of Music'

Though it is unknown yet who will receive the fortunes of Carrie and Debbie, signs point to Todd Fisher - Carrie's younger brother, and Bille Catherine Lourd, her daughter and Debbie's grand daughter.

Reynolds was estimated to have a networth of $85million at her death by certain outlets.

Reynolds died at age 84 following her daughter Fisher's death at 60, just one day earlier.
They separated quietly after 15 years together earlier this year.

However Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington were seen putting on a united front as their characters John and Mary in a new behind-the-scenes trailer for BBC series Sherlock - less than two weeks after announcing their own split.

The video, released on Thursday, sees the on-screen couple welcoming their new baby on the hit show - while the actors themselves discuss the happy story line off set, alongside co-star Benedict Cumberbatch.

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Loved-up on screen: Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington were seen putting on a united front as characters John and Mary in a new behind-the-scenes trailer for BBC series Sherlock

In the new trailer John and Mary are seen cradling their child lovingly, before they embark on the newborn's christening alongside close friends and family.

Featuring interviews with the cast as well as footage from the new series, Martin, 45, says of their characters' new arrival: 'They're very excited about it. They're in a good place and a loving couple.'

Before Amanda, 42, adds: 'I think the impending baby is something they are both looking forward to a lot actually - including Sherlock, despite what he says.'

Happy families: The scenes of John and Mary happily and lovingly cradling their new baby come less than a month after the actors themselves announced they had split after 15 years

Backstage: Featuring interviews with the cast, Martin, 45, says in the trailer their characters are 'a loving couple' on the show, while Amanda admits they are 'looking forward to' the baby

Adding a usual humorous twist, leading man Benedict then admits: 'Sherlock has always been very protective of them as a family', before the trailer cuts to a clip of Sherlock fluffing his words during a rare emotional speech at the celebration.

Mrs Hudson, played by Una Stubbs, also gushes of her own excitement for the next step in their relationship as she adds: 'Obviously Mrs Hudson is very excited about the impending baby. It means we get to have a baby on the set!'

According to a teaser in the Daily Telegraph, the child is named Rosamund Mary Watson in the new series, which premieres on New Year's Day on BBC One.

Not a family man: Benedict then adds: 'Sherlock has always been very protective of them as a family', before the trailer cuts to Sherlock fluffing his words during a rare emotional speech

Teaser: The new trailer also sees the pair on the newborn's christening, where she is reportedly named Rosamund, alongside their close friends and family

The clip of Martin and Amanda putting on a besotted display as their characters comes less than two weeks after the former partners announced they had separated.

Since the split, The Sun claimed that Amanda has allegedly been spotted 'getting close' to Northern Irish actor Jonjo O'Neill.

The Sherlock actress and Jonjo, best known for his role in BBC drama The Fall, were reportedly spotted enjoying an intimate night together at a pub in Camden, North London, alongside another friend.

Excited: Mrs Hudson, played by Una Stubbs, then adds in excitement: 'Obviously Mrs Hudson is very excited about the impending baby. It means we get to have a baby on the set!'

Moving on? Amanda Abbington has allegedly been spotted 'getting close' to new man and fellow actor Jonjo O'Neill in the wake of announcing her split from long-term partner Martin Freeman (pictured together in 2009)

A source told the paper: 'She had her hand on her man's thigh and they seemed pretty close.

'Punters recognised her but she didn't seem to care who saw. It was quite clear she'd split from Martin. They were very close.'

Amanda certainly seems to be very supportive of Jonjo, sharing several messages on social media as she encouraged people to sponsor him on a charity trek and vote for him at the Whats On Stage Awards.

MailOnline has contacted representatives for both Amanda and Jonjo for comment.

Close pals: The Sherlock actress and Jonjo, best known for his role in The Fall, were reportedly spotted together at a pub in Camden, North London, alongside another friend

Show of support: Amanda and Jonjo certainly seem to be firm friends, sharing several messages on social media as she encouraged people to sponsor him

Emotional post: This comes after Amanda posted a tweet reading, 'I Didn't Quit my Marriage. I Survived It', sharing a link to an article about a relationship breakdown

This comes as Amanda posted a tweet reading, 'I Didn't Quit my Marriage. I Survived It', sharing a link to a post about a relationship breakdown.

The emotive article, penned by Crystal Jackson on ElephantJournal.com, reads: 'Every woman I know who is now divorced fought like hell to save her marriage - before finally deciding to save herself instead.

'At a certain point, we realize that the ship is sinking, and so many of us have children who need rescuing.

'We didn't give up. We saved ourselves, saved our children. We didn't quit our marriages; we survived them.'

Over: News broke last week that Martin had secretly split from his partner and Sherlock co-star Amanda

Amanda previously revealed one of the key reasons behind her split with Martin was his lengthy overseas filming commitments.

She said the pair, who have two children, 'realised we'd come to the end of our time together' - but added that they still plan to spend Christmas together this year.

The couple, who have been together since 2001, quietly went their separate ways earlier this year - but news of the split only emerged last week.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Abbington reveals that the strain of staying in London with their children as Freeman filmed in America was 'one of the reasons' behind the split.

Taking to Twitter: This morning Abbington took to Twitter to thank fans for their messages of support

She said: 'You can't be away from people for too long, because you start to function on your own, and you get used to being separate [from] the person you're supposed to be with. You lose that connection and lose sight of it, in the end.'

'There was no hostility, really, we just said that we couldn't live together anymore, so we put everything in place, he moved out to a flat in north London, I stayed at home and we've started a new chapter.

'It is sad and it is upsetting, because you think you're going to be with someone forever, but you either do that or you break up, and we both came to the decision that splitting was best for us. We've been really lucky to make it such a clean break, especially for the kids.'

Change of direction: Martin hinted that the huge boost to his fame and fortune in recent years - including his lucrative lead role in The Hobbit (above) could have played a part in the break up

Last week she took to Twitter to thank fans for their messages of support.

She wrote: 'Hey you lot! Thanks for the beautiful and supportive messages. We are all OK! But thanks.'

Yesterday, revealing the break up in an interview with the Financial Times, 45-year-old Freeman said: 'I'm not with Amanda any more. It's very, very amicable  I'll always love Amanda.'

When pushed further on whether he thought his huge success in recent years on films such as The Hobbit played a part in the break up, he replied: 'To a certain extent, yes. Not as much as it might have done, and not as much as maybe I would have hoped it had.'

Martin first met Amanda, 42, on the set of 2000 movie Men Only and they went on to have a son, Joe, 10, and a daughter, Grace, eight.

Moving on: The couple - who have been together since 2001 and share two children - quietly went their separate ways earlier this year

They went on to work together on separate occasions, including 2003's The Debt, Swinging with the Finkels, The Robinsons and The All Together.

His shocking admission comes as the couple are set to return to screens as man and wife in the BBC hit crime drama, based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's eccentric detective.

There will also be a new addition to the cast - Freeman's Dr. Watson and Abbington's Mary Morstan become parents to a daughter.

The split is especially surprising as just last December, Martin suggested that they had finally walked down the aisle, quipping: 'We might have married already...

'I'm just saying  mind your own business. My job is public, why should my private life be public as well? We live in an age where you have to know everything and that's tedious.'

Co-stars: The shocking admission comes as the couple are set to return to screens as married couple Dr. Watson and Mary Morstan in Sherlock
Tim Robard's is on record as saying it's 'getting around that time' to propose to girlfriend Anna Heinrich.

But on Thursday, it was another friends turn to tie the knot.

The Bachelor Australia season one contestant took to Instagram to flaunt her long, tanned legs as she was joined by her hunky beau in Byron Bay for wedding celebrations.

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Beaming! Beaming Anna Heinrich took to Instagram to flaunt her long, tanned legs as she was joined by her Bachelor Australia beau Tim Robards in Byron Bay for wedding celebrations.

Reclined and beaming, the 30-year-old let her luscious blonde locks fall over a tiny white over-the-shoulder dress.

She sat cross-legged, exposing her lithe, sun-enriched legs in a bamboo chair.

'It's good to be here.' The personality captioned the image.

Sparkles! The 30-year-old added the hashtag 'Mr and Mrs Sparkles,' in reference to her friend's wedding partner

Anna added the hashtags 'Byron' and 'Mr and Mrs Sparkles,' in reference to her friend's wedding partner.

Quick to jump on the speculation bandwagon, one commenter wrote: 'Must be your turn next?'

The original Bachelor couple haven't been snapped together during the celebrations, but the 33-year-old fitness guru shared a video of his arrival at Byron Bay airport on his Instagram story.

Together! The original Bachelor couple haven't been snapped together during the celebrations, but the 33-year-old fitness guru shared a video of his arrival at Byron Bay airport on his Instagram story

The hunk also hinted at an engagement during an appearance on KIIS FM's Kyle and Jackie O show in November.

'It's three years on, so probably getting around that time,' he said.

'I know where I'd probably go to get [the ring]... I know what she likes. I need to steal one of her other ones to find out the size.'

Wedding Bells? The hunk also hinted at an engagement during an appearance on KIIS FM's Kyle and Jackie O show in November. 'It's three years on, so probably getting around that time,' he said

Tim will undoubtedly be in top shape when the big day arrives.

The former topless waiter regularly shares videos of his intense fitness regime to Instagram.

On Thursday, he flaunted his ripped abs in vibrant blue shorts while training in Bondi.
They welcomed their third child in September.

And on Wednesday Alec Baldwin and his wife Hilaria left two of their tots at home as they took their 18-month-old son Rafael for a stroll in New York.

Alec, 58, was in a silly mood as he joked about with his little boy who sat bundled up in his stroller.

Out and about: Alec and Hilaria Baldwin took a stroll with their son Rafael, 18 months, in New York on Thursday

Curiously the 30 Rock star braved the plunging Manhattan temperatures in just a t-shirt and trousers while his wife of four years kept warm in a padded coat.

The couple are also parents to Carmen, three and Leonardo, three months.

Meanwhile Hilaria has opened up about her health struggles.

In excerpts of her The Living Clearly Method book, obtained by People, Hilaria describes how, during her time at New York University, 'a long simmering struggle with anorexia and bulimia' held the yoga instructor 'firmly in its grip' when she was training as a dancer.

Peekaboo! The 58-year-old actor was in a silly mood and played with his little boy as he sat bundled up in his stroller

Look at dad! Alec pulled faces at Rafael as the family waited to cross the street in their neighbourhood

Hilaria wrote: 'Without realising it, I started drifting away from the playful connection to movement Id enjoyed as a young child and into a different and darker kind of dynamic: pushing my body to its limits and commanding it to perform through pain or fatigue.'

'By the time I was 20 years old, my 5-foot-3 frame was at least 20 lbs. under a healthy weight.

'My nails were brittle, my hair was falling out, my period was MIA, and my energy had tanked,' confides the brunette. 'I was miserable and desperate to feel better.'

Hilaria and Alec took their kids to a book store to see her first book, The Living Clearly Method, on the shelves
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She's regularly spotted frolicking in sunnier climes.

And Ashley James revealed she had booked herself yet another holiday on Thursday, jetting off the very next day for Gambia.

The former Made In Chelsea beauty shared a sexy bikini snap in celebration of her spontaneous splurge.

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Bikini babe: Ashley James revealed she had booked herself yet another holiday on Thursday, sharing a throwback snap in celebration as she prepared to jet off to Gambia

Ashley looked sensational in the throwback snap, showcasing her enviable figure in a camouflage print bikini.

The blonde bomshell's strapless number highlighted her hourglass waistline and was accessorised with a statement necklace.

'Just booked a holiday... leave tomorrow morning. Does anyone have any recommendations for things to do in #Gambia? #vitamind #vitaminsea', she captioned the post.

Bedazzled: Ashley is only just back from her holiday in Dubai, where she modelled a more unconventional beach look

Ashley is only just back from her holiday in Dubai, where she modelled a more unconventional beach look.

Sporting a glitzy, gold embellished swimsuit complete with matching turban, Ashley certainly turned heads.

The 29-year-old star also looked incredible in her camouflage bikini while enjoying a day at the beach in the Middle Eastern holiday hotspot.

Stunning: Ashley showcased her envy-inducing curves while soaking up the sun

Kicking back on a cabana, the model showcased her toned and tanned curves as she grinned into the camera.

The reality star wore her long blonde locks tumbling around her shoulders in loose waves and sheltered her eyes from the sun with a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

Ashley cheekily wrote alongside the snap: 'Sorry to hear it's raining in London.'

The DJ also treated her social media followers to a snap of a camel kicking back on the beach, joking: 'This is how we look after 24 hours of forced sobriety in Dubai.'

And it seemed Ashley - who is believed to be in Dubai for the Global Gift Gala on Monday night - was enjoying her new surroundings.

Fun in the sun: The former Made In Chelsea star, 29, seemed to be enjoying her stint in the Middle Eastern holiday hotspot ahead of Monday night's Global Gift Gala

Beach day: The model and DJ also treated her social media followers to a snap of a camel kicking back on the beach

Posting a snap of the view from her hotel swimming pool, she wrote: 'This is my pool view. I'm digging the architecture out here, but this building blows my mind!'

On Saturday, Ashley sizzled in a barely-there bikini as she enjoyed the blissful sunshine with a cheeky cocktail in her first holiday shot.

Ashley nailed the sexy beach babe look as she sizzled in front of the camera for her first day in the sun - showing off her phenomenal figure in the process.

Slipping into high-waisted bottoms, the blonde beauty complemented her pin-up figure with the strappy half of the bikini which was paired with a bust-enhancing bra top.

Awe-inspiring: Ashley told her social media fans she was 'digging the architecture' in the United Arab Emirates

Drawing attention to her ample cleavage, the stunning DJ and model opted for the balconette style bra which helped boost her cleavage.

As ever she showed off a cutting edge flare for fashion, the swimwear was given an edgy touch through the contrasting aztec print placed next to a camouflage pattern.

Kneeling on a beach bed, the blonde beauty beamed into the distance while sipping a drink as the balmy breeze pulled her hair off her face.

In another shot for the holiday album, ex-MIC star sizzled in a selfie in which she showed off the sky-line in the background while rocking yet another bikini.

Her blue tie-dye top stuggled to contain her ample assets as she flashed a generous hint of cleavage while showing off her dewy make-up free complexion.

Confident: Kicking back on a beach cabana, the reality showcased her toned and tanned curves as she grinned away in another snap over the weekend

Sun-drenched: Ashley sizzled in a barely-there bikini as she enjoyed the blissful sunshine with a cheeky cocktail

As she moved from the beach to the hotel room, she appeared to be getting up to plenty of frolics as she was thrown onto a sofa while joined by actors Kola Bokinni and Will Poulter, alongside her BFF and housemate, model Charlotte De Carle.

While she is living it up in the sunshine, she looked worlds away from her chagrin last week when she weighed in on the Victoria's Secret annual fashion show after it descended on Paris.

Many looked at the glam show with awe, yet Ashley took a different stance on the lingerie extravaganza as she reached out to her Instagram followers to send the message that 'beauty is confidence, not perfection'.

She stripped down to her lingerie for an empowering post, in which she urged viewers not to compare themselves to the Victoria's Secret models and to accept the fact body standards vary.

Pals: As she moved to her hotel room, she was joined by actors Kola Bokinni and Will Poulter and her best friend and housemate, model Charlotte De Carle

Stunner: Ashley has always been vocal about her body image woes, as she previously admitted to having body dysmorphia

Ashley has always been vocal about her body image woes, as she previously admitted to having body dysmorphia, a condition which causes the sufferer to have a distorted view of their looks.

In March, the blonde beauty admitted to having suffered with the condition, which she blames on her painful split from TV presenter Matt Richardson, and since the confession, she has fought to promote body confidence.

As the elite of the world's top supermodels stormed the stage at the lingerie giant's annual spectacular, it seemed Ashley was irked by the appearance of the models.

In a crusade to boost her fans, the DJ and blogger wrote a lengthy caption in which she reached out to those viewers who would put themselves down in light of the lithe and lean physiques of the VS Angels.

Posing in a tiny nude two-piece, with a sporty bra and high-rise knickers, Ashley looked into her camera while showing off her incredible curves.

Boost: In a crusade to boost her fans, the DJ and blogger recently hit out at Victoria's Secret models for their unrealistic body standards

In the accompanying caption, she penned: 'Hey ladies! If you're one of the many women sat at home looking at the Victoria Secret models and hating your body, then this is for you.

'This is my body, unedited and unfiltered. Some of you will look at me and think I look fat, whilst others might look at me and aspire to have my body.

'We all have different standards, but whether you're a size 6 or a size 22 there'll be parts of your body you hate.

'We all look in the mirror and wish we could change things, and whilst we can all strive to eat healthier and exercise more...

'I'll bet that the guy/girl we fancy would rather us have the love handles (or whatever it is you hate about yourself) and be happy, than look perfect and be miserable.

'Beauty is confidence, not perfection. #bodyconfidence #victoriasecret #vsfashionshow #girlpower.'
Ashley Greene took to Instagram on Thursday to share photos of her new engagement ring.

The 29-year-old actress earlier used the photo and video sharing sight to announce her engagement to Paul Khoury, 41.

Paul popped the question earlier this month during a trip to New Zealand.

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Engagement ring: Ashley Greene held out her engagement ring in an Instagram photo shared by her new fiance Paul Khoury on Thursday

Ashley shared two snaps of her sparkler on Instagram as fans offered their congratulations.

'I'm SO lucky and SO excited that I get to spend the rest of my life with my best friend but the ring doesn't hurt either. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen,' Ashley wrote in the caption for her roughly 750,000 followers.

Paul also posted a close-up photo of the ring as Ashley blushed in the background.

'This is the woman I'm going to spend the rest of my life with,' he wrote in the caption.

Overwhelmed: Ashley looked shocked and excited while still displaying her natural beauty during the proposal in a video she shared on Thursday

Sparkling ring: The Twilight Saga star also took to Instagram to show her engagement ring after earlier announcing her engagement to Paul

Soon to be man and wife: Paul Khoury popped the question during a trip to New Zealand earlier this month

The Twilight Saga actress earlier posted an Instagram video of the couple exploring the appropriately named Bridal Veil Falls in New Zealand.

She captioned the video: 'This is the most beautiful moment I could have ever hoped for. You've successfully made me the happiest, luckiest woman alive. I can't wait to show you my unfaltering immeasurable love for the rest of our lives. #engaged #loveofmylife #futurehusband (sic).'

Paul also posted the video and wrote: 'I promise to put a smile on your face for the rest of our lives. You complete me in ways I didnt even know was possible. I love you more than anything and excited to take this next step in life with you! #foreverlove #myfutrewife #ShesGonnaBeAKhoury (sic).'

New ring: The Twilight Saga actress' boyfriend Paul Khoury popped the question during a trip to New Zealand earlier this month

She looks naturally beautiful make-up free, with her brunette tresses in a centre parting.

The actress wore a charcoal sweater, while Paul had a black fedora covering his head.

Her new fiance is an Australian television personality, and is Liam Hemsworth's best friend.

Perfect spot: The couple were exploring the appropriately named Bridal Veil Falls at the time

Bundled up: The actress wore a charcoal sweater

Got the ring! Paul had a black fedora covering his head as he got ready for the moment

Big moment: Ashley looked surprised as Paul got down on one knee

She said yes! Paul seemed absolutely delighted

Pick up: Ashley leapt into her new fiance's arms

Look of love: The couple shared a smooch

They've been dating since 2013.

Ashley  who previously dated Joe Jonas - recently revealed she wants to start a family with Paul but hopes to enjoy being a married couple first before she gets pregnant.

She said: 'No more than three (kids). Probably two. I'm the opposite of my mom - she had us really young, and now she and my dad are able to have fun. I want to get married, enjoy that, and then when I'm ready to completely give myself to my kids, I will. But I'm a little too selfish still.'

Another victory! Ashley climbed to the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge on Thursday, visiting Down Under for her mom's birthday

All done up: Paul also posted the video and wrote: 'I promise to put a smile on your face for the rest of our lives.' Pictured early December
Japan defence minister visits Yasukuni war shrine

Japan's hawkish defence minister prayed Thursday at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo the day after accompanying Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a symbolic visit of reconciliation to Pearl Harbor, drawing condemnation from China and South Korea.

Yasukuni Shrine honours millions of mostly Japanese war dead, but is contentious for also enshrining senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes by an international tribunal.

The indigenous Shinto religious shrine has for decades been a flashpoint for criticism from countries such as South Korea and China, which suffered under Japan's colonialism and military aggression in the first half of the 20th century.

People visit Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honours millions of Japanese war dead but also senior military and political figures convicted of war crimes after World War II Kazuhiro NOGI (AFP)

Tomomi Inada's visit was her first since taking the key defence portfolio in August, though she has frequently gone in the past.

"By taking a future-oriented stance, I offered my prayers to build peace for Japan and the world," she told reporters.

She noted that Barack Obama -- "the president of a country that dropped atomic bombs" -- had gone to Hiroshima earlier this year, while Abe "voiced words to console the spirits of the dead" at Pearl Harbor, though she did not mention that Japan attacked it.

Inada made the pilgrimage the day after, in Japan time, Abe and Obama's joint visit to the site of the Japanese military's December 7, 1941 air assault on the navy base in Hawaii that drew the United States into World War II.

Inada is a close confidante of Abe, who said on a golf course that he had "no comment" on her action.

The visit, which Jiji Press and Nippon TV reported appeared to be the first by a defence chief since 2002, drew the ire of China and South Korea.

It is "deeply ironic after the so-called Pearl Harbor reconciliation tour", Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing.

"It will only make the people of the world more on-guard against Japans actions and intentions.

South Korea summoned a senior official from the Japanese embassy in Seoul to protest.

"Our government cannot but deplore" the visit, foreign ministry spokesman Cho June-Hyuck said in a statement, while in separate comments the defence ministry expressed "grave concern and regret".

- 'Abe's blessing' -

The move by Inada, who holds staunchly nationalist views, was an attempt to appease the government's conservative base after Abe's conciliatory gesture to the US, analysts said.

"As Ms Inada was present at Prime Minister Abe's visit to Hawaii, she wiped off some -- if not all -- of her reputation as a revisionist," said Tetsuro Kato, emeritus professor of Japanese politics at Hitotsubashi University.

"But she also had to address frustrations from right-wingers among her supporters," he told AFP.

Koichi Nakano, professor of politics at Sophia University and a vocal Abe critic, said Inada's decision to go to Yasukuni was not a rogue act.

"Yasukuni is not a normal Shinto shrine," he said. "Naturally, she went with Mr Abe's blessing."

The conservatism of Inada, a member of parliament from western Japan's Fukui prefecture, is well known.

She wrote in 2011 that Japan -- the only country in the world to suffer atomic bomb attacks -- should consider acquiring nuclear weapons.

In August, after becoming defence minister, she said that Japan "should not consider arming itself with nuclear weapons at this moment".

Inada argued Thursday that offering respect to war dead should be universally accepted, echoing the argument repeated by Japanese lawmakers who frequently visit Yasukuni.

Abe and Obama paid homage to the more than 2,400 Americans killed in Japan's surprise attack against the Pacific Fleet and stressed the power of reconciliation.

The prime minister's Pearl Harbor visit followed Obama's May journey to Hiroshima, the scene of the world's first atomic attack days in August 1945.

Abe has himself avoided Yasukuni after going there three years ago to commemorate his first anniversary as prime minister.

That sparked fury in Beijing and Seoul and earned a rare diplomatic rebuke from close ally Washington.

Japan's Yasukuni war shrine

US Army Brig. Gen. Spindler briefs Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Defense Minister Tomomi Inada during the Japanese leader's visit to Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii Tech Sgt. Kathrine DODD (US AIR FORCE/AFP)
Syrian war 'cancer on a global scale': incoming UN chief

The Syrian conflict "has become a cancer on a global scale", incoming UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said, while hoping Washington and Moscow overcome their differences to help end the crisis.

The war has caused "not only the suffering of the Syrian people" but also sparks "violent reactions which in some cases lead to terrorist acts", the former Portuguese premier told Portugal's SIC television channel in an interview broadcast Wednesday.

The conflict began in 2011 as an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad but quickly morphed into a civil war after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against dissent.

They Syrian conflict began in 2011 as an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad but quickly morphed into a civil war after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against dissent George OURFALIAN (AFP/File)

The war has killed more than 310,000 people and forced millions more to flee their homes.

It has since become a complex, multi-front conflict, drawing in global powers as well as militias and jihadists.

While Western powers and some regional states have backed the rebellion, Russia and Iran have thrown their full weight behind Assad's regime.
Giacomo wins Sydney-Hobart yachting race handicap win

New Zealand's Giacomo won the handicap honours Thursday in the record-breaking Sydney-Hobart yacht race after rivals were becalmed on Hobart's breathless River Derwent.

The Volvo 70 came in second fastest in line honours early Wednesday, just two hours behind triumphant Australian supermaxi Perpetual Loyal.

Both yachts sped into Hobart and easily broke the old record by hours with a time of 1 day 15hr 27min 5sec for Giacomo.

New Zealand yacht Giacomo sails in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race just after the start in Sydney harbour on December 26, 2014 PETER PARKS (AFP/File)

But soon after third-placed and Hong Kong-owned Scallywag finished the race rain began to fall and the wind dropped on the fickle Derwent river leading to Hobart.

With other leading handicap contenders tied up in the doldrums for much of Wednesday, Giacomo sat pretty on corrected time.

"Congratulations to the overall winners of the 72nd #RolexSydneyHobart - Giacomo, made up of a father, his 2 sons & a talented crew!," the race organisers tweeted Thursday afternoon.

New Zealand winemaker and Giacomo owner Jim Delegat described the win as "beyond belief".

"We're feeling wonderful, we're ecstatic and excited... The impressive, hard work of the crew was tireless. It was a race of opportunity," he said.

"I would be dishonest if I didn't say we put thought to overall victory 20 hours into the race. We identified our competitors."

Giacomo was awarded the Tattersall's Cup, handicap honours for the vessel that performs best according to size, whereas line honours are for the fastest boats.

Delegat earlier admitted the downwind conditions suited his 70-footer, allowing it to split the 100-foot Perpetual Loyal and Scallywag.

"Still, we're pretty surprised, it's not often that a 70-footer can do this, get second over the line," he said.

- 'No wind' -

Giacomo was a family affair for the Delegats, with Jim's two sons -- Nikolas, 20, and James 18 -- joining him on the yacht.

It was James Delegat's first Sydney to Hobart race and he was also the gruelling contest's youngest sailor.

The lack of wind on the last leg took care of Giacomo's rival 70-footers and the smaller boats.

Last year's overall winner Balance, a 52-footer owned by Australian Paul Clitheroe, had been running close for a second successive handicap crown before falling into the wind trap for much of Wednesday.

When Scallywag docked before dawn at Hobart's Constitution Dock, the first three home were well inside the 2012 record of one day 18hr 23min 12sec for the 628-nautical-mile (1,163-kilometre) event.

At one stage on Tuesday morning 24 yachts were running ahead of the record. But the change from the fastest times to a virtual standstill came suddenly.

The race organisers, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, described the Derwent shutdown as "a tortuous 11 miles of drifting and clawing to the finish line".

The breeze picked up Thursday, with a flurry of yachts crossing the finish line.

KLC Bengal 7's Japanese crew said the current and the lack of wind proved challenging.

"It was very difficult current, we had to really manage how strong it was in the river," navigator Yutaka Takagi said.
Broom hundred sets up New Zealand series win

Neil Broom's maiden century and the self-belief of Kane Williamson gave New Zealand a 67-run victory over Bangladesh to take the second one-day international and the series in Nelson on Thursday.

Bangladesh suffered a dramatic meltdown when they were cruising towards what should have been a comfortable victory after Broom's unbeaten 109 was the only significant score in New Zealand's 251.

The tourists reached 104 for one in the 23rd over and were all out for 184 by the 43rd, losing their last nine wickets for 80 runs.

Neil Broom scored 109 runs as New Zealand struggled to 251 against Bangladesh in the second one-day international in Nelson

The win, following New Zealand's 77-run victory in the first match, gives the home side an unbeatable 2-0 lead with one match remaining, also in Nelson, on Saturday.

With New Zealand's frontline bowlers struggling for consistency at the start of the Bangladesh innings, skipper and part-time spinner Williamson put himself into the attack as the seventh bowler and claimed three for 22 with his looping off-breaks.

Williamson described it as a "satisfying" outcome given the pressure New Zealand were under.

"They bowled outstandingly on that surface and gave us nothing for a long period of time. We certainly had to suck it up and Broomy did that and played the match-winning knock."

Williamson added his bowling effort was "a little bit fortunate. I was encouraged to bring myself on and it was nice that it came off."

For Bangladesh captain Mashrafe Mortaza there was no escaping that he had been let down by his batsmen who he said should have chased down their target.

"The bowlers did a very good job. But I'm very disappointed with the batters. One for 100 and then collapsing is obviously disappointing," he said.

- Bizarre run-out -

Williamson's triple strike was the breakthrough New Zealand needed after Imrul Kayes, Tamim Iqbal and Sabbir Rahman had given Bangladesh a solid start to their chase.

Tamim produced a quick 16 and Imrul (59) and Sabbir (38) kept the scoreboard ticking over at a constant rate.

But after Imrul brought the 100 up with a huge six off Jimmy Neesham, Sabbir was run out in bizarre fashion as he turned back going for a single and both batsmen raced for the non-striker's end.

Imrul believed he lost the race and headed for the dressing room only to be recalled when television replays showed Sabbir had grounded his bat second.

It was the start of the Bangladesh downfall with Lockie Ferguson, who dropped a sitter from Imrul on 45, bowling new batsman Mahmudullah for one with a yorker.

Williamson then entered the attack to remove Shakib Al Hasan (7), Mosaddek Hossain (3) and Tanveer Haider (2).

Debutant Nurul Hasan, standing in for injured wicketkeeper Mushfiqur Rahim, dragged the innings out with 24 before being the last wicket to fall.

Bangladesh, in an unorthodox reaction to losing the first ODI, injected three debutants into their side.

Along with Nurul, who capped his game with the smart stumping of Neesham and two sharp catches, speedster Subashis Roy took the wicket of Mitchell Santner and Tanveer took a catch to remove New Zealand's Luke Ronchi for 35.

Ronchi (35) was the second best performing New Zealand batsman and featured in a 64-run stand with Broom for the sixth wicket.

New Zealand were sent into bat after Mushrafe won the toss and decided to make early use of heavily overcast conditions.

By the time the clouds dispersed the New Zealand top order, with the exception of Broom, were already out and the tail struggled to pick up the pace.
Emirates agreement with Rolls-Royce on A380 engines

Dubai's Emirates said Thursday it has reached an agreement with Rolls-Royce over a "technical issue" relating to the engines of Airbus's A380 superjumbo, and confirmed receiving one plane this week.

The carrier also said it "will continue to receive deliveries of both A380s and (Boeing) 777s in 2017."

"Emirates can confirm that we have come to an agreement with Rolls-Royce on the technical issue relating to engines for our A380s. We have received delivery of our first Rolls-Royce powered A380s this week," a spokesperson told AFP.

Emirates airline has received its first Rolls-Royce powered Airbus A380s, after reaching an agreement over a technical issue RABIH MOGHRABI (AFP/File)

It will take delivery of two more units "before the end of this year."

Airbus said Wednesday it delivered the first A380 to Emirates equipped with a Rolls-Royce engine, a day after it said it was postponing for a year the planned delivery of 12 units.

The delay was linked to the Emirates's wish to purchase the finest Rolls-Royce engines, an informed source said.

"We continue to work closely with Airbus and Emirates Airline to satisfy their requests," a Rolls-Royce spokesman told AFP on Wednesday.

In November, Emirates complained of "technical difficulties" with the Trent 900 engines produced by the British firm for the A380.

In April 2015, Airbus selected Rolls-Royce for the lucrative deal to provide the engines for 50 of its A380s that was worth a record at the time of $9.2 billion.

Emirates, the biggest client for superjumbos, took delivery of its A380 in November and has ordered 142 in total.
Iraq forces in 'second phase' of east Mosul battle: commander

Iraqi forces launched the multi-pronged "second phase" of the battle to retake eastern Mosul from jihadists on Thursday, a top commander said.

Iraqi forces punched into eastern Mosul after the massive operation to recapture the northern city from the Islamic State group was launched on October 17, but progress slowed to a crawl.

"The second phase of liberating the left bank in Mosul was launched, and our forces began advancing toward Al-Quds neighbourhood," Staff Lieutenant General Abdulghani al-Assadi, a senior officer in Iraq's Counter-Terrorism Service, told AFP.

Iraqi forces punched into eastern Mosul after a massive operation to recapture the northern city from the Islamic State group was launched on October 17 AHMAD AL-RUBAYE (AFP)

Mosul, now the last Iraqi city in which IS still holds significant territory, is split by the Tigris River, with the east side referred to as the left bank and the west as the right.

"Now our forces clashed with the enemy and there is resistance," he said, adding that forces on the northern and southern fronts were also advancing.

Iraqi forces north and south of Mosul had so far remained outside the city, with the brunt of the fighting inside it being carried out by the CTS.

IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained much of the territory they lost to the jihadists.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had pledged that Mosul would be recaptured by year's end -- a goal that is now out of reach, as operations in western Mosul have yet to begin.
Oman joins Saudi 'anti-terror' coalition

Oman, which generally stays neutral in the face of regional disputes, has joined a Saudi-led military coalition aimed at "fighting terrorism," official media in Riyadh said Thursday.

The Gulf sultanate, which maintains good ties with rival powerhouses Iran and Saudi Arabia, becomes the 41st nation in the alliance announced last year by the Saudi defence minister, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The official SPA agency said Mohammed received a message from his Omani counterpart praising Saudi efforts in showing "leadership in the Islamic military coalition in fighting terrorism".

Yemenis carry belongings they recovered from the rubble of buildings destroyed during Saudi-led air strikes the previous day, in the rebel-held Yemeni port city of Hodeida

Oman is one of the few Arab states not to have joined a Saudi-led military coalition battling rebels in Yemen and has hosted several rounds of talks aimed at ending the conflict raging there since March 2015.
Turkey, Russia plan Syria ceasefire before New Year: Ankara

Turkey and Russia are planning to implement a countrywide ceasefire in Syria before the start of the New Year, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday.

The ceasefire could be put in place "at any moment", the minister told A Haber television after reports a day earlier that Turkey and Russia had agreed a deal.

"We are planning to secure this before the beginning of the New Year," he said, adding it was the "will of the leaders" for this to happen.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said a countrywide ceasefire in Syria could be put in place "at any moment" George OURFALIAN (AFP/File)

Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu said Wednesday that Turkey and Russia had agreed a nationwide truce plan for Syria but none of the key players in the conflict offered an immediate confirmation.

Cavusoglu said that if the ceasefire was successful, political negotiations between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and the opposition would take place in the Kazakh capital Astana.

But he insisted the Astana talks, overseen by Turkey and Russia, were not a rival to UN-backed talks that have been taking place on-and-off in Geneva in recent years.

"This is not an alternative to Geneva. It is a complementary step," said Cavusoglu.

"The talks in Astana will be under our supervision," he said, adding which groups will take part remains under discussion.

He said Ankara and Moscow continued intensive efforts to secure the ceasefire.

Russia would act as the regime's "guarantor" in any deal while Turkey would also perform a similar role.

Although Moscow and Ankara are on opposite sides in the civil war with Russia supporting Assad and Turkey calling for him to go, they have begun in the last few months to work closely on Syria.

Relations between Ankara and Moscow were normalised in June after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane on the Syrian border in November 2015.

Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from Aleppo after a ceasefire earlier this month brokered by Ankara and Moscow.

Meanwhile, Turkey stood conspicuously quiet as the regime, supported by Russia, took control last week of Aleppo, dealing the biggest defeat for the rebels in the civil war so far.
Buchheit Logistics donated the transportation of two loads of wreaths this year from Wreaths Across America.

The journey started in the beginning of December when Buchheit Logistics drivers John White and Jim Griffaw headed to Maine to pick up wreaths to lay on the headstones of fallen soldiers.

John White is a native of St. James, Missouri and joined the United States Marine Corps in 2007. In 2009, he was deployed to Iraq where he was stationed at Al Asad Air Base. He was honorably discharged after serving in the USMC for four years and began working at Buchheit Logistics in 2013.

Jim Griffaw a Cape Girardeau, Missouri native joined the Army in 1986. He was assigned to patrol the Korean Demilitarized Zone from 1986-1987. Ten months after his enlistment in the Army had ended, Jim was recalled from the IRR in support of Operation Desert Storm. Jim has been working for Buchheit Logistics for the past 12 years.

Both drivers returned from Maine the second week of December and were greeted with a warm welcome. On Wednesday, Dec. 14, John White was escorted by police, American Legion Riders, Patriot Guard Riders, and other supporters as he headed to Camp Butler National Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. From Springfield, the wreaths will be distributed to Camp Butler National Cemetery, Oak Ridge Cemetery Memorials.

On Dec. 17, 40-year Buchheit Team Member and Army Veteran, Howard Hall delivered wreaths to Mound City to be distributed to Mound City National Cemetery. On Dec. 15, Jim Griffaw was escorted to Bloomfield, Missouri and wreaths will be distributed to Missouri State Veterans Cemetery, the American Legion in Benton, St. Denis Cemetery, Old Benton Cemetery, St. Lawrence Church Cemetery, Lightner Cemetery, and St. Joseph Cemetery. The wreaths were laid by volunteers on National Wreaths Across America Day on Dec. 17, following a wreath laying ceremony.

Recently, Buchheit of Herculaneum department managers Abby Miller and Toni Slinger presented a wreath to the local AMVETS Post 42 1st Vice President Tim Ohnesorge. A Wreaths Across America display is available for viewing at all Buchheit locations.

In 1992, Wreaths Across America was founded by Maine business, Morrill Worcester to continue and expand the annual wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington Nation Cemetery. The organization's mission "remember, honor, teach" is carried out each year by coordinating wreath-laying ceremonies each December at Arlington, as well as hundreds of veterans' cemeteries across the nation. Now a 501(c)(e) non-for-profit and national organization, they lay wreaths in over 900 cemeteries throughout the United States.

In 2015, Buchheit Logistics donated a transport of wreaths for the first time, to honor our fallen veterans and Logistics driver and Army Veteran Thomas Tinnin picked up and delivered the wreaths.
Floods in DR Congo kill at least 50: provincial governor

Floods triggered by heavy rains and a river bursting its banks have killed at least 50 people and left thousands more homeless in southwestern Congo, a provincial governor said Thursday.

Torrential rains caused the Kalamu river, which flows through the city of Boma into the River Congo, to overflow for two hours before the waters receded, washing some of the victims across the border into Angola.

The waters left parts of the city, Democratic Republic of Congo's sole Atlantic port, covered in up to a metre of mud and a search was under way to dig out more bodies that may be buried.

Map of the Democratic Republic of Congo locating Kongo province where flooding has killed at least 50 people according to a provincial governor AFP (AFP)

"The rains on the night of Monday to Tuesday in Boma have caused at least 50 deaths," Jacques Mbadu, governor of Kongo Central province told AFP.

"We buried 31 bodies on Wednesday and we expect to get about 20 more bodies back today that ended up across the border in Angola," Mbadu added.

Mbadu said the waters hit a peak of two metres (six feet) above their usual level, destroying at least 500 homes and leaving several thousand people homeless.

Boma, which lies near the mouth of the River Congo around 470 kilometres (300 miles) southwest of the capital Kinshasa, is home to between 150,000 and 200,000 people.

"This is a cyclical phenomenon which happens every 10 years. It last happened in January 2015 but with climate change it's now happened again in December 2016," Mbadu said.

- 'Like a tsunami' -

Locals told AFP that two of the city's three districts were still covered in mud, up to a metre deep in some places, and described tragic scenes as the waters rushed dramatically into their houses.

"I lost my two children, carried off by the waters, which rose up to three metres like a tsunami. I could only watch them as they were washed away," Faustin Lutete, a government employee, said.

Fisherman Jean-Marie Kola said he just had time to "run far away, as our house was showing signs of fragility. It collapsed later."

Shopkeeper Camille Inonga said he had "lost everything" in the flash floods.

"My shop is covered in mud. I can't get in there. This is a whole life gone up in smoke," he said.

Provincial governor Mbadu said the authorities were encouraging those left homeless by the floods to seek shelter with relatives to avoid "creating more problems", rather than putting them in reception centres.

He said he had been working with a Dutch company to divert the "waters of the Congo river, whose enormous flow puts pressure on the Kalamu, to try to prevent these floods happening again."

Congolese towns and cities are typically built up in a haphazard fashion and government services to deal with natural disasters are practically non-existent.

Floods in Kinshasa in December 2015 left more than 30 people dead and 20,000 families homeless, most of them in the capital's slums, where residents were left to battle with their bare hands through noxious mud, slime and fecal matter.
Thai junta grants king power to appoint top monk

Thailand's military government on Thursday granted the king power to appoint the Buddhist country's top monk, a move aimed at resolving a bitter power struggle over the venerated post.

The position of Supreme Patriarch has been left open for several years as Thailand's Buddhist factions tussle over a successor.

Thai junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha has refrained from endorsing the front-runner nominated by the kingdom's ruling council of monks, a body known as the Sangha.

Thai Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn ascended to the throne after a ceremony in Bangkok, on December 1, 2016

The 91-year-old nominee, Somdet Phra Maha Ratchamangkhlacharn, has drawn criticism from some circles for his perceived links to the scandal-hit Dhammakaya sect.

Critics say the breakaway order emphasises materialism and many mainstream Buddhists fear it is poised to take over the nation's faith.

On Thursday Thailand's rubber-stamp parliament approved an amendment that hands the king power to appoint any monk for the post -- thereby cutting out the vote of the Sangha.

Lawmaker Somchai Swangkarn denied that the move was calculated to block the rise of Phra Ratchamangkhlacharn, who is also facing a probe for alleged tax evasion on a luxury car.

"The amendment of this law is not to prevent any single person," he said after the amendment sailed through the junta-appointed parliament in three rapid-fire readings.

While the move opens up a path for a new monk to lead the faith, little is known about who Thailand's King Maha Vajiralongkorn might favour.

The rancorous battle over the patriarch post is only the latest controversy to dog the clergy in a country where 95 percent of the population are Buddhist.

Monks routinely make lurid headlines for their lavish lifestyles, sex scandals and gambling.
Syria army, opposition confirm nationwide truce

Syria's army said Thursday it would halt all military operations from midnight under a truce deal brokered by Russia and Turkey and supported by a leading Syrian opposition body.

The agreement was announced earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin who said the Syrian regime and "main forces of the armed opposition" had signed on.

"The general command of the armed forces announces a complete halt to all hostilities on Syrian territory from the zero hour of December 30th," Syria's army said in a statement carried on state television.

Syrians soldiers sit by a fire in the former rebel-held Ansari district of Aleppo, on December 23, 2016 George Ourfalian (AFP/File)

It said that the ceasefire excluded the Islamic State group and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fateh al-Sham Front.

The National Coalition, a leading Syrian political opposition group based in Turkey, confirmed its backing for the truce.

"The National Coalition expresses support for the agreement and urges all parties to abide by it," spokesman Ahmed Ramadan told AFP.

He said key rebel groups including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham and Army of Islam factions had signed the ceasefire deal, though there was no immediate confirmation from rebel representatives.

"The agreement includes a ceasefire in all areas held by the moderate opposition, or by the moderate opposition and elements from Fateh al-Sham, such as Idlib province," he told AFP.

Idlib, in northwest Syria, is controlled by an alliance of rebel groups led by Fateh al-Sham.

The group, in its previous incarnation as Al-Nusra, was designated a "terrorist" organisation by countries including the United States, as well as the United Nations.

The ceasefire agreement follows the recapture by Syria's government of the country's second city Aleppo from rebels, in the worst blow to opposition forces since the war began.

It will be the first nationwide halt in fighting since a week-long truce from September 12-19 that collapsed after several incidents of violence.

A previous truce was implemented in February. Both of those deals were organised by Russia and the United States.

The latest agreement is the first nationwide ceasefire brokered with the involvement of Turkey, a backer of the Syrian opposition.

Russia is a key supporter of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and began a military intervention in support of his government in September 2015.

Despite backing opposing sides in the conflict, and a souring of relations after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane last year, Ankara and Moscow have worked increasingly closely on Syria.

They jointly brokered a ceasefire for Aleppo this month that allowed the last remaining rebels and civilians in the city's east to leave to opposition territory elsewhere.

More than 310,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with protests against Assad's government.

Successive bids to reach a peace deal to end the conflict have failed, but Moscow has said it is planning to convene new negotiations in Kazakhstan.
IS military leader killed in Syria air strike: Pentagon

A key military commander for the Islamic State group in Syria has been killed in an air strike carried out by the US-led coalition, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti died Monday near Tabqa Dam, west of the IS stronghold of Raqa, according to a statement from Centcom, the US military command in the Middle East.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, described al-Kuwaiti as the "number two military commander for IS in Syria."

Islamic State jihadists made Raqa their de-facto capital after seizing control of the northern Syrian city in 2014

The jihadi commander led battles in Iraq and Syria, and was most recently assigned to Raqa where he oversaw attacks on the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Observatory said.

The SDF, an Arab-Kurdish alliance backed by US ground and air forces, launched an offensive to retake Raqa in early November.

Al-Kuwaiti was involved in using suicide vehicles, IEDs and chemical weapons against the SDF, Centcom said.

He was previously a member of the IS "War Committee" and involved in the group's retaking of the central Syrian city of Palmyra on December 11, just eight months after the army backed by Russia drove them out.
What do the Israelis and Palestinians want?

The decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict has returned to the spotlight after a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements and a major speech by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

On Wednesday, Kerry warned Israel's ongoing settlement growth is threatening the prospect of a final peace deal with the Palestinians -- the so-called two-state solution.

What is the two-state solution?

All Israeli settlements are viewed as illegal under international law and major stumbling blocks to peace efforts AHMAD GHARABLI (AFP/File)

The idea dates back to 1947, a year before the creation of Israel, when the United Nations voted for partition of the land then known as British Mandate Palestine into two states -- one Jewish in nature and the other Arab.

After a war in 1967 Israel seized control of much of the Arab land, the largest part being the West Bank.

In the early 1990s peace talks led to the Oslo accords, which were meant to lead to an independent Palestinian state on the rough basis of the UN lines. However the state has failed to materialise, with the two sides trading blame.

In the meantime Israel has built dozens of settlements in the West Bank, with more than 400,000 Israelis now living in them, while around 2.6 million Palestinians live in the same territory.

They are seen as a major obstacle to peace and last week a UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements passed 14-0 after the United States unusually decided not to use its veto.

Are both sides still committed?

Officially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is still committed to the two-state solution but has also said his government, seen as the most right-wing in Israel's history, is the most pro-settlement ever.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the far right Jewish Home party, has led the charge against the two state solution -- calling for annexation of most of the West Bank, which would effectively render a Palestinian state impossible.

On the Palestinian side, president Mahmud Abbas is committed to the idea of two states and has backed a French peace initiative.

The Palestinian people appear increasingly sceptical -- a poll this month found nearly two-thirds no longer believe the two-state solution as viable.

The second part of the Palestinian territory, the Gaza Strip, is run by Islamist movement Hamas -- which refuses to recognise Israel.

Can negotiations restart?

A Kerry-led peace initiative collapsed in 2014 and negotiations have been at a standstill since.

Netanyahu says he is willing to hold bilateral talks with Abbas any time without preconditions but the Palestinians demand a suspension of settlement building beforehand, a claim Abbas reiterated Wednesday.

The Israel government also demands that the Palestinians recognise Israel specifically as a Jewish state.

For the Palestinians, doing so could preempt negotiations on the so-called right of return, the demand that Palestinian refugees from the time of Israel's creation in 1948 be allowed back under a peace deal.

France plans to hold an international peace conference on January 15 including some 70 nations with the aim of setting out a plan for restarting negotiations.

Israel opposes the conference and calls for direct talks. The Palestinians support it, saying years of negotiations have not ended the occupation.

Jewish settlements in the West Bank AFP (AFP)

US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Israel's ongoing settlement growth is threatening the prospect of a final peace deal with the Palestinians, during a keynote address on December 28, 2016 Zach Gibson (Getty/AFP)
SEC probes Mozambique debt sold by Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas

A US market regulator is probing the sale of $850 million in Mozambique government bonds used to purchase military equipment, which involved three major banks, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking information from investors on the 2013 bond issue which was arranged by Credit Suisse and the Russian bank VTB Group on behalf of a Mozambique state enterprise, the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

France's multinational bank BNP Paribas also helped sell the debt, mainly to US investment funds, but did not arrange the loans, the source said.

In April, Mozambican press reports revealed the existence of $1.4 billion in undisclosed public debts incurred since 2013 by state enterprises in deals overseen by Credit Suisse and VTB FABRICE COFFRINI (AFP/File)

The borrowing was intended for the purchase of fishing boats and coastal security, according to information given to subscribers, but also was used to buy military equipment, the source said.

The SEC has yet to request information from the three banks, according to a second source, but has written to bondholders asking them to share the information the banks provided at the time of the bond sale.

Representatives of the SEC and BNP declined to comment, while Credit Suisse did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The probe opens a new chapter in a scandal of hidden debts which has rocked Mozambique, one of the world's poorest countries, for months.

In April, Mozambican press reports revealed the existence of $1.4 billion in undisclosed public debts incurred since 2013 by state enterprises in deals overseen by Credit Suisse and VTB.

The debt carried a state guarantee even though lawmakers had not approved it, contrary to the constitution, according to the Swiss think tank Kontrapunkt.

Mozambique authorities later admitted that the funds from the bond issue, deliberately hidden from parliament, were used to purchased defense equipment.

As a result of the revelation, the International Monetary Fund suspended lending to the country, which is currently facing a fiscal crisis. However, the fund is holding talks with the government to restart the financial aid.

The Swiss financial market regulator Finma opened an investigation earlier this year in Credit Suisse's role in the matter, according to Contrepoint.

In October, Mozambique acknowledged that the debt is now unsustainable and requires refinancing.

But investors, which include the American investment firms AllianceBernstein LP, Franklin Templeton Investments and Greylock Capital, have resisted, claiming they already have allowed the postponement of initial repayments.

Bondholders have formed a committee to represent their interests, saying they were not informed that their investment would support military sales.

The Fitch ratings agency in November said Mozambique had officially defaulted on its debts, and was $175 million in arrears.
New York to allow religious police to wear beards and turbans

New York police officers will be allowed to wear beards and turbans while in uniform in accordance with their religion, a measure long demanded by Sikh and Muslim officers.

Sikh policemen in New York who request to do so will now be able to wear standard-length turbans, provided they are blue. They had previously been limited to wearing small turbans that fit under regular police caps.

Sikh and Muslim policemen will also be allowed to grow beards up to half an inch (1.3 centimeters) long, instead of the one millimeter currently allowed.

Sikh policemen in New York who request to do so will now be able to wear standard-length turbans, provided they are blue Drew Angerer (Getty/AFP/File)

"We're making this change to make sure that we allow everybody in New York City that wants to apply and have the opportunity to work in the greatest police department in the nation, to make sure we give them that opportunity," US media quoted Commissioner James O'Neill as saying in a speech to graduating recruits of the Police Academy late Wednesday.

"We want to make the NYPD as diverse as possible, and I think this is going to go a long way to help us with that."

Only a few US municipal police forces currently allow officers to have facial hair and wear turbans, including Washington and Riverside, California, according to The New York Times.

The revised policy, expected to be finalized next month, comes after a Muslim policeman filed a complaint against New York police last summer when he was suspended for wearing a beard that did not comply with regulations.
Morocco arrests 5 for 'celebrating' Russia envoy death

Morocco has arrested five youth members of the premier's Islamist party who allegedly celebrated last week's murder of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, a party source said Thursday.

Authorities arrested the five from the youth movement of Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane's Justice and Development Party (PJD), the source said, after the assassination of Andrei Karlov on December 19.

The Akhbar Al-Yaoum daily reported a sixth person had been called in for questioning.

The casket of slain Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov is pictured during his funeral ceremony in Moscow on December 22, 2016 Alexander NEMENOV (AFP/File)

The PJD, whose leader has been tasked with forming a new governing coalition after winning October parliamentary polls, has yet to comment on the arrests.

But the head of the party's lawyer association, Abdessamad al-Idrissi, said he would be defending those detained.

Under Moroccan law, the crime of justifying terrorist acts can be punished by up to six years in prison and more than $19,000 in fines.

On December 22, the justice and interior ministries said they were opening an investigation after a group of people "clearly celebrated on social media the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Turkey".

In early December, Benkirane caused a diplomatic stir by criticising Russia's military intervention in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Tunisia premier says returning jihadists will be arrested

Tunisia's Prime Minister Youssef Chahed on Thursday said all jihadists returning from foreign battlefields would be immediately arrested and judged according to the country's counter-terrorism law.

"The Tunisian state has not signed any deal on the return of terrorists and the government's position on the matter is clear: it does not support the return from areas of tension," Chahed told state television El Wataniya.

"Those who do return will be immediately arrested on their arrival to Tunisian territory and will be judged. And the counter-terrorism law will be applied against them," said the premier, who met President Beji Caid Essebsi on Thursday afternoon.

Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, pictured in November 2016, said Tunisia "has lists of all (Tunisian) terrorists who are in areas of tension and who have been part of terrorist organisations" FETHI BELAID (AFP/File)

Concern about the return of jihadists has risen since Tunisian Anis Amri, 24, was identified as the suspected attacker who mowed down 11 people with a truck at a Berlin Christmas market last week and also killed the driver.

Chahed said Tunisia "has lists of all (Tunisian) terrorists who are in areas of tension and who have been part of terrorist organisations. We know each and every one of them and have all the data on them."

His comments came after a ministerial meeting to decide on an action plan to tackle the issue did not take place on Thursday as planned.

Last week, Interior Minister Hedi Majdoub told parliament that 800 jihadists had already returned from the front lines, stressing however that the authorities have them on their radar.

Despite such assurances, Tunisians rallied outside parliament at the weekend to protest against allowing jihadists back into the country.

Politicians and their parties have expressed similar concerns, criticising the authorities' inaction.

The national union of internal security forces has called on the government to strip Tunisian jihadists of their nationality.

Essebsi said in early December that his country was "taking all the necessary measures" to ensure that jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq are "neutralised".

But, citing the constitution, he said the authorities could not prevent a Tunisian from returning to their country.
Australian police seize 1 ton of cocaine, arrest 15 men

SYDNEY (AP)  Australian officials seized more than a ton of cocaine worth about 360 million Australian dollars ($260 million) in what police on Thursday dubbed one of the largest drug busts in the nation's history.

Fifteen men were arrested following a 2 -year federal and state police investigation into suspected drug trafficking by commercial fishermen in Sydney, New South Wales police said in a statement.

In March, officials seized 600 kilograms (1,300 pounds) of cocaine in the South Pacific island nation of Tahiti that police say was bound for the Australian market. On Sunday, police seized 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of cocaine that was found on a boat in the town of Brooklyn, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Sydney. The drugs are believed to have come from South America.

A police officer guards a haul of drugs that are on display at an Australian Federal Police office in Sydney, Australia, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016. Officials have seized more than a ton of cocaine worth about 360 million Australian dollars ($260 million) in what police have dubbed one of the largest drug busts in the nation's history. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)

"The size of that seizure collectively makes it the largest cocaine seizure in Australian law enforcement history," Australian Federal Police Acting Assistant Commissioner Chris Sheehan told reporters. "The criminal syndicate we have dismantled over the last few days was a robust, resilient and determined syndicate."

In early December, police and border officials began monitoring a vessel that was traveling between Sydney's popular fish markets and the central coast of New South Wales. On Christmas night, police say a small boat was launched from the vessel and later docked in Brooklyn. Authorities swooped on the boat and arrested three men. Another 12 men were arrested over the past several days.

All of the men have been charged with conspiracy to import a commercial quantity of border-controlled drugs. If convicted, they could face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
A New Years Day tradition for many people across the nation as well as here in Missouri, more than 30 free, guided hikes will take place on the trails of Missouris state parks and historic sites throughout the state on Jan. 1.

The hikes are a part of Americas State Parks First Day Hikes, which gives park visitors the opportunity to start the year off right with some fresh air, exercise and a pleasant way to bring in the New Year with family and friends while connecting with the outdoors.

As a part of the national tradition, people from all 50 states are expected to mark the New Year with a hike in a state park. In Missouri, the guided hikes range in length from a half mile to four miles and take place on trails with a variety of terrain, from thick forests and rising hills, to the open prairie.

Two Parkland area parks are hosting a First Day Hike.

The hike at St. Joe State Park will start at 1 p.m. at the Trail parking lot at Pim Day Use Trail.

Another hike will take place at Washington State Park, also beginning at 1 p.m., at Thunderbird Lodge. Hikers will tackle the 1,000 Step Trail, which is approximately 1.5 miles long. In case of inclement weather, the hike will start at the interpretive center near the north entrance to the park.

Hikers planning on enjoying a First Day Hike should make sure to dress appropriately for the weather and the terrain of their chosen park trails.

For more information on First Day Hikes, as well as all Missouri state parks and historic sites, visit mostateparks.com. For more information about each First Day Hike across the state, visit mostateparks.com/page/59235/first-day-hikes.

For information on the national First Day Hikes initiative, visit americasstateparks.org.

The Parklands beautiful state parks are among those around the state that have been seeing significant increases in the number of visitors this past year.

Gov. Jay Nixon announced recently that more than 20 million people visited Missouri State Parks in 2016, setting a new state attendance record and marking the first time that milestone has been achieved.

In 2009, the governor set out to reverse a decade-long decline in state park attendance by embarking on an initiative to improve the parks and set a goal of 20 million annual visitors in the parks by 2016.

Missourians recognize the natural treasures we have in our state parks, and again supported the renewal of the Parks, Soil and Water sales tax with its highest margin ever just last month, Gov. Nixon said. In turn, weve not only invested millions of dollars to maintain our parks and enhance the experiences of visitors, weve expanded our park system at the same time other states are closing or even selling their state parks. And as always, theres no admission fee to enter and enjoy Missouri State Parks.

Five parks in the Parkland region were among the parks across the state which saw significant gains in attendance during 2016.

Elephant Rocks State Park has had more than 345,000 visitors so far this year, up from 300,000 last year. St. Francois State Park has had more than 294,000 visitors, up from 265,000. St. Joe State Park received more than 629,000 visitors, up from 579,000 visitors last year.

Johnsons Shut-Ins State Park, likewise, saw an increase over last year with more than 365,000 visitors so far this year, up from 318,000. Washington State Park saw more than 271,000 visitors, up from 214,000.

Other parks seeing significant attendance gains in 2016 were:

- Castlewood State Park, which has had more than 775,000 visitors (up from 660,000 in 2015)

- Dr. Edmund A. Babler State Park, which has had more than 675,000 visitors (up from 298,000)

- Long Branch State Park, which has had more than 442,000 visitors (up from 395,000)

- Mastodon State Historic Site, which has had more than 553,000 visitors (up from 480,000)

- Onondaga Cave State Park, which has had more than 315,000 visitors (up from 254,000)

- Sam A. Baker State Park, which has had more than 1,264,000 visitors (up from 1,097,000)

- Table Rock State Park, which has had more than 1,224,000 visitors (up from 1,033,000)

- Trail of Tears State Park, which has had more than 152,000 visitors (up from 105,000)

- Watkins Mill State Park & State Historic Site, which has had 493,000 visitors (up from 454,000)

- Weston Bend State Park, which has had 236,000 visitors (up from 181,000)

In July, Gov. Nixon dedicated Echo Bluff State Park in Shannon County. The new park has brought in more than 300,000 visitors during its first five months of operation, according to state officials, and has also become a driver of the local economy through construction jobs at the park site before it opened as well as the dozens of jobs established to staff the park.

In other parks news, on Dec. 10, the governor opened 47.5 miles of trail between Pleasant Hill and Windsor along the Rock Island spur of the Katy Trail State Park, enabling hikers and bicyclists to travel cross-state from the Kansas City area all the way to the St. Louis area along the Katy Trail.

Also recently, Gov. Nixon announced that Missouri is adding three new state parks: Bryant Creek State Park in Douglas County, Eleven Point State Park in Oregon County, and Ozark Mountain State Park in Taney County. With the addition of these parks, there will be a total of 91 Missouri state parks and historic sites.

Missouri trails and state parks are important drivers of tourism and economic activity; earlier this month, Gov. Nixon announced the total number of visitors to Missouri hit an all-time record of 41.7 million. An economic impact study found that visitors to state parks produced an overall economic impact of $1.02 billion and supported more than 14,000 Missouri jobs.

Gov. Nixon has also made a significant investment in the existing state parks and historic sites that make up the park system. During fiscal years 2014 and 2015, approximately $18 million was invested in improving and maintaining facilities in the park system. An additional $10 million in investments in improvements to state parks and historic sites throughout Missouri is currently being made through a strategic bond issuance.

Missouri voters overwhelming reapproved Missouris Parks, Soils and Water sales tax at the November ballot box by its highest margin ever, with 80 percent of voters supporting the initiative. Missouris Parks, Soils and Water sales tax is the primary source of funding for Missouris state parks and historic sites.
Japan's defense minister visits Yasukuni after Pearl Harbor

TOKYO (AP)  Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, just back from a visit to Pearl Harbor, has visited a Tokyo shrine that honors Japan's war dead, including convicted war criminals.

The visit Thursday, and one by another Cabinet minister the day before, drew rebukes from neighboring South Korea and China.

Earlier this week, Inada accompanied Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his visit to Hawaii's Pearl Harbor, where he offered condolences to those who died in the Japanese attack there in 1941.

Japan's Defense Minister Tomomi Inada visits Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese war dead, in Tokyo Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016. (Yosuke Mizuno/Kyodo News via AP)

Japan's Asian neighbors harbor bitter memories of the country's atrocities before and during World War II, when it colonized or invaded much of the region. So visits by top Japanese leaders to the shrine often draw complaints from countries such as China and South Korea that see them as attempts to whitewash that history of wartime aggression.

Since drawing complaints when he visited Yasukuni in December 2013, Abe has instead sent gifts of money and religious ornaments.

Japan's Kyodo News service reported that Abe, who was golfing outside Tokyo, refused comment when asked about Inada's visit.

The defense minister doffed her shoes on her way into the shrine, and afterward told waiting journalists, "Regardless of differences in historical views, regardless of whether they fought as enemies or allies, I believe any country can understand that we wish to express gratitude, respect and gratitude to those who sacrificed their lives for their countries."

China's CCTV news and its official Xinhua News Agency remarked on the timing of the visit, just after Inada's return from Hawaii.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry said it was "deplorable" that Inada had visited a shrine that "beautifies past colonial invasions and invasive war and honors war criminals."

The ministry also called in Kohei Maruyama, a minister at the Japanese Embassy in South Korea, to lodge protest over the Yasukuni visit, to protest over the Yasukuni visit.

The country's Defense Ministry expressed "serious concern and regret."

Inada's visit was her first since becoming defense minister last summer, though she has regularly visited it in the past. A lawyer-turned-lawmaker with little experience in defense, she is one of Abe's proteges and backer of his long-cherished hope to revise Japan's Constitution. She has said parts of the war-renouncing Article 9 should be scrapped, arguing that they could be interpreted as banning Japan's military.

Inada has defended Japan's wartime atrocities, including forcing many Asian women into sexual servitude in military-run brothels, and has led a party committee to re-evaluate the judgment of war tribunals led by the victorious Allies.

Her link to a notorious anti-Korea group was acknowledged by a court this year in a defamation case she lost. Inada also was seen posing with the leader of a neo-Nazi group in a 2011 photo that surfaced in the media in 2014.

Masahiro Imamura, Japan's disaster reconstruction minister, went to Yasukuni on Wednesday, drawing criticism from Beijing.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, said his visit "reflects the Japanese government's unhealthy attitude toward its past transgressions."

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Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul contributed.
Broom century, Williamson wickets, lead NZ over Bangladesh

NELSON, New Zealand (AP)  An unbeaten maiden century by Neil Broom guided New Zealand to a 67-run win over Bangladesh in the second one-day international on Thursday and a winning 2-0 lead in the three-match series.

Broom's 109 not out held together a disjointed batting performance after New Zealand lost the toss, with the hosts scoring a modest 251.

He then held two important catches and captain Kane Williamson took three wickets in a rare bowling appearance as Bangladesh collapsed spectacularly to be all out for 184 in 42.4 overs.

Bangladesh seemed to be cruising to victory when Imrul Kayes (59) and Sabbir Rahman (38) combined in a 75-run partnership for the second wicket which lifted the tourists to 105-1 in the 23rd over.

But when Sabbir was run out at that score in an epic mix-up which left both batsman at the same end, Bangladesh's effort wilted and it lost its next six wickets for 36.

Bangladesh still has never won an ODI against New Zealand on home soil.

"In comparison to the last match the bowlers have done a really good job," captain Masrafe Mortaza said.

"On this sort of wicket to get them for 250 was pretty good, but it was obviously disappointing with the bat. To be 1-100, then to collapse is disappointing.

"If you look at the wicket I think it was a lot better than the last one and the batters should have been able to chase that total down."

Williamson seemed to have misused his bowlers when he bowled the allrounder Colin Munro ahead of the young speedster Lockie Ferguson. But he pulled off a stroke of genius when he took the ball himself and ran through the Bangladesh middle order, dismissing Shakib Al Hasan (7), Tanbir Haider (2) and Masaddek Hossain (3).

He also participated in the runout of Sabbir which broke the critical partnership of the innings and held a catch to dismiss Mortaza for 17.

Wicketkeeper Luke Ronchi also had a good day, stumping Tanbir and Taskin Ahmed (0), taking a catch to remove the troublesome Nurul Hasan (24) and contributing to the runout of Sabbir.

Williamson finished with 3-22, Trent Boult with 2-26 and Tim Southee with 2-33.

"I was a little bit fortunate with my bowling," Williamson said. "The pitch suited the slower bowlers so I was encouraged to bring myself on and it was good that it came off.

"As a collective the bowlers bowled really, really well. It was the sort of surface on which if you could build a bit of pressure and put the ball on a good length for a long period of time then things could happen."

Broom, 32, was recalled to the New Zealand team for the current three-match series after a six year absence and his position at No. 4 in the order was far from certain when he made only 22 in the first match on Monday which New Zealand won by 77 runs.

Though he rushed through the 90s, going from 92 to 98 with a six off Mortaza, Broom faced a nervous moment when New Zealand's ninth wicket fell when he was 99. No. 11 Boult survived the last ball of the over and Broom went to his century from the first ball of the 48th over.

His innings, which included eight fours and three sixes, held together a batting effort in which the New Zealand middle order also failed. The next best score was 35 from 38 balls by Ronchi with whom he added 64 for the sixth wicket.
Police arrest man in New York City tourist stabbing

NEW YORK (AP)  Police have arrested a suspect in the random stabbing of a tourist in New York City earlier this month.

Twenty-three-year-old Connor Rasmussen, of Puyallup (pyoo-AL'-up), Washington, was stabbed in the back of the head on Dec. 18.

Police announced the arrest Wednesday of 20-year-old Steven Tlapanco on charges of attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

Rasmussen was attacked in the early morning hours, just blocks from popular tourist spots including Rockefeller Center and Grand Central Terminal.

Rasmussen said his assailant stabbed him without saying a word. He required eight stitches.

Police arrested Tlapanco after releasing surveillance photos and video footage from the attack.
Iraqi troops resume Mosul fight after 2-week lull

MOSUL, Iraq (AP)  Breaking a two-week lull in fighting, Iraqi troops backed by the U.S.-led coalition's airstrikes and artillery pushed deeper into eastern Mosul on Thursday in a multi-pronged assault against Islamic State militants in the city.

Elite special forces pushed into the Karama and Quds neighborhoods, while army troops and federal police advanced into the nearby Intisar, Salam and Sumor neighborhoods. Columns of dark smoke rose overhead as explosions shook the city and heavy machine gun fire echoed through the streets.

Stiff resistance by the militants, civilians trapped inside their houses and bad weather have slowed advances in the more than two-month-old offensive to recapture Iraq's second largest city, the extremist group's last urban bastion in the country. It is the biggest Iraqi military operation since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Iraqi army and special forces commanders gather to discuss battle plans in the eastern section of Mosul, Iraq, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016. Iraqi troops backed by U.S.-led airstrikes pushed deeper into eastern Mosul on Thursday in a multi-pronged assault after a two-week lull in the operation to retake the Islamic State-held city. (AP Photo/Hamza Hendawi)

The battle began around 7 a.m. on a bright but chilly December day and continued until shortly before sundown.

The counterterrorism forces, also known as the Golden Brigade, captured about half of the Quds neighborhood by early afternoon.

A statement by the U.S.-led coalition said Thursday's offensive opened two new fronts in eastern Mosul, increasing pressure on the militants' "dwindling ability to generate forces, move fighters or resupply."

It said that, at the request of the Iraqi government, coalition warplanes had "re-struck" two bridges over the Tigris River in Mosul on Tuesday, and a day earlier "disabled" the last bridge crossing in the city.

"The strikes were conducted to reduce enemy freedom of movement, and to further disrupt ISIL's ability to reinforce, resupply, or use vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices in East Mosul," said the statement.

Another coalition statement said an airstrike Thursday that targeted a van used by IS fighters in Mosul was later determined to have been located at a hospital's parking lot, "resulting in possible civilian casualties."

The coalition, it added, "takes all allegations of civilian casualties seriously and this incident will be fully investigated and the findings released in a timely and transparent manner." It was not immediately known how many, if any, were hurt by the airstrike.

Coalition airstrikes have been crucial in the fight against IS in Iraq, but a report released earlier this month by Airwars, a London-based project that tracks the coalition's airstrikes, criticized the coalition's lack of transparency when assessing civilian casualties.

While U.S. officials have acknowledged that 173 civilians have died in coalition airstrikes since the launch of the campaign against IS in the summer of 2014, the Airwars group said the number of civilian casualties is much greater, putting it at at least 1,500.

Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, commander of Iraq's the special forces in eastern Mosul, said his forces have been bolstered by reinforcements and are were less than 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the Tigris River, which slices the city in half.

The special forces, officially known as the Counter Terrorism Service, have done most of the fighting, pushing in from the east. But regular army troops on the city's southeast and northern edges, as well as militarized federal police farther west, have not moved in weeks, unable to penetrate the city.

The troops have faced grueling urban fighting, often house to house against IS militants who have had more than two years to dig in and prepare. Even in districts that have been recaptured, Iraqi troops have faced surprise attacks, shelling and car bombs. The extremists have launched more than 900 car bombs against Iraqi troops in and around Mosul. Al-Saadi said 260 of them had targeted his men.

He said he expected Iraqi forces would drive IS from Mosul and the rest of Nineveh province within three months. Iraqi leaders had previously vowed to drive the extremists from Mosul by the end of the year.

IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014, when it swept across much of northern and central Iraq, and the group's leader declared the establishment of its self-styled caliphate from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque.

The city is still home to around a million people. Some 120,000 have fled since the operation began on Oct. 17, according to the United Nations.

Meanwhile on Thursday, separate attacks in and around Baghdad killed at least 13 people and wounded 35 others, police said. The deadliest attack took place in the capital's southwestern neighborhood of Maalif when an explosives-laden vest was detonated near an outdoor market, killing seven and wounding 12, police added.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.

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Associated Press writer Murtada Faraj in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Civilians walk past while Iraqi special forces inspect frontline defenses in the eastern section of Mosul, Iraq, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016. Iraqi troops backed by U.S.-led airstrikes pushed deeper into eastern Mosul on Thursday in a multi-pronged assault after a two-week lull in the operation to retake the Islamic State-held city. (AP Photo/Hamza Hendawi)
Maimed lions show challenges of recovery in Mozambican park

GORONGOSA NATIONAL PARK, Mozambique (AP)  They are amputees, lions that lost paws to wire snares or metal-jaw traps set by poachers.

The 10 or so maimed carnivores represent one-sixth of the lions currently monitored in this flagship national park. These survivors, rescued, treated and released by park staff, highlight the pressures of rebuilding a lion population that was almost wiped out during a civil war that ended in 1992.

It is one of conservation's more dramatic stories in Africa, where many lion populations are dwindling as a growing human presence pushes into wild areas.

In this undated photo supplied by Gorongosa Lion Project a three-month-old lion cub is shown in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. Some lions in the park have lost paws to wire snares or metal-jaw traps set by poachers, and have survived to mate and hunt, though female lions with such injuries are unable to raise cubs successfully. The park's management is trying to rebuild the lion population in Gorongosa, where much of the wildlife was almost wiped out during the Mozambican civil war that ended in 1992.(Paola Bouley/Gorongosa Lion Project via AP)

The lions are usually not even the intended target of illegal hunters who want to catch antelopes and other animals for meat in a poor region shadowed by lingering conflict between old civil war foes.

The ones that survive the loss of a limb still mate and hunt, although most become solitary and the females struggle to raise cubs, partly because they are prone to getting infected during the stressful period of lactation. Healthy lions sometimes even attack maimed ones.

There were once an estimated 200 lions in Gorongosa, then fewer than 10 after the war. Traps killed seven lions early this year, but at least 14 cubs have been born since June, and 11 have survived until now.

"One in three of our lions have been hit" by poachers' traps, said Paola Bouley, who co-founded the Gorongosa Lion Project in 2012. "We've responded successfully to most of them. But we've lost a bunch of lions."

The challenges of monitoring lions were evident one morning as Bouley nudged her four-wheel drive vehicle  she calls it driving "by feeling"  through tall grass, tracking signals from a GPS collar on a healthy lion named Flavia. Eventually, Flavia was glimpsed walking and settling under a tree, though her three cubs were not in sight.

As Bouley prepared to leave, her vehicle got stuck in a hole probably used by resting warthogs. Colleagues in another vehicle clapped their hands to ward off Flavia while Bouley's passengers hurriedly got out to push. Fortunately, Flavia kept her distance.

Just 15 percent of the Gorongosa park's 4,067 square kilometers (1,570 square miles), which include grasslands, forest and a large mountain, are accessible by road. Still, GPS collars fitted onto some lions transmit their whereabouts every few hours, and anti-poaching teams can respond quickly to unusual data. For example, no movement for a while could mean a lion is caught in a snare.

This year, newly trained scouts at Gorongosa found 9,200 wire snares and 245 spring-operated "gin traps," and almost 400 poachers have been caught, according to Rui Branco, the park's head of law enforcement.

Convicted poachers can be fined and jailed, and new legal reforms will make it easier to target trap manufacturers and traffickers higher up in the poaching chain, Branco said. Judges have visited Gorongosa to learn more about poaching, he said.

Drought and tensions between the government of the ruling Frelimo party and Renamo, the main opposition group with a base in the Gorongosa region in central Mozambique, have deepened hardship for nearly 200,000 people around the park.

But various projects are underway to help the community, and the park brings in neighboring children for tours and educates them about lions and their role in generating tourism income. This year, the park hosted a ceremony at which local chiefs bestowed names  Tambarare, Muanadimae and Mafambisse  on new cubs.

Gorongosa's lions drew tourists during the Portuguese colonial rule that ended in 1975. A park landmark is the "lion house," an abandoned camp building that lions sometimes climbed, possibly to scan the plain for prey. The lions' numbers plummeted during the slaughter of animals by armed factions and others during the civil war.

More data is needed to confirm that the recovery of the park's lions, which have an abundance of prey to hunt now that some wildlife populations are increasing again, is on solid footing.

"Saving lions across the continent is more and more about tackling tough issues like food insecurity and poverty and local governance," Bouley wrote in an email this week. "And that's everything we are taking on in Gorongosa."

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Follow Christopher Torchia on Twitter at www.twitter.com/torchiachris
Thai parliament grants king power to name Buddhist patriarch

BANGKOK (AP)  Thailand's military-appointed parliament has granted the king absolute power in naming a supreme patriarch, the top ecclesiastical position of Thai Buddhism.

The amendment approved Thursday means the king can eliminate the traditional vote of the senior monks' body, the Supreme Sangha Council.

The power struggle over leadership of the Buddhist hierarchy in Thailand centers around 91-year old Somdet Phra Maha Ratchamangalacharn, who has been accused of corruption in a dispute that mixes politics and religion. He has ties to the Dhammakaya sect, which has a reputation for encouraging materialism and showiness and is unpopular with mainstream Buddhists.
Cease-fire goes into force in war-ravaged Syria

BEIRUT (AP)  A cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey went into effect in war-ravaged Syria at midnight Thursday, a potential breakthrough in the six years of fighting that have left more than a quarter-million people dead and triggered a refugee crisis across Europe.

If it holds, the truce between the Syrian government and the country's mainstream rebel forces will be followed by peace talks next month in Kazakhstan, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in announcing the agreement. He described it, however, as "quite fragile" and requiring "special attention and patience."

The first half-hour of the cease-fire was one of "comprehensive calm," said Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. He said that before the truce came into force, the government was bombing several areas, including the province of Aleppo and suburbs of the capital, Damascus.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, listens to Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow, Russia on Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016. Putin is ordering to scale down the Russian military presence in Syria. Putin made the statement Thursday while declaring that a cease-fire in Syria brokered by Russia and Turkey will start at midnight. (Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

The truce had the backing of both Russia, Syria's chief battlefield ally, and Turkey, which has been supporting the rebels. Russia said the deal was signed by seven of Syria's major rebel factions, though none of them immediately confirmed it, and one of them denied signing.

Several previous cease-fires in the Syrian civil war all collapsed, some of them in a matter of days. And this latest agreement, like previous ones, does not include extremist factions such as the Islamic State group and al-Qaida's branch in Syria.

Still, the deal raised hopes for a political settlement to the ruinous war, in part because the landscape has significantly shifted recently.

For one thing, the tide has turned in Syrian President Bashar Assad's favor militarily over the past year, with the government retaking the city of Aleppo from the rebels just days ago. Also, Turkey, which is fighting Kurdish and Islamic militants at home, appears more willing to strike a bargain with Russia if it means protecting its borders.

"This is a different political scene, and one would expect some outcomes to emerge," said Hilal Khashan, political science professor at the American University of Beirut. He cautioned, however, against expecting immediate results from the first round of talks.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem welcomed the cease-fire agreement said there is a "real chance" for a political settlement.

In comments made to Syrian TV, he said the Syrian government will attend the peace talks "with an open mind," but he suggested it would not be willing to compromise on Assad's fate. Assad's remaining in power has been a major sticking point in the crisis.

"Everything is negotiable except national sovereignty and the people's right to choose its leadership," al-Moallem said.

Putin said the cease-fire will be guaranteed by both Moscow and Turkey. Turkey has been allowing opposition forces to use its long border with Syria to cross back and forth. The agreement was also praised by Iran, another of Assad's strongest backers.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance. Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said President-elect Donald Trump's administration will be welcome to join the peace process once he takes office.

Putin said he ordered the Russian military to scale back its presence in Syria, where it has provided crucial support to Assad's forces. Putin didn't say how many troops and weapons will be withdrawn. He said Russia will continue "fighting international terrorism in Syria" and supporting Assad's military.

The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, welcomed the cease-fire announcement, saying he hopes the agreement will save civilian lives, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid and pave the way for productive peace talks.

Earlier Thursday, Turkey called on Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters from Syria. The Iranian-backed extremist group has sent thousands of fighters to support Assad and has been playing an instrumental role in the civil war since 2013.

Foreign fighters from around the world have joined both sides of the Syrian conflict, which has displaced half the country's population and produced more than 4 million refugees. Many of those refugees have been streaming into Europe, fueling anti-immigration sentiment and terrorist fears that are reshaping the continent's political landscape.

Syria's military noted that the cease-fire comes after the "successes achieved by the armed forces," an apparent reference to the fierce fighting in Aleppo.

Osama Abo Zayd, a spokesman for mainstream Syrian opposition groups, told reporters in the Turkish capital of Ankara that 13 armed opposition factions have signed the agreement.

He said the peace talks will be based on the Geneva 2012 declaration that calls for a governing body with full executive powers to run Syria during a transition period. "This means that there will be no presence for Assad in the future," he said.

However, Khashan, the political analyst, said Assad's exit is "out of the question." ''Neither the Russians nor the Iranians would allow it to happen," he said.

Saeed Sadek, a professor of political sociology at Cairo's Future University, said Assad has no power to accept or reject any deals.

"He is now under the control of Moscow, Tehran and Ankara. All these countries will decide his future," he said.

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Isachenkov reported from Moscow. Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Najib Jobain in Cairo and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.

Osama Abu Zeid of the main moderate Syrian opposition group Free Syrian Army, talks about the five-point cease-fire agreement for Syria, during a news conference, in Ankara, Turkey, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016. Abu Zeid said that his group, is one of the 13 armed opposition factions, that had agreed to abide by the nationwide cease-fire agreement that will go into effect at midnight Thursday. The truce will be followed by peace talks in Kazakhstan to find a solution for Syria's crisis, Abu Zeid said. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

FILE -- In this Feb. 24, 2016 file photo, a Syrian shopkeeper waits for customers next to paintings of of President Bashar Assad, and Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, center, at the Souk Tawil market in Damascus, Syria. Turkey said Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016, that Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, which has sent thousands of fighters to support President Bashar Assad, should withdraw from Syria. In an interview with Turkey's A Haber news channel, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also said Turkey and Russia are close to reaching an agreement on a nationwide Syrian cease-fire that would come into effect by the end of the year. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)
Philippines to insist on tribunal ruling if China drills

MANILA, Philippines (AP)  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday he will insist on a ruling of an international arbitration that invalidated Beijing's claims to most of the South China Sea if China starts to extract oil or gas from the area.

His statement in an interview with CNN Philippines Thursday was a departure from his earlier pronouncement that he would "set aside" the ruling because he does not want to impose on China.

Duterte also criticized the United States, saying it did not do anything when China started building artificial islands in the disputed sea.

Duterte, who took office in June, has taken steps to mend relations with China that grew hostile during the time of his predecessor over the long-unresolved territorial disputes. Former President Benigno Aquino III's administration took the disputes to international arbitration in a move backed by Washington after China seized a disputed shoal from the Philippines in 2012, then went on to construct seven man-made islands despite outside objections.

China has refused to recognize the arbitration tribunal, saying it has no jurisdiction.

Asked under what circumstances he would bring up the tribunal ruling with China, Duterte said: "Yes, when the minerals are already being siphoned out."

If that happens, he said, he will tell China: "I thought we're friends? We share economic bounties ... so how about us? I have this title, so what do you think? Don't you think we should talk now?"

Duterte added that if China's construction in the disputed waters was a serious concern then the United States should have led the way and stopped it "right at the beginning, when the first spade of soil was tossed out to the area that was being reclaimed."

"Why raise an issue putting the countries into distress or under stress when you are not going to do anything, when it is you who have the arms?" he added.

China is pitted against smaller neighbors including the Philippines in multiple disputes over islands, coral reefs and lagoons in waters crucial for global commerce and rich in fish and potential oil and gas reserves.
The Latest: Cease-fire takes effect in war-ravaged Syria

BEIRUT (AP)  The Latest on the conflict in Syria, and the Russia-Turkey-brokered cease-fire agreement (all times local):

Midnight:

A cease-fire agreement between Syria's government and the country's mainstream rebel groups has gone into effect in the war-ravaged nation.

FILE -- In this Feb. 24, 2016 file photo, a Syrian shopkeeper waits for customers next to paintings of of President Bashar Assad, and Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, center, at the Souk Tawil market in Damascus, Syria. Turkey said Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016, that Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, which has sent thousands of fighters to support President Bashar Assad, should withdraw from Syria. In an interview with Turkey's A Haber news channel, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also said Turkey and Russia are close to reaching an agreement on a nationwide Syrian cease-fire that would come into effect by the end of the year. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

The truce was brokered by both Russia and Turkey, who support opposing sides in the war. It took effect at midnight Thursday.

The agreement is a potential breakthrough in the six-year civil war that has left more than a quarter-million people dead and triggered a refugee crisis across Europe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says that if the truce holds, it will be followed by peace talks next month in Kazakhstan between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and opposition groups.

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8:45 p.m.

Syria's foreign minister has welcomed the cease-fire agreement and said there is a "real chance" for a political settlement.

In comments made to Syrian TV Thursday, he said the Syrian government will attend peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana "with an open mind," but suggested it would not be willing to compromise on the fate of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"Everything is negotiable except national sovereignty and the people's right to choose its leadership."

He lashed out at Turkey, calling it an "aggressive country and an occupier of parts of the Syrian territories."

He also said Turkey was not mentioned in any of the documents that were signed, adding that Turkey was not a partner and "we didn't negotiate with it."

Russia's president called Assad Thursday to discuss the cease-fire agreement and upcoming talks in Astana, the Syrian presidency said on its Instagram page.

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8:30 p.m.

Turkey's prime minister says the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish militia won't take part in peace talks that could take place if a nationwide Syrian cease-fire agreement succeeds.

Binali Yildirim told reporters Thursday: "No group that we regard as a terror organization will sit around the negotiating table and we regard the PYD as a terror organization." He was referring to the Democratic Union Party, which Turkey considers to be an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

An adviser to the U.N. envoy for Syria has said the peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition could be held in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan before the new U.S. president is sworn in on Jan. 20

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8:15 p.m.

The Kremlin says Syrian President Bashar Assad is committed to abiding by a cease-fire deal as well as a sit down for talks with the opposition.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Assad spoke on the phone to discuss the nationwide cease-fire deal that the Syrian government and Russia announced earlier on Thursday, the Kremlin said in a statement.

The Kremlin said Assad told Putin he is "committed to implementing" the cease-fire agreement and prepared to join the peace talks with opposition rebels that will follow the deal.

Vitaly Naumkin, who advises U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura, said in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency that talks in the Kazakh capital Astana could be held before the new U.S. president is sworn in on Jan. 20.

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7:45 p.m.

A Kurdish official says Kurdish groups and their Arab and Christian allies have approved a document that would act as a constitution in their autonomous region in northern Syria.

Nawaf Khalil, an official with the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, said the document known as the Social Contract was approved Thursday during a meeting in the northeastern Syrian town of Rmeilan.

Syrian Kurds run their self-declared, largely autonomous area, called Rojava Kurdistan or western Kurdistan.

The new document removed the word Rojava, in an apparent move to appease Arab and Christian groups that are part of the autonomous region.

Despite the large Kurdish presence in northeastern Syria, many towns and villages in the autonomous region are predominantly Arab or Christian.

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7:30 p.m.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Turkey will press ahead with its military offensive to clear a border area in northern Syria from Islamic State militants, saying the cease-fire agreement does not comprise terror organizations.

Erdogan on Thursday labeled the cease-fire agreement a "window of opportunity that should not be squandered" and called on all sides to abide by its terms.

In an apparent reference to Iran, Erdogan said all countries with influence over groups fighting in Syria should also contribute to the cease-fire process.

Speaking at a news conference alongside the president of Kosovo, Erdogan said the peace talks set to be held in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, were not meant to replace the peace process in Geneva but rather "complement" it.

Erdogan said the Turkish military operations "against terrorist organizations, including Daesh, will continue until the security of the Turkish citizens is completely guaranteed. There can be no concessions on this issue." He was using an Arabic acronym for the IS group.

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7 p.m.

Russia's foreign ministry says a mortar round has exploded inside the Russian embassy compound in the Syrian capital Damascus.

Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement Thursday that the mortar fired from a rebel-controlled suburb of Damascus fell near the entrance of the embassy's consulate department. The ministry reported "insignificant material damage" and no injuries.

It is the second mortar attack on the Russian embassy in as many days. The foreign ministry said Wednesday that a mortar round had landed in the embassy courtyard without exploding, and that another had also fallen in the vicinity.

Zakharova on Thursday linked the attack to a cease-fire deal in Syria that the government forces and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced earlier in the day.

Russia is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who since 2011has been battling a revolt against his family's four-decade rule.

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6:30 p.m.

U.N. envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura is welcoming the agreement on a cease-fire in Syria and says he hopes it will pave the way for "productive" talks between the parties to the country's civil war.

A statement from de Mistura's office in Geneva on Thursday said he hopes that the accord will save civilian lives, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance across Syria and allow for useful talks in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

The statement added: "The special envoy is of the view that these developments should contribute to inclusive and productive intra-Syrian negotiations to be convened under UN auspices on Feb. 8, 2017."

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6:15 p.m.

Egypt has welcomed the nationwide cease-fire in Syria that will go into effect at midnight Thursday.

In a statement Thursday following a meeting with a Syrian opposition leader, Ahmed al-Jarba, the Foreign Ministry says it is of "critical importance" that Syrian forces develop a common vision to resolve the country's crisis and begin serious talks about the future of Syria.

The cease-fire, which will be observed by Turkey and Russia, who are to follow the situation on the ground to ensure that it holds. It will include all parts of Syria, including the eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus.

Excerpts of the cease-fire agreement obtained by The Associated Press say the truce will include all areas where the "moderate opposition" has a presence, including those where al-Qaida's branch in Syria exists.

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6 p.m.

An adviser to the U.N. envoy for Syria says peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition could be held in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan before the new U.S. president is sworn in.

Vitaly Naumkin, who advises U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura, said in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency that talks in the Kazakh capital Astana "should take place in the nearest future."

"All of this will happen before Jan. 20," he was quoted as saying, adding that U.N.-sponsored talks in Geneva will be held afterward, when Donald Trump is sworn in as the U.S. president.

Naumkin's remarks came several hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Syrian army said that a nation-wide cease-fire agreement has been reached with opposition rebels, and that it will be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition, without specifying a date.

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5:15 p.m.

A spokesman for the main moderate Syrian opposition groups says they have agreed to abide by the nationwide cease-fire that will go into effect at midnight Thursday.

Osama Abu Zeid has told reporters in Turkey that the truce will be followed by peace talks in Kazakhstan that will focus on finding a solution for Syria's crisis.

He said 13 armed opposition factions have signed the five-point agreement.

Abu Zeid says the peace talks will be based on the Geneva 2012 declaration that called for a transitional governing body with full executive powers to run affairs in Syria during the transitional period.

He said "this means that there will be no presence for (President Bashar) Assad in the future."

He said the truce excluded the Islamic State group and the main Kurdish militia that Turkey considers a terrorist organization.

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4:30 p.m.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman says the Turkish and Russian leaders have discussed the cease-fire agreement as well as a planned peace process for Syria during a telephone conversation.

Ibrahim Kalin said Thursday that Turkey considers the cease-fire "an important step to resolve the Syrian conflict."

"The arrangement aims to expand the cease-fire in Aleppo to other parts of Syria, secure uninterrupted humanitarian assistance and revitalize the political process," Kalin said.

Kalin said Erdogan would "continue to work toward the success" of peace talks scheduled to take place in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana.

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4:15 p.m.

Turkish media reports say Russian war planes have targeted the Islamic State group in northern Syria, providing support to a Turkish offensive there.

The pro-government Sabah newspaper and other media said Thursday that the Russian jets bombed IS targets in the al-Bab region late on Wednesday. If confirmed, it would mark the first instance of Russian support to the Turkish operation in northern Syria.

The reports were based on unnamed Turkish military officials and came after Turkey complained about a lack of aerial support from the U.S.-led coalition for its operation to capture al-Bab from the extremist group.

The reports said Russian warplanes hit targets south of al-Bab.

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4 p.m.

The cease-fire that will go into effect in Syria midnight Thursday will include all parts of Syria including the eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus.

Excerpts of the cease-fire agreement that were obtained by The Associated Press say the truce will include all areas where the "moderate opposition" has a presence, including those where al-Qaida's branch in Syria exists.

It says the opposition will be given the right to name its delegation to peace talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana.

The talks will begin within a month from the time the cease-fire goes into effect. It says the peace talks will be in accordance with December 2015 U.N. Security Council resolution 2254 which endorsed a road map for a transitional period that includes parliamentary and presidential elections within 18 months.

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2:30 p.m.

A main Syrian opposition group says it supports a nationwide cease-fire set to go into effect at midnight and that moderate rebel factions will abide by it, but defend themselves if attacked.

Ahmad Ramadan of the Syrian National Coalition said the truce reached Thursday includes a halt to airstrikes and shelling.

Ramadan said in text messages sent to The Associated Press that members of the Free Syrian Army, a loose alliance of several moderate rebel factions, will abide by the truce but retaliate to violations by government and allied forces.

The Syrian army said the truce does not include al-Qaida's branch in Syria and the Islamic State group, two of the most powerful armed factions.

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2:10 p.m.

Turkey has welcomed a Syrian cease-fire set to come into effect at midnight.

The Foreign Ministry says groups regarded as terror organizations by the U.N. Security Council will be excluded from the cease-fire, in which Turkey and Russia will act as guarantors.

It was apparently referring to the Islamic State group and the al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front.

It says the government and the opposition have agreed to halt attacks, including aerial attacks, and not to expand territories under their control in a way that would be detrimental to each other.

Turkey and Russia would closely follow the situation on the ground to ensure the cease-fire holds. The statement calls on all sides wielding influence on the warring parties to provide the necessary support to halt hostilities.

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2 p.m.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to scale down its presence in Syria, where it has provided crucial support to Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces.

Putin spoke Thursday, as a Syrian cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey was set to begin at midnight.

Putin didn't say how many troops and weapons will be withdrawn. He said Russia will continue "fighting international terrorism in Syria" and supporting Assad's military.

Putin also said that the Russian military will maintain its presence at both an air base in Syria's coastal province of Latakia and the naval facility in the Syrian port of Tartus.

The cease-fire is to be followed by renewed peace negotiations to end the nearly six-year conflict.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Egypt will be invited to join the process, and that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan could eventually join as well.

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1:45 p.m.

The Syrian army has announced a nationwide cease-fire as of midnight.

In a statement carried by state news agency SANA on Thursday, the military command "declares a comprehensive nationwide cessation of hostilities as of midnight."

State TV says the cease-fire paves the way for reactivating negotiations to end the conflict.

It says the cease-fire comes after the "successes achieved by the armed forces," an apparent reference to the capture of rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo earlier this month.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia and Turkey will guarantee the truce. Russia is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, while Turkey supports the opposition.

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1:30 p.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says a Syrian cease-fire agreement has been reached with Turkey.

Putin said Thursday that Russia and Turkey will guarantee the truce, which is set to begin at midnight. He says it will be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition, and that the Syrian parties would take part in talks to be held in Kazakhstan, without specifying a date.

Syria's military said it had agreed to a nationwide cease-fire starting at midnight.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu says the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria, and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that that President-elect Donald Trump's administration will be welcome to join the Syrian peace process once he takes office.

Russia is a key ally of Assad, while Turkey is one of the main backers of the opposition. Several previous attempts to halt the civil war have failed.

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11:15 a.m.

Turkey says Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group should withdraw from Syria and a nationwide cease-fire should come into effect before the end of the year.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to back President Bashar Assad's forces.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with the Turkish A Haber news channel on Thursday that Ankara and Moscow are close to reaching an agreement on a nationwide cease-fire. Turkey would serve as guarantor of rebel compliance, while Russia would guarantee adherence by the government.
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Beijing fires some police involved in alleged brutality case

BEIJING (AP)  Four of the five police officers involved in the high-profile death of a man in their custody have been fired, Beijing police said Thursday, following a public outcry against city prosecutors' move to drop charges against them.

The municipal Public Security Bureau said on its official microblog that four officers, including a deputy branch chief, were dismissed from their positions while the remaining officer was transferred to a non-law enforcement post.

Last week's decision by Beijing prosecutors to drop charges against the officers for the death of Lei Yang, a 29-year-old environmentalist, had sparked outrage among the country's burgeoning middle class, thousands of whom signed online petitions to protest the move.
Maryland: Man killed, deputy wounded in gunfire exchange

CHESTERTOWN, Md. (AP)  An exchange of gunfire in a home on Maryland's Eastern Shore left one man dead and a sheriff's deputy critically wounded, authorities said Thursday.

Queen Anne's County sheriff's deputies were called to a domestic disturbance at the Chestertown home of James Rich II, 52. Rich's girlfriend, who had been staying at the home, sent her father a text message asking him to call authorities because she and Rich had been in a physical altercation, police said. The father called 911, but when Deputy 1st Class Warren Hogan and another deputy arrived, both Rich and his girlfriend were gone. The woman's father had taken her to the sheriff's office, police said.

After midnight, Hogan escorted the woman to Rich's home to collect some of her belongings and Rich and his teenage son were there. As the woman collected her things, police said she and Rich began to argue, then Rich got a shotgun and fired one shot. He continued walking toward Hogan and they exchanged gunfire. Both were struck.

This photo provided by the Queen Anne's County Sheriff's Office shows Deputy 1st Class Warren Hogan of the Queen Anne's County Sheriff's Office, in Centreville, Md. Hogan is in critical condition after exchanging gunfire with a man inside a residence, where authorities responded earlier in the day to a domestic disturbance. Authorities say the suspect has died. (Dale Patrick/Queen Anne's County Sheriff's Office via AP)

Investigators are still piecing together a timeline, but it looks like the gunfire exchange was very quick, occurring within a matter of "seconds," Maryland State Police spokesman Greg Shipley said.

Rich was taken to a hospital in Chestertown, where police said he died.

Hogan was taken to R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, where he is in critical condition after surgery.

"It looks like he's in good spirits," Sheriff Gary Hoffman said at a news conference. "It seems like he wants to be engaged in conversation."

Hogan was wearing body armor, but was hit below the armor, he said.

Hogan was also wearing a body camera, and investigators will review any footage as part of the investigation, police said. Hogan is white, and Rich was black, sheriff's office spokesman retired Lt. Dale Patrick said.
DJ gets 4 years in fatal beating over music volume complaint

AKRON, Ohio (AP)  A DJ at an Ohio bar will serve four years in prison for the fatal beating of a man who had complained that the music was too loud.

Robert Jarvis, of Akron, was sentenced Wednesday in Summit County Common Pleas Court for the death of Forrest Ryan, 43, of North Canton. At the sentencing, Judge Todd McKenney said Jarvis didn't intend to kill Ryan in the bar fight.

Jarvis' attorney, Mike Callahan, called the fight an "aberration" and said he would seek early prison release for Jarvis after six months.

Megan Frantz Oldham, an attorney for Ryan's family, said the family is disappointed with the sentence and plans to file a wrongful death lawsuit.

Prosecutors say the two men got into an argument Jan. 8 over the volume of the music that Jarvis was playing at the Zodiac bar in Akron. They say surveillance video showed Jarvis later sought out Ryan in another part of the bar and punched him three times in the head.

Assistant Prosecutor Greg Peacock said the altercation appeared to be unprovoked, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.

"It might not have been his intention to kill, but he made the conscious decision to inflict harm," Peacock said.

Jarvis, 65, was a teacher for three decades, including 10 as a special education teacher in Medina County. He pleaded guilty in a plea deal last month to involuntary manslaughter, a first-degree felony, and faced up to 11 years in prison.

Ryan's family wanted Jarvis to receive the maximum prison term. Samantha Ryan said in a letter that her father was her best friend and will miss milestones in her life, including teaching her to drive and walking her down the aisle at her wedding.
US considers mining limits in West to save sage grouse

DENVER (AP)  The Obama administration offered five possible plans Thursday for limiting mining on federal land in the West to protect the vulnerable greater sage grouse, but it isn't saying which it prefers.

The options range from banning new mining activity on about 15,000 square miles for up to 20 years to imposing no additional restrictions on mine locations.

The rules would affect sage grouse habitat on federal land in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming.

FILE - In this April 20, 2013 file photo, male greater sage grouse perform mating rituals for a female grouse, not pictured, on a lake outside Walden, Colo. The Obama administration will release five possible plans Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016, for limiting mining on federal land in the West to protect the vulnerable greater sage grouse, but it isnt saying which it prefers. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

Under all the options, mining and exploration projects already approved or underway could proceed. Energy companies could still extract oil and gas from any restricted lands, but they would have to use directional drilling from some distance away to avoid disturbing the surface.

After a public comment period ends in March, President-elect Donald Trump's administration will decide which option to choose, if any.

It's not yet clear whether Trump or his choice for Interior Secretary, Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana, would continue to pursue the current sage grouse conservation plans, modify them or scrap them.

Also unclear was why the federal government did not list a preferred alternative for mining restrictions, which it normally does in this kind of review.

Randi Spivak of the the Center for Biological Diversity said all mining is harmful to sage grouse. She said Zinke, who describes himself as "a Teddy Roosevelt Republican," could emulate the conservationist Roosevelt by protecting the bird.

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nevada, called the options an "11th-hour attack on Nevada and the West." He said he would try to overturn any mining restrictions.

Republicans have berated President Barack Obama for other last-minute environmental measures, including his designation Wednesday of two new national monuments, Bears Ears in Utah and Gold Butte in Nevada.

An estimated 200,000 to 500,000 sage grouse remain in 11 Western states, but their numbers are down significantly because they are losing habitat to development. The size of the sage grouse population is considered an indicator of the overall health of the vast Western sagebrush ecosystem and other species that depend on it.

The proposed mining restrictions are part of a broad plan to save the chicken-size bird without resorting to the Endangered Species Act, which could bring stricter limits on mining, drilling, agriculture and other activity.

But the plan is under attack from both sides, with critics saying it is either too restrictive or too lax. Environmental groups and energy companies have filed lawsuits seeking to overturn all or parts of the plan.

The options for mining restrictions are part of a draft environmental impact statement drawn up by the federal Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the Interior Department.

The land that could be affected by the proposals includes about 6,190 square miles in Idaho, 4,320 in Nevada, 2,880 in Oregon, 1,370 in Montana, 414 in Wyoming and 365 in Utah.

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BLM mining proposals: http://bit.ly//2ic6DQn

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Argentina court reopens probe of ex-president in bomb case

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP)  An Argentine court on Thursday ordered a renewed investigation into a prosecutor's accusation that former President Cristina Fernandez covered up the alleged involvement of Iranians in a 1994 attack on a Jewish community center.

The bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association center in Buenos Aires killed 85 people and wounded hundreds. Iran has denied any connection with the attack and declined to turn over suspects in the case.

Argentina's official Center of Judicial Information said the country's top criminal tribunal had accepted a request by a coalition of Jewish associations to re-examine the charge made by prosecutor Alberto Nisman on Jan. 14, 2015, against Fernandez, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman and other officials in her government. He alleged Fernandez reached a secret deal with Iran's government to hide the role of several Iranian officials suspected in the bombing.

FILE - In this Oct. 31, 2016 file photo, Argentina's former President Cristina Fernandez greets supporters outside her apartment, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The countrys top criminal tribunal on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2016, has ordered an investigation into the late prosecutor Alberto Nismans accusation that Fernandez covered up the alleged involvement of Iranians in a 1994 attack against a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano, File)

Nisman was found dead with a gunshot to the head four days later. Authorities never determined if he was killed or took his own life.

Fernandez, president in 2007-2015, has denied wrongdoing, and she ridiculed the charge Thursday.

"I am now accused of covering up the AMIA attack that took place ... 22 and a half years ago! The only thing they have failed to do is to accuse me of Kennedy's death," she tweeted.

The left-of-center Fernandez blames the accusation on what she says is the bias of judges following the orders of her conservative successor, President Mauricio Macri, who took office last December.

Ariel Cohen Sabban, president of the Jewish coalition, praised the court's decision.

"A country that wants to reach justice is a country that must investigate, and if Nisman's accusation must be dismissed, we will accept it. But what we cannot do is dismiss an allegation with so much political potential without at least it being investigated," he told The Associated Press.

The ruling adds to legal complication for Fernandez.

On Tuesday, a federal judge approved charges of illicit association and fraudulent administration against her and two former aides: ex-Planning Minister Julio de Vido and former Public Works Secretary Jose Lopez. They are accused of misusing public money by paying inflated prices for public works contracts.
Ukraine releases 15 people to separatists near front line

MOSCOW (AP)  Separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine say the government has released 15 people who had been held in custody.

The separatist mouthpiece Donetsk News Agency said Thursday that government representatives handed over eight men and seven women, some of them in poor health, to rebel commanders at a checkpoint near rebel stronghold Donetsk. The separatists this week released to the government two women they had held for months.

Fighting between the separatists and government troops has killed more than 9,600 people since it broke out in 2014.

The Ukrainian president last week pardoned nine people. His representative at talks with the separatists said the government was planning to release them and six others on humanitarian grounds.
Rural residents pool cash to save last bars, gathering sites

RENWICK, Iowa (AP)  Once-bustling Renwick, Iowa, lost its grocery, hardware store, school and Ford dealership years ago, but when its sole bar closed last June, it seemed to some residents there wasn't much of a town left.

So a group of seven friends and spouses who had met for beers at the bar for decades took matters into their own hands. One of them bought the place and the others pooled their money to fix it up, showing up after work to replace floors and walls on steamy summer nights before reopening in September as the Blue Moose Saloon.

It was an impressive achievement but one that is becoming more common as population continues to trickle away from rural America. Residents of some towns are scrambling to hold on to at least a few places where people can still get together. It's not just bars but groceries, cafes and other stores.

A pickup truck passes the Blue Moose Saloon which opened in September in Renwick, Iowa, on Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016. Once-bustling Renwick has lost many businesses as its population declined, but when the town's sole bar closed this year, a group of friends pooled their money to repair and reopen the place as the Blue Moose Saloon. They said without a meeting place, Renwick wouldn't be much of a town. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

They don't expect to turn around their communities' prospects, but after watching so many businesses shuttered, they feel they had to draw the line somewhere.

"There are two places not too far, over in Lu Verne, but it's not our place," said one of the Blue Moose owners, Ron Oberhelman, a 59-year-old farmer who has seen the population fall from about 500 to 235 residents. "It's not our home town.

"When your local place closes up, you're pretty much lost."

Renwick's wide streets are usually empty, apart from a trickle of people who stop at the small post office, do business at the towering silver Gold Eagle grain elevators or work at a seed production plant. But cars and pickups begin pulling up to the Blue Moose not long after it opens each afternoon at 4, offering a refuge from the icy December wind that blows off the snowy farmland surrounding the community about 90 miles north of Des Moines.

It's a similar situation in the Missouri River village of Decatur, Nebraska, where a dozen people put up money to help the owners rebuild when the Green Lantern Steakhouse burned in 2008. The restaurant, established in 1956, was what brought people into town and served as the main meeting spot in the community of 450 an hour's drive north of Omaha.

"It's not very easy to have a strong, active small town," said Matt Connealy, who lives on a farm just outside town. "You have to do things that don't always make the best sense financially."

Once reopened, the restaurant resumed its place as the community's hub, home to high school graduation parties and baby showers. Near the entrance, notices cram a bulletin board, so as Connealy notes, "If you want to find out what's happening, that's where you go."

U.S. Census figures show more than one-third of rural counties have lower population now than in 1930. In Iowa, about two-thirds of the state's 99 counties have lost population for decades. In addition to fewer potential customers, businesses in rural areas face stiff competition from online shopping and from urban chain stores offering big savings for those willing to drive another 30 or 40 miles.

Charles Fluharty, who heads the Rural Policy Research Institute at the University of Iowa, said he's seen an increase in rural neighbors joining to save local spots. Some create cooperatives or seek government and private grants.

Without gathering places, the residents fear that people in town won't know each other. They won't know who's getting married, who's sick, who needs help.

"There's a sense of, "We've got to take care of ourselves, and that means we've got to take care of one another because we're all we've got," Fluharty said.

In Kiester, Minnesota, the 486 residents went so far as gaining approval from the Legislature for the city to own the local food store. Residents later formed a co-op, and the Kiester Market sign notes, "Proud to be community owned."

Marcia Dahleen, until recently the market manager, said the grocery store relies increasingly on volunteer help. It delivers to elderly people at home and takes special orders for meat.

"We try to bend over backward to help people in town," she said.

Residents of Bowdon, North Dakota, population 135, also created a co-op to save a meat-cutting plant after the owner died. Although it only employed a few people, co-op board member Larry Crowder said it was "the busiest place on Main Street," and that residents feared Bowdon's cafe and co-op grocery could fail if the plant wasn't there to draw people into town. They managed to sell 100 shares at $5,500 apiece to fund a new plant along with grants.

"They did it to save the town," Crowder said.

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Follow Scott McFetridge on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/smcfetridge

Ron Oberhelman, right, talks with fellow owners Rod Nelson, left, and Jeff Thompson, center, in their Blue Moose Saloon which opened in September in Renwick, Iowa, on Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016. Oberhelman, a 59-year-old farmer who has seen the population fall from about 500 to 235 residents says, Its not our home town. When your local place closes up, youre pretty much lost." (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Traffic is seen on main street in front of the local grain elevator, Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016, in Renwick, Iowa. Once-bustling Renwick has lost many businesses as its population declined, but when the town's sole bar closed this year, a group of friends pooled their money to repair and reopen the place as the Blue Moose Saloon. They said without a meeting place, Renwick wouldn't be much of a town. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Tammy Hock, of Humboldt, Iowa, left, talks with Judy Oberhelman in the Blue Moose Saloon, Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016, in Renwick, Iowa. Once-bustling Renwick has lost many businesses as its population declined, but when the town's sole bar closed this year, a group of friends pooled their money to repair and reopen the place as the Blue Moose Saloon. They said without a meeting place, Renwick wouldn't be much of a town. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

The town water tower is seen near main street, Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016, in Renwick, Iowa. Once-bustling Renwick has lost many businesses as its population declined, but when the town's sole bar closed this year, a group of friends pooled their money to repair and reopen the place as the Blue Moose Saloon. They said without a meeting place, Renwick wouldn't be much of a town. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
EU stands by 2-state solution for Palestinian-Israel peace

BRUSSELS (AP)  The European Union has joined the outgoing U.S. administration in defending the two-state solution as the best way to achieve lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

A spokeswoman for the 28-nation bloc reiterated the EU's support for the two-state solution on Thursday, the day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tore into Israel for settlement-building.

EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic says Kerry's remarks "all send one key message: The international community does not give up on peace in the Middle East."

Secretary of State John Kerry speaks at the State Department in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016. Stepping into a raging diplomatic argument, Kerry staunchly defended the Obama administration's decision to allow the U.N. Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal and warned that Israel's very future as a democracy is at stake. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Kocijancic added: "The only way to end the conflict is through a two-state solution negotiated between the parties."

In a farewell speech, Kerry defended President Barack Obama's move last week to allow the U.N. Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal, a move that caused an extraordinary diplomatic spat.

Secretary of State John Kerry, left, speaks at the State Department in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016. Stepping into a raging diplomatic argument, Kerry staunchly defended the Obama administration's decision to allow the U.N. Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal and warned that Israel's very future as a democracy is at stake. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Secretary of State John Kerry speaks at the State Department in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016. Stepping into a raging diplomatic argument, Kerry staunchly defended the Obama administration's decision to allow the U.N. Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal and warned that Israel's very future as a democracy is at stake. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Nobel laureates criticize Aung San Suu Kyi over Rohingya

UNITED NATIONS (AP)  Nearly a dozen fellow Nobel peace laureates on Thursday criticized Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, saying she has failed to ensure equal rights for the minority Rohingya people in Rakhine state, where the group says more than 30,000 people have been displaced amid an unfolding humanitarian crisis.

A military offensive in recent months by the Myanmar army has led to the deaths of hundreds of Rohingya, the burning of homes, and the raping of women as well as arbitrary detentions, according to an open letter to the U.N. Security Council from a group of 23 activists, including Nobel laureates and current and former political and business leaders.

"Access for humanitarian aid organizations has been almost completely denied, creating an appalling humanitarian crisis in an area already extremely poor," the letter reads. "Thousands have fled to neighboring Bangladesh, only to be sent back."

FILE - In this Nov. 30, 2016 file photo, Myanmar's Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi speaks at the International Enterprise (IE) Singapore Global Conversations round table event in Singapore. Nearly a dozen fellow Nobel peace laureates on Thursday, Dec. 29 criticized Myanmar leader Suu Kyi, saying she has failed to ensure equal rights for the minority Rohingya people in Rakhine state, where the group says more than 30,000 people have been displaced amid an unfolding humanitarian crisis. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)

Myanmar's U.N. mission was closed Thursday and an email message seeking a response was not immediately returned.

Earlier this month, an Amnesty International report claimed that actions by Myanmar's military in Rakhine may constitute crimes against humanity. Myanmar has come under heavy criticism for its army's forceful treatment of the Rohingya, and international human rights groups including Amnesty have accused the military of mass murder, looting and rape.

In the open letter, the group asks that the U.N. encourage the Myanmar government to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid, grant access to journalists and human rights monitors and establish an independent, international inquiry into the situation in Rakhine state.

The group also asks that the Security Council make the Rohingya's plight a matter of urgency and that the U.N. Secretary-General visit Myanmar in the coming weeks.

"If we fail to take action, people may starve to death if they are not killed with bullets, and we may end up being the passive observers of crimes against humanity," the letter says.

The military sweeps were sparked by an Oct. 9 attack on police outposts in Rakhine state that killed nine officers. Located in Myanmar's west, Rakhine has long been home to simmering tensions between the Muslim ethnic Rohingya minority and the country's Buddhist majority population. The last major outbreak of violence in 2012 left hundreds dead and drove 140,000 people into internal displacement camps.

Nobel peace laureates who signed the letter include Jose Ramos-Horta, former president of East Timor; South African social rights activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu; and Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani advocate for female education and youngest-ever winner of the prize. Others who signed include former Prime Minister of Italy Romano Prodi and British business leader Sir Richard Branson.
Colombian rebels fear for safety after they rejoin society

MEDELLIN, Colombia (AP)  When Wilson Lopez lived in the jungle, he thought civilian life in the city meant meeting people, walking the streets, having a job. But the former Colombian guerrilla wasn't able to do any of these things.

Lopez went from a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia jungle camp to prison and then to the streets of Medellin after receiving a pardon in January. Since then, he hasn't been able to find a steady job or home, and couldn't go for stroll with his family in Medellin after he received death threats from a criminal group that said it didn't want rebels in its territory.

"I am in the mouth of the tiger," said Lopez, who agreed to speak with The Associated Press inside a warehouse in the capital of Colombia's mountainous Antioquia province. He wore a cap pulled low over his face and was accompanied by a friend.

In this Dec. 10, 2016 photo, Wilson Lopez, a former rebel of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, poses for a photo at a distance learning institution after receiving his elementary school diploma, in Bogota, Colombia. The ex-guerrilla says hes been hit with death threats since getting out of jail and trying to start life as a civilian, a snapshot of what awaits thousands of FARC rebels in rejoining society under Colombias peace pact. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

Lopez was one of 30 rebel prisoners pardoned by the government of President Juan Manuel Santos as a confidence-building gesture to advance peace talks with the FARC, as Latin America's last major leftist guerrilla army is known. Lopez's troubles integrating into civilian life highlight the difficulties that some 8,000 FARC guerrillas and 4,000 prisoners will face in rejoining society as part of the historic peace pact ratified by the country's congress on Nov. 30.

Experts say reintegrating rebels may face an especially hostile welcome in areas with high levels of crime and drug trafficking, and in areas that were previously under FARC control.

Trust is difficult to build following a 52-year conflict characterized by brutality. Fighting between guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and the armed forces has, according to government figures, left a toll of more than 220,000 dead, some 40,000 disappeared and over 5 million driven from their homes.

The guerrillas recall how during 1980s peace talks that ultimately failed, the FARC established a party known as the Patriotic Union as its political arm. In just a few years, more than 3,000 leftist activists, rebel sympathizers and two presidential candidates were gunned down by paramilitaries, often working with state security forces.

"There is a need for more action by the government and the creation of mechanisms to protect" rebels who lay down their arms as part of the peace deal, said Todd Howland, the representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia. "There is much to do in the field."

Just this month, another 110 inmates were pardoned and the FARC is demanding that all its prisoners be released if the group is to lay down its arms.

Both houses of Colombia's congress on Wednesday approved legislation on amnesty for leftist rebels under the government's peace accord with the FARC. The measure covers most offenses committed by fighters but it does not absolve any guerrillas who committed war crimes or human rights violations during the conflict.

For Lopez, who had spent two decades in the FARC and was jailed in 2010, the problems for himself, his wife and two children began soon after he was released from prison.

He said he was intercepted in the street by three men who told him that guerrillas were not welcome in the area. Then he received three threatening letters signed by a gang called "The Rastrojos."

One of the letters read: "You and your family are declared military targets by our organization. For the health of you and your family, you have 12 hours to leave this house." The letter had been slipped under the door.

He asked authorities for help and he now lives under police guard in a rural area four hours from Medellin  the area that saw the birth of Colombia's paramilitaries.

He recalled that when his protection team arrived, he was so afraid he hid and didn't emerge until he had received a telephone call confirming who they were. They told him they had been looking for him for three months and he responded that he moved constantly for his family's security.

"I don't trust anyone and in you even less," Lopez said he told the agents.

Attacks on community leaders and human rights activists have jumped this year, especially since the initial peace accord was signed on Sept. 26. That pact was rejected by voters in a referendum and the sides hastily negotiated a second deal that was passed by congress a month ago. According to United Nations' figures, 52 have been killed from January through November, and other organizations say the number has topped 70. Forty-one were killed in all of 2015.

Many of those killings have taken place in areas where the FARC has withdrawn to begin its disarmament.

Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, said the large majority of the attacks have been on members of the community and human rights groups, but not on their leaders.

"Something similar could happen with the FARC; its leaders will be well protected, but the lower-level guerrillas will be in greater danger," he said.

Throughout his life, Lopez has only known violence. He said that when he was a child, his family was killed by armed men who accused them of being guerrillas. He wasn't able to study and never learned how to read or write.

As a teenager, he tried to farm some land but he received threats telling him to leave or be killed. He said he joined the FARC to seek vengeance.

Lopez said he doesn't want more war, but he can't help thinking about what will happen if reintegrating FARC rebels are killed.
Group likely to keep contract after deadly school bus crash

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP)  A Tennessee school board will likely extend its contract another year with the company that provided school bus services in a crash that killed six children.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports (http://bit.ly/2hsZebA ) the Hamilton County school board said Wednesday that it would be almost impossible to find a new contractor before the coming school year.

Durham School Services operated the bus that crashed in November while carrying Woodmore Elementary students. The company has had a four-year contract with Hamilton County Schools since 2013.

Assistant superintendent Lee McDade said finding another bus service would take months. He said Durham has made safety strides since the crash.

School board member Rhonda Thurman said few companies could handle Hamilton County's system of about 20,000 students riding buses.

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The Latest: Obamas cheered on arrival at Waikiki restaurant

HONOLULU (AP)  The Latest on President Barack Obama's family vacation in Hawaii (all times local):

8:30 p.m.

A crowd of mostly tourists cheered as President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle arrived at a Waikiki restaurant Thursday night.

The couple dined with friends at Mahina and Sun's, which focuses on island cuisine.

The presidential party traveled by motorcade to Waikiki from their vacation home in Kailua, about a 35 minute trip.

Earlier in the day, the first family along with some companions soaked up the sun at the beach at Bellows Air Force Station.

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11:40 a.m.

President Barack Obama and the rest of the first family are spending the afternoon with friends at the beach at Bellows Air Force Station.

The president's motorcade arrived at Bellows in the sleepy town of Waimanalo on Oahu's east coast shortly after 11 a.m.

The Air Force station opened as the Waimanalo Military Reservation in 1917 and was renamed Bellows Field in 1933 after 2nd Lt. Franklin Barney Bellows, a hero of World War I. Since the last runways were closed in 1958, the base has been used primarily as a recreation center for the armed forces.

It is the Obamas' third visit to Bellows during their annual holiday vacation on Oahu.

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9:20 a.m.

President Barack Obama is starting the day with his usual morning workout at the Semper Fit gym on Marine Corps Base Hawaii.

Obama arrived at the Kaneohe Bay gym at about 8 a.m. The president's motorcade passed about 20 residents, who waved and took video with their cellphones on the way from his Kailua rental home to the nearby base.

Early-morning showers have given way to mostly clear skies and a heavy dose of sunshine on the East side of Oahu.
Officers killed in the line of duty rose in 2016

The number of police killed in the line of duty rose sharply in 2016, driven by shootings of police around the country, most notably ambushes in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

From Jan. 1 through Wednesday, 135 officers lost their lives. Some died in traffic accidents, but nearly half were shot to death.

That's a 56 percent increase in shooting deaths over the previous year. Of the 64 who were fatally shot, 21 were killed in ambush attacks often fueled by anger over police use of force involving minorities.

FILE - In this July 25, 2016 file photo, the funeral procession for slain Baton Rouge police Corporal Montrell Jackson leaves the Living Faith Christian Center in Baton Rouge, La. Jackson, slain by a gunman who authorities said targeted law enforcement. The number of police killed in the line of duty rose sharply in 2016, driven by shootings of police around the country, most notably ambushes in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. From Jan. 1 through Wednesday, 135 officers lost their lives. Some died in traffic accidents, but nearly half were shot to death. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

"We've never seen a year in my memory when we've had an increase of this magnitude in officer shooting deaths," said Craig Floyd, president and chief executive of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. "These officers were killed simply because of the uniform they wear and the job they do. This is unacceptable to the humane society that we are."

In Dallas, a sniper on July 7 attacked at the end of what had been a peaceful rally against police brutality. He killed five law enforcement officers and wounded nine others  the largest death toll among law enforcement from a single event since the 9/11 attacks, which killed 72 officers. Months later, Dallas businesses and residents still display blue ribbons and banners declaring, "We support our Dallas police officers."

But even amid community support, the police department remains unsettled. Hundreds of officers have retired or left the force over the past six months as the city struggles to find a way to increase pay and save a failing police and fire pension. Former Chief David Brown, who became a national figure in the aftermath, was among those who opted to retire. And interim Dallas Police Association president Frederick Frazier said that morale is "almost nonexistent."

"A lot of us are going through the motions at work. We're hoping things will get better with our struggle," he said. Frazier added that the attack was a "game changer. It changed the perception of law enforcement. It reversed the roll after Ferguson. We were the pursuer and now, we're being pursued."

Less than two weeks after the Dallas attack, a lone gunman in Baton Rouge shot and killed three officers and wounded three others outside a convenience store in the weeks after a black man, 37-year-old Alton Sterling, was shot and killed by police during a struggle.

Baton Rouge Police Cpl. Lester Mitchell was partners with Matthew Gerald, one of the three slain officers, and was among the officers who raced to the scene of the shooting that also killed sheriff's deputy Brad Garafola and officer Montrell Jackson. Mitchell has daily reminders of the deadly shootout, driving past the scene on his way to police headquarters.

"Just passing there, you can't help but replay it over and over again," he said.

Mitchell said the shooting has made him more alert and aware of potential dangers on patrol, sometimes in situations that wouldn't have alarmed him before, like a hand in a pocket. "You learn to cope with it, because if you don't, you can drive yourself crazy," he said.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund's Floyd said the impact of this year has been profound on law enforcement. Agencies are struggling to recruit officers to their ranks and those who continue to serve "talk about how their head is now on a swivel."

"They're always looking over their shoulder, always worrying about the next attack that could come at any time from any direction," Floyd said.

That was underscored by the slaying in November of a San Antonio detective who was fatally shot and killed outside police headquarters as he was writing a traffic ticket. The man accused of shooting him said he was angry about a child-custody battle and simply "lashed out at somebody who didn't deserve it."

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Associated Press reporters Claudia Lauer in Dallas and Mike Kunzelman in Baton Rouge contributed to this report. Pane reported from Atlanta. She can be followed on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/lisamariepane .

FILE - In this July 8, 2016 file photo, five red roses on the bronze medallion with another bouquet of flowers and a note in support of the Dallas Police Department are seen at The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington. The number of police killed in the line of duty rose sharply in 2016, driven by shootings of police around the country, most notably ambushes in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. From Jan. 1 through Wednesday, 135 officers lost their lives. Some died in traffic accidents, but nearly half were shot to death. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Law allows huge expansion of historic Civil War battlefield

PETERSBURG, Va. (AP)  Virginia's Petersburg National Battlefield, a climactic site in the collapse of the Confederacy in the Civil War, has been cleared for a huge expansion under a new law that would authorize it to become the nation's largest protected battlefield.

The park commemorates sites in the war's longest battlefield conflict, marked by bursts of bloody trench warfare spanning some ten months between 1864 and 1865. Legislation signed days ago by President Barack Obama authorizes, but does not pay for, the addition of more than 7,000 acres to the existing 2,700 acres of rolling hills, earthworks and siege lines already under protection at Petersburg.

Expansion has been a longtime priority of park advocates and comes amid a push to bolster and protect battlefields around the country this decade as the nation marked the 150th anniversary of the war. Supporters say the larger boundary would not only protect historic sites from commercial development but also give park visitors a more comprehensive understanding of the Petersburg campaign, which left tens of thousands of men dead.

In this Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2016, Petersburg National Battlefield Superintendent Lewis Rogers poses at the park's headquarters in Petersburg, Va. The national park in Virginia could expand by more than 7,000 acres under legislation Congress recently passed. (AP Photo/Sarah Rankin)

"We're finally moving forward. ... We're looking at the park and looking at the story in a whole new way," said Lewis Rogers, the park's superintendent, who joked that the weeks of waiting for the president's signature had left him in misery.

Miles south of the former Confederate capital of Richmond, the Petersburg area became the crucible of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's 10-month Union siege that broke the back of the Confederacy and precipitated the surrender of the South's Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, Virginia.

Grant prized Petersburg, with its rail connections, as key to taking Richmond. But Lee's forces dashed any Union hopes of swiftly seizing the gateway city. In July 1864, the Union detonated powerful explosives beneath a Confederate line, creating an enormous blast crater, but the ensuing Union attack failed, and it wasn't until April 1865 that the Union finally smashed through.

The park draws about 200,000 visitors a year according to National Park Service figures, far fewer than such higher-profile sites as Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, with more than 1 million tourists annually. Still, the Petersburg park is key to the area economy, bringing in some $10 million a year, and officials hope expanding the battlefield's protected footprint would reap even more visitors.

Although the legislation, which was included in a defense policy bill Congress passed in recent weeks, would not include any new funding, some land is already in the hands of preservation groups that plan to transfer it to the National Park Service.

"Our goal is to create a seamless visitor experience so that they can see the story from start to finish," said Jim Campi, a spokesman for the Civil War Trust, which owns about 1,800 acres of boundary expansion land.

Among the new properties the park could acquire is about 5,000 acres in Dinwiddie County where several decisive battles took place, Rogers said. Battlefields that would benefit include Five Forks, known as the "Waterloo of the Confederacy," and the Petersburg Breakthrough, where the advancing Union Army forced Lee to urge the Confederate government to evacuate Richmond.

Rogers said the first priority will be acquiring property that is privately owned and most vulnerable to commercial development that could endanger battle sites.

As for the funding, "the word there is creativity," Rogers said.

The possible changes come as the city of Petersburg, now grappling with nearly $19 million in unpaid obligations, could sorely use an influx of cash. City workers' pay has been cut and firefighting equipment repossessed as part of the financial difficulties.

Rogers acknowledged that changes could take years but said preserving the land and telling the soldiers' stories is worth the effort.

"There's something ... spiritual about that," he said. "Something people find very compelling. There's something about standing on the ground where something happened and understanding with clarity what happened that gives you a special connection."
The Latest: US closing Maryland compound used by Russians

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Latest on the Obama administration's response to Russia's interference in the U.S. elections, which it denies (all times EST):

6:40 p.m.

The United States is closing down a swanky riverfront compound on Maryland's Eastern Shore where Russian diplomats played tennis, went sailing and enjoyed a respite from the nation's capital.

U.S. Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., right, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., center, and U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., arrive for a meeting with Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite in the Presidential Palace in Vilnius, Lithuania, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)

President Barack Obama on Thursday announced sanctions against Russia for its efforts to influence November's presidential election. The sanctions include shutting down the Maryland compound and one on Long Island, New York.

White House officials said the Maryland facility is recreational but also used for intelligence activities.

People who identified themselves as State Department employees asked reporters to leave the property Thursday.

The sprawling property hosts a brick mansion that has been converted into 12 apartments, as well as a dozen cottages, each with four apartments. In total, the compound can accommodate 40 families at a time.

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6:05 p.m.

President-elect Donald Trump is responding to the Obama administration's decision to impose new sanctions on Russian officials and intelligence services by insisting it is "time for our country to move on to bigger and better things."

But he says he'll meet with U.S. intelligence officials next week "in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."

The Obama administration announced Thursday it would impose new sanctions in retaliation for Russia's efforts to interfere with the U.S. presidential election by hacking American political sites and email accounts.

Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusations. Trump has expressed skepticism about the alleged interference.

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5:45 p.m.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is calling President Barack Obama's efforts to retaliate against Russian hacking "a good initial step, however late in coming."

The Kentucky Republican is accusing the Obama administration of sitting "passively" over the last eight years "while Russia expanded its sphere of influence."

McConnell says, "The Russians are not our friends" and is promising that Congress will review accusations that Moscow interfered in the U.S. election.

He says Congress will "work to ensure that any attack against the United States is met with an overwhelming response."

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5:20 p.m.

The White House says it gave President-elect Donald Trump's team a heads-up about its plans to sanction Russia for election hacking but President Barack Obama didn't tell him about it personally.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz says the U.S. notified a "senior member" of Trump's transition team Thursday before the sanctions were publicly announced.

Obama had spoken to Trump a day earlier by phone while Obama was vacationing in Hawaii.

Trump hasn't yet commented on the U.S. sanctions targeting Russian intelligence agencies and intelligence operatives.

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4:15 p.m.

Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham say sanctions against Russia announced by the Obama administration on Thursday are "a small price" for Russia to pay for interfering with U.S. elections. They say they'll lead efforts in Congress to impose stronger sanctions.

McCain, of Arizona, and Graham, of South Carolina, called Russian cyberattacks on the 2016 election a "brazen attack on American democracy" and say retaliation measures announced Thursday by Obama are long overdue.

Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusation that the Russian government was involved at the highest levels in trying to influence the U.S. presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia's goal was to help Donald Trump win  an assessment Trump has dismissed as ridiculous.

Obama's move puts the president-elect in the position of having to decide whether to roll back the measures once in office.

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4 p.m.

The spokesman for President Vladimir Putin says Moscow regrets the new sanctions that the Obama administration imposed on Russia on Thursday and is considering retaliatory steps.

Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday that the measures signal Obama's "unpredictable" and "aggressive foreign policy."

Peskov says "Such steps of the U.S. administration that has three weeks left to work are aimed at two things: to further harm Russian-American ties, which are at a low point as it is, as well as, obviously, deal a blow on the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the president-elect."

President Barack Obama on Thursday imposed sanctions on Russian officials and intelligence services in retaliation for Russia's hacking of American political sites and email accounts ahead of the November election. Peskov on Thursday reiterated that Russia was not involved in the hacking.

Peskov said Putin has yet to study what the new sanctions involve and work out what retaliatory steps could be.

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3:45 p.m.

The foreign affairs committee chairman of the Russian parliament's upper chamber says Russia will see what President-elect Donald Trump has to say about U.S. sanctions announced on Thursday before stating retaliatory measures of its own.

Konstantin Kosachev tells the Interfax news agency that Russia "needs to consider the circumstances of the transition period and a possible reaction of the U.S. president-elect."

The Obama administration announced the new sanctions, expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and closing of two Russian compounds in reaction to Russia's interference in November's election. Russia denies the accusation.

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3:35 p.m.

House Speaker Paul Ryan says the Obama administration's new sanctions against Russia are long overdue after eight years of "failed policy" with Russia.

The Wisconsin Republican said in a statement Thursday that "Russia does not share America's interests" and has consistently sought to undermine U.S. values while "sowing dangerous instability around the world."

Ryan says the sanctions announced Thursday were overdue, but were "an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia."

He said Russia's interference in U.S. elections showed the Obama administration's "ineffective foreign policy that has left America weaker in the eyes of the world."

The Obama administration announced sanctions in response to Russia hacking the U.S. elections. Russia denies the accusation.

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2:30 p.m.

President Barack Obama has imposed sanctions on Russian officials and intelligence services in retaliation for Russia's interference in the U.S. presidential election by hacking American political sites and email accounts.

The State Department also has kicked out 35 Russian diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco, giving them and their families 72 hours to leave the U.S. The diplomats were declared persona non grata for acting in a "manner inconsistent with their diplomatic status."

Obama said Russians will no longer have access to two Russian government-owned compounds in the United States, in Maryland and in New York.

Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusation that the Russian government was trying to influence the U.S. presidential election.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia's goal was to help Donald Trump win  an assessment Trump has dismissed as ridiculous.

In this photo taken Dec. 16, 2016, President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference in the briefing room of the White House in Washington. President Barack Obama has imposed sanctions on Russian officials and intelligence services in retaliation for Russia's interference in the U.S. presidential election by hacking American political sites and email accounts. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Indiana mother confesses to children's deaths in letter

GOSHEN, Ind. (AP)  An Indiana woman accused of fatally smothering her two young children told a judge in a handwritten letter that she's guilty and ready to accept life in prison.

Amber Pasztor, 29, of Fort Wayne, faces two counts of murder in the Sept. 26 killings of 7-year-old Liliana Hernandez and 6-year-old Rene Pasztor. The children were killed after being abducted from their custodial grandparents' home.

Her attorneys are seeking to present a defense of mental disease or defect, saying they believe she cannot fully understand the legal proceedings or help prepare her defense. But in the letter, Pasztor said she was competent and would refuse to see another doctor for mental health evaluations.

"I made a lot of bad decisions in my life but this one really did it," she wrote. "I am guilty and I accept my consequences thank you so much for your time."

Pasztor has also admitted to fatally shooting her neighbor, 65-year-old Frank Macomber, and taking his car. She has not been charged in the death, but prosecutors have said she is a suspect. Investigators believe Macomber was shot the same day the children were killed. His body was found the next day in a wooded area near Fort Wayne.

Pasztor's letter to Elkhart Circuit Court Judge Terry Shewmaker was dated Dec. 14 but filed with the court on Tuesday, The Goshen News and The (Fort Wayne) Journal Gazette reported.

Shewmaker gave prosecutors a copy of Pasztor's letter during a Thursday court hearing, which Pasztor didn't attend. The judge made no ruling on the letter, but pushed Pasztor's trial date from late January until March 20 so a second competency evaluation could be completed.

Pasztor's defense attorney, Clifford Williams, told The Goshen News that he wouldn't discuss the letter. The Associated Press left a telephone message for Williams on Thursday seeking comment.

According to investigators, Pasztor parked a car outside the Elkhart Police Department hours after the children were abducted and told an officer her children's bodies were the back seat. Elkhart is about 70 miles northwest of Fort Wayne.

Pasztor said in an October jailhouse interview with WANE-TV that she decided to kill her children after hearing an Amber Alert for them. She said she killed the children so they would be safe in heaven.
Mexico commission: Army used undue force in 2015 protest

MEXICO CITY (AP)  Mexico's National Human Rights Commission says that soldiers employed "illegitimate use of force" against civilians at a protest in which a 12-year-old boy was shot dead and 10 other people were wounded.

The incident took place July 19, 2015, when residents blocked a highway in the western state of Michoacan to protest the arrest of their leader, the head of local community policing.

The rights commission said Thursday in a statement it found that in dislodging the protests, 15 soldiers fired their weapons. It deemed "not credible" a Defense Department report that all were warning shots fired in the air.

It said protesters had attacked government vehicles with stones and clubs but there was no evidence they used firearms.
Magnitude 6.2 earthquake hits region in eastern Indonesia

TOLOTANGGA, Indonesia (AP)  A magnitude 6.2 earthquake on Friday hit a region in the eastern part of Indonesia, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

The earthquake hit about 6:30 a.m. in the Sumbawa region, the agency said. The epicenter was about 33 kilometers south of the village of Tolotangga, which is 1,350 kilometers east of the nation's capital, Jakarta.

The earthquake was about 72 kilometers deep, the agency said.

In a statement, Indonesia's National Disaster Mitigation Agency said the earthquake was also felt in the neighboring province of East Nusa Tenggara and the tourist island of Bali.

The earthquake caused many residents in the areas hit to pour out from their houses, the agency said. But it added that there were no immediate reports of damages or casualties.

No tsunami warning has been issued, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

On Dec. 7, Indonesia's Aceh province was hit by a magnitude 6.5 quake that killed more than 100 people.
Dozens of children who lived in the Calais Jungle camp have launched a legal challenge against Home Secretary Amber Rudd for mishandling their asylum claims, according to reports.

Lawyers representing 36 children say the Government broke its promise to bring vulnerable accompanied minors to the UK under section 67 of the Immigration Act, known as the Dubs amendment, The Guardian reported.

Most of those bringing the action - 28 - have had their asylum applications turned down while the other eight are still waiting to hear the Home Offices final decision, the newspaper reported.

Threatened with a major political rebellion led by Lord Dubs, the Government agreed to take in more children from the sprawling refugee camp which was demolished in October.

Calais Jungle camp

But according to lawyers, the Home Office has failed to bring many of the most vulnerable refugee children to the UK and not given proper written decisions in refusing these applications.

Toufique Hossain, director of public law at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, told The Guardian: The Government has rendered these children, including some as young as 13, to effectively be without any legal remedy until well into the new year, which is the earliest that the relevant Home Office officials have agreed to give reasons for refusing some of these children.

He added: The way that this has all been handled by both the UK and French authorities is nothing short of shameful.

It is morally reprehensible and, we argue, simply unlawful that these children have not been given written reasons as to why their applications were refused and that these children were told about the refusals in group meetings without a proper procedure in place.

Calais Jungle camp

The Home Office faced criticism last month when it published guidelines which seriously restrict which children would qualify to come to the UK under the Dubs amendment.

Under new eligibility criteria, a child must be either 12 or under, at high risk of sexual exploitation, be 15 or under and either of Syrian or Sudanese nationality, or be under 18 and a sibling of someone fitting these criteria.

Labour peer Lord Dubs, who fled the Nazis and came to Britain as part of the Kindertransport scheme, at the time told the Press Association the change was shocking.

He said: I think in those new eligibility criteria they have breached both the letter and the spirit of the amendment. I think they have gone back on their word.
Breast implants and replacement hips will be printed with barcodes in a technological overhaul of equipment that could save the NHS 1 billion.

The codes on various implants, medication and surgical tools will help medics track patients care in a plan to reduce waste, save money and improve safety, the Department of Health (DoH) said.

The technology, used in the retail and aerospace industries, is being introduced as part of the Governments 12 million Scan4Safety project.

A consultant analysing a mammogram (Rui Vieira/PA)

Trust's interested in finding out more about #scan4safety should register now for the Scan4safety conference 2017 https://t.co/wgZ45KC1WW  SFT Scan4Safety (@SFTScan4safety) December 13, 2016

It is hoped that the scheme will help eliminate avoidable harm by reducing the number of times patients are administered the wrong drugs and surgery is performed on the wrong part of the body.

The scannable codes will show who administered treatment or performed a particular surgery, and allow anything from a screw in a knee operation to a replacement hip to be traced back if it becomes faulty.

It will also help doctors to compare the effectiveness of different treatments, and assist in stocktaking.

Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt said it was a world first in healthcare.

Saving money in the NHS https://t.co/XAhF4M1iP3 via @youtube  Theatre Managers (@theatremanagers) December 16, 2016

He said: Using simple barcodes that major industries rely on every day will help to transform standards of care - before, during and after patients have treatment, at the same time as freeing up resources for care by reducing waste.

The scheme is being piloted in six NHS trusts in Derby, Leeds, Salisbury, Cornwall, North Tees and Plymouth.

They report it is reducing unnecessary waste, saving staff time and providing patients with more information, the DoH said.
A wallaby, a pig and a cow were among the animals killed on motorways and major roads in England last year, new figures show.

Highways England said 2,143 dead animals were found on the Strategic Road Network in 2015.

Partial data for the types of animals killed suggests deer were the most common, being involved in around one in four cases.

The 10 most frequently killed animals also included cats, dogs, otters and swans.

The figures, released in response to a Freedom of Information request by the Press Association, included road death totals for 19 different animals.

One wallaby  a kangaroo-like creature primarily found in Australia  was among the fatalities.

The location of the death was not given, but there have been several sightings of wild wallabies in recent years, including in Devon, Norfolk and the Peak District.

Otters at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire (Chris Radburn/PA)

Steve Gooding, director of motoring research charity RAC Foundation, said: When it comes to hazard perception, drivers might not give much thought to animals straying into their path, but these figures show why they should.

Many of the animals hit will be family pets, and both Highways England and animal owners need to do their best to keep them off our roads  which have never been busier.

The Deer Initiative charity estimates that up to 74,000 deer-vehicle collisions occur on Britains roads each year, injuring as many as 700 drivers and passengers.

Deer rutting in Richmond Park, London (Jonathan Brady/PA)

Wildlife expert Dr Jochen Langbein said: Theres obviously a significant problem.

He explained that a range of potential measures can be deployed to protect deer  including enhanced fencing, better signage to warn drivers and building animal overpasses and underpasses.

But he warned: Theres not a simple solution.

Department for Transport figures show that eight people were killed on Britains roads last year in accidents where the presence of an animal or object in carriageway was a contributory factor.
Protesters at an anti-fracking camp erected close to one of only two UK sites to be given the go-ahead to start the controversial gas extraction technique have said they are drawing a line in the sand.

The camp began when activists moved on to private farmland near Kirby Misperton, North Yorkshire, just before Christmas, after the High Court rejected a legal move to stop plans for fracking at a well south-west of the village.

(Danny Lawson/PA)

A handful of campers braved Christmas Day outside and the sub-zero temperatures which have followed but they say hundreds more people have come to show their support at the site over the last week from the local area and around the country.

Now they say they want to turn the camp into the national focus for anti-fracking campaigning in the UK.

One camper, Louise Hammond, from Lincolnshire, said local residents brought Christmas dinner out to them on the big day.

Protester Louise Hammond.

She said: This field weve taken will be full before long and its absolutely massive.

This is the focus now, nationally. If we cant do anything here then thats it. Its a line in the sand.

Mrs Hammond said the camp was about two miles from the well but she said it was located next to a main road the trucks would need to use to access the well site when the operation begins.

(Danny Lawson/PA)

She said the plan was to use direct action to block the lorries.

The protesters entered the site without the permission of the landowner and they have spent the week putting in various facilities.

The plan by the firm Third Energy to frack for shale gas using an existing two-mile deep well in Kirby Misperton was approved in May by North Yorkshire county councils planning committee.

Protesters talk to a local man, left, at the anti-fracking camp.

Residents from the village supported by Friends of the Earth tried to block the decision in the High Court but, days before Christmas, a judge dismissed their application for judicial review.

The judge ruled that the terms and conditions afforded a considerable degree of protection to residents and the councils decision was lawful.

The Kirby Mipserton application was the first to be approved in the UK since 2011, when tests on the Fylde coast, in Lancashire, were found to have been the probable cause of minor earthquakes in the area.

We're here at Kirby Misperton Community Protection Camp, dropping off supplies from Preston New Road and friends  #WeSaidNo pic.twitter.com/U8g9Hd8tEh  Preston New Road (@NoFrackLancs) December 29, 2016

Since then, two high-profile applications to frack in Lancashire have been rejected by councillors.

But in October, the scheme to drill up to four wells and frack for shale gas at Preston New Road, Fylde, which had been turned down by Lancashire County Council, was given the go-ahead by Communities Secretary Sajid Javid following an appeal.

A second site in Lancashire, Roseacre Wood, has not yet been given the green light amid concerns over HGV traffic and road safety in the area.

In a statement, Third Energy said: Third Energy has become aware that a small group of protestors has set up a camp on the Kirby Misperton Road close to the junction with the A169, objecting to the companys plans for a test frack of its existing well at the KMA site in Kirby Misperton. These plans have been approved by North Yorkshire County Council, after extensive consultation and deliberation, and the councils decision was upheld in the High Court.

Third Energy respects peoples right to lawful and peaceful protest. We trust that those who object to our plans will also respect our rights, and the rights of Ryedale residents, to go about our business lawfully and peacefully.
Londons top-flight index has closed at a record high for the second day running thanks to a rally from precious metal stocks.

The FTSE 100 Index rose 14.18 points to hit a new high of 7120.26, after the traditional Santa Rally helped it reach a record closing high of 7106.08 in the previous session.

A graph showing movement in the FTSE 100 Index, as it has recorded a new all-time closing high of 7,120.26

It comes after the top flight hit a mid-session record of 7129.83 on October 11, boosted in part by the collapse in the value of the pound since the Brexit vote.

Sterlings post-referendum slump has proved a boon for multinational companies listed on the FTSE 100, as many tend to benefit from earnings in currencies that are stronger than the pound.

Gold miners Randgold Resources and Fresnillo led the charge on the London market, climbing more than 4%. The rally was spurred by the price of gold, which rose 1.3% to 1156.9 US dollars an ounce.

London Stock Exchange update: #FTSE 100 closes at 7,120.26, up 0.20%  London Stock Exchange (@LSEplc) December 29, 2016

#FTSE 100 biggest risers: Randgold Resources (+4.82%) / Fresnillo (+4.62%) / Hikma Pharmaceuticals (+1.92%)  London Stock Exchange (@LSEplc) December 29, 2016

The new record on the London market came amid thin trading volumes and a number of blue chip stocks going ex-dividend  a process where new buyers no longer qualify for the latest dividend payment.

Among the ex-dividend stocks were Dixons Carphone down 1% and data services company Experian dropping 0.1%. Across Europe, Germanys Dax and the Cac 40 in France were both 0.2% lower.

[World Index] Nasdaq -17.42-0.32% FTSE100 +0.20% CAC40 -0.20% DAX -0.21% [Forex] EURUSD 1.0488http://www.w-index.com/ (2:05)  Realtime World Index (@w_index_us) December 29, 2016

The price of oil broke above the 57 US dollar mark, but a surprise increase in US inventories prevented it climbing any higher. Brent crude was up 0.2%, or 10 cents, at 57.06 US dollars a barrel.

On the currency markets, the pound regained some strength against the US dollar, rising 0.1% to 1.223, but was down 0.6% against the euro at 1.166.

In UK stocks, housebuilders struggled to make gains despite the latest survey from the Nationwide Building Society showing property values have increased by 4.5% across 2016.

The average UK house price stood at 205,898 in December, marking a 0.8% month-on-month increase, the report said.

A 4.5% annual increase in December was the same as the rise in December last year, indicating that the last 12 months have seen relative stability in the market, according to Nationwide.
A Hillsborough campaigner and academic has turned down an OBE in the Queens New Year Honours list in protest against those who failed to help survivors of the disaster and the bereaved families

Professor Phil Scraton, who led the Hillsborough Independent Panels research team, refused the honour in protest at those who remained unresponsive to efforts for truth and justice after the tragedy.

An inquest jury concluded in April that the 96 who died in the crush at Hillsborough Stadium on April 15 1989 were unlawfully killed.

Prof Scratons book, Hillsborough: The Truth, is regarded as a definitive account of the disaster and he was given the freedom of the city of Liverpool for his work.

(Left to right) Trevor Hicks, Margaret Apsinall, Kenny Dalglish, the Lord Mayor of Liverpool Roz Gladden, Marina Dalglish, Consort Roy Gladden and Professor Phil Scraton all hold a medal for each of the 96 victims of the Hillsborough disaster at Liverpool Town Hall (Peter Byrne/PA)

In a statement reported by the BBC, he said: I researched Hillsborough from 1989, publishing reports, articles and the first edition of Hillsborough: The Truth in 1990.

Until 2009, and despite compelling evidence, successive governments declined to pursue a thorough independent review of the context, consequences and aftermath of the disaster.

This changed as a direct result of the families and survivors brave, persistent campaign. It led to the Hillsborough Independent Panel, its ground-breaking findings, new inquests and their crucially significant verdicts.

Hillsborough Independent Panel members after the release of previously unpublished papers realting to the Hillsborough disaster (Peter Byrne/PA)

He added: I headed the panels research team and was a consultant to the families lawyers throughout the new inquests.

I could not receive an honour on the recommendation of those who remained unresponsive to the determined efforts of bereaved families and survivors to secure truth and justice.

Prof Scraton said he appreciated his decision might come as a disappointment to some Hillsborough families, survivors and whoever nominated me, the BBC said.
Terrorist lorry attacks on crowds in Nice and Berlin this year forced UK police to adjust plans for protecting New Years revellers, a senior officer said.

Armed police will join around 3,000 officers on the streets of the capital on Saturday.

A police van in central London during the New Year celebrations

Concerns about the threat of a mass-casualty terror plot targeting the spectacle have been heightened after extremists struck busy public events in Europe.

In July, a lorry ploughed down the packed seafront promenade in Nice during the annual Bastille Day celebrations, killing 86 people and injuring hundreds of others.

Hundreds of handwritten tributes laid on the Promenade des Anglais, Nice

A Christmas market in the heart of Berlin was the scene of a similar atrocity in December, when 12 people died as a truck packed with steel was driven into crowds.

But the Metropolitan Polices Detective Superintendent Phil Langworthy sought to reassure the public.

He told the Press Association: Clearly we have been looking at what has happened around the world in terms of Berlin, Nice, etcetera, and have adjusted our plans and continue to adjust our plans.

We police around 3,500 large events every year including New Years Eve and we meticulously plan those events  we have meticulously planned New Years Eve  and we look at our tactics and we look around the world and adjust our tactics if need be.

We have a very extensive planning period, we plan for many months, pretty much we start planning since the last event.

Candles are lit at Breitscheidplatz, Berlin, in tribute to the 12 people who died after a lorry ploughed into the crowded Christmas market (Claire Hayhurst/PA)

He added there was no specific intelligence for an attack on the end-of-year event, but said: I would encourage people on the night if they see anything suspicious or have any concerns to come and speak to one of the police officers or stewards who will be on duty.

Huge numbers are expected to ring in the new year on the banks of the River Thames, but partygoers are likely to flood into other parts of central London, including major tourist spots such as Trafalgar Square.

Police urged those who did not have tickets for the set piece firework display, which has again sold out, to watch it from home instead.
Poland - Factors to Watch Dec. 29 - Reuters News

Following are news stories, media reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Thursday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 1 hour):

SHARES TO GAIN

Share prices on the Warsaw Exchange are headed for single-digit gains next year, according to a compilation of forecasts gathered by the Parkiet daily.

KHW

Poland's troubled state-run coal mining group KHW will most likely extend its agreement with bondholders to work out a restructuring plan, the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily reports. The current deal expires at the end of 2016.

ATTITUDE POLL

More than 70 percent of Poles look optimistically to 2017 and they positively assess the outgoing year, according to a poll by the Ariadna pollster, cited by the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily.

SUNDAY TRADING LAW

The parliament is working on a new draft law that would limit the number of retailers opened on Sundays, the daily Gazeta Polska Codziennie reports. Proponents of the idea say the law would "civilise" the industry, while opponents warn that about 40,000 people may lose their jobs and trade turnover may decrease by up to 9.6 billion zloty ($2.28 billion) per year.

AUTO INSURANCE

Insurance rates for drivers went up 50 percent in 2016 and are headed for a possible additional 30-percent increase next year, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily reports, on the back of continued heavy losses in the auto insurance industry.

R&D INVESTMENT

According to data from the Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency, foreign investors are increasingly parking their money in research and developments centres in Poland, banking on economic stabilisation in the country and a high level of education, the Rzeczpospolita daily writes.

NEWAG NOT FOR SALE

The largest shareholder in Poland's trains manufacturer Newag said the sale of the company's shares remains an unlikely scenario for now and the company's merger with Pesa manufacturer is also rather unrealistic, the Rzeczpospolita daily cites the shareholder, Zbigniew Jakubas, as saying.

DEBT SUPPLY DATA

The Finance Ministry may publish on Thursday a schedule of its debt auctions for Q1 2017.

****Reuters has not verified stories reported by Polish media and does not vouch for their accuracy.****
Youths among dead as Philippine gunmen kill 7 in 'drugs den'

MANILA, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Three minors were among seven people shot dead by suspected vigilantes in the Philippines at a house storing illegal narcotics, police said on Thursday, in the latest killings during a bloody and murky war on drugs.

Two unknown gunmen arrived on motorcycles and entered what police called a drugs den north of the capital Manila late on Wednesday. They opened fire on those inside, killing five instantly before fleeing, according to a police report, which said two other victims died before reaching the hospital.

Four of those killed were teenagers, two of them 15, one 16 and one 18. The killings come as the government of President Rodrigo Duterte prepares legislation to put to Congress to lower the age of criminal liability to nine from 15.

More than 6,100 people have been killed in the past six months during Duterte's controversial war on drugs, about a third in police operations and others classified as deaths under investigation. Police say killings during counter-narcotics operations were in self-defence.

The crackdown, the core plank of Duterte's election campaign, has been condemned internationally and has created tension between the Philippines and key allies and donors, among them the European Union, United States and United Nations. He has praised China for staying out of it.

Duterte has hit back with stunning rebukes and says he is willing to "rot in jail" to rid the Philippines of a drugs problem he initially vowed to solve within three to six months. He says the scourge was bigger than he first thought.

In a television interview on Thursday, Duterte said the drugs war would not end soon.

"Until the last pusher is out of the street... until the last drugs lord is killed, this drug campaign would continue to the last day of my term," he said.

Killings by vigilantes have occurred often and the authorities have been accused by rights groups of hiring assassins to kill suspects.
Amount of Monte dei Paschi's bailout depends on industrial plan, Econ min to paper

MILAN, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Italy's Economy Minister said the actual amount for the government's recapitalisation of Monte dei Paschi will depend on the lender's new industrial plan, in an interview to Italy's daily Il Sole 24 Ore on Thursday.

A capital increase could be launched in two to three months, with full information form the ECB and the EU, Pier Carlo Padoan said.
Sarajevo police commander indicted for war crimes against Serbs

SARAJEVO, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A Sarajevo police commander whose special forces fought to defend the Bosnian capital from Bosnian Serb attacks during the 1992-95 siege, was indicted on Thursday for war crimes against Serb prisoners early in the war.

Dragan Vikic, 59, and then Bosnian Interior Minister Jusuf Pusina, are accused of knowing, approving and covering up the killing of eight soldiers of the then Yugoslavian army (JNA) in Sarajevo Great Park in April 1992, the state prosecutor's office said in a statement.

The soldiers, who were trapped in a broken armoured vehicle at the outskirts of Sarajevo while trying to leave the city as part of a JNA convoy, were killed in a machine-gun burst and their bodies taken away to an unknown location, it said.

The two men are the highest profile wartime officials accused so far of war crimes against Serbs in Sarajevo.

Vikic dismissed any connection with the incident.

"My hands, and the hands of the people under my command, are clean," he told Sarajevo website Klix.

Bosnian Serb forces, helped by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), held Sarajevo under siege from April 1992 until December 1995 during which around 11,000 people died.

"The defendants are accused that they, as members of police and security structures who were positioned close to the site of the crime, were informed about the crime or personally witnessed the execution of the crime," the statement said.

They failed to arrest, prosecute and punish the executioners and prevent the removal of evidence and hiding of the bodies, the statement added.

Two other police officers, Nermin Uzunovic and Mladen Covcic, are accused of taking part in the killings.
Syrian rebels agree to ceasefire - rebels

BEIRUT, Dec 29 (Reuters) - A Free Syrian Army-affiliated rebel official said on Thursday rebels had agreed to a nationwide ceasefire plan backed by Russia and Turkey.
Italy criticises ECB over Monte Paschi capital decision

By Silvia Aloisi and Balazs Koranyi

MILAN/FRANKFURT, Dec 29 (Reuters) - The European Central Bank should have explained more clearly why it nearly doubled its estimated capital shortfall for the ailing Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank, which is being bailed out by the state, Italy's economy minister said.

In unusually critical comments of the euro zone's single banking supervisor, Pier Carlo Padoan said in a newspaper interview the ECB's new capital target was the result of a "very rigid stance" in its assessment of the bank's risk profile.

"It would have been useful, if not kind, to have a bit more information from the ECB about the criteria that led to this assessment," Padoan told financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore.

Monte dei Paschi, Italy's third biggest lender and the world's oldest, said on Monday the ECB had estimated its capital shortfall at 8.8 billion euros ($9.20 billion), compared with a 5 billion euro gap previously indicated by the bank.

The higher capital requirement substantially increases the cost of the bank's rescue by the government after it failed to raise the 5 billion euros on the market.

The treasury is now set to pump in around 6.5 billion euros to salvage the lender, raising concerns that its newly created 20-billion-euro bank bailout fund may not have enough money for other weak banks. The government says the fund is sufficient.

The rest of the money Monte dei Paschi needs will come from the forced conversion of its subordinated bonds into shares, in line with European rules on bank crises. The lender fared the worst in EU-wide banking stress tests published in July.

Padoan said he expected the capital increase to take place in two to three months.

The ECB told the Italian treasury of its decision in a letter, which Padoan said was just five lines long and which has not been made public.

It irked the Rome government and has quickly turned into a political issue. A group of lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Party asked Padoan and Italy's foreign minister on Wednesday to explain in parliament what had happened.

"I was a bit surprised to receive the news, out of the blue and on Christmas day," Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni told a press conference.

"It's important that the reasons behind this assessment are shared and that there is a dialogue because we need to handle this issue together ... We will stick to our guns."

The ECB has declined to comment on its rationale for the larger capital shortfall.

A source close to the matter said the bank's estimate of a 5 billion euros capital gap was based on the results of the stress test, conducted on end-2015 data, and included assumptions such as the sale of its whole portfolio of defaulting loans - a key plank of its plan to raise money privately.

Given that plan's failure and the bank's worsening balance sheet over the past year, the ECB wants to ensure Monte dei Paschi has enough capital to safely meet a Common Equity Tier 1 (CET 1) ratio of 8 percent in an adverse scenario, so it would be able to restore investor and customer confidence, the source said.

The source also said the ECB had offered to explain its stance to both the Italian treasury and Monte dei Paschi.

At 8 percent under the adverse scenario, Monte dei Paschi would still be below the average of the ECB's stress test, in which banks would see their CET 1 ratio fall to 9.4 percent from 13.2 percent.

The 8 percent threshold in the adverse scenario was also a requirement the ECB set for ailing Greek banks in a 2015 review.

Padoan said the exact amount of capital Monte dei Paschi will have to raise will be determined once it presents a new business plan to the ECB and the European Commission, but he played down the bank's problems.
Russia announces ceasefire in Syria from midnight

By Denis Pinchuk and Tulay Karadeniz

MOSCOW/ANKARA, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a ceasefire between Syrian opposition groups and the Syrian government starting at midnight on Thursday.

The parties were also prepared to start peace talks, Putin said, after Moscow, Iran and Turkey expressed readiness to broker a deal to settle the nearly six-year-old Syrian war.

The Syrian army announced a nationwide halt to fighting but said Islamic State and ex-Nusra Front militants and all groups linked to them would be excluded from the deal. It did not say which unnamed groups would be excluded.

A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, a loose alliance of rebel groups, said it would abide by the ceasefire, due to come into force at 2200 GMT, and take part in future talks.

It was the third nationwide ceasefire agreed in Syria this year. The previous two, negotiated by Washington and Moscow, collapsed within weeks as warring sides accused each other of violations. The current deal does not involve the United States or United Nations.

The latest ceasefire deal follows a major defeat for the anti-Assad rebellion in Aleppo, where the Russian air force and Iranian-backed ground forces played a critical role helping the government drive rebels from eastern parts of the city.

It also follows a thaw in ties between Russia and Turkey.

While Ankara has been a big sponsor of the rebellion, Assad's removal has become a secondary concern to combatting the expansion of Kurdish influence in northern Syria. The chances of Assad's opponents forcing him from power now seem more remote than at any point in the war.

One rebel commander expressed optimism that this deal would be more effective. "This time I have confidence in its seriousness. There is new international input," said Colonel Fares al-Bayoush, an FSA commander, without elaborating.

Talks on the latest truce picked up momentum after Russia, Iran and Turkey last week said they were ready to back a peace deal and adopted a declaration setting out principles for an agreement.

Putin said opposition groups and the Syrian government had signed a number of documents, including the ceasefire, measures to monitor the truce, and a statement on readiness to start peace talks.

"The agreements reached are, of course, fragile, need a special attention and involvement... But after all, this is a notable result of our joint work, efforts by the defence and foreign ministries, our partners in the regions," Putin said.

He also said Russia had agreed to reduce its military deployment in Syria, where its support has turned the tide in favour of President Bashar al-Assad in a war that has killed more than 300,000 and forced more than 11 million to flee their homes.

Putin spoke by phone to Assad who said he was committed to observing the ceasefire, the Kremlin said.

Turkey said it and Russia would guarantee the ceasefire.

"This window of opportunity should not be wasted," Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said.

ISLAMIC STATE

Three rebel officials told Reuters the deal excluded Islamic State, but did include the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group, formerly al Qaeda's Syria branch, the Nusra Front - appearing to contradict the Syrian army's statement.

The Free Syrian Army spokesman said the ceasefire also does not include the Kurdish YPG militia, which has mostly avoided conflict with the Syrian government. The YPG could not immediately be reached for comment.

Russia's defence ministry said insurgent groups that signed the agreement included the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, which operates primarily near Damascus, and Jabha Shamiya, one of the main Turkey-backed FSA groups that had operated in Aleppo.

However, a spokesman for Ahrar al-Sham said it had reservations about the agreement and had not signed it.

The United States has been sidelined in recent negotiations and is not due to attend the next round of peace talks in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, a key Russian ally.

Its exclusion reflects growing frustration from both Turkey and Russia over Washington's policy on Syria, officials have said.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the United States could join the peace process once President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month. He also wanted Egypt to join, together with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Jordan and the United Nations.

Washington said the news of a ceasefire was a positive.

"We hope it will be implemented fully and respected by all parties," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

The United Nations Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, welcomed the ceasefire announcement and hoped it would save civilian lives, enable the delivery of aid and lead to productive peace talks in Astana.

The deal should also help U.N. negotiations on Syria to be held in February, de Mistura's spokeswoman said.

CIVIL WAR

Talks on the ceasefire reflect the complexity of Syria's civil war, with an array of groups and foreign interests involved on all sides.

Turkey and Russia support different sides in the war. Ankara has insisted on the departure of Assad, who is backed by Russia.

Likewise, demands that troops from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement leave Syria may not please Iran, another major supporter of Assad. Hezbollah troops have been fighting alongside Syrian government forces against rebels opposed to Assad.

"All foreign fighters need to leave Syria. Hezbollah needs to return to Lebanon," Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

Sources have told Reuters that, under an outline deal between the three countries, Syria could be divided into informal zones of regional power and Assad would remain president for at least a few years.

Syria's foreign minister said Syria would participate "with an open mind" in the peace talks in Astana.

Meanwhile, disagreements remain between big powers.

Ankara supports the Free Syrian Army and some of the rebel groups in the alliance in operations in northern Syria designed to sweep Islamic State and Syrian Kurdish fighters from its southern border.

The United States is backing the Syrian Kurdish YPG in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, a move that has infuriated Turkey, which sees the YPG as an extension of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Ankara fears that advances by Kurdish fighters in Syria could inflame militants at home.
Turkish journalist accused of spreading propaganda; leading writer freed

By Humeyra Pamuk

ISTANBUL, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Prominent Turkish journalist Ahmet Sik was detained on Thursday on suspicion of spreading terrorist propaganda, state media and an opposition lawmaker who spoke to the reporter said.

Sik works for the daily Cumhuriyet, one of the few dailies still critical of the government as Turkish authorities have purged tens of thousands, largely from the state apparatus, in the wake of a coup attempt last July.

Prosecutors could not be reached for comment but Sik himself tweeted that he was being taken to the prosecutor's office.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said Sik was accused of spreading terrorist propaganda and insulting the state, the judiciary, the military and the police through several tweets and his work on Cumhuriyet.

Anadolu cited more than half a dozen tweets. Most were about the state's fight against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels, while one was about this month's killing of the Russian ambassador in Ankara.

Baris Yarkadas, a lawmaker for the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), tweeted that Sik had told him he was being accused of spreading terrorist propaganda.

Separately, a court in Istanbul ordered the release, pending trial, of award-winning novelist Asli Erdogan and linguist Necmiye Alpay, Alpay's lawyer said. The two had been in jail since August on charges of belonging to a terrorist organisation and harming national unity.

They are among a total of nine defendants who worked for a pro-Kurdish newspaper closed by authorities, some of whom face possible life sentences.

Alpay and Erdogan, who is not related to the Turkish president, both pleaded 'not guilty'.

JOURNALISTS IN JAIL

The PKK, which has been fighting for three decades for autonomy for Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, is considered a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States as well as Turkey.

At least 81 journalists are imprisoned in Turkey, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and more than 130 media outlets have been shut since July. Most of the detained journalists and writers are accused of spreading terrorist propaganda.

Over 110,000 civil servants, police, academics and others have been detained, suspended or dismissed over suspected links to Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based cleric accused by Ankara of orchestrating the coup. Around 40,000 have been formally arrested.

The scale of the crackdown has alarmed Turkey's Western allies and foreign investors, but Ankara says it is justified by the threat posed by Gulen's network, which it says is a terrorist organisation. Gulen, who lives in the United States, denies the charges.
Italian police search homes connected to Berlin attack suspect

ROME, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Italian police have searched three houses in and around Rome, where the man suspected of killing 12 people last week at a Christmas market in Berlin may have spent time, a judicial source said on Thursday.

Anis Amri, a Tunisian, first arrived in Europe by boat to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2011, and was shot dead by police in Milan four days after the Dec. 19 attack in Berlin.

The searches focused in the capital and nearby Aprilia, where he was thought to have stayed after leaving a detention centre in Sicily in 2015, the source said. Police are investigating whether he was seeking to stay in Italy or trying to reach another country.

On Thursday, during an end-year news conference, Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Amri was probably radicalised after arriving in Europe in 2011, but added that the government had no evidence Amri had "particular networks" in Italy.

"Five years ago he was not a jihadist ... In desperation, in isolation, in alienation, he found the conviction to follow the path of radicalisation," Italy's anti-terrorism chief Franco Roberti was also quoted as saying in an interview with la Repubblica newspaper on Thursday.

Roberti said lone-wolf attackers like Amri needed the help of small-scale criminal networks, such as those in Italy and Spain, for logistical support including acquiring false documents.

"From this point of view, Italy and Spain are the cradles," Roberti said.

Amri's undetected passage to Italy, via France, from Germany after the attack, has prompted eurosceptic parties to call for the reintroduction of border controls that were removed by the continent's open-border Schengen pact.
UN envoy welcomes Syria ceasefire deal as prelude to peace talks

GENEVA, Dec 29 (Reuters) - U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura welcomed the announcement of a Syria ceasefire deal on Thursday and said he hoped it would save civilian lives, enable the delivery of aid and lead to productive peace talks in Astana.
Egypt's government approves deal to hand two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia

CAIRO, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Egypt's government has approved a deal to hand over two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia and sent it to parliament for ratification, despite a legal dispute over the plan, according to state television.

The deal, announced in April, caused public uproar and rare protests by Egyptians who said the uninhabited islands of Tiran and Sanafir belonged to their country.

The controversy has become a source of tension with Saudi Arabia, which has provided billions of dollars of aid to Egypt but recently halted fuel shipments amid deteriorating relations.

In June, the Higher Administrative Court annulled the agreement, saying Egyptian sovereignty over the islands could not be given up. The Egyptian government lodged an appeal.

Earlier this month, an Egyptian state advisory body recommended the court uphold its original decision, in a report seen by Reuters.

The court is due to issue its final verdict on Jan. 16 and is not obliged to follow the advisory body's report.

The government's latest move shows "the collapse of the state of law and the constitution" in Egypt, said Khaled Ali, a lawyer who filed the June lawsuit to annul the deal.

"The decision that parliament is going to issue is void and the people should defend their land with all legitimate means against this tyrant regime that doesn't respect either law or judiciary," Ali said.

However, Nabil al-Gamal, member of the legislative and constitutional committee in parliament, said there was "absolutely no conflict" in sending the agreement to parliament for ratification before the court's final ruling.

"I expect the parliament not to vote ... on the agreement before the judiciary rules, so that there won't be any conflict between them," said al-Gamal.

Tiran and Sanafir are situated in the narrow entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba leading to Jordan and Israel.

Saudi and Egyptian officials say they belong to Saudi Arabia and were only under Egyptian control because Riyadh asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them.
Brazil's president to pursue tax reform in 2017

By Maria Carolina Marcello

BRASILIA, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Brazil will seek to simplify its tax code in 2017, President Michel Temer said on Thursday, aiming to broaden his business-friendly reform agenda following proposals to modify the pension system and labor laws.

A government source familiar with the matter told Reuters the reform could include streamlining the tax regime of the oil and gas industry, changes to levies on the financial system, and the reduction of red tape in general.

Since taking office after the ouster of his leftist predecessor Dilma Rousseff, Temer has pledged to pursue structural reforms to lift Brazil from its deepest economic recession in decades.

This month, Congress sanctioned his proposal to limit growth of public spending for the next 20 years, clearing the way for votes on other measures. Brazil's generous pension system must be overhauled if the spending cap is to have real effect, officials say.

In a news conference in the capital Brasilia, Temer said he expects Congress to swiftly approve his plans to simplify the hiring of workers on temporary contracts, saying lawmakers have shown "strong support" for his agenda.

"Why not pursue tax reform now that plenty of bills have advanced?" Temer said, adding that his government would work hard to achieve the reform next year.

Economists have long criticized Brazil's complex tax system as a barrier to long-term growth. Companies in Brazil spend on average 2,038 hours to do their taxes or about 12 times the average in the wealthy OECD group of nations, according to the World Bank's "Doing Business" index.

Temer's advisers have floated a proposal to unify the federal PIS and Cofins taxes to fund social security. The government could also negotiate with states to unify an inter-state tax known as ICMS, a measure considered crucial to reduce legal uncertainties.

The official, who asked not to be named because he is not allowed to speak publicly, said that in addition to changes for the oil and financial sectors, the broad reform could include the restructuring of the finance ministry's tax appeals tribunal, known as CARF.

"These are the general ideas of what should be done. It is still in embryonic stages," the source said.

Despite Temer's efforts at reform, unemployment has continued to rise. Data on Thursday showed the economy shed a net 116,747 jobs in November, more than double economists' expectations.

Temer approved a modest increase of 6.4 percent in the national minimum wage to 937 reais on Thursday, reflecting a slowdown in inflation.

The president also promised to support Congressional efforts to reform Brazil's political framework, a messy multiparty system that critics say makes Brazil's electoral politics complicated and often corrupt.

"The theme of political reform belongs to Congress, but we'll incentivize it and support it," he said.

Some lawmakers have called for rules limiting the proliferation of parties, blamed for fostering corruption by demanding broad coalition and deal-making in Congress.
BEIRUT AFP Dec28, 2016 -Air strikes carried out by unidentified aircraft killed at least 22 civilians, including 10 children, in a village held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria, a monitor said Wednesday.



The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the civilians were from two families at Hojna in Deir Ezzor, which borders Iraq and is the countrys second biggest province after Homs. The oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor is almost totally under IS control and has been regularly targeted by a US-led military coalition. The only part of the eastern province outside of IS control is its capital, which is also named Deir Ezzor and is held by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.



IS has carried out a series of attacks across Europe and has been targeted by military offensives on several fronts in Syria and Iraq, where it declared an Islamic caliphate in 2014.
Israeli police have obtained new documents in a secret probe against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, prompting them to seek a full criminal investigation against the politician on suspicion of bribery and fraud, local media reports.



Since discovering the files, police have requested from Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit that he allow a full investigation against Netanyahu. Authorities are reportedly convinced that they will be able to open one in the coming days, Channel 2 News reported, according to The Times of Israel.

The documents were reportedly obtained as part of a secret inquiry against Netanyahu by special police unit Lahav 433, which was launched in June. The probe was given the green light by Police Chief Roni Alsheich, who demanded secrecy and that no details of the investigation be leaked to the media.



Meanwhile, Mandelblit also reportedly instructed employees in the state prosecutors office to look into allegations that Netanyahu accepted 1 million ($1.04 million) from Arnaud Mimran, a French businessman currently serving eight years in prison for committing carbon tax fraud. During his trial, Mimran claimed he donated the money to Netanyahu during his 2009 election campaign.

However, Netanyahu has repeatedly denied the donation, and a spokesperson for the leader has called the newest action against him nonsense.



Since Netanyahus victory in the last elections and even before, hostile elements have made heroic efforts to attempt to bring about [Netanyahus] downfall, with false accusations against him and his family. This [latest attempt] is absolutely false. There was nothing and there will be nothing, the spokesperson said, as quoted by Haaretz.

RT.COM/28 Dec, 2016
Govt. to develop a single registry of citizens with information on family structure and economic characteristics

Newly set up Welfare Benefits Board will develop new selection criteria based on the data in the registry

Project expected to strengthen govt.s capacity to monitor and improve welfare programmes

Sri Lanka has signed an agreement to obtain a US $ 75 million World Bank credit line to support the countrys welfare programmes and improve the equity, efficiency and transparency of its social safety net system.

The credit will come from the International Development Association (IDA), the World Banks concessionary lending arm, through the IDA Scale-Up facility. It has a final maturity of 24 years, including a grace period of five years.

The project will allow the government to develop a single registry of citizens with information on family structure and economic characteristics. The Welfare Benefits Board, set up to manage the selection and payment of beneficiaries, will develop new selection criteria based on the data in the registry.

A World Bank statement said this will make identification fairer and more transparent and ensure that benefits reach the intended households. The project will also strengthen the governments capacity to monitor and improve welfare programmes.

World Bank Country Director for Sri Lanka and the Maldives Idah Pswarayi-Riddihough and Finance Ministry Secretary Dr. R.H.S. Samarathunga signed the project on behalf of the World Bank and government.

Safety net programmes are a safety valve for Sri Lankas poor and vulnerable populations. By increasing the efficiency of expenditures, the project will make social spending more sustainable, while ensuring that targeted households receive the full benefit of the programmes.

Over time, it will also help the government refine programmes to address emerging fiscal challenges, such as an aging population, Pswarayi-Riddihough said.

The project will be implemented by the Finance Ministry in partnership with the National Policies and Economic Affairs Ministry, Social Empowerment and Welfare Ministry and Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA).

Today, Sri Lanka has more than 30 welfare programmes operated by 11 different ministries. A lack of digital record-keeping limits their capacity to coordinate, monitor and evaluate and prevent fraud and mismanagement. While the programme costs have risen gradually over time, the coverage of the poorest households has fallen.

An analysis by the World Bank has shown that the welfare programmes have had a decreasing impact on poverty over the past decade. This poses a challenge when the population is aging, a shift that is likely to increase demand for social assistance in coming years.

Data in the registry will be updated periodically, with records reviewed to ensure that only eligible beneficiaries remain in the programmes. To prevent fraudulent applications, each individual will be identified using biometric technology.

A one-stop shop platform will be developed to harmonize management of welfare programmes at the divisional secretariat level. This will help improve the customer service experience and reduce application processing times for beneficiaries. Through these initiatives, the project will help modernize Sri Lankas welfare system for citizens future needs.

Governments around the world increasingly focus on system approaches to social protection, said Senior Economist and World Bank Task Team Leader for the project Thomas Walker.

Harmonizing the delivery of programmes has the potential to enhance each programmes performance and increase the overall benefit of social spending for those most in need, he added.
Nacogdoches, TX (75965)

Today

Mostly clear this evening then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 66F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mostly clear this evening then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 66F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
ECONOMYNEXT: Sri Lankans have been warned to conserve water and electricity as the country braces for perhaps the worst drought since the early 1970s, with crop output down and possible shortages of drinking water, officials said.

Disaster Management Minister Anura Yapa said the government was gearing up to deal with drought relief including food and water but early conservation efforts could help mitigate the coming crisis.

Sri Lanka may need to bring down bowsers (road water tankers) to distribute water if the crisis got worse.

In the past the maximum bowsers we could hire was about 270, Minister Yapa said. We may need to appeal for bowsers if water problems get really bad.

Sri Lankas rice crop in the main cultivation season is already expected to be sharply down with only about 30 percent of arable area cultivated.

The Department of Irrigation has stopped issuing water for cultivation as drinking water has taken priority. Yapa said the disaster management office, which works through district secretaries was already gearing up to distribute flood relief.

Deputy Information Minister Karunarathna Paranavithanage said social conflicts can arise in the next few weeks.

There were already rumblings about farmers threatening to cut tank bunds to get water.

He said in the past droughts have resulted in conflicts over access to wells and streams.

The drought could get acute from January to March, until rain comes in April.

Lalith Chandrapala, Head of Sri Lankas met department said extreme weather has become more common in recent year with heavy rainfall and acute drought. A key reason was getting large amounts of rain over a small period and leaving long periods without drought.

The 2016/2017 drought could be the worst experienced in 1973/74 in Sri Lankas dry zone, according to some analysts.

But no two droughts are the same, so it is difficult to compare, Chandrapala said.

The population is now much higher than in the 1970s, so the effects may be greater on some areas.

Sri Lankas per capita water usage had picked up sharply over the past decades with rising living standards, officials said.

Piped water, bathrooms with showers and flush toilets, industrialization, tourism, vehicle usage had all driven up water use.

Sri Lanka subsidizes piped water which encourages over-use but still does not have regulations to limit toilet cistern size or encourage rainwater harvests.

Market pricing of water would automatically encourage rainwater harvesting especially in urban areas and increase the demand for more efficient toilets without any regulation whatsoever.

A 2001-2003 administration run by current Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe developed far-reaching plans to manage water use, and not encourage water intensive cultivation but they were shot down by the opposition Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).

The JVP said the then administration wanted to sell water and helped oust government, which had diffic
A share sale of significant size relating to the diversified conglomerate Sunshine Holdings PLCs) took place between entities controlled by Sunshine Holdings director G. Sathasivam, a company official said yesterday.

Tansinghe (Private) Limited transferred 16.02 million shares, or 11.85 percent of the shares in Sunshine Holdings, which is Tansinghes entire shareholding, to Lamurep Investments Limited for Rs. 760.73 million at a consideration of Rs. 47.50 per share this Wednesday. I wouldnt call it a related party transaction. This was one shareholder who held shares through two companies bringing it under one company. They are owned by G. Sathasivam, Sunshine Holdings Group Managing Director Vish Govindasamy told Mirror Business.

Two director dealing disclosures filed by the G.Sathasivam and S.G.Sathsivam to the Colombo Stock Exchange yesterday confirmed the purchasing of the said shares by Lamurep but was mum on the sale of shares by Tansinghe (Private) Limited.

However, the transaction does not trigger the Takeovers and Mergers Code, despite the traded shares falling within the Codes thresholds, as both selling and buying were carried out by the same party. Sathasivam, who founded Sunshine Holdings as a pharmaceutical business, has cultivated close ties with Indias second largest conglomerate Tata, according to Sunshine Holdings annual reports, through which the company supplies to Tatas Tetleys Tea brand which is popular in the UK, Canada, the US and other global markets.

The companys shares had opened at Rs. 46.60 per share on the day of the trade while yesterday the shares were trading as high as Rs. 49.40 per share on lower volumes.

The net asset value per share at the end of the groups second quarter for the 2017 financial year was Rs. 44.94, while the earnings per share for the quarter had been Rs. 1.68, improving from Rs. 1.27 year-on-year.

At the end of the 2016 financial year, Sunshine Holdings had posted Rs. 4.34 in earnings per share, and Rs. 1.05 in dividends, with a net asset value per share of Rs. 42.78.

The company annual report noted that the group plans on expanding its brands overseas, as well as expanding its healthcare oil palm operations, which had buoyed the company profitability during global downturns in tea and rubber over the past few years.

Lamurep now owns 32.12 percent of the shares of Sunshine Holdings, while high net worth investor Dr. T. Senthilverl owns 22.42 percent. Foreign investment banks Deepcar Limited and Moneymore Securities Limited own 18.94 percent and 16.88 percent of the issued shares, respectively.

Sunshine Holdings public float as at September 30, 2016 was at 7.04 percent. Since the companys minimum public float market capitalization does not exceed Rs. 1 billion, the group has to increase its public float figure to 10 percent by the end of June 2017 to remain listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange.
How many of us believe that fairness is the ultimate expression of beauty? Today, fairness has become trendy so much so that fairness creams have become priorities. Beneath the urge to use life threatening cosmetics is the societal conception that dark skin is unacceptable. The cosmetic industry plays on this societal thinking and has since longtime advertised the efficacy of fairness creams, thus alluring the public who are dissatisfied with their skin tone. Daily Mirror spoke to Consultant dermatologist, Dr. Nayani Madarasingha on the harmful effects of skin whitening creams, injections which apparently whiten the skin and the importance of using an appropriate sunscreen to protect oneself from the scorching sun. What we need to maintain is blemish free clear skin and not fair skin. Fairness given by fairness creams is temporary. Once you stop applying it the colour comes back as you have been born with it, said Dr. Madarasinghe.



We live in a tropical country. Naturally we are exposed to sunlight. Long-term exposure to sunlight causes effects of ageing such as wrinkles and rough skin. 80% of premature aging is caused by sun damage. Exposure to sun can cause skin cancers. But we are not so prone to sun- related skin cancers as in other countries where fair people live, because we are protected by the melanin in our skin, she said.



She added that attempting to remove melanin artificially causes many harmful effects. Ageing and skin cancers are the main health effects. In certain salons, products are made to give fairness with no due care to its ingredients. There is a drug called steroid, prescribed for skin diseases, which makes the skin fair as a side effect. Some use this drug alongside other ingredients to make fairness creams. This can cause the thinning of skin, redness, over whitening of the skin and pimples. Heavy metals such as mercury can cause skin cancers. She noted that pigmentary diseases, genetics, hormonal imbalance, weight gain, certain cosmetics and sun exposure made one dark in appearance. You have to treat the root causes. If you get darker because of gaining weight, you have to reduce your weight instead of applying fairness cream. Even internal cancers can cause skin darkening. Therefore you need to meet a skin specialist who could identify the root cause and treat it accordingly, she said. Referring to the problems related to pigmentation she said, Certain pigmentary problems are aggravated by sun exposure. There are certain skin conditions where you get black patches or darkening of the face. In these cases there are skin whitening agents but they have to be taken under the supervision of a specialist. Sometimes, when I prescribe such a cream to be taken for two months after which the patient is supposed to meet me, the patient takes it for 6 months and then decides to come back to follow it up. This is wrong. You cant use a cream that has been prescribed for a friend either, she added, asserting that over the counter fairness creams were not safe.



GLUTATHIONE INJECTIONS ARE NOT SAFE

She further said injections which supposedly made people fair were not safe as their long-term efficacy and safety had not been proven scientifically. The injection called glutathione is not registered as a safe drug in Sri Lanka. No board certified dermatologist or plastic surgeon will prescribe this. However there is a racket going on. Long-term effects of injecting this drug are not known. Certain countries have banned this injection as well.



SUN PROTECTION

Emphasizing the importance of sun protection Dr. Madarasinghe said fairness could be achieved to a certain extent by applying a sunscreen. You can improve the complexion through sunscreen. It delays ageing. Certain sunscreens are not cosmetically appealing as they tend to be oily. You need to use different sunscreens and use one that is appropriate to your skin. You need to apply a thick layer of sunscreen half an hour before going out in the sun. It has to be reapplied every three to four hours.
Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left and Russian President Vladimir Putin

ANKARA, Turkey (AP/ Daily Mail) /28 December 2016-Turkey and Russia have reached an agreement on a cease fire plan comprising the whole of Syria, and the two countries will work to ensure that it comes into effect at midnight Wednesday night, Turkeys state-run news agency reported Wednesday.

The Anadolu Agency, quoting unnamed sources, said the plan would be presented to all sides of the Syria conflict and aims for a cease fire that would come into force in all regions where fighting between pro-government forces and opposition groups is taking place.

Terror organizations would be kept out of the scope of the cease fire agreement, the agency said, without elaborating on which insurgent groups would be considered terror organizations.

It said a peace process in Kazakhstans capital of Astana would go ahead under Russia and Turkeys leadership if the cease fire holds. Anadolu said the two countries would act as guarantors of the peace process. There was no immediate confirmation from Turkeys Foreign Ministry.
But Senior Cabinet Minister assures stability, invites Chinese investors

Only China has enough financial resources to cooperate with us

Sri Lanka is important for the world because of its strategic location

Kilinochchi DCC accepts proposal to declare LTTE war cemeteries as honoured sites

PAFFREL urges PC polls conducted soon without dragging

Is UNP biding time till PC polls?

Special Provisions Bill now unlikely to be taken in Parliament

Acrimony between the members of United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) sometimes raises doubts as to whether the foundation of the unity government is shaken. Despite taking on each other creating confusion in the minds of people on the governments future, a Minister representing SLFP tried to dispel such doubts in China recently.



Labour and Labour Relations Minister John Seneviratne, who led a parliamentary delegation to China, said the government was stable in enough, and therefore China should not worry about investment in Sri Lanka.



Upon a request by Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, the Chinese government has offered to sponsor familiarization visits to all 225 MPs. already, four batches have gone there this year. The latest delegation of 16 MPs across the divide undertook a tour of China this month and returned to the country recently.



Minister John Seneviratne led the team that travelled in three main provinces of China and interacted with the top officials of both the Communist Party of China and the government.



During the meeting, the Chinese authorities are reported to have questioned about the perceived fragility of the government. The question was directed at a time when China had embarked on investing heavily in the country.



The Minister in his address, as the leader of the delegation, tried to allay Chinese fears in investing in Sri Lanka, and said one should not be bothered about the governments stability. To convince the Chinese authorities further, he referred to how the government managed to pass the annual budget in Parliament with a two-thirds majority.



The Minister seemed to have been inspired by the Chinese hospitality. China is nice towards Sri Lanka all the time. We witnessed how it has developed so fast, he said.



Let alone the SLFP, even UNP MP State Minister of Vocational Training and Skills Development Palitha Range Bandara said Sri Lanka could turn only to China for financial cooperation.



There are countries that keep boasting. They do not extend any financial support to us. Only China has enough financial resources to cooperate with us. Sri Lanka is important for the world because of its strategic location. China appears to have understood it, he said.



Work is now underway for the identification of 15,000 acres of land, mainly from the Hambantota district and to a lesser extent from the nearby districts such as Moneragala and Ratnapura for Chinese investment projects earmarked at the moment. The project is however met with resistance from area residents who fear dislocation and deprivation of their agricultural land. At the moment, the surveying of land has been suspended following public demonstration. Be that as it may, no one seems to be opposed to investment zones and port development activities in Hambantota. The opposition is for the plan to demarcate such a large swathe of land for the purpose at once.

Alongside, all the parties - either directly or indirectly - have now realized the economic logic of the Hambantota port project.



It became apparent when JVP MP for the Hambantota district Nihal Galappatti said he, along with some others, such as business tycoon Ariyaseela Wickramanayake, spoke of the need to have a port in Hambantota way back prior to 1994. Next, former Minister Ananda Kularatne also tried to initiate the project during the 2002/2004 period of the UNP government. Hambantota is an area with a lot of environmentally sensitive lands, particularly due to elephant corridors and bird migratory routes. The second international airport, which was initially proposed to be constructed in Weerawila, was shifted to Mattala due to the same reason. Even the land earmarked for the port is occasionally roamed into by wild elephants as evident in damages caused to the fence at several points.



Of course, industrial development is accepted by all for Hambantota. But, a proper balance has to be struck as otherwise public protest may snowball beyond control making it impossible to do anything at the end.



Kilinochchi DCC accepts proposal to declare LTTE war cemeteries as honoured sites

An interesting suggestion was made by a member of civil society at the District Development Coordinating Committee meeting of Kilinochchi recently. The member proposed to declare the war cemeteries of the LTTE in the area as honoured sites for the benefit of relatives to pay homage.

Northern Province Chief Minister C.V.Wigneswaran, as the co-chairman of the committee, readily accepted the idea and decided to proceed. The LTTE maintained these cemeteries at that time for the burial of their cadres who perished in fighting. With this decision, they are to be renovated for the relatives of those cadres to pay homage.



Delimitation Report delayed further

Despite prior announcement, the committee headed by Asoka Peiris, could not hand over the report on delimitation of electoral wards on December 27. This has led to consternation among the election monitoring bodies.



In a hard-hitting statement, Peoples Action for Free and Fair Election (PAFFREL) said the failure to deliver in time had sullied the image of Mr. Peiris as a renowned public servant. PAFFREL also faulted Subject Minister Faiser Mustapha in this regard. It urged the government to take steps to conduct the local government election as early as possible without dragging its feet on the matter any further.



It said this had deprived people of their right to elect their representatives to 335 local authorities for two years as of now.



For the election to be conducted, the report has to be handed over to the Minister. Depending on its recommendations, the Minister has to announce the electoral wards in a gazette notification. Alongside, the number of members to be elected should also be gazetted.



Is UNP biding time till PC polls?

The Joint Opposition (JO) is the political force that agitated most for early elections to the local bodies. It is to have an urgent meeting very soon to discuss novel strategies to prevail upon the government to declare the elections. It believes the UNP, as the main party of the government, is keen to have the provincial elections due in August next year. The terms of the Eastern, North Central and Sabaragumwa Provincial Councils will be over by the middle of next year, and as such the election should be conducted to those bodies before August next year.



The JO believes that the UNP, as a governing party, would be more keen to go for the polls, and until such time, it would bide time without any firm action to hold elections to the local authorities.



Development (Special Provisions) Bill now unlikely to be taken in Parliament

The Development (Special Provisions) Bill, which intends to create two powerful ministers for decision making related to investments, has been rejected forthwith by five Provincial Councils. It is widely anticipated that the remaining four PCs will also follow suit in this regard. Against this backdrop, the government is now unlikely to move forward with the new legislation any time soon.



First, it was rejected by the Uva Provincial Council. Then, the trend continued with the Northern, North Central, Sabaragamuwa, Southern , Central and North Western Provincial Councils. It was a piece of legislation introduced by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Management headed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. SLFP, an ally of the government, is opposed to the contents of the Bill. All the PCs, barring the Northern and Eastern PCs, are administered by the Chief Ministers of SLFP.
RT.COM/ 27 Dec, 2016 - Accusations by the Israeli ambassador that the US was behind the UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements are just not true, the US State Department said. Israel has blamed Washington for not vetoing the resolution.



Adopted on Friday, Resolution 2334 declared Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, including East-Jerusalem to be a flagrant violation of international law.



We reject the notion that the US was the driving force behind this resolution, State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters at the daily press briefing Tuesday. Thats just not true.

Toner said that Palestinians worked with Egypt to formulate the resolution, and that Washington urged some changes to the text to make it more balanced.



We ended up abstaining because we didnt feel it was balanced enough, Toner said.

He defended the resolution itself, however, saying that there was nothing in there that would prompt us to veto.
IS-inspired terrorists in Bangladesh refuse to scale down, albeit for tactical reasons, their terror plans and have been striking at regular intervals despite the Sheikh Hasina government's relentless campaign against terrorism.

It would appear from the pattern of the attacks perpetrated by the Jamaitul Mujahdeen Bangladesh (JMB)  commencing from July 1 at a Dhaka cafe causing multiple fatalities, closely followed by the attack on an Eid congregation on July 7, and most recently on December 24 (where a woman and a teenager blew themselves up during a police raid)  that the outfit is clearly growing in strength and making its presence felt.

The most disturbing feature, however, in the December 24 episode was the involvement of a female suicide bomber named Shakira, who blew herself up while her seven-year-old daughter was providentially rescued by the counter-terror team. This shows how desperate and committed the suicide bomber was that she even risked the life of her daughter in the siege.

Amid these developments of disquiet and continued threats of Islamic terror, several members of the JMB were arrested on December 28 from Darus Salam, Mirpur, North of Dhaka.

Meanwhile, due to apparent 'operational' differences within the JMB hierarchy, a new offshoot referred to as the Neo-JMB has come into being. It's not only the nomenclature which is making the difference. The entire modus operandi seems to be undergoing a radical change which has a distinct and inedible footprint of the IS.

IS-inspired terrorists in Bangladesh refuse to scale down despite the Sheikh Hasina government's campaign against terrorism. Photo: PTI

For example, neo-JMB female Islamic cadres are now more active and playing a pivotal role. Also, women are being allegedly used as sex slaves by this outfit, a practice followed by the IS in Syria and Iraq, and the Boko Haram in Nigeria. Further, women are allowed multiple husbands or partners with plenty of freedom for their escapades.

While women in Bangladesh are emancipated and performing constructive roles in the society and polity, one segment of the women force are blatantly taking recourse to offensive terrorism. Shakira is the latest case in point. And the trend appears to continue by incessantly drawing induction of young and educated women to the terrorist fold.

Now lets go back to the latest neo-JMB arrests. Rakib, Bapi, Opu, Ehsan, Shohag and Himel, the prime offenders, have since been remanded to police custody for 10 days and are currently under interrogation. Sustained questioning is very likely to shed additional light to the whole blueprint as the arrested terrorists were planning a major devastating strike on the New Years eve.

Among those arrested, Rakib was in Kolkata recently and contacted one Sunny (possibly an alias) seeking instructions for terror assaults. According to highly placed sources in the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) - the premier intelligence agency of Bangladesh - Sunny (a Bangladeshi) is in hiding in Kolkata and is issuing diktats, at the behest of the IS, to the Bangladesh cadres.

We, therefore, see an India angle. The DGFI suspects that a section of pro-IS cadres in India (specifically in Kolkata) is in active league with the neo-JMB. This calls for a detailed scrutiny by the Indian intelligence outfits, specially the NIA, to bust the syndicate, if in operation. The infamous Burdwan blasts in West Bengal have already proved the nexus. Against this backdrop, it would seem advisable if Indian interrogators join the Dhaka team in the ongoing questioning of the arrested terrorists.

A huge cache of explosives has also been recovered. It would be indeed useful to ascertain the source of supply of such explosives, funding and international connections. A joint interrogation should be of immense help.

Meanwhile, close to Indian borders off Murshidabad, Zia, Haider and Shahidullah are acting as neo-JMB commanders overseeing activities on the Indo-Bangladesh borders. Proximity to India remains a dangerous trend making the porous frontiers hugely vulnerable. Their activities need to be delved and monitored regularly.

Mainul Islam Musa, a powerful and tech-savvy Neo-JMB activist who is also high in the hierarchy, is believed to be complicit in planning to target some of Indian infrastructures as well. Once an English teacher, he earlier deleted all his friends' profiles on Facebook trying not to leave any trails of evidence. Some meticulous planning seems to be on the anvil.

Such activities need to be carefully pieced together to arrive at a clear picture enabling the professional agencies to draw up a plan to neutralise the terror designs and possible execution with military precision.
I know the right question. But before I put it across at a news conference these days, I have several to put to myself.

And that presents an unusual challenge for a journalist who has covered successive governments for nearly 13 years.

"Are there good questions and bad questions?" I wonder. "Am I afraid of being judged?" or "Am I weary of questions or have I just turned cynical?" I ask.

Never before have I been pounded by such dilemma in my quest for possible missing links and overlaps while reporting.

But I am now and so are many others in the fraternity, I believe, whose craft traditionally lay in producing compelling answers and not spins that obfuscate facts.

Sample this:

On November 12, the nation's finance minister invited the press to the national media centre in the national capital.

It was supposed to be a significant event, given its timing - just four days after the prime minister's shock announcement that 500 and 1,000-rupee notes would cease to be legal tender.

What surprised me most at the minister's news conference were the responses over the planning and execution of the demonetisation exercise.

I couldn't help wonder if mounting miseries of the common man weren't a loud evidence.

On the contrary, I sensed the event was designed to serve as a covert compliment to a historically radical measure that its architects were defending as "bold".

Reporters were picked and chosen by the director-general of the Press Information Bureau for their questions, as if from a readymade red-and-green list.

Will we ever get an opportunity to play our part boldly as the fourth pillar of democracy, Mr Prime Minister? Photo: PTI

Nevertheless, I asked questions that I felt the people wanted answered.

This was my first poser to minister Arun Jaitely: "My fellow colleagues and I, who are covering stories from ground zero, will disagree with you. Don't you think there is mismanagement at the banks and people are suffering?"

My second question: "Does the government have the exact data of black money being used for terror funding or is the entire demonetisation drive based on guesstimates?"

When the minister was answering, someone took away the microphone from my hand unceremoniously.

That narrowed down my opportunity to counter-question. I had no other option but to try out my vocal chords, but unsuccessfully.

Nonetheless, what I asked were must-ask questions for any journalist to a government whose abrupt decision has acutely distressed the citizenry en masse.

These are challenging times for the media. The pitch is the same and so are the players, but the goalposts have changed.

Nowadays, you don't really hear tough questions.

During the winter session of Parliament, I realised how I miffed minister Ravi Shankar Prasad by asking whether he knew of five ways of doing cashless payments.

In the present climate of polarisation, journalists carry the burden of being judged and stamped for the questions they ask.

So, minister Prasad, pretty rudely, told me he would never grant me an interview ever.

Clearly, those in power and positions of influence are trying to cut the reporters to size.

Earlier, we carried a lot of weight. We were they eyes and ears of the news gathering system. Now we live in an era of social media where news is breaking on Twitter and Facebook.

The powerful assume they need no one on the ground to be asking questions. They think their message can be delivered directly to the newsroom.

Recently, a reporter told me a senior leader of a political party had called her editor-in-chief to complain she hadn't run his interview.

Reporters aren't postal staff, who pick up letters and drop them to addresses without any ifs and buts. Are they?

These days, press conferences have become the biggest PR exercises for all political parties because tough questions have become rare.

A case in point is a press conference that I happened to cover - of BSP chief Mayawati, at her party office on New Delhi's Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Road.

After a near 45-minute address, she threw the house open for so-called questions. It appeared to be a departure from her earlier practice of not taking questions. I was excited and enthusiastically raised my hand. She nodded in response.

"Behenji, the PM and Amit Shah say that it's the BSP that has suffered the most due to demonetisation," I asked, noticing a change in her expressions. "Even the UP CM has said it," I continued.

But before I could complete my question, she cut me short. "It seems that she has been sleeping during the press conference. Your question is over," the BSP leader retorted.

And that was the end of it. She was not interested in my questions. Later, a journalist covering the BSP for a long time told me that Behenji sensed where my question could have led the news conference. She just won't allow anything that would make her uncomfortable, the reporter said.

I feel the political class is increasingly becoming intolerant. Painting and tainting is becoming a norm.

"Either you are with us or you are with them (against us)." That appears to be the new phenomenon.

In the past too questioning ministers on their own power trip was not easy, but then journalists were not compartmentalised as Sanghi or Congressi.

The changing role of the media can be understood by the press conferences then PM Manmohan Singh held, three of them during his ten years in office.

The last being in 2014 when a journalist asked him about the perception that UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi was stronger than the PM. A senior fellow journalist, Neeraj Gupta asked him whether it was true that the government was run by 10 Janpath and all decisions were approved and stamped there, instead of 7 RCR.

These were the questions that dominated the public discourse then. PM Singh's answers to them made headlines.

His response was measured and calm. He didn't look agitated or angry. He admitted graciously enough that Sonia Gandhi was a guiding force, and left it to history to judge him.

The present PM has yet to hold a news conference.
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Healthcare Trust of America, Inc. (NYSE: HTA) is the largest dedicated owner and operator of MOBs in the United States, comprising approximately 25.1 million square feet of GLA, with $7.4 billion invested primarily in MOBs. HTA provides real estate infrastructure for the integrated delivery of healthcare services in highly-desirable locations. Investments are targeted to build critical mass in 20 to 25 leading gateway markets that generally have leading university and medical institutions, which translates to superior demographics, high-quality graduates, intellectual talent and job growth. The strategic markets HTA invests in support a strong, long-term demand for quality medical office space. HTA utilizes an integrated asset management platform consisting of on-site leasing, property management, engineering and building services, and development capabilities to create complete, state of the art facilities in each market. This drives efficiencies, strong tenant and health system relationships, and strategic partnerships that result in high levels of tenant retention, rental growth and long-term value creation. Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, HTA has developed a national brand with dedicated relationships at the local level. Founded in 2006 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012, HTA has produced attractive returns for its stockholders that have outperformed the US REIT index.
AbbVie Inc. discovers, develops, manufactures, and sells pharmaceuticals in the worldwide. The company offers HUMIRA, a therapy administered as an injection for autoimmune and intestinal Behcet's diseases; SKYRIZI to treat moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in adults; RINVOQ, a JAK inhibitor for the treatment of moderate to severe active rheumatoid arthritis in adult patients; IMBRUVICA to treat adult patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), and VENCLEXTA, a BCL-2 inhibitor used to treat adults with CLL or SLL; and MAVYRET to treat patients with chronic HCV genotype 1-6 infection. It also provides CREON, a pancreatic enzyme therapy for exocrine pancreatic insufficiency; Synthroid used in the treatment of hypothyroidism; Linzess/Constella to treat irritable bowel syndrome with constipation and chronic idiopathic constipation; Lupron for the palliative treatment of advanced prostate cancer, endometriosis and central precocious puberty, and patients with anemia caused by uterine fibroids; and Botox therapeutic. In addition, the company offers ORILISSA, a nonpeptide small molecule gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonist for women with moderate to severe endometriosis pain; Duopa and Duodopa, a levodopa-carbidopa intestinal gel to treat Parkinson's disease; Lumigan/Ganfort, a bimatoprost ophthalmic solution for the reduction of elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) in patients with open angle glaucoma (OAG) or ocular hypertension; Ubrelvy to treat migraine with or without aura in adults; Alphagan/ Combigan, an alpha-adrenergic receptor agonist for the reduction of IOP in patients with OAG; and Restasis, a calcineurin inhibitor immunosuppressant to increase tear production, as well as other eye care products. AbbVie Inc. has a research collaboration with Dragonfly Therapeutics, Inc. The company was incorporated in 2012 and is headquartered in North Chicago, Illinois.
Newell Brands Inc. designs, manufactures, sources, and distributes consumer and commercial products worldwide. It operates in five segments: Commercial Solutions, Home Appliances, Home Solutions, Learning and Development, and Outdoor and Recreation. The Commercial Solutions segment provides commercial cleaning and maintenance solutions; closet and garage organization products; hygiene systems and material handling solutions; and home and security, and smoke and carbon monoxide alarms products under the BRK, First Alert, Mapa, Quickie, Rubbermaid, Rubbermaid Commercial Products, and Spontex brands. The Home Appliances segment offers kitchen appliances under the Crock-Pot, Mr. Coffee, Oster, and Sunbeam brands. The Home Solutions segment provides food and home storage; fresh preserving; vacuum sealing; and gourmet cookware, bakeware, cutlery, and home fragrance products under the Ball, Calphalon, Chesapeake Bay Candle, FoodSaver, Rubbermaid, Sistema, WoodWick, and Yankee Candle brands. The Learning and Development segment offers writing instruments, including markers and highlighters, pens, and pencils; art products; activity-based adhesive and cutting products; labeling solutions; and baby gear and infant care products under the Aprica, Baby Jogger, Graco, NUK, Tigex, Dymo, Elmer's, EXPO, Graco, Mr. Sketch, NUK, Paper Mate, Parker, Prismacolor, Sharpie, Waterman, and X-Acto brands. The Outdoor and Recreation segment provides outdoor and outdoor-related products under the Campingaz, Coleman, Contigo, ExOfficio, and Marmot brands. It serves warehouse clubs, department and drug/grocery stores, mass merchants, home centers, office superstores and supply stores, contract stationers, and distributors, e-commerce, sporting goods, specialty, and travel retailers. The company was formerly known as Newell Rubbermaid Inc. and changed its name to Newell Brands Inc. in April 2016. Newell Brands Inc. was founded in 1903 and is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Duck Creek Technologies, Inc. provides software-as-a-service core systems to the property and casualty insurance industry in the United States and internationally. The company provides Duck Creek Policy, a solution that enables insurers to develop and launch new insurance products and manage various aspects of policy administration ranging from product definition to quoting, binding, and servicing; Duck Creek Billing that provides payment and invoicing capabilities, such as billing and collections, commission processing, disbursement management, and general ledger capabilities for insurance lines and bill types; and Duck Creek Claims that supports entire claims lifecycle from first notice of loss through investigation, payments, negotiations, reporting, and closure. It also offers Duck Creek Rating that allows carriers to develop new rates and models and deliver quotes in real-time based on the complex rating algorithms; Duck Creek Insights, an insurance analytics solution that allows carriers to gather and analyze data from internal and external sources and facilitate analysis and reporting on a single system; Duck Creek Digital Engagement that offer digital interactions between property and casualty insurers and their agents, brokers, and policyholders; and Duck Creek Distribution Management that automates sales channel activities for agents and brokers, including producer onboarding, compliance, and compensation management. In addition, the company provides Duck Creek Reinsurance Management that automates financial and administrative functions; and Duck Creek Industry Content that provides pre-built content, including base business rules, product designs, rating algorithms, data capture screens, and workflows for insurance lines of business, such as commercial auto, inland marine, and workers compensation. It has a partnership with Shift Technologies, Inc. to implement AI fraud detection. The company was founded in 2016 and is based in Boston, Massachusetts.
The following companies are subsidiares of Dover: APM Grundstucksverwaltungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, Accelerated Production Systems, Acme Cryo Intermediate Inc., Acme Cryogenics, Acme Cryogenics Inc., Acme Elevator, Advansor A/S, Advansor Dover International (Poland) sp. z o.o., Advansor Germany GmbH, Alfred Fueling Systems Holdco Ltd., Alfred Fueling Systems Inc., Alfred Fueling Systems Intermediate Holdco Ltd., All-Flo Pump Company, Anman LLC, Anthony Equity Holdings Inc., Anthony Holdings Inc., Anthony Inc., Anthony International, Anthony International Foreign Sales Corp., Anthony International Holding Company, Anthony Mexico Holdings LLC, Anthony North Holdco Inc., Anthony Specialty Glass LLC, Anthony TemperBent GP LLC, Audax ECII Blocker Inc., Auto Glanz Solutions LLC, AvaLAN Wireless Systems Incorporated, BELVAC CR spol s r.o., BSC Filters Limited, Belanger, Belanger Inc., Belvac Middle East FZE, Belvac Production Machinery Inc., Blackmer, BlitzRotary GmbH, Blue Bite LLC, Blue Bite LLC, Butler Engineering and Marketing S.P.A., CDS Visual, CDS Visual Inc., CEP Liquidation LLC, CP Formation LLC, CPC Europe Inc., CPI Products Inc., Caldera, Canada Organization & Development LLC, Chief Automotive Technologies (Shanghai) Trading Company Ltd., Chippewa Square Captive Insurance Company, Colder Products Company, Colder Products Company GmbH, Colder Products Company LTD, Cook Compression LLC, Cook Compression Limited, Cook-MFS Inc., Cryogenic Experts LLC, DD1 Inc., DDI Properties Inc., DE-STA-CO Benelux B.V., DE-STA-CO FRANCE, DE-STA-CO Shanghai Co. Ltd., DESTACO UK Limited, DFH Corporation, DFS Netherlands B.V., Datamax International Corp, De Sta Co (Asia) Company Limited, De-Sta-Co Cylinders Inc., DeStaCo Europe GmbH, Delaware Capital Formation Inc., Delaware Capital Holdings Inc., Dositec Sistemas SL, Dosmatic U.S.A. Inc., Dover (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Dover (Schweiz) Holding GmbH, Dover (Shanghai) Industrial Co. Ltd., Dover (Shenzhen) Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Dover (Suzhou) Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Dover Asia Trading Private Ltd., Dover Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Dover Business Services EMEA Limited, Dover Business Services Europe S.R.L., Dover Business Services LLC, Dover Business Services Philippines Corporation, Dover CLP Formation Limited Partnership, Dover Canada Holdings ULC, Dover Canada Operations ULC, Dover Corporation Regional Headquarters, Dover DEI Services Inc., Dover Denmark Holdings ApS, Dover EMEA FZCO, Dover Energy UK Ltd, Dover Engineered Products Segment Inc., Dover Europe Inc., Dover Europe Sarl, Dover Fluids UK Ltd, Dover France Holdings, Dover France Participations, Dover France Technologies, Dover Fueling Solutions Segment Inc., Dover Fueling Solutions UK Limited, Dover Germany GmbH, Dover Global Holdings LLC, Dover Holdings de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Dover Imaging & Identification Segment Inc., Dover India Pvt. Ltd., Dover Intercompany Services UK Limited, Dover International B.V., Dover International Operations Inc., Dover International Ventures Inc., Dover International ithalat ihracat ve Pazarlama Limited Sirketi, Dover Italy Holdings S.r.l., Dover Luxembourg Finance Sarl, Dover Luxembourg Participations Sarl, Dover Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Dover Luxembourg Services Sarl, Dover Operations South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Dover Overseas Ventures Inc., Dover Pumps & Process Solutions Segment Inc., Dover Refrigeration & Food Equipment Segment Inc., Dover Refrigeration & Food Equipment UK Ltd, Dover Resources International de Mexico S. de R.L. C.V., Dover Solutions Colombia SAS, Dover Southeast Asia (Thailand) Ltd., Dover Spain Holdings S.L., Dover Switzerland Participations GmbH, Dover UK Pensions Limited, Dover WSCR Holding LLC, Dover WSCR LLC, Dover do Brasil Ltda., Dow-Key Microwave Corporation, Dresser Wayne Data Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Dresser Wayne Fuel Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ECI - IGT Holdings LLC, ECI Holding Company LLC, ECI RegO S. de R.L. de C.V, ECI RegO Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., ECII (Mexico) LLC, EOA Systems Inc., Ebs-Ray Holdings Pty Ltd, Ebs-Ray Industries Pty Ltd, Ebs-Ray Pumps Pty Ltd, Em-Tec, Engineered Controls International LLC, Espy, Ettlinger, Ettlinger Kunststoffmaschinen GmbH, Fairbanks Environmental Limited, Fibrelite Composites Limited, Fibresec Holdings Limited, Fibresec Limited, Finder, GAL LLC, GIIER LLC, Gala Industries, Guangdong Tokheim LIYUAN Oil Industry Technology Limited Company, Highland Park Insurance Company, Hill PHOENIX Inc., Hill PHOENIX WIC LLC, Hill Phoenix Costa Rica Sociedad De Responsabilidad Limitada, Hill Phoenix El Salvador Limitada de Capital Variable, Hill Phoenix Guatemala Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix Honduras Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Hiltap Fittings Ltd., Hydro Systems Company, Hydro Systems Europe Ltd., Industrial Motion Control LLC, Innovative Control Systems, Innovative Control Systems Inc., Inpro/Seal LLC, JK Group, JK Group S.P.A., JK Group USA Inc., K S Boca Inc., K&L Microwave DR Inc., K&L Microwave Inc., KPS (Beijing) Petroleum Equipment Trading Co Ltd., KPS Fueling Solutions Sdn. Bhd., KPS Hong Kong Holding Limited, KPS UK Limited, KS Formation Inc., KS Liquidation Inc., KSLP Liquidation L.P., Kiian Digital (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Knappco LLC, Knowles Electronics, LIQAL, LIQAL B.V., Liquip, Liquip, Liquip International Pty Limited, MAAG, MARKEM FZ SA, MARKEM-IMAJE Corporation, MIP Holdings Inc., MS Printing Solutions, MS Printing Solutions S.R.L., Maag, Maag Automatik Plastics Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Maag Gala Inc., Maag Germany GmbH, Maag Italy S.R.L., Maag Pump Systems, Maag Pump Systems (US) Inc., Maag Pump Systems AG, Maag Reduction Inc., Maag Service (Malaysia) Sdn. Bdn., Maag Service (Taiwan) Ltd., Maag Systems (Thailand) Limited, Macro Technologies LLC, Malema, Marathon Equipment Company (Delaware), Markem Imaje Center of Competencies Spain S.L.U., Markem-Imaje, Markem-Imaje (China) Co. Limited, Markem-Imaje - Unipessoal Lda, Markem-Imaje A/S, Markem-Imaje AB, Markem-Imaje AG, Markem-Imaje AS, Markem-Imaje B.V., Markem-Imaje CSAT GmbH, Markem-Imaje Co. Ltd., Markem-Imaje GmbH, Markem-Imaje Holding, Markem-Imaje Identificacao de Produtos Ltda., Markem-Imaje Inc., Markem-Imaje India Private Limited, Markem-Imaje Industries, Markem-Imaje Industries Limited, Markem-Imaje KK, Markem-Imaje LLC, Markem-Imaje Limited, Markem-Imaje Ltd., Markem-Imaje N.V., Markem-Imaje Oy, Markem-Imaje Philippines Corporation, Markem-Imaje Pty. Ltd., Markem-Imaje S.A., Markem-Imaje S.A. de C.V., Markem-Imaje S.r.l., Markem-Imaje SAS, Markem-Imaje Sdn. Bhd., Markem-Imaje Singapore Pte. Ltd., Markem-Imaje Spain S.A., Markpoint Holding AB, Midland Manufacturing LLC, Midwest Cryogenics Inc., Mouvex, Northeast Services Inc., Northern Lights (Nevada) Inc., Northern Lights Funding LP, Northern Lights Investments LLC, Nova Controls Inc., OK International, OK International Holdings Inc., OK International Inc., OK International Ltd., OPW Engineered Systems LLC, OPW Fluid Transfer Group Europe B.V., OPW Fluid Transfer Solutions (Jiang Su) Co. Ltd., OPW Fluids Group Inc., OPW Fuel Management Systems Inc., OPW Fueling Components (SuZhou) Co. Ltd., OPW Fueling Components LLC, OPW Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., OPW Slovakia s.r.o., OPW Sweden AB, Officine Meccaniche Sirio S.R.L., PDQ Manufacturing, PDQ Manufacturing Inc., PISCES by OPW Inc., PSD Codax Holdings Limited, PSD Codax Limited, PSG (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PSG (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., PSG California LLC, PSG Germany GmbH, Petro Vend Sp. z o.o., Pike Machine Products Inc., Pole/Zero Acquisition Inc., Precision Brasil Equipamentos E Servicos Para Postos De Combustiveis Ltda., Precision Service - Servicos De Manutencao E Instalacao De Postos De Abastecimento De Combustivel Ltda., Production Control Services, Pump Management Services Co. LLC, Quantex Arc Limited, Quantex Patents Limited, RAV France, Ravaglioli S.P.A., Reduction Engineering GmbH, RegO (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., RegO Holding GmbH, RegO Products, RegO Valve (Shanghai) Company Ltd., Rego GmbH, Revod Corporation, Revod Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Revod Sweden AB, Robohand Inc., Rosario, Rosario Handel B.V., Rotary Lift Consolidated (Haimen) Co. Ltd., SE Liquidation LLC, SWEP France, SWEP Germany GmbH, SWEP Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., SWEP North America Inc., SWEP Slovakia s.r.o., SWEP Technology (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Seabiscuit Motorsports Inc., Shanghai RegO Flow Technology Company Ltd., Shine Bloom - ECI A Blocker Corp., Shine Bloom - ECI Blocker Corp., Shine Bloom - ECI S Blocker Corp., Simmons Sirvey Corporation, So. Cal. Soft-Pak, So. Cal. Soft-Pak Incorporated, Soft-Pak, Solaris Laser, Solaris Laser S.A., Somero Enterprises, Sound Solutions, Sound Solutions, Space S.R.L., Spirit, Start Italiana S.R.L., Superior Holding LLC, Superior Products LLC, Swep Energy Oy, Swep International A.B., Swep Japan K.K., Sys-Tech Solutions, Sys-Tech Solutions Inc., Systech, TQC Quantium Quality S.A. de C.V., TTSI III Inc., TWG Canada Consolidated Inc., TXHI LLC, Tartan Textile Services Inc., The Espy Corporation, The Heil Co., Tokheim, Tokheim Belgium, Tokheim China Company Limited, Tokheim GmbH, Tokheim Group, Tokheim Hengshan Technologies (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd., Tokheim Holding B.V., Tokheim India Private Limited, Tokheim Sofitam Applications, Triton Systems, Tulsa Winch Inc., UPCO Inc., US Synthetic, Unattended Payment Solutions LLC, Unified Brands, Val TemperBent Glass L.P., Vectron Frequency Devices (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Vehicle Service Group LLC, Vehicle Service Group UK Limited, Vos Food Store Equipment Ltd., WSCR Corp., Warn Automotive LLC, Warn Industries, Waukesha Bearings, Waukesha Bearings Corporation, Waukesha Bearings Limited, Waukesha Bearings Russia LLC, Wayne Fueling Systems, Wayne Fueling Systems (Rus) Limited Liability Company, Wayne Fueling Systems Australia Pty Ltd, Wayne Fueling Systems Canada ULC, Wayne Fueling Systems Italia S.R.L., Wayne Fueling Systems LLC, Wayne Fueling Systems Ltd., Wayne Fueling Systems Sweden AB, Wayne Fueling Systems UK Holdco Ltd., Wayne Industria e Comercio Ltda., WellMark, WellMark, and em-tec GmbH.

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Bristol-Myers Squibb Company discovers, develops, licenses, manufactures, and markets biopharmaceutical products worldwide. It offers products for hematology, oncology, cardiovascular, immunology, fibrotic, neuroscience, and covid-19 diseases. The company's products include Revlimid, an oral immunomodulatory drug for the treatment of multiple myeloma; Eliquis, an oral inhibitor for reduction in risk of stroke/systemic embolism in NVAF, and for the treatment of DVT/PE; Opdivo for anti-cancer indications; Pomalyst/Imnovid indicated for patients with multiple myeloma; and Orencia for adult patients with active RA and psoriatic arthritis. It also provides Sprycel for the treatment of Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia; Yervoy for the treatment of patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma; Abraxane, a protein-bound chemotherapy product; Reblozyl for the treatment of anemia in adult patients with beta thalassemia; and Empliciti for the treatment of multiple myeloma. In addition, the company offers Zeposia to treat relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis; Breyanzi, a CD19-directed genetically modified autologous T cell immunotherapy for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma; Inrebic, an oral kinase inhibitor indicated for the treatment of adult patients with myelofibrosis; and Onureg for the treatment of adult patients with AML. It sells products to wholesalers, distributors, pharmacies, retailers, hospitals, clinics, and government agencies. The company was formerly known as Bristol-Myers Company. The company was founded in 1887 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
The following companies are subsidiares of Quanta Services: (De) Lazy Q Ranch LLC, 1 Diamond LLC, 1Diamond AS, 618232 Alberta Ltd., 8246408 Canada Inc., Advanced Electric Systems, Advanced Electric Systems LLC, Advanced Utility Testing & Maintenance LLC, Alexander Publications LLC, Allteck GP Ltd., Allteck Limited Partnership, Apprenticeship Programs Inc., Arby Construction, Arcanum Chemicals LLC, Arnett & Burgess Oil Field Construction Limited, Arnett & Burgess Pipeliners (Rockies) LLC, Arnett & Burgess Pipeliners Ltd., B&N Clearing and Environmental LLC, Banister Pipelines Constructors Corp., Banister Pipelines Constructors GP Ltd., Banister Pipelines Limited Partnership, Brent Woodward Inc., Brink Constructors Inc., Brink Constructors Inc. A Corporation Of South Dakota, Brown Engineering and Testing, CAT SPEC Ltd., CAT-SPEC Limited Partnership, CAT-SPEC Limited Partnership (Regd Name) CAT SPEC Ltd., CAT-Spec Limited Partnership, Canadian Utility Construction Corp., Cat Spec Limited LP, Cat Spec Ltd, Cat Spec Ltd. L.P., Cat Spec Ltd. LP, Cat Spec. Ltd. LP, Cat-Spec Ltd (A Domestic limited Partnership), Cat-Spec Ltd LP, Cat-Spec Ltd., Cat-Spec Ltd. L.P., Cat-Spec Ltd. LP, Cat-Spec Ltd. Limited Partnership, Catalyst Changers Inc., Chatham Electric, Citadel Industrial Services L.P., Citadel Industrial Services Ltd., Citadel Industrial Services Ltd. L.P., Citadel Industrial Services Ltd. Limited Partnership, Coe Drilling Pty Ltd., Computapole, Conam Construction Co., Consolidated Power Projects Australia Pty Ltd, Conti Communications Inc., Crux Subsurface Canada Ltd., Crux Subsurface Inc., Cutting Technology - 1 Diamond LLC, DB Utilities Inc., DE Lazy Q Ranch LLC, DNR Pressure Welding Ltd., Dacon Corporation, Dashiell (DE) Corporation (Dashiell Corporation), Dashiell Corporation, Dashiell Corporation DBA Dashiell (DE) Corporation, De Mears Group, De Mears Group Inc., Delaware Quanta Technology LLC, Delaware Underground Construction Co., Didado Utility Company Inc., Digco Utility Construction L.P. Digco Utility Construction Limited Partnership, Dorado Specialty Services L.P., Dorado Specialty Services Ltd., Dorado Specialty Services Ltd. L.P., Dorado Specialty Services Ltd. Limited Partnership, Dorado Specialty Services. Ltd. L.P., Driftwood Electrical Contractors, EHV Power ULC, ELITE PIPING & CIVIL L.P., ELITE TURNAROUND SPECIALISTS LTD, Elite Fabrication Ltd. Elite Fabrication LP, Elite Piping & Civil Limited Partnership, Elite Piping & Civil Limited Partnership, Elite Piping & Civil Lp, Elite Piping & Civil Ltd L.P., Elite Piping & Civil Ltd., Elite Piping & Civil Ltd. L.P., Elite Piping & Civil Ltd. Limited Partnership, Elite Piping and Civil L.P., Elite Turnaround Specialists L.p., Elite Turnaround Specialists Limited Lp, Elite Turnaround Specialists Limited Partnership, Elite Turnaround Specialists Limited Partnership, Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd Lp, Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd., Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd. L.P., Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd. LP, Elite Turnaround Specialists Ltd. Limited Partnership, Energy Consulting Group LLC, Enscope, Enscope Pty Ltd, FIC GP LLC, Field Personnel Services LLC, First Infrastructure Capital Advisors LLC, First Infrastructure Capital GP L.P., Five Points Construction Co., G-Tek, G-Vac, GEM Engineering Co., Grand Electric Inc., Great Lakes Line Builders, Grid Creative Inc., Grid Manufacturing Corporation, Grid Training Corporation, H.L. Chapman Pipeline Construction Inc., Haverfield Aviation, Haverfield Aviation Inc., Haverfield International Incorporated, Heritage Midstream LLC, IM Electric Inc., IUC ILLINOIS LLC, IUC Nebraska LLC, InfraSource Construction LLC, InfraSource Field Services LLC, InfraSource Services LLC, InfraSources Construction LLC, Infraestructura ETP de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V, Infrasource Engineering Company PC, Infrasource Iowa Underground LLC, Infrasource Of Pa LLC, Integracion Tecnologica del Peru SAC, Intermountain Electric Inc., Intermountain Electric Inc. A Corporation of Colorado, IonEarth LLC, Irby Construction Company, Irby Construction Company Inc., Iron Mountain M.J. Electric LLC, Island Mechanical Corporation, J.C.R. Construction Co. Inc., J.C.R. Utility Construction Co., J.W. Didado Electric Inc., J.W. Didado Electric LLC, J.w. Didado Electric, JBT Electric LLC, Kingston Contracting Inc., Lazy Q Ranch LLC, Lazy Q Training Center LLC The Lazy Q Lineman School, Legend Foundation Services, Lex Engineering Ltd., Lindsey Electric L.P., Logical Link, Longfellow Drilling, M. G. Dyess Inc., M. J. ELECTRIC LLC IRON MOUNTAIN, M. J. Electric LLC, M. J. Electric LLC - Iron Mountain, M. J. Electric LLC DBA M. J. Electric Iron Mountain LLC, M.J. Electric LLC DBA M.J. Electric Iron Mountain, M.J. Electric LLC Iron Mountain, MTS Field Services, MTS Field Services (Richmond Co), MTS Quanta LLC, Manuel Bros. Inc., Marathon Construction Services, Mears Canada Corp., Mears Equipment Services LLC, Mears Group Inc., Mears Group Pty Ltd, Mears Installation LLC, Mearsmex S. de R.L. de C.V., Mejia Personnel Services LLC, Mercer Technical Services, Microline Technology Corporation, Mid America Energy Services Inc., NACAP Niugini Ltd., NC Northstar Energy Services Inc, NGI Construction, NGI Construction Inc., NGI Construction Inc. (FN), NLC CA. Inc., NLC FL. Inc. Northwest Lineman Center, NLC ID. Inc. Northwest Lineman College, NLC TX. Inc., NPC Energy Services LLC, Nacap Australia, Nacap PNG Limited, Network Communication Services, North Houston Pole Line L.P., North Houston Pole Line Limited Partnership, North Sky Communications, NorthStar Energy Services Inc., Northern Powerline Constructors Inc., Northstar Energy Solutions LLC, Northwest Lineman Center, Northwest Lineman College, Northwest Lineman Training Center, Northwest Lineman Training Center Inc., Nova Constructors LLC, Nova Constructors LTD, Nova Equipment Leasing LLC, Nova Group Inc, Nova Group Inc (CA), Nova Group Inc., Nova Group Inc. DBA NGI Construction, Nova NextGen Solutions LLC, O. J. Pipelines Canada Corporation, O. J. Pipelines Canada Limited Partnership, O.J. Industrial Maintenance, O.J. Pipelines Canada, One Call Locators Canada Ltd., P.D.G. Electric, PAR Electrical Contractors Inc., PDG Electric Co., Par Internacional S. de R.L. de C.V., Performance Energy Services Guyana Ltd., Performance Energy Services L.L.C., Phasor Engineering Inc., Phoenix North Constructors Inc., Phoenix Power Group Inc., Potelco Inc., Potelco Incorporated, Power Delivery Program Inc., Price Gregory International Inc., Price Gregory Services LLC, Probst Construction Inc., Probst Electric Inc., QEPC, QEPC Power Solutions LLC, QES GP LLC, QP Energy Services LLC, QPS Engineering LLC, QPS Engineering LTD., QPS Engineering PLLC, QPS Environmental, QPS Flint Construction, QPS Flint Tank Services, QPS Global, QPS Global Services, QPS Global Services (Richmond Ci), QPS Professional Services, QPSE, QS Mats, QSI Engineering Inc., QSI Finance (Australia) Pty Ltd., QSI Finance (Cayman) Pvt. Ltd., QSI Finance Canada ULC, QSI Finance GP (US) LLC, QSI Finance I (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., QSI Finance I (US) LP, QSI Finance II (Australia) Pty Ltd., QSI Finance II (Lux) S.a r.l, QSI Finance II (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., QSI Finance III (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance III (Lux) SARL, QSI Finance IV (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance IX (Canada) Limited Partnership, QSI Finance V (US) L.P., QSI Finance VI (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance VII (Canada) Limited Partnership, QSI Finance VIII (Canada) ULC, QSI Finance X (Canada) ULC, QSI Inc., QSN Lux Holdings I SCSp, QSN Lux Holdings II SCSp, QSN Lux Holdings III SCSp, QSN Lux Holdings IV SCSp, QTSL LLC, QUANTA FOUNDATION SERVICES, Quanta APL GP II Ltd., Quanta Asset Management LLC, Quanta Associates L.P., Quanta Aviation Services LLC, Quanta Canada GP ULC, Quanta Canada Holdings III Limited Partnership, Quanta Canada Holdings LP, Quanta Canada III GP Ltd., Quanta Capital GP LLC, Quanta Capital LP L.P., Quanta Capital Solutions Inc., Quanta Cares, Quanta EPC Services, Quanta Electric Power Construction LLC, Quanta Electric Power Construction Management Inc., Quanta Electric Power Services LLC, Quanta Electric Power Services West LLC, Quanta Energized Innovations Ltd., Quanta Energized Services U.S. LLC, Quanta Energized Services of Canada Ltd., Quanta Energy Services LLC, Quanta Environmental Solutions, Quanta Equipment Company LLC, Quanta Government Solutions Inc., Quanta Holdings I (Netherlands) B.V., Quanta Holdings II (Netherlands) B.V., Quanta Infraestructura de Chile SpA, Quanta Infrastructure Services LLC, Quanta Infrastructure Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Quanta Inline Devices LLC, Quanta Inspection Services, Quanta Insurance Company Inc., Quanta International Holdings (US) LLC, Quanta International Holdings II Ltd., Quanta International Holdings Ltd., Quanta International Limited, Quanta Kingsvale LP Ltd., Quanta Lines Pty Ltd., Quanta Maine Services LLC, Quanta Middle East LLC, Quanta Pipeline Services Inc., Quanta Power Australia Pty Ltd, Quanta Power Generation Inc., Quanta Power Inc., Quanta Power Solutions India Private Limited, Quanta Resource Development, Quanta Services Africa (PTY) Ltd., Quanta Services Australia Pty Ltd., Quanta Services Chile SpA, Quanta Services Colombia S.A.S., Quanta Services Costa Rica Ltda., Quanta Services Guatemala Ltda., Quanta Services International Holdings II LP, Quanta Services International Holdings LP, Quanta Services Management Partnership L.P., Quanta Services Netherlands B.V., Quanta Services Panama S. de R.L., Quanta Services Peru S.A.C., Quanta Services Puerto Rico LLC, Quanta Services of Canada Ltd., Quanta Subsurface Canada Ltd., Quanta Subsurface LLC, Quanta Tank Services, Quanta Technology Canada ULC, Quanta Technology LLC, Quanta Technology UK Ltd., Quanta Tecnologia do Brasil Ltda., Quanta Telecom, Quanta Telecom Services, Quanta Telecommunication Services, Quanta Telecommunication Services LLC, Quanta Telecommunications Services LLC, Quanta Underground Services, Quanta Underground Services (Culpeper Co), Quanta Underground Services (Spotsylvania Co), Quanta Underground Services Inc., Quanta Utility Engineering Services Inc., Quanta Utility Installation Company Inc., Quanta Utility Operation LLC, Quanta West LLC, Quantecua Cia. Ltda., R. R. Cassidy Inc., RMS Holdings LLC, RMS Holdings LLC (Delaware), RMS Welding Systems, RMS Welding Systems LLC, Ranger Directional, Realtime Engineers Inc., Realtime Utility Engineers Inc., Redes Andinas de Comunicaciones S.R.L., Riggin & Diggin Line Construction, Rms Welding LLC, Rms Welding Systems LLC, Road Bore Corporation, Ryan Company Inc. The, Ryan Company Inc. of Massachusetts, Ryan Company Inc.(The), Seaward, Seaward Corp, Seaward Corporation, Service EC (DE) Inc., Service Electric Company (DE), Service Electric Company Inc., Service Electric Company of Delaware, Servicios Par Electric S. de R.L. de C.V., Servicios de Infraestructura del Peru S.A.C., Southwest Trenching Company Inc., Specialty Tank Services L.P., Specialty Tank Services LP, Specialty Tank Services Limited Partnership, Specialty Tank Services Limited Partnership, Specialty Tank Services Ltd., Specialty Tank Services Ltd. (LP), Specialty Tank Services Ltd. L.P., Specialty Tank Services Ltd. LP, Specialty Tank Services Ltd. LP, Specialty Tank Services Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold General LLC, Stronghold Holdings (BVI) Limited, Stronghold Inspection L.P., Stronghold Inspection Limited Partnership, Stronghold Inspection Limited Partnership, Stronghold Inspection Lp, Stronghold Inspection Ltd L.P., Stronghold Inspection Ltd., Stronghold Inspection Ltd. L.P., Stronghold Inspection Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold Limited Partnership, Stronghold Ltd., Stronghold Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold Management Holdings LP, Stronghold Specialty General LLC, Stronghold Specialty Ltd., Stronghold Specialty Ltd., Stronghold Specialty Ltd. Limited Partnership, Stronghold Tower Group LP, Stronghold Tower Group Ltd LP, Stronghold Tower Group Ltd., Stronghold Tower Group Ltd. LP, Stronghold VI LLC, Subterra Damage Prevention Specialists Ltd., Summit Line Construction, Sumter Utilities Inc., T. G. Mercer Consulting Services Inc., TA Construction, TC Infrastructure Services Ltd., Taylor Built, Texas Specialty Tank Services Ltd. LP, The Aspen Utility Company LLC, The ComTran Group Inc., The Hallen Construction Co. Inc., The Massachusetts Ryan Company Inc., The Ryan Company Inc Of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company Inc., The Ryan Company Inc. (Massachusetts), The Ryan Company Inc. of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company Incorporated of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company Of Massachusetts Inc., The Ryan Company of Massachusetts, The Ryan Company of Massachusetts (FN), Tom Allen Construction Company Inc., Tom Allen Construction Company of Delaware, Trans Tech Electric, TurnKey Automation Limited Partnership, TurnKey Automation Limited Partnership, TurnKey Automation Ltd., TurnKey Automation Ltd. Limited Partnership, TurnKey Automation Ltd. Limited Partnership, TurnKey I&E Ltd., Turnkey Automation Ltd. L.P., Turnkey Automation Ltd. LP., UCC Underground Construction Co. 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Steelcase Inc. provides a portfolio of furniture and architectural products in the United States and internationally. It operates through Americas, EMEA, and Other segments. The company's furniture portfolio includes furniture systems, seating, storage, fixed and height-adjustable desks, benches, and tables, as well as complementary products, such as work accessories, lighting, and mobile power and screens. Its seating products comprise task chairs; seating for collaborative environments and casual settings; and specialty seating for specific vertical markets, including education and healthcare. The company's interior architectural products comprise full and partial height walls and architectural pods. It also provides textiles, wall coverings, and surface imaging solutions for architects and designers; and workplace strategy consulting, lease origination, and furniture and asset management services. The company markets and sells its products to corporate, government, healthcare, education, and retail customers under the Steelcase, Designtex, Coalesse, AMQ, Smith System, Orangebox, and Viccarbe brands. It distributes its products and services through a network of independent and company-owned dealers, as well as directly to end-use customers. The company was founded in 1912 and is headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Money leaders in the House of Delegates said last month that reversing budget cuts affecting the Virginia State Police would be their top priority for the coming General Assembly session.

Its a worthy goal.

Like mental health agencies, the State Police is another critical service that has been starved over the past decade or so.

Providing for the public safety is a fundamental responsibility of government, and the General Assembly has the obligation to keep the state's law enforcement agencies at peak efficiency.

Not only does that fulfill a promise to the public, but it also fulfills a promise  implicit if not explicit  made to officers: that they will be adequately paid, as well as adequately staffed to help ensure their own safety, in return for putting their lives on the line to protect the public.

How the House Appropriations Committee is going to accomplish this is another matter.

Virginia is facing yet another budget shortfall, and the committee  as well as the legislature as a whole  will have to make some tough choices about spending. With not enough money to go around, beefing up some areas will come at the expense of tightening the budget in other areas.

But the State Police make a strong case that the agency should be at, or near, the top of the list.

It already was clear that the State Police needed attention from the legislature. Superintendent Steven Flaherty reported nearly 270 trooper vacancies across the state. The pace of employee departures only quickened after Gov. Terry McAuliffe predicted the budget shortfall at the end of the summer, and planned pay raises were canceled due to a General Assenbly requirement that raises be tied to revenue collections.

And while more people are leaving the agency, said Superintendent Flaherty, fewer people are applying to replace them  and so there are fewer good candidates to fill vacancies.

Meanwhile, existing staff are working overtime to plug the gaps. For the state to pay overtime is not necessarily an efficient way to manage the budget, nor is it necessarily wise for officers to work tiring extra shifts in a job that requires split-second reflexes and decision-making.

We really feel like our backs are up against the wall right now, he told a different set of committees, which are looking into increasing vehicle registration fees and dedicating some of the revenue to the State Police.

John W. Jones, executive director of the Virginia Sheriffs Association decried the lack of attention to sheriffs departments, which are state constitutional offices. He said that deputies trying to support a family of four on state salaries can qualify for food stamps.

Thats just another example of the states failure to meet basic commitments.

And hence the legislatures predicament in making money stretch to cover all needs.

But the General Assembly must do something , even if it cant do everything .

Putting the State Police among Virginias top priorities is a good starting point.

Editor's note: This editorial was corrected on Jan. 4 to reflect that the cancellation of pay raises was triggered by a condition established by the General Assembly.
Temperatures will start 2017 on a high note and then head downhill.

The first few days of the new year will bring some above-average temperatures, but colder air will move into Virginia during the second half of next week.

This will be an instance where warmer than average isnt a guarantee of short-sleeve weather. Rather, it will be a reprieve from cold nights.

An upper-level ridge will build across the eastern United States starting on New Years Day and last through Tuesday. That means a warming trend will occur, along with occasional rain.

Richmonds average low in the first week of January is 29 degrees. Its unlikely that there will be any mornings below freezing from Sunday to Wednesday of next week. Mornings will trend from the upper 30s on Sunday to the 50s on Wednesday.

Despite the ridge, some afternoons will stay on the cool side because of cloud cover, particularly Sunday and Monday. If clouds can part on Tuesday, it shouldnt be hard to reach highs in the 60s.

While Virginia enjoys the break from winter, bitter cold air will build through the western and central U.S. The ridge will weaken, and cold air will slide into the East Coast as the week goes along, probably reaching Virginia next Thursday or Friday.

At this point, its not certain exactly how cold it will get or how long the cold pattern will stick around.

Temperatures are likely to be below average by the first weekend of January. That could mean highs in the 30s, or it could signal another cold snap like the one that swept through in mid-December. In the next few days, the cooling trend should come into focus.

What is certain is that any taste of 60-degree weather next week will not last all week. It shouldnt come as a surprise. Each of the past three years brought a rapid swing from warm weather to bitter cold during the first or second week of January.
Four days after New Jersey resident Barbara Briley, 71, and her great-granddaughter, LaMyra Briley, 5, went missing, the two were found in their vehicle in Dinwiddie County shortly before 5 p.m. Wednesday, according to Virginia State Police.

Barbara Briley was evacuated by helicopter to VCU Medical Center for treatment. While LaMyra Briley was alert and appeared to be unharmed, she was taken from the scene for medical evaluation, police said.

State police did not detail the nature of Barbara Brileys medical condition or how she and her great-granddaughter wound up in her Toyota Rav4 SUV on rural private property in the 16000 block of Nash Road, at least a mile from the nearest public roadway.

A local resident called police upon spotting the two. They were seated in the SUV when police arrived.

The FBI got involved Tuesday in what had already been a dayslong search by police. The New Jersey woman and her great-granddaughter were last seen in Caroline County on Christmas Eve at an Exxon station. They were traveling to Morven, N.C., where they were to celebrate Christmas with family.

Prior to the Brileys having been found Wednesday evening, a niece of Barbara Briley said her aunt used to work as a driver for New Jersey Transit and had made the long trip numerous times.

Driving is not an issue when it comes to my Aunt Barbara, Ginger Bittle, 35, had told The Associated Press. She said she didnt know her aunt to have any medical problems.

Family members had repeatedly tried to reach her by cellphone and retraced the route they believed she was traveling, but to no avail.

On Tuesday, Barbara Brileys cell phone pinged off a Sprint cellphone tower in Dinwiddie County, prompting authorities to search an area between Petersburg and the county airport.

Surveillance video taken Christmas Eve shows Barbara Briley at the Exxon station at 23807 Rogers Clark Blvd. in Ruther Glen.

In the video, Briley enters the store at 5:39 p.m. and walks out six minutes later. She returns to the store at 5:51 p.m. and leaves again at 5:53 p.m.

Gas station clerk Joanna Strange told local media that Briley came inside to say she was lost, and that she helped her with her GPS before Briley went on her way.

Briley had last been seen on video at 6:06 p.m., when she pulled out of the Exxon stations parking lot in her silver Toyota RAV4.

Officers spent much of Monday searching the Ruther Glen area and then shifted their efforts to an area south of Richmond, after police in New Jersey learned that the Brileys may have been there early Tuesday, Virginia State Police Sgt. Stephan Vick said.

State troopers looked up and down the Interstate 85, I-95 and U.S. 1 corridors, going all the way to the North Carolina state line without luck, Vick said. They used a helicopter and hunted for signs of guard rail damage or other evidence that a car may have run off the road, he said.

Police in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, led the investigation.
I am writing in response to a complaint written by Donald Sandifer and published in your paper.

We are servants of our community and, in my view, if anyone feels theyve been treated unfairly or unprofessionally by a member of my staff that person should contact me first so that I might investigate and respond. Donald Sandifer didnt choose to do this instead he published his complaint in a letter to the editor, so I will respond in-kind. My door remains open for a conversation with Mr. Sandifer. While I choose to ignore and rarely respond to the false or misleading accusations against me as sheriff, I wont do the same when it concerns my staff.

The traffic stop of Mr. Sandifer on Dec. 26 was video recorded and I invite any member of the community or media who would like to view the stop made by Deputy Kerry Grigsby. In his third paragraph, Mr. Sandifer stated I exited my car to ask what the problem was. Instead of a polite answer, you demanded to see my ID. This is not so. Mr. Sandifer also stated that he asked again what the problem was and the deputys response was to ignore me. This is also not accurate.

The video clearly shows Deputy Grigsby exit his patrol car and immediately say Hello, how you doing? and his next words were I seen you kinda pull off to the side. Mr. Sandifer went on to write that he asked a third time for the reason of the stop and was again ignoredagain another inaccuracy on the part of Mr. Sandifer.

He went on to say in his letter that he was standing there in painfor a long period. The entire stop lasted only four minutes and Mr. Sandifer chose to exit the vehicle himself, which is something I ask citizens to please not do unless asked by an officer to exit your vehicle.

Mr. Sandifers letter would lead you to believe that Deputy Grigsby did not engage him in conversation and was somehow rude during those few minutes of the stop. But in fact Deputy Grigsby, after asking Mr. Sandifer if his dog was friendly, continued to pet the dogs head as he stood just a few feet from Sandifer carrying on a conversation, even speaking to his wife about the decorations. The stop ended with a handshake and what appeared to be a friendly encounter.

It is beyond me what the motivation would be to print such a letter about Deputy Grigsby. Were not perfect, but my staff works hard every day to do the best job they can and to be responsive to our community. Citizens should know that when I saw the letter to the editor from Mr. Sandifer early this morning it naturally caused me to send a message to our Patrol Captain. By the time I arrived at the office, Deputy Grigsby had already come in from his time off and typed a written report detailing the incident, before the Captain had time to view the video recording and without being asked. This was an unfortunate waste of his timecaused by Mr. Sandifer.

My hope today is to remind our community that theres always another side to a story. I can assure you that we have a great group of deputies and Im proud to work with them each day. We will make mistakes because we are human. In this case, however, Deputy Grigsby had concerns based on Mr. Sandifers driving behavior, and appropriately stopped Mr. Sandifer to investigate those concerns. Deputy Grigsbys actions inconvenienced Mr. Sandifer for fewer than five minutes.

Fortunately, in this case, there was no further cause for concern based on Deputy Grigsbys investigation, and this brief encounter was terminated. Our most important objective is keeping our community safe, and Deputy Grigsby took appropriate steps under the circumstances here.

Scott Jenkins

Sheriff, Culpeper County
NCRI - According to eyewitnesses, on December 28th, flogging punishment of a young man charged with theft, and whose identity is unrevealed, has been carried out in public in the city of Iranshahr  South Eastern Iran.

It is worth noting that the United Nations earlier had announced that flogging in Iran is inhumane, cruel, degrading and contrary to international law.

Fingers of Two Jailed Brothers Amputated for Theft

Iranian regime prison authorities amputated the fingers of two jailed brothers by the names of Faramarz and Majid Bigham on charges of theft. These hideous measures were carried out in Urmia Central Prison in northwest Iran after they served time behind bars for four and a half years.





Prison authorities also forced dozens of other inmates with similar charges to watch the shocking scene to send a message to all.





The inhumane mullahs regime is implementing such vicious punishments for theft when huge cases of theft by Iranian regime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior regime officials, including judiciary chief Sadegh Larijani, are being unveiled.





Larijani himself is in charge of issuing such horrific verdicts.





The exposure of 63 bank accounts affiliated to Sadegh Larijani, with sums totaling over $650 million and a monthly profit of over $6.5 million, is only one such case. The total amount in these accounts is the sum that the regimes judiciary has extorted from prisoners and their families under the pretext of bails.





They have raised the issue of some bank accounts and they say [the judiciary chief] is filling his account with government money in previous terms of the judiciary chief, assets of this branch would be transferred to an account under the name of the judiciary branch, with permission from the leader this has not been the case only under my watch, it has also been an issue in previous terms, all under the leaders permission, Larijani admitted as this huge controversy continues to escalate. (State-run Mehr news agency  November 23, 2016)





All revenues of the huge financial empire known as the Setad Ejraiye Farmane Hazrate Emam  Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam, under Khameneis personal control and its wealth valued at over $95 billion, has been accumulated by confiscating the property of dissidents, including families of members of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and plundering the Iranian peoples wealth.

The United Nations says that in international human rights law, in particular the Convention against Torture, flogging punishment is prohibited and could be considered an act of torture.
Soon after his inauguration next month, President-elect Donald Trump will nominate someone to the Supreme Court, which has been hamstrung by a vacancy since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February. There will be public debates about the nominees credentials, past record, judicial philosophy and temperament. There will be Senate hearings and a vote.





No matter how it plays out, Americans must remember one thing above all: The person who gets confirmed will sit in a stolen seat.





It was stolen from Barack Obama, a twice-elected president who fulfilled his constitutional duty more than nine months ago by nominating Merrick Garland , a highly qualified and widely respected federal appellate judge.





It was stolen by top Senate Republicans, who broke with longstanding tradition and refused to consider any nominee Mr. Obama might send them, because they wanted to preserve the courts conservative majority. The main perpetrators of the theft were Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and Charles Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. But virtually all Republican senators were accomplices; only two supported holding hearings.





The Republican party line  that it was an election year, so the American people should have a voice in the selection of the next justice  was a patent lie. The people spoke when they re-elected Mr. Obama in 2012, entrusting him to choose new members for the court. And the Senate has had no problem considering, and usually confirming, election-year nominees in the past.





Of course, Supreme Court appointments have always been political, and the courts ideological center has shifted back and forth over time. But the Senate has given nominees full consideration and a vote even when the party in power has opposed a presidents choice. That is, until this year, when Republicans claimed that though the Constitution calls for the Senates advice and consent, senators arent obligated to do anything. This is a bad-faith reading of that clause, even if there is no clear way to force a vote. It certainly obliterates a well-established political norm that makes a functioning judicial branch possible. As Paul Krugman wrote in his column on Monday, institutions are not magically self-sustaining, and they dont protect against tyranny when powerful people start defying political norms.





This particular norm is of paramount importance because the courts institutional legitimacy depends on its perceived separation from the elected branches  a fragile concept in the best of times. By tying the latest appointment directly to the outcome of the election, Mr. McConnell and his allies took a torch to that idea  an outrageous gambit that, to nearly everyones shock, has paid off. But while Republicans may be celebrating now, the damage they have inflicted on the confirmation process, and on the court as an institution, may be irreversible.





The slope is both slippery and steep. If Republicans could justify an election-year blockade, whats to stop Democrats in the future from doing the same? For that matter, why should the party controlling the Senate ever allow a president of the opposing party to choose a justice ? Indeed, in the weeks before the election, Senate Republicans were threatening, with the encouragement of leading conservative thinkers, never to confirm anyone to fill the vacancy if Hillary Clinton won.





Can anything be done to repair the harm? One step  as obvious as it is unlikely  would be for Mr. Trump to renominate Mr. Garland. Conservatives will scoff, but they know he is as qualified for the job as anyone in the country. When Mr. Garland was floated as a possible choice for the Supreme Court in 2010, Orrin Hatch, the senior Republican senator from Utah, called him a consensus nominee and said there was no question that he would be confirmed with bipartisan support. Thats partly why Mr. Obama nominated him this time, and also why Mr. McConnell denied him a hearing  he knew he couldnt prevent a Senate vote once Americans saw an eminently qualified and reasonable jurist testify on live TV.





At the very least, Mr. Trump could follow President Obamas example and pick a centrist  someone who commands wide respect and operates within the bounds of mainstream legal thought. That would be an appropriate gesture from a man who lost the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes and will enter office with the lowest approval ratings in recent history.





The shameful, infuriating actions of the Senate Republicans wont be ignored in the history books. In a desperate effort to keep a conservative majority on the court, they rejected their own professed values of preserving American institutions. Theres little hope that they will come to their senses now, but they and Mr. Trump have the power, and the obligation, to fix the mess they created.

 | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



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Source: The New York Times , The Editorial Borad, December 24, 2016
New Delhi: In the wake of demonetisation, Ambuja Cement has launched a pan-India 'Go Cashless' campaign, encouraging its business partners to adapt to cashless business transactions.

The 'Go Cashless' campaign, aimed at helping its business partners conduct cashless transactions with ease, was launched on December 7 to create awareness on various available cashless options -- from swipe machines to bank services, the company said in statement.

Ambuja Cement has also tied up with ICICI Bank to launch an exclusive helpline to assist stakeholders open current accounts for regular business transactions. With this campaign, Ambuja Cement has notched another first to its credit.

It has become the first cement company to initiate drive on cashless transactions. Post demonetisation, the construction community especially in the rural and semi urban has been facing several challenges as it mostly deals in cash, the company said.

"Our Company is committed to improving the quality of life of all our stakeholders," company's Managing Director and CEO Ajay Kapur said. "The 'Go Cashless' campaign is yet another endeavour empowering the construction community through knowledge transfer. We are successfully seeding innovative thinking at the grass-roots and bringing information and technology to the forefront of all our esteemed business partners," Kapur added.

Ambuja Cement has, in the last 20 days, sent more than over 1000,000 text messages; 200,000 Whatsapp messages that included a series of short animated clips, and kick-started an educational radio campaign across 17 different stations in New Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and West Bengal.

These initiatives have helped reach out to over 42,000 partners (retailers, contractors and masons) across India and over 45,000 via radio. Meanwhile, all the company's dealers are already conducting cashless transactions.

Following the launch in early December, the first leg of the campaign witnessed a series of teaser text messages on problems faced by the cement community post demonetisation.

The second leg launched on 17th December that included broadcast of educational messages. The minute-long audio clips update on different modes of cashless transactions via cheques, cards (debit/ credit cards) and mobile payments (UPI app) in a simple manner.

In the near future, a few more similar initiatives will be launched by the company to further empower the construction community across the country.
Mumbai: Tata Sons on Thursday asked Cyrus Mistry to return confidential documents that he has in his possession and had access to when he was chairman of Tata Sons.

The group has also alleged that it has credible information that some movable property was being taken out of companys possession, allegedly at the behest of Mistry, CNBC-TV18 reported.

With this, the legal slugfest between Tata and Mistry camps has intensified as it is expected Mistry will soon come up with his own set of answers.

The development comes days after Tata Sons slapped a legal notice on Mistry for alleged breach of confidentiality and trust. It charged Mistry with "criminal breach of confidentiality".

The notice also charged Mistry of leaking sensitive information to public in his petition filed with the National Compnay Law Tribunal. Mistry had charged Tata Sons of practicing oppression and mismanagement in his petition filed with the NCLT.

NCLT had asked Mistry to substantiate his claims with material evidence.
"Since Duterte entered office in June, more than 5,000 people have

been killed in his war on drugs, some 2,000 at the hands of the

police and a further 3,000 by vigilante groups."

MANILA (Reuters) - Three minors were among seven people shot dead by suspected vigilantes in the Philippines at a house storing illegal narcotics, police said on Thursday, in the latest killings during a bloody and murky war on drugs.





Two unknown gunmen arrived on motorcycles and entered what police called a drugs den north of the capital Manila late on Wednesday. They opened fire on those inside, killing five instantly before fleeing, according to a police report, which said two other victims died before reaching the hospital.





Four of those killed were teenagers, two of them 15, one 16 and one 18. The killings come as the government of President Rodrigo Duterte prepares legislation to put to Congress to lower the age of criminal liability to nine from 15.





More than 6,100 people have been killed in the past six months during Duterte's controversial war on drugs, about a third in police operations and others classified as deaths under investigation. Police say killings during counter-narcotics operations were in self-defense.





The crackdown, the core plank of Duterte's election campaign, has been condemned internationally and has created tension between the Philippines and key allies and donors, among them the European Union, United States and United Nations . He has praised China for staying out of it.





Duterte has hit back with stunning rebukes and says he is willing to "rot in jail" to rid the Philippines of a drugs problem he initially vowed to solve within three to six months. He says the scourge was bigger than he first thought.





In a television interview on Thursday, Duterte said the drugs war would not end soon.





"Until the last pusher is out of the street... until the last drugs lord is killed, this drug campaign would continue to the last day of my term," he said.





Killings by vigilantes have occurred often and the authorities have been accused by rights groups of hiring assassins to kill suspects.





Duterte vehemently denies police are in cahoots with vigilantes and has said drugs gangs are killing rivals and silencing informants and it was taking place long before he took office.





Dutertes warning to corrupt Filipinos: I threw a kidnapper out a helicopter before

IN yet another public confession of a summary execution , Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday claimed he had once thrown a suspected kidnapper out of a helicopter mid-flight during his time as Davao city mayor.





His admission was a warning to corrupt officials who he threatened would suffer the same fate in the governments anti-corruption drive, referring to how he dealt with criminals in the past, the Philippine Star reported.





If you are corrupt I will fetch you with a helicopter and I will throw you out on the way to Manila, Duterte was quoted as saying.





I have done that before, why should I not do it again?





Duterte made the threat against corrupt officials during a speech at the Camarines Sur provincial capitol following his visit Typhoon Nina-hit disaster areas. He said much like his war on drugs, the anti-corruption campaign will be the main focus during his six-year term.





According to the Philippine Star, the president described the incident where he pursued the kidnappers of a Chinese individual who was tortured despite receiving ransom for his release.





He said he had then ordered the pilot to fly at the right height before kicking the kidnapper off the helicopter so as to not cause a commotion from the bodys splatter.





President Rodrigo Duterte Earlier this month, the firebrand leader, who was once dubbed The Punisher for meting out vigilante justice against hardcore criminals, said he Earlier this month, the firebrand leader, who was once dubbed The Punisher for meting out vigilante justice against hardcore criminals, said he personally killed suspected criminals during his time as mayor.





The president, now facing international heat for his administrations violent war on drugs, said he conducted the killings himself to set an example for the police under his watch.





In Davao I used to do it personally. Just to show to the guys (police) that if I can do it why cant you, he was quoted by the AFP as saying.





And Id go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also. I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill.





The White House said boasts by Duterte that he used to ride around on his motorcycle in search of criminals to put down are deeply troubling, while the United Nations human rights commission has urged the Philippines to launch a murder investigation





Duterte served as Davao City mayor for nearly two decades. His rule was tainted by hundreds of extrajudicial killings and most, if not all, of the murders have been linked to him by critics.





According to the allegations, the murders were carried out by the Davao Death Squad (DDS) that Duterte himself had formed.





In September, during the Senate inquiry into the extrajudicial killings, a man named Edgar Matobato came forward with a confession that rocked media headlines. In his testimony, Matobato admitted that he had been a hitman with the DDS and that he had killed more than 50 people.





He also linked Duterte to the killings, claiming the president had ordered his group of hitmen to pursue his rival supporters, bomb a mosque and kill Muslims, and set up an ambush for Senator Leila de Lima when she ordered a probe on the string of murders.





Since Duterte entered office in June, more than 5,000 people have been killed in his war on drugs, some 2,000 at the hands of the police and a further 3,000 by vigilante groups.

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Source: Reuters, Neil Jerome Morales, Martin Petty, December 29, 2016Source: Asian Correspondent, Staff, December 28, 2016
New Delhi: Tata Steel Special Economic Zone Ltd has sought more time from the government for setting up a multi-product SEZ in Odisha.

The company's proposal will be taken up in the meeting of the Board of Approval (BoA), headed by Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia, on January 6 here, an official said.

Formal approval to the developer was granted on June 18, 2007, over an area of 1,173 hectare. The developer has already been granted seven extensions, validity period of which was up to December 17 this year.

It has "requested for further extension so as to implement the project. The request of the developer is accordingly placed before BoA for its consideration," the official added.

Besides, the board will consider other proposals including G P Realtors and Mittal Infratech which have sought more time to implement their projects. G P Realtors Pvt Ltd has proposed to set up sector specific SEZ for electronic hardware and IT/ITES in Haryana.

Mittal Infratech too wants to set up IT/ITES zone in that state. SEZs are export hubs of the country. Exports from special economic zones logged a marginal growth of 0.77 per cent to Rs 4.67 lakh crore in 2015-16.

The exports from such 204 zones were Rs 4.63 lakh crore in 2014-15. According to the Commerce Ministry's data, as on March 31, these zones have attracted investments worth Rs 3.76 lakh crore and have generated employment for 15.91 lakh people.
The additional taxes under the IDS II would fund the 7th Pay Commission as well as recapitalise PSU banks without cutting back on public capex.

New Delhi: The government is expected to raise Rs 1,00,000 crore of additional taxes under the Income Disclosure Scheme II (IDS II), which in turn will help in containing the 2017-18 fiscal deficit, says a report.

According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA-ML), besides containing the fiscal deficit, the additional taxes under the IDS II would fund the 7th Pay Commission as well as recapitalise PSU banks without cutting back on public capex.

"We continue to expect the government to raise about Rs 1,000 billion/0.7 per cent of GDP of additional taxes under Income Disclosure Scheme II," BofA-ML said in a research note.

It further noted that "this should allow Finance Minister Jaitley to hold the FY18 fiscal deficit at 3.5 per cent of GDP - same as FY17's - and at the same time fund the 7th Pay Commission and recapitalise PSU banks, without cutting back on public capex".

The government on December 16, had announced that the second Income Disclosure Scheme (IDS II) will run till March 31. Under this scheme, black money hoarders would have time until March-end to come clean by paying 50 per cent tax on bank deposits of junked currencies post demonetisation.

For those holding unaccounted cash, it offered new tax evasion amnesty scheme wherein 50 per cent tax will be charged on declarations and a quarter of the total sum be parked in a non-interest bearing deposit for four years.

Regarding how much can the government get by way of 'special dividend' from the RBI, BofA-ML said "about Rs 1,000 billion/0.6 per cent of GDP, we continue to estimate, although we believe that the RBI should reduce 2017 OMO instead."

An open market operation (OMO) is a market operation conducted by RBI by way of sale/purchase of government securities to/from the market with an objective to adjust the rupee liquidity conditions in the market on a durable basis.

The report further noted that "about Rs 14,000 billion of the Rs 15,300 billion of demonetised Rs 500/1000 has already returned to the banks "in line with our expectations".

"If the RBI passes this as a 'special dividend' to the fiscal, it will allow Budget 2017 to step up social sector spend and public investment," it added.

Meanwhile, RBI Governor Urjit Patel earlier this month had said that "Actually, the withdrawal of legal tender characteristics status does not extinguish any of RBI's balance sheet. Therefore, there is no implication on the balance sheet as of now. The question of a special dividend automatically does not arise as of now."
The government is set to switch gears in 2017 to make India a hub for one of the largest installations of clean energy sources by 2022.

New Delhi: Green seems to be the catch word for the government heading into the next year as it gears up to achieve 175 gigawatt of clean energy by 2022 through auction of 1,000 MW of rooftop solar power, Rs 13,000 crore investment in solar parks and a Rs 21,000-crore package to boost local manufacturing of panels.

By all yardsticks, 2016 remains a watershed year when solar tariff slumped to Rs 4 per unit and wind projects received a major thrust.

The government is set to switch gears in 2017 to make India a hub for one of the largest installations of clean energy sources by 2022. Minister for New and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal offered a glimpse of things to come while speaking to PTI.

Scaling up of rooftop solar programme, scheme to encourage domestic manufacturing of solar panels and making wind power affordable through auction of sites all fill up a packed 2017. His ministry has in its sight Rs 1 lakh crore investment for the sector and is looking at 20 GW of power generation from non-conventional sources in 2017-18.

Beginning with speeding up the tempo for solar panel installation at homes, schools and hospitals through subsidies in 2016, plans are afoot to expand the rooftop programme to government buildings by providing target-based incentives.

In the November auction of 500 MW, subsidies for installation of as much as 432.7 MW of rooftop solar capacity were lapped up by 122 developers. A fresh tender for one gigawatt (1,000 MW) is now in the works.

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government is eyeing generation of 100 GW from solar power alone by 2022. Rooftop solar capacity almost doubled to 1,000 MW in 2016 and the aim is to take this to 40 GW.

Also on the table is a green corridor to transmit 2,000 MW of power from 34 solar panels across 21 states. For good measure, Goyal said, a scheme to promote domestic manufacturing of solar panels will become a reality in 2017.

The Rs 21,000-crore module aims to create 5 GW of photovoltaic manufacturing capacity by 2019 and 20 GW by 2026. India's renewable energy generation capacity stands at 45 GW. According to Goyal, wind power is up next after successful reduction in solar tariff through transparent auction of sites.

A mobility scheme is on the anvil to achieve 100 per cent electric vehicle-based transportation for India by 2030, he said without giving out specifics. Early next year, the ministry will organise Global RE- Invest 2017 India-ISA Partnership, the second edition of the bi-ennial Renewable Energy Investors Meet and Expo to bring in investors.

The event will build on RE-Invest 2015 and explore the advances to help meet India's ultimate target of adding 175 GW renewable energy capacity by 2022.
Mumbai: The ongoing struggle between the Tata Group and its former chairman Cyrus Mistry and long-time director Nusli Wadia highlights the fact that the role of an independent director in a company matters.

The independent directors and shareholders need a compelling reason to support a resolution, and voting for is no longer a default option nor is it a tick-the-box exercise. In this case, it was the special resolution calling for the ouster of businessman Nusli Wadia as director on various Tata companies.

Investors also focus on the now while voting, and not on the past much to the disappointment of the Tatas, who thought their image and reputation would decide voters choice, according to the Institutional Investor Advisory Services India Limited (IiAS).

liAS analysed the voting pattern of the resolutions put for voting at the four listed companies in the Tata Group that recently held their extra-ordinary general meetings. These were Tata Consult-ancy Services Ltd, Tata Steel Ltd, Tata Motors Ltd and Tata Chemicals Ltd.

From the moment, Mr Mistry was removed unceremoniously as chairman of Tata Sons, there were questions on the propriety of it. Even the appointment of independent director Ishaat Husain to chair various board meetings of TCS came under scrutiny as questions were raised as to whose side he was on.

In fact, several organisations which advise shareholders to oppose the sacking of Mr Mistry as they feel they was no reason for such as drastic step.

Even as investors questioned who exactly an independent director serves, they were not willing to see one removed: the resolution to remove Nusli Wadia had investors rooting for him. If the promoters votes are excluded, in two of the three companies, the investors voted for Nusli Wadia to continue, IiAS claimed in its report.

This should embolden independent directors, said IiAS, as the voting pattern in the case of Nusli Wadia shows that removal of independent directors by the principal shareholder is contentious. For the Tatas, a century of building trust served limited purpose when it came to the vote.

Companies do not exist in Dorian Grays world: All actions are noted and acted upon  be it perception, social media chat, the multiples they enjoy. Companies are judged every day.
Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan will both have two releases each in 2017, much to the joy of their fans.

Mumbai: 2016 has been a concoction of mixed emotions with a few surprises and some major disappointments. Some of the biggest stars had their biggest disappointments yet, while a few others showed up with their career bests.

But with the year almost coming to an end, 2017 beckons us with fresh films and superstars who dare to experiment.

Listed below are the 10 most highly awaited films of the year.

Raees:

As weird as it might sound, 'Raees' was one of 2016's most anticipated films, to begin with. But the grating delays that it went through, finally meant that a release would be possible only in early 2017. The film stars a congenially antagonistic Shah Rukh Khan, back at what he does best, and what gave him his enviable career, locking horns with Nawazuddin Siddiqui, playing cop third time round. Despite the delay, it's still probably the most anticipated film of the year, releasing on January 25, 2017.

Baahubali- The Conclusion:

The dark horse of 2015 that re-wrote the rules of a pan-Indian market, despite not starring a certain Monsieur Rajinikanth, SS Rajamouli's 'Baahubali: The Beginning,' was so ginormously successful, it is the second highest grossing Indian film till date. Redefining Indian utilisation of action-driven grandeur and CGI, the film was so revolutionary, that every film belonging to the genre that followed, including the giant-slaying (Read Dilwale), paled and seemed unintentionally amateurish in comparison.

The sequel, 'Baahubali: The Conclusion,' is eagerly awaited for the very same reason, and also because the nation wants to know why Kattappa would dare kill Baahubali.

The film, starring Prabhas and Rana Daggubati in the lead roles, is slated to release on April 27, 2017.

Judwaa 2:

Indian millennials fondly recollect the Khans, despite of their recent relative misdemeanours, because of the kind of films they offered them to cherish through their childhood. One of those was David Dhawan's hilariously mediocre yet entertaining 'Judwaa,' one of Salman Khan's most reminisced films. After David officially introduced his youngest, Varun Dhawan, as a worthy successor to Govinda, with 'Main Tera Hero,' it was but a propriety to have him play the iconic, zany twins in the film's sequel. Expected to release in 2017, the film will star Jacqueline Fernandez and Taapsee Pannu as the female leads.

Tubelight:

Salman Khan, had a phenomenal 2016, with an expected solo Eid release, which ended up being the highest grossing film of the year (It remains to be seen if Aamir Khan's Dangal manages to beat the record) and also his most acclaimed performance till date. The actor will next be seen in 'Tubelight,' helmed by Kabir Khan, who gave him his most adored and acclaimed film yet, 'Bajrangi Bhaijaan'. The film, set against the backdrop of the Sino-Indian war of 1962, reportedly has the superstar playing a child-man, alongside brother Sohail Khan and Chinese actress, Zhu Zhu.

Skipping Eid for once, the film will arrive on June 26, 2017.

Padmavati:

Touted to be the most expensive Bollywood film to be greenlit till date, Sanjay Leela Bhansali's ambitious 'Padmavati' repeats his muses Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone, with Shahid Kapoor being the third entrant in the cast. While Deepika plays the eponymous queen, Shahid will be seen playing her husband, Raja Rawal Ratan Singh, who must defend his kingdom and his wife's honour, against a lasciviously enamoured and sadistically savage Alauddin Khilji, who'd eventually invade his kingdom, to be played by Ranveer Singh. The summary on paper in itself is so magnificent, the cast and the director's penchant for glorious opulence only augments the film's stature.

Said to be conceived on a scale grander than the Holy Grailesque 'Baahubali,' the film is headed for a 17 November, 2017 release.

Imtiaz Ali's untitled next:

Shah Rukh Khan will be seen romancing Anushka Sharma in an Imtiaz Ali film. This in itself acts as an unabashedly unambiguous selling point for the film. The superstar, who's been having a terrific image makeover, with a rejuvenated script sense, will be collaborating with the ace director for the very first time. The film, which was tentatively titled 'The Ring,' is said to be about an engaged Gujarati girl, traversing across Europe, who loses her engagement ring during her gleeful sojourn, only to be helped by a charming tour guide in her retrieval quest. The romantic drama is slated for an August 11, 2017 release.

Jagga Jasoos:

This boy wonder sleuth flick, seen through the enterprising (yet plagiarising?) eyes of Anurag Basu, has been more delayed than Rahul Dholakia's 'Raees'. The film, that stars erstwhile lovers Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif in the lead roles, massively impressed with its first look, set in a Wes Andersonesque universe with generous dollops of some good old Tintin thrown in, not to forget the 'Ace Ventura' hairdo. But credit where it is due, the film does look gorgeous and furiously experimental without qualms, and could very well be the surprise of the year providing some major career boost to its deprived, A-list leads.

Golmaal Again:

We all loved Rohit Shetty's 'Golmaal'. The film gave us a timeless slapstick comedy and its characteristically commercial director a thriving career, only to be followed by two heartbreakingly and atrociously weak sequels. However, after the two primary entities associated with the project, the second being Ajay Devgn, both confessed their awareness of their ghastly mediocrity, hopes have skyrocketed. Can they do an encore of the original and make us laugh mindlessly all over again?

2.0:

The most expensive Indian film, yet, Shankar's followup to his iconic 'Endhiran/Robot,' pits none other than Akshay Kumar against Rajini. The film, which will see Rajinikanth reprise his role as the humanoid superhero, 'Chitti,' is easily the superstar actor's most ambitious till date. And the immense cult and fan recall associated with it, elevates it to the phenomenon waiting to happen that it is.

Rangoon:

Vishal Bharadwaj's dream project, the Casablancaesque love triangle of a thriving actress, a director and a strapping armyman, set against the backdrop of the second World War, is the kind of premise you'd want to be seen being made by a director as viscerally creative and cinematically ingenious as Vishal. And by managing a stellar casting coup by roping in Kangana Ranaut, Saif Ali Khan and Shahid Kapoor to play out the lead roles, he's only pulled off the unprecedented.

Saif Ali Khan delivered his absolute career best as the schemingly brutal Langda Tyagi, in his adaptation of 'Othello,' while Shahid's filmography screamed a similar situation, with 'Kaminey' and 'Haider,' until this year's 'Udta Punjab' happened. With Kangana herself at the zenith of her game, this film, scheduled for a February 24, 2017 release, is reel genius waiting to happen.

Arjun Rampal's astonishingly credible act in the film's first trailer of Ashim Ahluwalia's ensured people couldn't stop looping it. The actor, who'll be seen playing incarcerated gangster-turned-politician Arun Gawli in the film, a biopic on the latter, looks absolutely intimidating and unrecognisable in the teaser.

Ashim, who had helmed the Nawazuddin Siddiqui starrer 'Miss Lovely,' which went on to develop a cult following post its unanimously acclaimed run across film festivals, has made the film gritty and menacing to say the least.

Though they couldn't make it to our list, we must add that Salman Khan's 'Tiger Zinda hai,' Hrithik Roshan's 'Kaabil,' which has got grievously overshadowed by Shah Rukh Khan's 'Raees,' which it is all set to clash with, and Rajkumar Hirani's Sanjay Dutt biopic starring Ranbir Kapoor as the temperamental superstar, also have considerable patronage already.

All in all, rest assured, 2017 is bound to be one helluva Bollywood ride in the offing!
The actress finally took some time off her busy schedule.

Mumbai: While many celebrated Christmas with Karan Johars Koffee with Karans Katrina and Anushka starrer episode, the Bang Bang star was in London, celebrating the eve with her family.

Yes, the actress finally took some time off her busy schedule and flew off to London for the much needed break. Katrina is vacationing with her family in London and will also ring in the New Year with them.

During her stay, the actress learned how to fire a riffle. Katrinas facepage on Twitter shared the pictures with fans.

Katrina Kaif snapped with her family in London.

On work front, Katrina will next be seen opposite her ex-boyfriend Ranbir Kapoor in Jagga Jasoos. The movie is all set to release on April 7, 2017.
Khanna, who died in 2012 after battling cancer, was referred to as the first and the original "superstar" of Indian cinema.

Mumbai: Actress-turned-writer Twinkle Khanna paid an emotional tribute to father and superstar Rajesh Khanna on his 74th birth anniversary.

Taking to Twitter, the 41-year-old star posted a black and white image of herself along with her father.

"I see you, in my reflection off the back of a gleaming spoon, in a gesture my sister makes, in the arch of my son's eyebrows- I still see you," Twinkle captioned the picture.

Khanna, who died in 2012 after battling cancer, was referred to as the first and the original "superstar" of Indian cinema.

He starred in 15 consecutive solo hit films from 1969 to 1971, still an unbreakable record.

The actor was known for his work in films like 'The Train', 'Kati Patang', 'Anand', 'Haathi Mere Saathi', 'Namak Haraam' and 'Amar Prem'.
Brooklyn Beckham sparked off rumours of reconnecting with his ex when he contacted her on social media. The 17-year-old reportedly connected with upcoming French model Sonia Ben Ammar on Instagram when he landed in Maldives, where he and his family are currently holidaying, reported Dailymail.co.uk. Incidentally, Sonia too happened to be holidaying there.

The two who dated for five months, had apparently first met in Maldives itself and so, the island holds special memories for them.

According to reports, Sonia had made quite an impression on Beckhams parents and they were happy about the two. However, after their breakup, Brooklyn went on to date Hollywood actress Chloe Grace Moretz, before breaking up with her in August.
Tennessee: A Tennessee woman's $1.2 million estate has gone to the dogs - and cats, too.

The Johnson City Press reports Glenda Taylor DeLawder's bequest to an animal shelter was announced Christmas Day on the Carter County government website by Mayor Leon Humphrey.

Humphrey says $540,000 will be given to the Elizabethton Carter County Animal Shelter to expand the dog and cat holding areas. It also pay for a new van that can be converted to transport dogs and cats to be spayed and neutered.

Construction will begin on the shelter expansion Jan. 9, and Humphrey says the van is scheduled to arrive by March 1. DeLawder, who is described by her family as being an avid animal lover, died in November 2015.
Kolkata: The security of women against eve teasing and harassment has always been a cause of concern in India, but a more saddening reality is that of victim shaming in our society, where women have to suffer for hitting out against sexism.

The entire world was busy celebrating Christmas in their own ways with friends or family on 25th December, but for Vijaya Das, a visit to her favourite dhaba for the festive mood turned into a nightmare, as she was asked to leave just because she raised alarm over a man leering at her.

In what comes as another shocking incident at a Kolkata restaurant after one eatery denied entry to a driver, the 26-year-old wrote in her Facebook post that she noticed a shady man looking at her in the creepiest way possible and although she ignored him at first, she shouted at him when she he continued.

While Dass father supported her, the man refused to accept his mistake. But the shock came when the restaurants manager came up to Vijaya Das and her family, asking them to leave immediately.

The post reflects how harassment against women continues because the society chooses to look the other way and passively support it.
The former Spice Girl shot to fame in 1994, as one-fifth of the chart-topping band (Photo: AFP)

London: This Christmas was very special for the Beckhams, after Victoria Beckham revealed that she has been named on the Queen's New Year's Honours list.

Expecting an OBE for her fashion empire and body of charity work, the mother-of-four will follow in hubby David's footsteps, 13 years after he received his nod from the Queen, reports the Daily Mail.

According to sources close to the family, the 42-year-old business woman was "delighted and humbled for the recognition." Victoria's eponymous line made a modest debut at New York Fashion Week in September 2008.

The former Spice Girl shot to fame in 1994, as one-fifth of the chart-topping band alongside Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm, Emma Bunton and Geri Halliwell.
Pune: A youth from Bengaluru, who was detained in connection with the brutal murder of a young woman IT professional here, has been arrested, with police suspecting it to be a case of one-sided affair.

Santosh Kumar (25) was arrested late last night, days after he was detained for questioning, police said on Thursday.

"During investigation, it was revealed that Santosh Kumar had very smartly planned the murder. The accused claimed that he was present in Bengaluru on the day of the incident," Additional Superintendent of Police Rajkumar Shinde said.

Antara Das, 21, was attacked with a sharp weapon near Kanbay Chowk in Talawade on the outskirts of Pune on Friday night, barely 500 metres from her workplace. She was declared dead upon arrival in a hospital.

Her parents had alleged that a youth was stalking and harassing her for some time.

The ASP said it was found that Kumar, who hails from Bengaluru and is also an IT professional, had tasked someone to execute the attack.

A search is on to nab that person, he said. "We have arrested Kumar under IPC sections 302 (murder) and 120(b) (criminal conspiracy) and he will be produced before court today," Shinde said.

The accused had provided CCTV footage to the police, claiming that he was in Bengaluru on the day of the incident. Shinde said it was suspected to be a case of one-sided affair from Kumar's side. The victim, however, treated him just as a friend.

"There are messages between them which showed that Kumar was forcing her to have a relationship with him. However, she was non-responsive and even reprimanded him for harassing her. We are looking out for the other person in this connection and the manhunt has been intensified," he said.
In February, 2014, burglars had targeted Muthooot Finance building at Zaheerabad town and escaped with seven kilos gold ornaments and more than Rs 13 lakh cash.

Hyderabad: Police, who had concluded that its no handiwork of a street criminal gang, are probing which professional gang is involved in the Muthoot case.

Since a Jharkhand native was arrested earlier for a similar heist that targeted Muthoot Finance in another branch in the same area, police is looking at the angle of involvement of a gang from central India.

The cops are also investigating if the gang had links with any terror outfits. In the last two years, Muthoot officers across the country have been targeted by robbers multiple times.

In February, 2014, burglars had targeted Muthooot Finance building at Zaheerabad town and escaped with seven kilos gold ornaments and more than `13 lakh cash. But on the same day of the heist, police arrested a person named Ashok Sharma, 25, a native of Jam Nagar village, Saheb Gunj Mandal of Jharkand state, while he was boarding a bus at Mahathma Gandhi Bus station in Hyderabad with the booty. He was the only one arrested in the case, rest were absconding. Police now probe if the same gang is behind the robbery.

On Wednesday, after the gang fled with the 40 kg gold from the Muthoot branch in RC Puram, the police arrived at the spot. Clues teams and fingerprint experts collected the specimens as part of the probe. They also collected the CCTV footage from other buildings located in surrounding areas.

Cyberabad police commissioner Sandeep Shandilya said 16 teams have been formed to track down the culprits. Police were trying to identify the con men by analysing the footage from CCTV they got so far. We are in the process of finding the accused and verifying CCTV footage. Special teams have been formed to trace the accused, Shandilya said.

Police officials said that gang fled along the Hyderabad-Mumbai highway from Ramachandrapuram to Zaheerabad town in Sangareddy district. Sources say that they may have easily cross the border by the time police started their search.

They told the manager that a thief had disposed looted gold in this branch and they need to verify. To convince the employees the gang carried handcuffs. One of them was acting as a thief wearing a monkey cap. The gang also told the manager that they need to verify the accounts recorded after demonetisation.

Gangsters at large

Offender 1:Dressed like a sardarji - wearing black safari dress and light brown shoe, Light blackish / brownish turban (Pagdi). Height  5 10. Wore shoe , He carried short arm like pistol.

Offender 2: He wore a mask Initially, but then took it off and wore a monkey cap. Height  5-6  30 to 35 years- Posed has thief, slightly bald headed

Offender 3: In Traffic cop getup. Aged about 35  40 years. He wore white shirt and light black trouser. height 5-7

Offender 4: In safari dress. Height 6 feet. He wielded short weapon like pistol, carried handcuffs

Offender 5: He wore a military cap and a white full sleeve shirt. He also carried multiple bags and a blanket.

The gang used fake number plate. The registration number belongs to a Bajaj Chetak schooter.

It took 45 minutes for the employees to alert the cops after robbers fled the area.

Last year in May, an armed robbery by a gang at Muthoot Branch Hydernagar, Kukatpally failed as the employee's resisted. The case remains undetected.

Involvement of SIMI operatives in Muthoot robberies were earlier probed, but so far not proved.

Previous robberies at Muthoot

December 26,: Rs 90 lakh looted from Muthoot branch in Gujarat.

August 16, 2016: 5.5 kg gold stolen from Muthoot Fincorp in Salem of TN.
Hyderabad: Central Crime Station sleuths arrested Musaddial Jewellers Private Limited Managing Director Mr Kailash Chand Gupta for converting black money into gold with fake documents and another businessman Naredi Narender Kumar, MD of Sagar Petroleum Limited, for harbouring the accused. The case is pertaining to Rs 100 crore gold sold to fictitious buyers within three hours on November 8 after demonetisation announcement by the Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi.

Two other directors Musaddilal Nitin Gupta and Nikhil Gupta filed a petition in Nampally Sessions Court seeking anticipatory bail on Wednesday and the court has given oral order not to arrest them.

CCS police traced the fictitious buyers based on Aadhar documents attached in some cases of buyers and recorded their statements. The fictitious buyers told police that they didnt buy the gold and their signatures and hand writing on receipts are forged. Most of them are found to be poor and cant afford to buy Rs 1.89 lakh worth gold. One of the woman customer told police that she had only two notes of Rs 500 post demonetisation.

The accused made fake receipts of 5,200 customers stating each bought Rs 1.89 lakh by paying old currency. Some of the fake names are from other states.

According to CCS Deputy Commissioner of Police Mr Avinash Mohanty the accused resorted to cheating and manipulation of records in the wake of demonetisation.

Kailash Gupta, a resident of Banjara Hills is running two other firms Musaddilal Gems and Jewellers Private Limited with Nitin Gupta as director which deposited Rs 57.85 crore and Vaishnavi Bullion Private Limited with kin Neha Gupta and another woman Vinutha Bholla as directors which deposited Rs 40 crore in banks.

Narendra Kumar, brother in law of Kailash, harboured Kailash at his residence in Manikonda and his factory at Autonagar and concealed the whereabouts and also misguided police, said ACP Mr K ram Kumar.

Meanwhile investigating officials said they havent received any written orders from the court on either bail or stay of arrest to two other accused.
She cried for help but the men snatched her bag containing 1,400 Euros, $250, Rs 1,000 Indian currency, a mobile phone worth Rs 20,000, along with passport and an international credit card.

Chennai: A Slovenia tourist woman was allegedly attacked and robbed at Mahabalipuram beach when she went for a walk on Tuesday evening.

According to her police complaint, the woman identified as Ksenija Murali was surrounded by three men when she was walking alone and was attacked.

She cried for help but the men snatched her bag containing 1,400 Euros, $250, Rs 1,000 Indian currency, a mobile phone worth Rs 20,000, along with passport and an international credit card. She has been in India since November and reached Mahabalipuram four days ago.

She suffered some injuries in the attack and was in the state of shock, police said. She got treated at a private hospital in Mahabalipuram before she lodged complaint with the police.

Police noted that they had formed special police squads to patrol the beach to make sure the tourists are safe there. But isolated incidents do take place, an officer noted. Preliminary inquiries revealed that the robbers may have followed the woman walking on the shore and attacked her when she was away from the crowd. Ksenija Murali also approached the Slovenia Embassy in Delhi through the Mahabalipuram police to retrieve her passport and other assistance for her

further travel.
Rubina was sentenced to life imprisonment along with three other family members by a Mumbai TADA Court in 2006. (Photo: AFP/File)

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has rejected the plea of 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blast terror convict Rubina Suleman Memon, seeking her release on furlough.

"We are not inclined to release the petitioner (Rubina) on furlough as she had been convicted by a TADA court for her involvement in terrorist activities," said a bench of Justice V K Tahilramani and A M Badar in a recent judgement.

Rubina is also sister-in-law of Tiger Memon, believed to be living in Pakistan and one of the prime conspirators of the serial blasts that had rocked the city in March, 1993, claiming 257 lives and injuring more than 700 others.

Rubina was sentenced to life imprisonment along with three other family members by a Mumbai TADA Court in 2006, while her husband Sulieman was acquitted due to lack of evidence. Her brother-in-law Yakub was sent to the gallows on terror charges.

Rubina, currently lodged in Pune's Yerwada prison, had applied to jail authorities for furlough leave on January 22, 2015. However, her plea was rejected on January 15, 2016.

Aggrieved, she filed an appeal which was dismissed in May this year.

Thereafter, she moved the High Court by a writ petition seeking furlough leave, which was rejected last week.

Rubina's lawyer Farhana Shah argued that the three co-accused, who have also been convicted under TADA in the same case, have been released from jail temporary on leave.

They are Sardar Shahwali Khan, who was released on furlough on June 9, 2014, Nasir Abdul Kadar, who was given furlough leave on June 27, 2014 and Isa Abdul Razak Memon, who was also released on furlough on June 10, 2016, Farhana said.

As the three co-accused, who were similarly placed with Rubina in the 1993 bomb blast case, had been given furlough leave, the petitioner should also be given the same facility, i.e furlough leave, Farhana argued.

Additional Public prosecutor H J Dedia submitted that Rubina's application for furlough was rejected under Rule 4(4) of the Prisons (Bombay Furlough and Parole) Rules, 1959.

This Rule states that prisoners whose release is not recommended by Commissioner of Police or District Magistrate on the ground of public peace and tranquillity, shall not be granted furlough.

The prosecutor said that in the order jail authorities rejecting Rubina's furlough, it was stated that the petitioner is wife of brother of Yakub Memon. She will spend her period of furlough in Mahim area in Mumbai, where people of all communities reside.

"If she is released on parole people will turn up to meet her in large numbers and there would be a law and order problem, particularly in view of the fact that during the funeral of Yakub Memon, a huge crowd had turned up," the order stated.

The prosecutor also pointed out that as Rubina has been convicted under TADA hence under Rule 4(13) of Prison Tules, she would not be entitled to be released on furlough, as this rule states that prisoners who are convicted for terrorist crime shall not be released.

The prosecutor argued that admittedly, the petitioner (Rubina) is convicted under TADA, hence, she is not entitled to be released on furlough. He pointed out that the Bombay High court in two decisions has held that sub rule 13 to Rule 4 is not ultra virus.

Accepting the prosecutor's argument, the high court rejected the furlough leave petition of Rubina Memon.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday accused the Congress leadership of "desperation" in the face of his "tough" demonetisation decision and said it was the first time that a concerted effort was made by the Opposition to "openly" protect the dishonest through disruptions in Parliament.

He also slammed Manmohan Singh, who had described demonetisation as a "monumental mismanagement" and an "organised loot", and sarcastically said that his predecessor might have been referring to the "unending string of scams" like 2G, CWG and coal block allocation "under his leadership".

Modi said while the honest will not be harassed, those with black wealth have "only a few days to hide" and will not be spared.

"I pity a few of our opponenets, especially the Congress leadeship, for the desperation they have been exhibiting...Congress leaders are entirely pre-occupied with only one thing - elections.

"There is nothing political in the demonetisation decision...It was a tough decision taken to clean up our economy and our society. If I were guided by short term electoral politics, I would have never done so," he told a media house in an interview.
Meanwhile, authorities said entry of visitors to the airport has been banned with immediate effect. (Photo: Representational Image)

Chennai: As many as six Bengaluru-bound flights from different origins were diverted to Chennai due to severe fog in the Karnataka capital, causing delay in the landing of more than a dozen other flights in Chennai.

Due to the severe fog in Bengaluru this morning, the flights were diverted to Chennai, airport officials said.

According to them, due to diverstions, it caused delayed landing of 18 other flights in Chennai.

Meanwhile, authorities said entry of visitors to the airport has been banned with immediate effect till further notice "due to security reasons."

Notices have been pasted in the airport precincts about the ban on visitors' entry.
Members of Tamil Nadu Farmers Association and Tamil Nadu Agricultural Workers Union engaged in heated arguments with the police demanding to allow them inside the collectorate at Madurai on Wednesday to submit their petition to declare Tamil Nadu as drought-hit (Photo: DC)

Madurai: Thousands of farmers from Madurai and neighbouring districts staged protests on Wednesday demanding the State government to declare Tamil Nadu as drought-hit.

Stating that paddy cultivated in nearly 40,000 acres in double crop areas in Chellampatti and Alanganallur blocks were hit due to lack of rainfall, the members of Tamil Nadu Farmers Association, who organised a waiting protest (Kathiruppu Porattam) attempted to enter the collectorate to submit a petition to the Madurai collector Veera Raghava Rao.

However, when the police restricted their entry, it resulted in skirmish between the police and the farmers. Though the police arrested around 175 farmers and kept them in a marriage hall, the farmers continued their protest there.

Rainfall this year was an all time low in our district with storage level in Vagai standing at 24 feet. We have received only around 500 mm rainfall against the average of 874 mm, said T Chellakannu, state committee members of All Indian Kisan Sabha.

Farmers cultivated paddy in the double crop areas spent nearly Rs 30,000 per acre of land hoping to get water from the irrigation Channel during the Northeast Monsoon. But now cracks have started appearing in their land due to acute water scarcity, he said.

The farmers had spent more money on pesticides and for paying labourers to cultivate the crops. Unless the government pays a compensation of Rs 25,000 per acre, we all will be forced to migrate from the district, said Pandi, a farmer.

Thousand acres of dry land were also left uncultivated in the district. Farmers in T Kallikud, Usilampatti, Thiruparankundram, Sedapatti blocks who grow millets in the dry land, are suffering to meet their daily needs, said the farmers.

The situation is the same in Dindigul and Theni districts. Due to scarcity of water, paddy cultivated in 85,000 acres of wet land has been damaged, said Sachidanandam, district secretary of Tamil Nadu Farmers Association, Dindigul.

The farmers who depend on livestock for their livelihood, were forced to spend Rs 30, 000 for a load of straw to feed the cattle. They have to transport a load of straw from Theni district which will be sufficient for ten cattle only a week, he said.

In Theni district, nearly 30,000 wells have dried up which has affected paddy cultivation in thousands of acres. As water level in Periyar dam has come down to 111 feet, the farmers in Cumbum Valley are also finding it difficult to cultivate crops. The farmers also demand the government to pay Rs 10,000 per acre for dry land to arrest migration.
New Delhi: Union Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar on Thursday hit out at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for constantly attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi over demonetisation.

Javadekar said it shows the frustration and disappointment of the grand old party.

"The people will yet again teach them a lesson. First, they were 404 which reduced to 44 and now only four will be left," Javadekar said in a sarcastic tone.

"When we levelled allegations against them in the 2G scam, CWG, the court found them correct and the allotment was cancelled. And the allegations which they are putting against us have been already been dismissed by the court and hold no relevance," he added.

Hailing the decision of the Prime Minister to demonetise high-denomination notes of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000, Javadekar said no matter what happens the opposition won't be able to incline people against the government.

"The nation has openly welcomed the Prime Minister's decision to ban Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 notes. The people have belief that this is a big step taken against black money, corruption and terrorism. Opposition tried so much to incite people, but they could not. People have stood by the decision, but the opposition is failing to understand this," he told ANI.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Ahir also struck the same chord and asked Gandhi not to waste his time by levelling baseless charges against the government.

"It is the opposition's work to hinder the government's work, but I think Rahul Gandhi ji is wasting his time. We have received acceptance from the people of India. The Prime Minister has taken the decision taking into consideration everything," Ahir told ANI.

"Prime Minister Modi's government showed the courage to take such a decision. What Rahul Gandhi is portraying of himself is not even acceptable by the people. His attempt to unite the entire opposition also failed," he added.

Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of protecting black money hoarders and demanded that the names of Swiss account holders be revealed to the nation.
Mr Panneerselvam said in the case of all joint venture projects, the land brought in by the state government and by the government of India ministries should be treated as the equity contribution of the respective Governments.

Chennai: Demanding that bulls be denotified from the list of performing animals, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam on Wednesday asked the Union Government to bring amendments to Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act to ensure conduct of jallikattu this Pongal.

With just three weeks to go for the harvest festival of Pongal, Panneerselvam reminded the Union Government that his predecessor late J. Jayalalithaa had passionately fought for necessary amendments to the law to ensure that the famous bull taming festival is conducted.

Jallikattu has not been held in Madurai district for the past two years due to a Supreme Court ruling banning the sport. In the speech, read out by forest minister Dindigul C. Srinivasan, the Chief Minister reiterated Tamil Nadus demand for retrieval of Katchatheevu island from Sri Lanka, putting an end to attack on Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu, extension of Chennai-Vishakapatnam Industrial Corridor till Tuticorin and continuation of the current level of Central support for SC/ST scholarships beyond 2016-17.

Paying rich tributes to late Jayalalithaa, Mr Panneerselvam said his government is committed to ensure that the vision, goals and objectives of our revered leader are fulfilled and realised.

Noting that all the coastal districts of Tamil Nadu will be covered with 15 VHF towers and VHF sets provided for motorized and mechanised boats, the state government wanted the Union Government to expeditiously grant the remaining end user and operating licenses.

Tamil Nadu requests that the proposed extension of Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor up to Kochi, should be integrated with Coimbatore-Salem and Coimbatore Madurai Industrial Corridors outlined in the Tamil Nadu Vision 2023, he said.

On the issue of adequate allocation of funds for the scholarships for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, Mr Panneerselvam said as on date, a huge amount of `2019.09 crores is still to be reimbursed by both the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs to the Government of Tamil Nadu.

We strongly recommend that the current level of Central support for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes scholarship programmes must be continued beyond 2016-17, he said.

Tamil Nadu had already raised certain concerns regarding the purchase and sales effected through e-commerce portals not being properly reported to the commercial taxes departments of states, he said and stressed the need to maintain parity in the application of tax and other regulatory laws between e-commerce entities and brick and mortar shops to maintain a level playing field.

Noting that Tamil Nadu is in a position to sell about 1000 MW of wind power to other states, he said the government of India should establish a dedicated inter-state green energy corridor at the earliest, so that surplus wind energy from Tamil Nadu can be transmitted to other states.

Mr Panneerselvam said in the case of all joint venture projects, the land brought in by the state government and by the government of India ministries should be treated as the equity contribution of the respective Governments. The entire cost of the land brought by the state governments should be included in the project cost to ensure fair valuation of the contribution made by the governments, he said.
Obama Administration is unlikely to fulfill its promise made to the Modi Government before its term expires January 20, informed sources said.

Washington: A new draft proposal circulated among Nuclear Suppliers Group member states early this month could pave the way for India to become a member of the elite club, but this is unlikely to happen before the end of the Obama presidency next month.

The American push for India to become a full-fledged member of the NSG would now have to be pursued by the incoming Trump administration as the outgoing Obama Administration is unlikely to fulfill its promise made to the Modi Government before its term expires January 20, informed sources said.
He further said the department had also issued as many as 2,300 letters to the depositors, asking them to pay up taxes on their deposits. (Representational image)

Bengaluru: The Income Tax department has initiated action against 14 cooperative banks in Karnataka for holding back information amounting to abetting tax evasion in respect of deposits as it came across Rs 7,636 crore of amount in 80 banks in searches during this year.

I-T Director (Intelligence and Criminal Investigation) Ravichandran Ramaswamy told reporters here that the department during 14 searches conducted on banks, especially cooperative banks, during the year so far, found an amount of (deposits) Rs 7,636 crore.

"We have, as of today, found out an amount of Rs 7,636 crore in 14 searches conducted on banks, especially cooperative banks in current year across Karnataka... We have taken action against 14 cooperative banks as they have been exposed to prosecution for holding back information, which amounts to aiding and abetting tax evasion," he said.

Replying to a query, Ramaswamy said out of the 285 banks in Karnataka, 80 banks have not been providing information by way of annual returns.

"They will have to face penalty of Rs 500 every day," he said.

He further said the department had also issued as many as 2,300 letters to the depositors, asking them to pay up taxes on their deposits.

"We have already got 800 people coming forward to declare their income and paying up taxes and penalty," he said.

Ramaswamy said the department has also intimated the Reserve Bank of India to conduct inspections on banks which were not disclosing information (about deposits).

"We have also written to Registrar of Karnataka Cooperative to take action," he added.
Jammu: Separatist leader Masarat Alam Bhat, who has been in preventive custody under the Public Safety Act (PSA) since April 2015, was on Thursday released from Kathua Jail.

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court had on Wednesday ordered his release.

However, he was arrested again immediately following his release, a PTI report said.

Bhat, the senior Hurriyat Conference leader, has been booked under the PSA several times since April 2015 and the latest order in the series was issued by District Magistrate Baramulla.

According to the order, Bhat was accused of making the ongoing agitation "successful" while in custody of the state authorities.

A case was registered against Bhat at the Baramulla Police Station on August 30, two days before the detention order against him was passed by the deputy commissioner.
Washington: According to a US-based arms control organisation, a draft proposal for accepting new members into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) paves way for India's entry, but leaves out Pakistan.

Last week, the US media reported that former NSG chairman Rafael Mariano Grossi has prepared a two-page document, explaining how a non-NPT state, like India and Pakistan, could join the group.

The document prepared by Grossi, acting on behalf of the current chairman Song Young-wan of South Korea, enjoys a semi-official status, reports the Dawn.

Grossi's draft note proposes that "one non-NPT member state should reach an understanding not to block consensus on membership for another non-NPT member state".

Arms Control Association (ACA) executive director, Daryl Kimball, said Pakistan still has grounds to object to the formula outlined by Grossi.

He explains the document will require Pakistan to meet the same criteria for membership as India, adding Islamabad will have to win a separate NSG exemption from the full-scope safeguards requirement to engage in civil nuclear trade with the NSG states.

Present NSG membership rules require a state to sign the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) before joining the exclusive club.

India remains one of only three countries, with Israel and Pakistan, to have never signed the NPT.

Earlier this year, India formally applied for membership and was followed by Pakistan. The United States and a host of other western nations back India's application, but China and some others are blocking New Delhi's membership, which requires a consensus of all members.

The proposal requires a non-NPT state to declare that it has brought into force a clear and strict separation of current and future civilian nuclear facilities from non-civilian nuclear facilities and is willing to apply this principle to future facilities as well.

The new member also needs to assure NSG that it has provided and maintains a declaration to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that identifies all current and future civilian nuclear facilities.
New Delhi: Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal were engaged in a war of words on Twitter with the former daring the AAP chief to contest against him in the upcoming Punjab polls.

Kejriwal said he was not contesting Punjab Assembly elections and was fighting the Badals and state minister Bikram Singh Majithia to help free the state from the menace of drugs, following which Amarinder demanded an apology from him for making "false personal commitments".

"Always knew your screeching in Punjab was pure drama! Now that you've conceded, apologise for your months of lies & false personal commitments," Amarinder said on Twitter.

His reply came after Kejriwal said, "I m not fighting punjab elex. So, ur challenge hollow. We r fighting Badals/Majithia, who sunk Punjab in drugs. N u r fighting us, not them?"

The Twitter war started with Aam Aadmi Party nominating former journalist and Delhi MLA Jarnail Singh to contest against Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal from Lambi constituency. Amarinder termed Jarnail as a "weak candidate" and alleged that AAP was "colluding" with the Badals.

"Jarnail's nomination bid from Lambi shows AAP-SAD collusion to ensure Badal's victory. Reeks of an underhand deal!" the PCC chief tweeted.

Kejriwal replied, "Sir, r u fighting against Prakash Badal ji or Sukhbir Badal or Majithia or safe seat?"

Amarinder then dared Kejriwal to contest against him and tweeted, "Badals' story is over. You tell me where you're contesting from and I will come fight you there!"

The AAP chief retorted, "So, u r fighting me, not Badals/drugs. Badals also say they will fight against me. U n Badals wish to fight agnst me not agnst each other."

The former Punjab chief minister shot back with a tweet saying, "I've defeated Jaitely-Majithia combine when you didn't even know a thing about Punjab. But tell us, why are you so scared of fighting me?"

Kejriwal then replied that he was not contesting Punjab polls and was only seeking to free Punjab from the menace of drugs mafia allegedly patronised by the present dispensation.

Congress, which has been in political wilderness for a decade now after losing two successive elections at the hands of the ruling Akali Dal-BJP combine, is seeking to wrest back power. Amarinder, who is contesting his last elections, is

Congress' face in Punjab, but is pitted against entrant AAP which is giving Congress a good fight.

Punjab Assembly elections are slated for early next year and the announcement of its schedule is likely soon.
Questions have been raised by the Opposition and some sections of the public about the central bank's independence and communication policy under the leadership of new Governor Urjit Patel. (Photo: File)

Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) approved the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes less than three hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modis announcement on national television on November 8.

According to a report in Bloomberg, the RBI said in response to queries under RTI that information on how many members of the RBI Board of Directors approved the move is not on record.

However, it said that the decision to demonetise old notes was taken at 5:30 pm on November 8, in a meeting of the banks board.

The bank's board consists of Governor Urjit Patel, 3 deputies - R Gandhi, SS Mundra and NS Vishwanathan  and a host of eminent personalities including the Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das.

Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal had on November 16 told lawmakers that a 10-member board of the RBI came up with the idea of demonetisation.

After Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes were banned, the government introduce fresh tender of Rs 500 and also Rs 2000. However, lack of availability of new currency at banks and in ATMs led to chaos throughout the country.

The RBI has subsequently been criticised for a lack of preparedness and numerous policy U-turns that contributed to the chaos following demonetisation. Earlier in December for example, the central bank issued an order prohibiting deposits of over Rs 5000 in old notes more than once till December 30. The order provoked outrage, forcing the RBI to withdraw it eventually.

Questions have also been raised by the Opposition and some sections of the public about the central bank's independence and communication policy under the leadership of new governor Urjit Patel.

In its response to the RTI query, the RBI did not reveal as to how many new 2,000 and 500 rupee notes were being printed each day in its mints, or the number of hours each day the printing presses were working in the month leading up to the November 8 announcement.

"The RBI top management must communicate more through the media and speaking opportunities," former Deputy Governor of RBI Usha Thorat wrote in a news daily on Wednesday. She said it was necessary to do so in the interest of transparency and credibility.

50 days have passed since old notes were banned, but many ATMs are still out of cash. Meanwhile, thousands of crores in new notes are being seized across the country in Income Tax raids, raising doubts about the effectiveness of demonetisation.
Rajya Sabha member Sasikala Pushpas husband Lingeswara Thilakar seen bleeding after he was beaten up at AIADMK headquarters on Wednesday (Photo: DC)

Chennai: Rajya Sabha member Sasikala Pushpa's husband Lingeswara Thilakar along with advocates accompanying him was badly beaten up at the AIADMK headquarters here when they went to get an application form for the rebel MP to contest for the post of general secretary.

Thilakar sustained bleeding injuries on his face as a group of men and women at the party headquarters pounced on them and rained blows.

With blood flowing down his face, Thilakar was taken to the nearby Royapettah government general hospital by the police. Later, Sindhu Ravi, an AIADMK functionary, lodged a police complaint against Thilakar charging him with trespassing into the AIADMK headquarters and trying to create trouble. An FIR was registered against Thilakar.

Commenting on the incident, AIADMK spokesperson C. Ponnaiyan said, Such incidents are natural when passions are running high. Sasikala Pushpa had been expelled from the party.

Denying that the AIADMK party men were involved in the assault, Ponnaiyan said his party did not believe in violence. Lingeswara Thilakam, husband of the rebel AIADMK MP Sasikala Pushpa, had lodged a complaint at Royapettah police against unidentified men for attacking him when he went to AIADMK office on Wednesday afternoon.

Thilakam has been admitted at the Government Royapettah Hospital (GRH) for his treatment for injuries he suffered when he was attacked at AIADMK office.

Sasikala Pushpa too had sent complaint to home secretary and senior police officials saying that police should make sure that her husband is safe.

When asked about the allegations of karate master Shihan Hussaini on Jayalalithaas death, Ponnaiyan said, They are baseless charges. World class doctors from London, the AIIMS and Singapore had given her world class treatment. There is nothing to conceal about her death.
Lucknow: With Mulayam Singh Yadav's public snub to his son in announcement of candidates' list for UP polls leaving bitterness in the ruling camp, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday spoke to the Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo to convey his displeasure over the choice of names.

The factional feud in the Samajwadi Party was again in the open, a day after Mulayam Singh Yadav declared candidates for 325 of the 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh and ruled out projecting Akhilesh as the Chief Ministerial candidate.

A clearly upset Akhilesh on Thursday met his supporters at his 5-Kalidas Marg residence in Lucknow and later spoke to his father and party patriarch Mulayam Singh to convey his displeasure over the list of candidates from which names of his close confidants were missing, party sources said.

Hectic political activities began right from the morning with party leaders gathering outside the residences of Akhilesh and Mulayam. A big crowd also assembled outside Shivpal's residence.

Party sources said the Chief Minister, before meeting Mulayam, met legislators and office bearers who do not figure in the list of nominees.

The list, which includes 176 sitting MLAs, announced by Mulayam and Shivpal in the absence of Akhilesh, has left out several pro-Akhilesh ministers, including Ram Govind Chaudhary, Pawan Pandey and Arvind Singh Gope, and does not carry names of over 50 sitting MLAs.

Besides, 10 ministers, including Shivpal, sacked by the chief minister over the past few months have got tickets. These former ministers were in open defiance of Akhilesh and it paid off.

Within hours after release of the list, which clearly bore the stamp of Mulayam and Shivpal, Akhilesh who was away in Bundelkhand on Wednesday, had said he would take up the choice of candidates with the party chief.

"The list does not include names of certain candidates who are sure to win. I will take it up with the SP chief and tell him that some of them have done really good work and they should be given tickets," an upset Akhilesh had said last night.

In a late night tit-for-tat action, the Chief Minister struck back sacking two Shivpal loyalists -- Surabhi Shukla, vice-chairperson of UP Awas Vikas Parishad and her husband Sandeep Shukla from the post of advisor of Rajkiya Nirman Nigam. Sandeep has been fielded from Sultanpur Sadar seat.

Soon after returning to the state capital from Bundelkhand on Wednesday, Akhilesh had decided to convene a meeting of party leaders to listen to their "grievances".

Mulayam clearly ignored Akhilesh's objections to certain names, like Sigbatullah Ansari, brother of jailed gangster Mukhtar Ansari, and Atiq Ahmed who faces over 40 criminal cases including of murder.

The list also included tainted minister Gayatri Prajapati, whose sacking and re-induction as minister exposed factional fight in the ruling party.

The SP supremo also made very clear his differences with Akhilesh on the issue of pre-poll alliance by ruling out any pact for a gathbandhan or maha-gathbandhan and even refused to project a chief ministerial candidate, dealing a serious blow to his son at a time when polls are to be announced very soon.

Out of the 325 names announced by Mulayam, 218 tally with the panel submitted by Akhilesh to the SP chief, but 107 names do not match with the list given by the chief minister, indicating their sharp differences.

The list of candidates announced by Mulayam included those from 176 seats represented by SP in the outgoing Assembly, while 149 candidates were declared from constituencies where the party did not have an MLA.

Candidates for the remaining 78 constituencies are to be announced later leaving a small window for some adjustments to avoid perhaps the final showdown between father-son duo before the elections, a party insider said.
As he believed the bank was planning to take disciplinary action against him, Ravi Raj ended his life. (Photo: Representational Image)

Bengaluru: A 57-year-old bank employee ended his life by hanging himself from a ceiling fan at his residence in Vivek Nagar on Wednesday morning.

The deceased has been identified as Ravi Raj, a senior cashier with State Bank of Mysore in Avenue Road Branch. Ravi, a resident of Vannerpet in Vivek Nagar, took the extreme step as he was upset over unsubstantiated reports in local TV channels that he was under scrutiny for money laundering.

As he believed the bank was planning to take disciplinary action against him, Raj ended his life, his family members said. Vivek Nagar police said that he left no suicide note behind.

A report said that news channels had reported that an internal enquiry was on against Ravi Raj and his colleagues over currency conversion. Some channels went to the extent of saying the CBI had filed a case against Raviraj. However, senior SBM officials told the police that Raj faced no charges.

The cashier lived with his elder brother, Govind Raj, in Viveknagar. On Wednesday morning, the brothers went on a morning walk and returned home around 8 am. Thereafter, Raviraj went to the reading room.

However, when his wife knocked on the door of the reading room, she received no reply. After a few tries, she became suspicious. She climbed the compound wall and peeped through the window of the reading room, only to find her husband hanging from the ceiling fan.

Family members broke open the door and took Ravi Rajs body down from the ceiling before alerting the police.

The family said Raj was shocked at media reports about him being investigated for money laundering. "Relatives and friends had been calling Raviraj to ask him what had happened. It was tough to answer each call," a relative was quoted as telling the police.

Ravi Raj fell into depression after the reports began floating around, and eventually committed suicide.

However, the staff and officials at SBM Bank said he had been working there for 25 years without cause for suspicion. "News of CBI officers visiting the branch and questioning him and others is also baseless," an SBM official was quoted as saying.
March 3, 1915  Dec. 25, 2016

Gladys was 101 years old.

She was born in New Truxton, Missouri, to Random and Cora Bell Monroe Jennings. She married Hubert Hill in 1931 and moved to Mexico Missouri in 1938. They were divorced in 1940. Gladys and her two children moved with another family to Corvallis in November 1939. It was with this family that Gladys started attending the Nazarene Church with her children, Gary and Helen. She joined the Nazarene Church in 1940 and has been a member all these years.

She worked at many different jobs  in 1942 she worked for McDonald Candy Company driving a delivery truck for three years and book keeper for two years. She also worked for Lews Super Market until she met Jess Nordyke. They were married Dec. 25, 1948, and had one child, Donna Bell, in 1951. Jess passed away in 1970. She then worked for The Clothes Tree in Corvallis for several years. Gladys married Bill Wilson Sr. in 1974. Bill passed away in 1992

Gladys had many hobbies. She loved being in the woods, hunting, fishing and going to the coast. She loved the ocean. She hunted deer until she was 86 years old and decided it was time to quit. She gave her gun to her grandson, Dennis. He had asked several years earlier if some day he could have her 30-30.

Gladys loved to travel, she and her daughter Helen took several cruises and many other trips. She and her daughter, Donna Bell, took a trip to London and later to Florida to visit her grandson, Dennis, in the Air Force. She and eight members of her family have gone on two cruises the last few years.

Survivors are daughter Donna Bell Nelson of Boise, Idaho; and sons Bud Nordyke of Albany, Paul Wilson of Corvallis and Bill Wilson Jr. of Sweet Home. She is also survived by a wonderful blended family of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

Gladys was preceded in death by her daughter, Helen Campbell; sons Gayle Nordyke and Gary Hill; her brothers, sisters and numerous beloved stepchildren.

A service will be at noon Friday, Dec. 30, McHenry Funeral Home, 206 NW Fifth St., Corvallis. Graveside services will follow.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Samaritan Village, 285 NW 35th St., Corvallis, OR 97330.

Please share your thoughts and memories for the family at www.demossdurdan.com.
Metropolitan Magistrate Sumit Anand sent the accused to Delhi Police custody after they were produced on expiry of two days of judicial remand. (Photo: Representational Image)

New Delhi: Four men, arrested for allegedly raping a US tourist in a 5-star hotel earlier this year, were on Thursday sent to two-day police custody after the probe agency said they were needed for custodial interrogation.

Metropolitan Magistrate Sumit Anand sent the accused to Delhi Police custody after they were produced on expiry of two days of judicial remand.

The police told the court that one more person was still absconding and interrogation of these four accused was required in this regard.

Advocate Sandeep Kapur, appearing for the accused, opposed the police plea.
Hyderabad: The TS government on Thursday told the Hyderabad High Court that so far no evidence has been found that the police had been utilising the services of gangster Nayeem and that they were in cahoots. It also denied the allegation that police officers benefited from Nayeem.

Nayeem, a former Naxal-turned-gangster, was killed in an exchange of fire with the TS police in August this year and was alleged to be working as a covert operative for the police.

It also said there was no evidence to support the allegation that Nayeem was wanted by the CBI in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh case.
New Delhi: All eyes and ears will be glued to the television sets as Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation on New Years eve.

His proposed address on December 31 assumes a lot of significance, as it will be coming a day after the expiry of the 50 days period he had earmarked for depositing of old currency notes.

There are speculations that he may highlight the benefits of the demonetisation move and hint at some more reforms which may be part of the forthcoming Union Budget in February.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday accused the Congress leadership of desperation in the face of his tough demonetisation decision, and said that it was the first time that a concerted effort was made by the Opposition to openly protect the dishonest through disruptions in Parliament.

Mr Modi, in an interview to an English magazine, asserted that while the honest would not be harassed, those with black wealth had only a few days to hide before they were punished. Issuing the most dire warning to black marketeers and the corrupt, Mr Modi said if the enemy runs, we will chase them. If they change their tactics, we will change ours. When the corrupt finds new methods of cheating, we will find new methods to clamp down on the same.

The PM also slammed his predecessor Dr Manmohan Singh, who had described demonetisation move as a monumental mismanagement and an organised loot.

Mr Modi said his predecessor might have been referring to the unending string of scams like 2G, CWG and coal block allocation under his leadership. He said, I pity the Congress leadership, for the desperation they have been exhibiting... Congress leaders are entirely pre-occupied with only one thing, elections... There is nothing political with the demonetisation decision...
Hyderabad: Rape, robberies and dacoity cases surged In Telangana state this year with more cases reported in 2016 as compared to last year. Robberies and dacoities occurring along national highway across the state have been a headache for the cops. Talking about the increase in rape DGP Anurag Sharma said that the hike is because more victims are coming forward to report the crime because of departments friendly approach. He said that the state police is taking measures to curb dacoities and robberies by deploying special forces and installing more CCTV cameras beside highways.

Infographics

Meanwhile, the overall crime rates have come down in the state. The DGP claimed that the rate of crime against women has decreased in the state. Since the formation of Telangana state, there is a downward trend. Law and order of the state is under control this year, said Sharma. He attributed the lower crime rate to the new crime preventive measures introduced by the police.

Robberies and dacoities like Muthoot heist have been increasing. Senior police officials say that most of the major robbery gangs are from other states. The police record shows that Rs 93 crore have been looted in the state this year.

The police data showed that counterfeit currency case and economic offence cases increased this year.

The police chief said that in order to detect crime, new measures are being introduced in the state. Process is underway to set up three more regional forensic science labs at Mahbubnagar, Mancharial, and Khammam besides the three existing one in Karimnagar, Kamareddy and Khammam. Tenders have been floated for modernisation of FSL with Rs 20 crore budgets, said the DGP.
Telangana Joint Action Committee chairman M. Kodandaram (left) listens to Telangana PCC chief Uttam Kumar Reddy (second from left) during the formers protest fast in Hyderabad on Thursday. Other Congress leaders like K. Jana Reddy and J. Geeta Reddy look. (Photo: DC)

Hyderabad: As expected, leaders of the Congress, the TD and peoples organisations on Thursday made a beeline to the house of Telangana Joint Action Committee chairman M. Kodandaram, where he launched a protest fast against the arrest of several TJAC activists across the state.

These activists were proceeding to Hyderabad to participate in a dharna by displaced farmers, which the police did not allow citing sec-urity due to the ongoing Assembly session.

The leaders including TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly K. Jana Reddy, leader of TD Legislature Party A. Revanth Reddy and other legislators, who boycotted the session on Thursday, rushed to Mr Kodandarams house in Tarnaka and vowed to fight against the controversial land acquisition Bill, including challenging it in court.

Surrounded by Oppos-ition leaders, Mr Kodan-daram said that the TJAC would fight till the end against the controversial Bill and demanded that the government withdraw it as it removed some protections given by the 2013 Central Act.

He said that in the name of public interest and taking up developmental projects, the government was forci-bly acquiring more land from farmers than requ-ired. He vowed to fight against anti-people and anti-farmer measures taken up by the government, if needed by moving courts.

Mr Uttam Kumar Reddy, Mr Jana Reddy and Mr Revanth Reddy criticised the attempts of the government to terrorise farmers in the name of the new law to grab their lands. They said they would extend full support to the TJAC in its fight against the government. They said the TRS government which had come to power after a democratic struggle by various organisations including the TJAC was now resorting to intimidation and creating terror among people by imposing rest-rictions and regulations on the movements of TJAC activists including arresting them.

In the evening, Mr Kodandaram called off his fast after being persuaded by Chukka Ramaiah and the TJAC steering committee.
KOZHIKODE: Alinda Joselyn and Nandawula Mariam had no idea how the people of Kerala would react to their handmade crafts imported from their native land, Uganda. But on the very first day that they put up their hut at Iringal Sargaalaya Crafts Village as part of the International Crafts Expo, the two women were stunned seeing the love of Keralities for handmade crafts.

The two women are the representatives of the National Arts and Cultural Crafts Association, Uganda. The duo have exhibited crafts including oil paintings, show pieces, cotton and jute bags, accessories, all made by their members.

Our crafts are not appreciated back home even though they are priced low, but what we find here is very different, as the people here love our products and talks to us more about our lifestyle, crafts and a lot more, says Alinda with a smile.

Alinda comes from Munyoro in Misindi district in Uganda, whereas Nandawula comes from Muganda in Buganda District. Both of their have their craft units in Kampala District, which is one of the major crafts centres in Uganda.

Only recently, crafts in Uganda were appreciated by the Government but unlike in India, artisans are not supported by the Government. Here the opportunity to get platforms to display your product are wide, so we have decided to stay back in India to promote our products here, Alinda added.
Chennai: The year 2016 witnessed murderous attacks on women including techie Swathi that sparked an outrage along with unearthing of large amounts of ill-gotten money by income tax investigators, the great train robbery and the tragic crash of an IAF aircraft in the Bay of Bengal.

Other cases that kept the men in khaki on their toes through the year 2016 included the hunt for Kancheepuram land mafioso settled in Dubai, elimination of Chennai Central train blast suspects in an encounter, depressing deaths of three college girls in a college in Villupuram, arrest of city art dealer for suspected idol smuggling, theft of high end SUVs, arrest of people who allegedly spread rumours in social networking site on the health of former CM, chasing Madhan of SRM group and ganja killing in city besides molestation in IIT.

The crime map started blinking red in January when a security personnel molested an IIT student during Sarang, the annual cultural festival, inside the campus. The police swung into action by arresting the guard after the victim lodged a complaint. Within a week, the state woke up to the news about the death of three girl students of private native medicine institute. Their bodies were found in a farm well in Bangaram village in Villupuram.

Police made some arrests including the family members of the college owner based on suicide note and protest by students. In the third week of February, two suspects involved in the 2014 May Day twin blasts in BengaluruGuwahati train at Chennai Central station, which left a woman software professional killed, were nabbed in Rourkela, Odisha during a joint operation by Odisha and Telangana police. The two were later killed in an encounter after they escaped from a jail in Madhya Pradesh.

First week of June witnessed sleuths from idol wing police knocking the door of 84-year-old antique dealer Deenadayalan, for his suspected links in idol smuggling. Investigators during the course of probe found that he was linked to the infamous international idol smuggler Subash Kapoor, and recovered scores of idols and paintings from him.

Same month also saw some youngsters indulging in a grand theft auto scenario when they took away as many as seven SUVs from Hyundai yard in Manapakkam. Police, however, recovered all the vehicles in four days.

June also saw the most debated murder of the year  killing of Infosys techie Swathi at Nungambakkam railway station by a rejected lover, Ram Kumar. He was arrested in a week. Ramkumar later committed suicide in Puzhal jail by electrocuting himself in September.

The month July saw police swinging into action after newspapers widely reported the sale of narco chocolates in north Chennai. In the same month IAF AN 32 crash occurred. The IAF flight, which took off from the Tambaram base, vanished above Bay of Bengal and all the 29 on board are believed to have died after the aircraft crashed into the sea.

August belonged to daring case of train robbery, in which unidentified persons stole cash Rs 5.78 crore, part of Rs 342 crore worth soiled notes, being transported from Salem to Chennai in Salem Express on Monday night, after making a hole on the roof of the hired parcel wagon. CB-CID is still probing the case.

Mid-August, a Kancheepuram court declared wanted Dubai-based land mafioso Sridhar Dhanapalan a proclaimed offender. This was followed by ED and police attaching more than Rs 150 crore worth of his properties.

During the last week of August, police arrested T R Pachamuthu, SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centres chairman and managing director in connection with a medical seat cheating scam worth `75 crore. His disowned aide Madhan was arrested.

In September, a 29-year-old call taxi driver, a BA English graduate, came out of jail after being arrested for allegedly threatening a woman passenger, became an owner of a brand new car. A Tamil writer cum blogger, who believed that the complaint of the woman was exaggerated and collected Rs 2.41 lakh from his followers after he told the story of the driver in his blog to help the youth to buy a car.

The city witnessed a shocking incident in which a national racing champion Vikash Anand, possibly under the influence of alcohol, crashed a high end Porsche on Cathedral Road in the early morning of September 19 killing one and injuring eight others.

October was filled with police action against online rumour mongers on the health of then ailing CM J. Jayalalithaa. Though they could not nab Tamizachi  the France based Facebook account holder who was booked for spreading rumours  the police arrested many others in Tamil Nadu.

On Deepavali night, an ongoing turf war over pedaling ganja in the city left three persons dead in Kannagi Nagar after two groups clashed with each other. This incident forced the police to crack down against ganja sellers in the city and arrested nearly 100 peddlers during next 30 days.

While the TN police were keen on arresting Maoists in the past, the Kerala police on November 24 shocked the rights activists by killing two naxalites in an encounter in Nilambur forest in Malappuram district in Kerala.

The two Maoists killed on that day had their roots in Tamil Nadu. In a major cash seizure in Tamil Nadu after demonetisation, the income tax officials on December 8 and 9 seized Rs 131 crore cash  of which Rs 34 crore worth new Rs 2,000 notes, 177 kg gold from premises in Chennai and Vellore belonging to one Sekhar Reddy, a PWD contractor for sand mining in the state and his associates. This raid further led the IT sleuths to the house of former chief secretary P. Rama Mohana Rao.
New Delhi: From highlighting custodial deaths to putting a spotlight on poor fire safety compliance in hospitals, the NHRC championed the upholding of human rights in 2016 and is looking ahead with a hope to earn more teeth to enforce its orders on violations.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), since its inception, has impacted human lives and striven for justice, liberty and equality for all, with some landmark cases punctuating its eventful journey of over 20 years.

Chairperson of the rights panel Justice H L Dattu has pitched for vesting NHRC with "more power", and as it clocks another year, the Commission would be looking forward to move in that direction.

"Everyone wants to have more power. We (NHRC) also want to have more power," he had said on its Foundation Day celebrations in October.

Dattu had termed NHRC a "toothless tiger" that needed some teeth to enforce its orders on remedial measures in cases relating to any violations.

"In many cases, due to our active intervention, we have addressed human rights issues... And, with more power, it (NHRC) should roar like a tiger," he had told PTI.

Since its inception in 1993, the NHRC has come a long way by addressing several issues of human rights violations as well as giving inputs on key legislations impacting human rights, he said.

"Whenever an issue of human rights violation comes to the notice of the NHRC, it has to take cognisance without bothering for the permutations and combinations of electoral politics or caste and creed equations," Dattu said.

And, indeed the rights panel has taken up a whole gamut of issues, and highlighted cases of human rights violations with timely intervention.

According to NHRC, Uttar Pradesh registered highest number of cases of custodial deaths in the country between October 2015 and September 2016, with as many as 401 deaths taking place in judicial custody and 27 in policy custody.

Between October 2015 and September 2016, the NHRC has registered 1,05,664 cases on the basis of complaints, intimation from police and prison authorities etc, and on suo motu basis.

The Commission, in the wake of a devastating fire at a hospital in Bhubaneswar in October, had also issued notice to the Odisha government, while pointing out that only three of the state's 568 hospitals have fire safety clearance.

And, while the NHRC had faced criticism from a section of civil society and NGOs for its report on the on-spot inquiry of migration issue in Kairana in Uttar Pradesh, the panel has time and again emphasised on upholding of right to life and right to dignity for citizens as enjoined in the Constitution.

The panel's chairperson in his message on the Human Rights Day on December 10 emphasised that "any well intended action, policy or law, purportedly for the betterment of the country, will render itself meaningless, if implemented without a humane face and people's co-operation."

Lending the Commission with more power has also been proposed from other quarters, including legal luminaries.

Justice P Sathasivam, Governor of Kerala and former Chief Justice of India, had on the Human Rights Day function said, "The Commission should consider approaching Parliament through the government to seek an amendment in the Protection of Human Rights Act to make its recommendation effective. It should be able to execute its recommendations."

He had also said that "excesses of laws, lack of awareness about them and inadequacies of the legal system and and the lack of sufficient support from the legal services authorities need to be focused on to ensure protection of human rights in the country."

The Supreme Court had accepted the NHRC's recommendations, like in the encounter cases of Manipur and the incident of silicosis in a state.

When asked what action the Commission takes in case a party to which a notice has been served by it does not respond within the stipulated time, Dattu said, "In case they don't, we give them one more opportunity, and even then if they don't respond, then we issue them a conditional summon to appear before us and submit the report."
Hotels and clubs representatives attend police meeting on Wednesday in city to discuss the do's and don'ts for New Year celerations. (Photo: DC)

Chennai: The Chennai city police have issued directions to hotels and clubs in Chennai, hosting special programmes on New Years eve, to wind up celebrations by 1 am.

A direction to this effect was given to hotel owners during a meeting chaired by additional commissioner of police K. Sankar, joint commissioner police (South zone) S. Anbu and joint commissioner S. Manoharan, a city police release said on Wednesday.

Hotel authorities have been directed to take up all preventive measures ahead of the celebrations so that no untoward incidents take place, it said. The advisory issued to the hotels include, checking all vehicles entering their premises and noting their registration numbers, to close swimming pools from 6 pm on December 31 to 6 am of January 1, 2017.

Police had also asked hotel and club owners to serve alcohol in only at stipulated places. No temporary stage near swimming pools, the police told delegates of hotels.

Police also advised hoteliers to get nod from related department in case of erecting stages within hotel premises. Police also asked them to make sure that there is no case of eve teasing during New Year celebrations at their premises. Hotels should make arrangements for vehicles to drop drunken customers home, police noted.

They were also asked to deploy security guards in large numbers beside surveillance cameras in the hotel premises, the release said. Besides, the police officers have warned New Year eve revellers of strict action against drunk driving. Vehicles would be seized if more than two persons are seen riding a motorcycle, they said. Police also asked revellers not to venture into the sea at the beaches on New Years eve night. Police also asked youngsters to avoid wheeling and racing as part of New Year celebrations.
May 24, 1947  Dec. 17, 2016

Kathleen Ann Hanen Geddes passed away Dec. 17, 2016, in Portland.

Born in Salem on May 24, 1947, she was raised in Lebanon and graduated from Lebanon Union High School in 1965. She married Harold Geddes on July 28, 1968.

She is survived by her children, Brian (Dana) of Yakima, Washington, and Kory Geddes of Welches, Oregon; four grandchildren; and sisters Susan Conner (Michael) of Beaverton and Barbara Jones (Bruce) of Springfield.

A celebration of life will be at 1 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 12, 2017, at Lincoln Memorial Funeral Home, 11801 S.E. Mt. Scott Blvd., Portland (www.lincolnmemorialpk.com).
Bengaluru: In a blistering attack on state Chief Minister Siddaramaiah  that could sully his socialistic and uncompromising secular credentials in politics  former minister and newfound foe, V. Srinivas Prasad who is on the verge of joining the BJP, claimed that soon after his expulsion from the JD(S), Mr Siddaramaiah had met L.K. Advani and "pleaded with the latter to back him for the CM post."

Mr Prasad's tell-all interview follows a spectacular falling out with the CM after he was axed from the cabinet in June this year.

Mr Prasad further alleged that in 2009, "Mr Siddaramaiah had held talks with BJP president B.S. Yeddyurappa to field candidates in the 2009 parliament polls under the AHINDA banner."

He said that "in 2005, when the JD (S) expelled Mr Siddaramaiah and brought in M.P. Prakash as deputy to then Chief Minister Dharam Singh, Mr Siddaramaiah through a Karnataka BJP leader had met Mr Advani in New Delhi." He said: "Mr Siddaramaiah had claimed that he had the support of two-thirds of the total 58 JD (S) MLAs besides the backing of many Congress MLAs who were eager to come with him.
Chennai: DMK treasurer M.K. Stalin on Wednesday warned that his party would resort to protests if the state government did not heed to the farmers demands for increasing sugarcane procurement price to Rs 3,500 per tonne and payment of arrears for sugarcane supplied by them, before Pongal day. Citing Chief Minister O. Panneerselvams announcement to give a procurement price of Rs 2,850 per tonne, Stalin said he had only announced the earlier price.

Recalling the AIADMK election manifesto in 2011 that private sugar mill owners would be made to pay sugarcane price for the farmers immediately after supplying them. But, the farmers had not been paid the sugarcane price immediately as promised, he added. Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam is continuing the same policy of not fulfilling the election promises, the Leader of Opposition said and pointed out that the arrears amount had reached Rs 2,000 crores, which included the pending payment by private sugar mills owners and those run by government cooperative societies.

The tripartite talks among the government, sugar mill owners and farmers unions had not found a solution, he said and added that the DMK had raised the demands of farmers in the Assembly. The future of farmers had been affected due to the rising cost of sugarcane cultivation, depleting ground water, failure of monsoon and natural disasters.

The incentive of Rs 608 per tonne given by the earlier DMK government had not been increased, he said and charged that the AIADMK government is not concerned with farmers welfare. Recalling his allegation that an inactive government is functioning in the state, Stalin said Panneerselvam too had confirmed that his government is inactive. TNCC chief S. Thirunavukkarasar too demanded increase in the procurement price of sugar and payment of arrears for farmers.

He said the centre had fixed the price at Rs 2,300 and the state government had added the same amount of Rs 550 to the centre's procurement price. Pointing out that Maharashtra government fixed the sugarcane price as Rs. 3,000 per tonne, besides Rs.1000 per tonne as cutting price. He also alleged that the AIADMK government had not taken steps to make the sugar mills pay the arrears amount for farmers. He also demanded tripartite talks for payment of arrears amount for farmers.
Mumbai: Police in Maharashtra have registered an FIR against state BJP chief Raosaheb Danve for violating the model code of conduct, following his controversial remarks during a municipal election campaign.

"The FIR has been filed under section 171 B of IPC, at the Paithan police station on Thursday night," said Aurangabad Rural SP Navinchandra Reddy.

The State Election Commission had asked Aurangabad District Collector Nidhi Panday to register an FIR against Danve for violating the model code of conduct.

Danve was seen in a video clip, telling voters in Paithan to accept 'Laxmi' if it came their way before the elections. Laxmi is revered as the goddess of wealth.

In the clip, Danve was seen telling the voters, "Today is December 17 and tomorrow is December 18, the voting day. I know all of you are impatient to go home. "The eve of the election is important, as suddenly you get darshan of Laxmi. If such Laxmi comes to your door, please welcome it. But whatever you have decided, stick to your voting decision."

Earlier, in response to a notice by Netke, Danve had replied that he was quoted out of context.

"I said that the night before the polls is important and suddenly in the night, there will be obeisance of Goddess Laxmi. The public in the meeting were from rural areas and are spiritual and faithful and in case Goddess Laxmi comes, voters must see that the goddess does not return empty handed. The public at large must welcome Goddess Laxmi," Danve had said, in his clarification.

Danve's reply was sent to State Election Commissioner J S Saharia, who found his explanation unsatisfactory.

Congress and NCP had asked Saharia to register a criminal offence against Danve.
Jaipur/Srinagar: Congress demanded on Thursday, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologise to the nation for the "suffering" caused to the people by note-ban when he speaks on New Year's eve. The party has also vowed to hold country-wide protests from January 6.

Attacking Modi, who is set to address the nation after end of the 50-day period he had sought from the people to ease their problems due to cash crunch, Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said that the Prime Minister is good at making announcements that are far from reality. "Even after 50 days of demonetisation step, normalcy has not been restored.

Calling demonetisation a surgical strike on the countrys poor at a press conference in Jaipur, Sujrewala said, "PM Modi's demonetisation move has turned out to be 'Deshbandi' (lockdown of country); development has come to a standstill. It is a scam and an uncalled move. It has resulted into economic instability in the country. Several people have died due to cash crunch across the country.

He claimed that note ban has led to 115 deaths in last 50 days, RBI has changed its rules 126 times and it will take eight months to print the equivalent currency notes.

"Starting from January 6, we will continuously hold protests across the country against demonetisation. We demand compensation for aggrieved family members, income and sales tax rebate to traders and common man," said Sujrewal.

In Srinagar, Congress leader Meem Afzal said the Prime Minister "has so far not had a word of sympathy for the victims, forget about an apology".

"But we expect him to apologise when he speaks on the issue at the end of the 50 days he had sought," he said.

He further said that Modi promised to create two crore new jobs every year. But only 1.5 lakh jobs have been created in two and half years. After announcing demonetisation last month, at least 10 crore people have been rendered jobless," he claimed.

Afzal claimed as many as 11 crore man-hours were spent every day in queues outside banks and ATMs as people struggled to withdraw their own money.

"Money was taken from people's pockets and put in the banks. 130 crore people of the country were made to queue up for their money. The time people should have spent earning their livelihood was spent in the queues," he said.

Afzal said the Congress party demands an apology from the Prime Minister to the nation for these deaths and also compensation to the next of kin of the victims. He also said the party wanted 18 per cent interest be paid to the people on the money they have deposited in the banks.

Alleging that some BJP leaders have been caught with stashes of new currency notes, Surjewala demanded a high-level inquiry.

"Ordinary people are standing in bank lines to withdraw money, but a parallel black market flourishes in converting black money into white by charging commission up to 30 per cent commission," he alleged.

Surjewala also said that PM's credibility is under cloud as his named has allegedly surfaced in Birla and Sahara dairies for receiving kickbacks when he was the Gujarat Chief Minister. However, BJP has rejected these charges, terming them as false, baseless and malafide.
Hyderabad: The opposition Congress, TDP and CPI(M) on Thursday stayed away from the Telangana Assembly proceedings to protest the alleged unfair attitude of the TRS government and the Speaker towards them in the House.

The state government and the Speaker were not giving them proper opportunity to speak in the House, they alleged.

The opposition parties cited the example of a debate on land acquisition in the House yesterday when they allegedly did not get proper opportunity to speak.

The parties said they gave separate letters to the Speaker about their decision to stay away from the proceedings today.

However, Legislative Affairs Minister T Harish Rao said in the House that the opposition parties got appropriate time since the winter session began 11 days ago.

The government has been accommodative towards the opposition, he said.
Over the next four (and eight years, if Trump is re-elected) the world can expect to endure traumas on a scale last witnessed during the First and the Second World Wars. (Photo: AFP)

Calendars are invidious things. They divide continuous time into finite years, beginning each with a New Year abundant with optimism and ending with an Auld Lang Syne cringing with regrets. This year is no different. In just another day, 2016 shall be set in amber; 2017 is as yet an unformed crystal.

It would be a foolhardy crystal-gazer who would dare predict what the next year will bring. More surprises, like the Trump victory? More disappointments, like the Brexit referendum? More senseless conflicts, more destruction, more Aleppos?

Or, closer to home, more brimstone spewed by a choleric Mr Modi? More obsessive tilting at PML(N) windmills by a quixotic Imran Khan? More callous disregard by the government towards the norms of responsible governance? Over the next four (and eight years, if Trump is re-elected) the world can expect to endure traumas on a scale last witnessed during the First and the Second World Wars. It took one man  first Kaiser Wilhelm II, and after him Adolf Hitler  to precipitate a change that decimated European monarchies and, 25 years later, to pulverise Europe itself.

The generation that survived the 1914-18 war is now as much a part of history as the 38 million casualties of that brutal, mechanised manslaughter. At its outset, the British author H.G. Wells sensing its proportions assumed that it would be the war that will end war. The cannier politician David Lloyd George, who served as British Prime Minister during that war and then brokered the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, had good reason to be more cynical. He said: This war, like the next war, is a war to end war.

The Second World War is regarded by history books as having ended in 1945 with the defeat of Germany and of Japan. It could be argued that the Second World War never ended. Its scythe-like pendulum has never stopped oscillating between Cold War and Provocative Peace. That motion has been kept alive by the US and what was once the Soviet Union, now Vladimir Putins 21st century tsardom.

There was a time when the US and the USSR sought to checkmate each other with regional security blocs  Nato and Cento/Seato vs Warsaw Pact countries. Today, neither superpower needs such plaited fig leaves to hide their motives. Neither the US nor Russia (nor now China) seeks absolute victory. Yet neither is prepared to concede total defeat.

Will 2017 see Great Britain turn its back on Europe and revert to its 1,000-year-old history of geographical isolation? Prime Minister Theresa May has indicated that in the spring of 2017 she will sign Article 50, which would trigger two years of divorce proceedings from the EU. All other elements of her strategy she has kept clasped securely in her handbag, a secret from the public, her colleagues and even her Queen, one of whose courtiers let slip recently that the Queen had been frustrated by her PMs pointed reticence. It was almost as if May regarded Elizabeth Windsor as a security risk, a sort of crowned WikiLeaks.

Can Pakistanis expect any improvement in their lot in 2017? It is unlikely.

Changes at GHQ and in the Supreme Court are essentially cosmetic. They do not change the public stance of either body. Any shift in government policy? Even less likely. The government continues to enjoy the advantage of having no discernible policy on anything except road construction: nothing on population growth, education, health, job creation, industrial expansion, fiscal sobriety or water management. The Queen and Imran Khan share one grouse. Each has to deal with a Prime Minister unwilling to be forthcoming, or going.



By arrangement with Dawn.
Jerusalem: Israel's right wing on Thursday dismissed US Secretary of State John Kerry's speech on the conflict with the Palestinians as a parting shot of little consequence, especially with Donald Trump soon taking office.

One minister repeated his assertion that a Palestinian state will be "off the agenda" once expected ally Trump takes over, while others from what is seen as Israel's most right-wing government ever mocked Kerry.

"Palestine will be taken off the agenda," Education Minister Naftali Bennett of the hardline Jewish Home party told the Ynet news site.

He repeated his call for Israel to annex most of the West Bank, which would destroy any hope for a two-state solution long the basis of negotiations and which Kerry passionately defended on Wednesday.

Kerry's speech included forceful criticism of Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem, warning that it was helping put the two-state solution in "serious jeopardy."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he still supports a two-state solution, but he has also described his government as Israel's most pro-settlement, leading many analysts to question his sincerity.

Religious nationalists such as Bennett who see the West Bank as part of Israel, pointing to the Jewish connection to the land from the biblical era, hold heavy sway in Netanyahu's government.

Netanyahu hit back immediately following Kerry's speech, calling it biased against Israel and more focused on settlements than Palestinian violence.

He has lashed out at US President Barack Obama and Kerry in particularly harsh language, blaming them for orchestrating last week's UN Security Council resolution demanding a halt to settlement building.

The United States abstained from the vote in a rare move, with the resolution passing 14-0.

"Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders," Netanyahu said last night.

After Trump tweeted ahead of Kerry's speech "Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!" Netanyahu responded with a tweet of his own.

"President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!" he wrote.

While Kerry's speech broke little new ground, it included unusually stern criticism of Israel from an American leader.

"The Israeli prime minister publicly supports a two-state solution, but his current coalition is the most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements," he said.

He added later that "the settler agenda is defining the future in Israel. And their stated purpose is clear: They believe in one state: greater Israel."

Israel occupied the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967. It later annexed east Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community, and Israel now describes the entire city as its "eternal capital."
Washington: Al-Muhammadia, the student wing of terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was on Wednesday also designated as a terrorist organisation by the US, which also put sanctions against its two top leaders.

LeT was designated a terrorist organisation by the United States in December 2001. Since then, the organisation has repeatedly changed its name and created fronts in an effort to avoid sanctions, said the State Department.

"To that effect, Al-Muhammadia Students (AMS) is the student wing of LeT," it said.

Founded in 2009, AMS is a subsidiary of LeT and has worked with LeT senior leaders to organise recruiting courses and other activities for youth, it added.

Simultaneously, the US Treasury Department designated two LeT senior leaders Muhammad Sarwar and Shahid Mahmood as global terrorists, both based in Pakistan.

"These two Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders are responsible for raising and moving funds to support the terrorist group's operations," said John E Smith, Acting Director Office of Foreign Assets Control.

He added that the action "not only aims to expose their activities, but also disrupts Lashkar-e-Taiba's financial network and ability to carry out violent terrorist attacks".

Treasury said Sarwar has been a senior LeT official in Lahore for over 10 years and has held various leadership roles in the group, including his current position as LeT's emir for Lahore, a position he has held since at least January 2015.

As the LeT emir of Lahore, Sarwar maintains relationships with LeT's most senior leaders. Between 2012 and 2013, Sarwar worked with LeT's foreign affairs chief Hafiz Abdul Rahman Makki, and in early 2013, Makki asked Sarwar for money to pay for his travel within Pakistan, it added.

In his capacity as LeT Lahore emir, Sarwar has been directly involved in LeT fund raising activities and uses the formal financial system in Pakistan to raise and move funds on behalf of LeT, the Treasury said.

For example, in 2008, he led delegations of businessmen to LeT facilities for the purpose of soliciting donations for the group, and as of mid-2009, Sarwar was one of two officials who headed LeT's finance wing in Lahore, it added.

On the other hand, Mahmood has been a longstanding senior LeT member based in Karachi, and has been affiliated with the group since 2007.

166 people including many foreigners were killed in the 2008 Mumbai attack carried out by 10 Lashkar terrorists. Nine of the attackers were killed and lone survivor Ajmal Kasab was captured and later hanged in 2012. The terror outfit is led by Pakistan-based Hafiz Saeed.
Washington: President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to name China a currency manipulator on his first day in the White House. There's only one problem, it's not true anymore.

It's been years since the world's second-biggest economy has pushed down its currency to benefit Chinese exporters. And even if China were attempting a manipulation, the law targeting manipulators requires that the U.S. spend a year negotiating a solution before it can retaliate.

Still, the U.S-China trade relationship is lopsided with China selling a lot more to the U.S. than it buys. The resulting trade deficit in goods amounted to a staggering $289 billion through the first 10 months of 2016.

A former Commerce Department official, Amanda DeBusk, says naming China a currency manipulator is mostly "just a jaw-boning exercise."
Florida: Angered that Christian music was being played inside a McDonalds, a Florida man cursed at employees and other patrons and demanded that they turn it off and play Muslim and Hindu music, according to cops who arrested the customer.

Joseph Allen, 46, walked into the McDonalds around 10.20 am on Thursday and created a threat to the safety of others, according to a Largo Police Department report, as reported by Buster.

Allen, cops say, began cursing at customers and employees due to the Christian music being played over speakers in the fast food restaurant. The Christian music to which Allen referred was apparently Christmas tunes. Allen approached McDonalds workers in an aggressive manner, leaving the employees in fear for their safety. Cops responding to a 911 call confronted Allen, who admitted to cursing at workers and customers.
Dec. 6, 1920  Dec. 23, 2016

Orville Clyde Vogt passed on Dec. 23 after his 96th birthday.

Orville was born in Quinter, Kansas, the third child of Henry and Lois Vogt. He was a World War II vet, serving honorably as an aviation radio man in the United States Navy. Later in life, he retired after 20 years with the Albany Fire Department.

Orville was preceded in death by his wife, Ruby Anglesey Vogt; his mother and father; sister Helen Davis; and five brothers, Marvin, Wayne, Howard, Fred and Lyle.

He is survived by his two daughters, Susan Sheythe and Nancy Baker; two grandchildren; and one great-grandchild; younger sister Marie Kisor; and two younger brothers, Gerald and Larry.

Any charitable donations in Orville's name may be made to the Wounded Warrior Project in care of Fisher Funeral Home, 306 Washington St. S.W., Albany, OR 97321.

A memorial service will be at 3 p.m. Monday, Jan. 30, at Fisher Funeral Home. Private interment will be at Bilyeu Den Cemetery.

Online condolences for the family may be posted at www.fisherfuneralhome.com.
Amos Yee compared Lee to Jesus, saying they are both power-hungry and malicious but deceive others into thinking they are compassionate and kind. (Photo: AP)

Singapore: A Singaporean teenager who became notorious for profanity-laced attacks on the city's revered late leader Lee Kuan Yew is seeking political asylum in the US, his lawyers said on Thursday.

Amos Yee, 18, a filmmaker turned activist who has been repeatedly jailed in Singapore for his controversial videos, has been detained by US authorities since he arrived at Chicago's airport early December.

"Soon his case will be referred to an immigration judge for a hearing on his eligibility for asylum," Yee's lawyers Grossman Law said in a statement posted on Facebook.

Yee will have to undergo a "Credible Fear Interview" when US officials will determine whether he risks persecution or torture in Singapore, his lawyer Sandra Grossman told the South China Morning Post.

Yee was in high spirits despite being detained and was seeking US asylum because America is a "safe space" where free speech is not policed, Melissa Chen, a US-based Singaporean who has been helping Yee with his asylum bid, said in a Facebook post.

Yee's mother Mary Toh confirmed his detention and US asylum bid, adding: "the matter is now with his lawyers".

Singapore's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said that Yee was a "classic political dissident" who deserved asylum.

Singapore "has subjected Amos Yee to a sustained pattern of persecution, including intimidation, arrest and imprisonment, for publicly expressing his views on politics and religion," Robertson said in a statement.

Yee, who won a filmmaking award at 13, posted an expletive-laden video in March 2015 attacking Lee amid an outpouring of grief over the founding prime minister's death that same week.

In the eight-minute video, Yee compared Lee to Jesus, saying "they are both power-hungry and malicious but deceive others into thinking they are compassionate and kind".

He was jailed for four weeks for hurting the religious feelings of Christians and for posting an obscene image of Lee and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He served 50 days, including penalties for violating bail conditions.

In September, Yee was jailed for six weeks for insulting Muslims and Christians in a series of videos posted online, which included images of him disrespecting the Koran.

The videos were watched hundreds of thousands of times before they were taken down from Yee's YouTube page.
Beijing: Attackers drove a car into a government building in China's unruly far western region of Xinjiang on Wednesday and set off an explosive device killing one person, while all four of the attackers were shot dead, the regional government said.

Hundreds of people have been killed in recent years in resource-rich Xinjiang, on the borders of central Asia, in violence between the Muslim Uighur people who call the region home and ethnic majority Han Chinese.

The government has blamed the unrest on Islamist militants, though rights groups and exiles say anger at Chinese controls on the religion and culture of Uighurs is more to blame for the unrest. China denies any repression in Xinjiang.

The Xinjiang government said in a short statement on its main news website the incident occurred just before 5 pm in Karakax county, deep in southern Xinjiang's Uighur heartland.

It said the four "thugs" drove a vehicle into a yard at the county Communist Party offices and detonated an "explosive device", but were all shot dead.

Three people were wounded and one other died, it said, without giving details.

At present, local social order is stable," the government said.

In a separate English-language report, the official Xinhua news agency described the incident as a "terrorist attack".

State television said the attackers also used knives against staff at the party offices, and that the person they killed was a security guard and three government officials were wounded. It did not say if the guard died in the blast or the knife attack.

It is difficult for foreign journalists to report in Xinjiang, making it almost impossible to reach an independent assessment of security there.

Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the exiled group the World Uyghur Congress, said he doubted the official account."I strongly doubt the casualty toll and reason for the incident from official reports, which lack transparency," he said in an emailed statement.

The government has delayed reporting some previous incidents.

An attack on a coal mine in September 2015, in which at least 16 died, was not reported by the government until two months later, when it announced its security forces had killed 28 of the "terrorists" involved.

Xinjiang had generally been quiet 2016, with no major reported attacks or other violent incidents.
Manila: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte derided US ambassadors as "spies" on Thursday, responding to a media report of an alleged American plot to destabilize his government, a job he said some envoys were appointed solely to do.

The volatile former mayor said though had received no intelligence reports of any US plan to undermine his presidency, he believed most ambassadors were in cahoots with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which had a track record of meddling in other countries' affairs.

The Manila Times newspaper on Tuesday reported a former US ambassador to the Philippines had prepared a "blueprint to undermine Duterte", citing a document it had received from a what it described as a "highly placed source".

The US State Department has described the allegations as "false".

"Most of the ambassadors of the United States, but not all, are not really professional ambassadors. At the same time they are spying, they are connected with the CIA," Duterte said in a television interview.

"The ambassador of a country is the number one spy. But there are ambassador of the US, their forte is really to undermine governments."

Duterte has made no secret of his grudge against the United States and has a particular disdain for President Barack Obama, who he has told to "go to hell", mostly over Obama's concern s about Duterte's deadly drugs war.

He has made repeated threats to abrogate security treaties with the United States and vented almost daily about US "hypocrisy" and "bullying".

On Thursday, Duterte said he would honor those treaties and that he liked US President-elect Donald Trump and was keenly waiting for him to take office.

The Manila Times said Philip Goldberg, who recently ended his term as ambassador in Manila, had outlined various strategies over an 18-month period to destabilize Duterte.

That would include supporting the opposition and co-opting the media, the military, neighboring countries and senior government officials to turn against Duterte and isolate him economically.

Duterte has a dislike for Goldberg and has previously called him a "gay son of a bitch". He referred to him in three successive live television interviews on Thursday, calling him Washington's "superstar" with a track record of trying to undermine governments.

Goldberg was expelled as ambassador to Bolivia in 2008 by then President Evo Morales, who accused him of siding with his rightist opponents and of orchestrating street protests.

The United States rejected that and said his expulsion was a "grave error".

"Maybe he will deny it but it's not good," Duterte said of Goldberg's alleged blueprint, which he said was plausible because of Goldberg's history.

He added: "You might be able to oust me, but I will give you a bloody nose."

Attempts to reach Goldberg this week were unsuccessful.

US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Daniel Russel dismissed the Manila Times report.

"No such blueprint exists," he said in a statement on Tuesday.

"The United States respects the sovereignty of the Philippines and the democratic choices made by the Philippine people."
Manila: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Thursday he will insist on a ruling of an international arbitration that invalidated Beijing's claims to most of the South China Sea if China starts to extract oil or gas from the area.

His statement in an interview with CNN Philippines Thursday was a departure from his earlier pronouncement that he would "set aside" the ruling because he does not want to impose on China.

Duterte also criticized the United States, saying it did not do anything when China started building artificial islands in the disputed sea.

Duterte, who took office in June, has taken steps to mend relations with China that grew hostile during the time of his predecessor over the long-unresolved territorial disputes. Former President Benigno Aquino III's administration took the disputes to international arbitration in a move backed by Washington after China seized a disputed shoal from the Philippines in 2012, then went on to construct seven man-made islands despite outside objections.

China has refused to recognize the arbitration tribunal, saying it has no jurisdiction.

Asked under what circumstances he would bring up the tribunal ruling with China, Duterte said: "Yes, when the minerals are already being siphoned out."

If that happens, he said, he will tell China: "I though we're friends? We share economic bounties, so how about us? I have this title, so what do you think? Don't you think we should talk now?"

Duterte added that if China's construction in the disputed waters was a serious concern then the United States should have led the way and stopped it "right at the beginning, when the first spade of soil was tossed out to the area that was being reclaimed."

"Why raise an issue putting the countries into distress or under stress when you are not going to do anything, when it is you who have the arms?" he added.

China is pitted against smaller neighbors including the Philippines in multiple disputes over islands, coral reefs and lagoons in waters crucial for global commerce and rich in fish and potential oil and gas reserves.

The U.S. says it is not taking sides in the disputes but insists on freedom of navigation in international waters and is against coercion by any side against the other.
Her small honey-making business provides not only an income, but a sense of pride. (Photo: Pixabay)

Yakawlang, Afghanistan: "I make my money for me," declares Afghan beekeeper Jamila pointing emphatically at her chest.

Her small honey-making business provides not only an income, but a sense of pride.

In the mountainous central province of Bamiyan, one of the country's least developed but most liberal regions, beekeeping complements its only other commercial crop, potatoes, and gives rural women the chance to become entrepreneurs.

Four beekeeping cooperatives have been set up here in recent years, backed by NGOs and foreign aid. Starting from scratch, they now employ around 400 people, half of them women, and produce 14 tonnes of honey a year.

The district of Yakawlang, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the famous giant Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban, sits around 2,600 metres (8,500 feet) above sea-level. Residents are worried the arrival of winter will kill off their bees.

Bundled up tightly, they walk for more than an hour in the snow to fill their pots with honey and fix labels on them, though few know how to read.

'I'm my own boss'

Jamila got her start a year ago thanks to her neighbour, Siamui, a pioneer of the cooperative five years ago who gave her her first colony.

"It was in April and I remember that day perfectly. I was so happy: when I was done with my housework, I could spend the whole day watching my bees and how they work!" she confesses, making the other women around her laugh.

This cooperative has collected about 400 kilogrammes (880 pounds) of honey this year, according to its supervisor Habitullah Noori. Each kilo fetches 800 Afghanis in Bamiyan and 1,000 in Kabul -- about $15.

Jamila is a grandmother whose children have left the home; Siamui is raising eight of her own; Siddiqa, an orphan, takes care of four brothers and sisters.

Each of them maintains one to four hives on average -- the few thousand Afghanis earned supplements their household incomes.

"I can pay for the bus when I want to visit my daughter, I can buy her chocolate," says Jamila.

"I can buy notepads for the kids," adds Halima, who is in her twenties with two children.

For widowed Marzia, the honey is key to her very survival. She hails from the village Qatakhan, 30 minutes from Yakawlang. It was an area overrun by the Taliban in early 2000, with many of its residents butchered after one commander instructed his charges "to kill everyone, even the dogs and chickens".

Her husband was pulled out of his mosque and shot dead on January 19 that year.

She keeps four hives, explaining: "Earlier I started farming, sewing, reaping weeds in the mountains. My brother assisted me but I was mostly on my own.

"Now with the honey I can support my family, I am my own boss."

"When you invest $100 in the first year you will make $100 in the next," says Daud Mosavi, director of agricultural programmes for New Zealand's foreign aid agency in Bamiyan.

Elevated status

Further down the hill, Fatima and her daughters, wearing beekepers hats and visors, adjust the honeycombs in their beehives on the slopes of Qatakhan. Her husband, Ahmad Hossaini, is helping his wife by bringing the bees their sugar.

"It's the first time we've worked together!" he smiles.

"When they get a revenue for the first time it helps to establish their position better in the household", especially girls who are otherwise seen as potential burdens on their families, explains Sadia Fatimie, a consultant for international institutions.

Fifteen years after the fall of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan remains a harsh place for women: in 2016, only 10 percent of salaried female employees worked outside the agricultural sector, earning 30 percent less than their male counterparts.

In the countryside, they constitute an ignored, exhausted and poorly paid workforce.

"Only 34 percent of women in this country say they are allowed to spend the money which they earn," emphasises Fatimie.

"There was no tradition of beekeeping here until the 1960s, when it was launched by King Zahir Shah," says Marc Jeanjean, a French beekeeper sent by AFD, the French aid agency, to help revive the sector.

"When we started working in 2005 there was nothing left, but things really began to take off in 2012 when the ministry of agriculture began pushing it," he adds.

"It is widely accepted here by the society that women can be at the frontline to support the family," says provincial agricultural official Abdul Wahab Mohammadi. "It's increasing -- people see it as a success story and they are copying it."
Kabul: The head of the Sikh community in Afghanistan's restive Kunduz city was shot dead by unknown gunmen on Thursday, the second such incident within three months, triggering fear among the minority group members in the country.

Lala Del Souz, a naturopath, was gunned down at about 9am in the Haji Gulistan Kochi Haman area of the city, Tolo News reported.

He was reportedly on his way to his shop when the shooting occurred. He died from his injuries while being taken to hospital, the report said.

According to relatives of the deceased, he had been shot five years ago but survived the attack.

Kunduz security chief Masoum Stanikzai confirmed the incident and said police have arrested three suspects.

"Investigations will however continue," he said.

Del Souz's uncle, Prem, said the deceased had been well-liked and had no enemies.

The shooting, meanwhile, sparked an outcry on social media with hundreds of people condemning the incident and sending condolences to his family.

Prem called on government to thoroughly investigate the incident and make sure those responsible are brought to justice. He said if this does not happen, the few remaining Sikhs will sell up and leave the province.

Following the collapse of Kunduz city to Taliban militants, many Sikhs left the province. Currently only three families are still there, the report said.

Sikhs have lived in Kunduz for over thirty years and at one time there were as many as 40 families in the area.

After the collapse of Kunduz city 2015, Del Souz apparently moved his family to India. He stayed on in Kunduz and lived with his uncle.

Close to 99% of Hindu and Sikh in Afghanistan have left the country over the past three decades.

Sikh and Hindu population numbered 220,000 in the 1980's.

It is now estimated that only 1,350 Hindus and Sikhs remain in the war-torn country, the report said.

Hindus and Sikhs suffered huge setbacks after the Taliban regime collapsed in 2001. This forced many of them to leave rural areas and move to Kabul in order to make a living.

In October, a Sikh man was abducted from his home and gunned down by suspected militants in Afghanistan's restive Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan.

Sardar Rawail Singh, who lived in Jalalabad, was abducted from his house by militants wearing military fatigues and killed in Khalis Famil area.
Taipei: Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen will pass through the United States when she visits Latin America next month, the foreign ministry said Thursday, a move bound to infuriate China which had urged the United States to block a transit stopover.

China is deeply suspicious of Tsai, who it thinks wants to push for the formal independence of Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing regards as a renegade province, ineligible for state-to-state relations.

Details of the stopovers will be disclosed before the end of this week, the ministry said.

The transit details are being closely watched as Taiwan media has speculated Tsai will seek to meet President-elect Donald Trumps transition team ahead of his January 20 inauguration.

Trump angered China when he spoke to Tsai this month in a break with decades of precedent and cast doubt on his incoming administrations commitment to Beijings one China policy.

The United States, which switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, has acknowledged the Chinese position that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of it.

Tsais office earlier this month said she would visit Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador in that order. She will leave Taiwan on January 7 and return on January 15.

Taiwan had as many as 30 diplomatic allies in the mid-1990s, but now has formal relations with just 21, mostly smaller and poorer nations in Latin America and the Pacific.

The American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto embassy of the United States, had no immediate comment on Tsais itinerary.
Paris: Suspected Berlin truck attacker Anis Amri travelled by bus from the Netherlands to France before heading to Italy where police shot him dead, sources close to the investigation said Wednesday.

Two days after the December 19 attack on a Christmas market in Berlin left 12 dead, the 24-year-old Tunisian boarded an overnight bus at the Dutch city of Nijmegen, near the German border, that took him to Lyon in central France, one of the sources said, confirming a French media report.

Amri got off the bus at the Lyon-Part-Dieu rail station, the source said.

Surveillance cameras filmed Amri at the station last Thursday.

From there, he took a train to the French Alpine town of Chambery before heading to Milan, in northern Italy.

Italian police shot Amri dead in the early hours of Friday after he fired at officers who had stopped him for a routine identity check.

A train ticket from Lyon to Milan via Turin was found on his body.

Investigators are still trying to determine how Amri was able to leave Berlin and traverse most of Germany to reach the Netherlands.

Wim de Bruin, spokesman for the Dutch public prosecution service told AFP: "I can confirm that the Dutch police are investigating whether he travelled through The Netherlands after the attack in Berlin."

De Bruin declined however to give further details.

The Berlin rampage was claimed by the ISIS, which released a video on Friday in which Amri is shown pledging allegiance to IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

German authorities are probing whether Amri had help before or after the attack and on Wednesday police detained a 40-year-old Tunisian on suspicion of having ties with him.

In Tunisia, authorities Friday arrested Amri's nephew and two other suspects, aged between 18 and 27, who they said were members of a "terrorist cell" connected to Amri.

But the interior ministry made no direct link between the trio and the Berlin assault.

Meanwhile Dutch lawmakers including anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders demanded an explanation over reports that Amri may have travelled through the Netherlands.

An attempt however by Wilders to convene the lower house of parliament for an urgent debate on the matter was turned down after he failed to get the approval of a majority of lawmakers.
It forecasts that the economic world order will become more fragile as globalisation evolves, trade patterns shift, and economic power gravitates toward Asia. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP)

London: Brexit will mark the start of a "decade of disruption" for Britain with a slowing economy, an ageing population and volatile jobs market, a new report by a UK-based think tank warned on Thursday.

'Future proof: Britain in the 2020s' by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) concludes that Britain's exit from the European Union (EU) will have some "painful trade-offs" with lower growth and weaker public finances.

"Brexit is the firing gun on a decade of disruption. As the UK negotiates its new place in the world, an accelerating wave of economic, social and technological change will reshape the country, in often quite radical ways," says the report.

It forecasts that the economic world order will become more fragile as globalisation evolves, trade patterns shift, and economic power gravitates toward Asia.

"By 2030, the effects of Brexit combined with a wave of economic, social and technological change will reshape the UK, in often quite radical ways. In the face of this, a politics of nostalgia, institutional conservatism and a rear-guard defence of the institutions of 20th century social democracy will be inadequate," said the report's author, Mathew Lawrence.

Other factors would also disrupt Britain's future for years to come, including its ageing population, the report finds.

The number of people aged 65 and over is predicted to rise by a third by the end of the next decade, imposing new strains on an already cash strapped system.

The report came as Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn accused British Prime Minister Theresa May of behaving in an autocratic manner like Britain's past monarchs by not allowing a Parliament vote on Brexit.

"It (a final Brexit deal) would have to come to Parliament. She cannot hide behind Henry VIII and the divine rights of the power of kings on this one," he told the Guardian.

"The idea that on something as major as this the Prime Minister would use the royal prerogative to bypass parliament is extraordinary. I don't know where she's coming from," he said.

Meanwhile, Dave Penman, general secretary of the UK's civil servants union, said the Prime Minister May's inability to talk openly about the complexity of Brexit was putting huge strain on civil servants.

Penman, who represents 19,000 members, said, "It is pure politics that is defining the Brexit debate and forcing May to say this is not a big, difficult job, and it is all in hand. Ministers lack the political courage to admit how complex and time-consuming this will be".

"The politics around Brexit are the biggest risk to Brexit. The Government is clearly in a situation where they are trying to deny the complexity of it," he said.

The FDA also called for more resources to be devoted to civil services for Brexit related work.
Anis Amri was shot dead a few hours later outside a different train station in suburban Milan after he opened fire on police who asked him for ID. (Photo: AP)

Berlin: German prosecutors say they've released a Tunisian man who was detained on Wednesday after determining that he wasn't in contact with the main suspect in last week's Berlin truck attack.

The 40-year-old was detained in Berlin on Wednesday. Federal prosecutors said at the time that his telephone number was saved in suspect Anis Amri's cellphone and that they suspected he may have been involved in the attack.

But prosecutors' spokesman Frauke Koehler said Thursday they now have determined that the man "isn't this possible contact person of Anis Amri."

Amri is believed to have driven the truck that plowed into a Christmas market December 19, killing 12 people. His fingerprints and wallet were found in the truck.
Copenhagen: Swedish prosecutors say a Syrian man has been charged with war crimes for having taken part in the 2012 execution of seven government troops in Syria.

Investigator Kristina Lindehoff Carleson says the conflict then "was a non-international armed conflict between the Syrian government and a number of armed groups."

Lindehoff Carleson says the 46-year-old man had joined rebels in Syria and appeared in a May 2012 video where seven "defenceless" soldiers were executed. It was not immediately clear which rebel group he had joined.

She said Thursday the charge "should in no way been seen as an endorsement of the ongoing conflict in Syria."

The man sought asylum in Sweden in 2013 and has been held in pre-trial custody since March, according to the prosecution.
The 46-year-old accused identified as Mark Lancaster, violently attacked his partner in May this year. (Respresentational Image)

Newcastle: A man has been jailed for 16 months for breaking his girlfriends tooth, stripping her naked and pouring superglue down her throat in a horrifying attack after getting high on drugs and alcohol.

According to a report in the Daily Mail, the 46-year-old accused identified as Mark Lancaster, violently attacked his partner in May this year.

He was arrested after some of his neighbours heard the commotion from his house ad informed the police. He was then made to appear before a court.

During the trial of the case, the court heard that Lancaster put his hands on the victims mouth, broke her tooth and then tried to fix it by pouring superglue in her mouth. At one point, the victim tried to hide in the bathroom, but Lancaster kicked down the door and continued assaulting her.

Lancaster admitted to causing serious body harm to the victim, following which he was locked up in the prison for 16 and a half months. He has also been slapped with a five-year restraining order.
A handout picture released by the British Metropolitan Police Service in London on December 26, 2016 shows an undated picture of Isabel Gayther who was reported missing by her family after failing to attend Christmas celebrations. (Photo: AFP)

London: A British university student reported as missing after skipping a family Christmas has apparently sent Facebook posts saying she is alive and well and just embarrassed that her mother called the police.

Londons Metropolitan Police launched a search on Monday saying 21-year-old Isabel Gayther was last seen at her student residence on Saturday and had not visited her familys home on Christmas Day as planned.

This is extremely out of character for her and officers and her family are extremely concerned for her safety and wellbeing, the police said on Monday.

It is believed Isabel has her phone with her but it is unreachable, the police statement added.

Facebook posts on the account used by Gayther, where she uses the name Isabela Mishele, then appeared on Tuesday, British media reported.

Am not on my way to Syria or being held hostage.... A day and half Im out of contact and this is what happens? one of the posts read.

Oh god, how embarrassing, this is the second time my mum has filed a missing persons report, said another.

One post was a link to an article from Psychology Today entitled: Should You Divorce Your Mother?

A police spokesman told AFP on Wednesday that the appeal to find Gayther was still live.

Were aware of the reports but we have to know that shes safe and well. Until we are contacted by her, the search will continue, he said.
London: In a shocking incident that came to light in UK, a British girl was allegedly enslaved and held as a sex slave for 13 years by an Asian taxi driver, who also supposedly sold all the four children she borne during the period.

Narrating her story for the first time in her new book Secret Slave, Anna Ruston said that she was abducted when she was 15 by Malik. Ruston also said that she was repeatedly raped by her captor and was also prostituted out to other men, according to report in the Daily Mail.

During the years of abuse, Ruston claimed to have borne four children, who were feared to have been sold by Malik. She was forced to use a can in the corner of a room as a lavatory, said Ruston.

The report also mentioned that Ruston had lived with Maliks family  his mother, brothers and their wives  but none of them helped her. The wives gave her painkillers occasionally, said Ruston also revealing that they were getting abused them selves and that would use make up to disguise their bruises.

As someone with no close family -- her parents were not ready to support her and after her grandmother passed away, she was living with a friend -- it all began when she trusted his initial affection. Malik had invited her to his house. She was also welcomed by his family.

But things started going downhill immediately afterwards as he suddenly turned on her, called her abuses, locked the door and raped her, something he continued to do for 13 years, she said.

In her new book, she also wrote about how overjoyed she was when she discovered that she was pregnant for the first time. But that joy didnt last for long as her first son was soon taken away from her. She did not even get to hold any of her babies, she said, adding that she feared that Malik might have sold them.

Ruston was quoted saying, 'Malik dressed me in his cultures clothes, dyed my hair black, made me wear a scarf and keep my head down. When he spoke for me they thought it was a cultural thing. And I think people are scared to be accused of discrimination.'

She also narrated how she had tried to flee through the back door, but as she was beaten badly afterwards, she was scared to attempt it again.

While she tried to attempt suicide, help came in the form of a health visitor who had come to check her as she weighed only 38 kgs. Since, she knew Maliks family would be busy with their Eid celebrations. The visitor promised to wait outside and ring the house phone three times. Luckily for Ruston, the keys were in the door as the family was busy with their prayers.

Even thought she has been free for 16 years, She also stated that the garlic smell from her captor still haunted her. Ruston stated that she was still afraid to report her abuser to the police.

But however, she has rebuilt her life slowly with her new book, which she was advised to write for her therapy, and her new family -- husband and four kids, said the report.
London: After a year of record humanitarian needs, 2017 looks set to be even more challenging for aid agencies as they brace for the fallout from protracted conflicts and other escalating crises.

The United Nations estimates almost 93 million people in 33 countries will need humanitarian aid and has appealed for a record $22.2 billion to help them.

Conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and South Sudan account for half the budget.

In Africa's Sahel belt, poverty, conflict and climate change have left one in six hungry, fuelling migration to Europe, the United Nations says.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation asked aid agencies to name their three priorities for 2017:

UNHCR - Filippo Grandi, head of the U.N. refugee agency

1) Access to safety for those fleeing conflict - upholding asylum for refugees, and tackling xenophobia, scapegoating and populist fear-mongering.

2) Stabilising frontline refugee hosting countries by supporting an early life-saving humanitarian response, and decisive engagement by development actors to mitigate the dramatic consequences of large-scale refugee influxes.

3) Robust international action to prevent and resolve conflict, and renewed focus on the growing number of people who are internally displaced.

International Federation Of Red Cross And Red Crescent Societies- Garry Conille, head of operations

1) Emerging infectious diseases are becoming more frequent, complex and difficult to manage as they spread in urban settings with poor sanitation, crop up in new places due to migration and move across borders. After Ebola, 2016 saw the wildfire spread of Zika and yellow fever and Rift Valley Fever in new places.

2) Aid for migrants. With no solution in sight to simmering conflicts and other triggers for migration, and little progress in establishing safe and legal routes for asylum seekers, we expect the staggering numbers of people taking flight to continue in 2017.

3) Local preparedness and localised funding. We will help vulnerable communities become more shock resistant (by) investing in strengthening local systems; teaching and delivering first aid, because 90 percent of lives saved at the outset of a disaster are by locals; and boosting community-based disease surveillance.

International Rescue Committee- Ciaran Donnelly, senior vice president, international programmes

1) Cash for refugees, not just tents or food. Cash assistance empowers people and gives them choice, it helps scarce resources go further, and it supports the local host economy.

2) Refugees need long-term support, not just emergency relief. This means getting refugee children into school, getting their parents into jobs, and working with international financial institutions, host country governments and the private sector.

3) Don't let Europe and the United States off the hook. Fight to protect the hard-won rights of refugees despite the political and popular backlash, and urge governments to do more. Wealthy countries host just 14 percent of the world's refugees and must not leave poorer countries to manage the crisis alone.

OXFAM - Nigel Timmins, director of global humanitarian team

1) The eight-year conflict between Boko Haram and the military in northeast Nigeria has intensified, spreading into Niger, Chad and Cameroon. We are concerned at least 400,000 people could be experiencing famine-like conditions. Unless humanitarian aid is delivered, this could rise to 800,000. Over 2.6 million people have been forced to flee their homes.

2) After three years of fighting in South Sudan nearly 5 million people are desperately hungry. Half the population is already in need of humanitarian aid. Over 1.8 million people have been forced from their homes and more than one million have fled into neighbouring countries. The Ugandan village of Bidi Bidi has become the second largest refugee resettlement area in the world.

3) The Horn of Africa is experiencing a devastating drought where more than 12 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are facing food and water shortages. Forecasts suggest rainfall will not significantly increase, meaning both harvests and livestock productivity will decline sharply in early 2017.

World Vision - Mark Smith, senior director for humanitarian emergencies

1) As the Syria crisis enters its sixth year, civilians continue to bear the brunt of a conflict marked by unparalleled suffering, destruction and disregard for human life. Some 13.5 million people require humanitarian assistance, including 4.9 million trapped in besieged and hard-to-reach areas.

2) In the Lake Chad Basin, more than 2 million people have been displaced by Boko Haram-related insecurity and, according to USAID, 4.6 million in Nigeria's Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe states are experiencing acute food insecurity.

3) South Sudan continues to experience challenges including almost 600,000 refugees having fled to neighbouring Uganda.

Christian Aid - Jane Backhurst, senior humanitarian advocacy officer

1) Raise awareness and funding for the crises in northeast Nigeria and South Sudan.

2) The Middle East crises in Iraq, Syria and Israel and occupied Palestinian territory will remain a high priority.

3) Scale up our work in Afghanistan as Afghan refugees are returned from Pakistan.

Norwegian Refugee Council - Jan Egeland, secretary general

1) Do more to be there for those who need us the most, in areas that are hard to reach, from Syria and Yemen, to northern Nigeria and South Sudan. Parties to the conflicts are blocking humanitarian workers from delivering life-saving assistance, and relief in neglected crises in Yemen and Nigeria is woefully underfunded.

2) Protect the displaced, by advocating for their rights. We will push for countries to take their share of responsibility for protecting refugees and we will speak out against barbaric breaches of international humanitarian laws.

3) Education for children affected by conflict. Many countries risk losing a generation to war and conflict. If we are not able to provide these children with an education, who will be there to rebuild these countries and create peace and stability?

ACTIONAID - Mike Noyes, head of humanitarian response

1) Scale up our disaster response capability. This is in part because of the wider impacts of the Syria crisis following the battle for Aleppo and likely knock-on effects of the battle for Mosul (in Iraq). In particular we will be looking at strengthening our capacity to deliver cash-based responses, especially those targeted at women.

2) Look at how we can do more in our work on disaster anticipation, preventing emerging crises from escalating by engaging with the work of the Start Network on forecasting mechanisms and piloting early responses.

3) Ensure we meet the commitments at the World Humanitarian Summit to make a locally-directed response to a humanitarian disaster a reality.

Save The Children- Daniele Timarco, humanitarian director

1) Drought and hunger crises in Horn of Africa. 2) Coherent global response to migration and displacement. 3) Rapidly changing conflicts including Syria, Iraq, South Sudan.
Jerusalem: Israel's attorney general has decided to order a criminal probe against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and he is to soon be questioned by police, Israeli media reported Thursday.

The justice ministry and police have declined to comment. Police have however issued a statement saying that it would inform the public "in due time" on the issue, while warning that media reports have included speculation.

Israeli media have reported that the investigation is to involve suspicions of corruption.

Channel 10 television reported that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has authorised police to conduct a criminal investigation.

The station and other Israeli media have reported that Netanyahu is to be questioned by police.

In July, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said he had ordered a preliminary examination into an unspecified affair involving Netanyahu.

No details were given on the nature of the preliminary examination and Netanyahu has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

He has acknowledged receiving money from French tycoon Arnaud Mimran, who was sentenced to eight years in prison over a scam amounting to 283 million euros involving the trade of carbon emissions permits and the taxes on them.

Netanyahu's office said he had received $40,000 in contributions from Mimran in 2001, when he was not in office, as part of a fund for public activities, including appearances abroad to promote Israel.

He has also come under scrutiny over an alleged conflict of interest in the purchase of submarines from a German firm.

Media reports have alleged a conflict of interest over the role played by the Netanyahu family lawyer, David Shimron, who also acts for the Israeli agent of Germany's ThyssenKrupp, which builds the Dolphin submarines.
One of the many homeless dwellers in a cemetery in the town of Shahriar, near Irans capital Tehran. (Photo: Representational)

Tehran: Images of homeless drug addicts living in empty graves just outside the Iranian capital have deeply shocked the public and prompted reactions even from President Hassan Rouhani.

Shahrvand newspaper on Tuesday published the images in a report on the homeless people -- about 50 men and women -- who dwell in a cemetery in the town of Shahriar, 30 kilometres (18 miles) west of Tehran.

The story and the haunting images of the homeless staring into the camera from inside the unused grave slots spread quickly on social media, where users and celebrities reacted with expressions of alarm and sadness.

Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi aired his frustration in a letter to Rouhani.

I read the report... and now my entire being is filled with shame and sorrow, he wrote.

With this letter, I intend to share my shame with you and all those who have had any responsibility in this country in the past few decades, he added.

The president responded to Farhadis painful letter on Wednesday.

Alive in open graves: Published photos of homeless ppl in Iran sleeping in grave pits creates outrage on social media. pic.twitter.com/QYF6f8AyA3  Omid Memarian (@Omid_M) December 27, 2016

Who can see human beings hurt from social issues who take shelter in graves.... and not feel ashamed? Rouhani said in a speech about government supervision.

I have heard about people in western countries who sleep on cardboard under bridges out of poverty, or those who sleep in metro stations, but not in graves, he said.

To solve these issues we must all unite and leave aside partisan issues and differences and address the basic problems of the country.

In a follow-up report, Shahrvand said the grave-dwellers were forcibly removed from the cemetery, after promises from authorities to resolve the issue.

Some of those who lived in the graves had done so for 10 years, according to the daily.

Arent we humans? Are we foreigners? We are Iranian too, an unnamed homeless man told the newspaper in a video.

He asked authorities to build a shelter in the area.

The report is a rare glimpse into the lives of homeless people in the Iranian capital.

In October another report on homeless people occupying in sewage canals on Tehrans highways triggered similar reactions.

Poverty has worsened in recent years in Iran.

The official unemployment rate has risen to 12.7 percent this year from 10.6 percent in 2014, while joblessness among teens and young adults has reached 27 percent.
Moscow: Russia President Vladimir Putin on Thursday announced a nationwide ceasefire deal to come into effect across Syria from midnight and that the warring parties had agreed to sit down for peace talks.

The deal brokered by Russia and Turkey could represent a major breakthrough in nearly 6 years of war in Syria and comes a week after rebel resistance was crushed in the second city of Aleppo.

Although on opposing sides in the conflict, Turkey and Russia have been working intensively to find a ceasefire after the fall of Aleppo, in a process that conspicuously does not include the United States.

Putin said in televised comments that Damascus and the "main forces of the armed opposition" had inked the truce agreement and a document expressing a readiness to start peace talks.

"Several hours ago, the event occurred that we have not only been waiting for but been working so much to hasten," Putin said in a meeting with his defence and foreign ministers.

After the Kremlin announcement, Syria's army said it would halt all military operations from midnight, and the opposition National Coalition also said it backed the truce.

Putin also said he would reduce Moscow's military contingent in Syria, which has been flying a bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad since 2015.

The Kremlin strongman, however, said that Russia would continue to fight "terrorism" in the war-torn country and maintain its support for the government in Damascus.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the seven opposition groups, including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham, that have signed up to the agreements after months of talks comprise some 62,000 fighters and control a large portion of territory in central and northern Syria.

He warned that any groups that did not abide by the ceasefire would be considered "terrorists" alongside the Islamic State group and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fateh al-Sham Front.

Putin's announcement of the deal came hours after Turkey's foreign minister said the potential truce could start by New Year.

The nationwide ceasefire follows the deal brokered by Turkey and Russia for Aleppo which allowed the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians.

Astana talks

Moscow and Ankara are now pushing for peace talks between Damascus and the rebels to start soon in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana.

"Now we need to do everything for these agreements to come into force, for them to work, so that the negotiating teams that have been or are being formed promptly and as soon as possible arrive in Astana," Putin said.

Russia and Turkey have both said that the peace talks they will supervise are meant to supplement UN-backed peace efforts, rather than replace them entirely.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia, Turkey and Iran were currently organising for the talks to begin in Astana and pressing for other key international players to get involved.

Lavrov said Moscow would invite Egypt before trying to attract other regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Jordan.

In a clear snub to US President Barack Obama, Russia's top diplomat said Moscow would look to get the team of President-elect Donald Trump in the mix when he takes power next month.

Fighting continues

As its cooperation tightened with Moscow, Turkey stood conspicuously quiet as the regime, supported by Russia, took control last week of Aleppo, handing the rebels their biggest defeat in the civil war so far.

The victory was also a boost for Putin, who sent forces to Syria last year to bolster Assad in an unprecedented intervention.

Syria's conflict began with a 2011 uprising against Assad but quickly morphed into a complicated civil war that has now killed more than 310,000 people and forced millions more from their homes.

The conflict continued to rage as civilians were killed in regime strikes on Thursday, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP in Beirut.

The observatory said At least 15 civilians, including six children, were killed on Thursday in airstrikes and artillery fire on rebel-held territory near Syria's capital Damascus.
Istanbul: Russian warplanes have for the first time bombed jihadist targets around the town of Al-Bab in Syria held by Islamic State (IS) extremists but surrounded by Turkish forces, a report said on Thursday.

The Dogan news agency, citing military sources, said the air strikes took place yesterday. The report was published after the announcement of a deal brokered by Turkey and Russia for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria.

There was no official confirmation of the report. The agency did not specify if the strikes were coordinated with Turkey.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "strikes suspected to be Russian" had been hitting Al-Bab for the last two days "in support of the Turkish operation".

There was no comment from the Russian army.

Turkey has for four months pressed an incursion against IS jihadists inside Syria in support of pro-Ankara fighters.

But they have faced stiffening resistance in the battle to take Al-Bab, taking increasing casualties.

Turkey has in the last days stepped up criticism of US-led anti-IS coalition forces for failing to back the Turkish incursion inside Syria with air support.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who this week accused Washington of backing IS jihadists, on Thursday again attacked the US for its "support" for terror organizations in Syria.
The Observatory said five civilians including a baby were killed in regime rocket fire overnight in the south of Daraa city. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP)

Beirut: At least 15 civilians, including six children, were killed on Thursday in air strikes and artillery fire on rebel-held territory near Syria's capital Damascus, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was not immediately possible to determine where the strikes on the Eastern Ghouta region were carried out by the Syrian regime or its ally Russia.

Eastern Ghouta has long been a rebel stronghold, and is regularly targeted by government air strikes and artillery fire.

The Observatory, a Britain-based monitor, reported air strikes and artillery fire on the towns of Douma, Harasta, Arbin, Zamalka and Saqba in the region.

An AFP correspondent in Eastern Ghouta said warplanes had been overheard since the early hours of the morning.

Opposition fighters meanwhile launched a barrage of rockets at Damascus, the Observatory and an AFP correspondent in the capital said.

Syrian state television reported seven people were wounded in the fire.

Elsewhere, the Observatory said five civilians including a baby were killed in regime rocket fire overnight in the south of Daraa city.

The violence came ahead of an announcement Thursday by Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Syrian government and rebels had signed a ceasefire deal and agreed to start peace talks.

More than 310,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011.
Turkish journalist Ahmet Sik (C) had been detained over tweets about the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), as well as articles for the Cumhuriyet opposition daily that criticised the Turkish secret services. (Photo: AFP)

Istanbul: Turkish authorities on Thursday detained a prize-winning journalist over a succession of tweets and articles for an opposition daily, state media said, as alarm grows over press freedom in the country.

Ahmet Sik was detained on accusations of making "terror propaganda" and denigrating the Turkish Republic, the judicial authorities and police, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.

It said he had been detained over tweets about the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), as well as articles for the Cumhuriyet opposition daily that criticised the Turkish secret services.

The author of several books, Sik is one of the best-known journalists in the country and had already endured a lengthy spell in jail from 2011-2012. He has won numerous awards, including the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 2014.

Sik's books include notably one of the few full-scale investigations into the group of Fethullah Gulen, the US-based cleric who Ankara blames for the July 15 failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The book, called "The Imam's Army" and published in 2011, examines how Gulen supporters infiltrated the Turkish bureaucracy and built up an alliance with the ruling party that has now collapsed.

"I am being detained. I am being taken to prosecutors because of a tweet," he wrote in a final tweet Thursday morning.

Sik had previously been imprisoned for 375 days during the investigation into the so-called Ergenekon alleged coup plot against the government. That case was strongly supported by Gulen. But the convictions were quashed and suspects released amid accusations Gulen had perverted the process.

Activists worry of a drastically worsening climate for journalists in Turkey, in particular amid the state of emergency imposed in the wake of the coup.

According to the P24 Platform for Independent Journalism, 118 journalists have been arrested in the state of emergency, 80 of them within the coup probe.
Raqqa: One of Islamic State's top commanders in Syria has been killed in a US-led coalition air strike, the coalition's spokesman said on Thursday, corroborating an earlier report.

Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti, a member of Islamic State's war committee, was killed on Monday by the Tabqa Dam, a strategic objective in northern Syria near Raqqa city, the jihadists' main stronghold in the country, the spokesman said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, had reported on Tuesday his probable death in combat as the militants sought to stave off an advance towards the dam by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Islamic State has yet to confirm Kuwaiti's death.

Kuwaiti was involved in Islamic State's retaking of the ancient city of Palmyra earlier in December and then went to Tabqa to help shore up the jihadists' defences against the SDF, the coalition said.

"Abu Jandal was involved in the use of suicide vehicles, IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and chemical weapons against the SDF...his death will degrade ISIL's ability to defend Raqqa and launch external operations against the West," the statement said.

The SDF alliance includes the Kurdish YPG militia and is supported by US-led coalition air strikes in northern Syria in its fight against Islamic State.
Karachi: A mother of four in Pakistan was allegedly killed by her brother on Thursday in a suspected honour killing in the southern Sindh province, police said.

Ghulam Hussain Gopang, the brother of the woman, was arrested following the incident in the Loung Gopang village near Kot Diji of Khairpur district, they said.

Gopang confessed to have murdered his sister, saying he was motivated to commit the crime on the suspicion that his sister was in an illicit relationship with a local man, police said.

The woman's husband, however, did not comment on his wife's murder, the Dawn reported.

Every year, hundreds of women are killed in Pakistan by their male relatives for "dishonouring" the family.

In July, a high-profile murder of social media starlet Qandeel Baloch allegedly by her brother over "honour" prompted the government to pass a bill in the parliament invoking stronger punishments for those involved in such killings.
Taipei: Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen will pass through the United States when she visits Latin America next month, the Taiwan Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, angering China which urged the United States to block any such stopover.

China is deeply suspicious of Tsai, who it thinks wants to push for the formal independence of Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing regards as a renegade province, ineligible for state-to-state relations.

Details of the stopovers will be disclosed before the end of this week, the ministry said.

China said Tsai's intentions were clear and urged the United States not to let her in.

"We hope the U.S. can abide by the 'one China' policy...and not let her pass through their border, not give any false signals to Taiwan independence forces, and through concrete actions safeguard overall U.S. China relations and peace and stability in the Taiwan strait," Hua Chunying, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, told a briefing in Beijing.

The transit details are being closely watched as Taiwan media has speculated Tsai will seek to meet President-elect Donald Trump's transition team ahead of his January 20 inauguration.

Trump angered China when he spoke to Tsai this month in a break with decades of precedent and cast doubt on his incoming administration's commitment to Beijing's "one China" policy.

The United States, which switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, has acknowledged the Chinese position that there is only "one China" and that Taiwan is part of it.

China's sole aircraft carrier, accompanied by several warships, sailed close to Taiwan this week, which followed on from air force exercises also close to Taiwan.

Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun repeated that the drills were routine, but added that such drills did have Taiwan in mind.

"The military's holding of exercises is beneficial to raising our ability to oppose Taiwan independence and protecting the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and beneficial to protecting the peaceful development of cross-Taiwan Strait relations and peace and stability there," he told reporters.

Tsai's office earlier this month said she would visit Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador in that order. She will leave Taiwan on Jan. 7 and return on Jan. 15.

Taiwan had as many as 30 diplomatic allies in the mid-1990s, but now has formal relations with just 21, mostly smaller and poorer nations in Latin America and the Pacific and including the Vatican.

The American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto embassy of the United States, had no immediate comment on Tsai's itinerary.
Islamabad: No security or intelligence agency came to his rescue during his captivity, said Shahbaz Taseer, the son of slain Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer.

Shahbaz told the Dawn that he managed to escape from his militant captors with god's blessings months after his flamboyant father Salman was assassinated for siding with a blasphemy convict.

Shahbaz was abducted from Lahore on August 25, 2011 by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) when he was on his way to his office. He was rescued in March this year after being held captive for almost five years.

He said that the only politician who contacted him was Bilawal Bhutto of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), while all others distanced themselves from the Taseer family, citing that it would be controversial to be seen in their company.

"The security agencies were only involved in bringing me back from that hotel in Kuchlak near Quetta, where I reached after running away from my captors," he said.
Lala Del Souz was gunned down at about 9am in the Haji Gulistan Kochi Haman area of the city, Tolo News reported. (Photo: Representational Image)

Kabul: The head of the Sikh community in Afghanistan's restive Kunduz city was shot dead by unknown gunmen on Thursday, the second such incident within three months, triggering fear among the minority group members.

Lala Del Souz was gunned down at about 9am in the Haji Gulistan Kochi Haman area of the city, Tolo News reported.

He was reportedly on his way to his shop when the shooting occurred. He died from his injuries while being taken to hospital, the report said.

According to relatives of the deceased, he had been shot five years ago but survived the attack.

Kunduz security chief Masoum Stanikzai confirmed the incident and said police have arrested three suspects. "Investigations will however continue," he said.

Del Souz's uncle, Prem, said the deceased had been well-liked and had no enemies.

The shooting, meanwhile, sparked an outcry on social media with hundreds of people condemning the incident and sending condolences to his family.

Prem, however, called on government to thoroughly investigate the incident and make sure those responsible are brought to justice. He said if this does not happen, the few remaining Sikhs will sell up and leave the province.

Following the collapse of Kunduz to Taliban, many Sikhs left the province. Currently only three families are still there, the report said.

Sikhs have lived in Kunduz for over thirty years and at one time there were as many as 40 families in the area.

After the collapse of Kunduz city last year, Del Souz apparently moved his family to India. He stayed on in Kunduz and lived with his uncle.

Close to 99 per cent of Hindu and Sikh in Afghanistan have left the country over the past three decades.

Sikh and Hindu population numbered 220,000 in the 1980's. It is now estimated that only 1,350 Hindus and Sikhs remain in the country, the report said.

Hindus and Sikhs suffered huge setbacks after the Taliban regime collapsed in 2001. This forced many of them to leave rural areas and move to Kabul in order to make a living.

In October, a Sikh man was abducted from his home and gunned down by suspected militants in Afghanistan's restive Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan.

Sardar Rawail Singh, who lived in Jalalabad, was abducted from his house by militants wearing military fatigues and killed in Khalis Famil area.
Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday said it wants to "amicably" resolve all outstanding issues, including Kashmir, with India even as it underlined that no country can unilaterally revoke the Indus Waters Treaty.

Kashmir dispute is the "bone of contention" between Pakistan and India, Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said at the weekly news briefing here as he appealed to the international community to "play its due role" in resolving the longstanding issue.

"We want to amicably resolve all outstanding issues including Kashmir with India," he added.

In his opening remarks during the briefing, which was this year's last, Zakaria said: "We condemn unabated violation of UNSC Resolutions on Kashmir by India."

Amid reports India reviewed the Indus Waters Treaty following the Uri terror attack, he said the accord cannot be altered or suspended unilaterally.

No country can abrogate the treaty, he said, adding Pakistan is keeping an eye on the evolving situation and it would follow its strategy in case of any violation of the historic accord.

"We will assess India's activities within the framework of the Indus Waters Treaty," he was quoted as saying by the Radio Pakistan.

Pointing out that there is an arbitration mechanism to resolve the dispute regarding implementation of the treaty, he said many disputes related to it were resolved amicably in the past.
Four militants were shot dead after they attacked the ruling Communist Party of China's office in restive Xinjiang province, official media reported, one of the deadliest terror incidents reported in months.





A car carrying the attackers crashed into the yard of the office building of the local Communist Party committee in Karakax county and "detonated an explosive device", killing one person and injuring three others, the news portal of the Xinjiang government said.



Police shot and killed the four attackers, Hong Kong based South China Morning Post quoted the report as saying.



Social order had been restored, the portal report said, adding without identifying the attackers.



The attack was reported after several months of lull in terrorist violence in the province where the Uyghur Muslims were restive for years over the settlements Han Chinese in the province, bordering Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Afghanistan.



China has been blaming separatist outfit, East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), for the violent attacks in the province and the rest of the country.



ETIM was blamed for suicide blast in the Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan in September this year in which one person was killed and five others injured.



In November 2015, 28 suspected militants were killed over the course of a 56-day manhunt following an attack on a colliery in Aksu two months earlier that left 16 people dead.



In March 2014, 31 people were knifed to death at a train station in Kunming, in southwestern China, with four attackers killed.



Xinjiang had generally been quiet in 2016 with no major reported attacks or other violent incidents.


Slain journalist Rajdeo Ranjan's wife Asha Ranjan has lodged an FIR alleging threats received asking her to back out from pursuing a case against RJD strongman and former Siwan MP Mohammad Shahabuddin in connection with the killing of her husband who was a working with a prominent vernacular newspaper.





Rajdeo, who was the Siwan bureau chief of the newspaper, was shot dead on May 13 at a busy fruit market near Siwan railway station.



Mufassil police station SHO Vinay Kumar Singh said Asha filed the FIR yesterday where she alleged receiving a phone call from Dubai, threatening her to withdraw the case against Shahabuddin in the Supreme Court in connection with the killing of her husband.



She stated in the FIR, "I got a call from +671 at 12:28 am (on the intervening night of December 26-27). The caller asked me if I knew Shahabuddin. Once I replied in the affirmative, he said a lot of drama has been done and now, I should withdraw the case filed in the Supreme Court against Shahabuddin.



"I should stop pursuing the case failing which they (Shahabuddin's henchmen) would chop us into pieces, so that it would be difficult for anyone to recognise us. I am terrified. Please help me as we have repeatedly been getting threat calls. Even the security provided to our family is only on paper."



The widow of the scribe had moved the apex court seeking transfer of the probe and trial of her husband's murder case to Delhi from Siwan as she feared that a free-and-fair trial against Shahabuddin was not possible if he was lodged in a Bihar jail.

Shahabuddin is currently lodged in Siwan jail after the apex court had, on September 30, cancelled his bail after hearing the two petitions filed by the Bihar government and lawyer Prashant Bhushan on behalf of the slain scribe's family.



The Bihar government had, on May 16, within three days of the murder, handed over the probe to the central agency.
CBI has registered an FIR in connection with alleged irregularities in the appointment of Dr Nikunj Aggarwal, a senior resident, as OSD to Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain.





The agency registered the case on the basis of a complaint from Delhi government's Deputy Secretary Vigilance K S Meena. The complaint is now the part of the FIR.



The FIR is against Anup Mohta, Director, Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalya, and Aggarwal, a senior resident (SR) at the hospital, for alleged criminal conspiracy and under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.



BJP leader Vijender Gupta has alleged that Aggarwal is the son-in-law of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's sister-in-law.



In its complaint, the vigilance department has claimed Aggarwal was appointed as Senior Resident (Ortho) in Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalya on ad hoc basis on August 10, 2015 even though there was no proposal to engage an SR and no such post was available.



"Also no advertisement was issued by the hospital for the selection of Dr Nikunj Aggarwal as SR. No walk-in interview was conducted for the purpose," it alleged.



Aggarwal had made a handwritten application on a "plain paper" for appointment in the hospital on August 6, 2015 and within four days his appointment was approved without following any procedure, the complaint alleged.



"Within few days of appointment of Aggarwal, his services were requisitioned for appointment as OSD to Minister of Health, GNCTD. As per the Residency Scheme, the resident doctors are engaged for working in hospitals, and not for other duties," it alleged.



It was alleged in the complaint that Aggarwal was nominated for a training programme at IIM Ahmedabad and his name was also proposed for being in the official delegation for a trip to Beijing which was not as per the residency norms.



"As per residency scheme, there is, however, no provision for participation in such type of trainings and re-imbursement of registration fee/TA/DA for the purpose," it said.



Aggarwal continued on his position beyond August 3, 2016 even as the post against which he was appointed was filled up on regular basis, it said.



The file relating to appointment of Aggarwal was submitted by the Health Ministry to the Lt Governor after the directions from his office to submit all files which require his approval.



Meanwhile, a complaint was also received seeking a CBI inquiry on which approval was granted by the office of the Lt Governor.



"The aforesaid acts and omission on part of Dr Anoop Mohta, Director...Dr Nikunj Aggarwal...and other unknown officials of GNCT Delhi disclose commission of offence under section 120-B and Section 12(2) read with Section 13 (1)(d) of the PC Act," the FIR alleged.


BJP today warned Congress of legal action over its "baseless and untrue" allegations, including that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its chief Amit Shah have links with Gujarat businessman Mahesh Shah, who is being probed for declaring unaccounted income of Rs 13,860 crore.





Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also rejected Congress' charge against Amit Shah, who is one of the directors in a Gujarat bank in which deposits of over Rs 500 crore were made and asserted that the bank has over 200 branches and it will give explanation about the matter.



In a reference to Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's attack on Modi and BJP during his address at the party's 132nd foundation day, he told reporters that the party leaders and spokespersons behave like "children" and "today's Congress does not represent even a grain of its 132 year's heritage".



"We want to make it clear that our Prime Minister and party president have no links whatsoever with the person by the name of Mahesh Sharma, against whom action is going on. If Congress has any proof, it should talk about it. Otherwise, we will consider taking legal action under the law dealing with levelling of baseless allegations," the Law Minister said.



Prasad was accompanied by Power Minister Piyush Goyal, who is also the party's treasurer, as they hit out at the opposition party.



It has become the second nature of Congress to level "untrue and baseless" allegation, he said.



Attacking it, Prasad said it was "rattled" by Modi's continuous attack on those linked with black money and corruption and it thinks that its attack on him will "weaken" his fight. Action has been taken against those linked to BJP, he said, citing a case in Madhya Pradesh.



"Congress is the biggest patron of the corrupt and corruption. If it thinks that its attack will have any impact on the government, it is wrong. The government will remain unfazed and continue to act against black money and corruption," he said.



The corrupt and those with black money have long been patronised by Congress, he alleged, adding that they now "cry" before its leadership to save them from the government's action.



"I want to ask Congress chief Sonia Gandhi if the childish behaviour of her son and more childish conduct of its spokespersons is being done at her behest," he asked.



Congress has learnt no lessons from its successive poll defeats while BJP has won everywhere after demonetisation, Prasad claimed, adding that its attack on the government showed its "affection for the corrupt and corruption".

He also targeted West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over communal violence in Dhulagarh, alleging that "attempts of massacre" are being made and police is not taking action.



"This is height of the politics of appeasement," he said.

"I want to ask those intellectuals, who cried over 2002 riots in Gujarat and then intolerant India, that when are they going to Kolkata," he said sarcastically. BJP has claimed that Hindus have been targeted in the violence.



Prasad, who is also IT Minister, said digital payments have gone up by anywhere between 300 per cent and 1500 per cent following demonetisation which, he and Goyal said, have been a "big success".



Over 1.15 crore people against the target of 80 lakh have been trained in digital transactions, he claimed.



The Law Minister also defended promulgation of ordinances by the government, saying it was left with no option after the opposition did not allow Parliament to function in the last session.



Goyal also refuted the allegations that crores of rupees have been sent to BJP office in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, demanding that proof be given and warning of legal action.



"We are getting indication for an historic support for BJP in UP," he said, claiming that people have supported note ban despite hardships. "Things are fast returning to normalcy," he said.


The parents of the December 16 gangrape victim today voiced their displeasure in no uncertain terms with the government naming the "one-stop" crisis centres for women 'Sakhi' instead of Nirbhaya, alleging it was a bid to erase the memory of their daughter from public discourse.





"Initially, the Women and Child Development Ministry had announced setting up one-stop crisis centres across the country and name them 'Nirbhaya centres'. But as the project rolled out, they named them 'Sakhi'. It's not done!" said Asha Devi, mother of the victim.



"What happened with my daughter had sent a message to the society and government that crimes against women has crossed all boundaries and that we need to wake up and act. How can you just forget her," she asked the government.



Nirbhaya centres, or Sakhi centres, are a one-stop crisis centre for women in distress and are funded by Union government. They are to be set up in all 640 districts and 20 additional locations across the country.



The programme to launch such centres was conceived as a tribute to the victim of the December 16, 2012 gang-rape case.



But Asha Devi alleged the government was trying to wipe off the account of their daughter's sufferings. "Government and society can forget her, but how can I? Her face flashes before my eyes the moment I close them, and then I look deeper in her eyes and I could feel the pain she endured on that fateful night and I wake up with a soul-shattering chill."



The victim's father, Badri Singh Pandey, rued that the Nirbhaya Fund, a corpus announced by Union government in 2013 budget, was not being "properly utilised" and that there still were several dark spots in the city, which needed to be lit.



"A substantial amount of Rs 500 crore from the Nirbhaya Fund is being used on installing CCTV cameras at railway stations, but that should have been done by the Railways. Tell me, how many victims of rape have been benefited by the fund," he said.



The parents visited 'Gandhi Samadhi' today to remember their 23-year-old daughter, who died on December 29, 2012, at a hospital in Singapore where she was airlifted from Delhi.

Four of her six rapists have been lodged in jail as they have appealed against their death penalty. One committed suicide and another, a juvenile at the time of the crime, was released after spending three years at a correctional home.



According to Delhi Police statistics, 2,199 rape cases were registered in the capital in 2015 and till November 30 this year, 1,981 cases of rape have been reported.



As per National Crime Records Bureau, Delhi has highest rate of crimes against women among all cities in India. Last year, the total number of cases of crime against women in Delhi was 17,104.
A trip to Mount Kailash and the adjoining Mansarovar Lake requires a lot of planning, considering the challenges like the extreme cold, rugged terrain, dangerous trekking trails and the depleted oxygen levels at high altitudes. Kailash embodies all the experiences of travail and adventure. This yatra (journey) that takes place only during a few months of the year is only for physically fit people.





In May, my wife and I decided to make the trip. Reading about the hostile weather at such high altitudes, we were a little nervous as to whether we were fit enough for this but when we spoke to people who had done it earlier, we became confident that it was more a question of will and determination.



As we hopped from Kathmandu to Nepalgunj and onwards to Simikot and Hilsa on the Tibetan border by small planes and helicopters, flying over the Himalayas, the scenery was simply mesmerising. At Hilsa, we completed the visa formalities, aided by the pre-arranged local travel agents. We reached the Tibetan border town of Taklakot (the Chinese name is Purang). The trek to Mansarovar Lake by chartered buses took about an hour and a half after an overnight stay at Taklakot. The view of the mountains seemed breathtaking and we were on the edge of our seats to get the first glimpse of Mount Kailash. Once you enter Tibet as a group, it is the sherpas who take care of you. They cook for you, come with you and guide you.



By then, we were at an altitude of 15,000 feet, protected with several layers of winter clothing. One of the important requirements is to get acclimatised as you travel at very high altitudes. In addition, one would need to take medicine everyday once after meals to avoid high-altitude sickness.



We first reached the salty Rakshasthal Lake. There are many legends surrounding this lake. The demon king Ravana of Ramayana is supposed to have done penance here. Lake Mansarovar is connected to this lake but its water is fresh and potable which is a wonder. It is the highest freshwater lake in the world at 15,000 feet.



Many of the mighty rivers like Indus and Brahmaputra take their origin here. As part of the trip, we circumambulated the lake which took about three hours at a circumference of 90 km.



We finally halted at Lake Mansarovar for a holy dip. It was noon and we were lucky to get good sunshine. The waters were icy cold but the dip had to be completed.



There is a moment when the mind conquers the body to go for the dip. The water is pristine and the feeling is overwhelming. We were a group of 60 people and we performed a group puja before we retired for an overnight stay.



The lake abounds with tales of the devas including Shiva and Shakti descending from the sky to the lakes surface in the middle of the night like sparkling lights and taking off again after a dip. The next day we started our journey to the Dachan camp from where one begins the parikrama. The parikrama involves 52 km of arduous trekking around the Kailash clockwise at altitudes of 16,000 feet and above, which takes about three days and two nights of halt at Dirapuk and Zutulpuk camps on the way.



The first night camp is about 18 km from the base camp, out of which the first six km is by vehicle upto a point called Yamadwar, an ironical name indeed. At this point, one gets an option of either walking or riding a pony. One also needs a porter to carry their bag. The walk to Dirapuk camp was fairly smooth and it took about four hours to reach. Though one must be prepared for minimal facilities and some inconvenience, the sherpas never fail in their duties to take care of you. They provide you with good food and tea at regular intervals.



It was at Dirapuk that we got to see the divine spectacle. At sunrise, when the first rays of the sun hit the snow-clad peak, the mountain looked like it turned into gold. The sight was unbelievable.



However, it is here that one needs to take a call on whether to proceed further to complete the parikrama or not. Most of the people decided to return to the base camp at Dachan as the second day trip was the toughest part. It involved a climb upto 19,000 feet and then down to 16,000 ft covering a distance of 22 km.



The trek is quite tough but it is worth it, if you can make it. You get to experience the beautiful view of the mountains and Gowrikund Lake at a valley 1,000 feet below. The water of the lake is supposed to possess medicinal properties and cure several ailments. After the halt at Zutulpuk for the night, we were supposed to cover the remaining distance of 12 km. However, in our trip, we covered the distance on the second day itself to make up for the delay of one day on the way.



At last, at about 6 km from the base camp, we had a vehicle waiting to take us back. We reached Kathmandu and caught the flight to New Delhi the next day. We visited the famous Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu before departure.



Overall, Kailash is a once in a lifetime trip which gives one a feeling of fulfilment. There are people who have done the trip many times.



How to get there

Mount Kailash is located in Tibet and one needs a visa to travel which is obtainable through regular channels. The routes are closed from October to April. there are many travel agencies operating Kailash tours from many parts of India, which one can avail.



We landed in Kathmandu via Delhi. One flies to Kathmandu and then travels across Nepal to the Tibetan border by road or flight.



Places to stay

We stayed in reasonably priced hotels in Taklakot, Nepalgunj and Kathmandu.



The trip is expensive. Additional costs of having a pony or porter which alone cost Rs 30,000 for three days of circumambulation.



The preparation for the trip involved regular walking and trekking exercises using hiking boots, at least for three months leading up to the journey.





M V Subramanian

(The author can be contacted on mvsub2k7@gmail.com)
The West Bengal government today said it has taken strict actions against those involved in the Dhulagarh riots in Howrah district and also started compensating the affected.





A top official at the state secretariat said the government has already started compensating the families affected by the violence which rocked the district earlier this month.



"Families in Dhulagarh which have been affected will be compensated. We have also decided to rebuild the houses damaged during the riots," the officials said today.



Asked if persons involved in the riots were booked, the official said, "The state government has already taken strict action in the matter and arrests have been made... Law will take its own course."



Sources in the district police said people are wary of returning to their homes and thus have to remain homeless, barely 20 km from the state secretariat. Earlier, delegations of the BJP, CPI(M) and Congress were stopped from visiting the troubled areas.



Meanwhile, top officials at the state home department said SP Howrah (Rural) Sabyasachi Raman Mishra was transferred in the wake of violence in less than a fortnight of his appointment.
Mangaluru South MLA J R Lobo has called for rejuvenating lakes and ponds by removing their silt.





Speaking after inaugurating the Yuva Lake-2016 conference on the second day of the three-day Lake-2016: Conference on Conservation and Sustainable Management of Ecologically Sensitive Regions in Western Ghats at Alvas College in Moodbidri on Thursday, he said, If existing lakes cant retain water, what is the guarantee new lakes can perpetuate water?



Explaining the Pilikula project for conservation of Western Ghats, the legislator said it was a unique project that focused on recreating and preserving flora and fauna, and endangered species. He called it one of the unique projects not only in India but also in the world.



Lobo stressed the need to follow the traditional methods of water bodies like Madaka and Katta, an inseparable part of agricultural fraternity. We are systematically destroying our mother nature. Till now, we fought world wars for extension of our territory, to protect our trade and commerce, but hereafter future wars will be on water, he predicted.



Prof T V Ramachandra of the Centre for Ecological Sciences at IISc said, Government projects are contractor- and consultancy-driven, and decision makers cant make money with low-cost projects. So, they easily deny our suggestions.



On the Yettinahole project, he said, We had given a detail report to the government stating that the project is economically unviable and would be disastrous. The availability of water at the site is only 9.5 tmcft.



He continued, People in Kolar can get oxygen from Western Ghats through the laid pipeline, but not water. Politicians are fooling the people of Kolar, who are in distress, in the name of the project.



Alvas Education Foundation Managing Trustee Vivek Alva said the Western Ghats were an asset of the entire world and their conservation should be top priority.



In the first technical session on Wetlands and their ecosystem services: Experiences from North, Timo Huttula from Finland said, The Finnish Environment Institute works on the different aspects of environment such as marine research, sustainable construction and production, freshwater management, etc. He explained the concept of ecosystem and wetlands, and evaluated the studies and training related to construction of wetlands in Finland. Construction of wetlands is one of the most popular water protection measures in Finland, he added.



Speaking on Oxygen depletion in stratified lakes: Why shallow and deep lakes react differently?, Alfred Wuest of Switzerland said the decision to clean up lakes had led to 90% success in Switzerland. In the last 40 years, enormous activities in clean-up of lakes in Switzerland were carried out by the Hydro Biological Laboratory, Kastanienbaum.



At the conference, M D Subhashchandra, M A Khan, Bharath H Aithal and Harish Bhat were felicitated for their contribution towards preserving the environment.
A vast, boxy customs centre acts as a busy island of commerce deep in central China. Government officers race around wooden pallets piled high with boxes  counting, weighing, scanning and approving shipments. Unmarked trucks stretch for more than a mile awaiting the next load headed for Beijing, New York, London and other destinations.





The state-of-the-art facility was built several years ago to serve a single global exporter: Apple, now the worlds most valuable company and one of Chinas largest retailers.



The well-choreographed customs routine is part of a hidden bounty of perks, tax breaks and subsidies in China that supports the worlds biggest iPhone factory, according to confidential government records reviewed by The New York Times, as well as more than 100 interviews with factory workers, logistics handlers, truck drivers, tax specialists and current and former Apple executives. The package of sweeteners and incentives, worth billions of dollars, is central to the production of the iPhone, Apples best-selling and most profitable product.



It all centres on Zhengzhou, a city of 6 million people in an impoverished region of China. Running at full tilt, the factory here, owned and operated by Apples manufacturing partner Foxconn, can produce 5,00,000 iPhones a day. Locals now refer to Zhengzhou as iPhone City. The local government has proved instrumental, doling out more than $1.5 billion to Foxconn.



It helps cover continuing energy and transportation costs for the operation. It recruits workers for the assembly line. It pays bonuses to the factory for meeting export targets. All of it in support of iPhone production. We needed something that could really develop this part of the country, said Li Ziqiang, a Zhengzhou official. Theres an old saying in China: If you build the nest, the birds will come. And now, theyre coming.



The US officials have long decried Chinas support of its state-owned companies, calling the subsidies and other aid an unfair competitive advantage in a global marketplace. But the Zhengzhou operation shows the extent of Chinas effort to entice overseas multinationals to set up production in the country.



Local and provincial officials have courted manufacturers with incentive packages that make it easier and cheaper to do business. Beijing, for decades, has encouraged such efforts at the national level, by developing special economic zones that offer tax breaks to multinationals and exempt them from costly and cumbersome rules.



In this way, China is not unlike other countries, including the US, where states and cities vie for companies. To compete in the era of globalisation, multinationals, which face pressure from shareholders and customers, must seek the best opportunities, increasingly by relying on a highly interconnected supply chain spread across the world. In China, the competition for companies is secretive and rarely exposed to public scrutiny or debate  and it is often focused on manufacturing partners, rather than multinationals themselves.



While Apple came later than many technology companies, it now generates nearly a quarter of its revenues from sales in China and has some of the fattest profit margins in the business. As such, the Zhengzhou operation provides an especially illustrative look at Chinas importance to US technology companies  and specifically iPhone production and, more recently, Apples consumer sales. A 32-gigabyte iPhone 7 costs an estimated $400 to produce. It retails for roughly $649 in the US, with Apple taking a piece of the difference as profit. The result: Apple manages to earn 90% of the profits in smartphone industry worldwide, even though it accounts for only 12% of sales, according to Strategy Analytics, a research firm.



It is difficult to tally the total value of government benefits for the Zhengzhou operation or to determine the exact effect on the profits of Foxconn or Apple. The subsidies arent disclosed by the Chinese government or Foxconn. They arent available in public records. And Apple says it was not a party to Foxconns negotiations. As Chinas largest private employer, Foxconn, a Taiwanese company, has enormous leverage in the negotiations for those incentives. The companys size and scale is connected to Apple. Foxconn is Apples largest supplier. Apple is Foxconns largest customer.



The two companies are intertwined in Zhengzhou. When the factory opened, Apple was Foxconns only customer here. Even now, the US technology company accounts for almost all of the production at the Zhengzhou plant, where about half of the worlds iPhones are made. Apple is also the main exporter using the customs facility here. A growing backlash against globalisation puts Apple and other big multinationals directly in the sightlines of two increasingly combative giants: the US and China.



President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to bring down the full force of the government on US companies that move jobs overseas, threatening punitive tariffs on the goods they sell back at home. Apple has been a frequent target of Trump.



China, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, is growing less tolerant and more suspicious of Western influence, particularly US technology companies and the huge influence they have over Chinese consumers. A state-owned publication called Apple one of the guardian warriors that have seamlessly penetrated China and may pose a threat to national security.



National security review

Regulators shut down Apples iTunes Movies and iBooks Store last spring. The Chinese authorities fined the technology giant for failure to fully pay its taxes. And Apple went through a national security review in China for the iPhone 6, delaying its release in the country.



Apple is now engaged in the corporate version of shuttle diplomacy. In December, the companys chief executive, Timothy Cook, along with other Silicon Valley executives, met with Trump in New York, part of an effort to build bridges with the incoming administration. China and the US are playing a high-stakes game. The iPhone is a collection of intricate parts that are made around the world and assembled in China, spurring employment in many countries; Apple says it supports 2 million jobs in the United States.



As China and the US both brandish a new form of economic nationalism, they risk disrupting the system, without necessarily achieving their goals. And multinationals and their manufacturing partners would face serious financial trade-offs. As the Zhengzhou operation shows, China not only provides a large pool of labour; it also offers incentives that would be difficult to replicate in the United States or anywhere else. The benefits in Zhengzhou flow through the production process for the iPhone, from the factory floor to the retail store.



Foxconn receives a bonus when it meets targets for exports. Those subsidies, according to the government records, totalled $56 million in the first two years of production, when the factory was exclusively dedicated to the iPhone. The Zhengzhou government eliminated corporate taxes and value-added taxes that Foxconn pays for the first five years of production; they are half the usual rate for the next five.



The customs operation is also in a so-called bonded zone, an area that China essentially considers foreign soil, subject to different import and export rules. This setup allows Apple to sell iPhones more easily to Chinese consumers.

International New York Times
Crude oil price started to fall in 2014 after staying above $100 per barrel for three consecutive years. It was because of Saudi Arabias unilateral decision to go after market share.





Since then, there have been some forecasts that prices may not reach the high level of $100 per barrel for several years. Such forecasts were based on what happened soon after a similar oil price fall below single digit in 1986. It was also precipitated by Saudis decision to support their market share. Low oil prices prevailed for over 15 years. It is a million dollar question whether history will repeat this time also.



Even when oil prices fell below $30 in January this year, Saudi Arabia stuck to its policy of maximising oil production. However, as oil prices continued to remain low, and financial conditions started to become precarious, Saudis changed their mind.



They took the lead to convince other 13 members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) to cut production by 1.2 million barrels per day (mbd) from their October level, in November 2016. It was followed by an agreement with 11 non-OPEC members who agreed to reduce their production by another 0.6 mbd.



In the case of Opec, it was Saudi Arabia which took the maximum hit of 0.5 mbd and in the case of non-Opec, Russia took the leadership to reduce by 0.3 mbd. After this historic agreement with non-Opec members, Saudis have expressed their willingness to cut even beyond their quota. Despite such unusual determination to support prices by oil exporters, there are not many in the oil industry who believe that oil exporting countries will adhere to their quotas. Historically, there are no instances of oil exporters complying with their quotas. Most have cheated.



While the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts world oil demand to go up by 1.2 mbd, US Energy Information Administrations (EIA) estimate is 1.6 mbd. A likely drawdown of world oil inventory of about 1 million BD can easily wipe out the current surplus of 300 million barrels. In addition, if Opec and non-Opec succeed in reducing oil production in 2017 by the agreed amount of 1.8 MBD, then supply and demand will not only balance, there can be even a deficit.



Thus, one can easily come up with a scenario under which oil prices can go high. It is difficult to guess how high it can go. History shows that when supplies are limited, prices can easily exceed $100. Only recently, in 2008, it was $147 when there was perceived supply deficit.



One can easily come up with a scenario where there will be surplus crude oil. Nigerias and Libyas actual production capacity is around 3 mbd. But estimated production is only around 2.1 mbd. Thus, if they are able to resolve their civil unrest, their production can increase by 1 mbd. As prices go high, there is every possibility that US shale production may go up by as much as 0.5 mbd quickly.



Finally, Opec and non-Opec quota bursters may easily add another 0.6 mbd. Also oil demand increase may be less than 1.2 mbd. If all these negative factors occur (from the point of view of Opec), then oil prices may actually fall rather than go up.



Oil pundits explain the reason for crude oil price increase during 2003 to 2008 by pointing out at Opec surplus of less than 1 to 2.0 mbd. When we look at the Opec surplus during 2014-16, it is also less than 2 mbd. Still, oil prices fell. This clearly demonstrates that Opec surplus, though an important factor in determining oil prices, by itself does not influence the oil price movement. Also assessing Opec surplus capacity is not an objective exercise. For example, countries like Libya, Nigeria and Iraq where there is civil unrest, it is not easy to estimate their oil production capacities.



Oil futures

Ever since the development of oil futures market of early 1980s, it is not the physical supply/demand of oil which has major influence on oil prices, but the paper barrels. Open interest in oil futures during the last three years is more than 1,600 million barrels when daily world oil demand is only around 98 mbd. Soon after Saudi Arabia declared its policy to defend its market share, though physical supply/demand was reasonably in balance, oil prices started to fall. Within three months, oil prices were below $50 per barrel from a high of $90.



Since it is paper barrels which influence the oil price movement, 2017 oil prices will again be influenced by what oil futures market assess the chances of Opec and non-Opec enforcing the oil production quota. Therefore, if the assessment is that they will succeed, then oil market can easily go above and reach $100. On the other hand, if futures market loses faith in the ability of oil exporters to control the production, it can easily fall below $30 despite the production quota agreement.



No one has the perfect crystal ball to predict how futures market will assess the probability of oil exporters adhering to their quota. If history were to guide us, it is more than likely that oil exporters will fail and oil prices may remain low. However, with the aggressive stand taken by the Saudis to go beyond their agreed reduction, odds of Opec succeeding might have changed from 20% to 60%. Since the current Opec surplus is around 2 mbd, oil prices may easily climb above $70. Futures market is betting for $100 by the end of 2018.



Therefore, the NDA government should make the best use of the current low oil prices to eliminate indefensible LPG subsidy and liberalise the LPG market. The poor could still be helped through direct benefit transfer. Window of opportunity to reduce corruption by eliminating LPG subsidy will not remain open for long.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said demonetisation was not an impulsive decision but a long-term move to force all black money out into the open.





In his first interview after he banned Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, he told a magazine the government had the will, resources and the intelligence to chase black money hoarders.



If you act with clarity and with the purest of motives, the results will be there for anyone to see. Whatever my critics may say, I seek no personal benefit from all this, only the greater good, Modi said.



Countering critics who said tainted cash had returned to the banking system, he said: Black money has all been forced out into the open, whomsoever it may belong to  whether it is corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen or professionals. Counterfeit notes, which our intelligence agencies had reported to be available in high volumes with our enemies, have been instantly neutralised.



He took on Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, saying he pitied the party for its desperation. On the one hand, they say I took this decision for political dividends, and on the other, they say the people have been troubled and are deeply unhappy. How can the two go together? he wondered.



Hinting at the economic benefits of the note ban, Modi said investments would be directed at irrigation and rural housing. Modi gave a peep into the difficulties of getting cash volume figures right. This decision is so huge that even our best economists remain confused in their calculations, he revealed.
Each of the non-Congress Opposition parties like the Left, Janata Dal United and Samajwadi Party spent the year looking for right political partners against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But the search remained elusive.





The search for allies led the CPM to the brink of a vertical division in the party as party leaders clashed over the extent of relationship with the Congress. The JDU, a dominant party in Bihar, started looking outside the state to find new allies when it found its alliance with RJD inadequate.



The Samajwadi Party had to witness a big family feud over taking new partners and articulating its opposition to the Modi government.



The CPM in West Bengal had allied with the Congress to combat its adversary Mamata Banerjee in the last Assembly polls. State party leaders took advantage of an ambiguous resolution of the Party Plenum and went into electoral alliance with the party they were fiercely opposing in Kerala.



This inconsistency had such a fallout that a senior Central Committee member was expelled from the party because she wanted action against West Bengal leaders. The issue is yet to be resolved fully because the state party believes that understanding with Congress is essential to put up a joint front against the Trinamool Congress, which, they claim, is eliminating Left cadres.



Nitish dominates Bihar



In the process of searching allies outside the state, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar spent the entire year in reinventing himself and the party. He lost no time in recognising that he has to take control of the party to take it in the desired direction.



Senior party stalwart Sharad Yadav had to give way to make Nitish president of the Janata Dal United. At least for now, he has retained the existing bureaucracy which has leaders like K C Tyagi and Arun Shrivastava at the helm.



In order to have some new programmes, Nitish Kumar took up anti-liquor campaign and diverted his energy from balancing a difficult ally such as RJD leader Lalu Prasad.



Strategies



Nitish initially combined anti-liquor campaign with anti-RSS campaign (Sharab -mukta Bharat, Sangh Mukta Bharat). Later, he dropped the anti-RSS rhetoric to appear modest in dealing with adversaries. His search for new partners in Uttar Pradesh did not result in a positive outcome.



The chief minister did address some rallies but could rope in only a few people, including RLD leader Ajit Singh, to support his party.
With 2016 bidding adieu, a look back at the past 12 months clearly shows that for West Bengal the Person of the Year was definitely Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.





Not only did she come out victorious for the second time in the face of tough opposition and a variety of roadblocks, the Trinamool Congress chairperson also managed to keep her word of returning land to farmers at Singur, which was caught in a legal tussle for years.



Vocal opponent



With the year nearing its end, Mamata came up with a new crusade after Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared demonetisation of Rs 500 and 1,000 currency notes.



She emerged as the most vocal opponent of Modi and demonetisation, not just in West Bengal but even made sufficient noise in Delhi and elsewhere, with support from other top leaders like AAPs Arvind Kejriwal, RJDs Lalu Prasad Yadav, and even BJP ally Shiv Sena.



In a bid to make her commitment to the cause clear, Mamata even called up CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury, to draw on his partys support, despite the Left party having been her nemesis for decades.



In her trademark rhetoric, she pledged to never call up a CPM leader again after Yechury seemed cold to her overtures.



Mamata sharpened her attack on the prime minister every day since November 8, the day Modi declared demonetisation. She even bridged the gulf between herself and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi.



The year had started well for Mamata with political observers predicting her victory in the state Assembly elections, held in April-May. Things, however, took a turn when the CPM joined hands with the Congress in a bid to combat not just Mamata but also BJP, which has been making significant inroads since the landslide victory of Modi in 2014 general elections.



Things, however, started falling in place for the opposition in the state, who went on the offensive after an under-construction flyover in north Kolkata collapsed on March 31, killing 27 people.



Things turned further tense for Mamata after an online news organisation released videos of a sting operation, showing a number of top Trinamool leaders receiving bribes.



When all seemed to have soured and her chances of holding on to power turned almost into an afterthought, the election results in May surprised even Trinamools staunchest supporters.



If in 2011, Trinamool had come to power with 184 seats, five years later, Mamata had managed to touch 211, or two-thirds majority in the House. The Congress-Left combine won 76 seats and the BJP, just 2, virtually leaving her without any Opposition inside the Assembly.



Landmark victory



If the poll results put her firmly in place for another five years, a Supreme Court verdict in October gave Mamata a sweet deal, when the apex court found land acquisition at Singur during the Left regime in 2006 illegal.



Calling the ruling a landmark victory for her party, Mamata returned land to farmers, well within the deadline of 12 weeks the apex court had set.



For Mamata, life had come full circle as Singur catapulted her to another level of popularity and paved her path to topple a 34-year-old regime.
Congress is ready to contest all the Assembly seats in UP, party leader Randeep Surjewala said on Thursday, as he reacted to SP leader Mulayam Singhs announcement to go it alone.





Addressing a press conference, Surjewala said Congress did not want an alliance with Samajwadi Party. UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav reportedly favoured an alliance with Congress, but Mulayam put an end to speculation by ruling out the possibility.



He also blamed the Modi government for deaths happening as a result of demonetisation, dubbing it the biggest scam in Indias political history.



The poor and the farmers are the major sufferers, the Congress leader said, accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of turning the RBI into reverse bank of India as he changed the rules 134 times.



He also said the Congress would launch a three-phase national agitation on demonetisation and the corruption charges against Prime Minister Narendra Modi from January 6.



In the first phase, Congress would submit a five-point memorandum to all District Collectors, he said. In the second phase on January 9, District Mahila Congress will hold ek thali demonstration, as the Modi government snatched Roti from the poor and Thali from women in the days following demonetisation, Surjewala said.
Poll-bound Punjab may boast of a sizeable presence of Punjabi diaspora settled abroad, yet the participation of Punjabi NRIs in elections has remained dismal.





Until last week, only a minuscule number, just about 275 NRIs, got themselves registered as voters for the upcoming elections in the state.



In the general elections in 2014 when the Modi-led BJP swept the parliamentary polls, only 138 NRIs made it to the electoral rolls. Political parties in Punjab, including the ruling SAD-BJP combine and the Congress, and now even the AAP, are relying heavily on the Punjabi diaspora, not only for funds but also on the influence they tend to exert back home in their villages, especially in NRI-dominated Doaba region.



Principal political parties in the fray have active overseas offices and this year saw prominent faces from all political parties leading delegations to the US, Canada, Europe and the Middle East to garner support.



Officials feel one of the prime reasons for the low registration of NRIs in the electoral rolls is because postal ballots are not available for NRIs to cast their votes.



NRIs have often rued the fact that the facility of postal ballot is available for armed forces, central government employees etc, but not for them. Travelling all the way to Punjab to vote may be a difficult choice to make, many feel.



In the 2012 Assembly elections in the state, the number of NRIs registered in electoral rolls was a dismal 90. Ahead of elections, the Punjab AAP has launched a Chalo Punjab campaign for NRIs.



Disillusionment among NRIs is also said to be a reason for the low participation in polls. Many overseas groups, like the North-American Punjabi Association based in the US, feel promises made by the ruling dispensation to NRIs have not been fully accomplished, which is why a large section of this segment appears disinterested in electoral politics in Punjab.



For political parties in Punjab, apart from overseas funding, what really matters is the Punjabi diasporas support in terms of spreading goodwill and seeking votes for their candidates.



A source close to Congress candidate from Taran Taran in Punjab talking to DH said several NRIs from the US and Canada are expected to descend upon the constituency in the run-up to the polls to support the nominee.
Expressing serious doubts over the mystery shrouding the death of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa, the Madras High Court on Thursday asked why her body cannot be exhumed.





There was speculation and rumours over Jayalalithaas health after she was admitted to hospital on September 22 following fever and dehydration. Even her demise on December 5 following a cardiac arrest raised doubts since the hospital authorities had said she was ready to be discharged.



A petition filed by AIADMK cadre P J Joseph had sought the court to constitute a commission headed by a retired Supreme Court judge to investigate the matter.



Mysterious death



When the PIL came up for hearing, the vacation bench comprising Justice S Vaidyanathan and Justice Parthiban ordered notices to the Centre and the state government for not disclosing any information on the mysterious death.



They also sought to know whether her body should be exhumed to know the truth. Why cant we order exhumation of the body, the judges asked.



The bench observed that though the public wanted to know the details related to Jayalalithaas hospitalisation, the authorities concerned did not divulge any information, for reasons best known to them.



The bench pointed out that as per the media reports, when Jayalalithaa was in the hospital, she conducted official meetings, signed papers, ate and issued official orders.



Then suddenly she was declared dead, the judges said expressing unhappiness over the secrecy maintained. Even we have doubts, they said.



Stating that neither any revenue division officer had seen her body nor was any health report given, the bench asked why no proof was given after Jayalalithaas death.



The petition was filed based on a common law determined by the Calcutta High Court in 1999, directing the Constitution of a one-man commission chaired by a retired apex court judge to probe the death of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.



The court also asked whether the guidelines (on the death of a person having a large public following) given in the case of Bose were followed in Jayalalithaas case.



After issuing notices to the authorities concerned, the judges adjourned the matter to January 9 and referred the PIL to the chief justice for listing before an appropriate bench.
The High Court of Karnataka on Thursday barred the release of S C Jayachandra, the suspended chief project officer of the State Highway Development Project, till January 2, 2017.





The engineer, who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate, continues to be in judicial custody. The vacation bench of the high court on December 22 had barred Jayachandras release till December 29 (Thursday). Justice John Michael D'cunha who heard the case on Thursday, extended the order and directed the prison authorities not to release Jayachandra till January 2.



The ED officials had approached the HC questioning the order of the lower court to grant bail to Jayachandra. Income Tax officials on November 30 found Rs 5 lakh in new Rs 2,000 denomination notes besides other unaccounted-for wealth in his house.



Following this, ED officials arrested him in a money-laundering case. The CBI too arrested him later. The Anti-Corruption Bureau of the state too has registered a case against Jayachandra.
Outgoing Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung on Thursday approved a CBI probe into the appointment of Health Minister Satyendar Jains daughter Soumya as adviser to the Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics.





The move signals that Jung has some unfinished agenda before handing over charge to Anil Baijal on Saturday. Sources said Jung, who had had a running tussle with the AAP government, may take some more assertive decisions on the last day in office.



An unfazed Jain dismissed charges of nepotism. I am proud that my daughter served the poor. She did not take even one rupee as salary, he said. The minister maintained that his daughter was made in-charge of the clinics on an honorary basis.



She was also designated as adviser to the health secretary-cum-mission director of the National Health Mission. Soumya resigned in July after a political storm over her appointment.



Jung is expected to send his recommendation to the Centre on the V K Shunglu Committee report which detected many legally infirm decisions taken by the Kejriwal government before August 4, when the Delhi High Court upheld the LGs primacy in administrative decisions in the Union Territory, sources said.



His recommendation for the CBI probe into Soumyas hiring coincided with the probe agency registering an FIR to investigate irregularities in the appointment of Nikunj Aggarwal as officer on special duty to Jain.



Leader of the Opposition Vijender Gupta of the BJP demanded the CBI to speedily probe the appointment of Aggarwal and 10,000 other employees hired by the AAP government in violation of rules.
Nayanthara In For Another Women Centric Flick
Qualcomm plans to challenge this decision in Seoul High Court

Qualcomm, the smartphone chipmaker, has been fined 1.03 trillion won (approximately $854 million) by South Korea's antitrust regulator for unfair business practices. The charges have been levied based on unfair practices in patent licensing, and modem chip sales. The fine levied on Qualcomm is the largest ever in South Korea.

On Wednesday, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) found Qualcomm abusing its market position and forcing handset makers to pay royalties for a broader set of patents. The regulator also found Qualcomm restricting its competition by limiting, or refusing to license its patents related to modem chips, to rivals. Qualcomm's shares declined by over 2 percent in trading, on the back of this setback.

"The regulator ordered Qualcomm to negotiate in good faith with rival chipmakers on patent licensing and renegotiate chip supply agreements with handset makers if requested," reports Reuters. The fine comes after the South Korean antitrust regulator started looking into Qualcomm's business practices in 2014. "Foreign companies including Apple, Intel, MediaTek and Huawei expressed their views during the regulator's deliberation process, KFTC Secretary General Shin Young-son told a media briefing in the country's administrative capital."

In February 2015, Qualcomm faced similar antitrust rulings in China, which forced the company to pay $979 million in fine. Qualcomm has also been criticised by the European Union for abusing its market dominance.

The company recently announced its $38 billion purchase of NXP Semiconductors, a move seen by the industry as a way to bring down its reliance on smartphone chip supply. With NXP, Qualcomm can now target growing segments like automotive chips.

While Qualcomm plans to challenge this decision in Seoul High Court, it will take years to arrive at a decision. The KFTC ruling, meanwhile, could also set precedent for other regulators to start their own investigations, which can become a huge setback for the company.
Behind every big smartphone is an epic legal battle. And its about time we had a good one. With stagnation in smartphone innovation, companies seem to be settling more lawsuits than filing them. So, its about time we had one, and who better than the ones who started it all.

The great smartphone patent war of 2009 were started by Nokia and Apple, but the companies settled in 2011. Now that Nokia is making its way back to the market, theyre at it again.

The fight at hand

The 2016 battle actually started with third party patent assertion firms suing Apple based on Nokias patents. Apple, in turn, sued these firms, including Acacia Research and Conversant Property Management. According to Apple, the third party entities are conspiring with Nokia to extract unfair royalties.

The Cupertino, California based company argues that since these third parties do not actually produce anything, they are not bound by the terms Nokia is. It has also been implied that these third party entities are targeting Apple. According to The Verge, Acacia has sued Apple 40 times, while Conversant has sued 12 times, both for patents that are owned by Nokia. Apples appeal is against this particular practice.

In retaliation, Nokia has sued Apple directly, in both US and Germany. Nokias suit covers 32 patents, and that includes everything from display to UI, software, Siri, antenna, chipsets and even the video-coding technology. Nokia alleges that Apple is using many more of its technology than what its currently paying the company for.

Through our sustained investment in research and development, Nokia has created or contributed to many of the fundamental technologies used in today's mobile devices, including Apple products. After several years of negotiations trying to reach agreement to cover Apple's use of these patents, we are now taking action to defend our rights, Ikka Rhanasto, head of Nokias patent business, said in a statement.

The lawsuit filed by Nokia in the US, says Apple is infringing on the following patents: U.S. Patent Nos. 7,415,247 (the 247 patent), 9,270,301 (the 301 patent), 8,036,619 (the 619 patent), 6,393,260 (the 260 patent), 6,480,700 (the 700 patent), 7,653,366 (the 366 patent), 6,826,391 (the 391 patent), 9,473,602 (the 602 patent), 6,208,725 (the 725 patent), and 6,701,294 (the 294 patent) (collectively, the Asserted Patents or Patents-in-Suit).

Nokia has accused Apple for infringing on its patents for multiple Apple products, including all its iPhones (from iPhone 3GS to iPhone 7). The iPad Pro and all versions of the iPad Air and Mini are also included. If that wasnt enough, even the Apple Watch and Apple TV are included in Nokias lawsuit, along with the Find My iPhone and Find My iPad services.

While Nokias lawsuit (pdf courtesy ArsTechnica) details how Apple has infringed all of these patents, one example is that of Siri. According to Nokia, Siri and its implementation is infringement on US Patent No. 6,701,294. Similarly, Nokia has detailed various ways in which Apples mobile devices infringe on its patents, ranging from methods to save power in smartphones, to how various circuitry works.

How it began

Nokia and Apples patent wars started back in 2009, when Nokia sued Apple for infringing on 10 patents. Apple countersued Nokia, which then took further action in December 2010. At the time, the disputes between the companies were around Wi-Fi and 3G technologies, and also the touch interfaces and caller IDs.

These battles were settled in 2011, when Apple agreed to pay an undisclosed sum of money and future royalties to Nokia for the use of its patents. This settlement demonstrates Nokia's industry-leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market, said Stephen Elop, the Nokia CEO at the time.

Well, now that Nokia is heading back to the market, albeit by licensing its brand, it seems a juicy patent battle is just what it needs to gain back the consumers attention.
AIM-listed Indus Gas  interim revenue grew and it is expected to increase substantially once additional gas supplies start at its sites in India.

For the six months ended 31 September, adjusted revenue surged 21% to $27.39m, compared to the same period last year.

This resulted in a 58% rise in pre-tax profit to $22.61m, while operating profit climbed 33% to $22.33m.

Chairman Peter Cockburn, said: "Indus has made good progress in the period and continues to see consistent growth in revenue and profits. The revenues are now expected to increase substantially once the additional gas supplies commence."

The company realises $5 per one million British thermal units from its existing gas sales contract and is in discussions for the second contract with Gas Authority of India and RRVUNL, the electricity generation company of the government of Rajasthan, for the additional gas supplies to the 160 megawatt turbine in Ramgarh, which is expected to be finalised in first quarter of 2017.

The gas turbine has been procured by RRVUNL and the gas price needs to be agreed.

Negotiations are also being held for the gas pipeline to evacuate additional gas supply from the non-SGL gas field of the block.

The field development plan of about 2,000 square kilometers outside of the 176 square kilometers from the SGL gas field is under examination by the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons.

A revised field development plan for the SGL area to increase production to about 80 million standard cubic feet of gas per day has recently been submitted to the management committee for approval.

The company has also said that it has made a provision for a notional deferred tax liability of $9.94m, in accordance with international financial reporting standards.
Several Syrian rebel groups agreed to a nationwide ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia and Turkey which was due to come into effect at 2200 GMT.

A nationwide halt to the fighting, which had already claimed the lives of between 300,000 and 400,000 people, was announced by the Syrian Army following an agreement reached in the previous week by Russia, Iran and Turkey to broker a permanent deal to stop the six year-old civil war and on what'next steps' should be adopted in the process, although the details around the latter remained hazy.

Plans were also in motion for Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and the Syrian opposition to meet in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

"The agreements reached are, no doubt, very fragile and they demand special attention and follow-up in order to keep them and develop them. Nevertheless, this is a notable result of our joint work, efforts by the defence and foreign ministries, our partners in the regions," Russian President Vladimir Putin said

Significantly, the announcement had the backing of the Saudi-backed High Committee for Negotiations, whose leader, Riad Hassan Agha, told Al Jazeera: Factions who are with us will comply with the cease-fire.

According to Russias defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, the deal included roughly 62,000 Syrian rebels, although some reports indicated that the negotiating arm of the Free Syrian Army - which was backed by some Western and Persian Gulf countries - had not been contacted.

Other so-called 'rebel' groups were to be excluded outright from the talks, including Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which had links to Daesh, and the al-Nusra front (with links to Al-Qaeda), as well as groups related to them.

The Syrian Kurdish PYD political party would also be excluded from the ceasefire, Osama Abu Zaid, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army said, Reuters, rpeorted.

Other nations including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, and Jordan would be invited to provide their backing to an agreement, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said.

Russia and Turkey were to monitor compliance with the agreement, which some observers said in effect sidelined the United Nations and Washington.

Until recently, Turkey had asked that the current Syrian President step down as part of any agreement.

A new meeting between Syrian rebels, Turkey and Russia was expected to take place on Thursday, sources told Al Jazeera.
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Police charge suspect who fired at police, was shot in exchange

Columbus police identified the gunman wounded by police early Thursday morning as Raymond Richard Hampton, 26, of the University District.
Admiral Sunil Lanba to head Chiefs of Staff Committee

Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Sunil Lanba has been appointed Chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee. He will take charge from Indian Air Force Chief Arup Raha who retires on 31 December.

Admiral Sunil Lanba received the Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) baton from the outgoing Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha at a ceremony in South Block today. He will be assuming charge as Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee with effect from the afternoon of 31 December 2016.

The Chairman of CSC will also be responsible for advising the government of India and ensuring jointsmanship in the armed forces.

Lanba took charge as the Chief of Naval Staff on 31 May from Admiral Robin K Dhowan. He will hold office till May 2019.

The Chief of Army Staff Gen Dalbir Singh, who also retires from service on 31 December 2016 and principal staff officers of all three services and HQ Integrated Defence staff were present on the occasion.

Admiral Lanba assumed command of the Indian Navy on 31 May 2016. He is a navigation and direction specialist and has served onboard numerous ships in both the Eastern and Western fleets. He is an alumnus of the National Defence Academy (NDA), Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), Wellington, College of Defence Management (CDM) and Royal College of Defence Studies, London.

During his distinguished career, he has commanded frigates, destroyers and was the Executive Officer of the aircraft carrier, Viraat. He has held many coveted appointments such as Fleet Operations Officer of the Western Fleet, Chief of Staff Southern Naval Command, Chief of Staff Eastern Naval Command and Flag Officer CommandinginChief of the Southern and the Western Naval Commands. Admiral Lanba also has had instructional tenures at NDA, CDM and National Defence College. As Vice Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Lanba strived towards integration and jointness. In recognition of his dedication towards service, Admiral Lanba has been awarded the Param Vishisht Seva Medal and the Ati Vishishit Seva Medal by the President.

Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha, the outgoing Chairman, COSC had taken over as Chairman COSC on 1 August 2014. Under his stewardship as Chairman, COSC, the services received a vital boost in jointmanship. During his tenure the defence communication network got operationalised and training standards of the Tri Service Institutes such as NDA, DSSC and CDM were enhanced. The much awaited National War Museum got approval from the government. He was instrumental in enhancing the role of military diplomacy with friendly foreign countries. Various humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations during crisis situations both within and outside India such as J&K floods, Chennai floods, evacuation of Indian and foreign nationals from Yemen and Nepal earthquake were successfully conducted. He also played a pivotal role in formulation of DPP16 thereby streamlining and fast tracking defence procurement which has so far been plagued by laborious procedures and long delays, says a defence ministry release.
A Donegal GP has said the current outbreak of a viral chest infection is one of the worst he has experienced in over 40 years.

The infection is putting severe pressure on local surgeries and Letterkenny University Hospital, Dr James McDaid said.

The Letterkenny-based GP said the viral infection is lingering for anything between four weeks and eight weeks and has resulted in patients making multiple visits to their GP. He said the virus has caused an absolutely horrendous amount of sick people.

The GP said the infection was one of the worst he had seen in 40 years.

He said some patients, particularly children, are being referred to hospital as GPs want to ensure a more serious condition is ruled out. In some cases the chest infection is developing into viral pneumonia, he said.

He said he expected that Letterkenny University Hospital has had one of its busiest Decembers in recent times because of the amount of sickness in the public from the infection and the resulting referrals from GPs.

Respiratory Syncitial Virus occurs every winter but the HSE says there has been a dramatic increase in presentations to emergency departments due to the virus this winter.

The HSE said it is anticipated the virus will continue to be at peak levels throughout December and into the new year.

Earlier this month Minister for Health Simon Harris said during a visit to Letterkenny University hospital that infection control issues had contributed to the bed cisrs at the hospital and others around the country.

There has been a huge, huge amount of this virus and it is so different to anything else, Dr McDaid said. It is lasting four, to six to eight weeks. The same children are coming into the surgery two or three times in a month.

He said the longevity of the virus means GPs are resorting to bad medicine. Although the infection is believed to be viral in the vast majority of cases, GPs are issuing antibiotics to rule out a bacterial infection. He said children with a high fever are also being sent to the hospital for x-rays to rule out viral pneumonia.

We are inclined to give antibiotics because we want to make sure we cover every angle and maybe it is bacterial, he said. See P11

He said the infection is affecting all age groups, but mostly children,.

We feel so sorry for them because they have tried everything and they go to different doctors. Everyone wants child to be healthy for christmas. We give them antibiotics that may not do them any good, but will not do them any harm. The big thing about this is that it is dragging on and on and on.
Both Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds were proud of their Donegal heritage, the Democrat can reveal.

Actress and writer Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in Star Wars, passed away on Tuesday, four days after suffering a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles. She was 60 years old.

Her mother, the equally famous actress Debbie Reynolds, died yesterday (Wednesday) of a suspected stroke, aged 84.

The last thing she said this morning was that she was very, very sad about losing Carrie and that she would like to be with her again, her son Todd Fisher said in a statement last Wednesday. Fifteen minutes later she suffered a severe stroke.

Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher pictured at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2015, where Fisher presented her mother with a Lifetime Achievement Award.



In February 2015, Carrie Fisher was honoured with an Oscar Wilde Award from the US-Ireland Alliance for her contribution to film and television.

She revealed at the time how one of her ancestors had to flee Donegal.

"My great-great grandfather was a fugitive named Burt McReynolds," she said.

My great, great, fabulous grandfather from Co. Donegal was wrongfully accused of being a horse thief, a case of mistaken identity," the actress explained.

But rather than put his family through the rigors of a trial to clear the family name, she continued, he emigrated to America, dropped the Mc in the ocean, became Burt Reynolds, and the rest is history...and incredibly boring.

With a good-natured nod to her mother, she said, Thankfully, my mother changed all that and gave our family name a kick in the pants that it might or might not deserve.

The film, Postcards From the Edge, which starred Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine, was based on Carrie Fisher's semi-autobiographical novel about her struggle with addiction and her sometimes stormy relationship with her mother.
Authorities in Jackson County, Florida have released additional details about a shooting that happened during a family Christmas gathering and left the gunman dead.

Shortly after 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, a 911 operator received a call from a woman reporting a shooting in the 2600 block of Highway 2, near Campbellton, Florida, which is located along U.S. 231, a few miles south of the Alabama-Florida state line. According to a Wednesday statement from the Jackson County Sheriffs Office, the woman said her mother had been shot in the head and that she was taking her to a hospital. She also told the operator that, as she left the scene, gunshots continued.

At the scene, authorities detained several people while securing the area. During this time, a man with apparent head trauma was found lying dead in the yard.

Officers from multiple agencies arrived to investigate and authorities gathered the following information from several interviews conducted:

A family gathering for the Christmas holiday was ongoing, when for no apparent reason, Luke Edward Walker Ill displayed a pistol and shot 55-year-old Annette Cotton point blank in the head, Sheriff Lou Roberts said in a statement.

Walker then ran off into the woods, but returned shortly to the scene, shooting again at the numerous people in the yard, Roberts continued. Several of the victims' family members began trying to prevent injuries of others and attempted to subdue Walker. At some point several family members struck Walker with a blunt object to stop the threat of further violence. Ultimately Walker was struck in the head which caused his death.

As the Floridan reported Tuesday, Roberts said it appears Cotton will survive the injuries she received from small-caliber ammunition. After the 911 operator directed her daughter to meet emergency personnel in Campbellton, Cotton was taken to an area hospital for treatment. On Wednesday, authorities reported she was in stable condition.

The continuing investigation will be forwarded to the State Attorney's Office for review, according to Roberts, who expressed his gratitude for the assistance of officers with Jackson County Fire Rescue, Campbellton Volunteer Fire Department, Florida Highway Patrol, State Attorney's Office, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Florida Wildlife Commission, Medical Examiner's Office and the Graceville Police Department.
Apparently things are just fine in Michigan because Republicans here have resorted to (a) making something illegal more illegal and (b) to restricting local municipalities from passing local regulations for their community.

So much for local control.

The first bill makes the sale of fetal tissue resulting from abortions more illegal. I say it makes it more illegal because its already illegal:

Lt. Gov. Brian Calley has signed a bill making it illegal to financially benefit by selling or distributing a fetus or any fetal tissue. Its already against Michigan law to profit from the sale of fetal tissue.



The new law specifies physicians and medical office employees, who likely would have been covered by the original law. People convicted under the new law face up to five years in prison.

In other words, this is little more than a sloppy wet kiss for anti-Choice, forced birthers to keep them voting Republican. In a statement released by Planned Parenthood of Michigan, spokeswoman Ruth Lednicer said, It is unfortunate that Right to Life continues to push duplicative legislation for their own political gain. Instead of passing legislation that does nothing more than produce headlines, our legislature should instead be focused on the real work the State could be doing to reduce unintended pregnancies.

Hah! Thats a good one, Ruth!

The other new law flies directly in the face of the Republican dogma that elevates local control to mythological status. It bans municipalities from passing laws that regulate single-use plastic grocery bags:

Lt. Gov. Brian Calley has signed legislation to prohibit Michigan communities from regulating plastic shopping bags. The law approved Wednesday takes effect in 90 days. It bans municipalities from regulating, prohibiting or adding fees to the use or sale of auxiliary containers  reusable or single-use bags, cups, bottles or other packaging from stores and restaurants. More than 150 municipalities across the country have banned the environmentally unfriendly plastic bags or charged fees. Washtenaw County has OKd a 10-cent fee on disposable grocery bags and was expected to begin enforcing it in April, but the Republican-sponsored law pre-empts local ordinances.

Once again  and this is hardly the first time they have attempted to do this  Michigan Republicans have shown that local control is only important when those local controls fall in line with their conservative/corporatist worldview.

In other words, theyre a bunch of damned hypocrites.
Apple and the government of Ireland are fighting what some view as a European Union tax grab. The two recently filed a formal appeal of the ECs decision ordering Apple to pay nearly US$14 billion in back taxes, based on its finding that Ireland had given Apple several illegal tax breaks.

The commission this summer found that Ireland had allowed Apple to determine its tax based on the activities of its subsidiary firms, Apple Sales International and Apple Sales Europe, which are incorporated in Ireland.

That tax approach allowed Apple to pay a much lower tax rate than other firms doing business in Europe, according to the EC.

Irish Eyes

The Irish government profoundly disagrees with the commissions analysis, and had no alternative than to file an appeal to have the entire decision overturned, according to David Byrne, a spokesperson for the Department of Finance in Ireland.

Ireland did not give favorable tax treatment to Apple, he told the E-Commerce Times. Ireland does not do deals with taxpayers.

No fine or penalty has been levied against the Irish state, Byrne said, noting that the EC explicitly stated that the decision does not call into question Irelands general tax system or its corporate tax rate.

The commission will defend its decision in court, EC spokesperson Ricardo Cardoso told the E-Commerce Times.

The U.S. Treasury Department disagreed with the ECs findings, suggesting that the commission retroactively applied a new State Aid theory opposing established legal principles, challenging individual countries tax rules, and threatening to undermine the European business climate.

The ruling threatens to erode Americas tax base, according to the DoJ.

The department considers tax avoidance a serious problem around the world, and it will continue to work with the commission and other international partners, such as the OECD, toward the shared goal of preventing the erosion of corporate tax bases.

Apple Bites

Apples Irish presence dates back to 1980, when it opened its first factory in Cork, Ireland, with 60 employees, noted CEO Tim Cook in an open letter to the Apple community written this summer, after the EC handed down its decision. The company eventually expanded to a nationwide presence of 6,000 people across Ireland, the vast majority of them still working in Cork.

Apples presence in Cork has helped sustain more than 1.5 million jobs across Europe, Cook pointed out, held by Apple employees, app developers, smaller manufacturers and suppliers.

Apple has never asked for or received any special deals from Ireland, he insisted.

The ECs claim that Apple paid an effective tax rate of .005 percent is extremely misleading and deceptive, Apple said in a note sent to investors this summer.

Apple paid $400 million in corporate income taxes to Ireland in 2014, making it one of the largest corporate taxpayers in the country, according to the note to investors. Apple paid $400 million of its current U.S. taxes on those profits, bringing the companys total taxes paid to $800 million.

Apples total global corporate income tax rate that year was 26.1 percent, the company claimed.

The EC in 2013 began investigating the tax treatment of multiple companies, and early this year ruled that 35 multinational firms had received selective tax treatment that it considered illegal. Investigations into the tax treatment of McDonalds and Amazon are pending.
By Kevin Kalhoefer and Andrew Seifter

Donald Trump and the presidential election dominated news coverage in 2016. But talking heads still found plenty of time to make jaw-dropping comments about climate change, energy and the environment. This years list of ridiculous claims includes a dangerous conspiracy theory about Hurricane Matthew, over-the-top worship of fracking and coal and absurd victim-blaming around the Flint water crisis.

Here is our list of the 15 most ridiculous things that media figures said about climate, energy and environmental issues in 2016:

1. Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge Peddled a Reckless Conspiracy Theory Downplaying the Threat from Hurricane Matthew

Shortly before Hurricane Matthew made landfall in the U.S., Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge concocted a conspiracy theory that the federal government was overstating the hurricanes severity in order to manufacture concern about climate change. On The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh accused the National Hurricane Center of playing games with hurricane forecasting and added, Its in the interest of the left to have destructive hurricanes because then they can blame it on climate change, which they can desperately continue trying to sell.

Limbaugh doubled down on this theory the next day, telling his audience, Theres politics in the forecasting of hurricanes because there are votes.

Drudge, the curator of the widely read Drudge Report website, promoted the conspiracy as well, suggesting that federal officials were exaggerating the danger posed by Hurricane Matthew to make [an] exaggerated point on climate.

Twitter, 10/6/16

Twitter, 10/6/16

Drudge also used his website to persuade Southeast residents not to take the storm seriously, with a banner STORM FIZZLE? MATTHEW LOOKS RAGGED! and additional headlines ITS A 4? and RESIDENTS NOT TAKING SERIOUSLY.

Climate scientist Michael Mann explained that people could die because of the misinformation that folks like Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge are putting out there, and two actual hurricane experts provided a point-by-point rebuttal of Drudges claims. But that did nothing to dissuade Drudge, who refused to give up on the conspiracy theory.

2. Fox News Blamed the Flint Water Crisis on Climate Change Policies, PC Stuff, and Even Flint Residents Themselves

National media outlets largely ignored the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as it unfolded over almost two years, but when the story did finally make national headlines, Fox News pundits were quick to pin the blame on anyone and anything other than the Republican governor of Michigan.

On Fox & Friends, host Heather Nauert and guest Mark Aesch suggested that misplaced priorities, including climate change and PC stuff, allowed the water crisis to happen:

And on The Kelly File, Fox News digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt placed blame on Flint residents themselves, saying that the people of Flint should have been protesting in the streets after noticing that their water was poisoned. Stirewalt also blamed Flint parents for giving their children contaminated water, declaring: If you were pouring water into a cup for your child and it stunk and it smelled like sulfur and it was rotten, would you give that to your child? No, youd revolt, youd march in the street. In addition to being offensive, Stirewalts comments were premised on a falsehood; Flint residents did in fact repeatedly protest throughout the year to demand safe drinking water for their families.

3. CNNs Alisyn Camerota Claimed Trump EPA Nominee Scott Pruitt Hasnt Denied Global Warming

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, President-elect Donald Trumps choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, is a climate science denier who has refused to accept the clear consensus of the scientific community that human activities such as burning fossil fuels are primarily responsible for global warming. Yet according to CNN New Day anchor Alisyn Camerota, Pruitt simply sees nuance and hasnt denied global warming. Camerota falsely claimed that Pruitt only disputes climate predictions and forecasts, when in fact he has also denied that global warming is human-caused and even Camerotas premise that climate models are unreliable is incorrect. As Camerota wrongly absolved Pruitt of climate denial, CNNs on-screen text read: Climate Change Denier Scott Pruitt To Lead EPA. Co-anchor Chris Cuomo also pushed back on Camerota, stating that Pruitt says its far from settled. That means hes not accepting the science.
In war, natural disaster and poverty, water is the first relief to arrive alongside the security of life and limb. It is the gift that aids the weary traveler, sits at the table before a meal arrives. The lack of it kills before the lack of food does. It is not a commodity, as in the Bolivian Water Wars that fought the privatization of public wells, but rather it is a human right. So when the United Nations sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s stressed schools and hospitals to the point of disrepair and abandonment of their wells, human rights activists stepped in.

In 1999 a group of veterans, working through Veterans for Peace, founded the Iraq Water Project, with a mission to improve the health prospects of some part of the Iraqi population dependent upon water treatment facilities in desperate need of repair. Once a site is selected, usually a school or clinic, a 3-stage filtration unit, with reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light treatment, is set up to clean incoming water from a river, well or municipal source.

New water filter installed in alAskari shrine in Samarra.

To date, 160 units are in place mostly in schools and clinics across Iraq. Weve installed one filter unit in an orphanage, a refugee camp, six prisons, including Abu Ghraib, which is now closed, and the alAskari shrine in Samarra, the one that alQaida bombed back in 2006.

Our partner, Muslim Peacemaker Teams, installed five units in Najaf schools, while Life for Relief and Development, an American Islamic NGO, installed two units in schools in the Diyala Province (east-central Iraq). For reasons of security we cannot name the group we work with in Nassiriya that installed four water treatment units in the new Nassiriya Heart Center and another four in local schools. These organizations are doing the lions share of the work, taking responsibility for the installation, security and maintenance of the water filter units, providing citizens with a basic human rightaccess to clean water.

Whats come of this investment are positive unintended consequences that have exceed our expectations, both social justice and conservation. By contributing to the relief of someones suffering, a wonderful sense of humility and joy emerges, especially among the U.S. veterans participating in the project, which I can attest to personally. More importantly, lives are saved, dysentery among small children and water-borne illnesses have been reduced where the water filters are installed. Unexpectedly, the water filters serve not only the schools and clinics, but they become a community huba meeting place. The goodwill that emerges from Iraqi organizations managing their own recovery and the relationship that forms between Iraqis and American citizens is invaluable. There is reconciliation and atonement, which are hard to find.

A school in the Therthar village near Falluja.

Interestingly, giving water contributes to solving another problem: plastic pollution. Often when relief aid is sent after a natural disaster or during civil unrest, it comes packaged in stuff that becomes garbage. Water bottles by the millions are strewn across villages in Iraq, reflective of the years of poor waste management, garbage from war and relief aid. American bases established in Iraq employed burn pits to incinerate garbage. The same burn and bury strategy exists in villages across the country, sending acrid smoke into communities. Iraqs waste problem contributed to public outbreaks in cholera and dysentery, and roadside bombs found ample trash piles to be concealed within.

Iraqi children scavenging for recyclables in a dump near Najaf. Haidar Hamdan / AFP

One water filter can sustain daily drinking water for 1,000 residents for up to 3 months before filters need to be changed. The same volume would exceed half a million 1 liter plastic water bottles. By providing the means to fish, rather than the fish itself, access to water becomes seemingly endless. But in todays political climate in Iraq, there are continued challenges to keep these water filter units operational.

Therefore, what continues today is maintenance and new installations of water filter units where they are needed. We recognize that past sanctions, war and poverty, exacerbate suffering, but sharing this gift is contributing to Iraqs recovery in sometimes unpredictable ways. It all begins with water.
Sure, many of my friends in the climate change movement cant wait to forget 2016, the year when an incoming Trump presidency brought new meaning to climate uncertainty. But there is a movement taking hold that is far bigger than the U.S.Ive seen it in the last year in Africa, in Europe and the U.S.

Here are 10 shining lights for the irresistibility and inevitability of the low-carbon future. Its hereand there is no turning back.

1. Solar Symphony

Solar costs keep plummeting, the latest record low being a 120-megawatt solar project in Chile whose power will be sold for $29.10 a megawatt-hour, less than half the coal plant bid. Solar photovoltaic costs are dropping the fastest compared to other renewables, which helps explain the record 4,300 megawatts of new solar PV capacity installed in the U.S. in third quarter 16. (Thats 60 percent of new generating electric capacity installed in the US last quarter). We also saw the opening of the worlds first one-kilometer road paved with solar panels, dubbed the Wattway, this month in France.

2. A Big Dash of Disclosure

Companies bottom line is money and they need to provide better information about the financial risks they face from changing climate trends and government responses. This month, a task force convened by the G20 Financial Stability Board issued final recommendations on the types of disclosure companies should be providing to investors about climate risks and opportunities. Among the highlights: all companies, especially oil & gas firms, should say how their business strategies align with the global goal of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, the benchmark goal of the Paris climate agreement.

3. Prevailing Winds

Wind power is often cheaper than solar, the result of more efficient and less costly turbines. In some states, including Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska and parts of Texas, new wind turbines can generate electricity at a lower cost, without subsidies, than any other technology, according to a new University of Texas report. Texas is the king of wind, with 18,000 megawatts of capacity that on some windy days supply nearly half of the states power.

4. Pay It Forward

Pay-as-you-go solar companies, made possible by mobile phones, are the rage in Africa. M-Kopa Solar has leveraged the mobile money phenomena to sell more than 425,000 household solar systems in East Africa. With a $30 deposit and daily 50-cent payments, all by cell phone, customers get a solar panel, a couple of lights, a cell phone charger and a solar powered radio. After the first year of payments, customers own the system outright. Similar off-grid solar companies are now sprouting up across Africa and theyve attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in financing.

5. Emerging No More

Clean energy expenditures in emerging nations in South America, Africa, the Middle East and Africa eclipsed those in wealthier OECD countries for the first time. Some of the biggest jumps, especially for big utility-scale solar projects, were in countries like Chile, Mexico and South Africa. We also saw notable improvement in the investment environment for clean energy in many developing countries, with the top five scorers in a new Climatescope report being China, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and South Africa.

6. Morocco Salute

The fact that Morocco has phased out fossil fuel subsidies and is building the worlds largest concentrated solar plant is reason alone to be on my list. But its gracious leadership in hosting global leaders at the UN climate talks in Marrakeshand its unflagging commitment in rallying the rest of the world behind the ambitious Paris climate agreement, with or without U.S. leadershipwas inspiring and profoundly important for the global climate community.

Morocco Flips Switch on First Phase of World's Largest Solar Plant https://t.co/EOVD3QoQny @SolarPowerWorld @TheSolarCo  EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) February 5, 2016

7. States Collective Power

States also have crucial key role in setting policies that shape the energy mix of their economies. And judging from recent state actions, interest in using renewable energy and energy efficiency is getting stronger. Illinois and Michigan both passed clean energy laws this month that will boost investment, create jobs and save money. And yesterday, Ohios governor took a major step to lift a freeze on the states energy efficiency and renewable energy standards. Californias Jerry Brown has also announced hell work directly with other nations to fight climate change. In all four states, clean energy measures have strong support from the business community.

Owens Corning built this 2-megawatt solar array on top of its headquarters in Toledo, Ohio.

8. All Renewable

Fortune 500 companies are sourcing renewable energy at levels that did not seem conceivable just a few years ago. With prices dropping and states making it easier to provide green power, industry giants such as Walmart, Google, Apple and Mars all made the plunge to power all of their operations with 100 percent renewable energy. Google, which already has commitments to source 2,600 megawatts of wind and solar for its global operations, plans to hit its 100 percent target in 2017.

Google Announces Plans to Run Entirely on Renewable Energy https://t.co/ulZJaAMh8W via @EcoWatch pic.twitter.com/tOYglRDsjQ  The YEARS Project (@YEARSofLIVING) December 7, 2016

9. Unleashing the Money

Investor resolve on the low-carbon future is undoubtedly growing. Citigroup is seeing exponential growth in lending and financing for low-carbon and other sustainable business activity, including $48 billion of sustainable financing in 2015 alone. Yes, thats $48 billion. Even more inspiring is Deutsche Banks groundbreaking strategy to provide billions of dollars of capital to clean energy businesses in sub-Saharan Africa. The project, recently approved by the UN Green Climate Fund, will combine public and private capital to provide up to $3.5 billion in financing for household solar, solar mini grids and other off-grid clean energy businesses.

10. Christmas Elves: Kate Cincotta left a lucrative aerospace job to start Saha Global, which is providing clean water and solar power to the poorest of the poor in northern Ghana. The Boston nonprofit now has 93 water businesses, all run by local women, who are providing clean water to nearly 50,000 Ghanaians. Donn Tice, founder of Frontier Energy, spends his time working with African governments to remove policy barriers that are limiting the sale of off-grid solar products. Last spring he persuaded Sierra Leones government to eliminate import duties and sales taxes on certain solar appliances. Actions like this are critical in bringing clean affordable power to millions of Africans who live today with no energy except high-polluting kerosene lamps and charcoal.

Peyton Fleming is senior director at the nonprofit sustainability group Ceres.
Another state has officially banned plastic bag bansyes, you read that correctly. It is now illegal for local governments in Michigan to enact ordinances that ban or place fees on plastic bags or disposable containers used by stores and restaurants.

One-time usage, plastic bags are a major cause of plastic pollution. Flickr

The bill was signed Wednesday afternoon by Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, as Gov. Rick Snyder is out of the state for the holidays.

Other states that have banned local plastic bag ordinances include Wisconsin, Idaho, Florida and Arizona.

As MLive.com noted, Michigans new mandate affects Washtenaw County, which wanted to start charging 10 cents for paper and plastic grocery bags in 2017.

Michigan House Rep. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor, spoke against the bill on the House floor.

This is a bill that attacks local control, he said.

Jennifer Rigterink of the Michigan Municipal League, which opposed the bill, agreed.

So, if its important to a community to look at plastic bags or containers and how thats affecting their community they kind of have their hands tied now and arent able to do anything about it, Rigterink said during an interview with Michigan Radio.

Washtenaw County Commissioner Jennifer Eyer added that the law [puts] the priorities of business over the concerns about the environment, and doing whats good for the environment.

Despite the opposition, the Republican-sponsored bill passed 52-46 in the House and 25-12 in the Senate. Both chambers are controlled by the GOP. The approved law takes effect in 90 days.

The bill was supported by the Michigan Restaurant Association, which believes that local bans creates a burdensome patchwork of bag laws for retailers.

With many of our members owning and operating locations across the state, preventing a patchwork approach of additional regulations is imperative to avoid added complexities as it related to day-to-day business operations, Robert OMeara, the associations vice president of Government Affairs, told MLive.com.

In a post for EcoWatch last year, environmental advocate Laura Turner Seydel warned that outside forces are behind these bans on plastic bag bans.

Powerful and large special interest lobbying groups are behind these ban bans as well as litigation aimed at already existing bans, she wrote. Outside interests are funding these efforts to dissuade and dismantle local level legislation. Primary among them is the Progressive Bag Affiliates, funded by the largest plastic bag manufacturers in the country and the American Chemistry Council.

Turner Seydel noted in her post that Americans go through an estimated 100 billion plastic bags annually and at least 12 million barrels of oil are used per year to manufacture them. These one-time-use items are notorious for killing wildlife and polluting our environment.

Still, a number counties and even entire countries are putting their concern for the environment before their convenience and have banned these non-biodegradable menaces.

This past November, California became the first state to impose a statewide plastic bag ban despite heavy opposition from bag makers working with the American Legislative Exchange Council that tried to pass statewide bans on local bag bans.

And, in September, France became the first country to ban plastic silverware, plates and cups.
I was shocked when I found out the travel industry generates nearly 10 percent of the worlds GDP and rising each year. People are travelling and travelling more often. Tourism employs 1 of every 11 people in the world.

Along with economic impact, travel presents opportunities for growth, learning and the exchange of ideas. Travel and tourism are critical in maintaining our economy and this is especially true in developing countries. On global and local levels tourism is essential for sustainable development. As a result, the travel industry has become a sector where you can see shining examples of environmentally-conscious principles put into action that protect the planet and lift up the worlds peoples.

What is sustainable tourism? As defined by the United Nations, it is that which takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities.

The UN has declared 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism. According to the Secretary-General of the World Travel Organization, Taleb Rifai, this is a unique opportunity to advance the contribution of the tourism sector to the three pillars of sustainabilityeconomic, social and environmental, while raising awareness of the true dimensions of a sector which is often undervalued.

Tourism is directly associated with three of the 17 UNs 2030 Sustainable Development Goals:

Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.

Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.

We have to alleviate poverty and provide people with basic healthcare, food to eat and fresh water. However, this becomes impossible if we continue to erode the natural systems that support all life. Thankfully, nature travel and learning about cultural heritage are among the worlds fastest growing tourism sectors. In order to save the rhinos, elephants and tigers you have to help those that depend on the same land and resources. Tourism focused on wildlife ensures those animals become more valuable alive than dead. Fortunately, adventure tourism, which is focused on nature, wildlife and cultural experiences, has grown 65 percent year over year since 2009. Soon it will surpass $300 billion in annual revenues, reports George Washington University in their annual Adventure Tourism Market Report.

According to Booking.coms 2015 survey of more than 32,000 global travelers in 16 countries, 52 percent of adult travelers said they are more likely to choose travel based on destinations that reduce environmental impact or ensure that tourism has a positive impact on the local community. And Americans (53 percent) are among the worlds top sustainable-minded travelers. With this sharply growing trend hospitality and travel companies that do not keep up with sustainable travel will lose out.

Since 2014, I have been participating as a judge for National Geographics World Legacy Awards, which honors companies, organizations and destinations-ranging from airlines to hotels, from communities to countries driving the positive transformation of the tourism industry, showcasing leaders and visionaries in sustainable tourism best practices. Costas Christ, chairman of the awards, is credited with defining the term ecotourism which has now been standardized globally by the UN. Costas also serves as the director of sustainability for Virtuoso and moderated a panel I was on this year at the Virtuoso Travel Week conference. Virtuoso Travel Week is an intense five days where preferred luxury travel agents and providers come together to do hundreds of millions of dollars of business, as well as recognize industry leaders in sustainable tourism as the market continues to become more aware of the need to drive a sustainable strategy. Its about the triple bottom linepeople, profit and planet.

You can stay at Ted Turners formerly private residence on endless acres of pristine nature at Ladder Ranch with Ted Turner Expeditions.

Land and biodiversity conservation is one of my familys most beloved passions. My father launched Ted Turner Expeditions (TTX) in 2015 with three properties in New Mexico. My father, a well known leader in conservation, has worked to restore the overgrazed habitat of these grand ranches to their former pre-cattle glory. Having a passion for bison since his childhood, dad has made sure this iconic species is an important part of the restoration. There has also been a commitment to preserving and enhancing biodiversity.

Through the work of the Turner Endangered Species Fund biologists and other partner organizations have been working to increase the numbers of imperiled and endangered species, among them the Mexican Gray Wolf, Bolson Tortoise and Chiricahua Leopard Frog. Visitors can stay on one of a number of properties, including some of my fathers formerly-private residences and immerse themselves in an incredible American landscape that has been dubbed by some as the American Serengeti. As visitors enjoy the beauty of these natural landscapes they are also becoming more aware of the importance of conserving the land and species for many generations to come. Two TTX ranches, the Armendaris Ranch and Ladder Ranch, are located in one of two of the most critically important biodiversity hotspots in North America. With TTX, my father has created a model for other private land and business owners that you can manage these landscapes for profit and conservation and the two are not mutually exclusive.

With my family as we explore Iceland and their green energy economy.

As you begin to plan your 2017 vacation, consider destinations and accommodations that employ environmentally sustainable best practices. You can not imagine how much good your visit can do for the local people and animals. My favorite trips have been transformative experiences in nature, topping the list are the Arctic circle, the Amazon river basin and the Galapagos. I always come away restored and more committed than ever to work to make sure these special places are available for our children and future generations. On my bucket list are the Antarctic, the awe-inspiring Sandhill crane migration along Nebraskas Platte River and central Mexico to see the wintering grounds of the imperiled Monarch butterflies.

https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/status/735215113909772289

Here are 10 of the best ecolodges, according to National Geographic:

1. South Africa: Bushmans Kloof Wilderness Reserve

2. Indonesia: Misool Eco Resort

3. Peru: Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica

4. Australia: Great Ocean Ecolodge

5. Greece: Milia Mountain Retreat

6. Nicaragua: Jicaro Island Ecolodge

7. China: Yangshuo Mountain Retreat

8. Sri Lanka: Jetwing Vil Uyana

9. Poland: Eco-Frontiers Ranch

10. Namibia: Damaraland Camp
(Photo: United Nations)Ahmed Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief.

The new U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief has welcomed amendments to a law signed by U.S. President Barack Obama, which recognizes non-believers and atheists and their right not to profess or practise any religion.

"This is an important development, as believers, atheists and non-believers must all be equally protected," said Ahmed Shaheed after the amendments made to the International Religious Freedom Act.

"By updating an 18-year-old religious freedom law, the U.S. Congress has for the first time taken steps to explicitly protect people who identify as atheists," Quartz reports.

The new amendment to the act passed the U.S. House and Senate unanimously, and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on Dec. 16.

"The freedom of thought, conscience, and religion is understood to protect theistic and nontheistic beliefs and the right not to profess or practice any religion," it reads.

People who profess not to believe in any god have increased substantially in the United States in recent years.

Shaheed said in in his Dec. 28 statement, "Many humanists and non-believers are still widely stigmatized and persecuted around the world."

He noted that in some countries, the promotion of atheist thought in any form is considered an act of terrorism.

In others, he said, any expression of non-belief or atheism is condemned as blasphemy or apostasy and receives harsh punishment, including the death sentence or attacks by vigilante groups.

"People often do not fully understand the scope of the international human right to religious freedom.

"It is not just about religions or beliefs, but it also covers the right to freedom of thought and conscience as provided by the Universal Declaration for Human Rights," noted the Special Rapporteur.

'RELIGION' AND 'BELIEF'

The human rights expert said the terms "religion" and "belief" should be understood in a broad sense to include theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief.

"All of them have important roles to play in building pluralistic and inclusive societies for the 21st century that are peaceful and prosperous," Shaheed stressed.

"In the face of increasing diversity, the freedom of religion or belief can be upheld only with the acceptance and full inclusion of atheists and non-believers," said the U.N. experts

Shaheed assumed his mandate as Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief on Nov. 1.

He is Deputy Director of the Essex Human Rights Centre in the United Kingdom and was the first Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on the situation of human rights in the Iran since the termination of the previous Commission on Human Rights mandate in 2002.

A career diplomat, he has twice held the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Maldives.
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.
Applications invited for Commonwealth Day celebration



Queen Elizabeth II will be at the ceremony in Wesminster Abbey

Young people from the Isle of Man are being given the chance to mark Commonwealth Day in the presence of the Queen next year.

The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association is inviting 18 to 25 year olds from the Island to apply to attend an observance of the occasion in London.

Queen Elizabeth II will be attending a ceremony at Westminster Abbey and an evening reception, which two Manx residents will be invited to attend.

Applicants must have an interest in the Commonwealth and parliamentary democracy, and will have to submit a report about their experience after the event.

Those interest in taking part must apply by January 6th, explaining in fewer than 200 words why they should respresent the Island.

Applications should be sent my email to r.donnelly@tynwald.org.im.
Fire service calls for smoke alarm resolution

The Island's fire service is encouraging Manx residents to make checking their smoke alarms their New Year's resolution.

The Isle of Man Fire and Rescue Service regularly promotes the Test It Tuesday campaign on social media, suggesting smoke detectors are checked once a week to make sure they're in working order.

As the start of 2017 approaches, fire officers want the public to mark their new calendars every Tuesday with a reminder to check their alarms.
Samsung fans have been waiting for the latest version of Android Nougat. Nonetheless, some of Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge and Note 5 users will receive either Android 7.0 Nougat and Android 7.1.1 Nougat.

According to Mobile & Apps, the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge devices in Australia are to obtain the old Android 7.0 Nougat update. The said information was confirmed by a representative for Australia's Vodafone. As a matter of fact in a community forum for Vodafone, a Help and Support wrote a replied to a customer's inquiry which states, "I've checked in with the right people for you @chri5tin3 and @shauno100, and they've confirmed the references to Samsung skipping 7.0 refer to other markets and not to Australia. We're definitely testing 7.0 for both devices."

It can be remembered that Samsung Electronics has already announced that Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge's updates should be based on Android 7.1.1. The said firmware upgrade will major improvements and fixes to issues that weren't addressed in Android 7.0. Nevertheless, it wasn't revealed why the devices in Australia won't receive the latest update.

Additionally, Yibada stated in its article that it is not identified as to what are the models, as well as the regions of the world will obtain either Android 7.1.1 Nougat or Android 7.0 Nougat.

Aside from that, it is also not clear what will be the status for the older devices which are anticipated to receive the Android 7.0 Nougat following its rollout to the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and Samsung Galaxy S7, namely the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Plus, S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 5. At first, it is believed that these models would skip straight to Android 7.1.1 Nougat but then it now appears to be uncertain as the roll out of the upgrades may vary by region and model.

With the roll out of Android 7.0 and 7.1.1 Nougat to Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge and Note 5 devices being uncertain it seems that a lot of users will be disappointed. Moreover, it may be best for the South Korean company to release a roadmap for the firmware updates.
Samsung electronics is intended to release another flagship device which might be named as Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus. The said device from the South Korean tech giant might mark the end of the Note flagship series.

Forbes has learned that the Samsung Galaxy S8 might arrive featuring a 5-inch display package, while the new Galaxy S8 Plus will boast a 6-inch display. Samsung's decision produce a bigger Galaxy S8 Plus is somewhat interesting because the company has always let the Note line get the spotlight from the S line by being the "big" phone.

With the Note 7 last year many have started to observe that the lines between the two lines are already clouding. Now with the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus going entirely into Note screen size category, along with the Note line's seriously blotted brand name many may conclude that there will be no Note 8 to be unveiled next year.

When it comes with the specs, University Herald reported that aside from the 6-inch display the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus might also feature a curved display. Another interesting speculation is the removal of bezels in the screens. The Galaxy S8 Plus may be packed with an enormous 8GB of memory. It may be engineered with a Snapdragon 835 SoC processor. As for the stylus pen support, it is not yet established but it is supposed that Samsung is currently working on that. Nonetheless, the Galaxy S8 plus might not sport a digital assistant because it might be in conflict with Google Assistant.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus might be launched in April 2017 during an event in New York, but the price, however, is unknown for now. Moreover, it is yet to announce whether there would be an upcoming iteration of the Galaxy Note series or the release of Galaxy S8 Plus might be the end for the flagship handset.
The Microsoft Surface Pro 5 is believed to make its first appearance this year, but since 2016's end is very near, tech enthusiasts anticipated the device quarter one next year. Surface Pro 5 is speculated to be equipped with powerful specs and features that would possibly make this gadget dominant.

According to MobiPicker, the Microsoft Surface Pro line always does its best to deliver its users the best hardware possible. With this, Surface Pro 5 is expected to be on the same track just like its predecessors. Even though there are predictions that the Pro 5 could come with a Snapdragon chipset, since Microsoft and Qualcomm are working together in bringing full Windows 10 experience on ARM processors, probabilities are somewhat small.

In contrary, The Inquisitr stated in its article that the Surface Pro 5 might feature Intel Kaby Lake processor. Being Intel's last 14nm chip, Kaby Lake processors provide a noteworthy performance boost over its 6th generation Skylake chips. As of the moment, Apple's dominant and updated laptops are fortified with 6th-gen Intel Skylake processors. Once the Surface Pro 5 hit the market shelves with Kaby Lake processor, it would integrally have a more powerful chipset compared to its rivals.

The Surface Pro 5 might also feature cellular connectivity. As a matter of fact, LTE connectivity is precisely where the Surface Pro line has lagged against its competitors. So, of rumors are to be believed, the Surface Pro 5 might be able to ace against its opponents.

The Popular German Microsoft blog Dr. Windows just published a report affirming that the Surface Pro 5 might be the tech giant's fist hybrid device to feature eSIM technology. This would be the first time since the Surface line was introduced, the company would finally have a gadget that has the ability to connect to the internet on its own without being reliant on Wi-Fi or mobile hotspots.

The Surface Pro line-up always arrives with a dedicated Surface Pen and a keyboard case. These accessories really make this hybrid device a portable powerful machine capable of desktop-grade abilities. Although these accessories are awesome, it doesn't come with the initial product making it tremendously troublesome for users. Hence, with the Surface Pro 5, Microsoft might do something with it.

When it comes with the Surface Pro 5's price, there is still no available information as of the moment. Also, it is advised to wait for further details to be revealed by Microsoft.
Another mind-numbing batting collapse from Bangladesh meant that they lost the Nelson ODI and along with it the series to New Zealand

New Zealand 251 (Broom 109, Mashrafe 3-49) beat Bangladesh 184 (Kayes 59, Williamson 3-12) by 67 runs

Scorecard and ball-by-ball details

Another mind-numbing batting collapse from Bangladesh meant that they lost the Nelson ODI and along with it the series to New Zealand. They only had 252 to chase, and at one point were 105 for 1 but ended up losing the remaining nine wickets for only 79 runs. This meant that Neil Broom , who made his first ODI century nearly eight years after his debut, had something special to savour.

It was deja vu for Bangladesh. Back in October , they were on course to chase England's 309 in Mirpur. After Imrul Kayes and Shakib Al Hasan added 118 runs for the fifth wicket, the hosts needed just 39 runs in the last 8.3 overs. But they ended up losing their last six wickets for 17 runs in the space of 39 balls. It seemed Bangladesh had carried the baggage from that game to their tour of New Zealand.

Hayder reprimanded for breaching code of conduct Bangladesh allrounder Tanbir Hayder has been reprimanded for breaching Level 1 of the ICC Code of Conduct during his international debut - the second ODI against New Zealand in Nelson.

Hayder, who failed to pick up a wicket in eight overs and managed only two runs in the team's 67-run loss, was found to have been in violation of Article 2.1.4, which relates to "using language or a gesture that is obscene, offensive or insulting during an international match."

The incident concerned his reaction after the last ball of the 19th over, when he used obscene language after being pulled to the midwicket boundary by Neil Broom, who pressed on to make his maiden ODI hundred.

Since Hayder admitted to the offence and accepted the sanction imposed by Chris Broad, the match referee, there was no need for a formal hearing.

There was a rosy period, as with most Bangladesh batting collapses. After New Zealand were restricted to the first score under 300 batting first at home against Bangladesh, Kayes and Sabbir Rahman added 75 runs for the second wicket.

Kayes showed good patience, nudging singles off the wicket-to-wicket balls and taking full toll when he was given width. The pull also came out a number of times and when part-time seamer Colin Munro dropped him on 19, New Zealand would have been worried. Sabbir, from the other end, confidently cut and drove the fast bowlers as Bangladesh seemed to take control. They needed 146 runs off 163 balls with nine wickets in hand.

That was when the first domino fell, via a tragicomic run-out. Kayes pushed the ball into the covers and set off for a quick single. Sabbir responded initially before changing his mind. Kayes kept on running, and ended up reaching the non-striker's end before Sabbir who had turned him away. That meant the throw at the strikers' end essentially led to the the non-striker's run out.

Then, in the 26th over, an inswinging yorker from Lockie Ferguson toppled Mahmudullah's middle stump.

Three overs later, Shakib Al Hasan cut Kane Williamson to backward point. In the next over from the part-time offspinner, Mosaddek Hossain chipped a catch to mid-off.

Five balls later Kayes drove lazily at a Tim Southee delivery and Bangladesh's best hope for stemming the collapse was gone. He made 59 off 89 with six fours.

Bangladesh lost six wickets in 10 overs between the 23rd and the 33rd and were eventually bowled out for 184. One more damning sign of their collapse was that it was a part-timer, Williamson, who took the most wickets - 3 for 22.

It completed a highly satisfying series win for New Zealand after their torrid tours of India and Australia. One that might not have happened if the selectors hadn't thawed Broom out of ice. He had to wait six years to restart his ODI career, but ended 2016 with a maiden century that proved match-winning on a day bathed in sunshine, and on a pitch slower than normal at Saxton Oval, New Zealand struggled to bat at their usual high tempo.

Only Broom applied himself to any effect. He was particularly good driving through extra cover and used the sweep liberally - both shots were used to upset the spinners. His team was nine down when he was on 99, but Trent Boult hung in there just long enough and Broom finished unbeaten on 109 off 106 balls with eight fours and three sixes.

The rest of the New Zealand batting line-up faltered with Martin Guptill falling leg-before to Mashrafe in the first over. Kane Williamson was dismissed for 17 by Taskin Ahmed for the second time in as many games and the Boxing Day centurion Tom Latham, was lbw for 22.
Asli Aydintasbas (European Council on Foreign Relations)

The relations between the European Union and Turkey are at a critical stage. The European Parliament has supported a suspension of the negotiation process for Turkeys EU accession talks in a non-binding vote. The mutual relations have never been simple and there have been stages of progress and setbacks over the five decades. However, now, left on the table is the question of whether the continuation of the rapprochement between the two sides is desirable at all.

For those more than fifty years, Turkey has become part of the customs union and since 2006 it has led official talks on the accession to the Union. The countrys economy is considerably interconnected with the EU economy. About half of Turkeys exports go to EU countries, while, in the opposite direction, nearly 75 percent of the total foreign investments in Turkey come from the EU. Mutual relations reached their peak earlier this year when the EU was trying to prevent the influx of refugees pouring in from Syria through Turkey. In an agreement signed between both parties, the Turks pledged to secure its Western borders and accept refugees from Greece in exchange for 6 billion euros and an acceleration of the negotiation process leading to the EU accession.

However, following the failed military coup of July 2016, the relations have considerably cooled. Turkish officials have complained that EU politicians had failed to condemn the attempted coup soon enough and had not explicitly expressed their support for the democratically elected representatives. The developments that followed in the coming months confirmed the negative trend of the deterioration of democratic standards in Turkey, as noted in the European Commissions last evaluation report. More than 40,000 people, including prominent Kurdish politicians, were arrested, many media outlets were shut down and a debate on the reintroduction of the death penalty was initiated.

Even in this situation, it is not in the EUs interest to terminate relations with Turkey. The Union should approach Turkey in a different fashion. First and foremost, both sides should interact at the highest level and avoid the escalating rhetoric. The EU should offer Turkey an alternative to the full membership: an improved customs union treaty that would better suit the needs of the Turkish industry, but that would also put an emphasis on meeting certain democratic principles.

When the heads of state and government met at the December summit of the European Council, they should have taken into account Turkeys strategic potential in the long run and spoken out for the continuation of the cooperation. In todays dynamic world, it is not in the Unions interest to let Turkey turn to Russia or fall into a period of instability.

(The study can be downloaded here)


The Cambrian explosion is a major mystery for Darwinian evolution, so it may be no surprise that the theistic evolutionary group BioLogos has compiled a mixed record in analyzing the event. Back in 2010, we noted that the BioLogos page on the fossil record didnt even mention the Cambrian explosion. Then, in response to Stephen Meyers 2013 book Darwins Doubt, reviewers for BioLogos struggled to come to a consensus. Instead they reached conflicting conclusions.

Some claimed that the Cambrian explosion poses no challenge to traditional neo-Darwinian explanations of lifes origins. On the other hand, BioLogos past president Darrel Falk admitted, The big mystery associated with the Cambrian explosion is the rapid generation of body plans de novo. Dr. Falk also conceded that Stephen Meyer was correct to say that neo-Darwinism faces serious criticism in the mainstream scientific community.

Overall, however, for dealing with the Cambrian explosion, papering over other deficiencies in evolutionary explanations, and sidestepping evidence for intelligent design, the main strategy at BioLogos has been to invoke methodological naturalism.

Recently, a reader brought to our attention a BioLogos post by Kansas State University geologist Keith Miller, The Cambrian Explosion, Transitional Forms, and the Tree of Life. The article appeared in 2010 and is intended as an authoritative white paper of sorts. It is part one of a series at BioLogos on the Cambrian explosion. See here for a PDF.

Millers article seems to be based partly upon an earlier article he wrote for the American Scientific Affiliations which claims there are Precambrian transitional forms documenting the evolution of the Cambrian phyla. Though the paper is several years old and, with apologies, were only now getting around to writing about it, we have long been aware of Millers style of argument. In fact, nearly all of the issues he raises are addressed in Darwins Doubt or Debating Darwins Doubt. But for the reader who asked about it, what Miller had to say was evidently new, and so it must be for others who are just catching up on the discussion of the Cambrian mystery. We thus take this opportunity to answer his claims.

A Long Fuse

A major part of Millers argument is to claim that the Cambrian explosion was a long event that lasted many tens of millions of years (his preferred number is 52 million years), This, he thinks, rebuts Stephen Meyers argument that the fauna of the Cambrian period appeared in a geologically sudden manner. We have addressed this kind of argument many times before. We have pointed out the consensus view within the scientific literature that the Cambrian explosion lasted about 10 million years. Numerous authorities have acknowledged the Cambrian explosion was geologically sudden. Evolutionary biologists may thus seek to redefine the Cambrian explosion by expanding the temporal or taxonomic boundaries. Yet none of that changes the fact that there occurred an intense burst of novelty in the early-middle Cambrian  a burst lasting only about 5 to 10 million years.

Miller cites the small shelly fauna from the early Cambrian, claiming that they indicate a lengthy period of time for the evolution of the Cambrian animals. But as we have discussed, many authorities note that these largely problematic fossils are hard to diagnose, even at the phylum level and are are very difficult indeed to interpret. The enigmatic small shelly fossils dont clearly map on to other Cambrian animals.

Miller similarly claims the Cambrian explosion had a long fuse  extending back into the Precambrian, where we see transitional fossils leading to Cambrian animals. But as Stephen Meyer documents in Darwins Doubt, with the exception of sponges and the possible exception of Kimberella, the body plans of visibly fossilized [Precambrian] organisms (as opposed to trace fossils) bear no clear relationship to any of the organisms that appear in the Cambrian explosion (or thereafter). Even Keith Miller cannot deny that something like this is true. Although his timeline is still too long, he writes: there was clearly a major burst of evolutionary innovation and diversification in the first 20 million years or so of the Cambrian.

But Miller still claims that there are Precambrian bilaterian ancestors to the Cambrian animals. He writes:

Another bilateral form that has been the subject of much recent attention is Kimberella (Figure 5). This 555 million year old fossil has been interpreted as a stem mollusk. Scratch marks found associated with Kimberella indicate that it had some form of feeding structure (though probably not a true mollusk radula) that enabled it to graze the abundant algal mats.

As we saw, Meyer mentioned the possibility that Kimberella could be a bilaterian mollusk-like organism, and indeed a member of phylum mollusca. But even this may have been too generous. According to an authoritative review by Graham Budd and Soren Jensen, Kimberella does not possess any unequivocal derived molluscan features, and its assignment to the Mollusca or even the Bilateria must be considered to be unproven. Despite these ambiguities, they call this organism the the strongest case for an Ediacaran bilaterian body fossil. Douglas Erwin notes regarding Kimberella that this is not clearly a mollusc (Fedonkin and Waggoners preferred interpretation) or even a protostome. He thinks the connection between Kimberella and bilateria is unproven:

Those who would assign Ediacaran fossils to protostomes and deuterostomes have generally failed to identify any diagnostic characters which unambiguously support such assignments. At present then, claims of a higher metazoan affinity must be regarded as unproven.

(Douglas Erwin, The Origin of Bodyplans, American Zoologist, 39: 617-629 (1999).)

More recently Michael J. Vendrasco of California State University Fullteron has also questioned Kimberellas connection to true mollusks known from the Cambrian explosion:

[T]he Burgess Shale, a locality with exceptional fossil preservation, reveals that at least during the middle Cambrian there also lived much larger (> 100 mm in length) soft-bodied molluscs. Strikingly well-preserved fossils of Odontogriphus showing a distinct radula, chiton-like ventral mouth, and ring of ctenidia demonstrate that this genus is a member of the total group Mollusca (Caron et al., 2006). There is at least a superficial similarity between Odontogriphus and the similar large, flat, bilaterian Kimberella from the Neoproterozoic, and Caron et al. (2006) concluded that the latter is also a stem lineage mollusc. However, aside from bilateral symmetry and oval body, there are no distinct features in common between these two fossils. The original interpretation of Kimberella (in Fendonkin and Waggoner, 1997) included a terminal mouth and proboscis, and a differentiated dorsal surface, not at all like Odontogriphus or a typical mollusc. Parkhaev (2008) seconded Fedonkin and Waggoners (1997) hesitation in calling Kimberella a mollusc, and Butterfield (2006) questioned the mollusc affinity of both Kimberalla and Odontogriphus. Moreover Butterfield (2008) described an apparent radula from the early Cambrian of Canada that is more similar to the radulae of modern molluscs than is the feeding apparatus of Odontogriphus. Thus, although Caron et al. (2006) inferred that the KimberellaOdontogriphus body plan was the likely plesiomorphic (primitive) state of the Mollusca, their hypothesis lacks strong support, and this is exacerbated by the uncertain placement of Kimberella.

(Michael J. Vendrasco, Early Evolution of Molluscs, in Mollusks: Morphology, Behavior and Ecology, Averkii Fyodorov and Havrila Yakovlev eds., (Nova Science Publishers, 2012).)

Vendrasco goes on to classify Kimberella within Fossil Problematica or forms of uncertain affinity. If this is the strongest case for a Precambrian bilaterian, its pretty weak.

Cladistics to the Rescue

Many of Millers arguments, however, use cladistics to claim there are transitional forms showing the evolution of various Cambrian phyla. At its heart, all cladistics does is compare traits found in organisms. Those with more similar traits (called shared derived characteristics) are said to be more closely related. The method goes no deeper than that. To use it to construct phylogenetic trees (or cladograms), proponents of cladistics must make many assumptions.

First, cladistics assumes rather than demonstrates common ancestry; it assumes it from the outset.

Second, cladistics assumes that organisms with more similar traits are more closely related. But that assumption constantly fails when trying to construct phylogenetic trees. This is because traits often are not distributed in a tree-like manner. This forces evolutionary biologists to appeal to convergent evolution, loss of traits, and many other ad hoc explanations in order to force-fit the data into a tree. This issue is addressed in the Epilogue to Darwins Doubt and Chapters 4-9 of Debating Darwins Doubt.

Regarding the latter point, these failures become acute with regards to the origin of arthropods. Under cladistics, Miller can take any Cambrian fossil and find that it shares some (though not all) of the traits of some group and then call it transitional. Thats the essence of what cladistics does. But cladistics ignores unique traits that make an organism look very non-transitional (which is the case with the Cambrian oddballs like Hallucigenia or Opabinia), and the traits it doesnt ignore often dont fit neatly into a tree.

An ideal illustration of this problem is seen when Miller attempts to invoke lobopods and anomalocaridids as transitional forms to explain the evolution of arthropods. He claims that the lobopods have become recognized as the critical link in reconstructing the assembly of the arthropod body plan, and also cites stem arthropods such as the anomalocarids. In saying stem he means that anomalocaridids are early precursors to arthropods  transitional forms.

In claiming that both lobopods and anomalocaridids are closely related collateral ancestors or transitional forms leading to arthropods, Millers arguments have the same problems that Nick Matzkes did when he argued the same thing in response to Darwins Doubt. (Actually, its more likely that in responding to Steve Meyer, Matzke directly relied upon Millers arguments .) As Casey Luskin explained in Debating Darwins Doubt, the origin of arthropods is a major problem for evolutionary biologists because they cant construct a neat evolutionary tree that goes from lobopods and/or anomalocaridids to arthropods. Heres what Luskin wrote in response to Matzke:

Matzke claimed that Anomalocaris and other members of its family (the anomalocaridids) are intermediate to arthropods. Why? Because they share some (though not all) of the derived characteristics that define arthropods. He asserts that Anomalocaris is one of many fossils with transitional morphology between the crown-group arthropod phylum, and the next closest living crown group, Onychophora (velvet worms). But leading authorities doubt that the characteristics supposedly linking anomalocaridids to arthropods are homologous  in other words, that they demonstrate shared ancestry. For example, in his initial response to Meyer, Matzke posted a cladogram from David Legg et al. (2012) linking Anomalocaris to arthropods because of their similar compound eyes and cephalic limbs (limbs extending from their heads). But he failed to include the caption, which admits serious doubts about homology between these characters, noting that compound eyes disappeared and re-evolved a number of times, and that it is unclear if the arthropodized cephalic limbs of radiodontans (Anomalocaris and Hurdia) are homologous to the arthropodized trunk limbs of arthropods. In another article from 2013, Gregory Edgecombe and Legg even suggest that anomalocaridids might be nonarthropods with only convergent similarity to arthropods since their affinities to Arthropoda are controversial. Similar problems exist with regard to another supposed transitional form Matzke cites  the lobopods, represented today by velvet worms, of phylum Onychophora. He claims that the arthropod and velvet-worm phyla evolved from lobopods, and lobopods contain a whole series of transitional forms showing the basics of how this happened. Moreover, he asserts that Anomalocaris is one of many fossils with transitional morphology between the crown-group arthropod phylum, and the next closest living crown group, Onychophora (velvet worms). This suggests to him that Anomalocaris was intermediate between lobopods and arthropods. Matzke further claims that cladistic analyses reveal the order in which the characters found in living groups were acquired. Yet lobopods and anomalocaridids are a prime example of how cladistics has failed to reveal such ordering. If, according to Matzke, both lobopods and radiodontans (the order that includes anomalocaridids) are closely related to arthropods, which group is more closely related to arthropods? To put the question another way, what is the order in which these two groups branch off from the tree leading to arthropods? Experts disagree on this question, and their reasons for disagreeing challenge the homology of lobopod and anomalocaridid features with arthropods. Arthropods are defined by a number of features. But understanding the origin of arthropods requires explaining how they acquired paired, jointed appendages (legs) and a complex head and compound eyes. Lobopods have legs, sometimes resembling paired and jointed appendages in arthropods, but they lack arthropod-like heads with compound eyes. Anomalocaridids lack legs entirely, but some had arthropod-like heads with compound eyes. Sharp disagreement exists over whether lobopods (with legs, not heads or compound eyes), or anomalocaridids (with heads and compound eyes, not legs), are more closely related to arthropods. Cladistic analyses have failed to yield a consensus on the branching order in which these crucial arthropod characters were acquired.  Cladists must decide which is more closely related to arthropods  A or B? If you answer A, and the legless anomalocaridids are more closely related to arthropods, then this also means the legs of lobopods cannot be homologous to arthropod legs (and cladists have no ancestral source to explain the evolution of arthropod legs). If you answer B, and the compound-eyeless lobopods are closer to arthropods, then the compound eyes of anomalocaridids cannot be homologous to arthropod eyes (and cladists have no ancestral source to explain the evolution of arthropod eyes). Theres no good solution for cladists. Pick either option, and youre faced with a situation where one of Matzkes so-called transitional forms cannot be transitional, and may not even belong in the branching pattern of organisms leading to arthropods.

Figure 9-2 further illustrates this dilemma. As seen in Figure 9-2, cladists must choose between option (1) and (2), but in either case a key arthropod trait lacks homology with another Cambrian animal group and must have evolved convergently. The solid-horizontal lines indicate an hypothesis of genuine homologies; the dotted horizontal lines would then be homoplastic (convergent) characters. Matzkes rebuttals to Meyer disclose none of these problems. However, a brief review of the literature shows these issues are widely recognized. A Nature article from 2011 notes that potential stem-arthropods typically express mosaics of arthropod-like characters, which makes resolving a single, simple tree of arthropod origins problematic. Another Nature paper frames the problem this way: [T]he absence of sclerotized trunk limbs in dinocaridids (Anomalocaris, etc.) remains for us one of the great puzzles of stemgroup arthropod evolution. Put simply, dinocaridids [the class which includes anomalocaridids] have a more arthropod-like head region (cephalisation, eyes, sclerotized mouthparts), whereas Diania [a lobopod] lacks such sophistication in the anterior body [head] region, but has jointed trunk appendages. Another paper in the same exchange directly contradicts Matzkes claim that cladistics has revealed the ordering of arthropod evolution: The increasingly detailed fossil record of stem-group euarthropods provides our best chance of resolving this issue, but as yet has failed to do so; unequivocal evidence for any particular ordering of acquisition in these characters is not yet available. Moreover, unique and highly derived features of anomalocaridids and lobopods make them unlikely candidates for arthropod precursors. Anomalocaris has weird flexible lobes on each side of its body, and a unique mouth with ringed teeth. As two experts explain, it is unlike any known arthropod, particularly in the nature of the jaw apparatus and the close-spaced, strongly overlapping lateral lobes. Lobopods have equivalent peculiarities. One paper discussing Diania, a lobopod that some have claimed is closely related to arthropods, observes that it is a highly unusual creature. It is hard to envisage it as the progenitor of any modern arthropod group. In constructing cladograms showing these organisms as intermediate, cladistic analysis finds it convenient simply to ignore such unique features.

Because of these problems, authorities have acknowledged that the evolutionary origin of arthropods is a real mess. Luskin further explains in Debating Darwins Doubt:

Multiple authorities have recognized that Matzkes smooth evolutionary grade of intermediates leading to arthropods does not exist. Douglas Erwin and James Valentines 2013 tome The Cambrian Explosion, which we refer to often in this book, summarizes the debate by observing that the homology of anomalocaridid or lobopodian appendages with arthropods is one of the problems currently facing researchers. They write that [t]his debate is far from settled, illustrating the complexities of understanding the evolutionary pathways among these groups. Likewise, Stefan Richter et al. (2013) note: The exact composition of the stem group of arthropods depends on the position of the Onychophora and Tardigrada, which to date remains unresolved and there are still taxa which are the subject of debate with regard to their phylogenetic position, one being the great appendage arthropods'  e.g., the anomalocaridids. In other words, the phylogenetic positions of both anomalocaridids and lobopods, as well as the ordering of the evolution of arthropod characters, are unestablished. Similarly, Gregory Edgecombe writes: Arthropod phylogeny is sometimes presented as an almost hopeless puzzle wherein all possible competing hypotheses have support. Even Matzkes citation from Legg et al. (2012) explains: The origin of arthropods is a contentious issue there is little consensus regarding the details of their origins.

One final point about cladistics, which Steve Meyer explains in the Epilogue to Darwins Doubt: Cladistics does not address the mechanism of evolution. It only deals with trying to show evolutionary relationships and document common ancestry, and cannot tell you anything about how traits arose. So even if all of Millers cladistics arguments are provisionally taken for granted, he still cannot refute Meyers arguments about the lack of an evolutionary mechanism to explain the origin of body plans that appear abruptly in the Cambrian. As Meyer writes in the Epilogue:

Cladistics describes patterns of relationships among organisms; it provides tools for classifying organisms. It might also suggest historical reconstructions of evolutionary history if its question-begging assumptions in that context are granted. But it cannot determine what caused the patterns of relationship depicted by cladograms or what caused the origin of the complex animal features that it analyzes. For this reason, cladistics cannot be used to rebut the central argument of Darwins Doubt, which addresses precisely the question of what caused the Cambrian animals to arise.

As noted, Meyer addresses cladistics extensively in the Epilogue to Darwins Doubt. Much of this is also addressed in the Section II of Debating Darwins Doubt.

Return of the Artifact Hypothesis

To explain the Cambrian explosion, Miller also invokes the artifact hypothesis: Because of the biases of the fossil record, the most abundant and geographically widespread species of hardpart-bearing organisms would tend to be best represented. But Meyer deals with this argument in Darwins Doubt, noting that the prevalence of soft-bodied fossils in the Precambrian  yet the simultaneous lack of Precambrian fossils that can serve as ancestors to Cambrian animals  shows that the artifact hypothesis does not explain the Cambrian explosion.

Thus, when Miller invokes the Precambrian Ediacaran fauna to claim, In keeping with evolutionary expectations, fossils are now known from the late Precambrian and early Cambrian that record several dramatic transitions in the history of life, he misstates the evidence. Meyers take is far more accurate. He explains that leading paleontologists also doubt that the Cambrian animals descended from these Ediacaran forms and concludes:

In a best case, the Ediacaran forms represent possible ancestors for, at most, four distinct Cambrian body plans, even counting those documented only by trace fossils. This leaves the vast majority of the Cambrian phyla with no apparent ancestors in the Precambrian rocks (i.e., at least nineteen of the twenty-three phyla present in the Cambrian have no representative in Precambrian strata).

Meyer further notes that authorities dont see clear-cut Precambrian bilaterian ancestors to Cambrian animals:

As Graham Budd and Soren Jensen state, The known [Precambrian/Cambrian] fossil record has not been misunderstood, and there are no convincing bilaterian candidates known from the fossil record until just before the beginning of the Cambrian (c. 543 Ma), even though there are plentiful sediments older than this that should reveal them. Thus they conclude, The expected Darwinian pattern of a deep fossil history of the bilaterians, potentially showing their gradual development, stretching hundreds of millions of years into the Precambrian, has singularly failed to materialize.

Lastly, Miller tries to address the cause  which he calls the trigger  of the Cambrian explosion. He invokes a small but typical smorgasbord of familiar explanations  global Precambrian glaciation changed the temperature and chemistry of the oceans, leading to higher oxygen levels, the origin of hard parts led to an evolutionary arms race, and various feedbacks caused these factors to play off of one-another. Each of these shares the same glaring problem: None accounts for the origin of new information needed to explain the origin of the new animal body plans that appear in the Cambrian. For a discussion, see here.

In sum, Keith Millers white paper is a nice summary of many of the typical pop-evolutionary arguments that are invoked to explain away the Cambrian explosion. Those arguments just dont work. He opens with bold claims of how [i]mportant transitional steps between living phyla and their common ancestors are preserved including the rise of mollusks and the evolution of arthropods from lobopods. But when you dig into the technical literature and read the fine print, you find that theres a lot of disagreement about claims of Precambrian ancestral bilaterian fossils, and that many Cambrian animals dont make very good transitional forms to explain the origin of the phyla.

You will also find that many mainstream authorities agree with the view, expressed by ID proponents, that there really was a unique burst of novel biodiversity in the Cambrian. It is what numerous authorities call a geologically sudden explosion. Millers long fuse approach, redefining the Cambrian explosion as a longer period of time, doesnt explain that burst of novelty. Superficial explanations about triggers for the Cambrian explosion, or invocations of the artifact hypothesis, are woefully insufficient to explain the new biological information needed to build the animal body plans that appear abruptly in the Cambrian.

BioLogos handled the matter best when its former president Darrel Falk acknowledged a big mystery associated with the Cambrian explosion, namely the rapid generation of body plans de novo. If Keith Millers white paper had been so forthcoming, BioLogos readers would be better served.

Photo: Kimberella quadrata, by Aleksey Nagovitsyn (Arkhangelsk Regional Museum) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
Let me share with you some of the past days correspondence via Twitter that I think youll find illustrative. Yesterday I started receiving taunting tweets from an individual Id never heard of, Matthew Herron, directing me to his blog where he is identified as Senior Research Scientist in the School of Biology at Georgia Tech. Dr. Herron had authored a post (Lies of omission and straight-up lies) reaching back to the David Coppedge discrimination case and specifically a podcast series in which Coppedge told his story of being persecuted by NASA. I highlighted that here, here, and here.

Herrons research appeared to consist of downloading a court document from the website of the Darwin-lobbying National Center for Science Education. If he had consulted any of our copious analysis here, by Casey Luskin and others, from the months around the Coppedge trial, that was not reflected in his post.

Now why would a biologist employed at a public university, a self-described atheist and Senior Research Scientist, care to delve backward into history to attack Coppedge, who lost his job at NASAs Jet Propulsion Lab in 2011 and soon developed cancer, all shortly before retirement age? Why do the strong ever pick on the weak?

The story of bullying is unfortunately a familiar one from our defense of ID proponents in the science world. Do you find that as gut-wrenching as I do? As I asked here the other day, NASA Versus David Coppedge: Most Reprehensible Case of Anti-Intelligent Design Persecution Yet? Yes, I think it is that, because of the power differential:

Taking advantage of his vulnerability, David Coppedges supervisors sought to hurt and silence him. They succeeded. And that, by fear of career and personal ruin, is how the scientific consensus against ID is maintained.

Now we have a publicly funded professor coming along out of nowhere and, gratuitously, giving Mr. Coppedge another stamp of the boot heel, accusing him of being deluded (and me of lying on Coppedges behalf), all without having done the elementary research demanded by a sense of fairness.

This presents, in a nutshell, the reason I appeal to you today for your end-of-year generosity, to support the work of Discovery Institute and our research and advocacy for intelligent design. Darwinism is Goliath to IDs David. Think about the power differential between Matthew Herron, a random biologist supported from the public trough, versus David Coppedge, cut from his own work with gross prejudice for the offense of lending out DVDs on intelligent design to willing colleagues.

If youre a taxpayer, you already support Goliath. As Evolution News noted here the other day (Lets Tell the Truth about Science Funding), responding to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by the president of MIT asking for still more government funding:

The incestuous world of science grants is one of the best-kept secrets of the Federal Government. Billions of dollars are involved and Congressional oversight is unimpressive. Moreover, the system is so big that it effectively shapes research priorities of universities, rather than responding to them. The Federal Government controls and monopolizes science research, and the whole business is in the service of something quite other than the legendary disinterested search for truth. Addicted and engorged, Big Science isnt what most of the public pictures it to be. Professors dont so much profess  they suck money as through a straw, thanks to a system that epitomizes the kinds of corruption we associate with government.

Wont you assist in balancing the scales just a little today? Discovery Institute receives none of that government largesse. Not one dollar. The work of our scientists and scholars is made possible exclusively by the generosity of donors like yourself. Thank you for that!

Consider what your support has done already. The past twenty years have seen ID emerge as the major flashpoint in the evolution debate. Our researchers  Stephen Meyer, Douglas Axe, Michael Denton, Michael Behe, Ann Gauger, Paul Nelson, Jonathan Wells, Richard Sternberg, and more  are forcing government-funded science to confront the deficiencies of orthodox Darwinian theory and to consider scientific alternatives.

Go back and take a look at our comments on last months Royal Society conference. Would that ever have happened if it werent for the ID movement?

Because of our effectiveness, our opponents think we must be much bigger and better funded than we are. I mean, look at what we do, from books and articles to documentaries. Consider, just as one example, our colleagues John West and Rachel Adams, who are a two-person movie studio. Their most recent work is Revolutionary: Michael Behe and the Mystery of Molecular Machines, which Dr. West wrote and directed while also expertly managing the efforts of the Center for Science & Culture, which he serves as associate director.

The funders who made that provocative and highly professional hour-long video possible are listed at the end with the credits. You will not see any federal or state agency among them.

West and Adams are, by the way, also responsible for publishing Michael Dentons recent book, Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis (Discovery Institute Press), that was recognized by A.N. Wilson in the London Spectator as a best book of 2016. These are impressive accomplishments, all on what amounts to a shoestring.

Imagine if our budget were just a little less constrained than it is. Please help us now to continue this important work! We rely on you entirely. With much gratitude, I ask you to hit the red button above now!

Image: Goliath laughs at David (1915), by Ilya Repin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Family reunification is a key immigration commitment of the Government in Canada for 2017 with changes to how the programme works starting in the New Year.It used to be that there was a mad rush at the beginning of January for applications being submitted for the parent and grandparent visa programme, but 2017 will be different.  From 03 January 2017 sponsorship applications for the visa stream will avoid the January rush and still brings together thousands of families under changes announced by Immigration Minister John McCallum.In recent years, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada limited the number of parent and grandparent applications it would accept, in order to manage intake and interest in the programme and keep the number of applications from growing.Now those wanting to bring their parents or grandparents to Canada will have 30 days to fill out an online form to indicate their interest. IRCC will then randomly choose 10,000 individuals from those who filled out the form and those people will be invited to send in their complete application package.Were listening to what past applicants had to say and making the process fairer for people who want to sponsor their parents or grandparents. Were ensuring everyone can access the application process by giving them the same chance to have their name chosen, said McCallum.The form will ask for the individuals first name, family name, date of birth, country of birth, main home address, postal code and email address.An IRCC spokesman explained that once the information is successfully submitted through the online form, the individual will get a confirmation number. They should keep this number for their records. They will need to submit only one online form, as duplicate entries will be removed. Completing the form will not mean a person has applied to sponsor under the programme, he said.At the end of the 30 days, IRCC will remove the duplicates, randomly choose 10,000 people and ask them to complete the full application. IRCC will let everyone who completed an online form know whether they were chosen or not. Only those who were randomly chosen will be invited to apply to the parent and grandparent programme.Those who were invited to apply will have 90 days to submit their complete application to IRCC. The 2017 application kit and guide will be available on IRCCs website from 09 January 2017.Interested sponsors who are not selected will be able to indicate their interest to apply again in 2018.
Thursday, December 29, 2016

Generally, a document examiner cannot determine that a signature on a photocopy is cut and paste unless the source signature is available. There are exceptions to this rule. When a person is careless creating a document that will be passed as authentic, the document examiner can determine the photocopy is not made from an authentic document.

In a case I demonstrated that a photocopy was created using cut and paste signatures. Attributes of the typed text on the document were compared with the signature lines on the document. Also, the font used for the name under the signature line was compared with the font in the remainder of the document.

A person created a contract, then placed two signatures onto the document. I could not determine whether they were placed onto the page using computer software such as Photoshop, or they were placed onto the page from a manual cutout.

A telltale sign in the example is the signature lines are sloped down to the right for each signature. All the computer printed text on the page was horizontal. If the signature lines were printed on the page with the rest of the printed text, they would have been printed horizontally.

The left-side signature line is indented further right than the bullets in the primary text. This alone does not mean the signature line was pasted onto the contract. It is possible that a person typed leading spaces before starting the signature line.

The signature lines for each person do not align vertically. The signature line on the left side of the page is higher than the signature line on the right side of the page. Have they been printed onto the document, they would align vertically. The vertical distance between the two lines is different from the vertical distance between two of the printed lines of text.

There were many other anomalies on the page, including differences in the font in the names printed below the signature lines and the font in the text of the contract.

The result of the examination is signatures on the contract were not part of the original contract. Therefore, the contract document is not authentic. In this case the source documents for the signatures on the contract were not available. The discrepancies resulted in an opinion the document was created by a a cut and paste of the signatures onto the typed document. The mechanism used to place the signatures onto the typed document is unknown.
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The stars and the calendar are aligned for one of the best New Years Eve celebrations in recent years.

Not only is the biggest party night on the best party day of the week on Saturday, but three of the hottest acts in Texas Music will roll in the new year with Top 10 hits spinning on the Texas Regional Radio Report chart.

Itll be tough to figure out who will throw the rowdiest bash: Jon Wolfe, Kevin Fowler or William Clark Green?And then there is Shane Smith & The Saints, with a Top 30 on the chart.

There will be music for every taste, too.

Traditional country music lovers can pick from Billy Mata & The Texas Tradition, Gary P. Nunn, Dale Watson and Cactus Country.

And dont forget to check your favorite dance spot or club. Most are offering deals including drink specials, free Champagne, party favors and raffles.

The Blue Bonnet Palace, for instance, is offering a no-cover party with a free rib-eye dinner from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., breakfast tacos at 1 a.m. and a DJ spinning country tunes.

Here is a rundown of some of the hottest New Years Eve live shows in San Antonio and the area.

For Jon Wolfe, this show at John T. Floore Country Store also is a celebration of his latest single and part of a 30-date Boots on a Dance Floor Tour. Its named for the song about coping with lifes curves that is a Top 10 hit on the Texas Regional Radio Report chart. Its the first single from an upcoming album of the same name. Randall King will open.

Jon Pardi & Midland will roll into Cowboys Dancehall with songs from this summers sophomore album, California Sunrise, which scored a Billboard Top 20 single with Head Over Boots. The Nashville artist by way of California is no stranger to Texas Music artists: His songs have been covered by Wolfe, Kevin Fowler, Gabe Garcia and Mario Flores. The album was produced by friend and frequent co-writer Bart Butler, a Hondo native.

Billy Mata & The Texas Tradition will bring plenty of western swing and traditional country for dancers at Leon Springs Dance Hall including tunes from an upcoming album saluting Tommy Duncan, the vocalist for Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys during the bands heyday in the 1930s-40s. The album is the last in the This Is Tommy Duncan trilogy.

With the anthem Texas Forever in the Top 5 on the Texas radio chart, Kevin Fowler will be in fine form for a rowdy rocking country time at Gruene Hall. It follows the first hit single from his latest album, Coming to a Honky Tonk Near You. Cameran Nelson will open.

After hitting a lick with his latest studio album Ringling Road, high-energy Texas Music star William Clark Green is back in the Top 10 with Old Fashioned, a cut from his first live project, William Clark Green  Live at Gruene Hall, a 21-song double disk CD. Hell be at River Road Ice House in New Braunfels.

Shane Smith & The Saints, charting with the Top 30 Runaway Train, will be at Conways in New Braunfels with Zach Nytomt. The quartet is known for four-part harmonies and an Americana sound that mixes rock, country, folk and Cajun.

The Glen Templeton Band specializes in traditional-style country presented by Templetons powerful vocals. At Freiheit Country Store in New Braunfels, Templeton will preview a song or two from the album California, set for release in the spring.

Its a show made in country dancing heaven when a country traditionalist such as Gary P. Nunn, who makes sure that every song gets boots on the floor, plays in Kendalia Hall, the restored German dance hall in the little Kendall County town north of Bulverde.

Dale Watson, the unapologetic proponent of honky-tonk and old-school country, will be at Luckenbach Dance Hall with such songs as I Lie When I Drink and I Drink to Remember. Watson is teaming up with Asleep at the Wheel front man Ray Benson for their first duo album, Dale & Ray, set for release Jan. 6.

Cactus Country is set to follow up its 36th annual dance on Christmas Day with a return to Quihi Gun Club & Dance Hall packing plenty of traditional country, Top 40 country and a little Texas Music covers for good measure.

john@johngoodspeed.com
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As the sun set, Annette T. Hill searched for heart-shaped rocks to leave at the memorial of her son, Adam Hill Gibson, who served two tours in Iraq before dying of suicide in 2009.

Beginning at 5 a.m. each day, Hill, clinical director at Warriors Heart Treatment Center in Bandera, treats veterans and first responders with addiction and post-traumatic stress.

When the day ends, Hill is a grieving mother, still grappling with what post-traumatic stress disorder did to her son. Some of the veterans she treats have issues similar to what her son had, and with each therapy session, she brings a mothers understanding of the deadly impact of PTSD.

Hill, 54, searched for heart-shaped rocks as she walked along a trail winding around the ponds at Warriors Heart. To decompress, Hill runs along this trail at dusk, and sometimes a herd of deer will rise up from the brush when she passes by.

When her son was in Iraq, Hill said she had been steeling herself in the event he died in combat. She wasnt ready the day she learned he died at home. Four months later, her marriage fell apart.

Who am I? Im not a mom, now Im not even a wife, Hill said. I had to survive. To tell the truth, I didnt want to, at times.

Hill said she and her son had a unique way of saying goodbye. Ever since Adam was young, when the two parted, they would not say I love you to each other. Whether in person, in texts, or even in angry shouts across the room, their goodbyes would be one of them saying Love and the other replying, Love.

It was a small shared ritual, one they didnt follow the last week of Adams life, before he shot himself. That last week of his life, they were bickering too much, Hill said.

At the time, Hill was a practicing clinician, helping others with their grief and trauma. She said her then-husband lost his job the week before her son died.

I was the sole income provider, so I had to go back to work, Hill said.

She started with just a few clients, and then worked her way up from there, she said. Her fellow clinicians were there to support her and to watch her if she was fit to practice, she said.

The worst part was I didnt get a chance to grieve, but because I was so focused on what I was doing, it gave me just enough of a break in my thinking, Hill said.

She said that year she cried without words, just primal sounds.

Therapy had not been Hills first career. Until she was 37, she had been in interior design, until a sexual assault changed her path.

It is San Antonio Express-News policy not to identify victims of sexual assault without their consent.

She found she enjoyed solving the puzzle of the brain. When she helps someone see their trauma in a different context, she said she can see a physical reaction. She likens it to someone watching a movie with a twist ending. She sees them rewind their memories, and rewatching them with new information.

From time to time, a client will say something reminding her of Adam. Im very upfront, Hill said. If I had a moment where you said something that was very triggering in me, I would say it, and say it in a way that was a teaching moment.

Oddly enough, she felt that listening to combat veterans helped her understand her son. It just validated how trapped he was, through the eyes of someone else, Hill said. It helped me understand what he was going through.

After three years, Hill said she began to live her life again. She had joined Gold Star Mothers of America, an organization for those who lost sons or daughters in service of the United States Armed Forces. She would go to her sons grave and then drive to a ranch where they had named a pony after Adam.

One day, that pony appeared after a barbeque with other Gold Star Mothers. That night, before going to sleep, Hill realized she was smiling. That was, three years ago in October, my first real joy after his death, Hill said.

Though Gibson died seven years ago, Hill still encounters reminders of him.

Every day has its own brutality, Hill said.

Night had fallen when Hill stopped at her sons memorial, which was created by the suicide awareness group Mission 22 for 20 veterans who had died by suicide.

From 20 steel slabs, arrayed in a v-formation, the shape of a veteran was cut out. One of those veterans was Adam.

Hill said she didnt know the memorial would be placed on the front yard of her workplace. Hill said she thought, How am I going to work here? My worst pain is out there for everyone to see.

When the memorial was dedicated in the fall, Hill cried as she told the gathered crowd the story of her son. She brought two boots then, one a cowboy boot Adam wore when he was a child, and one a desert tan combat boot.

Today, Hill said she now feels connected to her sons memorial. At the end of her walk, Hill placed one of her heart-shaped rocks at the foot of Adams memorial, next to his two boots. She then left more heart-shaped rocks at base of other veterans memorials.

Hill said as a Gold Star Mother and as a clinician that she believes in the possibility of growth after trauma. There are things found in grief, that can only be found in grief, she said.

During Christmas, she was away from home working with veterans and first responders at Warriors Heart. The work keeps her anchored, and she said she feels connected to Adam when she helps other veterans.

Im bringing Adam forward with me, she said.

jlawrence@express-news.net

RELATED: Check out some mental health resources for veterans below.




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The frosty transfer of power at the Bexar County Sheriffs Office turned bitter cold on Wednesday as Sheriff-elect Javier Salazar obtained a temporary restraining order barring Sheriff Susan Pamerleau from making what he said are improper personnel changes.

Set to take office Sunday, Salazar claims the defeated incumbent is interfering with the transition. In a petition filed in state district court, Salazar, a Democrat, asserted that Pamerleau, a Republican, made reassignments that could result in grievances and lawsuits.

Some of the moves were designed to keep members of Pamerleaus top administrative team on the payroll in positions that do not exist, the petition stated.

Pamerleau denied those claims saying shes just carrying out her normal duties in her remaining days in office.

Operations and administrative functions dont stop, even when theres a change in leadership, Pamerleau said.

Citing her policy of adhering to state, county and Sheriffs Office rules, any actions taken regarding personnel are strictly based on those directives, she said.

But Salazar asserted otherwise in court, convincing state District Judge John D. Gabriel to issue the restraining order against Pamerleau.

Salazars petition said one of his supporters, a sergeant under Pamerleau, was given a 30 day suspension for unwarranted and meritless allegations. The lawsuit also claimed that two of Pamerleaus deputy chiefs, who faced dismissal by Salazar, were demoted by Pamerleau in mere attempts to protect her supporters.

Gabriels order barred Pamerleau from making personnel changes without administering the proper procedures and testing.

Salazar said the litigation was necessary because these improper actions on the part of the outgoing sheriff were inevitably going to lead to grievances filed on officers that by all rights needed the opportunity to promote into those positions the right way.

He added that those grievances are going to quickly become lawsuits, and guess whos going to pay for that? The taxpayers. It doesnt need to happen.

Salazar, who narrowly out-polled the first-term sheriff to end her re-election bid on Nov. 8, is slated to take office overnight Saturday at a midnight investiture ceremony, open to the public, in the Central Jury Room of the Bexar County Courthouse.

Staff writer Elizabeth Zavala contributed to this report.

jgonzalez@express-news.net

Twitter: @johnwgonzalez
Courtesy photo

AUSTIN  Gov. Greg Abbott made an unannounced visit to Australia for a family vacation and ended up exchanging hats with the prime minister, a transaction he duly chronicled on social media.

Engaging visit in Sydney with Australian Prime Minister. I traded a Stetson for an Australian Akubra, Abbott tweeted with a photo of him and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, both smiling as they showed off their newly acquired hats.
AUSTIN  - A federal judge supervising the states troubled foster-care system has ordered child-protection officials to immediately comply with a year-old court order prohibiting foster children from being placed in group homes that lacked 24-hour supervision.

The development comes as the state has continued to downplay reports of continuing abuse and chronic staffing shortages in a system that early next year faces the possibility of court supervision, as the Legislature convenes to address a plan to increase funding for the troubled programs.

In a decision signed Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack said the state Department of Family and Protective Services incorrectly interpreted her injunction issued on Dec. 17, 2015 that mandated that state officials immediately stop placing (permanent managing conservatorship) foster children in unsafe placements, which include foster group homes that lack 24-hour awake-night supervision.

The Corpus Christi-based judge said the state had interpreted her injunction to allow foster children already in those homes to remain there and to only cover future placements.

The new order states that for more than a year permanent managing conservatorships as well as temporary managing conservatorship foster children have remained in foster group homes without 24-hour awake-night supervision, in contrast to the Courts desired effect of its injunction, the new order states.

It orders an immediate halt to the continuing practice, which Jack said was discovered during a Dec. 21 conference with attorneys in the case.

Jacks latest order is part of a long-running saga over the quality of child welfare services in Texas. It also separately adds to a growing national debate on the challenge of how best to provide services to foster children.

Aides to Gov. Greg Abbott said the governor had no immediate comment on the new order. Kayleigh Lovvorn, a spokesman for Attorney General Ken Paxton, also declined comment.

There are now 10,306 foster children in permanent custody of CPS. Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Department of Family and Protective Services, said he does not know how many of those children are covered by the judges order. DFPS officials are working to determine that now, and to find alternate placements to comply with the court order, he said.

Permanent managing conservatorships are children who are most likely to remain in foster care until they turn 18, many because of emotional, behavioral or other issues that make family placements unlikely. Temporary conservatorships are for children who are expected to transition out of state custody at some point.

A footnote on Jacks order notes that she previously ruled that foster-care group homes without the 24-hour supervision are unsafe placements for either the permanent or temporary foster kids.

Testimony at an earlier trial showed that foster homes without around-the-clock supervision experienced problems with abuse not present at ones with supervision.

The state has been struggling for years to correct systemic flaws in its foster-care system, ranging from hundreds of deaths of children in state custody to chronic reports of abuse and neglect in foster placements. Moreover, hundreds of abuse reports go unchecked for months because of administrative chaos and high staff turnover.

Both Gov. Greg Abbott and DPFS Commissioner Henry Hank Whitman Jr. have publicly promised to curb the longstanding problems in the states system as their highest priority. Legislative leaders have said the crisis will have top priority during the five-month legislative session, as well.

Earlier this month, legislative leaders approved more than $142 million in additional funding to hire more than 800 workers and pay raises to 7,000 employees in its beleaguered Child Protective Services program. It is part of an emergency plan to address the agencys manpower crisis.
WASHINGTON - With Donald Trump tweeting from the sidelines, Secretary of State John F. Kerry condemned Jewish settlement activity under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a chief obstacle to Mideast peace, igniting a fresh war of words with the Israeli leader.

Kerrys lengthy and impassioned address, delivered at the State Department, marked the latest chapter in an unusually bitter public clash between the United States and Israel - and the extraordinary spectacle of the president-elect again inserting himself into a sensitive diplomatic matter before taking office.

In a speech lasting more than an hour, Kerry appealed for a hiatus in Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, called on Palestinian leaders to explicitly denounce terrorist attacks against Israelis, and warned repeatedly that the prospects for a "two-state solution," with Israel and a Palestinian state existing side by side, were in jeopardy.

"We cannot in good conscience do nothing, and say nothing, when we see the hope of peace slipping away," he said.

With less than a month until he leaves the State Department, Kerrys speech was a mainly symbolic gesture, an emblem of last-ditch hopes to restart a U.S.-brokered peace process that collapsed in 2014. Kerry tried again and again to revive the talks, but failed.

Although most of his speech took aim at Israeli policies, Kerry was also critical of Palestinian leaders, saying they needed to do more to condemn specific attacks against Israelis. As an example, he cited the naming of streets and squares for Palestinians who carried out such strikes.

"Murderers of innocents are still glorified," he said.

Kerry offered up a full-throated defense of President Barack Obamas Mideast policies, saying the administration had been "Israels greatest friend and supporter," citing enhanced military aid and intelligence sharing.

And he was sharply critical of Netanyahus government, saying it was creating a "dangerous dynamic" with continued settlement expansion.

"Time and again we have demonstrated that we have Israels back," said Kerry. But, he added, "friends need to tell each other the hard truths, and friendships require mutual respect."

After the speech, a visibly angry Netanyahu responded in Jerusalem that Kerry was "obsessively" dwelling on the settlements as part of what he described as a pattern of U.S. bias against Israel.

"If the administration invested the same energy into fighting Palestinian terrorism that it invested in condemning building in Jerusalem, maybe there would have been a better chance to promote peace," the Israeli leader told reporters.

"Decisions about Israels future wont be made by speeches in Washington," he added.

Palestinians responded by suggesting they would use a French-convened international conference next month to try to increase Israels diplomatic isolation.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would be willing to resume negotiations "the minute the Israeli government agrees to cease all settlement activities" and implement previous agreements.

As has become his habit, the U.S. president-elect was quick to opine on Twitter - even before Kerry spoke.

Trump tweeted early Wednesday to denounce what he called "disdain and disrespect" shown toward Israel - a reference to the Obama administrations decision Friday to abstain on a United Nations Security Council resolution that called Israeli settlement activity a flagrant violation of international law.

"Stay strong Israel," Trump tweeted. "January 20 is fast approaching!" - the date he will take office.

The president-elect has already indicated that he intends to upend long-standing U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, picking a financial patron of the settlement movement as U.S. ambassador to Israel and pledging to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, a move the Palestinians believe would undermine their statehood hopes.

Obama and Kerry have been the target of intensifying Israeli broadsides since Fridays vote at the U.N., and even before Kerry spoke, a member of Netanyahus Cabinet denounced the U.S. administrations efforts to influence events in Obamas last weeks in office.

Speaking to army radio in Israel, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan called the Obama administration "pro-Palestinian" and Kerrys planned speech a "pathetic" move. Another Cabinet minister, Naftali Bennett, tweeted against the "establishment of a terror state in the heart of the country."

Netanyahus office has said it would bypass the White House and deal directly with Trump, providing the incoming president with what it said was proof that the Obama administration colluded with the Palestinians to bring forth the U.N. resolution.

In his speech, Kerry vehemently denied that and said Israel had been warned repeatedly that the U.S. would not use its Security Council veto to block the resolution if it were fair and balanced.

Obamas relations with Netanyahu have long been rocky, but the last few days of exchanges marked some of the harshest public rhetoric in years between the two nations.

The White House decision to abstain on the U.N. resolution, and thus let it pass, has been awkward for Democrats in Congress and other allies of Obama, who fear it will be read as a betrayal of Israel.

Successive U.S. administrations have tried to coax Israel and the Palestinians toward common ground over disputes, including the status of Jerusalem, which both sides want as their capital, and a drawing of borders between Israel and a Palestinian state.

Palestinians say stepped-up Israeli settlement activity has prejudiced the outcome of negotiations, depriving them of contiguous territory needed for a viable state. Israel in turn has accused the Palestinians of negotiating in bad faith and inciting violence against Israeli civilians.

Kerrys address got at least some positive reaction in Israel.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who served as a defense minister under Netanyahu, praised Kerrys speech on Twitter as "strong and sane." He blamed Netanyahu for taking Israel to the brink of international isolation by following "a messianic movement" of Jews in the West Bank.

____

2016 Tribune Co.
(Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama phoned his successor, Donald Trump, after the Republican accused Obama of hobbling the transition to his administration in a tweet that alleged unspecified inflammatory statements and roadblocks.

The tweet on Wednesday morning brought tensions between the two men into the open less than a month before Inauguration Day, though the presidents phone call later may have smoothed over relations.

We had a very nice conversation, Trump told reporters gathered at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. We had a general conversation.

Earlier, Trump erupted on Twitter with attacks on actions and statements by the president, chiefly Obamas direction that the U.S. abstain from a United Nations Security Council vote declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal. By declining to veto the resolution, the U.S. allowed it to pass unanimously, enraging Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks, Trump tweeted on Wednesday. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition -- NOT!

As president-elect, Trump has taken an unusually activist role with a series of interventions into business decisions, federal contracting and foreign policy despite Obamas insistence that only one person can govern the U.S. at a time. The Republican has promised that his administration will be friendlier to Israel, a theme he emphasized on Twitter Wednesday.

Kerry Speech

We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect, Trump tweeted. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.!) Stay strong, Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!

His tweets came hours before Obamas secretary of state, John Kerry, described in a speech his vision for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Netanyahu has said the UN resolution reduced the prospects for an agreement, while Trump announced earlier this month he would nominate his friend and bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman -- an ardent supporter of Israeli settlements -- as his ambassador to the country.

Regulatory Actions

Other recent moves by Obama are also emerging as challenges to the incoming administration. Last week, the president announced that more than 100 million acres of the U.S. Arctic and undersea canyons in the Atlantic Ocean would be protected from new offshore oil and gas drilling. He has encouraged Americans to enroll in Obamacare before the Jan. 31 deadline for 2017 sign-ups despite Trumps vow to repeal the law, and the Environmental Protection Agency is moving rapidly to finalize mileage requirements for automakers months earlier than expected.

Obama has also needled Trump in recent public statements. In an interview published by CNN on Monday, the president said that he would have beaten Trump had he run for a third term. In a speech in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Tuesday commemorating the 1941 Japanese surprise attack that ushered the U.S. into World War II, Obama cautioned against tribalism and the urge to demonize those who are different, without mentioning the president-elect.

During the past 24 hours, Trump has been busy on Twitter, a medium that has become his favorite channel to communicate with the America public. He tweeted on Tuesday about his election win, after Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the memorial to the USS Arizona, a battleship sunk at Pearl Harbor, and just before their speeches.

President Obama campaigned hard (and personally) in the very important swing states, and lost, Trump wrote. The voters wanted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Thanks Donald

Later, he appeared to try to create his own version of the Thanks, Obama meme that the presidents supporters and opponents have used in commentary on his record.

The U.S. Consumer Confidence Index for December surged nearly four points to 113.7, THE HIGHEST LEVEL IN MORE THAN 15 YEARS! Thanks Donald! Trump tweeted.

Years of insults between the two men predated Trumps run for the White House. Yet the real estate developer met with Obama shortly after the election and praised his character while promising to retain some initiatives, including parts of Obamas signature health-care law.

Both men have said theyve spoken by phone more than once after that meeting. But their relations, at least in public, have recently been rocky.

In response to Obamas claim that he would have won a race between the two, Trump tweeted on Monday: I say NO WAY! - jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ben Brody in Washington at btenerellabr@bloomberg.net, Jennifer Epstein in Palm Beach, Florida at jepstein32@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Michael Shepard

2016 Bloomberg L.P.
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In a slow build to announcing a run for mayor, Manuel Medina has alleged that Mayor Ivy Taylor supports President-elect Donald Trump.

Thats rich for a few reasons, chief among them: In preparing to run for a nonpartisan office, the chairman of the Bexar County Democratic Party is accusing the incumbent of hyper-partisanship.

Its no secret that Ivy Taylors strategy is to embrace Donald Trump and his movement and ride that wave to City Hall, Medina told me.

Late Wednesday, Taylor texted a statement in response: While the chairman of a political party might want to inject partisan politics into a nonpartisan race, as mayor I am focused on basics like infrastructure, making city government work for everyone and being fiscally responsible to taxpayers.

Clearly, Medinas strategy is to tie the mayor, however unfairly, to an unpopular president-elect who won just 40.3 percent of ballots cast in Bexar County. And ironically, this no-holds-barred attack shows how the progressive Democrat is actually the one mimicking the Republican president-elects style, if not his politics.

This month, on the steps of City Hall, Medina announced he had appointed a campaign treasurer and would infuse his potential campaign with $250,000 of his own money.

Manuel Medina, as he looks forward to announcing soon to making his final decision, will be a mayor thats independent, politically and financially, of the special interests that run City Hall today, Medina said.

Its Trumpian enough to refer to yourself in the third person  Thanks Donald! Trump tweeted on Tuesday  but Medinas message of independence from special interests is a clear echo of the president-elects successful campaign strategy.

Medina acknowledged as much on Wednesday.

Thats a similarity between my message and Donald Trumps message at the national level, he said.

Later, he called me back to clarify.

I would consider myself more in the (Sen. Bernie) Sanders mold, he said, because we share the enthusiasm and excitement among the voters.

I noted that Trump captured a lot of enthusiasm, as well.

I would win an election by bringing us together, not by dividing us, Medina responded.

That assertion, though, underscores another likeness between Medina and Trump: Both are bold predictors of political triumph in defiance of conventional wisdom.

At City Hall, I asked Medina whether he would step down as chairman of the local Democratic Party to challenge Taylor.

As soon as I win, yes, he said, adding, If Ivy Taylor steps down as mayor, Ill step down as chair  I think we already have too much partisan politics in the mayors race, but its not because of Manuel Medina. Its because of Ivy Taylor and her support for Donald Trump.

I asked Medina  a Democratic stalwart who has advocated for designating San Antonio a so-called sanctuary city  how he expected to gain the support of local conservatives.

I think you will be pleasantly surprised, Medina replied. And Im going to make a bold announcement right now that Manuel Medina will win the North Side vote in this City Council election if he decides to run.

He added, The truth of the matter is that we know where the candidates line up in this race. There is already a Republican running. Theres a centrist running. I think in the city of San Antonio, a Democrat should be allowed to run for City Council, too.

To Medina, the centrist is Councilman Ron Nirenberg, who announced his candidacy this month, and the Republican is Taylor. In a sense, the chairman has no choice but to frame the race in such nakedly partisan terms, as it would prove all but impossible to unbridle the donkey, as it were, from his candidacy.

But by so proudly declaring his Democratic identity, Medina is also vying for the mayors seat in an unprecedented way  that is, if he ever gets around to announcing whether hes running.

Medina said that would happen next week.

Im a little unconventional, he said, with another Trumpian flourish, but I will be inviting the press.

bchasnoff@express-news.net
There are moments in a life that are much bigger than we are, and have a way of astounding us in memories as years pass by.

It was a bitterly cold winter day in early 1986 when I boarded a plane with a group of good people, all involved in agriculture, for a symposium in Washington, D.C.

There we would be meeting with our representatives as part of a well-planned Ohio Farm Bureau event, which I would be reporting on for the newspaper that employed me as editor.

It was an opportunity I looked forward to for many reasons. These were incredibly trying times for farmers. We had personally witnessed successful farmers suffering and struggling in ways we never thought we would.

The U.S. Prime rate in 1985 was around 10.5 percent, down from the horrific all-time high of 15 percent, and though we were promised better times ahead, some had seen their grasp on long-held family farms slip away.

Reserved seat

I learned upon our arrival I had been selected to attend dinner at the National Press Club, after a day of speakers and an official tour. I dressed for a semi-formal event, was escorted to the legendary Press Club dining area.

As I was shown to my reserved seat at a linen-draped round table, I saw my name plate situated beside none other than Senator John Glenn.

My heart skipped a few beats as I considered the enormity of this. My memory holds the sweet-natured gentlemans kindness, his distinct voice, his interest in his constituents struggles.

A shyness in his demeanor as he asked specific questions regarding Ohios family farms is what remains strongest in my memory. His concern and interest was genuine.

I later learned that he was a last-minute addition to the dinner, asking to be a part of it to meet Ohio constituents who understood the dire straights of farmers.

Positive impression

Regardless of his hero status as the first American to orbit Earth in 1962, his 59 flight missions in the South Pacific during World War II, and among the first to pilot supersonic trans-continental flight, the man who sat beside me was a soft-spoken Ohio man who cared deeply for his country.

After asking about my family and the type of farming my father was involved in, he spoke of his own, who had spent his life running a plumbing business in New Concord, Ohio, and mentioned that his mother had retired as a school teacher.

I think I made them proud, or at least I hope I did, he said with a grin. Those are the only words I was able to commit completely to memory, and it says a lot about the impression he left.

His interest in his fellow man was born in a modest childhood. In his memoir, Glenn wrote that his family was able to keep their home during the Great Depression by the mercy of a government-backed FHA loan which allowed his father to renegotiate with the bank.

In the memorial service for Senator Glenn last week at Ohio State University, Vice President Joe Biden said it so well in his remarks, I think John defined what it meant to be an Americanthe thing that I liked most about John was he knew from his upbringing that ordinary Americans could do extraordinary things.

If were looking for a message to send about our time on Earth and what it means to be an American, its the life of John Glenn, and that is not hyperbole.
The Farm and Dairy staff selected the top 10 stories to impact its readership in 2016. Comment below to share how these stories left a mark on your year.

1Prison Farms

In April, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, and the John Kasich administration, announced plans to close and sell Ohios prison farms and assets. The decision involved about 12,500 acres of farmland, about 3,300 head of cattle and roughly 10 farm locations.

The administration said it could do a better job of focusing on rehabilitation and opportunities for inmates without the farms, which the state said had become a drain on energy and resources.

The decision surprised most Ohioans, and many were concerned about how it would all play out, and what it would cost the state to buy the foods it had previously produced.

Learn more: Ohio corrections department to sell prison farms

2Presidential election makes big waves

The national presidential election took center stage for much of the year. Since the new leader will have significant influence over farm policy, we took a look at their positions on issues that matter to farmers and rural America.

We outlined their stances on trade, immigration, clean water, energy, food safety, the farm bill, biotechnology and taxes. With Donald Trumps victory in November we see his administration taking shape and wait for the legislative session to start again to see how policies affecting rural America are influenced by his leadership.

Learn more: Where do Clinton and Trump stand on agriculture?

3GMO labeling

Capping a hot issue that bubbled up for the past five years, in July, Congress passed legislation that will require most food packages to carry a text label, a symbol or an electronic code readable by smartphone that indicates whether the food contains genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. President Barack Obama signed the bill into law.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has two years to write the rules.

Learn more: Ohio Farm Science Review opens with GMO discussion

4Mergers

This was a year of many mergers, at the national and local level. The mergers were hailed as good business decisions by some, and feared by others. Nationally, the chemical giant Bayer announced plans to acquire Monsanto, ChemChina announced plans to acquire Syngenta, and John Deere continued its plan of acquiring Monsanto-owned Precision Planting. In August, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Deere, but the company vowed to defend its merger.

Locally, mergers were announced between Town and Country Co-op and Western Reserve Farm Cooperative; Agland Co-op and Heritage Cooperative, and Sunrise and Trupointe.

Learn more: Sunrise and Trupointe Co-ops propose merger; Agland Co-op and Heritage announce intent to merge; Bayer and Monsanto finalize merger agreement; Kubota to buy Great Plains Manufacturing; Justice department files antitrust lawsuit against John Deere, Monsanto

5Driverless tractors advance industry

Two autonomous tractors were unveiled at this years Farm Progress Show in Iowa, Aug. 30. After the initial showing they popped up at other farm shows and national events around the country, including the Farm Science Review and the National FFA Convention & Expo.

The New Holland NH Drive and Case IH Magnum concept tractors feature driverless technology, which can perform farming tasks day and night. New Holland Agriculture has received the 2017 SIMA Silver Innovation Medal at for the NH Drive concept, which can work with or without a driver.

Learn more: Driverless tractors unveiled at Farm Progress Show

6Oil and gas markets on pause

Although overall production was up, lower oil and natural gas prices in 2016 continued to challenge operators, who reduced drilling activity in the Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia Marcellus and Utica shale plays. However, a number of intrastate and interstate pipelines (Rover, Leach Xpress, Rayne Xpress and Nexus) have been approved or in the approval process that could move up to 6.8 billion cubic feet per day out of the region by the end of 2018.

Learn more: Shale gas drilling permits increase in Ohio, Pa.; Ohios Utica Shale gas production up, oil down; New natural gas infrastructure to up transport from Utica; Utica and Marcellus shale: Oil and gas drilling permits inch higher; Marathon finishes Cornerstone Pipeline; Utica and Marcellus shale: Horizontal well permit activity still strong in Pennsylvania

7The VFD takes effect Jan. 1

The Veterinary Feed Directive is set to take effect starting Jan. 1, 2017, which means producers will no longer be able to access certain medicated feeds without veterinary oversight. The FDAs main concern is improper or overuse of these drugs may be contributing to antibiotic resistant bacteria, making it more difficult to treat human illnesses. One of the keys is to have a Veterinary Client Patient Relationship (VCPR) with your local veterinarian.

Learn more: Veterinary Feed Directive: What producers need to know for the new year

8Pa. budget stalemate

The future of Penn States agriculture and Extension programs was almost jeopardized by a budget stalemate. The college of agricultural research and Extension programs are funded through the Land Scrip Fund, which had been part of the governors line-item veto and was zeroed out in late February. The stalemate ended March 23. Penn State received a 5 percent increase in general support appropriations, and a $4.3 million increase for agricultural research and Extension.

Learn more: Pa. budget impasse hits Penn State ag college, Extension

9Tight year for profits

For the third straight year, farmers faced declining net farm incomes, forecasted down 14.6 percent from 2015. Nearly all commodities felt the pinch, especially dairy which saw a decline of nearly $1 billion in profits in both Ohio and Pennsylvania. Grain prices were down, with corn barley trading at $4 a bushel and beans staying close to $10 or under. Net farm income for 2016 is predicted to be the lowest since 2009.

Learn more: USDA reports 2016 farm profits; Ag barometer points towards tough times; Good game plan a must for farmers in 2017; Tough ag economy weighs on minds at Farm Science Review; Dairy prices in a slump, but showing some improvement; Challenges ahead: crop and livestock sectors face difficult new year

10CAUV

Ohio farmers and landowners continued to push for reform in the Current Agricultural Use Value formula, after seeing two- and three-fold increases to their property taxes in recent years. Farmer-supported legislation was before lawmakers all-year, but was never voted out of committee. Some farmers said they were facing going out of business because of the dramatic increases, but school districts and local governments, who depend on the income from taxes, said changing the formula would cause a tax shift and increase on the tax burden on residential property owners. Supporters said theyll push for reform again in 2017.

Learn more: Ohio legislature punts on CAUV farm tax reform; Ohios CAUV case will stay in court, but trial not until 2018; Ohio farm groups disappointed with new CAUV rates; CAUV reform on hold in House and Senate committees; Ohio House committee hears CAUV bill testimony; Landowners in CAUV lawsuit want to keep case in Ashtabula; Whats up with CAUV appeals?
STATE COLLEGE, Pa.  Eclipse Resources Corporation announced Dec. 19 it has completed the sale of approximately 9,900 acres in eastern Noble County and western Monroe County, Ohio, for approximately $63.8 million to an undisclosed buyer.

The assets sold were predominately undeveloped acres in the Utica Shale formation and included production of approximately 1,000 Mcfe per day.

The acreage did not permit us to drill wells with lateral lengths that meet our internal planning requirements, and would have required future lease extension payments, said Benjamin W. Hulburt, chairman, president and CEO.

The sale will enhances our liquidity, he added, as the company looks to accelerate growth in 2017, including the addition of a second operated drilling rig during 2017.
JOHNSTON, Iowa  DuPont Pioneer recently announced 53 new corn products and introduced the Pioneer brand A-Series soybean varieties, and as part of its lineup for 2017 spring planting.

These new soybean varieties are the result of the DuPont Pioneer proprietary Accelerated Yield Technology 4.0 (AYT 4.0).

Available for 2017 planting, Pioneer is launching 54 new A-Series soybean varieties from maturity Groups 000 to 7 across North America. In 2016 on-farm Pioneer IMPACT plot tests, these varieties produced an average yield advantage of 2.3 bu./acre against 10,000 comparisons of elite competitors at 400 locations.

The new corn products range from 72 to 118 comparative relative maturity (CRM) and feature 29 new genetic platforms, all cultivated from the DuPont Pioneer global germplasm collection.

Soybeans

This is a historic milestone for Pioneer, said Steve Reno, vice president, business director U.S. and Canada. This new soybean line is producing unprecedented step-change improvements in yields.

The North America soybean line consists of more than 30 varieties with Roundup Ready 2 Xtend technology, 11 glyphosate tolerant varieties, a Pioneer brand Plenish high oleic soybean variety, plus conventional, LibertyLink and DuPont STS varieties.

The letter A will be part of the soybean variety names to help growers easily identify the new high-yielding lines.

Pioneer announced in July 2016 it had deployed a new breeding technology called AYT 4.0 across its entire soybean breeding program. The technology has more than doubled the rate of genetic gain of its soybean pipeline and cut the time it takes to bring new products to market. The majority of the A-Series soybean varieties were developed with AYT 4.0.

In the eastern Corn Belt eastward, Pioneer is introducing 28 A-Series soybeans for soybean growers, from 08 to early 5 maturities, including 17 varieties with Roundup Ready 2 Xtend technology and one variety with the Pioneer brand Plenish high oleic soybean trait.

Corn lineup

New product highlights include: a set of new Pioneer brand Optimum AQUAmax products; expanded end-use options for yellow food corn, white corn, and conventional (non-GMO) markets ; high-performance brown midrib (BMR) and silage corn products.

Adding these new advancements to the existing commercial lineup of Pioneer brand products means we now offer one of the broadest, most genetically diverse, and high-yielding corn lineups in our history, said Matt Smalley, DuPont Pioneer research director, North America Maize Product Development.

DuPont Pioneer agronomists conducted more than 10,000 Pioneer GrowingPoint agronomy trials in 2016 on customer farms.

Eastern Corn Belt

Many of the advanced products will help solve challenges unique to growers in the northeastern United States, including the eastern Corn Belt. Of the 53 new products, 13 are new genetic platforms with products in the 100- to 118-day maturity range, including corn silage, BMR silage, white corn and yellow food corn hybrids.
HOLLAND, Ohio  Yoder & Frey, leading auctioneers of heavy construction equipment announced Dec. 19 they will join forces with Europes largest construction machinery auctioneers, UK based Euro Auctions.

The venture will see Yoder & Frey become an extension of the Euro Auctions brand. Yoder & Frey was founded 52 years ago and the originators of the now famous annual Kissimmee winter consignment auction in Florida  now in its 43rd year.

Combining the established U.S. Yoder & Frey name with the global reach and worldwide machinery expertise of Euro Auctions will create a trusted partner for all customers.

The merger will see the joint brand create a stable and strategic partnership, offering customers greater options when buying and selling their equipment. The new venture will see Yoder & Frey provide its customers with a greater number of choices and platforms to buy, sell and dispose of equipment and assets.

Through the strategic alliance with Euro Auctions, customers will benefit from exposure to a new, enthusiastic and loyal customer base of buyers, as well as benefiting from a pool of consignors who will be looking to send their assets to Yoder & Frey sales in the USA.

The Yoder & Frey brand will continue in the USA, with Peter Clark, CEO of Yoder & Frey, continuing to lead this business for Euro Auctions.

Current employees will be retained to see the merger launch and deliver the busy 2017 auction season. Euro Auctions Atlanta site will be rebranded as Yoder & Frey and added to their portfolio.

Euro Auctions has been conducting unreserved auctions of industrial plant, construction equipment and agricultural machinery since 1998 and today conducts over 35 major auctions every year around the globe, in six countries and on three continents.

Euro Auctions is market leader in Europe, holding more sales and selling more lots per sale that any other auction house. With its head office located in Dromore, Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland it has five more permanent auction sites in England, Germany, Spain, Australia and the USA.
Fifteen of the UKs top farmers are being funded to attend the 2017 Oxford Farming Conference (OFC) which will be held at Oxford University from 3-5 January 2017.

The OFC Council has invited farmers to join its Emerging Leaders initiative, which builds on the OFCs successful UK and international scholars programmes.

Conference delegate places have been offered to people aged 30-45 years of age who are developing their skills and passion for leadership roles within the global agri-food sector. The initiative is being funded with support from Massey Ferguson.

The OFC invited organisations already actively developing leadership within agriculture and the rural communities to elect people to attend.

Partner organisations involved are: AHDB, the Institute of Agricultural Management (IAgrM), Nuffield Farming Scholarship Trust, Scottish Enterprise Rural Leadership, The European Young Farmers Association (CEJA) and the Worshipful Company of Farmers. Four final places were sought from the wider industry via a Twitter promotion.

The fifteen

Antony Pearce, Moat Farm, Stoke Mandeville, Bucks: AHDB

Rhys Williams, Trygarn, Sarn Meltyrn, South Wales: AHDB

James Chapman, F Moreton & Co, Leamington Spa, Warks: Nuffield Farming Scholarship Trust

Patrick Hook, PD Hook, Bampton, Oxon: Nuffield Farming Scholarship Trust

Susannah Pate, South Powrie, By Dundee, Angus: Scottish Enterprise Rural Leadership Programme

Tracey Roan, Barnbarroch Farm, Dalbeattie, Dumfries & Galloway: Scottish Enterprise Rural Leadership Programme

Angela Kirkwood, East Riding Country Pork, Halsham, E Yorks: Challenge of Rural Leadership (Worshipful Company of Famers)

Charlie Chamberlain, Crowmarsh Battle Farms, Oxon: Institute of Agricultural Management

Naill Blair, Kilry, Blairgowrie, Angus: Applied via Twitter promotion

Fiona Hanna, Newry, Northern Ireland: Applied via Twitter promotion

Dan Roberts, Brackley, Northants: Applied via Twitter promotion

Nicola Renison, Cannerheugh Farm, Renwick, Cumbria: Applied via Twitter promotion

Alan Jagoe, Carrigaline, Co.Cork, Ireland: President, CEJA

Alice Cerutti, Vercelli, Northern Italy: Vice-President, CEJA

Juha Tenho, Ulvila, Finland: Vice-President, CEJA

'Heart of every farm and rural business'

Martin Davies, the OFCs 2017 Chairman said: At the heart of every farm and rural business there is someone responsible for the key decisions  individuals who drive the business forward. They recognise the opportunities, seize the agenda, and forge the path that others will follow.

The OFC offers an excellent opportunity for these individuals to develop their networks and sector knowledge and the OFC Council feel that this is something that we can support them with by their attendance of the conference.

The OFC is cited by delegates as one of the best events for meaningful conversations with a wide range of contacts, including scientists, senior leaders from UK retail, policy makers, NGOs and supply chain managers. We attract the best speakers to a farming conference in the UK, people that will inform, challenge and inspire those with a determination to succeed.

The 15 selected Emerging Leaders will attend the conference at no cost. In addition, OFC are laying on some extra activities to encourage discussion and dialogue within the group and feedback that can be promoted to a wider audience.

The initiative is funded jointly as part of the OFCs charitable outreach for education and by Massey Ferguson.

We are excited to be playing an active part in this important programme with the OFC to develop our future farming leaders, says William Judge, Massey Ferguson National Sales Manager UK and Ireland.

It is a key element of our wider commitment to help support the next generation of farmers with their careers in agriculture. Now, more than ever before, strong leadership, clear vision and confident decision-making are pivotal to guiding global farming through the enormous challenges ahead.
One year on from the launch of the Farming Recovery Fund the initiative has received over 1,100 applications, which have totalled over 9 million.

The fund, which helps farmers with drain and boundary repair as well as reseeding, was created after Storm Desmond devastated large parts of rural Northern England last December.

Richard Bramley, an arable farmer and member of the NFU environment forum, said to FarmingUK that the fund had 'definitely been a good thing' and helped out with the costs of the extensive storm damage.

He said: The fact that we have the farming recovery fund is something that is very much welcomed. I think its important that this is now available in flooding when it happens again, because there is no doubt that it will happen."

Although this year hasnt seen a repeat of last winters devastation, Richard warned that last years storms showed that there were real issues and that the Government had to 'think and act very differently.'

And although he welcomed the Governments response over the last twelve months, he stressed that more action needed to be taken.

Bracing for another winter

However, NFU Deputy President Minette Batters said it was extremely frustrating that hundreds of farmers were bracing themselves for another winter while still waiting for funding to help recover from the previous one.

Miss Batters said Storm Desmond and the subsequent flooding brought 'devastation' to farming businesses and many are still feeling the effects.

She said: Farmers have faced months of uncertainty over access to the flood recovery fund, piled on top of delays to their annual farm payments. This is totally unacceptable and must be resolved as a matter of urgency.

Scotland and Northern Ireland had their farming recovery funds done and dusted by the middle of 2016. So why are so many farmers in England being forced to wait for their emergency funding? The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) created some delays when processing the original applications.

But we appreciate that they are still waiting to receive claims from affected farmers partly due to the high level of evidence farmers are required to submit."

'Whole catchment approach'

Early next year, the NFU will be launching its flooding manifesto. This will set out policy asks and action for government and others to mitigate flood risk in the future.

Miss Batters continued: We believe a whole catchment approach to flood management must be adopted. This includes accurate consideration of the importance of the food and farming industry  one that contributes 108bn to the economy, employing more than 1 in 8 people of the workforce.

Some of our most productive and highest value agricultural land is in the floodplain or coastal regions, vulnerable to flooding, and deserves to be protected.

Natural flood management schemes do have a place and Defra Secretary of State Andrea Leadsoms recent confirmation that 15million will be assigned for natural flood management is a step towards finding such a scheme.

However, they are not a universal solution and must be used alongside a package of measures across the catchment to improve flood resilience to both urban and rural communities, including traditional hard-engineered structures and their maintenance."
As 2016 draws to a close, thoughts inevitably turn to the year ahead and what it holds. There are few who, at the start of the year, expected to finish 2016 with Britain set to leave the EU and Donald Trump elected as President of the US.

But what does 2017 hold, in particular for those working in the agriculture sector?

The UK200Group is the UKs leading membership association of independent chartered accountancy and law firms, whose members act as trusted business advisers to over 150,000 SMEs, including over 3,887 farms.

The associations agriculture industry group brings together expert accountants who work with farmers on a regular basis.

As we start a new year, UK farmers will now start to look at what could face them in 2017. With many possible outcomes affecting Britain as a result of Brexit, there is a lot of uncertainty as to how these will affect agriculture in the coming years.

Brexit

Dylan Jones, Manager of the Farming & Rural Business Team at Cheshire-based Howard Worth said the Brexit boost for agriculture caused by the weakening of sterling is predicted to lead to an increase in farm profits this year and next.

He said: It is estimated that farming income for the 2016 calendar year will be higher than those seen in 2015, and a further improvement is expected for 2017 for many farming sectors.

Uncertainty about what terms and agreement that Britain will leave the EU in are expected to delay any possible investment from other countries in the EU. Similarly, will they purchase from the UK? This will all depend upon what trade agreements can be established and whether the UK will still be allowed to stay in the free market. It has been suggested that the UK may import more food from developing countries in an attempt to sweeten EU leaders. However, EU leaders dont want other countries to follow Britain out of the EU so may not look to give UK farmers too good a deal.

There is also concern for farming subsidies, which are paid by the EU, as some of the money put aside for farmers may be diverted to other areas by the government, such as to the NHS.

Mr Jones said: The prices of wheat and barley are expected to rise over the next year, but farmers are told not to rely on this lasting into the distant future due to current increases mainly being due to a drop in the pound.

The fluctuations in sterling may have a positive effect on export sales, milk prices and subsidy payments but are likely to have a negative effect in terms of expenses such as feed, fertiliser and fuel costs.

Milk prices

UK milk prices fell from an average 33.94p per litre February 2014 to an average farmgate price of just under 20p per litre in June 2016.

Mr Jones continued: There have been signs of recovery since then, and a number of UK milk processors have announced gradual price increases.

Milk production in the UK has also declined in recent months with September 2016 production (of approximately 1,050 million litres) down by about 100 million litres compared to 12 months earlier.

As a result, milk prices are expected to continue to rise over the coming year, as processors become short of milk.
Where to eat and drink in the Fayetteville area this weekend
Over the last year or so, billionaire George Soros has given over $20,000,000 to Hillary Clintons campaign and to associated groups supporting her and the Democrats. As we saw last night 73% of Trump voters are convinced that George Soros has been paying protesters to demonstrate against their Dear Leader. He isnt. Recently, though, he decided to warn his friends about his fears of a Trump regime.





Open Society Needs Defending

-by George Soros





Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of closed societies  from fascist dictatorships to mafia states  are on the rise. Because elected leaders failed to meet voters legitimate expectations and aspirations, electorates have become disenchanted with the prevailing versions of democracy and capitalism.





Well before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I sent a holiday greeting to my friends that read: These times are not business as usual. Wishing you the best in a troubled world. Now I feel the need to share this message with the rest of the world. But before I do, I must tell you who I am and what I stand for.





I am an 86-year-old Hungarian Jew who became a US citizen after the end of World War II. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of political regime prevails. The formative experience of my life was the occupation of Hungary by Hitlers Germany in 1944. I probably would have perished had my father not understood the gravity of the situation. He arranged false identities for his family and for many other Jews; with his help, most survived.





In 1947, I escaped from Hungary, by then under Communist rule, to England. As a student at the London School of Economics, I came under the influence of the philosopher Karl Popper, and I developed my own philosophy, built on the twin pillars of fallibility and reflexivity. I distinguished between two kinds of political regimes: those in which people elected their leaders, who were then supposed to look after the interests of the electorate, and others where the rulers sought to manipulate their subjects to serve the rulers interests. Under Poppers influence, I called the first kind of society open, the second, closed.





The classification is too simplistic. There are many degrees and variations throughout history, from well-functioning models to failed states, and many different levels of government in any particular situation. Even so, I find the distinction between the two regime types useful. I became an active promoter of the former and opponent of the latter.





I find the current moment in history very painful. Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of closed societies  from fascist dictatorships to mafia states  are on the rise. How could this happen? The only explanation I can find is that elected leaders failed to meet voters legitimate expectations and aspirations and that this failure led electorates to become disenchanted with the prevailing versions of democracy and capitalism. Quite simply, many people felt that the elites had stolen their democracy.





After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the sole remaining superpower, equally committed to the principles of democracy and free markets. The major development since then has been the globalization of financial markets, spearheaded by advocates who argued that globalization increases total wealth. After all, if the winners compensated the losers, they would still have something left over.





The argument was misleading, because it ignored the fact that the winners seldom, if ever, compensate the losers. But the potential winners spent enough money promoting the argument that it prevailed. It was a victory for believers in untrammeled free enterprise, or market fundamentalists, as I call them. Because financial capital is an indispensable ingredient of economic development, and few countries in the developing world could generate enough capital on their own, globalization spread like wildfire. Financial capital could move around freely and avoid taxation and regulation.





Globalization has had far-reaching economic and political consequences. It has brought about some economic convergence between poor and rich countries; but it increased inequality within both poor and rich countries. In the developed world, the benefits accrued mainly to large owners of financial capital, who constitute less than 1% of the population. The lack of redistributive policies is the main source of the dissatisfaction that democracys opponents have exploited. But there were other contributing factors as well, particularly in Europe.





I was an avid supporter of the European Union from its inception. I regarded it as the embodiment of the idea of an open society: an association of democratic states willing to sacrifice part of their sovereignty for the common good. It started out at as a bold experiment in what Popper called piecemeal social engineering. The leaders set an attainable objective and a fixed timeline and mobilized the political will needed to meet it, knowing full well that each step would necessitate a further step forward. That is how the European Coal and Steel Community developed into the EU.





But then something went woefully wrong. After the Crash of 2008, a voluntary association of equals was transformed into a relationship between creditors and debtors, where the debtors had difficulties in meeting their obligations and the creditors set the conditions the debtors had to obey. That relationship has been neither voluntary nor equal.





Germany emerged as the hegemonic power in Europe, but it failed to live up to the obligations that successful hegemons must fulfill, namely looking beyond their narrow self-interest to the interests of the people who depend on them. Compare the behavior of the US after WWII with Germanys behavior after the Crash of 2008: the US launched the Marshall Plan, which led to the development of the EU; Germany imposed an austerity program that served its narrow self-interest.





Before its reunification, Germany was the main force driving European integration: it was always willing to contribute a little bit extra to accommodate those putting up resistance. Remember Germanys contribution to meeting Margaret Thatchers demands regarding the EU budget?





But reuniting Germany on a 1:1 basis turned out to be very expensive. When Lehman Brothers collapsed, Germany did not feel rich enough to take on any additional obligations. When European finance ministers declared that no other systemically important financial institution would be allowed to fail, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, correctly reading the wishes of her electorate, declared that each member state should look after its own institutions. That was the start of a process of disintegration.





After the Crash of 2008, the EU and the eurozone became increasingly dysfunctional. Prevailing conditions became far removed from those prescribed by the Maastricht Treaty, but treaty change became progressively more difficult, and eventually impossible, because it couldnt be ratified. The eurozone became the victim of antiquated laws; much-needed reforms could be enacted only by finding loopholes in them. That is how institutions became increasingly complicated, and electorates became alienated.





The rise of anti-EU movements further impeded the functioning of institutions. And these forces of disintegration received a powerful boost in 2016, first from Brexit, then from the election of Trump in the US, and on December 4 from Italian voters rejection, by a wide margin, of constitutional reforms.





Democracy is now in crisis. Even the US, the worlds leading democracy, elected a con artist and would-be dictator as its president. Although Trump has toned down his rhetoric since he was elected, he has changed neither his behavior nor his advisers. His cabinet comprises incompetent extremists and retired generals.





What lies ahead?





I am confident that democracy will prove resilient in the US. Its Constitution and institutions, including the fourth estate, are strong enough to resist the excesses of the executive branch, thus preventing a would-be dictator from becoming an actual one.





But the US will be preoccupied with internal struggles in the near future, and targeted minorities will suffer. The US will be unable to protect and promote democracy in the rest of the world. On the contrary, Trump will have greater affinity with dictators. That will allow some of them to reach an accommodation with the US, and others to carry on without interference. Trump will prefer making deals to defending principles. Unfortunately, that will be popular with his core constituency.





I am particularly worried about the fate of the EU, which is in danger of coming under the influence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose concept of government is irreconcilable with that of open society. Putin is not a passive beneficiary of recent developments; he worked hard to bring them about. He recognized his regimes weakness: it can exploit natural resources but cannot generate economic growth. He felt threatened by color revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere. At first, he tried to control social media. Then, in a brilliant move, he exploited social media companies business model to spread misinformation and fake news, disorienting electorates and destabilizing democracies. That is how he helped Trump get elected.





The same is likely to happen in the European election season in 2017 in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy. In France, the two leading contenders are close to Putin and eager to appease him. If either wins, Putins dominance of Europe will become a fait accompli.





I hope that Europes leaders and citizens alike will realize that this endangers their way of life and the values on which the EU was founded. The trouble is that the method Putin has used to destabilize democracy cannot be used to restore respect for facts and a balanced view of reality.





With economic growth lagging and the refugee crisis out of control, the EU is on the verge of breakdown and is set to undergo an experience similar to that of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Those who believe that the EU needs to be saved in order to be reinvented must do whatever they can to bring about a better outcome.








Let me start by saying how pleased I am to be given the opportunity to share with readers ten Christmas memories related to my career as an author. The first dates back to when I was fourteen and my parents gave me a small, inexpensive gift that would have an influence on the rest of my life. It was a paperback book by mystery writer Agatha Christie. My late mother had always been a big fan of the author, and when I found out how riveting her books were it was the beginning of my love affair with crime novels and thrillers.

The Alibi

The following Christmas my parents gave me what was undoubtedly my best ever present - a potable typewriter. From that day on I didn't stop writing - short stories, letters to newspapers and novels that never got published.

One Christmas turned out to be a bit of a disaster. I'd just finished a book that I was really proud of - though looking back I doubt it would ever have found a publisher. It was Christmas Eve and I was going to my parents' flat in London and taking the manuscript with me for my mother to read. But somehow I managed to leave the carrier bag it was in on the bus. I didn't have any copies because in those days everything was typed on paper and not computers. The book was never handed in to the bus company and six months work was wasted. Needless to say I didn't bother starting the same book again!

A couple of years later I had a better Christmas. My first 'proper' book was accepted by publisher Robert Hale and I received their letter the day before Christmas Eve. With it came a cheque for the princely sum of 125, which was used to pay an outstanding electricity bill!

Wherever possible I try to combine research trips with holidays and visits to my daughter in America. One Christmas was spent in Texas while researching a novel about a man on death row. Two days before Christmas Eve my daughter took me to Huntsville to look at the famous prison they call 'The Walls.' It has the most active execution chamber in the US and became one of the main settings in my book. That day I also visited the Texas Prison Museum and saw an electric chair which was used to execute people between 1924 and 1964. I like to think that all that research helped to make the book a success - it went to number four on the Amazon best-seller chart.

Before becoming a full-time writer I was a newspaper and television journalist. One assignment took me to the Arctic Circle with a British Army unit. During the trip I saw several icebergs and this gave me an idea for a plot. When I returned home I wrote a book about a small plane crashing onto an iceberg and what happens to the survivors. The book was published by Robert Hale.

One particularly memorable Christmas break was spent in Istanbul, a place I had always wanted to see. But what made it really special was a visit to the Pera Palace Hotel where legend has it Agatha Christie wrote her book Murder on the Orient Express. We were even allowed a peek inside room 411 where the great writer stayed.

One Christmas I took an enormous risk so I'll never forget it. I gave up my job as a newspaper reporter because I wanted to devote more time to writing a book. But I needed to bring in some cash so I decided to work as an illegal street trader at weekends. The idea was to return to journalism after about four months. So I sold cheap jewellery from a suitcase in shopping streets just like Del Trotter did in Only Fools and Horses. I chose to start at Christmas because I knew it would be the busiest time. Thankfully the book was written and published and I managed to avoid getting into debt. But I enjoyed it so much that I chose not to return to a proper job for three whole years!

My youngest daughter lives in Balham, south London. That's also where much of the action in The Alibi takes place - so last Christmas I spent a memorable week with her and it gave me a chance to carry out some research. I managed to identify locations that would feature in the book - such as a road where a murder takes place and a spot where a woman is brutally beaten. That really got us into the Christmas spirit!!

This Christmas isn't yet a memory but it will be soon and it'll be another special one because The Alibi is being published on December 29. I'll therefore be busy promoting it from now until well into the New Year and it's something I'm really looking forward to.

Finally allow me to wish all Female First readers who were kind enough to show an interest in my Yuletide memories a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

JAIME RAVEN's The Alibi is published by Avon on Dec 29th.
Nick Cannon has been released from hospital.

Nick Cannon

The 36-year-old rapper and television personality spent Christmas in hospital where he was treated for complications relating to the autoimmune disease Lupus but told fans in an Instagram video on Thursday (29.12.16) that after "five blood transfusions", he had been released.

He captioned a video of himself in a recording studio: "I broke out that joint!!!! Stuffed some pillows under the covers and ran out like the little rascals!! LOL

"Isaiah 54:17 "No Weapon Formed Against me Shall Prosper" #BeNcredible #NoPityParty After 2 weeks and 5 blood transfusions ... by his stripes I am healed!!! #HoldOn (sic)."

And in the video, he proclaimed: "By his stripes, I am healed. Honestly, I feel great. We back at it again."

Nick revealed last week that he would be spending part of the festive season in Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Hospital.

Captioning a photograph of himself on his hospital bed, he wrote: "For all who have been trying to contact me the last few days this is where I've been. And I will be in the Hospital through Christmas. All good though, Doctors say I will be back to normal before the New Year. #LupusSucks #Incredible #warrior.(sic)"

Meanwhile, Nick - who has five-year-old twins Moroccan and Monroe with his ex-wife Mariah Carey - previously revealed he feels healthier than ever right now as he has done so much research into Lupus.

He said: "I'm healthier now than I've ever been before, because of the research, because of the education that I've received on the proper things to eat and the proper things to put into my body - what can cause flare ups and what can't, and preventative measures and all of these things. And when you can share that information and share knowledge and research, I think that helps more than anything. You learn that this is something that you can live with and actually overcome with the proper research and with the proper support system."
Prince Harry enjoyed a catch up with the man often referred to as his "second father" over Christmas.

Prince Harry

The 32-year-old royal - who is currently dating 'Suits' actress Meghan Markle - was spotted having a few drinks with his close pal, former Army officer Mark Dyer, at Mark's pub in London.

A source told MailOnline: "They had their heads down most of the time as if they really wanted to keep their chat private.

"They laughed and joked a bit, like they were old mates. Harry's bodyguard was also on the table as they talked.

"When Harry left he thanked the bar staff and was very polite."

Harry brought Meghan to the pub, the Sands End in South West London, during her last visit to London.

Mark was an equerry to Prince Charles at the time of the death of Princess Diana and Charles asked Mark to look out for Harry and his brother Prince William.

Since then, Mark has remained close to both Princes and was one of the guests at William's wedding to Duchess Catherine.

Royal biographer Penny Junor previously wrote in her book 'Prince Harry: Brother, Soldier, Son': "Mark Dyer is incredibly good for him because he's one of the few people who talks some sense into him at times."
Victoria Beckham has been accused of breaching royal protocol by revealing that she is to receive an OBE.

Victoria Beckham

The fashion designer will receive her award in Queen Elizabeth's New Year's Honours list, and the news was supposed to be kept a secret until it was announced by Buckingham Palace, but it has since leaked after Victoria informed family members.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen told the Daily Mail: "Nominees are sworn to secrecy, so she has broken the first rule of being offered the honour. It would appear to be a breach of protocol and perhaps raises questions over her suitability that she has leaked her own nomination. This further discredits our honours system."

And fellow Tory Peter Bone added: "It is certainly a betrayal of etiquette, it is just not done. It is just wrong and I don't understand why anyone would leak something like that. To get an honour is extremely important and it might well be for a very good reason but you just don't leak it. Full stop."

Victoria - who was named a UN Goodwill Ambassador in 2014 - will receive her OBE for her charity work and contributions to fashion.

Victoria's husband David Beckham received an OBE in 2003.
At a meeting to review the financial results of Vinatex, a state owned textile and apparel manufacturer and exporter, a minister in the government urged the company to improve its value chain and operate more efficiently in 2017. Cao Quoc Hung also advised Vinatex to undertake R&D to produce value added products, while also not harming the environment.In the period under review, sales totalled VN37.7 trillion, a steep rise of 103 per cent year over year, while it reported pre-tax profits of VN1.43 trillion, up 9 per cent over a fiscal ago period. In the reporting period, Vinatex invested VN5.5 trillion in altogether 41 projects.

At a meeting to review the financial results of Vinatex, a state owned textile and apparel manufacturer and exporter, a minister in the government urged the company to improve its value chain and operate more efficiently in 2017. Cao Quoc Hung also advised Vinatex to undertake R&D to produce value added products, while also not harming the environment.#

According to Vietnamese media reports, for the next fiscal, the group expects its export revenue to increase 12 per cent, sales by 15 per cent and pre-tax profit by 6 per cent.Vinatex will focus on expanding its market base in the next fiscal, maintain a close watch on the worldwide raw materials market and also take advantage of various free trade agreements, Vinatex chairman Tran Quang Ngh? observed at the meeting.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Upen Patel & Karishma Tanna

Upen Patel and Karishma Tanna shocked their fans by announcing their breakup on social media! We are aware that Upen and Karishma met on Bigg Boss Halla Bol and they were nicknamed as UpMa by the host of the show Farah Khan. The duo had appeared on dance reality show Nach Baliye, where Upen proposed Karishma. The actress said that the things didn't work out between them as they wanted and hence they ended their relationship!

Rohan Mehra & Yukti Kapoor

Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai and Bigg Boss 10 contestant Rohan Mehra was apparently dating Siya Ke Ram actress Yukti Kapoor. But, their relationship didn't last long. According to reports the reason behind their break up is that they couldn't spend time with each other.

Rati Pandey & Anas Rashid

Although, Diya Aur Baati Hum actor Anas Rashid and Hitler Didi actress Rati Pandey never publicly accepted their relationship, there were media reports of the duo dating for a long time. But in the beginning of the year, the reports of their break up shocked their fans. Apparently, Anas' family didn't approve of Rati, which led to the separation.

Anas-Rati

Another reason for the break-up is said to be Anas' busy schedule. Anas had said in an interview that he is busy shooting and believes marriage is a long process which requires commitment and he is not ready to commit now.

Pearl V Puri & Asmita Sood

Badtameez Dil lead pair Pearl V Puri and Asmita Sood parted their ways after their love story took a U-turn, when Pearl fell in love with his Meri Saasu Maa co-star Hiba Nawab.

Mayuresh Wadkar & Ajisha Shah

After participating in Nach Baliye 7, Mayuresh and Ajisha were seen on a few reality shows. Apparently, there were issues in the relationship since November 2015. The duo tried their best to sort things up, but they parted ways at the end! Ajisha said that they had issues in adjusting.

Ravi Bhatia and Heena Parmar

Ravi was in a relationship with Pavitra Rishta actress Pooja Pihal, when he grew close to his Jodha Akbar co-star Heena. Pooja even caught Ravi red-handed with Heena. After this, Ravi and Heena got serious about each other, but their relationship didn't last long as Ravi moved to Indonesia for work. Heena's alleged friendship with a producer was apparently another reason for their breakup. But, the actress said that she was loyal to Ravi and has been in depression ever since he called off the relationship! On the other hand Ravi claimed Heena to be as his friend!

Kritika Kamra & Siddharth Bijpuria

Kritika Kamra broke up with her boyfriend Siddharth, who is a senior publicist in the Viacom 18 network. Apparently, Siddharth wanted to get married and settle down, while Kritika was unwilling to settle down, which led to the break-up.

Neha Sargam & Neil Bhatt

Apparently, the actors Neha Sargam and Neil Bhatt were dating since a long time and were serious about their relationship. But the couple broke up a few months ago, due to personal issues.

Aashka Goradia & Rohit Bakshi

Aashka Goradia shocked her fans by ending her 10-year long relationship with Rohit Bakshi. Apparently, the couple had commitment issues. There are also reports that they broke up a few months before but the news didn't come out. Post her break up, Aashka was going through tough times and it was Brent Goble, who swept the television actress off her feet! Aashka recently got engaged to Brent as well!

Upasana Singh & Neeraj Bharadwaj

Upasana Singh married actor Neeraj Bharadwaj in November 2009. But their seven years of marriage has reached its nadir, as they have been staying separately since four years! Neeraj said that he couldn't meet her expectations and hence decided to part ways amicably; while Upasana chose not to comment on her personal matter!
Regulatory News:

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited and The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited take no responsibility for the contents of this announcement, make no representation as to its accuracy or completeness and expressly disclaim any liability whatsoever for any loss howsoever arising from or in reliance upon the whole or any part of the contents of this announcement.

UNITED COMPANY RUSAL PLC (Paris:RUSAL) (Paris:RUAL)

(Incorporated under the laws of Jersey with limited liability)

(Stock Code: 486)

CONTINUING CONNECTED TRANSACTION

PURCHASE OF RAW MATERIALS FOR REPAIRING

Reference is made to the announcements of the Company dated 22 December 2015, 27 April

2016, 18 May 2016, 13 July 2016, 1 September 2016, 4 October 2016 and 25 October 2016 in

relation to continuing connected transactions regarding purchase of raw materials for repairing.



The Company announces that on 28 December 2016, a member of the Group, as buyer, and

Closed Joint-Stock Company "ENERGOPROM-Novosibirsk Electrode Plant", an associate of

Mr. Blavatnik, as supplier, entered into the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing

Contract.

THE NEW PURCHASE OF RAW MATERIALS FOR REPAIRING CONTRACT

The Company announces that, on 28 December 2016, a member of the Group, as buyer, and Closed Joint-Stock Company "ENERGOPROM-Novosibirsk Electrode Plant", an associate of Mr. Blavatnik, as supplier, entered into a contract pursuant to which the buyer agreed to buy and the supplier agreed to sell raw materials for repairing (the "New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract"). The key terms of the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract are set out below:

Date of

contract Buyer

(member

of the

Group) Seller (an

associate of Mr.

Blavatnik) Raw

materials

to be

purchased Estimated

purchase

volume Unit price

(Net of

VAT) Estimated

consideration

payable

excluding

VAT (USD) Scheduled

termination

date Payment

terms 28 December

2016 Closed

Joint-Stock

Company

"Kremniy" Closed Joint-Stock

Company

"ENERGOPROM-

Novosibirsk

Electrode Plant" Electrode

paste For year

ending 31

December

2016: 20

metric tons USD560

per metric

ton 11,200 31

December

2016. If one

month

before the

expiration of the

contract,

neither

party has

not declared

its

termination,

the contract

will be

extended for

a period of

one year. Within 30

calendar

days from

the date

of

shipment Total

estimated

consideration

payable for

the year

ending 31

December

2016 11,200

The consideration is to be satisfied in cash via wire transfer or by setting-off against counter claims.

THE ANNUAL AGGREGATE TRANSACTION AMOUNT

Pursuant to Rule 14A.81 of the Listing Rules, the continuing connected transactions contemplated under the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract and the Previously Disclosed Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract should be aggregated, as they were entered into by members of the Group with the associates of Mr. Blavatnik, and the subject matter of each contract relates to the purchase of raw materials from the associates of Mr. Blavatnik by the Group.

The annual aggregate transaction amount that is payable by the Group to the associates of Mr. Blavatnik under the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract and the Previously Disclosed Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract for the financial year ending 31 December 2016 is estimated to be approximately USD28.69 million.

The contract price payable under the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract has been determined with reference to the market price and on terms no less favourable than those prevailing in the Russian market for raw materials of the same type and quality and those offered by the associates of Mr. Blavatnik to independent third parties.

The Company invited several organizations to take part in the tender in relation to the relevant required purchase of raw materials and chose the contractor offering the best terms and conditions (taking into account the price offered) and then entered into contracts with the chosen party. Accordingly, the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract was entered into.

The annual aggregate transaction amount is estimated by the Directors based on the amount of raw materials to be purchased and their contract price.

REASONS FOR AND BENEFITS OF THE TRANSACTIONS

The Directors consider that the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract is for the benefit of the Company, as Closed Joint-Stock Company "ENERGOPROM-Novosibirsk Electrode Plant" can supply raw materials to the Group at a price more favourable than the prevailing market rate based on tender. The New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract was entered into for the purposes of purchasing raw materials for repair work.

The Directors (including the independent non-executive Directors) consider that the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract has been negotiated on an arm's length basis and on normal commercial terms which are fair and reasonable and the transactions contemplated under the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract are in the ordinary and usual course of business of the Group and in the interests of the Company and its shareholders as a whole.

None of the Directors has a material interest in the transactions contemplated by the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract save for Mr. Blavatnik who is indirectly interested in more than 30% of Closed Joint-Stock Company "ENERGOPROM-Novosibirsk Electrode Plant". Accordingly, Mr. Blavatnik did not vote on the Board resolution to approve the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract.

LISTING RULES IMPLICATIONS

Mr. Blavatnik, a former non-executive Director, indirectly holds more than 30% of the issued share capital of Closed Joint-Stock Company ENERGOPROM-Novosibirsk Electrode Plant. Closed Joint-Stock Company ENERGOPROM-Novosibirsk Electrode Plant is therefore an associate of Mr. Blavatnik and a connected person of the Company under the Listing Rules.

Accordingly, the transactions contemplated under the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract constitute continuing connected transactions of the Company.

The estimated annual aggregate transaction amount of the continuing connected transactions under the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract for the financial year ending 31 December 2016 is more than 0.1% but less than 5% under the applicable percentage ratios. Accordingly, pursuant to Rule 14A.76 of the Listing Rules, the transactions contemplated under

these contracts are only subject to the announcement requirements set out in Rules 14A.35 and 14A.68, the annual review requirements set out in Rules 14A.49, 14A.55 to 14A.59, 14A.71 and 14A.72 and the requirements set out in Rules 14A.34 and 14A.50 to 14A.54 of the Listing Rules. These transactions are exempt from the circular and shareholders' approval requirements under Chapter 14A of the Listing Rules.

Details of the New Purchase of Raw Materials for Repairing Contract will be included in the relevant annual report and accounts of the Company in accordance with Rule 14A.71 of the Listing Rules where appropriate.

PRINCIPAL BUSINESS ACTIVITIES

The Company is principally engaged in the production and sale of aluminium, including alloys and value-added products, and alumina.

Closed Joint-Stock Company "ENERGOPROM-Novosibirsk Electrode Plant" is principally engaged in the production of graphite electrodes, carbon electrodes, cathode blocks, calcined petroleum coke and electrode paste.

DEFINITIONS

In this announcement, the following expressions have the following meanings, unless the context otherwise requires:

"associate(s)" has the same meaning ascribed thereto under the

Listing Rules. "Board" the board of Directors. "Company" United Company RUSAL Plc, a limited liability

company incorporated in Jersey, the shares of

which are listed on the main board of the Stock

Exchange. "connected person(s)" has the same meaning ascribed thereto under the

Listing Rules. "continuing connected transactions" has the same meaning ascribed thereto under the

Listing Rules. "Director(s)" the director(s) of the Company. "Group" the Company and its subsidiaries. "Listing Rules" the Rules Governing the Listing of Securities on

the Stock Exchange. "Mr. Blavatnik" Mr. Len Blavatnik, a former non-executive

Director. "percentage ratios" the percentage ratios under Rule 14.07 of the

Listing Rules. "Previously Disclosed Purchase of Raw

Materials for Repairing Contract" the agreement between members of the Group

and the associates of Mr. Blavatnik, pursuant to

which the associates of Mr. Blavatnik agreed to

supply raw materials to members of the Group in

2016, as disclosed in the announcements of the

Company dated 22 December 2015, 27 April

2016, 18 May 2016, 13 July 2016, 1 September

2016, 4 October 2016 and 25 October 2016. "Stock Exchange" The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. "USD" United States dollars, the lawful currency of the

United States of America. "VAT" value added tax.

By Order of the Board of Directors of

United Company RUSAL Plc

Aby Wong Po Ying

Company Secretary

As at the date of this announcement, the executive Directors are Mr. Oleg Deripaska, Mr. Vladislav Soloviev and Mr. Siegfried Wolf, the non-executive Directors are Mr. Maxim Sokov, Mr. Dmitry Afanasiev, Mr. Ivan Glasenberg, Mr. Maksim Goldman, Ms. Gulzhan Moldazhanova, Mr. Daniel Lesin Wolfe, Ms. Olga Mashkovskaya, Ms. Ekaterina Nikitina and Mr. Marco Musetti, and the independent non-executive Directors are Mr. Matthias Warnig (Chairman), Mr. Philip Lader, Dr. Elsie Leung Oi-sie, Mr. Mark Garber, Mr. Dmitry Vasiliev and Mr. Bernard Zonneveld.

All announcements and press releases published by the Company are available on its website under the links http://www.rusal.ru/en/investors/info.aspxhttp://rusal.ru/investors/info/moex/ and http://www.rusal.ru/en/press-center/press-releases.aspx, respectively.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161228005319/en/

Contacts:

United Company RUSAL Plc
#

: If youre available and within range of the Museum of the Moving Image on Friday afternoon, and you havent seen Martin Scorseses(2011), or for that matter, what you need to know is that theres a repeat screening scheduled at 3pm , concluding the initial installment of the museums planned Scorsese retrospective,: I sawlast Saturday afternoon knowing nothing about either the movie or the book its based on,by Brian Selznick, except what I'd read in an online interview that was keyed on the MoMI page for the film, who was on hand to introduce the show and to sign books afterward, and by the time Brian finished his intro, before Id seen a frame of the film, hed sold me a book. By the time the film ended, I was entertaining the possibility that its the best movie Ive ever seen.Thats one reason Im going back Friday  to see howholds up to a second viewing, and to a viewing with as much of the book as I can manage under my belt by then. Another reason is that I dont know when Ill have my next opportunity to see the film the way it was meant to be seen.The first thing you're always going to be told aboutis that it's Scorsese's only "family" film, and this is true but misleading -- it suggests something very different from a film of unique richness, humanity, and depth. I'm hardly the world's biggest Scorsese fan, but there's never been any question in my mind about either his filmmaking talent or his passion for the medium. I've just tended to figure that the concerns that have tended to dominate most, or at least many, of his films, are just more important to other filmgoers than to me.And then cameIronically, Brian Selznick took it for granted that no movie could be made of, and probably some thinking of this sort went into his bold decision to make the book not just a written story (his original thought, he told us) but a hybrid of alternating text and pictures -- his own black-and-white, or rather many-shades-of-gray, pencil drawings. (He's a Rhode Island School of Design-trained artist.) So it came as a surprise when he learned there was interest in film rights, and something closer to shock when he learned just who was interested.Brian has explained in interviews how the framework for the book evolved, out of his idea of an encounter between a child and an artifact of the all-but-forgotten pioneering filmmaker Georges Melies, which he had the idea of making one of the onetime magician's barely surviving automatons. (Yes, Melies made automatons.) He sketched for us the steps by which Hugo Cabret was imagined, as the abandoned orphan son of a family of clockmakers, living secretly inside the hidden spaces of one of Paris's great train stations, filled with bustle and human traffic. (If I got right what Brian said, for the book he had imagined the Gare Montparnasse, but the film mostly re-creates the Gare du Nord. He even had a wonderful story of his own about a brief visit of his own, during the making of the film, to the real Gare du Nord; I wish he were on hand to tell it to you.) Within the station are a whole host of shops, including a toy booth presided over by crusty old Papa Georges, who has a goddaughter, Isabelle, becomes enmeshed in a complex relationship with Hugo. There's also a bookshop owned by a Monsieur Labisse, which is Isabelle's sanctuary; she lives her life through books.Hugo, Isabelle, and the rest of the characters are his own invention, buttressed by apparently large quantities of research into the Paris of the period of the story, and of course into Melies's life and times. It all works so well together that the book had a hugely successful life even when its creator thought it would remain a self-contained story.But all that richness of story, character, and was sitting there waiting when the book found its way to Martin Scorsese, who wound up absorbing it all into his vision for a film that seems likely to stand as his testament as a filmmaker.Lonely Hugo looking out at the world through his clocks and grates apparently resonated powerfully with his childhood memories (and I'm guessing the the theme throughout the book of fiercely guarded secrets did too), and the history of film, not to mention film as the ultimate medium for dreams, is where he lives. And there's no question but that he "got" the book; it's breathtaking how much, in both detail and inspiration, Scorsese, screenwriter John Logan, and the entire production team drew from Brian Selznick's words and pictures.The production team's stunning re-creation of the Gare du Nord (with all the hidden spaces where Hugo leads his cloistered life), all the incredible clockworks and other machinery, the zillions of other scenic effects (the production designer was Dante Ferretti; the costume designer, Sandy Powell), the 3-D cinematography -- it all cost a fortune, but for once in a film that blew its budget, not only can we see where the money went but it appears all to have been well spent. It's hard to think of another director who would have had the chutzpah to attempt such a production, or the determination and grit to get it done. Viewed now, however, expensive as the picture may have been, for what Scorsese and his huge and hugely talented and skilled team got it looks like kind of a bargain. (Brian, who was present for most of the filming, mentioned that he wrote a book on the making ofand the people who made it, of which he's quite proud. I've got my copy on order.)The visual field, in fact, just barely contains the enormous amount of intimate human observation; for once, Scorsese's famous obsession with detail expands and enriches rather than suffocating the picture. As noted, I'm in awe of the created physical production. At least as notable is the richness of humanity Scorsese and team have created in and around all their locations -- principally, of course, the train station, where they have invented a whole teeming daily life including a whole roster of characters, some of them invented by the film team, but then there's the Station Inspector, Hugo's ultimate nightmare, who exists in the book, ultimately playing the exact same role he does in the film, but has been expanded in the film to a major player throughout, with a fleshed-out life and also an added plaintive, comic tinge that's perfectly suited to Sacha Baron Cohen.Ben Kingsley is hardly an unknown quantity, but if he's ever done anything better, I haven't seen it. The bitterness and deadness of soul that enshroud Papa Georges most of the way -- who would have thought he had that kind of performance in him? (Answer: Marty Scorsese.) Or there's Jude Law, another actor of enormous demonstrated versatility who even so is stunning in his tiny bits of screen time as Hugo's sainted father, in terms of dramatic importance one of the story's most important character. By comparison, Michael Stuhlbarg would have been an obvious choice for the film historian Tabard, keeper of the flame of Georges Melies, but that doesn't make him any less fine in his role. Obviously an enormous amount depends on the children, and Asa Butterfield (Hugo) and Chloe Grace Moretz (Isabelle) are just splendid -- not as "kid" performers but as for-real actors.

Labels: Movie Watch, Museum of the Moving Image
TRANAS, Sweden, Dec 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

OEM International has today signed an agreement to acquire all shares in Sitek-Palvelu Oy. The company, with head office in Jyvaskyla in Finland, develops and market products especially for industrial automation and process applications. The company has a yearly turnover of approximately 5 MEUR.

-For more than two decades now, Sitek has built a unique strong market position and we are looking forward to be a part of the future development. Some parts of the product range are the same as OEM are selling on other geographical markets which will give synergy effects. The acquisition will also strengthen our position on the Finnish market, says Jorgen Zahlin, Managing Director and CEO for OEM International.

The acquisition is expected to have a marginal impact on OEM's profit for the current year.

The information was made public on 29th December 2016 at 12:00 CET.

Tranas, 29th December 2016

OEM International AB (publ)

CONTACT:

For further information, please contact:

Jorgen Zahlin,

Managing Director and CEO for OEM International,

Phone number: +46(75)-242 40 22.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/oem/r/correction--oem-international-acquires-sitek-palvelu-oy,c2158045

The following files are available for download:


CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. dollar drifted lower against its major counterparts in late Asian deals on Thursday, following the release of disappointing U.S. housing data for November, as well as on falling treasury yields after a strong auction of five-year Treasury notes on Wednesday.



Data from the National Association of Realtors showed Wednesday that the pending home sales index plunged to a 10-month low in November.



NAR said its pending home sales index tumbled by 2.5 percent to 107.3 in November after inching up by 0.1 percent to a revised 110.0 in October.



U.S. bond prices rose following the release of the results of the Treasury Department's auction of $34 billion worth of five-year notes, which attracted above average demand.



The five-year note auction drew a high yield of 2.057 percent and a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.72, while the ten previous five-year note auctions had an average bid-to-cover ratio of 2.43.



The yield on the benchmark 2-year note fell 1.25 percent, while that of 10-year equivalent was down by 2.49 percent. Yields moves opposite to bond prices.



Traders await weekly jobless claims report due later in the day, which is expected to show a pull back in claims to 262,000 in the week ended December 24th after jumping to a six-month high of 275,000 in the previous week.



The greenback showed mixed performance in the Asian session. While the greenback rose against the euro and the pound, it held steady against the franc. Against the yen, it declined.



The greenback declined to a 3-day low of 1.0252 versus the franc, reversing from an early high of 1.0286. The next possible support for the greenback-franc pair is seen around the 1.01 mark.



The greenback fell to 116.30 against the Japanese yen, its lowest since December 14. Continuation of the greenback's downtrend may see it challenging support around the 115.00 region.



The greenback edged down to 1.2260 against the pound and 1.0464 against the euro, from its previous highs of 1.2210 and 1.0408, respectively. If the greenback extends slide, it may find support around 1.24 against the pound and 1.06 against the euro.



The greenback weakened to multi-day lows of 1.3522 against the loonie and 0.6948 against the kiwi, off its early highs of 1.3561 and 0.6916, respectively. The greenback is seen finding support around 1.33 against the loonie and 0.71 against the kiwi.



The greenback reached as low as 0.7213 against the aussie, following an advance to 0.7165 at 5:00 pm ET. On the downside, 0.74 is likely seen as the next support level for the greenback.



Looking ahead, Eurozone M3 money supply for November is due in the European session.



In the New York session, U.S. wholesale sales and advance goods trade data for November, as well as weekly jobless claims for the week ended December 24 are due.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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SHANGHAI, Dec. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Audio Lighting Industry CEO Summit and Top 10 Award Ceremony were hosted in Guangzhou on 8th December.The events were organized by Hc360.com, a leading B2B e-commerce platform in China.

Five pro audio equipment manufactures from Enping City won awards at ceremony. See the list below.

Enping Sanfeng Sound Technology Manufacturing Co Ltd awarded Top 10 Accessories Manufacture

Enbao Electronic Co Ltd awarded Top 10 Microphone Manufacture

Enping Bardl Sound Equipment Co Ltd awarded Top 10 Microphone Manufacture

YEAMIC Electronic Co Ltd awarded Top 10 Microphone Manufacture

Haitian Electronic Technology Company awarded Top 10 Conference Systems Manufacture

The city of Enping, located in Guangdong province, is an economic powerhouse in southern China. It is renowned the world over for its high quality microphone and professional audio equipment manufacturing industry.

Enping Microphone has quickly risen to the topranksin China'spro-audio equipment manufacturing industry. Found success in customer satisfaction, market performance and global expansion in recent years, Enping Microphone is continuing to upgrade its core technology's advantages, attracting more buyers all over the world.

"The innovation and entrepreneurship of Enping Microphone is now stronger than ever, and this trend not only affects investors and consumers, but also extends brand awareness globally," said Wu Zhonghuo, General Manager of Enbao Electronic Co Ltd. "More and more enterprises in Enping have passed the international standard ISO accreditation and CCC accreditation, while good quality products have also been making their way onto the global market."

Figures from the Enping Electro Acoustic Component Trade Association showed that production capacity is booming as Enping captures increasing market share.

Last year, Enping's electro-acoustic industry total production volume exceeded more than 100,000,000 units, which realized total industrial product revenues of over RMB 3.4 billion, accounting for more than 70% of China's export market share. For Enping Microphone, success is ubiquitous, the future is bright.

Media contact: Vicky Fu

+86-21-6295-3191

fuhaiqiang@shanghai-intex.com
Montreal, Quebec--(Newsfile Corp. - December 29, 2016) - Manganese X Energy Corp. (TSXV: MN) (FSE: 9SC2) (OTC: SNCGF) (the "Company") is pleased to announce it has signed an agreement with Kingston Process Metallurgy Inc. ("KPM") to conduct an Electrolytic Manganese Dioxide (EMD) Concept Study. The Company has decided to retain KPM due to the recent price increase of Electrolytic Manganese Dioxide (EMD) (please visit link to view metal and manganese prices http://www.metal-pages.com/metalprices/manganese/).

Electrolytic Manganese Dioxide is a high value product of manganese which is utilized within various applications especially for the cathode material used in Lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles - see the Company's press release dated Dec 21, 2016 for more details (http://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/24218/Manganese-X-Energy-Completed-Its-Diamond-Drill-Program#.WGQpfVUrKUk).

Manganese X Energy Corp. has contracted KPM to conduct an Electrolytic Manganese Dioxide (EMD) Concept Study to investigate all options to enhance manganese for the purposes of Lithium-ion battery use, as well as maximize the added value potential of the Company's Houlton Woodstock manganese property located in Carleton County, New Brunswick, Canada. This study would be conducted by integrating technical process concepts with capital and operation estimates to ensure the development of a practical path forward for the property.

In a follow-up to the Company's latest press release dated December 21, 2016 the Company is awaiting independent laboratory assay results from the Company's recently completed 16 hole diamond drill program of 3,589 meters on the Houlton Woodstock property. Results are expected the end of January, 2017.

The Company's primary objective from the above mentioned Concept Study is to analyze pertinent data, and investigate and research proposed efficient mining, chemical and metallurgical processes. In addition historical and recent exploration metallurgical test work on similar manganese-iron mineralization from adjacent areas are available and will be beneficial in evaluating and planning moving the Company's project forward.

From the Concept Study, the Company expects to have a better roadmap on how to develop a preliminary action plan of converting high purity manganese oxide ore from the Company's Houlton Woodstock manganese property.

About Kingston Process Metallurgy Inc.

Kingston Process Metallurgy Inc. was established in 2002 to provide process development and optimization, through contract research and development services to chemical, mining, and metallurgical industries. KPM's project portfolio is diverse but centers around integrating its experimental work with techno-economics to develop processes that are both financially and technically sound. Their team has the expertise, multidisciplinary skills, and fundamental knowledge to develop concepts and solve unique challenges.

Manganese X Energy's mission is to acquire and advance high potential manganese mining prospects located in North America with the intent of supplying value added materials to the lithium ion battery and other alternative energy industries. Striving to achieve green/zero emissions processing manganese solutions. For more information visit the website at www.manganesexenergycorp.com.



ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Martin Kepman

Interim CEO and Director

martin@kepman.com

1-514-802-1814

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements:

Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information that involves inherent risk and uncertainty affecting the business of Manganese X Energy. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.

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.
WINNIPEG, MANITOBA -- (Marketwired) -- 12/29/16 -- IGM Financial Inc. (TSX: IGM) today announced that its subsidiary, Mackenzie Financial Corporation ("Mackenzie Investments"), has entered into an agreement to acquire a 10% interest in China Asset Management Co., Ltd. ("China AMC") for approximately RMByen 2.4 billion (CAD$468 million). Mackenzie Investments has the opportunity to increase its equity position by an additional 3.9% in January through another purchase agreement. Both transactions involve separate non-strategic shareholders that are state-owned enterprises in China. China AMC is a market-leading asset manager in China.

"This acquisition gives IGM Financial the opportunity to participate in a rapidly-growing asset management industry in the world's second largest economy," said Jeff Carney, President and Chief Executive Officer, IGM Financial. "It also enables us to diversify our business outside of Canada."

Established in 1998 as one of China's first fund management companies, China AMC has a strong leadership team and multi-channel distribution business model which is supported by a market-leading brand, significant scale and strong investment management capabilities. The company also has a well-established institutional business and a diversified asset mix and client base utilizing China AMC's high quality products. It has demonstrated robust asset growth, with nearly RMByen 1099.7 billion (CAD$215 billion) in assets under management as of June 30, 2016, and has experienced a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 40% since December 31, 2011. After-tax income in 2015 amounted to RMByen 1414 million (CAD$289 million).

"China AMC is a well-diversified asset manager with strong investment performance across multiple asset classes," added Carney. "The company's controlling equity holder, CITIC Securities, China's largest securities dealer, is a strong partner that will help us create long-term value for our stakeholders."

"Mackenzie Investments and Investors Group have been actively developing relationships with China AMC since 2011," said Barry McInerney, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mackenzie Investments. "Mackenzie was recently awarded a new relative return global fixed income mandate to be distributed through China AMC's platform, and we look forward to this and other synergies which enable us to grow our retail and institutional business in both geographical regions."

"We are very pleased that Mackenzie Investments has taken a significant ownership stake in China AMC," said Yang Minghui, Chairman of China AMC and President of CITIC Securities. "We look forward to Mackenzie Investments becoming an equity holder of China AMC which will further strengthen our relationship with IGM and expand product development and distribution opportunities with its operating companies."

Mackenzie Investments' interest in China AMC leverages Power Corporation of Canada's long term presence and investment record in China which includes a 10% ownership in China AMC acquired in 2011.

The proposed transaction is expected to be accretive to IGM Financial's earnings in the first full year of ownership.

IGM Financial expects to finance the transaction with a combination of existing cash and the issuance of debt and/or preferred shares in the first half of 2017.

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2017, and is subject to customary closing conditions, including Chinese regulatory approvals.

BMO Capital Markets acted as financial advisor to IGM Financial on this transaction.

About China Asset Management Co., Ltd.

Founded in 1998 as one of the first fund management companies in China, China Asset Management Co. Ltd. (China AMC) has maintained a market leading position in China's asset management industry with total AUM of approximately RMByen 1099.7 billion CAD$215.2 billion at June 30, 2016. The company currently serves over 400 institutional mandates and 40 million retail investors. China AMC boasts one of the industry's strongest investment teams with over 200 dedicated investment professionals. See Chinaamc.com for more information.

About IGM Financial Inc.

IGM Financial Inc. is one of Canada's premier personal financial services companies, and one of the country's largest managers and distributors of mutual funds and other managed asset products, with approximately CAD$140 billion in total assets under management at November 30, 2016. Its activities are carried out principally through Investors Group, Mackenzie Investments and Investment Planning Counsel.

A MEMBER OF THE POWER FINANCIAL CORPORATION GROUP OF COMPANIES.

About Mackenzie Investments

Mackenzie Investments was founded in 1967, and is a leading investment management firm providing investment advisory and related services. With CAD$63.2 billion in assets under management as of November 30, 2016, Mackenzie Investments distributes its investment services through multiple distribution channels to both retail and institutional investors. Mackenzie Investments is a member of the IGM Financial Inc. (TSX: IGM) group of companies.

Analyst note: IGM Financial will be hosting a live conference call and webcast to share additional information about this transaction. Further details will be available on the IGM Financial website in the coming days.

Contacts:

IGM Financial

Media Relations

Trish Tervit

(416) 967-2166

trish.tervit@igmfinancial.com



IGM Financial

Investor Relations

Paul Hancock

204-956-8103

investor.relations@igmfinancial.com




SUGAR LAND, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 12/29/16 -- Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) -- According to Industrial Info's 2017 Global Industrial Outlook, more than $64 billion in active liquids pipelines projects are on the books for North America, with more than 55% of this total planned for Western Canada. More than $18.4 billion of this is planned to kick off in 2017 across North America, with most of this slated for Western Canada and $2.4 billion planned for Texas and Louisiana.

For details, view the entire article by subscribing to Industrial Info's Premium Industry News, or browse other breaking industrial news stories at www.industrialinfo.com.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. To contact an office in your area, visit the www.industrialinfo.com "Contact Us" page.

Contact:

Brian Ford

(713) 980-9393




Press-release

Krasnodar

December 29, 2016

PJSC "Magnit" Announces the 1st Coupon Yield Payment

Krasnodar, Russia (December 29, 2016): Magnit PJSC, one of Russia's leading retailers (the "Company"; MOEX and LSE: MGNT), announces the 1st coupon yield payment against bonds of the BO-001P-04 series.

Please be informed that today PJSC "Magnit" fulfilled its obligation of the first coupon redemption against bonds of the BO-001P-04 series in the amount of 484,900,000 rubles.

Parameters of the bond issue:

Type of securities: Non-convertible interest-bearing certified exchange-traded bonds of PJSC "Magnit" of the BO-001P-04 series to the bearer with the obligatory centralized custody, placed under the Program of the exchange-traded bonds with the identification number of 4-60525-P-001P-02E as of 23.10.2015, International Stock Identification Number (ISIN) RU000A0JWML1 Identification number of the securities issue and the date of its assignment: 4B02-04-60525-P-001P of 30.06.2016 Coupon period which the yield is paid for: The first coupon period ( 05.07.2016-29.12.2016 )

The total amount of the interest to be paid against bonds:

484,900,000 rubles excluding tax and other deductions

The amount of the interest to be paid against one bond:

48.49 rubles The total number of bonds against which the yield is paid: 10,000,000 bonds The method of payment: Monetary funds in the currency of the Russian Federation by means of non-cash settlement

The record date:

December 28, 2016





The date of the obligation fulfillment:





December 29, 2016

The total amount of the interest paid against bonds following the reporting period:

Following the 1st coupon period the amount of 484,900,000 rubles was paid excluding tax and other deductions. Obligation has been fulfilled.

For further information, please contact:

Timothy Post Head of Investor Relations

Email: post@magnit.ru

Office: +7-861-277-4554 x 17600 Investor Relations Office MagnitIR@magnit.ru

Direct Line: +7-861-277-4562

Website: ir.magnit.com/ Media Inquiries Media Relations Department

press@magnit.ru

Company description:

Public Joint Stock Company "Magnit" is one of Russia's leading retailers. Founded in 1994, the company is headquartered in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar. As of September 30, 2016, Magnit operated 33 distribution centers and 13,364 stores (10,138 convenience, 407 hypermarkets and 2,819 drogerie stores) in 2,436 cities and towns throughout 7 federal regions of the Russian Federation.

In accordance with the reviewed IFRS consolidated financial statements for 1H 2016, Magnit had revenues of RUB 522 billion and an EBITDA of RUB 52 billion. Magnit's local shares are traded on the Moscow Exchange (MOEX: MGNT) and its GDRs on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: MGNT) and it has a credit rating from Standard & Poor's of BB+. Measured by market capitalization, Magnit is one of the largest retailers in Europe.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 12/29/16 -- Appia Energy Corp. (the "Company" or "Appia") (CSE: API) is pleased to announce that it is proceeding with a non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") for the sale of up to 1,666,667 flow-through shares ("FT Shares") at $0.18 per FT Share for proceeds of up to $300,000. The Company intends to use the proceeds from the offering for exploration and drilling on its Loranger Property in Saskatchewan.

An insider of the Company will subscribe for 50,000 FT Shares. The insider private placement is exempt from the valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 ("MI 61-101") by virtue of the exemptions contained in section 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101 in that the fair market value of the consideration for the securities of the Company issued to the insider does not exceed 25% of its market capitalization.

All securities issued pursuant to the above referenced Offering are subject to a statutory four month hold period. The Offering is scheduled to close on December 30, 2016.

About Appia

Appia is a Canadian publicly-traded company in the uranium and rare earth sectors. The Company is currently focused on discovering high-grade uranium deposits in the prolific Athabasca Basin on its recently acquired properties, Loranger and Otherside, as well as high-grade REO and uranium surface showings on its Alces Lake joint venture. The company currently holds the surface rights to exploration for about 69,114 hectares (170,784 acres) in Saskatchewan. The company also has NI 43-101 compliant resources of 8.0 M lbs U3O8 and 47.7 M lbs. TREE Indicated, and 47.7 M lbs U3O8 and 133.2 M lbs. TREE Inferred in the Elliot Lake, ON, historic mining camp. The resources are largely unconstrained along strike and down dip.

Appia's technical team is directed by James Sykes, who has had direct and indirect involvement with over 350 M lbs. U3O8 being discovered in five deposits in the Athabasca Basin.

Appia currently has 43.8 million common shares outstanding, 47.7 million shares fully diluted.

The technical content concerning the Property in this news release was reviewed and approved by Thomas Skimming, P.Eng., a Director of Appia and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: This News Release contains forward-looking statements which are typically preceded by, followed by or including the words "believes", "expects", "anticipates", "estimates", "intends", "plans" or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance as they involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. We do not intend and do not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements and shareholders are cautioned not to put undue reliance on such statements.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Appia Energy Corp.

Tom Drivas

President, CEO and Director

416-546-2707

416-218-9772 (FAX)

appia@appiaenergy.ca



Appia Energy Corp.

James Sykes

Director of Saskatchewan Operations

306-221-8717

416-218-9772 (FAX)

jsykes@uraniumgeologist.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 12/29/16 -- Callinex Mines Inc. (the "Company" or "Callinex") (TSX VENTURE: CNX)(OTCQX: CLLXF) is pleased to announce that the Company has received proceeds of $2.4 million from the acceleration of the expiry date of share purchase warrants issued in July 2015 and May 2016 (the "Warrants") (See news release dated December 5, 2016). All Warrants that were not exercised by the accelerated expiry date have now expired. The Company currently has a cash position of approximately $10.0 million.

Max Porterfield, President and CEO stated, "We are pleased to have reduced the total warrants outstanding in advance of upcoming drilling catalysts while further strengthening the Company's robust cash position. As drilling resumes in the New Year, we will continue to be prudent with our treasury in order to achieve our goal to discover and develop economic VMS deposits."

With regards to the current drilling campaign, drill hole 284-393-DPN-W2 has been completed and core samples have been sent for assays. This hole tested the adjacent Pine Bay VMS Horizon, which is located to the northwest of the Cabin Zone VMS Horizon that hosts the new discovery. The Company is expecting assays back from this hole within two weeks. Callinex may complete additional drilling along the Pine Bay VMS Horizon to further assess its potential.

Additionally, Callinex has been drilling two holes, PBM-017 and PBM-018, to test down-dip extension of the new discovery. These two drill rigs have been temporarily placed on hold over the holiday season and drilling is expected to resume on January 5, 2017. The Company anticipates analytical results from these holes may be available in three to five weeks, depending on drilling conditions.

Callinex will provide additional updates on the progress of the ongoing drilling campaign as they become available.

About Callinex Mines Inc.

Callinex Mines Inc. is focused on discovering and developing zinc and copper rich mines within prolific Canadian VMS mining jurisdictions. The Company is actively exploring its Pine Bay Project, located in the Flin Flon mining district of Manitoba, which hosts significant historic VMS deposits that are within close proximity to a processing facility. The larger project portfolio hosts three significant zinc rich mineral resources including the Point Leamington, Nash Creek and Superjack Projects located in Eastern Canada.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to future expenditures. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include, among others, the ability to complete contemplated work programs and the timing and amount of expenditures. Callinex does not assume the obligation to update any forward-looking statement.

Contacts:

Callinex Mines Inc.

Max Porterfield

President and Chief Executive Officer

(604) 605-0885

info@callinex.ca




Regulatory News:

Eurofins Scientific (Paris:ERF) (EUFI.PA) a world leader in providing analytical support to the global pharmaceutical industry, announces the signing of an agreement to acquire Villapharma Research SL ("Villapharma") in Spain. The transaction is expected to close in February 2017, upon fulfilment of customary closing conditions.

Villapharma provides organic synthesis and medicinal chemistry services to global pharmaceutical and biotech companies for the discovery and optimization of potential new drug candidates. Founded in 2003, Villapharma employs 86 staff at its laboratory in Murcia and runs a research outsourcing business model for its clients. The company expects to generate more than EUR 6m of revenues in 2016 with EBITDA margins compatible with Group objective.

Villapharma's offering is complementary to Eurofins' existing competencies as a leading provider of pharmaceutical discovery services, currently focused primarily on safety pharmacology, ADME and target pathways. The transaction therefore expands the Group's services into a more comprehensive offering and further strengthens its service proposition for the pharma/biotech industry.

Comment from Dr. Gilles Martin, Eurofins CEO: "The addition of Villapharma adds another spectrum of new services that Eurofins can now offer to our clients. To benefit from the trend in the discovery pharmacology field for outsourcing to CROs, Eurofins is expanding its portfolio and footprint in this industry. This transaction is another demonstration of Eurofins' commitment to provide the most comprehensive portfolio of laboratory services in the industry."

Comment from Dr. Jose Manuel Villalgordo, Villapharma Research CEO: "With the integration of Villapharma into the large Eurofins group, the company expands its portfolio of services from hit finding to pre-clinical drug candidates."

For more information, please visit www.eurofins.com or contact:

Notes for the editor:

Eurofins a global leader in bio-analysis

Eurofins believes it is the world leader in food, environment and pharmaceutical products testing and that it is also one of the global independent market leaders in certain testing and laboratory services for agroscience, genomics and discovery pharmacology and for supporting clinical studies. In addition, Eurofins is one of the significant emerging players in specialty clinical diagnostic testing in Europe and the USA.

With 25,000 staff in more than 250 laboratories across 39 countries, Eurofins offers a portfolio of over 130,000 validated analytical methods for evaluating the safety, identity, composition, authenticity, origin, traceability and purity of biological substances and products, as well as for innovative clinical diagnostic. The Group provides its customers with high-quality services, accurate results on time and expert advice by its highly qualified staff.

Eurofins is committed to pursuing its dynamic growth strategy by expanding both its technology portfolio and its geographic reach. Through R&D and acquisitions, the Group draws on the latest developments in the field of biotechnology and analytical chemistry to offer its clients unique analytical solutions and the most comprehensive range of testing methods.

As one of the most innovative and quality oriented international players in its industry, Eurofins is ideally positioned to support its clients' increasingly stringent quality and safety standards and the expanding demands of regulatory authorities and healthcare practitioners around the world.

The shares of Eurofins Scientific are listed on the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange (ISIN FR0000038259, Reuters EUFI.PA, Bloomberg ERF FP).

Important disclaimer:

This press release contains forward-looking statements and estimates that involve risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements and estimates contained herein represent the judgement of Eurofins Scientific' management as of the date of this release. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees for future performance, and the forward-looking events discussed in this release may not occur. Eurofins Scientific disclaims any intent or obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements and estimates. All statements and estimates are made based on the information available to the Company's management as of the date of publication, but no guarantee can be made as to their validity.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161229005189/en/

Contacts:

Eurofins Scientific

Christina Shasserre, Phone: +1 636 362 7100

President, Eurofins Pharma BioAnalytical Services

E-mail: christinashasserre@eurofins.com

or

Investor Relations

Eurofins Scientific

Phone: 32 2 766 1620

E-mail: ir@eurofins.com
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. Labor Department releases U.S. weekly jobless claims for the week ended December 24 at 8:30 am ET Thursday. Economists expect the jobless claims to pull back to 265,000 from 275,000 last week. Ahead of the data, the greenback recovered from early lows against its major rivals. The greenback was worth 1.0446 against the euro, 116.82 against the yen, 1.2248 against the pound and 1.0253 against the franc as of 8:25 am ET. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - December 29, 2016) - TANQUERAY EXPLORATION LTD. (TSXV: TQY.H) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has completed its acquisition of ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd. (TSXV: IPA) ("IPA") (the "Transaction") and concurrent private placement financing of 14,377,500 common shares at a price of $0.30 per share for gross proceeds of $4,313,250. As part of the Transaction, the Company will commence trading on the TSX Venture Exchange as a Tier 2 life science issuer under the symbol "IPA" on December 29, 2016.

Acquisition of IPA

Under the terms of the Share Exchange Agreement ("Definitive Agreement"), the Company acquired all of the issued and outstanding shares of IPA and, in consideration of which, the Company (A) paid the principal shareholders $1,000,000 and (B) issued a total of 9,602,966 common shares of the Company to the shareholders of IPA (the "Consideration Shares"). The Consideration Shares represents twenty five percent (25%) of the issued and outstanding shares of the Company on closing of the transaction and Financing (as defined below).

Concurrent with closing the Transaction, the Company issued 14,377,500 common shares of the Company at a price of $0.30 per share for gross proceeds of $4,313,250 (the "Financing"). In connection with the Financing, the Company paid finders a cash fee of $42,291 and issued finders a total of 505,750 common shares. The securities issued under the financing will be subject to a hold period expiring on April 22, 2017 pursuant to applicable Canadian securities laws.

As part of the Transaction, the Company changed its name to "ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd." and paid a finder's fee of $97,022.

Directors, Officers and Stock Options

As a result of closing of the Transaction, Thomas D'Orazio became the Chief Executive Officer, President and a director of the Company, Robert Beecroft became Chief Technology Officer and a director of the Company, Natasha Tsai will remain as Chief Financial Officer of the Company and Dawn Wattie became Corporate Secretary of the Company. Guy Champagne, Dr. James Kuo and Greg Smith will serve as directors of the Company.

In conjunction with closing the Transaction, the Company granted 1,655,000 stock options to the officers, directors, employees and consultants of the Company. The options will be exercisable at a price of $0.30 per share, be subject to vesting provisions and be exercisable for a period of five years from the grant date.

Escrow Shares

A total of 10,852,966 shares will be subject to the escrow requirements set forth in TSX Venture Exchange Policy 5.4 - Escrow, Vendor Consideration and Resale Restrictions whereby 10% of the escrowed shares will be released on the initial listing date and 15% of the escrowed shares will be released each six month period thereafter.

About ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd.

IPA was incorporated on May 9, 1995 under the laws of the province of British Columbia. IPA is a premier supplier of custom monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies for a variety of species including rabbit, mice and rat for monoclonal hybridomas and for rabbit, rat, goat and sheep for polyclonal antibodies, custom peptide production services and cryopreservation services.

Utilizing IPA's state of the art laboratory services, IPA supplies customized monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies to customers worldwide. The target market for the IPA products and services are to academic, biotech and pharmaceutical industries.

For further information please contact:

ImmunoPrecise Antibodies Ltd.

Thomas D'Orazio, CEO

tom@immunoprecise.com

Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations; they are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the Company including those to be described in the Filing Statement filed by the Company on www.sedar.com. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.

NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.
HONG KONG, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 12/29/16 -- Reference is made to the SouthGobi Resources Ltd. (TSX: SGQ)(HKSE: 1878) (the "Company") announcement relating to the interest obligations with CIC dated December 20, 2016. The Company today announces the execution of a new deferral agreement ("December 2016 Deferral Agreement") with China Investment Corporation ("CIC") for a revised repayment schedule of US$20.7 million of cash interest and associated costs originally due on December 19, 2016 ("December 2016 Deferral Amounts"). The key terms of the December 2016 Deferral Agreement include the below:

i. the Company will repay US$1.4 million of cash interest and associated costs monthly on average during the period from December 2016 to April 2017; ii. the Company will repay US$14.3 million of cash interest and associated costs on May 19, 2017; iii.the Company will pay a deferral fee at a rate of 6.4% per annum as a consideration for deferral; and iv. at any time before the December 2016 Deferral Amounts are fully repaid, the Company is required to consult with and obtain written consent from CIC prior to effecting a replacement or termination of either or both of its Chief Executive Officer and its Chief Financial Officer; otherwise this will constitute an event of default for the convertible debenture between CIC and the Company signed in November 2009. Such consent shall not be unreasonably withheld to affect the exercise of fiduciary duties of the board of directors of the Company.

About SouthGobi

SouthGobi (TSX: SGQ)(HKSE: 1878), listed on the Toronto and Hong Kong stock exchanges, owns and operates its flagship Ovoot Tolgoi coal mine in Mongolia. It also holds the mining and exploration licences of its other metallurgical and thermal coal deposits in South Gobi Region of Mongolia. SouthGobi produces and sells coal to customers in China.

Contacts:

Investor Relations

Kino Fu

+852 2156 7030

kino.fu@southgobi.com

www.southgobi.com




SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - December 29, 2016) - As manganese gains attention as a potential major component in the next generation of battery technology, Manganese X Energy Corp. (TSX VENTURE: MN) is moving rapidly into the North American manganese market.

Included in this interview is: Manganese X Energy Corp.

In the last month, Manganese X Energy Corp. has taken actions to accelerate its entry into the manganese market. The company has entered an agreement with Globex Mining Enterprises Inc. to earn a 100% interest in the Houlton Woodstock project. Manganese X's news release of Nov. 30 detailed the terms of the options agreement, including $200,000 in cash payments, of which $100,000 has already been made; the issuing of 4 million post-consolidation shares; and spending a minimum of $1 million in exploration expenditures. Globex will retain a 3% gross metal royalty.

Christopher Ecclestone of Hallgarten & Company, in a Dec. 6 initiation report, noted that the Houlton Woodstock project "is one of the largest Manganese showings in the Northeast of the US/Canada on the Maine/New Brunswick border."

Manganese X is moving quickly to explore the Houlton Woodstock property. On Dec. 21, the company announced that it completed its diamond drill program: "The drilling program consisted of 16 holes totaling 3,589 meters, and was completed as an initial test of three primary areas on the property: Iron Ore Hill, Sharpe Farm and Moody Hill manganese occurrences. The drill targets were based on the results derived from gravity and magnetometer surveys completed in October." Drill results are expected toward the end of January 2017.

Manganese has long been used in alkaline batteries, but according to Ecclestone, "The more cutting edge application though is known as the Lithiated Manganese Dioxide (LMD) Battery. The standard mix of LMD used in batteries contains 4% Lithium, 61% manganese and 35% oxygen by atomic weight. The attractions of this format are that LMD has high power output, thermal stability and enhanced safety when compared to other lithium ion battery types. For these reasons LMD batteries are currently being used in the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf. Research at the University of Illinois has achieved an advanced prototype battery, using Lithiated Manganese that can be recharged in as little as two minutes (equivalent to filling a gas tank)." He added that "battery consumption of Electrolytic Manganese Dioxide (EMD) has been predicted to be fastest growing segment of manganese production with a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 5.1% from 2015 to 2022."

Continue reading this Article: Manganese X Sets Sights on Becoming a Major North American Producer

About Streetwise Reports - The Energy Report

The Energy Report shares investment ideas for the oil & gas, renewable and alternative energy industries. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

DISCLOSURE:

The following companies mentioned in this article are sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Manganese X Energy Corp. Streetwise Reports does not accept stock in exchange for its services. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

The full disclosure is provided at the end of the published article: Manganese X Sets Sights on Becoming a Major North American Producer

Contact Information:

Carrie Beal Amaro

Associate Publisher

Email contact


Energijos Skirstymo Operatorius AB (hereinafter - the Company), identification code 304151376, registered office placed at Aguonu str. 24, Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania. The total number of registered ordinary shares issued by company is 894 630 333; ISIN code LT0000130023.



The company informs that financial results in 2017 are planned to be released according to the following order:



-- January 31 - the Company's preliminary unaudited financial indicators* for the period of 12 months, 2016; -- February 28 - the Company's audited financial statements of 2016, the annual audited report; -- April 28 - the Company's preliminary unaudited financial indicators* for the three months of 2017; -- May 15 - the Company's interim financial statement and interim report for the period of three months 2017; -- July 31 - the Company's preliminary unaudited financial indicators* for the six months of 2017; -- August 31 - the Company's interim financial statement and interim report for the period of six months 2017; -- October 31 - the Company's preliminary unaudited financial indicators* for the nine months of 2017; -- November 17 - the Company's interim financial statement and interim report for the period of nine months 2017.



On 24th March, 2017 the Company plans to convene an ordinary general meeting of shareholders.



*Net profit (loss), EBITDA and sales revenue during the reporting period.



Representative for Public Relations Martynas Burba, tel. (8~5) 2514516.

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LONDON, December 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

European businesses put single market access to the UK as their primary priority in negotiations

41% of European businesses think UK is less attractive investment destination following EU vote

The UK's vote to leave the EU poses a threat to the European business community, according to new research conducted for RSM, the 6th largest audit, tax and consulting network, by the European Business Awards. The research asked almost 700 of Europe's successful business leaders their views on Brexit. 41% think that the UK is now a less attractive investment destination and 54% believe Brexit poses a threat, compared to 39% who see it as an opportunity.

Which aspect of the Brexit negotiation is most important to European businesses with UK operations? Single Market Access 29% Tax breaks 22% Free movement of labour 22% Tariff levels 21%

Three months ahead of the government's plan to invoke article 50, 14% of European businesses are already feeling the effects of Brexit, with twice as many (32%) expecting to be affected once the separation is complete.

European businesses are most concerned about increases to their cost base. Of those European businesses who will be affected by the vote to leave the EU, 58% expect the cost of doing business to rise and 50% expect a hit on their bottom line. Moreover, these businesses are concerned about the effect the Brexit vote will have on their suppliers, with 42% expecting it to have a negative impact in the years to come.

As Theresa May prepares to publish her Brexit plans, European firms with UK operations are calling on the two sides to come to an agreement on the single market. Continued access to the single market is the number one priority for European firms with operations in the UK, followed by tax incentives and free movement of labour.

Anand Selvarajan, Regional Leader for Europe, RSM International, commented:

"The UK's decision to leave the EU is not just a challenge for British businesses but for companies across Europe, uncertain about what Brexit means for their international ambitions.

It is vital, in this period of uncertainty, that businesses focus and prepare for the future based on the emerging facts and are not paralysed by the countless doomsday theories out there. Trade will continue and businesses need to be agile in responding to the evolving political and economic landscape."

European businesses are more despondent when it comes to the impact on the UK. 58% believe Brexit poses a threat to UK businesses with 41% of European businesses saying the UK is now a less attractive destination for investment, compared to 35% who do not.

Indeed 25% of respondents who intended to invest in the UK reported that the decision is now under review, with 9% saying they have been approached by organisations looking to attract investment into other EU states following the UK's decision to leave.

Adrian Tripp, CEO, European Business Awards said:

"Surveys conducted both before and after the referendum show us the continuing belief of many European businesses that Brexit has made the UK a less attractive place to do business. To stop this becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy the UK Government needs to get an agreement in place with the EU as soon as possible."

The European Business Awards is the largest cross sector business competition in Europe. Its primary purpose is to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community.

Note to Editors

About the survey

Research was undertaken among European businesses who have entered the European Business Awards which are sponsored by RSM. The majority of businesses surveyed were European middle market businesses which are here defined as having employees in the hundreds or thousands. The sample included businesses from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, UK, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Turkey, Spain and Sweden and more.

About RSM

RSM is the sixth largest network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms, encompassing over 120 countries, 760 offices and more than 38,000 people internationally. The network's total fee income is US$4.64 billion.

RSM is the lead sponsor and corporate champion of the European Business Awards promoting commercial excellence and recognition of entrepreneurial brilliance.

RSM is a member of the Forum of Firms, with the shared objective to promote consistent and high quality standards of financial and auditing practices worldwide.

RSM is the brand used by a network of independent accounting and advisory firms each of which practices in its own right. RSM International Limited does not itself provide any accounting and advisory services. Member firms are driven by a common vision of providing high quality professional services, both in their domestic markets and in serving the international professional service needs of their client base.

About the EBA

The European Business Awards' primary purpose is to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community throughout Europe.

For all citizens of Europe, prosperity, social and healthcare systems are reliant on businesses creating an even stronger, more innovative, successful, international and ethical business community - one that forms the beating heart of an increasingly globalised economy.

The European Business Awards programme serves the European business community in three ways:

 It celebrates and endorses individuals' and organisations' success

 It provides and promotes examples of excellence for the business community to aspire to

 It engages with the European business community to create debate on key issues

The European Business Awards is now in its 10th year. This year it engaged with over 33,000 businesses from 34 countries. Last year's public vote generated over 227,000 votes from across Europe. Sponsors and partners include RSM, ELITE and PR Newswire.

http://www.businessawardseurope.com


BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - Sales of luxury yachts in China, which some years ago was seen as a market with most potential in the world, have fallen short of projections, South China Morning Post reported.



An expected boom in luxury yacht sales in China never happened due to the slowing Chinese economy, depreciation of the yuan, and anti-corruption campaigns. Instead, the market in China has remained flat over the past two years.



The yacht market in China had expanded rapidly during 2009 - 2011 amid the booming Chinese economy. As of 2014, there were about 3,700 yachts measuring 8 meters or more registered on the mainland, according to a report released by the China Cruise and Yacht Industry Association.



The Chinese yacht market worth about 4.15 billion yuan in 2013, was estimated to touch $10 billion by 2020.



Sunny Tao, sales director with the yacht broker company Simpson Marine, told the South China Morning Post that the market in China is currently about the same size as it was three years ago.



Unlike in Europe or the U.S. where yachting is considered as affordable even for the middle class, in mainland China, it is regarded as an exclusive preserve of the ultra-rich, Tao told the Post.



Amid the high-profile corruption campaign, buyers in China are now worried about how their expression of extravagance would be seen by the public.



Despite the challenges, the market potential in China is believed to be tremendous due to the rising number of billionaires in the country.



According to a recent report released by Hurun Research Institute and China CITIC Bank Private Banking, there were 1.34 million multimillionaires in the Chinese mainland as of May 2016, up 10.7 percent from last year. Of these, 89,000 are billionaires, an increase of 14.1 percent from last year.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Dear Annie: I live with four other people in a big old house outside Boston. Two of the roommates are a couple, Jeremy and Rachel. Rachel is a very close friend of mine and has been for about 10 years, ever since we met in college. She and Jeremy live downstairs, while the other three of us live upstairs.

Jeremy and Rachel have been together for three years, and I liked Jeremy fine  until we moved in together. The past year has been a war. He and I started butting heads pretty much immediately. He kept using my condiments and leaving my TV on. (I keep it in the living room downstairs.) I had to tell him to stop several times before he finally did.

Well, things really came to a head yesterday. I was about a month late paying him my portion of the heating bill, and he texted me to ask for it. I told him I would have it to him when I get paid this week. He said, What about the money Rachel lent you last month?

I lost my cool and told him it wasnt his money or his business. He immediately wrote back, Whoa, whoa, OK, Friday is fine. Pay me back whenever. But it was too late for him to try to backtrack, and I let him have a piece of my mind. I told him to go to hell or at the very least get out of our house. I may have used even more colorful language than that. I was just so floored by his rudeness.

Now Rachel says shes angry with both of us for handling ourselves the way we did. She says she knows that Jeremy can be annoying, but shes hurt that I would act so hatefully toward her boyfriend. Hes trying to find a place to stay temporarily because I told him I dont want him living here.

I am not apologizing. I am the one who has been wronged here. Right?

 Mad in Massachusetts

Dear Mad: No matter how bad you think Jeremy is, cursing him out just made you worse.

Lets review Morality 101: Two wrongs dont make a right; they just make a mess. And your friend, by the way, is in the middle of that mess. Apologize to Jeremy for the outburst, but let him know that you do have some valid concerns about living with him. Find a way to tolerate each other, at least until the lease is up. There is enough drama in the world without friends tearing each other apart over condiments and heating bills.

Dear Annie: Usually, I agree with and appreciate your advice. Im sure you have to edit a lot of the letters you receive and we dont get all the information. This time, though, based on the information we got, I dont understand your advice.

When a couple are having a heart-to-heart conversation about a problem in their marriage, why would you encourage them to be anything less than honest with each other? You want Mumma to tell Bill to stop calling her names. It sounds to us as if he was honestly answering a yes-or-no question when she asked him whether the reason for his wandering eye is that she is fat. She knew it. He acknowledged it. They got to the root of the problem. Are you advocating that he lie to her?

Overall, good job. I enjoy your column. But sometimes you are too quick to side with your readers.
What better way of introducing its solution to CES 2017 than by celebrating the 350 000 kilometers/220 000 miles reached with zero-emissions? Symbio, fuel-cell systems integrator experts, have delivered their 150th hydrogen electric vehicle this year. Symbio will be introducing its green mobility solutions and how it can make a difference to improve air quality in urban areas at Sands Expo, Level 1 Hall G, Eureka Park, Booths 51720 51531, from January 5th to 8th.

Indeed, Symbio has deployed the biggest hydrogen fleet of commercial H2 vehicles thanks to the support of its partners Michelin and ENGIE. Symbio's core mission is to engineer complete fuel cell systems for electric vehicles, from prototyping to product.

Symbio offers an end-to-end hydrogen fuel cell system compatible to different usage-cycles and types of vehicle (commercial vehicles, van, bus, trucks and boats) and from 5 kW to 300 kW.

"We are very pleased to be leading this hydrogen momentum in Europe, and to introduce our 100% zero-emission and 100% electric mobility solution to Vegas. This solution is today a real pollutant free alternative, improving air quality." Said

Pierre-Yves Le Berre, VP at Symbio.

The company innovates, transforming dreams of a green mobility into reality. To highlight its ambition to spread its green mobility solution worldwide, Symbio will unveil a new H2 vehicle with 500 km of autonomy in March 2017 in Tokyo. Watch this space!

About Symbio

Symbio is the French leader in hydrogen fuel cell systems designed for the transportation markets. Symbio offers innovative green mobility solutions that extend electric vehicle autonomy and contributes to a low-carbon economy. We design, manufacture and sell hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and systems.

Follow us on Twitter http://bit.ly/Symbio-Twitter

Join the discussion on LinkedIn http://bit.ly/Symbio-LidIn

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161229005212/en/

Contacts:

Symbio

Geraldine Hervel

Communications Marketing

geraldine.hervel@symbiofcell.com
KYIV, Ukraine, December 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

On July 18, 2016, the District Court of Limassol (Republic of Cyprus) rejected the claim of "The DNS Trust Settlement" trustee to appoint management in "Agrein Holding Limited" company, which was in the process of acquiring major assets in the agrarian sector of Ukraine. The court made a ruling after finding out that the claim was based on false testimony and misleading accusations.

Thus, the Cyprus court prevented an attempt to establish control over the group of large agricultural companies in Ukraine that owns a total of 130 thousand hectares of land worth more than USD 100 million. The current management of Agrein has called the attempt a raiding attack.

Notably, this is not the first attempt to establish control over Ukrainian assets of "Agrein Holding Limited" company. The Court's decision stated that Lesya Sofiyenko, the plaintiff and the primary beneficiary in the lawsuit, used her family and personal connections in the government, being spouse of a Ukrainian MP, to launch a series of criminal investigations probing the bank loans received by the subsidiaries of the respondent company. After investigation, it was found that the criminal proceedings were unfounded and the case was closed.

While referring to the testimony of the parties in the case, the District Court of Limassol established that Mrs. Sofiyenko lied under oath. Mrs. Sofienko provided judges with false information. According to the court, Mrs. Sofiyenko failed to reveal her obligations to "Agrein Holding Limited" and about violation of such obligations.

It is not uncommon for Ukrainian enterprises to protect their property and avoid raiding attacks by registering holding companies in foreign jurisdictions like Cyprus. However, when the right to seize assets goes beyond the reach of Ukrainian courts the perpetrators try to exploit the judicial system of foreign countries by providing false information and fake evidence.

Ukraine is not immune to the practice when dishonest companies involve courts to seize assets of others. In fact, Ukraine occupied 115th place out of 128 countries according to the International Property Rights Index 2016, whereas last year it ranked 109th among 129 countries.

According to Anti-raider's Union of Entrepreneurs of Ukraine, there are more than 30 groups of raiders that operate in the country. In 2015, out of 3,000 raider's attacks 2,700 ended successfully for the perpetrators, reported the Union.
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The Swiss stock market ended Thursday's session with a small decrease. Trading activity remained subdued after the Christmas holiday and ahead of the long weekend for New Year's Day. Markets in the United States were also little changed. The Swiss Market Index decreased by 0.07 percent Thursday and finished at 8,251.13. The Swiss Leader Index dropped 0.26 percent and the Swiss Performance Index lost 0.05 percent. Bank stocks were under pressure Thursday. Investors continue to worry over the health of the Italian banking system. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. authorities have launched an investigation into a bond sale by the bank to Mozambique. Credit Suisse sank 3.4 percent and rival UBS fell 1.2 percent. Shares of Julius Baer also weakened by 0.7 percent. Swiss Re decreased 0.4 percent and Swiss Life lost 0.3 percent. Zurich Insurance and Baloise forfeited 0.6 percent each. Among the cyclicals, ABB dropped 0.8 percent and Syngenta fell 0.7 percent. The defensive heavyweights all finished in positive territory. Roche increased 0.4 percent, while Novartis and Nestle each gained 0.3 percent. Shares of Actelion rose 1.6 percent. Reuters reported that the company could be split by U.S. company Johnson & Johnson in a takeover. The commercial activities of the company would be separated from the research and development pipeline. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 12/29/16 -- Sabina Gold & Silver Corp. (TSX: SBB), ("Sabina" or the "Company") provides an update on the timing on a decision by the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada ("INAC").

On June 15, 2016, the Nunavut Impact Review Board ("NIRB") recommended to the federal Minister of INAC that the Back River Project not proceed to the next phase of permitting at this time. INAC has since been reviewing the NIRB Report and the Minister has three options:

1. Reject the NIRB Report/recommendation; 2. Accept the NIRB Report/recommendation; or 3. Send the project back to NIRB for reconsideration.

The federal government had originally suggested that its decision would likely be made before the end of Q4, 2016, however, they continue to consider the NIRB recommendation carefully.

Since the NIRB recommendation Sabina has continued to work with the Kitikmeot Inuit Association ("KIA") and various responsible agencies to define additional measures to address the NIRB uncertainties stated in the report. This work includes a two-day workshop on wildlife management and mitigation held in Yellowknife in October and multiple visits to the Kitikmeot communities resulting in an additional 25 meetings with the KIA, hamlet councils, hunters and trappers' organizations, advisory groups and the public since the last Company update.

Sabina continues to receive broad based Inuit support for the Project both at the final hearings in April and since the NIRB report in June. Letters written to the Minister on behalf of Sabina and the Project have been received from the KIA (the land owner) hamlet councils, hunters and trappers' organizations, community representatives, as well as the Government of Nunavut. Additionally, the Company has also been working with the KIA to progress the Inuit Impact and Benefit Agreement required for the Project.

"We had hoped to receive a decision from INAC before the end of the year," said Bruce McLeod, President & CEO "We have been working diligently with all appropriate parties in the interim towards this end. However, despite these efforts it is likely that we will not receive word from the Minister's office until early in 2017. Although this is disappointing to our shareholders, we appreciate INAC's careful consideration of the NIRB Report. We have continued to work with parties to bolster our plans and remain confident that there are no issues on the Project that cannot be addressed. We also appreciate the strong support we have received from Kitikmeot stakeholders and responsible parties: support that I believe is unprecedented for a mining project in Nunavut."

Sabina Gold & Silver Corp

Sabina Gold & Silver Corp. is a well-financed, emerging precious metals company with district scale, world class undeveloped assets in one of the world's newest, politically stable mining jurisdictions: Nunavut, Canada.

Sabina recently released a Feasibility Study on its 100% owned Back River Gold Project which presents a project that has been designed on a fit-for purpose basis, with the potential to produce approx. 200,000 ounces a year for approx. 11 years with a rapid payback of 2.9 years. At a US$1,150 gold price and a 0.80 exchange rate, the Study delivers a potential after tax internal rate of return of approximately 24.2% with an initial CAPEX of $415 million.

In addition to Back River, Sabina also owns a significant silver royalty on Glencore's Hackett River Project. The silver royalty on Hackett River's silver production is comprised of 22.5% of the first 190 million ounces produced and 12.5% of all silver produced thereafter.

The Company has approximately C$41.5 million in its treasury (September 30, 2016) and plans to end the year with approximately C$38 million.

Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws (the "forward-looking statements"), including our belief as to the extent, results and timing of test programs and various studies, permitting and environmental assessment outcomes, and access to project funding. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the future circumstances, outcomes or results anticipated in or implied by such forward-looking statements will occur or that plans, intentions or expectations upon which the forward-looking statements are based will occur. While we have based these forward-looking statements on our expectations about future events as at the date that such statements were prepared, the statements are not a guarantee that such future events will occur and are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors which could cause events or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors and assumptions include, among others, the effects of general economic conditions, commodity prices, changing foreign exchange rates and actions by government and regulatory authorities and misjudgments in the course of preparing forward-looking statements. In addition, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements.

Known risk factors include risks associated with exploration and project development; the need for additional financing; the calculation of mineral resources and reserves; operational risks associated with mining and mineral processing; fluctuations in metal prices; title matters; government regulation; obtaining and renewing necessary licences and permits; environmental liability and insurance; reliance on key personnel; the potential for conflicts of interest among certain of our officers or directors; the absence of dividends; currency fluctuations; labour disputes; competition; dilution; the volatility of the our common share price and volume; future sales of shares by existing shareholders; and other risks and uncertainties, including those relating to the Back River Project and general risks associated with the mineral exploration and development industry described in our Annual Information Form, financial statements and MD&A for the fiscal period ended December 31, 2015 filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators and available at www.sedar.com. Although we have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. We are under no obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable securities laws. This news release has been authorized by the undersigned on behalf of Sabina Gold & Silver Corp.

Contacts:

Sabina Gold & Silver Corp.

Nicole Hoeller

Vice-President, Communications

778 558-9093

nhoeller@sabinagoldsilver.com

www.sabinagoldsilver.com




Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - December 29, 2016) - Northern Sphere Mining Corp. (CSE: NSM) ("NSM" or the "Company") announced today that Peter Tassiopoulos has resigned from the Board of Directors, effective immediately. Mr. Tassiopoulos has resigned to focus his attention on his other business ventures.

John Carter, CEO of Northern Sphere Mining stated, "I want to thank Peter for his many contributions to the Board. His steady guidance and wise counsel have played an important role in setting the stage for success moving forward. We wish him success in his other ventures."

For further information, please contact:

John Carter

Chief Executive Officer

Northern Sphere Mining Corp.

Tel: 905-302-3843

About Northern Sphere Mining Corp.

Northern Sphere Mining is dedicated to growth through the acquisition and development of mining assets, with an emphasis on near term production opportunities. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Northern Sphere Mining has a strong project pipeline of properties with a focus on gold, silver and other metal production in pro-mining jurisdictions.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 12/29/16 -- John McKimm announces that he has acquired ownership and control over 2,507,800 Common Shares ("Common Shares") of Smart Employee Benefits Inc. ("SEB"), representing approximately 2.1% of SEB's currently issued and outstanding Common Shares. The shares were acquired for $0.20 per share pursuant to a private placement transaction for investment purposes.

The shares were acquired by Madison Partners Corporation ("Madison"), a corporation controlled by John McKimm. Following the acquisition, John McKimm holds 9,356,383 Common Shares and Madison holds 9,652,318 Common Shares. The total of 19,008,701 Common Shares represents approximately 16.2% of the Common Shares of SEB currently issued and outstanding.

Subject to compliance with applicable securities laws, Mr. McKimm, through Madison or otherwise, reserves the right to purchase additional securities of SEB or to dispose of any securities of SEB that it may own, from time to time.

Source and Information: John McKimm c/o 5500 Explorer Drive, 4th Floor Mississauga, Ontario L4W 5C7

This news release is issued pursuant to National Instrument 62-103: The Early Warning System and Related Take-over Bid and Insider Reporting Issues. A copy of the Early Warning Report will appear with SEB's documents on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. A copy of the Early Warning Report may also be obtained by contacting John McKimm, SEB's Chief Executive Officer at 416-460-2817.

Contacts:

John McKimm

416-460-2817






JERUSALEM (dpa-AFX) - Secretary of State John Kerry has argued the U.S. decision to abstain from the vote on a United Nations resolution banning Israeli settlement construction was intended to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution, but Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., warned the move could have the opposite effect.



In an interview on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' on Thursday, Murphy claimed the U.N. is not a fair forum for the Israelis and said the U.S. should have vetoed the resolution.



'It may be pushing Donald Trump further and further into Netanyahu's camp such that he's not going to be able to be an honest broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians,' Murphy said of the decision to abstain.



He added, 'So in the long run, this may actually be counterproductive to the sort of goals and precepts of Kerry's speech yesterday.'



Kerry argued that the U.S. 'could not, in good conscience, stand in the way' of the resolution, which passed by a vote of fourteen to zero.



'If we were to stand idly by and know that we were allowing a dangerous dynamic to take hold in a region in which we have vital interests, we would be derelict in our responsibilities,' Kerry said.



The secretary of state dismissed the idea that the U.S. must accept any policy put forward by the Israeli government and argued the U.S. cannot be true to its own values if it allows a viable two-state solution to be destroyed.



Murphy suggested President-elect Trump could build a better relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but noted the U.S. has been most productive when perceived by both the Israelis and Palestinians as being able to bring the two sides together.



'We are always going to first, second and third be Israel's friend, but that also means being able to criticize the Israelis when we think they're wrong and being able to bring both sides to the table,' Murphy said. 'I'm just not sure that Trump is setting himself up to be able to do that.'



Trump has argued the Obama administration has damaged the friendship between the U.S. and Israel but suggested things would be different once he is sworn in.



'We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but not anymore,' Trump said in a post on Twitter on Wednesday.



He added, 'The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!'



Netanyahu responded with a tweet of his own thanking Trump for his warm friendship and clear-cut support for Israel.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Facing criticism his incoming administration lacks diversity, President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly scrambling to appoint a Hispanic official to serve in his Cabinet. A transition official told Politico that Trump has narrowed his focus to Agriculture Secretary, which is among the few remaining openings along with Secretary of Veterans Affairs and U.S. Trade Representative. Former Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety Dr. Elsa Murano and former California Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach on Wednesday to discuss the Agriculture Secretary position. However, Politico said the candidates for Agriculture Secretary have generated complaints among farmers who supported Trump, who want him to appoint a farm insider to head the agency. Mario Rodriguez, head of the Latino PAC Hispanic 100, told Politico that Trump is 'absolutely looking for qualified Latinos for a Cabinet post.' 'I think some appointments are going to be pretty quick,' Rodriguez said. 'President-elect Trump was very impressed by the candidates. He wants to put a Latino in the Cabinet, he's not doing it just for show.' Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is also seen as a possible nominee for Agriculture Secretary and is scheduled to meet with Trump on Friday. (Photo: Gage Skidmore) Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WEST KELOWNA, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 12/29/16 -- COLORADO RESOURCES LTD. (TSX VENTURE: CXO) ("Colorado" or the "Company") announces it is has completed its previously announced non-brokered private placement (see news release December 21, 2016) for an aggregate of $950,000 through the issuance of 3,800,000 common shares of the Company that qualify as flow-through shares for purposes of the Income Tax Act (Canada) (the "Flow-Through Units") at an issue price of $0.25 per Flow-Through Unit (the "Offering").

Each Flow-Through Unit will consist of one flow-through common share in the capital of the Company (a "FT Share") and one-half of one non-transferable non-flow through common share purchase warrant (each whole warrant a "NFT Warrant"). Each NFT Warrant will entitle the holder thereof to purchase one additional common share of the Company (a "NFT Warrant Share") at an exercise price of $0.40 per NFT Warrant Share until December 29, 2017.

All of the FT Shares issued in connection with the Offering and any NFT Warrant Shares issued on exercise of the NFT Warrants will be subject to a restricted resale period that expires on April 30, 2017.

Finders acting in connection with the Offering received aggregate cash fees of $13,625.

The proceeds will be used by the Company for exploration activities on its Canadian properties.

About Colorado

Colorado Resources Ltd. is currently engaged in the business of mineral exploration for the purpose of acquiring and advancing mineral properties located in British Columbia and is also seeking opportunities in Southwest USA and Latin America.

Colorado's current exploration focus is to continue to advance: the KSP property currently under option with Seabridge Gold Inc., located 15 km's along strike to the southeast of the past producing Snip Mine(i); its 100% owned Kingpin property; its 100% owned North ROK property, located 15 km's northwest of the Red Chris(i) mine development, both located in northern central British Columbia; the Greensprings property (Nevada) currently under option from Ely Gold and Minerals Inc.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF COLORADO RESOURCES LTD.

Adam Travis

President and Chief Executive Officer

NR 16-22

Cautionary Note

(i)This news release contains information about adjacent properties on which Colorado has no right to explore or mine. Readers are cautioned that mineral deposits on adjacent properties are not indicative of mineral deposits on the Company's properties.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this news release, constitute "forward-looking information" as such term is used in applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information is based on plans, expectations and estimates of management at the date the information is provided and is subject to certain factors and assumptions, including: that the Company's financial condition and development plans do not change as a result of unforeseen events, that the Company obtains required regulatory approvals, that the Company continues to maintain a good relationship with the local project communities. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause plans, estimates and actual results to vary materially from those projected in such forward-looking information. Factors that could cause the forward-looking information in this news release to change or to be inaccurate include, but are not limited to, the risk that any of the assumptions referred to prove not to be valid or reliable, which could result in delays, or cessation in planned work, that the Company's financial condition and development plans change, delays in regulatory approval, risks associated with the interpretation of data, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits, the possibility that results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations, as well as the other risks and uncertainties applicable to mineral exploration and development activities and to the Company as set forth in the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis reports filed under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that any forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information or statements, other than as required by applicable law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

The FT Shares have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons absent registration or any applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws.

Contacts:

Colorado Resources Ltd.

Alex Blanchard

VP Corporate Development

T: (250) 768-1511 or TF (855) 768-1511

(250) 768-0849 (FAX)

Email. alexb@coloradoresources.com

W: www.coloradoresources.com




Embark Ventures, L.P., a Los Angeles, CA-based new venture capital firm, launches its first fund.

According to a regulatory form filed with the SEC, the firm is seeking to raise $50m. No funds have been raised yet.

The doc lists Yipeng Zhao and Peter Lee as people related to the offering.

According to LinkedIn, Peter Lee is Managing Partner at Baroda Ventures, a vc firm focused on early stage IT (internet, SaaS, digital media) while Yipeng Zhao is Managing Partner at ArcheMatrix Ventures, which invests in early-stage companies with high growth potential.

FinSMEs

29/12/2016
RENO  A Canadian man was sentenced to almost $3,000 in fines and penalties after pleading guilty to four misdemeanor counts of the illegal possession of raptors.

Dana Morely McIvor, 31, pled guilty to two counts of unlawful possession of a golden eagle and ordered to pay $1,745 in fines and civil penalties, according to the Nevada Department of Wildlife. He also pled guilty to two counts of unlawful possession of a bird of prey and was ordered to pay an additional $1,210. In addition to his total fine of $2,955, McIvor was given a 30-day jail sentence, suspended for two years.

McIvor admitted to killing at least three raptors and had numerous raptor parts, such as feathers, wings and feet in his possession when he was arrested.

This crime is an outrage to the citizens of Nevada. These birds are an important part of Nevadas ecosystem, and theres no excuse for this kind of thoughtless killing, said Chief Game Warden Tyler Turnipseed.

The original incident stemmed from a case of reckless driving that led to the arrest of McIvor in the Walmart Tire Center in Elko on Jan. 31. The bird parts were discovered after a search of the vehicle McIvor was driving.

Eagle feathers are often used in Native American celebrations and are sometimes illegally sold in international markets. In Nevada, as in other states, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permit is required to be in possession of raptors and raptor parts.

The total value of the seized raptor parts in this case could exceed $10,000, according to game wardens. McIvor admitted to keeping the raptor parts for ceremonial purposes.

The USFWS provides feathers for Native American celebrations and are available through the National Eagle Repository. NDOW routinely works with the USFWS to transfer killed and euthanized raptors to the repository. Each year NDOW coordinates getting numerous birds from Nevada to the repository for this use.
Kapilendo, a Berlin, Germany-based funding marketplace for entrepreneurs, raised $7m in Series B funding.

The round was led by the Berlin Dental Association Pension Fund, with participation from Finlab AG (WKN 121806 / ISIN DE0001218063 / ticker symbol: A7A) and founding investor Comvest Holding GmbH.

The company will use the funds to continue to expand operations.

Led by Christopher Kralove, founder and CEO, kapilendo provides a crowdfunding platform covering the entire funding spectrum from crowd-investing to crowd-lending with its two brands, kapilendo credit and kapilendo venture.

kapilendo credit provides low-priced and quick financing with no red tape to small and medium-sized enterprises through investments from private individuals while kapilendo venture offers startups access to growth financing from private investors.

FinSMEs

29/12/2016
The draconian punishments announced for keeping more than 10 notes of demonetised currency including a four-year jail sentence seems to be a defence mechanism to discourage any trigger happy Public Interest Litigator from suing the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for breaking its promise.

Every note carries the legend I promise to pay the bearer the sum of and the unilateral murder of these notes also leaves the RBI vulnerable to a breach of trust since the people were not party to the dissolution of the contractual obligation.

While illegally held notes or those that have been used for unlawful activities can be taxed and their holders penalised accordingly, the question that can be asked under the law is whether the promise still holds good.

Punish me as per the law but keep the written pledge.

In purely technical terms, going by the written pledge, the RBI is obligated to exchange every one of the notes with those of lesser denominations including coins because that is what it has said it will do.

But, wait a minute. Does it owe us an explanation and while it can be accused of clumsiness, is it legally within its rights to renege on its agreement?

The promissory note has its antecedents in the gold standard when a note could be exchanged for precious metals and is based on the Bank of Englands monetary system. In fact, at one stage, every note had the name of the individual to which it was given as legal tender.

Today, the note has the signature of the governor of the Reserve Bank and under his assurance the note per se is neither black, white, laundered or, in any way, reduced in value vis a vis the promise written on it.

As a legal conundrum how would the RBI defend itself? By citing the greater good? By underscoring the criminal element in its war on the parallel economy? By submitting that the pledge was initially broken by the people who misused the note and therefore rendered the promise null and void.

Perhaps the RBI's best bet is to state that the Indian currency note is not a promissory note as it was in the old days but is money like the coins and, therefore, not accountable legally if the promise is not kept.

If that be so and this argument will be the mainstay of the governments stand why have the legend on the note at all along with the governors signature? Doesn't it have any sanctity?

The government will say that it is a convention with no locus standi in the court of law.

Consequently, since there is a for and an against argument, the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes that were demonetised each can have a day in court because its owner has had a pledge broken.

But it is a losing battle. Modern Indian currency is not officially seen as being a descendant of the old notes from the history books but just cash.

While most of us do not really care very much and will not do anything, one can question the premise that legally the RBI is duty-bound to honour every single note and see it as mutually exclusive from who owns it or what laws that the owner has broken.

The RBI, in simple terms, is not the police.

After all, if there is no value to the promise and the signature and the Indian currency is purely money why repeat this pompous commitment on the new notes.

Would this make for a stronger petition one cannot say but it is an interesting situation.

Problem there is that in no place on the note does it mention conditions under which this promise can be negated.
By Catherine Ngai

| NEW YORK

NEW YORK Oil prices dipped on Thursday after a surprise increase in U.S. inventories reversed an advance in prices that had pushed global crude benchmarks to their highest levels since July last year.U.S. light, sweet crude was down 37 cents at $53.69 by 12:02 p.m. ET while North Sea Brent crude was down 17 cents at $56.05 a barrel.Traded volumes were thin with many investors away for year-end holidays, although the expiry of the front-month February ICE Brent contract on Thursday could generate some activity. U.S. distillate and gasoline futures expire on Friday, which could add to price swings, analysts noted."The petroleum markets are mixed in light-volume trade amid a general wait for fresh fundamental news that might push prices out of their established ranges," Tim Evans, an energy futures specialist at Citi Futures, said in a note.

Both crude oil benchmarks have made big gains this month, touching year-to-date highs after OPEC and other producers agreed to curb production in an attempt to balance an over-supplied fuel market. "The market is in good shape although it might fail to make significant advances this year," said analyst Tamas Varga at London brokerage PVM Oil Associates. "If that is the case, the uptrend should continue in early January.""Either way, the odds are still on higher numbers."

U.S. crude oil stocks unexpectedly rose last week, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed on Thursday, adding 614,000 barrels in the week to Dec 23. Analysts polled by Reuters before the report had forecast on average that inventories would decline by 2.1 million barrels. In Cushing, Oklahoma, inventories rose by 172,000 barrels, the EIA said.

But the overall trend appeared to be upwards with oil producers committed to output cuts.A committee of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC producers will meet in Vienna on Jan. 21-22 to discuss compliance with the production agreement, Kuwaiti oil minister Essam Al-Marzouq told state news agency KUNA. (Additional reporting by Christopher Johnson in London and Mark Tay in Singapore; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has rejected the plea of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts convict Rubina Suleman Memon, seeking her release on furlough.

"We are not inclined to release the petitioner (Rubina) on furlough as she had been convicted by a TADA court for her involvement in terrorist activities," said a bench of Justice VK Tahilramani and AM Badar in a recent judgement.

Rubina is also sister-in-law of Tiger Memon, believed to be living in Pakistan and one of the prime conspirators of the serial blasts that had rocked the city in March, 1993, claiming 257 lives and injuring more than 700 others.

Rubina was sentenced to life imprisonment along with three other family members by a Mumbai TADA Court in 2006, while her husband Sulieman was acquitted due to lack of evidence. Her brother-in-law Yakub was sent to the gallows on terror charges.

Rubina, currently lodged in Pune's Yerwada prison, had applied to jail authorities for furlough leave on 22 January 2015. However, her plea was rejected on 15 January 2016. Aggrieved, she filed an appeal which was dismissed in May this year. Thereafter, she moved the High Court by a writ petition seeking furlough leave, which was rejected last week.

Rubina's lawyer Farhana Shah argued that the three co-accused, who have also been convicted under TADA in the same case, have been released from jail temporary on leave.

They are Sardar Shahwali Khan, who was released on furlough on 9 June 2014, Nasir Abdul Kadar, who was given furlough leave on 27 June 2014 and Isa Abdul Razak Memon, who was also released on furlough on 10 June 2016, Farhana said.

As the three co-accused, who were similarly placed with Rubina in the 1993 bomb blast case, had been given furlough leave, the petitioner should also be given the same facility, i.e furlough leave, Farhana argued.

Additional Public prosecutor HJ Dedia submitted that Rubina's application for furlough was rejected under Rule 4(4) of the Prisons (Bombay Furlough and Parole) Rules, 1959.

This Rule states that prisoners whose release is not recommended by Commissioner of Police or District Magistrate on the ground of public peace and tranquility, shall not be granted furlough.

The prosecutor said that in the order jail authorities rejecting Rubina's furlough, it was stated that the petitioner is wife of brother of Yakub Memon. She will spend her period of furlough in Mahim area in Mumbai, where people of all communities reside.

"If she is released on parole people will turn up to meet her in large numbers and there would be a law and order problem, particularly in view of the fact that during the funeral of Yakub Memon, a huge crowd had turned up," the order stated.

The prosecutor also pointed out that as Rubina has been convicted under TADA hence under Rule 4(13) of Prison Tules, she would not be entitled to be released on furlough, as this rule states that prisoners who are convicted for terrorist crime shall not be released.

The prosecutor argued that admittedly, the petitioner (Rubina) is convicted under TADA, hence, she is not entitled to be released on furlough. He pointed out that the Bombay High court in two decisions has held that sub rule 13 to Rule 4 is not ultra virus.

Accepting the prosecutor's argument, the high court rejected the furlough leave petition of Rubina Memon.
Arguing that bonhomie between the different South Asian countries can happen only through utilising an accommodating rather than an exclusionary approach, Vice President of India, Hamid Ansari on Wednesday said that it is the only practical approach to the possibility of a "South Asian Union".

Ansari was addressing the gathering after releasing the book August Voices: What they said on 14-15 August 1947, authored by Observer Research Foundation head Sudheendra Kulkarni, in Mumbai.

Following is a full transcript of his speech:

I confess I have read, but infrequently, some of the writings of Sudheendra Kulkarni. Some years back he was gracious enough to send me a copy of his very interesting collection of writings on what Mahatma Gandhi would have done with the internet.

It is tempting to type caste. Could he be called an archeologist, or dubbed a futurologist? Neither would do justice to his work. To me, it is evident that Kulkarni ji has the mind of an explorer, a visionary, in quest of new worlds.

The book before us is one such endeavour, to build a new edifice on the ruins of the past. And yet, because this is not a green field venture, it is essential to understand the nature of ruins on which rebuilding is to commence.

The task of the historian, as Ibn Khuldun put it, is to lift the veil from conditions of the past. The present case is also a matter of living memory and therefore not immune from subjectivity of greater intensity. The post-truth, in this case, arrived seven decades earlier!

The challenge for us, therefore, is three fold:

To understand what happened in 1947?

To examine the role and limitations of the principal actors?

To explore realistically the options for the future.

The happening of 1947 has rightly been describes as a tragedy to which the Two Nation theory contributed. The British role, and their anxiety to leave India on terms most advantageous to them, is well known.

Was this sufficient to bring about the division of the country?

Some of the iconic personalities cited in the book, and others not mentioned, played a role in articulating and shaping perceptions for over two decades. Their final statements, if such a term can be used for what they said on August 14-15, have therefore to be seen in a wider context of their role in the developments that led to the final decisions.

The critical question is simply put: why was the Partition Plan, put forth by the British, accepted?

Much has been written about the experience of the functioning of the Interim Government of 1946-47. In the discussions preceding and during the crucial AICC meeting of 14-15 June 1947 opinion was divided but both Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel supported Partition. Their line of reasoning, as per public record, was not identical. Nehru felt a compromise with the Muslim League would result in a weak India, that is, a federal India with far too much power in the federating units, adding that partition would be temporary, that Pakistan was bound to come back to us. Patel felt, as he put it, that in spite of my previous strong opposition to partition, I agreed to it because I am convinced that in order to keep India united it must be divided. He added, in a speech in Bombay on 30 October 1948, that we accepted partition willingly and after a full weightment of its consequences.

Ten years after the event, Maulana Azad attributed the decision of his principal colleagues to anger or despair (that) had clouded their vision adding that the verdict (of history) would be that India was not divided by the Muslim League but by the Congress.

It is therefore difficult to disagree with Shri Kulkarnis conclusion that historys verdict casts the responsibility for Indias Partition on both the parties although the Muslim leagues guilt is decidedly greater because it anchored its demand on the Two Nation Theory.

And yet, the thought did persist with some of the decision-makers that the impending happening was somewhat unreal, not altogether desirable, and hopefully transitory. The latter aspect, however, was not investigated or spelt out.

Even more glaring was the apparent absence, on all sides, of reflection and articulation of the economic implications of the division of what had hitherto been one economic unit for over a century with its own imperatives and socio-economic consequences.

The theme of the book before us is to project a scenario of the possibility of a South Asian Union with the India-Pakistan-Bangladesh Confederation at the core. Its underlying assumption is the possibility and desirability of an India-Pakistan rapprochement.

Our focus is on three nation-states of recent origin, of different sizes and capacities, differing versions of the past, conflicting ideologies and national security perceptions, but sharing geography, ecology and wider human security challenges.

Our author seeks a solution by plunging headlong into the core of differences. He suggests a cultural and spiritual confederation that would subdue and overcome extremist perceptions of those whom he is not disinclined to name, reverts to what was said by some political and spiritual personalities, and cites with approval Maharishi Aurobindos words that the desired change will come by an increasing recognition of the necessity not only of peace and concord but of common action, by the practice of common action and the creation of means for that purpose.

Idealism, however lofty, has to be tempered with realism. Common action is easier done on areas of convergence than of divergence. This convergence is to be sought by moving beyond the traditional paradigm of conventional security into those of human security and human wrong. Both are ignored by the governments and societies in our region; there is a crying need for the recognition and implementation of both. Only then would we develop the perception and capacity for correctives.

A beginning therefore has to be made in regional cooperation with a focus on human security problems, on movement of people and on trade without unreasonable restrictions. The common traits in cultural traditions and historical narratives needs to be transmitted to a younger generation through conscious promotion rather than studied prevention of cultural exchanges, films, and other cultural activities.

The experience of Saarc has not been encouraging and therefore alternate strategies need to be explored. The proposed new structure would have to be voluntary and devoid of overt or covert coercion. There may be lessons to be learnt from other regional organizations.

The practical approach would be to make haste slowly, to be accommodative rather than exclusionary so that negative perceptions are allowed to fade away. Political commitment and modalities have to surface to resolve outstanding areas of disagreement. Foremost amongst these is what the Simla Agreement of 1972 called a final settlement of Jammu and Kashmir. Its domestic dimensions, as well as the trans-LOC incursions, have been in the news of late. The State is doing all that is necessary to confront and repel terrorism. The State also has a duty to ensure that the rights and dignity of our citizens in the State are respected and ensured and shortcomings effectively addressed. Alienation of any segment of the citizen body within our land does not contribute to the overall health of the Republic.

Chale chalo ke who manzil abhi nahin aaii.

Jai Hind.
New Delhi: Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and the Islamic State trying to weave its terror network in India kept the National Investigation Agency (NIA) busy throughout 2016.

The year began with one of the most audacious terror attacks on India when four Pakistani terrorists stormed the India Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot on 2 January and killed seven soldiers.

The NIA, formed in the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, quickly sprang into action and traced links of the attack to Pakistan, blaming Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar for masterminding the strike that brought the improving New Delhi-Islamabad ties back to square-one.

Within months, the anti-terror probe agency filed a detailed charge sheet nailing Azhar and three of his accomplices for their detailed and meticulous planning of the attack.

But the agency drew flak when the government allowed a Joint Investigation Team (JIT), which included an ISI officer, from Pakistan to visit the sensitive Pathankot military base to probe the incident.

Days after it took over the Pathankot probe, the NIA laid its hands on evidence of the Islamic State trying to expand its presence in India by radicalising youth as potential terrorists.

On 22 and 23 January, over two dozen raids were conducted across the country. Eighteen Islamic State suspects were arrested. Nine more, including a foreigner, were later held in separate raids in Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The agency filed a charge sheet in June alleging that Islamic State sympathisers were seeking to establish an Islamist caliphate in India -- Junoodul-Khilafa-Fil-Hind -- and recruit Muslim youth to terrorism at the behest of Syria-based Shafi Armar alias Yusuf-Al-Hindi.

According to the NIA, Armar, a resident of Karnataka's Bhatkal district and a senior Islamic State leader managing India recruitment, was in touch with the accused through social media networks.

He trained them how to prepare IEDs, identify training venues and provide logistics support for terror strikes.

However, the agency found itself in the midst of a controversy for going soft on alleged right-wing Hindu terror. On 13 May, it submitted the second and final report in the 29 September 2008, Malegaon bomb blast that killed six persons. The bombing was earlier blamed on the Abhinav Bharat group led by Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Lt. Col. Srikant Purohit.

The Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad, which was earlier probing the bombing, had filed charges against the two main accused in the attack. The NIA took over the case in 2011. And its chargesheet this year gave a clean chit to Thakur and watered down the case against Purohit.

The agency got one of its major successes when a Bengaluru court convicted 13 Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists in a 2012 conspiracy to kill prominent leaders, journalists and police officers in Karnataka and Maharashtra.

Another success came when a special court awarded the death sentence to five Indian Mujahideen operatives for their role in the 21 February 2013, Dilsukhnagar, Hyderabad, twin-blast case that claimed 18 lives.

In all, the NIA registered 33 cases in 2016. Twelve of them were related to Islamic State sympathisers, three against JeM, two of regarding counterfeit currency notes, two of Maoists and two more on terror incidents in northeastern India.

The agency also registered a case against controversial preacher and Islamic Research Foundation founder Zakir Naik on charges of misusing donations to radicalise youth.

The year also witnessed an unprecedented second extension given to NIA chief Sharad Kumar, making him the first Director General of the agency to be re-employed twice after his superannuation in 2015.
ELKO  The Bureau of Land Managements Elko District will host a United Blood Services community blood drive from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at the BLM offices at 3900 E. Idaho St.

We hosted a blood drive last spring and had 23 amazing donors that gave 28 life-saving units of blood, said Camille Howes, associate district manager. This blood drive every donor will receive a free movie ticket for donating. Our goal is 37 successful donations and 45 pints of blood.

According to United Blood Services, the winter months are a critical time for blood donations.

The following are some blood facts:

Save up to three lives with your donation

Northern Nevada needs 125 pints of blood a day to take care of the areas hospital patients

You can donate whole blood every 8 weeks

Someone needs a blood transfusion every 2 seconds

80 percent of patients entering the hospital will receive blood

Almost everyone knows someone who has received blood

All blood types are needed!

Blood donors are encouraged to visit the United Blood Services website for more information and to complete the screening process prior to arrival at www.UnitedBloodServices.org, use sponsor code EBLM.
Mumbai: Maharashtra government will implement the Supreme Court's verdict of 15 December that directed all the states to shut down all liquor shops and vends on national and state highways.

State Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar cited the rising number of deaths in road accidents in the state while stating that the liquor shops on state and national highways will be closed.

"Maximum number of deaths due to road accidents were due to drunken driving. The SC verdict effectively means that 12,967 liquor shops in the state that fall within the 500 meter radius will have to shut down after March 31, 2017," he told reporters in Mumbai.

Asked about the contention of the liquor lobby about revenue loss, Mungantiwar said, "anyway they are not in the business of selling holy water."

The minister also said that the Maharashtra government was prepared to incur the loss in its revenue and will implement the order of the apex court.

"Out of the total 16,856 deaths in 2015-16, 13,212 deaths were road accident deaths and again out of that maximum of them were due to drunken driving," Mungantiwar claimed. Meanwhile, officials said due to demonetisation, the department anticipates a 4.88 per cent decline in revenue between 1to 20 December.

As per State Excise departments data, the department had fixed the revenue income out of liquor for 2016 at Rs 15,343.96 crore.

The department had posted a revenue income of Rs 1,024.57 crore in November 2015, whereas the revenue income in November this year was Rs 1,027.35 crore, a rise of 0.27 per cent, shows the data.

As per the data, between 1 December to 20 December, 2015, the department posted a revenue income of Rs 670.25 crore, while the revenue for the same corresponding period this December stands at Rs 637.57 crore, a deficit of 4.88 percent.

Out of the total 12,967 liquor shops that will face closure after March 31, 2017, Pune district has maximum of 3,932 establishments, officials said. Of these 2,499 are in Nagpur, 2,225 in Kolhapur, , 2,224 in Aurangabad, 1,480 in Konkan region and 1,347 in Nashik district, they said.

There are a total of 24,572 country liquor, wine shops, permit rooms, clubs, beer shops, beer and wine serving outlets in the state, said officials.

According to them, the government has also directed its Superintendents of State Excise not to approve One Day temporary licenses (FL-4) to clubs that come within the radius of 500 meters from the boundaries of national, state highways and service roads.
Security breaches in and around Indian Army camps, over the past year, have cost us the lives of many soldiers. From Uri to Pathankot and from Samba to Nagrota, militants have brazenly attacked the security forces at the heart of some strategic security bases on the Indian territory. However, security loopholes seem to have taken a toll on the preparedness of our forces.

Now it appears that the recent attack on an army unit, which is located just three km from the Army XVI Corps headquarters in Nagrota was staged on similar lines of the Pathankot attack on the Indian Air Force base, where the failure to secure the camp's perimeter resulted in the massive security breach.

Seven army personnel, including two Major-ranked officers were killed in the 29 November Nagrota attack, in which three heavily armed militants stormed into the army complex and started indiscriminate shooting within the officers mess and residential quarters of the army men.

The militants behind the attack reportedly sneaked into the premises from the forest area in its rear, official sources told PTI.

In fact a report by The Indian Express said that the militants climbed atop a tree in the officers mess campus alongside the three-metre high perimeter wall to enter the premises.

Even in the case of Pathankot attack, it was revealed that the terrorists had managed to jump into the campus by climbing eucalyptus trees and then using a nylon rope to slide down the perimeter wall, according to The Hindu. Despite this, no thorough fortification of the boundary walls of strategic camps was conducted, The Indian Express report states.

Moreover, just like the Pathankot attack, in Nagrota too, failure to ensure preemptive action despite credible intelligence input is also among the many reasons that compromised security.

According to another report in The Indian Express, intelligence agencies had been targeting the movements of suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba militants in the Indian territory, since at least two weeks ahead of the Nagrota attack. Specific intelligence inputs, warning against an imminent strike on a high-value military target was issued just 10 days before the 29 November attack. Although, the LeT cell tracked by the intelligence agencies was not behind the attack, which was later blamed on Jaish-e-Mohammed, questions were raised as to what security measures were taken in response to the intelligence warnings.

However, responding to this, an army spokesperson told The Indian Express, The reports generated by intelligence agencies were not specific and covered a large spectrum of targets and locations. Even with reference to intelligence regarding Nagrota attack, no such specific or actionable intelligence was received. However, the report further claims that RAW further issued a warning just 72 hours ahead of the attack that suspected Jaish militants were active in the region. The warning, undoubtedly were generic and did not point out the specific targets on the radar of the militants, nonetheless, the inputs should have led bases to enhance security in the least.

Currently, the National Investigating Agency is probing the attacks, while it has already filed a chargesheet against JeM cadres including its chief Masood Azhar in the Pathankot attack case, the agency is seeking to establish how did the terrorists creep into the Indian soil and sustained without detection for so long. Meanwhile, a likely theory floating after the preliminary investigation states that the terrorists could have crawled in through an 80-metre-long tunnel under farm lands to cross the International Border (IB) used for the Samba attack, which occurred on the same day.

With inputs from agencies
New Delhi: Navy Chief Sunil Lanba will take over charge as chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee on Saturday afternoon, and has been handed over the ceremonial baton by outgoing incumbent, IAF Chief Arup Raha.

The senior-most of the service chiefs is given the charge of the Chiefs of Staff committee.

On Thursday, Air Chief Marshal Raha handed over the baton to Admiral Lanba at a ceremony in the South Block, which houses the Defence Ministry.

Lanba will assume the charge from the afternoon of 31 December, the day Raha retires.

Army chief, Gen Dalbir Singh, who also retires from service on 31 December, and Principal Staff Officers of all three services and the Integrated Defence Staff were present on the occasion, an official statement said.

Admiral Lanba assumed command of the Indian Navy on 31 May, 2016. He is a navigation and direction specialist and has served onboard numerous ships in both the eastern and eastern fleets.

He is an alumnus of National Defence Academy (NDA), Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), Wellington, College of Defence Management (CDM) and Royal College of Defence Studies, London.

Air Chief Marshal Raha, the outgoing chairman, COSC had taken over as chairman COSC on 1 August, 2014, and under his stewardship, the services received a "vital boost in jointmanship", the statement said.

"During his tenure, the Defence Communication Network got operationalised and training standards of the Tri Service Institutes such as NDA, DSSC and CDM were enhanced," the statement said.

"The much awaited National War Museum got approval from the government. He was instrumental in enhancing the role of military diplomacy with friendly foreign countries. Various humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations during crisis situations both within and outside India such as Jammu and Kashmir floods, Chennai floods, evacuation of Indian and foreign nationals from Yemen and Nepal Earthquake were successfully conducted," it said.

"He also played a pivotal role in formulation of DPP-16 thereby streamlining and fast tracking Defence Procurement which has so far been plagued by laborious procedures and long delays," it said.
The Congress would like to call demonetisation the biggest scam in India's political history. The party's vice-president Rahul Gandhi and senior member P Chidambaram have said so already. Party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala repeated it on Thursday. However, as none offers any specific case of wrong-doing involving either Narendra Modi or any other BJP biggie or the party for scrutiny, the allegation sounds hollow. The BJP has laughed it off, indulging in a bit of whataboutery.

But it should be careful. The Congress may not exactly be looking to catch thieves; it could be playing the perception game. It senses that Modi's aura of infallibility has taken a hit after demonetisation  the first time since he came to power in 2014 with a thumping mandate  and it stands a chance to catch up with him now. The post 8 November scenario has also provided Rahul the right platform to buttress the pro-poor image he has been trying to build assiduously over the last few years. The Congress is also aware that with nearly half of the government's tenure left, the party still has time to recover lost ground and throw a credible challenge to the BJP in 2019.

Coming to public perception, Modi still enjoys a clear advantage over all his rivals. His leadership style, manner of communication and most importantly, his untainted image continue to be his unique selling proposition. Till demonetisation, the Opposition, specifically the Congress, did not have a strong ground to launch a sustained attack on him. Things could have changed a bit after 8 November. The rivals have discovered that his USP could be his weakness too. The trouble to the public due to demonetisation exercise has raised questions on his style of leadership  some have called it reckless. His famous oratorical skill, for a change, appears to be failing him.

However, neither dents his stature as a leader much. The real damage could come only from the corruption taint on his image. That is the reason the Congress has been busy levelling corruption charges against him. Calling the demonetisation exercise a scam and presenting documents citing that he received money from corporate players work to that end. The Congress can draw some satisfaction if it manages to change the public perception on Modi's incorruptibility.

For the BJP it should be a matter of worry. It has exhausted most of its bankable emotive issues. The nationalism debate has run its course as has the controversy over cow and minorities. Nationalism and patriotism have lost the novelty quotient. The party cannot keep harping on Pakistan and terrorism forever given the post-surgical strike developments. Development as a talking point has lost some of its shine too. Unless it has new cards up its sleeve to drum up emotions  it's an essential part of the party's electoral strategy  the BJP might get into serious trouble in the run-up to the next general election.

Thus for all practical purposes Modi will remain the riveting point for the party as always. The Opposition's strategy would be to sully his image. The BJP can expect the Congress to intensify its attack on him in the coming days and continue with it for long. Rahul, obviously, will be at the forefront. It would be required to work on a strategy to blunt all attempts to spoil his image. Things could change if Modi keeps springing surprises to keep all confused and behind the curve. This has worked to his advantage so far.

Scam or no scam expect the coming months to be interesting.
New Delhi: Sharpening the attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over demonetisation and graft charges, the Congress on Thursday announced launching a nationwide protest campaign from January. Its also questioned Modi's alleged links with a Gujarat businessman being probed for black money, prompting the BJP to threaten legal action.

Announcing the three-phase nationwide agitation beginning 6 January, Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala questioned Modi over vice-president Rahul Gandhi's allegation of having taken Rs 65 crore in kickbacks from Sahara and Birla as the chief minister of Gujarat as well as businessman Mahesh Shah who declared Rs 13,860 crore black money under the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS).

"We are asking a simple question: Did you (Modi) take money or not? If not, then why aren't you ordering an independent probe into it," he asked.

"Former Chief Minister of Gujarat Suresh Mehta of BJP had said that Mahesh Shah used to visit Modi when he was the Gujarat chief minister quite often without any restrictions. Mahesh Shah declared Rs 13,860 crore black money under the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS).

"Why isn't Modiji telling us the truth behind Rs 13,860 crore? Is he doing any probe into it," he asked.

Surjewala also said that old currency notes were found in a private car in Maharashtra, which were said to have links with state ministers Pankaja Munde and Subhash Deshmukh.

"Is Modi going to tell the people how cash worth Rs 51.50 lakh was seized from Subhas Deshmukh's car? Will there be any probe in this?"

He accused the Modi government of having imposed "economic anarchy" through demonetisation in the country,

Congress' allegations against Modi attracted prompt rebuttal from the BJP with senior leader and Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad even threatening legal action.

"We want to clearly state that Mahesh Shah has no relations either with Modi or (BJP President) Amit Shah. If the Congress has proof, let it follow proper channels or stop making such baseless allegations. Otherwise, we will consider taking legal action," he said.

Prasad dubbed Congress the "biggest patron" of corruption, and said the party was making baseless allegations to deter the government from acting against the corrupt but asserted that the government will not yield to any such pressures," he said.

Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu also hit out at Congress and ridiculed Gandhi for demanding a white paper on demonetisation.

"Congress and its friends are rattled by the prospect of the government going after those who made illegitimate deposits in banks and bought benami properties. Their allegations are baseless and absurd. They want to dilute the public perception of demonetisation," he said.

"We are trying to change the entire system and end black money, but they are asking for white paper. They don't want white money, they want white paper," he said, adding that the government will not be distracted by these diversionary tactics.

Enumerating the benefits of the note ban, Naidu said demonetisation was an "anti-scam vaccine".

"Without any credible evidence, the Congress is calling demonetisation a scam. They want to tar the government, they are adopting a spit and run ploy. But demonetisaion is anti scam vaccine, to prevent scams, corruption and black money," he said.
Israel's attorney general has decided to order a criminal probe against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and he is to soon be questioned by police, Israeli media reported on Thursday.

The justice ministry and police have declined to comment. Police have however issued a statement saying that it would inform the public "in due time" on the issue, while warning that media reports have included speculation.

Israeli media have reported that the investigation is to involve suspicions of corruption.

Channel 10 television reported that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has authorised police to conduct a criminal investigation.

The station and other Israeli media have reported that Netanyahu is to be questioned by police.

In July, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said he had ordered a preliminary examination into an unspecified affair involving Netanyahu.

No details were given on the nature of the preliminary examination and Netanyahu has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

He has acknowledged receiving money from French tycoon Arnaud Mimran, who was sentenced to eight years in prison over a scam amounting to 283 million euros involving the trade of carbon emissions permits and the taxes on them.

Netanyahu's office said he had received $40,000 in contributions from Mimran in 2001, when he was not in office, as part of a fund for public activities, including appearances abroad to promote Israel.

He has also come under scrutiny over an alleged conflict of interest in the purchase of submarines from a German firm.

Media reports have alleged a conflict of interest over the role played by the Netanyahu family lawyer, David Shimron, who also acts for the Israeli agent of Germany's ThyssenKrupp, which builds the Dolphin submarines.
Demonetisation, the government's surprise move of stripping the old higher currency notes of their status as legal tender, has garnered varying reactions from different circles. However, as the government is busy propagating the many 'benefits' of demonetisation, it has undoubtedly invited unprecedented wrath of what is arguably a 'united Opposition.'

As Mamata Banerjee led All India Trinamool Congress and the Congress party are giving the government a tough time in New Delhi, signs of fresh trouble brewed at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.

To protest gainst hardships faced by people due to the demonetisation scheme, the ruling CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala organised a 'human chain' across the state on 29 December. The 'human chain' was formed from northern district Kasaragod to state capital in the south, Thiruvananthapuram, LDF convener Vaikom Viswan said.

According to a report in Manorama Online, the human chain started from the Raj Bhavan in the state capital and saw the presence of state Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, former chief minister VS Achuthanandan, CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, CPI state secretary Kanam Rajendran, among others. The report further states that beside Left leaders, and allies of the ruling LDF, representatives of political parties like JSS, INL, CMP, Janadhipathya Kerala Congress, Kerala Congress (B) also took part in the event.

However, The Times of India reported that the national leadership of the Left Front stayed away from the event. CPM general secretary, Sitaram Yechury was in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday, however, he did not stay back for the Thursday's event.

Before organising the 'human chain', LDF had mobilised a massive campaign to garner support for its move. The front had conduct conventions in all panchayats across the state while 'Padayatras' were also held to create awareness among people about the drawbacks of withdrawing high denomination notes.

Alleging that only corporates have benefited from the demonetisation, Viswan said the decision to withdraw currency was taken by the Centre with "political motives."

Meanwhile, on the issue of LDF's 'human chain', the BJP leadership quipped that it was strange to form a queue to protest against queues, in an apparent reference to the Left Front's outrage against the serpentine ATM and bank queues in the wake of demonetisation.

Reacting to the LDF's move, the state BJP leaders on earlier in the day demanded strict action against government employees to stop them from joining the human chain, according to The New Indian Express. In a letter to state Chief Secretary SM Vijayanand, the Kerala BJP alleged that the ruling party was running a propaganda in government establishments to garner support for its political events. The BJP leadership also pointed out that government employees joining any political movement is a violation of the Kerala Service Rules. The letter, according to the report, further alleges that the CPM-led government was even using migrant labourers working in the state to make its human chain look like a success.

As the Modi government decided to suck higher currency out of the system, only to replace with new notes of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500, a lot has been said about the govenrment's surprise move. As opposition parties panned the government for frequently changing the rules related to the note ban, they were also quick to point out that this only shows the poor implementation and government's lack of preparedness before making such a massive move.

However, in the absence of concrete parameters or analysis to gauge the actual impact on the common man, or the government's much-touted crackdown against black money, the move has at best received a mixed sentiment. As TK Devasia reports for Firstpost, small traders are sending a positive feedback for the move. "The traders, who had initially opposed demonetisation, are now fully supporting the digital payment drive. The Kerala Vyapari Vyavasayi Ekopana Samithi, which is rated as the single largest trade body in the world, is actively associating with the Go Cashless campaign," his report quotes PP Jayakumar, manager, e-Governance and networking, Akshaya, as saying. His report credits a "well-knit" network of Akshaya citizen service centres across Kerala, which was designated by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology as the nodal agency for the Go Cashless campaign in Kerala, for the apparent success of demonetisation vis-a-vis cashless economy amid small traders in Kerala.

However, another report submitted by a panel set up by the Kerala state government has found that demonetisation has hit the state's economy hard.

The committee, set up on 23 November, is headed by d CP Chandrasekhar of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning of the Jawaharlal Nehru University

"Cash-intensive sectors such as retail trade, hotels, and restaurants and transportation account for over 40 percent of the Kerala economy, and the primary sector accounts for another 16 percent of the economy. Thus, 56 percent of the economic activity of Kerala is immediately affected by the withdrawal of specified bank notes," an interim report submitted by the five-member committee has said

According to the report, the impact of demonetisation in terms of the cash deficit and its consequences has been particularly severe in the state also because of the distinct character of its banking sector, where the cooperative sector and the primary agricultural cooperative societies (PACS) play a central role.

It is instructive to note here that the RBI has kept the cooperative banks and societies out of the note exchange process, which according to the panel's report proved to be particularly damaging for Kerala's economy.

With inputs from PTI
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi's maverick 8 November announcement of demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, he assured the nation in a passionate appeal: "Cooperate with me and help me for 50 days and I will give you the India you desired." The prime minister's 50-day deadline will be over on Friday with confusion still prevailing among Indians as to what they desired from their government and what did they get actually. Though the jury is still out on demonetisation and the Centre's fight against black money and corruption, the NDA government is engaged in a war with the Opposition parties; battling, sometimes dodging the volley of questions that is being directed at them.

Modi's late evening announcements have become ominous now. All eyes will be on him when he will be addressing the nation at 7.30 pm on New Year's eve. Will it be a report card on the impact of demonetisation or another big announcement  the prime minister is holding the cards close to his chest. Meanwhile, the Opposition parties  sometimes united and most often fractured  have trained their guns on the government. Leading the pack is Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

On the prime minister's home turf in Gujarat, Rahul had accused Modi of accepting money from the Sahara conglomerate when he was the chief minister of the state. In a joint press conference held recently, the Congress vice-president along with Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sought the prime minister's resignation if he fails to keep his promise of improving things after the 50-day window. Now, Congress have demanded a white paper from the government and listed out a set of demands.

The Congress Party's Charter of Demands on demonetization on behalf of the people of India. The Prime Minister must answer these questions pic.twitter.com/YxbYEwScpg  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) December 28, 2016

Some of the demands include that Modi should double the MNREGA wages and the number of days each labourer can work, besides giving 50 percent rebate in Income Tax and Sales Tax to shopkeepers and 20 percent bonus on MSP for Rabi crops to farmers and waiving their loans. Coming out with the 'Charter of Demands' before the media, Rahul sought a list of all those who have deposited above Rs 25 lakh before demonetisation was announced and sought relief to those badly affected including provision of Rs 25,000 to at least one woman of each BPL family.

"After 8 November, how much black money has come out and how much economic loss has the country suffered due to demonetisation," he said.

Moreover, the Congress on Thursday announced that the party will launch a nationwide protest across the country from 6 January on the twin issues of note ban and corruption charges against Modi. "The Congress will start a three-phase nationwide agitation from January to protest against demonetisation and corruption charges against the prime minister. The first phase will start from 6 January," said the Congress communication department in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala.

Mamata, who has been very vocal in her opposition to demonetisation, had termed the move as "the biggest scam in Independent India". She had earlier said that her party will hit the streets with the slogan 'Modi hatao, desh bachao' from 1 January. "Our party's only slogan will be Modi hatao, desh bachao and we will organise meetings throughout the state from 1 to 8 January," Mamata had said.

Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the CPM, had launched a scathing attack on the Modi government during the Winter Session of Parliament and had compared Modi to French queen Marie Antoinette. "It reminds me of Marie Antoinette who during the French Revolution said if they (people) don't find bread, why don't they eat cakes. Now, we have Modi Antoinette who says: 'If you don't have paper, use plastic'," he had said.

On the approaching 50-day deadline, Yechury said that the hardships of the people have increased instead of easing. "We are now awaiting to know what are the new announcements. Based on that, the Left parties will reach out to people through protests. We also urge other Opposition parties which are against demonetisation to coordinate efforts," he said.

While JD(U) president and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said that the party would analyse the demonetisation decision on completion of 50 days of the drive, chief of JD(U)'s coalition partner RJD, Lalu Prasad Yadav said that he will be mobilising the opposition parties in a protest against demonetisation. Hitting out at the 50-day deadline, Prasad tweeted: "Does Modi know how many times he has chopped and changed his own decisions in the last 50 days? He is totally clueless, puzzled and jumping here and there."

Does Modi kw how many times he has chopped & changed his own decisions in last 50 days?He is totally clueless, puzzled &jumping here & there  Lalu Prasad Yadav (@laluprasadrjd) December 29, 2016

In another tweet, the RJD chief had said: "PM should chose his favourite chouraha (crossroads) where people could punish him for creating a chaotic condition in the name of demonetisation to fight black money."

PM shd chose his favourite '' whr ppl cud punish him for creating a chaotic condition in name of demonetisation to fight black money  Lalu Prasad Yadav (@laluprasadrjd) December 26, 2016

Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal not one back down a good fight had called Modi "anti-people" and asked him to take responsibility for the people's hardships. Kejriwal, however, might be a bit caught up what with the resignation of Najeeb Jung and the appointment of a new Delhi Lieutenant Governor and the upcoming Punjab Assembly Election.

Meanwhile, ahead of the deadline, prominent ministers of the NDA government addressed the media. While Union Minister Smriti Irani thanked the people of the country supported Modi's move, Venkaiah Naidu said, "Opposition's only job is to use the tactics of spit and run."

Main sabhi desh vasiyon ko naman karti hu jo Pradhanmantri ke aahvahan par iss ladai mein jude: Union Min Smriti Irani #DeMonetisation pic.twitter.com/th7AFrAiFw  ANI (@ANI_news) December 29, 2016

Law and Justice, Information Technology Minister of India Ravi Shankar Prasad, during a press conference, dismissed charges made by the Congress against Modi and said that Modi or BJP President Amit Shah have no connection whatsoever with businessman Mahesh Shah.

Would like to make it clear that PM or Amit Shah ji have no connection whatsoever with businessman Mahesh Shah: RS Prasad,Union Minister  ANI (@ANI_news) December 29, 2016

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said that the impact of demonetisation is clearly visible with tax collection figures seeing double-digit growth.

"There has been a 26.2 percent increase in central indirect tax collection till 30 November," he said at a press conference in New Delhi, adding till 19 December, direct tax collection increase has been to the extent of 14.4 percent against a growth rate of only 8.3 percent previous year.

With inputs from agencies
Chennai: Hours after a Madras High Court judge raised questions over the circumstances leading to the death of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa, the AIADMK on Thursday said the matter will be dealt with legally.

"The judge can pose questions. We live in a democracy. However, words like he may order exhumation of the body have hurt the cadre. The matter is in court and it will be dealt with legally (by the state government)," AIADMK spokesperson CR Saraswathy said. She said the party had fought hard to bring Jayalalithaa back to good health and wondered if it was possible to hush up matters such as the health condition of a top leader, especially when she was being treated not by one doctor but a panel of doctors.

"The panel included doctors from Aiims Delhi, a foreign expert, Dr Richard, and even physiotherapists from Singapore," Saraswathy told PTI when her party's reaction to the court's observations was sought.

Referring to the medical bulletins issued by Apollo Hospitals and the views expressed by specialists on the health of the departed leader, she wondered if it was possible to hush things up for 75 days.

Saraswathy also referred to the views expressed by Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu that though Jayalalithaa's health had picked up initially, she succumbed to a massive cardiac arrest.

Expressing doubts over the circumstances leading to the death of Jayalalithaa, Madras High Court judge Justice S Vaidyanathan hinted at ordering exhumation of the body after a plea before the court sought a probe by an inquiry commission or a fact-finding committee.
Mumbai: Police in Maharashtra have registered an FIR against state BJP chief Raosaheb Danve for violating the model code of conduct, following his controversial remarks during a municipal election campaign.

"The FIR has been filed under section 171 B of IPC, at the Paithan police station last night," Aurangabad Rural SP Navinchandra Reddy told PTI.

The FIR was registered in response to a complaint filed by Paithan sub divisional officer K Netke, the IPS officer said.

The State Election Commission had asked Aurangabad District Collector Nidhi Panday to register an FIR against Danve for violating the model code of conduct.

Danve was seen in a video clip, telling voters in Paithan to accept 'Laxmi' if it came their way before the elections. Laxmi is revered as the goddess of wealth.

In the clip, Danve was seen telling the voters: "Today is December 17 and tomorrow is 18 December, the voting day. I know all of you are impatient to go home.

"The eve of the election is important, as suddenly you get darshan of Laxmi. If such Laxmi comes to your door, please welcome it. But, whatever you have decided, stick to your voting decision."

Earlier, in response to a notice by Netke, Danve had replied that he was quoted out of context.

"I said that the night before the polls is important and suddenly in the night, there will be obeisance of Goddess Laxmi. The public in the meeting were from rural areas and are spiritual and faithful and in case Goddess Laxmi comes, voters must see that the goddess does not return empty handed. The public at large must welcome Goddess Laxmi," Danve had said, in his clarification.

Danve's reply was sent to State Election Commissioner JS Saharia, who found his explanation unsatisfactory.

Congress and NCP had asked Saharia to register a criminal offence against Danve.
ELKO  Lynn Rubel, soprano and executive director of the Ruby Mountain Symphony, died at her home Sunday morning at the age of 71.

The cause of death was an apparent heart attack according to her husband, Marvin Epstein.

Rubel became the driving force of the symphony after the death of conductor and music partner, George Rosenberg, in 2002. The symphony recently completed its 29th season.

She was in charge of managing the orchestra, contracting musicians as well as fundraising and publicity. Rubel was in the process of arranging the details for the upcoming season when she died.

Jane Brown, conductor of the symphony for the past three years, praised Rubels efforts with the organization that was heading into its 30th year.

I have always been impressed with her fortitude and dedication in bringing educational and musical opportunities to young people and the rural communities of Northern Nevada, Brown said in a statement.

Her dogged persistence in bringing high quality programs to Elko and involving schools and community groups in symphonic programs long ago earned my admiration, love, and respect, Brown continued.

Born June 13, 1945, Rubel began her career in music at the age of nine and studied voice and drama three years later. She majored in opera at the American Conservatory of Music in her hometown of Chicago.

Rubel performed with the Lyric Opera of Chicago in The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady and West Side Story, according to her career biography.

Longtime friends, Mike and Charlotte Polise, remember her ability to sing in German, French, Italian, and Russian.

In 1979, she formed a duo with pianist and conductor, George Rosenberg, and traveled to 14 states holding concerts and teaching master classes in music.

Rubel, Rosenberg and his wife Doris, arrived in Elko in the mid 1980s to present educational programs in the Elko County School District and met the Polises.

I said Elko could use more piano teachers if they were to come here, Mike Polise recalled. We were shocked when they called a couple months later saying they were moving to Elko.

Rubel gave voice lessons and, with Rosenberg, helped found the Northern Nevada Concert Orchestra Association, holding their first concert in 1987. She was appointed manager and featured as a soloist in many concerts with Rosenberg as the conductor.

Changing the name to the Ruby Mountain Symphony in 1996, Rubel and Rosenberg continued to build the concerts around young musicians and soloists who were of advanced skill and eager for the opportunity to perform with a professional orchestra.

After the death of Rosenberg in 2002, Rubel kept the dream alive of having an orchestra concert in Elko even though the financial arrangements were challenging, said Polise.

Polise cited her numerous duties that included fundraising, grant writing, commissioning music for the concert and bringing musicians and performers to Elko.

She really brought in some of the top quality orchestral players, added Polise.

Epstein said that the symphony to Rubel was her baby, that was her life.

Rubel was honored throughout her life with awards for her contributions to music which included the Community Service Award from Great Basin College in 2013 for her work with the symphony and a special recognition by Renos Alumnae Chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota music fraternity for women in 2012.

Rubel is survived by her husband, Marvin Epstein of Elko, brother Fred Feibel and two nephews Danny and David Duriavich of Chicago.

A memorial for Rubel in the form of a tribute concert is in the planning stages by conductor Jane Brown and symphony board president Amanda Zohar.
The era of VK Sasikala in the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam has begun. The ruling party of Tamil Nadu appointed VK Sasikala, an aide of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa (sometimes her name is also spelt as Jayalalitha), as the general secretary in a general council meeting in Vanagram, Chennai on Thursday.

AIADMK adopts resolution to work under the leadership of Chinnamma.  AIADMK (@AIADMKOfficial) December 29, 2016

Sasikala will lead the party until a new general secretary is elected, the party said in one of the 14 resolutions adopted at the meeting.

#Breakingnews- 5th resolution says Sasikala appointed as General Secretary till a General Secretary is elected. @thenewsminute  Dhanya Rajendran (@dhanyarajendran) December 29, 2016

The party passed resolutions demanding Jayalalithaa's birthday to be celebrated as "National Farmers Day" and that the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu should be conferred with Magsaysay Award and Nobel prize for World Peace.

Resolutions (Index) made at the AIADMK General Council meet. pic.twitter.com/WW1WYXtoxQ  AIADMK (@AIADMKOfficial) December 29, 2016

Chennai: AIADMK general body meeting underway (Inside Visuals) pic.twitter.com/hpuU0FFQCQ  ANI (@ANI_news) December 29, 2016

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam arrives for the AIADMK General Body meeting pic.twitter.com/5ZfntmHNzN  ANI (@ANI_news) December 29, 2016

The meeting, however, was just a formality since Senior leaders of the party had openly declared on Wednesday that VK Sasikala would the new general secretary of the party at its general council meeting on Thursday, reports said.

According to Deccan Chronicle, party spokesman C Ponnaiyan had said that no one has submitted application to contest for the post of general secretary and 'Chinnamma' will be elected unanimously.

"She alone has the capacity to safeguard the party since she had been with Amma during 30 years of political life. She has all the capabilities to take over as the general secretary, Ponnaiyan had said on Wednesday.

The Indian Express had reported that partys leaders, including district secretaries, were asked to assemble in Vanagaram for the meeting. The report also said that leaders of various wings of the party had already endorsed the leadership of Sasikala.

VK Sasikala didn't attend the meeting either. While DNA said that "she apparently wanted to convey the image of a reluctant politician  that she doesn't want any post but it is the party that has thrust the post on her", a party source informed The Indian Express that VK Sasikala was advised by her astrologer to take up the new role either on 2 January or 3 January.

According to ANI, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam handed over copies of the resolutions passed at the party general meeting to VK Sasikala at Poes Garden. Reports said that Sasikala has accepted all the resolutions passed in the party general meeting.

Sasikala Natarajan promised & accepted that; From today she'll be General Secretary of AIADMK and will soon formally take charge: TN CM pic.twitter.com/X5cFGIFzdZ  ANI (@ANI_news) December 29, 2016

This was the first general council meeting of the party after the death of Jayalalithaa.

Soon after the party general meeting, posters of Sasikala and Jayalalithaa appeared on the streets of Chennai.

Chennai: Posters of Sasikala Natarajan being put up after AIADMK adopted resolution to work under her leadership in the party gen body meet. pic.twitter.com/I2JDfg0Hsz  ANI (@ANI_news) December 29, 2016

Rebels cry foul

Earlier on Wednesday, a scuffle had broken out when Lingeswara Thilagan, husband of expelled AIADMK MP Sasikala Pushpa and her lawyers, had gone to the party office to file her candidature for the post of party general secretary. According to News18, Pushpa had moved the Supreme Court seeking a CBI probe or a judicial investigation by an apex court judge into the death of Jayalalithaa.

In her petition, Pushpa had alleged that Jayalalithaa's death was "suspicious" as her actual medical condition was not disclosed, no one was allowed to visit her, her funeral photographs showed embalming marks and everything from her hospitalisation to her death "was kept under wraps".

Now, one of the major challenges for VK Sasikala would be to silence rebels like Sasikala Pushpa and convince voters that she is the rightful heir of Amma.
In politics, especially in Uttar Pradesh, things remain more the same as they seem to change.

This was proved once again as ruling Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav on Wednesday announced a list of 325 contestants for as many Assembly seats for the 2017 election. Coming after the goings-on in the ruling Samajwadi Party over the last one year, the announcement is more of an assertion by the old guard than a reflection of change that was much bandied about when Akhilesh Yadav was made the chief minister in 2012.

Mulayams announcement came two days after Akhilesh unilaterally submitted a list of names for all the 403 Assembly seats to his father. Before that, state party president and axed minister Shivpal Yadav has released a list containing 175 names, amid frequent changes and amendments. While Shivpal sat beside Mulayam, Akhilesh was away to Jhansi on an official tour. Now that Mulayam has released the list, it can be expected that it will be an official Samajwadi Party document, although further changes cannot be fully ruled out. For the moment, though, the list clearly indicates that the party would rather trust the old guard and go by its pre-Akhilesh moorings.

The announcement also makes it clear that the Samajwadi Party is now no longer interested in any kind of alliance with any party, as Mulayam himself stated.

At the root of the conflict within the Yadav family and the party was the authority to select candidates for the coming election, and both Akhilesh and Shivpal had been claiming that their word should be final in preparing the candidate list. Both, however, had agreed to accept whatever Mulayam would decide. And using this power, Mulayam made it clear that he trusted brother Shivpals winning formula more than son Akhileshs 'development' plank. The list, thus, ignores many Akhilesh loyalists  although their names may figure in the next list as 78 names are yet to be announced. It also includes the names of at least three individuals with a criminal background, and eight ministers whom Akhilesh had sacked from his team.

The inclusion of Atiq Ahmed, the Allahabad strongman who will now be the party's candidate from Kanpur Cantonment, and Sigbatullah Ansari of the Ansari brothers of the erstwhile Qaumi Ekta Dal, is a signal that Akhileshs objections to these names was of little importance to Mulayam and Shivpal. Atiq Ahmed faces over 40 criminal cases including those of murder and attempt to murder.

His recent show of strength in Kanpur was a terrifying experience for the residents of the city as it brought life and traffic movement in the city as well as the Kanpur-Lucknow Highway to a standstill for hours.

Another MLA Rampal Yadav from Sitapur had been expelled from the party in the wake of the panchayat election early this year. An illegal commercial complex constructed by him in Lucknow had been demolished and he had also been arrested for attacking the police. Rampal was recently taken back into the party and now has been given the party ticket. The list also includes the names of OP Singh, Narad Rai, Shadab Fatima, Yogesh Pratap Singh, Raj Kishore Singh, Ambika Chaudhary, Mahendra Aridaman Singh, Shiv Kumar Beria and of course Shivpal Yadav, all ministers who had been sacked by Akhilesh over a period of time.

While 176 members of the Assembly figure on the list, it does not include several pro-Akhilesh ministers and MLAs such as Ram Govind Chaudhary, Pawan Pandey and Arvind Singh Gope. In all, 53 sitting MLAs have been dropped from the list. Incidentally, the name of Aman Mani Tripathi, arrested by CBI in a case related to the killing of his wife, does not figure in todays list.

Akhileshs name, too, is not on the list but he is already a member of the Legislative Council with his tenure lasting till 2018. Mulayam said that Akhilesh was free to contest from any seat he wanted.

Minutes before making the announcement, Mulayam had addressed a gathering of supporters at his residence. He had told them that more than 4,000 people had applied for the party ticket and the final decision had been taken on the basis of many surveys, internal analyses and the winnability of the candidates. He also assured those who had failed to get a party ticket, that they would be adjusted suitably once the party formed the government again.

Amid signs of a pre-Akhilesh era returning to the Samajwadi Party, some questions too have started emerging. Perhaps the events of the coming days and weeks provide answers to these:

-Akhilesh was initially very confident of attaining majority on his own, but had lately started saying that an alliance with the Congress could help the alliance secure more than 300 seats. Was Mulayam was not confident of either premise?

-Akhilesh had tried to take a stand against criminal elements. Does Mulayam not agree, and hence, relied upon his old favourites like Ansari and Atiq whom Akhilesh abhorred?

-Akhilesh had been saying all along that the 'unprecedented' development work initiated by his government would help his party win the election and form the government again. Is it not likely, since Mulayam has said that in case of a victory, the Samajwadi Party legislators will decide who will be the chief minister?

-For the last several days, reports have been making the rounds that the Samajwadi Party has decided to offer 78 seats to the Congress as part of an alliance. Is this why the party has left out this number of seats for which candidates will be announced later?

-In the aftermath of the election announcement, the party will start its campaign in right earnest. Will Akhilesh campaign for tainted candidates or axed ministers?
Mosul: Iraqi troops backed by US-led airstrikes pushed deeper into eastern Mosul on Thursday in a multi-pronged assault after a two-week lull in the operation to retake the Islamic State-held city.

Elite special forces pushed into the Karama and Quds neighbourhoods, while army troops and federal police advanced into nearby Intisar, Salam and Sumor neighbourhoods. Smoke rose across the city as explosions and machine gun fire echoed through the streets.

Stiff resistance by the militants, civilians trapped inside their houses and bad weather have slowed advances in the more than two-month-old offensive to recapture Iraq's second largest city, the extremist group's last urban bastion in the country. It is the biggest Iraqi military operation since the 2003 US-led invasion.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, commander of the special forces in eastern Mosul, said his forces have been bolstered by reinforcements and are now less than 3 kilometres from the Tigris River, which slices the city in half. A US-led coalition airstrike this week destroyed the last remaining bridge over the river.

The special forces, officially known as the Counter Terrorism Service, have done most of the fighting, pushing in from the east. But regular army troops on the city's southeast and northern edges, as well as militarised federal police farther west, have not moved in weeks, unable to penetrate the city.

The troops have faced grueling urban fighting, often house to house against IS militants who have had more than two years to dig in and prepare. Even in districts that have been recaptured, Iraqi troops have faced surprise attacks, shelling and car bombs. The extremists have launched more than 900 car bombs against Iraqi troops in and around Mosul. Al-Saadi said 260 targeted his men.

He said he expected Iraqi forces would drive IS from Mosul and the rest of Nineveh province within three months. Iraqi leaders had previously vowed to drive the extremists from Mosul by the end of the year.

IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014, when it swept across much of northern and central Iraq, and the group's leader declared the establishment of its self-styled caliphate from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque.

The city is still home to around a million people. Some 120,000 have fled since the operation began on 17 October, according to the United Nations.

Meanwhile on Thursday, separate attacks in and around Baghdad killed at least 13 people and wounded 35 others, police said. The deadliest took place in the capital's southwestern neighbourhood of Maalif when an explosives-laden vest was detonated near an outdoor market, killing seven and wounding 12, police added.

Medical officials confirmed casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to release information.
Boko Haram's elusive leader Abubakar Shekau appeared in a new video on Thursday to dispute a claim that the jihadist group had been routed from its Sambisa Forest stronghold.

"We are safe. We have not been flushed out of anywhere. And tactics and strategies cannot reveal our location except if Allah wills by his decree," Shekau said in the 25-minute video, flanked by masked armed fighters.

"You should not be telling lies to the people," he said, referring to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who said on Christmas Eve that the extremist group had been defeated and driven from the forest, its last known bastion.

"If you indeed crushed us, how can you see me like this? How many times have you killed us in your bogus death?" he asked.

It was not immediately clear where the new video was shot, but Shekau, who spoke in both Hausa and Arabic, said it was filmed on Christmas Day.

Shekau last appeared in a video in September where he disputed a claim by the Nigerian military that he had been wounded in battle.

He vowed to continue fighting on until an Islamic state was imposed in northern Nigeria.

"The war is not over yet. There is still more," he said, vowing no "respite" for Nigerians.

He urged followers around the world to "fight and kill infidels."

"Our aim is to establish an Islamic Caliphate and we have our own Caliphate, we are not part of Nigeria."

Boko Haram, which last year pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, has been in the grip of a power struggle.

The IS high command said in August that Shekau had been replaced as leader by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the 22-year-old son of Boko Haram's founder Mohammed Yusuf.

'Largest crisis in Africa'

The fresh video came after Buhari announced that a months-long military campaign in the 1,300 square-kilometre (500 square-mile) forest in northeastern Borno state had led to the "final crushing of Boko Haram terrorists in their last enclave in Sambisa Forest".

The government in Abuja and the military have frequently claimed victories against the jihadists but access to the epicentre of the conflict is strictly controlled, making independent verification virtually impossible.

Attacks have meanwhile continued, casting doubt over claims that Boko Haram has been defeated, despite undoubted progress in pushing back the group.

Boko Haram is waging a seven-year-old uprising against the Nigerian state that has claimed more than 20,000 lives, with the insurgency spilling over the West African nation's borders into neighbouring states.

The insurgency has left around 2.6 million people homeless, sparking a dire humanitarian crisis, with the United Nations warning the affected region faces the "largest crisis in Africa".

The UN estimates that 14 million people will need external help next year because of the violence, particularly in Borno State, the jihadist heartland.
OUAGADOUGOU Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore replaced army chief of staff Pingrenoma Zagre on Wednesday, the government said in a statement, after a string of deadly militant attacks, including against the security forces.The statement did not provide a reason for Zagre's replacement by Sadou Oumarou, formerly the inspector general of the armed forces, but military sources said the decision was prompted by the incidents.Attacks in Burkina Faso were relatively rare before an attack by al Qaeda-linked fighters on a hotel in the capital, Ouagadougou, that killed 29 people in January.Since then, the country has been hit by several attacks near its northern border with Mali, including one this month in which unidentified gunmen killed a dozen members of the army's special anti-terrorist group.

Islamist militants are active in Mali, and Burkinabe authorities are concerned the long desert border between the two countries could become a transit point.

Burkina Faso's army is also dealing with the fallout from a failed coup attempt by elite presidential guard soldiers in September of last year. The government said in October that it had foiled a new coup attempt by ex-members of the same unit, a pillar of former president Blaise Campaore's rule before he was ousted by demonstrators in 2014 over his attempts to change the constitution to prolong his 27 years in office.

(Reporting by Mathieu Bonkoungou; Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Alison Williams)

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(Corrects name of Italian town in third paragraph to Aprilia from Acilia)ROME Italian police have searched three houses in and around Rome, where the man suspected of killing 12 people last week at a Christmas market in Berlin may have spent time, a judicial source said on Thursday.Anis Amri, a Tunisian, first arrived in Europe by boat to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2011, and was shot dead by police in Milan four days after the Dec. 19 attack in Berlin.The searches focused in the capital and nearby Aprilia, where he was thought to have stayed after leaving a detention centre in Sicily in 2015, the source said. Police are investigating whether he was seeking to stay in Italy or trying to reach another country.On Thursday, during an end-year news conference, Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Amri was probably radicalised after arriving in Europe in 2011, but added that the government had no evidence Amri had "particular networks" in Italy.

"Five years ago he was not a jihadist ... In desperation, in isolation, in alienation, he found the conviction to follow the path of radicalisation," Italy's anti-terrorism chief Franco Roberti was also quoted as saying in an interview with la Repubblica newspaper on Thursday. Roberti said lone-wolf attackers like Amri needed the help of small-scale criminal networks, such as those in Italy and Spain, for logistical support including acquiring false documents.

"From this point of view, Italy and Spain are the cradles," Roberti said.Amri's undetected passage to Italy, via France, from Germany after the attack, has prompted eurosceptic parties to call for the reintroduction of border controls that were removed by the continent's open-border Schengen pact.

Italy tried to deport him to Tunisia after he completed a four-year jail term for attempting to set fire to a building, but Tunisian authorities refused to take him, so he was released from the centre. (Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Alison Williams)

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CAIRO Egypt's government has approved a deal to hand over two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia and sent it to parliament for ratification, despite a legal dispute over the plan, according to state television.The deal, announced in April, caused public uproar and rare protests by Egyptians who said the uninhabited islands of Tiran and Sanafir belonged to their country.The controversy has become a source of tension with Saudi Arabia, which has provided billions of dollars of aid to Egypt but has recently halted fuel shipments amid deteriorating relations.In June, the Higher Administrative Court annulled the agreement, saying Egyptian sovereignty over the islands could not be given up. The Egyptian government lodged an appeal.Earlier this month, an Egyptian state advisory body recommended the court to uphold its original decision in a report seen by Reuters.

The court is due to issue its final verdict on Jan. 16 and is not obliged to follow the advisory body's report. The government's latest move shows "the collapse of the state of law and the constitution" in Egypt, said Khaled Ali, a lawyer who filed the June lawsuit to annul the deal.

"The decision that parliament is going to issue is void and the people should defend their land with all legitimate means against this tyrant regime that doesn't respect either law or judiciary," Ali said.Tiran and Sanafir are situated in the narrow entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba leading to Jordan and Israel.

Saudi and Egyptian officials say they belong to Saudi Arabia and were only under Egyptian control because Riyadh asked Cairo in 1950 to protect them. Lawyers who opposed the handover said Cairo's sovereignty over the islands dated to a 1906 treaty, before Saudi Arabia was founded. (Reporting by Ahmed Tolba and Amina Ismail; Writing by Amina Ismail; Editing by Giles Elgood and Mark Potter)

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By Isabel Coles and Stephen Kalin

| NEAR MOSUL, Iraq

NEAR MOSUL, Iraq Iraqi security forces on Thursday began the second phase of their offensive against Islamic State militants in Mosul, pushing from three directions into eastern districts where the battle has been deadlocked for nearly a month.U.S.-backed forces have retaken a quarter of the jihadists' last major stronghold in Iraq in the biggest ground operation there since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. More than 5,000 soldiers and federal police troops, redeployed from Mosul's southern outskirts, entered half a dozen southeastern districts, while counter-terrorism forces advanced in al-Quds and Karama districts after reinforcements arrived.Other soldiers pushed simultaneously towards the city's northern limits. U.S. military advisers were seen watching operations."At 0700 this morning the three fronts began advancing towards the city centre. The operation is ongoing today and tomorrow and until we liberate the eastern side of the city completely," Lieutenant General Ali Freiji, who was overseeing army operations in the north, told Reuters.A U.S.-led coalition backing the Iraqis said the operation had opened two new fronts inside Mosul and limited Islamic State's ability to raise fighter numbers, move them or resupply.The fall of Mosul would probably spell the end for Islamic State's ambition to rule over millions of people in a self-styled caliphate, although the militants would still be capable of waging a traditional insurgency in Iraq, and plotting or inspiring attacks on the West.DEEPER U.S. ENGAGEMENT

One elite Iraqi unit encountered sniper and machine gunfire as it advanced alongside federal police in Mosul's Intisar district, an officer said.A plume of white smoke, likely to be from an air strike, rose from a southeastern district while heavy gunfire was audible on the northern front and a commander there said nine suicide car bombs had been disabled.State TV said Islamic State defences were collapsing in the areas of Salam, Intisar, Wahda, Palestine and al-Quds and that fighters' bodies filled the streets there. A military statement later said forces had raised the Iraqi flag in al-Quds.

The government's accounts are difficult to confirm as the authorities have increasingly restricted foreign media's access to the battle fronts and areas retaken from Islamic State in and around Mosul. They have given no reason.The military has not entered the city's western side, where 2,000-year-old markets and narrow alleyways would be likely to complicate any advance.The battle for Mosul involves 100,000 Iraqi troops, members of the Kurdish security forces and Shi'ite militiamen.U.S. commanders have said in recent weeks that their military advisers will embed more extensively with Iraqi forces.Some were spotted on a roof behind the front lines on Thursday, advising Iraqi commanders and watching the operations.An army colonel said Iraqi forces had suffered few casualties so far.

"The orders from the senior commanders are clear: no halting, no retreat until we reach the fourth bridge and link up with counter-terrorism units," he said.Coalition forces bombed the last remaining bridge connecting east and west Mosul late on Monday in a bid to block Islamic State's access across the Tigris River."The enemy is currently isolated inside the left (eastern) bank of Mosul," military spokesman Yahia Rassol said on state TV. "In the coming days, Iraqi forces will liberate the entire left bank of Mosul and after that we will tackle the right."TRAPPED CIVILIANS

The United Nations has expressed concern that destroying the bridges could obstruct the evacuation of civilians. As many as 1.5 million are thought to still be inside.

Residents of eastern Mosul reached by phone described fierce clashes that included explosions, air strikes and bombardment by helicopters."My family and I cannot leave the room we are sitting in. We have sealed the windows for hours, but in the afternoon the Iraqi forces arrived and we saw them," said one al-Quds resident. Civilians in western Mosul said clashes were audible from the opposite bank of the river. One of them said Islamic State was boasting in radio broadcasts of attacking areas retaken by Iraqi forces, where many civilians are trapped.Three residents emerged from a northern village on Thursday, including an elderly man who sat down in the road and wept. He said his wife had been shot dead by Islamic State a day earlier as she collected water. Iraqi forces searched the civilians and let them continue to a nearby village.Mosul, the largest city held by Islamic State anywhere across its once vast territorial holdings in Iraq and neighbouring Syria, has been held by the group since its fighters drove the U.S.-trained Iraqi army out in June 2014.Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who had pledged to retake Mosul by the end of the year, said this week it would take three more months to rout Islamic State from the country.The operation has been slowed by concern to avoid casualties among civilians, who despite food and water shortages have mostly stayed in their homes rather than fleeing as had been expected.More than 114,000 have been displaced so far, according to the United Nations.About 200 civilians who left villages north of Mosul on Thursday, many still with the full beards required by Islamic State, were taken by Kurdish security forces to a nearby camp. (Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Saif Hameed in Baghdad; Editing by Louise Ireland)

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ELKO  City council members were kept busy in 2016 dealing with several controversial issues, including those affecting the homeless, medical marijuana users, and the downtown business district.

The top story among readers at elkodaily.com was from April when organizers of the Motorcycle Jamboree faced criticism from the police chief and a downtown business owner about the event, which has been held near the beginning of summer each of the last 16 years.

Police Chief Ben Reed, who has been working to bring public safety costs under control, said safety issues at the Jamboree have been diminishing but costs of policing it remain high. The costs to the police, street, and parks departments and the city clerks office totaled $60,304 in 2015.

Coffee Mug owner Jeff Dalling told the council he loses $10,000 in sales during the event, and suggested it be moved to the fairgrounds.

The Jamboree went on as planned.

The councils decision to enact a two-year moratorium on medical marijuana establishments in the city also drew criticism. Proponents of the drugs medical benefits marched in front of City Hall on April 20.

Were trying to relieve some of the pain, suffering, were trying to show unity within a community of the patients, said Ron Abbott, founder and president of the Elko County Medical Marijuana Patients Association.

The issue become less significant after Nov. 8, when Nevada residents voted to legalize possession of up to one ounce of the drug. Local governments will soon be required to accommodate a certain number of recreational marijuana dispensaries.

The plight of Elkos homeless continued to draw attention in 2016, though the city has seen fewer serious incidents since it opened a temporary humanitarian campsite off Hot Springs Road. After much planning and preparation to move the site next to the FISH thrift store, the organization decided to oppose the move so the council voted to keep it where it is.

The council also approved the rezoning of land near the Amtrak station for an indoor homeless shelter proposed by Joshua Tree. The discussion involved the cost of sidewalks and the safety of pedestrians crossing 12th Street. As of the end of 2016 the group had yet to start construction.

Issues surrounding the decline of the downtown business district also made headlines, including a proposal to put another bar on Idaho Street. Last year the council voted to revoke the Horseshoe Clubs liquor license, but the bar was soon replaced by another one this year called the Cowboys Bar. Then, in December, city planners gave the OK for yet another bar to open two doors east of Cowboys. Officials explained they could not prevent such a business from opening there under current zoning.

A crumbling building on the corner of downtowns Fifth and Idaho intersection also drew attention this year when the City balked at the owners offer to donate it for redevelopment purposes. Later in the year, the Redevelopment Agency decided to put up cash toward the demolition of another building farther from the downtown core.

The Redevelopment Agency also revived a storefront program designed to split costs with business owners seeking to improve the look of their property.

The past year also brought an end to the most contentious lawsuit involving the City in modern times. The City sued Canyon Construction Co. and another firm in 2007 over the quality of concrete poured at Elko Regional Airport. After racking up millions in legal fees the City was offered half a million dollars by Canyon to settle the case.

The City accepted, quietly bringing an end to the nine-year lawsuit.
In a stern parting shot, US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Israel on Wednesday that building settlements on Palestinian land threatens the country's very future as a democracy. Less than four weeks before President Barack Obama leaves office, Kerry accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government of allowing Israel to slide towards a "perpetual occupation."

With President-elect Donald Trump taking office on 20 January, and already urging Israel to "stand strong" in the face of international pressure, it was not clear what impact Kerry hopes to have on the peace process.

But his comprehensive and at times angry speech laid down parameters for a peace deal  two states within their pre-1967 frontiers and with a shared capital in Jerusalem  that he hopes will outlast Obama.

Washington officials have refused to say what they might do next, but Israel fears the administration could attempt to codify these principles in a UN resolution or statement by the Middle East diplomatic quartet.

And they were quick to reject Kerry's rebuke, which Netanyahu said showed that Washington's chief diplomat was biased towards the Palestinian cause.

"For over an hour, Kerry obsessively dealt with settlements and barely touched upon the root of the conflict -- Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries," he complained.

Time to choose

Kerry's speech did not depart from US policy of many years, nor from his warnings in recent months, but critical and supportive observers alike noted his detailed breakdown of the problem as he sees it.

"Today, there are a similar number of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea," he told an audience of diplomats.

"They have a choice. They can choose to live together in one state, or they can separate into two states.

"But here is a fundamental reality: if the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic - it cannot be both - and it won't ever really be at peace," he argued.

Kerry was speaking against the backdrop of a diplomatic firestorm that was triggered last week when, on Obama's instruction, US diplomats opted not to veto a UN Security Council resolution criticizing Israel, instead abstaining.

The resolution, backed unanimously by the rest of the 15 powers on the council, effectively declared Israel's settlements in areas of east Jerusalem and the West Bank beyond its 1967 border illegal.

Kerry said that the resolution was allowed to pass as a warning that Israeli settlements are harming efforts to revive peace talks, not in an effort to prejudge the final status of territory.

But, in welcoming Kerry's speech, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas made it clear that he regards the resolution, UNSC 2334, as an element of international law that would underpin future negotiations.

In a statement, Abbas said the Palestinians are ready to resume talks "the minute the Israeli government agrees to cease all settlement activities... on the basis of international law... including UNSC 2334."

Netanyahu, whose right-wing coalition is backed by the settler movement and who has insisted the home building is no threat to peace, was furious and accused Obama and Kerry of orchestrating the Security Council vote.

Disdain and disrespect

Trump, who has picked a future US ambassador to Israel who strongly supports settlement building, was also angered, tweeting: "We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect."

But Kerry was undeterred, insisting the US could not "in good conscience" have vetoed a resolution it broadly agrees with, and piling on more criticism of Israel in his landmark speech.

"The vote in the UN was about preserving the two-state solution," he declared.

"That's what we were standing up for: Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state, living side by side in peace and security with its neighbors," Kerry said, warning that such a solution is now in "serious jeopardy."

Kerry warned the "settler agenda" was leading Israeli policy and imperiling prospects for peace.

"Trends indicate a comprehensive effort to take West Bank land for Israel and prevent any Palestinian development there," he said.

And Kerry added: "The settler agenda is defining the future in Israel. And their stated purpose is clear: They believe in one state: greater Israel."

Curious timing

Already, last week's decision to allow the UN resolution to pass has angered Israel's many supporters in Washington, including both Democratic and Republican lawmakers and major Jewish American lobby groups.

The speech did nothing to appease their concern, and some observers questioned its "curious" timing.

"A speech of this gravity really should have been delivered before such a permanent move as the Security Council resolution, rather than after," scholar Jonathan Schanzer told AFP.

Schanzer, vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, argued that Israel should have been given time to respond to Kerry's complaints before being ambushed at the United Nations.

Ilan Goldenberg of the Center for a New American Security was more supportive of Kerry's goals in the speech, but he also noted: "It would have been better two years ago."

Kerry, he suggested, was attempting to lay down the framework for a peace process that might bear fruit before Trump arrives in office and radically changes the US position.

Israelis don't need to be lecture: Netanyahu

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the speech by Kerry as biased against Israel and more focused on settlements than Palestinian violence. Speaking from his office following Kerry's speech in Washington, Netanyahu said the outgoing secretary of state paid only "lip service" to Palestinian violence against Israelis.

"What he did was he spent most of his speech blaming Israel for the lack of peace," Netanyahu said. He added later that "Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders". In an earlier statement from Netanyahu's office, the premier said "like the Security Council resolution that Secretary Kerry advanced in the UN, his speech tonight was skewed against Israel".

"For over an hour, Kerry obsessively dealt with settlements and barely touched upon the root of the conflict  Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries." The speech included sharp criticism of Israeli settlement building and came after last week's UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to such activity.

The United States abstained at the Security Council, allowing the resolution to pass 14-0. Netanyahu has accused US President Barack Obama's administration of being behind the resolution, which it denies, and vowed to defy it.

Netanyahu said Wednesday it "reflects a radical shift in US policy towards the Palestinians on final status issues, those issues that we always agreed, the US and Israel, have to be negotiated directly face to face without preconditions".

The United States and others say continued settlement building is steadily eating away at the possibility of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Settlements are built on land the Palestinians view as part of their future state, and are seen as illegal under international law.

Opposition leader Isaac Herzog, who heads the Labour party, told public radio Kerry's speech "expressed a real concern for the security and future of Israel". MP Zehava Galon, of the leftist Meretz party, compared Israel's settlement policy to "an explosive device that can only sabotage any agreement on a two-state solution" to the conflict.

Peace Now, an Israeli group that campaigns against settlements, urged Netanyahu to adopt Kerry's parameters for peace. "Netanyahu must adopt the parameters presented by Kerry instead of yielding to the most extremist forces in his coalition," it said. "He must freeze the expansion of settlements (and) cancel the law legalising settlements built on private Palestinian land."

With inputs from AFP
Washington: A draft proposal for accepting new members into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) paves the way for India's entry but leaves Pakistan out, says a US-based arms control organisation. The Arms Control Association (ACA), Washington, also warns that relaxing membership rules will undermine non-proliferation.

Last week, the US media reported that Rafael Mariano Grossi, a former chairman of the NSG, had prepared a two-page document, explaining how a non-Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) state, like India and Pakistan, could join the group. Grossi was acting on behalf of the current chairman, Song Young-wan of South Korea, and his document enjoys a semi-official status, Dawn reported.

To prevent India from blocking Pakistan from joining the NPT, Grossi's draft note proposes that "one non-NPT member state should reach an understanding not to block consensus on membership for another non-NPT member state".

But ACA's Executive Director Daryl Kimball warns that "Pakistan still has grounds to object to the formula outlined by Grossi".

He explains that the document will require Pakistan to meet the same criteria for membership as India "but, to engage in civil nuclear trade with NSG states, it would have to win a separate NSG exemption from the full-scope safeguards requirement".

India is seeking membership of the NSG on the strength of the fact that it is already doing business with NSG members.

The 48-nation NSG is a nuclear technology control organisation formed in 1975 in response to India's first nuclear weapons test, which used plutonium produced with nuclear technology from Canada and the US. The NSG seeks to prevent similar future misuses.

Current NSG membership rules require a state to sign the nuclear NPT before joining this exclusive club. India remains one of only three countries, with Israel and Pakistan, never to have signed the NPT. Earlier this year, India formally applied for membership and was followed by Pakistan. The US, and a host of other powerful western nations, back India's application, but China and half a dozen other nations are blocking India's membership, which requires a consensus of all members.

India hoped to join the group during NSG's last plenary session, held in Seoul in June this year, but the meeting ended without taking any decision on New Delhi's application.
New York: The New York Police Department (NYPD) will allow its Sikh officers to wear turbans and maintain beards, relaxing its uniform policy, a move aimed at inclusiveness. New York Police Commissioner James O'Neill announced the measures being taken towards ensuring religious accommodation to its officers following a graduation ceremony for new police recruits on Wednesday.

Under the revised policy, officers from the Sikh faith will be allowed to have beards that extend up to one-half inch from the face. The officers may also wear blue turbans  with a hat shield it affixed to it  in place of the traditional police cap. "We're making this change to make sure that we allow everybody in New York City that wants to apply and have the opportunity to work in the greatest police department in the nation, to make sure we give them that opportunity," the commissioner said.

Standing alongside Sikh officers after the grand graduation ceremony, O'Neill the measures were aimed at making the NYPD "as diverse as possible". "We changed our beard policy and our head covering policy. It is a major change in our uniform policy, so we had to go about it carefully," he said, as quoted in a New York Post report.

The Commissioner said there are about 160 Sikh officers currently in the ranks and he was looking to expand those numbers. He said the religious accommodation will give people from the faith the opportunity to join the police department. "We've been working with the Sikh officers to try to make sure we get this done. I had the opportunity to make the change and I thought it was about time that we did that. We want to make the NYPD as diverse as possible and I think this is going to be one way to help us with that," he said.

Sikh Officers Association, a group of Sikh officers welcomed the move, posting on Twitter:

Thank you @NYPDONeill for allowing Sikh Officers to wear a turban in the @NYPDnews. This is a proud moment for Sikh Community. pic.twitter.com/ArKkwVWj8G  Sikh Officers Assoc. (@SikhOfficers) December 28, 2016

Of the 557 recruits who graduated from the Police Academy, 33 are Muslims and two are Sikhs, according to the Police Department. According to the police department's patrol guide, officers are prohibited from having beards and headdresses that are not part of the uniform. However exceptions have been made for officers who receive a medical or religious accommodation to wear facial hair up to one millimetre in length.

Sikh advocacy group Sikh Coalition welcomed the move, saying it will send a strong message that there should be no discrimination against members of the community, which has contributed significantly to the city and the country.

"The Sikh Coalition has been working for over a decade to change the NYPD's policy that discriminated against Sikhs," the group said in a post on Facebook adding that in recent years, that work has continued with community partners, like the NYPD Sikh Officer Association.
By Jeff Mason and Lesley Wroughton

| HONOLULU/WASHINGTON

HONOLULU/WASHINGTON President Barack Obama on Thursday ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and sanctioned Russian intelligence officials who Washington believes were involved in hacking U.S. political groups in the 2016 presidential election. The measures, taken during the last days of Obama's presidency, mark a new low in U.S.-Russian relations which have deteriorated over serious differences on Ukraine and Syria. "These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior," Obama said in a statement from vacation in Hawaii.It was not immediately clear whether President-elect Donald Trump, who has repeatedly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and nominated people seen as friendly toward Moscow to senior administration posts, would seek to roll back the measures once he takes office on Jan. 20.Obama is seeking to deter Russia and other foreign governments from leveraging cyber attacks in the future to meddle in U.S. politics, former officials and cyber security experts said.Obama has been under growing pressure from within his own administration and lawmakers of both political parties to respond more forcefully to the cyber attacks, which included leaked emails of Democratic Party operatives that became part of the media coverage in the campaign for the Nov. 8 presidential election.

The Russian foreign ministry said on Thursday the sanctions were counter-productive and would harm the restoration of bilateral ties. Moscow denies the hacking allegation.Obama sanctioned two Russian intelligence agencies, the GRU and the FSB, four GRU officers and three companies "that provided material support to the GRUs cyber operations.PERSONA NON GRATA

Obama said the State Department declared as "persona non grata" 35 Russian intelligence operatives and is closing two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland that were used by Russian personnel for "intelligence-related purposes". The State Department originally said the 35 were diplomats.A senior U.S. official told Reuters the move would affect the Russian embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco. The Russians have 72 hours to leave the United States, the official said. Access to the two compounds, which are used by Russian officials for intelligence gathering, will be denied to all Russian officials as of noon on Friday, the senior U.S. official added.

"These actions were taken to respond to Russian harassment of American diplomats and actions by the diplomats that we have assessed to be not consistent with diplomatic practice," the official said.The State Department has long complained that Russian security agents and traffic police have harassed U.S. diplomats in Moscow, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has raised the issue with Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. "By imposing costs on the Russian diplomats in the United States, by denying them access to the two facilities, we hope the Russian government reevaluates its own actions, which have impeded the ability and safety of our own embassy personnel in Russia," the official said.The U.S. official declined to name the Russian diplomats who would be affected, although it is understood that Russia's ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, will not be one of those expelled. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton, Jeff Mason and Dustin Volz and Katya Golubkova in Moscow; Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Alistair Bell)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
DUBAI Oman, traditionally on friendly terms with Iran, confirmed on Thursday that it had joined a Saudi-led coalition of Muslim countries fighting terrorism, a move praised by other Gulf Arab states as closing ranks with them against Iran.Saudi and Gulf sources reported the development on Wednesday, saying Omani Minister for Defence Affairs Badr bin Saud al-Busaidi had informed Saudi Arabia in a letter that it would join the 40-strong grouping.On Thursday, the Omani Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the move "comes within the common understanding of the Islamic countries and in particular the role and leadership of the sisterly Kingdom of Saudi Arabia". The ministry added, without elaborating, that Oman would also join hands with "brothers and friends" for regional security and peace.

Although differences are rarely aired in public, Oman has long stood out among its Gulf allies. The Sultanate has worried that a wider regional confrontation between Riyadh and Tehran could threaten its own stability, and has often sought to play the conciliator. Saudi Arabia announced the formation of the coalition in December 2015 to the satisfaction of Washington, which had been urging greater regional involvement in the campaign against the militants of Islamic State, who control swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Although not explicitly targeted at Iran, the coalition includes neither Iran nor Iraq, whose Shi'ite-led government is closely allied with Iran.

Oman has watched anxiously as rivalry between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Iran has grown. Riyadh and some other Gulf Arab states accuse Tehran of interfering in Arab countries to build its influence. Iran denies that accusation. (Reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo and Celine Aswad in Dubai, Editing by William Maclean and Kevin Liffey)

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By Denis Pinchuk and Tulay Karadeniz

| MOSCOW/ANKARA

MOSCOW/ANKARA Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a ceasefire between Syrian opposition groups and the Syrian government starting at midnight on Thursday.The parties were also prepared to start peace talks, Putin said, after Moscow, Iran and Turkey expressed readiness to broker a deal to settle the nearly six-year-old Syrian war.The Syrian army announced a nationwide halt to fighting but said Islamic State and ex-Nusra Front militants and all groups linked to them would be excluded from the deal. It did not say which unnamed groups would be excluded.Several rebel officials told Reuters they had agreed to the ceasefire, due to come into effect at 2200 GMT on Thursday.It was the third nationwide ceasefire agreed in Syria this year. The previous two, negotiated by Washington and Moscow, collapsed within weeks as warring sides accused each other of violations. The current deal does not involve the United States or United Nations.One rebel commander expressed optimism that this deal would hold: "This time I have confidence in its seriousness. There is new international input," he said, without elaborating.Talks on the latest truce picked up momentum after Russia, Iran and Turkey last week said they were ready to back a peace deal and adopted a declaration setting out principles that any agreement should adhere to.Putin said opposition groups and the Syrian government had signed a number of documents, including the ceasefire, measures to monitor the truce, and a statement on readiness to start peace talks."The agreements reached are, of course, fragile, need a special attention and involvement... But after all, this is a notable result of our joint work, efforts by the defence and foreign ministries, our partners in the regions," Putin said.He also said Russia had agreed to reduce its military deployment in Syria, where its support has turned the tide in favour of President Bashar al-Assad in a war that has killed more than 300,000 and forced more than 11 million to flee their homes.Turkey said it and Russia would guarantee the ceasefire.

"With this agreement, parties have agreed to cease all armed attacks, including aerial, and have promised not to expand the areas they control against each other," the Turkish foreign ministry said.Three rebel officials told Reuters the deal excluded Islamic State, but did include the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group, formerly al Qaeda's Syria branch, the Nusra Front - appearing to contradict the Syrian army's statement.Russia's defence ministry said the insurgent groups that signed the agreement included the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, which operates primarily near Damascus, and Jabha Shamiya, one of the main groups that has operated in Aleppo.WASHINGTON SIDELINED

The United States has been sidelined in recent negotiations and is not due to attend the next round of peace talks in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, a key Russian ally.Its exclusion reflects growing frustration from both Turkey and Russia over Washington's policy on Syria, officials have said.However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the United States could join the peace process once President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month. Talks on the ceasefire reflect the complexity of Syria's civil war, with an array of groups and foreign interests involved on all sides.Turkey and Russia support different sides in the war. Ankara has insisted on the departure of Assad, who is backed by Russia.Likewise, demands that troops from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement leave Syria may not please Iran, another major supporter of Assad. Hezbollah troops have been fighting alongside Syrian government forces against rebels opposed to Assad.

"All foreign fighters need to leave Syria. Hezbollah needs to return to Lebanon," Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.Sources have told Reuters that, under an outline deal between the three countries, Syria could be divided into informal zones of regional power and Assad would remain president for at least a few years.Meanwhile, disagreements remain between big powers.Ankara supports the Free Syrian Army, a loose alliance of rebel groups, some of which it is backing in operations in northern Syria designed to sweep Islamic State and Syrian Kurdish fighters from its southern border. The United States is backing the Syrian Kurdish YPG in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, a move that has infuriated Turkey, which sees the YPG as an extension of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Ankara fears that advances by Kurdish fighters in Syria could inflame militants at home.Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has accused the United States of supporting terrorism in Syria, including Islamic State, comments that Washington has dismissed as "ludicrous"."We, as Turkey, have been calling on Western nations for some time to not distinguish between terrorist organizations and to be principled and consistent in their stance," Erdogan said in a speech on Thursday."Some countries, namely the United States, have come up with some excuses on their own and overtly supported the organisations that massacre innocent people in our region." (Additional reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman, Humeyra Pamuk and Daren Butler in Istanbul, Lisa Barrington, Tom Perry and Ellen Francis in Beirut; Writing by David Dolan, John Davison and Giles Elgood; Editing by Anna Willard)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Ten years after Saddam Hussein's execution, the ghost of the Iraqi strongman still haunts America, serving as a potent reminder of its broken ambitions to bring stability and democracy to the Middle East.

When Saddam was hung in Baghdad on 30 December, 2007, then president George W Bush already knew that the invasion of Iraq, which had already left 3,000 US forces dead, had not yielded the progress Washington sought.

"Many difficult choices and further sacrifices lie ahead. Yet the safety and security of the American people require that we not relent in ensuring that Iraq's young democracy continues to progress," Bush said at the time.

The democratic Iraq that Bush had envisioned turned out to be little more than a pipe dream, with the Americans failing to stop the deadly spiral of sectarian violence in the country.

The Sunni minority that once ruled Iraq grew increasingly resentful toward a predominantly Shiite government  a resentment that helped fuel the rise of the ultra-radical Islamic State group that counts former Saddam military officials in its ranks.

More than 5,000 US soldiers are still on the ground providing critical support to an Iraqi army still unable to alone man a war against the violent extremist fighters.

The American public, which once gave strong support to the 2003 US-led invasion, is still recovering from the trauma of war.

The failures in Iraq heavily influenced US President Barack Obama's decision not to intervene militarily against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country's bloody civil war that will soon stretch into its sixth year.

Meanwhile, Obama's successor Donald Trump built his presidential campaign in part on pledges that the United States would never again engage in "regime change" or "nation building."

Trump also said repeatedly that unlike his opponent Democrat Hillary Clinton, he was against the war in Iraq  despite telling radio personality Howard Stern in a 2002 interview that he would support an invasion.

'Clueless'

More than a decade later, some American policy-makers are still trying to understand the reasons for the failure.

John Nixon, the first CIA analyst to interrogate Saddam after his capture in December 2003, says in a new book that US intelligence and White House officials had mistaken views of the Iraqi leader.

Far from being an all-powerful dictator, Saddam during his last years in power "seemed clueless about what had been happening inside Iraq," Nixon wrote in a recent newspaper column ahead of the Thursday release of "Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein."

"He was inattentive to what his government was doing, had no real plan for the defense of Iraq and could not comprehend the immensity of the approaching storm," Nixon said.

"Saddam was busy writing novels in 2003. He was no longer running the government."

Complex picture

But top US officials firmly believed that toppling Saddam's Baathist regime would lead to peace in Iraq, Nixon said.

Nixon tells a story of briefing Bush in the Oval Office in 2007, an exchange that perhaps underscores why the US was doomed to fail in Iraq.

Bush asked Nixon to describe Saddam's character.

"I told him that he was disarming at first and used self-deprecating wit to put you at ease," he said.

"The president looked as if he was going to lose his cool. I quickly explained that the real Saddam was sarcastic, arrogant and sadistic, which seemed to calm Bush down."

Bush "blamed the agency (CIA) for everything that went wrong and called its analysis 'guesswork,' while hearing only what he wanted to hear," Nixon said.

The former analyst paints a complex picture of Saddam as a brutal dictator who through methods like murder, threats and intimidation was nevertheless able to achieve an equilibrium in ethnically diverse Iraq.

"Although I found Saddam to be thoroughly unlikable, I came away with a grudging respect for how he was able to maintain the Iraqi nation as a whole for as long as he did," according to an excerpt of Nixon's book published in Time.

"It is improbable that a group like ISIS would have been able to enjoy the kind of success under his repressive regime."
Damascus: Syria's army said on Thursday it would halt all military operations from midnight, under a deal brokered by Russia and Turkey, with the opposition National Coalition announcing support for the agreement.

Earlier, Russia's President Vladimir Putin announced the deal, saying the Syrian regime and "main forces of the armed opposition" had signed on.

"The general command of the armed forces announces a complete halt to all hostilities on Syrian territory from the zero hour of 30th December," Syria's army said in a statement carried on state television.

It added that the halt excluded combat against the Islamic State group and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fateh al-Sham Front.

Syria's leading opposition National Coalition body, a political entity based in Turkey, confirmed its support for the truce.

"The National Coalition expresses support for the agreement and urges all parties to abide by it," spokesman Ahmed Ramadan told AFP.

He said key rebel groups including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham and Army of Islam factions had signed the ceasefire deal, though there was no immediate confirmation from rebel officials.

The agreement comes after Syria's government recaptured the country's second city Aleppo from rebels, in the worst blow to opposition forces since the war began.

The ceasefire will be the first nationwide halt in fighting since a week-long truce from 12-19 September that collapsed after several incidents of violence.

A previous truce was implemented in February, with both of those deals organised by Russia and the United States.

Thursday's agreement is the first nationwide ceasefire brokered with the involvement of Turkey, a backer of the Syrian opposition.

Russia is a key supporter of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and began a military intervention in support of his government in September 2015.

Despite backing opposing sides in the conflict, and a souring of relations after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane last year, Ankara and Moscow have worked increasingly closely on Syria.

They jointly brokered a ceasefire for Aleppo this month that allowed the last remaining rebels and civilians in the city's east to leave to opposition territory elsewhere.

More than 310,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with protests against Assad's government.
The following comments were received after Wednesdays announcement that President Barack Obama utilized an executive order to unilaterally designate a new national monument south of Mesquite in Clark County, referred to as Gold Butte, as well as the Bears Ears region in Utah:

Gov. Brian Sandoval

Nevada has more public land managed by the federal government than any other state in the lower 48, and any new designation of those lands is most successful when implemented under a thorough, public process. The use of the Antiquities Act in designating Gold Butte as a National Monument bypassed Congress and the public. I believe our Congressional delegation should have had a primary role in working to build consensus as has been accomplished successfully in the past.

At the same time, I recognized the inevitability of this designation and therefore met and talked with leaders from Mesquite, land owners, stakeholders and special user groups on this specific issue to try and address their concerns. I also visited the site and saw a beautiful part of Nevada with many special features, including extraordinary petroglyphs, slot canyons and unique rock formations.

Following these discussions and the tour, I met with the White House to present these concerns, and my staff held follow-up meetings to address a number of issues including changing the proposed boundary to eliminate all private land to protect the interests of Mesquite and allow the city to continue to develop and grow as a municipality. We also worked with the White House and Department of Interior to ensure Nevada water law is adhered to and that the Virgin Valley Water District would have access to its water infrastructure for continued development and maintenance. Additionally, we worked to guarantee that the designated area would still be open for recreation, hunting, and multiple-use activities, including OHV trail riding, currently enjoyed by Nevadans and tourists alike. I also requested that a robust working group be established to develop the management plan that includes all voices.

My priority was to mitigate any disruption a potential designation may cause the surrounding private land owners, communities and recreationists. We all share a common goal of enacting smart conservation measures which help preserve our lands for the use and enjoyment of all Nevadans. My strong preference is for a more collaborative process when making such an important designation. I firmly believe our ranchers, environmentalists, and community stakeholders are the best experts in ensuring Nevadas lands are preserved, protected and accessible. I also believe that with this designation comes duties, responsibilities and an expectation that the BLM will properly manage the area and commit the funds necessary to do so.

Attorney General Adam Laxalt

Today, President Obama created two new national monuments in Nevada and Utah, setting aside a total of 1.65 million acres of land, without the support of Congress. This unilateral land grab is the latest attempt for the outgoing president to add another layer of unnecessary federal control to our State. Although I am not surprised by the presidents actions, I am deeply disappointed at his last minute attempt to cement his environmental legacy by undermining local control of Nevadas communities, and damaging our jobs and economy.

Sen. Harry Reid

After working for decades to protect Gold Buttes breathtaking landscapes and cultural treasures, I was overjoyed to hear the news today from President Obama. The splendor of Gold Butte will now be protected for all of us. It will be enjoyed for generations to come and I appreciate the persistence of the many Nevadans who fought for its protection despite the obstacles.

Gold Butte is quintessential Nevada. It represents the stark, natural beauty I think of, when I think of home. Its landscapes are unlike anything else in the world. There are stunning natural sandstone formations. There are critical wildlife habitats. Gold Butte is a fascinating place full of natural wonders.

And it represents Nevadas diverse past. Gold Butte is home to ancient Indian petroglyphs  writings and drawings dating back thousands of years. It houses historic mining and early pioneer sites and provides a critical link to our states culture and history. Gold Butte is a glimpse at what Nevada once was.

President Obama is a courageous man. I could not be more grateful to him and his team for working with me to make this happen, and for everything he has done to protect public lands in Nevada. By designating Gold Butte a national monument, President Obama has shown once again why he is one of greatest environmental presidents in American history.

This is personal for me. I still remember the wonder I felt traveling from dusty Searchlight to stunning Piute Springs as a child  it seemed like the entire world had opened up to me. Everything Ive done for the environment since has stemmed from those early experiences, and todays designation is a wonderful capstone to a career of fighting to protect Nevadas pristine landscapes. Protecting Gold Butte ensures that generations of people will continue to have the opportunity to experience Nevadas natural beauty. Weve done something lasting and historic today.

Sen. Dean Heller

I am terribly disappointed with todays news. For years, I have urged for all new land designations, especially ones in Nevada, to be considered in an open and public Congressional process. Doing so allows for all voices and stakeholders to have an equal opportunity to be heard. Best of all, input from local parties guarantees local needs are addressed. In the future, I will continue to fight for an open process utilizing Congressional support to designate new national monuments.

Nevada Conservation League

We are thrilled that President Obama is permanently protecting Nevadas piece of the Grand Canyon, Gold Butte. Now its countless, majestic landscapes and cultural treasures can be maintained and protected for current and future generations to enjoy. With todays announcement, President Obama is continuing to cement his conservation legacy by permanently protecting more land and water than any president in history.

This new monument is a huge victory for the 71 percent of Nevadans who overwhelmingly support this designation and protection of our public lands. This designation will not only ensure that our history, landscapes and wildlife are conserved for generations to come, but will also boost our outdoor recreation economy by encouraging tourism to the area and spending at local businesses.

Todays announcement wouldnt have been possible without the leadership of Senator Harry Reid and Congresswoman Dina Titus. The people of Nevada once again owe them our gratitude. We also owe thanks to the diverse coalition of grassroots supporters, numerous local and state elected officials, business and tourism groups, and many more that have worked for years for this designation.
CARSON CITY  Question Two, which legalized possession of up to an ounce of recreational-use marijuana for people over age 21, goes into effect Sunday. Sales of recreational marijuana, however, remain illegal until the state can put a new system of regulations in place, and that might not be until 2018.

State Sen. Tick Segerblom, who co-chaired the Question Two campaign, said this could create some chaos in the interim.

My personal fear is that, because we dont have a process to purchase it, that its going to create a black market, where the product will be inferior because it wont be grown and tested the way our medical product is, he said. And it wont be taxed, so the state wont be getting the revenue that we hope to get from legalized marijuana.

He estimates that Nevada will make $60 million a year by taxing marijuana purchases once sales become legal statewide. To bridge the gap, Segerblom said hell propose a bill in the next legislative session in February, to immediately allow medical marijuana dispensaries to sell their product to people over 21, even if they dont have a medical marijuana card.

He added that the so-called early-start program would be similar to one in Oregon that brought millions to state coffers there.

In Oregon, when they did an early-start program through their medical program, their taxes were $5 million a month, the first month that it was implemented, he explained. And Oregon is about the same size as Nevada and actually has a much smaller tourism base, so I think $5 million is a very conservative estimate.

There are about 60 dispensaries licensed to sell medical marijuana in Nevada, though some arent in operation yet. About 25,000 Nevadans have medical marijuana cards, a number that grows by a thousand people per month.

Segerblom said his early-start bill would not require recreational users to be registered in any state database.
Investors looking to the future of power shouldn't ignore uranium just because it has a bad name. Yes, solar and wind will be huge opportunities, but nuclear power will be an important part of the global energy mix, too. And Cameco Corp. (CCJ 0.13%), the largest pure-play uranium miner, is the top stock to invest in if you want to get in on the nuclear energy opportunity.

Why Cameco?

Cameco isn't the only uranium miner on the planet, but the other options aren't nearly as good. For example, Rio Tinto (RIO 0.46%) produced 3 million pounds of uranium in the first half of 2016, but revenue from this group contributed only around 1% of the company's top line. Uranium is pretty much all that Cameco does.

At the other end of the spectrum is a company like Energy Fuels, a pure play uranium miner like Cameco. But the company has a market cap of a little over $100 million. That's tiny compared with Cameco's $4 billion market cap. On the production side of things, Energy Fuels sold 1.1 million pounds of uranium in 2015 and is expecting to sell around 850,000 pounds in 2016. Cameco sold 32 million pounds in 2015 and is anticipating selling a similar amount in 2016. There's a significant difference in scale here.

Then there's the issue of reach. Cameco sells uranium around the world, with Asia accounting for roughly half the company's uranium sales last year. Notably, Asia happens to be where most of the nuclear power plant construction is taking place today. China, India, and South Korea account for roughly half of the 58 reactors currently under construction in the world. By contrast, Energy Fuels' strategy is focused on the U.S. market, where no increase in the number of nuclear power plants is expected in the near future.

More than just big

But Cameco is more than just a large pure-play uranium miner -- it is a profitable one. Uranium prices have been generally falling since 2011. Energy Fuels, for example, hasn't turned a profit in four years and 2016 is shaping up to be another round of bleeding. Cameco has remained profitable on an annual basis throughout the downturn and maintained a $0.40 per-share dividend each year.

Cameco also has a solid balance sheet backing up its mining business. Long-term debt makes up just about 20% of its capital structure. To be fair, that's slightly higher than Energy Fuels' debt levels, but when you add in the size difference, Cameco still comes out on top.

That said, Cameco has been burning through cash. Through the first nine months of 2016, the company's cash balance fell by nearly 60%. That's clearly not a good thing and suggests that there's at least a little risk to the dividend.

Cameco's share price, though, is near its 10-year lows. And its price-to-book value ratio is 1.05 times. So the stock looks reasonably cheap today. For long-term investors who see a bright future for nuclear power, Cameco easily looks like the top pure-play investment.

The only real option

There are a few ways to invest in uranium, including buying a widely diversified miner like Rio Tinto or betting on a small industry upstart like Energy Fuels. But neither is as good an option as Cameco, which is both a pure play and large enough to offer global exposure to the nuclear power industry. Add in a solid balance sheet, low price, and the nuclear construction taking place today, and Cameco starts to look like a pretty good deal.
Most people focus on the income taxes they pay to their federal and state governments, spending countless hours preparing returns. But for many people, residential property taxes make up a sizable portion of their overall tax bill. For the roughly 8.4 million residents of Virginia, real estate and land taxes are just a part of the taxes the state charges. Although only those who own real property pay the tax directly, renters can definitely see the impact of Virginia state property tax on their rental payments. Let's take a closer look at the state property tax system in the state in which England established its first permanent settlement in what would later become the U.S.

How Virginia state property taxes work

Virginia imposes real estate taxes generally at the local level, with county, city, and town governments responsible for the collection of the tax. State law sets some guidelines for how local governments go through the process, but its direct involvement is limited. For instance, the Virginia Department of Taxation does an audit of local government assessments to compare them to actual sales, with the goal of establishing the extent to which assessed values reflect true fair market value. However, there are few limitations on the ability of local governments to set their own tax rates.

As a result, property taxes can vary greatly from place to place. For instance, in Fairfax County, there is a base rate that applies to all real estate throughout the county. However, there are also a dozen add-on rates, not all of which apply to each property. Some taxes are aimed only at commercial properties, while others go toward specific areas in which municipal improvements such as community centers and watershed improvement measures need separate funding.

Tax relief is also available in some areas. For instance, in some jurisdictions, those who are age 65 or older or permanently disabled can get their taxes reduced by 25% to 100%, depending on income. The actual income threshold levels vary among jurisdictions, reflecting in part different standards of living and property values in different locations. Some jurisdictions also impose net worth limitations for tax relief. If tax relief is available in a given area, you must apply to receive it.

What's the property tax rate in Virginia?

Local tax rates vary widely throughout different cities and counties in Virginia. For example, in Lunenburg, which is in south central Virginia near the North Carolina border, local real estate taxes are just $0.38 per $100 of assessed value. By contrast, in many of the most populous counties along the Potomac, such as Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William Counties, base real estate tax rates exceed $1 per $100 of assessed value.

Often, cities will have even higher taxes than unincorporated portions of counties. For example, the highest tax rate found by the Virginia Department of Taxation in 2014 was Manassas Park, at $1.55 per $100 of assessed value. Moreover, when you include certain local add-ons for various purposes, the final rate can be higher than the base rate for your location.

Can you fight Virginia real estate tax?

Residents always have the right to contest an assessment of tax. In general, local governments go through an assessment process to determine their best estimate of fair market value for property within their jurisdiction. If that value doesn't match up with fair market value, homeowners can follow several processes to remedy the situation.

The simplest action is to have the local assessor review the initial finding. Typically, a member of the local assessor's staff will review the assessment with you, giving you a chance to raise objections to any factual errors or misinterpretations in the initial assessment.

Alternatively, independent reviews are available. In some locations, a local board exists to review assessments, with appointments to that board made independently of the assessor's office. Homeowners also have the right to file suit in court to have judicial review of the assessment and appeal process at lower levels. Most of the time, the legal remedy isn't available until local review and appeal processes have been completed.

In general, Virginia property tax is something that every homeowner will have to pay. Because taxes vary greatly from place to place, it's vital to contact local tax authorities to get the latest available tax rates before you decide on buying real estate in a new location. Otherwise, you might get a big surprise at tax time.
This blog covers software patent news and issues with a particular focus on wireless, mobile devices (smartphones, tablet computers, connected cars) as well as select antitrust matters surrounding those devices.
Several towns in Cook County, Illinois are balking at a minimum wage hike that will require local businesses to nearly double baseline salaries and provide paid sick leave for workers, FOX Business Networks Jeff Flock reported Thursday.

The measure, approved last October by the Cook County Board and set to take effect in July, will gradually raise minimum wage from $8.25 at present to $13 per hour by 2020. Opponents argue that a mandated wage hike will make it more difficult for Cook County businesses to operate and deter others from opening stores in the affected area.

The minimum wage hike is particularly divisive in Barrington, Illinois. The Cook County line runs through the center of town  businesses on one side of the line will pay the old rate, while businesses on the other side adhere to the new regulations. Rather than enforce two sets of rules on the same community, Barrington leaders say they will opt out of the law entirely.

We cant have two sets of rules for the business community, Barrington Village President Karen Barch told Flock.

Barrington isnt the only town considering an opt-out. The nearby communities of Palatine and Elgin are also weighing their options, according to Flock.

While local towns are within their rights to reject the wage hike, such an action could have consequences. County officials could cut funding in key areas, such as local infrastructure, for communities that choose not to adhere to the measure.

Several cities and states across the country have had similar debates on minimum wage in recent months. Proponents say wage hikes are necessary to support workers and combat the rising cost of living.

In November, voters in Arizona, Maine and Colorado approved an increase to a $12 minimum wage by 2020. Washington state passed an increase to $13.50 over the same timeframe.

Andy Puzder, the CKE Restaurants CEO and President-elect Donald Trumps nominee for Secretary of Labor, opposes federal mandates on minimum wage and job benefits.

States have every right to decide what the minimum wage should be, Puzder said during an appearance on Mornings With Maria in November.
Two left-wing activists have been arrested in the Greek port city of Igoumenitsa after they were discovered attempting to bring eight refugees to Spain by hiding them in the back of a caravan. Mikel Zuloaga and Begona Huarte, both members of the Plataforma Ongi Etorri Errefuxiatuak (Refugees Welcome) group based in the Basque Country, in northern Spain, were detained on Wednesday when they tried to board an Italy-bound ferry with the refugees in the back of their vehicle.

Mikel Zuloaga and Begona Huarte. Ongi Etorri Errefuxiatuak

The Refugees Welcome group said the pair  both well known in activist circles  had been arrested during a protest carried out in solidarity [with refugees] and as a way of denouncing European migration policies while defending human rights.

The group said the refugees who were to be taken out of Greece included a transsexual woman fleeing Pakistan and a total of seven young people from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. Six of the eight refugees, including the transsexual woman, were released early on Wednesday while two others had applied for asylum, the group said.

In a video, activist Mikel Zuloaga described the protest as an act of civil disobedience

Zuloaga and Huarte now face prison time in Greece if they are charged with people smuggling and are expected to appear in court on Friday. They are receiving assistance from Greek lawyers who are specialists in human rights, said Anabel Sanz, spokesperson for Refugees Welcome. Those lawyers have refused to comment until the exact nature of the charges is known.

Sanz likened the case to that of a group of firefighters from Seville who were arrested on the Greek island of Lesbos in January after rescuing refugees at sea. They were released three days later after paying bail of 15,000.

Sanz said Refugees Welcome was in contact with regional authorities in Navarre and the Basque Country while Spains Foreign Affairs Ministry said it was following the case closely.

In a video filmed before his arrest and posted on social media on Wednesday, Zuloaga claimed responsibility for the protest action, describing it as an act of civil disobedience funded by volunteers from a range of organizations.

Cristina Garcia, a member of Refugees Welcome, said not all of the groups volunteers had known of the plan to bring the refugees back to Spain in a caravan but said the group had assessed the risks and had been in contact with Greek lawyers before the protest action was carried out.

The activists face time in a Greek prison if they are charged with people smuggling

In fact, they filmed the video to explain they were activists not people smugglers, she added.

Zuloaga  who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2007 over links to the Basque terrorist group ETA but cleared two years later by Spains Supreme Court  visited Greece in July as a member of the Caravan to Greece collective. Members of that group visited refugee camps across Greece and protested outside the Spanish Embassy in Athens.

English version by George Mills.
Image source: Getty Images.

Like most of its peers, oil giant ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) found itself flat-footed when oil prices started to come crashing down in the middle of 2014. The company was in the midst of a major expansion phase, which required it to spend more money than it brought in even at triple digit oil prices. Needless to say, the company could not keep up that spending level given the new market reality. This predicament forced it to make several difficult decisions, which ultimately lowered the company's breakeven level from more than $75 per barrel to less than $50. That new lower breakeven point represents the company's biggest win of the past year.

Facing reality

Early on in the downturn, ConocoPhillips' primary focus was to cut costs as it adjusted to ever lower oil prices. The company's two chief targets were its capex budget and operational expenses. Heading into 2015, for example, the company estimated that it would spend $13.5 billion on capex, which was 20% lower than the prior year. However, as the year wore on the company slowly chipped away at that number. By the end of 2015, the company had cut it down to $10.2 billion and only expected to spend $7.7 billion in 2016 due to the completion of several large projects. Meanwhile, the company cut operating costs from $10.5 billion in 2014 to an initially projected $7.7 billion in 2016.

However, as the company continued to face the reality that oil prices were not heading higher anytime soon, it made the tough decision to cut even deeper. These reductions included the decision to exit deepwater exploration and to significantly reduce the dividend, which would go from $0.74 per share each quarter to just $0.25 per share. These moves, along with additional capex and operating cost cuts, would increase ConocoPhillips' cash flow by $4.4 billion on an annual basis, enabling the company to perform better at lower oil prices.

As a result of its continued efforts to push down costs, ConocoPhillips now believes that it only needs to spend $5 billion on capex per year to maintain its current production level. Meanwhile, it sees operational expenses averaging about $5.2 billion per year. These spending levels, when combined with the new dividend rate, pushes the company's break-even point to below $50 per barrel. For ConocoPhillps, that level should be low enough to sustain its operations in any future oil market.

Image source: ConocoPhillips.

Focusing on flexibility

Aside from cutting expenses, the other crucial driver of ConocoPhillips' transformation into a low-cost oil company is its strategic shift away from major growth projects such as LNG, oil sands, and deepwater developments. Instead, the company will focus on driving future growth from short-cycle shale plays.

Under its old model, ConocoPhillips would invest billions of dollars over several years to bring several major projects online. For example, ConocoPhillips and French oil giant Total (NYSE: TOT) first started development on their Surmont 2 oil sands facility in 2010. The 50/50 joint venture spent billions of dollars developing the project, which did not deliver first oil untilSeptember of 2015. Meanwhile, the ConocoPhillips/Total venture will not reach its maximum production capacity of 118,000 barrels per day until 2017.

Contrast this withhorizontal shale development, which can deliver first oil in a matter of months. While shale wells typically only produce 1,000 barrels per day in the first year, the company can drill hundreds of them each year at the cost of around $5 million per well. Not only do the faster cycle times for shale developments meanConocoPhillips can add oil more quickly, but it canadjust the spending rate up or down to match the oil market. This flexibility means the company can grow faster when prices are higher and quickly capture the upside.

For example, at $50 oil, ConocoPhillips expects that it can increase production by up to 2% per year while also growing the dividend, buying back stock, and paying down debt. Meanwhile, if prices rise to $60 a barrel, it can allocate more capital across those priorities while also growing production by up to 4%. Finally, at $70 oil it can allocate even more money to each area and potentially boost output by as much as 8%. This increased flexibility ensures that ConocoPhillips can deliver sustainable shareholder returns in any oil price environment. It is flexibility that would have never been possible if the company hadn't lowered its breakeven level and didn't have a vast resource position across most of the major resource plays in North America.

Investor takeaway

ConocoPhillips is in a much stronger position at the end of 2016 than it was at the beginning of the downturn. The company had to make several difficult decisions to drive this transformation, which ultimately pushed its break-even point to less than $50 per barrel. However, that level represents a significant win for the company because it is now in a stronger position to manage through any oil price environment.

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Sen. John McCain wants sanctions against Russia for its alleged attempt to influence the U.S. presidential election, adding that the country remains "a threat to the very fundamentals of democracy."

During a visit to Lithuania, McCain said Thursday he doubts Russia's efforts affected the U.S. electoral result. But he and fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham "will be urging increases in sanctions on Russia for what they just attempted to do in the United States election."

Graham said Russia was "creating discord throughout democracies on their border," in a nod to three former Soviet republics, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Together with Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar, they were on the last leg of a tour to the Baltic states to discuss security. They next head for Ukraine, Georgia and Montenegro.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on Tuesday about the United States policy toward Israel, following Americas decision to abstain from a United Nations vote that condemns Israeli settlements.

Kerry defended the U.S. belief in a two-state solution, saying it is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and added that the U.N. vote was about preserving the two-state solution.

Nir Barkat, mayor of the Israeli city of Jerusalem, joined the FOX Business Network to weigh in.

Israelis are appreciative of the security alliance Israel has with the United States, and naturally, in spite of where we are right now, were best friends, Barkat said. The problem is the policy this administration has taken in the last eight yearsits the wrong policy. It failed in Syria, it failed in Iraq, in Libya, it failed with the Egyptians. Unfortunately, its failing between Israel and the Palestinians.

The mayor also had advice for President-elect Trump, who assumes office on January 20, regarding U.S. policy toward the countrys Middle Eastern ally.

My recommendation to President-elect Trump is to move the embassy immediately to the City of Jerusalem. Align interests with all the moderate Arab states against radical Islam and work to improve the economyeconomic ties.

He added: This is his approach, this is Prime Minister Netanyahus approach. Its the right approach. And I commend them just to do what they say.
President Barack Obama on Thursday ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and sanctioned Russian intelligence officials who Washington believes were involved in hacking U.S. political groups in the 2016 presidential election.

The measures, taken during the last days of Obama's presidency, mark a new low in U.S.-Russian relations which have deteriorated over serious differences on Ukraine and Syria.

"These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior," Obama said in a statement from vacation in Hawaii.

It was not immediately clear whether President-elect Donald Trump, who has repeatedly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and nominated people seen as friendly toward Moscow to senior administration posts, would seek to roll back the measures once he takes office on Jan. 20.

Obama is seeking to deter Russia and other foreign governments from leveraging cyber attacks in the future to meddle in U.S. politics, former officials and cyber security experts said.

Obama has been under growing pressure from within his own administration and lawmakers of both political parties to respond more forcefully to the cyber attacks, which included leaked emails of Democratic Party operatives that became part of the media coverage in the campaign for the Nov. 8 presidential election.

The Russian foreign ministry said on Thursday the sanctions were counter-productive and would harm the restoration of bilateral ties. Moscow denies the hacking allegation.

Obama sanctioned two Russian intelligence agencies, the GRU and the FSB, four GRU officers and three companies "that provided material support to the GRU's cyber operations.

PERSONA NON GRATA

Obama said the State Department declared as "persona non grata" 35 Russian intelligence operatives and is closing two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland that were used by Russian personnel for "intelligence-related purposes". The State Department originally said the 35 were diplomats.

A senior U.S. official told Reuters the move would affect the Russian embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco.

The Russians have 72 hours to leave the United States, the official said. Access to the two compounds, which are used by Russian officials for intelligence gathering, will be denied to all Russian officials as of noon on Friday, the senior U.S. official added.

"These actions were taken to respond to Russian harassment of American diplomats and actions by the diplomats that we have assessed to be not consistent with diplomatic practice," the official said.

The State Department has long complained that Russian security agents and traffic police have harassed U.S. diplomats in Moscow, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has raised the issue with Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

"By imposing costs on the Russian diplomats in the United States, by denying them access to the two facilities, we hope the Russian government reevaluates its own actions, which have impeded the ability and safety of our own embassy personnel in Russia," the official said.

The U.S. official declined to name the Russian diplomats who would be affected, although it is understood that Russia's ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, will not be one of those expelled.
After the U.S. abstained from the United Nations vote condemning Israeli settlements, there have been mounting allegations that the Obama administration actually had a role in advancing the resolution through the U.N. The Israel Warrior author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach weighed in on the future of U.S. relations with Israel.

The Middle East goes to hell in a hand basket. You have three genocides in Syria, Yazidis are being slaughtered, Christians and Sunnis at the hands of Alawites and Shia and with all of that happening, with children being cluster bombed and attacked with sarin gas and mustard gas, hes [Secretary of State John Kerry] concerned about Jews building apartments in East Jerusalem, Boteach told the FOX Business Networks Sandra Smith.

But Boteach was hopeful that President-elect Donald Trump could help mend Americas relationship with Israel.

Im optimistic that President-elect Trump will be a far greater friend to Israel than President Obama has been.

According to Boteach, this is not the first time President Obama has caused tension with Israel.

The fact is that President Obama has had eight years of unremitting hostility towards the Jewish state. Hes done good things, so lets be fair, he has increased military and intelligence cooperation. And yet hes demonized Israel little by little with things like the U.N. Security Council resolution.

Boteach viewed the resolution as another example of how the United Nations has strayed from its original purpose.

The United Nations was set up as a security apparatus to protect vulnerable countries from this kind of aggression and now its being used to condemn those countries. What happened to American values, of us protecting democracies, countries that espouse our values of freedom and openness and the right to congregate? The Palestinians have none of that.

Despite the nuclear deal, Boteach views the U.S. as Irans major enemy, not Israel.

Lets not forget that Israel is the canary in the coal mine. When you say to fund terror were not just talking about Israel, which Iran threatens with annihilation a few times a week. [Iranians also threaten] death to America, death to America. You know, we have to remember that Irans ultimate enemy is, Iran sees Israel as a client-state of the United States  the great Satan is America.
The brother of JonBenet Ramsey, the 6-year-old beauty queen found dead in the basement of her family's Colorado home in 1996, is suing CBS and orthers for $750 million, arguing the network's special "The Case of JonBenet Ramsey" ignored evidence to falsely point the finger at him.

In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, Burke Ramsey claims that the network, its production company and the experts interviewed in the series on the unsolved murder conspired to defame him for publicity and profit. The series, called "The Case of JonBenet Ramsey," aired in September ahead of the 20th anniversary of JonBenet's death.

The lawsuit says CBS and its featured experts set out to conduct a "sham reinvestigation" of the murder with "the preconceived the story line" that Ramsey killed his sister and conspired with his parents to cover it up.

"The accusation that Burke Ramsey killed his sister was based on a compilation of lies, half-truths, manufactured information, and the intentional omission and avoidance of truthful information about the murder of JonBenet Ramsey," the lawsuit says.

CBS spokesman Dustin Smith declined to comment on the lawsuit, which is the second Burke Ramsey has filed over the television series.

Burke Ramsey's lawsuit also pointed out that in 2008 Mary Lacy, then the Boulder County District Attorney, cleared the Ramsey family as suspects after DNA analysis.

Current District Attorney Stan Garnett said two weeks ago that Lacy's public letter was not binding and that his office was still investigating the case.

The CBS special looked into theories that Burke Ramsey possibly could have killed his sister -- accusations he claimed were entirely false. He was 9 at the time of JonBenet's death.

Investigators have said they were looking at new DNA testing technology that they hoped would further the investigation. The move cames after an investigation by the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder and KUSA-TV in Denver that apparently uncovered flaws in the interpretation of previous DNA testing.

JonBenet Ramsey's body was found beaten and strangled at her family's home in Boulder on Dec. 26, 1996.

Garnett said much of the new testing would target previously screened items to see if new information could emerge.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Plus size model Tess Holliday is facing her body shamers straight on  again.

Taking to Instagram, shes proudly admitting to her own insecurities and the struggles she faces daily in her new post-baby bod.

Holliday gave birth to baby Bowie six months ago. She talked about the difficultly shes been having accepting the inevitable changes to her pre-baby figure, and the battle shes fighting.

Size 22 model Tess Holliday: 'I am fat'

Its been 6 months & my stomach is lower, my breasts are a different shape, new stretch marks & I feel like a stranger in my body more than ever, Holliday wrote. I wasnt anticipating this at all.

The Mississippi native has become a kind of body-positive activist. The first size-22 in the industry, Holliday has been quick to address the overwhelming criticism of her body.

On her recent Instagram post she says, I debated on whether or not to post this, but I think its important to be honest about what its like to be a woman in the media, who recently had a baby & the pressure thats put on new moms to lose the baby weight, Holliday continued. I was fat before, I carried a healthy baby & guess what, still fat  & THATS OK.

Size 22 Model Tess Holliday Talks 'Fighting Back' Against Haters With Nude Pregnancy Pic

Engaged to Australian artist Nick Holliday, she says doesnt square with a partners job to lift your spirits, adding, We have to be our own cheerleaders. So thats what I will do, take it day by day. Its a journey, not a race  & a beautiful one at that. #6monthspostpartum. #effyourbeautystandards.

She is already mom of son Rylee, 10, from a previous relationship.

Holliday was slammed in April after posting photos of herself pregnant.

To her trolls she wrote, Its also okay to tell someone to f--k off when they give you unsolicited advice about whats best for you & your baby, she wrote. As women, we know whats best & thats our business  No one elses.
Women who smoke during pregnancy may be more likely to have children with kidney damage than mothers who steer clear of cigarettes, a study suggests.

Smoking during pregnancy has long been linked to preterm and underweight babies and a wide range of birth defects. The current study offers fresh evidence that the kidneys are among the organs at risk for damage, said lead author Dr. Maki Shinzawa, a public health researcher at Kyoto University in Japan.

"Cigarette smoking releases nicotine and other harmful or potentially harmful substances, such as nitrogen oxide, polycarbonate, and carbon monoxide, some of which cross the placenta," Shinzawa said by email. "Some of these trans-placental substances may affect fetal programming of the kidney during pregnancy."

Shinzawa and colleagues examined data from urine tests from 44,595 children to look for elevated levels of protein in the urine, which can indicate impaired kidney function.

Data on maternal smoking was collected during women's prenatal checkups, and researchers also had records from their children's health checkups at four, nine, 18 and 36 months of age.

Overall, 79 percent of women said they never smoked and another 4 percent said they stopped smoking during pregnancy. About 17 percent of the mothers said they continued to smoke while they were pregnant.

The absolute risk of kidney damage among the children was low. But compared with children born to nonsmoking mothers, kids whose mothers smoked while pregnant were 24 percent more likely to show signs of kidney damage in their urine tests by age three.

Urine tests showed elevated protein levels in 1.7 percent of children born to smokers, 1.6 percent of kids whose mothers were former smokers and 1.3 percent of children born to women who never smoked.

Children exposed to second-hand smoke at home also appeared to have a higher risk of kidney damage than kids who didn't live with smokers, but the difference wasn't big enough to rule out the possibility that it was due to chance.

One limitation of the study is its reliance on women to accurately report and recall how much they smoked before or during pregnancy, and a lack of lab tests to confirm smoke exposure, the authors note in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Still, the findings add to evidence linking smoking to kidney damage, a connection that some previous research has established for adult smokers and for children who inhale second-hand smoke, said Dr. Paul Fowler, director of the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Aberdeen in the UK.

"Maternal smoking has been observed to lead to reduced kidney size in offspring, which is of concern since it is known that retarded kidney development contributes to (high blood pressure) and renal injury in adults," Fowler, who wasn't involved in the study, added by email.

"This study highlights one more reason why women should not smoke during pregnancy and why children should be raised in cigarette-free households," Fowler said. "It is not, in itself, an overwhelming reason, but rather one more nail in the coffin."
In August 2015, a California man was charged with a DUI after testing positive for caffeine even though his blood tested negative for alcohol. On Wednesday, the countys district attorney dropped the case.

Joseph Schwab, 36, was driving home in Fairfield, California, when he was pulled over by an Alcohol Beverage Control agent who claimed the man was weaving in and out of traffic, Fox 6 reported.

The agent found legal workout powders in Schwabs car. After asking Schwab to perform field sobriety tests, the agent arrested him.

The driver seemed very amped up, very agitated, very combative, and she thought he was under the influence of something, Krishna Abrams, Solano Countys district attorney, told Fox 6.

Schwab agreed to undergo a blood test in jail, and the results came back negative except for caffeine.

Forensic toxicologist Edwin Smith told the news station that caffeine may actually improve the ability of most drivers.

Very few, if any, of those people are having problems functioning in a task like driving, Smith told Fox 6. Most are probably doing it as well, and potentially even better than they would do without it.

Abrams dropped the DUI charge against Schwab on Wednesday.
Drones delivering blood and medicine to rural areas of Tanzania could help to save the lives of many mothers and newborn babies in a country where one of the biggest causes of maternal deaths is blood loss during childbirth, the UK aid department said.

The Department for International Development (DFID), which has given funding for the trial due to start early next year, said the drone deliveries could assist more than 50,000 births a year in the East African country.

The drones would be able to carry up to 1 kg (2 lbs) of medical supplies and reduce delivery times to 19 minutes from the 110 minutes it takes on average by vehicle. DFID said.

"The UK is at the forefront of investing in cutting-edge technology to tackle the global challenges of today such as disease pandemics, medical emergencies and disaster responses," said Priti Patel, UK's international development secretary.

"This innovative, modern approach ensures we are achieving the best results for the world's poorest people and delivering value for money for British taxpayers," she said in a statement on Thursday.

Seasonal floods in Tanzania can make it impossible for cars and motorcycles to deliver emergency blood supplies to health clinics in rural areas in time to save lives.

The drones, flying at 150 meters (500 ft) above ground, can reach areas up to 75 kms (47 miles) from the central blood bank in the Tanzanian capital Dodoma, DFID said.

DFID said it was also testing drones to map areas of Nepal that are prone to floods, landslides and avalanches to improve response in emergencies.

"To get help to people quickly when these disasters strike it is essential to know exactly where the medical facilities are and what condition the local road network is in," DFID said.
Colombias Congress on Wednesday took a major step forward in the countrys peace process when it approved an amnesty for former combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The new law provides legal guarantees for around 5,000 ex-fighters from the guerrilla group, who will now move to holding areas from where they will start to make the transition to civilian life.

FARC guerrillas working the land in a holding area. JOAQUIN SARMIENTO/ AFP

More information El Congreso de Colombia aprueba la ley de amnistia para las FARC

According to Voces de Paz (Voices of peace), a newly created association that aims to facilitate the FARCs transition to non-violence and participation in mainstream political life, the amnesty also directly affects around 1,000 people serving sentences for political and related crimes, who will now be conditionally released from jail.

The government of President Juan Manuel Santos says that by January 30 it will announce how many FARC members have not been included in the amnesty, i.e. those who will effectively be sent into internal exile rather than jailed. The Justice Ministry says that while it has no exact figures yet on the measures, it estimates there are at least 4,000 FARC members in jail.

We hope the doors of the jails will open so those involved in the insurgency can leave Francisco Toloza, Voces de paz

Interior Minister Juan Fernando Cristo told journalists that there are different types of amnesty. There will be an automatic amnesty for FARC members accused of political crimes such as rebellion, he said, which will affect the majority of the organizations foot soldiers.

Cases involving FARC members who have been found guilty of drug trafficking or other crimes will be assessed by a special court that has yet to be convened.

The government has pointed out that although state officials can apply for amnesty under the new law, it will not apply to people found guilty of war crimes. Nor will there be amnesty for members of the armed forces: In those cases, prison terms will not be imposed for minor offenses, said Cristo.

He warned that beneficiaries of the amnesty were required by law to cooperate with the specially commissioned peace tribunal and to take part in victim reparation programs.

There will be no amnesty for members of the armed forces, and will not apply to not apply to people found guilty of war crimes

The amnesty law was questioned by former president Alvaro Uribe and his Democratic Center party, which abstained in the vote. It was also criticized by Jose Miguel Vivanco, the director of Human Rights Watch Americas, who said there was a risk some wrongdoers may escape justice.

We are worried that some areas of the project may limit the possibility of judging abuses, wrote Vivanco in a letter to President Santos.

Rodrigo Londono, the leader of the FARC, called on members of Congress to respect the conditions of the revised peace deal signed with the government on November 24 and to implement it speedily.

Some 78 members of the FARC have been given presidential pardons over the last year, but Wednesdays amnesty law is aimed at bringing about a return to political normality as quickly as possible.

We hope that the doors of the jails will open so that those involved in the insurgency can leave, as well as the hundreds of community leaders who were also found guilty of rebellion, said Francisco Toloza of Voces de paz, which has been monitoring the debates in Congress.

The amnesty law is the first to be approved as part of a fast-track mechanism introduced to speed up the process of implementing the peace deal, first signed in September, after four years of negotiations in Cuba.

English version by Nick Lyne.
Today its not only the international financial community thats reacting to the risk of default by Venezuela (as brilliantly analyzed by Harvard Professor Ricardo Haussmann in a recent article that infuriated a Nicolas Maduro), which hasnt happened only because a commercial default which affects all Venezuelans has been implemented instead  as an alternative to paying public debt.

The alarm bells are also ringing for Petrocaribe and some sectors are getting ready to face the consequences of Venezuela being forced to seriously re-examine the aid program, which commits it to sending 300,000 barrels of oil a day to Cuba, the bulk of the island states of the Caribbean, Surinam and some Central American countries too.

In spite of paying a discounted price for their oil, and only having to pay between 40 and 50 dollars up front with the rest being payable as a loan ... all the [Petrocaribe] participating countries, with the exception of Suriname, are running balance of payments deficits.  Leopoldo Martinez

Given the difficulties they are experiencing, Venezuelans cannot possibly be expected to understand how their country is subsidizing the economies of the Petrocaribe nations to the tune of seven billion dollars annually. As well as being inexplicable, its plainly unacceptable that this provision of aid brings no benefits whatsoever to the economy of Venezuela, unlike what happened in the context of the San Jose pact, when Venezuela exported non-petroleum goods and services to markets which saved foreign currency through financing and discounts on their payments for Venezuelan oil.

But now we are facing a different problem. Venezuelan oil production has fallen due to a lack of investment and the economic pressures on the country are growing daily. Furthermore, the number of shipments of oil being sent to China to pay off the loans it has made to the government is increasing and this is reducing the countrys ability to comply with its Petrocaribe commitments.

As a result, there is already a great deal of open concern in the nations that make up the group about the impact of the unsustainable nature of the assistance they have been receiving and the negative consequences for their economies of it being cut off or reduced. Our Center for Democracy and Development in the Americas has been examining this issue in depth over recent years and the conclusions it has reached are alarming for the Caribbean nations.

The cost of petroleum imports financed by Petrocaribe represents between 7 percent and 12 percent of the GDPs of the participating countries. In spite of this huge subsidy, these economies have not shown robust growth  the average for 2014 was just 2.3 percent and a similar figure is predicted for 2015.

And these numbers come on the back of very low growth levels since 2011 (averaging just 1 percent) and, prior to that, a shrinkage in GDP of 3.5 percent in 2009 and 0.5 percent in 2010. Thus, economic growth in the Caribbean nations is very fragile and heavily dependent on the oil subsidy from Venezuela.

In the same way, the balances of payments of the Caribbean economies are heavily dependent on Petrocaribe subsidies. In spite of paying a discounted price for their oil, and only having to pay between 40 and 50 dollars up front with the rest being payable as a loan (some countries have even had the privilege of making payments in kind with their own products), all the participating countries, with the exception of Suriname, are running balance of payments deficits. And worst of all, the level of indebtedness owed to Venezuela by the participating countries is increasing to such a degree that it may become impossible to service, particularly if the aid system itself collapses, something which indeed seems to be happening.

The Dominican Republic owes Venezuela more than 12 billion dollars, Jamaica another 6 billion and the Bahamas a little more than 3 billion. These are the three big debtors but the list is long and the total debt adds up to some 25 billion dollars which, at the rate things are going, wont be recovered by Venezuela for decades.

The situation is similar in Central America where the country which receives the most benefits is Nicaragua. Indeed it was President Daniel Ortega who recently expressed his worries about this matter to President Obama and concluded that it was necessary to find other forms of energy cooperation given the unsustainability of Venezuelan aid and the resulting vulnerability of the economies of Central America and the Caribbean.

All of this is occurring in the context of important changes in the patterns of energy production in the hemisphere. For the first time in its history the United States has become self-sufficient in energy and indeed has become an energy exporter. Mexico is carrying out reforms that will lead to increased production and similar developments are occurring in Canada.

In a nutshell, the three NAFTA states, led by the United States, today have the capacity to play a major role in the Caribbean and Central American regions by promoting alliances and cooperation models based on new sources of energy which will have a greater economic impact and are truly sustainable. Sources in Washington confirm that this is indeed the direction the White House is working towards.

During the past decade Chinas imports have fueled a Latin American commodities-exports-driven growth which providing resilience to the world economic crisis. However, the Caribbean and Central America are a different story, as these economies have been much less resilient to the world economic slowdown, and highly vulnerable to the high cost of energy. Indeed, the uncertainties in Europe and other Western economies, has impacted among other things the flow of tourism to the Caribbean.

Politically speaking, within the OAS, analysts have clearly identified the Petrocaribe countries as the key factor to the diminishing hemispheric influence of the United States in the Americas, and indeed, together with the ALBA countries (Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador), a protective shield to any initiative to enforce democratic values in the case of Venezuela under the Inter-American Democratic Charter.

To this extent, Venezuelas intervention in this region has not only a political impact, but it has created a significant economic distortion and vulnerability to a region that is critical for United States foreign policy.

As the future of the economies in the Caribbean, which depend on Petrocaribes assistance becomes ever more uncertain, their only hope is to look for alternatives to the north. Indeed, an economic collapse in the Caribbean and Central America could feed, among other consequences, the growth of organized crime operatives which are linked to illicit trades, drug trafficking and other unwanted and unwelcomed consequences for the United States and the Caribbean, and the CAFTA-DR market.

Times are changing and with them will change, beyond any doubt, the political solidarity of many with the Venezuelan revolution. This trend, in which the decline of Petrocaribe is converging with the energy independence achieve by the United States lends perfectly for the United States to reach bipartisan consensus to foster and launch a renewed partnership with the Caribbean and Central America to promote development, in which, energy comes the key element of the strategy.

The time for bold leadership from the United States in the Caribbean and Central America has come.
When New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Ivy League grad and member of the political elite club, destroys the legacy of a war hero, I call bulls--t. Gillibrands book is called "Off the Sidelines," and its big tell is the fact that a fellow senator once said something offensive to her about her weight.

This week it was revealed by the New York Times that the senior senator who offended Gillibrand by telling her not to lose "too much weight" because he liked his girls "chubby" was the late Hawaii Sen. Daniel K. Inouye.

Senator Daniel Inouye was awarded a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. But today, if you Google his name, thats not what you read about. What you read about is Kirsten Gillibrands bad day.  Rick Sanchez

Since the story came out, Gillibrands stock has risen, unfortunately at the expense of Inouyes legacy. The late senator, who before was mostly revered as a war hero, now dominates Google searches in the category of sexism. What a shame!

Seems surprising to me that Gillibrand would make this revelation in her book, especially at such a high cost to somebody elses reputation. The questions are obvious. For example, why did you not ask yourself, Kirsten, if it wasnt just a bad attempt at humor by a man who was generationally disconnected from you? You couldnt give him a break?

My wife is from the south. Moultrie, Georgia is just above Tallahassee and way below the sophistication of the big ATL  thats Atlanta to you, Kirsten. Moultrie is where my wife introduced me to her grandparents, a courtly old woman named Lola and her husband M.L. Papa M.L. talked liked an 80-year-old southerner. He called me Julio because he thought it was funny. His jokes  certainly by todays standards  were inappropriate and his language was beyond salty. He wasnt a bad man, though. He was just old! Nobody in his family still thinks or talks that way, but he did. I wasnt going to change him and neither was anybody else. Nor did he deserve to be called out or ridiculed for it.

Next question for Senator Gillibrand: Were you shocked by the comments or were you simply feigning shock? I dont know about you, but most of us out here in the real world are offended, scowled, shot the middle finger or given a Bronx salute every day. And thats just in traffic on the way to work. Yes, people will say mean and offensive things from time to time. You should know that. You went to Dartmouth, isnt that the school Animal House was based on? Just asking...

Finally, is this really the worst thing that ever happened to you? The most significant moment in your life is a sexist comment delivered by an 80-year-old man? Its a given that what he said was obviously wrong and sexist, Im not here to quibble with that, but really? Thats it?

Let me tell you about somebody elses most significant moment. Let me tell you about what happened to Sgt. Daniel Inouye during World War II. Forbes' Victor Lipman, who once interviewed Inouye, shares this account.

In April 1945, as a lieutenant and platoon leader, he was leading his men against a heavily fortified German line of defense in Tuscany, Italy. While leading a flanking maneuver, he was shot in the stomach from machine gun fire some 40 yards away. Refusing medical treatment, he proceeded to destroy two machine gun nests with hand grenades and his own machine gun fire. Collapsing from blood loss, he crawled toward the final machine gun nest when a German grenade severed most of his right arm. He somehow transferred his own grenade to his left hand and tossed it into the German bunker, destroying it. He was carried off unconscious, but awoke briefly to see some of his men checking on him, at which point he ordered them back to their positions, telling them, Nobody called off the war! He was awarded a Medal of Honor.

Senator Daniel Inouye was also awarded a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. But today, if you Google his name, thats not what you read about. What you read about is Kirsten Gillibrands bad day.
The battle over the nations high-speed Internet policy is a complicated one and, if carried out inadequately, could spur a series of unintentional outcomes. That conflict is being fought out at the Federal Communications Commission as it considers the Open Internet issue, sometimes referred to as Net Neutrality. Take it from an engineer with 20 plus years of experience in communications technology: the Open Internet per se is a non-issue.

If successful, Title II would reverse America's hugely successful policy of minimal regulation of the Internet and replace it with pervasive regulation designed for monopoly telephone companies back in 1934.  Jose Marquez

An Open Internet simply means an Internet where all providers of legal content have non-discriminatory access to the privately owned high-speed networks that make up the Internet in America. We have had an Open Internet policy in place at the FCC since the Clinton administration and it's still working fine. But in 2010, the FCC attempted to codify a series of rules, which a Court earlier this year ruled were based on an incorrect legal foundation. Since then, the FCC proposed very similar rules, but under the Court-approved authority. So, what is the issue?

If the Internet we all know and use works just fine and consumers can access the websites and content they want, why the concern? The danger is that proponents of utility-style regulations would use the non-issue of the Open Internet to rationalize a reclassification of Internet services under Title II of the Communications Act, and treat broadband as a utility  with all of the cumbersome rules, oversight and bureaucracy that would stifle innovation and harm our economy.

If successful, Title II would reverse America's hugely successful policy of minimal regulation of the Internet and replace it with pervasive regulation designed for monopoly telephone companies back in 1934.

Throttling the progress of Internet technology with that kind of regulation would be an unconscionable disservice to all Americans. It would be a particularly mean blow to Latinos and other minorities who are still playing catch-up when it comes to utilizing the full benefits of high-speed Internet technology.

Recently, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council filed a petition with the FCC stating its belief in the importance of free and unfettered Internet access by minority communities. Signing on to the MMTC filing were 41 other civil rights and labor organizations including groups such as SER - Jobs for Progress, OCA  Asian Pacific American Advocates, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and the group I head, Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association (LISTA).

We pointed out that restrictive utility-type regulation could easily suffocate the very innovation that has made high-speed Internet vital to minority communities. The FCC should have loftier goals than micromanaging an already successful industry. Their real targets should include assuring more and better connections for minorities, seniors, and low-income families still without high-speed Internet access. The commissions final decision could well determine whether U.S. minority groups will be able to compete on a level playing field throughout the 21st century.

That's why the battle over high-speed Internet regulations has been justifiably called the emerging civil rights struggle of the 21st century.

Thanks to lightning-fast connections, Americas minority groups are better able to get access to good education, find more rewarding jobs, and enjoy greater involvement in their communities. Maintaining and expanding these sorts of advances is a continuous slog, but a necessary one. Because hard as it might be to imagine, our media obsessed society is only scratching the surface of what high-speed Internet services can deliver in the future.

A continued Open Internet is essential to that future. Congress was looking to the future when it passed The Communications Act of 1996 that specified an Open Internet policy.

Now, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler should swing the attention of his fellow commissioners back to where it belongs: on ensuring widespread high-speed Internet access to low- and middle-income people, especially those in minority communities.

LISTA applauds the chairmans efforts and we pledge him our support for the Court-mandated authority. Nobody wins if high-speed Internet services are weighted down with unnecessary regulation.
When some years back Vanity Fair published a story called Jungle Law, Steve Donziger believed the story would constitute a paradigmatic change that would end in a positive verdict in his judicial case against Chevron. Donziger, the lawyer representing a group of people from the Ecuadors Amazonia that for over 20 years have been seeking reparations for the contamination allegedly left behind by Texaco (now merged with Chevron), probably did not imagine that all the fraudulent schemes he planned and executed would end up coming to light.

The lawyer that was able to obtain millions of dollars to defend the indigenous people had no qualms in pressuring the government to block any type of remediation.  Ezequiel Vazquez-Ger

It turns out that the real paradigmatic change was not the Vanity Fair story, but a decision of judge Lewis Kaplan of the federal court of the Southern District of New York, which allowed Chevron to initiate a judicial process against Donziger and his team in the United States, for having conspired to break the law and procure a fraudulent judgment in Ecuador.

The trial revealed all types of fraudulent, corrupt, and extorting maneuvers executed by Donziger. Phrases such as we would have never achieved this from the Judge if we had not pressured him, the law and facts are secondary; at the end of the day what really matters if brute force, or the Ecuadorian judges make their decisions based on who they fear the most, not on what the law says, were the type of ideas that guided Donzigers actions, which to his dismay, were registered in the thousands of video-recording hours in the documentary Crude, which Chevron gained access to through a court order.

A new book by Bloomberg BusinessWeeks senior editor, Paul Barrett, summarizes this story and makes reference to some scarcely known events. For example, the book tells how in 2006, Donziger and Pablo Fajardo (another lead lawyer in the plaintiffs team) exchanged emails discussing the success of their efforts to prevent Petroecuador from cleaning certain oil wells.

Specifically, Fajardo recognizes having pressured the companys President for him to suspend all type of remediation activities in the area where Petroecuador operated together with Texaco, as this could eliminate evidence. In other words, the lawyer that was able to obtain millions of dollars to defend the indigenous people had no qualms in pressuring the government to block any type of remediation.

Another point of interest in this story is Donzigers inoperable business model to pursue the trial. Throughout 20 years of legal actions before different courts, Donziger sold rights over the trial and entered into shade agreements with different investors and law firms, without regard for how much money would be left for the remediation after covering debts with all investors.

A forensic analysis by Chevron and mentioned by Barrett, establishes that if for example the parties reached an agreement for $100 million, only 1.5 percent would be left to repair the Lago Agrio people. The remaining 98.5 percent would be divided among investors, legal fees (including Donzigers fees) and administrative expenses.

The last contracts registered with the U.S. Department of Justice by one of these agencies, demonstrate how the Rafael Correa administration spent over half a million dollars in payments to Hollywood celebrities, such as Danny Glover or Mia Farrow to visit Ecuador and dip their hands in the allegedly contaminated wells, as part of the campaign Chevrons Dirty Hand.

Therefore, it is expected the efforts of the Ecuadorian Government will be increased given the new revelations of Barretts book. In fact, in a note published in BusinessWeek last week, the author points out how the PR firm Ketchum, that also works for the Ecuadorian Government, would have set out a strategy to counterattack the books claims, through the use of the discredit the messenger tactic.

In his personal notes, which are also part of the legal process before the New York court, Donziger wrote: I feel like I have gone over to the dark side. Barretts book narrates this turning to the dark side, in a story that contains all possible ingredients: hypocrisy, corruption, extortion; a multinational with unlimited resources to continue its battle; an indigenous community that, after twenty years, continues claiming for what it believes is just, and behind all this, a lawyer drowning in his own vanity who lost the opportunity of doing good.
Recently, a column of mine drew heavy response from an excited group of Hispanics far to the left that disagreed substantially with the points I made. If they had been state prosecutors, they would have charged me with many felony counts of turning my back on my people, on ignoring their needs, of betraying the principles they live by and insist others do too and for selling out to the Man, Whites.

They use two words as ultimate pejoratives: VENDIDO  sell out; and COCONUT  Brown on the outside and white on the inside.

I am neither, end of discussion.

It was the President from my party that ordered United States troops into schools so that Black children could attend schools formerly reserved for Whites-only, not a President from the other party.  Raoul Lowery Contreras

I am what I believe in, I am what I am because I have the tools to think on my own, to realize that everything we need to know socially, economically and politically is written down somewhere in book, on the net or passed on to us by our families.

What these critics refuse to understand is that as ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said some years ago  Reasonable men looking at the same facts will arrive at the same conclusions (at least he said something like that).

The problem then, is what is a reasonable person?

For example, I choose most of my political affinity through history, say 75 percent.

The party I choose was organized to stop the spread of slavery in the United States in 1854. It morphed into the party that ended slavery for all time. The party refused to see the United States of America destroyed by special slave-holding interests and defended the country and the Constitution by organizing and successfully defending it from those who would have destroyed it. My party reinvented the United States of America when it amended the Constitution to guarantee:

 Civil rights

 Voting rights

 Equal protection of the law

 Due process of law

 Ended slavery by amending the Constitution

 Guaranteed American citizenship to all born in the United States

 Military service for Black and Hispanic Americans

 Passed into law the vote for women

My party did these things by democratic processes, political leadership and a profound respect for and desire to save the country. At every step of these processes and the Civil War itself, the other party fought my party in Congress, in the states and on the battlefield.

It was the other party that winked and nodded the Ku Klux Klan into existence as a domestic terror group to terrorize by fire, rope and death American citizens of the Black persuasion and foreign born Catholics and Jews. It was the other party that smothered Hispanic citizens in Texas while my party was electing the first Hispanic statewide officeholder in California, the first elected Hispanic congressman (California), the first Hispanic governor (New Mexico), the first Hispanic U.S. Senator (New Mexico) and even appointed the first Hispanic Navy Admiral (Farragut) and first Hispanic Army General (California Native Cavalry, Union forces).

It was the other party that shut down the South when Union troops left; it reinstituted segregation, took the vote away from American Blacks and refused them the rights and privileges of American citizenship and of human rights in general for the crimes of being Black and Republican.

As late as 1940, it was the other party and its President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that opposed anti-lynching bills in Congress.

It was my party that led the United States into the world and turned the 20th Century into the American Century. Teddy Roosevelt did that; he laid the groundwork for our becoming a world power, he started the Panama Canal making the Pacific Ocean an American ocean which it is to this day.

It was the President of the other party that invaded Mexico twice in 1914 and 1916. That same President led the way for the 16th Amendment and its income tax.

It was the President of the other party that wanted to disband the United States Marine Corps, Americas first line of defense after WWII and was stopped in time for the Corps to save the war in Korea, much to that Presidents chagrin.

It was governors of the other party in Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and other southern states that prevented Black children from attending schools ordered integrated by the United States Supreme Court, not governors from my party.

It was the President from my party that ordered United States troops into schools so that Black children could attend schools formerly reserved for Whites-only, not a President from the other party.

It was U.S. Senators from my party that provided the votes to override southern Democrat inspired filibusters and to vote for civil and voting rights in enough numbers to defeat efforts to kill the bills in 1964 and 1965; it was not senators from the other party.

My party wins the historical argument hands down; my party is Republican.
The White House recently reached into the ranks of Google to fill the post of technology czar. It was just the latest example of a Google executive joining the administration, leaving little doubt about the special relationship the company has with President Obama.

As it turns out, word of the high-profile appointment of Megan Smith largely overshadowed some troubling news that has been coming out of Google lately: disclosures of the companys dreadful record of hiring Hispanics, as well as African Americans and women.

Google should commit to addressing its poor record on the crucial issue of diversity, especially if called upon to do so by the President on behalf of the nation.  Jose Marquez

Google, like most other Silicon Valley tech companies, is a largely white and male bastion. Its labor statistics paint an unflattering picture, with Googles workforce only three percent Hispanic, two percent African American and 30 percent female. The picture is even more dismal when counting only employees in high-tech and leadership roles in the company.

It makes sense, of course, for the White House to hire former Google executives, given the companys well-deserved reputation for innovative thinking and product development in the highly competitive high-tech industry. For an Administration that has made modernizing government one of its top priorities, Google can provide key tools to help fulfill this objective.

Yet President Obama has a unique opportunity to work with Google to improve its disturbing hiring practices at a time when the unemployment rate among Hispanics (7.5 percent) and African Americans remains higher than that of whites (5.3 percent).

It is worth noting that Mr. Obama has already used his singular platform as the nations first African-American president to push for diversity on a number of fronts. Mr. Obama, for example, has sought to name more women and minorities to the bench, most notably Sonia Sotomayor, who became the first Hispanic to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

For years now, Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association has warned of the hiring practices involving Latinos in Silicon Valley and the lack of interest of building a strong Latino workforce pipeline. We believe an inclusive culture promotes creativity, innovation and drives collaboration. We know no global company today can stay competitive without persistently recruiting, retaining and developing a diverse work force. Diversity is critical to achieving growth objectives and serving customers globally, and although everyone says how important STEM is in our community of color and how important diversity is in Silicon Valley, Latinos are still less than 6% in Silicon Valley.

With jobs in the high-tech industry poised to become among the biggest drivers of growth in the coming decades, it is only natural that the Administration should work with Google and other tech companies to foster diversity in their workforces.

Jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are growing at nearly double the pace of their non-STEM counterparts. But as things stand now, Hispanics and other minorities are at risk of being left behind as these jobs become the linchpin of the 21st century economy.

Clearly, Mr. Obama has earned the respect and admiration of Google executives and employees, who have been among his biggest supporters politically. As a result, President Obama has the credibility to persuade Google and other Silicon Valley companies to take steps to quickly integrate greater numbers of Hispanics, African Americans and women into their workforces.

Time is of the essence. Mr. Obama is settling into the final years of his last term in office. As the president and his advisors ponder the legacy he will leave behind, the troubling hiring practices in Silicon Valley cry out for Mr. Obamas attention and passion.

Without question, Google has benefited as a company from its close partnership with the White House. In return, Google should commit to addressing its poor record on the crucial issue of diversity, especially if called upon to do so by the President on behalf of the nation.
While it has become common knowledge that Latinos represent the fastest growing segment in the country, their force and power in the economy, politics and business are yet to be fully leveraged by Americas decision makers across sectors.

Somehow the math does not seem to be enough to unlock the audience, consumer or voter population that is set to make a winning difference for many.

With a projected population growth of 167 percent from 2010- 2050 versus 1 percent for non-Hispanic whites and a thriving $1.2 trillion in buying power, when compared to the GDP of the G-20, Hispanics are the 11th largest economy in the world, according to the U.S. Census and the Selig Center for Economic Growth.

Despite media stereotypes around Hispanic matters, the numbers demonstrate it being a very upwardly mobile community, made up of 65 percent U.S.-born citizens with a lot of influence. Also, 29 percent of all are upscale Hispanic earning an income over $50,000 per year. Nielsen has called the group Americas new baby boomers.

But what is behind this shift? A new generation of entrepreneurs and college educated Latinos. For the first time, as reported by the Pew Hispanic Center, a greater share of Hispanic recent high school graduates are enrolled in college than whites. According to the Census Bureau, 49 percent of young Hispanic high school graduates were enrolled in college. By comparison, 47 percent of white non-Hispanic high school graduates were enrolled in college; and Latinas are outpacing their male counterparts in their educational pursuit and career development. 86 percent of Latinas also report the woman being the primary shopper for the household, therefore controlling the decisions behind the so coveted $1.2 trillion in buying power.

Yet people still wonder when it comes to placing the right level of investment, priority and outreach to engage the community that represents the future of America; particularly Latinas.

This is why we have assembled five key reasons that may inspire you to take a new look at the power of Latinas.

1. 100 Percent Of Growth Of Women Population 18-49 Is Latina

From winning elections to selling cars, shampoo or baby products, everyone seems to be targeting women as their sweet spot. How could Latinas not be a priority when the group represents 10 percent of the growth in the women population ages 18-49 from 2010 to 2020? The non-Hispanic women population between the same age range is actually shrinking at 1.8 per cent for the same period.

2. Hispanics Are 14 Years Younger

Win them today and you win a lifetime fan. The median age of Hispanics is 27 years-old versus 41 for Whites, 32 for Black and 35 for Asian. The community is a millennial, bicultural and bilingual community that is reshaping pop-culture and leading the trends.

3. 1 In 4 Births

Hispanic households are larger and as the population grows, there is a compounding effect with the contribution Latina moms represent. The Department of Education has projected that public schools will be majority-minority this Fall. Young Latinos alone accounted for at least 20 percent of public school kindergartners in 17 states, up from just eight states in 2000.

4. Upscale And Entrepreneurial

Hispanic-owned businesses have nearly doubled over the last decade, a rate more than twice than the average national business growth rate during that period, according to a study commissioned by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with Geoscape. Women-owned firms make up 34.9 percent of all Hispanic non-farm businesses across the country.

5. Preserving Cultural Heritage

Latinas are the gatekeepers of culture and language at home. Contrary to the assumption of many, they are working to preserve the language with their families and children. In fact, a recent Nielsen report shows that there is a decline in English-speaking-only Hispanic households while there is an 87 percent growth in the amount of Spanish being spoken at home. While 65 percent are U.S. born Spanish continue to be the language of the heart.

Indeed Latinas are a force of change, and every year that goes by in which corporations, politicians and society ignores their power is a year of incremental opportunities and growth that is grossly missed.

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More than a decade ago, Venezuela spun a Faustian compact with the Cuban government. It was the beginning of an opportunistic and somewhat brilliant agreement between the two. Cuba, which didnt have much by way of natural resources to export, found something else it could use as trade fodder. Doctors. Thats right, doctors. The era of medical diplomacy was officially under way, or as it has come to be known universally, the doctors-for-oil deal.

The Cuban economy had been in a perpetual chokehold since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a chokehold that could only be undone by the generosity of a fool. Enter Hugo Chavez. The English proverb that states a fool and his money are soon parted must have been written with Chavez in mind.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Washington reports that the number of Cuban doctors, nurses, optometrists and medical technicians applying for U.S. visas under the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program is running 50 percent ahead of last year's pace, which was nearly double that of the year before.

Back in 2003, Chavez began sending Cuba more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day. In exchange, Cuba has sent Venezuela more than 30,000 doctors and other medical professionals. You dont have to be an MIT economist to figure out that what proved to be a great deal for Cuba was not exactly a boon to Venezuela.

Fast forward to 2014 and not only is Venezuelas economy spinning out of control, but so is the plan for medical diplomacy. Cuban doctors are leaving Venezuela, abandoning their posts and arriving in Miami at a clip that will see more than 1,500 arrive in the United States this year.

Uncle Sam is opening his arms and welcoming the trained medical officials with a special program to expedite their applications to come here. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Washington reports that the number of Cuban doctors, nurses, optometrists and medical technicians applying for U.S. visas under the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program is running 50 percent ahead of last year's pace, which was nearly double that of the year before.

Why are Cuban doctors leaving? The answers are plentiful. First off, the pay is miserable  $20 dollars a month. Thats right, a doctor makes $20 dollars a month. Then theres the crime in Caracas, which is rampant in most neighborhoods including those where the Cuban doctors with their meager earnings are forced to live.

Doctors also complain about the workload. Whereas in Cuba they would do 20 procedures a day, in Venezuela they are forced to do as many as 90 to 100. Add to that the fact that Venezuela is now a divided country plagued by civil unrest, and what you have is a recipe for dissatisfaction, even among the most ardent Marxist revolutionary believers who are seen as interlopers by those who oppose the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

Venezuelas social experiment is failing in large measure because of foolhardy economic decisions, one of which was the doctors-for-oil pact. The irony is that now the Cuban doctors are paying the price. But like water from a leaky roof and like the hundreds of thousands of Cuban immigrants who left before them, these doctors will find their way into the home created by other Castro cast-offs.

Thats right. Cubas doctors will soon end up, by way of Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolution, right smack in the middle of Miami, USA.
How should MSBNCs Jose Diaz-Balart pronounce the name Maria Ramirez? Should he use a Brooklyn accent with its mixture of Yiddish, Italian and other influences? Maybe with a Louisiana Southern drawl? Or it might not be the region, but the time period that matters: An Elizabethan accent could work, or maybe the prevalent accent in England right before William the Conqueror?

This is about you dont look like me, you dont sound like me; youre not from around here. Words do matter.  Jose Parra

As far as Laura Ingraham and the monolingual temple of thought known as the Center for Immigration Studies are concerned, any of those accents would probably do. Diaz-Balart should just not use the original Spanish pronunciation. Further, he should say Mary and switch that last name to something like Ramz or Rames.

Before I get too far from the lede  no, it isnt misspelled and it isnt Spanish for first sentence Ill recap the linguistic sal pa fuera (Caribbean Spanish for brouhaha, itself French, of possible Hebrew origin) that transpired over the last few days: Ingraham ridiculed Diaz-Balart for pronouncing on air a Spanish name the way its usually pronounced and the Center of Immigration Studies unveiled a brilliant paper finally proving that one in five people in the United States speak a language other than English at home.

For the Ingraham crowd this is of course the preamble to the end of the Union. Thought Fort Sumter was a big deal? Hah, wait until you find out what the Gonzalezs are saying at the kitchen table.

Sarcasm aside, I am one of those people who switch languages when they cross into the privacy of their home. I also pronounce my name the way my parents do, the way my grandparents did. Imagine the right wings reaction if Diaz-Balart had rolled on air that RR in Parra. But really, what makes this unsettling is that the Ingraham and CIS flaps are part of a consistent pattern where conservatives belittle Hispanic culture, or outright equate us with a danger to the nation.

Just recently Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown, who ironically just crossed the border into New Hampshire, warned how the Islamic State could be using Mexico to launch terrorist attacks on America. Damn the evidence and forget that other border to the north. And then theres Rick Perry warning about Ebola oozing from Mexico and Dan Sullivan in Alaska rabidly stumping about amnesty.

Como se dice fear mongering? Im sure all these upstanding leaders of our pluralistic society do not see the harm in stoking peoples fears and equating rolled Rs with threats to the national fabric. And if they can scare a few votes in their direction while theyre at it, why not?

But the effect of this rhetoric outlasts election cycles. It has real effects on community relations and yes, Hispanic voters do and will remember for a long time. I am a political reaction to Pete Wilsons Prop 187, even though I grew up in Florida, not California. But Im sure Republicans think they will fix all that with a Marco Rubio speech.

This is the essence of the RNCs post 2012 Autopsy. This worsening vitriol is why over the last decade immigration reform among Hispanics, even for those who have roots in North America older than the Pilgrims themselves, has morphed from a legal or economic question into an identity issue charged with emotion. This is about you dont look like me, you dont sound like me; youre not from around here. Words do matter.

Whether its the CIS, Scott Brown or Laura Ingraham, their insistence in equating all that sound or look Latino in their mind with the other is the real threat to the American fabric. It ignores the nations historical process, where German once dominated the Pennsylvania countryside, French enriched the Louisiana Bayous and Yiddish helped shape the Big Apple.

This mindset ignores and belittles the contributions people made to our national culture in all those places named San Antonio, Florida, Nevada and gasp- New Mexico. In the Ingraham school of thought, quintessentially American words like rodeo and lazo, that inspired the melodies of a Jewish composer named Aaron Copland, would be declared outside of the scope of the First Amendment. To them I am shredding the Constitution when I give my daughter the tools to help her literally understand the world.

Yes, I can read, write and speak the languages of Shakespeare and Twain, of Cervantes and Garcia Marquez. I am bi-lingual, bi-cultural and that makes me as American as New Yorks St. Patricks Day parade. No, Ms. Ingraham doesnt get to define me. I do.
Remember how President Obama and the Democrats who passed Obamacare were going to get the insurance companies? Rhetorically, Obama set out to target big insurance companiesmaking them the bad guy was central to selling Obamacare as a plan that would help middle and lower class families.

But one of the dirty little secrets of Obamacare is that the biggest insurance companies were willing allies in the fight to pass the law, knowing that they stood to add hundreds of thousands of new members to their networks. And they have. The central part of Obamacare, the individual mandate, may be the most disliked component among the American people, but it is precisely what guarantees insurers new customers.

Today 95 percent of Bayonne [Medical Center's] patients are covered by some type of insurance payment, a very high percentage compared to other urban hospitals.  Mario H. Lopez

Of course, these new customers have brought with them profit growth for the insurance industry in leaps and bounds. In 2013, the value of the S&P health insurance index gained 43 percent. Major insurers have seen their revenues rise by billions every year since the passage of Obamacare.

And yet, this comes as middle class and working families continue to be squeezed by rising health care costs. As illustrated last week, government data show that health care costs are the biggest driver of income inequality in America today. Pay increases are being eaten up by rising healthcare costs, including higher insurance premiums, and the shrinking American middle class suffers.

Some in the insurance industry appear to not be content with the advantage that they won under Obamacare, which obscures prices for the average consumer/patient even more than before the law was passed. Insurance companies and providers are incentivized to use artificially high price points to start, and end up negotiating a discounted middle-ground.

These pricing schemes just add to string of hits on middle and low income families. Providers who dare to look at better ways to implement sound business practices in order to remain operationally viable can find themselves under attack.

For example, one urban hospital in New Jersey, Bayonne Medical Center, has found itself in the crosshairs for seeking to negotiate a more sane pricing structure.

Policy expert Ryan Ellis provides his assessment:

Two recent screaming headlines from the U.K.s Daily Mail (Thats painful! New Jersey hospital charges man nearly $9,000 to treat a CUT on his middle finger) and the New York Times (New Jersey Hospital Has Highest Billing Rates in the Nation) were clearly planted as a negotiating leverage tactic by Big Insurance. The hope is to cow providers into charging less in the fake first bill so that the discount results in lower payments to providers/bigger profits for insurance companies.

Not long ago, Bayonne Medical Center was on the verge of closing its doors after decades of financial struggleno surprise when one considers just how much strain medical facilities face in underserved areas. In fact, Hudson County, where Bayonne is located, has the highest rate of uninsured, underinsured, and Medicaid patients in New Jersey.

Bayonne is now on more solid financial footing thanks to new investment, restructuring of management practices, and the negotiation of a more fair reimbursement plan with insurers. Bayonne reached contract agreements with all of the nearly all insurance providers, including the New Jerseys largest. Today 95 percent of Bayonne's patients are covered by some type of insurance payment, a very high percentage compared to other urban hospitals.

But as Ellis have points out, suddenly there appears to be a coordinated attack designed to pressure Bayonne into giving in to insurance providers with whom they have yet to reach a pricing agreement.

In the current health care environment in which working families are being subjected to strains on their budget and ultimately their well-being, it would seem that health care providers who operate in underserved communities, especially those that are efficient and price effective, could be held up as a model of success. Instead, they face sensationalist headlines designed to create pressure on them to succumb to pricing demands.

All of this just adds to the long list of reasons why the American people need health care reform that puts patients and families in charge of their health care, as opposed to politicians, bureaucrats, and third-party payers. The sooner that real health care reform is passes the better for all of us.
This year Santiago Ayuso, a 33-year-old schoolteacher from Madrid, is not just coming home for a Christmas visit. With more luggage than usual, he has decided that he is staying. After living in the English city of Bristol for more than five years, he says he is moving back to Spain because of the recent vote on the United Kingdoms membership of the EU, widely known as Brexit .

Santiago Ayuso lived in Bristol for five years.

When I woke up on the morning of June 24, and saw that Britain had voted in favor of Brexit, it was the push that made me decide to leave the United Kingdom I was disillusioned, devastated, he explains.

Ayuso left Spain in 2011, when the countrys employment outlook was not promising. By the final quarter of the year, the jobless rate was nearly at 23%. The economic crisis drove him to become one of the approximately 200,000 Spaniards who had moved to the United Kingdom.

Brexit created a strong feeling of fear and racism its an exhausting environment

Santiago Ayuso

I went by myself, without knowing anyone, to experience a new culture and to work. I also left because I wanted to do research and you have to admit that nearly all the well-known university essays that get published are written in English, he says.

UKIP, the Europhobic party led by Nigel Farage, aggressively campaigned against immigration and for greater border control, with the large number of immigrants from Europe living in the country seen as a threat by many of the Britons who voted in favor of Brexit.

Its false! Its false what they say about foreign workers, Ayuso exclaims. Theres a contradiction in their discourse: they say that foreigners come to steal jobs and take advantage of the welfare state, but the typical profile of a foreigner looking for work in the United Kingdom is someone who is young and healthy, someone who has gone to university they arent going to be receiving many benefits from Social Security. On top of that, these people help sustain the economy and pensions, because they earn a good wage and pay taxes, he argues.

Ayuso was strongly opposed to Brexit, and even worked on main opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyns Momentum Campaign, which fought for Britain to remain in the EU.

This graffiti appeared on the wall of a school for Spanish children in London in June. A.C.

When Ayuso first moved to England, he got a job as a waiter and worked on improving his English. Eventually he became a substitute teacher. Everything was going well: he had friends, a girlfriend, and he wasnt homesick. He was even considering studying for a doctorate at Cambridge University.

Despite watching what he considered to be xenophobic and racist speeches during the referendum campaign, the straw that broke the camels back was when he saw that 52% of voters chose Brexit.

Despite the fact that in Bristol, where he was living, 61% of voters cast their ballots in favor of England remaining in the EU, Ayuso said that after the referendum he felt unwelcome in his adopted country.

I was teaching a rugby class and I suggested to some lads that we play a game. One said to me, You bloody Mexican, your father is a dead man! Of course I dont think the boy knew what he was saying but its still disheartening. It means the adults legitimize this anti-immigrant feeling.

According to the British government, the number of hate crimes shot up by 41% to the end of July, compared to the same period in 2015. Ayuso said that his friends and other foreigners also experienced xenophobia.

Some English guys started to harass my friends on a bus. They were drinking and chanting Brexit! They said to them, Fucking Spanish, go home! and said they shouldnt speak Spanish if they are in England. My friends had to get off the bus at the next stop. In the end its created a strong feeling of fear and racism its an exhausting environment, he explains.

Ayuso worked on Jeremy Corbyns Momentum Campaign, which fought for Britain to remain in the EU

Although Ayuso is back home, he does not think Spain is any better, but is excited to take part in change.

He says that with Donald Trump about to be the new US president, populism creeping up in Europe, the radicalization of countries such as Hungary and Poland, and fears over what could happen in France, he feels like he has to fight to defend his ideals. For now, however, hes passing out resumes to different schools and spending time with his friends and family.

Were going to be all right, and I think here things will get better, says his girlfriend, as they enjoy the last rays of light illuminating Madrids Puerta del Sol on a crisp December afternoon.

English version by Alyssa McMurty.
This week we celebrate National Latino HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. I say celebrate because, in New York, we have much to be proud of.

Over the past decade, New York has reduced its new HIV cases by 40 percent. Furthermore, we are the first state in the nation to commit to ending the AIDS epidemic  an announcement made by Governor Cuomo on the morning of the annual Pride March last June. His plan, Bending the Curve, aims to bring the total number of new HIV infections below the number of HIV-related deaths in New York State by 2020.

Perhaps we have failed to provide successful prevention measures in the Hispanic/Latino community because we have failed to understand the diverse cultural identities, norms, and values that exist within the community itself.  Jacquelyn Kilmer

Despite our advances, 50,000 Americans still become infected with the virus each year. If nothing were to change, by 2024, that number would increase by a half-million. We have a problem  a problem that only deepens when it comes to Hispanics/Latinos, the largest minority group in the U.S.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Hispanics/Latinos account for 21 percent  one-fifth  of all new HIV cases in the United States. This is a rate three times as high as that of whites. Unpack this statistic a little further: it is expected that 1 in every 36 Hispanic/Latino men and 1 in every 106 Hispanic/Latina women will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime.

We are failing this population. Earlier this month, I attended the 18th Annual United States Conference on AIDS held in San Diego, California. The theme was Transforming Together, and the conference opened with a plenary session that put the spotlight on HIV among Latinos, setting the tone for the week.

We listened to first-hand accounts, discussed the issue with experts in the field, and debated the topic in the larger framework of constantly shifting methods of HIV prevention. Many of these issues are familiar to us at Harlem United, where we run the only Spanish-language AIDS Adult Day Healthcare Center in the state.

While it is generally understood that high rates of infection are linked to socioeconomic factors, such as poverty and/or homelessness, unemployment, migration patterns, language barriers, or lower educational accomplishment, the single most important barrier to HIV prevention in the Hispanic/Latino community is stigma  a mark of shame that persists amidst so much progress.

The stigma associated with HIV and AIDS is huge, says Jackie Nieves de la Paz, Managing Director of the HOME program at Harlem United. HOME stands for Helping Our Members Evolve and is the prevention arm for Young Men who have Sex with Men and Young Transgender Females of color.

Its cultural. Gender roles, stigma around the disease, stigma around homosexuality  all of these are barriers to prevention, education and treatment in the Latino community, she adds.

It is not easy to cut through the HIV-equivalent of a dont ask, dont tell approach in a community that is characterized by rigid machismo/marianismo fears around immigration and a conservative value system.

Taboo and shame are often the only things standing in the way of someone getting tested. (Latinos typically test late, which means they are frequently diagnosed with AIDS within one year of testing positive.)

But maybe we  the health care providers and the community-based organizations  are part of the problem. Perhaps we have failed to provide successful prevention measures in the Hispanic/Latino community because we have failed to understand the diverse cultural identities, norms, and values that exist within the community itself.

The idea that all Latinos speak Spanish, for example, is a common misconception. Nearly 17 percent of Mexicans residing in New York City speak an indigenous language other than Spanish, many only learning the language well after they arrive here. Furthermore, the differences  linguistic and otherwise  between U.S.-born Latinos and foreign-born Latinos are huge. I think it is clear: any solution to reach the Hispanic/Latino population requires an approach as multi-pronged as the community itself.

The question becomes: How do we tailor our services to fill in the gaps? As community-based organizations, we need to take the time to explore non-traditional outreach methods that deliver the message in a way that works. Social networking has proven an important conduit for information on counseling, testing, and referrals to travel peer-to-peer through existing social connections. Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter have a similar effect, creating a sense of virtual community and camaraderie.

In the case of Harlem United, we use both tactics to spark discussion about the tough stuff, market the importance of early detection, and remind clients they are not alone.

As the Bending the Curve initiative kicks off this week, and as we celebrate National Latino HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, we also need to think big-picture. If we truly aim to end AIDS by 2020, the advancement of a policy, funding, and programmatic agenda that supports the full complexity of the Hispanic/Latino population is imperative. Simply put, it is an essential piece to the puzzle.
Nobody likes waiting in line. Not at the movies, not at the DMV, not at the airport. Now imagine that you have to wait in line every day after work as part of your job. Should you be paid for your time? Thats the issue that the Supreme Court is considering in Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk.

Time is money. The Supreme Court should recognize that this basic principle applies to employees and employers, and rule for the workers in the Integrity Staffing case.  Raul A. Reyes

Jesse Busk is a former employee of Integrity Staffing, a subcontractor that runs warehouses in Nevada for companies like Amazon. After clocking out of a twelve-hour shift, Busk had to line up for a security check before he could go home. At times, this process took 25 minutes. Busk believed he deserved to be paid for that time, so he sued Integrity Staffing. A lower court agreed with him, and last week the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case.

The decision in Integrity Staffing will be important to Latinos because Hispanics are well represented among hourly and minimum wage workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Latinos are 19.1 percent of the nations hourly workers. Whats more, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement reports that Latinos suffer more minimum wage and overtime pay violations that any other ethnic group.

Unlike many Supreme Court cases, this one is fairly straightforward. Both the law and basic fairness dictate that the high court should rule for Busk and his fellow employees. Yet the Obama administration  which holds itself out as a champion of American workers - is siding with Integrity Staffing.

To understand why the government is getting it wrong, lets take a look at existing law. For starters, the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) and the Portal-To-Portal Act (1947) establish rules for what is considered work time. Building on these laws, in Steiner v. Mitchell (1956) the Court found that if an activity was an integral and indispensable part of an employees duties, then the employee should be paid for that activity.

Integrity Staffing says that the time spent waiting to clear security is not an integral and indispensable part of its employees work. However, the security clearance was mandatory; employees who did not submit to it would be fired. By making the security check a requirement for the job, Integrity Staffing made it integral and indispensable. Although Amazon is not a party to the lawsuit, a company spokesman told The Washington Post that the time employees have to wait for the security check is minimal. If the time is so minimal, why is Integrity Staffing fighting over paying for it?

Twenty-five minutes a day may not sound like much. But multiply that by five days a week, then by 52 weeks a year, and then by an hourly wage. Millions of dollars are at stake here, not to mention potentially one hundred hours a year that a worker could be spending with his family, instead of being stuck in a line (unpaid) at work. Integrity Staffing could have likely avoided this whole issue by hiring more screeners and cutting down on the wait times. Instead, they prioritized saving money over respecting the employees time.

It is disappointing that the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor are not taking the side of the employees. This is the same Department of Labor that features articles like Defending Workers Rights is What We Do on their website, and that recently posted a tribute to Latino workers for Hispanic Heritage Month. Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute suggests that this is because the U.S. government employs workers under the same conditions as Integrity Staffing. In other words, Eisenbrey writes, as an employer, the government wants to be able to get away without paying its own workers for their time. So the Obama administrations position seems cynical and self-serving.

True, many large retailers and corporations employ practices similar to Integrity Staffing. That doesnt make it right. In fact, other companies  including Apple, JCPenney, CVS Health, and Ross Stores  have faced similar lawsuits as well. When these corporations argue that paying workers for their time in security lines would cost significant monies, they actually bolster the employees case that their time in line is significant. And theres nothing wrong with corporations making a profit, so long as they do so without circumventing wage laws.

It is a truism in business that Time is money. The Supreme Court should recognize that this basic principle applies to employees and employers, and rule for the workers in the Integrity Staffing case.
In Mexico, on el Dia de los Muertos or the Day of the Dead, relatives clean the graves of the departed and decorate them with favorite foods like a plate of chicken mole and favorite drinks like tequila. They also buy a special bread for the occasion, pan de muertos, and place bouquets of orange-colored Cempasuchil, a type of Mexican marigold on the graves.

The muertos holiday celebrated on Nov. 1 and 2, All Saints Day and All Souls Day, a fusion of Catholic and indigenous traditions, is a time to celebrate the lives of those who have passed.

But this year many Mexicans cannot celebrate death as a natural part of life.

How many more dead does Mexico need for the government and the international community to act?  Teresa Puente

They are living in a sort of purgatory searching for answers to what happened to 43 students who disappeared in late September in Guerrero.

For a culture that honors death at this time of year, there is mounting anger and frustration as the students have not been found.

In recent weeks at least 11 mass graves have been identified but government officials say the missing students are not among the dead. They are now searching an area near a garbage dump for bodies.

Who are these unidentified dead? Mass graves have been found in recent years from northern to southern Mexico.

And two weeks ago, three U.S. citizens from Texas and a friend from Mexico went missing while visiting relatives near Matamoros, Mexico. The bodies of four people were discovered this week near where they were seen abducted by police security forces and have now been identified as them.

How many more dead does Mexico need for the government and the international community to act?

This is not just about the missing students from Guerrero or the Americans dead in Matamaros.

This is not just a Mexican problem either. The violence is fueled by illegal guns smuggled from the U.S. into Mexico and by the drug appetite of people in the U.S. and the rest of the world.

A U.N. Human Rights Council report found that from 2006 to 2012 there were more than 102,000 homicides in Mexico and 70 percent of them were tied to the drug war. But in only 1 to 2 percent of the cases were there any convictions.

Few Mexicans trust the police. A 2012 poll found that 71 percent dont trust the local police and 64 percent dont trust the federal police or the army.

In the Guerrero case, more than 50 people have been arrested, including police officers and cartel members.

Government officials allege the attack against the students was orchestrated by a local mayor and his wife who feared the students from a teaching college were going to protest a speech. The mayor and his wife are now on the run.

The governor of Guerrero state has resigned and the President of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto who usually avoids talking about death and the drug war, has been forced to address the missing students with the nation. He also met with parents of the missing students.

Even if there are convictions in this case, what about all the other dead? And when will the parents of the 43 students be able to grieve their children?

There are powerful symbols of death within the Mexican culture.

Artist Jose Guadalupe Posada more than a century ago first illustrated La Catrina, a female skeleton wearing a hat of the upper class. La Santa Muerte is a dark folk saint known as the Goddess of Death.

There are many sayings about death.

The late Mexican poet Octavio Paz once wrote, The Mexican, in contrast, is familiar with death. (He) jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love.

Contemporary poet, Javier Sicilia, whose son was a victim of the drug war, stopped writing after his son was killed in 2011.

The world is no longer dignified enough for words, he wrote, according to the state-run Notimex news agency.

He also wrote an open letter to politicians and criminals in the Mexican magazine Proceso.

We do not want one more man, one of our sons, killed," he wrote, calling for "a national movement that we must keep alive to destroy the fear and isolation put in our minds and souls by your incompetence, politicians and your cruelty, criminals."

Mexicans have engaged is mass protests in Mexico City and Guerrero in support of the missing students.

But this year for many Mexicans there is too much pain. And they cannot grieve until there is justice.
This years record-breaking midterm election campaign will cost $3.67 billion, which the Center for Responsive Politics reports is the most expensive midterm campaign ever.

Beyond the impressive spending numbers, the attention on winning the Hispanic vote continues to become a more prominent message in the agendas and rhetoric of both parties. There are 25 million eligible Latino voters which is an increase of 2 million since 2012. Every month in fact approximately 50,000 U.S. born Hispanics turn 18.

After President Obamas impressive win of the Latino vote at 71 versus 27 for nominee Mitt Romney, the Democratic Party enjoys a greater level of comfort with the group that could influence key battle grounds. In Colorado for example, Latinos make up 15.4 percent of the eligible voting population, according to 2013 American Community Survey statistics analyzed by the polling firm Latino Decisions, and a fierce battle between incumbent Mark Udall (D) and Cory Gardner (R) for the senate could grant Republicans one of the six seats needed to regain control.

While Democrats have historically reported a wide advantage; however this number is declining vs. 2010 with 65 percent of Hispanic favoring Republicans in 2010 down to 57 percent this year. More than half of registered Latino voters (53 percent) say the Democratic Party takes their vote for granted. On the other hand, Republicans are also making their best attempts to reach the community and gain a relevant voice that balances accusations of amnesty versus the need for proper immigration reform. Their struggle in keeping the base aligned while gaining new Hispanic voters puts their positions at odds at times.

The good news for both parties is that Latinos #1 reason to vote is to support the Latino community, not either party, according to a Latino Decisions poll. A plurality of Latino voters nationwide, 37 percent, said they were voting in 2014 to support the Latino community, while 34 percent said they were voting to support the Democratic candidate and 16 percent said they were voting to support the Republican candidate.

This year Latinos have seen some olive branches extended by both parties recognizing the importance of their support. Jeb Bush (R), who is married to a Mexican-American immigrant, impressed Hispanic voters with his flawless Spanish language television spots as he endorsed Republican colleagues and numerous Democrats have also nudged to the community with emotional campaigns like Somos Familia, We are Family, by Texas Democratic governor candidate Wendy Davis (D), among others. But is their intention matching with their investment?

Univision Communications Inc. reports that more campaigns than ever are buying Spanish-language (SL) media but the percentage investment in SL remains at a marginal 4 percent; way below the 12 percent of registered voters who are Hispanic nationally. For example, in CA, where approximate 23 percent of registered voters are Hispanic, the biggest propositions spent less than 3 percent in SL media and Zero was spent in SL media for the Governor's race.

However there are some surprises in media spend. In this year's midterms through September, Republican investment in SL media now exceeds the Democrats, which has declined by 50 percent since 2012 (Cmag). This may be an indication of their comfort with the Latino vote while Republicans struggle in their attempts to find a relevant and consistent voice with the community.

In statewide and gubernatorial races in Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Illinois, where Spanish-language media investment could swing each election with Hispanics, investment in SL is up from 4 years ago, yet the share of spending relative to total market spending is a fraction of what it should considering the voter representation.

While many may argue that Latino voters are bilingual who are captured by the English media messaging, a recent Nielsen TV Brand Study reports that Spanish ads resonate better among both English dominant and Spanish dominant Hispanics delivering higher message recall and likeability. Among English dominant Latinos 35 years-old or older, Spanish ads perform almost 2 times better for likeability; therefore confirming that language does matter to get to the heart.

Hispanics are Americas fastest growing segment of the population and this trend will continue to compound in the years to come. It is births, not immigration what is driving the impressive growth, and with a population that is on average 10 years younger than non-Hispanic, Latinos represent the future that is reshaping the face of American politics.

Without the proper time, investment and resources to do the outreach great speeches and promises may not translate into the support and vote that makes a winning difference.

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Governor Rick Scott proves once again that Hispanics can beat you at the Florida polls on Election Day or help you win a tight race. Four years ago, Governor Scott carried the Hispanic vote by one point against Democrat Alex Sink and won the state by one percent. In other words, Scott won with the Hispanic vote. He didnt carry the Hispanic vote this time, but he carried enough of it to win.

Governor Scott won the hotly contested campaign over former Governor, former Republican, former Independent and now Democrat Charlie Crist by about 72,182 votes (at the 1:00 a.m. posting by the state) out of 5,641,730 votes cast by Floridians. Using the CNN exit polls as our source, of all voters, 69 percent were white of which 37 percent voted for Crist and 58 percent voted for Scott.

Perhaps Charlie Crist can change his name to Charlie Jesu- Cristo, change his registration and run for something next time as a Hispanic Libertarian.  Raoul Lowery Contreras

Blacks lived up to the projected block-voting, with 85 percent voting for Crist (AKA Chain Gang Charlie for his resurrection of the infamous black-dominated prison chain gangs in 1996) and only 12 percent for Rick Scott.

Among Hispanics, according to the same source, 58 percent voted for Crist and 38 percent voted for Scott. Hispanic men voted 58 percent for Crist and 40 percent for Scott. Hispanic women voted 59 percent for Crist and 35 percent voted for Scott.

The key to the Hispanic vote and the reason that Scott can claim victory is that 50 percent of Cuban- Americans voted for Crist while 46 percent voted for Scott.

When all the numbers are gathered and studied, that 46 percent Cuban vote for Scott will probably amount to his winning margin of 72,310.

The key here is the Cuban-American vote for which Florida is famous. Yes, they dont vote Republican in the percentages they used to as more and more youngsters enter the work and political worlds of Florida. But, as is the case nationally, a Republican need not win the Hispanic vote  a Republican only needs to win 35 percent of the vote to win in Florida.

The history is that, since Hispanic votes have been counted separately in presidential elections (1968), whenever the Republican presidential candidate received 35 percent or more of the Hispanic vote he has won. Florida Governor Rick Scott has achieved that percentage each time he has won.

Perhaps Charlie Crist can change his name to Charlie Jesu-Cristo, change his registration and run for something next time as a Hispanic Libertarian.
Puerto Ricos economic struggles are no secret. The Internet is full of opinion pieces criticizing policies that may have contributed to its continued economic decline, the mass exodus of young professionals seeking better opportunities elsewhere, and an ever-increasing government debt that also affects the millions of Americans whove invested in Puerto Ricos bonds.

However, few have delved into the dramatic impact that eight years of economic decay have had on Puerto Rican entrepreneurship. As an economist, and the founder of a relatively new organization dedicated to the development of Puerto Rican businesses, Ive seen firsthand just how important it is to foster entrepreneurship on the island.

A recent study of global entrepreneurship found that only 28 percent of Puerto Ricans think there are still good opportunities to start a business on the island, down from 35 percent in 2007 and nearly half the percentage of those polled in the U.S. and the rest of Latin America. Currently only 2 percent of the population are business owners (compared to 7.5 percent in the U.S.), despite the majority of islanders stating they have the skills and desire to start a business.

Puerto Rico has had its share of struggles, especially over the last decade. If it is to turn the economic corner and begin growing again, economists agree that entrepreneurship has to be a major economic driver.  Justin Velez-Hagan

Given the poor numbers, the government has enacted a series of incentives to attract foreign investment and boost entrepreneurial activity. Non-profit organizations, like my own, along with universities and government agencies are all banding together to change perceptions and increase small business growth.

Yet, one company, who has given over 2,000 Puerto Ricans the opportunity to start their own business, has come under attack from some of the very organizations who seek to better the lives of average Puerto Ricans.

Since its founding in 1980, Herbalife (NYSE: HLF) has used its network marketing business model to offer an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of individuals around the world to invest in and start their own small business. Their model is one of the few that is specifically appealing and available to low income individuals in areas of the world where few options for employment exist. In fact, Herbalife has more than 120,000 members in Latin America (where incomes are far lower, and inequality is far higher than in the U.S.).

Since joining Herbalife, more than 2,000 people now contribute to Puerto Ricos economy that might otherwise not have an opportunity to do so. (If these were full-time employees of a single company, they would comprise one of Puerto Ricos largest private employers.) These members either purchase discounted nutrition products for personal use or have started their own small businesses selling to others.

Despite being in the middle of a severe recession, royalties paid to Herbalifes business owners in Puerto Rico have more than tripled between 2012 and 2013. I doubt many other businesses on the island can lay claim to similar success.

With unemployment stagnating at more than twice the national rate  not including the large number of long-term unemployed or those in its immense informal economy  the historically entrepreneurial Puerto Rican population is increasingly turning to businesses similar to Herbalife for an opportunity to earn a living.

Yet, despite this growing demand, some have publicly derided Herbalifes business model. One of the loudest detractors is an institutional investor who stands to earn nearly $2 billion if Herbalife fails. It would be kind to call his opinion biased.

Others are concerned that Hispanics are more susceptible to be taken advantage of by Herbalifes business model, while finding no fault in other, even larger companies who rely on the same business practices.

These organizations biggest concerns surround the possibility of losing money in new business ventures. Yet, common sense has taught us all that there is an inherent risk in starting a new business and neither Herbalife, nor any other similar company, denies this. Without risk, there can be no reward. Stating that Hispanics lack this understanding is either disingenuous, or a little insulting.

Millions of people around the world have earned an income from networking marketing companies such as Alticor (Amway), Avon, Mary Kay, Tupperware, and Primerica. Herbalife is no different. In fact, I would say that Herbalife provides an opportunity that caters more specifically to those who are in greatest need and stand to gain the most from a new business venture, while it simultaneously has one of the best consumer protection policies in the industry, including 100 percent refund guarantees (even for shipping costs) for the return of all unsold products purchased in the prior 12 months if a member decides to stop selling Herbalife products for any reason. Most entrepreneurs endure much greater risks when starting their own ventures.

Puerto Rico has had its share of struggles, especially over the last decade. If it is to turn the economic corner and begin growing again, economists agree that entrepreneurship has to be a major economic driver. Neither the government of Puerto Rico, nor the hundreds of benevolent non-profit organizations offering a helping hand to Puerto Ricans can make that happen without the private sector. And with a relatively poor population, Puerto Rico needs more organizations like Herbalife whose business model is one of the few that can provide an opportunity to all budding entrepreneurs, regardless of their income level.

After nearly a decade in recession, every policy alternative must be considered and every opportunity that has the possibility of helping to increase entrepreneurship in Puerto Rico should be advocated for, including and especially those that can offer a chance to those from every socioeconomic background.
The U.S.-Mexico border wasnt immune to the Republican tidal wave that swept America on Election Day, and the results have political and policy implications for Congress in 2015.

Back and forth in Texas and Arizona

If youre looking for Election Day drama, my home state of Texas isnt usually the place to look. The Lone Star state is solidly red, but there is one slice of the congressional map that serves as a barometer for the rest of the electorate.

Former CIA operative and Republican Will Hurd won Texas only swing seat, in the sprawling 23rd district. The 23rd stretches from San Antonio west to the edges of El Paso and contains 800 miles of border, including border communities Eagle Pass and Del Rio where I work with border authorities often.

This part of Texas congressional map has been tweaked over the years because of redistricting, but these parts of the state have been represented by Republicans before, most recently by one-term Rep. Quico Canseco and former Rep. Henry Bonilla before that.

Speaker of the House John Boehner and new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell need to coral their respective caucuses and advance an agenda that proves it can be trusted with the controls of government. Worrying about whether the president will veto the bills Congress sends to his desk should be a distant second in concerns.  Nelson Balido

My advice to Rep.-elect Hurd: dont get comfortable. This seat has seen the incumbent go down to defeat in the last two elections. Surviving here isnt easy, often going the way of broader national results.

In Arizonas border district covering Tucson and the southeast region of the states border with Mexico, incumbent Democratic Rep. Ron Barber as of this writing is still waiting to learn his fate versus Republican challenger Martha McSally, as they are separated by only a few hundred votes. This is an almost exact replay of what happened in this district two years ago when the two matched up.

In the scheme of things, the outcomes in these two border districts wont have major ramifications in the House, where the GOP will hold a majority not seen since the Truman administration.

But the winners in these two seats bring to the table the unique perspective of competitive border districts, where one of the most contentious issues facing the new Congress  immigration reform  has an outsized political impact. Their party leaders would be wise to include them in any reform plan that moves forward.

Does immigration reform get moving?

One could easily look at the election results and determine that there would be no upside to a Republican Congress getting to work on an immigration reform package next year. After all, to the extent that immigration played any role in election 2014, it was limited to talk over the unaccompanied minors at the U.S.-Mexico border, an issue that largely faded from the headlines by the time Election Day rolled around.

There is no argument to be made that this years electorate was clamoring for an immigration reform bill. Yet I still believe that Congress must do something about the thousands of students and young men and women called Dreamers that are in the United States by no fault of their own yet lack a piece of paper so they can legally work.

But Republicans shouldnt assume that 2014 offers up a big lesson about 2016.

The GOP deserves credit for upping its get-out-the-vote game and doing a much better job with candidate recruitment. But the Republicans cant bank on such poor Democratic voter turnout next cycle, a presidential year where, as President Obamas 2012 operation proved, Democrats have performed much better.

The Republican Party does not want to wake up the day after Election Day in two years and wonder what happened to its majority. Speaker of the House John Boehner and new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell need to coral their respective caucuses and advance an agenda that proves it can be trusted with the controls of government. Worrying about whether the president will veto the bills Congress sends to his desk should be a distant second in concerns.

Even in a controversial issue like immigration, there is room for bipartisan agreement, as an Obama executive order would only fan the flames of frustration. Visa reform for both high-skilled and low-skilled workers, a functional guest worker program and smart border security measures offer areas where both parties can get a win and prove to the American people that theyre serious about the business of governing.

So congratulations, Republicans, on a hard-earned victory. But get down to work in January, even on the tough issues. Otherwise 2016 could be a rude awakening.
Now that the smoke has cleared at the United Nations, there is little question about President Obamas intentions; they are now crystal clear. Incontrovertible evidence exists that suggests the proposal for a return to the 1967 borders in Israel was orchestrated by the White House. By any measure that is a break from the historic ties between the U.S. and Israel and, as many commentators have noted, an act of betrayal.

It is also an act that cannot be trivialized. Of course, Israel will ignore the proposition. Netanyahu hasnt any alternative. President Trump will regard it as an openly hostile act and may repudiate it by naming Jerusalem the capital of Israel. But what must also be realized is that even a coat of paint in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank is technically illegal and a violation of international law according to the Hague Court of International Justice. While the court doesnt have the ability to impose its will, as was demonstrated by Chinas President Xi repudiating a decision on the Spratly islands, it can bog down the Israeli government in legal harassment.

Most significantly, this proposal could be a casus belli. Suppose Palestinian activists decide to take matters into their own hands by arguing they have a legitimate claim to Samaria and Judea thereby employing force to obtain the territory they have acquired through legal decree. What Obama may not have thought through is how disruptive his proposal might be. Moreover, since the Sunni nations have put the Palestinian question behind them, it is odd that President Obama should insert it into the international equation as a front burner issue. Now terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iranian Quds can claim a legitimate right to attack an Israeli government theoretically violating the law.

Even the insertion of a note into the Western Wall, a practice that has gone on as a Jewish religious ritual since 1967, can be declared an act violating the U.N. proposal. That Obama chose this matter as his swan song is revealing. His hostility towards Israel has been manifest in many ways, but at no point in the past has an American president acted as Obama has. This White House abstention and behind the scenes maneuvering with sponsoring states is unprecedented. The lies leading to the decision and rationalizations in the aftermath are also unprecedented.

In fact, this decision puts a slow burn on Donald Trump. Despite the number of global issues he will be obliged to digest setting foot in the White House from Syria to NATO, from the South China Sea air perimeter to North Korea, he will now be saddled with a Palestinian state issue most officials thought was on hold for the foreseeable future.

Obama has virtually destroyed any legacy he hoped to transmit to future historians about his eight years in office. He has left in ruins all he tried to manage.

The world is in disarray in large part because of his mismanagement or ignoring any management.

His ego wont allow a dispassionate assessment of the Obama presidency, but if one were to do so after this recent U.N. fiasco, Barack Obama would have to be considered among the worst presidents in American history.
A headline that would become famous appeared in the New York Daily News in October 1975 after then-President Gerald Ford denied federal assistance to spare the city from bankruptcy. It read: Ford to City: Drop Dead.

President Obama has told Israel much the same. By instructing his U.N. ambassador not to veto a resolution condemning Israel for building so-called settlements on disputed land, the president has aided and comforted that nations enemies. The U.S. abstention will inevitably invite stepped-up attacks against Israelis, as well as calls for more boycotts by the European Union, whose ugly anti-Semitic past and present is well documented.

In the Middle East, symbols can be more important than substance, and this symbolic act will send a strong message to Israels enemies.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the resolution a shameful ambush and distorted, noting, It states that the Jewish quarter and Western Wall (in Jerusalem) are occupied, which is absurd. Netanyahu, who has had a tense relationship with President Obama, suggested he expects better relations between the U.S. and Israel after Donald Trump becomes president.

Netanyahu likes to cite history to show how the Jews were in the land long before Arab peoples showed up and started rewriting the past to the point that it belongs in the fiction section of bookstores.

What makes anyone think that what Israel does, or does not do, has any effect on the behavior and declared religious mandate of those dedicated to eliminating the country and killing and/or expelling every Jew from it?

Did unilaterally relinquishing Gaza bring Israel closer to peace? It did not. Instead, it invited Hamas to use the region as a launching pad for terrorist attacks.

It is the same with agreements between Palestinian and Israeli leaders. Israel released terrorist prisoners and got more terror. Israel gave up land and got more terror.

Only the deliberately blind and deaf who refuse to believe the stated and repeated goals of Palestinian leadership and much of the Arab world (and Iran) to eliminate Israel still think that the key to peace and stability lies solely with that country.

Only the self-deluded think the establishment of a separate Palestinian state will result in peace. Such a state would most certainly be used as a base for a modern final solution against Israel.

What kind of state would the Palestinians establish? Their leaders have already said it would be one without Jews. Netanyahu noted that in any other scenario this would be seen as ethnic cleansing, but because much of the world hates Jews and is embarrassed by Israel and its prosperity, it applies a different standard to the Palestinians.

The late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin once told me that while Israel needs friends, it could never fully trust any nation for its security. The Obama administrations refusal to veto the U.N. resolution is more proof he was right.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says he will ask Congress to stop sending money to the U.N. until the resolution is repealed. His proposal is gaining support among some pro-Israel Democrats. Netanyahu has announced the termination of programs and aid to nations that voted in favor of the resolution and recalled some of his countrys ambassadors from those states.

At a time when Jews the world over are celebrating Hanukkah and the miracle of lights, Barack Obama has attempted to turn out the light on the Jewish state.

Israel will survive, because it has survived worse than a U.N. resolution, but the action will only encourage her enemies, which include every nation that voted for this resolution and engaged in boycotts of Israeli products and businesses.

The prophet Isaiah wrote: Speak tenderly to Jerusalem (Isaiah 40:2). The Psalmist said: Pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6).

In his final insult to Israel, President Obama has spoken harshly and ensured there will be more war, not peace. The Nobel committee should demand he return his prematurely awarded Peace Prize.
The Cub Scouts are facing a transgender controversy after an eight-year-old born a girl who identifies as a boy was asked to leave a New Jersey pack.

Several readers alerted me to this story from Secaucus, New Jersey. Before I get into the heart of the issue, I want to explain why I have chosen not to identify the parent or the child.

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I find it reprehensible a grown woman would parade her child in front of the national media to advance some sort of cultural agenda. This parent is sacrificing her childs privacy and innocence for 15 minutes of fame. And I refuse to give the woman the satisfaction of reading her name in print.

The eight-year-old, who had been a member of the scouting group for about a month, was kicked out of Cub Scout Pack 87 because she is transgender. Local news accounts indicate an unknown number of parents were upset their sons were in a scouting group with a girl who identifies as a boy.

How dare they judge me? the child told The Record newspaper. I dont have to explain it. Its the way Im born.

The New York Daily News reports it may be the first case of a child being prohibited from participating in scouting activities because of gender identity.

But the Boy Scouts of America defended the childs ouster, pointing out to the newspaper the child does not meet the requirements to participate in this program.

Gender identity isnt related to sexual orientation, BSA spokesperson Effie Delimarkos told the New York Daily News.

In other words, the child was not kicked out for being transgender. The child was kicked out for not being a boy.

It made me mad, the child told The Record. I had a sad face, but I wasnt crying. Im way more angry than sad. My identity is a boy. If I was them, I would let every person in the world go in. Its right to do.

The mother of the ex-Cub Scout told the newspaper she first thought her child was a tomboy because he liked climbing trees and digging in dirt to look for worms.

But she said she knew it was more than that by the time he was 5 and she began reading about what it means to be transgender, the newspaper reported.

Last year, the mother allowed the child to come out as a boy and get a short haircut. The Record published an editorial calling for the Boy Scouts to reverse its decision.

There should be some common sense applied here with regard to an 8-year-old. (Name omitted) wants to be a Scout. He identifies as a boy. There should be no need for litigation or years of court battles. He should just be allowed to be a Scout, the newspaper wrote.

Sooner rather than later, I suspect the Boy Scouts may face a legal challenge over its transgender policy. And the Boy Scouts will face further controversies when they are forced to confront non-binary scouts, gender-fluid scouts and genderless scouts.

The Girl Scouts already allow boys who identify as girls to sell Tagalongs and Thin Mints.

So do not be surprised if the Boy Scouts of America capitulate. They've already done it once before  sacrificing their long-cherished values on the altar of tolerance and diversity.

That's why so many families are getting involved in organizations like American Heritage Girls and Trail Life USA. Both are faith-based scouting organizations built on a firm spiritual foundation.

Trail Life USA was founded in 2013 in the aftermath of the BSAs decision to forego their core values for the sake of political expedience. Since then, they have experienced explosive growth  with more than 26,000 members.

I believe organizations like Trail Life and American Heritage Girls help will raise up a new generation of good citizens and patriots  young men and young women who will do their duty to God and country  a generation that is physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.
Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector

STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH

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Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

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PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan

Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

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There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

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The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

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This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan

Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments

Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan

Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement

With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building

OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border

Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh
With Iraqi Security Forces fighting ISIS inside of Mosul, it is now realistic to assume that ISIS could soon be driven out of Iraq. Observers now need to ask the question, what does a post-ISIS Iraq look like? If nothing changes, the Sunni Arab regions will, once again, return to being mired in a vicious cycle of sectarian violence. How to prevent such an outcome is a key question and I believe that unless the Sunni Arab regions of Iraq, once controlled by ISIS, perceive they have a path forward to becoming a full partner in a Shia-dominated government, this area will remain a breeding ground for terrorists.

To provide some background: Prior to the 2003 U.S. led invasion of Iraq, the Sunni Arabs, at only twenty percent of the population, were the ruling elite of the country and enjoyed a privileged status over the majority Shia Arabs.

Under Saddam Husseins dictatorship, an authoritarian rule of the country was accomplished through a vertically integrated structure that placed all power at the central government in Baghdad. Iraqi local and provincial authorities were merely administrative arms of the bureaucrats in Baghdad who dictated the orders from Saddam Hussein.

After the U.S. led invasion of 2003 toppled Saddam Hussein, an Iraqi constitution was ratified in 2005. Article 5 of the constitution contains a provision that allows provinces to band together to form a semiautonomous region(s). Shortly after the constitution was ratified, the Kurds, under Article 5, formed what is now known as Kurdistan while the Sunni areas have not banded together. Consequently, local and provincial governments in the Sunni areas of Iraq still have no more authority to make decisions than they did when the country was ruled under a dictatorship.

Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with a common sectarian enemy in the emerging majority Shia government of Iraq, the Sunni Arabs, at first, welcomed al Qaeda, a Sunni terrorist organization, into their communities despite never sharing the same vision for what they wanted to achieve beyond defeating Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces.

By 2005, however, a noticeable split emerged between these two disparate parts of the insurgency because al Qaeda fighters were increasingly seen as outsiders terrorizing the Sunni Arab communities. As the Sunni tribal leaders came to see al Qaeda as an even greater threat than the Shias, they aligned with the U.S. military which armed them, trained them, and then paid these disaffected Sunni tribal militias to fight against al Qaeda. This transformation, often referred to as the Sunni Awakening, was a turning point in defeating al Qaeda in Iraq.

Unfortunately, in 2011, President Obama, against the advice of the intelligence and defense community, withdrew all remaining U.S. military forces from Iraq. By severing our military-to-military relationships, we also lost our political influence within the Iraqi government.

Immediately after the U.S. military pulled out of Iraq, Prime Minister Nori Maliki launched a systematic campaign to push the Sunnis Arabs out of the government creating an opening for ISIS, an organization evolved from Al Qaeda and battle-hardened in Syria, to spill over into Iraq and rapidly take control all of the Sunni-dominated regions who had no loyalty to the Iraqi government in Baghdad.

Assuming the current offensive will expel ISIS from Iraq, I urge the incoming Trump administration to encourage the Sunnis to form, and the Iraqi government to accept, a semi-autonomous region, a Sunnistan, similar to Kurdistan. Doing so could go a long way toward creating the conditions where the Sunnis feel they have more say in governing themselves at the local and provincial levels. This could help bring stability to the country, reduce sectarian violence, and to prevent the Sunni Arab areas from, once again, becoming a safe haven for radical Islamic terrorists.

This solution is not perfect and it still requires an equitable distribution of the oil wealth of the country. A semi-autonomous region, however, can provide the Sunni Arabs with the non-violent political voice they need.
On Wednesday, Secretary Kerry gave a speech at the State Department outlining a two state solution for the conflicts in the Middle East. With just three weeks until the new administration is set to take over, this last ditch, show of 'effort' included the Secretary claiming "no American administration has done more for the security of Israel than Barack Obama's." Nothing could be further from the truth.

For nearly 70 years, the State of Israel has served as an example of democracy and stability in a region surrounded by chaos. As Iran continues to flout the flawed nuclear deal, it has become apparent through their own ballistic missile testing and supply of sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah that Iran is continuing to threaten the safety and security of Israel, and the United States.

Circumstances have changed over the past decade, and as a result, Israel has become increasingly surrounded by various enemies. The existence of Israel and its continued survival is critical, especially as the Middle East teeters on total collapse. Now more than ever, America needs Israel and ignoring that fact will cause greater danger for us and our allies.

Since the nation was created as the homeland of the Jewish people, Israel has faced countless assaults, terrorist attacks, and threats to wipe it off the map. Despite these threats, Israel has become a home to freedom, democracy, and innovation. Israel boasts a booming economy by leading the world in new technology startups and life-saving innovations for the American people, particularly our military men and women.

While serving in the Middle East, I saw several of these pioneering tools up close, like the emergency bandage, designed by Israel and found in every U.S. soldiers first aid kit. Additionally, Israeli-made armor technology was utilized to shield the U.S. militarys Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles and ultimately saved countless American servicemen and women that could have fallen victim to Iranian-made explosively formed penetrators (EFPs).

Israel continues to provide the world with these critical technologies even as the people are burdened by endless bouts of violence. The danger has grown in the past decade with the constant threat of rocket attacks and other bombardments becoming commonplace. After Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, with hopes of greater stability and security, the terrorist group Hamas secured places of higher ground along the border and made greater advances in their crude rocket capability. Coupling the rocket attacks with the random knife attacks or bombings by Palestinian jihadists, its unbelievably dangerous and being there materializes that feeling of constant vulnerability and conflict  something the Jewish people have felt for centuries.

We all want to see an end to the deadly conflict, but true peace can only come when the threats to Israel and its people end. In late June, we woke up to the horror of another senseless terrorist attack in Israel that took the life of a 13-year-old American girl asleep in her bed. I stood with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu when he said that you dont murder a sleeping child for peace. For peace to have a chance, these senseless murders need to stop immediately.

First and foremost, the United Nations cannot stifle negotiations by imposing resolutions that ultimately delegitimizes the state of Israel. Secondly, Hamas and the Palestinian leadership must recognize Israels right to exist and stop the incitement of violence. There needs to be a true Palestinian partner that is ready to sit down and end the decades-old conflict to ensure a lasting and secure peace.

On my many visits to Israel, I continue to be impressed by the resilience and commitment of the people of Israel to the state. The young people of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) serving their obligation to the military (for little pay) are on constant guard and ready to defend their fellow citizens from daily threats, regardless of what God they worship. In a time of war, this means protecting civilians who are constantly put in harms way by terrorists and thugs using human shields in the hopes of turning public opinion against Israel. On many occasions, Israel has met the international standard of the laws of armed conflict and even exceeded that standard by exercising great restraint to reduce civilian casualties, particularly at great risk to IDF servicemen and women.

In recognizing that Israel is one of our strongest allies, its important that we continue to cooperate on further partnerships and provide the necessary security assistance. Rather than hampering Israel with arbitrary limits on the funds Congress can provide, we need to ensure our ally has what it needs to stave off threats from jihadist terrorists and maniacal regimes. I hope that Congress and the new administration can work together to do away with the limits imposed on the current security assistance package signed by the Obama Administration.

In no area is this strategic partnership more critical than with the looming threat from Iran. Iran has continued to fund Hezbollah and Hamas and provide weaponry to those responsible for taking so many innocent lives. We cannot underestimate the Iranian regime or their threats. The United States must continue to convey to the Iranians that we will hold them accountable for their ongoing destabilizing and threatening activities against Israel.

At a time when the global order seems to be falling apart in the Middle East, there remains one constant for the United States: the friendship and steadfastness of our ally Israel. The last eight years have seen some troubling disagreements and clashes between the United States and Israel made all the more fractured by a President and administration that believes there should be daylight between our two countries in areas that should not divide us. Dismissing our friends and their needs for security was not good policy, especially when driven by politics.

Most recently, President Obama acted against our countrys decade-long, bipartisan agreement to stand by Israel. He undoubtedly should have vetoed the UNs resolution on Israeli settlements, and his failure to do so highlights his willingness to support dictator enemies in Iran and Cuba rather than supporting the democratic state of Israel. Its an embarrassment.

As we look ahead to 2017, I am confident the new White House administration will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel, reverse the damage done by Obama and understand the critical need for this partnership as it relates to our stability and security in the Middle East. Now more than ever we must reassure our allies in the global community that we are here, ready to stand for democracy and freedom.
A small change to U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) policy that went into effect on Thursday will allow a small number of undocumented immigrants to join the U.S. military.

The Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Jessica L. Garfola Wright, signed a memorandum expanding a pilot program called the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest, or MAVNI, which allows permanent residents to join the military.

A DOD spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, told Fox News Latino in an email that the expansion allows Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients to apply for enlistment into the military through the MAVNI pilot program.

DACA is the program, extended earlier this year by the White House, that provides protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who arrived as minors before June 2007.

The DOD change comes at a time when military personnel are being forced out of the armed forces in order to meet budget targets.

Under the new program, undocumented immigrants who want to join the military need to show expertise in a field that the DOD considers vital to the national interest, said Christensen.

Typically, this includes, he added, certain health care professionals in areas where the military services have shortfalls and certain experts in languages critical to the Department.

The policy change is unlikely to affect force numbers significantly, Christensen said. He said in more than three years, approximately 2,900 people have entered the armed forces through the MAVNI program, with a maximum of 1,500 in any given year.

We do not know how many people with the required skills will apply to enter the military and therefore do not have an estimate of how many people this will potentially impact, he said.

Still, some feel the change was a political move, particularly since the military is dealing with such severe cutbacks.

I know enlisted people who are getting pushed out of the service right now, he said. Its hard [to deal with that] and at the same time have people who arent in the country legally replace them, said Justin Velez-Hagan, the founder of the National Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce and an economic policy researcher at the University of Maryland.

Velez-Hagan said he believes the change could further dampen morale in the armed forces.

Its tough to continue to fight for what you believe in if what you believe in is getting changed, he said.

But others say the changes dont go far enough  the military, they say, made the requirements so restrictive that very few will be able to qualify.

Cesar Vargas, the co-director of the DRM Action Coalition, which spent the better part of a decade fighting for DACA and for the rights of the so-called Dreamers, said the changes should have been more sweeping.

Its a positive step, Vargas told FNL, but too limited, because the program is small, and the skill-set that theyre looking for is so restrictive. I know maybe one person who might qualify.
Maria Echaveste, 60, is bound to make history by becoming not only the first woman ever to serve as U.S. ambassador to Mexico  she will be one of the very few Mexican-Americans to do so.

She was nominated by president Obama last week and her confirmation now awaits Senate confirmation.

The Texas-born corporate lawyer, a graduate of UC Berkeley and Stanford University and former White House staffer, has worn many hats in her long and exceptional career. Next up is putting her diplomacy skills to the test in one of the largest U.S. consular operations in the world.

She embodies diversity of influence, knowledge and I think thats very special, said David Ayon, an expert with the Wilson Center, U.S. Director of the binational Focus Mexico/Enfoque Mexico project and former coworker and friend.

Echavestes pick comes weeks before the midterm election, at a time of mixed political sentiments over immigration, as criticism from Latino and immigration groups keeps mounting due to the government and Congress inaction in introducing a policy reform.

As was the case of other Mexican American ambassadors, such as Julian Nava, some say Echevastes appointment points toward electoral expediency; others believe she represents the right dose of bicultural mix to reach for diplomatic solutions in bilateral relations between the U.S. and Mexico.

I think it is a great advantage that she's a Mexican American, and she's going to be the right ambassador, just right for the times that were living, he told Fox News Latino.

Her colleagues describe her as a fluent Spanish speaker with a clear Mexican accent, who thinks of herself as a nerd, enjoys language and has a wide range of interests.

A White House official during the Clinton administration, where she served as Deputy Chief of Staff from 1998 to 2001, Echaveste comes to the post compensating her lack of diplomatic experience with her great influence in Washington, where she is well known as an authority on immigration and public policy issues.

Her husband, Christopher Edley, Jr., a former dean of the University of California, in Berkeley Law School and a Harvard Law professor, has also moved between academia and public service, focusing on civil rights and holding close ties to Hillary Clinton.

From 2009 to 2010, Mrs. Echaveste served as a U.S. special representative to Bolivia, and before that as an advisor to the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center, as a member of the Board of Directors of CARE, a humanitarian organization fighting global poverty, and also participated with the Alliance for Excellent Education, organization which advocates for reforms on education.

In 2010 she joined the board of the recently formed U.S./ Mexico Foundation (USMF), organization that claims to be the only national 501(c)(3) in the United States dedicated to carrying out philanthropic efforts in the U.S. exclusively for Mexico.

Maria Echaveste is among the best and brightest that our community has to offer. Her roots are in Texas and California, two states who understand well the importance of the U.S. Mexico relationship. Shell be an excellent ambassador, said Texas Congressman Pete Gallego.

If confirmed, Echaveste will be replacing Ambassador Anthony Wayne, a career diplomat who served in Mexico since 2011.

Mexico is the U.S. second largest export market, and its third largest trading partner and energy supplier. According to figures by the State Department, the U.S. buys over 75 percent of Mexicos exports  in 2013 bilateral trade in goods and services was over $500 billion, having grown in each of the last three years.

I think her appointment is stellar  She has a really distinguished career, and a real desire to improve bilateral relations between the United States and Mexico. I think it is a very positive choice and I think it will be well received among many in the United States and Mexico, said Professor Harley Shaiken, Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley.
Most of the nearly 60,000 Central American children who have arrived on the U.S.-Mexico border in the last year still don't have lawyers to represent them in immigration court, and advocates are scrambling to train volunteer attorneys to help cope with the massive caseload.

With the number of unaccompanied immigrant children more than doubling this past fiscal year, the need for attorneys has surged, and it has been exacerbated by the immigration courts' decision to fast-track children's cases, holding initial hearings within a few weeks instead of months.

Immigrants can have counsel in immigration courts, but lawyers are not guaranteed or provided at government expense. Having an attorney can make a big difference: While almost half of children with attorneys were allowed to remain in the country, only 10 percent of those without representation were allowed to stay, according to an analysis of cases through June by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Efforts are underway from White Plains, New York, to New Orleans to train attorneys at private law firms on the country's byzantine immigration laws and how to work with traumatized, Spanish-speaking children, many of whom are fleeing violence  a far cry from the corporate clients most deal with on a daily basis.

"We're doing pretty well on finding willing lawyers. We've got to get them trained, we've got to get them matched to that child," said Reid Trautz, director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association's practice and professionalism center. "It just takes time."

Last month, Vice President Joe Biden urged lawyers to increase efforts to take on the children's cases. Since then, the cities of San Francisco and New York have each announced plans to allocate roughly $2 million to help provide more lawyers for unaccompanied minors. California has appropriated $3 million toward the effort.

About 800 immigration lawyers have signed up to volunteer on the cases, the immigration lawyers association said.

So have many other attorneys without any background in immigration law. They are being trained and paired with experienced immigration practitioners, who serve as mentors.

"We've had tax lawyers do this, corporate lawyers, real estate  anybody can do it," said Ricardo Martinez-Cid, president of the Cuban American Bar Association, which started a program earlier this year to represent unaccompanied children in Miami.

Immigrant advocates say the efforts are working, but not as quickly as desired. Nonprofit organizations have been boosting staff, but there aren't enough experienced immigration lawyers to take on the cases or to mentor volunteers. Nor is there enough long-term funding for cases that can take more than a year to resolve, they said.

"It is very much a triage situation, and it is very, very frustrating because you know when someone calls and you turn them away, it is very unlikely they'll find counsel," said Judy London, directing attorney of the immigrants' rights project at Los Angeles-based Public Counsel.

Some children will apply for green cards under a federal program for abused and abandoned children, while others who came fleeing violence in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are seeking asylum.

One of the biggest challenges for volunteer lawyers is getting clients to open up about their lives when they have been beaten, raped or seen friends and family killed.

Three of the 30 children whose cases are being handled by Public Counsel have a history of suicide attempts or risk of suicide, London said. Most children are not going to feel comfortable walking into a fancy law firm and would probably run from the building, she said, unless an attorney meets the child outside and walks jointly through the door.

Jack Ross, an attorney in Southern California, said he met with a 16-year-old client four times before he told his full story. The boy, who arrived in the country two years ago, fled years of violence from his father and a police department that refused to protect him, he said.

"It's some of the most compelling legal work you can do, because the stakes are so high," said Ross, who represents hospitals and care providers in negligence claims and contract disputes. "You become so emotionally invested in the client, their well-being is really at the forefront of everything, and that doesn't happen a lot in law."

Before the recent influx of unaccompanied children, only about half were represented, said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit that pairs volunteer lawyers with children. She could not say how many children now have lawyers, but said certainly fewer than before.

Advocates have sued to demand the government provide the children with attorneys at the government's expense. The lawsuit is pending before a judge in Seattle.

They say children with representation are more likely to attend their court hearings.

This week, the Homeland Security Department acknowledged that tens of thousands of young families caught on the border failed to meet with federal immigration agents as instructed. A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said she could not say whether they attended court hearings on their cases.

At a recent immigration court hearing in Los Angeles, most of the 19 children whose cases were scheduled showed up. Seven had attorneys. Others were accompanied by a relative, as the judge reviewed their names and ages.

Their guardians were given a handout with a list of low-cost legal service providers and told to return in December with a lawyer.

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New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez is viewed by many as highly likely to win re-election by a large margin, and if she does, one of the groups that she will have to thank for it is conservative Democrats.

Lt. Gov. John Sanchez, who is running for re-election on the ticket with Martinez, told Fox News Latino that "conservative Democrats, who are primarily Hispanics" have been important backers.

"Hispanics in New Mexico are not a monolithic block as far as they cast their votes," Sanchez said. "They want leaders they can related to, and leaders who will offer solutions to the challenges facing theme every day  their kids' education and ability for them to have a good job."

To wit, Sanchez said, the state with the highest Latino percentage of the general population is led by three conservative Latino Republicans  him, Martinez, and Secretary of State Dianna Duran. Duran is also running for re-election.

But the nations first Latina governor is not taking anything for granted. Martinez, a Republican, has a huge war chest that crushes that of her opponent, Democrat Gary King.

King, New Mexicos two-term attorney general, had a balance in his campaign account of $157,730 at the beginning of this month  chump change compared to Martinezs nearly $3.8 million.

The Republican Governors Association has taken out ads  to the tune of about $350,000  supporting Martinez.

Overall, Martinez leads King in most regions of the state.

The only area where King outshone the governor was in north-central New Mexico. That area includes Democratic-leaning Santa Fe, Espanola and Taos and counties with large Latino populations.

In those areas King leads Martinez 59 percent to 30 percent.

Overall, Martinez trails among Hispanic voters with 36 percent supporting her and 56 percent supporting King.

New Mexicos population of roughly 2 million is nearly 50 percent Latino, the highest share in the nation. More than half a million Latinos in the state are eligible to vote, according to Pew Hispanic Research.

Martinez has backing from 20 percent of Democrats polled while 12 percent said they were still undecided. Hispanic Democrats who opted to throw support behind Martinez contributed a key role to her 2010 victory.

A race with an incumbent is always the incumbents to lose, said Lonna Atkeson, University of New Mexico political science professor and director of the Center for the Study of Voting, Elections and Democracy. Gov. Martinez has a lot of charisma, she looks very confident when she speaks.

And in a state where registered Democrats far outnumber Republicans, Martinez has proved adept at attracting voters across the aisle.

In New Mexico, a candidate has to be able to put together a coalition of voters, Atkeson said to Fox News Latino. Any Republican has to develop a base where theyre going to cross over from other parties.

King is no weakling, however.

He has name recognition in New Mexico, where his father was governor.

Hes fairly wealthy and has name legacy, Atkeson said. His strength is that he has been a tried and true political figure in the state for a long time.

But, she added, he lacks Martinezs charisma, and has not been able to generate much excitement among the electorate.

A few weeks ago, he drew negative press when he said that Martinez "does not have a Latino heart.

Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, said to Fox News Latino that Kings comment indicated an assumption that Hispanics should think alike, and anyone who has views different from the stereotype cant be really Latino.

Its treating Hispanics as a herd and not as thinking individuals, he said.

Efforts to get a comment from King's campaign or the state Democratic organization about his candidacy were unsuccessful.

King has taken aim at Martinezs handling of the states economy, criticizing her, for example, for giving large corporations tax breaks.

The Republican Party of New Mexico said Martinez is the better choice.

Being the first Hispanic female governor, she fights for conservative efforts and is focused on making New Mexico a better place to live economically by providing better jobs, she fights for better education and helps small business flourish, said Emily Strickler, the groups communications director. New Mexico has a six-decade long history of Democrat legislative control that has put us at or near the bottom on the very issues Gov. Martinez is trying to rectify.

According to recent polling, it appears the public supports her reelection, Strickler said. She wants to boldly change decades of a culture that promotes and accepts low expectations.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Spain's government has filed appeals before the country's top court to try to halt the powerful northeastern region of Catalonia from staging an independence referendum, the prime minister said Monday.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said the Nov. 9 referendum called by Catalan regional leader Artur Mas represented "a grave attack on the rights of all Spaniards," who under the 1979 Spanish Constitution were the only ones who could vote on issues of sovereignty.

He stressed that the Constitution "was based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish state" and that while the charter could be amended in the future, right now the government's priority was to defend it. He spoke after a special Cabinet meeting called to discuss the crisis.

He said the government is challenging both the referendum call and a law passed by the Catalan government that allowed Mas to call the vote.

If the Constitutional Court takes on the appeals, as is widely expected to happen this week, both the law and the referendum will automatically be suspended while the court deliberates, a process that could take months or years.

Unhappy at Spain's refusal to give it more powers, Catalonia has vowed for months to hold the referendum. The move is the latest secession push in Europe following Scotland's recent vote to remain in Britain.

Polls indicate most Catalans favor holding the referendum but are roughly evenly split on independence.

Mas insists the vote will take place but at the same time says he won't do anything illegal.

Catalonia, whose capital is Barcelona, has prepared ballot boxes and begun publicity campaigns to inform the region's 5 million voters about the referendum.

Rajoy said it was not too late for the Catalan government to change direction, adding that he remained opened to talks.

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The transfer of prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay has ground to a halt amid a slow Pentagon approval process, causing deep frustration within the administration and raising doubts that President Barack Obama will be able to fulfill his campaign promise to close the offshore prison for terrorism suspects.

A detainee sent back to his native Algeria in March is the only prisoner to have moved out this year, beyond the controversial exchange of five Taliban members in return for long-held captive U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

The slow pace is the result of the law that gives Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel  not the commander in chief  the final authority to transfer any of the 149 terror suspects being held at Guantanamo. Pentagon officials say they must carefully consider the risks before signing off, given that others have returned to terrorism.

The White House has reminded the Pentagon that recidivism risks must be weighed against the danger to the United States in keeping the Cuban prison open. Obama has said Guantanamo's continued operation hurts U.S. standing overseas and is a recruitment tool for terrorists.

"The president would absolutely like to see more progress in our efforts to close Guantanamo," Obama counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco said. "He wants it closed. He's pushing his own team very hard, raising it weekly with me, with Secretary Hagel, with Secretary (of State John) Kerry. He also wants Congress to act to remove the restrictions in place that are making it even harder to move forward."

For years, Congress used its budget power to block Obama from making transfers. The president announced in May 2013 that he was appointing special envoys for Guantanamo closure at the State and Defense departments to move prisoners out "to the greatest extent possible." Congress responded by lifting some of the complicated restrictions for transfers, allowing them when Hagel determines steps have been taken to reduce the risk that detainees will re-engage in the fight.

"My name goes on that document, that's a big responsibility," Hagel said earlier this year. "I'm taking my time. I owe that to the American people, I owe that to the president."

Hagel was responding to a question about the months that had passed since Uruguay offered to take six detainees. Hagel eventually signed off, after a call from White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, according to administration officials. Meanwhile, controversy grew over the deal in Uruguay and officials there say it is now unlikely to proceed before their fall election.

Ian Moss, who works in the office of State Department envoy Clifford Sloan, said Uruguay and the U.S. are "absolutely committed" to making the transfer, but he can't say when. "We are actively engaging a wide variety of governments and working diligently to transfer each of 79 detainees currently approved for transfer," Moss said.

Administration officials say the State Department has reached or is finalizing agreements with foreign governments to accept about two dozen detainees. An administration official said 11 of those deals have been awaiting Hagel's signature, some for many months.

"Many countries are willing to help, but willingness is not everything," said Paul Lewis, the Pentagon's envoy for Guantanamo closure. He said Hagel is "absolutely committed to close Guantanamo," but under the law Pentagon officials have to closely examine security in the receiving country, including whether detainees who have been previously released have returned to the fight or could move over a porous border. "We're being careful and deliberative."

Administration officials described a viewpoint among some who work on detainee policy in the military that Guantanamo should remain open indefinitely rather than risk that a detainee will return to terrorism. Some detainees have been released and then recaptured, including June's arrest in Spain of a former prisoner accused of recruiting militants for the Islamic State group.

Administration officials say Obama national security adviser Susan Rice wrote to Hagel in May, laying out Obama's view that there's never zero risk in transferring a detainee but that assessment must be balanced against the risk of keeping the prison open.

"The president's expectation is that all detainees who have been determined to be eligible for transfer or release ... will be repatriated or resettled from Guantanamo Bay as quickly as possible, consistent with U.S. national security interests," Rice's letter said, according to parts read to The Associated Press.

Transferring out approved detainees is only the first step to shuttering the prison established in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A more complicated question looms over how to handle the most dangerous prisoners. Congress has prohibited Obama from bringing them to the United States for detention or trial, leaving them nowhere to be held other than Guantanamo.

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The state senators vying to be Texas' next lieutenant governor tore into one another Monday night during their only scheduled debate, clashing on immigration, education and tax policy while accusing each other of misrepresenting their legislative records.

Republican Dan Patrick and San Antonio Democrat Leticia Van de Putte clashed on a 2001 Texas law that extended in-state tuition at public universities to the children of immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally. Patrick said he didn't want to deny legal residents entry to their chosen schools in favor of those whose families broke the law to come to Texas. Van de Putte accused him of failing to read the measure since it only affects how much college costs, not who gets in.

"I have read the bill, Leticia," Patrick shot back.

Patrick, a conservative Houston radio talk show host and tea party darling, is favored in November  meaningVan de Putte had the most to gain. She came out swinging, saying her opponent supports higher sales taxes but has refused to divulge his own federal income tax returns as other top candidates have.

"He wants to raise your taxes but he won't release his," Van de Putte said, accusing Patrick of backing a "tax swap" that would mean higher sales taxes so that he could lower property taxes.

Patrick countered that he'd lower property taxes first, then study increasing the sales tax "by a penny or two" so he could cut homeowners' tax burden even more.

"My opponent is the one who wants to raise every tax she can find," Patrick said. He also said he'd released 160-plus pages of financial disclosure information as a state senator, which he said would be more informative than a personal income tax return that ran about eight pages.

Van de Putte, who works as a pharmacist when she is not in the Legislature, grinned and concluded: "There's two people on this stage and I'm the only one who doesn't want to raise your taxes."

Patrick stayed aggressive, however, calling Van de Putte "a liberal" who would "turn Texas into California." He said that meant high taxes and unchecked government spending that would hurt job creation. Van de Putte responded that spending on public education and health care would be a good thing in Texas, where a Democrat hasn't won statewide office in 20 years.

The lieutenant governor oversees the Texas Senate and is in some ways the state's most-powerful position. Taking the gloves off was a departure for Patrick, who has made relatively few public appearances since knocking off incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and two other top GOP candidates in the Republican primary.

When Van de Putte said she was a faithful Roman Catholic who would prefer a world with no abortions, but that making the procedure more difficult for women to obtain wasn't the answer, Patrick pounced.

"She tries to use flowery language," he said "but she has stood against life ever since she's been in the Legislature."

Patrick has called for securing the Texas-Mexico border above all else and when Van de Putte suggested that such rhetoric was offense to people living in South Texas, he said those same residents had to be protected from terrorists, drug smugglers and gang members slipping into U.S. territory.

Asked about Gov. Rick Perry's signature economic incentive funds, which are supposed to attract top job creators to Texas but whose financial specifics have drawn criticism from independent auditors, Patrick sided with conservative activists who said it's time to scrap them. Van de Putte, who has previously backed the funds, called for a moratorium until more financial scrutiny occurs.

They also agreed that Texas should further reduce the number of standardized tests high school students are required to pass for graduation. Both serve on the Texas Senate Education Committee and last year, the Legislature slashed the number of such exams from 15 to five.

Based on reporting by The Associated Press.

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Latino advocacy have a message for Democrats: Dont blame us if you lose the election.

Members of the National Council of La Raza expressed concerns over the disparity between the growth of the Latino population and the meek attempts the parties are making to appeal to the Hispanic electorate. At a panel hosted by the organization in Washington D.C. on Monday, advocates said both parties have committed political malpractice because they are failing to actively reach out to Latino voters or tackling the issues they care about  and said the community shouldnt be blamed for not showing on up Election Day.

The decision not to vote is still a political decision, and it is not necessarily irrational  Gary Segura, Stanford University professor and co-founder of Latino Decisions

There is a tendency, particularly among Democrats and other folks, that if they lose an election, they blame Latinos, said Clarissa Martinez de Castro, NCLRs deputy vice president of the Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation.

She added that, other than Colorado incumbent Sen. Mark Udall (D), Democratic candidates have done little to appeal to Latino voters.

The reality we see often times in a lot of these places is that neither side (Democrats nor Republicans) actually was approaching our voters, she said.

Many Hispanics, already upset over a lack of action on immigration reform, became enraged when President Obama announced recently that he would once again postpone executive action on it until after the November elections.

Despite the boomerang effect this may have in terms of turnout, some insist that Latino voters and their impact on the midterm should not be underestimated.

The decision not to vote is still a political decision, and it is not necessarily irrational, said Gary Segura, a Stanford University professor who is co-founder of the polling firm, Latino Decisions.

Indeed, some advocates continue to appeal to the Latino voter with an abundance of optimism.

Janet Murguia, NCLR President and CEO, said the $5 million register-by-mail campaign announced in January by Mi Familia Vota and NCLR expected to register about 250,000 in approximately seven states.

But that ambitious campaign seems to be falling way short of its goal  only 80,000 people have registered to vote because of the campaign and preliminary estimates show only 10,000 will register from now until Election Day.

You can argue that Latinos can also have an influence by letting people lose, said Latino Decisions' Matt Barreto. Just as they can have influence by helping people win.
Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector

STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH

SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS

Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan

Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS

There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

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The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces

LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET

STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN

This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan

Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments

Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan

Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement

With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building

OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border

Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh
Facing blistering criticism from Congress, Secret Service Director Julia Pierson acknowledged on Tuesday that her agency failed in executing its plan to protect the White House when a man with a knife entered the mansion and ran through half the ground floor before being subdued.

"It's unacceptable," Pierson told lawmakers. But her promised review of how the storied but blemished agency carries out its mission of protecting the president  and how it failed to intercept the intruder much earlier  left lawmakers from both parties cold.

"I wish to God you protected the White House like you protected your reputation here today," Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch told her at a hearing.

Calm but defensive in testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Pierson disclosed that shortly before the intruder jumped the fence Sept. 19, at least two of her uniformed officers recognized him from an earlier troubling encounter but did not approach him or report his presence to superiors.

On Aug. 25, Army veteran Omar J. Gonzalez was stopped while carrying a small hatchet near the fence south of the White House, Pierson said. Weeks later, the same officers observed him "for some time" but never intervened. Gonzalez later went over the fence and broke inside the White House.

President Barack Obama and his daughters had left for Camp David shortly before the intrusion; Michelle Obama had gone to the retreat earlier in the day.

"The fact is the system broke down," declared committee chairman Darrell Issa. "An intruder walked in the front door of the White House, and that is unacceptable."

Not only that, he said, but the intruder penetrated at least five rings of security protecting what is supposed to be one of the world's most secure properties.

"How on earth did it happen?" he asked. "This failure ... has tested the trust of the American people in the Secret Service, a trust we clearly depend on to protect the president."

Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania called the intrusion: "Stunning, outrageous, disgraceful."

Pierson said she took full responsibility for the failures and "I'll make sure that it does not happen again."

That was clearly insufficient assurance for lawmakers from both parties, who were aghast, too, about a four-day delay in 2011 before the Secret Service realized a man had fired a high-powered rifle at the White House.

The Washington Post reported on the weekend that some Secret Service officers believed immediately that shots had been fired into the mansion but they were "largely ignored" or afraid to challenge their bosses' conclusions that the shooting was not directed at the White House.

Such breaches, combined with recurring reports of misbehavior within the agency, cause "many people to ask whether there is a much broader problem with the Secret Service," said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, top Democrat on the committee.

Lynch told the agency's chief at the hearing he had "very low confidence in the Secret Service under your leadership. Based on the evidence, that's how we have to call it."

Members of Congress briefed by the agency apparently weren't told of the full extent of the breaches.

Details emerged only later. Among them: The recent intruder ran through the White House, into the East Room and near the doors to the Green Room before being apprehended. This, after he made it past a guard stationed inside the White House,.

On the way to the East Room, the intruder would have passed a stairwell that leads to the first family's residence. It was unclear what security would have been in place to prevent Gonzalez from attempting to go up to the family quarters.

Pierson said Tuesday that the front door to the White House now locks automatically in a security breach. She said that on Sept. 19 a Secret Service guard was attempting to lock one of the doors manually when the intruder knocked the agent down.

In the hours after the Sept. 19 fence-jumper incident, Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told The Associated Press that Gonzalez had been apprehended just inside the North Portico doors of the White House. The agency also said that night the Army veteran had been unarmed  an assertion that was revealed to be false the next day, when officials acknowledged Gonzalez had a knife with him when he was apprehended.

Senate Judiciary Committee staffers who were briefed about the investigation by the administration a week after the incident were never told how far Gonzalez made it into the building, according to a congressional official who wasn't authorized to discuss the investigation and requested anonymity. The official said the committee later was told that the suspect had, indeed, made it far beyond the front door.

Pierson said there have been six fence-jumpers this year alone, including one just eight days before Gonzalez went over.

Pierson's predecessor, Mark J. Sullivan, apologized to lawmakers in 2012 after details emerged of a night of debauchery involving 13 Secret Service agents and officers in advance of the president's arrival at a summit in Colombia. Sullivan retired about 10 months later.

Since the incident, the White House has treaded carefully. Although White House spokesman Josh Earnest acknowledged the president was "obviously concerned" about the intrusion, he expressed confidence in the Secret Service as recently as Monday.

It would be untenable for any president, not just Obama, to pointedly criticize the men and women who put themselves at risk to protect his life and family. That inherent conflict of interest means Congress, not the executive branch, is the most effective oversight authority for the Secret Service, its agents and officers.

"The president and the first lady, like all parents, are concerned about the safety of their children, but the president and first lady also have confidence in the men and women of the Secret Service to do a very important job," Earnest said.

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The Obama administration is initiating a program to give refugee status to some young people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador in response to the influx of unaccompanied minors arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Under the program, immigrants from those countries who are lawfully in the United States will be able to request that child relatives still in those three countries be resettled in the United States as refugees. The program would establish in-country processing to screen the young people to determine if they qualify to join relatives in the U.S.

In a memorandum to the State Department Tuesday, President Barack Obama allocated 4,000 slots for refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean for next year. The number is a fraction of the number of children who have already crossed the border into the United States and are awaiting deportation proceedings.

The program would not provide a path for minors to join relatives illegally in the United States, and would not apply to minors who have entered the country illegally.

Instead, it aims to set up an orderly alternative for dealing with young people who otherwise might embark on a dangerous journey to join their families in the United States.

The program is not likely to stop other minors or migrant families from seeking to cross the border.

Last month, Border Patrol agents apprehended 3,129 young people, mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Since the start of the budget year in October, more than 66,000 unaccompanied children have apprehended crossing the border illegally, nearly double the number from the 2013 budget year.

That number has been declining but remains a worry for the administration as Obama considers ways to remove the threat of deportation and grant work permits potentially to several million immigrants already illegally in the U.S.

Under the plan, the U.S. would process refugee requests for youths in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Similar in-country screening programs were set up in East Asia after the Vietnam War and in Haiti in the 1990s.

The plan was included in a White House memo to the State Department setting a total 2015 allocation of 70,000 refugees from Africa, East Asia, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and the Near East and South Asia. In addition to specifying El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, the memorandum also singled out Cuba, Iraq, Eurasia and the Baltics as locations where the United States could screen individuals for potential refugee status.

The United Nations has pushed the U.S. to treat children arriving at the southern border from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as refugees displaced by armed conflict. Growing control by drug traffickers and street gangs has made the three-country region one of the most violent regions in the world in recent years.

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The Obama administration has urged a court to reject Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's appeal of a ruling that blocks the state from denying driver's licenses to young immigrants who have avoided deportation under a change ordered by the president.

Lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department told the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a filing Tuesday that the state policy is trumped by federal law. They argued the state won't accept documents issued to the immigrants in question as proof of their legal presence in the country, yet it continues to accept such records from other immigrants.

"The state has failed to identify any reason why the same documents should not similarly suffice for plaintiffs," the Justice Department said in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in a lawsuit by young immigrants who challenged the policy.

The federal government didn't challenge the driver's license policy, but it was asked by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to offer input on the case. In July, a three-judge panel of the court blocked the driver's license policy and suggested the rules were intended to express hostility toward the young immigrants.

The governor is now asking for a 15-judge panel to reconsider the ruling. The Obama administration said no such review is warranted.

Brewer spokesman Andrew Wilder said in a statement that the filing demonstrates how lawless the Obama administration has become.

"Rather than secure U.S. borders or enforce existing federal immigration laws, the Obama administration continues to afford preference and privileges to people who enter our country illegally and whose presence is unauthorized," Wilder said. "States, not the Obama administration, have the right to determine who is issued a driver's license."

The Justice Department declined to comment.

The Obama administration also chimed in on Tuesday on another Arizona immigration policy by urging a judge to throw out the state's 2005 immigrant smuggling ban. The federal government argues the state smuggling law is trumped by a similar federal law, while Brewer's attorneys contend there is no such conflict with federal law.

Brewer and the Obama administration have clashed over illegal immigration before, most notably in a federal challenge seeking to throw out Arizona's 2010 immigration law, SB1070.

In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law's most contentious section, requiring police to question, while enforcing other laws, the immigration status of people suspected of being in the country illegally. Other parts, such as a requirement that immigrants carry registration, were struck down.

The state driver's license policy was a reaction to steps the Obama administration took in June 2012 to shield thousands of immigrants from deportation and expand their legal rights. About 580,000 people have been approved to take part in the program, including about 20,000 in Arizona.

Brewer issued an executive order in August 2012 directing state agencies to deny driver's licenses and other public benefits to young immigrants who get work authorization under the program.

Immigrant-rights advocates argued that the state let some immigrants with work permits get driver's licenses, but it wouldn't let immigrants protected under Obama's program have the same benefit.

The state revised the policy last year by saying it would stop issuing driver's licenses to all people who receive deportation deferrals from the federal government, not just young immigrants given protection under Obama's policy. The governor's attorneys argued the revision makes the young immigrants' equal-protection arguments moot.

Brewer's attorneys have contended the decision to deny driver's licenses grew out of liability concerns and the desire to reduce the risk of the licenses being used to improperly access public benefits.

Lawyers who sought to overturn the policy said the rule change made it difficult or impossible for such young immigrants to do essential things in their everyday lives, such as going to school, going to the grocery store and finding and holding a job.

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The Castro brother who isnt likely to be named Hillary Clintons running mate did endorse her for president. The Castro brother who is, didnt. Got that?

There has been much speculation about the vice-presidential prospects of Julian Castro, 40, the former mayor of San Antonio who in July was named Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The theory went that President Barack Obama was helping get the Democratic rising star a more national profile in preparation for the 2016 presidential election.

On Monday Castros identical twin brother, U.S. Rep. Joaquin, was quoted in an email blast sent out by the pro-Clinton Super PAC, Ready for Hillary, as saying, Hillarys the leader I want to see moving into the White House in two years.

The email obtained by the website Politico quoted Castro lauding Clinton profusely. Hillary has always been a tireless advocate for working families  shes never ceased to make sure everybody has a fair shot at achieving the American Dream, he wrote.

Of course, there is the small stumbling block of Clinton not having declared herself a candidate yet, but the Congressman didnt seem to mind too much. Hillary needs to know that if she does, millions of grassroots supporters like you will be standing proudly by her side.

Possibly nobody would be closer to her side than Joaquins brother.

After being tapped to head HUD, Castro went to Bill and Hillarys Washington home for a dinner that included members of their inner circlean invitation that further fueled running-mate speculation.

But on Tuesday Secretary Castro told Todd Gillman of the Dallas News, In this position, Im focused on my work here at HUD. Im staying out of politics.

At least for the moment.

As for that dinner with the Clintons, Castro claimed it had nothing to do with 2016.

Not at all, he said. We had a good conversation about how HUD can work on energy efficiencyperhaps with the Clinton Foundation.

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On a recent Saturday morning, about 24 Hispanic election canvassers gather in a second floor meeting space of an office building in Homestead, a small city in the southern fringes of Miami-Dade County, Florida. They all wear blue and yellow t-shirts bearing the logo of the Florida New Majority, a Democratic-leaning organization that is working to increase the number of minority voters in local and state elections.

Many of the workers voted in a U.S. election for the first time in 2012 and hail from Mexico and Central American countries like El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Their mission is to rally others like them to the polls for the election in November and, they hope, build on the momentum from the 2012 election, when a new wave of Hispanic voters helped Barack Obama win the state.

So far, its been a difficult task, according to some of the canvassers.

It is like night and day when comparing 2012 to what is happening today, said Guadalupe de la Cruz, a 24-year-old Mexican-American who supervises a team of six canvassers. Two years ago, there was more excitement. But now people are afraid to open the door out of fear it might be an immigration agent coming for their relatives.

And its not just that way in Homestead. Across Florida, enthusiasm among non-Cuban Latino voters is low, political analysts note.

The turnout is not going to be as high in the Hispanic community as it was in 2012, Armando Ibarra, a principal of Ai Advisory, a public affairs consulting firm, told Fox News Latino. The reduction in turnout will affect Democratic candidates more than Republican candidates.

Several factors play a role in diminished Hispanic voter interest, Ibarra explains. For one, Republicans traditionally out-perform Democrats during midterm elections. Secondly, people who voted for the first time in 2012 may not be completely accustomed to the electoral process.

Their habit of going to the polls hasnt been solidified through decades of voting like Cuban-Americans have, Ibarra says. When someone has only voted once or twice in their lives, that third time becomes harder.

There is also a lack of strong Hispanic candidates running for high posts. In the previous mid-term election in 2010, there was U.S. Senate race that featured a young Cuban-American Republican star, Marco Rubio, who captured 55 percent of the Hispanic vote en route to victory.

This year, the lieutenant governors race does feature a Cuban-American Republican, Carlos Lopez Cantera, and a Colombian-American Democrat, Annette Taddeo-Goldstein, but its first and foremost a competition between the top dogs on the tickets, Gov. Rick Scott and Charlie Crist.

Apart from that, the only high-profile race featuring Hispanic candidates is the congressional showdown between Cuban-Americans Joe Garcia, the Democratic incumbent, and his Republican challenger, Carlos Curbelo.

Curbelo will have an easier time turning out his base of largely Republican Cuban-American voters, Ibarra believes. A large number of voters who elected Garcia didnt have a close connection with him. He will have a hard time getting them out, especially during a midterm election that favors Republicans.

Groups like Florida New Majority aim to increase Garcias chances by reaching out to those 2012 voters through a massive door-to-door campaign.

Serena Perez, Florida New Majoritys campaign manager coordinating voter outreach in Homestead, said the goal is to remind non-Cuban Hispanic voters, as well as Haitian-Americans and African-Americans, that Garcia introduced an immigration reform bill that has garnered bipartisan support, and that hes championed a bill raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

Our goal is to knock on 25,000 doors, said Perez, who emigrated from Ecuador to Miami in 2003. So far, we have knocked on 10,000. We still have a lot more to knock on.

After becoming a U.S. citizen following Obamas win in 2008, Perez says she has voted in every local, state and federal election since. In 2010, she went to work for Florida New Majority.

Voter engagement is a super effective tool our communities can use to make change happen, she told FNL. And its the one most people can participate in.

Perez recruited others like de la Cruz, the young Mexican-American woman who leads her own team of canvassers.

I started volunteering in 2012, de la Cruz said. The problem is that people dont know how local and state elections affect them.

Born in Miami, de la Cruz first voted in 2012, when she was 22. I work with an organization that helps undocumented immigrants, she said. Thats what motivates me to go out and recruit voters. We need to be the voice for the people who cant be represented.
U.S. President Barack Obama has some explaining to do Thursday night when he makes his speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute  less than a month after angering many Latinos by delaying any action on immigration reform until after the midterm elections.

His speech will be the first public remark he has made on immigration since the announcement last month and Obama is expected to reiterate his ongoing commitment to immigration reform by promising to use his presidential powers to amend the current system.

The president will reiterate his continuous commitment to immigration reform and to fix as much of our immigration system as he can on his own, a White House official said, according to the Hill.

What Obama says could weigh heavily on how Latino constituents vote come the first Tuesday in November, given the disenfranchisement felt by many following the immigration reform delay.

Obama faced competing pressures from immigration advocacy groups that wanted prompt action and from Democrats worried that acting now would energize Republican opposition against vulnerable Senate Democrats. Among those considered most at risk were Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Kay Hagan of North Carolina.

Obama advisers were not convinced that any presidential action would affect the elections. But the officials said the discussions around timing grew more pronounced within the past few weeks.

White House officials said aides realized that if Obama's immigration action was deemed responsible for Democratic losses this year, it could hurt any attempt to pass a broad overhaul later on.

Democratic Representative Luis Gutierrez of Illinois highlighted the frustration that many Latinos have had with the Obama administration during the past six years.

"The president of the United States made a promise in 2008, during the campaign, that he'd get it done in 2009 and 2010, '11, '12," Gutierrez told Reuters, about revamping of the outdated U.S. immigration law. "It's clear that anybody that looks at this says, 'Wow, we weren't the priority we should have been and we weren't the priority he promised we'd be.'"

With dozens of protesters planning to picket the event and some lawmakers accusing Obama of a brutal betrayal of Latinos, Labor Secretary and prospective candidate for attorney general Tom Perez tried to assuage the concerns of those at the conference earlier this week.

The question of executive action, my friends, is a when? question, Perez said, according to the Washington Post. Immigration is all about his values and his leadership. And thats why I love working for this president.

Partisan fighting erupted recently over how to address the increased flow of unaccompanied minors from Central America at the U.S. border with Mexico. The officials said the White House had not envisioned such a battle when Obama made his pledge June 30.

Obama asked for $3.7 billion to address the border crisis. The Republican-controlled House, however, passed a measure that only gave Obama a fraction of what he sought and made it easier to deport the young migrants arriving at the border, a provision opposed by Democrats and immigration advocates. In the end, Congress adjourned without a final bill.

The dispute over how to deal with the surge of Central American border crossers threatened to spill over into the larger debate over immigration and the fate of 11 million immigrants in the United States who either entered illegally or overstayed their visas and have been in the U.S. for some time.

The Democratic-led Senate last year passed a broad overhaul of immigration that boosted border security, increased visas for legal immigrants and a provided a path to citizenship for immigrants illegally in the country.

But the Republican-controlled House balked at acting on any broad measure and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, informed Obama earlier this year that the House would not act in 2014. That led Obama to declare he would act on his own.

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U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who has led Republican efforts in the House of Representatives to craft an immigration reform bill, says the next viable window for the measure to pass is early next year.

If that doesnt happen, said Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican, then immigration reform will continue to be elusive indefinitely.

Im hoping we can do it early next Congress, Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Fox News Latino.

In 2015, the political focus will shift to the 2016 presidential election, and to announcements by those who plan to run, as well as to speculation about who may enter the race.

If we dont do it early next Congress, it just gets more difficult," Diaz-Balart said.

Diaz-Balart was visibly frustrated in the summer after the House GOP leadership told him they would not consider his bill this year.

The congressman had worked on crafting a bill that could win bipartisan support, including a path to legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants, but also stricter enforcement at the border as well as the interior of the country.

After getting word that his bill was, in essence, dead for this year, Diaz-Balart held a press conference expressing disappointment in both parties.

But Diaz-Balart says he is remaining loyal to efforts to reform immigration, and determined to forge ahead to get a measure passed in Congress that can stand up to any resistance by the Obama administration  or others in the future  not to abide by parts of the law, particularly those addressing enforcement.

Part of the challenge of coming up with a measure that would have a real shot at passage, he said, was addressing the lack of trust many in his party have in President Obamas commitment to enforcement.

His goal, he said, was to come up with a version that finally secures the borders, that does so even if you have a president that frankly not a lot of people trust in enforcing the law.

He and others, including Democrat Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, who assisted in crafting the measure made sure to include accountability, Diaz-Balart said.

So you can force this or future administrations to enforce border and interior security aspects, he said. This legislation does that.

Last year, the Senate passed a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill that tightened border security, expanded guest worker visas, and provided a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants who meet a strict set of criteria.

But the effort stalled in the House, where a faction of conservative Republicans  who have the majority in the chamber  said they would never support a measure that gave a break to undocumented immigrants.

That, they said, amounted to rewarding law-breakers.

Diaz-Balart said one key flaw in the Senate version is that it did not address accountability  making sure that whatever administration is in power abides by it.

Diaz-Balart has long maintained that rounding up and deporting the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States is unrealistic.

The immigration system, he said, is absolutely broken.

Its not working for our national security interests, he said. We dont know who comes in and who leaves. We dont control who comes in and who leaves, and thats not acceptable.

But furthermore its also hurting our economic interests, he added, so Im committed to continuing to work to fix an immigration system that everyone understands is broken  fix it for our national security interests but also fix it for our economic interests.

It wouldnt be amnesty, Diaz-Balart said, but an earned legal status that would be fair to the many other immigrants who have come to the United States legally.

President Obama has vowed to take executive action on immigration after the elections, citing the failure of Congress to pass a measure. Originally, Obama had said he would make such a move  which would include providing at least temporary relief from deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants  in September, but then postponed it after some Democrats facing re-election in November worried that it would hurt them.

Diaz-Balart expressed skepticism that the president will take executive action.

The president has drawn a red line once again, but he himself has violated his own red line, the congressman said. The president first said he was going to do immigration reform his first year  he broke his word.

And various other times, he said, Obama said he would act unilaterally and did not do so.

Now hes saying after the elections, said Diaz-Balart. Hes had ample opportunity to get it done. The reality is President Obama only thinks of immigration reform in election season.
With frustration mounting, President Barack Obama sought Thursday to quell doubts he'll use his presidential powers to act on immigration, telling Hispanics and immigration activists it's "not a question of if but when."

At the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's annual gala, Obama warned activists that his eventual actions will spark intense political opposition that could threaten the durability of what he does. In a partisan pitch a month before Election Day, he urged Hispanics across the U.S. to use their votes to improve prospects in the future for a legislative fix.

"The moment I act  and it will be taking place between the November election and the end of the year  opponents of reform will roll out the same old scare tactics," Obama said. "When opponents are out there saying who knows what, I'm going to need you to have my back."

Once hailed as a champion for Hispanic rights, Obama's relationship with the Hispanic community has become strained since he decided last month to abandon his earlier pledge to act quickly after summer's end to help some immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. Instead, he said he'd wait until after the Nov. 4 elections, exasperating immigration activists who accused the president of putting politics ahead of their families and said they had waited far too long already.

With the elections nearing, Obama sought to parlay impatience into motivation for Hispanic voters to elect politicians who will enact more sweeping reforms to fix the U.S. immigration system. Arguing that no executive action on immigration could be as comprehensive as what Congress could do, he urged Hispanics at the black-tie dinner to go into their communities to ensure voters don't stay home.

"Yes we can  if we vote," he said, first in Spanish and then in English, in a twist on his 2008 campaign slogan.

The White House has been coy about what unilateral actions Obama and his administration are considering, and legal experts differ about just how far Obama can go without Congress. Immigration activists are calling for Obama to act aggressively to free a sizeable portion of the 11.5 million immigrants here illegally from fear of deportation.

Such a possibility has incensed Republicans who say Obama's willingness to ignore existing laws is the key reason they're reluctant to work with him to pass new ones.

"The president's promise isn't about making the best policy or enforcing the law  it's an admission that his pledge to not uphold the law in the future would be bad for his party now," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.

A supportive crowd offered the president a mostly warm reception, although he was briefly interrupted by a heckler who objected to deportations on Obama's watch and was escorted out of the hall. Outside the convention center, a group of demonstrators gathered in protest of Obama's delay.

And at the podium, Obama was gently nudged by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who said Hispanics were looking to Obama "for big, bold, unapologetic" relief without delay.

"We need major reforms, we need them now," he said, "and Mr. President, we need your help."

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Peruvian President Ollanta Humala sat down for a wide-ranging interview with Fox News Latino at the Manhattan residence of the country's ambassador to the United Nations during that organization's recent ministerial meetings.

An elegant man with two more years to go in office, Humala, 52, said that improving education in his homeland is his obsession.

In Peru we had cared to create an economic policy, but the social side was lacking, Humala said. In the history of Peru, we invested a lot on mineral trades, but we didnt achieve our dreams.

Nevertheless, Humala is proud of his administration's accomplishments in fighting the drug trade.

Peru has broadened its academic scholarship program, awarding tens of thousands for study in the country as well as study abroad.

Today Peru is not the top cocaine producer in the world, he said, that is one of the main achievements of my administration.

Weve taken tough steps, we have more routes that are policed, Humala said. Everyone [passing through the routes] has to have documentation of chemicals [theyre carrying] and information about where theyre going.

Nevertheless, Humala, who addressed the United Nations General Assembly while in New York City, said that the responsibility to fight the drug trade doesn't just fall on one nation.

The problems cannot be solved solely by the cocaine-producing nations if you dont also work on the demand.

The president said he has voiced his concern to the U.S. government and the European Union about the need to combat drug production from their end, where there is a huge demand.

We have to talk about co-responsibility, and those responsibilities have to be assumed in terms of equipment, funding and development projects to fight the drug enterprise, Humala said.

Humala, who was an army officer, campaigned for the presidency on a promise to improve the quality of life for the poor in Peru, whose economy has been strong in recent years. After assuming office, he at first seemed to support the policies of the late socialist Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, but he has moved toward the center in recent years.

People always ask Are you on the left or the right? Humala said about his ideology. I say Dont put me on the left or the right, put me at the bottom, Im with the people who are at the bottom.

His goal, he said, is to address the inequality that exists in so much of Latin America.

How do you divide the pie? he asked. Were making investments in projects that will change life in Peru. Were constructing a new Peru, investing in transportation, fiber optics, new refineries, technology.

While he was in New York, the Americas Society gave Humala its highest award, the Gold Insigne, for his outstanding contributions to his country and its people, the region and society.

"Within the first three months of your term, you created the first ever ministry dedicated to development and social inclusion," said Susan Segal, the CEO of Americas Society during the ceremony. And within two years, you had increased social spending by more than 50 percent, lifting half a million Peruvians out of poverty."

Humala, whose nation is hosting a global summit on climate change in December, in accepting the honor said, "I think it is important to understand that countries that have succeeded in achieving development have done so not because they have more natural resources, but because they have had the political will and have invested in education. That is why we are assigning an unprecedented portion of our budget to education, health, social policy and security."

He sees the climate change summit an opportunity to tackle one of the greatest threats facing the planet.

What do we do to avoid the rising temperatures on the planet? he asked. We have to understand that mankind has developed the ability to destroy civilization as we know it without nuclear arms, but by warming the planet.

Industrialized nations, Humala pointed out, are preoccupied with how much it will cost them to address the issue.

But they must realize that while theyre looking at how much money it will cost them, we in other nations have already been paying a price, he said, by struggling through more fierce hurricanes, less harvesting and the thawing of glaciers, among other things.

Were paying the consequences caused by industrial countries, Humala said. We in Peru have decided not to sit back in the face of this world problem. Were hosting this summit, taking a leadership role in shedding light on this problem.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Nearly 143 million Brazilians are going to the polls Sunday to elect president, but it's likely power will not be changing hands this time.

In a poll released Thursday, President Dilma Rousseff kept her support steady, a big comeback from just a month ago when she was trailing "green" candidate Marina Silva by 10 percentage points.

A Datafolha polling group survey said Rousseff was supported by 40 percent of those surveyed, while Silva with 24 percent and Neves with 21 percent were running neck and neck for the second spot and a place in the runoff.

A second-round vote is very likely on October 26, since no candidate appears to be getting an outright majority of votes.

In the survey, when voters were asked who they would support in a runoff vote, Rousseff led Silva and Neves by the same margin  48 percent to 41 percent.

Datafolha interviewed 12,022 people across Brazil on Wednesday and Thursday. The margin of error was two percentage points.

In the last debate on Thursday the top presidential candidates aggressively attacked one another in the final debate ahead of this weekend's election, as new polls showed President Dilma Rousseff solidifying her lead in the race.

Rousseff was repeatedly hit with questions about big corruption cases that have dogged her Workers Party during its nearly 12 years in power  with a focus on an emerging scandal over kickbacks at the state-run oil company Petrobras, which the president says she knew nothing about.

"It's a very grave situation, what's happening with corruption. They've not taken the measures to cut it off at the root," Marina Silva, the president's top rival, said about what she called Rousseff's inaction. "The answer is always the same, 'We didn't know.' In my government we'll combat corruption first by not naming the corrupt to posts."

Rousseff shot back to both Silva and Aecio Neves, the other candidate with a chance at forcing the leader into an Oct. 26 second-round vote that she has repeatedly gone after the corrupt in government, including forcing out several of her own ministers accused of wrongdoing in the first year of her mandate.

"No government has combated corruption more than mine," Rousseff said, emphasizing her pushing federal police to investigate alleged cases. "I never swept anything under the rug. If these cases of corruption are being discovered today it's because we combated corruption."

Based on reporting by The Associated Press.

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The twists and turns in Brazil's presidential race ended for at least a few hours on Sunday as millions of Brazilians cast ballots in an election expected to force a three-week runoff campaign between incumbent Dilma Rousseff and one of her two top challengers.

Rousseff held a commanding lead in all recent opinion polls, with her support rising to 46 percent in a survey released Saturday. But even the leader said it was unlikely she could push through to win the absolute majority required to avoid a second-round election.

"I'm not operating with that idea, I'm working with the idea there will be a runoff," Rousseff told reporters just before casting her vote early Sunday in southern Brazil, where she lived for many years and first entered politics.

She'll likely face either former environment minister and senator Marina Silva or Aecio Neves, the former governor of Brazil's second-biggest state. They were deadlocked in the most recent surveys, following Silva's steep drop in polls after aggressive campaigning by Rousseff.

"The fear campaign that Dilma and her marketing people have set up against Marina Silva has had a strong effect," said David Fleischer, a political science professor at the University of Brasilia. "Dilma's people are saying Marina will abolish ... things they've gained through government social programs."

That's the heart of an apparent contradiction of this unpredictable campaign that saw Silva only enter the race in mid-August when a plane crash killed Eduardo Campos, her Social Party's top candidate, with whom she was running as the vice presidential candidate.

Opinion surveys say around 70 percent of Brazilians say they want change - as made plain by mammoth anti-government protests held around the country last year blasting Brazil's woeful public services despite the nation's heavy tax burden.

Yet surveys also find that nearly three-fourths of Brazilians say they are satisfied with their lives.

"They want more of the same and that is what Dilma is offering," Fleischer said.

During the nearly 12 years in power for Rousseff's Workers' Party, strong social programs have helped lift millions out of poverty and into the middle class. Rousseff's strongest support comes from the poorest, those who are precariously hanging onto gains despite an economy that has sputtered during the past four years.

Rousseff promised to expand those programs and to continue strong state involvement in the economy, even though critics complain it creates a poor business environment and the main stock market tumbled every time a new poll showed her on the rise.

Both Silva and Neves offered more centrist economic approaches - such as central bank independence, more privatizations and the seeking of trade deals with Europe and the United States.

Brazilians, who are also deciding congressional races and electing governors, will vote using electronic machines Sunday and results are expected to be known within hours of poll closing at 5 p.m. local time in the country's far west.

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It is one of the most conservative counties in one of the most conservative states in the Union. In the past two decades in Montgomery County, Texas, Democrats have not won one single elected office in local or legislative races. Republican candidates easily trump Democrats 2-to-1 in state and national races.

But now that the countys demographics are changing as more and more Latinos move to the area, Democrats say they see an opportunity to turn Montgomery County blue. Republicans are also seeing a chance to tap into the growing population to make sure the area remains a conservative stronghold.

I think weve made significant progress in the last year in introducing ourselves to the Hispanic community, Wally Wilkerson, chairman of the Montgomery County Republican Party, told Fox News Latino. Weve been involved with Hispanic voters by doing tutoring and citizenship classes, going to Cinco de Mayo celebration and handing out Spanish-language versions of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Were doing all we can possibly do to make the Hispanic community to feel comfortable.

In 2000, 13 percent of Montgomerys population was Hispanic, according to Census figures. The population nearly doubled 14 years later, with the Hispanic population now at 20 percent and growing.

Historically, Hispanics tend to be Democrats because of the partys stance on immigration and social issues.

I think the Democratic Party is more appealing than the Republican Party to Hispanics, said Bruce Barnes, the Montgomery County Democratic Party chairman. Its because they believe in our values.

But the GOP is try to capitalize on what is perhaps the partys most attractive stance to Latinos  its opposition to abortion, Cal Jillson, a professor at Southern Methodist University, told the Houston Chronicle.

"When you're in a very conservative hotbed that is upscale Anglo, Hispanics don't tend to feel the warmth," Jillson said.

This could partly be the reason why Latinos in Texas show up to vote in much lower numbers than other demographic groups. A 2010 study by the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life at the University of Texas-Austin and the National Conference of Citizenship reported that 48.3 percent of white Texans voted in 2010, while only 23.1 percent of Latinos reported voting that year.

"They cast far fewer votes than their presence in the population would suggest," Jillson added. "That's why both Democrats and Republicans think mobilization of Hispanic votes is possible and might bear fruit for them."

To counter the Democratic Latino shift, the Republican Party has stepped up its own outreach to the community.

Theyve heard a lot of propaganda about the Republican Party, Wilkerson said. But were intent on reaching out to the Hispanic community and confident that we have the same values as we have.

The battle for the Latino vote in Montgomery County is seen as a microcosm of what is going on at the state level in Texas. Gubernatorial candidates, the Republican Greg Abbott and the Democrat Wendy Davis, have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertisements on Spanish-language channels along with making concerted efforts on campaign stops and through social media to reach out to Latino voters.

Demographers predict Hispanics will make up a plurality of Texas residents as soon as 2020.

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New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez will debate her Democratic opponent, Gary King, in Spanish on Monday night.

The governor speaks Spanish fluently; King, New Mexicos attorney general, will use an interpreter.

The debate, in a KLUZ-TV Univision-sponsored forum, will be their second.

Political observers say the debate is unique since only one of the candidates is fluent in Spanish.

According to the U.S. Census, around 47 percent of the state's population is Latino  the largest percentage of any state. Roughly 40 percent of New Mexicos eligible voters are Hispanic, the largest Hispanic eligible voter share nationally, according to Pew Hispanic Research.

Martinez is the states first female and Latina governor. She is also the nations first Latina governor.

Absentee voting begins Tuesday by mail and at county clerks' offices. Early in-person voting expands to more locations on Oct. 18.

King has taken aim at Martinezs handling of the states economy, criticizing her, for example, for giving large corporations tax breaks.

The Republican Party of New Mexico said Martinez is the better choice.

Recent polls showed Martinez doubling her lead over King since mid-August, apparently due to more support from Democrats, Hispanics and independents who had been backing King, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

Martinez had the support of 54 percent of likely New Mexico voters, compared with King's 36 percent.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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As his state becomes the center of Ebola fears in the U.S., Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced on Monday the creation of a task force that, among other things, will heighten security and health screening at the states points of entry.

Speaking at the Texas State Capitol building, the Republican governor and potential 2016 presidential candidate said that Washington isnt doing enough to combat Ebola and recommended that Customs and Border Patrol agents enhance their screening process  even going so far as to suggest that authorities take the temperature of people entering the country.

Washington needs to take immediate steps to minimize the dangers of Ebola and infectious diseases, Perry said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Perry is not the first conservative lawmaker to raise fears about the spread of Ebola across the U.S.s border, but his comments come amid an uproar over a Dallas hospital initially sending patient Thomas Eric Duncan home only with antibiotics, even though he told staff that he had recently been in Liberia.

There were mistakes made, but the process is working, Gov. Perry said. We dont have an outbreak.

Republican senator and another prospective GOP presidential candidate, Rand Paul, had previously raised fears that infected individuals could enter the country through the U.S.-Mexico border.

The border is not only a danger for national security purposes, it is also a danger for a worldwide pandemic should it occur, Paul told talk show host Glenn Beck last week.

Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia wrote to the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last month about his fears that undocumented immigrants might be bringing "swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis into the U.S.

"As the unaccompanied children continue to be transported to shelters around the country on commercial airlines and other forms of transportation, I have serious concerns that the diseases carried by these children may begin to spread too rapidly to control," he wrote.

Echoing Perrys statement that there won't be an outbreak of Ebola in Texas or the rest of the U.S., the nations top doctors sought to reassure a wary public that the U.S. has things under control.

"[To] people who are scared, I say, 'We don't take lightly your fear. We respect it. We understand it,'" Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health told the Associated Press.

But Fauci emphasized that the United States is different from African nations where fragile health care systems have been overwhelmed by Ebola. Scientists know how to stop the virus from spreading with adequate resources, he said.

Even though Duncan's case won't necessarily be the only case of Ebola diagnosed within the United States, Fauci maintained that here, "We won't have an outbreak."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush hasn't said whether he's going to run for president in 2016, but he's going on the air in three races this year  in Spanish.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday released Spanish-language ads Bush filmed for three Republican candidates: Rep. Cory Gardner in Colorado, who is running for U.S. Senate; embattled Rep. David Valadao in California; and Martha McSally, who is trying to oust Democratic Rep. Ron Barber in Arizona.

Bush is President George W. Bush's older brother and many Republican power brokers' favored 2016 candidate. He is bilingual and supports immigration reform. But that position could make it challenging for him to win a Republican primary if he runs.

Jeb Bush's intercession comes in three of the few races where Republicans need Hispanic voters this cycle. In Colorado, where 14 percent of voters are Hispanic, Gardner has become more in favor of an immigration overhaul.

Valadao is one of two Republicans who signed a petition to force a vote on a Senate immigration bill that died in the House. McSally is running in a district with a sizeable Hispanic population.

Bush is the second Florida Republican and possible 2016 GOP presidential candidate who has starred in the Chamber's Spanish-language ad campaign. Sen. Marco Rubio cut an ad for Gardner this spring.

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In the second debate in one of the nations most watched and high-stakes midterm races this year, Colorado rivals for the U.S. Senate accused each other on Monday night of being disingenuous in their immigration reform stances.

Democrat incumbent Sen. Mark Udall balked at remarks in support of a path to legalization by his GOP challenger, U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, accusing him of flip-flopping from previous hard-line positions on the issue.

In the debate, which lasted 45 minutes and was sponsored by Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, Gardner said expressed support for the DREAM Act, a measure that would give conditional permanent residency for people brought to this country illegally as children.

I believe an earned status is going to be ultimately part of the solution, said Gardner, according to Politico.

Udall said that Gardner had done nothing to move forward immigration reform in the House, where the effort stalled after the Senate passed a sweeping bipartisan bill in 2013. Many conservative Republicans, who have a majority in the House, vowed not to approve an immigration reform measure that gave a break to undocumented immigrants.

Gardner said Udall once had supported a measure making it a felony to help undocumented immigrants and for urging Congress in 2010 to deal with a cap-and-trade bill before working on immigration, Politico said.

Congressman Gardner can talk about 10 years ago, but lets talk about today, said Udall, according to Politico. Hes for de facto amnesty.  Congressman Gardner says he believes in immigration reform, but he hasnt moved a finger to get it passed in the House of Representatives.

Polls suggest a close election. A September poll by the Denver Post, for instance, showed Udall leading Gardner 46-42 percent.

Udall said he is in favor of President Barack Obama taking executive action to spare perhaps millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Gardner questioned whether the president has the power to act unilaterally, and said that Obama had himself previously said he could not do so.

As he has done in his campaign, Gardner sought to link Udall with Obama, saying that a vote for Udall is essentially a vote for Obamas policies.

The president just said it: His policies are on the ballot, said Gardner, Politico reported, and Mark Udall has voted with him 99 percent of the time.

Udall said that Gardner is an extreme conservative.

His record is out of the mainstream, said Udall. Its in the extreme.

The candidates were not asked about marriage equality, even though the debate came hours after Colorado got word that same-sex marriage will proceed despite a ban in the state constitution.

Udall defended his support for a carbon tax, lashing back at criticism from his opponent who says plans to slash carbon emissions at coal-fired power plants raises energy costs for homeowners.

Udall took a more aggressive stance than he has in the past, saying the changes by the Environmental Protection Agency are an opportunity for green energy companies.

"We are ready for the EPA regulations. Carbon pollution is real," Udall said. "Climate science ... is showing us that we have to act."

Udall made pointed jabs at Gardner on climate change, saying that Gardner "doesn't think climate change is occurring."

Gardner said he believed man-made pollution contributes to climate change. But he opposed a carbon tax.

"What I am not willing to do is to destroy the economy for policies to address that," Gardner said.

Gardner asked Udall to say what price should be put on carbon.

"We've shown that we can put a price on pollution," Udall answered without giving a price.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The moderator gave New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez the nod to give her opening statement. She smiled, then looked at the camera.

"Welcome. And thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to the Hispanic people of my community," Martinez said in Spanish.

It marked Martinez's entry in an emerging trend as Republicans and Democrats around the U.S. court Hispanic voters.

From California to Texas, colleges and Spanish-language networks are hosting similar Spanish debates regardless of candidates' fluency amid the growing influence of Latinos as swing voters in key races.

Florida gubernatorial candidates, for example, will meet in a Spanish debate Friday, though both GOP Gov. Rick Scott and Democratic former-Gov. Charlie Crist will use a translator.

In California, Congressman David Valadao, R-Hanford, and Democratic challenger Amanda Renteria conducted a debate entirely in Spanish on Saturday in a race for the state's 21st Congressional District in central California.

But in New Mexico, the debate came as Democratic challenger Gary King sought to replace Martinez, a Republican and the country's first Latina elected governor in any state.

"I appreciate the opportunity to be here today," King said as his voice faded away to a translator's words. He then attacked Martinez for her opposition to raising the state's minimum wage and for the state's low ranking on child well-being.

The New Mexico debate and others like it acknowledge the ability of the growing and increasingly independent voting bloc to swing an election.

The overwhelming majority of Hispanics in New Mexico speak English, but the culture of bilingualism runs deep. Across the state, some local government bodies start meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance in English and Spanish.

Still, Matt Barreto, co-founder of a nonpartisan Latino political research firm and a University of Washington political science professor, said Hispanic voters see Spanish-language debates as a sign of respect and a genuine effort to acknowledge their importance.

"The debate is more for symbolism," said King, who is white and the son of a popular former governor.

In recent years, other notable Spanish debates included a 2010 event in California and a 2007 Democratic presidential forum.

The KLUZ-TV Univision Nuevo Mexico-sponsored forum for Martinez and King offered few surprises. Both candidates just repeated previous talking points, and the debate ran a mere 30 minutes.

However, the debate did give Spanish-speaking voters a chance to hear the candidates' views on a state law that allows immigrants in the country illegally to obtain driver's licenses. King said he was for it. Martinez said she was against it for safety reasons.

"It's not a problem of immigration. It's a problem of security," Martinez said in Spanish.

Barreto said in 2010 Martinez took around 38 percent of the Latino vote in New Mexico at a time when most GOP candidates garnered 20 percent nationwide. If she gets more than 40 percent and wins, the Martinez candidacy may be used as a blueprint for the GOP as it struggles to make inroads with Hispanic voters.

Speaking Spanish is one way to make such voters comfortable, Barreto said.

"Everyone remembers (former Texas Gov.) George W. Bush speaking Spanish, even though it was bad," Barreto said. "He ended up in the White House."

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They call it the only true competitive race in Texas in this years election.

Its the states 23rd congressional district, where no party really ever has a lock on voters.

First-term, incumbent Democrat Rep. Pete Gallego is fighting to hold on to his seat, which he won in 2012 by beating then-incumbent congressional freshman Quico Canseco, a Republican.

His challenger is former CIA operative Will Hurd, who won a competitive primary and is getting strong support from national Republican and conservative groups. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney beat President Barack Obama in this district in 2012, 51-48 percent. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Tea Party Republican, also came out the winner in this district.

And so, Gallego, who is 52, said he is pushing hard to win re-election in this vast district, which spans more than 800 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border and includes about a quarter of the land area of Texas. Roughly 70 percent of the districts population is Latino  something that, clearly, has not guaranteed Democrats victories.

By itself the district is bigger than 29 of the 50 states, Gallego pointed out in an interview with Fox News Latino.

Hurd, who is 36, has cast Gallego, who served in the state legislature for more than a decade, as a career politician. In a statement to Fox News Latino, Hurds campaign blasted Gallego for opposing the Keystone Pipeline, saying that the project would bring thousands of jobs to Texas

It is clear that job creation and energy independence are not priorities for Pete Gallego, although both are pressing issues in his home district, the campaign told FNL. His alliance with radical environmentalists will only lead to more job-killing regulations and higher energy costs that middle-class Texas families can't afford.

Gallego, whose ancestors are from Mexico, said that Hurd seems interested only in the most conservative faction of voters.

National Republican groups have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into ads supporting Hurd.

This district, which Mitt Romney won, is definitely seen as a huge pick-up opportunity for us, said Katie Prill, spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, to the Dallas Morning News. The race is very winnable for Republicans.

While Hurd scoffs at long-time politicians, he plays up his service in the CIA.

It is clear that of the 435 elected members of Congress, not one shares his unique knowledge of national security and foreign policy, and now more than ever, we need elected officials at work who have a critical understanding of the ongoings in the Middle East, of border security, and of the energy industry, his campaign said. We need individuals who have real life experience in the field, and not just politicians who have spent decades behind a desk.

Gallego, meanwhile, backs away from being seen as one voting blocs candidate.

Yes, he is Latino, he says, but adds that Latinos care about the same issues as other voters.

Theyre passionate about making sure that kids have an education, he said. They care about jobs, about the economy. They want to work their way into the middle class and beyond.

Its also a district that is home to many military families, he said.

One of the things that ties people together, whether they live in a rural or urban area, is the really big number of people who have served in the military. Veterans issues are very important in the district.

Gallego recently sent out an email to constituents accusing Hurd of dodging debates.

He especially took Hurd to task for refusing to do a debate hosted by Univision and the San Antonio Express-News. The debate, Gallego insists, would have been in English.

This is a heavily Hispanic district, he said. Weve not had any debates. Its a lack of respect for the community, when youre not willing to debate because its the wrong network.

Hurds campaign, however, insists they offered to reschedule and that Gallego never bothered to respond to them.

This is a classic case of a career politician who does not want to debate, but later warps the situation to play politics, the campaign said.

Hurd plans to launch Spanish-language web ads this week. Gallego has run ads targeting Latinos, telling them Hurd wants to cut programs, such as low-income education-related programs, that are valuable to Latinos.

Will's support for a balanced budget, Hurds campaign said, does not translate to slashed funding for education and border patrol, as Gallego's ads suggest.
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Republicans are continuing to insist that ISIS terrorists are and could infiltrate the United States through the nations southern border with Mexico, despite the fact that Homeland Security Officials have said there is no credible evidence to back the claims.

In a live telephone town hall recorded by Arkansas Democrats, Republican Rep. Tom Cotton, who is running for Senate in Arkansas against Democrat Sen. Mark Pryor, is heard linking the issue of illegal immigration and ISIS terrorists as one connected and broad national security threat. As first reported by the Washington Post, Cotton says that ISIS terrorists are collaborating with Mexican drug cartels and could attack Americans in the U.S..

The problem is with Mark Pryor and Barack Obama refusing to enforce our immigration laws and refusing to secure our border. Ill change that when Im in the united states senate and I would add its not just an immigration problem we now know that its a security problem, Cotton said. Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico who have clearly shown theyre willing to expand outside the drug trade into human trafficking and potentially even terrorism. They could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas.

Cottons claims have been echoed by Republicans alike. Texas Senator Ted Cruz wrote in a September op-ed that Washington must make border security a top priority because the the government is making it far too easy for terrorists to infiltrate our nation. On Tuesday night, in an interview with Fox News Channels Greta Van Susteren, Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter took it a step further claiming the U.S. Border Patrol has captured at least 10 ISIS fighters trying to enter the U.S. through the Mexico border. Hunter told Van Susteren, If they catch five or 10 of them you know there are going to be dozens more that did not get caught by the Border Patrol. A new ad by the Republican Congressional Committee attacks Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) for voting against border security leaving Arizona vulnerable to ISIS terrorists looking to enter through Arizonas backyard.

A Fox News exclusive revealed a Texas law enforcement bulletin in late August warned that social media chatter showed Islamic State militants are aware of the porous U.S.-Mexico border and are expressing an increased interest in crossing over to carry out a terrorist attack. But despite the social media messages by ISIS terrorists and propagangdists, Homeland Security Officials have said as early as September 10th that there is no imminent threat or specific attack emanating from our nations border.

To date we have not had credible reporting that either Hezbollah or any other terrorist group has been taking advantage of our borders to move individuals in and outs, said Jennifer A. Lasley, Deputy Undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security on September 10th at a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on the threat posed by ISIS. Its something we are always looking for, but to date, we have not seen credible evidence of that.

The U.S. Border Patrol also reiterated Lasleys testimony, saying the overwhelming number of potential terrorists are trying to come through U.S. airports.

The numbers of known watch listed individuals that we have encountered at the ports, in between the Southwest border, is minimal compared to what we see in commercial aviation, said John Wagner, Acting Assistant Commisoner for Customs and Border Protection, on Sept. 10th. Youre talking tens versus thousands.

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Sen. Marco Rubio made a stop in New Hampshire earlier this week to stump for Republican senatorial candidate Scott Brown  who has blasted the senators bipartisan bill on immigration reform.

Brown, a former U.S. Senator from Massachusetts who is now running in neighboring New Hampshire, made it clear earlier this week during a debate with Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen that despite the high-profile visit from Rubio, he would not support Rubios proposed immigration reform bill.

I would not have supported that bill, because it still did not address the one thing that is very important, Brown said, according to Bloomberg. I did not believe the mechanisms in there were strong enough to address that very real issue. And I also believe that it dealt with the amnesty issue a little bit too leniently."

Some questioned whether Rubios decision to stump for Brown was a sign that the prospective 2016 presidential candidate was backing away from his friendly stance on immigration reform.

During the debate, Shaheen gave a strong defense of the bill that Rubio helped draft.

"The way to make the border secure is to do some of the things that are in that legislation," Shaheen said. "It provides for additional border security  almost double the number of border agents  700 miles of fence, more money for interdiction and surveillance efforts, that E-Verify system. And it would have also dealt with the 11 million people who are here illegally, because they would have gotten in line behind the people who were here legally. And it would have said they have to pay fines, they have to learn English, they have to pay their taxes in order to qualify to continue to be here."

After Rubio received much criticism for his position on immigration, the first-term senator is now focusing on border security.

In August, Rubio urged President Barack Obama not to take actions that would shield from deportation millions of people who entered the U.S. illegally. Congress, Rubio said, should first "make real progress on stemming the tide of illegal immigration."

Rubio's aides say the senator always has stressed border security and that he insisted on tougher enforcement measures as a condition for his Senate vote last year. But immigrant advocates contend that in emphasizing only border security and dismissing his own bill, Rubio is effectively switching sides in the heated debate. He has denied that is the case.

"The votes aren't there," Rubio said. "You're going to have to deal with the border first. Otherwise we're going to continue to beat our head against a wall here for another decade without any changes or any progress being made."

Rubios potential 2016 rivals such as Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who voted against the overhaul that Rubio helped write, have taken a harder line on immigration.

Rubio was in New Hampshire to help raise money for Browns campaign and the two also appeared together at an event to criticize U.S. foreign policy and the 2011 withdrawal of troops in Iraq.

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Wilmer Valderrama has not been quiet about his disappointment over the lack of action by President Barack Obama and Congress on immigration this year.

The 34-year-old actor and activist said that the Latino community not getting what has been promised time and time again is the equivalent of "taking a back seat again.

It was a dark day for all of us, Valderrama told Fox News Latino regarding the Presidents decision to delay executive action until after November's midterm elections. We needed a more comprehensive action, and it was delayed.

He believes that the inaction by the countrys leaders will ignite a backlash from the Latino community at the midterms next month  and that is exactly what he wants.

Minorities have been through many downfalls  many scenes of disappointment with the things that hit home, but they dont have the champions to get things passed, he said. They are starting to see that it cant be just the president fighting the battles. Unless you have the right people to fight these battles, its just not going to get done.

Valderrama is calling on everyone who is eligible to vote  especially those in the Latino community  to register and to let their voices be heard at the polls next month.

Make sure anyone in your family who is eligible to vote goes out and represents their household, your family and themselves," he told FNL. "We need to get the equation right to move the needle forward.

Valderrama, who is well known for playing foreign exchange student Fez on That '70s Show, has been working with nonprofit group Voto Latino to ignite a passion in young millennial voters nationwide to get involved in politics and in their local communities.

For Hispanic Heritage Month, the organization launched a voter outreach program to get young Latinos registered. Valderrama said the response to the campaign has been incredible.

There was no real emotional investment (from people) in the midterms. Most people thought elections stopped at the presidential elections, he told FNL. We have found a level of excitement for the midterm election and that has been the biggest gift of this movement.

Valderrama, who had the opportunity to have dinner with Obama along with girlfriend Demi Lovato and director Robert Rodriguez this summer, said his message to get Latinos out to vote in the coming weeks is fundamentally non-partisan.

Nobody (Democrat or Republican) has had the courage to stand up and be the swing vote in their party, he said. Its a non-partisan conversation.

In a handful of the most competitive gubernatorial and Congressional races this year, political analysts say the Latino community could determine who wins  a notion Valderrama strongly agrees with.

That is a fact, he said. The history and future of both parties relies on Latinos. Its math.

When asked why he is so passionate about politics, Valderrama said that its because he is so grateful for this country.

The actor was born in Miami but grew up in Venezuela. His family moved back when he was 14 for the same reason that millions of immigrants have arrived in the U.S. have going back centuries: to find work.

This country gave me the American Dream, Valderrama said. Everyone appreciates the opportunities given here, (but) we cant pretend the government will fix everything.

Despite his activism, Valderrama said he is not interested in going into politics. He admitted that people have asked him if he would consider running for office, but its not in the cards.

I think I am a little louder on this side of the fence, he said. As artists we ignite passions to start the conversations. Thats my job. My work as an activist has been the most rewarding job Ive ever had.

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A peace deal that would end the bloody 50-plus year conflict between Colombian forces and left-wing guerrillas could cost at the South America countrys government a minimum of $44 billion, a Colombian politician said earlier this week  adding that this cost is still far less than how much they are spending on the current war.

Senator Roy Barreras, president of the Colombian Congress's peace commission, gave the first estimate of the cost of a peace accord to end the conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and said that the money would be used to finance reintegration programs for former rebels, victim compensation, the return of displaced populations and land reform.

The minimum cost for the next 10 years is estimated at 90 trillion pesos, Barreras said, according to Reuters. There will need to be adjustments, modifications, and we need budget reform, a structural tax reform for peace.

Converted to U.S. currently, that would cost about $44.4 billion.

Barreras said the government in Bogota will have to implement a number of structural reforms to make sure there is sufficient funding for such post-conflict programs and added that the government needs to re-evaluate spending and taxation.

The price tag for the peace deal has gained backing from newly re-elected Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, whose administration is asking Colombian legislators to approve a tax reform package to raise an additional $26 billion between 2015 and 2018. Santos backing coalition holds the majority of seats in the countrys Congress, making approval of the tax reform package likely.

Peace may cost 9 trillion each year, that's to say that with one year of war we pay for peace and from there on out Colombia will keep growing without the burden of the conflict, Santos said.

During a phone call on Wednesday, the current peace talks between Colombia and FARC rebels in Havana got the support of U.S. President Barack Obama.

The President underscored continued strong U.S. support for the work done so far by the Colombian government to bring an end to the longest running conflict in the Americas and expressed U.S. readiness to work closely with Colombia during the post-conflict period, Obama told Santos over the phone, according to a statement released by the White House.

Santos himself seemed upbeat following his talk with Obama and pleased the U.S. offered its support as the peace process moves forward.

"I explained the progress (negotiation), explained the challenges ahead and something very important, I want to publicly thank him, he reiterated his full support to the Peace Process," Santos said.

Both the Colombian government and the FARC have made some headway by promoting an agrarian forum in Bogota; setting up a website that has elicited more than 2,000 proposals for citizen participation in the peace process; and receiving thousands more ideas collected from Colombians by lawmakers back home.

The Colombian government and the FARC are looking for points of agreement upon which to build a peace accord in their talks in Havana.

Formed in the 1960s, the FARC is believed to have about 9,000 members and is the oldest active guerrilla army in the Western Hemisphere.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Despite across the board denials of any White House involvement following the dismissal of 12 Secret Service and military members connected to a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, new details have emerged that suggest Obama administration aides may have known more than previously suggested.

According to new information and interviews by the Washington Post, Obama Administration aides were told that a prostitute was an overnight guest of a presidential advance-team member in Cartagena, but the aides neither investigated nor publically acknowledged the information.

The misbehavior became public after a dispute over payment between the agent and a prostitute at a Cartagena hotel on April 12, 2012. The Secret Service was in the coastal resort for a Latin American summit before Obama's arrival.

The Secret Service shared its information  mostly hotel records and first-hand accounts  with White House officials, including then-White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, twice in the new few weeks. Both times the White House group determined that nothing wrong had occurred.

Along with this investigation, an inspector generals office of the Department of Homeland Security investigation found more information from the Colombia trip, but the lead investigator said that he was pressured by superiors in the office of then-acting inspector general Charles K. Edwards to withhold evidence since 2012 was an election year.

We were directed at the time . . . to delay the report of the investigation until after the 2012 election, David Nieland, the lead investigator on the Colombia case for the DHS inspector generals office, told Senate staffers, according to The Washington Post. Nieland added that he was told to withhold and alter certain information in the report of investigation because it was potentially embarrassing to the administration.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz denied Wednesday that President Barack Obama or any of his advisers worked to suppress the information before the 2012 presidential elections.

As was reported more than two years ago, the White House conducted an internal review that did not identify any inappropriate behavior on the part of the White House advance team, Schultz added.

The advance team member in question, Jonathan Dach, declined to be interviewed, but his lawyer said that the then-25 year old Yale law student never hired a prostitute or brought anyone to his hotel room. Dach, son of a prominent Democratic donor Leslie Dach, currently works full time in the Obama administration on a federal contract as a policy adviser in the Office on Global Womens Issues at the State Department.

The Colombia escapade along with a recent major security breach at the White House has cast a critical spotlight on the Secret Service, with key members of Congress now weighing dramatic changes to the agency, including moving it out of the Homeland Security Department and breaking up its mission.

The agency's director, Julia Pierson, resigned amid the controversy, but lawmakers are promising they'll continue their focus once Congress reconvenes after the Nov. 4 midterm elections.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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A senior State Department official said Wednesday that the U.S. is prepared to welcome Cuba for the first time to a region-wide summit but wants heads of state to focus attention on the communist government's human rights record.

At the urging of Latin American leaders, host country Panama plans to invite Cuban President Raul Castro to the Summit of the Americas in April 2015. Cuba was excluded from six previous summits because Washington said it didn't meet the region's standards for democracy and U.S. lawmakers, led by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, are urging Panama to reconsider its invitation this time around.

The deputy assistant secretary of state for Latin America, John Feeley, played down the significance of Cuba's likely participation. Speaking to journalists in Spanish during a stop in Panama on Wednesday, Feeley said that "it's not so important the guests at the table but the meal that's served."

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa boycotted the last summit in Cartagena, Colombia, over Cuba's exclusion and several of his leftist allies have threatened to sit out the next gathering of 34 regional heads of state if Cuba isn't invited to attend.

The Washington-based Organization of American States, which organizes the summits, suspended Cuba shortly after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.

Feeley's remarks were the strongest yet by a U.S. official since Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela took office in July and reversed his conservative predecessor's objection to Cuba's attendance at the summit. Last month he sent his vice president and foreign minister to Washington and Havana to discuss the matter.

Feeley said that if Castro does participate it will be important that he learn from the experience of other countries in the region where democracy has prospered.

President Barack Obama is expected to attend the summit, and Castro's presence could set the stage for an uncomfortable encounter between leaders from the two former Cold War enemies, but Feeley said what is more "uncomfortable is the basic lack of human rights in Cuba" that the U.S. won't shy from denouncing.

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A federal judge likened Texas' strict voter ID requirement to a poll tax deliberately meant to suppress minority voter turnout and struck it down less than a month before Election Day  and mere hours after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked a similar measure in Wisconsin.

The twin rulings released Thursday evening represent major and somewhat surprising blows to largely Republican-backed voter identification rules sweeping the nation that have generally been upheld in previous rulings.

Approved in 2011, Texas' law is considered among the nation's harshest and had even been derided in court by the Justice Department as blatant discrimination. Wisconsin's law was passed the same year and has remained a similar political flashpoint.

"We are extremely heartened by the court's decision, which affirms our position that the Texas voter identification law unfairly and unnecessarily restricts access to the franchise," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. "We are also pleased that the Supreme Court has refused to allow Wisconsin to implement its own restrictive voter identification law."

U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi on Texas' Gulf Coast, an appointee of President Barack Obama, never signaled during a two-week trial in September that she intended to rule on the Texas law before Election Day. But the timing could spare an estimated 13.6 million registered Texas voters from needing photo identification to cast a ballot.

The Justice Department says more than 600,000 of those voters, mostly blacks and Hispanics, currently lack eligible ID to vote.

Gonzales Ramos' nearly 150-page ruling says the law "creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans, and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose." It added that the measure "constitutes an unconstitutional poll tax."

Republican Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office said it would appeal, but in the meantime the state may hold the election under rules that predate the voter ID law.

"The Court today effectively ruled that racial discrimination simply cannot spread to the ballot box," said Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

In the Wisconsin case, meanwhile, the nation's highest court used a one-page order to grant an emergency stay sought by the American Civil Liberties Union and blocked implementation of the state's voter ID law  overturning a decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals three days earlier that declared it constitutional.

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said in a statement that he believed the law was constitutional and that "nothing in the Court's order suggests otherwise."

Still, Luis Roberto Vera, Jr., national general counsel for League of United Latin American Citizens, said "You can call it the perfect storm against voter ID."

"It's a total victory on both fronts," Vera said.

Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, said the order "puts the brakes on the last-minute disruption and voter chaos created by this law," that he said imperiled the vote for thousands of registered voters in the state.

Wisconsin advocates now have 90 days to file a formal petition asking the Supreme Court to take up the case, a deadline so far beyond Election Day that the law may not be reinstated by Nov. 4. The dissenting Supreme Court justices raised concerns that absentee ballots had been sent with no notification of the need to present photo IDs  and that there was not enough time to address this issue before voting begins.

Nineteen states have voter ID laws. Courts nationwide have knocked down challenges  including at the U.S. Supreme Court. But Texas' case attracted unusual attention from Holder.

He brought the weight of his office to the case after the Supreme Court last year struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act. It had blocked Texas and eight other states with histories of discrimination from changing election laws without permission from the DOJ or a federal court. Holder vowed to wring whatever protections he could from the new and weakened version, and made Texas a first target.

"Even after the Voting Rights Act was seriously eroded last year, we vowed to continue enforcing the remaining portions of that statute as aggressively as possible. This ruling is an important vindication of those efforts," Holder's Thursday statement said.

Abbott is the favorite to replace outgoing Texas Gov. Rick Perry in the Nov. 4 election. His office had argued that minorities and whites alike supported the law in public opinion polls. It also pointed to other states, such as Georgia and Indiana, where the similar measures have been upheld.

But opponents slammed Texas' law as far more discriminatory. College students IDs aren't accepted by poll workers, but concealed handgun licenses are. Free voting IDs offered by the state require a birth certificate that costs little as $3, but the Justice Department argued that traveling to get those documents imposes an outsize burden on poor minorities.

As a result, attorneys argued, Texas has issued fewer than 300 free voter IDs since the law took effect.

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The longest-sitting governor in California seems headed toward a fourth term.

Gov. Jerry Brown, 76, is enjoying a roughly 20 percent lead over his Republican challenger, former U.S. Treasury official Neel Kashkari, who is 41.

One poll found that only a quarter of likely voters could identify Kashkari, who quit his job as investment banker to run for governor.

Brown is riding a wave of kudos over ending the long-standing state deficit and making a surplus the new normal. Brown accomplished it, although it meant raising taxes and targeting tax loopholes that benefited business.

In public polling, people think Brown has done a good job, said Louis DeSipio, a political-science professor at the University of California, Irvine. Hes field-tested, hes very popular, and Democrats have a very strong advantage, as far as registered voters, in California.

Less than a third of Californias registered voters identify as Republican. No Republican holds a statewide elected office.

Brown has enjoyed a relatively good relationship with Californias Latinos, many of whom link the Republican Party to former Gov. Pete Wilsons efforts in the 1990s to crack down on undocumented immigrants through Proposition 187, an initiative that called for denying healthcare, education and other services to people who were not in the country legally.

It also required professionals who might come into contact with undocumented immigrants such as teachers and doctors to report them.

Brown, by contrast, has signed bills allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers licenses, go to public colleges and receive financial aid to cover tuition, among other things.

Hes been countering the national anti-immigration rhetoric, DeSipio said.

That said, though Latinos are about 40 percent of Californias population, and 23 percent of registered voters, their turnout is likely to be on the low side on Nov. 4.

Governor Brown has his party backing him on very immigrant friendly legislation because they understand that a huge percentage of Latino families are mixed status, said Apolonio Morales, the political director for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA).

What impacts one family member impacts the whole family. This is an investment in the future work force and, politically speaking, to the next generation of voters here in California.

Kashkari has highlighted his Indian immigrant roots in his campaign, portraying himself as someone who actually is more representative of California than Brown, whom the Republican depicts as privileged and the continuation of a political dynasty. (Browns father was also governor of California.)

Kashkari, a fiscal conservative, has said that despite the polls, he still is running to win.

He has made income inequality a central theme of his campaign, and he accused the governor of overselling California's comeback, saying millions of Californians are still trapped in low-paying or part-time jobs and too many poor children attend failing schools.

He also has described his candidacy as an effort to rebrand the Republican Party. Hes actually staked out political positions that sound more Democrat than Republican. He supports same-sex marriage, he is pro-choice and backs a comprehensive immigration reform plan that address both tighter border security and a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants.

The state GOP organization says that his immigrant roots makes Kashkari the kind of candidate Republicans are looking to have more of in the future.

Neel Kashkari is a great representative of the people of California, said Kaitlyn MacGregor, the communications director for the California Republican Party. He has a great background, a great story, his family immigrated, achieved the American Dream. It resonates with a lot of people.

The Republican Party in California has talked about trying to find nominees and candidates who come from the communities, MacGregor said, and really can get in there and represent them as they want to be represented.

Morales, the CHIRLA political director, said the American Dream image is window-dressing and that Kashkari will find it difficult to overcome the GOP's image as anti-immigrant.

"The party swung too far to the right on the issue of immigration and has been in decline since the days of Proposition 187," Morales said. "As far as Latinos are concerned, the Pete Wilson style of politics never ended for the Republican party."

"To win back the Latino vote in the state, it will take more than window dressing," he said. "It will take a commitment to move pro-immigrant legislation, healthcare, education and jobs despite immigration status."

MacGregor said the Republican challenger is addressing issues that many Californians care about, including job creation and education.

Kashkari has hammered away at Brown for the governors $68 billion high-speed rail project. Brown argues that the rail, which is controversial in the state, is a less expensive alternative to building more freeways.

Kashkari has said the state would be better off spending the money geared for the rail to address such things as the water shortage.

But Kashkaris liberal views on social issues make him radioactive to many Republicans.

The national GOP has kept a rather low profile regarding Kashkaris candidacy, political experts note.

Kashkari represents a divided Republican Party, DeSipio said. He was not a universal choice in the primary. Leading establishment Republicans dont want to get into that fight. The easy way for them is to be quiet and not be very [publicly] supportive of Kashkari to preserve their own future in the party for a future run.
President Barack Obama may not be going any further than the White House in his search for a successor to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who recently announced his resignation.

The front-runner for the job appears to be U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez, according to The New York Times.

Holder, America's first black attorney general and an unflinching champion of civil rights who had come under increasing scrutiny, announced his resignation after leading the Justice Department since the first days of Obama's term. He is the fourth-longest-serving attorney general in U.S. history.

Holder said he would remain in his post until a replacement is confirmed.

Perez, who is 53 and is the son of Dominican immigrants, had been considered by political observers an ideal nominee, given his background as a Justice Department civil rights official.

The New York Times reported that Obama may announce his choice for attorney general before the Nov. 4 election.

Citing only people familiar with the administrations planning, The New York Times said Perez is at the top of the list.

The Times added that no final decision has been made, however, and that other candidates such as Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Kathryn Ruemmler, the former White House counsel, are still potential nominees.

Democrats have praised Thomas as an aggressive advocate of voting and civil rights laws. Many Latino organizations lauded his confirmation as labor secretary in the summer of 2013, saying he had been a dedicated public servant and had acted in the best interests of Latinos and other minorities.

But Republicans considered Perez too liberal and ideological. GOP senators suggested that politics has guided his decisions about enforcing voting rights laws and have accused him of supporting efforts to sidestep federal immigration laws when he was a local government official in Maryland.

"Tom Perez is more than just some left-wing ideologue  he's a left-wing ideologue who appears perfectly willing to bend the rules to achieve his ends," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, last year.

This is reflective not of some passionate left-winger who views himself as patiently advancing policies within the bounds of a democratic system but as a crusading ideologue whose convictions lead him to believe that the law simply doesnt apply to him.

After Holder announced his resignation, Senate Republicans signaled they were preparing for a confirmation fight after years of battles with him.

McConnell warned: "I will be scrutinizing the president's replacement nominee to ensure the Justice Department finally returns to prioritizing law enforcement over partisan concerns."

The New York Times noted that Democrats could act on the nomination through in a lame-duck session on a simple majority vote in the Senate.

The fact that Mr. Perez went through the confirmation process and extensive background check as recently as last year is also an advantage, The Times said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Alabama has agreed not to enforce a provision of its controversial immigration law that required officials to regularly publish a list of people known to be in the country unlawfully.

Lawyers for the state and groups representing immigrants on Friday filed a proposed settlement to a federal lawsuit that challenged the requirement. Critics had derided the public list as a "scarlet letter" provision that could subject immigrants to harassment and vigilantism.

"Alabama has finally recognized that shaming immigrants isn't just morally repugnant, it's constitutionally risky," said Nora Preciado, staff attorney of the National Immigration Law Center. "We're pleased the state decided to finally close this ugly chapter in its legal history."

Alabama politicians approved a hard-line immigration law in 2011, a year after Arizona sparked headlines and lawsuits with a similar law. State legislators revamped the law in 2012 and added a requirement for the state to regularly publish a list of people living in the state illegally who have been arrested and appeared in court.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Immigration Law Center and other groups filed a lawsuit in 2013 challenging the provision on behalf of four people from Mexico who were arrested for fishing without an Alabama fishing license, a misdemeanor offense.

However, Alabama told the court last year that the state had no intention of publishing the list after being warned by federal officials it was a misuse of confidential information.

Alabama Homeland Security Director Spencer Collier wrote in an affidavit that he was advised that the federal information was for law enforcement proposes only and improper use could risk the state's access to law enforcement databases.

The attorney general's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Federal courts, as they did with the Arizona law, blocked many of the far-reaching components of Alabama's immigration law, including a provision for schools to document the immigration status of students.

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A federal judge, as she promised two days before, has filed a permanent injunction against enforcement of a tough Texas voter ID law.

U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos filed her one-paragraph order Saturday in Corpus Christi, likely paving the way for an appeal promised by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

The order was a formality as Gonzales Ramos had issued a 147-page opinion late Thursday night finding the voter ID law to be discriminatory and unconstitutional.

The ruling comes just weeks ahead of the November elections. It's a defeat for Republican-backed photo ID measures that have swept across the U.S. in recent years. Most have been upheld in court, but the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday blocked Wisconsin from implementing its voter ID law.

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Evo Morales appeared headed to an unprecedented third term in elections Sunday on the strength of the economic and political stability the coca growers' union leader has brought to Bolivia.

While known internationally for his anti-imperialist and socialist rhetoric, Morales is widely popular at home for a pragmatic economic stewardship that spread Bolivia's natural gas and mineral wealth among the masses.

"I voted for Evo Morales because he doesn't forget the elderly," said Maria Virginia Velasquez, a 70-year-old widow. Universal old-age pensions  Velasquez gets $36 a month  are among the benefits instituted by Morales that have boosted his popularity.

A boom in commodities prices increased export revenues nine-fold, the country has accumulated $15.5 billion in international reserves and economic growth has averaged 5 percent annually, well above the regional average.

A half a million people have put poverty behind them since Bolivia's first indigenous president first took office in 2006. Public works projects abound, including a satellite designed to deliver Internet to rural schools, a fertilizer plant and La Paz's gleaming new cable car system. His newest promise: to light up La Paz with nuclear power.

Morales was favored in pre-election polls to defeat by some 40 points the closest of four challengers, cement magnate Samuel Doria Medina, and win all nine Bolivian states.

He sought Sunday to improve on his previous best showing  64 percent in 2009  and maintain a two-thirds control of Bolivia's Senate and assembly. That would let him change the constitution, which restricts presidents to two 5-year terms, so he can run again.

Morales, a 55-year-old native Aymara from Bolivia's poor, wind-swept plateau, has not said whether he would seek a fourth term, only that he would "respect the constitution." He did say in a TV interview last week, however, that he didn't believe people over the age of 60 should be president.

A court ruled last year that Morales could run for a third term because his first preceded a constitutional rewrite. All seats are up for grabs in the 36-member Senate and 130-member lower house.

Morales' critics say he has spent tens of millions in government money on his campaign, giving him an unfair advantage. And press freedom advocates accuse him of gradually silencing critical media by helping government allies buy them out, a formula also employed by the ruling socialist heirs in Venezuela of the late Hugo Chavez.

"There are almost no independent media," said Raul Penaranda, vice president of the La Paz Journalists Association. It organized the campaign's lone presidential debate, which Morales didn't attend and state TV didn't broadcast.

Morales has capitalized on his everyman image while his Movement Toward Socialism party's consolidated control over state institutions. He long ago crushed and splintered the opposition, nationalized key utilities and renegotiating natural gas contracts to give the government a bigger share of profits.

His image-makers have built a cult of personality around him. Stadiums, markets, schools, state enterprises and even a village bear Morales' name. In the center of the capital, crews are building a second presidential palace, a 20-story center complete with a heliport.

Yet Morales has alienated environmentalists and many former indigenous allies by promoting mining and a planned jungle highway through an indigenous reserve.

And despite Bolivia's economic advancements, it is still among South America's poorest countries. Nearly one in five Bolivians lives on less than a dollar a day.

Many economists also think it depends too much on natural resources and is especially susceptible to the current easing in commodities demand from China.

Morales' dreams of converting its lithium reserves into battery factories have yet to be realized, as are plans to create a major iron foundry.

In the first half of 2014, natural gas and minerals accounted for 82 percent of export revenues.

The underground cocaine economy also gets credit for the economic boom. Peru's former drug czar, Ricardo Soberon, estimates its annual revenues at $2.3 billion, equal to about 7 percent of gross domestic product.

Morales promotes coca's traditional uses and claims zero tolerance for cocaine.

The United States deems Bolivia uncooperative in the war on drugs and has halted trade preferences and cut all counter-narcotics aid. Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador and Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008, accusing them of inciting the opposition.

Last year he threw out the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Morales' ability to combat crime and corruption have, meanwhile, been questioned. A former counterdrug czar is in a U.S. prison for drug trafficking, there have been multiple graft scandals involving state industries and Bolivia's justice system has been tarnished by an extortion scandal.

Ronald Velasquez, a 38-year-old computer specialist, said he voted for Morales because he didn't trust any of the other candidates. He said he trusts Morales but the president "is surrounded by bad associates."

"He has had a lot of problems in his government with corruption and influence-peddling," Velasquez said.

Macario Chambi, a 54-year-old street vendor, said he would not vote for Morales, whose ruling clique he believes is getting rich off the economic bonanza without instituting the type of reforms that will actually create wealth.

"He thinks we're all sheep, that we don't realize that they want to buy us with cheap sweets."

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The mayor of a New Mexico city where immigration authorities are holding nearly 500 detainees says dozens of immigrants have been released.

Artesia Mayor Phillip Burch told the Associated Press that 68 detainees at the Artesia Family Residential Center were released and around 14 were deported last week. He says federal immigration officials reported around 479 detainees remain at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia and more are expected to arrive in the coming days.

Burch says Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials briefed Artesia officials on the latest numbers during a weekly meeting.

ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa says 324 detainees have been deported to Central America since the center opened three months ago.

The Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review says it told the AP a "special request" taking 10 to 15 days was required for information on immigration judges' latest decisions.

The immigration detention center at Artesia, an isolated New Mexico desert town, has come under fire from outside and from within recently.

Billed as a temporary place to house women and children from Central America who were among a wave of immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally earlier this year, the facility could remain open until next summer, it was revealed earlier this month.

"All of us would love us to see the doors close in Artesia but the reality is the need will probably be there and probably until the end of the high season, probably August next year," a government official told immigration advocates in a confidential meeting, a recording of which the AP was given access to.

The detainees, meanwhile, have been growing increasingly frustrated that they are being held with no end in sight while earlier border-crossers were released with orders to contact immigration officials later.

"I'm being punished for coming here, they tell us," said Geraldyn Perez. She said she fled death threats by gangs in Guatemala.

The center opened as federal officials were realizing over the summer that the thousands of border-crossers they released had disappeared into the nation's interior and never showed up for any meetings with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

The government official in the recorded confidential meeting acknowledged that about 70 percent of the released families vanished.

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A California-based conservative group is fuming over a cartoon they found hanging in a state senators office depicting Arizonas strict immigration law as racist.

Members of the group We the People Rising apparently saw the cartoon -- which shows Arizona police officers pointing guns at immigrants traveling in a van near a highway sign that says Welcome to Arizona  during a visit in the summer to the office of Long Beach Democratic Sen. Ricardo Lara.

Speech bubbles in the cartoon had police officers saying in a mix of German and English: Stoppen yer auto and Achtung! Ve want to see your papers! A sign under Velcome to Arizona says If youre brown leave town.

Had this been a white senator and minorities were complaining, I think the wall hanging would have been removed at the first complaint and never been put up again, said Robin Hvidston, executive director of We the People Rising told Fox News Latino. The organization claims to have over 500 members and says it is a non-partisan organization open to anyone who cares about immigration. Honestly, I think a white senator wouldnt even dare to take this action.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the 2010 Arizona law's most contentious section  a requirement that police, while enforcing other laws, question the immigration status of those suspected of being in the country illegally. But the courts have either struck down or blocked enforcement of other sections of the law known as SB1070, such as a requirement that immigrants carry registration.

The activists with We the People Rising evidently took down the cartoon when they visited the office, and told Laras staff they found it offensive, but learned that it was hanging on the wall again.

What are you doing with this cartoon in a taxpayer funded senators office presenting an inappropriate, divisive, negative depiction of law officers, Hvidston explained. Its a cartoon. Thats freedom of speech. We think its inappropriate for it to be in the senators reception area in his foyer.

The group wants an apology from Lara, and also wants the City Council to get involved in seeing that the cartoon comes down from the wall permanently.

Its basically saying that anybody who is against illegal immigration is a racist, the Long Beach Press Telegram quoted Wes Parker, a member of the group, as saying about the cartoon.

Lara said in an emailed statement quoted by local newspapers: The satirical piece depicts Arizonas well-known discriminatory, anti-immigrant and anti-Latino attitudes in recent history. I obtained the piece at an ACLU of Southern California event where I proudly accepted the Legislator of the Year Award in the Assembly for my work on behalf of all Californians.

The Republican Tea Partiers who visited my district office, many from outside of my district, also enjoyed my personal collection of LGBT and Cambodian art, as well as Latin American art from (the Museum of Latin American Art), Lara said.

The lawmaker said while he respects art criticism, he also values the diversity of opinion such as those expressed by the artist.

"The art piece will remain on the wall and my district office will continue to welcome all constituents, he said, even those belonging to groups like the Tea Party.

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The growing Latino population in Georgia could decide one of tightest Senate races in the country.

With more than 9 percent of the Georgia population identifying themselves as Hispanic or Latino, the Senate race between former non-profit executive Michelle Nunn, a Democrat, and American businessman David Perdue, a Republican, is now more influenced by Hispanics than ever before.

It is one of the races where political analysts and members of the Latino community have noted that the percentage of Latino voters in the state could make a game-changing difference.

As tight and competitive as the Senate race is in Georgia, I think that the Latino vote has the potential to determine the outcome of the election, said Jerry Gonzales, Executive Director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials.

The most recent polling data average from Real Clear Politics shows Purdue leading Nunn by more than three points.

Every indication is that the Senate election in Georgia this year will be very close. So although Latinos are a small component of the electorate, if they vote cohesively for one candidate or the other, it could provide the margin, said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock.

Political experts say that what is happening in Georgia is a microcosm of what is happening throughout the country  Latino voters are becoming more important in elections across the country as their populations increase in size.

The Purdue and Nunn campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.

One of the most important topics surrounding the Latino community, some experts said, is immigration.

In 2011, Georgia passed a law making the state the strictest when it comes to illegal immigration. HB 87 cracked down on illegal immigration by increasing some law enforcement powers and requiring many employers to check the immigration status of new hires. The law penalizes people who transport or harbor undocumented immigrants.

The candidates should be aware that immigration is still a very important issue to Latinos. The issue of how they address immigration is a way in how we judge who we will likely vote for in the election, said Gonzales.

While both candidates have ideological differences on immigration, both are calling for a more secure border and are vague on how to carry out the states strict immigration law.

Nunn believes we need comprehensive immigration reform that secures our borders and provides an accountable pathway to citizenship that requires those currently living here go to the back of the line, pass a background check, learn English, and pay back taxes, her website page says.

Perdue places more of a focus on securing the border, saying on his website page the debate in Washington over illegal immigration has become unnecessarily complicatedsimply put, we need to strictly enforce current laws and any new laws should be straightforward, focusing on true border security.

Both parties are heavily reaching out to Latino voters in their effort to clinch the seat as Republicans and Democrats nationwide fight for control of the Senate.

A poll focusing on Latino voters came under criticism after it showed that Hispanics in the states were heavily backing the Republican candidate. A Survey USA/NBC-11 Atlanta poll recently reported Latinos favoring Perdue, 44 to 32 percent, with an article entitled "Hispanic voter buck assumptions, back GA GOP candidates." The 12-point difference could significantly influence the election.

But Matt Barreto, one of the most prominent Latino pollsters in the country, has heavily criticized the poll, claiming it is not credible.

The poll is garbage, said Barreto, a professor of political science at the University of Washington and co-founder of the polling and research firm Latino Decisions.

Barreto told Fox News Latino that Survey USAs sample size of Hispanic voters is only 7 percent, which equals about 38 Latino voters out of the entire 550 likely voters in the survey.

Barreto said Georgias Latino population is over 900,000, and a sample size of only 38 people is not appropriate for estimating Latino vote preference in Georgia.

The margin of error for the Hispanic sub-sample group in the Survey USA poll is plus or minus 16 percent, according to Barreto.

But Georgia Republican strategist Todd Rehm defended the poll.

When you start looking at sub-groups, you got to keep an eye on the fact that as the number of respondents goes down, your margin of error goes up, said Rehm said.

But the political parties say they are not worried about polling data, they are just focusing on making sure they adequately reach out to minority groups.

"Regardless of what one poll may showjust as they have in previous electionsLatinos will play a key role in this election in helping to spread the word of the shared priorities between the Democratic Party and their community," said Rebecca DeHart, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia.

Republican Party officials say they have 17 field offices in the state, over 40 full-time staffers, and nearly a thousand grassroots leaders organizing in neighborhoods and communities around the state. But, they said, they are not concentrating on one group.

Every people group - no matter how large or small - will impact the results of this election, said Ryan Matthew Mahoney, a spokesman for the Georgia Republican Party. For that reason, the Georgia Republican Party continues to engage with traditional Republican voters as well as African American, Latino/Hispanic, and Asian voters in Georgia.

The increasing Latino and Hispanic population numbers does not necessarily mean more of them will show up at the polls on Election Day.

Despite the fact that the Census data reports the Hispanic population growing pretty quickly, that hasnt necessarily translated into strong showing at the polls as far as we can tell, Rehm said. If you look at the Secretary of States numbers, it has hovered around 2 percent of the electorate in the last several general elections.

Gonzales said his group, GALEO, is encouraging Latinos to vote early and to encourage their friends to vote.

We are doing this specifically in the Latino community because the state of Georgia has a citizenship verification process that people have to overcome in order for them to exercise their right to vote, Gonzales said. So if they vote early, they will have a longer time to address any issues that may come up in proving citizenship.

The Senate candidates are fighting to replace Georgias current Senator Saxby Chambliss, who announced earlier in 2013 he would not be running for a third term.

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Democratic candidates in Colorado got back-to-back smackdowns in recent days.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) opted to cancel $1.4 million of TV commercials theyd planned to air for congressional challenger Andrew Romanoff, Politico reported.

Politico called the move a sign of waning confidence in his prospects.

Romanoff is running in the 6th district against incumbent Republican Rep. Mike Coffman, whos been maintaining a consistent lead in the polls.

At the same time, Colorados major newspaper, the Denver Post, which traditionally endorses Democrats, threw its support behind Republican Cory Gardner, a congressman who is running for the Senate against incumbent Democrat Mark Udall.

The Post conceded that it shares Udalls ideology on many issues, but that he had failed to be much of a force in Washington, D.C. It also scolded the one-term senator for distorting some of Gardners stances, and lauded Gardners ability to leave his mark in his legislative career.

Rather than run on his record, Udall's campaign has devoted a shocking amount of energy and money trying to convince voters that Gardner seeks to outlaw birth control despite the congressman's call for over-the-counter sales of contraceptives, the Post editorial said. Udall is trying to frighten voters rather than inspire them with a hopeful vision. His obnoxious one-issue campaign is an insult to those he seeks to convince.

Both moves against Colorado Democrats were significant  these two races in particular are being closely watched nationally.

The U.S. Senate race is one of the most high-stakes in the nation. The Republicans, who now have a majority in the House of Representatives, need to win six seats nationally on Nov. 4 to have a majority in the Senate as well.

The race between Coffman and Romanoff is Colorados most competitive race for the House. It also has become the most expensive House contest in Colorado history.

Romanoff, former speaker of the state House, has outraised Coffman thanks to help from national Democratic allies including Vice President Joe Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Fundraising numbers released by the campaigns last week showed the challenger maintaining his fundraising advantage. Romanoff raised about $1.1 million in the last fiscal quarter, compared with about $850,000 for Coffman.

But Romanoff, once considered one of the most promising candidates for the Democrats for the midterm elections, has seen his once-strong position weaken in the face of an assertive campaign by Coffman and disillusionment over the performance of President Barack Obama and, by extension, all Democrats.

Politico said that the DCCC said it would reallocate the funds planned for Romanoff to other congressional races.

Colorado's 6th district is almost evenly divided among Republicans, Democrats and independents. It is about 20 percent Latino. The winner likely will determine which party controls Colorado's congressional delegation, currently made up of four Republicans and three Democrats.

Romanoff has tried to pry the seat from Coffman by consistently reminding voters that when Coffman was first elected in 2008, he opposed pro-immigrant measures like a plan to allow provisional status for some people brought illegally to this country as children.

Coffman said in a recent debate that his mind has been changed by meeting immigrant families with "parents that live in fear on a daily basis" over the prospect of being separated from their children.

"We do have to secure the borders and enforce the laws," Coffman said. But he added, "You have to be compassionate in keeping families together."

For his part, Romanoff faults Congress for failing to solve the nation's immigration troubles. "We haven't gotten action from this government," Romanoff said.

Underscoring the importance of Latino voters in the contest, the candidate's final debate on Oct. 30 will be conducted in Spanish.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Only hours after the publication of an Associated Press story on his case Tuesday, the U.S. government issued a humanitarian visa enabling the return of a Harvard University student who broke immigration rules by taking his dying mother to Mexico.

Dario Guerrero was born in Mexico and moved with his family to California when he was 2. The Obama administration granted him and hundreds of thousands of other young immigrants a reprieve from deportation two years ago.

But these people can't leave the U.S. without government approval. And Guerrero's mother was dying of cancer.

Desperate to save her, Guerrero took his mother to clinics in Mexico before getting that approval. She died there in August, and he's been stuck since then. The government denied his initial request to return, saying he effectively deported himself by taking his mother across the border before the paperwork was done on his approval request.

Guerrero has been languishing since then at his grandparents' home outside Mexico City, saying he's hoping for another chance to return home to his family in California and complete his studies in Massachusetts.

Hours after the AP explained his story, he got his answer: In a two-page letter to his lawyer, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service said it has conditionally approved a 2-year parole for Guerrero, meaning he can return without fear of deportation.

"He should be back in America in a few days," his attorney Alan Klein told the AP.

Since his mother died in August, the film studies major stayed with his grandparents in a gang-controlled suburb of Mexico City. His effort to get a exemption from the rules was a long shot: Last year, the agency approved only about a third of the humanitarian parole petitions it received.

Agency officials declined to discuss any details of Guerrero's case because it is ongoing. However, spokesman Chris Bentley said earlier Tuesday that "immigration law is complex; anyone considering taking an immigration action needs to clearly understand the potential consequences of that action first."

Guerrero told the AP that he had submitted two requests for fast-tracked permission to leave while his mother's health declined at the family's home in Long Beach, California, and was asked to more fully document his mother's medical condition. He could have tried to plead his case in person, but he left instead before getting an answer.

"My mom had a lot of ups and downs," he said. "The decision to actually leave was made overnight."

Miami-based immigration attorney Ira Kurzban says it's not infrequent for immigrants to lose their legal status by leaving the country without permission. It happens when they go on cruise ships  thinking they haven't really left the U.S.  or take off due to a family emergency. Many discover only later that they can't return, or are barred for entering for as much as 10 years.

"There's no question (Guerrero) didn't follow the rules. The question is what the penalty should be," Kurzban said.

Any immigrants with pending cases need permission to go abroad, which is not difficult to get eventually, if their requests are deemed valid. But those who don't wait for sometimes slow responses are considered to have voluntarily given up their effort to remain in the U.S.

Advocates say it should be easier for immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for many years to get permission to travel. Visas for skilled H-1B temporary workers already allow travel internationally without preapproval, and giving others this freedom would reduce heartbreak and add only minimal administrative work, Kurzban said.

But no such provisions were included in last year's immigration reform bills, and they aren't expected to be included in any executive action President Barack Obama might announce later this year. Kurzban thinks that's because the issue affects a relatively small group, and there are so many other priorities.

When Rocio Meneses Diaz died Aug. 14 at the age of 41 in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. Guerrero's 16-year-old brother also was by her side. As a U.S.-born citizen, he is allowed to travel freely. Their father, a building contractor in the U.S. illegally, stayed behind with their 9-year-old sister, also a citizen.

Guerrero says he regrets his rash decision most of all because he thinks his mother would have been happier living her final days in Southern California with her husband and children, "but then we still had hope  and if we delayed that treatment any longer because of immigration issues, I don't think I would have been able to forgive myself."

Guerrero's parents had kept his immigration status secret for years. They came clean only when he began taking community-college engineering classes while still in high school, and the Social Security number his parents submitted bounced back.

Before her death, Guerrero's mom opened up about the past and her reasons for leaving Mexico: Her father had been kidnapped twice; her father-in-law and other relatives faced extortion; armed thieves broke into her clothing and jewelry store, holding a knife to her stomach.

Guerrero recorded her stories and her struggle with kidney cancer, hoping to turn it into a documentary back at school.

Instead, he has passed time in a room next to a garage just big enough to fit his twin bed and bureau. A picture of his mother and a single rose hang above the bed. His grandparents rent out the nearest bathroom during weekends for a pop-up street market. Guerrero sees his cousins after they get off work, and "writes poetry and stuff" at night.

Former Harvard lecturer Eoin Cannon, who taught history to Guerrero, was surprised to learn of his student's predicament. Cannon described him as "one of the most thoughtful and creative and original students that I had the pleasure of teaching," and "an exceptional writer." Guerrero tackled homelessness in a student film, and later co-produced "A Dream Deferred," a documentary about other immigrants like himself at Harvard.

"He's as American as anyone I know," Cannon said. "The law needs to sort of recognize that and have a mechanism for accounting for that ... For the law not to be able to handle his kind of case is hurting America."

Guerrero says it's been liberating to have no term-paper deadlines to worry about, but the lack of a routine keeps him edgy. He watches his back when he ventures outside. Crime cartels have moved in, extorting neighborhood businesses. Weeks ago, a relative was mugged and shot in the stomach.

Harvard has been supportive, granting him leave and helping him find sympathetic ears in Washington, including Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. But when asked what's hardest about being stuck in Mexico, he loses his bravado and his voice drops to a whisper: "That I don't have a mom anymore."

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Executive action on immigration isn't the only move President Barack Obama is delaying until after the Nov. 4 election to appease Democrats who worry that a backlash will cost them their race.

Obama also is putting off announcing his choice for attorney general.

Delaying an announcement of a replacement for outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, however, will set up a likely showdown with a lame duck Senate later this year.

Senate Democrats have asked Obama to wait so controversy doesn't arise over whether they will support a specific nominee. Not only that, a delay would give Obama more time to consider his options.

Earlier this month, the New York Times, citing unidentified sources, reported that the front-runner for attorney general apparently was U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez.

But the Associated Press reports that a White House official said on Tuesday that the president has not yet decided who he wants to replace Holder, a longtime friend and political ally who announced last month he will step down whenever a new attorney general is confirmed.

The White House is preparing for the prospect of trying to push through a nominee in the year-end congressional session while Democrats still have a 10-seat majority in the Senate.

Obama faces the likelihood of an even tougher challenge to win confirmation if he waits until the new Senate is seated early next year, since Republicans are expected to pick up seats in the midterm, if not to win outright control.

Some Senate Republicans have called on Obama to wait until the new Senate is seated in January to make the nomination.

The lame duck timetable is compressed into just seven legislative calendar weeks, not counting time off for holiday recesses. But the White House has pointed out that there is precedent for such a move. The day after the 2006 midterm, President George W. Bush nominated Robert Gates as secretary of defense and he was confirmed in less than a month with bipartisan support.

Obama seems to be looking most closely at those who already have served in his administration. Top contenders include Perez, Solicitor General Don Verrilli and former White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler, although those involved with the process say other candidates haven't been ruled out.

Perez, who is 53 and is the son of Dominican immigrants, had been considered by political observers an ideal nominee, given his background as a Justice Department civil rights official.

Based on reporting by The Associated Press.

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he is going to visit Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic before the Nov. 4 election as a sign of respect to state residents who have roots in the two places.

But his Republican challenger, Rob Astorino, says the governors plans amount to pandering to Latinos.

Astorino sent out an email this week describing Cuomos plans to visit both places as a panic and pander tour and an "insulting attempt to make [Cuomo] seem engaged in Hispanic affairs."

Cuomo told reporters over the weekend that he planned to go to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and meet with officials there, according to published reports.

On Monday, at the Columbus Day Parade on Fifth Avenue, he said to the press: "I would like to get there before Election Day as a sign of respect to those two communities that I've worked with for a very long time."

In New York, Puerto Ricans are the largest Hispanic group, making up about a third of the states Latino population, according to Pew Research Center. In the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans are the dominant Hispanic origin groups.

New York is home to about 50 percent of the roughly 1.5 million Dominicans who live in the United States, according to Pew.

About half of the Dominicans living in New York are eligible to vote, the New York Times reported earlier this year.

And Puerto Ricans, of course, are U.S. citizens by birth.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. responded to Astorinos criticism of Cuomos travel plans on behalf of the Cuomo campaign saying, according to Newsday, that "the millions of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York State always appreciate the governor's visits to our ancestral homes."

"The more we examine Rob Astorino's record, Diaz added, the easier it is to see that his conservative policies would be dangerous not just to Latinos, but all New Yorkers."

Astorino's criticism, to be sure, does not mean the Republican is not pursuing Latino voters.

He has often used his fluency in Spanish to court them.

A Newsday article noted that Astorino, who, like Cuomo, is of Italian descent, has used his Spanish skills several times in bilingual speeches and Internet video addresses.

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An appeals court on Wednesday struck down a voter-approved law in Arizona that denies bail to immigrants who are in the country illegally and have been charged with a range of felonies that include shoplifting, aggravated identity theft, sexual assault and murder.

An 11-member panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the law violates due-process rights by imposing punishment before trial.

Proponents of the 2006 law said the statute prevents people who aren't authorized to be in the country and skip out on their bail from committing future offenses. Critics say the law's real intent is to punish immigrants before they have been convicted of crimes.

The law was approved with 78 percent of the vote and was among four immigration proposals approved by Arizonans in 2006. The other measures made English the state's official language, barred immigrants who aren't authorized to be in the country from receiving punitive damages in lawsuits and prohibited them from receiving certain government services and benefits.

Arizona is one of at least four states with laws confronting the issue of bail for people in the country without authorization. Missouri and Alabama have similar laws, while Virginia has a less stringent statute in which immigrants are allowed to argue their case for bail before a judge.

Arizona's no-bail law was proposed by then-state Rep. Russell Pearce, who later would succeed in pushing through Arizona's landmark 2010 immigration enforcement law.

A three-member panel of the appeals court previously rejected a challenge to the no-bail law, finding it didn't run afoul of the Constitution. But the law's challengers succeeded in getting a larger panel of the court to consider the case.

American Civil Liberties Union and other groups maintain immigrants are unfairly held and denied their fundamental constitutional rights while others are allowed to put up bond in exchange for their freedom before trial.

The challengers say the Legislature's push to put the measure on the ballot was permeated with the intent to punish people who were in the country illegally for federal immigration violations. They also argue federal law trumps the state law.

The lawyers defending the law say the intent of the statute was to improve public safety, not to punish people for federal immigration violations. They also said the state law doesn't conflict with federal law.

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A federal appeals court on Tuesday temporarily reinstated Texas' tough voter ID law, which the U.S. Justice Department had condemned as the state's latest means of suppressing minority voter turnout.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals allows the law to be used in the November election, despite a lower judge's ruling that the law is unconstitutional. The 5th Circuit did not rule on the law's merits; instead, it determined it's too late to change the rules for the election.

The judge said the Supreme Court has repeatedly told courts to be cautious about late-hour interruptions of elections. Early voting starts Oct. 20.

"It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the state to adequately train its 25,000 polling workers at 8,000 polling places" in time for the start of early voting, the appeals court wrote.

While some voters may be harmed, the greater harm would come in potentially disrupting an election statewide, the court said.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund promised a quick appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The ruling represents a temporary but key victory for Republican-backed photo ID measures that have swept across the U.S. in recent years. Last week's ruling from U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos  an appointee of President Barack Obama who likened the law to a poll tax designed to dissuade minorities from voting  remains under appeal.

The Texas law, considered the toughest of its kind in the nation, requires that an estimated 13.6 million registered voters show one of seven kinds of photo identification to cast a ballot. The Justice Department says more than 600,000 of those voters, mostly blacks and Hispanics, lack eligible ID.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who had sought an emergency ruling from the conservative-leaning appeals court, is on the ballot as the Republican nominee for governor.

Abbott spokeswoman Lauren Bean called Tuesday's ruling "the right choice to avoid voter confusion."

A Justice Department spokeswoman said the agency was reviewing the opinion and declined immediate comment.

Texas Democrats decried the ruling.

"An intentionally discriminatory law should not be allowed to remain in effect," said Texas Democrat Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa.

Nineteen states have laws requiring voters to show identification at the polls. Courts across the country have knocked down challenges, including at the Supreme Court.

But U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder brought the weight of his office into Texas after the Supreme Court last year struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, which had prevented the state from enacting its voter ID law.

The full Voting Rights Act had blocked Texas and eight other states with histories of discrimination from changing election laws without permission from the Justice Department or a federal court. Holder vowed to wring whatever protections he could from the weakened version, and made Texas a first target.

Abbott, who is favored to win the race against Democrat Wendy Davis to replace Rick Perry as governor, said the law has support from minorities and whites alike. His office also pointed to other states, such as Georgia and Indiana, where similar measures have been upheld.

But opponents slammed Texas' law as far more discriminatory. College students IDs aren't acceptable, but concealed handgun licenses are. Free IDs offered by the state require a birth certificate that costs as little as $3, but the Justice Department argued that traveling to get those documents imposes a burden on poor minorities.

Opponents say Texas has issued fewer than 300 free voter IDs since the law took effect, while Georgia has issued 2,200 under a program with more robust outreach.

Davis criticized Abbott for continuing to support a law that a judge ruled discriminatory.

"It's nothing more than a 'poll tax,' which means democracy and all Texans lose," Davis said.

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In Californias 21st congressional district, Republican incumbent David Valadao, a first-term House member, is fighting for re-election against Democrat Amanda Renteria.

The district tends to alternate between parties. In 2012, it split, going to President Obama and Valadao.

Although Democrats maintain a voter registration advantage, those in Washington are beginning to realize what the district already knows: Central Valley voters will support the candidate that shares their values, regardless of party, said a Valadao for Congress spokesperson.

To be re-elected, Valadao would have to once again overcome demographics that dont seem to favor him: Democrats account for nearly 75 percent of registered voters in the Hispanic-dominated district. So far, so good. A September SurveyUSA poll put his lead over Renteria at nearly 20 points.

Fox News Latino asked the challenger why she thinks voters chose a Republican Congressman in the last election.

There wasnt really a great job of building the grassroots team, Renteria said referring to the Democratic campaign. If you dont have that truly grassroots door-knocking really connecting with the community, its tough.

Voters in this very agricultural area of Californias Central Valley seem to be able to relate to the incumbent. Valadao comes from a farming family taught himself Spanish by speaking to workers in the fields.

Valadao is an advocate of increasing the number of hands-on jobs. Unlike Renteria, he doesnt support an increase in the minimum wageinstead hes in favor of improving the business conditions.

Minimum wage is an issue that should be addressed at the state level, a Valadao for Congress spokesperson said.

Renteria also has her roots in the agriculture industry. Her parents, originally from Mexico, grew up picking fruit in Woodlake, California.

Growing up,she was an athlete and excelled in school, attending Stanford and Harvard. She went on to become high school teacher. Shes naturally a strong advocate of education, stressing the importance of the Title 1 funding for literacy.

I believe that education is the key to our future as a country, Renteria told FNL. I know that I would never have had the opportunities Ive had if I hadnt done well in school.

Despite their differences, the candidates have a history of respecting each other in commercials and debates.

Renteria said reaching the Hispanic base is obviously very important to her campaign.

Were doing everything we can to reach out to all the different communities here but the Latino community, the Hispanic vote, is clearly important. I think when you look at the issues  whether its education or immigration or jobs  it really does effect the Latino and Hispanic community here.

The Central Valley is dubbed the bread basket of the state and country. This year, California is in the middle of one of the most devastating droughts in history. The future of agriculture and water supply is vital to the area and is perhaps the most important issue facing the region.

Water is a huge issue, Renteria said. The agriculture community here in the Valley really does provide... What I like to say is, 'We feed the country, we feed the world.'

Renteria is asking her supporters to vote in favor of a $2.7 billion water bond that will provide storage for water and fund short- and long-term projects including transferring water from Northern California.

Not only do water and agriculture issues affect those who work and depend on those specific industries; it affects every family and individual in California's San Joaquin Valley, said a spokesperson for Valadao for Congress.

Valadao introduced legislation which has passed through the House of Representatives, the Water Delivery Act, would preserve hundreds of billions of gallons of water being flushed into the ocean.
The Kentucky Democrat challenging Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, in the November election angered many by taking a hard line on immigration and by airing campaign ads that condemned amnesty and undocumented immigrants  calling them "illegal aliens," a phrase that is anathema to immigration activists.

She also has refused to say if she voted for President Barack Obama in 2012.

Now, it seems, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has decided that it has had enough from Alison Lundergan Grimes, whom the party aggressively courted to challenge McConnell.

The group has stopped running ads supporting her, a severe blow to Grimes' effort against a powerful incumbent opponent running a well-backed campaign.

In a statement issued three weeks before the Nov. 4 election and a day after the candidates' only debate, the DSCC said Tuesday that it had spent more than $2 million in Kentucky and continued to fund get-out-the-vote efforts. However, the committee made no commitment to go back on the air in support of Grimes, who has been pummeled by tens of millions of dollars in attack ads by McConnell and his allies.

The committee's decision was in strong contrast to its activities in other states with pivotal Senate races. Democrats continued to spend freely in Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina and other states as they tried to block a Republican drive to gain a Senate majority.

Grimes' campaign continued to air its own ads  including one that accuses McConnell of supporting amnesty for three million immigrants living in the country illegally. MoveOn.org, a liberal political action committee, on Tuesday called on Grimes to pull the ad because it refers to undocumented immigrants as "illegal aliens."

Other groups that favor more lenient policies addressing illegal immigration also assailed Grimes.

Immigration reform is a critical issue that will require leadership and political courage to do the right thing, said Cristobal Alex, president of the Latino Victory Project, a group co-founded by actress Eva Longoria. To see a candidate from either party use this kind of language in advertising is unacceptable in 2014, and we condemn this attempt by Alison Lundergan Grimes to play ugly politics with an issue so important to our community and the nation.

McConnell has been plagued by low approval ratings, and he has sought to turn the election into a referendum on President Barack Obama, who is even more unpopular in the state. Grimes has responded throughout the campaign by distancing herself from the president as well, a tactic that until recently seemed to be paying off in the polls.

In recent days, the issue of Obama moved to the top of the daily back-and-forth, with Grimes refusing to say if she voted for Obama in 2008 or 2012, even though she was a delegate for Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2012.

During their televised debate Monday night, Grimes repeatedly criticized the five-term Republican senator for running a campaign bankrolled by millionaires and billionaires. She repeated those themes Tuesday after speaking with supporters at an event in Florence, in northern Kentucky.

Grimes said of McConnell, "He can buy the airwaves, but he can't buy the hearts and minds of Kentuckians."

The challenger has proven to be a formidable fundraiser herself, besting McConnell by nearly $1 million in the second fundraising quarter. Her campaign announced Tuesday it had raised $4.9 million in the quarter ending Sept. 30, breaking her own state fundraising record. The campaign says it has $4.4 million in cash available to spend, more than any Democrat in a competitive U.S. Senate race.

Despite that, she has been outspent by McConnell and his network of super PACs by tens of millions of dollars.

Republicans who track the race also say Grimes is no longer benefiting from ads from the Senate Majority PAC, an independent group that is allied with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and has spent millions on competitive races. A spokesman for the group did not respond to requests for comment.

The United Mineworkers of America, which endorsed Grimes over McConnell, started running $318,000 worth of TV ads in the Evansville, Indiana, and Charleston, West Virginia, markets that cover much of Kentucky's coal fields.

At the same time, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, the super PAC supporting McConnell, launched yet another $1.2 million TV ad buy on Tuesday that again connects Grimes to Obama.

Grimes brushed off the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, telling reporters Tuesday that the group is "one letter shy of Koch brothers," a reference to the billionaire Republican donors who Democrats have turned into a symbol for campaign finance reform.

"I think that Kentuckians know my record as secretary of state has been one that has actually put the people first and broken through the gridlock to actually be an independent thinker that's gotten results for them," Grimes said. "That is what we have seen has resonated. They know it in their hearts."

Based on reporting by The Associated Press.

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Is there a doctor in the house?

The House of Representatives, that is.

If you ask Annette Teijeiro, there are not enough  especially at a time when health insurance and Ebola are in the headlines, but little understood by the public and lawmakers alike.

That is one reason why Teijeiro, an anesthesiologist, is running to unseat U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, a Democrat who is running for re-election in the 1st Congressional District.

There are only 18 physicians in Congress, said Teijeiro, but there are 173 lawyers.

That is worrisome, Teijeiro says, at a time when the United States is faced with its first cases of Ebola, with possibly more to emerge in the near future, perhaps because of missteps.

We have a major disease that has entered our borders, Teijeiro says. Yet Congress will not suspend its [election] activities to take care of the people of this nation. They should be bringing attention to all that needs to be done to prevent an outbreak.

Teijeiro says that members of Congress should learning about the disease, methods of dealing with it, and allocating funding to it.

People dont need to be dying, she says, adding that on the campaign trail and in media interviews she has been speaking about Ebola and precautions that Americans should take.

There was a misperception, she says, that Ebola was a third world problem, something that proliferates there because of a lack of resources and knowledge about fighting diseases.

Were not Africa, but the virus doesnt care whether its in the United States, or Liberia or the Sudan, Teijeiro says. Its a virus, it has one single purpose  to reproduce itself, and killing the host in the process doesnt matter.

Earlier this year, Teijeiro defeated lawyer Jose Padilla in a competitive GOP primary.

But Teijeiro faces a tough challenge in the general election.

Democrats have a 2-to-1 registration advantage, and the only Republican to ever hold the seat was former U.S. Rep. and Sen. John Ensign.

Teijeiro says shes also running because she feels Nevadas congressional delegation needs ethnic diversity. She has accused Titus of and Democrats in general of not being sincere when they say they care about Latinos and immigration reform.

The Democrats, and President Barack Obama, prioritized passing the Affordable Care Act over reforming immigration, Teijeiro says. Immigration reform, Teijeiro argues, is more urgently needed, and will affect many more people, than the Affordable Care Act.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal said that if she succeeds, Teijeiro would be Nevadas first Hispanic congressional representative.

Teijeiro says that she supports a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants who work, have not committed crimes, and who want to continue to contribute.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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A veteran New Hampshire state representative has created a firestorm over a blog post in which he says that an incumbent congresswoman likely will lose her re-election bid because she is ugly as sin, while her younger challenger is truly attractive.

Steve Vaillancourt, a Republican who is in his sixth term in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, said that if theres credence to a poll that he saw about how attractive candidates appeal to voters more than unattractive ones , then U.S. Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, a Democrat, surely will lose to her Republican challenger Marilinda Garcia.

In New Hampshire's 2nd congressional district, if I may be so bold as to speak the truth, Republican Marilinda Garcia is one of the most attractive women on the political scene anywhere, Vaillancourt wrote. Not so attractive as to be intimidating, but truly attractive.

How attractive is Marilinda Garcia? Vaillancourt asked rhetorically. You know how opposition ad makers usually go out of their way to find a photo of the opponent not looking his or her best. Well ... Democrats and Annie Kuster supporters can't seem to find a photo of Marilinda Garcia looking bad at all.

Kuster, on the other hand, he said, is the opposite.

Let's be honest. Does anyone not believe that Congressman Annie Kuster is as ugly as sin? Vaillancourt asked. And I hope I haven't offended sin.

How ugly is Annie Kuster? he asked. Annie Kuster looks more like a drag queen than most men in drag.

Garcia, who is currently a state representative, said Vaillancourt's comments have absolutely no place in political discourse.

Both Rep. Kuster and I have experienced this unfortunate reality of being a woman in politics, Garcia said in a statement. I hope that as time moves forward and more female candidates run for political office around the country, people will focus on the content of our ideas rather than what we wear and how we look.

Kusters campaign has declined to comment.

Polls of likely voters, however, largely buck Vaillancourts hypothesis.

They have tended to show Kuster, 58, leading Garcia, 31, by as much as double digits, though some more recent surveys have showed the candidates almost even, or with Garcia slightly leading.

Garcia, a conservative, has received the strong backing of national Republicans, who have declared her one of their rising stars.

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican who is one of the most vocal conservatives in Congress, traveled to New Hampshire several weeks ago to stump for Garcia.

This is hardly the first time Garcia in her career has dealt with references to her looks.

Immediately after she announced her candidacy for U.S. Congress, Democratic State Rep. Peter Sullivan attacked Garcia on Twitter, saying she was another Republican lawmaker in stiletto heels.He called her a lightweight and compared her to reality-TV celebrity Kim Kardashian.

The latest sexist references to the candidates prompted Time Magazine to ask, What is going on in New Hampshire? Youd think the state with the first-in-history all-female delegationboth senators, both House members and the governorwould be more enlightened, or at least more sensitive, when it comes to female candidates.

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WASHINGTON (AP) - An anti-immigration group on Wednesday began running more than $1 million in ads that blame new immigrants for the economic struggles of longtime Americans.

NumbersUSA will run the 30-second spot in 10 states where there are competitive Senate races. The ad doesn't endorse a particular candidate or party but urges voters to examine whether incumbents or their challengers would be the strongest opponents to increased immigration.

"Finally, the economy is starting to crank out new jobs. But who should get those jobs?" a female narrator says. She asks whether they should go to new immigrants, "Or should the jobs go to the millions of Americans and legal immigrants already here, still looking for work?"

NumbersUSA bills itself as a non-partisan grassroots group that wants to reduce the number of immigrants in order to help American workers. The group claims it has 2 million activists.

NumbersUSA operates under part of the tax code that allows it to keep secret its donors because it is technically focused on public education and social welfare. Nowhere in the ads does the group tell voters how to cast ballots, only to investigate candidates' records.

The ads will air in states with competitive Senate races: Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire and North Carolina.

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Democratic Sen. Kevin de Leon was sworn in as the first Latino to head the California Senate in more than a century with an expensive and out-of-the-ordinary soiree Wednesday night in downtown Los Angeles.

The event at Walt Disney Concert Hall with an estimated price tag of $50,000 resembled a presidential inaugural more than the low-key affairs at the state Capitol held by past senate leaders.

"What a beautiful venue," de Leon said of the modern architectural marvel designed by Frank Gehry. "This is a grand public building and the centerpiece of my district. I chose this venue because it sits close to the working families who put me in office, and it is a visual representation of California's innovative spirit."

The California Latino Legislative Caucus Foundation, which receives donations from special interests seeking influence in the Legislature, picked up the tab for the event and organizers emphasized no taxpayer money was involved.

Other than the location and size of the ceremony, there was little Hollywood opulence at the event.

The frills included a traditional mariachi band that greeted guests outside, and the more modern Mariachi Divas who performed the national anthem inside.

Most guests wore business suits and dresses, but a few women had fancier dresses and clusters of teens invited from local schools came in shorts and sneakers.

Ismael Hernandez, 18, said De Leon spoke earlier in the week with members of Legacy LA, a nonprofit youth development group in the East Los Angeles community of Boyle Heights.

De Leon pledged to donate money to the group "so we can fix our community," said Hernandez, who attends Abraham Lincoln High School.

"We live... by a freeway, factories and where the train passes, so like a lot of bad chemicals in the air." Hernandez said.

Dozens of current and former officeholders, including former Gov. Gray Davis and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, were among the 2,000 guests invited to witness the swearing-in of de Leon as state Senate president pro tempore.

Guests were also invited to a post-ceremony reception in a blocked-off street outside the concert hall, with food and drinks paid for by the caucus.

The event follows a California Democratic Party fundraiser on Tuesday night with a top ticket going for $50,000. The party declined to disclose how much was raised until it files its official campaign finance reports.

The swearing-in party comes during a year when two Democratic state senators were suspended after being charged in separate federal corruption cases, a third resigned after being sentenced to jail for perjury, and another faces DUI charges after a night of drinking that included late-night revelry with Latinocaucus members inside the Capitol.

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said Senate leaders should "be extra careful not to be engaging in excess of any kind."

However, Latino caucus spokesman Roger Salazar said the swearing-in is not too elaborate for such an historic event.

"While it is an inauguration, it also is a fairly down-to-earth one when you really think about it," he said.

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One of three temporary detention centers for Central American families who have entered the U.S. illegally this year has started releasing many more detainees than it deports, a New Mexico city official said.

Federal immigration authorities reported 61 releases and no deportations last week at the Artesia Family Residential Center in southeastern New Mexico, Artesia Mayor Phillip Burch said.

It was the second week in a row that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement authorities reported to Artesia officials that more detainees were released than deported.

The numbers show a dramatic change from the center's first two weeks, when 135 people were deported and 12 were released, according to figures provided to Burch by ICE officials. The center opened in late June and is one of just three facilities in the U.S. with units for migrant families who were among a recent surge of people crossing the border illegally.

ICE declined to comment on the recent shift, or say whether it's also happening at the other two lockups, in Pennsylvania and Texas. However, experts said factors that likely led to the change include detainees having better access to lawyers, and judges setting lower bond amounts.

The Artesia barracks can house up to 650 women and children.

ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa said 324 people have been deported to Central America since it opened in late June. Burch said 227 detainees were released since then.

Federal officials haven't said how many people were released and referred questions to the U.S. Justice Department's immigration review office. That office said it would take 10 to 15 days before the AP could obtain the numbers.

Homeland Secretary Jeh Johnson said in July the facility would serve as a processing center to quickly deport people through expedited removal.

Civil rights advocates later sued the government, complaining a lack of access to legal representation has turned the center into a "deportation mill." They say bail is set impossibly high and asylum claims are denied at a much higher rate than the rest of the immigrant population.

ICE recently has opened a place where lawyer can meet with clients, and has set up a private room for lawyers. The agency also has provided mothers the opportunity to leave their children at a separate room if they need to discuss traumatic experiences that would make them eligible for asylum.

Laura Lichter, an immigration attorney working with detainees in Artesia, said judges listening to cases closed-circuit from Colorado are imposing much lower bonds for immigrants that are granted release.

Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst for the Cato Institute, said better access to legal representation and pressure on the Obama Administration from immigrant advocates both likely played roles to the change in Artesia detainees getting released.

"But I think better lawyering probably played a bigger role," Nowrasteh said. "Better access to attorneys is key, and as long as detainees have legal representation, this trend will likely continue."

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The share of Latino eligible voters has been growing steadily, making up a record 11 percent of all people who will be able to cast a ballot in November.

But they make up a small share of eligible voters in the states with close Senate and gubernatorial races, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.

The study noted that a record 25.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote in Novembers midterm elections, reflecting a rise of 3.9 million Latinos voters since 2010.

But in most of the roughly eight states with close Senate races, Latinos comprise less than 5 percent of eligible voters.

An exception is Colorado, where Latinos are 14.2 percent of eligible voters.

Colorado has emerged as a particular midterm election state for the fight between Republicans and Democrats for control of the U.S. Senate. Republicans need to pick up six additional seats in November to win control of the Senate from Democrats.

The latest polls for Colorados race show Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, leading the incumbent, Democrat U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, by several points. A Quinnipiac University poll has Gardner leading Udall 47 percent to 41 percent, and a CNN/Opinion Research Center one has Gardner ahead of Udall 50 percent to 46 percent.

Kansas is the only other state with a competitive Senate race where Latinos make up more than 5 percent of eligible voters  but not by much. In Kansas, Latinos are 6 percent of eligible voters.

As a result, the impact of Latino voters in determining which party controls the U.S. Senate may not be as large as might be expected given their growing electoral and demographic presence nationwide, the study said.

But even in states where Latinos have a greater voter share, they are dogged by low turnout.

While all groups tend to turn out at the polls in lower numbers in midterm elections, Latinos lag behind other racial and ethnic communities.

In 2010, 31.2 percent of Latino eligible voters cast ballots  far fewer than whites, who had a 48.6 percent turnout, and blacks, with 44 percent.

Part of the reason for the low turnout, the study said, is that Latino eligible voters include a larger share than other group of young people, who typically vote a lower rate than other age groups.

Another reason, the study said, is that many places with a large share of Latino eligible voters are not battleground states where high stakes draw more people to participate.

We started this election cycle acutely aware that in the midterms you see all kinds of voters drop off, said Emily Bittner, press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

We put a high premium on communicating with Latino voters and youth voters. We made sure to start our earliest ever field program, going out and talking to voters door to door, and we found Spanish-speaking organizers.

The effort to register voters for the midterm began about six months earlier than usual, Bittner said. Thus far they registered about 80,000 new voters, she said.

Republicans also have made efforts to court Latino voters, with many candidates running Spanish-language ads and even participating in Spanish-language debates, using interpreters if they're not fluent in the language.

We are not taking a single vote for granted, every vote matters," said Ruth Guerra, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. "We have staff on the ground working hand-in-hand with state parties and campaigns across the country to mobilize Latino voters in numerous states  including North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado."

"We will continue to reach Latinos where they live, work and worship to get them to the polls," Guerra said.

Latinos make up a large share of registered voters in places such as New Mexico and Texas, where they make up 40 percent and 27.4 percent, respectively. But those are not considered competitive places in November.

As for House elections, about 96 percent of Latino eligible voters live in districts that dont have competitive races, Pew said.

Only nine states have close gubernatorial races, and those are largely in places that have a smaller share of Latino eligible voters.

Three states with competitive gubernatorial races have Latino eligible voter shares above 10 percent  Florida, which has 17.1 percent, Colorado, which has 14.2 percent, and Connecticut, which has 10.3 percent.

As for ballot initiatives, Latinos tend to share other voters' views on some issues, but not on others, such as gun control, abortion and federal minimum wage. About 62 percent of Latino registered voters support gun control, compared with 45 percent of all voters.

Latinos are split on abortion, while voters in general lean in favor of keeping abortion legal. About 84 percent of Latinos support raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25, compared with 73 percent of all Americans.

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Venezuela, New Zealand, Angola and Malaysia have been elected to fill four of the five coveted temporary seats on the United Nations Security Council, but the final seat has yet to be determined.

Neither Turkey nor Spain got enough votes in the first ballot of Thursday's election by the U.N. General Assembly's member states to earn a spot in the U.N.'s most powerful body.

Special attention has been on Turkey as it is under mounting pressure to do more about the ongoing conflicts in Syria thatare pushing up against its border.

Venezuela's socialist government was unopposed for the single seat allocated to Latin America and the Caribbean. Angola was the only candidate for the African seat, and Malaysia had no opposition for an Asian seat.

The winners will join the council on Jan. 1 and serve through 2016.

While there have been concerns voiced by the U.S. about Venezuela joining the Security Council, many experts say that the country joining the group is a much different affair than when former leader Hugo Chavez pushed for a spot back in 2006.

The government of President Nicolas Maduro is seen to be in much more dire straits than Chavez was in 2006 and it is generally accepted that Venezuela wont pose a major threat to U.S. interests on the Council.

The question still in the air is how much of an effect the Latin American country will have as the Council addresses touchy geopolitical issues such as Russian expansionism into the Ukraine and the U.S.s efforts against Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria.

Venezuela has close political and business ties to permanent security members Russia and China. Given the widening geopolitical divide between the U.S. and Russia, Venezuelas inclusion on the Security Council could prove a boon to the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It will play into the hands of the Russians as the Venezuelans will take orders directly from the Russians, Jason Marczak, the deputy director of the Atlantic Councils Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center told Fox News Latino recently.

Russia and the U.S. have been at odds on a number of issues on the world stage recently, especially Russian troops entering the Ukraine, the civil war in Syria and hostilities between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas.

Venezuela staunchly backed Russia in its move into the Crimea, and Maduro openly praised Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during his speech before the U.N. General Assembly for helping stave off Islamic State militants.

Experts, however, argue that despite the balance of power shifting over to Russia with the inclusion of Venezuela in the Security Council, the socialist nation wont cause any major changes in the way the council votes. Venezuela's presence may make Security Council meetings livelier, and tenser, but given the U.S.s veto power, its inclusion can only really be a thorn in the American side.

There will be some unpleasantness and discomfort for the U.S. and its allies, Eric Olson, the associate director of the Latin American program at the Woodrow Wilson Center told FNL. But Venezuelas ability to roadblock anything is pretty limited  theyre more of an annoyance than anything else.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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In an attempt to make sure that Arizona remains solidly red, Republican Party leaders in the southwestern state are heavily courting young, conservative Latinos to bolster their ranks in the coming years.

Looking at the success of Hispanic Republican politicians like New Mexicos Gov. Susana Martinez and Nevada's Gov. Brian Sandoval, GOP leaders in the Grand Canyon state are looking for new leaders who can appeal to a growing demographic concerned about issues like immigration and the border.

Immigration has been a particularly contentious issue in Arizona as businesses and the states image in general still deal with the backlash to SB 1070, the state bill passed in 2010 that was described at the time as the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration measure in recent U.S. history.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the 2010 Arizona law's most contentious section  a requirement that police, while enforcing other laws, question the immigration status of those suspected of being in the country illegally. But the courts have either struck down or blocked enforcement of other sections of the law, such as a requirement that immigrants carry registration.

Along with the backlash to SB 1070  which included boycotts and protests  Republican leaders have to worry about the states influx of young, Latino voters who tend to vote Democratic on many issues. A study conducted by Arizona State University predicted that the state could lean Democratic as soon as 2025 because of Hispanic voters.

Thats something that worries me, T.J. Shope, a first-term Republican state senator in Arizona told The Hill. Im 29, Im a Republican. My mom was born in Mexico, my dad is from Iowa originally. I kinda look at myself and say weve got to do a better job.

Republican strategists say that given the changing demographics of the state there is no way the GOP in Arizona can survive without distancing itself from the more hardline figures  like Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Gov. Jan Brewer and former state Senate President Russell Pearce - who have dominated the immigration debate in the state.

Pearce was recalled from his post in part for authoring SB 1070, and earlier this year was forced to resign from a top job at the Arizona GOP for saying on his radio show that poor women on Medicaid should be forcefully sterilized.

Nathan Sproul, a former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, said that the GOP in Arizona needs to look at someone like Susana Martinez to bridge the gap with the states Latino community.

We need to recruit that type of leadership to run, to convey the message that the Hispanic community is a strong believer in faith, family, entrepreneurship, small business ownership, a strong work ethic, said Sproul, who worked on Martinezs gubernatorial campaign. The future of Arizona politics is the Hispanic community  there is no doubt about that. If we just walk away and dont address it, weve got a problem.

Latino Democrats in Arizona, however, claim that their Republican counterparts refuse to bring bills to the floor of the state capital that would benefit young Latinos, such as ones that would let undocumented immigrants obtain drivers licenses or in-state tuition at colleges.

"Theyre changing their language but still at the core are anti-Hispanic, former Democratic state representative and current congressional candidate Ruben Gallego said. They all use Sheriff Joe in their primary to attract the anti-Hispanic vote, then hide him in the general election.

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During the Texas gubernatorial campaign this year, shes been called a prop, an asset and outreach personified. Through it all, Cecilia Phalen Abbott, the wife of Texas District Attorney and Republican candidate for governor, Greg Abbott, has remained unruffled, a calm and steady presence at her husbands side.

And Cecilia, a San Antonio native and granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, could make history in the process by becoming the first Latina first lady in Texas history should her husband win.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 38 percent of the Texas population is Latino, making Cecilias heritage a significant plus for her husbands campaign.

Her heritage is frequently mentioned during Abbotts stump speeches, and the candidate tends to field questions regarding Hispanic voters by referring to his wifes ethnic background.

When asked on a Facebook Q&A about Hispanic outreach, he answered, I reach out to the Hispanic community each morning when I hug my wife, causing many to see this as a form of exploitation.

Last winter, when the Abbotts were making a primary campaign appearance at a Lubbock restaurant, one local Democratic politician challenged the candidate on TV to "go beyond the props of a background of a Mexican restaurant, and actually come to our community."

The comment was interpreted as referring to Cecilia herself.

Regardless of these claims against Cecilias presence in the campaign, the Abbotts relationship is an honest and realistic representation of the many biracial families in Texas, says Sylvia Manzano, a principal at Latino Decisions.

She told Fox News Latino that Cecilias Latino background is rightfully a focus in Gregs campaign since their relationship is reflective of Texas There are millions of Latinos who have blended families. This is not unusual for Texas at all.

As Greg Abbott has said in campaign appearances, referring to both the state and his marriage: Dos casas, pero una fundacion. Two houses, one foundation.

Cecilia Abbott has found many ways to represent and listen to the voices of her community. A devout Roman Catholic, she played a key part in her husbands conversion to that faith.

And after Greg was paralyzed when a tree fell on him in 1984, family friend Kent Sullivan, told the Texas Tribune, [Cecilia] was instrumental in supporting him in every way imaginable after the accident. She was a pillar of strength for him. It sounds like a cliche, but it really is true.

For the most part, Cecilia has been a silent partner in the political marriage, a staunch supporter, but not the prominent face of his campaign that she is now.

Today, Cecilia is an integral part of Gregs campaign and an active participant in reaching out to voters, specifically women and Latino voters.

I was happiest behind the scenes and I still am, as you can tell, she told one group in March of this year. I was so shy and I would practically hide from voters working up the courage to ask them a simple question  you wouldnt want to vote for my husband, would you?

Manzano says that her efforts will be critical in gaining Hispanic votes in the coming election.

Voter engagement is the biggest need in the Latino population in Texas, she told FNL. The most important thing we can do to get these voters engaged is to talk to them and to remain engaged in the community, not just show up every four years. Greg has been very assertive in working for Latino votes even though his politics and the politics for most Hispanic voters are very distant from one another.

The Abbotts continue to make the effort to reach out to the Latino population in Texas. Greg Abbott has signaled his commitment by saying, I am taking my campaign to heavily Hispanic populated areas explaining how I will grow jobs, improve school and keep communities safe.

Without Cecilia and her ability to connect with the Latino population of Texas, his chances of receiving a significant percentage of the Latino vote would be slim, according to Manzano.

It would be a milestone to have Cecilia as the first Latina first lady, she added. She opens avenues to the Hispanic community that wouldnt be there otherwise.
MFA: OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries should sober up Azerbaijani leadership

Statement by the RA MFA We condemn in the strongest terms todays diversionary incursion attempt by Azerbaijan on the state border with Armenia, which resulted in human loses. We express our deepest condolences to the relatives and fellow servicemen of the fallen soldiers. While the most serious damage caused to the settlement process in the result of the Azerbaijani aggression against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) this April has not been overcome yet, Baku embarks on a new adventurism grossly violating the agreements reached at the Vienna and St. Petersburg summits and the commitment to settle the issue through peaceful means. This is how Baku responds to the Foreign Ministers of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries who urged in Hamburg to adhere strictly to the 1994/95 ceasefire agreements. On numerous occasions the international community, via the Co-Chairs, has called to maintain the ceasefire, especially during the holidays. By undertaking military diversionary incursion on the Christmas and New Years Eve, Baku acts against the universal human values. The international community, first and foremost the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries should take immediate steps to sober up the Azerbaijani leadership, who has lost the sense of reality, ignores and opposes with defiance to their calls and demands.
Some demographers call it the browning of America. Fueled by immigration and higher birth rates among Hispanics and blacks, the U.S. population is becoming less white.

These changes, however, have largely bypassed congressional districts represented by Republicans, adding to divisions between the GOP and Democrats on issues like immigration.

National GOP leaders have been urging Republicans in Congress to reach out to Hispanic voters on immigration, well aware that Hispanics are the nation's fastest-growing group.

Those calls have fallen flat among many House Republicans, who have been unwilling to advance legislation that would provide a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress have made immigration overhaul a priority.

Demography helps explain the divide.

Following the 2010 census, Republican legislators in key states redrew congressional districts in ways that favored their candidates. That helped House Republicans maintain a 33-seat majority in the 2012 election, but it left many House Republicans largely isolated from demographic changes sweeping much of the country.

While America is becoming more diverse, most congressional districts represented by Republicans are overwhelmingly white, with relatively few minorities.

"That's not going to last forever," said William Frey, a demographer at The Brookings Institution. "Sooner or later, demography is not on the side of those places staying isolated."

On average, Republican-held districts are 74 percent white. Hispanics make up 11 percent and blacks make up 9 percent.

By comparison, the average district represented by a Democrat is 51 percent white, 23 percent Hispanic and 17 percent black  more diverse than the country as a whole.

Nationally, non-Hispanic whites make up 64 percent of the country, a share that has been declining for decades. Over the next 30 years, the Census Bureau projects that whites will lose their majority status. Racial and ethnic minorities already make up about half of all children under 5.

Hispanics make up 16 percent of the U.S. population, a share that will continue to grow, according to Census projections. That's why some Republican leaders are concerned.

In the 2012 presidential election, Republican Mitt Romney got just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote. Following the election, the Republican National Committee conducted an analysis to see what went wrong.

Among the RNC's findings: "We must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our party's appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only."

In the Senate, some Republicans have embraced the immigration issue, led by Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a possible presidential contender in 2016. Last year, 14 Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to pass a comprehensive immigration bill that would couple increased border security with a path to citizenship for those in the U.S. illegally.

In January, House Republican leaders unveiled their principles for overhauling immigration laws. They included a proposed pathway to legal status for millions of adults who live in the U.S. unlawfully  after they pay back taxes and fines  but not the route to citizenship that Obama and many Democrats favor.

Rank-and-file Republicans balked and some labeled the plan "amnesty." House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, never brought up a bill for a vote.

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With its Carnival reputation and skin-baring beach life, Brazil may look like a liberal bastion. But unease over a worsening economy and deteriorating public safety, plus a backlash against recent gay-rights gains, are propelling a conservative rise that will shape the next administration, regardless of who wins the presidency.

The general election held earlier this month saw a greater share of Brazil's National Congress seats go to various conservative caucuses, which now control nearly 60 percent of the 513 seats in the lower house. They include evangelical lawmakers who oppose gay marriage or access to abortion; the "ruralistas" whose pro-agriculture positions counter environmentalists and indigenous groups; and a law-and-order faction that demands a crackdown on crime.

Ahead of the presidential runoff Oct. 26, there's no doubt such conservatives are giving greater support to center-right challenger Aecio Neves over left-leaning President Dilma Rousseff. But it's also clear that neither presidential candidate is as socially conservative as the increasingly powerful elements of Congress.

"Brazil is one of the very few Latin American countries where the parliament is more important than the president in terms of overall power in the decision-making process," said Thiago de Aragao, a political analyst for the Brasilia-based Arko Advice consulting firm. "The parliament, in an arm-wrestling contest against the presidency, would win ... because the parliament's main weapon is just crossing their arms and not voting on matters that are of strong interest to the government."

Despite its anything-goes appearance, Brazil is, like many predominantly Roman Catholic nations in Latin America, socially conservative. In recent opinion polls, for example, more than 80 percent of Brazilians said they oppose loosening their restrictive abortion laws or legalizing marijuana and just over half oppose gay marriage.

However, since Brazil's return to democracy in 1985, the nation's presidents and its judiciary have pushed through progressive projects either by decree or rulings  such as protecting huge swaths of jungle as indigenous reserves, a high-court ruling permitting same-sex civil unions, and the creation of Bolsa Familia, a program that gives monthly cash payments to Brazil's poorest families.

Some predict such changes could be rolled back by the growing conservative forces.

The evangelical caucus votes in lockstep on hot-button social issues and is willing to block projects put forth by the presidency because its members know they represent a growing segment of the electorate. While Catholics remain the majority in Brazil, since 1970 their portion of the population has fallen from more than 90 percent to 65 percent while those identifying as Protestants have grown from 5 percent to 22 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.

In Rousseff's first term, the evangelical caucus blocked her effort to promote gay-tolerance teaching in schools and managed to have their most outspoken anti-gay legislator, Deputy Marco Feliciano, named head of the body's human rights commission  a move that provoked condemnation from Amnesty International and other activist groups. In the Oct. 5 election, Feliciano was re-elected to his Sao Paulo district with nearly double the votes he won four years ago.

The "ruralista" caucus also grew and now has about 200 members who support its agenda. These lawmakers showed their strength in 2012, forcing weakening of environmental protection laws, which critics say contributed to a 29 percent jump in the number of Amazon acres deforested over the last year.

And while the law-and-order block is small with only about 20 members, it wields influence on security issues. The caucus' members defend tougher penal codes for young offenders and want to block the sort of drug liberalization seen in neighboring countries, even as Brazil copes with overcrowded prisons and years of failed efforts to suppress powerful drug gangs.

But it's the evangelical lawmakers who are at the heart of Brazil's growing conservatism, and they've shown an ability to rally the other groups behind their main cause: defeating any attempt to legalize gay marriage or advance protections for LGBT communities.

Toni Reis, who heads the gay rights advocacy group Dignidade, noted it took a landmark Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex civil unions in 2011 following years of congressional stalling on the matter. Now, he said, gay rights groups are focused not on gay marriage but on advancing legislation to criminalize discrimination against gays.

Given the new legislative reality, Reis acknowledged it will be an uphill battle.

"We're going to have to work twice as hard," he said.

Jean Wyllys, Brazil's first openly gay congressman, said progressive lawmakers won't give up.

"There's no doubt it's going to be more difficult," said Wyllys, who represents Rio de Janeiro state. "But I also have my allies. ... We are a political force capable of blocking their (the evangelicals') legislative projects."

But Brazil's most influential evangelical pastor, Silas Malafaia, who campaigned for several Pentecostal politicians, says the conservatives don't intend to impose stances out of step with the electorate.

"I am against gay marriage. Let's hold a referendum and let society decide," Malafaia said in an interview. "If the people decide that they want abortions (to be legalized), I will always be against it, but I will respect those decisions. We're not evangelical extremists trying to impose what we think with an iron fist."

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo took his campaign for a second term to the Caribbean on Friday with stops in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic  two places with significant ties to the state that Cuomo governs.

Cuomo met with Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla and pledged to boost business ties between New York and the U.S. territory. He said the island's ailing economy could benefit from New York state government initiatives such as Global New York and a planned state import-export program aimed at developing markets for New York businesses.

Cuomo also promised to bring more trade missions to the island to bolster the territory's struggling economy and take advantage of the deep ties between Puerto Rico and New York.

"We will be bringing more business relationships to build on the cultural relationships we already have," Cuomo said.

He praised Garcia for making difficult decisions to help bolster Puerto Rico's sluggish economy, which Cuomo said bore similarities to the economic situation he dealt with in New York.

"We've had to make reforms in the pension system," Cuomo said. "That is very, very difficult to do."

Puerto Rico is struggling with a public debt of $73 billion and is entering its eighth year in recession.

Citing dropping unemployment and record levels of private sector employment in New York, Cuomo urged Puerto Ricans to see the government reforms through to better times.

"The good news is, yes, it is difficult when you are going through it, but it will bear fruit," Cuomo said.

Garcia urged Latinos to vote for Democrats in upcoming elections if they want to see approval of the DREAM Act.

Cuomo noted New York's version of the DREAM Act did not pass last year because of lack of support from the New York legislature.

"It's an issue in this year's elections," he said. "Hopefully we'll get a Senate that passes the Dream Act and we'll pass it in January."

Cuomo met earlier Friday with Dominican President Danilo Medina and said he wants to encourage a closer relationship and will return on a trade mission if he wins re-election next month.

"I always felt a special connection with the Dominican Republic," Cuomo said. "In New York, the Dominican community has been growing and is becoming more and more important economically and politically and is this development that we want to encourage and continue."

During their meeting at the presidential palace, Cuomo said that he and Medina discussed ways to boost trade and the possibility of higher education partnerships.

Asked why he was taking the trip so close to the Nov. 4 election, Cuomo said he wanted to show Dominicans in New York his "respect for their community and their origins."

More than a million New Yorkers are of Puerto Rican or Dominican heritage.

Cuomo has said he'll lead trade missions to several nations to increase foreign trade if he wins his Nov. 4 matchup with Republican Rob Astorino.

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The Supreme Court said Saturday that Texas can use its controversial new voter identification law for the November election.

A majority of the justices rejected an emergency request from the Justice Department and civil rights groups to prohibit the state from requiring voters to produce certain forms of photo identification in order to cast ballots. Three justices dissented.

The law was struck down by a federal judge last week, but a federal appeals court had put that ruling on hold. The judge found that roughly 600,000 voters, many of them black or Latino, could be turned away at the polls because they lack acceptable identification. Early voting in Texas begins Monday.

The Supreme Court's order was unsigned, as it typically is in these situations. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented, saying they would have left the district court decision in place.

"The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters," Ginsburg wrote in dissent.

Texas' law sets out seven forms of approved ID  a list that includes concealed handgun licenses but not college student IDs, which are accepted in other states with similar measures.

The 143-page opinion from U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos called the law an "unconstitutional burden on the right to vote" and the equivalent of a poll tax in finding that the Republican-led Texas Legislature purposely discriminated against minority voters in Texas.

Texas had urged the Supreme Court to let the state enforce voter ID at the polls in a court filing that took aim at the ruling by Ramos, an appointee of President Barack Obama. Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican who's favored in the gubernatorial race, called Ramos' findings "preposterous" and accused the judge of ignoring evidence favorable to the state.

The court had intervened in three other disputes in recent weeks over Republican-inspired restrictions on voting access. In Wisconsin, the justices blocked a voter ID law from being used in November. In North Carolina and Ohio, the justices allowed limits on same-day registration, early voting and provisional ballots to take or remain in effect.

Ginsburg said the Texas case was different from the clashes in North Carolina and Ohio because a federal judge held a full trial on the Texas election procedures and developed "an extensive record" finding the process discriminated against ballot access.

Texas has enforced its tough voter ID in elections since the Supreme Court in June 2013 effectively eliminated the heart of the Voting Rights Act, which had prevented Texas and eight other states with histories of discrimination from changing election laws without permission. Critics of the Texas measure, though, said the new ID requirement has not been used for an election for Congress and the Senate, or a high-turnout statewide election like the race for governor.

Ramos' issued her ruling on October 9. Five days later, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans put her decision on hold and cited a 2006 Supreme Court opinion that warned judges not to change the rules too close to Election Day.

The challengers in Texas said that the last time the Supreme Court allowed a voting law to be used in a subsequent election after it had been found to be unconstitutional was in 1982. That case from Georgia involved an at-large election system that had been in existence since 1911.

Republican lawmakers in Texas and elsewhere say voter ID laws are needed to reduce voter fraud. Democrats contend that such cases are extremely rare and that voter ID measures are thinly veiled attempts to keep eligible voters, many of them minorities supportive of Democrats, away from the polls.

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Spain has agreed to allow the U.S. to use two military bases in the southwest of the country to support its efforts to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

A Defense Ministry statement says the deal permits U.S. armed forces to use the air base at Moron de la Frontera near Seville and the naval station at Rota on Spain's Atlantic coast to transport personnel and materials to and from Africa.

Defense Minister Pedro Morenes sealed the deal with U.S. counterpart Chuck Hagel in Washington.

The ministry statement, released late Saturday, says the agreement will be reviewed and updated on a case-by-case basis and would also permit U.S. forces to use the bases against IS militants.

The U.S. has made use of the bases since the 1950s.

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Andrea Hermosillo rode for hours to protest at her neighbor's office.

The high school junior lives only a few blocks from GOP Senate candidate Cory Gardner in Yuma, a small town on Colorado's high plains.

But this summer, Hermosillo went to the congressman's main office, in a city closer to Denver in Gardner's sprawling eastern Colorado district, for a sit-in to demand that he support granting citizenship to many of the 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally.

"It was kind of weird, but it felt we had to be there," Hermosillo said. "It's important he know that it's people in his town who feel this way."

Bill Breithauer also lives in Yuma. The 72-year-old retired farmer has known Gardner since the two-term congressman was a child.

As Breithauer nursed a coffee at Yuma's central gathering spot, a restaurant called The Main Event, he made it clear that he thinks what Hermosillo wants is an outrage.

"How are they going to give them citizenship if they don't speak the language and they're up to no good?" Breithauer asked. "Cory's all right. He knows what's what."

This is the riddle for Gardner in his race against Democratic Sen. Mark Udall in the only state among the dozen or so in play this year with both a competitive Senate race and a sizable population of Hispanic voters.

Yuma is Colorado in a microcosm.

The town, like the state, has been transformed by Latin American immigrants who have arrived to open businesses, labor in fields and hog farms, and take seats in public school classrooms.

They have been welcomed  the Yuma town council in 2010 urged Congress to pass the kind of legislation Hermosillo demands  and met with suspicion.

Udall has called on President Barack Obama to limit deportations of people living illegally in the U.S., and he voted for a Senate bill that eventually would have granted them citizenship.

Gardner has straddled the fence.

He opposes the Senate bill, but speaks warmly of immigrants. It's an indication of how he has been shaped by his town and his place in a party where supporting an immigration overhaul is a political risk.

Gardner regularly tells a story of meeting a high school valedictorian who was waiting tables at a small-town diner in his district. He told her she had a bright future; she told him she was brought into the country illegally and couldn't go to college.

The following year, Gardner passed through the town again. The girl was still there, still waiting tables.

"If you're looking at the way our criminal justice system works, we don't charge a 2-year-old or a 3-year-old with the same crime as adults," Gardner said. "I have known them for a very long time, whether it's just the people I've gotten to know through living in the community or its people my daughter goes to school with."

Yet Gardner opposed legislation that would have let those young immigrants live in the U.S. legally. He did change course this summer and voted against efforts to repeal a program that lets some who came to the U.S. illegally as children stay in the country.

He has called for increased border security, a guest worker program and citizenship for people brought here illegally who serve in the military, but hasn't gotten more specific.

"Cory Gardner has made the calculation that he can say a few nice things, fool enough voters and get away with this," said Patty Kupfer of America's Voice, which supports the Senate bill.

Udall has hammered Gardner on the issue, even though in 2005, when immigration played less favorably in Colorado, Udall voted for a Republican bill that would have made being in the country illegally a felony.

"He's said we should take immigration reform in steps," Udall said at a recent debate. "Well, he hasn't taken one step to move immigration to the finish line."

Gardner's combination of warmth and hesitation make sense at The Main Event in Yuma, a town of 3,200 that began to change in the 1990s as Mexicans from Nicolas Bravo, in northern Chihuahua state, were drawn by the area's new hog farms and dairies.

On a recent morning, half-a-dozen longtime friends grumbled about the amount of Spanish they hear and the idea people can enter the country illegally. But they acknowledged that local businesses depend on immigrants and that most of the town's new residents, legal or not, are good people.

Said Bob Seward, 88, "Yuma would look like a ghost town without the Spanish or Mexican people here."

Yuma's immigrants have lobbied Gardner for years.

In 2005, Margo Ebersole held a meeting for teenage girls at a community center. Though Ebersole expected to talk birth control, the girls wanted to discuss college. Under state law at the time, they could not win scholarships to public universities and had to pay higher, out-of-state tuition if they were living in the country illegally.

The girls called themselves Las Estrellas  The Stars, in Spanish  and have set about trying to win over the town. Gardner always seemed sympathetic, said Navil Babonoyaba, 16. She followed Gardner to town halls and tried to pin him down, writing questions on notecards so she was prepared.

"He would answer them, but not directly," she said. "He'd try to go around them."

Ebersole sees Gardner at church, but also hasn't had any luck.

In a private meeting with Gardner, she told him of how her husband, who came to the U.S. illegally as a child, had to return to Mexico and missed the birth of their second child.

"He can be really nice and polite and agreeable, but not where we wish he could be," Ebersole said.

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To most of those at the campaign fundraiser in Texas, it was a meeting among kindred spirits  an Iowa congressman speaking to a roomful of fellow lawyers about why he would do a better job in the U.S. Senate than the Republican incumbent, Sen. Chuck Grassley.

If you help me win this race, you may have someone with your background, your experience, your voice, said Bruce Braley, a Democrat running for the seat of Iowas other U.S. senator, retiring Democrat Tom Harkin someone whos been literally fighting tort reform for 30 years in a visible and public way on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Then came the zinger  Or you might have a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, serving as the next chair of the Senate Judiciary, Braley said. Because if Democrats lose the majority, Chuck Grassley will be the next chair of the Senate Judiciary.

We want to make sure were there, so that someone cant go to a Chamber of Commerce event in the morning, and then talk to a group of farmers in the afternoon and say something different.  Kelli Farr, American Bridge, group that tracks Republican candidates

On that day, what happened in Texas might have stayed in Texas had it not been for a spy  known as a tracker in the political world  who captured Braley on video for America Rising PAC, the leading Republican-aligned opposition research group that lives solely to expose what Democrats running for (or already in) office would like to keep hidden.

We were able to slip through the cracks, said Tim Miller, executive director for America Rising PAC and former Republican National Committee spokesperson. Braley has gone through great lengths to avoid having trackers at [his] events. And he was the one who had the most damage caused by trackers.

Braleys disparaging comments about Grassley, who is popular in Iowa, came back to haunt the Democratic candidate, who later issued an apology for his comment.

Senator Chuck Grassley is well-regarded in Iowa, and so are farmers in general, Miller said. Agriculture is an important industry in Iowa.

Trackers long have been around in one form or another, but the practice became more organized and institutionalized only a few years ago, around 2008, those in the field say.

Its more prevalent now, said Kelli Farr, a former tracker and vice president for American Bridge, the leading liberal group keeping tabs on Republican candidates through tracking, monitoring media and doing other research to sniff out any gaffes or contradictory comments.

Tracking has definitely transformed and grown exponentially over the last couple of years.

Several years ago, tracking consisted of little more than a campaign sending out an intern with a camera to an opponents event, hoping to capture an embarrassing moment that could be used later in an ad. That has changed.

Our trackers arent just cameramen capturing a gaffe on cellphone video, Farr said, theyre researchers in the field, they know what [candidates] said last year, they know their voting records, they look through financial records, they know when they change their stance and they put that with more traditional research.

American Bridge, which was started in 2012 with 20 trackers, now has 44 trackers in 41 states, and an annual budget of about $18 million. America Rising, which was created in 2013 by Matt Rhoades, who was Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign manager, has an annual budget of about $8 million and has 27 full-time trackers in 24 states, as well as many part-time trackers in other places.

In Iowa, Braley is trailing his opponent, state Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican, in the latest polls.

And that is significant, because it would put Republicans closer to gaining six news seats in the Senate this November, which would give them the majority in that chamber. At present, Democrats have the majority in the Senate, and Republicans control the House.

The tracker [for America Rising] is the reason the Iowa Senate race became so competitive, said Kirsten Kukowski, the press secretary for the Republican National Committee. That was a real game changer in the Senate race. Thats a true-life example of why tracking is so important.

Social media and 24-hour cable news added the dynamic of real-time slips and sound-bytes taking on a life their own, through a clip that is played over and over again on TV, or a comment or moment that goes viral.

"We're so much of a visual society now," Kukowski said, referring to the value of tracking in this new dimension of political campaigns. "There's Twitter, Facebook, different websites  getting sound and visuals is so important."

Farr and Miller say they like to see their work as helping to peel away the facade in election campaigns, and show voters a candidates real views and character.

Some people like to talk about gaffes, Farr said, but a gaffe means someone had a slip-up.

What trackers often capture, Farr said, is someone saying what they really think.

Miller put it this way: Its the wolf and the sheepdog.

And getting that moment, that comment, is not hard to do with some political figures, such as U.S. Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who is known for his lightning-rod comments about undocumented immigrants.

American Bridge recorded King in 2012 making his now-infamous comparison of immigrants to dogs at a town hall, telling constituents that the U.S. should pick only the best immigrants the way one chooses the pick of the litter.

King told the crowd that when picking a bird dog, he learned this: You want a good bird dog? You want one thats going to be aggressive? Pick the one thats the friskiest  not the one thats over there sleeping in the corner.

And thats how it should be with deciding what immigrants to admit into the United States, said King, who was seeking re-election at the time.

You get the pick of the litter and you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. Well, weve got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet, King said. Weve got the vigor from the planet to come to America.

The recording of King making the comment went viral. King told Fox News Latino in an interview shortly after that his remarks were meant to be a compliment to immigrants.

If someone is insulted by that, I dont know that they belong in this country, King said. It gets repeated that I made disparaging comments about immigrants, thats how devious people on the other side areits such a rotten thing to do.

But Farr said American Bridge simply was capturing the true King.

Our main objective is to capture every statement, she said, when someone is trying to make people support them. We want to make sure were there, so that someone cant go to a Chamber of Commerce event in the morning, and then talk to a group of farmers in the afternoon and say something different.

On occasion, trackers have been accused of using unsavory or even unethical tactics to get that one moment that could go viral and torpedo an opposition candidates campaign.

In August, for instance, California congressional candidate Amanda Renteria, a Democrat, accused her opponent, incumbent David Valadao, a Republican, of having someone working for his campaign follow her into church.

The tracker, she said, followed her into Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Mendota, California, asked her questions while she walked down the aisle, and even videotaped her as she knelt to pray.

This is a step too far, Renteria, who uses trackers, said in an interview with the Fresno Bee. If anyone does this, it is inappropriate. There is no way you should be invading a persons privacy in church when you are praying.

Valadao denied having any link to the tracker, who, it turns out, was working for America Rising, which later said that the person had gone too far.

The tracker was used on a per event basis, America Rising spokesman, Jeff Bechdel said in an email quoted by the Fresno Bee. His behavior was clearly too aggressive and violated our rules of conduct. He will no longer be tracking events for America Rising.

Those in the tracking business say that many political candidates have grown accustomed to having trackers around, and a few even exchange pleasantries with them.

"The most cordial about the fact that they're being tracked are usually the ones who are the most successful," Miller said, the ones who don't have things to hide.

"Others go to great lengths to prevent themselves from being taped," he said. "They have security to kick out trackers."

"The media gives attention to political gaffes, candidates saying something that's really dumb or really controversial, that's the kind of thing that drives the discussion  the 'gotcha' moments," Miller said. "We certainly will publicize them, but what we see as the greatest value is keeping the candidates honest."
Federal police have taken control of 13 municipalities in southern Mexico where local police are suspected of links to organized crime and possibly to the case of 43 missing students, a top official said.

The municipalities are all within a roughly 125-mile (200-kilometer) radius of Iguala, the town where the students from a rural teachers' college disappeared more than three weeks ago after a confrontation with police. Twelve of the municipalities are in Guerrero state and one is in Mexico state. Among them are the tourist destinations of Taxco and Ixtapan de la Sal.

National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said Sunday night that authorities investigating the disappearance of the students found "irregularities" and "presumed links to organized crime" in the 13 municipal police forces.

Federal police have assumed control of public security in the municipalities, the police chiefs have been sent to a special center for "certification" and their guns are being tested, he said.

Federal forces had already disarmed local police in Iguala and Cocula, and arrested a total of 36 police officers. Both the mayor and police chief of Iguala are fugitives and accused of links to the local drug cartel, Guerrero Unidos, believed to have worked with police in disappearing the students.

The disappearance of the students has outraged Mexicans, with thousands of protesters marching recently in Mexico City, Acapulco and elsewhere to demand their safe return.

On Friday, Mexican officials announced the arrest of Sidronio Casarrubias Salgado, the purported leader of Guerreros Unidos. He was detained Thursday on a highway leaving Mexico City, federal prosecutor Tomas Zeron said.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam had said he hoped the arrest would bring new leads in the case.

Rubido said Sunday night that the search for the 43 students is being carried out by land, air and water with the help of relatives and the International Red Cross.

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U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz expressed certainty over the weekend that Republicans will win enough seats on Nov. 4 to become the majority in the Senate.

In TV appearances and an op-ed that ran in USA Today, Cruz described Republicans, who are the majority in the House but the minority in the Senate, as poised to take control of Congress.

Cruz also warned in a CNN interview that the Obama administration better not try to push through the nomination and confirmation of a new attorney general during the lame-duck session.

Several news reports quoting anonymous sources have indicated that President Obama is likely to nominate a successor to Eric Holder, who recently said he was stepping down, before the end of the year.

Republicans need to win at least six new Senate seats to get control of the chamber.

By all signs, Americans are preparing to send Washington a clear message in the 2014 elections, Cruz wrote in USA Today. The question is, will Washington listen?

Republicans  poised to take control of Congress  should set our sights on three big goals to make Americans feel confident in their futures once again: jump-start the economy, safeguard constitutional liberties, and strengthen our national security.

In a list of priorities Cruz outlined for the next Congress, he included doing away with the Internal Revenue Service and the Affordable Care Act. He also called for tightening security at the border and for putting an end to giving breaks to undocumented immigrants.

"We should welcome and celebrate legal immigrants who follow the rules, and at the same time honor the will of the people and prevent any more illegal amnesty," Cruz said.

In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Cruz firmly opposed the idea of confirming a new attorney general during the lame-duck session, which is the period between the Nov. 4 election and when the next Congress convenes in January.

Under no circumstances should a partisan attorney general be confirmed during a lame-duck session, Cruz said. We should not be confirming an attorney general during a lame-duck session with a bunch of senators who have just been voted out of office.

The confirmation should occur in January or February, when we have the new Senate where every senator will be accountable to the voters. I dont think we should meet for a lame duck at all, because lame ducks are really where Washington imposes its agenda instead of listening to the American people.

Earlier this month, the New York Times, citing unidentified sources, reported that the front-runner for attorney general apparently was U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez.

But days later, the Associated Press reported that a White House official said that the president had not yet decided who he wants to replace Holder, a longtime friend and political ally who announced last month he will step down whenever a new attorney general is confirmed.

The White House is preparing for the prospect of trying to push through a nominee in the year-end congressional session while Democrats still have a 10-seat majority in the Senate.

Obama faces the likelihood of an even tougher challenge to win confirmation if he waits until the new Senate is seated early next year, since Republicans are expected to pick up seats in the midterm, if not to win outright control.

In addition to Cruz, other Senate Republicans have called on Obama to wait until the new Senate is seated in January to make the nomination.

The lame duck timetable is compressed into just seven legislative calendar weeks, not counting time off for holiday recesses. But the White House has pointed out that there is precedent for such a move. The day after the 2006 midterm, President George W. Bush nominated Robert Gates as secretary of defense and he was confirmed in less than a month with bipartisan support.

Perez, who is 53 and is the son of Dominican immigrants, had been considered by political observers an ideal nominee, given his background as a Justice Department civil rights official.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Where can you find an election that features a twice-convicted felon and a candidate who makes a donation to his rivals campaign?

The answer is Providence, Rhode Island.

This citys mayoral race consists of Republican Dan Harrop, Democrat Jorge Elorza, and former Mayor Buddy Cianci, who is running as an independent.

Cianci was forced from office in 1984 after being convicted of assault and then, after a comeback in 1990, he was convicted of racketeering conspiracy in 2002 and sent to prison for 4 1/2 years.

Harrop has given a $1,000 donation  the maximum allowed under state law  to the campaign of his rival, Elorza.

"I think he is a good and honorable man. I disagree with him on many, many policy issues," Harrop said of Elorza. "I am fourth in a three-man race. I'm behind the undecided voters. It's clearly coming down to a race between the two of them."

The men are running to replace one-term Mayor Angel Taveras, a Democrat, who ran unsuccessfully for governor.

Harrop, a psychiatrist, said he would not drop out of the race or endorse Elorza, a law professor and former housing court judge. But when asked by The Associated Press if he would vote for Elorza, Harrop replied: "Ask me that later. I don't know. I really don't know at this point. I've got two weeks to make a decision."

David Ortiz, Elorza's campaign spokesman, said Elorza was pleased to receive the Republican's donation.

"They happen to agree that Providence needs honest leadership moving forward," Ortiz said.

Cianci called Harrop a nuisance who is not a legitimate candidate, and he released a statement asking Republicans to support him. Cianci said Harrop uses his debate appearances to throw bombs at him.

"It's obvious that they're in collusion together," he said. "One of them can't beat me, so the other says, 'Let's team up.'"

Harrop and Ortiz denied any collusion and said Elorza never asked Harrop for money. He said he had only spoken with Elorza and his campaign staff during debates, or chitchat during various campaign appearances. The only time it's gone beyond that was when Elorza called him after his donation, Harrop said.

"He thanked me very much for my donation. I said I hoped he could put it to good use. He mentioned it had been a pleasure debating me," Harrop said. "He treated me as if I was just a donor."

Harrop's donation was first reported by WPRI-TV.

Elorza began this month with much less campaign cash on hand than Cianci. While Cianci has been airing TV ads for weeks, Elorza has yet to run one.

Based on reporting by The Associated Press.

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Candidates competing in New Hampshire's 2nd Congressional District accused each other Monday of being missing in action and ignoring constituents in favor of following party leaders.

In their first debate, Republican Marilinda Garcia criticized Democratic incumbent Annie Kuster for not holding town hall meetings, and accused her of putting President Barack Obama's agenda ahead of constituent concerns.

"When they approach her with a concern with a new regulation that's passed, or something they're having trouble dealing with ... she'll say, 'I hear your concern, but I know this is important to the Obama administration, so I have to support it,'" Garcia said. "That's not leadership."

Kuster responded that she meets with constituents every day, visiting businesses and hosting round table discussions. She described helping farmers win changes to proposed food safety regulations, and argued it's Garcia who has ignored constituents by missing about a third of the votes during her time in the state Legislature.

"Miss Garcia herself has a real record of being missing in action for her constituents," said Kuster, who argued that when Garcia did show up, she served as a rubber stamp for former Republican House Speaker Bill O'Brien.

The debate aired on WBIN-TV. Candidates in the 1st District will face each other Tuesday, followed by gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidates later in the week.

Garcia sidestepped when asked to give an example of a time she disagreed with O'Brien, but described her attendance record as "wonderful" given that she often had to miss votes to work. That work history also became an issue in the debate, with Kuster criticizing Garcia for paying herself a salary to campaign. Garcia, 31, left her job as a music teacher to campaign fulltime this summer.

"If she had more life experience, maybe she'd understand," what it's like to struggle to save money for a house or college tuition, Kuster said in defending her support for raising the minimum wage. Garcia opposes raising the minimum wage, saying it would lead to businesses laying off workers.

The candidates also tangled over a Kuster campaign ad that says Garcia wants to abolish the federal Department of Education and supports banning abortion. In 2008, she voted for a bill that would have made it a felony for anyone to perform an abortion "when there is a reasonable expectation that the fetus would be viable if delivered."

"Miss Garcia's views on this are very extreme and outside the norm for New Hampshire," Kuster said.

Garcia said Kuster was distorting her position and that she never tried to ban all abortions. As for the ad, "I didn't hear her talk about a single issue that matters to New Hampshire voters," Garcia said.

"I don't know if that's something you do once you're a D.C. politician and you're out of touch with voters here in the state, or that's just her own scruples, but I think it lacks compunction and conscience," Garcia said.

Kuster said she was shocked to hear Garcia say voters don't care about the Department of Education, given that it provides grants and subsidized loans to college students.

"All across this district, middle-class families care about sending their kids to college. It's the number one issue I talk about, not just for families, but for the business community," she said.

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U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Monday that he will be introducing a measure that would ban new visas for people from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, which have been ravaged by an Ebola outbreak.

Rubio said in a press release that he plans to introduce the legislation following the Senates return to session in November.

Demands are rising in Washington for the U.S. to ban travelers from countries in West Africa, but the Obama administration is resisting and says the screening measures already in place for travelers are more effective.

There are no direct flights from Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone to the U.S. Officials say that about 150 passengers a day arrive in the U.S. from those countries after making a connecting flight, usually in Europe. Most arrive at one of five airports, where screening for fever  a symptom of the disease  began this month.

While Ebolas deadly reach has proven to be a complex and unique international challenge, the many uncertainties surrounding this virus continue to threaten U.S. national security, said Rubio. Our biggest priority is ensuring that sufficient safeguards are in place to limit the spread of Ebola, contain it at the source, and protect Americans.

Rubios measure would call for the ban to take effect immediately, and be reviewed if the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) determines that the outbreak has been contained.

If new countries experience an outbreak, then a ban would be put in place for visas for people from those locations, Rubios release said.

We must take any and all necessary precautions to contain this virus  and common sense restrictions on travel from countries now confronting this epidemic is an important step, added Rubio. The most effective way to combat this deadly virus is to address it at its source. This ban on issuance of visas does not mean we will be completely cutting off the affected countries from the outside world.

We must continue to increase our assistance to those countries as they struggle to contain this outbreak. That is, ultimately, the only way we will be able to stop this outbreak and keep Americans safe from this horrible disease.

Some 9,000 people have been infected with Ebola, and about 4,500 have died, mostly in hard-hit Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, with the number of cases expected to increase exponentially in the coming weeks.

Dr. Simon Mardel, one of the world's leading experts on viral hemorrhagic fevers, said the number of deaths could be cut in half if infected people were taught to properly hydrate themselves and do not take anti-inflammatory drugs, which can actually harm Ebola victims.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Nomination? What nomination?

Labor Secretary Tom Perez is believed to be on the short list of candidates that President Barack Obama is considering nominating to replace Eric Holder as U.S. attorney general.

But when asked about the rumor, Perez, who was at the National Press Club Monday delivering a speech about labor and the economy, tried to switch the focus to his current job.

Weve got a lot of balls in the air at the Department of Labor and weve got a lot of people who depend on us to make sure that we expand opportunity every day, and that continues to be my singular focus, Perez said, according to The Hill.

But that didn't mean that he couldn't talk about the job that Holder has done or talk about the Justice Department.

When he was asked, "What should be the Justice Department's top priorities?"

Perez said, "My particular focus is on the job of being the head of the Department of Labor."

"I'm still doing my day job," he added.

Perez, who is 53 and is the son of Dominican immigrants, ran the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division before he became labor secretary last summer. Earlier this month, the New York Times, citing unidentified sources, reported that the front-runner for attorney general apparently was Perez.

But days later, the Associated Press reported that a White House official said that the president had not yet decided who he wants to succeed Holder, a longtime friend and political ally who announced last month he will step down whenever a new attorney general is confirmed.

On Monday, Perez praised Holder for fighting for voting rights and other justice issues.

Eric Holder stood up for voting rights, Eric Holder stood up for common-sense criminal justice reform, he said. Whenever youre going to work on some of these defining issues of our day, you will have folks who oppose you."

Perez suggested that it is a misconception that such measures as voter ID laws are needed to address rampant fraud.

I dont believe that because I did these cases when I was over there, he said, according to The Hill. And that is a phantom problem.

The Supreme Court said Saturday that Texas can use its controversial new voter identification law for the election on Nov. 4.

A majority of the justices rejected an emergency request from the Justice Department and civil rights groups to prohibit the state from requiring voters to produce certain forms of photo identification in order to cast ballots. Three justices  Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor  dissented.

The law had been struck down by a federal judge last week, but a federal appeals court had put that ruling on hold. The judge found that roughly 600,000 voters, many of them black or Latino, could be turned away at the polls because they lack acceptable identification.

The White House is preparing for the prospect of trying to push through a nominee in the year-end congressional session while Democrats still have a 10-seat majority in the Senate.

Obama faces the likelihood of an even tougher challenge to win confirmation if he waits until early next year, since Republicans are expected to pick up seats in the midterm, if not to win outright control of the Senate.

Republicans have called on Obama to wait until the new Congress is seated in January to make the nomination.

On Monday, Perez pushed his and Obamas efforts to raise the national minimum wage and to have paid maternity- and paternity-leave federally mandated for workers.

Perez said that the United States is the only industrialized nation that lacks such a mandate. He said having it would raise the labor participation rate as well as benefit families in a variety of ways.

"Why are we making people choose between the job they need and the family they love?" Perez asked.

"This is a family issue and an American issue," Perez said. "We need to lead on leave. We can't simply leave talent on the bench."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Florida's leading candidates for governor clashed fiercely during their final debate on Tuesday night, sniping at each other over everything from the economy and the minimum wage to the death penalty.

Republican-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist and Republican Gov. Rick Scott, essentially tied in the polls, used their final moments before the television cameras to come up with some of the most personal attacks leveled so far in what has already been an extremely negative campaign.

The debate's sponsors, including CNN, did not allow still photographers or reporters inside the studio during the event, preventing them from capturing the full context of how the candidates performed outside the view of the TV cameras.

Crist called Scott "out of touch" with regular Floridians, while Scott called Crist a "divider" who switched parties and policies to further his political career.

"What is he saying this year that he actually believes, whether it's on taxes, education, or abortion?" Scott asked.

As they debated the economy and who was responsible for the recovery, Scott contended that Crist, the son of a doctor, grew up rich and didn't know the struggles of poor people like he did. Crist fired back by saying that Scott, who is now a multimillionaire after growing up poor, didn't care about the middle class and spent all his time in a private jet and a seaside mansion.

Crist used that line to stress the need to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, which Scott opposes because he argued it could prompt some businesses to pare back the number of jobs they offer.

"How can somebody get by on $7.93 cents an hour?" asked Crist, who noted that some Floridians have to work extra jobs to make ends meet. "That's not an economy that's humming along."

Scott said he did believe there should be some sort of minimum wage in place, but when asked how much it should be, he responded: "How would I know? I mean the private sector decides wages."

But Scott then maintained it was just as important to have economic policies that help stimulate the economy. He faulted Crist for pursuing policies while he was governor that he said hurt the economy and led to job losses during the Great Recession.

"Just because you set a minimum wage doesn't mean you get a job," he said.

The debate on CNN also featured questions about Cuba, immigration, medical marijuana and whether ex-convicts deserve voting rights after they are released from prison. The candidates disagreed on nearly every one of them.

There was no direct mention of the controversy generated at last week's debate, when Crist's campaign brought in an electric fan and placed it beneath his lectern. Scott's campaign said that violated debate rules, and in response, Scott did not appear on stage for seven minutes.

CNN moderator Jake Tapper did make a sly reference to the issue Tuesday night, however, asking both candidates if they were comfortable.

Crist uses a fan at almost every public appearance. Asked after the debate how he felt without it, he responded, "It was great. It felt great."

During the debate, Crist and Scott each took digs at the other's past, with Crist attacking Scott over his time as the head of the hospital chain HCA/Columbia, which was fined $1.7 billion for Medicare fraud. Crist repeated a line from one of his ads, saying that Scott once invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination while questioned about an unrelated civil lawsuit.

Scott recounted the lines from one of his ads claiming that associates of Crist, including the former head of the Republican Party and Ponzi scheme organizer Scott Rothstein, wound up going to jail.

But one of the sharpest exchanges may have been while they discussed the death penalty.

Both men said they supported it, but Crist questioned how serious Scott takes the duty because he delayed an execution when the date conflicted with a political fundraiser for Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi later apologized for the incident and Scott said at the time he was unaware of the reason for the delay.

But Crist hammered away at Scott, asking him outright if he knew the delay was due to a fundraiser. Scott finally replied, "She apologized, Charlie. What would you like her to do?"

Crist responded, "He doesn't answer questions. Pleads the Fifth."

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With marijuana initiatives up for vote on ballots in a number of states, advocates of liberalizing marijuana laws won't be able to rely on the Latino vote to help them out on Nov. 4, a new study found.

The study, conducted by the Pew Research Center, indicates that Latinos are more likely than white or black voters to oppose decriminalizing marijuana. When asked whether pot should be legalized, 49 percent of registered Latino voters answered yes, while 48 percent said otherwise.

That is compared to 53 percent of the overall U.S. population favoring legalization against 44 percent who do not.

But it isn't exactly a sweeping anti-pot sentiment from the Latino community.

When asked whether they supported legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes only, or for personal recreational use as well, the results were very different.

About eight-in-ten Latino registered voters responded that marijuana should be legal in some form, with 47 percent supporting medicinal legalization only and 34 percent supporting legalization for personal use as well.

In terms of the rest of the U.S. population, 38 percent of whites and 43 percent of blacks supporting legalization of marijuana for medicinal use only, and 43 percent of whites and 41 percent of blacks favor legalizing it for personal use as well.

The study also found that foreign-born Latinos in the U.S. are far less likely to support marijuana legalization than Hispanics born in the United States, with only 27 percent of the immigrants favoring legalization compared to the 57 percent of those born here.

Overall, Latinos are also less likely to have tried marijuana, with 33 percent of Hispanic respondents saying they have compared to 50 percent of whites and 49 percent of blacks.

Proposals for recreational marijuana use are on the ballot in Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C., with medical-marijuana measures up for vote in the territory of Guam and the Latino-heavy state of Florida.

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Latinos have the potential to break political records in this mid-term election, said the head of a national non-profit group that works toward greater Latino involvement in politics.

If the House of Representatives gains four more Latino members, Congress would have its highest number of Latinos in history, said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund.

As for the ballot box, NALEO estimates that nearly 8 million Latinos will vote this year, an increase of 1.2 million from 2010.

Latinos will play a key role in shaping the nations political landscape in two weeks, said Vargas at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C on Tuesday. Latinos are poised to demonstrate their power as both voters and candidates on Election Day, with Latino candidates likely to make history as the largest class of Latinos in the 114th Congress.

Congressional races in Arizona, California, New Hampshire and West Virginia could help Latinos who appear to have a strong shot at winning reach a new record in the House of Representatives, NALEO said, by raising their number from 28 to 32.

Candidates running strong campaigns include Republican Marilinda Garcia, a state representative in New Hampshire who is challenging incumbent Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, a Democrat; former Arizona State Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who is running unopposed for the 7th Congressional District seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. Ed Pastor, also a Democrat; Republican Alex Mooney, a former Maryland state senator who is running in the West Virginias 2nd Congressional District against businessman Nick Casey, a Democrat. The West Virginia seat is being vacated by incumbent U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate.

Nearly 20 Latinos are running for statewide office, including in such places as Rhode Island and Wyoming, NALEO noted.

Governors Susana Martinez of New Mexico and Brian Sandoval of Nevada, both Republicans, are expected to handily win re-election.

And several gubernatorial candidates around the nation have picked Latino running mates.

Moreover, two Latina contenders for lieutenant governor are running in Nevada and Texas, where these positions call for candidates to run on their own, not with the gubernatorial candidate.

In Nevada State Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, a Democrat, is running against State Sen. Mark Hutchison, a Republican. In Texas, State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, a Democrat, is challenging State Sen. Dan Patrick, a Republican.

Latino voters can play a pivotal role in various tight races around the country, NALEO said.

Those include gubernatorial races in Arizona, where Latino registered voters are 16 percent of the electorate; Florida, where Latinos are 15 percent of voters; and Illinois, where Latinos are 8 percent of voters.

In Colorado, Latinos are about 10 percent of registered voters, giving them the potential to be a determining factor in the tight Senate race between incumbent U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat, and his GOP challenger, U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner.

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Members of the Mid-South Hispanic community were the primary targets of Tammy Brooks Carpenter, a Memphis City Court clerk who was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of stealing more than $24,000 from the city.

Advocacy group Latino Memphis hopes it sends a clear message.

Mauricio Calvo, Executive Director of Latino Memphis, said these charges are a clear case of racial profiling. For some reason or another Carpenter thought Hispanic residents would make easy victims.

Well, she thought wrong.

"Happy to hear she got caught," Calvo said. "It sends a clear message: Do not profile, do not commit crime, and do not underestimate the power of the Hispanic community."

All but eight of Carpenter's victims have Hispanic surnames. The city clerk is accused of targeting Hispanic citizens who went in to pay their traffic tickets in cash.

"Targeting individuals based on any type of nationality such as what we have here will not be tolerated," said U.S. Attorney Edward Stanton III, who added that Carpenter would take their cash and then void the original payment, enter a smaller citation amount, and then pocket the rest.

Not only was she stealing from the city, her victims would soon receive a letter in the mail telling them their fine had not been paid.

Calvo said we all profile in one way or another. The difference here is that Carpenter acted on it. Calvo believes she thought Hispanic victims would not ask for receipts, would not follow up or be smart enough to complain if they did notice something wrong.

"This is part of the solution," Calvo said. "I don't care if you're robbing Hispanics with a gun in an apartment complex or you're committing fraud or embezzling something at the clerk's office, this is a message that you will get prosecuted. The Latinos will step up and they will testify and they will make this happen."

One of her victims did finally notice and spoke up and that's how this whole investigation began, which led to her federal indictment.

If convicted, Carpenter faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

For more Tennessee news, check out http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/

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The White House on Wednesday cautioned against making assumptions about President Barack Obama's changes to immigration rules based on a new federal contract proposal from the Homeland Security Department to buy enough supplies to make as many as 34 million immigrant work permits and residency cards over the next five years.

The Associated Press reported earlier in the day the contract proposal suggested that the Obama administration appeared to be preparing for an increase in the number work permit applications form of immigrants living illegally in the country. The U.S. government produces about 3 million work permits and residency identifications, known as green cards, annually. The new contract for at least 5 million cards a year would provide the administration with the flexibility to issue far more work permits or green cards even if it chose not to exercise that option.

"I think those who are trying to read into those specific orders about what the president may decide are a little too cleverly trying to divine what the president's ultimate conclusion might be," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. "What I would caution you against is making assumptions about what will be in those announcements based on the procurement practices of the Department of Homeland Security."

Earnest did not say whether Obama plans to issue more work permits.

Obama announced earlier this year that if Congress didn't pass immigration legislation, he would act on his own. After twice postponing a final decision, he said as recently as last month that he would hold off on executive actions until after November's midterm elections.

The administration has repeatedly declined to say what options Obama was considering, but it is widely believed that he will expand protections from deportation already extended to more than 500,000 young immigrants who came to the United States as children. Under that program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, many young immigrants who are in school or who have graduated and don't have a criminal record can win protection from deportation for up to two years. They are also eligible for work permits.

The president does not have the legal authority unilaterally to offer immigrants living in the country illegally green cards or any other permanent immigration status. But administration officials have said the president can authorize protection from deportation for immigrants on a case-by-case basis, such as with the DACA program, and issue them work permits.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Leon Rodriguez told an audience at a Georgetown University Law Center conference Tuesday that his agency was ready for whatever immigration changes Obama may announce. He declined to provide details.

USCIS confirmed to the AP on Tuesday that it published a draft contract proposal to buy the card stock needed to make work permits and permanent resident cards, more commonly known as green cards. The proposal calls for providing material for at least 5 million cards a year, with as many as 9 million "during the initial period ... to support possible future immigration reform initiative requirements." The contract calls for as many 34 million cards over five years.

USCIS spokesman Christopher Bentley described the proposal posted earlier this month a routine contract solicitation.

"Solicitations of this nature are frequent practice," Bentley said. He said the number of immigration applications can rise "for any number of any reasons."

The contract proposal was first reported by the online news site Breitbart.com.

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Latinos in North Carolina might become the determining factor in deciding who wins North Carolinas Senate race.

Thom Tillis, a Republican businessman who is the state speaker of the House, and Democratic incumbent Senator Kay Hagan are battling in a state where Hispanics are 9 percent of the population  having more voting power than ever before.

It is very close," said North Carolina political strategist Larry Shaheen. "The Latino vote is going to be very crucial in this election.

Political experts also say North Carolina is like a microcosm of what is happening throughout the county, where Latino voters are becoming more important in elections. A similar situation is happening in Georgias senate race with Michelle Nunn and David Perdue battling it out for a senate seat in a state that also has a nine percent population of Hispanics and Latinos.

But the changes being wrought by Latinos go beyond state-wide demographics, according to North Carolina State University political science professor Andrew Taylor.

One of the interesting things about the Latino vote in North Carolina, Taylor told Fox News Latino, is that most of the Latino population in the state has been growing in small towns and rural areas. So its been more difficult for it to become more integrated into the political community.

Which also makes it more of a challenge to get out the vote.

It doesnt matter if there are 120,000 or so registered Hispanic voters in North Carolina [if] we dont go out and vote, said Olma Echeverri, former State Chair of the Hispanic American Democrats of North Carolina.

Political leaders in the Latino community believe both parties can do more to reach out to Hispanic voters.

Id like to obviously see the Republicans to do more, but I think that a lot more can be done on both sides, said Rosemary Fernandez Stein, Chairwoman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly in North Carolina.

[The campaigns] clearly dont make a strong enough effort to get out the vote here as it is the case in other states. I think some of that is the sense that both parties worry whether an explicit outreach to the Latino population [will be] construed as being somewhat soft on immigration, said Taylor.

The Tillis and Hagan campaigns did not respond to requests for comment about the importance of the Latino vote.

Tillis campaign website says the former speaker believes in doing more to secure our borders and opposes amnesty. Congress should solve our border security crisis now - before it even debates any other changes to our immigration reform, the website outlines.

Although Hagans campaign website does not directly outline her stance on immigration, her voting record is pretty clear. Hagan voted in support of the Senates Gang of Eight bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) bill in 2013 - which would strengthen border security protections and ensure everyone plays by the same rules fixing the broken immigration system and require undocumented immigrants to pay back taxes and penalties, learn English, pass background checks, and go to the back of the line before becoming eligible for temporary status, Hagan was quoted as saying in a press release on the bill.

With nearly 900,000 Latinos living in North Carolinas population of about 10 million, some Hispanics are skeptical but hopeful about how their community will influence the Senate election.

I dont know if the 9 percent of Hispanic voters will decide the election, resident Ximena Uribe told FNL. I dont know if its going to decide the election, but its a big influence.

The most recent polls on the race have the race as a toss-up or give Hagan with a slight lead well within the margin of error.

No polls have been released, however, since a fourth televised debate between the candidates on Tuesday night, became more of a monologue when Hagan, who hadnt officially agreed to attend, declined to participate.
The man taking on former mayor and twice-convicted felon Buddy Cianci in the race for mayor of Providence is a Harvard-educated law professor who grew up poor, the son of Guatemalan immigrants.

Democrat Jorge Elorza has never run for elected office and faces Cianci, an independent and Providence political giant who first won office 40 years ago. He never lost any of his six previous mayoral races but was forced from office twice after his convictions, one of which resulted in 4  years in prison.

Elorza, 37, has made ethics a cornerstone of his candidacy, drawing a contrast between his up-from-the-bootstraps success story and Cianci's past overseeing widespread corruption in City Hall. Cianci, 73, has gone after what he says is Elorza's lack of experience.

A Brown University poll out this week shows Elorza leading Cianci by more than 10 points. Republican candidate Daniel Harrop is far behind in polls and recently donated $1,000 to Elorza's campaign, saying he might even vote for him to help keep Cianci from winning.

Elorza grew up in a tenement house in a rough neighborhood. He graduated from the city's prestigious Classical High School and finished at the top of his accounting program at the University of Rhode Island then went to work as an auditor on Wall Street. Months later, everything changed when he learned a childhood friend had been violently killed.

"At that point, I made a commitment to myself to dedicating the rest of my life to working in that community," he said.

He got into Harvard and after graduation returned to Rhode Island, working as a legal aid lawyer before becoming a professor at Roger Williams University School of Law. He also became a part-time housing court judge in Providence, where he fined banks that didn't appear for court hearings about abandoned properties.

Carl Bogus, a law professor at Roger Williams, called Elorza an introvert, policy wonk and intellectual nerd, not a politician. But he also said Elorza is extremely self-disciplined and competitive, something he's learned in their chess games together.

"He hates losing more than any other chess player I have ever played with," Bogus said. "He's a guy who wants to succeed. He's got the fire in the belly to succeed."

In debates, Elorza doesn't roll out the jokey, sometimes stinging one-liners Cianci is known for, but he faces Cianci head-on. When Cianci has claimed Elorza supports instituting a municipal income tax or said Elorza is supported by strip club owners, Elorza will challenge him, "You can't tell lies, Buddy" or, "You can't just make things up, Buddy."

At a community forum, when an audience member implied the streets were safer under Cianci's watch, Elorza bristled.

"No one is going to tell me that those were rosy days in my community," Elorza shot back.

To criticism he doesn't have experience running a city, Elorza has said his background as an accountant will help him get the city's finances into shape.

While Elorza has introduced plans to address abandoned properties and improve community involvement in schools, he has aggressively focused on Cianci's past.

He goes after Cianci for shaking down city employees for campaign contributions and for overseeing two administrations where corruption was so pervasive that several officials went to prison. He brings up Cianci's decision to approve high cost-of-living increases for the pension system, resulting in one retiree receiving a pension of nearly $200,000 per year from the financially strapped city.

Political analysts say Elorza has to give people a reason to vote for him rather than just a reason not to vote for Cianci. Cianci has had a financial advantage throughout the race, high name recognition and has been airing TV ads for weeks. Elorza isn't as well-known and only had the money to start airing TV ads this week.

"I don't know that Elorza is inspiring people, and that charisma, that draw is usually what will get people out to the polls," said Valerie Endress, a communications professor at Rhode Island College.

Even Elorza's supporters focus on Cianci. When asked this week why she was supporting Elorza, Karen McAninch, 62, said she didn't want to return to the days of Cianci. Then she was pressed on what specifically she likes about Elorza.

"He may not have all the pizazz of Cianci. Nobody does," she replied. "He has the best interests of the community on his mind."

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CSTO does not exist?

On December 29 of 2016, Azerbaijan launched a diversionary infiltration attempt southeast of Chinar village in Tavush region of the Republic of Armenia, and entered into a battle with the Armenian Armed Forces. As a result, at least 3 Armenian servicemen have been killed. Thus, Azerbaijan has made an attack on the internationally recognized state borders of the Republic of Armenia, which means that this act should be followed by the response of Armenias strategic allies, namely Russia and the other CSTO member states: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. However, at the time of writing this article, no such steps were taken by Armenias allies though CSTO borders have been attacked. Leaving aside the expected actions by CSTO and, particularly, Russia, or their possible absence, we should note that these provocative actions by Azerbaijan have been preceded by a number of notable events. The Iskanders and Their Effect As it is known, Iskander missile systems obtained from Russia were shown during the military parade dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Armenias independence. It was announced that these will help maintain balance of power in the region and that Armenia is getting a restraining advantage over Azerbaijan thanks to that armament. However, on December 15, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Rogozin left to Baku on a working visit with a very interesting mission. Namely, Rogozin gave explanations in Baku related to the Armenian Iskanders, and, according to media publications, also ensured that these will not be used against Azerbaijan. Split in the CSTO The summit of the leaders of CSTO member states in Saint Petersburg on December 26 showed that there are deep problems in that structure which directly touch on Armenias interests in a negative way. Armenian representative should have been appointed as CSTO Secretary General since December 2015. That issue was postponed in 2015 due to tense relations between Russia and Turkey. The issue was raised again during the CSTO Summit in Yerevan in October 2016. However, the appointment did not take place as Kazakhstans President Nursultan Nazarbayev did not participate in summit in Armenia explaining his absence by his being ill. Note that Nazarbayev is famous for his pro-Azerbaijani position, and later it was revealed that Nazarbayev was not sick at all. The agenda of the Saint Petersburg summit also contained appointment of the representative from Armenia, which again did not find a solution because of absence of the leader of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko (note that Lukashenko visited Azerbaijan in November, where he received warmest welcome). Combining all this, one can safely state that the appointment of an Armenian representative in the CSTO fails because of Armenias contractual partners which have marked pro-Azerbaijani positions. Joint Group of Forces and Air Defense During the last few months, the process of creation of a Joint Group of Forces based on the Russian 102nd Military Base in Armenia and 5th Corps of the RA Armed Forces is in full action. It is being announced that Armenia will get additional security guarantees and that Russia will be more diligently engaged in ensuring Armenias security. As it is known, earlier Armenia and Russia had signed an agreement on having a joint air defense system, which should also serve to ensure Armenias security. But But the last act of diversion by Azerbaijan directly shows that Baku does not care about the CSTO, the Joint Group of Forces, the air defense agreement or Armenias allies. It should be noted that this position of Azerbaijan is not groundless since experience has shown that Baku can attack a state which is member of a defense treaty and be sure that allies of that state will remain silent. It is difficult to imagine a case in which any country would ever dare to attack a NATO member state. It is scary, to say the least, since NATOs response will be as fierce as one could possibly imagine. But in case of CSTO, it is not scary at all. Armenia, member state of that defense alliance, is always completely alone when it is forced to respond, protect itself, punish and scare its enemy. Hence, numerous questions arise related to the expediency of Armenias membership in that alliance, especially taking into account the fact that within the framework of that treaty, Armenia is very often forced to join statements which do not stem from the state interests of the country. It is worth reminding that Union of Informed Citizens has recently published a video related to the CSTO and Armenias security. UPDATE: Later on CSTO Secretary General Nikolay Bordyuzha made the following statement: The CSTO Secretariat is deeply concerned about the information received related to the armed incident that took place near Chinari village of the Republic of Armenia. We view these actions in the territory of a CSTO member state as a provocation, especially against the backdrop of quite a grave incident in Nagorno Karabagh this April, during which heavy weaponry was applied. Thus, it can be said that by making an official statement, the CSTO, however, does not condemn Baku for what happened and is just limited to quite blurred terms. In his statement, Bordyuzha does not speak about assisting Armenia, does not blame Baku and merely expresses a deep concern. Vahe Ghukasyan, Union of Informed Citizens
A program that would allow immigrants with certain skills to enroll in the military is on hold because of a Pentagon initiative announced last month that calls for allowing some undocumented people who have a two-year reprieve from deportation also to enlist.

The delay is causing frustration among legal immigrants who were ready to serve under the special skills program, known as Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest, or MAVNI.

Politico reported that the delay is happening because military officials have to finish working on details regarding the screening of undocumented immigrants who want to enlist.

Its a major bureaucratic screw-up by the Obama administration, Politico quoted Margaret Stock, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, as saying.

Stock came up with the MAVNI program, Politico said.

The undocumented immigrants who would qualify to enlist in MAVNI are those who have qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

To be eligible for DACA, an immigrant must have been brought to the United States before the age of 16 and meet various other criteria, such as having no criminal record.

Military officials have no accepted applications for MAVNI this month.

Army spokesman Wayne Hall said the MAVNI application process should reopen by late November, according to Politico. But officials are not sure when DACA immigrants will be able to apply.

From the Armys standpoint, the MAVNI Program is currently on hold while Army officials sort out final details on screening MAVNI candidates, Politico quoted Hall as saying.

Procedures to enlist DACAs require additional coordination (not limited to security screening) which is ongoing at this time.

One powerful lawmaker pushing the Pentagon to allow young undocumented immigrants into the military was Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has sponsored legislation for more than a decade to give Dreamers legal status and was a member of the Senate Gang of Eight that wrote the comprehensive reform bill last year. Durbin also chairs the Senate subcommittee that oversees funding for the Pentagon.

Politico said that few DACA immigrants likely will end up qualifying for MAVNI because of the specialized skills, such as medical knowledge, that are required.

The Army launched MAVNI as a one-year pilot program in 2008 to recruit legal immigrants who had skills that the military lacked. To entice immigrants to enlist, the military promised a fast track to U.S. citizenship.

The program operated through 2010, and picked up again in 2012 with authorization to run for two years.

The provision that called for DACA immigrants to be allowed to apply for MAVNI also called for renewing MAVNI through 2016.

Complications that have arisen in the process of folding DACA into the MAVNI program include the fact that undocumented immigrants lack some key documents that MAVNI requires.

Moreover, it would be highly difficult, if not impossible, to run a thorough security check on DACA immigrants, Stock said to Politico.

The MAVNI program is not designed for DACA at all, Stock said. It was rather alarming to see DACAs being put into MAVNI. Someone didnt know what they were doing.

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The campaign to become the next New Mexico state treasurer has candidates talking about education and ways to gain more revenue.

Democrat Tim Eichenberg is going against Republican Rick Lopez in a race to replace James Lewis, who can't run again because of term limits.

Eichenberg, 62, a Realtor, said the state should acquire more federal lands that could then be leased to create a new revenue source for early childhood education at a time when advocates are demanding more funding for early childhood programs.

He also said the treasurer's office should invest more in New Mexico's infrastructure to help start construction projects. "As your state treasurer, I will grow the economy by investing our state money, right here, in New Mexico," Eichenberg says in a campaign ad.

The former state senator from a majority GOP district in Albuquerque is trying to win a race after a heated Democratic primary fight with former state Democratic Party Chairman John Wertheim. In that race, Wertheim accused Eichenberg of discriminating against Latinos, women and gays with votes in the Senate and as Bernalillo County treasurer.

Santa Fe resident Lopez, 59, a former state and federal government employee, promised to oppose any proposal to increase the amount of money distributed annually from the Land Grant Permanent Fund to expand early childhood programs, something Eichenberg says he's also against. That proposal has drawn heated debated in the state Legislature as education advocates press lawmakers to tap the fund against the resistance of fiscal conservatives.

Lopez also said the state treasurer needs to be more active in getting these boards and commissions to be more active. "I have 27 years of experience in various federal and state positions, and I won't need on-the-job training," Lopez said.

In his campaign, Lopez has played up his roots from humble beginning to later earning three master's degrees.

According to campaign finance reports earlier this month, Eichenberg reported cash on hand of $32,097, and Lopez had $13,606. Eichenberg spent $5,672 compared with $6,185 by Lopez. Eichenberg raised $26,416, including a personal loan of $4,651. Lopez received $12,295 in contributions, including $2,400 from Biad Chili Products of Mesilla.

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The Democratic lieutenant governor candidates from Florida, Texas and Nevada all have colorful biographies: a Colombian-born business executive; a pharmacist-turned-veteran lawmaker; and a juvenile delinquent-turned-lawyer.

And all balk at the umpteenth "How does it feel to be the first Latina?" question.

"I'd like to get to a place where that's no longer of interest," said Annette Taddeo Goldstein, the running mate of former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the Republican-turned-Democrat seeking to recapture his old job. Besides running a successful translation company, Taddeo is a powerful state party activist and a member of the Democratic National Committee's executive committee. And yes, she is also the first Florida Latina to hold the No. 2 spot on the Democratic ticket.

Her sentiment is echoed by Texas state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte and Nevada Assembly Rep. Lucy Flores. All three are the first competitive Latinas to run for the post in their states.

After years of running few Latinos for statewide posts, Democrats are building a bench that better reflects the support they have in the Hispanic community: more than twice as many Hispanics identify as Democrats than Republicans nationally, according to polls. This year they are showcasing this bench in key states that not only have large Hispanic electorates but enough electoral votes to swing presidential elections. The shift is crucial for a party that often fails to get its Hispanic supporters to the polls.

Democrats have long run minority candidates in minority districts, but not in heavily white districts or statewide. Rosalind Gold, senior director of policy for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, says this year looks different. If 2010 was the year of the Republican Latino candidate  Gov. Susana Martinez won in New Mexico, and U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in Florida and Texas  2014 may well be the year Democrats begin to catch up, she said.

"The gubernatorial candidates are seeing Latinas as someone who will help their ticket," she said, "but it also shows the continuing evolution of Latinos in politics."

Gold said the change is as much about quality as quantity, with more viable Latina non-incumbents running in both parties, and even from states with emerging Hispanic communities. For example, a Latina Democrat is running for Rhode Island's secretary of state. On the Republican side, Evelyn Sanguienetti, the daughter of Ecuadoran and Cuban immigrants, is the lieutenant governor candidate in Illinois.

Yet the ascension of candidates like Taddeo, Van de Putte and Flores is also a reminder of just how far Democrats have to go.

Crist chose Taddeo after Republican Gov. Rick Scott appointed former state lawmaker Carlos Lopez-Cantera, a Cuban-American, to be Florida's first Latino lieutenant governor earlier this year.

The Crist campaign recently inaugurated its first office in the farm town of Apopka, one of many central Florida communities where Latinos are increasingly making their home and an area Democrats previously overlooked. At the opening, Taddeo discussed school testing with fellow parents, insurance premiums with small business owners and health care access with young volunteers. She later switched to flawless Spanish for the local Telemundo reporters.

Yet almost none of the local campaign volunteers or staff was Latino. When Taddeo visited a campaign office in Broward County, a region with twice as many eligible Hispanic voters as the entire state of Virginia, monolingual staffers passed her the Spanish-language get-out-the-vote calls.

But nowhere is low Hispanic turnout and participation more significant than Texas, where Hispanics make up nearly 40 percent of the population. Nearly half the state's registered voters are Democrats, but only about 25 percent of eligible Latinos cast their ballot in the last non-presidential election. The Supreme Court's decision last week to uphold a strict voter ID law won't help with turnout, either.

Pharmacist and veteran lawmaker Van De Putte said Democrats have done little outreach with Latinos in the past, but they are stepping up this year, thanks in part to candidates like her.

She said her win would be historic, but quickly added, "it's also about someone who served in the Legislature for 20 years."

Drawn in part by the increase in candidates, as well as Democrats' need for Hispanic votes, nonprofit organizations are stepping up outreach. The National Council of La Raza has increased non-partisan registration in Texas this year, expanded phone banking and launched a pilot program to encourage voters to register by mail. The group is also working in Florida to groom new Latina leaders and drive registration. So, too, is the Democratic group Emily's List. And immigrant rights groups have knocked on some 25,000 doors in Florida.

But Republicans are also stepping up, increasing data collection on Hispanic voters in Florida and elsewhere and offering paid internships. The Scott campaign and supportive outside groups have run at least seven TV commercials in Spanish, compared with two from the Crist campaign.

Nevada's Flores, an attorney who turned her life around after a stint in juvenile detention for stealing a car, stresses that engaging Hispanic voters is about more than name and ethnicity. After all, she was elected the same year as Gov. Brian Sandoval, and he won the top Nevada post despite losing the Latino vote.

Flores, who has been outspent 4-1, is reluctant to again answer "that question." But she acknowledges her campaign is about something more than one race.

"If women see myself and Annette and Leticia doing it, they may think about it," she said. "If we're successful, and even if we're not, we'll have an impact on the national conversation."

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Democrat Gary King hopes to follow his father's footsteps into the governorship of New Mexico but he's struggled to raise money and make much headway against Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, the nation's only Latina governor.

Martinez has outspent King more than 6-to-1 on television ads and a new poll showed Martinez maintaining a comfortable lead in what's traditionally a Democratic-leaning state. The Democratic challenger had only $123,000 in his campaign account this month as the race entered the final stretch.

"TV isn't everything in a modern world," said King, a two-term attorney general and the son of the state's longest serving governor, the late Bruce King, who won three terms from the 1970s to 1990s.

"I campaign a lot in the style of Bruce King, which is to go out and meet voters face to face," King said at a recent political forum.

An Albuquerque Journal poll released Sunday showed 53 percent of likely voters backing Martinez to 38 percent for King, with 9 percent undecided.

Martinez made history four years ago by becoming the nation's first female Hispanic governor and the first woman elected governor of New Mexico. She's considered a rising star in a party that's searching for ways nationally to appeal to Hispanic voters.

Martinez has succeeded in doing that in New Mexico, where Hispanics account for 47 percent of the population. The latest Journal poll showed two-fifths of likely Hispanic voters supporting the governor. That's strong for a Republican in a state in which Democrats traditionally win by margins of 2-to-1 or better in heavily Hispanic areas.

Martinez also had the backing of 28 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents, according to the poll conducted for the paper by Albuquerque-based Research and Polling.

"We're less than two weeks away from the election and Gary King is still below 40 percent, despite the Democratic Party's 47 percent share of statewide voter registration," pollster Brian Sanderoff said.

His firm surveyed 614 voters over a three-day period last week, and the poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

A big Martinez victory on Election Day could boost the governor's national political standing, but Martinez maintains she's uninterested in national office or becoming a vice presidential running mate. She pledges to serve the full four years of a second term, if elected, to fulfill campaign promises of improving schools and the economy.

"I am not going to start the day after the election in concentrating on a new career," Martinez said.

"I don't want to be known as a politician," she said. "I think politicians nationwide have earned a reputation sometimes that is very unfavorable because they will say things and then do something else when they get into office."

On education, Martinez wants to end the practice of "social promotion" by requiring schools to hold back third-graders who can't read proficiently. Advancing kids with reading problems to the next grade, the governor contends, increases the risk they'll struggle in school later and drop out. The Democratic-controlled Legislature has blocked the governor's proposal, however.

Karen Erickson, a retired Albuquerque banker, said she supports Martinez because of her education efforts, especially the governor's attempt to stop social promotion of struggling students.

"I think it will really improve graduation rates later on," said Erickson. About 70 percent of the class of 2013 graduated after four years.

King advocates rolling back Martinez administration school policies, including a teacher evaluation system heavily based on student test performance.

Unions are backing the Democrat and trying to boost turnout among teachers and other workers.

"A disenfranchised, disinterested electorate is not good for me," King said in an interview. "We have to encourage people to recognize that they can make a difference if they go vote, and I think that we're going to be able to do that."

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Uruguayans were choosing a new president Sunday in a contest that could also determine the future of the country's pioneering marijuana law.

Outgoing President Jose Mujica led Uruguay through economic prosperity and gained worldwide acclaim for social reforms such as the legalization of marijuana and gay marriage. His left-leaning Broad Front coalition leads in the election to replace him, but victory in the first round is far from certain.

"I want the Broad Front to win in a first round, but I know it's hard," said Virginia Picun, 37, a nurse who voted at a public school in Montevideo joined by her husband and their two children.

"I want the Broad Front to continue in the government because I've seen how much it's improved Uruguay in these years."

Polls suggest that Broad Front candidate Tabare Vazquez, 74, will fall short of the absolute majority, forcing a runoff next month. His main challenger is center-right National Party candidate Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou, the son of a former president.

If elected, Lacalle Pou, 41, promises to tackle rising crime, improve education and modify the law that Mujica spearheaded to create the world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana. Although he would still allow consumers to grow the plants at home for personal use, he would end the government's role in the production and sales of pot.

In distant third is Pedro Bordaberry, 54, of the Colorado Party, whose father was elected president then seized power as a dictator. Bordaberry opposes the marijuana law and has vowed to repeal it if elected.

Mujica, who was barred by law from running for another term, remains popular after steering Uruguay through a period of economic growth and rises in wages. But his social reforms are less popular at home, and critics say his administration failed to deal with problems in education, security and environmental protection  all pillars of his presidential agenda.

"I want change," said Sofia Rimola, 25, a journalism student who wore a National Party button as she voted. "I want more education and improved health services."

Rising crime has also raised security concerns among the South American nation's 3.2 million citizens. As for education, Uruguay's students have tested among the worst in the world for mathematics, science and reading comprehension.

The Broad Front, a coalition of center-leftists, communists and former guerrilla leaders, had 44 percent support of voters going into the election, according to a survey of 2,008 voters taken Oct. 4-19 by Uruguayan pollster Factum.

The National Party was second at 32 percent, while support for the right-wing Colorado party was 15 percent. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.

Uruguayans will cast ballots for president and lawmakers at the same time, which means the Broad Front could also lose its legislative majority. Voters will also vote in a plebiscite on whether to reform the constitution to lower the age a person can be criminally charged as an adult from 18 to 16.

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Former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano fought resistance and challenges in the White House as she pushed for a way to give a reprieve to undocumented immigrants who had been brought as children to the United States, according to The Washington Post.

Offering a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes tug-of-war that occurred over what eventually became the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Napolitano described in an interview with the Post prickly debates that she had with officials at the DHS as well as with White House lawyers.

It just seemed to me that we needed to do something for this group of young people, Napolitano said to the Post. They were brought here as kids, not of their own volition. They really are kind of the worst victims of the lack of immigration reform.

Napolitano said some in the DHS wondered whether many more people would apply for DACA than the agency could handle.

The Post also provided information about the internal discussions between Napolitano and others from an advance copy of a speech the former DHS head was planning to deliver in Georgia on Monday.

There were serious logistical concerns, the Post quoted Napolitanos speech as saying about the debates over DACA. It would run the risk of appearing to make law and usurping Congress. . . . Who knew how it all would turn out?

Napolitano left the DHS last year and took a job as president of the University of California system.

Napolitano said that she never directly spoke with President Obama during all the discussions, though it seems he strongly supported it.

The move to do something to spare hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants from deportation and pave the way for them to do such things as obtain work permits and drivers licenses was rooted in the failure of Congress to pass a comprehensive reform law, or a more limited one, known as the Dream Act, that would have given undocumented immigrants who came as minors a chance to legalize their status.

Last year, the U.S. Senate, where Democrats have a majority, passed a sweeping bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill that, among other things, bolstered border security, expanded foreign worker visa programs, and provided a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants who meet a strict set of criteria.

But the effort stalled in the House, where Republicans have the majority, and where some of the most conservative members fought against taking up any immigration measure that provided a path to legal status to people who are here illegally.

Napolitano told the Post that she supports Obamas plan to take executive action after the November election to allow some undocumented immigrants to work and live legally in the United States.

Many Republicans have denounced Obamas plan, calling it an end-run around Congress.

If Congress refuses to act and perform its duties, then I think its appropriate for the executive to step in and use his authorities based on law . . . to take action in the immigration arena, Napolitano said.

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Former President Tabare Vazquez won the most votes in Uruguay's presidential election Sunday, but he fell short of the outright majority needed to avoid a Nov. 30 runoff, exit polls said.

Three polls indicated that the left-leaning Vazquez, 74, the candidate of the outgoing president's Broad Front coalition, would face center-right challenger Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou, 41, of the National Party in a second-round vote.

Vazquez, who was president in 2005-10, would end up with around 44 percent or 45 percent of the vote, against 31 percent to 33 percent for Lacalle Pou, the polls predicted. Pedro Bordaberry of the Colorado Party came in a distant third, with 13 percent to 14 percent.

Few results were available late Sunday, and officials didn't expect to report the final count until morning.

"This political force has been voted by the majority, but we'll have to go into a runoff," Vazquez told supporters after the exit polls were released. "It's a huge recognition to the nine years of the Broad Front's government. ... Uruguay will now have to decide between five more years of progressivism, or another type of government."

Uruguayans also voted for lawmakers. Exit polls predicted the Broad Front lost its legislative majority, but Vazquez said that he expected his coalition to retain it.

As Uruguay's first socialist president, Vazquez was the first person to break 170 years of control by the long dominant Colorado and National parties. He pursued moderate economic policies that helped Uruguay outpace neighbors while improving life for the poor.

He left office with high popularity ratings that put his party's candidate, Jose Mujica, in the president's office. This time, Vazquez has vowed to continue with the Broad Front's social welfare plans during its decade in power.

Mujica, who was barred by the constitution from running for a second consecutive term, remains popular after steering Uruguay through a period of economic growth and rises in wages. He also gained worldwide notice for social reforms such as the legalization of marijuana and gay marriage. But critics say his administration failed to deal with problems in education, security and environmental protection  all pillars of his presidential agenda.

Lacalle Pou campaigned on a promise to tackle rising crime, improve education and modify the law that Mujica spearheaded to create the world's first national marketplace for legal marijuana. Although he would still allow consumers to grow pot plants at home for personal use, he said he would end the government's role in the production and sale of marijuana.

"What's being done well, we'll continue doing well, and what's wrong, we'll fix and do well now," Lacalle Pou said Sunday night.

Rising crime has raised security concerns among the South American nation's 3.2 million citizens. In education, Uruguay's students test among the worst in the world for mathematics, science and reading comprehension.

According to the exit polls, Uruguayans voted against changing the constitution to lower the age a person can be criminally charged as an adult from 18 to 16.

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He is the Lone Star states best-known political enigma.

George P. Bush, the 38-year-old scion of, yes, the country's most enduring, trans-generational political dynasty, is running for the post of Texas land commissioner and is widely expected to win by a large margin.

Unlike his rival , Democrat John Cook, a 68-year-old who served on the El Paso City Council for three terms and as mayor for two terms, Bush has never before held a political office.

Not that that seems to be hurting him much.

People know his name, they know about him, but they dont know him, said Alfonso Aguilar, a GOP strategist who was chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship in the George W. Bush administration. Hes at a perfect age to start his career. Hes running for a very powerful position in Texas.

The job of land commissioner is said to be one of the most powerful in Texas and has proven to be a stepping stone to bigger and better positions.

If Bush wins, he would be continuing a family tradition. His father, Jeb, was governor of Florida and is widely expected to run for president in 2016; his uncle, George W., was Texas governor and U.S. president; his grandfather, George H.W., was CIA director, vice-president under Ronald Reagan and then president himself; and his great-grandfather, Prescott, was a U.S. senator.

But George P. is entering the political arena as talk centers on whether his father will run for president. He appeared on Sunday on ABC's "This Week,"but the interview made headlines only because of what he said about the likelihood of his father running for president in 2016.

"I think it's more than likely that he's giving this a serious thought and moving forward," George P. said. Asked if that meant it was "more than likely that he'll run," he responded, "That he'll run. If you had asked me a few years back ... I would have said it was less likely."

But even though his father has the spotlight right now, political observers say this is just the beginning of what many consider to be George P.s own, very bright future.

To generate buzz someday about a higher, national political office, Aguilar said, the younger Bush will have to audition  so to speak  while in the role of land commissioner.

After he wins, obviously he needs to do a good job as land commissioner, then he has to travel outside Texas, give speeches, talk to different audiences, meet with different groups around the country, Aguilar said.

Oddly, George P. Bush, who has been endorsed by various major news outlets, including the Dallas Morning News, would make family history if he is victorious on Nov. 4: He would be the first in his family to win an election in his maiden run for office.

Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Texas, says that although Bush is unproven as a politician, the states residents are generally welcoming to him.

People like the idea of a next generation of Bushes in Texas politics, Jillson said. Hes seen very positively across the board, by Republicans and Democrats.

However, Jillson said, People know the name, it has very positive resonance in Texas, even more positive than George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush. Hes young, hes good-looking, but theres nothing substantive yet about him.

Jillson added, Hes an empty vessel... As he develops, hell flesh out the substance of his political character.

The likely next land commissioner of Texas is a lawyer and founder of a political action committee called Hispanic Republicans of Texas.

He often has sounded like someone who is trying to cast himself as more than just a local political figure  weighing in on national issues, praising the virtues of the Republican Party while echoing many GOP talking points when criticizing Democrats and the Obama administration.

He has taken decidedly conservative Republicans stances  sometimes departing from more moderate ones embraced by his father and uncle  such as opposing abortion and same-sex marriage and supporting the defunding of the Affordable Care Act.

On the other hand, he has expressed support for more liberal immigration proposals, such as giving undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children a chance to legalize their status, and attend public universities paying the same tuition rate as state residents.

In his campaign for land commissioner, Bush has pushed for expanding oil and gas exploration, arguing that it could generate funding for public schools.

Bush's campaign senior advisor, Trey Newton, said: "George P. Bush is a new generation conservative leader who is building a new and enduring coalition of Hispanics, young people, small business owners and working class families around his conservative message of freedom and family."

"As land commissioner, George will fight to improve public schools, create more energy sector jobs and provide better service to our returning veterans."

His rival, Cook, the former El Paso mayor, has criticized Bush as running on his name and lacking in political experience.

Cook, who says hes running to win, even if others have written the race off as a certain Bush victory, concedes the challenges of running against a state political brand.

Its more difficult because everyone recognizes the name, Cook told Fox News Latino. Any marketing strategy is name recognition, whether its trying to sell Coke or Papa Johns pizza or a candidate.

But if you look at the Bush name, there are both positive and negative parts to it, he added. The two elder Bushes got us into wars that were still involved in, one was obviously because of oil, another was for weapons of mass destruction that didnt exist. That creates Bush fatigue, there are people who arent going to vote for the name because they dont want another Bush.

Cook says hes been an underdog before, and triumphed. When he ran to be mayor of El Paso, he said, Nobody except my wife thought I could win.

We spent a lot less than my opponent, and I won  and among every demographic, including Hispanic, Cook said.

What Cook has to offer, he says, is less dazzle and more experience than his rival.

I have a better resume than my opponent, he said. I have business experience and municipal government government experience.

Bushs lack of experience, he argued, is worrisome with a land commission job that involves 13 million acres of public land and 2,200 miles of coastline, going slightly more than 10 miles into the gulf, he said.

If theres an oil spill, the state agency thats responsible for that clean-up being done properly is the land office, Cook said. You need a land commissioner who is environmentally conscious.

His opponent, he said, cares more about big business than about the environment and Texas residents.

Bush speaks Spanish. His mother, Columba, is from Mexico, and his father, Jeb, speaks Spanish fluently. Bush has released a Spanish-language ad urging Latinos to vote for him for land commissioner.

In an interview with Univision's Jorge Ramos, Jeb Bush said that George P. identifies himself as a Latino.

Earlier this year, George P. mocked Democrats in a speech for suggesting that they are better representatives of young people and Latinos.

"I happen to know a little something about these two groups," he said. "In fact, I am these two groups. We dont want the Obama model, it doesnt work."

In press interviews, Bush has admitted that he has long entertained a career in politics. When he was a teenager, he shared his political plans with his grandmother, former First Lady Barbara Bush.

But she gave him a reality check.

She told him not to ride on his name. She urged him to have a career in something else, to marry and start a family, then to enter politics when he was truly ready to be a public servant.

In a 2012 interview with FNL, George P. Bush said, I am drawn to public service. Im intrigued by being in public office. Im feeling the bug, the bug to jump into it. Its in my genes, I cant get it out.
Using a term that harkens back to the days of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Monday that he would conduct a purge of his countrys police force following allegations that law enforcement officers had taken part in the murder of a governing party lawmaker earlier this month.

Maduro said that he would name a presidential commission to "revolutionize the police" and "fix everything that's wrong" with the force in the wake of the stabbing death of 27-year-old lawmaker Robert Serra and his girlfriend, Maria Herrera, who was at his home.

"Let's dig deep to build the kind of police force that our fatherland really deserves. We need a revolution of the police force here in Venezuela, and I will carry it out without delay, without excuses," Maduro said during a news conference on Monday, according to the BBC.

Maduro added that during the investigation into the death of Serra it had come to light that a small group of police officers were in the pay of criminal groups operating in the country. He added that the people behind Serra's murder had been identified and on Friday blamed once again Colombian groups for being responsible for the slaying.

The president alleged earlier this month that a Colombian paramilitary group conspired with the socialist legislator's bodyguards for three months to commit the murder with the aim of destabilizing Venezuela. He said two of six perpetrators had been arrested, including Serra's head of security, and suggested the other four may have fled the country after "sowing violence."

Maduro previously accused former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe of participating in the plot and said Uribe maintains links to groups working against Venezuela. He has presented no evidence for either claim.

"Rest assured that we will get to the masterminds of Serra's murder inside or outside the country," Maduro said.

The shake-up of the Venezuelan police force also comes less than two months after Maduro rearranged his presidential cabinet in a move that saw Rafael Ramirez, long-time chief of the state-run oil company PDVSA, minister of Petroleum and Mining and vice president for economic affairs, become foreign minister.

Economy and Finance Minister Marcos Torres will assume the vice-presidential post. Asdrubal Chavez, cousin of late President Hugo Chavez, will succeed Ramirez at the ministry, while PDVSA head of exploration Eulogio del Pino gets a promotion to company president.

Erstwhile foreign minister Elias Jaua is now minister of Communes and Social Movements and vice president for Development of Domestic Socialism.

The Associated Press and Efe contributed to this report.

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West Virginia could soon see its first ever Latino congressional representative.

His name is Alex Mooney and his mother is from Cuba.

If he were to win this race  which at the moment is viewed as a toss-up  Mooney, a conservative Republican running against Nick Casey, a former chairman of the West Virginia Democratic Party, would make history in a state that has the distinction of having the smallest percentage of Latinos in the entire nation.

Latinos make up just 1.2 percent  or slightly more than 22,268  of the Eastern Panhandle state's population.

Mooney, 43, has ruffled feathers with his candidacy for West Virginias 2d congressional district, which leans Republican.

Many accuse the Cuban-American of having made West Virginia home solely to run for office.

For most of his life, until recently, Mooney lived in Maryland, where he was Republican Party chairman. Before that his political career included serving as a Maryland state senator for 12 years, being a congressional aide and a delegate to the Republican National Convention.

Several news outlets have frowned upon Mooneys brief West Virginian presence, in effect depicting him as opportunistic.

"He has the background to run for Congress. Except all of that [political experience] happened in other states, said the West Virginia Gazette.

The current Maryland Republican Party head, Joe Cluster, told the Gazette: Hes wanted to run for Congress for a while. He saw an opportunity in West Virginia, and he took advantage.

Mooney and Casey, who is 61, are vying to succeed U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican who is running for a U.S. Senate seat.

Caseys campaign has not minced words about Mooney, hammering away at his not-too-long-ago Maryland address.

Its long past time that Alex Mooney tells the truth about himself to the voters of the second district, said Casey campaign manager Derek Scarbro in a statement on the Democrats website.

Mooney has yet to identify himself as a former member of the Maryland State Senate in his advertising, a tactic thats clearly designed to mislead voters into thinking hes a West Virginian.

Mooney has plenty of defenders.

Fellow Republicans in his former home state dismiss the suggestion that Mooneys move to West Virginia was self-serving. They say his move was simply one driven by a desire to be in a state that seemed to nurture his values more than Maryland did.

Hes very conservative, hes extremely pro-business, said Republican state Sen. Nancy Jacobs, according to the Gazette. I think he realized that theres not a whole lot left that we Republicans can do in Maryland, unless theres a massive change in whos in office.

Mooney has not given interviews to the media.

His campaign manager, Nick Clemens, has said that Mooneys decision to relocate were both personal and professional.

Alex and his wife moved to West Virginia because they wanted to raise their two children in a state that shares their values, the Gazette quoted Nick Clemens, Mooneys campaign manager, as saying in an email. In Congress, Alex will fight to protect West Virginias conservative values and coal jobs and make sure West Virginia continues to be the kind of place to which other families want to move.

Mooney has assailed Casey for supporting policies and regulations that he says hurt the coal industry and imperil jobs.

David Wasserman, with the Cook Political Report, was quoted in the states MetroNews as saying that its anyones guess at this point who will win the 2nd congressional seat. He said that Mooney could be hurt by the recent Maryland residence.

These races usually break towards the party that has an advantage in the district, Wasserman said.

The trouble is, in West Virginia, its really difficult to identify which party has a fundamental advantage because there are still more voters that consider themselves Democrats at the local level and, yet, voters are overwhelmingly disapproving of President Obama.

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Representative of Human Rights Defender departs for Chinari

According to the press release by the RA Ministry of Defense, Azerbaijani troops launched a sabotage infiltration in the vicinity of Chinari village of Armenias Tavush region, early in the morning of December 29. Due to the attack the Armenian side suffered losses: two private soldiers and an officer were killed. The attack hadnt stopped as of 12 p.m. in areas including the vicinity of Chinari village. The attack launched by the Azerbaijani armed forces is obviously in breach of all international norms protecting the right to life. Depriving a person, including a military serviceman of life under circumstances where there is no probability of an attack by the latter, is unacceptable and should be a mandatory matter for condemnation. Launching a military action in the vicinity of a civilian settlement should be a mandatory matter for condemnation; not to mention that the attack was launched in morning and noontime thus making real the possibility of damaging the locals of the village and revealing such intention by the Azerbaijani armed forces. The representative of the RA Human Rights Defenders Gegharkunik regional office has urgently departed for Chinari Village, Tavush region, to carry out on-site examination into circumstances under which rights, including the right to life were violated, as well as to conduct necessary fact-finding activities. Based on the results of the fact-finding activities, substantiated judgment will be given to the incident with the aim of presenting the judgment to relevant international organizations. The RA Human Rights Defender extends his condolences over the grievous loss of Armenian soldiers to their loved ones.
Latino support for the Democratic Party is not as strong as it has been in recent elections, a national survey of Latinos conducted by the Pew Research Center released on Wednesday revealed.

While the Republicans still lag among Hispanics, the gap is narrowing. The study found that 63 percent of Latinos identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, as opposed to 27 percent for the GOP.

Thats down from a 70 to 22 percent Democratic advantage in in 2012.

The gap is smaller when asked about voters plans for the Congressional midterms. Only 57 percent of registered Latino voters said that they planned to vote or were leaning Democratic, as opposed to the 28 percent who plan to vote or are leaning Republican.

Thats down from a 65-22 Democratic edge in the last midterm elections in 2010.

Americans are tired of Democrats lies and broken promises from jobs to ObamaCare to immigration reform, Republican National Committee director of Hispanic media, Ruth Guerra, told Fox News Latino. Latino voters know their vote has been taken for granted and are looking for a change.

But Pili Tobar, Democratic National Committee press secretary and director of Hispanic media, cautioned against reading too much into the study.

While Republicans make it clear that they will fight administrative relief at every turn and keep refusing to vote on the bipartisan bill sitting on [House] Speaker [John] Boehner's desk, Tobar told Fox News Latino, Democrats are fighting for immigration reform that keeps families together."

On the matter of immigration, the Pew survey found Hispanics to be a deeply divided group.

About a third (35 percent) of Latino voters described themselves as being either angry or disappointed at President Barack Obamas decision to delay executive action on immigration until after the election.

More than a quarter (26 percent) said they were either pleased or very happy about it.

As for who is more to blame for the lack of action on immigration, registered voters in the survey were likelier to blame Republicans in Congress (45 percent) than either the president (20 percent) or Congressional Democrats (14 percent).

And while nearly three-quarters of the surveys respondents said that immigration is either extremely or very important to them, that placed the issue behind education (92 percent), jobs and the economy (91 percent) and health care (86 person), but ahead of the conflicts in the Middle East (66 percent).

"These elections are critical in deciding whether the composition of Congress will be conducive to policies that are in the best interest of Latinos or whether we end up with a Republican congress that continues blocking policies that would benefit the community," the DNC's Tobar said. "Theres a lot at stake on November 4th - not just the future of immigration reform and administrative relief for the community - but also issues like increasing the minimum wage, equal pay and affordable higher education.

Another possibly surprising finding is that a majority of Latino registered voters (54 percent) said they would vote for a candidate who disagreed with them on immigration policy provided that they agreed on most other issues, as compared to 36 percent who said they wouldnt.

The bottom line is voters want candidates who will fight for job creation, access to better schools, and truly affordable healthcare, Guerra told FNL. Harry Reids do-nothing Senate has proved its ineffectiveness and thats partly why we continue to see momentum on the Republican side.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Wednesday also showed that Latino voters are either apathetic or in favor of the GOP taking over control of the Senate.

Thirty percent of Latino respondents thought it would be a good thing, compared to only 15 percent who ranked it a bad thing. Half thought it would make no difference. Although it should be pointed out that the small sample size involved makes the margin of error much higher than for the overall poll.

Among all respondents, the numbers were 33 percent good thing, 24 percent bad thing and 39 percent no difference.

The Post-ABC surveyed a national sample of 1,204 adults by telephone between Thursday and Sunday. The Pew Research Center poll was conducted by phone between Sept. 11 and Oct. 9 and surveyed 1,520 Latino adults, 733 of them registered voters. Its margin of error for the full sample of respondents is 3.2 percent, 4.8 percent for registered voters.
The investigator who led the Homeland Security Department's internal review of a prostitution scandal involving Secret Service agents on assignment in Colombia in 2012 has himself resigned over an incident involving a prostitute in Florida, The New York Times reported.

Current and former department officials say that investigator David Nieland left the government in August after refusing to answer questions from the department's inspector general about the Florida incident, the Times said in an article posted its website Tuesday night.

Nieland has told congressional staffers that he was pressured to leave out of the report on the Secret Service scandal that a White House volunteer had brought a prostitute to his room. However, the congressional staffers and the White House have said that no evidence supported that allegation.

Officials briefed on the Nieland investigation said that in May, sheriff's deputies in Broward County, Florida, saw him entering and leaving a building they had under surveillance as part of a prostitution investigation, the Times reported. Deputies later interviewed a prostitute who identified Nieland in a photograph and said he had paid her for sex, according to the newspaper.

Nieland has not been charged. He said in an email that "the allegation is not true" and declined to answer any questions, the newspaper reported. He resigned Aug. 9, citing health problems, and later sent a tweet that his government career had ended, according to the newspaper.

A Homeland Security Department spokesman, William O. Hillburg, confirmed to the Times that Nieland had resigned and that officials had become aware of an incident in Florida that involved one of its employees. Under law, no comment could be offered on a specific case, Hillburg said.

Thirteen Secret Service agents and officers were implicated in a prostitution scandal that arose from preparations for President Barack Obama's trip in April 2012 to the seaside resort of Cartagena, Colombia. They were accused of carousing with female foreign nationals at a hotel where they were staying before Obama's arrival. Nine of the officers and agents eventually left the agency  resigned, forced out or retired.

Nieland, the head of the inspector general's Miami office at the time, led the Homeland Security Department investigation into how the Secret Service handled the scandal. He later told staff members of a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee that he had been asked to delete derogatory information from the 65-page public report issued in September 2012 because it was potentially damaging to the administration two months ahead of the November election, the Times reported.

Nieland told the Senate staffers that the deleted information was that a volunteer member of the White House advance team in Cartagena also had a prostitute in his room, the newspaper said. The subcommittee later said that it had not found any evidence to substantiate that claim. The White House said it had not intervened in the report's preparation and that it had not found evidence to support the allegation against the volunteer, the Times reported.

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These midterm elections will see nine first-time Hispanic candidates for the House of Representatives.

One of the challenges they face is persuading fellow Latinos to go out and vote on Nov. 4.

First-time congressional candidate Norma Torres tells people in her Los Angeles-area district that there is no more critical time to vote than now, even as she acknowledges "great disillusion" may cause many Hispanics to sit out Election Day.

"There's nothing sexy on the ballot, no ballot measure to mobilize people" said Torres.

And no presidential contest this year.

She and fellow Democrat Christina Gagnier are in a race to succeed Democratic Rep. Gloria Negrete McLeod, who is quitting Capitol Hill after just one term and trying to win election to a county board of supervisors.

"My message is that now it's more important than ever that we vote to send a clear message to Washington that we are a big group of voters and they should pay attention to us," Torres said.

Another candidate running for office is Democrat Raul Garcia, a write-in candidate against Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, the House's No. 2 Republican.

Elections in nonpresidential years typically draw fewer voters. How Hispanics respond in Tuesday's balloting could offer clues to the long-term political consequences of inaction on immigration policy and on increased deportations, issues that have dismayed Hispanics.

House Republicans refused to take up comprehensive immigration legislation that passed by a strong bipartisan vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate in June 2013. That bill would have granted a path to citizenship for immigrants living illegally in the U.S., tightened border security and expanded the number of visas for highly skilled workers.

After more than 2 million deportations, President Barack Obama said he would use executive power to enact immigration changes after Congress' summer recess. Obama later reversed course and promised action after Election Day.

First-time Republican candidate Carlos Curbelo, a son of Cuban exiles who is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Joe Garcia of Florida, blames both parties for the failure on immigration. There is "deep disappointment" about it among Hispanic voters, Curbelo said, but "sometimes disappointment can encourage people to go and vote."

"I fear there will be a lack of participation, but my job is to try to fight that," said Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who is seeking Arizona's 7th Congressional District seat.

The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials predicted that almost 8 million of the nearly 25 million eligible Hispanic voters would go to the polls in November, compared with 6.6 million in the 2010 midterms.

Citing voter apathy, stricter ID laws and budget shortfalls, the National Council of La Raza scaled back to 120,000 its goal of registering 250,000 new Hispanic voters for the upcoming election, said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, deputy director of research.

Pete Aguilar, a Democrat running for an open California seat against Republican Paul Chabot, says Democrats could be hurt if Latino voters stay home. "We will make an effort so that all members of our community will go out and vote," Aguilar said.

Other first-time Hispanic Democrats are Amanda Renteria, daughter of Mexican day laborers who is running against Republican David Valadao for California's 21st District, and Roxanne "Rocky" Lara, who is trying to unseat Rep. Steve Pearce, a five-term Republican from New Mexico.

The GOP's first-timers were among 45 participants in its "Young Guns" program, which helped the GOP take 63 seats in 2010.

They include Alex Mooney, also the son of a Cuban exile. Mooney moved from Maryland to West Virginia, where he faces former state Democratic Party Chairman Nick Casey in the 2nd Congressional District.

Pedro Celis, who is trying to unseat Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., thinks his Mexican origin might help him win.

"I'm American by choice," said Celis, who is from Monterrey, Mexico, and became a U.S. citizen in 1993. "I came here as an adult, I wasn't brought by my parents. As far as I know, there's nobody with my background in Congress."

Marilinda Garcia, who is challenging Rep. Annie Kuster, D-N.H., said Hispanic voters ask her about the Senate-passed immigration bill.

"I am against amnesty, but giving legal status is a different thing, and there are different possible solutions," Garcia said.

Overall, there are 32 Hispanic members of Congress seeking re-election: 25 Democrats and seven Republicans.

There are no new Hispanic candidates in the Senate. Republican Marco Rubio of Florida, a possible presidential candidate, is up for re-election in 2016. Texas' Ted Cruz, also mentioned as a potential GOP presidential nominee, and Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey face re-election in 2018.

Mario H. Lopez, president of the Hispanic Leadership Fund, a conservative national advocacy organization that primarily backs Republicans, wrote in The Hill that elections in Colorado, New Hampshire and Florida will be particularly significant for Latinos.

He argues that while Republicans and Latinos may disagree on aspects of immigration, they share many values and that Latinos can play a vital role in how the GOP does in elections.

There are three races that will impact the future of those issues that matter to main street Hispanics more than the many other contested races, and those are races where Hispanic voters and candidates can change history, Lopez wrote. Candidates in those races are: Cory Gardner (R) for Senate in Colorado; Marilinda Garcia (R) for Congress in New Hampshire; and Carlos Curbelo (R) for Congress in Florida.

Based on reporting by The Associated Press.

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Immigrants who are not naturalized, and therefore are ineligible to vote, are casting ballots, according to two Virginia political scientists.

The political scientists, who are professors at Old Dominion University, say their research found that while the number of immigrants who vote despite not being naturalized is relatively small, enough do that their participation can change the outcome of close races.

The professors, who provided glimpses of their findings in an article they authored for The Washington Post, said that data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study indicated more than 14 percent of non-citizens who took part in the CCES survey were registered to vote in 2008 and 2010. About 6 percent actually voted in 2008, and 2 percent did so in 2010, the professors said they estimated from the data.

Democrats likely benefitted from this, since immigrants tend to prefer them over Republicans, said the authors, Jesse Richman and David Earnest.

What is more, they noted, this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections.

Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress.

The professors also said that although minimal, Minnesota's 0.65 percent of non-citizen voters could have made the difference in the victory of U.S. Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat.

Non-citizen voters also could have handed President Barack Obama his 2008 win in North Carolina, they said.

Cristobal Alex, president of the Latino Victory Project, cautioned against an overreaction to the professors' findings.



Perpetuating the myth of rampant voter fraud is nothing more than a strategy to keep growing minority communities on the sidelines," Alex said to Fox News Latino. "In fact, there is overwhelming evidence that illustrates the crime of voter fraud is incredibly rare."

He said once people acknowledge how it is, they should focus on making sure all eligible voters go out and vote.

Our democracy works best when campaigns focus on issues that motivate voters, not on strategies to game the system, Alex said.

The professor's contention comes on the heels of an announcement by the North Carolina Board of Elections that it found 145 names in its voter rolls that belong to immigrants who are in the federal program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

DACA gives undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as minors a two-year reprieve from deportation as well as the chance to obtain a drivers license and work permit.

But they are not citizens and not eligible to vote. The Journal said that the number of people registered to vote in North Carolina who should not be may be much higher.

Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington D.C.-based organization that supports tight enforcement, said that its no secret that people who are ineligible to vote do so anyway. But Krikorian said that he would like to see more data.

If the percentages reported in the academic paper are correct, it would mean hundreds of thousands, maybe more than a million, of non-citizens have voted, Krikorian said to Fox News Latino. That number seems high to me, and the survey is based on a small sample size, so Id like to see more research on the question before drawing firm conclusions as to the scope of the problem.

But theres no question it happens, and probably the Motor-Voter law is a big reason for that, he said.

Such laws, Krikorian said, which were meant to encourage more civic participation by making it easier to register to vote  while doing other things like getting a drivers license -- have had the unintended consequence of also paving the way for people who are not eligible to cast ballots to do so, sometimes out of confusion.

If theyre not well-educated, may [legal immigrants who are not naturalized] simply conclude that getting a green card means theyre now citizens, Krikorian said.

The findings of the Old Dominion University professors also follows a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow Texas to enforce its photo identification law at the polls in the upcoming elections.

The law is the strictest in the nation, permitting only certain types of photo ID at the polls. Gun licenses are included; college IDs are not. It was enacted to cut down on in-person voter fraud, but critics said only two people were convicted of impersonating others at the polls during a recent 10-year period.

Critics of voter ID laws say they dissuade minorities from voting. Supporters say they do not and only protect the electoral system from fraud.

One critic was a federal district judge in Corpus Christi, Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, who had struck down the Texas voter ID law. She ruled that it was passed by the Texas state Legislature in 2011 with a "discriminatory purpose" and could disenfranchise about 600,000 voters, a disproportionate number of whom are black or Hispanic.

But if voter ID supporters take the authors findings to be ammunition for their argument, the political scientists say: Not so fast.

We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective, the authors said. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted.

Echoing Krikorians theory, the professors suggested that many legal immigrants have cast votes believing that they are eligible. They found that those with less education were more likely to vote, perhaps out of confusion.

Therefore, the authors said, An alternative approach to reducing non-citizen turnout might emphasize public information.

Krikorian added: What needs to be done is Motor-Voter needs to be altered to no longer require (or even prohibit) registration as part of the drivers license process, since all green-card holders can (and obviously should be able to) get licenses, but theres no connection between eligibility to vote and eligibility for a license, so they shouldnt be bundled together.

And he agreed that legal immigrants must be educated about what their rights are, and how they differ from those who take the oath of citizenship.

The distinction between a [legal permanent resident] status and U.S. citizenship should probably be made clearer to new green-card recipients.

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More than an estimated 8.5 million immigrants living in the U.S. were eligible for citizenship in 2012. Yet fewer than 800,000 took the leap, according to the latest Department of Homeland Security numbers.

If statistics hold, nearly 60 percent of the remainder eventually will  a percentage that has been slowly rising.

Still, there are many holdouts. Immigrants give a variety of explanations as to why, most commonly:

 The cost of the process that most of the time takes seven years. It usually costs $680, though fee waivers are available for some, and the cost is often multiplied by several family members;

 A lack of English. Immigrants must demonstrate basic knowledge of U.S. history and government and pass an English proficiency language exam, unless they are over 50, and then certain waivers may apply.

 The potential loss of benefits from their native land, such as the ability to freely travel and work across Europe.

Still others say they simply don't see the need. Here, some legal permanent residents explain their reticence in their own words to the Associated Press.

Language Barrier

Nancy Alvarez, 35, came to the United States a decade ago from Havana. She ticks off the list of jobs she's held since then: nursing assistant, notary, childcare worker, school nutritionist. She has half a dozen diplomas and certificates, but the one she doesn't have: citizen. Alvarez blames her lack of English skills.

"I should have studied English when I first came here," she says. But in the Miami suburb of Hialeah where she first landed, everyone spoke Spanish. Only a few years later did she notice that even employers doing business primarily in Spanish still wanted an English speaker.

By then, she was working all day, coming home to prepare meals for her husband, son and new baby. With only one car and a spouse working nights, she says she would have had to take the bus and find someone to watch her baby. And with cutbacks to county education programs, few classes were offered.

"Now I'm too embarrassed," she says. Recently, she moved to the Orlando area. Maybe with fewer Spanish speakers there, she'll finally start learning English, she says, and then she will think about citizenship.

The European Passport

"I guess it's an emotional thing," said Lena Dyring, as to why she hasn't sought to become a U.S. citizen. "I'd have to renounce my Norwegian citizenship. "It's not that I don't like the U.S. I love it here. It would be almost to renounce my family, my background."

Dyring came to the U.S. in 2005 with her husband, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Colombia. The two met at a bar in Norway. She still isn't used to some American customs: the hello hug or in Miami, the hello kiss  and the "how are you?" greeting. In Norway, people don't ask that question until halfway into the conversation when they really want to hear an answer, she says.

But her decision to opt out is more than an emotional one. The Norwegian Seafarer's labor union representative acknowledges the practical benefits.

"If I wanted to live or work in Europe one day, I could do that without much difficulty. And my children can have Norwegian citizenship through me."

Although in Norway, individuals must give up their citizenship to become Americans, other European countries allow people to retain dual citizenship.

Dyring says she'd like to be able to vote, not so much for president but on local issues.

Still, she isn't convinced becoming a citizen offers her that much. The blonde 39-year-old mother of two fears neither racial profiling nor deportation.

And since health care is cheaper in Norway, she wants to keep all options.

Planned to Go Back

Maria Jimenez has been a U.S. resident for decades and counsels other immigrant women on becoming politically empowered. But she rarely talks about her own immigration status.

"I'm too ashamed to tell friends I've been here so long and haven't done it," she says of becoming a citizen.

Jimenez came to the U.S. from the Jalisco, Mexico, town of San Juan de los Lagos in 1986, to help her brother and his wife care for their newborn. That year Congress passed a massive immigration bill, which allowed millions of those in the country illegally to get their green cards. Jimenez was among those.

"We always thought we would go home. We never thought we were going to stay. But the time kept passing," she says. "We tried to go back several times but couldn't find work. And our families depended on us for the money." Besides, her three U.S.-born children didn't feel at home in Mexico.

She keeps telling herself one of these days she will take the plunge because she wants to have a say in the laws that affect her.

"But my own son who is fluent in English and was born here says he wouldn't be able to answer a lot of the (citizenship test) questions, so I think 'how can I?'" she says. "I've heard of people who think they speak English well and are humiliated."

Test your knowledge with this quiz: http://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/quiz/learners/study-test/study-materials-civics-test/naturalization-self-test-1

Never Felt Quite Welcome

"I thought that American girl was extremely interesting," Luis Sanz says of falling for his future wife while she studied Spanish in his native Madrid. When she returned home, he decided to visit, never imagining he would stay. More than a decade later in the U.S., the couple has three children. Sanz works as a website designer for the University of California, Riverside.

"When I came to the U.S., I didn't speak any English," he says. "And with all the process with my papers, I felt very mistreated, and I felt like a secondhand person. It really bothered me, so at the beginning I thought: 'I'll just stay here, but I don't know how long.'"

They did move briefly to Spain, "but I'd become too used to the United States, to the freedom," he says.

"I truly love this country. We know we are not moving back," Sanz says, adding that he has yet to take the oath of allegiance for a combination of reasons. "I get a little lazy, but I still keep a little bit of that pain  and I feel it every day because of my accent  and if people meet me, they still view me as a second-hand citizen. It makes me feel bad, and that I don't want to completely commit."

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Young undocumented immigrants, known for their assertive, and often provocative style of pushing for measures that will provide a path to legal status, have been attending events featuring possible presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and trying to pin her down on her views on immigration issues.

The immigrants, commonly known as Dreamers  after a proposed measure called the DREAM Act, which calls for a chance for undocumented people brought as minors to legalize their status  are taking some of the frustration they feel about the failure of President Obama and Congress to revamp the immigration system and directing it at Clinton, the New York Times reported.

At a recent campaign stop in North Carolina to support U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat who is facing a challenge from Republican Thom Tillis, immigrant activists and their friends and relatives in the crowd tried to get Clinton to address immigration.

Oliver Merino, a 25-year-old whose mother, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, faces deportation, carried a sign that said: Hillary, do you stand with our immigrant families?

He yelled out to the former secretary of state that his mother was terrified she would be deported.

I have to say that I understand immigration is an important issue, and we appreciate that, Clinton said, according to the Times. We thank you for your advocacy.

Dreamers have been particularly upset with Congress, where there have been measures to stop an initiative that the Obama administration launched in 2012 giving undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children a reprieve from deportation and a chance to obtain work permits and drivers licenses during that time.

And like many other advocates of immigration reform that would pave the way for many undocumented immigrants, not just Dreamers, to legalize their status, Dreamers have been increasingly exasperated by Obamas unrealized indications that he will take unilateral steps to give some kind of break to undocumented immigrants if Congress does not act.

The Times noted that Clinton enjoyed strong Latino support when she ran in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries.

But since then, growing disillusionment over the failure of lawmakers to make substantial changes to the immigration system, and do something to address the roughly 12 million people living in the United States illegally, has spread from being directed at Republicans to Democrats and the Obama administration.

Increasingly, Latino leaders say that Democrats in general also have not done enough to move immigration reform forward, and they are telling them that they will pay the price at election time.

That is one key reason, the Times said, that activists have decided to start now putting pressure on Clinton, who has not yet said if she will run for president in 2016.

Immigration is not the only issue, but it is the defining issue, and she will need to learn that the old lines and old dynamics no longer apply, said Frank Sharry, executive director of Americas Voice, a group that favors more lenient immigration measures.

In particular, the activists were not happy that Clinton was stumping for Hagan, who was one of a small group of Democrats who voted against the Dream Act a few years ago.

Yash Mori, 19, who was at the North Carolina campaign event with the immigrant advocacy group United We Dream, said, If she stands with Hagan, then she obviously doesnt stand with the Latino community.

Clinton has said she supports the Dream Act and comprehensive immigration reform, the Times noted.

I think its important to provide opportunities for young people, many of them brought here as babies or young children who have imbued the American dream in their genes, the Times quoted Clinton as saying earlier this year.

But she also has come under fire for saying this year that she felt that unaccompanied children from Central America who approached the U.S. border illegally in a surge should be returned to their countries. She said doing otherwise would encourage more to make the dangerous journey.

That angered many in the immigrant advocacy community, which called for the United States to try to let them stay here.

If youre going to pick politics over our families, you should know that you cant take this constituency for granted, said Cristina Jimenez, managing director of United We Dream, the largest national network of young undocumented immigrants.

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On Thursday, Colorado  one of the most closely watched states this midterm election season  will have its first all-Spanish congressional debate.

U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, a Republican, and his Democratic challenger, Andrew Romanoff, will be fielding questions and answering them in Spanish in a televised debate on the local Univision station.

Latinos are hailing the event, saying it serves as testimony to the importance of their community, which many political observers say can play in pivotal role in the hotly-contested contest.

It absolutely demonstrates just how crucial the Latino vote will be in this race, said Julie Gonzales, the statewide co-chair of the Colorado Latino Forum. Latinos can represent the margin of victory in the 6th congressional district and other districts, too.

Romanoff, a former speaker of the state House of Representatives and the loser of a 2010 bid for the U.S. Senate, is fluent in Spanish, while Coffman has been studying the language with a tutor.

This is the first time in Colorado that congressional candidates have held a Spanish-language debate, and it is a rare event on a national level, as well. The debate will not have English-language subtitles, but there will be an interpreter on hand for English-language media in attendance.

To be sure, candidates running for office at different levels of government around the United States increasingly have been participating in debates targeting Spanish-speakers, but usually only one, sometimes neither, of the candidates is fluent and translators usually are employed.

Political experts say the result of this trend is a more educated immigrant electorate.

The more information you have in either language, the more of an informed electorate youre going to have, said Jose Dante Parra, a Democratic strategist who headed Latino communications for U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, in 2010. The more information voters can get, the more we can expand opportunities for voters to cast their ballot and exercise their constitutional right.

The Latino community in Colorado is among the states fastest-growing.

The challenge for political candidates, Parra said, is that the electorate consists of Latinos born in the United States, or bred here, and immigrants who are naturalized citizens and are eager to get involved and vote, but are not yet fluent in English.

My parents, for example, came here when they were older, Parra said. Both of them did night school as much as they could to learn English, but my dad had to take an extra job. My dad is more likely to get his information in Spanish than in English.

For immigrants like his father, Parra said, a Spanish-language debate  especially one without the middle layers of translators and subtitles  gives voters a rare opportunity to get information beyond the campaign commercials.

The idea for a debate in Spanish only has been kicked around for a long time, those involved say.

Weve been talking about a debate for many many years, said Don Daboub, senior vice president at Entravision Communications Colorado, an Univision affiliate. We felt it was the best forum to have both parties relay their values and whats important to them.

Daboub said that debates targeting Spanish-speakers marks the beginning of a new, necessary [step] for our community and growing Hispanic voters in the country."

Ben Monterroso, the executive director of Mi Familia Vota, which has been working to register Latinos nationwide to vote, said the debate shows that Latinos in Colorado have come a long way.

He noted that the congressional district that is holding the Spanish-language debate is also the one that had one of the countrys most polarizing recent representatives to Latinos  Tom Tancredo, a Republican who served in the House from 1999 to 2009.

Tancredo drew the ire of many because of his hard line on undocumented immigrants, as well as the matching rhetoric he was prone to.

Its testament to the work that the Latino community has been doing to participate in the civic life of this country, Monterroso said. In the district that used to be represented by an anti-immigrant [like] Tom Tancredo, this acknowledges that the community is part of this country, and it's [the political establishment] understanding that if you want democracy, you cannot ignore this population.

Coffman is viewed with skepticism by many Latinos.

The Republican, whose district was redrawn in 2011 and now is about one-fifth Latino, at one time aggressively pushed for hard-line immigration measures and introduced a measure to stop ballots from being available in languages other than English.

Coffman has been doing Latino outreach, Gonzales said, but he has a reputation for saying one thing to Latinos and then doing another. It has really raised a lot of questions about him.

Like Coffman, Romanoff has drawn the ire of Latino activists in the past.

When Congress failed to pass immigration reform several years ago, Colorado, like various other states across the country, moved forward with efforts to pass its own state measures to crack down on undocumented immigrants.

Romanoff, who was speaker of the state House until 2008, backed them.

Those measures were draconian and far-reaching, Gonzales said.

The difference, she added, is that Romanoff has gone out of his way since to try to mend relations with Latinos in the state, and now says that states should not deal with immigration matters.

We want someone representing us in Congress who will push for immigration reform on a daily basis, she said. Hes done an incredible amount of outreach to talk about the need for comprehensive immigration reform and better education for Latinos.

Coffman has been less accessible, she said.

Weve tried for months to meet meaningfully with the congressman, we even went so far as to have a sit-in in his office to try to get a meeting, Gonzales said. He hasn't really been willing to sit down and have conversations with Latino communities about his record.

Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the American Principles Projects Latino Partnership, which targets Latino conservatives, said that Hispanics do give candidates credit for making an effort to address them in Spanish, whether directly or indirectly.

The Latino community appreciates when candidates are willing to go on Spanish-language TV, even if its with a voiceover or translator, said Aguilar, who worked for the George W. Bush administration. This year, he pointed out, "we saw debates for Spanish-language voters in New Mexico, in Florida  Gov. Rick Scott said a few things in Spanish at the end of the debate. It shows theres a recognition that the Latino vote matters.

Gonzales agrees. That both candidates for whom Spanish is a second language are reaching out and really making an effort, stretching out of their comfort zone, she said, hopefully will demonstrate to other candidates across the state and other places that stretching and doing something that may not be comfortable, and reaching out to all your constituents, can go a long way.
The second anniversary of Superstorm Sandy arrived Wednesday in a region where recovery in New Jersey and New York is happening unevenly, with many houses, boardwalks and businesses rebuilt but many people still unable to return to their homes.

Officials in both states visited houses and businesses badly damaged by the storm to meet with victims still rebuilding and promised to keep working until the recovery is complete.

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and federal officials toured a flood-ravaged neighborhood near Raritan Bay in Union Beach, N.J., where many residents are struggling to rebuild. Andrea Kassimatis held her 6-month-old daughter as she described living with four other relatives in a 37-foot trailer next to a partially built home.

"It's been a rough and grueling process," she said. "You feel like your government has forgotten you."

Kassimatis received a $150,000 rebuilding grant from New Jersey but only got a third of what her flood insurance policy was supposed to pay  a common refrain up and down the coast.

"Don't believe what you have from a flood insurance policy," she warned. "Because what you're sold is not what you're going to get."

She voiced her complaints to Castro, to New Jersey's two U.S. senators, Robert Menendez and Cory Booker, and to Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., all of whom said more "accountability and transparency" is needed in Sandy aid distribution.

The Oct. 29, 2012, storm, which was spawned when Hurricane Sandy merged with two other weather systems, devastated the oceanfront coastline and caused catastrophic flooding in New York and cities in New Jersey, including Hoboken and Jersey City. It was blamed for at least 182 deaths and $65 billion in damage in the U.S. It's New Jersey's worst natural disaster.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio joined City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and other elected officials to work with Habitat for Humanity at a storm-damaged home in Brooklyn. The group has helped rebuild 100 homes in New York. He also toured a Staten Island neighborhood named Ocean Breeze and recounted the destruction.

"This borough, this island, in many ways bore the brunt of the storm: 44 lives lost due to Sandy, 23 from Staten Island," he said. "A lot of pain, and a lot of memory. We are now safer than we were two years ago, that is a matter of fact. But we have a lot more to do. I can say with assurance, when we gather a year from now, we will be safer than we were in 2014."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state has supported the repair and rebuilding of nearly 10,000 homes, provided $20.8 million in grants to small businesses and facilitated the proposal of approximately 600 projects through the N.Y. Rising Community Reconstruction Program.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, while defending his administration's handling of the rebuilding, tangled with a heckler who was critical of its efforts. The often combative governor told heckler Jim Keady, who interrupted his speech several times to criticize the pace of storm aid assistance, "Sit down and shut up."

Christie said his administration will keep working until everyone who needs help gets it.

"It seems like a lot longer than two years," Christie said after the incident was over. "This has been a long, long two years and a long struggle. Time doesn't move as quickly as we might like it to."

Sanitation worker Christopher Camuso, whose Staten Island home was severely damaged in the storm, finally moved back into it on Wednesday.

"It feels amazing. The weather is great and just blowing the air through the windows," Camuso said. "It's awesome. It feels like home."

At a memorial ceremony in New York's battered Rockaways section, Pandit Seerattan came away with one overriding thought.

"The main thing we learned from Sandy is: We have to think like the unthinkable," said Seerattan. "Because the unthinkable happens."

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Fueled by the growth of Latino voters across the United States, small, minority-owned public opinion firms are in high demand this election season.

Candidates, political organizations and media companies are relying more and more on companies like Latino Decisions in Seattle, Washington, and Bendixen & Amandi in Miami, Florida, to track Latino voting trends and behavior.

Were getting new inquiries every day from groups trying to understand what Latinos are thinking, said Latino Decisions co-founder Matt Barreto. Across the board, candidates realize they need to engage Latinos in a more authentic way.

In 2007, Barreto and his business partner, Gary Segura, founded Latino Decisions because they believed established national polling firms were not producing accurate information about Latino voters and the issues most important to them.

We have dedicated a good amount of our adult lives studying the Latino perspective in a scientific way, Segura said. We have been doing research since the 1990s. The data we use is drawn from the entire United States.

The firm started gaining traction in 2009, when Latino Decisions began a weekly tracking poll of Latino voters in the run-up to the 2010 mid-term election. Back then, Barreto and Segura only had one other analyst keeping tabs on Latino voting predictions. Their work eventually got picked up by mainstream media outlets. By 2012, Latino Decisions had carved its niche in the polling industry and now has seven analysts sifting through data.

The firm gained credibility with mentions in Nate Silvers fivethirtyeight blog when it was being published by the New York Times.

Silver noted Latino Decisions practice of using bilingual interviewers to talk to Latino voters provided the firm with more accurate answers about projected Latino voting patterns that favored President Barack Obama. Polling firms such as Latino Decisions that have conducted interviews in Spanish have shown Mr. Obama with a larger advantage among Hispanic voters than those which interview in English only, Silver wrote.

Bendixen & Amandi, whose Peruvian-born principal Sergio Bendixen has been analyzing Latino voter trends since the 1980s, also uses similar methods with success.

Bendixen & Amandi co-founder Fernand Amandi said the firm has grown its client base by 30 percent since the 2010 census.

"We saw an explosion of interest from people who realized the Latino population was growing at an exponential level," Amandi said. "Whether it is advertisers or political campaigns, they want to find the best way to understand how to reach Hispanics. The way to do that is to hire firms that have a real understanding about the culture and behavior of Latinos."

In the past four years, Bendixen & Amandi have expanded into Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

"These are states where Latinos have gone from being a blip on the screen to a significant chunk of the population," Amandi said. "By 2050, one out of every four Americans will be of Hispanic descent."

Latino Decisions conducts polling for a plethora of clients that includes the immigration reform organization Americas Voices, Latino advancement group the National Council of La Raza and the American Jewish Committee, which hired the firm in 2012 to conduct a survey that found that only 18 percent of Latinos in the U.S. were highly familiar with Jews and the Jewish religion.

Dina Seigel Vann, director of the American Jewish Committees Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs, said the surveys purpose was to figure out what opinions and attitudes Latinos had about the Jewish community. Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States, she said. Our focus is building a bridge with Latinos in the United States, as well as in Latin America.

Siegel Vann said the institute selected Latino Decisions based on their research methodology. They are really forward-looking, she said.

More recently, Latino Decisions has conducted polls in North Carolina and Colorado for the National Council for La Raza. Both surveys showed Latino voters overwhelmingly support the Democratic candidates running for U.S. Senate and could tip the balance in those close races. In a poll for Americas Voices, a sample of 600 Latino voters across the country found that 46 percent of them are voting in the midterm election to support the Latino community and not because of party affiliation.

I can also tell you that Latinos could shift the outcome of elections in Georgia and Kansas, Segura said. Ten years ago, no one would have said that.

While his firm and Bendixen & Amandi are the most well-known Latino polling firms nationally, Segura said the market is big enough for more players to enter the arena.

Latinos are the fastest-growing segment in everything, he said. Ten years from now, Latinos will easily represent more than a quarter of the U.S. population. There is definitely a growing market for what we do.
Republican Senators Marco Rubio, John McCain and Lindsay Graham on Thursday asked President Barack Obama not to take executive action to provide relief from deportation for undocumented immigrants, as he has promised to do after the midterm elections.

"We write to you today to strongly discourage such action," said the three lawmakers in a letter directed to the president, in which they say that it is necessary first to secure the U.S. border before providing immigration relief to undocumented foreigners.

"Moreover, the need to secure our southern border and effectively enforce the law has been underscored - not diminished - by recent developments at home and abroad of which you are well aware," added the senators, referring to the child migrant crisis last summer.

The trio, who at one time were part of the "Gang of Eight" that prepared a comprehensive immigration reform bill approved by the Senate, asked the president to let the matter "be debated and decided by the representatives of the people" rather than taking executive action on it.

The president said he would offer immigrants who have been illegally in the United States for some time a way to become legal residents, pay taxes, pay a fine and learn English.

"Acting by executive order on an issue of this magnitude would be the most divisive action you could take  completely undermining any good-faith effort to meaningfully address this important issue, which would be a disservice to the needs of the American people," the senators argued.

McCain (Ariz.), Graham (S.C.) and Rubio (Fla.) reiterated in their letter that Congress "must fulfill its obligations under the Constitution and address this issue."

"Furthermore," they continued, "it is not clear under what authority you would take such action, if you chose to do so."

The Senate passed the Gang of Eight measure - which boosted border security, increased visas for legal immigrants and a provided a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally - in June 2013, but it failed in the House.

Activists say time is running out on the Senate-passed bill, with no indication that the House would vote during a postelection, lame-duck session.

Given the inaction, Obama had promised months ago to take executive action on the matter to alleviate the suffering caused to many by deportations and family separation.

Although the president did not specify exactly how far he would go to provide immigration relief, he said that he would take executive action after the summer but later decided to postpone such a move due to pressure from various Democratic lawmakers who are facing tough midterm election races so as not to hurt their chances on Nov. 4.

EFE and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Azerbaijans sabotage has special goal (video)

Three casualties in Tavush, on the border with Azerbaijan. Early in the morning on the border south-east to Chinari village, the adversary carried out sabotage penetration attempt. Two conscripts and an officer were killed. The adversary was thrown back, sustaining large losses and leaving materials proof in our territory that the attacking side was really Azerbaijan, political expert Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan told A1+. According to the political expert, the attack was carried out in the direction of one post. Snipers acted from the Azerbaijani side; grenade launchers were used. It wasnt an accidental sabotage penetration attempt, it was planned. If they were able to cause so much damage to us, it means it was a long-planned action and it is possible that their best personnel were involved, he says. According to the assessment of Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan, this diversionary infiltration attempt by Azerbaijanis, who didnt achieve success in April, has concrete goal, So that impression that Azerbaijan has reconciled itself with this situation not be formed among mediators or the international community. It is notable, that the process of Artsakh issue settlement recently has been actively discussed in Armenia. The topic has been activated by the first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan, was widely discussed by the society, and yesterday Serzh Sargsyan touched upon the current questions. Not telling the Armenian society about the negotiations process, he justified by the desire not be heard in Baku and other capitals. Wasnt the sabotage Azerbaijans reply to what was said? Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan answers, I will not condition it by that, because Presidents speech was made yesterday in the afternoon and Azerbaijanis would definitely need more time for getting ready for such an attack. Azerbaijan has a concretely planned strategy and they implement it irrespective of processes in Armenia. The OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs are also aware of Azerbaijans sabotage in Tavush. According to the information by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, activities have been carried out with the international structures over the situation. By the way, Artsakh Defense Army today refuted the news disseminated by Azerbaijani media outlets that allegedly as a result of shelling by the Armenian forces towards Akna (Aghdam), one of the houses in Ahmedaghaly village of the same region was set on fire. Information has been officially qualified as a simple propaganda means.
In what seemed a clear blow to candidate-apparent Jeb Bush, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz said Thursday that if Republicans want a truly competitive chance in 2016 against the likes of Hillary Clinton, theyll need to run a candidate who is not moderate.

Cruz, considered a potential presidential candidate in 2016, is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who has been a vocal critic of those in his party who stray to the center or become too Beltway.

When asked about the former Florida governor in an interview on CNBC, Cruz, who is from Texas, said that running moderate or so-called establishment candidates such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona in 2008 and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012 has proven futile for Republicans.

Jeb has not declared his candidacy. I like Jeb. Im a fan of Jeb Bushs. Im going to let him decide if hes running first and let the primary voters make a decision, Cruz said, according to Politico. But I will say this: We need to learn from history, we need to look to history and what works and what doesnt.

[I]f we run another candidate in the mold of a Bob Dole [in 1996] or a John McCain or Mitt Romney, we will end up with the same result, which is millions of people will stay home on Election Day, which is what happened for all three of them, Cruz said. And if we run another candidate like that, Hillary Clinton will be the next president.

Many political experts believe that Clinton, former secretary of state and first lady, is the strong favorite to get the Democratic nomination in 2016. She has not yet announced whether she will run or not.

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Democrat Party star Hillary Clinton was the headliner, stopping by Maryland on Thursday to lend her clout to gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown.

But something grabbed the headlines from the headliner.

Young undocumented immigrant activists heckled the former first lady and secretary of state for roughly the duration of Clintons speech in College Park.

They were organized, and they were loud.

As security removed one group of hecklers, another group started yelling at Clinton, and when they were removed, yet another group picked up where they had left off, according to Politico.

The demonstrators  members of United We Dream, a group that advocates for an end to deportations and for policies that will enable undocumented immigrants to obtain a path to legal status  have been targeting Clinton, who has indicated she may run for president in 2016.

The Dreamers have told reporters that they want to start putting pressure on her now in the hope that she will articulate, in clear terms, where she stands on various aspects of immigration reform.

Recently, they heckled Clinton when she was in North Carolina stumping for Sen. Kay Hagan, who has drawn the ire of many Latinos and immigrant advocates by voting against the Dream Act, a measure that would have given undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as minors a chance to legalize their status if they meet a strict set of criteria.

Clinton has addressed immigration on occasion, at times making remarks that have irked advocates. This year, for example, she said that the Central American children who were part of the surge of immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border should be returned to their home countries.

In North Carolina and now in Maryland, she spoke about immigration after Dreamers began heckling.

If they had just waited a little while I was getting to the Dream Act, Clinton said, then going on to praising the measure.

Maryland, as it happens, passed a state measure aimed at Dreamers that allows them to attend public college at in-state tuition rates, which tend to be half of out-of-state rates.

Im a strong supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, said Clinton, adding that the it is a moral issue. We have to treat everyone with dignity and compassion.

That was too little for the Dreamers at the campaign event.

I think she avoided the question like she has in the other events where weve tried to connect with her before, said Greisa Martinez, an organizer with United We Dream, according to Politico.

I know that Hillary Clinton is a very intelligent woman and she knows exactly what we are talking about Its not about the Dream Act and its not about immigration reform  its about administrative relief, and so to hear her use that as a cop out was frustrating.

Proponents of more lenient immigration measures have grown frustrated over the lack of action by Congress and what they say is a lack of a effort by President Barack Obama to work on modifying aspects of immigration policies and reducing the record number of deportations during his administration.

The Dreamers, as well as other advocates, are warning Democrats generally, and Clinton specifically, that they will experience a backlash if they do not make a more forceful commitment to the passage of immigration reform.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, whom Lt. Gov. Brown is hoping to succeed, was at the event. Clinton and O'Malley, who also is seen as a potential 2016 presidential contender, kept a distance from each other at the event.

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Candidates for one of the top congressional races in the country debated in Spanish on Thursday as they compete for a district with a growing Hispanic population.

U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman has been furiously studying Spanish for the past year; his Democrat challenger, former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, is fluent, having served in the Peace Corps in Costa Rica.

They are locked in one of the most expensive and intense House contests in the country. Organizers billed the debate as the first Spanish-language congressional debate between non-Hispanic candidates.

Coffman has changed his stance on whether people in the country illegally should be allowed to stay, after his district was redrawn to include the immigrant-heavy city of Aurora. He said he supports citizenship for people brought to the U.S. illegally as children, but that he opposes "special" treatment for others.

Romanoff said it is important that such a diverse district have a representative who supports an immigration overhaul, "not just in days before an election, but in their whole career."

Coffman previously opposed a bill to allow people brought into the country illegally as children to become citizens, Romanoff said. Coffman also introduced legislation to overturn requirements that diverse areas provide bilingual ballots to voters and had spoken positively of notorious immigration hardliner Rep. Tom Tancredo.

Coffman said he does support immigrants, noting that Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez had praised his leadership on a proposal to let people brought to the country illegally as children to earn their citizenship by serving in the military.

Coffman said he only opposed Obama trying to implement immigration changes unilaterally.

"I want congressional action because that guarantees a fundamental right," he said.

Romanoff was asked about his own support for a 2006 state law that would have required police to alert federal authorities to immigrants they suspected were living in the U.S. illegally. Many Democrats voted for the legislation, then touted as the toughest immigration measure in the nation.

"The law was an error," Romanoff said. He said he was wrong to support it and added that he's proud Democrats have since rejected it. He said he's always supported citizenship for people who come here illegally.

The two candidates also sparred over the environment, the cost of college and the health care overhaul during the 30-minute debate. Afterward, Coffman said: "I think it was important to show respect for the community."

Gina Millan, a community organizer who watched the debate at the Entravision studios in Denver, was elated. She said it was an important chance for Spanish-speakers to hear the candidates address the issue and that even bilingual members of the community got a jolt from watching the exchanges.

"This is so, so big for our community, a debate in our own language," she said.

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Along with hundreds - maybe even thousands - of candidates fighting to get themselves elected to political offices across the country, there are more than 140 ballot initiatives that are being decided on Tuesday. All of them asking voters to take sides on issues as varied as drivers' cards for undocumented immigrants in Oregon and raising the minimum wage in Arkansas to recreational marijuana and stricter gun laws.

That is actually a very low number of ballot measures, down from nearly 190 in 2012. But that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot at stake, both in terms of important issues as well as money spent (by itself one California ballot measure, Proposition 45, which would allow the state's insurance commissioner to intercede in conflicts over health insurance rate hikes, has drawn more than $50 million in spending by outside groups).

A number of those ballot initiatives could have a direct impact on the lives of Latinos, and this has politicians, activists, political action committees and voter organizations on all sides hoping to win over this key demographic.

There are less ballot initiatives this year, but the ones that are on the ballot are very important, Justine Sarver, executive director of the Ballot Imitative Strategy Center told Fox News Latino. The Latino voting population is not huge in a lot of these states, but it is still very important.

The ballot initiative in Oregon  the Alternative Driver Licenses Referendum  is probably the one that could most directly affect the lives of Latinos. The measure is a citizen's veto referendum on State Bill 833, a bill passed in 2013 by the Oregon Legislature which grants official driver IDs to people who cannot prove legal presence in the U.S.

There are less ballot initiatives this year, but the ones that are on the ballot are very important.  Justine Sarver, executive director of the Ballot Imitative Strategy Center

The proposal has enflamed sentiments on both sides of the immigration debate.

Trying to make life easier for these people here illegally just makes me ashamed and embarrassed that that our government supports this measure, Cynthia Kendoll, a campaign manager for Protect Oregon Driver Licenses told FNL.

Kendoll and other opponents of granting government identity cards to undocumented immigrants and others who can't prove they're in the country legally is that there's no way to prove the people who apply for the cards are who they claim to be  making the system ripe for corruption.

This is one of the most fraud-riddled documents in the nation, Kendoll said of SB 833. Weve got a pervasive culture of corruption where we pick which laws apply to whom and how to enforce [them].

Supporters counter that these documents help keep roads safer as people who may have been driving without insurance or a license will go through the training process and be more accountable.

The measure makes sense because it makes drivers know the rules of the road, and it is not a proxy for immigration laws, Becky Straus, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oregon told FNL. It has nothing to do with immigration but instead its about drivers' safety and civil liberties.

Oregons 60 Driver and Motor Vehicle Services offices could begin issuing driver cards in as little as 30 days if the initiative passes. Recent polling data suggests the majority of likely voters are leaning toward vetoing SB 833.

Oregon would become one of 12 states in the U.S. to allow drivers cards for undocumented immigrants, while only two states  Arizona and Nebraska  deny drivers license to young people granted protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Illinois also has a number of proposals on the ballot in this years elections, including a non-binding question about raising the minimum wage in the state, but the most pressing for Latinos in the state is the Right to Vote amendment.

Proponents and adversaries of the initiative alike have suggested that the amendment is, at least in part, meant to discourage a controversial voter identification card like that being used in Texas, but the main thrust of the proposal is to ensure that no person is denied the right to vote based on race, sex, color, ethnicity as well as a host of other factors.

When Illinois state Senate voted back to put the amendment up for vote in November, the move was widely praised by Democrats who claim that proof of citizenship measures unfairly disenfranchise low-income people  often Democrats  who don't have IDs or the money to acquire them.

"No voter should have to face the suppression tactics that we see in other states across the nation," Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn said in a prepared statement as he encouraged voter approval earlier this year.

The U.S. Supreme Court said last week that Texas can use its controversial new voter identification law this election. A majority of the justices rejected an emergency request from the Justice Department and civil rights groups to prohibit the state from requiring voters to produce certain forms of photo identification in order to cast ballots.

Democrats in Illinois, including the bills sponsor Sen. Kwame Raoul, have not denied the fact that the Right to Vote amendment is an attempt to dissuade any implementation of voter ID laws.

"It is definitely, definitely intended to discourage voter ID laws," Raoul said. "If you cast a vote for this, you are casting a vote against voter ID laws."

For the amendment to go into effect, it would need to garner the approval from either 3/5 of the people who vote solely on the question or a majority of all people voting in the election.

Some of the other measures that are piquing interest across the nation deal with issues like birth control, gun ownership and the legalization of marijuana.

In Colorado, a "personhood" amendment would add fetuses to those protected by the state's criminal and wrongful death act. Opponents say it would effectively ban abortions.

In North Dakota, Measure 1 would provide "the inalienable right to life" for humans at "any stage of development." Supporters and opponents differ on what impact it might have on abortion regulations.

Voters in Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia all have the chance to legalize the recreational use of marijuana by adults, a step already taken two years ago by voters in Colorado and Washington state. A measure in the Latino-centric state of Florida would legalize medical marijuana use.

Washington state has two competing gun-related measures on its ballot, with one pursuing background checks for all gun sales and transfers (including private transactions) and another that would prevent any such requirement involving purchases from private sellers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
For Republicans, 40 percent is the magic threshold.

That is the share of Latino votes, the theory goes, that a Republican presidential candidate should get to significantly bolster the chance of a victory.

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, the nations first female Hispanic governor, has proven that she is in that small circle of Republicans with a national profile who can generate such a level of support among Latino voters.

Martinez is running for re-election against New Mexico Attorney General Gary King, a Democrat whose father served as governor in the state.

A recent poll in the Albuquerque Journal showed Martinez, who is seeking a second term, getting 40 percent of Latinos who indicated they planned to vote. King, a two-term attorney general, would get 50 percent of the vote. The others say theyre undecided.

Latinos comprise 47 percent of New Mexicos total population.

Among all voters in the state, Martinez has led King by double digits  quite a feat in a state that typically prefers Democrats.

Fifty-three percent of likely voters said they favor Martinez, while 38 percent back King and 9 percent were undecided.

Those whove been tracking Martinezs political career know her current showing among Latinos  strong for a Republican  is no fluke. She got nearly 40 percent of the Latino vote when she first ran for governor in 2010. That same year, Republicans running for office around the country were able to get about 20 percent of the Latino vote.

Martinez manages to enjoy hefty Latino support  and support among New Mexico voters in general  despite serious problems dogging the state, the Wall Street Journal reported.

New Mexico ranks low, sometimes at the very bottom, nationwide on such things as job growth and child welfare. Martinez has attributed the job growth weakness on what she says is the states over-reliance on federal government jobs. When the economy is struggling, she has said, the state suffers disproportionately.

She has done nothing substantive to fix the problems of New Mexico, said Phil Sisneros, a spokesman for Kings campaign, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Martinez told the Wall Street Journal that many of New Mexicos problems predated her.

She has done a pretty good job of placing the blame of the slow recovery on the federal government and not so much on her, said Gabriel Sanchez, a political scientist at the University of New Mexico, according to the Wall Street Journal. A lot of folks here say, Well, its not her fault. 

The kind of appeal Martinez has been able to sustain among Latinos and voters who are not registered Republicans is the kind that the GOP has indicated it would like in a presidential candidate in 2016.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who ran in 2012 against President Obama, got only 27 percent of the Latino vote, compared with 71 percent for Obama.

That led to talk among Republicans and political scientists about how President George W. Bush was able to get more than 40 percent of the Latino vote in 2004, and how, given that about 24 million Latinos are eligible to vote, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

If Martinez draws 40 percent or more of the Latino vote next Tuesday, her stock likely will rise as a strong contender for 2016, though the governor has tried to downplay the idea of her running when reporters have raised the question.

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Vice President Joe Biden and actress Eva Longoria urged Democrats to get out and vote during a rally Saturday at a Las Vegas union hall aimed at shoring up sagging statewide turnout by party members ahead of Tuesday's election.

Biden and the former "Desperate Housewives" star both urged Latinos to support state lieutenant governor candidate Lucy Flores, and Biden, in more than 30 minutes of personal recollections and political exhortations, made a declaration for the party faithful.

"We've got three days," Biden said. "If we vote, we win. If we don't, we lose."

Flores, a state assemblywoman, told the audience of perhaps 300 people at Plumbers and Pipefitters Joint Local 525 that she knew she'd been outspent in her race against Republican state Sen. Mark Hutchison to replace the term-limited Brian Krolicki.

Campaign disclosures showed Flores raised and spent about $700,000 on her campaign, while Hutchison spent about $2.4 million.

"Despite all that money, he has not been able to pull ahead in the polls," Flores said. "We can sit here and think that everything will be OK. We're not OK unless you vote."

Almost 25 percent of registered voters in Nevada have voted already, including 7 percent more Republicans than Democrats, according to figures released after early voting ended Friday.

Longoria is co-founder with Democratic National Committee finance chief Henry Munoz III of a political group called Latino Victory Project. Both appeared on the stage with Flores and Biden to call Latino issues American issues.

Biden, Longoria and Munoz also urged support for Democratic U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford, a first-term congressman whose re-election campaign against challenger GOP state Assemblyman Cresent Hardy in Nevada's 4th congressional district has seen a recent wave of interest group spending.

The conservative group Crossroads GPS has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into ads linking Horsford to President Barack Obama, whose popularity is at near-record lows.

"He might have the Super PACs," Horsford told the crowd. "But I have you."

U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., also urged the party members to vote. Titus is expected to face little challenge from Republican challenger Dr. Annette Teijeiro in a heavily Democratic district.

"We've got three days," Titus said. "Three days to get it done."

Biden talked about the power of the Latino vote. He promised that President Barack Obama would act on immigration reform  a touchstone issue for Hispanics nationwide  even if Congress remains deadlocked.

"By the way," Biden said, "the president is going to act on this if they don't."

The campaign stop was Biden's third this year in Las Vegas, and his third stop of a day that began in San Diego and included a visit to a high school in California's San Bernardino County.

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The final campaign swing of the midterm election for President Barack Obama turned out to be a rowdy affair. At a rally in a Bridgeport, Connecticut, high school on Sunday on behalf of incumbent Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy, the president was heckled repeatedly by young Hispanic immigration activists.

Exactly the kind of voter that was at the heart of the coalition that swept Obama into office in 2008 and won him re-election just two years ago.

According to the Washington Times, the protesters were organized by United We Dream, the same pro-immigration reform group, known as Dreamers, last week ambushed Hillary Clinton at a Maryland appearance.

"I am sympathetic to those who are concerned about immigration," Obama said after one interruption. "It's the other party that's blocked it. Unfortunately, folks get frustrated and they want to yell at everybody."

Dreamers have been taking out the frustration they feel about the failure of President Obama and Congress to revamp the immigration system and directing it at Clinton. But on Sunday, they decided to put the pressure on Obama.

Dreamers will not take any more political delays or excuses, Maria Praeli, a United We Dream member, told the Times. Our community expects President Obama to be broad in using his executive authority to provide deportation relief to millions of people from our community, including parents of Dreamers, and were here to hold him accountable to his promise.

Malloy is locked into a neck-and-neck battle with Republican Tom Foley, whom he narrowly defeated four years ago.

Apart from immigration, Obama made a case at the Bridgeport rally that Americans are better off today than when he came into office, and they shouldn't let critics deter them from voting.

"Despite all the cynicism, America is making progress," Obama told the crowd of about 1,900. "Despite unyielding opposition, there are workers who have jobs today that didn't have it before. There are families who have health insurance today that didn't have it before. There are kids going to college today that didn't have the opportunity to go to college before. There are troops in Afghanistan now here with their families because of your vote."

Obama has focused this past week's appearances on candidates for governor in states that he carried in both of his presidential runs. On Saturday, he headlined a rally in Detroit for Senate candidate Gary Peters and Mark Schauer, who's running for governor, and earlier in the week he campaigned in Wisconsin, Maine and Rhode Island.

Though any Democratic losses probably would raise questions about the strength of his popularity even among his biggest fans, Democrats said not campaigning carried bigger downsides.

"There is a bigger risk in not doing everything he can to hold a Senate majority and elect Democratic governors," said Ben LaBolt, national spokesman for Obama's 2012 campaign. "Republicans are likely to say he didn't perform to 2008 and 2012 levels regardless."

Democrats outnumber Republicans in Connecticut, so motivating core voters was essential for Malloy's survival against Foley. First lady Michelle Obama, who campaigned for Malloy on Thursday, called him an "instrumental partner" of the president, and she citied Malloy's success in raising the minimum wage and with the state's roll-out of the federal health law.

Foley got a boost Sunday when conservative candidate Joe Visconti dropped out of the race and threw his support behind the Republican.

In Pennsylvania, Wolf has emerged as the favorite, but Corbett was seizing on Obama's appearance to portray the Democrat as a virtual Obama running mate, hoping that antipathy toward the president would drive more Republican voters to polls.

"Voting for Tom Wolf would be like voting to make Obama Pennsylvania's governor," a new Corbett television ad said.



Based on reporting by the Associated Press.

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With the 2014 elections upon us, political campaigns are making last-ditch efforts to win over voters as they prepare to head to the ballot. This years races feature a number of Latino candidates  both incumbents and upstarts  who could help to decide the next trend in American politics. Here, Fox News Latino breaks down the key races to watch.

Arizona

7th Congressional District: Ruben Gallego (D) vs. Jose Penalosa (I)

With no Republican in the race and a Libertarian opponent with little campaign cash or name recognition, Gallego was considered a shoe-in for retiring Rep. Ed Pastor's seat. The frustration among many Latinos over immigration inaction by both Congress and President Obama, however, could persuade many to sit out the elections. Penalosa is arguing that that inaction is exactly why they need to vote  for someone who is an Independent. "This election is not over, and Ruben Gallego should not take voters for granted," he said last month.

California

Governor: Jerry Brown (D) vs. Neel Kashkari (R)

As Election Day approaches, Brown, the incumbent, enjoys a solid lead over his Republican challenger, a former U.S. Treasury official. Brown is riding a wave of kudos over ending the long-standing state deficit and making a surplus the new normal. It meant raising taxes and targeting loopholes that benefited business, however. Brown has a relatively good relationship with Californias Latinos, many of whom link the GOP to former Gov. Pete Wilsons efforts in the 1990s to crack down on undocumented immigrants through Proposition 187, an initiative that called for denying health care, education and other services. Kashkari has played up his Indian roots in his campaign, portraying himself as an immigrant and someone who is more representative of California than Brown, whom he depicts as privileged. (Browns father was also governor.)

21st Congressional District: David Valadao (R) vs. Amanda Renteria (D)

The district tends to alternate between parties. In 2012, it split, going to President Obama and Valadao. To be re-elected, Valadao will have to once again overcome demographics: Democrats account for nearly 75 percent of registered voters in the Hispanic-dominated district. The Central Valley is dubbed the bread basket of the state and country, but it finds itself in the middle of one of the most devastating droughts in history. Both are pushing water measures: Renteria, a $2.7 billion water bond that would provide storage for water and fund projects transferring water from Northern California; Valadao introduced the Water Delivery Act, which passed the House and would preserve hundreds of billions of gallons of water being flushed into the ocean.

Colorado

Senate: Mark Udall (D) vs. Cory Gardner (R)

The incumbent Udall is going all-out to court Latinos as he battles challenger Gardner. Udall launched a million-dollar round of Spanish-language television ads that are running through Election Day. Colorado has emerged as ground zero for the fight between Republicans and Democrats for control of the U.S. Senate. Udall has had Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Mass. Sen. Elizabeth Warren campaign for him, while former Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush and N.J. Gov. Chris Christie have stumped for Gardner. Republicans need to pick up six additional seats in November to win control of the Senate from Democrats. The latest polls for Colorados race show Gardner leading Udall by a couple of points within the margins of error.

Florida

Governor: Rick Scott (R) vs. Charlie Crist (D)

With the incumbent Scott and former governor Crist virtually deadlocked in the polls, Hispanic voters in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, as well as the crucial I-4 corridor in central Florida, could determine who wins. Thats why both candidates picked Hispanic running mates for lieutenant governor, according to party leaders. Scott made Cuban-American Carlos Lopez-Cantera the first Hispanic lieutenant governor in state history. Countering Scotts selection, Crist announced in July that Miami-Dade Democratic Party chief and state party vice-chairwoman, Annette Taddeo-Goldstein, whose mother is Colombian, would be his running mate.

26th Congressional District: Joe Garcia (D) vs. Carlos Curbelo (R)

Incumbent Garcia and challenger Curbelo insist they are running on the issues affecting the 850,000 residents in their South Florida district, but the ongoing back-and-forth over which one is more corrupt has not been exactly edifying. Not only has this been one of the most bruising political match-ups of the year, it's also been one of the longest: Curbelo, a Miami-Dade School Board-member, announced in July of last year that he would run, and he has focused on the criminal investigations against Garcias former chief of staff and ex-campaign manager, Jeff Garcia (no relation). Last year, Jeff Garcia pleaded guilty to ballot fraud and served 65 days in jail. Rep. Garcia and Democratic operatives have countered that in 2009, Curbelo - who earns a living as a political consultant and lobbyist - improperly transferred ownership of his company, Capitol Gains, to his wife.

Georgia

Michelle Nunn (D) vs. David Perdue (R)

With more than 9 percent of the Georgia population identifying themselves as Hispanic or Latino, the Senate race between former non-profit executive Michelle Nunn, a Democrat, and American businessman David Perdue, a Republican, is now more influenced by Hispanics than ever before. It is one of the races where political analysts and members of the Latino community have noted that the percentage of Latino voters in the state could make a game-changing difference. While both candidates have ideological differences on immigration, both are calling for a more secure border and are vague on how to carry out the states strict immigration law. Nunn believes we need comprehensive immigration reform that secures our borders and provides an accountable pathway to citizenship that requires those currently living here go to the back of the line, pass a background check, learn English, and pay back taxes, her website page says. Perdue places more of a focus on securing the border, saying on his website page the debate in Washington over illegal immigration has become unnecessarily complicatedsimply put, we need to strictly enforce current laws and any new laws should be straightforward, focusing on true border security.

Nevada

Brian Sandoval (R) vs. Bob Goodman (D)

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval is heading into Novembers midterm election with such strong polling numbers and popularity that the Democratic Party did not even bother to put up a serious challenger. Bob Goodman, who was former Gov. Mike OCallaghans director of economic development in the 1970s, is the party's official candidate, though polls show him trailing the governor by double digits. Goodman won the Democratic primary with 25 percent of the vote, five points behind the "None of These Candidates" option that appears on Nevada ballots; Sandoval clinched the GOP one with 90 percent. Goodman knows a victory at this point seems like a pipe dream but says he is running for the sake of democracy.

New Hampshire

Marilinda Garcia (R) vs. Annie Kuster (D)

The New Hampshire 2nd Congressional District race pits a conservative rising star with the strong backing of national Republicans against a Democratic stalwart in this New England state. In a recent debate, Republican Marilinda Garcia criticized Democratic incumbent Annie Kuster for not holding town hall meetings, and accused her of putting President Barack Obama's agenda ahead of constituent concerns. Kuster responded that she meets with constituents every day, visiting businesses and hosting round table discussions. She described helping farmers win changes to proposed food safety regulations, and argued it's Garcia who has ignored constituents by missing about a third of the votes during her time in the state Legislature. The candidates also tangled over a Kuster campaign ad that says Garcia wants to abolish the federal Department of Education and supports banning abortion. In 2008, she voted for a bill that would have made it a felony for anyone to perform an abortion "when there is a reasonable expectation that the fetus would be viable if delivered."

New Mexico

Susana Martinez (R) vs. Gary King (D)

For Republicans, 40 percent is the magic threshold. That is the share of Latino votes, the theory goes, that a Republican presidential candidate should get to significantly bolster the chance of a victory. New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, the nations first female Hispanic governor, has proven that she is in that small circle of Republicans with a national profile who can generate such a level of support among Latino voters. Martinez is running for re-election against New Mexico Attorney General Gary King, a Democrat whose father served as governor in the state. A recent poll in the Albuquerque Journal showed Martinez, who is seeking a second term, getting 40 percent of Latinos who indicated they planned to vote. King, a two-term attorney general, would get 50 percent of the vote. The others say theyre undecided. Latinos comprise 47 percent of New Mexicos total population.

North Carolina

Kay Hagan (D) vs. Thom Tillis (R)

Latinos in North Carolina might become the determining factor in deciding who wins North Carolinas Senate race. Thom Tillis, a Republican businessman who is the state speaker of the House, and Democratic incumbent Senator Kay Hagan are battling in a state where Hispanics are 9 percent of the population  having more voting power than ever before. Tillis campaign website says the former speaker believes in doing more to secure our borders and opposes amnesty. Hagan, on the other hand, voted in support of the Senates Gang of Eight bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) bill in 2013. With nearly 900,000 Latinos living in North Carolinas population of about 10 million, some Hispanics are skeptical but hopeful about how their community will influence the Senate election.

Texas

Greg Abbott (R) vs. Wendy Davis (D)

Current Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott faces a tough sell beyond the demographics. Divisive Republican measures he's backed have been viewed as hostile toward Hispanics and particularly felt on the southern Texas border. Abbott, who is married to a Mexican-American, also has supported the deployment of 1,000 National Guard troops along the border to block illegal immigration, which Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto called "reprehensible." He's also fighting in court to uphold a new state law that forced the closure of the only abortion clinic in 300 miles. But Abbott is getting help. The Republican National Committee has been dumping $50,000 a month into Texas to recruit Hispanic voters, who went for President Barack Obama more than 2-to-1 two years ago.

Pete Gallego (D) vs. Will Hurd (R)

They call it the only true competitive race in Texas in this years election. Its the states 23rd congressional district, where no party really ever has a lock on voters. First-term, incumbent Democrat Rep. Pete Gallego is fighting to hold on to his seat, which he won in 2012 by beating then-incumbent congressional freshman Quico Canseco, a Republican. His challenger is former CIA operative Will Hurd, who won a competitive primary and is getting strong support from national Republican and conservative groups. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney beat President Barack Obama in this district in 2012, 51-48 percent. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Tea Party Republican, also came out the winner in this district. And so, Gallego, who is 52, said he is pushing hard to win re-election in this vast district, which spans more than 800 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border and includes about a quarter of the land area of Texas. Roughly 70 percent of the districts population is Latino  something that, clearly, has not guaranteed a Democratic victory.

George P. Bush (R) vs. John Cook (D)

George P. Bush, the 38-year-old scion of the country's most enduring political dynasty, is running for the post of Texas land commissioner and is widely expected to win by a large margin. Unlike his rival, Democrat John Cook, a 68-year-old who served on the El Paso City Council for three terms and as mayor for two terms, Bush has never before held a political office. The job of land commissioner is said to be one of the most powerful in Texas and has proven to be a stepping stone to bigger and better positions. If Bush wins, he would be continuing a family tradition. His father, Jeb, was governor of Florida and is widely expected to run for president in 2016; his uncle, George W., was Texas governor and U.S. president; his grandfather, George H.W., was CIA director, vice-president under Ronald Reagan and then president himself; and his great-grandfather, Prescott, was a U.S. senator.

West Virginia

Alex Mooney (R) vs. Nick Casey (D)

West Virginia could soon see its first ever Latino congressional representative. His name is Alex Mooney and his mother is from Cuba. If he were to win this race  which at the moment is viewed as a toss-up  Mooney, a conservative Republican running against Nick Casey, a former chairman of the West Virginia Democratic Party, would make history in a state that has the distinction of having the smallest percentage of Latinos in the entire nation. Latinos make up just 1.2 percent  or slightly more than 22,268  of the Eastern Panhandle state's population.

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Resurgent Republicans captured Democratic seats in Arkansas and West Virginia and bid for control of the U.S. Senate and a tighter grip on the House Tuesday in elections shaped by deep voter discontent with President Barack Obama.

The party's leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, dispatched Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky after a $78 million campaign of unrelieved negativity. Voters are "hungry for new leadership. They want a reason to be hopeful," said the man in line to become majority leader of the Senate if his party captures control.

Obama was at the White House as voters remade Congress for the final two years of his term. With lawmakers set to convene next week for a postelection session, he invited the leadership to a meeting on Friday.

Two-term Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas was the first Democratic incumbent to fall, defeated by freshman Rep. Tom Cotton. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito was the GOP winner for a Senate seat in West Virginia, the first of her party to make that claim since 1956.

Republicans also reached out for relatively easy pickings among Senate seats held by Democrats in South Dakota and Montana.

The Republicans needed to gain six seats in all to oust a Democratic Senate majority in place since 2006.

No matter which party emerged with control of the Senate, a new chapter in divided government was inevitable in a nation marked by profound unease over the future and dissatisfaction with its political leaders. Obama has two more years in the White House, and Republican control over the House seemed likely to increase.

There were 36 gubernatorial elections on the ballot, and several incumbents struggled against challengers. Tom Wolf captured the Pennsylvania statehouse for the democrats, defeated Republican Gov. Tom Corbett.

Former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, a Republicans, was elected governor of Arkansas more than a decade after playing a prominent role in President Bill Clinton's impeachment and trial.

Also winning a new term was Ohio Gov. John Kasich, one of several presidential candidates on the ballot across several states.

In a footnote to one of the year's biggest political surprises, college professor Dave Brat was elected to the House from Virginia, several months after he defeated Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a Republican primary.

After years of a sluggish economic recovery and foreign crises aplenty, the voters' mood was sour.

Nearly two thirds of those interviewed after casting ballots said the country was seriously on the wrong track. Only about 30 percent said it was generally going in the right direction.

More than four in ten voters disapprove of both Obama and Congress, according to preliminary results of interviews with voters leaving the polls in surveys conducted for the Associated Press and the television networks.

Still, a majority of those polled supported several positions associated with Democrats or Obama rather than Republicans  saying immigrants in the country illegally should be able to work, backing U.S. military involvement against Islamic State fighters, and agreeing that climate change is a serious problem.

A shift in control of the Senate would likely result in a strong GOP assault on deficits, additional pressure to accept sweeping changes to the health care law that stands as his signal domestic accomplishment and a bid to reduce federal regulations.

The large number of highly competitive races, combined with the likelihood of runoffs in Louisiana and Georgia, raised the possibility that neither party would be able to claim victory by the day after Election Day.

There were 36 Senate races on the ballot, although most of the attention went to fewer than a dozen. They drew hundreds of millions of dollars in attack ads in a campaign season estimated to cost more than $4 billion  just for the races for Congress.

Among incumbents, Kay Hagan faced a stiff challenge in North Carolina and Mark Begich in Alaska, all states that Obama lost in 2012.

The same applied in Louisiana, where Sen., Mary Landrieu and Rep. Bill Cassidy were in a three-way race, with a Dec. 6 runoff ahead if no candidate gained a majority.

Democrats Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire and Mark Udall in Colorado also had difficult races in states Obama won two years ago.

Sen. Tom Harkin's decision to step down in Iowa gave rise to a fierce battle between Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley and Republican Joni Ernst. Her campaign took off earlier in the year when she made a television advertisement saying she had learned how to castrate hogs as a girl growing up on a farm.

Georgia chose a replacement for retiring Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss in a three-way race that included Republican David Perdue and Democrat Michelle Nunn, whose father held the seat for a quarter century. State law set a runoff for Jan. 6, 2015, if no candidate gained a majority.

The year's most unlikely race belonged to Kansas, where Republican Sen. Pat Roberts faced a challenge from independent Greg Orman.

In the House, all 435 seats were on the ballot, but the roster of competitive races was less than 10 percent of those

Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was on the ballot for a 13th term, and the Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, for a 14th.

Not even Democrats claimed a chance to topple the Republican House majority. They spent the campaign's final days dispatching money to districts where incumbents suddenly found themselves in danger.

Republicans sought to downplay any expectation of large gains. A pickup of 13 would give them more seats in the House than at any time since 1946.

The elections' $4 billion price tag spending was unprecedented for a non-presidential year.

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U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, a conservative Republican, beat Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Udall in one of the most closely watched races in the nation.

Gardner won 51 percent of the vote, and Udall got 43 percent with 71 percent of the precincts reporting.

Gardner's victory put Republicans closer to the six seats they needed to gain control of the Senate, which has had a Democrat majority.

Latinos had a strong turnout, according to Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of American Principles in Action's Latino Partnership, and a former official with the George W. Bush administration. Aguilar, who campaigned for Gardner, helping the candidate with Latino outreach, said that Latinos were about 13 percent of voters who turned out in Colorado.

They comprise about 14 percent of the state's electorate. Latino voters in Colorado have tended to lean Democratic in elections, but Republicans have been gaining.

"It's a good win," Alfonso said. "I do believe he'll be a force for good in the Senate, and be supportive of immigration reform. He supports a path to legal status, and expanding the guest worker program, he's told me this in private conversations."

Aguilar said that exit polls did not break down information on whom Latino voters supported.

"I think Gardner held his own with Latino voters," he said.

The Senate race in Colorado was seen as one of the tightest and most hotly contested. Both candidates vied for the states Latino electorate, one of the fastest growing in the nation.

Colorados general electorate tends to be split evenly between those who identify or lean toward Republican, and those who identify or lean Democrat.

Udall had sought to shake off the shadow of President Barack Obama, whose approval ratings have been low  not unusual for a president in his second term in the Oval Office.

Udall even passed up an opportunity to campaign with Obama, saying he had a scheduling conflict and could not be at a July fundraiser that was to feature the president.

The number of Latino voters in Colorado climbed to more than 20,000 since 2010  from 144,000 to 162,000, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO).

Polls showed Udall trailing Gardner by a couple of points heading into Election Day. But the state has proven an unreliable one for pollsters in recent election cycles because of underrepresentation of Latino voters, and one poll a week before the election that attempted to correct for that gave Udall the slightest of overall margins.

The rivals accused each other during debates of being disingenuous in their immigration reform stances.

Udall balked at remarks in support of a path to legalization by Gardner, accusing him of flip-flopping from previous hard-line positions on the issue.

Gardner expressed support for the DREAM Act, a measure that would give conditional permanent residency for people brought to this country illegally as children.

The two also clashed on the new health care law, with Udall defending it and Gardner, like many Republicans, criticizing it.

Asked whether he'd vote again for the overhaul, Udall said he would.

As he has done in his campaign, Gardner sought to link Udall with Obama, saying that a vote for Udall is essentially a vote for Obamas policies.

Udall attempted to paint Gardner an extreme conservative.

Other key elections in the state included that of governor between Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat and former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, a Republican was too close to call as of press date. With 71 percent of the vote in, Beauprez was leading Hickenlooper by a 1.5 percent margin.

Another closely watched race in the 6th Congressional District saw the incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, the GOP candidate, defeat Democratic challenger, Andrew Romanoff, by a 12-point margin with 68 percent of the precincts reporting.
Republican Greg Abbott defeated Democratic state lawmaker Wendy Davis in the race for Texas governor. Davis became nationally known literally overnight for her more than 12-hour filibuster in pink sneakers to temporarily stall new abortion restrictions. But she was unable to compete with her popular and well-funded Republican opponent.

Demographers predict Hispanics will make up a plurality of Texas residents as soon as 2020. Their voting strength, however, hasn't kept pace with their rapid growth: in 2012 in Texas, turnout among voting-age Hispanics was 39 percent, compared to 61 percent for whites, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. In the last governor's election, only a quarter of the valley's Hispanic voters cast ballots.

Abbott faced a tough sell beyond the demographics.

Divisive Republican measures he's backed have been viewed as hostile toward Hispanics and particularly felt on the southern Texas border. One in three people here live at or below the federal poverty level, as longtime Republican Gov. Rick Perry refuses Medicaid expansion.

Abbott also has supported the deployment of 1,000 National Guard troops along the border to block illegal immigration, which Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto called "reprehensible." He's also fighting in court to uphold a new state law that forced the closure of the only abortion clinic in 300 miles. Even the roaring Texas economy, for which Republicans take credit, is far tougher to see along the border, where a nearly 10 percent unemployment rate is nearly double the state average.

Abbott did have some help though, as the Republican National Committee dumped $50,000 a month into Texas to recruit Hispanic voters, who went for President Barack Obama more than 2-to-1 two years ago. Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists who also are significant donors to Abbott, help underwrite the Libre Initiative that offers Spanish-speakers classes to learn English -- while preaching to them the sensibilities of limited government.

Former U.S. ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza, a Bush appointee whose political career began as a Republican in Brownsville, said he sees an opening for Republicans because Democrats traditionally have taken their voters for granted.

"Not only is he (Abbott) in sync with the conservative nature of the state, by spending a lot of time in the valley ... he's forcing the Democratic nominee to defend what should be a base," Garza said.

Based on reporting by The Associated Press.

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In a spirited race, Democratic incumbent Ann Kuster beat Republican Marilinda Garcia in New Hampshires 2nd congressional district. According to the Associated Press, with roughly one-third of the votes counted, Kuster was leading 55.9 percent to 44.1 percent.

Polls leading up to the election had showed Kuster leading Garcia by 7 to 10 points.

The race attracted considerable national attention because of Garcia, whom the Republican National Committee held up as a rising star within the Party. Garcia presented herself as a departure from your grandfathers GOP, which she said had been perceived in the country as "being populated mostly by old, white men."

Garcia, a state representative, criticized Kuster for not holding town hall meetings, and accused her of putting President Barack Obama's agenda ahead of constituent concerns. Garcia said that she was running because she wanted to minimize the role of government, lower taxes and keep a lid on regulations that she said hampered small businesses.

Kuster countered by saying that she meets with constituents every day, visiting businesses and hosting round table discussions. She claimed to have helped farmers win changes to proposed food safety regulations, and pointed out that Garcia missed about a third of the votes during her time in the state Legislature.

On her final campaign stops, Kuster said, according to WMUR.com, "People realize this is a critical election for their families, and I've been out there talking about good jobs, making sure we keep college affordable, and let's protect Social Security and Medicare."

Prominent GOP conservatives backed Garcia. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas traveled to New Hampshire, where Latinos are just 3 percent of the total population, to stump for her.

National Democrats took aim. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee depicted Garcia as an extremist  even by tea party standards  in a television ad.

Garcia was not initially fully embraced by Republicans in her pursuit of the House seat. They saw her chief competitor, former state Sen. Gary Lambert, who is a moderate, as a safer bet and more electable in the Democrat-leaning 2nd District. (Former state Rep. Jim Lawrence also ran in the GOP primary.)

Garcia earned her bachelors from Tufts University in 2006, as well as a Bachelors from the New England Conservatory of Music. She then went to Harvard, where she received a Master of Public Policy in 2010.

She is a recipient of the National Foundation for Women Legislators Integrative Healthcare Pioneer Award and the Disruptivate! Innovation in Healthcare Award. She was honored as one of the Republican Security Councils 45 Most Influential Women under 45.

It is almost certain that Garcia will run again for elective office in the near future.

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Public campaigning gave way to the privacy of the voting booth Tuesday with control of the Senate, the makeup of the House and three dozen governorships at stake.

President Barack Obama, his approval ratings low, was not on the ballot midway through his second term. But even he said his policies were, and Republicans rushed to agree.

"The president's policies have just flat-out failed," House Speaker John Boehner said Monday, campaigning for a 13th term in Congress and hoping for two more years as top House leader. He and other Republicans vowed to change Obama's policies, but have offered little in the way of specifics.

Democrats didn't so much defend the president as insist they were independent of him.

"There are two people on the ballot tomorrow, me and Scott Brown," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said as she made the rounds of six campaign stops on the race's final full day.

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The main prize in a $4 billion campaign was control of the Senate, a contest that sprawled across three dozen states and spawned attack ads beyond counting.

A large number of competitive races combined with the possibility of runoffs in Louisiana and Georgia meant that neither party might be able to claim victory by the day after Election Day.

About 10 Senate races drew most of the attention.

In Kentucky, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell squared off with Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes in a race that cost more than $50 million and was relentlessly negative.

Democratic retirements gave Republicans their best pickup opportunities in Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia, where Rep. Shelly Moore Capito hopes to become the first member of her party to win a Senate seat in more than a half-century.

Another Democratic retirement produced a highly competitive race in Iowa between Republican Joni Ernst and Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley.

A Republican retirement in Georgia led to one of the country's most closely-watched races, between Democrat Michelle Nunn and Republican businessman David Perdue.

Democratic incumbents in states that Obama lost in 2012, including Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina, faced strong challenges. The same was true in states the president won two years ago, Colorado and New Hampshire.

The wildest wild card of all was Kansas, where 78-year-old Republican Sen. Pat Roberts is in a competitive race with independent Greg Orman.

Republicans expressed optimism about their overall chances to win control of the Senate, while Democrats countered that a costly get-out-the-vote program to encourage millions of blacks, young voters and women to vote could save their majority.

The spreading popularity of early voting produced the equivalent of an election within an election.

Early voting topped 18 million ballots in 32 states, and both parties seized on the number as evidence of their own strength.

In Wisconsin, early ballots exceeded the number from the midterms in 2010, evidence of high voter interest in the race between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Mary Burke.

There was little suspense about House races, beyond the size of the new Republican majority. A gain of 13 seats would give the GOP its largest representation since it stood at 246 in 1946.

All 435 House seats were on Tuesday's ballot. Democrats concentrated on protecting their incumbents, a strategy that meant tacitly conceding races in Utah, New York and North Carolina where retirements created opportunities for Republicans to pad their majority.

"Not one of our incumbents is down or out," said New York Rep. Steve Israel, who heads House Democrats' campaign organization.

There were 36 gubernatorial contests, and an unusual number of incumbents appeared to be struggling heading into the election.

Obama had raised millions of dollars for Democratic candidates over the past two years, but candidates in state after state decided not to be photographed by his side. Obama was in eight states in the campaign's final days, hoping to help gubernatorial candidates in Maryland, Illinois, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine.

The races played out against a backdrop of changes in election law in some states.

Republicans said they were designed to prohibit voting fraud. Democrats said the changes were aimed at discouraging minority voters from casting ballots.

The elections were the last act of a campaign that featured a primary season in which establishment Republican candidates went head-to-head with tea party challengers in several states.

Not a single Senate Republican lost a primary, easing fears of party leaders who worried about a replay of 2010 and 2012. Both times the GOP lost seats that were winnable  and a chance at a Senate majority  because unelectable candidates made it through the primary only to lose on Election Day.

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Republican Gov. Susana Martinez looks for a possible mandate from voters and a boost to her national political standing as New Mexicans decide whether she'll serve a second term as the nation's only female Hispanic governor.

If Martinez wins as expected Tuesday over Democratic challenger Gary King, it could solidify her reputation as a rising GOP star with the ability to appeal to independents, moderate Democrats and Hispanics.

Martinez maintains she's uninterested in a national office and has pledged to serve a full four-year if re-elected. But that's unlikely to stop speculation over her future as a possible GOP vice presidential contender as the focus shifts to the 2016 presidential campaign.

Martinez rocketed to national prominence four years ago in becoming the nation's first Latina governor.

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A Broward County judge has rejected an emergency motion filed by Florida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist requesting that polling hours be extended because of voter confusion and malfunctions.

According to the motion, one polling station was offline for more than an hour as people tried to cast ballots before work.

Malfunctions with some voters' addresses also caused them to be bounced between various precincts and, according to the motion, ultimately the system did not register them and they were unable to cast regular ballots.

Recent changes to voting districts caused much of the confusion. According to the motion, the conflicting information ended up discouraging many voters from casting their ballot.

According to the Miami Herald, Judge Jack Tuter rejected the motion at 7:50 p.m., almost an hour after polls closed.

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The court didnt feel it could reopen the polls, Mike Ryan said, a lawyer for the Democratic Party, told the newspaper.

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Spain's Constitutional Court on Tuesday suspended plans by the northeastern region of Catalonia to hold an informal independence poll Nov. 9 following a legal challenge by the government, which claims the poll is illegal.

Catalan authorities opted to hold an informal poll after plans to stage a proper referendum were also suspended by the court when the government presented a similar challenge last month.

The court's unanimous decision to hear the government's case automatically halts the vote until the court deliberates and makes a decision. That process could take months.

Spain's government, backed by parliament, deems any such poll as anti-constitutional, arguing that only the central government has the power to call such referendums and all Spaniards must be allowed to vote.

The Catalan move is Europe's latest secession attempt following a Scottish independence poll in September on separating from Britain, which resulted in a No vote.

Opinion surveys indicate most Catalans favor a referendum, but are roughly equally divided over breaking ancient ties with the rest of Spain.

It's not clear if the latest suspension will have much effect.

Catalonia's regional government accuses the central government of restricting Catalans' democratic rights and insisted Tuesday there would still be a vote. It has recruited 40,000 volunteers and hopes to stage the vote in schools and other regionally-run centers.

Catalan authorities agree that only those in favor of independence are likely to try to vote Sunday. They say, however, they will have a result Monday but admit the vote will have little or no meaning beyond that of a symbolic protest.

Secessionist sentiment surged during Spain's economic stagnation and amid discontent at Spain's refusal to give the region more autonomy and fiscal powers.

Catalonia, with about 7.5 million inhabitants and Barcelona as its capital, is one of Spain's wealthiest regions.

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Brian Sandovals easy reelection win already has political spectators thinking about 2016  and a possible showdown between the popular Republican governor and Nevadas powerful Democratic senator, Harry Reid.

Everything seemed to work in Sandovals favor Tuesday night: He easily won reelection and the lieutenant governors seat was won by Republican State Sen. Mark Hutchison over Democratic Assemblywoman Lucy Flores. He received 47 percent of the Latino vote in Nevada, a significant jump from 2010 when he got 15 percent.

The result of that race was important because the person in the lieutenant governors seat would fill in as governor if Sandoval decides to step down in order to challenge Reid.

For Reid, everything seemed to work against him Tuesday night. With Republicans gaining control of the senate, he lost his influential seat as Senate majority leader, a post he held for seven years.

And Reid had thrown his support solidly behind Flores, who lost 58-33 despite the senators active campaigning on her behalf throughout the state.

But whether Sandoval could ride his wave of victory to unseat one of the countrys most powerful senators in two years remains a very open question.

Sandoval has a lot of options when it comes to 2016 that would have not been there had things gone differently Tuesday night, Fernando Romero, the president of Hispanics in Politics told Fox News Latino.

A poll taken by Harper Polling this summer showed that Sandoval would lead Reid 53 percent to 43 percent in a hypothetical race between the two.

Jose Dante Parra, a Democratic political analyst who worked on Flores campaign this year and for Reid in 2010, told FNL, Im not worried about Reid at all Adversity propels him. He is one of the greatest long-term political strategists Ive ever seen.

One of the examples of that acumen that Parra cites has to do with Latino voters.

Reid used to go to all these Hispanic community events, and people would tell him, Why are you wasting your time? A lot of those people cant or wont vote. But it paid off big for him in 2010, Parra said.

He says that if Reid and Sandoval do face off in 2016, Reid would win the Latino vote handily. The Hispanic operation hes built up over the years is terrific, Parra told FNL. Sandoval has a last name, but that doesnt make you the defender of the community Reid has the track record.

Sandoval is one of a number of telegenic Latino lawmakers who have risen to prominence over the past few years within the Republican Party. While he is mentioned more in the second tier for a 2016 presidential run than his GOP compatriots like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Sandoval has built a strong following in Nevada as the state recovers from a crippling economic recession.

The 51-year old former state lawmaker, attorney general and federal judge has become popular among Nevadas growing Latino population  27.5 percent of the state, according to the most recent census figures  thanks to his more moderate views than some of his fellow Republicans, especially when it comes to comprehensive immigration reform.

This is a big change from a few years ago when Sandoval incurred the wrath of other Latinos in his state when he supported outgoing Arizonas Gov. Jan Brewers controversial SB 1070 immigration law.

Sandoval has since eased his support on that law  saying that it would not work in Nevada  and has signed a number of laws that are strongly supported by the states Latino population, including a bill allowing immigrants here illegally to obtain a driver's privilege card. He also supported the Senates push for bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform back on 2013.

The Senates vote today is a sign of hope for those millions of people across the United States who are counting on us to make sure that the window to opportunity always remains open to everyone, Sandoval said back in June of 2013.

I am confident that Congress can work together to achieve immigration reform that is good for both parties and good for America. I stand ready to work with Nevadans and Americans to secure a better day for our state and our country.

One of the biggest coups for Sandoval  and his chances of running for the U.S. Senate in 2016  was Hutchinsons victory in the lieutenant governors race.

The governor stumped frequently for him, pitching himself and Hutchinson as a two-man team during campaign stops.

Or, as Parra put it, Hutchinson gripped onto Sandovals coattails as hard as he could.

Flores, 34, who turned her life around from her teenage years as a gang member, had been touted by Reid and other Democratic lawmakers as a rising star in the party.

She gave it the old college try but if you lose by that large of a margin its tough to mount a comeback, Romero said.

Despite all the talk of Sandovals political future, the newly reelected governor attempted Tuesday night to brush off any speculation about his purported senate run and instead focused his speeches on his next term as governor.

"I'm looking forward to serving another four years, Sandoval told the Associated Press before a speech in front of supporters in Las Vegas. I'm going to continue to work hard, and there is a lot of work to be done. We've got to work on education, K-12, and keep the economy moving."
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio hopes Republican gains in midterm elections will breathe new life into efforts to impose sanctions on Venezuelan officials who commit human rights abuses.

The Florida Republican is a sponsor of legislation targeting Venezuela's socialist government that has been stalled since clearing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May with bipartisan support. Similar legislation, which instructs the Obama administration to freeze the U.S. assets of known abusers and commit more American funding to pro-democracy groups in the South American country, has already passed the U.S. House.

Speaking in Colombia's capital a day after Republicans won control of the Senate, Rubio said Wednesday that he welcomes the Obama administration's decision in July to impose a travel ban on more than 20 unidentified senior Venezuelan officials who played a role crushing anti-government demonstrations earlier this year. At least 43 people were killed on both sides during the unrest.

Still, the lawmaker said more action is needed to punish President Nicolas Maduro's government.

"I hope we can achieve something much stronger than what the White House has done so far," Rubio, speaking in Spanish, told journalists.

The Obama administration has argued that any additional action against Venezuela isn't needed, could hurt U.S. relations with the rest of Latin America and would provide Maduro's government with a scapegoat to distract attention from the oil-rich nation's economic crisis.

Rubio said the sanctions bill would have already been approved if not for the objections of his Democrat colleague, Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who has stalled a vote out of worries over hundreds of jobs at a refinery owned by Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run oil company. Landrieu faces a December runoff ballot with a Republican challenger after failing to secure a majority of votes in Tuesday's election.

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Providence, Rhode Island, voters selected Jorge Elorza as their new mayor. A result that repudiates the city's old politics and the growing role of a different side of Providence  new immigrants, transplants, the wealthy.

Voters decided Tuesday to give Vincent "Buddy" Cianci's latest comeback bid the thumb's-down, instead opting for a first-time candidate in Elorza.

One voter summed up the feeling for many at the polls Tuesday.

"We saw the damage that [Cianci] did," said John Cariati, a financial adviser. "We don't want to go back there."

Elorza said voters wanted a new direction.

"They want change. They want new ideas, new faces and new perspectives," he said Wednesday.

Elorza, 37, a Democrat, is a law school professor and former housing court judge who was little known before the campaign. By contrast Cianci, 73, an independent, was mayor for 21 years.

Voters loved him or hated him. There were few in between.

Cianci ran a nostalgia campaign, surrounding himself with people who had worked for him for decades and speaking frequently of a rosy past where jobs were plentiful and development projects were always on the horizon. Cianci supporters spoke of "taking our city back" and "putting the grown-ups back in charge."

Cianci's first administration ended in 1984 with his no-contest plea for assaulting a man with a fireplace log, ashtray and lit cigarette. He made a comeback in 1990, but his second administration ended in 2002 with a 4-year prison term for racketeering conspiracy.

Elorza ran a quiet campaign, with no TV ads until the final week. He built support in the city's growing Hispanic population, now nearly 40 percent, a huge increase from when Cianci last ran for office in 1998.

The Democrat also found ways to connect with younger voters, holding a free concert with popular bands including the Low Anthem shortly before the election. He also built ties in the city's wealthy East Side, which turned out in droves for him. Even his Republican opponent, running in third and desperate to see anyone but Cianci in office, voted for him.

"You look at the people around him, it really is representative of our city. Jorge has young, old, hip and non-hip. It's really a face of 2014 Providence," said Mayor Angel Taveras, a Democrat who supported Elorza after giving up City Hall for an unsuccessful run for governor.

During the campaign, Elorza focused on ethics, refusing campaign donations from city employees because that led to some of the corruption that plagued Cianci's administrations. Cianci had promised not to take such donations himself but backpedaled after campaign finance records showed he had taken $18,000 from dozens of municipal workers.

In the end, Elorza won with 52 percent of the vote to Cianci's 45 percent. Cianci even lost his own polling place.

Wendy Schiller, a Brown University professor, said the city's political power base has shifted to a coalition ofLatinos, progressives and women. City residents now see that the old system of using connections to get things done wasn't working for them.

Cianci has already gone back to his job as a radio talk show host. Valerie Endress, a professor at Rhode Island College, says that makes it especially important for Elorza to connect with Cianci's supporters.

"He does have a public voice that can rail against Elorza," she said.

Elorza said he wants to engage everyone who cares about the city.

"Whether they voted for me or not," he said. "That's true for former candidates as well."

Based on reporting by the Associated Press.

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A look at the exit poll data from Tuesday's elections shows many Republicans won key senatorial and gubernatorial races, in part, thanks to relatively strong support from Hispanic voters.

Hispanics voted nearly two to one for Democratic candidates across the country in this midterm election. For Republicans, 40 percent is the magic threshold for winning in states with strong Latino voter presence. That is the share of Latino votes, the theory goes, that a Republican presidential candidate should get to significantly bolster the chance of a victory.

According to Fox News exit poll data on Hispanic voters, in states where the data is available, Republican U.S. senate candidates who captured nearly 40 percent of the Hispanic vote won their races.

In Texas, Republican John Cornyn won the state's Hispanic vote on his way to senate re-election. Cornyn won 48 percent of the Hispanic vote while his Democratic challenger, David Alameel, won 47 percent of the vote.

In Georgia, Republican David Purdue won 42 percent of the Hispanic vote in Georgia, a state that's becoming more and more blue as state demographics shift. Purdue beat Democratic challenger Michelle Nunn, who won 57 percent of the Hispanic vote.

In Kansas, Republican Pat Roberts won and nearly garnered more Hispanic support than his Independent challenger Greg Orman. Roberts received 46 percent of the Hispanic vote while Orman won 49 percent of the vote.

"We need to get out there and promote self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and individual responsibility," Angela McGlowan, a Republican political analyst, told Fox News. "We are not second class citizens just because we are Black, Brown and Red."

According to Fox News exit poll data on Hispanic voters, in states where the data is available, Republicans who won near 40 percent of the Hispanic vote won three out of five Governor races.

Many say that while Republicans made inroads with the Hispanic community, there is still room for improvement.

"They did a good job, but we could have done a better job. A lot of minorities believe that my party will only go to them when it's time to get out the vote, McGlowan said. Bush got 45 percent of the Latino vote because he went to that community and did coalition building, grassroots building."

Republican Governor Rick Scott won his re-election bid in Florida with 38 percent of the Latino vote. In Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott won and got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote and Georgia's Republican Governor Nathan Deal won re-election with 47 percent of the Latino vote.

Both Neel Kashkari in California and Rob Astorino in New York lost their bids for Governor and were only able to muster 27 percent of the Hispanic vote. But both of those states are strongly Democratic.

Julie Roginsky, a Fox News contributor and former political advisor for Democratic Senator Mark Lautenberg, said Democrats were hurt because many Latinos were feeling disenchanted and decided to sit out the election because President Barack Obama decided to defer executive action on immigration.

"Latinos were desenergized, disenchanted," Roginsky said. "and a lot of them stayed home."
Voters in Anaheim passed a measure on Tuesday that should pave the way for the citys majority Hispanic population to have a voice on a city council which has only seen three Latinos serve in its history.

In a move expected to improve Latinos chances of getting elected to the Anaheim city council, voters in the California city of 354,000 approved Measure L on Tuesday with an overwhelming 68 percent of the vote.

Council seats have been determined in at-large votes, which allows anyone in the city to cast a ballot for any candidate. Now the city will be divided into seven districts, and each one will choose its own representative.

The city was sued earlier this year by the American Civil Liberties Union, with support from Latino community leaders, for discriminating against Hispanic voters and violating the states Voting Rights Act.

Anaheim was the largest city in California to still use at-large voting. Proponents of Measure L contend that the system silenced the citys Latino community.

Measure M also passed on Tuesday, expanding the city council seats from 5 to 7.

About 54 percent of the people in Anaheim are Hispanic, but only three Latinos have ever served on the city council in the citys 157 year history, the lawsuit pointed out.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a committee of three retired judges will decide on the new district boundaries.

"All this time, to not have anyone on the council representing us is a shock  and unacceptable," Ada Tamayo, a teacher for 17 years, told the LA Times.

It was an overwhelming display by the voters that it was time to modernize our electoral system, Jose F. Moreno, president of the Anaheim City School District told the Orange County Register, and provide a voice for residents who have felt neglected, ignored and disrespected by the current system.
So close, but no cigar.

After rumors in recent weeks that Labor Secretary Tom Perez was the front-runner for being President Barack Obama's nominee for Attorney General, several media outlets are reporting that Loretta Lynch, U.S. attorney for Eastern New York, is likely to be named in the next few days.

People with knowledge of his plans publicly are downplaying it, saying that Obama is not ready to announce a nomination and is abandoning the option to push for confirmation this year while Democrats still control the Senate.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday that Obama has not made a decision, and the president told inquiring reporters that he'd let them know when he makes a decision. People with knowledge of his thinking say he does not plan to announce a choice before returning from a trip to Asia next week and will leave it up to the Republican-controlled Senate to vote on the choice in 2015.

Lynch would be the first black female to lead the Justice Department if she ends up being the choice. The sources who described Obama's plans did so on condition of anonymity without authorization to speak on the record.

Lynch, 55, would be Obama's second trail-blazing pick for the post after Eric Holder served as the nation's first black attorney general. Lynch is the U.S. attorney for Eastern New York, which covers Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island, a position she also held under President Bill Clinton.

Perez, who is 53 and is the son of Dominican immigrants, ran the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division before he became labor secretary last summer. Earlier this month, the New York Times, citing unidentified sources, reported that the front-runner for attorney general apparently was Perez.

But days later, the Associated Press reported that a White House official said that the president had not yet decided who he wants to succeed Holder, a longtime friend and political ally who announced last month he will step down whenever a new attorney general is confirmed.

Last week, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus endorsed Perez for attorney general, and exhorted Obama to nominate him.

Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, a Texas Democrat and the first vice chairman of the CHC, said in a statement: The Congressional Hispanic Caucus proudly endorses Secretary Tom Perez to serve as the next Attorney General of the United States. Throughout a distinguished career that includes Secretary of Labor and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Tom Perez has demonstrated a deep commitment to justice and civil rights. As a dedicated public servant, he has stood up for working families and advocated for the rights of all Americans  especially the most vulnerable.

Democrats on Capitol Hill have told the White House it would be difficult to win confirmation before they turn over the gavel at the end of the year, especially considering all the other competing priorities they are trying to complete while they are in power.

The White House considered the option of lame duck confirmation, but it didn't make political sense after Republicans won such a clear majority in this week's midterm. Pushing through a nominee so quickly would have tainted the pick with a process argument. It also could have opened the next attorney general to GOP claims of illegitimacy and a hostile oversight committee for the next two years.

It's unusual for Obama to pick someone he doesn't know well for such a sensitive administration post. But at a time when Obama is under political fire, her distance from the president could be an asset in the confirmation process. Another candidate Obama asked to consider the job, former White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler, asked not to be nominated out of concern her close relationship with Obama could lead to difficult confirmation amid partisan politics.

Lynch is seen as having little baggage or controversy as Republicans are promising tough scrutiny after years of battles with the long-serving Holder. The current attorney general is close to Lynch and appointed her as chair of the committee that advises him on policy. Since Lynch is unfamiliar to many on Capitol Hill, senators will have to quickly get up to speed on her record.

One lawmaker in particular is familiar with her work. Lynch filed tax evasion charges against Rep. Michael Grimm, a Republican accused of hiding more than $1 million in sales and wages while running a restaurant. Grimm, who won re-election Tuesday, has pleaded not guilty and is set to go to trial in February.

She's overseen bank fraud and other public corruption cases. She also charged reputed mobster Vincent Asaro and his associates for the 36-year-old heist of $6 million in cash and jewelry from a Lufthansa Airlines vault at Kennedy Airport, dramatized in the blockbuster movie "Goodfellas."

During her first tenure in the Eastern District, Lynch helped prosecute police officers who severely beat and sexually assaulted Haitian immigrant Abner Louima with a broken broom handle.

There was no immediate response from Lynch's spokeswoman.

Based on reporting by The Associated Press.

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Republicans won 35 percent of the Latino vote on Tuesday, thanks in part to a stepped-up nationwide GOP outreach effort that began in earnest after the 2012 election in which Mitt Romney won only 27 percent of the Latino vote.

But other factors also came into play to create a GOP recipe for success, political experts say.

The midterm doldrums  which often produce low turnouts, particularly among certain groups such as young and minority voters  struck again, resulting in older white people accounting for a disproportionate amount of votes. The traditional disillusionment of the party of the sitting second-term president again was a factor.

And among many Latinos, frustration  even anger  over President Obamas latest unfulfilled promise to overhaul immigration policy kept them home or made them particularly open to what Republicans had to say.

The most important lesson for all, said Alfonso Aguilar, a GOP strategist and former official in the George W. Bush administration, is that Latinos are not beholden to any one political party.

"The message in this election is that Latinos said 'We're not satisfied, we're a more sophisticated Latino community, we're independent,'" and not blindly supportive of any one party, Aguilar said.

The lessons for Democrats, Aguilar and others say, is that they are wrong if they assume the Latino support for them is a given.

Even when a Democratic candidate won a larger share of Latino voters than a GOP rival, in many races, the Republican candidate still won a solid enough share of Latinos to get him or her closer to a victory.

In Texas, for example, gubernatorial candidate Democrat Wendy Davis got 55 percent of the Latino vote, but GOP candidate Greg Abbott, who won, got 44 percent, a significant show of support for a Republican.

That said, however, Republicans should not feel too secure as far as Latinos go, Aguilar added.

Thirty five percent is an improvement, but the percentage of Latinos voting for Republicans was actually higher in 2010, it was 38 percent.

George W. Bush got 44 percent of the Latino vote in 2004, Aguilar noted, the result of years  going back to his days as Texas governor  of establishing a rapport with Latinos and making a true effort to understand the complexities of immigration.

So, given that, I wouldnt rest on laurels, he said.

For Republicans, sustaining  and building  Latino support means doing more than avoiding offensive rhetoric and having an enduring presence in ethnic communities, Aguilar said.

At the end, issues matter, Aguilar said. We have to lead on immigration. The issue of immigration is not going away. That doesnt mean doing Obamas amnesty, its doing something constructive that will include a path to legal status, work visas.

In Florida, with the large Puerto Rican community, we can look at Puerto Rican statehood  64 percent of Puerto Rican voters support statehood for Puerto Rico.

Jose Dante Parra, a Democratic strategist who headed Latino communications for U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, in 2010, said despite all the talk of the importance of Latino voters, get-out-the-vote efforts nationwide focused largely on women and white independents.

In Colorado, defeated incumbent Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat, did not devote enough attention to immigration reform  an issue that his GOP rival, Rep. Cory Gardner, once addressed with a hard line.

Many political experts say that Gardner , who won, was able to soften his tone and refashion the communitys perception of him with little challenge from Udall.

We always thought this election would come down to how many Latino voters turned out, Patty Kupfer, managing director of pro-reform group Americas Voice, told MSNBC. It doesnt look like the Udall campaign was run [as if] thats what the election is going to come down to.

Parra says he was stunned by the Democrats losses in Nevada.

Im alarmed, Parra said.

Both parties, but mostly Democrats, who had the most to lose, were focusing their efforts on red states and appealing to white Independents and female voters, Parra said. And the presidents delay with executive action on immigration really dampened enthusiasm with the base.

In Nevada, Democrats lost every seat that was up for grabs, Parra said, even where Democrats outnumber Republicans by vast numbers.

A notable example of strong Latino support was Nevadas race for governor.

Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval nailed 47 percent of the Latino vote, a remarkable improvement from when he first ran and got only 15 percent of their support. Sandoval angered many Latinos back then with his support for Arizonas tough immigration law  parts of which courts have struck down. But as governor, hes established or improved programs that have helped win him more Latino support.

One of the biggest common denominators in the Latino apathy in many parts of the country, or their decision to support Republicans, Parra said, was Obamas inaction on taking executive action on immigration.

Obama exasperated many Latinos by saying several times over the years that he would either get an immigration reform law passed during his presidency, or that he would take unilateral action to what Congress was unwilling to do.

The biggest issue for Latinos wasnt so much the inaction, Parra said, but raising the expectation then crashing it. Youre better off not saying anything and then surprising people afterward.
Ted Cruz is looking for new digs.

They purportedly will serve as the Texas lawmakers command center for a potential 2016 candidacy for president, reports U.S. News & World Report.

The publication says that Cruz, who has become one of the most headline-generating members of Congress despite the fact that hes only a freshman U.S. senator, has dispatched staffers to check out rentable locations in Houston.

Houston is home to Cruz and his family.

U.S. News & World Report said it received the information from sources who have knowledge about Cruzs efforts to find a place that could serve as his presidential campaign headquarters.

The quiet decision to begin searching for a campaign headquarters location is the latest indication of Cruz's seriousness about a White House bid, said the publication.

An unnamed source is said to have told the publication that Cruz wants to conduct a poll to see how feasible a presidential run would be before he makes a final decision.

"Cruz is a big data guy. He's big on polling, big on data. He's going to want to poll and none of those conversations are happening," the source said, according to U.S. News & World report. "My gut tells me he runs."

An analysis by U.S. News & World Report shows that Cruz was at the top of the list of potential 2016 candidates who have the most trips to "the first three nominating states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina."

This year, Cruz has made several trips to Iowa, the state that kicks off presidential voting. He leads in the number of trips to Iowa among other lawmakers who have been named as potential 2016 presidential candidates.

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With President Barack Obama vowing to press ahead on immigration, prominent Hispanic Republicans are worried about the reaction of staunch conservatives. They fear it will harm the party's ability to win over Latinos in the next presidential election and beyond.

While immigration was generally a muted issue in midterm elections dominated by the GOP, Obama promised the next day to move ahead on his own to remove the threat of deportation or grant work permits to an unspecified number of immigrants living here illegally.

"The initial reaction from Republicans is going to be very ugly and not well- thought-out, unfortunately," said Alfonso Aguilar, former chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship in the George W. Bush administration and executive director of Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles.

Aguilar said congressional Republicans must offer a plausible alternative to the president's plan, especially since the GOP-controlled House has shelved bipartisan immigration legislation. His call echoes those of some of the party's potential 2016 candidates to reach out to Hispanic voters in some way.

"Just saying 'let's repeal this,' or 'let's not fund it'  if that's the only reaction, that's going to antagonize Hispanics," Aguilar said.

But House Republican aides note that Speaker John Boehner and others have no effective way to tone down comments of members who stridently oppose looser immigration rules. Indeed, many of those members are proud to defy party leaders.

Boehner himself likened Obama's remarks to playing with matches. "He's going to burn himself if he continues to go down this path," Boehner said Thursday, a day after Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell warned the president not to act without congressional approval. Such a move, McConnell said, "poisons the well" for potential bipartisan efforts.

A Congress controlled by the GOP come January "will defend itself and our citizens from these lawless actions," said Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, adding "Americans do not want their borders erased."

Aguilar and others are concerned that conservative firebrands will go further in their rhetoric, perhaps by calling for Obama's impeachment or for mass deportations  creating a political sweet spot for Democrats not long after the Republican triumph at the polls and exposing a rift inside the GOP just as the party assumes control of both chambers.

"Republicans have a knack for shooting themselves in the foot," said Carlos Gutierrez, a commerce secretary under Bush who led that administration's failed effort in 2007 to enact comprehensive immigration changes. "The Republicans can overreact and give the impression that they're not so much against the concept of executive action but that they're against immigrants. And that would be a big problem."

Some possible GOP presidential contenders, including Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, have signaled a desire to tackle an overhaul of the nation's immigration system next year. Others outside Washington, including Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Rick Perry of Texas, have taken measures to appeal to Hispanics, including passing laws that allow some children of immigrants here illegally to pay in-state tuition at public colleges.

And not all Republicans agree that aggressive opposition to an executive action will yield an electoral disaster. Republican consultant Mike McKenna, who conducts polls and focus groups in several states, said that unless the president's effort is modest, "he's going to sink the (Democratic) party for 2016."

Obama faces enormous pressure to act from Latinos, an important part of the Democratic base. Immigrant advocates, labor leaders and others called on the president Thursday to act boldly, and dared Republicans to stand in his way.

"If they come after him," said AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka, Democrats will say, "Look, the lunatics are already running the asylum."

Advocates say the White House is weighing actions that would apply to those who meet a certain term of U.S. residency, perhaps 10 years. Also under consideration is whether to include parents of those who received deportation deferrals under Obama, or only parents of children who are U.S. citizens because they were born here.

Hispanic voters were an important part of Obama's support in his presidential campaigns and are seen as a crucial voting bloc in the years to come. A Republican Party "autopsy" of the 2012 election made only one policy recommendation: The GOP should embrace "comprehensive immigration reform."

That phrase typically means enhancing border security along with addressing the status of the roughly 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.

But many House Republicans, and some senators, owe their elections largely to GOP primary voters who adamantly oppose any form of legalization.

Exit polls of voters in Tuesday's midterms found that while 57 percent of Americans favor offering immigrants living here illegally a chance to apply for legal status, the issue splits along party lines: 78 percent of Democratic voters supported providing a way for immigrants to remain in the country, while 56 percent of Republican voters said they should be deported.

Mitt Romney won just 27 percent of the Latino vote in 2012, the worst performance for a GOP nominee in 16 years. Many Republicans attribute it to his hard-line stance on immigration.

Voters "don't care what you know until they know you really care about them," said Hector Barreto, who has advised Republican presidential campaigns since 2000. "I don't see how you go into 2016 and you brag about how great you're going to be for the Hispanic community and you never did anything on this issue."

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An organization that opposes plans by the northeastern region of Catalonia to hold an informal independence poll has held protests in several cities across Spain.

Several hundred people in Madrid listened to Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa read out a statement Saturday describing the poll planned for Nov. 9 as disrespectful of "the rule of law or the true will of the people."

The group, called Libres e Iguales (Free and Equal) includes politicians, intellectuals such as Vargas Llosa, and aristocrat Carlos Falco. It held gatherings in 52 cities said Popular Party lawmaker, Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo.

A protest in the Catalan city of Girona proceeded peacefully, she said. However one in Barcelona saw minor scuffles between pro- and anti-consultation supporters that the police broke up without making arrests.

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A federal judge has struck down Arizona's 2005 immigrant smuggling law on the grounds that it's trumped by federal statutes.

The ruling Friday by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton marked the latest in a string of restrictions placed by the courts on Arizona's effort to get local police to confront illegal immigration.

Bolton ruled the state law deprives federal authorities of their exclusive right to prosecute smuggling crimes.

Gov. Jan Brewer's office and the U.S. Justice Department, which pressed the challenge on behalf of the Obama administration, did not immediately respond to emails Saturday morning.

Lawmakers passed Arizona's smuggling law in response to voter frustration over the state's position as the nation's then-busiest immigrant smuggling hub. It marked Arizona's second major immigration law and was followed in 2010 with a broader law that required police to make immigration checks in certain cases, inspiring similar laws in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah.

The smuggling law had been used frequently in Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's trademark immigration efforts, though the courts have curbed his immigration powers over the 17 last months.

The law came under heavy criticism after more than 2,000 immigrants who paid to be sneaked into the country were charged with conspiring to smuggle themselves across the border.

Critics said the law was intended for the smugglers, not their customers. Last year, a different federal judge barred the tactic, ruling that the policy criminalizes actions that the federal law treats as a civil matter. County officials agreed to drop their appeal of that ruling.

Bolton struck down the smuggling law as part of the Obama administration's challenge of the 2010 law, which made a minor change to the 2005 statute. The dispute over the smuggling law is all that remains of the administration's challenge of the 2010 law.

Still, a coalition of civil rights groups is pushing a separate challenge to the 2010 law in federal court.

Arizona's list of immigration policies that have been shelved is growing. Still, the courts have upheld some Arizona policies, such as a section of the landmark 2010 immigration enforcement law that requires police to check people's immigration status under certain circumstances.

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Catalonia's government said more than a million voters participated Sunday in an informal vote on whether the wealthy northeastern region should secede from the rest of Spain.

The regional Catalan government pushed forward with the vote despite Spain's Constitutional Court ordering its suspension on Tuesday after it agreed to hear the Spanish government's challenge that the poll is unconstitutional.

The Catalan government said that over 1.1 million of the 5.4 million eligible voters had voted by 1300 local time at polling stations manned with more than 40,000 volunteers. Results are expected Monday morning.

"Despite the enormous impediments, we have been able to get out the ballot boxes and vote," regional president Artur Mas said after depositing his ballot at a school in Barcelona.

The ballot asks voters two questions: should Catalonia be a state, and if so, should it be independent.

Polls show that the majority of Catalonia's 7.5 million inhabitants want an official vote on independence, while around half support breaking centuries-old ties with Spain.

Catalonia's push for independence comes two months after the Scots voted to remain in the United Kingdom.

Mas has said the vote, which lacks guarantees such as an electoral roll, is only symbolic and will likely lead to anticipated regional elections that will stand-in for a referendum on independence.

There was a festive atmosphere as hundreds lined up in front of another school in Barcelona, with some wearing pro-independence regalia.

"I voted for independence because I've always felt very Catalan," said Nuria Silvestre, a 44-year-old teacher. "Maybe I wasn't so radical before, but the fact that they are prohibiting (the vote) from Madrid has made me."

Catalan television showed similar lines of voters across the region.

Spanish state prosecutors announced late Saturday that they were opening an investigation to determine if by holding the informal vote in defiance of the court's suspension the Catalan government has broken the law.

Catalonia has seen rallies of hundreds of thousands of pro-independence supporters for the past three years, after Spain's economic downturn and the Spanish government's repeated denial to grant Catalonia control over its financial future.

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New York City's mayor visited a polluted canal in Puerto Rico's capital city on Saturday and said the federal government must do more to clean it up.

Mayor Bill de Blasio visited the Canal Martin Pena with other elected officials and said later that nearly 27,000 residents of San Juan are affected by the contaminated waterway.

"We went to a neighborhood in distinct need that deserves help from our federal government," he said, adding that Washington must "remember its obligation" to the U.S. territory.

Before touring the canal, de Blasio met with Puerto Rican Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla.

The mayor was in San Juan for the Somos El Futuro conference, an annual gathering of Democratic elected officials from New York City and New York state.

He told conference attendees at a reception that New York "would not be all it is today if it weren't for the contributions of the Puerto Rican people over the last century that have made New York so strong, so vibrant."

Switching to Spanish, de Blasio said the Caribbean island "has a special place in our hearts" and offered praise for "the climate, the food and above all the people of Puerto Rico."

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A White House lunch aiming for cooperation boiled into a fresh dispute with newly empowered Republicans over immigration reform Friday, with GOP leaders warning President Barack Obama to his face not to take unilateral action. The president stood unflinchingly by his plan to act.

Republicans attending the postelection lunch at Obama's invitation said they asked him for more time to work on legislation, but the president said his patience was running out. He underscored his intent to act on his own by the end of the year if they don't approve legislation to ease deportations before then and send it to him to sign.

The Republicans' approach, three days after they resoundingly won control of the Senate in midterm elections, "seemed to fall on deaf ears," Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said in a telephone interview. "The president instead of being contrite or saying in effect to America, 'I hear you,' as a result of the referendum on his policies that drove this last election, he seems unmoved and even defiant."

"I don't know why he would want to sabotage his last two years as president by doing something this provocative," said Cornyn. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell earlier this week said the president's stance was "like waving a red flag in front of a bull."

Obama press secretary Josh Earnest said there was no reason that executive action on immigration should kill opportunities for the president and Republicans to find common ground.

"I could stand up here and say Republicans to vote once again for the 50th time to repeal the Affordable Care Act, that that's playing with fire or waving a red flag in front of a bull. I'm not really sure what that means," Earnest said.

The White House said lawmakers went home from the meeting with a parting gift  a six-pack of beer brewed at the White House. The White House also said Obama laid out three areas where he and Congress could work together before the end of the year  emergency funding to combat the Ebola outbreak, approval of a federal budget and quick action on spending to fight the Islamic State militant group.

House Speaker John Boehner's office said he told Obama he was ready to work with the president on a new authorization for military force against the IS group if the president worked to build bipartisan support. The White House announced soon after lunch ended that the U.S. was sending as many as 1,500 more troops to Iraq to serve as advisers, trainers and security personnel as part of the mission. Obama is also asking Congress for more than $5 billion to help fund the fight.

Friday's two-hour meeting was tense at times, according to a senior House Republican aide. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, about to lose his grip on the upper chamber, barely said a word, the aide said. The aide said at one point as House Speaker John Boehner was making an argument on immigration, Obama responded that his patience was running out and Vice President Joe Biden interrupted to ask how long Republicans needed. Obama angrily cut Biden off, the aide said.

The aide was not authorized to describe the back-and-forth publicly by name and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Publicly Obama's tone was more upbeat as he opened the gathering. He pledged to work on ending long-running partisan gridlock and to be open to Republican ideas. The president said the lunch was a chance to "explore where we can make progress" after Americans showed in the midterm elections that they wanted to see more accomplished in Washington.

"They'd like to see more cooperation," Obama said, sitting at the middle of 13 lawmakers in the Old Family Dining Room set with the Truman china. "And I think all of us have the responsibility, me in particular, to try to make that happen."

Reporters were ushered out before any lawmaker spoke or the lunch of sea bass was served. Republican descriptions of the meeting were provided after they returned to Capitol Hill.

For the record, Boehner's office said he suggested that the president should back a Republican jobs bill as a starting place for bipartisan action.

Obama said at the start he was interested in "hearing and sharing ideas" for compromise on measures to boost the economy, then mentioned his personal priorities of college affordability and investment in road and building projects. He also touted improved monthly job growth numbers out Friday as evidence his economic policies are working, saying, "We're doing something right here."

Briefings on Ebola and the Islamic State from Pentagon officials dominated much of the meeting, and the immigration debate was said to have lasted about half an hour. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Republicans told Obama that any executive order, particularly on immigration but any issue, would be a "toxic decision."

"He still hasn't come to grips with the reality of the election and the consequences of the election," Barrasso said. "His tone and tenor didn't seem to reflect that of somebody whose policies were just significantly rejected all across the country just three days ago."

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Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who is in line to be the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is working on a border security bill and will aim to move it once the new Republican-controlled Congress convenes in January.

Johnson said his legislation would include a guest-worker program to reduce the incentive for illegal immigration. It would build on work already done by Congress, including a House bill aimed at ensuring that 90 percent of would-be border-crossers are stopped.

The senator made the announcement as President Barack Obama prepares to take executive action on immigration, saying that Congress has forced him to because of its inaction on the matter.

Johnson outlined his plans in an interview with the Associated Press amid growing GOP complaints over Obama's planned action by year's end to address the faulty immigration system.

The president's executive action plan, which could remove the threat of deportation for millions, is emerging as a major point of conflict with congressional Republicans who made big gains in last week's midterm elections.

"Regardless of what President Obama does, I'm going to move forward with a very strong border security bill," Johnson said. "I hope President Obama doesn't take that executive action because I think for many people that will poison the well and certainly make it more difficult to solve the immigration problem."

Johnson said he would move his border bill "as quickly as we can" once the new Congress convenes. He said he supports solving the immigration system one issue at a time  the stated position of most Republicans.

Advocates expect the president to expand a 2-year-old program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that temporarily halted deportations and granted work permits to more than 500,000 immigrants brought here illegally as kids.

"I prefer and still prefer to see it done through Congress, but every day that I wait we're misallocating resources," Obama said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Johnson said DACA is responsible for increasing illegal immigration, including the recent crisis of unaccompanied minors from Central America  something administration officials dispute. He said it should be overturned, though he stopped short of pledging to attempt to do that legislatively.

"Is that going to pass? Probably not," Johnson said of any attempt to undo DACA. "I don't think President Obama is going to sign that into law. I'm not sure we'd get Democrats to vote for it. We can talk about it, and we should talk about it."

Immigration advocates are pessimistic that the incoming GOP-controlled Congress could pass immigration legislation that would be acceptable to the Latino community or that Obama would sign. But Johnson said he's committed to trying. His plans for a border bill are unusual in that it would include a guest-worker provision  something that many businesses that rely on migrant workers support, but some conservatives say hurts American workers.

"The No. 1 incentive is people coming into this country seeking opportunity and seeking work," Johnson said. "We need a functioning guest-worker program."

Based on reporting by the Associated Press.

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The U.S. global development agency is preparing internal rules that would effectively end risky undercover work in hostile countries, such as the once-secret "Cuban Twitter" program it orchestrated, the Associated Press has learned.

The new policy follows an AP investigation this year into work by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which established a Twitter-like social network in Cuba and secretly sought to recruit a new generation of dissidents there while hiding ties to the U.S. government.

The AP found USAID and its contractor concealed their involvement in the Cuban programs, setting up a front company, routing money through Cayman Islands bank transactions and fashioning elaborate cover stories. That subterfuge put at risk the agency's cooperation with foreign governments to deliver aid to the world's poor; last month, it pledged more than $140 million to fight Ebola in West Africa.

USAID's proposed policy closely mirrors a Senate bill this summer, according to government officials familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to talk about the matter publicly. That bill would prohibit USAID from spending money on democracy programs in countries that reject the agency's assistance, where staff wasn't directly hired and where USAID would have to go to "excessive lengths to protect program beneficiaries and participants."

The officials said USAID's high-risk democracy efforts would likely be moved under the aegis of another arm of the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit group that receives money from the U.S. government. Such a change would have effectively made it impossible for USAID to run programs such as the "Cuban Twitter" project, known as ZunZuneo.

In a statement late Sunday, USAID said it would continue to carry out democracy programs in "politically restrictive environments" and aim to be transparent. But it said the new rules would balance safety and security risks, which aligns with proposed legislation that would stop USAID's democracy work in hostile countries that outright reject the agency's help and where USAID's role had to be minimized. The statement said that the rules have not been finalized.

"We will also examine risks that might constrain effective implementation of the projects or undermine the safety of our partners, such as programmatic, legal, financial, physical and digital security-related risks," it said.

The officials said USAID acknowledged changing its democracy-promotion policy after being questioned by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who wrote the agency following the AP's report in April. Leahy called the program "cockamamie" in a subcommittee hearing.

Both ZunZuneo and a second program to recruit Cuban dissidents were part of a larger, multimillion-dollar effort by USAID to effect change in politically volatile countries. But the officials said they were told USAID had concluded some democracy programs in hostile countries were not effective.

In April, the AP reported that ZunZuneo evaded Cuba's Internet restrictions by creating a text-messaging service that could be used to organize political demonstrations. It drew tens of thousands of subscribers who were unaware it was backed by the U.S. government. U.S. officials said it ended in late 2012 because funding ran out.

In August, the AP reported that the agency secretly dispatched young Latin Americans to Cuba using the cover of health and civic initiatives to provoke political change. That program sent Latin youth  often posing as tourists  around the island for as low as $5.41 an hour to scout for people they could turn into political activists.

Shortly after the AP revealed the existence of the social media project this year, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked USAID to turn over all records about the program as part of a broader review of the agency's civil-society efforts. And this summer, the agency's inspector general confirmed it was examining the ZunZuneo program.

It is illegal in Cuba to work with foreign democracy-building programs. Nevertheless, one USAID contract was signed days after American contractor Alan Gross was arrested in December 2009 for smuggling sensitive technology into the country. Cuba's highest court denied his appeal, and he remains imprisoned there.

The USAID programs were also launched around the time newly inaugurated President Barack Obama talked about a "new beginning" with Cuba after decades of mistrust, raising questions about whether the White House had a coherent policy toward the island nation.

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President Enrique Pena Nieto's government, which had seen smooth sailing through its first year and a half in office, is suddenly listing in the face of multiple crises.

The administration scrambled Monday to respond to growing questions about the family's multi-million-dollar mansion owned by a government contractor, even as it tried to calm continuing protests over the disappearance  and probable murder  of 43 students.

President Pena Nieto cut his visit short by four days: he rescheduled his trip to Nov. 9-Nov. 15, although it had been originally planned from Nov. 7 to Nov. 17.

The president has tried to shift Mexico's focus away from a bloody fight against organized crime to a series of political and economic reforms his administration successfully pushed through congress.

But as he attended a summit in China on Monday, Pena Nieto's aides were trying the quell doubts about what the administration called his wife's 2012 purchase of a $7 million mansion from a company that had won extensive contracts from the State of Mexico while Enrique Pena Nieto was governor. According to a story published Sunday by Aristegui Noticias, the house was built and is still owned by Ingenieria Inmobiliaria del Centro, a company belonging to Grupo Higa.

Grupo Higa also owns a company that was part of the Chinese-led consortium awarded a $3.7 billion high-speed rail project this year. The consortium was the only bidder. All other competitors bowed out, saying they had been given only two months to put together an offer on the extremely complex project.

But three days before the Aristegui story was published, Pena Nieto abruptly cancelled the contract, and the government announced it would take new bids in the interest of transparency.

Presidential spokesman Eduardo Sanchez denied there was anything improper about the housing deal in which the company granted first lady Angelica Rivera a loan to buy the mansion, saying she had money from her former career as an actress.

Sanchez said the property borders Rivera's existing home. "She needed to expand her house, she bought out her neighbor, regardless of who that neighbor was," Sanchez said. "Why is she to blame for being the wife of the president, being successful, having savings and, forgive the expression, spending it anyway she wants?"

But according to the Aristegui article, it wasn't a random purchase of a neighbor's property to expand. Rivera and Pena Nieto worked extensively with the architect, Miguel Angel Aragones, to build the home to their specifications. The plans posted on the website archdaily.com are dated October 2010 and the home is listed as being completed in 2011.

Sanchez's explanation was met with much skepticism.

According to the Aristegui article, Grupo Higa and its affiliates won more than $8 billion pesos ($600 million) in construction projects in the State of Mexico, which borders Mexico City, while Pena Nieto was governor.

It said an air-charter service owned by Grupo Higa ferried Pena Nieto during his 2012 presidential campaign, while another Grupo Higa company printed campaign materials.

"It opens up a lot of questions ... If she needed a loan to buy a house, why didn't she go to a bank?" said Mexico City-based security analyst Alejandro Hope. "When they realized it was a big government contractor, didn't that set off an alarm bell ... that a transaction like that might represent a conflict of interest?"

Federico Estevez, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, said Pena Nieto's administration is "just being backed into a corner" by repeated scandals.

Pena Nieto began his term as the master of high-level political pacts to pass structural reforms, but made little progress on more chronic problems like corruption and violence.

"The carpet sort of has been pulled out from underneath him," Estevez said. "He's really good at elite consensus ... but this is no longer about that."

Meanwhile, officials were still trying to respond to public horror at the disappearance of 43 teachers college students at the hands of a city police force on Sept. 26.

On Friday, officials said members of a drug gang based in Guerrero  the state where Acapulco is located  had confessed to killing the students and burning their bodies, leaving only charred fragments of bones and teeth.

But supporters of the missing students, refusing to believe they are dead, continued protests on Monday, building on demonstrations that have blocked major highways and set government buildings ablaze in recent weeks.

On Monday, relatives and supporters battled federal police in Acapulco, then blocked roads leading to the Pacific resort's airport, forcing tourists to trudge for a half-mile (a kilometer) to the terminal.

Many then had to make the same hike back after finding the airport closed.

"We are carrying out a symbolic closures of the airport," said protest leader Felipe de la Cruz, who said outgoing flights would be blocked for a couple of hours to press demands that the government find the students.

Protesters had left and roads reopened by later afternoon. The airport returned to normal operations around 3:30 p.m., said security supervisor Rafael Fajardo. He added that flights were on time.

Pena Nieto's predecessors spent much of their terms lurching from one scandal to another, and the country's outbursts of violence threaten to erase the president's efforts to convince the world that Mexico has put the worst behind it.

"I think we are going through some difficult moments," Sanchez said. "I am sure we'll get through this, and that something positive has to come out of this all."

Based on reporting by the Associated Press.

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The day after Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval won re-election last week, Jose Dante Parra, a Democratic political analyst who has worked for a number of candidates in the state, was aksed whether or not Sandoval would choose to challenge the lame-duck Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, for his seat in 2016.

"A lot of it," Parra told Fox News Latino, "depends on how hard the leaders of the national Republican Party lean on him."

The early indication is that they are prepared to lean pretty hard.

Senate Republicans, riding high after capturing the majority, say a top priority in 2016 will be defeating Reid.

"It's not just about being in the majority, it's about expanding the majority at this point," Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., told reporters. "We'll do whatever it takes to make that happen."

In 2016, Republicans will be trying to protect 24 seats to the Democrats' 10. Heller said he and other Republicans have spoken to Sandoval about challenging Reid.

"I think he'll want to assess and we'll give him a little time to do that," Heller said of Sandoval.

Heller, who is seeking the chairmanship of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the effort to defeat Reid would be "just business."

The GOP won handily on Election Day, tightening its grip on the House and regaining control of the Senate after eight years. Republicans knocked off Democratic Senate incumbents in Arkansas, North Carolina, Colorado and Alaska  where the latest vote count shows Dan Sullivan prevailing over Sen. Mark Begich  and claimed a handful of open seats.

The GOP could hold as many as 54 Senate seats next year, as three-term Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu is considered the underdog in her Dec. 6 runoff against GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy.

Sandoval, 51, is basking in the glow of an improving state economy and a deal that will bring Tesla Motors battery manufacturing gigafactory to the Reno area, a move with the potential to bring $100 billion into the state. Sandovals economic advisors say the Tesla deal also could create tens of thousands of jobs in Nevada.

The deal also gave Sandoval a national sheen and buzz about loftier political positions in the future.

In the midterm election last week, state Sen. Mark Hutchison, a Republican whom Sandoval backed for the lieutenant governor post, beat Democratic state Rep. Lucy Flores, a victory that paves the way for Sandoval, who would have to cede the governor's seat midterm to the lieutenant governor, to challenge Reid.

Sandoval was born in Redding, Calif. He has broken many barriers in the Silver State, serving on the Nevada Assembly and the Gaming Commission and becoming the first Latino to hold statewide office. He has also served as the states attorney general and a U.S. District Court judge.

Heller faces off against Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker to become chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is responsible for getting more Republicans elected to the U.S. Senate.

The Nevada senator wasted no time in trying to drum up votes among the incoming class of GOP senators. Heller escorted Senator-elect Thom Tillis of North Carolina into current Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's office and chatted with several of the newly elected.

McConnell held a meeting for the incoming class.

Told that Wicker says he has the votes for the chairmanship, Heller said, "He's a lot more cocky than I am. It's an uphill battle. He's got seniority, but I'm not discounting anything at this point and nor should he."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Conservative Republicans want to drag must-pass spending bills into their fight with President Barack Obama over his planned executive action on immigration, inviting comparisons to last year's shutdown showdown over the health care law.

In the Senate, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Mike Lee of Utah are among those arguing to use an upcoming must-pass spending bill  either in December or next year  to try to block Obama from taking unilateral action to protect millions of immigrants here illegally from deportation

"Congress appropriates the money," Sessions told reporters Wednesday. "That's a clear constitutional power. If Congress disapproves of the president providing ID cards for people who've been in the country illegally, then it should not appropriate money to fund it."

GOP leaders appear cool to the effort since it could lead to a confrontation with Obama that, if taken too far, could spark another government shutdown. They have given the Appropriations Committee the green light to negotiate a catch-all omnibus spending bill for the budget year that began last month. Any deal with Democrats still in control of the Senate would not include language to block Obama on immigration.

A temporary spending measure expires Dec. 11 and a partial government shutdown would occur if Congress doesn't act by then. Sessions said he'd rather have Congress pass another short-term spending bill so that the new Republican Senate could be in place to tackle the issue.

Rep. Matt Salmon said he had more than 50 GOP lawmakers' signatures on a letter to Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., urging that any spending bill include language saying nothing in it could be used to implement an executive immigration policy.

"This is an opportunity for everybody to come together and speak clearly and forcefully that doing this unconstitutional act would be a mistake, and if you do it, there won't be funding for it," said Salmon, R-Ariz.

But he stopped short of threatening to withhold his vote for any spending bill that omits such language.

"Members are going to decide for themselves whether or not it's something they want to fall on their sword over," Salmon said.

The plans circulated on Capitol Hill as lawmakers returned to Washington a week after midterm elections in which Republicans trounced Democrats and retook the Senate. Obama's determination to move forward with his promised executive action despite the election results has emerged as a major point of conflict between congressional Republicans and the White House. Obama is under intense pressure from Latino advocates to act.

Incoming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said it would be a "big mistake" for Obama to issue an executive order on immigration, but has promised that there will not be a government shutdown.

But any attempt by conservatives to use must-pass spending legislation to block Obama raises the specter of a government shutdown similar to last year when conservatives insisted on trying to use a spending bill to defund the health care law. That was a temporary political blow to the GOP, and Republican leaders have vowed to avoid a repeat, especially when they're determined to show voters they can deliver on a positive agenda.

It's unclear how widespread the support is for trying to use spending legislation that must come to a vote during the lame-duck session to stop Obama from acting. At least a few high-ranking Republicans sounded open to the idea. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who will take over in January as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is looking at the idea, according to spokeswoman Beth Levine.

A spokeswoman for House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said he supports "employing every tool afforded to Congress by the Constitution to stop President Obama's unconstitutional actions."

The sentiment appears to be growing in the wake of defiant comments by Obama in support of executive action, which he argues is necessary because the GOP-led House never acted on a sweeping, bipartisan immigration bill passed last year by the Senate.

The plans could present problems for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and McConnell as they try to navigate a controversy-free lame duck session in which they complete necessary work on a few items, including legislation to fund the government into the new year.

And it's a fight that Democrats might welcome as they look to 2016 presidential elections in which the power ofLatino voters is expected to be greater than it was in the midterms, and Republicans instead of Democrats will be playing defense with 24 GOP Senate seats at stake to Democrats' 10.

Obama has not provided details of his plans, but advocates in touch with the White House anticipate he will expand a two-year-old program that temporarily lifted the threat of deportation for more than 500,000 immigrants brought here illegally as kids, while allowing them to get permits to work legally in this country. The program could be extended to potentially millions more people based on criteria including how long people have been in this country and whether they have children or spouses who are U.S. citizens.

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A day before a court order was to take effect in Kansas paving the way for gay couples to marry, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday put it on hold.

The lower court order cleared the way for same-sex couples to marry despite a ban in Kansas on gay marriage.

Sotomayor issued the stay at the request of Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt. The state wants to continue enforcing its ban while the federal courts review a legal challenge filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two lesbian couples.

But Sotomayor also directed the ACLU to file a response to Schmidts request by 4 p.m. Central time Tuesday.

The ACLU lawsuit last month for the two lesbian couples challenges the states gay-marriage ban. It resulted in the lower-court order.

Equality Kansas Executive Director Tom Witt said Sotomayor could quickly reconsider once she receives the response.

Meanwhile, advocates for same sex marriage prepared arguments Tuesday in the hope of persuading the U.S. Supreme Court to allow gay nuptials to go forward in Kansas.

Gay rights advocates weren't sure when or where gay couples would be able to get marriage licenses because of a tangle of litigation over the issue, which also includes a separate Kansas court case. Schmidt argues that the complex legal situation argues for keeping the ban in place for now.

"The road to freedom is sometimes circuitous," ACLU attorney Doug Bonney said.

Same-sex marriage is legal in 32 states.

Tom Witt, executive director of the gay rights group Equality Kansas, said even if the U.S. Supreme Court clears the way for gay marriage in Kansas, it's not clear whether licenses will be issued to same-sex couples in all 105 counties.

Kansas never has recognized same-sex marriages, and voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the state constitution in 2005 to reinforce the gay marriage ban.

But gay couples in Kansas began seeking marriage licenses after the U.S. Supreme Court refused Oct. 6 to hear appeals from five other states seeking to preserve their gay-marriage bans following adverse lower-court rulings. In Kansas, state district court clerks' offices issue marriage licenses after a mandatory three-day wait.

Chief judges in Douglas and Sedgwick County directed their clerks' offices not to issue licenses to same-sex couples, prompting the ACLU's federal lawsuit.

But the chief judge in Johnson County, in the Kansas City area and the state's most populous county, ordered licenses to be issued.

That prompted Schmidt to file a petition with the Kansas Supreme Court, hours before the ACLU filed its federal lawsuit. One lesbian couple in Johnson County obtained a license and married in the meantime.

The Kansas court said marriage-license applications from same-sex couples could be accepted but not issued until its case is resolved. That order remained in effect Tuesday.

Schmidt has argued that if the federal judge's injunction takes effect, it will apply only in Douglas and Sedgwick counties, because their court clerks were sued. But Bonney believes the federal order would apply statewide.

"I think you're still going to see questions around the state  and different answers," Witt said.

Based on reporting by The Associated Press.

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Two U.S. senators expressed optimism Tuesday that Cuba will free imprisoned American government contractor Alan Gross.

Sens. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, and Tom Udall, a Democrat from New Mexico, said they met with Gross for about two hours during a trip that included meetings with Cuban officials.

Gross was detained in December 2009 while working to set up Internet access as a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. He was tried and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Gross' family has said he has threatened to commit suicide if he is not released by his birthday next May.

Asked about the possibility of Gross going free, Flake said: "I do feel we're closer there, one because what Alan Gross has said himself, this is going to end one way or another."

Both senators added, though, that Cuban officials gave no indication any development was imminent.

Flake also cited as cause for optimism a report by the Associated Press on Monday that USAID is preparing internal rules that would effectively end risky undercover work in hostile countries.

The new policy follows an AP investigation this year into work by the development agency, which set up a Twitter-like social network in Cuba and secretly sought to recruit a new generation of dissidents on the island while hiding ties to the U.S. government. The AP found USAID and its contractor concealed their involvement in the programs by setting up a front company, routing money through Cayman Islands bank transactions and fashioning elaborate cover stories.

"There's been a realization and a statement that there won't be covert programs run out of AID anymore and that's a good thing," said Flake, who is a longtime advocate of loosening the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. "It's not just a source of tension between countries; it puts Americans in danger and it really cheapens AID's mission around the world, in my view."

USAID has denied the Cuba programs constituted covert action.

Cuba has said repeatedly it wants to negotiate with the U.S. over the fate of Gross as well as three Cuban agents who are imprisoned in the U.S. on charges including espionage. Cuba argues they were only keeping tabs on militant exile groups blamed for terror attacks on the island.

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The U.S. government now patrols nearly half the Mexican border by drones alone in a largely unheralded shift to control desolate stretches where there are no agents, camera towers, ground sensors or fences, and it plans to expand the strategy to the Canadian border.

It represents a significant departure from a decades-old approach that emphasizes boots on the ground and fences. Since 2000, the number of Border Patrol agents on the 1,954-mile border more than doubled to surpass 18,000 and fencing multiplied nine times to 700 miles.

Under the new approach, Predator Bs sweep remote mountains, canyons and rivers with a high-resolution video camera and return within three days for another video in the same spot, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the effort on condition of anonymity because details have not been made public.

The two videos are then overlaid for analysts who use sophisticated software to identify tiny changes  perhaps the tracks of a farmer or cows, perhaps those of immigrants who entered the country illegally or a drug-laden Hummer, they said.

About 92 percent of drone missions have shown no change in terrain, but the others raised enough questions to dispatch agents to determine if someone got away, sometimes by helicopter because the area is so remote. The agents look for any sign of human activity  footprints, broken twigs, trash.

About 4 percent of missions have been false alarms, like tracks of livestock or farmers, and about 2 percent are inconclusive. The remaining 2 percent offer evidence of illegal crossings from Mexico, which typically results in ground sensors being planted for closer monitoring.

The government has operated about 10,000 drone flights under the strategy, known internally as "change detection," since it began in March 2013. The flights currently cover about 900 miles, much of it in Texas, and are expected to expand to the Canadian border by the end of 2015.

The purpose is to assign agents where illegal activity is highest, said R. Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol's parent agency, which operates nine unmanned aircraft across the country.

"You have finite resources," he said in an interview. "If you can look at some very rugged terrain (and) you can see there's not traffic, whether it's tire tracks or clothing being abandoned or anything else, you want to deploy your resources to where you have a greater risk, a greater threat."

If the video shows the terrain unchanged, Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher calls it "proving the negative"  showing there isn't anything illegal happening there and therefore no need for agents and fences.

The strategy was launched without fanfare and expanded at a time when President Barack Obama prepares to issue an executive order by the end of this year to reduce deportations and enhance border security.

Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, applauded the approach while saying that surveillance gaps still remain. "We can no longer focus only on static defenses such as fences and fixed (camera) towers," he said.

Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican who co-authored legislation last year to add 20,000 Border Patrol agents and 350 miles of fencing to the southwest border, said, "If there are better ways of ensuring the border is secure, I am certainly open to considering those options."

Border missions fly out of Sierra Vista, home of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, or Corpus Christi, Texas. They patrol at altitudes between 19,000 at 28,000 feet and between 25 and 60 miles of the border.

The first step is for Border Patrol sector chiefs to identify areas that are least likely to attract smugglers, typically far from towns and roads. Analysts scour the drone videos at operations centers in Grand Forks, North Dakota; Riverside, California; and Sierra Vista. After an initial survey, the drones return within a week for another sweep.

Privacy advocates have raised concerns about drones since Customs and Border Protection introduced them in 2006, saying there is potential to monitor innocent people under no suspicion. Lothar Eckardt, the agency's executive director of national air security operations, said law-abiding people shouldn't worry and that cameras are unable to capture details like license plate numbers and faces on the ground.

Eckardt looked on one September morning as a drone taxied down a runway in Sierra Vista, lifted off with a muffled buzz, and disappeared over a rocky mountain range into a blue Arizona sky. About a dozen computer screens line the wall of their trailer, showing the weather, maps and real-time images of the ground below.

Eckardt said there is "no silver bullet" to border security but that using drones in highly remote areas is part of the overall effort. If there's nothing there, he said, "Let's not waste the manpower here. Let's focus our efforts someplace else, where they're needed."

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The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to block a lower-court ruling that struck down an Arizona law that denies bail to undocumented immigrants.

The decision Thursday by the nation's highest court clears the way for a wave of bail hearings for immigrants across Arizona.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals three weeks ago overturned the state's voter-approved law, which denies bail to immigrants in the country illegally who are charged with a range of felonies that include shoplifting, aggravated identity theft, sexual assault and murder.

The 11-member panel ruled that the law violates due process by imposing punishment before trial.

The law was passed in a referendum with 78 percent of the vote in 2006 amid a series of immigration crackdowns in the state. Other measures made English the states official language, barred undocumented immigrants from receiving punitive damages in lawsuits and prohibited them from receiving certain government services and benefits.

A three-member panel of the appeals court had previously upheld the no-bail law, finding it didnt run afoul of the Constitution. But the laws challengers succeeded in getting the 11-member panel to consider the case.

Arizona is one of at least four states with laws taking on the issue of bail for undocumented immigrants. Missouri and Alabama have similar laws, while Virginia has a less stringent statute that allows immigrants to argue their case for bail before a judge.

The law's defenders say the Supreme Courts recent ruling calls into question bans on bail in 40 states.

Based on reporting by the Associated Press.

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The U.S. government will launch a program in December to grant refugee status to some people under the age of 21 who live in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and whose parents legally reside in the United States.

U.S. officials say parents can ask authorities free of charge for refugee status for their children in the Central American countries, which are plagued by poverty and vicious gang violence. The program does not apply to minors who have arrived in the U.S. illegally.

Vice President Joe Biden announced the program Friday at the Inter-American Development Bank, where the presidents of the three Central American countries will present a plan to stem child migration from their countries.

U.S. officials said that children deemed refugees will be able to work immediately upon arrival in the U.S., opt for permanent residency the following year and for naturalization five years later. They did not say how long the process of receiving refugee status will take.

Central American children who meet the requirements will be part of a quota of 4,000 people from Latin America receiving refugee status each fiscal year, officials said. The U.S. quota of Latin America refugees currently consists of Cubans and Colombians.

Applicants who don't meet the requirements will be evaluated to see if they can be admitted conditionally under a non-permanent migratory status that allows them to work temporarily in the U.S.

Biden's announcement comes as President Barack Obama is poised to unveil a series of executive actions on immigration that will shield possibly around 5 million immigrants living in the country illegally from deportation, according to advocates in touch with the White House.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., criticized the plan, which he described as "government-sanctioned border surge" if Obama acts as expected.

"The policy announced today could open Pandora's box, allowing potentially even more people to come to the United States. This is bad policy and undermines the integrity of our immigration system," Goodlatte said in a news release.

The program aims to be a legal and safe alternative to the long and dangerous journey some Central American children take north to reach the U.S. and to reunite with their parents in the U.S. Tens of thousands of unaccompanied child and teenage migrants showed up at the U.S. border earlier this year.

On Wednesday, Salvadoran Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez said the plan includes measures to stimulate economic growth, improve public safety, improve government agencies and provide better education and training opportunities.

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House Republicans debated Friday how to respond to President Barack Obama's expected executive action on immigration, with GOP leaders anxious to craft a solution that satisfies the demands of their most conservative members without courting a government shutdown.

Options under consideration include suing the president to overturn his action, or passing a stand-alone bill to try to stop him. Some are pushing for House Republicans to their write own immigration bill  something they've been unable to do in the past two years  to show they are serious about acting and pre-empt Obama.

But it's not clear that any of these options will be enough to deflate efforts brewing among conservatives to use upcoming must-pass spending bills to block Obama from acting. Pragmatists in the caucus are warning loudly that such an approach could result in a government shutdown because Obama would likely veto the bill. But at least some on the right appear unconcerned.

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said he refused to "take a position we're not going to use the power of the purse to restrain a president who has threatened to violate the Constitution in the most obscene manner possible."

As for shutdown fears, King pointed to the GOP's success in last week's midterms as evidence that the party wasn't hurt by the last government shutdown it provoked. That was a year ago, in an unsuccessful effort to "defund" Obama's health care law.

"We picked up beaucoup seats in the House and won the vast majority in the Senate. Where's the political penalty for doing the right and just and responsible thing?" King said.

Many Republicans, though, are determined to avoid a shutdown, convinced they would pay a political price, and disturbed that they already find themselves in the position of debating one barely a week after the midterms awarded them control of the Senate and a bigger majority in the House.

"Shutting the government down would only serve the president's interests and we shouldn't take the bait, we Republicans shouldn't take the bait," said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa.

Obama's announcement could come as early as next week and could extend protections from deportation to as many as 5 million people now in the country illegally. Changes to law enforcement programs and the issuance of business visas also are expected.

Obama says he must act because the House GOP never did even after the Senate passed a sweeping bipartisan bill more than a year ago that included a pathway to citizenship for most of the 11.5 million people in the country illegally.

At least some Republicans say they should act now to deprive Obama of that argument, although immigration advocates have little hope of the House arriving at a bill that could pass the Senate and that Obama would sign.

"Right now if he does this and makes all these declarations of the House won't do anything and yada yada yada, what's our response? You're right, we haven't done anything," said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho. "Our only defense is we are working on it."

Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., is exploring options including a lawsuit to stop Obama on immigration, aides said. House Republicans already have announced a lawsuit against Obama over his health care plan but have not yet filed it.

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President Obama told critics on Thursday that his executive action on immigration could easily be undone  if immigration reform passes.

"I would advise that if in fact they want to take a different approach, rather than devote a lot of time trying to constrain my lawful actions as the chief executive of the U.S. government in charge of enforcing our immigrations laws, that they spend some time passing a bill," Obama said during a news conference in Yangon, Myanmar.

The president's comments came after news broke that he is considering a plan that would shield possibly around 5 million immigrants living in the country illegally from deportation as part of a broad set of executive actions that he could announce as early as next week.

Obama has pledged to move on the measures by year's end, and White House officials are debating whether to act soon after he returns this weekend from his current trip to Asia and Australia or wait until after Congress approves a major spending bill in December.

Several officials said Obama still hasn't received formal recommendations from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, but they said Obama is well acquainted with the realm of possibilities. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the status of the decision publicly.

The 5 million estimate includes extending deportation protections to parents and spouses of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have been in the country for some years. The president is also likely to expand his 2-year-old program that protects young immigrants from deportation.

Such a step would represent an expansive use of Obama's executive authority. The step would fall shy of what many immigrant advocates have been demanding, but is sure to enrage Republicans who are already trying to devise ways to thwart his actions.

"We're going to fight the president tooth and nail if he continues down this path. This is the wrong way to govern. This is exactly what the American people said on Election Day they didn't want," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Thursday. "And so, all the options are on the table."

Some conservatives in the House and Senate announced plans to push for language in must-pass spending bills to block the president from acting. But other Republicans warned that such a push could result in another government shutdown like the one last year over Obama's health care plan.

"My sense is that the vast majority of us want to do everything we can to stop it, but also want to avoid outcomes that would prove bad for the country as a whole," said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. It wasn't clear, though, what other options Republicans had.

The White House is likely to include parents and spouses of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, stipulating that they've resided in the U.S. for some period of time  possibly as little as five years. That group totals around 3.8 million people, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Although Obama is not able to grant citizenship or permanent resident green cards on his own without Congress, he can offer temporary protection from deportation along with work authorization, as he has done in the past.

Adjustments also are expected to the existing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that allowed immigrants under 31 who had arrived before June 2007 to apply for a reprieve from deportation and a work permit. More than 600,000 young immigrants have been shielded from deportation to date under the program. Removing the upper age limit so that applicants don't have to be under 31  one option under consideration  would make an additional 200,000 people eligible.

There may also be tweaks to business visa programs to speed up visas or make more available for high-tech workers or others.

Changes are also expected on the law enforcement side, including to a controversial program called Secure Communities that hands over people booked for local crimes to federal immigration authorities. A former administration official with knowledge of the plans said the Secure Communities program would be eliminated or at least renamed, although some of the concepts would remain.

Priorities for immigrants to be picked up by immigration authorities will also be revised to eliminate some of the less serious conduct that previously would have caused someone to be detained, said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose private details.

Advocates are gearing up to embrace the long-sought changes, which Obama has delayed twice, most recently under pressure from Senate Democrats concerned about the midterm elections. At the same time they intend to keep pushing for wider protections and a legislative solution.

"This is definitely a step in the right direction and we would still encourage the administration to go even bigger than the estimated 5 million," said Kica Matos, of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement. "This is a temporary fix and Republicans need to understand that the immigrant rights movement intends to wage a ferocious fight until we have permanent solution and that is through legislation."
House Republicans debated how to respond to President Barack Obama's expected executive action on immigration, with GOP leaders anxious to craft a solution that satisfies the demands of their most conservative members without courting a government shutdown.

Options under consideration include suing the president to overturn his action, or passing a stand-alone bill to try to stop him. Some are pushing for House Republicans to write their own immigration bill  something they've been unable to do in the past two years  to show they are serious about acting and preempt Obama.

Another option would be to pass a temporary spending bill into next year when the GOP will control the Senate, to try to see if Republicans can use their grip on the purse strings to gain leverage over the president.

But it's not clear that any of these options will be enough to deflate efforts brewing among conservatives to try to use upcoming must-pass spending bills to block Obama from acting. Pragmatists in the caucus are warning loudly that such an approach could result in a government shutdown because Obama would likely veto the bill. But at least some on the right appear unconcerned.

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said Friday he refused to "take a position we're not going to use the power of the purse to restrain a president who has threatened to violate the Constitution in the most obscene manner possible."

As for shutdown fears, King pointed to the GOP's success in last week's midterms as evidence that the party wasn't hurt by the last government shutdown it provoked. That was a year ago, in an unsuccessful effort to "defund" Obama's health care law.

"We picked up beaucoup seats in the House and won the vast majority in the Senate. Where's the political penalty for doing the right and just and responsible thing?" King said.

Many Republicans, though, are determined to avoid a shutdown, convinced they would pay a political price, and disturbed that they already find themselves in the position of debating one barely a week after the midterms awarded them control of the Senate and a bigger majority in the House. House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who will take over as majority leader come January, both are intent upon avoiding a shutdown.

"Shutting the government down would only serve the president's interests and we shouldn't take the bait," said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa.

Obama's announcement could come as early as next week and could extend protections from deportation to as many as 5 million people now in the country illegally. Changes to law enforcement programs and an expansion of business visas also are expected.

Obama says he must act because the House GOP never did after the Senate passed a sweeping bill more than a year ago that included a pathway to citizenship for most of the 11.5 million people in the country illegally.

At least some Republicans say they should act now to deprive Obama of that argument, although immigration advocates have little hope of the House arriving at a bill that could pass the Senate and that Obama would sign.

"Right now if he does this and makes all these declarations of the House won't do anything and yada yada yada, what's our response? You're right, we haven't done anything," said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho. "We need to quit trying to fix the blame and fix the problem."

Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., is exploring options including a lawsuit to stop Obama on immigration, aides said. House Republicans already have announced a lawsuit against Obama over his health care plan but have not yet filed it, so it could be expanded to include immigration.

Some on the right have gone so far as to suggest that Obama should be impeached if he takes unilateral action on immigration, but few if any in the House view that as a viable option, even if they think it might be merited.

"Doing something that's an impeachable offense and getting impeached are two different things," said Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., who's leading the conservative effort to include language in must-pass spending bills to try to block Obama from acting. "Impeachment's not going to be on the table."

Meanwhile there's debate within the White House on whether Obama should announce the immigration decision as early as next week when he returns from a trip in Asia, or wait until Congress finishes work on a government-funding bill that must be done by the time an existing one expires Dec. 11.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday that "I'd like to get the finances of this country out of the way" before Obama acts. But his office provided a statement from him Friday to clarify that Congress must act to fund the government "regardless of when the president acts to provide relief to families."

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President Obamas looming announcement on major changes to the U.S. immigration system could take a financial and economic toll on the states, some critics say  as undocumented residents come out of the shadows and, in some cases, become eligible for benefits.

The White House has not confirmed the details or the timing of the presidents executive action plan, but the president has vowed to act before years end. As Fox News reported on Wednesday, the president could act as early as next week  and a draft document calls for giving millions of illegal immigrants a deportation reprieve as part of that plan.

This would immediately raise questions about the impact on states where illegal immigrant populations are concentrated.

"State and local governments and taxpayers will pay the price if President Obama takes immigration into his own hands, Republican Texas state Sen. Kelly Hancock told FoxNews.com in a statement.

The draft Obama plan calls for expanding a program known as deferred action, which currently allows some undocumented residents who came to the U.S. as children to stay. The potential expansion would extend that to anyone who entered before they were 16, and before January 2010  a change estimated to affect up to 300,000 people.

The bigger change would, according to the draft, extend the program to some illegal immigrant parents of U.S. citizens and legal residents  affecting up to 4.5 million people.

The impact on the states is a subject of speculation at this point, as its unclear whether states would give these newly protected immigrants access to things like drivers licenses, health care and in-state tuition for college.

Dan Holler, spokesman for the conservative Heritage Action, said, for starters, it will have a ripple effect on jobs  because they likely would be handed a Social Security card and the ability to work in more varied occupations.

Thats going to put extra pressure on a job marketplace that is, by most accounts, not doing so well, he charged. Some communities will be hit hard and others wont, based on where the illegal immigration trends are, and what the job markets are like. There is a jobs component here that just cant be ignored.

While giving immigrants who are here illegally deferred action status likely would not make them eligible for green cards or the panoply of federal social services, including Medicaid, each state has its own laws dictating the level of state-funded benefits such as protected immigrants can get. Some are more generous than others. One guide would be how states reacted when the administration enacted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy in 2012.

After that measure, the U.S. approved 550,000 applications. Five states had 60 percent of the approvals: California, Texas, Illinois, New York and Arizona, according to a study by the Brookings Institution. Those DACA immigrants are now able to get drivers licenses in 10 states and access to in-state college tuition in 17 states.

California, Washington, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Washington, D.C., also now offer low-income DACA recipients health insurance. Others states like Texas and Nebraska offered no new benefits under DACA.

Under any future changes, states like California and Texas probably would see the biggest impact based on their populations.

According to the most recent statistics by the Department of Homeland Security, there were 11.4 million people in the U.S. illegally in 2011. State Census figures in 2010 showed that 2.5 million lived in California and 1.6 million in Texas, representing 6.8 percent and 6.7 percent of their total populations, respectively. Many of those, particularly in California, may be eligible for new benefits, under any new deferred action policy. (Currently, however, 23 states already offer illegal immigrants a host of health care and other welfare services, with eligibility varying.)

Right now it is up to the states what kind of care they want to give illegal immigrants. After DACA, some states gave illegal immigrants access to a full range of services, others did not, said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes the push for an executive order.

I think it is a very unsettled question, but I do believe the largest states will go ahead and make people eligible for their programs, she added. Theres not likely to be new tax revenue to pay for that [at the state level]. Its just not there unfortunately.

Not everyone sees the executive order plan as an economic negative. There is a thorny constitutional question that needs to be addressed, but from a pure policy perspective such an action will have positive effects on the United States, said Alex Nowrasteh, immigration policy expert at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Legalizing some parts of the unauthorized immigration population will allow them to come forward, said Nowrasteh. It will also allow these unauthorized immigrants to be legal workers which means they will become more productive, making higher wages, competing on a fair and even step with the rest of American workers.

And as for paying for it, Wendy Feliz of the American Immigration Council said the millions of working immigrants who would be paying new taxes would be contributing to the revenue stream.

They will get work permits now and that will ensure that 100 percent of them will be paying income taxes, she told FoxNews.com The states would benefit. Really, it would make them more accountable, it would make them pay more and they will be able to participate more.

Republican Texas state Sen. Charles Schwertner, disagrees, saying he believes the states will be more fiscally burdened because Obamas executive actions would encourage more illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. in the long run. He said Texas will continue to resist offering new services to unauthorized immigrants, protected or not.

I guess it will put a strain on our medical system, our social safety networks, he told FoxNews.com. It encourages further lawlessness, and it is unfair to those seeking to immigrate legally.

Texas is going to take the stand it needs to  were going to protect our citizens.
President Barack Obama showed no sign of backing down on his plans to issue executive orders on immigration, saying the timing will not be affected by the threat of a government shutdown by Republicans, who says theyll try to include measures to block the orders in must-pass spending bills.

The President said at a news conference Sunday that he understands some Republicans disagree theres a need to fix immigration laws. But he said shutting down the government over the issue makes little sense.

"I take Mitch McConnell at his word that the government is not going to shut down," Obama said of the Kentucky Republican and incoming Senate majority leader who has previously rejected talk of a shutdown. Obama repeated his pledge to abandon his executive orders if House Republicans were to quickly hold a vote on comprehensive immigration legislation that passed the Senate earlier this year.

Obama, who has pledged to act before the end of the year, is considering actions that will shield up to 5 million undocumented immigrations living in the U.S. from deportation.

He said the main factor is getting it right, adding that any action he takes will require changes on how the Homeland Security Department operates.

Obama, who just completed a trip through Asia that included attending the Group of 20 economic forum in Australia, also touted his unexpectedly productive swing through the Asia Pacific as a strong week for American leadership that resulted in deals with China and other regional powers on issues like climate change, trade and economic growth.

Taking on another area of tension between the White House and Republicans, the president all but threatened to veto congressional legislation that seeks to force construction of an oil pipeline from Canada to Texas. The House passed a bill last week and the Senate is expected to move on the measure in the coming days.

The Keystone pipeline has been a pet project for Republicans for the past several years. But now some members of Obama's own Democratic party see a political incentive in forcing a vote, most notably Sen. Mary Landrieu of oil and gas-producing Louisiana who faces a December runoff with her Republican challenger in the midterm elections.

Obama showed little sign of being willing to sign off on a bill in an attempt to give Landrieu a political lifeline. Instead, he reiterated his long-standing position that the only way the project could move forward is if a State Department review declared it environmentally sound.

"We have to let the process play out," he said.

While Obama and Republican lawmakers talked of cooperation in the days after the GOP took control of the Senate in midterm elections this month, the confrontations over immigration and the pipeline appear to make it more likely that the two sides will fall back into the same pattern of gridlock that defined the president's last four years in office.

With that in mind, Obama has appeared to relish in being away from Washington this week, embracing his ability to strike deals with foreign leaders that don't require approval from Congress. The crowning achievement of his trip was an agreement with China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, marking the first time Beijing has outlined such a plan.

Obama also highlighted the agreement among the G20 leaders to boost global gross domestic product by more than $2 trillion over five years by investing in infrastructure and increasing trade.

Based on reporting by the Associated Press.

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The fate of a little-noticed ballot measure in strongly Democratic Oregon serves as a warning to President Barack Obama and his party about the political perils of immigration policy.

Even as Oregon voters were legalizing recreational marijuana and expanding Democratic majorities in state government, they decided by a margin of 66-34 to cancel a new state law that would have provided driver's licenses to people who are in the United States illegally.

Obama is considering acting on his own, as early as this week, to possibly shield from deportation up to 5 million immigrants now living illegally in the country. Some Republicans in Congress are threatening a government shutdown if the president follows through.

"The Oregon measure tells you these measures are not easy or simple," said Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute. "The political cost may be significant, even in blue states."

The state law had seemed to be popular. It easily passed last year with bipartisan support in the Democratic-controlled Legislature and was signed Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber, who was re-elected Nov. 4.

Opponents barely gathered enough signatures to put the repeal question on the ballot. Immigrant rights groups outspent their opponents 10-1.

Still, the measure failed in every county but the state's most liberal one, Multnomah, home to Portland. Even there it trailed significantly behind other Democratic candidates and causes.

"It was really the epitome of a grassroots effort," said Cynthia Kendoll, one of the activists who led the campaign against licenses. "There's such a disconnect between what people really want and what's happening."

Obama made his postelection pledge on immigration despite the drubbing that Democrats took across the country. He said he had to act because Congress has deadlocked on immigration for years.

A bipartisan Senate bill to provide citizenship to many of the 11 million people in the U.S. illegally died in the Republican-controlled House, and with the GOP now holding a majority in the Senate, many believe it is unlikely any broad immigration measure could make it to Obama before the end of his term.

Allowing immigrants in the U.S. illegally to remain in the country generally polls well. Even 57 percent of the conservative-leaning national electorate that voted Nov. 4 favors legalization, according to exit polling for the Associated Press and other news organizations.

Immigration has been seen as a winning issue for Democrats because Hispanic and Asian populations account for an increasing share of the electorate, especially in presidential years.

Eleven other states have granted driver's licenses to people in the U.S. illegally, and 17 allow them to pay in-state tuition at public universities.

But Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., which advocates more restrictions on immigration, says voters often are befuddled by complex immigration proposals and polling questions, overstating the actual support for an immigration overhaul.

The Oregon vote, he said, is proof of that.

"Whenever the public gets that sort of clear-cut, black-and-white issue for tougher controls  even in Oregon, when they're legalizing dope  they support them," Krikorian said. "It really highlights how this issue is not a Republican-liberal issue like, say, taxes and abortion, but an up-down issue, elites versus the public."

Greg Olson, a lifelong Portland resident and conservative, was pleasantly surprised the driver's license law was repealed by such a large margin in his liberal state. "Licensing for driving I think is a privilege for a legal citizen," Olson said.

Oregon immigrant rights groups argue that the issue wasn't as clear as opponents are suggesting after the fact. The state has a relatively small immigrant community  only 12 percent of the population is Hispanic and 3 percent Asian, below the national average for both ethnic groups.

Because relatively little money was spent on the campaign, voters did not know why they should preserve the licenses, said Andrea Miller, director of the Oregon immigrant-rights group Causa.

"This was a very nuanced, very complex measure," Miller said. "Just because someone voted no doesn't mean they don't accept the immigrant community. It doesn't mean that they don't want immigration reform. It means they don't want that particular solution for Oregon."

Marshall Fitz of the Center for American Progress in Washington, which has argued that Obama should act, acknowledged that the first response of many voters may be unfavorable to immigrant rights groups' cause.

"Is there an instinct toward security, hunkering down and against welcoming the other?" Fitz said. "That's part of human nature. But that doesn't mean instincts can't be overcome by reason."

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Now that their party has seized the Senate and faces the pressure of governing, an ambitious group of first-term Republicans may try to use that new majority status, and the opportunities it brings, as a springboard to the presidency in 2016.

While many sitting senators have tried to make that jump, Barack Obama is the only one to accomplish that in the past half-century.

That history doesn't seem to be deterring at least four from trying to capitalize on their party's success in the midterm elections for possible runs for national office: Rand Paul of Kentucky, Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rob Portman from Ohio.

Each represents a different strain within the GOP.

Cruz, for example, is the tea partyer elected in 2012 who led the GOP through the last government shutdown. Rubio, voted in two years earlier, is a foreign policy hard-liner who supports a path to legal status for immigrants who are in the United States illegally.

As leadership opportunities grow with the GOP gaining the majority come January, each is working to bolster his case for those presidential ambitions.

"It is critical now that Republicans have won a majority that we stand up and lead," Cruz said as lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill this past week for a postelection session. "We have an opportunity to demonstrate bold, principled leadership."

Primary contests in Iowa and New Hampshire are little more than a year away, and prospective candidates in both parties are nearing decisions about whether to run.

Hillary Rodham Clinton remains the overwhelming Democratic front-runner, if she gets in, while more than a dozen Republicans are considering the race. In addition to the four senators, that list includes former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Scott Walker of Wisconsin. They are promoting the inherent advantages that state leaders have over those elected to a Congress suffering from gridlock and anti-Washington sentiment.

That dynamic is forcing senators who are would-be candidates to distance themselves from the very institution they serve.

"I have taken the strong position that this place is broken," Portman told The Associated Press while walking through the Capitol last week. "Whether I'm running for re-election in Ohio or running for national election, I'll continue to express my strong view that Washington is letting down the rest of the country."

Portman served four terms in the House before winning election to the Senate in 2010.

An early showdown over immigration, and the prospect of a second government shutdown in two years, will showcase differences between the ambitious senators.

Like most Republicans, Rubio opposes Obama's plans to issue an executive order before year's end that may shield from deportation about 5 million immigrants who are living in the United States illegally.

"The quandary is, what option do we have to stop it that isn't counterproductive? Ideally, you would be able to not fund it in the budget, but doing so could threaten shutdown," Rubio said in an interview. He said the American people do not need to suffer through the "shock" of another government closure.

Rubio's team thinks his failed immigration efforts ultimately will help his standing with Hispanic voters. In the coming month, the senator plans to outline a policy agenda that will include an alternative for Obama's health care overhaul.

Cruz is not ruling out another government closure, and his supporters note that voters did not punish Republicans this fall for the 2013 shutdown that furloughed more than a million workers and closed national parks for more than two weeks.

The Senate's top Republican, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has pledged that there will not be a shutdown. But Cruz has achieved hero status among conservative activists for his willingness to take on party leaders.

The libertarian-minded Paul, elected in 2010, is trying to harness energy from the tea party movement while broadening his appeal enough to win a national election.

He met privately with advisers in Washington last week to chart a road map for the coming months. A spokesman said the meetings were focused on "fundraising performance, grassroots engagement, communications and outreach" and included dozens of supporters from across the country.

Being part of the majority, Paul said in an interview, is a potent tool: Even with 53 percent of the senators, "you get 100 percent of the agenda."

Instead of backing a broad spending bill that would keep the federal government funded through next fall, Paul wants his party to approve individual ones to have more direct control over the administration.

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Some New Jersey jails have stopped honoring federal immigration requests asking them to hold on to inmates so that authorities can pursue deportation proceedings, according to nj.com.

The change in policy by some county jails came after the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to file costly lawsuits against those prisons who hold defendants for immigration authorities.

And so, some people who might be deportable are being released before immigration officials have a chance to begin the deportation process.

That is not sitting well with officials of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

When serious criminal offenders are released to the streets in a community, rather than to ICE custody, it undermines ICEs ability to protect public safety and impedes us from enforcing the nations immigration laws, said Harold Ort, a spokesman for ICE in New Jersey. Jurisdictions that ignore detainers bear the risk of possible public safety risks.

The catalyst for the ACLUs warning was a ruling in March by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit involving a man, Ernesto Galarza, who was a U.S. citizen with roots in Puerto Rico, and was held for three days in a Pennsylvania county jail on an ICE detainer after he posted bail.

The immigration detainer, which ICE submits to jails seeking the detention of someone the agency believes is deportable, calls for holding an immigrant for about two days after they are scheduled to be released.

Typically, ICE then assumes custody and initiates the deportation process.

ICE realized, however, that as a Puerto Rican, Galarza was a U.S. citizen, and withdrew the detainer.

An appeals court on Galarzas detention for ICE purposes determined that jails are not forced to honor immigration detainer requests.

Essentially the federal government cannot command the government agencies of the states to imprison persons of interest to federal officials, the appeals court wrote, according to nj.com.

The ACLU then fired off a warning to county jails.

Should an individual who has been wrongfully detained in your jail on the basis of an immigration detainer seek our assistance, the ACLU of New Jersey is prepared to pursue legal action to vindicate his or her rights, said a letter by the civil rights group, according to nj.com.

The news organization reported that the ACLU contends that ICE issued roughly 6,000 detainer requests to New Jersey county jails between October 2011 and August 2013.

The number of that total that was then put under ICE custody is unclear.

Several county jail warden have said they are no longer going to abide by ICE detainer requests.

Camden County Jail Warden David Owens said that while he will let alert ICE to the release of an inmate who could have immigration violations, his jail is no longer holding them until ICE picks them up.

Owens says he has little choice.

We will do what the 3rd Circuit tells us to do, Owens said. I will obey the law.

Union, Burlington and Ocean counties also are no longer honoring ICE detainers.

It is the policy of this department that individuals shall not be housed in this facility solely on an ICE detainer or warrant, Oceans policy reads, according to nj.com. Nor shall they be committed to this facility by a law enforcement agency without an accompanying commitment issued by a judge.

Meanwhile, other counties in New Jersey  and elsewhere in the country  say they are not going to hold immigrants in jail to facilitate deportation because it is creating a schism between local law enforcement and immigrant communities.

Many county officials say that some federal immigration enforcement programs are targeting people who have minor infractions, such as those involving traffic violations or DUIs, instead of serious criminals.

In the face of congressional inaction, counties across the country are responding to senseless family separations by issuing policies that prevent families from being funneled into detention and promote trust between immigrant communities and police departments, said a release by Union County officials, according to nj.com.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law Introductions 486-A and 487-A which will dramatically reduce the city's cooperation with ICE hold requests, except in cases where there are public safety concerns.

At the signing ceremony, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said, This bill sends a strong message that while our nations leaders have dragged their feet on immigration reform, New York City can and will lead. No longer will a person be unnecessarily sent through senseless immigration red tape under this new law."

Groups that favor strict immigration enforcement criticize the ACLU's actions in New Jersey.

The ACLU has turned this into a campaign, said Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., a group that advocates for lower immigration levels and tougher immigration laws. Its trying to intimidate sheriffs into not cooperating with ICE by telling them theyre going to sue them.

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Two presidents have acted unilaterally on immigration  and both were Republican. Ronald Reagan and his successor George H.W. Bush extended amnesty to family members who were not covered by the last major overhaul of immigration law in 1986.

Neither faced the political uproar widely anticipated if and when President Barack Obama uses his executive authority to protect millions of immigrants from deportation.

Reagan's and Bush's actions were conducted in the wake of a sweeping, bipartisan immigration overhaul and at a time when "amnesty" was not a dirty word. Obama is acting as the country  and Washington  are bitterly divided over a broken immigration system and what to do about 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally.

Obama wants to extend protection from deportation to millions of immigrant parents and spouses of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, and expand his 2-year-old program that shields immigrants brought illegally to this country as children.

A tea party-influenced GOP is poised to erupt, if and when Obama follows through on his promise.

"The audacity of this president to think he can completely destroy the rule of law with the stroke of a pen is unfathomable to me," said GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa, an outspoken opponent of relaxing U.S. immigration law. "It is unconstitutional, it is cynical, and it violates the will of the American people."

Some Republicans have even raised the possibility of impeachment.

Here's a timeline of then and now:

1986. Congress and Reagan enacted a sweeping overhaul that gave legal status to up to 3 million immigrants without authorization to be in the country, if they had come to the U.S. before 1982. Spouses and children who could not meet that test did not qualify, which incited protests that the new law was breaking up families.

1987. Early efforts in Congress to amend the law to cover family members failed. Reagan's Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner announced that minor children of parents granted amnesty by the law would get protection from deportation. Spouses and children of couples in which one parent qualified for amnesty but the other did not remained subject to deportation, leading to efforts to amend the 1986 law.

1989. By a sweeping 81-17 vote, the Senate in July voted to prohibit deportations of family members of immigrants covered by the 1986 law. The House failed to act.

1990. In February, President George H.W. Bush, acting through the Immigration and Naturalization Service, established a "family fairness" in which family members living with a legalizing immigrant and who were in the U.S. before passage of the 1986 law were granted protection from deportation and authorized to seek employment. The administration estimated up to 1.5 million people would be covered by the policy. Congress in October passed a broader immigration law that made the protections permanent.

2012. In July, the Obama administration announces a new policy curbing deportations for certain immigrants brought illegally to the country as kids. The policy, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, applies to people younger than 30 who were brought to the U.S. before they turned 16 and meet other criteria such as graduating high school. It has now granted two-year deportation reprieves and work permits to nearly 600,000 people.

2013-2014 (Congress). After months of work, the Senate in June of 2013 passes, 68-32, a huge immigration overhaul bill that includes a path to citizenship for immigrants who meet strict criteria. The House fails to act.

2014 Frustrated by Congress' inability to act on immigration, Obama announces in June that he'll use executive powers to cover as many as 5 million people. Like Bush, Obama is expected to extend deportation protections to families of U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Obama's anticipated action would not award legal status, but it would offer temporary protection from deportation and the possibility of obtaining a work permit. On Monday, Democratic leaders sent a letter to Obama saying they strongly support his plans to take executive action on immigration.

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The issue of immigration got pointedly personal this weekend as Rep. Xavier Becerra lashed out at former Bush administration Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The California Democrat seems to be emerging as the Obama administrations attack man in defense of the president plan to provide temporary relief to undocumented immigrants.

Appearing on a panel on CNN's "State of the Union," Gonzales said that President Obama should not act on immigration unilaterally now  before the end of the year, as he has vowed  when a new Congress will be in place in January.

"We now have a new Congress, a new congressional leadership, and I dont understand the urgency," Gonzales said, according to the Hill.

Becerra, a key player in immigration reform talks in the House, hit back, saying "If it were your child, and you were about to be separated from your child, simply because Congress is dysfunctional and doesnt get its job done, then you would say, 'My God, this is crazy, a citizen child being separated [from their family].'"

Becerra was part of a bipartisan group of congressional leaders who recently met with Obama in the White House after the Nov. 4 elections to discuss immigration reform and the presidents plan to use executive action to unilaterally move on some aspects of the bitterly divisive issue.

Among some of those aspects reportedly under consideration are expanding the so-called deferred action  suspending deportation  to include parents of U.S. citizens, parents of undocumented immigrants brought here as minors, as well as others.

Beginning last week, when news broke that Obama was planning on shielding about 5 million immigrants from deportation, Becerra has become the attack dog of sorts for the Obama administration to try and line up for executive action.

Republican congressional leaders have said that the president must not seek to circumvent Congress on immigration, and that if he acts alone on some parts of this matter it will doom efforts to achieve bipartisan consensus on a comprehensive reform bill.

Obama has countered that Republicans in House, where they have had a majority, have lacked the political will to bring a workable bill to the floor for a vote, much less pass one. The Senate passed a bipartisan measure last year, but many Republicans in the House opposed it because it included giving some undocumented immigrants the chance to legalize their status  a move that critics called amnesty that rewards lawbreakers and encourages more illegal immigration.

Recently, Becerra locked horns on executive action on immigration with Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, a member of the Senate Republican leadership, on Fox News Sunday.

"I believe it would hurt cooperation on every issue," said Barrasso. "It would be like the president pulling the pin out of the hand grenade and throwing in as we're trying to actually work together."

Becerra shot back: "I think the president has been very patient. He's been waiting a year and a half for the House Republicans to act on the bill that the Senate passed on a bipartisan basis."

"House Republicans continue to insist that the president must wait to help fix what everyone agrees is a broken immigration system," he added. "So, I think the president is right to move forward."

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House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi announced Monday that she had tapped Rep. Ben Ray Lujan to head the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and try to get the party back on track after a drubbing in midterm elections.

If approved, the 42-year-old Lujan would become the first Hispanic to hold the post of DCCC chairman, succeeding New York Rep. Steve Israel.

"Congressman Ben Ray Lujan is a dynamic and forward-looking leader with the fresh energy and ideas House Democrats need for victory in 2016," Pelosi said in a press release. "Congressman Lujan has the bold vision and determined leadership to deliver Democratic wins in difficult districts  and I am confident he will prove a tireless champion for our members and candidates across the country."

Lujan was born in Santa Fe to Carmen and Ben Lujan, who was the speaker of the New Mexico House of Representatives from 2001 until his death in December 2012. The younger Lujan has held several public service positions, inlcuding Deputy State Treasurer, Director of Administrative Services and Chief Financial Officer for the New Mexico Cultural Affairs Department.

In 2004 he was elected to the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission and in 2008 Lujan won the spot to succeed U.S. Rep. Tom Udall in New Mexico's 3rd congressional district.

The midterms of President Barack Obama's second term were widely expected to be tough for Democrats, but the party had even tougher going than expected as the GOP claimed a commanding majority and captured seats in typically favorable states such as New York, Illinois and Maine.

Democrats lost at least a dozen seats and Republicans should hold 246 in the next Congress, the most in nearly 70 years.

Lujan told reporters at a news conference that the 2016 presidential election year should be more favorable.

"We will be on the offensive to put the majority in play," he said.

Despite having their strength at an historic low, Democrats plan to stand pat with their Congressional leadership at elections on Tuesday. Democrats are expected to re-elect the 14-term Pelosi as House leader and 17-term Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland for the No. 2 job.

In addition to Lujan, Pelosi is recommending that Israel serve as chairman of policy and communications, crafting a message for the party; Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut to be the Steering Committee co-chairman and Rep. Donna Edwards of Maryland to be policy co-chair.

The Democratic caucus is expected to approve the slate.

Lujan told reporters Monday that he wants to "take lessons from the recent elections and get right to work."

Based on reporting by The Associated Press.

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Rep. Steve King caused widespread controversy earlier this summer when he said that families of Central American migrant children give their daughters birth control pills and send them down a rape path all the way through Mexico because the White House has created a magnet for migrants with its policies.

On Tuesday, the Iowa Republican did not back down from the comments made in July.

I would say to the families that were upset about what I had to say about their vulnerability to rape: What I delivered is what I learned down there from caregivers, and we should be upset  all of us should be upset  about a circumstance where families would send their daughters up with a 30 to 70 percent chance of being sexually abused on the way, he said while appearing on CNN. Thats appalling for me. I cant imagine doing that with, say, one of my granddaughters.

Kings original comments were made when Congress  and the country  was grappling with unprecedented influx of undocumented, unaccompanied child migrants coming to the U.S.-Mexico border.

On Tuesday, King said that the House bill passed in August in response to the child migrant surge aimed at enhancing border security could be approved by the Senate in the new session. He said the bill would help families.

It sends people back instead of putting them in the custody of (the Department of Health and Human Services), he said. We cannot have an open borders policy. Well empty out Central America, and then the United States is going to be buried under the burden of the social services that we so willingly provide.

King has openly opposed to the expected executive order on immigration hinted by president Obama.

The specific polices included in the final version of the executive action remain unclear, but it may include plans to tighten border security, expand work visas, and extend a DACA-type relief to more undocumented immigrants.

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The patch of sand between the White House and the Capitol is so full of lines that have been declared unpassable at one time or another during President Barack Obamas tenure that its sometimes difficult to see who has drawn what and where.

Especially when it comes to the thorny issue of immigration reform.

Take, for instance, the threat by some lawmakers that if the President, using executive action, extended deportation deferrals to millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States illegally or offered a path to citizenship, then Congress would shut down the U.S. government during the next budget battle.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), for one, was talking about that very possibility just a few weeks ago.

But now, top Republicans say that two things are clear: Last year's government shutdown hurt the party. And Republicans must not let the president's pending immigration action bait them into a repeat.

But some rank-and-file GOP lawmakers from safe districts don't see it that way. They say another shutdown must be an option if President Barack Obama keeps his promises.

The disagreement may force Republican leaders to quell an insurrection just when they hope to capitalize on what they consider a presidential blunder.

Republican Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana said he's tired of conservative pundits criticizing government shutdowns "rather than saying, 'Hey, this could be a good way of holding the president's feet to the fire.'"

Fleming, in language echoed by numerous colleagues, said his constituents "want us to use every tool available to us to stop, or in some way limit, executive amnesty. They think it's unlawful, it's unconstitutional. To them it's shocking."

Party leaders, however, would like to stop such talk.

"We will not be shutting the government down," soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has said repeatedly since the Nov. 4 elections.

There's evidence that it's taken congressional Republicans nearly a year to overcome public anger created when a budget impasse led to a partial government shutdown in fall 2013.

"Since bottoming out at 28 percent during the government shutdown," Gallup reported two months ago, Americans' favorable opinions of the Republican Party "are nearly back to pre-shutdown levels." At the same time, a majority still expressed unfavorable views of the party, the poll showed.

Many GOP lawmakers say they want to pass spending bills that would specifically prevent Obama from carrying out his proposed immigration changes. If, as widely expected, the president vetoes such bills, numerous House Republicans say closing the government should be used a last option to force a major political showdown and national debate.

Of course, during the height of a bruising re-election campaign, in an August interview with Politico, McConnell confirmed that his strategy for the coming session of Congress was exactly that.

Were going to pass spending bills, and theyre going to have a lot of restrictions on the activities of the bureaucracy, McConnell said. Thats something [the president] wont like, but that will be done. I guarantee it.

What may be more important than the GOP leadership saying a government shutdown isnt on the table is that the groups that pour money into the coffers of Republican politicians seem to be saying the same thing.

According to the New York Times, Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political group founded by the Koch brothers, has been holding meetings with GOP lawmakers urging them not to fight unilateral immigration action with a shutdown.

And Americans for Prosperity president, Tim Phillips, wrote an op-ed that counseled party leaders to carefully develop a strategy to counter the presidents, according to the Times.

It is important for the new Republican majority to stay focused on crucial priorities like rolling back Obamacare, passing the Keystone pipeline and other energy initiatives, and passing a free-market budget, he wrote. That means not overreacting to executive orders by the president.

Its unclear how much Republicans are paying attention.

"I don't think anybody wants a shutdown, but you've got to play the cards you're dealt," Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland said. "I don't think that is off the table at all."

Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas said: "If the government is shut down, it will be because the president perhaps vetoes a bill. But that will be the president shutting it down, not Congress."

Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia said Republican leaders are "going to do everything they can to prevent a shutdown," but he stopped short of ruling it out.

"Kowtowing to the president to let him work in a dictatorial manner is not in the best interest of America," Broun said, "and I think we need to do everything possible to prevent that."

Some House Republicans are less reserved. The House should consider impeaching Obama if he gives legal protection to "people who have violated the law," said Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina.

Asked about GOP leaders who say the party will struggle to win presidential elections unless it gains more support from Hispanics  in part by softening its stand on immigration  Jones said, "They're weak!"

"Your concern should be about the future of America and protecting the Constitution," he said, not "the next election."

Republican leaders say these House members view politics through a lens focused on their overwhelmingly conservative districts, not on statewide and presidential elections. These lawmakers can be ousted, the leaders say, only by losing to a Republican primary challenger who attacks from the far right. That encourages them to stay on the hard right.

Obama lost Westmoreland's district by 33 percentage points in 2012. He lost Broun's district by 27 percentage points, Smith's district by 22 points, and Fleming's and Jones' districts by 19 points each.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former House member who opposes a shutdown, said party leaders must "go to those people who are in very safe seats and appeal to their better nature."

Graham said his message to the rank-and-file Republicans is: "I'm not looking to make your life comfortable. I'm looking to make the party viable."

Some Republicans say shutdowns aren't particularly damaging.

"It's true that our numbers did drop precipitously" after the 2013 shutdown, Fleming said. "But they came up quickly, too."

And, he noted, Republicans expanded their House majority in this month's elections, and took control of the Senate.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday the addition of roughly 8,000 new jobs for Americans, including 5,000 that telecommunications giant Sprint will bring from all around the world.

Theyre coming back to the United States, which is a nice change, he said.

Trump, who takes office January 20, said the other 3,000 jobs will be hires from a new company called One Web.

Trump was elected in part on the promise to return to the United States jobs that American companies had moved overseas, in search of cheaper labor costs.

Last month, he announced that Carrier would keep roughly 1,000 jobs in Indiana, after months of criticizing the air-conditioning corporation on the campaign trail for plans to move the jobs to Mexico.

Trump spoke Wednesday from his Mar a Largo estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

The wealthy businessman-turned politician also said he had a nice and general conversation earlier in the day with outgoing President Obama.

Trump opposed the Obama administrations move last week to allow the United Nations to pass a resolution condemning Israel for building more settlements in the disputed West Bank.

He said Secretary of State John Kerrys speech earlier Wednesday defending the administrations U.N. decision spoke for itself.

Trump, who in recent days has been especially critical of the U.N., also said that the international body has tremendous potential but is not living up to itself.

Trump added he had help on the jobs deals from several people including Massayoshi Son, the chief executive officer for SoftBank of Japan, which owns Sprint.

Trump has had previous business dealings with Son, whom he described on Wednesday as a terrific guy.
Its customary for scribes to cobble together year-ender or review pieces about the news as the final days drip from the calendar. These essays help you recall something which unfolded in August or May. Or, gosh, that one thing back on January 2? Can you even believe that was this year? I thought that was last year for sure.

Here, we wont dissect those events. Well scrutinize the things on Capitol Hill and in politics which many expected to happenbut never did. Perhaps these circumstances did come to pass in a parallel universe somewhere. But they never materialized in the cosmos where we reside.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and several Democratic colleagues commandeered the Senate floor for 14 hours and 50 minutes in mid-June to discuss firearm violence. This emerge after the Orlando nightclub massacre and three-and-a-half-years after the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. Murphy and his allies called for increased gun control measures.

They never got them.

Same deal a week later when Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and John Larson, D-Conn., orchestrated an old-fashioned, 1960s-style sit-in. They took over the House chamber for more than a day to protest the lack of additional gun control measures.

That effort proved futile as well.

Then there was chatter from top Republican leaders intent to discipline Democrats for violating House rules with the sit-in, abusing floor staff and even mildly damaging the furniture inside the chamber.

Bring it on, dared House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., of rumored sanctions.

The Republican brass hoped to address the issue over the summer  and then before the election. But GOPers worried such a maneuver could poke the sleeping bear and elicit another sit-in. That could invigorate Democrats and harm Republicans. So the GOP didnt mete out any discipline at all. In the near year, House GOPers now plan to retool their rules to penalize lawmakers for similar transgressions. But those demerits would only apply to future infractions and not address what went down in June. Theres some question about the Constitutionality of the proposal.

So

Some political observers thought House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., might struggle to continue as Speaker late this year or in a floor vote come January in the new Congress. In July, outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the Wisconsin Republican was failing spectacularly.

If hes not careful, hes going to wind up just like (former House Speaker John) Boehner, R-Ohio., augured Reid, considering the restless bloc of conservatives which toils in the House Republican Conference ranks.

Some political observers wondered if Ryan would ever support President-elect Trump let alone find a way to work with him. Well, in a bizarre twist of fate, Mr. Trumps election was the best thing that ever happened to Ryan and his Speakership. Amid a skeptical House Freedom Caucus, vote counters argued Ryan had little margin for error on the floor to return to the Speakers suite on the first ballot. But since Mr. Trump won, Ryan finds himself in the most-solid position yet of his Speakership.

Somewhere along another timeline, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio., may have challenged Ryan for the Speakers gavel. But in this membrane, it was Pelosi who encountered a challenge for her position  from Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio.

House Democrats were fairly consistent in adopting budgets when they held the majority. Senate Democrats? A mixed record. Naturally, that produced howls of protest from Congressional Republicans. Some of the most-vocal protestations came from the then-chairman of the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan. But Republicans failed to adopt a budget this year. Ryan tried multiple things. But it never worked out.

Other things which didnt happen?

There was no fight over raising the debt ceiling in 2016. President Obama and Boehner took care of that in the fall of 2015, just before the Ohio Republican hit the Congressional exit. The debt ceiling is expected to ripen in mid-March. So, the debt limit could be an issue in 2017.

Republicans did not successfully repeal Obamacare this year, the seventh consecutive year they pushed to ditch the law. Congressional Republicans did send the final version of an Obamacare repeal package to the White House for President Obama to sign. But he vetoed that plan.

However, a successful repeal of Obamacare may have its best chances in 2017  especially with invigorated Congressional Republicans and President Trump in the White House.

There were no threats of a government shutdown in 2016. The Senate came within an hour of a lapse in funding for the government just a few weeks ago. It wasnt a crisis as the government would have been flush with cash at some point. The only question was when? Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., led a coalition of senators to improve health care packages for coal miners. Manchin & company pushed the issue toward a midnight fiscal deadline. Its unlikely the government would have technically shut down. It may have just lacked specific, Congressional direction as to how to spend its money for a few hours.

There was no fiscal cliff in 2016.

Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Ted Cruz, R-Texas., Rand Paul, R-Ky., Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., all ran for President. None secured their partys nomination.

Senate Democrats did not capture control of that body in this years elections. Democrats face a daunting challenge just to hang on to seats in the 2018 midterms.

Some Congressional Republicans implored the GOP to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen this year. Top Republican leaders arent friends of Koskinen. But they wondered if a push by members of the House Freedom Caucus to impeach Koskinen was a good idea. Did Koskinens alleged transgressions meet the Constitutional bar of high crimes and misdemeanors set for impeachment? Did Koskinen get due process from Congress? The House had only ever impeached one executive branch appointee since the beginning of the republic a Secretary of War in the 1870s. Was this a bridge too far? This is to say nothing of bogging down the Senate in 2017 with a trial to remove Koskinen.

The House sidestepped a guerilla effort to go over the heads of leaders by Reps. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kansas., and John Fleming, R-La., to impeach Koskinen. But Jim Jordan reignited that fuse on short notice this fall. The House finally voted to send the impeachment referral to the Judiciary Committee.

The issue is dead..for now.

A gyrocopter did not land on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol like one did in 2015.

So consider whats supposed to happen in 2017.

Talk about tax reform. A big infrastructure and spending package. Cutting deficits. More help for the military. Repealing and replacing Obamacare. And remember, Democrats are supposedly at their lowest ebb.

Well revisit all of those expectations this time next year.
Congress is already setting the stage to cut off U.S. funding to the United Nations in the wake of a contested vote last week in which the Obama administration permitted an anti-Israel resolution to win overwhelming approval, according to congressional leaders, who told the Washington Free Beacon that the current administration is already plotting to take further action against the Jewish state before vacating office.

Other punitive actions by Congress could include expelling Palestinian diplomats from U.S. soil and scaling back ties with foreign nations that voted in favor of the controversial measure, according to multiple sources who spoke to the Free Beacon about the situation both on and off the record.

The Obama administration is still under bipartisan attack for its decision to help craft and facilitate the passage of a U.N. resolution condemning the construction of Jewish homes in Jerusalem, a move that reversed years of U.S. policy on the matter.

The Free Beacon was the first to disclose on Monday that senior Obama administration officials played a key role in ensuring the measure was passed unanimously by the U.N. Security Council. This included a phone call by Vice President Joe Biden to Ukraines president to ensure that country voted in favor of the measure.

While Bidens office continues to dispute the claim, reporters in Israel and Europe confirmed in the intervening days that the call between Biden and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko did in fact take place.

With anger over the issue still roiling, leading members of Congress told the Free Beacon on Wednesday that they will not delay in seeking retribution against the U.N. for the vote. This could include cutting off U.S. funding for the U.N. and stripping the Palestinian missions diplomatic privileges.

Click for more from The Washington Free Beacon.
President Obama designated two national monuments in Utah and Nevada Wednesday as part of the outgoing presidents efforts to secure and expand his environmental legacy, and to possibly bind the hands of President-elect Donald Trump.

The White House announced that The Bears Ears National Monument in Utah will cover 1.35 million acres in the Four Corners region. The move is a victory for Native American tribes and conservationists for whom the land is considered sacred, but sparked intense opposition from Republicans.

"This arrogant act by a lame duck president will not stand," Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah., tweeted.

The president also announced a 300,000-acre Gold Butte National Monument outside Las Vegas that will protect an ecologically fragile area that includes rock art, artifacts and fossils.

Todays actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes, Obama said in a statement.

The Gold Butte designation was applauded by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who said he was overjoyed at the news.

President Obama is a courageous man. I could not be more grateful to him and his team for working with me to make this happen, and for everything he has done to protect public lands in Nevada. By designating Gold Butte a national monument, President Obama has shown once again why he is one of greatest environmental presidents in American history, Reid said in a statement.

In Utah, state Republican leaders claimed the designation there would add another layer of federal control, and close the area to new energy development. While Republicans agreed the area is worth preserving, they expressed concern that it would restrict energy development, as well as the ability of residents to camp, hike and gather wood in the area.

Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz said Obama had ruined a bipartisan compromise in the works.

"After years of painstaking negotiations with a diverse coalition, Utah had a comprehensive bipartisan solution on the table that would have protected the Bears Ears and provided a balanced solution. Instead, the president's midnight proclamation cherry picked provisions of the Public Lands Initiative and disregarded the economic development and multi-use provisions necessary for a balanced compromise, he said.

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said his office is planning a lawsuit over the issue.

It is extremely disappointing that President Obama has declared another national monument here in Utah, ignoring the voices of so many in our state, particularly those closest to the designated space, Reyes said. By significantly restricting access to a large portion of public lands in Utah, the President weakens land management capabilities and fails to protect those the Antiquities Act intended to benefit.

However, Native American groups were delighted, with Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye calling it an exciting day.

"We have always looked to Bears Ears as a place of refuge," Begaye said. "The rocks, the winds, the land  they are living, breathing things that deserve timely and lasting protection."

Obamas latest environmental move is the latest in a series of actions to nail down his legacy before Trump is inaugurated. Trump has pledged to remove many environmental regulations to drilling and other energy mining, and has promised to undo much of Obamas environmental agenda.

Last week, the president ordered U.S.-owned waters in the Arctic Ocean and certain areas in the Atlantic Ocean placed "indefinitely" off-limits for future oil and gas leases. He has also blocked new mining claims outside Yellowstone National Park.

While the monuments were designated by executive action, it may require action by Congress to remove. Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, told The Associated Press that the Antiquities Act allows presidents to create monuments, but does not give them authority to undo one.

However, that did not stop congressional Republicans from saying they intended to overturn Obamas latest move. Rep. Chaffetz said he looked forward to helping President-elect Trump overturn the Utah designation.

"We look forward to working with President-elect Trump to follow through on his commitment to repeal midnight regulations. We will work to repeal this top-down decision and replace it with one that garners local support and creates a balanced, win-win solution, he said in a statement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday its time for our country to move on to bigger and better things after the Obama administration issued sanctions against Russia for its alleged 2016 election hacking.

It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things, Trump said in a written response released four hours after the announcement. Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."

The Obama administration announced sanctions against Russias intelligence services, while ejecting dozens of intelligence operatives from the U.S. as part of a response to what it says are efforts by Moscow to influence the election.

Using an executive order, President Obama sanctioned the GRU and the FSB -- two of Russia's intelligence services as well as other entities and individuals associated with the GRU. The cybersecurity firm hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate the hack of its emails earlier this year concluded the hacking came from the Fancy Bear group, believed to be affiliated with the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency.

In addition to the sanctions, the State Department has declared 35 Russian intelligence operatives "persona non grata" in the U.S., giving them 72 hours to leave, and is shutting down two Russian compounds in Maryland and New York.

The Maryland property is a 45-acre property at Pioneer Point, and was purchased by the Soviet government in 1972.

President Obama expels 35  diplomats in Cold War deja vu. As everybody, incl  people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless Adm. pic.twitter.com/mleqA16H8D  Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) December 29, 2016

The New York property is on Long Island and is 14 acres and was purchased by the Soviet government in 1954.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said in response to the announcement that Moscow will consider retaliatory measures.

"We think that such steps by a U.S. administration that has three weeks left to work are aimed at two things: to further harm Russian-American ties, which are at a low point as it is, as well as, obviously, to deal a blow to the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the president-elect," Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow.

The Russian Embassy in the UK took a different approach, tweeting out a picture of a lame duck and blasting what it called "Cold War deja vu."

The Treasury Secretary meanwhile has named two individuals -- Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev and Aleksey Alekseyevich Belan -- it says were involved in "malicious cyber-enabled activities."

"These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior," Obama said in a statement.

Obama also announced that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI will release declassified information on Russian cyberactivity to help "identify, detect and Russia's global campaign of malicious cyber activities."

Obama also said that the administration will be providing a report to Congress "in the coming days" about Russian attempts to interfere in the election, as well as previous election cycles.

The president also hinted that his administration intends to do more to hold Russia accountable.

"These actions are not the sum total of our response to Russia's aggressive activities," Obama said. "We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicized."

U.S. intelligence services have concluded that the Russians interfered in the election to try and help President-elect Donald Trump win. Trump has dismissed the conclusions.

However, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. welcomed the move in a statement.

"Russia does not share America's interests. In fact, it has consistently sought to undermine them, sowing dangerous instability around the world. While today's action by the administration is overdue, it is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia," Ryan said.

Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY., also praised the move in a statement late Thursday.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-TX., called Obama's actions "long overdue," while House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes said he's been "urging" Obama for years to take action and that this "indecision and delay" explains why "American's influence has collapsed."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Secretary of State John Kerry is under fire for his blunt speech taking aim at the Israeli government -- with criticism coming from not only congressional Republicans, but also from members of his own party.

The defiant secretary of state used the speech Wednesday to defend the decision by the Obama administration to abstain on a U.N. Security Council resolution calling Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem a violation of international law. The abstention allowed the measure to pass Friday  enraging the Israelis and drawing a strong rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

That abstention was opposed by a number of Democratic lawmakers, including incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY., as well as Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Chris Coons, D-Del., Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.

In his speech defending the abstention, Kerry rebuked what he called the settler agenda, which he claimed is hurting prospects for peace.

Friends need to tell each other the hard truths, and friendships require mutual respect, Kerry said. He called the current government the "most right-wing" in Israel's history and claimed its agenda is "driven by the most extreme elements."

Kerrys speech was instantly met with a fresh wave of criticism from Republicans, with President-elect Donald Trump tweeting: We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also took issue with the speech:

"Secretary Kerrys speech today was at best a pointless tirade in the waning days of an outgoing administration. At worst, it was another dangerous outburst that will further Israels diplomatic isolation and embolden its enemies," he said.

However, Kerrys words were also criticized by senior members of his own party, with Schumer accusing him of emboldening extremism.

While Secretary Kerry mentioned Gaza in his speech, he seems to have forgotten the history of the settlements in Gaza, where the Israeli government forced settlers to withdraw from all settlements and the Palestinians responded by sending rockets into Israel, Schumer said.

"While he may not have intended it, I fear Secretary Kerry, in his speech and action at the [United Nations], has emboldened extremists on both sides.

Some high-profile Democrats, such as House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., backed Kerry. Pelosi called Kerrys speech a reaffirmation of Americas commitment to a secure, Jewish and democratic Israel, and a state for the Palestinians.

But Rep. Eliot Engel, D-NY., accused Kerry on beating up on Israel while laying off the Palestinians.

The two state solution is the only way to get peace but what Secretary Kerry did was just beat up on Israel in a disproportionate way [and] sort of gloss over the terrorism that the Palestinians have used throughout these years, Engel, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Fox and Friends Thursday.

Engel also said he would be prepared to work with President-elect Trump on strengthening the U.S. relationship with Israel in the future.

I think support for Israel in Congress is bipartisan and should remain bipartisan and if President Trump is working with us on Israel, Im perfectly happy to work with the President of the United States, he said.

Other Democrats made positive remarks about the speech, while also noting their continued opposition to the abstention. Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., said he shared a number of Kerrys concerns, specifically on the lack of progress on a two-state solution, but said I remain disappointed by the Obama Administrations decision not to veto UN Security Resolution 2334 last week.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., also offered cautious support for Kerry's speech while reiterating his opposition to the absention.

"The United States will have a role to play in helping both parties reach the goal of lasting peace, even if that involves highlighting uncomfortable facts on the ground, as Secretary Kerry did. Nonetheless, I continue to believe that the U.N. Security Council is the wrong forum for critiquing Israeli policies, he said in a statement.
Inquiries from Donald Trumps transition team to federal agencies about their work on hot-button issues like climate change and 'violent extremism' -- and about the staffers involved -- have spurred questions over what the incoming administration has planned for those programs.

His team, in the roughly seven weeks since the election, has posed such questions to the departments of Energy, State and Homeland Security.

Critics of President-elect Trump have suggested the inquiries are a sign his administration intends to gut key programs and punish the staffers involved. Republican defenders, though, say these concerns are overblown.

The Democrats are trying to talk about anything other than their own problems, and currently they include stoking faux outrage about President-elect Trump rolling back women's rights and firing bureaucrats who don't agree with his environmental policy, Republican strategist Joe Desilets said Wednesday.

The inquiries began earlier this month when transition team members submitted 74 questions to the Energy Department regarding climate change and other policy issues, including two about staffers who worked on President Obamas climate agenda.

Energy officials have pledged to cooperate with the incoming Republican administration but didnt provide the staffers names. The transition team hastily struck the questions, but not before a storm of criticism.

Max Stier, founding president of the Partnership for Public Service, which started the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition, told FoxNews.com that both sides handled the matter appropriately but that the personnel questions were unusual and unsettling.

Career employees are responsible for executing the policy directives the president sets, Stier told FoxNews.com. You dont hold people accountable for the policies set by people elected by the American public. Thats just wrong.

The transition team did not respond for a request for comment.

The Los Angeles Times also reported that the team has inquired with the State Department about gender-based programs, asking about staffing, programming and funding, including those started or championed by Hillary Clinton when she ran the department.

Stier said the inquiries from Trumps landing team at the State Department about spending and other matters such as this are not unusual.

Questions about the policy landscape are entirely legitimate, he said. Its a different kettle of fish.

Aside from recent tensions regarding the Obama administrations latest confrontation with Israel, Trump and Obama largely have maintained a cordial relationship since the election. The two met at the White House in November. And the president has pledged cooperation to help ensure a smooth transition for the incoming administration, ahead of Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

However, Energy spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder recently said some of the transition team questions left agency staffers unsettled.

Climate change  which holds that the earths gradual warming is a result of human activity including the burning of fossil fuel -- has been called a hoax by Trump.

Though his transition team withdrew the personnel questions to the Energy Department, two influential House Democrats still submitted their objections.

We are concerned that these efforts to single out particular department employees involved in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may be an attempt to target DOE employees whose scientific views on climate change differ from those of the incoming Trump administration, wrote Reps. Elijah Cumming, of Maryland, and Frank Pallone, of New Jersey, the top Democrats, respectively, on the Houses Oversight and Energy committees.

State Department spokesman John Kirby later characterized the requests to his department as normal questions about how an agency is staffed, it is manned and it is resourced.

Nothing that Ive seen and nothing that were aware of falls outside the lines of what would be a normal, he said.

Reuters, meanwhile, reported that the team also has asked the State and Homeland Security department for the names of officials working on efforts to counter violent extremism.

Reuters reported that some career officials were concerned about what the incoming administration would do regarding those programs.

During the presidential campaign, Trump vowed to fight radical Islamic terrorism and frequently criticized Obama for avoiding the term radical Islam to describe the Islamic State and other such terror groups.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
It was a good year for imaginative military innovations. From "Star Wars"-style speeders to an inescapable surveillance drone, many of the futuristic advances seem straight out of science fiction or Hollywood blockbusters.

Here are some favorites from 2016.

'Star Wars'- style speeders

Remember those speeder bikes in "Return of the Jedi" that raced through the air? The US military may get to zoom around the battlespace on a type of real-life version in the not-so-distant future.

Malloy Aeronautics and SURVICE Engineering Company teamed up to further develop Malloys Hoverbike for the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. The craft is called the Joint Tactical Aerial Resupply Vehicle, or JTARV.

Capable of potentially reaching speeds of 110 mph, JTARV could carry teams rapidly and nimbly it could even fly around a war zone delivering about 300 pounds of supplies by itself.

JTARV also provides stealth advantages, including a small physical footprint since it flies through the air, rather than drives on the ground. It also has a reduced acoustic signature.

These real life speeders wouldnt require runways or traditional landing zones, giving teams lots of flexibility.

Discover more here.

This huge combat tractor is a Swiss Army Knife

Meet the 32-ton armored combat vehicle thats the ultimate tractor albeit one that can punch holes through concrete, fire rockets, and carve safe passage through minefields for soldiers.

BAE Systems Terrier is affectionately known as the Swiss Army Knife of combat vehicles because there isn't anything it can't tackle. A multi-tool on a giant scale, the Terrier is a number of critical vehicles all in one. It can quickly adapt to tackle a range of important tasks. It even has a 26-foot arm.

Terrier can destroy enemy runways, rip holes in concrete compounds where terrorists hide, and dismantle bridges.

This mammoth machine beast can even unleash PYTHON rocket-propelled explosives to destroy concealed IEDS, protecting dismounted troops.

Like tractors found all throughout the United States, Terrier can lift, grab and move things. But the Terrier is next-level: its front loader system can lift five tons.

It can move a staggering 300 tons of earth per hour  thats about the weight of 120 5,000-pound SUVs.

What else can it do? Find out more here.

Surveillance drone terrorists cant escape

It looks like a "Star Trek" Bird of Prey, and acts like a drone that terrorists cannot escape: A new military aircraft thats powered by the sun and can conduct missions without landing for 45 days.

Airbus Defence and Space calls the new drone the High Altitude Pseudo Satellite (HAPS), but its been dubbed the Zephyr. Whats a "pseudo satellite"? It has satellite-type capabilities like extreme surveillance but is on demand with the flexibility and versatility of an unmanned aircraft. This sort of capability could prove particularly handy for special operations teams.

Unlike a satellite, the Zephyr can be landed, modified with alternative tech, and quickly re-launched to provide different capabilities as required.

The Zephyr could fly without landing to provide the military with non-stop high- resolution imagery for a remarkable month and a half, and it could give teams accuracy down to 6-inch resolution.

Flying at about 12.5 miles high at a fixed location, Zephyr can see over 250 miles to the horizon and provide imagery in excess of 386 square miles.

While the Zephyr wont be flying in space, it can get awfully close. The drone can reach heights higher than 70,000 feet. At those heights you can see the curvature of the earth.

Learn more here.

'Superman-style' vision for helicopter pilots

New technology means U.S. military helicopter pilots will be getting amped-up Superman-style vision to help them tackle dangerous environments.

Degraded Visual Environment, or DVE, is a frequent threat to military aircraft masking hazards and making it tough to land and fly. Visibility can be degraded by bad weather like rain, snow, dust and fog  but also by things like brown out.

In a brown-out for example, the pilot loses his or her visual reference with the ground when sand, dirt and dust get kicked up. The airframe can drift and collide with the ground or other structures causing the helicopter to land hard or even roll over.

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, chose Honeywell to create tech to help pilots defeat extreme DVE and "see" crucial details. The tech is called synthetic vision and provides pilots with a 3-D view of the landing zone on their flight displays. In spite of tough conditions, it builds a picture using a number of state-of-the-art sensors.

Dangers like other aircraft, telephone wires, vehicles and personnel near the landing zone as well as unexpected terrain would no longer be hidden by brownouts.

Ultimately, military pilots could have such enhanced vision that even small holes and ditches around the landing zone will be revealed.

DVEs are a big challenge for all militaries, but with this tech US pilots would have the advantage of being able to safely operate where others cannot.

Find out more here.

New Marine Corps combat vehicle that "swims"

A nearly 34-ton armored fighting vehicle-- that swims? Marines will have a new Amphibious Combat Vehicle with even more power to storm the beaches in future battles.

The Amphibious Combat Vehicle prototype, or the ACV 1.1, was created by BAE Systems and IVECO Defence, and unveiled at Modern Day Marine. The vehicle combines a high degree of protection with amphibious and land capabilities.

This new armored assault vehicle can launch from a ship at sea and then travel by water at speeds of six knots, ready to launch attacks on the shore.

Surf? Not a problem for this vehicle. The ACV 1.1 can continue to charge forward in spite of nine-foot plunging surf.

Once it reaches ground, it can attack enemy forces at 70 miles per hour and unleash some serious firepower.

Dig into more capabilities here.
Robots can be terrifying all on their own, but stick a human being inside and give them control of the mechanical muscles that provide superhuman strength and you've got a recipe for a horror movie. South Korean robotics firm Hankook Mirae Technology has done exactly that, and its Method-2 robot just took its first steps towards world domination this week.

The robot is just one year into development, but it's already a hulking beast that could give anyone nightmares. The bot stands over 13 feet tall and weighs over one and a half tons. Its sturdy metal arms weigh nearly 300 pounds each, and with its human-like hands it's a spitting image of the intimidating militarized robot suits that play a starring role in the sci-fi flick Avatar.

Method-2 is still over a year from being finished -- the robot still requires a tether for power and is only just getting its feet under it -- but it's makers are already getting lots of inquiries from companies wanting to buy their own. The robot may eventually find itself in construction yards or warehouses, and Phys.org reports that it may even be used in defense applications, potentially making an appearance at the heavily policed border between North Korea and South Korea.

Whoever ends up adding a Method-2 to their shopping cart will need deep pockets, as the robot is expected to sell for around 10 billion won, which is the equivalent of roughly $8.3 million. Hankook plans to have the final version of the robot ready for potential buyers by the end of 2017.
It's that time of year again when most of us swill cheap champagne from plastic glasses and the ultra-rich board the world's fastest long-range private jet so they can ring in the New Year twice.

For a measly $184,500, you and 17 of your nearest and dearest can fly "back in time" from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles as you're treated to wine, champagne, and gourmet food (there's also a bed) on PrivateFly's G650ER, reports CNN.

Given the 19-hour time difference between the two cities and 12-hour flight, partygoers who take off from Sydney at 2am on New Year's Day will arrive in LA at 7pm on New Year's Eve.

"It's the closest we may ever get to time travel," reports Travel Pulse, which explains why a maximum of 18 passengers will have to fork over $10,250 each to make the trip.

The price tag might also explain why no one has ever booked the one-way flight, which PrivateFly also offered last year, but the company's marketing director is still holding out hope.

"A lot of people booking private aviation don't like to think ahead, so it wouldn't surprise me at all that we'll be booking flights up to New Year's Eve," she says.

The same "time travel" is technically possible on a cheaper commercial flight, which takes 14 hours, but no airlines offer flights at the times necessary to ring in 2017 twice.

That said, News.com.au notes you can replay New Year's Eve by making the short drive west from Badajoz, Spain, to Elvas, Portugal, or from Karesuvanto, Finland, to Karesuando, Sweden, gaining an hour.

(See the best US cities to ring in the New Year.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: For Whopping Fee, You Can Ring in the New Year Twice
An animal rights activist who vandalized a fur store and journeyed around the country freeing thousands of minks from farms has pleaded guilty to a federal charge in San Diego.

The San Diego Union-Tribune says (http://bit.ly/2hOZani ) Nicole Kissane pleaded Tuesday to a charge of conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.

Prosecutors are expected to recommend an 18-month sentence.

In her plea deal, the former Escondido woman acknowledged damaging the mink businesses. She also acknowledged vandalizing a San Diego fur store and the homes of the business owner and the owner's parents.

She's agreed to pay more than $420,000 in restitution.

A co-defendant, Joseph Buddenberg, was sentenced in May to two years in prison.

___

Information from: The San Diego Union-Tribune, http://www.utsandiego.com
The unsolved disappearance of a woman in New Hampshire 35 years ago has led to a new criminal investigation, as officials announced Tuesday they received new information in her case and had been in touch with the woman's daughter.

GIRL, GREAT-GRANDMOTHER FOUND ALIVE DAYS AFTER VANISHING

Denise Beaudin's family last saw her on Thanksgiving 1981, when she was 23, with her boyfriend, Robert "Bob" Evans, and her infant daughter, the state attorney general's office reported.

When relatives went to visit her Manchester home a few days later, the couple and baby were gone.

JONBENET RAMSEY'S BROTHER SUES CBS OVER TV SHOW

The family did not contact police at the time, said Jeffery Strelzin, senior assistant attorney general and chief of the homicide unit. The family believed the couple had left to avoid money troubles, according to investigators.

"It was a different time, you had no cellphones, no social media, so it was different," Strelzin said.

Investigators have been in touch with Beaudin's daughter, he added. "We know where she is, we've identified her, she's alive and well," Strelzin said of the daughter. "She doesn't want her identity released at this time, but she's OK."

He also said the investigators found the daughter "years later."

Evans, who was 37 at the time, is now 72, and authorities know where he is, Strelzin said. He declined to provide more information about Evans, or what led authorities to begin investigating.

Beaudin was between 5 feet four inches and 5 feet six inches tall with brown eyes, brown hair and an overbite, officials told the Boston Globe.

Her name has been added to the National Crime Information Center's missing persons database, which includes records of people missing under circumstances indicating they may be in physical danger or their disappearance may not have been voluntary.

Strelzin said authorities would give more details in a few weeks, but they wanted to get the word out this week, when those who knew Beaudin might be back in the area for the holidays.

Police said they wanted to hear from anyone who knew Beaudin or Evans between 1976 and 1981, including her high school classmates or neighbors in the area around Hayward Street in Manchester.

Beaudin graduated from Goffstown High School in 1976 and later worked at General Cable and the Demers Nursing Home in Manchester.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A DJ at an Ohio bar will serve four years in prison for the fatal beating of a man who had complained that the music was too loud.

Robert Jarvis, of Akron, was sentenced Wednesday in Summit County Common Pleas Court for the death of Forrest Ryan, 43, of North Canton. At the sentencing, Judge Todd McKenney said Jarvis didn't intend to kill Ryan in the bar fight.

Jarvis' attorney, Mike Callahan, called the fight an "aberration" and said he would seek early prison release for Jarvis after six months.

Megan Frantz Oldham, an attorney for Ryan's family, said the family is disappointed with the sentence and plans to file a wrongful death lawsuit.

Prosecutors say the two men got into an argument Jan. 8 over the volume of the music that Jarvis was playing at the Zodiac bar in Akron. They say surveillance video showed Jarvis later sought out Ryan in another part of the bar and punched him three times in the head.

Assistant Prosecutor Greg Peacock said the altercation appeared to be unprovoked, the Akron Beacon Journal reported.

"It might not have been his intention to kill, but he made the conscious decision to inflict harm," Peacock said.

Jarvis, 65, was a teacher for three decades, including 10 as a special education teacher in Medina County. He pleaded guilty in a plea deal last month to involuntary manslaughter, a first-degree felony, and faced up to 11 years in prison.

Ryan's family wanted Jarvis to receive the maximum prison term. Samantha Ryan said in a letter that her father was her best friend and will miss milestones in her life, including teaching her to drive and walking her down the aisle at her wedding.

"Everything has changed because of how that man killed my daddy," she said.
A Maryland sheriff's deputy was in critical condition but out of surgery Thursday morning after an early morning shootout that left a gunman dead, officials said.

MINNESOTA OFFICER REINSTATED AFTER BEING FIRED FOR VIDEO

Dfc. Warren Scott Hogan, a four-year veteran, was escorting a female previously involved in a domestic disturbance from the sheriff's department's headquarters back to her house in order to gather clothing. That's when a man inside the home grabbed a shotgun and fired at Hogan, the Queen Anne's County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post.

Hogan shot back, hitting the man, who was pronounced dead just after 8:30 a.m. at Chester River Medical Center in Chestertown.

The gunman's name was not immediately released.

Hogan was flown to Shock Trauma where he underwent surgery for unspecified injuries.

Maryland State Police were investigating the incident. A deputy at the scene was wearing a body camera, retired Lt. Dale Patrick said.

Photos that Patrick took at the scene showed police tape in front of a one-story home with Christmas decorations out front, including an inflated Santa Claus atop a chimney and a snowman.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The sister of a woman murdered more than 30 years ago in North Carolina says she and her family fully support the military's planned execution of the woman's killer, a former soldier.

MILITARY HELICOPTER BREAKS APART MIDAIR; 2 DEAD

The execution would be the first by the U.S. military in more than a half-century. A Kansas federal judge earlier this month lifted the stay of execution for the former Fort Bragg soldier Ronald A. Gray, who is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Gray was convicted in military and civilian courts of raping several women and killing four, including 18-year-old Tammy Cofer Wilson. He was sentenced to death in a Fort Bragg court-martial in 1988.

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED INTO WOMAN'S 1981 DISAPPEARANCE AFTER DAUGHTER FOUND

Wilson's sister, Honey Rosalie Schlehuber of Chickasha, Oklahoma, told The Fayetteville Observer she would like to witness Gray's execution and that her entire family has struggled since the murder.

U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten last week sided with the U.S. government in denying Gray's bid to block the military from pressing ahead with the execution by lethal injection.

The military carried out its last execution at Fort Leavenworth in 1961 when it hanged Army Pvt. John Bennett for raping and trying to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl.

No known execution date has been set for Gray. Though Gray's attorneys have said in recent court filings that they planned to ask military courts to intervene, that status of those appeals was unclear. A message left by The Associated Press with Gray's capital public defender, Tim Kane, was not immediately returned.

Gray was convicted and ordered condemned in military court in 1988 for two murders and three rapes in the Fayetteville, North Carolina, area while stationed at Fort Bragg, where he reached the rank of specialist and was a cook. He pleaded guilty in civilian courts to two other killings and five rapes and was sentenced to eight life terms, three of them consecutive.

Gray, 51, is among six people on the U.S. military's death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit research group that opposes capital punishment. Those inmates, whose appeals are pending, include Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in a 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas.

The president has the power to commute a military death sentence, and no service member can be put to death unless the president signs off on it, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The commandant of Fort Leavenworth's disciplinary barracks where Gray is held is the one who would schedule the date and time of the execution, according to the federal government's court filings.

The federal appeal was filed in 2008 for Gray, whose attorneys claimed he had an ineffective lawyer in his earlier case and lacked the mental capacity to stand trial. Gray's appellate attorneys also have questioned the military's jurisdiction over the case.

In November 2008, another Kansas federal judge, Richard Rogers, issued a stay for Gray two weeks before his scheduled execution.

In successfully pressing for Marten to lift the stay, federal prosecutors argued in a court filing Dec. 9 that Gray "seems to believe that he is entitled to an indefinite federal stay of execution while he exhausts his remedies in the military courts. This is not the law."

Various factors help explain the absence of military executions in recent decades. Condemned inmates may appeal their death sentences to military and civilian courts, potentially delaying an execution for decades, as in Gray's case.

In 1983, the armed services' highest court ruled that the military death penalty law was constitutionally flawed because it did not include "aggravating" factors to help jurors decide which cases deserve capital punishment. That ruling resulted in a number of death sentences being converted to life terms.

But the next year, President Ronald Reagan reinstated the military's capital punishment, defining who is subject to the death penalty in the armed forces through an executive order. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1996 upheld Reagan's action as constitutional.

In 1997, the Uniform Code of Military Justice -- the military's modern-day legal system -- was amended to add a life sentence without the possibility of parole as an alternative to the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

In October, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would not hear a challenge to the death penalty for military members, rejecting an appeal from a former soldier sentenced to death for killing two fellow soldiers and injuring 14 others in an attack in Kuwait in 2003.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A New Jersey woman and her 5-year-old great-granddaughter have been found alive in secluded woods in rural Virginia, apparently stranded there for days and surviving on snacks after disappearing on a holiday road trip, investigators announced.

Seventy-one-year-old Barbara Briley was unconscious when crews found her Wednesday afternoon with her great-granddaughter La'Myra Briley in Dinwiddie County at least a mile from a paved road, Virginia State Police said. The girl was reported to be alert and unhurt.

POLICE SEEK NEW INFORMATION ABOUT WOMAN'S 1981 DISAPPEARANCE

The two were near their SUV, stuck on a dirt road on private property where a man found them, police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said. The two apparently survived on snacks and drinks they'd brought with them, according to investigators.

The property owner had spotted the SUV from a distance and when he went to check on it, he found the two seated nearby, authorities said. Maj. William Knott of the Dinwiddie County Sheriff's Office said the man had seen news reports about the missing travelers, realized who the Brileys were and called 911.

"This person probably saved them," Knott said.

GUILTY VERDICT IN MISSING MAUI PREGNANT WOMAN'S DEATH

The SUV, a silver Toyota RAV4, was more than a mile from the main road, WTVR reported.

The two had been the focus of a multistate search. Police said they did not believe foul play was involved in the disappearance. The county where crews found them was south of Richmond, Virginia's capital.

Barbara Briley was flown by helicopter to VCU Medical Center in Richmond where she was in serious condition, police said. Authorities said the child appeared alert and unhurt and received a medical evaluation before being reunited with a family member.

Barbara Briley was "not responsive to questions" when authorities arrived, but Knott said the child was "in good shape and very talkative" and has since been reunited with a relative.

The Brileys had left New Jersey on Christmas Eve to visit relatives in North Carolina but never arrived. They were last seen last weekend at a gas station in Ruther Glen, Virginia, about 30 miles north of Richmond.

Surveillance video from the gas station shows Barbara Briley walking inside about 5:40 p.m. Saturday. She exits and re-enters before eventually pulling away just after 6 p.m., authorities said.

Gas station clerk Joanna Strange told local media that Briley came inside to say she was lost and she then helped the woman with her GPS before Briley went on her way.

Police said the evidence points to Briley having pulled onto a dirt road, which she then followed a short distance into the woods in Dinwiddie County. There she drove over a small tree and got stuck in a remote area of the property when she tried to back up, according to police.

Family members have said Barbara Briley was a former driver for New Jersey Transit and had made the long trip numerous times. They also said she didn't have any known medical issues.

A relative of Briley's reached by The Associated Press declined comment, and VCU Medical Center didn't immediately return a message.

Lt. Travis Nutter of the Caroline County Sheriff's Office, which released the video, said nothing in the footage indicated any kind of suspicious activity at the gas station where the travelers were seen.

"That video is the last anybody saw of her," he had said.

State troopers had searched around Ruther Glen area and along the Interstate 85 corridor from south of the Virginia capital city of Richmond to the North Carolina line, state police spokesman Sgt. Stephan Vick said.

They used a helicopter and hunted for signs of guard rail damage or other evidence that a vehicle may have run off the road, he said.

The North Carolina Highway Patrol also aided in the search. The investigation was being led by Hamilton Township, New Jersey, police, who didn't immediately return messages seeking comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Three stranded teenage boys from California called 911 and calmly sat atop a capsized boat before being rescued from waters off the Florida Keys, authorities said Wednesday.

Monroe County Sheriff's spokeswoman Becky Herrin says Zack Sowder and Brent Shishido, both 18, and Jacob Sowder, 16 -- all of Orange County, California -- were perched on the overturned hull, their life jackets trapped under the 22-foot vessel, when help arrived Tuesday.

GIRL, GREAT-GRANDMOTHER FOUND ALIVE DAYS AFTER VANISHING IN VIRGINIA WOODS

Marine Deputy James Hagar spotted the teens in waters about 2 1/2 miles off the coast and brought them safely ashore in his patrol boat. A photo released by the sheriff's office showed the teens seated on a small section of the hull that still jutted above the waters.

"Fortunately they knew their rough location. They were lucky they had a cell signal," sheriff's officials wrote on their Facebook page.

MOM ATE TWIGS, DRANK OWN URINE ON JOURNEY TO SAVE FAMILY, SISTER SAYS

Hagar had just taken his boat out of the water around 3:15 p.m. Tuesday when he got the call about the stranded teenagers.

"He quickly put the boat back in the water," Herrin said in a statement.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission investigator David Bingham joined Hagar in the search for the boys. "They spent some time looking, but they found the three boys and loaded them on board the patrol boat, bringing them safely back to shore," Herrin said.

The teens had anchored the 22-foot rented boat on the Atlantic side of Little Torch Key, which is some 30 miles north of Key West.

Later Tuesday, Zack Sowder showed his sense of humor on social media.

"Make sure your bilge works before you run five miles offshore and realize it's too late," Zack Sowder tweeted Tuesday night, along with two photos from the scene. "Other than that great day on the water."

Click for more from Fox 11.
A powerful nor'easter moved into northern New England Thursday and forecasters predicted it could dump almost 20 inches of snow in some interior locations.

Roads in Leominster/Fitchburg starting to see snow cover. Here's some video. pic.twitter.com/Ve0a7lN2je  Robert Goulston (@rgoulston) December 29, 2016

STORMS TO DISRUPT TRAVEL FOR MILLIONS HEADED TO TOP NEW YEARS EVE DESTINATIONS

A winter storm warning has been posted for much of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont through mid-day Friday.

National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Pohl says accumulations of a foot or more are expected inland but that a changeover to rain will reduce snowfall totals near the coast.

FRIGID AIR TO MAKE NEW YEARS EVE PARTIERS SHIVER IN TIMES SQUARE

Roads in Vermont were snow covered and snow was falling at the rate of about 1 to 2 inches per hour by Thursday afternoon. No significant problems had been reported, but motorists were warned to expect hazardous driving conditions.

In New Hampshire, Gov. Maggie Hassan's office says the state's Emergency Operations Center will open at 1 p.m., with state officials closely monitoring the storm. The Department of Transportation says people should limit road travel after 6 p.m., when snow is expected to be heavy. Utility companies have crews on standby in preparation for power outages.

Pete Rogers, of Maine Emergency Management Agency, said it's important for residents to be prepared for heavy snow and strong winds.

The storm will pack a wallop. Pohl says the barometric pressure associated with the storm is projected to be the lowest since the Valentine's Day storm in 2014.

On New Hampshire's Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast, officials say there is "considerable danger" of an avalanche due to the storm.

The Vermont Health Department is reminding people that overexertion shoveling snow can lead to heart attacks. People should also keep heat vents clear of ice and snow.

Click for more from Fox 23.
At the sprawling Mont-Bouet market in Libreville, dozens of children heave bags of cement on their shoulders. Others wander around for hours, desperately trying to sell dried fish or cakes.

Their parents are nowhere to be seen: these children are virtual slaves illegally lured from west African states to oil-rich, equatorial Gabon.

Lari, now 22, was only 11 when she was taken from her native Togo by a stranger who claimed to be her uncle.

She was told that she would be reunited with her mother, who had abandoned her at birth, and was taken by boat to Gabon.

But Lari had been tricked, and she was sent to work for a rich Togolese family living in Gabon, placed there by her "uncle".

So began her gruelling new life as a house maid: up every day at dawn, preparing the meals, acting as a nanny for the family's baby, and when all that was done, shopping every evening for food.

During her time working for the family, Lari said she never received any money. Instead it was taken by her so-called guardian.

"I never earned a cent," Lari told AFP. Her guardian would visit "to take money at the end of each month, he never told me how much", she said.

"Wherever I worked, it was the same."

Lari calculated that the family owed her 2.6 million CFA francs (almost 4,000 euros), money that she has never been given.

In 10 years, more than 700 children have been rescued from exploitation as virtual slaves and repatriated, according to the UN Children's Fund.

However, "nobody knows how many are exploited because they have no travel papers, they don't have formal jobs... Everything is informal," said UNICEF representative in Gabon, Michel Ikamba.

To bring children to Gabon, a country of 1.6 million people seen as an El Dorado in other parts of Africa, child traffickers use the "channels of clandestine immigration", Ikamba explained.

Overloaded boats full of west Africans fleeing poverty and unemployment in Benin, Togo, Nigeria or Mali land on beaches near the coastal capital Libreville after nightfall.

The Gabonese navy intercepted one such vessel in 2009 which was carrying 300 illegal immigrants, including 34 children destined for exploitation who were handed over to UNICEF.

-- Parents given promises and cash --

The children arriving in Gabon have no idea what awaits them.

Young girls often end up as domestic servants or prostitutes and the boys are given manual labour, toiling from morning to night in sweltering heat.

Their parents back in the home country were won over by vain promises and a fistful of money.

"They tell them that their children will go to school and then they give them 20,000 CFA francs (30 euros, $39) to encourage them," said Sister Marguerite Bwandala, who runs two centres in Libreville opened by the Roman Catholic charity Caritas.

"The networks are well organised. The trafficker places them, often with people from their home country, to take up jobs such as vulcanising rubber (to give it greater strength and elasticity) or selling groundnuts, and he collects their wages," Sister Marguerite said.

But it does not stop at financial exploitation: according to UNICEF, children are often subject to violence, including sexual abuse by the father in the family that takes them in.

For teenager Sonia, who was just six years old when she arrived from Ketou, a village in southern Benin, violence was the norm.

After each day at work, "I was tired, the old woman beat me very hard. She hit me across the face. They said that I was their daughter, but it wasn't true", said Sonia. Finally, she fled.

Rare are the children though who manage to break free of the grip of their new families, who are their only reference point in a nation where they are foreigners and have no papers.

As she grew up, Lari was passed from employer to employer.

She says her final job, which lasted eight years, was the worst. "I was made mistress of the house. I had to look after the husband all the time, I couldn't go to bed until he came home, even if it was at four in the morning."

"His wife accused me of things that weren't true. When she lost money, it was always my fault. She searched my things and when she found nothing, she tortured me, she beat me to make me confess," she added.

Much worse was to follow.

"She accused me of sleeping with her husband's brother. Three times she took me to the doctor to prove that I was still a virgin."

Gabon has started taking steps to crackdown on the trafficking of children. It has joined UNICEF in launching a training programme in five towns to unite magistrates, army officers, police and social workers in fighting against such exploitation.

Closer cooperation will also make it easier to repatriate children, said UNICEF's Ikamba.

Lari has at last found a way out, with paid employment as a nanny in Gabon. She is hoping to save up enough to open a business back home.

At a Caritas-run centre, there is also hope. Fourteen-year-old Edith is training to be a hairdresser. The nuns hope that she can qualify in Gabon and avoid further exploitation.

"She's doing well," said Sister Marguerite. "She has even learned to read and write here."
Merchants in the Dominican Republic have shuttered the biggest border market for trade with Haiti amid that country's ban on some goods entering overland.

Haiti has banned 23 products from crossing by land its border with the Dominican Republic, seeking to improve tax collection and ensure better quality control. As of Oct. 1, such things as drinking water, flour and construction materials can arrive only by air or sea.

On Friday, Dominican traders in the market town of Dajabon began a strike to pressure Haiti to scrap its ban. Union leader Freddy Morillo says the work freeze at Dajabon is "indefinite."

The banned goods represent $500 million in annual sales and make up 6 percent of all Dominican exports. The Dominican government has complained to the World Trade Organization.
Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski used his time on the podium at the United Nations General Assembly to plea with his fellow Latin American leaders to help out with Venezuelas crippling economic crisis and put pressure his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolas Maduro.

Kuczynski cited the widespread shortages of food, medicine and basic supplies in Venezuela and called on Maduro to respect human rights and a democratic political process.

Besides shortages, Venezuela faces widespread unrest over Maduros rule and opposition leaders are awaiting a decision by the national election board on the next stage of a possible referendum on his socialist rule.

"It is unavoidable that I mention our concern for the very critical political, economic and social situation that our friendly nation of Venezuela is experiencing," Kuczynski said, according to Reuters. "Full-fledged democracy requires absolute respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as due process. It also requires the full guarantee of the respect of the separation of powers and checks and balances."

The 77-year-old Peruvian leaders address drew strong criticism from Venezuela's representative to the United Nations, Rafael Ramirez, who called Kuczynski's comments "a gratuitous attack."

"It was an unfortunate speech that shows that certain countries continue to interfere in our internal affairs," Ramirez said.

Kuczynski is seen by many as the political polar opposite of Maduro, who spent time as a bus driver before moving up in the ranks of government under late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez. Kuczynski, on the other hand, spent years working on Wall Street in investment funds and even acquired U.S. citizenship before renouncing it to run for president.

In a year that saw Latin American politics shift sharply to the right, Kuczynski came to power in 2016 along with fellow free-market advocates like Mauricio Macri in Argentina and Brazils new president Michel Temer. The sea change has soured the socialist government of Venezuelas standing among its Latin American neighbors.

Citing its violation of human rights and its failure to comply with the organization's internal rules, a number of members countries form the Mercosur trade bloc have also questioned Venezuelas right to exercise the rotating presidency of the group.

Venezuela has staunchly defended their right to hold the post.

"The ball is in their court. We will continue defending the legality, working for Mercosur," Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said last week after the four other member states  Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay  agreed that Venezuela may not exercise the bloc's presidency and warned of its possible suspension.

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Philippine police say gunmen have shot dead seven people including three teens and a pregnant woman in what they suspect is a feud involving illegal drugs.

Chief Superintendent Roberto Fajardo said Thursday one of four suspects in the Caloocan city shooting has been arrested, pinpointed by a survivor of the attack.

Fajardo, the district police chief, says a group of young men were dancing in a house that is reportedly a drug den when gunmen barged in Wednesday night and started shooting. The assailants then followed one of the men who fled to a nearby house, where a pregnant woman and her mother-in-law were killed.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has been waging a brutal crackdown on drug users and dealers that has left thousands dead since June.
Prosecutors in Bosnia have charged the commander of special police units in Sarajevo during the 1992-95 siege of the city by Bosnian Serb forces with war crimes over the execution of eight captured enemy combatants.

The Bosnian prosecutor's office said in a statement Thursday that Dragan Vikic and three former Bosnian police officers were charged over their roles in the 1992 killings in the center of Sarajevo. The eight Serb soldiers had been captured after their armored personnel carrier broke down on the outskirts of the city.

Vikic and one officer were charged with "failing to arrest, process and sanction" persons responsible for the crime and "failing to prevent removal of evidence and hiding of the bodies." Two other officers were charged with participation in the crime.
British Prime Minister Theresa May issued a strong statement Thursday denouncing Secretary of State John Kerry for a speech that was heavily critical of Israel.

We do not believe that the way to negotiate peace is by focusing on only one issue, in this case the construction of settlements, when clearly the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so deeply complex, a spokesman for the prime minister told The Jewish Chronicle.

And we do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically-elected government of an ally. The government believes that negotiations will only succeed when they are conducted between the two parties, supported by the international community, the spokesman continued.

A State Department spokesperson said:

We are grateful for the strongly supportive statements in response to Secretary Kerrys speech from across the world, including Germany, France, Canada, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and others. We are surprised by the UK Prime Ministers office statement given that Secretary Kerrys remarkswhich covered the full range of threats to a two state solution, including terrorism, violence, incitement and settlementswere in-line with the UKs own longstanding policy and its vote at the United Nations last week.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Kerry mentioned settlements or settlers at least 62 times in his remarks Wednesday at the State Department.

With three weeks remaining in his position, Kerry used his 70-minute speech to denounce the approach taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling his administration the most right-wing in Israeli history with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements.

He also asserted that if Israel goes down the one-state path it will never have peace with the Arab world - and I can say that with certainty."

Kerrys speech and Mays rebuke both stem from a controversial United Nations resolution that demanded Israel immediately and completely halt all settlement activity on Palestinian lands.

In a break with longstanding policy, the United States abstained from voting and did not veto the resolution.

Britain was one of 14 nations on the Security Council to rule the settlements were illegal, a vote which resulted in Netanyahu snubbing May, according to the London Independent.

The spokesman defended the support for the resolution, but slammed Kerry for his singular focus on the settlement issue.

We continue to believe that the construction of settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is illegal, which is why we supported UN Security Council Resolution 2334 last week. But we are also clear that the settlements are far from the only problem in this conflict. In particular, the people of Israel deserve to live free from the threat of terrorism, with which they have had to cope for too long, he said.
A man in Canada said Wednesday that as soon as he saw a cougar attacking his dog, he had only one option: fight back.

Will Gibb saved his dog, Sasha from a cougar in Whitecourt. He scared the animal into the woods after punching it. Sasha is a bit rattled. pic.twitter.com/L3sIwUSoq8  Travis McEwan (@TravisMcEwanCBC) December 28, 2016

COUPLE'S PET SQUIRREL ATTACKS CONTRACTOR, LAWSUIT CLAIMS

Will Gibb said he raced toward the cougar and hit the ferocious animal in the head Monday. He claimed the fight left him with scratches on his wrist, but nothing more serious than that.

The 31-year-old technician, from the city of Red Deer in Alberta, said he had let his two dogs play in the parking lot of a Tim Hortons restaurant -- near the woods -- while he met a friend for coffee. Moments later, he said he heard his pet husky Sasha yelping.

PHOTO SHOWS 3 TEENS HUDDLED ON CAPSIZED BOAT MILES OFF FLORIDA

"She was crying out in pain and distress so I went running," Gibb told the CBC, saying he saw something wrapped around the dog's neck.

"I went over and hit the thing in the head. It ended up being a cougar and I thought, 'what the heck?'" he told Global News.

Gibb claimed it was not the cougar that bit him on the wrist. He said Sasha latched onto him as the dog fought for its life.

The cougar stood its ground at first, Gibb said. Within moments, the animal apparently started approaching his other dog, Mongo.

"I could see the cougar going for him, so I got between him and the cougar and started swinging and screaming at it, and called for my brother and friend to come give a hand."

Once Gibb said he grabbed a stick and charged at the cougar, the cat ran back into the woods.

The fight left 5-year-old Sasha with wounds across the dog's body, but vets were able to take care of the animal quickly, the CBC added.

Officers eventually found the cougar and killed it, Sgt. Jack Poitras told the news agency.
A cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey went into effect in war-ravaged Syria at midnight Thursday, a potential breakthrough in the six years of fighting that have left more than a quarter-million people dead and triggered a refugee crisis across Europe.

If it holds, the truce between the Syrian government and the country's mainstream rebel forces will be followed by peace talks next month in Kazakhstan, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in announcing the agreement. He described it, however, as "quite fragile" and requiring "special attention and patience."

It was not immediately clear whether the truce  which excludes extremist factions such as the Islamic State group and al-Qaida affiliate in Syria  was holding. It is expected to at least reduce the violence that has gripped the country, including government airstrikes.

Opposition activist Mazen al-Shami told The Associated Press that half an hour before midnight, the situation became "very calm" in the suburbs of the capital Damascus.

He added that a government offensive on the rebel-held Barada Valley northwest of Damascus that had been going on for days had stopped.

The truce had the backing of both Russia and Turkey, which have been supporting opposing sides in the war, and was welcomed by Iran and the United Nations. Russia said the deal was signed by seven of Syria's major rebel factions.

Several previous cease-fires all collapsed, some of them in a matter of days. Nevertheless, the deal this time raised hopes for a political settlement to the ruinous war in the coming months, in part because the landscape has significantly shifted recently.

For one thing, the tide has turned in Syrian President Bashar Assad's favor militarily over the past year, with the government retaking the city of Aleppo from the rebels just days ago. Also, Turkey, which is fighting Kurdish and Islamic militants at home, appears more willing to strike a bargain with Russia if it means protecting its borders.

"This is a different political scene, and one would expect some outcomes to emerge," said Hilal Khashan, political science professor at the American University of Beirut. He cautioned, however, against expecting immediate results from the first round of talks.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem welcomed the cease-fire agreement said there is a "real chance" for a political settlement.

In comments made to Syrian TV, he said the Syrian government will attend the peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana "with an open mind," but suggested it would not be willing to compromise on Assad's fate.

"Everything is negotiable except national sovereignty and the people's right to choose its leadership," he said.

Putin said the cease-fire will be guaranteed by Moscow  Assad's chief patron and battlefield ally  and by Turkey. Turkey is a main backer of the opposition forces, who use the country's long border with Syria to cross back and forth, and has wide influence on them. Iran, for its part, has been one of Assad's strongest backers.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance. Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said President-elect Donald Trump's administration will be welcome to join the peace process once he takes office.

Putin said he ordered the Russian military to scale back its presence in Syria, where it has provided crucial support to Assad's forces. Putin didn't say how many troops and weapons will be withdrawn. He said Russia will continue "fighting international terrorism in Syria" and supporting Assad's military.

The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, welcomed the cease-fire announcement, saying he hopes the agreement will save civilian lives, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid and pave the way for productive peace talks.

Earlier Thursday, Turkey called on Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters from Syria. The Iranian-backed extremist group has sent thousands of fighters to support Assad and has been playing an instrumental role in the civil war since 2013.

Foreign fighters from around the world have joined both sides of the Syrian conflict, which has displaced half the country's population and produced more than 4 million refugees. Many of those refugees have been streaming into Europe, fueling anti-immigration sentiment and terrorist fears that are reshaping the continent's political landscape.

Syria's military noted that the cease-fire comes after the "successes achieved by the armed forces," an apparent reference to the fierce fighting in Aleppo.

Osama Abo Zayd, a spokesman for mainstream Syrian opposition groups, told reporters in the Turkish capital of Ankara that 13 armed opposition factions have signed the five-point agreement and that they have agreed to abide by the cease-fire.

He said the peace talks will be based on the Geneva 2012 declaration that calls for a governing body with full executive powers to run affairs in Syria during a transition period. "This means that there will be no presence for Assad in the future," he said.

Assad's future has been the main sticking in previous negotiations between the warring sides, and he is seen as unlikely to step down, particularly when he's on the winning side.

Khashan, the political analyst, said Assad's exit is "out of the question."

"Neither the Russians nor the Iranians would allow it to happen," he said.

Saeed Sadek, a professor of political sociology at Cairo's Future University, said Assad has no power to accept or reject any deals.

"He is now under the control of Moscow, Tehran and Ankara. All these countries will decide his future," he said.
A Tunisian man detained Wednesday in connection with the Berlin terror attack was released Thursday after German prosecutors determined he had not been in contact with the militant behind the Christmas market massacre.

The unnamed 40-year-old was detained in Berlin after investigators found his telephone number was saved in the cellphone of Anis Amri, who drove a truck into a crowd on Dec. 19, killing 12 people.

But prosecutors' spokesman Frauke Koehler said Thursday they now have determined that the man "isn't this possible contact person of Anis Amri."

ATTACKER'S CELLPHONE PROVIDES CRUCIAL DETAILS OF BERLIN MASSACRE

Amri, who was killed Friday in a shootout with police in Milan, was identified as the attacker when his fingerprints and wallet were found in the truck used in the incident.

At least 48 people were injured in the bloody episode.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack and released a video showing Amri pledging allegiance to its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Finnish court has sentenced a former Helsinki narcotics police boss to 10 years in prison for running a drug ring while in office  a rare case of corruption among the country's civil servants.

Helsinki's District Court says Jari Aarnio was guilty of official misconduct and aggravated evidence tampering.

The court said Thursday that Aarnio, who pleaded innocent, played a key role in importing from the Netherlands nearly 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds) of hashish, which was distributed in 2011-2012.

An accomplice, a local top criminal, was also given 10 years.

After 30 years on the force, Aarnio was arrested in 2013. In September, he was convicted of fraud and corruption for an ownership interest in a company that sold surveillance equipment to Finnish police.
A top Islamic State military commander described as a "gang leader" for the terror group was killed by a coalition airstrike in Syria, the U.S. military confirmed on Thursday.

SYRIAN GOVERNMENT, REBELS AGREE TO NEW CEASE-FIRE

The strike on Monday killed Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti near Tabqa Dam, outside Raqqa in northern Syria, U.S. officials said.

They added that he was a former member of the terror network's "War Committee" and helped ISIS storm and recapture the historic Syrian city of Palmyra.

"His death will degrade ISIL's ability to defend Raqqah and launch external operations against the West," the U.S. military said in a statement, using another name for the Islamic State.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier this week that he had been targeted by U.S.-led coalition aircraft. ISIS supporters on social media had indicated on Tuesday that he had been killed.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have been battling ISIS fighters near the strategically located dam, aided by a barrage of coalition airstrikes in the region.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Italy's premier says he was taken aback by the European Central Bank's move to significantly increase the amount of money that troubled bank Monte dei Paschi will need.

He said, however, that the government would cooperate with the banking authority.

Paolo Gentiloni's comments Thursday echo those by his finance minister, Pier Carlo Padoan, who chided the ECB in comments to the business daily Il Sole 24 Ore for not being transparent in how it arrived at the 8.8-billion-euro figure.

The government last week approved a 20-billion-euro fund to rescue Italy's third-largest lender, which had failed to raise enough capital on its own, and to secure other banks at risk.

Monte dei Paschi had been seeking 5 billion euros in new capital after failing an EU stress test last summer.
The Latest on the conflict in Syria (all times local):

1:30 p.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says a Syrian cease-fire agreement has been reached with Turkey.

Putin said Thursday that Russia and Turkey will guarantee the truce, which is set to begin at midnight. He says it will be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition, and that the Syrian parties would take part in talks to be held in Kazakhstan, without specifying a date.

Syria's military said it had agreed to a nationwide cease-fire starting at midnight.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu says the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria, and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that that President-elect Donald Trump's administration will be welcome to join the Syrian peace process once he takes office.

Russia is a key ally of Assad, while Turkey is one of the main backers of the opposition. Several previous attempts to halt the civil war have failed.

___

11:15 a.m.

Turkey says Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group should withdraw from Syria and a nationwide cease-fire should come into effect before the end of the year.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to back President Bashar Assad's forces.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with the Turkish A Haber news channel on Thursday that Ankara and Moscow are close to reaching an agreement on a nationwide cease-fire. Turkey would serve as guarantor of rebel compliance, while Russia would guarantee adherence by the government.

He says Iran stated during talks earlier this month in Moscow that it will act as a guarantor for the Syrian government as well as allied Shiite groups, including Hezbollah.
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Madrid's town hall says smog levels have dropped enough to allow the city to end unprecedented restrictions it had announced on vehicle circulation.

City environment councilor Ines Sabanes said Thursday's ban on vehicles with plates ending in an even number will not be extended. Other measures, including a ban on street parking for non-residents and reduced speed limits, will continue.

Madrid ordered the traffic limits, a first for a Spanish city, due to excess levels of nitrogen dioxide in the air.

Sabanes said weather conditions continued to be bad, mainly due to a lack of rain and wind, and authorities would continue to monitor the situation.
Russia and Turkey have pushed a deal to end Syria's nearly-six-year-long civil war -- which could leave the dictator Bashar al-Assad with much less power than before, and eventually force him out of office, Reuters reported.

Russia, Turkey and Iran -- leaving out the United States -- were crafting the potential deal ahead of Thursday's cease-fire announcement, sources told the news agency on Wednesday. They said Iran was balking at the proposal to cut Assad's power, but either way, the plan would be to push him out of office in a way that saves face as much as possible.

TURKEY DEMANDS LEBANON'S MILITANT HEZBOLLAH LEAVE SYRIA

"A final deal will be hard, but stances have shifted," Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, said.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said President-elect Donald Trump's administration would be welcome to join the Syrian peace process once he takes office.

ISIS 'GANG LEADER' KILLED IN SYRIA, PENTAGON OFFICIALS SAY

The cease-fire plan would informally divide Syria into zones of power influence, the sources said. They added that Assad would stay in office for at least a few years.

Among the power shifts: Turkey could see more control over northern Syria, potentially using part of the land as a base for anti-Assad rebels, whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government supports.

Both Russia and Iran have provided major backing to Assad's fighters, in the form of Iranian soldiers and Russian airpower. While Iran has been slow to make compromises at the bargaining table, the sources said Tehran agreed to talk after Turkey dropped its push to force Assad from power immediately.

Still, Iran's name was noticeably left out of the truce agreement announced Thursday. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow and Turkey would guarantee the cease-fire.

"Our priority is not to see Assad go, but for terrorism to be defeated," a senior Turkish government official told Reuters. "It doesn't mean we approve of Assad. But we have come to an understanding."

Syria's military said it agreed to a nationwide cease-fire starting at midnight, adding that it paved the way for reactivating negotiations to end the civil war entirely.

"News of a ceasefire in the Syrian civil war is a positive development," U.S. State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said in a statement. "We hope it will be implemented fully and respected by all parties. Any effort that stops the violence, saves lives, and creates the conditions for renewed and productive political negotiations would be welcome."

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the truce would include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria, and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance.

It comes on the heels of the Syrian army's retaking control of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, ending the opposition's four-year hold over parts of the city.

Putin said he ordered the Russian military to scale down its presence in Syria, where it has provided crucial support to Assad's forces. Putin didn't say how many troops and weapons would be withdrawn. He said Russia would continue "fighting international terrorism in Syria" and supporting Assad's military.

Putin also said that the Russian military would maintain its presence at both an air base in Syria's coastal province of Latakia and the naval facility in the Syrian port of Tartus.

Earlier Thursday, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called on Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters from Syria. The group, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Assad, has been playing an instrumental role in Syria's civil war since 2013, mostly in areas near the border with Lebanon, the suburbs of the capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo. The group is not likely to withdraw from Syria in the near future as its leader repeatedly said that their presence there is mostly to prevent attacks by extremists deep inside Lebanon.

Foreign fighters from around the world have joined both sides of the Syrian conflict that has so far killed more than quarter a million people, displaced half the country's population and produced more than four millions refugees.

Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem had said that fighters from more than 80 countries have joined insurgent groups trying to remove Assad from power while the Syrian government is backed by fighters from countries including Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Russia.

Fox News' Greg Palkot and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Swedish prosecutors say a Syrian man has been charged with war crimes for having taken part in the 2012 execution of seven government troops in Syria.

Investigator Kristina Lindehoff Carleson says the conflict then "was a non-international armed conflict between the Syrian government and a number of armed groups."

Lindehoff Carleson says the 46-year-old man had joined rebels in Syria and appeared in a May 2012 video where seven "defenseless" soldiers were executed. It was not immediately clear which rebel group he had joined.

She said Thursday the charge "should in no way been seen as an endorsement of the ongoing conflict in Syria."

The man sought asylum in Sweden in 2013 and has been held in pre-trial custody since March, according to the prosecution.
Turkey has rejected Washington's denials that it has provided weapons to a Syrian Kurdish militia force which Ankara considers to be a terrorist group.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday: "The United States has provided arms to the YPG  period."

He was responding to a U.S. Embassy statement a day earlier which said the U.S. had not "provided weapons or explosives to the YPG or the PKK  period."

Turkey views the U.S.-backed People's Protection Units, or YPG, as a terrorist organization because of its links to Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also rebuffed the U.S. denials and called on Washington to side with its ally.

Erdogan said: "Aren't we partners in NATO? Why are you supporting a terror organization and not us?"
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Turkey says Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group should withdraw from Syria and a nationwide cease-fire should come into effect before the end of the year.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to back President Bashar Assad's forces.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with the Turkish A Haber news channel on Thursday that Ankara and Moscow are close to reaching an agreement on a nationwide cease-fire. Turkey would serve as guarantor of rebel compliance, while Russia would guarantee adherence by the government.

He says Iran stated during talks earlier this month in Moscow that it will act as a guarantor for the Syrian government as well as allied Shiite groups, including Hezbollah.
Turkey says Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, which has sent thousands of fighters to support President Bashar Assad, should withdraw from Syria.

In an interview with Turkey's A Haber news channel on Thursday, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also said Turkey and Russia are close to reaching an agreement on a nationwide Syrian cease-fire that would come into effect by the end of the year.

Turkey would serve as guarantor of rebel compliance, while Russia would guarantee adherence by the government.

He says Iran stated during talks earlier this month in Moscow that it will act as a guarantor for the Syrian government as well as allied Shiite groups, including Hezbollah.
Separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine say the government has released 15 people who had been held in custody.

The separatist mouthpiece Donetsk News Agency said Thursday that government representatives handed over eight men and seven women, some of them in poor health, to rebel commanders at a checkpoint near rebel stronghold Donetsk. The separatists this week released to the government two women they had held for months.

Fighting between the separatists and government troops has killed more than 9,600 people since it broke out in 2014.

The Ukrainian president last week pardoned nine people. His representative at talks with the separatists said the government was planning to release them and six others on humanitarian grounds.

Officials did not give their names or say on what charges they had been held.
New U.K. Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt has reversed most of an economic package announced by the government just weeks ago, including a planned cut in income taxes. Hunt said Monday he was scrapping almost all the tax cuts announced last month by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Liz Truss, and also signaled that public spending cuts are on the way. It was a bid to soothe turbulent financial markets spooked by fears of excessive government borrowing. The move raises questions about how long the beleaguered prime minister can stay in office, though Truss insisted she has no plans to quit. She vowed to lead the Conservatives into the next general election, but many in the party want her gone.
Lambs, goats and cows will once again be auctioned off at the old Fredericksburg Livestock Exchange.

Asad Yosufzai, who owns a halal slaughterhouse and grocery next to the exchange, purchased it in October for $350,000. He plans to fix up the 75-year-old facility in the Fredericksburg Industrial Park early next year and reopen it.

We havent decided when yet, but we will make the decision after we do some remodeling, he said. Once we start, were going to bring the cafeteria back.

Hes also interested in hiring people who had worked at the exchange to help run it.

Reopening the exchange will certainly benefit a lot of people, said Jerry Silver, treasurer of the exchanges board of directors. Farmers who had gone to the exchanges weekly auctions to buy or sell livestock were forced to travel to auctions as far away as Marshall, Front Royal, Radiant or even Staunton after the Fredericksburg Livestock Exchange closed.

Silver, who owns Silver Ridge Farm in Stafford County, said that he now has to drive 52 miles to sell his fat cattle and 52 to 100 miles to buy feeder calves. Those in the Northern Neck and southern Maryland whod frequented the exchange have even farther to go.

Theres an economic benefit, just in the time that it will save you, he said.

Stockholders voted at their annual meeting last March to close after the May 19 auction and sell the 2.7-acre property and its ramshackle buildings due to dwindling sales and attendance. Many of the large cattle farms that once surrounded Fredericksburg have been sold and turned into subdivisions, and some of the remaining farmers found it more profitable to raise crops instead of cattle.

Silver said that several people expressed interest in the property, but Yosufzai was the only one to offer a contract. The asking price was $430,000, which is much less than the 2016 assessed value of $405,000 for the land and $104,316 for the exchanges buildings.

The sale closed on Oct. 31, but the board still has to figure out its tax liability.

As soon as that's done, we'll disperse the money to shareholders, Silver said.

Yosufzai said he bought the exchange because its next door to his Safa Halal Meats and Slaughterhouse at 207 Central Road.

It was a good opportunity because we can keep our livestock there, we can do auctions, plus its like a grandfather, so the city is happy to keep him like the way it is.

Yosufzais slaughterhouse is halal, which means that it butchers livestock according to Muslim law. It requires, among other things, that animals be killed in a way that minimizes suffering.

We slaughter lamb, goat, beef, but no pork because halal does not permit me to slaughter pork, he said.

The slaughterhouse delivers meat to stores, but it also has a small grocery where people can buy it or place custom orders.

Yosufzai, who lives in Springfield, also owns Afghan Mini Mart in Springfield and MZ Fashion, the Middle Eastern clothing boutique next door.
If youre anything like me, you probably have grand New Years Eve plans that involve frozen pizza, that channel that shows old game shows from the 70s and a 9 p.m. bedtime. I prefer to say goodbye to 2016 and my dignity at the same time.

Its too late for me, but there is still time to save yourself. If youre looking for a great way to celebrate the promise of the coming year, live music is key, and there are plenty of options within driving distance of our quaint town. Heck, some of them probably wouldnt require driving at all.

Fredericksburg

City officials have revamped the old First Night NYE celebration downtown, re-branding it Downtown 31. Various celebrations will be held in Riverfront Park and Market Square, and Steve Jarrell will be jamming. The festivities start at 5 p.m. If youre looking for something a little more intimate and high-voltage, check out Fredericksburgs own guerilla marching band, Elby Brass, at the Colonial Tavern. Southern Explosion will be rocking Doughertys Tavern in Stafford and Acoustic Onion will play classic rock and a slew of Beatles tunes at La Petite Auberge downtown. If you just want to dance your pants off, head to Hard Times Cafe for DJ Tony B, DJ Chub, DJ Bob Kidd and DJ Scotty Rock.

Baltimore

This is as far as Im willing to go with this list, but its for a good reason. Fredericksburgs own music superstar, Keller Williams, will kick 2016 in the teeth at Rams Head Live in Charm City. He will play solo, as well as with his Grateful Gospel project, which features some other familiar, local faces.

Washington

Super Seattle folk-rockers Band of Horses closes out the year with a two-night stand at the 9:30 Club in D.C., including a big blast on NYE. If you want your rock with a harder, country edge, check out the Old 97s at The Hamilton. Bluegrass fans can hop across the Potomac River to The Birchmere in Alexandria to see The Seldom Scene, with Fredericksburgs own Cabin Creek opening.

Charlottesville

Another son of Fredericksburg, Jay Starling, takes the stage at The Jefferson Theater as a member of Love Canon, a phenomenal bluegrass band that plays 80s hits. Local faves The Stray Birds open the show. If you want to get weird in the same town, check out the New Years Eve Pajama Dance Party at The Southern Cafe & Music Hall, featuring Lauren Hoffmans Secret Storm, Shagwuf, Synthetic Division, Ships In The Night and Just Sex.

Richmond

If you want to sail the seas of smooth music for NYE, you cant do any better than Three Sheets to the Wind, an impeccable yacht rock tribute band playing a 70s-themed Disco Ball at The Broadberry. A couple of fixtures on the Richmond music sceneJackass Flats and The Shack Bandare joining forces as The Shackass Flats for a NYE double-bill at The Camel. The final shot of NYE bluegrass comes from progressive pickers The Infamous Stringdusters, who will flip the calendar at The National Theater.Jonas Beals: jbeals@freelancestar.com
Members of the Davis family have suffered with one respiratory condition after anotherfrom allergies to pneumonia and bronchitis to sinus infectionsfor most of the two years theyve lived in their home near Spotsylvania High School.

When an inspection confirmed what parents Ryan and Alexis Davis suspected, that mold is causing the health issues, the young couple finally had the answers they sought.

But not the money to fix the problem. Theyve had some financial struggles in recent years and didnt qualify for a loan or payment plan to cover the estimated $2,200 cost of removing the mold.

When the Davises asked Dan Derbes, owner of AdvantaClean in Alexandria, if they could work out some sort of financial arrangement, he told them not to worry about it.

Hes had the business in Alexandria for only 14 months and cant afford to do many jobs for free. But Derbes also couldnt let the familywhich includes a dad who served in the Navy and volunteers as a firefighter, a mom with a problem pregnancy, a toddler boy and a baby girl on the wayget any sicker.

Derbes, who also served in the Navy, said his environmental service company would do the work free of charge.

It all touched me in the same way, that theyre somebody I want to help, Derbes said. I want them to have a clean and healthy environment, thats what its all about.

Wednesday afternoon, Derbes and two employees pulled their orange and white trucks and trailer into the Davis driveway and started working. They sealed off the source of the problem, the unfinished basement where water from a leaky kitchen sink and dishwasher had pooled in the ceiling, above the washer and dryer.

In the dark, dank environment, mold spores had blossomed. They created a musty smell, telltale black spots and an unhealthy environment for all those living in the home.

Levi, wholl be 3 next month, constantly has sniffles and a runny nose. He and his father have had bronchitis, and the dads allergies have worsened. The mom had a sinus infection that developed into pneumonia, which lasted for three weeks.

She was recovering from it the day Derbes inspected the house. Shed show him a room, then say she had to lie down for a while.

The mother also has had several problems with her pregnancy. Shes due March 22, but worries the baby will come sooner because shes already having contractions, as well as high blood pressure and severe migraines.

Its probably just the stress of this house, she said.

When the Davises bought the home in November 2014, they knew it needed work. It lacks central heat and air conditioning, but the young couplehes 28 and shes 22figured theyd eventually use equity from the home to make some changes.

Now, they realize the house is in much worse shape than they imagined, especially with the plumbing, and both believe the previous owners must have known about the problems.

Ryan Davis specifically asked the home inspector if they needed a mold study, and was told no. The dad also said the inspector wasnt all that thorough; he didnt even go up on the roof to examine it.

If we had known even half the issues with this house, we would not have bought it, Alexis Davis said. It looked clean.

Ryan Davis said he feels naive, that he should have known better. Brooke Rosol, his wifes aunt who urged the couple to have the house inspected for mold, said it was their first home. How was he supposed to know what problems lie beneath a fresh coat of paint?

He does commercial electrical work in Washington and leaves his Spotsylvania County home at 3 a.m. on weekday mornings. Hes also working on an associates degree at Northern Virginia Community College and studying to become a career firefighter. He volunteers with a local fire company every other weekend.

Alexis Davis is a loan officer. She grew up in Woodbridge while he graduated from Chancellor High School.

One of his volunteer firefighter friends fixed the kitchen plumbing responsible for the leak. Thats the first step in getting rid of a mold problem, Derbes said. The next is to contain the area, which Derbes team did on Wednesday, as they sealed off the room with plastic.

Two large pieces of equipment, called air scrubbers, drew out the mold spores and cleaned the air, then his team vacuumed the various storage bins and boxes in the basement to remove mold from them.

Workers also planned to pull out the insulation in the basement ceiling, vacuum around it and apply antimicrobial solution, an agent that should prevent the growth of future mold spores.

After the highest concentration of mold is removed from the basement, the spore count in the rest of the house will decrease, Derbes said. The real answer is to keep humidity below 60 percent, and mold wont grow.

After all the anxiety from the house and its mold, the Davises admit they were a little shockedin a good wayto learn a company would do the work in their home for free.

I dont know how well ever thank Dan, the mother said.
The Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation charged a Louisa County man after an early morning shooting on Monday.

Kelly J. Clark Jr., 44, is charged with one felony count of attempted capital murder of a police officer, according to a news release from the state police.

The incident took place Monday after the Louisa County Sheriffs Office responded to a single-vehicle traffic accident around 3 a.m., according to police. Clark, the driver, left the vehicle and ran into the woods. The sheriffs deputy located Clark a quarter-mile away a few minutes later. During a brief discussion, Clark charged the deputy and a struggle took place, which resulted in the deputy shooting the man once.

Clark was transported to the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville and is being treated for non-life-threatening injuries. The deputy was not hurt.

The shooting is being investigated by the Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigations Richmond Field Office at the request of the Louisa County sheriff. The investigation is ongoing, and once completed, state police will submit its findings to the Louisa County Commonwealths Attorney.

Virginia State Police Trooper C.J. Vernon is separately investigating the traffic crash.

Clark was traveling west on Louisa Road/Route 22 in a 2002 Cadillac Deville when the vehicle ran off the right side of the road, struck an embankment, struck three trees, spun around across a private driveway and came to rest along the right side of the highway, according to the release.

Clark was wearing a seat belt and a charge related to the crash is pending, according to Steve Vick of the Virginia State Police.
Four days after New Jersey resident Barbara Briley, 71, and her great-granddaughter, LaMyra Briley, 5, went missing, the two were found in their vehicle shortly before 5 p.m. Wednesday in Dinwiddie County, according to Virginia State Police.

Barbara Briley was evacuated by helicopter to VCU Medical Center for treatment. While LaMyra Briley was alert, talkative and appeared to be unharmed, she was taken from the scene for medical evaluation, police said.

State police did not detail the nature of Barbara Brileys medical condition or how she and her great-granddaughter wound up in her Toyota RAV4 on rural private property in the 16000 block of Nash Road, at least a mile from the nearest public road.

A local resident called police upon spotting the two. They were seated in the SUV when police arrived.

Maj. William Knott of the Dinwiddie Sheriffs Office said a man walking in a wooded area stumbled across the two in their vehicle. The man had seen news reports, realized who the Brileys were and called 911, Knott said.

This person probably saved them, Knott said.

Barbara Briley was not responsive to questions when authorities arrived, but LaMyra, who has since been reunited with family, was in good shape and very talkative, according to Knott. He said the two were alone in the vehicle, which did not appear damaged.

I have absolutely no clue how they got where they were, said Knott, who declined to say how long the vehicle had been on the property.

The FBI got involved Tuesday in what already had been an extensive search by police. Barbara Briley and her great-granddaughter were last seen Christmas Eve at an Exxon station in Caroline County. They were traveling to Morven, N.C., where they were to celebrate Christmas with family.

Prior to the Brileys having been found Wednesday evening, a niece of Barbara Brileys said her aunt used to work as a driver for New Jersey Transit and had made the nine-hour trip to North Carolina numerous times.

Driving is not an issue when it comes to my Aunt Barbara, said Ginger Bittle, who added that she didnt know her aunt to have any medical problems.

Family members had repeatedly tried to reach her by cellphone and retraced the route they believed she was traveling, but to no avail.

On Tuesday, Barbara Brileys cellphone pinged off a Sprint tower in Dinwiddie County, prompting authorities to search an area between Petersburg and the county airport.

Surveillance video taken Christmas Eve shows Barbara Briley at the Exxon station in the 23800 block of Rogers Clark Boulevard in Ruther Glen.

In the video, Briley enters the store at 5:39 p.m. and walks out six minutes later. She returns to the store at 5:51 p.m. and leaves again at 5:53 p.m.

Gas station clerk Joanna Strange told local media outlets Briley came inside to say she was lost and that Strange helped Briley with her GPS before she went on her way.

Briley was last seen on the gas stations video at 6:06 p.m., when she pulled out of the parking lot in her silver SUV.

Officers spent much of Monday searching the Ruther Glen area and then shifted their efforts to an area south of Richmond after police in New Jersey learned that the Brileys may have been there early Tuesday, state police Sgt. Stephan Vick said.

State troopers looked up and down the Interstate 85, I-95 and U.S. 1 corridors, going all the way to the North Carolina state line without luck, Vick said. They used a helicopter and hunted for signs of guardrail damage or other evidence that a car may have run off the road, he said.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this story.
Holiday missing from papers 2017 calendar

As a subscriber to The Free Lance-Star for more than five years, l looked forward to the recent edition that contained the 2017 calendar. The pictures are always great and represent our region well.

As I hung it on my office wall, I was somewhat surprised that Jan. 16 was not marked/highlighted as the official Martin Luther King holiday (the third Monday of January). This caused me to look throughout the rest of the year and I saw that many less significant dates were identified: Valentines Day, etc.

I truly want to believe this was an honest mistake which would be acknowledged by your paper.

I served 37 years in the U.S. Army. A fundamental tenet of leadership is, if you pass a mistake and do not correct it, you have set a new standard for your organization.

As a result, I am pointing out this error to your organization so you can continue your high standard of reporting and advertising.

James Kennon

Brigadier general,

U.S. Army (retired)

Stafford

Publishers Note: We apologize for the error in not including Martin Luther King Day in the recent Free LanceStar calendar. As Gen. Kennons letter indicates, it was an honest mistake, and the exclusion was not intentional.

Martin Luther King Day is a day that should be included in all calendars, and we will be sure to include it in future editions. Dr. Kings contribution to ensuring equal rights for all Americans cannot be emphasized enough. We are sorry we missed that important day on our calendar.
Plant Asset Management System 2016 Global Market Expected To Grow At CAGR 10.07% And Forecast To 2020

WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On - "Plant Asset Management System 2016 Global Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 10.07% and Forecast to 2020".

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The analysts forecast the global PAM system market to grow at a CAGR of 10.07% during the period 2016-2020.

A PAM system manages and monitors the fixed assets of a company, which are used in the production process. PAM gives a better control over the production process and generates a real-time data of assets, which enables officials to take informed decision. The real-time data generated by a PAM system can also be used to identify signs of failure, ensuring that plant productivity is not hit due to machine downtime.

Download Sample Report @ https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/336117-global-plant-asset-management-system-market-2016-2020

For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.com

Covered in this report

The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global plant asset management (PAM) system market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated through the sales of the PAM software and maintenance and support services in this report.

The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:

o US

o EMEA

o Asia

o ROW

The report, Global Plant Asset Management System Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.

Key vendors

o ABB

o Emerson Electric

o Honeywell

o Rockwell Automation

o Siemens

Other prominent vendors

o Applied Materials

o Dassault Systemes

o Endress+Hauser

o GE Energy

o Hitachi

o IBM

o Petrofac

o SAP

o Schneider Electric

o Yokogawa

Market driver

o Shift to lean manufacturing and green technology

o For a full, detailed list, view our report

Complete Report Details @ https://www.wiseguyreports.com/reports/336117-global-plant-asset-management-system-market-2016-2020

Market challenge

o Threat from substitutes

o For a full, detailed list, view our report

Market trend

o Integration with IIoT-connected smart devices

o For a full, detailed list, view our report

Key questions answered in this report

o What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?

o What are the key market trends?

o What is driving this market?

o What are the challenges to market growth?

o Who are the key vendors in this market space?

o What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?

o What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?

Table Of Contents - Major Key Points

PART 01: Executive summary

o Highlights

PART 02: Scope of the report

o Market overview

o Top-vendor offerings

o Other prominent vendors

PART 03: Market research methodology

o Research methodology

o Economic indicators

PART 04: Introduction

o Key market highlights

PART 05: Market landscape

o Market overview

o Five forces analysis

PART 06: Market segmentation by end user

o Market overview

o Global PAM system market: Oil and gas industry

o Global PAM system market: Power industry

o Global PAM system market: Petrochemical industry

o Global PAM system market: Pulp and paper industry

o Global PAM system market: Chemical industry

o Global PAM system market: Mining and metal industry

o Global PAM system market: Other industries

PART 07: Geographical segmentation

o Market overview

o PAM system market in the US

o PAM system market in EMEA

o PAM system market in Asia

o PAM system management market in the ROW

PART 08: Market drivers

PART 09: Impact of drivers

PART 10: Market challenges

PART 11: Impact of drivers and challenges

PART 12: Market trends

........CONTINUED

For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.com

Check Discount On This Report @ https://www.wiseguyreports.com/check-discount/336117-global-plant-asset-management-system-market-2016-2020

ABOUT US:

Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.

For more information, please visit https://www.wiseguyreports.com

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Email: sales@wiseguyreports.com

Organization: WiseGuy Research Consultants Pvt Ltd.

Address: Office No. 528, Amanora Chambers Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar Pune - 411028

Phone: +1-646-845-9349

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IC Media Direct - Expert Group Takes Part At Ad:tech Conference In New York City

Named one of the Top 10 conferences for digital marketers by AdWeek, ad:tech New York is cited as an event that centers on important issues in online marketing such as programmatic buying, viewability, and measuring digital media.

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In November 2015, team at IC Media Direct participated at ad:tech, a forward-thinking platform that gathered industry leaders from the technology and media sectors in New York City. The conference was established to allow companies to meet and share new ideas, build strong partnerships, and define the marketing strategies for the year ahead. With a chance to address key challenges and opportunities, the reputation management agency explained the essential tactics and methods they've learnt over the years on how to sustain a positive status across the Internet. See your Online Reputation Report now, by visiting http://www.icmediadirect.com

Named one of the Top 10 conferences for digital marketers by AdWeek, ad:tech New York is cited as an event that centers on important issues in online marketing such as programmatic buying, viewability, and measuring digital media. Their annual events around the world focus on education through keynote speakers and topic-driven panels showcasing the latest products and services to help deepen understanding and create new ideas to drive business forward. IC Media Direct joined attendees including John Costello from Dunkin' Brands, Inc., podcaster Marc Maron, and marketers behind recent digital political campaigns. Well-known brands such as Hyundai Motor America, Comedy Central, AMC Networks, Pandora, MTV, American Express, and Absolut also shared their expertise on how to tackle the various challenges for marketers that lie ahead.

The conference addressed the major shifts within content marketing and its ever-changing industry, encouraging participation and attendance among businesses for their insight and ideas. 2016 is showing signs of significant change for advertisers, with much emphasis being placed on mobile search results and video advertisement. Companies discussed future possibilities as marketers find different ways to interact with customers across mobile devices and new social media platforms. The ongoing merge of technology firms with media distributors will help maintain a fruitful future for both industries, as it is likely they will see a mutually beneficial partnership in the future as video placements overtake conventional text-based advertising.

Established in 1996, IC Media Direct is an online reputation management agency dedicated to brand repair for individuals and companies across the world. With clients ranging from Fortune 500 CEOs to celebrities, the company delivers effective results to help businesses and individuals gain control over their online search results. IC Media Direct has been awarded the New York Excellence Award from the Small Business Institute for Excellence in Commerce (SBIEC) for two consecutive years due to their exceptional results. The firm attends a variety of esteemed marketing conferences and events throughout the year, including SES, Affiliate Summit, and LeadsCon.

ICMediaDirect - PR and Marketing News: http://icmediadirectnews.com

ICMediaDirect.com - Google Reputation Management - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/icmediadirect

ICMediaDirect Reputation: http://icmediadirectreputation.com

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Contact Info:

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Email: pr@icmediadirect.com

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Phone: 800-595-0821

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Jacob Frydman - Donates $180,000 at NCFJE 76th Annual Awards Dinner

Acclaimed property developer Jacob Frydman announced to give $180,000 in support of the NCFJE organization at their 76th annual Awards Dinner Sunday night.

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On November 20th, 2016 the NCFJE hosted their 76th Annual Awards Dinner at Manhattan's stunning Edison Hotel Ballroom. Prominent New York-based real estate developer Jacob Frydman who was invited to attend the event as Guest of Honor has come out in strong support of the organization's mission and programs and offered to donate to the organization's work in the Jewish community. The real estate mogul, a frequent guest on major news networks, punctuated his enthusiastic support of the NCFJE with a pledge of $180,000. The room was electrified by Frydman's announcement and his commitment to charity, philanthropy, and kindness.

In a recorded statement, Jacob Frydman praised the organization's flagship Jewish Released Time Program, which sends hundreds of volunteers across metropolitan New York to teach Jewish public school students. "Find me another organization that mobilizes, literally, an army of young men and women... to engage Jewish children all over metro New York, week after week..." He also praised the Machon LeYahadus, the organization's advanced Jewish Studies program for women, which he called "forward thinking" and "ground breaking". "The National Committee was decades ahead of the rest of the Jewish world, to recognize that there were young ladies, and many of them... thirsting for that knowledge."

NCFJE Chairman, Rabbi Shea Hecht said: "We really could not be more happy with our relationship with Mr. Frydman. He has shown a real concern for the welfare of the community at large, and is the kind of guy that really wants to help. You would think that someone involved with such massive projects is very removed from the concerns of the community, but Jacob is not like that at all. He is just an incredibly warm and loving person. I'm really impressed with him."

"I'm the kind of guy - I do things right, I do things with impact, or I don't do them," said Jacob Frydman, "I feel very fortunate to have discovered an organization that shares my approach."

NCFJE was founded in 1941 by the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn to teach Torah to public school students through the Jewish Released Time Program. The organization is responsible for running 37 separate social, religious and educational programs, including Jewish Summer Camps, TOYS for Hospitalized Children, Food Pantry in Brooklyn, Anti Shmad, ILTSF (formerly known as ILTSE), and Operation Survival. In recent years, the organization has turned its focus upon the economically disadvantaged families in its home community of Crown Heights.

Jacob Frydman - Blog - JacobFrydmanNews.com: http://JacobFrydmanNews.com

Jacob Frydman -- Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/jacob-frydman

Jacob Frydman - On the Development of New High Performance Office Space: http://www.streetinsider.com/Press+Releases/Jacob+Frydman+--+On+the+Development+of+New+High+Performance+Office+Space/11911116.html

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Raj Prem - A New Book On His Career In Music Photography To Be Published

After starting in a career of music journalism, it quickly became clear that Raj Prem was more interested in the images of his favorite musicians rather than the stories on which he would report.

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Highly regarded for unmatched talent to reveal to some of the best, however previously unseen creative artwork, founder of Fine Art Photography, Raj Prem rightly thinks the period between 1960s and 1970s was the most revolutionary and artistically rich time in the history of Rock 'n' Roll music. With legendary groups such as The Rolling Stones and The Beatles turning the music world on its head, it was a time in history that changed the landscape for the future. The increased availability of portable photography meant that the combination of artistic passion with the mirroring of the music resulted in new pictures being taken of these musicians. Today, these remain some of the most iconic photographs ever taken. It is due to passionate individuals like internationally renowned collector, curator, and manager Raj Prem that many of these behind-the-scenes photographs can be viewed by the public. Now, Prem is preparing to publish a book about his documented career in music photography.

After starting in a career of music journalism, it quickly became clear that Raj Prem was more interested in the images of his favorite musicians rather than the stories on which he would report. His insider's view combined with tireless research revealed that top photographers had a myriad of work as stunning, if not more so, than their most famous pictures. He also realized that non-professionals who frequented the musicians' inner circles would often have memorable images of equal value. It was in this way that he became one of the pioneers of displaying music photography as fine art.

When asked why he decided to write a book about his career, he explained: "Because so many people have asked me to do it!" With nearly 20 years' experience working alongside the most valued music photographers in the world, it is certain that there will be a host of incredible stories to be told. The book will be available both online and in stores, and will feature interviews with top artists along with other industry leaders like Philip Townsend and Bruce Fleming. It is the autobiographical material, however, that many will be most interested in: reading the first-person account of what it entails to be the main organizer of historical exhibitions, such as one of the greatest Beatles displays of all time and the definitive Rolling Stones retrospective "The Decca Years." Prem is in discussions with two publishing houses, which wish to distribute the yet untitled book.

Prem first became enthralled with Rock 'n' Roll after witnessing one The Who's incendiary performances in the late 60's, which he claims changed his life - his ' Damascene conversion' as he describes it. The Who were for a brief period his favorite band, and he was an 'extra' in the 1974 film adaptation of The Who's ' Tommy', directed by Ken Russell. Prem describes Pete Townsend of The Who as, "the most impressive musician I ever met. The Who were iconoclasts, rock's greatest terrorists, unlike The Stones who were cultural icons but never truly revolutionary. The Who changed my life with their transcendent performances, though I had difficulty reconciling Townsend's capacity for shocking violence with his often articulate thoughtful pronouncements, indicative of a questing intellect".

Raj Prem is one of the world's most highly-respected curators and collectors of rock music photography. To date, his Raj Prem Fine Art Photography has worked with some of the leading photographers from the 60s and early 70s, including Robert Freeman, Michael Joseph, Iain Macmillan, Michael Cooper, Peter Webb, Jerry Schatzberg, Dominique Tarle, Terry O'Neill, and Pattie Boyd. He has also curated exhibitions or facilitated the use of photographs featuring rock royalty such as The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and others either through his relationships with the photographers or with his own world-famous Raj Prem Collection. His exhibitions and private collections feature some of the most iconic images from the 1960s and 70s. He has staged almost 100 exhibitions in just under two decades in countries including the USA, UK, Dubai, Hong Kong, Japan, and the Netherlands. He often collaborates with the Atlas Gallery, Snap Gallery, and Proud Galleries in London and San Francisco's SFAE Gallery.

Raj Prem - Fine Art Photography: http://rajpremnews.com

The Rolling Stones in pictures - Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/2b312c24-6570-11e0-b150-00144feab49a

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For more information, please visit http://www.RajPremNews.com

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New Show Focused on Developing Awareness with Dr. Gala Launches December 29th

Gala Gorman is launching her brand new show, "Awareness Addicts", available at AwarenessAddicts.com/Episodes and on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play. It is targeted at fans of the spirituality, personal growth and development world. More information is available at the website: http://www.AwarenessAddicts.com/Episodes

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As a student of Eastern and Western philosophy, Dr. Gala Gorman works to infuse a blend of the best of both worlds into her businesses and life. In her new show, Awareness Addicts, she provides listeners with practical examples and situations that demonstrate how developing awareness is the key to living a full and fulfilling life. The show is set to go live December 29th and is available at AwarenessAddicts.com/Episodes. It can also be found on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play. It is expected to become a big hit with fans of the spirituality, personal growth and development world.

More information on the show can be found here: http://www.AwarenessAddicts.com/Episodes

This show was created to provide Sage Advice for taking inspired action. Awareness is the key. With this key, it's easier to navigate in the human world with all of its detours. As awareness is developed, along with it comes an intimate understanding of self. And, that enhanced sense of awareness introduces some new information into the mix. With that new knowledge or outside the box experience, there is a spark that adds to life.

The Awareness Addicts Show's main focus is on helping listeners becoming alive, alert, awake and aware of life's possibilities. It is being released by MetaComm Media LLC.

Dr. Gala Gorman is an entrepreneur...consultant, mediator, broker, publisher and, formerly, accounting firm partner. This experience helped shape the creation of the show. As a change facilitator, she ignites transformation in businesses, families, students, clients and, especially, within herself.

When asked about why she created the show, Gorman said: "Developing awareness is what's worked for me. In fact, I'm a bit of an Awareness Addict. And, I'm hoping you'll become addicted too."

Gorman has hopes that the show will save listeners from wasting time feeling confused and stuck. As fellow Awareness Addicts, she believes they'll be alive, alert, awake and aware of life's possibilities. As listeners practice what she talks about on the show to develop awareness, they'll build muscles around their awareness skills. The idea is to close the gap so they can switch into awareness much more quickly ... applying awareness and understanding before getting into something they regret.

In a recent interview, the author made a point of appreciating all of the experiences that have made her who she is today. Every show includes a segment she calls Aware Appreciation. It's one of the powerful practices she introduces listeners to.

Those interested in learning more about the show can visit: http://www.AwarenessAddicts.com/Episodes

For more information, please visit http://www.metacommmedia.com

Contact Info:

Name: Gala Gorman

Email: drgg@metacommmedia.com

Organization: MetaComm Media LLC

Address: 5618 Frenzel Road, Round Top, TX, 78954 United States

Phone: (979) 661-7116

Release ID: 157258

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Kalamazoo Family Law and Criminal Attorney Legal Representation Service Launched

Michigan Family law and criminal law firm The Law Office of Victor L. Bland announced the launch of its services in the greater Kalamazoo area. The law office provides appropriate legal representation across several legal practice areas with personalized care and expert legal advice.

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The Law Office of Victor L. Bland announced the launch of its family law and criminal law consultative services in and around Kalamazoo, Michigan. The firm provides professional legal representation for a wide range of civil and criminal cases involving legal separation, child custody, restraining orders, felonies, misdemeanors, murder, forgery, robbery, and drug offenses.

More information about The Law Office of Victor L. Bland can be found at http://attorneyvictorbland.com

Advisory services in the areas of family law and criminal law remain two of the most accessed legal services in the United States. The practice of family law covers all major areas applicable to couples and families including paternity, alimony, visitation, spousal and child support. Legal services in this area also cover legal matters arising after a ruling or judgement.

The Law Office of Victor L. Bland specializes in the expert legal management of family law cases through an approach that employs, compassion, sensitivity to the needs of clients, especially when children are involved. The firm offers personalized services to meet the unique needs and situation of each client, ensuring that the individual or family is adequately represented. The firm offers its expertise in handling even the most complex aspects of criminal law pertaining to a wide range of crimes ranging from DUI to murder and homicide.

According to a spokesperson for the Law Office of Victor L. Bland, "In the sensitive matter of family law, we offer sound legal advice backed by a compassionate approach to help a client navigate through complex matters such as planning custody and joint parenthood with as little added stress as is possible. Our criminal law practice focuses on ensuring that our clients receive sound representation, a fair hearing, and a smooth legal process."

The Law Office of Victor L. Bland is headquartered in Kalamazoo, Michigan and comprises board certified family law attorneys and criminal attorneys with decades of legal practice and expertise. The firm's practice extends to the city and its surrounding regions.

For more information, please visit http://attorneyvictorbland.com

Contact Info:

Name: Rich

Organization: The Law Office of Victor L. Bland

Address: 8229 Mellowwood Dr, Jenison United States



Release ID: 157659

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Digital Marketing Web Hosting & Lead Management Business Services Launched

Connect Trend, a California online marketing company announced the launch of Insty.me, a new web hosting platform which incorporates digital marketing and lead generation features. Insty.me allows its users to create e-mail marketing campaigns, collect leads and manage website features from one single desktop app.

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Connect Trend, a California digital marketing company announced the launch of Insty.me, a new web hosting platform which includes digital marketing and lead generation features.

More information is available at http://connecttrend.com/InstyMe2.

Web hosting is essential for all online businesses, since the quality of the web hosting platform affects important website features such as overall layout, user friendliness and load times. These are crucial features that play a major part in Google ranking, thereby making quality web hosting a key part of the entire web marketing process.

Most web hosting platforms feature basic functions such as domain hosting, file uploading, built-in templates and even e-commerce options. However, online businesses looking for reliable internet marketing built-in features such as subscription forms or e-mail marketing lists are hard-pressed to find a reliable web hosting platform.

Insty.me was designed with digital marketing purposes in mind, in an effort to provide an inclusive web hosting platform suitable for most modern online marketing needs.

The platform features a set of functions that are not normally found in the standard versions of other web hosts, such as full e-mail marketing support, lead capture forms, as well as an integrated single-dashboard desktop app.

The e-mail marketing function allows Insty.me users to create e-mail campaigns, send e-mail copies to multiple contacts at once, and identify the action taken by the recipients. This helps online businesses identify which campaigns had the highest success rate, and tailor their future campaigns accordingly.

Insty.me also provides users with the opportunity to create easily-accessible subscription forms. These are connected with the e-mail marketing features, thereby effectively transferring contacts from subscription to e-mailing lists.

Finally, the entire functionality of Insty.me can be accessed via a single-tab desktop app which signs the user in automatically across all linked accounts, thus reducing log-in times considerably.

Insty.me is fully compatible with WordPress, and website transfer from other web hosting platforms is free of charge.

Interested parties can find more information by visiting the above-mentioned website.

For more information, please visit http://www.ConnectTrend.com

Contact Info:

Name: Rob Hoerntlein

Email: Trend@ConnectTrend.com

Organization: Connect Trend

Address: PO Box Sonora, CA 95370, Yosemite National Park, California, 5501 United States

Phone: (209) 206-2549

Release ID: 156871

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MBMA Adds Two New Members  Panasonic Corporation of North America and Package Steel Systems Inc.

The Metal Building Manufacturers Association recently welcomed two new members to its ranks.

December 29, 2016 (FPRC) -- CLEVELAND, OHIO  www.mbma.com: The membership ranks of the Metal Building Manufacturers Association (MBMA) are continuing to expand. MBMA recently welcomed Panasonic Corporation of North America (Panasonic) as its 60th Associate member, and Package Steel Systems Inc. as a Building Systems member.



Panasonic will be represented by Jon Downey, who serves as the companys housing and construction market development manager. Package Steel Systems will be represented by Bob Fisette, who serves as the companys president.



Our members are vital to MBMAs continued success and influence in the building and construction industry, says Dan Walker, PE, associate general manager of MBMA. Each companys unique contributions help us to advance the wide-spread acceptance of metal building systems as the premier building solution within the low-rise commercial construction market.



Based in Newark, N.J., Panasonic Corporation of North America manufactures consumer and industrial products, including advanced building insulation solutions and products for metal roofs and gutters. The company is a subsidiary of Osaka, Japan-based Panasonic Corporation, founded in 1918.



Package Steel Systems is located in Sutton, Mass. The metal building manufacturer serves customers in the Northeastern region of the U.S.



The MBMA is comprised of metal building system manufacturers and their suppliers who fabricate or manufacture materials for the industry, as well as architecture and engineering firms and service providers.



_________

Founded in 1956, MBMA serves manufacturers and suppliers as it works to promote the metal building systems industry. For 60 years, its membership has supplied high-quality buildings for use in commercial, retail, office, industrial, institutional and other end-uses. The association provides a wealth of useful information on its website, www.mbma.com, for anyone who works with or is interested in metal building systems. It includes technical materials and design guides.





Send an email to Dan Walker, Associate General Manager of r

216.241.7333

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Sterlings recent weakness has been a key factor in pushing up beef prices following the Brexit vote.

The UK is only 75% self-sufficient in beef, and imports, mainly from Ireland, have become more expensive.

This has bolstered finished prices, offsetting some stringent, buyer-driven reductions in maximum carcass weights, says Andersons consultant Ben Burton.

Well-managed businesses are generating positive margins. But the weaker pound has driven feed price rises, increasing pressure in an environment where a typical beef system continues to make negative returns, particularly upland systems.

See also: How a discussion group could help your farm business

AHDB figures show that in 2014-15 a combined suckler/finishing unit lost 1.09/kg deadweight on average, he adds.

Business pointers Well managed businesses can create positive margins

Technical efficiency is key

Ensure cattle meet target market requirements

Favourable future EU/world trade deals are crucial

If the UK unilaterally removes import trade barriers  prime minister Theresa May has suggested the UK will lead the world in free trade  it will not only be Irish prices that affect the British beef price premium, but perhaps South American supplies as well, says Mr Burton.

Unfortunately, the beef trade is unlikely to feature high up the UKs political agenda and its importance as a sacrificial pawn when negotiating trade deals should not be underestimated.

Red tape

In the short term, red tape such as NVZ regulations is unlikely to disappear after Brexit. It could even increase, with resultant administrative and production costs, says Mr Burton.

Technical efficiency remains key to profitability, and a healthy herd is a must to achieve it, he advises.

Start with abattoir reports and talk to your vet  a small amount of time can save a significant amount of money.

Diets must be monitored to ensure they are cost-effective, he adds. Seek professional help  advisers use feed formulation software to optimise ration performance and cost.

Producing cattle to target market requirements is key, says Mr Burton. Talk to your buyer and review performance, and be prepared to act on it.

Resources must be scrutinised, says Mr Burton. Ensure resources are effectively used and that the business is not overresourced.

Farmers Weekly says: Sarah Alderton, livestock editor Efficient beef production is still an issue in the UK, with only 53% of cattle hitting target specification.

Mortality and production losses due to disease are still affecting the bottom line. This, coupled with increasing pressure to minimise antibiotic use in stock, means it is more important than ever to focus on proactive cattle health management.

Food and forage efficiency is another key factor in sustaining a profitable beef system. Farmers are looking to get more production from grass, to keep costs to a minimum.
The agreement comes about two months after Project Roomkey, which provided motel rooms for the homeless, ended.
March 21, 1934  Dec. 24, 2016

Virginia (Latshaw) Wilson was born March 21, 1934, to Florence and Stanley Latshaw in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. She died in Corvallis on Dec. 24, 2016, in the care of Ts Heart Elder Care. She was a loving wife and mother, and taught mathematics at the secondary and junior college levels. She is survived by her husband, Howard; three children, Cheryl, Randall and Brian; four grandchildren, Catherine, Nathanael, Ari and Eli; and siblings Miriam, David and Carol.

The first of four siblings, Virginia grew up in a Pennsylvania Dutch home, working on the family farm. She enjoyed school and excelled at it, graduating from high school with high honors. After graduating from Pennsylvania State University, she taught junior high mathematics for a few years outside Philadelphia. Virginia met Howard L. Wilson when they were graduate students of mathematics at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois. They were married Aug. 27, 1960.

For many years Virginias highest desire was to manage her home, nurture her children and support and love her husband. She accomplished all of these, providing her family with a safe and caring home. She cooked, she celebrated, she mourned, she offered advice, she traversed with care and sensitivity her childrens adolescent years. She supported Howard in his desire to work overseas, living in Papua New Guinea with the family in 1971 and 72. She welcomed wholeheartedly her son-in-law, Mark, and daughters-in-law, Ramey and Katherine, and her grandchildren she treasured. Compassionate and self-sacrificing, she quietly and consistently thought of others before herself.

Virginia returned to the professional world, working at OSU and then teaching algebra at LBCC, from which she derived much satisfaction and where her patience was much appreciated.

In retirement she was able to travel the world with Howard. She volunteered at the OSU Thrift Store for many years. A long-time member of the First United Methodist Church in Corvallis, she served in a variety of ways through the years  as an organist, with the United Methodist Women, and on the Congregational Care Team. Her faith was an integral part of who she was, and her dearest friends were members of the church.

Though her last years were clouded by dementia, her compassionate spirit remained to the end. Her family is thankful to have had such a wife, mother and grandmother.

A memorial service will be at 10 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 14, at the Corvallis First United Methodist Church.

In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made in her name to Benton Hospice Service or The First United Methodist Church of Corvallis.
Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021.
New Years Eve : Cologne has new plan for this year

COLOGNE Cologne presented its new security concept for New Years Eve. In addition to grappling with memories of last years mayhem, terrorism is also on the radar. You can plan a lot, but you cant prevent everything, said Cologne police chief Jurgen Mathies.

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Dozens of media representatives, domestic and international, came to the city hall on Wednesday to hear security plans for New Years Eve in Cologne. The basic message on such an occasion: There is no one hundred percent security.

However, this year in the area of the Cologne Cathedral and train station, there will be a Schutzzone which is a protected area, lots of light, modern surveillance cameras, 1,500 police, street workers, and a Beratungsmobil which is a mobile station for girls and women to go to if needed.

Those who want to light off fireworks will have to go elsewhere. In a place where hundreds of women were sexually harassed last year on New Years Eve, this year Cologne is promoting its New Years Eve as a family festival with lighting displays and singing together. Lord Mayor Henriette Reker says everyone should be able to celebrate peacefully in Cologne, and she hoped that women would not be overcome by memories of last year.

Addressing terror Besides the events of last year, officials are also dealing with the threat of terror. In Cologne and other cities where crowds of people gather, barriers will be put up to prevent heavy vehicles from entering. Barriers will be set up in some areas, including the Deutz bridge and the Rheinuferstrae. Bike paths and walkways on the Hohenzollernbrucke will be blocked. In Dusseldorf old town, there will also be a ban on fireworks.

Social media will be closely monitored for any developments. In Oberhausen, police are optimistic, There is nothing to indicate any unusual developments, said police spokesperson Tom Litges. In Dusiburg, all police who are not on vacation will be on duty.
Interview with Frank Thelen : Investor sees Bonn moving forward

Bonn GA-reporters Sabrina Bauer and Andreas Dyck talk with Bonn investor and technology expert Frank Thelen about the start-up scene in Bonn, international schooling and what makes a good idea. Here are some excerpts from their interview.

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We have been examining the start-up scene in Bonn. How well is Bonn prepared?

Frank Thelen: Bonn is moving forward. We founded the Digital Hub Region Bonn, of which I am also an investing partner. The initiative Digitales Bonn (Digital Bonn) with our Lord Mayor and leading business leaders Tim Hoettges and Frank Strau unifies the topic of digitalization in Bonn. But Bonn is not Berlin; we are far from that. Berlin is the center for start-ups in Germany, where U.S. investors are heading for new ideas. Smaller hubs such as Bonn, Cologne, Hamburg and Munich need to maintain close ties to Berlin.

What does Bonn offer young companies?

Thelen: Bonn is a positive city. I enjoy living here. With High-Tech Grunderfonds (a public-private partnership firm investing capital in start-ups), we have a real highlight. Its invested in nearly 500 start-ups. Besides that, we have big partners like Deutsche Telekom, DHL and Postbank as partners for start-ups. We have affordable rent and with the United Nations and worldwide firms, we are really international.

What can Bonn do better?

Thelen: I think there is not so much more Bonn can do directly for the start-up scene. The important issues are determined at federal level or by strong founders, such as Jorg Haas who acts without worrying about political circumstances or decisions. But I would hope that Lord Mayor Sridharan would also take on uncomfortable issues and not always try to please everyone.

Which issues do you mean?

Thelen: For example, international schools: We wanted to build another international school which offered a focus on programming. It was rejected by the city council, because we apparently have enough international schools. This is aggravating, especially since the parents wanted to provide funding. We need such schools so we have people who can do coding right here in our city. The city is reluctant to support international schools because it wants to please everyone. But if you want start-ups, you must promote programming and provide high quality schools for key players.

First of all, one needs a good idea. What does it take?

Thelen: Every good idea needs a founder who lives and breathes it. There are also founders who just want to be founders. This does not work, however. Founders and their teams must also represent their ideas in brutally hard times - because they have a vision. Those who do not have this energy and dynamics will not be able to manage.

How hard is it to start a new company in Germany?

Thelen: We have too many hurdles, because we regulate even the smallest details, for example. I now have so many legal advisors and tax consultants around me because it is such a huge issue. We must radically simplify this so that we can move faster. Friedrich Merz of the CDU has tried this and failed. Christian Linder is now trying to push this urgently needed simplification with the FDP party.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai Arrives in India: Everything You Need to Know Features oi -Rohit Sundar Pichai is expected to make some new announcements aimed at helping the digital operations of small and medium business enterprises in India

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is in India for a holiday trip. But as we know that the man never rests, he will address an event in New Delhi on January 4, where Pichai is expected to announce the company's new initiatives aimed at helping small businesses and startups in the Indian market.

The reports say that Google's upcoming announcement is expected to be in sync with the government's Digital India and Startup India initiatives. India is considered as an emerging hub for new startups and Google wants to focus on the digital operations of small and medium business enterprises in 2017.

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The event's spotlight will be on the Indian SMB ecosystem and how digital can be a game changer for their business.

Sundar Pichai will attend the event scheduled in New Delhi at 11.00 am on Wednesday, January 4 in the presence of Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting - Sh. Ravi Shankar Prasad.

The Union Minister will talk about how the digital tools are helping Indian businesses and entrepreneurs. The media event will also be graced by the presence of Google India head Rajan Anandan. The event will also be attended by entrepreneurs and businessmen.

Pichai is expected to talk and announce Google's Digital Unlocked platform. The company's online learning tool for small businesses and startups.

The training course is certified by Google in association with Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. The whole idea behind Google's upcoming event is to make emerging businesses go online.

Post the event in New Delhi, Pichai is expected to travel to IIT Kharagpur, where he will discuss his life experiences with a group of students and teachers at an event, titled 'A journey back to the past to inspire the future'. The event will take place on January 5.

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Value for Money Smartphones Launched in 2016 Features oi -Abhinaya Prabhu Best value for money smartphones of 2016.

In the Indian market, there are several smartphones at different price points. However, not all the devices have gained enough popularity. Some devices managed to gain a lot of fame in a short span of time, but gradually the same faded away. On the other hand, a few smartphones are highly popular and remain the best handsets in their category.

Today, we at GizBot, as a part of our 2016 collectives, have listed a few such popular smartphones that are great value for money offerings. Notably, these smartphones have amazing specifications and attractive price tags too.

Top Android Smartphones with Best Battery Life Released in 2016

The list includes smartphones from Xiaomi, Motorola, Lenovo, Samsung and other players as well. Get to know more from below and decide which one you like to purchase or use.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Xiaomi's Redmi Note 3 is a huge success for the manufacturer and a great smartphone in the affordable market. It is the most searched smartphone on Google India this year and one of the best sellers in the Indian smartphone arena. Above all, the device offers all that a smartphone user might need in an affordable package making it a hit. Moto G4 Plus The Moto G4 Plus is a successful smartphone in the country due to its features, specifications, and price tag. The smartphone comes as an impressive package despite its reasonable price tag, making it a notable offering. Eventually, we have added the Moto G4 Plus in our list of value for money smartphones. Samsung Galaxy J5 The Galaxy J5 smartphone is a notable one in the popular Galaxy J series from the South Korean tech giant. Well, this mid-ranger is a popular device and managed to attract the buyers with its competitive price point, 4G connectivity support and long lasting battery life. Oppo F1s Oppo F1s launched in August this year is the company's latest selfie-focused smartphone in India. The device comes with a 16 MP front-facing selfie camera with f/2.0 aperture, which can capture great looking selfies without any glitches. It has opened up a new segment of competition in the already competitive smartphone arena. Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime Xiaomi announced the Redmi 3S Prime smartphone in the country with an octa-core processor and other impressive features and specifications. The device features a metal magnesium alloy unibody design and a fingerprint sensor as well at its back. The device is yet another impressive offering from Xiaomi in India. Coolpad Note 3 Lite Earlier this year, Coolpad announced an affordable variant of the Note 3 smartphone, the Coolpad Note 3 Lite. The device is priced attractively and it set a new criterion for the low-cost smartphones. Despite being affordable, this phone features a fingerprint sensor giving a tough challenge to the rivals. Lenovo K5 Note The Lenovo K5 Note is one of the most searched smartphones launched this year. The device has been launched with the USP of delivering long lasting battery life and 4G connectivity despite the reasonable price tag. Eventually, it attracted buyers and became a smash hit. Vivo V5 Vivo V5 sets a standard in the selfie-centric smartphone segment with a 20 MP front-facing camera module to lure the selfie enthusiasts. The handset has many other impressive features in addition to its selfie camera. There is a water resistant build and a decent battery backup as well. Lenovo K6 Power Lenovo K6 Power is a pretty good budget smartphone that you can choose to buy. There are decent specifications and a long lasting 4000mAh battery powering the device rendering a backup of around 2 days. This smartphone comes packed with many features as well making it a great value for money purchase available in the smartphone arena. LeEco Le 2 This smartphone from the Chinese vendor LeEco was released in India earlier this year at a reasonable price point that lured many buyers for its new features and decent specs. Along with Le Max 2, this smartphone introduced the CDLA Type-C Earphones ditching the 3.5mm audio jack.

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OnePlus 3T Soft Gold Variant Will Now be Available on Amazon News oi -Samden Sherpa OnePlus has announced the availability of OnePlus 3T in Soft Gold color in early January.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus has disclosed that the Soft Gold variant of its flagship OnePlus 3T smartphone will now be available in India. Till now, only the Gun Metal version was available on the e-commerce website.

However, the OnePlus 3T, which will now be available in Soft Gold color, will come as a 64 GB variant only. The smartphone will be priced at Rs 29,999 and will be exclusively available on Amazon India.

So if you are looking forward to buying the device, you can register for the "Amazon APP only sale" on January 5, 2017. Pre-registrations also start from December 28th, 5 PM onwards and will go on until January 3, 2017. After the sale, the phone will eventually be open for sale on the website starting January 6.

Mobile Accessories That Cost Less than Rs. 100

Coming to the specs, the OnePlus 3T soft gold variant features a 5.5-inch full-HD 1080p OLED display with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. The device gets an all-aluminium body which is just 7.4mm thin and weighs 158g. The device is powered by a Snapdragon 821 processor, which is paired with a huge 6GB RAM.

OnePlus 3T is running on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with OnePlus's Oxygen OS skin on top with an Android 7.0 Nougat update around the corner. The smartphone is a dual-SIM device with support for 4G LTE and VoLTE. Sadly, the device lacks support for an expandable storage. As for the cameras, the OnePlus 3T comes with a 16-megapixel rear camera with f/2.0 aperture and PDAF as well as a 16-megapixel selfie camera. The rear camera can shoot QHD videos at 30fps and full-HD 1080p videos at 60fps.

Snapdeal Will Soon Deliver Reliance Jio SIM Cards

Powering the device is a 3400mAh battery with OnePlus's proprietary Dash-Charge quick charging capabilities, which delivers an entire day of battery in just 30 minutes of charge time.

OnePlus has stated that the company has been looking forward to fulfilling yet another promise and commitment by introducing a brand-new Soft Gold color variant of OnePlus 3T for the fans this New Year. The company claims that the color is unbelievably beautiful and presents a lighter, yet elegant look. To complement this more low-profile take on gold, OnePlus has gone with a subtle texture reminiscent of holding fine and silky-soft sand.

Click Here for New Smartphones Best Online Deals

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Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus Rumored to Feature S Pen, Does it Mark the End of Road to Galaxy Note Series? News oi -Chakri Kudikala The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 might be the last phone in the trademark Note series.

We are just two months away from the official launch of Samsung Galaxy S8 . It is widely speculated that Samsung is working on two new variants of the phones, the original Galaxy S8 and a phablet sized Galaxy S8 Plus.

We have already seen a couple of rumors regarding the Galaxy S8 Plus from the last five days. And, a recent leak coming from China suggests that the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus might come with the S Pen accessory, which is exclusive to the Galaxy Note series.

Also Read: OnePlus to Soon Unveil OnePlus 5, Company's First Water-Resistant Smartphone

Samsung is currently testing various prototypes of the Galaxy S8 and yet to decide the final prototype of the phone. Another leak that came out today suggests that both the variants of the Galaxy S8 will move away from the traditional capacitive buttons and instead feature on-screen navigation keys.

Also, there are several noteworthy changes to be expected in the Galaxy S8. Nevertheless, this leak raises several questions regarding the 'Note' series as the S Pen is exclusive only to the Note series phones.

With the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco, the company might permanently kill the Note series and will release a Galaxy S phablet this year.

Source

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Overall, Double XL is a well-made film that might be liked by gentry in all shapes, sizes, and age too. By the way, do not miss the interval!!
Inherent Resolve Strikes Target ISIL in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Dec. 28, 2016  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack and fighter aircraft conducted 15 strikes in Syria:

-- Near Shadaddi, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a tactical vehicle.

-- Near Raqqa, 13 strikes engaged seven ISIL tactical units; destroyed 11 fighting positions, a surface-to-air-missile truck and a radar truck, a heavy machine gun, and a mortar system; damaged two supply routes; and suppressed an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, a strike destroyed two supply caches.

Strikes in Iraq

Attack, bomber, fighter, rotary and remotely piloted aircraft, as well as rocket artillery, conducted four strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government:

-- Near Kirkuk, a strike engaged an ISL tactical unit and destroyed a tractor.

-- Near Mosul, three strikes engaged an ISIL tactical unit; destroyed four mortar systems, two vehicle-borne-bomb factories, an unmanned-aerial-vehicle facility, two front-end loaders, an ISIL tactical vehicle and an ISIL-held building; damaged a front-end loader and a vehicle-borne bomb; disabled two bridges; and suppressed two ISIL tactical units and a mortar system.

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 it poses to Iraq, Syria, the region and the wider international community. The destruction of targets in Syria and Iraq further limits ISIL'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, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

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Obama, Japanese Prime Minister Pay Respects at Pearl Harbor

By Karen Parrish DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Dec. 28, 2016  President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met yesterday at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to pay their respects to the victims and honor the survivors of the attack 75 years ago that drew the United States into World War II.

"It is here that we reflect on how war tests our most enduring values," Obama said. "How even as Japanese-Americans were deprived of their own liberty during the war, one of the most decorated military units in the history of the United States was the 442nd Infantry Regiment, and its 100th Infantry Battalion, the Japanese-American Nisei."

"America's first battle of the Second World War roused a nation," Obama said. "Here, in so many ways, America came of age. A generation of Americans -- including my grandparents, that greatest generation -- they did not seek war, but they refused to shrink from it."

On the front lines and in factories, Americans did their part to win that war, Obama said. To the World War II veterans in his audience, he declared, "A grateful nation thanks you."

The meeting of the two leaders, the president said, was intended to "send a message to the world that there is more to be won in peace than in war, that reconciliation carries more rewards than retribution."

"Here in this quiet harbor, we honor those we lost," Obama said. "And we give thanks for all that our two nations have won, together, as friends."

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Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group Returns Home

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS161228-08

Release Date: 12/28/2016 12:27:00 PM

From NORFOLK, Va.

Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command Public Affairs Office (NNS) -- More than 6,000 Sailors from Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 10 are scheduled to arrive at their homeports Dec. 30 after completing a highly successful seven-month deployment.

The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) (Ike), guided-missile cruiser USS San Jacinto (CG 56) and guided-missile destroyers USS Mason (DDG 87) and USS Nitze (DDG 94) are returning to Naval Station (NS) Norfolk. USS Roosevelt (DDG 80) is returning to its homeport of NS Mayport, Florida.

Commanded by Rear Adm. James Malloy, the Eisenhower CSG is comprised of Ike, embarked squadrons of Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 3, CSG 10 staff and Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 26 staff and ships.

CVW-3 is commanded by Capt. Marc Miguez and is comprised of squadrons based out of Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana, NAS Whidbey Island, NAS Jacksonville, NAS Lemoore and NS Norfolk. CVW-3 includes Strike Fighter Squadrons (VFA) 32 "Swordsmen," VFA-86 "Sidewinders," VFA-105 "Gunslingers" and VFA-131 "Wildcats;" Tactical Electronics Warfare Squadron (VAQ) 130 "Zappers;" Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron (VAW) 123 "Screwtops;" Fleet Logistics Support Squadron (VRC) 40 "Rawhides;" Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 74 "Swamp Foxes;" and Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 7 "Dusty Dogs."

While deployed, the strike group performed admirably in the 5th and 6th U.S. Fleet areas of operations while providing maritime security, conducting combat missions and launching F/A-18 strikes against ISIL in Syria and Iraq. The strike group's support of Operation Inherent Resolve, Operation Odyssey Resolve and Operation Oaken Steel was integral to each mission's success.

While conducting operations in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb Strait, USS Mason defended itself and other U.S. ships from multiple inbound anti-ship cruise missiles during the week of Oct. 9. In response to these threats, Sailors aboard Nitze swiftly carried out a defensive Tomahawk strike against three radar sites on the Yemeni coast. These combined actions reduced adversary capabilities in this strategic maritime chokepoint and helped ensure continued free-flow of commerce throughout the region.

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Future USS Rafael Peralta Completes Acceptance Trials

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS161228-06

Release Date: 12/28/2016 11:58:00 AM

From Team Ships Public Affairs

BATH, Maine (NNS) -- The future USS Rafael Peralta (DDG 115) successfully completed acceptance trials Dec. 16 after spending two days underway off the coast of Maine.

The U.S. Navy's Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) reviewed the ship and its crew during a series of demonstrations while underway. INSURV evaluates the ship's construction and compliance with Navy specifications and is the governing body that recommends the ship be delivered to the Navy.

The trials were conducted both pier-side and underway. Many of the ship's onboard systems tested to validate performance, including navigation, damage control, mechanical and electrical systems, combat systems, communications, and propulsion applications, met or exceeded Navy specifications.

"DDG 115 performed exceedingly well during acceptance trials and throughout the test and trials period," said Capt. Casey Moton, DDG 51 class program manager, Program Executive Office (PEO) Ships. "This ship is another example of the excellent work performed by our Navy, waterfront, and industry teams. As we continue with serial production of the Arleigh Burke class, I look forward to delivering more of these world-class ships to the fleet."

Rafael Peralta is equipped with the Aegis Baseline 9 Combat System which includes an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) capability incorporating Ballistic Missile Defense 5.0 Capability Upgrade and Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air capability. The ship's IAMD radar will provide increased computing power and radar upgrades that improve detection and reaction capabilities against modern air warfare threats. The Aegis Combat System will enable the ship to link radars with other ships and aircraft to provide a composite picture of the battlespace and effectively increase the theater space.

Following delivery, DDG 115 will be the 65th Arleigh Burke class destroyer and the first of the DDG 51 FLT IIA restart ships to be built at Bath Iron Works. The shipyard is currently in production on future destroyers Thomas Hudner (DDG 116), Daniel Inouye (DDG 118) and Carl M. Levin (DDG 120) and under contract for three additional ships awarded as part of the five-ship multi-year procurement for FY13-17.

As one of the Defense Department's largest acquisition organizations, PEO Ships is responsible for executing the development and procurement of all destroyers, amphibious ships, special mission and support ships, and boats and craft.

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Uruguay's former dictator Gregorio Alvarez dies at 91

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 28, 2016 6:8PM

General Gregorio "El Goyo" Alvarez, the last military dictator in Uruguay who ruled the country from 1981 to 1985, has died at the age of 91.

Human rights activists in Uruguay were celebrating the death on Wednesday of Alvarez, who reportedly died of a heart failure at Montevideo Military Hospital.

"With the greatest respect, a rapist, a murderer, a torturer, a 'disappearer' doesn't redeem himself by dying," said a lawyer who once defended the victims of the Alvarez era.

Activist Beatriz Benzano said, "The first thing I thought is, he died with the secret of all the people he 'disappeared' and killed."

"Kidnapping children, robbing babies, disappearances, raping men and women... He had an interminable list of crimes."

Alvarez was a key element of a military regime that took power in Uruguay following the 1973 coup. He stepped down in 1985, when protests forced him to accept a return of democracy to Uruguay. He had been sentenced to 25 years in prison over human rights violations he committed during his dictatorship, which included imprisonment, torture and killing of thousands of people in the country.

Investigations by independent groups have found that some 6,000 people were jailed during the time of the military regime only for political charges. The regime is also believed to have orchestrated the abduction of 230 people who are missing and presumed dead.

Leftist Tupamaro guerrillas played a role in the regime's downfall in the 1980s. The fighters later merged into a broader coalition, which still rules the country.

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Israeli settlements 'destroy hopes for peace': Kerry

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 28, 2016 5:46PM

Secretary of State John Kerry defended the United States' decision to abstain - and not veto - a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, saying Israel's policies put the so-called two-state solution "in serious jeopardy."

Speaking days after a historic measure by the UN Security Council against the settlements, Kerry said on Wednesday the status quo was leading to a "perpetual occupation" of Palestinian lands which in turn would "destroy hopes for peace on both sides."

"The two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians," Kerry said as he laid out President Barack Obama's vision of the Middle East before a group of diplomats in Washington.

"Today, there are a similar number of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea," the top US diplomat continued. "They have a choice. They can choose to live together in one state, or they can separate into two states."

On Friday, the UN Security Council voted 14-0 to pass Resolution 2334, which demanded an immediate end to Israel's "illegal" settlement activities in occupied Palestinian territories.

The unanimous vote was made possible after the US broke away from its tradition of vetoing anti-Israeli measures and allowed the resolution to pass by abstaining from the vote.

The decision angered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accused Obama and Kerry of being behind the "shameful" act. The Israeli envoy to the US, Ron Dermer, pushed the envelope even further, saying on Monday that Tel Aviv was in possession of "ironclad" evidence that showed Obama planned the "gang-up."

Kerry said in his speech that Netanyahu's "current coalition is the most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements."

"Friends need to tell each other the hard truths and friendships require mutual respect," he said.

Kerry also rejected Tel Aviv's claims of US collusion with other Security Council members and Palestinian officials, saying the decision to abstain from the vote was "'in accordance with our values."

However, he said the Obama administration, like all the administrations before it, has been fully committed to Israel's security.

"No American administration has done more for Israel's security than Barack Obama's," Kerry said. "The Israeli prime minister himself has noted our unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation."

Ahead of Kerry's speech, President-elect Donald Trump harshly criticized the Obama administration for allowing the resolution to pass and urged Israel to "stay strong" until January 20 when he takes office.

Netanyahu, who is reportedly preparing to deliver a rebuttal to Kerry's speech on Wednesday afternoon, responded with a tweet thanking Trump for his "clear-cut support for Israel."

The Israeli prime minister and Trump have both said they would ignore the new UN resolution.

Relations between the Obama administration and Netanyahu reached a particularly low point last year as the Israeli premier lobbied members of Congress to undermine a historic nuclear agreement reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries.

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US denies discussing UN Israeli settlement measure with Palestine

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 28, 2016 4:24PM

The White House has vehemently denied accusations that Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Adviser Susan Rice had discussed the recent UN resolution against illegal Israeli settlements with Palestinian officials.

A report, which first surfaced on an Egyptian new website on Wednesday morning, detailed what it claimed was a meeting between the American officials and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chief Saeb Muhammad Salih Erekat ahead of the UN Security Council's passing of the anti-Israeli measure on Friday.

Israeli media claimed that Kerry and Rice had discussed the resolution's draft with Erekat.

Following the accusations, US National Security Council spokesman Ned Price rejected the claims as "fabrication" in a tweet.

"This is a total fabrication. This meeting never occurred," he said.

This is while, according to the US State Department's own website, Kerry was indeed slated for a meeting with Erekat on December 12. No details on the meeting were released on the website.

On Friday, the UN Security Council voted 14-0 to pass Resolution 2334, which demanded an immediate end to Israel's "illegal" settlement activities in occupied Palestinian territories.

The unanimous vote was made possible after the US broke away from its tradition of vetoing anti-Israeli measures and allowed the resolution to pass by abstaining from the vote.

The decision angered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who summoned the representatives of most of the countries backing the measure and reduced diplomatic ties with 12 of them on Monday.

Netanyahu also gave US Ambassador Daniel Shapiro an earful over the measure and accused President Barack Obama and Kerry of planning the "shameful" act.

The Israeli envoy to the US, Ron Dermer, pushed the envelope even further, saying on Monday that Tel Aviv was in possession of "ironclad" evidence that showed Obama's role in "gang-up."

He said Israel would hand over the evidence to incoming President Donald Trump's administration once the New York businessman is inaugurated on January 20.

The report came ahead of Kerry's highly anticipated speech on Wednesday evening, where he is expected to address the Israeli-Palestinian issue as well as other Middle East conflicts.

Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan called Kerry's planned speech a "pathetic step," highlighting the growing tensions between Tel Aviv and Washington.

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Lebanese parliament endorses new government led by Hariri

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 28, 2016 2:54PM

A national unity government headed by Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri has won a vote of confidence in the parliament.

On Wednesday, the 128-member legislature voted 87 to 4, with one abstention, in support of Hariri's 30-member cabinet.

The vote of confidence came after Lebanese lawmakers debated the new government's policy statement that outlined its priorities.

The cabinet, which includes most of the country's political groups, has the slogan of "restoring confidence."

In an address to the parliament on Wednesday, Hariri underlined the need for a new electoral law that will replace the 1960 legislation.

"There's a role that should be played by the cabinet and another by the parliament... All political factions are seeking to endorse a new electoral law," he said.

Touching on the issue of corruption at state institutions, the Lebanese premier further said that his administration had set a precedent in establishing a ministerial portfolio to tackle graft in the Middle Eastern country.

The new cabinet was announced on December 18, less than two months after the country's parliament elected Michel Aoun, a Christian leader and strong ally of the Hezbollah resistance movement, as president. Aoun's election ended a 29-month-long political stalemate in the country.

Lebanon is expected to hold parliamentary elections in May 2017, the first legislative vote in eight years.

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Israel calls off vote on new illegal settler homes in East al-Quds

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 28, 2016 10:8AM

Israeli officials have reportedly scrapped plans to build hundreds more illegal settler units on the occupied Palestinian territory, which would amount to a clear violation of the recent UN Security Council resolution demanding a halt to the regime's land grab policy.

Hanan Rubin, with the Jerusalem al-Quds Local Planning and Building Committee, told Reuters on Wednesday that the bid to approve construction permits for nearly 500 homes in East Jerusalem al-Quds had been shelved upon the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Rubin said the decision came as US Secretary of State John Kerry is to offer a purported "comprehensive vision" for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during a speech in Washington later in the day.

Relations between Tel Aviv and Washington are in tatters after the United States abstained from voting on the Security Council resolution 2334.

The resolution demands Israel to "immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem" al-Quds.

It also states that the building of settlements by Israel has "no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law."

Israeli officials claim they have "iron-clad information," which reveals the administration of outgoing US President Barack Obama drafted the document to end unlawful settlements on Palestinian land.

The Hebrew-language daily Israel Hayom reported on Sunday that Israel mulls construction of 2,600 housing units in the illegal Gilo settlement in southwestern East Jerusalem al-Quds, 2,600 others in Givat HaMatos, and 400 units in the Ramat Shlomo settlement.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.

The continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle to the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.

The Palestinian Authority wants the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinians state, with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.

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Over 3,000 return home in northeast Nigeria after internal displacement

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 28, 2016 6:15AM

Over 3,000 people displaced in Nigeria's northeast as a result of a seven-year terrorist campaign by the Boko Haram militant group have returned home after the reopening of key roads in the region.

"They were residents of Damasak, displaced by the insurgency staying as refugees in the neighboring Niger Republic and internally displaced people in Maiduguri," said Nigerian army spokesman Sani Usman on Tuesday.

Damasak is a town in the country's northeastern state of Borno, which was the worst hit by the Boko Haram militancy. The town was seized by the Takfiri militants in late 2014.

According to Usman, more than 3,000 residents of the area used one of the roads recently reopened by the army to return to Damasak on Monday.

He said the returnees went through military security checks on their arrival and were then greeted by local government authorities and community leaders.

The Boko Haram terrorists were flushed out of the town by Nigerian forces in July, and the country's President Muhammadu Buhari announced on Saturday that the army had recaptured Boko Haram's main camp in the Sambisa Forest.

The government further announced on Sunday that it was also reopening two roadways between Maiduguri, which is Borno's capital, and the northern towns of Damasak and Baga.

More than two million Nigerians have been forced to flee their homes in the course of Boko Haram's terror campaign as the militants attempted to establish their own rule in northeast of Nigeria. Nearly 15,000 people have so far been killed as the result of the militancy.

Following the recapture of the Sambisa camp, Nigeria's Chief of Army Staff Tukur Buratai announced that the former game reserve would be converted to a military training base in a bid to prevent the militants from returning.

Despite suffering a major setback at the hands of the Nigerian military in the past few months, Boko Haram terrorists, affiliated to Daesh, continue to stage bombing attacks in northeast Nigeria as well as in neighboring Niger and Cameroon.

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Kerry Defends Controversial UN Vote On Israeli Settlements

RFE/RL December 28, 2016

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said a two-state solution is essential for peace between the Palestinians and Israel, as the U.S. administration defended a controversial United Nations vote.

Kerry's speech on December 28 came amid an increasingly bitter standoff between President Barack Obama's administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Long uneasy relations between Obama and Netanyahu took a sharp turn for the worse last week when the United States abstained from a UN Security Council vote condemning new settlements pushed by Netanyahu's government.

The resolution, which called the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem a violation of international law, was slammed by Netanyahu, who accused Washington of colluding with the Palestinians in drafting it.

"The two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians," Kerry told an audience of diplomats and policymakers at the State Department in Washington.

"It is the only way to ensure Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state living in peace and security with its neighbors. It is the only way to ensure a future, freedom, and dignity for the Palestinian people. And it is an important way of advancing United States' interests in the region," he said.

Kerry leveled direct criticism at some elements of Israeli politics, in particular what he said were groups pushing an extremist agenda, including the "settler agenda."

"No one thinking seriously about peace can ignore the reality of the threat settlements pose to peace," he said.

"The settler agenda is defining the future in Israel. And their stated purpose is clear: They believe in one state: greater Israel," he said.

Shortly after Kerry's speech concluded, Netanyahu lashed back, accusing Kerry of being obsessed with the issue of settlements.

"Like the Security Council resolution that Secretary Kerry advanced in the UN, his speech tonight was skewed against Israel," Netanyahu said in a statement issued by his office.

"For over an hour, Kerry obsessively dealt with settlements and barely touched upon the root of the conflict -- Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries," he said.

The speech comes amid a vocal push-back from the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, whose mounting criticism of Obama has upended years of protocol surrounding the transition from one U.S. president to another.

Trump doesn't take office until January 20, but he and Obama have been poking at one another over major policy differences, including relations with Israel.

Before Kerry's speech, Trump posted a series of critical messages on Twitter accusing Obama of treating Israel with "total disdain," and promising a different approach to ties with Israel.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect," he said in a two-part message. "They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but...not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!"

Those posts brought an eyebrow-raising response from Netanyahu himself that, also coming ahead of Kerry's speech, further highlighted the rift with the Obama administration and the unusually public nature of the diplomatic dispute:

"President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!" Netanyahu said in a Twitter message.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/us-israel-kerry-defends-un-vote/28202298.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Kabul Protests Being Left Out Of Moscow Meeting On Peace In Afghanistan

December 28, 2016

The Afghan government has expressed concern over a third high-level meeting about the country held in Moscow on December 27 between Russia, China, and Pakistan that did not include any Afghan representatives.

"Discussion about the situation in Afghanistan, even if well-intentioned, in the absence of Afghans cannot help," said Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad Shekib Mostaghni.

The United States, which still has nearly 10,000 troops in Afghanistan and has been fighting the Taliban with Afghan forces since 2001, also was not invited to the Moscow talks.

Officials in Kabul and Washington say Russia has been deepening its ties with Taliban militants, though Moscow has denied that.

The Russian Foreign Ministry and Pakistan Foreign Ministry said after the meeting that the three countries agreed to invite the Afghan government to such talks in the future.

They said the three countries want an "Afghan-led, Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation process."

They warned that the Islamic State extremist group has been growing in influence in Afghanistan amid a "deteriorating" security situation.

Russia and China, as permanent members of the UN Security Council, agreed to be "flexible" about delisting Afghans from UN sanctions lists to "foster peaceful dialogue between Kabul and the Taliban," they said.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/kabul-protests-left- out-moscow-meeting-russia-china-pakistan-peace-in afghanistan-taliban/28201061.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Israeli Media: Attorney General Approves Criminal Investigation Into Netanyahu

Sputnik News

23:53 28.12.2016(updated 23:54 28.12.2016)

Israeli media is reporting that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has approved a full criminal investigation into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's financial activities.

On Wednesday evening, Israel's Channel 10 reported that the Prime Minister will be under investigation in two separate affairs, but did not go into detail on the focus of either one. Mandelblit's office has neither confirmed nor denied the report.

"When the time comes we will update authoritatively the status of the investigation," the Lahav 433 special investigations unit, widely referred to as Israel's FBI, said in a statement.

In June, it was reported that police chief Roni Alsheich had launched a secret investigation through the use of the Lahav 433.

On Monday, Israeli media reported that Netanyahu was under a secret investigation for allegations of bribery. It is alleged that the Prime Minister accepted bribes in the form of donations during his 2009 campaign.

"On Sunday, police descended on the Defense Ministry to gather information relating to a ship-building contract with Germany, as part of a probe into how negotiations for multi-billion shekel naval deals were handled," the Times of Israel reported.

A spokesperson for Netanyahu denied the allegations, referring to them as "nonsense."

"Since Netanyahu's victory in the last elections and even before, hostile elements have made heroic efforts to attempt to bring about [Netanyahu's] downfall, with false accusations against him and his family. This [latest attempt] is absolutely false. There was nothing and there will be nothing," the spokesperson told Haaretz.

Netanyahu has long been the subject of scrutiny over his financial dealings. He has previously been accused of using state funds to pay for his family's lavish lifestyle. While there have been preliminary reviews, none had yet moved to a full criminal investigation.

 Sputnik

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US Troops to Deploy Near Mosul Frontline, Trying to Revive Stalled Offensive

Sputnik News

22:27 28.12.2016(updated 00:17 29.12.2016)

US military officials have announced that Iraqi forces will soon resume their offensive against Daesh in the jihadists' Mosul stronghold, as part of new US troop deployments to the area.

Roughly 10,000 fighters, including Kurdish security forces, popular mobilization units and Iraqi forces have been involved in the conflict to retake Mosul, the largest Iraqi ground operation since the 2003 beginning of the US-led invasion.

Washington will likely have a more prominent combat role in the coming movements than they have had since withdrawing from Iraq in 2011 following a pledge from President Barack Obama. Advancement of the Iraqi troops have slowed, but they have been able to retake about a quarter of Mosul, and this month plan to engage what is termed an "operational refit," the first noteworthy pause since the beginning of the campaign.

Two weeks ago, a unit of several thousand heavily-armored federal police redeployed from the southern edge of Mosul to fortify the eastern front, which suffered heavy losses following a Daesh counterattack.

In a Sunday interview, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart James said, "Right now we're staging [] for the next phase of the attack as we start the penetration into the interior of east MosulSo right now, positioning forces and positioning men and equipment into the interior of east Mosul it's going to happen in the next several days."

Although three US servicemen have been killed in the last 15 months, and American troops will be at greater risk in their new placement in Mosul, James described the danger level as "moderate."

He said, "If we achieve great success on the first day and we gain momentum, then it may go very quickly. If Daesh fights very hard the first day and we run into a roadblock and we have to go back and go OK that was not the correct point of penetration, it may take longer." according to Reuters.

James also explained that US troops becoming more deeply integrated with Iraqi ground troops can help the former to become more knowledgeable about the landscape and will increase their "situational understanding."

As part of an international coalition assisting Iraqi forces, US advisers have trained tens of thousands of Iraqi troops on the ground and have conducted thousands of airstrikes. They will continue working with these forces alongside an elite unit of the Interior Ministry in the new offensive.

When defeated, jihadists will have to give up their plans to establish a caliphate in the ethnically-diverse city of some 1.5 million people. On Tuesday an airstrike conducted by the US-led coalition destroyed the last functioning bridge over the river Tigris, which Daesh used to move fighters and supplies throughout the area.

 Sputnik

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Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Slams Obama's Middle East Policy

Sputnik News

22:00 28.12.2016(updated 00:17 29.12.2016)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted US President Barack Obama over his administration's Middle East policies after Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a major speech on a two-state solution.

"Terror is everywhere" and "for an entire hour" the US Secretary of State didn't see that "Israel is the only place in the Middle East where Christians can celebrate Christmas," without worrying that they might be attacked, Netanyahu said.

"Like the Security Council resolution that Secretary Kerry advanced in the U.N., his speech tonight was skewed against Israel," Netanyahu claimed in a statement following Kerry's speech Wednesday, noting that Kerry "obsessively dealt with settlements" during the speech.

Netanyahu further reiterated that Israel has evidence the US orchestrated the UN resolution. "It's all true" he said, though not all media would get access since it contains sensitive material. While Netanyahu offered his enthusiasm about working with Trump he expressed sincere disapproval with the US moving to further work against Israeli interests in the UN until Trump takes office.

"The persistent refusal of the presence of a Jewish state is at the core of the issue," Netanyahu said, adding that he regrets Kerry does not see this "simple truth." Kerry delivered perhaps the most scathing speech in US history against Israel on Wednesday in which he condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu began his speech in Hebrew before switching to English in order to directly address the US public. Last week's UN resolution encourages sanctions against Israel, "that's effectively what it does," Netanyahu added.

"Israel looks forward to working with President-elect Trump" to "mitigate" the damage done by the UN resolution, he said. "War and terror are horrible," he noted, adding that Palestinian children are not currently taught peace, "but Palestinian authorities teach children to reject the presence of a Jewish state."

"By passionately condemning a policy to allow Jews live in their historic homeland," Kerry gave an "unbalanced" speech. "Nobody wants peace more than Israel," but it must be via direct negotiations, as Israel has done with previous agreements among regional partners, including Egypt and Jordan.

Earlier on Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that a two-state agreement is the only way to ensure safety for all parties in the region. Settlement expansion in the West Bank and ongoing terror threats reinforce the polarized status quo, he said.

"Israel's economy could enjoy unprecedented growth" and take advantage of trade opportunities with Arab partners by opting for peace. "We cannot in good conscience do nothing" when peace is possible, Kerry said, even though the incoming Trump administration may split with the current administration's stance on the settlements.

On Wednesday morning, Trump vowed to improve relations with Israel upon assuming office.

 Sputnik

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Kerry Slams Netanyahu, Defends US Abstention in UN on Israeli Settlements

Sputnik News

21:49 28.12.2016(updated 23:50 28.12.2016)

On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry energetically defended the Obama administration's decision not to veto a UN Security Council bill condemning Israeli settlement construction on Palestinian land. Observers described Kerry's remarks as the toughest criticism in years by a US official of Washington's Israeli ally.

Speaking to reporters, Kerry blew off allegations by Israel that the US had failed to defend its ally on the international stage, saying categorically that "no American administration has done more for Israel's security than Barack Obama's." The secretary pointed to the massive military assistance the US has provided Israel under Obama's tenure. "More than half of our entire global foreign military financing goes to Israel," he said.

Touching on the vote at the UN Security Council, Kerry said that the US had in fact voted "in accordance with our values." The secretary explained that the US could not condone Israel's illegal settlements on Palestinian land, which threaten the two-state solution to Israeli-Palestinian peace. Kerry stressed that the US is "fundamentally oppose[d]" to giving "license to unfettered settlement construction.

Kerry made the remarks amid deteriorating relations between Washington and Tel Aviv in recent months. The Obama administration's relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was further soured last week, when the US decided not to veto a draft resolution in the Security Council calling on Israel to immediately halt all settlement activities in Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem. The US abstained from the vote despite calls by Israel to veto the measure.

At Wednesday's press event, the secretary of state stressed that "friends need to tell each other the hard truths," and suggested that US friendship does not mean that Washington will be willing to give up its interests, positions, words and principles.

The secretary of state also slammed Netanyahu, saying the leader had built "the most rightwing [coalition government] in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements."

Calling the two-state solution as "the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians," Kerry said that "if the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic. It cannot be both."

Kerry's press conference comes less than a month before President-elect Donald Trump steps into office. Trump criticized President Obama over last week's UN vote, saying that the US "cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect." The President-elect has promised to reverse Obama's course on Israel after his inauguration on January 20. Netanyahu has thanked Trump for his support.

The Israeli Prime Minister's Office rushed to condemn Kerry's speech, calling it "biased against Israel," and suggesting that the secretary of state had "dealt obsessively with the settlements issue," but "almost did not touch on the source of the conflict  Palestinian opposition to the existence of a Jewish state without any borders."

 Sputnik

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Future of Two-State Solution for Israelis, Palestinians 'In Jeopardy' - Kerry

Sputnik News

19:36 28.12.2016(updated 20:14 28.12.2016)

Outgoing US Secretary of State John Kerry said that the two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The possibility for a two-state solution to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is now in danger, outgoing US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday.

"The two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians," Kerry stated in a policy speech. "It is the only way to ensure Israel's future."

Kerry proceeded to say that this future "is now in jeopardy."

Kerry said that the United States has advised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that further expansion of settlements would result in a new response from the United Nations.

"In literally hundreds of conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, I've made clear that continuous settlement activity would only increase pressure for an international response," Kerry stated. "I advised Prime Minister repeatedly that further settlement activity only invited UN action."

US Secretary of State noted that the United States is committed to maintaining Israel's security through dedicated funding in the area of defense, whereby Tel Aviv receives more than half of all US foreign military financing.

"More than half of our entire global foreign military financing goes to Israel," Kerry stated.

Kerry noted that the United States had just concluded an additional $38 billion military aid agreement earlier this year.

The ten-year aid package concluded in September is the largest ever between the two counties.

Kerry's remarks came amid a downturn in US-Israeli relations following Washington's decision to abstain from a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The United States has repeatedly condemned settlement activity by Israel in the West Bank and Washington believes settlement-construction undermines efforts to find a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

 Sputnik

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Remarks on Middle East Peace

Remarks

John Kerry

Secretary of State

The Dean Acheson Auditorium

Washington, DC

December 28, 2016



SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. (Coughs.) Excuse me. Thank you for your patience, all of you. For those of you who celebrated Christmas, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. Happy Chanukah. And to everybody here, I know it's the middle of a holiday week. I understand. (Laughter.) But I wish you all a very, very productive and Happy New Year.

Today, I want to share candid thoughts about an issue which for decades has animated the foreign policy dialogue here and around the world  the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Throughout his Administration, President Obama has been deeply committed to Israel and its security, and that commitment has guided his pursuit of peace in the Middle East. This is an issue which, all of you know, I have worked on intensively during my time as Secretary of State for one simple reason: because the two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It is the only way to ensure Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state, living in peace and security with its neighbors. It is the only way to ensure a future of freedom and dignity for the Palestinian people. And it is an important way of advancing United States interests in the region.

Now, I'd like to explain why that future is now in jeopardy, and provide some context for why we could not, in good conscience, stand in the way of a resolution at the United Nations that makes clear that both sides must act now to preserve the possibility of peace.

I'm also here to share my conviction that there is still a way forward if the responsible parties are willing to act. And I want to share practical suggestions for how to preserve and advance the prospects for the just and lasting peace that both sides deserve.

So it is vital that we have an honest, clear-eyed conversation about the uncomfortable truths and difficult choices, because the alternative that is fast becoming the reality on the ground is in nobody's interest  not the Israelis, not the Palestinians, not the region  and not the United States.

Now, I want to stress that there is an important point here: My job, above all, is to defend the United States of America  to stand up for and defend our values and our interests in the world. And if we were to stand idly by and know that in doing so we are allowing a dangerous dynamic to take hold which promises greater conflict and instability to a region in which we have vital interests, we would be derelict in our own responsibilities.

Regrettably, some seem to believe that the U.S. friendship means the U.S. must accept any policy, regardless of our own interests, our own positions, our own words, our own principles  even after urging again and again that the policy must change. Friends need to tell each other the hard truths, and friendships require mutual respect.

Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations, who does not support a two-state solution, said after the vote last week, quote, "It was to be expected that Israel's greatest ally would act in accordance with the values that we share," and veto this resolution. I am compelled to respond today that the United States did, in fact, vote in accordance with our values, just as previous U.S. administrations have done at the Security Council before us.

They fail to recognize that this friend, the United States of America, that has done more to support Israel than any other country, this friend that has blocked countless efforts to delegitimize Israel, cannot be true to our own values  or even the stated democratic values of Israel  and we cannot properly defend and protect Israel if we allow a viable two-state solution to be destroyed before our own eyes.

And that's the bottom line: the vote in the United Nations was about preserving the two-state solution. That's what we were standing up for: Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state, living side by side in peace and security with its neighbors. That's what we are trying to preserve for our sake and for theirs.

In fact, this Administration has been Israel's greatest friend and supporter, with an absolutely unwavering commitment to advancing Israel's security and protecting its legitimacy.

On this point, I want to be very clear: No American administration has done more for Israel's security than Barack Obama's. The Israeli prime minister himself has noted our, quote, "unprecedented" military and intelligence cooperation. Our military exercises are more advanced than ever. Our assistance for Iron Dome has saved countless Israeli lives. We have consistently supported Israel's right to defend itself, by itself, including during actions in Gaza that sparked great controversy.

Time and again we have demonstrated that we have Israel's back. We have strongly opposed boycotts, divestment campaigns, and sanctions targeting Israel in international fora, whenever and wherever its legitimacy was attacked, and we have fought for its inclusion across the UN system. In the midst of our own financial crisis and budget deficits, we repeatedly increased funding to support Israel. In fact, more than one-half of our entire global Foreign Military Financing goes to Israel. And this fall, we concluded an historic $38 billion memorandum of understanding that exceeds any military assistance package the United States has provided to any country, at any time, and that will invest in cutting-edge missile defense and sustain Israel's qualitative military edge for years to come. That's the measure of our support.

This commitment to Israel's security is actually very personal for me. On my first trip to Israel as a young senator in 1986, I was captivated by a special country, one that I immediately admired and soon grew to love. Over the years, like so many others who are drawn to this extraordinary place, I have climbed Masada, swum in the Dead Sea, driven from one Biblical city to another. I've also seen the dark side of Hizballah's rocket storage facilities just across the border in Lebanon, walked through exhibits of the hell of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem, stood on the Golan Heights, and piloted an Israeli jet over the tiny airspace of Israel, which would make anyone understand the importance of security to Israelis. Out of those experiences came a steadfast commitment to Israel's security that has never wavered for a single minute in my 28 years in the Senate or my four years as Secretary.

I have also often visited West Bank communities, where I met Palestinians struggling for basic freedom and dignity amidst the occupation, passed by military checkpoints that can make even the most routine daily trips to work or school an ordeal, and heard from business leaders who could not get the permits that they needed to get their products to the market and families who have struggled to secure permission just to travel for needed medical care.

And I have witnessed firsthand the ravages of a conflict that has gone on for far too long. I've seen Israeli children in Sderot whose playgrounds had been hit by Katyusha rockets. I've visited shelters next to schools in Kiryat Shmona that kids had 15 seconds to get to after a warning siren went off. I've also seen the devastation of war in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian girls in Izbet Abed Rabo played in the rubble of a bombed-out building.

No children  Israeli or Palestinian  should have to live like that.

So, despite the obvious difficulties that I understood when I became Secretary of State, I knew that I had to do everything in my power to help end this conflict. And I was grateful to be working for President Obama, who was prepared to take risks for peace and was deeply committed to that effort.

Like previous U.S. administrations, we have committed our influence and our resources to trying to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict because, yes, it would serve American interests to stabilize a volatile region and fulfill America's commitment to the survival, security and well-being of an Israel at peace with its Arab neighbors.

Despite our best efforts over the years, the two-state solution is now in serious jeopardy.

The truth is that trends on the ground  violence, terrorism, incitement, settlement expansion and the seemingly endless occupation  they are combining to destroy hopes for peace on both sides and increasingly cementing an irreversible one-state reality that most people do not actually want.

Today, there are a number  there are a similar number of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. They have a choice. They can choose to live together in one state, or they can separate into two states. But here is a fundamental reality: if the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic  it cannot be both  and it won't ever really be at peace. Moreover, the Palestinians will never fully realize their vast potential in a homeland of their own with a one-state solution.

Now, most on both sides understand this basic choice, and that is why it is important that polls of Israelis and Palestinians show that there is still strong support for the two-state solution  in theory. They just don't believe that it can happen.

After decades of conflict, many no longer see the other side as people, only as threats and enemies. Both sides continue to push a narrative that plays to people's fears and reinforces the worst stereotypes rather than working to change perceptions and build up belief in the possibility of peace.

And the truth is the extraordinary polarization in this conflict extends beyond Israelis and Palestinians. Allies of both sides are content to reinforce this with an us or  "you're with us or against us" mentality where too often anyone who questions Palestinian actions is an apologist for the occupation and anyone who disagrees with Israel policy is cast as anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic.

That's one of the most striking realties about the current situation: This critical decision about the future  one state or two states  is effectively being made on the ground every single day, despite the expressed opinion of the majority of the people.

The status quo is leading towards one state and perpetual occupation, but most of the public either ignores it or has given up hope that anything can be done to change it. And with this passive resignation, the problem only gets worse, the risks get greater and the choices are narrowed.

This sense of hopelessness among Israelis is exacerbated by the continuing violence, terrorist attacks against civilians and incitement, which are destroying belief in the possibility of peace.

Let me say it again: There is absolutely no justification for terrorism, and there never will be.

And the most recent wave of Palestinian violence has included hundreds of terrorist attacks in the past year, including stabbings, shootings, vehicular attacks and bombings, many by individuals who have been radicalized by social media. Yet the murderers of innocents are still glorified on Fatah websites, including showing attackers next to Palestinian leaders following attacks. And despite statements by President Abbas and his party's leaders making clear their opposition to violence, too often they send a different message by failing to condemn specific terrorist attacks and naming public squares, streets and schools after terrorists.

President Obama and I have made it clear to the Palestinian leadership countless times, publicly and privately, that all incitement to violence must stop. We have consistently condemned violence and terrorism, and even condemned the Palestinian leadership for not condemning it.

Far too often, the Palestinians have pursued efforts to delegitimize Israel in international fora. We have strongly opposed these initiatives, including the recent wholly unbalanced and inflammatory UNESCO resolution regarding Jerusalem. And we have made clear our strong opposition to Palestinian efforts against Israel at the ICC, which only sets back the prospects for peace.

And we all understand that the Palestinian Authority has a lot more to do to strengthen its institutions and improve governance.

Most troubling of all, Hamas continues to pursue an extremist agenda: they refuse to accept Israel's very right to exist. They have a one-state vision of their own: all of the land is Palestine. Hamas and other radical factions are responsible for the most explicit forms of incitement to violence, and many of the images that they use are truly appalling. And they are willing to kill innocents in Israel and put the people of Gaza at risk in order to advance that agenda.

Compounding this, the humanitarian situation in Gaza, exacerbated by the closings of the crossings, is dire. Gaza is home to one of the world's densest concentrations of people enduring extreme hardships with few opportunities. 1.3 million people out of Gaza's population of 1.8 million are in need of daily assistance  food and shelter. Most have electricity less than half the time and only 5 percent of the water is safe to drink. And yet despite the urgency of these needs, Hamas and other militant groups continue to re-arm and divert reconstruction materials to build tunnels, threatening more attacks on Israeli civilians that no government can tolerate.

Now, at the same time, we have to be clear about what is happening in the West Bank. The Israeli prime minister publicly supports a two-state solution, but his current coalition is the most right wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements. The result is that policies of this government, which the prime minister himself just described as "more committed to settlements than any in Israel's history," are leading in the opposite direction. They're leading towards one state. In fact, Israel has increasingly consolidated control over much of the West Bank for its own purposes, effectively reversing the transitions to greater Palestinian civil authority that were called for by the Oslo Accords.

I don't think most people in Israel, and certainly in the world, have any idea how broad and systematic the process has become. But the facts speak for themselves. The number of settlers in the roughly 130 Israeli settlements east of the 1967 lines has steadily grown. The settler population in the West Bank alone, not including East Jerusalem, has increased by nearly 270,000 since Oslo, including 100,000 just since 2009, when President Obama's term began.

There's no point in pretending that these are just in large settlement blocks. Nearly 90,000 settlers are living east of the separation barrier that was created by Israel itself in the middle of what, by any reasonable definition, would be the future Palestinian state. And the population of these distant settlements has grown by 20,000 just since 2009. In fact, just recently the government approved a significant new settlement well east of the barrier, closer to Jordan than to Israel. What does that say to Palestinians in particular  but also to the United States and the world  about Israel's intentions?

Let me emphasize, this is not to say that the settlements are the whole or even the primary cause of this conflict. Of course they are not. Nor can you say that if the settlements were suddenly removed, you'd have peace. Without a broader agreement, you would not. And we understand that in a final status agreement, certain settlements would become part of Israel to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 49 years  we understand that  including the new democratic demographic realities that exist on the ground. They would have to be factored in. But if more and more settlers are moving into the middle of Palestinian areas, it's going to be just that much harder to separate, that much harder to imagine transferring sovereignty, and that is exactly the outcome that some are purposefully accelerating.

Let's be clear: Settlement expansion has nothing to do with Israel's security. Many settlements actually increase the security burden on the Israeli Defense Forces. And leaders of the settler movement are motivated by ideological imperatives that entirely ignore legitimate Palestinian aspirations.

Among the most troubling illustrations of this point has been the proliferation of settler outposts that are illegal under Israel's own laws. They're often located on private Palestinian land and strategically placed in locations that make two states impossible. There are over 100 of these outposts. And since 2011, nearly one-third of them have been or are being legalized, despite pledges by past Israeli governments to dismantle many of them.

Now leaders of the settler movement have advanced unprecedented new legislation that would legalize most of those outposts. For the first time, it would apply Israeli domestic law to the West Bank rather than military law, which is a major step towards the process of annexation. When the law passed the first reading in the Israeli parliament, in the Knesset, one of the chief proponents said proudly  and I quote  "Today, the Israeli Knesset moved from heading towards establishing a Palestinian state towards Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria." Even the Israeli attorney general has said that the draft law is unconstitutional and a violation of international law.

Now, you may hear from advocates that the settlements are not an obstacle to peace because the settlers who don't want to leave can just stay in Palestine, like the Arab Israelis who live in Israel. But that misses a critical point, my friends. The Arab Israelis are citizens of Israel, subject to Israel's law. Does anyone here really believe that the settlers will agree to submit to Palestinian law in Palestine?

Likewise, some supporters of the settlements argue that the settlers could just stay in their settlements and remain as Israeli citizens in their separate enclaves in the middle of Palestine, protected by the IDF. Well, there are over 80 settlements east of the separation barrier, many located in places that would make a continuous  a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. Does anyone seriously think that if they just stay where they are you could still have a viable Palestinian state?

Now, some have asked, "Why can't we build in the blocs which everyone knows will eventually be part of Israel?" Well, the reason building there or anywhere else in the West Bank now results in such pushback is that the decision of what constitutes a bloc is being made unilaterally by the Israeli Government, without consultation, without the consent of the Palestinians, and without granting the Palestinians a reciprocal right to build in what will be, by most accounts, part of Palestine. Bottom line  without agreement or mutuality, the unilateral choices become a major point of contention, and that is part of why we are here where we are.

You may hear that these remote settlements aren't a problem because they only take up a very small percentage of the land. Well, again and again we have made it clear, it's not just a question of the overall amount of land available in the West Bank. It's whether the land can be connected or it's broken up into small parcels, like a Swiss cheese, that could never constitute a real state. The more outposts that are built, the more the settlements expand, the less possible it is to create a contiguous state. So in the end, a settlement is not just the land that it's on, it's also what the location does to the movement of people, what it does to the ability of a road to connect people, one community to another, what it does to the sense of statehood that is chipped away with each new construction. No one thinking seriously about peace can ignore the reality of what the settlements pose to that peace.

But the problem, obviously, goes well beyond settlements. Trends indicate a comprehensive effort to take the West Bank land for Israel and prevent any Palestinian development there. Today, the 60 percent of the West Bank known as Area C  much of which was supposed to be transferred to Palestinian control long ago under the Oslo Accords  much of it is effectively off limits to Palestinian development. Most today has essentially been taken for exclusive use by Israel simply by unilaterally designating it as "state land" or including it within the jurisdiction of regional settlement councils. Israeli farms flourish in the Jordan River Valley, and Israeli resorts line the shores of the Dead Sea  a lot of people don't realize this  they line the shore of the Dead Sea, where Palestinian development is not allowed. In fact, almost no private Palestinian building is approved in Area C at all. Only one permit was issued by Israel in all of 2014 and 2015, while approvals for hundreds of settlement units were advanced during that same period.

Moreover, Palestinian structures in Area C that do not have a permit from the Israeli military are potentially subject to demolition. And they are currently being demolished at an historically high rate. Over 1,300 Palestinians, including over 600 children, have been displaced by demolitions in 2016 alone  more than any previous year.

So the settler agenda is defining the future of Israel. And their stated purpose is clear. They believe in one state: greater Israel. In fact, one prominent minister, who heads a pro-settler party, declared just after the U.S. election  and I quote  "the era of the two-state solution is over," end quote. And many other coalition ministers publicly reject a Palestinian state. And they are increasingly getting their way, with plans for hundreds of new units in East Jerusalem recently announced and talk of a major new settlement building effort in the West Bank to follow.

So why are we so concerned? Why does this matter? Well, ask yourself these questions: What happens if that agenda succeeds? Where does that lead?

There are currently about 2.75 million Palestinians living under military occupation in the West Bank, most of them in Areas A and B  40 percent of the West Bank  where they have limited autonomy. They are restricted in their daily movements by a web of checkpoints and unable to travel into or out of the West Bank without a permit from the Israelis.

So if there is only one state, you would have millions of Palestinians permanently living in segregated enclaves in the middle of the West Bank, with no real political rights, separate legal, education, and transportation systems, vast income disparities, under a permanent military occupation that deprives them of the most basic freedoms. Separate and unequal is what you would have. And nobody can explain how that works. Would an Israeli accept living that way? Would an American accept living that way? Will the world accept it?

If the occupation becomes permanent, over the time the Palestinian Authority could simply dissolve, turn over all the administrative and security responsibilities to the Israelis. What would happen then? Who would administer the schools and hospitals and on what basis? Does Israel want to pay for the billions of dollars of lost international assistance that the Palestinian Authority now receives? Would the Israel Defense Force police the streets of every single Palestinian city and town?

How would Israel respond to a growing civil rights movement from Palestinians, demanding a right to vote, or widespread protests and unrest across the West Bank? How does Israel reconcile a permanent occupation with its democratic ideals? How does the U.S. continue to defend that and still live up to our own democratic ideals?

Nobody has ever provided good answers to those questions because there aren't any. And there would be an increasing risk of more intense violence between Palestinians and settlers, and complete despair among Palestinians that would create very fertile ground for extremists.

With all the external threats that Israel faces today, which we are very cognizant of and working with them to deal with, does it really want an intensifying conflict in the West Bank? How does that help Israel's security? How does that help the region?

The answer is it doesn't, which is precisely why so many senior Israeli military and intelligence leaders, past and present, believe the two-state solution is the only real answer for Israel's long term security.

Now, one thing we do know: if Israel goes down the one state path, it will never have true peace with the rest of the Arab world, and I can say that with certainty. The Arab countries have made clear that they will not make peace with Israel without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That's not where their loyalties lie. That's not where their politics are.

But there is something new here. Common interests in countering Iran's destabilizing activities, and fighting extremists, as well as diversifying their economies have created real possibilities for something different is Israel takes advantage of the opportunities for peace. I have spent a great deal of time with key Arab leaders exploring this, and there is no doubt that they are prepared to have a fundamentally different relationship with Israel. That was stated in the Arab Peace Initiative, years ago. And in all my recent conversations, Arab leaders have confirmed their readiness, in the context of Israeli-Palestinian peace, not just to normalize relations but to work openly on securing that peace with significant regional security cooperation. It's waiting. It's right there.

Many have shown a willingness to support serious Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and to take steps on the path to normalization to relations, including public meetings, providing there is a meaningful progress towards a two-state solution. My friends, that is a real opportunity that we should not allow to be missed.

And that raises one final question: Is ours the generation that gives up on the dream of a Jewish democratic state of Israel living in peace and security with its neighbors? Because that is really what is at stake.

Now, that is what informed our vote at the Security Council last week  the need to preserve the two-state solution  and both sides in this conflict must take responsibility to do that. We have repeatedly and emphatically stressed to the Palestinians that all incitement to violence must stop. We have consistently condemned all violence and terrorism, and we have strongly opposed unilateral efforts to delegitimize Israel in international fora.

We've made countless public and private exhortations to the Israelis to stop the march of settlements. In literally hundreds of conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, I have made clear that continued settlement activity would only increase pressure for an international response. We have all known for some time that the Palestinians were intent on moving forward in the UN with a settlements resolution, and I advised the prime minister repeatedly that further settlement activity only invited UN action.

Yet the settlement activity just increased, including advancing the unprecedented legislation to legalize settler outposts that the prime minister himself reportedly warned could expose Israel to action at the Security Council and even international prosecution before deciding to support it.

In the end, we could not in good conscience protect the most extreme elements of the settler movement as it tries to destroy the two-state solution. We could not in good conscience turn a blind eye to Palestinian actions that fan hatred and violence. It is not in U.S. interest to help anyone on either side create a unitary state. And we may not be able to stop them, but we cannot be expected to defend them. And it is certainly not the role of any country to vote against its own policies.

That is why we decided not to block the UN resolution that makes clear both sides have to take steps to save the two-state solution while there is still time. And we did not take this decision lightly. The Obama Administration has always defended Israel against any effort at the UN and any international fora or biased and one-sided resolutions that seek to undermine its legitimacy or security, and that has not changed. It didn't change with this vote.

But remember it's important to note that every United States administration, Republican and Democratic, has opposed settlements as contrary to the prospects for peace, and action at the UN Security Council is far from unprecedented. In fact, previous administrations of both political parties have allowed resolutions that were critical of Israel to pass, including on settlements. On dozens of occasions under George W. Bush alone, the council passed six resolutions that Israel opposed, including one that endorsed a plan calling for a complete freeze on settlements, including natural growth.

Let me read you the lead paragraph from a New York Times story dated December 23rd. I quote: "With the United States abstaining, the Security Council adopted a resolution today strongly deploring Israel's handling of the disturbances in the occupied territories, which the resolution defined as, including Jerusalem. All of the 14 other Security Council members voted in favor." My friends, that story was not written last week. It was written December 23rd, 1987, 26 years to the day that we voted last week, when Ronald Reagan was president.

Yet despite growing pressure, the Obama Administration held a strong line against UN action, any UN action, we were the only administration since 1967 that had not allowed any resolution to pass that Israel opposed. In fact, the only time in eight years the Obama Administration exercised its veto at the United Nations was against a one-sided settlements resolution in 2011. And that resolution did not mention incitement or violence.

Now let's look at what's happened since then. Since then, there have been over 30,000 settlement units advanced through some stage of the planning process. That's right  over 30,000 settlement units advanced notwithstanding the positions of the United States and other countries. And if we had vetoed this resolution just the other day, the United States would have been giving license to further unfettered settlement construction that we fundamentally oppose.

So we reject the criticism that this vote abandons Israel. On the contrary, it is not this resolution that is isolating Israel; it is the permanent policy of settlement construction that risks making peace impossible. And virtually every country in the world other than Israel opposes settlements. That includes many of the friends of Israel, including the United Kingdom, France, Russia  all of whom voted in favor of the settlements resolution in 2011 that we vetoed, and again this year along with every other member of the council.

In fact, this resolution simply reaffirms statements made by the Security Council on the legality of settlements over several decades. It does not break new ground. In 1978, the State Department Legal Adviser advised the Congress on his conclusion that Israel's government, the Israeli Government's program of establishing civilian settlements in the occupied territory is inconsistent with international law, and we see no change since then to affect that fundamental conclusion.

Now, you may have heard that some criticized this resolution for calling East Jerusalem occupied territory. But to be clear, there was absolutely nothing new in last week's resolution on that issue. It was one of a long line of Security Council resolutions that included East Jerusalem as part of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, and that includes resolutions passed by the Security Council under President Reagan and President George H.W. Bush. And remember that every U.S. administration since 1967, along with the entire international community, has recognized East Jerusalem as among the territories that Israel occupied in the Six-Day War.

Now, I want to stress this point: We fully respect Israel's profound historic and religious ties to the city and to its holy sites. We've never questioned that. This resolution in no manner prejudges the outcome of permanent status negotiations on East Jerusalem, which must, of course, reflect those historic ties and the realities on the ground. That's our position. We still support it.

We also strongly reject the notion that somehow the United States was the driving force behind this resolution. The Egyptians and Palestinians had long made clear to all of us  to all of the international community  their intention to bring a resolution to a vote before the end of the year, and we communicated that to the Israelis and they knew it anyway. The United States did not draft or originate this resolution, nor did we put it forward. It was drafted by Egypt  it was drafted and I think introduced by Egypt, which is one of Israel's closest friends in the region, in coordination with the Palestinians and others.

And during the time of the process as it went out, we made clear to others, including those on the Security Council, that it was possible that if the resolution were to be balanced and it were to include references to incitement and to terrorism, that it was possible the United States would then not block it, that  if it was balanced and fair. That's a standard practice with resolutions at the Security Council. The Egyptians and the Palestinians and many others understood that if the text were more balanced, it was possible we wouldn't block it. But we also made crystal clear that the President of the United States would not make a final decision about our own position until we saw the final text.

In the end, we did not agree with every word in this resolution. There are important issues that are not sufficiently addressed or even addressed at all. But we could not in good conscience veto a resolution that condemns violence and incitement and reiterates what has been for a long time the overwhelming consensus and international view on settlements and calls for the parties to start taking constructive steps to advance the two-state solution on the ground.

Ultimately, it will be up to the Israeli people to decide whether the unusually heated attacks that Israeli officials have directed towards this Administration best serve Israel's national interests and its relationship with an ally that has been steadfast in its support, as I described. Those attacks, alongside allegations of U.S.-led conspiracy and other manufactured claims, distract attention from what the substance of this vote was really all about.

And we all understand that Israel faces very serious threats in a very tough neighborhood. Israelis are rightfully concerned about making sure that there is not a new terrorist haven right next door to them, often referencing what's happened with Gaza, and we understand that and we believe there are ways to meet those needs of security. And Israelis are fully justified in decrying attempts to legitimize[1] their state and question the right of a Jewish state to exist. But this vote was not about that. It was about actions that Israelis and Palestinians are taking that are increasingly rendering a two-state solution impossible. It was not about making peace with the Palestinians now  it was about making sure that peace with the Palestinians will be possible in the future.

Now, we all understand that Israel faces extraordinary, serious threats in a very tough neighborhood. And Israelis are very correct in making sure that there's not a terrorist haven right on their border.

But this vote  I can't emphasize enough  is not about the possibility of arriving at an agreement that's going to resolve that overnight or in one year or two years. This is about a longer process. This is about how we make peace with the Palestinians in the future but preserve the capacity to do so.

So how do we get there? How do we get there, to that peace?

Since the parties have not yet been able to resume talks, the U.S. and the Middle East Quartet have repeatedly called on both sides to independently demonstrate a genuine commitment to the two-state solution  not just with words, but with real actions and policies  to create the conditions for meaningful negotiations.

We've called for both sides to take significant steps on the ground to reverse current trends and send a different message  a clear message  that they are prepared to fundamentally change the equation without waiting for the other side to act.

We have pushed them to comply with their basic commitments under their own prior agreements in order to advance a two-state reality on the ground.

We have called for the Palestinians to do everything in their power to stop violence and incitement, including publicly and consistently condemning acts of terrorism and stopping the glorification of violence.

And we have called on them to continue efforts to strengthen their own institutions and to improve governance, transparency, and accountability.

And we have stressed that the Hamas arms buildup and militant activities in Gaza must stop.

Along with our Quartet partners, we have called on Israel to end the policy of settlement construction and expansion, of taking land for exclusive Israeli use and denying Palestinian development.

To reverse the current process, the U.S. and our partners have encouraged Israel to resume the transfer of greater civil authority to the Palestinians in Area C, consistent with the transition that was called for by Oslo. And we have made clear that significant progress across a range of sectors, including housing, agriculture, and natural resources, can be made without negatively impacting Israel's legitimate security needs. And we've called for significantly easing the movement and access restrictions to and from Gaza, with due consideration for Israel's need to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks.

So let me stress here again: None of the steps that I just talked about would negatively impact Israel's security.

Let me also emphasize this is not about offering limited economic measures that perpetuate the status quo. We're talking about significant steps that would signal real progress towards creating two states.

That's the bottom line: If we're serious about the two-state solution, it's time to start implementing it now. Advancing the process of separation now, in a serious way, could make a significant difference in saving the two-state solution and in building confidence in the citizens of both sides that peace is, indeed, possible. And much progress can be made in advance of negotiations that can lay the foundation for negotiations, as contemplated by the Oslo process. In fact, these steps will help create the conditions for successful talks.

Now, in the end, we all understand that a final status agreement can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties. We've said that again and again. We cannot impose the peace.

There are other countries in the UN who believe it is our job to dictate the terms of a solution in the Security Council. Others want us to simply recognize a Palestinian state, absent an agreement. But I want to make clear today, these are not the choices that we will make.

We choose instead to draw on the experiences of the last eight years, to provide a way forward when the parties are ready for serious negotiations. In a place where the narratives from the past powerfully inform and mold the present, it's important to understand the history. We mark this year and next a series of milestones that I believe both illustrate the two sides of the conflict and form the basis for its resolution. It's worth touching on them briefly.

A hundred and twenty years ago, the First Zionist Congress was convened in Basel by a group of Jewish visionaries, who decided that the only effective response to the waves of anti-Semitic horrors sweeping across Europe was to create a state in the historic home of the Jewish people, where their ties to the land went back centuries  a state that could defend its borders, protect its people, and live in peace with its neighbors. That was the vision. That was the modern beginning, and it remains the dream of Israel today.

Nearly 70 years ago, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 finally paved the way to making the State of Israel a reality. The concept was simple: to create two states for two peoples  one Jewish, one Arab  to realize the national aspirations of both Jews and Palestinians. And both Israel and the PLO referenced Resolution 181 in their respective declarations of independence.

The United States recognized Israel seven minutes after its creation. But the Palestinians and the Arab world did not, and from its birth, Israel had to fight for its life. Palestinians also suffered terribly in the 1948 war, including many who had lived for generations in a land that had long been their home too. And when Israel celebrates its 70th anniversary in 2018, the Palestinians will mark a very different anniversary: 70 years since what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe.

Next year will also mark 50 years since the end of the Six-Day War, when Israel again fought for its survival. And Palestinians will again mark just the opposite: 50 years of military occupation. Both sides have accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242, which called for the withdrawal of Israel from territory that it occupied in 1967 in return for peace and secure borders, as the basis for ending the conflict.

It has been more than 20 years since Israel and the PLO signed their first agreement  the Oslo Accords  and the PLO formally recognized Israel. Both sides committed to a plan to transition much of the West Bank and Gaza to Palestinian control during permanent status negotiations that would put an end to their conflict. Unfortunately, neither the transition nor the final agreement came about, and both sides bear responsibility for that.

Finally, some 15 years ago, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia came out with the historic Arab Peace Initiative, which offered fully normalized relations with Israel when it made peace  an enormous opportunity then and now, which has never been fully been embraced.

That history was critical to our approach to trying to find a way to resolve the conflict. And based on my experience with both sides over the last four years, including the nine months of formal negotiations, the core issues can be resolved if there is leadership on both sides committed to finding a solution.

In the end, I believe the negotiations did not fail because the gaps were too wide, but because the level of trust was too low. Both sides were concerned that any concessions would not be reciprocated and would come at too great a political cost. And the deep public skepticism only made it more difficult for them to be able to take risks.

In the countless hours that we spent working on a detailed framework, we worked through numerous formulations and developed specific bridging proposals, and we came away with a clear understanding of the fundamental needs of both sides. In the past two and a half years, I have tested ideas with regional and international stakeholders, including our Quartet partners. And I believe what has emerged from all of that is a broad consensus on balanced principles that would satisfy the core needs of both sides.

President Clinton deserves great credit for laying out extensive parameters designed to bridge gaps in advanced final status negotiations 16 years ago. Today, with mistrust too high to even start talks, we're at the opposite end of the spectrum. Neither side is willing to even risk acknowledging the other's bottom line, and more negotiations that do not produce progress will only reinforce the worst fears.

Now, everyone understands that negotiations would be complex and difficult, and nobody can be expected to agree on the final result in advance. But if the parties could at least demonstrate that they understand the other side's most basic needs  and are potentially willing to meet them if theirs are also met at the end of comprehensive negotiations  perhaps then enough trust could be established to enable a meaningful process to begin.

It is in that spirit that we offer the following principles  not to prejudge or impose an outcome, but to provide a possible basis for serious negotiations when the parties are ready. Now, individual countries may have more detailed policies on these issues  as we do, by the way  but I believe there is a broad consensus that a final status agreement that could meet the needs of both sides would do the following.

Principle number one: Provide for secure and recognized international borders between Israel and a viable and contiguous Palestine, negotiated based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed equivalent swaps.

Resolution 242, which has been enshrined in international law for 50 years, provides for the withdrawal of Israel from territory it occupied in 1967 in return for peace with its neighbors and secure and recognized borders. It has long been accepted by both sides, and it remains the basis for an agreement today.

As Secretary, one of the first issues that I worked out with the Arab League was their agreement that the reference in the Arab Peace Initiative to the 1967 lines would from now on include the concept of land swaps, which the Palestinians have acknowledged. And this is necessary to reflect practical realities on the ground, and mutually agreed equivalent swaps that will ensure that the agreement is fair to both sides.

There is also broad recognition of Israel's need to ensure that the borders are secure and defensible, and that the territory of Palestine is viable and contiguous. Virtually everyone that I have spoken to has been clear on this principle as well: No changes by Israel to the 1967 lines will be recognized by the international community unless agreed to by both sides.

Principle two: Fulfill the vision of the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of two states for two peoples, one Jewish and one Arab, with mutual recognition and full equal rights for all their respective citizens.

This has been the fundamental  the foundational principle of the two-state solution from the beginning: creating a state for the Jewish people and a state for the Palestinian people, where each can achieve their national aspirations. And Resolution 181 is incorporated into the foundational documents of both the Israelis and Palestinians. Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state has been the U.S. position for years, and based on my conversations in these last months, I am absolutely convinced that many others are now prepared to accept it as well  provided the need for a Palestinian state is also addressed.

We also know that there are some 1.7 million Arab citizens who call Israel their home and must now and always be able to live as equal citizens, which makes this a difficult issue for Palestinians and others in the Arab world. That's why it is so important that in recognizing each other's homeland  Israel for the Jewish people and Palestine for the Palestinian people  both sides reaffirm their commitment to upholding full equal rights for all of their respective citizens.

Principle number three: Provide for a just, agreed, fair, and realistic solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, with international assistance, that includes compensation, options and assistance in finding permanent homes, acknowledgment of suffering, and other measures necessary for a comprehensive resolution consistent with two states for two peoples.

The plight of many Palestinian refugees is heartbreaking, and all agree that their needs have to be addressed. As part of a comprehensive resolution, they must be provided with compensation, their suffering must be acknowledged, and there will be a need to have options and assistance in finding permanent homes. The international community can provide significant support and assistance. I know we are prepared to do that, including in raising money to help ensure the compensation and other needs of the refugees are met, and many have expressed a willingness to contribute to that effort, particularly if it brings peace. But there is a general recognition that the solution must be consistent with two states for two peoples, and cannot affect the fundamental character of Israel.

Principle four: Provide an agreed resolution for Jerusalem as the internationally recognized capital of the two states, and protect and assure freedom of access to the holy sites consistent with the established status quo.

Now, Jerusalem is the most sensitive issue for both sides, and the solution will have to meet the needs not only of the parties, but of all three monotheistic faiths. That is why the holy sites that are sacred to billions of people around the world must be protected and remain accessible and the established status quo maintained. Most acknowledge that Jerusalem should not be divided again like it was in 1967, and we believe that. At the same time, there is broad recognition that there will be no peace agreement without reconciling the basic aspirations of both sides to have capitals there.

Principle five: Satisfy Israel's security needs and bring a full end, ultimately, to the occupation, while ensuring that Israel can defend itself effectively and that Palestine can provide security for its people in a sovereign and non-militarized state.

Security is the fundamental issue for Israel together with a couple of others I've mentioned, but security is critical. Everyone understands that no Israeli Government can ever accept an agreement that does not satisfy its security needs or that risk creating an enduring security threat like Gaza transferred to the West Bank. And Israel must be able to defend itself effectively, including against terrorism and other regional threats. In fact, there is a real willingness by Egypt, Jordan, and others to work together with Israel on meeting key security challenges. And I believe that those collective efforts, including close coordination on border security, intelligence-sharing, joint cooperations  joint operation, can all play a critical role in securing the peace.

At the same time, fully ending the occupation is the fundamental issue for the Palestinians. They need to know that the military occupation itself will really end after an agreed transitional process. They need to know they can live in freedom and dignity in a sovereign state while providing security for their population even without a military of their own. This is widely accepted as well. And it is important to understand there are many different ways without occupation for Israel and Palestine and Jordan and Egypt and the United States and others to cooperate in providing that security.

Now, balancing those requirements was among the most important challenges that we faced in the negotiations, but it was one where the United States has the ability to provide the most assistance. And that is why a team that was led by General John Allen, who is here, for whom I am very grateful for his many hours of effort, along with  he is one of our foremost military minds, and dozens of experts from the Department of Defense and other agencies, all of them engaged extensively with the Israeli Defense Force on trying to find solutions that could help Israel address its legitimate security needs.

They developed innovative approaches to creating unprecedented, multi-layered border security; enhancing Palestinian capacity; enabling Israel to retain the ability to address threats by itself even when the occupation had ended. General Allen and his team were not suggesting one particular outcome or one particular timeline, nor were they suggesting that technology alone would resolve these problems. They were simply working on ways to support whatever the negotiators agreed to. And they did some very impressive work that gives me total confidence that Israel's security requirements can be met.

Principle six: End the conflict and all outstanding claims, enabling normalized relations and enhanced regional security for all as envisaged by the Arab Peace Initiative. It is essential for both sides that the final status agreement resolves all the outstanding issues and finally brings closure to this conflict, so that everyone can move ahead to a new era of peaceful coexistence and cooperation. For Israel, this must also bring broader peace with all of its Arab neighbors. That is the fundamental promise of the Arab Peace Initiative, which key Arab leaders have affirmed in these most recent days.

The Arab Peace Initiative also envisions enhanced security for all of the region. It envisages Israel being a partner in those efforts when peace is made. This is the area where Israel and the Arab world are looking at perhaps the greatest moment of potential transformation in the Middle East since Israel's creation in 1948. The Arab world faces its own set of security challenges. With Israeli-Palestinian peace, Israel, the United States, Jordan, Egypt  together with the GCC countries  would be ready and willing to define a new security partnership for the region that would be absolutely groundbreaking.

So ladies and gentlemen, that's why it is vital that we all work to keep open the possibility of peace, that we not lose hope in the two-state solution, no matter how difficult it may seem  because there really is no viable alternative.

Now, we all know that a speech alone won't produce peace. But based on over 30 years of experience and the lessons from the past 4 years, I have suggested, I believe, and President Obama has signed on to and believes in a path that the parties could take: realistic steps on the ground now, consistent with the parties' own prior commitments, that will begin the process of separating into two states; a political horizon to work towards to create the conditions for a successful final status talk; and a basis for negotiations that the parties could accept to demonstrate that they are serious about making peace.

We can only encourage them to take this path; we cannot walk down it for them. But if they take these steps, peace would bring extraordinary benefits in enhancing the security and the stability and the prosperity of Israelis, Palestinians, all of the nations of the region. The Palestinian economy has amazing potential in the context of independence, with major private sector investment possibilities and a talented, hungry, eager-to-work young workforce. Israel's economy could enjoy unprecedented growth as it becomes a regional economic powerhouse, taking advantage of the unparalleled culture of innovation and trading opportunities with new Arab partners. Meanwhile, security challenges could be addressed by an entirely new security arrangement, in which Israel cooperates openly with key Arab states. That is the future that everybody should be working for.

President Obama and I know that the incoming administration has signaled that they may take a different path, and even suggested breaking from the longstanding U.S. policies on settlements, Jerusalem, and the possibility of a two-state solution. That is for them to decide. That's how we work. But we cannot  in good conscience  do nothing, and say nothing, when we see the hope of peace slipping away.

This is a time to stand up for what is right. We have long known what two states living side by side in peace and security looks like. We should not be afraid to say so.

Now, I really began to reflect on what we have learned  and the way ahead  when I recently joined President Obama in Jerusalem for the state funeral for Shimon Peres. Shimon was one of the founding fathers of Israel who became one of the world's great elder statesmen  a beautiful man. I was proud to call him my friend, and I know that President Obama was as well.

And I remembered the first time that I saw Shimon in person  standing on the White House lawn for the signing the historic Oslo Accords. And I thought about the last time, at an intimate one-on-one Shabbat dinner just a few months before he died, when we toasted together to the future of Israel and to the peace that he still so passionately believed in for his people.

He summed it up simply and eloquently, as only Shimon could, quote, "The original mandate gave the Palestinians 48 percent, now it's down to 22 percent. I think 78 percent is enough for us."

As we laid Shimon to rest that day, many of us couldn't help but wonder if peace between Israelis and Palestinians might also be buried along with one of its most eloquent champions. We cannot let that happen. There is simply too much at stake  for future generations of Israelis and Palestinians  to give in to pessimism, especially when peace is, in fact, still possible.

We must not lose hope in the possibility of peace. We must not give in to those who say what is now must always be, that there is no chance for a better future. It is up to Israelis and Palestinians to make the difficult choices for peace, but we can all help. And for the sake of future generations of Israelis and Palestinians, for all the people of the region, for the United States, for all those around the world who have prayed for and worked for peace for generations, let's hope that we are all prepared  and particularly Israelis and Palestinians  to make those choices now.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

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Kerry: Israeli-Palestinian Two-state Solution in 'Serious Jeopardy

By VOA News December 28, 2016

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry unveiled broad guidelines Wednesday for an eventual peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, warning that a two-state solution to the conflict is in "serious jeopardy."

In an hour-long speech at the State Department, Kerry also defended the U.S. decision last week to abstain from a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned Israeli settlements.

The vote at the U.N. "was about preserving the two-state solution," said Kerry, rejecting criticism that the U.S. was betraying its longtime ally, Israel. "That's what we were standing up for - Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state." He noted that the vote was "in accordance" with U.S. values.

No major new proposals were included in the six parameters outlined in Kerry's speech. Rather, the address was aimed at preserving the generally agreed upon framework of a two-state solution that has been embraced by the last several U.S. administrations.

Among the principles were a "secure and recognized international border" between Israel and a "viable and contiguous Palestine," as well as an end to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. Kerry also said a successful two-state solution must provide a "just, agreed, fair and realistic solution" to the Palestinian refugee crisis, declare Jerusalem as a capital for both states, and satisfy Israel's security needs.

While Kerry stressed that Israel will always be a U.S. ally, he accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of allowing Israel to slip into a state of "perpetual occupation."

"Here is the fundamental reality: if the choice is one state, Israel can be either Jewish or democratic, but it cannot be both," said Kerry, warning that the status quo is leading toward an "irreversible one-state reality" that "most people don't actually want."

Backlash

The stern rebuke of Israel, which comes in the final days of Barack Obama's presidency, prompted a fierce backlash from Israeli leaders.

"Like the Security Council resolution that Kerry advanced in the U.N., his speech tonight was skewed against Israel," Netanyahu said in a statement after the speech. "For over an hour, Kerry obsessively dealt with settlements and barely touched upon the root of the conflict - Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries."

In his own statement, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reaffirmed his commitment to the two-state solution, saying he is willing to restart peace talks if Israel first agrees to a settlement freeze.

The next step is likely to be determined during the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has emerged as a staunch ally of Netanyahu.

In a tweet Wednesday, Trump lashed out at the Obama administration for its treatment of Israel.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a good friend in the U.S., but not anymore," Trump said in a tweet, adding: "Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching."

The Israeli-Palestinian issue was a main focus for Kerry when he took the top post at the State Department in February 2013, but years of negotiations, including some intense periods of shuttle diplomacy, have failed to yield an agreement.

One lingering obstacle has been Israel's continued construction of settlements in areas the Palestinians see as part of a future state.

That issue rocketed back to the forefront with last week's U.N. vote.

The U.S. move to abstain from the vote effectively allowed unanimous passage of the resolution.

Israel criticizes US abstention

Netanyahu, who has had a cool relationship with President Obama, has called the resolution "shameful'' and accused the U.S. of playing an active role in its passage.

The prime minister also said he has "incontestible" evidence showing that the U.S. helped craft the resolution and pushed for its passage. U.S. officials have rejected that notion.

Israeli officials also have launched a series of diplomatic retaliatory measures against nations and other organizations who supported the U.N. resolution

However, in a move aimed at cooling tensions, an Israeli committee on Wednesday postponed a planned vote on permits to construct hundreds of new settler homes in occupied East Jerusalem.

Hanan Rubin, a member of the Jerusalem Planning and Housing Committee, said the vote was taken off the agenda for Wednesday at the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The proposal involved 492 new homes in the Ramot and Ramat Shlomo neighborhoods located in areas Israel captured during the 1967 war.

Hours later, a Jerusalem municipal panel approved the construction of a separate four-story building for Jewish settlers in a Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, located in East Jerusalem.

Washington has long said it opposes Israeli settlements, calling them an obstacle to peace, but the U.S. has generally used its Security Council veto to protect Israel from censure.

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Israel Delays Vote on New Settlements

By VOA News December 28, 2016

A Jerusalem official said Wednesday a committee had postponed a planned vote on permits to construct hundreds of new settler homes in occupied East Jerusalem.

Hanan Rubin, a member of the Jerusalem Planning and Housing Committee, said the vote was taken off the agenda for Wednesday at the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The proposal involved 492 new homes in the Ramot and Ramat Shlomo neighborhoods located in areas Israel captured during the 1967 war.

The move comes hours ahead of a planned speech by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who is expected to both lay out his view of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and address Israeli accusations that the U.S. was behind a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an end to settlement building.

The resolution passed Friday condemned Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as "a flagrant violation under international law," calling the construction an enduring obstacle to regional peace.

The council approved the measure 14-0, with the United States abstaining.

Russell Stone, American University Center for Israeli Studies professor emeritus, told VOA the important thing is that the U.S. for the first time did not use its veto power on this kind of issue.

"It represents increasing world opinion and American opinion that the settlement activity is counterproductive," he said.

Netanyahu government blames US

Netanyahu spokesman David Keys told MSNBC on Tuesday the government had information that shows "beyond a shadow of a doubt" the Obama administration actively helped craft the resolution.

He declined to offer specifics, saying "some of the information is sensitive, so I can't share it on live TV."

On Sunday, a visibly angry Netanyahu, speaking on national television, blasted the U.N. resolution and the U.S. abstention, calling the U.S. inaction a "shameful" swipe against Washington's traditional ally.

He said his immediate response includes the withholding of nearly $8 million in funding to unnamed institutions, and said "there is more to come."He did not elaborate, but later recalled ambassadors from New Zealand and Senegal, two of the resolution's four sponsors.

The prime minister also said he had ordered his foreign ministry to review within a month all of Israel's engagements with the world body.

Palestinians celebrate UN measure

Elsewhere in the region, Palestinians hailed the vote, with former Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat calling it "a clear and unanimous message" to Netanyahu that his policies will not lead to peace or security for Israel or Palestinians.

Hamas spokesman Fawzy Barhoum described the outcome of the U.N. ballot as "a vote for the right of Palestinian people [to live] on their land."

More than 500,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, in settlements that most world governments view as illegal.The Obama administration has called them "illegitimate."

Citing biblical connections to the land and modern day security concerns, Israel claims all of Jerusalem and the West Bank, territories seized during the Six-Day War of 1967.

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Kenya's Senate Moves Cautiously on Contentious Election Bill

By Mohammed Yusuf December 28, 2016

In Kenya, a controversial amendment to the electoral law is now before the Senate. The bill would give the electoral commission a workaround if biometric voting equipment fails, but the opposition has rejected the change for fear of voter fraud.

But as political temperatures rise ahead of next year's polls, Senate members are advising caution and careful consideration.

The Senate did not vote on the amendment to the electoral law Wednesday. Instead, Senate Speaker Ekwe Ethuro sent the bill to committee.

"The standing committee on legal affairs and human rights must, therefore, proceed with dispatch and be ready to table its report on 4 January 2017 when the Senate is expected to assemble for the special sitting," Ethuro said.

Wednesday's proceedings in the Senate were remarkably sober compared to the chaos last week in the lower house. Debate on the bill descended into fistfights on the parliament floor and a walk-out by opposition members before the vote.

The proposed change would allow the electoral commission to manually identify voters and transmit results if biometric voting kits fail, a move the opposition says is one way of rigging the election.

Opposition Senate member Amos Wako welcomed the move by the speaker to refer the matter to the committee.

"I feared that the cardinal principle which underlines in our constitution participation by the people in whom the sovereignty of Kenya lies may be curtailed or shortened just to meet the deadline that this bill must be passed today. I am glad through a consultative approach, and so on we have now come to a place where the committee will be given some time," Wako said.

Protests, boycott threatened

The opposition has threatened to protest and even boycott next year's nationwide elections if the electoral law is changed.

The rising tensions have sparked concern in Kenya, where post-election violence in 2007 and 2008 killed 1,300 people and uprooted 300,000 more from their homes.

Senate Majority Leader Kithure Kindiki says the committee has to look at the issue with a lot of care.

"Certain clarities have to be highlighted because there has been extraordinary sacrifices and discussions that have been going on between the two sides of this house since this matter started polarizing our country to a level of almost tearing us apart. This is an issue that even as a committee in my view must be looked at in that context," Kindiki said.

Lawmakers in the lower house said the request to change the law was made by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, or IEBC.

Political commentator Martin Andati blames the electoral body for the current political crisis.

"The political will is not there. Once IEBC encounters those challenges, they should have reached out to both sides of the political divide and told them we are having a problem here So from that perspective, they should have also have given possible solutions so that when you go and meet the leadership of Jubilee and CORD, then you are able to hammer out consensus and it's on the basis of that deal that you will take those amendments to the parliament," he said.

Andati says the perception of a unilateral change by one side will foster suspicion, potentially casting doubt on election results and even leading to violence.

The opposition had pledged to take to the streets to protest the bill starting January 4. It is not clear if this latest move in the Senate will make them postpone a decision.

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Two State Solution

Israels establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory constitutes a war crime. The International Criminal Courts Rome Statute classifies an occupying powers direct or indirect transfer of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies as a war crime.

United States President Joe Bidens Middle East policy will be to support a mutually agreed, two-state solution, in which Israel lives in peace and security, alongside a viable Palestinian state, acting US Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Mills told the UN Security Council 26 January 2021. The Presidents view continues to be that a two-state solution is the only path forward, White House press secretary Jen Psaki added. Mills said the Biden administration intends to restore Palestinian aid and take steps to reopen diplomatic missions closed by the Trump administration and will continue to urge other countries to normalise ties with Israel.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) will resume coordination with Israel that it suspended in May in response to an Israeli plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, a senior Palestinian official said 17 November 2020. Hussein al-Sheikh, the PAs civil affairs minister and close aide to President Mahmoud Abbas, said that the relationship with Israel will return to how it was following official written and oral letters we received confirming Israels commitment to past agreements.

Israel and the United Arab Emirates reached a historic peace deal on 13 August 2020 that will lead to a full normalization of diplomatic relations between the two Middle Eastern nations in an agreement that U.S. President Donald Trump helped broker. While the deal halted Israeli annexation plans, the Palestinians have repeatedly urged Arab governments not to normalise relations with Israel until a peace agreement establishing an independent Palestinian state is reached. By dropping the annexation plan Netanyahu may be hedging his bets ahead of a possible change in the White House. The UAEs Foreign Minister Abdullah al Nahyan has condemned the planned annexation, calling it illegal and contradictory to attempts to find a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Former defense minister Naftali Bennett decried the abrupt decision as tragic and blamed the Prime Minister, It is unfortunate that Netanyahu missed a once-in-a-century opportunity to apply Israeli sovereignty, he said. Settler leaders claimed to have been betrayed by the suspension of annexation announced as part of the Abraham Accords with the UAE. Texas Megapastor Robert Jeffres, who is a leading voice on Trumps faith advisory council, told the New York Times already on June 22nd, that most Evangelicals were indifferent to annexation.

Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, made clear that he would oppose any moves by Israel to unilaterally redraw the Mideast map and annex lands sought by the Palestinians. Abandoning its annexation plan changes little on the ground. Israel already holds overall control of the West Bank and continues to expand its settlements there, while granting the Palestinians autonomy in a series of disconnected enclaves. Some 500,000 Israelis now live in the rapidly expanding West Bank settlements.

With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing by his side, Donald Trump on 28 January 2020 unveiled his long-delayed Middle East plan, claiming that it would lay the foundations for a "realistic two-state solution" in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian leaders had rejected the plan even before its release and were absent during its unveiling. Following the announcement at the White House, Palestinians denounced the proposal as utterly biased in favour of Israel and insisted that "Jerusalem is not for sale". Trump called his plan an "historic opportunity" for Palestinians to achieve an independent state of their own by doubling the territory currently under their control. But under the proposal, the United States said Jerusalem would remain the "undivided capital" of Israel and it would recognise Israeli sovereignty over parts of the occupied West Bank. The Palestinians want both occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank to be part of a future state.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's (MBS) effort to secure the Saudi throne led him to back US President Donald Trump's Middle East plan and liquidate the Palestinian cause altogether.

Before announcing the much-touted plan, the Trump administration had broken from international consensus by recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The administration had also halted aid to the Palestinians, and said it no longer considered the settlements a breach of international law. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and the plan's principal architect, shrugged off the Palestinian rejection. "We're not going to chase the Palestinians ... the Palestinian leadership, you can't really treat them like they're a serious government, or capable or competent dealmakers," he told reporters. "They'll do what they've always done, which is screw everything up."

According to the plan, Israel would annex "the vast majority" of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank which would be connected to the rest of Israel with their own access roads and a transportation system. Ninety-seven percent of Israelis living in the West Bank would be incorporated into Israeli territory. The Jordan Valley would also be under Israeli sovereignty, giving Israel a permanent eastern border along the Jordan River. The Gaza Strip would be connected to the West Bank with a high-speed transportation link, crossing over or under Israel.

The so-called "Triangle Communities" consisting of 10 Palestinian towns in Israel: Kafr Qara, Ar'ara, Baha al-Gharbiyye, Umm al Fahm, Qalansawe, Tayibe, Kafr Qasim, Tira, Kafr Bara and Jaljulia could possibly be transferred to the State of Palestine. As many as 257,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel could find themselves outside the borders of Israel.

Jerusalem would be the capital of Israel and "Al Quds (or another name selected by the State of Palestine)" should be internationally recognised for the State of Palestine, according to Trump's plan. The separation barrier would serve as a border between the two capitals. The Palestinian state would not include any part of Jerusalem inside the current separation barrier which includes the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque located in the Old City and areas where most East Jerusalemites live. The capital of Palestine will be in East Jerusalem, located in areas which Israel previously cut off with its separation barrier including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis.

The plan calls for the demilitarisation of all of Palestine and the disarmament of Palestinian factions in Gaza such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Israel would control security at all international crossings into Palestine. It would also continue to carry out surveillance of Palestinians within their own territory. Israel would rely on blimps, drones and similar aerial equipment "to reduce the Israeli security footprint" within the State of Palestine.

There would be no right of return of any Palestinian refugees or their descendants into Israel. According to the plan: "Their Arab brothers have the moral responsibility to integrate them into their countries as the Jews were integrated into the State of Israel." Upon the signing of an agreement as proposed under Trump's Middle East plan, Palestinian refugee status would cease to exist and the United Nations's agency for Palestinian refugees would be terminated.

As of 2019, there were some 600,000 to 750,000 illegal settlers living in about 150 settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Nearly 400,000 Jewish settlers were living in the West Bank along with 2.8 million Palestinians. Another 200,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem, an area claimed by Palestinians. The government of Israel stopped building any official new settlements in 1992, according to Israeli monitoring group Peace Now. That, however, did not stop the construction of unauthorized settlements in the West Bank. According to UN Human Rights Office, more than 100 unauthorized Jewish outposts with thousands of housing units have been erected in existing settlements in the last 25 years without the formal approval of the Israeli authorities.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 05 April 2019 that he would annex illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank if he wins another term in office. "You are asking whether we are moving on to the next stage - the answer is yes, we will move to the next stage. I am going to extend [Israeli] sovereignty and I don't distinguish between settlement blocs and the isolated settlements."

UN Ambassador Danny Danon said 20 November 2019 Judea and Samaria are inseparable parts of the Jewish peoples homeland. This is not a recent development or claim, but a historical truth that will never again be denied... The Jordanian-Israeli General Armistice Agreement of April 1949 explicitly states that the demarcation line was established for military purposes only, and I quote from the agreement: without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundaries, he said. That was signed in 1949 between us and the Jordanians. Adding such a precondition is an attempt to decide the outcome of the negotiations before they have started.

Donald Trump said 15 February 2017 that a peace deal between Israel and Palestine can be a one-state or two-state solution as long as both sides agree on it. "The United States will encourage a peace and really a great peace deal," Trump said during a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington Trump also said that Washington was working to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. "I would like to see that happen. We are looking at it very very strongly. We are looking at it with great care. Lets see what happens."

Since the 1990 Madrid conference, the peace process had been built on the principle of "land for peace", where Israel withdraws from Arab land it occupied in 1967 in exchange for peace and the normalisation of relations with the Palestinians and Arabs. This was also the core of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative proposed by Saudi Arabia. Regardless of its shortcomings, the 1993 Oslo Accords provided a political vision for Peres's plan - a two-state solution - which was followed by the 1994 Paris Protocol which established rules regulating economic relations between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Jared Kushner's 'deal of the century' replaced this principle with his idea of "peace to prosperity", which effectively reduces the conflict to an economic problem that can be resolved by improving the living standard of the Palestinians. The absence of a proposed solution for major political issues, particularly Palestinian statehood, the status of Jerusalem, and the right of return, rendered his proposal nothing more than an attempt to bribe the Palestinians into giving up self-determination.

The Palestinian Authority has no control over borders, infrastructure, ports and airports, land, water and other resources. It does not even have full control over its own budget. As of 2019 public servants were not getting paid in full because the occupying power, Israel, had decided to take a portion of the funds allocated for salaries. The development and prosperity that Kushner is promising can only happen if the Israeli occupation is lifted.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on 16 February 2017 the United States still supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. First of all, the two-state solution is what we support. Anybody that wants to say the United States does not support the two-state solution - that would be an error, Haley told reporters at the United Nations. We absolutely support the two-state solution but we are thinking out of the box as well: which is what does it take to bring these two sides to the table; what do we need to have them agree on.

A senior White House official said 15 February 2017 that peace between Israel and the Palestinians does not have to be through a two-state solution, and that it is up to the two parties to decide. The official said the United States will not "dictate what the terms of peace will be.... A two-state solution that doesn't bring peace is not a goal that anybody wants to achieve," the official said. "Peace is the goal, whether it comes in the form of a two-state solution if that's what the parties want or something else if that's what the parties want. We're going to help them." The U.S. official spoke to reporters on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington. Trump has given his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the task of negotiating a peace deal.

Netanyahu had spoken of a "state minus," suggesting he could offer the Palestinians deep-seated autonomy and the trappings of statehood without full sovereignty. The Palestinians want an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza, with the capital in East Jerusalem, which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that there was "no alternative" to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, after a White House official said peace did not necessarily have to entail Palestinian statehood. "There is no alternative solution for the situation between the Palestinians and Israelis, other than the solution of establishing two states and we should do all that can be done to maintain this," Guterres said during a visit to Cairo.

The head of a German parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, Norbert Rottgen, was quoted by "Die Welt" newspaper as saying "the two-state solution is the only way Israel can remain a democratic and a Jewish state at the same time." Shimon Stein, a former Israeli ambassador to Germany, told the Bayerischer Rundfunk public broadcaster that abandoning the two-state solution was "unrealistic" and "a lot of blood would be shed" before both sides finally end up returning to the two-state solution.

"If the Trump Administration rejects this policy it would be destroying the chances for peace and undermining American interests, standing and credibility abroad," Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), said in response to the US official's remarks. "Accommodating the most extreme and irresponsible elements in Israel and in the White House is no way to make responsible foreign policy," she said in a statement.

President-elect Trump signaled the last gasp of the two-state solution through his choice of ambassador to Israel. Donald Trump announced 16 December 2016 he would nominate David Friedman, his long-time friend, bankruptcy lawyer (used often) and campaign adviser on Jewish world issues, as US ambassador to Israel. Friedman is noted for his affinity with extremist Israeli settlers. J Street - the dovish lobbying organization that has been critical of some Israeli policies, charged that : "the nomination shows breathtaking disdain for the vast majority of American Jews who support the two-state solution, progress toward peace with the Palestinians and common decency in public discourse."

Friedman contributed several opeds to The Jerusalem Post, on 20 October 2016 writing: " ... president Trump will trust Israel to seek peace as best it can, and will not attempt to impose a two state solution, or any other solution, against the wishes of the democratically elected Israeli government."

Senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway emphasized that moving the embassy to Jerusalem had been a "big priority" for Trump. In the event of a two-state solution, Palestinian authorities have made clear that they want East Jerusalem to serve as the capital of their own separate state. Trump's decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem is therefore almost certain to provoke objections from the Arab world and Muslims further afield.

On 06 February 2017, the Israeli Knesset also passed a law that retroactively legalises the seizure of private Palestinian land on which settlements have already been established. The law prevents Palestinian landowners from laying claim to their land if Israeli settlers are living on it, despite the fact that the settlers' presence in occupied territory is illegal under international law. It has been estimated that the law will retroactively legalise 53 settlements and outposts - allowing for the expropriation of about 8,000 dunams (80 hectares) of private Palestinian land [roughly equivalent to Manhattan below Central Park].

On 14 February 2017 Israeli President Reuven Rivlin supported the application of Israeli sovereignty over major settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank, and granting Israeli citizenship for Palestinians living near the settlement blocs. Rivlin is known as a staunch supporter of Jewish colonies. The Israeli president has never concealed his opposition to an independent Palestinian state. Although he is known as a hardline politician, Rivlins political stand is different from that of Likud led by Netanyahu, the party known for its rightist extremist agenda. Rivlin has said that Israel is defined as a Jewish state, but we should not forget that it is defined at the same time as a democracy. I call on the Jews and my Arab brothers also to avoid incitement.

Rivlin spoke more than once of his support to a confederation of two states, Israeli and Palestinian, with open borders, united Jerusalem with a joint administration of its holy sites and two sovereign democratic powers. He said it was an initiative for two states-one homeland that proposes a confederation. By supporting colonies to remain where they are, the initiative provides an answer to the practical and ethical difficulty of evacuating the colonists. Sovereignty would be declared over all the territory under Israeli civilian and military control in the West Bank, known as Area C.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely [MK, Likud] encouraged more settlers to head to the West Bank during an event supporting West Bank settlements in Washington 28 March 2017. We need to go to a million settlers in Judea and Samaria  with a US embassy in Jerusalem. We need to think of new ways of thinking that will include Judea and Samaria under Israeli sovereignty forever," she said. She went on to say that the notion of Israel occupying the West Bank is a "myth." I always say that the occupation is a myth, because we never occupied other peoples land. This is Jewish land [Judea and Samaria]. This should forever be a Jewish land under Israeli law," she said, as quoted by the Jerusalem Post.

I think that now, 50 years after the Six Day War, its about time for us to say in a very clear way: Half a million Jews live in a Jewish land. Were not occupiers in our own land. And this is why we have the natural right to build in Judea and Samaria. The most important thing is for the American administration to understand the needs of those communities, where after eight years of having no ability to plan new buildings, I think its about time for us to say: We need this like air to breathe, continued Hotovely.

Since January 2017 the Israeli government, emboldened by Donald Trump's inauguration, has authorised the construction of more than 6,219 illegal settlement homes in the occupied West Bank, including 719 in East Jerusalem.

On 30 March 2017 Israel's government approved the building of the first new settlement in 20 years in the occupied West Bank - a move swiftly condemned as an obstacle to peace based on a two-state solution. The move - illegal under international law - was adopted less than a week after the United Nations criticised Israel for not taking any steps to halt settlement building on occupied Palestinian territory, as demanded by Security Council in Resolution 2334 passed in December 2016, adopted with 14 votes after the United States abstained in the vote. The unanimous vote in favor of construction of the new settlement in an area called Emek Shilo was announced in an Israeli government statement.

On 03 May 2019, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner indicated that the US would be pulling back from its long-standing support of the two-state solution. "If you say 'two-state', it means one thing to the Israelis, it means one thing to the Palestinians," he told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "We said, you know, let's just not say it. Let's just say, let's work on the details of what this means".

Kushner voiced his opinion that Palestinians deserve "self-determination" but are not yet capable of governing themselves. Asked whether he believed the Palestinians were capable of governing themselves without Israeli interference, on 03 June 2019 Kushner said: "That's one that we'll have to see. The hope is that they, over time, will become capable of governing". The Palestinians, he said, "need to have a fair judicial system ... freedom of press, freedom of expression, tolerance for all religions" before the Palestinian areas can become "investable".

Trump officials have hinted that their approach will not mention the creation of an independent Palestinian state, a goal of US diplomacy for decades. When the economic part of the United States's Middle East peace plan was released 22 June 2019, many noticed that the 40-page plan was void of any political context with the words "occupation", "freedom", "equality", "blockade" missing.

Kushner avoided saying explicitly whether the plan would include a two-state solution, the bedrock of US policy for decades. "I do think they should have self-determination. I'm going to leave the details until we come out with the actual plan," Kushner said.

A United Nations report in 2016 found that the economy of the occupied Palestinian territories might reach twice its size if the illegal Israeli military occupation was lifted. "Occupation imposes a heavy cost," the report read, citing Israeli "restrictions on the movement of people and goods; systematic erosion and destruction of the productive base; losses of land, water and other natural resources", as some of the impediments disrupting the territories' growth.

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US Senate believes Russia meddled in election: Graham

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 28, 2016 3:17AM

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says nearly the entire Senate believes that Russia interfered in the November presidential election.

"There are 100 United States senators... I would say that 99 percent of us believe that the Russians did this, and we're going to do something about it," Graham told CNN on Tuesday.

"We're going to have the hearings. We're going to put sanctions together that hit [Russian President Vladimir] Putin as an individual and his inner circle for interfering in our election," he said.

The US senator further claimed that the alleged meddling in the 2016 vote was not the only case worth prosecution, arguing Moscow's practice is common across the world.

"It's just not in our backyard. [Russia's] doing it all over the world, not just the United States. They're interfering in elections in democratic countries' efforts to self-determination all over the world," Graham said.

Washington first publicly accused Moscow of a campaign of cyber operations against American political organizations in October but did not attribute motives at the time.

In the run-up to the November 8 face-off between GOP nominee Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Washington claimed that some Democratic organizations were hacked by Russians in favor of Trump.

According to a Washington Post report, US intelligence agencies had identified individuals with alleged connection to the Russian government that had acted as part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and reduce his rival's chances of winning.

While many Republican and Democratic politicians have voiced serious concern about the allegations, calling for an in-depth investigation, others have downplayed such claims, including Trump himself, who has dismissed the accusations and questioned the US intelligence community's judgment. He has described the CIA report as "ridiculous," alleging that his opponents are coming up with "excuses" to delegitimize his Electoral College victory, which did come as a surprise to many political observers.

Clinton herself has signaled that her loss was in large part because of severe damage done to her campaign with allegations that the former US secretary of state's use of a private email account for top-level communication may have breached the law.

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U.S. Senator: Tough Sanctions To Hit Russia, Putin For Cyberattacks

RFE/RL December 28, 2016

A U.S. senator says that Russia and President Vladimir Putin will be hit with tough sanctions as a result of suspected Russian cyberattacks during last month's U.S. presidential election.

Lindsey Graham (Republican-South Carolina) said in Latvia on December 28 that Congress will investigate charges that Moscow interfered in the November 8 election and that "bipartisan sanctions [by Congress]...will hit Russia hard, particularly Putin as an individual."

Graham did not elaborate on the possible sanctions.

Russian officials have rejected any involvement in the presidential election that was won by Republican Donald Trump.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova repeated those denials on December 28, and promised retaliation if Washington went through with new sanctions.

"If Washington actually takes new hostile steps, then it will get a response," she said.

She also called the reports a "provocation directed by the White House."

Graham is on a three-day visit to the Baltics with fellow Senators John McCain (Republican-Arizona) and Amy Klobuchar (Democrat-Minnesota), after which they will travel to Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro.

Both McCain and Graham serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which plays a pivotal role in crafting U.S. defense policy. McCain, who heads the committee, has also pledged to investigate alleged Russian hacking during the election campaign.

All three Baltics states -- Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia-- fear Russia's increasingly aggressive policies toward them, particularly since they joined NATO and the European Union.

The United States and other NATO members are deploying small advance military units to the three countries, along with other deployments to Poland and elsewhere. The effort is aimed at presenting a small, but symbolic deterrent to Russia.

"I think the presence of the American troops here in Estonia is a signal that we believe in what [former U.S. President] Ronald Reagan believed, and that is peace through strength," McCain told reporters in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, on December 28.

"And the best way to prevent Russian misbehavior is by having a credible, strong military and a strong NATO alliance," he added.

With reporting by AP and Reuters

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-us-senator- says-tough-sanctions-on-putin-over- election-hacking/28202135.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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OSCE Suffered Cyberattack in Fall

Sputnik News

23:15 28.12.2016

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was hit by a cyberattack in the fall, media reported Wednesday, citing an OSCE official.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  OSCE Deputy spokeswoman Natacha Rajakovic said that the organization learned about the attack by the end of October, according to French newspaper Le Monde.

The newspaper cited an unnamed western security service as saying that Fancy Bears hacker group, which is allegedly linked to the Russian security service, was behind the attack.

In December, media reported that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) suspects that Russia had interfered in the course of US presidential election, hacking mail servers of US citizens and organizations. The agency claimed that Moscow had targeted the presidential campaign of the Democratic Party's Hillary Clinton, because it wanted her Republican rival Donald Trump to win. At the same time, the FBI has reportedly reached opposite conclusions from the same raw intelligence.

Kremlin has denied the allegations of its involvement in the cyberattacks, calling the accusations "indecent."

 Sputnik

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Department of State Actions in Response to Russian Harassment

Press Statement

Mark C. Toner

Deputy Department Spokesperson

Washington, DC

December 29, 2016

The State Department today declared persona non grata 35 Russian officials operating in the United States who were acting in a manner inconsistent with their diplomatic or consular status. The Department also informed the Russian Government that it would deny Russian personnel access to two recreational compounds in the United States owned by the Russian Government.

The Department took these actions as part of a comprehensive response to Russia's interference in the U.S. election and to a pattern of harassment of our diplomats overseas that has increased over the last four years, including a significant increase in the last 12 months. This harassment has involved arbitrary police stops, physical assault, and the broadcast on State TV of personal details about our personnel that put them at risk. In addition, the Russian Government has impeded our diplomatic operations by, among other actions: forcing the closure of 28 American corners which hosted cultural programs and English-language teaching; blocking our efforts to begin the construction of a new, safer facility for our Consulate General in St. Petersburg; and rejecting requests to improve perimeter security at the current, outdated facility in St. Petersburg.

Today's actions send a clear message that such behavior is unacceptable and will have consequences.

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Nation to send unmanned probes to Mars, Jupiter by 2030

People's Daily Online

(Chinadaily.com.cn) 08:30, December 28, 2016

China plans to send unmanned probes to explore Mars and Jupiter by 2030, said a senior space official.

Wu Yanhua, deputy director of the China National Space Administration, said at a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday that the government has decided to send a robotic probe to Mars to orbit and land on the red planet around 2020. The probe will conduct scientific research on the Martian soil and atmosphere and search for signs of water.

"The project has proceeded well since it was approved in January. Now we have finalized the overall plan and begun to develop related equipment such as the Mars rover," he said.

A larger probe also will set off for Mars around 2030 to take samples and return to Earth, he said.

The conference was held by the State Council Information Office to issue the China's Space Activities in 2016 white paper, which reviews progress made in 2016 and discloses major tasks for the next five years.

Jupiter as well as its moons will be visited by at least one unmanned probe from China before 2030, Wu said.

Illustrations show the country's first Mars probe consisting of three parts  an orbiter, lander and rover. The rover will have six wheels and four solar panels.

The probe is expected to take nearly seven months before reaching the red planet, said Zhang Rongqiao, chief scientist of China's Mars exploration program.

The rover will carry 13 scientific instruments, weigh about 200 kilograms and work 92 days on the planet, according to Sun Zezhou, chief designer of the probe.

Wu also said Tuesday that the Chang'e 5 lunar probe will be sent to the moon by the end of 2017 to take samples and return to Earth. In 2018, Chang'e 4 will carry out the world's first soft landing  using rockets to slow descent  on the far side of the moon.

China has launched three robotic lunar exploration missions, including one that soft-landed a rover on the moon.

To realize China's grand aspirations, scientists have started to design a super-heavy rocket, the Long March 9, and plan to put it to use around 2030, Wu said.

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Photos of China's aircraft carrier urge better protection of confidential information

People's Daily Online

(People's Daily Online) 17:19, December 28, 2016

Some high-resolution photos of China's newest aircraft carrier, still under construction, have gained widespread attention online. The photos, which clearly show details of the carrier's structure, first appeared on the site of Japan's Kyodo News Service. They were taken by employees of Kyodo News Service, according to a report in China National Defense News.

The aircraft carrier is an important weapon for China. Taking photos of the carrier is strictly forbidden. The fact that Japanese employees managed to snap photos of the ship despite heavy security is something of a wake-up call.

Citing several examples from history, the report noted that keeping military secrets is a matter that affects state security and the potential for war. Prior to the first Sino-Japanese War (189495), Japanese spies learned the departure time of Chinese ships heading to Korea for reinforcements. Using this information, the Japanese navy ambushed the Chinese ships transporting soldiers. Later, during Japan's aggression against China in 1930s, large numbers of Japanese came to China to survey the terrain, resources and social conditions of China, providing intelligence to the invading Japanese army.

With the rapid advancement of technology such as big data and unmanned civil aircraft, it has become even easier to steal such secrets. In the meantime, foreign spies have started penetrating all sectors of society.

The report calls for the creation of an effective system to prevent confidential information leaks and improve state security education. April 15 was designated as China's first National Security Education Day. In addition, authorities will promote education through posters, advertisements, film and even WeChat articles.

The report additionally calls for strict management of certain groups. Military fans have become a high-risk group for the leaking of confidential information. In the past, some have shared images of advanced weapons before official photos were released. Overseas military institutions and personnel have obtained significant intelligence in this way.

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China to promote military relations with Bolivia

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 14:01, December 28, 2016

Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan Tuesday said that China is willing to take military relations with Bolivia to a new level.

Chang made the remarks while meeting with his Bolivian counterpart Reymi Ferreira.

Chang spoke about the sound military exchanges between the two armies in recent years, with the joint efforts of leaders from both countries.

Ferreira thanked China's various support and assistance to the armed forces of Bolivia and hoped to strengthen cooperation and boost relations between the two armies.

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Pictures revealed of China's improved stealth fighter J-31

People's Daily Online

By Sun Wenyu (People's Daily Online) 13:25, December 28, 2016

Recently, pictures of the improved edition of China's stealth fighter J-31 were posted online, indicating a new stage of development for the aircraft. However, Chinese military expert Yin Zhuo told CCTV that it would still be some time before the design is finalized.

The J-31 is a fourth-generation fighter developed by China. It completed its first test flight on Oct. 31, 2012. With the development of the new model, China became the second country testing two models of fourth-generation flights at the same time, after only the U.S.

Compared with the earlier model, exhibited at Airshow China 2014, the improved version has a more aerodynamic design and an expanded weapons bay. Yin said five to seven prototypes are usually tested before a design is finalized.

Yin believes it is possible for the J-31 to be deployed on aircraft carriers in the future, saying that the aircraft's capability to carry out sea and land attacks would be a major asset for carriers.

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Taiwan Mainland Spokesman Urges US to Stick to 'One China' Policy

Sputnik News

16:57 28.12.2016

An Fengshan, the spokesman for the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, stated that any attempt to disrupt "One China" policy was "doomed to fail."

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The United States should treat issues related to Taiwan very carefully and should not abandon "One China" policy, An Fengshan, the spokesman for the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, said Wednesday.

"We hope the United States will abide by the 'One China' policy and the three China-U.S. joint communiques, and carefully handle issues related to Taiwan," the spokesman said, as quoted by the CCTV broadcaster.

The spokesman also said that any attempt to disrupt "One China" policy was "doomed to fail."

On December 2, Donald Trump became the first US president or president-elect to speak with a Taiwanese leader in an official capacity since 1979. On December 11, Trump said he would not be bound by the "One China" policy regarding relations with Taiwan.

On December 23, the White House announced that outgoing US president Barack Obama signed into law the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to set the budget for the US Department of Defense, which included the provision on cooperation with Taiwan.

After Chinese Nationalist forces were defeated by Mao Zedong's Communists, the Nationalist government moved to Taiwan in 1949. Since then, Beijing has viewed the self-ruled, democratic island as a breakaway province. The United States, along with many other countries, does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation and sticks officially to the "One China" position, but has kept informal relations with the island after severing diplomatic ties with it in 1979.

 Sputnik

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US Intel Images Suggest Another N. Korean Missile Launch Site

By Ham Jiha December 28, 2016

New reviews of satellite images suggest North Korea may possess another missile launching site at a village once suspected of having nuclear facilities.

The images, analyzed by Strategic Sentinel, a firm that deals with geospatial image processing, intelligence analysis and geopolitical research, exposed a missile silo in mountainous Geumchang-ri, North Pyongan Province, where the U.S. intelligence community said in the late 1990s there was a nuclear weapons site.

The silo, an underground chamber used for storing and firing missiles, seems analogous to the one at a missile base in Tabriz, Iran, with the same 7.4-meter-wide sliding cover and the same type of exhaust vents, the intelligence consultancy told VOA Tuesday.

That U.S.-based group added that this rectangular-shaped structure appears large enough to house current North Korean missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads that can strike neighboring countries like South Korea and Japan.

"If this Iranian site is housing missiles and the North Korean site that we have uncovered is the exact same dimension, then it's quite possible that the site that we have uncovered is housing missiles as well," said Ryan Barenklau, founder of Strategic Sentinel, also suggesting a possible nuclear cooperation between the two countries.

Just north of the silo, three structures, which appear as check-out points and a below-ground access point, stood in a triangle formation, and a possible guard post also was within close proximity, the satellite images showed.

Barenklau said one thing to take note of is the great similarity between this clandestine facility and North Korea's other established missile launching sites in terms of the way structures are set up and the distance between check-out points and launch pads.

Unlike the conventional 55-meter-long launch vehicle processing buildings, the two check-out buildings at the suspected site, however, measure about 27 and 31 meters long, respectively, with a vacant lot in between them.

Asked about the difference in size of missile assembly buildings, Nathan Hunt, chief operations officer of Strategic Sentinel, said "this may be for smaller missiles, possibly a Rodong or such," while other sites like the Sohae Satellite Launching Station and the Tonghae Satellite Launching ground, also known as Musudan-ri, accommodate "very large space launch [vehicles] or Taepodong-type missiles."

Collected between 2010 and 2014, the satellite images also highlighted an unpaved, 6-meter-wide road, along which a number of cement crossings were installed.

Pointing out that construction of such infrastructure could cost several million dollars, the group insisted that the reclusive regime would only have built it "to support large vehicles to move heavy, military assets to the site."

However, additional reviews of new satellite images need to be done in order to ascertain the exact purpose of the facility, Barenklau said.

The firm's discovery of the suspected missile launching site came months after North Korea conducted two missile tests in October, which, according to the South Korean Joint Chief of Staff, were attempted near Panghyon Airport in Kusong City  located south of the suspected site. The exact location of the launch pad has yet to be discovered.

Despite global condemnation and increasing sanctions on North Korea, the reclusive regime remains steadfast in its determination to advance its nuclear and missile programs, conducting two nuclear tests and firing more than 20 ballistic missiles this year alone.

VOA Korean Service's Jeeun Lee contributed to this report.

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India on Track to Unveil Most Advanced Version of Tejas LCA

Sputnik News

19:30 28.12.2016

The Indian Air Force was forced to accept diluted parameters of Tejas due to the delay in the upgraded MK2. There is now optimism about rolling out the prototype by 2019.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  India may receive the prototype of the most advanced version of indigenously developed Tejas in 2019 a decade after the project was sanctioned.

Indian aircraft manufacturer HAL has floated a tender for the supply of valves and wheel tires for Tejas MK2. It was thought that MK2 project may not see light of the day but the recent request for proposals (RFP) indicate that manufacturer may be simultaneously working on MK-1A and MK-2 versions. The open tender is for domestic as well as global manufacturers.

The Indian Air Force had to accept a stepped-down version of Tejas due to the delay in getting the MK2 project off the ground.

The project for design and development of Tejas Mk2 was sanctioned in November 2009 at a cost of $370 million. The project has suffered because of the delay in finalization of the engine contract. Tejas MK2 aims to have home-developed Active Electrically Scanned Array (AESA) radars, unified EW suites, on board oxygen generation systems and upgraded avionics.

 Sputnik

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Russia Left Out From Major Indian Tender for EW Suites

Sputnik News

19:27 28.12.2016

India has asked a Russian vendor to quote for AESA radars but overlooked it while asking for participation in the tender for EW self-protection jammer pods.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  India has requested for quotations from seven global manufacturers for electronic warfare (EW) self-protection suites to accelerate the upgrading of its self-developed light combat aircraft Tejas Mark-1A.

Interestingly, India did not send a request to the Russian manufacturer Rosoboronexport though it has been selected to compete in the tender for AESA radars for the same aircraft.

Sources told Sputnik that EW systems worth $200 million will be selected by April next year. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), the designated local assembler of Tejas, will purchase a total of 83 EW suites for series production that is expected to start from 2019.

The tender has strict conditions for transfer of technology and local manufacturing. India has also sought exclusive worldwide sales and product support rights for the LCA MK1A aircraft or its variants fitted with the EW suite. It will also have the right to use the suite or its adapted versions on any other airborne platform designed or produced by HAL for use by Indian defense customers.

Bids have been invited from Elbit Systems and Elta Systems (both Israel), Saab (Sweden), Thales (France), Elettronica s.p.a (Italy), Raytheon (US) and Indra Systems (Spain).

HAL will make outright purchase of 24 sets of fully formed EW suites and locally manufacture another 48 based on a combination of kits supplied by the vendor.

"[The] Vendor shall ensure that HAL work content shall be more than or equal to 40 per cent by value of the unit price of each EW Suite," reads the tender issued by HAL.

LCA TEJAS is a light weight, single engine combat jet optimized for air superiority and ground attack roles. This 4.5+ generation combat aircraft has a carbon composite frame, digital flight control system; glass cockpit and digital avionics.

Last month, the Indian Defense Ministry had cleared the ``acceptance of necessity'' (AoN) for the procurement of 83 upgraded versions of Tejas for $7.7 billion.

 Sputnik

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Indian Air Force Pushes For 200-250 More Medium Weight Combat Jets

Sputnik News

17:47 28.12.2016

India is staring at a startling shortage of combat jets to fight two front wars with Pakistan and China. The current strength of the Indian Air Force is 34 squadrons (18-20 aircraft per squadron) as against the estimated requirement of 42 squadrons for a two-front war.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  The Indian Air Force has once again sought more medium weight combat aircraft in its fleet strength but is happy with the support from home-grown Tejas and Sukhoi 30MKI to the forces in light and heavy combat category respectively.

"Rafale is tremendously capable in its entire role. It is a multi-role aircraft and can be used very effectively. It can prove its worth in any situation. But we have just ordered 36 aircraft and we require more aircraft in this middle weight category to give the entire spectrum of capability," said the outgoing IAF Chief Arup Raha during a farewell interaction here.

Raha indicated the need for 200-250 medium weight combat aircraft in next five to 10 years but would like them to be manufactured in India. He said the file for selecting another aircraft for the IAF is presently under examination by the Ministry of Defense.

Adding that India has enough Russian-origin Sukhoi-30 MKI heavyweight combat aircraft, Raha said, "We are still inducting Sukhoi-30s; it will last us for another 40 years. The Light Combat Aircraft (Tejas) will fill some void in the lightweight category."

On September 23, India had signed an $ 8.85 billion deal with France to purchase 36 Rafale combat aircraft after 18 months of negotiations. The deliveries will commence in September 2019 and will be completed in April 2022. The manufacturer Dassault Aviation has promised 50 years' product support. Earlier in year 2015, India had cancelled a 126 combat aircraft tender in which the Dassault had emerged the winner. Under the new contract, Dassault will make India-specific changes to the aircraft and mount missiles as per the IAF's requirements: beyond visual range (BVR) air-to-air Meteor, short and medium range air-to-air MICA and precision guided air-to-ground SCALP missiles.

India is staring at a startling shortage of combat jets to fight two front wars with Pakistan and China. The current strength of the Indian Air Force is 34 squadrons (18-20 aircraft per squadron) which are far below the required strength of 42 squadrons suggested by an Indian Parliamentary panel for two front wars.

 Sputnik

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China Takes Media Reports at Face Value, Questions Indias Nuke Capable ICBM Test

Sputnik News

12:00 28.12.2016(updated 12:08 28.12.2016)

China has flagged the UN Security Council Resolution 1172 which calls upon both India and Pakistan to cease development of ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear warheads.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  A day after media reports claimed India had successfully test-fired a home-developed Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), China has hinted at its intention to raise questions about launch of the ballistic missile at the UN Security Council.

"We have noted reports on India's test fire of Agni-V ballistic missile. The UN Security Council has explicit regulations on whether India can develop ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons," Hua Chunying, spokesperson of Chinese foreign ministry.

The Indian and foreign media had widely reported the "last user trial" of the ICBM Agni V. Technically, Agni-V has a range of 5,000 kms whereas ICBMs have a range of more than 5,500 kms. Second, Indian defense scientists would not have liked to fuel speculation that the missile will target certain Chinese cities. This is because they are aware that majority of Chinese long range missiles are not targeted at the Eurasian land mass consisting of India, Russia and Central Asia.

"We also notice reports, including some from India and Japan, speculating whether India made this move to counter China. They need to ask the Indian side for their intention behind the move. On the Chinese part, China and India have reached an important consensus that the two countries are not rivals for competition but partners for cooperation as two significant developing countries and emerging economies," Hua Chunying added.

UNSC Resolution 1172 unanimously adopted after India and Pakistan had conducted nuclear tests in 1998, calls upon both countries to cease development of ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear warheads. ``Calling on India and Pakistan immediately to stop their nuclear-weapon development programmes, to cease development of ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons and any further production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, the Council encouraged all States to prevent the export of equipment, materials or technology that could in any way assist their programmes for nuclear weapons or for ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons,'' reads the resolution.

Nevertheless, India has since then speeded up the development of nuclear capable ballistic missile program citing the need to fill gaps in its deterrence capability. Recently, Manohar Parrikar, India's Defense Minister had said that he would not hesitate to use nuclear weapon first. Indian government had adopted the doctrine of no first use (NFU) after the 1998 nuclear tests.

 Sputnik

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Selling 70 tons of heavy water barometer of Iran's nuclear capabilities: Senior MP

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Dec 28, IRNA -- Iran's selling of 70 tons of heavy water in the global markets sets a reliable benchmark for the country's nuclear capabilities, says the head of the Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security in the Parliament.

'Based on the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran is only allowed to store a limited amount of heavy water produced in the country,' Alaeddin Boroujerdi said on Wednesday.

'So as it has been announced by Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, the Islamic Republic has sold the surplus of the heavy water in its possession, amounting 70 tons, to other countries over a period of seven months,' Boroujerdi said.

'Despite all the restrictions faced by Iran, supplying the heavy water in the world markets is going to be a good barometer of the Islamic Republic's nuclear capabilities,' he said.

The chairman of Iran parliament's Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security also said that the heavy water produced in the country meets the best global standards and even the United States is among the customer's of Iran's heavy water.

'Other developing nations can also buy the heavy water manufactured in the Islamic Republic,' Boroujerdi said.

2044**1771

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Iran drills: Missile defense systems deployed against mock hostile aircraft

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 28, 2016 8:0AM

Iran has successfully test-fired its long-range surface-to-air S-200 missile as its air defense drills enter the final phase in the country's southern belt.

Wednesday marked the third and final day of Modafean-e-Aseman-e-Velayat 7 (The Defenders of Velayat Skies 7) wargames featuring Iran's Army and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

Military commanders from either force came together in the city of Bushehr before S-200 was successfully fired at its designated target on the back of relevant detection and tracking activity.

The day also witnessed the enlisted forces deploying missile defense systems against mock hostile aircraft as per schedule.

In the morning phase of the exercises, the participating forces debuted the Talash (Endeavor) missile defense system on the southern Khark Island to destroy mock intruding drones.

To eliminate the aircraft, which transpired in under a second, the apparatus had to be operated in tandem with the Ofoq (Horizon) Airborne Fire-Control Radar (AFCR).

Elsewhere on the island, various other missile systems, including Mersad (Ambush), were deployed to annihilate mock aggressive aircraft using medium-range missiles.

The maneuvers' spokesman Second Head of Brigade Abbas Farajpour said -- despite prior warning, which had been issued to foreign and domestic aircraft to avoid the drills' general area -- aircraft belonging to extra-regional forces had to be warned away again on 12 occasions during the drills.

The maneuvers take place over an area measuring 496,000 square kilometers throughout Iran's southern, southeastern, and southwestern parts, the skies above which constitute the country's most frequented ones.

They involve around 17,000 military personnel. They seek to hone coordination among the different divisions of the Armed Forces employed to defend the country's airspace.

The second day witnessed the recruits practicing high-precision targeting against mock invasive aircraft. It also featured first-ever application of the long-range aerospace telecommunications system named Aseman (Sky), which provided sustainable contact among the elements of the drill over a range of 150 kilometers.

During the first day's escapades, various defensive apparatuses were successfully scrambled to designated positions in record time. The forces also tried their hands at intelligence gathering and electronic warfare.

Also debuting during the drills was the Jabbar (Authoritative) Smoke Generation System, which was used to create smokescreen complicating the mock enemy's observation of action stations.

Having successfully attained all its designated targets, the maneuvers concluded with a parade of the select best-performing units, which had rendered their services to the event.

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Iran Plans Aircraft Carrier Build, Major Naval Upgrade

Sputnik News

02:26 28.12.2016(updated 03:48 28.12.2016)

Iran is looking to add an aircraft carrier and possibly heavy submarines to bolster its navy.

Constructing an aircraft carrier is "among the goals" of the Iranian navy, a senior commander recently told FARS News Agency.

The announcement could be a bluff, according to international analysts, due to the massive expense associated with aircraft carriers and how little strategic benefit they are increasingly seen to offer, especially to a country like Iran.

In 2014, Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari noted that Iran has the "capability" to construct aircraft carriers and heavy submarines. But despite Tehran's claims of military prowess, these abilities cannot be corroborated by sources outside of Iran, the Times of Israel noted.

The US leads the pack globally in aircraft carriers, with 11. China, Brazil, France, India, Italy, Russia, Spain and Thailand are the only other sovereign militaries with claims to the sea-based landing strips.

Earlier this month, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani signed an order allowing the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to begin testing nuclear-powered propulsion mechanisms for Iranian submarines. The mandate was sent "in response to a violation" by the US of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear pact.

 Sputnik

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Iraqi Premier Says Will Run Islamic State Out Of Iraq In Three More Months

December 28, 2016

Iraq's Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi predicted on December 27 that it will take only three more months to remove the Islamic State extremist group from Mosul and the rest of Iraq.

The city's fall would effectively end the militant group's ambitions to form a "caliphate" stretching across Syria, Iraq, and other states.

U.S. commanders have said it would take as long as two years to eliminate IS from Iraq, but elite Iraqi soldiers have moved quickly to retake about a quarter of Mosul and areas south of that in offensives this year.

"The Americans were very pessimistic. They used to talk about a really long period, but the remarkable successes achieved by our brave and heroic fighters reduced that. I foresee that in Iraq it will take three months," Abadi told a televised news conference.

Coalition forces this week bombed the last remaining bridge connecting the eastern and western parts of Mosul. They have reconquered parts of eastern Mosul, but IS still occupies the western side of the city.

Mosul -- the largest city seized by Islamic State in Syria and Iraq -- was first captured in June 2014.

Besides Mosul, IS still controls the Iraqi towns of Tel Afar, Qaim, and Hawija.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/iraqi-prime-minister- abadi-says-will-oust-islamic-state-from- iraq-three-months/28201080.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Daesh Will Be Cast Out of Iraq in 3 Months - Iraqi PM

Sputnik News

20:58 28.12.2016(updated 21:02 28.12.2016)

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has claimed that it will take just three more months to push the jihadist group Daesh out of Iraq. It comes as al-Abadi has accepted he has failed to meet an earlier set deadline, while also calling the US "pessimistic" about the fight against terror in Iraq.

So far, Iraqi forces say they have seized only a quarter of eastern Mosul. Iraq's second largest city has long been strategically critical to the rulers of Iraq.

Daesh militants overran it in June 2014, ousting the Iraqi army in a humiliating defeat.

Iraq's official government and it's key international ally, the US, have repeatedly vowed to re-take the city, but to no avail.

Prime Minister al-Abadi previously set a deadline of the upcoming New Year. However, despite a coalition of Iraqi security forces, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Shia paramilitary forces, Sunni tribesmen and US-led airstrikes, al-Abadi has since conceded that his deadline will come and go, with Mosul continuing to be under the sway of the terrorist Daesh fighters.

However, the offensive continues.

Iraqi TV quoted al-Abadi on Tuesday 27 December, following a government meeting in Baghdad:

"Conditions indicate that Iraq needs three months to eliminate Daesh."

The campaign saw some advancement on Monday 26 December with Mosul's bridge over the historic Tigris River, being hit by a US-led air strike.

Despite their air power, the US has repeatedly denied that US forces are going to take on a ground combat role in Mosul.

US Commander Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend said in an interview published on Monday 26 December, that the US estimates it will take two years to fully eradicate Daesh forces from Iraq and Syria.

Iraq's leader rejected this assessment.

In response, al-Abadi accused his Western allies of being "very pessimistic", reiterating that Iraqi forces are capable of success much faster than the US predicts.

"The Americans were very pessimistic. They used to talk about a really long period, but the remarkable successes achieved by our brave and heroic fighters reduced that. I foresee that in Iraq it will take three months," Mr. al-Abadi insisted.

In Washington, the Obama administration has been cautious over getting further entangled in the Middle-East. Their air support has already been linked to accusations of excessive civilian deaths in Iraq.

Indeed, the relentless attempts to drive Daesh out of Iraqi territory has left many displaced.

It is estimated that there are still 1.5 million civilians left trapped inside Mosul. The recent destruction of Mosul's last remaining bridge will hamper not only the movement of Daesh militants, but also that of refugees trying to flee.

 Sputnik

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Iraq: Nearly 115,000 people displaced, 50,000 children affected by Mosul military operation - UN

28 December 2016  Since operations began to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) two months ago, some 114,042 people have been displaced and as many as one million are out of reach of humanitarian assistance.

According to the latest report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the ongoing conflict has rendered it is impossible to state a definitive estimate on the number of people who are still living in ISIL-controlled areas.

However, the humanitarian community is concerned that conditions for these communities are deteriorating, as basic goods have not been replaced in western parts of the city since the city's supply routes were closed last month.

Of particular concern is the safety and security of children, as more than 50,000 have been affected due to the Mosul military operation and surrounding conflict. Hamida Lasseko, Deputy Representative of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Iraq, told UN News that the agency is working with the Iraqi Government to provide basic services, psychosocial support, and education to children.

"This is going to be our main area of focus  to advocate for the education of children. This will also help to keep the children safe: they will be protected from being recruited, affected from the armed conflict, and they will also be able to access their basic rights," she said.

"We continue to ask all those who are involved in the conflict to leave children to grow as children so that they have a normal life," Ms. Lasseko said, emphasizing that "they should stop using children for the benefit of the war."

For those who are now living at camps, humanitarian assistance includes basic services such as clean drinking water, latrines, medical assistance. OCHA emphasized that providing new plots to accommodate people who have recently fled is an urgent priority: just last week, an additional 10,170 people were displaced.

However, security incidents have threatened aid operations in eastern Mosul. On 22 December, three suicide car bombs exploded in Gogchali, an area on the eastern outskirts of the city adjacent to the main access route. These explosions were in addition to mortar fire that killed aid workers and beneficiaries. just a few days earlier, as well as a significant uptick in trauma injuries over the past month.

Meanwhile, flooding due to ongoing rains has threatened water safety, and the arrival of winter brings dropping temperatures and harsher conditions. UN agencies and stakeholders are working to ensure that civilians have adequate protection from the cold, and one NGO is building a field hospital to shorten ambulance journeys and reduce pressure on Erbil hospitals.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Statement in Response to US Secretary of State John Kerry's Speech

Israel - Prime Minister's Office

28 December 2016

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Statement in Response to US Secretary of State John Kerry's Speech:

"Before why I explain why this speech was so disappointing to millions of Israelis, I want to say that Israel is deeply grateful to the United States of America, to successive American administrations, to the American Congress, to the American people. We're grateful for the support Israel has received over many, many decades. Our alliance is based on shared values, shared interests, a sense of shared destiny and a partnership that has endured differences of opinions between our two governments over the best way to advance peace and stability in the Middle East. I have no doubt that our alliance will endure the profound disagreement we have had with the Obama Administration and will become even stronger in the future.

But now I must express my deep disappointment with the speech today of John Kerry  a speech that was almost as unbalanced as the anti-Israel resolution passed at the UN last week. In a speech ostensibly about peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Secretary Kerry paid lip service to the unremitting campaign of terrorism that has been waged by the Palestinians against the Jewish state for nearly a century.

What he did was to spend most of his speech blaming Israel for the lack of peace by passionately condemning a policy of enabling Jews to live in their historic homeland and in their eternal capital, Jerusalem.

Hundreds of suicide bombings, thousand, tens of thousands of rockets, millions of Israelis in bomb shelters are not throwaway lines in a speech; they're the realities that the people of Israel had to endure because of mistaken policies, policies that at the time won the thunderous applause of the world. I don't seek applause; I seek the security, and peace, and prosperity and the future of the Jewish state. The Jewish people have sought their place under the sun for 3,000 years, and we're not about to be swayed by mistaken policies that have caused great, great damage.

Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders. Israel's hand has been extended in peace to its neighbors from day one, from its very first day. We've prayed for peace, we've worked for it every day since then. And thousands of Israeli families have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend our country and advance peace.

My family has been one of them; there are many, many others.

No one wants peace more than the people of Israel. Israel remains committed to resolving the outstanding differences between us and the Palestinians through direct negotiations. This is how we made peace with Egypt; this is how we made peace with Jordan; it's the only way we'll make peace with the Palestinians. That has always been Israel's policy; that has always been America's policy.

Here's what President Obama himself said at the UN in 2011. He said: 'Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations. If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now.'

That's what President Obama said, and he was right. And until last week this was repeated over and over again as American policy. Secretary Kerry said that the United States cannot vote against its own policy. But that's exactly what it did at the UN, and that's why Israel opposed last week's Security Council resolution, because it effectively calls the Western Wall 'occupied Palestinian Territory,' because it encourages boycotts and sanctions against Israel  that's what it effectively does, and because it reflects a radical shift in US policy towards the Palestinians on final status issues  those issues that we always agreed, the US and Israel, have to be negotiated directly, face to face without preconditions.

That shift happened despite the Palestinians walking away from peace and from peace offers time and time again, despite their refusal to even negotiate peace for the past eight years, and despite the Palestinian Authority inculcating a culture of hatred towards Israel in an entire generation of young Palestinians.

Israel looks forward to working with President-elect Trump and with the American Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, to mitigate the damage that this resolution has done and ultimately, to repeal it.

Israel hopes that the outgoing Obama Administration will prevent any more damage being done to Israel at the UN in its waning days. I wish I could be comforted by the promise that the US says we will not bring any more resolutions to the UN. That's what they said about the previous resolution. We have it on absolutely incontestable evidence that the United States organized, advanced and brought this resolution to the United Nations Security Council. We'll share that information with the incoming administration. Some of it is sensitive, it's all true. You saw some of it in the protocol released in an Egyptian paper. There's plenty more; it's the tip of the iceberg.

So they say, but we didn't bring it. And they could take John Kerry's speech with the six points. It could be raised in the French international conference a few days from now and then brought to the UN. So France will bring it, or Sweden  not a noted friend of Israel  could bring it. And the United States could say, well, we can't vote against our own policy, we've just annunciated it.

I think the United States, if it's true to its word, or at least if it's now true to its word, should now come out and say we will not allow any resolutions, any more resolutions in the Security Council on Israel. Period. Not we will bring or not bring  we will not allow any, and stop this game, the charades.

I think that the decisions that are vital to Israel's interests and the future of its children, they won't be made through speeches in Washington or votes in the United Nations or conferences in Paris. They'll be made by the Government of Israel around the negotiating table, making them on behalf of the one and only Jewish state  a sovereign nation that is the master of its own fate.

And one final thought  I personally know the pain, the loss and the suffering of war. That's why I'm so committed to peace. Because for anyone who's experienced it, as I have, war and terror are horrible. I want young Palestinian children to be educated like our children, for peace. But they're not educated for peace. The Palestinian Authority educates them to lionize terrorists and to murder Israelis.

My vision is that Israelis and Palestinians both have a future of mutual recognition, of dignity, mutual respect, co-existence. But the Palestinian Authority tells them that they will never accept, should never accept the existence of a Jewish state.

So, I ask you, how can you make peace with someone who rejects your very existence?

See, this conflict is not about houses, or communities in the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, the Gaza district or anywhere else. This conflict is and has always been about Israel's very right to exist. That's why my hundreds of calls to sit with President Abbas for peace talks have gone unanswered. That's why my invitation to him to come to the Knesset was never answered. That's why the Palestinian government continues to pay anyone who murders Israelis a monthly salary.

The persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state remains the core of the conflict and its removal is the key to peace.

Palestinian rejection of Israel and support for terror are what the nations of the world should focus on if they truly want to advance peace, and I can only express my regret and say that it's a shame that Secretary Kerry does not see this simple truth."

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Abe offers no apology during Pearl Harbor visit

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 11:33, December 28, 2016

Hawkish Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday offered no apology during his visit to Pearl Harbor for a sneak attack in World War II that claimed more than 2,400 American lives.

Though the Japanese government billed Abe's visit as a tour of reconciliation, the no-apology tour also served no more than a political show from Abe that aims to strengthen Japanese-U.S. alliance amid uncertainty in the upcoming Donald Trump administration.

Calling himself "entire speechless" when standing at the Pearl Harbor memorial constructed on the sunken USS Arizona, Abe acknowledged that the United States and Japan fought a fierce war "that will go down in the annuls of human history."

However, except from offering his "sincere and everlasting condolences" to the souls of the Americans killed by troops of the Japanese Imperial Empire, no apology from Abe was issued.

As many as 2,403 Americans were killed, about 20 U.S. vessels were sunk or damaged and over 300 U.S. aircraft were damaged or destroyed when more than 350 Japanese warplanes launched stealth attacks.

"I think he should apologize. It was a raid that they bombed us and they should apologize. They already surrendered but they should apologize further," said Grace Sandoval, a teenager visiting Washington, D.C. from the U.S. State of Connecticut.

The attack came as a shock to the Americans and directly led to U.S. entry into World War II.

Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, after the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Abe's decision to visit Pearl Harbor came about six months after Obama visited Hiroshima.

Apart from reciprocating Obama's visit to Hiroshima, Abe's trip to Pearl Harbor was believed to be the latest step by the Japanese government to strengthen the Japan-U.S. alliance before Trump's inauguration next January.

During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly ripped U.S. defense of Japan as one-sided and expensive deal.

Japan's Kyodo News quoted a senior Japanese official as saying that since the election of Trump, Japan had been forced to think how best to show Trump that Japan was a trustworthy partner.

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Head of South Korea's pension fund arrested in probe

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 28, 2016 10:24AM

South Korean authorities have arrested the head of the state-run pension fund as part of an expanding investigation into the alleged involvement of President Park Geun-hye in a fraud scandal.

The chief of the country's National Pension Service (NPS) and former health minister Moon Hyung-pyo "was taken into emergency detention early this morning," said a spokesman for the Special Prosecutor's Office in a Wednesday press briefing.

Moon stands accused of coercing the state pension fund to back a controversial merger of two Samsung units when he served as the country's health minister.

Moon has denied the charge. He was taken into custody after a key NPS official told investigators that he had been pressured by the Health Ministry under Moon's watch to vote for the merger, South Korean Yonhap news agency reported.

Korean prosecutors would now have to decide whether to formally place Moon under detention before the emergency arrest period expires in 48 hours.

As part of the current corruption and influence peddling scandal, President Park is accused of collaborating with her long-time personal friend Choi Soon-sil to pressure major corporations such as Samsung into "donating" over tens of millions of dollars to foundations under Choi's control.

Korean legislators voted to impeach Park on December 9, accusing her of constitutional and criminal violations. While she has been stripped of her executive powers as a result of the impeachment, she retains her title.

Her impeachment is now under consideration at the Constitutional Court, which is allowed 180 days from the impeachment date to rule on its validity.

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Russia Seeks Joint Use Of Tajik Air Base Amid Growing Islamic Militancy

December 28, 2016

Russia wants to expand its air force deployment to Tajikistan and is in talks with Dushanbe for joint use of an air base in the former Soviet republic, the Russian ambassador to Dushanbe said on December 27.

Russia already has an infantry base near Dushanbe with up to 7,000 troops stationed there and last year deployed four attack and transport helicopters to nearby Ayni air base.

Ambassador Igor Lyakin-Frolov told reporters in Dushanbe that the Russian and Tajik governments were in talks over an agreement that would allow Russia joint use of the Ayni base and to expand its presence there.

Meanwhile, members of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization meeting in St. Petersburg also discussed giving Tajikistan more assistance in guarding its border with Afghanistan amid deteriorating security.

Tajikistan is seen by Russia and the West as a prime conduit for Islamist militants. The Ferghana Valley, a fertile and densely populated strip of land that straddles Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, is considered to be the heart of Islamist militancy in Central Asia, whose main target is Russia.

Based on reporting by Reuters, TASS, and Interfax

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/russia- seeks-joint-use-tajik-air-base-growing- islamic-militancy/28201072.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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US rejects Russian accusations it's arming militants in Syria

Iran Press TV

Wed Dec 28, 2016 7:57AM

The United States has rejected Russia's accusations that Washington provides sophisticated military equipment to militants fighting against the Syrian government.

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Tuesday that the outgoing administration of President Barack Obama remains opposed to providing portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS, to militant groups in Syria.

"Our position on MANPADS has not changed. We have a very deep concern about that kind of weaponry getting into Syria," Toner said.

He said the Obama administration fears that the anti-aircraft missiles could end up in the hands of militants and be used against civilian airliners.

His comments come a day after Russia warned that the US decision to ease restrictions on arming militants threatens the safety of Russian warplanes and military personnel in Syria.

On December 8, the White House said Obama had relaxed the so-called Arms Export Control Act for the militants "supporting US Special Forces" in Syria, saying such leniency would contribute to "the national security interests" of the US.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that it viewed the decision as a "hostile act," and cautioned that the Obama administration was attempting to complicate the situation in the world before President-elect Donald Trump took over the White House in January.

Earlier this month, Moscow warned that the US decision to ease the arms flow to militants in Syria would pose a threat to the entire Middle East. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at the time that US weapons could end up in the wrong hands.

Russia has been lending air support to Syria's counterterrorism operations since last September. It operates two airbases in the Arab country.

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U.S. Dismisses Russian Claims About Rocket Launchers

RFE/RL December 28, 2016

The United States said it has no plans to provide portable rocket launchers to Syrian rebels, dismissing rhetoric from Russia after Moscow warned that such weapons might fall into the hands of Islamic militants.

"Our position on MANPADS (man-portable air-defense systems) has not changed. We would have very deep concern about that kind of weaponry getting into Syria," U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on December 27, referring to shoulder-fired launchers that can be carried by a single person and used to shoot down airplanes.

"We're not providing any kind of MANPADS...to the Syrian opposition," Toner said.

He spoke after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov raised the matter with Secretary of State John Kerry in a phone call on December 27, and after Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova mentioned the weapons in an accusatory statement lashing out at President Barack Obama's administration over a defense spending bill Obama signed on December 23.

A provision of the National Defense Authorization Act bars the U.S. Defense Department from spending funds on MANPADS for Syrian rebel groups until the secretaries of state and defense submit a report to congressional committees explaining the decision. The report would have to specify which groups would receive the weapons, how many and what kind, and also include intelligence analyses on the groups.

Russia, however, suggested that the law would make it more likely for extremists to acquire portable rocket launchers.

"It is impossible for the Obama administration not to understand that such weapons will quickly end up in the hands of jihadists with whom the ostensibly 'moderate' opposition has long acted as one. It's possible that they are even counting on that happening," Zakharova said in the statement on December 27, adding that "this can be called nothing other than abetting terrorists."

She said that such weapons deliveries would pose a "direct threat" to Russian warplanes, military personnel, and diplomatic staff in Syria.

"For this reason, we see this as a hostile step," it said.

Zakharova said in the statement that "the Americans have rejected full-fledged cooperation with us in the fight against terrorists."

But U.S. officials have accused Russia of failing to follow through on previous cease-fire deals in Syria and say most of Russia's military operations there have targeted rebels rather than the Islamic State (IS) extremists the United States is combatting with its own air campaign.

Russia has backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad throughout a nearly six-year civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people since it erupted following a government crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2011. A campaign of air strikes Russia has conducted since September 2015 has helped Assad avoid defeat and take territory such as the eastern part of the city of Aleppo from the rebels.

With reporting by Reuters, TASS, and Sputnik News

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/us-denies-plas- provide-portable-rocket-launcher-syrian-rebels-russia -complains-lavrov-kerry/28201133.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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US Intensifies Weapons Supply to Syrian Kurds - Reports

Sputnik News

15:49 28.12.2016(updated 16:08 28.12.2016)

The United States delivered weapons to the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), despite the claims of the US ambassador to Turkey, according to Turkish media.

ANKARA (Sputnik)  The United States has boosted supplies of weaponry to the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) that is considered to be an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) labeled as terrorist by Ankara, Turkish media reported on Wednesday, citing its sources.

On December 24, the US ambassador to Turkey said the United States did not provide direct military support to the PYD. However, according to the Anadolu news agency, in the last two weeks alone the US weaponry was delivered three times to the northeastern Syrian province of Hasakah.

The agency claims that on the day the ambassador made his statement, a plane with US weapons on board landed at the Rumeilan airport. The weapons then were reloaded into US Army helicopters and delivered to other regions of the country, Anadolu explained.

According to the agency's sources, the latest major weapons delivery to the northern regions of Syria took place late on Tuesday. Moreover, dozens of heavy trucks have left Erbil in northern Iraq to reach regions of Syria controlled by the Kurdish self-defense forces, Anadolu added.

On August 24, Turkish forces, backed by US-led coalition aircraft, began a military operation dubbed the Euphrates Shield to clear the Syrian border town of Jarabulus and the surrounding area of the Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) terrorist group. As Jarabulus was retaken, the offensive moved southwest toward Al Bab.

The operation has been widely criticized both by the Syrian Kurds and Damascus, who have accused Ankara of violating Syria's territorial integrity. In the northern regions of Syria Turkish forces repeatedly engage in fighting with the Kurdish self-defense units they consider to be tied with the PKK.

 Sputnik

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Turkish Media: Syrian Cease-fire Agreement Reached with Russia

By Dorian Jones December 28, 2016

News reports out of Turkey say Ankara and Russia have prepared a cease-fire agreement for all of Syria, but Russia is refusing to comment on the reports and rebel groups say no such official truce has been agreed on.

"There are two texts ready on a solution in Syria," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was quoted Wednesday as saying on the sidelines of an awards ceremony in Ankara. "One is about a political resolution and the other is about a cease-fire. They can be implemented anytime."

The Turkish state Anadolu news agency, citing an official source, said the cease-fire could go into effect as early as 2200 UTC, or midnight Wednesday; but, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, while confirming both sides were in constant communication over Syria, refused to comment on the cease-fire reports, saying he did not have "enough information."

Moscow and Ankara have been engaged in intense negotiations in the past couple of weeks. Earlier this month, the two sides brokered an agreement for a cease-fire and evacuation of refugees from the rebel enclave in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Last week, the Turkish, Iranian and Russian foreign ministers met in Moscow for talks on Syria. According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Cavusoglu spoke twice by phone this week with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.

Russia and Turkey back opposite sides in the Syrian civil war, but analysts say they have come to recognize the importance of one another to resolving the conflict. "These efforts are significant, but what will really determine their real significance is what results they bear," cautions political columnist Semih Idiz of Al Monitor website. "We saw with the evacuation in Aleppo it bore some results. If the cease-fire does work, it will become a very important diplomatic track for Syria."

A senior Turkish Foreign Ministry official, speaking under customary condition of anonymity, confirmed that Ankara has been holding meetings with Syrian rebel representatives. A Syrian rebel official, quoted by a news agency, said those meetings are expected to continue in the coming days.

Terrorist groups excluded

Ankara and Moscow have stated that terrorist groups will not be covered by any cease-fire; but, analysts warn a potential key stumbling block remains over the designation of which rebel groups are considered terrorist organizations. "There are definitions that don't match. Russia has not openly declared the Syrian Kurdish group the YPG a terrorist organization, which Turkey calls a terrorist group," said columnist Idiz. "On the other side, there are constant allegations that Turkey has some kind of links with groups that Russia considers as terrorist organizations."

The role of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad too is a likely obstacle. "The whole world knows it is not possible for there to be a political transition with Assad," Cavusoglu said. "We also all know that it is impossible for these people to unite around Assad." That stance is strongly opposed by Moscow, which insists the Syrian people should decide who rules them.

Tuesday, Lavrov said Russia, Iran and Turkey had agreed that the priority in Syria was to fight terrorism and not the removal of Assad's government.

Ankara has suggested if the planned Syrian cease-fire does take hold, the Syrian government and opposition groups would be present in a scheduled meeting to be held next month in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, with Russia, Iran and Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking in support of the Kazakhstan meeting Tuesday, appeared to sideline United Nations efforts in Geneva. "Unfortunately, Geneva came up empty. How many meetings were held? And no results were obtained," Erdogan said.

Washington too faces being sidelined. While Turkey and the United States are NATO allies, differences over the Syrian civil war have hurt relations. Erdogan on Tuesday accused Washington of arming Islamic State. "Ludicrous," was the response by U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner to the accusation.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in Ankara issued a statement rebutting the allegations. "The United States government is not supporting Daesh," the embassy said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. The United States "did not create or support Daesh in the past. Assertions the United States government is supporting Daesh are not true."

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U.S. says new law not aimed at highlighting cross-strait tensions

ROC Central News Agency

2016/12/28 19:12:09

Washington, Dec. 27 (CNA) The United States has a strong security relationship with Taiwan and its recent legislation on military exchanges with Taiwan was not aimed at highlighting tensions across the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday.

"Our policy with regard to Taiwan is exactly the same, hasn't changed," State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said at a daily pressing briefing. "We believe in a 'one China' policy. There's been no change to that policy."

In response to questions about the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017 that was signed into law Dec. 23 amid strained cross-strait ties, Toner said the U.S. was not seeking to highlight cross-strait tensions.

He also said the U.S. has "a strong security relationship with Taiwan."

Questions on the issue were raised at the press briefing after U.S. President Barack Obama on Dec. 23 signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, which included for the first time a section on exchanges of senior military personnel between Taiwan and the U.S.

The bill cleared the Senate in a 92-7 vote on Dec. 8 after it was approved in the House of Representatives by a vote of 375-34 on Dec. 2.

Section 1284 of the act states that it is the sense of Congress that "the Secretary of Defense should carry out a program of exchanges of senior military officers and senior officials between the United States and Taiwan designed to improve military to military relations between the United States and Taiwan."

It defines an exchange as "an activity, exercise, event, or observation opportunity between members of the Armed Forces and officials of the Department of Defense, on the one hand, and armed forces personnel and officials of Taiwan, on the other hand."

It remains to be seen whether or how the new administration under President Donald Trump will act on this section of the act after he formally takes office in January.

Taiwan has said it welcomes the inclusion of military exchanges with Taiwan in the act and hopes for continued cooperation between the two sides.

China, meanwhile, has expressed opposition to the Taiwan-related content of the new U.S. act.

"We are strongly discontented with the U.S. for signing this act," China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying () said at a news conference in Beijing on Dec. 26.

(By Elaine Hou and Rita Cheng)

ENDITEM/pc

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Taiwan says ties with Central American allies remain solid

ROC Central News Agency

2016/12/28 22:16:10

Taipei, Dec. 28 (CNA) The Presidential Office said Wednesday that Taiwan's diplomatic relations with four of its Central American allies are solid and the preparations for next week's visit there by President Tsai Ing-wen () are going smoothly.

The office was responding to local media reports that Taiwan's diplomatic ties with Honduras and Nicaragua are shaky.

According to the reports, Taiwanese diplomats stationed in Nicaragua have been having difficulty contacting Nicaraguan officials to discuss plans for Tsai's impending visit to attend the inauguration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on Jan. 10.

The Presidential Office, however, said the news reports were nothing more than speculation and were false.

Taiwan's ties with the four Central American allies are solid and the preparations for Tsai's visit to Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras from Jan. 7-15 are progressing smoothly, the office said.

The trip, Tsai's second overseas tour since she took office in May, has been in the spotlight since Sao Tome and Principe severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan on Dec. 21, leaving Taiwan with 21 allies.

The African country's decision to break diplomatic ties was due mainly to Taiwan's refusal to meet what was described as an unreasonable demand for financial aid, according to Taiwan's foreign ministry officials.

Five days after it severed official relations with Taiwan, Sao Tome and Principe resumed diplomatic ties with China.

There have been concerns that China might lure more of Taiwan's diplomatic allies as relations between the two sides have been strained since Tsai took office in May, mainly because she has refused to heed Beijing's calls to accept the so-called "1992 consensus" as the political foundation for the development of cross-Taiwan Strait exchanges.

The "1992 consensus" refers to a tacit understanding reached in 1992 between China and Taiwan, which was then under a Kuomintang (KMT) government, that there is only one China, with both sides free to interpret what that means.

(By Sophia Yeh and Elaine Hou)

ENDITEM/pc

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English Icelandic

Landsnet and Landsvirkjun have reached an agreement on the refinancing of debt between the companies. By this agreement Landsnet has bought back all of its outstanding bonds issued in 2005 and which were owned by Landsvirkjun.

Landsnets buy-back was in part paid in cash and in part by a new loan agreement between the companies in USD and maturing in 2020.

Islandsbanki acted as a consultant to Landsnet and Landsvirkjun for the buy-back and for the new loan agreement.

Reykjavik, December 29, 2016

For further information please contact Gulaug Sigurardottir CFO , phone nr. +354 563 9300 or by email: gudlaugs@landsnet.is
President Tran Dai Quang (R) and Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Vietnam Martin Klepetko (Source: VNA)



While highlighting the fruitful development of bilateral relations in politics and diplomacy and close cooperation in multilateral forums, Quang said he hopes the two sides will further step up economic, trade and investment links in the coming time.

Vietnam is willing to create favourable conditions for Czech enterprises to seek investment and business opportunities in Vietnam, he affirmed.

He asked the Czech Republic to continue supporting and promoting the partnership and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and the European Union (EU), approve the Vietnam-EU Free Trade, and recognise Vietnams market economy.

These will facilitate economic, trade and investment cooperation between the Czech Republic and Vietnam, he affirmed, adding that Vietnam will support the central European country to enhance ties with other ASEAN member nations.

He thanked the Czech Government for its support for overseas Vietnamese, hoping that the country will continue providing assistance to the expatriate community, thus promoting mutual understanding between the two countries people.

On the occasion, President Tran Dai Quang conveyed his invitation to President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman to visit Vietnam in 2017, stressing that the maintenance of high-raking visits is vital to foster the political relations, thus bolstering economic links between the two nations.

For his part, Ambassador Martin Klepetko thanked the Vietnamese leader for his appreciation for the ambassadors efforts in strengthening the relations between the two countries.

He said that the two sides have seen progresses in bilateral relations in recent times.

The two sides needs to boost cultural exchange, and collaboration in trade and investment, towards realising the target of economic cooperation set by the two nations, he said./.
Dean Shostak, a master of making music with historical glass instruments, will be in concert at the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History at 7 p.m. Jan. 20.

The performance, entitled Crystal Concert, will take place in the Danville Museum performance auditorium.

There also will be two additional school presentations earlier that same day.

From Williamsburg, Shostak presents a multimedia concert that introduces audiences to glass instruments.

They range from Benjamin Franklins glass armonica to brand new instruments created for Shostak by glass artists all around the world. It is an ever-changing showcase of glass music, art, history and science.

Shostak is a nationally acclaimed touring artist whose music has been featured on Voice of America, The Weather Channel, The Discovery Channel, NPRs All Things Considered and at The Arena Stage in Washington D.C.

In 1991, he became involved in the revival of the rare glass armonica, invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761. Today, there are only eight glass armonica players in the world. He also has incorporated new and antique glass instruments into his show that include the glass violin and crystal hand bells.

Tickets for the concert will be available at the door a are available now at the museum, Gingerbread House, Karens Hallmark and Vintages by the Dan.

Cost of admission is $15 for general public, $12 for museum members, and $5 for students.

The museum is located at 975 Main St. For more information, call (434) 793-5644.
American National Bankshares Inc. has announced executive changes to be effective in 2017.

 R. Helm Dobbins, executive vice president of the company and its wholly owned subsidiary, American National Bank and Trust Co., and chief credit officer of the bank, will retire on March 31.

 Edward C. Martin, who is currently executive vice president and senior credit officer of the bank, will assume the chief credit officer position.

 Ramsey K. Hamadi, executive vice president of the company and the bank, has been named chief administrative officer of the bank, effective Sunday.

Dobbins has been an executive officer and the chief credit officer of the bank since June 2003. He has nearly 40 years of banking experience in credit policy, lending, analysis and underwriting processes, according to a news release.

Dobbins successfully led American Nationals stellar credit results while loans increased from approximately $400 million to over $1 billion, stated the release from the company.

Martin joined the bank in September after serving as chief credit officer of a large Roanoke community bank and as regional credit officer of a multi-state regional bank.

He is a graduate of the University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce and lives in Roanoke.

Hamadi, a resident of Greensboro, North Carolina, joined American National in July and currently leads the banks major strategic initiatives from his office in Danville.

He has 24 years of financial and accounting experience with 14 of those years as a chief financial officer of regional community banks. He is a graduate of Maryville University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

American National also announced the following promotions by the bank, effective Sunday:

 Brandon D. Atkins to senior vice president and senior risk officer with his office in Danville;

 M. Lee Burris to senior vice president and commercial relationship manager with his office in Greensboro, North Carolina; and

 William L. Kirby IV to senior vice president and market president, Southside Region with his office in Martinsville.
Vancouver, British Columbia (FSCwire) - Prophecy Development Corp. (Prophecy or the Company) (TSX:PCY, OTC:PRPCF, Frankfurt:1P2N) is pleased to announce that it has signed two coal sales and purchase agreements (the SPAs) to sell a total of 16,000 tonnes of coal sourced from its 100%-owned Ulaan Ovoo mine (Ulaan Ovoo) in Mongolia.

The two purchasers were Erdenet Mining Corporation (GOK) (for 10,000 tonnes) and Selenge Energo Heat Plant (Selenge Energo) (for 6,000 tonnes). Coal deliveries sourced from the Companys existing Ulaan Ovoo coal stockpiles began in December 2016. Delivery of the 16,000 tonnes is expected to complete by February 2017.

GOK has been a major Prophecy customer and (excluding the current 10,000 tonnes) has purchased a total of 77,334 tonnes of coal since 2013. The Company expects to generate positive cash flow from the two SPAs.

In recent months, Prophecy has received multiple, unsolicited written expressions of interest from parties in Russia, China, and India, relating to possible transactions involving sales from, or joint venture of, Ulaan Ovoo.

While Prophecy considers Ulaan Ovoo to be one of its core company assets, the Company is responding to those expressions of interest and intends to evaluate any potential proposals received with a view to maximizing shareholder value.

To date in 2016, the benchmark thermal coal price (i.e. Australian thermal coal, 12,000 Btu/lb, FOB Newcastle) has nearly doubled to over US$100/tonne from US$53/tonne in January. Prophecy is surveying existing and prospective customers with a view to possibly restarting Ulaan Ovoo in 2017.

About Ulaan Ovoo:

Ulaan Ovoo is located in northern Mongolia, 17km from the Zelter border to Russia by dirt road, and 120km by road from Mongolias Sukhbaatar railway station (which connects to the Trans-Siberian railway network). The mine has been on standby since 2014.

During 2012 to 2015, Prophecy successfully delivered approximately 500,000 tonnes of Ulaan Ovoo coal to 28 Mongolian and Russian customers, with a track record of timely delivery and meeting or exceeding the required coal quality specifications.

Prophecy received a mining permit for Ulaan Ovoo in 2011, and has invested approximately $60 million into the project since then. The coal is marketed specifically to power plants, heat/boiler plants, cement factories, metallurgical plants, direct reduced iron plants, and railway companies. Ulaan Ovoo coal (5,000 kcal/kg GCV, < 1% Sulphur, < 8% Ash, < 3% rock) is well-suited for all of these customers applications.

Qualified Persons

The technical content of this news release was reviewed and approved by Christopher M. Kravits, CPG, LPG, who is a Qualified Person within the meaning of NI 43-101. Mr. Kravits is a consultant to the Company and serves as its Qualified Person and General Mining Manager.

About Prophecy

Prophecy Development Corp. is a Canadian public company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange that is engaged in developing mining and energy projects in Mongolia, Bolivia and Canada. Further information on Prophecy can be found at www.prophecydev.com.

Prophecy Development Corp.



ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

JOHN LEE

Executive Chairman

For more information about Prophecy, please contact Investor Relations:

+1.888.513.6286

ir@prophecydev.com

www.prophecydev.com

Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Toronto Stock Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this news release, including statements which may contain words such as expects, anticipates, intends, plans, believes, estimates, or similar expressions, and statements related to matters which are not historical facts, are forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Such forward-looking statements, which reflect managements expectations regarding Prophecys future growth, results of operations, performance, business prospects and opportunities, are based on certain factors and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.

These factors should be considered carefully, and readers should not place undue reliance on the Prophecys forward-looking statements. Prophecy believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements contained in this news release and the documents incorporated by reference herein are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct. In addition, although Prophecy has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Prophecy undertakes no obligation to release publicly any future revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this news or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as expressly required by law.

To view this press release as a PDF file, click onto the following link:public://news_release_pdf/Prophecy12282016.pdfSource: Prophecy Development Corp. (TSX:PCY, OTC Pink:PRPCD, FWB:1P2N)

To follow Prophecy Development Corp. on your favorite social media platform or financial websites, please click on the icons below.

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Copyright  2016 Filing Services Canada Inc.
VANCOUVER, Dec. 28, 2016 /CNW/ - International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. (TSX: ITH, NYSE-MKT: THM) ("ITH" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has closed the previously announced non-brokered private placement financing (the "Offering") of 45,833,334 common shares at a price of US$0.48 per share for gross proceeds of US$22.0 million.

"It is significant to have such high quality support from Paulson & Co. Inc. as they increase their interest in the Company and to have Tocqueville Asset Management, L. P. and AngloGold Ashanti (U.S.A.) Exploration Inc. participate in this private placement to maintain their pro-rata share. With this support, the improved results of the Pre-Feasibility Study released on October 24, 2016 and the key project fundamentals of a large resource base, stable jurisdiction, and leverage to gold price, we look forward to continuing to advance the Livengood Gold Project," said Tom Irwin, CEO.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the private placement for full satisfaction of the final payment due in January 2017 with respect to acquisition of certain mining claims and related rights in the vicinity of the Livengood Gold Project in Alaska (the "Project") (determined to be approximately USD $14.7 million as calculated per the purchase agreement through December 12, 2016), continuation of optimization studies to further improve and de-risk the Project, required environmental baseline studies, and for general working capital purposes.

In connection with the Offering, the Company has appointed Marcelo Kim to the ITH board of directors, where he will serve as Chairman. Mr. Kim is a Partner at Paulson & Co. Inc., where he oversees global natural resource investments. He received his BA in Economics from Yale University and currently also sits on the board of directors of Midas Gold Corp.. Commencing from the next annual general meeting of the Company's shareholders, Paulson & Co. Inc. will have the right to nominate Mr. Kim and one other individual to stand for election to the board of directors.

Marcelo Kim, incoming Chairman for ITH said, "We are excited to continue our partnership with ITH, owner of one of the largest gold reserves in North America not owned by a major company. In addition to its low strip ratio, minimal infrastructure requirements, and excellent jurisdiction, there are a number of opportunities that could further improve the economics for the Livengood project. Going forward, we will work to optimize both the capital and operating expenses of what we believe one day will become one of North America's most profitable gold mines."

Steve Lang, who has served as the Board Chairman since January 2014, has been appointed as the lead independent director for the Company.

Mr. Lang said "We appreciate the strong signal of support from our major shareholders. On behalf of the entire board, we would like to welcome Mr. Kim to the board."

All common shares issued in the Offering are subject to a hold period in Canada of four months from the closing of the Offering. All common shares issued in the United States will be subject to resale restrictions under U.S. federal and state securities laws. The common shares to be issued in the Offering have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "1933 Act") or any applicable securities laws of any state of the United States and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons (as defined in Regulation S under the 1933 Act) or persons in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from such registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any of the common shares to be issued in the Offering, nor shall there be any offer or sale of the common shares to be issued in the Offering in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction.

About International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.

International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. controls a 100% interest of the Livengood Gold Project, located along the paved Elliott Highway, 70 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska.

On behalf of

International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.

(signed) Thomas E. Irwin

Chief Executive Officer

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and US securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including statements with respect to the proposed use of the proceeds of the Offering by the Company, the ability of the Company to carry out and complete optimization studies with respect to the Livengood Gold Project, the ability of the Company to advance the Livengood Gold Project, the potential development of any mine at Livengood, business and financing plans and business trends are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, postulate, proposed, planned, potential and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, risks associated with the outcome of the expected remedial de-listing review by the TSX, the use of proceeds from the Offering, the potential inability of the Company to raise the necessary capital or to be fully able to implement its business strategies, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company's annual report on Form 10-K and other reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), and certain securities commissions in Canada and other information released by the Company and filed with the appropriate regulatory agencies. All of the Company's Canadian public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sedar.com and its United States public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sec.gov, and readers are urged to review these materials, including the latest technical report filed with respect to the Company's Livengood Gold Project.

This news release is not, and is not to be construed in any way as, an offer to buy or sell securities in the United States or Canada.

SOURCE International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.
CALGARY, ALBERTA--(Marketwired - Dec. 28, 2016) - (TSX VENTURE:CBA)

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

Champion Bear Resources Ltd. ("Champion Bear" or the "Company") announced today that it has completed a private placement of 5,000,000 common shares of the Corporation at a price of $0.10 per share for total gross proceeds of $500,000 (the "Private Placement"). Certain directors of the Company, directly or indirectly, purchased an aggregate of 2,250,000 common shares pursuant to the Private Placement.

Champion Bear intends to use the proceeds of the Private Placement to further exploration programs on its wholly-owned Plomp Farm Au Property and Eagle Rock Cu-Au-Pt-Pd Property located near Dryden, Ontario as well as for general corporate purposes. Steve Siemieniuk, P.Geo.of Clark Exploration and Todd McCracken, P.Geo. of WSP Canada Inc., both qualified persons under NI 43-101,Champion Bear's consulting geologists, will be overseeing the exploration programs.

The Private Placement constituted a related party transaction within the meaning of TSX Venture Exchange Policy 5.9 and Multilateral Instrument 61-101 ("MI 61-101") as insiders of the Company, directly or indirectly, subscribed for an aggregate of 2,250,000 Common Shares. The Company is relying on the exemptions from the valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 contained in sections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101, as the fair market value of the participation in the Private Placement by insiders does not exceed 25% of the market capitalization of the Company, as determined in accordance with MI 61-101. The Company did not file a material change report in respect of the related party transaction at least 21 days before the closing of the Private Placement, which the Company deems reasonable in the circumstances so as to be able to avail itself of the proceeds of the Offering in an expeditious manner.

All securities issuable under the private placement will be subject to a hold period of four months and one day from the closing date.

This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of any offer to buy the securities in any jurisdiction. The securities offered have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons except in certain transactions exempt from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act.

Champion Bear is a mineral exploration company focused exclusively on the historically prospective regions of Ontario. The Company's primary target is platinum group and precious metals and to a lesser extent polymetallic base metal and pegmatite-hosted tantalum deposits. Champion Bear's aim is to create shareholder value through selective property acquisition and joint venture followed by focused exploration emphasizing drilling. The Company has assembled a large land position in the Dryden and Sudbury areas, totaling over 16,000 hectares.

This news release contains forward-looking statements concerning the completion of the private placement, the use of proceeds of the private placement and the timing and composition of the exploration programs to be completed on certain of Champion Bear's mineral properties which are based on Champion Bear's current internal expectations, which may prove to be incorrect. These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that are common to junior mineral exploration companies. These risks and uncertainties include, among other things, Champion Bear's need for additional funding to continue its exploration efforts, changes in general economic, market and business conditions; and competition for, among other things, capital and skilled personnel. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements except as required by applicable securities laws.

No regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained in this news release. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
/NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES./

SASKATOON, SK, Dec. 29, 2016 /CNW/ - Karnalyte Resources Inc. ("Karnalyte" or the "Company") (TSX: KRN) is pleased to announce the completion of the optimization program at the Company's potash mine at Wynyard, Saskatchewan (the "Optimization Program").

Optimization Background

The Company's economic projections for the first phase of its planned 625,000 tonnes per year (tpy) potash mine at Wynyard ("Phase 1") used a conservative estimate of KCl content in the production brine that was based on laboratory dissolution tests and computer modelling. Given the challenging environment for potash, Karnalyte sought to improve the economics for Phase 1 with a program designed to optimize the potash production process and reduce projected operating and capital costs.

Karnalyte retained industry-leading experts in potash solution mining, Ercosplan Ingenieurgesellschaft Geotechnik und Bergbau mBH from Erfurt, Germany ("Ercosplan") to design, monitor and independently verify the results of the Optimization Program. The Optimization Program was designed to provide information about KCl brine concentrations that can be achieved at particular flow rates in a controlled cavern operation. The goal of the Optimization Program was to show that controlled carnallitite solution mining of the Belle Plaine Member is technically feasible and to obtain data to calibrate the thermal model for the cavern.

The Optimization Program was conducted in three phases from May, 2016 until November, 2016:

Sump leaching - to provide space to capture non-dissolved material from the next leaching stages;

Undercut leaching - to provide a dissolution area required to obtain concentrated brine at relatively high flow rates during production leaching; and

Production leaching - the cavern and surrounding rocks are heated by the injection of 85C solvent, and hot brine with high KCl content is extracted from the cavern.

Optimization Results

Ercosplan has produced a report on the Optimization Program (the "Report") which expands on previous laboratory dissolution tests and computer modelling conducted during the preparation of the Company's feasibility study (the "Feasibility Study") and technical report for the Company's potash project. The Report indicates that during the hot production leaching stage, inflow rates of 15-20 m/h and solvent temperature of 85C can heat the cavern to temperatures of 70-75C. These observations suggest that the cavern brine temperatures in the Feasibility Study estimated to be between 50-60C during production leaching are too low and that achieving higher temperatures is possible. This would also confirm that the 116 g/l KCl concentration brine in the Feasibility Study (Ercosplan et al., 2012 /2/) is very conservative, and that higher KCl concentration in the production brine could be achieved with higher production brine temperature. This will require further testing to confirm the extent of the increased KCl concentration in the production brine.

Karnalyte believes that any increase in KCl concentration could significantly enhance project economics for the full scale Phase 1 plant by reducing operating and capital costs.

Conclusions

The Optimization Program allowed Karnalyte's technical and engineering teams to gather significant beneficial information which will be incorporated into the design and operation of the full scale potash production facility. The Report indicates that a full scale double well production cavern with 70m radius as planned in the Feasibility Study for brine production is not required for test work, as the necessary information to calibrate the modelling program can be obtained from a smaller diameter single well cavern.

Mr. Phinney commented "I would like to thank Karnalyte's technical team for their dedication in conducting this test on time and under budget."

About Karnalyte Resources Inc.

Karnalyte is engaged in the business of exploration and development of high purity potash and magnesium products. Karnalyte intends to develop and extract a carnallite-sylvite mineral deposit through a known solution mining process at competitive costs and with minimal environmental impact. Using a staged approach to construction, the Company plans to operate a solution mining facility that will initially produce 625,000 tpy, increasing to 2.125 million tpy of potash.

Karnalyte's common shares are traded on the TSX under the symbol KRN.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Certain information included in this press release is forward-looking, within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information is often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "believe", "could", "estimate", "expect", "plan", "intend", "forecast", "future", "guidance", "may", "predict", "project", "should", "strategy", "target", "will" or similar words or phrases suggesting future outcomes or language suggesting an outlook.

The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by Karnalyte, including, without limitation, assumptions as to: the results of the Optimization Program, projected economics for the Company's planned potash production facility, the ability of Karnalyte to obtain financing on terms favourable to the Company, and the ability of Karnalyte to receive, in a timely manner, the necessary approvals from the Company's board of directors, shareholders, regulatory authorities, and other third parties.

Karnalyte believes the expectations and assumptions upon which the forward-looking information is based are reasonable. However, no assurance can be given that these assumptions and expectations will prove to be correct. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this press release.

Actual results may vary from the forward-looking information presented in this press release, and such variations could be material. Risk factors and uncertainties could cause actual results to vary from the forward-looking information in this press release. Additional information on forward-looking statements and other factors that could affect Karnalyte's operations and financial results are included in documents on file with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and may be accessed through the Company's profile on the SEDAR website (www.sedar.com).

These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. Subject to applicable securities laws, the Corporation assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances.

SOURCE Karnalyte Resources Inc.
Description

 GIS - 29 December, 2016: A Marine Spatial Plan for the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Republic of Mauritius will be elaborated in view of the increasing demand for marine space in the EEZ for various purposes, particularly, agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, tourism and leisure.

The main purpose of marine spatial planning is to identify the utilisation of marine space for different sea uses in accordance with national policies and legislation, while taking into consideration the preservation, protection and improvement of marine environment, including resilience to climate change impacts.

Furthermore, the Plan will also contribute to the effective management of marine activities and the sustainable use of marine and coastal resources through the creation of a framework for consistent, transparent, sustainable and evidence-based decision making.

The elaboration of the Marine Spatial Plan is in line with the implementation of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Description

GIS  29 December, 2016: We live in a country which symbolises a message for the world and is widely respected as a model of peaceful coexistence. Despite looming difficulties, we have to continue working together and adopt a working philosophy based on a culture of excellence as well as respect our fellow citizens, said the President of the Republic, Dr Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, yesterday in Beau Bassin.

The President was addressing around ten women detainees during a visit at the Open Prison for Women in the context of an activity organised to mark the New Years festive season. Detainees were also presented with gift tokens on that occasion.

In her speech, the President while lauding the fact that detainees have created a family unit within the Open Prison, pointed out that yet, at this time of the year it would not be easy for most of them to be far away from their families.

Speaking about the reintegration process of detainees, Dr Gurib-Fakim stated that values learnt during their time spent within the Prison structure would definitely help them in their rehabilitation. The President also recalled her visit earlier this year to another Prison where she discovered the different talents displayed by detainees in making compost, sculptures, and handicrafts. There is need for these products to be further valued, she said.

The President praised the remarkable work achieved by the personnel of the Mauritius Prison Service in offering the necessary support to detainees which involves the provision of an adequate environment to favour the reestablishment of friendly ties and learn how to live within the society. She underscored the importance for the public to understand that, despite any one person may commit a mistake, we should be able to forgive and give a second chance.

The physical structure of the Open Prison for Women (Barkly) includes a prayer point, kitchen, medical unit, and tailoring workshop. Detainees also benefit from embroidery, Yoga and Tai Chi classes.

The Mauritius Prison Service has as objectives to maintain order, control, and discipline ; provide a safe and healthy environment for the detainees which is conducive to their rehabilitation and spiritual enhancement. It also helps detainees address their offending behaviour and prepare them to live a full and responsible life.
(TNS)  Most pop culture depictions of the future, fromto the zombie apocalypse, feature dystopia. Singularity University wants to help people  particularly corporate chiefs, global entrepreneurs, government officials, academics, creative types and nonprofit leaders  envision and create more upbeat prospects.I have a sense of urgency about the need to tell positive stories about a future of abundance, so we have an alternative, said CEO Rob Nail. Were creating a new lens of how to look at the world and create a long-term future we want to live in.Singularity isnt a university in the traditional sense. Occupying a handful of low-slung buildings on NASA Ames Research Centers Moffett Field, it combines a think tank, business incubator, worldwide conferences and short-duration on-site education programs, along with a thriving online community of alumni and supporters.Singularitys name stems from the sci-fi concept of a point at which technological changes are so rapid that they transform human life. More specifically, it comes from co-founder Ray Kurzweils 2006 book(He plans a 2017 update calledNail said.) Peter Diamandis, the other co-founder, is best known for the X Prize, a $10 million reward for the first private reusable manned spacecraft.Futurists and inventors, Kurzweil and Diamandis found a sympathetic ear in Google co-founder Larry Page, who championed their idea of a transhumanist approach to lofty goals. Google is a major corporate backer. Founded in 2009, Singularity changed from a nonprofit to a benefit corporation, a form of for-profit business, four years ago. As such, it can consider its vision of solving big problems alongside ordinary corporate goals of profit-making. Nail said the university is growing rapidly and investing heavily in its programs while balancing that with the need to build a sustainable and growing business, but doesnt disclose its finances publicly. In 2012, the last year it reported results as a nonprofit, it had $4.9 million in revenue and $5.2 million in expenses, and ended the year with $2.1 million in assets.Singularity aims big. Its pitch to applicants to its accelerator and students at its intensive 40-day summer program called Global Solutions is this: Come up with an idea to positively impact the lives of a billion people. Think clean water, renewable energy, health, hunger, poverty.We get thousands of applicants, and look for people who are stars; who have the mind-set and talent to be a game changer and are dedicated to applying technology to address the worlds biggest problems, said Brad Templeton, a Silicon Valley stalwart and chairman of computing at Singularity.It sounds both audacious and hyperbolic  and yet some companies hatched at Singularity have already achieved success at tackling worldwide issues.Matternet, which harnesses drones to deliver supplies in austere circumstances, such as medicine to remote villages, just scored a multimillion-dollar investment from Mercedes-Benz. Made In Space, which makes 3-D printers for use in microgravity, has one aboard the International Space Station. Getaround, which arranges peer-to-peer rentals of personal cars, has raised $56.3 million and is planning a national expansion.Singularity exposed us to the forefront of leading technologies and trends that are accelerating exponentially, said Sam Zaid, Getaround CEO and co-founder who attended Singularitys first summer program in 2009 along with co-founder Jessica Scorpio. Whether computing, genetics, AI, it helps you understand how these technologies could be used to benefit humanity in the most impactful way possible.Singularity lines up A-list speakers, from astronauts to Nobel Prize winners. Anyone can watch their TED talks anytime, but this is about interacting and having discussions with them, Nail said. Well get a group of faculty to tell you how to disrupt your business  like telling Coke about Soylent.Exponential is a word thrown around a lot at Singularity, which focuses on technology with the potential to accelerate at warp speed.A case in point: ImpactVision, one of the accelerator companies, has harnessed a NASA technology called hyperspectral imaging to determine foods freshness.In the near term, food manufacturers can use it to improve quality. But long-term, the hope is that it will address world hunger by reducing waste, said Abi Ramanan, CEO and co-founder. Were working toward a more sustainable and transparent food system, she said.While the imaging tech is enormously expensive now, with the exponential pace of change, it wont be long until people can use their smartphones to snap a picture of an avocado to learn when it will be ripe, or of milk to determine its shelf life, she said.ImpactVision, which Ramanan and co-founder Gustav Nipe conceived of during last summers Singularity program, is already on pace for deals with major food makers. That rapid trajectory  and the early practical focus on revenue  is typical of Singularitys accelerator, said Monique Giggy, who directs the startup program.We take people from moonshot to MVP  minimally viable product  in a few months, she said. They need that (product) to communicate with the world; show what they can do, get investors interested, find partnerships. Moonshots are usually understood as taking a lot of time and capital. We try to help them build a company thats sustainable, creating a mechanism to generate revenue so they can stay alive long enough to get to the big idea.While Singularity seems so steeped in Silicon Valleys ethos of technology as the worlds savior as to border on parody, its proponents say all the visionary focus comes with a healthy dose of skepticism. This is not some rah-rah cheerleading session for technology, said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley forecaster who chairs future studies at Singularity. The risks and costs are very much at the forefront of conversations, as well as the opportunities. The focus is action-oriented; its not just sitting in a chair listening to lectures.Unlike most conferences, participants arent in the hallways checking their phones, he said. And bucking the trend toward bite-size data downloads, Singularity lectures are 60 or 90 minutes. Indeed, at an executive-education course this month  one previously taken by the likes of Gavin Newsom, Steve Case and Reid Hoffman  participants, whod paid $14,000 for the weeklong session, sat rapt for discussions of disruption from the likes of Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowes Innovation Labs.If you dont change your model, you get wiped out, Nel said as an artist drew on a wall poster to create word bubbles encapsulating his thoughts. In-store robots, 3-D printing and augmented reality are among the changes hes bringing to the Fortune 15 home-improvement retailer.At lunch, animated conversations in German, French, Chinese and other languages wafted around the outdoor picnic tables.Singularitys focus on the future is more crucial than ever, Nail said, as many people operate out of fear of living in a world where things change so quickly. Theyre clinging to anything that seems like the old ways, he said, citing the election of Donald Trump and the British vote to leave the European Union as examples.Were trying to help shift the minds of individuals and organizations about technology, about the future and their roles in it.
(TNS)  Amid city budget woes, continued mistrust of police in minority communities and a still-pending federal investigation into police practices, Chicago police announced a plan to deploy body cameras into every police district a year early. The move means that in a year, the chest-mounted devices will become a new watchful eye over Chicago police officers and those they encounter.Just months after police first revealed plans to expand a 2015 body camera pilot program into all 22 police districts by the end of 2018, City Hall and the Police Department announced on Wednesday an accelerated plan to outfit thousands of patrol officers with the new AXON II cameras and training by late 2017.The citywide use of body worn cameras within the Chicago Police Department will provide a greater sense of self-awareness to both officers and the individuals that they interact with, police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a news release announcing the change.After starting with the pilot program in the Police Departments Shakespeare District on the Northwest Side, about 2,000 cameras are now in use in seven police districts, but officials didnt have a precise timetable for when the cameras would hit the streets in the remaining 15 districts.Use of the cameras ramped up after the public outcry over the release of 2014 squad car video showing Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times as the teenager, who was holding a knife, was walking away.The move comes as the U.S. Department of Justice continues examining police policies and procedures in the wake of the 2015 release the McDonald video.Town Hall District Cmdr. Marc Buslik, who oversaw the implementation of the body cameras while working in the Shakespeare District, said the department adopted body camera policies backed by the federal officials.Our policies were originally based on best practices of the Justice Department, said Buslik, who had also acted as the departments liaison with the Justice Department during its investigation. We knew what they were likely to be looking for in terms of policy. Were very comfortable with our policy, and any other commentary from the DOJ will be favorable.The commander said he didnt know the status of the federal investigation, and officials with U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardons office declined to comment.After the announcement of the body camera expansion, Buslik and officers at the Town Hall District in Lakeview demonstrated how the flip-phone-size camera can be clipped on to an officers bulletproof vest and switched on to record video and audio.Police were mum on how they paid for the cameras, which were estimated to cost about $8 million and were to be paid for through a combination of the departments operating budget and grants.Body cameras have been championed by community activists and civil libertarians as a way of monitoring possible police misconduct, while critics say it could violate the privacy of working police officers. But they arent foolproof  police were criticized in late July when a body camera worn by a Chicago officer who fatally shot Paul ONeal did not capture footage of the altercation.Buslik said benefits of the body cameras far outweighed the negatives, saying it could provide a fuller picture than clips of supposed police misconduct posted on social media.I think any of those concerns is offset by the fact that having our own recording of an incident provides a much better, much fuller description of what took place than a 40-second clip on YouTube, the commander said.
The UBR TV channel stops broadcasting from January 1, 2017, editor of the TV channel Serhiy Shynkar has said.

"I've brought a piece of news for the upcoming New Year holidays  the UBR, a poor thing, has been closed," he wrote on his Facebook page.

The Internet publication Ukrayinska Pravda informed that Shynkar said about the channel's termination from January 1:"There will be nothing, but the off-air TV screen image in the air from January1, 2017."

This information is confirmed by other members of the channel, the Telekritika reported.

The UBR channel (Ukrainian business resource) is included in the media holding 'Vesti Ukraine', which is associated with fugitive former Minister of Tax and Revenue Oleksandr Klymenko, who served under disgraced former President Viktor Yanukovych.
Kavitha Keen On Joining Modi Cabinet!

Telangana Rashtra Samithi MP from Nizamabad Kalvakuntla Kavitha appears to be keen on joining the Narendra Modi cabinet at the Centre, but has left the decision to her father  chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

When media on Wednesday asked her about the TRS joining the National Democratic Alliance, Kavitha did not rule out the possibility. She said KCR, being the party president, would take a decision on that.

His decision is final in so far as joining the Modi cabinet, Kavitha said.

She, however, made it clear that there had been no talks with the NDA leadership on the TRS joining the Central cabinet. There was no truth in the reports that the TRS was supporting the demonetisation decision taken by the Prime Minister only for joining the NDA.

We have taken the decision to support Modi only in the best interest of the state and only under unavoidable circumstances, she clarified.
What Naidu Asked, What KCR Said

After a gap of a few months, Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister happened to meet his Telangana counterpart and Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K Chandrasekhar Rao at Raj Bhavan in Hyderabad, where Governor of the two states E S L Narasimhan hosted dinner for President Pranab Mukherjee.

While exchange of pleasantries between the two chief ministers was expected, what attracted the attention of the photographers and electronic media was the way both KCR and Naidu were chatting with each other so intimately, cracking jokes and sometimes, even holding serious discussions. Naidu was seen patting KCR several times on the shoulder and the latter with folded hands nodding his head in approval.

The pro-Naidu media, as usual, reported that both the Andhra and Telangana chief ministers had discussed the fallout of the demonetisation in their respective states and also about issues that remained unresolved between the two states.

However, there is another section of media which speculated that Naidu was actually thanking KCR for diluting the cash-for-note case against him in the ACB court and KCR said it was his pleasure doing it.

Apparently, Naidu also suggested that it would be better if the TRS also joined the NDA sooner or later, but KCR did not disclose his mind.

Well, anything is possible in politics!
Lower gas pressure maintained by Russia's Gazprom again has been recorded at the entry points to the Ukrainian gas transport system from the direction of Russia, Spokesman for pubic joint-stock company Ukrtransgaz Maskym Beliavsky has said.

"Gazprom continues practice of gas pressure drops: a sharp fall by 9% of the limit is recorded at Russia's Sudzha station. Despite this fact, Ukraine implements the orders for gas transit [for European consumers] and ensures required gas pressure on the western border," he wrote on his Facebook page.

In 2016, Naftogaz Ukrainy and Ukrtransgaz several times informed about frequent cases of gas pressure drops lower the contract level at the entry points to the Ukrainian gas transport system. Gazprom complicates the fulfillment of own orders to transport gas to Europe.

The Ukrainian company said that the Ukrainian gas transport operator had to adjust its operations and have additional costs to balance transit.

In 2014, Gazprom-Export terminated a contract with Ukrtransgaz to balance gas transit daily.
Brazils Petrobras closed two asset sales for the total sum of US$587 million. Petrobras subsidiary Petrobras Biocombustivel (PBio) sold to Tereos Participationsa company in the French Tereos groupits entire stake in Guarani, representing 45.97% of the companys equity capital, for US$202 million. The Petrobras Board of Directors also approved the sale of Companhia Petroquimica de Pernambuco (PetroquimicaSuape) and Companhia Integrada Textil de Pernambuco (Citepe) to two subsidiaries of the Mexican company Alpek, for US$385 million.

Guarani is one of the leading companies in the Brazilian sugar and ethanol market, ranked third among the largest sugar producers in Brazil. The company has eight industrial units: seven in Brazil, in the state of Sao Paulo (Andrade, Cruz Alta, Sao Jose, Severinia, Mandu, Tanabi and Vertente mills, the last in a joint venture with the Humus Group, which owns 50%) and one in Africa, in Mozambique (Sena mill).

PetroquimicaSuape and Citepe are fully-owned subsidiaries of Petrobras and form part of the companys Chemical-Textile Industrial Complex in Ipojuca, in the state of Pernambuco. These companies bring together three integrated industrial units: PTA (purified terephthalic acid), polyester fibers and PET (polyethylene terephthalate) resin.

With these latest transactions, the Petrobras partnerships and divestments program has chalked up a total of US$13.6 billion in the period 2015-2016below the US$15.1-billion target set for the two-year period. Petrobras acribed its failure to meet the target to its obligation to comply with the preliminary injunction of the Sergipe Court that blocked the completion of the negotiations for sale of the Tartaruga Verde and Bauna fields, located in the Campos Basin and the Santos Basin, respectively, which were already at an advanced stage. The target for the partnerships and divestments program in the period 2017-2018 will automatically be increased by the respective amounts, to the sum of US$21 billion.

The two newest agreements are among the five transactions that may see their contracts signed in accordance with a precautionary decision handed down by the Federal Audit Court (TCU). All the transactions were conducted through a competitive process and the sale prices were appraised by several financial institutions, by means of independent opinions regarding the fair value (fairness opinion) and the valuation report.

Tereos, which is a partner of PBio (Petrobras Biofuels) in Guarani, with a 54.03% equity stake, is the worlds third largest sugar producer. The group specializes in transforming raw materials into sugar, ethanol, alcohol and starch and has 24,000 employees at 42 industrial units across Europe, South America, the Indian Ocean, Africa and Asia.

Alpek is a listed Mexican company, owned by Alfa, S.A.B. de C.V. (Alfa), which operates in the petrochemical segment and is a world leader in the production of polyester (PTA, PET and fibers).
Members of the Supreme Courts conservative majority are questioning the continued use of affirmative action in higher education. In lengthy arguments Monday, the justices wrestled with persistent, difficult questions of race. The justices heard from six different lawyers in challenges to policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard. Those policies consider race among many factors in evaluating applications for admission. One conservative justice likened affirmative action to giving some college applicants a head start in a footrace. But a liberal justice said universities are the pipelines to leadership in our society and suggested that without affirmative action minority enrollment will drop.
The Ukrainian government at a meeting on Wednesday approved the procedure for applying safeguard measures regarding imports of passenger cars to Ukraine (tariff heading 8703) from the European Union (EU) meeting the provisions of Article 44 of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. The procedure was proposed by the Economic Development and Trade Ministry.

An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent has reported that the draft resolution was passed without discussion.

The Economic Development and Trade Ministry earlier said that the duty can be imposed if imports of passenger cars from the EU for the last 12 month period reaches 45,000, and their share of the Ukrainian car market exceeds 20% (for the second year after the date of entry into force of the Agreement with gradual increase to 25%).

The condition for imposing the duty is imports of passenger cars from the EU exceeding all primary registrations of passenger cars for the last 12 month period and causing serious injury to the domestic industry.

The ministry said that in 2015 imports of passenger cars from the EU to Ukraine totaled 38,900 cars and in January-September 2016  30,600 cars.

"Thus, if in September 2017, for example, the number of imported passenger cars to Ukraine reaches 45,000 and other conditions are met, after consultations with the EU Ukraine would have a chance to increase imports duty to 10% for the period until the end of 2017," the ministry said.

According to the Association schedule, the imports duty rate on passenger cars from EU (new with engines of more than 1,500 cubic centimeters and no more than 2,200 cubic centimeters) in 2017 would be 8.2%, the safeguard duty cannot exceed 1.8% respectively.
President-elect Donald Trump wants to be a great friend to Israel.

I believe that, and I credit him for good intentions.

I question whether supporting Israel's aggressive settlement policies will really help Israel in the long run.

Trump thinks the Obama administration has harmed Israel by failing to block a U.N. Security Council vote last week condemning Israel's illegal settlements.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect," he tweeted. "They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!"

The vote in the Security Council was unanimous, with the U.S. abstaining. The U.S. could have blocked the vote but it could not have forced other nations to respect Israel's settlement policies. As to whether the U.S. is still a friend to Israel, Secretary of State John Kerry affirmed that friendship in an important address yesterday:

"No American administration has done more for Israels security than Barack Obamas. The Israeli prime minister himself has noted our, quote, 'unprecedented' military and intelligence cooperation. Our military exercises are more advanced than ever. Our assistance for Iron Dome has saved countless Israeli lives. We have consistently supported Israels right to defend itself, by itself, including during actions in Gaza that sparked great controversy.

"Time and again we have demonstrated that we have Israels back. We have strongly opposed boycotts, divestment campaigns, and sanctions targeting Israel in international fora, whenever and wherever its legitimacy was attacked, and we have fought for its inclusion across the UN system. In the midst of our own financial crisis and budget deficits, we repeatedly increased funding to support Israel. In fact, more than one-half of our entire global Foreign Military Financing goes to Israel. And this fall, we concluded an historic $38 billion memorandum of understanding that exceeds any military assistance package the United States has provided to any country, at any time, and that will invest in cutting-edge missile defense and sustain Israels qualitative military edge for years to come. Thats the measure of our support."

Those are facts. But Kerry didn't shy away from offering friendly advice for Israel. Namely, that its policy of rapidly expanding and adding to settlements in Palestinian territory will doom the "two-state solution," which has long been the goal of U.S. and Israeli policy. How can the Palestinians ever have a state of their own that is settled with hundreds of thousands, eventually millions, of Israelis?

Israeli bases its claims to control of these lands on its victory in the Six-Day War of 1967. Indeed, it defended itself from attacks by Egypt, Syria and Jordan. It captured land in the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt (since returned in a peace treaty), Golan Heights (from Syria) and West Bank (from Jordan).

It is illegal under international law to colonize lands taken in war. Just by way of example, the U.S. did not establish settlements of Americans in Germany or Japan after World War II.

Certainly, there are ongoing security issues in Israel. Return of the Golan Heights to Syria, which has a hostile government and harbors the anti-Israeli terrorist organization Hezbollah, is unthinkable.

There are obstacles to creating a Palestinian state from the West Bank and Gaza, and Kerry addressed those in his speech yesterday.

"Let me say it again: There is absolutely no justification for terrorism, and there never will be.

"And the most recent wave of Palestinian violence has included hundreds of terrorist attacks in the past year, including stabbings, shootings, vehicular attacks and bombings, many by individuals who have been radicalized by social media. Yet the murderers of innocents are still glorified on Fatah websites, including showing attackers next to Palestinian leaders following attacks. And despite statements by President Abbas and his partys leaders making clear their opposition to violence, too often they send a different message by failing to condemn specific terrorist attacks and naming public squares, streets and schools after terrorists.

"President Obama and I have made it clear to the Palestinian leadership countless times, publicly and privately, that all incitement to violence must stop. We have consistently condemned violence and terrorism, and even condemned the Palestinian leadership for not condemning it.

"Far too often, the Palestinians have pursued efforts to delegitimize Israel in international fora. We have strongly opposed these initiatives, including the recent wholly unbalanced and inflammatory UNESCO resolution regarding Jerusalem. And we have made clear our strong opposition to Palestinian efforts against Israel at the ICC, which only sets back the prospects for peace.

"And we all understand that the Palestinian Authority has a lot more to do to strengthen its institutions and improve governance.

"Most troubling of all, Hamas continues to pursue an extremist agenda: they refuse to accept Israels very right to exist. They have a one-state vision of their own: all of the land is Palestine. Hamas and other radical factions are responsible for the most explicit forms of incitement to violence, and many of the images that they use are truly appalling. And they are willing to kill innocents in Israel and put the people of Gaza at risk in order to advance that agenda."

As Kerry said, the Palestinians must prove they want to live in peace with Israel before they can achieve their goal of a separate state. Yet, as Israeli settlements occupy more and more Palestinian land, the Palestinians see their prospects for a "state" diminish. They have less and less to gain and more incentive to resist.

Kerry also offered personal remarks:

"On my first trip to Israel as a young senator in 1986, I was captivated by a special country, one that I immediately admired and soon grew to love. Over the years, like so many others who are drawn to this extraordinary place, I have climbed Masada, swum in the Dead Sea, driven from one Biblical city to another. Ive also seen the dark side of Hizballahs rocket storage facilities just across the border in Lebanon, walked through exhibits of the hell of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem, stood on the Golan Heights, and piloted an Israeli jet over the tiny airspace of Israel, which would make anyone understand the importance of security to Israelis. Out of those experiences came a steadfast commitment to Israels security that has never wavered for a single minute in my 28 years in the Senate or my four years as Secretary.

"I have also often visited West Bank communities, where I met Palestinians struggling for basic freedom and dignity amidst the occupation, passed by military checkpoints that can make even the most routine daily trips to work or school an ordeal, and heard from business leaders who could not get the permits that they needed to get their products to the market and families who have struggled to secure permission just to travel for needed medical care.

"And I have witnessed firsthand the ravages of a conflict that has gone on for far too long. Ive seen Israeli children in Sderot whose playgrounds had been hit by Katyusha rockets. Ive visited shelters next to schools in Kiryat Shmona that kids had 15 seconds to get to after a warning siren went off. Ive also seen the devastation of war in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian girls in Izbet Abed Rabo played in the rubble of a bombed-out building.

"No children  Israeli or Palestinian  should have to live like that."

I have been to Israel, too  nearly five years ago  and visited some of the places Kerry mentioned. I strongly support Israel's right to exist and to defend itself.

But one can't help notice the contradictions of a democratic state that, for the sake of security, makes life so hard for so many of its neighbors  most of whom only want to live in dignity with the basic necessities. We should understand that when Israelis build settlements in occupied territory, the Palestinian population is further hemmed in on its own land. Is that a sustainable policy? Is it what our country wants to support? Is that what friendship requires?
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.  To prepare for her role in the British miniseries The Hollow Crown, concluding at 9 p.m. today on UNC-TV, British actress Sophie Okonedo had a steep learning curve.

I had to learn everything, she said. I didnt know how to ride a horse, sword fight or any of those things. We learned it all quite fast, and a lot of us were learning it for the first time as well.

Tonights installment is Richard III, the final chapter of the series. It is based on William Shakespeares dramas. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Richard, with Okonedo as Queen Margaret and Judi Dench as the Duchess of York.

The critically acclaimed productions have aired stateside on PBSs Great Performances series. They were a tough slog to make, which Okonedo felt added to the realism of the performances.

We filmed for a long time, over about five or six months, she said. And we were filming in every castle in England. ... And we were often staying in quiet, kind of low-end hotels, you know. It wasnt always, like, posh places. And it was a bit like, to be honest, doing sort of rep theater, where you go around through different towns and stay at different places.

So we all became close. It was a bit like doing a theater job, even though we were filming. And we got very close. I think the whole sort of rawness of everything, being really there. ... It was amazing castles, and being in sopping-wet fields, and being in these really heavy costumes. It just made everything very real and visceral. It really added to it. 

Speaking of British productions, for a millennia-old alien from a distant planet, The Doctor in Doctor Who sure seems fond of the Earthling tradition of Christmas. Tonight brings the only Who episode of 2016, and its the Timelords latest Christmas adventure, which have become a British TV holiday tradition in recent years.

Doctor Who: The Return of Doctor Mysterio airs at 9 p.m. on BBC America, with the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) joining forces with a superhero to save New York. The special was written by showrunner Steven Moffat.

A new season of Who  Moffats last before he turns over the reins to a new showrunner, and perhaps Capaldis last as well, will debut in spring 2017, alongside the American debut of Class, a spin-off series about students at a school occasionally featured in previous Doctor Who episodes.

Other holiday specials airing today include a 90-minute installment of Call the Midwife, a British drama set in the early 1960s (7:30 p.m. on UNC-TV); and When Calls the Heart Christmas (8 p.m. on Hallmark), a new installment of the wholesome series about life in a Canadian frontier town in the early 20th century.

The Real Mayberry, a documentary about how Mount Airy has both embraced and moved beyond its image as the inspiration for The Andy Griffith Show, is now available to rent or buy on iTunes, Amazon and other digital services.

In addition to the digital download version, a DVD is available from Amazon for $19.99.
What would the world be like if everyone, every now and then, just broke into song?

Trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic? Climb out of the car, kick up your heels, belt out a tune.

Lonely on a dusky pier? Add lyrics to the melody youre whistling, and invite a passerby to join in a waltz as an invisible orchestra adds accompaniment.

The world is exactly like that in La La Land, Damien Chazelles charming, transcendent movie musical  a throwback to MGM song-and-dance classics (yes, its in CinemaScope!) and, at the same time, a here-and-now love story where two talented people try to juggle a full-force romance and their follow-your-dream career ambitions.

Shes Mia, a would-be actress who serves lattes in a coffee shop on a studio backlot, doffing her apron to run to another humiliating audition. Hes Sebastian, a diehard jazzbo reduced to playing yuletide ditties on the Steinway at a restaurant where the owner (a cameo from J.K. Simmons, the maniacal music prof of Chazelles 2014 hit, Whiplash) threatens to fire him if he ever again dares to veer off into one of those moody, improvised numbers.

Thats where Mia and Sebastian first encounter each other  in that restaurant, in the balmy days of December in L.A. But it takes a while before they actually meet and talk, mocking each others pitiful place in the showbiz food chain. Theyre at a party, and then theyre leaving, strolling past a line of parked cars to find a bench overlooking a vast valley of lights.

Weve stumbled on a view/thats tailor-made for two, Gosling croons, Chet Baker-style, the two of them in complete accord on the subject of their ill-suitedness for one another. What a waste of a lovely night, they harmonize, as Stone slips off her high heels and pulls on some wingtips. Wingtips with taps.

If you havent succumbed to the joyous magic of La La Land by the end of the Fred-and-Ginger-flavored A Lovely Night, well, then, pick up your Official Curmudgeon badge and head for the exit. Everyone else, stay put  lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and composer Justin Hurwitz have plenty more where that came from. By the time Stone tries out the first tentative notes of Audition (The Fools Who Dream), the movies final full-fledged production number, La La Land has taken us soaring through the starry skies of the Griffith Park planetarium, celebrated the magic of movies and movie gods long-gone (James Dean, Ingrid Bergman, Chaplin, Monroe) and delivered a passionate lecture on the alchemy, art and essentialness of jazz.

Chazelle, a jazz drummer in high school (Whiplash was more than a tad autobiographical), clearly knows his stuff. Singin in the Rain is saluted, An American in Paris is saluted. So, too, the lush, lushly colored The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, by French movie-musical man Jacques Demy.

And Chazelle expands and elaborates on themes he addressed in his micro-budgeted first feature, 2010s Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. In that one, a jazz trumpeter and a restless student/waitress sing and dance to an exuberant beat, caught up in the melodrama of a broken romance. The music (also by Hurwitz) swings, and so does the camera, handheld, with its black-and-white, French New Wavy energy and elan.

Stone and Gosling bring their star power  and their shared experience on two previous collaborations  to La La Land, amping up the wattage and the sense of anything-can-happen wonderment. Chazelle guides them along  through the dance numbers, the snappy dialogue, through a smoke-alarm-punctuated candlelight dinner gone awry, through a John Legend-fronted concert teeming with fans, and an all-or-nothing one-woman show that Mia mounts to turn her career around. Some of it is wistful, some of it whimsical, but its all wonderful, impossibly so.

Big post-screening musical production number, anyone?
Investigators want to know who killed a Liberty man near Barnes Street in Reidsville earlier this month.

Phillip Ray Austin, 43, was traveling on a moped at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 16 from his house in Liberty to Virginia when a vehicle struck him from behind on northbound U.S. 29 near the Barnes Street exit.

Highway Patrol spokesman Chris Knox said the collision caused Austin to fall from his moped and hit his head on the pavement. The other driver never stopped.

They would have known they hit something, Knox said. We believe the lights were working properly on the moped and that there was no reason not to have seen him.

Knox said the collision did little damage to the moped but Austins hitting the pavement proved fatal.

His death has left investigators and his family searching for answers.

Every morning I think I have a breakdown, said Beverly Perry, Austins sister.

Perry and Austin were the middle children in a family of six. Most of Austins relatives live in Tennessee, making his loss and the investigation even more difficult on them.

My mother is having a hard time with it, Perry said, but she is faithful to the Lord and knows in her heart  and she will tell us  that even if it does not get solved here, whoever is responsible will pay for what they did in this lifetime or the next.

She said Austins daughter also is having difficulty dealing with his death. Its a loss Austin and his siblings went through with their own father 28 years ago, and Perry said she believes that learning who caused the wreck would help bring his daughter closure.

Austin first moved to North Carolina to serve at the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, before moving to Greensboro, where he had visited his aunt, uncle and cousins on weekends. Eventually, he moved to Liberty.

Perry said her brother had a heart of gold and would give anyone the shirt off his back.

Coming to terms with what happened has been difficult.

Theres moments where you are mad, Perry said. You are angry because you wonder if the hit-and-run driver had stopped, would the outcome have been different?

Would help have gotten to her brother faster, she wonders.

According to a Reidsville Fire Department incident report, a passer-by performed CPR on Austin until paramedics arrived. He was taken to Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro where he died the next day.

Perry said that according to the death certificate, he died from multiple head injuries and blunt force trauma.

Knox said Austin was wearing a helmet when he was struck. Perry said troopers told the family the helmet fell off at some point after the collision. She said the damage to the helmet troopers described was so severe her mother refused to look at it.

Troopers immediately began investigating how Austin was hit and who struck his moped.

Its hard to know how to search for this vehicle because there isnt much evidence left behind from a hit-and-run with this small of a vehicle, Knox said. He said troopers think it might have suffered minor damage.

Early reports from the Highway Patrol indicate the wreck left skid marks from the unknown vehicle. However, Knox said troopers later determined the marks had been caused by an accident involving a deer a day earlier in the same spot.

Thats what makes this difficult, Knox said. We really do not have any leads to go on. Really, at this point, we are hoping to generate some public calls to us from someone who saw something that night.
North Carolina ranks with authoritarian states and pseudo-democracies in terms of electoral integrity, a UNC-Chapel Hill political science professor wrote in The News & Observer of Raleigh last week.

Thats an astonishing statement, but Andrew Reynolds is not an Ivory Tower pundit. He has helped set up elections in Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt and other difficult places, and he and colleagues have created measures to evaluate the quality of elections around the world.

North Carolina does not stack up well. There are many problems with voting restrictions in North Carolina, but the main reason our state stands out is for its extreme gerrymandering.

We should all understand that. It doesnt take a doctorate in political science to see that state legislative and congressional elections arent competitive in North Carolina. But we may not realize just how bad it is.

North Carolina is not only the worst state in the USA for unfair districting but the worst entity in the world ever analyzed by the Electoral Integrity Project, Reynolds observed.

Legislators who draw their own districts choose the voters they want. The result, Reynolds contends, is that legislative power does not depend on the votes of the people.

Here, the dominant party  at present, the Republicans  holds all the power while winning just a slight majority of the overall vote. Everyone who votes for Democratic representatives or senators is given no voice in Raleigh because Democrats have no power. Just two weeks ago, the Republican legislature even went so far as to diminish the powers of the incoming Democratic governor, despite his statewide election victory. Republicans can do this with impunity because most of them dont face real elections.

Reynolds makes a good argument that North Carolina operates like a sham democracy in critical respects. The question is what people can do to reclaim the right of real representation.

One avenue is the courts. Dissenters from the Raleigh political power structure have had a lot of success by challenging legislative actions on constitutional grounds. The federal courts are granting legislatures less leeway in drawing partisan gerrymanders, especially if racial minorities are disadvantaged. The courts also can be counted on to provide broader voting rights protections. While the legislature has even tried to manipulate state courts for political advantage, it will find that most judges do uphold constitutional principles.

Its possible that court-ordered legislative redistricting could lead to special elections next November held on a more nearly level playing field. The prospect of having to run in fair elections could moderate the actions of Republican legislators.

Local governments can also provide a bulwark against legislative abuses. Asheville and Charlotte have staved off legislative attempts to wrest control of their water system and airport, respectively. Greensboro has so far stopped a city council power grab. Cities should fight for their own interests every time theyre threatened by an undemocratic legislature. They can build their own moral authority by encouraging more grass-roots participation in local affairs.

Most importantly, North Carolinians must flood legislators with messages demanding democracy in Raleigh. Americans shouldnt tolerate less.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) jointly with Prosecutor General's Office and police raided OJSC KSG Bank investigating into embezzlement of UAH 386 million.

The press service of SBU reported late on Wednesday that the bank's offices, commercial structures involved in the crime and places of residence of key owners and top managers of the bank were raided.

"Law enforcers seized draft accountant documents, stamps, documents confirming unlawful operations and data storage devices with information about operation of bubble companies involved in financial transactions with the funds of the bank," the press service said.

The law enforcers are investigating into the crime under Part 4 of Article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (fraud). Investigation is underway.

The key shareholders of the bank were Serhiy Kasianov and Ksenia Kasianova (33.46% each) and former MP Oleksandr Shepelev.

According to media reports, in 2012 a criminal case was opened against former MP Shepelev. He was accused of being involved in embezzlement of funds of Rodovid Bank (Kyiv, over UAH 220 million) and of participating in embezzlement of refinancing funds of UAH 315.3 million issued by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU).

Shepelev was put on the international wanted list and was detained in Hungary early July 2013. Hungary subsequently extradited him to Ukraine. However he managed to escape while in hospital and fled Ukraine for the second time.

Along with his implication in bankruptcy of Rodovid Bank, Shepelev is accused of two murders (banker Serhiy Kirychenko in 2003 and Interior Ministry's colonel Roman Yerokhin in 2006) and an attempted murder of Serhiy Diadechko in 2012. On March 20, 2015 Shepelev was detained in Russia.

On August 30, 2016, the NBU decided to revoke the banking license and liquidate KSG Bank for regular violations in the fight and prevention of legalization of proceeds received from crime (money laundering), in particular for risk activities in the sphere of financial monitoring.

During the last inspection the NBU revealed the scheme of conversion of bank deposits into cash, in which legal entities, individual entrepreneurs and credit unions were involved.

Participants in the scheme carried out a series of transactions aimed at multi-million dollar remittances to the bank accounts of the bank's individual clients and the subsequent transfer of funds into cash. The customers were unable to carry out operations in such amounts, while some of them lost their passports or the passports did not coincide with the owners.

The NBU intended to provide information on financial operations to law enforcement agencies.

KSG Bank was founded in 1993.
Connecticuts first legal incubator is due to open in early 2017 at the Center for Family Justice, a Bridgeport-based nonprofit that provides services to trauma survivors affected by domestic violence, sexual assault or child abuse.

A legal incubator is like a business incubator, said Jennifer Ferrante, who has joined the Center for Family Justice staff as the coordinator for the new service. At the centers office at 753 Fairfield Ave., We are going to be housing four attorneys here on site, she said. Two of the first attorneys who applied and were accepted in the program are recent law school graduates.

They are their own bosses, Ferrante said. They have their own independent law practices. But we are going to be supporting them in multiple ways. We give them subsidized office space and supplies. We give them training in business management and provide them with networking and mentoring opportunities and referrals, along with a collaborative work environment. At the end of the two years, they will hopefully have all of the tools that they can go out into the community with a sustainable law practice and be able to go out and earn a living.

Ferrante, a Westport resident, previously was a litigation associate at the white-shoe New York law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, where she offered pro bono services to clients of the domestic violence program Sanctuary for Families. She later joined the RAE (Rights, Advocacy and Empowerment) Law Group, a private nonprofit law practice in Connecticut dedicated to providing legal assistance to domestic and sexual violence victims.

Pioneering a legal incubator model in Bridgeport, I think it will give the low- and moderate-income community a real chance in getting their legal needs met and ending their cycles in abuse and poverty, Ferrante said. This is a relatively new model that started in 2007. There are over 60 legal incubator programs nationwide as well as programs popping up in other countries. When I saw this was happening here, I was excited about getting involved and lending a hand.

Ferrante is also working with Connecticut law schools to help build the centers legal apparatus. We have several professors from Quinnipiac University on our steering committee and they helped set up the parameters of our program, she said, adding that a pair of graduates from Quinnipiac and the University of Connecticut are slated to join the legal incubator next year.

Lawyers in the incubator program will provide the legal advices services and representation needed by victims of domestic violence, including restraining orders, divorce proceedings, child custody and support, housing and immigration issues.

One attorney joining the legal incubator in January is Larissa Johnson, a Haddam-based lawyer and 2008 graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Law, who learned of the opportunity through a posting at Idealist.org.

I am looking forward to working with their clientele and addressing their legal needs, Johnson said, adding that she appreciated the centers role in helping her establish her own practice. There are not a lot of support systems out there, and having a fellow attorney to reach out and ask for advice and support is very important.

Planning for the legal incubator has been ongoing since 2009, and the Center for Family Justice raised more than $5 million through government funding and private donations to finance the endeavor. For the center, the influx of new attorneys to assist violence victims could not have come at a better time.

At the Golden Hill Courthouse (in Bridgeport) on the criminal side, they saw 2,500 victims in last fiscal year, said Angela Schlingheyde, the centers director of civil legal and court advocacy services. It is not that there is more domestic violence. It is that more people are realizing that services are available to them and are coming forward. It is still grossly underreported, as is sexual violence and child abuse. 

Our civil legal program is still very young, Schlingheyde said. I came in 2015 to start it. Although weve made strides, we are far from being able to assist every client in need with the depth of legal assistance that they need.

Although the Center for Family Justice is focused on serving six Fairfield County municipalities  Bridgeport, Easton, Fairfield, Monroe, Stratford and Trumbull  it also welcomes those seeking help from elsewhere in the state. Debra Greenwood, center president and CEO, noted that while the addition of the legal incubator will help violence victims in their pursuit of justice, it will also complement ongoing efforts to ensure that victims can move forward with their lives with a new level of economic self-sufficiency.

They will continue to keep going through the system if they are not able to find a job or write a resume, she said. We want them to be able to feed themselves and their children and to consider what the future will hold. Otherwise, they will go back to the same abusive relationship.

Greenwood credited corporate philanthropic support from Verizon and volunteer input from business professionals in the community - including job placement officers - with helping residents aided by the Center for Family Justice to become productive members of the workforce.

If we dont do our job in making sure someone can survive on their own, they could become homeless again, she said. We know that 92 percent of individuals that get out of abusive situations become homeless  thats a national statistic.

Phil Hall writes for the Fairfield County Business Journal. For more, go to www.westfaironline.com.
Now that the holidays are over and the new year is in full swing, its time to head back to the lab to formulate fresh, smart, and effective ideas that will grow your organization.

Whatever the size of your firm, whether youre B2B or B2C, and regardless of the industry in which you operate, here are four must dos that you need to launch if youre aiming to increase profits and market share over the next 365 days:

1. 100-Day Plan.

Since the 1930s when Franklin Roosevelt pioneered it as a means of gauging his effectiveness in the Oval Office, the 100-day plan has become a tradition for newly elected American Presidents. The plan consists of achievable short term goals that adhere to a Presidents long term vision for the country. Entrepreneurs should write their own 100 day plans as blueprints for advancing their organizations productivity and profitability. Such a plan establishes 100 tasks, and requires business owners to consider the specific steps and resources that are needed to bring them to fruition. While theres a time and place for visionary long term planning, the 100-day plan allows entrepreneurs to craft and pursue attainable objectives and start the year off with a burst of energy. When the 100-day finish line is reached mid-April, entrepreneurs will know if they should be celebrating or if they need to recalibrate their efforts.

Related: How This Mom Grew Multiple 6-Figure Businesses From Home

2. Declutter

Whether you want to improve the feng shui of your office or just make it easier to find and store your stuff, a comprehensive tidy up of your companys work space is a laborious yet necessary task. To make it happen, set aside a Saturday when your team can come in, rent a dumpster and high capacity paper shredder, and destroy unnecessary documents, presentations and files, and toss out old equipment, brochures, books, product samples, and other unproductive items. Once your space has been tightened and tidied, implement a cloud-based backup system that allows for fast and convenient recovery of your organizations electronic files. The decluttering will not only allow your team to operate more efficiently, it will also help your office to look more streamlined and professional.

Related: 5 Marketing Essentials for Your Business to Appeal to Millennials

3. Fire the person you know you have to fire.

Maybe youve tried to intervene to help turn things around, or youve ignored the problem in hopes that it would eventually take care of itself. But however youve handled the challenge of having weak members on your team, you know that theyre there and that theyre dangerous the to the health of your company. If you didnt have the heart to do any purging during the holiday season, delay no longer. The costs to your firm in reduced productivity, low employee morale, additional supervision, damaged client relationships, and lost revenue that are caused by substandard employees can be as high as $190,000 per year, so make a decision now to either remedy a situation thats fixable --- or to clean house.

Related: Pay Yourself: Why Founders Should Set Aside Profits Every Month

4. Get high or higher.

While 26 states and the District of Columbia have laws legalizing marijuana, the suggestion here isnt that entrepreneurs should light up more. Instead, the first week of the new year is a perfect time to review and possibly raise the prices of your products or services. Too many small business owners try to compete by lowering their prices, and thats often a mistake. Instead, devise a plan by studying your competitive landscape; looking at your firms pricing history; reviewing the calendar to determine the best time to bump up your rate, fees, or prices; and thinking about how you can enhance the value of your offerings in order to justify price revisions. If you detect some white space that would allow for small yet profitable increases, you should absolutely seize it.

After the joy and frenzy of the holidays, its understandable if it takes a minute for business owners to snap back to attention and keep their ships moving forward, but the upside to getting started is significant. Entrepreneurs who have the discipline to leverage these four steps as an annual early January organizational reboot will help to energize their teams, inspire exciting ideas, and generate new opportunities for innovation and growth.

Related:

4 Things Every Entrepreneur Needs to Do the First Week of the New Year

The Best Way to Avoid Your Next Business Disaster

This Is What to Do Now to Hit 2017 Running



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Yanair airline (Zhytomyr) seeks to expand regular flights in summer 2017 thanks to Tel-Aviv, Yanair Director General Volodymyr Sobolev has said.

"We have been assigned for Lviv-Tel-Aviv and now we are trying to have assignment for Odesa-Tel-Aviv. There are all preconditions for this. We plan to launch Chernivtsi-Tel-Aviv and Kryvy Rih-Tel-Aviv flights which the airline was assigned for. On should not forget about a sort of monopoly for the flights to Tel-Aviv, where the monopolist can set any prices and it is harder to work here," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

He also said that recently some airlines stick to low-cost airline's rules on many routes, while Yanair is a conventional airline.

"Thanks to this, for example, on the Tbilisi route, we managed to draw around 80-85% of point-to-point passenger flow. At the cost of what? At the cost of the arrival airport  Zhuliany. This is convenient, thanks to the fact that we are flying in the time convenient for passengers and that we have free food and drinks on board. We want to leave the same things on the flights to Tel-Aviv," he said.

He said that Georgia is a commercially good destination.

"Next year we were assigned for flights from Lviv to Tbilisi and Batumi. There is a flow of passengers from Georgia and Azerbaijan for this destination who traditionally come for treatment to Truskavets. In summer Georgia is viable, especially thanks to Batumi. Many passengers go there for holidays. This is a good alternative to Bulgaria and Turkey. By the way, Turkey is several kilometers far from Georgia and one can visit it without any problems [and without visas]," Sobolev said.

Asked what passengers would be on the flights to Tel-Aviv, tourists or businessmen, he said that the ratio will be 50 to 50 and maybe there will be fewer tourists.

"These are mainly people who have relatives. These are people who came from Ukraine and who lives there. For some time it was 're-export' when people started coming here and buy houses. It is expensive to live in Tel-Aviv and with Israeli pensions one can live in Ukraine. In addition, we rely on Chernivtsi in the issue where they have a group of people interested in the flights to Tel-Aviv. We want to take a small plane [Boeing 737-500] and it might fly from Chernivtsi, as the airport does not suit to larger planes," he said.

Yanair was registered in Zhytomyr on June 15, 2012. In July 2013 it received a certificate for operations. The airline is based at Kyiv Zhuliany International Airport.

At present, the company's fleet consists of three Saab 340 planes, three Airbus A320 planes, one Airbus 321, two Boeing 737-300 and two Boeing 737-400s.
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A new rumor has come from David Ruddock on Twitter. Given that the author is not citing a confident source of the alleged facts, well take them lightly. Although it doesnt confirm or deny anything, we can still speculate on the rumors that are coming through the mill.

The first rumor is regarding the hardware keys. This is not the first time we hear about the Galaxy S8s possible removal of the capacitive navigation keys (with a physical home button), in favor of software keys. The new rumor reiterates the previous one, but offers more insight into the mechanics of the navigation keys.

Source: Galaxy S8 will completely ditch hardware navigation keys, Samsung is switching to all soft keys with 3D touch-like functionality.  David Ruddock (@RDR0b11) December 28, 2016

The navigation keys would be on-screen, but would also feature pressure-sensitive capabilities for extended navigation or gesture control. Ruddock also reports of possibly customizable navigation keys, much like LG has been doing in its UI for several iterations now.

And yes, it looks like the fingerprint scanner is being removed from the front. Will go on the back probably, exact placement not clear.  David Ruddock (@RDR0b11) December 28, 2016

As for the fingerprint scanner, such a sensor embedded into the display has been previously rumored, but was not mentioned by Ruddocks source. So either Samsung has figured out the in-display fingerprint authentication, or the Galaxy S8 might sport a scanner on the back of the phone, assuming the hardware keys are officially out the window.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is currently slated for an April announcement and commercial release shortly thereafter. This is Samsungs first major release since the Galaxy Note7 debacle that sparked no shortage of controversy when it was recalled two times, until the company ultimately discontinued one of the best smartphones to come out of 2016.

Where do you think Samsung will place the fingerprint scanner after all? Should we expect something new from Samsung?

Source | Via
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ATB-Market LLC (Dnipro), owning the discount store chain in Ukraine, has published a denial of information spread by media that a member of its board of directors Oleksandr Tokar was detained by the Ukraine's SBU State Security Service of Ukraine. The company is preparing a claim to court.

"In the last days of the passing year a new information attack was made against ATB chain. This concerns publications ordered by someone. The materials were placed on several online media resources with doubtful reputation, saying SBU officers allegedly detained board of directors member Oleksandr Tokar. This information is a lie and has no grounds," the company said on Thursday.

Tokar continues working as usual and learnt about his detention from Internet resources.

The authors of the publications used the news concerning another retail chain and added the name of Tokar to discredit the company




Haiti - Diaspora : New Consul of Haiti in Orlando





The Consulate of the Republic of Haiti in Orlando informs the Haitian community of Central Florida that Minister-Counselor, Pierre Max Charles replaces outgoing Consul Natalie Fourcand as Head of this Consular Post. The new Head of Post is open to any suggestion for a better policy of proximity with the Haitian Community.



The Consulate of the Republic of Haiti in Orlando rely on the collaboration of the Haitian Community and on the accompaniment of the media.



Learn more about Pierre Max Charles :

Pierre Max Charles is a career diplomat. He has worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for more than two decades. He has held in particular the osition of Minister-Counselor and Charge d'Affaires at the Embassy of Haiti in Cuba, Minister Counselor at the Embassy of Haiti Washington DC, and Director of Consular Affairs prior to his arrival in Orlando.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Politics : Privert announces his departure from the Power





Wednesday at the National Palace, de facto President Jocelerme Privert, accompanied by Prime Minister Enex Jean-Charles, chaired the last Council of Ministers of the year 2016. The Head of State took the opportunity to discuss the progress of the Electoral process, the government's balance sheet and the management of the Treasury's resources.



With regard to the electoral process, Privert welcomed the Government's efforts to ensure that elections could take place in good conditions. He also reiterated his firm decision to withdraw from power on 7 February 2017 ""The Prime Minister and I have three great rendezvous not to be missed. It is January 1, 2017, the date of the celebration of the 213th anniversary of our independence in Gonaives, the day of the ancestors January 2, 2017 and January 9, opening the first regular session of the legislative year. At this moment the Prime Minister will have to present the balance sheet of the government and I will have to deliver a general statement on the situation of the country," he informed during this important Council of Ministers.



Jocelerme Privert called on the Head of Government and Ministers to prepare to assume their responsibilities after his departure on 7 February 2017 specifying "Know that you will remain in your posts until a new government replaces you" urging the Government to continue to make sound management of the State's resources.



Prime Minister Enex Jean-Charles insisted that "even after the final election results (Tuesday, January 3, 2017 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19646-haiti-flash-publication-of-the-results-of-the-presidential-postponed.html ), the Government will remain a full-fledged Government [...] all ministers must remain in their posts and fulfill all their duties until the installation of a new government," recalling that " the management of current affairs only begins that from the resignation of the government presented by the Prime Minister, which will take place when a new President is installed."



HL/ S/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Security : Arrest of murderer of young police officer Rigaud





Tuesday in a press conference, Inspector Garry Desrosiers, deputy spokesman for the Haitian National Police (PNH), informed that the police had arrested 6 bandits in the framework of the investigation into the murder, on 11 December, of the young police officer Rigaud Claude Clermont including the murderer https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19501-haiti-security-a-young-24-year-old-police-officer-savagely-assassinated.html , at least 4 of them were part of the dangerous Gang "sans limite" that sowed terror in Petion-ville.



According to Inspector Desrosiers, the murderer, one of the members of the Gang, went on to confess, presenting to the media 4 of them "These are Jean-Louis Maxon (27) and Frid Colas aka 'Bout' who shot down the police officer." If before the media Jean-Louis Maxon has admitted having killed the police officer on the order of Enock (the Head of the Gang "Sans limite" actively sought), his accomplice, Frid Colas says to have nothing to do with the death of police officer Rigaud.



In addition, Garry Desrosiers presented the results of the operations led from December 1 to December 27, 2016, by the police of West in 13 communes (including Port-au-Prince, Delmas, Carrefour, Leogane and Petion-ville...), which led to the arrest of 242 people.



In summary for this period : "17 individuals were arrested for murder, 5 for rape, 6 for possession of illegal weapons, 2 for burglary, 2 for theft of motorcycles, 1 for armed robbery, 1 escaped was captured, 1 was arrested for arson, 73 for conspiracy, the other 125it is for other charges [...] There were 44 people injured in traffic accidents, and 16 people who unfortunately lost their lives in traffic accidents [...] 3 people were stoned, 2 lynched, 4 suspected bandits killed, as well as 2 police officers and a Chinese national, also killed by bandits [...]"



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19501-haiti-security-a-young-24-year-old-police-officer-savagely-assassinated.html



HL/ TB/ HaitiLibre
























Haiti - FLASH : Pierre Esperance receives a threat letter with a bullet





Wednesday, Pierre Esperance, Executive Director of the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH), received with his name, an envelope delivered by the Post Office to the local of RNDDH, containing a threat letter accompanied by a bullet. In this letter, he was accused of "preventing the real results from being published"



In a letter addressed to Me Danton Leger, the Commissioner of the Government of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Port-au-Prince, Pierre Esperance explains :



"[...] For some time, of messages intolerant vis-a-vis the organization of which he is the Executive Director, circulate on the social networks. These messages were never taken seriously by the RNDDH [...] However, today, Pierre Esperance feels it his duty to inform you that on December 28, 2016, a stamped envelope addressed, was delivered by the Post Office to the RNDDH office, at # 9 Rue Riviere. It contains a bullet and a letter dated 6 December 2016, in which the Executive Director of the RNDDH is accused of 'preventing the real results from being published'.



The Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) was informed of the receipt of this correspondence and the bullet attached to it was given to it for ballistic analysis.



[...] Pierre Esperance draws your attention to the fact that these messages arrive at a time when, through national media, Parliamentarians openly incite the Haitian people to violence and treat the RNDDH as a terrorist organization.



[...] Moreover, it is not the first time that the Executive Director of RNDDH receives a document of this kind. Indeed, on 2 April 2014, Pierre Esperance had received a letter of threats to which was also annexed a bullet.



A letter of complaint had been filed with the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Court of First Instance of Port-au-Prince on 9 April 2014. However,there appears to have been no judicial action in this file.



[...] The exhibitor therefore requests to you, Honorable Magistrate, to put the public action in motion against the authors and co-authors of these documents for threats written anonymously, punishable by articles 251 and following of the Penal Code [...]"



HL/ SL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping politics...





FLASH : VISA scam alert

Beware of visa scams ! The US Embassy does not accept any visa fees by Western Union. Never pay fees this way - it's a scam and you will lose your money! Report visa scams to the US Embassy at papfraud@state.gov.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-18088-haiti-alert-usa-visa-fraud.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16682-haiti-alert-fraud-attempt-for-us-visa-and-scholarships.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-13910-haiti-social-11-000-us-visa-fraud-cases.html



Moise Jean-Charles minimizes the rejection of the CEP

The presidential candidate of PITIT Dessalin, Moise Jean-Charles, minimizes the decision of the CEP to reject his request for disqualification of the 5 judges of the electoral tribunal https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19645-haiti-flash-the-cep-rejects-requests-for-recusals.html wnd informs that the legal-political battle will continue to demand respect for the verdict of the ballot boxes.



Deputy Celestin threatens Privert

Privert's fierce opponent Rony Celestin (PHTK) threatens to instigate in the lower chamber a procedure of indictment of de facto President Jocelerme Privert in case of violence in the country after the publication of the final results of the elections.



Eddy Labossiere predicts the collapse of the economy

The economist Eddy Labossiere predicted the collapse of the economy in case of continuing protests following the publication of final election results, according to him the gourde could depreciate further if the electoral crisis is not resolved quickly.



New blood in Presidential Security

Wednesday at the National Palace, de facto President Jocelerme Privert, received a new promotion from the Presidential Security Unit (USP). The Head of State took the opportunity to welcome them within this group they integrate and honor the three laureates of this promotion.



Growth of the textile sector

The Investment Facilitation Center (CFI) reports that the textile and clothing sector in Haiti has experienced significant growth over the last 7 years in terms of both the number of jobs created and the total value of exports. "In December 2009 , 24,000 workers were employed in the textile sector. In November 2016, this figure was 40,801 workers. In 2015, exports of clothing products from Haiti amounted to $ 1.03 billion, or 90% of Haiti's exports."



HL/ HaitiLibre


















China's CNBM International Corporation is mulling the challenging of the decision of Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada to cut the feed-in tariff for large solar power plants in an international arbitration court, CNBM International Corporation Board Chairman Jinsong Zhang has told Interfax-Ukraine.

"We are mulling this option," he said.

The company said that the payback period of CNBM's solar power plants sharply increased over the decision of the parliament.

"The payback period of our plants would exceed 15 years or the entire term when the feed-in tariff will be in effect, which is unacceptable for us. Thus, there is a threat that these facilities become bankrupt," he said.

Zhang said that CNBM has several options for the solar power plants in Ukraine. The company does not want to specify them now.

CNBM said that their solar power plants were built observing Ukrainian legislation and without lobbying for them.

"Our company took part in building some facilities as a supplier of equipment. When we bought the plants we conducted audits with participation of independent international companies. They showed that building of the plants, including the allocation of land parcels, connection to power grids, was in line with Ukrainian legislation," Zhang said.

The company said that 22 more companies in Ukraine continue having the feed-in tariff as the company had.

"There were no preferences in setting the tariff. Now over 200 companies in alternative energy are operating in Ukraine. All of them have the tariff, land parcels and all are connected to power lines. Is this also thanks to lobbying?" he said.

He believes that the decision of the Ukrainian parliament is discriminative towards Chinese investment. It represents practice of selective legislation in Ukraine, he said.

"This gives a negative signal to the whole investment society," he said.
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Ukraine's National Radio and Television Council (NRTC) has said 1+1 TV channel's license for continued broadcasting has been reformulated and extended for seven years. The agency's regulator has asked not to politicize the issue.

"Two months ago, on December 15, 2016, the license for 1+1 TV for continued broadcasting was unanimously approved by NRTC members," says a note on the website of the regulator.

According to Article 33 of the Law on Radio and Television broadcasting, a copy of the license to broadcast with the extended dates is given to the licensee not earlier that on the last working day of the end of the previous license, if all license fees have been paid, that is, not earlier than December 29.

Article 32 of the law provides for the license to be given to the licensee after license dues are collected, as per NRTC written procedures defined by the council for handing budget funds. A copy of the state organ processing the payment is confirmation that the licensee fee has been paid. The document received on December 26. NRTC says 1+1 TV should receive its new license not later than January 2017.

NRTC said it provided confirmation the end beneficiary of the 1+1 TV has not changed.

"We ask you not to look for a political scandal here. The process began on December 15, 2016 when 1+1 TV's license was extended for seven years. NRTC acted and will continue to act exclusively within the framework of existing legislation," NRTC's regulator said.

NRTC Chairman Yuriy Artemenko earlier told the Kyiv-based website Detector Media that 1+1 TV can continue broadcasting, even without a hard copy of the new license.

As earlier reported, on Wednesday evening 1+1 TV posted a letter signed by executives of the channel addressed to the president and prime minister, saying the Presidential Administration was attempting to pressure NRTC to revoke 1+1 TV's license.

"During the last two weeks we have received information from reliable sources blaming namely the Presidential administration for attempting to transfer control of the channel.

According to the letter, NRTC on December 15 unanimously voted to reformat and extend licenses for the channel, but has yet to do so.
The following information is provided by local law enforcement agencies.

All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Compiled by Jessica Isaacs

The following were provided by the Watauga County Sheriffs Office.

Dec. 19

INCIDENT: Fraud  obtaining money/property by false pretense was reported at 687 Hayes Wellborn Road in Deep Gap.

INCIDENT: Larceny was reported at 3728 Sampson Road in Lenoir.

INCIDENT: Vandalism was reported at 1233 Andy Hicks Road in Banner Elk.

Dec. 20

ARREST: A male suspect, 28, of 7443 N.C. Highway 194 N in Boone, was charged with larceny. Trial date: Jan. 17.

ARREST: A female suspect, 39, of 171 Summerville Place in Wilkesboro, was charged with FTA unsupervised probation and FTA criminal summons. Secured bond: $6,000. Trial date: Jan. 13.

ARREST: A male suspect, 30, of 115 Winter Drive in Boone, was charged with failure to appear on show cause. Secured bond: $1,000. Trial date: Jan. 13.

INCIDENT: Fraud  worthless checks was reported at 138 Quail Ridge Lane Unit B in Boone.

INCIDENT: DOA was reported at 1556 Old U.S. Highway 421 N in Sugar Grove.

INCIDENT: Fraud  obtaining money/property by false pretense was reported at 161 Sorrento Forest Drive in Blowing Rock.

Dec. 21

ARREST: A female suspect, 42, of 120 Parsons Drive in Wilkesboro, was charged with failure to pay monies. Bond: $371. Trial date: Jan. 19.

ARREST: A male suspect, 46, of 120 Parsons Drive in Wilkesboro, was charged with parole and probation violations. Secured bond: $5,000. Trial date: Jan. 26.

INCIDENT: Larceny and forgery  using/uttering were reported at 227 Pinnacle Woods Drive in Boone.

Dec. 22

ARREST: A male suspect, 22, of 1904 N.C. Highway 194 N in Boone, was charged with breaking and entering building, larceny and resist/delay/obstruct. Secured bond: $3,500. Trial date: Jan. 19.

INCIDENT: Larceny was reported at 128 Grand Maple Court in Todd.

INCIDENT: Simple possession marijuana and drug violations were reported at 1866 N.C. Highway 194 N in Boone.

Dec. 24

ARREST: A male suspect, 41, of 161 Old Highway 16 in Jefferson, was charged with contempt of court/perjury/court violations. Secured bond: $2,500. Trial date: Jan. 25.

INCIDENT: Missing person was reported at 176 Laurel Reach Lane Unit A in Boone.

Dec. 26

ARREST: A male suspect, 25, of 104 Carlin Court in Boone, was charge with nonsupport/nonpayment of alimony. Bond: $440. Trial date: Jan. 20.

INCIDENT: Larceny and vandalism were reported at 315 White Tail Ridge Road in Boone.

INCIDENT: Breaking and entering was reported at 142 Cub Ward Road in Vilas.

Dec. 27

ARREST: A female suspect, 18, of 4 Harbor Lane in Newland, was charged with simple physical assault and resist/obstruct/delay. Secured bond: $2,250. Trial date: Jan. 24.

ARREST: A male suspect, 24, of 260 Watauga Drive in Boone, was charged with trespassing. Secured bond: $1,000. Trial date: Jan. 27.

INCIDENT: Simple possession sch. VI, drug violations and carrying concealed weapon were reported at the intersection of Vanderpool and Charlie Thompson roads in Vilas.

INCIDENT: Welfare check and trespassing were reported at 1065 Fallview Lane Unit 2 in Boone.

Dec. 28

ARREST: A male suspect, 25, of 478 Hardin Road in Boone, was charged with assault on a female and communicating threats. Secured bond: $10,000. Trial date: Jan. 10.

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Almost one-fifth, or 18 per cent, of people who are self-employed on a full-time basis revealed that they earn less than 1,000 euros a month and 27 per cent that they earn 1,0002,000 euros a month. As many as 60 per cent of people self-employed on a part-time basis, in turn, revealed that their gross earnings fall short of the 1,000 euro mark and 24 per cent that their monthly earnings fall in the range of 1,0002,000 euros.

Over a half, or 51 per cent, of one-person business owners have to scrape by on gross earnings of no more than 2,000 euros a month, finds a survey conducted by the Federation of Finnish Enterprises (SY) .

The average wage earner, by contrast, reported nominal earnings of 3,338 euros a month in 2015, according to Statistics Finland.

[The Confederation of Finnish Industries] EK demanded most recently in Kauppalehti on Wednesday that now is the time to turn our attention to larger and more mature businesses. The Federation of Finnish Industries disagrees, Mikael Pentikainen, the chief executive of SY, states in a press release.

Now is the time to support small business owners, many of whom are in a tough financial situation, he argues.

Small and medium enterprises, he reminds, are responsible not only for producing many of the innovations that end up changing the world but also for a substantial share of the jobs created recently in Finland.

One should bear in mind that jobs have recently been created especially in small enterprises with fewer than ten employees  and luckily so, because those jobs have been crucial in compensating for the lay-offs made by large corporations, says Pentikainen.

SY proposes consequently that the threshold for value-added tax liability for businesses be raised from 10,000 euros to 20,000 euros in order to promote the operations of small businesses and encourage entrepreneurship. The reform, it says, would enhance the flexibility of the society and the appeal of entrepreneurship as a means to employ oneself and others.

Over 2,200 member organisations of the Federation of Finnish Enterprises responded to the survey in November. There are currently almost 180,000 one-person businesses in Finland.

Aleksi Teivainen - HT

Photo: Martti Kainulainen  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
The Finnish capital received an unprecedented amount of global media attention between November and December due to the performances of Saara Aalto in the X Factor UK and a tourism poster designed in collaboration by Slush and Visit Helsinki, according to a press release from the City of Helsinki .

The past two months have capped an already excellent year for the tourism sector in Helsinki.

The city reveals that media stories mentioning both Aalto and Helsinki potentially reached as many as 1.7 billion people worldwide between 1 and 22 December, translating to an equivalent advertising value of 15.7 million euros, according to an analysis conducted by Meltwater.

Stories about the advertising stunt pulled off during Slush, a start-up event that attracted over 15,000 visitors to Helsinki between November and December, reached an estimated 270 million people over the three-week period. The tourism poster went viral on social media for greeting visitors willing to brave the dreary end-of-year weather in Helsinki with the text: Nobody in their right mind would come to Helsinki in November. Except you, you badass. Welcome.

Helsinki and Finland have received a record amount of international publicity this year, says Laura Aalto, a development director at Visit Helsinki. The National Geographic lauded Helsinki lavishly as early as in February, while the Lonely Planet selected Finland as the third best travel destination for 2017 in October.

The capital's sauna culture has similarly received attention in the world media, she adds.

The City of Helsinki also reports that the number of overnight stays by foreign visitors have continued to grow this year, despite a continuing decline in the number of overnight stays by visitors from Russia.

Our estimates indicate that the number of overnight stays will grow by three to four per cent from the previous year. I am confident that we can hit a total of 3.6 million overnight stays in 2016, says Tuulikki Becker, the chief executive of Visit Helsinki.

Both Helsinki and Finland should only increase their appeal as a travel destination next year, as they kick off celebrations to commemorate the centenary of Finnish independence from Russia. Helsinki, for example, will celebrate the centenary of independence with dozens of programme projects and hundreds of events. The city is also set to host a number of major international events in 2017, according to the press release.

The celebrations will be kicked off on the main artery of Helsinki, Mannerheimintie, on New Year's Eve, with performances from a long list of beloved domestic artists, including Saara Aalto, Michael Monroe and Paleface.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Seppo Samuli  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
Naftogaz Ukrainy is ready to sell its assets in Egypt, chairman of the state holding Andriy Kobolev has said.

According to him, the feasibility of such a step is due to the fact that this business does not bring much profit to the company.

As reported, Naftogaz through its subsidiary Zakordonnaftogaz explores and operates two oil and gas blocks in the Eastern Desert of Egypt - South Wadi El Mahareeth and Wadi El Mahareeth. The work on these deposits, the projected resources of which exceed 360 million tonnes of oil, is carried out on the basis of concession agreements signed on February 7, 2012 between Zakordonnaftogaz on behalf of Naftogaz and the government of the Arab Republic of Egypt and GANOPE state oil company (Ganoub El -Wadi Holding Petroleum Company).

The duration of the concession agreements is 28 years.

Naftogaz Ukrainy in 2015 increased production of oil and condensate in Egypt by 20.7% compared to 2014, to 318,000 tonnes (2.33 million barrels). Commercial gas production was 192 million cubic meters, which is 4.8 times more than in 2014.

As of January 1, 2015 Ryder Scott company conducted an independent assessment of the Naftogaz branch's hydrocarbon reserves/resources in Egypt, according to which total recoverable reserves (proven and probable, 2P) amounted to 1.132 million tonnes of oil (8.2 million barrels) and 599.6 million cubic meters of gas.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has enacted bill providing for the aggressive exports expansion of Ukrainian manufacturers via insuring, guaranteeing and cheapening of exports crediting No. 2142a and envisaging the creation of the export-credit agency.

According to a posting on the website of the Verkhovna Rada, the law signed by the president was sent to parliament on Wednesday.

"President Poroshenko signed our bill on the export-credit agency intended to support and promote national producers on the foreign markets," Leader of Radical Party Oleh Liashko said in his blog.

As reported, the Verkhovna Rada backed a bill creating the export-credit agency in Ukraine during the budget discussion night in early hours of December 21. A total of 237 lawmakers backed it.

According to the document, Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers creates the export-credit agency to stimulate exports of Ukrainian goods, labor and services. The agency will insure, reinsure exports on a voluntary basis and will secure contracts aimed at developing exports. The agency will participate in the implementation of the program to partially compensate the rates for exports credits.

The export-credit agency will support exports of Ukrainian labor and services and goods made by processing industry under some foreign activity codes.

The bill describes the procedure for creating the agency, its structure, goals and key tasks. The agency will protect Ukrainian exporters from a risk of payment failures and financial losses related to the implementation of foreign economic contracts using insurance, reinsurance and guarantee tools.

The agency is created in the form of a public joint-stock company. The state in the person of the government is the founder and a shareholder in the agency with at least 50% plus one share of the share capital.
It seems Pope Francis enjoys the fun of magic as much of the rest of us when the Golden Circus performing troupe entertained him at the Vatican.

Performing at the end of the Pope's weekly address yesterday, the Golden Circus performers levitated tables, created balloon shapes and even presented the pontiff with a white cockatoo.

Spectacle

A Swiss Guard standing nearby provided security but was left largely redundant as Pope Francis enjoyed the spectacle in the Paul VI Hall. At one stage, the disbelieving Pope even checked under the levitating table for hints of how the magic was performed.

The festival atmosphere was aided by a performing jazz band as well as jugglers, dancers and clowns.

The Pope later smiled and applauded as the cockatoo lifted its talon and waved goodbye to the crowds. The Golden Circus is a regular visitor to the Vatican during the two-week run of the circus festival which is taking place in Rome until January 8.

At his traditional Christmas greeting on December 25, the Pope called for peace in war-torn parts of the world such as Syria, Israel and Palestine.

"This message goes out to the ends of the earth to reach all peoples, especially those scarred by war and harsh conflicts that seem stronger than the yearning for peace," he said.

Pope Francis will visit Ireland in August 2018 - the first time a papal visit will be made since Pope John Paul II came in 1979.
The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) fears library fines are being used as a "money-maker" after it was revealed almost 500,000 is paid by students each year in Ireland's biggest colleges.

The figures across Ireland's nine largest third level colleges show that, over a five-and-a-half-year period, 2,786,930 was paid in library fines thanks to overdue books.

The figures, revealed under the Freedom of Information Act, included Ireland's seven universities - Trinity College, Maynooth University, University College Dublin (UCD), Dublin City University, University of Limerick, University College Cork, and NUI Galway.

Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) and Waterford Institute of Technology were also included.

Double

The largest amount received was at Trinity College, with 112,111 paid to the university each year.

This works out at around 597,925 over the period from September 2010 to January 2016.

It was also more than double the average that was owed to the college - 53,902.

Speaking to the Herald, USI President Annie Hoey called for a cap on fines to be introduced across the board for college libraries and said that she would like to know if the money is used to improve facilities within the library.

"Library fines as an overall concept are nothing new - you get fines from your local library," Ms Hoey said.

"What we would be concerned about is when a fine moves from being reprimanding for late books and it turns into a substantial cost, which puts a student at a severe disadvantage.

"If it becomes quite apparent that library fines are being simply used as a money-making mechanism, obviously we would have concerns about that.

"I haven't looked at all of them and how much each of them charges and what their different breakdowns are," she added.

Income

DIT, which received 312,694, imposes a maximum fine of 30 per item taken from the library - with a maximum of six books permitted at any one time.

However, UCD, which took in 343,673 in the same period, has a maximum fine of 50.

It was unclear whether any maximum sanctions applied to some of the other colleges in question.

However, a number of colleges do not allow students to graduate until they have settled any overdue payments owed to the library.

Meanwhile, the top colleges are also losing out on some income, with students and members of staff guilty of not paying fines totalling 1,204,291 over the same period.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry calls on the UN member states to take further steps to increase pressure on the Russian Federation in connection with the country's violation of key provisions of a number of declarations and conventions in the field of human rights, including the continuation of the illegal detention, torture and repression against citizens of Ukraine.

"We call on UN Member States to take further consolidated steps to increase pressure on the Russian Federation due to the willful violation of key provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms of European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and other major international instruments, as well as the neglect of the requirements of the UN General Assembly resolution A/C.3/71/L.26 "Situation of human rights in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (Ukraine)," the statement of the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine says, posted on Thursday.

In particular, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry says that Russia is continuing illegal detention, torture and repression against Ukrainian citizens.

In addition, the document says that the Russian Federation continues ignoring obligations it took in the framework of the Minsk agreements over the exchange of hostages based on the "all for all" principle.

Moreover, the Ukrainian diplomats say that the amount of Ukrainians detained for political reasons in Russia, did not decrease, but increased, and today there are no less than 17 people. Also, no less than 27 citizens of Ukraine are illegally held or persecuted in Crimea occupied by Russia.
Ukraine will hand 15 captives over to representatives of ORDLO (occupied areas in Donetsk and Luhansk regions) on Thursday. ORDLO put the individuals on the list. Today Ukraine will unilaterally transfer 15 persons from the list, which was provided for the release by the other side," a source close to the negotiation process told Interfax-Ukraine.

It is supposed to happen near the Mayorsk checkpoint (Donetsk region) on Thursday during the day," the source said.
Candidates with no legislative history not uncommon

Maryland's candidates for governor do not have long legislative records. Wes Moore has none at all. Analysis shows that is not uncommon.
A Ukrainian Armed Forces serviceman was killed in an armed clash near the village of Kruta Balka in the Yasynuvata district of the Donetsk region on Wednesday, Kyiv said.

A gun battle between Ukrainian army units and the militants broke out on Wednesday afternoon and continued for about 30 minutes, the press center of Kyiv's Anti-Terrorist operation (ATO) in Donbas said.

"Thanks to the well-coordinated actions of Ukrainian Armed Forces units, the adversary was forced to retreat... One Ukrainian Armed Forces serviceman was killed as a result of the gun battle," the press center said.
Two servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were killed and two more suffered injuries in the hostilities in Donbas in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzianyk said.

"Two soldiers of ours were killed and two more were wounded in hostilities during the day," he told a press briefing in Kyiv on Thursday.

The vicinity of Krymske, where the hostiles thrice used armored vehicles and machineguns, was the flashpoint in the Luhansk sector, Motuzianyk said, adding that provocations were also observed in the Stanytsia Luhanska area.

In all, the ceasefire was breached six times in the Luhansk sector over the past day, he said.

In the Donetsk sector, hostiles attacked Ukrainian army positions all along the frontline, and the only calm sector was the Donetsk airport. Shelling incidents have been ongoing on the Svitlodarsk bulge, where the total duration of hostile fire approached six hours and 50 mortar mines were fired, Motuzianyk said. Small arms and grenade launchers were fired near Horlivka, and an assault was attempted near Kruta Balka, where hostiles retreated after a 30-minute clash, he said.

In all, 15 violations of the ceasefire were seen in the Donetsk sector over the past day, including three instances of use of heavy weapons, he said.

Two-thirds of attacks launched in the Mariupol sector occurred in the Pavlopil-Shyrokyne area, where hostiles were employing heavy weapons only, he said. Besides, armed provocations were observed in Maryinka, Krasnohorivka and Novotroyitske, he said.

Twenty-nine attacks by the hostiles were seen in that area during the day, Motuzianyk said.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said that allegations that 1+1 TV channel could be deprived of a broadcasting license are groundless.

"As far as I was informed, there are not threats that the license would not be issued. If there were no threats, let's believe that it was a mistake," he told reporters on Thursday.

Earlier First Deputy Head of the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting Olha Herasymiuk told Interfax-Ukraine that the council believes that it is impossible to deprive 1 plus 1 TV channel of the broadcasting license.

"I think that this is impossible. The National Council on December 15 decided to expand the license. I am sure that the decision is to be implemented. I do not know a case when the National council could deprive of the license after its decision. I will stick to the law. I do not know the essence of claims to the TV channel," she said.

Chairman of the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting Yuriy Artemenko told Detector Media publication that the new license paper is issued no earlier than the term of the old license expires  on December 29.

He said that the regulator issues the extended license paper during 30 days after the license holder pays the license fee. The TV channel paid it on December 23 and the National Council has time to issue the paper to the channel before January 23.

Artemenko said that the council did not send the bills to pay the license fee to 1 plus 1 TV channel, as the council asked for the updated data about its ultimate beneficiaries after the nationalization of PrivatBank.
The Ukrainian side has unilaterally handed 15 captives over to the representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR).

"The handover of 15 people, who were under prosecution in Ukraine, has just taken place," the press center of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) told Interfax-Ukraine.

Earlier reports said the handover is taking place between the cities of Horlivka and Mayorsk in a neutral zone.
Butch Trucks, founding member of legendary Southern rock band The Allman Brothers, launches his second holiday tour with Butch Trucks and The Freight Train with a performance at Salvage Station in Asheville on Jan. 4.

Founding member of The Allman Brothers Band, drummer Butch Trucks, is joined onstage by world-renowned blues guitar slinger Damon Fowler.

Hammond B-3 keyboard master Bruce Katz, who has appeared on more than 72 albums and is a four-time Blues Music Awards "Piano Player of the Year" nominee, joins The Freight Train directly from his recent tour with the Bruce Katz Band.

Florida-based percussionist Garrett Dawson, of The Dickey Betts Band, adds his unique rhythms and percussive style to the musical mix. Also on guitar is renowned blues Hall of Famer, Chris Vitarello.

The newest member of The Freight Train is 27-year-old Matt Walker on Fender Bass. He brings an energy borrowed from a lineage of musicians both old and new; from The Muscle Shoals sound to finger- picking ragtime.

Rounding out the band is the young and very talented Heather Gillis, whose vocals, guitar playing, and performance tie together this amazing representation of the past, present and future of Roots Rock and the Blues.

Trucks recorded and performed with The Allman Brothers Band until they disbanded in 2014.

In 2015, Trucks performed at two festivals with a band billed as, "Butch Trucks & Very Special Friends."

The show begins at 8 p.m. and tickets cost $22.50.

Monday Evening Pottery with Sally Warren

HIDDENITE  The Hiddenite Arts & Heritage Center hosts instructor Sally Warren, of Mud Dauber studios in Statesville, for a six-week session of pottery classes for adults starting Jan. 9.

Classes will be Monday evenings from 7-9 p.m. at the Centers Educational Complex pottery studio (70 Hiddenite Church Road in Alexander County).

Cost for the full session is $50 for the public and $45 for center members. An additional materials fee of $15 covers the cost of a 25-pound bag of clay. Registration is required and may be made by calling 828-632-6966.

Heritage center hosts ballroom dance class

HIDDENITE  The Hiddenite Arts & Heritage Center hosts renowned ballroom dance instructor, Dirk Myers, II for advanced classes at the centers Educational Complex beginning Jan. 16.

Classes will be held Monday evenings from 6:30-7:20 p.m.

Cost for enrollment in the full eight-week session is $100 for the public and $95 for center members.

Class space is limited and early registration is encouraged. To register, call 828-632-6966.

Shag dance classes coming in February

HIDDENITE  The Hiddenite Arts & Heritage Center hosts a class entirely devoted to Shag dancing. This eight-week series will begin Feb. 13 and will be held at the centers Educational Complex from 7:30-8:20 p.m.

Cost is $100 per person for the public and $95 per person for members of the centers Friends program. To register, call 828-632-6966.

Heritage center hosts adult oil painting

HIDDENITE  The Hiddenite Arts & Heritage Center hosts adult oil painting classes with instructor Martha Burgin to begin Jan. 18.

Classes are held Wednesday mornings from 10 a.m. until noon at the centers Educational Complex.

Cost for the full session is $45 for the public and $40 for members of the center. Students are asked to bring their own paints and materials.

To register, call 828-632-6966

Hickory Theatre plays host to funniest man

HICKORY  The Funniest Man in America returns for his seventh annual appearance in the Jeffers Theatre for New Years Eve at 8 p.m.

The James Gregory show turns the clock back to a time when life was simpler; to a better time, before the death of common sense; a time when people sat on the front porch and actually talked to each other without a cell phone in their ear.

Tickets are $45 for premium seating or $38 for regular reserved seating.

Reception is at 7 p.m. and doors open for regular admission at 7:45 p.m.

For more information visit www.hickorytheatre.org.

Bethlehem Branch hosts book discussion series

HICKORY  Picturing America: Places in the Heart is the theme for the next Lets Talk About It book discussion series hosted by the Alexander County Library, Bethlehem Branch.

The series will be held at the Bethlehem Branch located at 45 Rink Dam Road. The dates are Jan. 10, 24, Feb. 7, 21, and March 7.

All sessions are 7-8:30 p.m., with a new scholar leading the discussion each week.

For further information about Lets Talk About It, call the Bethlehem Branch at 828-495-8753.
Donald Trump's alarming Tweet about his desire to "greatly strengthen and expand" the "nuclear capability" of the United States unleashed a frenzy of media efforts to try to divine his actual policy intentions. It forced some of his advisers into tortured claims that Trump didn't say what he actually said, even as others simultaneously insisted that Trump did meaningfully put other countries on notice that if he deems them to be challenging our supremacy, they will face an arms race.

But perhaps the most worrisome thing about Trump's nuclear Tweet is not the intention to break with decades of international disarmament efforts that it may have signaled, though that's frightening enough on its own. Rather, it's that he saw fit to Tweet about nuclear weapons at all.

As we prepare for President Trump to take near-unchecked control of our nuclear machinery, his nuclear Tweet is best seen as a window into his temperament. Trump still does not appreciate that every word he utters carries tremendous weight and could have dramatic, untold, far-reaching, unpredictable consequences -- something that is especially true in the nuclear arena. Or, perhaps worse, Trump may be entirely indifferent to this fact.

Arms control experts I spoke with suggested that Trump's willingness to Tweet about nuclear weapons raises the possibility of Trump doing the same as president -- and more to the point, the possibility of him doing so amid some species of international crisis or escalation.

Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, points out that in peacetime, any belligerent Trump Tweet about nuclear weapons might not appear as alarming, simply because "confirmation bias" might lead key actors not to interpret it in its most frightening light at that moment. Amid rising international tensions, though, that confirmation bias might work in the other direction, he says.

"Imagine we're in a crisis -- if he recklessly Tweets, people could read these things in the worst possible light," Lewis tells me. "The North Koreans have a plan to use nuclear weapons very early in a conflict. They're not going to wait around. If they think we are going, they're going to use nuclear weapons against South Korea and Japan."

Some reports have indicated that President Barack Obama privately told Trump that one of the greatest national security predicaments he will face as president is North Korea's escalating nuclear potential. But Trump's Tweet suggests an inability to appreciate that Twitter is far too blunt instrument to handle dangerously sensitive, complex international challenges, and indeed could lead to misunderstandings -- and potential catastrophe.

As a potential example, Lewis points out that earlier this year, Trump said he would handle the North Korean nuclear threat by getting China to make North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "disappear." Lewis notes that imprecise language in an errant, bellicose Trump Tweet -- particularly amid rising tensions -- could conceivably amount to an "accidental assassination threat."

"Imagine if the North Koreans are looking for any signs that we're about to attack as their signal that they have to go," says Lewis, adding that if Trump "says the wrong thing" and "gives the impression that we're about to act," the North Koreans might "decide not to wait around to find out if that's true or not," and might hit "targets throughout South Korea and Japan where U.S. military forces are stationed."

In this telling, Lewis notes, it's possible to envision some kind of ambiguous Tweet -- such as, "we've gotta get rid of this guy" -- unleashing untold consequences. Alternatively, Lewis argues, it's possible to envision a rash Trump Tweet locking the U.S. into an untenable position by "closing off the president's ability to back down or compromise," rather than preserving maneuvering room, making peaceful resolution harder.

More broadly, journalist Eric Schlosser has a compelling piece in the New Yorker that documents the history of how technological dysfunction, as well as human imperfection and folly, have at times almost led to nuclear catastrophe. Schlosser argues that Trump's Tweet, combined with escalating rhetoric from American politicians towards Vladimir Putin, and Putin's own increasingly bellicose nuclear talk, all combine to boost "the danger of miscalculations and mistakes."

It should be obvious that Trump's use of Twitter would be unlikely to alleviate that danger.

Twitter "is a tool of provocation and belligerence in the hands of Donald Trump," Bruce Blair, a nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University, tells me, adding that it's easy to envision Trump Tweeting a warning to another world leader that "if you do this or that, you'll be sorry."

Blair says the worry isn't necessarily that a single Trump Tweet might alone unleash nuclear catastrophe, but rather that one could very well exacerbate an already-existing situation in far worse ways than otherwise might have happened. Which, when you think about it, isn't a particularly reassuring distinction.

"Almost any threat could be perceived as warranting some sort of response that's not only rhetorical, but operational," Blair tells me. In a reference to Soviet leader Lenoid Brezhnev, Blair added: "Brezhnev in 1973 threatened to intervene in the Arab-Israeli conflict. That triggered the United States under Nixon to respond by going on nuclear alert. We went to Defcon 3. Words and threats have consequences in the nuclear operations world, and can instigate a cycle of escalation that spins out of control."

All this could be made a lot worse if Trump goes through with conducting "nuclear diplomacy by Twitter," Blair said.

And so, whatever Trump's actual intentions for our nuclear arsenal and the future of international disarmament efforts, his willingness to use Twitter to posture and chest-thump around nuclear matters should itself stir urgent concern. This will be particularly true if it holds over into situations involving escalating tensions.

In fact, one thing that Trump and his advisers should be pressed to answer right now is whether Trump will put his Twitter feed on ice in such situations. Given what we've seen from Trump thus far, there's simply no reason to assume that he will be so inclined.
Looking at the decimated landscape for Democrats - out of the White House, holding fewer than 20 governorships, and in the minority in the House, Senate and vast majority of statehouses - it is tempting to blame President Barack Obama for the party's plight. In one real sense, this is correct: With the White House in Democratic hands for eight years and sclerotic House and Senate leaders, a generation of young and capable talent has not developed. The Democratic Party stuck with Hillary Clinton in large part because there was no viable alternative.

However, Republicans miss the mark, we would argue, in declaring with certainty that Obama's results - Obamacare, foreign policy retrenchment, fiscal irresponsibility - caused the downfall of Democrats. Maybe. Then again, governors and state legislatures generally did not run on Obamacare and were not forced to account for the exploding national debt. Moreover, many Republicans were proponents of foreign policy retrenchment and guilty of fiscal irresponsibility. Maybe Democrats' collapse occurred in spite of Obama and not because of him.

In his rather self-reverential interview with David Axelrod (could we have expected anything else?), Obama declared, "If I had run again and articulated [my vision], I think I could've mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it." He might be right, and that's the problem staring Democrats in the face. Obama had the ability to supercharge his base in part because he was the first African American president. His ability to skewer opponents while maintaining an air of moral superiority served him well in two elections. That is personal to him, not reflective of the party as a whole or even of Obama's ideology.

We should also remember the circumstances under which he won. In 2008 he ran as a historic figure just as the economy melted down. It would have been extraordinary had he lost. In 2012 he ran against a candidate who bet on dissatisfaction with the economy and suggested 47 percent of the electorate were welfare-grubbing oafs. Obama won, but by a smaller margin than in 2008.

Perhaps, then, Obama's identity as a historic figure and as a heartthrob for liberals, combined with the collapse of the economy (while Republicans were on watch) and less-than-stellar opponents - rather than anything the Democratic Party was offering - was the key to his success, a success that masked a hollowness in the Democratic Party's message and agenda. A party has to have selling and staying power beyond a single individual and when fortuitous circumstances don't exist.

Democrats are not alone in reaching an ideological dead end. Republicans' stale 1980s agenda allowed right-wing populism (however wrongheaded we may think it is) to emerge and replace conservatism as the ethos of the GOP. (And lest Republicans get too cocky, it surely would have been hard-pressed to win the presidency had Vice President Joe Biden, for example, run.) Democrats' dilemma is not unique or insoluble.

First, a message of straight identity politics and reflexive appeal to federal welfare-state expansion needs updating, to put it mildly. Unifying themes and objectives - reducing poverty by X percent, graduating X number of engineers, rebuilding X percent of the country's physical infrastructure - have the potential to add to the Democratic coalition.

Second, like the original progressives of the early 20th century, 21st-century progressives must be the party of good, clean government dedicated to rooting out corruption, self-dealing and favoritism. They'll have a poster boy for their anti-corruption efforts in the person of Donald Trump.

Third, the electorate, for better or for worse, does not necessarily consider politics to be preparation for elected office. In looking for a new generation of talent, the party should cast a wide net to business, philanthropy, etc. - to figures who embodies a forward-looking, modern ethos, not one that relies on 20th-century nostalgia.

Fourth, if Republicans are going to be the party of nativism and anti-globalism, the Democrats have to be the party that prepares and supports Americans as they compete in the 21st-century economy. Promising to cut off trade or suggesting Wall Street is synonymous with fraud will not do it. When working-class whites in the Rust Belt find health care is less secure and a trade war does not produce good-paying jobs, they will look for practical solutions. Democrats better have some.

Finally, Obama may be retiring, but voters still want inspiration, a sense of belonging and, yes, hope and change. A president who continues to appeal to the worst instincts and who sees the economy as a fixed pie (ironically, two unconservative sensibilities) leaves an opening for a party who preaches "more" is better - more innovation, more high-skill workers, more trade, more educational opportunities.

In sum, parties tend to be victims of their own success. With Obama exiting, Democrats have the opportunity to turn the page on moldy ideas and build a unifying message. Let's see if they seize it.
Temprano Techvestors pick Newton for HQ

A new high-tech company announced its intentions to bring the company headquarters to the city of Newton, bringing new jobs to the area. Techvestors made the announcement in September 2016.

Techvestors Temprano was awarded a North Carolina Rural Infrastructure Authority (RIA) grant totaling $253,750 toward a total investment of up to $520,000.

The new home to Temprano is a Blackwelder's Furniture building originally constructed in the 1940s. Walling Development purchased the building in 2007; Walling plans to renovate the building to house the new company.

Temprano helps emerging market software companies bring their products to market in North America. To support that effort, Temprano plans to add new, high-tech jobs as part of its expansion.

Long time Catawba County resident Luke Walling is the companys founder.

Small plane crashes in Longview

A small plane crashed into the BB&T Bank in Longview on Oct. 1 killing the pilot, George Baxter Harris, 81.

Barbara Long, of Hickory, lives down the street from the bank and was on her porch with her family at the time of the crash.

The airplane was going over our house; it was so low we thought it was a bike (motorcycle), Long said.

Long and her family were in the process of hanging Halloween decorations when they heard what they thought was a motorcycle engine, followed by a crash.

The family was under the awning when the crash happened so they did not see the plane, but they heard it.

The engine had cut out, it sounded like he tried to restart the engine and then we you could hear a crash, Long said.

Debate leads to restriction of Confederate flag in parade

Local residents voiced their opinions during a public comments session in a Catawba County School Board meeting over the use of the Confederate flag in Newtons annual Soldiers Reunion parade.

The Soldiers Reunion celebration in Newton is believed to be the longest-running patriotic celebration in the United States not based on a holiday.

The tradition began in Newton on July 4, 1889, when Civil War veterans answered a statewide call for recognition of their wartime efforts and to receive their pensions, according to the City of Newton website.

Jerry McCombs, Catawba County NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Chapter President, asked the board to support the idea of not having the county schools in the parade because of the Confederate flag.

It has nothing to do with the parade. Its a good parade, beautiful parade, but the flag represents hatred, McCombs said. Were asking that you keep the schools out of the parade until the flag is removed from the parade.

An agreement was reached by reunion organizers and the Rev. Dwayne Tutt, the display of the Confederate flag during the parade was restricted to people associated with the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Voter turnout nearly hits 70 percent

Nearly 50,000 Catawba County residents cast early votes for the 2016 general election. Catawba County has predominately voted in favor of Republican candidates in past elections.

In the March primary elections, 43.99 percent of Republican voters in Catawba County or 11,050 ballots cast were for Donald Trump.

Catawba County voted in favor of Trump in the Nov. 8 election. He received 66.85 percent of the votes in Catawba County while Clinton received 29.28 percent of local votes.

More than 72,000 votes were cast for the presidential election in Catawba County, which equates to almost 70 percent voter turnout.

Catawba County faces population decline

Over the next 20 years, Catawba County will have to find ways to avoid a demographic decline that will have significant economic ramifications for the area.

Catawba County Economic Development Corporation President Scott Millar gave a presentation in September to the Catawba County Board of Commissioners highlighting some of those challenges.

If trends continue, the Hickory Metropolitan Statistical Area is expected to have a 20,000 worker gap between the working age population and the number of available jobs in 2035.

To make up the shortfall, the area would have to grow by 60,000 people, or 18 percent population growth per decade.

The issue with population growth is something the commission has known about and is working on addressing, Catawba County Board of Commissioners Chairman Randy Isenhower said.

Through the countys strategic planning process, and by targeting areas targeting such as amenities and education to draw families, Isenhower said.

Catawba County begins strategic planning process

Catawba County commissioners began holding meetings in September as part of their strategic planning process for the county, and meetings will continue through February 2017.

In the planning sessions, commissioners heard presentations from city staff and officials on a variety of topics, including economic development, water and sewer, and education.

The end goal will be to devise policies in the different areas moving forward, Catawba County Board of Commissioners chairman Randy Isenhower said.

The county already reached out to officials in the municipalities and will reach out to the public later in the process.

Highway 150 expansion to have dramatic impact in Denver area

A planned expansion of N.C. Highway 150 has several business owners in the Denver area concerned about the effects on their property.

The 15-mile expansion, which covers sections in Catawba and Iredell counties, would expand the highway to between four and six lanes at different points. The highway also would have a superstreet design, which eliminates left-turns in favor of turning right and using U-turns.

Property owners who would have their businesses taken proposed an alternative northern bypass that would run from the Terrell area to some point near East Maiden Road to bypass the businesses and homes.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation is still working on final design for the project, and a Finding of No Significant Impact is expected in 2017, project planning engineer Karen Reynolds said in an email.

Catawba County enters into lease agreement with Apple

Catawba County commissioners approved a lease agreement with Apple on June 6 for a renewable energy center at the Blackburn Resource and Recovery Center.

The county would lease Apple about 3.71 acres on the landfill property at an annual rent of $5,569.50, or $1,500 per acre, per year, for the first five years. After that, the rent would fluctuate based on the regional Consumer Price Index, but not go below the price of $1,500 per acre per year.

The lease term is 16 years, with an option for Apple to continue the agreement an additional five years.

In a parallel agreement, the company Quadrogen Power Systems, Catawba County would sell 40 percent of its landfill gas to the company, which would clean the landfill gas. The remaining 60 percent would be used by the county to make energy.

The cleaned landfill gas will be used in fuel cells at the planned Apple facility.

California aerospace engineering company moves operations to Claremont

California-based Dynamic Air Engineering announced July 18 the company would be moving its operations to the spec building in Claremont.

As part of the deal, the company agreed to a minimum investment of $7,255,000 and the creation of at least 53 jobs over five years.

The jobs would have an average salary of at least $51,618.

As of December, the company is working toward occupancy in the Claremont spec building by July 2017, Catawba County Economic Development Corporation President Scott Millar said.

Unemployment reaches a low in region

The Western Piedmont Workforce Development Board showed unemployment rates in the area are at a 15-year low.

In April, the unemployment rate in the region sat at 4.8 percent, the first time in 15 years it has dropped below 5 percent.

Much of the employment increase came in manufacturing, which accounted for 41.6 percent of all employment gains between 2012 and 2015, according to a previous report by the HDR.

While the economic growth pattern is positive, it will still take more time for the economy to reach levels seen before 2001, according to reports.
[File photo]

Chinese President Xi Jinping has praised a group of middle school students for their efforts in satellite design and said he was pleased with their passion and bravery in scientific exploration.

Xi made the remarks in a letter written to the students from Beijing's Bayi School on Saturday. A small satellite designed and developed by them was launched Wednesday.

[File photo]

The president said he was very pleased to know that the satellite designed by the students would be launched and called on them to become pillars of the country.

Xi hoped that the students would stay hungry for knowledge, keep their interest in scientific exploration and foster their scientific spirit.

He urged the students to inspire more youngsters to embrace science in a bid to contribute to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

[File photo]

The president also wished the teachers and students in Bayi School a happy new year.

On Sept. 9, Xi returned to Bayi School, his alma mater, to visit a laboratory and talk to teachers and students designing the small satellite. He asked them to tell him when the satellite was about to be launched.

The design group told Xi about the satellite launch in a letter and received the reply from him.

The small satellite is the first of its kind designed by China's middle school students. It was launched at Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center and sent into orbit.

The satellite is designed to operate in orbit for 180 days.
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This bizzare fight between two artists couldnt get more colourful. Award-winning Mumbai-born sculptor Anish Kapoor has triggered a row with the creator of the worlds pinkest pink by acquiring the colour illegally.

The 61-year-old London-based artist had hit the headlines earlier this year after he had acquired the exclusive right to use the worlds blackest black. British artist Stuart Semple retaliated by banning him from purchasing or using the PINK created by him.

Buyers of the paint were asked to sign a legal declaration at checkout to ensure that Kapoor or his associates would not be able to get their hands on it, according to The Independent.

But last week Kapoor posted a picture of his middle finger dipped in PINK on the social media with the caption Up yours.

Up yours #pink A photo posted by Anish Kapoor (@dirty_corner) on Dec 23, 2016 at 2:32am PST

Its obviously very disappointing that Anish has illegally got his hands on the worlds Pinkest paint, Semple told The Creators Project.

If anyone knows who is behind sharing it with him it would be good if they could come forward. Anish is still very much at large, not just with the blackest black but now the stolen pinkest pink. Luckily hes failed to get his hands on the worlds glitteriest glitter so we would urge purchasers to refrain from sharing any with him or his associates, he added.

The glitteriest glitter refers to Diamond Dust, which Semple released at the same time in response to Kapoors acquisition of PINK.

Out now world's most glittery #glitter anyone apart from Anish Kapoor can have some from https://t.co/FFNOYjgM0P pic.twitter.com/2tl5EUlBj6  STUART SEMPLE (@stuartsemple) December 20, 2016

Hell never have seen this one coming and hes not getting a grain of this glitter until he stops acting like such a rotter and shares the mega black! he said.

The so-called blackest black or Vantablack S-Vis is produced by UK-based Surrey NanoSystems.

We have an agreement with Sir Anish Kapoor for the exclusive worldwide right to use Vantablack S-Vis in the creative arts. The agreement does not cover any other field, a spokesperson for Surrey NanoSystems had said earlier this year.

This special material has a very unusual and unique appearance. It is used within optical instruments to improve how they control light. It has the potential of turning 3D objects into 2D because there just isnt enough light for the brain to perceive the object fully, he explained.

Kapoor, who won the coveted Turner Prize in 1991 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013, is known for his unique ability to experiment with very bright and dark colours.

The nanostructure of Vantablack is so small that it virtually has no materiality. Its thinner than a coat of paint and rests on the liminal edge between an imagined thing and an actual one.

Its a physical thing that you cannot see, giving it a transcendent or even transcendental dimension, which I think is very compelling, he told Artforum in reference to the black pigment.

He has been working with Surrey NanoSystems since 2014 and the exclusive agreement grew out of that long association.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more
Miffed Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav came out late on Thursday with his own list of 235 Samajwadi Party candidates for next years assembly polls, triggering speculation of a split in the party besieged by a bitter family feud.

The move is viewed as a tit-for-tat response from the 43-year-old son to party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, who declared candidates for 325 of the 403 assembly seats the day before and ruled out projecting Akhilesh as the candidate for the chief ministers post.

The states youngest chief minister has been engaged in an intense power struggle with the ruling familys elders, especially uncle Shivpal Yadav , who enjoys the backing of his brother Mulayam.

Read | SP chief Mulayam rules out alliance ahead of UP polls, declares 325 candidates

But hours after Akhileshs move, SP state unit president Shivpal released the partys second list of 68 candidates. The list featured Akhilesh aide and legislator Abhishek Mishra, who has a difficult choice to make -- whether to go to the Shivpal camp for the SP-authorised ticket or remain in Akhilesh camp.

Akhileshs parallel list contains all the legislators loyal to him, such as Ram Gobind Chaudhary who was not among Mulayams nominees. It also contains names from Mulayams list, including two ministers he had sacked -- Raja Mahendra Aridaman Singh and Manoj Paras.

Akhilesh drew up his own list of 403 candidates on Sunday and sent it to Mulayam, bypassing Shivpal.

But the party chief appeared to have sided with his brother, denying tickets to at least three top pro-Akhilesh ministers Arvind Singh Gope, Ram Govind Chaudhary and Tej Narayan Pandey or Pawan Pandey.

Also, he ignored Akhileshs objections to names such as Sigbatullah Ansari, the brother of jailed gangster Mukhtar Ansari and Atiq Ahmed, who faces over 40 criminal cases. The Akhilesh list left out Ahmed and murder accused Aman Mani Tripathi.

The chief minister didnt formally release his list as he is not the partys national president or the state chief to declare candidates for elections.

Read | Akhilesh sacks Shivpal loyalists, Yadav pari-war heats up over candidates list

The chief minister asked us to go to our constituencies and begin poll preparations. He said his efforts are on, said an MLA who attended a meeting that Akhilesh called before declaring his list.

Both camps held a series of meetings during the day. Akhilesh gathered his flock at his home and went out for an hour to meet his father. Shivpal also joined them, but the outcome was not clearly known.

Shivpal and Mulayam have softened their stand on Chaudhary and Gope, but they are against taking back Pawan Pandey and giving him a ticket, a source said.

Pandey was expelled from the party at the peak of the Yadav family feud in October.

In a new twist to the day-long drama, Mulayams cousin and SP general secretary Ramgopal Yadav said many leaders in the party do not want to see Akhilesh as the chief minister again. But, the fact remains that people of the state want him back as CM, news agency PTI quoted him as saying.

Also read | Yadav family feud: Damage irreversible, now SP govt at stake

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I first met Sunder Lal Patwaji in 1974. I was deeply impressed by his brilliance, dynamism and amazing oratory skills.

I came closer to him in 1985 when he contested from Bhojpur constituency. He never knew fatigue and inspired and motivated all to live up to their potential. It was only due to the hard work of party workers and popularity of Patwaji that BJP came to power in 1990.

Patwaji lived a pure and full life. Even at the age of 92, he was averse to being called vridha (elderly). I often met him to seek guidance. Patwaji had a deep impact on my personal life as well. It was Patwaji, who inspired me to get married and still devote my life to the service of society and nation.

He had appointed me as state Yuva Morcha president. It was the time when the Ram Janmabhumi movement had started at Ayodhya. A large number of Rambhakts sacrificed their lives. After this, former Prime Minister VP Singh visited Bhopal. We decided to oppose him. Patwaji was the chief minister. The administration had made foolproof security arrangements, but the Yuva Morcha succeeded in disrupting PMs visit. We were cane charged. In return, we pelted stones. VP Singh then staged a sit-in outside CMs residence. I apprehended that Patwaji would be angry but he came out and told the media that when a large number of Rambhakts had lost their lives, a small agitation and little stone pelting would not bring down the sky.

Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan having a word with BJP veterans and former chief ministers Kailash Joshi and Sunder Lal Patwa during a programme organised to mark Shivraj`s 10 years in office, in Bhopal. (Mujeeb Faruqui/ HT file)

Patwaji was a man at peace. When his government was dissolved in 1992 following Ram Janmabhumi movement, he remained calm and composed. He boarded a state transport bus in the evening and left for Indore.

He was always ready to fight for the right cause. He undertook a fast unto death protesting against the killing of farmers in Multai during Digvijaya Singh regime. He was a messiah to farmers and was first political leader to waive off 714 crore in farm loans. A strict administrator, he never gave in to any goonda element or terror and ruthlessly eliminated the mafia in Indore and Bhopal.

For the generations to come, Patwajis life would remain a source of inspiration.

I salute the noble soul.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan

(The author is chief minister of Madhya Pradesh)
Madhya Pradesh governor Om Prakash Kohli, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and political leaders expressed their grief over the death of former chief minister Sunder Lal Patwa on Wednesday.

Patwa, who was also a union minister, died of cardiac arrest at his official residence at Bhopal on Wednesday morning. He was 92.

Patwas death is an irreparable loss to the state. He was a great and popular state leader besides a skilled administrator and a well wisher of poor and farmers, said the governor.

Kohli mentioned that late Patwa was a simple and courteous person and his works for the state couldnt be forgotten.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi pays his last respects to the mortal remains of the former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Sunder Lal Patwa, in Bhopal on Wednesday. (Praveen Bajpai/HT photo)

The chief minister in his condolence message said Patwa had given a new direction to the states politics.

Patwa Ji was respected by all the political parties and without him state politics is unimaginable. Moreover, he used to hold special place in the public life and his death is an irreparable loss. Madhya Pradesh is incomplete without him, said Chouhan, declaring three days state mourning.

Former chief minister Digvijaya Singh said, I was deeply pained to hear the news regarding Sunderlal ji Patwa. He was a hardworking and spirited leader of Madhya Pradesh. The state has suffered irreparable loss.

Former chief minister and BJP leader Kailash Joshi said Patwas death was his personal loss. He worked relentlessly for the uplifting of tribals, poor and weaker section of the society.

Public relations minister Narottam Mishra said an era had come to an end with death of Sunder Lal Patwa. For him, politics was a means to serve the downtrodden section of the society.

Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar said Patwa was a founder member of Bharatiya Jansangh and he sacrificed everything for the organisation.

Advani, Naidu to attend last rites

Senior BJP leader LK Advani and Union minister Venkaiah Naidu will attend the funeral ceremony of Patwa at Kukdeshwar on Thursday, as per the BJPs media cell.
[File photo]

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor, criticized by China as lacking in sincerity, was quickly followed by one of his Cabinet ministers visiting a Tokyo war shrine on Wednesday.

According to analysts, Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor, the target of the 1941 Japanese surprise attack on Hawaii, had hawkish intentions at heart, not pursuing peace and reconciliation. The purpose, they said, was to broaden Japan's military capabilities and curb the rise of China by strengthening the alliance with the United States.

On Tuesday, Abe and US President Barack Obama laid wreaths at the USS Arizona Memorial.

Afterward, in a speech, Abe said that Japan would never again wage war. On Dec 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor killed more than 2,400 US citizens and drew the US into World War II.

Not long after Abe spoke, Masahiro Imamura, the minister in charge of reconstruction of northern Japan after the 2011 tsunami, offered prayers at the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan's war dead, including 14 Class-A war criminals from World War II. Class-A convicts were found guilty of plotting and carrying out the war.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Japan should reflect upon its war crimes in a sincere manner rather than "make political shows repeatedly". She spoke at a regular news conference on Wednesday.

The reconciliation between Japan and victimized Asian countries, including China, must be based on Tokyo's sincere reflection on the suffering it caused, she said, adding that some Western media have used words like "shrewd" to describe Abe's visit.

In the Financial Times, writer Joji Sakurai called Abe's visit "a dovish act that masks a hawkish intent". The visit is "shrewd politics", through which Abe could defuse fears about militarism reawakening in Japan, Sakurai wrote.

"Mr. Abe's dream is to revise Japan's pacifist Constitution, drawn up by the US under postwar occupation, to allow the country to have a real army," he wrote.

On Tuesday, the Association for Inheriting and Propagating the Murayama Statement, a Japanese civic group, issued a statement urging Abe to visit Nanjing and other locations of Japanese atrocities before and during World War II.

"The Japanese Imperial Army killed far more civilians in the Nanjing Massacre, the germ warfare in Harbin and in some other places in Asia, and it is intolerable just to memorialize the US dead while ignoring the victims in Asian countries," said Takakage Fujita, director general of the association.

The group aims to uphold the 1995 statement issued by then Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama apologizing for damage and suffering caused by Japan.

Nell Calloway, director of the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Monroe, Louisiana, said, "I feel the visit by Japanese Prime Minister Abe to Pearl Harbor ... was meaningless and he was nothing more than a tourist." Calloway is the granddaughter of the famed Flying Tigers' Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault, who commanded US pilots who fought the Japanese in China.

Zhang Jingquan, a professor of Japanese studies at Jilin University, said that Abe's visit was a way to strengthen the Japan-US alliance and jointly curb the rise of China.

On Wednesday, more protesters than usual showed up for the weekly demonstration in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. South Korean "comfort women" meet there to denounce being forced into sexual slavery during the war, Xinhua News Agency reported.

It marked the anniversary of what protesters called a "humiliating" agreement last year between South Korea and Japan meant to be a final settlement of the issue in exchange for $8.3 million for a foundation for the victims, Xinhua reported. Protesters called for annulment of the agreement, and the group also held a remembrance for seven of the women who died this year.

The Japanese military coerced as many as 200,000 women from the Asian countries into sexual slavery during the war, historians say.

Contact the writers at [email protected]
The family of a 70-year-old farmer who died at Ramtoriya village in Chhatarpur districts Badi Malahra area on Friday after three men of his caste allegedly asked him to stand on a leg as a punishment for a cow calfs death is still facing social boycott from his community.

The man, Har Singh Lodhi, was punished by a caste panchayat on Friday. The deceaseds foster son Daryav had alleged three men of his caste were responsible for his fathers death. Police have lodged a case against them under section 174 of the CrPC.

The deceaseds kin are facing boycott from their Lodhi community as the situation is still tense at Ramtauriya village. The family on Tuesday organised a Shudhi Bhoj which was attended by only five Lodhi community persons although there are nearly 30 Lodhi families in the village. Members of other communities, however, did participate in it.

There is a widespread anger among his community people over Daryav allegation, a Lodhi community person told HT on condition of anonymity, adding the deceased had himself called a caste panchayat and followed purification rituals and died a natural death due to old age and ill health.

He also said Daryav was at enmity with three alleged accused -- Gondi Lodhi, Mardanh Lodhi and Karan Lodhi-- and on Friday had a heated argument with them over purification rituals. Thereafter he made this allegation against them.

Meanwhile on Tuesday evening, Badamalehra sub-divisional magistrate Divya Awasthi, sub-divisional officer (police) PK Saraswat and other officials reached the village and had a meeting with villagers, Lodhi community members and deceased farmers family.
Demonetisation has worsened troubled times for farmers in Sheopur district as people in Badoda tehsil sleep outside the State Bank of India (SBI) branch, the lone bank branch there, for cash.

Farmers from over 50 villages in Badoda brace the cold and queue up from midnight but are allowed to withdraw only Rs 4000 a week instead of the Rs 24,000 weekly limit due to severe cash crunch. There was a serpentine queue of 600 people before the SBI branch opened on Tuesday morning.

Shankar Banjara of Salmanya village said, I need Rs 10,000 for treatment of my ears and eyes. I waited in a queue for two days but the cash finished before my turn came. Farmer Halku Banjara of the same village said he needs money for his sons wedding next month.

SBI branch incharge manager Sarwan Meena said, Were not getting sufficient cash supply. Were getting only Rs 10 lakh daily against demand of Rs 1 crore.

Meanwhile, exchange of demonetised banknotes continued in Sheopur as countless people lined up at SBI, Bank of India, Central Bank and Punjab National Bank branches on Wednesday.

Bank unions to stage protest in Bhopal

Even as Modis 50-day promise approaches deadline, cash crunch does not seem to end any time soon. In protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modis call for demonetization, bankers, under the banner of All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) and All India Bank Officers Association (AIBOA), have decided to stage a protest in Bhopal on Thursday seeking an immediate solution to the woes of people.

AIBEA leader VK Sharma said, The decision was taken with the aim to cut down on black money, fake notes and terrorist activities. Currency worth 14 lakh-crores worth were banned and withdrawn from circulation with the hope that a bulk of it which is black money will be confiscated. But we observe that the entire money has come back to the banks belying all their expectations, Sharma said.

The fact that this announcement was made without proper planning to supply replace banned notes with new ones is evident from the problem people, including bankers, are facing every day, he added.

Sharma said, There is a reduced cash flow to bank branches. Majority of the ATMs are still non-functional or empty. There is unusual rush of customers inside the bank but inadequate supply of cash is forcing the branches to deny withdrawal of the permitted Rs. 24,000 to customers. We will demand sufficient supply of cash to all banks, ATMs and branches, and maintenance of law and order to prevent harassment of bank staff.
Disposing of a petition, Madhya Pradesh high court on Wednesday declined to interfere in the alleged SIMI encounter probe, citing that a designated panel is already handling the case.

Abdul Rashid, brother of Abdul Majid  one of the eight Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) suspects killed in an alleged encounter in October  had filed a petition seeking a probe through an independent agency. He is a resident of Mahidpur in Ujjain district.

In his plea, Abdul wanted the HC to direct the respondents to keep the case evidence in a sealed cover, to be opened only before the inquiry commission in presence of petitioners counsel.

Justice Sanjay Yadav, however, rejected the petition and observed that the matter is being inquired upon by a panel, constituted under Commission of Inquiry Act and comprising a retired high court judge...this court refrains from causing indulgence.

The State had taken steps as per the apex courts directives passed in the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties Vs State of Maharashtra and others case in 2014, the petitioners counsel had argued.

Abdul filed a petition in HC on December 13, 2016 after the Gunga police station in Bhopal refused to take action over his complaint in the SIMI encounter case.

Eight SIMI activists, who allegedly escaped from a prison in Bhopal, were killed during an encounter in October.

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Infamous for churning out crowd-pleasing, escapist drama that is often mindless, Bollywood has been working on changing that image. And 2016 saw a major shift in the narrative of Indian cinema with filmmakers moving on to hard-hitting and taboos subjects like homophobia, drug abuse, mental illness, importance of sexual consent and casual sex.

From Manoj Bajpayees Aligarh to Shah Rukh Khans Dear Zindagi and more, here is a list of eight films that will be counted as milestones in the changing Bollywood narrative.

1. Aligarh



In Aligarh, director Hansal Mehta once again picked up a contemporary true story to highlight the prevailing homophobia in society. Set in the city of Aligarh, the plot revolved around professor Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras, a sensitive Marathi language professor, who loses his job and is ostracised for his sexual orientation. Manoj Bajpayee sunk his teeth into the role of a gay, lonely man, who finds himself defenceless in the face of prejudice.

Read: Aligarh movie review

2. Kapoor & Sons



Director Shakun Batra can be credited for breaking many stereotypes when it comes to the portrayal of gay community in Bollywood with Kapoor & Sons. Fawad Khan played a gay man in the movie, who is hesitant to come out to his family.

Read: Kapoor & Sons review

3. Pink



Pink was another bold attempt at addressing the issue of sexual molestation and importance of consent in Indian society. Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari and Andrea Tariang played three young women who face assault charges after being molested by a group of men in the courtroom-drama. Despite being the victim, they are slut-shamed and pressurised to drop the case. The film received wide-spread critical acclaim for bringing the discussion of sexual molestation on the big screen and gave the audience perhaps one of the most defining dialogues this year: No means no.

Read: Pink movie review

4. Kahaani 2



The central theme of Kahaani 2, which marked the return of Vidya Balan in another challenging role, was about the horrors of child sexual abuse.

Read: Kahaani 2 movie review

5. Udta Punjab



Director Abhishek Chaubeys controversial film Udta Punjab revolved around the issue of drug-trafficking and abuse in Punjab. In the movie, Diljit Dosanjh played a morally ambiguous police officer who realises the horror of drugs after his brother is admitted to hospital, Shahid Kapoor is in the character of a high-on-drugs, rockstar Tommy Singh and Alia Bhatt portrays the character of a migrant worker, who accidentally slips into this ugly vortex.

Read: Udta Punjab review

6. Phobia



Director Pavan Kripalanis Phobia, which saw Radhika Apte deliver a strong performance, brought into spotlight a disorder rarely talked about: agoraphobia. Aptes character develops agoraphobia after escaping molestation by a taxi driver. Phobia deftly used the psychological thriller setting to bring home the issue of assault.

Read: Phobia movie review

7. Dear Zindagi



Gauri Shinde took a light-hearted approach in Dear Zindagi to tell the story of a young woman (Alia Bhatt) grappling with relationship issues and the help she eventually finds from a psychologist (Shah Rukh Khan).

Read: Dear Zindagi review

8. Befikre



Aditya Chopras much-talked about return to direction was one of the latest example of Bollywood stepping out of the box and talking about taboos subjects. The film focussed on the millennial generation that is not too hung up about commitment. It is not the first time that a Bollywood film talks about casual sex but it is still rare for the lead pair to flaunt it. Starring Ranveer Singh and Vaani Kapoor, the film was set in Paris.

Read: Befikre review

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Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) chairperson Pahlaj Nihalani has shrugged off all responsibility for the certification of Mohalla Assi, after the Delhi High Court sought the censor bodys response on a plea by the makers of the banned Bollywood film.

The plea challenged a denial of a certificate for public screening of the Chandraprakash Dwivedi movie, which features actor Sunny Deol. The movie is around the commercialisation of the pilgrimage city of Varanasi.

Talking about the issue, Nihalani said, Both the Examining Committee and Revising Committee have denied the film a certification. The film has now gone to the Tribunal (Film Certification Appellate Tribunal). I am not aware of what is happening to the film there. But as far as the CBFC is concerned, the film youve mentioned has gone out of our hands.

The complete film Mohalla Assi was leaked online last year. The profane verbal content of the movie -- with dialogues delivered by Sunny and actress Sakshi Tanwar -- shocked many.
The banking sector is gearing up to put in place know-your-employee (KYE) guidelines as reports of bank staff helping people launder money following the November 8 demonetisation announcement continue to come in .

While it is important to follow the KYC (know-your-customer) norms, it is equally important to have a well thought out KYE norm, which naturally will have different indicators but at the same time, we must understand that it is unfair to brand all bank employees under one category, a government official said.

To improve compliance, a policy to protect whistleblowers was also in the works, sources said.

Read: Note ban effect not adverse, sharp rise in tax collection, says FM Arun Jaitley

Several officials  from public as well as private banks -- have been suspended or arrested for opening fake accounts and violating cash-exchange rules after the government scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes in a crackdown on black money and counterfeit currency.

According to sources, suspicious deposits, or laundered money, that has come into the system after November 8 could well be over Rs 1 lakh crore, enough to fund the Digital India campaign.

Investigating agencies and the income-tax department have also found several people holding huge quantities of cash in new bills of Rs 2,000 introduced after November 8 along with a new Rs 500 note, as millions struggled for cash.

While the cases are being investigated, this could not have been possible without the help of bank staff, the official said.

Read: Modi to address nation on New Years eve, likely to talk about demonetisation

The surprise withdrawal of the high-value notes, which accounted for 86% of the currency in circulation, triggered a cash crunch, forcing millions of people to spend hours in queues outside banks and ATM kiosks.

Thousands of suspicious accounts are being scrutinised, with most banks appointing consultancy firms for a forensic audit.

The focus till now has been on adhering to KYC norms that allow banks to verify the identity of their customers. These guidelines are aimed at preventing identity theft and misuse of banks for laundering money and funding terror.

But, as reports of fake accounts and arrest of bank staff come in, the spotlight is firmly on bankers.

The government and Reserve Bank of India revised cash guidelines numerous times after November 8. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the changes were made to stay ahead of the people exploiting the loopholes.

The RBI has also asked all banks to preserve the CCTV footage of the period between November 8 to December 30, the last day for depositing scrapped notes.

Read: Cong to launch protest over note ban, graft charges against PM Modi from Jan 6

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E-commerce giant Amazon has strengthened its position as one of the largest online clothing retailers in the country by signing up more premium brands.

From Emporio Armani to TarunTahiliani, you will find it all on Amazon at competitive prices.

In 2016, Amazon Fashion doubled its selection by adding 150 fashion brands, including Armani Exchange, Versus by Versace, Payal Pratap, and Monisha Jaising.

It also launched five premium watch brands  Invicta, Stuhrling, August Steiner, Burgi, and Akribos XXIV. Watches contribute to 15% of the overall Amazon Fashion business. The premium watches business doubled year-on-year in October this year.

This year, the firm aggressively negotiated with top fashion brands that had strong fashion equity in the market and were high on aspirational value, said Arun Sirdeshmukh, business head, Amazon Fashion.

Amazon claims its fashion segment attracted nearly 30% of all new customers on Amazon India platform.

Sirdeshmukh further said their aim was to make Amazon Fashion the countrys top online store. With a third of its customers buying from its online fashion store as of November 2016, Amazon India is focusing on the category.

These additions might help Amazon get a larger market share compared to its counterparts.

Arvind Singhal, chairman, Technopak Advisors, said, In the fashion category, the Flipkart portfolio of portals (Flipkart, Myntra, and Jabong) have a dominant share of over 75%.

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A recent study of attitudes among Indian students offered an ominous finding. Young Indians are sceptical about the merits of democracy and are open to the idea of authoritarian rule. According to the Yuva Nagarik Meter compiled by researchers at the Childrens Movement for Civic Awareness, two thirds of Indian college students agree that India should have only one strong political party at the Centre to rule the country. Over half (53%) of college students agreed that the military should rule India for several years. The study, which produced similar results a year ago, suggests that many young Indians have clearly authoritarian leanings.

Observers have debated the merits and methodology of the report, but even if those numbers were halved they would still be troublingly high. That these are the opinions of college students  ostensibly among the more curious, well-informed members of society  is doubly worrying.

Read: Donald Trump in White House: Now, what will happen to H-1B visas?

This apparent fatigue or impatience with democracy among younger citizens isnt limited to India. Researchers in the West have also noticed a trend of youthful apathy to democracy. Using data from World Values Surveys, the Harvard political scientist Yascha Mounk sketched the rise of authoritarian sentiment in the United States and Europe in a report released last January.

While nearly 75% of Americans born in the 1930s believe it is essential to live in a democratic system, barely a quarter of Americans born in the 1980s feel the same way. Only a tenth of Americans born in the 1930s believe that democracy is a bad or very bad way to run a country, but that number doubles to over 20% for Americans born in the 1980s. Nearly half of young Americans would be open to having a strong leader not beholden to elections and legislatures (only a quarter of older Americans share that view). According to Mounks study, similar trends are visible in Western European countries and in Australia and New Zealand.

Again, these reports have been hotly contested and debated, with other political scientists claiming that support for democracy in the West has remained fairly robust and consistent over the decades. But even Mounks most trenchant critic, Erik Voeten at Georgetown University, concedes that there seems to be a clear uptick in authoritarian sentiment among young Americans, with people under 35 more willing to countenance the rule of a strong leader or even the military than ever before.

Read: Trump takes credit for 8,000 jobs, has very very good talk with Obama

These findings have acquired greater meaning in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, who consciously styled himself during his campaign as a strongman leader removed from the conventional political class, declaiming at the Republican convention, I alone can fix it! He will begin his presidency with a great deal of power; both houses of Congress are in his grasp and he has over 100 appointments to make in the judiciary.

Trump encouraged the idea that a vote for him was not just a vote for the Republican candidate, but a rejection of the existing system. His supporters imagine him as a wrecking ball to the old political order. In that sense, he has much in common with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The author Chetan Bhagat recently asked his Twitter followers  most of whom are fairly young  whether they would rather have Modi ruling the country without democracy or democracy without Modi; 55% of over 10,000 votes cast opted for Modi.

This is not to say that authoritarian dictatorship is just around the corner, but it does highlight a problem shared by India and the United States, the worlds largest pluralist, ostensibly liberal democracies. The institutions and political assumptions that sustain the democratic systems of both countries inspire less and less confidence.

Read: UN has great potential, but right now just a club to have good time: Trump

There are many reasons, of course, to be suspicious and critical of the political class. In my travels in both countries, I hear people often dismissing their representatives as corrupt or beholden to special interests. Endemic corruption in India has certainly driven many young Indians towards more authoritarian positions. In the US, the unseemly gridlock in Congress during the latter years of the Obama presidency (caused in large part by cynical Republican obstructionism) no doubt fuelled disgust at the political establishment, paving the way for outsider figures like Bernie Sanders and the triumphant Trump.

But I dont think this authoritarian surge is just a response to the malfeasance and incompetence of politicians. Larger forces are at work. The rise of authoritarianism among young people points to the big questions facing liberal democracy in the 21st century. How does a society reconcile the great dislocations and disparities caused by economic globalisation within the political confines of a nation-state? How can societies preserve and strengthen liberal, civic republican values when market forces and the demands of the digital economy are reshaping educational and cultural priorities? At the moment, liberal democrats dont seem to have compelling answers.

Kanishk Tharoor is the author of Swimmer Among the Stars: Stories

The views expressed are personal

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Lawyer Rohit Tandon, who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday night in connection with a money laundering case, will be produced before a court on Thursday.

The Crime Branch and Delhi Police had earlier on December 11 carried out raids at the office of his firm T&T Law and seized nearly Rs. 13.5 crore, of which Rs 2.6 crore was in new banknotes released after demonetisation. The ED had booked a PMLA case against him based on the police FIR.

The Enforcement Directorate had been questioning Tandon for the last few days and suspects that he was also allegedly instrumental in the illegal conversion of demonetised currency worth about Rs 60 crore in purported connivance with Kolkata-based businessman Paras Mal Lodha and arrested Kotak Bank manager in Delhi Ashish Kumar.

With Tandons arrest, the investigative agencies have now nabbed some of the major players of the two high-profile black money rackets unearthed post the note ban.

While Reddy has been arrested by the CBI from Chennai, Lodha and Kumar have already been arrested by the ED apart from two others in Chennai.

The agency has been questioning Lodha and Tandon and even brought both of them face-to-face. Sources claimed that as the required information was not coming forth from Tandon, he had to be taken into custody.

Tandon is required for custodial interrogation, they said.

The lawyer was earlier also separately searched by the tax department where it was said that he declared undisclosed income worth over Rs 125 crore to the taxman.

The two cases involving Tandon and Reddy are being probed by at least four lead agencies of the country including the ED, I-T department, CBI and Delhi Police.

The Reddy case pertains to Chennai where the Income Tax department has made the biggest detection of unaccounted income of over Rs 142 crore.
The tenure of Najeeb Jung as Delhis lieutenant governor was marred by frequent run-ins with the AAP government, led by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

In a very public spat, Kejriwal and deputy CM Manish Sisodia blamed Jung for blocking Delhis development, while the L-G criticised them for overstepping their bounds. A three-member committee appointed by the L-G scrutinised all important decisions taken by the government, and often stuck them down, not always without reason.

As a new incumbent steps into the L-G office, the big question is: Can Anil Baijal and Kejriwal forge a working relationship on the key issues that face the national capital? It will be interesting to see if the tide can turn and the focus can shift from a battle of one-upmanship to development.

As a fresh battle for supremacy looms, HT outlines five key focus areas for Baijal:

1. Pollution

The L-G had conducted review meetings with all agencies concerned (municipalities, DDA, PWD) after Delhis air quality became hazardous in the first week of November.

One-month plan: The new L-G will be expected to not only keep the momentum going, but also push for new measures to combat air pollution during review meetings.

One-year action plan: A policy on restriction of entry of diesel trucks from Delhis neighbouring states, revising parking rates and implementation of road vacuuming are some proposals the new L-G will need to look at. The promises of mist fountains and outdoor air purifiers in five high-pollution zones need to become a reality. After settling in, Baijals task will be to approve measures to ensure Delhi doesnt choke during the next Diwali season. For this, he will have to work with the government to ensure fresh steps are taken in advance, and not on an emergency basis once its too late.

Three-year plan: Baijal will need to take up the issue of crop-burning issue up with neighbouring states.

2. Health

One-month plan: The Kejriwal government planned to come up with 1,000 mohalla clinics by December, 2016. However, the government managed to start just 100 such clinics as part of a pilot project. The new L-G will have to clear the file for the remaining mohalla clinics.

One -year plan: The government has set a new deadline of March 2017 for mohalla clinics and the L-G will have to play a crucial role in meeting it. He will have to look after new hospital buildings that are supposed to come up. His other job will be to implement precautionary measures to prevent outbreak of seasonal diseases during the monsoon.

Three-year plan: Bringing modern medical equipment to government hospitals will be Baijals biggest long-term challenge.

3. Education

One-month plan: Former L-G Najeeb Jung had returned a government proposal to make guest teachers, serving in government schools, permanent. Making guest teachers permanent is one of the most ambitious plans mooted by Sisodia. The government wants to give some relaxations, such as extra weightage in written tests for such teachers, based on their work experience. Jung had vetoed the idea, leaving the fate of 17,000 guest teachers hanging in balance. The new L-G will need to find a common ground with the government and give his nod to the proposal.

One-year plan: The Delhi government is trying to overhaul the education system and condition of government schools. The new L-G will have to provide them the support needed to making this possible.

Three-year plan: Some of the Delhi governments education bills, including the one doing away with management quota in nursery admissions and preventing private schools from arbitrarily increasing fees, are lying with the Centre. The L-G will have to act as a mediator to get these bills passed.

4. Transport

One-month plan: Baijal will need to clear files to improve the citys public transportation system. The Kejriwal government had mooted a proposal for creation of dedicated bus lanes. The file was sent to Jungs office, who suggested some changes. The government has sent the file back for the L-Gs approval.

One-year plan: Jung refused to give a go-ahead to the governments ambitious app-based premium bus service that was to be rolled out from June 1, 2016. The new L-G will have to consider the proposal and take a call on it.

Three-year plan: Purchasing buses must be a top priority to improve public transport. Baijal needs to prepare an action plan to double the citys existing bus fleet.

5. Law and Order

One-month plan: The working of the current anti-corruption branch (ACB) has been affected by the spat between the L-G and the government. The new L-G will have to work on ending this conflict one way or the other.

One-year plan: The L-G will need to ensure the ACB is seen as an independent body, free of any political influence that works actively towards ending graft in government departments.

Three-year plan: Crimes against women remain the biggest challenge. The Delhi Police commissioner reports to the L-G, which is a sore point with the Delhi government. With this reporting structure unlikely to change, Baijal is expected to continue in Jungs footsteps and hold two meetings a week with the police on crimes in the city.
[File Photo]

China's central bank issued a statement overnight, condemning irresponsible media reports that onshore renminbi against the US dollar dropped down below the 7 key defensive line.

The PBoC confirmed the rate of the Yuan in the domestic inter-bank foreign exchange market remains stable between 6.95 and just below 6.96.

The bank says it retains the right to hold the related media outlet to account.

The people's bank issued the statement shortly after a Bloomberg's system showed the decline of the Chinese currency, shocking the market.

But it was later verified as untrue by Reuters.

Bloomberg has also confirmed there was problems with its information publishing and that the exchange rates in its system have now returned to normal.

It also said it was checking what information its staff had published.

It has been speculated in the market that the yuan would face further devaluation pressure in the short-term given the seesaw nature of the yuan-dollar relationship.
The tenure of Najeeb Jung as lieutenant governor was marred by frequent run-ins with the AAP government. The AAP blamed the L-G for handicapping Delhis development. On the other hand, a three-member committee appointed by the L-G scrutinised all important decisions taken by the government.

The challenge for Delhis new L-G, Anil Baijal, will be to clear pending files and ensure the constitution is followed in every case. HT outlines five key priorities before Baijal.

Pollution

Pollution is a major concern in Delhi. (Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times)

The L-G has been conducting review meetings with all agencies concerned (municipalities, DDA, PWD) after air quality in Delhi in the first week of November.

One-month plan: The new L-G will be expected to keep the momentum going, if not step-up measures, to combat air pollution during the review meetings.

One-year action plan: A policy on restriction of entry of diesel trucks from Delhis neighbouring states, revising parking rates and implementation of road vacuuming are some proposals the new L-G will want to look at. The promises of mist fountains and outdoor air purifiers in five high pollution zones may become a reality. After settling in, Baijals task will be to approve measures to ensure Delhi doesnt choke during next Diwali.

Three-year plan: Probable L-G Baijal will need to take the crop burning issue up with the neighbouring states.

Health

One-month plan: The AAP government planned to come up with 1,000 mohalla clinics by December, 2016. However, the government managed to start just 100 such clinics as part of a pilot project. The new L-G will have to clear the file for the remaining mohalla clinics.

One -year plan: The government has set a new deadline of March 2017 and the new L-G will have to play a crucial role in meeting it. He will have to look after new hospital buildings that are supposed to come up. His other job would be take precautionary measure to prevent outbreak of diseases during monsoon.

Three-year plan: Bringing modern medical equipment in government hospitals will be Baijals biggest long-term challenge.

Read:Former home secy Anil Baijal appointed new Lieutenant Governor of Delhi

Education

One-month plan: Former L-G Najeeb Jung had returned a proposal of the government to make guest teachers, serving in government-run schools, permanent. Making guest teachers permanent is one of the most ambitious plans mooted by deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia. The government wants to give some relaxations, like extra weightage in written tests for such teachers, based on their work experience. However, Jung vetoed the idea leaving the fate of 17,000 guest teachers hanging in balance. The new L-G will need to find a common ground with the government and give his nod to the proposal.

One-year plan: The AAP is trying to overhaul the education system and condition of government schools. The new L-G should render all help possible in making this possible.

Three-year plan: Some of the present AAP governments education bills, including the one doing away with management quota in nursery admissions and preventing private schools from arbitrarily increasing fees, are lying with the Centre. The new L-G will have to act as a mediator and ensure that the bills are passed at the earliest.

Transport

Baijal should prepare an action plan to double the citys existing bus fleet. (Hindustan Times)

One-month plan: Baijal will need to clear files to improve the citys public transportation system. The government had mooted a proposal for creation of dedicated bus lanes. The file was sent to Jungs office, who suggested some changes. The government resent the file for the L-Gs approval but never heard back.

One-year plan: Jung refused to give a go-ahead to the governments ambitious app-based premium bus service that was to be rolled out from June 1, 2016. The new L-G might consider the proposal.

Three-year plan: Purchasing buses on a priority basis. Baijal should prepare an action plan to double the citys existing bus fleet.

Law and order

One-month plan: The working of the current anti-corruption branch (ACB) has been affected. The new L-G will try to end the clash of conflict with the government over the control of the ACB.

One-year plan: The L-G must ensure the ACB is seen as an independent body, free of any political influence that works actively towards ending graft in government departments.

Three-year plan: The citys law and order situation, especially crimes against women, will be the new L-Gs biggest challenge. The Delhi Police commissioner reports to the L-G. The Delhi government has also demanded control of the Delhi police. Baijal is expected to continue in Jungs steps and hold two meetings a week with the police top brass on the crimes reported in Delhi.
The Central Bureau of Investigation registered a case against an officer-on-special duty (OSD) in the Delhi health ministers office in what is being seen as a parting shot by lieutenant-governor Najeeb Jung who resigned recently.

Jung, who was locked in a running feud with chief minister Arvind Kejriwals team, had before he quit this month called for an investigation into the appointment of Dr Nikunj Aggarwal as a doctor in a city hospital and his subsequent selection as an OSD to Jain.

The case was registered after the CBI received the complaint from the Delhi vigilance department, which reports to the L-Gs office. The case is likely to be another flashpoint between the Union and Delhi governments.

Besides Dr Aggarwal, the agency has named Anup Mohta, the director of Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalya that first hired the doctor, and other unknown officials of the hospital as well as the Delhi government.

The issue has the potential to snowball into an Aam Aadmi Party-Bharatiya Janata Party slugfest, since the latters leader Vijender Gupta has alleged that Dr Nikunj Aggarwal is the son-in-law of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwals sister-in-law.

Read: Najeeb Jung leaves behind unfinished legal battles with Kejriwal over Delhi

Health minister Satyendra Jain was not available for comments but his aide said Dr Aggarwal was not an OSD to the minister now and he works with the health department.

The complaint sent to the CBI by Delhi governments deputy secretary (vigilance) KS Meena alleged that Dr Aggarwal made a handwritten application on a plain paper for appointment in the hospital on August 6, 2015 and within four days, his appointment was approved without procedure being followed.

Since there was no post of SR available in the Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya, Dr Nikunj Aggarwal was taken on the strength against the post of faculty (orthopaedics). Within days of appointment, Aggarwals services were requisitioned for appointment as OSD to minister of health.

As per the Residency Scheme, resident doctors are engaged for working in hospitals, and not for other duties, said the complaint.

The complaint also states that Dr Aggarwal was nominated for a training programme at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad on government expenses in contravention of the residency scheme.

The department of health and family welfare also sanctioned Dr Aggarwals expenses for a proposed visit to China as member of an official delegation, which the complaint said, was not as per the residency scheme.

The file relating to appointment of Dr Aggarwal was submitted by the health ministry to the L-G following directions from his office.
The ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu has clearly closed ranks by appointing Sasikala Natarajan, who was the late chief minister J Jayalalithaas shadow for more than two decades, as the partys interim chief. This move was not unexpected, given that Sasikala has been virtually running the party in Jayalalithaas name for some time now as the late leader remained absent from public view because of spells in jail and her illnesses. Jayalalithaa was missing during much of the campaign for elections that returned her to power in May, leaving Sasikala to convey her orders to the party faithful. For a majority of the MLAs, Sasikala was their point of contact; she controlled access to Jayalalithaa. Chief minister O Panneerselvam owes his rise to Sasikala, a Thevar like him, and he made his affiliation clear by reading out the resolution making her interim party chief: Just as we saw MGR in the form of Jayalalithaa, so too we see Amma in Sasikala.

Read:As it happened: AIADMK appoints Sasikala as interim general secretary

So does that mean Sasikala, who has never contested an election for public office, will take over party and government in some kind of natural progression? She has been very careful so far not to give the impression of being in a hurry to take charge. Even on Thursday, she stayed away from the meeting that elected her party chief. She is unlikely to immediately face opposition from among the MLAs, if nothing because no one wants to rock the boat with more than four years of the governments term remaining. And whatever the party rank and file may think about the issue, theres little they can do now. But if she decides to take over as chief minister, she will have to stand for elections within six months, which is a very different ball-game. Sasikala also faces cases related to corruption charges, which she will have to factor in before deciding her course of action.

In the larger context of democratic politics in Tamil Nadu, the vacuum left by Jayalalithaa can eventually trigger a fundamental reordering of the political landscape. For, not even her most ardent supporters will claim Sasikala can successfully fill Jayalalithaas shoes. This does not bode well for the future of the AIADMK as we know it today. Waiting in the wings are MK Stalin and the DMK and, dont forget, the BJP, which sniffs a chance to finally make a mark in a state whose Dravidian ethos had so far kept it out. The biggest concern, however, is that the political machinations that appear inevitable can derail governance. The people of Tamil Nadu deserve better.
From the next academic session all the government schools across Madhya Pradesh will have uniform dress codes for students as well as teachers.

school education minister Kunwar Vijay Shah was told by officials of his department at a review meeting on Tuesday that all formalities to introduce the dress codes were completed.

Teachers will also have to wear identical Nehru jackets

As per the new proposal colours of uniforms for the students of 1.23 lakh government schools in the state will be the same, sources privy to the meeting said on Wednesday. The states 2.5 lakh teachers will also have to wear identical Nehru jackets.

Designers were roped in to design the dresses. Uniforms to 50 lakhs students of elementary and middle schools will be distributed through self-help groups.

Designs for the dress of 38 lakh high school and higher secondary students and jacket for teachers are prepared by separate designers.

The School education minister Vijay Shah had in September announced to introduce uniform dress code for teachers.

He said the idea was to give the teachers a feel that they are on an important duty and to infuse stronger professionalism among them.

In the meeting, school education secretary Deepti Gaur Mukherjee informed the minister about various other initiatives of the department.

Free cycles for students of Class 6 to 9

It is informed that free cycles will be provided to around 6.75 lakh students of class 6th to 9th standards during the next academic session.

The minister told the officials to ensure the availability of furniture in all the school for smooth functioning. A budgetary provision of Rs 25 crore was made for this.

Kunwar Shah also directed the officials to ensure proper security in the girls hostels of the government schools. He said the superintendents and women security guards should be available 24x7 in the hostels.

In the meeting it was also informed that the works to provide proper electric connections to 1800 government schools will be carried out in 2017.
After several infrastructure projects aimed at easing traffic congestion in the city were announced in 2015, the groundwork for the projects started this year.

Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway

Work began on the three major underpasses that would ease the east-west vehicular movement at Rajiv Chowk, Signature Tower crossing and Iffco chowk on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway. Trenching started at the three sites in the first week of December. The construction company has also started barricading these sites. Union Transport minister Nitin Gadkari has set a deadline of 15 months from the day the work formally starts for the completion of the project.

However, the major challenge for the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), highway concessionaire, construction company and authorities would be managing the high volume of traffic and preventing gridlocks during the next two years when construction is in progress.

Anticipating jams at the three major junctions where underpasses would be constructed, the Gurgaon police will soon convene a meeting of officials of the NHAI, expressway concessionaire and operator, and state government departments such as the Huda, PWD and HSIIDC to roll out a traffic diversion and detour plan.

Police said the traffic advisory would be worked out collectively by all stakeholders to ensure smooth traffic at the three intersections for the next 15 months -- till February/March 2017.

Since construction of all three crossings is going to happen simultaneously, the task of managing traffic on these locations becomes a daunting task for about one and a half years. This will be possible by the joint efforts of various departments and agencies. We will roll out a well-thought out traffic advisory for the commuters of this stretch, Sandeep Khirwar, commissioner of police, Gurgaon, said.

The first proposal for the three underpasses project was floated by the NHAI in February 2015. However, there were several changes in the contract conditions and as a result, the work was finally awarded in September this year. However, due to delay in getting land and permission from forest department to cut trees, the work was further delayed.

Dwarka Expressway

The Northern Peripheral Road also known as the Dwarka expressway, which has missed seven deadlines since it was launched in 2006 was designated as a national highway by the union transport ministry. Consequently, the NHAI has started the exercise to connect this road with National Highway 8 at Shiv Murti near Mahipalpur in Delhi. Earlier, the Haryana government and the Delhi government were to get the project completed.

Ashok Sharma, project director, NHAI said the authority is working with Delhi and Haryana governments to ensure the project is completed at the earliest. Land has been identified in Dwarka and Bharthal villages and notifications have also been issued to acquire it, Sharma said.

The NHAI has inspected the proposed section in Delhi and estimated that around 15 acres of private land would be needed. Most of the project land is owned by the PWD of Delhi. The NHAI initiated the process of land acquisition from private owners in April. The authority needs this land to connect a 4.4-km stretch between Shiv Murti and PWD land at Bharthal village.

U-turn at Sirhaul

Another key project in the pipeline is the elevated U-turn at Sirhaul toll plaza. The project has been approved by the NHAI, Huda and other stakeholders. However, the completion of this project depends on the transfer of eight acres of prime government land opposite Ambience Mall.

Yashpal Yadav, Huda administrator, said the authority is finding ways to get this land transferred to the Hdua but it is a complicated process. There are three ways to get this land. Either we pay the cost, which is in hundreds of crores, or get this land on lease. Also, the state can award development rights in lieu of it. We will send the recommendations to the government for a final decision, Yadav said.

Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway

One section of the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Expressway became functional between Manesar and Palwal this year. Considering the importance of the project, the Haryana government allotted the work of the 83-km Manesar-Kundli section to M/s Essel Infraprojects Limited. The construction work for the 53-km Manesar-Palwal section was awarded to another firm - M/s KCC Buildcon Private Limited - Dilip Buildcon Private Limited (JV) in March 2015.

The revised deadline to complete the Manesar-Palwal section was decided as January 2016 and the Kundli-Manesar section by August 2018 but this deadline has been advanced to February 2017.

The rest of the road is expected to be completed in the next one and a half years as the work has been awarded to a new contractor. The project is being overseen by HSIIDC.

Proposed projects

Apart from these projects, the union transport minister announced a slew of measures, which if delivered could help Gurgaon get rid of jams.

A pod taxi project, which will connect Dhaula Kuan and Rajokri on Delhi-Gurgaon border with Rajiv Chowk, and Subash Chowk on Sohna road has been announced by the NHAI. A number of stations have been proposed on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway.

Pod taxi is a pilot project announced by NHAI on the Right of Way (ROW) of Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway.

Gadkari also announced a new access control highway between Delhi and Jaipur, passing through Gurgaon, which will enable commuters to cover the distance in two hours. Gadkari made this announcement on September 11, during his visit to Gurgaon to lay the foundation stone of the underpass project. This highway will cost 16,000 crore and work on it will start from January 2017.

If this project is delivered, a large majority of traffic passing to Gurgaon could shift to this road. The city will see lesser inter-state traffic, particularly of commercial vehicles.



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She maybe a little a late but Priyanka Chopra has finally tried her hand at the mannequin challenge. She made a video her team and posted it on her social media handles on Thursday.

Freezing this moment forever..This is just a part of my India team- cant believe I got them to stop working for 1min! See u in the new year, the 34-year-old wrote with the post.

Freezing this moment forever....This is just a part of my India team...can't believe I got them to stop working for 1 minute! See you in the new year! #Respect #Work #Team #Love A video posted by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on Dec 28, 2016 at 11:24am PST

Priyanka is now off to Goa to celebrate her New Years Eve with friends and family.

On the professional front, she waiting for the release of her debut Punjabi production Sarvann and will be seen in Baywatch starring Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Every year a slew of Hollywood celebs visit India, and rarely do they return disappointed. Last year, superstars such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett and Orlando Bloom, among others, were here and shared how the country charmed them. This year, too, a host of celebrities visited, be it for films, social work, networking or leisure. Heres a round up:

Will Smith

The actor was here in August for a dinner hosted by actor Akshay Kumar at his Mumbai house. It was an intimate dinner, Akki had told us. Actors Varun Dhawan, Ranbir Kapoor, Jacqueline Fernandez, Shraddha Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha, Alia Bhatt, and filmmakers Karan Johar and Rohit Dhawan also attended, and posted photos on social media.

A very rare sighting. @akshaykumar eating phirni  with our hosts for the night, and my fav couple! @twinklerkhanna #aboutlastnight A photo posted by Sonakshi Sinha (@aslisona) on Aug 28, 2016 at 11:10pm PDT

Chris Hemsworth

The adventure enthusiast along with wife, actor Elsa Pataky, took part in a Spanish adventure programme in February, climbing a 18,000 ft mountain, Chantang, in Ladakh. The happy couple also posted pictures from their stay in India. This included a photo of Chris posing with a cow.

Give us a kiss gorgeous A photo posted by Chris Hemsworth (@chrishemsworth) on Feb 9, 2016 at 11:37pm PST

Ian McKellen

The British actor was here as part of a global programme to celebrate Shakespeares works and his influence on culture, education and society, coinciding with his 400th death anniversary in May. The 77-year-old Lord of The Rings actor  who came out of the closet in 1988  spoke on homosexuality, slamming Indias hypocritical stance. It is appalling and ironical that India would use a colonial law to oppress its homosexuals. India needs to grow up. India needs to realise that it doesnt need to follow British laws any more, he had said.

Actor Ian McKellan spoke to Bollywood star Aamir Khan about Indias hypocritical stance on homosexuality.

Ellen Page

The Juno star visited in May to shoot her show, Gaycation, which explores the lives of the LGBT community in various countries. She also caught up with Apurva Asrani, scriptwriter of Bollywood film, Aligarh, that touched upon the subject of homosexuality, and celebrated his dogs birthday. Ellen and her best friend Ian Daniels came home to chat with me about Aligarh and the state of LGBTQ rights in India. I am also one of the guests on the show that shes shooting.She was extremely moved by our film and thought that Aligarh was relevant to the US audience, too. She came out (of the closet) in 2014 and I came out in 2015. It was great chatting with her as we are united by the same cause, Apurva had told us then.

Actor Ellen Page also visited scriptwriter Apurva Asranis house to celebrate his dogs birthday.

Jason Isaacs

The Harry Potter actor shot for the film, Mumbai Hotel, based on 26/11 terror attacks in October. In Mumbai, he also met foster families to understand if India safeguards childrens interests. Im passionate about childrens rights and protection... trying to find a way to give them the childhood they deserve. There are more home-based foster groups than orphanages there. In India, I see that is yet to happen, but also the magnitude of problem is much larger, he was quoted as saying. The British actor also visited the only Indian cafe run by acid attack survivors, in Agra.

ockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">

India stuns me witless. Yesterday we ate here. It's run by magnificent acid attack survivors https://t.co/eVWUovVbcChttps://t.co/729cMiu0A2 pic.twitter.com/CjeNUjfU1l

 Jason Isaacs (@jasonsfolly)

Brendan Fraser

The Mummy fame actor was here in June to shoot for the film, The Field, alongside actor Ronit Roy. Portions of the film were shot in Delhi and Mumbai.

Brendan Fraser shot for a film alongside actor Ronit Roy.

Earlier this year, Daphne Zuniga visited Mumbai in February where she shot for Duane Adlers film, Heartbeat.

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A local court has summoned Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal asking him to appear in person on a complaint alleging that he made defamatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Diphu sub-divisional officer Sadar Deka Barua issued the order on Tuesday and asked Kejriwal to be present on January 30, 2017.

Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council executive member Surjo Rongphar filed a complaint the against the Aam Aadmi Party leader in Diphu court accusing him of making defamatory remarks against the PM on his educational qualifications.

As the Delhi chief minister spoke against Modi ji, so I filed the case against Kejriwal, Rongphar, a local BJP leader, said.

Read| Dont coerce Opposition using CBI, not everyone is Rahul: Kejriwal to PM Modi
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday warned Congress of legal action over its baseless and untrue allegations, including that about Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its chief Amit Shah having links with Gujarat businessman Mahesh Shah, who is being probed for declaring unaccounted income of Rs 13,860 crore.

Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also rejected the Congress charge against Shah, who is one of the directors in a Gujarat bank in which deposits of over Rs 500 crore were made, and asserted that the bank has over 200 branches and it will give explanation about the matter.

Read | Modi should clarify his and Amit Shahs relation with Mahesh Shah: Kejriwal

In a reference to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhis attack on Modi and BJP during his address at the partys 132nd foundation day, he told reporters that the party leaders and spokespersons behave like children and todays Congress does not represent even a grain of its 132 years heritage.

We want to make it clear that our Prime Minister and party president have no links whatsoever with the person by the name of Mahesh Sharma, against whom action is going on. If Congress has any proof, it should talk about it. Otherwise, we will consider taking legal action under the law dealing with levelling of baseless allegations, the law minister said.

Prasad was accompanied by power minister Piyush Goyal, who is also the partys treasurer, as they hit out at the opposition party.

It has become the second nature of Congress to level untrue and baseless allegation, he said.

Attacking it, Prasad said it was rattled by Modis continuous attack on those linked with black money and corruption and it thinks that its attack on him will weaken his fight. Action has been taken against those linked to BJP, he said, citing a case in Madhya Pradesh.

Congress is the biggest patron of the corrupt and corruption. If it thinks that its attack will have any impact on the government, it is wrong. The government will remain unfazed and continue to act against black money and corruption, he said.

Read | Amit Shah sharply criticizes opposition, says demonetisation has upset rivals

The corrupt and those with black money have long been patronised by Congress, he alleged, adding that they now cry before its leadership to save them from the governments action.

I want to ask Congress chief Sonia Gandhi if the childish behaviour of her son and more childish conduct of its spokespersons is being done at her behest, he asked.
The Bombay high court has rejected the plea of 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blast terror convict Rubina Suleman Memon, seeking her release on furlough.

We are not inclined to release the petitioner (Rubina) on furlough as she had been convicted by a Tada court for her involvement in terrorist activities, said a bench of Justice V K Tahilramani and A M Badar in a recent judgement.

Rubina is also sister-in-law of Tiger Memon, believed to be living in Pakistan and one of the prime conspirators of the serial blasts that had rocked the city in March, 1993, claiming 257 lives and injuring more than 700 others.

Rubina was sentenced to life imprisonment along with three other family members by a Mumbai Tada Court in 2006, while her husband Suleman was acquitted due to lack of evidence. Her brother-in-law Yakub was sent to the gallows on terror charges.

Rubina, currently lodged in Punes Yerwada prison, had applied to jail authorities for furlough leave on January 22, 2015. However, her plea was rejected on January 15, 2016. Aggrieved, she filed an appeal which was dismissed in May this year.

Thereafter, she moved the High Court by a writ petition seeking furlough leave, which was rejected last week.

Rubinas lawyer Farhana Shah argued that the three co-accused, who have also been convicted under Tada in the same case, have been released from jail temporary on leave.

They are Sardar Shahwali Khan, who was released on furlough on June 9, 2014, Nasir Abdul Kadar, who was given furlough leave on June 27, 2014 and Isa Abdul Razak Memon, who was also released on furlough on June 10, 2016, Farhana said.

As the three co-accused, who were similarly placed with Rubina in the 1993 bomb blast case, had been given furlough leave, the petitioner should also be given the same facility, i.e furlough leave, Farhana argued.

Additional Public prosecutor H J Dedia submitted that Rubinas application for furlough was rejected under Rule 4(4) of the Prisons (Bombay Furlough and Parole) Rules, 1959.

This Rule states that prisoners whose release is not recommended by Commissioner of Police or District Magistrate on the ground of public peace and tranquillity, shall not be granted furlough.
The ploy of a professional beggar in Tai'an, Shandong province was recently discovered by employees of local rescue station on Dec. 24.

The man was lying down on a skateboard in the street, pretending to be physically disabled, when employees of the rescue center came upon him. The employees offered help, but the beggar refused them. Undeterred, the employees insistently tried to persuade the man to let them help for nearly 90 minutes. Finally, annoyed by the onslaught, the man stood up and said he would quit begging in that spot.

Quickly, many people criticized the beggar for disguising himself as disabled. When the employees brought the man to the rescue center, they discovered that he was from Changsha, Hunan province. He has been begging in Tai'an for many years.

After taking a shower, the man changed into a clean suit. Later, the rescue center sent him home, enjoining him not to beg anymore.
The Congress on Thursday announced that the party will launch a nationwide protest from January 6 on the twin issues of note ban and corruption charges against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Congress will start a three-phase nationwide agitation from January to protest against demonetisation and corruption charges against the Prime Minister. The first phase will start from January 6, said Randeep Singh Surjewala, Congress communication department in-charge.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of taking Rs 65 crore in kickbacks from corporates as the chief minister of Gujarat.

Read | India robbed in the name of achche din: Rahul, Mamata attack Modis demonetisation move

We are asking a simple question: Did you (Modi) take money or not? If not, then why arent you ordering an independent probe into it, asked Surjewala.

He said: Former Chief Minister of Gujarat Suresh Mehta of BJP had said that Mahesh Shah used to visit Modi when he was the Gujarat CM quite often without any restrictions.

Shah declared Rs 13,860 crore black money under the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS).

Why isnt Modiji telling us the truth behind Rs 13,860 crore? Is he doing any probe into it? he said.

Surjewala also said that old currency notes were found in a private car in Maharashtra, which were said to have links with state ministers Pankaja Munde and Subhash Deshmukh.

Is Modi going to tell the people how cash worth Rs 51.50 lakh was seized from Subhas Deshmukhs car? Will there be any probe into this?

He pointed out that complaints were registered against Congress leaders Sachin Pilot and Ashok Gehlot without any proof. Would he probe all these charges? he said.

Surjewala also alleged that the Modi government has imposed economic anarchy through demonetisation.

At least 115 people have died due to demonetisation. The RBI has become the Reverse Bank of India, and in 50 days, rules have changed 135 times.

Unlike what Modi promised, people continue to suffer even after the expiry of 50-day deadline. In fact, it will take at least 7-8 months to re-print the 86 per cent of notes withdrawn from the economy, said Surjewala.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday Prime Minister Narendra Modis demonetisation move bore results, adding that the critical part of the exercise to scrap high-value banknotes was over.

We are extremely grateful to people of India who have supported the move of demonetisation Life insurance, tourism, petroleum consumption, flow of mutual fund investment has increased during this period, Jaitley told reporters.

The Narendra Modi-led government, which has come under criticism after the November 8 demonetisation drive, plans to roll out a campaign to reach out to the masses over the move.

Shortly after a press conference by Union ministers Piyush Goyal and Ravi Shankar Prasad over the results of demonetisation, Jaitley said the gross direct tax collection was now growing at a rate of 14.4% over last year. This growth rate was only 8.3% previous year, he added.

Jaitleys remarks came after the Congress announced that it will launch a nationwide protest from January 6 on the twin issues of note ban and corruption charges against Modi.

The Congress will start a three-phase nationwide agitation from January to protest against demonetisation and corruption charges against the Prime Minister. The first phase will start from January 6, said Randeep Singh Surjewala, Congress communication department in-charge.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has accused Modi of taking Rs 65 crore in kickbacks from corporates when he was the chief minister of Gujarat.

Surjewala alleged the Modi government had imposed economic anarchy through demonetisation.

At least 115 people have died due to demonetisation. The RBI has become the Reverse Bank of India, and in 50 days, rules have changed 135 times.

Unlike what Modi promised, people continue to suffer even after the expiry of 50-day deadline. In fact, it will take at least 7-8 months to re-print the 86% of notes withdrawn from the economy, said Surjewala.

Jaitley said not a single case of unrest had been reported since the demonetisation move. Critical part of remonetisation is now behind us, it will be much better going forward, the finance minister said.
Manipur is witnessing a protracted blockade of its two lifelines  NH2 and NH37  but its residents, though inconvenienced, are not exactly surprised.

The recent history of this landlocked state tucked in the countrys northeast is lined with blockades enforced by different outfits pressing for divergent objectives. The current blockade, by members of the United Naga Council (UNC), of the two national highways that bring in essential goods from other states to Imphal would enter its 59th day on Friday.

The blockades toll has been huge: prices have skyrocketed as shelves in stores across the state mostly remain empty. The authorities are attempting to ease the crisis by bringing in trucks carrying essential items to the city under armed escorts, but supplies still remain at best patchy.

Yet, the UNC  the enforcers of the blockade  are far from being apologetic.

Blockade is the most effective option to make the state government listen to our demands as all national highways to Imphal Valley pass through Naga-dominated areas, UNC general secretary Milan Shimray told HT.

The Imphal Valley, which is home to the majority Meitei community, is surrounded by hill districts where Nagas, Kukis and other tribes reside.

In the absence of railway network, all essentials reach Imphal via the two highways. And blocking them is the easiest way for Naga and Kuki groups to put pressure on the state government or the Centre to address their demands.

Manipur-based activists say the states geography largely dictates the desire to impose blockades. They disrupt life and focuses attention on issues of a region thousands of miles away from New Delhi.

The view has gained further currency in the backdrop of Irom Sharmilas 16-year hunger strike. Her valiant struggle failed in its principal aim: the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, which gives extrajudicial powers to the security forces during counter-insurgency operations.

The blockades, at times, have taken somewhat bizarre dimensions.

In 2011, the Sadar Hills Districthood Demand Committee (SHDDC), an organisation of Kukis  the states third major ethnic community  enforced a blockade demanding the creation of a new Sadar Hills district.

The UNC, opposed to the demand, responded with a tit-for-tat blockade. The UNC blockade stretched for 122 days.

The myriad groups in Manipur have a long list of grievances and consequently, many of them have put their faith on blockades to seek redressal.

In 2005, the state witnessed a total 60 days of highway blockades. It was followed by 97 days the next year, 77 in 2007 and 53 days in 2010.

For records sake, the current blockade by the UNC is in protest against the creation of seven new districts that it says benefits the non-Naga communities.

On Wednesday, the UNC held a consultative meet at Senapati district and decided to continue the blockade till the state government rolls back the decision to create new districts.

Our indefinite blockade will continue. And if the state government and the Centre doesnt address our demands, we will intensify our protest in coming days, the UNCs Milan Shimray said.

As in the past, the current blockade is also resulting in more bad blood.

Frustrated by the scarcity of goods, some unorganised Meitei groups in Imphal Valley carried out counter-blockades, preventing movement of vehicles heading to the hill districts. Nearly 20 vehicles were torched by those opposed to UNC blockade.

They (UNC) are holding an entire state to ransom. This time people got fed up, said Elangbam Johnson, president of United Committee of Manipur, a civil society organisation comprising mostly Meiteis from Imphal Valley.

Non-Nagas are suspicious of UNC intent. Its blockade started close to Ningol Chakouba, the most prominent festival of Meiteis when married daughters come to their parents homes to have specially prepared meals.

It also coincided with Kut, the biggest annual festival of the Kukis, which marks an end to the harvest season.

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The gangrape of a 30-year-old American woman in a Delhi five-star hotel in April 2016  revealed when she returned to India and spoke up on December 6, 2016  has returned the spotlight onto Delhis notorious reputation as a city being unsafe for women.

The American said she was raped by her tour guide, two hotel staffers and two other men.

In 2015, 365 crimes against foreigners in India were registered, of which 147 (40%) were in Delhi, followed by Maharashtra (53) and Uttar Pradesh (33), according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data.

Of these 365 crimes, 271 were against tourists and the rest against foreigners resident in India. The number of crimes, however, was 25% lesser than the 486 registered in 2014.

Source: National Crime Records Bureau

61% of crimes against foreigners were thefts

Of the 365 crimes registered, 223 were theft cases, followed by assault with intent to outrage a womans modesty (23 cases) and forgery (15). There were twelve cases of foreigners being raped in 2015 nationwide, of which three (25%) were in Delhi.

Rape cases in Delhi increased by 284% in five years

The number of rape cases, in general, registered in Delhi rose 284% from 572 cases in 2011 to 2,199 in 2015.

Delhi reported the highest rate of rapes in 201523.7 per 100,000 populationfollowed by Chhattisgarh (12.2) and Madhya Pradesh (11.9), IndiaSpend reported in September 2016.

Read | Worried that I may not get justice, says American woman allegedly raped in Delhi

It is not clear if rapes have increased or more women are reporting rape; it could be either reason or both. The rise in rapes reported can be correlated to the change in rape lawwhich was made more stringent, possibly leading to higher reportingafter the 2012 gangrape of a physiotherapy student, now widely known as Nirbhaya, which led to protests and outrage.

Rapes in Delhi tripled and the reform process promised after the 2012 Nirbhaya case had failed, IndiaSpend reported in August 2016.

Source: National Crime Records Bureau

In its India travel advisory for citizens, the UK government classified Delhi as potentially unsafe for women. Some of the advisories include:

 British women have been the victims of sexual assault in Goa, Delhi, Bangalore and Rajasthan and women travellers often receive unwanted attention in the form of verbal and physical harassment by individuals or groups of men.

 Women travellers should exercise caution when travelling in India even if travelling in a group.

 Do not leave your luggage unattended on trains at all. There has been an increase in handbag snatching in Delhi.

Read | I am scared, alone but I will fight for justice, says US rape victim

(Saha is an MA Gender and Development student at Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex)

This story first appeared on Indiaspend. Indiaspend.org is a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit
Faced with a campaign blitzkrieg by the ruling dispensation, the Congress on Thursday attacked the BJP for not investigating bank accounts of its leaders.

It also dubbed demonetisation as the biggest scam aimed to benefit industrialists and sought to know from PM Narendra Modi the amount of black money recovered.

In Delhi, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala accused senior BJP leaders of hoarding cash and laundering money. In Jammu, party leader Ambika Soni said, The PM should give us an idea of how much black money has been recovered in the process.

The Congress alleged the government did not investigate Gujarat businessman Mahesh Shahs declaration of Rs13,860 crore. It also alleged that after Rs 3 crore cash seized from BJP leaders car in Ghaziabad recently, BJP leader Ashok Monga told the police that the money was sent from the BJPs Delhi headquarters to partys Lucknow office, showing a letter on behalf of Amit Shah.

Attacking Modi, Surjewala said, You talk about digital payments, then why Rs 3 crore in cash was sent to BJPs office in UP?

The Congress added that notebandi had turned out to be deshbandi. Development has come to a standstill. Its a scam that has led to economic instability in the country, Surjewala said.

Soni said, The government should answer the five questions that were raised by Rahul Gandhi and let the country know who were the economists the Prime Minister consulted or was it just a dream he got and implemented, inflicting trouble on 125 crore people.

(With agency inputs)
Manabi Bandopadhyay, the first transgender principal of an Indian college, submitted her resignation on Thursday, bringing down the curtains on a stormy 19-month tenure as the head of Krishnagar Womens College.

The 50-year-old cited indiscipline and lack of cooperation from students and colleagues as the reason for the decision.

All my colleagues went against me. Most of the students, too, were opposed to me. I always strove to restore discipline and an atmosphere conducive to academics in the college that they didnt like. I always got cooperation from local administration, but never got any cooperation from my colleagues and students, a bitter Bandopadhyay said.

I was tired of confronting regular agitations and gherao by students and teachers. I came to this college with new hopes and dreams. But I have no hesitation to concede defeat, she said.

I received the resignation letter from Manabi Bandopadhyay on December 27 and forwarded the same to the state higher education department. They will take a decision, said Sumit Gupta, district magistrate of Nadia. Gupta is also the administrator of the college.
Daaru ne hun chori karta pan vadhare vakhodi kadhva layak ganu chu (I despise alcohol more than theft), screams a hoarding carrying a picture of a young Mahatma Gandhi outside a shopping mall in one of Ahmedabads plush localities.

Just 100 metres away, another hoarding with an aged Gandhi reads, One should not hesitate to implement prohibition at any cost.

These are two of the 13 quotes of the Father of the Nation on prohibition that the Gujarat government has used in black and white billboards across the city to discourage alcoholism ahead of New Year revelries. The move comes a fortnight after passing a harsher prohibition law that entails up to 10 years in jail for just carrying liquor and other penalties and fine on offenders, including cops who fail to implement the law properly.

Hopefully, people will follow the Mahatmas advice, said minister of state for home, Pradeepsinh Jadeja, unveiling special awareness materials with quotes of Gandhi this week.

With the crucial assembly elections next year, the BJP-led government  under pressure from OSS (OBC, SC and ST) Ekta Manch demanding complete prohibition  is leaving no stone unturned to appease these communities. Raids have been conducted on bootleggers and high-profile revellers, including a pre-wedding party in Vadodara.

DGP PP Pandey made it clear that the law would treat everyone equally. According to Ahmedabad police, since December 15, on an average four bootleggers are arrested daily under the provisions of Prevention of Anti-Social Act, which is invoked for repeat offenders.

To ensure a dry New Year, Ahmedabad police will set up 100 check points on December 31 at all entry points and highway stretches housing farmhouses and party venues.

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The results for 2,891 out of 8,624 gram panchayats in Gujarat, which went to polls on December 27, came out on Thursday, following which both BJP and opposition Congress claimed their respective victories.

As soon as the results stared tricking in, at least two incidents of clashes were reported between groups of rival candidates in Vadodara and Banskantha districts.

While the ruling party has hailed their win in the aftermath of demonetisation and attributed it to the village development policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Congress dismissed it as tall claims of BJP and the victory of Rahul Gandhi over Modi.

Gram panchayat polls are not fought on party symbols as candidates need to fight on their personal capacity and each voter is required to cast two votes, one to elect sarpanch and another for electing panchayat member for his ward.

Votes are being counted manually as EVMs were not used in polls.

Till evening, counting is over for 2,891 gram panchayats, both for members as well as for (the posts of) sarpanch. Since counting is done manually, the process would go on till late night, a State Election Commission official said.

BJP has claimed 80 per cent of elected representatives are associated with the party.

Out of those elected till now, 80 per cent representatives have the BJPs support. In coming days, BJP will organise sarpanch conclaves across state to establish better coordination, state unit BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya said.

He said the poll outcome is the victory of BJP after demonetisation and of policies of village development adopted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Congress said 70 per cent elected sarpanchs are associated with the party some way or the other.

Around 70 per cent sarpanchs elected today were directly or indirectly associated with Congress and its ideology. Its very clear that BJP has lost this election. We are surprised about BJPs tall claims, state Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki said at a press conference.

He said rural voters are not happy with BJP, mainly because of the Centres demonetisation move.

It was a fight between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi and it was Rahulji who came out victorious. Rural voters rejected BJP mainly because the note ban decision, which has crippled rural economy, he added.

In the polling held in 8,624 village panchayats across for the election of members as well as sarpanchs on Tuesday, about 80.12 per cent voter turnout was recorded.

Around 1.20 lakh candidates were in fray for 53,116 wards, whereas 26,800 candidates contested 8,527 seats of sarpanchs.
The students of IIT Madras received a rude shock on Thursday morning when they found the institutes website hacked and pro-Pakistan messages posted on it.

The website apparently was hacked by one Faisal 1337x, who put the photo of the famous joker from Batman movie Dark Knight in the garb of McDonalds mascot Ronald McDonald on its page.

A message posted on the page read Pakistan Zindabad and You dont know the power of Pakistan hackers.

I came to know sometime in the morning from students that the site was hacked, IIT Madras spokesperson Venkatraman told IANS.

The site overall worked fine, except the hacked pages, he added.

The pages were restored after some time, and started working as usual.

Read| Yahoo breaks its own record: Suffers worlds biggest hack, 1 billion affected

Read| Legion: Meet the hackers who broke into Rahul, Barkha Dutts Twitter accounts
India has cautioned its nationals to be careful while travelling in Germany in the wake of the truck attack at a Christmas market here in which 12 people were killed and nearly 50 others injured.

The Indian embassy here in its advisory to the nationals also asked them to avoid crowded tourist areas during the holiday season.

During the Holiday Season all Indian Nationals are advised due caution while travelling in Germany, particularly in view of the incident at the Berlin Christmas Market on December 19, 2016.

It is advised to avoid crowded tourist areas during the holiday season, the advisory said.

On the evening of December 19, a truck ploughed through a crowded Christmas market killing and injuring several holiday shoppers, an attack which was claimed by the Islamic State.
(Xinhua) 13:16, December 29, 2016

Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada visited the notorious war-linked Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Thursday, a day after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned from his non-apology trip to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Inada said she put down "Defense Minister Tomomi Inada" as her name in the visitor's log of the shrine, though meanwhile claiming that she went there as "a citizen of this country."

This was Inada's first visit to the notorious shrine since she entered Abe's Cabinet in early August. Her visit to Djibouti in Africa this August prevented the hawkish figure from visiting it on the 71st anniversary of the end of World War II on Aug. 15.

Inada, known for a close ally of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a supporter of revamping Japan's pacifist constitution, regularly visited the notorious Yasukuni Shrine on the Aug. 15 anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II before assuming the post of defense minister.

Earlier, Masahiro Imamura, Japan's disaster reconstruction minister, visited the notorious shrine on Wednesday, shortly after Abe attended a memorial at Pearl Harbor.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Wednesday that China is firmly opposed to the visit to the Yasukuni Shrine by Masahiro Imamura.

"We once again seriously urge Japan to squarely face and deeply reflect upon the history of invasion and deal with the issue with a responsible attitude to win the trust of its Asian neighbors and the international community through concrete acts," Hua said.

The notorious Tokyo war shrine, which honors 14 Class-A convicted war criminals among 2.5 million Japanese war dead from the WWII, is regarded as a symbol of the past Japanese militarism.

The Japanese government billed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor as a tour of reconciliation. However, except to offer his "sincere and everlasting condolences" to the souls of the Americans killed by troops of the Japanese imperial empire, no apology from Abe was issued.

As many as 2,403 Americans were killed, about 20 U.S. vessels were sunk or damaged and over 300 U.S. aircraft were damaged or destroyed when more than 350 Japanese warplanes launched stealth attacks on Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.

Japan's Asian neighbors have called on Abe to visit places in Asia which suffered heavily from Japan's barbaric militarism during the war.
Love and desperation drove Mumbai engineer Hamid Ansari to illegally cross over to Pakistan from Afghanistan in late 2012 leading to his arrest and subsequent imprisonment in the neighbouring country.

Four years later, the desperation to hear a word from their son has prompted Hamids parents -- Fauzia Ansari and Nehal Ansari -- to pitch a tent in the citys protest hotspot, Jantar Mantar, and knock on the Prime Ministers door.

The last time I spoke to him was on November 10, 2012 when he told me that he will be back in Mumbai by November 12 and was looking forward to take up a teaching assignment, Fauzia said.

Little did she know that, egged on by a group of people in Pakistan who may have trapped him, Hamids false bravado would plunge the family in a state of despair, with virtually no glimmer of hope.

During this period, Fauzia has written to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, met Union external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj five times, so much so that she recognises me even from a distance.

Allow Hamid to talk to us from prison. We have not spoken to him for over four years now. Please allow him consular access denied to him till date, reads her letter to Sharif.

Sushmaji has been extremely cooperative. Our last meeting was in August this year. She assured us that the government was pursuing the case, Fauzia said, adding that the family would submit a memorandum to the PMO.

Hamid, 31, had entered Pakistan reportedly to meet a girl he had befriended online, who was being forcibly married off by her family, said Fauzia, a lecturer with a Mumbai college.

It was only in January this year that Fauzia and Nehal came to know from Pakistan governments submission in the Peshawar High Court, responding to Habeas Corpus petition, that Hamid was in military custody.

He was arrested soon after he entered Pakistan and was tried by a Pakistani military court, which awarded him three years of imprisonment.

Since he has been in jail since 2012, he has served this sentence already. But there is no clarity about when he will be released. What is intriguing is that a woman Zeenat Shehzadi, who tried to help Hamid, seems to have been targeted by agencies there. She has gone missing, Fauzia said.
As the deadline for holding 500 and 1000 rupee banknotes comes to an end, Indians travelling abroad will get a new window to deposit old ban notes.

A top source in the government told Hindustan Times, In the last cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has himself taken a call on this specific issue. The Reserve Bank of India will soon issue a new notification to allow Indian travellers from abroad deposit old currencies.

Read | Cabinet clears ordinance to punish people holding banned notes beyond deadline

According to RBI rules, an Indian on a temporary visit abroad may bring back money amounting to Rs 25,000 from any place, except Nepal and Bhutan currency.

The same cap is applicable for any person resident outside India, not being a citizen of Pakistan and Bangladesh and also not a traveller coming from and going to Pakistan and Bangladesh, and visiting India may bring Indian currency notes up to Rs 25,000 while entering only through an airport.

People will be allowed to return from abroad money in old Indian currency up to the stipulated cap. If they have hoarded more money, then no body can help them. As it is, they are not expected to hoard Indian currency abroad, said a minister.

The proposed move comes amid large scale appeals and concern of Indians settled abroad and also those who have gone for a long, overseas tour.

The RBI notification is expected in a day or two, after the President promulgates the new ordinance that slaps a penalty on those with the scrapped banknotes after December 30, sources said.

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Iraqi security forces on Thursday began the second phase of their offensive against Islamic State militants in Mosul, pushing into some eastern districts where the battle has been in deadlock for nearly a month.

Thousands of federal police troops who redeployed from Mosuls southern outskirts two weeks ago also pushed into a handful of southeastern districts, state television reported.

This is the second phase of the operation to liberate Mosul conducted by the special forces, the federal police and us on this front, general Nejm Jabouri, a senior army commander, said in a village just north of Mosul.

Since the offensive to capture Mosul began nine weeks ago, counter-terrorism forces have retaken a quarter of the city, the militants last major stronghold in Iraq, but their advance has been slow and punishing. They entered a planned operational refit earlier this month, the first significant pause of the campaign.

The second phase of liberating the left bank in Mosul was launched, and our forces began advancing toward Al-Quds neighbourhood, staff lieutenant general Abdulghani al-Assadi, a senior officer in Iraqs counter-terrorism service, said.

An officer from an elite interior ministry unit on Thursday said it was advancing alongside counter-terrorism forces in Mosuls Intisar district, where army troops advised by US forces had made little progress.

Members of Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation Forces fire towards Islamic State militant positions in west of Mosul, Iraq. (Reuters photo)

Our troops now are advancing. In the first five or 10 minutes they took 500 metres. Just now they are starting to shoot, the officer said.

A plume of white smoke, likely from an air strike, rose from a southeastern district on Thursday morning while at the northern front heavy gunfire was audible and a suicide car bomb was disabled by the Iraqi army before reaching its target.

Deeper US engagement

The battle for Mosul involving 100,000 Iraqi troops, members of the Kurdish security forces and Shiite militiamen, is the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003 which toppled Saddam Hussein.

US commanders have said in recent weeks that US military advisers, part of an international coalition fighting Islamic State, will embed more extensively with Iraqi forces. Some of them were seen behind the front lines on Thursday, watching over the operations.

The coalition bombed the last remaining bridge connecting the eastern and western parts of Mosul late on Monday in a bid to make it more difficult for Islamic State to redeploy and resupply its fighters across the Tigris River.

The enemy is currently isolated inside the left (eastern) bank of Mosul, Yahia Rassol, a military spokesman, said on state TV. In the coming days, Iraqi forces will liberate the entire left bank of Mosul and after that we will tackle the right.

Highlights Mosul, now the last Iraqi city in which IS still holds significant territory, is split by the Tigris River. Iraqi forces north and south of Mosul had remained outside the city, with the fighting being carried out by Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service inside. IS overran large areas of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained much of the territory. Its fall might end the groups ambition to rule over millions in a self-styled caliphate, but the fighters can still mount a traditional insurgency in Iraq, and plot attacks on the West.

The United Nations has previously expressed concern that the destruction of Mosuls bridges could obstruct the evacuation of civilians. Up to 1.5 million are thought to remain inside.

Mosul, the largest city held by Islamic State anywhere across its once vast territorial holdings in Iraq and neighbouring Syria, has been held by the group since its fighters drove the US-trained Iraqi army out in June, 2014.

Its fall would probably spell the end for the groups ambition to rule over millions of people in a self-styled caliphate, but the fighters could still mount a traditional insurgency in Iraq, and plot or inspire attacks on the West.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who previously pledged to retake Mosul by the end of the year, said this week it would take another three months to rout Islamic State in Iraq.

Read: Iraqi PM says three months needed to remove Islamic State from the country

The operation has been slowed by concern to avoid casualties among civilians, who have mostly stayed in their homes rather than flee as was initially expected.
Over the past three years, the month of December has twice been dry in the picturesque Kashmir valley, a phenomenon that has worried environmentalists and disappointed tourists.

This year, it is for the sixth time since 1993 when Kashmir saw a dry, or almost dry, month of December.

Apart from a brief spell of snow or light rains on December 11 and 12 this year, local residents and tourists have been looking ahead to snow in the mountains and plains. In Kashmir, the harshest period of winter starts from December 21 and ends by the end of January.

Yashpal Sharma, weather officer at the Met office, said that anything above 100mm of rain or snow in the month of December in Srinagar station would be considered heavy precipitation.

Quoting records, he said there was record snowfall and rains of 209mm in December in 1985, followed by 185mm in 1986, 244mm in 1990, and 154mm in 1994.

But the years 1993, 1998, 1999, 2005, 2014 and 2016 have seen dry Decembers.

Sharma said there was moderate to good snowfall or rains in Decembers in only four years over the last 17 years.

We had 43mm of rain or snow in 2010, 59mm in 2008, 72.2mm in 2006, and 59.4mm in 2003. For the rest of the years, it has been very low or negligible, Sharma said.

Prof Shakil A Romshoo, head of Kashmir Universitys department of earth sciences, told HT that the percentage of snowfall in Kashmir valley was decreasing over the years.

If we see the long term trends of precipitation in the past 130 years in Kashmir, there is no change in overall precipitation. But we are witnessing a decrease in overall snowfall and an increase in rains, particularly during winters, he said.

Romshoo attributed it to the changing climate across the globe. We are now getting extreme temperatures. The data indicates that minimum temperatures have increased and this increase is not allowing rain to fall as snow. In fact some researchers suggest that we may get 30%-70% less snowfall by the end of this century, he said.
The government has made the holding of more than 10 junked Rs 500/1000 notes a penal offence punishable with a minimum Rs 10,000 fine, but the harsher four-year jail term has been dropped.

The Specified Bank Notes Cessation of Liabilities Ordinance, approved on Wednesday by the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, allows individuals to hold no more than 10 notes of the old currency. It allows 25 such currencies to be held by research scholars.

Top sources said the ordinance, which will be sent to the President for his assent shortly, will come into effect from December 31.

It provides for making the holding of old 1,000- and 500-rupee notes after March 31 a criminal offence that will attract a fine of Rs 10,000 or five times the cash held, whichever is higher.

Furnishing wrong information while depositing the old currency between January 1 and March 31 -- a window provided only for exigencies -- will attract a fine of Rs 5,000 or five times the amount, whichever is higher.

The ordinance also provides for amending the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act to provide legislative support for extinguishing the demonetised banknotes that are not returned.

Read: After note ban, KYC-like norms likely for banking staff to curb malpractices

The 50-day window for depositing the old notes in bank accounts and post offices expires on December 30.

While the high-denomination currency ceased to be a legal tender from midnight of November 8, 2016, a mere notification was not thought to be enough to end the central banks liability and avoid future litigations.

Currency notes carry RBIs promise to pay the bearer the amount of the value of the note, a pledge that can be nullified only by legislation after giving due opportunity to everyone to return old notes.

Sources said the proposal for a four-year jail term for anyone possessing large number of demonetised currency after March 31, 2017 was not approved.

The ordinance, which will have to be converted into proper legislation by passing of a law in Parliament within six months, makes possession, transfer or receiving an amount of over Rs 10,000 in the now-demonetised 500 and 1,000-rupee notes a punishable offence.

Sources said while the deadline for the deposit of old currency in bank or post office accounts expires on Friday, time till March 31 is available for doing so at select RBI counters with stiff conditions. This facility is for people who were abroad, armed forces personnel posted in remote areas or others who can give valid reasons for not being able to deposit the cancelled notes at banks till December 30.

Read: Note ban effect not adverse, sharp rise in tax collection, says FM Arun Jaitley

While announcing the demonetisation of the old currency on November 8, the government had allowed holders to either exchange them or deposit in bank and post office accounts.

In 1978, a similar Ordinance was issued to end the governments liability after Rs 1,000, Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 notes were demonetised by the Morarji Desai-led government.

Sources said the legal amendments are needed every time the government decides to scrap any legal tender to put an end to its promissory note.

Of the Rs 15.4 lakh crore worth of currency that was scrapped, about Rs 14 lakh crore has been deposited in banks or exchanged.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation on New Years eve, a day after the deadline for depositing scrapped notes expires. This will be his second television address in as many months, the first was the demonetisation announcement.

On December 31, Modi, said sources, was expected to thank the people again for bearing hardships brought in by the recall of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes that triggered a cash crunch and a bitter war with the Opposition. He could also unveil a roadmap to push cashless economy.

This fashion of reducing any talk of corruption to politics is a dangerous trap. It creates a cover for many others guilty of the same to get away with it. But, this doesnt mean I condone corruption in politics, Modi told India Today magazine in an interview on Thursday.

Read: Demonetisation forced black money into the open, claims PM Modi

The Opposition has been unsparing in its criticism of the move, which in one stroke wiped out 86% of the cash in circulation.

It has accused Modi of helming the biggest scam in Indias history and unleashing economic emergency. Some of parties have even demanded Modis resignation over continuing cash chaos. While announcing demonetisation, the Prime Minister had sought 50 days to bring things back to normal.

You must understand that we took the decision on demonetisation not for some short-term windfall gain, but for a long-term structural transformation, Modi said, describing demonetisation as a watershed moment.

The governments objective was to rid the economy and society of the menace of black money and the ills brought by it, he said. India was close to being Swachh from all forms of filth.

Brushing aside the oppositions criticism, Modi said Indias 1.25 billion citizens welcomed the move, understood it and supported it even in the face of great personal difficulties.

Read: On changing note ban guidelines, Modi says difference between policy, strategy

Note ban had a crippling impact on dangerous and highly damaging illegal activities, such as human trafficking, and the narcotics trade as well, he said.

The Prime Minister took on the Congress, which is leading the Opposition charge. I pity some of our opponents, especially the Congress leadership, for the desperation they have been exhibiting. On the one hand, they say I took this decision for political dividends, and on the other, they say people have been troubled and are deeply unhappy. How can the two go together?

Modi was also critical of Manmohan Singh who said demonetisation was monumental mismanagement and organised loot.

Read: Digital transactions not short-term substitute for cash payments, says Modi

It is interesting that the words monumental mismanagement come from a leader who has been at the helm of Indias economic journey for around 45 years -- from being the chief economic adviser to the DEA (department of economic affairs) secretary, RBI governor, planning commission deputy chairman, finance minister and prime minister -- all the while during which large sections of our society have continued to live in poverty and deprivation, Modi said.

The Prime Minister also defended frequent changes in guidelines by seeking to make a distinction between niti (policy) and ran-niti (strategy). The changes were made to stay ahead of the people trying to exploit the loopholes.

Following the November 8 announcement, the government and the Reserve Bank of India have changed the guidelines at least 60 times.
All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi and four legislators of his party, who included his brother, were acquitted by a court in Telangana on Thursday in a case related to demolition of a mosque 11 years ago.

A court in Sangareddy town acquitted the Lok Sabha member from Hyderabad Asaduddin Owaisi, his brother Akbaruddin Owaisi, and four state legislators Ahmed Pasha Khadri, Mumtaz Ahmed Khan and Muazzam Khan. The five were booked by the police on March 16, 2005 for obstructing officials from demolishing a mosque to facilitate road extension at Muttangi village.

Asaduddin surrendered before the court on January 21, 2013, and was sent to jail after the court dismissed his petition for cancellation of the non-bailable warrant pending against him.

The AIMIM chief was later granted bail in the case.

Reacting to Thursdays court order, Asaduddin asked if the Congress party, which was in power during undivided Andhra Pradesh, will apologise for booking the false case.

He tweeted that the mosque was demolished without following due process of law.
A month after the terrorist attack near the 16 Corps headquarters in Nagrota near Jammu, intelligence agencies have indicated that the three Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) fidayeen had infiltrated the Line of Control (LoC) in Poonch sector the night before and carried out the November 29 strike with local help. Seven Indian Army personnel, including two officers, died in the attack.

Investigators have not been able to identify the terrorists as they were neither carrying mobile phones nor global positioning system (GPS) devices. They have an eyewitness account, however, of three persons in police uniforms crossing over the LoC in Poonch the night before. Intelligence agencies suspect that the attackers were taken to their target by local supporters of the Pakistan-based terror group in a vehicle. Efforts are on to identify local JeM supporters.

There is no link-up between the tunnel found by BSF near International Border in Samba sector the day after attack and the Nagrota attackers.The attackers have been identified belonging to JeM on the basis of pamphlets recovered from the bodies, said a senior official.

Even though the LoC infiltration has gone down with the onset of winter, 2016 recorded a three- fold increase in Pakistani intruders in Jammu and Kashmir as compared to the past years. There has been no firing on the LoC or the border after new Pakistani chief General Qamar Jawed Bajwa took over from Raheel Sharif on November 29.

Even though there is less snow on high mountain passes astride the LoC, not many terrorists are waiting to infiltrate due to severe cold, said a senior official.

Although Indian security forces are maintaining an alert posture on the LoC, New Delhi is diplomatically playing a patient game, waiting for Pakistan to cease terrorism from across the border as a precursor to any bilateral dialogue. While the new Russia-China-Pakistan group on Afghanistan is a matter of concern to India, it is also worried over the beginning of Chinese construction activity in Occupied Kashmir as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday dismissed talk of the government lobbying with an agency for better ratings.

There is no question the government trying to influence anybody, Naidu said when he was asked about the matter.

Read | How India lobbied Moodys for a ratings upgrade, but failed

He, however, said such ratings are based on the information made available to these agencies.

What is wrong if any department or ministries has made efforts to provide information available to them? he asked.

Earlier this week, documents reviewed by Reuters revealed India criticised Moodys ratings methods and pushed aggressively for an upgrade, but the US-based agency declined to budge citing concerns over the countrys debt levels and fragile banks.

In letters and emails written in October, the finance ministry questioned Moodys methodology, saying it was not accounting for a steady decline in the Indias debt burden in recent years. It said the agency ignored countries levels of development when assessing their fiscal strength.

Rejecting those arguments, Moodys said Indias debt situation was not as rosy as the government maintained and its banks were a cause for concern, the correspondence seen by Reuters showed.
As the Madras high court cast doubts on the cause behind sudden death of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa on Thursday, Union information and broadcasting minister M Venkaiah Naidu said there was no reason to disbelieve doctors on the matter.

The matter is sub judice and (I) should not make a comment on that. But I dont have reasons to disbelieve the cause (of death) given by the doctor, Naidu said in New Delhi.

Sharing peoples doubts over the circumstances leading to the death of Jayalalithaa, a Madras high court judge hinted he may order exhumation of her body on a plea seeking a high-level judicial probe into the secrecy preceding her demise.

The public should know what has happened, justice S Vaidyanathan said, issuing notices to the Central government, Prime Ministers office and the state government, among others.

His observations came when the bench, also comprising justice V Parthiban, was hearing the PIL filed by an AIADMK worker PA Joseph seeking a probe by an inquiry commission or a fact-finding committee into the death of Jayalalithaa.

After the demise, everybody has a right to question. I personally have a doubt. One day it was told that she is walking, another day you said that she will come out and suddenly what happened. Even with regard to the health of late chief minister MGR, video was released, justice Vaidyanathan said.

Persisting further, he said, Even relations were not allowed to see and they are also not before the court now. I personally find in case if I have doubt I may order exhumation of the body of deceased.

Advocate general Muthukumaraswamy, however, contended there was no mystery behind the AIADMK supremos death.

The bench recorded the acceptance of notice by the counsel for the Union government on behalf of the Prime Ministers Office, the ministries of home, law and parliamentary affairs and CBI, and posted the matter for further hearing on January 9. The AG accepted notice on behalf of the state government.

The bench also issued notice to the Apollo Hospitals returnable by January 9.

The PIL sought a commission comprising retired Supreme Court judges or a fact-finding committee to look into the questionable incidents, including Jayalalithaas sudden hospitalisation, reported recovery and finally the cardiac arrest resulting in her death on December 5.

It listed the sequence of events since Jayalalithaas admission to Apollo Hospitals in Chennai on September 22 and claimed that the secrecy preceding her death gave rise to grave doubts in the minds of the people.
Film ratings by critics removed from platform as low ratings seen as hurting domestic movie industry

(Global Times) 13:23, December 29, 2016

The professional ratings and reviews of some domestic films have been removed from an online ticket platform amid accusations that low ratings would harm China's movie industry.

The professional reviews on the recent domestic films such as The Great Wall, See You Tomorrow, and Railroad Tigers, on Maoyan, an online ticket selling app, could not be seen on Wednesday, with only the ratings from the public left on the site. The movies were poorly received by critics, especially the blockbuster The Great Wall, a work of China's iconic director Zhang Yimou.

Officials from the State Administration of Press Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) had talked to Maoyan and also the film review platform Douban over the low rating of domestic films on Tuesday, the Caijing magazine quoted 36kr.com as saying.

The SAPPRFT could not be reached for comment as of press time.

There are criticisms about the low ratings, accusing them of harming the ecosystem of Chinese movies. Those criticisms also noted that some new media also published malicious reviews to earn attention and profit.

The professional rating of The Great Wall and See You Tomorrow on Maoyan was 4.9 and Railroad Tigers was 5.2, while the public reviews are respectively 8.4, 7.8 and 8.5.

However, some netizens also pointed out that the reviews from the professionals should be viewed with tolerance, and film makers should welcome all kinds of reviews to improve their movies.
Army chief-designate lieutenant general Bipin Rawat expects support and cooperation from the two generals superseded by the government to elevate him to the top position, as uncertainty looms over the senior officers next move.

In promoting Rawat, who takes over as army chief on December 31, the claims of lieutenant generals Praveen Bakshi and PM Hariz were ignored.

They have been cooperating all along and I think they have been most supportive thus far and I expect the same in future, said Rawat in his first interview after being named as general Dalbir Singhs successor.

Bakshi and Hariz were commissioned in December 1977 and June 1978, while Rawat joined the army in December 1978. Had the government gone by seniority, Bakshi would have been the next chief. But Rawats experience in Kashmir and the Northeast tipped the scales in his favour.

Read: Lt Gen Bipin Rawats Kashmir experience gave him the edge

On the seniority principle being abandoned, Rawat said it was the governments call and we should all abide by the decision.

Both generals Bakshi and Hariz have been good friends and I have lot of respect for them. But since the government has taken a decision, it is with humility I accept this responsibility and I will do my best. He said he was as surprised as others when the announcement was made.

Theres talk in the army that the supersession may have created an intra-service rift. Rawat is from infantry while Bakshi and Hariz are from mechanised forces.

Asked if he was inheriting a divided army, Rawat said his perception was different.

The army has had tremendous successes all along and divided armies dont succeed. Whatever we have done, whatever achievements we have had all this has happened because of operating in a synergised manner.

Read: Eight things you need to know about new army chief Bipin Rawat

Rawat, who was commissioned into 5/11 Gorkha Rifles, said all arms and services were assigned equally important roles and as long as the army functioned as a team, it would remain an efficient force.

The general, who has had three stints in Kashmir, said the situation in the Valley was dynamic and a status quo mentality wouldnt work. You have to seek status changeA renewed thrust will be given to all issues after I visit Kashmir and interact with the men who are operating on the ground under difficult conditions.

Rawat takes over as army chief at a time when the force has stepped up efforts to meet deficiencies ranging from assault rifles and body armour to high-end artillery guns and air defence systems.

Read: How Lt Gen Rawat changed the face of UN peacekeeping in conflict-hit Congo

He said modernising mechanised forces, artillery, air defence systems, the armys aviation wing and improving night-fighting capabilities would be his top priorities.

Priorities have already been spelt out by general Dalbir Singh and I think with the governments support, we are moving in the right direction.

He also backed creating the post of chief of defence staff, saying its a good idea to integrate the defence services at the highest level but its the governments call.

After the Kargil war with Pakistan in 1999, a government-appointed panel recommended the appointment of a CDS to provide single-point military advice to the countrys leadership.
Continuing its attack on the Centre against demonetisation, the Congress on Thursday alleged that the exercise was undertaken to divert the attention of opposition parties from the charges of personal corruption against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

However, the party also stated not to read much into TMC chief Mamata Banerjee and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi holding a joint press conference on the issue on December 27.

Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmad said the party wanted an impartial probe and sought to know why was Modi afraid to face an inquiry.

When allegations of corruption were levelled against Sheila Dikshit by the BJP, she had clearly stated that she was ready for any probe to bring out the truth. So, why is Narendra Modi shying away from investigation? We want an impartial probe, he said.

Read| Read my lips Ive information on PM Modis corruption: Rahul Gandhi

Ahmad alleged that the entire demonetisation move was directed to divert the attention of the opposition parties from the charges of the prime ministers personal corruption.

What has happened in the name of demonetisation is the role reversal of Robin Hood. About Rs 1,40,000 crore owned by some industrialists have been written off, while the money of the poor is stuck in the banks. Why is the Modi government not waiving the loans of poor farmers as the Congress had done during the UPA regime, he asked.

The Congress leader also alleged that the RBI had compromised with its autonomy as regards the demonetisation drive.

Read| Demonetisation, GST to transform India, NPAs key risk: RBI

RBI was supposed to be an autonomous institution. It has undoubtedly compromised on its autonomy, he said.

On the recent press conference which saw Mamata Banerjee and Rahul Gandhi sharing a dias, the Congress declined to comment on the Narada and Saradha scams, but said there was no need to read much into joint address.

There is nothing to read much into it. Many political parties have come together on the issue of demonetisation. And on this issue, both the TMC and the Congress are on the same page, Congress general secretary and national spokesperson Shakeel Ahmad said.

Ahmad, who had served as the partys observer during the 2011 West Bengal Assembly polls, said, We are running a government in Bihar as a coalition partner of the JD(U), but Nitish Kumar had earlier supported demonetisation. So, does it mean that our alliance doesnt exist? The same logic applies to Bengal as regards the relationship between the Congress and the TMC.

He also refused to give a reply to the question on why the Congress was willing to align with the TMC on demonetisation and black money when the partys Bengal unit has accused the TMC of being involved in the Narada and Saradha scams.

Our fight is against the personal corruption of Narendra Modi. There are several chief ministers in India who have corruption cases and allegations against them. We are not here to talk about them, said the Congress leader.

Incidentally, Ahmad at the press conference was seated beside leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly and senior Congress leader Abdul Mannan whose PIL in the Supreme Court led to the CBI investigation in the Saradha scam.

Ahmad said the party had not yet decided to hold any joint protest with the TMC on the issue of demonetisation.

His comments came only two days after Banerjee, along with Rahul Gandhi and leaders of other regional parties, sought to put up a united face against demonetisation by demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The latest thaw in the ties comes as the Congress and the Left Front had struck up an alliance for this years West Bengal Assembly election, which Banerjee had termed as unethical and immoral.

The West Bengal chief minister on Wednesday extended her warm wishes and greetings to the members of the Congress on the partys 132nd foundation day.
Comparing the Opposition to an asura who tries to disturb peace during a yagna, NDA managers lashed out at them while hailing the success of demonetisation.

As the scrapping of high-value bank notes completed 50 days, information and broadcasting minister Venkaiah Naidu claimed the move improved cashless transactions without affecting agriculture.

He also took potshots at the Opposition, saying, Some asuras always try to disturb peace during yagna (demonetisation).

He added, India has changed but the Congress has not changed, while claiming that despite demonetisation, rabi crops were sown in 573.42 lakh hectares, which is higher than the average sowing for the past five years at 539.06 lakh hectare.

Naidu dubbed the note ban an effective anti-scam vaccine and said demonetisation was an anti-corruption plan as per their 2014 mandate.

He assured that the cash situation, a major area of concern for the common man, would improve from January.

The minister also highlighted that cashless transactions had jumped by 30% and insurance premiums, foreign exchange from tourists and arrival of foreign tourists had witnessed a sharp rise.

His cabinet colleague, agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh, underplayed Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhis demand for a bonus on Rabi crops and a farm loan waiver, saying Gandhi was frustrated for not being promoted as the party president.

Adding to the tirade against the Opposition, Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad brushed aside the Congress allegations of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shahs links with a Gujrati businessman and said the Congress was rattled by Modis continuous attack on black money.

The Congress is the biggest patron of the corrupt and corruption. I want to ask Congress chief Sonia Gandhi if the childish behaviour of her son and more childish conduct of its spokespersons is being done at her behest, Prasad asked.
On the eve of the new year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation through public broadcaster Doordarshan.

Sources said that Modi will talk about the support of the people for his ambitious scheme of scrapping high-value currency to drain black money from the economy.

He might also announce further steps, including sops to ease a nationwide cash crunch and a crackdown on properties registered in fake names.

On November 8, PM Modi had taken the nation by surprise as he announced the scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes. He had set a deadline till December 30 for people to deposit old notes in bank accounts, a move that was widely criticised by his political rivals.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had even levelled charges of personal corruption against Modi during a political rally in the PMs home state Gujarat.

In the new year, the political tussle over demonetisation is set to enter a new phase.

The ruling BJP has planned a long series of rallies and campaign programmes to tell people the benefits of a cashless economy.

The Opposition, eyeing a united bloc and a possible alliance against the BJP, may hold joint rallies across states.

While many Opposition parties have been critical of the move, they have so far restricted themselves to individual protest programmes.

But after the meeting and press conference of eight parties in New Delhi Tuesday, plans are afoot to hold four major rallies in as many corners of the country.

The blueprint of a united protest was sketched during the Oppositions meeting where Rahul Gandhi, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and others were present.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, spearheading the governments aggressive campaign on demonetisation, has a packed schedule. He will be in Lucknow on January 2, Tirupati in January 3 and Patna on January 5.

While he will be going there for official engagements, he is likely to give further push to cashless economy, said a source.

Later, he will go to Bangalore on January 8 and his home state Gujarat on January 9.

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Industries and businesses will have a free hand to pay employees their salary by cheque or direct bank transfer rather than cash on the next payday.

President Pranab Mukherjee promulgated the ordinance to amend the Payment of Wages Act on Wednesday evening as proposed by the Union cabinet last week. The ordinance comes into force with immediate effect.

The law  which currently covers those earning a monthly salary of Rs 18,000 or less  had mandated that employees be paid in cash only. It was amended during Emergency, in 1976, to give employers the option of crediting the salary into the employees bank account or pay by cheque.

But this could be done only if the employer had a written authorisation from each worker. If there were employees who preferred to receive the money in cash, the employer could not, say, pay by cheque.

The ordinance cleared by Rashtrapati Bhavan removes the requirement of obtaining written authorisation from workers.

Labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya had introduced a bill, on the lines of the ordinance, in the Lok Sabha on December 15, a day before the Winter Session came to an end.

A similar choice extended to its employees too had already been withdrawn by the government, curiously on the basis of a February cabinet decision that it had been sitting on. Earlier this month, for instance, the home ministry told the 42 employees who drew their salary in cash to provide their bank account details.

A government official said the amendment was conceived to encourage digital transactions and would help reduce the demand for cash by employers for disbursal of salaries. Many had complained earlier this month about the difficulties they faced to pay employees in cash.

Last week, an official statement had claimed that the amendment would ensure that minimum wages were paid to employees and their social security rights could be protected.

Thus the employers can no longer under-quote the number of employees employed by them in their establishments to avoid becoming a subscriber to the EPFO or ESIC schemes, the statement said.

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Pune Police have arrested a Bengaluru-based friend of the 23-year-old woman software engineer, who was stabbed to death barely metres away from her office on the outskirts of the city last Friday, after he allegedly admitted to his role in the crime.

Police officials involved in the investigation said Santosh Kumar, who was picked up from Bengaluru and brought to Pune on Monday for further questioning, admitted his role in the crime on Wednesday.

During the interrogation, Santosh Kumar gave us information related to the crime. We have now arrested him, additional superintendent of police Rajkumar Shinde told Hindustan Times.

Antara Das, who was from Kolkata and worked with Capgemini in Talawade near Pune, was stabbed to death at KNB square at Talawade.

Read | Pune techie stabbed to death: Cops hunt for friend who proposed to victim

Sources said 24-year-old Kumar initially told the interrogators he was in Bengaluru when Das was attacked and that another person carried out the murder. This led to the police working on the other leads too.

Antaras family, however, expressed suspicion about the possible role of Kumar in her murder. Based on the familys suspicion, the police began their investigation and a team went to Bengaluru to grill him.

This is a shock as to me as a father. When I enquired with my younger daughter about Antara, she told me that she was being harassed by a boy and I suspect his involvement in this case, her father Debananda Das said.

She had met Kumar during her training in Bengaluru. He had even come to Pune when she was scheduled to appear for an interview for Capgemini and allegedly threatened to kill her.

As far as we know, the man had proposed to Antara in Bangalore which she turned down. He then came down to Pune with the same request. Although she had informed us about the man, we did not lodge a complaint because we did not think he can go to the extent of murder, Panchanan Das, her uncle in Kolkata, said.

On the day when she was murdered, Antara did not avail the companys bus service saying she would take an auto rickshaw to Nigadi where she lived as a paying guest. However, she did not take an auto rickshaw and was walking to a friends place nearby when she was attacked.

A motorcyclist Satyendra Sinha and another passerby took her to a nearby hospital where she was declared dead on arrival.

Sinha told the police that he could see the attacker, wearing a T-shirt with black and blue stripes, fleeing the spot.

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Noted writer Nayantara Sahgal said the countrys cultural diversity and freedom of expression is in danger and called upon the people to say no to Hindu Rashtra.

Our cultural diversity is in danger. Our freedom of expression is in danger, she said in hard hitting statement that was read out at a programme titled Hastakshep: Jantantrik Aur Sanskritik Bahulata Ke Paksh Me in Gandhi Bhavan in Lucknow.

Secularism is in danger. Hinduism itself is in danger, mocked and distorted by Hindutva. Let us make it clear: No Hindu Rashtra. Let that be our war cry, were the closing lines of the statement from Sahgal that was read on Wednesday evening.

Sahgal is a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family, the second of the three daughters born to Jawaharlal Nehrus sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit.

She was awarded the 1986 Sahitya Akademi Award for English, for her novel Rich Like Us (1985), by the Sahitya Akademi.

The dangers we face today come from the fact that this Government is destroying the meaning of India, and step by step, stealthily and openly, is converting our secular democratic republic into a Hindu Rashtra, she said.

It started with the takeover of our premier institutions, the dismissal of their directors and their replacement by RSS mouthpieces, Sahgal said.

It has continued with the rewriting of history and the destruction of scientific temper by substituting mythology, fantasy and sheer nonsense for history and science. Suddenly Sardar Patel and Ambedkar have been adopted as RSS icons. Nehru, meanwhile, is being wiped out of history, she said in the statement.

Sahgal has been one of the most vocal authors campaigning against the alleged dangers to freedom of expression.

The Hindutva mindset does not allow dissent. Its believers have murdered those who do not think like them -- writers, truck drivers transporting cattle, and a helpless blacksmith. These murders have come to light and the criminals still roam free, she said.

Activists who are working for the victims of the Gujarat riots and other Hindutva atrocities are being persecuted. Art, literature, cinema, and common sense are under threat. And amid the cow paranoia, human life has no value, she added.

Her statements were at the event that was a collaborative session by a number of organisations including Pragatishil Lekhak Sangh and Jan Sanskriti Manch, among others.
Firebrand separatist leader Masarat Alam was released from Kathua prison in Jammu on Thursday evening and taken back into police custody immediately.

The development came two days after the state HC quashed his detention under the Public Safety Act (PSA) and ordered his release.

A senior officer at Kathua jail confirmed that Alam, chairman of the Muslim League, a constituent of the Syed Ali Shah Geelani-led Hurriyat Conference, was released from jail in the evening.

But sources said soon after he walked out of prison, he was re-arrested and reportedly taken to the joint interrogation centre (JIC), Jammu. Further details were awaited at the time of filing this report.

Quashing the PSA detention earlier this week, justice Muzaffar Hussain Attar had held Alams detention illegal on several grounds. While passing the judgment, the court said, Even in the face of extreme provocations, the laws of the land are to be implemented. Laws possess unique quality, in as much as, they, even at times, protect those who break them. Thus, they prove to be better than many human beings.

Such a cycle is not new for Alam. He was detained under PSA for the first time on October 2, 1990, and since then, has been booked under the Act 34 times by successive governments, sources close to him said.

Lashing out at the state machinery, Alams counsel Mian Abdul Qayoom said, How many times will this man be detained on the same grounds? If you say there is rule of law, there is legal procedure that one has to follow, then why is that not followed in his case? He is not found guilty by any court. There is no conviction order against him. There is no sentence ordered against him. There is no case in which he has been found guilty. What kind of democracy is this?

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Sri Lankas former president Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed on Thursday that India was now silent on growing Chinese influence in the island nation but the neighbour country was more vocal on the issue during his administration.

All my Indian friends were shouting against me when Chinese submarines came to Colombo port. But now they are silent like rats, he said, addressing foreign correspondents.

Asked on what basis he can claim that Indians were no longer worried about Chinese influence in Lanka, Rajapkasa said, They were openly expressing it then.

He said he stands opposed to the Chinese being given 15,000 acres in his hometown of Hambantota for an industrial park.

We welcome the industrial park but 15,000 acres would be too much, he said.

He thought India might also be waiting to see if the Trincomalee harbour or the Palaly airport in the north may be given to them by the Maithripala Sirisena government.

Rajapaksa said India, which had backed him in the war against the LTTE, was influenced by the US to work against him.

I wanted them to come (actively support the military campaign) they did not because of the South Indian attitude, Rajapaksa said.

Rajapaksa alleged his ouster was due to a sustained campaign by the West, Indias RAW and others that had stared two years before the 2015 January presidential election, which he called two years ahead of schedule.
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj has stepped in to help bring back the mortal remains of the youth from Punjab who was allegedly stabbed to death by a girl at Christchurch in New Zealand on Christmas evening.

The family of a 26-year-old Sikh youth of Rania in Sirsa district, Hardeep Singh, was struggling to bring his body back to the country.

Swaraj directed the Indian High Commission in New Zealand to help the family of deceased Hardeep Singh after they reached out to her on Twitter.

Deol family - Rania (Sirsa) : I hv seen news report and given instructions to our High Commissioner in New Zealand, the external affairs minister tweeted.

Deol family - Rania (Sirsa) : I hv seen news report and given instructions to our High Commissioner in New Zealand. https://t.co/dDDOqiemt3  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) December 29, 2016

According to Hardeeps grandfather Baldev Singh Deol, he had gone to New Zealand on a study visa to pursue a course in hotel management.

According to reports in New Zealand media, Hardeep suffered serious injuries during an assault on Christmas on Sunday at Cashmere house. He was taken to Christchurch Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.

Local police said a 22-year-old woman has been arrested and charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, adding the charge was likely to be replaced with a murder charge.

They said the inquiry has been upgraded to a homicide investigation.

The minister, who is recuperating after undergoing a kidney transplant on December 10, is known for her prompt response to Indians who are in distress abroad, many of whom approach her through twitter for help.
China is expected to achieve an economic growth rate of 6.7 percent, which accounts for 31.8 percent of the world's economic growth. That performance is attributed to a series of favorable policies put forward by the Chinese government in 2016, said Cai Fang, deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

China's economic growth has maintained a middle to high speed, entering a "new normal" of declining potential growth. The economic growth rate was 6.7 percent in the first three quarters of 2016, achieving L-shaped short-term stability since the consecutive downward trend that started in 2012.

A trend of industrial upgrades and optimization is emerging, injecting new momentum into the current growth rate. The added value of China's service sector continued to rise in 2016, after it surpassed 50 percent for the first time in 2015, the economist at China's top think-tank said in an article published on the People's Daily.

China's economic growth guarantees full employment and the continuous improvement of people's livelihoods. China's current registered and surveyed urban unemployment rates respectively stand at less than 4.1 percent and 5 percent. Though some laborers lost their jobs amid the de-capacity transition and clean-up of "zombie" enterprises, they were soon re-employed with the help of social insurance, public employment services and other policies. As a result, the Gini coefficient, an important indicator of income inequality and the urban-rural income gap, has been declining since 2009.

China's economy is providing an engine for global economic growth and setting a path for the world economy, despite a complicated international situation and the risk of de-globalization. The country is speaking up more frequently when it comes to global governance, and its Belt and Road Initiative has earned praise from a number of countries. The establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the successful 2016 G20 summit and the RMB's inclusion in the International Monetary Fund's SDR basket are also major Chinese achievements.
The legislator of the ruling Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh, who claimed to have studied physics and mathematics in his Bachelors of Commerce (BCom) programme, has only completed Class 10.

Subsequently, I joined pre-university course (PUC), but later discontinued to take up business, Jaleel Khan told Hindustan Times.

Khan even mentioned that he passed his Class 10 examination from Vijayawadas Shad Tutorial College in 1969 in his affidavit submitted to the Election Commission of India.

He apparently sat for the Class 10 examination privately and took tuitions at a tutorial college. He was elected from Vijayawada West assembly constituency on a YSR Congress party ticket but later defected to the TDP.

In an interview to a Telugu news channel, Khan said he had taken commerce in his graduation because he was interested in mathematics and physics. When it was pointed out by the reporter that the two subjects are not taught in BCom, the MLA shot back saying they were very much a part of the BCom course.

He even doubted the knowledge of the reporter who told him that he was also a BCom graduate.

The legislator also blamed the reporter for distorting the interview that was posted on Facebook and taken apart by social media users.

He was after me for an interview and after repeated requests, I had to oblige his request. It was recorded late in the night. I did not tell him that I had completed BCom, but only said I was interested in pursuing the course. But the first sentence was deliberately deleted, Khan said.

When asked why he told the reporter he had studied physics and mathematics in BCom, Khan said he meant to say that he had studied the two subjects in Class 10. I also told him that I had got very good marks in mathematics in my schooling, he said.

The MLA was clearly heard saying during the interview that mathematics and physics are taught in BCom. At the end of the interview, Khan even told the reporter that he would like to check his certificates to find out what he had really studied them as his BCom subjects.

Khan has no regrets for being trolled on social media. For right or wrong reasons, I have got into news and gained publicity. That is what a politician wants, he said.

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Its been 50 days since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took his mitron by surprise when he made the televised announcement that currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 would no longer be legal tender. Since then, the nation has been befuddled by the series of curve balls thrown by the government as the rules to withdraw or deposit money kept changing.

But the prime minister had more surprises in store. The day after his deadline of 50 days - the final day when the nation can make a beeline for the banks to deposit old currency - he is to make another televised address at 7:30pm on December 31.

The news of the possible New Years eve address evoked instant reactions on Twitter, with people speculating about the speech.

1. The PMs speech will be best accompanied by a spoonful of medicine. And by medicine, we mean: lots of alcohol.

Modi's scheduled speech on New Year's Eve has ensured that people will consume even more alcohol -either to drown their sorrows or in relief  The Bad Doctor (@DOCTORATLARGE) December 29, 2016

2. What will your choice of music on New Years eve be?

This New Year's eve, night clubs in India will be playing PM Modi's Mann Ki Baat  GappistanRadio (@GappistanRadio) December 29, 2016

3. This warning that you may have to wrap up your celebrations early. A very (un)happy New Year!

Please celebrate your new year on 31st before 7.30 pm as Modispeech at 8. Patanahifir happy new year hogayasirfnew year.  DarshanMehta (@darshanetnow) December 29, 2016

4. This speculation over the PMs New Year gift to the nation

Will Modioffer to resign as his new year gift to India?  Wildcard (@Vidyut) December 17, 2016

5. Wheres the party tonight?

PM Modiduring his speech on 31st Dec pic.twitter.com/ESQXZP1ktU  The Viral Fever (@TheViralFever) December 29, 2016

6. Fretting over what 2017 holds for you

Modi ji on December 31st pic.twitter.com/kD4M7CEKMc  The Viral Fever (@TheViralFever) December 29, 2016

8. Plans for this New Year? Pray-ting?

Probably the first time when on 31st Dec, people will be partying less and praying more. pic.twitter.com/G3kC6E5Bs8  Gabru Tippler (@MrTippler) December 29, 2016

9. At the stroke of the midnight hour...

At the stroke of midnight hour, when the world parties, India will wait for the latest demonetisationupdate.  AvinashIyer(@IyerAvin) December 29, 2016

10. And the ghosts of demonetisation will follow you into 2017

The World's Shortest Horror Story.



"Mitron"  Satya (@absolutesatya) December 29, 2016
Union ministers are set to tour the country, including poll-bound states of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, to spread the message of the NDA governments good governance and benefits of its demonetisation decision.

The move is aimed at blunting the Oppositions belligerent attack on the government after it recalled Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, triggering a cash crunch in the country.

The ministers have been told to participate in 10 programmes covering 10 districts till next March and reach out to their constituents to explain the long-term benefits of the move to demonetise the two high-value notes.

This is part of a Sushashan Diwas, or good governance day, programme that the government has rolled out on December 25 to mark former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayees birthday.

In a letter to his colleagues, information and broadcasting minister M Venkaiah Naidu said they should visit the districts to popularise the governments welfare initiatives.

The occasion could be seized also to explain to your constituents the reasons behind the demonetisation move and its long-term benefits for the country and its economy so that the Oppositions malicious propaganda is effectively countered, Naidu wrote.

The ministers will spread the word on the importance of digital payments in line with the governments push for cashless transactions.

Besides, Naidu has also told his colleagues to popularise the good governance and pro-poor initiatives of the government.

In order that good governance carried from Vajpayee ji to Modi ji is disseminated among the people, it has been decided to observe a 95-day long good governance period starting December 25 to March 2017 to highlight the period of prime ministership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in NDA-I and also the good governance and pro-poor welfare initiatives under the leadership of Narendra Modi during NDA-II, Naidus letter read.

Soon after coming to power in 2014, the Modi government had decided to celebrate December 25 as good governance day.

But this time around, with an eye on assembly elections next year in five states, the government decided to extend the programme to 95 days.

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The Madras high court on Thursday expressed doubts over the death of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa in response to a petition filed by a member of her party.

Why cant we exhume her body? asked a bench, adding that the sudden nature of her death and the fact that no medical report had been submitted has raised suspicions.

Read | After Jayalalithaas death, AIADMK appoint Sasikala as interim party chief

The bench was responding to a petition filed by AIADMK member PA Joseph.

In his petition, Joseph asked the Centre to set up a commission to probe the mysterious death of Jayalalithaa similar to the commission formed for Subhas Chandra Bose.

Pointing to the conflicting reports the party had given, Joseph had said that the public had a right to know what happened.

Read | Nobel for Jayalalithaa, her statue in Parliament: 5 resolutions of AIADMK

Jayalalithaa was admitted to hospital on September 22 and died on December 4, two days after she suffered a heart attack.

Her death triggered waves of grief across Chennai as thousands of people flocked to the hospital and her memorial to pay their respects to one of Indias most-powerful politicians and a leader who achieved cult status.

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A month and a half after more than 140 passengers died in a train mishap near Kanpur, the Ajmer-Sealdah Express derailed in the same district on Wednesday morning, causing injuries to over 60 passengers.

Accidents and train derailments are reported routinely on this route.

From 2003 to 2015, 239 accidents have happened on the network of the Indian Railways and 208 of these  or 80% of all accidents  have happened because of derailments, says the parliamentary standing committee report presented last month.

Derailments are mostly caused by rail fractures during extreme summer and foggy winter conditions on account of the expansion or contraction of tracks.

Read | Kanpur train: Cracks in rail tracks expose disregard for passenger safety

While technology and funding issues are there, the big problem is that adequate time to carry out routine maintenance of tracks is never available as loco pilots (train drivers) are under stress to run more trains in lesser time, Sanjay Pandhi of the Indian Railways Loco Running Men Organisation (IRLRO) said.

Kanpur is located in between the busiest track of the Indian Railways on the Delhi-Howrah route, which has a train departing from the originating station after a gap of every 9 minutes.

Progress on track renewal and signalling upgrade plans have been slow. Against the requirement of constructing 5,000 kilometers of new lines each year, a target of only 2,700 kilometres has been set in this years budget.

A contract to install automatic block signalling devices on the Kanpur-Allahabad route was awarded nearly two years back, but implementation work has not yet begun.

Ultrasonic flaw detection devices available in the inventory of the Indian Railways are capable of vertical verification and can detect cracks or rail fractures along the vertical length of tracks, but cannot undertake horizontal checks.

Sources said that plans to acquire newer models of these ultrasonic devices that can do both vertical and horizontal checks have remained in cold storage.

Facing a severe financial crunch, the railways in past years have been unable to spare adequate funds for safety works. It moved a proposal earlier this year proposing the creation of a safety corpus of Rs 1,01,700 crore.

The finance ministry suggested that only 30% of the amount could be provided by way of a grant, while asking the railways to raise the remaining 70% by way of passenger ticket surcharge and other means.

Read | Patna-Indore train accident shifts spotlight back on passenger safety issues

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The feud in Uttar Pradeshs ruling Yadav family appeared to be worsening, with chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday meeting legislators who have not found a place in the Samajwadi Partys (SPs) list of 325 candidates and then conveying objections to his father Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Akhilesh may announce his own list of candidates for the upcoming state elections, PTI quoted a party legislator as saying after the CMs meeting with those denied tickets. But there were contradictory reports. Some sources said there wont be any such list soon.

The chief minister has asked legislators who have not got tickets to go their constituencies and start campaigning, the sources said, adding the leader has assured that he will try to arrange tickets for them.

Read: Akhilesh sacks Shivpal loyalists, Yadav pari-war heats up over candidates list

Hectic political activities began in the morning with party leaders gathering outside the residences of Akhilesh and SP supremo Mulayam. A big crowd assembled outside the residence of Shivpal Yadav, who has been locked in a bruising fight for control of the party with nephew Akhilesh.

Akhilesh, clearly upset over being apparently kept out of the process to select candidates for the polls, met at 5-Kalidas Marg residence in Lucknow with his supporters, including legislators and office bearers who do not figure in the list, party sources said.

Later, he spoke to Mulayam to convey his displeasure over the list of candidates from which names of his close confidants are missing, the sources said.

Read: SP chief Mulayam rules out alliance ahead of UP polls, declares 325 candidates

Mulayam, along with his brother and state party chief Shivpal, declared candidates for 325 of the 403 assembly seats on Wednesday and ruled out projecting Akhilesh as the chief ministerial candidate. Akhilesh was away on Bundelkhand tour when the list was released at a hurriedly-convened press conference.

The list, which includes 176 sitting MLAs, announced by Mulayam and Shivpal in the absence of Akhilesh, has left out several pro-Akhilesh ministers, including Ram Govind Chaudhary, Pawan Pandey and Arvind Singh Gope, and does not carry names of over 50 sitting MLAs.

Besides, 10 ministers, including Shivpal, sacked by the chief minister over the past few months have got tickets. These former ministers were in open defiance of Akhilesh and it paid off.

Read: As Yadav family feud erupts again, only a miracle can help SP win UP

Within hours after release of the list, which clearly bore the stamp of Mulayam and Shivpal, Akhilesh had said he would take up the choice of candidates with the party chief.

The list does not include names of certain candidates who are sure to win. I will take it up with the SP chief and tell him that some of them have done really good work and they should be given tickets, an upset Akhilesh had said last night.

In a late night tit-for-tat action, the chief minister struck back sacking two Shivpal loyalists -- Surabhi Shukla, vice-chairperson of UP Awas Vikas Parishad and her husband Sandeep Shukla from the post of advisor of Rajkiya Nirman Nigam. Sandeep has been fielded from Sultanpur Sadar seat.
Hit by cash crunch and spectre of further dip in land prices, those who had booked flats and plots through an open public auction by the Indore Development Authority (IDA) in September this year, are demanding their money back.

The IDA held a property fair and invited bids from interested buyers by putting up for sale more than 1,000 plots and flats. To grab them more than 7,500 applications were filled.

The development authority, as per rules, was supposed to open tenders within 90 days of auction and handover allocation letter to the buyers. But since the rule was not followed in this case, experts say, buyers have right to claim their money back.

However, the IDA chairman Shankar Lalwani said the tenders would be opened soon and plots could be handed over to the allottees.

Lalwani said, Some people are demanding their money back probably due to cash crunch.

After demonetisation people are speculating that the prices of properties might come down much below the prices they quoted during auction in September, said an IDA official on condition of anonymity.

The IDA has received over Rs 35 lakh by selling the auction applications alone. More than 4,000 applications were sold for 550 plots in scheme no 136 (Niranjanpur), about 1,500 applications were sold for 230 plots in scheme no. 103 (Tejpur Gadbadi) and the rest 2,000 applications were sold for auctioning plots in scheme no. 71 (Gumasta Nagar) and Scheme no. 114.

Bank staff demonstrate to draw focus on issues post note ban

Bank employees staged a demonstration on Wednesday to draw attention of the Reserve Bank of India and Central government regarding the problems being faced by common people and bank officials due to demonetisation.

Bank employees stage a demonstration at Zanjeerwala Square in Indore on Wednesday. (Arun Mondhe/HT)

Organised by All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA), a similar demonstration was held all over India, said AIBEA secretary Mohan Krishna Shukla. In Indore, the demonstration was held in front of Allahabad Bank, Palasiya branch. MP Bank Officers Association secretary Alok Khare and MP Bank Employees Association chairman MK Shukla addressed the gathering.

About 1.10 lakh in banned currency was found, out of a total 8.70 lakh, in donation boxes at Khajrana temple in Indore on Wednesday. (Arun Mondhe/HT)
The Indore regional transport authorities will set up an automated digital driving test track that will start functioning from the first week of January, an official said on Wednesday.

Inspired by the testing track in Punjab, the Indore RTO is also ready with its new track that has been digitized to test the driving skills for new license applicants, said MP Singh, Indore regional transport officer (RTO).

A team of road transport officials, including RTO MP Singh, inspector Rajendra Singh, ARTO Archana Mishra and Nisha Chauhan visited Punjab to study the track. The department has given the work to construct to city-based Smart Chip Company.

The smart track in the shape of number eight, will have two cameras installed and separate tracks for two-wheelers and four-wheelers driving tests.

The highlight of the smart track is that it will automatically track mistakes being made by an applicant while taking the driving test, said RTO Singh.

If an applicant makes a total of four mistakes, he will still be issued the license but in case of the fifth mistake, the system will mark the applicant as failed, he said.

Singh further said that tests for two-wheelers will be comparatively easier than of four-wheelers.

In the driving test for four-wheelers, the applicant will be asked to drive in reverse gear and park the car parallel. While reversing the vehicle, if the applicant touches the outline of the track, he will be considered as failed, he said.

The system has been made in such a way that the identity of the driver will be recorded in the system, with no room for any loopholes, Singh said.

Usually people tend to send somebody else for the driving test but with the new system, this will not be possible.

The picture of the applicant will be captured by the camera before taking the test and all his details will be made available with the help of his learning license number, application number or date of birth.
A judge in Bengals Nadia district marched into a police station on Wednesday to rescue a 25-year-old girl illegally detained by the cops. In the process, she created judicial history of sorts. This is the same district where another judge disposed of a sexual assault case in 15 days, setting a record of speedy judicial trial.

On Wednesday, Sanghamitra Poddar, the additional chief judicial magistrate of Ranaghat, was hearing a complaint filed by Godinda Biswas, the father of a girl, alleging that cops had picked up her daughter on the morning of December 23 and was illegally holding her at the police station for five days without a charge. She was not even produced before a court and there were no papers recording her presence at the PS.

Hearing this, on Wednesday afternoon, Sanghamitra Poddar barged into Hanskhali police station near the Bangladesh border, took the woman with her and returned to court. Later, the judge sent the girl to a welfare home.

Police officers could not specify the charges against her, but merely said they suspected her to be a Bangladeshi. The village where she stays is near the Bangladesh border.

We will take appropriate action against the policemen involved after investigating the matter, Sheesh Ram Jhajharia, Nadias police super, told HT.

The police officers concerned should face charges of unlawful detention. The victim can get compensation that can be deducted from the salary of the officers who can even be demoted, said human rights activist Sujato Bhadra.

This is an example of judicial activism. I have never heard of such a thing in my career, remarked senior advocate Milon Mukherjee.
Western disturbances that triggered snowfall on Christmas Day in Shimla after a gap of almost 24 years is playing havoc with the winter in Kolkata.

The chill, which gave Kolkatans a miss on Christmas Day, is unlikely to return even on New Year day of 2017, met officials have predicted.

Even though the night temperature hasnt dropped as much, gusts of cold and dry winds since early morning is forcing the day temperature in the city to plummet considerably. Result: the day seems to be colder than the nights.

While the night temperature is hovering at 16 degrees Celsius, which is at least two degrees above normal, the day temperature has dropped at least four degrees below what it should have been during this time of the year, said a senior official of Indian Meteorological Departments regional office in Kolkata.

Met officials said it is the western disturbances that are behind this rather strange phenomenon.

A Western Disturbance is a kind of low pressure area that comes in from west Asia. It triggers rain and snow in north India. Such systems usually develop during winter.

A series of Western Disturbances are sweeping north Indian states such as Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh over the past few days. These are coming from Pakistan-Afghanistan area, said the official.

These systems have been blocking the passage of cold northerly winds from sweeping Kolkata. To fill in the vacuum, moisture laden easterly winds from the Bay of Bengal and Bangladesh gushed in. This turned the sky over Kolkata partly cloudy.

While, on one hand, the moisture trapped more heat and helped the mercury shoot up, the cloudy night sky didnt allow the land to radiate the heat at night that had accumulated during the day.

The result was mists in the mornings which lingered late during the day. The night temperature failed to drop because of the mist and the fog. But when they cleared, the temperature dropped and Kolkatans could feel the chill during the day.

From Tuesday we have been getting some gusts of cold winds from the north as they got stronger which helped the day temperature to plummet during the day. The nights as usual remained warmer than what they should have been during this time of the year, said the official.

But Kolkatans would feel the chill during the day at least. The day temperature would continue to remain at least three to four degrees below the normal over the next few days, he said.

Earlier this year, IMD in its first winter forecast predicted that temperature would remain in the normal and above normal range this winter.

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Chinese films should be strong enough to tolerate bad reviews, and rating films is a right that belongs to movie viewers, Peoples Daily said in a commentary on Dec. 28. The commentary came after professional reviews of several domestic films were removed from an online ticket platform, amid worries that low ratings would harm China's film industry.

Maoyan Dianying, a Chinese movie app, recently eliminated its professional rating service after being criticized by China Film News, a newspaper under the State Administration for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of China (SAPPRFT). The app was accused of facilitating unfair and vicious comments about domestic films. However, Zhang Hongsen, director of SAPPRF's film bureau, denied the authoritys involvement in the incident.

According to China Film News, three domestic films -- "The Great Wall," "See You Tomorrow" and "Railroad Tigers" -- now face enormous public pressure after a major Weibo account maliciously attacked Zhang Yimou, the director of "The Great Wall." Douban, another film review website, also gave "See You Tomorrow" a one-star rating, which is the lowest possible grade.

The China Film News article challenged the credibility of Maoyan's so-called professional rating system.

Out of 69 professionals, only 45 rated 'The Great Wall.' Yet their ratings are displayed right next to the ratings given by 401,000 viewers. Can they truly represent the real professionals? the article asked.

Shortly after the article's publication, Maoyan shut down its professional rating service. The app company explained that the shut-down is only temporarily, done in order to upgrade their system.

A financial media outlet reported on Dec. 27 that the film bureau invited Maoyan and Douban for a closed-door meeting. Zhang Hongsen later refuted the report via social media.

The Film Bureau has made zero contact with Douban or other platforms so far, and does not know any Douban employees. We hope to jointly discuss measures to promote Chinese movies, read Zhangs post.

As for Maoyans professional rating system, Zhang noted that he once had an in-depth discussion with Maoyan management on this subject.

The consensus is that we should increase sample volumes, expand coverage and step up participation to enhance the authority of professional reviews, Zhang said.

Different ratings indicate that audiences are becoming more mature and can no longer be fooled into buying tickets for bad movies, the Peoples Daily commentary stated, adding that the goal is always to produce substantial and quality works.
Ahead of the assembly elections in the state, the Centre on Thursday released another Rs 250 crore for the Lucknow metro rail project, a joint venture of the Central and Uttar Pradesh governments.

The Union urban development ministry (UD) had released Rs 300 crore, earlier this year.

This takes the total assistance provided to the Lucknow Metro to Rs 550 crore. Union home minister Rajnath Singh had last week discussed the progress of the project with UD minister M Venkaiah Naidu and had sought its speedy implementation, said a senior UD ministry official.

The 23 kilometre Lucknow metro is estimated to cost Rs 6,928 crore. Of this, the central government will provide Rs 1,003 crore as its share of equity, Rs 297 crore is sub-ordinate debt and Rs 3,500 crore is loan assistance from the European Investment Bank. The state has to mobilise the remaining Rs 2,128 crore.
Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru

Director: Karthick Naren

Cast: Rahman, Prakash, Delhi Ganesh, Anjana, Yashika

Rating: 2.5/5

Debutant director Karthick Narens Tamil murder mystery, Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru, is gripping to a point, starting eerily on a rain-soaked, dark night -- when we have a killer on the prowl, and his target appears to be a young woman celebrating her birthday with her boyfriend. As he places a ring on her finger, Hell breaks.

The film fast-forwards six years when we see a retired and handicapped cop, Deepak (Rahman), talking about his famously unsolved case of the murder to a young man who wants to join the Indian Police Service. On a seemingly dull morning six years ago, Deepak is called in to investigate a suicide of a young woman that later turns out to be a case of homicide. Even as he probes this, he gets a phone call about a woman missing from her flat, where there are traces of blood. Deepak realises that there is a strange link between these two unfortunate women. But he cannot nail anybody. Or, maybe, he does not want to.

Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru is undoubtedly a welcome relief from the low-grade comedy, garish costumes and meaningless songs and dances that Tamil cinema is largely known for. Naren -- who has also written the story -- must be commended for his highly focussed way of narration. No distractions here.

Dhuruvangal Pathinaaru is undoubtedly a welcome relief from the low-grade comedy.

Rahman is effective as the policeman called upon to do something which he does not quite cherish. But does he have a choice? Perhaps, a more seasoned helmer could have brought out this dilemma with greater conviction.

Also, Narens scripting often appears muddled -- causing confusion in the mind of a viewer. A thriller or mystery cannot, after all, be such a jigsaw puzzle that solving it diminishes a fair degree of cinematic enjoyment.

As Naren told this critic later that a second viewing of his work would make things clearer. But, really, audiences cannot be expected to do that.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

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The upcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections are likely to be multi-cornered. Reason: The Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Thursday said they would be going solo.

Going a step ahead, the NCP even declared its first list of 45 candidates, showing that it will not wait for alliance talks with the Congress or other like-minded parties. The party also said it will declare the rest of the candidates by next month. In response, the Mumbai Congress said it had no plans to forge an alliance with the NCP.

The decision of the two erstwhile alliance partners, who ran the state government together for 15 years, could lead to a division of their votes because both have an anti-BJP, anti-Shiv Sena voter base.

The development could also trigger a demand within the BJP to contest on its own because a divided opposition may be its best chance to win without an alliance with the Sena.

While declaring the names, Mumbai NCP president Sachin Ahir said they were keen to have an alliance, but reluctance by Congress leaders led them to take this decision.

The Congress, too, announced its intention to go solo in Mumbai. Sanjay Nirupam, city unit chief of the Congress, said his party had already announced it was not interested in joining hands with the NCP. We announced this two months ago after taking permission from our high command. The party leadership had left it to us to decide on the alliance. Our local leaders and workers were in favour of going solo in the civic elections, Nirupam said.

The party leadership feels going solo in the BMC election will help the Congress perform better in the election.

While in the Opposition and with the constraint on resources, it is always better to go without an alliance because it helps the party give opportunities to workers at the local level. We have been concentrating on picking the best possible candidates from the wards and have started discussing probables, another leader from the Congress said.

It remains to be seen whether the two parties take a similar decision with respect to the civic elections in 10 cities and Zilla Parishads (district councils) across the state. Both the parties have power in a majority of ZPs that play important role in rural politics. The NCP is also in power in the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad civic bodies. If the two parties contest separately in the entire state, it may turn out to be an advantage for the ruling parties, especially the BJP.

Meanwhile, the NCP said it would contest in Mumbai only according to its strength.

We have decided to contest on only those seats where either party is in the strong position or where our candidate is strong enough to contest polls, Ahir said, when asked about the number of seats the NCP will contest in the elections. He, however, clarified that the party can make changes in the list if it gets better candidates. The NCP will also leave a few seats to accommodate candidates from other parties, Ahir said.

In the 2012 polls, both the Congress and the NCP contested the BMC elections together and had won 65 seats (Congress-52 and NCP-13) of the total 227 seats. Interestingly, in 2007, too, both the parties had contested the BMC elections separately and had got 89 seats  Congress-75 and NCP-14)  which is 24 seats more than the 2012 poll results.

Read more: BMC polls 2017: Mobile app to help voters find wards, booths
The State Election Commission (SEC) has ordered filing an offence against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state chief Raosaheb Danve for advising the voters to accept the money offered by the candidates during the ongoing local body elections. Danve is the third leader from the ruling alliance to face charges of the violation of the code of conduct.

The SEC on Wednesday evening asked the Aurangabad collector to register a first information report (FIR) against Danve under various sections of Indian Penal Code and Maharashtra Municipal Councils, Nagar Panchayats and Industrial Townships Act 1965. The action was taken after Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Shiv Sena registered complaints against Danve for his statement made at a public rally in Aurangabad on December 17. The SEC had sought reports from the district collector and an explanation from Danve before initiating the criminal action.

Danve had said at the public rally that the voters should accept the money if offered by the candidates in the municipal council polls. Other parties had raised strong objection to the remarks and pleaded action for the violation of code of conduct. In his explanation to the SEC, Danve had claimed that his remarks were misinterpreted and he did not mean to promote bribery in the elections.

In the past, dairy development and fisheries minister and Rashtriy Samaj Paksha chief Mahadev Jankar too has been booked for asking returning officer from Gadchiroli to reject Congress candidates nomination. Cooperation minister and BJP leader Subhash Deshmukh was in the controversy after banned notes worth Rs 91.5 lakh were seized from a van belonging to Lokmangal group founded by him few weeks ago. The SEC is investigating the case.

Also read

When Laxmi knocks at the door
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has declared Mumbai free of open defecation but also decided not to take any responsibility for people defecating in the open in land parcels owned by other government agencies such as railways, in Aarey colony or on Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) land and Defense area in south Mumbai.

Civic chief Ajoy Mehta has written to railway authorities to deploy Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel to prevent open defecation on the railway premises.

With chances of criticism from the citizens over various spots in the city where open defecation still takes place, the civic chief wrote to the Central and Western Railways, informing them that open defecation was still taking place along the railway tracks, especially in Mahim, Bandra and Kurla.

Mehta, in his letter (copy of which HT has) on Thursday, has requested the authorities to construct public toilets on railway land as per the directives issued by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and also to deploy the RPF. The BMC too has deployed clean-up marshals at various spots that were identified as OD spots.

Before declaring the city OD free, the civic body on Wednesday had not only written to railway authorities but also to the salt commissioners office for permission to construct toilets on their premises, considering no response was received from these agencies in the past. In a recent controversy, it had come to light that Aarey authorities had denied the civic body permission to repair existing toilets. This repair-help was offered by actor Salman Khan, the official BMC brand ambassador for the campaign, through a civic official.

A senior civic official, involved with the process, said, We have been seeking approvals from various agencies but there has been no response. We cannot wait for them as we have provided toilets or mobile toilets at all 118 open defecation spots identified by us. Further to ensure that people use these toilets, we have deployed clean-up marshals at these spots.

As part of Swachch Bharat Abhiyaan, various civic authorities were directed to make their city open-defecation free. According to the process, the BMC had to self-declare itself open-defecation free before December 31, 2016, to earn points under the Swachha Bharat Abhiyaan. The civic body wrote to the urban development department of the state government declaring the city open-defecation free.

However, the civic body has failed to provide citizens with permanent public and community (toilets in the slums) toilets in the city. Two years back, the civic body had planned over 2,300 toilet seats but has managed to construct only 1,641. Further, in a hurry to declare the city open-defecation free, the civic body routed to installing 800 mobile toilet seats at about 95 locations and spending around Rs3 crore, in the last two months alone.

READ MORE

Mumbai civic body set to declare city free of open defecation next week

Salman Khan visits slum as part of drive against open defecation

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Since demonetisation, the Mumbai crime branch has been busy compiling past cases to dispose of crores of rupees it has seized in various cases. Some of the cases are more than 40 years old. Officers are still compiling and making records and depositing cash in account after taking respective courts permission, said an officer.

Usually, police seize illegal cash during raids, searches and detection, and returns it to the complainant once the court decides on the case. The cash recovered by the crime branch in several cases like robbery, snatching, extortion and dacoity, was stored in the evidence room of each and every crime branch unit, collectively worth Rs1.6 crore.

Officers from all the 12 units and other specialised units like the anti-robbery cell and property cell, were asked to get old records in which the cash was seized during raids. Each unit prepared a detailed list regarding cases handled by it and cash seized, said a crime branch officer, adding, every officers took permission and deposited cash in the courts account.

After demonetisation, all the senior officers discussed what needs to be done with the money and even complainants were consulted before taking up each case to the court. Finally, it was decided that the seized amount was to be deposited with i in the concern courts account, the officer said.

Also read

Mumbai: Rs47 lakh in new currency seized in Kalbadevi
A day before the deadline to submit banned banknotes of Rs500 and Rs1,000, a rumour on popular messaging apps sent people in some areas of Mumbai into a tizzy. The message: the government may ban the new 2,000 -rupee notes too.

People came to our counters wanting to deposit the new notes. They said they read a news report about new notes being banned after the December 30 deadline, said a Borivli bank official adding some deposited all the Rs2,000 notes they had withdrawn till date. Neeraj Shah, a trader and Kandivli resident said he was scared and informed his in-laws. Now, we cannot afford to skip a single rumour.

Meanwhile, people who went to banks with pen marks scribbled on new notes were turned away.

READ MORE

Mumbai University exhibits demonetised notes from across the world
How would you like to combine an easy run with a worthy cause and a midnight adventure?

Akshara, a not-for-profit womens organisation, has tied up with Hindustan Times and fitness mobile app company UActiv to conduct a 7-km night run on January 7, at Bandra-Kurla Complex.

Called Urban Feet  Run for Womens Safety, the aim is to demand safe access for women to public spaces and promote the idea that they should be free to loiter or reclaim the night as they please.

Registration for the run is open to all; 60 women and girls from within the NGOs ranks with be participating too.

It is important for women to reclaim the night, says co-director of Akshara, Nandita Shah. It is sad that weve come to a point where we need to remind ourselves, first, that the streets are ours as much, and second, that public spaces should be equally accessible to both at any time of day.

As a cause that has been consistently overlooked, Aatish Chhabria, co-founder of UActiv says, Nights have become synonymous with women feeling insecure and this is our bit to promote equality in our city and the country.

Akshara and HT have been consistently campaigning for womens safety since the Make Mumbai Safer for Women series of 2011, which included a comprehensive survey of sexual harassment of women in public spaces. Of the 4,225 women interviewed, 43% perceived skywalks to be unsafe, while 46% said they had been sexually harassed inside buses. Another 21% said stalking was a concern.

Four round-table discussions followed the findings, as HT and Akshara sought to frame solutions and ways forward.

Following the Shakti Mill gang rape case in 2013, HT and Akshara conducted a safety audit that covered streets and railway stations, parks and playgrounds, exploring why women feel unsafe in public spaces in Mumbai.

Nearly 30,000 people then signed an online petition calling for well-lit parks and railway stations, opening up of police chowkies in areas where they had shut down and reconstruction of public toilets, among other women-friendly measures, which Akshara along with other womens organisations submitted to the chief minister in 2013. Some of these changes were effected in parts, but much more needs to be done. And you can lend a hand, be heard, by running at midnight in the first week of the new year.

What: Urban Feet, a 7-km night run to help women reclaim the streets, and the night

Where: Bandra-Kurla Complex

When: January 7, 11 pm to 2 am

Registration is open to all and costs Rs 600 per person.

For details, go to bit.ly/2hvHpvD or register online at bit.ly/2iHCyVY

Read

Women must break tech barriers, join engineering

Sexual harassment rampant at train stations in Mumbai, reveals Akshara survey

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On New Years eve, the railway police will step up its presence at all major stations in south Mumbai and the suburbs  areas full of revelers.

Personnel deployment will be focused at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) and Churchgate stations. Officials from the Government Railway Police (GRP) said many people head to Marine Drive and Gateway of India to see firecracker shows, resulting in CST and Churchgate recording the highest footfalls for years now.

We want to disperse crowds arriving at the two terminals as quickly as possible. Smaller teams will be posted strategically across platforms. There will be personnel at Dadar and Bandra stations too, which also a number of commuters on December 31, said Rupali Ambure, deputy commissioner of police, GRP.

At the smaller stations, at least two policemen will be posted. Commando and crack teams will sweep the areas from the suburbs to south Mumbai, officials said.

Officials said while there was no security alert, anti-sabotage checks will be a part of the security cover and dog squads will be on alert.

RPF personnel will also be watching the Kurla, Thane, Andheri and Borivli stations, while officers in plain clothes will keep a tab on groups who damage railway property while returning home. There have been incidents in the past of glass being shattered and tube lights being broken by groups in the early hours, said an officer.

Officials said the improved CCTV camera network will act as a deterrent and footage will be monitored when crowds start swelling at stations.

Also read

Mumbai cops have a cool new tool this New Years eve: Breathalysers that dont lie

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As the 50-day deadline set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the troubles due to demonetisation to subside draws closer, the Shiv Sena, a component of the Modi government, renewed its criticism of the governments move, asking what the nation should do after December 30.

Over the past couple of days, the party has been targeting the demonetization move. Speaking at a rally in Dhule in north Maharashtra, on Tuesday, Shiv Sena Chief Uddhav Thackeray said, Modi had said give me 50 days or else give me whiplashes. Fifty days are about to get over on December 30. What should we do on the 31st?

A day later, the party in its mouthpiece Saamana, said that Modi implemented demonetisation to get black money stashed overseas back in the country, but not even a single such penny has come back until now. Even domestically, black money hoarders didnt have to suffer even a rupee worth of losses. But the common man immensely suffered in this entire situation, read an article in Saamana on Thursday.

The party, which has been constantly criticizing the sudden decommissioning of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination currency notes, creating a cash crunch and inconveniencing people, said, It seems like the loopholes in the law are deliberately kept for the rich, whereas the common man is supposed to be crushed under the weight of the same law.

Despite being allies at the Centre and the state, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena have had choppy relations of late, with the tie-up souring even more closer to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls scheduled for February 2017.

Also read

Modi to address nation on New Years eve, likely to talk about demonetisation

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More than 2000 children affected with cleft lip and palate, have been gifted beautiful smiles by the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in association with Smile Train, a US-based NGO.

Babita Vashisht was shocked when her daughter Ridhi was born with cleft lip and palate in Shimla. Her upper palate was missing and there was a cut in her upper lip. I could not breast-feed her as she had problem with suckling due to the cleft lip. I was worried about her future, recounts Babita.

The most annoying part was the strange looks people would give her. Strangers would gather around her to show sympathy, she relates.

But all her worries were laid to rest after Babita met Dr Ramesh Sharma, Head, Plastic Surgery department, PGIMER. Dr Sharma told me about the disorder and the long treatment, she said.

Ridhi was six months old when she underwent a cleft lip operation; at 11 months, she was operated upon for correcting the cleft of the palate. At five, she had a minor nose operation. There are many more surgeries which she will have to undergo in her adolescence, but her mother is relaxed now.

The strange looks have disappeared, people dont gape at her any longer, smiles Babita.

Children with a cleft lip have to face several problems, ranging from feeding difficulties to speech problems.

ACROSS SEVEN SEAS

It was in 2007 that PGIMER entered into a collaboration with Smile Train, a US-based non-profit organisarion, to support such children. The Smile Train is funded by various donors across the globe. Each donor is asked to donate USD 200 which is the approximate cost of a surgery, explains Dr Ramesh Sharma.

Founders of Smile Train select centers from across the globe, capable of providing quality healthcare.

They pay money for the surgery only once its been done. They seek detailed information about the patient with his/her pre and post-operative photos. This information is reviewed by their expert group and they send money if they are satisfied with the surgery, says Dr Sharma.

The treatment of cleft lip and palate patients at PGIMER has been completely free since July 2007. The department has performed more than 2000 surgeries to date. And the smile foundation is updated about the status of these patients once in ten days.

The department performs nearly 20 cleft lip surgeries every month, which is not a big number looking at the large number of patients needing the treatment, says Dr Sharma. A cleft lip surgery in PGI costs around Rs 12000, which is half the sum charged in the private sector.

A LONG WAY TO HEAL

Cleft is a separation of parts of the lip or palate that takes place when they fail to join during the early weeks of prenatal development. It is a congenital defect whose exact cause is not known. Some say it is genetically inherited. It is also greatly influenced by the environment. A genetic predisposition coupled with lack of certain nutrients, specially folic acid during the first trimester, could lead to cleft lip, says Dr Ramesh Sharma.

The incidence of cleft lip in India is one in 700, and every year 35,000 new patients are added.

These children have both functional and cosmetic deformities. Normal development of soft palate is mandatory for proper speech development. These children cannot speak properly and if they do so, they speak with a nasal twang. They are also plagued by recurrent ear infections. If they dont hear well, they cant speak well, explains Dr Sharma. Once we operate upon them, more than 90% of them achieve normalcy, he adds.

The doctors say the first surgery should be done by the time the child is six months old or else it impacts the speech development. These children need constant care, from birth till their adolescence. The cleft lip also distorts the teeth line, which necessitates orthodontic care. As they grow, their upper jaw bone and cheek bones dont grow normally, causing their faces to look protruded. All these issues are tackled by experts from various departments of PGIMER.

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There seems to be no end to the snatching menace that the city has endured for over two years now with four incident reported over Tuesday and Wednesday, taking the total count to 156 to date. The figure for last year was marginally higher at 159.

In the most recent incident, two unidentified motorcycle-borne miscreants allegedly snatched the gold chain of a Sector 37 resident near her house on Wednesday evening.

Sarita Mittal, the victim, was standing outside her house with two women, when the pillion rider had the fearlessness to get down and snatched the chain around her neck.

The Police Control Room (PCR) was informed and the Sector 39 police reached the spot. A case has been registered at the Sector 39 police station.

In the second incident, three unidentified motorcycle-borne miscreants snatched a purse containing Rs 2600 and mobile phone of a resident of Faidan village, near Kali Bari lightpoint in Sector 47.

The victim Dinesh also informed the PCR following which nakas were laid to nab the snatchers, but there was no progress in the case, except the registration of a case at the Sector 31 police station.

In yet another incident, two motorcyclists sped away after snatching the earrings of a woman in Kansal, SAS Nagar, near Forest Guest House, at the Kaimbwala village on Tuesday.

The victim, Gayatri, claimed that the snatchers were on a Pulsar. Again, the police were informed and a Sector 3 police station team reached the spot, again to no result. A case was registered.

In the fourth incident, three pedestrians overpowered a Sector 49 resident, Maninderjit Singh, near the Dinosaur Park and snatched his iphone.
Shortage of Point of Sale (POS) machines and thermal paper rolls used in them are affecting the Jharkhand governments ambitious go cashless drive in Dhanbad district.

Companies providing POS machines and paper rolls in the district are unable to meet the sudden spurt in demand since recall of old 500 and 1,000 banknotes in November.

Chief minister Raghubar Das on November 29 announced a Cashless Jharkhand campaign. Experts say demonetisation gives a significant push towards a cashless economy.

Traders and retailers in Dhanbad said they were running pillar to post to get POS machines and paper rolls.

Service provider company didnt provide thermal paper roll citing shortage, said Pramod Goyal, the general secretary of Dhanbad district distributer association.

Goyal, who also who runs a cosmetic shop at Bank More area, said banks and their associate companys venders were passing the buck.

I had purchased a POS machine from State Bank of India. When I contacted my vender for paper roll, he told me that there was an acute shortage, said Goyal, who later lodged a complaint with the bank.

Vinod Kumar, a shopkeeper, said he applied for a POS machine a month ago but yet to get it. We are helpless as neither the bank nor service providing agencies are giving us concrete reason for the delay, said Kumar.

The Federation of Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FCCI), meanwhile, expressed concern over the crisis. Only slogans and advertisement for cashless transactions wont help, implementing agencies should be more serious, said Surendra Arora, the president of FCCI Dhanbad chapter.

Audhesh Verma, the assistant general manager of State Bank of Indias main branch here, admitted the crisis, but added that installation and services of POS machines were assigned to outsourcing agencies.

The bank has hired agencies to provide service to our customers. After getting complaints, we write to the agencies and issue guidelines accordingly, Verma said, adding that the crisis would be over within a fortnight.

Two companies - Hitachi and Worldline - provide services for installation and maintenance of POS machines in the state.

Hitachis Umesh Verma said a sudden rise in demand was to be blamed for the crisis.

Manufacturing companies are unable to supply POS machines and paper roll as demand shot up suddenly after demonetisation, he said, adding that Hitachi was yet to supply 25,000 POS machines in Jharkhand.
After impressing audiences and critics alike as a conniving entrepreneur in last years Tamil blockbuster Thani Oruvan, actor Arvind Swami will be seen donning the khaki in his next yet-untitled Tamil project.

Shelva, the films director said: He (Arvind) plays a stylish and straight-forward cop. Thats all I can reveal about the character at this moment. Ritika Singh plays his pair and audiences are definitely going to be surprised by their first-time combination.

With the pre-production work already underway, the regular shooting will commence early next year.

The film will be produced by MR Ganesh of Magic Box Films.

The New Year is going to be interesting for the Roja actor who has four films in his kitty, including Tamil films Sathuranga Vettai 2 and Bogan.

ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop
Reality TV star Kim Kardashian and socialite Paris Hilton reunited after a long time at the formers mother Kris Jenners party.

Kris threw a Christmas Eve party here on December 24.

Lovely evening celebrating the holidays with @KimKardashian.  A photo posted by Paris Hilton (@parishilton) on Dec 27, 2016 at 5:24pm PST

Hilton, who earlier used to be friends with Kim, shared a photograph of herself with Kanye Wests wife from the star-studded party and it appears that the two are back on friendly terms, reports Aceshowbiz.com.

Holidays with the baes @KylieJenner & @NickyHilton.  A photo posted by Paris Hilton (@parishilton) on Dec 27, 2016 at 10:19pm PST

#GoodTimes celebrating Christmas with these beauties @KhloeKardashian & @NickyHilton.  A photo posted by Paris Hilton (@parishilton) on Dec 25, 2016 at 4:49pm PST

Kendall where u at ? A photo posted by Kylie (@kyliejenner) on Dec 26, 2016 at 7:10pm PST

Young Jenners A photo posted by Kylie (@kyliejenner) on Dec 26, 2016 at 7:12pm PST

Hilton posted the image on her Instagram account on Tuesday night.

Lovely evening celebrating the holidays with Kim Kardashian, she captioned the image.

In the photograph, Hilton can be seen wearing a black lace dress, while Kim glammed up in a gold dress.

It was the first time in years that the two reality stars posed together for a photograph, after they ran into each other at Riccardo Tiscis star-studded birthday party in Ibiza in 2014.

Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian during their A Simple Life days. (Rueters)

Kim and Hilton were close friends before their relationship turned sour, following the formers rise to fame.

Hilton also took images with other Kardashian-Jenner members at the Christmas Eve party, including Khloe Kardashian, Kris and Caitlyn Jenner. Her sister Nicky Hilton was spotted at the celebration as well.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
The Afghanistan government said on Thursday that the Afghan people alone can decide on removing Taliban leaders from UN sanctions lists, rejecting a call by China, Russia and Pakistan to delist some militants to foster a peace dialogue.

Afghanistan has been angered by efforts by the three countries to work towards some sort of accommodation with the Taliban. Following a meeting in Moscow on Tuesday, the three countries called for flexible approaches on sanctioned persons to promote a dialogue between Kabul and the Taliban.

The delisting of Taliban leaders is the right of only the Afghan people. The Afghan people can and will decide on this when we have security, Afghan interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told Hindustan Times.

If the Taliban accept the peace offer and stop killing innocent people, then the Afghan people will decide.

Afghanistan was especially angered as it was excluded from the third round of consultations between Russia, China and Pakistan, and reports the troika would be expanded to include Iran.

Despite a concession by the three countries to include Afghan representatives in the next consultations, Sediqqi said it remained to be seen how effective the process could be in the absence of Afghanistan.

Lingering suspicions also remained about Pakistans role in the process after the collapse of Islamabad-brokered talks between Kabul and the Taliban.

Photo of Afghan interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi. (Twitter)

Taliban leaders are still in Pakistan and they still have training bases there. If they are not fighting the Taliban in Pakistan, how can they express concern about security in our country? Sediqqi asked.

We need to see what Pakistan can do in action to show that it is worried about (the security situation), they should fight like we fight.

Read | Russia, Iran ties with Taliban stoke Afghan anxiety

Afghanistan has also not taken kindly to the suggestion from China, Russia and Pakistan that the Taliban should be accommodated to bolster the fight against the Islamic State, which has established a presence in eastern Nangarhar province and carried out several attacks. A statement issued by the three countries had spoken about intensifying activities of the Afghan branch of IS.

We have been fighting Daesh, who are all ex-members of the Pakistani Taliban, they have just changed names. We have a specific strategy that has contained Daesh to Nangarhar and limited their activities. They are under pressure, Sediqqi said.

The biggest threat are the Taliban, Haqqani Network and al-Qaeda  thats the core of the issue. And we cant differentiate and say some Taliban are better.

Kabuls stance could provide some comfort to New Delhi, which has been loath to engage the Taliban and perceives the group with ties to the Pakistani security establishment as the biggest threat in Afghanistan. India is also wary of any peace process driven by Pakistan.

The Afghan National Unity Government, weakened by the rift between President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Abdullah Abdullah, has struggled to cope with the resurgent Taliban following the drawdown of foreign forces. The stand likely to be adopted by president-elect Donald Trump towards Afghanistan has added to the uncertainty.

Sediqqi said regional countries and key powers such as China and Russia should stand by the Afghan government in its fight against all terrorists. We cant expect Pakistan to do this, there is no evidence Pakistan can. But the least we expect from China, Russia and Iran is that they will stand by Afghanistan to fight, he said.

And we expect them to make no contact with these terrorist groups, he added.

Read | Russia, Pakistan, China warn of increased Islamic State threat in Afghanistan

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A prominent Sikh leader in the restive Afghan city of Kunduz was shot dead by unidentified gunmen on Thursday, the latest in a string of attacks targeting the minority community whose members have left the country in droves.

Lala Del Souz, a naturopath, was gunned down in Haji Gulistan Kochi Haman area of Kunduz at 9 am, Tolo News channel reported. He was reportedly on his way to his shop when the shooting occurred.

Del Souz, who headed the Sikh community of Kunduz succumbed to his injuries while being taken to hospital, said Naeem Mangal, the chief of the regional hospital.

Kunduz security chief Masoum Stanikzai confirmed the incident and said police had arrested three suspects. Investigations will continue, he added.

Prem, Del Souzs uncle, said his nephew was well liked and had no enemies. Other relatives said Del Souz was shot five years ago but survived. Prem asked the government to investigate the killing and make sure those responsible were brought to justice. He said if this does not happen, the few remaining Sikhs will sell up and leave Kunduz province.

This was the second killing of a Sikh since October, when Sardar Rawail Singh was abducted from his home and gunned down by suspected militants wearing military fatigues in the restive Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan.

Del Souzs killing sparked an outcry on social media, with hundreds condemning the incident and sending condolences to his family.

Following the collapse of Kunduz province to the Taliban on two occasions in a little more than a year, many Sikhs left the area. After the fall of Kunduz city last year, Del Souz reportedly moved his family to India but stayed on himself with Prem in a dharamsala.

Only three Sikh families still live there. Sikhs have lived in Kunduz for more than three decades and there were as many as 40 families at one time.

Some 30,000 civilians fled Kunduz province after the Taliban launched an offensive in October to take over the region, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

Nearly 99% of the Hindus and Sikhs of Afghanistan have left the country over the past three decades, Tolo News said. It added that the Sikh and Hindu population numbered 220,000 in the 1980s but was now estimated to be only 1,350.

Tolo News said a survey done by it in June had showed that Hindus and Sikhs were once very active in business but now faced increasing poverty. The population of the two communities plummeted to 15,000 when the Taliban were in power during the 1990s and remained at that level during the militant regime.

Sikhs and Hindus suffered huge setbacks after the Taliban regime collapsed in 2001. This forced many of them to leave rural areas and move to Kabul to make a living.
Bangladesh authorities have blocked more than 500 pornographic websites as part of a major morality drive, officials said Thursday.

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) said it had ordered local internet service providers to stop the sites from streaming amid fears over the impact of children.

Were blocking the porn sites in a bid to protect our children and youths from the harmful impact of pornography, BTRC spokesman Sarwar Alam said.

This is part of a major effort to promote our culture and moral values.

Weve set up a committee which has drawn up a list of 560 (porn) sites. The committee has told local ISPs to block them, Alam said, adding the regulator would gradually broaden the blacklist.

More than a third of Bangladeshs 160 million people have access to internet including millions of underage teenagers who browse with smart phones, laptops and tablets.

Junior telecoms minister Tarana Halim wrote on her Facebook page that blocking all access to porn in Bangladesh would be a challenge but added that any crackdown could only be of benefit.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

Trend:

Armenias provocation against Azerbaijan has been prepared by Yerevan in advance, Chingiz Mammadov, Azerbaijani military expert, former deputy defense minister, retired lieutenant-general, told Trend December 29.

On Dec. 29, a reconnaissance group of the Armenian Armed Forces tried to violate the Azerbaijan-Armenia state border. The Armenian group found itself in the ambush of the Azerbaijani army while violating the borders. The enemy suffered losses in the ensuing clash and had to retreat.

Mammadov added that Yerevan committed a provocation today to draw attention of the CSTO member-states to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict after the Armenian delegation failed to point to the conflict and elect an Armenian representative as the CSTO secretary general at the organizations recent session in St. Petersburg.

Mammadov said that while gradually spreading misinformation about diversions in the region, not related to the Nagorno-Karabakh area, Armenia aims to artificially expand the scale of the conflict and involve other CSTO members in it.

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.
As soon as China abandoned its one-child policy a year ago, Zheng Xiaoyu and her husband started trying for a sibling for their nine-year-old son.

Their efforts bore fruit with another boy -- one of a million extra births this year.

The traditional Chinese thinking is that more children bring more blessings, Zheng said, recovering from the birth at a luxury convalescent home in Beijing.

For years the couple dreamed of a second child to keep them company in their twilight years.

Neither me nor my husband is the only child in our families. We grew up in the company of our siblings, she said.

Before the change, we questioned why we couldnt have a second child, why they had to limit everyones desire to have children.

Since the late 1970s, strict measures in the worlds most populous country restricted most couples to only a single child, with fines for violators and even forced abortions.

Zheng and her husband were employees of state-owned enterprises and faced losing their jobs if they violated the ban.

Officials say it was a key contributor to Chinas economic boom.

But concerns over an ageing population, gender imbalances and a shrinking workforce pushed authorities to end the restriction and allow all couples a second child from January 1.

Now China is undergoing a minor baby boom, with almost one million more newborns expected this year, National Health and Family Planning Commission deputy director Wang Peian said according to official media reports.

More than 17.5 million births were expected in 2016, he told a conference in November -- which would reverse a decline last year and be the highest figure since 2000.

But while the end of the one-child policy swayed Zheng and her husband, it is unclear how much it contributed to this years baby boom.

Previous statistics show the increase was concentrated in the first half of the year, before the new policy could have an effect. And 2016 is the lunar year of the monkey -- considered a particularly auspicious zodiac sign to be born under.

Bed of jade

In pyjamas and slippers, Zheng was recovering at the gated Xiyuege Centre, or Lucky Month Home, in Beijing, where Porsche and Lexus cars line the parking lot.

It is a modern take on the 2,000-year-old practice of postpartum confinement orzuoyezi -- literally sitting the month -- in which new mothers stay in bed, keep warm and avoid certain foods.

Traditionally they do not exercise, expose themselves to draughts of any kind, or bathe.

There is no evidence for traditional claims that the practice will prevent diseases such as arthritis later in life.

But the 75-room Xiyuege Centre offers what nurses, managers and promotional materials all describe as scientific accompaniments to confinement: spa facilities where women can lie on a heated bed of jade, consume six specially calibrated meals a day to boost breast milk production while shedding pounds, and enjoy round-the-clock specialist care.

Such institutions in recent years have turned the custom into a lucrative industry, now set to boom even further.

There were more than 760 such centres across the country generating revenues of approximately 4.2 billion yuan ($605 million) two years ago, according to website China Industry Information. It projected that sector turnover would more than double to 11 billion yuan by 2019.

The Xiyuege Centre has seen clients recovering from their second pregnancies more than double this year, estimated Zheng Hui, the nurse managing infant care for VIP mothers, who pay more than $1,000 a day for their stays.

The oldest woman she had cared for was a 44-year-old, whose first child was already an undergraduate at college.

Its very clear that this year demand has gone up drastically. Customers are booking further and further in advance, said Hou Yanran, marketing manager of Xiyuege which plans to open a third branch in the capital.

Women were calling to reserve spots a mere month into their pregnancies, she said.

Very hesitant

The long-term impact of the new family planning rules remains unclear.

Officials predicted a surge in births after a 2013 change that allowed couples a second child as long as one parent was without siblings. But it did not materialise.

The Global Times newspaper this month cited family planning policy expert Yuan Xin as attributing the current uptick to the 2013 relaxation, with an increase from the two-child policy only coming in the next few years.

But around 53 percent of one-child families have no desire for a second, according to a survey of 10,000 families with kids under 15 by the All-China Womens Federation.

Zheng is 38 and said many of her friends had been extremely curious about her pregnancy, asking endless questions to decide if it was worth the risk of having another child at their age.

Due to financial reasons, most people dont want to have a lot of kids anyway, she said.

Theyre all very hesitant. From the perspective of an ordinary citizen, I think it would have been better to end this policy earlier.
The fate of a reported nationwide truce for Syria was unclear on Thursday, following talks between Moscow and Ankara, despite Turkish state media saying a deal had been reached.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said late Wednesday the agreed plan aims to expand a ceasefire in the city of Aleppo to the whole country, but neither Ankara nor Moscow confirmed the report.

The Aleppo truce was brokered by Turkey and Russia earlier this month to allow the evacuation of civilians and was hailed as a major turning point in the nearly six-year war.

If successful, the latest proposal would form the basis of upcoming political negotiations between Damascus and the opposition, overseen by Russia and Turkey in the Kazakh capital Astana, Anadolu added.

Ankara has hosted a succession of closed-door talks between Russia and Syrian opposition rebels over the last weeks.

Map of Syria showing which fighting force controls which area, following reports of a ceasefire. (AFP)

Qatar-based channel Al-Jazeera said a new meeting was planned on Thursday in Ankara, this time between Syrian rebels, Turkey and Russia.

Ankara and Moscow have been on opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, with Turkey seeking the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Russia and Iran.

But the two countries have recently started to cooperate more closely on Syria, especially after a deal to normalise ties battered by Turkeys shooting down of a Russian warplane last year.

Turkey remained conspicuously quiet as Assads forces, backed by Russia, took control last week of Aleppo in the biggest defeat so far for the rebels.

The conflict began in 2011 as an uprising against Assad but quickly morphed into a civil war after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown on dissent.

The war has killed more than 310,000 people and forced millions more to flee their homes.

Cancer on a global scale

In a speech in Ankara after the report on a nationwide ceasefire came out, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made no reference to the plan, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not have enough information to comment.

A Syrian rebel official confirmed to AFP that talks for a possible ceasefire were under way, but obstacles remained for any deal.

Labib Nahhas, foreign relations head for the powerful Ahrar al-Sham rebel group, said the faction was aware of ongoing discussions between Russia and Turkey about a nationwide ceasefire.

He said rebel factions had not been presented with any official proposal.

Russia wants to exclude Eastern Ghouta from the ceasefire, which is not acceptable, he said, referring to a rebel-held area outside Damascus.

Syrias army has been advancing in Eastern Ghouta in recent months, and securing the area around the capital would be another major government gain after recapturing Aleppo.

An official from the High Negotiations Committee -- which oversees political talks of the Syrian rebels -- said there was no information about a ceasefire so far. There was also no reaction from the Syrian regime.

No date has yet been set for the Astana talks and Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the meeting was still at the planning stage.

But the direct involvement of Turkey and Russia comes as Erdogan is increasingly expressing impatience at the role of the United States in Syria.

Previous ceasefire plans had been brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. They met with only temporary success and failed to lead to a solution for the conflict.

Erdogan on Tuesday launched one of his most bitter attacks on US and Western policy in Syria.

He accused the West of not just supporting Kurdish militia that Ankara regards as a terror group but even Islamic State (IS) jihadists.

In an angry statement, the US embassy in Ankara said: Assertions the United States government is supporting Daesh (IS) are not true.

Meanwhile, air strikes carried out by unidentified aircraft killed at least 22 civilians, including 10 children, in a village held by IS in Deir Ezzor province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Incoming UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the conflict has become a cancer on a global scale, while urging Washington and Moscow to overcome their differences to help end the crisis.
A generous boss of a US-based company has rewarded his 800 employees with Caribbean cruise for their hard work over the last 12 months.

The CEO of Bertch Cabinets will pay for all of his staff to have a five-day break at the start of 2017.

Gary Bertch, who co-founded the company with his wife, Becky, told workers last week the company had met its goals for the year and they would go on a week-long Caribbean cruise, including a stop at the island of Cozumel off the coast of Mexico, The Courier reported.

Bertch is excited to announce a company wide vacation! We will be closing all facilities January 9-13 so we can set sails for the sunny Caribbean! This trip wouldnt be possible without the hard work of our incredible Bertch associates! Happy Holidays, everyone!, they posted on Facebook.

Bertch will fly staff to Miami for a night in a five-star hotel before the Caribbean cruise begins, the paper said.

Weve got four charter aircraft that will be flying directly to Miami [on] Sunday and staying at a nice five-star hotel, Bertch said. Then on Monday, well bus over from the hotel to the port and load up on the ship.

He explained that the cruise was offered to staff at the beginning of the year as an incentive.

We just tried to get all of our people pumped up a little more to achieve the various goals, both customer-oriented goals and financial goals, he added.

Were happy we were able to achieve our goals. And theyre never easy. The financial goal was the big one, one of the last to be met.

We hit the other goals. Not by much. But we hit them. Were looking forward to the following year.

Asked why he chose Carnival cruise lines, he replied: Theyre a fun ship. And if anyone knows our crowd, they like to have fun. The first time we had them we ran them out of beer. Weve learned they stocked extra for our trip this time so we dont run out.

The company, founded in a Gilbertville barn in 1977, is based in Waterloo, Iowa.

Many have praised the company on social media, with one posting: Thats awesome! What an incredible company! I hope you all have a wonderful and safe trip!!!
You may need to convince a computer that you are telling the truth during future airport security checks, thanks to a new lie-detecting kiosk that can spot changes in physiology and behaviour during interviews with travellers.

The Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real Time (AVATAR) is currently being tested to help border security agents determine whether travellers coming into Canada may have undisclosed motives for entering the country.

AVATAR is a kiosk, much like an airport check-in or grocery store self-checkout kiosk, said Professor Aaron Elkins from San Diego State University in the US. However, this kiosk has a face on the screen that asks questions of travellers and can detect changes in physiology and behaviour during the interview.

The system can detect changes in the eyes, voice, gestures and posture to determine potential risk. It can even tell when you are curling your toes, added Elkins.

Passengers will step up to the kiosk and will be asked a series of questions such as, Do you have fruits or vegetables in your luggage? or Are you carrying any weapons with you?

Eye-detection software and motion and pressure sensors will monitor the passengers as they answer the questions, looking for tell-tale physiological signs of lying or discomfort.

The kiosk will also ask a series of innocuous questions to establish baseline measurements so people who are just nervous about flying, for example, will not be unduly singled out.

Once the kiosk detects deception, the passengers will be sent for further scrutiny from human agents.

Elkins began working on AVATAR when he was a PhD student at the University of Arizona. As the deception detection project grew more advanced and more sensors were added, more data about the interviewee was analysed.

We have come to realise that this can be used not just for border security, but also for law enforcement, job interviews and other human resources applications as well, Elkins said. We continue to make improvements, such as analysing the collected data using Big Data analysis techniques that make AVATAR a potentially valuable tool across many industries.

Elkins is looking for a government agency willing to utilise the technology in a real-world application. AVATAR has been tested in labs, at airports and at border crossing stations, Elkins noted.

The system is fully ready for implementation to help stem the flow of contraband, thwart fleeing criminals, and detect potential terrorists and many other applications in the effort to secure international borders, he said.
Nearly 1,000 bodies of political activists and suspected separatists have been found in the restive Balochistan province over the past six years, according to the Pakistan governments official figures.

Most of the bodies were dumped in the regions of Quetta, Qalat, Khuzdar and Makran, areas where Balochistans separatist insurgency has its roots, BBC Urdu reported citing figures from the federal human rights ministry.

According to the Federal Ministry of Human Rights, at least 936 dead bodies have been found in Balochistan since 2011, the report said.

Rights activists said the figures pointed to large-scale extrajudicial killings, the report added. Relatives said most victims were picked up by security agencies.

Read | What Baloch dissidents have to say about Modis comments on Pak atrocities

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modis remarks about rights violations in Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir created a furore in Pakistan, which said he had crossed a red line.

Baloch activists have for long accused Pakistans intelligence and security agencies of adopting a kill-and-dump policy in the resource-rich but impoverished region.

Thousands of people have disappeared without trace in Balochistan since a separatist insurgency gained momentum in 2007, BBC reported. A military-led operation was launched in early 2005 to counter the uprising by ethnic Baloch groups, who want a greater say in decision-making and exploitation of natural resources such as minerals and gas.

Read | Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur: Voice of missing people in Balochistan

The BBC report said one of the more prominent cases of kill-and-dump was that of political activist Jalil Reki, who lived in Quettas Saryab neighbourhood. He was arrested at his home in 2009, and his body was found two years later in Mand area near the border with Iran, some 1,100 km south of Quetta.

They came to our house in three vehicles. These were the vehicles of agencies. They took away Jalil, his mother said. The police did not take our report. Our male relatives later approached the then chief ministers office, but we could not get any response.

Two years later some people found his body in Mand. He had one bullet in the head and three in the chest. His arms were fractured and there were cigarette burns on his back.

Read | India hits out at Pakistan; raises Balochistan, PoK rights violations at UN

The Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) said it recorded 1,200 cases of dumped bodies and there are many more it had not been able to document.

VBMP chief Nasrullah Baloch said most of the bodies are of those activists who have been victims of enforced disappearances - people who are picked up by authorities and then just go missing.

His allegations were largely in line with a 2013 report by the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) that noted credible reports of continued serious human rights violations, including disappearances of people, arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings.

Balochistan government spokesman Anwarul Haq Kakar denied that state agencies were involved in such acts. There are several explanations. Sometimes insurgents are killed in a gunfight with law enforcement agencies but their bodies are found later, he said.

Militant groups also fight among each other and dont bury their dead fighters. Then there are tribal feuds, organised crime and drug mafia.

There have been frequent protests by relatives of victims and Baloch nationalist organisations over the years, and many activists have fled to foreign countries or safer locations within Pakistan.

Naveed Baloch, who was briefly held by German police for the December 19 truck attack in Berlin, left Pakistan in February to escape persecution in his village in Mand region.

An activist of a nationalist party, he was arrested and tortured by Pakistani forces in Balochistan last year, and his home in the village was raided again recently, his cousin, also named Naveed Baloch, told BBC Urdu.

Read | How India can play the Balochistan card against Pakistan
The New York Police Department will allow its Sikh officers to wear turbans and maintain beards, relaxing its uniform policy to promote inclusiveness and encourage the minority community members to join the force.

New York Police commissioner James ONeill announced the measures being taken towards ensuring religious accommodation to its officers following a graduation ceremony for new police recruits yesterday.

Under the revised policy, officers from the Sikh faith will be allowed to have beards that extend up to one-half inch from the face. The officers may also wear blue turbans with a hat shield it affixed to it in place of the traditional police cap.

Were making this change to make sure that we allow everybody in New York City that wants to apply and have the opportunity to work in the greatest police department in the nation, to make sure we give them that opportunity, the commissioner said.

Standing alongside Sikh officers after the grand graduation ceremony, ONeill the measures were aimed at making the NYPD as diverse as possible.

We changed our beard policy and our head covering policy. It is a major change in our uniform policy, so we had to go about it carefully, he said, as quoted in a New York Post report.

The Commissioner said there are about 160 Sikh officers currently in the ranks and he was looking to expand those numbers. He said the religious accommodation will give people from the faith the opportunity to join the police department.

Weve been working with the Sikh officers to try to make sure we get this done. I had the opportunity to make the change and I thought it was about time that we did that. We want to make the NYPD as diverse as possible and I think this is going to be one way to help us with that, he said.

Sikh Officers Association, a group of Sikh officers welcomed the move, posting on Twitter that Thank you @NYPDONeill for allowing Sikh Officers to wear a turban in the @NYPDnews. This is a proud moment for Sikh Community.

Of the 557 recruits who graduated from the Police Academy, 33 are Muslims and two are Sikhs, according to the Police Department.

According to the police departments patrol guide, officers are prohibited from having beards and headdresses that are not part of the uniform. However exceptions have been made for officers who receive a medical or religious accommodation to wear facial hair up to one millimetre in length.

Sikh advocacy group Sikh Coalition welcomed the move, saying it will send a strong message that there should be no discrimination against members of the community, which has contributed significantly to the city and the country.
Madrids city hall on Thursday announced that it had ordered half of most private cars off the roads to fight a particularly bad bout of pollution -- a first in Spain.

From Friday, between 0530 GMT and 2000 GMT, vehicles with even-number registration plates will be allowed to drive around on even-number days and cars with odd-number registration plates on odd-number days, it said in a statement.

The measure, which will be re-evaluated on a daily basis depending on pollution levels, is a first in Spain.

It is activated when levels of harmful nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere go above 200 microgrammes per cubic metre in at least two measuring stations for two days running, and if the air is unlikely to clear imminently.

There are exceptions to the ban, such as for mopeds, hybrid cars, those carrying three people or more or used by disabled people.

Buses, taxis and emergency vehicles are also exempt.

It is not about traffic restrictions but about the important issue of public health, deputy mayor Marta Higueras said. Lots of people suffer from breathing problems and are very affected by pollution.

With 3.2 million residents and some 1.8 million cars, Madrid often suffers from bad bouts of pollution. The move to ban half of cars off the roads is level three out of four anti-pollution measures.

Level four bans taxis also from the city, barring those using hybrid cars.

The measure implemented by the city hall, led by an alliance of leftist groups since 2015, sparked criticism from the conservative Popular Party (PP) which ruled Madrid for nearly a quarter century and governs at the national level.

Inigo Henriquez de Luna, PP spokesman in Madrids local parliament, slammed it as ideological and said authorities should do more to encourage residents to avoid using their cars rather than punish them.

The anti-pollution measures were implemented by former PP mayor Ana Botella just before municipal elections in May 2015.
The outgoing Obama administration is planning a series of fresh sanctions against Russia for its alleged role in cyber hacking into servers and emails of American political parties and leaders in the run up to the general elections, multiple media reports have said.

Quoting unnamed senior administration officials, CBS News and CNN said the new set of sanctions is likely to target the Russian intelligence agency and its official. US officials believe that the spy agency operated with the approval of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The sanctions could be announced as early as Thursday, CNN reported.

President Barack Obama has already announced investigations into the alleged Russian hacking and the report on the incident is expected early January.

US president-elect Donald Trump told reporters that the administration should do the best they can, figure it all out.

CBS News said the White House is seeking measures the incoming administration cant reverse. Trump has so far refused to acknowledge Russias role in the cyberattacks.

Administration officials would also like to make it difficult for President-elect Donald Trump to roll back any action they take.

Part of the goal here is to make sure that we have as much of the record public or communicated to Congress in a form that would be difficult to simply walk back, one senior administration official told The Washington Post.

Reacting to media reports, Russia has said such a move by the US would be considered as provocative and warned of retaliation.The sanctions is likely to name individuals associated with the hacking and having close contacts with the government.

If Washington really does take new hostile steps, they will be answered...any action against Russian diplomatic missions in the US will immediately bounce back on US diplomats in Russia, a spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

According to CNN, the US actions are expected to include expanded sanctions and diplomatic measures.

In October, the United States formally blamed Russia for political hacking attacks, saying they were intended to interfere with American elections. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Interfax that the accusations are nonsense.

Earlier this month, CIA officials told US media they had high confidence that Russian hackers had attempted to sway the US election in Trumps favour.

The Trump team responded to those reports by saying these are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte derided US ambassadors as spies on Thursday, responding to a media report of an alleged American plot to destabilise his government, a job he said some envoys were appointed solely to do.

The volatile former mayor said though he had received no intelligence reports of any US plan to undermine his presidency, he believed most ambassadors were in cahoots with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which had a track record of meddling in other countries affairs.

The Manila Times newspaper on Tuesday reported a former US ambassador to the Philippines had prepared a blueprint to undermine Duterte, citing a document it had received from a what it described as a highly placed source.

The US State Department has described the allegations as false.

Read| Philippine prez Duterte says once threw man from helicopter, would do it again

Most of the ambassadors of the United States, but not all, are not really professional ambassadors. At the same time they are spying, they are connected with the CIA, Duterte said in a television interview.

The ambassador of a country is the number one spy. But there are ambassador of the US, their forte is really to undermine governments.

Duterte has made no secret of his grudge against the United States and has a particular disdain for President Barack Obama, who he has told to go to hell, mostly over Obamas concern s about Dutertes deadly drugs war.

He has made repeated threats to abrogate security treaties with the United States and vented almost daily about US hypocrisy and bullying.

On Thursday, Duterte said he would honour those treaties and that he liked U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and was keenly waiting for him to take office.

The Manila Times said Philip Goldberg, who recently ended his term as ambassador in Manila, had outlined various strategies over an 18-month period to destabilise Duterte.

That would include supporting the opposition and co-opting the media, the military, neighbouring countries and senior government officials to turn against Duterte and isolate him economically.

Duterte has a dislike for Goldberg and has previously called him a gay son of a bitch. He referred to him in three successive live television interviews on Thursday, calling him Washingtons superstar with a track record of trying to undermine governments.

Read| Philippines Duterte says he personally killed people

Goldberg was expelled as ambassador to Bolivia in 2008 by then President Evo Morales, who accused him of siding with his rightist opponents and of orchestrating street protests.

The United States rejected that and said his expulsion was a grave error.

Maybe he will deny it but its not good, Duterte said of Goldbergs alleged blueprint, which he said was plausible because of Goldbergs history.

He added: You might be able to oust me, but I will give you a bloody nose.

Attempts by Reuters to reach Goldberg this week were unsuccessful.

US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific Daniel Russel dismissed the Manila Times report.

No such blueprint exists, he said in a statement on Tuesday.

The United States respects the sovereignty of the Philippines and the democratic choices made by the Philippine people.
Allegations over Russia and Irans deepening ties with the Taliban have ignited concerns of a renewed Great Game of proxy warfare in Afghanistan that could undermine US-backed troops and push the country deeper into turmoil.

Moscow and Tehran insist their contact with insurgents is aimed at promoting regional security, but local and US officials who are already frustrated with Pakistans perceived double-dealing in Afghanistan have expressed bitter scepticism.

Washingtons long-time nemesis Iran is accused of covertly aiding the Taliban, and Russia is back to what observers call Cold War shenanigans to derail US gains at a time when uncertainty reigns over President-elect Donald Trumps Afghanistan policy.

(Russias) narrative goes something like this: that the Taliban are the ones fighting Islamic State, top US commander in Afghanistan John Nicholson said recently, denouncing the malign influence of external powers.

This public legitimacy that Russia lends to the Taliban is not based on fact, but it is used as a way to essentially undermine the Afghan government and the NATO effort and bolster the belligerents.

Shifting to Iran, you have a similar situation. There have been linkages between the Iranians and the Taliban.

Russia has officially provided military helicopters for Afghan forces, but simultaneously propped up the Taliban with arms, official and insurgent sources say.

We are particularly concerned about loads of Russian-made weapons recently seized from areas on the border with Tajikistan, a senior Afghan security official told AFP.

Cross-border support for the Taliban will further complicate the security situation in Afghanistans north.

A Taliban commander told AFP the Russian support had helped the insurgents overrun the northern city of Kunduz in October for the second time in a year.

Taliban representatives in recent months have also held several meetings with Russian officials in Tajikistan and Moscow, sources say.

No country should be in touch with destructive groups who are the enemies of Afghanistan. This shows disrespect towards the victims of war, interior ministry spokesman Sediq Siddiqi told AFP.

We ask Russia and Iran to work with Afghans to defeat terrorism.

Great fear

Western diplomats in Kabul have privately voiced alarm that Russia is quietly filling its embassy ranks with Soviet era old-timers well versed in Cold War tactics, as relations with Washington turn sour over the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine.

And this week Kabul vented fury over a summit between Russia, China and Pakistan in Moscow which agreed on a flexible approach to remove certain Taliban figures from sanctions lists.

Alexander Mantytskiy, Russias ambassador to Kabul, insists engagement with the insurgents is benign.

We have ties with the Taliban to ensure the security of our political offices, consulates and the security of central Asia, he told reporters this month.

Lashing out at NATO, he added the allegations against Russia were an effort to distract attention from the worsening conflict and put the blame for their failures on our shoulders.

Some observers agree that Russian and Iranian concerns over Islamic State jihadists cannot be dismissed lightly.

Islamic State may not have a deep presence in Afghanistan, but it has developed a profile there and its overall brand inspires great fear, Michael Kugelman, an analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, told AFP.

We cant rule out the possibility that Russia and Iran are trying to hedge against the future possibility of a stronger Islamic State in Afghanistan by expanding their ties to the Taliban.

Playground for superpowers

Afghanistan has long been used as a chessboard for proxy battles -- from the 19th century Great Game of rivalry between Britain and Russia to the US funnelling weapons through Pakistan to Afghan rebels fighting Soviet forces in the 1980s.

It has also served as a proxy war playground for nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, which is also accused of playing a double game by endorsing Washingtons war on terrorism while providing sanctuary to the Taliban.

Superpowers jockeying for supremacy in Afghanistan could sow further chaos amid the unpredictability of Trumps foreign policy, analysts say.

Trump has given surprisingly few details on how he will tackle Americas longest war.

Russia is waiting to see the next US move when Trump takes over, said Kabul-based analyst Ahmad Saeedi.

If Trump chooses to scale back the US presence, then the Russians will be eager to fill the gap.

As for Iran, many in Tehran fear that a potentially hawkish White House under Trump will try to scrap its landmark nuclear deal with world powers, pushing them to retaliate by deepening ties with the Taliban.

Foreign powers fighting for their own self interest does not bode well for Afghanistan, said Saeedi. That only means more violence and bloodshed in the country.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

Trend:

In the evening of Dec. 29, military units of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces have detected and landed an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the direction of Azerbaijani Tartar region, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said in a message.

The UAV belonging to Armenian Armed Forces attempted to carry out reconnaissance flights over the positions of Azerbaijan Army.

Earlier on Dec. 29, a reconnaissance group of the Armenian Armed Forces tried to violate the Azerbaijan-Armenia state border. The Armenian group found itself in the ambush of the Azerbaijani army while violating the borders.

The enemy suffered losses in the ensuing clash and had to retreat, said the ministry.

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.
Russian officials probing the crash of a Syria-bound military plane on Thursday said there was no explosion on board, but the equipment was not functioning correctly when it plunged into the Black Sea.

The Soviet-era Tu-154 plane went down shortly after takeoff from Sochi airport on Sunday morning, killing all 92 on board, including scores of performers from a feted Red Army Choir troupe.



Read: No survivors as Syria-bound Russian military jet with 92 people on board crashes

There was no explosion on board, I can say that for certain, said Sergei Bainetov, head of flight safety for the Russian air force. But an act of terror is not necessarily an explosion, so we are not discarding this version.

Transport minister Maxim Sokolov said the probe had established the plane was not working normally but will not issue any conclusions before January, cautioning journalists not to jump on any theories.

It is obvious that the equipment was functioning abnormally. Why that happened is up to experts to work out, he said.

The military ensemble was due to give a concert to Russian soldiers at the Hmeimim base, Moscows main outpost for its bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

Flowers, candles, portraits placed at a pier in honour of the victims of the military plane crash, in Sochi, Russia. (AP photo)

Bainetov said the air force had ground the Tu-154, which is not used by commercial airlines, until the first conclusions are made about the crash.

The plane was flown by an experienced pilot, who had 4,000 hours of flight experience, including 1,500 hours on the Tu-154, and analysis of the second black box, which records conversations in the cockpit, suggests he noticed something was wrong.

Everything was going rather normally, but one phrase from the commander... suggests that an abnormal situation began to develop, he said. The entire flight was 70 seconds long, he added, but the abnormal situation lasted just 10.

Russian media reported, citing a dialogue in the cockpit, that the planes flaps failed to retract on time, leading to the crash, but Bainetov refused to confirm this.

Main search over

The first victim of the crash was buried at a Moscow region military cemetery on Wednesday, officials said, but most of the bodies were still underwater despite the main phase of the search being over.

A diver looks at a piece of the crashed military plane during searches in the underwater area outside Sochi, in the Black Sea. (AFP photo)

At this time, everything that has to do with the planes crash has been brought to surface and pieces are being laid out on the shore, minister Sokolov said.

Russian plane crash: Second flight recorder recovered from Black Sea

We established that the plane almost entirely broke apart when it hit the water surface and the sea bottom, which, of course, complicated the search, he said.

So far only 19 bodies and some 230 body parts have been discovered, Sokolov said.

The loss of the plane has shocked Russia at a time when the Kremlin was celebrating the recapture of Syrias Aleppo by regime forces, the biggest success since it launched its bombing campaign to support Assad last year.

Residents in Sochi and Moscow laid flowers at makeshift memorials to remember the choir members and popular charity worker Yelizaveta Glinka who were on the doomed flight.
Baghdad shopkeeper Anwar offers Saddam Hussein photos, coins and postage stamps that keep the ousted president alive 10 years after his execution and cater to customers nostalgic for his rule.

While Saddam was brutal to those who opposed him, and led his country into two disastrous wars, there are those who still look back fondly on his time in power, especially in comparison to the years of devastating internal violence and ineffective governance that followed his overthrow in 2003.

In his antique shop, Anwar proudly caresses a leather holster stamped with the words: On behalf of President Saddam Hussein.

A stand at a market selling coins and notes bearing portraits of late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. (AFP photo)

It was a gift that Saddam gave to deserving officers, said Anwar, who may be his own best customer for Saddam memorabilia. I am constantly looking for items related to Saddam, but when I find them, I often keep them for myself, said the young man, who mainly trades in more innocuous, non-political items.

Offering a line of reasoning often used to support the ex-president, Anwar said: Saddam Hussein knew how to control the country.

And I say this as a son of the south, he said, indicating that he is a member of Iraqs Shiite majority, which along with the Kurds was the target of deadly oppression under Saddams rule.

It was for the 1982 killing of 148 Shiite villagers in Dujail that Saddam was found guilty of crimes against humanity, a verdict that led to his execution by hanging on December 30, 2006.

That was the day of the end of the head of the snake that reduced Iraqis to the rank of humiliated citizens, said Khalaf Abdulsamad, a lawmaker from the Shiite Dawa party which has held the Iraqi premiership since 2006.

An Iraqi shopkeeper holds a book bearing a portrait of late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein at his shop in Baghdad. (AFP photo)

Saddam countered dissent with prison, torture and death, started a disastrous 1980-1988 war with Iran, and invaded Kuwait in 1990, leading to years of punishing sanctions.

But his rule also offered stability, quality education, health care, employment and services for most of the population -- commodities that have often been in short supply in the years since his fall.

From serpent to serpents

The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq unleashed years of sectarian violence, including frequent bombings, kidnappings and executions that peaked from 2006-2008.

That violence was sharply reduced by the combination of Sunni Arab tribesmen joining forces with American troops, and the US militarys surge of additional forces in Iraq.

An Iraqi shopkeeper holds watches bearing portraits of late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein at his shop in Baghdad. (AFP photo)

But it was not to last: violence steadily rose in the years after the US military withdrew in 2011, driven in large part by widespread anger among Iraqi Sunni Arabs with then-premier Nuri al-Malikis government.

Malikis heavy-handed response to anti-government protests led to the loss of control of one entire city and shifting parts of a second in early 2014.

That was followed six months later by a sweeping offensive by the Islamic State jihadist group, which overran swathes of territory north and west of Baghdad.

Iraqi forces have pushed the jihadists back, but doing so have devastated Sunni Arab cities and towns, laying the groundwork for further discontent and conflict.

In Anwars shop, Abu Osama looks at stamps bearing Saddams image and a book of photos of the ousted dictator.

He is a Sunni who served as an officer in Saddams army, but said he is not a supporter of his former commander-in-chief. But I love justice, and we are sorely lacking it today.

He did not buy anything from the shop, his memories of Saddams rule preserved in photos he has at home.

The new political class that took power after Saddams fall has done little to endear itself to many Iraqis, even outside its repeated failure to secure the country.

An Iraqi shopkeeper holds stamps bearing portraits of late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein at his shop in Baghdad. (AFP photo)

Corruption is rampant, basic services such as electricity and water sorely lacking, and government riven by sectarianism and political infighting.

Months of protests in Baghdad and elsewhere drew repeated pledges that reforms would be carried out, but little in the way of real or lasting change has taken place so far.

Ilaf, a law student who was visiting Anwars shop, criticised both Iraqs past and present leadership. Saddam Hussein was an enormous serpent, he said.

Today, it is a multitude of small serpents that lead us.
Syrias army said Thursday it would halt all military operations from midnight under a truce deal brokered by Russia and Turkey and supported by a leading Syrian opposition body.

The agreement was announced earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin who said the Syrian regime and main forces of the armed opposition had signed on.

The general command of the armed forces announces a complete halt to all hostilities on Syrian territory from the zero hour of December 30th, Syrias army said in a statement carried on state television.

It said that the ceasefire excluded the Islamic State group and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fateh al-Sham Front.

The National Coalition, a leading Syrian political opposition group based in Turkey, confirmed its backing for the truce.

The National Coalition expresses support for the agreement and urges all parties to abide by it, spokesman Ahmed Ramadan told AFP.

He said key rebel groups including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham and Army of Islam factions had signed the ceasefire deal, though there was no immediate confirmation from rebel representatives.

The agreement includes a ceasefire in all areas held by the moderate opposition, or by the moderate opposition and elements from Fateh al-Sham, such as Idlib province, he told AFP.

Idlib, in northwest Syria, is controlled by an alliance of rebel groups led by Fateh al-Sham.

Read| Turkey, Russia to implement Syria ceasefire before New Year: Turkish minister

The group, in its previous incarnation as Al-Nusra, was designated a terrorist organisation by countries including the United States, as well as the United Nations.

The ceasefire agreement follows the recapture by Syrias government of the countrys second city Aleppo from rebels, in the worst blow to opposition forces since the war began.

It will be the first nationwide halt in fighting since a week-long truce from September 12-19 that collapsed after several incidents of violence.

A previous truce was implemented in February. Both of those deals were organised by Russia and the United States.

The latest agreement is the first nationwide ceasefire brokered with the involvement of Turkey, a backer of the Syrian opposition.

Russia is a key supporter of Syrias President Bashar al-Assad and began a military intervention in support of his government in September 2015.

Despite backing opposing sides in the conflict, and a souring of relations after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane last year, Ankara and Moscow have worked increasingly closely on Syria.

They jointly brokered a ceasefire for Aleppo this month that allowed the last remaining rebels and civilians in the citys east to leave to opposition territory elsewhere.

More than 310,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with protests against Assads government.

Successive bids to reach a peace deal to end the conflict have failed, but Moscow has said it is planning to convene new negotiations in Kazakhstan.

And the army statement said the ceasefire was intended to create conditions to support the political track in resolving the conflict.
Taiwan welcomes the name change by Japans de facto embassy on the self-ruled island, the foreign ministry said on Thursday, a day after China called on Japan to remember that Taiwan is part of China, riled that the new name includes the word Taiwan.

Japan, like most countries in the world, maintains only informal relations with Taiwan while it has diplomatic ties with Beijing - recognising Chinas position that there is only one China and Taiwan is part of it.

However, in the absence of formal ties, many major countries like Japan, Britain and the United States operate representative offices under various names as de facto embassies. The U.S. mission is the American Institute in Taiwan.

We will still strengthen exchanges between Japan and Taiwan, Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Eleanor Wang told reporters at a regular news briefing. We think the name change by the Japan side more fully shows the nature of the institutions work in Taiwan.

From Jan. 1, the Interchange Association, Japan will become the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association, according to a notice on its website. An association official in Japan said the new name would boost recognition.

On Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the name change was a negative move and urged Japan to uphold the one China principle and not create new disturbances in China-Japan ties.

Defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war with the Communists. China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.

China and Japan also have difficult ties. Beijing has repeatedly urged Japan to show greater repentance for World War Two atrocities and the two sides have a festering territorial dispute in the East China Sea.

However, Japans 1895-1945 rule in Taiwan is seen by some on the island as having been good for its development, unlike perceptions of Japan in other parts of Asia, particularly in China and Korea, which are often deeply negative.

Taiwan had as many as 30 diplomatic allies in the mid-1990s, but now has formal relations with just 21, mostly smaller and poorer nations in Latin America and the Pacific.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen will pass through the United States when she visits Latin America next month, the foreign ministry said Thursday, a move bound to infuriate China which had urged the United States to block a transit stopover.

China is deeply suspicious of Tsai, who it thinks wants to push for the formal independence of Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing regards as a renegade province, ineligible for state-to-state relations.

Details of the stopovers will be disclosed before the end of this week, the ministry said.

The transit details are being closely watched as Taiwan media has speculated Tsai will seek to meet President-elect Donald Trumps transition team ahead of his January 20 inauguration.

Trump angered China when he spoke to Tsai this month in a break with decades of precedent and cast doubt on his incoming administrations commitment to Beijings one China policy.

The United States, which switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, has acknowledged the Chinese position that there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of it.

Tsais office earlier this month said she would visit Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador in that order. She will leave Taiwan on January 7 and return on January 15.

Taiwan had as many as 30 diplomatic allies in the mid-1990s, but now has formal relations with just 21, mostly smaller and poorer nations in Latin America and the Pacific.

The American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto embassy of the United States, had no immediate comment on Tsais itinerary.
A top Chinese military general is being probed for corruption, becoming the highest ranking serving army official to face graft probe in a massive anti-corruption campaign launched by President Xi Jinping, defence ministry said on Thursday.

General Wang Jianping, deputy chief of staff with the joint staff department of the central military commission headed by Xi has been put under investigation for being suspected of taking bribes, Chinese defense spokesman, Yang Yujun told reporters here confirming that Wang has been picked for interrogation.

While he is the top serving general working directly under Xi to face corruption probe, over 40 retired and some serving officers have already faced such probes in the sweeping anti-graft campaign launched by the President three years ago.

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post had reported in August this year Wang, 62, was taken away in Chengdu, Sichuan provinc

Wangs wife, secretary and former secretary Su Haihui and now deputy director of the armed polices training department, were also held.

Read| 2 lakh Communist Party members punished for corruption in China

Wang was arrested by military prosecutors in Chengdu while on an inspection trip. His wife and secretary were taken away in Beijing, the Post report said.

The ministry of defence formally confirmed it on Thursday.

Wang, the first general still in active military service to be brought down, was an ally of Chinas former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang, who is currently serving life sentence, the report said.

In his last speech at a key party meet, Xi cited disgraced leaders like Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, Guo Boxiong, Xu Caihou and Ling Jihua who were convicted in corruption and abuse of power as examples of bad behaviour.

Guo Boxiong, then a top general and former vice chairman of the military commission was reported to have accepted bribes worth about $ 2.3 million mainly selling military ranks to highest bidders.

Guo, 74, was also stripped of his rank and forced to hand over all his assets to the Chinese government.

Two days ago, CPC removed military officials from its powerful provincial committees in a bid to reduce militarys influence on party further consolidating the powers of President Xi.

Fourteen provinces have removed the position of military members in the shuffle of new standing committees, official media reported.
German police Wednesday detained a Tunisian they believe could have been involved in the Berlin Christmas market attack, with alleged links to Anis Amri, the suspected assailant shot dead in Italy last week.

The arrest was the first in Germany by investigators seeking to discover if Amri had accomplices in the December 19 attack when he allegedly hijacked a truck and drove it into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people.

The deceased suspect Anis Amri had saved the number of this 40-year-old Tunisian national in his phone. The investigations indicate that he could have been involved in the attack, the federal prosecutors office said in a statement.

Graphic showing the known movements of Berlin truck attacker Anis Amri following his attack on a Christmas market in Berlin on December 19. - (AFP)

The suspect was taken into custody early Wednesday after federal police officers searched his Berlin home and work premises.

The extent to which the suspicions against the detained person can be confirmed remains subject to further investigation, the statement added.

Amri, 24, went on the run and was the focus of a four-day manhunt before being shot dead by police in Milan, northern Italy, after opening fire first.

German police said they found his fingerprints and his temporary residence permit in the cab of the truck used in the Berlin attack, next to the body of its registered Polish driver, who was killed with a gunshot to the head.

The Berlin rampage was claimed by the Islamic State group, which released a video last Friday in which Amri is shown pledging allegiance to IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Read | CCTV confirms Berlin attacker passed through French city Lyon: Probe source

By bus and train

More than a week after the attack, investigators were still battling to find out if Amri had help before and after the assault.

Three other men, including Amris nephew, were arrested by Tunisian authorities last Friday.

On Wednesday, a spokesman at the anti-terrorism unit told AFP that their probe was ongoing, declining to give further details.

Separately, investigators came closer to tracing Amris escape route to Milan.

The Tunisian had boarded an overnight bus at the Dutch city of Nijmegen, near the German border, that took him to Lyon in central France, sources close to the investigation said.

Wim de Bruin, spokesman for the Dutch public prosecution service told AFP: We believe he was in Nijmegen, most likely last Wednesday.

Read | Stay strong and carry on: Berlin Christmas market opens in show of defiance

There are video images and its very likely him, De Bruin said, adding that its most likely here where he received a SIM card, which Italian police later found on his body.

Amri got off the bus at the Lyon-Part-Dieu rail station, one of the sources said.

Surveillance cameras filmed Amri at the station last Thursday.

From there, he took a train to the French Alpine town of Chambery before heading to Milan.

A train ticket from Lyon to Milan via Turin was also found on Amris body.

Accomplices?

But investigators are still trying to determine how Amri was able to leave Berlin and cross most of Germany to reach the Netherlands, and whether he received assistance.

German magazine Focus quoted unnamed security sources as saying Amri had been texting messages and sending photos to Islamist friends only 10 minutes before the attack.

Flowers and candles are placed near the Christmas market at Breitscheid square in Berlin. (Reuters)

Several German media also quoted government sources as saying the truck came to an automatic stop thanks to the activation of an emergency braking system.

Amri was known to Tunisian police as a juvenile delinquent who drank and took drugs.

In 2011, he left his home country for Italy. There he spent four years in prison for starting a fire in a refugee centre, during which time he was apparently radicalised.

Italian police on Wednesday raided two houses in the town of Aprilia near Rome that Amri had lived in before moving to Germany, police said.

After serving his sentence he made his way to Germany in 2015, taking advantage of Europes Schengen system of open borders -- as he did on his return to Italy last week.

German security agencies began monitoring Amri in March, suspecting he was planning break-ins to raise cash for automatic weapons to carry out an attack.

But the surveillance was halted in September because Amri, who was supposed to have been deported months earlier, was seen primarily as a small-time drug dealer.
Turkey and Russia are planning to implement a countrywide ceasefire in Syria before the start of the New Year, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday.

The ceasefire could be put in place at any moment, the minister said after reports that Turkey and Russia had agreed on a deal. We are planning to secure this before the beginning of the New Year, he added.

The Aleppo truce was brokered by Turkey and Russia earlier this month to allow the evacuation of civilians and was hailed as a major turning point in the nearly six-year war.

The incoming UN secretary general Antonio Guterres had said the conflict had become a cancer on a global scale, urging Washington and Moscow to overcome their differences to end the crisis.

Read: Russia, Turkey agree ceasefire plan for all of Syria: Media reports

The Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency said if successfull, the latest proposal will form the basis of political negotiations between Damascus and the opposition overseen by Russia and Turkey in the Kazakh capital Astana.

Ankara has hosted a series of closed-door talks between Russia and Syrian opposition rebels in recent weeks.

Ankara and Moscow have been on opposing sides in Syrias war, with Turkey seeking the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Russia and Iran.

But they have recently started to cooperate more closely on Syria, especially after a deal to normalise ties battered by Turkeys shooting down of a Russian warplane last year.

Turkey remained conspicuously quiet as Assads forces, backed by Russia, took control last week of Aleppo in the biggest rebel defeat so far.

Previous ceasefire plans brokered by US secretary of state John Kerry and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov failed to stem the violence.

Syrias conflict began with a 2011 uprising against Assad but quickly morphed into a complicated civil war that has now killed more than 310,000 people and forced millions more from their homes.

Scathing attacks

Erdogan on Tuesday launched one of his most bitter attacks on US and Western policy in Syria.

He accused the West of not just supporting a Kurdish militia that Ankara regards as a terror group but even backing Islamic State group jihadists.

In an angry statement, the US embassy in Ankara said: Assertions that United States government is supporting (IS) are not true.

Meanwhile, air strikes carried out by unidentified aircraft killed at least 22 civilians, including 10 children, in an IS-held village in the eastern Deir Ezzor province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
A pro-Islamic State group on Wednesday urged supporters of the jihadists to carry out attacks on targets such as markets and hospitals in Europe over the Christmas holiday period and urged Muslims to stay away from Christian celebrations.

The threat came as European authorities have stepped up security following an attack claimed by Islamic State in which a truck ploughed into crowds in a Berlin Christmas market and killed 12 people this month.

The Nashir Media Foundation, which backs Islamic State, posted its message online, accompanied by images of fighters with guns and knives, Santa Claus, reindeer and a Christmas tree, according to the according to the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant groups online.

Their celebrations, gatherings, clubs, markets, theatres, cinemas, malls and even their hospitals are all perfect targets for you, the online message to Islamist lone wolves in Europe said.

It said Islamic State would replace their fireworks with explosive belts and devices, and turn their singing and clapping into weeping and wailing.

The message reminded Islamic State supporters of a call earlier this month by the groups new spokesman, Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajer, who said they should also attack Turkish consulates and embassies.

Turkey may have been chosen as a target because it has backed rebels in Syria against Islamic State.
US President-elect Donald Trump launched a fresh salvo of accusations against the United Nations Wednesday, saying the world body had not lived up to its potential and failed to solve global problems.

The UN had such tremendous potential. (It is) not living up to its potential, Trump told reporters at his Florida holiday resort Mar-a-Lago.

When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They dont. They cause problems.

The international institution, set up amid the ashes of World War II includes the World Health Organization, which helped eradicate small pox, and the Security Council, which was frozen by divisions as Syria plunged into chaos.

If it lives up to the potential, its a great thing. If it doesnt, its a waste of time and money, Trump said.

His comments came as incoming UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he wants to meet Trump as soon as possible and is determined to establish a constructive dialogue with the new US administration.

The former Portuguese prime minister takes over from Ban Ki-moon on January 1. Trump takes office on January 20.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

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Creating ASAN Viza was in fact a necessity, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said at the opening of ASAN Kommunal Center No 1.

Because we are trying to attract more tourists to Azerbaijan, for them to both get familiarized with the country and have right information about it. At the same time this is a huge contribution to the countrys economy, said the president.

Both hotels and public places are working, and this means currency is coming to the country, he noted.

The president hailed the factors characterizing the new service and its advantages.

The head of state underlined that getting a visa to visit Azerbaijan was once a huge problem.

We could not be satisfied with the situation regarding visas. There were not only lots of irregularities, but also groundless demands were put forward, he added. In general, in order to visit Azerbaijan people needed to stand in queues for months, they had to appeal to embassies and consulates of our country in other cities and it was not yet clear whether they would be given visas or not.

Therefore, ASAN Viza was created in order to address this issue once and for all, and now any citizen can visit Azerbaijan within three days, said President Aliyev.

He noted that the number of tourists visiting Azerbaijan increased by about 10 percent this year.

The number of visitors from some countries increased by 30-40 times. In 2017, this process will go even more rapidly, added the president.
A senior US defence official is confirming that a top Islamic State military commander was killed by a coalition airstrike in Syria on Monday.

The official says that Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti was killed near Tabqa Dam. He was a key leader of the group in Raqqa. No other details were available.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier this week that he had been targeted by U.S.-led coalition aircraft. And IS supporters on social media had indicated on Tuesday that he had been killed.

The US confirmation was the first official coalition acknowledgement of his death.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have been battling Islamic State fighters near the strategically located dam, aided by a barrage of coalition airstrikes in the region.
In a sweeping response to election hacking, President Barack Obama on Thursday sanctioned Russian intelligence services and their top officials, kicked out 35 Russian officials and shuttered two Russian-owned compounds in the US. It was the strongest action the Obama administration has taken to date to retaliate for a cyberattack.

All Americans should be alarmed by Russias actions, Obama said in a statement released while he was vacationing in Hawaii. He added: Such activities have consequences.

Obama ordered sanctions against two Russian intelligence services, the GRU and the FSB, plus companies which the US says support the GRU. The cybersecurity firm hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate theft of its emails determined earlier this year the hacking came from the Fancy Bear group, believed to be affiliated with the GRU, Russias military intelligence agency.

Read | Obama administration plans new sanctions against Russia: Report

The president also sanctioned Lt. Gen. Korobov, the head of GRU, and three of his deputies. Other individuals sanctioned include Alexei Belan and Yevgeny Bogachev, two Russian nationals who have been wanted by the FBI for cyber crimes for years.

Obama said the hacking could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government, a contention the US has used to suggest Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved.

Although the White House announced at the same time it was kicking out Russian officials and closing facilities, it said those were responses to other troubling Russian behavior: harassment of US diplomats by Russian personnel and police.

The 35 Russian diplomats being kicked out are intelligence operatives, Obama said. The State Department said they were being declared persona non grata, and they were given 72 hours to leave the country.

Read | Russia interfered in US election to help Donald Trump win: CIA report

The two compounds being closed down are recreational facilities owned by Russias government, one in Maryland and one in New York, the US said. The White House said Russia had been notified that Russia would be denied access to the sites starting noon on Friday.

Russian officials have denied the Obama administrations accusation that the Russian government was involved at the highest levels in trying to influence the U.S. presidential election. US intelligence agencies concluded that Russias goal was to help Donald Trump win  an assessment Trump has dismissed as ridiculous.

The move puts the president-elect in the position of having to decide whether to roll back the measures once in office.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened corrupt government officials with the prospect of being thrown out of a helicopter mid-air, warning he has done it himself before and had no qualms about doing it again.

The fiery-tempered former prosecutor said he once hurled a Chinese man suspected of rape and murder out of a helicopter.

If you are corrupt, I will fetch you using a helicopter to Manila and I will throw you out. I have done this before, why would I not do it again? Duterte said during a speech to victims of a typhoon on Tuesday, a clip of which is posted on a video feed of the presidents office.

Dutertes latest threat comes just a few weeks after he admitted killing people during his 22 years as a mayor of Davao City, sometimes riding a motorcycle looking for encounters to kill.

He said those killings were part of legitimate police operations, including a hostage incident. Some senators have warned Duterte he risks impeachment over his comments.

Duterte also said six people arrested last week during a seizure of more than half a tonne of methamphetamine, known locally as shabu, in the capital were fortunate he was out of town.

They were lucky I was not in Manila that time. If I had known there were that much shabu inside a house, I would definitely kill you, he said.

Lets not make any drama, I will personally gun you down if nobody else will do it.

It was not immediately clear when or where the helicopter incident Duterte spoke of took place. His spokesman, Ernesto Abella, suggested it may not have actually happened.

Lets just say, urban legend, Abella told reporters, without elaborating.

The United Nations top human rights envoy has called for an investigation into Dutertes claims of killing people, to which Duterte last week responded by calling him stupid, an idiot and a son of a bitch who should go back to school.
Born in 1957 in suburban St. Louis, Mo., Rodney V. Rocky Sickmann enlisted in the Marines in 1975 in the wake of the Vietnam War. He spent a few years in the infantry before joining the Marine Corps Security Guard Battalion (present-day Marine Corps Embassy Security Group), which watches over U.S. Embassies worldwide. In October 1979 Sergeant Sickmann was posted to the embassy in Tehran, Iran. Weeks later, on November 4, radical Islamic students stormed the compound and took Sickmann and 51 other Americans captive. Over the next 444 days he and his fellow hostages endured privation and torture as officials sought their release. On April 24, 1980, eight U.S. servicemen died during a failed rescue attempt known as Operation Eagle Claw. To secure the hostages release, President Jimmy Carters administration signed an accord on Jan. 19, 1981, that among other concessions removed a freeze on nearly $8 billion in Iranian assets and included a pledge not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Irans internal affairs. The next day, within minutes of Ronald Reagans inauguration as U.S. president, Iran released the hostages. Soon after arriving home, Sickmann left the Marines for a successful career in sales. He now works for Folds of Honor, a nonprofit that provides scholarships to the children and spouses of U.S. military men and women disabled or killed in service to their country.

Sickmann was serving as a Marine security guard at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran when Iranian militants overran the compound on Nov. 4, 1979. (Randy Glass Studio)

Describe the embassy attack.

The Iranians had been demonstrating because the United States had admitted the shah. There was a demonstration again that day in front of the embassy. Id planned to run errands in town and was walking down to the motor pool when my walkie-talkie blared Recall! Recall! The demonstrators were coming over the main entrance gate, and the Iranian guards who were supposed to be protecting us walked away like nothing was happening.

I ran back to the embassy. Billy Gallegos, a fellow Marine security guard, was sealing down the building, securing it with steel doors. He kept it open long enough for me to get in. Then we donned our gas masks and flak jackets and retrieved our shotguns and snub-nosed .38s. My adrenaline was pumping. At the same time I was concerned. There were only a couple of us in the embassy.

How did they gain entry to the chancery?

As I watched, the Iranians approached, holding signs with messages like This Is a Peaceful Demonstration. Then they were pounding on the front door, and I heard theyd gained access to the basement. So I ran downstairs, and around the corner through smoke and debris come four Iranian women being forced forward by Iranian men. Thats when we start hearing orders: Dont fire! Dont antagonize! Help is on the way. So we withdrew upstairs behind the steel doors.

Smoke was coming in under the door, as we had popped tear gas. Then the attackers started bringing Americans to the door. There we were, safe on the other side, and wed hear someone on the other side yell, Theyve got a gun to my head, and if you dont open the door, theyre going to kill me! Then theyd bring another person begging for his or her life.

Somebody was in communication with the White House or State Department, and they were asking what was happening. At that point we were ordered to give ourselves up, and the government would resolve things diplomatically. That was Nov. 4, 1979, and we werent released until Jan. 20, 1981. So that morning 52 Americans were stripped of their freedom, dignity and pride for 444 days.

Do you wish you had opened fire?

After being taken, yes. But its the military: You receive orders, and you execute orders. In retrospect, had we fired on the Iranian women, the men would have paraded their bodies outside, claiming the Marines had shot unarmed, innocent women. Then they would have all come unglued. We probably would have gotten everybody killed.

But the problem is that we didnt do anything, and Iran has used that same approach to continue to fight us. Were not fighting an enemy in uniform. Were fighting people in plain clothes that use different means than we do.

Did your captors single out you and your fellow Marines?

At the beginning we were all separatednone of us saw everyone again until released on Jan. 20, 1981. A picture of every Marine was up on the wall of our post, so they knew who we were. They wanted us to make derogatory statements and made it pretty rough. We just gave them name, rank and serial number.

What sort of torture did you and the others endure?

Mental, physical and psychological.

I knew there was a fleet on standby in the Mediterranean, as I was on that fleet when the embassy was attacked in February 1979. So Im sitting there on the first day, thinking, Hey, those guys are coming to get ustheyre coming to rescue us. The first day comes, the second.The first month was pretty tough. Imagine 444 days.

At first we were handcuffed, hands behind our backs. We sat like that for hours, sometimes days. I spent an entire week tied in a bed. We went outside seven times, 15 minutes total, in those 444 days. We dont even treat our war prisoners like that.

The worst time was the night they stripped us from our room, took us down the hallway and put us up against the wall, an Iranian behind each of us with a weapon. Theyre all screaming. You think its a rescue operation, and youre thinking, This is it. Because they always told us, If the United States comes, you will die before they get to you.

Youre in a foreign country, 7,000 miles from home. Youre not allowed to talk to anybody. Your mind plays game after game. You dont know if youre going to live or die. You hate everybody, yourself, your government. Trust me, it is one of your worst nightmares, something you dont ever forget.

How did you withstand the ordeal?

Thank God for my wonderful childhood, my parents, how they brought us up. They taught us love of country, respect for the flag, love of family and religion. Ive never prayed so hard in my life.

What stays with you?

Eight people lost their lives trying to regain my freedom. How does anybody forget such people?

Did the government revise embassy security procedures?

In the Embassy Security Group are regional groups of Marines. Whenever they hear of a hostile act in a foreign country, these reaction-force Marines are brought in to help provide security. And in 1987 Congress created the Special Operations Command to help prevent another failed rescue attempt.

But then Benghazi happened. These guys were calling for helpthere were supposed to be measures in place. How could that have happened with such precautionary measures in place?

The War on Terror started Nov. 4, 1979, when the Iranians took our embassy, and we didnt do anything about it

Do you agree with how U.S. officials handled the crisis?

President Carter was a kind, good man. But Iran ate him up. They just used him. The Iranians told me, It is not you we hate, its your governmentbut we will use you to humiliate your government. And they did exactly that to Carter. He tried a rescue attemptthat failed. He then tried to negotiate. The day they paid that $8 billion is the day that they fed the animaland hes going to want to be fed again.

Should the United States negotiate with terrorists or the nation-states that support them?

Never. I truly believe the War on Terror started Nov. 4, 1979, when the Iranians took our embassy, and we didnt do anything about it. Since then they have rubbed it in our face one incident after another, and weve never held them accountable.

The radical Islamic mullahs have been in power since 1979. We change power every four to eight years, and they know that. We get a new president, they tell him, Were going to negotiate, and then they drag him through the wringer. So we get hung up, and nobody remembers the past.

How should we handle Iran?

Sanctions work pretty well. We should tighten them to the point it makes them squirm. Instead, we just gave them all this money. I dont think its going toward solving poverty in Iran, and I dont think its going into human rights. Its paying for other terrorist events around the world.

How many times do you allow the schoolyard bully to push you around? Its got to stop.

Why does radical Islamic terrorism persist?

I truly believe a Muslim is not born with hatredtheyre taught hatred. Every morning back in 1979 the cars would start honking, and the demonstrators would chant, Death to America! Young Iranian children who had never been in America, never met an American, were being taught to hate America. That teaching is infiltrating into our society.

You wonder why people around the world to this day are strapping themselves with C-4 and walking into a roomful of people? Its because theyve been taught hatred.

How do we protect ourselves?

We must vet each individual that comes into our country. On a personal level everybody must be aware of his surroundings. And if you see something happening, you must stand up. Im always thinking, OK, if something happens, heres what Im going to do. Everybody needs to help each other.

We should be very thankful for what we have here in the United States of America. Not until it is stripped from you do you realize how wonderful life is here.
Xia Changjun, a farmer from China, found a massive stone with the shape of a UFO. Discovered in a cave, the stone has many holes and it is on display in Xiangyang City, Hubei Province.

Xia Changjun rejected a $14,000 offer to buy the UFO-shaped stone. Xia discovered the stone while he was driving along the village. He dug with an iron shovel and to his great surprise, he found that the visible part of the stone was only a small fraction of the huge rock. The body was buried and it was much bigger than previously thought. It has three layers.

Is the UFO-shaped stone a masterpiece of an ancient civilization?

The weight of the rock is about 6 tons. It has the shape of an irregular oval, resembling an unknown flying object. Its length is 2.8 meters, its width is 2 meters and its height is 1.6 meters. The stone has three layers, the bottom layer is composed of pillars of various sizes. The middle layer is composed of seven holes, through those holes you can see to the other side. The top layer creates a big platform, where five piers stand on one side.

Wang Qingxiang, an expert who has studied the local culture for more than two decades, was confused about the UFO-shaped stone and asked if this was a masterpiece of the ancient ancestors or an amazing work of nature.

The expert found that the stone is basalt, which means that the stone has a very long history. Wang Qingxiang speculated that if the stone was made by humans a long time ago, it might be made to be used as an altar.

As the stone was too big and heavy, Xia Changjun had to use a crane to take it home.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
KIM Jong-Un will own a devastating nuclear weapons system ready to destroy North Korea's enemies in less than 12 months. North Korea develops Nuclear Weapons for possible World War. Thae Yong-ho, a former Pyongyang diplomat, recently defected to South Korea and declared that as long as Kim Jong-un is in power, North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons. The North will not give them up even if the Kim regime is offered $1trillion or $10trillion in return." The north korean leader will see next year as the right time to increase nuclear testing as South Korea and US appoint new leaders, according to Thae Yong-ho.

Fighting the Kim regime will facilitate unification of the Korea

Yong-ho is planning to join a security think tank in South Korea in order to fight against the north korean leader. He said that as soon as he came to South Korea he decided to be active in public appearances. He also declared that his heart aches when he thinks of his family members and colleagues who remain in North Korea. But he adds that regretting and crying will bring him nowhere. His priority is fighting the Kim regime and facilitate the unification of both Koreas.

The former diplomat declared that the Kim Jong-un regime is rotting and it has no future due to the great economic development of South Korea and democratisation on the Internet.

North Korea tests rocket drills at all hours of the day. Kim oversaw the multiple launch rocket system division of the Korean People's Army and expressed satisfaction with the results. Kim told his men they had to be ready under any conditions. The armed forces began their winter training regime in early December.

Japan is making preparations for a nuclear attack, surface-to-air missiles are appearing in Tokyo and pamphlets have been produced to advice the population on how to survive a nuclear attack.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Recent reports surface recently about a UFO base in Antarctica, buried beneath the massive ice shelf. NASA satellite photos and all the last trips made by high-ranking officials to the Antarctica backed the claims.

It seems that recent events have conspired to give new life to the modern myth and conspiracy theory of a flying saucer technology and an underground base operating in Antarctica. SecureTeam10, a Youtube channel, posted a video where UFO hunters believe that a decade-old anomaly discovered in NASA photos suggests the existence of UFO bases built by Nazis during World War II. The images show many entrances built into the side of mountains, with the shape of a saucer and at a very high altitude.

Another new addendum to the Nazi UFO theory is U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's recent trip to Antarctica. But, as the Washington Post reported, Kerry's trip was to highlight the effects of climate change.

Conspiracy theorists suggest that the US Navy has been sent to investigate the secret UFO bases. The NASA photos of Antarctica show a massive anomaly that stretches 185 miles wide in a region known as Wilkes Land. But even the scientist who discovered the anomaly, Ralph von Frese, said this impression was made by a gigantic asteroid impact.

The Antarctic Nazi UFO theory was seen as not valid by Naturemagazine in 2007 because Germany sent just one mission to Antarctica, hoping to establish a viable whaling outpost, and stayed just one day there.

Anyway, the Antarctic Nazi UFO base theory keeps growing, possibly due to the power of suggestion, misguided thinking, and other factors.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
After winning the election, Donald Trump is now taking the credit for the Sprint plan to add 5000 jobs in the US. He declared his victory on Wednesday for bringing back jobs, according to his promise. Previously he forced to corporate America to create more jobs in US soil than in other countries.

"I was just called by the head people at Sprint, and they are going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States," said Trump to the reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. He said that Sprint is ready to bring back 5000 jobs in the US from other countries.

Masayoshi Son, CEO of Soft Bank, a Japanese billionaire and a technology investor met with Trump in the early of this month in New York. At that meeting, it was decided that Soft Bank will invest $50 billion to create 50,000 jobs. Moreover, Soft Bank is one of the major investors in One Web and that will create more than 3000 jobs in the USA.

Trump said "They're bringing them back to the United States and Masa and some other people were very much involved in that so I want to thank them,". He also added that creating more 3000 jobs by One Web is quite exciting.

It is not clear till now that where these 8000 jobs will be based. Bringing back jobs in the USA was one of the major parts of his presidential campaigning.

In November Trump made a deal with Carrier to keep 850 jobs in Indianapolis factory which were planned to be shifted to Mexico. According to the deal Carrier will get $7 million incentives by keeping jobs in Indiana polis Factory.

Though the above-mentioned plan was decided between Trump and Carrier still Carrier is planning to shift 1000 jobs to Mexico. The carrier is not the only one who is thinking so, but also another factory owned by the ball bearing maker Rexnord thinking to leave Indianapolis factory soon.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

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A social rehabilitation center for visually impaired minors, social shelter for persons over 18 years of age, as well as s social shelter and rehabilitation center of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population were inaugurated in Sabunchu settlement, Zabrat, Baku December 29.

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, his wife Mehriban Aliyeva, and daughters Leyla and Arzu attended the opening of the facilities.

The president cut the ribbon symbolizing the opening of the complex.

Minister of Labour and Social Protection of Population Salim Muslumov informed President Aliyev and Mehriban Aliyeva about the conditions created at the complex.

The Azerbaijani president and his family members viewed the complex.
Meeting with a group of military servants who participate in April fights have taken place at Azerbaijan State University of Economics (UNEC) on December 28.

Memory of the martyrs sacrificed their lives for the territorial integrity, independence of Azerbaijan were honored with a minutes silence within the event held under the slogan April Battles are our Glorious Victory. The national anthem was sounded.

UNEC Rector, Professor Adalat Muradov noted 2016, the year of 25th jubilee of our national independence, is being seen off with the progress achieved in socio- political, socio- economic, as well as army building as a result of a deliberate policy of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces Mr. Ilham Aliyev: As our Commander in Chief notes, the April fights demonstrated the power of our state and army, our peoples unity, solidarity and patriotism to the entire world. Today, the Azerbaijani army is the strongest army in the region.

Rector spoke about the faculties and students trips to frontline regions within UNECs cooperation with the Ministry of Defense. He said UNEC family is ready for liberation of our lands to the Supreme Commanders order at any moment.

Honored Art Figure, Colonel Abdulla Gurbani introduced to participants soldiers and officers, war veterans and families of martyrs invited to the event. Former military commander who lost his right leg and got several wounds in fight for Lalatapa, Lieutenant- Colonel awarded For Motherland medal Elshan Garayev, Deputy Military Commander on Work with staff, Lieutenant- Colonel awarded Courage medal Seymur Habibullayev, Azerbaijans National Hero, martyr Aliyar Aliyevs son Major Emin Aliyev, the battery commander who destroyed about 10 enemy tanks, armed vehicles and automobiles, awarded the third degree order for Services to Motherland, Captain Mirdamat Baghiyev, the tank commander who gave enemy heavy losses of equipment and manpower, Chief Warrant Officer Pasha Mehdiyev, one of brave fighters, Lieutenant Vusal Ibrahimov, military servant extended his military service Teymur Aliyev and others delivered the information about the April fights to UNEC students and answered their questions.

The April martyr, Ruhin Gahramanovs father Ashraf Gafarov spoke about his sons valor. He said his both sons fought in the trenches adjacent to war in April. His younger son Ruhin was heroically killed, but his elder son continues his military service on the front line up to date: My both sons were awarded the medal Courage. The martyrs father who came to event with sons portrait and the flag laid on Ruhins funeral expressed confidence for the flag to be raised in other occupied territories. The military servant Gahraman Gahramanov who was invited to the event expressed proud for his brothers heroism.

Senior Lieutenant, martyr Ziya Hasanovs father Niyazi Hasanov expressed gratitude to the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the administration of the Ministry of Defense for the care rendered to their families.

Peoples Artist Samir Jafarov performed a heroic song Lalatapa Conquerors. Members of UNECs Creativity Center Aslan Azimzade sounded the poetry Azerbaijani Soldier and Igbal Bayramov Flag within the event.

A letter of congratulation on the occasion of December 31- the World Azerbaijanis Solidarity and New Year to Azerbaijani soldier written by UNEC administration and staff has been read at the end of the event.

UNEC is the brand of Azerbaijan State University of Economics. The brand of UNEC has been registered and patented by the State Committee on Standardization, Metrology and Patent on January 21 2016.
T he hottest drinks trend of the year shows no sign of slowing down with a gin-themed hotel opening in west London.

The new venture by the team at Portobello Road Gin overlooks the famous Portobello Road market in Notting Hill. It will be home to a distillery, two bars, a musuem, shop and three guest rooms.

Head to the ground floor for a specialist cocktail bar offering international gins and a selection of British dishes to eat.

Each of the three guestrooms boasts a minibar filled with spirits made on-site

The gin is served from hand-built barrels suspended above the bar, offering a different tasting cocktail each time.

A Spanish-inspired bar and kitchen GinTonica takes over the first floor, with Pintura Kitchen & Bar executive head chef Greg Lewis putting together the tapas food menu.

The top floor is home to The Boardroom, a private dining room with its own bar. Here there are three guestrooms, each individually designed by Portobello Road Gins founding directors.

Each room boasts a minibar filled with spirits made on-site and a handmade record player with a vinyl playlist from record company Rough Trade. Prices for bed and breakfast start from 150 per night.

Inspired by the Gin Palaces of the 19th Century, The Distillery's History Room is part of the fabled Ginstitute sessions that sees guests learn all about the (often dark) history of gin before heading into the working distillery to make their own gin

The Ginstitute offers wannabe distillers the chance to find out about the gin-making process and make their own unique blend of gin. Tickets for the sessions are priced at 110 per person.

Alternatively, a museum in the building offers visitors the chance to swot up on their gin knowledge with the first-ever English cocktail book. Visit the on-site, off-licenced shop filled with gin-related memorabilia and bottles to buy.

For more information, prices and latest news visit the website.
Coinciding with the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development to be celebrated throughout 2017, the third International Congress on Ethics and Tourism will be held in Poland, on 27-28 April 2017. Organized by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in collaboration with the European Commission (EC) and the Government of Poland, the event will focus on the shared responsibility of all stakeholders in promoting a more sustainable tourism sector.

Held in the framework of the UNWTO Global Code of Ethics for Tourism and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Congress will discuss the global sustainability agenda, particularly issues of governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR), responsible consumption patterns, universal accessibility as well as effective management models for natural and cultural resources.

On the agenda are also inclusive tourism practices that contribute to socio-economic empowerment of local communities and individuals and spread the benefits of tourism development, notably to women, youth, indigenous people and persons with disabilities. The Congress will further highlight the competitive advantages of investing in a more inclusive and diverse tourism sector.

"With more than 1.2 billion international tourists crossing international borders in one single year and the prospects of continuous growth, it is crucial that we manage growth in an ethical and responsible manner" said UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai. "The tourism sector needs to build equitable partnerships and adopt effective national policies and sustainable business strategies in all areas of development."

The 3rd International Congress on Ethics and Tourism is organized in the framework of the cooperation between UNWTO and the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs of the European Commission (DG GROW), with the support of the EC and the Government of Poland.

"I have gladly accepted the decision of the World Tourism Organization to choose Poland as a host for the third edition of the International Congress on Ethics and Tourism" said Witold Banka, Minister of Sport and Tourism. "Poland is actively channeling efforts to implement ethical standards among the tourism organizations in their everyday business. I am confident, that the great atmosphere of Krakow, one of the most beautiful sites in Europe will foster thoughtful discussions and yield positive results of the Congress - added Mr Banka.

The event will include the signing ceremony of the Private Sector Commitment to the UNWTO Global Code of Ethics for Tourism by a group of prominent companies and trade associations with sound CSR policies and strategies.

About the 'Enhancing the Understanding of European Tourism' Project

'Enhancing the Understanding of European Tourism' is a joint project by UNWTO and the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs of the European Commission (DG GROW). The project aims to improve the socio-economic knowledge of the tourism sector, enhance the understanding of European tourism and contribute towards economic growth, job creation, thus improving the competitiveness of the sector in Europe. The project includes three components: 1) increased cooperation and capacity building in tourism statistics; 2) assessment of tourism market trends; 3) promotion of cultural tourism through the Western Silk Road and; 4) promoting sustainable, responsible, accessible and ethical tourism.

The project is co-financed with COSME funds and will run until February 2018.

About The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is the United Nations specialized agency fostering tourism as a vehicle for equal, inclusive and sustainable development. Working with its Member States, international organizations and the private sector, UNWTO promotes safe and seamless travel for all. UNWTO also works to make tourism the foundation of trust and international cooperation and a central pillar of recovery. As part of the wider UN system, UNWTO is at the forefront of global efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including through its ability to create decent jobs, promote equality and preserve natural and cultural heritage.

Follow UNWTO on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin.

Rut Gomez Sobrino

Principal Media Officer

(+34) 91 567 81 60

UNWTO
Coming at Drake will lead to immediate viral notoriety. Thats why many of his rivals choose to avoid beefing in the spotlight or at least are very careful when they do decide to take a shot. Not Funk Flex. The veteran HOT 97 DJ seizes just about every opportunity he has to come at the OVO boss. Flex is now trending on Twitter due to his rant in response to Drakes headline-causing Instagram photo with Jennifer Lopez, which shows the two of them cuddled up, basically confirming dating rumors.

The photo happened to implicate another man with whom Drake has had a long and tumultuous history: Diddy, who dated J. Lo many moons ago. It turns out that Drakes new Instagram picture arrived exactly 17 years after the infamous Manhattan nightclub shooting that would mark the end of Puffy and J. Los relationship. Perceiving Drakes pic as a veiled diss toward his fellow New York vet, Flex immediately sided with Diddy and clowned Drake for his attempt to use a woman as ammo in a rap beef.

Flexs latest rant didnt win him much respect on rap Twitter, though. Many saw his clap back as evidence of his old age and growing disillusionment, whereas others roasted him for seeming to take credit for Diddy smashing J. Lo all those years ago. Now Flex is no stranger to Drakes online fan army, but he had to expect this type of backlash with his latest outburst. Is Flex brave for continuing to go after Drake, or is it about time he got his name out of his mouth? Heres what Twitter had to say

Funk Flex
A massive vessel, the first ever classified as a "very large ethane carrier," began shipping ethane from a Houston terminal last week en route to India - the first time the U.S. has exported the natural gas product used to make plastics to Asia.

The shipment is further evidence of the growing role that Texas shale gas is playing in developing countries, where the rising middle class is demanding more consumer goods - from cars to computers - that use plastics. It also means that abundant supplies of natural gas produced by the so-called shale revolution are finding new markets both here and abroad as ethane, liquefied natural gas, and other products.

In addition to exports, ethane is providing the feedstock for new petrochemical plants in Texas and Louisiana, said Debnil Chowdhury, IHS Markit's director of natural gas liquids in North America. These markets are helping to reduce a glut of ethane and stabilize prices, good news for natural gas producers.

"We've gone from having an ethane excess to potentially having a balanced market by 2020," Chowdhury said.

Ethane is mainly used to make the chemical ethylene, the primary building block of common plastics. The growing global demand for plastics is centered in Asia, especially China and India. China is considering whether to start importing ethane from the U.S., Chowdhury said.

The Ethane Crystal vessel, commissioned by Mumbai-based Reliance Industries and built by Samsung Heavy Industries, is carrying ethane from Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners' terminal at Morgan's Point. The terminal, the world's largest ethane export facility, opened this fall, but initially just shipped to Europe.

The Enterprise facility is the nation's second ethane export terminal after Sunoco's smaller Marcus Hook Terminal opened this spring in Pennsylvania. Sunoco is a subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners.

"Ethane really was landlocked before," Chowdhury said. "There's so much ethane available and not enough U.S. demand."

The American Bureau of Shipping ship classification society dubbed the Ethane Crystal the world's first very large ethane carrier, or VLEC, classified vessel. It's the first of six such vessels being built through 2017. The second, the Ethane Emerald, was completed earlier in December.

Ethane gas is chilled below negative 100 degrees Fahrenheit and liquefied for transport. The Ethane Crystal can ship up to 87,000 cubic meters of ethane at a time, about three times as much as so-called dragon class ships, which began exporting ethane from the terminal of Europe in September.

While the dragon ships, which carry up to 27,500 cubic meters of ethane, work just fine for Europe, it's not economical to transport their relatively small cargos to more distant destinations such as India.

Rising oil prices going into 2017 will only lead to more ethane production. Oil drilling in Texas' Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale also produce a lot of natural gas and by-products, primarily ethane, butane and propane.

The U.S. already has increased exports of butane and propane for cooking and heating in Latin America, China and other markets. Combined exports of propane and butane exceeded gasoline exports for the first time ever in early 2016.

Enterprise Products completed its propane and butane export terminal expansion along the Houston Ship Channel at the end of 2015. Earlier this month, Houston-based Phillips 66 completed a propane and butane export terminal in Freeport.
Katherine Feser/HC staff

Houston-area homeowners, on average, have a slightly rosier perception of their homes' values than appraisers do, according to data by lender Quicken Loans.

Quicken uses its Home Price Perception Index to chart the difference between appraisers' opinions of homes in a market and what homeowners think their property is worth. The information gives a peek at the "psychographics" of the American housing market said Bob Walters, Quicken's chief economist, in a statement.
WASHINGTON - Congress is preparing to do major battle next month over President-elect Donald Trump's secretary of state nominee, Rex Tillerson, in a brewing proxy fight over Trump's potential financial conflicts of interests and his unconventional foreign policy.

The official sparring is expected to take place on Jan. 11, when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee plans to hold a two-part hearing to grill Tillerson over his tenure as Exxon Mobil's CEO and what many lawmakers believe are unseemly links to Russia.

But behind the scenes on Capitol Hill, the strategizing has already begun.

Democrats do not believe they stand much chance of stopping Tillerson from being confirmed. But they plan to press the top diplomat-designate to commit to full divestiture from Exxon Mobil and detail how he would pursue a different approach to the world as secretary of state, in what one Senate Democratic aide who requested anonymity to candidly discuss strategy called a "very thorough, tough vetting." As they have with Trump, Democrats plan to focus sharply on potential conflicts of interests deriving from Tillerson's finances, as well as his unorthodox views on critical foreign policy matters.

It's a grilling they would happily serve Trump, if only they had reason to drag him before a congressional committee.

Already, the minority party is railing against Republicans for refusing to demand Tillerson produce his tax returns. Their frustration stems from Tillerson's response to a routine question about tax returns on the Foreign Relations Committee's pre-confirmation hearing questionnaire. According to a Senate Democratic aide and a Trump transition team spokesman, Tillerson said he stood ready to provide only "tax return information" for his wife and himself for the previous three years. That means it's possible Tillerson isn't willing to provide complete returns.

Democrats have demanded that all Trump's Cabinet nominees release their tax returns - something Trump himself steadfastly refused to do during the campaign because, he said, the returns were under routine audit.

Foreign Relations Chair Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said the GOP would not break with years of precedent to compel Tillerson to turn over his tax returns without good reason, no matter how loud the clamor from Democrats.

Corker stressed that Tillerson is "not going to be the proxy" for Trump "because we're not going to ask for tax returns."

Senate Democrats believe they can fight miniature versions of the political battles they are waging with Trump during the confirmation hearings for his Cabinet choices - particularly those like Tillerson who hail from the private sector. They intend to focus on what they - and some Republicans - see as questionable ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Several Democratic members of the committee have said they also plan to ask Tillerson about human rights and climate change.

Many lawmakers are leaning on Trump to fully divest from his companies because his wide-ranging business empire lends itself at the very least to an appearance of conflict of interest. Democrats argue Tillerson's business career raises similar questions.

Just how thorny those conflicts may be won't be clear until the committee receives Tillerson's financial disclosure statements, documents that Corker expects to have before the end of 2016. Corker plans to give other committee members a copy of the disclosures "as soon as we have it," providing ample time to review what is expected to be a "very extensive" document.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

By Anvar Mammadov  Trend:

A special plan of actions will be prepared in order to speed up the recovery of Azerbaijans biggest bank, International Bank (IBA).

This is envisaged in President Ilham Aliyevs decree on approval of the draft state budget for 2017.

The decree instructs Azerbaijans Financial Stability Council to prepare the plan of actions.

According to the decree, the council is instructed to prepare and approve a monetary program for 2017, as well as a plan of actions to ensure macroeconomic and financial stability for 2017 and medium-term period that should include measures on intensifying the IBAs recovery.

The Financial Stability Council was created under the decree of the Azerbaijani president in order to further strengthen macroeconomic stability and financial sustainability in the country, conduct coordinated policy in this sphere and others. The council is chaired by Azerbaijans Prime Minister Artur Rasizade.

On July 15, 2015, Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on measures on the recovery related to preparation for privatization of the state-owned shares of the International Bank of Azerbaijan.
ZHENGZHOU, China - A vast, boxy customs center acts as a busy island of commerce deep in central China.

Government officers race around wooden pallets piled high with boxes - counting, weighing, scanning and approving shipments. Unmarked trucks stretch for more than a mile awaiting the next load headed for Beijing, New York, London and dozens of other destinations.

The state-of-the-art facility was built several years ago to serve a single global exporter: Apple, now the world's most valuable company and one of China's largest retailers.

The well-choreographed customs routine is part of a hidden bounty of perks, tax breaks and subsidies in China that supports the world's biggest iPhone factory, according to confidential government records reviewed by the New York Times, as well as more than 100 interviews with factory workers, logistics handlers, truck drivers, tax specialists and current and former Apple executives. The package of sweeteners and incentives, worth billions of dollars, is central to the production of the iPhone, Apple's best-selling and most profitable product.

It all centers on Zhengzhou, a city of 6 million people in an impoverished region of China. Running at full tilt, the factory here, owned and operated by Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn, can produce 500,000 iPhones a day. Locals now refer to Zhengzhou as "iPhone City."

The local government has proved instrumental, doling out more than $1.5 billion to Foxconn to build large sections of the factory and nearby employee housing. It paved roads and built power plants.

It helps cover continuing energy and transportation costs for the operation. It recruits workers for the assembly line. It pays bonuses to the factory for meeting export targets.

All of it in support of iPhone production.

"We needed something that could really develop this part of the country," said Li Ziqiang, a Zhengzhou official. "There's an old saying in China: 'If you build the nest, the birds will come.' And now, they're coming."

U.S. officials have long decried China's support of its state-owned companies, calling the subsidies and other aid an unfair competitive advantage in a global marketplace. But the Zhengzhou operation shows the extent of China's effort to entice overseas multinationals to set up production in the country.

Local and provincial officials have courted manufacturers with incentive packages that make it easier and cheaper to do business. Beijing, for decades, has encouraged such efforts at the national level, by developing special economic zones that offer tax breaks to multinationals and exempt them from costly and cumbersome rules.

In this way, China is not unlike other countries, including the United States, where states and cities vie for companies. To compete in the era of globalization, multinationals, which face pressures from shareholders and customers, must seek the best opportunities, increasingly by relying on a highly interconnected supply chain spread across the world.

In China, the competition for companies is secretive and rarely exposed to public scrutiny or debate - and it is often focused on manufacturing partners, rather than multinationals themselves.

It is difficult to tally the total value of government benefits for the Zhengzhou operation or to determine the exact effect on the profits of Foxconn or Apple. The subsidies aren't disclosed by the Chinese government or by Foxconn officials. They aren't available in public records. And Apple says it was not a party to Foxconn's negotiations.


President-elect Donald Trump sought credit for Sprint's commitment to create or bring back 5,000 jobs that the carrier says are part of broader U.S. hiring plans previously announced by Japan-based parent SoftBank Group Corp.

Trump said SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son was among those behind the move to add workers. The Japanese billionaire, who Trump calls "Masa," said earlier this month that he intends to invest $50 billion in the U.S. using a previously announced technology fund, creating 50,000 jobs.

"Because of what's happening and the spirit and the hope I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they're going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States," Trump told reporters Wednesday outside his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. "Masa and some other people were very much involved with that."

The 5,000 jobs in Sprint's plans are part of Son's overall 50,000-job commitment, though they'll be funded by Sprint and not SoftBank, the U.S. carrier said.

The employment will be in customer care, sales and other functions, Sprint said in a statement Wednesday. The company is still determining the location of the positions, which will be filled by the end of March 2018, Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint said. Sprint had about 30,000 employees as of the end of March, down from 38,000 in 2013, when Son acquired the company.

Trump disputed the notion that the jobs had already been announced, telling reporters later Wednesday that "I just spoke with the head person. He said because of me they're doing 5,000 jobs in this country." He referred reporters to his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, for details. She didn't respond to a request for comment, and Sprint didn't respond to follow-up questions.

Son's vow to invest in the U.S. and create jobs helped provide Trump with evidence he's producing more work for Americans. It also scored points for Sprint, which was rebuffed by the Obama administration on a previous merger attempt.

Trump also repeated an announcement earlier this month that OneWeb Ltd., a satellite startup backed by Son's SoftBank Group Corp., will create almost 3,000 jobs in Florida over the next four years. That number consists of about 1,200 jobs at OneWeb, plus about 1,800 jobs at suppliers that work directly with the startup and include Qualcomm Inc., Hughes Network Systems and Honeywell International Inc., Greg Wyler, founder of OneWeb, said in an interview.

"Masa's meeting with Trump invigorated and inspired Masa to increase investment in OneWeb and accelerate OneWeb's growth," Wyler said in an interview. In September, October and November, the U.S. economy gained an average of 176,000 nonfarm jobs a month, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Sprint shares have more than doubled this year on improving subscriber gains and speculation that the company could revisit a long-speculated merger with T-Mobile US Inc., the third-largest wireless provider, under the Trump administration. The stock rose less than 1 percent in early trading Thursday.

Sprint has struggled since 2013, when Son hinted he could try to buy T-Mobile, only to abandon the effort after signals from the Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department that they could oppose the move. While T-Mobile has rebounded, becoming the country's fastest growing carrier, Sprint has cut costs and mortgaged assets to contain its debt.

OneWeb is developing small, low-orbit satellites to provide wireless internet access in remote areas. The company raised $1.2 billion from SoftBank and others this month. The Trump administration's interest in space accelerated OneWeb's plans, said a spokesman, Charles Palmer.

Consumer and business confidence has surged since the election, reflecting optimism about Trump's pledges to boost growth, keep the labor market churning, cut taxes and ease regulations. Trump has meanwhile scored political victories as president-elect by appearing to persuade individual companies to keep or create jobs in the U.S., and by intervening in Pentagon contracts.

Trump struck a deal with United Technologies Corp.'s Carrier unit last month to keep about 800 manufacturing jobs at a furnace factory in Indianapolis. Trump had vowed during his campaign that he would force the company to abandon plans to move the jobs to Mexico. About 1,000 Carrier jobs are still leaving the state for Mexico, and the company will receive about $7 million in incentives from state taxpayers for the positions it is keeping in Indianapolis.

This month, IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty -- a Trump economic adviser -- announced just before a meeting with Trump that she planned to hire 25,000 people in the U.S. and invest $1 billion over the next four years.

Earlier this month, Trump called on Boeing to cut the price of a new version of the president's aircraft, Air Force One. Last week, he said he had asked the company to "price-out" a new version of its F-18 Super Hornet fighter that could compete with Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive U.S. weapons system ever.

The announcements have buttressed Trump's campaign-trail claims that he would use his business acumen to broker better deals for American workers and taxpayers. He's also said he will exit or renegotiate trade deals that make it easier for companies to shift production to countries with lower labor costs, and threatened to impose significant tariffs on imports.

Trump's public pronouncements sometimes exaggerate either the costs of projects he's trying to influence or his own impact. For example, he said the new Air Force One would cost $4 billion, while the Air Force has budgeted $3.2 billion so far to research, develop and purchase two of the planes. He claimed he had convinced Carrier to keep more than 1,000 jobs in Indianapolis; the accurate number is about 800. In November, the president-elect claimed credit for convincing Ford to keep an auto plant in Kentucky rather than moving it to Mexico. Ford had planned to move production of a specific model to Mexico, but did not expect to close the Kentucky plant or reduce the number of jobs there.

And while companies have expressed optimism over Trump's promise to lower the corporate tax rate, new tariffs could ratchet up the price of consumer goods.

---

Bloomberg's Jennifer Epstein contributed.
There's a lot of apprehension on Texas' southern border these days. What will happen with the peso, which is making it harder for Mexicans to shop in the United States? Will President-elect Donald Trump really build a wall to keep out immigrants? And what about his promise to overhaul NAFTA, the free trade agreement that has had mixed effects on the U.S., but largely positive ones for Texas?

Most of that is still uncertain. But there's some indication that Trump is already having an impact on corporate plans. Local economic development officials report increased interest in U.S. border communities from international companies to insulate themselves against potential tariffs or other trade barriers that could pop up after January 20.

"One of the things that foreign companies are looking at is setting up operations on both sides of the border," says Keith Patridge, president of the McAllen Economic Development Corporation, a non-profit that promotes investment in the area. "If NAFTA were somehow changed, we could serve our customers in the U.S. from the U.S. side, and Mexican customers from Mexico."

The other big advantage of having both facilities right next to each other: Managers can look after the whole operation, while still living in the United States, which they tend to prefer.

It's actually an old model. Before NAFTA went into effect, Mexican factories known as maquiladoras had to import a certain percentage of their raw materials from the U.S. in order to qualify for duty-free status when products were exported back to the U.S., so they hugged the American border to minimize transportation costs.

When that requirement went away, so did the need for U.S. proximity. More of the maquiladoras migrated into Mexico's interior; northern border cities only had 62 percent of the sector's employment in the year 2000. Manufacturing jobs also gravitated to cities with large auto plants like Hermosillo and Monterrey, as car companies asked their suppliers to locate close by.

Patridge thinks the old model could return, if trade becomes less free. "It's kind of like the old adage, 'the more things change, the more they remain the same,'" he says.

There are other forces moving companies to the U.S. side of the border: It's actually getting hard to find workers in Mexican manufacturing hubs, as competition has heated up. And according to Jason Hilts, president of the Brownsville Economic Development Corporation, some companies are considering locating in the U.S. out of concern that the new president might target them like he did Carrier and Ford Motor Company when they announced plans to expand in Mexico.

"They're afraid of that Trump tweet, and what will that do to their shares, and how will their customers perceive that move," Hilts says. "Of course they would have more savings by doing it in Mexico. But they do a lot of manufacturing in the U.S. as it is, they can do it on the U.S. side and still make money doing it."

So it may be possible that Trump's actions  both formal and informal  could create some jobs in the U.S. But the overall effect of creating barriers to trade would still likely make the whole region less competitive for foreign investment, which may migrate to Asia instead.

It's not that NAFTA couldn't be improved. Mexico, in fact, was looking forward to aspects of the now-dead Trans-Pacific Partnership that would have modernized the 1990s trade agreement for new developments like cross-border data flows.

"Essentially, if there is a renegotiation, Mexico's opening position will be something that approximates TPP," says Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington D.C.

Even though Trump bashed the TPP on the campaign trail, America's business lobby is reportedly also planning to push provisions from that defunct deal  such as those protecting digital products and safeguarding foreign investments  if NAFTA is opened up. But Wilson doubts such changes to trade policy would create more manufacturing jobs in the U.S., as Trump's team has promised.

"If they don't like TPP, what is it that they can do better?" Wilson says. "If the fundamental goal is to strengthen manufacturing in the U.S., it's not easy to think about a free trade agreement that would do that better than what's already in place."
William Tyler's "The Great Unwind" evokes a world of feeling in eight minutes.

The song opens with Tyler playing a gentle guitar line that gets swallowed in a small tempest of feedback. Near midway through the song the music ceases, birds chirp, and Glenn Kotche's feather-light drums bring the music back: a droning keyboard and a guitar figure informed by weariness and hope.

The composition's title refers to "The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America," George Packer's prescient 2013 book about a country reconfigured due to demographic and generational changes as well as the financial crash of 2008, which altered the footprint of its foundation. The 2016 that swept some up in stages of disbelief was a long, slow process.

Tyler read the book, and independently he made a decision to travel from concert to concert by back roads. He saw towns decimated and struggling - part of an empire in decline that was invisible in the prosperous segments of urban centers.

He made an autumnal album and titled it "Modern Country." The title is, in part, a commentary about what is (and is not) country music in the 21st century. It's also a reference to the music, which is elegiac.

"The album ended up hitting a nerve that was relevant to the intention behind it," he says. "If it came out right now, after the election, everybody would get it."

He laughs. "It seems more reflective and sober after the election, but these things were all in play long before November."

Instrumental music, naturally, doesn't have the luxury of being literal, but through mood offers room for interpretation. And Tyler's contemplative and melancholy record is one of several profoundly realized instrumental albums in 2016 that set up a narrative for our being, from the cradle to the grave: love, rest, conflict, decay, death and rebirth.

A guitarist of great expressive range, Wilco's Nels Cline made a conceptual album about the many splendors of love, as well as its more pointed aspects. Note the album's cover in which a heart is pierced by a dagger. Under the sway of the late, great guitarist Jim Hall, Cline sought to create a contemporary piece of "mood music," jazzy musings often made with leisurely tempos. Some of his most sublime playing is included on the album, though Cline also represents the knife on the cover, making use of his avant garde bona fides to punctuate some pieces with love's more pointed complications.

"Thor and Friends," by La Porte native Thor Harris, touched on similar themes without words. The album was largely built around polyrhythmic patterns tapped out on marimbas, though there are accents added with violins, electronics and other instruments. By working in this minimalistic manner, Harris and his friends almost imperceptibly alter the musical patterns until things that are seemingly disparate intersect into little bursts of beauty. The effect is profoundly human and hopeful.

German ambient composer Max Richter created one of the year's most audacious recordings with "Sleep." Richter issued two versions of the album: An eight-hour iTunes version, customized to accompany a night's sleep, and a 60-minute version for waking hours. I've tried "Sleep" both ways, though logistically one version is decidedly less practical to comment upon with much insight. That said, the gorgeous sadness that floats through 18 minutes of "Dream 11" on the long version is unfortunately shortened to 10 minutes as "Dream 3" on the CD. The music possesses a dreaminess, obviously, but Richter's interaction of strings and electronics also infuses it with some urgency and tension.

Producer and musician Nicolas Jaar opens "Sirens" with the sound of a flag flapping in the wind, a metaphor for possession of property and/or nationalistic identity. The sounds he puts together riff repeatedly on the theme of conflict, not surprising considering Jaar's status as a pan-continental being: He lives in Europe, though he's from Chile, with Palestinian and French roots. Jaar's music strikes a jittery sound informed by 21st-century global anxiety. It's not nihilistic, but it doesn't coddle either.

Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson's "Orphee" is the sort of entrancing work I can disappear into for hours. The title is a reference to the Orpheus myth, so it contains subtext from the underworld. On "Filght From the City" Johannson intertwines a mournful piano line with some strings and just a breath of dissonant electronics to devastating effect. A distorted voice offers a chilling counterpart to a sweeping piece played by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble on "A Song for Europa."

Houston native William Basinski has also previewed some of his "A Shadow in Time," which will be released at the top of 2017, one year after the death of David Bowie, who is the subject of "For David Robert Jones," a loving 20-minute eulogy threaded around the droning sound of a distorted saxophone.

But I keep coming back to Tyler's mournful travelogue, maybe because the results of the election are so likely to bring a rush of lyrical protest music next year.

Tyler's travels expanded his thinking about who we are and how we got here.

"I don't think it's realistic to believe in binary aspects of society," he said. "This year showed how closed-minded people are, especially some liberal people who just were unable to accept that something like Donald Trump could happen. I think it's important to find out about other things. It's important to take a different route. To have different information sources and challenge your belief systems. Which we, as a culture, don't typically do, whether it's politics or religion or music."

Tyler, in the liner notes, quotes the doomed Arkansas poet Frank Stanford: "All of this is magic/against death."

The next lines of Stanford's poem also hover above the album, even if they're not printed in it: "All of this ends / with to be continued."
Across the nation, 10.1 percent of kids in kindergarten through 12th grade are enrolled in private school, making that privilege a huge minority of students. And in Texas, it's even more rare: The census reports that only 6.7 percent of Lone Star kids attend private schools.

But here in Houston, there are several areas where it's not just a little more common than the national average. It's the norm.

In the Galleria's 77056 ZIP Code for instance, 60.9 percent of kids currently enrolled in the grades between kindergarten and 12th grade go private. If you're keeping score, that's about six times the national average, and nine times the state's rate. What makes it so high there?

The number is buoyed by the area's middle schoolers. While 40.6 percent of kids between first and fourth grade go to private schools, the rate jumps up to 78.5 percent in grades five through eight.

This can't be cheap for families  especially in a part of town where residents are already shelling out more than they might be able to afford just to live in their high-end homes. But the Galleria certainly isn't the only spot where more than half of families are choosing to forego the public school system.

In West U's 77005, where the area's wealthiest families live, 54.9 percent of students are enrolled in private schools, and the rate is 52.2 percent in River Oaks's 77019 area.

Some of the kids in these areas are attending schools within the Beltway, while others may commute to other parts of the greater Houston area, where prep schools are enjoying a moment of growth.

To look up demographic information on any ZIP code, type it into the tool below.

Bookmark Gray Matters. It's the norm.
The Army has launched an investigation into what caused an AH-64 Apache helicopter to crash into a section of Galveston Bay near the Bayport terminal Wednesday, killing two Texas Army National Guard soldiers.

The helicopter, assigned to the 1-149 Attack Reconnaissance Battalion based at Ellington Field, went down shortly before 3 p.m., prompting an immediate search by state and local agencies, along with the U.S. Coast Guard.

Military officials later Wednesday did not identify the two soldiers who were aboard the helicopter, pending notification of their families.

The cause of the fatal crash will be the subject of the official inquiry by the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center at Fort Rucker, Ala.

Army officials said the flight was a "normal" training mission so the Texas Guard soldiers could maintain their flight proficiency.

"Our pilots are very competent and they are very well-trained," said Chief Warrant Officer 5 Glen Webb.

Pasadena firefighters were among the first at the scene of the crash.

Late Wednesday, officials said they were still working to recover the bodies of the two soldiers along with the submerged wreckage.

Although the downed Apache was quickly identified as a military helicopter, there was some initial confusion about where it had come from.

"We haven't had anybody who has claimed it," Pasadena Fire Marshal David Brannon said soon after the fatal crash.

An Army spokesman at Fort Hood initially said they had no reports of missing helicopters and a soldier who answered the telephone at Texas Guard headquarters in Austin was initially unaware of any mishaps involving one of their Apache gunships.

"We're just trying to sort it out," Brannon said.

Uniformed military officials eventually showed up at the scene of the recovery effort and identified the helicopter as being from the unit based at Ellington Field.

The AH-64 Apache is the Army's primary attack helicopter with its principal mission being the destruction of what military officials call "high value targets" with missiles, rockets or a 30 millimeter chain gun.

It has a tandem-seated crew cockpit with the pilot in the rear seat and the co-pilot/gunner located in front.

The 1-149th, part of the Texas Army National Guard's 36th Combat Aviation Brigade, has experienced combat with deployments in recent years to both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Three months after a judge ruled that a Katy man convicted of murdering his wife did not get a fair trial and excoriated the prosecutor who handled the case, saying she withheld evidence, the Harris County District Attorney's Office filed objections to the decision, tackling it point-by-point, and defended its attorney.

In an 80-page court filing released Wednesday, prosecutors objected to findings made by state District Judge Larry Gist, who in June issued a long-awaited ruling in the case involving the 2007 murder trial of David Temple.

In his decision, Gist recommended that Temple be granted a new trial and outlined 36 different instances of prosecutorial misconduct by Kelly Siegler, the legendary former prosecutor who is now star of the nationally televised show "Cold Justice." Temple's case is in front of the state's highest criminal court, which will decide if he gets a new trial.

Belinda Lucas Temple - who was eight months pregnant - was killed execution-style by a shotgun blast in 1999. Her husband was convicted of murder in a lengthy and hotly contested trial eight years later.

Since the guilty verdict, lawyers on both sides continue to fight about the jury's decision. Last December, that fight continued when Gist began a hearing that lasted one month during which he heard about the behind-the-scenes machinations of the trial.

In his ruling, the judge agreed with defense lawyers who said Siegler violated a central tenet of modern criminal law, in which prosecutors have to hand over information that could help the defendant. Gist said evidence that could have helped Temple was either withheld completely or delayed so much that it was not helpful.

Point-by-point rebuttal

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling that codified the law, Brady vs. Maryland, stands for the principle that suspects are entitled to exculpatory information.

In the district attorney's objections to Gist's ruling, prosecutors offer a point-by-point rebuttal.

"(Gist's) findings concerning alleged exculpatory evidence are either directly contradicted by the record, not supported by the record, or refer to information that is not exculpatory and/or material so that Brady is neither implicated nor violated ," according to prosecutors. The objections note that four of Gist's findings address issues that happened after the trial, so they did not affect whether he got a fair trial.

Read the full filing below.

Siegler has denied any wrongdoing in the case. In a response to the ruling, she said she disagreed with Gist and looked forward to a detailed and documented response from the District Attorney's Office.

That response arrived Wednesday with hundreds of points of contention arguing that the evidence was handed over with enough time for Temple's defense attorney Dick Deguerin to make use of it.

In some instances, they wrote, the evidence was handed over in the years before trial. In other cases, the evidence came out at trial and the jury took a break, giving the defense team time to read through statements.

Delayed information

The District Attorney's Office response also addressed one of the biggest legal issues in this case - that prosecutors were able to delay the release of information while still following their office procedures.

Before 2008, Harris County prosecutors would not let defense lawyers use a machine to copy documents, like offense reports, that were found in the files. In some cases, like Temple's, that meant lawyers had to hand copy hundreds of pages of documents, with the prosecutor showing them only what was deemed to be Brady information.

That has changed, and in 2014, the wrongful prosecution of Michael Morton led to new rules that generally force prosecutors to allow the defense to copy the entire file, a change noted in the most recent filing in the Temple trial.

"It should be noted that the applicant's trial occurred in 2007, seven years prior to the Michael Morton Act and resulting changes in Texas discovery procedures; thus the applicant's case should be considered in light of the law and discovery procedures in effect at the time of the trial," according to the filing.

A spokesman for the District Attorney's Office said the agency would not comment further on the filings until the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals makes a decision.

Lawyers for Temple called the objections "offensive" and "ridiculous."

"You can take things out of context all you want, and that's what they did," said Stan Schneider, who represents Temple with Casie Gotro.

Added Gotro: "Siegler has always maintained that this evidence wasn't exculpatory. It's the excuse she needed to hide evidence, and its the same excuse this DA's office will continue to use to protect her and the other prosecutors who helped her hide that evidence.

"It's just offensive."

On Friday, Siegler released the following statement.

"The 80-page Objections filed on Tuesday by the Harris County District Attorney's office conclusively refute every instance of prosecutorial misconduct found by the court in its order on David Temple's habeas corpus application. The Objections provide a meticulous review of the court record and include extensive citations to and quotations from, that recordboth of which are missing from the habeas court's original opinion. In many instances, the record evidence directly contradicts the habeas court's factual findings, and the habeas court has misstated witness testimony and dates. The Objections demonstrate that the witness statements that were purportedly withheld by the prosecution not only were timely produced, but were even used during trial by defense counsel, who introduced them as evidence, used them during witness examinations or simply referred to them on the record. The Objections undeniably establish that the jury in the Temple murder trial heard all relevant evidence, that Temple's defense counsel had sufficient notice of all relevant evidence and that no prosecutorial misconduct occurred."
A federal judge Wednesday ordered the Texas prison system to disclose the number of heat-related deaths among inmates statewide since 1990, sharply questioning why its lawyers had not provided the information sooner.

U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison gave the state 30 days to provide the details or face the consequences.

"We are not talking about how many widgets were sold out of a given factory," Ellison said during a hearing Wednesday in Houston. "We are talking about human lives, and I would be very distressed if the answer is the TDCJ does not even keep count of how many people died of heat-related illness."

The issue is central to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in 2013 over the death of Robert Allen Webb and others who died of heat-related causes. The suit contends at least 13 inmates have died of heat-related deaths since 2007, including 11 who died in the especially hot year of 2011.

The class-action suit contends more than 1,400 state prison inmates - mostly elderly and disabled - are suffering "cruel and unusual punishment" by enduring extreme summer heat without air conditioning.

"They have turned fraud into a death sentence, drunk driving into a death sentence, " said Austin lawyer Jeff Edwards, who represents Webb and others. "Even if we were talking about a murderer, the sentence is what the jury decides, not torturous and cruel."

If the number of people escaping from prison were as high as the number of people dying of heat-related deaths, Edwards said, "heads would roll and things would change."

It was not clear late Wednesday if the state would appeal the judge's ruling.

"The well-being of staff and offenders is a top priority for the agency and we remain committed to making sure that both are safe during the extreme heat," according to a statement issued by prison spokesman Jason Clark.

In the hearing Wednesday, Ellison also ordered the prison system to provide figures on the number of heat-related injuries to staff and inmates at the Hodge Unit, where Webb was held with other developmentally disabled inmates. The judge gave the state 30 days to provide him with the name of an official who could testify as to why that unit was built without air conditioning.

The treatment of prisoners touches the core of criminal justice sensibilities in Texas, where most inmates are housed in cells without air-conditioning. Of the 109 state prison facilities in Texas, 30 are air-conditioned in all housing areas, though all units have some areas that are air-conditioned, Clark said.

Edwards said Webb was taking medication that was widely known to increase vulnerability for a person in extreme heat.

A key part of the case is knowing what prison officials knew about people being injured or killed by the heat and what they did or did not do about it, he said.

"It has always been a huge problem in the Texas prison system, and they ought to be able to tell us who died of heat-related illness in the Texas prison system," Edwards said during the hearing, "and if they can't, they ought to say it under oath."

Harold Liller, who is with the Texas Attorney General's Office and only recently assigned to the case, told the judge the state had not yet provided the requested information as it was first going through the court system to determine who among the defendants would be protected by law from potential liability.

Liller told the judge it would cost millions of dollars and take a great deal of time to try and figure out how many of the prison system's 150,000 inmates had heat-related injuries in the past 27 years.

The suit stirs memories of the Ruiz lawsuit, which led to the appointment of a special master by U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice in the 1970s.

Justice rode herd over the state's entire prison system after inmate David Ruiz filed a handwritten complaint in 1972. The lawsuit exposed a system in which prisoners were packed in cells and certain inmates were used as what amounted to auxiliary guards to keep order on cell blocks.

Texas spent millions of dollars to build new prisons and make upgrades as a result.

On Wednesday, following Ellison's ruling, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice released a statement noting that in 2014 architects and engineers examined the logistics and possible costs of outfitting the state's prisons with air conditioning.

Four facilities were studied because their designs were representative of the other units in the system, according to TDCJ. The 18-month study concluded just to outfit those four prisons would cost approximately $350 million as well as millions of dollars in increased annual operating costs.

"Many of TDCJ's facilities were built before the time that air conditioning was commonly installed," TDCJ said in the prepared statement. "Prisons built in the eighties and nineties, which were specifically approved by the federal courts in the Ruiz case, didn't include air conditioning."
A Fort Bend County grand jury this week declined to file any charges in connection with the death of an inmate of a suburban city's jail.

Joseph Gunter, 33, who was being held in the city of Rosenberg's jail, died in early October in what was later ruled a suicide, Fort Bend County District Attorney John Healey said.

Facts surrounding his death were presented before the grand jury in closed proceedings.

The intent was to determine whether an individual - such as jail staff or city employees - or an entity had committed a criminal offense.

City jails operate independently of the county and are not subject to inspection or regulation by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, which developed a revised mental-health screening form in 2015.

"After reviewing the evidence, the grand jury indicated that they were going to take no action in reference to his death," Healey said Wednesday.

Gunter was arrested hours before his death on narcotics-related charges, police said at the time.

Gunter was pronounced dead about 8:20 p.m. Oct. 3 at OakBend Medical Center in Richmond.

Healey said his office, viewing the matter closed in reference to a criminal charge, separately shared information on the case, including jailhouse video, with the family and answered its questions.

"While I know it's painful for the family to go through an incident like this, I think it's also important that the incident be reviewed by a grand jury so that there can be a greater certainty as to the cause of an individual's death," Healey said. "I hope it helps to answer some questions and helps the healing process of the family."

The death this month of a second inmate at the medical facility, Robert Velasquez, 39, remains under investigation, Healey said.

Velasquez was found unresponsive in his cell the morning after his arrest.

Police had gone to investigate a possible assault case and learned a warrant had been issued for his arrest for failing to appear in court in an unrelated child neglect case.

He died at OakBend Medical Center in Richmond on Dec. 3, authorities said, exactly two months after Gunter.
Details added, headline and text changed (first version posted on 13:13)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

By Anvar Mammadov  Trend:

Introduction of partial tax amnesty in Azerbaijan starting from 2017 will make it possible to write off about 8 million manats of the banking sector liabilities before the state budget, Head of the Main Department on Analysis and Control over Tax Risks of Taxes Ministry Natig Shirinov told reporters in Baku Dec. 29.

He said that as of Dec. 1, liabilities of Azerbaijans banking sector account for about 7 million manats.

Of this amount, financial sanctions account for 4.8 million manats, and the interest charged for the late payment of taxes amounts to 2.19 million manats, said Shirinov.

Currently, the Parliament of Azerbaijan is considering a draft law On regulation of tax liabilities accumulated as of Jan. 1, 2017.

In accordance with the draft law, two types of tax liabilities will be written off: all the interest accrued for non-payment of the debt and a part of the financial sanctions.

If 30 percent of the financial sanctions is paid in January 2017, the remaining 70 percent of sanctions will be written off. If 50 percent of tax penalties is paid in January-February 2017, the remaining 50 percent of the sanctions will be written off, and if 70 percent of the financial sanctions is paid in January-March 2017, the remaining 30 percent of the sanctions will be written off.
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It sounded like an ending too unbelievable for even Hollywood: Famed actress Debbie Reynolds died just one day after she'd lost her celebrity daughter, 60-year-old Carrie Fisher.

The 84-year-old performer reportedly suffered a stroke Wednesday. The official cause of death hasn't yet been disclosed, though Reynolds' son, Todd Fisher, told the Associated Press that his sister's death "was too much" for his mother: "She said, 'I want to be with Carrie.' And then she was gone."

The dramatic turn had fans across the world wondering: Can you die from a broken heart? The phrase dates back thousands of years, describing a feeling of loss as universal as love itself, but in recent decades researchers have uncovered a medical explanation.

It's called broken-heart syndrome, and it can be fatal, said Dr. Rohan Wagle, a cardiologist at Kelsey-Seybold Clinic in Houston. Wagle didn't want to speculate about what happened to Reynolds, but he said the publicized description is consistent with the condition, also called stress-induced cardiomyopathy.

"It's basically a syndrome where a patient experiences a traumatic or a highly emotional event, it causes a surge of adrenalin that becomes sort of toxic to the heart muscle and actually causes the heart muscle to pump less efficiently," Wagle said. "That leads to a situation similar to a heart-failure patient, but happening in a very sudden fashion."

Patients suffering from broken-heart syndrome usually show up at an emergency room believing they'd suffered a heart attack, said Dr. Salim Virani, an associate professor of cardiology at Baylor College of Medicine, explaining that the condition was first described in 1990 by Japanese researchers. They named it Takotsubo syndrome, because the left ventricles of patients who suffer from it are puffed up, resembling the shape of Takotsubo pots used to catch octopuses in Japan.

Symptoms are indeed similar to a heart attack - chest pain, shortness of breath - but the similarities end there, Virani said. The condition doesn't involve a heart blockage, he said, and most patients recover within days or weeks, with minimal lasting harm.

In rare cases, when other underlying health problems are at play, the condition can be deadly.

Any emotional trauma can trigger broken-heart syndrome, said Virani, who published a study on the topic a decade ago. The death of a loved one. A bad break-up. Financial stress.

It's widely believed that those emotional traumas trigger a hormonal release that affects the heart, but after years of study, "the truth is we really don't know for sure," said Virani, who has treated a number of these cases at DeBakey VA Medical Center.

The vast majority of broken-heart patients - up to 80 or 90 percent - are women, raising questions about the differences in the way men and women process emotions. Researchers haven't been able to explain the disparity, Wagle said.

In the past five years, he said he's seen about 10 cases, including one that seemed to be triggered by excessive energy drink consumption. In another case, a woman came in a couple weeks after her cat died.

"She recovered," he said.

To prevent the condition, doctors say people who are grieving should surround themselves with supportive loved ones and try to stay active. The most important thing is to find ways to stay calm and relieve stress, Wagle said.

The condition is relatively rare, though it's often erroneously mentioned in news accounts when an elderly couple dies within hours or days of each other. In most of those cases, Wagle said, another physiological phenomenon is at play: People who are already ill simply lose the will to keep fighting after losing a cherished companion.

In an interview with NPR last month, Carrie Fisher spoke of her admiration for Reynolds, noting that her mother had recently suffered some health troubles. Stress in general can also play a role in strokes.

Whatever the cause, Reynolds' death is a reminder of the devastating toll grief can take on the body.

"I think the brain and the heart are definitely connected," Wagle said. "You see it in a lot of stories of patients."
AUSTIN - A federal judge supervising the state's troubled foster-care system has ordered child-protection officials to immediately comply with a year-old court order prohibiting foster children from being placed in group homes that lacked 24-hour supervision.

The development comes as the state has continued to downplay reports of continuing abuse and chronic staffing shortages in a system that early next year faces the possibility of court supervision, as the Legislature convenes to address a plan to increase funding for the programs.

In a decision signed Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack said the state Department of Family and Protective Services "incorrectly interpreted" her injunction issued on Dec. 17, 2015, that mandated that state officials "immediately stop placing (permanent managing conservatorship) foster children in unsafe placements, which include foster group homes that lack 24-hour awake-night supervision."

The Corpus Christi-based judge said the state had interpreted her injunction to allow foster children already in those homes to remain there and to only cover future placements.

The new order states that for more than a year permanent managing conservatorships "as well as temporary managing conservatorship foster children have remained in foster group homes without 24-hour awake-night supervision, in contrast to the Court's desired effect of its injunction," the new order states.

It orders an immediate halt to the continuing practice, which Jack said was discovered during a Dec. 21 conference with attorneys in the case.

Aides to Gov. Greg Abbott, who has made repairs to the foster-care system a top priority, said the governor had no immediate comment on the new order. Kayleigh Lovvorn, a spokesman for Attorney General Ken Paxton, declined comment on the order.

Judge Jack's latest order is part of a long-running saga over the quality of child welfare services in Texas. It also may help fuel a growing national debate on the challenge of how best to provide services elsewhere to foster children.

In Texas, there are now 10,306 foster children in permanent custody of CPS. Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the Department of Family and Protective Services, said he does not know how many of those children are covered by the judge's order. DFPS officials are working to determine that now, and to find alternate placements to comply with the court order, he said.

Permanent managing conservatorships are children who are most likely to remain in foster care until they turn 18, many because of emotional, behavioral or other issues that make family placements unlikely. Temporary conservatorships are for children who are expected to transition out of state custody at some point.

A footnote on Jack's order notes that she previously ruled that foster-care group homes without the 24-hour supervision "are unsafe placements" for either the permanent or temporary foster kids.

Testimony at an earlier trial showed that foster homes without around-the-clock supervision experienced problems with abuse not present at those with supervision.

The state has been struggling for years to correct systemic flaws in its foster-care system, ranging from hundreds of deaths of children in state custody to chronic reports of abuse and neglect in foster placements. Moreover, hundreds of abuse reports go unchecked for months because of administrative chaos and high staff turnover.

Both Abbott and DPFS Commissioner Henry "Hank" Whitman Jr. have publicly promised to curb the long-standing problems in the state's system as their highest priority. Legislative leaders have said the crisis will be at the top of the agenda during the coming five-month legislative session, as well.

Earlier this month, legislative leaders approved more than $142 million in additional funding to hire more than 800 workers and give pay raises to 7,000 employees in its beleaguered Child Protective Services program. It is part of an emergency plan to address a manpower crisis that has impaired the state's ability to protect hundreds of vulnerable and abused children.

Included will be $12,000 raises for about 6,000 front-line workers and pay hikes of up to 20 percent for an additional 1,110 managers and special investigators, according to legislative leaders. The agency also got permission to immediately start hiring as many as 829 new workers to supplement the existing staff.

Attorneys for child-advocacy groups that sued the state over foster-care problems and the state could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday on the judge's new order.

Child-protection advocates have previously said that the continuing troubles in Texas' foster-care system highlight how a long-standing problem of too many foster children and too few places to house them has persisted for years. Officials have said that is a key reason that group homes were relied on so extensively in past years, for lack of better settings for many children.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska - Generations of pilots once came north for adventure and to hone their skills in small planes, flying the Alaskan bush in the nation's most aviation-dependent state.

Their derring-do, in turn, helped create the Alaskan mystique.

But now a shortage of pilots - global in scope, fueled by the growth of aviation in Asia and a wave of retirements - is rippling across Alaska. A state with six times as many pilots per capita as the rest of the nation, and the need for every one of them to connect its many far-flung dots on the map, is rewriting the equations of supply and demand.

Competition is pushing up salaries and luring pilots and mechanics to jobs in the lower 48 states. Airlines are grooming pilots from within, bypassing the old system that made Alaska a proving ground where a pilot could log the thousands of hours of flight time needed to qualify for a major airline job. International freight haulers have also hired away Alaskan pilots as Anchorage has become a refueling and crew-change hub for aircraft flying between Asia and North America.

"The pilot shortage is affecting the whole commercial aviation industry from the beginning to the end, the small to the large, and I think Alaska is going to get hit hard," said Bill Thompson, 47, who left the state in 2015 for a job with an airline in Minneapolis.

That flying small planes in Alaska is dangerous is part of the shifting dynamic. From 1990 to 2009, more than a third of all commuter and air taxi crashes in the nation, and about a fifth of the fatal crashes, occurred in Alaska, according to federal figures.

Those hazards, on top of a worsening pilot shortage, are making some researchers and entrepreneurs see opportunity for pilotless drone aircraft to fill the gap. Researchers and pilots say they see a time - sooner or later, depending on when federal safety regulation might allow it - when mail, medicine or groceries might be delivered to remote villages by drone.

"Is it technologically feasible to do it right now? The answer is yes," said Nickolas D. Macchiarella, a professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. "And one of the first places it could occur is Alaska."

Ben Kellie, 30, with his brother Nick, 27, founded a drone company, K2 Dronotics, in Anchorage last year. Their father, Mike Kellie, was a swashbuckling bush pilot of the old school, they said, who arrived in Alaska with a duffel bag and $500 to his name, wanting only to fly. Drones, said Ben Kellie, the company's chief executive and chief engineer, are the future and are less likely to produce injuries or harm if they crash.

"In Alaska, you can fly for hundreds of miles, and if you have issues you're going to hit tundra or a spruce tree," he said.

Carl France once considered the pilot's life, but decided the future was pilotless.

"I decided I'd get bored, flying back and forth from the same place," said France, 30, chief executive of a drone startup.
MOBILE, Ala. - A naval program that has become a target for critics is preparing to commission the USS Gabrielle Giffords, named for the U.S. politician who survived an assassination attempt in 2011.

The USS Gabrielle Giffords, constructed by Austal USA in Mobile, Ala., has completed testing in the Gulf of Mexico and is scheduled to be commissioned in mid-2017. The company handed over the $475 million ship to the Navy on Friday.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday appointed an experienced hand from the George W. Bush era to his national security circle and a figure from the Trump Organization to make international deals.

Thomas Bossert will become an assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism. A statement from Trump's transition team said Bossert will advise the president on issues related to homeland security, counterterrorism and cybersecurity and coordinate the Cabinet's process for making and executing policy in those areas.

The position notably "is being elevated and restored to its independent status alongside the national security adviser," the statement said. Policymakers have long debated whether such national security jobs should operate independently from the White House.

Bossert will work closely with Trump's pick for national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Bossert is currently president of the risk management consulting firm CDS Consulting. He previously served as deputy assistant to the president for homeland security under Bush.

The president-elect also appointed one of his main advisers on U.S.-Israel relations as special representative for international negotiations. Jason Greenblatt has worked for the Trump Organization for over two decades and currently serves as its executive vice president and chief legal officer.

Trump's West Wing is shaping up to have multiple power centers. Chief of staff Reince Priebus and senior adviser Steve Bannon will work as "equal partners," according to Trump, and counselor Kellyanne Conway is also expected to have autonomy. Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will also have a direct line to the president.

Trump has long stoked rivalries among his staff in business and during his presidential campaign. But doing so in the White House could sow confusion and slow decision-making.

In New York Tuesday afternoon, police hastily cleared the lobby of Trump Tower to investigate an unattended backpack, only to find that it contained children's toys. Video taken by a bystander and posted on Twitter showed people running through the lobby for the exits.

The bomb squad checked out the package and gave an "all clear" just after 5 p.m.

Meanwhile, Trump's plan to dissolve his charitable foundation before he takes office to eliminate any conflicts of interest appears to be harder than he thought.

The New York attorney general's office said Tuesday that Trump cannot move ahead with his decision to dismantle his charitable foundation because state prosecutors are probing whether the president-elect personally benefited from its spending.

"The Trump foundation is still under investigation by this office and cannot legally dissolve until that investigation is complete," said Amy Spitalnick, spokeswoman for state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

The statement came after Trump announced that he wanted to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation, part of what his presidential transition team says is an effort to erase any conflicts of interest before he takes office Jan. 20.

Trump's charity has admitted that it violated IRS regulations barring it from using its money or assets to benefit Trump, his family, his companies or substantial contributors to the foundation.

The admissions by the Donald J. Trump Foundation were in a 2015 tax filing made public after a presidential election in which it was revealed that Trump has used the charity to settle lawsuits, make a $25,000 political contribution and purchase items like a painting of himself that was displayed at one of his properties.
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PUERTO CABELLO, Venezuela - When hunger drew tens of thousands of Venezuelans to the streets last summer in protest, President Nicolas Maduro turned to the military to manage the country's diminished food supply, putting generals in charge of everything from butter to rice.

But instead of fighting hunger, the military is making money from it, an Associated Press investigation shows. That's what grocer Jose Campos found when he ran out of pantry staples this year. In the middle of the night, he would travel to an illegal market run by the military to buy corn flour - at 100 times the government-set price.

"The military would be watching over whole bags of money," Campos said. "They always had what I needed."

With much of the oil country on the verge of starvation and malnourished children dying in pediatric wards, food trafficking has become big business in Venezuela. And the military is at the heart of the graft, according to documents and interviews with more than 60 officials, company owners and workers, including five former generals.

As a result, food is not reaching those who most need it.

The U.S. government has taken notice. Prosecutors have opened investigations against senior Venezuelan officials for laundering riches from food contracts through the U.S. financial system, according to several people with direct knowledge of the probes. No charges have been brought.

The late President Hugo Chavez created a Food Ministry in 2004. His socialist government nationalized and then neglected farms and factories, and domestic production dried up. When the price of oil collapsed in 2014, the government no longer could afford to import all the country needed.

Hungry Venezuelans began rioting, and so Maduro handed the generals complete power over food. The government now imports nearly all the country's food, and corruption drives prices sky-high, said Werner Gutierrez, agronomy professor at the University of Zulia.

"If Venezuela paid market prices, we'd be able to double our imports," Gutierrez said. "Instead, people are starving."

In large part due to concerns of graft, the three largest global food traders, all based in the U.S., have stopped selling directly to the Venezuelan government.

One South American businessman says he paid millions in kickbacks to Venezuelan officials as the hunger crisis worsened, including $8 million to people who work for the food minister, Gen. Rodolfo Marco Torres. The businessman insisted on speaking anonymously.

He explained that vendors like him can afford to pay off officials because they build large profit margins into what they bill the state. A single $52 million contract of his to import yellow corn last year, seen by AP, included a potential overpayment of more than $20 million, compared with market prices.
Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state and the current chief executive of ExxonMobil, has surfaced in a corporate registration document leaked to journalists from the tax haven of the Bahamas. The document shows Tillerson served with American and Russian executives as a director and officer of an Exxon subsidiary that operates a vast oil and gas reserve off the Russian coast.

The document does not indicate anything illegal or improper, and Tillerson's presence in the registry may not be particularly surprising given his high-ranking position at Exxon at the time. But it does offer a window into how multinational companies like ExxonMobil use complex webs of offshore companies to carry out their operations around the globe.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

About 250,000 tons of Azerbaijani oil (1.8 million barrels) will be transshipped from Georgias Black Sea port of Supsa in January 2017, a source on the countrys oil and gas market told Trend Dec. 29.

The oil will be transshipped from the port in three equal batches, 600,000 barrels each.

Two batches will account for Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR, the other one  for BP, according to the source.

Azerbaijans Azeri Light oil from the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli block of oil and gas fields is delivered to the Supsa port via the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline. The Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) is the pipelines operator.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
How do you say "Hook 'em Horns" in Mandarin?

The Texas Constitution charges our state with creating higher education institutions, but new ideas about cutting tuition costs might have the eyes of Texas shifting from Austin to Beijing.

At public universities across the nation, growing ranks of international students paying full out-of-state tuition, largely hailing from China, have worked to fill higher education budget gaps left by skinflint legislatures, according to a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

That's a nice trick - the sort of gimmick that financial reality might start to force on the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University.

The twin pillars of Lone Star State higher education haven't seen the sort of skyrocketing foreign enrollment that's provided financial support for schools like UCLA and UC-Berkeley. But as legislators continue to dither on fully funding higher education, the California model might be among the least-bad options.

The state budget has grown by about 25 percent since 2008, but in that time spending per student at our public universities has fallen 17 percent. Meanwhile, average tuition has grown by nearly 25 percent, according to the Center on Budget Policy Priorities.

Rather than restore funding, politicians are scrambling for tricks and loopholes - and they're putting the burden on the students who need help the most.

Average tuition has more than doubled since the 2003 deregulation, but poor students have been able to access top programs thanks to expanded aid programs, such as tuition set-asides. However, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wants to slash that required aid for low-income students in an attempt to cut tuition costs. The set-aside basically charges wealthy students more - about $680 - to help provide grants for poor and working-class families. Texas could always eliminate the program and simply fund need-based financial aid out of the state budget to the tune of $345 million - but that's not likely given the tight budget.

Higher education has been key to Texas' continuing success, and Patrick's plan would take an axe to the bottom rungs of our state's economic ladder. The state economy will suffer.

Whatever the policy looks like, Texas needs to guarantee that aspiring students have access to higher education. For decades, affordable public universities provided the next wave of Texans with the necessary skills to run businesses and lead our state. Now we're denying those once-promised opportunities. Texas shouldn't need to import the next generation of doctors and engineers.

And Texans shouldn't have to look to Beijing for affordable tuition.
Thief's death

Regarding "Homeowner cleared in death" (Page A3, Monday), I'm glad the homeowner isn't going to be charged. While it would have been better if this whole thing had never happened - responsibility for it rests primarily on the shoulders of the thief. He would still be alive, and the homeowner would be enjoying a pleasant Christmas in anonymity - had he had the good sense not to try to break into that truck.

Z.A. Weiss via HoustonChronicle.com

Pension focus

Regarding "Turner keeps focus on pensions" (Page A1, Monday), this a very important goal. Pensions will crush a number of cities if they don't figure it out. Everything is slow growth, and promising anything else is foolish.

Keith Tipton via Facebook

Israel debate

Regarding "U.S. abstains as Security Council rebukes Israel" (Page A1, Saturday), these countries on the current Security Council include quite a few that have recognized Israel from the early days. That is one reason why Israel has ambassadors to recall. International courts have consistently ruled that these settlements are illegitimate, and most polls indicate that a significant portion of the Israeli population oppose them. Despite the national and international opposition to these settlements, their population is known to have increased by almost 70,000 in the past five years. Seems to me that Israel should take this as friendly advice, yet its leaders seem unable to listen.

D. Feldman via HoustonChronicle.com

Priorities

Regarding "HISD keeps special ed rolls arbitrarily low" (Page A1, Wednesday), there's no excuse for Texas to lag behind every other state like this. Especially when the district artificially caps acceptance rates below the average rate of disabled children. There's also no reason to test children differently. The testing and criteria should be the same. As for where the funding should come from, there are undoubtedly other programs that could be cut or eliminated. Imagine how many children we could help if we weren't spending millions on stadiums for a handful of students to play games.

Chris Fossan via HoustonChronicle.com

Strong America

Regarding "Fears about future not a partisan matter" (Page A17, Wednesday), has Kathleen Parker forgotten so readily the Obama condescension with Paul Ryan and Congress in the Obamacare discussions? Or forgotten the many times that Obama and his team mentioned that "elections have consequences," and "we won," as justification for refusing negotiations or compromise on the ACA or other decisions?

Elections do have consequences, and Trump did win, so consequences are occurring. If you haven't noticed, "the threads that hold civilization together" that Parker mentioned have indeed been unraveling at an alarming speed in the past eight years as Nero has fiddled.

Let the Russians, the dictators and the terrorists of the world be terrified for a change with a president who is not going to telegraph his moves or lay down for the communists and dictators to trample America. Being strong and unpredictable is no weakness when dealing with tyrants; it never has been.

Terry Brown, The Woodlands
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Lisa Raitt wants Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step away from the sideline and deliver a principled stance on Israel.

In a statement posted to Facebook on Wednesday, the Conservative Party leadership candidate called last weeks United Nations Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements disgusting.

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Canada needs a principled stance. One that singles out Israel for being the only civilized democracy in the Middle East constantly being showered with rockets by those who do not believe she should exist, Riatt wrote.

She criticized the Canadian government for its silence following the resolution condemning expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory to be in violation of international law.

The former Conservative cabinet minister suggested a conflict with Trudeau's bid to regain a seat on the 15-member Security Council.

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If Canada were there  we would not have stopped it, Raitt claimed.

The Prime Ministers Office declined to comment on Riatts remarks.

We won't hesitate from talking about unhelpful steps like the continued illegal settlements.  Prime Minister Trudeau in March

In March, Trudeau called Israel is a friend and an ally during a global town hall hosted by The Huffington Post Canada. He added that the country inherits a set of attitudes and approach that are very much aligned with Canadians values.

He was quick to reaffirm his opposition against unlawful settlements at the time.

But, at the same time we won't hesitate from talking about unhelpful steps like the continued illegal settlements. We will point that out. We will continue to engage in a forthright and open way because that's what people expect of Canada, he said.

Kerry: Two-state solution in serious jeopardy

Raitts comments came shortly after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a speech warning that the future of a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in trouble.

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Kerry defended Americas decision to abstain and allow passage of the resolution, saying it was a decision intended to preserve the possibility of peace with a two-state solution.

Israel called the vote shameful.

Despite our best efforts, over the years, the two-state solution are now in serious jeopardy, said Kerry in his State Department speech, adding the U.S. could not in good conscience do and say nothing.

The truth is that trends on the ground, violence, terrorism, incitement, settlement expansion and the seemingly endless occupation, they are combining to destroy hopes for peace on both sides and increasingly cementing an irreversible one state reality that most people do not actually want.

He panned the protectionist argument behind the expansion of settlements, saying new construction actually increases the burden of security on Israeli defence forces.

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Kerry also criticized the wave of Palestinian violence, hundreds of terrorist attacks in the past year. He made a plea for continued diplomacy to ensure future peace talks.

Friends need to tell each other the hard truths, and friendships require mutual respect, he said.

Earlier in the day, president-elect Donald Trump blasted the Obama administration for treating Israel with such total disdain and disrespect. Citing inflammatory roadblocks, Trump complained about the transition of power process  the first deviation from his previously complimentary remarks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the cue from the president-elect and praised Trump for his clear-cut support of his country in a tweet.

President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel! @IvankaTrump@DonaldJTrumpJrhttps://t.co/lURPimG0wS  Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) December 28, 2016

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Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.29



By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:



The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is ready to consider an investment in the implementation of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project together with other partners, a source in EBRD told Trend Dec.29.



It is premature to go into any further details at this stage, said the source.



Earlier, EBRD President Suma Chakrabarti said that TAP pipeline project is of great interest as it will help the regions energy security and is deemed environmentally sustainable.



In the energy sector, the EBRD is well aware of the need to secure energy for Europe which is affordable and acceptable from the point of view of climate change, noted Chakrabarti. In this context, we are positive about the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, a project that develops the three characteristics of energy security, energy access and environmental sustainability.



TAP is a part of the Southern Gas Corridor which is one of the priority energy projects for the EU.



TAP project envisages transportation of gas from the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas and condensate field to the EU countries.



The pipeline will be connected to the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) on the Turkish-Greek border, run through Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in Italy's south.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Billionaires had a pretty awesome 2016.

The world's 200 wealthiest people made a combined US$237 billion this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, bringing their total net worth up to $4.4 trillion.

The biggest winner was Warren Buffett, who made a cool US$11.8 billion. He's the world's second richest person, with a net worth of US$74.1 billion, preceded by Bill Gates' first-place-worth of US$91.5 billion.

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For context, the world's poorest 3.6 billion people (just under half the world's population) had a net worth of US$1.76 trillion in 2015, according to a study by Oxfam. That's just US$488 per person.

"Wealth has become concentrated in just a few places in the world ... it's a ticking time bomb."

It was a big win for the wealthy, despite being such an economically volatile year.

Britain's vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump's shocking U.S. election win saw the billionaires' wealth fluctuate through US$4.8 trillion of daily gains and losses before ending the year on a high note.

The rankings highlight exactly how much global wealth inequality has grown in recent years.

In November, Nobel Peace laureate Mohammed Yunus cautioned that a growing income divide is worsening social tensions.

"Wealth has become concentrated in just a few places in the world ... it's a ticking time bomb and a great danger to the world," he said, as reported by Reuters.

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"This creates tension among people at the bottom (of the income ladder). They blame refugees and minorities  and unscrupulous politicians exploit this."

In Canada, wealth inequality is also on the rise.

An OECD study from January found that Canada's top 10 per cent of earners took home four times as much as the median earner.

Out of the world's 200 richest people, only four are Canadian, and none of them make the top 100: Galen Weston, Sherry Brydson, Arthur Irving and Garrett Camp.

Here are the world's five richest people as of Dec. 28, 2016, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index:

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Bill Gates (Net worth: US$91. billion) Warren Buffett (Net worth: US$73.6 billion) Amancio Ortega (Net worth: US$71.2 billion) Jeff Bezos (Net worth: US$67.2 billion) Mark Zuckerberg (Net worth: US$50.8 billion)

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A group of Russian men are being investigated after video appeared online this week showing a bear repeatedly being run over by heavy-duty trucks in the Siberian tundra.

The graphic footage, uploaded to YouTube Monday but since removed, shows off-road trucks chase an exhausted bear through the snow, with a man in the video shouting "Squash him! Squash him!" according to a Agence France-Presse translation.

One truck approaches, and the bear, who is unable to run away, eventually disappears underneath the truck's tires. When the truck backs up, the bear is listless. In the next shot, a man is taking photographs of the dead bear.

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According to The Guardian, the trucks are normally used for Russian oil and mining operations, and Russia's interior ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk said the assailants are local mining workers in Russia's Yakutia region.

Investigators said in a statement Wednesday that they have opened a criminal probe on the charges of animal cruelty, reports AP.

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"We will strive for the most serious punishment for these scoundrels," the minister for natural resources and environment, Sergei Donskoi, wrote on his official Facebook page.

"Such crimes should be followed by real prison terms!"

Russian news outlet Tass reported that if convicted the workers could face up to a year in prison.

On an edited version of the original video, YouTube commenters expressed their disgust and outrage.

"As someone who lives in the forest, I find this utterly disgusting! You are spineless F-ing cowards who deserve the same fate you brought upon this animal!" fumed one person.

"Cowards, damn cowards," wrote another. "I hope a bear eats each one of them."

In Yakutia shift workers specifically killed the bear with a truck https://t.co/9VVLfaOW8B#news#Russia  Rus to En Fr Es News (@Rus_Eng_News) December 27, 2016

In 2015, three Russian men were charged in a similar crime, after video appeared online of a brown bear being run over repeatedly by a truck.

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However, in that video, the angry bear managed to retaliate against the attackers, and the men drove off before the bear was seriously harmed, reports the Daily Star.

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An eight-year-old New Jersey boy has been booted from his Cub Scout group.

Not because he was misbehaving or his parents werent paying  no, because hes transgender.

Joe Maldonado had been part of the Pack 87 in Secaucus for more than a month and has never hidden the fact that he was born a girl, according to The Record.

"Not one of the kids said, 'You dont belong here,'" his mom Kristie Maldonado told the publication.

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But some parents complained, according to an official from Northern New Jersey Council of Boy Scouts, who called Kristie to tell her Joe would have to stay home from Cub Scouts.

Joe, who was born Jodi, has identified as a boy for more than a year, Kristie told CBS News.

He wanted to join Cub Scouts because all of his favourite friends were there, he told the broadcaster.

The Boy Scouts of America told The Associated Press in a statement that while it doesnt ban members on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity is a separate matter.

"If I was them, I would let every person in the world go in. Its right to do."

The organization said that Cub Scout programs were for boys who were listed as male on their birth certificates.

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An official confirmed to AP that he made a call to Kristie Maldonado, but referred questions to the Boy Scouts national office.

Earlier this year, the organization said that transgender children could join its coed programs, but not boys-only groups like Boy and Cub Scouts.

The Girl Scouts of the United States of America accepts transgender members. It says on its website that while placement of transgender girls in a troop is handled on a "case by case" basis, the organization wants to be a safe place for those who are recognized and live as girls.

Kristie told CBS News shes received support from around the world since the story broke.

But she still wants an apology for her son.

Joe told The Record he's more angry than sad.

"My identity is a boy," he said.
Ezhukov via Getty Images Two glasses of frozen lemonade on bar counterTwo glasses of frozen lemonade on bar counter

When you walk into a cocktail bar, you usually are met with a drink list that includes your standard concoctions as well as favourite inventions from the man or woman behind the bar. Not so at Toronto's Civil Liberties.

You won't find a menu at all. What you will encounter is a cozy space with fun-loving guys behind the bar with more than a little rebelliousness in them. Nick Kennedy, one of those bartenders and co-owners, says Civil Liberties chose the no-menu concept in order to facilitate conversation.

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"Usually when you are behind the bar, the menu is the last interaction you have with the customer. You give it to them, they pick their drink and you serve it to them, and that's a lot of the times what it's about," Kennedy says.

But when there is no menu, customers will engage with Kennedy and the other bartenders. It leads to a lively atmosphere and, according to Kennedy, a more satisfying cocktail experience for his customers. His desire is to expand people's cocktail horizons, moving away from the standards of gin and tonic, rum and Coke, and vodka and soda, to trying drinks with more complex flavours, as well as less well-known products.

"We have a policy that if you don't like it, we'll drink it," Kennedy says of the drinks he mixes for guests.

When I asked for an Old-Fashioned, he served up one with Ancho Reyes, a liqueur made from ancho chile. The product of Pueblo, Mexico has 40-per-cent alcohol and has a distinct flavour that mixes sweet and spicy notes.

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My new article and video on Vacay.ca on interesting #cocktail bars in #Toronto, including @CivLibTO and its clever, personable bartender Nick Kennedy. #drinks #cocktails A video posted by AdrianBrijbassi (@adrianbrijbassi) on Oct 15, 2016 at 7:31am PDT

With the holiday season happening, many cocktails are being consumed. Bars such as Civil Liberties (878 Bloor Street West) give you the opportunity to broaden your drink selection, while also indulging in an atmosphere that adds to the merriment.

Here are three other Toronto cocktail bars to visit when you're in the mood for something different.

BAR RAVAL (505 College Street West) -- Cocktails, wines, small bites and share plates. Few places in the city are more comfortable and capable as Bar Raval. This ode to Barcelona by chef and owner Grant Van Gameren is about as good as it gets if you want great drinks and share plates in a vibrant atmosphere. The decor is Spanish, with textured wood panelling on the walls and moody lighting. The small tapas plates, or pintxos, include octopus, Iberico ham and a range of imported cheeses. The Morcilla and Egg ($11) is blood sausage topped with a fried egg served on toast. It's a rich dish foodies will adore. Perhaps the best part about Bar Raval is its hours. You could spend all day and night there as it serves good coffee and breakfast beginning at 8 am and turns into a party scene with music and lots of drinks pouring until 2 am on most nights. In its first year of operations, Bar Raval ranked No. 9 on the 2015 Vacay.ca Top Restaurants in Canada list.

dBAR (60 Yorkville Avenue) -- For those who enjoy some sophistication with their beverages, the lobby-level bar at the Four Seasons Yorkville is often bustling with activity -- including a few celebrities or notable professionals -- and has a wide selection of top-shelf drinks. Try #TheSix ($18), which is a reference to one of nicknames for Toronto. It features Stolichnaya vodka, Amaretto, pear juice, lemon juice, egg whites and Amarena cherries. If you're hungry, be sure to order the decadent lobster roll ($29).

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RESPOSADO (136 Ossington Avenue) -- If tequila is your thing, then Resposado is your place. This trendy spot on the Ossington Strip is often teeming with guests looking for Patron, El Jimador and other fine tequila brands. You'll also find tapas plates on the menu and live music.
ugurv via Getty Images Moscow mule cocktail in a metal copper mug with ice, lemon and mint sprigs on a wooden table

I hope you've all been enjoying some good R&R over the holidays season! We've been in heaven here in Hawaii with our whole family together. My parents also made the trip and we are celebrating my sister and her family's first Christmas in their new house! There has been lots of beach time, delicious food and of course, some celebratory cocktails!

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With New Year's Eve approaching I thought no better time for my first ever cocktail on the blog! I thought I might as well start out with my favorite, the Moscow Mule. I'm not a fan of super sweet drinks and always tend to gravitate towards tangy, citrusy,and refreshing. To me this drink is the perfect blend of all these things!

I love ginger beer but for this version, I chose to test it out with ginger Kombucha and it was so good!

Kombucha is a fermented tea made with tea, sugar, bacteria and yeast. I know, sounds kind of gross right? But it's the combination of these ingredients that allows it to ferment, making it a probiotic (beneficial bacteria for our gut) drink with attributed benefits of aiding digestion and potentially contributing to decreased risk of diabetes, cancer and heart disease. While scientific evidence is lacking with limited studies, it has been consumed for centuries with some ancient cultures swearing by the benefits of this nutrient dense tonic.

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While the verdict is still out, this naturally fizzy, tangy concoction makes the perfect substitute for a less sugary version of the Moscow Mule and hey, who's gonna say no to the potential digestive aid while those holiday cocktails go down?! For this holiday version, I decided to add pomegranate seeds. They are so festive and with known anti-oxidant benefits, they finish it off perfectly!

I'd also love to hear what you think of this cocktail and if you'd like to see more on the blog! Join me on Facebook or Instagram and let me know!

Ginger Pomegranate Kombucha Moscow Mule

2 Cocktails

Ingredients

- Lots of ice

- 3 oz vodka

- 9 oz Ginger Kombucha (I used Rise and I also tried it with their lemongrass flavor, also delish!)

- Seeds from 1/4 of a pomegranate

- 1/2 lime, cut into 4 wedges

Directions

1. Fill 2 rocks glasses half full of ice.

2. Pour in vodka and top up with Kombucha, followed by the juice of 1 lime wedge each.

3. To prepare the pomegranate, cut in half and then quarters and carefully fold it inside out so that the seeds are exposed. Pull at them gently with your fingers to remove from the skin.

4. Give your drink a good stir and sprinkle with pomegranate seeds, server with a lime wedge.

Happy Holidays! Enjoy!

P.S.- Have you heard?! I've just opened the doors to a new FREE Eat Well Live Well Facebook Community with daily tips, recipes, support and motivation. I'll be checking in regularly to answer your questions and create awesome content just for you! All you have to do is click on this link and hit the "Join" button. Can't wait to you inside!

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For more recipes and kitchen inspiration, check out www.lindsaypleskot.com or find Lindsay on Instagram here or Facebook.
The world is about to bid goodbye to 2016.

Prime Minister Just Trudeau's honeymoon with Canadians has continued, marred only by the constant questions regarding "cash for access" and electoral reform. The House of Commons is on a long Xmas and New Year's break. The government benches no longer have to answer questions in the House of Commons on the electoral reform and "cash for access" quagmires. The prime minister and his crew must feel relieved.

It seems Santa has delivered a gift to the prime minister this Christmas. The NDP, Greens and the Bloc are asking Trudeau to reinstate the per-vote subsidy, initially brought in by Jean Chretien. Until wrongly done away by the Conservatives, the per-vote subsidy -- with all the other changes that were brought in -- had done an effective job of reducing the influence of big money in Canadian politics.

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Both the issues of "cash for access" and electoral reform will continue to dog the government in 2017.

We are fooling ourselves if we buy the Conservative argument that they outlawed the per-vote subsidy to eliminate public financing of political parties. The tax credits for political contributions -- running into millions of dollars every year -- are one humongous subsidy.

While both the issues of "cash for access" and electoral reform will continue to dog the government in 2017, it is the drip-drip of the former that could prove fatal to the credibility of the government. The criticism of "cash for access" -- the practice of charging people $1,500 for fundraisers where they have exclusive access to the prime minister or his ministers -- is bound to continue, in and out of the House.

In the last several weeks, the government's popularity slipped by at least 10 points; if there is no timely lancing of the "cash for access" boil, one has to agree with Postmedia columnist Michael den Tandt that the slip could turn into a slide in 2017.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should embrace the constructive suggestion of the three opposition parties -- and he should not look this gift horse in the mouth. It is a lifeline for his government, one stuck and sinking in the quicksand of talking points which profoundly contradict Trudeau's own guidelines to his ministers to avoid even the appearance of "preferential access" for the donors to the Liberal Party, and to do so above and beyond the existing law.

Sixty per cent of Canadians are uncomfortable with the Liberals' cash-for-access fundraisers -- to them it appears to give favourable access to government for people with money who donate to the Liberals -- exactly something the PM himself prohibited.

The Conservatives will continue to oppose the per-vote subsidy, but Trudeau will do well to remember that the Harper (and the more recent Harper-less) Conservatives are the political descendants of the Reformers who first went to Ottawa to wreck government as an institution. They believed in decreasing the capacity of government to help Canadians with better education, health care and other benefits that make Canada a more equitable and fair society.

The Trudeau government can't afford the continuing distraction of the now completely disgraceful practice of cash for access.

A per-vote subsidy never fit the Reformer's or the Conservatives' idea of a lesser, smaller and a less fair government. The current crop of Conservatives aren't in the real, old tradition of the Diefenbaker/Mulroney/Progressive eras, generally governing from the centre and giving us such things as the Canadian Bill of Rights and sanctions against Apartheid South Africa or better environmental regulations.

The Trudeau government can't afford the continuing distraction of the now completely disgraceful practice of cash for access. It will convince no one of its fairness to say that the practice used to be alright. Times do change, and in this instance they clearly have. People expect more and better from their politicians.

Trudeau appeared to know and recognize that in his very robust guidelines. It remains to be seen whether a bout of healthy reflection in the holidays persuades him of their propriety once again; and whether the cabinet smarting from the Canadians' disapproval of cash for access will have the fortitude to remember Trudeau's guidelines and collectively remind him of the same.

They should be thankful for the unexpected gift of the per-vote subsidy from the opposition -- one of a religious bent of mind might even call it God-sent, particularly around Christmas and Hanukkah.

Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year, Canada. Hope all had a wonderful snowy Christmas.

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were1962 via Getty Images

It is fair to say that for people who care passionately about tackling climate change, they feel a lot more positive about achieving that goal than they did, let's say, ten years ago.

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Climate optimism due to technological advances

Most of that optimism is due to the advance in clean energy and clean technologies and solutions. To name just a few, solar power whose efficiency increases year by year; and the technological advances in battery technology which, combined with technological advances in electric vehicles, have propelled them to such a level deemed unimaginable ten years ago. And in the near future energy storage, electrification of aeroplanes and new innovative transport technologies, such as the Hyperloop One, are critically important for us to be able to combat the climate crisis.

And it is undoubtedly the advance of those technologies that prompted the world to sign the Paris Agreement last year. Due to technological advances countries across the world, world leaders now feel confident in committing themselves to serious CO2 reduction pledges. The Danish MP and former UN General Assembly President, Mogens Lykketoft, told me as much when I interviewed him in Lisbon as he was about to speak at the world's largest technology gathering, the Web Summit, where over 50,000 technology entrepreneurs met to discuss all areas of technological innovations.

Technology alone can't solve the climate crisis

However, having said all that it is also important to emphasise that we shouldn't have a false sense of security and be complacent that technology alone will solve the climate crisis. There are serious issues we need to overcome but where we lack technological solutions; and we must not simply hope and expect that a future technological breakthrough will find a solution. We can't escape the fact that to overcome the climate crisis we need much more than just technology. We have to accept that individuals as well as companies have a responsibility to act, and it is no longer a problem we can blame on others. 'Not us but them' was, of course, a phrase that for many years was used by western leaders to delay climate action: 'We are not going to act before China does'. It was a dangerous narrative that delayed action and was caused by ignorance about what was actually happening in China. But in fact, they had mobilised clean energy investment on a scale never seen before. This means that China has now overtaken every other country on earth, and is now the world's premier clean energy powerhouse. But back to the main point, we as individuals have a responsibility to look at ourselves and ask how are we personally contributing to this problem? And how can we change? and more importantly at an individual level how can each one of us change the way in which we live our lives? The crisis we are in warrants and requires that.

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Does the technology sector take the climate crisis seriously?

But even within the technology sector, there are serious questions to be asked about whether the climate challenge is prioritised as much as it should be. During the Web Summit you could, of course, find isolated events related to climate change and energy, and those tech solutions we need to be discussing if we are to overcome the climate challenge. But it was very much dominated by more trendsetting topics, such as automation, including driverless vehicles, disruptive technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and so on. But one could very reasonably argue that the climate challenge should have its own stage at such events. Then at least we would know that the technology sector takes the challenge seriously. It is a challenge in which this sector should be playing a key role. Despite the lack of focus in this area, many I met at the event agreed that it should play a much bigger role, and many were equally frustrated that it did not. Many of those were young people, who have entered the technology sector or were planning to enter because they are so deeply concerned about the climate crisis.

Shaping the technology sector in the right direction

To summarise, and with a plea to the sector for, as with many other sectors, profit for the sake of profit is a key driver. But a huge number of people are involved in the technology sector because of their desire to change the world for the better. Recent studies have found that the age group caring most about the climate crisis are millennials. Millennials are already involved and are set to be the largest age group to join the technology sector, and will play a key role in shaping it. In the technology sector, there are two groups battling for dominance: technology for profit, and technology for good. We have to make sure the latter wins and the sector become the driving force for action on climate change. We're only just now beginning to see the potential for the technology sector to address the single biggest issue facing the world, and we must continue driving it in the correct direction.

First published on A greener life, a greener world.
Human Rights Day, 10 December, was the final date of the United Nations 16 Days of Action Against Gender-Based Violence Campaign - and also the effective start of the horrifying 'cutting season', when in some traditional communities girls undergo female genital mutilation (FGM).

To stop violence against women requires active engagement by men worldwide who have not yet acknowledged harmful practices in their own communities, alongside the many men who wouldn't ever permit violence to their wives, daughters, or other women and girls.

In contemporary manifestations this harm includes everything from cruel words which destroy female confidence and autonomy, to crass intrusion into matters physiological and sexual: the denial for instance of access to family planning and abortion.

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In traditional communities abuse may be even more overt. Male control are often exercised via the idea that women, even young girls, are simply 'baby machines', fed and nurtured only until sold by fathers to other men as 'pure' - read: 'virgin' - commodities ready to produce the next generation of sons or ('regrettably') daughters.

That autocratic way lies everything from flat refusal to 'waste' money on girls' education, through to the barbarities of bride price, so-called 'honour' killings (every month in Britain) and my own specific focus, female genital mutilation / FGM (perhaps 140+ thousand affected women and girls in the UK alone; 200 million world-wide).

Researching for my book, Female Mutilation, I learnt how men engage in promoting gender equality and preventing harm to women and girls.

Via Twitter, in Kenya I discovered Evanson Njeru, Gerald Lepariyo, Samuel Leadismo and Tony Mwebia, all determined that their sisters, daughters and neighbours should get an education and never, ever undergo FGM. In Uganda there was Ahabwe Mugerwa Michael, organising the wonderful 'barefoot grannies' to take health and EndFGM messages into the bush. In Minneapolis, USA Ahmed Hassan works hard to stop FGM in Somalian communities.

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Likewise, we have Kameel Ahmady on whose book In the Name of Tradition on FGM in Iran I was lucky to collaborate, and the surgeon Pierre Foldes in Paris, who undertakes pro bono reconstruction of damaged genitalia for women who seek it. Plus, amongst others, Dexter Dias QC and Karl Turner MP in the UK, emphasising that FGM is a gross abuse of human rights....

But what can the rest of us do to challenge the damage to women, girls and also thereby to our wider societies? How can men tackle these issues without appearing either less 'manly' or indeed over-bearing?

Here are a few ideas:

* Open your eyes. Much of the behaviour which hurts women and girls arises from accepted routines and customs. Do you even know it's there? Will you respond well if you see a woman or girl being compromised or threatened? How can you best challenge embedded ideas and traditions?

* This is personal. It's about you as a man, and as a human being. How will you cope if others dismiss your belief that all of us deserve equal care and respect? How can you support ending violence against women, to prevent grave harm and to demonstrate these beliefs?

* These are not challenges only for men. Nonetheless, we know that child sexual abuse, usually by men, remains a vile scourge. Men perpetrate around 90% of domestic violence in Britain (half in the presence of children). Still FGM and so-called 'honour' violence are found in the UK as well as in many other parts of the world.

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Already some men (wherever they are across the globe) demand an end to gendered, and indeed other, violence.

The pending year-end 'cutting season' adds grim emphasis to this imperative. If men everywhere are vigilant and determined and speak out unflinchingly, FGM could become history right now.

As another contributor to my book, the valiant Qamar Naseem of Blue Veins in Pakistan, says:

Male chauvinism is a cocoon from which men must emerge. Everyone is happier when girls and boys, men and women, coexist in peace.

~ ~ ~
Baku, Azerbaijan,Dec. 29

Trend:

A meeting of the Supervisory Board of the State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) was held on December 29, 2016. SOFAZs draft budget for 2017 was discussed during the meeting chaired by Prime Minister of Azerbaijan and Chairman of SOFAZ Supervisory Board Mr. Artur Rasi-zadeh.

The Supervisory Board recommended the Fund's 2017 draft budget, including the major directions of its investment policy, and its draft annual operating expenditures for the approval by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Board members also discussed amendments to the Rules on management of foreign currency assets of the State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan and Rules on the preparation and execution of the annual program of revenues and expenditures (budget) of the State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan proposed by the Executive Director of the Fund and recommended the amendments for the approval by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

SOFAZ was established in 1999 with assets of $271 million.

Based on SOFAZs regulations, its funds may be used for construction and reconstruction of strategically important infrastructure facilities, as well as solving important national problems.

The main goals of the State Oil Fund are accumulation of resources and placement of the Funds assets abroad in order to minimize the negative effect on the economy, prevention of "Dutch disease", promotion of resource accumulation for future generations, and supporting current social and economic processes in Azerbaijan.
By many yardsticks 2016 has been a terrible year. Refugees and migrants have made difficult journeys to escape danger, with 5,000 drowning in the Mediterranean as they made a desperate attempt to reach safety. 60million people have gone hungry as the El Nino weather phenomenon hit almost every continent.

As we count down to the new year and what should be a new start, the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East shows no signs of improvement. More than 47 million people are in need of aid - a figure equivalent to three quarters of the population of the UK. Many emergencies have come to a head in the final months of 2016 with the defeat of opposition-held areas in Syria's second city Aleppo, the fight for control of Mosul in Iraq and the increasing risk of catastrophic hunger in Yemen. The conflicts at the roots of all these emergencies are years old but have reached new depths of suffering in recent weeks.

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Behind the mind numbing numbers are real people like Nadi who is just one of the 47 million people who need help. She's a widow and along with her children was forced to leave their home in Jalawla town in Iraq because of ISIS. They stayed in various places and Nadi sold desserts to pay for her children's education. Eventually they went back home to find it had been burnt out, with the contents of her shop beneath where they lived, stolen and destroyed. With Oxfam's help, she is putting her house and shop back together, but the impact of the fighting on her and her children will take much longer to repair:

"My children were so scared of the bombing that it made them ill. I would try to encourage them, to comfort them, but they are just children. They didn't want to eat for two days because they were frightened of the big sounds from the bombs. When we were displaced my children would always ask me why all of this misery had happened to us? I was living a nice normal life before all of this. We are still tired mentally; with all that we have gone through we still feel in pain."

Nadi suffered not just because of fighting, but because the international laws that should have kept her safe were totally disregarded. And they're not just disregarded by rebel groups. When governments turn their backs on refugees, rather than giving them sanctuary from danger, as the Refugee Convention prescribes, they are undermining international law. When Russia bombs Aleppo or when Saudi Arabia bombs Sa'dah in Yemen they are not only destroying hospitals, schools and lives, but the bedrock of international law, the rules that put into practice what is our common humanity. Chipping away of respect for international law - to our shame - goes wider than that.

When the UK sells bombs that it knows may be dropped on the children of Yemen, it's also chipping away at the International Humanitarian Law, agreed so as to place limits on the human carnage of war.

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The point is not that international law is perfect or complete. It is that in stormy times - and 2016 has certainly been that - we should strengthen it and uphold it, rather than chip away at the edges. But that is exactly what has happened in 2016 when so many governments - not all, to be fair - have tried to do all that they can to limit the number of refugees reaching their shores, rather than welcoming those who do, and sharing responsibility for hosting them with the low and middle-income countries that still now host the vast majority of the world's refugees.

We need change that builds, rather than destroys. That means controlling arms supplies as the Arms Trade Treaty already requires governments to do. It means offering a refuge to those fleeing violence and persecution, as the Refugee Convention has for decades prescribed. We must also develop a Global Compact on Migration, to protect migrants, so often as vulnerable as refugees, and to manage migration for the benefit of all.
Senegalese peacekeepers from the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) speak with Malians while on patrol. UN Photo/Marco Dormino

By Ban Ki-moon*

The United Nations flag represents the highest ideals of humanity. All those who work under this banner have a responsibility to live up to those values.

As I end ten years as head of the world Organization, I feel enormous anguish that sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeepers continues to compound the suffering of people already caught up in armed conflict. Such acts are an atrocious form of betrayal, destroying a covenant with the very people these forces are meant to serve and protect. It also undermines the work of the United Nations, as the shameful acts of some UN personnel cast a shadow over the achievements of the many.

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In 2016, 82 reports of sexual exploitation and abuse have been received to date across all missions. While this number is high, nearly 60 per cent of the allegations reported this year relate to incidents which took place in 2015 or before. The United Nations currently deploys more than 100,000 troops, police and other personnel. The overwhelming majority of our personnel abide by our policies and serve with honour. But even one case is too many. Throughout my tenure, I have taken robust measures to enforce the Organization's zero-tolerance policy, which was put in place in 2003. The United Nations and Member States have been taking unprecedented measures to prevent, ensure accountability for and remediate acts of sexual exploitation and abuse. I have made the fight against sexual exploitation and abuse by United Nations personnel a day-to-day effort and a top priority.

I have sent a clear message to senior leaders across the UN system that they will be held accountable for failure to respond to allegations. In the face of abuses in the Central African Republic, I removed the top UN official from his position. I have sent entire troop contingents back to their home countries, imposed financial penalties on countries whose troops and police have committed these crimes and barred perpetrators from ever serving again with the United Nations.

To ensure transparency, for the first time in UN history, allegations, investigations and actions taken by Member States and the United Nations are publicly reported.

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To increase speed in assessing evidence and pursuing justice, Member States are required to complete full, credible investigations in less than six months -- and in three months where circumstances suggest the need for greater urgency.

To ensure that each and every allegation is reported and investigated, we have put in place community-based reporting mechanisms across all peacekeeping missions so that victims and witnesses can come forward without fear and with guarantees of confidentiality. This has resulted in the documentation of more allegations, mostly from earlier years, that had gone unreported.

And to coordinate and unify efforts across the UN system, I appointed a Special Coordinator.We have made huge strides but one big challenge remains. The United Nations relies on Member States to loan us troops, and those soldiers can only be prosecuted by their own authorities. Everything beyond investigating allegations and repatriating personnel is outside the UN's control. Many Member States have adopted best practices, but the timeliness of investigations and punishment still needs improvement. It has been suggested that prosecutions could take place in the host country, but many of the countries in which we are deployed are themselves in the midst of conflict, with judicial institutions that are corrupted, weak or fledgling.

Partnership between the United Nations and Member States is crucial in eliminating these heinous acts. Perpetrators must know that if they commit a crime, we will do everything possible to pursue them and bring them to justice. And victims must know that we will strive to uphold our institutional responsibility to safeguard their security and dignity. We have established a Trust Fund to provide legal, medical and psychosocial support. And I have said clearly to victims: Please come forward. Please feel safe in knowing that we will do all we can to respond to outrageous crimes. Victims should never feel shame. Shame must always belong to the perpetrators.

In my final speech to world leaders at the opening of the General Assembly in September, I expressed my deep regret that individuals working for the United Nations have traumatized many people we serve and sullied our own reputation. My successor as UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has pledged to continue the battle. I urge every government to give him the support and resources he needs. Sexual exploitation and abuse must end - least of all in the United Nations which stands for the rights of the world's most vulnerable.

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Once again a debate has broken out over the movement of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem - Israel's capital. Candidate Donald Trump promised to make this long overdue move, as have all presidential candidates for several decades. The difference is that Trump will most likely honor his promise. President-Elect Trump has already announced his intent to nominate David Friedman, who is most vocal in his own support for moving the U.S. Embassy, as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

Israel declared its independence as a sovereign nation in 1948 and shortly thereafter declared Jerusalem as its capital - which is the right of any sovereign state. The fact that both the Obama White House and State Department refused even to acknowledge this over half a century later remains a fundamental disgrace  yet another stain on the "Obama legacy." If North Korea, Iran, Cuba and other nations get to decide what their own capital is, why not Israel? Obama himself had no answer and deflected the question. In any event, he will be gone in a month and a new administration that holds a fare more realistic view of Israel will be taking charge.

The debate over Jerusalem predates the Obama administration by several decades and involves the broader legal and diplomatic community. When Israel was admitted to the United Nations in May 1949, a number of U.N. members recognizing Israel refused to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, citing various U.N. resolutions calling for an international status for the city. Over half a century and several wars later, this pipedream has yet to materialize. The U.N. itself needs to get a better grip on reality, and understand that Jerusalem is and will be Israel's capital. They don't get a say in this matter.

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Israel continues to battle the effects of U.N. Security Council Resolution 478, adopted in 1980, and passed in response to Israel's Jerusalem Law. It declared that Jerusalem being Israel's "complete and united" capital is a violation of international law. This resolution also called upon member states to withdraw their diplomatic missions from the city. Within weeks, 11 of the 13 states that had embassies in Jerusalem shut them down, and the last two were closed in 2006. Israel categorically rejected the resolution, and its Foreign Ministry announced, "It will not undermine the status of Jerusalem as the capital of a sovereign Israel and as a united city which will never again be torn apart."

For their part, the U.S. Congress has done far better. In passing the 1996 Jerusalem Embassy Act Congress, Congress recognized not only Jerusalem's status as Israel's permanent capital but specifically directed that the U.S. Embassy be moved from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing that Israel is the only nation on earth with which the U.S. has diplomatic relations but where the U.S. embassy is not located in that nation's capital. Unfortunately this act also provided the President with the ability to waive implementation of the law, which needed to be renewed semi-annually, on "national security" grounds, and this has been done by every President since the law was enacted. President-elect Trump and several of his key advisers have already indicated that this waiver will no longer be the case and that the law here will be obeyed.

Historically the Western part of Jerusalem has always been part of Israel. The armistice that ended Israel's War of Independence with the Arab states left the city divided with the armistice lines - not national borders - cutting Jerusalem in two. Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day War ended this division and a united Jerusalem merely described reality. Immediately after the war Israel's government united the city, expanding its municipal borders to now include areas that had been under Jordanian occupation since 1949.

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Since 1967 a succession of Israeli governments, the U.N. and other nations including the U.S. have looked to a lasting and peaceful resolution of the issues here with the potential establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. One element of this two-state concept is that some part of East Jerusalem might serve as the capital of this Palestinian state - a solution that has managed to escape implementation for many years. While the future of what has become known as the "two state solution" remains in doubt, no question exists as to whether Jerusalem is in fact Israel's capital and, contrary to statements by various prior U.S. administrations, this issue is not even a subject of any negotiation.

Where this process is going now is anybody's guess. The Palestinian leadership has made clear that it has no interest in making peace with Israel, and their intransigence has resulted in stalemate in the so-called peace process for more than a decade. Even true believers on the Israeli Left are now seeing that the vaunted two-state paradigm may simply not be workable. While the 1993 Oslo Accord produced two Nobel peace prizes, the hoped for peace has never been realized as the Palestinians did not reject violence or fully recognize Israel's right to even exist as required. For their part, Trump and his key advisers seem to be taking a broader and more realistic look at the situation.

The proposed move of the U.S. Embassy is now getting additional pushback from opponents less-worried about the U.N. and international law than some prospect that this would somehow make the Palestinians unhappy and lead to additional violence in Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu, who strongly embraces the move, has stated that Israel is capable of dealing with any possible disturbances. Other opponents are concerned that the move will anger Arab states allied with the U.S. Let them be angry - it will pass. In a region that is in great turmoil, they desperately need the U.S., and where the American Embassy in Israel is located just isn't up to them.

Ultimately Trump cares about solutions that work, and not the optics of what may look good. As Caroline Glick notes recently, "He isn't interested in moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem because he cares about recognizing Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem or over anything else for that matter. If Trump moves the embassy he will do so to advance America's interests."

Such a move is not just symbolic. I would be a substantial step in correcting some of the damage caused by the Obama foreign policy that impaired U.S. credibility worldwide. The U.S. can begin to rebuild credibility with its most important ally in the Middle East. It is more than just moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. By taking this key step that none of Trump's predecessors were willing to make, it would show critical support of the America's most embattled ally, and that show that America can again be trusted.

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Photo Credit: ITC via wikimedia

Consider this. By 2035 the number of Africans joining the working age population will exceed that of the rest of the world combined, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are at the heart of Africa's growth. MSMEs account for around half of Africa's employment and one third of its GDP - considerably more if the informal sector is included. But the MSMEs are struggling.

Further, MSMEs are the largest job creators on the continent. Still, failure rates for these businesses are extremely high - around 50pc of South African SMEs fail in the first two years, for example - due to factors such as limited access to finance, poor access to markets and low operational capacity. In terms of finance, the World Bank estimates the global funding gap for MSMEs is between $2.1-2.6 trillion dollars in Africa, and this figure is approximately 140 billion dollars.

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We need to rethink small business support if we are to awaken Africa's potential for entrepreneurship. A host of small business support programmes, incubators and accelerators have emerged to help entrepreneurs build skills, obtain finance and access markets - with limited success. There is a need to rethink the way in which businesses are identified and grown on the continent. How?

First, understand the informal sector.

There is very little information on informal MSMEs in Africa, and yet these constitute approximately 90% of the MSMEs on the continent. What little we do know of the informal sector points to a dynamic and varied economy that, if understood, could be harnessed for growth. A recent study in West Africa, for example, found that a third of informal enterprises surveyed had strong growth potential (e.g., business skills, high margins) but were constrained by access to finance and other barriers.

Second, get smarter on business support.

There is a need to move beyond establishing greater numbers of incubators and accelerators to finding ways of surfacing and rewarding successful MSME support models. For example, Catalyst for Growth, a non-profit in South Africa, is currently building an analytics platform to assess the impact of various MSME support programmes, which will help entrepreneurs and investors channel resources to the most effective providers. As part of this effort, it is important to recognise that there is considerable variation within the MSME category itself, and that government has an important role to play in creating enabling environments for business growth through activities such as inclusive city planning.

Third, find new ways of assessing risk.

Many commercial banks across the continent offer SME lending facilities, and yet very few actually lend to SMEs due to the perceived riskiness of these enterprises. One way to counter this challenge is to create mechanisms where donors and/or investors seeking social impact subsidize lending and reduce risk - for example, the African Guarantee Fund, which is backed by the African Development Bank, underwrites commercial bank lending to SMEs. However, there is also a need to move beyond traditional means of assessing risk - like collateral - to more creatively identify the opportunities offered by MSMEs, many of whom lack the means to demonstrate their worth to banks in the way that they are required to.

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For example, First Access has created technology that utilizes financial service provider data in innovative ways to provide credit scores to clients in informal markets. Initiatives like this one help mobilise capital for entrepreneurs who otherwise would not have access. We need to think harder about ways to give SME's access to funding on terms that aren't restrictive.

Getting the African entrepreneurship story right will require creativity, collaboration and no small amount of risk. But governments, private firms and development actors can - and must - rise to the challenge. The African Union Commission (AUC) has the potential to play a catalytic role in supporting entrepreneurship and MSME growth by creating continental wide mechanisms to identify, reward and scale up successful business models as well as working to invest in better bridging the knowledge gaps on critical success factors for this sector.

In addition the AUC has the ability to advocate for and promote policies that enable the more widespread use of alternative credit risk assessment and mitigation. We must make our economies work for everybody and I fully support the AUC's SME Strategy and Master Plan 2017-2021 which aims to improve the continental business environment, increasing business formation, supporting formalization of growth-oriented informal enterprises and start-ups.

It also seeks to increase SMEs, MSMEs and entrepreneurs' participation (including women and youth) in regional and global value chains and promoting innovative financing and inclusive economic growth.

Finally the AUC can leverage its convening power to bring together the multiple stakeholders that are required to fully deliver on improving and accelerating the success and growth of the MSME sector. We all know that the challenge of job creation on the continent is significant and certainly cannot be addressed by any single actor.

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By entering into east Aleppo, it would seem that the Syrian Arab Army and allied forces have prevented their country from suffering Libya's fate. But despite the government victory over the galaxy of Jihadist and "moderate rebels," US Secretary of State John Kerry, among others, does not think control of Aleppo - the commercial and industrial hub of Syria - will in itself end the war. President Assad agrees, telling the Syrian daily Al-Watan, that the rebels' defeat "won't mean the end of the war in Syria." However, he did call it a "huge step" in that direction.

After more than five years of multiple civil and proxy wars wreaking havoc on a biblical scale, and despite some defections and losses, the Syrian Arab Army, supported by Iran-linked land forces and the Russian Airforce, remains compact and effective. Meanwhile, opposition forces, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, are splintered. The rebellion is infected by Salafist Jihadis on the payroll of foreign countries, with their oppression of women, minorities, and dissent of all kinds, lacking any credible plan or agenda. One reason the Syrian Arab Army was able to prevail in east Aleppo is the power shift in Washington, where President-Elect Donald Trump's enigmatic relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin likely portends the end of US aid for the anti-government rebels.

A Divided Syria ?

Like Kerry and Assad, most observers expect the war to continue for the present; nonetheless, the outlines of a tri-partite Syria are slowly forming:1.The North, dominated by Kurds but lacking territorial continuity to avoid further provoking Turkey; 2.The West and Mediterranean Syria, with most urban centers already, or likely soon, under government control; and 3.The desert-like South and South East, more or less controlled by various extremist groups warring against the government and among themselves, likely for the next 10-20 years. In this scenario, the rebels lose strength at the negotiation table, while the government gains, at the same time liberating almost 20,000 troops to redirect elsewhere. In the long run, the secularist coalition of minorities (Christian, Alawite, Druze, etc.) supported by a moderate Sunni majority will prevail. In the final analysis, the Syrian conflict is not sectarian in nature but rather a political and geopolitical power struggle, even though all the players use it as a tool.

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External Actors and New Balances

United StatesAlthough the Syrian tragedy is mostly the result of interventionism rather than failure to intervene more decisively, the president-elect seems to be an isolationist. Although President Obama has already sought a reduced involvement in Syria, according to the Wall Street Journal Donald Trump has reaffirmed his campaign position that assisting the Syrian government in fighting ISIS should be the US objective in Syria.

Despite the president-elect's isolationist tendencies, the US will likely continue supporting Syrian Democratic Forces, mainly Kurds, yet with sufficient restraint to avoid antagonizing Turkey, which wants to prevent formation of an autonomous Kurdish region on its borders.

RussiaThe new Middle East power balance undoubtedly includes a resurgent Russia supported subtly by China. Facing latent Sunni extremism within its borders, Russia could seek to shore up domestic security by taking on the extremists in Syria and in areas of the former Soviet Union.

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The military base at Tartus gives continuity to the Russian presence on the Mediterranean and the Syrian arena serves also as an effective showcase for the latest Russian weaponry. Russia is establishing itself solidly on the Mediterranean Sea and in the Middle East at a level not seen even at the height of the former Soviet Union. Putin thus becomes a kind of kingmaker, wielding the Russian Airforce, and promoting multi-party negotiations on Syria. He could leverage Syria as a bargaining chip for broader issues such as Ukraine or to push for the removal of sanctions applied by the West after his annexation of Crimea.

IranAlthough Russian influence has increased after the recapture of Aleppo, Tehran is the real victor according to the Financial Times. The Russian Airforce matters less than the Iranian revolutionary guards and Iran-linked militias.

Iran has supported the Syrian regime from the start, with financial aid, armaments, intelligence advice, and militia on the ground - although it has also criticized the cruelty of Assad's regime. Iran assembled militias and volunteers from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to build battalions of ideologically motivated fighters to combat ISIS and other terrorism in the region. It was Tehran that convinced Russia to enter Syria, despite their competition for European natural gas markets. Of more concern to Tehran is the geopolitical competition from Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia; yet it is necessary to keep in mind that historically all the minorities in the Middle East have at one point or another set anchor in Iran to avoid harsh persecution from the Caliphate's orthodoxy. Iranian regional power thus rises, yet its continuity still depends on avoiding any direct confrontation with Turkey, as well as the Middle East policy of the White House after January 20, when the president-elect takes office.

TurkeyErdogan's Muslim Brotherhood oriented government in Turkey has deep relations with all the Syrian rebel groups hoping to oust Assad and build a new sphere of influence in the informal space of the former Ottoman caliphate. Based on this logic, Turkey itself become the transit hub of Jihadi extremists moving to and from Syria, and according to WikiLeaks the hub of a dubious and illicit trade even with ISIS. Turkey's relationship with most of the rebel groups active in Syria and Iraq is widely known and acknowledged.

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Aleppo, considered by Turkey as its back yard, was seen as crucial to Erdogan's quest for regional hegemony. Therefore, the fall of Aleppo is a game-changer for Erdogan and demonstrates the failure of his neo-Ottoman aspirations. At the same time, by distancing itself further from Europe and its democratic values, and in riskily playing various extremist groups as geopolitical tools, Turkey has itself become a victim of terrorism. With insecurity increasing especially in urban centers, tourism is declining and the economy is contracting. The assassination of Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov can only exacerbate the anxiety.

Turkey now seems to be setting its sights on the more modest and realistic role as a power broker in forging a political solution for Syria, by participating in the trilateral Russian-Iranian-Turkish summit for peace in Syria.

Saudi Arabia and Allied Kingdoms The Saudis and their allies along the southern shore of the Persian Gulf have invested a remarkable amount of their petrodollar income in, and tied their regional policy's fate to, the Syrian Salafi-Jihadi rebels. If Syria's al-Qaeda branch was on Turkey's payroll, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have Jaysh al Islam, Ahrar al Sham and other groups. Yet after years of boldness culminating in the ascent of King Salman to the throne, Saudi Arabia has begun to retreat diplomatically. Aside from its regional competitor Iran gaining increased influence, Saudi Arabia has lost an important former/formal ally in the Egyptian general al-Sisi, who openly has supported the Syrian Army against the ideologized rebels. The Saudi war against Yemen has further weakened the aspirations of the petro-aristocracies of the Arabian Peninsula.

The Saudis and their allies continue to dispense resources, putting further stress on their finances. Meanwhile, the international community is eager to prevent the funding and spread of the destructive ideology promulgated by clerics from Saudi Arabia.

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A Path to a Comprehensive and Lasting Cease-Fire ?
In alphabetical order, here are the top theatrical productions seen in Los Angeles this year, where despite Actors Equity demanding a higher pay structure that will decimate many smaller theatres, the work goes on, not so much for the profit of the artists but for the profit of the audience.

Baby Doll (Fountain Theatre)

No one in theatre gets Tennessee Williams like director Simon Levy and this adaptation by Pierre Laville and Emily Mann captures the dark humor and desperation of his characters with perfect, creepy aplomb.

Barbecue (Geffen Playhouse)

Robert O'Hara's outrageous comedy explodes African-American stereotypes and enjoys a consistently pulling out of the rug under our expectations about time and racial identity.

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Bumpersticker: The Musical (Asylum Theatre/Hollywood Fringe)

Gary Stockdale and Spencer Green created the book and lyrics to a musical that cleverly takes bumpersticker slogans and turns them into music of virtually every imaginable genre, from the outlandish to the heartbreaking.

Church and State (Skylight Theatre)

Jason Odell Williams's powerful indictment of American political rhetoric and violence is a reminder of the need for change in perilous times. Rob Nagle is totally engrossing as a politician who lets his conscience win out over pragmatism, to tragic effect.

Edward Albee's The Play About the Baby (Road Theatre Company)

The loss of the great Edward Albee this past year is commemorated by the production of this dark and constantly shifting play, about two couples and the enigmatic disappearance of a baby, led by the unredoubtable work of actor and artistic director Sam Anderson.

A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder (Ahmanson Theatre/Center Theatre Group)

A killer of a musical, with brilliant book and lyrics by Robert L. Freedman and music and lyrics by Steven Lutvak. Darko Tresnjak directs the many performers and technical elements with an expert comedic touch.

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Icebergs (Geffen Playhouse)

Alena Smith wonderfully skewers the peculiarities of Southern Californians in her play, with some unexpected, deeply moving revelations by the one character who is not from La La Land.

In Case of Emergency (Chalk Repertory Theatre)

An immersive project, performed at numerous locations, by Ruth McKee who sets her play in a garage and has the audience sit in the driveway, as an emergency preparation consultant freaks out during an L.A. earthquake and tests the limits of two warring sisters.

Vicuna (Kirk Douglas Theatre/Center Theatre Group)

Just in time for President Electored Trump, Jon Robin Baitz portrays an egotistical, corrosive politician who is willing to stoke fires of hate to get elected, and thinks a "power suit" will make all the difference.
It's one critic's opinion. Let's save the fighting for the future of our democracy. And let's hope for streaming video for the titles at the bottom.

1. Newtown

Kim Snyder's emotionally devastating one year followup on the survivors of the horrific shooting of schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut avoids explicit violence and manipulative sequences. Instead, she shows how irreparably damaged parents and siblings of those lost are, and condemns this nation rightfully for its refusal to enact any gun control. A transcendent doc that earns it tears fairly.

2. Miss Sloane

Screenwriter Jonathan Perera was living in Asia, unrepresented, before this literate, constantly surprising project got in the hands of director John Madden and Jessica Chastain, playing a brilliant, ruthless Washington lobbyist who sacrifices her career while trying to enact, yes, once again, gun control legislation. Reminiscent of Michael Clayton with its finely etched characters.

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3. Weiner

Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg had no idea that Congressman Anthony Weiner was going to witness a major scandal that would melt down his career while on camera. His brilliance, passion and humor are put in sharp relief by his compulsive, self-destructive behavior. A squirm-inducing, miraculous film.

4. Zero Days

Prolific, multi-award winner Alex Gibney has created a documentary about our greatest and most overlooked threat to the planet, the hacking of our critical infrastructure. It plays out like an international thriller, involving the US and Israel secretly cyber-attacking Iranian nuclear power centrifuges, but when Israel launched a second attack, the code was discovered and has now spread worldwide. Chilling and of the utmost importance.

5. Tower

Keith Maitland expands the nature of documentary with a primarily rotoscoped visit back to the sniper who took 16 lives from a clock tower on the University of Texas, Austin campus in 1966. There are fascinating shifts in perspective and storytelling by Maitland, as well as recalling inspiring acts of personal bravery.

6. Remember

Atom Egoyan returns to top directorial form, as the impeccable Christopher Plummer plays a senior citizen with dementia, on a personal mission to murder the Nazi guard who killed his family, recently found in America. Martin Landau supports with excellent work in this taut, finely constructed and moving feature.

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7. Hell or High Water

Scotsman David Mackenzie and his screenwriter, David Sheridan, nail the quirks and mannerisms of West Texas, as two bank-robbing brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) try to save their ranch. They're up against Jeff Bridges, as a charmingly laid back but brilliant lawman unwilling to give up on apprehending them. Foster is yet again a revelation as actor.

8. Neruda

Director Pablo Larrain has a beautifully shot and poetic tale in this, the persecution of Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, hunted down by an inspector (Gael Garcia Bernal) who admires his work. A luxurious, metaphysical chase thriller, nominated for the Golden Globe for Foreign Film.

9. The Infiltrator

By now, we all know Bryan Cranston can do anything and here he rejuvenates the undercover thriller. Director Brad Furman has plenty of nail-biting tension and respect for his Columbian cartel characters as well, especially with Benjamin Bratt as an associate of kingpin Pablo Escobar. Based on the nonfiction book by US Customs agent Robert Mazur.

10. The Girl on the Train

It's a delight to see how far Emily Blunt has come, from comedic second banana to this wrenching portrayal of an alcoholic who might be a murderer. Tate Taylor's adaptation of the best seller by Paula Hawkins not only keeps you guessing but is lensed with great precision and color.

Great Films, No Theatrical Distribution:
According to Expedia and ARC's annual Global Air Travel Outlook for 2017, travel hackers may not have to work quite as hard to get air travel deals in 2017. It seems average ticket prices for economy class are dropping all over the world. In fact, they haven't been this low since 2013. Good news! But wait, there's more! We've gathered tips and anecdotes from veteran travel hackers and experts to give you a definitive 2017 travel hacking cheat sheet.

WATCH our interview with Randi Wolfson of Skyscanner



1. Use a VPN and clear your cookies!

David Bakke from MoneyCrashers.com says before you start shopping for travel deals you need to outsmart the search engines. "Make sure private browsing is enabled on your computer before shopping for travel deals - or at the very least clear your cookies. Due to airlines' use of dynamic pricing, websites may show higher prices if you've clicked on them before."

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"It's not widely known that the price of a particular flight may differ when booked from varying locations. One of the ways around this is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that will allow you to check and compare the fares of the same flight by connecting to multiple countries and then book from the location with the cheapest price. This can save you a lot of money," says Haris Mumtaz of PureVPN.

2. Airline gold and credit card perks

According to FoxNews Travel writer and GotoTravelGal.com blogger, Lyn Mettler, one of the best travel hacks for 2017 will continue to be the Southwest Companion Pass, which allows one person to fly free with the pass holder for up to two years. "It's fairly simple to earn the pass, which is achieved after you earn 110,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards Points. To easily earn the pass, you need to sign up for two Southwest credit cards, meet the minimum spend of $2000 through everyday spending that you can pay off within a month and then earn an additional 6000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points. Once you have 110,000 points, then book a lot of flights without spending a dime on airfare aside from the government required $5.80 per way security fee. My family of four has flown to six destinations within a year for less than $100 per flight using my methods."

Robert Schrader, a popular travel blogger at LeaveYourDailyHell.com, says credit cards are the key to flying free in 2017, even more so than in 2016. "Now that all major U.S. airlines have finished their race to the bottom--they all use revenue-based mileage earning and have even introduced "basic economy" fares that earn no miles at all--earning free travel via flying is impossible for all but a few travelers."

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"Moreover, with poor airline lounge quality and scant upgrade availability, elite status has little value. Contrast this with generous credit card bonuses, from a recent targeted AMEX Business Platinum offer of 100,000 to 50,000 becoming standard on American Airlines co-branded cards from Citi."

3. Best practices for air travel savings

Valerie Bowden, author of Backpacking Africa for Beginners, offers three tried and true best practices for saving money if traveling by air.

- Reconsider one-way flights. Valerie saved an enormous amount of money by skipping out on round-trip tickets. First, airlines make a lot of money with canceled or rescheduled tickets. If you didn't buy travel insurance, you're looking at a $200-300 fee. Second, one-way tickets allow you to get better deals. For examples, Valerie got a flight from Africa to the US for only $355 (including taxes!). Most tickets within the US cost that amount or more. This is all because she found a quick sale happening that she was able to take advantage of.

- Take New or Rarely Used Airlines. "Another reason why I found such a great sale was because I took Saudi Airlines. It sounds risky. But often Middle Eastern or Developing Countries have great new airlines, and they try hard to promote them. Through sales and special deals, you get tickets much cheaper than you would be taking Delta or Lufthansa."

- Be flexible. "Flights can vary by hundreds of dollars even within a 24-hour span. I like websites that let you search one month at a time because then you can see the best deals. For that, Skyscanner is by far my favorite."

4. Housesitting & hotel hacks

The ultimate travel hack to cut out ALL accommodation (and often food) costs is housesitting. According to Tanbay Theune, a professional house/ pet sitter and blogger at www.travellingweasels.com, The perks are hard to dismiss. "Most homeowners treat you like a guest. They pick you up from the airport/train station/ bus stop. They cook you a meal or two and leave you some food in the cupboards. All gladly received when traveling on a budget - and even when you're not! They also show you the area and the secret spots only the locals know."

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James, another devout house-sitter, and blogger at portugalist.com, acknowledges that getting that first house sit can be difficult as you won't have any references or experience. "The first two I did were actually in the town I lived at the time (Edinburgh). I did them just for the reference. Then, I applied for ones that I was interested in and managed to get several back-to-backs in France. One was five month's long so, in the end, I was able to spend nine month's there."

James has written a list of sites where you can find those opportunities. Of these, Trusted Housesitters is the biggest and it has the most opportunities.

For folks who want to go traditional with their accommodations, Abigail, a travel blogger at Where Abigail Went, says one of the best travel hacks she knows is this: Check if any of your family or friends are full-time employees of hotel chains. Associates' friends and family are able to enjoy preferred rates.

"Now that Marriott and Starwood have merged, for instance, you can take advantage of the extended Explore Friends program, which entitles you to book an unlimited number of nights per year for leisure travel at any of their hotels across the world, based on availability. You can save up to 50% off rooms this way, which is a fantastic deal."



5. Avoid duty and tax fees at the airport

"I recently bought a blender for my mom for her birthday and had to carry it with me all the way from Australia to South Africa. It's small enough to fit into my luggage, but when I was going through the boarding gates, they charged me tax on the item. I then saw a guy in front of me going through the boarding gates with a couple of gifts. He paid no tax on the items, simply because they were gift-wrapped. So, to avoid paying tax or duty fees on any items, make sure to wrap them in gift wrapping paper and declare them as gifts!" -- Gerrard Hattfield, Flight Factory
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech in his office in his Jerusalem office December 28, 2016. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

The recent public acrimony between Israel and the United States could have profound political consequences within the United States, impacting Israel's historic and traditional domestic coalition of support.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's personal attacks against President Obama for U.S. abstention on a United Nation's Security Council resolution criticizing Israel's continued occupation and building of settlements on Palestinian lands risks igniting a firestorm of resumed domestic criticism and actions, especially among college students across the United States.

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The New York Times in Wednesday's editorial noted that:

"The dispute reflects not any change in American policy, but a dangerous evolution in Israeli policy, under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, away from an acceptance of a negotiated two-state resolution to Israel's conflict with the Palestinians. The dispute also arises from Mr. Netanyahu's lamentable practice of making his government a more nakedly partisan player in American politics than any foreign government in memory, save Russia."

Israel's open solicitation of support from members of Congress for its criticism of President Obama and Secretary of State, John Kerry may be misreading the political support it believes it has nationwide among most Americans. The scathing criticism by Israel of Obama for his alleged nonsupport of Israel could irreparably fracture the historic "Shared Legacy" coalition developed during our earlier Civil Rights Movement between the African-American and Jewish Communities.

The Times also noted that:

"Settlements are certainly not the only impediment, or even the principal one, to negotiations today. The Palestinians remain divided and their leadership malicious or hapless, with Hamas, which advocates terrorism, reigning in the Gaza Strip, while the Palestinian Authority, rife with corruption, governs ineptly in the West Bank. But the settlements are an obstacle to any eventual deal, and they are Israel's responsibility."

Nevertheless, "at the end of the day," Prime Minster Netanyahu should reflect and ask: what other American president has authorized $38 Billion (with a "B") military assistance to Israel for its security? This is money that the Obama administration could have otherwise allocated to address some of our urgent domestic needs.

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NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 7: Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt arrives at Trump Tower in New York, NY on Wednesday, Dec. 07, 2016. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The imminent confirmation hearings for Donald Trump's cabinet are an opportunity for senators of good conscience to place country ahead of partisanship. If they believe human activity is accelerating climate change and unquestionably needs to be addressed, they can -- and should -- send a powerful message to President Trump.

These senators should demand a similar environmental commitment from Trump's nominees, and if it is not forthcoming, rejection would be in order. Hopefully, there would be enough Republican votes coupled with the Democrats to block the nomination.

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Should Trump then replace the failed nominee with someone possessing similar negative views, that individual should also be voted down. So it should go until the president gets the idea.

Senate prospects for defying Trump are not as farfetched as they might appear, even with a Republican majority and a severe partisan divide permeating the nation's capital. In 2015, all 54 Republican senators joined their Democratic colleagues in backing a resolution stating that climate change was occurring. Five Republicans lawmakers even broke ranks to support an additional resolution declaring that climate change was significantly caused by humans (though the quintet stopped short of calling for immediate corrective action). If they ever sided with the Democrats in opposing a recalcitrant Trump nominee, it would constitute sufficient numbers to thwart the confirmation.

Senators should certainly entertain dropping the hammer on Trump's nomination of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Virulently anti-EPA in his role as Oklahoma's attorney general, Pruitt was expressly selected by Trump to emasculate the very agency he was supposed to head. The dubious justification for this counterintuitive appointment was that the EPA was over-regulating the fossil fuel industry.

In gratitude for Pruitt's endorsement in the GOP presidential primary, Jeb Bush asserted that the EPA nominee would do a great job "unleashing an energy revolution." But that is not EPA's job. If that is Bush's ambition for the nominee, the former Florida governor should be touting Pruitt for the top post at the Department of Energy.

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In his confirmation hearing, Pruitt should be asked to pledge that environmental protection will be his first and foremost priority, with economics and energy productivity relegated to secondary considerations. That is in accordance with the original conceptualization of the EPA as an independent agency acting within the federal government as the sole exclusive custodian of the public's and planet's environmental health. If Pruitt can't commit to the agency's primary mission, he should be issued his walking papers.

Other Trump environmentally-related nominees are former Texas governor Rick Perry at the Department of Energy and Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke at the Interior Department. Senators should only vote affirmatively if these nominees demonstrate they take climate change seriously.

Perry also needs to explain what caused him to agree to lead a government agency whose elimination he previously advocated. Approval of his nomination should also hinge on his willingness to shift gradually away from fossil fuels in the direction of clean, renewable energy.

Zinke's commitment to renewable energy and restraints on wholesale extraction of fossil fuels on federal lands and waters should be established before he gets the green light.

Republican senators ought not to feel intimidated at the thought of challenging Trump's environmental choices. The latest poll shows an overwhelming majority of Trump voters want his nominees to toe the line in combatting climate change.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

Trend:

An educational seminar sponsored by Bakcell  the First Mobile Operator and Leading Mobile Internet Provider of Azerbaijan, and jointly organized by the Ugur Academy and UAFA has been held for the parents of children in need for special care. The main objective of the seminar was to provide the parents of children with disabilities with necessary support, advice and information.

The lecturers Ulviyya Mirzayeva and Zahra Khalafli, being the experts with vast experience in this field, have discussed wide range of topics with the audience, such as relationship between the children with disabilities and their parents, attitude and stigmas existing in the society towards them, as well as the solutions to eliminate this kind of problems.

Paralympic champion Ilham Zakiyev and world champion Aynur Mammadova have also participated in the event. They have shared very interesting real life stories that have served as a great motivation not only for the children with disabilities and their parents, but also for the people without disabilities. The champions have shared with the event participants that a disability is not a barrier, and any person, who has a strong will and determination, may achieve a lot regardless of disability.

At the end of the event, the lecturers have answered the questions and gave some valuable advices to the parents.

Bakcell, The First Mobile Operator and the Leading Mobile Internet Provider of Azerbaijan, offers a variety of products for modern mobile communications customers. Bakcell provides class leading 3G and 4G mobile internet experience in the country under the Su[email protected] brand name.

With more than 5300 base stations Bakcells network covers more than 99% of the population and 93% of the land area of the country (excluding occupied territories). Bakcell is a leader in innovation and it focuses on bringing the best of the mobile internet to Azerbaijanis through new partnerships and its Su[email protected] services. Bakcell 3G service is available in all regions of Azerbaijan and covers 93% of population.

For more information about Bakcell products and services, please visit www.bakcell.com or call 555.For press releases please see www.bakcell.com/az/news (or www.bakcell.com/en/news for press releases in English).

If you are not a Bakcell subscriber, but wish to find out about Bakcell and its services, please call 055 000 05 55.


Even in the most altruistically oriented social organizations, a top dog generally emerges. Hive mind is a much talked about in terms of social media, but ultimately humans function more like predators with ideologies only furnishing the silver coating for Darwinian survival of the fittest. Herbert Spencer's Social Darwinism is actually the most profound synthesis of the biological and social drives. What differentiates the ethos of the current incoming administration from say the Obama era, however, is what might be called "value free" politics. President elect Trump's early pronunciamentos and behavior have the quality of the reality TV world which is the school of thinking, if there was one, in which his candidacy was melded. The Apprentice is the name of the Trump's show but one of the most popular reality shows on TV is called Survivor. The way in which potential candidates for cabinet positions have appeared in front of the cameras in the lobby of Trump Tower is probably a microcosm of the way in which both domestic and foreign policy issues will be dealt with during the Trump administration. Al Gore made a cameo appearance on the part of the environment (with Ivanka), but Scott Pruitt was Trump's choice for the EPA. Mitt Romney, who would have been a concession of the kind that Obama made when he chose Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, was trumped by Rex Tillerson, a protege of one of the greatest survivalists of all times, Vladimir Putin. The one missing ingredient is values. You might say that making "America great" is a value, but it's a value that flies in the face of the constitution which is all about means rather than ends and producing greatness through an emphasis on the kind of process that Trump is already eschewing.
Thanks to President Obama, the new national monuments at Bears Ears and Gold Butte will provide areas for future generations to enjoy exploring nature and learning about the history of indigenous cultures.



Protected open spaces are also important to veterans reintegrating to civilian life. Nevada based, Marine Corps veteran Ray Curry said in a Las Vegas Sun article, "The healing nature that our public lands offer for veterans cannot be understated. Without the ability to use our national parks, forests and conservation lands, the transition back to civilian life for many veterans after coming home from Afghanistan or Iraq would have been much more difficult. Whether it's reconnecting with family and friends or hunting, fishing, hiking and exploring back roads, or finding peace and solitude, our public lands provide opportunities for it all."



Gold Butte - Nevada's piece of the Grand Canyon - is beloved by Nevadans and visitors from throughout the country and across the world who come to hike, camp, hunt, ride ATVs on designated routes, climb, explore cultural and historical sites, and otherwise enjoy the great outdoors. I am grateful that these incredible experiences will forever be available to me and to future generations of Americans.



The Gold Butte National Monument will preserve a region that is rich in cultural, natural and historical resources, including ancient petroglyphs, caves, agave roasting pits and camp sites dating back at least 3,000 years, as well as artifacts from Spanish exploration in the 1700s, and pioneer mining camps from the 1800s.



The monument will conserve habitat for numerous wildlife species, including desert tortoise, desert bighorn sheep, the banded Gila monster, great horned owls and a great variety of reptiles, birds and mammals.



Nevada is home to a proud military tradition that includes Nellis and Creech Air Force bases, the Hawthorne Army Depot, and Fallon Naval Air Station, as well as being the home to one of the largest veteran populations in the country per capita. Nevada contains some of the most breathtaking wilderness in the country and, for many, the defense of the nation and the defense of its public lands go hand in hand. Indeed, protection and conservation of lands for public use and enjoyment is a proud military tradition going back for generations.



Bears Ears - Americans most significant cultural landscape - lies in Southern Utah, north of the Navajo Nation and the San Juan River, east of the Colorado River, and west of the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation. It earns its name for the twin buttes in the heart of a landscape that rise high above the pinon-juniper forests, deep canyons, inspiring arches, and arresting red rock formations that adorn the renowned and majestic Cedar Mesa.



The inter-tribal led coalition has been attempting to safeguard the more than 100,000 Native American cultural sites in this landscape for over 80 years. Many tribes throughout the southwest have ancestral connections to these lands, which is why all the Tribal governments in the region, local grassroots Navajo and Ute people and the vast majority of the citizens of Utah support the monument designation.



Protection of Bears Ears will help end the rampant and ongoing grave robbing, looting and destruction of scared sites. These acts literally rob Native American people of spiritual connections, as well as a sense of place and history. The national monument honors our Native American's deep connection with these lands, while ensuring continued access for current traditional uses.
Conversations at 70Candles! Gatherings, and posts on 70Candles.com blog, often turn to the challenges of moving; downsizing from the family home to a new location, maybe nearby, or perhaps to a far-off destination. Yes, such moves can be scary...but they can also be exciting.

We moved from Ohio to Texas to be near our children and grandchildren. It took a lot of effort to make the transition, but we have had no regrets.

There are lots of big steps...down-sizing possessions...selling a house....finding a new residence...leaving jobs and old friends...meeting new people...exploring new terrain...and ultimately, figuring out what to "do" once settled in a new location. It helps to create a plan, get help when you need it, and stay the course with optimism.

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There are professionals who can help with sorting possessions, selling furnishings, and staging a home for sale.There might be friends or family members willing to do the same. Sometimes it does take a village.

It is interesting to be a tourist for a while when exploring a new town, for each unique aspect of a place will appear in high relief. Such novelty engages our attention and becomes embedded in memory. Eventually, as life returns to its normal rhythms, we adapt to the similarities, established rituals and habits that keep order in our lives, so enjoy those early impressions and appreciate what makes a new place distinctive.

Leaving old friends is hard, but visits and frequent communication by phone and FaceTime help a lot. Keep in touch with old pals, because making new friends is a challenge, and takes time. Seek activities that you enjoy, and chances are there will be people there with whom you'll eventually want to spend more time.

It seems that "newcomers" are everywhere, so know you're not the only one. Towns throughout the country have active Newcomers' clubs and Meet-up groups for every sort of interest. Religious venues, recreation and senior centers offer further opportunities to get involved. Volunteer opportunities abound. Much can be discovered by talking to new neighbors, or just Googling.

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Take your time exploring and enjoy the process as you create the next chapter in your life story.

JG
When the United States abstained on United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 on Israeli settlements, it was more than just a foreign policy error. It sold out a friend. It shows Israel and our allies that the United States can't be trusted. And most of all, it may result in Israel seeking an independent foreign policy that could trigger a nuclear exchange, undermining any hope Obama has of accomplishing any sort of foreign policy legacy.

Isn't this just a meaningless United Nations resolution?

That might be the case, if it was a United Nations General Assembly resolution, which involves votes from the entire membership of the U.N. Israel's enemies usually win those. But United Nations Security Council resolutions are more powerful. They have greater significance in international politics.

Israel usually relies upon the United States to cast a veto in the United Nations Security Council to torpedo such a resolution. That's why an "abstain" vote hurts. Because Israel needed that American "no" vote, and didn't get it. Now Israel will be under far greater international pressure to halt the settlements, giving its Middle East adversaries a big boost.

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But Israel isn't a formal ally, so why does this matter?

It is true that the United States and Israel lack a formal military alliance. In fact, Israel wasn't even allowed in NATO. Every U.S. President has promised to defend Israel, and has heaped aid on the country over the years, of course.

So why does the U.S. abstention vote send a bad message? Israel may not be a formal ally, but they definitely are a friend. On nearly every issue, Israel and America are in agreement, or at least on the same page. They are a rare Middle East democracy. For a country facing constant wartime conditions, they've maintained a decent respect for human rights, as witnesses by their rating from Freedom House.

Such a vote tells America's formal military allies, like those in NATO, Latin America, and even other friends in the Middle East or Asia and the Pacific, that the U.S.A. won't always be counted on to support a friend in need.

But doesn't this make America safer?

Critics of America's pro-Israeli policy insist that our blind support of the Jewish Nation via U.N. vetoes gives terrorists plenty of ammunition to justify strikes against the U.S.A. But terrorists usually have a long list of grievances, and giving in on one issue rarely mollifies them. After all, Osama bin-Laden cited the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia as a reason for attacking the USA. But after America pulled its troops out of that country, the terror violence against the U.S. continued.

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How could this decision result in a nuclear brinkmanship?

Israel has restrained itself in attacking other countries or wielding its nuclear weapons because the United States provides extended deterrence using its own arsenal. The abstention simply shows Israel that it can't trust the U.S. to defend it; the Jewish nation will likely adopt a more hawkish tone against other countries that threaten it.

One can likely see a tough Israel response to Iran's nuclear ambitions. Such an event will only get worse if hardline Ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who threatened to wipe Israel from the face of the Earth) and his allies make a comeback against President Rouhani and his moderate faction. American promises to protect Israel won't mean as much, even with a change in administration.

That's why the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.'s abstention vote, most likely the outgrowth of a petty dispute between Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, could wind up undermining the outgoing U.S. President's entire foreign policy legacy of building closer ties with allies, the Iranian nuclear accord, and a chance at a framework for a Middle East Peace Pact.
By Ralph Benko



Image licensed under Creative Commons

As the "second most conservative man in the world," according to a Washington Post Magazine humor columnist, I much prefer reading, and get most of my news from, publications of the left. Like The Huffington Post, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly.



Why?

I already know what I think. Variety is the spice of life.

Reading writings from members of my own Tribe doesn't usually challenge my thinking. There are plenty of smart people on the left as well as on the right. I like to have my opinions challenged. Exposing myself to thoughtful counternarratives and counterarguments helps me gain a more complete perspective. It helps me compensate for my own blind spots.

Everyone has blind spots. I do. You do.

It is fascinating to discover what's inside them.

For the same reason I relish being part of livingroomconversations.org constituted by the wonderful MoveOn co-founder Joan Blades to bring people of differing viewpoints together to hear one another and celebrate varied creeds. I try to listen not to identify the blind spots of others but to help myself confront my own.

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I prefer encountering opposing perspectives of a spirited rather than vicious nature. (I make an exception for the vitriolic but brilliant Matt Taibbi from The Rolling Stone. His wit is so keen and his insults so over-the-top that he regularly offers a tour de force.)

That said, the opportunities to learn have grown fewer and harder since the left entered Tizzyworld with the election of Donald Trump. The declarations mostly have descended into tedious, apocalyptic, dogma.

The examples are ubiquitous but consider, as exemplary, The Rolling Stone's recent Meet President Trump's Cabinet of Horrors. This, of course, is hyperbole. Most unhelpful.

The ambience of apocalyptic declarations brings to my mind an admonition from the great classical liberal Saul Alinsky, whose Center I am honored to serve as president. Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals:

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"I detest and fear dogma. I know that all revolutions must have ideologies to spur them on. That in the heat of conflict these ideologies tend to be smelted into rigid dogmas claiming exclusive possession of the truth, and the keys to paradise, is tragic. Dogma is the enemy of human freedom. Dogma must be watched for and apprehended at every turn and twist of the revolutionary movement. The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice. Those who enshrine the poor or Have-Nots are as guilty as other dogmatists and just as dangerous. To diminish the danger that ideology will deteriorate into dogma, and to protect the free, open, questing, and creative mind of man, as well as to allow for change, no ideology should be more specific than that of America's founding fathers: 'For the general welfare.'"

Would I prefer less stray voltage from the president-elect's Twitter account? Mostly, yes.

That said, tweets are trivial (except when amplified by the media). And while Hillary Clinton won the popularity contest America elected Donald Trump president. Continued efforts to delegitimize that status by attacks on his character and that of his appointees and on the integrity of the voting process only serve to paralyze the national conversation.

Spirited opposition to policies is legitimate. A "loyal opposition" is a vital part of the warp-and-woof of a republic.

Delegitimizing the electoral process and the man? Not so much.

Republican victories at the federal level are not, as generally portrayed by the left, an anomaly. As I have elsewhere written, in addition to the winning the presidency and keeping House and Senate majorities:

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At the state level, there now will be 33 Republican state governors, the most since 1922. Republicans control "more than twice as many legislative chambers at 68 than Democrats, who hold 30, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures." In other words, where actual elections are involved the left is getting itself creamed.

The voters' demonstrated massive, across-the-board, preference for Republicans over Democrats. This might give those who extol democracy cause to ponder. It's deeply unfair to scapegoat Hillary Clinton or blame it on the Russians.

If one extols democracy -- something loudly declared by the left -- how can one casually condemn the wholesale, across-the-board, verdict of the voters at every level of government? To do so is simply anti-democratic.

Could be a teachable moment.

I seek to and intend to continue to learn from the left. It's more difficult for me -- and others -- to do so when the left's insights, such as the importance of social justice, are wrapped in sugar-coated Satan sandwiches of invective (mercifully absent from Living Room Conversations).

I, and probably you, have taken a Pledge: the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America. It concludes with a commitment to "liberty and justice for all." I take to heart my commitment to do a better job of delivering "justice for all." Others might find that a reminder of their own commitment to "liberty for all" -- even from figures they may find baffling, like Donald Trump -- might provide unexpectedly delightful rewards.

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Alinsky: "The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice."
To make sure you're maximizing your success on social media, I've compiled my top 10 social media tips below. If you're wondering how to take your social media marketing to the next level, or feel like you've hit a plateau when it comes to the results you're seeing, this article is for you!

1. Create a social media plan for each channel

Before creating a social media account on a particular channel, the first thing you should do is develop a social media plan (a separate one Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.). This plan should outline your goals, objectives, audiences, tone and voice, posting schedule, types of content you'll post, and success metrics.

2. Use a social media management system for scheduling, analytics, and posting consistency

Whether you have one social media account or many, I highly recommend a social media management system to help you post content consistently, manage your time, and discover via analytics, which content is working and which isn't. I use Buffer and would suggest that system, but there are many others that a lot of organizations have great success with.

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3. Pay attention to the copy

When it comes to social media, content is everything. Pay careful attention to not just the update itself, but the image, and if it's a link post, the caption/description and headline. Your post copy should engage people and draw them in in a short and concise way. Think about the "WIIFM" acronym which stands for "What's in it for me?" If your copy doesn't give people a reason to click, doesn't provide value or help your audience in any way, you're missing the boat.

4. Create a content library

It can be hard and time-consuming to come up with content on the fly. That's why I recommend creating a social media content library that you continually update and can use when you can't think of any content to post. Using your social media management system, you'll schedule your content for the next few days or weeks and this is where your content library will come in helpful. This library can't account for things that have recently come up that you'll want to post, but for evergreen content that you think is social media worthy, a content library can be very useful.

5. Use images on Twitter

Twitter is a cluttered environment with a lot of people and organizations competing for attention. That's why you should always include images with your tweets; not only do they take up more real estate in users' news feeds, but they help draw people in so they click on your link. As well, Convince & Convert found that sharing images on Twitter increases retweets by 150%.

6. Post one piece of content multiple times

Next time you write that great blog post, e-book (or any other type of content), don't just post it once and forget about it. Instead, write multiple different updates that link to that content and schedule the updates out over the course of the next week or month. If your blog post is on Facebook advertising, for instance, you might have one update that reads "Check out our top 5 Facebook advertising tips," another that reads "Learn how to be a Facebook advertising champion," another that reads "Learn 5 secrets for winning Facebook ads," etc. You get the gist.

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7. Experiment with ads

Advertising can help dramatically increase the reach of your posts. On Facebook, only about 3% of your fans will see any given update. So if you want to increase the chances of success on social media, I recommend experimenting with ads, analyzing their performance (did they help you reach your objectives, was the ROI there?) and then potentially allocating some budget every year into social media advertisements.

Facebook has robust targeting options to ensure you serve the right ads to the right people; you can target ads to your website visitors, upload a list of your active email subscribers, and even reach just those who have engaged with your content on Facebook in the past.

8. Keep a close pulse on the industry

You need to keep your finger on the pulse as social media is constantly changing and new features continuously emerge and evolve. Subscribe to social media blogs to keep yourself informed of any relevant news, changes and updates.

If you don't make an effort to keep yourself informed, you'll find that your social media will become increasingly less effective and your audience will start to pay more attention to your competitors than you. If a new a feature comes available and you don't take advantage of it because you don't know it exists, you could miss out on a great opportunity to better reach your objectives (such as leads or sales).

9. Watch your competitors

In my last point I alluded to your competitors. You should keep an eye on what they're doing (and not doing) on social media. What kind of content are they posting? How often are they posting it? How are they engaging with their audience? If you see that something they're doing is effective, you may want to do something similar, or may be able to draw inspiraton from it.

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10. Use contests and promotions

A huge benefit of social media is that it gives organizations the chance to engage with their audience and contests are a great way to facilitate some great engagement. Check out these 6 social contest ideas and examples and these 5 awesome social media contests for some inspiration. And when it comes to promotions, offering your audience exclusive content or discounts are an excellent way to provide value through your social media channels and give people an incentive to continue to follow you.
McLean Hospital Guest Blogger

Catherine Ulrich Milliken, LICSW, MLADC, LCS

Actress and writer Carrie Fisher died at the age of 60 on Tuesday after going into cardiac arrest on Friday during a flight from London to Los Angeles. Fisher was a longtime advocate for mental health awareness, sharing publicly her own battle with bipolar and substance use disorders. She encouraged those who struggled with bipolar disorder and substance use issues to join in community and find comfort in shared feelings and experiences. As we remember her advocacy and commitment to confronting stigma and reducing shame, let's explore what we know about these disorders and what we can do to help.

What We Know About Co-Occurring Bipolar and Substance Use Disorders

Bipolar disorder is a serious mental health disorder affecting approximately 5.7 million adults each year (Kessler, Crum, et al., 1997), representing 8.1 percent of all diagnosed mental illness (US Department of Health and Human Services, 1999) in the United States. Bipolar disorder is characterized by sudden and intense shifts in mood, behavior, and energy levels and can present in a variety of ways, making diagnosis challenging. Like substance use disorders, bipolar disorder impacts physical and emotional wellbeing, and has been associated with higher rates of relationship problems, economic instability, accidental injury, suicide, and addiction.

Studies have demonstrated that people with bipolar disorder have higher rates of co-occurring substance use disorders than the population as a whole. Among individuals with bipolar disorder in one study, about 56 percent were dependent on substances, with 46 percent diagnosed with alcohol abuse or dependence and 41 percent diagnosed with drug abuse or dependence. People with bipolar I disorder were more than 3 times as likely to have alcohol abuse or dependence and about 7 times more likely to have drug abuse or dependence than those in the general population (Reiger, DA, Farmer ME, Rae DS, et al.1990).

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What We Know About Treatment for Co-Occurring Bipolar and Substance Use Disorders

Having a co-occurring disorder can make recovery more challenging and requires treating bipolar disorder and substance use disorder simultaneously through a process called integrated treatment. Integrated treatment emphasizes centralized care delivered by a collaborative, multidisciplinary team, utilizing individual, family, group, peer, and medication intervention and support. Therapeutic approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) have been shown to be effective in helping individuals regulate mood and behavior.

Integrated group therapy (IGT) is a 12-session group treatment for individuals with co-occurring bipolar disorder and substance use problems. IGT utilizes many principles of CBT, combined with psychoeducational approaches, and recommends the use of mutual self-help groups. IGT integrates the treatment of these two disorders by focusing on a single disorder paradigm, bipolar substance abuse. The treatment emphasizes the commonalities and relationship between the two disorders. Substance use is recognized as a risk factor for return to bipolar disorder and vice versa.

Important Things to Know About Co-Occurring Bipolar and Substance Use Disorders

A combination of genetics, environment, biology, and other factors are believed to play a role in developing these disorders.

Misdiagnosis is common. Proper screening and assessment is crucial.

Individuals often self-medicate.

Treatment for bipolar disorder can reduce cravings for substances.

Integrated treatment is essential, and medication-assisted therapies can help manage symptoms.

Listen, learn, and encourage treatment, notice symptoms, make a plan, stick to a schedule, express your concerns and take care of yourself.

Resources for Help

SAMHSA Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator is a confidential and anonymous source of information for persons seeking treatment facilities in the United States or US territories for substance abuse/addiction and/or mental health problems.

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Mental Health America (MHA)--founded in 1909--is the nation's leading community-based nonprofit dedicated to addressing the needs of those living with mental illness and to promoting the overall mental health of all Americans.

Founded in 1811, McLean Hospital is a leader in psychiatric care, research, and education and is the largest psychiatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.

- - -

Catherine Ulrich Milliken, LICSW, MLADC, LCS, is the program director of Borden Cottage, one of McLean Hospital's Signature Recovery Programs which provide individualized residential care for patients with drug or alcohol addiction and co-occurring psychiatric conditions.

References
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump talks to members of the media at Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., December 21, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

There is no more important political and moral agenda for 2017 than to counter Donald Trump's political philosophy. This philosophy is modeled on domestic violence and it breeds a dangerous politics of control.

You can see this model in how Trump performs power over others by ritual humiliation and intimidation, but that is not the limit of the analogy.

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Domestic violence is called violence for a reason.

Trump has moved to the threat of ultimate violence, the death not only of individuals, but also of the planet by raising the specter of an accelerated nuclear age, and an increased nuclear risk. Unlike some who think Trump's departure from decades of nuclear policy was a blunder, I believe it is a deliberate attempt to ratchet up the level of intimidation to the ultimate threat, the threat of annihilation.

The trajectory from humiliation to intimidation to threats of violence is a classic pattern of domestic abuse and it is now the reigning political philosophy of the incoming administration. Our current Department of Justice defines domestic abuse as "any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone."

This is horrifying in abusive personal relationships, and it is equally horrifying when seen as a broader pattern of an abusive political philosophy.

Humiliation and intimidation are warning signs of this trend, both relationally and politically.

Recently, Newt Gingrich was publically humiliated by Trump for daring to pull back the curtain and expose that Trump's campaign rhetoric about 'draining the swamp' was not to be taken seriously.

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But prior to that, there was the cruel body-shaming of Chris Christie, and who can forget the extended and excruciating public shaming of Mitt Romney up to and including getting dumped, apparently at dinner.

Romney getting dumped at dinner was like every caricature of a guy breaking up with a woman at dinner 'so she won't make a scene.' Except in Romney's case, the scene was the point. A message was sent to other potential political critics: 'Public humiliation will result if you criticize me. '

This is how we know this is a political philosophy. The humiliation and intimidation are done for specific political ends.

And we know it is a political philosophy modeled on domestic violence because now Trump has threatened not only the country but the world with a new nuclear arms race. In domestic violence, the threat of death is always there, ratcheting up the fear factor. As moral ethicist Mary Pellauer has so wisely noted in her chapter in Lift Every Voice: Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside 'I could have died' is the existential crisis women who have been subject to violence report.

The nuclear threat is a real death threat. There are enough nuclear weapons in the world to destroy it several times over. The fear of death is the ultimate way abusers wrest control away from their victims.

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Just to refresh your memory, here is Trump's nuclear Tweet.

The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016

And we need not necessarily go to DEFCON 1 (defined as "imminent threat of nuclear attack") to see how certain groups in the U.S. will be increasingly threatened. Here's just one example: the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General is a threat to equal treatment under the law. The threat is tangible and potentially lethal. African American communities will lose recourse to the Justice Department when a member of that community who is unarmed is summarily executed by police or a vigilante. Police and vigilantes may consider themselves even more above the law than they do now.

Unless we effectively counter this political philosophy of abuse starting right away, the effects long term will be devastating for democracy.

In my experience as a domestic violence counselor and teaching seminary classes on sexual and domestic violence, I have seen the psychological damage of exposure to the pattern of domestic violence. The person who is ritually humiliated, intimidated and threatened with death over and over can come to doubt their own ability to make decisions and can become more and more dependent and submissive.

Submission and dependence are learned from repeated domestic abuse. People become far more inclined to obedience and they can lose the capacity for independent thought and action.

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In a political sense, this is antithetical to a democracy where citizens need to hold their political leaders accountable, critique them and even remove them when necessary by the power of the ballot.

The abusive political philosophy of the incoming Trump administration is therefore subversive of the democratic process itself.

There is a way out of this. The way to resist a political philosophy of abuse is the same way those who have been subject to domestic violence have successfully rejected abuse and become survivors.

Recognize that this Behavior is Abuse

Raising awareness that there is a reigning philosophy of political abuse is crucial. Teen Vogue has an excellent article on how Donald Trump is Gaslighting America through systematic denial of the truth we can see right before our eyes, like the psychological abuse in the Victorian era drama "Gaslight." Denial of the truth is a form of psychological abuse, and it is critical to the maintenance of a political philosophy of abuse.

Here's how you stop this: Use every opportunity to call out #FakeNews and help one another recognize and sustain the truth about what is happening.

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Take Away the Weapons

There are federal and state laws to prevent domestic abusers from having access to lethal weapons such as guns. These must be improved as there are often loopholes, but such laws tend to prevent domestic violence from becoming lethal.

In the same way, the Trump administration needs to be prevented from a first-strike capability with nuclear weapons. Congress must push forward with a no first strike bill to take away Trump's capacity to 'shoot first and ask questions later' when it comes to the nuclear trigger.

Trump must be prevented from being able to credibly threaten the world with a nuclear first strike.

Get Legal Help

I have often helped women who are being psychologically and physically abused to recognize that what is being done to them is illegal. Their abusers will try to reinforce the idea that it is perfectly fine for a man to beat or humiliate his wife or partner. It's not. Women in this situation are often helped by securing legal advice.

In the same way, an abusive political philosophy tries to wrap itself in the cloak of legality, but often its actions are completely illegal. The American Civil Liberties Union has named this clearly in their campaign "See You in Court," launched the day after the election. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund with its long experience in defending civil rights cases is another line of legal defense. As it becomes clearer and clearer that the recent election has empowered neo-Nazis, the Southern Poverty Law Center is essential organization. They have successfully fought the Ku Klux Klan in the past, and they will be needed to counter the rise of a spectrum of hate crimes. Planned Parenthood remains an essential line of defense of women's right to self-determination about their bodies.

Support these organizations and volunteer as you are able. There are many other worthy ones, of course.

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It will also be crucial to lobby against extremist judges being appointed to our courts.

Support One Another

The domestic abuser tries to isolate his victim. Support groups are crucial to counter this tactic. I have formed bible studies in churches that have become support groups for domestic violence victims and survivors.

The online Twitter attacks and harassment are a leading characteristic of this abusive political philosophy. President-elect Trump has been called "Twitter-troll-in-Chief for his Twitter attacks or Cyberbully-in-Chief when President.

When Trump attacks someone on Twitter, I have proposed (and I follow my own advice) that those who would be moral actors in this society Tweet or send online messages of support those whom he, or his minions such as the neo-Nazi groups, attack. I call this campaign #LoveOneAnother and I use that hashtag when contacting those who have been attacked.

Twitter attacks by Trump model incredibly abusive behavior and there has been a huge increase of cyber-bullying as well as face-to-face bullying since he was elected.

A political philosophy modeled on domestic violence is very dangerous for the United States and the world.

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There is no greater imperative for 2017 than to oppose and defeat this abusive philosophy.
Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House after being nominated by President Barack Obama (not pictured) to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington March 16, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

We can still get Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court! The clock is ticking, but the Constitution is on our side. This is an exciting situation, and a petition is already in place. I've signed, I'm asking you to please do so as well.

Why? Because there is not one issue related to clean elections that a Supreme Court with Garland on it wouldn't be able to address in ways that are much more profound than a president and a Congress even can.

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Citizens United? To overturn it, we don't need a constitutional amendment (which would take two-thirds of all our states to ratify). We just need a clean-elections majority on the Supreme Court. We already have four justices in place, we just need Garland to join them. And immediately -- Citizens United, and its horrific, unprecedented dumping of money into increasingly corrupted elections -- would be gone. Gerrymandered districts, that have given one party a lockhold on the House of Representatives? Struck down as unconstitutional. Voting restrictions that keep African-American voters and low-income voters from voting? Gone. Laws that prevent those who have been convicted of crimes from voting (which is not only unconstitutional but has an outsized impact on low-income voters and minorities)? Finished.

With Garland's appointment, we'd start moving toward clean elections in America! And with clean elections, everything else starts to take care of itself.

Here's the good news. There is something we can do, this very minute.

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Before Biden begins the proceedings, he has a chance to preside over a Senate that consists of 34 Democrats, 2 independents who caucus with Democrats and 30 Republicans. At this point, Democrats could ask to finish Senate business as it pertains to President Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland.



For the past year, Republicans have claimed that the "American people" should decide the fate of that Supreme Court seat. Hillary Clinton got 2.7 million more votes than Donald Trump, and more Americans voted Democratic in the U.S. Senate races. Democrats are entirely justified to make this move, and it's the only way to guarantee that Garland will be confirmed.



The truth is, the three Justices over the age of 80 would overturn Citizens United. The pro-Citizens United Justices are all in their 60s.



Opponents of clean elections saw this ahead of time, and acted. That's why they refused to hold hearings on Garland. They saw their chance to dominate the Court for decades. We can be angry, but we can't fault a winning strategy. Opponents of clean elections are incredibly effective at gaming the system so that their interests are protected despite the will of the people. Need more proof of this?



The majority of the public has voted for Democratic presidential candidates in four of the last five Presidential elections. And yet only twice has the Democrat taken office.

A majority of the public voted for Democratic Senate candidates in 2016. Yet Republicans retained control of the Senate. A majority of voters voted for Democratic House candidates in 2014. Republicans kept the House anyway. In every election since 2000, Republicans have held far more seats in both Houses than reflected in their percentage of the vote.

With Trump in office, filling up vacancies throughout the federal judiciary; with "unlimited spending" politicians controlling the majority of Congress, of the governorships, of statehouses; the Supreme Court could be the last remaining balance, keeping money out of politics.

This is not a partisan issue. It's an American issue.

That's why it's so important to be able to do something! Take two minutes to sign this petition to persuade Joe Biden to move to instate Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court on January 3rd. Maybe even take a few additional minutes and contact your Senators and Congresspeople, your friends, the press you are familiar with, and ask them to take this opportunity seriously.



America democracy can't survive without clean elections. A vote is a fragile thing. It requires advocacy, vigilance, wisdom, and passion. Please join me in protecting our precious rights while we still can!

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On November 25, 2016, the mastermind of Cuba's 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro, died at age 90. Even though Castro was criticized in the West for the authoritarian nature of his rule and egregious human rights abuses, his death prompted an outpouring of grief in the developing world. Sub-Saharan African leaders reacted in an especially strong manner. The leaders of South Africa, Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe attended his funeral, and days of mourning were declared across the continent to commemorate Castro's life and revolutionary ideals.

A wide range of factors and national experiences explain the extent of admiration for Castro in Africa. For many African leaders, Castro's resistance to United States hegemony and successful overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's US-backed dictatorship were viewed as a successful model for leaders opposed to neocolonialism to follow.

The Algerian struggle for independence during the early 1960s was inspired by Castro's takeover of Cuba. Lahkdar Brahimi, a key Algerian nationalist politician, visited Cuba in 1961 to gain inspiration from Castro's revolutionary values. South Africa's first black president Nelson Mandela viewed the Cuban Communist Party's rise to prominence through guerilla warfare and gradual military triumphs as an inspiration for his subsequent struggle against apartheid.

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Yet admiration for Castro amongst anti-Western African leaders was not universal during the 1960s and 1970s. A faction of the non-aligned movement led by Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi criticized Castro's alliance with the Soviet Union as a surrender of national sovereignty.

Castro responded to these criticisms with a speech at the 1973 non-aligned conference in Algiers that praised the USSR's "extraordinary services" to the Third World and resistance to "Yankee imperialism." The Cuban government's strident pro-Soviet stance caused Gaddafi and Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba to walk out of the summit. This represented a low point for Communist Cuba's relationship with Africa.

This hostile reaction convinced Castro to develop a new Cuban foreign policy identity, which was more independent from the USSR and targeted towards the concerns of African leaders. Castro's Africa strategy transitioned from its previous focus on spreading Soviet-style communism, to a soft power offensive emphasizing civil rights and humanitarian assistance to impoverished countries. The most striking manifestation of this new approach was Cuba's resolute criticism of South Africa's apartheid regime and calls for the release of Nelson Mandela from prison.

Cuba's willingness to use military force to further its civil rights promotion objectives in Africa increased admiration for Castro on the continent. African leaders increasingly viewed Cuba as an independent pro-Soviet actor, rather than a mere proxy of the USSR. This perception was cemented by Cuba's deployment of 25,000 troops to Angola in 1975.

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As South Africa had intervened militarily on the behalf of right-wing forces in Angola, Cuba's military intervention weakened the apartheid regime by depriving Pretoria of critical financial and military resources during a period of intense international isolation. Castro's agreement at the 1988 New York Accords to withdraw Cuban troops from Angola in exchange for the liberation of Namibia from apartheid rule further bolstered his stature amongst African nationalists.

Cuba's poverty relief efforts also won plaudits in Sub-Saharan Africa, as they provided a more human face to revolutionary communism than the Soviet Union's military-focused approach. During the early 1970s, Cuba provided health care assistance to Somalia's left-wing government and assisted Mogadishu in the establishment of a viable sugarcane industry.

While Castro's alliance with Somalia was compromised by Cuba's military support for Ethiopia during the 1977-78 Ogaden War, Havana's role in ameliorating the Angolan health care crisis of the late 1970s was a signature achievement for Cuba's humanitarian campaign. Castro's medical diplomacy strategy continued after the Cold War, as Cuba sent 450 doctors to South Africa from 1996-2002 to ease the apartheid-induced medical personnel shortage in the country.

As Cuba struggled with an economic crisis and the aftershock of losing its Soviet patron during the 1990s, the legacy of Castro's African strategy played a key role in ensuring that Cuba's communist regime did not follow North Korea and Laos into international isolation. A group of African countries, spearheaded by South Africa, pressured the United States to end its embargo against Cuba. Gaddafi also set aside his foreign policy disagreements with Castro, and encouraged Cuba to maintain a high-profile diplomatic role in the non-aligned movement.

While Cuba's ability to exert economic or military leverage over African affairs diminished in a post-Cold War world, Havana has continued to express solidarity with authoritarian regimes targeted by Western sanctions. Cuban policymakers have condemned international sanctions against Zimbabwe, and praised President Robert Mugabe for his role in ending white-majority role in Zimbabwe.

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Cuba also strongly supported Gaddafi during the 2011 Libyan civil war. After Gaddafi was killed in October 2011, Fidel Castro accused NATO of genocidal activities in Libya, and scathingly condemned how Gaddafi was murdered as a "trophy of war" in violation of Islamic traditions.

Even though Castro was scathingly criticized in the West for his authoritarian policies and brazen defiance of the United States, many Africans viewed him in a much more favorable light and as an anti-Western nationalist hero. The close alliances between Cuba's Communist Party and numerous African countries will ensure that Castro's imprint on African politics will live on for years to come.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:

Kazakh Government appointed Berik Sholpankulov as the deputy finance minister, the Finance Ministry said Dec. 29.

Before this appointment he served as chairman of the Committee for Financial Monitoring under the Finance Ministry.

Sholpankulov has a huge experience of work in the management of Finance Ministry.

He served as the deputy finance minister in 2008-2014.

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Reno Commission puts liquor by drink without food sales on 2023 ballot

Hutchinson board acts quickly to respond to brewery's dilemma, but vote is more than a year away.
Growth was the most notable development for Burns & Wilcox Canada in 2016, says Jodie Kaufman Davis, corporate vice president and managing director.The wholesale broker grew 20% in both premium and revenue over 2015, and, going into 2017, the company will continue to focus on growth, she told Insurance Business.Overall we are aggressively pushing to expand our expertise and provide more exhaustive products for our brokers in the coming year, Kaufman Davis explained.Expanded offerings in a number of key business areas, such as its environmental centre, ocean marine capabilities, and its P&C operations, will continue to drive growth, according to the vice-president.Our global ocean marine capabilities are industry leading and we are always striving to support brokers with commercial marine risks for their clients around the world, Kaufman Davis said.The firm also has a new security program, which includes competitive coverage for security guards, vacant buildings, and all protective services.Burns & Wilcox Canada has grown in both top and bottom line this year, despite a tough market.As the market has become more competitive our organization has stayed true to our business strategy by underwriting the best coverage for our clients, she said.By doing so, we are continuously supporting our markets to not only protect against large losses but also to spread risk throughout the marketplace.Cyber is another key focus for the future, and as technology continues to rapidly change the landscape, the firms underwriters pride themselves on staying atop of current events, Kaufman Davis said.For example, [we were] first to market to provide coverage for medical marijuana licensed producers and facilities in the nation, she explained.Consolidation will remain a constant challenge to brokerages in the coming year, Kaufman Davis said, and brokers should be strategic on where business is placed.To be successful, our retail clients should understand where they are sending their submissions and where they are creating partnerships, she said.
Macy's announced it would close in January. Lanesborough Elementary School was recognized for its good work by the state twice in 2016. Spirit of Blue from Chicago and Dunkin Donuts was in town in March to grant some $4,000 worth of automated external defibrillators. How about them Bulldogs? The Narragansett Avenue bridge will be going through a $7 million reconstruction. PreviousNext

Lanesborough In Review: 2016



Lanesborough got its first new truck in 20 years this fall. LANESBOROUGH, Mass.  The year started off on a down note but ended much better.

The earliest Lanesborough piece of news this year came on Jan. 6 when Macy's at the Berkshire Mall told its employees the store would be closing. It was one of 36 stores to be closed nationwide by the major retailer and one of significance to Lanesborough as it served as one of the few anchors at the mall.

Previously, the mall had previously lost Best Buy and has yet to replace it. The loss of yet another store meant a significant hit to the commercial value of the mall. The mall had continued to drop in value and from 2008 until 2014 it went from $60.4 million to $33.5 million. Another drop is expected when the mall is reassessed in January.

Those assessments were being challenged in court by the then owners.

Meanwhile, the Selectmen were wrapped into an epic battle over the proposal to build a new Mount Greylock Regional Middle and High School. The $64.8 million project was in the works and continued into the early part of January. On Jan. 7 the Selectmen released a controversial survey asking residents for input. But the wording and process were contentious as was the entire project proposal. The Mount Greylock School Committee approved the project.

Also on Jan. 7, Lanesborough Elementary School was one of many area schools to receive a bomb threat. It proved to be false but Lanesborough first responders put its "bomb scare protocol" in place.

The year was off to a rocky start.

But there was a little piece of good news that month, the elementary school was one of just 45 schools in the state to receive commendations from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for its performance.

The school project debate rolled into February and Selectmen John Goerlach and Henry "Hank" Sayers publicly opposed the construction, concerned with the costs. Around the same time, Williams College sweetened the pot by creating a $5 million endowment for school officials to use on projects outside of the scope of work on the renovation/new build proposed. Town leaders, however, were skeptical about it and wanted more say in how the money way spent.

The Selectmen were also thrust into playing judge and jury over a neighborhood issue. Resident Kara Zaks was raising some 80 ducks and chickens, including roosters on her property, which upset neighbor Clark Gable. Gable brought the issue to the Selectmen, asking for a bylaw to restrict the number of fowl on the property.

The board tried to play an arbitrator role and work out a compromise between the two parties. When that failed, it crafted a proposal to limit the number of fowl an owner can have but town meeting tabled it. Finally, the board just sent it to the Board of Health to deal with.

In March, the hotly debated school project went to the ballot and passed by just 134 votes. Williamstown approved it earlier that month by an overwhelming margin. Lanesborough was now responsible for about $10.6 million of the project and add between $353 and $393 to the average property tax bill.

Spirit of Blue from Chicago and Dunkin Donuts was in town in March to grant some $4,000 worth of automated external defibrillators. The gift is particularly important for the town because it had been working to install more of them in town buildings since 2012 when a Planning Board member collapsed at town meeting. The defibrillators from Spirit of Blue were given to Police for the cruisers.

Another financial issue surfaced. The Lanesborough Ambulance Service was facing a problem: there wasn't enough revenue to keep up with expenses. The choice was to stop the service or make major changes. The next month the volunteers themselves stepped up and offered to forego their stipends to help out. In September, the Selectmen approved training one of the town's part-time seasonal workers to become an emergency medical technician to help bring in revenue during the day, when the other volunteers were working and couldn't field calls. But there is still more work to be done, which should continue in 2017.

April is the month the Selectmen started really looking at what to do with Summer Street. The road is in poor condition and will be costly to repair. There are a few options as to how to get it funded and difference sources. Paul Furgal, a senior engineer with Tighe and Bond, visited the board and helped explain the options.

Up at the Elementary School, staff began a new breakfast program offering all of the students a "grab and go" breakfast to eat in class. Across the nation schools have been implementing breakfast programs in schools.

The Selectmen also found out they had the ability to change the percentage a certain group of retirees pay for health insurance. Town Manager Paul Sieloff thought it was a good way to save some money for the town and he crafted a proposal. But, that was quickly opposed by the group of retirees impacted.

As the town election started to approach, Michelle Johnson announced her candidacy for the Board of Selectmen in May. She was joined in June by incumbent Robert Ericson.

Ericson ultimately retained his seat. But during the town election, Rebecca Flood ousted Al Terranova for a seat on the Finance Committee. Terranova wouldn't be gone from local politics for long, though, in November he won a write-in bid to serve on the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee.



Samantha Trybus and friends Gianna Auriemma and Shaelyn Roberts pose with the town's new holiday tree. Voters also rejected a proposal to join the Berkshire Mosquito Control Project in June. But another pest issue came up. A group of jet skiers was using a section of Pontoosuc Lake at night to race and party. The noise was keeping the nearby residents up. The Police Department was ultimately asked to keep an eye on things and eventually it settled down.

Another round of school controversy picked up in July when the Selectmen sent a letter to then Mount Greylock Superintendent Douglas Dias suggesting the central office would be moved to Lanesborough Elementary School since it wasn't in the new building design. The Selectmen saw an opportunity to charge back the district some rent to offset the town's bill while filling unused areas of the elementary school.

Yet, the Lanesborough School Committee wasn't included in that letter and was frustrated that the Selectmen bypassed them.

But things started to turn around in Lanesborough at the halfway point of the year.

Charter Communications announced it would upgrading and expanding internet service throughout town. Lanesborough had been part of Wired West and involved in working with the Massachusetts Broadband Institute to expand access to all areas of the town. Charter had purchased Time Warner Cable, which served some of the town, and put forth the project. The Selectmen bowed out of Wired West.

In August, the town got a new holiday tree. Mount Greylock student Samantha Trybus found and planted the new tree next to the Police station. In December, the town held a tree lighting ceremony.

The Baker Hill Road District's Prudential Committee later met with the Board of Selectmen because it was nearing an agreement with the Berkshire Mall for the tax assessments which had been appealed. Multiple years of tax assessments were tied up in litigation, leaving many question marks about the anticipated revenue in coming years.

The owners of the mall, Strategic Asset Services, wanted to settle the appeals because in September it was selling it to the Kohan Retail Investment Group of Great Neck, N.Y. Owner Mehran Kohanseih said he plans to try to revive the troubled mall.

A few days later, the town finished securing easements to allow the state to proceed with a $7 million replacement of the Narragansett Avenue bridge, a well-needed project. Later in the month, the fire truck the town had spent some three years saving up for arrived. The Fire Department got its first new engine in 20 years.

In October, both Lanesborough Elementary School and Mount Greylock were ranked Level 1 by the state.

Things were looking up. But it wouldn't last long because in the fall is when cities and towns set the tax rate.

The mall's value decreased at the same time the first bills for the school renovation hit the ledger. The result was a property tax increase of nearly 8 percent. And next year, it won't get much better.

"This is the first of three years," Sieloff said at the time. "It is a tough couple of years."

The loss of Macy's still hasn't entirely hit the assessment books and the school project bills will increase over the next two years. The good news, however, is that the largest jump for those two was in 2016.

Issues with Mount Greylock rolled back in as November came. Superintendent Douglas Dias resigned from the job after a contentious relationship with many of the Mount Greylock School Committee members. In December, Supervisory Union 71 agreed to place Kimberly Grady in the role as interim superintendent. The process for finding the next superintendent will unfold in the coming months.

The town also may be seeing a little boost in the tax base in a few years because in December Eversource was approved to build a massive 5.2-megawatt solar photovoltaic field off of Route 7. That is hoped to bring in some $200,000 more per year - which would go a long way toward offsetting the school bills and drop in mall value.

So while 2016 started off rocky, the year ended a lot better. The hope is now the good will continue to outweigh the bad in 2017.




iciHaiti - Diaspora : Message from the Consul General of Haiti in Chicago





Lesly Conde, Consul General of Haiti in Chicago wishes Happy New Year 2017 to the entire Haitian community and also reminds the compatriots of Chicago and of the entire Midwest and the friends of Haiti that the 1st and 2nd of January 2017 bring back respectively the 213 th anniversary of our National Independence and the Haiti Ancestors' Day.



On this occasion, the Haitian Catholic Mission of the Archdiocese of Chicago invites the brothers and sisters of the community to a solemn Mass, which will be celebrated on Sunday, January 1 at 5:30 pm at the Church of Our Lady of Peace located at 7801 South Jeffery, Chicago. After the religious ceremony a reception will be offered in the basement of the Church. This invitation extends to the faithful of all religious denominations.



In addition, on Saturday, January 7, the Haitian Congress to Fortify Haiti, the Consular Mission and other local organizations invite all the compatriots to a large community gathering to be held from 7:00 pm at the Levy Center located at 300 Dodge Ave., Evanston. On the program: different speakers, songs, poems, musical animation etc. The traditional soup with giraumon will be served and a souvenir of our dear Haiti will be given to all those present. We will take this opportunity to honor the memory of the victims of the 2010 earthquake.



The Consulate General of Haiti in Chicago encourages the members of our large family to come and show their national pride and solidarity by welcoming the New Year in harmony and respect.



IH/ iciHaiti


















Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.29

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Russias President Vladimir Putin has signed the law on ratification of the agreement with Kyrgyzstan on cooperation in the supply of oil and oil products.

The agreement between Russian and Kyrgyz governments was signed June 6, 2016 in Bishkek. The document sets the conditions of cooperation in the supply of oil and oil products from Russia to Kyrgyzstan.

The agreement also bans re-export of goods delivered from Russia to Kyrgyzstan to third countries without charging export duties.

Any possible dispute between the two parties over the implementation of this agreement should be resolved through talks.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon invited his Uzbek counterpart Shavkat Mirziyoyev to come to Tajikistan on an official visit at a time convenient for him, the press service of the Uzbek government said in a message.

Emomali Rahmon made the invitation during a meeting with the Uzbek delegation, which took part in the fourth meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation held in the city of Dushanbe Dec. 27-28.

The message said that Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have big plans to further develop fruitful cooperation, implement joint projects of an economic nature, develop cultural and interethnic dialogue.

A wide range of topical issues of bilateral cooperation, including the basic parameters of interaction in the fields of economy and trade, transport, industry, culture, education, sport and health care was considered within the framework of the meeting, the message said.

It was decided to hold the next meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in Tashkent in 2017.

Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have had no bilateral relations since the early 90s. The two countries had no air traffic, there were virtually no commercial, economic and political ties.

The relations began to establish in the current year: the first charter flight from Tashkent to Dushanbe since 1992 took place Nov. 30. The sides also agreed to restore regular flights since the beginning of 2017. It is also planned to establish railway and bus links, as well as facilitate the visa regime, which has been in force since 2000.

In early 2017, Tashkent plans to organize in Dushanbe a grandiose exhibition of goods manufactured in Uzbekistan  starting from production of Uzbek car industry to food products. Following the exhibition in Dushanbe, the first business forum of Tajik and Uzbek entrepreneurs will take place.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 28



By Farhad Daneshvar  Trend:



Azerbaijan has expressed interest in investing in the construction of a freight terminal at an under-construction rail station in Iranian city of Astara, as part of the North-South Transport Corridor, a high-ranking Iranian railway official told Trend.



Deputy Head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Railway Company for Operation Affairs Hossein Ashouri has said that Azerbaijan declared readiness to invest in the freight terminal to be constructed on 10 hectares of land in the Iranian city.



The official added that the announcement was made during a meeting between Iranian and Azerbaijani officials over the past week discussing the latest developments concerning the construction of Astara (Iran)  Astara (Azerbaijan) railroad, a small segment of the North-South Transport Corridor.



Saying that the railway segment is projected to come on stream within the next three months, he added that the freight terminal will facilitate loading and unloading operations of industrial goods and metals as well as cereals, etc.



Speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing three-day meetings of the Azerbaijan-Iran intergovernmental commission in Baku, the official noted that the Astara-Astara railroad segment will ease transportation of goods between Russia and India.



Iranian officials are currently making efforts to meet their commitment regarding the construction of the railway segment connecting the two countries through Astara border bridge.



Azerbaijan has already completed a 8.5 kilometer-long section of the project that falls on its territory. The Iranian side is 2.5 kilometer-long.
Friends of Israel  Let Your Support Be Known!

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein | December 29, 2016

Dear Friend of Israel

In his speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry put even more distance between the United States and its greatest ally  Israel.

The distance was created last week, when the U.S. refused to exercise its veto power to stop passage of a one-sided and unfair U.N. resolution declaring that Israeli settlements  communities in East Jerusalem and biblical Judea and Samaria  are illegal. On Wednesday, Secretary Kerry drove a wedge into that rift, and pushed two traditional allies farther apart.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus strongly-worded rebuttal to Kerrys speech cut to the heart of the matter, challenging the notion that Israel is the obstacle to peace. See, this conflict is not about houses, or communities in the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, the Gaza district or anywhere else, the Prime Minister said. This conflict is and has always been about Israels very right to exist  The persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state remains the core of the conflict and its removal is the key to peace.

It is clear that now is the time for friends of Israel to stand up and be counted, and to let their support for the Jewish state be known. There are many ways to do so. Please, continue to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Continue to speak out on Israels behalf. And continue to support our programs that do so much to fill the needs and preserve the security of impoverished and struggling Israelis.

I continue to believe that the strong bonds between Israel and the U.S.  based not just on common strategic and economic interests, but on what columnist Jeff Jacoby once called a kinship of common values  will endure. Even when many of Americas senior leaders fail to do so, the American people recognize in the state of Israel a kindred spirit, a nation based on the same principles of freedom and democracy embraced by the U.S.

Especially at times like this, I am so grateful to you, my Christian and Jewish friends, for all you do every day to show your love for Israel and her people. And from where I sit now, in the Holy City of Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people, I can assure you that the people of Israel are grateful, too.
Imperial Valley News Center

FTC Requires Divestitures as Condition to Proposed $13.53 Billion Deal between German Pharmaceutical Boehringer Ingelheim and Paris-based Sanofi

Washington, DC - German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim has agreed to divest five types of animal health products in the United States in order to settle FTC charges that its proposed asset swap with Paris-based Sanofi would likely be anticompetitive.

Under the proposed swap, Boehringer Ingelheim will acquire Sanofis animal care subsidiary, Merial, valued at $13.53 billion, and Sanofi will obtain Boehringer Ingelheims consumer health care business unit, valued at $7.98 billion, as well as cash compensation of $5.54 billion.

The FTCs complaint alleges that without the divestitures the proposed asset swap would harm competition in the U.S. markets for various vaccines for companion animals (pets) and certain parasite control products for cattle and sheep.

The transaction could also lead to higher prices and reduced service in these markets, and could increase the likelihood of coordinated interaction between competitors, according to the FTCs complaint.

The proposed consent order preserves competition by requiring Boehringer Ingelheim to divest the companion animal vaccines to Eli Lilly and the companys Elanco Animal Health division, and the parasite control products to Bayer AG.

According to the complaint, the proposed transaction, without a remedy, would have substantially lessened U.S. competition for the following products:

Canine vaccines. The proposed acquisition would reduce the number of canine vaccine suppliers from four to three.

Feline vaccines. The proposed acquisition would combine the two leading feline vaccine suppliers, reducing the number of competitors from four to three.

Rabies vaccines. The proposed acquisition would combine the top two rabies vaccine suppliers, which control a combined 75 percent market share, and would reduce the number of rabies vaccine suppliers from four to three.

Products to prevent and control outbreaks of parasites in cattle. There are only three primary suppliers of these parasiticides, also known as macrocyclic lactones, in the U.S. market. The proposed acquisition would reduce the number of suppliers to two, giving the merged firm a market share of more than 65 percent.

Products to prevent and control outbreaks of parasites in sheep. Currently, Boehringer Ingelheim and Sanofis Merial are the two primary suppliers of these parasiticides in the U.S. market, and the acquisition would give the merged firm a market share of more than 78 percent.

To help ensure that the consent order achieves its remedial goals, Boehringer Ingelheim is required to provide technical assistance and other transition services so that Elanco and Bayer can independently manufacture and sell the divested products. The FTC order also includes an asset maintenance order and it appoints a monitor to oversee the divestiture process.

More information about this proposed merger and the FTCs consent agreement can be found in the analysis to aid public comment.

The Commission vote to issue the complaint and accept the proposed consent order for public comment was 3-0. The FTC will publish the consent agreement package in the Federal Register shortly. The agreement will be subject to public comment for 30 days, beginning today and continuing through January 27, 2017, after which the Commission will decide whether to make the proposed consent order final. Comments can be filed electronically or in paper form by following the instructions in the Supplementary Information section of the Federal Register notice.
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Carrie Fisher, who passed away at the age of 60, will forever be immortalised as one of the world's greatest onscreen heroines - the fearless Princess Leia in the Star Wars trilogy, though The Force Awakens later gave her the title of General Leia.

However, Fisher wasn't just a fearless and brilliant presence onscreen, but off it too; enjoying an unsung, but wildly successful career as one of Hollywood's finest script doctors, tinkering with and tightening some of the most popular films of the 1990s.

One of those films was 1991's Hook, which also saw her make a secretive cameo alongside George Lucas in the film's opening stretch; featuring as the kissing couple on the bridge who begin to float upwards after Tinkerbell sprinkles Fairy Dust over them.

Though the cameos were long held to be simply rumoured appearances, The Wrap recently confirmed the couple's identity with Hook's filmmakers (and Fisher herself) as part of their coverage of the film's 25th anniversary.

Lucas paid tribute to Fisher after her passing by stating: "Carrie and I have been friends most of our adult lives. She was extremely smart; a talented actress, writer and comedienne with a very colorful personality that everyone loved. In Star Wars she was our great and powerful princessfeisty, wise and full of hope in a role that was more difficult than most people might think.

 Remembering Carrie Fisher's hilarious award speech for George Lucas

"My heart and prayers are with Billie, Debbie and all Carrie's family, friends and fans. She will be missed by all."

You can watch a clip of the scene below.



Fisher passed away on Tuesday, four days after suffering a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles. Fisher's mother, and legendary screen actress, Debbie Reynolds passed away the following day; after being rushed to hospital after experiencing a stroke.
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This week saw the passing of two Hollywood icons - Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds - within a day of each other.

Over the course of their lives, the mother-daughter duo endured tempestuous times but remained the best of friends until their passing. The fact they were so willing to talk openly about their struggles on Oprah Winfrey's chat show in 2011 was proof of how endlessly resilient and professional these two extraordinary individuals were.

Fisher wasn't just an actor: she wrote several novels also, one being Postcards from the Edge - a fictionalised account of how it was to be brought up by a Hollywood movie star parent (a film adaptation starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine followed in 1990).

The sobering and often hilarious interview - conducted to coincide with the HBO documentary of Fisher's Wishful Drinking - lasts for over 40 minutes and sees the duo perform a touching medley. Among other things, the duo talk about Reynolds' ill-fated relationship with Fisher's father, crooning sensation Eddie, and the Princess Leia actor's mental health problems.

Reynolds shot to fame after starring in classic 1952 musical Singin' in the Rain opposite Gene Kelly.

Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Show all 9 1 /9 Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher American actor and singer Debbie Reynolds smiles and holds her infant daughter, Carrie Fisher Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher American actress Debbie Reynolds with her daughter Carrie Fisher Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Actress Debbie Reynolds, poses with her children Carrie Fisher and Todd Fisher Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher arrive at the premiere of 'Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith' Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Actress Carrie Fisher and her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Actress Debbie Reynolds accepts the Life Achievement Award from her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher onstage at the 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Actresses Carrie Fisher, Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award recipient Debbie Reynolds, and Billie Lourd pose in the press room during the 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher A candle is seen on the star for Debbie Reynolds on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher A view of a temporary star made by fans in tribute to actress Carrie Fisher on Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California Getty

"There have been a few times where I thought I was going to lose Carrie," Reynolds can be seen saying. "I've had to walk through a lot of my tears but Carrie's worth it.

"My lowest point in Carrie's and my relationship was when we discovered that she was ill, or that she had this mental health problem and that it was going to be with her forever. That was very hard. How was she going to get along in life? How can I help her life? All I can do is love her and always shall."

You can watch the full interview below.

The world has been saddened by the news of Fisher and Reynolds' deaths, with an overwhelming outpouring of tributes flooding in from across the world.
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(12A) Dir: JA Bayona, 108 mins, starring: Lewis MacDougall, Liam Neeson, Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver, Geraldine Chaplin,Toby Kebbell

A Monster Calls is the story of a 12-year-old boy (too old to be a kid, too young to be man) trying to come to terms with the fact that his mother is dying. Its extraordinary power lies in the interweaving of the fantastical and the everyday.

Adapted from Patrick Nesss novel, this is a very British affair, set in a small provincial town (it is isnt specified exactly where) but the film is made by a Spanish director JA Bayona, known for his visual flamboyance.

The boy, Conor OMalley (Lewis MacDougall), has a wretched life. He is bullied at school by classmates who resent his habit of escaping off into his own little dream world. He doesnt like his grandmother (Sigourney Weaver), who is assuming a more and more prominent role in his upbringing as his mother Lizzie (Felicity Jones) becomes weaker and weaker.

In a more conventional Disney-style weepie, the filmmakers would have gone out of their way to console their audiences. A Monster Calls takes the reverse tack. The first moment that Conor experiences anything approaching pleasure is when his mother rigs up an old movie projector and screens King Kong.

He delights in the way that the giant ape smashes his adversaries and breaks them into a million pieces. Thats precisely what he wants to do with his grandmother, teachers and schoolmates.

Bayona uses horror movie conventions. We see Conor alone in his room when the furniture begins to creak, pencils roll around of their own accord and heavy breathing is heard on the soundtrack. This is where the monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) puts in its first appearance. It/he is a gigantic yew tree from a church graveyard which seems to have lava flowing through its roots and branches. Whenever the monster moves, it leaves destruction in its wake. I have come to get you, it growls at Conor, as if it wants to kill him. The monster, though, is Conors ally. It has stories to tell him, brutal little fables that will help him to cope with the bigger truth he simply cant face, namely that he is powerless to protect his mother.

The film is seen almost entirely from Conors perspective. Hes a sensitive, observant but very petulant kid, seething with resentment and baffled by the injustice of his mothers illness. Bayona throws in continual close-ups of him with his sad face and big, expressive eyes, staring outward at a world he so distrusts.

Felicity Jones, currently on our screens as the badass heroine of the new Star Wars movie, here plays a woman so sickly (presumably with cancer, although it is never named) that her hair is falling out and she can barely stand upright. Jones gives an understated but very affecting performance, treating her illness in a matter of fact way, avoiding self pity at all times and always trying to protect Conor.

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Bayona uses animation to bring the Monsters stories to life. They are perplexing tales in which there isnt an obvious hero and in which characters arent always what they seem. Evil stepmothers arent as bad as they appear. Farmers daughters die for no reason, handsome princes behave in a furtive or even cowardly fashion, and wizards dont provide magical cures.

 A Monster Calls Clip - In The Eyes

There is not always a good guy and nor is there always a bad one ... most people are somewhere in between, the monster tells the perplexed boy.

The parallels with the boys own life are apparent but there isnt an obvious moral to the stories. What the monster seems to be telling the boy is that he has to learn to endure. He must accept the pain of his likely bereavement. He also has to stop judging people, whether the stern grandmother whose motives he doesnt really understand or his neer do well father (Toby Kebbell) who has long since remarried and started a new life in LA.

Every bit as therapeutic as the monsters stories is the chance for the boy to go on a wrecking spree  to smash everything in sight including his grandmothers precious grandfather clock which has kept time for generations.

Films to get excited about in 2017 Show all 13 1 /13 Films to get excited about in 2017 Films to get excited about in 2017 Star Wars: The Last Jedi Director: Rian Johnson Rian Johnson Cast: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, and Lupita Nyong'o Plot: No details yet, but it will continue directly on from Rey coming face-to-face with Luke at the end of The Force Awakens. Release Date: 15 December 2017 Films to get excited about in 2017 Thor: Ragnarok Director: Taika Waititi Taika Waititi Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Tessa Thompson, Jeff Goldblum, Karl Urban, and Mark Ruffalo Plot: Story details are minimal as of now, but Thor's third return to screen has already been teased to feature a loose adaptation of the famous 'Planet Hulk' storyline. Release Date: 27 October 2017 Films to get excited about in 2017 You Were Never Really Here Director: Lynne Ramsay Lynne Ramsay Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Alessandro Nivola Plot: A war veteran's attempt to save a young girl from a sex trafficking ring goes horribly wrong. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 Annihilation Director: Alex Garland Alex Garland Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, and Oscar Isaac Plot: A biologist's husband disappears. She thus puts her name forward for an expedition into an environmental disaster zone, but does not quite find what she's expecting. The expedition team is made up of the biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a surveyor. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 Wonderstruck (image from Far From Heaven) Director: Todd Haynes Cast: Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, and Amy Hargreaves Plot: The story of a young boy in the Midwest is told simultaneously with a tale about a young girl in New York from fifty years ago as they both seek the same mysterious connection. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 Mother (image of Darren Aronofsky) Director: Darren Aronofsky Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, and Ed Harris Plot: A couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 The Killing of a Sacred Deer (image from The Lobster) Director: Yorgos Lanthimos Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, and Alicia Silverstone Plot: A surgeon forms a familial bond with a sinister teenage boy, with disastrous results. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 Blade Runner 2049 Director: Denis Villeneuve Denis Villeneuve Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, and Jared Leto Plot: Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard, a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years. Release Date: 6 October 2017 Films to get excited about in 2017 Lady Bird (image of director Greta Gerwig) Director: Greta Gerwig Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, and Lucas Hedges Plot: The adventures of a young woman living in Northern California for a year. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (image of director Steven Spielberg and star Mark Rylance) Director: Steven Spielberg Cast: Mark Rylance, Oscar Isaac Plot: The Kidnapping Of Edgardo Mortara recounts the story of a young Jewish boy in Bologna, Italy in 1858 who, having been secretly baptized, is forcibly taken from his family to be raised as a Christian. His parents' struggle to free their son becomes part of a larger political battle that pits the Papacy against forces of democracy and Italian unification. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 How to Talk to Girls at Parties Director: John Cameron Mitchell John Cameron Mitchell Cast: Elle Fanning, Ruth Wilson, and Nicole Kidman Plot: An alien touring the galaxy breaks away from her group and meets two young inhabitants of the most dangerous place in the universe: the London suburb of Croydon. Release Date: Unknown Films to get excited about in 2017 The Dark Tower Director: Nikolaj Arcel Nikolaj Arcel Cast: Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Taylor Plot: Gunslinger Roland Deschain roams an Old West-like landscape in search of the dark tower, in the hopes that reaching it will preserve his dying world. Release Date: 28 July 2017 Films to get excited about in 2017 Suburbicon Director: George Clooney George Clooney Cast: Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, Josh Brolin, and Oscar Isaac Plot: A crime mystery set in the quiet family town of Suburbicon during the 1950s, where the best and worst of humanity is hilariously reflected through the deeds of seemingly ordinary people. When a home invasion turns deadly, a picture-perfect family turns to blackmail, revenge and betrayal. Release Date: 24 November



Of course, A Monster Calls is as manipulative in its own way as any more conventional tearjerker. What makes it so distinctive is its very barbed storytelling style  its readiness to show its characters at their most vicious and destructive rather than to make them objects of pity.

The monster himself looks a little like Marvels Thing. He could easily have seemed a ridiculous figure, too cartoonish to scare us but too coarse and angry to be ingratiating. Instead, as voiced by Neeson, he has dignity and gravitas.

Inevitably, sentimentality does eventually seep into the storytelling. There is mournful piano music on the soundtrack, characters utter trite one-liners about the nature of love and time, and there are fraught scenes in hospitals. Nonetheless, this is a subtle and very cleverly crafted film which has a searing emotional impact precisely because it isnt scared to let the monster out - to acknowledge the boys rage and his guilt as well as his grief.
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Carrie Fisher's mother, the actress Debbie Reynolds, has died at the age of 84. Reynolds was a leading lady in Hollywood musicals and comedies in the 1950s and 1960s, starring in Singin' in the Rain.

"She wanted to be with Carrie," her son Todd Fisher said. "She's now with Carrie and we're all heartbroken."

The pair were reportedly planning Fisher's funeral when Reynolds was taken ill at her son's home in Beverley Hills, California. She was rushed to the nearby Cedars Sinai Medical Center after suffering from a stroke, according to celebrity news website TMZ.

Her death comes just over 24-hours after her 60-year-old daughter died in a Los Angeles hospital, four days after suffering a heart attack on board a flight from London to the Californian city.

Reynolds, who appeared in more than 60 films, is best known for her starring role in the 1952 musical Singing in the Rain, alongside Gene Kelly.

She was married to Fisher's father Eddie Fisher for four years between 1955 and 1959. She would eventually lose him to Elizabeth Taylor. Two other husbands plundered her for millions.

Debra Messing, who played Reynolds' on-screen daughter in Will & Grace, was among the stars who paid tribute to her on social media.

Ms Messing wrote on Instagram: "Debbie went to be with Carrie. She always worried about her. Carrie left too soon and now they are together again."

Dame Joan Collins tweeted: "Truly heartbroken to hear DebbieReynolds1 has died. She was a wonderfully warm friend and colleague. Praying for Todd & Billie. RIPDebbie."

William Shatner wrote: "Debbie Reynolds was one of the last of Hollywood Royalty. It breaks my heart that she is gone. I'd hoped that my grieving was done for 2016."

Notable deaths in 2016 Show all 42 1 /42 Notable deaths in 2016 Notable deaths in 2016 Debbie Reynolds was an American actress, singer, businesswoman, film historian, and humanitarian. She died on December 28 in Los Angeles Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Actress Carrie Fisher died on December 27 aged 60 Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Comedian and Actor Ricky Harris died on December 26 aged 54 Rex Notable deaths in 2016 British singer George Michael died on 25 December aged 53 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Rick Parfitt OBE was an English musician, best known for being a singer, songwriter and rhythm guitarist in the rock band Status Quo. He died on December 24 in Marbella, Spain Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Lord Jenkin of Roding died at the age of 90 on the 21 December PA wire Notable deaths in 2016 Rabbi Lionel Blue died on the 19 December Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Zsa Zsa Gabor died on December 18 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Leonard Cohen died on 7 November Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Grand secretary of the Orange Order Drew Nelson died on 10 October aged 60 after a short illness PA Notable deaths in 2016 Aaron Pryor, the relentless junior welterweight died Sunday, Oct. 9, at the age of 60 at his home in Cincinnati after a long battle with heart disease AP Notable deaths in 2016 Polish Director Andrzej Wajda died on October 9, aged 90 Reuters Notable deaths in 2016 Stylianos Pattakos has died following a stroke on 8th October. He was 103 years old. AP Notable deaths in 2016 Dickie Jeeps, was an English rugby union player who played for Northampton. He represented and captained both the England national rugby union team and the British Lions in the 1950s and 1960s. He died on 8th October. He was 84 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Duke of Westminster Billionaire landowner the Duke of Westminster, Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor has died on 9 August, aged 64 Rex Features Notable deaths in 2016 Christina Knudsen Sir Roger Moores stepdaughter Christina Knudsen has died from cancer on 25 July at teh age of 47 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Caroline Aherne The actress Caroline Aherne has died from cancer on 2 July at the age of 52 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Christina Grimmie Christina Grimmie, 22, who was an American singer and songwriter, known for her participation in the NBC singing competition The Voice, was signing autographs at a concert venue in Orlando on 10 June when an assailant shot her. Grimmie was transported to a local hospital where she died from her wounds on 11 June Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Kimbo Slice Former UFC and Bellator MMA fighter Kimbo Slice died after being admitted to hospital in Florida on 6 June, aged 42 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Muhammad Ali The three-time former heavyweight world champion died after being admitted to hospital with a respiratory illness on 3 June, aged 74 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Sally Brampton Brampton who was the launch editor of the UK edition of Elle magazine has died on 10 May, aged 60 Grant Triplow/REX/Shutterstock Notable deaths in 2016 Billy Paul The soul singer Billy Paul, who was best known for his single Me and Mrs Jones, has died on 24 April, aged 81 Noel Vasquez/Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Prince Prince, the legendary musician, has been found dead at his Paisley Park recording studio on 21 April. He was 57 Notable deaths in 2016 Chyna WWE icon Joan Laurer dies aged 45 after being found at California home on 20 April Notable deaths in 2016 Victoria Wood The five-time Bafta-winning actress and comedian Victoria Wood has died on 20 April at her London home after a short illness with cancer. She was 62 Notable deaths in 2016 David Gest The entertainer and former husband of Liza Minnelli, David Gest has been found dead on 12 April in the Four Seasons hotel in Canary Warf, London. He was 62-years-old PA Notable deaths in 2016 Denise Robertson Denise Robertson, an agony aunt on This Morning for over 30 years, has died on 1 April, aged 83 Notable deaths in 2016 Zaha Hadid Dame Zaha Hadid, the prominent architect best known for designs such as the London Olympic Aquatic Centre and the Guangzhou Opera House, has died of a heart attack on 31 March, aged 65 2010 AFP Notable deaths in 2016 Ronnie Corbett British entertainer Ronnie Corbett has passed away on 31 March at the age of 85 2014 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Imre Kertesz Hungarian writer and Holocaust survivor Imre Kertesz, who won the 2002 Nobel Literature Prize, has died on 31 March, at the age of 86 REUTERS Notable deaths in 2016 Rob Ford Rob Ford, the former controversial mayor of Toronto, has died following a battle with a rare form of cancer. The 46-year-old passed away at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto on 22 March Notable deaths in 2016 Joey Feek Joey (left) passed away in March after a two-year cancer illness. She was part of country music duo, Joey + Rory, with her husband Rory (right) Jason Merritt/Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Umberto Eco Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco died 19 February 2016 aged 84 EPA Notable deaths in 2016 Harper Lee Harper Lee, the American novelist known for writing 'To Kill a Mockingbird', died February 19, 2016 aged 89 2005 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Vanity Vanity, pictured performing in 1983, died aged 57 REX Features Notable deaths in 2016 Dave Mirra The BMX legend's body found inside truck with gunshot wound after apparent suicide aged 41 Notable deaths in 2016 Harry Harpham The former miner became Sheffield Labour MP in May after many years as a local councillor. He died after succumbing to cancer, at the age of 61. Notable deaths in 2016 Dale Griffin The Mott the Hoople drummer died on January 17, aged 67 REX Notable deaths in 2016 Rene Angelil Celine Dion's husband and manager Rene Angelil has lost his battle with cancer on 14 January, aged 73 2011 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Alan Rickman Legendary actor Alan Rickman has died on 14 January at the age of 69 after battle with pancreatic cancer. He is largely regarded as one of the most beloved British actors of our generation with roles in Love Actually, Die Hard, Michael Collins, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and an illustrious stage career 2015 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Maurice White The Earth, Wind & Fire founder died aged 74. The nine-piece band sold more than 90 million albums worldwide and won six Grammy awards Notable deaths in 2016 Lawrence Phillips Former NFL star found dead in prison cell on 13 January in suspected suicide, aged 40 AFP/Getty Images

His fellow Star Trek actor George Takei added: "There is nothing harder than having to bury a child. Debbie died of a broken heart, but she's with her daughter now."

Reynolds had paid an emotional tribute to her daughter on Facebook.

She wrote: "Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop. Love Carrie's Mother."

In her screen career, Reynolds was a superstar early in life. After two minor roles at Warner Brothers and three supporting roles at MGM, studio boss Louis B. Mayer cast her in Singin' in the Rain, despite Kelly's objections.

She was 19 with little dance experience, and she would be appearing with two of the screen's greatest dancers, Donald O'Connor and Kelly, who also co-directed.

Debbie Reynolds (left) accepts the life achievement award from her daughter actress Carrie Fisher at the 21st annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles, 2015 (Reuters)

"Gene Kelly was hard on me, but I think he had to be," Reynolds, who more than held her own in the movie, told the Associated Press in 1990. "I had to learn everything in three to six months. Donald O'Connor had been dancing since he was three months old, Gene Kelly since he was 2 years old... I think Gene knew I had to be challenged."

She would go on to make more than 60 films receiving an Oscar nomination for The Unsinkable Molly Brown in 1964.

She starred with Glenn Ford in The Gazebo, Tony Curtis in The Rat Race and Fred Astaire in The Pleasure of His Company. She also provided the voice of Charlotte the spider in the 1973 animated "Charlotte's Web."

On stage she also received a Tony nomination in 1973 when she starred on Broadway in the revival of "Irene," in which her daughter also appeared.

 Celebrity deaths in 2016 from David Bowie to Carrie Fisher

But over the years, her marital woes continued. In 1960 Reynolds married shoe magnate Harry Karl. The marriage ended in disaster when she discovered that Karl, a compulsive gambler, had devastated her assets and left her deeply in debt. She divorced him in 1973 and toured tirelessly with her song and dance show to pay off creditors.

Reynolds' third marriage, to Virginia businessman Richard Hamlett in 1984, proved equally disastrous. In 1992, against friends' advice, she paid $10m (8.2m) to buy and convert the faded Paddlewheel Hotel in Las Vegas into the Debbie Reynolds Hotel and Casino. She performed nightly and conducted tours of her movie memorabilia, which she had collected since MGM auctioned its artifacts in 1970.

She ended up filing for bankruptcy in 1997 and selling the property at auction the next year, and accused Hamlett of making off with her money.

Along with her daughter she featured in the HBO documentary "Bright Lights," scheduled for release in 2017.
Tehran, Iran, Dec. 28

By Mehdi Sepahvand  Trend:

The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has held talks with two oil giants Shell and British Petroleum for one-year and long-term contracts, according to NIOC Director of International Affairs Mohsen Qamsari.

The NIOC has been selling more and more oil to these two companies since the first consignments were shipped to them earlier this year, said Qamsari, adding that so far two or three consignments of about 1 million barrels have been sold to each European company.

He expects that the amount of trade with these two companies will increase.

On October 4, Qamsari said Iran had started the gas condensate (ultra-light crude oil) sale to BP in the form of spot cargo, adding that the first 1-million-barrel condensate cargo had been delivered to the British company a while before.

Shell purchased one million barrels of crude oil from Iran in June. Before the sanctions, imposed in 2012, Iran was exporting 800,000 barrels per day of oil to Europe.
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There have been a number of outbreaks of disease - including one at Disneyland - as a result of children not being properly vaccinated.

At the same time, there is exhaustive scientific research that concludes that vaccines such as the MMR (Measles, Mumps, & Rubella) have no association with autism.

Despite this, a new survey suggests that one in three supporters of Donald Trump believe vaccines do indeed cause autism. (Around one in five supporters of Hillary Clinton believe the same.)

Around one in three supporters of the President-elect believe vaccines can do serious harm (The Economist/YouGov ) (The Economist/YouGov)

The findings are based on a survey conducted by The Economist/YouGov, which surveyed 1,376 US adults between December 17-20 and asked them a number of questions.

One reason for the high percentage of Mr Trumps supporters holding this erroneous opinion, may be the man himself.

Mr Trump has repeatedly said he believes there is a link between vaccines and autism in children.

I've seen people where they have a perfectly healthy child, and they go for the vaccinations, and a month later the child is no longer healthy, Mr Trump told Fox News in 2012.

It happened to somebody that worked for me recently. I mean, they had this beautiful child, not a problem in the world. And all of a sudden, they go in, they get this monster shot. You ever see the size of it? Its like theyre pumping in  you know, its terrible, the amount. And they pump this into this little body. And then all of the sudden, the child is different a month later. And I strongly believe thats it.

Mr Trump was asked about this incident during a Republican primary debate in September 2015, and he repeated the claim. Indeed, he said the vaccines were causing an autism epidemic.

People that work for me, just the other day, two years old, beautiful child went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later, got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic, he said.

At one campaign stop, Mr Trump spoke with leading proponents of the discredited link between vaccines and autism, including disbarred British doctor Andrew Wakefield, at a fundraiser in Florida.

ScienceMag said Trump chatted with a group of donors that included four anti-vaccine activists for 45 minutes, according to accounts of the meeting, and promised to watch Vaxxed, an anti-vaccine documentary produced by Mr Wakefield.

Mr Wakefield, who is now believed to live in Austin, Texas, was the lead author of a 1998 paper published in The Lancet which claimed to show a link between children who were given the MMR with autism and bowel disease.

 Trump takes credit for Sprint plan to add 5,000 jobs in U.S.

No other scientists were able to reproduce his results. Following an official inquiry, the British General Medical Council concluded that Mr Wakefield acted dishonestly and irresponsibly, and even performed unnecessary invasive medical procedures such as colonoscopies.

The Lancet eventually retracted the paper and Mr Wakefield was struck from the UK medical register.

Experts say the danger of not getting vaccinated is all too clear.

In December 2014 dozens of people caught Measles after visiting Californias Disneyland. The outbreak, one of the worst in the last 15 years, eventually spread to Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Washington state and Mexico.

Observers pointed out that while California law requires children to get vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella, a loophole allows parents to opt out via a personal belief waiver if they think there is a link between vaccines and autism.

Reports said that of the 34 patients caught up in the initial outbreak, only five were believed to be fully vaccinated.
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Emerging onto the marketplace after the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, carbon offset schemes work by calculating an individual, or businesss, total output of carbon dioxide, and then allocating funds to projects around the world that roughly offset the estimated carbon footprint. These organisations invest in a range of eco-friendly projects from reforestation and waste energy plants, to energy efficient stoves, typically operated in developing nations.

The global average for CO2 emissions per person, per year, is 5.2 tonnes. In the UK we are each responsible for around 13.54 tonnes. According to WWF UK, we need to get this down to 1.5 tonnes per person by 2050 in order for the UK to stick to its target of reducing overall CO2 emissions by 80% in that year and stave off the worst effects of climate change.

Its not as expensive as you may think, with most schemes working out at 8-12 per tonne of carbon. There are a variety of carbon calculators online, such as those run by the WWF, CarbonFootprint.com and the Nature Conservancy, and each will probably provide a slightly different readout.

Ineffective schemes employed by multinationals were widely reported a few years ago and the industry has retained its fair share of detractors. The entire philosophy of offsetting emissions has been called into question by the very people you might have expected to be its supporters. The Guardians George Monbiot has described carbon offset as a way of escaping guilt without having to make any lifestyle adjustments. How has this magic been arranged? he asked back in 2006. You buy yourself a clean conscience by paying someone else to undo the harm you are causing.

Carbon offset projects include clean energy schemes, such as solar, biofuel, and wind power. (Getty)

Some have gone even further, with Joseph Romm of climateprogress.org comparing offset to trying to save the Arctic by collecting left-over ice cubes and shipping them up north.

The NRDCs Brian Palmer has outlined four criteria that a truly effective offset should match - it must be real, verified, enforceable and additional. In this context, additional simply means that your money should not be used to do something that was going to happen anyway.

Its a fundamentally undermining issue for George Monbiot: you also need to demonstrate that these projects would not have happened without you - that Mexico would not have decided to capture the methane from its pig farms, or that people in India would not have bought new stoves of their own accord. In other words, you must look into a counterfactual future. I have yet to meet someone from a carbon offset company who possesses supernatural powers.

Brian Palmer has also stressed a concern known in the trade as carbon leakage. Lets say your money prevented the Amazonian landowner from selling his plot to a logging company. Thats great, but what if the logging company simply bought the plot next door? Thats leakage. Your offset dollars shifted deforestation rather than preventing it.

Its one of the reasons that clean energy projects have become increasingly popular investments for offset companies, as the measurable impact is more instantaneous than planting trees.

Reforestation has become less popular as a carbon offset, due to the length of time it takes for trees to grow. (Image: Gordon Hatton)

By working with a variety of offset schemes, Google says it has been carbon neutral since 2007. Their offices and servers consumed around 5.7 terrawatt hours of electricity last year, or about the same annual energy use as a city the size of Belfast. Google employs a team of investigators, who go out and inspect the projects that the company has invested in to ensure they are actually doing the work they have described, a luxury few individuals can afford.

In order to reassure consumers, the voluntary offset market has established certifications for projects that meet Kyoto Protocol guidelines. The Voluntary Gold Standard and Voluntary Carbon Standard are two such certifications to look out for when considering an individual offset and are comparable to the voluntary standards set for organic or fairly traded food, according to green living writer, Duncan Clark.

Most of the organisations that manage offset schemes say they should be part of an individual or businesss move towards reducing their overall carbon emissions, rather than being viewed as a way out of achieving a more sustainable lifestyle. Many individuals chose to offset only a part of their lifestyle, such as unavoidable long haul flights.

The environmentalists that do support offset also suggest people who make a habit of using the schemes should actually pay over and above the tonnage of carbon they are offsetting. That way an individual will be actively reducing their carbon emissions, rather than neutralising them, and as the carbon calculators can only give a rough indication of actual CO2 output, this also means any shortfall in the numbers provided by the calculator and your real world emissions is factored in.

The biggest complaint about voluntary offset is still the concern that individuals are using it to get out of changing their lifestyles. A report by the National Consumer Council and Sustainable Development Commission suggested this is not the case: "a positive approach to offsetting could have public resonance well beyond the CO2 offset, and would help to build awareness of the need for other measures", it concluded. Most UK nationals concerned enough to bother with, and pay for, carbon offset are unlikely to be self-consciously going about a carbon-excessive existence.

Duncan Clark, author of the Rough Guide to Green Living, concludes: If you offset as part of cutting your footprint, or as an incentive to be greener (after all, the less you emit, the less it will cost you to go carbon neutral) then that can't be bad  especially if the offset projects offer extra benefits such as poverty reduction in the developing world. Almost 20 years after the the signatures were applied to the Kyoto Protocol, carbon offset has yet to win over all the naysayers, but it remains a highly attractive, and relatively straightforward, means for businesses and individuals to take the edge off their impact on the planet.
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A majority of European business chiefs see the UKs vote to leave the EU,as a threat to their business, with some reviewing their plans to invest in the UK, a new survey has found.

A poll of 700 of Europes business leaders conducted by the European Business Awards for accountancy firm RSM, the 6th largest audit, tax and consulting network, found that 54 per cent believe Brexit poses a threat, compared to 39 per cent who see it as an opportunity.

Meanwhile, a quarter of respondents said they were reviewing their investment plans in the UK because of Brexit.

Anand Selvarajan, regional leader for Europe at RSM International, said Britains decision to leave the EU was a "challenge" for companies across Europe as they remain uncertain about how the vote will affect them.

He said: "It is vital, in this period of uncertainty, that businesses focus and prepare for the future based on the emerging facts and are not paralysed by the countless doomsday theories out there. Trade will continue and businesses need to be agile in responding to the evolving political and economic landscape."

As Theresa May prepares to publish her Brexit plans, European firms with UK operations are calling on the two sides to come to an agreement on the single market.

Picture: (Datawrapper)

Continued access to the single market is the number one priority for European firms with operations in the UK, followed by tax incentives and free movement of labour, according to the survey.

Adrian Tripp, chief executive at European Business Awards, said: "Surveys conducted both before and after the referendum show us the continuing belief of many European businesses that Brexit has made the UK a less attractive place to do business. To stop this becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy the UK Government needs to get an agreement in place with the EU as soon as possible."

In the UK, businesses, particularly within the financial services industry, have long pushed the Government to go for a transitional arrangement, as part of Brexit negotiations.

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

Earlier in December, a cross-party group of peers said Britains financial sector must be offered a "Brexit bridge" to prevent companies moving to rival financial centres such as New York, Dublin, Luxembourg, Frankfurt or Paris.

Additional reporting by PA
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A man whose celebrated murder conviction was recently vacated, has been told that he stay in jail while he awaits a new trial.

Adnan Syed, whose story and murder conviction was featured in the podcast Serial, was told by a Baltimore judge that his request to be released had been turned down. The judge said he had taken the decision as there was a pending appeal from prosecutors, who rejected the decision to vacate his trial.

Syed was convicted in the killing of his high school girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, and sentenced to life in prison in 2000.

Adnan Syed arrives at court in Baltimore for a hearing (AP)

His case was the centerpiece for the first season of Serial and he was granted a new trial last summer because his original trial lawyer failed to cross-examine a state witness who presented possibly unreliable cell tower data linking Syed to Ms Lees burial site.

 Adnan Syed gets new trial

The Associated Press said that Baltimore Circuit Judge Martin Welch had turned down the request from Syeds legal team.

His lawyer, Justin Brown, argued in court filings that the appeals process could take years and that Syed has shown he is good candidate for release pending a new trial. He said that his client was not a flight risk.

On Thursday, Mr Brown told the Baltimore Sun: Adnan has been locked up for 17 years in some of the most dangerous places in our society yet he has not done anything violent. In fact, he has been a model prisoner.
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First sold in 1824, the Macintosh coat is named after its Glaswegian inventor, Charles Macintosh. He designed one of the first waterproof fabrics by rubberising sheets of material in his textile factory.

On what have been his 250th birthday, he has now been honoured with his own Google Doodle.

From humble beginnings

He was born in Glasgow in 1766 and, though he started life as a clerk, he was a keen chemist in his spare time and resigned his clerkship to take up the manufacture of chemicals.

In 1823, while trying to find uses for the waste products of gasworks, Macintosh noted that naphtha - one of the by-products of tar  was able to dissolve India rubber.

Design difficulties and disputes

Taking the rubber coating and placing it between two pieces of wool cloth, he was able to create a fabric that could get wet on the outside, but protect the wearer from water.

He patented his invention in 1824, after which factories began to produce the new "Mackintosh"  now spelt with a "k"  fabric.

However, it suffered from a number of teething problems. In the process of stitching the garments tailors puncture the fabric allowing the rain to get in. They also became stiff in winter and sticky in hot weather.

It was also claimed that he had copied the method from James Syme, a Scottish surgeon.

Recognition

Macintosh was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1823, for his various chemical discoveries.

But tailors were initially reluctant to use his material and so he set up his own company instead. This was later merged with that of Thomas Hancock, who initiated the use vulcanised rubber into the design.

This improved its durability to cement its usefulness and desirability.

Fashion item

The first clothing item was a riding coat with internal leg straps to keep the coat from flapping.

Now, the company's range of men's and women's raincoats, that range from slim,single-breasted styles to double-breasted, belted trenches, is made by craftspeople who have served a three-year apprenticeship. It's still made in the UK in factories in Cumbernauld in Scotland and Nelson, Lancashire.

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Global appeal

It was turned into a fashion icon by stars such as Audrey Hepburn and Steve McQueen, which sealed its reputation as a venerable British brand.

Like Burberry and Paul Smith, Mackintosh's Britishness has also given it a cult status in Japan, where it is hugely popular.
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Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher were one of hollywoods most iconic mother and daughter duos. Dying just a day apart, fans were barely able to process news of the Star Wars heroines death before they were faced with that of her mother.

Reynolds died at the age of 84 following a suspected stroke on Wednesday. Her last words were: I miss her so much, I want to be with Carrie. Her daughter suffered a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles last week and died on Tuesday at the age of 60.

While the mother and daughter had highly different acting careers - Reynolds is best known for her starring role in 1952s Singin in the Rain and Fisher rose to fame for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars films - Hollywood ran in both of their veins.

In spite of the fact their relationship was by no means always easy or straightforward, their love persevered. So much so that the mother-and-daughter relationship is the subject of a HBO documentary set for release next year, aptly titled Bright Lights: Starring Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher.

Its a love story, HBO Documentary Films president Sheila Nevins told Variety. Carrie wanted to make Bright Lights for Debbie and Debbie wanted to make it for Carrie. The sudden loss of two women only magnify the importance of Fisher and Bloom capturing the material for the movie when they did.

"If this was a Hollywood script, no one would believe it. They just loved each other so much. The bond was just unbreakable," she added while trying to hold back tears.

American actor and singer Debbie Reynolds smiles and holds her infant daughter, Carrie Fisher (Getty)

American actress Debbie Reynolds with her daughter Carrie Fisher (Getty)

Actress Debbie Reynolds, poses with her children Carrie Fisher and Todd Fisher (Getty)

Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher arrive at the premiere of 'Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith' (Getty)

Actress Carrie Fisher and her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds (Getty)

Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Show all 9 1 /9 Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher American actor and singer Debbie Reynolds smiles and holds her infant daughter, Carrie Fisher Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher American actress Debbie Reynolds with her daughter Carrie Fisher Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Actress Debbie Reynolds, poses with her children Carrie Fisher and Todd Fisher Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher arrive at the premiere of 'Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith' Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Actress Carrie Fisher and her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Actress Debbie Reynolds accepts the Life Achievement Award from her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher onstage at the 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Actresses Carrie Fisher, Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award recipient Debbie Reynolds, and Billie Lourd pose in the press room during the 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher A candle is seen on the star for Debbie Reynolds on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher A view of a temporary star made by fans in tribute to actress Carrie Fisher on Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California Getty

Fans of the Hollywood duo have honoured both mother and daughter with moving tributes.
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Debbie Reynolds, the actress, pop star, and Hollywood icon who starred in Singin in the Rain and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, died on Wednesday. She was 84.

Reynolds experienced a stroke and was rushed to the hospital where she died just a few hours later, one day after her 60-year-old daughter Carrie Fisher died of complications from a heart attack on Tuesday.

Following Reynolds death, her son, Todd Fisher, told TMZ that his mother's last words were, I miss her so much, I want to be with Carrie."

Reynolds was born in El Paso, Texas and moved to California at 16-years-old. She soon became a beauty pageant queen in Burbank where she caught the eye of Warner Bros executives.

She made one film, The Daughter of Rosie OGrady, with Warner before signing a deal with the most powerful production house at the time, MGM. She then rocketed toward fame in the 50s, starring in Two Weeks in Love and Three Little Words. At just 19-years-old she landed her breakout role in 1952s Singin in the Rain.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Show all 24 1 /24 Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Actors John Boyega (L) and Carrie Fisher attend the World Premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens at the Dolby, El Capitan, and TCL Theatres on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Mike Windle/Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Actress Carrie Fisher attends the World Premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens at the Dolby, El Capitan, and TCL Theatres on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Actresses Carrie Fisher (L) and Billie Lourd attend the Premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Jason Merritt/Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Actor Harrison Ford (L) and actress Calista Flockhart attend the premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" at the Dolby Theatre on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Ethan Miller/Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles HOLLYWOOD, CA - DECEMBER 14: Actress Lupita Nyong'o attends Premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Frazer Harrison/Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Actress Lupita Nyong'o attends Premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Actress Lupita Nyong'o attends the premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" on December 14th, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Ethan Miller/Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Actress Daisy Ridley attends the premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" at the Dolby Theatre on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Ethan Miller/Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Actress Zendaya attends the World Premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", in Hollywood, California, on December 14, 2015. Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Actress/singer Zendaya attends the premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" at the Dolby Theatre on December 14th, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles HOLLYWOOD, CA - DECEMBER 14: Actors Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello attend Premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Jason Merritt/Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles HOLLYWOOD, CA - DECEMBER 14: Writer-director J.J. Abrams attends Premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Jason Merritt/Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles HOLLYWOOD, CA - DECEMBER 14: Actors Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac attend the premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" at the Dolby Theatre on December 14th, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Getty Images Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Actor Adam Driver attends Premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Frazer Harrison/Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Actress Carrie Fisher attends the premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" at the Dolby Theatre on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood, California. Ethan Miller/Getty Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles The Storm Troopers attend the World Premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", in Hollywood, California, on December 14, 2015. Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles R2-D2 and C-3PO attend the World Premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", in Hollywood, California, on December 14, 2015. Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles BB8 attends the World Premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", in Hollywood, California, on December 14, 2015. Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images Star Wars: The Force Awakens premieres in Los Angeles Getty

In 1959, she famously divorced Eddie Fisher, Carries father, after learning of his affair with Elizabeth Taylor. She would eventually marry twice more in 1960 and 1984.

In an interview last month with NPR, Carrie Fisher spoke of her relationship with her mother. "She's an immensely powerful woman, she said, and I just admire my mother very much.
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Just a day after Carrie Fisher died, her mother Debbie Reynolds has also passed away.

Her son told the world the last words the Hollywood icon uttered were: I miss her so much, I want to be with Carrie.

Reynolds, who rose to fame for starring in Singin in the Rain, was taken to hospital from Fishers Beverly Hills house on Wednesday after suffering a suspected stroke. She was 84.

She's now with Carrie and we're all heartbroken, her son and Carries brother Todd Fisher told Associated Press from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

He said the stress of his sister's death was too much for his mother to bear and she died on Wednesday.

According to celebrity news site TMZ, Todd and his mother were planning Fishers funeral when Reynolds was rushed to the nearby hospital.

Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Show all 9 1 /9 Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher American actor and singer Debbie Reynolds smiles and holds her infant daughter, Carrie Fisher Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher American actress Debbie Reynolds with her daughter Carrie Fisher Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Actress Debbie Reynolds, poses with her children Carrie Fisher and Todd Fisher Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher arrive at the premiere of 'Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith' Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Actress Carrie Fisher and her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Actress Debbie Reynolds accepts the Life Achievement Award from her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher onstage at the 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher Actresses Carrie Fisher, Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award recipient Debbie Reynolds, and Billie Lourd pose in the press room during the 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher A candle is seen on the star for Debbie Reynolds on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California Getty Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher A view of a temporary star made by fans in tribute to actress Carrie Fisher on Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California Getty

To the dismay and grief of her devoted fans, Fisher, who achieved her own fame for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars films, suffered a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles last week and died on Tuesday at the age of 60.

Reynolds expressed her gratitude to Fishers fans for their support since her death.

Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter, she wrote on Facebook. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop. Love Carries Mother".

Her brother also paid tribute to Fisher. "My sister has graduated to heaven," he wrote on Twitter. "But she has left us all with so much of her, It is a very sad time for my family and all her friends."

Reynolds' lengthy career spanned 68 years in show business and saw her appear in more than 60 films. She played the leading lady in Hollywood musicals and comedies in the 1950s and 1960s and received an Oscar nomination for The Unsinkable Molly Brown in 1964.

Off the screen and away from the stage, she was best known for the Hollywood scandal which saw her husband and Carries fathers Eddie Fisher leave her for widow and fellow icon Elizabeth Taylor.

Reynolds featured in the HBO documentary Bright Lights scheduled for release in 2017, alongside her daughter.

Reynolds is survived by her son Todd and a granddaughter Billie Lourd.
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Milo Yiannopoulos, a British journalist, who rose to fame and notoriety for his racist and far right views, has reportedly been paid $250,000 for his memoirs.

Mr Yiannopoulos, who was banned from Twitter after posting a series of offensive tweets, is said to have struck a deal with Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster that previously published Donald Trumps last book, Crippled America.

They said banning me from Twitter would finish me off. Just as I predicted, the opposite has happened, Mr Yiannopoulos reportedly told The Hollywood Reporter.

Did it hurt Madonna being banned from MTV in the 1990s? Did all that negative press hurt Donald Trump's chances of winning the election?

Jennifer Robinson, a spokeswoman for Simon & Schuster, told The Independent: We never comment on advances.

Mr Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter after posting a series of derogatory and racist comments about Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones.

 Milo Yiannopoulos defends Breitbart headlines as 'satire'

I met with top execs at Simon & Schuster earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions. I thought they were going to have me escorted from the building  but instead they offered me a wheelbarrow full of money, told the Reporter.

News of the deal comes as the 32-year-old is filming a tour of college campuses that will feature in a forthcoming documentary.

Every line of attack the forces of political correctness try on me fails pathetically, he said.

Im more powerful, more influential, and more fabulous than ever before and this book is the moment Milo goes mainstream. Social justice warriors should be scared - very scared.


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Migrating birds are arriving at their breeding grounds earlier as global temperatures rise, according to a study which looked at hundreds of species across five continents.

For every degree the temperature rises, the birds arrive one day earlier, researchers at the University of Edinburgh found.

It is now hoped study will help scientists better predict how different species may respond to current and future environmental change.

Reaching their summer breeding grounds at the wrong time - even by a few days - may cause birds to miss out on maximum availability of vital resources such as food and nesting places.

Late arrival to breeding grounds may, in turn, affect the timing of offspring hatching and their chances of survival.

Long-distance migrants, which are shown to be less responsive to rising temperatures, may suffer most as other birds gain advantage by arriving at breeding grounds ahead of them.

"Many plant and animal species are altering the timing of activities associated with the start of spring, such as flowering and breeding," said Takuji Usui, of the University of Edinburgh's school of biological sciences.

The UK's top birds 2018 Show all 10 1 /10 The UK's top birds 2018 The UK's top birds 2018 10. Chaffinch Down one place on last year. Birdwatch has released this year's rankings for the most frequently spotted birds in the UK. Results were collected from 420,489 British birdspotters Getty The UK's top birds 2018 9. Long-tailed tit Up one place on last year Getty The UK's top birds 2018 8. Robin Redbreast Down one place on last year Getty The UK's top birds 2018 7. Great Tit Up one place on last year Getty The UK's top birds 2018 6. Goldfinch In the same place as last year Pierre Dalous The UK's top birds 2018 5. Woodpigeon In the same place as last year Getty The UK's top birds 2018 4. Blackbird Down one place on last year Getty The UK's top birds 2018 3. Blue tit Up one place on last year Getty The UK's top birds 2018 2. Starling In the same place as last year Getty The UK's top birds 2018 1. House sparrow In the same place as last year Getty

"Now we have detailed insights into how the timing of migration is changing and how this change varies across species.

"These insights may help us predict how well migratory birds keep up with changing conditions on their breeding grounds."

The study, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, examined how various species, which take flight in response to cues such as changing seasonal temperatures and food availability, have altered their behaviour over time and with increasing temperatures.

The researchers examined records of migrating bird species dating back almost 300 years.

The study drew upon records from amateur enthusiasts and scientists, including notes from 19th-century American naturalist Henry David Thoreau.

Species that migrate huge distances - such as the swallow and pied flycatcher - and those with shorter migrations - such as the lapwing and pied wagtail - were included in the research.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

By Orkhan Quluzade  Trend:

The supply of armament to the People's Protection Units (YPG) terrorist group by the US is unacceptable, Turkish NTV TV channel reported citing Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The head of state said Turkey does not receive any support from NATO countries in its fight against terrorists.

"At the same time, the West is shamelessly lying that Turkey supports the Islamic State (aka IS, ISIL, ISIS or Daesh) terrorist group. In fact, Turkey wages the most large-scale fight against IS", the president said.

Erdogan added that the Free Syrian Army opposition group must not be rated as a terrorist group.

Turkey intends to further support the Free Syrian Army, he added.

On Aug. 24 morning, the Turkish Air Force, with the support of the coalition aircraft, launched an operation to liberate the city of Jarabulus from the IS militants in northern Syria, near Aleppo.

The operation was dubbed the Shield of the Euphrates. Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has so far claimed over 500,000 lives.

Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops. The IS, YPG and PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @o_quluzade
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A British woman has told the horrific story of how she was kidnapped and abused as a sex slave for 13 years.

Anna Ruston claims she was locked in a bedroom by her captor and relentlessly beaten.

She says her kidnapper also pimped her out to other men and sold the four children she had while in captivity.

I can still see that bedroom, the corner where I would rock in pain, she told The Daily Mirror.

Although after a while I stopped feeling pain, I think my body shut down.

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pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty

She added: And I can smell it  the can I used as a toilet, the garlic he reeked of. I got to the point where I didnt know what life was.

Her story bears striking resemblance to that of Elisabeth Fritzl, who spent 24 years trapped in an underground bunker where she was raped by her father, Josef Fritzl.

Detailing her ordeal in her book, Secret Slave, Ms Ruston says she was 15 years old and vulnerable when taxi driver Malik took an interest in her and invited her to his home to meet his mother, brothers and their wives.

Once there, she claims he called her a white shit and raped her, before locking her in a room where she would live and be raped repeatedly for 13 years.

She also says she was prostituted to other men and her captor sold the four children she bore in captivity.

 MP speaks out in Parliament about being raped as a teenager

During her ordeal, she tried to escape twice but got such a beating.

Instead, she tried to kill herself with painkillers, by throwing herself down the stairs, or trying to strangle herself with a scarf.

Ms Ruston eventually escaped with the help of a health visitor, after she wrote a note begging for help on a piece of paper along with a time she knew Malik and his family would be distracted by prayers for the Muslim festival of Eid.

The health visitor handed back a note saying she would ring the house phone three times when she was outside, allowing Ms Ruston to run for help through the front door where a key had been left.

Free for 16 years, she has rekindled a relationship with her first boyfriend Jamie, who she has four children with.

She says she is too scared to give evidence to the police, but was encouraged to write about her experiences as part of her therapy.
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People who voted for Brexit are experiencing buyer's remorse, according to the results of a YouGov survey about the best and worst events of 2016.

Four per cent of Leave voters polled said they thought Brexit was the worst thing to have happened this year, while 17 per cent picked the election of Donald Trump and 12 per cent cited the carnage of the Syrian civil war.

Even three per cent of people who voted for Ukip in the last general election said the nation's Brexit decision was the worst event of the year, according to the survey of 1,649 UK adults, carried out on 11 and 12 December.

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

But a small number of Remain voters were apparently glad the vote did not go their way, with two per cent saying Brexit was in fact the best part of 2016. Forty-three per cent said it was the worst.

Despite strong showings for the Olympics and Paralympics in the 'best' columnand of course Brexitmany Britons were undecided on what they were happy about. Fully a third of women, and a fifth of men, could not pick their best moment.

The survey comes after it was revealed that employees in the UK are not confident in the Governments ability to negotiate a good deal for Britain after it leaves the EU.

Six months after the UK voted for Brexit, recruitment firm Glassdoor, which regularly assesses employee sentiment around jobs and workplace issues, said confidence levels are waning as the uncertainty surrounding the negotiations continues.

And on Wednesday the head of the FDA, the union for civil servants, said Theresa May was scared to admit how complicated the Brexit process would beand how taxing on her teams in Whitehall.

Dave Penman said: "The civil service is either going to have to be given more resources to deal with Brexit and its usual work or it will have to change its priorities. And the Government doesnt want to admit to either."
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Dozens of children who lived in the Calais refugee camp have launched a legal challenge against the Home Secretary for mishandling their asylum claims.

The Government has a commitment to bring particularly vulnerable accompanied children into the UK, under the Dubs amendment to the Immigration Act.

But the Home Office has failed to provide sanctuary to the most at-risk refugee children and not given proper written decisions in refusing these applications, their lawyers say.

It was revealed in early December that hundreds of children who had expected to come to the UK had been refused asylum by the Home Office.

Charities have previously taken legal action against the Government over its handling of minors asylum claims. But this will be the first time that children have launched their own individual cases.

Of the 36 bringing the action, 28 have already had their asylum cases refused, while another eight are still waiting for a decision from the Home Office, The Guardian reported.

Toufique Hossain, director of public law at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, told the paper: The Government has rendered these children, including some as young as 13, to effectively be without any legal remedy until well into the new year, which is the earliest that the relevant Home Office officials have agreed to give reasons for refusing some of these children.

He added: The way that this has all been handled by both the UK and French authorities is nothing short of shameful.

It is morally reprehensible and, we argue, simply unlawful that these children have not been given written reasons as to why their applications were refused and that these children were told about the refusals in group meetings without a proper procedure in place.

 Calais 'Jungle' exodus: Charity boss likens refugee treatment to Nazi persecution

It was reported in November that almost one in three Calais child refugees had gone missing since the demolition of the Jungle.

The Home Office also faced criticism last month when it published guidelines restricting the children who would qualify to come to the UK under the Dubs amendment.

Under new eligibility criteria, a child must be 12 or under unless they are either Syrian or Sudanese. Then they can be 15-years-old.

Their siblings, if under the age of 18, also qualify as do those at high risk of sexual exploitation,

Labour peer Lord Dubs, who fled the Nazis and came to Britain as part of the Kindertransport scheme, has said the recent changes to the criteria were shocking.

Calais refugee camp evacuation Show all 15 1 /15 Calais refugee camp evacuation Calais refugee camp evacuation Refugees run past a fire in the makeshift migrant camp known as 'the jungle' in Calais, October 2016 AP Calais refugee camp evacuation French authorities say the closure of the slum-like camp in Calais will last approximately a week in what they describe as a "humanitarian" operation, October 2016 AP Calais refugee camp evacuation A painted message saying 'Bye Jungle' on a tent in the camp in Calais, October 2016 Getty Calais refugee camp evacuation Refugees set rubbish bins alight as a protest in the makeshift camp 'the Jungle' in Calais, France, October 2016 EPA Calais refugee camp evacuation French riot police advance through tear gas and smoke from a fire to disperse refugees throwing stones and lighting fires at the Jungle migrant camp Getty Calais refugee camp evacuation French CRS riot police secure an area on the eve of the evacuation and transfer of refugees to reception centers in France Reuters Calais refugee camp evacuation Journalists run away from smoke during clashes near a makeshift refugee camp known as 'the jungle' in Calais AP Calais refugee camp evacuation French CRS riot police secure an area on the eve of the evacuation and transfer of refugees to reception centers in Franc Reuters Calais refugee camp evacuation Migrants queue for transportation by bus to reception centres across France, from the 'Jungle' refugee camp in Calais Getty Calais refugee camp evacuation Refugees line-up to register at a processing centre in the 'jungle' near Calais, northern France, as the mass exodus from the migrant camp begins PA wire Calais refugee camp evacuation Refugees 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 Calais refugee camp evacuation French far-right Front National (FN) party's member of parliament Marion Marechal-Le Pen (L) delivers a speech next to a banner reading "They arrive in Vaucluse, no migrants in our place" as she attends a rally against the hosting of refugees in La Tour d'Aigues Getty Images Calais refugee camp evacuation French police forces secure the area near the 'Jungle' refugee camp in Calais Getty Calais refugee camp evacuation Refugees leave messages on their tents in the Jungle migrant camp Getty Calais refugee camp evacuation Refugees carry their belongings and transfer to reception centers in France

I think in those new eligibility criteria they have breached both the letter and the spirit of the amendment," he said. "I think they have gone back on their word.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: It would be inappropriate to comment on ongoing legal proceedings.
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A university student reported missing after failing to join her family on Christmas Day has been found safe and well.

Isabel Gayther, 21, was located at an address in north London on Thursday five days after a disappearance the Metropolitan Police described as "extremely out of character".

Except for messages sent from her Facebook account on December 27, she had not been seen or heard from since around 11.30am on Christmas Eve.

The messages claimed that she was safe. In all, the account posted three updates as well as discussing the disappearance with commenters on her wall.

Am not on my way to Syria or being held hostage, the account wrote in the first update. Promise, it is lovely though that my name now comes up on The Sun. A day and half Im out of contact and this is what happens??? I AM NOT MISSING peace.

Oh god how embarrassing, this is the second time my mum has filed a missing persons report, for a missing person I just keep coming back...errrr, the account posted in one reply. Now I look like a c***...a day and half tho thats a bit extra, another read.

The account also shared a link to a story from Psychology Today with the headline Should You Divorce Your Mother?

Officers had seen and spoken with Ms Gayther and were "satisfied that she is safe and well", Scotland Yard said.

Police in Lewisham had appealed for the public's help to trace the student, who lives in halls of residence in New Cross, south-east London.

Scotland Yard thanked the media and the public for their assistance.
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A man has phoned into a radio station and admitted, live on air, that he had committed electoral fraud during the Brexit referendum.

Umi, from Hackney in London, told LBC he had used both his and his brother's vote on 23 June  committing the offence of personation.

The man said: "I was fired up for the Brexit vote so I did go for, like, cheating, and took my brother's vote and voted on his behalf. I'm serious."

He added: "He's registered to a different house. I wouldn't be able to do it in the same polling station. He wasn't in the country.

"You go in and you say, 'What's your name, yeah, that's my name,' door number, that's it."

What experts have said about Brexit Show all 11 1 /11 What experts have said about Brexit What experts have said about Brexit Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond The Chancellor claims London can still be a world financial hub despite Brexit One of Britains great strengths is the ability to offer and aggregate all of the services the global financial services industry needs This has not changed as a result of the EU referendum and I will do everything I can to ensure the City of London retains its position as the worlds leading international financial centre. Reuters What experts have said about Brexit Yanis Varoufakis Greece's former finance minister compared the UK relations with the EU bloc with a well-known song by the Eagles: You can check out any time you like, as the Hotel California song says, but you can't really leave. The proof is Theresa May has not even dared to trigger Article 50. It's like Harrison Ford going into Indiana Jones' castle and the path behind him fragmenting. You can get in, but getting out is not at all clear Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Michael OLeary Ryanair boss says UK will be screwed by EU in Brexit trade deals: I have no faith in the politicians in London going on about how the world will want to trade with us. The world will want to screw you  that's what happens in trade talks, he said. They have no interest in giving the UK a deal on trade Getty What experts have said about Brexit Tim Martin JD Wetherspoon's chairman has said claims that the UK would see serious economic consequences from a Brexit vote were "lurid" and wrong: We were told it would be Armageddon from the OECD, from the IMF, David Cameron, the chancellor and President Obama who were predicting locusts in the fields and tidal waves in the North Sea" PA What experts have said about Brexit Mark Carney Governor of Bank of England is 'serene' about Bank of England's Brexit stance: I am absolutely serene about the  judgments made both by the MPC and the FPC Reuters What experts have said about Brexit Christine Lagarde IMF chief urges quick Brexit to reduce economic uncertainty: We want to see clarity sooner rather than later because we think that a lack of clarity feeds uncertainty, which itself undermines investment appetites and decision making Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Inga Beale Lloyds chief executive says Brexit is a major issue: "Clearly the UK's referendum on its EU membership is a major issue for us to deal with and we are now focusing our attention on having in place the plans that will ensure Lloyd's continues trading across Europe EPA What experts have said about Brexit Colm Kelleher President of US bank Morgan Stanley says City of London will suffer as result of the EU referendum: I do believe, and I said prior to the referendum, that the City of London will suffer as result of Brexit. The issue is how much What experts have said about Brexit Richard Branson Virgin founder believes we've lost a THIRD of our value because of Brexit and cancelled a deal worth 3,000 jobs: We're not any worse than anybody else, but I suspect we've lost a third of our value which is dreadful for people in the workplace.' He continued: "We were about to do a very big deal, we cancelled that deal, that would have involved 3,000 jobs, and thats happening all over the country" Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Barack Obama US President believes Britain was wrong to vote to leave the EU: "It is absolutely true that I believed pre-Brexit vote and continue to believe post-Brexit vote that the world benefited enormously from the United Kingdom's participation in the EU. We are fully supportive of a process that is as little disruptive as possible so that people around the world can continue to benefit from economic growth" Getty Images What experts have said about Brexit Kristin Forbes American economist and an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England argues that the economy had been less stormy than many expected following the shock referendum result: For nowthe economy is experiencing some chop, but no tsunami. The adverse winds could quickly pick up  and merit a stronger policy response. But recently they have shifted to a more favourable direction Getty

It came during a discussion of an anti-voter fraud scheme due to be tested in the 2018 local elections.

Prosecutions for personation must be brought within 12 months of the alleged offence being committed.

Presenter Katie Hopkins, whose programme airs on Sundays, asked him: "Did you ask your brother, 'What would you like to vote for?' or did you just vote the way you fancied?"

Umi replied: "I voted for both Remain. But we didn't win."

Voters could soon be forced to present a form of ID  such as a driving licence or passport  at polling stations across Britain as part of a Government attempt to crack down on fraud.

The move for more stringent controls at the ballot box comes in response to a Government-commissioned report by Sir Eric Pickles, the Prime Ministers anti-corruption champion. The report was released earlier this year and made 50 recommendations.

While there is already a requirement for the public in Northern Ireland to present photographic ID before they vote, no such procedures exist in the rest of Britain. Sir Eric suggested in his report that a driving licence, passport or utility bill would not seem unreasonable to establish identity.

Having agreed with this recommendation, the Government will now aim to introduce a pilot scheme at the local elections in May 2018.

The independent Electoral Commission has long advocated the introduction of ID at polling stations in Britain, previously warning that electoral fraud has the potential to undermine confidence in the electoral system if not addressed.

The electoral watchdog has estimated such a scheme would cost between 1.8m and 10.8m to implement.
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Brexit will fire the starting gun on a decade of disruption with the UK being hit by a perfect storm of economic uncertainty, an ageing population and volatile jobs market, a major report has concluded.

The Institute For Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank said the decision to leave the European Union had delivered a profound shock to Britain. It claimed this could see the country into lasting lower growth.

The Governments ability to deal with the challenge was also called into question, when the head of the senior civil servants union said Theresa May lacked the courage to admit the severe Brexit difficulties she faces.

 Theresa May refuses to rule out making payments to the EU after Brexit

Recommended Majority of managers feel pessimistic about UK economic growth in 2017

But the left-of-centre IPPRs report said that while the country is still reeling from the impact of Brexit, a rapidly ageing population would put unprecedented pressure on its ability to deliver services.

Exceptional advances in technology may make a small number of people very wealthy, it said. But increasing automation was set to risk some 15 million jobs and inequality was also set to soar more generally.

International factors such as diminishing US power, climate change and rocketing demand for dwindling natural resources would further exacerbate pressures at home, it added.

By 2030, the effects of Brexit combined with a wave of economic, social and technological change will reshape the UK, in often quite radical ways," said the report's author, Mathew Lawrence.

In the face of this, a politics of nostalgia, institutional conservatism and a rearguard defence of the institutions of 20th century social democracy will be inadequate.

He added that Britain would be left defending sand castles against the tide of history unless it pursued a more progressive political and economic reform agenda.

Painting a grim picture of the years ahead, the report argued that Brexit was likely to exacerbate longstanding economic weaknesses in the country, such as its low productivity rates. Along with significant new barriers to growth, it would mean future governments will rely on a weaker currency as the key to retaining competitiveness in the 2020s, it said.

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

At the same time such an approach will increase consumer costs and hit living standards, the IPPR said. Overall, it argued that growth is expected to be lower, investment rates worse and the public finances weaker as a result of the decision to quit the EU.

It came as Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA, the civil servants union, said the Prime Ministers inability to talk openly about the complexity of Brexit was putting huge strain on Whitehall.

Mr Penman, who represents some 19,000 members, said: "It is pure politics that is defining the Brexit debate and forcing May to say this is not a big, difficult job, and it is all in hand.

"Ministers lack the political courage to admit how complex and time-consuming this will be."

As he argued for more resources for the civil services, he said: "When anyone pops their head above the parapet ... and says this is going to take a long time and its complex, they are immediately shot down and accused of betraying the will of the people.

 Theresa May refuses to comment on suggestions Brexit deal will take 10 years

"The politics around Brexit are the biggest risk to Brexit. The Government is clearly in a situation where they are trying to deny the complexity of it."

Other exacerbating factors would disrupt Britains future for years to come, including its ageing population, the report said.

The number of people aged 65 and over is predicted to rise by a third by the end of the next decade, imposing new strains on an already cash strapped system. The funding gap for adult social care is expected to hit 13bn by 2030-31, the report said.

Meanwhile, exponential improvements in new technologies in the workplace, such as artificial intelligence systems and machine learning, will radically change the way people work, putting two-thirds of current jobs  15 million  at risk of automation, it claimed.

While the report said it would not end work as we know it, who benefits from the changes and who loses out would depend on politics, which was likely to become increasingly assertive after decades of a liberalising consensus.

While there was the potential to create an era of widespread abundance, the changes could also usher in a second machine age resulting in radical concentrations of economic power, it said.

It also predicted that work is likely to become more insecure and more freelance, while inequality is set to increase sharply with the wages of high-income households forecast to rise 11 times faster than for those on low pay.

All the changes will take place against an international backdrop of growing uncertainty, as the American hegemony which underpinned the post war international order fades and the global south rises in economic and geopolitical importance.

Mr Lawrence said: Britains progressives should be ambitious, seeking to shape the direction of technological and social change. We must build a high energy democracy that accelerates meaningful democratic experimentation at a national, city and local level, and also in the marketplace by increasing everyones say over corporate governance, ownership and power.
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David Cameron has emerged as a frontrunner to be the next secretary general of Nato after reports he will be nominated by Theresa May.

The former prime minister is reportedly being lined up by the UK Government as a candidate to replace the current secretary general, former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, when he steps down in 2018 or 2019.

Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, has previously said the UK will play a bigger role in Nato to make up for its withdrawal from the EU.

Recommended David Cameron launches new speaking and writing career

Cabinet sources said they want to find a prominent role for Mr Cameron, who resigned in June after losing the EU referendum.

One senior Cabinet minister told the Daily Mail: Weve got to find a role for him  he has so much to offer. We have got to get him batting for Britain again.

Allies of Mr Cameron suggested he would be interested in the role. One said: The key at this stage is to flag high-level interest in leader level conversations and to show that our eventual candidate is visible and acceptable to everyone.

That means a would-be candidate would need to start talking about the right issues and show up at various conferences such as the Munich Security Conference and Davos.

Key to winning the position will be securing the support of the United States. The secretary general is appointed by consensus after discussions between the 28 Nato member states, but American support is seen as important in influencing other states.

David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 David Cameron's premiership - in pictures David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Queen Elizabeth II greeting David Cameron at Buckingham Palace for an audience to invite him to be the next Prime Minister on 11 May 2010 PA David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha wave from the steps of Number 10 Downing Street on 11 May 2010 Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures On 12 May 2010 Prime Minister David Cameron said in a press conference with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who was then deputy PM, they plan to "take Britain in a historic new direction" and Conservative-led coalition government would be united and provide "strong and stable" leadership Rex David Cameron's premiership - in pictures A decade ago, David Cameron visited the Arctic to witness the effects of climate change. However since coming to power in 2010, his government has gradually dropped down a succession of green policies David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David cameron told the then New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Queen had purred down the line after he told her Scotland had voted against independence in September 2014. He was forced to apologise for breaking constitutional convention Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron greeted soldiers working on flood relief in York city centre after the river Ouse burst its banks, in northern England in December 2015 REUTERS David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Claims that David Cameron performed an obscene act with a dead pig and smoked cannabis during his studies at Oxford University spread around the world in September 2015. The extraordinary allegations were made in an unauthorised biography of the Prime Minister written by Lord Ashcroft David Hartley/REX Shutterstock David Cameron's premiership - in pictures In 2016, Mr Cameron was caught up in a worldwide scandal dubbed the Panama papers Reuters David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha with seven week old Regan as they meet her parents, first time home buyers Robert Arron and Kelly Jeffers at the Heritage Brook housing development in Chorley, Lancashire. David Cameron has joked that he wants "another baby" and said that he feels a "bit broody" every time he sees a newborn on the campaign trail David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron was criticised for branding refugees in the Calais jungle camp as a bunch of migrants in January 2016 after thousands of refugees died in their attempt to cross the Mediterranean in 2015 Sky News David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker during an EU summit meeting on 17 March 2016 at the European Union council in Brussels. Cameron was in Brussels to renegotiate deal of UK membership with other European leaders. The deal, sealed after hours of haggling at a marathon summit, paved the way for a referendum on whether Britain will stay in the EU AFP/Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures President Barack Obama shakes hands with British Prime Minister David Cameron at a meeting at 10 Downing Street in London on 22 April 2016. The President and his wife visited 10 Downing Street where he joined press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron and made his case for the UK to remain inside the European Union Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures After David returned from Brussels claiming victory in his renegotiation with European leaders, Boris Johnson announced that he will not support the Remain campaign. The prime minister said publicly he was "disappointed but Boris remains a friend" PA David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron makes a joint appearance with Mayor of London Sadiq Khan as they launch the Britain Stronger in Europe guarantee card at Roehampton University on 20 May 2016 in London. The 'guarantee card' lists five pledges should Britain remain in the EU, including the protection of workers' rights, full access to the single market and stability for Britain David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks outside 10 Downing Street on 24 June 2016. Cameron announced his resignation after Britain voted to leave the European Union after a bitterly divisive referendum campaign AP

Natos most senior military officer, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, is usually an American and so the secretary general of the organisation has traditionally been an European. The last Briton to hold the post was George Robertson, a former Labour Defence Secretary, between 1999 and 2003.

Earlier this year Mr Fallon said the UK wanted to step up its involvement in Nato. He said: Its a disappointment were leaving the European Union because in my view it does add to what Nato gives us. But Nato is the cornerstone of our defence and what we'll be telling other leaders is we'll be doing more in Nato to compensate for our withdrawal from the EU.

Well be leading harder into the alliance and thats the purpose of the deployments were announcing today.

Mr Stoltenberg began his term in 2014, succeeding former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

 What will David Cameron do next?

The post comes with a 220,000 salary.

Mr Cameron is currently on the speaking tour circuit. where he is reported to be earning hundreds of thousands of pounds per speech.

He is also in the process of writing his autobiography, due to be published in 2018.

The next head of Nato is likely to take office at a key time for the organisation. US President-elect Donald Trump has been critical of the organisation and said he would make US contributions to Nato dependent on other states paying a bigger share.

Mr Trump said he would not necessarily come to the defence of a Nato ally under attack  the core promise of the alliance.

He also suggested Nato could dissolve, adding: Thats OK, not the worst thing in the world.
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A right-wing think tank that campaigns for tougher immigration controls has been accused of risking the livelihoods of thousands of British people.

In a recent report, the influential Migration Watch UK recommended a hard Brexit, claiming that immigration from the EU would remain high if Britain stayed in the single market.

It is not possible to be both a member of the European single market and in control of EU immigration, it said.

If the UK remains a member of the single market, EU migration will remain high and is unlikely to fall below 155,000 a year in the medium term.

But the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, said it was "no surprise that Ukip's favourite think-tank is pushing for a hard Brexit that would rip Britain out of the single market, costing jobs and risking the livelihoods of thousands of British people."

Criticising the findings, he said the majority of people in the UK wish to stay in the single market.

"They do not want a hard Brexit that would leave Britain economically isolated and poorer," he said.

Migration Watch's paper said the scope for a "significant reduction" in the number was "extremely limited" if Britain remained a member of the single market, and thus subject to free movement of people.

The most recent official figures showed that total international net migration  the difference between the number of people arriving and leaving the country  was at a near record estimated level of 335,000 in the year to the end of June.

This is considerably more than the Government's target of less than 100,000. Net migration for EU citizens was estimated to be 189,000, the highest number recorded.

Key Faces of UKIP Show all 11 1 /11 Key Faces of UKIP Key Faces of UKIP Nigel Farage Getty Key Faces of UKIP United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) Migration spokesman Steven Woolfe addresses supporters and media personnel in central London Getty Key Faces of UKIP Robert Kilroy-Silk, former television presenter and newly elected member of the European Parliament for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), shows a placard against the European Constitution in front of the Houses of Parliament Getty Key Faces of UKIP Mark Reckless, Director of Policy Development addresses party members during the UK Independence Party annual conference at Doncaster Racecourse Getty Key Faces of UKIP Gerard Batten MEP poses with protesters outside parliament Creative Commons Key Faces of UKIP Diane James gives an address at the UKIP Autumn Conference in Bournemouth Getty Key Faces of UKIP Douglas Carswell MP speaks to party members and supporters during the UK Independence Party annual conference Getty Key Faces of UKIP Suzanne Evans, Deputy Party Chairman of UK Independence Party (UKIP) speaks during the launch of UKIP's election manifesto Getty Key Faces of UKIP Peter Whittle, the UK Independence Party Member of the London Assembly, is interviewed in central London Getty Key Faces of UKIP MEP Mike Hookem during a visit to Concept Metal Products & Co Ltd Getty Key Faces of UKIP Paul Nuttall, Deputy Leader of the UK Independence Party speaks at a Say NO, Believe in Britain debate at Carn Brea Leisure Centre in Pool near Redruthon Getty

Ukip's immigration spokesman John Bickley claimed that the report showed a "population explosion" would occur in the coming years if immigration was not strictly clamped down on.

Today's report from Migration Watch makes it crystal clear that remaining in the EU's single market will mean the continuation of uncontrolled immigration," he said. Throughout the EU referendum campaign both sides made it utterly apparent that voting to leave the European Union meant leaving the single market.

These new forecasts show that failing to control immigration will result in a population explosion of 12 million in 25 years, equivalent to the entire current populations of Bulgaria and New Zealand.

In response to the report a Government spokesperson said: "The people spoke very clearly in the referendum to say they wanted Britain to control its own borders and to see lower levels of immigration.

"That is what we will deliver as we strike the best possible deal for leaving the EU: one that is unique to Britain, not an 'off-the-shelf' solution.

"We have been clear that this must mean the UK controlling its borders and reducing immigration  but also British companies having the maximum freedom to trade with and operate in the single market."
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The Conservatives have been accused of an attempt to hide party cronyism after quietly switching the way that the political affiliations of people given top public-sector roles are recorded.

Ministers have admitted it will make it impossible to compare figures released in the future with those from the final year of David Camerons administration, which has already been marred by a damaging cronyism row.

Critics claimed the switch in the way affiliations are recorded will mean Tories could hand top jobs to their mates, just months after officials blocked part of Mr Camerons resignation honours list in which aides and friends were handed baubles including a peerage and knighthoods.

Recommended Cameron to face inquiry into resignation honours list

It comes just 24 hours after Theresa Mays administration was accused of making a separate change to how public appointments are approved that would make it easier for ministers in the future to pick political allies for senior jobs.

But it is the methodology change in how political affiliations are recorded, which The Independent shines a light on today, that will mask any glut of appointments in the final year of Mr Camerons administration.

When ministers slipped it out earlier this year, they admitted figures in the new data would not be comparable to those released under the previous system.

The co-leader of the Green party, Jonathan Bartley, told The Independent: Its no wonder more and more people are disillusioned with politics when we have a system that doesnt just fail to stop politicians handing top jobs to their mates, but also deliberately seeks to hide whats going on.

 Tory MP accuses BBC of 'manufacturing' Conservative backbench Brexit rebellion

Weve long called for transparency to be the watchword when it comes to political appointments and the revolving doors that exist between industry and government. Sadly though, cronyism is still the order of the day.

Applicants for non-political public appointments must disclose any party political activity they have to the Commissioner for Public Appointments as one of the safeguards for making sure such top jobs are not handed to party cronies.

Under the new system of records, instead recording what percentage of all public appointments are affiliated with a political party, documents will show what percentage of all appointments answer a question relating to political party affiliation.

In a written answer to MPs, Tory Cabinet Office minister Ben Gummer explained that the subtle change means that for the final year of David Camerons administration, figures are not directly comparative to those released in any previous year of the former PMs tenure.

The statistics in the new system show 6.2 per cent of all political appointments are affiliated with the Conservatives, up from 1.2 per cent the previous year under the old system.

Because absolute numbers are not released and the two figures are not comparable, opposition parties say the change could mask any last-minute jump caused by Mr Cameron rewarding allies on leaving office

Labour shadow minister Andrew Gwynne branded the change a gross distortion of government data.

He told The Independent: These changes attempt to hide the true scale of the Tories power grab on our democracy  hiding the extent to which Tory allies have been snuck into the boardrooms of public institutions.

Its a gross distortion of government data, flies in the face of transparency and must be stopped.

Theresa May refused to reverse David Camerons honours list (PA)

In the statistical notice released in response to a question by Labour MP Paula Sherriff, Mr Gummer said the figures for party-affiliated appointees had been significantly higher under the last Labour government.

Appointments with Labour and Lib Dem affiliations make up 5.5 per cent and 2.2 per cent of the appointments in the most recent figures, though again, these are not comparable to the previous year. Going back further over four years the data shows a sustained gradual fall in the proportion of Labour-affiliated appointments awarded by the Government.

Mr Gummer said in the answer: Being involved in a political party is a healthy part of civic democracy, and those interested in politics are often the same people who will be interested in public service.

Individuals are appointed on the basis of their skills and experience, not their party background.

David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 David Cameron's premiership - in pictures David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Queen Elizabeth II greeting David Cameron at Buckingham Palace for an audience to invite him to be the next Prime Minister on 11 May 2010 PA David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha wave from the steps of Number 10 Downing Street on 11 May 2010 Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures On 12 May 2010 Prime Minister David Cameron said in a press conference with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who was then deputy PM, they plan to "take Britain in a historic new direction" and Conservative-led coalition government would be united and provide "strong and stable" leadership Rex David Cameron's premiership - in pictures A decade ago, David Cameron visited the Arctic to witness the effects of climate change. However since coming to power in 2010, his government has gradually dropped down a succession of green policies David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David cameron told the then New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Queen had purred down the line after he told her Scotland had voted against independence in September 2014. He was forced to apologise for breaking constitutional convention Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron greeted soldiers working on flood relief in York city centre after the river Ouse burst its banks, in northern England in December 2015 REUTERS David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Claims that David Cameron performed an obscene act with a dead pig and smoked cannabis during his studies at Oxford University spread around the world in September 2015. The extraordinary allegations were made in an unauthorised biography of the Prime Minister written by Lord Ashcroft David Hartley/REX Shutterstock David Cameron's premiership - in pictures In 2016, Mr Cameron was caught up in a worldwide scandal dubbed the Panama papers Reuters David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha with seven week old Regan as they meet her parents, first time home buyers Robert Arron and Kelly Jeffers at the Heritage Brook housing development in Chorley, Lancashire. David Cameron has joked that he wants "another baby" and said that he feels a "bit broody" every time he sees a newborn on the campaign trail David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron was criticised for branding refugees in the Calais jungle camp as a bunch of migrants in January 2016 after thousands of refugees died in their attempt to cross the Mediterranean in 2015 Sky News David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker during an EU summit meeting on 17 March 2016 at the European Union council in Brussels. Cameron was in Brussels to renegotiate deal of UK membership with other European leaders. The deal, sealed after hours of haggling at a marathon summit, paved the way for a referendum on whether Britain will stay in the EU AFP/Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures President Barack Obama shakes hands with British Prime Minister David Cameron at a meeting at 10 Downing Street in London on 22 April 2016. The President and his wife visited 10 Downing Street where he joined press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron and made his case for the UK to remain inside the European Union Getty Images David Cameron's premiership - in pictures After David returned from Brussels claiming victory in his renegotiation with European leaders, Boris Johnson announced that he will not support the Remain campaign. The prime minister said publicly he was "disappointed but Boris remains a friend" PA David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Prime Minister David Cameron makes a joint appearance with Mayor of London Sadiq Khan as they launch the Britain Stronger in Europe guarantee card at Roehampton University on 20 May 2016 in London. The 'guarantee card' lists five pledges should Britain remain in the EU, including the protection of workers' rights, full access to the single market and stability for Britain David Cameron's premiership - in pictures Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron speaks outside 10 Downing Street on 24 June 2016. Cameron announced his resignation after Britain voted to leave the European Union after a bitterly divisive referendum campaign AP

The Conservative party declined to comment further on issue beyond the statement already issued by the minister.

Mr Cameron was dragged into a cronyism row this summer after an independent scrutiny committee blocked part of his resignation honours list, refusing to support an award to a City businessman who raised an estimated 70m for the party.

Theresa May refused to intervene to block the list, which Labours deputy leader Tom Watson branded an old boys network and Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said would embarrass a medieval court.

But the Prime Minister was again pulled into the cronyism row yesterday, when it emerged that a new code on public appointments will give ministers greater sway over them.

Ministers have always had the final say over appointments to senior public sector jobs, advised by a panel that shortlists appointable people for them.

Under the new code, the panels independent assessors, chosen by the Commissioner for Public Appointments to oversee the most important selections, will be abolished in favour of panel members picked by ministers.

Those selected will have to be independent of the departments and not currently politically active, but the Commissioner will only have a consultative role in their selection.

Ministers will also be able to overrule the panel by choosing candidates not deemed to be appointable and have the right to dispense with an open competition without the permission of the Commissioner.
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Tony Blair will not return to the House of Commons while Jeremy Corbyn is in charge of Labour, the party leader has said.

Mr Corbyn said "nuanced differences of opinion" would prevent the former prime minister's return to Parliamentary politics inside Labour, which he led to three successive general election victories between 1997 and 2005.

This summer Mr Corbyn backed a motion declaring his predecessor guilty of "contempt" following the release of the Chilcot Report, while Mr Blair was later reported to be mulling a comeback because he considered the Islington North MP a "nutter".

Turning the page on Blair: What new light do Tony Blair's memoirs throw on his time in power? Show all 3 1 /3 Turning the page on Blair: What new light do Tony Blair's memoirs throw on his time in power? Turning the page on Blair: What new light do Tony Blair's memoirs throw on his time in power? 443981.bin GETTY IMAGES Turning the page on Blair: What new light do Tony Blair's memoirs throw on his time in power? 443983.bin Turning the page on Blair: What new light do Tony Blair's memoirs throw on his time in power? 443982.bin AP

Mr Corbyn told The Guardian: "I think the nuanced differences of opinion between me and Tony Blair are quite well known.

"I dont see Tony Blair and I working together. I dont think he does either."

Mr Blair ruled himself out of the upcoming byelection in Copeland, Cumbria, triggered by Jamie Reed's resignation, the Labour leader added. Mr Reed has been a public critic of Mr Corbyn, describing himself light-heartedly as Red Leader, Rebel Alliance on Twitter.

Labour is ramping up preparations to relaunch Mr Corbyn as a left-wing populist figure in the new year as it seeks to ride an anti-politics mood following Brexit.

Senior party officials reportedly believe his unpolished authenticity could gather support from the same anti-establishment sentiment that has heralded the popularity of the likes of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, and believe this could bolster his chances in a potential early election.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Mr Corbyn said his MPs would back a vote for an early election if Theresa May decided to call one.
Oman has joined the anti-terrorism coalition of Muslim nations led by Saudi Arabia, according to a letter sent to Saudi authorities, Sputnik reported.

The letter was sent to Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammad bin Salman al Saud, the Al Arabiya broadcaster said on Thursday citing Saudi and Gulf sources.

A US-led coalition of over 60 countries has been bombing the positions of the Islamic State (ISIL, also known as Daesh) terrorist group without the approval of the Syrian government since 2014.

In December 2015, a group of 34 Muslim nations from the Middle East, Africa and Asia announced the creation of a new anti-Daesh coalition in a bid to tackle Islamic extremism. The coalition, which now has 40 members, is led by Saudi Arabia.

The Islamic State radical group has ceased vast areas in Syria and Iraq. The group, banned in a wide range of countries, has become notorious for its human rights violations and multiple terrorist attacks staged around the world, including in Europe.
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Theresa May is planning on making the case to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) a central aspect of her 2020 election campaign, according to reports.

She would reportedly plan to transfer the rights from the international body into British law, to be applied by the Supreme Court.

Ms May will be looking for a solid mandate from the British public  and a stronger majority in Parliament  to proceed with the controversial process of leaving the ECHR.

Critics have said the move, which goes further than David Camerons plans for a Britsh Bill of Rights, would weaken the rights of citizens.

A government source told The Telegraph: A clean break [from the ECHR] is by far the best option and, if we put it in the manifesto, even those Tory MPs who are squeamish about the idea will have to get behind it.

A manifesto pledge also means the Lords will have to let it through eventually. All the signs are that the Prime Minister is up for this.

Government officials are also worried that the current preoccupation with Brexit would prevent proper attention being given to the issue.

We have a few other things on our plate at the moment, Attorney General Jeremy Wright recently told MPs, according to the newspaper. He added: I think we will have to resolve those before we can resolve the matter.

May: Britain should leave ECHR

Mr Wright said the government had no quarrel with the content of the ECHR - upheld by the European Court of Human rights in Strasbourg - but its application gave the government difficulty.

The ECHR is separate to the European Union, which the UK voted to leave in the summer of 2016, but many Conservative MPs are disdainful towards British membership of the court. They say it prevents dangerous foreign criminals and terrorists being tracked and deported.

The Prime Minister herself has previously advocated leaving the ECHR, after experiencing difficulties during her time as Home Secretary deporting hate preacher Abu Qatada.

What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence.

But the Good Friday Agreement, a key aspect of the Northern Ireland peace process, also depends on the ECHR. Critics have said withdrawing from the Convention would be playing with fire.

The ECHR also protects freedoms such as the prohibition of torture, slavery, the right to a fair trial and freedom of expression.

If implemented, the new laws would replace David Camerons plans to abandon the Human Rights Act for a British Bill of Rights. Unlike these previous proposals, where the European Court would have retained a role hearing appeals, Ms May is looking to break off all relations with the court.
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Theresa Mays controversial plans to withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights could be blocked by a legal challenge.

The Prime Minister is widely thought to be planning on running a 2020 election campaign on the basis of withdrawing from the ECHR in a major reform of human rights legislation.

The plans were drawn up by her predecessor David Cameron, amid concerns European laws make it too difficult for the Government to deport suspected criminals and terrorists.

In 2013, then Home Secretary, Ms May announced the Conservatives next manifesto would include a pledge to scrap the Human Rights Act which was introduced under Labour. She said such a move would send a message to judges who chose to ignore Parliament and go on putting the law on the side of foreign criminals instead of the public.

Mr Camerons Government backed the plan too, however he failed to enact it before his resignation. Ms Mays Government has confirmed it intends to push ahead with the proposal after Brexit. A spokesperson has confirmed a British Bill of Rights will be published following Brexit. Although, senior Conservatives are pressing Ms May to go one step and guarantee full ECHR withdrawal.

However, lawyers and campaign groups in Northern Ireland say that to do so could be a breach of the Good Friday Agreement. The Agreement is a peace treaty which ended the Northern Irish Troubles conflict and was voted on in referenda in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, before being lodged as a treaty to the UN. Critics say withdrawal from the ECHR would breach the treaty by removing avenues for justice and reconciliation for people affected by the conflict.

Stewart Dickson, a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, told The Independent that lawyers, politicians and victims groups supporting those affected by The Troubles will be queuing up to take legal action to block the plans.

He said: There is anger about attempts to scrap the Human Rights Act. I have little doubt there will be a legal challenge. There are a slew of actors queuing up to take action. It could be taken by one or more political parties, a group of activists, victims or others. Anyone affected by the Good Friday Agreement and how it links to human rights legislation could do it. There are ample opportunities here.

Fiona De Londras, Professor of Global Legal Studies at the University of Birmingham, echoed his warning, telling The Independent: Withdrawal would almost certainly result in a breach of the Agreement as currently framed and understood, and is certainly well beyond what was contemplated when the Agreement was reached and approved by referendum.

She explained: I would imagine that a legal challenge is likely to any proposed withdrawal from the ECHR on the basis of an alleged breach of the Good Friday Agreement, although much may depend on what if anything the Supreme Court says about the constitution of Northern Ireland in the Brexit case, the judgement in which we await. That will largely determine likelihood of taking a challenge and of its success.

The Supreme Court is currently hearing a legal challenge to Mays plans to trigger Article 50 thereby sparking negotiations to leave the without allowing MPs to vote on it first. Judges were told Northern Ireland will be adversely impacted by Brexit and so Northern Ireland must approve triggering Article 50, in addition to Westminster MPs, by approving a legislative consent motion.

Withdrawing human rights protections became a key challenge for Ms May after her tenure as Home Secretary was undermined by repeated failed attempts to deport Abu Qatada, a radical Muslim preacher. Nearly a decade of appeals, involving expensive legal battles, occurred before she succeeded in deporting him due to human rights legislation.

Professor De Londras also told The Independent that withdrawal from the ECHR could also prompt further insecurity in Northern Ireland in potentially influencing whether local people wish to remain part of the UK. She said: Should the people and political system of Northern Ireland determine that withdrawal from the ECHR is a serious rupture in the agreed constitutional settlement in Northern Ireland this may result in calls to revisit Northern Irelands continuing presence within the United Kingdom. Should that happen, the fragility of the peace in Northern Ireland would certainly be a matter of concern.

The European Court of Human Rights is an international body established by the European Convention on Human Rights. Individuals and groups can lodge complaints with the court to allege that a signatory state breaches any of the human rights stipulated in the Convention. The 47 member states of the Council of Europe (which includes the UK as a member) are signatories.

In April of this year, while serving as Home Secretary prior to becoming Prime Minister, Ms May said: The ECHR can bind the hands of Parliament, adds nothing to our prosperity, makes us less secure by preventing the deportation of dangerous foreign nationals, and does nothing to change the attitudes of governments like Russias when it comes to human rights. It is believed she intends to list and shift ECHR human rights stipulations into UK law by creating a new British Bill of Rights.

Theresa May in quotes Show all 10 1 /10 Theresa May in quotes Theresa May in quotes On being described by the former chancellor Ken Clarke as a bloody difficult woman: Politics could do with some Bloody Difficult Women actually Rex Features Theresa May in quotes On keeping secrets even from her husband: There are some things I am told that I am not able to confide in anybody Rex Features Theresa May in quotes On the relentless focus on her appearance during a speech at the Women in the World summit: "I like clothes and I like shoes. One of the challenges for women in the workplace is to be ourselves and I say you can be clever and like clothes. You can have a career and like clothes Getty Images Theresa May in quotes On comparisons to Margaret Thatcher: I think there can only ever be one Margaret Thatcher. Im not someone who naturally looks to role models. Ive always, whatever job it is Im doing at the time, given it my best shot. I put my all into it, and try to do the best job I can AFP/Getty Images Theresa May in quotes On her rebelliousness, or lack of, as a teenager: I probably was Goody Two Shoes at school Getty Images Theresa May in quotes On being replaced as chairman by Lord Saatchi and Liam Fox in 2003: Yes, it takes two men to step into the shoes of one woman AFP/Getty Images Theresa May in quotes What Theresa May said when she was asked about her political ambitions during an interview with Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, a lawyer married to Nick Clegg, in December: MD: "My very last question is: that little girl who is somewhere there, is she dreaming of becoming the next British Prime Minister?" TM: "Shes dreaming of carrying on doing a good job in the Home Office" Getty Images Theresa May in quotes On not being able to have children: I like to keep my personal life personal. We couldnt have children, we dealt with it and moved on. I hope nobody would think that mattered; I can still empathise, understand people and care about fairness and opportunity Getty Images Theresa May in quotes On whether she can deliver the mandate of the EU referendum: I think for party members and indeed for others, I would say look at my record. I think they can see that Im somebody who gets on with the job, but Im also somebody who says it as I see it and actually delivers on what I say Getty Images Theresa May in quotes On the equally relentless obsession with her shoes: As a woman I know you can be very serious about something and very soberly dressed add a little bit of interest with footwear. I always tell women you have to be yourself, dont assume you have to fit into a stereotype and if your personality is shown through your clothes or shoes, so be it Getty Images

However, critics have warned that a British bill would be effectively pointless if the UK remains bound to the ECHR. Senior Conservative figures are said to be pushing for full ECHR in order to avoid such a scenario.

Mr Dickson said his party, which is a cross-community party formed to tackle sectarianism in Northern Ireland, will also seek to block the plan through a vote at Stormont. He said ECHR withdrawal should require a vote in the regional, devolved assemblies in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, called a legislative consent motion, which allows them to approve or block central government plans. He said Alliance would also vote against such a motion, meaning it is likely the policy could be blocked. He said: You can be absolutely sure Alliance would oppose it and indeed anything which undermines human rights laws.

Mr Dickson said the party could even employ a petition of concern, a mechanism in Northern Irish power sharing structures which can allow parties to effectively block legislation. It is a controversial practise which the Democratic Unionist Party have famously used to block passing same-sex marriage on multiple occasions. However, Mr Dickson said using a petition of concern to block ECHR withdrawal would be absolutely justified.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: We will set out our proposals for a Bill of Rights in due course. We will consult fully on our proposals.
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Theresa May is behaving like Henry VIII over her refusal to commit to giving Parliament a say on Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn has said.

The Labour leader accused the Prime Minister of trying to replicate the power of kings by insisting she can take Britain out of the European Union (EU) without parliamentary approval.

The Tudor monarch is known for his autocratic style and using his regal powers to make sweeping changes, such as separating the Church of England from the Vatican.

Government ministers have argued that Mrs May has the power to take Britain out of Europe unilaterally because of the royal prerogative  the system by which, under Britains constitution, the traditional powers of the British monarch are vested in in the prime minister.

Mr Corbyn said such a claim was extraordinary.

Speaking to The Guardian about Brexit and Mrs Mays current stance, the Labour leader said: It would have to come to Parliament. She cannot hide behind Henry VIII and the divine rights of the power of kings on this one.

The idea that on something as major as this the prime minister would use the royal prerogative to bypass parliament is extraordinary  I dont know where shes coming from."

Supreme Court Brexit Challenge Show all 13 1 /13 Supreme Court Brexit Challenge Supreme Court Brexit Challenge People wait to enter the public gallery outside the Supreme Court ahead of the challenge against a court ruling that Theresa May's government requires parliamentary approval to start the process of leaving the European Union, in Parliament Square, central London Reuters Supreme Court Brexit Challenge Gina Miller, co-founder of investment fund SCM Private arrives at the Supreme court in London on the first day of a four-day hearing Getty Supreme Court Brexit Challenge A man waves the EU flag in front of the Supreme Court Getty Supreme Court Brexit Challenge Satirical artist Kaya Mar poses with two of his paintings in front of the Supreme Court Getty Supreme Court Brexit Challenge Pro-Europe protestors dressed as Supreme Court Justices stand outside the Supreme Court ahead of the first day of a hearing into whether Parliament's consent is required before the Brexit process can begin. The eleven Supreme Court Justices will hear the government's appeal, following the High Court's recent decision that only Parliament can trigger Article 50 Getty Supreme Court Brexit Challenge The eleven Supreme Court Justices will hear the government's appeal, following the High Court's recent decision that only Parliament can trigger Article 50 Getty Supreme Court Brexit Challenge Businesswoman Gina Miller arrives at the Supreme Court ahead of the first day of a hearing into whether Parliament's consent is required before the Brexit process can begin Getty Supreme Court Brexit Challenge Attorney General Jeremy Wright arrives at the Supreme Court in London EPA Supreme Court Brexit Challenge Protesters outside the Supreme Court in London, where the Government is appealing against a ruling that the Prime Minister must seek MPs' approval to trigger the process of taking Britain out of the European Union PA wire Supreme Court Brexit Challenge A protesters wearing a judge's wigs and robes stands outside the Supreme Court ahead of the challenge against a court ruling that Theresa May's government requires parliamentary approval to start the process of leaving the European Union, in Parliament Square, central London Reuters Supreme Court Brexit Challenge A protester holds up a placard outside the Supreme Court ahead of the challenge against a court ruling that Theresa May's government requires parliamentary approval to start the process of leaving the European Union, in Parliament Square, central London Reuters Supreme Court Brexit Challenge Pro-Europe protestors dressed as Supreme Court Justices stand outside the Supreme Court Getty Supreme Court Brexit Challenge A man waiting to enter the public gallery waves a European Union flag outside the Supreme Court ahead of the challenge against a court ruling that Theresa May's government requires parliamentary approval to start the process of leaving the European Union, in Parliament Square, central London Reuters

Mrs May has repeatedly refused to commit to giving MPs a vote on a future Brexit Bill, despite the High Court having ruled that Parliament must be consulted before Britain begins the process of leaving the EU.

The Government is challenging that ruling in the Supreme Court, with a verdict set to be delivered in January.

If the Supreme Court judges uphold the original ruling, ministers could be forced to introduce a parliamentary Brexit Bill, which MPs and lords would be able to amend and vote on.

Mr Corbyn has said Labour will not vote against the Governments bill, but a number of the partys MPs are expelled to rebel.

Quizzed by MPs during a select committee hearing earlier this month, the Prime Minister repeatedly refused to guarantee MPs would be given a vote on Brexit.

Appearing in front of the House of Commons Brexit committee, she would only go so far as to say: It is my intention to make sure that parliament has ample opportunity to comment on and discuss the aspects of the arrangements that we are putting in place.
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Carrie Fisher's mother has been taken to hospital after reportedly suffering from a stroke, a day after the death of her daughter.

Debbie Reynolds was said to be planning the Star War actress's funeral with the help of her son Todd Fisher when she was taken ill at his home in Beverley Hills, California.

The 84-year-old was rushed to the nearby Cedars Sinai Medical Center after suffering from a stroke, according to US celebrity news website TMZ.

It happened just over 24-hours after her 60-year-old daughter died in a Los Angeles hospital four days after suffering a heart attack on board a flight from London to LA.

Reynolds, who appeared in more than 60 films, is best known for her starring role in 1952 musical Singing in the Rain, alongside Gene Kelly.

She was married to Fisher's father for four years between 1955 and 1959.

Hours after her daughter's death, she took to Facebook to thank fans for their support.

"Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter," she wrote. "I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop. Love Carries Mother,"
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Earlier this month, a 6-year-old from Arkansas is making headlines after using her sleeping mothers to purchase $250 in Pokemon presents.

Her mother, Bethany Howell, told the Wall Street Journal that she originally thought her Amazon account was hacked after noticing 13 suspicious Pokemon-themed gifts charged to her account. Little Ashlynd eventually told her mother that she used her thumbprint to complete purchases on the Amazon mobile application while she slept on the couch. She also assured her mother that the gifts would be delivered to the correct address.

No, Mommy, I was shopping, she told her mom. But dont worryeverything that I ordered is coming straight to the house.

The funniest Pokemon Go memes Show all 15 1 /15 The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes The funniest Pokemon Go memes

Since the mothers phone used a fingerprint ID lock, Ashlynd didnt need to enter a password to complete the purchases.

Still, Howell was only allowed to return four of the 13 items. She told Ashlynd that Santa Claus somehow caught word of her shopping spree and wouldnt be delivering her all the gifts on Christmas morning.
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A federal court in Grand Rapids, Michigan ruled in favor of police who shoot barking or moving dogs while an officer enters a home. The ruling is the final decision in a lawsuit from Grand Rapids residents Mark and Cheryl Brown, whose pit bull terriers were fatally shot when police issued a search warrant to their home in 2013.

An officer successfully argued that he shot the first dog after it moved a few inches and lunged in his direction, and when the dog ran away to the basement, he followed the pet and killed it. Another officer killed the couples second dog when it also ran to the basement and barked at them.

The standard we set out today is that a police officers use of deadly force against a dog while executing a search warrant to search a home for illegal drug activity is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when the dog poses an imminent threat to the officers safety, Judge Eric Clay wrote in his decision, saying the couple failed to provide solid evidence that the dogs did not lunge or bark at the officers.

Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Show all 19 1 /19 Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Protestors demand justice for Philando Castile on July 7, 2016 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Stephen Maturen/Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Protestors lie in an intersection during a demonstration for Philando Castile on July 7, 2016 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Stephen Maturen/Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Protestors lie in an intersection during a demonstration for Philando Castile on July 7, 2016 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Stephen Maturen/Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Protestors demand justice for Philando Castile on July 7, 2016 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Stephen Maturen/Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Protesters march throughout New York City. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Protesters march throughout New York City. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Protesters are arrested by NYPD as they call for justice throughout New York City. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Protesters are arrested by NYPD as they call for justice throughout New York City. AFP/Getty Images Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police AFP/Getty Images Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police AFP/Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police AFP/Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police AFP/Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police AFP/Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police AFP/Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police AFP/Getty Images Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Getty Protests and outrage across the US following killings by police Getty

According to the Battle Creek Enquirer, the officers argued that they could not have cleared the basement without killing the dogs. While the areas police chief supported the ruling, he admitted that the lawsuit highlighted some actions to be improved upon.

"It was a good ruling," Police Chief Jim Blocker told the newspaper "It pointed out some things we have to improve upon, but supported our operating concept that officers must act within reason."
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Multi-billionaire Warren Buffett made on average $32.2m (26.3) every day in the year that populism triumphed in global politics.

The Wizard of Omaha regained his spot as the worlds second-richest person two days after the US election result despite opposing Mr Trump throughout the campaign.

Critics are claiming this is yet more evidence that the 70-year-old property magnates presidency will not "drain the swamp".

London School of Economics fellow in comparative politics, Dr Brian Klaas, said billionaires like Mr Buffett will very likely gain from Mr Trumps era.

 Warren Buffett Challenges Trump to Reveal Tax Return

Ironically, the areas where Trump is going to find the most common ground with Congressional Republicans isn't on trade policy or reforming Washington, said Dr Klaas, speaking to The Independent.

It's on supply-side tax cuts, deregulation, and an erosion of the social safety net.

All three of those approaches are great for business titans, but awful for the working class base that was integral to his electoral victory.

Harvard Business School reject Mr Buffet is the chairman, chief executive and largest shareholder of multinational Berkshire Hathaway.

The 86-year-old challenged Mr Trump to release his tax returns during the election campaign and appeared alongside Hillary Clinton as one of her most influential advocates.

The twice-married father-of-three asked Mr Trump Have you no sense of decency, sir? at a Ms Clinton rally in August.

Yet, the worth of his airline and banking holdings soared after Mr Trumps surprise victory.

He added $11.8bn (9.6m) to his wealth in 2016 which marked a 19 per cent increase up to $74.1bn (60.5m).

Generally, the countrys richest were opposed to Mr Trump, but US billionaires have reportedly added $77bn (62.2m) to their fortunes since his landmark win.

The worlds richest 500 people, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, increased their wealth from approximately $4.2 trillion (3.4 trillion) at the beginning of the year to $4.4 trillion (3.6 trillion).

Disappointing economic data from China at the beginning of the year and the UKs Brexit vote, in the same year as mild populist successes for Frances far-right Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands Geert Wilders, are also believed to have made the rich richer.

2016s been event-driven with global news driving prices, said Michael Cole, president of Ascent Private Capital Management.

The belief that Trump is going to come in and deregulate big parts of the economy is driving the markets right now.

Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio said last week that Mr Trumps business-heavy cabinet selections will unleash the animal spirits of capitalism.

Dr Klaas, who this year published The Despot's Accomplice: How the West is Aiding & Abetting the Decline of Democracy, added: Donald Trump ran on a promise to Drain the Swamp.

He tapped into the real economic anxieties of millions of Americans who are victims of sharp increases in inequality over the last quarter century.

And yet, his strategy to drain the swamp seems to be hiring much of it.

Beyond the corporate lobbyists and industry titans who will be the new regulators, the Trump cabinet will be - by far - the richest in American history.

The net worth of the proposed cabinet surpasses the net worth of the bottom third of American households combined.

The economic policy ideas they are putting forward would not address inequality but instead double down on the approach that produced it.

Dr Klaas however said Mr Buffett, who donated stock valued at $2.6bn (2.1bn) in July, may realise that Mr Trumps effect on economic growth will be short lived.

Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Show all 10 1 /10 Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Bill Gates - $75 bn The creator of Microsoft is worth $78 billion. He has topped the list for 17 out of the past 22 years - though his net worth shrank by $4.2bn (3bn) to $75bn (53.7bn). Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Amancio Ortega - $67 bn The Spanish business who set up the Zara chain of high-street shops is worth $67 billion. REUTERS/ AP Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Warren Buffet - $60.8 bn Warren buffet is the world's most successful investor. Forbes rates him as being worth $60.8 billion. Getty Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Carlos Slim Helu - $50 bn Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecom magnate, is this years biggest loser with a fortune of $50 billion, down from $77.1 billion last year. Getty Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Jeff Bezos - $45.2 bn Amazons Jeff Bezos moved up to the fifth from the fifteenth spot last year; his net worth increased to $45.2 billion. Getty Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Mark Zuckerberg - $44.6 bn The biggest gainer on the 2016 list is Mark Zuckerberg , whose fortune is up $11.2 billion for a total net worth of $44.6 billion. He is the sixth richest in the world. Getty Images Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Larry Ellison - $43.6 bn The American entrepreneur has a fortune of $43.6 billion Bloomberg Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Michael Bloomberg - $40 bn Michael Bloomberg, whose media and financial empire has created a personal fortune of $40 bn, is said to be willing to spend up to $1bn on a presidential campaign AP Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Charles Koch and David Koch - $39.6 bn Charles Koch, along with brother David Koch of Koch Industries are joint sixth and are valued at $39.6 billion. Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Liliane Bettencourt - $36.1 bn Liliane Bettencourt is the heir to the LOreal empire Getty Images

He added: Buffett's successes are separate from his policy views.

Buffett is a breed of billionaire that believes that the world is a better place when wealth is not so concentrated in the hands of a tiny few and a world in which people who work hard are rewarded with a decent life.

Dr Klaas, who says the Bush-era tax cuts were a boon to the wealthiest Americans, believes government policy and speculation drastically affects economic growth.

Dr Rob Dover however, from the University of Leicesters School of History, Politics and International Relations, told The Independent: The rise in the richest people's wealth does not discredit the promises of populism.

 Trump: Clinton may be 'most corrupt person ever to seek presidency'

What it shows is the failure of insurgent electorate's to pay attention to the validity of populist messages and what they really meant.

The intelligence and international security professor, who correctly bet on Brexit, Mr Trump's win and has conservative Emmanuel Macron down to win the 2017 France presidential election, added: "The volatility of the markets that have resulted from these unexpected results were always likely to benefit those with considerable capital, as they can take advantage of market opportunities in a way that ordinary folk cannot.

This is more a story of how the establishment was bested by more sophisticated alternative establishment market participants, rather than a betrayal of populism."
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North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has ordered more than 300 people to their deaths in the five years since he took power.

Mr Kim has used the executions to tighten his hold on power, according to the South Korean think-tank the Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS).

Some 140 of the 340 killed since 2011 were senior government officers.

North Korea Prison Camps Show all 7 1 /7 North Korea Prison Camps North Korea Prison Camps An overview of Camp 25 Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe North Korea Prison Camps The administration area of Camp 15 Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe North Korea Prison Camps A water treatment system in Camp 25 Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe North Korea Prison Camps Crop fields and, inset, prisoners in Camp 25 Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe North Korea Prison Camps The reported crematorium in Camp 25 Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe North Korea Prison Camps A possible mine Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe North Korea Prison Camps A walled compound in Camp 15 Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe

In August two officials were reportedly executed with an anti-aircraft gun on Mr Kim's orders - one for falling asleep in a meeting and the other for proposing a project the despot believed would challenge his authority.

Bruce Bennett, a defence analyst from the RAND Corporation think-tank told CNN Mr Kim had demonstrated an "extreme" level of brutality since inheriting his father's place as leader.

"For example, in the five years he has served as leader of North Korea, he has purged his defence minister five times, while his father changed his defence minister only three times in his 17 years. And two of those changes were because they died of old age, he added.

The five-year tally surfaced in INSS' report "The misgoverning of Kim Jong Un's five years in power", released on Thursday.

Mr Kim's highest-profile execution was that, three years ago, of his uncle and one-time deputy Jang Song Thaek. He had about 50 officials executed in 2014 on charges ranging from graft to watching South Korean soap operas.

"Kim is continuing to replace the old guard of his fathers regime with loyalists," said Robert Kelly, a political science professor at South Koreas Pusan National University, in August. "The charges are obviously trumped up, and this is how promotion or demotion often works in totalitarian states without legitimate venues for opposition."
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North Korea's despotic leaders are determined to complete development of nuclear weapons by the end of 2017, according to the country's most senior defector.

Thae Yong-ho, 55, the former North Korean deputy ambassador in London, defected to South Korea earlier this year along with his wife and children due to his discontent with the regime and for their futures.

Mr Thae said Kim Jong-un will pursue his nuclear programme "at all costs" and will not relinquish its weapons "even if the country is offered $1 trillion or $10 trillion in return", Yonhap news agency reported.

North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone Show all 13 1 /13 North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP

The election of Donald Trump and the impeachment of the South's president, Park Geun-hye, meant 2017 was an "opportune time" for the North, he said.

He added: "Due to domestic political procedures, North Korea calculates that South Korea and the US will not be able to take physical or military actions to deter North Korea's nuclear development."

Discussing his defection he said: "I made a vow to dismantle the Kim Jong-un regime and save our people from an approaching nuclear disaster.

"My heart aches when I think of my family members and colleagues who remain in North Korea. But regretting and crying will bring me nowhere. Fighting the Kim regime will facilitate unification of the Koreas."

James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, has previously said trying to persuade North Korea to "denuclearise" is "probably a lost cause". Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken retorted by saying: "We will not accept North Korea as a nuclear state, we will not accept North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons. Period."

In November the United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions on North Korea in response to its latest nuclear test two months prior.

It was the fifth and largest controlled detonation of a nuclear device ever undertaken by the pariah state.

The sanctions, which included a limit on coal shipments to China and a total ban on the export of statues, could reduce the North's overall export revenues by a quarter.

Mr Thae added in a brief interview with the BBC this week: "I am very happy now my family here is settling down, and everyone in my family thinks it is the right decision to come to South Korea for a new life. No regrets at all."

And he told Yonhap that while China, the North's main backer, could cripple the Kim regime, it does not act because of the geopolitical "buffer zone" it provides against US-allied Japan and South Korea.

His nuclear claim came as a report said Kim Jong-un has sent more than 300 people to their deaths since inheriting power in 2011, including 140 senior government officers.

In August two officials were reportedly executed with an anti-aircraft gun on Mr Kim's orders - one for falling asleep in a meeting and the other for proposing a project the dictator believed would challenge his authority.
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Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte has claimed he once threw a kidnapper from a helicopter in flight - and said he would do the same to corrupt government officials as part of his anti-graft drive.

The outspoken leader, whose anti-drugs crackdown has seen thousands killed and who has boasted of personally killing three people while mayor of Davao city, made the claim after announcing up to 1.64m-worth of aid to areas affected by Typhoon Nina earlier this week, the Philippine Star reported.

When he was elected after promising to fix what he called a broken country, Mr Duterte pledged to bring back the death penalty and shoot-to-kill powers to the Philippines.

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

Mr Duterte said in a speech on Tuesday: "If you are corrupt I will fetch you with a helicopter and I will throw you out on the way to Manila.

"I have done that before, why should I not do it again?"

Mr Duterte said the killing happened when he was on the trail of kidnappers who abused their Chinese victim even after the ransom was paid.

UN human rights experts have been asking the Philippine government to address extrajudicial killings of drug users in the country since August.

Recommended Rodrigo Duterte says three out of five Americans are idiots

In response, Mr Duterte has said he is considering taking the Philippines out of the UN, withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, and ending a major pact with the US.

Last week he called the UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein an "idiot", in response to a suggestion by the diplomat that Mr Duterte be investigated for murder after the president said he personally gunned down at least three people when he was a city mayor.

He added he would "burn down the United Nations if you want".

Since he took office in June, about 6,000 people have been killed by police, vigilantes, and mercenaries in the south-east Asian country on Mr Duterte's instructions.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

Trend:

Agreements have been achieved on a ceasefire in Syria and the readiness to start peace talks, Russias President Vladimir Putin said, TASS news agency reported.

Reports have just arrived that several hours ago there was a development that we all have for so long looked and worked for. Three documents have been signed. A ceasefire between the Syrian government and the armed opposition is one. A package of measures to control the ceasefire is another. And a declaration of readiness to enter peace talks on a settlement in Syria is the third, Putin said at a meeting with Russian foreign and defense ministers.
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Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte has backpedalled on his apparent admission that he once threw a kidnapper out of a helicopter in flight.

The outspoken leader, whose anti-drugs crackdown has seen thousands killed and who has boasted of personally killing three people while mayor of Davao city, made the claim after announcing up to 1.64m-worth of aid to areas affected by Typhoon Nina earlier this week.

But he has now said it never happened, telling reporters at a press conference that "your team knows I really want to say jokes", CNN reported.

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

Mr Duterte said: "We had no helicopter. We don't use that.

"I am playing you, I am really like that, your team knows I really want to say jokes.

"And you spent time writing about it, criticising, and that is your story, and you believe that."

He had said in a speech on Tuesday, referencing his time as mayor: "If you are corrupt I will fetch you with a helicopter and I will throw you out on the way to Manila.

"I have done that before, why should I not do it again?"

Mr Duterte said the killing happened when he was on the trail of kidnappers who abused their Chinese victim even after the ransom was paid.

Earlier this month he claimed he personally killed drug suspects in Davao because he wanted to show police officers if I can do it, why cant you.

In Davao I used to do it personally, said the 71-year-old world leader.

Id go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also. I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill. Mr Duterte has repeatedly said those killings were part of legitimate police operations, including a hostage incident, and those killed were criminals, not suspects.

Since Mr Duterte took office in June, about 6,000 people have been killed by police, vigilantes, and mercenaries in the south-east Asian country - with Mr Duterte's government waging a 'war on drugs'.

UN human rights experts have repeatedly asked the Philippine government to address killings of drug users in the country since August.

In response, Mr Duterte has said he is considering taking the Philippines out of the UN, withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, and potentially ending a major pact with the US.

Last week he called the UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein an "idiot", in response to a suggestion by the diplomat that Mr Duterte be investigated for murder. He added he would "burn down the United Nations if you want".
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Australian police and border agents have seized 1,100kg of drugs worth 212m in the country's biggest ever cocaine bust.

Fifteen men have been charged with drug importation following a two-and-a-half-year operation that culminated on Christmas Day with the capture of 500kg of cocaine in New South Wales - adding to more than 600kg seized earlier in Tahiti that police said was destined for Australia.

Chris Sheehan, acting commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP), praised officers' "tenacity and dedication" during the multi-agency Operation Okesi. "The size of that seizure collectively makes it the largest cocaine seizure in Australian law enforcement history," he added, according to the BBC.

Australian Drugs Bust Show all 7 1 /7 Australian Drugs Bust Australian Drugs Bust Police operation that seized cocaine worth about 258 million US dollars in NSW and Tahiti, in Sydney. Fifteen men, allegedly part of an Australian criminal syndicate, have been arrested in connection to 500kg of cocaine in NSW and 600kg of cocaine about to be imported from Tahiti. The operation has been running for more than two and a half years but it ramped up during the Christmas period, the Australian Federal Police said in a statement EPA/Australian Police handout Australian Drugs Bust Seized shipment of around 1.1 tonnes of cocaine by the AFP, which they say has an estimated street value of around A$360 million (US$300 million) Australian Federal Police/Handout via REUTERS Australian Drugs Bust Seized shipment of around 1.1 tonnes of cocaine by the AFP, which they say has an estimated street value of around A$360 million (US$300 million) Australian Federal Police handout Australian Drugs Bust A suspect in handcuffs being led away by police during a police operation that seized cocaine worth about 258 million US dollars in NSW and Tahiti, in Sydney, Australia, Australian Federal Police handout Australian Drugs Bust Fifteen men, allegedly part of an Australian criminal syndicate, have been arrested in connection to 500kg of cocaine in NSW and 600kg of cocaine about to be imported from Tahiti. EPA/Australian Police handout Australian Drugs Bust A suspect in handcuffs being led away by police during a police operation that seized cocaine worth about 258 million US dollars in NSW and Tahiti, in Sydney, Australia Australian Federal Police handout Australian Drugs Bust Approximately 500 kilograms of cocaine were seized in NSW and a further 600 kilograms in Tahiti bound for Australia, with 15 men arrested who were allegedly involved in the ring. The drugs are estimated to have a market value of about 258 million US dollars EPA/Australian Police handout

In July 2014 investigators at the AFP and the New South Wales state drug squad received a snippet of information and launched an investigation into suspected drug smuggling by commercial fishermen in Sydney.

Their months of surveillance led to Fijian authorities' seizure of 32kg of heroin in December of that year, and the bust in Tahiti, which took place in March this year.

Mr Sheehan said: "Weve prevented future importations by apprehending 15 men for their alleged involvement in the criminal syndicate responsible for this attempted importation."

The latest bust came after officers monitored a boat leaving Sydney Fish Markets on 3 December, which later returned to the Central Coast area.

During the night on Christmas Day a small tender launched from the boat, police said, and when it landed in Parsley Bay, Brooklyn, officers swooped. Three men were arrested and 500kg of cocaine seized.

All 15 men arrested and charged during the operation have appeared in court. They were due to appear again on Thursday at New South Wales' Central Local Court.

The maximum penalty for conspiracy to import a commercial quantity of border controlled drugs is life imprisonment. The drugs are believed to have come from South America.

Mark Jenkins, assistant commissioner of the New South Wales state police, said: "The dedication of all officers involved over the course of this investigation needs to be commended  especially those who sacrificed precious time with family and friends to ensure these dangerous drugs didnt reach the streets."
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An automatic braking system fitted to the lorry used in the Berlin attack prevented the deaths of many more victims, investigators have found.

Anis Amri, a Tunisian Isis supporter, is believed to have hijacked the vehicle from its Polish driver in the German capital before ploughing it into a busy Christmas market on 19 December.

Twelve people were killed by the lorry and more than 50 others injured, being caught under the wheels or crushed by debris before it came to a stop.

 Video surfaces of Berlin attack suspect Anis Amri

Investigators now believe the driver was only able to push a maximum of 260ft (80m) into the market because of the vehicles emergency braking system.

It kicked in after detecting obstacles and no response from the cab, bringing the lorry to a stop as quickly as possible given its forward momentum.

The technology saved lives, a Berlin local government official told the Suddeutsche Zeitung.

An older lorry used in the Nice attack was not equipped with the system, allowing Isis supporter Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel to kill 86 people and injure 400 more after driving into densely packed crowds celebrating Bastille Day.

His rampage lasted at least five minutes, while the Berlin attack happened in a matter of seconds after the lorry accelerated off a main road next to the Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz, according to witnesses.

There was initial speculation the lorrys driver, Lukasz Urban, may have fought the hijacker in an attempt to prevent the attack but a post-mortem found he had been shot in the head at least two-and-a-half hours before and would have been unable to intervene.

The hijacker fled on foot and was later identified as Amri, whose wallet, identification, phone and fingerprints were found at the crime scene.

Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Show all 18 1 /18 Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Several people have been killed after a lorry drove into crowds at a Christmas market in Berlin REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch Berlin Christmas market lorry attack 'At least nine' people have been killed and more than 50 injured. AP Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Emergency Services rush a Berlin market victim to an ambulance Associated Press Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Police cordoned off the square at Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church following the incident REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Rescue workers inspect the lorry that crashed into a Christmas market close to the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church in Berlin EPA Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Emergency crews inspect the lorry that ploughed into a Berlin Christmas market, killing at least nine people AFP Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Fire crews attend the scene of the attack AFP/Getty Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Armed police secure the site of a lorry attack at a Christmas market in Berlin REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Crushed debris is visible beneath the wheels of the vehicle REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack An injured man is pushed to an ambulance REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Medics attend an injured person after the lorry attack which killed at least nine and injured more than 50 people AFP/Getty Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Firefighters examine the lorry which was rammed into a Berlin Christmas market REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack A person is carried into an ambulance REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack View of the lorry that crashed into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing at least nine and injuring at least 50 people AFP/Getty Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Rescue workers push a person on a stretcher to an ambulance Getty Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Firefighters assess the damage after the lorry rammed the Christmas market, killing 'at least nine', and injuring more than 50 people AP Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Firefighters stand beside a toppled Christmas tree at the site of the suspected terrorist attack in a Berlin Christmas market AP Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Damaged stalls at the scene of the incident at a Berlin Christmas market where at least nine people have been killed EPA

Minutes before the attack, he reportedly sent a message reading: My brother, all is well, according to God's will. I am now in a car, pray for me my brother, pray for me.

It was sent along with a selfie taken in the lorrys cab to a contact, who remains unidentified after 40-year-old Tunisian man who arrested in Berlin was freed.

Recommended Germany failed to deport Berlin attack suspect

Brother is frequently used to address other Muslims, rather than exclusively relatives.

Frauke Kohler, a spokesperson for Germanys federal prosecutor's office, said the gun Amri used to fire at officers was of the same calibre as the weapon used to kill Mr Urban.

Investigations have also confirmed a video of Amri pledging allegiance to Isis that was released by the group following his death to be authentic.

Amri was shot dead in a gun battle with Italian police in Milan on Friday after days on the run as the most wanted man in Europe.

The 24-year-old Tunisian man had a lengthy criminal history, including armed robbery in his home country and arson in Italy, where he was jailed for four years after arriving in Europe by boat in 2011.

Italian authorities attempted to deport Amri after he finished serving his prison sentence in 2015 but Tunisia refused to take him and he was released from a detention centre after the 60-day legal limit.

Berlin attack suspect Anis Amri pledged allegiance to Isis in a video released by the group following his death

Amris brothers believe he was radicalised during his imprisonment, travelling onwards to Germany where he became part of an Islamist network including two hate preachers in Dortmund and Hildesheim who have since been jailed for supporting Isis.

Having flagged as a terror risk, he was put under surveillance over a separate attack plot in March but the investigation stopped in September after uncovering drug dealing and minor crime but failing to reveal evidence of extremism.

Security services rated Amri as a five on an eight-point danger scale and did not believe an attack was likely, Suddeutsche Zeitung reported, despite having evidence he volunteered to commit a suicide bombing and researched making explosives, and updating his file just five days before the Berlin attack.

Amris asylum application was denied in June but Germany was unable to deport him because Tunisia refused to accept the expulsion without documents proving his nationality.

Prosecutors in North Rhine-Westphalia also opened a fraud investigation after Amri was suspected using two of at least eight identities he employed in Germany to claim refugee benefits in two towns.

Detlef Nowotsch, a spokesman for prosecutors in Duisburg, told The Independent Amri applied for public funds in both Emmerich and Oberhausen in late 2015. But an investigation started in April was shelved in November because his whereabouts were unknown.

Authorities across Europe are attempting to piece Amris movements together through Germany, and then on his route via the Netherlands and France to Italy as he fled following the attack.

Italian police and forensics experts surround Anis Amris body in Milan in the early hours of Friday morning (Daniele Bennati/AFP/Getty)

Italian police have also searched homes in and around Rome where he may have stayed after leaving a detention centre in Sicily in 2015, seizing mobile phones.

No particular networks have emerged in Italy, said Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, acknowledging Amri was most probably radicalised in the country.

Italy's anti-terror prosecutor, Franco Roberti, told La Repubblica that Amri found the convictions of his radicalisation path in prison, in desperation, isolation and marginalisation".

Amri was shot dead after firing on police who stopped him in the Milan suburb of Sesto San Giovanni in the early hours of Friday morning.

Investigators are trying to establish whether Amri was attempting to reach another country when he was shot or had been seeking shelter with contacts in the city.

He was carrying a Dutch SIM card that had been given out days before as part of a promotion in the Netherlands, leading prosecutors to believe he transited through the country.

Dutch investigators have traced Amri to Nijmegen, where he boarded an overnight bus to Lyon in central France, then boarded a train from Lyon-Part-Dieu to Chambery on Thursday, and travelled on to Milan.

EU nations have vowed to work to increase security cooperation, while Angela Merkel ordered a sweeping security review to identify any necessary reforms in Germany.
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A suspected contact of the Berlin attacker has been set free in Germany as investigations continue into possible accomplices.

No charges were brought against the 40-year-old Tunisian man, who was arrested in Berlin on Wednesday, a spokesperson for federal prosecutors said.

Officials previously announced the mans number had been found on Anis Amris phone, showing he could have been involved in the attack.

But a spokesperson said no link was established and the man has been released.

 Video surfaces of Berlin attack suspect Anis Amri

Further investigations determined that the man who was provisionally detained isn't this possible contact person of Anis Amri, so he had to be released from custody, Frauke Kohler said.

Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian man, fled the scene of the attack on 19 November and was shot dead by Italian police days later in Milan.

Ms Kohler said the gun he used to fire at officers was of the same calibre as the weapon used to kill a lorry driver as he hijacked his vehicle.

Investigations have also confirmed a video of Amri pledging allegiance to Isis that was released by the group following his death to be authentic.

Amri killed 12 people and injured more than 50 more when he ploughed the lorry into a busy Christmas market.

The vehicle's automatic braking system prevented more deaths by forcibly bringing it to a stop, prosecutors said.

The hijacker fled the scene and was later identified as Amri, whose wallet, identification, phone and fingerprints were found at the crime scene.

Minutes before the attack, he reportedly sent a selfie from the cab along with a message reading: My brother, all is well, according to God's will. I am now in a car, pray for me my brother, pray for me."

Brother is frequently used to address other Muslims, rather than exclusively relatives, and investigators are still working to establish who received the messages.

Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Show all 18 1 /18 Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Several people have been killed after a lorry drove into crowds at a Christmas market in Berlin REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch Berlin Christmas market lorry attack 'At least nine' people have been killed and more than 50 injured. AP Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Emergency Services rush a Berlin market victim to an ambulance Associated Press Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Police cordoned off the square at Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church following the incident REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Rescue workers inspect the lorry that crashed into a Christmas market close to the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church in Berlin EPA Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Emergency crews inspect the lorry that ploughed into a Berlin Christmas market, killing at least nine people AFP Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Fire crews attend the scene of the attack AFP/Getty Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Armed police secure the site of a lorry attack at a Christmas market in Berlin REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Crushed debris is visible beneath the wheels of the vehicle REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack An injured man is pushed to an ambulance REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Medics attend an injured person after the lorry attack which killed at least nine and injured more than 50 people AFP/Getty Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Firefighters examine the lorry which was rammed into a Berlin Christmas market REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack A person is carried into an ambulance REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack View of the lorry that crashed into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing at least nine and injuring at least 50 people AFP/Getty Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Rescue workers push a person on a stretcher to an ambulance Getty Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Firefighters assess the damage after the lorry rammed the Christmas market, killing 'at least nine', and injuring more than 50 people AP Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Firefighters stand beside a toppled Christmas tree at the site of the suspected terrorist attack in a Berlin Christmas market AP Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Damaged stalls at the scene of the incident at a Berlin Christmas market where at least nine people have been killed EPA

The 24-year-old Tunisian man had a lengthy criminal history, including armed robbery in his home country and arson in Italy, where he was jailed for four years after arriving in Europe by boat in 2011.

Amris brothers believe he was radicalised during his imprisonment, travelling onwards to Germany where he became part of an Islamist network including two hate preachers in Dortmund and Hildesheim who have since been jailed for supporting Isis.

Having flagged as a terror risk, he was put under surveillance over a separate attack plot in March but the investigation stopped in September after uncovering drug dealing and minor crime but failing to reveal evidence of extremism.

Security services rated Amri as a five on an eight-point danger scale, Suddeutsche Zeitung reported, despite having evidence he volunteered to commit a suicide bombing and researched making explosives, and updating his file just five days before the Berlin attack.

Amris asylum application was denied in June but Germany was unable to deport him because Tunisia refused to accept the expulsion without documents proving his nationality.

Prosecutors in North Rhine-Westphalia also opened a fraud investigation after Amri was suspected using two of at least eight identities he employed in Germany to claim refugee benefits in two towns.

Authorities across Europe are attempting to piece Amris movements together through Germany, and then on his route via the Netherlands and France to Italy as he fled following the attack.
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A French woman convicted of murdering her abusive husband has been released from jail.

Jacqueline Sauvage, of Montargis in central France, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2014 after killing her alcoholic and abusive husband, shooting him three times in the back with his own hunting rifle, the day after their son hanged himself.

The court had heard how her husband Norbert Marot had raped and beaten Ms Sauvage and her three daughters and acted violently towards their son for 40 years. But her lawyers argument that she was acting in self-defence was rejected on the grounds that her life was not threatened at the time she seized the hunting rifle.

Mr Hollande issued a partial pardon at the end of January after more than 400,000 people signed a petition calling on him to use his right to pardon convicted criminals to release Ms Sauvage, including politicians on the left and right, as well as the Presidents former partner Valerie Trierweiler.

The courts had rejected previous applications for her release, but the President has now given Ms Sauvage, 69, a complete pardon.

He tweeted on Wednesday: I've decided to grant Jacqueline Sauvage a pardon of the rest of her sentence. This pardon puts an immediate end to her detention.

A statement released by the Elysee Palace stated: The President of the Republic has decided that Ms Sauvage should no longer be in prison, but with her family.

Following her release, one of Ms Sauvages lawyers, Nathalie Tomasini, said Mr Hollande's decision sent out a very strong message by the President of the Republic to all female victims of domestic abuse.

But others have condemned the decision, with the Trade Union of Magistrates (USM), Virginie Duval, denouncing it as appalling, saying the President had acted to please public opinion and calling it a total violation of judicial decisions.

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

On average, 134 French women are killed by their husbands or male partners each year.

The French president was granted the power to decree pardons in 1958.

During his election campaign in 2012, Mr Hollande suggested he would not use presidential pardons, saying they belonged to a different concept of power.
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A man who was wrongly arrested for the lorry attack on a Berlin Christmas market said he now fears for his life in both Germany and his native Pakistan.

Naveed Baloch has been warned by German police that he might be targeted by right-wing extremists.

But he told The Guardian that he has also been forced to live in a secret location away from his former home in a refugee camp because police fear he maybe attacked by his fellow countrymen, who might view him as an enemy of the state.

Mr Baloch was arrested in connection with the 19 December attack when a lorry veered into a busy Christmas market, killing 12 people and injuring 48.

The 24-year-old who is seeking asylum from Pakistan  was later released after the police authorities admitted they had the wrong man.

Anis Amri, a Tunisian whose documents had been found in the lorry, was then identified as a suspect. He was later killed in a shootout with Italian police in Milan.

Despite his release, Mr Baloch said that parts of the Pakistani media have continued to implicate him for the attack. Some have said that he brought shame on his home nation.

Mr Baloch is a member of a secular separatist movement in Balochistan, a province in the south west of Pakistan with a precarious security situation. Frequent violent attacks have taken place.

He said he was forced to flee the region after receiving death threats for his political activism.

Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Show all 18 1 /18 Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Several people have been killed after a lorry drove into crowds at a Christmas market in Berlin REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch Berlin Christmas market lorry attack 'At least nine' people have been killed and more than 50 injured. AP Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Emergency Services rush a Berlin market victim to an ambulance Associated Press Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Police cordoned off the square at Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church following the incident REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Rescue workers inspect the lorry that crashed into a Christmas market close to the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church in Berlin EPA Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Emergency crews inspect the lorry that ploughed into a Berlin Christmas market, killing at least nine people AFP Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Fire crews attend the scene of the attack AFP/Getty Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Armed police secure the site of a lorry attack at a Christmas market in Berlin REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Crushed debris is visible beneath the wheels of the vehicle REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack An injured man is pushed to an ambulance REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Medics attend an injured person after the lorry attack which killed at least nine and injured more than 50 people AFP/Getty Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Firefighters examine the lorry which was rammed into a Berlin Christmas market REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack A person is carried into an ambulance REUTERS Berlin Christmas market lorry attack View of the lorry that crashed into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing at least nine and injuring at least 50 people AFP/Getty Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Rescue workers push a person on a stretcher to an ambulance Getty Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Firefighters assess the damage after the lorry rammed the Christmas market, killing 'at least nine', and injuring more than 50 people AP Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Firefighters stand beside a toppled Christmas tree at the site of the suspected terrorist attack in a Berlin Christmas market AP Berlin Christmas market lorry attack Damaged stalls at the scene of the incident at a Berlin Christmas market where at least nine people have been killed EPA

Now his waiting for a translator who speaks his native Balochi, so he can make his case for asylum to the German authorities.

I will tell them that I have threats to my life in Pakistan," he told The Guardian. "Some of my cousins who also belong to the same political party were killed by the security agencies, who picked them up, murdered them and dumped their bodies."

"I knew it was a matter of time before they came for me," he added, "Thats the reason I came to Germany.

Following the Berlin massacre he also worries about the safety of his family, who live in the village of Mand in the Mekran region of Balochistan.

Before the attack for which I was arrested, no one in Balochistan knew I had disappeared, he said.

Now they all know I fled... It leaves my family very vulnerable and theres nothing I can do to protect them."
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Russian authorities say they have not ruled out terrorism as the cause of the crash of a military plane into the Black Sea on Christmas Day.

The Tupolev TU-154 flight was en route to Syria with 92 people on board when it plunged into the sea shortly after takeoff from Sochi in southern Russia. There were no survivors.

Investigators said pilot error or a technical fault were the most likely reasons for the disaster but terrorism could not be ruled out.

Lieutenant-General Sergei Bainetov, the Russian air forces head of flight safety, said: The was no explosion on board but this isnt the only type of terrorist act ... It could have been any type of mechanical impact, so we dont rule out a terrorist act.

He said the commission was currently investigating around seven theories that include poor quality fuel causing engine failure and a bird getting caught up in the engine but there was no leading theory.

Lt Gen Bainetov said it would take at least 10 days to decipher the aircrafts main flight recorder, which arrived back in Moscow on Wednesday, and there would be no final conclusions about the cause of the crash for at least 30 days.

He added that the TU-154, an ageing Soviet-era aircraft, would not be phased out following the crash but Russian news agencies had earlier reported that the military had temporarily grounded all TU-154 planes until the cause of the crash could be determined.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The Tu-154 of the Russian Defence Ministry crashed into the sea early Sunday, moments after taking off in good weather. Mr Bainetov said that the plane crashed 70 seconds after takeoff from an altitude of 250 metres while it was travelling at a speed of 224 to 230 miles per hour.

After deciphering the first flight recorder we have made a conclusion that there was no explosion on board, Mr Bainetov said.

He wouldnt offer any details, saying that Russian law-enforcement agencies are working on the case.

Mr Bainetovs words appeared to contradict a previous statement from Russias top domestic security and counter-terrorism agency, the FSB, which has said it found no indications or facts pointing at the possibility of a terror attack or an act of sabotage.

Mr Bainetov noted that according to a preliminary assessment of information from the flight parameter recorder there had been no obvious equipment failures.

In an apparent attempt to downplay Mr Bainetovs statement, Russian transport minister Maxim Sokolov emphasised that the version of a terror attack isnt being considered as the main version.

Search and rescue teams have been scouring a stretch of water roughly 1 mile from Sochi.

Mr Sokolov said they had so far recovered 19 bodies, 230 body fragments and nearly 2,000 pieces of debris from the aircraft.

Passengers on board the flight included the official choir of the Russian armed forces, the Alexandrov Ensemble, and humanitarian and businesswoman Elizaveta Glinka who was en route to deliver medical supplies to a hospital in Latakia, Syria.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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Moscow immediately threatened to retaliate to Americas announcement that it was expelling 35 Russian diplomats - saying the USs actions were the death throes of political corpses.

In a development that plunged relations between Russia and the US to a level not seen since the Cold War, President Barack Obama on Thursday gave the diplomats 72 hours to leave and said he was sanctioning Russian intelligence officials believed to be involved in hacking the Democratic Party during the election. US intelligence has said it believes the hacking was designed to benefit Donald Trump.

All Americans should be alarmed by Russias actions, Mr Obama said, claiming the extent of data theft and cyber attacks uncovered could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government.

 President Obama vows to take action against alleged Russian hacking of election

In addition to expelling the 35 intelligence operatives, the President announced Russias FSB and GRU intelligence agencies, four GRU officers and three companies supporting its cyber operations.

Recommended Vladimir Putin rejects allegations over US election cyber attacks

Two other Russians have been blacklisted by the Treasury for using cyber-enabled means to cause misappropriation of funds and personal identifying information and the State Department is shutting down two Russian compounds in Maryland and New York.

Mr Obama said the actions were a response to the Russian governments aggressive harassment of US officials and cyber operations aimed at the US election and followed repeated public and private warnings to the Kremlin.

These actions are not the sum total of our response to Russias aggressive activities, he added.

We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicised.

The US leader reportedly told Mr Putin to 'cut it out' when he confronted him about the hacking (AP)

Within minutes of the announcement, Russia indicated that it was likely to reciprocate. President Vladimir Putins spokesman said Moscow regretted the sanctions and was considering retaliatory steps.

Dmitry Peskov told reporters America's move signalled Mr Obama's unpredictable and aggressive foreign policy.

Such steps of the US administration that has three weeks left to work are aimed at two things: to further harm Russian-American ties, which are at a low point as it is, as well as, obviously, deal a blow on the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the President-elect, he said.

Konstantin Kosachyov, a chairman of the international affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, condemned the move and suggested there would be a fast response. He said the USs actions were the death throes of political corpses.

He also said that Russia was waiting to see what Mr Trump had to say about the steps of the Obama administration and needed to consider the circumstances of the transition period and a possible reaction of the US President-elect.

Konstantin Dolgov, Russian Foreign Ministry Commissioner for Human rights, told Interfax that Washingtons actions were counterproductive and are intended to cause harm in the future, including the process of restoring bilateral relations.

Meanwhile, the Russian Embassy in London tweeted a picture of duckling, with the caption LAME, writing: President Obama expels 35 Russian diplomats in Cold War deja vu. As everybody, incl the US people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless administration.

Mr Obama on imposed the sanctions on Russian officials and intelligence services in retaliation for Russia's hacking of American political sites and email accounts ahead of the November election. US intelligence believes that Moscow was behind the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails that were then passed to Wikileaks.

At least some intelligence officials believe the hacks were carried out to try and benefit the electoral fortunes of Mr Trump, who has frequently praised the leadership of Mr Putin and vowed to reset the strategic and political relationship between the two countries.

Mr Putins spokesman, Mr Peskov, insisted that Russia was not involved in the hacking. He also said that Mr Putin had yet to study what the new sanctions involve and work out what retaliatory steps could be taken.

We will certainly response adequatelyand it will be determined in line with decisions adopted by the Russian President, he told reporters, calling the sanctions unpredictable and aggressive.
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A seven-strong suspected terror cell who are alleged to have been plotting attacks over the New Year period under orders from Isis, have been arrested in Russia.

The group were preparing to attack crowded places in Moscow, according to the FSB - Russia's domestic security and counter-terrorism agency.

Agents detained the suspects in the North Caucasus province of Dagestan, the agency said in a statement.

It added that they also seized "a large quantity of firearms and weapons (grenades and ammunition), as well as components for IEDs".

The arrests are thought to have taken place in Makhachkala, the restive region's capital.

Dagestan, which translates as "land of the mountains", is situated in Russia's turbulent North Caucasus with Chechnya and Georgia to the west, Azerbaijan to the south and the Caspian Sea to the east. It is around 100 miles closer to Iraq than it is to Moscow.

Islamic militants have repeatedly called and fought for independence from Moscow in the hope of establishing an Islamic Caliphate across the North Caucasus

As a result the republic has seen numerous bombings targeted at the Russian military stationed in the republic.

The FSB claimed to have killed the leader of the North Caucasuss Isis branch, Rustam Magomedovich Aselderov, in Dagestan earlier this year.

Dagestan: Russia's Islamic enemy within Show all 4 1 /4 Dagestan: Russia's Islamic enemy within Dagestan: Russia's Islamic enemy within 474666.bin GETTY IMAGES Dagestan: Russia's Islamic enemy within 474667.bin AP Dagestan: Russia's Islamic enemy within 474668.bin GETTY IMAGES Dagestan: Russia's Islamic enemy within 474669.bin GETTY IMAGES

The militant, also known as Abu Muhammad, pledged allegiance to Isis in 2014 and was wanted over a 2013 terrorist bomb attack in Volgograd that killed more than 30 people.

President Vladimir Putin has since said that thousands of Russian citizens and people in other ex-Soviet nations have joined Isis in Syria, where his country has waged an air campaign since September 2015.

Russian forces have targeted rebel and terrorist strongholds, in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

More than 430,000 people are estimated to have died in the conflict and 11 million Syrians are thought to have fled their homes since it began in March 2011.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced the signing of a truce deal between the Syrian regime and opposition groups.

The ceasefire agreement, to begin from midnight and guaranteed by Russia and Turkeys governments, will be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and seven major armed opposition groups.

The negotiations, however, exclude United Nations-recognised terrorist groups, such as Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, and Mr Putin said he will continue fighting international terrorism in Syria and supporting Mr Assads military.

The agreements reached are, of course, fragile, and need a special attention and involvement, said Mr Putin. But after all, this is a notable result of our joint work, efforts by the defence and foreign ministries and our partners in the regions.

The Syrian state news agency SANA followed with confirmation, and an army statement said: The general command of the armed forces announces a complete halt to all hostilities on Syrian territory from the zero hour of 30 December.

It said the ceasefire comes after the successes achieved by the armed forces in a thinly veiled reference to the capture and evacuation of besieged Aleppo earlier this month.

A spokesman for one of the main opposition groups, the Syrian National Coalition, said: The National Coalition expresses support for the agreement and urges all parties to abide by it. However, he added that the group would respond to any ceasefire violations.

Several rebel officials told Reuters they had agreed to the ceasefire plan, but there was uncertainty over which groups were included in the deal.

In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Show all 30 1 /30 In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian family arrives at a checkpoint, manned by pro-government forces, at the al-Hawoz street roundabout, after leaving Aleppo's eastern neighbourhoods Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian woman, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, reacts as she stands with her children in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian pro-regime fighters, gesture as they drive past resident fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood , after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian pro-regime fighters, gesture as they drive past residents fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian pro-regime fighter speaks with a child, as residents flee violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood. Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops AFP/Getty Images In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Smoke rises as seen from a governement-held area of Aleppo, Syria Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian soldiers targeting rebels-held areas in the eastern neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria. According to media reports, the army is now holding on 99 percent of Aleppois eastern neighborhoods EPA In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian pro-government forces patrol Aleppo's eastern al-Salihin neighbourhood after troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian soldiers rest following the battle at al-Sheik Saeed neighborhood in Aleppo, Syria EPA In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian pro-government fighter walking past closed shops in the Bab al-Nasr district of Aleppo's Old City. Once renowned for its bustling souks, grand citadel and historic gates, Aleppo's Old City has been rendered virtually unrecognisable by some of the worst violence of Syria's war Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria The crucial battle for Aleppo entered its 'final phase' after Syrian rebels retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances. The retreat leaves opposition fighters confined to just a handful of neighbourhoods in southeast Aleppo, the largest of them Sukkari and Mashhad Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian civilans arrive at a checkpoint, manned by pro-government forces, at the al-Hawoz street roundabout, after leaving Aleppo's eastern neighbourhoods. Syria's government has retaken at least 85 percent of east Aleppo, which fell to rebels in 2012, since beginning its operation Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian civilians flee the Sukkari neighbourhood towards safer rebel-held areas in southeastern Aleppo Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrians celebrate in the government-held Mogambo neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, after rebel fighters retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrians celebrate in the government-held Mogambo neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, after rebel fighters retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances. The fall of Aleppo would be the worst rebel defeat since Syria's conflict began in 2011, and leave the government in control of the country's five major cities Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian refugee Aliya inside the tent where she lives with her husband and ten children in a camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian refugee women and children outside the entrance to their tents in the refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA Wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA Wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee woman outside the entrance to the tent where her family live, in the refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A vehicle drives past a mosque at night in Idlib, Syria. Picture taken with a long exposure Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Damaged buildings stand in the rebel-controlled town of Binnish in Idlib province, Syria Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria The night sky is seen through damaged windows in the rebel-controlled town of Binnish in Idlib province, Syria Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Damaged buildings stand in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province, Syria Reuters

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said the truce will include 62,000 rebel fighters across the country.

I agree with the proposal from the defence ministry for the reduction of our military presence in Syria, Mr Putin said.

The Russian military will maintain a presence at an air base in Syrias Latakia province and in the port of Tartus, the Russian president added.

The Russian military has reportedly set up a hotline with its Turkish counterparts to monitor compliance.

 Russia, Assad and Iran asked 'Is there literally nothing that can shame you' by US ambassador

The United Nations Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, has since welcomed the ceasefire announcement and said he hopes it "will save civilian lives, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance across Syria, and pave the way for productive talks in Astana"

"The Special Envoy welcomes the announcement of a nationwide ceasefire between the government of Syria and armed opposition groups in Syria," said de Mistura, who also said these "developments" should contribute to official UN negotiations on 8 February, 2017.

Talks on a ceasefire picked up momentum after Russia, Iran and Turkey last week said they were ready to back a deal and adopted a declaration setting out principles that any agreement should adhere to.

The United States has been sidelined in recent negotiations and is not due to attend the next round of peace talks in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, a key Russian ally. These talks have been described by Russia as a complement to UN-backed talks in Geneva that are due to reconvene in February.

The exclusion of the US reflects growing frustration from both Turkey and Russia over Washingtons policy on Syria, officials have said.

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the United States could join the peace process once President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Talks towards a ceasefire to end the conflict reflect the complexity of Syria's civil war, with an array of groups and foreign interests involved on all sides.

The deal by Turkey and Russia to act as guarantors in the war comes despite their support of different sides in the civil war. Ankara has insisted on the departure of Mr Assad, who is backed by Russia.

Likewise, demands that troops from Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah leave Syria may not sit well with Iran, another major supporter of Mr Assad. Hezbollah troops have been fighting alongside Syrian government forces against rebels opposed to Mr Assad.

All foreign fighters need to leave Syria. Hezbollah needs to return to Lebanon, Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

Sources have told Reuters that, under an outline deal, Syria could be divided into informal zones of regional power and Mr Assad would remain president for at least a few years.

There are also more immediate hurdles. Syrian rebel groups were due to hold talks with Turkish officials in Ankara on Thursday.

A senior rebel official told Reuters this week that the groups were discussing, with Turkey, the ceasefire proposal being negotiated with Russia.

They had rejected Moscow's demand to exclude a rebel stronghold near the capital from any deal, said Munir al Sayal, the head of the political wing of Ahrar al Sham, whose group is involved in talks with Turkey.

Ankara supports the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a loose alliance of rebel groups, some of which it is backing in operations in northern Syria designed to sweep Isis and Syrian Kurdish fighters from its southern border.

The United States is backing the Syrian Kurdish YPG in the fight against Isis in Syria, a move that has infuriated Turkey, which sees the YPG as an extension of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Ankara fears that advances by Kurdish fighters in Syria could inflame militants at home.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused the United States of supporting terrorism in Syria, including Isis, comments that Washington has dismissed as ludicrous.

We, as Turkey, have been calling to Western nations for some time to not distinguish between terrorist organisations and to be principled and consistent in their stance, Mr Erdogan said in a speech on Thursday.

Some countries, namely the United States, have come up with some excuses on their own and overtly supported the organisations that massacre innocent people in our region. When we voice these, these gentlemen are bothered by it.

Agencies contributed to this report
The White House said in a press release that outgoing US President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump discussed in a phone call ongoing efforts on smooth and successful transition of power on January 20th, Sputnik reported.

Outgoing US President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump discussed in a phone call ongoing efforts on smooth and successful transition of power on January 20th, the White House said in a press release.

"Today's call, like the others since the [November 8 presidential] election, was positive and focused on continuing smooth and effective transition," the release stated Wednesday.

Obama and Trump committed to staying in touch and supporting their teams to work hand-in-hand over the next weeks, according to the release.

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump told reporters that the US presidential transition of power is going very smoothly, despite his previous remarks about roadblocks laid by Obama.
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Turkey and Russia are planning to implement a countrywide ceasefire in Syria before the start of the New Year.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has also told the nation's A Haber television broadcaster that all foreign fighter groups, including Shia militant group and President Bashar al-Assad ally Hezbollah, need to leave the war-torn country.

It follows unconfirmed reports that the two governments had already agreed terms of a ceasefire deal in the wake of the evacuation of around 34,000 from under-siege Aleppo.

We are planning to secure this before the beginning of the New Year, said Mr Cavusoglu.

"We are on the verge of an agreement with Russia. If everything goes all right, we will make this agreement."

In the same interview, he said there is no joint operation between Turkey and Russia against Isis in the Syrian stronghold of al-Bab and that the US was not giving air support to its Syria operation.

Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Show all 12 1 /12 Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A man crosses a street in Aleppo, December 12, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A vendor sits inside an antique shop in al-Jdeideh neighbourhood, in the Old City of Aleppo, December 12, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A view shows part of Aleppo's historic citadel, overlooking Aleppo city, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A view shows part of Aleppo's historic citadel, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Visitors walk inside Aleppo's Umayyad mosque, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War People walk inside the Khan al-Shounah market, in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A man walks past shops in al-Jdeideh neighbourhood, in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War People walk along an alley in al-Jdeideh neighbourhood, in the Old City of Aleppo, Syria Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Visitors tour Aleppo's historic citadel, Syria December 11, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A general view shows the Old City of Aleppo as seen from Aleppo's historic citadel, Syria December 11, 2009 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War People walk near Aleppo's Bab al-Faraj Clock Tower, Syria October 6, 2010 Reuters Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War Aleppo before the Syrian Civil War A man stands inside Aleppo's historic citadel, overlooking Aleppo city, Syria December 11, 2009 Reuters

The former migration committee chairman, who said Russia and Turkey will both be guarantors but that there is "nothing final" over whether Iran will also sign, added: "All foreign fighters need to leave Syria. Hezbollah needs to return to Lebanon."

He also said the talks were "not an alternative" to United Nations-backed negotiations in Geneva, but were a "complementary step", and said dialogue between Turkey and President Assad was "out of the question".

Russia, Iran and Turkey said last week they were ready to help broker a peace deal after holding talks in Moscow.

Ankara and the Kremlin however fail to agree over President Assad, who is supported by President Vladimir Putin but vehemently opposed as a "tyrant" by Turkey's President Recep Erdogan.

 Buses sent to evacuate civilians burned by militants in Syria

A potential ceasefire in September, brokered by the US and Russia, failed as the Syrian government continued bombing rebel-held areas.

The war in Syria has killed potentially more than 430,000, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights - a monitoring group - and an estimated 11 million Syrians have fled their homes since March 2011.

Around one million Syrians have requested asylum to Europe, including 300,000 applications to Germany, according to the European University Institute in Florence.
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Youd be surprised how many people say theyve come here because of [1964 film] Zulu; its a lot, says Barry Marshall, my bearded guide, as he leads me around the old battlefields.

The Anglo-Zulu war isnt really taught in British schools  probably because its a rather embarrassing bit of imperialism  so the conflict is perhaps best known in the UK through the 1964 film, Zulu, and its prequel, Zulu Dawn which is set in the green field were standing in.

In 1879, the independent Zulu Kingdom was seen by British authorities as an obstacle to creating a unified South Africa; so after a perfunctory request that the Zulus dissolve their army  rejected, of course  the redcoats were sent in. My great-great-grandfather was, according to family legend, one of those men in the 24th Regiment of Foot (2nd Warwickshire Regiment) who found themselves in what is now KwaZulu-Natal province, in eastern South Africa.

The battlefields are far from the regions main tourist draw. The province is home to some extraordinary safari reserves and beaches  especially around Durban, South Africas manic second biggest city. There is also the Berg  the verdant Drakensberg mountain range bordering Lesotho.

Stepping away from all that history on a Durban beach (Getty Images)

But with the right guide, a visit to this place illuminates a shared piece of British and South African history that is little-known in the UK  all set against a stunning natural landscape that would have felt like Mars to the soldiers of the 42nd.

Barry has worked along KwaZulu-Natals history trail long enough to have met the South African president, Jacob Zuma, back when he was the local state minister for tourism. Hes seen the battlefields change over time  they once played host to a taxi rank for tourists and quite a bit of rubbish. But now, cleaned up, they are truly a sight: plains and savannah that stretch out to meet blue-grey mountains, with history and blood in the soil.

Is Zulu accurate? The answer is fairly simple: No  apart from the basic outline of events. It wasnt even filmed nearby; the producers instead shot in the Drakensberg mountains, hundreds of miles away  well away from modern Zulu tribal lands (the filming took place at the height of the apartheid regime).

Barry now works with Isandlwana Lodge  the only tourist accommodation based right on one of the battlefields. Because the building is located on collectively owned Zulu tribal land, the lodges lease provides an income for the communities who live in the area.

Its a short drive to Rorkes Drift, one of the key battle locations, which has an excellent museum and visitor centre. And its also a short amble through a collection of Zulu homesteads to Isandlwana, a rather wilder spot with a natural vantage from which to point out the events of 22 January 1879.

Isandlwana Lodge

Its quite an atmospheric place here, youll feel it up on your neck. You get the feeling something bad happened here, Barry says, staring across the plain.

That feeling is warranted. The main sights on the battlefield  apart from the domineering mountain peak, which we climb for a better view  are piles of white rocks, marking mass graves. More formal war memorials also dot the place  dedicated to both the British and the Zulus.

Though Rorkes Drift is more well-known in Britain because of Zulu, at the time it was something of a sideshow to Isandlwana, where 1,300 British soldiers and around 1,000 Zulu died during one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Local oral tradition still remembers incredibly specific things about the Battle of Isandlwana. One tale is of a British soldier identified as Younghusband, who was one of the last on the field to die. He is said to be remembered for making a last stand against overwhelming odds, until he ran out of ammunition. The crag from which he is believed to have turned and charged into certain death is visible on the battlefield.

The Zulu people are the countrys biggest ethnic group (Getty)

They talk about the rise and fall of the Zulu empire, but the nation never disappeared, says Barry. To this day the Zulus are the biggest ethnic group in South Africa, and KwaZulu-Natal has its own unique culture that sets it apart from the rest of the country. The Zulu monarchy is also still going strong, operating as a ceremonial layer on top of the political system.

I dont know much for sure about what happened to my great, great grandfather  or even which part of the war he fought in  other than that he survived and returned to Wales, presumably for a quiet life.

Travel essentials

Getting there

South African Airlines flies from Heathrow to Durban via Johannesburg from 460 return.

Staying there

Isandlwana Lodge offers rooms from 208 per person per night, full board.

More information

uk.southafrica.net
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The US should stop investigating whether Russia interfered in the countrys presidential election by hacking Democratic Party computers, Donald Trump has suggested.

The President-elect said it was time to get on with our lives rather than try to uncover who was behind a series of election-related cyber-attacks

US intelligence agencies had previously concluded with high confidence that Russia had interfered in the election and had done so in a way designed to favour Mr Trump.

Following the initial findings, President Barack Obama ordered a full investigation into the claims. This subsequent report will be handed to the current President before he leaves office on 20 January.

Mr Trump suggested the investigation should be dropped. He said: We ought to get on with our lives.

I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly whats going on.

We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but Im not sure we have the kind of security we need."

The President-elect made the comments at his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort, where he is spending the Christmas and New Year break while working on filling the last remaining senior positions in his incoming administration.

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

Asked about suggestions made by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who ran against Mr Trump for the partys presidential nomination, that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be personally sanctioned for the cyber-attacks, Mr Trump said: I dont know what hes doing. I havent spoken to Senator Grahamas you know he ran against me.

In the months leading up to the November 8 election, Wikileaks published thousands of leaked documents, including emails sent by Hillary Clintons campaign chair, John Podesta. US officials have suggested the information was handed to the website by the Russian state. Both Wikileaks and Russia deny the allegation.

Mr Trump has repeatedly raised doubts about the security services findings of Russian involvement in the cyber-attacks.

When that conclusion was released, Mr Trumps team attacked US intelligence agencies, referring to them as the same people who said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

He has since called claims of Russian interference ridiculous and said: I dont believe it.

Mr Trumps critics have accused him of being too close to Mr Putin. The pair have repeatedly praised each other and pledged to work more closely together.
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On Christmas Eve, Laura was flying on Norwegian from Gatwick to Oakland, for a well-earned break in California. The plane diverted to Calgary when a passenger became ill, and spent three hours on the Tarmac in a Canadian midwinter.

Such events are unavoidable. But other disruptions are unnecessary. Earlier this year, at Las Vegas airport, a drunk passenger (not Laura) had to be offloaded before the flight departed. That was the relatively easy part. It was also necessary to trace his bag in the hold and remove it, which took considerably longer and resulted in a lunchtime arrival rather than getting home in time for elevenses.

Every excess minute an aircraft remains on a stand costs money. And when passengers miss onward connections, the airline has to assume responsibility for finding fresh flights, and providing meals and accommodation if necessary. (That's assuming the onward trip is part of the same ticket; if not, then the passenger takes the pain.) So there's a keen focus on getting away on time.

On Laura's previous westbound trip, while her plane was waiting for pushback at Gatwick, a fellow passenger was implausibly injured by a laptop that had been insecurely stowed in an overhead bin. When another traveller (not Laura) went to retrieve something just before departure, the computer dropped onto the head of the unsuspecting victim.

The crew immediately summoned paramedics to see if the passenger was well enough to travel; thankfully, she was. But the plane departed late, with the damage that delays inevitably have on onward travel plans or joyful rendezvous.

On all these occasions, the crew did the right thing.

In the Las Vegas incident, it might have been tempting simply to say, Oh, he's drunk and will probably just go to sleep, rather than accepting an annoying and expensive delay.

But the law is clear: passengers must not be intoxicated on a plane. Thats not just because of the risk of air rage (which is usually alcohol-related). Its also to prevent a drunk impeding an emergency evacuation  such the one that took place on the runway at Las Vegas last year, when a Gatwick-bound plane caught fire during the take-off run. Incidentally, the blazing BA Boeing 777 was repaired and is now back in active service; I flew on G-VIIO from Gatwick to Orlando in October, and you wouldnt know that anything had happened to India Oscar.

So, good calls from the cabin crew  at a cost in time for passengers and the airline involved.

Given that no-one wants to be late, what can be done to reduce such apparently random incidents? The short answer: penalise the passengers whose thoughtless behaviour holds everyone up.

The most obvious candidates among the travelling public for paying a penalty are perpetrators of air rage. Disruptive passengers who cause a plane to divert trigger high costs to the airline and inconvenience to their passengers. Offenders are routinely handed over to local police. But criminal prosecutions are rare, partly because airlines are unwilling to see cabin crew and pilots tied up in court cases overseas rather than flying.

Carriers commonly say they will recover costs incurred through the civil courts  which could, with damages running into tens of thousands, be an even more effective deterrent. But I have yet to see serious intent on the part of airlines.

Rather than creating more work for lawyers, there are remedies readily available. Anyone who tries to board a plane drunk should be reunited with their baggage but disconnected from their destination, and obliged to buy a new ticket.

Then there are the people who can't be bothered to get to the gate on time. The airlines don't help, by making fanciful claims that boarding will close 30 or 40 minutes before the appointed departure time. Most passengers know that assertion is tosh, but some respond by planning to turn up with just a couple of minutes to go.

In my experience you need to be at the gate with 20 minutes to spare, just in case it's one of those rare departures where the captain is able to leave earlier than scheduled. Typically, with 10 minutes to go, airlines start searching for the baggage of missing passengers; if the bag turns up before the person, theyre off the plane. Perhaps if airlines spelt out the cost of dawdling in duty-free, fewer passengers would reach the gate to discover they have been offloaded.

That might sound harsh, but airline travellers need to understand that causing a kerfuffle is not cost-free. Whether they are contemplating another drink or have simply left their brain behind along with the cat, they are responsible for the consequences of their actions. And in air travel, those consequences can ripple disruptively and expensively across the world. Just ask Laura.

Well, you'll need to wait until she returns from California (and hope you're not on that flight with her). But when she does, she will become our Head of Travel.

The present holder of that illustrious title, Nicola Trup, is about to spread her wings and spend more time with the world. Nicola will be much missed. I am happy to say, though, she will still be writing inspirational and enlightening travel stories for us in a New Year that, I hope, will be less disrupted than the one the world is leaving in its wake.
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Oh, and by the way, the Prime Minister has resigned. That wasnt quite what the BBC said on 24 June, but almost. Remarkably, David Camerons decision to stand down was relegated to the third item of the BBC News bulletin  behind the vote for Brexit and the ensuing turmoil on global financial markets.

It was a momentous day in a momentous year that also brought us Donald Trumps election as US President; a failed coup against Jeremy Corbyn and the murder of a much-loved Labour MP on the streets of her constituency.

Arguably, Camerons fate was sealed in February, when he returned from Brussels with a threadbare new deal after renegotiating the UKs EU membership terms. Although he won some curbs on benefits claimed by EU migrants, his fellow EU leaders would not let him restrict the number of migrants. So when the referendum came, the Remain camp had very little to say on what became the most salient issue  immigration.

Nigel Farage was frozen out of the official Vote Leave campaign but, after saying it would not join him in playing on public anxiety about immigration, it did precisely that. Farages crude populism, which divided voters, was given a respectable veneer by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the figureheads of Vote Leave. It was a powerful combination, and proved lethal for Cameron. He avoided the immigration issue, calculating that a relentless message on the economic risks of leaving the EU would triumph. It was a catastrophic misjudgement: by 52 to 48 per cent, the British people voted to leave the EU.

 Theresa May makes sweary 'FFS' joke about Boris Johnson

Perhaps we should not have been so surprised. A three-month referendum campaign was never going to turn a 30-year tide of hostile press coverage of the EU. Even Europhiles like Tony Blair missed their moment to sell the EU to the public.

Many voters seized the moment to make an anti-establishment protest after years of wage stagnation and being left behind by globalisation. Some 2.8 million people who voted in the June referendum had not bothered to vote in the 2015 general election. They were missed by the opinion pollsters, who therefore got the referendum wrong.

The result sparked a Shakespearian drama in the Conservative Party. When Cameron bowed to the inevitable and resigned, the front-runner to succeed him was Johnson. Yet there were doubts about his suitability for the top job. Genuinely shaken by his part in Camerons downfall, Johnson failed to focus on the Tory leadership election. Gove, his fellow co-leader of Vote Leave, knifed Boris just before his campaign launch and ran himself. The act of betrayal left Gove without enough support from Tory MPs. Soon Theresa May was the only candidate left standing after her only rival, Andrea Leadsom, self-destructed.

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After expecting a two-month contest against Leadsom, the then Home Secretary had just two days to move into Downing Street. She made Johnson her Foreign Secretary, another of the years great surprises and its quickest comeback. As May purged the Government of Cameron allies, the Eurosceptics David Davis and Liam Fox were also given key jobs implementing Brexit. May, a reluctant Remainer who kept her head down during the referendum battle, tried to win her partys trust by making control of migration her red line in the EU negotiations.

The complexity of Brexit made it a difficult baptism for May. She ended the year without the plan for Brexit demanded by MPs and with the Cabinets crucial decisions put off until the New Year. But May provided stability and reassurance when the country desperately needed it. She and her party were rewarded with a commanding lead in the opinion polls.

The seismic shock of Brexit helped to prepare the ground for another earthquake. Trump, the Republican outsider in the US presidential race against the Washington insider Hillary Clinton, urged Americans to copy Britains independence day and, after his remarkable victory in November, was able to celebrate Brexit plus, plus, plus.

US voters staged their own anti-establishment protest. Although the parallels can be overdone, struggling white working-class voters again felt neglected by the political class: Washington, like Westminster, became a dirty word. Trumps America first policy echoed the nationalist, anti-immigration message of the Leave campaign. He was lucky to have Clinton as his opponent; the Democrats lacked a clear message and failed to connect with working-class people who, like many who voted for Brexit, felt they had nothing to lose by backing Trump.

 Jeremy Corbyn confronts Theresa May on how much social care budget has been cut

Both results were a defeat for the liberal elite which had dominated politics on both sides of the Atlantic. Nationalism triumphed over globalism in a bad year for international bodies. Warnings by the IMF and OECD against Brexit were ignored as voters seemed to agree with Gove that we have had enough of experts. The EU was shaken by the decision by its second largest economy to leave. The future of Nato and international trade deals were called into question by Trumps victory.

In the short term, the arrival of President Trump will have a bigger impact on an uncertain world but he may last for only four years. Whatever form Brexit takes, it will transform the UKs relationship with the EU forever; there will be no going back.

One man who could celebrate both events was Farage  along with May, the one to benefit most in a tumultuous year. Love him or hate him, Farage secured the referendum and then achieved what he went into politics for, a rare triumph. He also advised Trump and the lasting image of 2016 is the grinning faces of the former Ukip leader and President-elect in the golden lift of Trump Tower in New York. The anti-establishment forces were suddenly the new establishment. Farage left the UK Government looking flat-footed after it banked on a Clinton victory  a salutary lesson that nothing could be taken for granted in the new world.

Recommended This is why Theresa May would be wise to call an early election

The shockwaves from the referendum also destabilised Jeremy Corbyn, who fought a half-hearted campaign even though Labour was committed to staying in the EU. The backlash from Labour MPs led to a vote of no confidence in Corbyn and a leadership challenge by Owen Smith. But it was a chaotic, premature coup and Smith, running as a more competent version of Corbyn, failed to woo enough of Labours fast-growing 600,000-strong membership. In September, Corbyn won a bigger mandate than a year earlier, beating his challenger by 62 to 38 per cent.

Labours three-month leadership contest summed up its wasted, inward-looking year and was in sharp contrast to the three weeks it took to install May as Camerons successor. Although Sadiq Khan won the London Mayoralty for Labour in May, he kept his distance from Corbyn. The Labour leader sharpened his act at Prime Ministers Questions but his party made little headway; it often looked irrelevant and invisible, and anything but a government-in-waiting.

For those on the centre left, it was annus horriblis. But there was eventually something to cheer when Liberal Democrats showed they are back in business by winning the Richmond Park by-election in December against the Tory-turned-independent Zac Goldsmith.

Overall, however, it was the year of the populist and politics had a dark side. The attacks and bullying on social media by right and left got nastier. America saw fake news stories such as the claim that the Pope backed Trump. Britain, too, became a less tolerant country; hate crimes rose after the referendum.

The nadir was not Brexit or Trump but the murder in June of Jo Cox, a pro-EU rising Labour star and mother of two young children, outside her constituency surgery in Batley and Spen, Yorkshire. Her political epitaph  we have far more in common with each other than things that divide us  was tested to destruction in 2016. But it provided a ray of light for those hoping that the year was a one-off rather than the start of a dangerous new era.
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Theresa May will enter 2017 in a strong position, comfortably ahead in the opinion polls and still enjoying something of a honeymoon phase. Amid the chaos after the vote for Brexit in June, Ms May brought stability and reassurance when the country desperately needed it. She was the right person to succeed David Cameron.

Yet, almost six months on, we still know remarkably little about our new Prime Minister. Her Conservative leadership campaign was cut short when her rivals fell by the wayside, and she was anointed by Tory MPs without a ballot of the party membership, let alone a mandate from the wider electorate.

So there is a strong case for Ms May to ask the country for such a mandate in 2017. Some Conservatives will urge her to seek a general election for narrow party political advantage, confident of victory against Labour while it is led by Jeremy Corbyn. Ms May seems intent on delaying the election until the next scheduled one in 2020, and would change her mind only if Parliament threatened to block Brexit, which currently looks unlikely.

Yet a general election in the next 12 months would be healthy for our democracy. If the economy worsened and living standards fell, voters might judge that she lacked legitimacy, as Gordon Brown did after ducking an early election in 2007.

 Theresa May left standing on her own at Brussels EU summit

An election would allow the country to make a proper judgement on the most momentous decision facing it since the Second World War. Although some Leave supporters said in media interviews during the referendum campaign that the UK should quit the single European market, it is doubtful whether many voters noticed or understood the implications for the economy. An election campaign would not rerun the referendum but allow the public to make an informed choice between soft and hard Brexit, and the crucial trade-off between controlling immigration and market access. It would force Ms May to decide and then spell out what Brexit really means rather than hide behind the protective shield of EU negotiations, which would not be affected by a UK election as they will not reach a meaningful stage until after the German elections next autumn.

An election victory for Ms May would give her an undisputed mandate for the Brexit she wants and five years to implement the social reforms she wishes to pursue.

Although many Labour MPs fear privately that a 2017 election would be disastrous for their party and themselves, a contest would in some ways be healthy for Labour. It would force the party to come off the fence on Brexit and to resolve the differing lines on immigration coming from its senior figures. An election would also demonstrate whether Mr Corbyn has what it takes to perform at the highest level and can extend his appeal from the faithful to millions of voters.

A 2017 election might not be in Labours interests, but, as Mr Corbyn acknowledged in his interview with The Independent last week, the party could not duck one by using the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (which stipulates an election every five years) to block one.

An early election would certainly suit the Liberal Democrats, and test their appeal to the 48 per cent who voted Remain. The party is back in business after its victory at the Richmond Park by-election but, without a general election, will struggle to remain on the publics radar with just nine MPs. If it secured a handful of additional seats and beat Labour to second place in a number of key constituencies (a real possibility, given their clarity on the matter of Europe), it would be a powerful force in British politics again.

As she weighs her options for the year ahead, Theresa May should consider seriously calling an election that would be in her partys as well as the national interest.
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The claim from Change Britain  the so-called Clean Brexit group  that Britain stands to gain some 450m a week from leaving the EU and its single market should be taken with a degree of scepticism.

It seems that the Vote Leave campaign, which has morphed into this euphemistically named pressure group for hard Brexit, has not changed its misleading ways. It is barely six months since they toured Britain with a bus bearing the misleading message that the country would soon have 350m a week extra to spend on the NHS after Brexit. This was soon abandoned, rescinded and ridiculed out of existence. This new, at best arbitrary, calculation deserves to meet the same fate.

Rather than easily observable closures of plant and measurable job losses  though there will be those too  the most likely consequences of Brexit will be a decades-long loss of investment, job creation and gains in living standards from thousands of decisions by businesses to invest elsewhere rather than the UK, including elsewhere in the EU.

Of course, as the former Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn, now Lord, King remarked, the European project has in some respects been a failure. Yet he knows better than most that Britain remained outside the main failure, the single currency, and staying out of the euro with a floating exchange rate helped the UK make the very best of the single market, a British-driven project. While there will certainly be new trade deals and fresh investment from nations the UK needs to build links to, such as China and India, there is no guarantee that they will be able to make up for lost trade and investment from Brexit, and certainly not rapidly. To do so would require a shredding of protections for workers and consumers  not a price worth paying.

As the incoming Commerce Secretary in the Trump administration remarked this week, Brexit represents a God-given opportunity for rivals to steal business from the UK, especially in financial services, where upstarts from Frankfurt to Cyprus are already courting banks and others. The City of London has formidable strengths, but it has no God-given right to global or even European pre-eminence. When Britain boasted the largest shipbuilding, textile and motorcycle industries in the world there was a similar sense of complacency about British supremacy to that now emanating from the Leave camp about financial services. The car industry, aerospace and even the fishing industry, ironically, are also critically threatened by Brexit. As these hard facts come more sharply into focus there will be irresistible pressure to place before the people the terms of exit from the EU. There must be a parliamentary or popular vote to ratify this massive change, with a debate informed by a much closer idea of the alternatives. We will then see how much poorer we are likely to be, and the voters who did not vote for that on 23 June and some of those who those who voted Leave on 23 June will be able to decide whether their distaste for immigration is sufficient to justify a permanent reduction in living standards for themselves and their families.
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Among the loving tributes to George Michael this week was a touching front page from The Sun that said: You were something special, George. You can see why his death must have been especially upsetting for the newspapers owners and editors, because they adored George so much that he complained that they referred to him as a poof and a pervert. And nothing says you feel someones special as much as calling them a poof and a pervert.

On Christmas morning, Rupert Murdoch probably leaned across to Jerry Hall with a tender kiss and whispered: Happy Christmas my little poofy pervert. I expect Kelvin Mackenzie writes: To my darling pervert, forever my poof, on Christmas cards to his kids.

The Sun went even further when George campaigned against the Iraq War. RIP George Michaels Career: 1982-2002, ran one headline. Presumably this is their way of saying nothing makes you more special and loved than being a poof and a pervert whose career has been waning for some time.

 Celebrity deaths in 2016 from David Bowie to Carrie Fisher

So if Jeremy Corbyn wants to win The Sun over, he should be arrested for cruising in the toilets at Debenhams. Then, at the next election, The Sun will declare: He may not be pervect when it comes to singing the national anthem, but Cocky Corbyn gets our vote for his special perving skills. VOTE LABOUR!

George himself joined in with the banter. When The Suns record of phone hacking was revealed, he remarked: Im glad to see the exposure of Rupert Murdoch, who has tried to ruin so many lives including my own. Which must have been his own endearing way of saying he hoped Murdoch would get away with everything and eventually achieve his aim of owning 100 per cent of Sky.

George Michael: a life in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 George Michael: a life in pictures George Michael: a life in pictures 1982 Wham perform at the Hammersmith Odeon Rex George Michael: a life in pictures 1983 George Micheal and Andrew Ridley perform in concert in June 1983 Rex Features George Michael: a life in pictures 1984 May 1984 Exclusive Photocall with Wham When Their Song 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-go' Hit Number One in the Charts at Bbc Tv Centre George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley Rex Features George Michael: a life in pictures 1985 Ivor Novello Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel, George Michael (songwriter of the Year) and Andrew Ridgeley Rex Features George Michael: a life in pictures 1985 Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael in Tiananmen Square, during their WHAM! in China tour in 1985 Rex Features George Michael: a life in pictures 1986 rank Bruno Boxer 1986 George Michael And Frank Bruno. British And European Heavyweight Champion Frank Bruno Flew Off For A Winning Weekend In Las Vegas Yesterday And Found Himself Sitting Next To George Michael The Wham! Star. Rex Features George Michael: a life in pictures 1986 George Michael is presented with an award by Elton John during the 1986 Brit Awards Rex Features George Michael: a life in pictures 1986 George Michael and Freddie Mercury during a Queen party at the Groucho Club Rex Features George Michael: a life in pictures 1991 WHAM! reunited during the "Rock in Rio" concert in Rio de Janeiro Rex Features George Michael: a life in pictures 1993 George Michael appears outside the high court, a case where micheal fought Sony Music for failing to promote his albumn "Listen without prejudice Vol.1" Rex Features George Michael: a life in pictures 1995 David Frost interviewed George Michael following his Sony contract dispute Rex Features George Michael: a life in pictures 1997 The pop star was visibly moved during the funeral of Princess Diana Rex Features George Michael: a life in pictures 1998 Michael gave a press conference ahead of his public service for aids charity "Angel Food" following his conviction for engaging in a sex act in a public toilet Rex Features George Michael: a life in pictures 2004 George Michael poses at the Sunset Virgin Megastore where he made an apperance to sign copies of his new CD 'Patience' Getty George Michael: a life in pictures 2005 George Michael poses during the photocall of his documentary film 'George Michael - A different Story' by Southan Morris during the 55th Berlin Film Festival Getty George Michael: a life in pictures 2005 Musicians Pete Townhsend from The Who, George Michael and David Gilmour from Pink Floyd perform 'Hey Jude' with children on stage at the finale of 'Live 8 London' in Hyde Park Getty George Michael: a life in pictures 2007 George Michael arrives at Brent Magistrates Court in west London as he faces charges of driving while unfit through drugs. The former Wham! star's legal team had hoped he could be absent from the trial but he was ordered by District Judge Katherine Marshall to appear on the first day Getty George Michael: a life in pictures 2007 George Michael performs the first concert at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium Getty George Michael: a life in pictures 2011 George Michael speaks to the media during a press conference at the Royal Opera House, central London on May 11, 2011. The event was to announce his 'Symphonica' European tour which is set to visit historic venues such as Prague's State Opera House, Paris' Palais Garnier and London's Royal Opera House Getty George Michael: a life in pictures 2012 George Michael performs during the Closing Ceremony on Day 16 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium Getty

Some people have objected that we shouldnt make his death political. And its hard to see why anyone would read anything political into the life of a pop star who campaigned for 30 years for gay rights and was despised by half of America for opposing the Iraq War.

It was the same with Fidel Castro. Most people wanted to make nice comments about his funny little beard and leave posts on Twitter such as, I hope Heaven has plenty of cigars in stock lol #bigloveFidel. But some people had to spoil things by mentioning Cuba and nuclear weapons.

Instead of harping on about his flamboyant views on sexuality, we should remember George through his hit songs, such as I want your sex.

Recommended George Michael taught me that gay sex is nothing to be ashamed of

The difficulty for anyone who wants to remember an unpolitical George is that he did manage to complicate things by expressing anti-establishment opinions. For example, the correct response to being arrested in a public toilet, as written in the official politicians handbook, is to make an announcement at your front gate with your wife and children by your side. I apologise deeply for my moment of madness, you will say. I had eaten three packets of Cheesy Wotsits and the E numbers must have gone to my head  which is why I was dressed in a crotchless pair of Speedo swimming trunks and smothered in Vaseline, having chained myself to a radiator in the urinal while fellating a headmaster at Bristol Temple Meads Railway Station.

Instead, George Michael wrote a song called Outside that began, Take me to the places that I love best. Lets go outside (Im servicing the community), and came with a video of him dressed as a cop in a public toilet. But this probably just referred to his love of picking up litter to keep toilets tidy. What a shame that gay rights activists have twisted it to be a comment on the ridiculous amount of effort and expense that went into his arrest.

George explained his opposition to the Iraq War by saying: If Saddam has to be removed, why did we leave him there for 12 years and at times support him? Why do we leave Ariel Sharon bombing the West Bank while suddenly deciding to take on Saddam?

 George Michael explained his 'self-destructive behaviour' on Desert Island Discs

Thank the Lord we didnt base our foreign policy on that naive, foolish analysis from a pop star, and left important matters to clever people like Tony Blair and George W Bush who understood the situation properly.

He also said he doubted the claims that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, whereas most MPs  with their lifetimes experience of political affairs  understood with their superior judgement you were supposed to realise that two years later, then go: How were we supposed to know?

This must be why The Sun thinks hes special. Tomorrow theyll insist the Careless Whisper lyric: A wasted chance that Ive been given, was a comment on the whole of Tony Blairs rule, and You keep me hanging on like a yo-yo, was a deeply satirical critique of newspaper proprietors who are asked to explain why phones were hacked and then sit there for half an hour unable to recall a single thing theyve ever said to anyone.
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The Government could scarcely be doing more to destabilise and alienate Northern Ireland if it tried. As Theresa Mays Cabinet lurches from one post-Brexit crisis to the next, the Prime Ministers approach is very damaging for the least understood and most maligned corner of the UK.

The region is used to being an afterthought in announcements and mere footnotes in major policy briefings, so it is perhaps best to assume the Governments serious errors are due to ignorance of Northern Irish politics rather than deliberate malice. However, regardless of intention, May shows little understanding of how her actions impact on Northern Ireland.

The Prime Minister looks set to plough ahead with her predecessor David Camerons plans to scrap the Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights  despite the fact that politicians, policy experts, victims of the Troubles and human rights groups have warned that to do this would breach the Good Friday Agreement. A legal bid to try and stop the Prime Minister proceeding is now very likely, The Independent learned this week.

 Theresa May reassures Northern Ireland about Brexit negotiations

The Agreement, which was voted on in referenda in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland before being lodged as an international treaty with the UN, is one of the most significant pieces of legislation in the UK. It was signed after decades of bitter division and bloody disorder. And yet May seems happy to consider it mere collateral damage in her bid to make her party the champion of little Englanders. This is short-sighted and risks the return of serious political unrest in Northern Ireland.

Due to the legacy of the Troubles, Northern Ireland has more immediate need than anywhere else in the UK for a robust, legal human rights framework. Murder inquiries into alleged human rights breaches by paramilitary groups and the British government during the Troubles are continuing to this day, decades after the crimes were committed, as the region pieces together the past and learns from it to secure a stable future.

Recommended This is why Theresa May would be wise to call an early election

Just this month, prosecutors revealed they were considering whether to charge Bloody Sunday soldiers who shot dead innocent civilians in Derry in 1972. A group known as the Hooded Men are also seeking legal action after they allege they were tortured by the British Army in 1971.

Human rights abuses continue in Northern Ireland in the present day. Notably, the abortion ban makes it a criminal offence to have a termination and women can receive life in prison for murder if they do. A 21-year-old woman was tried and convicted there as recently as April this year. The ban has been ruled by Belfast High Court to be a breach of international human rights law. Yet local politicians, emboldened by British silence on human rights, have kept the ban. As the desperate and degrading situation continues, a challenge from international human rights bodies is Northern Irish womens only hope of changing the law.

There have been other political gaffes. Last week, in a move of characteristic short-sightedness, Communities Minister Sajid Javid announced he is considering a British values oath for public sector workers. Such a move would be deeply damaging and divisive in Northern Ireland, where many Unionists (predominantly members of the Protestant community) identify as British and many Nationalists (predominantly members of the Catholic community) reject a British identity and instead identify as Irish.

 Abortion protest in Derry

Northern Ireland has been ignored for successive Governments since Tony Blair left office in 2007, but the matter is spinning out of control in the aftermath of the EU referendum. Despite sharing a border with another EU country and only recently emerging from a peace process after decades of conflict, Northern Ireland has hardly featured at all in the debates over Brexit.

More than six months after the UK voted to leave the EU, Northern Irelands future still lies in Brexit limbo. Whether a deeply controversial physical border will now have to be erected between the North and South of Ireland still remains unknown, as does the future of EU peace money which funds cross-community projects to bring disadvantaged Catholic and Protestant people together.

Northern Ireland cannot simply be an afterthought for Theresa May. Whether she is demonstrating reckless disregard or outright ignorance, her policies are not only insulting or damaging but, in the case of human rights reform, they appear outright illegal.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

Trend:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed with the Defense Ministrys proposal for reducing military presence in Syria, TASS news agency reported.

"I agree with the Defense Ministrys idea to cut military presence in the Syrian Republic," Putin said at a meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Putin stated that Russia will "unconditionally continue the struggle against international terrorism and furnish support for the legitimate Syrian government in its struggle with terrorism."

"It goes without saying that we will stand by the agreements that have been achieved, including the development of the Russian military logistic facilities in Tartus and at the Hmeymim airdrome," he said.
The Coast Guard co-ordinated responses to 2,500 incidents from its main bases in 2016

More than 400 lives were saved during sea rescues this year, the Coast Guard has said.

The rescue missions were among 2,500 incidents co-ordinated from the agency's main bases at Dublin, Malin, Co Donegal, and Valentia, Co Kerry.

At the end of 2016, the Coast Guard also warned of an increase in kayaking and surfing-related incidents.

It was called out to 45 kayaking and surfing incidents during the year.

The year also saw tragedy strike the rescue service, with the loss of volunteer Caitriona Lucas, who died during a search operation off Kilkee, Co Clare, in September.

She was the first volunteer member to lose her life on operational service.

The Coast Guard said the death had "cast a dark shadow" over all its activities.

Also during the year, the Coast Guard:

:: Transferred nine patients to the UK for emergency procedures mainly relating to organ transplant

:: Conducted 20 long-range offshore missions involving casualty evacuations more 100 miles from land

:: Flew on 23 suspected pollution investigation missions arising from satellite-based reports

:: Participated in 86 mountain rescue missions

In relation to drowning, the Coast Guard said men remained the most likely victims, with preliminary reports showing that well over half of people needing rescue were not wearing lifejackets.

Eugene Clonan, acting Coast Guard director, thanked all staff and volunteers involved in missions during 2016.

"Sadly, at this time we remember the family of Caitriona Lucas and recall Caitriona as a person who so embodied the volunteer ethos," he added.
The Obama Administration has announced it is taking action against what it calls the European Unions (EU) unfair trade practices that it says discriminate against US beef imports.

Acting on the request of the U.S. beef industry, the US has scheduled a public hearing and is seeking public comments in connection with the EUs ban on most U.S. beef products.

It says the EUs ban on U.S. beef is not based on sound science and discriminates against American beef farmers, ranchers, and producers.

If the trade action resumes, the United States would reinstate industry-supported tariffs on a list of EU products imported into the United States.

"The WTO determined that the European Union's ban on US beef imports violates its international trade obligations," said Ambassador Froman.

"The EU has failed to live up to assurances to address this issue, and it's now time to take action.

The action holds the EU accountable and is an important step in encouraging the Commission to come back to the table to ensure that American ranchers have access to Europe's market and that European consumers have better access to high-quality US beef," he said

Ban

In 1998, the EU lost a case at the WTO for banning American beef. In 2009, the U.S. negotiated an agreement to allow a modest degree of market access for specially-produced beef that meets the EU's standards, but it says that agreement has not worked as intended due to competition from non-US suppliers.

The European Commission had argued that this issue should be resolved through TTIP.

However, given that European officials decided after their trade minister's meeting in September not to complete TTIP this year, the US has decided that now is the time to take action.

The U.S. beef industry exports an average $6 billion per year. These exports produce an estimated $7.6 billion in economic activity and support 50,000 jobs nationwide.

"American ranchers raise some of the best beef on the planet, but restrictive European Union policies continue to deny EU consumers access to US beef at affordable prices.

For several years we have been asking the EU to fix an agreement that is clearly broken, despite its original promise to provide a favourable market for U.S. beef, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Food Standards

The Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed said recently that a number of key issues in regard arise in relation to US food standards and hormone treated.

All of these arose in the recent negotiations with Canada for a Free Trade Agreement and were resolved, and I believe they will also be capable of being resolved in TTIP.

We have made the point, and I am confident that it is shared by the European Commission and other Member States, that the principle of equivalence must continue to apply so that, even where food production processes in the EU and US are not identical, they will provide equivalent guarantees regarding the standards of production.

This principle is already enshrined under the World Trade Organisation Agreement on Agriculture, and is also recognised by both sides as the basis for a TTIP agreement, he said.

Equally, he said it is important that both the EU and United States retain the policy space to restrict certain practices and processes on social and ethical grounds, and this is also recognised, in principle, by both sides.

For example, he said the EU Commission has made it clear that it will not allow the importation of hormone treated meat into the EU, and this is well understood by the US side
Germany's finance ministry expressed concern yesterday about Italian plans to rescue the country's third biggest lender Monte dei Paschi di Siena, saying Rome must stick to European rules.

"The European Central Bank and European Commission must check and make sure that Italian authorities stick to the European rules," a ministry spokesman said.

He also said a precautionary state recapitalisation of banks can only be part of a solution in exceptional cases and under strict conditions and that owners and creditors must be among the first to suffer losses.

The bank must be solvent, he added, and state money must not be used to cover losses.

"These rules must not be circumvented," he said. The ECB had said earlier this week that Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena needs about 8.8bn to bolster its balance sheet, almost twice the amount the Italian lender had sought to raise in a failed capital increase.

The calculation is based on the results of a 2016 stress test, the Italian bank said in a statement, citing two letters from the ECB. While the ECB saw worsening liquidity at Monte Paschi recently it still considers the bank to be solvent.

The lender is seeking additional information on the ECB's calculations.

The Italian government said last Friday it will plough as much as 20bn into Monte Paschi and other banks after the lender failed in its plan to raise about 5bn from the market. (Bloomberg/agencies)
President Michael D Higgins led the tributes to 'master of long poem' Anthony Cronin, after the literary genius died at the age of 88.

Cronin - a columnist for the Sunday Independent - was also a novelist, memoirist, biographer, critic and cultural activist.

Expand Close Anthony Cronin. Photo: Tony Gavin / Facebook

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Having spent time in hospital recently, he is understood to have returned home to his wife for Christmas, but died in the early hours of yesterday morning.

Cronin's legacy includes heavy involvement in the creation of 'Bloomsday' - a celebration of James Joyce - along with the highly acclaimed novel 'The Life of Riley'.

Immense

He also served as a cultural adviser to former taoiseach Charlie Haughey.

President Higgins said he was saddened at the passing of a friend.

"I have learned with great sorrow of the passing of Anthony Cronin, poet, novelist, biographer of Samuel Beckett, essayist and critic," Mr Higgins said.

"A master of the long poem and faithful to the scholarly tradition of understanding the poem, the poet and history, Anthony Cronin made an immense contribution to Irish life and sensibility."

The president also commended Cronin for his role in establishing the Aosdana - the Irish association of artists - in 1981. He became chairperson of the association in 1993.

Chair of the Arts Council Sheila Pratschke said Cronin was "a rare example of the public intellectual in Irish life".

"Appalled by the penury faced by so many senior Irish artists in their later years, he persuaded then taoiseach Charles Haughey, to whom he was cultural adviser, to establish Aosdana," she said.

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Sunday Independent editor Cormac Bourke said the newspaper would be printing his final selection of poetry this weekend.

"Anthony Cronin was a poet and philosopher; he was an intellectual powerhouse of the 20th century," he said.

"One of the must influential culture figures in modern Ireland, he was a regular contributor to the Sunday Independent across three decades, including his popular weekly poetry column.

"We will be proud to publish his final selection for that column this Sunday.

"Our deepest condolences to his wife Anne and daughter Sarah - and his many colleagues and friends."

Arts Minister Heather Humphries commended Cronin's "cultural activism" in Ireland and his representation of artists.

"I was very sorry to hear today of the passing of Anthony Cronin," she said.

"Anthony loomed large in Ireland's cultural life, both as a prolific poet and an acclaimed author."
So, if we tell you that this was originally produced a couple of years ago for the Hallmark Channel you might get some sense of the diabetes-inducing sweetness and sentimentality it contains but, really, would you prefer that or someone crying into a drink on EastEnders? We'll take Mimi any day.

The one-hour musical special features outstanding performances of Christmas songs by the one woman meme machine herself - Mariah Carey - including a duet with 11-time Grammy Award winner Kenny 'Babyface' Edmonds.

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Emmy-award winner Kelsey Grammer gives an unforgettable reading of 'The Night Before Christmas'. Billy Gardell (Mike & Molly) appears as Santa Claus. Additionally, cast members from A Christmas Melody - Lacey Chabert, Brennan Elliott and Fina Strazza - join the celebrations, sharing holiday memories and experiences from working with Mariah on-set during production of the movie. Just let it wash over you.

A Very Murray Christmas

Available now

Is there anyone who doesn't like Bill Murray and if so, what's wrong with them? Who else does deadpan, cynical and humane all in one raised eyebrow? This film explores the schizophrenic nature of Christmas - is it an orgy of consumerism, a religious holiday or an annual chance to be tortured by your family? The premise: Bill Murray, playing himself or an approximate version (we're left guessing), has signed on to do one of those celebrity extravaganzas (see above), this particular one set at the Carlyle Hotel in New York, on Christmas Eve. He does not want to do the show. This is mostly because he thinks it's all a bit ridiculous, but also because, apparently, he is racked with holiday ennui. We are meant to understand this because A Very Murray Christmas's opening musical number features Murray, bedecked in a tux and an antler headband, crooning Christmas Blues, Bing Crosby style, as Paul Shaffer accompanies him on the piano. And because Murray announces to his producers that "I feel so alone" and also that "God hates me". It's a film for everyone who has trouble stomaching the festive season in any of its guises, yet secretly longs for that one moment of Yuletide magic.

The Royle Family: Christmas Special 2000

Available now

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With due respect to Bowie and Leonard Cohen, Caroline Aherne was one of the biggest celebrity losses of 2016. This unassuming and troubled writer and performer tore up the comedy rule book with her performances in Mrs Merton and The Royle Family. Years before anyone thought of Gogglebox Aherne knew that the simple conceit of a family sitting around and listlessly commenting on the silliness of television would make for some brilliant comedy.

The Royle Family would have been a very different show if the TV execs had got their way. They wanted a studio audience or laughter track - Aherne rejected it. They wanted to have bigger, more obvious storylines - Aherne again rejected it. And they wanted to take the show out of the Royle's living room and set it in different locations - but once again Aherne stood up to the suits.

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Interestingly, this was meant to be the last-ever episode of The Royle Family because Aherne was planning to move abroad from Britain because of the stress which her fame and her personal life was causing her. But the show returned a couple of more times with 'one-off' specials.

Blackadder's Christmas Carol

Available now

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Dickens'S classic tale of kindness, truth and virtue is given the antic Blackadder take. It turns the story on its head by having Scrooge start out all lovely and generous - an easy target for moochers - and ending up happily transforming into the oul miser that Dickens imagined.

Stuffed with deeply unpleasant people (many of whom are enormously fat) and heaving with oodles of seasonal bottom jokes, it manages to squeeze in not only a Victorian Blackadder but also his famous Elizabethan, Regency and Space Age relatives into a huge Christmas cake of comedy, that will satisfy all but the most humour-impaired viewers.

Catch up now

Emily Hourican

Ireland's Fittest Family

RTE Player, until December 28, series 4

Some of the best-fun family viewing around. This is the one we're glued to in our house. Watch the toughest, fittest families in Ireland battle it out across impossible courses that include tyre-pulls, bog runs, sprints, and the kind of wall-scaling that isn't possible without serious SAS-style training. Over the course of four series, I'm beginning to work out that those with a GAA background are the ones to watch...

Best of all is seeing the ways in which the families pull together - or not - and watching how they deal with challenge and failure. The emergence of unexpected heroes (here's a tip - this year, the women have it, in spades!) keeps the excitement mounting towards the muddy, gruelling grande finale. Plenty of scope for speculation as to how you might manage in their place, not to mention recreating some of the more manageable tasks at home (try 'Hanging Tough' for a real stretch). Everyone's a winner.

In Plain Sight

UTV Player, until January 6

This is part of a spate of crime dramas based on real, if distant, murder cases. Dark Angel explored the story of Mary Ann Cotton, who murdered her husband and several children in Victorian England. Then there was the gripping Rillington Place, with a new perspective on the John Christie murders of the 1940s and 1950s. Now it's In Plain Sight, which deals with Peter Manuel, a Scottish serial killer from the 1950s who killed at least eight people.

Martin Compston is Manuel, an arrogant, delusional sadist, with Douglas Henshall as William Muncie, the decent, idealistic detective inspector trying to chase down a man he knows is evil so that the justice in which he so firmly believes, can triumph. Around them, the life of a small rural town carries on, as its inhabitants slowly try to get to grips with the growing menace in their midst. Excellent direction, plotting and acting, and the perfect antidote to some of the more schmaltzy Christmas offerings.

Podcasts

Emily Hourican

Mayo Boy, Vietnam Hero

www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/2016/1202/835992-mayo-boy-vietnam-hero

This fascinating documentary traces the story of Patrick Bob Gallagher, who grew up near Ballyhaunis in rural county Mayo and emigrated to the United States in the early 1960s. He joined the US Marine Corps, and was stationed in Vietnam during some of the most intense fighting of the war.

Patrick was just 23 years old and a Marine Corporal when he was killed on duty in southeast Asia. Just before he died, Patrick was awarded a Navy Cross, the second highest honour in the US military. The documentary is made by Kathy Raftery, whose mother knew Patrick growing up in Ballyhaunis, which gives the story a very touching and personal edge. She talks to people who knew Patrick, his family and comrades, and hears about the extraordinary act of bravery that warranted him receiving a Navy Cross. Such was Patricks heroism that family and friends have now started a campaign to have a US services vessel named after him.

Longform

www.longform.org/podcast

This podcast tells the stories behind the stories, taking as starting points the kind of longform non-fiction pieces that are the best kind of journalism, and discussing them in detail. Hosts Aaron Lammer, Max Linsky and Evan Ratliff talk to authors and editors, about what they have written and why. A quick browse through the site will show plenty of interest- Jason Zengerles piece on Henry Heimlich, who invented the life-saving technique for choke victims named after him, a history of the first African-American President, nine ways to oppose Donald Trump, and far more.
The coast guard saved 405 lives in 2016, and responded to more than 3,000 incidents.

This year brave volunteer Caitriona Lucas became the first coast guard member to lose her life in the line of duty.

Ms Lucas, an active member of the Doolin coast guard in Co Clare, was part of a search and rescue operation when she lost her life in September.

Her tragic death cast a dark shadow over all Coast Guard activities according to the Irish Coast Guard, as the service released details of all of rescue missions and operations carried out this year.

Irish coast guard members attended some 2,500 incidents through the coast guards three Marine Rescue Coordination Centres based in Valentia, Malin and its Dublin HQ.

Volunteers nationwide also responded to 1,042 incidents.

A total of 405 people who were rescued or assisted were categorised as lives saved on the basis that the intervention precluded loss of life or severe risk of loss of life according to the group.

The organistaion said that technology including Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) and Electronic Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRBs) were responsible for directly saving the lives of five people.

One of these incidents related to a Coast Guard helicopter rescue of a lone yachtsman, whose yacht had overturned, 20 miles south of Co Wexford.

A second related to the location and recovery of three fishermen whose vessel had sunk.

The third incident concerned the location of a single crewed yacht which had become dis-masted off the Coast and was subsequently towed to Castletownbere, Co Cork.

Air support also attended a number of medical incidents, including 258 occasions where the coast guard assisted the HSE or the National Ambulance service.

The service also carried out 61 patient transfers from offshore islands and transferred nine patients to UK for emergency procedures mainly relating to organ transplant.

In relation to drowning, the Coast Guard said men remained the most likely victims, with preliminary reports showing that well over half of people needing rescue were not wearing lifejackets.

Eugene Clonan, acting Coast Guard director, thanked all staff and volunteers involved in missions during 2016.

"Sadly, at this time we remember the family of Caitriona Lucas and recall Caitriona as a person who so embodied the volunteer ethos," he added.

The coast guard has appealed to the public to be water safety aware and will continue to work with schools to encourage people to use life jackets.

Next year will see the launch of a safety message based on the importance of retaining the ability to stay afloat coupled with a capacity to raise the alarm utilising the theme Stay Afloat  Stay in Contact according to the organisation.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 29

Trend:

David Cameron is being lined up as a contender to be the next secretary general of NATO, the Daily Mail reported Dec. 29.

Officials believe the former prime minister is the most likely candidate to be successful if Theresa May wants to get a Briton appointed to Europe's top defence job.

It comes with a tax-free salary of 260,624 euros (222,019), although Mr Cameron is thought to be earning up to 2,000 a minute on the lucrative speaking tour circuit after stepping down as an MP after 15 years in September.

Following the Brexit vote Britain has pledged to play a greater role in the US-led military alliance.

The current Nato boss, former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, will finish his term in either 2018 or 2019.

Britain has held the position three times, with Lord Ismay serving as the first secretary general from 1952 to 1957, then Lord Carrington from 1984 to 1988 and Lord Robertson from 1999 to 2003. But advisers think Britain's best chances of securing the leadership again are to put forward an ex-PM as more recently former prime ministers have won out over foreign or defense ministers.
Retiring Limerick State Solicitor Michael Murray has warned that the city's murderous feud could erupt again at the slightest notice.

For the past 36 years, Mr Murray has risked his life as senior gang members were prosecuted, convicted and then jailed.

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However, as he prepares for retirement in the new year, Mr Murray (69) said serious challenges remained for his successor.

"I look around Limerick city today - the feud hasn't gone away, and it wouldn't take too much to reignite it," he said.

"The gardai have to remain vigilant, but they are more than a match for the feuding parties. In my time they've been excellent," he added, paying tribute to gardai who toppled the gangs.

Mr Murray, from the Ennis Road, knows only too well the perils that come with his title. His offices have been the subject of three arson attacks, he has been followed by criminals and has had the tyres of his car slashed in other acts of intimidation.

At one point, he was advised by gardai to carry a gun on his person.

Speaking to the 'Limerick Life' newspaper, he said: "There was a period of years when there was a lot of tension. I had to be security- conscious but I had to suck it up.

"I was fortunate to have good back-up, and I had the confidence in the security arrangements. I also had the mental resolve not to let it affect me."

The solicitor, who holds a shotgun licence, even received training in the use of handguns after threats against him intensified. However, he said he refused to carry a weapon on him at work.

"I felt carrying a firearm would have been upping the ante," he said.

The challenges faced by gardai and by Mr Murray at the height of the notorious Limerick gang feud cannot be overstated.

Up to 20 men were murdered. Many were involved in the feud, but some innocents were caught up in the crossfire, including rugby player Shane Geoghegan and businessman Roy Collins.

Their deaths served as a low point in the city's bloody feud, but also a turning point as brave citizens took a stand against the gangs. "The policing plan had to be vigorous and speedy, and I had to match the garda activity, make sure this was all done promptly. It became a huge ministry," Mr Murray said.

"It was a huge team effort between my office and the gardai. We feel we both did a good service and that no balls were dropped."

Peace has now been restored to Limerick's streets, but the threat posed by a new generation of gangsters remains.

Mr Murray will step down as State Solicitor for Limerick on April 30. He said he intended to continue as a solicitor in a private capacity, working with his daughter, Aisling.

"It'll be hard to let go," he said.
The latest murder in the bloody Kinahan-Hutch gang feud was fully captured on high-quality CCTV at the victims home.

A massive garda investigation is continuing into last Thursdays gun slaying of Noel Duck Egg Kirwan (62)  the 11th murder in the feud between the Kinahan cartel and associates of Gerry The Monk Hutch.

Last night, sources revealed that gardai have obtained high-quality CCTV of the murder taking place from cameras installed at the victims home.

The CCTV system at Kirwans house on St Ronans Drive in Clondalkin was upgraded when gardai formally notified him of a threat against his life after he accompanied Hutch to the funeral of his brother, Eddie Hutch Snr, last February.

Officers are examining every aspect of the CCTV footage in a bid to identify those responsible and their movements before, during and after the murder.

It is not yet known if the killers attempted to disguise themselves.

Gardai investigating the murder are hoping that arrests will soon be made.

Kirwan moved out of the Summerhill area of the north inner city to Kilbarrack several years ago and had been was living with his partner, Bernadette Murray, in Ronanstown in recent years.

Ms Murray had a lucky escape as the killer, who had been lying in wait, opened fire when the couple were sitting in their car at 5.10pm.

A small van believed to have been used in the shooting was found burnt out at Neilstown Shopping Centre a short time later.

Several shots were fired at Kirwan before the assailant ran off and escaped in the getaway vehicle, which was driven by an accomplice.

Kirwan spent his final few hours at the funeral of a close associate in Finglas before making his way home.

Sources have revealed that specialist gardai will formally interview a number of Kirwans closest associates under caution in the coming days.

Read more: Murder victim Kirwan tried to mediate with Kinahans and paid with his life - now associate is plotting revenge

The aim of this is to get a clear picture of exactly what disputes the victim had been involved in during his last few weeks alive, a source said.

Sources said officers are investigating whether Kirwan had been involved in a row with an older associate of an out-of-control thug from Dublins south inner city, who is a member of the Kinahan cartel.

The Herald previously revealed that gardai were investigating if Kirwan was shot dead after trying to mediate in a dispute between the Kinahan cartel and their own mob banker.

Kirwan attempted to prevent the cartel from carrying out an attack on the gangland banker, who also works for the Hutch mob.

The Kinahan outfit had previously attempted a hit on the gangland moneyman at his home on November 23, without success.

Nobody was injured during the gun attack, but gardai believe it was an attempt to seriously harm or kill the banker.

This individual has no previous convictions but is suspected of involvement in the financial aspect of the Hutch and Kinahan gangs.

Following the attack, Kirwan tried prevent further attacks on his banker pal.

Gardai believe this failed bid to reason with the cartel could be the reason why Kirwan was shot dead.

Kirwan was a childhood friend of The Monk and was a prominent anti-drugs campaigner in the north inner city during the 1990s.

He was also a close friend of James Jaws Byrne (69), the father of slain Kinahan gangster David Byrne.
Interventions by armed members of the Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau have prevented a spate of fresh attacks by gunmen linked to the Kinahan crime cartel since David Byrne was shot dead last February. Photo: Collins

Gardai have saved at least 15 lives during the savage Kinahan-Hutch feud, despite the bloodshed of the past 10 months.

Interventions by armed members of the Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau have prevented a spate of fresh attacks by gunmen linked to the Kinahan crime cartel since one of its members, David Byrne, was shot dead at the Regency Hotel on the northside of Dublin last February.

The one-sided feud has claimed 11 lives since it erupted in the Costa del Sol in Spain with the murder of Gary Hutch in September last year.

"As a result of either interceptions or disruptive tactics, we are satisfied we have prevented the deaths of at least 15 targeted figures," said one of the senior officers in the bureau, Det Supt Tony Howard.

"This has meant that monitoring and patrolling in the key neighbourhoods still remains and we have identified most of the main players."

The bureau has seized 18 guns, including assault rifles, sub-machine guns and semi-automatic pistols, and almost 1,200 rounds of ammunition. At least half of those weapons can be linked to the feud.

Read more: Elite gardai to patrol city streets to prevent further bloodshed in Hutch-Kinahan feud

Gardai point out that the feud is not a straightforward geographical crime fight with northside (Hutch gang) versus southside (Kinahan faction).

The Kinahan crew, who congregate in the south inner city if they are not overseas, has informants in the Hutch heartland in the north inner city with small local criminal units aligning themselves with the powerful cartel.

This has meant that associates and innocent members of the Hutch family cannot feel safe, even in their own neighbourhoods and communities. Last week, Noel Kirwan, a long-time friend of Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch, was gunned down in Clondalkin.

But since the bureau was formed through the amalgamation of the national drugs unit and the organised crime unit in March last year, officers have seized 39 firearms.

During that time the bureau has confiscated 2.1m in cash, suspected to be the proceeds of either money laundering or drug trafficking. In one incident on the M1 motorway, officers stopped a vehicle and seized 400,000 in cash. A file has been sent to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The bureau works closely with Customs in combating drugs and has to date seized hauls worth 22m. These include cannabis worth 8m, heroin and cocaine and 100,000 ecstasy tablets worth about 1m.
Mr Halligan said he was 'delighted' at the figures for female participation in tech courses. Photo: Tom Burke

Government-backed training courses saw 80pc of those who participants leave the live register over four years, a new report has found.

Meanwhile, Skills Minister John Halligan hailed the number of women in Springboard+ linked technology training schemes.

New figures showed that 27pc of participants in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) courses applied for through Springboard+ were women.

That was almost double the 15pc proportion accounted for by women in courses where students go through the CAO in a sector that traditionally struggles to increase female participation.

Mr Halligan said he was "delighted" at the figures for female participation in tech courses.

"We need to build on this success in the coming years," he said.

The sector provided "great job opportunities" and he pointed to data that showed ICT skills graduates had the highest employment rate - 73pc - after three to six months following graduation in 2014.

The statistics on female participation came in a report on the 113m Springboard+ scheme between 2011 and 2016 entitled 'Developing Talent, Changing Lives'.

The project, co-funded by the Irish Government and the European Social Fund, has seen more than 30,000 course places filled - in 1,349 different topics - in the last five years.

The report found that 80pc of Springboard+ participants between 2011 and 2015 were no longer on the live register.

Overall employment rates up to six months after graduation had increased from 37pc in 2011 to 61pc in 2014.

The initiative had also supported access to lifelong learning and reskilling opportunities, with 63pc of participants aged between 30 and 49 and 10pc aged 50 to 65.

"Springboard+ is a great example of education providers and employers working together to develop the talent required in the economy and changing people's lives by giving them the chance to reskill to gain employment," Mr Halligan said.
Actor Rory Cowan has described abuse he received on social media network Twitter as quick and vicious.

The much-loved Dubliner said he received abusive tweets from several accounts after he attended the Crumlin Ward Walk at the Crumlin Childrens Hospital before Christmas.

It was the strangest thing at how quick and vicious it happened, he told RTE Radio Ones Today with Sean ORourke programme.

I replied to a tweet and before I knew it, I was being accused of being a molester.

People were saying here Rory, leave the kids alone, Rory will fix it and Id take my kid out of hospital if it was being met with celebs like you.

Cowan, who plays Rory Brown in the hit RTE show Mrs Browns Boys, described his shock at the torrent of abuse.

He said he normally reacts to critical tweets like water off a ducks back, but was surprised at how offensive the messages were.

I should have ignored them. There were a few accounts and it seems they were all feeding each other.

In the end, I thought I had to get on to my solicitor about this, it was taking on a life of its own.

I was actually sick to my stomach, he continued.

Read More

I couldnt believe what was coming in and so quick and all because of one response I have to a tweet. It was like a kick in the stomach.

Cowan said his solicitor is now dealing with the matter and they are on a mission to find the people behind the accounts before they report the issue to the gardai.

This is something thats completely new to me, I dont know whats going to happen.

Theres no point in involving the guards if we cant find out who these people are. I dont want to go down to the police and say, Im a victim, you dont know where this is coming from, it could be from the UK or abroad.

He said Twitter should be a fun thing, but now he thinks he will hold back from engaging with people on the network.

Im not going to engage anymore. Ill certainly think very carefully about responding, or even what Im writing myself.

It should be no problem but unfortunately, there are people out there whove accused me of the vilest things.

I will stay on it, I like it. When youve nothing to do you go on Twitter, he laughed.

If youre waiting on your TV programmes or the tea to happen.

But I wont be engaging as much with people anymore, he added.
The scene of the incident and Mary Bermingham and Gary Fenton inset.

A naval service veteran who miraculously escaped death along with his partner and her four children in an horrific head on collision faces spending much of the New Year in hospital.

Gary Fenton (35) revealed in a social media post that it will be weeks before he is able to walk again  and he then faces months in rehabilitation.

Mr Fentons update on his condition came as he contacted car maker, Citroen, to say he owes them his life after surviving a horror crash thanks to the safety features on his French-built car.

Mr Fenton said he is convinced that, but for the multiple safety features on his 2011 Citroen C4 Picasso, he might not have survived the head-on collision in Waterford on December 4 along with his partner, Mary Bermingham (37) and her four children, aged from six to 14 years.

Three young men travelling in the other vehicle involved, a small hatchback, died when it exploded in a fireball seconds after the collision.

Such was the intensity of the resultant blaze that all three had to be identified from dental records and DNA.

The dead were Eamon Dixon (22), Michael Tobin (38), both from Dungarvan,and Ken OSullivan( 39) from Cork.

The tragedy remains the focus of a major Garda investigation.

Moving tributes were paid to all three young men who died in the collision.

Mr Dixons mother, Lorraine, posted a special Facebook tribute to her son. My beautiful handsome boy. (We are) devastated beyond words. You were my first born - if I could have u back is all I want, she posted.

The crash sparked one of the biggest emergency service operations in recent years in Waterford with Gardai, Dungarvan fire brigade, Civil Defence, Irish Coast Guard and the Defence Forces responding.

Some of the injured were airlifted to Cork and Waterford hospitals by Irish Coast Guard and Air Corps helicopters.

Mr Fenton, based in Cobh, Co Cork with the Naval Service, was driving his Citroen people carrier to Waterford so his partners children could see the Winterval Christmas festival.

The collision occurred on the Military Road some 5km outside Dungarvan shortly after 9am on December 4.

Mr Fenton, in a Facebook post from his hospital bed, paid tribute to Citroen for the high safety specifications of their cars.

My sincere gratitude to Citroen, he wrote. I was driving a 2011 C4 Grand Picasso which I purchased in Cork. I fully believe that because I was driving this car the six of us survived.

The occupants of the other car were less fortunate. What I also find astounding is the children had very minor or no injuries at all.

However, myself and my partner fared the worst. We are currently in Cork University Hospital (CUH) with severe injuries.

It will be another six weeks at least before we can walk, but we are alive and will get better. So I just want to display my gratitude to Citroen for building one of the safest cars in the world in my view. So (this is) just a post to say thank you.

Citroen Ireland said they were delighted with his comments and wished him and his family a speedy recovery.

Your story (is) not about the C4 Picasso but much more importantly it is about you, your partner and her four precious children, the French car manufacturer posted.

We are so glad to hear that all the children managed to escape injury, and wishing you and your partner a speedy and complete recovery.

Wishing you safe driving in 2017 and health and happiness for you and your family.

Mr Fenton admitted he wont be driving for a while but said he feels the French car manufacturer and the safety levels of their vehicles deserve special mention.

I just wanted to display my gratitude as that car saved our lives, he posted.
Dublin Fire Brigade attended fire at the Ballyfermot substation on Blackditch Road on Wednesday evening

Local residents will be left without power for more than 24 hours following a fire at an ESB substation.

Dublin Fire Brigade attended a fire at the Ballyfermot substation on Blackditch Road at approximately 6.30pm yesterday evening.

Two pumps attended the scene for almost two hours and efforts were made to restore power in the area.

ESB have apologised to customers and estimate that residents will have power again at approximately 8pm this evening.

DUBLIN: Traffic lights are out of action at the Ballyfermot Rd/ Blackditch Drive jct due to a power cut in the area. https://t.co/qvBPcgxUj8  AA Roadwatch (@aaroadwatch) December 28, 2016

"We apologise for the loss of supply. We are currently working to repair a fault affecting your premises and will restore power as quickly as possible," they wrote online.

Approximately 382 customers are affected by the blackout, which is located to the west of Fanu Park in Ballyfermot.

AA Roadwatch have warned motorists that traffic lights on the Ballyfermot Road/Blackditch Drive are out of action as a result.

ESB customers can stay updated with the power status here.
A man was rushed to hospital after suffering serious hand injuries in an assault on Wednesday evening.

The victim, who is in his 20s, was set upon and assaulted in Mill Lane, Clondalkin in West Dublin at around 5pm.

It is believed that the man was attacked with a weapon, possibly a hatchet, during the sustained attack.

Gardai believe that at one point he attempted to protect his face but was struck in the hands with the weapon.

He also suffered head injuries in the assault.

Emergency services were called to the scene and the man was taken by ambulance to Tallaght Hospital.

Gardai arrived after the victim was brought to hospital.

No arrests have been made and gardai in Clondalkin are investigating the incident.
04:13 (GMT+4) Brazilian police suspect a body discovered inside a charred vehicle in Rio de Janeiro is Greece's ambassador to Brazil who went missing three days ago, television channel Globo reported on Thursday.

A police spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment, Reuters reported.

Ambassador Kyriakos Amiridis, 59, was last seen Monday evening leaving the home of friends of his Brazilian wife in a poor and violent suburb of Rio's metropolitan area, police had said earlier on Thursday.

A Rio state police official said the ambassador's wife reported him as missing on Wednesday.

Globo showed images of the burned-out white car in the Nova Iguacu neighborhood where the ambassador went missing. The station reported that the license plates on the car matched those of Amiridis' rental vehicle.

An official at the Greek Embassy in Brasilia would not confirm the ambassador was missing, saying only that he was on vacation in Rio and expected to return to Brasilia on Jan. 9.

Rio police inspector Evaristo Pontes had earlier told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper that he did not believe the ambassador was kidnapped.

"We're following some leads, but not that one. If it had been (a kidnapping), those who took him would have made contact by now," he said.

Amiridis previously served as Greece's consul general in Rio from 2001 to 2004.

More recently he was Greece's ambassador to Libya from 2012 until he took the top Brazil post at the beginning of 2016.

Brazil's Foreign Ministry said it had no comment on the case, other than to say it was being fully pursued by police.

In Athens, Greece's Foreign Ministry had no comment.

21:39 (GMT+4) Rio de Janeiro police said on Thursday that they are investigating the disappearance of Greece's ambassador to Brazil, AP reported.

Kyriakos Amiridis was last seen Monday night, the police said in a statement. A police spokeswoman later told The Associated Press that a family member reported him missing in the city of Nova Iguacu, 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Rio.

Neither Greece's embassy in capital of Brasilia nor the Greek consulate in Rio replied to requests for comment.

According to the embassy website, Amiridis started his career as diplomat in 1985 in Athens and became Greece's top diplomat in Brazil in 2016.

He earlier was Greece's ambassador to Libya and worked as consul in Rio from 2001 and 2004.

Brazilian news website G1 reported that Amiridis' wife has an apartment in Nova Iguacu.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Waterford Garda Station on (051) 305300.

Gardai have arrested a man after a Lithuanian national found unconscious on Christmas Day in Waterford with severe head injuries lost his four day battle for life.

The 29-year-old, named locally as Agnius Naumovas, died on Wednesday evening in University Hospital Waterford (UHW) having failed to regain consciousness.

He was found at 8.40pm on Christmas Day lying unconscious at the junction of Margaret's Avenue and Francis Street in Waterford by a person walking home after visiting friends.

It was initially suspected the man may have struck his head in a fall as he walked home but Gardai now fear the man was the victim of an assault.

Gardai believe the man had been making his way from the Shortcourse area towards his home when he sustained the fatal head injuries.

The man, who will not be formally named until all his relatives in Lithuania are notified, was rushed to UHW and remained in a critical condition until he died on Wednesday evening.

Shortly after 8am yesterday, Waterford Gardai arrested a man in his 40s at an address in the city in connection with the man's death.

He was taken to Ballybricken Garda Station and is being questioned about a suspected assault on the Lithuanian national.

The man was detained under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act and can be questioned for up to 24 hours.

A file on the matter will be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

The Lithuanian man is understood to have been resident in Waterford over recent years and was working locally.

Gardai have renewed their appeal for information on the man's movements over both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

He is known to have been out socialising on Christmas Eve but detectives want to confirm his final movements.

Gardai stressed they have received an excellent public response so far but want to talk to anyone who may have been in the Margaret's Avenue, Francis Street or Shortcourse areas on December 25 to contact them.

They have also urged anyone who may have spotted the deceased out in Waterford over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to come forward.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Waterford Garda Station on (051) 305300.
Online predators are pushing children to post compromising pictures and to meet up within minutes of making contact, a top garda has revealed.

Detective Superintendent Declan Daly heads up the recently formed Garda National Protective Services Bureau (GNPSB) and in an exclusive interview with Independent.ie he revealed how his officers have witnessed an increase in children being targeted for naked pictures online.

D-Supt Daly called on parents not to be naive and to educate both themselves and their children about the dangers online.

The internet has many fantastic uses but one of the downsides is that at any given time there are perpetrators who are looking to target our children sexually and exploit our children.

He continued: A child who's innocently online may be unaware that they are being targeted by an online predator."

The GNPSB was set up in 2015. Previously it operated at the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Investigation Unit (DVSAIU) in the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI).

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Whatsapp Detective Superintendent Declan Daly explained that they have seen a worrying increase in self-taken child images ending up in the hands of predators.

However garda chiefs felt it was important to create an independent unit that dealt specifically with crimes of a sexual nature.

The sensitive nature of the work carried out by the skilled detectives means that many details of the crimes they work on cannot be published.

However D-Supt Daly explained that he wants to make parents and children aware of the serious dangers that exist.

The unit is in constant contact with policing bodies across the globe including the FBI in the US, Interpol and Europol.

Police and agents alert gardai to the presence of particular predators and photographs online. The GNPSB then process the information and disseminate it to districts across the country where local garda units deal with perpetrators and victims.

D-Supt Daly explained that they have seen a worrying increase in self-taken child images ending up in the hands of predators.

This is where a child takes an image of themselves, either partially clothed or fully unclothed and posts that image online,he explained.

The child then either knowingly or unknowingly maybe gives that image to somebody. Maybe emails that image to another child, or what they believe is another child, but ultimately that image makes its way onto the internet by a number of means. Obviously you have the difficulties there.

A recent study revealed that one in four children were in contact with a stranger online.

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Asked how children fall for this plot D-Supt Daly explained that criminals often operate a form of 'catfishing' where they pretend to be someone they are not.

At any one time there are perpetrators pretending to be young children and then trying to build up credibility with a child.

For example, an adult male posing as a teenage girl to try and get pictures of young boys. The boy believes that he's interacting with a young girl and innocently sends the image, believing that he is sending it to a young girl. He may or may not find out that it is an adult that he is interacting with.

Although he could not provide specific numbers for the amount of these cases that have happened D-Supt Daly explained that at any one time his unit would be carrying out several investigations.

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He explained that conversations between predators and victims develop worryingly fast.

What we find is that when we look at the interacting that would happen between a suspect and a victim. It progresses into a request for images, or to meet, very quickly."

Asked how quickly, the garda chief responded: Within four or five questions. Obviously I can't put a figure on every case but what we have seen is a suspect will be online and he will be eager to find out somebody who is amenable to his advances or his interaction.

They seem to get down to the point very quickly. They ask name, age, sex, location and then it's into that sexualised chat very quickly.

Gardai use a number of tools to follow the footprint that leads to the criminals but D-Supt Daly said parents need to take control of the situation before it gets to that point.

He urged mothers and fathers to educate themselves and to adapt real-world thinking to the online sphere.

If a parent is in the house and they looked out the window and they saw their child speaking with a stranger, they would react immediately because they would be horrified to think: 'Who is my child talking to? What is my child talking to this person about? What danger does this person pose?' So when the child comes in we would ask our child a number of questions about this interaction.

However on the internet we give our children access. And how many strangers do our children speak to without any critique or questions posed?

He added that communication between parent and child is crucial so that the child is not overly criticised for communicating with a stranger.

What you don't want is a situation where a child is simply not going to interact with the parent and not going to come forward and tell their story," he said.

If a child is a victim of sexplay, for example, you want that communication piece that the child is confident and able to go to parents and say 'somebody is trying to target me online and I'm worried about it'. You don't want the child holding that in, you want them to tell you.
Health Minister Simon Harris has defended a HSE recruitment drive which attracted fewer than 100 people and said there is no "magic wand" to recruit nurses to Irish hospitals.

The Minister was speaking at an event in Dr Steeven's hospital which was designed to recruit Irish nurses and midwives working abroad to return home, which drew just 88 people over two days.

Today is just the start, Im not suggesting there is a magic wand or a silver bullet but what I am saying is we want 1,000 more nurses working in the Irish health service by the end of 2017," he said.

2017 hasnt quite started yet and new have a situation where we are interviewing more than 50 people here today. Weve seen 19 [people]offered jobs on Wednesday and weve another day Friday."

He said he wants to see the event rolled out nationwide

He also expressed his disappointment at Siptus decision to ballot emergency department and support workers for strike action.

On Wednesday the union, which represents health-care assistants, porters, caterers and other key hospital staff announced their intention to ballot.

Strike action by the union could signal chaos in the country's hospitals.

I must say I am disappointed that Siptu have decided to ballot, I note that the outcome of that ballet is not yet known and I would encourage Siptu, who are a very large trade union to use the mechanisms available to them within the Lansdowne Road Agreement to engage with the HSE as the employer," Minister Harris said.

It is really important, particularly as we come into such a busy period of time, in the interest of our patients that we see engagement to try and resolve issues, he said.

Minister Harris said he also regretted the outcome of the INMO ballet for strike action.

I regret the outcome of their ballot. The Lansdowne Road Oversight Committee has instructed the department of health to meet with the INMO and discuss these issues in relation to recruitment and retention and that process will take place in advance of the INMOs executive meeting in the middle of January.

I would really hope that if all sides put their minds to it and do everything we possibly can then we can find a way forward.

The HSE statement yesterday made it very clear that they are open to establishing a scheme but the details of that scheme needs to be discussed and I would encourage the two parties to engage.

"You only ever resolve issues by sitting down around a table and talking and I really hope and expect that the HSE and Siptu will do that in the coming days.

Minister Harris was speaking after he announced that delayed discharges in Irish hospitals have reached a low of 436 and the reduction targeted by the Winter Initiative has been exceeded.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has raised concerns about the growth in the 'gap' between pensions in the public and private sectors. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has raised concerns about the growth in the "gap" between pensions in the public and private sectors.

He said the Government was "anxious" that the matter be considered by the Public Service Pay Commission and also restated the commitment to the Lansdowne Road Agreement (LRA).

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Earlier this week the Irish Independent revealed that an end to pension increases for retired public sector workers was on the table in the next round of pay talks.

The Government could potentially save billions by breaking the link between public sector pension increases and State worker pay hikes.

Mr Kenny's comments are a further signal that a review of pension arrangements may form a significant part of the Government's dealings with looming pay demands by public sector unions.

Significantly, he made his remarks about public sector pensions unprompted as part of a wide-ranging statement ahead of a round-table interview with reporters.

"In respect of public pay, Government has decided that the public pay commission has been asked to take into account the value of public pensions," he said.

Mr Kenny added that Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe will not deal with his strategy for public pay until the Public Pay Commission sends its report to Government. This is due as early as April.

Mr Kenny said that the Government remained "fully supportive" of the Lansdowne Road Agreement and the structures to roll back FEMPI (Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest), which was prompted by the economic crash.

A total of 1.4bn cut from wages under these measures has yet to be refunded.

Returning to the issue of pensions, the Mr Kenny added: "Clearly, the gap between private pensions and public pensions will have grown so the Government is anxious that the public pay commission will be allowed to do its work in that regard and report back...in due course."

His comments echo Mr Donohoe's, who said future pay negotiations had to take account of the value of public pensions.

"The reason for that is my expectation that the difference between public and private pensions has now widened in recent years," he told the Irish Independent.

His department has legislation on the books that would stop State workers' pensions rising when someone in the grade from which they retired gets a pay rise.

Now pay rises are back on the agenda, Mr Donohoe is expected to give the cost-cutting measure fresh consideration,

Pay increases for public sector workers worth 290m are due under the LRA in 2017.

Those earning more than 65,000 are due their pay rise in April, with lower earners set to see a 1,000 increase in September.

Talks on a successor to the LRA are due to take place in the summer, with unions poised to demand further pay rises.
Three teenage students at one of south Dublins most prestigious private schools have been questioned about a savage knife attack that left a man with horrific facial injuries.

The incident happened shortly before midnight on Christmas Eve in Dalkey when a row broke out over a teenage girl.

The 26-year-old victim, who is from the Glenageary area of the capital, almost lost an eye and suffered huge blood loss when he was stabbed in the face with a Swiss Army knife.

His suspected attacker, a 17-year-old boy from Killiney, was arrested on Tuesday and questioned at Shankill Garda Station before being released without charge.

Sources say the suspect is a student in one of the countrys best-known private secondary schools, which charges substantial annual fees.

Two 17-year-old boys, who are also believed to attend the same school, have also been questioned by gardai but neither were arrested.

These two boys, who have addresses in Dalkey and Glasthule, are understood to have voluntarily presented themselves for questioning at Dun Laoghaire Garda Station hours after the brutal attack took place. They are not considered suspects.

The Herald can reveal the attack happened in The Metals area, near Dalkey Quarry, when an argument started outside a pub.

It has been alleged that the private school students followed the victim after remarks were made to a young female in their company.

It is understood that at least three of them confronted the victim and demanded he apologise. It is alleged that a 17-year-old produced a Swiss Army knife and stabbed the man in the face.

Gardai were unable to confirm reports that the stabbing had been recorded on a mobile phone.

It seems that he [the culprit] used the knife in a punching motion and the knife just missed the victims eye by a fraction, a source said.

The knife was then dragged along the injured mans face, all the way to his neck. He suffered huge blood loss and terrible injuries to his face. This was a barbaric incident.

Emergency services were called and the man was rushed to St Vincents Hospital. He has since been discharged.

At one stage it is believed that medics feared his injuries were critical.

It is understood that the Dart line in the area was sealed off for a time as gardai carried out a detailed forensic examination of the vicinity of the attack.
An error in her French comprehension meant that when Kelli and Patrick Marjolet first met online in 1997, she thought he was a gay woman. The Chicago woman was looking to improve her French, and got chatting to Frenchman Patrick in a language chatroom.

"His screen name ended in 'e' and I presumed it was feminine," says Kelli, then 20. "He said his heart had been broken by a girl so then I thought I was talking to a lesbian. We clarified he was a man and he sent me a photo. I thought I had to 'friendzone' him because he was out of my league."

They wrote back and forth, purely as friends, but their first phone call was a disaster as Patrick's English was as bad as Kelli's French, When she graduated in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison two years later, her dad, Jim Hader, gave her a trip to Europe as a present. She decided to go to Rennes to hang out with her pal Patrick, who was studying maths at university there.

"Patrick picked my friend and me up from the train station and was carrying the saddest-looking baguette, which was so cliche," she laughs. "I was dating someone else - another French guy - and my plan was actually to set Patrick up with my friend."

Patrick, 40, is from Brittany and comes third of Gilles and Elisabeth's four children. As soon as he saw Kelli, he liked her. "She had this white shirt on, beautiful blue eyes and the perfect figure," he recalls. "Kelli was always smiling and there was, and is, something so vibrant about her. She brings balance to my craziness."

They hung out for a few weeks, and Patrick brought Kelli to Ireland as he had visited previously and really loved it. Alas she wasn't as impressed with the country as her thoughts lay in France, but she found that she was interested in him.

She went back to Chicago, planning to move to Paris and the firm she worked at happened to offer her a job at their branch there. Both her boyfriend and Patrick were living in Paris, but her relationship with the other guy ended after a while. She began dating Patrick in April 2001. "He showed me such compassion and taught me what unconditional love was," says Kelli, now 39. "I think I won the lottery when I met him."

Patrick then got a job in IT in Los Angeles. They moved over for 18 months and Kelli got a marketing job. They got married in Beverly Hills in 2003, with one witness present... "I was in work that morning and bought the dress en route," Kelli recalls. "We went to Catalina Island for our honeymoon. Patrick lost his wedding ring while we were snorkelling, three days after we got married."

The Marjolets then moved to Wisconsin and Paris and came to Ireland for four years as Kelli had warmed to it somewhat. Then they had a four-year stint in San Francisco. "We went to Chicago to visit my family for Christmas, and my stepmum Maxine asked me where I felt home was?" says Kelli, who has two older brothers. "I didn't know, but then on the plane to visit Dublin, Ireland came into view and I started bawling. I'm not an emotional person but I was thinking about seeing our friends and walking down the streets in the cold, and I just felt we belonged here. I went on a quiet campaign as soon as we got home to move back to Dublin. We came back in 2014 and are staying here forever because I love it."

Kelli and Patrick have begun a very exciting adventure making chocolate now, and it all started when someone gave Kelli a bag of roasted cocoa beans in SF. Patrick decided to see if he could make chocolate from them, and really enjoyed the process. He began experimenting, adding different ingredients and hosting tasting parties along the way.

He was working on developing Failte Ireland's website at the time, and got such a great reaction, he and Kelli got serious about it and set up The Proper Chocolate Company in May. Patrick made the chocolate and Kelli did the design and branding work, and they now work out of a kitchen in Glasnevin. They sell the bars and hot chocolate at two markets every Saturday, Honest2Goodness in Glasnevin and Green Door in Newmarket. They are also in six retailers.

"We actually import the beans and do the entire process ourselves," Patrick explains. "It has a deeper flavour than the classic dark chocolate and we don't put any additives in it. The Irish palate has come a long way in recent years, and we feel we can bring something that people will really like. The reaction has been wildly good so far - better than we could have imagined."

Kelli and Patrick recently stepped out of their respective careers to focus full-time on the chocolate. They have eight bars, ranging from the 58pc cocoa Ghana Milk Chocolate and Hazelnut bar to the 75pc Dominican Republic Hispaniola. They live in Rathmines with their cat Stout, a stray they adopted in San Francisco.

Was having a family on the cards for them? "Maybe briefly," Kelli replies. "We were just always on the go, and if it had happened, it would have been perfectly fine but it is fine without it too. I don't think Patrick and I have ever been closer than we are right now. We know our sensitive spots and when to give each other space, and have so much respect for one another. We're also the least dramatic people we know."

www.facebook.com/properchocolate
The good news is that the standard of food in Ireland continues to improve. The bad news is that good food experiences are in danger of being ruined by sloppy service. There's a truism in the restaurant industry that a customer can forgive a poor meal, and return to the restaurant that served it, but they will never revisit a restaurant in which they were treated badly.

This year I've eaten decent meals in restaurants to which I will never go back. I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than return to one in particular, where the staff sneered at me and my female companion, while fawning over the corporate tables populated entirely by men.

And I am over - way over - cynical restaurants that make a conscious decision to skimp on the quality of their ingredients, particularly when it comes to animal protein. Please get with the programme and serve smaller quantities of better quality, higher-welfare meat, poultry and fish. The most cynical meal of all is brunch: a huge money-spinner for restaurants and generally comprised of poor quality food smothered in hollandaise sauce. It takes more than a free glass of cheap prosecco to compensate for that, or to get rid of the bad taste in the mouth that you get when you're being ripped off.

Restaurant awards proliferate these days. Some involve rotating the gongs between members of a golden circle to keep everyone happy, and their primary function is as a hook on which to hang the selling of tickets for a lucrative black-tie event. My informal restaurant awards, on the other hand, are a resolutely gong-free zone. There is no dinner for the winners and I promise not to be on the phone flogging plaques over the coming weeks.

So, without further ado (as they say), here are my 2016 restaurant awards, with thanks to all the restaurants in which I ate great food over the past 12 months.

MEAL OF THE YEAR:

Gregan's Castle, Corkscrew Hill, Ballyvaughan, Co Clare. (065) 707-7005

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David Hurley's cooking at Gregan's Castle is modern and as big on flavour as it is in looks. Book before Hurley gets a star so that you can tell your friends that you ate there way back when.

NEWCOMERS OF THE YEAR:

FOREST & MARCY, 126 Leeson Street Upper, Dublin 4. (01) 660-2480

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The little sibling to John and Sandy Wyer's wonderful Forest Avenue, Forest & Marcy, located just around the corner, is helmed by Ciaran Sweeney, whose food (above) is a delight. Don't miss his fermented potato bread with bacon and cabbage.

Pickle, 43 Camden St Lr, Dublin 2. (01) 555-7755

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Sunil Ghai departed Ananda and opened Pickle (above main), which serves the best Indian food in the city. Don't ask for chicken tikka masala, do have the kid goat curry with black cardamom.

'IT COULDN'T HAPPEN TO NICER PEOPLE'

Heron & Grey, Blackrock Market, Blackrock, Co Dublin. (087) 608-3140

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It's all been said already, but the award of a Michelin star to this modest little restaurant was the feel-good Irish food moment of the year. It'll be exciting to see what Andrew Heron and Damien Grey (above) have in store for us next.

FOOD ACTIVIST OF THE YEAR

Stephane Griesbach, Gannet Fishmongers, Galway. (091) 440167

Griesbach is the fishmonger who supplies all the best restaurants in the west, and he's a stickler for labelling fish correctly. Expect to hear more from Griesbach in 2017, as he puts it up to the supermarkets and restaurants who aren't quite as honest as he is.

POP-UPS OF THE YEAR

Joint winners: North East and Ichi-go ichi-e

Eric Heilig's monthly Pomeranian pop-up at Heron & Grey was a revelation, and the Ichi-go ichi-e collaboration between Katie Sanderson and Takashi Miyazaki in the Fumbally Stables last month was another very special experience.

SMALL AND PERFECTLY FORMED

ASSASSINATION CUSTARD, 17 Kevin Street Cross, Dublin 8. (087) 997-1513

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This tiny little cafe seats fewer than a dozen people, so arrive early to feast on budget-priced Middle Eastern and Italian-inspired street food. Wonderful.

SPENDING MY OWN MONEY

Etto, 18 Merrion Row, Dublin 2. (01) 678-8872

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For the second year in a row, this award goes to Etto for the utter deliciousness of its food and an ambiance that's the best in the city. The worker's lunch is a steal at 14 - you might get something along the lines of fresh taglierini with cockles, n'duja and white wine - and the cote de boeuf is a dish to please the pickiest of eaters. Sit at the bar if you can't get a table.
Agreeable: Jim Carrey in 'Yes Man' decides to say yes to everything with interesting consequences

Kicking off with the General Election in February, through the Brexit referendum and right round to the US presidential election last month, it has been a year of big decisions across the globe. Admittedly, many of them were out of our hands, but by recent estimates, the average adult still has to make some 35,000 choices a day, from the trivial to the life-changing.

That sounds soul-wearing enough, before you learn that the quality of our decision-making actually erodes with every choice we make: each one depletes willpower, which researchers from Florida State University discovered is a resource that gets "used up" and is replenished by rest, much like a muscle. No wonder decision-making itself has become a boom science, with online courses on offer at Stanford University in California.

Of course, technology has only added to our choice-burden, with every email or social media update eating into our mental bandwidth. Even people who appear spectacularly together fall prey to decision fatigue; Hillary Clinton's hacked emails revealed this summer that her aides had identified her as a fellow sufferer.

Since indecision often goes hand in hand with anxiety, we pay the price with our mental health, too. "We're frequently indecisive when we're feeling down, because our brain is too sensitive to losses or disappointment," explains UCLA neuroscientist Alex Korb. "We can't cope with making the 'wrong' choice - so we protect ourselves." Basically, by making no choices at all.

This sounds painfully familiar. Like many people, my chronic indecision and fear of change go together. So if I want 2017 to be the year of getting things done, I decide I need to seek help.

Ellen Bard, a psychologist and motivation expert, has 15 years' experience in helping people to get better at making decisions. She tells me that my fear is normal. "We think that as soon as we commit, we rule out all the alternatives. But actually, there are very few decisions you can never go back on."

Bar parenthood, I conclude, she's right: everything else is reversible, if necessary. "Once you realise this," she says, "it's very freeing. Life isn't a chess game; we don't need to think 50 moves ahead, and there is no perfect decision or ideal solution - ever."

Every decision will have its pros and cons - accepting this speeds up decision-making and helps us relax about choosing an option.

"You just need to establish what the critical criteria are, then make a decision with these in mind, accepting that some times you'll get it wrong," says Bard.

This brings me out in a cold sweat. Having been brought up to be a people-pleaser, I don't like being told off, and have a phobia of failure.

Bard commiserates: "The idea that sometimes you will make mistakes is hard to swallow. But being comfortable with errors is crucial. You can't waste energy beating yourself up. You need to take action, then move on."

I start ploughing through academic journals and contacting experts to establish the best strategies for making better, swifter and, crucially, fewer decisions.

First, I learn we all need to give our bandwidth a break.

A study from Denmark's Happiness Research Institute showed that regular Facebook users who took a sabbatical from the social media site were 55pc less stressed and experienced better concentration levels (which aids better decision-making) in just seven days.

On the one hand, I'm flabbergasted; on the other hand - the one scrolling through five years of someone else's Facebook photos - I'm not surprised at all.

I resolve to go cold turkey, deleting the Facebook app on my phone. I try to limit my use of Twitter and vow only to check email three times a day, switching to "airplane mode" to avoid that distracting "ping" whenever possible.

I'm also a classic multi-tasker - something I considered an asset until reading research from Stanford proving that multi-taskers are less productive, experience difficulties concentrating, and expend unnecessary brainpower. A study from the University of London found that multi-taskers experience declines in IQ similar to heavy cannabis users or chronic insomniacs, with many regressing to the IQ levels of an eight-year-old.

As a writer who's also a parent, news junkie and fan of multi-screen viewing (such as tweeting during 'The Apprentice'), this hits a nerve. There is plenty of multi-tasking in my life that's unavoidable: I regularly have to do my job while being cried at by my toddler and bounced at by my dog. But reading all the news at the same time could be a bit much. It's good to care, but we don't get extra points for reading everything. In fact, we get weary, which contributes to further indecision.

One way of preserving mental energy is to streamline the number of unnecessary decisions we make each day with habits that help us avoid squandering our limited self-control.

"If you regularly find yourself struggling to decide what to have for lunch and end up reaching for the biscuit tin, you need to plan ahead and form healthier habits," suggests Dr Benjamin Gardner, an expert in behaviour change at King's College London. "Eating something you've already prepared takes the choice away - and avoids exhausting your willpower."

So I bake batches of lasagne to avoid another takeaway dinner, make soup and shop online, so I can click the same list every week.

Clothes are next, and I'm delighted to learn that my typical work uniform of jeans and a black jumper isn't just laziness on my part: I'm channelling Barack Obama.

The outgoing US president stuck to grey or blue suits to minimise "non-critical" decision-making in the mornings.

Clothed, fed, digitally detoxed and single tasking, I feel like a paragon of virtue. There's just one problem: I'm still anxious. Fortunately, scientists at Pennsylvania State University discovered that by scheduling specific "worry time", we can fend off decision-inhibiting anxiety during the rest of our day.

All we need to do is set aside 15 to 30 minutes at the same time each day to agonise.

I start writing down all my "what if" thoughts as they occur to me. These range from the work-related (will I meet those deadlines?) to the domestic, large and small (where should we live? Should I switch to semi-skimmed milk?). After 15 minutes, I stop, go outside, and fill my lungs with fresh, worry-free air.

By the end of the week, I haven't done nearly so much fretting as normal. Instead of accepting low-level worry as the soundtrack to my day, I have the headspace to think more clearly and concentrate.

A month later, I'm less fretful and surprisingly productive. I no longer experience nausea when the prospect of "choosing" is dangled in front of me.

And because I've cut down on unnecessary decision-making, there are fewer choices to be made anyway. I don't just have more energy, but a sneaking suspicion that I might even be in decision-fatigue recovery.

 Telegraph
Ankara, Turkey, Dec. 29

By Atilla Caner  Trend:

The Parliamentary Constitutional Committee of Turkey approved a number of articles in the countrys draft constitution, a source in the Turkish Parliament told Trend Dec. 29.

The approved articles increase the number of seats in the Turkish Parliament from 550 to 600.

The draft constitution proposes to allow Turkish citizens to run for the post of the MP from the age of 18. Currently, the lowest age limit for this is 25.

One of the approved articles also offers to hold parliamentary elections every 5 years. Currently, the parliamentary elections are held every 4 years.

A Turkish citizen not younger than 40 and with higher education can become president of Turkey, according to the draft constitution. The Turkish president will also have the powers to appoint ministers and replace them.

The newly approved articles stipulate that the president-elect is not obliged to be a non-party nominee.

All the above mentioned proposals approved by the Constitutional Committee must be submitted to the Turkish Parliaments General Assembly. The constitutional amendments would then be discussed at two parliamentary sessions of the General Assembly.

During the first session, the four political parties in the General Assembly and the government would discuss the proposals as a whole and the articles separately, as well as any motions for amendment. The second session would be devoted only to the discussion of motions on amendments to articles.

If the draft constitution gets more than 367 votes, it can pass directly without the need for a referendum. However, the AK Party, the ruling party in Turkey, has said it will hold a referendum even if none is needed.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emphasized that he will push for a referendum even if the draft is approved by a two-thirds majority in the Parliament.

The changes to the constitution require a 50-percent vote in favor in a referendum.
Norwegian has announced plans to fly from Britain to the US from $69, reducing its current prices by more than 50pc.

The low-cost airline, which has been granted permission to fly direct from Cork to the US, is to offer the fares from summer 2017.

They will be the cheapest transatlantic tickets on the market.

Bjorn Kjos, chief executive of the Oslo-based airline, said that Norwegian will offer the low prices on flights from Edinburgh to New York on board its six new Boeing 737MAX aircraft. The airline will take delivery of the aircraft in April, and flights will commence a few months later.

Our planes are very, very fuel efficient, Kjos said of the Boeing 737MAX models. We have a totally different set up to other airlines. The Boeing 737MAX has a very modern engine, which means it can go for a longer distance.

Norwegian has yet to confirm start dates and prices for its forthcoming Cork - Boston route, though they are expected by summer 2017.

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Niall MacCarthy, Cork Airport's MD, has previously said he thinks fares will start with some "lead-in special offers around the $69 mark."

Norwegian also plans to cut prices by flying to smaller, out-of-town airports in New York state, rather than JFK.

Well also be flying to secondary airports in New York, said Kjos. That means we dont pay as much and can charge cheaper fares.

The airline has not yet announced which New York airport will be the flights final destination, but it already flies to Newark from the UK.

Norwegian has also been looking at Stewart International Airport, about 70 miles north of Manhattan, and smaller airports close to Boston, including Portsmouth, Providence and Hartford (already served by Aer Lingus), according to reports.

Norwegian, which is Europe's third-largest low-cost carrier, is also expected to launch flights between Cork and New York in the near future.

Meanwhile, in the UK, it looks like the airline will be making further savings by not basing its new fleet in London. Although Norwegian has a hub at Gatwick Airport, the new low-cost flights will only be available from Edinburgh.

Norwegian, which commenced transatlantic flights in 2014, currently operates flights from Gatwick to New York with prices starting from 125/147 one-way.

It also offers direct services to Florida, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and last month launched flights to Las Vegas for less than 400/469 return.

Extra costs - buyer beware

Norwegian, along with other airlines offering low-cost long-haul travel, such as Iceland's WOW air, uses headline-grabbing fares to attract customers, but passengers are faced with extra costs for the likes of hold luggage and seat selection.

Attempting to book a 179/210 Norwegian flight from London Gatwick to Las Vegas, we found that tickets at the base cost were available, but checked baggage, a meal on board or a seat reservation would cost a further 50/59 each way.

But the airline is certainly more than a match for traditional carriers on price, and its continued expansion suggests it is paying off with passengers.

Kjos said that Norwegians long-haul flights are typically 95 per cent full, and next year it will increase the number of flights from London to the US by 55 per cent in response to huge demand from passengers.

Everyone said would low cost long-haul work. But passengers have shown that is demand there, said Kjos.

- Additional reporting by Pol O Conghaile

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Debbie Reynolds, the leading lady of Hollywood musicals and comedies in the 1950s and 1960s including "Singin' in the Rain," was rushed to a hospital on Wednesday, the day after her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher, died, TMZ and E! News reported.

Reynolds, 84, was at her son Todd Fisher's home in Beverly Hills, California, discussing funeral arrangements for Fisher, who died on Tuesday, TMZ reported. Someone in the house called 911 shortly after 1 pm local time.

E! News said Reynolds was transported in fair to serious condition. TMZ reported that she had a possible stroke.

Representatives for Reynolds did not returns calls for comment.

One of the most enduring and endearing Hollywood stars of her time, Reynolds received a best actress Academy Award nomination for the 1964 musical "The Unsinkable Molly Brown."

Carrie Fisher, who rose to fame as Princess Leia in the "Star Wars" films and later battled through drug addiction before going on to tell her story as a best-selling author, died on Tuesday at the age of 60 after suffering a heart attack last Friday.

After Fisher's death, Reynolds said on Facebook, "Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop."
Debbie Reynolds, left, with her daughter Carrie Fisher at the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in Los Angeles in 2011 (AP)

Hollywood star Debbie Reynolds has died of a suspected stroke barely a day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher.

The 84-year-old Singin' In The Rain star died on Wednesday, her son Todd Fisher announced, saying: "She's now with Carrie and we're all heartbroken."

"She said, 'I want to be with Carrie'," he added. "And then she was gone."

In emergency service dispatch audio obtained by celebrity website Tmz.com, Reynolds is said to have suffered a stroke.

Emergency services were called at 1pm local time on Wednesday to her son's Beverly Hills home, where they were making plans for Fisher's funeral.

Actor and director Mr Fisher, 58, speaking outside Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre where Reynolds was taken by ambulance, said the stress of his sister's death on Tuesday at 60 "was too much" for their mother.

Carrie Fisher, who rose to fame for her role playing Princess Leia in Star Wars, died in hospital days after suffering a heart attack on a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles.

Fisher's daughter, actress Billie Lourd, 24, was photographed on Wednesday in California with Scream Queens co-star Taylor Lautner just before her grandmother fell ill.

Earlier this year Reynolds was said to be "frail" by her family and had reportedly suffered two previous separate strokes in 2013 and 2015.

Reynolds was just a teenager when she landed a role in the 1950 film Three Little Words, for which she was nominated for a most promising newcomer Golden Globe .

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She was perhaps most famous for playing Kathy Selden in 1952 musical Singin' In The Rain alongside Gene Kelly.

Her first of three marriages was to musician Eddie Fisher in 1955 and with him she had Carrie and Todd.

But their relationship ended sourly after news emerged of his affair with film star Elizabeth Taylor.

Reynolds continued to have a loving relationship with her ex-husband's children, including Joely Fisher, 49, who tweeted: " Some of the magic people have left the tribe ... for the moment I am inconsolable ... "

Reynolds had paid an emotional tribute to her daughter on Facebook.

She wrote: "Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop. Love Carrie's Mother."

The actresses enjoyed a tumultuous relationship, particularly during Fisher's early forays into show business as she battled drug and alcohol addiction.

However, the bond between the mother and daughter grew stronger in later years and their homes shared the same grounds in Beverly Hills.

Earlier this year they premiered mother-daughter documentary Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds at the Cannes Film Festival which will air on HBO next year.

In 2011 Fisher said she would be "happy" if she was like her mother "in any way".

The actress captured the hearts of a generation as the blaster-toting, bikini-wearing princess and tough resistance leader in the three original Star Wars films.

On Fisher's success as Leia, Reynolds once said: "People used to call her Debbie Reynolds' daughter ... now they call me Princess Leia's mother."

Off screen Fisher battled drink, drugs and mental illness and later emerged as a widely-lauded mental health advocate who inspired others by writing about her struggles.

In 1987 she published her semi-autobiographical novel Postcards From The Edge about a recovering drug addict film star. It became a bestseller and was turned into a 1990 film starring an Oscar-nominated Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine and Dennis Quaid.

She wrote and performed in an autobiographical one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, which went to Broadway and was turned into a book.
Gregorio Goyo Alvarez pictured arriving to court in the capital, Montevideo, for his trial in 2007 Picture: Reuters

The last leader of Uruguay's brutal dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s has died in prison at the age of 91.

Gregorio Alvarez was serving a sentence for human rights abuses. The Central Hospital of the Armed Forces confirmed his death.

Under Alvarez, Uruguay was part of the secret alliance of South American dictatorships known as 'Operation Condor', in which military leaders co-operated in persecuting and killing dissidents across the continent.

Alvarez, himself the son of a general, participated in the 1973 coup that dissolved congress following a government crackdown on the Marxist Tupamaro rebels who were trying to seize power by force. One of Alvarez's brothers was killed by Tupamaro attackers in 1972.

Tortured

Alvarez became army chief in 1978, finally taking over the country's presidency in 1981. His government imprisoned democratic critics and censored the press.

He finally agreed to hand over power to an elected civilian government in 1984 as the wave of dictatorships in the region was starting to recede. Argentina's military rule ended a year earlier and Brazil's a year later.

Hundreds of suspected leftists were arrested and tortured during the dictatorship and it is estimated that 180 Uruguayans were killed - most of them while in the custody of the government's Argentine allies.

In 2009, Alvarez was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his responsibility in the death or disappearance of 37 Uruguayans under Operation Condor.

During his trial, he said he knew nothing of illegal abductions and forced disappearances.
Israel's prime minister decried US Secretary of State John Kerry's Middle East policy speech as a "deep disappointment" yesterday and vowed to work with the incoming Trump administration to contain the fallout from last week's UN resolution calling Israeli settlements illegal.

Mr Netanyahu's angry statement, delivered at a late-night news conference, capped a tumultuous week in which years of tense relations with President Barack Obama boiled over.

"We are not about to be swayed by a mistaken policy that could cause big, big damage," Mr Netanyahu said.

"Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders."

In a farewell speech at the State Department, Mr Kerry outlined his vision for Middle East peace. While his address included criticism of Palestinian violence and incitement, his strongest words were aimed at Israel, and its policy of settling its citizens in occupied territories.

He said the continued settlement growth was threatening the possibility of a two-state solution, which Mr Netanyahu had endorsed.

"The settler agenda is defining the future of Israel. And their stated purpose is clear: They believe in one state," Mr Kerry said.

He also defended Mr Obama's move last week to allow the UN Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal, the spark that set off a nearly week-long diplomatic spat between Israel and its most important ally.

"I must express my deep disappointment with the speech today of John Kerry, a speech that was almost as unbalanced as the anti-Israel resolution passed at the UN last week," Mr Netanyahu said.

He accused Mr Kerry of paying "lip service" to decades of Palestinian violence against Israelis, while spending "most of his speech blaming Israel for the lack of peace".

He repeated his position that Israel was ready to pursue peace through direct negotiations with the Palestinians.

Mr Netanyahu, whose government is dominated by West Bank settler supporters who oppose Palestinian independence, said international dictates in favour of the Palestinians undermined the negotiating process.

"Israel looks forward to working with President-elect Trump and with the American Congress, Democrats and Republicans, to mitigate the damage that this resolution has done and ultimately to repeal it," he said.

He expressed hope that the Obama administration would not pursue any more moves against Israel at the UN in its remaining time in office.

Mr Netanyahu and Mr Obama, who took office in 2009 just months apart, have had chilly relations throughout their tenures.

The Obama administration has been a vocal critic of Mr Netanyahu's policies and questioned his commitment to peace. Mr Netanyahu has harshly criticised the US-led nuclear deal with Iran.

Although Mr Trump has not outlined his Middle East policy, he has signalled that he will be much more sympathetic to Israel. He has appointed a West Bank settler ally as his ambassador to Israel and vowed to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, despite Palestinian objections.
Syria's beleaguered rebels appear close to agreeing to a Russian plan for a ceasefire across the entire country but said that some details of the deal remained unresolved.

Russia, one of the main backers of the Assad regime, has been working closely with Turkey, a supporter of the rebels, on a diplomatic initiative to end the fighting in Syria.

But rebel officials told the media that there were still gaps between the two sides and that no ceasefire agreement had been reached.

Bassam Hijji, a spokesman for Nour al-Din al-Zenki brigade, said Russia and the Syrian regime did not want the ceasefire to apply to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS), a group with links to al-Qa'ida, or Jund al-Aqsa, another Islamist rebel group.

He also said Russia and the regime wanted to allow fighting to continue in certain areas where it sensed that it had the advantage on the battlefield.

Both conditions were unacceptable to the rebels, Mr Hijji said, and rebel negotiators were pushing to make sure the ceasefire applied to all rebel factions and across all areas.

But he acknowledged that the rebels were on the backfoot after their defeat in the four-year battle for Aleppo and were under pressure to eventually accept a ceasefire agreement.

"We are militarily in a very bad shape," he said. "The Syrian revolution hasn't been defeated but the Russians are trying to cash in."

He said it was possible a ceasefire agreement could be reached as early as today.

Previous ceasefires brokered by the US and Russia have collapsed, partly over disagreements on which rebel groups can be seen as the "moderate opposition" and which are jihadists and can be targeted.

The US accused Russia of targeting moderate groups under the guise of attacking JFS, while Russia said there was no distinction between the jihadists and other groups.

Russia and Turkey hope that if a ceasefire agreement can be reached it will pave the way for comprehensive peace talks between the Assad regime and the rebels in Astana, Kazakhstan, next month.

Reuters reported that an outline for the comprehensive deal had already been drawn up by Russia, Turkey, and Iran.

It is said to involve dividing Syria into informal zones of regional power influences and allowing Bashar al-Assad to remain in power for at least several years.
Turkey aims to establish a ceasefire in Syria before the new year, and will act together with Russia as a guarantor of the deal, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday.

In an interview with broadcaster AHaber, Cavusoglu also said all foreign fighter groups in Syria - including Hezbollah - need to leave the country. His comments come a day after Turkey said it and Russia had prepared an agreement for a ceasefire.

"We are on the verge of an agreement with Russia. If everything goes alright, we will make this agreement. Russia will be the guarantor of the regime," Cavusoglu said, adding the deal could be implemented before the new year.

"Russia and Turkey are guarantors in the agreement being worked on in Ankara. There is nothing final on whether Iran will sign it as a guarantor... All foreign fighters need to leave Syria. Hezbollah needs to return to Lebanon."

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Cavusoglu's comments appear to signal tentative progress in talks aimed at reaching a truce. However, Ankara's insistence on the departure of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could complicate negotiations with his biggest backer, Russia.

Demands that troops from Lebanese Shi'ite Hezbollah leave Syria may not sit well with Iran, another major backer of Assad. Hezbollah troops are fighting alongside Syrian government forces against rebels opposed to Assad.

Syria's main rebel groups were discussing with Turkey the ceasefire proposal being negotiated with Russia, but had rejected Moscow's demand to exclude a rebel stronghold near the capital from any deal, a senior rebel official told Reuters on Wednesday.
Donald Trump has accused Barack Obama of creating "inflammatory" roadblocks during the transition of power in America.

The US president-elect also accused the outgoing administration of treating Israel with "total disdain", further straining the veneer of civility between the incoming and outgoing leaders.

Although Mr Trump did not detail his complaints in a series of broadsides on Twitter, he made it clear that Mr Obama's recent claim that he would have won the election had he been running did not sit well with the president-elect.

Mr Trump's largely respectful tone about the current president since the election evaporated in his latest tweets.

"Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks," he said.

"Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!"

Mr Trump and his team has until now been largely complimentary of the way Barack Obama and his team has handled the transition.

The dispute erupted between Mr Obama and Mr Trump, spurred by Mr Obama's hypothetical musings that, had he run again, he would have been victorious.

Mr Obama suggested he still held enough sway over the coalition of voters who elected him twice to get them to vote for him once again.

Mr Trump's response to that was: "NO WAY!"

"President Obama campaigned hard (and personally) in very important swing states, and lost. The voters wanted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" he said on Twitter.

Mr Obama swept most key swing states in his two bids for the White House, but Hillary Clinton fell short in her battle.

Mr Trump also thanked himself for a surge in a key gauge of consumer confidence. He wrote on Twitter that the Conference Board had reported that its consumer confidence index had climbed to 113.7 in December.

He noted that was the highest climb in more than 15 years, then added: "Thanks Donald!"

His complaints came hours before John Kerry was due to make his final speech about peace in the Middle East as secretary of state - remarks some Israeli officials panned in advance.

The administration's decision not to veto the UN resolution has aggravated an already strained US-Israel relationship.

Mr Trump also took direct issue with the Obama administration's decision to let a UN Security Council resolution critical of Israel pass.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect," he said in a two-part tweet. They used to have a great friend in the US, but ... not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (UN)! Stay strong Israel, January 20 is fast approaching!"
Ankara, Turkey, Dec. 29

By Atilla Caner  Trend:

Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar will discuss the Shield of Euphrates operation, said a message from the Turkish presidential administration Dec. 29.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim will also take part in the discussions, according to the message.

On Aug. 24 morning, the Turkish Air Force, with the support of the coalition aircraft, launched an operation to liberate the city of Jarabulus from the IS militants in northern Syria, near Aleppo. The operation was dubbed the Shield of the Euphrates.

About 30 Turkish servicemen have been killed during the ongoing Shield of the Euphrates operation in northern Syria.

Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has so far claimed over 500,000 lives.

Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops. The IS, YPG and PYD are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.
Russian president Vladimir Putin said a Syrian ceasefire agreement has been reached with Turkey.

Mr Putin said Russia and Turkey will guarantee the truce, which is set to begin at midnight on Thursday.

He said it will be followed by peace talks between Syrian president Bashar Assad's government and the opposition, and that the Syrian parties will take part in talks to be held in Kazakhstan at a later date.

Syria's military has agreed to a nationwide ceasefire, starting at midnight.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria, and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance.

Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said US president-elect Donald Trump's administration will be welcome to join the Syrian peace process once he takes office.

Russia is a key ally of Mr Assad, while Turkey is one of the main backers of the opposition.

Several previous attempts to halt the Syrian civil war have failed.
Mr Putin said Russia and Turkey will act as guarantors to the peace deal (AP)

A Syrian army soldier places a Syrian national flag during the battle with rebel fighters at the Ramouseh front line, east of Aleppo (AP)

A nationwide ceasefire between Syrian government forces and opposition rebels has come into effect.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier that the ceasefire, which excludes extremist groups such as Islamic State and an al Qaida affiliate, will be guaranteed by Moscow and Turkey.

It will be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition, due to be held in Kazakhstan.

The ceasefire will include all parts of Syria, including the eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus.

Syria's military said it agreed to the nationwide truce, paving the way for reactivating negotiations to end the conflict.

It added that the ceasefire comes after the "successes achieved by the armed forces", an apparent reference to the capture of rebel-held neighbourhoods of Aleppo earlier this month.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria, and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance.

Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said US President-elect Donald Trump's administration will be welcome to join the Syrian peace process once he takes office.

Moscow is a key ally of Mr Assad, while Turkey is one of the main backers of the opposition.

Several previous attempts to halt the civil war have failed, but the recent warming of ties between Turkey and Russia may prove to be crucial.

The move comes on the heels of the Syrian army retaking control of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, ending the opposition's four-year hold over parts of the city.

Mr Putin said he had ordered the Russian military to scale down its presence in Syria, where it has provided crucial support to Mr Assad's forces.
An Arkansas teacher has come under fire for an alleged Facebook post calling Michelle Obama the 'First Chimp'.

Teacher Trent Bennett, a high school instructor in rural Malvern is alleged to have written a post about the First Lady according to KARK.

MORE: The Malvern School District confirms they are investigating teacher, Trent Bennett's Facebook posts. pic.twitter.com/PNeoLWIQLA  Sarafina Brooks (@KATVSarafina) December 27, 2016

"Michelle Obummer  Americas First Chimp, he is alleged to have said.

When asked about the remarks, Bennett said just good to see that nasty chimp and her spider monkey husband gone for good, according to KARK.

Malvern School District said it was aware of the remarks that was inappropriate, insensitive, and used racially charged rhetoric.

According to KARK, it is investigating the remarks.

There have since been calls for Bennett to resign from his post.

There is no place in an educational system for someone in a public position of authority that is willing to publicly make the comments that you are alleged to have made, Arkansas State Conference NAACP President Rizelle Aaron said in a letter to the teacher.

Earlier this year state officials came under fire for calling Michelle Obama "an Ape in Heels".

Pamela Taylor, director of the Clay County Development Corp in Clay, West Virginia, has been fired for her remarks.
A sweeping anti-corruption drive is being carried out in China (AP)

A top Chinese military general has been placed under investigation for alleged corruption.

Gen Wang Jianping is suspected of accepting bribes, and is the highest-level active duty military official to be caught up in a sweeping anti-corruption drive.

Defence ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said military prosecutors are investigating.

Gen Wang is the deputy chief of staff with the joint staff department of the central military commission, which is led by Xi Jinping, China's president and leader of the ruling Communist Party.

Gen Wang was formerly the commander of China's armed paramilitary police force for five years.

Three other top Chinese generals have been accused of corruption in the crackdown. They were officially retired when their investigations were announced.
Donald Trump has said he plans to write his own inaugural address and is drawing inspiration from former US presidents Ronald Reagan and John F Kennedy.

The billionaire property tycoon, who will become president on January 20, has said that Mr Reagan had "incredible style" and also noted the upcoming 100th anniversary of Mr Kennedy's birth, according to a person who has spoken with the leader-in-waiting at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Mr Trump is spending the Christmas and New Year holiday at the club but is also focusing on veterans' health issues and has told visitors he plans to make that a priority in his administration, the source said.

The announcement came during a whirlwind day in which Mr Trump accused US president Barack Obama of throwing up "inflammatory" roadblocks during the transition of power and said his administration was treating Israel with "total disdain".

"Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks," Mr Trump tweeted on Wednesday. "Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!"

However, when journalists at the Mar-a-Lago resort asked him about the tweet and how he thought the transition was going, h e said: "I think very, very smoothly. It's very good. You don't think so?"

Later Mr Trump told reporters he had spoken by phone with Mr Obama and said the two "had a very nice conversation".

White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Mr Obama phoned Mr Trump.

"Today's call, like the others since the election, was positive and focused on continuing a smooth and effective transition," he said.

"The president and president-elect committed to staying in touch over the next several weeks."

Mr Trump also took direct issue with the Obama administration's decision to let a United Nations Security Council resolution critical of Israel pass.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect," he said in a two-part tweet.

"They used to have a great friend in the US, but ... not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (UN)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!"

The president-elect's complaints about the treatment of Israel came a few hours before John Kerry made his final speech about Middle East peace as secretary of state.

Mr Kerry criticised Israel for settlement-building and accused prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of dragging Israel away from democracy.

Later Mr Trump appeared yet again at on the steps of the club, this time alongside boxing entrepreneur Don King, who carried about a dozen flags, including those of the US and Israel; wore two big diamond necklaces, one of the Star of David and one of the American flag; and sported a large pin featuring a picture of Mr Trump.

With Mr King by his side, Mr Trump said he and Mr Obama had "a very, very good talk", dismissing days of tense remarks by the outgoing and incoming presidents about who would win if they were to hypothetically run against each other.

"We talked about it and smiled about it and nobody is ever going to know because we are never going to be going against each other," Mr Trump said.

Mr Trump also touted plans by a Japanese mogul to bring 8,000 jobs to the United States - possibly the first of 50,000 tech billionaire Masayoshi Son promised to create after meeting the president-elect earlier this month.

In the grand scheme of the economy, the jobs announcement is unlikely to have a major impact, but it is another example of how Mr Trump is trying to stoke voters' belief that he is actively fighting for their well-being.

Mr Son is the founder and chief executive of SoftBank, one of Japan's largest technology outfits. He owns the US mobile carrier Sprint, which Mr Trump said would be moving 5,000 jobs "back" to the United States. Mr Son also controls OneWeb, which Mr Trump said would employ 3,000 workers.

It was unclear whether Mr Trump was talking about the December 6 commitment by Mr Son to invest 50 billion dollars (41bn) in the United States and create 50,000 jobs.

Mr Trump said the addition of 8,000 jobs was "because of what's happening and the spirit and the hope".

The US job market has been robust for much of 2016. Employers have added more than 2.2 million jobs over the past 12 months - a sign of economic health that pre-dates Mr Trump's presidential victory.

Sprint has struggled since its 2013 acquisition by SoftBank. The carrier shed about 9,000 workers between 2012 and 2016, reducing its staff to 30,000, according to annual reports.

Sprint's attempt to join with rival T-Mobile failed in 2014 after regulators objected to combining two of the four largest mobile telecom companies in the United States. Analysts say a Trump administration would be more likely to approve telecom mergers, including a deal between Sprint and T-Mobile.

Sprint chief executive Marcelo Claure said the company was "excited" to work with Mr Trump.

"We believe it is critical for business and government to partner together to create more job opportunities in the US and ensure prosperity for all Americans," he said.

The Sprint jobs announcement came after tensions rose and fell on Wednesday between Mr Trump and Mr Obama. Mr Trump has made it clear that it did not sit well with him when Mr Obama recently boasted that he would have won the election if he had been running.

AP
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that the upcoming Astana meeting between the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian opposition over peace in war-torn Syria would not substitute the Geneva peace talks, Anadolu reported.

The Astana meeting will be complementary and supportive rather than substitute for the Geneva process, Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Ankara in a joint press meeting with President of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci.

The upcoming meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan, where representatives of warring sides in Syria will meet under Turkey and Russias guidance, is part of efforts between Turkey and Russia to launch a political process in Syria.

A number of the UN-led talks in Geneva in an attempt to bring peace to war-torn Syria have achieved no success.

Earlier today, the Turkish Foreign Ministry announced that the parties in Syria have agreed to a nationwide cease-fire scheduled to start on Dec. 30 at 12 midnight local time (2200GMT).

I would like to thank all those who supported the cease-fire process, especially my precious friend [Vladimir] Putin, Erdogan said.

As Turkey, we will continue to make every effort to ensure the peace, stability of our region and Syria, Erdogan said.

Erdogan stated that the parties in Syria were committed to stopping armed attacks including aerial and not to extend regions under their control.

Erdogan added that the cease-fire did not apply to terrorist groups listed by the UN Security Council.

We will continue to fight with the same determination against particularly Daesh until Turkish citizens' security is fully guaranteed, Erdogan said.
The magazine provides a general overview of the options available to foreign firms to sell to the online India...
Worshippers and pilgrims gather at the Church of Nativity on December 24, 2015 in Bethlehem, West Bank. (Photo : Getty Images/Ilia Yefimovich)

Thousands of Christian pilgrims and faithful from many places around the world together with the local Christians, have gathered together in the town of Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas on Dec. 24, Saturday, after a tense year between the Palestinians and the Israelis.



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The faithful have endured the cold weather outside Manger Square in the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem while traditional songs like "Jingle Bells" played in Arabic in loud speakers, according to CNBC. Both the tourists and the local Christians alike have enjoyed strolling and wandering around the square decorated by festive red and golden lights and a huge Christmas tree.



Rodrigo Reis, a tourist from Louisville, Kentucky, has shared in an interview, how the experience was unique for him. He said that it was a very meaningful way to celebrate Christmas, thinking that it was where everything about Christmas started.



In a statement obtained by Ynet News, the tourism officials said that thousands of tourists are always expected to visit not only Bethlehem but also Jerusalem and Nazareth over the holidays. The Christians in the Holy Land only make up a small percentage of the whole population but somehow, the festivities were able to bring in the holiday cheer.



"There is more stability this year and the numbers coming out of the tourism ministry are showing that there will be growth between 2015 and 2016," Sami Khoury, who runs the Visit Palestine online tourism porta, told the newspaper in an interview. Wahid al-Laham, a Bethlehem shop owner selling Christmas memorabilia and decorations, also told the publication that Christmas shopping "was half the rate of previous years, but 80 percent higher than compared to 2015."



After the region experienced a wave of Israeli-Palestinian protests and violence a year ago, more optimism reigned this year in Israel. Shopping was even better this year compared to 2015, according to al-Laham.



Amidst the political instability in the Middle East as well as the ongoing wars, Bethlehem still tries to promote itself as a defender of peace and stability. Thus, the preservation of the yearly Christmas celebrations hosted in the city to preserve and support the Christian presence in Palestine.



Here's a video clip of the Christmas celebration of Christian pilgrims in Bethlehem:






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Initial signs of moderation in API cost pressures: IIFL Securities High raw-material inflation, elevated freight expenses, and normalization in marketing spends have impacted margins of Indian pharma players over the past 12 months. However, some of these API/RM cost pressures have started abating in Q3CY22. Cipla, Sun, JB Pharma and Torrent remain IIFL Securities top-picks in the pharma sector owing to lowest risk to IIFL Securities margin and earnings estimates for these companies. 01 Nov 2022 10:53 AM
Chinese visitors attend event of samgyetang tasting as South Koreas capital Seoul is bustling with a huge group of tasting samgyetang in Seoul, South Korea on May 6, 2016. (Photo : Getty Images)

According to Reuters, South Korea will introduce a new five-year renewable visa in January to attract affluent Chinese tourists, against the backdrop of a decrease in Chinese arrivals in the second half of 2016. Chinese tourists holders of the 'Hallyu' visa will now be allowed to stay up to 30 days In the country.



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In recent years, South Korea became one of the top destinations among Chinese travelers. Although there is a brief slowdown of travelers due to an outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, it is said that the number of Chinese visitors is expected to reach 8 million at the end of the year. This is a 33 percent increase compared to 2015.



However, there have been monthly decreases in the number of Chinese visitors since Seoul announced the deployment of the THAAD advanced United States missile defense system in July. There are only 516,856 Chinese visitors in South Korea, a huge decrease compared to July's record of 917,500 visitors.



"The China Youth Travel Service Co saw a decrease of about 20 to 30 percent in the number of visitors to South Korea in the second half of the year compared with the first half. Many complicated exterior reasons were responsible," said Xu Xialoei, the spokesman of the company.



Besides the THAAD deployment, the latest scandal of the impeachment of Park Geun-Hye, South Korea's president, affected the decisions of Chinese tourists.



According to industry insiders, it is too early to determine whether the new visa will fuel the inbound tourism industry of South Korea in the upcoming year.



Wang Zhenyue, the deputy director of UTour International Travel Service's direct-marketing center, said, "The timing of the new visa policy is good because it coincides with the New Year and Spring Festival holidays, a peak season for outbound Chinese tourism. However, the amount needed to qualify for a hallyu visa is relatively expensive for a brief visit, and residents from Shanghai and Beijing can easily get a five-year, multiple-entry visa without spending so much money."


This past year has been so heartbreakingly tough for so many that its actually taken an unexpected turn toward comedy for some. On the internet, memes and jokes abound as people declare their disdain for 2016 and seek comfort in laughing at our collective sorrow.

A slew of celebrity deaths, an election season that was downright ugly, and seemingly never-ending and always-escalating violence prompted writer Matt Oswalt to inquire on Twitter, Is Quentin Tarantino directing 2016?

So why rehash the pain? Its for the same reason that we study history: It helps us understand. Though awful, these experiences made us who we are, showed us what we can endure and, hopefully, have provided guidelines for a better future.

Heres a look back at the lows of 2016:

Russia for Trump?

U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that hackers working on behalf of Russia infiltrated the Democratic National Committees computer network, as well as the private email of John Podesta, a top adviser to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Some reports, like one from the CIA, say the purpose of the hacking  and the subsequent release of documents  was to throw support behind now-President-elect Donald Trump. Although President Barack Obama has stopped short of confirming the suspected motivation of the hacking, he has promised to take action. In an interview with NPR, Obama said: I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections  we need to take action. And we will  at a time and place of our own choosing. Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.

Crisis continues in Syria

The Syrian Civil War entered its fifth year, and as 2016 comes to a close, theres still no end in sight. A partial cease-fire that began at the end of February unraveled by early July. As violence continues, exacerbating disease, crime and the prevalence of human rights violations, Syrians continue to be displaced, both within the war-torn country and beyond its borders. The U.S. resettled roughly 13,000 Syrian refugees in 2016, and many states have welcomed the displaced with open arms. In Indiana, however, Gov. Mike Pence tried to ban Syrian refugees, despite having accepted federal funds for resettling refugees. The move was ultimately blocked by a federal appeals court panel.

Hate turns to violence

Brussels. Orlando. Berlin. Nice, France. Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. Keith Lamont Scott. Dallas police. Ohio State University. Violent acts motivated by race, religion, sexuality and other isms and forms of hate have come in a seemingly endless string this year. Reports of hate crimes in the U.S. have skyrocketed since Trumps election, as people rip off Muslim womens hijabs, vandals spray paint swastikas on churches and children chant build the wall at their Hispanic classmates. And yet, another year has come and gone without Indiana lawmakers passing long-overdue hate crime legislation.

Indiana jobs leave for Mexico

United Steelworkers Local 1999 has had a busy year working to keep high-paying jobs at Carrier and Rexnord from leaving Indiana and, when that failed, negotiating severance packages for the soon-to-be-unemployed. Both companies announced plans this year to close their factories on the citys west side. Another Carrier factory in Huntington, Indiana, also plans a move south of the border. Despite attempts by Trump and Pence to save the jobs, the losses are likely to be in the thousands.

Flint water crisis

Though the problem of lead leeching into the water in Flint, Michigan, began a couple years back, 2016 saw Gov. Rick Snyder acknowledge the breadth of the crisis and declare a state of emergency, and the National Guard was activated to distribute water. Throughout the year, criminal charges have been filed against several government employees, most recently on Dec. 20, when two former Flint emergency managers and two water plant officials were charged with felonies.

Indy breaks homicide record  again

For the second consecutive year, Indianapolis will break its record for most homicides. Though the exact numbers are disputed, reports indicate 2016 was the sixth consecutive year that saw an increase in homicide numbers. Since 2010, the overall homicide rate in Indianapolis has increased by roughly 57 percent.

Also, for the second consecutive year, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department will be seeking new leadership after the resignation of its chief.
If there is one place which welcomes you into its fold the moment you arrive, it has to be the good old city of Delhi. The quintessential Delhiwalla is street-smart and knows exactly how to wriggle through every situation the bustling city has to offer. Maybe it is the nonchalant spirit of the city which has made it a muse to many writers and poets. The city is constantly surprising you with its myriad moods and characters and to truly understand this city, one has to look beyond its crowded metros, ever-rushing traffic, and historic past.

Theres an invisible umbilical cord which connects the soul to this city. So, when guest blogger Sarthaks friend Christopher decided to head to Delhi to spend his Christmas weekend here, he was greeted with the perfect evening mapped out to assimilate him with the spirit of the old city. The best way to discover the Delhi essence is to explore it by night. Thats when you realize that the city comes with surprises aplenty and many happy contradictions. Lets check out their midnight escapade into the lively city by night.

Kick-starting the night at Qla

OPPO

OPPO

Mehrauli might come across as a part of the city resplendent with the history of the bygone era. Scratch the surface and you would know that this quaint corner has so many hidden delights to make your night full of fun and frolic. The duo forayed into the Mehrauli ruins and after meandering through the canopy of filtered moonlight, they headed to Qla, which is one of the many contemporary delights of this historic part of the city. Qlas terrace seating offers a great view of the Qutab Minar and it is definitely the place to hang out with the fellas to simply watch life pass you by.

Ringing in the right vibes at Summerhouse Cafe

OPPO

OPPO

This beautiful place in Hauz Khas simply lives up to its name. It is a cheerful place to be and is a tip off to the great fun that awaits you at Hauz Khas. They gave the place extra brownie points for its great food and cocktails.

Great sights and great delights at Hauz Khas

OPPO

OPPO

The moment you enter into the narrow lanes of Hauz Khas Village, a different kind of emotion grips you over. With artsy streets and back lanes, rooftop restaurants looking out to a grand lake view, and happy faces all around, you effortlessly become a part of the vibrant night. They explored the ruins and the tombs and basked in the fine amalgamation of the old and the new, the contemporary and the surreal.

One for the sweet tooth at Elma's

OPPO

OPPO

There is no better way to treat yourself on Christmas Eve than with cakes. Now every Delhiite would agree that the best cakes in Hauz Khas Village are at Elmas. Both of them straight went for the super-delicious red velvet cake and welcomed Christmas bang on!

Raising a toast to life and friendship at Maquina

OPPO

OPPO

When old friends meet, a lot of reminiscing happens. You trace the flow of time and look back to the good old days with a smile and a longing. Our adventurous duo headed to Maquina at Hauz Khas Village and raised a toast to their friendship with a glass of sangria. Maquina is one place that is best loved for its great music choices and as they sat there revisiting the happy days, the music perfectly punctuated their carefree laughter.

Rounding it off with some fine jazz music

OPPO

OPPO

They say that the best things should be saved for last. This adage played well for Sarthak and Christopher who headed to The The Pianoman Jazz Club at Safdarjung to round off the night that was all about spontaneous adventures. Soul-stirring jazz music was their best antidote to soothe their mind after this great escapade. It is thronged by the nouveau-urban and with rustic red-brick walls, mezzanine flooring, and of course, the grand chandelier made of 58 trumpets, The Pianoman Jazz Club is the dreamy place that you read in the literature of the old era. The place is a treat to ones aesthetics and is the best round off to your perfect day!

Sarthak and Christophers midnight adventure couldnt have been a better one. They were glad that they could unwind just the way they had wished to. The beautiful places they visited and the great company made them bask in the afterglow of it long after the night had blurred away. Sarthak is particularly glad that he took along the Oppo F1s which helped him capture the best shots in the night, freezing those happy moments with Christopher until next time!

Explore more stories on #SelfieExpert
Freedom 251 was the world's most hyped phone - for maybe 2 weeks.

Reuters

It seems that most Indians who paid the Rs 250 will never experience the joy of features that belong to 2011 - 1 GB RAM, a tiny 4 inch screen 3.2 MP camera. Mohit Goel, the managing director of the Noida-based Ringing Bells, has reportedly quit, and so has his wife Dharna Goel, the company's director. Their office in Noida has been shut for 2 weeks now, and phone dealers don't know how to respond to customers who paid the Rs. 250 fee.

Noida-based dealer Prem Prakash, who had a Freedom 251 dealership told the Times of India, "I have shut my shop as I didn't know how to answer the people who gave us money."

Reuters

A Ghaziabad dealer said that Goel owes him Rs 16 lakh: "Initially he owed me Rs 25 lakh of which he returned some part claiming that he would pay the remaining amount in some time. However, now we hear that the company has been dissolved and a new company named MDM has been formed by the founders of the Ringing Bells. Owners of the company were recently summoned by a Delhi court for a cheque bounce case filed by Aryan Infratech Pvt Ltd, a private firm. Ringing Bells had issued a cheque worth Rs 2 crore which bounced due to 'insufficient funds'.

After reports of Mohit Goel reportedly starting another smartphone venture called MDM Electronics this month, Ringing Bells spoke out, stating they were "very much in the market and is operating as earlier". They have, according to their official statement, delivered around 70,000 units in states like West Bengal, Haryana, Himachal, Bihar, Uttarakhand, New Delhi, Punjab, J&K, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Although the company was supposed to have already planned to deliver 25 lakh handsets before the 30th of June, they received 7 crore orders which led to a crash of the payment gateway within three days.

Also read: Here's Why The Freedom 251 Might Be The Scammiest Scam Of 2016

Aakash Tablet Maker Calls 'Freedom 251' A Bluff, Says 'Made In China' Cheaper Than 'Make In India' Anyday
The Railways administration has put the brakes on its endeavour to purchase high-speed rakes, which can run at speed of 130kmph, as trials done were unsatisfactory.

S L SHANTH KUMAR for BCCL

For the record, officials said that technical defects were detected during the trials. However, they refused to elaborate on the same.

The bogies from Siemens were to be procured under the Rs 4,500 crore Mumbai Urban Transport Project-I. The total cost of purchasing 54 bogies, which would be fitted on four trains, was estimated to be Rs 60 crore.

"We had entered into a contract with Siemens to purchase the bogies that can clock in 130 kmph. However, the trials were unsuccessful and hence the contract will be terminated," said Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation Ltd (MRVC) chairman and managing director Prabhat Sahai.

One of the rakes with the newly designed bogies arrived in 2011, but the same could no be inducted into the suburban system, either on Western Ra ilway or Central Railway as trials remained inconclusive. At the time of signing the deal, Railways had claimed that commuters would have a more comfortable ride.

The older rakes have oil-filled dampers which sometimes leak and have to be refilled each time the train goes for an overhaul.

The Railways said that all this would be done away with after the bolster-less bogies were introduced.

"Although the rakes have the potential to run at 130 kmph, the train would not ha ve clocked this speed ever on CR up to Kalyan and on WR beyond Mira Road because of small intervals between sta tions," said a WR official.

"We have to factor the speed of the train that precedes the high-speed train. How can the modified train run at a higher speed when the one ahead can clock in only 100 to 110 kmph?" he said.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has assured help in bringing back the body of late Hardeep Singh, a Sikh youth who was stabbed to death at a Christmas party in New Zealand.

the tribune

Swaraj said that she had directed the Indian High Commission in New Zealand and asked for the family's contact information.

Deol family - Rania (Sirsa) : I hv seen news report and given instructions to our High Commissioner in New Zealand. https://t.co/dDDOqiemt3  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) December 29, 2016

Please give me your number. I will spk to you on phone. You need not come to Delhi. My heartfelt condolences./2  Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) December 29, 2016

26-year-old Hardeep, who belonged to the Sirsa district of Haryana, was pursuing hotel management in New Zealand and was living there on a work permit. He was stabbed by a 22-year-old girl, Franchesca Kororia Borell, at a party on Christmas day in Christchurch.

afp

Hardeep's family had contacted the Indian High Commission in New Zealand and the New Zealand High Commission in India but to no avail. It was only when they tweeted to Swaraj for her help did they receive any respite.

The family was planning a trip to Delhi but Swaraj's swift response saved them that additional burden.
The cap on cash withdrawal may not be necessary from 1 January, as 250-300 million currency notes were being printed on a daily basis, Minister of State for Finance Santosh Gangwar has said.

ANI

"I have been told that 25-30 crore notes are being printed on a daily basis. Continuing with the withdrawal cap is not necessary from 1 January," Gangwar told CNBC TV18 in an interview on Thursday.

"Inconvenience of limited withdrawal will lessen after 30 December. Improvements can be seen in the transaction process in the last few days," he added.

The central government had demonetised 500 and 1,000 currency notes on 8 November, sending the whole nation into a tizzy. Long queues outside banks have been a daily occurrence since then because enough currency notes are not available with the banks.

The Minister said that sufficient quantities of new currency could not have been printed earlier as it would have leaked the news of demonetisation which was intended to be a surprise. This is particularly true for the new 500 notes, printing of which, presumably, started after 10 November.

BCCL

"Could not print currency earlier as the news would have leaked," he said.

There are four currency printing presses -- one each in Nashik (Maharashtra), Dewas (Madhya Pradesh), Salboni (West Bengal) and Mysuru (Karnataka).

The first two are owned by the central government through the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd. The other two -- in Salboni and Mysuru -- are part of the Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Pvt. Ltd. (BRBNMPL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

If all three shifts run, the four presses would be able to print 40 billion notes a year, irrespective of the denomination.

BCCL

The government had earlier said that it had no intention of printing new notes worth the entire demonetised currency i.e. 15.44 lakh crore.

The requirement of the cash will be measured and according to that it will be pushed into circulation, the Finance Ministry had said.

According to estimates the government would have put about 50 percent of 15.44 lakh crore in circulation by December-end.

Gangwar said that post-demonetisation the government wants to move towards a less-cash society and not completely cashless society.

BCCL

"We are not talking about cashless but less cash," he said.

On the government receiving flak for its decision of allowing only one-time deposits of amounts of over 5,000, Gangwar said that it was rolled back after receiving people's feedback.

"There's nothing wrong in rolling back some decisions. We are answerable primarily to the common man more than the opposition party. We have rolled back certain decisions after receiving feedback," he said.
Actor Michael Sheen, director Morten Tyldum, Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt attend the premiere of Columbia Pictures' 'Passengers' at Regency Village Theatre on December 14, 2016 in Westwood, California. (Photo : Getty Images/Matt Winkelmeyer)

Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt are glad that their latest release "Passengers" will not have a sequel. The actors are seemingly happy with how the film has ended and do not want to jump into another sequel from the ending.



Morten Tyldum directed sci-fi movie features Pratt as Jim, who is one of 5,000 passengers hibernating aboard a spacecraft that is on a 120-year journey from Earth to a colony planet. When a malfunction causes him to wake up 90 years early, he becomes obsessed with another hibernating passenger, Aurora Lane, played by Lawrence, and eventually decides to wake her up.



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Speaking during an interview, Lawrence explained that her character in the recent movie has made her feel very special. The actress is otherwise known for playing large roles in movie sagas after taking on the lead of Katniss Everdeen in the "Hunger Games" franchise.



"It's really rare to find original content in a studio movie, that doesn't have a proven audience -- that has such a big budget," the 26-year-old actress told Cinema Blend. "So it still feels weird that we just kind of closed the case on it."



Following up, Pratt expressed that it is very crucial not to have a sequel to the film "Passengers." He revealed to the above-mentioned publication that he had conversations with Tyldum about making sure the ending remained the same and would not be modified to create the possibilities of sequels. The actor is set to embark on his own franchise adventure as Star-Lord in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" movies.



Meanwhile, Lawrence showed her soft side when she visited the Norton Children's Hospital to spread some holiday cheer. She has made the visit on Christmas eve. The Oscar-winning actress, who is a Louisville native, has been visiting the hospital during Christmas time since 2013.



"My family and I have met so many wonderful children on our visits to the hospital," the actress told Courier-Journal at the time. "Their strength and courage is inspiring."



Check out the trailer of "Passengers" featuring Lawrence and Pratt, below:






Pakistan has been facing flak on global flatforms including UN over its alleged atrocities on Baloch people in Pakistans biggest province Balochistan. According to a new report published in BBC on Wednesday over 1000 dead bodies of suspected armed separatists and political activists have been found in Balochistan over the past six years.

AFP

Figures obtained by BBC Urdu from Pakistans Human Rights ministry points towards a large scale extra-judicial killings. Most of the relatives of the deceased say that they had been picked up by security agencies and never made home again.

The government, however, blames the dumped bodies on infighting among insurgent groups. The separatist insurgency had gained momentum in Pakistan in 2007 and ever since, thousands of people have reportedly disappeared.

AFP

According to the Federal Ministry of Human Rights, at least 936 dead bodies have been found in Balochistan since 2011.

Most of them were dumped in the regions of Quetta, Qalat, Khuzdar and Makran - areas where the separatist insurgency has its roots. Jalil Rekis case who was allegedly killed and dumped had surfaced in news prominently. Reki was a famous political activisyt who lived in Saryab neighbourhood of Quetta.

Reki was arrested from his residence in 2009 and his two years after his body was found in the Mand area near the border of Iran. "They came to our house in three vehicles. These were the vehicles of agencies. They took away Jalil," his mother told the BBC.

"The police did not take our report. Our male relatives later approached the then chief minister's office, but we could not get any response. "Two years later some people found his body in Mand. He had one bullet in the head and three in the chest. His arms were fractured and there were cigarette burns on his back."

AFP

Though the official figures claim the number to be around thousand, the relatives of the missing persons believe that this number could be way higher.

The Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) says it has recorded 1,200 cases of dumped bodies and there are many more it has not been able to document.

Nasrullah Baloch, the head of VBMP, told the BBC most of the bodies "are of those activists who have been victims of 'enforced disappearances' - people who are picked up by authorities and then just go missing."

His allegations chime with an independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) report in 2013 that noted "credible reports of continued serious human rights violations, including [enforced] disappearances of people, arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings".

Though like the previous times, even now Pakistan denies that the state aka army had any hand in these crimes.

Anwarul Haw Kakar, spokesman of the provincial government of Balochistan says that the state has no role in these killings.

"There are several explanations. Sometimes insurgents are killed in a gunfight with law enforcement agencies but their bodies are found later," he said.

"Militant groups also fight among each other and don't bury their dead fighters. Then there are tribal feuds, organised crime and drug mafia," Kakar said to BBC.
While Europeans in various countries are opposing the arrival of refugees on their land, nearly 55000 refugees and migrants have voluntarily left Germany in 2016 which is way beyond the number of people who had left Germany in 2015.

Nearly 20,000 had left Germany voluntarily in 2015. Since the beginning of 2016 when nearly 1000 women were assaulted in New Years Eve of 2016 in Germanys Colonge, Germans have been critical of their chancellor, Angela Merkel for her open arm policy towards refugees.

Reuters

Several protests have held throughout the year where German citizens have openly called for the departure of refugees and migrant. As a result, Germany has toughened its stance on immigration on recent months. Since early 2015, more than 1.1 million migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have entered Germany.

"That's a considerable increase from last year," Harald Neymanns, interior ministry spokesman, announced on Wednesday, adding that the 2016 figure had climbed to 54,123 through December 27.

Reuters

"The increase is welcome. It's always preferable when people leave the country voluntarily instead of being deported."

Finance ministry spokesperson further said the German government would boost finding to 150 million Euros in 2017 to encourage people leave Germany.

Reuters

Last week, the person who killed 12 people by mowing them down under truck in Christian market was a failed asylum seeker and had a sworn alliance to ISIS. Most of the people who have left Germany are returning to their homes in Albania, Serbia, Iraq Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iran, Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said earlier.

Germany is also financially assisting those voluntarily leaving the country. Its giving up to 3,000 euros to any refugee or migrants leaving the country.

Reuters

Separately, German security officials told Reuters news agency the number of those deported after their asylum requests were rejected rose to almost 23,800 from January to November - up from almost 20,900 in all of 2015.

Apart from people voluntarily leaving Germany, there has also been a rise in the number of refugees turned away at the borders.

Reuters

A report by the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung daily said police had turned back 19,720 refugees through the first 11 months of 2016 - up from 8,913 in all of 2015.

Most were from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Nigeria. They had been registered in other EU countries.
2016 was marred by various ongoing theatres of war across globe. 2015 was no different either. Infact ever since the advent of 21st century, conflicts in which innocents die and suffer have become a global, undisputed yet inconvenient truth.

AFP

And those who think that 2017 will be different are being over optimistic or to some extant largely unrealistic because whether the deal between US and Russia over Syria works out or not, 2017 is destined to witness conflicts getting deeper to make humans suffer more.

In 2016, record humanitarian aid was given to people especially those conflicted in war theatres such as Syria, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, but 2017, its likely to get worse as aid agencies would require more to money to help the people as the conflicts is likely to get deeper in 2017.

According to an estimate by the United Nations, almost 93 million people in 33 countries will need humanitarian aid and has appealed for a record $22.2 billion to help them.

And its an at all surprising that conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and South Sudan account for half the budget.

Reuters

In Africa's Sahel belt, poverty, conflict and climate change have left one in six hungry, fuelling migration to Europe, the United Nations says.

Here are major priorities of various human welfare organisations across the globe who would be carrying out the aid work throughout the globe.

1. According to Filippo Grandi, Head of UN refugee agency, UNHCR, access to safety for those fleeing conflict - upholding asylum for refugees, and tackling xenophobia, scapegoating and populist fear-mongering is major priority.

Reuters

2) Stabilising frontline refugee hosting countries by supporting an early life-saving humanitarian response, and decisive engagement by development actors to mitigate the dramatic consequences of large-scale refugee influxes.

3. According to Garry Conille, Head of Operations, International Federation Of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, emerging infectious diseases are becoming more frequent, complex and difficult to manage as they spread in urban settings with poor sanitation, crop up in new places due to migration and move across borders.

AFP

After Ebola, 2016 saw the wildfire spread of Zika and yellow fever and Rift Valley Fever in new places.

4. Ciaran Donnelly of International Rescue Committee believes that their organisation would focus on proving cash for refugees, not just tents or food. Cash assistance empowers people and gives them choice, it helps scarce resources go further, and it supports the local host economy.

AFP

Refugees need long-term support, not just emergency relief. This means getting refugee children into school, getting their parents into jobs, and working with international financial institutions, host country governments and the private sector.

5. Nigel Timmins of Oxfam says that their focus would be on Africa especially Nigeria and Sudan where the eight-year conflict between Boko Haram and the military in northeast Nigeria has intensified, spreading into Niger, Chad and Cameroon. We are concerned at least 400,000 people could be experiencing famine-like conditions.

Reuters

Unless humanitarian aid is delivered, this could rise to 800,000. Over 2.6 million people have been forced to flee their homes.

After three years of fighting in South Sudan nearly 5 million people are desperately hungry. Half the population is already in need of humanitarian aid. Over 1.8 million people have been forced from their homes and more than one million have fled into neighbouring countries. The Ugandan village of Bidi Bidi has become the second largest refugee resettlement area in the world.

6. Other priorities of various human aid organisations would be the Middle East crises in Iraq, Syria and Israel and occupied Palestine.

AFP

Scale up our work in Afghanistan as Afghan refugees are returned from Pakistan.

Scale up our disaster response capability. This is in part because of the wider impacts of the Syria crisis following the battle for Aleppo and likely knock-on effects of the battle for Mosul (in Iraq).
The infamous Supreme Leader of North Korea is on a constant spree, adding more cases of extreme brutality, cruelty, and evilness to his name.

That said, Kim Jong-Un has executed more than 300 people, claims a spy agency. Ever since he came to power in 2011, he's ordered for 340 people to be killed, including one of his uncles - describing him as a "traitor for all ages.".

upi

The Institute for National Security Strategy, a South Korean think tank, released "The misgoverning of Kim Jong Un's five years in power" on Thursday, detailing how the North Korean leader uses executions to tighten his hold on power. Among those who were killed, 140 were senior officials in the country's government, military and ruling Korean Worker's Party.

The Supreme Leader has shown extreme levels of brutality and ruthlessness ever since he came to power.

youtube

"For example, in the five years he has served as leader of North Korea, he has purged (his) Defense Minister five times, while his father changed his Defense Minister only three times in his 17 years ... and two of those changes were because (they) died of old age," said RAND Corporation's Senior Defense Analyst Bruce Bennett to CNN.

The country and the institute has managed to keep a lot under wraps, but from time to time, reports of Kim Jong Un's acts of cruelty keep leaking.

Earlier this year, North Korea's top education official Kim Yong Jin was executed by firing squad after he exercised a "bad attitude" at the country's Supreme People's Assembly in June.

He also killed his Defense Minister Hyon Yong Chol with an anti-aircraft gun at a military school in Pyongyang, in front of an audience.

nbcnews

He also made sure that his family was there to see the execution.

Sources claim that it's Kim's obsession with power that forces him to behave like this. He's desperate to live up to his expectations of becoming a great leader. To do so, he has been pushing around top leaders -- military and civil, primarily the party -- to show off his being the boss.
Actor Tom Hardy attends the UK Premiere of 'The Revenant' at the Empire Leicester Square on January 14, 2016 in London, England. (Photo : Getty Images/John Phillips)

FX is set to premiere its new show "Taboo" on Jan. 10, 2017. Going by its trailers and spoilers, Tom Hardy starring limited series seems to be the network's answer to HBO's "Game of Thrones."



Not only "Taboo" promises plenty of nudity, conspiracy and betrayal, it will also feature eerie glare of Jonathan Pryce, who recently retired from duties as the High Sparrow in "Game of Thrones" Season 6. Oona Chaplin, who starred in the HBO series as Talisa Stark, will also be seen in the upcoming FX drama.



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Set in 1814, "Taboo" will follow James Keziah Delaney (Hardy), who seemingly rises from the grave after a dangerous trip to Africa to return to London to rebuild his life. As he claims his stake in his father's shipping empire and reunites with his sister, he will also uncover the legacy of his murdered father, thus, leading him to seek revenge on those who killed him.



The mini-series is also co-created by the actor along with his father Chips Hardy and Steven Knight. The first four episodes are directed by Kristoffer Nyhol while the second four episodes are directed by Anders Engstrom. Apart from former "Game of Thrones" cast members, the highly-anticipated FX's show also stars Stephen Graham, Michael Kelly, David Hayman, Jason Watkins, Leo Bill, Jefferson Hall and Robert Parker.



The gritty drama's trailer was released recently giving fans an eyeful of what is to come. In a brief moment, Tom can be seen completely naked as he sits in front of a lamp with his head in his hands. Another sneak peek showed him wading through a river in Africa and covered almost completely in tribal tattoos.



Tom was last seen in "Mad Max: Fury Road" along with BBC's "Peaky Binders" Season 3. Publicly, the 39-year-old actor was spotted making his way out of the airport after touching down at JFK on Dec. 16 in New York City, Just Jared reported.



Earlier this month, Tom told Esquire UK that he will soon get a tattoo done, thanks to his close friend Leonardo DiCaprio. The former actor will be getting himself inked with "Leo known everything" since he admittedly lost a bet to the "Titanic" star.



Meanwhile, watch the trailer of "Taboo" below:






Trump's Ambassador, Makes Netanyahu Look Like a J Street Lefty





Its a good thing ambassador-designate David Friedman will have diplomatic immunity; otherwise he might get arrested for incitement.



By Chemi Shalev

December 28, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Haaretz" - By Israeli standards, Donald Trumps designated Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is an extreme right-winger. He might find a place in the settler movement or with Naftali Bennetts Habayit Hayehudi Party, but only on its right-wing fringes. He makes Benjamin Netanyahu seem like a left-wing defeatist. From where Friedman stands, most Israelis, never mind most American Jews, are more or less traitors.

Friedman wont be the first Jewish ambassador to Israel, of course: Dan Shapiro, Dan Kurtzer and Martin Indyk preceded him. They often clashed with Israeli governments, but usually on behalf of their superiors in Washington and in the understated diplomatic tones in which they were trained. And whatever their opinions, they were well entrenched within the Israeli mainstream.

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Friedman would be a different kind of envoy altogether, on the assumption that his appointment is approved, which, to my mind, is far from certain. Friedman has expressed opinions that are considered radical even in todays more right-wing Israel. He opposes a two-state solution, supports settlements and advocates annexation, has denigrated President Obama as an anti-Semite, questioned the citizenship of Israeli Arabs, compared J Street to Holocaust-era kapos and so on. Its good hell be coming with diplomatic immunity: For some of his articles and statements, Friedman could get arrested by the Israeli police on suspicion of incitement.

Friedmans appointment would seem to confirm Bennetts initial jubilation following Trumps election: This is not an ambassador that a rational U.S. administration would send if it had any plans whatsoever to advance the peace process. This is an ambassador who will please Evangelicals, delight Jewish settlers and bring pleasure to Land of Israel zealots far and wide. In many ways, Friedman will seem like a turbo-charged Ron Dermer, courting the extreme right in his host country while shunning all the rest. It will upset many Israelis, including, possibly, Netanyahu himself. The prime minister is always concerned more about his right-wing flanks than his opposition on the left: The last thing he needs is a U.S. ambassador who supports his most feared rivals.

From dismay to jubilation, Trump's pick of Israel envoy splits Jewish response

Friedmans appointment will displease many Israelis and American Jews, of course: It will drive home just how much they have lost the plot and how Trumps Presidency could represent transformational change, for the worse, from their point of view. The nomination of Friedman will raise alarm in European capitals and in many non-aligned countries. It is likely to be viewed by Palestinians as a signal that Trump intends to stray from any semblance of an even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to throw his full weight behind Israel. Right-wingers, who tend to believe that a strong hand is the only thing needed to quell the restless natives, will assert that such resoluteness can make Palestinians accept reality. But the opposite might also be true, especially if Friedmans appointment is a harbinger of Trumps intention to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem: It could weaken Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority  which would please Friedman, as he has often written  and give rise to more extreme leaders who will try to spark a new and violent intifada.

What remains to be seen is whether Friedmans appointment is a consequence of serious deliberations that have taken into account all the pros and cons  a remote possibility, apparently - or whether it is another impulsive, haphazard move with no rhyme or reason other than to get Friedman off Trumps back or to please his son in law Jared Kushner, who contributed at least $20,000 to American Friends of Beit El Yeshiva, which Friedman heads. The very fact that Trump is dispatching as ambassador a bankruptcy lawyer so closely identified with a radical yeshiva in the West Bank is mind-boggling in and of itself, but no less mind boggling, almost 40 days after the fact, than Trumps election.
Welcome to Greater Israel!





The tail will be wagging the dog under Donald Trump



By Philip Giraldi

December 28, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Unz Review " - While the presidential campaign was still in progress it was possible to think that there might be some positive change in Americas broken foreign policy. Hillary Clinton was clearly the candidate of Washington Establishment hawkishness, while Donald Trump was declaring his disinclination for democracy and nation building overseas as well as promoting detente with Russia. Those of us who considered the foreign policy debacle to be the most dangerous issue confronting the country, particularly as it was also fueling domestic tyranny, tended to vote on the basis of that one issue in favor of Trump.

On December 1st in Cincinnati, president-elect Donald Trump made some interesting comments about his post-electoral foreign policy plans. There were a lot of good things in it, including his citing of $6 trillion wasted in Mideast fights when our goal is stability not chaos. And as for dealing with real enemies, he promised to partner with any nation that is willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism He called it a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past adding that We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments, folks.

Regarding the apparent inability of governments to thoroughly check out new immigrants prior to letting them inside the country, demonstrated most recently in Nice, Ohio and Berlin, Trump described how People are pouring in from regions of the Middle East  we have no idea who they are, where they come from what they are thinking and we are going to stop that dead cold.  These are stupid refugee programs created by stupid politicians. Exaggerated? For sure, but he has a point, and it all is part and parcel of a foreign policy that serves no actual interest for people who already live in the United States.

But, as so often with Trump, there was also the flip side. On the looney fringe of the foreign and national security policy agenda, the president-elect oddly believes that The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes. So to reduce the number of nukes we have to create more of them and put them in more places. Pouring gasoline on a raging fire would be an appropriate analogy and it certainly leads to questions regarding who is advising The Donald with this kind of nonsense.

Trump has promised to put America first, but there is inevitably a spanner in the works. Now, with the New Year only six days away and the presidential inauguration coming less than three weeks after that, it is possible to discern that the new foreign policy will, more than under Barack Obama and George W. Bush, be driven in significant part by Israeli interests.

At least Obama had the good sense to despise Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but that will not be true of the White House after January 20th. Trumps very first telephone conversation with a foreign head of government after being elected was with Netanyahu and during the campaign, he promised to invite Bibi to the White House immediately after the inauguration. The new presidents first naming of an Ambassador-designate to a foreign nation was of his good friend and bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman to Israel. Friedman had headed Trumps Israel Advisory Committee and is a notable hard liner who supports the Israeli settler movement, an extreme right-wing political entity that is nominally opposed by existing U.S. government policy as both illegal and damaging to Washingtons interests. Beyond that, Friedman rejects creation of a Palestinian state and supports Israels actual annexation of the West Bank.

U.S. Ambassadors are supposed to support American interests but Friedman would actually be representing and endorsing a particularly noxious version of Israeli fascism as the new normal in the relationship with Washington. Friedman describes Jerusalem as the holy capital of the Jewish people and only the Jewish people. Trump is already taking steps to move the U.S. Embassy there, making the American government unique in having its chief diplomatic mission in the legally disputed city. The move will also serve as a recruiting poster for groups like ISIS and will inflame opinion against the U.S. among friendly Arab states in the region. There is no possible gain and much to lose for the United States and for American citizens in making the move, but it satisfies Israeli hardliners and zealots like Friedman.

The Trump teams animosity towards Iran is also part of the broader Israeli agenda. Iran does not threaten the United States and is a military midget compared either to nuclear armed Israel or the U.S. Yet is has been singled out as the enemy du jour in the Middle East even though it has invaded no one since the seventeenth century. Israel would like to have the United States do the heavy lifting to destroy Iran as a regional power. If Washington were to attempt to do so it would be a catastrophe for all parties involved but that has not stopped hardliners from demanding unrelenting military pressure on Tehran.

Donald Trump is not even president yet but he advised Barack Obama to exercise the U.S. veto for the resolution condemning Israeli settlements that was voted on at the United Nations Security Council on Friday, explaining that As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations. This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis.

This is a straight Israeli line that might even have been written by Netanyahu himself. Or by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which fumed AIPAC is deeply disturbed by the failure of the Obama Administration to exercise its veto to prevent a destructive, one-sided, anti-Israel resolution from being enacted by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). In the past, this administration and past administrations have rejected this type of biased resolution since it undermines prospects for peace. It is particularly regrettable, in his last month in office, that the president has taken an action at odds with the bipartisan consensus in Congress and Americas long history of standing with Israel at the United Nations.

Ah yes, the fabled negotiations for a two state solution, regularly employed to enable Israelis to do nothing while expanding their theft of Arab land and one wonders how Trump would define what is fair to the Palestinians? So we are already well into Trumps adoption of the always the victim argument that the Israelis have so cleverly exploited with U.S. politicians and the media.

Not content with advising Obama, Trump also reportedly took the Palestinian issue one step further by directly pressuring the sponsoring Egyptians to postpone any submission of the resolution. Expecting to have a friendly president in the White House after January 20th, Egypts president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi complied on Thursday but the motion was reintroduced by New Zealand, Venezuela, Senegal and Malaysia on the following day. The resolution passed with 14 yes votes and a courageous U.S. abstention after Obama finally, after eight long years, developed a backbone. But unfortunately, Trumps interventions suggest that nothing critical of Israel will be allowed to emerge from the U.N. during his term of office. Referring to the U.N. vote, he said that things will be different after January 20th.

The United Nations resolution produced an immediate reaction from Israeli Firsters in Congress and the media, led by Senator Chuck Schumer and the Washington Post. The Post featured a lead editorial entitled The Obama Administration fires a dangerous parting shot and an op-ed The United States just made Middle East peace harder by no less a redoubtable American hero than Eliot Abrams. Look in vain for any suggestion of what might be construed as an actual U.S. interest in either piece. It is all about Israel, as it always is.

The problem with Israel and its friends is that they are never satisfied and never leave the rest of us Americans alone, pushing constantly at what is essentially an open door. They have treated the United States like a doormat, spying on us more than any ostensibly friendly nation while pocketing our $38 billion donation to their expanding state without so much as a thank you. They are shameless. Israels ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer has been all over American television sputtering his rage over the United Nations settlements vote. On CNN he revealed that Israel has clear evidence that President Obama was behind the resolution and he announced his intention to share the information with Donald Trump. Every American should be outraged by Israels contempt for us and our institutions. One has to wonder if the mainstream media will take a rest from their pillorying of Russia to cover the story.

For many years now, Israel has sought to make the American people complicit in its own crimes while also encouraging our countrys feckless and corrupt leadership to provide their government with political cover and even go to war on its behalf. This has got to stop and, for a moment, it looked like Trump might be the man to end it when he promised to be even-handed in negotiating between the Arabs and Israelis. That was before he promised to be the best friend Israel would ever have.

Israels quarrels dont stay in Israel and they are not limited to the foreign policy realm. I have already discussed the pending Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, a bipartisan effort by Congress to penalize and even potentially criminalize any criticism of Israel by equating it to anti-Semitism. Whether Israel itself wants to consider itself a democracy is up to Netanyahu and Israeli voters but the denial of basic free speech rights to Americans in deference to Israeli perceptions should be considered to be completely outrageous.

And theres more. Israels government funded lawfare organization Shurat HaDin has long been using American courts to punish Palestinians and Iranians, obtaining punitive damages linked to allegations regarding terrorist incidents that have taken place in Israel. Now Shurat HaDin is using our courts to go after American companies that do business with countries like Iran.

Last years nuclear agreement with Iran included an end to restraints on the Islamic Republics ability to engage in normal banking and commercial activity. As a high priority, Iran has sought to replace some of its aging infrastructure, to include its passenger aircraft fleet. Seattle based Boeing has sought to sell to Iran Air 80 airplanes at a cost of more than $16 billion and has worked with the U.S. government to meet all licensing and technology transfer requirements. The civilian-use planes are not in any way configurable for military purposes, but Shurat HaDin on December 16th sought to block the sale at a federal court in Illinois, demanding a lien against Boeing for the monies alleged to be due to the claimed victims of Iranian sponsored terrorism. Boeing, meanwhile, has stated that the Iran Air order support(s) tens of thousands of U.S. jobs.

So an agency of the Israeli government is taking steps to stop an American company from doing something that is perfectly legal under U.S. law even though it will cost thousands of jobs here at home. It is a prime example of how much Israel truly cares about the United States and its people. And even more pathetic, the Israel Lobby owned U.S. Congress has predictably bowed down and kissed Netanyahus ring on the issue, passing a bill in November that seeks to block Treasury Department licenses to permit the financing of the airplane deal.

The New Year and the arrival of an administration with fresh ideas would provide a great opportunity for the United States to finally distance itself from a toxic Israel, but, unfortunately, it seems that everything is actually moving in the opposite direction. Dont be too surprised if we see a shooting war with Iran before the year is out as well as a shiny new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem (to be built on land stolen from Palestinians, incidentally). Trump might think he is ushering in a new era of American policy based on American interests but it is beginning to look a lot like same-old same-old but even worse, and Benjamin Netanyahu will be very much in the drivers seat.

Phil Giraldi is a former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years overseas in Europe and the Middle East working terrorism cases. He holds a BA with honors from the University of Chicago and an MA and PhD in Modern History from the University of London.
John Kerry Speaking on Vision for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Video



Kerrys Mid-East speech will ensure chaos lasts after Obama admin  Israeli minister.



Speech begins at 22 minutes, 45 seconds.



Posted December 28, 2016 John Kerry Defends U.S. Approach to Israel After U.N. Vote on Settlements By Felicia Schwartz December 28, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " WSJ " - WASHINGTONSecretary of State John Kerry launched a forceful defense of the Obama administrations approach to Israel Wednesday, warning that a two-state solution is in jeopardy in a speech outlining the administrations vision for finding Middle East peace. Mr. Kerrys remarks come amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and Israel after the U.S., refraining from using its veto last week in the United Nations Security Council, allowed a resolution critical of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to pass. Mr. Kerry said the U.S. decision to abstain from the vote last week was in accordance with our values. Some seem to believe that the U.S. friendship means the U.S. must accept any policy, regardless of our own interests, our own positions, our own words, our own principleseven after urging again and again that the policy must change, Mr. Kerry said. Friends need to tell each other the hard truths. Mr. Kerry said the conditions on the ground such as violence, terrorism, incitement, settlement expansion and the seemingly endless occupationare combining to destroy hopes for peace on both sides and increasingly cementing an irreversible one-state reality that most people do not actually want. The address also unfolded against a backdrop of an unusual back-and-forth between President-elect Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as both criticized the Obama administration, which still has three weeks left in office. Ahead of Mr. Kerrys speech Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump harshly criticized the Obama administration the resolution to pass and urged Israel to stay strong until Jan. 20th, when he takes office. They used to have a great friend in the U.S. but not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal and now this (U.N.)! Mr. Trump tweeted. Mr. Netanyahu responded with a tweet thanking Mr. Trump for his clear-cut support for Israel. Messrs. Netanyahu and Trump have said they would ignore the new U.N. resolution and pursue their own efforts to reach peace. Mr. Kerry on Wednesday said the U.S. has done more to support Israel than any other country as its friend. This friend that as blocked countless efforts to delegitimize Israel, cannot be true to our own valuesor even the stated democratic values of Israeland we cannot properly defend and protect Israelif we allow a viable two state solution to be destroyed before our eyes, Mr. Kerry said. Relations between the Obama administration and Mr. Netanyahu reached a low point last year as Mr. Netanyahu lobbied lawmakers to scuttle a nuclear deal with Iran that President Barack Obama sees as a pillar of his legacy. Relations soured further as Israel has continued to pursue settlements in the Palestinian territories, and after U.S. refused to use its veto power in the United Nations this week. Mr. Kerry expended considerable personal effort in 2013 and 2014 trying to broker peace, but those talks ultimately fell apart in spring 2014 over disagreements on land swaps and prisoner exchanges. Write to Felicia Schwartz at Felicia.Schwartz@wsj.com Kerry: Israel Can Either Be Jewish or Democratic  It Cannot Be Both : They have a choice. They can choose to live together in one state or they can separate into two states. Netanyahu slams Kerrys skewed speech, obsessing over settlements : Like the resolution that John Kerry advanced at the UN [Security Council], John Kerry gave a skewed speech against Israel." Donald Trump, Republicans threaten to get back at UN for Israel resolution : President-elect Donald Trump is joining the cavalcade of Republicans who are denouncing the United Nations over its Friday resolution to stop Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House editorial policy.
Berlin  Another False Flag? By Peter Koenig December 28, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - 12 dead, about 40 injured, is the result of the latest terror attack in Berlin, when on 19 December, a truck plouged into a Christmas market at Berlins Bretscheideplatz, near the lush Kurfuerstendamm. Is it not a deja-vu of not even half a year ago, when in Nice, France, on 14th July a truck mowed down hordes of people celebrating Bastille Day? In Berlin, the first culprit was a Pakistani who apparently escaped. When later he turned up and explained with proof his innocence, they had to let him go. In the cabin of the truck they also found a dead man of Polish origin. He couldnt be accused, since he was dead. Then the chase was stalled, until miraculously, about a day later, they found in the truck identity papers of a Mr. Anis Amri (24) of Tunisian citizenship beneath the drivers seat. As is usual with these terrorists, they like to leave their ID cards behind. It seems to be part of their strategy to be caught and killed. Then, once more there was a suspect, who could be chased, throughout Europe. At three in the morning of December 23, again miraculously, Anis Amri turned up on a plaza in Milan, got allegedly into a confrontation with two policemen, who claimed he pulled a gun, when one of them shot and killed him. No witness, no proof. Two Italian policemen killed a young man, whom  they say  they didnt even have a clue who he might be. They became heroes, literally overnight. Italys new PM, Paolo Gentiloni, thanked and congratulated them; and so did Mme. Merkel and her Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere. The same pattern all over again. DEAD MAN CANT TALK . Its Paris (Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan); Nice; Brussels; Munich; Orlando, Florida; San Bernardino, California  all over again- and again  and again. The plowing-through-a-celebrating-crowd is in many regards a carbon copy of the 14th July massacre in Nice (see image below). At the end, the designated Muslim terrorist was killed. No witness. No testimony. Questions to be fully investigated: Were the secret services, the core of which are the CIA, Mossad and MI6, with the collaboration of Germanys BND involved. Was it a false flag? Dont believe one minute that your respective governments didnt and dont know whats going on. Who are the real perpetrators? The real perpetrators are not Muslims. They are your own spineless puppet governments, all of which (covertly) support the ISIS and al Qaeda. They obey orders to demonize the Muslim faith and society. Thats what the west knows best  denigrating and discriminating, accusing the innocent, to serve their purpose, sanctions for those who do not submit. In reality, no change for the last 800-some years, colonizing, exploiting, murdering the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Todays leaders are the descendants of the colonial era killers of times past. They form the core of our western killer civilization. These western leaders are mere puppets, because they have been put in power by the the elusive elite, also called the Deep State  the Deep State gone global. Democracy is dead. Its become a useless defunct slogan. No so-called election over the past decade or so, in the western world has been democratic. They were all scams and manipulations of peoples minds and wills. And if they didnt conform to what the Washington masters and their supreme masters needed, Plan B of regime change kicked in. They have become experts of semi-clandestine regime change through parliamentary coups  i.e. Paraguay, Ukraine, Brazil, Greece, Portugal, Spain and many others. If these eventually elected western leaders (sic-sic), from Obama, to Merkel, Hollande, May, Gentiloni  and the entire EU / OECD clan, dont behave, they are cooked, the target of political destabilizaion. Thats the extent of impunity which drives this hegemonic and criminal process towards the New World Order, or the One World Order, led by the global finance and war industry. The finance clan, the lords of money, the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Morgans, et al, the FED, BIS (Bank for International Settlements, the secretive central bank of all central banks) and Goldman Sachs, have to act fast; otherwise they might lose the key instrument of their power  the sham dollar pyramid economy  may fall apart, before they have actually reached their goal  a world under constant chaos, never-ending conflicts and wars. A world under which a small elite, enslaves the 99.99% of Us, the People  under ever worsening life conditions, unemployment, misery, disease, privatized social services, all contributing to a steady decline in life expectancy. Among their instruments is permanent chaos. Economic dislocation and social crises. Open borders forced by trade lobbies and WTO (World Trade Organization) will wipe out small farmers and manufacturers in developing countries, thus eventually handing monopolies to large, mostly US corporations, to the detriment of already impoverished nations, whose vulnerability will be further abused to extract their natural resources for a pittance, so they may repay their IMF / World Bank imposed and leveraged debt. Floods of refugees from war zones to industrialized wealthy countries, currently happening from the war-torn Middle East to Europe, will disrupt the labor market, push down wages, create massive unemployment. These are all tools towards enslavement of populations. People who have to fend and fight for daily food and often for sheer survival, have no energy or time to take to the streets and protest. Thats the plan; already being enacted. Just look at Greece.



What does all that have to do with the Berlin massacre?  Everything. Berlin, like Paris, Brussels, Munich, Orlando is just a cog in the wheel of the monsters drive towards full world hegemony. Unexpected, haphazard carnage and terror acts are spreading misery, poverty and fear. People who are afraid will call for more police and military protection. They will voluntarily give up their human and civil rights for what they hope will be more protection, being totally oblivious to the fact that the very governments from whom they are seeking more protection are those that commit these acts of treason and terror, those who are behind the killings. The Anglo-american controlled presstitute mainstream media is in permanent brainwashing mode. Unless you search the news and information for yourself on alternative media, they will never tell you the truth, but their lies, after lies, after more of the same lies will fabricate the public truth. Peoples fear and absence of civil rights are easy steps towards increased militarization of the west, already happening  look at France  President (sic) Hollande was just able to extend the State of Emergency through July 2017. [The Paris November 2015 terror attacks played a key role in justifying the State of Emergency.] The goal is to include it into the French Constitution, basically putting the French people under permanent actual or threat of Martial Law. Others might follow  Germany, Italy  all those whose constituents are ever warier of the EU and their monopoly money, the euro, and who may seek EUREXIT. This would break the camels back, so to speak, or at least put a wrench in the boundless onslaught of the hegemon. Peoples fear may also re-strengthen the faltering justification of NATO. The fall of NATO must be halted. NATO is the Deep States warrior flagship, the military fear- and war monger vis-a-vis Russia and eventually China  the last vestiges to be conquered by the self-styled almighty empire, the invisible elite that pretends to rule the globe. Fortunately, they cannot stand up to the Russia-China chess duo which is gradually outsmarting the wests ostentatious killer exploits. Imagine, your own spineless governments, following orders of the globalized Deep State  in Berlin, Munich, Nice, Paris, Brussels, Orlando, and an almost endless list of false flags. How can we respect our so-called leaders? They have zero esteem for us, who are their bread-earners. They kill us, no hesitation, if it pleases them and serves their purpose  and their greed. In the case of Berlin, is the German government complicit? Blaming Muslims, finding a pre-identified victim, Mr. Anis Amri, who most likely had no clue that he was framed. In Italy, the police catches him (or somebody who has been given the pre-identified Tunisian victims name), they kill him  and, bingo  case closed. Another fear-inflicting false flag was born and concluded, advancing the bulldozer of empires destruction a notch closer to Full Spectrum Dominance. The MSM will do the rest  until the next fake exploit. Be prepared. But this can happen only if we let our governments get away with it, if we close our eyes to reality; if we keep believing the presstitute media. People wake up!  Boycott the MSM. Take the time to seek the truth elsewhere, for example, on RT, TeleSur, Global Research, ICH, New Eastern Outlook (NEO), CounterPunch, The Saker, Voltairenet  and many more. The Deep State cannot win without your participation. Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He is the author of Implosion  An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed  fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution!  Essays from the Resistance . The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House editorial policy.
Aleppo Liberated - Turkey's Problems Increase



By Moon Of Alabama December 28, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Moon Of Alabama " - As planned by the Russian forces the liberation of east-Aleppo was completed before Christmas. There are no longer beheadings by Takfiris in East-Aleppo. Instead a Christmas mass could be held in the damaged Elias Cathedral in the Old City in east-Aleppo. A total of about 88,000 people left the area during the evacuation of east-Aleppo. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross some 35,000 (13,000 militants and their immediate families) left to al-Qaeda held areas in Idleb governate. The UN Humanitarian Relief Organization found that 54,000 entered the government held west Aleppo. Currently the area is searched by sapper teams and several hidden bombs were found. Several exploded and killed dozens of Syrian army soldiers. Mass graves were found of Syrian soldiers and civilians executed by al-Qaeda, Ahrar al Sham and other U.S. supported groups, presumably shortly before their evacuation. The Syrian government had wanted to negotiate their release before the evacuation. But an estimate of the additional death toll by a prolonged presence of the Takfiris during negotiations was high and international politics demanded a fast solution of the crisis. Many weapon and food storage were found as well as intact health clinics. The fighters and their families were obviously well supplied while the rest of the population suffered. The weapons and ammunition found (video of just one stash - 1, 2) - mostly produced in Bulgaria, paid by the Saudis and transported and distributed by the U.S. - are estimated to be about $100 million in value. The Turkish forces and some of its Syrian Islamist proxies are trying to capture Al-Bab, east of Aleppo, from Islamic State forces. Their "Euphrates Shield" operation has run into severe problems. The proxy forces ran away instead of fighting ISIS. On Dec 22 a suicide bomber killed some 16 Turkish soldiers. In total some 80-90 Turkish soldiers were killed during the short campaign so far - more than Russian soldiers killed in Syria since the start of their campaign more than a year ago. Ten of the most modern tanks in the Turkish army, German build Leopard 2A4, have been damaged or destroyed by ISIS forces. These use U.S. manufactured TOW anti-tank missiles provided by the CIA to support "moderate rebels" fighting the Syrian government. ISIS pictures of battle damage in Al-Bab show UK/U.S. supported "White Helmets" doing "rescue" work. The Turkish army now sent 500 additional special forces as well as artillery to get a hold of Al-Bab. Turkish jets are not allowed in Syrian air space and the U.S. has denied all air support. Today the Russian air forces(!) gave air support to Turkish troops fighting ISIS in Al-Bab. (Remember that not so long ago neocon propagandists were claiming that Russias Giving ISIS An Air Force.) In east-Syria ISIS is again trying to capture the government held enclave in Deir Ezzor but has failed so far to make any gain. Kurdish YPG forces and some bribed tribal Arab groups with the (rather funny) name Syrian Democratic Forces, both under U.S. command, slowly approach the ISIS held city of Raqqa. Shortly before Christmas the U.S. president signed a new directive that allows the distribution of air-defense MANPADs to "moderate rebels" in Syria. Like with the TOWs the CIA distributed to "moderate rebels" some of these MANPADs will inevitably end up with ISIS and may well be used against civilian airliners outside of Syria. The Kurdish YPG/SDF also wants these weapons though their only potential enemy with an air forces is the Turkish NATO army. The Russians understand the distribution of MANPADs to their enemies in Syria as a "hostile act" and will likely response in kind. With his losses in Syria accumulating the Turkish president Erdogan now accused the U.S. of supporting ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria - groups Erdogan himself supported until the probably U.S. induced coup against him was warded. His permanent ideological U-turns (pro-ISIS/anti-ISIS; pro-Russian/anti-Russian/pro-Russian etc) are taking a toll with his followers. (The economic problems don't help either.) The recent assassination of the Russian ambassador in Turkey by some Islamist policeman can be seen as a result of these confusions. Erdogan followers are not the only ones who are getting confused about the various actors, allies and interests in Syria. Elijah Magnier has written an insightful year-end recap about the current "Regional and international balance in the Levant". Part one covers the Turkish shifts in the Syrian war and part two Russias role in the Syrian war and the tactical differences with Iran. He concludes: Syria is headed toward more battles but a peace deal is visible on the 2017 horizon. Sometimes diplomacy necessitates the language of guns and fire to impose peace on the participants. One thing is certain: the jihadists certainly will not be laying down their arms for the simple reason that this would blow away the essence of their ideology: they would have to choose to migrate to a country outside Syria. The first choice of the migrating Takfiris will be Turkey where they have a support base and many followers of their ideology. With the pursuit of the war on Syria and support for radical Islamists Erdogan has put his country in the same position Pakistan had put itself when Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq supported the CIA supplied Mujahedin in Afghanistan against the progressive Afghan government in 1978. The result in Pakistan has been a slow boiling, deadly insurgency ever since. It will probably take decades for Turkey to rid the formerly secular country of such deadly cancer. Proof: "Moderate Rebels" in Syria are Really Jihadists (Ben Swann) The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House editorial policy.
Following the kick off of the One Lagos Fiesta (OLF) on Saturday to mark the end of 2016 and usher in the New Year, Lagos residents in different areas have been entertained across the state, with Agege hosting the event Wednesday night.

Agege stadium became a spectacle as the show was graced with performances from artistes both known and upcoming.

Skuki, Oritsefemi, including former Remedies members Eedris Abdulkareem and Tony Tetuila all set the stage alight as they performed their respective hits.

Other performers were Niniola and Esojay Luciano who got the crowd going with his new single Omo Ton So.

The fiesta, which was introduced last year by the state government,ends December 31.

It is sponsored by telecommunications firm, Globacom, which said it had already created special fun spots for residents at all the five OLF centres in Ikeja, Ikorodu, Epe, Badagry and Lagos Island.
Australian authorities seized more than a ton of cocaine worth hundreds of millions of dollars, police said on Thursday, describing it as one of the countrys largest drug busts.

Fifteen men, including commercial fishing operators, were arrested for allegedly importing the cocaine from South America.

The combined value of the cocaine is about 258.5 million U.S. dollars.

The arrests follow a two-and-a-half year investigation into fishermen who were allegedly using trawlers to move cocaine from South America to Australia.

Police said the secret operation culminated in arrests on Christmas Day at Sydney Fish Markets when a trawler docked that had allegedly been used to meet a mother ship.

This is a very significant organised crime group, New South Wales Police Force Assistant Commissioner Mark Jenkins said.

Federal Police Acting Assistant Commissioner Chris Sheehan said at a press conference that investigations were continuing in South America to find the suppliers of the cocaine.

Police said a group of Australians were caught smuggling 500 kilograms of cocaine at a small coastal village north of Sydney on Christmas Day.

A separate shipment of 600 kilograms was intercepted in March by the French Navy off the coast of Tahiti, which was destined for Australia.

In July 2014, Operation Okesi was launched to investigate suspected drug trafficking by commercial fisherman in Sydney.

About 32 kilograms of heroin was found in Fiji in December 2014 that police say the gang was trying to smuggle into Australia.

The 15 were charged with serious drug importation offences and refused bail.

Source: Punch
American actress, Debbie Reynolds has died at the age of 84, just one day after the death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher. She was at her son, Todds home where she was taking part in discussions over her daughters funeral arrangement when she reportedly broke own and expressed a desire to be with her dead daughter.

TMZ quotes Todd as saying, I miss her so much; I want to be with Carrie.

She suffered a stroke on the same day and was rushed to the Cedars-Sinai hospital where she eventually passed away. While Carrie Fisher was famous for her role in Star Wars, Debbie shot to fame when she starred in the 1952 musical, Singin in the rain alongside Gene Kelly.
'A Monster Calls' director J.A. Bayonas on 'Jurassic World' sequel: It'll be way bigger than the last one

'A Monster Calls' director J.A. Bayona attends the 60th BFI London Film Festival at the May Fair Hotel Gala. (Photo : Getty Images/Gareth Cattermole)

Months after being confirmed as the director for the sequel to "Jurassic World," J.A. Bayona promised a dinosaur film that will be way bigger than its predecessor. He will be taking over the reins from fellow director Colin Trevorrow.



In an interview with The Playlist, Bayona expressed his enthusiasm with starting work on the film which begins production in February 2017. According to him, the sequel would undoubtedly be bigger and better than "Jurassic World."



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"It's great," Bayona said. "But at the same time it's massive and way bigger than the last one."



Fresh from working on "A Monster Calls starring Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones and Lewis MacDougall, the director revealed his biggest challenge was to make sure he brings something new to the table while retaining the classics which places the 'Jurassic Park' movies in a league of its own. Bayona-who also admitted to still being surprised at Trevorrow's offer for him to direct the movie- added the former's vision for the sequel is something he can only marvel at.



"I was kind of surprised when Trevorrow pitched me the story because it leads the story to a place that we've never seen before," Bayona said. He expressed his interest in Trevorrow's concept of meshing the movie's successful plot points with new and refreshing ideas.



Trevorrow, who earlier announced he would stay on as a writer for the franchise, told the Collider that the next two films of the planned trilogy would include settings other than remote islands. He also dropped hints on the plot, saying it would possibly include dinosaurs co-existing with humans while being utilized in a variety of fields.



Trevorrow's statements have fueled speculation about the sequel's plot involving dinosaurs being used for modern warfare. While the first movie intended to highlight corporate excess and consumerism, the concept of weaponized dinosaurs had also been heavily discussed.



"Jurassic World" earned $1.670 billion worldwide, making it the most successful of the four "Jurassic Park" installments. It also became the fourth highest-grossing film of all time, behind "Avatar", "Titanic", and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens".



Learn the scheduled showing of "Jurassic World 2" here:






Nigerian journalist Dele Momodu didnt seem pleased during a show as he walked out when Davido performed Falzs hit song Bahd, Baddo, Baddest.

The businessman left the show when the artist performed the song which contains the lyrics Mr Dele na my boy, Dele na my boy , an obvious reference to the Ovation publisher.

Davido and the Ovation magazine publisher have long been at loggerheads.

Footage of the incident surfaced on social media.

https://twitter.com/XANTAPLUS/status/814218737846980608

Momodu had previously stated that their differences had been resolved, but it doesnt seem so by the look of things.

The veteran journalist and the DMW boss clashed earlier in the year over the custody of the latters baby, whom the former is an uncle to the mother.
A former head of drug police in Finland was sentenced to 10 years in jail for aggravated narcotics offences and other crimes on Thursday. The Helsinki District Court handed Aarnio the full sentence demanded by prosecutors.

According to the Helsinki District Court, Jari Aarnio was the infamous Pasila man, who led an operation to import almost 1000 kilograms of hashish to the country. Pasila is a reference to a Helsinki neighbourhood.

Aarnio was also convicted of a number of other crimes, including trying to frame an innocent man of being in charge of the drug ring.

The District Court concludes that Aarnio has flagrantly abused his position in Helsinkis drug police and therefore is guilty of a number of aggravated and lesser abuses of public office, the Court stated in its press briefing ordering the accused to be imprisoned immediately.

Aarnio has strongly denied all charges throughout the multi-year trial. According to him, all his actions are related to legal acts while in office and the operations of Helsinkis drug police.
A Canadian man had to engage himself in a scuffle with a mountain lion after it attacked his dog outside a restaurant.

William Gibb, 31, had gone with his brother to meet a friend for coffee at a Tim Hortons restaurant in Whitecourt in central Alberta when he briefly let his dog outside to ease itself.

I let my dog out quickly to go to the bathroom, and within less than 30 seconds, she starts crying out, he told Global News. So I went and saw something wrapped around her  I didnt even know what it was. I went over and hit the thing in the head. It ended up being a cougar and I thought, what the heck?

He saw his husky, Sasha, twitching in pain nearby and yelled, screamed and kicked to distract the mountain lion until the dog was able to flee to a nearby church as he called the local Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

I scooped her up with my left, swung at the cat with my right. I tried to keep it away from me. I got a little scratch across the wrist but it didnt do anything to me, Gibb said.

Police eventually arrived on the scene and were astounded by Gibbs bravery and quick actions.

I was surprised to hear that the owner took the quick action and its probably what saved the dogs life in this case, Sgt. Jack Poitras told the CBC. I wouldnt recommend everybody wrastle with a cougar, but in this case it worked for the best.

Sasha was immediately taken to a nearby veterinarian to be treated for several wounds, but was later released from care.
Nigerian newspaper headlines December 29, 2016.

Premium Times

The Nigerian police said they have arrested a man plotting, with some other people at large, to bomb the pivotal Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos.

Guardian

Plateau State governor, Simon Bako Lalong, has appealed to people of Dogo Nahawa community to forgive those who killed hundreds of their relations and embrace peace.

Punch

More than 500,000 Nigerians may lose their jobs at Seme border if the ban on importation of vehicles through land borders comes into full effect.

Thisday

Nigerias largest airline, Arik Air, has accused the countrys aviation authority of unprofessional act.

Vanguard

All Progressives Congress, APC, in Rivers State, has called on the Federal Government to sanction Governor Nyesom Wike for refusing to appear before a Police probe panel on violence that characterised the just concluded re-run elections in the state.

Leadership

Days after Boko Haram fighters lost Sambisa Forest to Nigerian troops, the Nigerian Army yesterday disclosed that it arrested a total of 1,240 suspected Boko Haram suspects during mop-up operations.

The Sun

The Biafra Independent Movement (BIM), one of the frontline groups affiliated to the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), yesterday reiterated its readiness to continue their agitation until Biafra is achieved.

The Nation

The military gave more details yesterday about the capture of Sambisa Forest, including Camp Zero and Camp S (shape), the last bastion of the Boko Haram insurgents
The Nigerian police said they have arrested a man plotting, with some other people at large, to bomb the pivotal Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos State.

The suspected bomber was identified as Abiodun Amos alias SENTI.

In a statement, the police described him as the leader of the Militant Gang planning to bomb the 3rd Mainland Bridge in Lagos.

He was arrested on 2nd of November, 2016 in a hideout at the bank of Majidun River in Ikorodu area of Lagos State and two AK 47 rifles recovered from his possession.

The principal suspect is an Ijaw man and a Native of Ese Odo LGA of Ondo State. He is an Explosives Expert who specializes in assembling and modifying large scale Improvised Explosives Devices (IED) for terrorist acts, Police said.

The suspect also volunteered confessional statement to the Police and named other members of the militant group that are still at large.

In the course of further investigation into the case, one of the suspects at large mentioned to the Police by the principal suspect as the person in possession of their explosive devices and the detonators was trailed by the Police (IRT) Operatives on the 26th December, 2016 while conveying in a Toyota Camry Car, two (2) Cartons of Galantine Dynamite Explosives and Hundred and twenty five (125) Detonators in the boot of the Car in a location in Ikorodu area of Lagos state on his way to link up with the other members of the militant gang to blow up the 3rd mainland bridge.

The Suspect, on sighting the Intelligence Response Team Operatives jumped out of the Car and escaped into the nearby bush. The explosive devices and the detonators were recovered by the Police IRT operatives and the Explosive Ordinance Department, and the attack that would have been a major devastating and colossus damage to Lagos state and Nigeria was averted.

The police in a statement by deputy commissioner of police, Don Awunah, said further investigation is being intensified to arrest all the other members of the militant gang still at large.
Rob Kardashian has reportedly checked out of the hospital following his diabetes scare.

According to TMZ, Rob Kardashian, 29, had a medical emergency and was rushed to the hospital near Hidden Hills, California, on Wednesday, December 28.

Sources told the online gossip site that Rob had a diabetic attack and was rushed to the hospital because he wasnt taking good care of himself or eating right. The source added that, the stress affected his diabetes which resulted in him being hospitalized.

The father of one was seen checking out of the facility around 10am today.
Health workers at the National Orthopeadic Hospital Dala, Kano, on Wednesday began an indefinite strike over non-payment of three months salary.

The workers had earlier gone on a five-day warning strike which expired last week.

An official of the health workers union who spoke to NAN under anonymity said that the action was to pressurise the Federal Government to pay them.

We call on the federal government to pay our three months salary as this has brought untold hardship to our members.

Chairman of the workers union, Mr Nasiru Lawan was not immediately available for comment, but the hospitals spokesman, Malam Rabiu Mohammed confirmed the development.

He said that the workers had commenced an indefinite strike to protest the non-payment of their three months salaries.

The strike had paralysed activities at the hospital as patients were seen stranded in the various wards.

The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), had at one time or the other embarked on a general strike thereby rendering skeletal services.

Some of patience however, expressed hope that the Federal Government would intervene before the matter gets out of hand.

They feared that their plight at the hospital could worsen if the Federal Ministry of Health fails to listen to the demands of the workers.

Source: NAN
British designer and recording artist Victoria Beckham is set to join her husband David in receiving one of the highest honours in England from the Queen herself.

People reports that Beckham has been named to the Queens Honours List for 2017 due to her contributions to fashion and her charity work.

The former Spice Girls member was named a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador in 2014 and has worked to spread awareness of HIV and AIDS.

She will receive an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in the New Year, joining a list of fellow designers who have received the honour, including Jimmy Choo and Sarah Burton.
RFD-TV Interview: Grain and Livestock Markets Blue Line Futures - Thu Nov 3, 6:38PM CDT What's on the radar for grain and livestock markets to round out the week?

Cotton Bounce Continued through Thursday Barchart - Thu Nov 3, 4:48PM CDT Front month cotton futures ended with another triple digit bounce on the day. December closed at the allotted 4c limit, while the other nearbys were 138 to 353 point gains. Census data reported 703,536... CTZ22 : 82.58 (-0.51%) CTH23 : 80.99 (-1.44%) CTK23 : 80.96 (-1.27%)

Red Thursday for Wheat Market Barchart - Thu Nov 3, 4:48PM CDT The nearby wheat market ended with mixed but mostly lower. SRW prices gave back 3 to 5 1/2 cents on the day. December stayed at a net 11 1/4 cent gain wk/wk so far. KC wheat held firmer with December up... ZWZ22 : 847-2 (+0.80%) ZWH23 : 865-6 (+0.70%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.7263 (-0.65%) KEZ22 : 949-0 (+0.82%) KEPAWS.CM : 8.9929 (+0.14%) MWZ22 : 950-2 (+0.77%)

Hog Market Fades on Thursday Barchart - Thu Nov 3, 4:48PM CDT Lean hog futures held onto minimal gains in the December contract on Thursday, while the other nearby contracts dropped by 2 to 20 cents. The USDA National Average Base Hog Price was $3.36 weaker in the... HEZ22 : 83.375s (+0.09%) HEJ23 : 92.550s (-0.11%) KMZ22 : 94.000s (+0.16%)

Weak Thursday for Cattle Market Barchart - Thu Nov 3, 4:48PM CDT Front month fat cattle futures ended the session mixed with a 55 cent gain in Dec and a 5 cent gain in the August 23 contract. The other nearby futures fell by 2 to 20 cents on a mixed / mostly weaker... LEZ22 : 151.950s (+0.36%) LEG23 : 154.875s (-0.02%) LEJ23 : 158.300s (-0.13%) GFX22 : 178.000s (-0.52%) GFF23 : 179.425s (-0.32%)

Corn Faded on Thursday Barchart - Thu Nov 3, 4:48PM CDT Thursday action in the corn market left futures 2 3/4 to 8 1/4 cents lower. For December contracts that was the lowest close since 10/19. IHS Markit expects the national U.S. corn yield at 172.9 bpa,... ZCZ22 : 681-6 (+0.37%) ZCPAUS.CM : 6.7556 (-1.15%) ZCH23 : 687-2 (+0.37%) ZCK23 : 687-2 (+0.37%)
1. Asset Managers, Prepare to Have Your Business Disrupted

Disruption in the asset management industry is imminent, wrote Katina Stefanova, David Teten and Brent Beardsley for Institutional Investor. Due to a combination of new technologies, shifting demographics and changing client demands, the asset manager of the future must self-regulate, adopt corporate governance by investment firms, invest in technology, and cultivate and keep top-notch talent. This is not a prediction, but rather a wake-up call about how the industry is changing.

2. The 2016 All-America Research Team: The Resilience of the Sell-Side

Since May Day 1975, when 180 years of fixed-rate commissions ended on Wall Street, prognosticators have insisted that sell-side equity researchs days are numbered. And yet, year after year, the sell side has proved surprisingly resilient. While markets quake and geopolitics rumble, the buy side continues to need and value the sell-side. On the 45th anniversary of our annual ranking of Wall Streets top equity analysts, Institutional Investor rolled out this years top 322 analysts from 30 firms  with J.P. Morgan in the lead. Check out the full list of winners.

3. GMOs Mean-Reversion Strategy Is Tested in Todays Market

Finding a truly exceptional asset manager is challenging, even for the most sophisticated investor. Most pitch investors by leading with the opportunities they see in the market or point to lofty end goals for those who invest with them. But not Boston-based Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co., who open with risks: risks to the market, risks to your investments and, indeed, risks to your career if you follow their ideas all the way through. While their approach  determining fair value by looking at asset valuation trends over the entire history of the market  might be less than conventional, their long track record of successfully calling market bubbles speaks for itself.

4. CargoMetrics Cracks the Code on Shipping Data

Scott Borgerson and his team of quants at hedge fund firm CargoMetrics are at the forefront of harnessing information for potentially big investment advantages. Linking satellite signals, shipping data and proprietary analytics for its own trading in commodities, currencies and equity index futures, the start-up investment firm has a vision to map historically and in real time whats really going on with economic supply and demand across the planet. The problem, Borgerson says, is enormous, but the reward, if realized, is huge.

5. Warren Buffett Deputy Ted Weschler Makes His Mark

The highest bidder for lunch with Warren Buffet at Glide Foundations 2010 and 2011 auction, Weschler is now one of the billionaires two top investment managers at Berkshire Hathaway and a likely inheritor of his profile. Institutional Investors Miles Irish spoke with the hedge fund manager, who says he enjoys considerable autonomy as an investor. Forced to play his own devils advocate, he says hes a bear on a given stock one morning and a bull the next.

6. Evan Greenbergs Ace in Chubb Clothing

This summer, Upstart ACE engineered one of the largest insurance takeovers in history, acquiring venerable Chubb Corp. for more than $28 billion. As chairman and CEO of postmerger Chubb Corp., Greenberg turned the company from a midsize reinsurer into one of the worlds largest multiline insurance companies. He says he will be betting on the same acquisition strategy and obsession with underwriting as he continues to lead this select group of insurers.

7. The 2016 Hedge Fund Rising Stars: Ivy Leagues Pave the Way

The hedge fund industry has grown to nearly $3 trillion in assets, up from $1 trillion a decade ago. At the heart of this growth: people. This years ranking examines the elite colleges that produced Institutional Investors most recent roundup of hedge fund rising stars. While many hailed from University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School, among other Ivy League schools, our list consistently includes stars with less typical backgrounds. It turns out you dont have to graduate from an Ivy League university. But it helps.

8. Hedge Funds Smell Blood in the Student Debt Market

It looks like the solid choice for a new economic doomsday scenario: The countrys student loan debt now sits north of $1.3 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. More and more students are taking out loans for their education and going into default. Students who are behind on or have defaulted on their loan debt take a major hit to their credit scores, which can limit their ability to find jobs and buy cars and homes. As default rates climb, investors are shorting companies from debt manager Navient to student-housing providers, which poses the question: How did we get here? Read Bailey McCanns take.

9. The 2016 Tech 50: Making Financial Services Faster, Cheaper, Bigger

This years top financial technologists have leveraged cloud innovations and agile software techniques to accomplish more, on a larger scale, than ever before. Those who excel in financial services  including the executives, innovators and entrepreneurs spotlighted in Institutional Investors Tech 50 ranking  meet three simple benchmarks: better, faster, cheaper. Starting at the top with Bank of America Corp. chief operations and technology officer Catherine Bessant, many winners are applying advanced technologies that allow them to accomplish more within budget and are doing so at a global scale. Such innovation has not been feasible until recently.
IU performs onstage during the MelOn Music Awards at Olympic Gymnasium on November 14, 2013 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo : Getty Images/Chung Sung-Jun)

Fans of "Scarlet Heart: Ryeo" lead stars Lee Joon Gi and Lee Ji Eun aka IU donated to Save the Children after the success of their video project Scarlet Heart: Ryeo Was Here. The joint international fan community who called themselves Neoui Stargazers, which means Your Stargazers showed their support to their admired actors through the donation.



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The fans of the two South Korean stars have worked with organizing fundraisers for different non-profit charities in Joon Gi's or IU's name. Many donors come from the Soompi community.



Save the Children is an international charity working for the well-being of children all over the world. They reach 185 million children in more than 120 countries through programs in education, health and nutrition, newborn and child survival, protecting children, HIV and AIDS, emergency response, U.S. disaster response as well as hunger and livelihood.



The efforts of Save the Children were recently geared towards Aleppo. Multinational firm Johnson&Johnson matched the donation to the charity, Soompi reported.



For the love and support of Joon Gi and IU's latest drama, the Neoui Stargazers fan community likewise created a widespread project video, Scarlet Heart: Ryeo Was Here. More than 400 fans from 64 countries and 214 cities contributed to the project. The project also got responses from Korean actors Jo Min Ki and Kim San Ho, who played as King Taejo and Crown Prince Wang Mu in the drama.



Founded in November and launched earlier this month following the Scarlet Heart: Ryeo Was Here fan support video project, Neoui Stargazers aim to scatter the dark sky with the bright light of Joon Gi and IU, one at a time. They are united with a single purpose, to spread love in the name of the two Korean stars by helping the less fortunate.



It is not the first time Joon Gi's followers expressed their support of the actor in terms of donations. After his mandatory military enlistment in 2012, his fans from China, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand donated 10 tons of rice to congratulate him in his comeback project "Arang and the Magistrate," AllKPop reported. Ten tons of rice can provide meals to about 86,000 people.



Here is the project video Scarlet Heart: Ryeo Was Here:






They came back to us and said that what were doing with our Skills Units is head and shoulders above anything else thats available globally.

Willsford outlined the reinvention of ANZIIF over the past three years, and what it means for the organisation in 2017.

What were finding  is that there are lots of people who have an idea of who we were, but dont yet know who weve become, she said.

So, our real focus next year is on engaging the industry so that they really understand how we can add value to them and ensuring that they understand how we can partner with them to assist in attracting, developing and retaining their people, growing the insurance community.

Willsford adds that ANZIIFs objectives for 2017 include continuing to work closely with the industry on tailored learning pathways and continuing to build out its Skills Units so that theres a real breadth and depth of relevant education for the industry.

However, she stressed the critical importance of quality broker education for sustainable business growth.

[Brokers] have really got to demonstrate that they add value both to the client and the underwriter, she said. To do that, theyve got to be really focusing on quality, risk-based advice and theyve actually got to have the skills that will enable them to be confident, to be productive and to be effective.

We dont just want growth. We want quality growth - and the brokers role in that is really critical in terms of assessing and managing risk and writing good risk.
United Continental Holdings Inc. will install new conveyor belts and take other steps to improve worker safety at its Newark Liberty International Airport hub in New Jersey, after federal inspectors found hazardous conditions in its baggage handling operations there.

The U.S. Department of Labor on Tuesday said the accord resolves its August 2015 lawsuit accusing Chicago-based United Continental of committing a serious violation of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.

The Labor Department said Uniteds settlement could become a template for other carriers.

United Airlines is setting a workplace safety standard that other airlines will be compelled to follow, Jeffrey Rogoff, the departments regional solicitor in New York, said in a statement.

United is the largest airline at Newark Liberty, scheduling close to three-quarters of its flights.

According to the Labor Department, below-the-wing handlers who moved baggage between Uniteds aircraft and terminals, and within terminals, were forced to bend, lift, reach or twist awkwardly when collecting items on conveyor belts, loading gate-checked baggage at passenger jet bridges, and loading and unloading baggage in aircraft cargo bays.

As a result, there was increased risk of musculoskeletal injuries such as back, shoulder, and neck strains and sprains, and handlers reported at least 622 such injuries between 2011 and January 2015, the department said.

Under the settlement, United agreed to hire a consultant to examine repetitive stress and injury risks in its Newark Liberty baggage handling operations and adopt the consultants recommendations or similar measures within two years.

United also agreed to form a dedicated ergonomic safety committee, and pay a $7,000 civil fine.

The safety of our employees and customers is our top priority, United said in a statement. We are reviewing our ergonomic practices in order to further improve the work environment for our employees.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Topics Lawsuits Aviation New Jersey
Officials in a suburban Rochester community are scrambling to replace snow removal equipment after a fire gutted the towns public works garage.

The Christmas Eve fire at the town of Irondequoits Department of Public Works garage caused millions of dollars in damage and destroyed more than a dozen vehicles, including seven plow and salt truck and a dump truck.

It took firefighters several hours to put out the blaze, which started late Saturday night in a corner of the garage. No one was injured. The cause remains under investigation.

The loss of equipment comes amid an already snowy winter for the Rochester area. Irondequoit officials say nearby towns have been offering to help out by lending vehicles to plow and salt roads.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics New York
Randall & Quilter Investment Holdings Ltd. announced the novation of reinsurance policies issued between 2002 and 2016 by Georgia Atlantic Insurance Ltd. (GAIL) for workers compensation, general liability, auto liability and auto property damages.

GAIL is a wholly owned, Bermuda-based captive of the Coca-Cola Bottlers Association Inc. GAILs estimated undiscounted reserves for these policies, adjusted for recently paid claims is approximately $21.5 million, said R&Q in a statement.

The policies were novated to an R&Q owned cell in its Bermuda-based segregated account company, R&Q Quest Insurance (SAC) Ltd.

Ken Randall, chairman and chief executive officer of R&Q, explained: We are delighted to complete this good-sized novation with the Coca Cola Bottlers Association and to offer them a clean break from their legacy insurance liabilities.

Source: Randall & Quilter Investment Holdings
A federal workplace safety agency has cited a Wisconsin company after a teenage worker was fatally injured at a machine shop.

The U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration said Tuesday it has issued multiple safety and health violations against G.D. Roberts & Co. of Columbus.

Authorities say 17-year-old Dusty Babcock became trapped in a machine at G.D. Roberts on June 27. Police say Babcok was cleaning scrap metal under a laser cutter when the machine engaged and came down on him. He later died.

OSHA found the company failed to ensure procedures were followed to lockout the machine, and did not train its employees properly in such safety procedures.

The agency is proposing $119,000 in penalties. G.D. Roberts says it continuously improves its workplace safety, and is cooperating with OSHA.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Wisconsin
A Fidelity National Financial Inc. subsidiary is in final talks to pay as much as $65 million to resolve U.S. government accusations that it contributed to improper and fraudulent foreclosures after the 2008 credit crisis, according to a person familiar with the deal.

Federal banking regulators agreed that a $65 million penalty could settle the case involving so-called robo-signing of foreclosure papers tied to the firm formerly known as Lender Processing Services Inc., according to the person, who requested anonymity because the negotiations arent public. Fidelity National acquired the company during the lengthy settlement talks with the Federal Reserve and other agencies, and it has been divided among subsidiaries including ServiceLink Holdings and Black Knight Financial Services.

LPS, which provided technology and services to lenders such as Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., faced accusations that it filed fraudulent legal documents used in the repossession of homes. For more than five years, LPS has been ensnared by a 2011 order from the Fed, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. requiring changes to how it deals with loan defaults and the hiring of an outside firm to examine its work from 2008 through 2010.

Loss Contingency

Fidelity Nationals ServiceLink subsidiary is primarily on the hook for the new settlement, according to company disclosures. The expected accord and fine would free that LPS successor from the 2011 order. Black Knight, which absorbed much of LPSs old business and is spinning off from Fidelity National, is shielded from the fine through an agreement with ServiceLink.

ServiceLink has been negotiating with regulators over a probable penalty, but the sides hadnt yet agreed on an amount, the company said in a regulatory filing last month. ServiceLink had recently beefed up its loss contingencies to $60 million, it said in the quarterly earnings report. Wells Fargo paid $70 million in a similar agreement this year.

Fidelity National, the biggest U.S. title insurer, declined to comment on the settlement discussions. Spokesmen for the three bank regulators also declined to comment.

Earlier in the talks, regulators had sought more than $200 million and weighed whether some money could be directed to help borrowers. Its unclear how the number being discussed dropped to about a third of that, but agency settlements are often affected by a firms level of cooperation and ability to pay.

Six-Year Scheme

Before Fidelity National acquired the Jacksonville, Florida-based company in 2014, LPS had already settled with dozens of states for $127 million. It paid another $35 million to resolve a Justice Department inquiry in which it was said to have been involved in a six-year scheme to prepare and file more than 1 million fraudulently signed and notarized mortgage-related documents.

Lorraine Brown, former chief executive officer of LPSs DocX LLC subsidiary, spent more than three years in prison after pleading guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Brown, who was released on parole Aug. 31, was accused by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette of establishing a widespread scheme of robo-signing, a practice in which employees were directed to fraudulently sign another authorized persons name on mortgage documents in order to execute these documents as quickly as possible.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Fraud
California vs. Trump, so to speak, is shaping up to be a heavyweight match.

On one side is the worlds sixth (or so) largest economy  home to Disneyland, Hollywood and Big Sur.

On the other is the reality show host/real estate mogul who beat all the odds and grabbed the Oval Office by the electoral college.

California Gov. Jerry Brown is putting out strong signals that the state will work with other nations on fighting climate change despite indications from President-elect Donald Trump that he intends to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate change agreement.

An article earlier this week in the New York Times outlines how Brown and his state appear poised to resist Trump on climate change, as well as other on likely Trump initiatives, such as efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.

California can make a significant contribution to advancing the cause of dealing with climate change, irrespective of what goes on in Washington, the Democrat governor was quoted as saying in the article. I wouldnt underestimate Californias resolve if everything moves in this extreme climate denial direction. Yes, we will take action.

Brown, who spoke at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris just over a year ago, has had his foot on the gas pedal in the fight against global warming for some time.

He signed Senate Bill 32 and Assembly Bill 197 in September. The new laws require the state to cut emissions at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and invest in the communities hardest hit by climate change.

Brown a year earlier signed Senate Bill 350 to double the rate of energy efficiency savings in California buildings and generate half of the states electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Brown also committed to reducing petroleum use in cars and trucks by up to 50 percent within the next 15 years.

More recently at the recent American Geophysical Unions annual fall meeting in San Francisco, Brown called on the group of scientists to help mobilize the fight against climate change.

The time has never been more urgent or your work never more important, Brown said. The climate is changing, temperatures are rising, oceans are becoming more acidified, habitats are under stress  the world is facing tremendous danger.

Brown told them it will be up to you as truth-tellers, truth seekers to mobilize efforts to fight back.

We will pursue a path of collaboration and bold political advancement  whatever they do in Washington  and eventually the truth will prevail, Brown continued. This is not a battle of one day or one election. This is a long-term slog into the future and you are there, the foot soldiers of change and understanding and scientific collaboration.

Its nothing personal against Trump. Brown was outspoken throughout the presidential campaign against the climate change positions of several Republican candidates, according to a Breitbart story.

Last September, for instance, he sent Dr. Ben Carson a flash drive containing the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the story states. Earlier this month, Brown attacked President-elect Trumps views on climate change and also attacked Breitbart News for describing methane regulations (accurately, if crudely) as rules on cow farts.'

Other states

On the other hand, attorneys general from conservative states that have fought against the Obama administrations climate change agenda from the start may gladly take on the role of supporting Trump in an effort to roll back that agenda, according to an article in the Washington Times.

Republicans have begun exercising their influence over the incoming president and his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who has built a political career by battling the very agency he is about to lead, the article states. Earlier this month, 24 attorneys general signed an open letter laying out how the Trump administration could begin to dismantle President Obamas global warming agenda.

The letter focuses on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys Clean Power Plan proposal to limit carbon emissions from power plants.

The incoming administration and Congress now have the opportunity to withdraw this unlawful rule and prevent adoption of a similar rule in the future, the letter states. An executive order on Day One is critical. The order should explain that it is the administrations view that the rule is unlawful and that EPA lacks authority to enforce it. The executive order is necessary to send an immediate and strong message to states and regulated entities that the administration will not enforce the rule.

The attorneys general are part of a multistate lawsuit against the EPA rules. A decision is pending in federal court. In the meantime, the Clean Power Plan is on hold due to a Supreme Court order that halted it during litigation

Wisconsin

Wisconsin is now a red state for the first time since Ronald Reagans win in 1984.

The state  well at least the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources  is evidently on board with the incoming presidents likely climate agenda. This is beside handing Trump 10 electoral votes in the most recent election

The department got some press when it was revealed that it removed information about human activity being the main cause of climate change from its website.

An archived version of the website is bullish on the departments assessment of mankinds involvement in global warming.

Earths climate is changing. Human activities that increase heattrapping (green house) gases are the main cause, the site states.

It notes that Earths average temperature has risen 1.4 F since 1850, the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 1998 and that these changes could have severe effects on the Great Lakes and the plants, wildlife and people who depend on them.

The new version of the page reads:

As it has done throughout the centuries, the earth is going through a change. The reasons for this change at this particular time in the earths long history are being debated and researched by academic entities outside the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Many thanks to Snopes.com for doing some of the legwork on this.

Tampa Bay

Several low-lying parts of Tampa Bay, Fla. are in danger of flooding under even the most modest sea level rise scenario, according to a study from the Hillsborough County-City Planning Commission conducted in advance of an upcoming public hearing on Jan. 23, 2017.

Data for the study comes from the Tampa Bay Climate Science Advisory Panel, which issued recommended sea level rise projections for the area. Planning Commission staff worked with the City of Tampa staff and the assistance of the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council to complete a vulnerability assessment for Tampa based on the projections.

The study relies on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that sea level rise will impact the Tampa Bay region in the next 25 years. The NOAA estimates provide four global mean sea level rise scenarios.

The advisory panel convened in 2015 to study these scenarios using the NOAA estimates and concluded that the Tampa Bay region might experience sea level rise between 0.5 to 2.5 feet by 2050.

Tampa has already experienced an estimated 7 inches of sea level rise over the last 67 years of records, according to the study.

The study and upcoming the Planning Commission hearing, which is to vote on whether to recommend that the city council adopt an amended city plan that includes the studys suggestions, are under the auspices of the Peril of Flood Act in 2015. Passed by the Florida Legislature, the act placed new requirements for local governments to address flooding, including flooding from sea level rise.

Three areas highlighted in the study that may be impacted are: Old Tampa Bay near Tampa International Airport; the Tampa Bay area east of MacDill Air Force Base; and McKay Bay and the Tampa Bypass Canal. Properties along the Hillsborough River may also see a distributed rise in water level, according to the study.

Notable findings include: Segments of 31 local roads are at-risk; at least 80 percent of affected properties are publicly owned; Tampa General Hospital and a number of parks are at risk; critical facilities are not located within at-risk areas, but the area surrounding the McKay Bay Refuse-To-Energy Facility should be monitored; several storm water basins and some storm water facilities are within the at-risk areas.

Past columns:

Topics California USA Flood Washington Climate Change Pollution Wisconsin
Kenneth and Natasha Briggs and their four children had avoided the area near the Bush Turnpike and Interstate 30 in spite of, and because of, what it had done to form their family.

This week, however, Natasha sat front and center under a tent at John Paul Jones Park while holding her girls, ages 12 and 7.

Technically, theyre her nieces. But a year ago, about a quarter-mile away, they became the Briggs children. Nine motorists were killed after a tornado ripped through Garland on Dec. 26, 2015, including the girls mother and brother.

The cities of Garland and Rowlett this week remembered the victims at dual ceremonies.

We havent been back since everything happened, Natasha told The Dallas Morning News. But the reason to be here today was because of the outpouring and support we received from the community. We really appreciate every single deed and action.

The McKinney family, including the couples two younger children, says it felt the prayers for victims Kimberly Tippett, 30, and her 1-year-old, Kamryn Crain, and want those prayers to continue.

Kim is very prevalent in our lives, Kenneth Briggs said of his sister-in-law. We dont put Kim and Kam in a box and tuck them away.

About 50 members of the victims families took part in the Garland ceremony. Many held white carnations and most wore ribbons in honor of their loved ones. Few had ever met other victims families before, but their tears and hugs cut through to a shared pain.

In all, 13 people died in 12 tornadoes in North Texas on Dec. 26, 2015.

Mondays ceremonies also honored the first responders and government officials who worked to speed aid and rebuilding of the communities.

Amid the sheared trees at John Paul Jones Park were several newly planted ones near a plaque that was unveiled in honor of the spirit of Garland.

At the yet-to-be-developed Schrade Bluebonnet Park in Rowlett, the centerpiece will be a sculpture of a phoenix rising from a tornado. A replica was unveiled at Monday afternoons presentation there.

The artist, Rowlett resident Troy Connatser, said the four pieces of the 50-foot work will be assembled onsite in three to six months.

I dont want people to remember Rowlett as a place where the deadly tornado hit, Mayor Todd Gottel said. I want Rowlett to be remembered as a place that had a revival and pulled together united to help people in need.

At the Garland event, Mayor Douglas Athas said: Video and pictures do not tell a story of what a tornado does to a community.

He recalled the immediate hours after 6:50 p.m., when the tornado struck the southernmost part of the city. Other communities sent fire and police aid, and a steady stream of volunteers continues to meet needs.

The giving constantly to GarlandStrong and the other things to help our community, thatll be the lasting memory, Athas said.

Garland City Council member Stephen Stanley, who represents the tornado-hit area, said there is a long way to go toward rebuilding peoples lives and the neighborhoods. City Manager Bryan Bradford marked the anniversary not as the culmination of effort, but as a time to recommit.

This is, perhaps, an unparalleled reminder of why we choose to spend our careers in public service, said Bradford, who had taken over leadership in the city just seven months before the EF-4 tornado, the strongest on record to hit North Texas in December. I assure you, the effort will not end, but a recommitment to restoring lives, homes and neighborhoods.

Rowlett leaders talked about the 3.5-mile scar, half a mile wide, in their community. They, too, found light among the grief, in that although thousands of homes were damaged, many devastated, nobody in those homes died that night.

City Manager Brian Funderburk spoke of taking shelter with his family, including grandkids and an 80-pound golden retriever, then heading to Rowletts emergency management center and, at daylight, seeing the devastation.

Acts of heroism were performed by our friends, our neighbors and our emergency response teams, he recalled. We were so shocked and horrified by what we were seeing.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to more people and organizations than we can count.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Texas Windstorm
Tulsa experienced a surge of robberies in 2016, ending a five-year downward trend.

Tulsa Police Department data showed that over 1,000 robberies were reported from the start of January through November, already 19 percent more than last years total of 854 robberies.

Decembers robbery count wont be available until January, the Tulsa World reported.

The spike halted the citys annual decrease dating back to at least 2010, when nearly 1,400 robberies occurred.

Sgt. Brandon Watkins, who heads the police departments robbery unit, said he cant explain why 2016 was such a tough year. He said the reversal isnt enough to predict whether a new trend of increased robberies can be expected in the future.

It could just be a correction, Watkins said. Things have been going pretty good over the last few years, but anytime you have a nice long down period, eventually its going to correct and go back up a little ways.

The sergeant said robberies also tend to spike in the summer, partly due to the fact that children are on summer break and that the hot weather can possibly bring out a persons inner robber. The highest recorded number of robberies in 2016 was between June and September.

Watkins said the increase could be because of understaffing and overtime in the robbery unit, making it difficult to keep the clearance rate above national average.

If I had 20 detectives, I bet we could get close to 100 percent, he said, referring to this years robbery clearance rate at around 46 percent. We dont have those bodies, and those bodies dont exist on the Tulsa Police Department.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Trends Oklahoma
Authorities in southwest Florida say theyre tracking down leads after 83 vehicles were broken into around several hotels early Christmas morning.

The News-Press reports that the Lee County Sheriffs Office is investigating smashed windows and stolen property at four Estero hotels. Three of the hotels were located near the same Interstate 75 exit, while the fourth was located several miles away.

The burglaries kept more than a dozen deputies busy Christmas morning. Sheriffs office spokesman Jeff Dektas encouraged residents and visitors to not leave valuables in their vehicles and to always secure their vehicles while traveling.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Florida
Several Samsung Galaxy Note 7's lay on a counter in plastic bags after they were returned to a Best Buy on September 15, 2016 in Orem, Utah. (Photo : Getty Images/George Frey)

Galaxy Note 7 users who got their smartphones from T-Mobile will be receiving the dreaded software update that will prevent the device from being charged or connected to networks. It is the latest step from Samsung to urge users into returning the dangerous devices.



The Galaxy Note 7 had a bright future just before the reports of sudden fire hazards and explosions piled up. It had better specs than its predecessor and it also received stellar reviews from both casual and power users alike.



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Unfortunately, the positive feedback was cut short after several dozens of users reported that the Android phablet started to flame up. There were even users who were injured and burned because of the battery problem the Note 7 had.



Samsung has started recalling the devices but a small percentage of the customers still choose to use the smartphone instead of returning it, endangering their lives and those around them. T-Mobile is the first United States carrier to roll out the new Galaxy Note 7 update that prevents the phone from being charged at all, Patch reported.



In addition to the charge limiter, the update also includes the usual reminder to return the defective smartphone immediately. It would also prevent the smartphone from being connected to networks in order to render it basically useless without any Internet or network connection.



Verizon, AT&T and Sprint will be rolling out the same update for their customers in the coming weeks to prevent them from further using the devices. Customers who will replace the Galaxy Note 7 with another Samsung device will be entitled to a $100 credit while those who want a refund will get $25 in store credit, Fortune reported.



Users can just skip the update altogether but there is no guarantee that the Galaxy Note 7 will not explode. The design flaw was found in the device itself and not with the battery as previously thought.



Watch a review about the Galaxy Note 7 in the video below:






A Miami man was arrested on multiple felony fraud and grand theft charges following an investigation by the Florida Department of Financial Services Division of Investigative and Forensic Services (DIFS). Julian Garcia-Sellek of Miami is accused of acting as an unlicensed public adjuster and allegedly inflating the costs associated with multiple insurance claims in addition to filing several fraudulent claims to cover water damage that did not exist.

In total, Garcia-Sellek is accused of stealing nearly $100,000 from Citizens Property Insurance Corp. Citizens representatives flagged multiple claims created by Garcia-Sellek as suspicious and referred the information they collected to DIFS. As a result, fraud investigators opened an investigation into the companys day-to-day operations.

According to DIFS, investigators found that between March 2012 to January 2016, Garcia-Sellek met with multiple homeowners who were looking for help with the handling of an insurance claim. DIFS said he made promises to these homeowners, claiming that he would file the claim on their behalf, removing them from the stress of the insurance claims process. He would then solicit the services of a local artist to use a caffeine-based liquid to paint what looked like water stains on the ceilings, walls, and floors of homes to either inflate the cost of existing water damage claims or in order to generate a fraudulent water damage claim.

DIFS said that to further the scheme, he enlisted the services of public notaries to forge homeowners signatures and fraudulently notarize insurance claims documents that he would later submit to the insurance company for payment, many times without the homeowners knowledge. As a result of his actions, at least $99,000 in claims were fraudulently submitted via documents filed by Garcia-Sellek. He cashed and kept the resulting insurance claims checks.

He was arrested without incident and booked into Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Facility on one count of scheme to defraud and acting as an unlicensed public adjuster and nine counts of insurance fraud and grand theft. The case will be prosecuted by the Office of Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. If convicted, Garcia-Sellek faces up to 30 years in prison.

According to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, a national coalition of consumers, insurance companies and government agencies, insurance fraud costs Americans at least $80 billion a year, nearly $950 per family.

Topics Claims Fraud Homeowners
Two major prescription drug distributors have agreed to settle a West Virginia lawsuit alleging they fueled West Virginias opioid epidemic with excessively large shipments of painkillers into the state over several years.

Boone County Circuit Court Judge William Thompson disclosed the settlement in principle in an order Tuesday cancelling further proceedings.

He directed Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen and the state attorney generals office to provide details by the week of Jan. 9.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that the settlements, with terms undisclosed, end the state suit against the companies.

The newspapers investigation found drug wholesalers shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to West Virginia in six years, a period when 1,728 people statewide fatally overdosed on them.

The state has settled similar claims against other wholesalers.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Virginia Drugs
Seattle is being sued over a voter-approved measure requiring new workplace protections for hotel workers.

The American Hotel and Lodging Association, Washington Hospitality Association and Seattle Hotel Association say provisions of Initiative-124 duplicate or clash with existing laws. The Seattle Times reported the groups are particularly concerned about a provision in the measure approved last month requiring hotels to keep lists of guests workers accuse of sexual assault or harassment.

The groups say hotels are required to place guests name on the list whether or not the employee is willing to sign a sworn statement, make a police report or offer any supporting evidence.

I-124 also requires hotels protect workers from chemical hazards and limits housekeepers to cleaning 5,000 square feet in a normal workday.

Rebecca Saldana, who campaigned for the measure and was recently appointed to the state Senate, said local hotels are demonstrating a clear disregard for hotel employees, Seattle voters, and Seattle values.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Commercial Lines Business Insurance
The California Department of Industrial Relations has released its 2016 Legislative Digest, which summarizes new laws that impact workers and employers.

Most of the chaptered bills are slated to take effect on Jan. 1, 2017. Highlights those new laws include:

Wage and Hour Laws

Senate Bill 3 increases the state minimum wage annually starting on Jan. 1, 2017 until it reaches $15 per hour on Jan. 1, 2022. Employers with 25 or fewer employees have an extra year to comply with these requirements. It also provides that, starting July 1, 2018, In-Home Supportive Services workers are entitled to paid sick days.

Assembly Bill 1066 ensures California farmworkers earn overtime pay after eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. It creates a schedule to phase in these overtime requirements over a four-year period: from 2019 to 2022 for employers with 26 or more employees and from 2022 to 2025 for employers of 25 or fewer employees.

Senate Bill 1015 indefinitely extends the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights specifying that domestic workers earn overtime pay when they work more than nine hours in one workday day or more than 45 hours in any workweek.

Access to Medical Care and Fraud Prevention

Assembly Bill 1244 and Senate Bill 1160 build upon Californias workers compensation reforms by addressing two issues: reducing treatment delays for injured workers and rooting out provider fraud and illegitimate liens. AB 1244 requires the Division of Workers Compensation to suspend any medical provider, physician or practitioner convicted of fraud from participating in the workers compensation system. SB 1160 expedites treatment to injured workers in the acute stage of a claim. It also mandates electronic reporting of utilization review data by claims administrators and implements measures intended to increase transparency and combat fraud in the system.

Worker Health and Safety

AB 1978 protects janitorial workers by requiring registration of employers, starting July 1, 2018, and mandating the Labor Commissioner to establish a biennial in-person sexual violence and harassment prevention training requirement.

Senate Bill 1167 mandates Cal/OSHA propose a new standard that minimizes heat-related illness and injury among workers working in indoor places by Jan. 1, 2019.

Budget Implementation

Senate Bill 836 does the following: reforms the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act to allow greater state government and court oversight of PAGA claims and litigation; clarifies public works requirements for ready-mix cement delivery; aligns statutes that authorize the Divisions of Labor Standards Enforcement and Occupational Safety and Health to charge fees for various regulatory activities to make the programs self-sustaining through user fees and reduce the number of funds into which those fees are deposited; eliminates a duplicate inspection requirement in the Permanent Amusement Ride Safety Inspection Program; and authorizes sharing confidential information among state education and job training agencies for evaluating and reporting on program performance and outcomes for program participants.

Topics California Legislation Workers' Compensation Fraud Training Development
Startupbootcamp has announced its latest list of insurtech companies set to join its three-month accelerator program.

Newcomers range from on-demand insurers to users of emerging technologies, such as drones, blockchain and telematics; developing products for retail, life and health, according to Startupbootcamps website. The London-based company, founded in 2010, began with a list of 23 startups from 12 countries before selecting its top 10 over a three day period last month, it added.

During the 12-week program beginning in January, startups will meet more than 100 partners, investors, and mentors associated with the startup incubator, including Google, Paypal and Amazon Web Services. The acceleration phase culminates with Demo Day, where startups are eligible to receive 1,000,000 in investments from aformentioned partners.

Here are this years Startupbootcamp participants:
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401(k) vs. IRA: An Overview

The two main goals for saving for retirement include 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts (IRAs). When employers want to give their employees a tax-advantaged way to save for retirement, they may offer participation in a defined-contribution plan such as a 401(k).

Employees typically contribute a percentage of their salary to their 401(k), while the employer may offer matching contributions up to a specific limit. Employers might also offer a simplified employee pension (SEP) IRA, or a Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees (SIMPLE) IRA if the company has 100 or fewer employees.

Individuals can opt to save on their own and open an IRA (an individual can have both a 401(k) and an IRA). However, IRAs dont provide matching contributions from an employer. Various types of IRAs have specific income and contribution limits, as well as their own tax advantages. Both traditional IRAs and 401(k)s grow tax-free, meaning theres no tax on the interest and earnings over the years. However, distributions or withdrawals from these accounts are typically taxed at your then-income tax rate in retirement.

That said, there are IRAs that offer tax-free withdrawals in retirement. Most IRAs and 401(k)s do not allow withdrawals before the owner reaches the age of 59; otherwise, theres a tax penalty levied by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Again, depending on the specific retirement account and a persons financial situation, there can be exceptions to the early withdrawal penalty.

Key Takeaways 401(k) plans are tax-deferred retirement savings accounts.

They are offered by employers who may match an employees contributions.

Individuals can also set up a traditional IRA or Roth IRA, which do not have employer matching.

IRAs generally offer more investment choices than 401(k)s, but permitted contribution levels are much lower.

SEP and SIMPLE IRAs were designed to make it easy for employers to set up retirement plans for employees.

401(k)s

A 401(k) is a tax-deferred retirement savings account employers offer their employees. Employees contribute money to their account via elective salary deferrals, meaning a percentage of their salary is withheld and contributed to the 401(k).

The money is deposited in various investments, typically a lineup of mutual funds, as selected by the sponsor. The fund choices are designed to meet a specific risk tolerance so that employees may only take on as aggressive or conservative a risk as they are comfortable with taking. Investment income accrues and compounds tax-free.

Many employers are also offering Roth 401(k)s. Unlike a traditional 401(k), contributions are funded with after-tax money, so they are not tax-deductible; however, qualified withdrawals are tax-free.

Employee Contributions

Contributions to 401(k) accounts are made pretax, meaning the total of the contributions would reduce your taxable income for that year by the contribution amount. For example, if an employee earned a $50,000 salary and contributed $10,000 to a 401(k), then the taxable income for the year would be $40,000all else being equal.

For 2022, participants can contribute up to $20,500 per year to a traditional or Roth 401(k), with an additional $6,500 catch-up contribution allowed for people ages 50 and older. This contribution limit increased for 2023, allowing individuals to contribute up to $22,500 with an additional $7,500 of catch-up contributions.

Employer Matching Contributions

Employers typically match a percentage of their employee's contributions up to a certain limit or percentage. An employer might match based on how much the employee contributes annually. For example, an employer could match 50% of an employees contribution up to 6% of their salary. If an employee contributes 6% of their salary, then the employer will contribute a 3% match.

In some cases, employers may simply state a matching policy that is effective up to but not in excess of IRS limitations. For example, a company may state it will make a 50% match on all 401(k) contributions up to contribution limits. In this case, a company may match up to $11,250 in 2023 (50% of $22,500).

If the employee doesnt contribute the full 6%, they might not qualify for a match and receive either nothing or a reduced portion from the employer. To receive the employer match, the employee may need to contribute a minimum amount or percentage of their salary. Its important to review the 401(k) retirement plan documents to determine if theres an employer match, and if so, what the maximum match and the minimum employee contribution are to qualify for a matching contribution.

The IRS has established limits on total contributionsby both employee and employerto a 401(k). For 2023, total contributions may not exceed $66,000 (or $73,500 with catch-up contributions). Alternatively, the total contribution into a 401(k) cannot exceed 100% of the participant's compensation.

Withdrawals From 401(k)s

Withdrawals are taxed at the persons income tax rate, and theres no penalty for withdrawals as long as the distributions are made at age 59 or older. An employee may be permitted to take loans or hardship withdrawals from a 401(k). Loan repayments are generally deducted from the employees paycheck.



Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs)

There are several types of IRAs, which are tax-deferred retirement savings accounts established by an individual. IRAs can be held by banks, brokerages, and investment firms.

An IRA can be as straightforward as a savings account or certificate of deposit (CD) at a local bank. IRAs held by brokerage and investment firms offer IRA owners more investment options than 401(k)s, including stocks, bonds, CDs, and even real estate. Some assets, such as art, are not permitted within an IRA, according to IRS rules.

IRA Contribution Limits

Annual contribution limits for traditional and Roth IRAs are $6,000 for 2022 with an additional $1,000 catch-up contribution allowed for people ages 50 and older. This limit increased for 2023 contributions, allowing individuals to contribute up to $6,500.

Traditional and Roth IRAs

Like 401(k)s, contributions to traditional IRAs are generally tax-deductible. Earnings and returns grow tax-free, and you pay tax on withdrawals in retirement. Contributions to a Roth IRA are made with after-tax dollars, meaning you dont receive a tax deduction in the year of the contribution. However, qualified distributions from a Roth IRA are tax-free in retirement.

IRA Benefits Employer plans typically provide some amount of matching contribution. You get to select from a menu of mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs), as outlined by your individual plan. An IRA is not tied to an employer. If your income is below a certain amount and you are not covered by an employer plan, then you can contribute up to $6,000 per year plus a $1,000 catch-up contribution for those ages 50 and over. The benefit of an IRA is that your investment choices are much greater and almost unlimited. The costs of each need to be considered, and they will vary depending on the investment selection. Michelle Mabry, Certified Financial Planner, Client 1st Advisory Group, Hattiesburg, MS

Withdrawals From IRAs

As with 401(k) plans, IRA holders can begin withdrawals after they reach age 59. Withdrawals before that age will incur a 10% tax penalty, unless you qualify for a hardship withdrawal. Importantly, unlike 401(k) plans, the IRS does not allow you to borrow against the balance of your IRA account.



Key Differences

The primary differences between 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts is explained in the following table:
The Duchess of Cambridge, Princess Charlotte, Prince George and the Duke of Cambridge at a children's party for Military families during the Royal Tour of Canada on September 29, 2016 in Victoria, Canada. (Photo : Getty Images/Chris Jackson)

The coming new year may bring many changes to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's family as the royal couple weighs their options of living in Anmer Hall or moving to London. It appears that Prince William and Kate may consider moving to Kensington Palace to take an active role in royal duties and to continue Prince George's pre-prep schooling.



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Speculations are rife that Prince William and Kate, along with children Prince George and Princess Charlotte, may be relocating to London sometime in 2017. After spending several years in Anmer Hall in Norfolk, the royal family may decide to give up their "simple" life and move to Kensington Palace.



Sources told The Telegraph that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have been telling their friends how 2017 will mark a very important milestone in their life. It appears that Prince William is using the holiday break to think about his various life roles as a future King, his career as a helicopter pilot, as well as being a husband and a father to two children.



Given Prince William's intention to take on more royal duties in the coming year and expanding the scope of the couple's Royal Foundation, the Duke of Cambridge may need to decide whether he will give up his job as a helicopter pilot.



Moreover, the royal prince's employment with Bond Air Services is set to expire in March 2017. However, it is unclear if Prince William will decide to renew his contract for another two-year term.



Meanwhile, the royal couple's schooling plans for Prince George may also push Prince William and Kate to consider moving to Kensington Palace. The three-year-old toddler's name is said to be listed as a potential student at London's Wetherby School, the same pre-prep school that Prince William and Prince Harry previously attended.



At this time, it is still unsure if the royal family of four will relocate to London. The royal couple has yet to share their 2017 plans.



In other news, Prince George and Princess Charlotte recently joined their parents and other members of the royal family to attend the Christmas mass held at Englefield's St. Mark's church. After the service, the royal siblings appeared outside of the church's entryway each holding candy canes, according to Today.



The recent Christmas service marked the first time that Prince George and Princess Charlotte joined the royal family's annual Christmas mass tradition. Watch a clip of the royal family emerging from the St. Mark's on Christmas Day:






Inner city residents have objected to plans by the Cork Penny Dinners charity to develop a new day-centre, writes Eoin English.

Several residents of Anne St and James St, off Washington St, have said the proposed development is not suitable for their residential area.

They have also outlined how their area has been blighted by late-night drinking parties, and have expressed fears that the soup kitchen charitys proposed project could aggravate the situation.

Cork Penny Dinners, one of the countrys oldest charities which is providing some 2,000 hot meals a week to the citys needy from its premises on Little Hanover St, and which fed more than 200 people on Christmas Day, lodged plans with Cork City Council in late September for a change of use of its single and two-storey storage unit at nearby 13 James St.

In planning documents, the charity outlined its plans to convert the storage unit to provide space for a part-time doctor service, a hair salon, a range of counselling services, and a training room at the James St premises.

The proposal will require modifications to its roof and balcony area, and will, if granted planning, feature a 391 sq m open-plan facility, including a 51 sq m first-floor extension.

However, a number of residents of Anne St and James St have objected, on several grounds.

They said high walls around their properties are quite restricting without further high structures being added, and claimed that the proposed pitched roof and balcony at the day centre would interfere with light and privacy.

They said the mostly elderly people who live in the residential area have to endure drinking parties on the streets and adjoining lanes, day and night.

Student nights out also cause a lot of worry and annoyance, they said in a jointly signed letter of objection.

They said their cars, while parked on the streets, have been interfered with and that the extra activity in the area would not be welcomed.

And they said that gardai have been called on numerous occasions to the area to deal with the nuisance.

They said the charitys proposed project, if sanctioned, would aggravate the situation in their area.

The opening hours of 8am to 8pm will greatly increase unwanted activity in this area. To sum up, this proposal is not suitable to be operated in a residential area, an area which is expanding with the building of extra apartments, both for students and residents.

Cork Penny Dinners is one of the countrys oldest independent caring organisations and depends entirely on volunteers and donations.

It can trace its roots back to the Quaker-run Famine soup kitchens of the 1840s.

Today, it offers a hot midday meal and food parcels 365 days a year to anyone who calls to its Little Hanover St premises.

Last Christmas, the food and dining hall was revamped as part of celebrity hotelier Francis Brennans At Your Service Christmas Day special.

This article first appeared in the Irish Examiner.
Donald Trump says the United Nations is a waste of time and money.

The US President Elect has launched a stinging attack on the body after a war of words erupted between America and Israel over the Palestinian conflict.

It has been a turbulent 24 hours between the two countries after the US refused to veto a UN resolution against Israel.

It comes just days before Mr Trump takes office and Steven Knowlton Professor of Journalism at DCU says it's been a long time in the making: "It is the culmination of tensions between the Obama administration and Israeli administration that have been worsening for many years.

"And with four weeks to go and Israel on a path that the Obama administration thinks is disasterous both for Israel and for everyone else."
President Barack Obama has imposed sanctions on Russian officials and intelligence services in retaliation for Russia's alleged interference in the US presidential election by hacking American political sites and email accounts.

The state department has also kicked out 35 Russian diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco, giving them and their families 72 hours to leave the US.

The diplomats were declared persona non grata for acting in a "manner inconsistent with their diplomatic status".

Mr Obama said Russians will no longer have access to two Russian government-owned compounds in the United States, in Maryland and in New York.

Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusation that the Russian government was trying to influence the US presidential election.

US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia's goal was to help Donald Trump win - an assessment Mr Trump has dismissed as ridiculous.

BREAKING: @BarackObama sanctions Russia

1. 35 diplomats & families xpelled

2.Two compounds closed

3.Russians & agencies sanctioned pic.twitter.com/h7aBj75zjr  JJ Green (@JJGreenWTOP) December 29, 2016

It was the strongest action the Obama administration has taken to date to retaliate for a cyber attack.

"All Americans should be alarmed by Russia's actions," Mr Obama said in a statement released while he was on holiday in Hawaii.

He added: "Such activities have consequences."

Mr Obama ordered sanctions against two Russian intelligence services, the GRU and the FSB, plus companies which the US says support the GRU.

The cyber security firm hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate the theft of its emails determined earlier this year the hacking came from the Fancy Bear group, believed to be affiliated with the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency.

The president also sanctioned Lt Gen Korobov, the head of the GRU, and three of his deputies.

Other individuals sanctioned include Alexei Belan and Yevgeny Bogachev, two Russian nationals who have been wanted by the FBI for cyber crimes for years.

Mr Obama said the hacking "could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government", a contention the US has used to suggest Russian president Vladimir Putin was personally involved.

A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the new sanctions were a sign of Mr Obama's "unpredictable and, if I may say, aggressive foreign policy" and were aimed at undermining President-elect Donald Trump.

"We think that such steps by a US administration that has three weeks left to work are aimed at two things: to further harm Russian-American ties, which are at a low point as it is, as well as, obviously, to deal a blow to the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the president-elect," Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow.
Owen Keegan made the comments as he aired his concerns over the conditions in the Nama-owned office block that has been taken over by the Home Sweet Home campaign group.

I think Irish people are a sucker for a celebrity endorsement and theres been a huge element of that, Mr Keegan told the Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk.
It follows Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Paschal Donohoes recent remarks that the widened gap between public and private pension pots is of concern amid suggestions that pension increases for retired public-sector workers could be scrapped.

As nurses and 30,000 Siptu health workers prepare to ballot for industrial action, and following fraught negotiations with teachers and gardai, Mr Kenny admitted the restoration of public pay remains a key concern for the Government.
Unisex signs hang outside bathrooms at Toast Paninoteca on May 10, 2016 in Durham, North Carolina. (Photo : Getty Images/Sara D. Davis)

Shanghai opened a unisex public toilet block in a park in Pudong New Area on the World Toilet Day on Nov. 19 with a view to reduce the time spent by women have to wait in queues. The toilet comprises 10 unisex stalls and urinals and a restroom.



According to available statistics, currently there are over 12,000 public toilets in Beijing, but nearly all of them are found in residential communities, squares, parks, and tourist attractions, markets in the urban areas and along main roads. However, there are not enough public toilets for women, forcing them to stand in long queues to use public latrines, Xinhua reported.



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China has been actively promoting gender equality, but it is not certain whether the trial with the unisex toilet concept will be enough to solve the problem faced by women visiting public toilets. This is primarily because some parental groups have opposed the opening of all-gender washrooms by the University of Hong Kong, Global Times reported.



Many of these protestors are of the view that endorsing such a controversial model in the society is nothing but misuse of public money. Consequently, the authorities are undecided on whether they should build more unisex toilets because people are yet to embrace the concept.



In fact, the protests in Hong Kong are nothing new, as people witnessed similar opposition from the public in London when the authorities introduced unisex toilets for primary school students above eight years. Parents feared that unisex toilets would make their children more exposed to premature sex activities or even sexual abuse.



Depsite such protests, the number of unisex toilets continues to grow across the globe. However, the question remains whether people are really ready to use such unisex bathrooms.



Aside from the issues raised by protestors in Hong Kong against the concept of unisex toilets, there are a number of other issues that still make them unpopular among the masses. For instance, men using toilets in China are often found chatting continuously with their loved ones on phone without even realizing that there are people waiting in the queue.



On the other hand, unisex toilets are places where a guy's patience is tested. Generally, women take more time inside the toilet, at they also check their make-up and fiddle with their outfit before they leave the place. Moreover, women usually go to toilets with colleagues or friends and use the place for small talk.



Studies have shown that neither men nor women in China prefer the concept of unisex toilets, the report said. Usually men and women share toilets in their homes, but when it comes to public they are against sharing toilets.



Watch a funny clip on unisex toilets below:






He admitted there is no upside to British voters deciding in a referendum last June to leave the EU and that until they put their cards on the table, Ireland will remain in the dark on the likely impact in this country.

In advance of Brexit being officially triggered in March, Mr Creed told the Irish Examinerthat the Government was working very strategically to limit the potential damage.

Echoing concerns from farming and fisheries groups, he said in a worst-case scenario, up to 40% of the sectors multibillion-euro export markets could be at risk.

There is no upside to Brexit for the agri-food sector, but the message I would want to give is we are approaching this in a very strategic way, said Mr Creed.

Weve done a lot of things in-house to mitigate the very worst excesses of the challenge and to see whether there might be any opportunities.

Were involved in detailed negotiations on a north-south basis with my equivalent in the North, Michelle McIlveen, and my UK equivalent, Andrea Leadsom, to try and negotiate the best possible deal we can for Irish agriculture.

But the difficulty for us is 40% of our agri-food exports go to the UK.

We also have virtually an all-Ireland economy when it comes to agri and fishery, which is really complicated  38% by volume, 36% by value of Irish fish endeavour is caught in UK territorial waters.

Put it like this: If the UK goes and decides to stand by article 50 [the clause triggering secession from the EU] negotiations that one of its primary objectives in the negotiations is to take lock, stock, and barrel of its territorial waters with it, thats a real problem for us.

Mr Creed outlined the situation as he stressed the Government was working very strategically on the Brexit issues in an attempt to limit damage to the Irish economy.

Mr Creed confirmed that, since the referendum on June 23, he has held direct meetings with the chief executives of Tesco and Sainsburys which, together, account for over 2bn of Irish agri-food exports per year to cement Irelands position in their stores.

In addition, Mr Creed said he has been reassured by Ms Leadsom that she wants to continue allowing Irish beef to be easily sold in Britain and is aware of the historically shared fishing traditions between the countries.

Asked if he had been given any guarantees over the issue and, specifically, if Ms Leadsom had ruled out seeking a deal with non-EU beef manufacturers which could push Irish products out of the market, Mr Creed said no such guarantee had been given.

No, she didnt [rule it out], and I think I need to be upfront and clear about all this. Shes not ruling out anything, he said.

The question is Mercosur, the South American trade deal with the EU  will the UK now do that by itself?

That could have a significant adverse impact on us.

Mr Creeds worst-case scenario for the farming and fisheries sectors post-Brexit echo fears raised by interest groups over the fallout.

Earlier this year, Teagasc said the sectors stand to lose between 150m and 800m a year due to Brexit. The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association said the vote is the biggest threat to the economy since the economic crash.

The comments came as the Leave Means Leave campaign in Britain said it has written to business groups across Europe asking them to put pressure on their governments for a free trade deal with the UK.

Lloyds Banking Group, it emerged, is planning to set up a European subsidiary to maintain access to the EU market.
Several residents of Anne St and James St, off Washington St, have said the proposed development is not suitable for their residential area.

They have also outlined how their area has been blighted by late-night drinking parties, and have expressed fears that the soup kitchen charitys proposed project could aggravate the situation.

Cork Penny Dinners, one of the countrys oldest charities which is providing some 2,000 hot meals a week to the citys needy from its premises on Little Hanover St, and which fed more than 200 people on Christmas Day, lodged plans with Cork City Council in late September for a change of use of its single and two-storey storage unit at nearby 13 James St.

In planning documents, the charity outlined its plans to convert the storage unit to provide space for a part-time doctor service, a hair salon, a range of counselling services, and a training room at the James St premises.

The proposal will require modifications to its roof and balcony area, and will, if granted planning, feature a 391 sq m open-plan facility, including a 51 sq m first-floor extension.

However, a number of residents of Anne St and James St have objected, on several grounds.

They said high walls around their properties are quite restricting without further high structures being added, and claimed that the proposed pitched roof and balcony at the day centre would interfere with light and privacy.

They said the mostly elderly people who live in the residential area have to endure drinking parties on the streets and adjoining lanes, day and night.

Student nights out also cause a lot of worry and annoyance, they said in a jointly signed letter of objection.

They said their cars, while parked on the streets, have been interfered with and that the extra activity in the area would not be welcomed.

And they said that gardai have been called on numerous occasions to the area to deal with the nuisance.

They said the charitys proposed project, if sanctioned, would aggravate the situation in their area.

The opening hours of 8am to 8pm will greatly increase unwanted activity in this area. To sum up, this proposal is not suitable to be operated in a residential area, an area which is expanding with the building of extra apartments, both for students and residents.

Cork Penny Dinners is one of the countrys oldest independent caring organisations and depends entirely on volunteers and donations.

It can trace its roots back to the Quaker-run Famine soup kitchens of the 1840s.

Today, it offers a hot midday meal and food parcels 365 days a year to anyone who calls to its Little Hanover St premises.

Last Christmas, the food and dining hall was revamped as part of celebrity hotelier Francis Brennans At Your Service Christmas Day special.
An old debate about the role of religion has come to the fore. To what extent should it determine political legitimacy, social frames of reference, and personal identities?

Religions social role is a conspicuous problem in the Middle East. But now it is causing tensions in Europe, as well, owing to the influx of predominantly Muslim refugees, and in the United States, where president-elect Donald Trumps campaign stoked fears about Islamist radicalism.

With militant Islamism on the rise in the last decade, many people in the West are asking if Islam itself is inherently in conflict with diversity  whether it necessarily rejects the other  and is, therefore, incompatible with secular modernity.

This debate has far-reaching implications for European and American Muslims. Most Western, and particularly European, observers consider the separation of church and state (or mosque and state) to be crucial for ensuring that religion plays a healthy role in society.

In this view, religion is a philosophical and ethical framework outside the public realm, a private matter subject to individual choice, detached from the reproduction of the political, economic, and social order.

But this perspective has been shaped by the evolution of Judaism and Christianity, particularly in certain parts of the West. It has little purchase in most of the Islamic world, and in Asian societies, which have a vastly different understanding of religions place in peoples lives.

In a society where the majority of people are adherents to one faith, order is established through rules and regulations that the majority deems divine, and through revered social institutions that are furnished with considerable resources.

For example, Cairos al-Azhar University  one of the oldest in the world, established several decades before Oxford  was the main seat of learning for the entire Sunni Islamic world for more than 800 years.

For believers in these societies, religion is at the foundation of their identity and a source of comfort during periods of fear, grief, or uncertainty. Thus, it plays an important role in societies, such as those in the Middle East, that have suffered through years of turmoil.

But, as history has repeatedly shown, when religion is deeply entrenched in a society, political powers can manipulate religious institutions to serve their own selfish interests and silence opposition.

This has long been a problem throughout the Islamic world, where religious authorities have rarely ruled outright  unlike in much of Western history  but have, instead, served as arms of the state, through which political elites could wield power.

Religiously-based social and political structures tend to be less adaptable to change and innovation. The debate in many parts of the US about whether schools should teach some version of creationism alongside the theory of evolution demonstrates the extent to which religious-ideological rigidity can take hold, even in the most developed societies.

There is no shortage of such examples, which suggests that while religion can provide emotional support, its role as a source of identity can be socially problematic.

Throughout monotheistic and Asian religions histories, adherents have often excluded and demonised social minorities, and shunned plurality in favor of conformity.

The history of medieval and Renaissance Europe, and parts of the Islamic world today, demonstrates that religion can fuel militancy, and be used to justify restrictions on free expression.

These problems are exacerbated when communities with fraught historical relationships are forced to live together, which is what happens in states with borders imposed by foreign powers.

They become still worse in countries that have had complicated experiences with modernity, characterised by polarised views among various social groups about how religion should inform legislation, politics, identities, and what is considered sacred.

These disagreements can become explosive when a societys younger members come to constitute a majority of the population and are confronted with severe political and economic problems not of their own making.

Not surprisingly, all of these aggravating dynamics exist simultaneously in many of the wars currently plaguing the Middle East.

The region today seems to be undergoing a painful catharsis, following the collapse of institutional structures that had defined the field of political participation for seven decades.

Long-suppressed conflict over fundamental questions, such as religions role in society, is now coming to the fore  often through violence.

As this process continues into 2017 and beyond, more demons could be unleashed, consuming the region for a long time. If that happens, the region will fall further behind, just as many other parts of the world are reaching new technological and scientific heights.

These profoundly different trajectories will only make it harder for the Middle Easts burgeoning younger generations to escape their crippling heritage.

But this is not the only possible future. The Middle Easts young people have an opportunity to learn from their societies achievements and failures over the past two centuries.

They can reflect on the Arab and Islamic worlds first encounters with secular modernity, and on the Wests own political experimentation with religion over the past 400 years. Such reflection is the best hope for finally moving the region toward a more promising future.

The alternative is to continue paying a high price for religiosity, without reaping any of its potential benefits.

Tarek Osman is the author of Islamism: What It Means for the Middle East and the World, and Egypt on the Brink.
It is for their rivers and their lakes fair jumping with salmon that playwright Frank Mc Guinnesss Ulstermen charge to their death in the Battle of the Somme.

In his play Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, revived for 2016 in theatres in Dublin and Belfast and London, he located his Ulstermen going into their tragic battle as natives of this beautiful island, springing from its soil and sustained by its waters.

This was a huge and important imaginative leap for a playwright who grew up on the border during the Troubles, in a Catholic, nationalist tradition which explicitly rejected the Protestant tradition as an invasive species.

Why does this memory keep recurring as we prepare to leave 2016 behind? Because the most unlikely outcome of this year of remembrance is that a United Ireland is back on the agenda. And for me it is back on the agenda because we live on a small island and nature knows no borders.

People are talking of hard and soft borders but few seem concerned at the possible impact of Brexit on Irelands environment. There is next to no environmental law which does not originate in the EU.

As Tony Lowes of Friends of the Irish Environment says, without EU environmental law We are the emperor with no clothes. And he points to the interesting fact that Northern unionists may have fiercely rejected union with the South but have not rejected being ruled by EU law.

With Northern Ireland out of the EU the Assembly will not have to translate EU directives into national law. They can even take out the bits that are in there.

This would impact implementation of the Water Framework Directive which protects our freshwater systems and the Habitats Directive which protects our biodiversity on this side of the border. In some cases and in some places it would make implementation impossible.

Green Party MLA Steven Agnew says the implications of Brexit for the Norths environment have made some steadfast unionist Greens, who even campaigned against the Greens becoming an all-Ireland party in 2004, call for a United Ireland.

Coming himself from a strong loyalist community, he says he experienced the Brexit vote as a body blow. With the leaders of Alliance, Sinn Fein and the SDLP he has taken a case, which is being considered by the UK Supreme Court, that triggering Article 50 to leave the EU is inconsistent with the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Control in an independent state in the context of the international environmental challenge is a nonsense, he says.

Because Northern Irelands environmental law is completely devolved and he worries where a DUP-led administration will lead when it comes to the environment: Sammy Wilsons attitude is we are responsible for 3% of UK greenhouse gas emissions, we can do whatever we like, he says.

Every time the North backs out of a commitment under EU environmental legislation the whole island will be impacted. Agnew points to the implications for water quality of the Assembly vote to stop installing water metres in new houses.

We are as bad ourselves, of course. The Republics implementation of the Water Framework and Habitats Directives has been so poor that in many cases the directives might as well not have been there.

But they are there. That is important. The directives and our EU commitments on climate change are the only hopes we have that this island can ever be prosperous, peaceful, clean and green.

The truth is that even if there is no hard border for people there will be a renewed attempt to draw a hard border for natural resources. There has been a dispute between North and South about the ownership of the waters of Loughs Foyle and Carlingford, for instance.

After the Good Friday Agreement it was kicked to touch by way of the Loughs Agency. But the Brexit vote was barely in before the new secretary of state of Northern Ireland, James Brokenshire was claiming that all of Lough Foyle was in the UK.

Louth county councillor Mark Dearey (GP) thinks its quite possible the UK will attempt to claim Carlingford Lough as well as there is dispute as to where the high water mark is and what it means for control of the lough.

He paints a compelling picture of how interconnected our natural resources are along the border: Three-quarters of Co Louth is in the Neagh/Bann River Basin. The River Fane rises in Monaghan, flows to Armagh, it is the border for seven miles before ending up in Co Louth where it supplies 40,000 people with their drinking water.

There is already evidence of diesel-laundering going on along the border and affecting water quality to the point that it is explicitly monitored before the water reaches the taps. Dearey accepts the EU water directive is not working as it should.

But he says Brexit threatens every shred of regulation protecting natural resources in border counties. As an example he mentions the toothless Loughs Agency and says mussel dredging is still happening in Carlingford Lough where bird life is being affected.

But having an agency which could potentially co-ordinate North and South to protect the Lough is far better than having none.

The possible implications of Brexit for the natural environment of this divided island go on and on. Dearey questions whether Northern farmers will continue to accept an intervention price for their beef, for instance.

Will there be pressure on them to compete globally by using growth hormones and how could the South protect its food chain?

Brokenshire has already said the UK will withdraw from the EU Common Fisheries Policy and it is policy which few environmentally-minded people can support.

But what fair and sustainable fishing policy is possible in our waters if UK fishermen are not part of it? The fish dont observe any borders and rising water temperatures are changing their migratory habits.

Who and how will disputes between Irish and UK fisherfolk we resolved if the UK does not recognise the European Court of Justice?

Im writing this from the north-western tip of the island. We drove from Dublin to get here, skirting the Donegal village in which my mother grew up unionist and Google reveals a relation drilling with Carsons UVF to keep Ulster in the UK.

Im no unionist but still, as a committed European and a pacifist, I never thought I would find myself writing in favour of renewing the discussion around uniting the island.

But I do so now and I do so here. Not because Only our rivers run free. But because free is the only way rivers know how to run.
Two other people, one of whom is suspected of having planned an attack on police, were arrested in another police raid in Toulouse, in the south-west of the country, the police source said.

The arrests came as German authorities detained a Tunisian man they suspect of involvement in the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market which killed 12 people, prosecutors said yesterday. IS has claimed responsibility for the attack, which some critics say was made easier by Chancellor Angela Merkels open-door migrant policy.
In Person U OoHla Saw: The NLD-Dominated Parliament Has Not Thought About Federalism in Advance

U OoHla Saw / The Irrawaddy

The Irrawaddys HtetNaingZaw recently sat down with U OoHla Saw, an outspoken Lower House lawmaker representing Arakan States MraukU, to outline his perspective as an Arakan National Party (ANP)Central Executive Committeemember (CEC) on the most pertinent obstacles and issues that he feels the current National League for Democracy (NLD)administration is facing. In the interview, U OoHla Saw was also confronted with and asked to comment on criticism that the Arakanese community and its political entitiesare working against the promotion of human rights in Arakan State, particularly concerning Muslims who self-identify as Rohingya. The views that follow are his own.

Do you think Burmas democratization will be successful? What challenges are being faced in the process?

I think challenges have become bigger, because of,for example, problems like the one that broke out unexpectedly in Arakan State. If the government fails to handle it properly, it will draw response from Muslim groups and fellow Asean members. This is a challenge.

Speaking of the country as a whole, people have expected a change, but the government has not been able to bringsocioeconomic development. As for peace, there was a certain amount of progress under U TheinSeins government. But the situation is getting worse now, and tensions have increased.

The government has publicly said that it would build a federal democratic Union, but we cant even feel the slightest essence of federalism, and ethnic groups are frustrated with the central government. There are big problems and big challenges.

Do you think a federal democratic Union can be built without changing the 2008 Constitution? Are there other ways?

Previously, ethnic parties and the NLD pushed for Constitutional amendments, and so did 88-Generation students. Then the calls for Constitutional amendments fell silent after the NLD won the election. [The government] changed its plan of amending the Constitution through the Parliament, and instead said it would hold a peace conference with ethnic armed groups, and submit the results of the conference to the Parliament to change the Constitution.

This is more complicated and includes more stages than amending the Constitution through the Parliament because the latter just needs over 75 percent of votes for approval to change the Constitution.

If we choose the method of going through the Parliament, the Constitution may be amended if the army has some willingness to do so. But the process of going through peace talks is difficult. There is not even an agreement between political parties, the army and ethnic armed organizations. The process cant even start yet.

There was some momentum for Constitutional reform under U TheinSeins government, but now it seems the momentum has been lost and is heading in the wrong direction. But if civil war stops completely, political dialogue may happen, and there will be an answer if dialogue takes place.

What is your assessment of the NLDs efforts for national reconciliation, which it has said is its top priority?

We are happy with the NLDs leadership toward national reconciliation. But the NLD has shown no signs of holding a dialogue in a friendly and cordial manner on equal terms. The NLD won in a landslide and when it came to forming the government, it seems that the NLD leadership thought that,for example, the NLD in Mon State or Chin State could represent the ethnicities there. So there have been gaps and misunderstandings between the NLD and ethnic parties that both won and didnt win the election. Ethnicities voted for the NLD with trust, but the NLDhas not fulfilled their wishes in terms of building a federal Union, and [promoting] regional development and a ceasefire. So, there is frustration.

The ethnic Arakanese people are often viewed positively on the democratic front, but there is criticism that they are narrow-minded concerning the promotion of human rights and regarding issues of race. What would you say to that?

We respect democracy and human rights, but ethnic rights are also very important. We are different from other parts of the country in that we have the problem of illegal Bengali immigrants. [Editors Note: Bengali is a term frequently used to describe the Muslim Rohingya minority concentrated in Arakan State, but the group itself rejects this term, as it is used throughout Burma and by the government to imply that the Rohingya are interlopers from Bangladesh. The Rohingya maintain that they are not immigrants and have lived in Arakan State for generations.]People from the mainland do not understand the extent of the problem. We Arakanese people respect human rights. Bengalis are also humans and we respect the rights they deserve. But they have claimed more than human rights. This was already proven by the recent incidents in Buthidaung and Maungdaw. And the government has publicly said that those militant attacks are linked with international organizations. [Editors Note: This original claim has since been criticized as lacking in evidence.]

Arakanese people do not support the governments approach to resolving issues in Arakan State.What would be your suggestions?

The first thing for the government to do is to say that there are no Rohingya. Many historians as well as U TheinSeins government and the commander-in-chief of defense services have said that there are no Rohingya. DawAung San SuuKyi needs to officially ban the name Rohingya. [Editors Note: The Rohingya self-identify as such, rather than as Bengali. Advocates and researchers have described the denial of the right to self-identify as a step toward denying the Rohingya citizenship and basic rights.]

I would suggest that theyforget the name Rohingya, and try to follow the laws of Burma and adapt to its culture. The government should investigate illegal migration and it should grant citizenship to those who deserve it. There are many people who deserve citizenship since they have lived in the country for four or five generations. And the government should assist them for their social development and livelihood, and give them access to schooling and freedom of movement across Burma.

This problem is not so big, but there are big external pressures from the UN, the UNHCR and so on. These are the challenges.

Regarding DawAung San SuuKyi, what is your assessment of her governments performance?

The cabinet needs to be strong. Our country is facing problems like rising dollar prices and a trade deficit. The cabinet should be bold in solving those problems and picking up the countrys economy. The NLD has able persons: use them. If they are not good, just leave them behind. They have been there for one year. If NLD continues using them, the country will suffer.

You mean DawAung San SuuKyis cabinet members cannot follow her steps and that a bureaucracy still exists?

I totally accept what you have just described. The bureaucracy remains, despite the fact that the democratic government has come to power. The ministers are afraid of making mistakes, and of displeasing DawAung San SuuKyi. And they dare not push their subordinates to change their mindset.

The ANP won some seats in the national legislature. What has the party done for Arakan State through the parliament?

We are not satisfied. We got around a 250 billion-kyat budget for our state under U TheinSeins government. Now, we are getting a smaller budget under the new government, which is just the opposite of its rhetoric about democratic federalism.

Frankly speaking, the NLD-dominated parliament has not thought about federalism in advance. They should have [developed] moderate thoughts in advance about how they Bamars could co-exist amicably with ethnicities, what models of federalism could be built, and what concessions they could make.

And the army does not seem to think about it. It even says that the 2008 Constitution already provides a federal Union. And I believe that there is no theory teaching about federalism in the NLD. I thinkthat NLD CEC members have zero knowledge about federalism.

Federalism is a very sensitive issue to them. I am also not satisfied with the Parliaments efforts regarding federalism. The Parliament seems to even shy away from discussion about the peace process. In successive periods from the time of U Ne Win to the early days of U TheinSeins government, governments were afraid of talking about federalism. Then, they started to get familiar with it and the lead peace negotiator from U TheinSeins government,U Aung Min,finally openly talked about it.

Until now, it is difficult to discuss federalism in the parliament. If we cant go to federalism constitutionally or through an internal peace process or in the parliament, federalism will just be a nominal label.
Burma Through Reclusive Wa, Chinas Reach Extends Into Burma

Ethnic Wa performer dressed as United Wa State Army (UWSA) soldiers perform a traditional dance in Mongmao, Wa territory in October. / Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

PANGSHANG, Shan State  China is extending its sway over an autonomous enclave run by Burmas most powerful ethnic armed group, sources in the region told Reuters, bolstering Beijings role in the peace process that is the signature policy of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The foreign policy of the self-proclaimed Wa State is closely monitored by Beijing, senior officials in the administration run by the 30,000-strong United Wa State Army (UWSA) and its political wing said, with contact with Western governments, businesses or aid groups deemed particularly sensitive.

Official known to Burma as Special Region 2, the remote territory is the size of Belgium and home to 600,000 people. Largely closed to Westerners for decades, it was visited by Reuters in October.

Chinas influence is quickly apparent, with street signs in Mandarin and Chinese businesses and banknotes ubiquitous in the self-proclaimed states capital, Panghsang, and other Wa towns that straddle the rugged border.

We share the same language and we marry each other, said the head of the Wa Foreign Affairs Office, Zhao Guo An, when asked about the Chinese influence on Wa politics. Theres nothing we can do about it. We use Chinese currency, we speak Chinese and we wear and use products from China. Very little of that is from Burma.

Delve a little deeper, and it is apparent that Chinas reach extends much further than business and social ties.

Eyes and Ears

When Lo Yaku, the Wa agriculture minister, was asked about the drugs the statelet is accused of producing on an industrial scale, his secretary and a staffer from the official Wa News Bureau intervened to deflect the question. Both men are not Wa natives, but from China.

This question was answered yesterday, said I Feng, a news bureau reporter originally from western China.

After the drug eradication campaign, our government encouraged agencies, individuals and Chinese investors to participate in anti-drug activities, said the ministers secretary, Chen Chun, originally from Zhejiang province on Chinas faraway east coast.

A similar scene played out repeatedly during Reuters visitthe first by a major international news organizationquestions on topics ranging from military funding to methamphetamine were mostly fielded not by the Wa minister but by an accompanying Chinese minder.

These and other Chinese citizens Reuters found working in the administration in Panghsan said they were employees of the Wa government and did not work for the authorities in Beijing.

But their presence hints at just how closely entwined the Wa State and its leaders are with their giant neighbour.

China has its ears and eyes everywhere, including in the government and business, and is wary of any deepening of ties with the West, said one minister from the Wa government, speaking on condition of anonymity due the sensitivity of the matter.

We take this very seriously, and act so as not to anger China, he said, adding that all dealings with Washington and Brussels, as well as every foreigner or NGO entering Wa territory, were scrupulously reported to China.

Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in response to a question from Reuters that as a friendly neighbour it has consistently respected Burmas sovereignty and territorial integrity, and not interfered with Burmas internal affairs.

Opening Up

The Wa State was formed in 1989, when the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) disintegrated into ethnic armies, and has been run as an autonomous region by the UWSA beyond the authority of the central Burma government since.

The rare invitation to a small group of foreign journalists to visitmade at Beijings urging according to two ministers from the Wa governmentappears to be part of a charm offensive aimed at the new civilian government led by democracy champion Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Reaching an accord with the Wa and other rebels is one of the State Counselors biggest challenges as she grapples with the interlocking issues of ending decades of ethnic conflict and tackling drug production in Burmas lawless border regions.

While it has not fought the Burma army in years, the USWAwhose leaders deny allegations from the United States and others that it is a major producer of methamphetaminehas so far declined to actively participate in Suu Kyis peace process.

Its a good timing for us to open up. Theres a new political reality in Burma, so its good to engage in the political dialogue and open up to the outside world, said Nyi Rang, a Wa government official.

China also has its own interests in play, according to analysts.

Beijing hopes Suu Kyi will restart a blocked, Chinese-financed mega-dam project, and wants to protect its extensive mineral interests in the country after the removal of U.S. sanctions has opened it up to Western competitors.

China is playing a complex game in Burma aimed at safeguarding and extending its considerable economic, commercial and strategic interests while at the same time deterring any encroachment by Western or Japanese interests along its southwestern border, said Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based analyst for security consulting firm IHS-Janes.

In this carrot-and-stick game the UWSA is unquestionably the biggest stick Beijing wields  plausibly deniable diplomatically, hugely influential as a strategic rear-base for allied ethnic factions, and itself far too powerful to be taken down militarily.

Weapons Sales

The Wa mini-state relies heavily on China as a market for its exports of rubber and metals such as tin.

As well as occupying government posts, Chinese citizens, mainly from neighboring Yunnan province, dominate local markets and the Wa elite send their children to Chinese schools and elderly to its hospitals.

We dont make anything here. The stuff we eat, we wear and we use is all from China, said Chu Chin Hung, district office chief in the Wa border town of Nan Tit. Every Saturday morning there is a farmers market, but almost all of the vendors are from China.

Experts such as IHS-Janes Defence Weekly have previously reported that China has sold a variety of weapons to the Wa. For the first time, a Wa minister, who declined to be identified, confirmed some of those reports and described the process.

The Wa State has bought military trucks directly from China and light weapons from China indirectly through Laos, said the minister. Those weapons include rifles and cannons. They dont want to anger Burma by selling directly.

The Chinese Defence Ministry denied selling weapons to the Wa.

China has consistently and strictly adhered to a military equipment export policy that benefits the recipient countrys present defense needs, does not harm regional or world peace, security and stability, and that does not interfere in the internal affairs of the recipient country, it said in a statement to Reuters.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Photo : Getty Images/Mike Windle)

"The Walking Dead" Season 7 has introduced Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as a villainous character in the hit AMC series.



However, TV Line believes that more fans will be able to relate to the character if more information about his past is unveiled in the upcoming episodes. The publication noted how good of an actor Morgan is so there is no doubt that he has left a huge impact on the viewers and his co-stars. But since he is a villain, not a lot of fans love his character.



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It would therefore be a good idea for the writers of "The Walking Dead" Season 7 to portray the character as a more compelling member of the show. When this is done, fans will also understand why Negan has turned into a very heartless character. Not to mention, most evil men definitely suffered from great losses and pain from the past that they do not want to remember anymore. This means that there could be an important story regarding Negan's past that should really be explored.



Meanwhile, "The Walking Dead" Season 7 just aired its midseason finale, and it has the most similarities with the original comic book. In "Hearts Still Beating," the creators of the series came up with parallel storylines as with its written counterpart. In the episode, the gutting of Spencer was depicted the same way it was written in the book.



However, Daryl Dixon's confrontation with Fat Joey was shown on television, but it was not really part of the book. Additionally, Olivia being shot on the face was also only added for television, as well as Rosita's shooting of Lucille. Also in the episode, it was revealed that Carl shot Lucille. This enraged Negan so the latter insisted for Carl to be handed over. In the end, the residents of Alexandria did not want to hand Carl over, but Negan said that if they do not do as they are told, he would kill more people.



"The Walking Dead" Season 7 will return to AMC with episode 9 on Feb. 12, 2017.






The goal of telephone companies and their ecosystems to push fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) data transmission speeds continues unabated. The latest chapter is XGS-PON. This month, there was a plug fest supporting the new XGS-PON specification at LANs Digital Application Laboratory in Tauxigny, France. It was attended by more than 30 companies.

The goal of such conclaves is to establish processes and meet challenges related to interoperation of gear from different vendors. That this stage has been reached for the spec, which is the International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sectors (ITU-T) new XGS-PON, shows that it is on the point of much wider commercialization.

The plug fest was sponsored by the Broadband Forum and the Full Service Access Network forum. XGS-PON, according to the press release, is aimed at providing 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) in both directions simultaneously (symmetrical). The specification will be interoperable with other gigabit passive optical network (GPON) specifications promulgated by the ITU.

XGS-PON is a big deal in networking circles as the heavy demands of 5G appear on the horizon. Earlier this month, Nokia said that it and Telefonica have tested the XGS-PON technology in the vendors labs. The press release said that the test provided four times the upstream bandwidth generated by XG-PON1. Possible uses for equipment that offers such capacity are mobile backhaul and remote access node traffic aggregation. Both of these, the release says, make it an important tool for 5G.

ADTRAN is also getting into the act. Lightwave Online says that the vendor claims to have entered XGS-PON trials with several service providers, though they are not named. The story links to another that says that the standard gained initial approval in the spring. It is an offshoot of NG-PON2.

NGS PON is positioned in the story as far from an ultimate goal. It is, rather, an important stop along the way:

The technology is seen as a transitional step between current GPON and the time- and wavelength-division multiplexing (TWDM) PON-based NG-PON2, which will require tunable optics to support its multi-wavelength, multi-PON capabilities.

The key driver of XGS-PON seems to be the demands that will be made by 5G. The key to a new wireless technology isnt just the ability to send great amounts of data through the air. It also requires the capability to smoothly move that data once it enters the wired network. XGS-PON appears to be one of the key approaches to extending these earthbound capabilities.

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.
How to Create a Culture of Innovation

Last week, I wrote about Venkat Devraj, who argued that the vendor selection process needs to be much more collaborative if IT departments want to prevent business units from going rogue with technology deployments. That post defined the problem that Devraj was out to fix. This one addresses how hes going about fixing it.

Devraj, co-founder and CEO of SelectHub, a technology evaluation platform provider in Denver, claims that by enabling all of the stakeholders in a technology project to have a voice, and dramatically streamlining the procurement process, SelectHub helps to eliminate the drivers of the shadow IT problem. To understand how SelectHub accomplishes that, I opened this portion of the interview by setting up a scenario in which a mid-size logistics company needs to procure a transportation management system. I asked Devraj to outline what SelectHubs process would be for procuring the TMS, and he began by summarizing the way IT procurement typically works now:

What often happens today is when, say, a TMS is needed, the department that needs it will enter a requisition for a new TMS, and the IT department, which is busy because its often understaffed, will wait for a business analyst or a project manager or a program manager to be freed up that will get assigned to the project  that may take a few weeks. Then the project manager will meet with the business users, try to gather requirements, then they will map those requirements back to the companys existing IT infrastructure. They may talk to Gartner, they talk to Forrester, they may bring in a software selection consultant. The procurement department may get involved, they may look at existing vendors, partners that they have that have those capabilities. They will also do an RFI or an RFP; the results come back, there is a panel of evaluators from the end-user community, from the IT department, from the finance department, then the finance department will short-list the vendors. Once two or three vendors are short-listed, they may initiate a proof-of-concept or a trial, which may run for 30 days or 60 days. In the meantime, the business pain that initially triggered the need for a new TMS, that hasnt gone away  that has only become worse, and users are sitting there in frustration. Sometimes theyre not even consulted about all the final vendor capabilities, vs. what they wanted.

The streamlined process that SelectHub enables, Devraj said, begins when the request comes in through the requisition system and opens up a project in SelectHub:

The stakeholders from the IT department, finance department, procurement, etc. can automatically be added to the project. They can specify their requirements for any new software, such that it needs to integrate with SAP, or with a particular system in order to be compliant with a certain security standard. So all of those governance requirements can be auto-populated into the project as part of the overall requirements. SelectHub also will allow the end user who created the request to pull up a template of best practices, which is crowdsourced, so they can see what other companies their size, in their industry, specify as requirements when they look for a new TMS. They can also add other end users, other business stakeholders, so this can be a lot more collaborative. And while all of this is happening, IT has full visibility even though they havent waited and assigned a project manager. All of this happens in a matter of days, right from requirements gathering all the way to vendor finalization. So thats really the change in the process that we are looking to enable.

Devraj went on to explain how the system identifies prospective vendors:

We have created a proprietary algorithm that goes out and looks at several different sources. Number one, it looks at traditional vendors that are out there in that space, that are having conversations on social media, that are talking about their products on different B2B websites, review websites, etc. It will capture some of that data and compare it with some of the industry heavyweights based on things like the research that is available in the public domain from Gartner and Forrester. Vendors will often brag about being featured in Gartners Magic Quadrant, and thats all available in the public domain, so our algorithm can pick it up. Then we also contrast that data with what our users are telling us. We have over 14,000 enterprise users, all doing actual real-world projects, finding different software, different technology partners. So there is an element of crowdsourcing, where our users are able to validate whether or not these vendors truly meet these requirements.

Vendors, meanwhile, are actively seeking to be listed in SelectHubs database, Devraj said:

A lot of vendors realize that we are providing this service  it has become a very common thing where each month we will see several vendors reach out. Its a free service for vendors, where they can list themselves in our database, and they can go through the process of being vetted against the requirements that our community of users has shown us to be relevant for their organizations. And then the community rates them, based on having gone through a selection project, where they may have done a proof of concept or an extended trial with these vendors, and the scorecards will help validate whether these vendors are credible or not. Its kind of a self-balancing system, where the vendors can come in and be represented, and the buyers are able to rate and rank them.

I wrapped up the conversation by asking Devraj if he could have one do-over since he co-founded SelectHub, what it would be. He said he would have formed a customer advisory panel a lot sooner.

We have about half a dozen customers that we have cherry-picked to be on our customer advisory panel. The amount of wisdom and advice we get from them is incredible. It has really helped us evolve the offering  we have seen growth of over 200 percent in the last 12 months. If I had it to do it all over again, we would have set up this kind of customer advisory panel maybe three years ago, right when we were starting  maybe even before we got started. We have some phenomenal IT executives that are part of the panel  for example, Kroll CTO Bill Krivoshik, and David Buckholtz [SVP of corporate information technology] from Sony Pictures. With people like that, who have walked in these shoes for a long time, we get the benefit of learning from them and avoiding costly mistakes. That is irreplaceable, and I wish we had done it much earlier on in the process.

A contributing writer on IT management and career topics with IT Business Edge since 2009, Don Tennant began his technology journalism career in 1990 in Hong Kong, where he served as editor of the Hong Kong edition of Computerworld. After returning to the U.S. in 2000, he became Editor in Chief of the U.S. edition of Computerworld, and later assumed the editorial directorship of Computerworld and InfoWorld. Don was presented with the 2007 Timothy White Award for Editorial Integrity by American Business Media, and he is a recipient of the Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for editorial excellence in news coverage. Follow him on Twitter @dontennant.
Doctors in the fifth century were advised by Hippocrates to smell their patients' breath in order to detect maladies. Modern science backed this idea that there are indeed certain diseases which may cause the body to produce volatile compounds, which could provide diagnostic method if detected properly.

For the past decade, scientists developed sniff tests for diagnosing tuberculosis, hypertension, cystic fibrosis, and even certain types of cancer, Quartz reported. For example, cystic fibrosis causes the patient's bodies to function in a way that they produce nearly four times as much acetic acid (the base chemical in vinegar) as healthy people.

The Inspiration Of The Breathalyzer Is A Dog's Nose

Researchers led by Hossam Haick at the Israel Institute of Technology took the idea a step further by building a breathalyzer that is compact and can diagnose up to 17 diseases from a single breath. The study, which was published in ACS Publications, details how 3D printed device containing a sensor array of carbon nanotubes is used to capture the unique "breathprint" of certain diseases.

According to Haick, they got their inspiration from dogs, because a dog's nose "can be trained to recognize the scent of a disease on someone's breath and distinguish it from a healthy person." He also added that instead of the nose, his team "have chemical sensors instead of the dog's brain, and a computer algorithm" so they can communicate more about the disease than a dog sniffing it out.

Disease Have A Unique "Breath Print"

Researchers found that just as we each have a unique fingerprint, each of the diseases that they have studied has a unique "breath print" or a 'signature' of chemical components. Haick added that they have created a device which can discriminate between diseases, and which is "elegant and affordable." The research team said that their results can be used to create inexpensive, noninvasive and portable biomedical devices, projected to cost as little as $40.
The radical transparency organization WikiLeaks is commemorating its 10th anniversary of leaking classified documents that had surprised the world, since it revealed the secret actions and decision of many governments, that almost everyone wouldn't know if it wasn't for Julian Assanges group. Given this situation, here are the most groundbreaking high-profile revelations that WikiLeaks has published so far.

US War On Iraq And Afghanistan

The war in Iraq and Afghanistan were two of the most controversial moments in the U.S. foreign policy in this century, considering the political consequences that had in the Middle East and the world. Although both wars weren't exactly unpopular among the American people at the beginning, eventually it became an operation that almost everyone criticized.

The controversy among these wars escalated to a whole new level when WikiLeaks started to leak classified information regarding the U.S. military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, since it was revealed the way in which the American soldiers killed thousands of innocent people between 2004 and 2009.

WikiLeaks operation was called the "Iraq War Logs", and it was extremely controversial and groundbreaking, given the fact that the leaks helped to include 15,000 new civilian casualties to the U.S. public death count. Eventually, it was known that the person who provided the information to WikiLeaks was the U.S. Army Private Chelsea Manning, who were sentenced to 35 years in prison because of this.

The Controversial Foreign Activities Of The US Intelligence

If theres one thing that almost every single U.S. government since the 20th century has been blamed of, is the way in which intelligence agencies as the CIA or the NSA has infiltrated and spied foreign nations politicians, in order to make sure that these fulfill the American interests and doesn't negotiate with the wrong nation.

Although this has happened in several occasions, some of the most controversial in the last 10 years were published by WikiLeaks, since the whistleblower organization released in May 2014 classified documents in which it was proved how the NSA recorded almost every single domestic and international phone calls from some target nations as of 2013.

In fact, also published in 2015 several documents that indicated how the NSA kept under surveillance some French presidents as Jacques Chirac, and engaged in economic espionage against some French companies. However, the most controversial revelation was the way in which the NSA spied Germanys top officials for years, including Angela Merkel.

WikiLeaks Changed The American Politics With The Podesta Emails

This was probably the most groundbreaking high-profile revelations that WikiLeaks has leaked since it was founded, considering the consequences that these actions had on the American political sphere. Were talking about the publication of the John Podestas emails, the man who worked as the campaign chairman of the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

Over 55,000 classified documents were released, revealing the inner workings of Clinton campaign, in which it was known her relationship with the press, with Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and how Saudi Arabia and Qatar donated $1 million to her foundation. Naturally, these revelations were endorsed by many and strongly criticized by others, who believed that WikiLeaks was making the leaks in order to get Donald Trump elected as the U.S. president.

Although is not known which could be WikiLeaks motivations behind these actions, the truth is that in addition to how the concerns that many Americans had for the political system, the Podesta emails played a huge role in the elections' outcome, considering how damaging these publications were for Hillary Clinton.
There was a bit of worry a while back regarding a possible delay of the release of Apple's new iPhones in 2017. But the fire was quickly put out.

A few days ago, reports came in that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. or TSMC and other similar companies were having difficulties meeting the production schedule of the for 10nm chips. The supposed lag in the yield rate would be a big blow to Apple and other companies relying on TSMC for the 10nm chips.

But now, BGR says that the Taiwanese company has contradicted the initial reports and has stressed that it is "totally on track" in the production of the processor. TSMC will also contribute to the sales revenue in the first quarter next year.

Aside from focusing on the production of 10nm chips, TSMC is also in the process of developing other mobile chips such as 7nm, 5nm, and 3nm versions, according to Elizabeth Sun, TSMC's senior director of Corporate Communications. The company is still on the fence regarding the use of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for the 5nm and 3nm SoCs.

Aside from Apple, TSMC counts HiSilicon and MediaTek among its 10nm buyers.

If TSMC does fail to produce the needed processors, Apple will be left with nothing to show next year. The tech giant is expected to release the iPhone 8, its anniversary smartphone, and one of three iPhones set for 2017. Aside from the smartphones, the iPad Pro will also be affected by the supposed delay in production of the 10nm chips.

Intel and Samsung, one of Apple's most bitter rivals, are also producing these processors and has reportedly suffered from low yield rate, as well. According to Patently Apple, Qualcomm, which gets its 10nm chips from the Korean tech giant, has been forced to scrap its plan to have its Snapdragon 835 and other chips built using Samsung's 10nm process.
Australia weather reported today that there will be heat waves starting today. Western Sydney is forecast to hit 40 degrees Celsius today.

Sydney's heat wave will continue until New Year's day. The temperature is expected to climb at 42 degrees Celsius. Making it the hottest year in more than 150 years.

NSW police alerted people to stay hydrated and in air-conditioned rooms.

The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast severe heat wave conditions across all of coastal NSW, with the unbearable heat tipped to linger through to New Year's Day.

Melbourne is expected to experience thunderstorms and heavy rains after the hot night this year. There would be a possibility of flash flooding on Thursday.

Despite of this stormy weather conditions, the Victorian capital should stay at 32 degrees Celsius throughout the day.

According to Daily Mail, Brisbane will experience five days straight perfect summer. Hitting 34 degrees Celsius on Sunday and Monday.

A Bureau of Meteorology spokesman told the Courier Mail the roasting temperatures were a result of a northwest breeze that would bring warm air from central Queensland.

The heat wave that is very alarming prompted authorities to issue warnings.

First is to stay hydrated. Next is avoiding alcohol, sugary and hot drinks. The third is to avoid physical unnecessary activities. Lastly is to stay out of the sun during the hottest part of the day.

According to ABC News, because of the Australia weather today, people should be cautious about heat stroke. There is also a very high fire danger forecast.

Surf Life Saving NSW released a safety plea, telling people safety guides to prevent heat stroke. First step is to seek shade, stay well hydrated and control their breathing.

If the procedure is not successful. And if the person's condition deteriorates. This is the time that people should alert the life savers or life guards.

During this Australia weather today people should find ways to beat the heat.
2016 has seen its share of hits and misses this year in the tech industry, but the year is almost up and there is only more to look forward to. Some of the biggest names, in particular, are already scheduled to release products that will undoubtedly make waves with the public. And in terms of the best tablets that are expected, Microsoft's Surface Pro 5, Samsung's Galaxy Tab 3 and Apple's iPad Air 3 are some of the anticipated ones.

As PC Advisor notes, Microsoft likely delayed the release of the Surface Pro 5 to the early months of 2017 because it is waiting for stock of Intel's latest Kaby Lake processor, as well as the release of an update to Windows 10. Nevertheless, it is expected to come with several more updates and improvements other than a change in processor. It will undoubtedly be the best tablet that the Redmond-based company has ever offered.

The Surface Pen, which allows users to write directly onto the Surface Pro 5's screen, is expected to receive its own update. This alone will better the entire experience of the 2-in-1 hybrid tablet. But when it comes to the device itself, it is expected to have better battery life, as well as a USB Type C connection and a 4K screen.

The same publication notes that the newest generation of Samsung's famed Galaxy Tab S series will arrive sometime within the first quarter of 2017. As the latest addition to the series, there is a lot of pressure and expectation with the device. However, the Korean tech giant is expected to still blow the Android world away.

There will probably be two variants of the device, as an 8 inch and a 9.7-inch model are expected to reach the market. Multiple reports claim that it will sport the same curved edge design as the Galaxy S7 Edge, but it will definitely be more than just a beauty. The Galaxy Tab S3 is estimated to come powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor, as well as 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

The iPad Air 3 was actually expected to launch earlier this year in March 2016 when Apple had an event. The Cupertino giant's succeeding September and October events also failed to display or announce the tablet. And while the company has not released a statement confirming it will arrive next year, it is likely to arrive in March 2017.

Its rumored specs include a Smart Connector for easy connection to a Smart Keyboard. In addition to this, the iPad Air 3 is also expected to be compatible with the Apple Pencil. Furthermore, the device is expected to be thinner than ever before, as well as an upgraded processor. It is expected to be available in silver, gold, space gray and rose gold.

Tablet Monkeys notes, however, that there are other tablets that will be released as well. These include the Asus Zenpad 3, which will run on Android 6.0 and will be released as early as January. Another is the Lenovo Tab3 8 Plus, and the Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 Plus 10. In the second quarter, the Nexus 7 is expected to arrive in the market.
Samsung's up and coming flagship smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S8 is highly anticipated to be unveiled next year, sometime in April. However, several details regarding the smartphone have already started leaking online.

Rumors on the upcoming Galaxy S8

According to the said information available right at this moment, Samsung is rumored to be releasing two variants of the S8 device; the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus will be Samsung's newest flagship phones once they roll out. Now, information suggests that Samsung will also be incorporating double the RAM and a much faster storage chip.

Ice Universe, a prominent and well-known leaker when it comes to Samsung smartphones, has suggested that the Galaxy S8 is going to feature a whopping 8GB worth of RAM, made using 10nm fabrication technology, and a newer UFS 2.1 flash storage chip. Earlier rumors have the Galaxy S8 featuring only 6GB of RAM and up to 256GB storage.

Qualcomm has already announced its upcoming Snapdragon 835 processor, and it might also be used for the Galaxy S8. However, it has also been said that Samsung will be making a variant of the device with their very own Exynos 8895 processor.

Other rumors to ponder on

According to some other rumors, the standard variant of the Galaxy S8 might feature a 5.1-inch curved display, and the Galaxy S8 Plus with a 6-inch curved screen as well. It is also being suggested that the Galaxy S8 might also be featuring a single rear-facing camera, while the Galaxy S8 Plus might feature a dual rear-facing camera setup.

The South Korean tech company might also be using its own AI digital assistant to compete with Apple's Siri technology and Google's Assistant. Their smartphone is also rumored to come preloaded with Android 7.0 Nougat with Samsung Experience user interface on top of it.

With all things said, it all goes down to the upcoming Galaxy S8 potentially being the fastest smartphone on the planet once it rolls out.
Samsung is expected to launch the upcoming flagship device called as the Galaxy S8 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.

Samsung Galaxy S8 virtual assistant Bixby to be integrated with all pre-loaded apps and can beat the well-known Apple's Siri.

Bixby: Samsung Galaxy S8's Virtual Assistant

Because of the big issue happened on Galaxy Note 7's explosion, the company needs to have a new launch that will be the show-stopper and will really bring back the loyalty of the fans. Now, new rumors suggest that it is the upcoming Galaxy S8 will use its built-in Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant in all of the phone's pre-installed apps.

The voice-guided assistant is rumoredly named as Bixby. Many believe that it could be used for a wide variety of functions in a similar way to Apple's Siri or even more than that. According to Daily Mail, Bixby could help Samsung close the gap on its leading smartphone competitors Apple and Google.

The latest rumors, as of today comes from a re[prt by Sammobile, who suggests that it has received insider information on the new phone. Samsung has previously relied on its now-ageing S Voice feature for user assistance. Even though it is old enough and slightly outdated, as far as the record is concern, no negative issues were reported regarding this.

According to Sammobile's report: 'S Voice is likely to be replaced by Bixby in the Galaxy S8. Unlike S Voice, Bixby will be much more advanced, and it will work system-wide.'

Samsung has already mentioned previously that smartphone users will not have to use specific apps to perform many tasks. The new AI intelligence, Bixby, is rumored to be the key ingredient to this modernized user experience.

According to Indian Express, all the native applications will feature a new user interface (UI) so that they all have a similar design. The status bar will always be visible when the Bixby in use so that users wont have to swipe twice to access notifications and quick settings.

Bixby And Vib Labs

Samsung Galaxy S8 is expected to next year alongside with the new voice-based digital assistant. Following on from the South Korean company's acquisition of Viv Labs, the technology from this artificial intelligence platform will be baked into Samsung's software on the upcoming flagship, as reported by Forbes.

Viv Labs was founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham, the team that spun out research from the SRI Artificial intelligence Center. On October 5th, 2016, Viv was acquired by Samsung Electronics. The following month, it was revealed that Viv would be available on the Samsung Galaxy S8.

Can Samsung Galaxy S8 Beat Apple iPhone 7 And 7 Plus?

Previously, Samsung has fought back against Googles strict requirement for Android certificationand came out second-best. Samsung Galaxy S8 is turning out to be a device that will make a number of technological leaps forward, noted the Learn Bonds.

The inclusion of AI of Viv Lab in the Galaxy S8 is one of the many plans of Samsung to beat Apple's flagships smartphones. Aside from acquiring Bixby as Samsung's official AI, it is also rumored that the Galaxy S8 will have the first to have rear dual cameras.

'Currently Samsung Electronics is deciding whether to use all-in-one dual-cameras or separated dual-cameras,' a representative for a component industry told Yun Keonil of ET News. Rumors suggest that pixels of the dual-cameras will support 16 megapixels and 8 megapixels while the iPhone 7 Plus only supports 12 megapixels.
As the number of opioid-related deaths exceeded 1000 this year, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced recently the state law reform plans to combat opioid addiction. As part of the legislative package he signed this year, the reform plans are directed to health insurance companies, physicians, and hospital services.

Due to the urgent nature of drug addiction and the soaring overdose deaths as reported earlier, the state of New York is leading the health reforms and have set it to be implemented as soon as January 1.

To better help patients suffering from opioid addiction, the new state reform law is unprecedented in its scope and financial resources.

First of all, it requires all health insurance companies to expand coverage for addiction treatment. Second, it increases access to treatment by removing burdensome barriers in health services. Third, it modifies prevention strategies in the community to improve education about heroin and opioid addiction. Lastly, it strengthens the limitation of prescribing opioids in New York as reported in Kings County Politics.

Opioid addiction dominates top 10 of the most overdosed drug deaths in the U.S. this year as announced by the Centers of Communicable Diseases (CDC). Fentanyl is the most commonly used synthetic opioid by most addicts and it is ten times more potent than morphine. Often used in surgery, it is illicitly obtained by most users.

To cut down on overdosed deaths and also to manage the opioid addiction epidemic, the state reforms focuses on increasing health services and social support to the patients and their loved ones.

According to Ny1, the health plans specifically allow for health insurance to cover for immediate inpatient treatment as long as it is needed. It also dictates that approval is no longer needed from health insurers on what emergency supplies are used for the emergency treatment.

Furthermore, it requires health insurance companies to cover the cost of Naloxone, an antidote for opioid intoxication. With regards to the role of physicians, they are required to undergo ongoing education on addiction and pain management treatment. They're also limited to prescribing opioid pain relief from 30 days to 7 days only.

With the expansive health reforms in place, the state of New York hopes to take the lead in stamping out the problems of opioid addiction that has plagued the country recently.
It is well known that Americans have the most expensive health care spending in the world as reported earlier. However, as to what diseases Americans spend the most money on is not very clear. A recent study announces that the top three diseases that drain the pocket are diabetes, heart conditions, and back pain.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation studied public health services and personal spending as they attempt to distinguish between the two with regards to medical spending on over 155 diseases.

They found that diabetes is the most expensive disease with $101 billion worth of spending on diagnosis and treatment alone. It is alarmingly growing 36 times more expensive than the spending worth on ischemic heart disease or heart attack.

According to Science Daily, heart disease was the leading cause of death for 18 years in the United States. However, due to the proliferation of fast food chains, conditions that promote fast food and high calorie food consumption, and sedentary lifestyle, diabetes gradually rose to the top of the health care spending list.

The study also highlighted the age groups affected by the top 3 most expensive diseases. Mostly people who are 65 and above suffer both diabetes and heart diseases, while back pain inflicts mostly those who are younger and working.

These top 3 diseases comprise $437 billion and 18% of the overall personal medical spending in 2013. All the 155 diseases studied accrue a whooping $2.1 trillion in spending. In addition to that, over the counter drugs and home health care are unaccounted for in the study, indicating that the estimated spending could come up to $2.4 trillion, Tech Times reports.

The implications for this finding speaks loudly on the lifestyle choices that people make. The top 3 most expensive diseases are serious health issues, but they are also easily preventable with proper education.

Other medical conditions that made it to the top 20 on health care spending are an array of musculoskeletal disorders, health visits to the dentists, and prenatal and postpartum care.
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Feds laud $83M to better Pell Bridge The congressional delegation of Rhode Island was in Jamestown to celebrate an $82.5 million grant to upgrade the bridge that connects Conanicut Island to Newport. U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a...

Local author, illustrator collaborate on book A local woman has turned her digital cross-country teatimes with her granddaughter into a childrens book. Tuesday Tea, written by Debby Furness Saletin and illustrated by Maryann England, both of...

Local group asks for rental rules changes A group of residents is expected to present its recommendations on how to improve the ordinance that governs short-term rentals. Member Ron Ratcliffe said the item is scheduled to be...
Everyone in the world who has access to the Internet is familiar with Google and its products, but the popular company has several products and services that most people are not even aware of. These products and services are incredibly helpful for those in the workplace as well as for stay at home parents.

Business Insider compiled a list of lesser-known Google products and services, and we picked seven that many people will find useful in their day to day lives.

Google Express

Who knew that Google can now deliver books, electronics, apparel, food, and more to your doorstep? This service is an online marketplace which connects shoppers with popular retailers, and it is a game-changer as members get fast delivery of everyday essentials from stores such as Walgreens, Toys R Us, and Costco.

Google Fonts

Cant find the perfect app for your website? Try Google Fonts to find a gorgeous font that you can use for free. With over 800 fonts to choose from, theres a font out there that will make any site more engaging and a pleasure to read. This product also makes web pages run faster by safely caching fonts without compromising users privacy or security.

Google Keep

This note-taking and reminder service enables users to store notes, lists, photos and audio, and the Google Keep app works on both desktops and smartphones. One can set up a reminder to finish a list, and one can even use it to record thoughts throughout the day. Best of all, everything that has been stored in Keep, such as shopping lists, can be shared with family and friends.

Google Input Tools

This lets users type in over 80 different languages, and one doesnt even need to download a special keyboard to do so. Input tools is currently available in 22 different languages, including Bahasa, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and Russian.

Google Art Project

Get your art fix with this service, which allows users to access high-resolution images of artworks that are housed in well-known museums which Google has partnered with. With Art Project, one can enjoy looking at stunning pieces found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate Gallery in London, and more.

Google Trends

Clueless about whats trending? This service gives users information about the latest issues that people are caring about at any given moment as it displays the most searched items every day.

Google Sound Search

With this service, users can identify songs playing nearby. It also links to the right track to buy at the Google Play Store.

For more, check out Jobs & Hires list of the best apps to help you be more productive in 2017.
Workers have been pushing for an increase in minimum wage for a long time now. They argue that they cannot feed their family and cannot afford basic necessities at the current minimum wage level. Another argument they use to get employers on their side is that higher minimum wage could mean increased productivity levels.

Tim Worstall, a fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, agreed with the argument that workers could be induced to work more if they are getting a higher wage for their effort, Forbes reported. However, he argued that increased productivity levels could mean that there will be fewer jobs available.

He cited the reasoning made by Sir Charlie Mayfield, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership. Mayfield, who also serves as a government adviser on productivity, said higher minimum wage could push employers into increasing the use of automation in workplaces, which could lead to the decline in the number of jobs available for humans.

The arguments of Worstall and Mayfield rest on the fact that employers will always choose the cheaper option when it comes to production. If a machine costs lower than the wages of the number of humans it would take to finish a task, employers will not hesitate to implement automation. Lower wage expenses could contribute to higher profit after all.

McDonald's Corp. is one of the corporations that has been beleaguered by workers asking for higher minimum wage, Jobs & Hire previously reported. The fast-food giant agreed to settle with its workers to the tune of $3.75 million.

Worstall advised those who have been lobbying for a higher minimum wage to stop using higher productivity levels as an argument for their cause, but he did not offer an alternative option. The automation option that could lead to fewer jobs would just hamper the cost because it could lead to lower employment levels. However, workers and employers need to resolve the issue first because it remains uncertain whether full automation would be a thing in the near future.
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These are perilous times for our representative democracy.

The recent campaigns and subsequent events fanned the flames of bigotry and sharpened the fault lines of our partisan divisions. Scripture reminds us that a house divided cannot stand; while Thomas Jefferson wrote that A nation united can never be conquered. We must resist both external terrorism and the equally dangerous internal forces of hatred, racism, injustice and exclusivity.

It is time for a collective pause to remember who we aspire to be as Americans. From our founding documents to the present, we have proclaimed that America is the land of the free, with liberty and justice for all, not just for those who look like, think like or believe as some of us.

For an effective government that serves all citizens, I propose 10 New Years resolutions for officeholders and supported by the rest of us. Imagine our future if politicians and citizens pledged the following:

1. In both personal and public life, we will work diligently to make 2017 a year of healing and reconciliation. I agree with Robert F. Kennedy, who said, That which unites us is, must be, stronger than that which divides us. We can concentrate on what unites us, and secure the future for all our children; or we can concentrate on what divides us, and fail our duty through argument and resentment and waste.

2. We will never engage in language or actions springing from or supporting prejudice, hatred or demonization of others. We will listen to those with whom we differ, trying to build bridges of mutual understanding.

3. We will examine our history honestly, both to celebrate real achievements, while also addressing remaining issues hindering the American dream for a just and equitable society. We lag behind other industrialized nations in health and education, and we still have 43.1 million (13.5 percent) of our citizens and 18 percent of our children living in the poverty that blocks educational success. Cardinal Roger Mahony wrote Any society, any nation is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members, and John Kennedy said in 1961, If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

We should not despair; we can fix these problems, if we have determination and willingness to address complex factors, rather than rushing to simplistic solutions. The United States has always risen to overcome significant challenges, and we can again!

4. We will turn our backs on fake news, seeking and advancing truth. History shows that dictators rise to power through skillfully manipulating lies, half truths and false promises.

5. We will pursue and support public policies based on careful, reasoned consideration of the best information and resources available. In public decision-making, we resolve that the first question will be: What is the best course for the country, state or community as a whole, not what is good for my party and my re-election?

6. We will stand against any and all forms of violence, while addressing the conditions giving rise to hopelessness.

7. We commit to be servant leaders, governing with a spirit of humility and the willingness to find compromises necessary to insure a functional government. On all issues, there is middle ground for agreement.

8. We will work to expand opportunity, through improving national and local infrastructure, establishing strong re-training programs for those left behind by technology and carefully examining tax policies for appropriate strategies reducing inequities.

9. We will reform our justice system, focusing on rehabilitation for non-violent offenders. Neither our economy nor our quality of life can be sustained with one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world.

10. We will explore effective policies and services to promote family strength, as foundational for a healthy society.

Long ago, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. Yes, these are dangerous times, but we can move forward confidently if we pledge to meet new challenges; decide not to avoid problems, but to face and overcome them; and stand fast to our most noble ideals. The world is watching us with bated breath, fearing a misuse of our great power. Every day, I see evidence of individual kindness and courage  why not resolve to channel collective goodness into positive national policies?
JERRY W. MARTIN, Winston-Salem

Sadness

I am so sad. The election is over and the electors have spoken and Donald Trump is officially our 45th president. Before the election, half the people wanted to kill the other half. Now that it is over, half the people want to kill the other half.

I am so sad. Growing up it wasnt that way.

What happened? Are our ideas so far apart that we would harm someone because they dont believe as we do?

I am so sad. I remember elections as being stupid and boring when I was, say, 6 or 8 years old. Things have sure changed. Roads were blocked. Cars were destroyed. Businesses were burned. Police officers were prime targets to be shot.

I am so sad. After Najee Harmon was arrested in Milwaukee for shooting a police officer, his friend Stephanie King told the press,  to me he aint do no wrong  he just shot a cop. Just shot a cop.

I am so sad. What have we as a people turned into? Are we that barbaric? Has life begun to mean so little to us that we just dont care? They say black lives matter and I agree, but do any lives matter more than others? I am so sad...

******

MARK B. HOWARD, Winston-Salem

Power plays

I dont care who did it first; this isnt a damn playground.

We elect state legislators with the hope theyll get business done, not keep grabbing power and creating more and more ill will.

If Sen. Phil Berger and Rep. Tim Moore cant handle the responsibility, if all they can do is make power plays that make North Carolinians look like a bunch of backward hicks, they need to be replaced, along with the rest of the Republican bunch. And if Republicans care about the state, theyll agree! Our 2018 election cant come soon enough.

******

JANE SIMMONS, Winston-Salem

Making America great

President-elect Trump.

Hes not going to build a wall. Hes not going to lock her up. Hes not going to drain the swamp. But hes going to make a hell of a lot of money. Taxpayer money.

Way to make America great again, Trump voters.

******

ANGELA PEARMAN, Winston-Salem

The victory tour

One of the many great things about this country is that I can write this letter without fear of retribution. I hope that never changes.

Now, to the letter writer who is disappointed by President-elect Trumps victory tour (Exceed the performance, Dec. 21)  really? Now youre disappointed in his bad-mouthing the press and his critics and offering a laundry list of promises with no substance? Hes been rewarded for his behavior and his rhetoric by being elected president. How could anyone possibly think that suddenly hes going to change any of his methods or his personality?

Did anyone really think he cared about unifying the country? Hes a master manipulator. He figured out long ago that he can tweet something outrageous to distract everyone from the things hes doing that should be examined. He figured out long ago that facts are not important to his audiences. Hes played this country as if its all a big social experiment.

When I read, or hear anyone say that theyre surprised by his anything he says or does, Im reminded of the quote from Maya Angelou: When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

******

HELEN ETTERS, Winston-Salem

Rule of law

Why did North Carolina bother to hold an election? The people voted for Roy Cooper, a Democrat, to be our next governor. In response, our legislators called an emergency session and hurriedly, without public discussion, passed bills that undermine the will of the voters.

The people voted for a Democrat to replace a Republican on the N.C. Supreme Court, so the legislation will require constitutional challenges, now, to go to the Republican majority Court of Appeals before a case can be heard by the N.C. Supreme Court, where our votes created a Democratic majority.

The legislators stripped our new governor of the power to appoint a majority to the state Board of Elections. They stripped the governor of his ability to name members of the boards of state universities. They reduced the number of state employees the governor can appoint from 1,500, under Gov. Pat McCrory, to 425 for Gov. Roy Cooper, and they will require Coopers appointments to agencies to be approved by legislators.

A Democrat won the office of governor, so the Republican legislators will stop him, to the extent possible, from being able to perform the duties of the office he was elected to.

This institutional brinksmanship in North Carolina is being discussed on national news, and we must, in all seriousness, ask whether our elections matter and whether we want our democratic rule of law to continue to be eroded.

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If you would like a photo of yourself included with your letter, send it to us as a .jpg file.

For more guidelines and advice on writing letters, go to journalnow.com/opinion/submit_a_letter.

The Journal welcomes original submissions for guest columns on local, regional and statewide topics. Essay length should not exceed 750 words. The writer should have some authority for writing about his or her subject. Our email address is: Letters@wsjournal.com. Essays may also be mailed to: The Readers Forum, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. Please include your name and address and a daytime telephone number.
Our family isnt much for holiday traditions. We have never made the trip to a Christmas tree farm. Holiday baking gets done if we find time. And Christmas cards are often sent out after Dec. 25.

But one tradition we try to keep every year is a hike or outing on New Years Day.

The tradition started about 20 years ago with the Eno River Associations hikes. The organization that advocates for the Eno River and acquires land in Durham and Orange counties for Eno River State Park held its first New Years Day hike in 1971, two years before the park was established.

When our kids were small we would coax them into hiking to the halfway point with the promise of a backpack ride on the way back. A bag of popcorn and cup of hot cocoa around a crackling fire was a welcome treat at the end of the Eno hikes.

Over the years we have participated in a number of the organized hikes that include staff and volunteer interpreters to provide background along the way. Some years we have invited friends to join in our tradition. Other years weve chosen to get away from the crowds to hike or bike on our own.

Exploring masses of ladybugs sheltering in the cracks of Pilot Mountain, marveling at the sweeping view of the high valley from the top Elk Knob, encouraging an apprehensive child to cross the expansive spans of the New River Trail and father-son talks on top of Hanging Rocks Moores Knob have left some of my most indelible family memories.

As a system, North Carolina State Parks started First Day hikes in 2012. Since then, the parks have held guided hikes each New Years Day in every park. This year, they are holding more than 50 hikes, varying in length from half a mile to 7 miles, and from flat and easy to strenuous.

Perhaps the most curious event is the 7-mile roundtrip hike to the top of Chimney Rock that starts at 12:01 a.m. Another hike worth considering is the Two States, One Hike event that begins at Crowders Mountain State Park in North Carolina and ends in Kings Mountain National Park in South Carolina. And if you want to be among the first to explore a region, a hike at Carvers Creek State Park near Fayetteville touts a 3-mile sneak peak of areas not yet open to the public.

Closer to home are two ranger-led hikes at Pilot Mountain State Park  a 6-mile hike on the Mountain Trail at 10 a.m. and a hike around the pinnacle on the 1-mile Jomeokee Trail at 2 p.m. Also close by is the 4.7-mile hike of the Moores Wall Hike in Hanging Rock State Park that begins at 9 a.m. and promises to be done in time for the polar plunge at the parks beach area.

The state parks website has a complete list of all the systems hikes along with ranger recommendations of what to bring with you  from bug spray to snowshoes.

Now, will someone please pass me the good-luck foods for the new year: pork, sauerkraut, black-eyed peas and greens?
Turkey and Russia will act as guarantors of a nationwide ceasefire while representatives from the Syrian government and the opposition are expected to meet soon

Syria's army and key ally Russia on Thursday announced a nationwide ceasefire to take effect at midnight, in a major potential breakthrough after nearly six years of civil war.

The deal was brokered by Russia and Turkey, who back opposing sides in the brutal conflict, but notably does not involve Washington, which has negotiated previous ceasefires with Moscow.

It comes a week after the government recaptured second city Aleppo in a major blow to rebel forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the deal, saying Damascus and the "main forces of the armed opposition" had inked a truce and a document expressing a readiness to start peace talks.

"Several hours ago, the event occurred that we have not only been waiting for but been working so much to hasten," Putin said in a meeting with his defence and foreign ministers.

After the Kremlin's announcement, Syria's army said it would halt all military operations from midnight, and the opposition National Coalition also said it backed the truce.

Putin said he would also reduce Moscow's military contingent in Syria, which has been flying a bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad since last year.

The Kremlin strongman, however, said that Russia would continue to fight "terrorism" in the war-torn country and maintain its support for the government in Damascus.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said that seven opposition groups, including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham, had signed the deal and those who failed to adhere would be considered "terrorists".

Syria's army said the deal did not include the Islamic State (IS) militant group and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fateh al-Sham Front.

That could cause complications in areas like Idlib in northwestern Syria, where Fateh al-Sham is allied with rebel groups that have signed on to the deal.

Syria's political opposition and rebels confirmed their backing for the deal, saying it applied to all parts of the country.

"The agreement is for all of Syria and contains no exceptions or preconditions," said Osama Abou Zeid, a legal advisor to rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.

Ahmed Ramadan, a member of the National Coalition political opposition body, also said the deal covered Idlib, despite Fateh al-Sham's presence.

"The agreement includes a ceasefire in all areas held by the moderate opposition, or by the moderate opposition and elements from Fateh al-Sham, such as Idlib province," he told AFP.

The agreement comes after Turkey and Russia brokered a deal to allow the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians and rebel fighters from Aleppo.

Moscow and Ankara are now pushing for peace talks between Damascus and the rebels to start soon in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana.

"Now we need to do everything for these agreements to come into force, for them to work, so that the negotiating teams that have been or are being formed promptly and as soon as possible arrive in Astana," Putin said.

Russia and Turkey have both said that the peace talks they will supervise are meant to supplement UN-backed peace efforts, rather than replace them entirely.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia, Turkey and Iran were currently organising for the talks and pressing for other key international players to get involved.

Lavrov said Moscow would invite Egypt and try to attract other regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Jordan.

He added that Moscow would seek to involve US President-elect Donald Trump's administration once he takes office this month, but the process does not appear to involve outgoing President Barack Obama's administration.

Abou Zeid confirmed that the truce deal was intended to pave the way for new talks in Astana, with the High Negotiations Committee that has represented the opposition at previous negotiations expected to participate.

Turkey has long backed Syria's opposition, and its relations with Russia soured last year after Ankara shot down a Russian warplane.

But the two countries have worked closely of late on Syria and Turkey was conspicuously quiet as Assad's forces retook Aleppo.

The Kremlin said Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke Thursday and discussed the importance of efforts to convene the Astana talks.

Turkey's Dogan news agency, citing military sources, reported that Russian warplanes had for the first time bombed Islamist militant targets around the town of Al-Bab in Syria, held by IS extremists but surrounded by Turkish forces.

Syria's conflict began in 2011 with anti-government protests, but evolved into a complex civil war that has killed more than 310,000 people and forced millions from their homes.

In the hours before the ceasefire was to take effect, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor reported at least 17 civilians, including six children, killed on in air strikes and artillery fire on rebel-held territory near Damascus.

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I met Bagpiper Michael Hostler a few months ago when my beau Ron Gills band, The Lowbillies had a gig in Hutchinson Square. Michael has had quite a life. He grew up across from Kent State University. He was at the KSU Commons (N. end) as a teen when he saw and heard the infamous shots rin Read moreInterview with Bagpiper/Musician Michael Hostler
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Donald Trump has pronounced solar power too expensive and has pledged to revive the use of coal. The former is a falsehood, the latter a genocide. (Coal kills people with lung disease and global warming). Moreover, Trump keeps complaining that China is eating Americans lunch with regard to bilateral trade. But if he doesnt back American solar industry, hell be giving the economy of the future away to . . . China.

Amazingly enough, renewables companies in the US arent pessimistic about what they can accomplish while Trump is in power. Prices of renewable power sources have fallen 80% in a decade and probably the prices will go on down from there. Prices can fall for several reasons better efficiency, cheaper materials, innovative technology. Solar is already cheaper on paper than the least expensive of the hydrocarbons, coal, and so looking 10 or 15 years out, fossil fuels are dead without their investors or owners knowing it or perhaps being willing to admit it. (If people believed what I just wrote, Exxon-Mobils stock price would fall to zero tomorrow; which it should).

Moreover, even if the Federal government turns hostile to solar, states and municipalities are often putting in incentives for it.

Not to mention that the Chinese government is highly committed to renewables. In fact, it was largely owing to Chinese investment and research and development that solar costs have fallen 80%. In fact, China is able to reduce its subsidies to renewables because solar panel prices have fallen 30% this year alone! The world is one market, with some lags, so if Chinese panels fall dramatically in cost (they will) it cuts costs for everyone. The problem is that then it is the Chinese who get the profits on this $100 billion sector (which will grow in size), not American companies. What Trump and the GOP may actually accomplish is to create a loud whooshing sound of American energy dollars hurtling toward Beijing, while we are left with old costly inefficient coal and natural gas plants.

How fast the solar transition can take place out in the real world is demonstrated by India. Indian minister for energy and mines Piyush Goyal observed that everyone laughed at India when it said it would reach 100GW of solar power by 2022. PV-Tech writes, Speaking at the Energy Conservation day in Delhi, he said: They thought it is impossible that a country like India can expand by 40 times from 2,400MW, that we had in 2014, to 100,000MW by 2022.'

In fact, India already has 9,000 megawatts of solar in 2016 and plausibly hopes to be at 20,000 MW next year this time. A lot of this progress is at the level of utility-scale solar, as with the just-opened Kamuthi solar facility in Tamil Nadu. It has a capacity of 550 MW and was built in only 8 months.

India is now the third-largest solar market after China and the US. Will it use Chinese panels and other technology? Or American? The US governments policies will help decide the answer to this question, on which the issue of American economic and technological supremacy in the 21st century will hang. The answer is in Trumps cabinet appointments, all of them deeply entangled in the 19th century technology of bubbling crude.

That China will be the leader on solar tech will give its companies the edge in buying up promising new technologies on the world market. Thus, Thermal Focus of China has just bought a proven Australian heliostat technology that uses lots of small mirrors to boil water to turn turbines. With every Chinese innovation and every such purchase, it gets further ahead of the United States in this field.

So if you look out at the big world, where 78% of global GDP is produced, youd have to be very bullish on solar and very bearish on Trump, Tillerson and his other grimy fossil-fuel fossils. What is tragic is that Americans over time will have fewer jobs, less money, more expensive energy, and more lung disease because of the reckless decision they made in November of this year.



Related video:

TomoNews: Sustainable energy: New energy innovations to make the future brighter  Compilation
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TeleSur |  

John Kerry claimed the Palestinian leadership enables terrorism as he defended the U.S. decision to let the U.N. resolution on Israeli settlements pass.

After kicking off his speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Wednesday with a lengthy condemnation of what he called Palestinian terror and the Palestinian leaderships alleged celebration of terrorists, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry found a few minutes to defend his countrys abstention in the United Nations vote on a resolution against Israeli illegal settlements.

His 70-minute speech came just days after the United States abstained in the Dec. 23 United Nations vote in what many see as a parting shot by U.S. President Barack Obama, who had a tense relationship with Netanyahu.

Kerry defended Obamas commitment to Israels security, mentioning how Washington has shielded Israel from being prosecuted at the International Criminal Court and the U.N., as well as other international platforms.

No American administration has done more for Israels security than Barack Obamas, Kerry said. The Israeli prime minister himself has noted our unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation.

Earlier this year, Obama approved US$38 billion in military assistance for Israel over the next decade, the biggest such package in the countrys history.

Kerry then went on to slam Palestinian terror against Israel, referring to the recent surge in stabbing attacks against occupying forces in the West Bank and illegal settlers, further claiming that the Palestinian leadership and ruling party Fatah have been celebrating those attackers and naming streets and squares after them.

But the top U.S. diplomat found some room later on in his speech to criticize Israel for the occupation, settlements and the increasingly right-wing politics in the government.

Kerry said in his speech that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus current coalition is the most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements.

The truth is that trends on the ground  violence, terrorism, incitement, settlement expansion and the seemingly endless occupation  are destroying hopes for peace on both sides and increasingly cementing an irreversible one-state reality that most people do not actually want.

Kerry vigorously defended the U.N. resolution and rejected criticism that the vote abandons Israel, adding that It is not this resolution that is isolating Israel. It is the permanent policy of settlement construction that risks making peace impossible.

He said that vetoing the resolution would have been giving license to further, unfettered settlement construction that we fundamentally oppose.

Responding to Kerrys remarks, Netanyahu said the speech was skewed against Israel and that the secretary of state obsessively dealt with settlements and barely touched on the root of the conflict  Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries.

But Israelis are looking past Obama and expect they will receive more favorable treatment from Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20. The Republican used his Twitter account on Wednesday to denounce the Obama administration, including its U.N. vote, and the nuclear accord it reached with Iran last year.

We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but not anymore, Trump said in a series of tweets. Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!

Trump had openly lobbied against the U.N. resolution and would be expected to veto any further ones deemed anti-Israel.

He has vowed to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and has appointed as ambassador a lawyer who raised money for a major Jewish settlement, has cast doubt on the idea of a two-state solution and even advocated for Israels annexation of the West Bank, a notion even further to the right of Netanyahus own stance.

Via TeleSur



Related video added by Juan Cole:

CNN: Kerry: One-state path wont give Israel peace
The bill has been referred to the House's foreign affairs committee

Egypt has said it rejects a bill introduced to the US Congress that would require the Secretary of State report on progress made in Egypt in restoring churches damaged during mob attacks in August 2013.

The foreign ministry said Wednesday it repudiates the move which "allows a foreign entity the right to undermine national sovereignty and imagines that Egyptian authorities may submit to be accountable to a legislative or executive foreign authority."

The bill, titled the Coptic Churches Accountability Act and introduced by Representative David Trott in September, directs the Secretary of State to submit an annual report to Congress regarding "efforts to restore or repair Christian property in the Arab Republic of Egypt that was burned, damaged, or otherwise destroyed during the sectarian violence in August 2013," according to the Congress website.

The report should also track efforts to implement a 2016 law which "imposes significant burdens on church building and the nature and extent of Egyptian laws and policies regarding the construction of Christian churches or places of worship."

The bill has currently been referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, according to the Congress website.

The Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement that the bill contains errors inconsistent with reality, adding that Egypt did not witness sectarian violence but rather "terrorist attacks by an illegal group."

Dar Al-Ifta, the top authority for fatwas and Islamic advice, also condemned the bill. It said Thursday the law constitutes "interference in Egypt's internal affairs and foments discord and discrimination" between Egyptians.

The Coptic Orthodox Church said in a statement that the government has carried out its "full duty in repairing and renovating the churches," a process it said is about to be completed as pledged by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.

"Egyptian national unity is above all, and can never be compromised," it added

In August 2013, dozens of churches, Christian institutions, schools and homes were torched or damaged by mobs following the violent dispersal of two large camps of pro-Mohamed Morsi protesters in Cairo.

The State Department currently issues an annual report on the state of religious freedom in 195 different countries, including Egypt.

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Sarah van Gelder | (Yes! Magazine)

The election divided the year into before and after. But there remain signs of hope for 2017.

It was a year blown up by the election results. There are now two very different 2016sthe one before and the one after we learned that Donald Trump would become president of the United States.

Before Nov. 8, most assumed that Hillary Clinton would be elected and would lead the nation more or less in the footsteps of Barack Obama. From Nov. 9 onward, though, we entered a different world. The ideologues and billionaires appointed to the cabinet, coupled with the president-elects own tweets, clear up any doubts that disastrous policies will soon follow. Most recently Trumps tweet about restarting a nuclear arms race gives the dangers a terrifying immediacy.

And we know from watching the campaign that Trump is poised to use his presidency to direct hate and blame at people of color, immigrants, religious minorities, LGBTQ people, women, journalists, and anyone else who fails to get in line. We are about to enter a time of uncertainty and danger.

To make it through the Trump presidency well need to clear away any remaining illusions that the solution is a return to the Democratic establishment status quo.

We are living on a planet with a carbon-saturated atmosphere, in a time of increasing inequality and terrifying violence. Trumps administration wont get us where we need to go, but neither would the Democratic Partys corporate-friendly policies.

So, even as we enter a time that could be quite dark, we should focus not on finding a way back to an Obama/Clinton past, but on how to move forward by nurturing the seeds of real change that began to germinate in 2016.

1. We gained a new respect for Mother Earth

The most dramatic new possibilities in 2016 came out of a North Dakota tribe: the Standing Rock Sioux, the people of Chief Sitting Bull. The vision and courage coming from the Native peoples gathered at Standing Rock are rippling out across the country. Natives and non-Natives are learning lessons about humility, nonviolent power, thinking about the seventh generation and about our ancestors, off-the-grid communities, and about protecting Mother Earth, one place at a time.

Elsewhere too people see that progress cannot proceed at the expense of Mother Earth.

Contaminate the water and the soil, and we poison ourselves. And we poison our own souls when we demean the animals who are our relatives. This wisdom, long part of the indigenous worldview, is permeating the broader society.

Meanwhile, the people of Flint, Michigan, and other cities are stepping up the fight for clean, safe water. Movements led by Native people, farmers, and neighborhood leaders are fighting pipelines and fossil fuel infrastructure across the country.

2. We learned how to heal violence

The water protectors at Standing Rock flipped the notion of what it means to be a courageous warrior. It is no longer about the capacity to inflict violence; being a warrior now means the courage to stand unarmed in the face of danger, to protect vulnerable people and places, and to be willingas the veterans at Standing Rock saidto take a bullet to protect the sacred.

Courage also means the willingness to apologize and forgive. Veterans and clergy alike made history at Standing Rock by apologizing for the role of the military and the church in the atrocities committed against Native peoples.

3. We acknowledged the leadership of people of color

Black Lives Matter continued to force onto the national agenda the issue of police shootings of people of color and, more generally, the continued issues around White, male, straight, cis-gendered violence and exclusion. And they were able to get through to both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Despite the backlash of the Trump election, or perhaps because of it, there is a growing awareness that the issues and leadership of people of color must be central to progressive change.

4. We embraced a presidential campaign based on economic justice

The surprising strength of Sanders insurgent presidential campaign showed the passion of many Americans for authentic economic populism. While the Democratic Party establishment glossed over the hardships faced by low-wage workers, the underemployed, and unemployed, Sanders acknowledged the hardship.

Trump also acknowledged the hardships, but he touted policies based in xenophobia as the answers to middle-class fears. Sanders, on the other hand, showed that the systems that concentrate wealth and power can be changed and that everyone in the 99 percent could benefit.

By filling stadiums with tens of thousands, raising millions with average contributions of $27, and mounting a powerful campaign in the face of Democratic Party obstruction, Sanders showed that the grip of the oligarchy can be challenged. This authentic economic populism is an important step to countering Trumps form of ultra-right populism, which would quickly have collapsed into its own absurdity were it not for a compliant media and the continued legacy of racism in the United States.

5. We witnessed the start of the fight for real science

Trump has chosen to surround himself with climate deniers. But actual climate scientists and others who believe in the reality of the climate crisis are not sitting still. Instead they are downloading research data on the changing climate from U.S. government servers and safeguarding them so they will remain available for further research no matter whom Trump appoints. Preserving these invaluable data sets will enable scientists to continue to refine their understanding of what is happening to the habitability of the planet, and that could be life-saving. Their moral courage in the face of possible retaliation is an example of the sort of quiet heroism that well need to make it through the Trump years.

The acts of courage at the camps on a frozen plain at Standing Rock, in the nondescript offices of climate scientists, and among citizens in cities and towns throughout the country offer hope.

I was at Standing Rock on the day after the election, and I asked tribal leaders for their reactions. Were accustomed to living under bad presidents, they told me. Well get through this, too.

By protecting the most vulnerable people and the Earth, supporting each other, and nurturing the seeds of healing and rebirth, we can use this time of disruption to transform our society. Even the children of Trump supporters might someday thank us.

Sarah van Gelder wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Sarah is cofounder and editor at large of YES! Magazine. Her new book, The Revolution Where You Live: Stories from a 12,000-Mile Journey Through a New America is available now from YES! Read more about her road trip and book here and follow her on Twitter @sarahvangelder.

Reprinted from Yes! Magazine
Colombian Congress approved [press release; Spanish] a measure Wednesday granting amnesty to low-level Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) [BBC backgrounder] guerrillas who have not committed atrocious crimes. The measure will also create a special procedural system for FARC fighters accused of offenses outside the boundaries of amnesty. The new law is part of a peace deal between the Colombian government and FARC. An earlier version of the law failed in October, and this version faced fierce opposition with some members abstaining from the vote. The government hopes the measure will stabilize the peace agreement and act to reassure [Reuters report] those rebels moving to demobilize.

The Colombian government and the FARC reached a peace agreement [JURIST report] last month to end the guerrilla warfare that has been plaguing the country for more than five decades. In December Colombias Constitutional Court approved [JURIST report] the governments plan to expedite a peace deal with the FARC. Colombian voters in October narrowly rejected [JURIST report] the previous peace deal negotiated between Santos and Timoleon Jimenez, the leader of the FARC. The Colombian government and the FARC signed a ceasefire [JURIST report] in June, marking an end to more than 50 years of armed conflict between the two groups.
Lt. Governor Brian Calley [website] of Michigan signed a measure [materials] Wednesday prohibiting local regulation of shopping bags. The measure refers to the bags as auxiliary containers and defines the term to encompass containers made of plastic, cloth, paper, etc. The bill will not allow local governments to regulate, prohibit, or impose a fee on the containers. The bill takes effect in 90 days.

The regulation of plastic bags [NCSL report] in the US has become a growing topic of concern in 2016. Several cities and municipalities have taken it upon themselves to regulate the use of such containers. Some states, like Michigan, have preempted local regulation all together. Last month California voters supported [JURIST report] a state-wide mandate to eliminate the usage of plastic bags while simultaneously voting down a measure which required fees collected from the bag usage to better the environment.
Yasin Aktay, spokesman for Turkeys ruling party [official website] said on Wednesday that the government is pushing for a Syrian cease-fire to be in place by 2017. Aktay confirmed that talks between Russia and Turkey are ongoing and that Turkeys insistence is  to bring the sides together and for a cease-fire to come about as we enter 2017. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu [official profile] stated [WP report] that terrorist organizations would be kept out of the ceasefire agreement. The Russian Foreign Ministry [official website] confirmed [New Zealand Herald] that the UN envoy for Syria has promised to help negotiate a ceasefire and assist with proposed peace talks. Sergei Zheleznyak, a Russian Member of Parliament, stated [Andalou report] that the plan was an important step towards a political solution in Syria.

The Syrian Civil War [JURIST backgrounder] has been ongoing since 2011 when opposition groups began protesting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and the increasingly bloody nature of the conflict has put pressure on the international community to intervene. In March, Amnesty International reported that Russian and Syrian armed forces are deliberately attacking hospitals and other medical facilities as part of a military strategy to clear the way to northern Aleppo. Just prior, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee passed [press release] two resolutions calling for an international tribunal in the Middle East to address the alleged war crimes [JURIST report] committed by the government of Syria and its allies, specifically Russia and Iran.
Egypts foreign ministry says the will to implement the principles is key

Cairo believes that the principles proposed by US Secretary of State John Kerry to revive the Middle East peace process are mostly consistent with the Egyptian vision, but it is important that those principles are implemented eventually, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

The principles proposed by Secretary John Kerry are mostly consistent with the international consensus and the Egyptian vision but in the end what is important is the will to implement those principles eventually, said Ahmed Abu Zeid, the ministry spokesman.

Abu Zeid added that the vision proposed by Kerry would need to be fully studied and evaluated, revealing that the US Secretary of State spoke with his Egyptian counterpart about some aspects of his vision in the recent months during his talks with major international and regional parties involved in the peace process.

In his speech on Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry criticisd the government of Benjamin Netanyahu which he said was undermining the two-state solution.

He proposed six principles to relaunch the peace process between Israel and Palestine, including the recognition of the 1967 borders, presenting a fair, acceptable and realistic solution for Palestinian refugees, implementing the two-state solution and making Jerusalem a shared capital of both states.

Egypts foreign ministry stressed in its statement that the relaunch of the peace process would require huge efforts in the upcoming period, and that Egypt is ready to participate in that efforts with its regional and international partners, among them the new US administration.

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday criticised the speech saying he had different views to John Kerry. "Israel has been treated very, very unfairly by a lot of different people," he told reporters.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin told Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in a phone call on Thursday that Russian flights between Moscow and Cairo will resume soon, the Egyptian presidency said in a statement.

Russia halted flights to Egypt after a passenger jet crashed in Sinai in October 2015, killing 224 people, most of whom were holiday makers.

Shortly after the crash, the Islamic State militant group claimed it had downed the plane with a bomb, though Egyptian authorities have not yet confirmed the cause of the crash.

The two leaders discussed topics including the situation in Syria during their phone conversation, the Kremlin said earlier on Thursday.

"They exchanged views on the current situation in the Middle East and North Africa, including the issues of resolving the crises in Syria and Libya," the Kremlin press service said in a statement.

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Egypts cabinet referred on Thursday the Egyptian-Saudi Red Sea border demarcation agreement to parliament after approving the deal that places the Egyptian-controlled Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir under Saudi sovereignty.

The cabinet asserted in a statement that its approval of the deal and its referral to parliament is constitutional, though lawyers challenging the agreement in court say the move is unconstitutional, as the court has not yet given a final verdict on the issue.

The cabinet has received several inquiries from parliament asking why the agreement has not been sent to parliament for approval, according to Ahram Arabic website.

However, lawyer Khaled Ali, who is challenging the deal in court, told Ahram Online that the cabinets decision is neither legal nor constitutional.

The administrative court has ordered [that the cabinet must heed the court ruling] voiding the agreement, Ali said, adding that the cabinet should not have sent the deal to parliament for discussion.

"[The cabinets decision] is creating conflict between the judicial and legislative authorities, the cabinet should follow the court order. If not, we will take legal action," Ali said.

In June, an administrative court voided the agreement after a number of citizens and lawyers filed a lawsuit challenging the deal.

The State Lawsuits Authority, the legal body representing the government in court, has appealed the ruling on behalf of the cabinet, the presidency and parliament.

On 5 December, the Commissioner's Authority of the High Administrative Court recommended that the court reject the government appeal.

The High Administrative Court is set to issue a final verdict on the deal on 16 January.

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A senior U.S. defense official is confirming that a top Islamic State military commander was killed by a coalition airstrike in Syria on Monday.

The official says that Abu Jandal Al-Kuwaiti was killed near Tabqa Dam. He was a key leader of the group in Raqqa. No other details were available.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier this week that he had been targeted by U.S.-led coalition aircraft. And IS supporters on social media had indicated on Tuesday that he had been killed.

The U.S. confirmation was the first official coalition acknowledgement of his death.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have been battling Islamic State fighters near the strategically located dam, aided by a barrage of coalition airstrikes in the region.

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OMAHA -- A nonprofit group that runs federal prisoner re-entry programs across the nation wants to open a residential center for prisoners in a riverfront industrial park north of Omahas Eppley Airfield.

Dismas Charities Inc. proposes to provide housing and such re-entry services as job readiness and placement for up to 95 soon-to-be-released prisoners. They would be people from metropolitan Omaha or southwest Iowa expected to return home after serving federal prison sentences.

Dismas, a nonprofit corporation based in Kentucky, is seeking a contract with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons to build and operate the center. The bureau expects to select a contractor by Friday.

Although the contract has yet to be awarded, Dismas has identified and sewn up a location, contingent on the contract and permit, said Den Freaney, the firms vice president of development. The site is a vacant lot at 506 Crown Point Ave., between Abbott Drive and the Missouri River levee.

Dismas officials chose the site for its proximity to bus lines and prospective employment, and because no homes or schools are nearby, Freaney said. They hoped that the industrial park would be a path with less resistance than trying to locate in a residential area. But the industrial area site choice promises to be controversial as well.

The lot is surrounded on three sides by businesses that distribute or make products such as livestock feed, concrete, steel, machinery and heavy-duty shelving.

Dismas is seeking a permit from the City of Omaha to allow transitional living in an area with industrial zoning. The Omaha Planning Board voted at its latest meeting to recommend that the Omaha City Council grant the permit.

The proposal and site have the support of the Omaha Planning Department and City Council President Ben Gray, whose District 2 includes the area.

Gray said Dismas  which operates 32 residential re-entry programs, mostly in Southern states  has a good record over its 50 years of providing re-entry services.

Gray said the services are needed. He expressed confidence in the groups security plans for the proposed site.

The Planning Departments recommendation called the proposal an appropriate use of the land that will not adversely affect the neighborhood.

Several of the neighbors disagree. They said theyll oppose the permit request as it goes to the City Council.

Neal Drickey said hes scared to death of the proposed facility. His NBG Enterprises manufactures and assembles high-pressure natural gas equipment next door to the proposed location.

Im terrified at the thought of having 100 convicted felons next door to me, Drickey said. Im concerned about the safety of myself and my employees.

Hes also concerned about theft, he said.

Drickey was one of three people from nearby businesses who testified against the proposal at the Planning Board meeting. He had hired an attorney to speak at the meeting as well.

Im offering what resistance I can, but it isnt much, he said. They (Dismas leaders) are a lot more familiar with this process than I am.

Representatives of John Day Co. and Patriot Crane and Rigging also spoke against the permit request. Nancy Kurtenbach said a lot of semi trucks come and go to John Day, which distributes agricultural and industrial equipment. Carrie Olson said she was worried about theft from Patriot Crane and Rigging.

No injustice to what theyre trying to do, but I feel like there could be a better place to locate this business, she told the Planning Board.

People from three other neighboring businesses said in interviews that they oppose the plan.

Butch Spurrier, manager of the Watco terminal next door to the vacant lot, said its the wrong place for such a facility.

I agree with getting rehab for prisoners, he said. But it doesnt belong in a commercial area.

Spurrier said he worried about the security at Watco, which loads and unloads livestock feed, fertilizer and steel beams between train cars and trucks. Soon Watco will begin handling ethanol as well, Spurrier said.

Jon Cavalieri, who owns Can It dumpster rental next door, said the city would not allow him to put an industrial business in a residential area, and it shouldnt allow a residential use in an industrial area.

He said hes worried about the riff-raff it would bring.

Planning Board members were unpersuaded by neighbors opposing testimony, voting 7-0 to support the permit. But one, Arnold Nesbitt, told Freaney, I would still encourage you to have some conversations with your neighbors.

Freaney said he would meet individually with neighbors to discuss their concerns.

Councilman Gray said he should. But Gray said he has no concerns about their security.

I have high regard for what they (Dismas Charities) have done around the country, and what they propose to do here, Gray said. Some of these businesses are going to have to get over themselves. This is that NIMBY (not in my backyard) thing.

The Bureau of Prisons wants a facility built to house 78 men and 17 women.

Most would be federal prisoners returning to Douglas, Sarpy or Washington Counties in Nebraska, or Pottawattamie, Harrison, Mills, Montgomery or Shelby Counties in Iowa. A few would be former prisoners who had been on federal probation in the Omaha area but violated their probation and were sent by a judge to the re-entry center.

The residents would have been convicted of a variety of crimes, mostly drug offenses, but also gun and sex offenses. Most of the latter would be Internet sex crimes, Freaney said.

At a Dismas re-entry center in Kearney, 79 percent of the clients had gone to prison for drug offenses, Freaney said.

The center would be staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Freaney said. The peoples movements would be tightly monitored, he said. They would have to check in and out with their fingerprints when going to and coming from work, and to check in by landline from their jobs.

They would have to have a breathalyzer check for alcohol every time they enter or leave the center, Freaney said. If they had drug abuse problems in the past, they would undergo at least four urinalysis screenings a month.

The prisoners would have just a few months left on their sentences. If they broke any of the rules at the center, they could be sent back to prison, Freaney said.

In the other locations where Dismas operates, he said, they have actually improved the areas security. Freaney said Dismas centers have security video cameras all over the place. He said security guards must regularly patrol outside the facility as well as inside, and they are trained to look for and report suspicious activity in the neighborhood. And Dismas encourages police who patrol the area to stop in to the re-entry center to have coffee, use the bathroom or file their reports in relative comfort, Freaney said.

People get all up in arms, he said. They think there will be murderers and rapists with no supervision running the streets.

But thats not the case, Freaney said.

He cited Dismas re-entry centers in Kearney and in Sioux City, Iowa. The Kearney Hub reported in November that Kearney Mayor Stan Clouse said Dismas had met or exceeded his expectations in its first eight months. The mayor said he had received no complaints.

That was after Clouse had initially criticized Dismas as not being forthcoming about the project and not making enough efforts to meet with the community.

In Omaha, Freaney has been trying to build support among social-service advocates and law enforcement leaders, among others.

Dismas application for a permit includes a letter of support from John Griffith, executive director of Catholic Charities.

Griffith, whose agency could provide some services to the centers clients, said in an interview that the need is there.

He said the prisoners whom the center would serve are likely to return to the Omaha area anyway. Its better that they learn life skills and have help preparing for and finding jobs.

That reintegration is critical, Griffith said.

Douglas County Sheriff Tim Dunning was among the dozens of people who signed a Dismas petition supporting the companys proposal.

Dunning said hes not weighing in on the specific location, but he supports a re-entry center.

Ive never been a fan of just letting people loose out of prison and sticking them back on the street, Dunning said.
Whether out of anger or of angst, Bill Clinton spoke from the core of Democratic Party presumption when he told a Westchester County, N.Y., journalist recently that Donald Trump doesnt know much but does know how to get angry white males to vote for him.

This was supposed to be the Republicans season of discontent. Instead, Democrats emerged from the election with less political clout on the national and state levels of government than at any time since 1928.

And Hillary Clinton was again denied her appointed role in history.

If Trump pursued the politics of resentment in courting white, working-class voters and their rural cousins, Democrats succumbed to what I call the politics of righteousness in overlooking their concerns and underestimating their power. By righteousness I mean the tendency of the Democratic Party to assume ownership of the moral high ground whenever cultural values and social norms are at issue in American politics  and to presume that those who disagree are, as Hillary Clinton put it, a basket of deplorables.

If Democrats want to recapture their old self-image as the peoples party, their political self-examination will have to go deeper than strategy and farther back than millennials can remember. The partys alienation from the white working class began in the streets of Chicago outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention. There, antiwar protesters and activists for a host of countercultural causes fought the police of Mayor Richard J. Daley while the nation watched on television. As President Bill Clinton later observed in the first volume of his memoirs, Vietnam was only one point of contention in what was really a wider clash between generations, social classes and moral cultures:

The kids and their supporters saw the mayor and the cops as authoritarian, ignorant, violent bigots. The mayor and his largely blue-collar police force saw the kids as foul-mouthed, immoral, unpatriotic, soft, upper-class kids who were too spoiled to appreciate authority, too selfish to appreciate what it takes to hold a society together, too cowardly to serve in Vietnam ... .

Over the next four years, a commission on party structure and delegate selection, with Sen. George McGovern as chairman, introduced a series of reforms ensuring that, culturally as well as politically, the delegates to the 1972 Democratic convention would resemble the young activists who had battled the police in Chicago more than delegates who had been seated inside.

The 1972 Democratic platform formally introduced the partys commitment to identity politics. Rejecting old systems of thought, the platform summoned Democrats to rethink and reorder the institutions of this country so that everyone  women, blacks, Spanish speaking, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, the young and the old  can participate in the decision-making process inherent in the democratic heritage to which we aspire.

There was also this: We must restructure the social, political and economic relationships throughout the entire society in order to ensure the equitable distribution of wealth and power.

The line between political righteousness and party self-righteousness is wavy and easy to cross. The temptation to do so is all the greater when, as now, political party attachments are more divisive than even religion in this country used to be. Democrats have been humbled politically in ways that allow no room for arrogance.

They should leave arrogance to the president-elect and embrace the politics of humility as a way of putting their own house back in order.

Kenneth L. Woodward of Chicago is a former religion editor at Newsweek. He wrote this for the Chicago Tribune.
If Vladimir Putin gave a damn about American public opinion, hed encourage Donald Trump to make at least a symbolic gesture to prove hes not the Russian strongmans vassal. So far, theres no sign either party to their oddly one-sided alliance feels the need.

Trumps every significant appointment and foreign policy pronouncement has been exactly as the Russians would have it. The man has very strong control over his country, Trump has said. Hes been a leader far more than our president has been a leader. So what if Putins leadership skills include having political rivals and troublesome journalists jailed or killed?

For all of his crudity, Trump can be excruciatingly polite.

More telling are Trumps cabinet picks: first, national security adviser Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, a flaky conspiracy-theorist who not only gave credence to the delusional Pizzagate tale, but has also dined publicly with Putin and done paid gigs on the Kremlin-sponsored Russia Today TV network.

Then theres Rex Tillerson, the ExxonMobil CEO who has done billions in business deals with state-dominated Russian oil companies and accepted that countrys highest civilian medal from Putin himself.

The Guardian has revealed that Tillerson was the longtime director of a U.S.-Russian oil firm based in the tax haven of the Bahamas  perfectly legal, but unusual behavior in a man nominated as secretary of state. Imagine the caterwauling if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had done something similar.

Also, did you know that Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign director forced to resign last summer after reportedly taking millions from the Russian puppet government in Ukraine, actually lives in Trump Tower? Did he ever really quit stage-managing the campaign? Its worth wondering if, like the omnipresent Trump children, he remains on the president-elects private payroll.

Add the skeptical noises that Trump has made about NATO, his seeming indifference to Russian military interventions in Ukraine and its role in the ongoing Syrian slaughter, and it becomes hard to imagine anything Putin might want that Trump is unwilling to give him. Its a good bet President Trump will withdraw U.S. support for NATO economic sanctions imposed after Russias seizure of Crimea  a blow to our European allies and a boost to the faltering Russian economy.

What Trump gets out of his bromance with Putin is also perfectly clear. His campaigns response to The Washington Posts revelation that CIA and FBI analysts have concluded that Kremlin operatives meddled in the 2016 presidential election on his behalf was a classic of the Trump method.

And what exactly do Trump voters think theyre getting out of the Russian connection? Most simply dont care. Theyve basically chosen party over country. They dislike Americans who vote Democratic far more than the Russian dictator, a distant figure of seemingly no significance to their lives. Most are too busy gloating and rationalizing Trumps boasts to worry about the Kremlins armlock on the White House.

But how much money does the House of Trump owe to Russian banks? If the president-elect gets his way, well surely never know.

Writing in New York Review, expatriate Russian journalist Masha Gessen analyzes the two mens deep similarities. Lying is the message, she explains. Its not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power over truth itself.

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of The Hunting of the President.
FILE - This July 15, 2016, file photo, U.S. The "Moonhouse" in McLoyd Canyon, near Blanding, Utah, is shown during U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell tour. President Barack Obama designated two national monuments Wednesday, Dec. 28, at sites in Utah and Nevada that have become key flashpoints over use of public land in the U.S. West. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)
Iraqi forces launched the multi-pronged "second phase" of the battle to retake eastern Mosul from militants on Thursday, a top commander said.

Iraqi forces punched into eastern Mosul after the massive operation to recapture the northern city from the Islamic State group was launched on October 17, but progress slowed to a crawl.

"The second phase of liberating the left bank in Mosul was launched, and our forces began advancing toward Al-Quds neighbourhood," Staff Lieutenant General Abdulghani al-Assadi, a senior officer in Iraq's Counter-Terrorism Service, told AFP.

Mosul, now the last Iraqi city in which IS still holds significant territory, is split by the Tigris River, with the east side referred to as the left bank and the west as the right.

"Now our forces clashed with the enemy and there is resistance," he said, adding that forces on the northern and southern fronts were also advancing.

Iraqi forces north and south of Mosul had so far remained outside the city, with the brunt of the fighting inside it being carried out by the CTS.

IS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes have since regained much of the territory they lost to the jihadists.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had pledged that Mosul would be recaptured by year's end -- a goal that is now out of reach, as operations in western Mosul have yet to begin.

Abadi also said earlier this week that three months were needed to eliminate IS in Iraq.

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German anti-terrorism experts believed Berlin truck attack suspect Anis Amri was unlikely to commit an assault, even though he was a known Islamist who had volunteered for a suicide attack, a report said Thursday.

Officials also knew Amri was tightly linked to Germany's radical Islamist network and had looked up instructions online to build pipe bombs, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily reported.

The latest version of their file on Amri, which included information on his eight different identities, was updated on December 14 -- just five days before he rammed a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin.

Duesseldorf police deemed him a Salafist and radical fundamentalist, while Dortmund police had rated him a sympathiser of the Islamic State group.

Amri had been a regular guest at a religious school in a Dortmund apartment run by a notorious radical known as Boban S. that was believed to be a recruitment ground for jihadists.

Nevertheless, on an eight-point scale assessing an individual's potential danger, with "one" the highest threat, counter-terrorism experts rated him a "five" -- meaning they considered an attack possible but unlikely.

Shortly after the Christmas market rampage, authorities admitted that counter-terrorism services had been watching Amri, suspecting he may have been plotting an attack.

But surveillance was dropped in September, as police thought he was primarily as a small-time drug dealer.

Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered a sweeping review of the security apparatus after the attack, so that any necessary reforms could be agreed and implemented quickly.

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One of Turkey's most prominent contemporary novelists appeared in court for the first time on Thursday on charges of terror propaganda, in case that has caused an international outcry over freedom of expression in the country.

Novelist Asli Erdogan has been held in jail for 132 days since her detention over her links to a pro-Kurdish newspaper the authorities regard as a mouthpiece for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Also on trial is Necmiye Alpay, an internationally prominent linguist who has also made widely praised translations of Western novels into Turkish. She has been held behind bars for 120 days.

They were taken into custody in August as part of a probe into the now shut-down pro-Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Gundem.

Including Erdogan, 49, and Alpay, 70, a total of nine suspects linked to Ozgur Gundem have been charged in the case.

Erdogan is no relation to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- the name is common in Turkey. There had been reports in November the pair were being released but these were swiftly denied.

She has published several well-received novels including "The City in Crimson Cloak", which was also translated into English.

"They are being prosecuted for writings and thoughts that are in no way reprehensible according to Turkish law," said Baris Yarkadas, Istanbul MP for the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP).

Dozens of people gathered outside the courthouse ahead of the hearing to support the defendants.

"We are here not just to show solidarity with the accused but also to defend democracy," said Murat, 48.

"It's now or never, otherwise it's too late and dictatorship is there."

Activists worry about a drastically worsening climate for journalists in Turkey, in particular since the state of emergency imposed in the wake of the July 15 coup.

According to the P24 Platform for Independent Journalism, 118 journalists have been arrested during the state of emergency, 80 of them within the coup probe.

Turkish authorities on Thursday detained prize-winning journalist Ahmet Sik over a succession of tweets and articles for an opposition daily.

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In January, the National Academy of Medicine is launching a new committee to address the high rates of depression and suicide among physicians and other health care workers in the United States. They plan to bring together medical professionals, educators and hospital administrators, and I hope they will also bring to the table professionals who have experienced burnout, and who may have attempted suicide due to burnout. I say this because I am well aware of their pain, and I believe they can best shed light on helping to find the best solutions.

I have the important job at my medical institution of working with others to create a campus culture where the aim is to prevent, recognize and treat problems like burnout and depression before it is too late. Those of us who are physicians, or who work with faculty and students, know that the prevalent culture in medicine today needs to change from the traditional get the job done, dont show emotion, dont ask for help to one where physicians and doctors-in-training can speak openly and seek help when needed without fear of having their professional careers jeopardized. Physicians also must come to appreciate that just like the patients whose suffering they are called upon to relieve, that they too are only human.

Pressures have never been greater in the medical profession and in the high-stakes arena of medical research. And with the looming possibility that the Affordable Care Act may be repealed or radically changed, bringing in yet more change and challenge for hospitals and health care professionals, it will only get worse.

In the past few months, a Mount Sinai College of Medicine medical student close to the end of her training and no doubt in despair purposefully jumped to her death from a building on campus. I believe it more likely than not that burnout, exhaustion, and frustration played a role in this tragic event. She joined an all too long list of other medical students, residents, and physicians who took their own lives. Her tragic death was only the latest public example in a pattern that is unfortunately all too common today in all academic medical institutions throughout our country and well known to those of us working in academic medicine.

Sadly, because stoicism and silence are the norm when it comes to feelings of despair among the medical community  the so-called silent crisis of physician burnout  this problem often goes undiagnosed by faculty, hospital professionals and medical students alike.

Tragically, in the United States, physicians are much more likely to commit suicide than the general public according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Male doctors have suicide rates 70 percent higher than other men; female physicians suicide at a shocking 250 to 400 percent higher rate than other women. Thats 300 to 400 MDs each year that take their own lives, over twice the size of an average entire medical school class. Medical students have rates of depression, a major risk for suicide, 15 to 30 percent higher than the general population. A 2016 article in Medical Education reported a global prevalence of depression in medical students of 28 percent with the overall mean frequency of suicidal ideation being almost 6 percent in medical students. While often called an epidemic, steps to address this dreadful reality seem to be too little too late.

Burnout is the loss of enthusiasm for work, feelings of cynicism, and a low sense of personal accomplishment. It is the very snuffing out of the flame that burned as idealism in those called to medicine and science discovery in the first place. There are multiple costs due to burnout in addition to the personal including its affect on patient safety, patient and staff satisfaction, overall productivity, and increased acts of physician incivility.

We can wait for the National Academy of Medicine report recommendations, but health care institutions and centers for medical education and research need to take a very close look at a root cause of this problem now: the very culture of medical practice and medical education. Identifying and addressing burnout on our medical campuses as soon as possible is one important prevention intervention for suicide. This applies to everyone, but certainly to physicians  half of whom reveal they feel the symptoms of burnout. We need to make it OK to talk about stress, anxiety, and depression  and even about having thoughts of suicide. Doctors and all health professionals need to talk about this for ourselves so we can be there for the patients who may be suffering from the same thoughts and feelings. This topic should be a discussion in departmental grand rounds and journal clubs. It should be raised often with faculty and students. We need to begin to openly discuss how our burnout is affecting us  and our families, institutions, and patients. We need to show concern for our colleagues whom we know or suspect of being burned out and/or depressed. Let us provide the education and support that encourages and permits our colleagues to ask for help. In New York State, the Committee for Physician Health can provide guidance, support, and assistance in arranging treatment without penalty to anyones career.

And if we are in positions of leadership and able to implement programs on our campuses to provide education and support for our students and colleagues, let us do so now and show the leadership necessary to beat this epidemic as we have previous epidemics including smallpox, cholera, polio, tuberculosis, and AIDS.

We cannot afford to lose another 300 to 400 of our colleagues this year. Let our collective efforts change our relationship with burnout and suicide from one of being its victim to its vanquisher.

Joseph P. Merlino is a psychiatrist and fellow ambassador, the New York Academy of Medicine.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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Dear Husband, MD

I see you. I hear you cough all night, knowing your flu vaccine has failed and you have it. I hear you wheeze with your post-flu pneumonia. I feel you shiver in the bed beside me while you sleep for 5 hours before you get back up and start getting ready for the next shift.

I put quotations around shift because we both know you will not work 8 admin or 12 clinical, but instead you will do your own personal gauntlet of a 16+ hour combo before heading home for a typical late evening and early morning of multiple texts and phone calls while you attempt to shove a cold supper down or dry off from a quick shower. Because they never leave you alone. Even on vacation, they still call.

I see you give up your dreams and desires to keep the ever growing census list seen, to continue to manipulate the schedule thru physician shortages, random locums, NP and PA providers who are all tired of picking up extra shifts to cover the empty spots. I see the management company that you were sold to like meat, keep asking for more and more with less and less, the hospital administrators asking what your plan is, as if you have any say.

I see you losing your soul. Your joy and wit replaced by bitterness and sarcasm. You race against the clock. You rage against quality and quantity and charts and graphs and core measures and planning meetings and follow-up meetings and why-cant-you-just-do-it-all meetings.

I see you come home exhausted, attempt to do dishes or a load of laundry because, honestly, Im losing hope too. I fear we will never get to finish this project, build onto the house, see our children happy and content in a stress-free home. Ive lost hope that you will move away from this path that destroys you. There are no more interviews, no more recruiters calling, you have sent them all away to live in your comfortable misery because everywhere is the same and that this is what health care has become. And I know that you are right.

You never meant for this to happen. It just did. You wanted to help people, treat them, see them walk out of the hospital and go home to their families. Or, ease their transition into the next adventure, because you know we are all mortal. Yet here you are. Documentation and EHRs, and intake registry and profit margins and Facebook posts from former patients trashing your hospital and your teams care because they have no idea how hard a tick-born/auto-immune/mental illness is to diagnose and they just want to feel better, while you stand before them with pneumonia, taking care of them.

They dont see you researching and reading late into the night, worrying yourself and not sleeping, pouring over medical records of 20 other patients and keeping up with them all just to start over with 20 different ones the next day. They dont see you code the elderly patient over and over that just needs to die with peace and dignity like any mortal soul should, and they dont see you deal daily with the ones that abuse their bodies yet still demand miracles from you. They didnt see you dedicate 23 years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars to educating yourself to where you are.

I see you. And I love you.

Charity Williams is a physicians wife.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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Dear patients,

One year ago, I wrote to you about my concerns for the future of my practice in light of upcoming changes to the Medicare system. I explained my anxiety about the Medicare Access and CHIPS Reauthorization Act (MACRA), a change in fee structure from fee-for-service (I treat you in the office, submit the bill to Medicare, and they pay the bill), to value-based payment (I treat you in the office, submit the bill to Medicare, and they decide if my care provided adequate value to warrant payment).

This payment change guarantees to financially penalize 50 percent of Medicare providers, mostly solo and small practice doctors, just by nature of design. It works like this: Medicare allots a set pool of money to pay doctors. Payment occurs on a scale, with the best doctors (those who provide the best value, per Medicare) getting paid more, while the remainder are penalized with less money. Value is determined by physician reporting of various data points, like diabetes control and cholesterol medicine use. Doctors must either do this extra reporting during their free time, or hire additional staff to act as data entry clerks, just to avoid a financial penalty.

In addition to data reporting, physicians are graded by the dauntingly vague concept of resource utilization. This means that doctors will become accountable for patient outcomes, with financial penalties if their patients end up in the emergency room or readmitted to the hospital. Somehow, doctors are now responsible for ensuring that patients make the right choices, like smoking cessation and taking their medications, all the while attempting to maintain the highest patient satisfaction scores, since patient experience also contributes to the payment/penalty calculation.

This additional reporting and superhuman level of expectation demanded by MACRA just adds to the growing burden of administrative responsibilities faced by physicians. The increase in bureaucracy , often coming from the demands of insurance companies and Medicare, is a major cause of physician burnout, causing many doctors to contemplate leaving the practice of medicine entirely.

And I get this urge to leave clinical medicine. As I spent hours reviewing Medicares 2400-page final ruling on MACRA, set to begin just a few short months from the release of the report, I felt a sense of hopelessness and despair. How could I ever comply with the ever-growing list of requirements demanded of me, on top of the time that I needed to spend with my patients?

And so I made a difficult decision. I have decided to opt-out of Medicare, acknowledging that I can no longer play a game that is rigged against me; one that I can never win because of constantly changing rules, and one where the stakes include fines and even potential jail time.

And in leaving the current broken system, I will take my chances in a brave new world that hopes to return to the foundation of medicine: the physician-patient relationship.

I am returning to a time before insurance companies and Medicare, when doctors wrote their notes for themselves rather than for bean-counters. And while I will be using an electronic record rather than a 5 x 8-inch index card as many old-school physicians once did, my notes will be succinct and differential diagnosis-based, not cluttered by meaningless information entered merely to earn a payment bonus or avoid a penalty.

I am getting back to a time when medical decisions were made between the patient and the doctor, rather than by third-party mandates. And in eliminating those third-party payers, I am recreating a system that allows doctors the time they need, face-to-face with patients, to make those important health decisions. I will no longer require hours of time on needless paperwork, or have to pay an entire team of staff to handle the minutiae while I maintain a breakneck 7-minute-per-patient visit schedule, just so I can pay my overhead.

As of January 1, 2017, I am no longer a part of the conventional Medicare system. And as hard as this transition may be, its a no-brainer when compared with the option of staying in a system that has led to catastrophic levels of burn out, depression, and physician suicide. I am taking back control. I am direct care.

Rebekah Bernard is a family physician and the author of How to Be a Rock Star Doctor: The Complete Guide to Taking Back Control of Your Life and Your Profession. She can be reached at her self-titled site, Rebekah Bernard, MD.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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Recently, Dr. Michelle Herren, a professor of pediatric anesthesiology at the University of Colorado and Denver Health Hospital, resigned after posting racist comments on her Facebook page. In particular, she wrote that Michelle Obama speaks ebonics and stated that our first lady has a monkey face. Dr. Herren ended her post by affirming that she is not racist but was just calling it like it is. This post remained on Facebook for over four days until a patient reported the remarks to the Denver Health board of directors.

Having trained in emergency medicine at Denver Health and the University of Colorado, where I also served as a chief resident, I was obviously shocked by these comments. I couldnt help but wonder about all the children that Dr. Herren treated over the last nine years at Denver Health, a county hospital serving a large minority population. Did these children always receive adequate anesthesia? Did Dr. Herrens racial bias compromise patient care?

A recent study in JAMA Pediatrics showed that black children are less likely than white children to receive pain medication in the emergency department when presenting with a diagnosis of appendicitis. This study is not unique. A recent study from the University of Virginia demonstrated that nearly 14 percent of sampled medical students endorsed beliefs that black people feel less pain than white people. Students citing this belief were also less likely to prescribe pain medication to black patients.

While these articles are recent, these disparities in medical care are hardly new. Now as we must ask when will we, as health care providers, demand that the medical community acknowledges the impact of bias, both implicit and overt, on the health care outcomes of our patients and our children. As health care providers, we have all completed mandatory modules on the importance of diversity and cultural competency, and we all know that these perfunctory measures are inadequate. Just checking these boxes does a disservice to our patients and our community. We must demand that medical institutions treat the values of diversity and inclusion as a driver of medical excellence.

How this is executed remains a fertile frontier in medicine and our study of health care outcomes. Possible solutions include additional research on how we can make physicians aware of the implicit biases that we all unknowingly believe. Some emergency rooms have incorporated questions about discrimination on the part of the provider into patient satisfaction surveys. This data is then made available to the provider and department chair. Additionally, further work should propose and evaluate interventions that can be implemented on a systematic level, such as pain management protocols for all patients in the Emergency Room, that can circumvent the bias of individual providers.

The exact path remains unknown. But without change, the inherent bias in our system will only become stronger. We must be vigilant and hold both our medical institutions and ourselves accountable for the inherent bias that remains in our medical system.

Dowin Boatright is a fellow, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program and a clinical instructor, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
The largest solar farm ever in Kilkenny is being planned for Ballytobin outside of Callan town.

It comes at a time when the country's main farming organisation, the IFA has warned farmers to be wary of signing contracts with solar companies.

The 25 acre installation is being promoted by the Camphill Community who already have a number of cool environmental projects up and running, including the region's first ever biodigester and an innovative reed water filtration system.

A planning application for the project which will generate 5MW of power for export to the national grid has been submitted to Kilkenny County Council.

They also want to construct the infrastructure to support the farm, including an on-site substation with grid systems services and four inverters and transformers. The proposed development will include over 400 metres of new site tracks, cable ducting, fencing and security camera poles site entrance and ancillary works. The applications has been accompanied by a Natural Impact Statement (NIS).

An appropriate period of 10 years is sought, with an operational life of up to 30 years after the date of commission. IFA Renewables Project Team Chairman, Inistioge man, James Murphy has restated his call on landowners approached by solar development companies to think long and hard before advancing negotiations or signing further contracts.

The recent statement by Energy Minister Denis Naughten that his Department is unlikely to provide any significant support for solar energy in the short term, raises significant concerns for the many farmers who have committed to solar energy contracts.

Of even greater concern is the fact landowners continue to be approached to sign contracts, with Government now indicating that it may be the middle of 2017 before there is any clarity on the level of tariff or the number of megawatts that will be supported by this tariff.

He expressed disappointment at the failure of Minister Naughten to set out any plan on the role of communities in future renewable projects. He said farmers should be consulted and offered an opportunity to become stakeholders in the development of renewable projects.

Government has a key role to play, whether through the tariff support mechanisms or planning policy, he added.

James Murphy concluded by re-emphasising the need for farmers to get good independent legal advice before signing any contract.
An angling development project in Kilkenny has been awarded funding to improve angling access in the area.

The Kilkenny City & County Anglers submitted a successful project application which will improve access to the River Nore for the local community, angling club members and visitors.

The project, which will receive support to the value of 2,080, will see entrance stiles provided at the site. It will also involve the provision fishing stands, seating and stiles along the river bank plus the clearance and upgrading of pathways to and along the river.

Suzanne Campion, Head of Business Development at Inland Fisheries Ireland said: The Capital Works Fund has been overwhelmed by strong project applications and following a considered review process, we are delighted to announce the 50 projects which have secured support which includes this project in Kilkenny. The demand for improvements in angling access and development is evident. Rural communities across Ireland are engaged with angling and recognise the value of the fisheries resource to their local area.

Inland Fisheries Ireland has worked closely with angling clubs, individuals, community groups and chambers of commerce to inform them about the fund and the overall National Strategy for Angling Development.

We hope to empower these stakeholders to improve access to angling in their areas and as a result deliver long term recreational and economic benefit to their communities.

The projects is one of 50 angling development projects across the country which will receive support from Inland Fisheries Ireland to the value of 500,000 in total as part of its Capital Works Fund.
HANOI, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official market and indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi at 0100 GMT.

Dec 29 Dec 28 USD/VND mid-point 22,162 22,156

USD/VND interbank 22,770/22,772 22,768/22,770 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 35.67/36.44 35.67/36.44

NOTES: As of Jan. 4, 2016 the State Bank of Vietnam has begun setting the mid-point rate on daily basis, allowing dollar/dong transactions to move in a band of +/- 3 percent around the mid point. The dong's exchange rate against other currencies is not restricted by a band. Interbank quotes are indicative bid/ask prices.

One tael is equivalent to 37.5 grams or 1.21 troy ounces. SJC gold prices are quoted by state-owned Saigon Jewelry Co, the gold manufacturer.

Interbank offered rates are indicative, quoted from market sources.

For Vietnam market overview click on: Vietnam's bonds market auctions: Bonds auction results: (Compiled by Hanoi Newsroom)
HANOI, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official and unofficial markets, indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi and interbank offered rates at 0419 GMT.

Dec 29 Dec 28 USD/VND mid-point 22,162 22,156 USD/VND interbank 22,770/22,780 22,768/22,770 USD/VND unofficial 23,020/23,070 23,080/23,120 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 35.63/36.45 35.67/36.44

Interbank offered rates Overnight 2.5-4.5 2.8-4.5

1 week 3.8-5.0 4.0-4.7

1 month 5.0-5.5 4.9-5.4

3 months 5.1-5.5 5.1-5.5

NOTES: As of Jan. 4, 2016 the State Bank of Vietnam has begun setting the mid-point rate on daily basis, allowing dollar/dong transactions to move in a band of +/- 3 percent around the mid point. The dong's exchange rate against other currencies is not restricted by a band. Interbank offered rates are the latest indicative bid/ask prices, quoted from market sources.

One tael is equivalent to 37.5 grams or 1.21 troy ounces. SJC gold prices are quoted by state-owned Saigon Jewelry Co.

For more interbank rate fixings released at 0400 GMT, click on .

For Vietnam market overview click on: Vietnam's bonds market auctions: Bonds auction results: (Compiled by Hanoi Newsroom)
Brazil economy sheds 116,747 jobs in November - official



BRASILIA, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Brazil shed a net 116,747 payroll jobs in November, the Labor Ministry said on Thursday, performing far worse than expected as the economy reels from a second year of deep recession. Job cuts rose from October, when Brazilian companies shed 75,000 payroll jobs, and were well above market expectations for a drop of 62,000 jobs. Brazil's economy is expected to shrink more than 3 percent for a second straight year in 2016, with more than 12 million workers officially unemployed.

(Reporting by Alonso Soto; Editing by Daniel Flynn)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

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* STOXX 600 index down 0.3 pct

* Italian lenders, Credit Suisse down

* Gold miners in demand

(ADVISORY- Follow European and UK stock markets in real time on the Reuters Live Markets blog on Eikon - see cpurl://apps.cp./cms/?pageId=livemarkets)

By Kit Rees

LONDON, Dec 29 (Reuters) - European shares opened slightly lower on Thursday as miners fell and Italian banks and Credit Suisse led banking shares lower.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index was down 0.3 percent. Volumes were subdued during the last few days of the year.

Banking stocks were among the top fallers, led lower by Italian merger partners Banco Popolare and Banca Popolare di Milano , which both fell more than 2 percent.

Shares in fellow Italian lender Monte dei Paschi were suspended once again, and Italy's economy minister said the actual amount for the government's recapitalisation of the bank would depend on the lender's new industrial plan, in an interview to Italy's daily Il Sole 24 Ore. "The banks have really been the ultimate pain trade for professional fund managers in the second half of the year, and it's all been very much part of this switch from expensive defensives and quality growth to cyclicals," Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said.

"Because they're very difficult companies to understand and you had the Deutsche Bank flap in the autumn, you've got the ongoing Italian situation, lots of fund managers are still fighting shy of them, but they did brilliantly in the second half of the year."

Credit Suisse was down 2.1 percent after a media report saying the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the sale of $850 million in bonds issued by Mozambique by Credit Suisse, Russia's VTB Group and BNP Paribas , which was down 1 percent. While the broader European basic resources index declined, precious metals miners Polymetal International , Randgold Resources and Fresnillo were the top gainers on the STOXX 600, up between 1.9 percent and 2.6 percent as the price of gold found support from a declining U.S. dollar. The STOXX 600 index is set to post a loss of 1.4 percent for 2016, while France's CAC , Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE 100 indexes are all on course to end the year with a gain.

(Reporting by Kit Rees; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Mark Potter)
OceanaGold Corp. (TSX, ASX, NZX: OGC) announces the start of milling at the Haile Gold Mine in South Carolina. The company has said it expects to produce 150,000 to 170,000 ounces of gold at Haile in 2017 at all-in sustaining costs between $500 and $550 per ounce. "This milestone represents a special moment in the history of the Haile Gold Mine as this historic goldfield is re-established with a world-class modern mining operation, says Mick Wilkes, president and chief executive officer. From the start of the year, we established a firm timeline of key milestones that we have achieved throughout the year, culminating in the start of milling ore at year-end as planned." The company achieved this benchmark 15 months after taking ownership of Haile, Wilkes points out. OceanaGold currently has approximately 675,000 tonnes of ore stockpiled on surface, including 275,000 tonnes grading 2.3 grams per tonne of sulphide ore, 245,000 tonnes grading 0.6 g/t of oxide ore and 155,000 tonnes grading 1.1 g/t of transitional material. The company says it will continue to advance a Haile expansion study, with results expected in the middle of 2017.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

Centerra: Kumtor Mine Receives 2017 Mine Plan Approvals

Centerra Gold Inc. (TSX: CG) reports that its Kumtor operation in the Kyrgyz Republic has received the necessary permits and approvals for its 2017 mine plan. These are valid for the full year, the company says. The permits are for industrial safety, subsoil, environmental, maximum allowable emissions and waste disposal. With these permits, Kumtor has the necessary permits and approvals in place for mining operations throughout 2017, Centerra says. Kumtor routinely discharges water from its tailings facility starting in the spring and expects to apply for and receive, in the ordinary course, the required discharge permit prior to that time.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com
Yields fall after strong 7-year note auction



Dec 29 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury debt yields fell across the curve after a well-bid 7-year note auction. The high yield on the 7-year note sale was more than 2 basis points below its 1 p.m. when-issued level, according to Reuters data. Benchmark U.S. 10-year notes were last up 13/32 in price to yield 2.46 percent, their lowest level since Dec. 14.

(Reporting by Dion Rabouin; Editing by Chris Reese)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in precious metal products, commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

kitco news
Spiked writes:

It is a testament to their cushioned, detached lives that so many in the political and media classes have described 2016 as the worst year ever. Theyve moaned about 2016. Memed about it. Written books about it. Dark Age, populism, fascism, END TIMES  the keywords of the 2016 haters.

I guess none of these people lost their homes in 2008, eh? Or their jobs in the fallout from that crash. Or their feeling of political power over the past three decades of rising technocracy and shrinking democracy. Never mind their historical illiteracy. What does 2016 have on 1347 or 1914 in terms of awfulness? Nothing, of course. If you think 2016 was an unspeakably bad year, then all that tells us is youve led a cloistered, lovely life, blind to the economic deprivations and sense of political exclusion experienced by others these past years. Bully for you.
A transition towards peace in Syria that involves President Bashar al-Assad is "impossible" as the country's opposition will not accept him, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday.

Cavusoglu also confirmed Turkey had prepared an agreement towards a ceasefire.

Turkish state media earlier said Turkey and Russia had agreed on a proposal toward a general ceasefire in Syria.

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Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Cloudy skies this evening followed by thunderstorms late. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. Low 42F. SW winds shifting to NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening followed by thunderstorms late. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. Low 42F. SW winds shifting to NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Syrian rebel officials said on Thursday that a ceasefire deal agreed with the government included Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as the al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front, although the army said that was not the case.

The Syrian army has announced a nationwide halt to military operations to begin at midnight on Thursday, excluding Islamic State (IS) militants as well as the former Nusra Front and all groups linked to them.

But several rebel officials told Reuters the deal included the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group.

A spokesman for the Jaish al-Nasr rebel faction present at the ceasefire talks told Reuters that only IS was excluded. The deal is to be monitored by Russia and Turkey and includes establishing humanitarian corridors, he said.

Zakaria Malahifji, head of the political office of rebel group Fastaqim, also said the truce only excludes areas under the control of IS.

The Jaish al-Nasr spokesman said the other side had wanted to exclude the ex-Nusra Front, and to exclude the besieged Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta from the agreement. But he said the rebel groups at the meeting refused.

Fastaqim's Malahifji said: "Rebel groups said it is not about covering for (the ex-Nusra Front), but because we can't separate them out, because the territory is overlapping."

Malahifji, who was not present at the talks, said rebels had agreed to three main points: one about the truce, one about how it would be monitored by Russia and Turkey and one about a political process to begin after one month of ceasefire.

Several other rebel officials also said if the ceasefire holds for a month, political negotiations will begin.

Mamoun al-Haj-Mousa, a member of the rebel Free Syrian Army's political council and spokesman for the Suqur al-Sham rebel group, told al-Arabiya al-Hadath television channel that rebels had asked that no group be excluded.

"We saw recently how Aleppo was annihilated because of 200 fighters from Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. This is a fundamental condition for us that no group is excluded be it Fatah al-Sham or not," he said.

The ceasefire deal was first announced by Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, after Moscow, Iran and Turkey said they were ready to broker a peace deal in the nearly six-year-old Syrian war.

Russia's defence ministry said the insurgent groups which signed the agreement were: Failaq al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, Suqor al-Sham, Jaish al-Muhajidin, Jaish Idlib and al-Jabha al-Shamia.

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An Istanbul court on Thursday ordered the release of novelist Asli Erdogan in her trial on terror propaganda charges after over four months behind bars, reports said.

The court ordered the release under judicial supervision of Erdogan as well as the linguist Necmiye Alpay, the state-run Anadolu news agency said. They remain on trial over their involvement in a pro-Kurdish newspaper, with the next hearing scheduled for January.

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By Jhoo Dong-chan





Chung Mong-koo

Hyundai Motor Group chief

Hyundai Motor has donated 25 billion won to help the needy for the holiday season, living up to its social responsibility.

According to the nation's largest carmaker, Thursday, its high-ranking officials, including Hyundai Motor President Chung Jin-haeng, participated in a ceremony held at the Community Chest of Korea headquarters in Jung-gu, central Seoul, where they donated 25 billion won as a part of the company's corporate social responsibility (CSR) drive.

Including this year's donation, Hyundai Motor has donated a total of 209 billion won in total over the last 14 years since 2003.

"Hyundai Motor will do its best even in the most difficult time to fulfill its social duty," a Hyundai Motor official said. "Utilizing its specialties, Hyundai Motor and its affiliates will also provide social opportunities for those in need."

This year's donation is expected to help raise awareness of traffic safety and support transportation for the disabled, as well as providing cultural opportunities for young students from low-income families.

Hyundai Motor Group said it seeks to greatly boost its combined sales in China next year with various new models including SUVs, according to sources, Thursday.

The sources said the automotive group recently set its target for China in 2017 at 1.95 million vehicle sales.

The figure represents an almost 8 percent rise from its estimated sales this year. Hyundai Motor Group, the world's fifth-largest automotive group in terms of sales, owns both Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Motors.

When contacted, the Seoul-based carmaker said it has yet to finalize its sales target for the world's most populous country.
"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"







Jyn (Felicity Jones) is part of the Rebel Alliance who tries to combat the Empire, an evil superpower. Jyn and her friends set off on a plan to steal the Empire's ultimate weapon in order to destroy it. Directed by Gareth Edwards.

"Master"







Mr. Jin (Lee Byung-hun) is a notorious swindler who has committed large-scale fraud. In order to catch him, detective Kim Jae-myeong (Gang Dong-won) threatens Jin's henchman, Park Jang-gun (Kim Woo-bin). Directed by Cho Ui-seok.

"Sing"







Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) holds a singing competition in order to revive his old music theater. All kinds of animals from all over the country come to participate in the competition. Directed by Garth Jennings.

"Pandora"







A strong earthquake hits South Korea, followed by a nuclear power plant explosion. Jae-hyeok (Kim Nam-gil) and his fellow workers at the power plant desperately try to prevent a radiation leak. Directed by Park Jung-woo.

"La La Land"







Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is a jazz pianist, and Mia (Emma Stone) is an aspiring actress, both of whom are living in Los Angeles. They fall in love, and inspire each other to achieve their dreams. Directed by Damien Chazelle.
By Choi Ha-young





Joo Seung-yong

Joo Seung-yong, a four-term lawmaker, was elected as the new floor leader of the People's Party, Thursday, replacing Rep. Park Jie-won.



As Joo's running mate, Cho Bae-sook, also a four-term lawmaker, became the party's chief policymaker.



Both Joo and Cho represent constituencies is in the Jeolla region.



In his acceptance speech, Joo said the party faces grave challenges amid dwindling support and the changing political landscape following the creation of a new conservative party separate from the Saenuri Party.



"The People's Party is on the verge of becoming the fourth largest party," Joo said. "Particularly, it is urgent to restore our approval rate in the Jeolla region."



The People's Party has 38 seats in the 300-member National Assembly, while the tentatively named New Conservative Party for Reform, has 30 seats. However, more Saenuri Party lawmakers are expected to join the party ahead of the presidential election.



Joo said the party is losing support even in its home turf  the Jella region.



"For the presidential race, we have to create a leadership of harmony and communication that can bring together all forces except pro-Park (Geun-hye) and pro-Moon (Jae-in) groups," he said.
By Lee Myung-min



A government panel has rejected a proposal to construct a cable car on Mount Seorak in Gangwon Province, scrapping the controversial project.



A 10-member cultural heritage management committee under the Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA) said Wednesday that it unanimously voted against the plan after determining that it would cause irreparable environmental damage for only short-term economic gains.



Mount Seorak is a natural heritage site, and any activity that could interfere with heritage protection requires prior approval from the committee.



It was the third attempt by the Yangyang County government, the municipality of the scenic mountain, to win project approval, following previous failures in 2012 and 2013 for the same project. County officials and supporters of the project say they will appeal to the CHA by revising the plan, although the committee's stance is unlikely to change.



"Cable car construction is impossible without using explosives to destroy large rocks, as well as constant noise and vibration caused by helicopters. They will undoubtedly cause enormous stress to the animals living there," the committee said.



"The mountain is a natural habitat for many valuable species including mountain goats, which are designated as an endangered species. The ecosystem in general is highly likely to suffer irreversible damage."



The country has pushed to erect a 3.5-kilometer cable car route using six pillars at a cost of 46 billion won ($39 million) by next year, saying the project would be the most effective measure to revitalize the stagnant economy there.



Environmental groups welcomed the committee's decision, saying it enables future generations to appreciate the beauty of nature.



"The 1,708-meter Seorak is the third-highest mountain in the country. It was designated as a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 1982. We should know that nature is to be preserved, not exploited for human greed," a Green Korea official said.



"People can live without using a cable car to reach the top of a mountain, but the animals cannot. They are subject to extinction."



The controversial construction plan had drawn fierce opposition from both environmentalists and opposition party members due to its expected negative impact on the nation's most scenic and best-preserved natural park.



After the county's two failed attempts, the Ministry of Environment unexpectedly approved its third attempt in August 2015 after President Park Geun-hye called for "prompt construction of a cable car ahead of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics."



Two months after the approval, however, an allegation emerged that two Yangyang officials added false information to a Korea Environment Institute report before submitting it to the ministry.



In the falsified information, the officials allegedly exaggerated the positive aspects and downplayed negative fallout of the construction. The two were indicted for forging documents.




By Jun Ji-hye



Suspicions are growing that President Park Geun-hye's arrested confidant Choi Soon-sil also meddled in military personnel appointments.



Citing sources, the Segye Ilbo reported that Choi might have exerted her influence in appointments to key posts in the Army, including the commander of the Defense Security Command (DSC), Lt. Gen. Cho Hyun-cheon, who was appointed in October 2014.



Since then  until earlier this year  Choi, along with President Park's former civil affairs secretary Woo Byung-woo and former personal secretary Ahn Bong-geun, has helped Cho get his close colleagues appointed to important positions such as the commander of the Special Warfare Command.



The Segye Ilbo said a person well-informed on internal matters in the military created a report about Choi's influence peddling and delivered it to lawmakers.



When the high-profile scandal broke out in late October centering on allegations that Choi exercised huge influence in state affairs and extorted millions of dollars from big businesses, rumors were also raised that Choi might have intervened in military personnel appointments. At the time, observers cited the "unexpected" replacement of the DSC commander in 2014, in which Lt. Gen. Lee Jae-soo was replaced by Lt. Gen. Cho only a year after his appointment. Observers said Choi might have pulled some strings behind the President, considering that Lee was close to Park's brother, Ji-man, who was known to have engaged in a power struggle with Choi.



But this was the first time that specific names and positions were revealed.



DSC commander Cho and his colleagues belonged to a military fraternity called "Alza." The group was composed of those who entered the Korea Military Academy from 1974 to 1983, but was supposed to have been disbanded in 1992 under the Roh Tae-woo administration after its existence was made public.



According to the report, a former spy agency officer, indentified only by his surname, Choo, who was also a member of the group, approached Choi using his sister's relationship with her. He purportedly recommended Cho as DSC commander, the report said, adding that after this recommendation, former presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon ordered the civil affairs staff at the presidential office to stop verifying Cho's background.



The report claimed that after Cho was appointed as DSC commander, he delivered a list of candidates for key posts to Choo, who then delivered this to Woo and Ahn, who are suspected of being involved in the scandal.



People on the list were selected for key posts, the report continued, citing examples that Gen. Leem Ho-young was named deputy commander of the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC) in September this year, and Lt. Gen. Jo Jong-seol was assigned to take command of the Special Warfare Command the following month.



The Ministry of National Defense strongly denied the suspicion, saying that the group was disbanded a long time ago and that an unqualified civilian's intervention in military personnel appointments was an absolute impossibility.



Defense Minister Han Min-koo said Thursday, "I can say with confidence that military personnel appointments have been conducted very fairly. There was no external influence."



Another military official said on condition of anonymity that the report might have been created by a person with a grudge due to his failure to be promoted.




Italian police have searched three houses in and around Rome, where the man suspected of killing 12 people last week at a Christmas market in Berlin may have spent time, a judicial source said on Thursday.

Anis Amri, a Tunisian, first arrived in Europe by boat to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2011, and was shot dead by police in Milan four days after the Dec. 19 attack in Berlin.

The searches focused in the capital and nearby Acilia, where he was thought to have stayed after leaving a detention centre in Sicily in 2015, the source said. Police are investigating whether he was seeking to stay in Italy or trying to reach another country.

On Thursday, during an end-year news conference, Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Amri was probably radicalised after arriving in Europe in 2011, but added that the government had no evidence Amri had "particular networks" in Italy.

"Five years ago he was not a jihadist ... In desperation, in isolation, in alienation, he found the conviction to follow the path of radicalisation," Italy's anti-terrorism chief Franco Roberti was also quoted as saying in an interview with la Repubblica newspaper on Thursday.

Roberti said lone-wolf attackers like Amri needed the help of small-scale criminal networks, such as those in Italy and Spain, for logistical support including acquiring false documents.

"From this point of view, Italy and Spain are the cradles," Roberti said.

Amri's undetected passage to Italy, via France, from Germany after the attack, has prompted eurosceptic parties to call for the reintroduction of border controls that were removed by the continent's open-border Schengen pact.

Italy tried to deport him to Tunisia after he completed a four-year jail term for attempting to set fire to a building, but Tunisian authorities refused to take him, so he was released from the centre.

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Mo Chul-min, the South Korean Ambassador to France, enters the independent counsel team's office in southern Seoul for questioning, Thursday. Mo is suspected of being involved in the government's blacklisting of artists critical of it while he served as the presidential education and cultural affairs secretary. / Korea Times photo by Seo Jae-hoon



By Kim Bo-eun





Culture Minister Cho Yoon-sun answers reporters' questions at Seoul Station, Thursday, after a ceremony promoting the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Cho, a former presidential secretary for political affairs, is suspected of being involved in Cheong Wa Dae's creation of a blacklist of cultural figures, an alleged attempt by the Park Geun-hye administration to restrict the work of progressive artists. / Yonhap

The Park Geun-hye administration's alleged attempt to hamper the activities of artists critical of the government is stirring a major controversy.

Artists are denouncing the government for taking anachronistic measures to suppress freedom of expression, which would have been more likely decades ago under South Korea's military dictatorships.

"The government's effort to restrict artists is something that took place several decades ago, but this has been replayed in the 21st century," poet Ko Un, 83, told The Korea Times. "The foolish acts of the current administration have resulted in a huge tragedy for the country."

A group of artists held a press conference in front of the Constitutional Court in Seoul, Thursday, denouncing the Park administration and demanding officials involved in compiling the blacklist resign. They also called for an investigation into the incident.

President Park has pledged to boost the culture industry. However, the authoritarian, uncommunicative leader has done the opposite over the past four years  she allegedly sought to control artists and cultural figures using the blacklist.

The blacklist generated further dispute after former Culture Minister Yoo Jin-ryong said in an interview with a local news outlet that he saw it first in June 2014, before his term ended.

Yoo claimed the list was drawn up by Cheong Wa Dae between 2014 and 2015 and handed over to the ministry.

The independent counsel team investigating the scandal surrounding President Park and her confidant Choi believes that former presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon and then-presidential secretary for political affairs Cho Yoon-sun, who is now culture minister, were behind the list.

The list was allegedly handed over to Mo Chul-min, then-secretary of presidential education and cultural affairs, and then to the culture ministry.

Mo, currently the South Korean Ambassador to France, was summoned by the team for questioning over his involvement, Thursday.

In notes of the late former presidential secretary Kim Young-han from the latter half of 2014 to early 2015, Kim Ki-choon ordered a "fight against the leftist schemes of the culture circle," and called for him "look into the networks of left-leaning figures in the film industry."

Kim, Cho and other involved figures are maintaining their ignorance of the list.

The list is estimated to contain the names of around 9,400 cultural figures and entities deemed progressive.

This includes artists who protested the government's inept dealing with the Sewol ferry disaster or voiced support for liberal political figures such as the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea's Moon Jae-in or Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon. Renowned poet Ko Un and novelist Hang Kang, whose book won the Man Booker Prize this year, are allegedly on the list.

Companies such as distributors of so-called left-leaning films or publishers of books authored by opposition lawmakers were also included.

Those on the list were reportedly excluded from government subsidies.

Government subsidies have been withheld from At 9 Film, the distributor of the 2012 film "Namyeong-dong 1985" depicting oppression of pro-democracy activists during the military dictatorship of former President Chun Doo-hwan.

Others faced different forms of disadvantage.

Painter Hong Seong-dam's artwork "Sewol Owol," which satirized President Park, was banned from the Gwangju Biennale, one of the country's largest art events, in 2014.

Gwangju Mayor Yoon Jang-hye said last month that former Vice Culture Minister Kim Chong pressured him to ban the painting, adding the government threatened to cancel its sponsorship of the event otherwise.

Earlier this month, a group of 12 cultural organizations filed a complaint with the independent counsel against Kim Ki-choon and nine other government officials for obstructing artists' rights through their abuse of power.
Chung Yoo-ra / Courtesy of Hankook Ilbo



By Ko Dong-hwan

As Korean prosecutors search for Chung Yoo-ra to question her over how much she benefited from the corruption scandal involving her mother Choi Soon-sil and President Park Geun-hye, it was reported that Chung had abandoned more than 10 pets at her German home before fleeing.

Chung reportedly stayed at a luxury hotel in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe, some 140 kilometers south of Frankfurt, from late November until early December. She did not have her 10 large dogs and a cat with her, according to TV Chosun.

"It appears that she abandoned her pets because carrying them will make her more noticeable to public eyes while on the run," the report said, after reporters visited the hotel's most expensive suite that Chung paid 300,000 won ($248) a day for.





Chung stayed in a luxury hotel in Karlsruhe, Germany, from late November until early December, paying $248 a day.



A Korean living in Frankfurt said an unknown person approached him last month and suggested him to "raise several large dogs." He supposed Chung was selling her pets.

Chung is an avid animal lover, having renovated her two-story Frankfurt mansion just for her pets. A recent online photo showed her playing with a puppy.

"The fact that Chung ditched her pets, despite her particular attachment to them, proves that she was desperate and in a hurry to abscond," the report said.

In a twist, it was revealed at a National Assembly hearing early this month that an incident involving one of Chung's pets played a role in encouraging a key witness to give evidence about Choi's alleged influence-peddling.

Ko Young-tae, a business partner of Choi and the former head of The Blue K, a paper company Choi set up, said he had had an argument with Choi over one of Chung's dogs. Choi had temporarily left the dog in Ko's care but when she found out he left it at home alone for hours, she rebuked him, treating him "inhumanely." The incident damaged their relationship and emboldened Ko to cooperate with lawmakers and answer their questions.





Chung, who reportedly raised 10 large dogs and a cat, renovated her Frankfurt mansion just for her pets.



It is believed that at least two people are helping Chung evade authorities, including a Korean surnamed Lee who owns a gift shop for tourists in Frankfurt. The shop has been closed for the past two weeks, the report said, hinting that Lee is with Chung.

The independent counsel, led by special prosecutor Park Young-soo, asked Interpol on Tuesday to issue a "red notice" for Chung to spur her extradition to Korea. Earlier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ordered Chung to hand in her passport or it will be annulled and she could be deported.

Chung, 20, a dressage competitor, faces charges of obstruction of work at Ewha Womans University. It is alleged she gained admission to the school unfairly by taking advantage of her mother's influence. She also will be questioned about favors in grading that the school allegedly gave her.

The investigative team warned on Dec. 22 that anyone helping Chung flee or destroy evidence would be regarded as an accomplice and could face criminal charges. The team had earlier secured a warrant to detain Chung and has requested cooperation from German authorities.
By Yee Rem Kim

I would like to share my thoughts on the urgency for South Koreans to look beyond their domestic problems and what they are missing out on regionally and globally.

Demonstrators have filled Gwanghwamun Square for weeks. A victorious atmosphere surrounded Koreans as they celebrated the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. They patiently await the final ruling of the Constitutional Court in the next 180 days. Meanwhile, an unstable leadership with unpopular Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn as the acting president, is plunging South Korea into political limbo.

The recent history of Ukraine moves me to warn South Korea amid domestic turmoil to be wary of what is going on outside.

Japan postponed the trilateral summit between the leaders of Japan, China, and South Korea, scheduled for this month, bent on leaving South Korea out of the talks regarding not only bilateral but also regional matters, especially when the one-year anniversary of the Comfort Women Agreement is approaching and further negotiations are necessary for the implementation of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA).

South Korea is losing opportunities to have a say in crucial regional issues due to its current power vacuum. It is falling behind other countries by leaving the first six months of its 2017 summit calendar blank at such a critical juncture, with the impending Trump administration and shifting security and foreign relations in the region. Current interim government in Seoul presents a stark contrast against the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which has been busy congratulating Donald Trump the president-elect and making friendly moves to the Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

A much-anticipated visit by Putin to Japan took place on Dec. 15 and the following day. It has amassed great attention globally and the big question has been whether Japan and Russia, still at war without a peace treaty at the end of World War II, will be able to put history behind them and envision a brighter future together. Two leaders, however, diverge on their goals for the upcoming summit. Putin emphasized the shared economic progress while Abe wished to complete the legacy of his grandfather by pushing forward the issue of territorial dispute over the Kurils (known as Northern Territories in Japan) with Russia.

Although his prospects of settling the territorial dispute with Putin are criticized as "pure fantasy," Abe ceaselessly tries to establish Japan as a powerful regional and a global player hedged between the U.S. and Russia. Such vigorous pursuit of the Kuril Islands must put South Korea on its guard, especially since the signing of GSOMIA in the absence of a legitimate government in Seoul. South Korea must be firm with Japan on issues such as the Dokdo dispute.

As political limbo continues, South Koreans must be vigilant of what is happening around them. Amid political disorder, the Ukrainian crisis shows that it is imperative for the interim government to maintain its voice in foreign affairs. It is too early to celebrate as South Korea still has to transform itself into a stronger democracy and a stronger nation.

The writer, originally from Ukraine, is an international studies major at Yonsei University in Seoul. Write to yeeremkiev@yahoo.com.
Starting at the bottom of Hooker Hill, the area appears deserted and that feeling is only strengthened by the opaque doors and windows that line both sides of the Hill. / Courtesy of John Lee



The Korea Times invites readers to be reporters and file columns and reports on subjects they deem interesting. We publish them on a selective basis. The following is the first of its kind.  ED.

By John Lee

Itaewon has one secret that virtually everybody knows.

That secret is Hooker Hill, where the world's oldest profession still thrives more or less out in the open.

Prostitution is illegal in Korea. So if the law were actually obeyed to the letter, Hooker Hill  that well known red light district located on a short sloping hill that is jam-packed with small bars with opaque doors and dark tinted windows  would not exist. However, reality does not care for our fancies  not even the elevated desires of high minded justices of the Constitutional Court. The Hill should not exist and yet exist it does and it is no secret to anyone. A U.S. Army major-general was caught charging thousands of dollars for services received at one of those bars on Hooker Hill to his government-issued credit card not too long ago.

With inexpensive CCTV cameras installed facing up and down the hill, no one has to stand outside to showcase their wares. All one has to do is walk up or down the hill and when near enough any of those establishments, a painted lady will slightly open the door to stick an arm out to beckon the customer inside.

Having been designated a no-go area for American military personnel, the Hill has been deprived of a significant portion of its clients over the past few years. And with the temperature having dipped in the past few weeks, there was hardly anyone on the Hill when this writer traveled there late in the evening on Christmas Eve. It is clear that everything about the Hill carries the unmistakable stench of desperation and broken dreams.

However, it is important to point out that it is not the ladies and the work they do that makes the Hill ugly. To each his own; and no market would ever be supplied with merchandise if there were no demand to be met. What is ugly is that each of these women has been made a de facto criminal by the government for the audacity of trying to earn a living after all other options had been denied to them. The Hill is not ugly because of the women. It is ugly because it is a constant reminder that when the law ignores common sense, the ones who are hurt most are the most vulnerable members of society.

Nothing lasts forever and for better or for worse, Hooker Hill will be relegated to history books someday. With the never ending tide of gentrification, which is always accompanied by higher rents, commercialization, and rising real estate prices, Hooker Hill's demise is inevitable. Also, the constant improvements in technology, which the sex industry is always on the bleeding edge of, threatens not only Hooker Hill, but also every other old fashioned neon-lit brothel.

One way or another, with or without Hooker Hill, Itaewon will keep rolling on. Businesses will come and go and the faces that pass through or even call it home will be legion. But the push to make an honest buck, or even a dishonest one from time to time, will always ensure that Itaewon continues to evolve and thrive.

John Lee is a pro-free-market blogger at the Korean Foreigner (thekoreanforeigner.blogspot.com) and focuses on economic and political issues as they pertain to Korea and the United States. He can be reached atjohnwlee1013@gmail.com.
By Jang-Sup Shin and William Lazonick



While pressing for restructuring, value extractors and academics who justified this activity argued that U.S. corporations held on to too much "free cash flow" that should be "disgorged" to shareholders as buybacks and dividends. However, what the corporations actually gave away was much more than free cash flow. Many of America's largest corporations routinely distributed more than 100 percent of net income to shareholders. They then generated the extra money by further restructuring of their workforces, selling off businesses or taking on more debts.



Shareholders are supposed to be "residual claimants" who get part of profits as dividends after expensing wages, business costs, taxes and so on. However, they have made their claims the first priority and have instead made wages and other business costs residual. Moreover, on top of receiving dividends for holding shares, they now get massive stock buybacks that will increase their gains from selling shares. In draining trillions of dollars out of business corporations that are vital to the wealth of the nations, they have engaged in predatory value extraction that can only be called the looting of U.S. business corporations.



There are several factors that made shareholders such strong value extractors. One of them is the ever-strengthening trend of fund capitalism. Shareholding by institutional investors in the U.S. passed the 20% mark in 1970 and has continued increase to reach about the 70% level currently. Moreover, the shareholding is extremely concentrated with a small number of investors. The top five institutional investors held 31% of the value of U.S stocks and the top 10 held 42% in the middle of 2016. BlackRock, the largest institutional investor with $4.7 trillion of assets under management is the single largest shareholder in one of every five U.S. companies and had 5% or higher shareholding in 2,610 companies.



Substantial revision of U.S. financial regulations in the 1980s and early 1990s increased the power of institutional investors to extract value. Heavily influenced by the rhetoric of "maximizing shareholder value", federal regulators rapidly increased the proxy voting power to institutional investors acting in concert, treating them as, individually, weak "minority shareholders" who should be allowed to act together to challenge "autocratic corporate management".



Currently, activist hedge funds are financiers that are making use of the collective proxy voting power of institutional investors most effectively for their own profit. Buying a small fraction of a company's outstanding corporate shares, they criticize incumbent management and request restructuring and cash disbursement to shareholders, with the threat of mobilizing proxy votes if management does not accede to their demands. More often than not, other institutional investors and proxy advisory firms support the hedge-fund activists' demands. "Wolf pact attacks" and "co-investments" have rapidly become a convention in the U.S. system of corporate governance and resource allocation. From the 1980, stock-based pay made corporate executives growing advocates of maximizing shareholder value. Since the mid-2000s, hedge-fund activism has been responsible for the acceleration of predatory value extraction from U.S. business corporations.



The U.S. economy is now run as a "shareholder dictatorship", not as a "shareholder democracy". Among shareholders, only a few grab the lion's share of the benefit of value extraction. As the looting of industrial corporations intensifies the U.S. middle-class has disappeared, with "the 1% versus the 99%" becoming the new normal.



Trump won the presidential election only because he was in a better position than Clinton to exploit this dismal state of the disappearing middle-class, not because he had leadership qualities to correct the current situation. He was born into a family of "1% of 1%" and has been a master of value extraction including large-scale tax avoidance, breaking contracts, and shifting losses onto other participants in his businesses to maintain his luxurious, flamboyant, and egotistical life. He is supported by hedge-fund billionaires such as Robert Mercer, John Paulson, and Carl Icahn.



As President-elect, Trump is revealing that he represents the interests of the value-extracting class. Contrary to his criticisms of Wall Street bankers during his election campaign, he is currently filling his cabinet with ultra-rich financiers, including Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive, for Treasury Secretary and Wilbur Ross, formerly a corporate raider and currently a private-equity investor, for Commerce Secretary. Under Trump's administration, a small number of value-extractors will find ample opportunities to enrich themselves while an increasing number of workers, who are the actual value-creators, will wonder how, in voting for Trump, they were so thoroughly conned.



Shin Jang-sup is an economics professor at the National University of Singapore and former advisor to Korea's finance minister, and William Lazonick is professor of economics at University of Massachusetts Lowell and president of the Academic-Industry Research Network.




Korea and China feel uneasy about Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor Tuesday.



The Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying described the visit as one of his "smart shows," urging Japan's sincere apology for the "war of aggression" against China and other Asian neighbors. This is how many Koreans also feel. Prime Minister Abe must realize that true reconciliation is impossible without the aggressor's wholehearted reflection and apology.



U.S. President Barack Obama hailed Abe's visit as a "historic gesture that speaks to the power of reconciliation and the alliance between the American and Japanese peoples." While showing sympathy to the victims, however, Abe offered no apology for his country's wartime aggression during his visit to the site of Japan's surprise bombing 75 years ago that killed more than 2,300 Americans.



It is also highly regrettable that a member of Abe's Cabinet visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which worships Class A war criminals from World War II and glorifies its wartime aggression, on the same day of Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada's visit to the shrine and summoned Kohei Maruyama, a minister at the Japanese Embassy, to lodge a protest.



Abe's Pearl Harbor visit came on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Korea-Japan comfort women deal made between President Park Geun-hye and her Japanese counterpart on Dec. 28, 2015, which many Koreans still protest. For countries that suffered under Japanese occupation and aggression, Japan must admit its wrongdoings and offer a sincere apology and compensation.



Abe's visit is also seen as an attempt to solidify U.S.-Japan relations ahead of a power change in the U.S. During a speech at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese leader stressed that the two countries which had fought a fierce war have become "allies with deep and strong ties rarely found anywhere in history," and that the two countries were bound by an "alliance of hope." Abe was the first head of state to meet with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. Korea's foreign ministry should swiftly prepare measures to reaffirm Korea-U.S. ties in a Trump White House.




Regulator's decision should have come earlier



The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said Wednesday that it would slap a record 1.03 trillion won ($853 million) fine on Qualcomm for alleged antitrust violations. After a three-year investigation, the antitrust agency also ordered the San Diego-based chipmaker to change its anti-competitive business practices.



Qualcomm's unfair actions, detailed by Seoul's antitrust officials, are beyond imagination. The company denied or limited licenses of modem chips to other developers, including Samsung Electronics, in violation of the established fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) principle. The FTC accused Qualcomm of using an unfair royalties model for handset makers, saying it required them to buy comprehensive wireless-technology licenses, including ones they didn't use. Qualcomm was also accused of asking global smartphone makers for royalties-free access to their patents.



Given these and other unfair practices the American company has used to restrict competition, the FTC's decision should have come earlier. The antitrust regulator said South Korea accounts for one-fifth of Qualcomm's annual global sales of $25 billion. Samsung and other handset makers in Korea pay a combined 1.5 trillion won in annual royalties. Qualcomm charges them up to 5 percent in royalties based on the wholesale price of their devices  this is often called the "Qualcomm tax." It's undeniable that our mobile-phone makers have stood behind Qualcomm's meteoric rise as a global IT giant.



Qualcomm said it would file for an immediate stay of the regulator's corrective order and appeal the decision to the Seoul High Court. Whether the FTC is right will ultimately be up to the court, but one needs to take note of remarks by an FTC official that the ruling was not intended to protect domestic companies. This is why the FTC should do its utmost to prepare for the legal battle.



The decision could mean lower costs for handset makers because Qualcomm must comply with their requests to renegotiate licensing terms under the corrective order. More important, the ruling will serve as an occasion for them to be less influenced by Qualcomm, which has been accused of forcing unfair licensing contracts on handset makers. In fact, the environment will be ripe for them not to be swayed by Qualcomm any longer.



The problem is that the next U.S. administration to be led by Donald Trump, who strongly voiced protectionism during his campaign, might take retaliatory actions against Seoul, citing the Qualcomm case. But it would be nonsense if the FTC takes no action at a time when it's evident that the company has breached the nation's antitrust law. The government needs to do whatever it can to prevent the Qualcomm case from being the seed of trade friction between Seoul and Washington.




By Donald Kirk



WASHINGTON  The U.S. refusal to veto the UN Security Council resolution attacking Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory as "a flagrant violation" of international law has triggered cries of outrage worthy of full-scale hostilities.

You might think, from the responses of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that President Barack Obama had announced the U.S. had allied with the Palestinians in a declaration of war. In fact, the resolution is non-binding, and the U.S. remains Israel's staunchest ally. Washington now provides $3.1 billion in aid for Israel every year and will soon be pumping in $3.8. billion annually under an agreement signed three months ago  stupendous figures for a country of 8.2 million people.

So really, nothing is changing, and Israel has nothing to worry about as far as U.S. support is concerned. Moreover, President-elect Donald Trump has signaled his dedication to Israel's survival  and expansionism  by promising after he takes office in three weeks to do whatever he can about Obama's snub in the UN.

Trump's view on U.S. abstention from the resolution, endorsed by all the other 14 members of the Security Council, suggests imminent change from what he sees as Obama's weak and wavering policy. His gut response means he not only approves of Israel's design for taking over land claimed by Palestinians but will also be far more aggressive than Obama in combating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other terrorist groups.

The outlook for Trump's foreign policy decisions, however, is laden with one huge paradox. How will he maintain his warm relations with Russia's President Vladimir Putin while Putin is on good terms with countries seen as Israel's real enemies, notably Iran and Syria? Netanyahu offended Obama by bypassing him and addressing the U.S. Congress in March of last year on the perils of any agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. The U.S. and other countries, including Russia, approved the agreement anyway.

Then there's the matter of Russian support  actually, Russian and Iranian and Turkish support  of Syrian President Bashar Assad in his war against foes of his dictatorial regime.

The sight of the terrible suffering inflicted on Assad's behalf by the Russian bombing of rebel forces, and civilians, in the city of Aleppo is engraved in the consciousness of anyone who watches television. Let us not forget that Israel in 2007 bombed a nuclear facility under construction in Syria. Netanyahu views Syria as just about as terrible as Iran  maybe worse considering the Syrian border with Israel on the Golan Heights. Israeli forces seized the Golan Heights in the 1967 war and drove out Syrian troops who had briefly overrun them in 1973.

The complexities of the Middle East struggle extend to Northeast Asia. North Koreans were constructing the nuclear facility in Syria in coordination with Iran, with which North Korea was exchanging nuclear technology. The reactor would have produced nuclear devices with highly enriched uranium of the sort that Iran has made ostensibly to produce energy, not warheads. The Israelis were not going to wait to see what the Syrian reactor was for. They made sure to destroy it first.

In the face of sanctions, North Korea has shipped missiles to both Syria and Iran while Putin, Trump's friend, has made overtures to Pyongyang in a blatant attempt at competing with China for influence. While Russia and China have agreed to the latest UN resolution strengthening sanctions against North Korea as punishment for its nuclear and missile tests, it's far from certain how interested they are in enforcing them. They would rather Kim Jong-un not go through with ordering a sixth nuclear test, but they're not likely to do anything to stop him.

Trump and his inexperienced foreign policy team will have to navigate through the shoals of swirling currents and stormy relationships that go far beyond anything the UN Security Council can do to resolve anything. At odds with China's expansionist ambitions in Asia, the Trump team has pledged to uphold historic U.S. alliances in Northeast Asia. Hopefully Trump will be as dedicated to defending South Korea and Japan as he is to assuring the defense of Israel.

Donald Kirk, www.donaldkirk.com, has reported for decades on war and peace in the middle east as well as Asia. He's at kirkdon4343@gmail.com.
Hellen Choo, founder and CEO of Art and Design International, poses at the company's office in Mapo-gu, western Seoul, Wednesday. /Korea Times photo by Park Jae-hyuk



By Park Jae-hyuk

The men's grooming products market in Korea, which has rapidly grown in recent years, is expected to total 1 trillion won ($825 million) this year, as Korean men  including those in their 40s and 50s  have recently begun to pay more attention to their appearances.

Yet, few options have been available in the domestic market for Korean men, most of who tend to have thick and coarse hair, unlike Caucasian men's thin and pliant hair.

So, CEO Hellen Choo of Art and Design International launched men's lifestyle brand Swagger dedicated to Asian men in 2011.

The brand seeks to expand its presence next year through well-known drugstore chain Watsons, in the newly emerging markets of China and Southeast Asia.

"At first, our company had only helped design products of other cosmetics makers," the designer-turned-entrepreneur said in an interview with The Korea Times, Wednesday.

"It was not a very lucrative business, so we decided to produce our own in-house brand, after a couple of years in cosmetics manufacturing."

Choo said few men's grooming products, except several skincare brands, were available in the domestic market when she started the business.

"After surveying male consumers at that time, we found they are spending more hours on hairstyling than facial makeup," she said.

To meet such demand, her company first introduced several types of pomades and waxes, which were selected as some of the best new products by the Small and Medium Business Administration.

The CEO said she tried hard to understand what men exactly want, asking for advice from her husband, brother, father, company employees and online consumers.

"Women, however, also have the advantage in making men's grooming products which are more attractive to women," she said. "Our company produces men's cosmetics with the scents that are most preferred by women."

Most men's hairstyling products in Korea still smell fruity, just like women's beauty products. Choo's company surveyed 500 20-something Korean women on their scent preferences and created scented hair products accordingly.

The products quickly attracted consumer attention, and are now sold at about 8,000 outlets nationwide, including Olive Young, 7-Eleven, LOHBS, Shinsegae Department Stores and Shilla Duty Free.

However, Choo is not satisfied with her present position and is setting her eyes on bigger markets.

"The men's grooming industry is still at an early stage, so it will grow much bigger in the future," she said. "I hope Swagger will be one of the industry's leading brands, which can appeal to more consumers worldwide."
Don Rosenberg, executive vice president and general counsel of Qualcomm, left, shakes hands with a government official, at the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) headquarters at the Sejong Government Complex, south of Seoul, July 20. The antitrust watchdog fined Qualcomm a record 1.03 trillion ($852 million), Wednesday, for abusing its dominant position here. / Yonhap



By Lee Min-hyung

With the nation's antitrust watchdog imposing a record fine on Qualcomm, trade friction is likely to ensue between Korea and the United States in the wake of complaints by the U.S.-based chipmaker, sources said Thursday.

The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) announced Wednesday it would fine the firm 1.03 trillion won ($852 million) for its years-long unfair licensing contracts with local handset manufacturers.

Qualcomm disputed the ruling, saying it would take the case to court. In a statement issued Wednesday, the firm said the FTC decision was a breach of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA).

Industry insiders said the case would escalate further and chances are the U.S. government may take retaliatory measures.

"Qualcomm filed a lawsuit against the FTC in 2009 when the Korean regulator imposed a 270 billion won fine on the firm for abusing its dominant position here, but the case has yet to be settled in court," a mobile industry source said. "Qualcomm is defending itself, citing the trade agreement between the two countries. But due to the tougher penalty, the potentially ensuing lawsuit is likely to turn into a power game between Korea and the U.S."

The FTC dispelled concerns over possible trade friction with the upcoming Donald Trump administration, saying the antitrust regulation is a global norm that almost all countries follow. This is why it is inappropriate to say this latest regulation may cause trade friction with the U.S. government, according to the Korean regulator.

"The FTC has guaranteed Qualcomm's rights in our bid to remain fair in our final decision," the watchdog said. "If the company disagrees with the latest decision, it can take legal steps."

Another source from the electronics industry said: "A possible lawsuit is expected to take three to four years to conclude at the earliest."

"At the moment, local smartphone makers  including Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics  are relying heavily on Qualcomm's application processors," he said. "Expectations are that Qualcomm will face pressure not just in Korea but in other overseas markets to lower the royalties it demands, due to the FTC decision."

The FTC said Qualcomm had abused its monopolistic position when signing contracts with smartphone makers here. It ordered the company to revise its unfair licensing terms and conditions.

In reaction to the decision, Qualcomm issued the following statement: "We are pleased that our appeal will go to the Seoul High Court." The company also called the amount of the fine "insupportable and unreasonable" related to the size of the Korean market.
French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Thursday warned troops stationed in Africa's Sahel region that they should "prepare for a long war" against Islamist militants.

He also promised Chad, where French troops have been stationed since 2014 under Operation Barkhane, his nation's financial support.

"Our country must continue to make clear and ambitious budgetary decisions in support of our armies," Cazeneuve said on his first overseas visit as prime minister.

The Barkhane forces' mission is to target Islamist militant groups that are active in the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert.

The operation was launched after French military interventions in Mali and Chad.

"We must prepare for a long war in an environment that has undergone dramatic shifts," Cazeneuve said.

The French military is currently battling Islamist militant in two regions -- in the Middle East against the Islamic State (IS) militants, and in the Sahel where it has deployed 4,000 soldiers as part of the Barkhane force.

Operation Barkhane covers five nations: Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad.

Cazeneuve hailed troops fighting on fronts "thousands of kilometres away from their homes".

"You risk your lives to save others'," he said.

Four French troops have been killed in Mali this year.

Barkhane forces are working alongside Malian troops in the search for Sophie Petronin, a French aid worker who was kidnapped last weekend.

The prime minister also pledged France's help for poverty-stricken Chad.

"France will always help Chad surmount its difficulties," said Cazeneuve after a meeting with President Idriss Deby.

Like its neighbour, oil giant Nigeria, Chad has been undergoing a severe financial crisis as a result of a several months-long slump in the price of crude.

While the world's major oil producers have agreed to cut back on production in order to bring prices back up, the impact of the change remains to be seen in the worst-affected nations.

The opposition in Chad is also critical of the political situation under Deby's iron-fisted rule.

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Two of the hottest Korean actors of 2016 are back as the newest faces of Line Pay.

The Descendants of the Sun actor Song Joong Ki and Moonlight Drawn by Clouds lead Park Bo Gum are two of the most in demand endorsers nowadays, so its not surprising that Line Pay also tapped them.

Yibada wrote that this commercial for Line Pay will highlight the manliness within the two actors. Although some netizens wished to see them having some bromance which is a trend nowadays, this new CF will emphasize the identities of the actors and how they can sell the Line Pay service. Song Joong Ki and Park Bo Gum are close friends in real life alongside actors Yoo Ah In and Lee Kwang Soo and they are usually spotted hanging out together but for this CF, producers avoided the bromance angle as the two actors were recently intrigued by gender preference issues where Park Bo Gum was recently involved in an issue with his male manager.

Before the two actors were even tapped for this Line Pay CF, All Kpop reported that Song Joong Ki and Park Bo Gum previously worked for a CF for Domino Pizza on November this year. The two showcased their manly friendship while indulging themselves with Domino Pizzas newest menu that time which is the braised pork pizza. Check the CF below.

Indeed, 2016 is the year for the two actors. Song Joong Ki dominated the first half of the year as he starred in the worldwide hit Descendants of the Sun. He just recently wrapped up his filming for his 2017 film Battleship Island alongside top actor So Ji Sub.

Park Bo Gum also had an amazing 2016 as he lead the hit historical drama Moonlight Drawn by Clouds. His prowess in being an MC made him a household name in Korea garnering him several endorsements.

Apart from this Line Pay CF, Song Joong Ki and Park Bo Gum are reported to reunite before the year ends as both are nominated in the upcoming 2016 KBS Drama Awards.
Seungri is the youngest member of Bigbang with numbers of stories to share. He often shares to the media about his relationship, his problem, his concern and even he also shares the stories of other members. He is known to spill everything in her mouth.

Recently he shared about his worst relationship that he has ever had at "Radio Star". According to koreaboo, he said that she had a relationship before about a year but the girl denied the fact and that hurt him a lot. He didn't have any girlfriend afterwards.

During his talk, G-Dragon said that the girl was from Osaka or something by a joke. It was true to indicate that the girl is Japanese because Seungri spilled some Japanese words while explaining about the situation. He said that it hurt a lot because he really liked her and they even changed handwritten letters. He also talked to her mom sometime and that she denied their relationship really made him upset.

G-Dragon explained that he asked his friend to introduce the girl to Seungri and that was how they started to know each other. After spending some time with Seungri and he thought that they were dating, then she denied that she had a relationship with him.

Seungri said that maybe she had another relationship with someone else so she denied everything, according to report from allkpop. Well, it must him a lot. While talking about that, it seemed to indicate that she hit on girls a lot but often got rejected because they have boyfriend already.

It was a sad story for a relationship to have with Seungri. Seungri often gets picked up to share about his private life by other members of Bigbang because it is either funny or sad but still funny at the same time. That also what happened at the show when other members picking up on him.
A replica statue of the deity Serquet will be erected in Terminal 2

The Egyptian goddess of protection, Serqet, is to welcome Egypts visitors at Cairo International Airport starting Thursday, when a replica statue of the deity will be erected in Terminal 2.

Amr El-Tibi, the executive director of the antiquities ministry's Antiquity Replicas Unit, told Ahram Online that the statue will be taken from the units factory in Cairos Citadel to the airport on Thursday morning.

The statue is a gift from the antiquities ministry to the civil aviation ministry, El-Tibi said, in an attempt to encourage tourism as well as to highlight the ongoing cooperation between the two ministries, as well as the tourism ministry.

El-Tibi explained that the polyester statue is four metres tall, weighs 150kg, and took two months to make. It is made of polyester and depicts Serquet, one of the four protective ancient Egyptian deities who stretch their arms to protect Tutankhamun's golden shrine. She wears a scorpion on her head.

Last month the antiquities ministry offered Ecuador a replica statue of Ramses II, which is similar to the authentic one that was transported in 2006 from Ramses Square in downtown Cairo to the Grand Egyptian Museum overlooking Giza Plateau, which is yet to open.

The statue was erected in Quito's Condado Square which was subsequently renamed Egypt Square.

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Arab and Islamic states should react strongly to any attempts to transfer the US embassy to Jerusalem

If the new US administration decides to fulfill its promise to transfer the US embassy to Jerusalem it would be an accomplice with Israel in breaching international law, the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions.

More than this it would constitute a rejection of the unequivocal legal opinion of the International Court of Justice, which asserted that Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem and every settlement Israel would establish on this land would violate international law and should be removed.

The International Court of Justice decision bound Israel to recompense Palestinians for all damage resulting from its measures and for every loss that would result from removing the violations it made.

What is more dangerous is that transferring the US embassy to Jerusalem would signify US participation in breaching a fundamental rule that organises international relations since the end of World War II and that stipulates the impermissibility of the acquisition of territory by use of force or war.

The transfer would simply mean that we live in a barbaric world ruled by the law of the jungle and the arrogance of power.

This would raise once again the repeated question around the duality of standards of American and Western policies in general whenever the issue is connected with Israel, which is permitted thereby to be above international law and enjoy full impunity concerning its continuing breaches of these laws.

If this decision is taken, then the US will have lost what remains of its credibility, which was already minimal, as a partner in the Middle East Quartet and whats called Middle East peace efforts.

The USAs absolute bias towards Israel would also confirm its inability to play any positive role in mediation and sponsoring whats called the peace process."

During the last 23 years, Israel used this process as a cover for settlement expansionism and Judaicising the occupied Palestinian territories.

Trumps choice of David Friedman as the new US ambassador to Israel fomented anger, since Friedman is one of the staunchest supporters of illegal settlements and previously call for transferring the US embassy to Jerusalem, the annexation of parts of the West Bank to Israel, and financially backed illegal settlements built on Ramallah's occupied lands.

Friedman's talk about transferring the US embassy to Jerusalem coincided with other statements, including Settlement activity isnt an obstacle to peace.

We saw how racist Israeli ministers considered such statements a green light for a totally unrestrained state to launch settlement expansion operations in Jerusalem and other cities and to prepare new legislation that legalises 120 new settlements.

Everyone who is silent regarding this and continues to express concern without imposing sanctions on Israel or withdrawing privileges from it will be a participant in the operation of killing the idea of a Palestinian state and hence the so-called the two state solution.

Its important that the US hear decisive and strong reactions from Arab and Islamic states against these statements and against the threat of transferring of the US embassy, in order to give a clear signal that undertaking such a decision would harm American interests.

However, the most important lesson for us Palestinians is that every form of deterioration that befell our national cause and all that Israel expresses in effrontery and arrogance, that reached the extent of thwarting the Paris Conference and turning its back on Russian efforts  all this was the direct result of the defect in the balance of power between us and Israel and its occupation.

This defect wont be fixed by repeating what has previously failed or by continuing to bargain for futile negotiations that wont materialise. But we should embrace a new unified national strategy based on a profound perception that we are not in the stage of reaching a solution with Israel; we are rather in a confrontation stage with the Zionist project that insists on seizing the whole of Palestine and entrenching the occupation, the Apartheid regime and racial discrimination towards the Palestinian people, and repeats in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Hebron and other cities what it has done in Jaffa, Haifa and Acre and elsewhere.

There are basic elements for this alternate strategy we wont get bored of repeating; from popular resistance to the boycott movement to national unity to supporting the peoples steadfastness and survival to creating integration between the Palestinian peoples three constituents.

The most important element, which only we can immediately achieve and nobody can prevent us from doing, is ending internal division and facing the world and Israel with a unified national leadership.

We thank everybody who is trying to help us. However, the matter does not need trips, travel and meetings that move from one capital to another as much as it needs real political will that is able to open the road to unity and ending division in a matter of hours.

This will be the beginning of the road to changing the balance of power in our favour in an age that respects only the powerful.

The writer is secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative.

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Despite the moratorium on death penalty, which Nigeria signed, the Edo State governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, has signed the warrant for the execution of three death-row inmates at Oko Prison, outside Benin, Edo State. The death row inmates, who were executed on December 23, 2016 are Ogbomoro Omoregie, Apostle Igene and Mark Omosowhota.

This came as Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State, yesterday, granted amnesty to four death-row prison inmates in three South West prisons.

Director of Public Prosecutions and Secretary to Osun State Advisory Council on Prerogative of Mercy, Mr Pomade Adeniji, announced the amnesty in a statement in Osogbo.



He said, Pursuant to the advice and recommendations of the State Advisory Council on Prerogative of Mercy, Governor Aregbesola, in exercise of his powers, has granted amnesty to the prison inmates.

It said the inmates were serving their jail terms at federal prisons in Ilesha, Ibara and Abeokuta as well as the Maximum Security Prison, Kirikiri in Lagos.

Meanwhile, a civil society group, Legal Defence and Assistance Project, LEDAP, has condemned the execution on December 23, of three death row inmates of Oko Prisons, Edo State following the death warrants signed by Governor Obaseki.

The death-row inmates in Benin Prison, were all convicted and sentenced to death about 20 years ago by military tribunals under the Robbery and Firearms (Special Provisions) Decree as amended.

In an earlier petition submitted to the governor by the executed prisoners on December 21, 2016 through LEDAP, protesting the plan for their execution, the prisoners had pleaded with the governor to shelve the planned execution because there was a pending case at the Court of Appeal, Lagos brought by all death row prisoners in Nigeria against their execution. The appeal had not been decided and it was therefore, illegal to carry out the executions, Mr Chino Obiagwu, National Coordinator of LEDAP had argued in the earlier petition.

He said they were appalled that the earliest social duty of Governor Obaseki upon assumption of office was execution of his citizens on death row.

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The Athenaeum Music & Arts Library will host the 10th annual SoundON Festival of Modern Music, a four-day long series of concerts, performances, workshops, lectures and art, Jan. 5-8, 2017 at 1008 Wall St., La Jolla.

In collaboration with San Diego New Music, the program is curated by NOISE percussionist Morris Palter.

(Part 1) SOUNDSTREAMS will feature works awash of aural awareness by current and former San Diego composers, including Benjamin Sabey, former San Diego New Music executive director Nathan Brock, and NOISE cellist Franklin Cox, and works by New Zealand composer Chris Cree Brown, French composer Betsy Jolas and American maverick James Tenney. Evocative of sonic panoramas, these works are foundational in their motive, yet sweeping in their inference.

(Part 2) RISING CURRENTS I & II will feature established and newly established composers. While individually creative in their compositional explorations, collectively they represent composers who derive their strength from dynamic internal forces that connect them intimately to their immediate surroundings, be they natural, urban or cultural.

All will be joined by guest composers James Romig, Benjamin Sabey and Andrew Staniland. The Jan. 7 evening event will feature a world premiere of Festival of Whispers, by composer Matthew Burtner, which will be presented with an installation during the festival. Festival of Whispers was commissioned by The Athenaeum in honor of the 20th anniversary collaboration with San Diego New Music and the 10th anniversary of SoundOn Festival.

NOISE artists: Lisa Cella, flute; Colin McAllister, guitar and conductor; Mark Menzies, violin;Franklin Cox, cello; Robert Zelickman, clarinet; Christopher Adler, piano and Morris Palter, percussion.

Special guest artists: Stephanie Aston, soprano;Kyle Adam Blair, piano; Fiona Digney, percussion; Sean Dowgray, percussion; Michael Matsuno, flute.

 IF YOU GO: Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla. 4-Day Festival Pass: $55 members, $70 nonmembers. 1-Day Pass: $20 members, $25 nonmembers, $5 students. Tickets and schedule: (858) 454-5872. ljathenaeum.org/sound-on
Historic ties of north Meck span throughout region Though the north Mecklenburg area didnt see significant population growth until a few decades ago, its rich history dates back to the Revolutionary War. That was the basis of...

An easier-than-expected first mammogram experience HUNTERSVILLE  Scheduling a cancer screening probably ranks somewhere on your to-do list between "clean out the garage" and "donate those clothes that don't fit." Sure, you'll get to it at...
The Director General of International Organization for Migration (IOM) Ambassador William Lacy Swing commended Sri Lankas dynamic leadership in Migration in connection with the important role played by Sri Lanka as the current chair of the Colombo Process. In particular Ambassador Swing highlighted the development of the five thematic areas ; Skills and Qualification Recognition, Ethical Recruitment, Pre-departure Orientation, Remittances and Labour Market Trends, under Sri Lankas chair of the Colombo Process.

Congratulating Sri Lanka on assuming the Chair of Abu Dhabi Dialogue (ADD) in January 2017, Ambassador Swing said he looks forward to participating in the ADD Ministerial Meeting in January 2017. He also congratulated Sri Lanka on the Second Global Consultation on Migrant Health in Colombo, scheduled from 21-23 February 2017 and appreciated IOMs collaboration with Sri Lanka.

Ambassador Swing made these observations in response to the Statement delivered by Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva Ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha during the General Debate of the 107th IOM Council, which concluded in Geneva last Thursday.

Ambassador Aryasinha in his statement had congratulated the IOM on its 65th anniversary and on the formal entry of the IOM to the United Nations system as a "related organization". He had noted the need to utilize the existing frameworks at regional and inter-governmental level such as regional consultative processes and the GFMD in developing the Global Compact on Migration envisaged under the New York Declaration on Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants by year 2018. Ambassador Aryasinha had emphasized the need for a proper assessment of the available mechanisms and how the elements in the Global Compact related to existing commitments in migration.

On the national context, Ambassador Aryasinha had noted the several measures taken by the Government of Sri Lanka in tackling challenges of migration including those related to irregular migration such as human trafficking as well as the measures taken to ensure the welfare of the families of the Sri Lankan migrants including programmes for migrant protection and education of the children of migrant workers.

Ambassador Aryasinha also delivered the Joint Statement of G-15, a Summit Level Group of Developing Countries on South-South Cooperation, currently chaired by Sri Lanka.

Full Statement

Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka

Geneva.

07th December 2016
The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary

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PRESS RELEASE

Philippines Congress To Investigate U.S. Color Revolution Plot

Dec. 28, 2016 (EIRNS)Speaker of the Philippines House of Representatives Pantaleon Alvarez called for a congressional investigation into the blueprint exposed Tuesday by the Manila Times, published by Dante Ang, which is reported to be a detailed plan drawn up by outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg for a color revolution to depose President Duterte. According to todays Manila Times, Alvarez said:

"If true, this has serious consequences not only on our countrys political stability but also on the economic and social fabric of our nation. It would also have grave repercussions on our relationship with the United States. In view of this serious allegation I am calling for a congressional investigation to find out if there is basis to this reported ouster plot against President Rodrigo Duterte.... That is anathema to the gospel of democracy the U.S. government, especially under the administration of President Obama, has been preaching to the world."

Alvarez said Congress could invite members of the intelligence community and U.S. Embassy staff to hearings on the alleged plot. "Of course, we cannot force them [U.S. Embassy staff] but we will extend the invitation," the speaker said.

"I was not surprised. The United States always meddlesif it has no hold over a countrys president," Alvarez said in Tagalog.

Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay also addressed the plot: "It is not new for Ambassador Goldberg to be accused of such a plot," Yasay said, referring to the fact that Goldberg had been thrown out as Ambassador to Bolivia when he was caught organizing a coup against President Evo Morales in 2008. Yasay said the Manila Times report involved "a serious matter that we have to dig deeper into. I would not take this threat lightly."

The U.S. Embassy in Manila denied the existence of such a plot, and the U.S. state department earlier denied its participation in any plans to oust Duterte. Believe it?
PRESS RELEASE

Turkey and Russia Have Evidence of U.S.-Led Coalition Support for Islamic State

Dec. 28, 2016 (EIRNS)Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a press conference in Ankara, yesterday, that Turkey has evidence of U.S. support for the Islamic State and Kurdish terror groups.

"They give support to terrorist groups, including Daesh (Islamic State), YPG (Kurdish Peoples Protection Units), PYD (Democratic Union Party). Its very clear. We have confirmed evidence, with pictures, photos, and videos,"

Irans PressTV quoted Erdogan as saying.

TASS also reports that on Dec. 26, former U.S. Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein accused Washington of supporting terrorist groups when it serves its interests.

U.S. Department of State spokesman Mark Toner rejected Erdogans accusations, saying:

"I dont think anyone could look at our actions on the ground leading the coalition in northern Syria, in Iraq, and say anything other than that were 100% behind the defeat, destruction of Daesh, and even beyond Syria and Iraq, seeing its networks dismantled, destroyed around the regionor outside of the region around the world."

Despite these denials, Russian sappers working to de-mine Aleppo have found huge caches of ammunition manufactured in NATO countries. Commander of Russias International Mine Action Center Ivan Gromov told Rossiya-24 TV Channel on Wednesday:

"Ammunition and large-caliber small arms together with rockets for Grad multiple-launch rocket systems are represented there. The shells were produced in Germany, the United States, and Bulgaria."

They found 122mm mortar shells, rockets for multiple-launch rocket systems, hand grenades, grenade launchers, and howitzer projectiles in one of the militants headquartersenough ammunition for a whole battalion.

On Dec. 12 the Bulgarian newspaper Trud reported that Syrian government troops had found an arms depot with Bulgarian-made military ammunition in one of the citys quarters and found in Aleppo another eight depots with Bulgarian-made ammunition.
Alicia Mendoza was working two part-time jobs when she transferred into Northeastern Illinois University. Swamped with work, school and a daily commute, bolstering her resume with something extra was the last thing on her mind.

She thought getting good grades was enough to land her a job after graduation. Now she knows better.

You can have a perfect 4.0 GPA, but that does not guarantee you a job, said Mendoza, now a 24-year-old MBA student and graduate assistant in Northeasterns College of Business and Management in Chicago.

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Colleges and universities expend a lot of effort getting students in the doors, but there are worries that there isnt enough focus on making sure the recruits land good jobs after graduation. More than half of college graduates say they visited their schools career services office at least once, but only 16% said it was helpful, according to a recent report from Gallup and Purdue University.

The need for change in career services is evident, according to the report. Gallup found that barely 1 in 10 U.S. business leaders think a college education equips people with the right skills for their business.

Career services needs to be more than just an office students visit their senior year, said Brandon Busteed, executive director of education and workforce development at Gallup. It needs to reach students when theyre freshmen and incorporate mentors, internships and work experience.

Some colleges already have been making moves to do that. They are becoming mindful that not everyone comes from the same background, and not everyone is heading in the same direction.

The Career Development Center at Loyola University Chicago was reorganized about three years ago to expand and better prepare students for their careers.

It partners with Greek affairs, teaches classes and makes contact at freshman orientation. It maintains some of its traditional roles  advising students, tweaking resumes  but with a twist. Advising can be done over Skype, job leads are sent out via Twitter and tips on how to dress for an interview are posted on Pinterest.

A lot of times students engaging with us dont realize its us, said the centers director, Kathryn Jackson.

With the hiring landscape constantly shifting, many jobs that todays students may eventually occupy havent been created yet. Rather than being trained for one type of job, students must learn how to develop certain skills  such as teamwork, problem-solving and leadership  and talk those up to potential employers, said Thy Nguyen, director of the career services office at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

What matters to us is that theyre developing the core competencies which employers are telling us are important in the workplace, he said.

Nguyens office ran a pilot program in which it trained on-campus supervisors to work with student employees on career planning, and helped faculty integrate those core skills into their lessons.

That well come to you approach is especially important with first-generation and transfer students. Among graduates nationally, those two groups are less likely to say they visited career services as undergrads, according to the report.

Theyre literally trying to pay rent, said Mendoza, herself a transfer student. Its tough.

But those students will end up competing with traditional students, so they need to change their mind-sets, Mendoza said. The MBA student works in the deans office on the side, coordinating with the school to help students find jobs and internships.

At Chicagos DePaul University, nearly 1 in 3 freshmen in 2016 were first-generation students, said Gillian Steele, assistant vice president of the schools career center, and the school keeps that at front of mind.

It runs a program that gives a stipend to first-generation students working unpaid internships. Theyre working their way through college, Steele said. It [isnt] easy for them to leave that job.

The approach seems to be yielding results. In 2015, a higher percentage of first-generation students did an internship during undergraduate studies than those who werent first-generation students, Steele said.

DePaul requires all of its undergraduates to complete real-world experience, through an internship or research, for example. It runs a program that connects hundreds of alumni and other professionals with students. Gallup found that mentors can be a sort of lifeblood for students job searches.

Dontorrie Chatman can attest to that. Hes a senior at DePaul majoring in psychology with a minor in screenwriting. The 22-year-old planned to pursue a career in psychology, but a 20-page psychology paper his junior year made him realize it wasnt the right path. Now his sights are set on screenwriting.

I just applied for my first job at Netflix, he said, sitting at his desk at DePauls Career Center, where he works part time helping other students. "[Id be] mostly assisting an executive producer for original content. He is waiting to hear back from Netflix about the status of his application.

Chatmans parents did not go to college, and he knew no one in the screenwriting world when he decided to make the switch. But through the mentoring program, he connected with an alumnus who has done work at a couple of studios in New York, and was able to get some pointers.

Everybody can help deliver the success of college grads, Gallups Busteed said. But I dont think weve made it clear that everybody can have a productive role in that.

amarotti@chicagotribune.com

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Holiday shoppers who enjoyed the convenience of fulfilling wish lists with a simple click of the buy button are learning this week that the return process for online purchases can still be a hassle.

E-commerce purchases can be made with little effort, but shoppers say the returns are almost never as straightforward.

Lauren OConnor would rather not have made the trip to a Chicago neighborhood post office Tuesday morning. But she needed to return a dog bed and coat shed bought online at Lands End for her new puppy. Lands End doesnt have a store near her home, so carting her online purchase back to a bricks-and-mortar location, as some shoppers do, wasnt an option.

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Thats how she found herself waiting with an unwieldy square cardboard box while struggling to find a pen to address the package, all without forfeiting her place in a growing line.

Its just a big hassle, she said.

Dealing with returns is a pain for retailers too, and one thats only getting bigger, said Chris Zubel, a managing director at real estate services firm CBRE.

Online sales are growing, and shoppers are more likely to return items bought over the Internet, Zubel said. Thats because on-screen images dont always match what the item looks like in person, and consumers buying apparel often order the same item in multiple sizes or colors, intending to send all but one version back.

Estimates of the return rate for online purchases range from 15% to 30%, depending on the type of item purchased and whom you ask, compared with 8% for all U.S. merchandise sales, according to a 2015 report from the National Retail Federation and software company the Retail Equation. The problem is worse over the holidays, when shoppers buy more gifts, apparently with mixed success. Overall merchandise return rates rise about 2% in November and December.

United Parcel Service sees a bump in shipping volumes throughout January as customers return unwanted gifts, order items in exchange and spend gift cards, said spokesman Matthew OConnor. But the first week of January is UPS busiest period for e-commerce returns, tracked using the pre-printed shipping labels some retailers provide to make returns easier for customers.

The early-January flurry of activity is good news for shipping companies like UPS, which expects to ship about 5.8 million returns during the first week in January, up from about 5 million the year before, OConnor said. Its not such great news for the customers making extra trips to ship return packages, or retailers that have to figure out what to do with extra merchandise that comes back.

Most returns that were purchased online get taken to brick-and-mortar stores, as long as the retailer has a physical store that is convenient for the customer. Unless the returned item is unusually bulky or something not typically stocked in the store, thats often the best outcome for the retailer, which can put the item back on a shelf and try to sell the customer something else.

A UPS survey found 70% of online shoppers made an extra purchase when returning an item to a brick-and-mortar store, according to OConnor. Only about 45% made an additional purchase when processing a return online and then shipping it back.

Nearly 70% of retailers surveyed by the National Retail Federation at the end of 2015 let customers return gifts purchased online to their stores, up from 57% earlier that year.

Many retailers  especially those that only sell online  are working to make it easier for customers to ship returns back. Venice Beach start-up Happy Returns has opened return stations where customers of some online merchants can drop off returns and get an immediate credit. Other retailers provide customers pre-printed address labels or cover the cost of mailing the item back.

Even though those efforts can cut into profits, Zubel said he hasnt seen retailers tightening return policies as online shopping has grown. Retailers weigh the cost of making returns as painless as possible against potential lost sales if customers are nervous about buying items they arent positive theyll keep.

The return policy becomes a competitive advantage, he said.

Some retailers are outsourcing returns to companies that specialize in taking back merchandise and squeezing as much value from them as possible, Zubel said.

Last year, FedEx acquired Genco, a logistics company that processes returns. UPS recently invested in Optoro, a software company that helps retailers and manufacturers handle returned and excess inventory.

Its a high-tech solution for how to connect items to the next-best home, said Optoro co-founder and CEO Tobin Moore, whose company takes a cut of any money it helps retailers recover.

Depending on the items condition, it might go back to the retailer to be sold again, returned to the vendor for a credit, sold to a liquidator or on a secondary market such as eBay, recycled or donated, Moore said.

For every consumer irritated that an ill-chosen holiday gift comes with a bonus trip to the post office, others, like Chicago resident Jackie Fegan, try to put it in perspective.

There was no line at the UPS Store on Tuesday morning when she arrived to send a smartwatch shed given her son for Christmas back to Amazon. A friend talked him into using the money to fund a college spring break trip, she said.

Had she bought it at a local store, the return still would have required a trip. The day before, shed spent 20 minutes in line at Target amid shoppers looking for post-Christmas deals.

This is so much easier, Fegan said.

Zumbach writes for the Chicago Tribune.

lzumbach@chicagotribune.com
Andrew Garfield holds a go-to spot in his mind when he needs to recover from, say, feeling like a cog in a corporate studio movie like The Amazing Spider-Man or spending more than a year immersed in the intellectual and spiritual demands required by Martin Scorseses powerful new film, Silence.

Big Sur is my favorite place in the world, one of those places that vibrates, Garfield says. I love the hiking and the walking and the Henry Miller Library. But I can just be there. I dont have to do anything. I can just sit.

I remember sitting in the hot springs at Esalen one night under the stars and somebody told me about the Esalen tribe, that theres about 70 of them left, and how they believe that Big Sur is the window of souls, meaning its where all souls travel to enter the other world. And when I heard that, I got a shiver. It felt true.

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Garfield is a young man who feels things. Deeply. During a leisurely conversation at a vegetarian Mexican restaurant in West Hollywood, the 33-year-old British actor speaks often of welling up. It happened recently, he says, at the first public screening of Silence when during a Q&A Scorsese recalled telling Pope Francis that Garfield spent so much time preparing to play a Jesuit priest that he could easily be ordained. (It just brought back the sincere feeling of Maybe I could do this, Garfield says. Hearing Marty say that opened something up in me.)

And it happened early this year when he watched Mel Gibson, who directed Garfield in the war drama Hacksaw Ridge, counter a jab from Ricky Gervais onstage at the Golden Globes. Responding to Gervais question about something he said while inebriated, Gibson said, I dont know. Ask the guy who said it. It wasnt me.

Thats a man seven years sober that knows himself and knows theres a demon there, Garfield says. I just burst into tears when he said that.

 Andrew Garfield talks about Desmond Doss, the conscientious objector he portrays in Hacksaw Ridge.

That kind of deep-seated empathy is plainly evident in Garfields work in both Hacksaw, in which he plays Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery in combat as a medic during World War II, as well as Silence. In Scorseses film, a gaunt Garfield portrays a priest grappling with a flagging faith while on a mission in 17th century feudal Japan.

Both roles, Garfield says, deal with men in touch with the self-sacrificing Jesus Christ archetype that lives within each of us. Preparing for Silence, Garfield communed with that symbol of Jesus by asking himself  and Jesus  probing questions while going through a 30-day structured retreat called the Spiritual Exercises. The meditative course had Garfield contemplating every aspect of Jesus life, from birth to resurrection, asking questions, waiting for answers, entering into conversation. Garfield filled up five journals with his findings. (The actor doesnt align himself with a particular faith.)

All the mystics know its all inside you, Garfield says. You go back to Rumi, its all there. Its what Cat Stevens is singing about. You look at [John] Lennon. Hes singing, I dont believe in Jesus, God, tarot  I just believe in me. Ive been fascinated with that.

Its worth noting here that Garfield went on to finish singing Lennons song, God, laughing with pleasure as he came to the couplet, Yoko and me / Thats reality. For all his earnest purposefulness  and theres more, well get to that  Garfield loves a good joke, particularly one at his own expense, and lists Judd Apatow as a director hed love to work with someday. (He has an actual list. Scorsese and Gibson were both on it.)

 Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, Ciaran Hinds and Liam Neeson star in Martin Scorseses Silence.

But hes also a big-picture guy whose favorite movie is Its a Wonderful Life, Frank Capras dark fable about disappointment, community and second chances. Its a film he watches this time every year  in a proper theater, mind you, usually the Everyman in Londons Hampstead neighborhood  because its story asks the one question Garfield regularly asks himself: How do you live a full life of joy within the hand youve been dealt?

Thats what I want to know, Garfield says. I want to know how to live.

Scorsese says Garfields searching nature was one primary reason he cast him for Silence. Any number of actors might have done well with the part. Maybe, Scorsese says. But Andrew brought a passion and a commitment to the role that makes it difficult for me to see anyone else doing it.

Gibson saw it too. The man inhabits the character in a way thats extraordinary and a way I never worked as an actor. Hes there all the time.

Garfield is currently in a very different professional head space, shooting the neo-noir crime thriller Under the Silver Lake with It Follows director David Robert Mitchell. He describes the Hollywood-set film as all shadow work, paranoia, fear, conspiracy, manipulation and poison.

Its, like, the opposite of La La Land, Garfield says, laughing. Its, like: If you have dreams, youre screwed.

But it does speak to that prevailing toxicity that is seeping in right now and numbing us all and making us lose our minds ever so slowly to the point where we elect a reality TV star to be the president, he adds.

That state of affairs, as described by Garfield, makes it easy to understand why he wanted to hold on to the feelings he had while making Silence and why he stopped off in Big Sur on the way home from making the movie in Taiwan and why, upon eventually returning to London, he took his mother on a walking poetry retreat in Englands Lake District.

There were a lot of things I needed to do to hold on to the stuff that I had been touched by while making Silence, Garfield says. Making that movie, there was something soothing about letting go of all things worldly, the commodification of everything, the cultural sickness were all in. Sometimes I get a glimpse back into that serenity of forsaking all things worldly in the service of your fellow man and some higher power. Its a very glorious place to inhabit for a period of time.

But the psyche needs balance, he adds, which is why Im hanging out with those darker impulses in David Robert Mitchells world. Its important for us to know all our selves. Otherwise we turn into the future president of the United States, wandering around unconscious and out of touch with his own soul.

glenn.whipp@latimes.com

Twitter: @glennwhipp

ALSO:

Silence is the movie Martin Scorsese has waited a lifetime to make

With the success of Hacksaw Ridge, is it time for Hollywood to get over Mel Gibsons past?

Andrew Garfield dedicates his Hacksaw Ridge nomination to Desmond Doss, the real-life veteran behind his character
Tall, handsome and well-spoken, the man looks as if he were designed in a lab, complete with rich baritone. That might be why he likes playing such total bastards onscreen.

Hopefully its not an example of art imitating life, says Armie Hammer, flashing a million-dollar smile in a lounge at the Soho House West Hollywood. After a run of good guys in big-budget studio movies (The Lone Ranger, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), he says he looked for more nimble indies to rev his acting motor. He estimates he shot seven projects in the year that produced Nocturnal Animals, in which he is a charming cad, and Birth of a Nation, in which his charms are not on display as a struggling, rotten-toothed slave owner.

 Watch the trailer for "The Birth of a Nation.

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When Hammer got the script for Birth, the Nat Turner slave revolt chronicle that repurposes the title of one of cinemas most revolutionary  and racist  cornerstone works, he was immediately intrigued.

By the way, if it was handed to me now, post-election, Id be saying, Theyre actually remaking Birth of a Nation!  Hammer laughs darkly over a Guinness. But I saw that script and said, This guys gonna stir up some ...! 

Hammer met with star/producer/co-writer/first-time director Nate Parker to measure the cut of his jib.

He radiated energy, this tenacity, he says of Parker. He is the dog in the fight that wont quit. Just to hear the narrative of how hed been working on this script for eight years  and his fire had not dimmed at all. I was, like, Dude, whatever youre doing, Im in. 

Hammer wasnt familiar with Turners bloody revolt.

Its a dangerous idea, and its also, by the way, an extremely American idea, rising against tyranny.

He burrowed into a character whose actions are flatly repugnant. The film doesnt excuse Sam Turners inhuman treatment of slaves. However, the hollow look in his eyes speaks to his desperation.

Sam Turner, in the 1830s, would have been raised by one of the most progressive families out there, says Hammer. They taught Nat to read, which was illegal. So he was raised to be a good person in probably as  a time as has existed in American history.

Sam owns Nat, he can make him do whatever he wants. He pimps out one of his slaves wives. But it starts out and hes a kid, playing with Nat  plantation owners kids and slave kids would play together. So thats how their relationship started, but it has the unfortunate timing of being in a socioeconomic and political system that polluted and corrupted everything it touched.

Whereas Hutton, he says, pivoting to the philandering husband in Tom Fords less bloody but somehow equally brutal Nocturnal Animals, grew up wealthy, accustomed to getting everything he wanted, whether it be going to this school, getting this girl, even a girl who was married and pregnant at the time. But as soon as he gets what he wants, hes bored. He has an insatiable appetite for the chase.

Despite his limited screen time, Huttons actions dont come out of nowhere. A cold kitchen scene with wife Susan (Amy Adams) depicts how empty their relationship has become.

There was little opportunity to put history between these characters, Hammer admits, but you go, I see how this marriage has grown into this loveless state. How does that weigh on someone if youve lived that for years?

Hammer is excited for the spring release of Free Fire, a chamber crime piece with humor in which he plays a touched vet on the edge of a shootout and co-starring Sharlto Copley and Brie Larson, and for the chance for his fried-but-sly character Ord to get out there. But its clearly Birth that lingers with him  and the people he meets.

The other day, coming through the airport in Dallas, I was going through the security line and there was this TSA guy, an older gentleman, as I walked by, he leaned over and said, Thank you. I said, For what? He said, I saw Birth of a Nation and I wanted to thank you for making that movie. It was an older African American gentleman. Thats worth more to me than anything else. Thats the great currency of making movies.

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Captain Fantastic protagonist Ben Cash lives off the grid, raising his six children in the woods at the highest standards of intellectual and physical training. Some might question his methods, or at least consider them extreme. But at the heart of Bens tutelage is critical thinking, and star Viggo Mortensen is down with that.

The kids are reading all kinds of books, comparing different interpretations of the same material, says the actor, whose accolades for the role include both Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations. For example, the father talks to them about every single religion he can think of, and atheism, agnosticism, every ism. Hes fine with each of his kids deciding to be whatever they want. But they need to be able to explain why.

 Viggo Mortenson stars in Captain Fantastic.

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And that is consistent with Mortensen, with whom just about any conversation becomes a deep dive. Hes well-informed and engaged. He has a track record of making artistic choices with integrity, whether in acting, music, photography, poetry or in founding the Perceval Press to bring forward artists he admires. He relates Bens iconoclastic lifestyle and eventual realization of his own need to change to basic questions of parenting and even civic participation.

I think its a matter of degree and being flexible, he says, urging people to turn the dial figuratively and literally, to force themselves to take in other views. Democracy, parenting, theyre not fixed things. Relationships. Theyre not fixed; its a process. We say, This is a democratic country. It is, as long as we work to keep it so, and progress and evolve.

Whoever played Ben Cash would have to pull off the daunting intellectual side of the part, as well as the demanding physical one, and convey a loving father figure. Check, check and check. Perhaps the roles essence, though, and how it might frame the great challenge of parenting, is the great challenge at the heart of acting: Active listening.

Its a lot harder to do what Ben does: Not to say, No, because I said so, but simply to say, No, I dont think so, and heres why. If you have a strong disagreement, Id like to hear why. In the end, Im your dad, but lets talk about it. That takes a lot of energy, says Mortensen, who has one adult son.

While Ben is engaging his children in a sincere, direct and open way, Mortensen is so engaging his young acting partners that the acting effectively disappears. Beneath the veneer of highfalutin intellectualism and the comedy of blunt honesty, the viewer responds to the truth of those connections. And when some of Bens choices lead to disastrous consequences, the nakedness of his devastation is painful to watch.

Mortensen says its entirely legitimate to wonder if the father is too honest sometimes, or too strict, too intense. But basically, I agree with him. A 7-year-old asks you about sex or death, give em an honest answer. Maybe you can modify a little, use different words, and still be honest with a 7-year-old. That doesnt mean its all wrong. The basic idea is good.

Mortensen is struck by audiences responses to the film, no matter where its shown.

What people are saying to us after screenings, whether its Ireland or Denmark or Spain or France, is My family  or The country  or I had an experience ! Sometimes theyll say with absolute certainty, Its obviously about this, and Ill be surprised. Matt [Ross, the films auteur], is it about that, do you think? It could be. But there has been uniformly passionate engagement with the movie. That doesnt happen all the time.

This is the man who was the foretold king in the Lord of the Rings films  which had their share of dedicated fans. With Captain Fantastic, hes talking about a level of engagement that feels deeply personal.

Several times, its won audience awards. The Seattle Film Festival goes on for a month and usually you get to show your movie several times. We got to show it once in the final days and we won the audience award. Thats happened in Europe at several places, the Rome Film Festival. Theres something to that.

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Queen Elizabeth II enjoyed an especially warm relationship with Prime Minister Winston Churchill. That admiration is mirrored in the bond between the actors who play those roles on the Netflix series The Crown.

Its a complete love affair. Im completely, completely in love with him. And Im not alone in that, says Claire Foy of costar John Lithgow. The caliber of actor he is, to watch him take on a role that was such a challenge, its a joy to watch someone doing that, to have an amazing time in a part.

Lithgow, the only Yankee in the cast, says of Foy, Her eyes tell it all. Boy, the cameras adore them. Shes also very smart, a canny actress. All that said, acting with her was hilarious and fun. Some of those scenes, we couldnt keep a straight face. Shes a quicksilver actress, the kind of person you just dream of acting with.

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Foy, Lithgow and the show have collected a slew of nominations from the SAG Awards, the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Television Awards, as well as an AFI honor.

The 32-year-old Foy is charged with playing one of the most famous women in the world during her first years as sovereign. New Yorker Lithgow, 71, has to embody one of the best-known, most quotable British heroes of the last century.

There was the idea that every British actor would be saying, here Foy takes on a Jolly Old English bray, What? An American playing Winston Ch-ar-chill? Well, lots of English people have been playing, you know, Abraham Lincoln. John never played a victim or a legend. He just played someone who was fighting to the end. He was playing a difficult man who was in his 80s who was frail but strong.

Lithgows portrayal of that particular lion in winter began with his spring.

What fascinated me most was Churchill as a young child, says the actor. He had a kind of Dickensian childhood. The neglect. And he was a terrible student. His whole life is a study in trying to overcome your feelings of inadequacy.

We know him as tremendously courageous and decisive. He was also depressive, maudlin, sentimental and he drank like a fish. The best quote I heard in that area was, Churchill was not an alcoholic. Because no alcoholic could drink that much. 

But Churchill was also one of the more formidable minds of his time, especially when it came to political machinations. Lithgow references a Crown episode dealing with a toxic fog that ravaged London in 1952, in which Churchills inaction contributes to a disaster that proves lethal to thousands. When the prime minister learns one of the victims is a pretty young subordinate of whom hed become fond, he rushes to the hospital to see her. Then it dawns on him just being there among the carnage could show the British people how much he cared, and he cannily calls for a news conference.

Hes racked with grief over the death of this beautiful young gal, Lithgow says. And yet, he instantly figures out how to turn it to his advantage politically, to turn his own sorrow into political gold.

Foys Elizabeth II is a contrast in just about every way. Born into the highest of privilege, greatness thrust upon her, yet limited by tradition and even her gender.

She wasnt educated the way girls are educated now, but to be honest, Id bet lots of girls werent, Foy says. She just had lessons in the constitution  as opposed to current affairs or politics. If she had been a prince, I think she would have been taught in absolutely everything.

Lithgow says Foy clearly had done so much homework, how events changed Elizabeth. Shes dealing with enormous grief [over the death of her father, the king]. At the same time, her husband has been incredibly emasculated, becoming the queens consort. And she has to learn how to be a queen at 25.

Shes capable of conveying all those different colors and shadows and feelings. I just watch it in amazement.

As reliable information about the actual Elizabeth is notoriously hard to come by, Foy says she takes what she gleans through research with a grain of salt.

I didnt know she was woken up every morning by bagpipes, she says with a delighted laugh. She is the head of the church; I think that was the thing I was most surprised about, how significant that was. There could be no divorced people in the family. There could be no divorced people on the grounds of the Windsor Racecourse if she were there.

Despite all the accolades, Foy says things havent really changed for her.

Definitely not in everyday life because nobody ever recognizes me, says the Manchester native, caring for her toddler son as she speaks by phone. But definitely on set just because people quite like to take the mick out of me  as I come through the door, they sort of part.

She laughs, then when asked about not being recognized, laughs again and says, People dont really look at each other in London. Also, you dont really expect to see the queen on the Underground.

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They were like her children.

Thats how Joe Maddalena, president and chief executive of Profiles in History, the Calabasas-based auction house, described Debbie Reynolds vast collection of Hollywood memorabilia amassed over a lifetime in the public eye.

Her decades-long devotion to preserving the magic and golden age of Hollywood, the industry that made her a star, starting with 1952s Singin in the Rain, wasnt as well known as her onscreen pursuits.

Maddalena met Reynolds, a fellow avid collector of Hollywood mementos, in the 1970s. In an interview with The Times on Thursday, he called Reynolds, who died Wednesday, a kindred spirit.

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There were very few of us who collected, Maddalena said. We were looked at as crazy people. There couldnt have been 20 or 30 of us.

Debbie Reynolds was the ultimate lover of Hollywood, Maddalena added. I dont know how many people in the industry had that passion she had. It lit her up. She had such joy in her eyes when she talked about these old movies and the people. It meant the world to her, and that was the thing that resonated the most to me.

Reynolds collection was emblematic of some of the most iconic moments in movie history. At one point, she owned such recognizable items as Marilyn Monroes white halter dress from 1955s The Seven Year Itch (cut to the famous scene of Monroe holding down her dress on the breezy subway grate), that black bowler hat that defined Charlie Chaplin and the lavish, flowing gold and emerald gown in 1934s Cleopatra.

In nearly 40 years, Reynolds acquired some 5,000 vintage costumes, props, cameras, letters and cars.

Debbie thought that Hollywood was a very important thing to preserve, Maddalena said. She on her own tried to save what was left of Hollywood.

Reynolds essentially grew up in film studios and spent much of her time in the wardrobe departments, enamored with the costumes and props that brought movies to life. When Reynolds learned that MGM planned to sell its entire collection in 1970, she was in shock.

She showed up to an auction and bought every costume for every personality that meant something to her, Maddalena said. When Fox and Paramount also began auctioning costumes and set pieces around the same time, Reynolds jumped at the opportunity to expand her holdings.

In an interview with The Times at her Beverly Hills home in 2012, Reynolds recalled how her collection had helped keep her afloat financially.

I still have a lot of my things, but I decided to become rich, and I had all of this that Id invested my money in, millions over the years, she said then. My collection was 50 years old. I sold my collection, but not everything. So I decided to pull some money out so that Carrie and [her brother] Todd and I could do whatever we wanted to do.

For decades, she tried in vain to enlist others in her preservation efforts. She even opened her own museum with her third husband, Richard Hamlett, in the 1980s. They bought the Paddlewheel Hotel in Las Vegas and transformed it into the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Hotel and Casino. But both the hotel and museum failed, leaving Reynolds at square one.

Her last attempt to display her vast collection was in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. According to Knox News, the Pigeon Forge Hollywood Motion Picture and Television Museum  in a steamboat-shaped building in the center of Belle Island  was expected to open in 2005.

But 2008s financial turmoil shelved those plans. The museum never opened, and Reynolds auctioned her prized possessions.

I remember when she finally decided to sell, and I would take something off the rack, and shed say, No, not that one, Maddalena said. Every costume had a story, every actor had a memory  people dont understand this was her life.

In a 2011 interview with The Times, Reynolds talked about the defeat she felt before one of her auctions. I am really sick and tired of it. I feel that I must call it a day now, the then-79-year-old said. Over the years, I have literally spent millions of dollars protecting it and taking care of it. If you were me, wouldnt you give up after 35 years?

Maddalena worked with Reynolds to sell her pieces, which ended up all over the world, to buyers in China, Macao and Dubai, likely bringing in close to $30 million.

I dont want to do any more, Reynolds said in the 2012 Times interview. I was going to do two more, but Im not going to do it. Theyre exhausting, theyre depleting and theyre depressing for me and too hard. It goes too deep.

But nowadays Hollywood is taking better care of its history. In 2015, the Los Angeles City Council approved the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, a $300-million museum that will celebrate the world of cinema, set to open in 2017.

The most important thing is that she wanted people to love this stuff, Maddalena said. The fact that at the end of the day these items of hers are still out there and theyre being celebrated, I think its something shes really proud of.

makeda.easter@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter @makedaeaster
Carrie Fisher on Princess Leia: Shes like a superhero

(Robert Carter / For The Times)

Actress and writer Carrie Fisher has died after suffering a cardiac episode during a flight from London to Los Angeles on Dec. 23. Prior to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Fisher spoke to The Times about the film, Princess Leia and her Star Wars legacy. Below is an excerpt from a story originally published on Dec. 4, 2015.

Fisher would know what it takes to make a lasting legacy in this franchise. The first few precious moments of A New Hope follow the angry revolutionary pulling together a contingency plan to smuggle spy documents off a spaceship. Unafraid of being taken hostage by the nefarious Empire, Princess Leia blasts the invading Imperial Stormtroopers. Leia shoots first.

In captivity, Leia proceeds to throw some truly galactic shade: Darth Vader, only you could be so bold, Gov. Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vaders leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board, and the classic, Arent you a little short for a Stormtrooper?

While Han Solo shirks responsibility and Luke Skywalker fumbles around with his evolving, boyish perception of the hero, Leia gets things done. When her own rescue goes awry, she grabs the blaster herself and finds a way out. Shes not just a princess but a radical fighting for freedom under a tyrannical empire.

She had contempt for and worked with men, and I liked that, Fisher says. There was something human about her. It showed that she could do whatever she needed to do, and if she could do that, then everybody could do it. People identified with her. Shes like a superhero.

Kennedy, who took over the reins for Lucas in 2012, agrees. When Princess Leia hit the scene in 1977 she was a pretty formidable character. I give George [Lucas] a huge amount of credit, she says. Leia really held her own. We used that as kind of a touchstone for why it was so important to have a strong female character and hopefully many more strong female characters in the Star Wars universe.

The new film reintroduces Leia 30 years after the war. Shes no longer a princess but a general. And shes still very much in command  still walking and talking, Fisher says. She doesnt have any mortal wounds or disease. But, she warns, things have happened that have been difficult.

Fisher was mum on the rest of her characters details but didnt mind sharing a moment of nostalgia she felt on the set of the new film:

Youre so self-conscious, youre exhausted before you get out of your trailer. I was in my trailer in the back and I heard Harrison. I recognized how his boots sound, and I heard him say, Is Carrie here? That was funny. That was like were back on Star Wars campus.

In response to this reporters surprise that the actress who brought to life Princess Leia  general of the new resistance  was self-conscious, Fisher let out a guffaw. I think everyone thinks the same way, only [some] people pretend better. Im going to do badly this time. I look like .... The new people are better. What am I going to do? My hair looks bad again.

Fisher may still get nervous, but that doesnt change her legacy. Nor did it stop her tenacious response about the recent kerfuffle over her characters notorious bikini. A frustrated father in Deptford, Pa., went viral in a Fox 29 report over a Target store selling Princess Leia action figure toys dressed in the divisive slave Leia ensemble (a metal two-piece the character was forced to wear while prisoner to character Jabba the Hutt). The man was perturbed it was being sold in the toy aisle and flustered over how he was going to explain the toys chain to his daughters.

How about telling his daughter that the character is wearing that outfit not because shes chosen to wear it. Shes been forced to wear it, Fisher advises. Shes a prisoner of a giant testicle who has a lot of saliva going on and she does not want to wear that thing and its ultimately that chain, which youre now indicating is some sort of accessory to S&M, that is used to kill the giant saliva testicle. Thats asinine.

Truly the contempt for the scruffy-looking nerf-herders of the world is very much alive and well in Fisher.

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Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds died on Wednesday at age 84. In 2012, she sat down with The Times to discuss her role in the Katherine Heigl comedy One for the Money, as well as on cornering the market for great dotty grandmothers alongside Shirley MacLaine and Betty White. This story originally ran in The Times on Jan. 12, 2012.

At 79, Debbie Reynolds is unsinkable. She returns to the big screen as dotty Grandma Mazur in the Katherine Heigl comedy One for the Money, opening Friday, and maintains a busy performing schedule. At her cozy Beverly Hills home, she talked about her famous family and historic Hollywood memorabilia collection, which she partly liquidated in two auctions last year.

Whos this?

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This is Dwight. This is Carries dog. Im the grandma. Im a grandma in every way. Im Grandma Mazur, Im Grandma Reynolds. I wont say Fisher. Ill just say Carries mother. Carries dog is a Coton de Tulear, which is a fancy name for a dog, just an adorable little dog. Carrie left for the Bahamas today with her daughter, Billie Catherine. So Grandma is left baby-sitting with this little dog that I love.

Debbie Reynolds with daughter Carrie Fishers dog, Dwight. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times )

I read that Billie inherited your talent for impressions.

Yes. I always call it an ear. Some people are gifted at the piano, violin, trombone. Nanette Fabray, my girlfriend, plays a saw. So it could be a gift for sawing. You have to have a certain sound you can hear that nobody else seems to hear. Carrie doesnt do impressions. She has a great voice. She has Eddie Fishers voice. See, I said his name. Carrie doesnt use her gift, her voice, yet. You dont know what her future will be.

Although I did see her one-woman show.

You heard her sing a little Happy Days Are Here Again. But you didnt really see her do a concert. I hope I live to see her do that, but because I want her to, she hasnt done it. We have a definite daughter-mother relationship, not a roller-skating relationship. Some people just join hands and glide around the ring. We dont do that.

You both have strong personalities. How could it not be that way?

Great love, great love, but theres usually quite a difference of opinion. Which is fun and exciting and Im looking forward to the day my daughter sings completely, where I really get to see her do a full act. Thats what Im looking forward to. If I live that long.

How can you tell she inherited her voice talent from her father and not from you?

I dont have a great voice. I have a good voice, a very good trained voice, 25, 30 years of training a voice so you know what songs you can sing and sing them well. Ive been performing now for 63 years, so I know what Im best at doing, whereas Carrie hasnt done that yet. She does a harder job at doing a stand-up, one-woman comedy show. Thats harder to do than anything. Her talent is writing. Shes intellectual but not snotty. Shes really quite diversified and loves to travel. She wants to see the world, the round world, not just Pasadena. I used to take the bus to Glendale for 25 cents and thought that was an extraordinary trip, but we were a poor family. She was born differently and always had the good fortune to be able to travel.

But you still travel for work. How much do you travel?

Until this year, 42 weeks a year. I was in England 17 weeks [last year], and we did a bus-and-truck tour, where you take the bus, you do a show, you take the bus to the next place, you do a show, all over England.

You already have four engagements in March.

March we have four. April is my 80th birthday, and in April I have two engagements, and then Im going to take two weeks off. Theres a place I like very much to go back to. Its off Florida; its Paradise Island.

Thats the Bahamas.

Well, thats where Carrie went. She should have asked me if Id like to go. My favorite place. I probably will go there, and Ill invite her to go, and shell say, No, Ive been there, Mother, and Im going to China. I predict that answer.

I imagine you know each other pretty well by now.

I dont think at all. As adults? I dont think you can predict a manic-depressive, bipolar person. I find it an everyday experience, you never really know whats going to happen. So its kind of interesting. Its like learning to do impressions; you play it by ear. Life should be like that anyway.

Doesnt medication make it more predictable?

Controllable, not predictable. Controllable, livable, possible, which is very important. But not predictable. Some personalities are like that. The reason I did Grandma Mazur in the picture is because I thought she was very funny like that  unpredictable. I felt she was someone I could easily understand and easily play. It was fun to do. I just knew who she was.

Shes not the lead, shes a small part, but shes the head of the mafia, in my opinion, so I treated her like that. I dont want a big part. I dont have the love nor the desire, you have to have a passion for your work. Thats not my passion, to play a long, tedious memorization. My whole life was spent all day in the dark on a set. I did that for 27 years.

1 / 15 Actress Debbie Reynolds poses for a portrait in Beverly Hills on May 21, 2013. (Chris Pizzello / Associated Press) 2 / 15 A detail of the poster for Stanley Donens Singin in the Rain, featuring Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds. (Movie Poster Image Art / Getty Images) 3 / 15 Actress Debbie Reynolds posing for a portrait in New York. (Richard Drew / Associated Press) 4 / 15 In this March 6, 1959, photo, actress Debbie Reynolds boards an airliner in New York en route to Spain, where she would film a new movie. (John Rooney / Associated Press) 5 / 15 Debbie Reynolds in 1960, wearing a black sweater top and a pearl necklace. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images) 6 / 15 Actress Debbie Reynolds photographed in 1959. (HO / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 15 Actress Debbie Reynolds appears at Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremonies in Los Angeles. (Wally Fong / Associated Press) 8 / 15 Actress Debbie Reynolds shows $13,900 in U.S. bonds given to her by acting County Clerk W. G. Sharp. in 1953. (Larry Sharkey / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 15 Carrie, 3, gives mother Debbie Reynolds a hug after her afternoon nap in their West Los Angeles home. (Ray Graham / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 15 Debbie Reynolds in one of the storage rooms where clothes from 41 years in show business were kept in 1988. (Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 15 Debbie Reynolds star along the 7000 block of Hollywood Boulevard. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 15 Debbie Reynolds appears on the red carpet before the 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, where she received a Lifetime Achievement Award, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on January 25, 2015. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 15 Debbie Reynolds placing her hand prints in the wet cement at Graumans Chinese Theatre in Hollywood in 1965. (Bruce H. Cox / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 15 Debbie Reynolds, who will receive the Screen Actors Guilds Life Achievement Award, is seen photographed at her Los Angeles home in 2012. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 15 Carrie Fisher, right, presents her mother, Debbie Reynolds, with the Life Achievement Award at the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Jan. 25, 2015. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Youve practically cornered the market on great dotty grandmothers.

Not really. Shirley MacLaine, I would say, has that market. After Shirley, me, and Betty White was always in television but now shes gone into film, so now youd put Betty White first, but as an actress Shirley MacLaine is of course a very fine character actress. Shirley is one hell of an actress.

I get the sense that youre having more fun now.

I havent had a lot of time until I decided to auction off my memorabilia, which you see, my red slippers. I still have a lot of my things but I decided to become rich, and I had all of this that Id invested my money in, millions over the years. Over 40 years. My collection was 50 years old. I sold my collection, but not everything. So I decided to pull some money out so that Carrie and [her brother] Todd and I could do whatever we wanted to do.

[Reynolds campaign to found a Hollywood memorabilia museum is] interrupted now, and now the fun of it is hurt. Now Im hurt. So I wont do it. Ill just sell. I cant accomplish the museum. The dream could not be fulfilled. Therefore you must move along, catch another train and go down another track.

What were the prize pieces of the collection for you?

It was the whole collection that was the prize, the fact that it was all in one and that from every picture I had every costume and I had all Academy Award-winning films. So of course the subway dress [Marilyn Monroe wore over a grate in The Seven Year Itch], I had 18 Marilyn Monroe costumes. I bought Grace Kelly, ladies I knew like Garbo lasts forever, Katharine Hepburn. I had all three sequences in films of Little Women. I had all three Mutiny on the Bountys, from Clark Gable and Charles Laughton on to the latest one with Mel Gibson. So I had history.

When is your next auction?

I dont want to do any more. I was going to do two more, but Im not going to do it. Theyre exhausting, theyre depleting and theyre depressing for me and too hard. It goes too deep.

Any more husbands in the offing?

I never like the word never. No, it is not in the plans. Husbands, no. Marriage, no. Would I want a companion? Possibly. Friendship? Of course. But not permanent, because I really like my space. Its especially peaceful since the auction. They were like my children, so I had these thousands of stars to take care of. My life is much more peaceful, calm, less worrisome.

calendar@latimes.com

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Less than two years ago, I sang a duet with Debbie Reynolds.

Then 82, Reynolds was about to receive the Screen Actors Guilds Lifetime Achievement Award but she was only doing minimal press; I joined her in the cozy home on daughter Carrie Fishers property where Reynolds lived for years. She was noticeably frail that cold, rainy afternoon; she had been ill during the past few months and she confided in her typical candid fashion that only one of her kidneys was working.

Still, Hollywoods famous girl-next-door was as upbeat and indefatigable as ever, sipping a cup of tea on a sofa, her devoted Coton de Tulear dog Dwight next to her. While discussing Singin in the Rain, she started to croon Moses Supposes. Its a funny song, one I knew well, and I could not resist joining in.

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So there I was were in Carrie Fishers guest house, singing a duet with Debbie Reynolds. Heaven.

Her blue eyes sparkled when we finished, just as mine filled with tears Wednesday when, having just written a piece in the wake of Fishers death, I learned of Debbies.

Almost unimaginably, she had collapsed while planning her daughters funeral.

Mother and daughter, Old Hollywood and new, both teenage stars of iconic films, their lives perpetually, inextricably entwined on stage, film, memoir, were now linked too in death.

The stuff of legend indeed.

Two decades ago, when Reynolds accepted another Lifetime Achievement Award (this time from ABCs American Comedy Awards) she brought the house down by referring to her ill-fated marriage to crooner Eddie Fisher as Oh, my faux pas  a spoof on Fishers hit tune, Oh My Papa.

Reynolds didnt write that speech, Fisher did; Eddie, of course, was her father.

Along with younger brother Todd, Carrie Fisher was the child of Hollywood royalty, photographed and cooed over by Hollywood and Reynolds adoring fans, especially after Eddie famously left Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor after her husband Mike Todd died. The two couples had been friends and when Todd was killed, Eddie rushed to her side, Fisher explained in her one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, adding dryly: Gradually moving it to her front.

As immortalized in the film version of Fishers novel Postcards From the Edge, Carrie and Debbie were proof of the strange yet devoted attraction of opposites. Even after all those years, Reynolds had stars in her eyes about Hollywood, while Fisher, true intergalactic princess, shook off the stardust and told the truth, writing about her battle with substance abuse and mental illness with perception, dry wit and brazen honesty.

I come from a long line of short, potent broads who render their mates sort of obsolete, Fisher told me in a 1995 interview. My parents whole relationship was basically a press release.

Still, Fisher became an actress because it was in the family business.

My mother put me in a nightclub act, in effect, to be with her, Fisher noted. She was not having a good time at the time. It was a way of keeping the family together. I was 13 and did her nightclub act in Vegas and Reno. Then I acted in the chorus [on Broadway] when I was 15. How do you walk away from something that you can do OK, that is sort of fiscally attractive? Theres a lot of drama about it and your mother can give you advice forever.

Especially when she lives in your guest house.

Just like her daughter, Reynolds had more than her share of struggles including two marriages that left her in horrible financial shape. But she too was a fighter.

I first interviewed Reynolds in 2011 at the Paley Center where she was auctioning off part of her famous collection of Hollywood memorabilia. Nearly 600 items of the 5,000-plus vintage costumes, props, cameras, letters and even cars she had acquired over four decades in hopes of opening a permanent museum, were being sold to meet her debts.

Though it must have been devastating, Reynolds was strong as an ox. She walked through rooms filled with such items as Marilyn Monroes white subway dress from The Seven Year Itch, a lock of Mary Pickfords hair and gowns from The Unsinkable Molly Brown as if she couldnt wait to get rid of the stuff.

And although she did not show it as often, Reynolds shared her daughters wicked sense of humor  she gave Fred Astaire a jeweled jockstrap after starring with him in 1961s The Pleasure of His Company.

He only had a little dance at the wedding, she recalled on that rainy day, offering me a plate of chocolate chip cookies. He said to me, You dont worry about dancing. Just relax and let me lead you. Let me guide you. I just floated around the table. We didnt make one mistake, at least not that I remember.

So she gave him the jockstrap as a thank you present.

It is very precocious and sounds fresh and smart aleck, but I meant it as a lovely, funny gesture, she said. He laughed for an hour.

Reynolds hadnt been the first choice for what became her iconic role in Unsinkable Molly Brown. Director Charles Walters wanted Shirley MacLaine, but contractual issues prevented MacLaine from taking the part.

Walters said, You are totally wrong for the part. I said, No, Im not. I am exactly right for the part.

Which even Walters finally admitted was true. (Ironically, MacLaine would play the Reynolds part in Postcards From the Edge.)

You have to believe in yourself, Reynolds said. I remember Gene Kelly yelling at me Smile! while Im dancing. Smile one more time. You become a workhorse.

A workhorse who had just recently finished another film, a documentary called Bright Lights, about her life with Fisher.

Mother and daughter together in their shared final work.

If my life wasnt funny it would just be true, Fisher said in Wishful Drinking, and even in the shock of such an unprecedented double death, its easy to hear them laughing somewhere, two short, potent broads who, together, rendered so many things obsolete.

Shortly after Reynolds death was announced Wednesday I got a text from the publicist who was at the interview that day.

Thinking of you as I learned of Debbie Reynolds passing and the sweet moment when you sang together in her living room.

Ill never forget that day. And well never forget Reynolds.
Movie recommendations from critics Kenneth Turan, Justin Chang and other reviewers. Click title for full review.

Arrival Amy Adams stars in this elegant, involving science-fiction drama that is simultaneously old and new, revisiting many alien-invasion conventions but with unexpected intelligence, visual style and heart. (Kenneth Turan) PG-13.

The Eagle Huntress A portrait of a 13-year-old Kazakh girl from Mongolia who defies eons of tradition by learning to hunt with fierce golden eagles is a documentary so satisfying it makes you feel good about feeling good. (Kenneth Turan) G.

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The Edge of Seventeen Hailee Steinfeld gives a superb performance as a high-school misfit in Kelly Fremon Craigs disarmingly smart teen dramedy, the rare coming-of-age picture that feels less like a retread than a renewal. (Justin Chang) R.

Elle Paul Verhoevens brilliantly booby-trapped thriller starring Isabelle Huppert is a gripping whodunit, a tour de force of psychological suspense and a wickedly droll comedy of manners. (Justin Chang) R.

The Handmaiden The most absorbing feature in years from South Korean director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) is a teasingly witty and elegant puzzle-box of a thriller about two women (played by Kim Tae-ri and Kim Min-hee) pursuing their destinies in 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea. (Justin Chang) NR.

Jackie Star Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy and director Pablo Larrain brilliantly pull back the curtain on one of the most public of private lives. (Kenneth Turan) R.

La La Land Starring a well-paired Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, writer-director Damien Chazelles tuneful tribute to classic movie musicals is often stronger in concept than execution, but its lovely and transporting all the same. (Justin Chang) PG-13.

Loving Beautifully acted by Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton, this involving, socially conscious Jeff Nichols drama shows the personal lives of the interracial couple whose marriage led to the 1967 Supreme Court ruling that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional. (Kenneth Turan) PG-13.

Manchester by the Sea Powerful, emotional filmmaking that leaves a scar, Kenneth Lonergans drama starring Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams is both heartbreaking and heartening, a film that just wallops you with its honesty, its authenticity and its access to despair. (Kenneth Turan) R.

Moonlight Superb filmmaking and an exceptional level of emotional honesty universalizes a very specific coming-of-age experience, that of a gay black man growing from child to adult starting in 1980s Miamis crack cocaine epidemic years. (Kenneth Turan) R.

Neruda Pablo Larrains intoxicating puzzle of a movie is less a straightforward biopic of the great Chilean poet (played by Luis Gnecco) than a rigorous and imaginative investigation of his inner world. (Justin Chang) R.

Paterson Jim Jarmuschs wonderfully serene and beguiling movie is a portrait of a young artist refining his craft, drawing impressions from his everyday existence and coaxing them into a pleasing and provocative shape. (Justin Chang) R.

Silence Martin Scorseses wrenching adaptation of Shusaku Endos 1966 novel, about 17th century Portuguese priests experiencing a crisis of faith in feudal Japan, ponders the dogmas and mysteries of Christian faith with astonishing rigor and seriousness. (Justin Chang) R.

Toni Erdmann Sandra Huller and Peter Simonischek give splendid performances as a high-strung businesswoman and her screw-loose dad in this magnificently unpredictable comedy from the German writer-director Maren Ade. (Justin Chang) R.

Things to Come The great Isabelle Huppert and director Mia Hansen-Love combine for a film about a woman newly on her own. Its quiet satisfactions very much sneak up on you. (Kenneth Turan) PG-13.

20th Century Women Mike Mills lovingly fictionalized snapshot of his late-1970s adolescence belongs to Annette Bening and her marvelously suggestive and layered performance. (Justin Chang) R.

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour 
King and I gets the royal treatment

I saw The King and I at the Pantages Theatre last night and then read F. Kathleen Foleys review the next morning [King and I retains stirring power, Dec. 21]. Her review was spot on and captured the essence of the production very well. I encourage anyone who appreciates Rodgers and Hammerstein as well as those not familiar with them to see this production while its here for a few more weeks. A lifelong fan of Rodgers music and Hammersteins lyrics, I am moved to tears whenever I see and hear their work performed. This cast is uniformly outstanding and successfully conveys the profound truths in the songs. For reasons I dont completely understand, I am moved by Rodgers and Hammerstein (and others of their generation) in ways that go far beyond anything that has come to the Broadway stage since their time (I have not seen Hamilton, and I understand that might change my opinion).

Richard Seligman

Encino

::

As a longtime theater fan, I was thrilled to attend The King and I recently. Our group  three generations of family  thoroughly enjoyed it. However, when I read the review I was astounded. How can one review a musical without even a mention of the music? Yes, the acting, staging, choreography and lighting were brilliant but the orchestra brought it all to life and deserves to be recognized. Bravo to this top-notch group of musicians!

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Liz Kinnon

Culver City

Netflixs brand is diversity

Yes, Netflix has become an eclectic sprawl, and I say thumbs up [Netflix Is Evolving Into ... What, Exactly?, Dec. 22] The only people who obsess about a networks brand are those who write about television. Meredith Blake, for instance, appears troubled that Netflix doesnt even have a slogan. In the last two weeks, Ive sped past less worthy Netflix fare and streamed arresting series from Norway, Belgium and Canada, the last of these (Sensitive Skin) a work of supple charm, wit and nuance. In other words, the Netflix brand is diversity, whose benefits Meredith for some reason seems to question.

Howard Rosenberg

Agoura Hills

Shakespeare still resonates today

Technology changes from smoke signals to the telegraph to the telephone to texting and on and on. What remains constant, however, in all its contours and inconsistencies, is the human psyche. Great dramatists  with Shakespeare at the top of that list  provide the emotional through-line connecting the effect of times past with the emotion of the hear and now. As Charles McNulty so beautifully articulates [A Rich Banquet of Productions Honoring Bard, Dec. 26], well-performed stagings of Shakespeares plays still have the potential to light our way through the ever-murky present.

Ben Miles

Huntington Beach

::

Charles McNulty notes that 2016 was the year of Donald Trump, who could no doubt hold his own in one of Shakespeares ruthless history plays.

OK, we finally figured out you dont like Trump. Give it a rest unless it relates to politics.

David Goodwin

Los Angeles

Viola Davis deserves Oscar

Just wanted to say a big thank you for the wonderful interview with Viola Davis [Act of Courage, [Dec. 25]. I loved Fences, and lets just hand Viola the Oscar right now.

Nancy Beverly

Sherman Oaks

First lady gives low farewell

Regarding A political force in or out of office [Dec. 21]: Whether the Oprah Winfrey interview of Michelle Obama was shown live or taped previously, Obamas offensive statement, Now were feeling what not having hope feels like, does not speak more broadly to the tense geopolitical climate, heightened by fresh terrors Monday in Berlin and Ankara, Turkey as Meredith Blake suggests in her attempts to soften the insulting statement. Foremost, it most definitely was, as Blake also said, a critique of Trump. It is entirely possible that Obama has also forgotten her previous mantra  When they go low, we go high. She went low, as does this and many major city newspapers who report with such bias.

Jan Wader

Pasadena

::

As disingenuously laughable as Meredith Blakes attempt to spin the comment is, Michelle Obamas comment about not having hope is the Obama family conceit that whether America has hope is all about them and tragically vanished when Hillary Clinton did not win a third Obama term.

Kip Dellinger

Santa Monica
Relatives of a teenager killed by a hit-and-run driver near Canyon Country on Monday say the girl had been missing since September but recently promised to return home.

Desiree Lawson, 15, was struck and killed by a vehicle about 8:40 p.m. in the 27500 block of Sierra Highway just south of Soledad Canyon Road, said Sgt. Scott Shoemaker, traffic supervisor of the Los Angeles County sheriffs Santa Clarita Station, which is investigating the incident.

No one has been arrested in connection with the girls death, Shoemaker said Thursday. Authorities received calls saying a man was seen walking with or near Desiree around the time she was hit, but officials have been unable to locate that person, Shoemaker said. Detectives do not have any information about the hit-and-run driver or vehicle, he said.

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She was very loving, very protective of her family and her sisters. She was extremely intelligent and beautiful. She had a gift for being with children, said Claire Wickhorst, the dead girls mother.

Wickhorst said Desiree, who had five siblings, was extremely willing to help others, yet hard on herself. The girl, who turned 15 on Dec. 5, had had brushes with the law  nothing serious, Wickhorst said  and disappeared from home several times.

Each time she left however, she always called home, said she was safe and that she loved her family. She had vowed to return soon, her mother said.

One time, Desiree asked her mother to pick her up at a local 7-Eleven, but didnt show. Wickhorst said ever since, the stores clerk has held onto Desirees picture and Wickhorsts phone number in case she turned up again.

The clerk never called.

[Desiree] wanted to be a social worker. She had good grades. She was a cheerleader, said Wendy Harvey, a cousin of the girls mother. She comes from a good family. Its not like we didnt offer her any means. She comes from an educated family.

Desirees family lives in Sylmar, a dozen miles from where she was struck. The last school grade she completed was seventh, her mother said.

Harvey said Desiree was testing her independence.

Its really sad that she was taken before she really had a chance to show the family she would turn her life around, Harvey said. Her family has set up a GoFundMe site to help with funeral costs.

There are no street lights in the area where Desiree was walking, a dark section of the northbound lanes of Sierra Highway not near any intersections or crosswalks, Shoemaker said. Officials are trying to gather any security footage that might exist of the incident, the sergeant added. There are businesses and residences in the area.

Desiree had been missing since September, according to the West Los Angeles station of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Santa Clarita sheriffs station at (661) 255-1121 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-TIPS or lacrimestoppers.org.

maya.lau@latimes.com

Twitter: @mayalau

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UPDATES:

2:30 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from the girls mother.

This article was originally published at 9:40 a.m.
An incident in which a man was struck and killed by a Gold Line train near the Arcadia station early Thursday is being investigated as a suicide, officials say.

The incident occurred just after midnight and prompted closure of the tracks for several hours. Ramon Montenegro, a public information officer with the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Departments Transit Policing Division, said the call originally came in as a pedestrian who was hit by a train.

Deputies, along with the Arcadia Police Department, responded, and paramedics pronounced the man dead at the scene. The Sheriffs Department Homicide Bureau is now handling the case and Det. Louie Aguilera said they were investigating the death as a suicide.

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A shuttle bus ferried passengers between the Monrovia and Sierra Madre stations until the tracks were reopened about 5:15 a.m., Montenegro said.

nicole.santacruz@latimes.com

For more crime news, follow @nicolesantacruz on Twitter.
A woman who was shot to death while standing on a street corner in Highland Park on Wednesday afternoon was identified by the Los Angeles County coroners office Thursday as 23-year-old Jessica Andrea Rocha.

Rocha was standing near North Avenue 56 and Monte Vista Street shortly before 11 a.m. when a person walked up and shot her, according to the coroners office and Det. Martee Miyakawa with the Los Angeles Police Departments Northeast Division.

Rocha was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead, said Ed Winter, assistant chief of investigations for the Los Angeles County coroners office. An autopsy was pending, Winter said.

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Police believe that there may have been a short conversation between Rocha and her assailant before she was shot, but its unknown what was said.

Witnesses told police that two people ran away toward train tracks in the area, Miyakawa said.

The woman was a former resident of the neighborhood, Miyakawa said.

Police believe the victim had gang ties and thats why she was shot.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Northeast Division detectives desk at (323) 561-3421. Those who wish to remain anonymous can call Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-8477.

nicole.santacruz@latimes.com

For more crime news, follow @nicolesantacruz on Twitter.
A woman accused of going on a cross-country rampage against the fur industry reached a new plea deal with prosecutors this week  six months after a federal judge in San Diego rejected her initial plea agreement.

Nicole Kissane pleaded guilty Tuesday to a charge of conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, admitting to damaging the operation of an animal enterprise and freeing minks from farms across the country, causing more than $100,000 in damage.

She also admitted to vandalizing the Furs by Graf store in San Diegos Kearny Mesa neighborhood on July 14, 2013, as well as the La Mesa and Spring Valley homes of the business owner and the owners parents, according to the plea agreement.

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Kissane had pleaded guilty in February at the same time as her co-defendant, Joseph Buddenberg. Their plea agreements were unusual in that they were binding, meaning that rather than allow the judge to set the sentence, the judge had to accept or reject the specific sentence spelled out in the plea agreement.

Buddenberg was sentenced in May to two years in prison, as agreed upon in the plea deal.

When it came time to sentence Kissane in June, U.S. District Judge Larry Burns scoffed at the term in the plea deal  six months  saying the punishment didnt seem in the interest of justice.

I dont want my name on this, Burns said. He called the crime a campaign of terror against an industry that goes multi-state, involves great planning and coordination by the defendants.

The prosecution and the defense said they arrived at the agreement because Kissane played a smaller role in the rampage than Buddenberg. They accused Buddenberg of dominating Kissane and leading her into trouble.

The two had met at a lawful animal-rights protest and moved to Portland, Ore., together in 2012, according to Kissanes defense team.

Burns said he didnt hear any of that evidence when he sentenced Buddenberg and told the lawyers in June that he felt he made a mistake in sentencing him to a low-end term.

In the new agreement, which is not binding, the sentence will be left up to Burns. Prosecutors are expected to recommend 18 months, while the defense will argue for 15 months. Sentencing has been set for Jan. 17.

Kissane also has agreed to pay $423,477 in restitution, to be shared by Buddenberg. The amount includes damages to paid to the Grafs and several mink farms.

The pair were accused of traveling about 40,000 miles, freeing thousands of minks from farms and targeting others they felt were sympathetic to the fur industry. The damage to the Furs by Graf store included spray-painting the words killer and murder on the building, etching its windows and spraying acid into the shop, according to court records.

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Davis writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune

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Political donations flow as Rick Caruso seeks approval for a 20-story tower near the Beverly Center

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Patty Davila said there was a lot riding on her Christmas dinner, including pride.

She didnt cook often, and in the past she and her sisters made pozole and tamales together. This year Davila, 52, of Santa Fe Springs, decided to go solo and make the tamales on her own.

She cooked her meat in garlic and salt and made her chile pasilla sauce. Then she scooped the prepared masa and other ingredients into corn husks before cooking them in her new pot.

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But when she checked on the tamales, Davila said, they were jelly-like. They were falling apart.

Was it the pot? she wondered. Or maybe it was the corn leaves. I left them in the water too long?

The centerpiece of her Christmas meal ended up being fried chicken and nachos.

Who has nachos on Christmas? Davila said. You can imagine everybody was making fun of me. I felt stupid.

The case of the funky Christmas tamales continued Wednesday as Davila and dozens of Amapola Deli and Market customers in Downey returned once again for refunds on a supply of bad masa.

More than 300 customers lined up at the well-known market  some holding bags of the ground cornmeal  to collect refunds after the grocer ran out of cash on Monday.

Among the crowd was Virginia Olivarez, 62, who drove from Santa Ana that morning with a bad batch of tamales she made using the stores masa.

They said they were going to make this refund process easier, she said. That doesnt appear to be the case.

An aluminum pan full of ruined tamales outside Amapola Deli and Market in Downey. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times )

Olivarez, who had been standing in line since 8 a.m., said she spent about $146 on masa and other ingredients.

Olivarez said she came with a copy of her bank statement as proof of purchase, which was one of several ways to obtain a refund.

Olivarez said she has been purchasing masa at Amapola for four years and never had a problem until this year.

She said she purchased her masa on Dec. 24 and began cooking her tamales that day around 1 p.m. By 1 a.m. Christmas Day, the tamales didnt look like they had been cooked.

She said her daughter tried one and spit the tamale back out.

We ended up eating nothing that day, she said. Christmas dinner was ruined.

She drove to the store Monday after learning of the bad batch of masa but couldnt get a refund. She returned Wednesday hoping for better luck.

Im frustrated. Were all frustrated here, Olivarez said.

Hundreds of people line up outside Amapola Deli and Market in Downey looking to receive refunds for bad masa they had purchased. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times )

Davila said she received a text message from her sister telling her that it wasnt her fault that her tamales turned out terrible, because the store had sold bad masa.

I never thought it was the masa. It never crossed my mind, Davila said. Ive been buying masa here for 10 to 12 years and Ive never had a problem. For 50 years this place is known for making the best masa; it has the best flavor  you just cant go wrong.

Davila said she was seeking a $105 refund.

In line, person after person said they second-guessed themselves first before they even considered that the masa was bad.

Mayra Florez, 32, of Downey, has been making tamales for most of her life. She used to make them with her mother and then with her family. But the tamale fiasco ended up making her doubt her cooking skills. She spent long hours cooking the tamales as she hosted dinner at her home for the first time, but they looked as if they hadnt been cooked.

She said her guests kept passing up on eating the tamales. Her confidence as a cook took a blow.

Maybe I just cant make tamales, she said. I thought, Did I add too much water to the chili? Maybe there were too many tamales in one pot? 

She switched the tamales from larger pots to smaller ones but the result was the same: bad tamales. She said her mother in-law also had the same problem.

When she learned through Facebook that the store had sold bad masa, she felt a sense of relief. She lined up to get more than $100 refunded.

Delfina Garcia, 52, of Pico Rivera, said she found herself blaming her mother at first.

I told my mom she put too much water in the pot, she said.

She said her elderly mother felt terrible about the bad batch of tamales and spent most of the night in the bedroom.

The next day she felt relief when Garcia told her it wasnt her but the masa that was the problem.

Luis Alvarado, a spokesman for Amapola, said the market was established in 1961 and had never encountered this problem before.

He said the family that owns the market has been doing the right thing from the start, giving refunds to people who purchased the bad product. He said they are cooperating with Los Angeles County health inspectors and the national vendor who supplied the corn.

L.A. County health officials said three complaints were made against the market related to the masa incident.

Alvarado said all four Amapola stores were affected by the bad masa, but the Downey and South L.A. stores had the most customer complaints.

Alvarado said theyre giving instant refunds to anyone who purchased masa on Dec. 23 and Dec. 24. Additionally, they will refund up to $100 for the other ingredients used in making the tamales.

We are working as expediently as humanly possible to make sure those claims are processed in the next 7 to 10 days, Alvarado said. We understand the frustration, and we know that ... people expect high quality products for their seasonal festivities.

While some customers said they dont plan to come back, that wont be the case for Garcia. She said that while Christmas dinner was ruined, it didnt spoil the festivities that evening. They had nachos and pizza.

There were no tamales, but there was plenty of tequila and nachos, she said.

Click here for a Spanish version of this story

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UPDATES:

5:05 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from more people seeking refunds for bad masa.

This article was originally published at 3:35 p.m.
Confined to a California prison since 1971, former Manson family member and convicted murderer Patricia Krenwinkel is now the longest-serving female inmate in the states correctional system.

On Thursday, the 69-year-old will have a chance at freedom when a review board considers whether to recommend her for parole.

Krenwinkel was sent to death row after a Los Angeles jury convicted her of killing actress Sharon Tate and six others in a two-day rampage intended to trigger a race war. The killings were done at the behest of Charles Manson, leader of a cult-like group living on an old movie ranch near Chatsworth.

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But after the states highest court in 1972 ruled the death penalty unconstitutional, Krenwinkels sentence  along with those of other Manson family members  was commuted to life in prison.

The hearing at the womens state prison in Corona will be Krenwinkels 15th appearance before the board. At her last, in 2011, the panel recognized Krenwinkels efforts, commending her for a clean disciplinary record, having earned a bachelors degree and her work training service dogs and counseling fellow inmates.

But Commissioner Susan Melanson said the barbarity of the crimes  coupled with Krenwinkels failure to fully grasp the global impact of the Manson killings  warranted more time behind bars.

This crime remains relevant, Melanson said. The public is in fear. And that just is a fact of the crime and the consequences of the crime.

Krenwinkels attorney, Keith Wattley, said he was hopeful that this time around, the two-member panel would recognize his clients commitment to examining her offenses and reforming her behavior. He noted that Krenwinkel consistently has been viewed by medical professionals as posing no danger to society.

With this case, up to now, its been the clearest example of the way in which public outcry can completely eviscerate and override someones constitutional rights, Wattley said. Some might say, well she committed a serious crime like that  youve given up your right to fair treatment. Well, thats not how the law works.

At her last hearing, Krenwinkel said she had made preparations to leave the structured environment of prison. She said she hoped to move out of California and legally change her name.

She also opted not to discuss the crime, but did acknowledge how she had changed once she met Manson. Looking back, she said, he presented himself as a messiah to whom she surrendered her spiritual being.

I became a monster, she said. I gave up all that was good and accepted all that was bad and allowed that to be me.

Behind bars, she said, she lives with guilt, grief and shame.

Im just haunted each and every day by the unending suffering my participation in murders caused, she said. Im so ashamed of my actions. I am ever aware that the victims who perished had so much life yet to live.

On Aug. 9, 1969, Krenwinkel joined the band of Manson acolytes who stormed the Benedict Canyon home shared by pregnant actress Tate, 26, and her movie director husband, Roman Polanski. Tate and four others were stabbed and shot. Krenwinkel testified to chasing coffee heiress Abigail Folger with a raised knife and stabbing her 28 times.

The next night, Krenwinkel and others killed Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, at their Los Feliz home. Krenwinkel and fellow family member Leslie Van Houten held down Rosemary LaBianca as Charles Tex Watson stabbed Leno LaBianca.

Both homes had walls smeared with blood, and Krenwinkel used blood to scrawl Death to Pigs. She later testified at trial that her hand throbbed from stabbing one of the victims so many times.

Prosecutors long have fought against her release.

Youre talking about the brutal slaughter, mutilation of innocent people for no reason, Deputy Dist. Atty. Patrick Sequeira said. But beyond the horror of that alone is also the larger horror, that it was designed to start a race war, to cause even more violence.  This is really an act of domestic terrorism.

Im so ashamed of my actions. I am ever aware that the victims who perished had so much life yet to live.  Patricia Krenwinkel

Parole commissioners also have cited public opposition, expressed in letters from across the country. Among the chief opponents of Krenwinkels release is Debra Tate, the younger sister of Sharon Tate, who often attends parole hearings for Manson family members.

Society cannot allow this serial killer who committed such horrible, gruesome, random killings back out, Tate wrote in an online petition that has garnered more than 95,000 supporters.

Krenwinkels hearing is the last in a year that saw several Manson family members go before the parole board.

Van Houten was recommended for parole in April, but Gov. Jerry Brown denied her release. He also rejected parole for Bruce Davis, making it the fourth time that a governor blocked his release.

According to Wattley, Krenwinkel has two key factors working in her favor  both revolving around age.

Because she was 21 at the time of the murders, she is considered a youthful offender under a law that took effect in 2016. Also, commissioners must recognize the elderly have a lower risk of future violence, he said.

Im not saying the crime doesnt matter, Wattley said. But it does not predict her future risk to public safety. Thats why the law requires her release.

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Twitter: @MattHjourno.

MORE ON THE MANSON FOLLOWERS

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Prominent Muslim spokesman Hussam Ayloush had pulled over his car to refuel on a trip from Southern California to visit family in Texas on Christmas Day when he had a thought.

A Russian military passenger jet en route to Syria had crashed in the Black Sea, he had learned earlier that morning, and after conducting a cursory search on the model he deduced that type of aircraft usually carries soldiers.



For the record: A previous version of this story said that Hussam Ayloush learned about the crash of a Russian military jet on Christmas Day while refueling at a gas station. He had, in fact, first heard about it earlier that morning through a messaging group.

He posted a message to Facebook and Twitter, and drove off.

Im sad about the crashed Russian military jet. The TU-154 could have carried up to 180 military personnel instead of just 92! the tweet read.

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From the swift reactions on social media, Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Los Angeles chapter, soon realized he had erred: Some called him vicious for wanting more bloodshed in the ongoing civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians, many of them civilians. His Twitter followers criticized him. Conservatives noted that Ayloush is a Democratic convention delegate. Others called for the death of Muslims. Still others asked for an explanation.

Ayloush, whose parents are Syrian, didnt know at the time of the tweet, he said, that the plane was carrying several journalists, a prominent Russian philanthropist and members of a Russian military choir heading to perform at an air force base. To his followers, it sounded as if he wished death on even more civilians and noncombatants. Ayloush said he felt devastated and really bad.

Ayloushs response also came quickly. He took down the tweet, and posted a long message on Facebook. I regret that my anger and emotions over the tragic situation in Syria got the best of me, he wrote. My tweet was wrong and I sincerely apologize to those hurt by it, especially the families and loved ones of the innocent people who died in the crash.

He would never, he continued, condone/tolerate the death of Russian or any other civilians.

A spokeswoman for CAIR-LA directed inquiries to Ayloushs response on Facebook and noted that no disciplinary actions had been taken against him.

In an interview, Ayloush explained that before he learned who was on the plane, he assumed that if fewer soldiers made it to Syria, fewer Syrians would die.

Its like hearing the day of Pearl Harbor that some imperial Japanese airplanes crashed before reaching Pearl Harbor, he said. After the apology, he said, most people were understanding. Some comments on his Facebook post thanked him for apologizing; another called him a scumbag.

It was uncertain whether the contretemps would prove damaging to the reputation and standing of Ayloush, a delegate to this years Democratic National Convention as well as a member of the state partys executive board, a group of about 500.

State Republican and Democratic leaders either said they werent aware of the tweet, declined to comment or could not be reached. The Russian Embassy did not return requests for comment. Ayloush said he hadnt gotten a response from Democratic Party officials.

For people who will look at it in an objective way, it shouldnt be an issue, said John Esposito, a religion and international affairs professor at Georgetown University who directs the Bridge Initiative, a research project that studies public perceptions of Islamophobia. People who want to go after Muslim groups, who are ultraconservative, will make an issue out of it.

The blowup comes at a precarious moment for American Muslims, as they await the inauguration of president-elect Donald Trump, who has said disparaging things about the religion. But people in the community say that one tweet doesnt make them any more vulnerable.

Trying to address issues like the Syrian crisis on Twitter and Facebook obviously has its limitations.  Salam Al Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council

The attacks from the outside are going to continue regardless, said Salam Al Marayati, the executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Trying to address issues like the Syrian crisis on Twitter and Facebook obviously has its limitations and lends itself to distortions and misinterpretations.

Omar Ricci, a Los Angeles Police Department reserve officer who chairs the Islamic Center of Southern California, chalked up the fracas to high emotions. Theres a lot of emotion in our community about how innocent people are getting slaughtered, he said. Youre seeing these more visceral reactions in certain cases.

Ayloush, too, said he was unconcerned that the tweet would affect CAIRs reputation. People who work with CAIR and know it wouldnt be swayed by one retracted tweet, he said. That doesnt happen in real life. That happens in movies.

You can reach Joy Resmovits on Twitter @Joy_Resmovits and by email at Joy.Resmovits@LATimes.com.

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San Diego authorities are cracking down on safety violations at two art venues in the wake of a deadly fire at an Oakland warehouse.

The Dec. 2 blaze that killed 36 people served as a wake-up call, San Diego Fire Marshal Doug Perry said.

It did heighten our awareness and made us maybe a little more critical or suspicious, Perry said. But a lot of these places are inspected annually and have no issues.

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There are, however, problems at two buildings.

Inspections of La Bodega Gallery and the Glashaus, both in San Diegos Barrio Logan neighborhood, uncovered a lack of safety features, Perry said. Inspectors have prohibited large public events at the venues until the violations are addressed.

At La Bodega, there are no fire alarm or sprinkler systems and the building needs one more emergency exit, Perry said. City fire marshal and code inspectors are finalizing a list of violations that will be given to the owner.

La Bodega, which opened in 2011, was inspected after the Fire Department received an anonymous tip following the Oakland fire, Perry said.

Before that, the gallery, which includes 10 art studios, hadnt been on inspectors radar because they typically check up on buildings with fire alarm and sprinkler systems  features that were not required before the Logan Avenue spot became an art gallery.

Little by little we were doing what we thought was right, or what we thought was safe, said Sony Lopez Chavez, assistant manager of La Bodega. We never really knew the extent of what codes were or what the city demanded.

Lopez Chavez said La Bodega was committed to being in compliance.

We do understand and do agree that safety is a priority for any venue that is hosting art shows  or any event, she said.

The Glashaus, which was inspected before the Oakland fire, has been making needed changes such as adding exit signs and improving emergency exits. Inspectors more recently have pressured the venue to meet code requirements, Perry said.

The art gallery includes 15 studios, according to its website. The venue did not respond to a request for an interview.

Unlike Oaklands Ghost Ship warehouse, neither of the two San Diego venues serves as a live-work space for artists and musicians looking for cheaper rent.

And the conditions in La Bodega and the Glashaus, Perry said, are nothing like Ghost Ship.

The Oakland warehouse clearly was a fire hazard, according to those who frequented the spot. Officials said city inspectors had not been in the structure for three decades.

According to Perry, San Diego  with its 31 fire marshal inspectors  is better equipped than Oakland to enforce safety regulations. The Northern California city has just two full-time inspectors.

The tip about La Bodega was the only one officials have received since the Oakland blaze, Perry said. While most places seem to be up to code, the fire marshal said he was recommitted to cracking down on unsafe structures and investigating complaints from the community.

We do not want to repeat what happened up in Oakland, Perry said. We owe it to the community to at least do our part and try to investigate everything that we can.

david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com

Hernandez writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
LA 90: Child abuse in the military: Failing those most in need Reports by the Army, Navy and Air Force revealed cases where officials knew or suspected that child abuse or neglect was occurring  but failed to intervene
Police responding to gunfire at a mobile home near Ft. Bragg one night found a soldier in full military gear, waving an AR-15 assault rifle and trying to get a child to snort a powerful prescription tranquilizer.

Spc. Devin Havis and Samantha Bryant, his girlfriend, were abusing Klonopin and urging Bryants 13-year-old daughter, Brittany, to engage in this drug use, according to a police report from the October 2015 incident.

Officers found the girl hiding in a closet with her 17-month-old half-brother Rylan.

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Police charged Havis and Bryant with child abuse and fighting with firearms in the presence of minors. Bryant was committed to a local hospitals mental health ward for three days. The two children were placed in foster care at Ft. Bragg for their protection while military and civilian agencies investigated.

But Americas largest Army base  a heavily guarded enclave that is home to 238,000 soldiers and civilians  proved no refuge.

On April 14, four months after a state judge returned the two children to their mother, Rylan drowned in a pond near the mobile home.

Bryant was charged with involuntary manslaughter and child neglect and is in Moore County jail awaiting trial. Havis  who was not prosecuted on the earlier charges  was kicked out of the Army with a general discharge, one level below an honorable discharge.

Rylans death was one of at least five child fatalities or severe abuse and neglect cases at Ft. Bragg over the last 14 months.

Ft. Bragg officials declined to discuss the five cases, citing legal proceedings. But its clear, from court records and interviews, that the system failed toddler Rylan Ott.

His father, Spc. Corey Ott, had married Samantha Bryant in 2014, and their relationship was volatile.

She liked to drink and party, and so did I, but when she drank, she got crazy, Ott said in an interview.

She liked to drink and party, and so did I, but when she drank, she got crazy.  Spc. Corey Ott

They lived in a cramped apartment on Ft. Bragg after Rylan was born, and then moved to an on-base house. Bryants daughter, Brittany, came from Texas to live with them.

But after Ott began an eight-month deployment to the United Arab Emirates, Bryant moved to a mobile home off base with the two children. She also began seeing Havis, a military policeman.

She got my boy and my truck and just took off, Ott said. I felt like I was losing my family.

When Ott returned in September 2015, Bryant refused to rejoin him. She showed him a new AR-15 rifle with a high-powered sight, saying she had bought it herself. Ott didnt believe her, convinced that the weapon was proof she was seeing another soldier.

Bryant and Havis were arrested three weeks later for firing the AR-15 and sniffing Klonopin, an anti-seizure medication that is often abused, around her children.

Sgt. Shane Mills and his wife, Amanda, whose daughters attended school with Brittany, agreed to act as foster parents while the Moore County child protective services agency investigated the case.

Rylan was real quiet and very thin when he arrived on Nov. 2, Amanda Mills recalled. After a month, he had become a sweet, smiling, laughing little boy, she said.

The toddlers mother was allowed to visit three times a week. But Bryant was so disruptive that the Mills asked authorities to halt the visits. After that, social workers drove the children to offices 25 miles away so Bryant could see them in supervised visits.

On Dec. 17, 2015, after a daylong hearing, North Carolina District Judge Scott C. Etheridge ordered Rylan and Brittany returned to their mother. He cited a state law that calls for courts to seek family reunification whenever possible.

The Moore County social services department backed the ruling, noting that Bryant had finished a class on parenting.

The judge rebuffed pleas from the foster parents and from Pamela Reed, a court-appointed social worker who had urged him not to send the children back to their mother.

Corey Ott displays a book of photographs of his son, Rylan Ott, who apparently drowned in a North Carolina pond while under the care of his mother, Samantha Bryant. (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

The judge also rejected Otts request for custody, ruling he hadnt spent enough time with the boy  mostly due to his long overseas deployment  to be a good father.

I left that courthouse in tears, recalled Ott, who quit the Army the next day.

When child protection workers arrived to take Rylan and Brittany to their mother, Shane and Amanda Mills also broke into tears, fearing for the childrens safety, they said.

When this thing goes south  not if, but when  you call me, day or night, Shane Mills said he told the social workers. I will be there to pick up these children.

The Mills never got a call. They learned Rylan had drowned when Brittany posted a photo on Instagram last April of the smiling toddler in her lap.

RIP. This little boy is my little brother and he was really a blessing, she wrote. I love you Rylan Ott  but [youre] with God now.

david.cloud@latimes.com

Twitter: @davidcloudLAT

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Next month, the World Meteorological Organization is expected to declare 2016 the hottest year in recorded history  just as the United States prepares to inaugurate a president who questions whether climate change is real.

While the election of Donald Trump has stunned the world, record warmth no longer feels surprising.

After all, the current record was set only in 2015, breaking the record set in 2014. Not including 2016, the 16 warmest years since record-keeping began in 1880 have occurred since 1998. So goes climate change: another year, another ominous superlative.

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The rising temperature is just one foreboding example of how climate change and other environmental issues rattled the world, and particularly the Western U.S., in 2016.

While the year began on a note of relative harmony after nearly 200 nations agreed to the landmark Paris climate accord at the end of 2015, it also brought an immediate reminder of division  the intransigent fight over public lands in the West.

On Jan. 2, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, claiming they were protesting land policies and the plight of two ranchers imprisoned for setting fire to federal land, led what became a 41-day armed standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon.

The standoff ended with one man killed by law enforcement and more than two dozen people arrested. In October, the story took a surprising turn when the Bundy brothers and five others were acquitted in federal court in Portland on conspiracy and weapons charges.

Fossil fuel industries faced challenges. The price of oil and gas stayed low most of the year, though nothing suffered like coal. Cities and Indian tribes along the West Coast fought off the construction of export terminals, while the bankruptcy of major coal companies raised questions about whether they would be able to fulfill their obligations to repair land they had mined.

Lots of ice melted. In the spring, a study found that, by the end of this century, sea levels could rise 6 feet or more if nothing is done to reduce carbon emissions  with much of the rise attributed to the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet. By December, the focus was on the Arctic, where average sea ice had hit record lows and the mean high temperature neared 30 degrees above normal.

Drought continued in much of the West, and the federal Bureau of Reclamation did something it had never done: In August, it forecast a shortage of water on the Colorado River, which provides water to nearly 40 million people, including in California.

The forecast did not apply until 2018, and the bureau later clarified that there was only about a 50-50 chance it would happen. Still, it underscored that the trendline is not good and added motivation for water managers who are trying to broker a new plan to conserve water in the rivers largest reservoir, Lake Mead.

The wildfire season in the West was not as bad as it was in 2015, but it had its moments in California and elsewhere  Alaska, in particular, burned wide and fierce. There was also the blaze that raced across much of northern Alberta, Canada, in May, forcing the chaotic evacuation of more than 80,000 people from the oil town of Fort McMurray. In October, scientists found that climate change had nearly doubled the acreage in the West that had been burned by wildfire in the last three decades.

By the end of the summer, a relatively little-known issue leapt into the headlines: the fight over the Dakota Access pipeline. Thousands of Native Americans and others joined the Standing Rock Sioux Indian tribe near their North Dakota reservation to protest the pipeline, which was slated to be constructed under a dammed section of the Missouri River from which the tribe gets its drinking water.

Violent encounters with law enforcement led to more than 400 arrests  and accusations of police brutality. In December, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers thrilled protesters and infuriated the company building the pipeline by announcing that it would explore other routes for the project.

By that point, Trump had been elected, throwing into question the fate of the pipeline and much of the rest of the environmental legacy President Obama set out to create toward the end of his second term.

Trump has said he wants to cancel the Paris climate accord, which took legal effect in November, and that he wants to roll back environmental regulations, revive the coal industry and greatly expand oil and gas development. He named prominent climate change skeptics to top cabinet positions, including to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy.

Meanwhile, Obama pressed forward with a flurry of new regulations and conservation measures, not all of which are likely to survive under his successor.

Since election day, the Obama administration has finalized a rule to reduce methane emissions from energy production, protected land in Montana from oil and gas production, limited gold exploration near Yellowstone National Park and, perhaps most notably, banned new offshore drilling activity in almost all of the Arctic and much of the Atlantic. This week, the president set aside more than 1.65 million acres of land in Utah and Nevada as national monuments.

There may be a bit of good news in 2017: Scientists say next year likely will not be quite as hot as 2016 because short-term factors like the El Nino weather pattern will not overlay long-term warming.

william.yardley@latimes.com

Twitter: @yardleyLAT

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Among the many constituencies viewing the presidency of Donald Trump with apprehension are gay, lesbian and transgender Americans, who are disturbed by what theyve heard from members of the president-elects inner circle and by language in the Republican platform.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence, for example, has espoused troubling views on issues of importance to the gay community. As a member of Congress, for instance, he supported a constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage, warning that societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family. As governor of Indiana, Pence signed a religious freedom bill that many feared would allow businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation (though he later signed a revised version making it clear that businesses couldnt deny services to anyone based on sexual orientation or gender identity).

Then theres the platform adopted by the Republican National Convention this past summer, which condemns the Supreme Courts 2015 decision extending the constitutional right to marriage to same-sex couples. The platform calls the decision a lawless ruling and (quoting the late Justice Antonin Scalia) a judicial putsch. The document also supports the appointment of justices and judges who respect the constitutional limits on their power and respect the authority of the states to decide such fundamental social questions as whether to recognize same-sex marriage.

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Trump must oppose efforts in Congress to curtail the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender Americans.

Of course, party platforms dont bind presidents. And Trump himself has sounded an encouragingly different note in discussing issues of importance to gay, lesbian and transgender Americans.

In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, he referred to the attack at a gay nightclub in Orlando and promised: As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology. In response to applause he added: And I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said.

Earlier this year, Trump criticized a North Carolina law requiring people to use restrooms in public buildings that match the gender on their birth certificate  even if that doesnt match their actual gender identity.

More recently, in a post-election interview with 60 Minutes, the president-elect indicated that he had no intention of using his appointments to the Supreme Court to undo the courts ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. It was settled in the Supreme Court, Trump said, adding: Im fine with that.

Of course, equality for gays and lesbians isnt the only issue on which it is hard to reconcile Trumps statements with the positions of the men and women he has appointed to his administration. But it is an issue on which clarity is vitally important. The new president can resolve any confusion by taking action early in his administration to demonstrate that he was serious when he reached out to gay, lesbian and transgender people.

First, Trump should announce that  contrary to the wishes of some of his supporters in Congress  he will leave in place an executive order issued by President Obama in 2014 telling federal contractors that they may not discriminate in hiring on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The new president also should make it clear that he doesnt support efforts in Congress to enact a religious freedom exception to that directive that would allow church-related groups to engage in such discrimination. The exception would permit them to reject job applicants who dont share the organizations religious tenets.

Trump also must oppose efforts in Congress to curtail the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender Americans. That means he should be prepared to veto a new version of the so-called 1st Amendment Defense Act. That legislation would prevent the federal government from penalizing any person on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage. The 1st Amendment protects freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion  but not the right to discriminate.

Conversely, Trump should lend his support to perennial efforts in Congress  most recently in a bill called The Equality Act  to protect employees in the private sector from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. If he meant what he said in his acceptance speech about protecting our LGBTQ citizens, he can do no less. Protecting gay, lesbian and transgender Americans involves more than shielding them from terrorism; it also means affording them a right to earn a living without fear of discrimination.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Ivanka Trump wants you to know she cares. She cares about the environment. She cares about children. She cares about women. Ivanka is smooth, composed and in control. Sure, Daddy might be a little rough around the edges. But how bad could Donald Trump really be if he produced such a visibly self-possessed and accomplished young woman?

That seems to be the message emerging from Trump Tower as Ivanka assumes an unprecedented role in her fathers administration. Within days of Trumps stunning upset election victory, there was his second (and, by most accounts, favorite) child at a meeting between him and the Japanese prime minister. Next, she was listening in on a phone call with Argentinas president. Later, it was reported that Ivanka might assume White House office space normally reserved for the first lady (the long-suffering Melania Trump having decided to spend most of her time in New York). Showing off her environmentalist bona fides, Ivanka arranged an improbable meeting between Trump and former Vice President Al Gore. Throughout the campaign, she spearheaded her fathers initiatives on childcare policy and stoutly defended his record as a great advocate for the women in the workforce.

Its easy to be seduced by Ivanka  she really is smooth, not to mention beautiful  but keep your guard up: This is a trap. Ivanka is nothing more than pretty window dressing to the explicitly authoritarian, racially divisive, conflict-of-interest-laden presidential campaign (soon-to-be administration) of her father.

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Mariela Castro and Ivanka Trump are what happen when privileged entitlement meets political depravity.

For all the talk about how shes so much classier and more dignified than Dad, the avaricious apple doesnt fall far from the Trump tree. Ivanka, too, is using the American presidency for influence peddling and buck making. Just a day after appearing with the rest of her family on 60 Minutes, Ivankas jewelry brand sent out an email to fashion writers hawking the $10,800 gold bracelet she had worn on air. As part of a charity auction, she offered a 45-minute coffee date to the highest bidder. Only after critics accused the Trump camp of creating a pay to play conflict of interest was the item  which had earned a top bid of $70,000  scrapped. If the first daughter serves a role in government while simultaneously overseeing the Trump Organization, as has been rumored, that will edge this country closer to resembling a post-Soviet, family-run kleptocracy like Azerbaijan.

Good luck challenging Ivanka about the propriety of her self-dealing, or anything else. When a reporter for Cosmopolitan, not a publication exactly known for its hard-hitting political coverage, asked if her fathers family leave program would apply to same-sex couples, Ivanka suddenly transformed from Princess Grace to Cruella de Vil. I think you have a lot of negativity in these questions, she snapped. I dont know how useful it is to spend too much time with you on this if youre going to make a comment like that. In other words, let them eat cake.

Its easy to feel sympathy for Ivanka. Try to imagine the emotional damage wrought by a father like Donald Trump, an admitted sexual predator who publicly boasted that hed date you if you werent his offspring, and giddily consented when a radio shock jock asked if he could call you a piece of ass. Children, after all, cannot choose their parents.

They can, however, choose whether to support their parents irresponsible and dangerous behavior. Like a spouse who quietly condones her partners drink-fueled binges, Ivanka is an enabler. Shes actually worse than that, providing feminine cover and a bogus veil of responsibility for the most crudely misogynistic and immature man ever to occupy the Oval Office.

In this sense, Ivanka resembles not so much any previous member of the first family than she does the scion of another obscenely rich, quasi-royal dynasty: Mariela Castro. Daughter of Cuban president Raul Castro and niece of the recently departed Fidel, Mariela has in recent years adopted LGBT rights as a pet cause  in a country that once herded gay men into concentration camps and quarantined AIDS victims. Who could have a problem with that? But a wealthy, well-connected straight woman like Mariela can only claim the mantle of gay rights because the Cuban Communist Party muffles grass-roots LGBT activists, just as it suppresses labor unions, non-government newspapers and all forms of political activity independent of the regime. Gay rights, such as they are, will be meaningless as long as Cuba remains a totalitarian society.

Marielas purpose is not improving the livelihood of her LGBT countrymen so much as its fooling credulous Western progressives into thinking that Cuba is anything other than a one-party state run by a mafia clan. Mariela Castro and Ivanka Trump are what happen when privileged entitlement meets political depravity.

James Kirchicks book, The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age, is forthcoming from Yale University Press. Follow him on Twitter @jkirchick.

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What Kerrys speech says about the Obama administrations Israel strategy

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When the United Nations Security Council voted on Friday to censure Israels settlement-building policy, the United States shocked its allies by abstaining. This shock was a little odd given that the Obama administration has always opposed the settlements. Odder still, Secretary of State John Kerry felt the need to deliver an excruciating 80-minute speech on Wednesday that was essentially an apology for the abstention. The whole song-and-dance says a lot about Kerrys well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual Mideast strategy.

While many, not just in Israels government, have already described Kerrys speech as deeply critical, even anti-Israel, it was nothing of the sort. Kerry spoke convincingly of his deep love for Israel since his first visit there as a young senator in 1986, and of the many actions the Obama administration has taken to enhance Israels security and international standing. Indeed, while all previous U.S. administrations in the past five decades have on occasion abstained on Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, last week was a first for this administration.

By any traditional interpretation of the word, Kerry gave a devoutly Zionist speech. He gave ample justification for the Jewish states existence and placed much of the blame for the ongoing conflict on its Arab neighbors. He even made some concessions to Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahus official policy  such as acknowledging that the eventual agreement with the Palestinians will have to take into account the existence of settlement blocs, recognize Israel as a Jewish state and place no responsibility on Israel for the resettlement of Palestinian refugees.

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Next month Kerry will begin writing his memoirs while Israels prime minister will still be in office, now with a like-minded president in the White House.

Other jarring notes for Palestinian listeners included the way Kerry described Palestinian-Israeli citizens as Arab citizens who call Israel their home and his use of Israeli data when mentioning the number of Palestinians living in the West Bank, instead of the Palestinian Authoritys figures.

The Obama administration has tried hard to show Israelis love. Only two weeks ago, Netanyahu stood beside Defense Secretary Ashton Carter as two American-made F-35 fighter-jets landed at Nevatim Airbase in the Negev. That night Netanyahu thanked President Obama for this latest addition to Israels arsenal.

The unbridgeable chasm remains the settlements. In the opinion of the Obama administration, and of many Israelis and American lovers of Israel, they are an immovable obstacle to peace and a threat to Israels very soul. For the Netanyahu government and its supporters, they are the natural embodiment of the return of the Jewish people to their historical homeland.

In the face of Netanyahus resolve, Kerry conceded that the U.S. cannot dictate the peace.

It was a tacit admission that in eight years, the Obama administration has failed to budge Netanyahu even an inch. Next month Kerry will begin writing his memoirs while Israels prime minister will still be in office, now with a like-minded president in the White House.

An hour before the speech, Netanyahu and President-elect Donald Trump were already high-fiving each other on Twitter. Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching! promised Trump. Thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!, Netanyahu tweeted back, with cute emojis of Israeli and U.S. flags.

Even before he took to the stage, Kerry was the jilted lover. But it is hard to feel sorry for him. He promised in his speech practical suggestions and uncomfortable truths. Instead he issued a cringe-inducing string of cliches. The six principles Kerry offered at the end of the speech were little more than the 16-year-old Clinton Parameters rehashed. In that period of time, the number of Israeli settlers has nearly doubled. Kerry has no sense of irony if these are his practical suggestions.

Even excusing the old chestnuts, what was the point of making such a speech now? Kerry is right: The settlements and the underlying policy of creeping annexation are disastrous for Israels future as a Jewish democracy. But an administration that failed so dismally at convincing Israel, or the Palestinians for that matter, to take any concrete steps away from the current stagnation has no business offering advice in its dying days.

Kerrys swansong was one of crushing impotence and absolute irrelevance. No surprise there. As Americas senior diplomat, he allowed Vladimir Putin to have his way in Ukraine and Syria, acquiesced to Irans growing malignant influence across the Middle East and abandoned Syrias rebels as they were massacred by the Assad regime. Kerrys heart has always been in the right place; he loves Israel. But now even the Israelis who agree with him in principle have joined the long list of those he has let down.

Anshel Pfeffer is a columnist for Israeli daily Haaretz and The Economists correspondent in Israel.

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President Obama deserves our gratitude for designating the rich natural and cultural treasure of the Bears Ears region in southeastern Utah as a national monument. He had to think big. In granting 1.35 million acres of federal land new, needed protections, he preserved for the future a place of learning, grandeur, sanctuary, and healing.

Against political headwinds, Obama used the executive power inherent in the Antiquities Act of 1906  the same legislation that initially protected four of Utahs Mighty Five national parks. Arches, Zion, Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef were all presidential-proclamation monuments first; Canyonlands was created as a park by Congress.

The president acted on behalf of our children and grandchildren, on behalf of the last canyon treefrogs singing in Slickhorn Gulch along the San Juan River, on behalf of the Navajo medicine man gathering herbs on the forested mesas of the Bears Ears. His action will be a boon to Utahs rural economy.

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For Native people, these canyons and mesas arent desert or wilderness or destination. These redrock labyrinths are home. For millennia, people have woven cultural identity into this ground. Artifacts, ruins and rock art from the Ancestral Puebloans carry essential messages to the Hopi and Zuni of our time and to all of us.

The Republicans who dominate Utahs politics are already threatening to repeal not only the Bears Ears designation but the Antiquities Act itself.

For the first time in conservation history, the primary advocates for this new national monument were Native American tribes. In October 2015, the Navajo, Ute Mountain, Hopi, Zuni, and Ute nations presented the Obama administration with a proposal to preserve and co-manage public lands they consider sacred. The full membership of the National Congress of American Indians supported them. Remarkably, given the history of Indian people and the United States, the government listened.

By establishing this national monument, Obama has protected canyons actively consecrated and blessed by Native prayers, living libraries of indigenous traditional knowledge. All of us, Indian and non-Indian, will deepen our relationships with home as we come to know this landscape.

As Willie Grayeyes of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition put it, protecting Bears Ears is not just about healing for the land and Native people. Its for our adversaries to be healed too. I truly believe we can all come out dancing together.

President Obama also established Gold Butte National Monument on Wednesday, at the western edge of the Grand Canyon in Nevada, taking advantage of another opportunity to protect rich archaeological resources from relentless vandalism and amplifying the vision of co-management by tribes, this time with the Moapa Paiute people.

The elected officials in Utah who argued against the national monument  including the entire Utah congressional delegation  struck the same hackneyed chords used by Utahs governor more than 50 years ago when he opposed creating Canyonlands National Park because the state might need all those rocks for building material.

A so-called compromise plan introduced by Utah Representatives Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz would have preserved far fewer acres of incomparable wildlands and accelerated energy development and mining on public lands across much of eastern Utah. The tribes turned to the president when they felt the congressmen were not listening to them.

The Republicans who dominate Utahs politics are already threatening to repeal not only the Bears Ears designation but the Antiquities Act itself. They attack the very idea of federal public lands, and repeat false claims about the monuments effects (it wont prohibit Native uses such as woodcutting and herb gathering). They rail against the exclusion of local voices in decision-making, but at a Dec. 19 press conference refused to speak to the elected tribal leaders from the Ute and Navajo nations.

The president has done right by Bears Ears, and brought into being a never-before-dreamed-of reconciliation in the form of co-management by federal agencies and tribes. He has acted boldly for preservation in Utah and elsewhere, protecting Alaskas Chukchi and Beaufort seas from risky drilling, designating the Katahdin Woods and Waters as a national monument in Maine, and establishing and extending enormous marine preserves.

When Donald Trump becomes president, there is little chance well see such irreplaceable land- and seascapes protected. With a Republican Congress bent on repealing every shred of Obamas legacy, with Bishop (chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources) angrily pushing bills that would open up public lands to development and greed, theres yet more Obama should do.

A proclamation for Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument, a preserve that permanently protects the Greater Grand Canyon watershed, awaits the presidents signature. Between now and Jan. 20 there is time enough to act again. Lyndon Johnson was still signing national monument proclamations as he dressed for Richard Nixons inauguration.

May the president keep using his pen and the power of the Antiquities Act before we lose such opportunities for the next four years, maybe eight, maybe even longer.

Salt Lake City writer Stephen Trimble is editor of the forthcoming Red Rock Stories: Three Generations of Writers Speak on Behalf of Utahs Public Lands.

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To the editor: The coverage of the plight of back-door immigrants to the United States is laudable in its humanitarian emphasis. But it must be remembered that the United States has an embassy in Bangladesh, Rasel Ahmeds home country, which publishes clear procedures for obtaining visas to come here legally. (They gambled, and lost, Dec. 24)

Ahmed attempted to bypass that system, and The Times sympathetically portrays his failure to succeed at it without any critical analysis of the implications. In particular, there are untold hundreds of millions of desperate people in the world who would like to live here instead of where they are. Clearly something more than the humanitarian impulse alone must inform immigration policy, or we will be swamped.

I have one discomfiting question for those who want open borders and sanctuary policies: How many immigrants should we accept? After all this time, I have never heard a maximum number mentioned, so I assume it is infinite. And no one has explained how that is going to work.

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Ronald Masson, Topanga

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To the editor: America has a stained history when it comes to accepting, let alone welcoming, desperate people to its shores.

When, in 1939, about 900 Jews attempted to flee Nazi Germany, they were denied entry into Cuba. They then sailed to Florida asking for asylum. They were refused entry, and no one else accepted the refugees, who returned to Adolf Hitlers open arms.

It would behoove us all to re-read Emma Lazarus The New Colossus that is etched onto the Statue of Liberty and ask ourselves if we live by its meaning or if it belies who we are.

Michael Davidson, Altadena

..

To the editor: Limited and poor as his circumstances were, Ahmed lived free and housed in Bangladesh. He raised $30,000 to smuggle himself to America. Hundreds of thousands in this country live homeless, and millions more could not raise $30,000 if their lives depended on it.

Wanting more opportunity is understandable; the idea that our country can accept anyone and everyone with Ahmeds dream is ridiculous.

The series about the arduous journey to travel here illegally  the danger, the soul -crushing disappointment when it fails  paints a romantically misleading picture of people who are not seeking asylum but lie to claim that status upon arrival. Meanwhile, there is true persecution for Bangladeshis who question militant Islam or are secular or gay; several have been butchered in the streets. They sought the modest opportunity of freedom at home.

There are no grandiose Pulitzer attempts for them.

Mitch Paradise, Los Angeles

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To the editor: I greatly appreciate The Times editorial on Israeli settlements. But it is also important to get back to the basics of what these settlements are. (From bad to worse, as Israel pursues settlement expansion, editorial, Dec. 28)

Israeli settlements are segregated communities: Jewish-only roads leading to Jewish-only houses. They are built on confiscated Palestinian homes, schools and farms as a way to ethnically cleanse those who originally lived there. And they are evidence that Israel was never sincere about peace talks. How can you claim to want to negotiate borders when you are doing everything possible to change the facts on the ground with a sustained land-grab campaign?

Israel has said that the United Nations resolution declaring these settlements illegal is unfair and one-sided. However, if you scratch the surface and learn what these settlements are really about, the real question becomes what took us so long to speak up?

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Susan Kerin, Rockville, Md.

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To the editor: We are in the middle of Hanukkah, which celebrates the rebellion against King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the victory of the Maccabees in 167 B.C. and the liberation of the holy temple in Jerusalem. So should the Maccabees be considered occupiers? How can Israelis be occupiers in their own land?

It is time to admit that first and foremost, the Jewish people have historical roots and rights to the land of Israel. With that recognition, one could ask whether the Israelis are willing to give up part of their land for peace.

The Times asks if any solution other than two states exists. The simple answer is that Jordan (the East Bank) already is Palestine. That country occupied the West Bank from 1948-67. The Arabs living in Israel and in the West Bank need to reunite themselves with Jordan and become citizens of that land. They can stay where they live today, within the land of Israel, but have full citizenship rights including voting rights in Jordan.

This approach answers the dilemma that the Times has regarding the Jewish state being democratic while inhabiting the liberated lands of Samaria and Judea.

Nahum Gat, Manhattan Beach

..

To the editor: Your editorial objects to 6,000 new Israeli homes being built under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. You argue that those new homes for Jews only will split the Arab inhabited land and make a two-state solution impossible. All this is true.

Your editorial omits a critically important fact: Palestinians dont get paid one cent for their land or homes that make room for Jewish homes.

Justice for all is a foundational belief of Judaism. Thou shalt not steal (except for Palestinian land) seems to be the settlers version of the commandment.

I agree that stealing (it is not just taking, it is stealing) Palestinian land and homes not only makes a two-state solution impossible; in addition, it fatally undermines Jewish belief in justice.

Robert Baker, Los Angeles

..

To the editor: This editorial identifies settlements as one of the biggest obstacles to peace but fails to state the biggest obstacle: the Palestinians refusal to recognize Israels right to exist.

If the Palestinians genuinely and sincerely changed their stance on this, the Israeli response would be a swift and significant pivot toward moderation and reconciliation. Its a big if and perhaps a naive view at this time, but who knows what the future may hold?

Nate Tucker, Costa Mesa

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Gov. Jerry Brown had to pick an attorney general faster than he expected

(Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

The phone call that Gov. Jerry Brown made on Wednesday night was unusual. A governor who marches to his own methodical timetable for decisions was having his hand forced by the politics of Capitol Hill, and the job of California attorney general hung in the balance.

In the end, Brown got the man he wanted: Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles). But it was Becerras effort to make a big career move that complicated things.

In interviews with advisers to the governor and those close to Becerra, a portrait emerged of two veteran politicians who have mutual admiration but dont really know each other very well. In fact, the 12-term congressman plans to spend part of this weekend meeting with Brown in Sacramento.

It was Becerras angling for an unexpectedly open high-profile post leading Democrats on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee that sparked the circumspect governor into action.

Nancy McFadden, the governors top staffer, decided she did not want to be attorney general. (Robert Durell / For The Times)

In Sacramento, those close to the governor said that the list of potential replacements for Kamala Harris was short, much shorter than the ones circulated by political watchers. Advisers confirmed that either First Lady Anne Gust Brown or the governors top aide, Nancy McFadden, could have had the job if they had wanted it.

Neither did, perhaps knowing the importance being placed on picking someone who would be willing to run for a full term in the job in 2018 (though Becerra declined to talk about future plans when asked on Thursday).

Becerra, on the other hand, intrigued the governor. Not only did he have the right credentials -- a former deputy attorney general, former state legislator, veteran member of Congress -- but advisers said the governor also valued diversity. And the chance to select the states first Latino attorney general was important.

While few jobs are as important to Brown, himself a former attorney general, the leading contender never came in for an in-person interview. Becerra, who grew up in Sacramento, had been in town just before election day to stump for the reelection of Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove). He met with McFadden on that visit, but not the governor.

And so the two men, who had no deep personal relationship, made the big decision long distance.

When they talked, McFadden said in an interview, the man matched the resume.

Becerra had been looking for somewhere to land. Out of places to move in House leadership and nearing the limit on how much longer he could lead the House Democratic Caucus, the vocal advocate for Hillary Clinton had spent the last year campaigning for her across the country with hopes it might lead to a new position.

Clintons loss Nov. 8 put an end to that speculation, and for a while Becerras next move didnt seem clear.

Surprise news Tuesday afternoon that the ranking Democrat on Ways and Means, Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) would not seek the position again led Beccera to quickly announce his plans to seek the position and lobby colleagues to back him. Levin quickly endorsed Becerra over Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Richie Neal, who had sought the job before.

Word of Becerras effort quickly reached the state Capitol and the governors inner circle sprang into action. Perhaps fewer than a half dozen people knew of Browns decision until news began to spread early Thursday morning.

Becerra called the offer sudden and said with Congress in session he hadnt even had a chance to talk with Brown about the job in person.

It went very quickly when it started to move, he said. I was as stunned as you probably were and others were.
Cho Yeo-ok, an army nurse, told a National Assembly hearing that she was working at the Cheong Wa Dae clinic and not with the president when the ferry Sewol sank with over 300, mostly teenage passengers, on board in April 2014.

A former Cheong Wa Dae nurse on Thursday failed to shed any light on the question of President Park Geun-hye's whereabouts on the morning of the worst disaster in Korea's modern history.

Park was nowhere to be found for seven hours on the day of the disaster while rescue efforts went badly awry. Suspicions abound that she was having some kind of cosmetic procedure and had been put under after catching on to a celebrity fad for the knockout sleeping drug Propofol.

"I did not engage in any treatment of the president as I was working in the clinic," Cho told lawmakers, going back on her claim in an earlier media interview that she had been "close to the president" on the fateful day.

But Cho rounded out an absurd picture of the presidential office at the time by admitting that she administered placenta injections not only to Park but to about a dozen Cheong Wa Dae staff on other occasions.

Evidence shows that the presidential office purchased hundreds of the quack anti-aging injections in recent years, and Cho said she never saw Park being given them by other nurses.

She said most of the shots, which are administered subcutaneously, were for the president. But she denied that the presidential office, which also stockpiled the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, had a supply of Propofol.

Asked if Park was suffering from sleeping disorders, as one of Park's private doctors has testified, Cho declined to comment citing confidentiality. Cho also denied rumors that military intelligence tried to prevent her from attending the hearing.


President Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats, closed two rural estates reportedly used by Russian spies, and slapped sanctions on two Russian intelligence organizations and other entities Thursday for their alleged role in what the White House says was a Kremlin-directed effort to interfere with the 2016 presidential race.

The sweeping retaliation follows an intense review of what Obama called aggressive harassment of U.S. diplomats in Moscow and cyberoperations aimed at the U.S. election, a hacking campaign that U.S. officials code-named Grizzly Steppe.

It also signaled the worst cyberclash of the modern era, with the two former Cold War adversaries now increasingly focused on penetrating each others digital networks and communications.

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In the most dramatic move, the State Department declared 35 intelligence operatives at the Russian Embassy in Washington and the Russian Consulate in San Francisco as personae non gratae. They were given 72 hours to leave the country with their families for acting in a manner inconsistent with their diplomatic status.

The Obama administration also said it would block access after noon Friday to two properties owned by the Russian government  a 45-acre estate along the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and 14-acre compound in Long Island, N.Y.  that it says were used by Russian personnel for gathering intelligence.

The broad penalties, three weeks before Obama hands over the White House to Donald Trump, mark a new low in post-Cold War relations with Russia amid rising tensions over President Vladimir Putins military operations in Syria and Ukraine.

All Americans should be alarmed by Russias actions, Obama said in a statement. He said the U.S. moves follow repeated private and public warnings to Moscow.

These actions are not the sum total of our response to Russias aggressive activities, Obama added. We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicized.

Obama said the Russian effort was aimed at interfering with the U.S. election. He stopped short of endorsing FBI and CIA conclusions that the cyberattack was aimed, at least in part, at helping Trump win.

Earlier this month, Obama all but blamed Putin personally, telling reporters that very little happens in the Russian government without Putins knowledge.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed conclusions from the Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security that senior Russian officials directed a campaign to interfere in the fall election.

In a statement Thursday night,Trump made clear he is still not convinced.

Its time for our country to move on to bigger and better things, he said. Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.

The mass expulsion of alleged Russian spies is the largest in decades, and a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said Moscow would respond in kind. I cant say what the response will be, but there is absolutely no alternative to the principle of reciprocity, he said.

Peskov said the U.S. measures were ungrounded and illegal and were intended to undermine Trumps calls for warmer relations with Moscow.

In an acerbic statement, Maria Zakharova, Russias Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said America had been humiliated by its own president and his hardly literate foreign policy team.

Not by international terrorists, not enemy armies. Washingtons own master slapped it on the face by maximally increasing the number of urgent things to be done by the next administration, she said.

She said Russia would announce countermeasures and a lot of other things Friday.

The State Department said it was expelling the 35 Russian diplomats partly in response to the harassment of U.S. diplomats in Russia over the last four years, including the tackling of a U.S. Embassy official by a Russian security guard that was posted on YouTube in June.

This harassment has involved arbitrary police stops, physical assault, and the broadcast on State TV of personal details about our personnel that put them at risk, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement. The Russian government has also closed 28 American cultural education centers in Russia and blocked the construction of a new consular office in St. Petersburg.

Such behavior is unacceptable and will have consequences, Toner said.

Closing the two Russian compounds may be especially painful for Russian diplomats.

One is a sprawling estate called Pioneer Point on Marylands Eastern Shore that Russias ambassador to Washington long has used as a weekend retreat.

In 2007, Washington Life magazine described it as a three-story brick dacha fronting the Chester River. The parcel was purchased by the Soviet government in 1972 and transferred to the Russian Federation in the 1990s.

Russian diplomats based in New York City or at the United Nations have used the Long Island compound for decades as a weekend retreat. A State Department official described both locations on condition of anonymity.

Obama used a newly amended executive order that for the first time authorizes U.S. action in response to attempted interfering with or undermining a U.S. election, an expansion of previous authority.

He ordered sanctions against Russias Main Intelligence Directorate, known as the GRU, and the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB.

Officials said both took part in the hacking and leaking of tens of thousands of emails and other material from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clintons campaign manager, among other targets. The stolen digital trove was posted on WikiLeaks and other websites.

The administration also sanctioned four senior GRU officers  the current chief, Igor Valentinovich Korobov Sergey, and three of his deputies  and three Russian companies that provided material support for its cyberoperations.

Also sanctioned were two notorious Russian hackers, Evgeniy Bogachev and Aleksey Belan, who U.S. officials said had stolen more than $100 million by breaking into the computers of U.S. banks, universities and online retailers.

In a joint analysis from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, officials said Russian civilian and military intelligence services had sought to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election.

It said a GRU-backed hacking group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 29 had participated in the intrusion into a U.S. political party in the summer of 2015 and that a separate FSB-backed group had penetrated the computers last spring.

Both groups have historically targeted government organizations, think tanks, universities and corporations around the world, it said.

It said the two groups were among at least 48 known Russian intelligence hacking units. Some had colorful code names, including Chopstick, Eviltoss, Sandworm and Sourface.

These cyber operations have included spearphishing campaigns targeting government organizations, critical infrastructure, think tanks, universities, political organizations and corporations, said a separate statement from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The administration announced the moves while Obama is on a two-week vacation with his family in Hawaii. He has promised to deliver a classified report to Congress on the hacking before he leaves office Jan. 20.

Obamas actions drew broad support in Congress, though with partisan overtones.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called the measures overdue, saying the Obama administration had waited too long to stand up to Russia.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the incoming Senate minority leader, applauded the decision to punch back against Russia, but he worried about how Trump might react. Since Obama used an executive order, Trump could cancel or ease the crackdown after he takes office.

I hope the incoming Trump administration, which has been far too close to Russia throughout the campaign and transition, wont think for one second about weakening these new sanctions or our existing regime, Schumer said.

Several lawmakers say they plan to further investigate Russias role in the hacks and press for harsher penalties against Moscow.

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said they would push for stronger sanctions on Russia when Congress returns to Washington on Jan. 3.

Parsons reported from Honolulu and Bennett from Washington. Special correspondent Mansur Mirovalev in Moscow contributed to this report.

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UPDATES:

2:55 p.m.: This story was updated with details of the U.S. and Russian response.

11:35 a.m.: This story was updated with details on the U.S. response.

This story was originally published at 11:20 a.m.
So far, none of Californias 55 senators and representatives have announced plans to retire ahead of the 2018 election. But after weeks at home with family during the holidays to talk about the future, such declarations could come soon.

Every two years, a few members announce its time to come home because they want more time with family or there is a chance to run for another office. Plus, most of Californias members are Democrats and wont control any branch of government come Jan. 20.

Life in the minority party is frustrating, especially in the House. It is not just that your proposals are unlikely to prevail, it is that they are unlikely to even get considered, said UC Irvine political scientist Matthew Beckmann. For Democratic members who forecast four to eight years of a Republican rule, there are compelling reasons to think the grass is greener outside of Washington.

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Another factor is how long some of them have been in Washington: Twelve of the states seats have been held by the same person for 20 years or more. And 18 members are 65 or older, the age when many people begin to consider not working any more.

California political observers said theyre watching most of the 10 members in their 70s for retirement in 2018 or 2020, noting the long cross-country commute and a few rumored health problems that have popped up.

Retiring members in long-held seats often try to give potential candidates as much time as possible to prepare a run. Retiring Democrats Rep. Lois Capps of Santa Barbara and Sen. Barbara Boxer gave more than a years notice of their plans to head home.

Well likely get a good idea of who will stay or go during the next six months. For now, here are the most-watched candidates for retirement.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Alex Wong / Getty Images )

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

At 83, Feinstein is the oldest member of the U.S. Senate, and with 24 years under her belt, the California political establishment is buzzing about whether she will seek another six-year term.

Feinstein has sent mixed messages about her plans, and suggested last April that she needed to get closer to the election before announcing her decision.

Ive got two years and nine months. Ask me that in about a year, Feinstein said with a grin during a late March meeting with Los Angeles Times editors and reporters. Ill give you the answer then.

She has about $2.6 million in the bank, a small war chest for a fifth-term senator two years out, but that might be because donors have been focused on the presidential race.

Feinstein also likely will consider the health of her husband, investment banker and UC Regent Richard Blum, who began treatment for lung cancer during the summer.

Her new position as the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee may keep her in Washington. Feinstein is the first woman to hold the job, and she is raring for fights with Republicans and the administration of President-elect Donald Trump over judicial nominees, especially for the Supreme Court.

If Feinstein does retire, her decision could shake up a few congressional districts because several members and state officials are expected to sign up to run for her office.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco)

With 30 years in office, the 76-year-old Pelosi is the longest-serving member of the California House delegation.

But shes showing no signs of slowing down. Picked by colleagues in November to lead House Democrats for the eighth time, Pelosi will be one of the most visible foils for the Trump administration.

Beckmann said its a testament to Pelosi that she has stayed in leadership so long, but other members are clamoring for a chance to lead the caucus.

Given the ages and tenures of the current Democratic leaders, I suspect this will be Mrs. Pelosis final stint as Democratic leader, Beckmann said.

Pelosi has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run again in 2018, but dont read too much into that. Many long-serving members routinely file documents as soon as an election ends because it allows them to start raising money immediately. Nearly half of Californias 55 members have filed statements of candidacy for 2018 since Nov. 8.

If Pelosi does decide to retire, keep an eye on her close friend 74-year-old Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Menlo Park), who has represented her Northern California district for 24 years and might decide to retire too.

The seven California congressional members most likely to help or hinder the Trump administration 

Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Norwalk)

At 80, Napolitano is the oldest of the states House members. She suffered a minor stroke earlier this year that affected her ability to write and slightly slowed her walk. She also is the primary caretaker for her elderly husband, and both factors could impact Napolitanos decision.

Several political watchers said Napolitano pushed so hard to win reelection in 2016 in part to keep her opponent and fellow Democrat, State Assemblyman Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina), from having a chance to represent the district.

Hernandez effectively ended his campaign in August after a judge granted his ex-wifes request for a domestic violence restraining order against him.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa)

The longest-serving Republican in the California delegation has been the subject of retirement rumblings for years.

Rohrabacher, 69, who has represented his Huntington Beach-area district for 28 years, lashed out at former Orange County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh last April when Baugh began raising money in anticipation of the congressmans potential 2018 retirement.

I very much enjoy and am honored to represent my constituents in the 48th congressional district. My only plans are to continue to do so in 2016, 2018, and beyond, Rohrabacher said.

Rohrabacher, who was floated as a possible secretary of State for Donald Trump, is viewed as sharing Trumps sympathetic views of Russia. That could make him a major Capitol Hill ally for Trump and give him a reason to stay.

Still, Nathan Gonzales, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report newsletter, said theres been so much talk about Rohrabacher retiring for so long that he wouldnt be surprised if it happens after all.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (Andrew Harnik / Associated Press )

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles)

This one is pretty much going to happen.

Though he hasnt made it official, Becerra will have to resign the central Los Angeles seat he has held for 24 years if hes confirmed as Californias next attorney general, as is expected.

Gov. Jerry Brown announced last month he plans to nominate Becerra for the job once Kamala Harris is sworn in as Californias new senator on Jan. 3, but Becerra isnt expected to give up his seat until hes actually confirmed by the state Legislature.

Nearly a dozen people already have expressed interest in Becerras seat.

sarah.wire@latimes.com

Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter

Read more about the 55 members of Californias delegation at latimes.com/politics

ALSO:

The seven California congressional members most likely to help or hinder the Trump administration

Whos in and whos out in the race to replace Rep. Xavier Becerra in Congress

Updates on California politics
Cheetahs may have once prospered, but they certainly arent anymore.

Scientists examining the worldwide population of these swift, spotted cats have found that there are only 7,100 left in the wild, surviving on just 9% of their original land range  and that they should be upgraded from vulnerable to endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Natures Red List of Threatened Species.

The grim findings, published in PNAS, show that studying cheetahs in protected areas may make the species status look rosier than reality  and that conservationists may need to switch tactics if they want to prevent cheetahs and other threatened species from going extinct.

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As humans have spread across every continent on Earth, it has often bode ill for nearby populations of large mammals. Tens of thousands of years ago, mammoths, saber-toothed cats and giant ground sloths roamed California  but these and other charismatic megafauna dwindled and went extinct around the same time that humans arrived on the scene. (Scientists are still studying whether humans, climate change or both helped lead to these species extinction.)

The spread and dominance of humans across the world during the Anthropocene have precipitated a sixth global biodiversity extinction crisis, the study authors wrote.

The Anthropocene is the term used for the Earths current geological age  the chapter of its history in which human activity has profoundly affected the environment and global climate. One place where that effect is highly noticeable is in todays extinction rate: The industrialization and spread of human civilization in recent times has accelerated the decline of much of the worlds iconic wildlife, be they giraffes, rhinoceroses, elephants or lions, among many others.

Large land-based mammals, the authors wrote, can be especially vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts, such as habitat loss and fragmentation, human-wildlife conflict, illegal wildlife trade, and overharvesting for bushmeat or traditional use.

Cheetahs, as it turns out, are no exception to that trend of decline. Known formally as Acinonyx jubatus, cheetahs today survive on only 9% of their past distributional range, according to the study authors. Thats a big deal for large carnivores particularly for cheetahs, who need a lot of space. Their home ranges can exceed 3,000 square kilometers.

As they have for other species, scientists, government officials and conservationists have worked to create protected areas to shelter these shrinking populations against poaching and deadly confrontations with farmers and other humans, among other risks.

But population estimates based on protected areas dont tell the whole story, since wild animals dont stay within these human-defined boundaries, the authors pointed out. And those inaccuracies are especially problematic for large mammals, because while cheetah populations might look OK within those well-patrolled areas, the dangers immediately increase for any populations living outside of those zones.

Wildlife management authorities may be required to monitor wildlife within PAs [protected areas] but not outside them, and monitoring is usually more challenging outside PAs, because wildlife are more elusive and occur there at lower densities, the study authors wrote. This deficit leads to a lack of information on populations outside PAs, where they are generally more threatened, resulting in an overly favorable assessment of status.

So for this paper, Sarah Durant of the Zoological Society of London and her international team of colleagues put together a comprehensive data set of cheetahs distribution and status, hoping to get a clearer picture about how cheetahs were really doing.

The findings were sobering. There appear to be only about 7,100 adult and adolescent cheetahs left in the wild, restricted to less than a tenth of their original range. On top of that, a full 77% of their current range actually falls outside of protected areas, which means the vast majority of the cheetahs range exposes them to a host of threats, from hunting or trafficking by humans to conflict and competition with humans.

Establishing and maintaining protected areas [PAs] are key tools for biodiversity conservation, the study authors pointed out. However, this approach is insufficient for many species, particularly those that are wide-ranging and sparse.

The scientists recommended that cheetahs be raised from vulnerable to endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Natures Red List.

In the meantime, conservationists, scientists and policymakers may have to shift their focus toward making those unprotected areas safer places for cheetahs to survive, rather than focusing all their efforts on the protected zones.

For this shift to occur, new policy, management, and financial tools are needed that promote coexistence between people and wildlife outside and adjacent to PAs, the authors wrote. This innovation will require concerted action from governments and effective cross-sectoral engagement across the conservation and economic development communities.

Doing so could provide a model for dealing with other threatened species  although getting there will present a new and complicated set of challenges, the scientists said.

Securing sustainable solutions for wildlife and people will not be easy, particularly where threatened species may share their range with marginalized and vulnerable communities and where human development challenges are substantial, the authors wrote. However, unless this transformation is achieved, the future of wide-ranging and highly threatened species, such as cheetah, is in doubt.

amina.khan@latimes.com

Follow @aminawrite on Twitter for more science news and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

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One is a buttoned-up Iowan divorcee trying to figure out who she is, the other a mysterious and fiery New Yorker who wishes to start over.

Theyre the only characters in The Roommate, a coming-of-age story, of sorts, about two women in their 50s who help each other embark on a journey that will change them both, if not necessarily for the better.

The dark comedy that churns thoughts of reinvention, boldness and adventure makes its West Coast premiere starting Tuesday at South Coast Repertorys Julianne Argyros Stage. Its directed by South Coast Repertory founding artistic director Martin Benson.

The Roommate was written by the fast-rising playwright Jen Silverman, who in the past year has seen her plays performed at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia and  for a workshop  at the Playwrights Horizons Theater School in New York City.

In discussing the premise of the show, Silverman said she has seen a significant number of plays, movies and television shows where the female characters were structurally positioned as the central character but werent exactly driving the narrative. Instead, the women were reactive to whatever the male characters were doing.

She also observed that older actresses were playing roles where they were waiting for their children to come home, sitting around talking to their friends about some man or learning that their husbands were sleeping with younger women.

Younger characters were taken seriously, yet mothers and grandmothers played the dull and old-fashioned roles, she said.

I wanted material to offer them where they were seen as powerful women and not the problem, Silverman said by phone from New York City. I really wanted to challenge myself and keep true to these characters, who I wanted seen as strong and were living out dangerous possibilities. What happened were some beautiful surprises.

Her journey to Iowa, where the play is centered, was a literal one, following from her busy younger years and more recent academic and career moves.

This year, Silverman has upcoming world premieres at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., and the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park in Ohio, as well as a New York premiere at The Playwrights Realm at the Duke.

Shes received grants or fellowships to create new plays through some of the most prestigious theater organizations in the country, including Connecticuts Eugene ONeill Theater Center and the Yale Institute for Music Theatre.

Silverman, a Brown University graduate, earned her masters in fine arts from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and also studied at the Playwrights Program at Juilliard.

Growing up, her scientist parents relocated the family to countries including Finland, Sweden and New Zealand. Silverman said the moves influenced her work as she grew interested in how peoples worlds and cultures collided.

When she lived in Iowa City for three years during graduate school, Silverman said she enjoyed meeting people who were either transplants like herself or who grew up on family farms and had roots in one place.

After she left, she found herself missing the Midwest and knew shed write a play centered there.

Indeed, The Roommate, set in a sleepy Iowa town, follows two 54-year-old women at a crossroads in life.

Sharon, played by seasoned South Coast Repertory actress Linda Gehringer (Going to a Place where you Already Are, The Language Archive, All My Sons) is chatty, practical, an Iowan and an empty-nester.

She takes in roommate Robyn, played by Tessa Auberjonois (Mr. Wolf, A Wrinkle in Time, Crimes of the Heart) to make ends meet and quickly learns that the woman who arrived from the Bronx is holding a lifetime of secrets.

Both are driven to self-transformation and find themselves learning they share more similarities than differences, Silverman said.

I think everyone wants to start over, Sharon says at one point in the play.

Its one of the messages Silverman said she wishes to share with audiences, along with the reminder that its not too late to be what you might have been and that second chances do happen.

Its never too late to transform your life, Silverman said. The possibilities are endless.

*

IF YOU GO

What: The Roommate

When: Jan. 3 to 22

Where: South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

Cost: Ticket prices vary

Information: (714) 708-5555 or visit scr.org.

kathleen.luppi@latimes.com

Twitter: @KathleenLuppi
After a decades-long decline of town butchers showcasing hand-cut meats, a growing demand for alternatives to mass-produced chickens and steaks has inspired a resurgence in boutique butcher shops across the country.

Orange County carnivores can have their choice of Jidori chicken, Kobe beef, buffalo meat and other delicacies, along with charcuterie and aged cheese cut from a wheel, at The Butchery. The meat market and take-out shop has three locations in Orange County, the latest having opened in November in Newport Beachs Crystal Cove shopping center.

Business partners Brian Smith and Robert Hagopians other shops are in Costa Mesa and Brea.

Smith and Hagopian said they wanted to elevate the aesthetic of a classic butcher shop at their latest location by using subway tiles, concrete floors and chalkboards that advertise house-made sandwiches for sale. But otherwise, the shops offer the same goods and service.

Customers can peek through deli cases for items like top-choice and prime beef, grass-fed beef, and all-natural pork and poultry sourced from regional farms and ranches.

All meats can be hand-cut to order and prepared to specifications by butchers.

And on wooden shelves the partners stock wine and beer to pair with, for example, the locally made sausages stuffed with cheddar.

Our main goal is to have everything taste really good and be the same quality found in high-end restaurants, Hagopian said during a recent tour of the newest store. Remember, a good steak only needs salt and pepper.

He would know.

The business partners, both Laguna Beach residents, met through their children and often found themselves cooking dinner for their families.

They took cooking courses together and wanted to recreate best-practice techniques in their kitchens.

Smith asked professional chefs to name the best place to purchase meat for dishes, but he quickly learned that the only option was mass-produced poultry sold on foam trays and wrapped in plastic.

Frustrated with the lack of quality meats offered in Orange County, Smith and Hagopian discussed opening a business that offered specialty products, from dry-aged beef and Wagyu to bison and venison.

They opened their first butcher shop in Costa Mesa in 2009 and seven years later established their second location, in Brea. With their third site, they plan to cater to Newport Beach and cities south on Pacific Coast Highway.

Smith and Hagopian said they buy from farmers who never feed their animals antibiotics or hormone-like growth promotants and whose meat is free from artificial enhancers, preservatives and chemicals. Poultry is sourced from farms like Snake River Farms and Double R Ranch in the Pacific Northwest and Salmon Creek Farms, based in Twin Falls, Idaho.

The shops carry wet-aged and dry-aged steaks. Wet-aged involves taking a fresh side of meat, vacuum-packing it and letting it age in a refrigerated unit for seven to 28 days. For dry-aging, steaks are hung in coolers for at least 30 days, the evaporation softening the meat.

Hagopian said The Butchery aims to appeal not only to advanced chefs but also novices.

He suggested a house steak tip to a couple who identified themselves as grill beginners. The cut is user-friendly and should be cooked on high heat, Hagopian instructed.

The steak tips offered in the display case are top-choice sirloin flap meat, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture notes as high quality. It is meat that is tender, juicy and flavorful.

The Butchery carries only roasts and steaks that are graded prime or choice, meaning they are the first-and second-highest graded beef. Top-grade meats are harder to mess up in the cooking process.

Seasoned butchers are happy to talk shop and give prep recommendations to the uninitiated customers.

Its the type of service that retail experts believe has helped increase the demand for specialty-food stores.

According to nonprofit trade organization Specialty Food Assn., specialty foods saw a record year in 2014, when U.S. sales topped $100 billion, an increase of nearly 22% over 2012.

The study referenced humane food production and a return to simple, old-fashioned practices as contributing factors to a growth in specialty stores.

We like to educate customers, encourage them to taste samples and find the best piece they are looking for, because then itll change the eating experience to exceptional, Hagopian said.

The Butchery locations are 8058 E. Pacific Coast Hwy., Newport Beach; 103 E. 17th St., Costa Mesa; and 415 S. Associated Road, Brea. For more information, visit butcherymeats.com.

kathleen.luppi@latimes.com

Twitter: @KathleenLuppi
In a polished community like Newport Beach, issues such as hunger and homelessness can be tough for children to grasp.

But Allison Rabin, a mother of two, has aimed to give youngsters a chance to learn about such topics and to make a difference.

For more than six years she has volunteered in the Parent Faculty Organization at Harbor View Elementary School in Corona del Mar, which both her children attend.

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Allison Rabin, a volunteer with the Parent Faculty Organization at Harbor View Elementary School in Corona del Mar, says she aims to help children understand and empathize with people who are homeless and hungry. (Scott Smeltzer / Daily Pilot)

As the groups vice president of community outreach for two years, she has been able to create programs in which Harbor View students and their parents can help organizations such as Irvine-based Families Forward, which assists homeless and low-income families with counseling, housing and other services.

By doing these community programs, the hope is that [these issues] no longer become a scary thing, Rabin said.

-----------------------------------

Editors note: This is an installment of Unsung Heroes, a new annual feature that highlights otherwise overlooked members of the community.

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In November, each class at Harbor View gathered canned and boxed foods to make a Thanksgiving basket for those in need.

Some Harbor View parents and students also volunteered to drop off the baskets at the Families Forward headquarters to help feed some of the 900 families the organization serves across the county.

Allison involving the entire elementary school goes beyond just feeding families, said Kim Strohm, director of communications at Families Forward. Its also a teachable moment for the teachers and families in the classroom who learn that by just bringing in cans of food, someone else can have a Thanksgiving meal, which is what we take for granted.

This month, the school also participated in the second year of Rabins Angel Tree program, in which wish lists from children and parents from Families Forward were written on ornament tags hung from the Christmas tree in Harbor Views multipurpose room. This is the first year the program has been coordinated with Families Forward.

Students could take the tags home and later return to the tree with items the families had asked for, such as shoes, pajamas and gift cards for gas or groceries.

Its a way to understand and create empathy in a comfortable way, Rabin said. It can be scary for kids to think about homelessness and people who are hungry.

Now, on occasion, when Rabins family goes out for dinner and walks home afterward, passing homeless people near Coast Highway, she sees her kids handing them leftovers without fear or hesitation.

We live in an area with so much wealth, and most of us are not wanting or needing many things, Rabin said. But Im proud to be a part of a community that wants to take the time to help others.

--

Alex Chan, alexandra.chan@latimes.com

Twitter: @AlexandraChan10
Now that the people have overwhelmingly spoken, demanding that the question of Museum House be placed on the ballot, it is time to look at the alternatives available to Newport Beach City Council, the consequences arising from each option and hope, perhaps against reason, that thecouncil will do the right thing.

The council has, essentially, two options.

The first would be to vote to rescind the ordinance and kill the project. And, while such an action would show tremendous leadership and a strong commitment to carrying out the will of the people, given the politics involved, this would not seem to be the path that will be followed.

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The second is to put the matter to a vote, as demanded by the more than 13,000 people who signed the referendum petition, despite threats and misinformation spread by proponents of the project. Up to this point, the conversation has been solely about the positives and negatives of the development. Now that a vote is all but certain, it might make sense to discuss the fiscal implications inherent in such a vote.

The petitions submitted to the residents of Newport Beach consist of more than 1,100 pages, cost approximately $100 per petition to print and weigh more than than 10 pounds each. The obvious intent was to burden, intimidate and, ultimately dissuade, the petition-gathers from the exercise of their Constitutional rights. This tactic failed, and now the city will have to suffer the long-term consequences of their short-sighted actions.

California Elections Code Section 9238 requires that the ordinance, as adopted with thousands of unnecessary pages, be sent out to all 53,131 registered voters in Newport Beach. If my calculations are correct, the ballot pamphlet wont even fit in most mailboxes and will clearly be an expensive endeavor. And vote-by-mail ballots, county servicing of petition verification, operation of polling places and vote tabulation have to be added to the costs.

Newport Beach City Council has a clear choice. It can continue to follow the dictates of its puppet masters, acknowledge its political debt to the developer, and reaffirm that its claimed adherence to fiscal conservatism is nothing more than political expediency. Or it can repeal the approval of this project and save the taxpayers from the financial quagmire that it is are responsible for creating.

And councilmembers need to remember that this time the voters, who will overwhelmingly vote in favor of the referendum, are paying attention.

--

PHIL GREER ran for Newport Beach City Council in 2016.
Ten Years Ago

Eight La Canada High School students won positions in the Pasadena City College Tournament of Roses Honor Band and were preparing to perform in the 2007 Rose Parade. They were Charlie Davidson, Tim Elfman, Kevin Kraft, DeDe Mann, Nicky Moura, Tyler Ose, Suzanne Stathatos and Gina Tucker. Reigning over the parade that year was Rose Queen Mary McCluggage, a Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy student.

Twenty Years Ago

The elementary school instrumental program in La Canada Unified School District, sponsored by Assistance League of Flintridge, welcomed gifts from two parents as the 1996 year drew to a close. Palm Crest Elementary School parent Robert Cauer donated 16 half- and quarter-size violins and violas, with bows and carrying cases, along with several boxes of strings; Paradise Canyon Elementary School parent Donna Jaeger donated five sturdy new music stands.

Thirty Years Ago

A decision of the La Canada Flintridge Planning Commission to locate an 85-foot cell tower on an antenna at the Crescenta-Canada YMCA prompted neighbors to appeal the case to the City Council and to ask for an environmental impact report. Among the concerns they stated: effects of high winds on the bluff where the tower would be located, air traffic safety (related to helicopters delivering injured patients to nearby Verdugo Hills Hospital), soil erosion, water drainage, television reception, fire safety and protection of wildlife habitat. Attorney Anita Brenner, who later became a Valley Sun columnist, pressed the neighbors case.

Forty Years Ago

A smoldering fire of unknown origin destroyed the guest house behind a Madison Road home while the property owners were out of town. Smoke seen by neighbors alerted them to the fire and they called the fire department. Damages were estimated at $30,000.

Fifty Years Ago

It was announced in late 1966 that a day-long rugby tournament staged by the Crescenta-Canada Junior Chamber of Commerce was set to take place in early January 1967 on the fields at La Canada and St. Francis high schools. Event chairman Mike Quint said several colleges would be fielding teams that day, including UCLA, the USC Alumni Club, Loyola, Santa Clara, UC Irvine, Fullerton, Occidental and Pomona. Also planning to participate were several Southland rugby clubs.

Sixty Years Ago

At the behest of attorney James A. Mitchell, La Canada merchants interested in the problem of sewage disposal set a meeting for Jan. 2, 1957 at Rudys Flintridge Inn to discuss ways and means of installing a modern sewage system in La Canada, which then still relied on septic systems. Many people dont realize it, but even if we start working for a sewage system now, it will be three-to-five years before we actually have relief, Mitchell was quoted as saying. (In fact, it took well over 30 years after that meeting before the businesses along Foothill Boulevard could hook up to a new main sewer line for relief.)

Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci.
When will the first baby of 2017 be delivered at USC-Verdugo Hills Hospital, and how much will it weigh? Correct guesses could help participants win $100 gift cards in a new Facebook contest announced by hospital officials earlier this week.

Time and weight guesses may be submitted as comments to the contest post at Keck Medicine of USC Verdugo Hills Hospital Facebook page. The winning guess for the time of birth will receive a $100 gift card courtesy of Los Gringos Locos in La Canada, while the closest guess for the babys weight will receive a $100 gift card for Albertsons in Tujunga.

Guesses will be time coded, and in the event of a tie, the person who made the correct guess first will win. Winners will be notified of the results sometime in early January.

--

Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine
In their last meeting of 2016, members of the La Canada Flintridge City Council joined staff members in congratulating city engineer Kris Markarian on taking a new position with the city of Pasadena.

Public Works Director Edward Hitti and City Manager Mark Alexander bid a fond farewell to Markarian, who came into the position in February of last year after previous engineer Ying Kwan retired at the end of 2014.

We certainly wish her the best and thank her for her years of service for the city of La Canada Flintridge, Alexander said of the engineers move to a city whose population is nearly seven times larger. If she thought she was busy before, shes really going to be busy now.

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Markarian said she was grateful to have had an opportunity to serve the city.

Its not by accident that you have such a wonderful community and Im grateful to have been part of it, the outgoing city engineer said, adding she would likely continue to work with La Canada officials on broader, regional issues. Im sure our paths will cross again.

--

Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine
Since Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen took office in May, the government in Taipei has documented four incursions into what it considers its territorial waters. Two of the most recent military movements have occurred since the Taiwanese leader's telephone conversation with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, raising concerns that more Chinese actions will be directed at the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.

Since May 20, Chinese air force planes and naval vessels have approached identification zones marked by Taiwan, which is 160 km away at its nearest point, a defense ministry spokesman told VOA.

The spokesman said China is maneuvering those units, part of the world's third biggest military, to warn Taiwan.

Beijing has claimed Taiwan since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s and insists on eventual unification of the two sides, despite Taiwanese opinion polls indicating a preference for autonomy.

The spokesman said Taipei expects China to continue encroaching on its territorial air and waters. It has ratcheted up its alert but will avoid any recourse that provokes China, the defense ministry spokesman said.

Beijing's military drills received particular attention in Taiwan late this month when the Qingdao-based Liaoning aircraft carrier and an attendant fleet sailed into the Pacific Ocean east of Taiwan, then passed close to the Pratas Islands, what China calls the Dongsha islands, in the South China Sea.

Taiwan claims the islands, which are 850 km southwest of Taipei.
A Tunisian man detained on suspicion of involvement in last weeks Berlin truck attack was released Thursday after investigators determined that he wasnt in contact with the main suspect immediately before the rampage.

The 40-year-old was detained in Berlin on Wednesday. Federal prosecutors said at the time that his telephone number was saved in suspect Anis Amris cellphone and that they suspected he may have been involved.

Prosecutors spokeswoman Frauke Koehler said Thursday that investigators had suspected Amri might have sent him a message and a picture over a messenger service shortly before the Dec. 19 attack on a Christmas market.

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But further investigations determined that the man who was provisionally detained isnt this possible contact person of Anis Amri, so he had to be released from custody, Koehler told reporters.

Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian, is believed to have driven the truck that plowed into the market, killing 12 people. His fingerprints and wallet were found in the truck.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack and released a video showing Amri pledging allegiance to its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Investigators have determined that the video is genuine, Koehler said.

Germany on Dec. 21 released a Europe-wide wanted notice for Amri, who used a string of different names and nationalities. He was killed in a shootout Friday with Italian police in a Milan suburb after they stopped him for a routine identity check.

Prosecutors believe he traveled via the Netherlands and France, Koehler said. In Milan, he was carrying a .22 pistol that he used to shoot a police officer, hitting him in the shoulder.

A bullet found in the truck used in the attack was also from a .22 firearm, but ballistic tests have still to confirm whether it was the same weapon, according to Koehler.

The trucks regular Polish driver was found dead in the cab. Koehler said that a provisional autopsy report shows that he died close to the time of the attack, but it isnt yet possible to give an exact time.

Koehler confirmed German media reports that the truck apparently was slowed by an automatic braking system, bringing it to a standstill after 70 to 80 meters (230 to 260 feet) and preventing worse carnage.

Amri, who had previously spent time in prison in Italy, arrived in Germany in July 2015. German authorities tried this year to deport him to Tunisia after his asylum application was rejected.

Italian investigators are trying to determine whether Amri was tapping a jihadi network in Italy, his port of entry to Europe in early 2011 amid the Arab Spring upheaval.

However, no particular networks have emerged in Italy, Premier Paolo Gentiloni told reporters in Rome.

Authorities in Rome, meanwhile, seized cellphones during a search of two residences in Rome where Amri stayed in 2015, Italian news agency ANSA reported. One of the apartments is home to a Tunisian jailed on a drug dealing conviction.

German authorities had put Amri under covert surveillance for six months earlier this year following a warning from intelligence agencies that he might be planning an attack. The surveillance ended in September after police found no evidence of his alleged plans.

Separately, prosecutors in the western German city of Duisburg said Thursday that they opened a fraud investigation against Amri in April but shelved it in November because his whereabouts were unknown.

Amri was being investigated for receiving asylum-seeker benefits in two different towns, under different identities, for a few days in late 2015.

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Armed guards led the Islamic State suspect down the terrazzo hall and into an office where two judges sat behind carved wooden desks.

They wore heavy black overcoats, the buildings heat having failed long ago.

When did you swear your affiliation? barked one of the judges, a tall, clean-shaven man, imposing even when seated.

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The suspect, a calm young man with a trimmed beard who had been detained at a police checkpoint, denied having sworn allegiance to the militant group.

I will stay here until tonight questioning you until you tell me, the judge said.

I didnt deal with Islamic State, the man insisted.

More than two months into an offensive to retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State, scores of suspected militants have been sent by Iraqi counterterrorism forces to a series of terrorist investigation courts set up as an alternative to instant justice.

Its crucial to the future of Iraq as a state, Professor Audrey Kurth Cronin at American Universitys School of International Service said of the hearings, which she said could reestablish the scope and legitimacy of the Iraqi government.

Screening for potential militants has been more formalized during the Mosul offensive than during past campaigns in an attempt to ensure that Islamic State, once routed from Iraqs second-largest city, doesnt regenerate, said Patrick Martin, an Iraq expert at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

It is an improved process ... but you are still going to have ISIS members who slip through the cracks, said Martin, using an acronym for the Islamic State terrorist organization.

Part of the challenge is identifying hard-core militants.

The reality that the security forces and the justice system are dealing with is that a lot of people joined ISIS because they had to, Martin said, and some of the volunteers included bureaucrats or street sweepers.

It becomes a question of how you judge them, he said.

Human Rights Watch last week said it had found evidence that Iraqi government-backed Sunni militias patrolling south of Mosul on Nov. 29 executed four suspected militants without due process; their families claimed they were innocent. In another case, the group said, Iraqi forces and Sunni militias executed a suspect after he surrendered in Qayyarah in October.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Haider Abadi rejected the allegations.

There are instructions to deliver these terrorists to the relevant security authorities to bring them to justice, spokesman Saad Hadithi said. Violations are prosecuted and forwarded to the competent courts.

Some suspects brought to the court in Qayyarah were caught as they fled villages surrounding the city, at checkpoints and displaced-persons camps. Iraqi security forces screen civilians using a list of 57,000 Islamic State affiliates names.

Judges refer about half of the cases to Ninewa Criminal Court, about 100 miles north in Sheikhan. If a witness provides evidence, thats enough to refer a case. If convicted, penalties range from 15 years for assisting militants to death for violent crimes.

The judges in Qayyarah have heard hundreds of cases since the Mosul offensive began Oct. 17, everything from people accused of being cooks and cleaners for Islamic State to a suspected suicide bomber who reportedly killed dozens of civilians.

Almost all suspects insist theyre innocent. Some claim they didnt fight for Islamic State, just worked for the organization to pay the bills. Others blame relatives, or insist theyve been confused with fighters who share the same name.

Some days, the judges work until midnight, without computers, stamping and filing stacks of documents. They travel to and from work under guard.

Every suspect is entitled to an attorney, and those who cannot afford them are provided court-appointed counsel. Lawyers drift in and out of the makeshift courtroom, fashioned from a residence formerly used by Islamic State.

Suspects await hearings crouched under guard in the hallway or the dirt yard, scraps of white cloth tied around some of their heads as blindfolds.

The man with the trimmed beard was one of eight cases judges heard that day. On Monday, the previous day, theyd heard 48.

In one case, a woman was accused of inserting metal teeth in her mouth to work as an Islamic State enforcer, or biter, nipping female neighbors who violated the militants strict religious code. The sole witness against her: her husband, enough to refer the case to a higher court, judges said.

A man arrested at a nearby camp admitted that his two brothers and four nephews were Islamic State police and fighters, but insisted he himself was not.

Another man was accused of raising money for Islamic State under the guise of helping displaced persons.

The judges asked suspects to provide information about the jihadis, and many did, although the quality of their tips varied.

Two men who confessed to setting off Katyusha rockets for Islamic State told the judges about a bomb-making factory in Mosul. Some suspects snitched on Islamic State-affiliated relatives.

Others were less cooperative.

The man with the trimmed beard was a challenge. The judges took turns questioning him.

Why did your family stay in Mosul? Why didnt you let them come with you? asked the clean-shaven judge, who wanted to be identified as Abu Yaman, a nickname. (Suspects also could not be identified, the judges said, because of security concerns.)

My mom was scared, the suspect said. I came through the only road that was open, through Gogjali. I gave the security forces my name and my familys name.

Abu Yaman, 46, flipped through the mans file in front of him. The suspect had worked as a city cleaner. Recently, another man had appeared before the judge who claimed to have cooked for Islamic State because his family needed the money. The judge had released him.

Did you stay in your position after Islamic State came? asked the second judge, Abu Ali, 53.

Yes, the man said, and then, quickly, No.

The judges exchanged a glance. Sometimes, one word decides a case.

They fingerprinted the suspect, and guards led him from the room less than 10 minutes after he arrived.

The next suspect, a young man with a mustache and shaggy hair, arrived pinching the legs of his gray sweatsuit nervously.

When did you join Islamic State? Abu Yaman demanded as the other judge smoked and studied the suspect.

2015 and I stayed four months.  No, not me, my brother, the man said, fists clenching. They left after the army came. They were in charge of collecting money and bothering people.

After Iraqi security forces freed the area, the man said, they told him to stay home. But he left to get food for his family and was arrested for the first time in his life.

Five minutes later, he was fingerprinted and escorted out.

See the most-read stories in World News this hour 

You can tell from his face hes not Islamic State, Abu Yaman said, as opposed to the man with the beard: Im pretty sure he was ISIS.

The next suspect, a bearded man in a brown dishdasha gown, had been arrested at a camp where he fled with his family. He said his relatives belonged to Islamic State.

Just confess to me. It will be better for you, Abu Yaman said firmly. I will send you to the security forces, and they will beat you.

The man refused to confess. A few minutes later, he was led back to detention.

The next suspect had only a few minutes to plead for his freedom.

I have been here 25 days, he said. I have a paralyzed leg. I have a family.

He, too, was sent back to custody.

Abu Yaman has been a judge for eight years, Abu Ali for 11 years. Thats long enough to form impressions of suspects, they said, and also long enough to know it takes more than an impression to refer a case. They rule based on evidence, they said, not gut feelings.

By days end, the judges had not referred any of the cases they had heard to the higher court  yet. They wanted to take more time to consider the evidence. With that, a guard drove them away.

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Twitter: @mollyhf

ALSO

Americans adjust to a changed role in Iraq

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The U.S. is helping train Iraqi militias historically tied to Iran
Iraqi security forces launched the second phase of their offensive against Islamic State in the key city of Mosul on Thursday, advancing into the city with U.S. forces embedded closer to the front line than in the past.

While Iraqi counter-terrorism and army units pushed forward from the north and east toward the Tigris River, which divides the city, several thousand federal police advanced to the southeast, commanders said.

The prime minister gave us orders to reach the river in a short time. Now the second step, this morning, begins, Maj. Gen. Najim Jabouri, Iraqi army commander of the offensive, said by phone from a north Mosul neigbhorhood where he was overseeing troops.

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Prime Minister Haider Abadi had hoped to retake Mosul by years end but said this week that he expected the offensive to take three more months.

Jabouri said troops started their latest attack at 7 a.m. with strong air support from U.S. forces, hoping to reach the river in a few days and to capture the city sooner than the prime minister expected.

To the north, units of the 16th Division of the Iraqi army cleared neighborhoods and took new ground. To the east, counter-terrorism troops pushed into the city along two fronts. To the south, federal police also began clearing Mosul neighborhoods.

The Iraqi multi-axis advance opens two new fronts within the city and increases pressure on [Islamic States] dwindling ability to generate forces, move fighters or resupply, the U.S.-led coalition said in a statement.

Islamic State seized the northern city, Iraqs second largest, two years ago, and it became central to the survival of the groups self-proclaimed caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria.

The offensive to recapture Mosul began Oct. 17 as a joint effort by 100,000 Iraqi troops, Kurdish security forces and Shiite militiamen  all backed by the U.S.-led coalition  the countrys largest military operation since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Earlier this week, the U.S.-led coalition laid the groundwork for the advance by bombing and disabling the last of five bridges spanning the Tigris. The strikes were conducted to reduce enemy freedom of movement and to further disrupt [Islamic States] ability to reinforce, resupply or use vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices in east Mosul, according to a coalition statement.

Since the start of the operation, the coalition has dropped more than 7,650 munitions in support of Iraqi forces.

Militants have been fighting bitterly to retain control of east Mosul, firing mortar shells into freed areas from nearby neighborhoods and sending in multiple suicide car bombs as well as drones armed with grenades, Jabouri said.

Even so, Jabouri said, Islamic State has weakened in recent weeks. They lose many casualties. They lose the ability to fight. Their morale is down, he said.

The coalition forces, American forces, they did a good job. They destroyed eight [suicide car bombs] just here in the north route, and they destroyed three mortar crews and killed more than 40 Islamic State fighters on Thursday, Jabouri said.

Yahia Rassol, an Iraqi military spokesman, noted the role the Tigris will play in the offensive against Islamic State.

The enemy is currently isolated inside the left bank of Mosul, Rassol said on state television, referring to the west bank of the Tigris. In the coming days, Iraqi forces will liberate the entire left bank of Mosul, and after that we will tackle the right.

The advance into the city that began in October has been led by Iraqi counter-terrorism forces known as the Golden Division, which captured half the east side, then paused in recent weeks for what officials called an operational refit after suffering heavy casualties.

As part of the refit, federal police and Interior Ministry rapid response units were sent in as reinforcements. Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab Saadi, commander of counter-terrorism forces in east Mosul, said they appreciated the help from federal police who have experience with urban warfare.

U.S. military advisors have embedded closer to Iraqi forces in Mosul than previously. Jabouri said he was working with an American advisor near the front line Thursday.

He helps me. He also watches the area. Thats very useful, Jabouri said.

About 114,000 of Mosuls 1.2 million residents have fled the city, and fighting around those who have stayed has been a challenge for Iraqi troops, Jabouri said. U.S. technology  including precision rockets and airstrikes  has helped Iraqi forces target militants without harming civilians, he said.

We depend on them in this battle, Jabouri said of U.S. air forces. In the city we cannot use our heavy weapons; it is very difficult. We need very high technology to fight [Islamic State] and not bother the people.

But a U.S.-coalition airstrike Thursday on a van of suspected Islamic State fighters may also have killed civilians.

Militants were seen firing rocket-propelled grenades, then loading the launcher in the van before the airstrike in what was later determined to be a hospital compound parking lot, according to a coalition statement. The coalition is investigating.

U.S. officials previously acknowledged that a coalition airstrike on Islamic State targets in the eastern Syrian province of Dair Alzour on Sept. 17 mistakenly hit Syrian government troops, killing 62.

Coalition officials have been investigating accusations by Syrian activists that airstrikes led to multiple deaths of civilians  eight people, including three children, in October north of Mosul and at least 20 more last month in a village near the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqah.

U.S. Central Command announced last month that during the last year, two dozen U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria may have killed 64 civilians.

U.S. Army Col. Brett Sylvia said the coalition is deepening its integration and now pushing that into more of the Iraqi formations, including federal police, providing advisors to the brigade level, as they have with the Iraqi army.

Greater integration with Iraqi forces puts U.S. troops  most of whom stay on or near their bases here  closer to the action than they have been since President Obama withdrew U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011. Four U.S. servicemen have been killed in northern Iraq since U.S. troops returned in 2014, mostly special forces deployed near the front line.

Navy Chief Petty Officer Jason Finan, 34, of Anaheim was attached to an elite SEAL team advising Iraqi counter-terrorism forces north of Mosul when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb and he was killed Oct. 20.

Navy SEAL Charles Keating IV was killed in a raid alongside Iraqi troops in May.

Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin was killed by a rocket attack March 19 while he was stationed at an artillery outpost south of Mosul.

Army Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, a special forces commander, was killed during a raid on an Islamic State prison with Kurdish forces outside the northern city of Hawija in October 2015.

A coalition spokesman emphasized that U.S. troops embedding with Iraqi forces remained behind the front line.

As has always been the policy, these advisors are not directly involved in combat but are prepared to defend themselves if necessary, said Army Col. Joe Scrocca, a coalition spokesman, adding that putting more coalition troops in the field will improve synchronization of partner force units.

Daesh has proven vulnerable to decisive maneuver and simultaneous attacks along two or more axes, he said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. He added that Islamic State forces are being bombarded daily by coalition air and artillery strikes, and they have no ability to reinforce or resupply.

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Twitter: @mollyhf

ALSO

Turning Christmas season into an act of service to help wounded warriors at Camp Pendleton

The Iraqi government told Mosul residents to stay put. Now they are paying a heavy price

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UPDATES:

12:50 p.m.: This story was updated to report that an airstrike targeting Islamic State may have killed civilians.

This story was originally published at 7:15 a.m.
Energy Crisis Solution on the Way; A Cold War Airplane Technology Can Serve the Planet!

staff@latinoshealth.com By Qudsia Ibrahims Dec 28, 2016 12:01 PM EST

Energy is the sole important need of man today and tomorrow. With the world population increasing at an alarming speed, it is not wrong to say that in a 20 years' time the current supply of energy will suffice the only half of the world population. If we do not give energy solution the highest priority it will soon be very late.

Fossil fuels could come handy but they burn to exude poisonous fumes and climate disaster that threaten millions. Moreover, their reservoirs will run out in a century or a little more. Renewable energy like solar and the wind is no silver bullet solution. There should be reliable energy generation which is available on demand - something wind and solar can never do, said Kirk Sorensen, the CTO of nuclear energy startup Flibe Energy, as shares Energy Directory.

But we are fortunate of having a great technology used in Cold War-era airplane: NB-36H jet bomber known as "The Crusader." The plane worked with a nuclear reactor in its middle as part of Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program. From here the idea of "molten-salt reactor" took birth which was a radically new sort of plant.

The "molten-salt reactor" was abandoned by the US in the 1970s but today the engineer Sorensen and others are trying to revive the same plan and fuel it with thorium - a carbon-free energy.

The key importance of this nuclear-powered plane was to make it fly 15,000 miles without refueling.

The US government in 1946 launched ANP as an effort to develop a nuclear-powered jet bomber. The physicist Alvin Weinberg, the inventor of light-water reactor (LWR), was well aware of the fact that LWR is not an ideal option for an airplane because it relies on uranium-235, solid nuclear fuel. If uranium is hit by a flying neutron, it can be torn, releasing energy and shooting neutrons. This process is called as "Fission."

Solid fuel holds risk because of possible "fission." So, Weinberg was left with no other options but "molten-salt reactor." This reactor works in a different way than the other nuclear reactors. Instead of burning solid nuclear fuel, it dissolves nuclear fuel in a steady, blazing-hot fluid which increases the efficacy of nuclear fission. This results in burning up all the nuclear fuel and boosting energy output!

Seeing the efficiency of molten-salt reactor, Weinberg, and his team built the first ever small molten-salt reactor which is now in focus of Sorensen and others.

Developing nuclear power technology needs billions of dollars. Only the licensing process needs a huge struggle. The Department of Energy approximations are that licensing of a commercial molten-salt power plant will be possible till 2040 or 2050, Business Insider reported.

But the good news is ahead if gets built; the energy crisis of earth will no more be there! The human success will step on a new stage and the benefits will be tremendous.

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SC Middle School Scare: TB Infection Possible, Report To Be Out By Dec 30

staff@latinoshealth.com By Staff Writer Dec 29, 2016 04:54 AM EST

Rockhill, S.C. - Parents of children studying at Castle Heights Middle School at Rockhill, SC are concerned and anxious that their children might have been exposed to the fatal disease of tuberculosis or TB. On December 23, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control had warned parents that a possible case of TB has been discovered at this SC middle school.

According to The State, once the confirmation report comes out on December 30, the staff and student will also be tested for the possible exposure to disease.

TB is relatively rare in the US. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2015, the state of South Carolina reported just 104 cases of tuberculosis. In the York county, only seven cases were reported.

This does not change the fact that TB remains one of the deadliest diseases of the world. Last year, 10.4 million people around the world became sick due to TB, while 1.8 million died because of it. About one-third of the world's population is infected with TB today.

The lung or throat TB is the one that is infectious. The bacteria that causes tuberculosis spreads by speaking, singing or sneezing in such cases. TB bacteria may attack other parts of the body too, such as the brain, kidney or spine but they are not infectious.

Not everyone who is exposed to TB bacteria becomes sick immediately. They may develop latent TB, which makes them sick when their immune system weakens due to other reasons. Hence, it becomes hard to detect. Such people cannot spread TB to others but they still need to be treated in time so that they do not develop the disease afterward.

Some of the common symptoms of TB patients include pain in the chest, a bad cough that lasts for three weeks or longer, fever and chills, weight loss, sweating at night, and fatigue. It can be effectively treated with the help of drugs if correct measures are taken in time.

The state health agency says that lab tests will be completed by December 30. The parents will be informed whether the germ that causes TB was found at the SC middle school or not.

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Danish Study Links Fish Oil During Pregnancy With Reduced Asthma Risk In Kids [STUDY]

staff@latinoshealth.com By Aboki Basira Dec 29, 2016 04:14 AM EST

A Danish study has discovered that women who took fish oil supplements during pregnancy give birth to children with reduced risk of asthma.

"I would say that the finding that the effect was there was maybe not the surprise, because there have been indications," says Dr. Hans Bisgaard, the study's lead researcher says. "But the magnitude was very surprising to us."

The researchers at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark who engaged in the study gave 2.4 grams of fish oil capsules or olive oil capsules to more than 700 pregnant women who were already in the third trimester of their pregnancy.

The health of the babies was monitored for at least five years after birth. The researchers found that 17 percent of the children in the fish oil group and 24 in the olive oil group had developed persistent wheezing or asthma at the age of 5, according to CBSLocal.

The result shows up to 30 percent reduction in cases of asthma or wheezing and there were also fewer cases of pneumonia, bronchitis and other related diseases in the fish oil group.

However, almost all of the reduced risk occurred among babies born to women who initially had the lowest blood levels of lipids found in fish at the start of the study, Bisgaard says.

He thus suggests that a simple blood test during pregnancy could identify the women who will benefit most from supplements. He described the strategy as "precision prevention," because it targets women who are likely to see the biggest benefit and distinguishes them from other who not the supplement at all.

Bisgaard suspects that more of the United States population would fall in the group who would benefit most from fish oil during pregnancy as Americans consume less fish than Danes. However, the study does not prove that it will be generally helpful, and the findings of other researches contradict this conclusion, according to NPR.

Dr. Ellen Mozurkewich, an OB-GYN at the University of New Mexico, noted that she agrees with that go-slow approach. She has also studied the relationship between fish oil and asthma and says she finds the Danish results intriguing.

However, Mozurkewich stated that she would not recommend the supplements for her patients, as several studies have shown that women who consume fish oil supplements during pregnancy tend to have larger babies, which might be detrimental to the moms.

She said it would be great to run a big study, at multiple universities, to figure out whether fish oil really would prevent asthma in a diverse population.

Although, Bisgaard agrees that his careful exploration of the topic is not the final answer, he said the problem is that it is very difficult to get funding for these kinds of studies.

The study was funded for by the Lundbeck Foundation of Denmark and the Danish Ministry of Health and other groups. The researchers published their findings in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

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Pamela Ramsey Taylor has been initially suspended from her job as director of the Clay County Development Corp. after she made a racist remark on her Facebook account about First Lady Michelle Obama in November. Reports say that she was suspended and will be reinstated before Christmas but later she was completely terminated from her position at the nonprofit.

Vox reported that Taylor sparked national outrage when she called the First Lady as an "ape in heels." Aside from being fired permanently from her position, her employer will now be managed by the state. CCDC uses government funding to provide services for low-income families or residents as well as the elderly.

West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin issued a statement saying that Taylor's termination from her job as CCDC director is assuring that the nonprofit is following anti-discrimination policies. The governor also said that the Appalachian Area Agency on Aging will take over the work of the CDC for six months.

Perez Hilton has also reported on Pamela Taylor's fate after calling Michelle Obama an "ape in heels." The popular online blogger called this a 'non-denominational holiday miracle.' Hilton also joked that Taylor might not be out of work for long since she could be perfect fit for Trump's 'Cabinet of Horrors.'

Apparently this was not the first time Michelle Obama has received cruel racist and sexist remarks since her husband campaigned for presidency. Michelle let these all out in an emotional commentary citing vulgar words and shameful comments that denote the value of women with their physical appearances.

The First Lady was once called a "monkey man" and "gorilla face" by Patrick Rushing mayor of Airway Heights, WA in his Facebook post in July 2015, joked to appear in National Geographic for $50 while Ann Romney was offered $250,000 for Playboy by a California comedian in 2012 and an "ugly black bitch" by a loan officer on Twitter last July to name a few.

Michelle Obama did not respond to any of these attacks but her speech tells of her pain that she has endured over the years.
A recent discovery made in Africa can change the face of energy production and consumption. Croton megalocarpus tree is widely grown in East and Central Africa but is rarely used for anything other than firewood. However, croton holds far greater potential than that.

Alan Paul, a serial entrepreneur, researched croton much earlier than he setup his company, Eco Fuels Kenya (EFK) to learn more about its latent potential. His previous investigation piqued his interest when the low hanging fruit of this treat showed signs of greater promise.

EFK is now pioneering the movement to bring Croton biofuel in the mainstream. The highly potent nuts grown on this tree are storehouse for oil and protein that can be used as clean alternative to diesel, that too at a minimal cost, PennState Extension reported.

According to Paul, the company took small, steady steps into the industry to avoid mistakes like jatropha. He also added that these trees can be grown localy and organically, unlike Jatropha that was exotic to Africa, thus reducing the cost of manufacturing significantly.

EFK managing director Myles Katz also explains how their initiative will help the farmers in the process. He says that the company can purchase nuts from the farmers directly, helping them generate steady income. At the same time, the company already has a working model that does not require millions of dollars in funding just to "get off the ground."

EFK has already started getting the word out to local entrepreneurs for continual supply of nuts. The network of smallholders was immediately intrigued and began participating when they realized that their formerly useless trees can now generate a solid income, CNN reported.

Croton production doesn't require state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities as compared to conventional fuels. It has a simple manufacturing process that uses croton nuts for the extraction of fuel.

For now, the company is selling its biofuel to local businesses that operate using generators. EFK is firming up its foothold by working with local suppliers and using local approach.

Researchers believe that croton has all that it takes to become a successful biofuel. All it needs is proper efforts, in terms of funding and adequate research, to make it marketable and mainstream.
The Massachusetts Legislature on Wednesday delayed the key provisions of new recreational marijuana law after which the backer of the provisions are not happy.

The House and Senate has put a six-month delay on the recreational marijuana law including the licensing of pot shops.

According to a report in pressherald, the bill was passed without a public hearing and without debate during lightly attended session at the house.

The move by the house has now made it illegal to sell pot barring registered medical marijuana patients in Massachusetts.

Pressherald quoted Senate President Stan Rosenberg as saying "The Legislature has a responsibility to implement the will of the voters while also protecting public health and public safety".

Meanwhile, the bill would also require the state Department of Public Health to commission a detailed study of marijuana usage in Massachusetts and the possible impacts of the new law.

Several lawmakers have expressed concern that the 3.75 percent state excise tax currently in the law would be too low to cover regulatory and enforcement costs.

A spokesperson for Republican government Charlie Baker has suggested the possible need for more local control over pot shops and limits on the potency of edible marijuana products.

Voters in California, Maine and Nevada also approved recreational marijuana initiatives last month, joining Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska, which previously had legalized recreational marijuana.

Baker would review the bill before deciding whether to sign it.

Earlier he has told media persons that he would respect the will of voters, but was open to delaying implementation of the law for a "reasonable time period."

However, Pressherald quoted a sponser as saying that their position over the bill remains the same and added that the measure was written with careful consideration regarding process and time lines and that no major legislative revisions are necessary.
Around 55,000 migrants who were not eligible for or were refused asylum left Germany voluntarily between January and November 2016, up by 20,000 from the total number who left voluntarily in 2015, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Germany has toughened its stance on immigration in recent months, prompted by concerns about security and integration after admitting more than 1.1 million migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere since early 2015.

Last week a failed asylum seeker who had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State militant group killed 12 people when he rammed a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, fueling growing criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel's immigration policy.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung quoted government data showing the number who returned to their homes in the first 11 months of the year. Most returned to Albania, Serbia, Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iran, the newspaper said. Those leaving are eligible for one-off support of up to 3,000 euros.


Lee Kyu-chul, a spokesman for the independent counsel investigating the crony scandal, said Suh is suspected of turning a blind eye to the quack treatments the president was allegedly addicted to. He is also accused of helping Kim Young-jae get a job at SNUH in July despite his lack of credentials.

Investigators also raided the Chaum clinic and the home and office of Seoul National University Hospital President Suh Chang-suk, who was Park's official doctor from 2014 until earlier this year.

They include Kim Young-jae, a plastic surgeon who has been close to Park's longtime friend Choi Soon-sil for years, and Kim Sang-man, a doctor formerly employed by the luxury Chaum clinic in Gangnam, who prescribed rejuvenating shots for Park under an alias from 2011 to 2014.

Investigators on Wednesday raided the homes and clinics of doctors who are suspected of providing unsupervised treatments to President Park Geun-hye.

The doctors are believed to be in a position to shed light on the president's whereabouts in the notorious "missing seven hours," when Park was nowhere to be found during the 2014 ferry disaster.

Rumors so far say Park was receiving some kind of cosmetic procedure or had been put under with the knockout drug Propofol, which was enjoying a bizarre celebrity vogue at the time.

The mystery is among the main reasons lawmakers are seeking to have her impeached, charging her with inaction while rescue efforts went badly awry and over 300 people, mostly teenagers, died.

The independent counsel has established a separate team to investigate Park's whereabouts during the sinking.

Cheong Wa Dae claims Park was somehow invisibly on duty during these hours and was briefed nine times over the phone and 13 times in writing. The independent counsel will question every person who claims to have spoken to Park on the phone or seen her.

According to Cheong Wa Dae she spoke seven times to Kim Jang-soo, who was national security chief at the time, and once each with senior secretary Choi Won-young and ex-maritime police chief Kim Seok-kyun.

Choi has already told investigators that he spoke with Park on his "office-use mobile phone" that day and noticed nothing unusual about her.


Restaurants and catering businesses, which are usually busy at this time of year thanks to year-end parties and gatherings, are struggling as an increasing number of people tend to skip year-end festivities amid the prolonged recession.

According to a survey of 709 restaurants and catering services conducted by the Korea Foodservice Industry Research institute, 596 of them or 84 percent had their sales decline compared to a year ago.


Dec 28, 2016, 4:32pm ET

Study: Cars can't get much lighter without embracing composites

The findings were presented to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as officials review upcoming CAFE targets.

Automakers will face difficulty significantly reducing weight of next-generation vehicles without embracing composite materials, according to a Center for Automotive Research study.

The survey sought to determine which materials automakers will switch to for primary components if they need to reduce vehicle weight by several levels, ranging from five to 15 percent. Such reductions are viewed as critical in achieving mandatory mpg targets.

"If you really have to get lighter weight vehicles, there is a huge shift to composites, and especially carbon fiber," said CAR chief Jay Baron, as quoted by Automotive News. "Even in pillars and crossbeams and rails."

A group of nine automakers responded to the survey, providing detailed information on the parts materials for dozens of different 2015-model-year vehicles. All were mainstream models, together accounting for the majority of US sales, though the specific identity of each model was not disclosed by the study authors.

America's best-selling nameplate, the Ford F-150, was presumably included in the research and demonstrates one significant leap in lightweight-focused design and production. Extensive use of aluminum helped slash over 700 pounds, representing around 15 percent of the 2014 edition's curb weight.

The AN report suggests the CAR study was presented to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, presumably as part of a discussion about the looming Corporate Average Fuel Economy increase to 54.5 mpg in 2025. The industry has lobbied to reduce the threshold, which may prove more difficult to attain as consumers gravitate toward crossovers and SUVs.
Residents of all but two Bethlehem homes affected by a sinkhole, water leak and natural gas leak Wednesday morning had returned home by nightfall, city fire Chief Robert Novatnack said.

Utility crews were working to restore natural gas service and electricity to those final two homes Wednesday night so their residents could return home, as well.

Residents of "the other 20 homes are already back in," Novatnack said about 4:30 p.m.

"Water's been turned on (along with) the electricity to most of the homes except those two homes right now in front of where the sinkholes are," he said.

The sinkhole created two voids in Hamilton Avenue, near Elm Street, in a residential area bordering Northeast Bethlehem and Center City.

A newspaper carrier reported the problem about 3:30 a.m. after hearing a hiss and seeing water leaking and spraying in the area, according to the fire chief.

The cause of the sinkhole and leaks remained under investigation, Novatnack said.

Roads closed for the incident were expected to reopen Wednesday night, as well.

Half of the sinkhole had been filled in with stone as of dusk, with the final repairs and a top coat delayed until a later date, Novatnack said.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
UPDATE: Religious bookstore robbery suspect is missing inmate, cops say



A Bethlehem man failed to return Wednesday to the Community Corrections facility in West Easton after a shift of work release in Palmer Township, the county Department of Corrections reports.

Jahcquez Vereen-Sappleton, 21, escaped the West Easton work release facility and was later identified as a man allegedly casing a religious bookstore before it was robbed Dec. 31, 2016, in Bethlehem Township. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Jahcquez Vereen-Sappleton, 21, pleaded guilty on March 19, 2015, to making terroristic threats, according to court records. He was sentenced to nine to 23 months behind bars, the Department of Corrections said.

Charges of burglary, attempted harassment and criminal trespass were withdrawn, records show.

Vereen-Sappleton and another man on Sept. 14, 2014, entered a South Side Bethlehem apartment allegedly to protect the resident from a man with whom she was arguing, city police said at the time. But the woman said the argument was minor and Vereen-Sappleton and the other man weren't welcome in her home, police said.

Sappleton is black, 5 feet 11 inches tall and 195 pounds, the Department of Corrections said. He has a teardrop tattoo on his right lower lip, a music notes tattoo on his right forearm, a star tattooed on the right side of his neck, "Elizabeth" tattooed on the left side of his neck and "Fear none" on his chest, the Department of Corrections said.

He was last seen at 5:20 a.m. Wednesday and was reported missing at 7:30 p.m.

His work-release job was at Pallet Express, 2906 William Penn Highway, the Department of Corrections said.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has snubbed outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who had hoped for a meeting to boost his presidential ambitions in Korea.

Foreign Policy magazine cited UN officials as saying Trump "backtracked on a post-election pledge to hold face-to-face talks" with Ban.

The revelation comes amid dismissive bluster about the world body by Trump, who hopes to appeal to American exceptionalists and right-wingers.

Ban and Trump already talked on the phone for 20 minutes on Nov. 11, three days after the U.S. presidential election. Ban later told Korean reporters that the conversation was "polite" and added Trump agreed to a meeting to discuss UN issues.

"We tried to arrange for a personal meeting, as it was agreed during the phone call," the magazine quoted a senior UN official as saying. "But then they said president-elect will not personally see any foreign diplomats before" his Jan. 20 inauguration.

By then Ban will be out of office, so it is likely that Trump saw no urgent reason to meet him. But Trump has also been grandstanding against the UN on Twitter, saying it is "just a club for people to have a 'good time.'"

More recently he was incensed by the Obama administrations decision not to veto a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine.

"As to the UN, things will be different after Jan. 20th," he tweeted.

During the presidential election, Trump also threatened to scotch the Paris climate pact that Ban strongly favored, and dismissed global warming as a "hoax."


easton dishes

Eight satellite dishes sit on the roof of a five-apartment building in the 600 block of Northampton Street in Easton. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

(Matt Smith)

Renters who order satellite TV in their Easton apartments often leave behind the dish when they move to a new home.

The result is "dish blight," the cropping up of non-working dishes all over the city.

"We don't know how many dishes are involved. My guess would be hundreds," said Easton City Councilman David O'Connell. "People, when they leave, they don't take them down. And the new tenants don't remove them either."

City council passed a resolution Wednesday night requiring the removal of the dishes 30 days after they're disconnected. O'Connell sponsored the measure.

"They don't look good. If the service is disconnected, you have the wire just hanging there," he said Thursday. "I think that's a safety issue."

The problem has cropped up in cities across the country, including Boston and Philadelphia.

O'Connell said he would consult with the city's Chief Code Administrator Stephen Nowroski for ways to enforce the resolution.

"I think it will be hard to enforce but I can certainly get behind it," O'Connell said.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
drinky's

Drinky's Nightclub is closing after 13 years in business, with plans for a new music venue in its place.

(Courtesy Photo)

Drinky's Nightclub in Easton's Centre Square will close on Jan. 1 after 13 years in business, making way for a planned music venue in its place.

A New Year's Eve bash, with music by DJ Jamal Knight and DJ K-Fre$h, will cap Drinky's run in Easton on Saturday night before the club's doors close for good at 2 a.m. on New Year's Day.

The owners then intend to spend the coming months overhauling the Drinky's space, with plans to open the music venue sometime in the spring.

Co-owner Billy Cornish said the new concert spot, with two levels and an expected capacity of about 1,000, would fill a niche in the Lehigh Valley by hosting nationally touring acts of all genres.

He said the venue would look to complement, not encroach on, the nearby State Theatre's offerings. More details about the plans and renovations to the space would be coming in the new year, Cornish said.

After more than a dozen years operating Drinky's, Cornish said it was time for something new.

"It really just had its run," said Cornish, who has owned the bar with his partner Greg Melhem for its whole tenure. "To run a concept for 13 years is really lucky."

The club, a fixture in downtown Easton's nightlife, underwent changes throughout its run. About two years ago, Drinky's relaunched with several renovations, a no-smoking policy and a brand new food menu. The adjacent bar The Standard, under the same ownership, was rebranded for a time as Drinky's Pub with a craft beer list and small plates.

Looking back on Drinky's years in Easton, Cornish pointed to the 2011 Rail Jam as a highlight of its run. The event, organized by Drinky's and Red Bull, filled Centre Square with a few dump trucks worth of snow for a snowboarding competition. It returned the following year as the Red Bull Butter Cup with an even bigger ramp for the dozens of competitors.

The club also co-sponsored a motorcycle ride to honor fallen police officers that drew more than 400 riders and hosted events for the American Cancer Society of Lehigh Valley and the MS Society of Lehigh Valley.

Andrew Doerfler may be reached at adoerfler@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @adoerfler or on Facebook.
ELIZABETH -- An Elizabeth man who has pleaded guilty to killing three people in the Lehigh Valley now faces indictment for the killing of three people in one day in Elizabeth, and a fourth person a month earlier.

A Union County grand jury on Tuesday indicted 24-year-old Todd West for the killing of his cousin Michael Tompkins, 29, and fatally shooting Jamil Payne, 29, Kevin Nelson, 32, and Dennis Vega, 28, all of Elizabeth.

Payne, Nelson and Vega were all killed on June 25, 2015 over a period of 20 hours, with the first fatal shooting at about 2 a.m. and the last about 11 p.m., authorities said. Tompkins was killed a month earlier, on May 18.

West was also indicted for attempted murder of Richard Marte, 24, also on June 25.

Following those shootings, authorities said West went to Pennsylvania, where he shot and killed Kory Ketrow, 22, in Easton, and then traveled to Allentown, where he also murdered Trevor D. Gray, 21, and Francine E. Ramos, 32. All three killings occurred in a deadly July 4th weekend shooting spree.

West, who told police in the Lehigh Valley the devil made him gun down random victims, pleaded guilty in Pennsylvania last October in a plea agreement that allowed him to avoid the death penalty, but will result in him being sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison.

Authorities agreed to have West tried first in Pennsylvania, where he faced the death penalty.

Acting Union County Prosecutor Grace Park had said that all seven victims were shot with a .38 caliber revolver and that weapon was recovered in Pennsylvania. The Elizabeth killings occurred within close proximity and West had lived in that neighborhood, Park said.

West was identified as a suspect in the June 25 shooting of Payne by witnesses who saw him leaving the scene at South Park and Sixth Streets in Elizabeth shortly before 11 p.m. that night, according to court documents. He was also reportedly captured on surveillance video chasing Payne, 28, with his car.

Each murder charge carries a maximum sentence of 30 years to life in prison.

It is uncertain when Todd will be brought to New Jersey to face the indictment.

Tom Haydon may be reached at thaydon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @Tom_HaydonSL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
A New Jersey State Police lieutenant who was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in 2015 attributed to his response to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center died Thursday from cancer, the State Police announced.

State Police Lt. Bill Fearon died Thursday. (State Police)

Lt. Bill Fearon, of Cedar Grove, served 22 years with the State Police, most recently as a tactical instructor, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Fearon was diagnosed with a brain tumor on May 3, 2015 and underwent surgery three days later. While undergoing treatment, he returned to work on a limited basis in July 2015, according to a story by NorthJersey.com.

The Cedar Grove community rallied around the trooper during his illness and raised funds to cover medical expenses as he underwent chemotherapy treatment. A GoFundMe account started in May 2015 raised nearly $60,000 and a local fire department hosted a chili cook-off.

The State Police, in a Facebook tribute to Fearon posted late Thursday, cited his enduring positive attitude during the ongoing treatment. He handed out "No Fear" wristbands throughout his battle with cancer, the State Police said.

"Every day I put my feet on the ground and I look forward to winning," Fearon said, according to the State Police post. "This is the mindset that I have, it's about living without fear."

Fearon is survived by his wife Janice, and their three children, Ryan, Elyse and Jessie.

State Police Lt. Bill Fearon in a photo posted on a GoFundMe page dedicated to covering his medical expenses. (GoFundMe)

Jessica Remo may be reached at jremo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessicaRemoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
A community effort to help a family came to fruition last week when the Doyle family from Portlaoise received their brand new 9-seater car, thanks to a local fundraising campaign.

Michelle Doyle, and her seven young children, including three sets of twins, tragically lost husband and dad Christopher Doyle when he passed away suddenly in his sleep last June.

He just didn't wake up. It was a big shock. Some days are harder than others, luckily I have good neighbours and friends, and the kids keep me going, said his widow Michelle, 37.

With no relations living close to help her, she was overwhelmed at the immediate support of the community, from donations to offers to do school runs as her car wasn't big enough.

Playschool owner Bernie Tynan formed a fundraising committee of local parents to buy a nine seater car for them, organising gigs, bagpacks, and setting up a gofundme page and bank account.

It was so touching, the way they pulled together to do this for us, it is unbelievable. I never thought or expected it all, they just weren't going to stop until they got it, said a tearful Michelle at the presentation of her car in Downey's Autostop.

A national tv appearance for a while slowed fundraising, as locals thought the family were getting a free car from Volkswagen.

After months of waiting, the committee turned to Downey's who immediately ordered a car.

In total 37,088 was raised, and with a discount from Ford Ireland and Downeys, the family now have a 42,000 Ford Transit 9-seater, customised for Adam's needs, with car seats and insurance and services costs covered for six years.

The children are twins Adam and Anthony, 8, who attend St Francis' School, Andrew aged 7 and twins Lily and Luke, 6, who go to Scoil Bhride, and Ollie and Olivia, 4, in playschool.

In matching warm coats, they posed patiently for photos in their new car, before taking off together to surprise their grandparents Mary and John in Dublin.

I just love it, said Olivia.

It's fun, I like where we're sitting, said Luke, as Adam gave Michelle a high five.

Committee member Elaine Duff thanked the community for support.

It shows how strong a community spirit we have here. She is such an amazing woman and they are such lovely kids, now they have some security,and they can go places as a unit, that's very important, she said.
Korea's antitrust watchdog has fined Qualcomm a record W1.03 trillion for gouging royalties from Korean smartphone manufacturers (US$1=W1,211).

The Fair Trade Commission on Tuesday said Qualcomm abused a monopoly on certain technologies to force unfair contracts on Korean manufacturers. "Qualcomm made W38 trillion in revenues here since December 2009, so we decided to impose a 2.7 percent fine," said FTC Secretary-General Shin Young-seon.

The highest fine so far was W668.9 billion imposed on six refineries for fixing LPG prices in 2010.

The FTC said Qualcomm forced Samsung and LG to pay three to five percent of their smartphone prices in royalties for patented technologies and permitting only limited use of its technologies to rivals like Samsung and Intel, thereby hindering competition. It told Qualcomm to renegotiate contracts with the smartphone and chip manufacturers.


An Bord Pleanala has refused permission for the proposed construction of a new two-storey licenced food store and off-licence at Attifinlay and Attyrory Tds, Carrick-on-Shannon for Lidl.

In April this year Leitrim County Council granted conditional planning permission for the development lodged by Avant Ireland Property S.a.r.l in November 2015.

However that decision was subsequently appealed to An Bord Pleanala and a number of objections were made about the proposed development.

On December 22, a decision was made by the Board of An Bord Pleanala to refuse permission for the development.

A report released to the Leitrim Observer today by An Bord Pleanala detailed the reasons for the refusal.

In it An Bord Pleanala noted the prominent setting of the proposal at a key entrance to the town of Carrick-on-Shannon and its location adjacent to an important business campus.

The location of the site on lands which partly comprises flood zones and the substantial increase in the retail space provision for Co Leitrim involved in the proposed development were also highlighted.

"Having regard to the justification of the proposed development by the closure of an existing store in Cortober, and in the absence of a comprehensive proposal for an alternative use for the store at Cortober, the Board was not satisfied that the proposed development could be justified in the location proposed, and that the proposed development would not lead to excessive provision of convenience retail space in excess of the retail cap contained in the Leitrim County Retail Strategy 2015-2021," noted An Bord Pleanala.

"The proposed development would, therefore, have a negative impact on the retail vitality of the town centre of Carrick-on-Shannon in contravention of the Retail Planning Guidelines for Planning Authorities, issued by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government in April 2012, would consist of an unnecessary development of lands that are partly subject to flooding and would not be in accordance with the proper planning and sustainable development of the area."

The Board of An Bord Pleanala decided not to accept the Inspectors recommendation to grant permission noting: "The Board was not satisfied that the proposed development represented a satisfactory outcome from the point of view of proper planning and sustainable development of the town of Carrick-on-Shannon as a whole, taking all relevant factors into account."
Over the next few days, we will be publishing our twelve most read posts of 2016. Many thanks to the 533,000 people who have visited the site over the past tumultuous 12 months.

We kick off with our 12th most popular post, a message from Tim Farron in the aftermath of the EU Referendum vote:

Tim Farron has sent this message to members this evening:

Liberal Democrats have always believed that Britain should be outward facing, collaborating with other countries to tackle global challenges. Our membership of the European Union allows us to do that.

Britain has now voted to leave. The margin of victory was small and risks dividing our country. We must respect the outcome of the referendum in how we talk about moving forward.

We also have to understand that for many people this was not just a vote about Europe. It was also a howl of anger at politicians and institutions who they feel are out of touch and have let them down. Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove won this campaign by deliberately deceiving voters. They offered cheap slogans and easy answers that they knew they could never keep. Their hollow pledge of 350 million for the NHS has already unravelled and people will be right to feel angry that they have been let down again.

We must also remember that there are many, many European citizens who have made Britain their home. We are immensely grateful for the contribution they make to our country and we are committed to ensuring they can remain here and feel safe here.

I believe our countrys future is still best served by our membership of the European Union, despite its flaws. Millions of our fellow citizens believe that. I also believe many of those people share our vision of a country that is tolerant, compassionate and positive about Britains role for good in the world. They share our vision of a country that wants to repair its divisions by working hard together, not by offering cheap slogans.

That is why I want to make clear that the Liberal Democrats will fight the next election on a clear and unequivocal promise to restore Britains prosperity and role in the world, with the United Kingdom in the European Union, not outside it.

At the same time, we must address the difficult issues that this referendum has raised about Europe and our country  but with real answers, not cheap slogans.

Since the result of the referendum became known, thousands of new members have joined our party. I encourage you all to reach out to family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances and encourage them to join us to build that Britain together.

If you feel inspired to join us, then you can do so here.
The Economists main Christmas leader is something of a cri de coeur to liberals to feel not defeated but invigorated by events of 2016:

For a certain kind of liberal, 2016 stands as a rebuke. If you believe, as The Economist does, in open economies and open societies, where the free exchange of goods, capital, people and ideas is encouraged and where universal freedoms are protected from state abuse by the rule of law, then this has been a year of setbacks. Not just over Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, but also the tragedy of Syria, abandoned to its suffering, and widespread supportin Hungary, Poland and beyondfor illiberal democracy. As globalisation has become a slur, nationalism, and even authoritarianism, have flourished. In Turkey relief at the failure of a coup was overtaken by savage (and popular) reprisals. In the Philippines voters chose a president who not only deployed death squads but bragged about pulling the trigger. All the while Russia, which hacked Western democracy, and China, which just last week set out to taunt America by seizing one of its maritime drones, insist liberalism is merely a cover for Western expansion.

Faced with this litany, many liberals (of the free-market sort) have lost their nerve. Some have written epitaphs for the liberal order and issued warnings about the threat to democracy. Others argue that, with a timid tweak to immigration law or an extra tariff, life will simply return to normal. That is not good enough. The bitter harvest of 2016 has not suddenly destroyed liberalisms claim to be the best way to confer dignity and bring about prosperity and equity. Rather than ducking the struggle of ideas, liberals should relish it.

At least some of the blame for liberalisms failure this year is self-inflicted, argues the piece: whereas liberalism has in the past been responsible for bold and truly transformative answers to big questions, liberals have failed to do the same now:

If it is to thrive, liberalism must have an answer for the pessimists, too. Yet, during those decades in power, liberals solutions have been underwhelming. In the 19th century liberal reformers met change with universal education, a vast programme of public works and the first employment rights. Later, citizens got the vote, health care and a safety net. After the second world war, America built a global liberal order, using bodies such as the UN and the IMF to give form to its vision. Nothing half so ambitious is coming from the West today. That must change. Liberals must explore the avenues that technology and social needs will open up. Power could be devolved from the state to cities, which act as laboratories for fresh policies. Politics might escape sterile partisanship using new forms of local democracy. The labyrinth of taxation and regulation could be rebuilt rationally. Society could transform education and work so that college is something you return to over several careers in brand new industries. The possibilities are as yet unimagined, but a liberal system, in which individual creativity, preferences and enterprise have full expression, is more likely to seize them than any other.

But it concludes with the a dose of the liberals typical optimism:
THE fascinating and rich history of one of Limericks oldest and most respected rowing clubs has been donated to the councils archives for safe keeping.

The Shannon Rowing Club, which marked its 150th anniversary this year, has seen its archive transferred from its clubhouse at Sarsfield Bridge to the City and County Council premises at Lissanalta House in Dooradoyle.

Among the items in the collection are minute books of the club dating back to 1900, plus finance books, and drawings of the Shannon Rowing Club boathouse itself.

William ONeill, the Limerick museum and archives scholar added: There is also a lovely letter from architect William Clifford Smith thanking the club and its members saying they were a fantastic group of people to deal with.

Mr Clifford Smith was a young British designer, who won a contest to design the rowing club when it opened in the early part of the 20th century.

It was the clubs 150th anniversary president Dorothy Quinn who proposed its archive be donated so it can be preserved for future generations.

Mr ONeill explained: We have the tools, and will be able to conserve and preserve these records for a long time to come. Sometimes, records like these can fall into the wrong processes. Luckily we are able to look after everything properly here.

The documents donated give an insight into the inner workings of the rowing club.

This collection is a valuable piece of social and sporting history of Limerick. The meeting books and other documents will unveil a fascinating insight into Shannon Rowing Club, its history and how it did its business, Mr ONeill added.

Once the collection has been catalogued, it will then be possible for members of the public to come in and view it by appointment.

Shannon Rowing Club was founded in 1866 by members of Limericks business community including entrepreneur and former mayor, Sir Peter Tait. Its iconic clubhouse at Sarsfield Bridge was built and opened in 1904.

More than 200 people attended the clubs gala ball in September.
PLENTY done  but more to do in 2017.

Thats the view of the group behind the delivery of a Mens Shed facility to serve the sprawling suburbs of Raheen, Dooradoyle and Mungret, as the New Year approaches.

It was 12 months ago this week when the Limerick Leader unveiled plans for such a facility at St Nessans Road in Dooradoyle.

But in that time, the group, chaired by Sean Dalton, have secured planning permission to erect a modular building on council land off this road.

And they have also secured the backing of the seven City West councillors  who agreed to donate tens of thousands to the cause  as well as JP McManus, who the group says has made a significant donation to the scheme.

But more is needed to ensure the dream of the six-strong committee, who meet each week at varying locations, becomes a reality.

Money is the king, Sean admits, The nest present for us would probably be if a company or individual decided to sponsor an event or donate something to the shed.

A relatively new concept, a Mens Shed is a dedicated, friendly and welcoming meeting space where men can come together and undertake a variety of activities or just socialise with their peers and enjoy a coffee or game of cards.

An underlying issue  especially at Christmas  is loneliness among older men, Sean says.

We have had a huge amount of feedback on this from people. There is a big emphasis on men and isolation among them. Community is the antidote to isolation. When youre in a community, youre never isolated, he explained.

The group has also had many expressions of interest through its Facebook page from the wives of men who, he jokingly suggests, want to get their less better half out the house!

The Dooradoyle Mens Shed project is different to many of its counterparts nationwide, Sean adds.

We had to work very hard to secure the site [at St Nessans Road]. We are probably a victim of our own success in that most Mens Shed projects take up an unused building. We didnt have that luxury. We have had to find a site and build our own shed, he explains.

While the group is a good distance towards raising a six-figure sum to get the Mens Shed project on the move, Denis McMahon, treasurer, admits he is disappointed in the lack of response from Irelands drug companies.

We are disappointed with the response of some of these companies who are living off us with all their medicines. We have approached some of these firms through our GPs, but heard nothing back. We are all users of their products, and it would be nice for them to give something back to us.

The Mens Shed committee did not know each other at the start of this process, and one of the most pleasing things for them all is the friendships formed among themselves.

We dearly love each other. We bait the s***e out of each other at times, but it has been wonderful to meet these people. We have been great support to one another, Denis said, This is exactly what Mens Shed is all about: men supporting men.
A VERSATILE display of classical music and modern Irish music is to take place at St Marys Cathedral this Friday, marking the collective Strungs debut.

The four-piece contemporary Irish ensemble will kick off their album launch tour at St Marys Cathedral at 8pm, delivering a setlist that certainly sets a positive tone for the New Year.

The ensemble comprises Pallasgreen native Maria Ryan, on violin and vocals, and fellow musicians Lucia Mac Partlin, violin, Sean Warren, cello, and pianist Aonghus McCarthy.

Ms Ryan, 23, recently finished her Bachelor of Music degree at Cork School of Music and is currently studying Performance Masters at the University of Gothenberg, Sweden.

She said that they are delighted with the response to the debut album, which reached number one on the World Music album charts, speedily after its release.

After her studies, Strung will be the main focus, she says.

The plan is to focus on Strung for a while, and see if we can get as many gigs as possible, and to play for as many people as we can. Its about getting our music out there, and getting new material and developing music skills.

We are all classically-trained, and we love writing new music, and getting our classical training into our new music. And its not difficult writing the new music, and we just love doing it. We love writing new material and bouncing new ideas off each other.

Admission for the night is 10, with concession tickets at 5. The album will also be available for purchase on the night at 15.

The group will perform the album at St Finians Church, in Dublin, on January 5, followed by the official album launch at the CIT Cork School of Music on January 7. They will also perform at the Live on Air Festival, Sligo, next May.

For more information on the ensemble, visit their website www.strungmusic.com.
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China's Information Office of the State Council on Tuesday (Dec. 27) released an expansive white paper on that country's space activities in 2016. The document also projected a look at China's space agenda over the coming years, a plan that includes a lunar sample-return mission and the first soft-landing on the far side of the moon in 2018.

In an associated press conference marking the release of the white paper, vice administrator of the China National Space Administration, Wu Yanhua, stated that China plans to develop a new generation of heavy-lift carrier rocket, the "Changzheng-9" or "Long March-9." That booster is intended for future manned lunar landing and deep space exploration missions, according to a report by the website Crienglish.com.

"There is an old saying in aerospace industry, 'If you want to develop space industry, you need to work on space rockets first; and if you want to develop space rockets, you need to work on its engines first,;" Wu said in the press conference. "So now we need to make progress in the heavy-lift carrier rocket's engine first, to create conditions for the whole project. It is planned that the heavy-lift carrier rocket's maiden flight will be held around 2030." [China in Space: A Video Look Back]

Vice administrator of China National Space Administration, Wu Yanhua, speaks at Dec. 27 briefing unveiling a white paper on Chinese space development 2016. (Image credit: gov.cn)

China's 5-year space plan

The wide-ranging white paper lays out the purpose of China's space program as well as its vision and principles of development. It also includes a summary of China's major developments in space since 2011, and the major tasks ahead for the next five years.

The document also includes policies and measures for development and the role of international exchanges and cooperation.

In terms of deep-space exploration, the white paper explains that China will continue its lunar exploration project, and strive to attain the automated extraterrestrial sampling and returning technology by space explorers.

Three strategic steps

"We plan to fulfill the three strategic steps of 'orbiting, landing and returning' for the lunar exploration project by launching the Chang'e-5 lunar probe by the end of 2017 and realizing regional soft landing, sampling and return. We will launch the Chang'e-4 lunar probe around 2018 to achieve humanity's first soft-landing on the far side of the moon, and conduct an in-situ and rover detection and relay communications misison from the Earth-moon L2 point."

Also noted is that through China's lunar exploration project, topographic and geological surveys will be implemented and laboratory research conducted on lunar samples; geological survey and research as well as low-frequency radio astronomy observation and research will be carried out targeting the landing area on the far side of the moon for a better understanding of the formation and evolution of the moon.

Next lunar probe

At the press conference hosted by the State Council Information Office, Wu also detailed work underway on Chang'e-5, targeted for liftoff at the end of 2017.

"We will take samples from the surface of the moon as well as different depths of the moon rocks after drilling, and the samples will be used by scientists for scientific research," Wu said.

Wu added that work related to Chang'e-5 is going smoothly.

Mars and beyond

Explained in the white paper is that China intends to execute its first Mars exploration operation, and grasp key technologies for orbiting, landing and roving exploration.

China plans to launch this Mars probe by 2020 to carry out orbiting and roving exploration.

"It will conduct further studies and key technological research on the bringing back of samples from Mars, asteroid exploration, exploration of the Jupiter system and planet fly-by exploration. When conditions allow, related projects will be implemented to conduct research into major scientific questions such as the origin and evolution of the solar system, and search for extraterrestrial life," the paper explains.

Raising human spaceflight capacity

In the category of human spaceflight, the white paper notes that China plans to launch the Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft to dock with the now Earth-orbiting Tiangong-2 space laboratory, "and research and master key technologies for cargo transport and replenishment to accumulate experience in building and operating a space station."

"We strive to acquire key technologies and conduct experiments on such technologies," the paper continues, "to raise our manned spaceflight capacity, laying a foundation for exploring and developing cislunar space." [China's Tiangong-2 Space Lab in Pictures]

Chinas 60-ton medium-size space station is depicted in this artwork. (Image credit: CNSA)

In June 2016, China's new Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island celebrated its first launch. Renovations have also been accomplished in the Jiuquan, Taiyuan and Xichang launch sites, "forming a launch site network covering both coastal and inland areas, high and low altitudes, and various trajectories to satisfy the launch needs of manned spaceships, space laboratory core modules, deep space probes and all kinds of satellites," the document explains. "The integrated capacities and functions of space launch sites will be enhanced and exploited to meet various needs."

Historical starting line

The white paper concludes by noting that the country is "standing at a new historical starting line," with China "determined to quicken the pace of developing its space industry, and actively carry out international space exchanges and cooperation."

Since 2011 China has signed 43 space cooperation agreements or memoranda of understanding with 29 countries, space agencies and international organizations.

To access the full white paper  "China's Space Activities in 2016"  visit: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1025885.shtml.

Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," published in October by National Geographic this October. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel six-part series, Mars. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
The armadillo is one of the few mammals covered in defensive body armor  in fact, armadillo means "little armored one" in Spanish. Their protective plates shield them from the attacks of potential predators, but are armadillos just as guarded with their hearts?

There are 21 species of armadillos across the globe. The nine-banded armadillo is the only armadillo species found in the United States, and it's also the state small mammal of Texas. This species is named for the bands of plates on its back; they have an average of nine bands, but the actual number varies among individuals of the species.

Nine-banded armadillos are mostly solitary creatures and usually come together only during the breeding season, which lasts from early summer through autumn, said Colleen McDonough, a behavioral ecologist at Valdosta State University in Georgia who studies nine-banded armadillos. Adults set up small home ranges that may overlap with those of other adults, and they may have low levels of interactions in these overlapping areas, she said. [Animal Sex: 7 Tales of Naughty Acts in the Wild]

"They may be feeding near one another but not with one another," McDonough told Live Science. "They have a pretty good olfactory system, so they likely know who is around and who should be around."

The mating behaviors of nine-banded armadillos are not well known, but McDonough has made some careful observations of the animals during the breeding season. During the breeding season, males use their powerful noses to find a female with which to "pair." It's most common to see males pair with females whose home ranges overlap most with their own, McDonough said.

Pairing behavior is a kind of courtship ritual in which the male tries to remain in close proximity to the female (within a few meters) at all times. If the female is unreceptive, however, she'll do all she can to get away, including kicking at him with her hind legs, according to McDonough. But females are generally much more tolerant of males during the breeding season.

If another male comes up to a couple, the paired male will rush off to meet him; in some cases, he will simply chase the newcomer off, but other times, a duel can ensue. These battles can get vicious, with the males attacking each other with their formidable claws.

"There was this one time where I did see one male usurp the other [paired] male," McDonough said.

Aside from remaining close by his chosen mate and protecting her, the male will engage in other smooth moves, such as touching the back end of her carapace with his front paws, sniffing her genitalia, and bringing his body into physical contact with hers. The female will occasionally lift her tail (exposing her genitals) and wag it from side to side. The pair may also forage near each other and make low "chuck" sounds to each other that can be heard only within a 15-foot (5 meters) radius. [The 7 Weirdest Animal Penises]

Overall, these behaviors ramp up and intensify as the pair gets closer to mating, with the male touching the female more and becoming more focused on her genital area, McDonough said. To mate, the female lifts her tail, and the male mounts her from behind.

Interestingly, nine-banded armadillos have delayed implantation. In other words, depending on when the female mated, her eggs may not implant into her uterus for development for several months; this delay allows her to time the birth of her quadruplets with the coming of spring.

In one unusual case, McDonough said, pregnant females were transported from the United States to England for leprosy studies. "The females were alone for at least a year and a half," she said. "But then, they gave birth."

Original article on Live Science.
In negotiating, is a more precise opening offer always better? It might be  but it depends on the experience level of the person with whom you're negotiating, a recent study from Germany found.

In the study, researchers showed that increasing the precision of an opening offer improved a person's negotiations with amateurs, but could actually backfire on negotiations with experts.

In most situations, precision can influence social perceptions during a negotiation, suggesting more confidence and competence, the researchers wrote in their study, which was published in October in the journal Psychological Science. People tend to assume that those they're communicating with provide exactly the right amount of information needed  not any more, and not any less, the researchers said. Thus, people may intuitively feel that a more precise offer reflects more knowledge about the value of what is being bought or sold, the investigators said. [7 Ways to Reduce Job Stress]

However, too much precision can hurt with experts, because they may assume that the overly precise number reflects a lack of competence, the study found.

To explore the effects of precision on negotiating, the researchers conducted five experiments that included 1,320 experts and amateurs in real estate, jewelry, car and human-resources negotiations.

For example, in one of the experiments, the researchers provided 230 amateurs and 223 real estate agents (the experts) in Germany with a detailed real-estate listing that included pictures, floor plans and other relevant information. The study participants were then given an opening offer with varying degrees of precision, ranging from 979,000 euros or 981,000 euros in the least-precise condition up to 978,781.63 euros or 981,218.37 euros in the most-precise condition.

When asked to make a counteroffer and state the highest price they were willing to pay for the house, amateurs were almost always willing to pay more when the offer was more precise. In other words, they made higher counteroffers and were willing to pay more for the house as precision increased.

Experts, however, reacted differently. While increased precision in an offer helped in negotiations up to a point, researchers saw a "U shape" in experts' willingness to pay and in the amount of their counteroffers. If the offer became tooprecise, then this precision turned into a disadvantage, lowering the experts' view of the value of the home and the competence of the person with whom they were negotiating.

Real-world implications

The findings suggest that negotiators analyze their counterpart's expertise before making a precise offer, said lead-study author David Loschelder, an assistant professor of economic psychology at Leuphana University Luneburg in Germany.

"Moderate precision is always safe and very likely effective," Loschelder told Live Science.

The study did have limitations, however.

For example, the transactions in the study were not real; rather, they were conducted in a laboratory setting, Loschelder noted. People might have said they were willing to pay X amount, but in reality, the number might be different, he said.

Despite such limitations, Michael Wheeler, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, who was not involved in the study, said that he was "pretty well-persuaded that if the authors can get these effects here, they are applicable to the real world."

The power of the study comes from its very different findings for the effects of precision on experts versus on amateurs, said Wheeler, who is also involved with Harvard Business School's online learning initiative, HBX.

"That may be very subversive in terms of negotiation research," Wheeler told Live Science, noting that most research on negotiation is performed in labs using amateurs, or participants with little negotiation experience. The recent study could raise a "yellow caution flag" when examining other research done with subjects who were entirely inexperienced negotiators, he added.

The study has practical, real-world implications as well.

"One takeaway is avoid being too clever by half," Wheeler said. "If you think a precise number is going to be valuable, don't overdo it, particularly if you're dealing with somebody who is experienced in that particular industry or realm."

Originally published on Live Science.
A weapon that viruses use in their neverending war with bacteria could be used to turn off the worlds most powerful gene-editing tool.

That, in turn, could reduce the risk that the bacterial cut-and-paste system, called CRISPR-Cas9, snips the wrong genes and introduces runaway genetic changes into humans or other species in the wild.

In a new study, scientists discovered that a tiny protein shuts off the system, and at least in a petri dish, the protein works in human cells, the researchers said.

"It's just basically a single protein that we can make in the cell or deliver to the cell that will turn off Cas9, [and] stop it from binding and cutting DNA," said study author Joseph Bondy-Denomy, a microbiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. [Video: How Does CRISPR-Cas 9 Gene Editing Work?]

Genetic find and replace

The CRISPR-Cas9 complex is a powerful tool in the bacterial immune defense against invading viruses. When a virus infiltrates a bacterial cell, the bacteria mobilize a sequence of DNA, called CRISPR, or "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats." The DNA consists of short blocks of repeating base pairs separated by spacer DNA. The bacteria copy and insert the viral DNA sequence into the CRISPR region and produce two strands of RNA. This RNA then associates with an enzyme called Cas9, which acts as a pair of guided scissors, homing in to the target viral DNA and snipping it out. Finally, the cell repairs the DNA, replacing the deleted DNA snippet with another replacement piece (supplied by scientists). Essentially, the CRISPR/Cas9 system can be used as a genetic "find and replace."

The CRISPR system's ease of use means it could be used for almost any gene-editing technique. For instance, doctors could one day edit human immune cells in the lab to recognize cancer cells, and then inject those cells back into a person as a targeted cancer treatment, Bondy-Denomy said. Recently, researchers in China used CRISPR to edit human embryos with serious genetic defects, though they did not allow the embryos to mature.

Off-target effects

However, the gene-editing system has a problem: It still sometimes cuts the wrong DNA sequences. Cas9 also sticks around too long; it takes about 24 hours for half of the Cas9 to be degraded by a cell, giving it plenty of time to make off-target cuts to DNA, Bondy-Denomy told Live Science.

Therefore, if Cas9 has an "off" switch, it would make the possibility of human genetic engineering safer, Bondy-Denomy said.

He and his colleagues reasoned that viruses must have some way of switching off CRISPR/Cas9. To replicate, viruses often insert their own DNA into the bacteria's genome, coopting the cells genetic machinery to make many copies of viral DNA. By that logic, then, viruses must have a way to deactivate CRISPR/Cas9, or else sometimes the bacteria's immune system would identify the target viral DNA in its own genome, cut it and cause itself to self-destruct, Bondy-Denomy and his colleagues said.

"Cas9 should make an RNA that will then cleave the virus that happens to be in its own genome  it's not smart enough to know it's in its own genome, Bondy-Denomy told Live Science. The team reasoned that if the bacterial cell is stable and it's not self-destructing, "then perhaps this virus is making an inhibitor protein."

Then, the team looked at 300 strains of Listeria bacteria, which cause food-borne illness, for signs that viral DNA had infiltrated the bacterial genome. Yet the bacteria were not self-destructing. From there, they looked for proteins that inactivated Listeria's version of Cas9, which is very similar to the one used in most labs around the world, called SpyCas9.

The team found four anti-CRISPR proteins, two of which worked against the commonly used SpyCas9, the researchers reported today (Dec. 29) in the journal Cell. In a petri dish, these two anti-CRISPR proteins also worked in human cells to deactivate the CRISPR/Cas9 system.

Safer engineering

The team still has to prove that using the anti-Cas9 proteins reduces the off-target cutting potential of Cas9, and they don't know how long the protein lingers in cells. However, if they can show the protein works in vivo, the new discovery would have the potential to make gene editing safer by eliminating Cas9 quickly.

"You don't rely on its passive degradation; you actually ensure it gets turned off," Bondy-Denomy said.

The technique could also be used for other applications. For instance, people have discussed using Cas9 to introduce a mutant gene into an entire population of mosquitoes to eradicate them or prevent the spread of certain diseases.

"This is essentially unleashing bioterror on an organism," which could have good, bad or completely unpredictable consequences, Bondy-Denomy said. So these anti-CRISPR proteins could be a handy off switch or control mechanism to use in case such species-wide engineering needs to be reined in, Bondy-Denomy said.

Original article on Live Science.
8 Huge Health Stories from 2016

A female Aedes aegypti mosquito, a carrier of the Zika virus, feeds on human blood. (Image credit: CDC/James Gathany)

From the elimination of measles in the U.S. to the advance of potential new treatments for Alzheimer's disease, 2016 was a jam-packed year for health news. Here are eight of the most noteworthy health news stories from this year.

Zika's rise and retreat

A female Aedes aegypti mosquito, a carrier of the Zika virus, feeds on human blood. (Image credit: CDC/James Gathany)

Although the Zika virus was identified in 1947, it erupted onto the world scene in 2015, and moved into greater global consciousness with lightning speed over the past year.

During the summer of 2016, local transmission of the Zika virus was seen in the U.S. for the first time, in a neighborhood near Miami. And in August, the National Institutes of Health announced that it had launched a clinical trial to test a vaccine to protect people against Zika infections.

These infections can be hard to spot, Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, told Live Science. That's because 80 percent of people infected with the virus have no symptoms, and the other 20 percent usually have only mild symptoms, like fever and headaches, he said.

The primary danger of the virus, though, comes from the potential birth defects Zika causes when it infects pregnant women: Researchers have linked the virus to microcephaly, a disorder in which babies are born with smaller-than-average heads. These babies then face lifelong disabilities.

On Nov. 18, 2016, the World Health Organization declared that Zika was no longer a global emergency. Even still, the virus has spread to the U.S. in areas like Florida and Texas, where Zika-infected mosquitoes now exist. Currently, no vaccine for Zika exists.

"Zika is here to stay in the Americas. It's going to be a part of our lives for years to come," Glatter told Live Science in February. "We need to look at the time line and get a good idea of what the viruses are that are a threat to the human race, and invest in technologies and spot the trends early to become more proactive and less reactive."

Advance in Alzheimer's treatment

A new investigational drugs shows a dramatic ability to clear amyloid beta plaques, the signature abnormal protein clumps found in the brains of those with Alzheimer's Disease. Brain scans of people with the early stages of the disease (left) show amyloid tangles in bright red; after a year of treatment (right), most of these plaques were completely gone. The drug also showed increased ability to clear plaques at higher doses (top to bottom). (Image credit: Sevigny et al, Nature 2016)

An advance in the search for a treatment for Alzheimer's disease hit the stage in 2016: An early study, published in August, found that an investigational drug called aducanumab can significantly reduce the amount of amyloid beta plaque in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. This plaque consists of the tangled clumps of proteins that build up over time in the brains of people who have Alzheimer's disease. The researchers concluded that the drug spurs the immune system to work to clear the plaques.

Although the study was not designed to show whether the drug can improve people's cognitive abilities, the findings suggest that the drug does work this way, the researchers said.

"We believe that's a hint of efficacy," study co-author Dr. Alfred Sandrock said during a news briefing on the findings. Sandrock is a neurologist and executive vice president at Biogen, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, company that funded the trial and applied to patent the drug.

More research is needed to determine whether the drug affects patients' symptoms of Alzheimer's, Sandrock said. [6 Big Mysteries of Alzheimer's Disease]

Ebola outbreak declared over

(Image credit: lmstockwork/Shutterstock)

Earlier this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was no longer a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, signifying that the region was largely clear of the disease. The outbreak began in December 2013 and raged during 2014 and 2015, striking hardest in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where more than 28,000 people were infected. More than 11,000 people in the region died from the disease.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO's special representative for the Ebola response, noted in a statement in January 2016 that efforts to prevent and track the disease were still underway, and that "we still anticipate flare-ups and must be prepared for them.

Landmark Supreme Court case in women's health

(opens in new tab) via Shutterstock) (Image credit: Supreme Court photo via Shutterstock)

On June 27 this year the Supreme Court overturned a Texas bill that had stated that doctors who perform abortions must have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The majority opinion (decided 5-3) said that such requirements did not offer any medical benefits to women seeking abortions, given that "abortion is one of the safest medical procedures performed in the United States."

Patients who undergo the procedure in a clinic rarely require hospital admission, said the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Controversy over the EpiPen

(Image credit: Rob Byron / Shutterstock.com)

This year, the EpiPen's skyrocketing price generated controversy. The device allows people to inject epinephrine into their systems to counteract life-threatening allergic reactions. But in 2016, the device's price had increased by 500 percent since 2009 (opens in new tab). Mylan, the company that sells EpiPens, agreed in October to pay a whopping $465 million to the Department of Justice (DOJ) after accusations that it had been overcharging Medicaid for the devices. As part of that settlement, Mylan did not have to admit to any wrongdoing, but worked with the Department of Justice to create a corporate integrity agreement.

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch said in a statement to the U.S. House of Representatives in September that "the misconception about our profits is understandable and at least partly due to the complex environment in which pharmaceutical prices are determined."

She also detailed Mylan's plans to offer savings to EpiPen consumers, including offering the first generic version of the EpiPen.

Americans voted on weed in the election

Cannabis plants grow at a medical marijuana cultivation facility in Johnstown, New York, on Aug. 19, 2016. (Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

During the 2016 election, Americans in nine states voted on whether to legalize marijuana, for either medical or recreational use, in their states. Now, it's legal to recreationally use marijuana in Alaska, California, Colorado, Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Washington and the District of Columbia. Plus, 21 other states allow people to use marijuana for medical purposes.

It's hard to say yet what effect all of the new laws might have, experts said. Dr. Tina Rizack, an oncologist at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, told Live Science in March that as the drug "becomes more available, patients will ask more questions about its therapeutic value, and, hopefully, more research will be done to answer these questions."

Measles eliminated in the Americas

This is the skin of a patient after three days of measles infection. (Image credit: CDC)

On Sept. 27, the Pan American Health Organization (part of the United Nations) declared that measles was eliminated from the Americas. Essentially, this means that there are no more cases of measles originating in those countries and that any cases of measles that do arise in those locations come from outside the Americas, Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist and a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Health Security, told Live Science in September.

"What's keeping measles at bay right now in the Americas is our high vaccination rate," Adalja said. The World Health Organization recommended that countries have at least 80 percent of people living in cities and 95 percent of the entire population vaccinated against measles in order to prevent the spread of imported cases.

New male birth control tested, but rejected

(Image credit: Stockxpert)

A study on a new, experimental type of male birth control that involves hormone shots was halted early because of the high rate of side effects in men who received the shots. The men's side effects included acne, pain at the injection site, increased sex drive and mood disorders  which garnered attention given their similarity to many side effects of female birth control.

"Although the injections were effective in reducing the rate of pregnancy, the combination of hormones needs to be studied more to consider a good balance between efficacy and safety," said study co-author Dr. Mario Philip Reyes Festin, a medical officer on the human reproduction team at the World Health Organization.

Originally published on Live Science.
In December of 1992, a young devout Catholic studying science, Jose Juan Sanchez, approached the priest at St. Augustine Church about the idea of officiating a special Mass for Aggie students.

Sanchezs sole intention for this Mass was for the priest to have a special blessing at the end of the service for all Aggie students returning to College Station in the spring semester.
A Laredo native running for San Antonio City Council came back to town for a campaign fundraiser hosted by Juan Cruz on Wednesday evening.

Rick Trevino grew up in Laredo and attended Gutierrez Elementary, Clark Middle School and Alexander High School. At the age of 20 Trevino moved to San Antonio to continue his studies at Northwest Vista College and later transferred to UTSA where he completed his Bachelors degree in political science. Trevino completed his teacher certification while at UTSA and holds a Masters in educational leadership from Trinity University as well.

Trevino has worked at Sam Houston High School on San Antonios eastside for five years teaching world geography, U.S. history and government. His experience as a teacher has propelled him to run for San Antonio City Council District 6, he said. Although Trevino graduated with a political science degree, the thought that his political background would enter the foreground never really crossed his mind.

I never thought that it would actually be something that I would pursue, but when I started teaching at Sam Houston, just what Ive seen what the community is going through and what poverty is  when you see it firsthand and you see it everyday its just something that I cant stand. We have to do something about it, Trevino said.

Teaching provided Trevino with the ability to see the realities of San Antonio and that alone has led him to his current position, he said.

Trevinos political platform mirrors his efforts within the classroom as well as his community involvement. As a teacher, Trevino has become involved with the community with initiatives that aim to eliminate Food Deserts. While teaching urban agriculture, Trevino and his students brought the idea of a farmers market to life through a collaboration with Eastside Promise Neighborhood and the San Antonio Food Bank. The market is now two years old and is the only farmers market in San Antonio that offers double up food bucks which doubles food stamps, he said. He also has started a bicycle club at Sam Houston that trains students how to build and fix bikes that will hopefully provide students with skills that may translate to jobs one day.

Trevino was a national delegate for Bernie Sanders and is responsible for establishing San Antonio for Sanders and helped in the establishment of Laredo for Sanders as well. He said he hopes to encourage the discussion surrounding the challenges hard workers face as they struggle with minimal wage, which Trevino said has been neglected by politicians.

You look at politicians and we make them seem like theyre these holy people  theyre just people and a lot of them are bought and sold by the highest bidder and I dont want to be that guy, Trevino said. We need authenticity. We got to start representing ourselves, start at the school board, city council and I really hope that this resonates and we can give the community what they deserve. Thats what Im trying to do.
CAMPBELLTON, Texas (AP)  Law officers in South Texas have fatally shot a man who escaped from a county jail on Christmas Eve after injuring several guards.

The Live Oak County sheriff's office says 36-year-old Jake Childers was killed in a shootout Tuesday night in Campbellton, about 50 miles south of San Antonio.
A number of high profile names have stepped up in support of the ongoing campaign to have the wonder-drug Orkambi introduced for Cystic Fibrosis sufferers in Ireland.

Members of the cast of the ever-popular series 'Mrs Brown's Boys', including star and writer Brendan O'Carroll, as well as entrepreneur Gavin Duffy, jockey Ruby Walsh and Gogglebox star Sandra Martin paid a visit to Longford woman Hazel Robinson and her daughter Gypsy, during one of Gypsy's stays in Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin recently.

The more people we can get to advocate for us the better, Hazel told the Leader last week. In the New Year, we're going to see if we can get some more famous faces.

If I can get enough high profile people behind it, it might cause a bit more pressure.

I also plan in the New Year to contact every County Council. We started from the top down and it didn't work, so now we'll work from the ground up.

Hazel also hit out at Health Minister Simon Harris for failing to meet with families of Cystic Fibrosis sufferers, despite the issues they're currently facing.

We're a year on now and I don't have much faith in them (Vertex or the HSE).

I want to try and meet Minister Simon Harris in the New Year, too.

He didn't ever acknowledge the petition.

I can't understand why he, so far to date, has danced around meeting with anybody.

So if the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain!

Admitting that it has been a difficult, frustrating year, Hazel shared her fears about the year ahead.

I'm going into next year looking at my child, if she's lucky, to get somebody else's lung.

That's the year we're looking ahead at.

My desperation is literally turning to anger.
Nature & Weather, Local News, National & World News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 29 2016

A broad coalition of 19 states and localities calls on President-Elect Trump to continue the federal governments defense of the Clean Power Plan.

New York, NY - December 29, 2016 - A broad coalition of 19 states and localities, led by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, called on President-Elect Trump to continue the federal governments defense of the Clean Power Plan in a letter sent today, urging him to reject misguided advice from a group of Attorneys General led by West Virginia to discard the plan,

The letter details why the Clean Power Plan is vital to efforts to limit carbon pollution, and pushes back against ill-conceived efforts to urge the President-Elect to unravel the plan -- which, the letter explains, would be contrary to the law.

States like New York are on the front lines of climate change  and have demonstrated how to cut pollution and emissions while protecting affordable and reliable electricity, creating jobs, and growing our economy, said Attorney General Schneiderman. The Clean Power Plan builds on that successful work and is a blueprint for the critical action needed to fight climate changes devastating environmental, economic, and public health impacts. The science is clear and far too much is at stake to turn back the clock on our climate efforts.

Click here to read the letter.

In November 2015, the Attorney General, leading a coalition of states, cities and counties, intervened in defense of the Clean Power Plan against legal challenge in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court heard oral argument for a full day in late September; a decision is expected soon. In the letter, the coalition vowed to oppose any attempt to send the rule back to EPA prior to the court issuing its decision.

The Clean Power Plan is the culmination of a decade-long effort by New York and partnering states and cities to require mandatory cuts in the emissions of climate change pollution from fossil fuel burning power plants under the Clean Air Act. The Clean Power Plan, along with the companion rule applicable to new, modified, and reconstructed power plants, will control these emissions by setting limits on the amount of climate change pollution that power plants can emit. The rule for existing plants is expected to eliminate as much climate change pollution as is emitted by more than 160 million cars a year  or 70% of the nations passenger cars.

EPA adopted the Clean Power Plan through a multi-year stakeholder process that drew heavily on the experience of states and utilities in reducing power plant greenhouse gas emissions. A number of states, including New York, have already taken a leading role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions by moving forward with their own programs.

New York and eight other states are part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which has reduced regional carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector by 40 percent from 2005 levels. The RGGI states have shown that by a combination of encouraging shifts to less carbon-intensive fossil fuel generation, increasing reliance on renewable energy, and using proceeds to invest in energy efficiency, substantial reductions in carbon dioxide emissions are possible over a relatively short period, while supporting economic goals and maintaining grid reliability. An independent analysis found that in the first three years of the RGGI program, the reinvestment of allowance auction proceeds is reducing total energy bills across the region by $1.3 billion and adding $1.6 billion to the regional economy, creating an estimated 16,000 jobs in the process.
School & Education, Nature & Weather, Local News, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 29 2016

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the graduation of the inaugural class of New Yorks Excelsior Conservation Corps and the beginning of enrollment for a second class.

Albany, NY - December 28, 2016 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the graduation of the inaugural class of New Yorks Excelsior Conservation Corps and the beginning of enrollment for a second class. Forty-one people completed the AmeriCorps environmental stewardship and education program after finishing 10 months of service.



The Excelsior Conservation Corps is a unique opportunity for young adults to gain valuable skills and training while addressing many of the states environmental challenges, Governor Cuomo said. I applaud these young men and women for their stewardship and dedication to making New York a better place, and encourage those interested in preserving and protecting our environment for future generations of New Yorkers to apply for the Class of 2017.



The graduating class completed environmental projects across New York, while gaining hands-on experience and conservation skills that will serve their future careers. The Excelsior Conservation Corps will begin its second class January 30. Enrollment is now open for young adults ages 18 to 25 who live or attend school in New York, and veterans from any state up to the age of 28.



During the program, ECC members were based at Morrisville State College to receive extensive training and certifications in wilderness first aid, trail construction, carpentry, risk management and emergency response, education and outreach, and backcountry living. After completing basic training, members were divided into small teams to tackle priority projects across the state. In addition to environmental stewardship work, members received disaster and volunteer management training to help communities impacted by extreme weather and serve as volunteer leaders during major storm events. Click here for a list of 2016 graduates.



ECC members completed more than 80 projects and provided services to 19 different Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation sites and 44 DEC properties. The members:

Improved 100 miles of trail : Constructed 147 steps to rehabilitate a gorge trail in Robert H. Tremen State Park outside of Ithaca, and constructed an ADA compliant pathway on top of Prospect Mountain outside of Lake George.

Improved 378 acres of land : Members assessed acres of land, mapped 800 culverts and water crossings in Harriman and Bear Mountain State parks for aquatic connectivity, and helped reforestation efforts at : Members assessed acres of land, mapped 800 culverts and water crossings in Harriman and Bear Mountain State parks for aquatic connectivity, and helped reforestation efforts at Connetquot River State Park on Long Island, which has been damaged by the southern pine beetle.

Educated 2,500 people : Helped educate people through interpretive trail building and design; outreach at fairs, festivals and clinics; and by conducting interpretive education programing.

Led volunteer service projects: Members oversaw service projects that brought more than 800 volunteers to natural resource management, trail repair and maintenance, habitat restoration, and general conservation stewardship efforts.

The program is administered by the Student Conservation Association, a leading national organization in youth and young adult conservation service and environmental education. The program is supported by $1.9 million in combined state and federal funding, including $1 million from the States Environmental Protection Fund, New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation, and the State University of New York. The New York State Commission on National and Community Service, in partnership with the federal Corporation for National and Community Service, has also committed $850,000 of AmeriCorps funding to the program.



DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos said, "The Excelsior Conservation Corps provides the next generation of conservation professionals with the chance to hone their skills safeguarding New Yorks environment and to learn firsthand the steps we take each day to protect our irreplaceable natural resources. The wide-ranging experiences offered through their time in State Parks and natural areas helped advance on the ground conservation projects while expanding their environmental understanding, and I commend the accomplishments achieved by this inaugural class.



New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation Commissioner Rose Harvey said, From the Civilian Conservation Corps to the Excelsior Conservation Corps, New York State Parks has a long tradition of hosting young workers who sharpen their skills and talents in our parks. I congratulate this years ECC members for building on this proud tradition, and making improvements that will benefit our natural environment and our park visitors.



Student Conservation Association President and Chief Executive Officer Jaime Berman Matyas said, From Letchworth State Park to Long Island, the young leaders of the Excelsior Conservation Corps skillfully addressed some of New Yorks most pressing environmental issues while gaining important career experience and protecting key segments of the states economic engine. The ECCs first year was a remarkable success and SCA looks forward to building on these accomplishments in the future.



Open Enrollment Begins for Year Two

A New York State AmeriCorps program, the Excelsior Conservation Corps is now recruiting members for year two of the program, which begins on January 30, 2017. An Excelsior Conservation Corps member must:

be a U.S. citizen or resident between the ages of 18 and 25;

be a New York State resident or go to school in the state;

have a high school diploma or GED;

be able to work both independently and as part of team; and

be able to perform physical labor.

Appropriate accommodations will be made whenever possible for those who are disabled. Special efforts will be made to recruit veterans and minority candidates. For more information, visit: here
Local News, Crime, National & World News, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 29 2016

The NYS Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services Office of Counter Terrorism completed more than 600 "Operation Safeguard" counter terrorism exercises this year.

Albany, NY - December 28, 2016 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services Office of Counter Terrorism completed more than 600 "Operation Safeguard" counter terrorism exercises this year at businesses and organizations across the state to test their suspicious activity reporting programs and counter terrorism plans.



In response to the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Governor Cuomo directed the states Office of Counter Terrorism during the 2016 State of the State to increase the number of exercises across New York to determine if various businesses detected unannounced suspicious exercise activity and promptly reported it to law enforcement.



"Protecting New Yorkers is our number one priority, and we must do everything in our power to ensure safety and security in the face of 21st century terrorism threats," Governor Cuomo said. "We need the public to take an active role in helping to protect all New Yorkers by reporting any suspicious activity to law enforcement, and these exercises are critical to ensuring that businesses stay vigilant and report unusual behavior."



Throughout 2016, members of the FBIs Joint Terrorism Task Force, New York State Police, county sheriffs, and police departments partnered with the states Office of Counter Terrorism personnel to plan and execute this unprecedented statewide initiative. In total, nearly 100 law enforcement agencies and 300 personnel across the State supported this effort. As a result of the Governors direction, exercises that were previously held in only a few of New Yorks 16 Counter Terrorism Zones each year will now take place in all zones across the state every year.



Based on the current threat environment and intelligence, undercover homeland security and law enforcement personnel visited more than 600 locations from Buffalo to Long Island. At each business, personnel conducted suspicious activity such as searching for various chemicals and components used in improvised explosive devices, to determine if a business detected the nefarious activity and reported it. After each visit, homeland security, federal, state and local partners discussed the encounters with each location to point out successful actions and areas of improvement.



Law enforcement teams visited a wide variety of locations and businesses, from the most rural to the largest urban areas of the state, including mass gathering sites like stadiums, arenas, shopping malls, truck rental companies, colleges and universities, transportation infrastructure, and other public locations that could be targeted by terrorists. Team members also conducted exercises at events such this summers Great New York State Fair. In many instances, the activity was reported promptly and accurately, and when activity was not reported, follow up education by team members was well received and would most likely be reported to law enforcement in the future.



Law enforcement also visited businesses, such as hardware stores, gun stores, large retailers and businesses that sell chemicals or components used in the construction of improvised explosive devices, such as pressure cooker bombs and pipe bombs, which were used in the September 2016 explosions in New York and New Jersey. Additionally, these teams tested the hotel and lodging industry based on the premise that those with nefarious intent could use a room as a base of operations to plot future attacks or stage materials.



John P. Melville, Commissioner, New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, said, "The unannounced, real-time exercises give us an opportunity to see if businesses react to unusual or suspicious activity and whether they promptly report it to law enforcement. During the past year we did note many positive examples of business employees and the general public who reported the suspicious activity they witnessed from our activities to law enforcement. I applaud their vigilance and ask all citizens to remain alert and be aware of their surroundings."



State Police Superintendent George P. Beach II said, "Educating businesses and the public on how to spot suspicious activity and notify law enforcement is a critical part of protecting our communities from the threat of terrorism. These exercises provided us with vital information that will help us better inform the public and illustrate how critically important it is for businesses and the public to remain vigilant and report potential threats."



Special Agent in Charge Andrew W. Vale, Federal Bureau of Investigation in Albany, said, "Experience has taught us that law enforcement and our communities must work together to identify actions that may involve terrorist related activity. We have seen numerous instances where information from the public leads to the identification of individuals and disruption of criminal activity. The more we can educate the public and test protocols, the safer our communities will be. I encourage the public to remain vigilant and advise law enforcement of any suspicious activity."



Margaret Ryan, Executive Director New York State Association of Chiefs of Police, said, "Police chiefs and law enforcement officers work together to make New York State safer each day. Working hand in hand with our community and business partners through Operation Safeguard enhances that protection and re-enforces everyone is part of See Something, Say Something."



Peter R. Kehoe, Executive Director New York State Sheriffs Association said, "These important exercises are great examples of how federal, state and local law enforcement agencies have come together since 9-11 to pro-actively help protect all our citizens from the terrorist threat. Recent events in this country and overseas teach us how necessary it is to remain vigilant. We are fortunate in New York to have a Governor and a Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services that place such a high priority on maintaining vigilance among our citizens."



Terrorist attacks and plots, across the nation and overseas, reinforce the shared responsibility of all New Yorkers to help keep the state safe. One phone call from an alert citizen or employee of a business who witnesses suspicious activity could alert law enforcement to a terrorist plot in the making.



Anyone can report suspicious activity to the New York State Terrorism Tips Line by calling 1-866-SAFE-NYS (1-866-723-3697), or as a photo or written note via the SeeSend mobile app. Visit Safeguard New York to learn more about how to spot suspicious activity, as well as the states See Something, Say Something campaign.



About the Office of Counter Terrorism

Operated by the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, the Office of Counter Terrorism supports federal, state, local, tribal and private sector efforts to prevent, protect against and prepare for acts and threats of terrorism. The Office of Counter Terrorism is not a law enforcement agency, but works closely with the New York State Police and other law enforcement and public safety agencies in the fight against terrorism.



About the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services

The Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services and its four offices -- Counter Terrorism, Emergency Management, Fire Prevention and Control, and Interoperable and Emergency Communications -- provides leadership, coordination and support for efforts to prevent, protect against, prepare for, respond to, and recover from terrorism and other man-made and natural disasters, threats, fires and other emergencies. For more information, visit the Facebook page, follow @NYSDHSES on Twitter, or visit dhses.ny.gov.
Nature & Weather, Local News, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 29 2016

DEC announced the agency's proposed guidance document that emphasizes natural and nature-based solutions to better protect New Yorkers and the state's coastline.

DEC's proposed guidance encourages the appropriate use of natural shoreline protection measures in place of hardened or man-made approaches to coastal erosion controls.

Albany, NY - December 28, 2016 - The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) today announced the agency's proposed guidance document that emphasizes natural and nature-based solutions to better protect New Yorkers and the state's coastline and help guide communities to produce living shorelines in New York's marine district.

"Improving coastal resiliency and reducing risk to communities is a priority of Governor Andrew Cuomo, and this proposed living shorelines guidance encourages smart approaches to protect against shoreline erosion," said DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos. "Using natural solutions will build a more resilient coastline that will be better able to withstand the impacts of severe weather and coastal storms. Living shorelines can reduce shoreline erosion while maintaining habitats that are critical to our economy and we urge coastal communities and planners to follow these important suggestions."

DEC's proposed guidance encourages the appropriate use of natural shoreline protection measures in place of hardened or man-made approaches to coastal erosion controls. The guidance document, which can be found on the Tidal Wetlands web page at DEC's website, provides information on different types of living shorelines, explains how tidal wetland and protection of water permit standards relate to living shorelines, and speaks to proper siting, maintenance, and monitoring considerations for these shoreline approaches.

Citizens and officials interested and affected by the Tidal Wetland Land Use Regulations are encouraged to make comments on this guidance document.

The guidance document advances the concepts of the Community Risk and Resiliency Act (CRRA) signed by Governor Cuomo in 2014. CRRA's goal is to speed up New York's adaptation to climate change and create opportunities to use living shorelines as natural buffers to coastal erosion.

New York's proposed guidance is an example of national trends emphasizing the importance and value of natural and nature-based features (NNBF) to reduce flooding and erosion risks. Living shorelines and tidal wetlands areas are invaluable for improving water quality, marine food production, wildlife habitat, flood, hurricane, and storm control.

In the early 1970s, New York State began to recognize the importance of tidal wetland areas and sought to insure their protection from human activities by passing the Tidal Wetland Act in 1973.

Tidal wetlands line much of the salt water shoreline, bays, inlets, canals, and estuaries of Long Island, New York City, and Westchester County. These wetlands also line the Hudson River in Westchester and Rockland counties upstream of the salt line.

The guidance document will provide communities in these areas a better understanding of what living shorelines are and how to incorporate them within tidal wetland and protection of water regulations (Please see Part 661: Tidal Wetlands-Land Use Regulations under DEC's Division of Water's Chapter X web page) with the intention of maintaining the quality of habitats and their storm risk reduction function.

Notice of availability for comment will be published in the Environmental Notice Bulletin on Jan. 4, 2017.

Citizens and officials interested and affected by the Tidal Wetland Land Use Regulations may provide comments on this guidance document. All comments and questions on this guidance document should be forwarded to: Dawn McReynolds, Bureau of Marine Habitat, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, 205 N. Belle Meade Road, E. Setauket, NY 11733 email by Feb. 8, 2017. Please reference Living Shoreline Guidance in the subject of the email.
Local News, Crime, Health & Wellness, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: December 29 2016

Arrest in connection to death of an 81-year-old, ventilator-dependent resident of A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility in Uniondale.

Two registered nurses and one certified nurse aide charged with endangering the welfare of vulnerable elderly person, willful violation of public health laws for failing to respond to ventilator alarms.

Uniondale, NY - December 28, 2016 - Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced the arrests of two registered nurses, Sijimole Reji and Annieamma Augustine, and a certified nurse aide, Martine Morland, for endangering and neglecting an 81-year-old, ventilator-dependent resident of A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility in Uniondale. The resident, whose identity is being kept confidential, lived on a specialized ventilator unit at the facility. She required a mechanical ventilator to breathe and was entirely dependent on the nursing staff; the resident passed away after the defendants failed to respond to the ventilator alarms. If convicted, the defendants, none of whom still work at the facility, each face up to seven years in prison.

These allegations paint a picture of blatant neglect that ultimately resulted in the death of a patient, said Attorney General Schneiderman. My office will always hold accountable those medical professionals and others who knowingly ignore a patients basic needs or recklessly place any nursing home resident in a life-threatening situation.

Felony complaints filed in the Nassau County First District Court by the Attorney Generals Office charge Reji, 42, of Smithtown; Augustine, 57, of West Hempstead; and Morland, 41, of Freeport, with Endangering the Welfare of a Vulnerable Elderly Person, or an Incompetent or Physically Disabled Person in the First Degree, a class D felony, and Wilful Violation of Health Laws, a misdemeanor.

The complaint alleges that on the morning of December 20, 2015, the residentwho was wheelchair bound and ventilator dependentbecame disconnected from her ventilator. The resident was unable to breathe without the assistance of her mechanical ventilator. A visual and audible alarm was immediately triggered which notified nursing staff on the floor that this resident was in an emergency, life-threatening situation.

Sijimole Reji, Annieamma Augustine and Martine Morland were at the nursing station near the residents room when the alarm sounded throughout the unit. All nursing staff who work on the ventilator unit at A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility are required to immediately respond to resident ventilator alarms. These three defendantsReji, Augustine and Morlandignored the emergency ventilator alarm for more than nine minutes and failed to provide any assistance to the resident who languished without oxygen.

Eventually, when staff entered her room, they discovered that the resident was unresponsive and unconscious. The resident was transported from A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility to Nassau University Medical Center, where she died the following day, December 21, 2015.

The defendants, who pled not guilty, were arraigned today in Nassau County First District Court before the Honorable Judge James M. Darcy and released on their own recognizance.

The charges are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

The case was investigated by Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) Investigators George Feliciano and Richard Smith, with assistance from Supervisor Investigator Greg Muroff and Deputy Chief of Downstate Investigations Kenneth Morgan.

The case is being prosecuted by Special Assistant Attorney General Peter Zadek of the MFCU Hauppauge Regional Office with the assistance of Hauppauge Regional Director Jane Zwirn-Turkin. Thomas OHanlon is MFCUs Chief of Criminal Investigations-Downstate. MFCU is led by Director Amy Held and Assistant Deputy Attorney General Paul J. Mahoney.
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
The US government has added the Al-Muhammadia Students (AMS) organization, or the student wing of the Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT or Army of the Pure), to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Additionally, the US added LeT leaders Muhammad Sarwar and Shahid Mahmood to the list of global terrorists. The designations highlight LeTs role in international terrorism and its adeptness in using front organizations to skirt international sanctions.

Founded in 2009, AMS is a subsidiary of LeT and has worked with LeT senior leaders to organize recruiting courses and other activities for youth, the State Department designation noted.

State also noted that LeT has repeatedly changed its name and created front organizations in an effort to avoid sanctions since the US first added it to the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in 2001.

LeT has mastered the art of using charitable groups to fundraise as well as promote its message and recruit. Since 2010, the US has identified the following groups as LeT fronts: Falah-i Insaniat Foundation, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Al-Anfal Trust, Tehrik-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool, and Tehrik-e-Tahafuz Qibla Awwal. [See LWJ reports, US designates Lashkar-e-Taibas charitable front as terror group, and US adds 2 Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders, several aliases to terrorism list.]

AMS is active on social media and uses Twitter and Facebook to fundraise and promote their message. AMS also holds rallies and seminars throughout Pakistan.

A prime message of AMS is opposition to India, Pakistans neighbor and rival. The banner for AMS social media outreach includes images of Pakistani troops storming a city and trampling on an Indian flag.

While AMS is careful not to advertise its connection to LeT on social media platforms, evidence of an association can be seen. For instance, one of the speakers at its Unite and Defend Pakistan rallies included Muhammad Masood, the brother of Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Hafiz Saeed. Masood previously was the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of New Englands Sharon mosque, and was deported from the US after pleading guilty of five charges of immigration fraud.

Muhammad Sarwar and Shahid Mahmood

In addition to States designation of AMS, the Treasury Department added LeT leaders Muhammad Sarwar and Shahid Mahmood to the US list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

Sarwar has been a senior LeT official in Lahore for over ten years and has held various leadership roles in the group, including his current position as LeTs emir for Lahore, Treasury noted in its designation. As the LeT emir of Lahore, Sarwar maintains relationships with LeTs most senior leaders.

Sarwar fundraises for LeT and was one of two officials who headed LeTs finance wing in Lahore.

Mahmood has been a longstanding senior LeT member based in Karachi, according to Treasury. He served as the vice chairman of Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation, which the US government identified as an LeT front organization in 2010.

Additionally, Mahmood has been active in LeTs overseas operations. Mahmood has used his job at the Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation to travel to Burma, Turkey, and Syria to recruit and establish FiF branches in those countries.

As a member of LeTs overseas operations team, which is led by Sajjid Mir. Treasury stated that Mahmood was instructed to forge covert links with Islamic organizations in Bangladesh and Burma, and as of late 2011, Mahmood claimed that LeTs primary concern should be attacking India and America. He also operated in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh.

LeT: An established jihadist group

LeT was founded in 1987 by its leader, Hafiz Saeed, along with Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam, the godfather of international jihad. Bin Laden helped LeT establish training camps in Afghanistans provinces of Kunar and Paktia, where it continues to operates to this day. LeT shares al Qaedas goal of establishing an Islamic state in South Asia and beyond.

LeT operates openly inside Pakistan and has offices throughout the country. Markaz-e-Taiba, its headquarters in Muridke near Lahore, is a sprawling complex used to indoctrinate future jihadists before they are sent off for military training. The provincial government of Punjab has financed Markaz-e-Taiba in the past.

This terrorist infrastructure has been used to conduct egregious terrorist attacks in India and Afghanistan. The most prominent attack took place in Mumbai, India, when a suicide assault team fanned out across the city and targeted multiple locations, including a theater, a train station, hotels as well as a Jewish center and killed 164 people. The attack lasted for three days. Indian intelligence traced phone calls back to handlers in Pakistan as the assault was ongoing. The handlers directed its fighters to execute non-Muslims, often brutally, and laughed when their instructions were carried out. After the attack, Interpol issued arrest warrants for two serving senior Pakistani army officers and a retired major.

Despite LeTs overt ties to al Qaeda and its campaign of terror in India and Afghanistan, the Pakistani government refuses to crack down on this group. The organizations complexes in Muridke and throughout the country remain open and its leaders operate unfettered. Hafiz Saeed is feted by Pakistani officials, who refuse to hold him and other LeT leaders accountable for their actions. Not a single member of LeT who has been implicated in the Mumbai attack has been prosecuted.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

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The future always belongs to Samsung! Instead of having to make up for blowing up peoples phones, theyre once again set to beat Apple. All is forgiven!

Writing for the Forbes contributor network and remedial Cookie Clicker institute, Ewan Spence says the New Galaxy S8 Leak Will Challenge Apples Dominance. (Tip o the antlers to @JonyIveParody.)

Not the phone, just the leak! This is how fragile Apple has become. Like naught but the gossamer wings of faeries, tis.

Samsungs Galaxy S8 is expected to include the debut of its new voice-based digital assistant. Following on from the South Korean companys acquisition of Viv Labs, the technology from this artificial intelligence platform will be baked into Samsungs software on the upcoming flagship.

Any time something is baked in you know its going to be delicious.

And what exploding phone? Why do you keep bringing that up? That will have literally been last years news by the time its next year. People will have forgotten all about it and will immediately line up to get their voice boxes using Samsungs magical voice recognition technology which will work perfectly because its not like they have a history of rushing things out the door with explosive results or anything.

WHY DO YOU KEEP MENTIONING THAT? Ugh. So some phones blew up. That was like two months ago. Get over it already.

It is pretty amazing how the current narrative is all about whether or not Apple can bounce back from its horrible year. Gonna be hard when Ka-BOOM! Inc. is already beating Apple with nothing but leaks!

It also gives Samsung a stronger foothold into the world of digital AI alongside the likes of Microsofts Cortana, Apples Siri, and Googles imaginatively named Google Assistant.

But only one of those makes the headline, of course.

The Macalope isnt even really sure what the leak is here, other than the gray matter coming out his ears at having to read this. We already knew that Samsung had bought Viv, so the leak is apparently that its technology might be in the Galaxy S8. Hopefully one of its jobs will be to whisper to the battery Please dont explode.
BELOIT  A joyous celebration honoring Our Lady of Guadalupe on her feast day, December 12, attracted hundreds of area residents, including families with children, to a solemn Mass offered in the Spanish language, a Mariachi band concert, and a festive Mexican meal.

Held at Our Lady of the Assumption Church (OLA), the event was sponsored by the Hispanic Ministry of the three Beloit Catholic parishes: St. Jude, St. Thomas, and OLA. Araceli Montoya, director of Hispanic ministry for the Beloit parishes, coordinated the event.

Mexican music

Prior to Mass, a half hour concert of traditional Mexican songs was presented by Mariachi Juvenil del Sur from Harvard, Ill. They stood in a semicircle at the foot of the altar before a framed image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Among the songs was a cheery Las Mananitas, which means Happy Birthday to Our Lady. The group, led by Miguel Juarez and Fabian Mercodo, also provided music during the Mass.

Mass in Spanish

Celebrating Mass in the Spanish language, St. Jude Pastor Fr. John Hedrick commented, I feel that I am only beginning to understand the faith of the Mexican people.

He has studied the Spanish language in order to offer Mass on the third Sunday of each month for area Hispanic people.

Father Hedrick summarized the importance of the celebration by saying, I think back to the words of Pope Francis when he visited Mexico earlier this year.

Father Hedrick said Pope Francis words included, Mary, the woman of yes, wished also to come to the inhabitants of these American lands through the person of the Indian St. Juan Diego. Just as she went along the paths of Judea and Galilee, in the same way she walked through Tepeyac, wearing the indigenous garb and using their language so as to serve this great nation.

Just as she accompanied Elizabeth in her pregnancy, so too she has and continues to accompany the development of this blessed Mexican land. Just as she made herself present to little Juan, so too she continues to reveal herself to all of us, especially to those who feel, like him, worthless.

OLA Pastor Fr. Mike Resop, who concelebrated the Mass, said, This festive experience was one of culture and sacred devotion. Over 500 people who gathered for Mass and a meal was very inspiring.

During the Mass, the readings, Gospel, and homily were spoken in the Spanish language and repeated in English. Mass servers were Jaquelin Bolanos and Imelda Dominquez.

Honoring Our Lady

In a procession prior to the Mass, people honored Our Lady by presenting fresh bouquets of flowers placed in vases on the altar steps. Many children were dressed in traditional Mexican attire featuring colorful embroidery and images.

Following Mass, many spent time kneeling in veneration of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Special celebration

Montoya said it was an exciting special celebration that means so much to the Mexican people. We are happy to share our faith and traditions and it was a wonderful surprise that we had about 500 attend. The church parking lots were full!

She also thanked the many people who donated food for the meal. We had generous donations of a large variety of foods including special Mexican dishes. She especially thanked Beloit resident Yolanda Banuelos for making dozens of her delicious tamales.

Montoya added, My main work is to help the area Hispanic community be welcome and be part of our Catholic Church. She expressed her appreciation for all the people participating in planning the event, including the two pastors, Eucharistic ministers, and parish staff members.
China white paper details goals for more efficient transport network

From:Xinhua | 2016-12-29 11:46

A test train in seen on the Guizhou West section of the Shanghai-Kunming high-speed railway, Dec. 17, 2016. China on Wednesday put into operation one of the world's longest high-speed railways, linking the country's prosperous eastern coast to the less-developed southwest. The Shanghai-Kunming line -- 2,252 km in length -- traverses the five provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan and cuts travel time from Shanghai to Kunming from 34 to 11 hours, according to China Railway Corporation. (Xinhua/Ou Dongqu)

BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- China aims to build a comprehensive transport system, with a faster, greener and safer network to offer more efficient services to the public by 2020, according to a white paper released on Thursday.

The white paper, titled "Development of China's Transport," reviewed the sector's tremendous changes in past decades and set goals for its further expansion in coming years.

The sector should quicken its pace of development, and fully play its basic role as a vanguard for completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects in 2020, said the document issued by the State Council Information Office.

By 2020, China will increase the length of high-speed railways in operation to 30,000 kilometers, connecting more than 80 percent of its big cities.

The country will also renovate 30,000 km of expressways and provide tarmac and cement roads and shuttle bus services for administrative villages with the necessary conditions, while all villages will have access to mail service, it said.

Over the past decades, China's transport network has undergone drastic changes, especially the railway sector.

When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, total railway length was only 21,800 km, half of which was paralyzed.

Thanks to a series of reforms since then, total railway operation length reached 121,000 km by the end of 2015, the world's second longest, including 19,000-km high-speed railway, ranking top of the world.

While the vast network has enhanced connectivity in large swathes of the country, disparity remained as construction has lagged behind in the less developed western regions, and in recent years, the government is seeking to narrow the gap.

The white paper pledged to speed up the construction of railways in the central and western areas.

China on Wednesday put into operation one of the world's longest high-speed railways, linking the country's prosperous eastern coast to the least-developed southwestern region.

The Shanghai-Kunming line -- 2,252 km in length -- traverses five provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan and cuts travel time from Shanghai to Kunming from 35 to 11 hours, according to China Railway Corporation.

Also on Wednesday, another high-speed rail line linking Kunming and Nanning, capital of southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, was launched.

Related:

FACTBOX: Development of China's transport network

Full Text: Development of China's Transport

China's high-speed rail on fast track in technology innovation and application

BEIJING, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- With leading technology innovation and application, high-speed rail has become a symbol of Made-in-China and going-global products, said a white paper released by the State Council Information Office on Thursday.

"China's technologies for high-speed, alpine, plateau and heavy-haul railways have reached the world's advanced level," said the document titled "Development of China's Transport". Full story
Great Falls experienced a strong year of commercial development in 2016, with nearly $70 million in construction or major additions.

The building numbers were the best in nearly 10 years, said Craig Raymond, city planning and community development director, who attributed the growth to an improved national economy building local momentum.

"Success begets success," said Raymond, who pointed to recent Great Falls gains in manufacturing, commercial and retail projects.

Peter Johnson , [email protected]

Full Story: http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2016/12/28/why-developers-building-great-falls/95918726/
Have you ever watched a talk so relatable that you started asking: "How did this guy know my story? Did he steal my journal? Can he read my mind?"

Larry Smiths TED Talk, "Why you will fail to have a great career," made me want to get a tinfoil hat. Dr. Smith, a Canadian economist, discusses one of the oldest pieces of advice ever given: follow your passion. He points out that while everyone knows the advice, very few actually follow it. And the most commonly used excuse for not following someones passion is the desire to have great human relationships over a great career.

TED Video: http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_have_a_great_career?utm_source=31+days+of+ideas&utm_campaign=7c175fc8d7-31DAYS_2016_12_29&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_09cd6c5568-7c175fc8d7-294663381
Alain St.Ange, the popular former Seychelles Minister for Tourism, Civil Aviation, Ports and Marine and now President of the Islands One Seychelles political party was on Emmanuel DOffays popular talk show explaining his vision for Seychelles.

St.Ange explained the need for more choice for the Seychelles electorate as he emphasized that politicians are employed by the people. Any Seychellois who is happy with his life should and must vote for a status quo and have more of the same for five more years. But if elected officials have not delivered on their electoral manifesto promises the people must be offered the chance to bring about change said Alain St.Ange as he confirmed that One Seychelles would be concentrating on explaining the party manifesto and will not be discussing what other existing political parties are doing or not doing.

One Seychelles is the latest political group to be gearing for the coming 2020 Presidential elections. The partys Secretary General is Peter Sinon, also a former Seychelles Minister and Director of the African Development Bank. This election will see the current President Danny Faure face the electorate for the first time ever having made it to the top job only when James Michel resigned from Office. Wavel Ramkalawan on the other hand is the Leader of the Opposition and has been contesting virtually every Presidential Election since the return of multiparty politics in Seychelles.

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The UN General Assembly has declared June 27 as the International SME Day to recognise the importance and immense contribution of SMEs to global economies. As we celebrate this special day, Bank One would like to place on record and recognise the vital role SMEs play in local and global economies. Bank One understands and appreciates the hardships entrepreneurs go through to make a success of their enterprises.

Small and Nimble: Powering entire economies and employment

In Mauritius, as in the rest of the world, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) act as a crucial engine of the national economy and employment. With their innovative mindsets, agile work methodology and competitive operations, they bring to the table unique ideas, breakthrough products, and improved processes, thus powering economic growth and employment. No wonder then that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development lauds entrepreneurship as the engine that lies at the heart of economic growth.

Indeed, SMEs account for the majority of businesses worldwide and are important contributors to job creation and global economic development. The World Bank estimates that SMEs represent about 90% of businesses and more than 50% of employment worldwide. In Mauritius, SMEs represented 99% of all enterprises, 50% of employment, 35.7% of Gross Value Added and around 12% of total exports, according to a 2019 handbook by the Ministry of Industrial Development, SMEs and Cooperatives.

Resilience in the face of constant crises

With SMEs shoring up Mauritius across economic and employment paradigms, it is unfortunate indeed that the last three years have sorely tested the entrepreneurial spirit in the island economy. With COVID-19 raging for two long years and then being closely followed by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the period since the start of 2020 has been most trying for the SME sector.

In particular, the pandemic impacted global trade, which dropped significantly following the lockdown and subsequent prohibitive sanitary measures imposed by different countries. The situation proved to be more alarming for SMEs as they were too resource constrained to adapt to a changing context. A survey conducted by the International Trade Centre in 2020 on 4,467 SMEs in 132 countries revealed that 55% of the respondents were strongly affected by the global pandemic and one-fifth of them were on the verge of closing down their operations permanently in the near future. In Mauritius, in addition to being economically affected by the lockdown, SMEs faced problems in raw material imports due to the international supply chain disruption caused by COVID-19.

For businesses that have been hit hard by the pandemic and are looking to make a strong comeback, now is the time to uncover and seize these opportunities as the pandemic has upended traditional businesses and created new norms.

Despite all the challenges, difficulties and crises plaguing them, SMEs have been most resilient and agile in the face of these constant tremors that have shaken their very foundation. However, while SMEs have succeeded in weathering the storms so far, trusting to their resilience alone is not enough. Here in Mauritius, the Government acknowledges the role that SMEs play in furthering economic growth, employment and exports, and has consciously set up a conducive framework for their progress in these tough times.

Government laying the groundwork for supporting SMEs

Indeed, over the last two years, the Government has provided its full support to SMEs through the Wage Assistance Scheme and financing of additional remuneration. For the way forward, the recently read Mauritius Budget 2022-23 comes as welcome respite for the SME sector, with a slew of supportive measures for entrepreneurs. One of the most lauded announcements of Budget 2022-23 is the proposed amendment to the definition of SMEs.

Noting that SMEs are the driving force of growth and employment to the island, the Finance Minister unveiled an enlarged definition of SMEs towards increasing the assistance provided to them. Thus, the turnover threshold for micro enterprises has been increased from Rs 2 M to Rs 10 M, that for small enterprises from Rs 2 M  Rs 10 M to Rs 10 M  Rs 30 M and for medium enterprises from Rs 10 M  Rs 50 M to Rs 30 M  Rs 100 M. In addition, a new category of mid-market enterprises with turnover from Rs 100 M to Rs 250 M has been included under the SME Act. This enlarged definition will effectively enable some 142,000 enterprises to benefit from improved access to government support programmes and financing.

In addition, Budget 2022-23 also announced the intention of the Mauritius Investment Corporation to set up a Venture Capital Fund of Rs 5 B aimed at SMEs and mid-market enterprises.

Innovation set to provide the impetus from good to great

Finally, to not just survive but thrive and succeed to the next level, SMEs need to innovate and lay the groundwork to face potential changes and disruptions that will undoubtedly follow in the not-so-distant future. SMEs should always remember that challenges bring opportunities, and the biggest window of opportunity that COVID-19 brought in its wake is increasing digitalisation. SMEs must innovate and develop new ways of doing things. Indeed, new technologies have been proven to be important assets in helping countries to recover from disruptions caused by the pandemic.

Now is the time to truly realise this sectors potential for taking the economy from good to great, with SMEs powering the digitisation of the economy with all the agility, innovation and resilience at their command. At Bank One, we would like to stress that we are here to help SMEs start, manage and grow their enterprise. So let us help you take your business from good to great.

By Sunil Sathebajee,

Head of Business & SME Banking

Bamk One

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China issues rules for cyberspace

From:Shanghai Daily | 2016-12-28 13:02

China's top Internet regulator released a security strategy for cyberspace yesterday, advocating peace, security, openness, cooperation and order.



The government will guarantee cyberspace sovereignty and national security, protect information infrastructure and act against cyber terror and crimes, according to the 15-page strategy released by the Cyberspace Administration of China.

Rules and their imposition will be improved and international cooperation expanded, it says.

Cyberspace sovereignty is an important part of state sovereignty, it adds.

All countries should be respected in their Internet development and management, playing equal parts in a cyberspace governance without hegemony or double standards, according to the strategy.

It says that China will use whatever means necessary  scientific, technological, legal, diplomatic or military  to ensure cyberspace sovereignty and no attempt to use the Internet to undermine or overturn Chinas national government or sabotage sovereignty will be tolerated.

China is home to the worlds largest online population. About 700 million of its citizens use the Internet to study, make purchases, work and access public services.

In this context, protecting critical information infrastructure and important data is crucial, the strategy says.

Service producers and other organizations will not be allowed to take advantage of privileged information or technology to compete unfairly or harm users interests.

This does not mean that we will refuse foreign products or services, said Zhao Zeliang, director of the CAC cybersecurity coordination bureau.

Our requirements of security and controllability are not meant to raise barriers to foreign enterprises, he told a press conference at the release of the strategy.

China will participate in dialogue and exchanges in cybersecurity; help establish international norms and antiterror pacts; and improve judicial collaboration. International cooperation will be enshrined in policy, law, technology, standards, emergency response and security infrastructure.

Assistance will be given to developing countries. Lu Jianwen, in charge of cybersecurity at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said priority will be given to building Africas information highway.
Critical illness insurance has been provided for over one billion Chinese people, according to government statistics, which fulfills the promise Premier Li Keqiang had made this year.

Critical illness insurance partners with basic healthcare insurance, which covers over 1.3 billion people, to benefit peoples welfare, The Beijing News said.

This March, Premier Li said in The Government Work Report that the government will invest more into easing the burden of more patients with severe illnesses.

Critical illness insurance not only guarantees treatment, but also serves as a cure for worry, the Premier said.

From January to September, the actual reimbursement ratio for people suffering from critical illnesses has been increased 13.85 percent, and the highest reimbursement was 1.17 million yuan, data showed.

And a reimbursement approach guided by the government and run by the insurance market was gradually implemented as 16 insurance companies nationwide undertook the critical illness insurance business in 31 provincial regions, covering 87.6 percent of citizens.

Premier Li was also concerned about the implementation of related policies. When he visited a family that was especially poor in Ningxia Hui autonomous region, he carefully asked them about the medical reimbursement situation. When he visited the First Hospital affiliated to Henan University of Science and Technology in Luoyang city of Henan province, he inquired about the medical payment and reimbursement ratio at several payment windows.

The Premier said at a State Council executive meeting that poverty can be caused by critical illness, and critical illness insurance could bring them security, which is not only a good thing, but also a stabilizer for all of society.

Exploring the critical illness insurance system contributes to the social security system and the combination of both social security and commercial insurance, and it provides a safety net to ensure that people can work or start their own business without concern, the Premier stressed.
The time to get your pet spayed or neutered is right now, and it could be for free.

The largest no-kill animal rescue in North Carolina has developed a chapter in McDowell County to help bring positive change to the community, a news release from the organization said

And the group is concerned that McDowell County is not taking advantage of s free spay/neuter program.

There is a large pet-overpopulation crisis in this county, with an overwhelming number of lost, homeless, abandoned, and unwanted animals. In the past, roughly 90 percent of the animals who have ended up at our local shelter have been euthanized, McDowell chapter manager Jamie Stillwachs said.

He said spaying or neutering pets is critically important to reducing the overpopulation and preventing unwanted animals from dying in shelters or on the streets. Increased dumping of unwanted puppies or kittens at the shelter or on someone else's property is becoming a real issue, Stillwachs said.

McDowell County offers a great program to provide free spay/ neuter vouchers to McDowell residents, but we recently learned that folks are not taking advantage of this program. Perhaps not enough people are aware that it exists. The typical cost of a spay/ neuter surgery at a vet is $100-$200, and the county is offering hundreds of these free vouchers each year, that are going un-used, said Stillwachs.

Residents who receive assistance in other areas automatically qualify for the program, and can get up to two free spay/neuter vouchers each year.

We were surprised to learn last week that the Department of Social Services still has lots of vouchers sitting around from last quarter. Considering the pet overpopulation in McDowell County and the number of stray, abandoned, and unwanted animals, it is shocking that people are not taking advantage of this free resource, said Stillwachs.

Anyone who is on a government program such as SSI, disability and food stamps automatically qualifies for the vouchers.

Even if youre not on assistance, you could still qualify by bringing proof of income, a bank statement or current tax return to McDowell County DSS.

A new group of vouchers will be released in January, but there are still 2016 vouchers that have not been used.

Every resident in McDowell County with a pet that's not fixed should look into this, said Stillwachs.

For more information, contact DSS at 828-652-3355. Visit www.bwar.org/mcdowell for more information.

WHY SPAY/ NEUTER?

- Reduce the number of homeless animals killed in shelters each week, month and year.

- Improve your pets health, and reduce chance of disease. Pets that are fixed live longer and healthier lives than animals that are not.

- Reduce or eliminate unwanted behaviors, such as urine-marking (lifting his leg), the urge to roam, fighting with other animals, aggression, excessive barking or howling, and "mounting.
Skin cancers, excluding melanoma, are often tracked by placing small tattoos near lesions that have been selected for further treatment. While they do their job as intended, the tattoos remain on the skin long after theyre needed and sometimes the inks can cause inflammation. Moreover, these tattoos can be confused as being lesions themselves at a later time.

A team headed by researchers at University of California, Los Angeles has come up with a new ink that can be used to temporarily mark the spot, and that is only visible when a light of specific wavelength (465 nanometers) is shined over it. Additionally, the ink is eventually washed away by the body so that it doesnt create confusion in the future.

The new dye consists of cross-linked fluorescent supramolecular nanoparticles with a fluorescent conjugated polymer center. They have been shown to have a retention time by the body of around three months, a period similar to the time it takes in some places to go from a biopsy to treatment.

So far the researchers tested the new dye in laboratory mice, demonstrating that it works for three months and disappears thereafter, while not causing any nearby inflammation.

Study in ACS Nano: Cross-Linked Fluorescent Supramolecular Nanoparticles as Finite Tattoo Pigments with Controllable Intradermal Retention Times

Via: American Chemical Society
by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, December 27, 2016

Mobile commerce is about to get more vocal.

As in buying things by issuing voice commands.

Within three years, 20% of all user interactions with smartphones will take place via virtual personal assistants, according to a new Gartner forecast.

Voice assistants, such as Apple Siri and Google Now, today fulfill simple tasks, such as setting an alarm or retrieving Internet information, but in the near future these systems will be able to deliver more complex tasks, like completing a transaction based on past, present and predicted context.

The report notes that Facebook Messenger already allows consumers to interact with businesses to make purchases, chat with customer service and order Uber cars.

The study, comprising a survey of 3,000 consumers in the U.S., U.K. and China, found that almost half (42%) of consumers in the U.S. and almost a third (32%) of those in the U.K. used voice assistants within the last three months. More than a third (37%) on average used a voice assistant one or more times a day.

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It will be interesting to see what the state of this around this time next year, since smartphones are taking more of the center stage around holiday shopping.

For example, mobile devices accounted for more than $24 billion in holiday sales during a month and a half before Christmas, according to Adobe Digital Insights. Of mobile transactions, smartphones comprised 68% of the sales and mobile devices accounted for almost a third (31%) of online retail sales.

By adding options including on-site buy buttons, single-click checkout, financing services and unified offline-to-online commerce experiences, various brands are beginning to convert desktop shoppers to mobile, according to a Business Insider holiday shopping report.

As further evidence of the shift to digital purchasing, the National Retail Federation said that 44% of Black Friday sales this year took place online.

As more consumers add voice commerce to what they already do with their smartphones, the potential is there for an increase in mobile payments, at least the type done remotely and not at a store.

For example, location-based mobile payments will reach $92 billion within three years, according to Javelin Research. However, in-app and in-browser purchases are set to jump to $319 billion, more than triple those on location.

As more consumers become comfortable with making online purchases via smartphone, the behavior is likely to translate to new expectations to pay that way when at in-store checkout.

Meanwhile, more consumers will turning to virtual mobile assistants to help them shop. That could usher in a new form of personal, mobile shopping, with a shopping assistant that lives exclusively in the digital world.
by Tobi Elkin @tobielkin, December 29, 2016

In a bid to understand the way in which artificial intelligence (AI) is related to programmatic media, Real-Time Daily spoke to Tomer Sade, CEO and founder of Wise Data Media. The company markets an AI, real-time bid management system that aims to facilitate marketing decisions across all digital channels. The data-driven, cloud marketing software is essentially a prediction management platform that tries to forecast how each new campaign can best be optimized in order to achieve optimal results before bids are made.

Real-Time Daily: We don't typically think of AI when we think of programmatic media. What is the connection between AI and programmatic?

Tomer Sade: Marketing is one of the first industries to have been significantly affected by advances in artificial intelligence. AI is at the heart of the digital advertising industry and is becoming a more integral part of programmatic buying.

Programmatic advertising is the automated process of buying and selling ad inventory through an exchange, connecting advertisers to publishers. This process uses artificial intelligence and real-time bidding for inventory across all channels. AI can analyze the complexity of media buying via programmatic in a way that is not humanly possible or not possible by human media buyers and planners.

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RTD: Can you offer some specific examples or potential scenarios of what this relationship looks like?

Sade: Artificial intelligence gives marketers the ability to take control of their data to achieve the results they are looking for. It gives them the power to optimize their digital marketing campaigns pre-bid. They can determine exactly where they should place their bid, how much they should bid, and when they should bid  this is all before they even place the bid. The goal is to help them monetize their campaigns and deliver the best possible return on investment.

The purpose of AI is to take the massive amount of consumer data thats collected, and analyze the information it contains about consumer demographics, interests, and purchasing preferences. Marketers then use this analysis to determine the right audience for an ad so they can create more focused and targeted ads, which leads to better campaign results. This is especially helpful in video ad campaigns, where the proper placement and timing of the ad is a critical aspect of a campaigns success.

RTD: How are predictive insights generated by AI, and how specifically might they help improve programmatic media practices?

Sade: AI and predictive modeling techniques boost campaign effectiveness by accelerating the decision-making process in terms of determining what ad should be delivered to which user, what type of format should be used, and the best time to deliver it.

RTD: What companies are using this technology now in their programmatic media processes?

Sade: Google, Microsoft, IBM, the holding companies of media agencies groups, and any media companies looking to optimize their decision-making processes.

RTD: What are the benefits of AI? What are the challenges?

Sade: In terms of benefits, AI can increase marketers knowledge and understanding of consumer behavior in ways that were never possible before, making for more relevant, cost-effective, and optimal advertising. AI can process and analyze the quantity and complexity of big data in a way that hasnt been possible before. The result is marketing on a scale thats never been imagined, let alone achieved. AI delivers better ad campaign control because it employs more quantified and automated strategies. These strategies can be used to improve the customers shopping experience, to test advertising campaigns, and to make campaign bidding decisions more cost-efficient.

The main challenge with AI is having the technology predict the right action, in context. Algorithms need to work seamlessly to make decisions in real time. Not every organization has the resources to build these capabilities. Getting from the theoretical to reality is a challenge that not all companies are prepared for. Its also an issue of personnel. The motivation for a company to become fully automated is often questioned by workers who fear what that might mean for their job security.

RTD: How does machine learning play into this, if it all?

Sade: Machine learning algorithms operate 24/7. The learning never stops, enabling greater awareness and knowledge of even the most subtle changes in market behavior, which can be used to make better marketing decisions. Its a combination of developments, including more powerful computing, big data, and advances in deep learning technology. This combination has made it possible to create and maintain large datasets that deep learning algorithms can analyze for marketing purposes, such as identifying trends and making predictions. For example, with AI, large amounts of data, such as browsing or shopping histories, can be analyzed to tell advertisers where, when, and whom to target.

RTD: Explain how AI ties into probabilistic and deterministic predictive analytics, and to the evolution of programmatic.

Sade: AI is always learning. The more its used, the smarter and more efficient it becomes. So AI learns which users to target and which users not to target, which users are likely to engage, and which users arent likely to engage. From this, AI can determine only the most relevant users to target, which means fewer wasted ad impressions and highly defined, targeted ad campaigns.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, December 28, 2016

While the definition of what constitutes live streaming video journalism may be open to debate  to say nothing of the business model that will hopefully support it  one thing is now clear: if a publisher live streams interesting stuff online, people will watch it.

Indeed, as 2016 draws to a close, The New York Times revealed it has passed 100 million views of its live streaming content after launching on Facebook Live in April of this year. According to the newspaper, its success was driven by an eclectic array of content, ranging from what might be termed traditional on the scene live reporting to well, some pretty weird stuff.

The NYTs list of its most popular live streaming content from the past eight months included a fairly straightforward visit by reporter Declan Walsh to a shelter for recent deportees from the U.S. in Nogales, Mexico, featuring interviews with deportees, people planning to cross the border illegally, and activists who work with migrants.

Among other interesting insights from Walshs live report, some of the stories of recent deportees revealed how migrants who have lived in the U.S. for long periods of time, frequently establishing families, may be deported for trivial reasons, leaving spouses and children (who may be U.S. citizens) unable to provide for themselves.

It would be hard to dispute the value of boots on the ground journalism from an editorial perspective. However, the NYT has also been experimenting with more unusual, even whimsical, live streaming video that pushes the boundaries of what is typically thought of as editorial content.

One great example is a series of live drawing videos with various artists, including one participant, Cari Vander Yacht, who translated comments from readers in real time. This creative presentation is strangely entrancing, akin to Bob Ross or other art video procedurals, with the added fascination of online interactivity. It forces the artist to constantly adjust to accommodate new suggestions.

Then there was the NYTs live puppet show recapping the 2016 presidential campaign. And no, it did not feature Punch and Judy. Instead, it was a tasteful shadow puppet production using cut-out silhouettes of the key figures, as well as objects reflecting the main themes and events.

A floating sombrero, resting uneasily on Hillary Clintons head, represents the failure of her attempts to pander to Hispanics by comparing herself to an abuela.

As noted, the business model for live streaming content remains up in the air, as a number of publishers admitted at MediaPosts Publishing Insider Summit in October. Product placements? Good old-fashioned on-air promotional spots, like vintage newscasts? Nobody knows  but at least the audience is there.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, December 29, 2016

Heres one for the devious psychopath file, which seems to get bigger every day: an Iowa woman is accused of murdering a romantic rival and then impersonating her on social media to make everyone believe she was still alive, according to the Omaha World-Herald, which first reported the news.

Shanna Golyar, 41, is charged with murdering Cari Farver, then 37, in November 2012, after discovering they were dating the same man. Golyar then sent messages to and from Farvers mobile phone and on social media to make it seem like she had simply left town.

Police have been unable to locate a body, murder weapon, or witnesses, but they did find traces of Farvers blood in the apartment of the man the women were dating. Farvers vehicle was discovered abandoned in Omaha, where the murder allegedly occurred, and Golyars fingerprints were found on a pack of gum in the vehicle.

Social media seems to play a role in all kinds of convoluted crimes nowadays. Earlier this month I wrote about the plight of Tyler Parkervest, a California man who was arrested four times and hit with a huge bail payment after his ex-girlfriend used Facebook to make it look like he was stalking her.

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Parkervests ex, 25-year-old Stephani Lawson, set up a fake Facebook profile using his image and various personal details under the name Tyler Parker, then sent herself threatening messages from the account, in which Parkervest for example supposedly vowed to kill her and her young daughter.

Lawsons scheme finally fell apart when police obtained search warrants for her personal mobile device and social profile with T-Mobile and Facebook, and discovered that her IP address matched that of the Facebook profile sending the messages.
by Sara Guaglione , December 29, 2016

The Washington Post plans to expand its newsroom by about 60 journalists in early 2017 -- a large number of hires at a time when many publishers are making staff cuts.

The Washington Post's publisher Fred Ryan told Politicos Ken Doctor, who first reported the news Tuesday, that the Post is adding "dozens of reporters" to its workforce. Sources told Doctor the additions could be as many as five dozen new hires.

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This year, the Post newsroom has grown by more than 8% to around 750 people.

The hires come after Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, who is also the founder and CEO of Amazon, reportedly invested up to $50 million in the company last year. Bezos bought the Post in October 2013.

Next year, the Post plans to add a "rapid-response" investigative team and expand its video journalism, especially its mobile video production. Journalists will also be added to the Posts breaking news team, and the publisher will invest in its podcasts, photography and mobile.

We looked at what succeeded for us in 2016 and made investments there, Ryan told Doctor.

In a memo, Ryan said the Post is now "a profitable and growing company."

The Post's online traffic had increased by nearly 50% in the past year. New subscriptions have grown by 75%, and digital subscription revenue has more than doubled, Ryan said.

Earlier this month, the Post hired Scot Gillespie as its first chief technology officer, and at the time Ryan emphasized the important partnership between news, engineering and product at the Post.

In recent years, The Washington Post has focused on transforming into a growing, world-class media and technology company, he stated.

The Post isnt the only paper to have increased subscriptions this fall. For example, The Wall Street Journal reported record growth in subscriptions. But hiring is another story - in October, WSJ sought a substantial number of buyouts to limit the number of layoffs it will inevitably need to undergo.
Given that Facebook have 1.79 billion monthly active users, there is no doubt that it is a popular social platform. The irony of Facebook  a platform designed to make us more sociable  is that the site has been linked to depression  a condition that can result in withdrawal and social isolation. Is it possible to avoid Facebook depression? Share on Pinterest Particular behaviors that occur while using Facebook could put people at risk of Facebook-induced depression. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) proposed the existence of Facebook depression in 2011. They defined the condition as: Depression that develops when preteens and teens spend a great deal of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to exhibit classic symptoms of depression. While the AAP received some criticism from those who argued that their claims were not adequately supported, previous research has suggested that using Facebook is linked to several mental health consequences, including depression, low self-esteem, and jealousy. Low moods and depressive symptoms appear to go hand-in-hand with Facebook use, but one of the triggering factors seems to be social comparison. People who regularly use Facebook are exposed to the glossy showreel of friends, family, and acquaintances lives. The idealized highlights of the daily existence of their peers may provoke feelings of envy and the distorted belief that others may lead happier, more exciting, and more successful lives. Studies indicate that some people are more susceptible to developing depression when they use technology for extended periods of time, or may even become detached from their real-life social or work environments.

Social comparison significant trigger for Facebook depression A new systematic review of all the literature linking social media networking sites with depression was conducted by Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, in order to examine the relationship between the two. Of the 799 articles on the subject, there were 30 that met the criteria for inclusion in the review. The findings were mixed, with 16 percent of the studies finding a link between online social networking and depression, 6 percent finding that social networks do not cause depression and, in fact, have a positive impact on mental health, and 13 percent finding no significant link either way. David A. Baker, doctorate in clinical psychology at the Faculty of Health and Medicine, and Guillermo Perez Algorta, Ph.D., of the Spectrum Centre for Mental Health Research, Division of Health Research at the Faculty of Health and Medicine  both from Lancaster University in the U.K.  carried out the review. Their findings  published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking  suggest that there is a complex relationship between online social networking and depression. The researchers say that social comparison was the trigger in cases where there was a significant association between social networking and depression. They say that comparing yourself with others can lead to rumination, or overthinking. Comparing yourself negatively to others when using Facebook was shown to predict depression by the act of overthinking. Frequently posting on Facebook was also associated with depression for the same reason. Additionally, the frequency, quality, and type of social networking interactions were also found to be important factors.
A new Tel Aviv University study finds that a popular food supplement called phosphatidylserine may be instrumental in reversing the detrimental effects of Familial Dysautonomia (FD), a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder that affects approximately 1 in 31 Jewish people of Eastern European, or Ashkenazi, ancestry. FD affects aspects of the autonomic nervous system such as swallowing, sweating, and pain sensitivity, and places patients at increased risk for pulmonary and gastrointestinal complications.

The research, led jointly by Prof. Gil Ast and Prof. Eran Perlson of TAU's Sackler School of Medicine, generated a mouse model of FD to examine the neuron degeneration caused by FD and to observe the positive effects of the novel therapy. The study was published in PLOS Genetics.

Trucks, highways, and neurons

"Neurons are the longest cells in our body," said Prof. Ast. "'Highways' along our neurons allow 'trucks' with 'cargo' to supply our neurons with essential supplies. In most neurodegenerative diseases these highways - called microtubules - and the axonal transport process are impaired. Our study demonstrates that alterations in the stability of microtubules and disruptions in the transport may lead to FD."

The research team, including Shiran Naftelberg-Blonder and other TAU students, generated a mouse model of FD. The mice exhibited symptoms similar to those experienced by human patients with FD, including developmental delays, sensory abnormalities, unstable microtubules, and impairment of axonal retrograde transport of nerve growth factor.

"We found that in neurons from our FD mice, the microtubular highways were impaired by elevated levels of an enzyme called HDAC6," said Prof. Ast. "This impairment removed the adhesive that connects the 'bricks' of the highway. This led to less stabilized highways and to the slower movement of cargo along it."

Once the mouse exhibiting FD symptoms was generated, the researchers administered a phosphatidylserine treatment, which lowered the level of the enzyme that removed the "glue" from the "bricks" of the microtubular highways. Phosphatidylserine contains both amino acids and fatty acids and is known to be effective in slowing down long-term memory loss.

Finding a "path" to treatment

The researchers found that the treatment with phosphatidylserine enhanced the stability of the microtubular "highways" and improved the movement of "cargo" along these pathways. "We identified the molecular pathway that leads to neurodegeneration in FD and demonstrated that phosphatidylserine has the potential to slow progression of neurodegeneration," said Prof. Ast.

"Phosphatidylserine can repair the activity in neurons from the FD mouse by reducing the amount of the enzyme that removes the 'glue' from the 'bricks,'" Prof. Ast continued. "This elevates the stability of the 'highways' and increases essential cargo movement along these neurological pathways."

The researchers are currently researching ways of improving the delivery of phosphatidylserine to the nervous system. Teva Pharmaceuticals contributed support for this research through the National Network of Excellence.

Article: Phosphatidylserine Ameliorates Neurodegenerative Symptoms and Enhances Axonal Transport in a Mouse Model of Familial Dysautonomia, Shiran Naftelberg, Ziv Abramovitch, Shani Gluska, Sivan Yannai, Yuvraj Joshi, Maya Donyo, Keren Ben-Yaakov, Tal Gradus, Jonathan Zonszain, Chen Farhy, Ruth Ashery-Padan, Eran Perlson, Gil Ast, PLOS Genetics, doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1006486, published 20 December 2016.
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JAIPUR,/PRNewswire/ --Newndra Innovationshttp://www.newndra.comof Jaipur received 'Top 10 Promising Start-up of Year Award' by leading Industry body CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) among 10 other promising start-ups of the country for the year during CII Indusial Innovations Awards 2016. CII has recognized 10 promising start-ups from all over. This year, in the start-up category, over 100 entries were received from various sectors across. Out of these 59 were shortlisted in the initial phase, from which the prominent Jury selected the Top 10 promising start-ups in various categories viz., Best Manufacturing Start-up, Best Service Start-up and a Grand Winner. Newndra Innovations was presented with this award at The Lalit Hotel,organized by CII.(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/452629/PRNE_Top_10_Promising_Startup_of_the_Year_Newndra.jpg )With more than 7 national and international patents, JaipurBelt is flagship product of Newndra Innovations. JaipurBelt is an unpowered, lightweight, efficient and affordable exoskeleton to assist manual workers, mentioned Mr. Ganesh Ram Jangir, CEO of Newndra Innovations.More than 65% population of the world is engaged in manual work. 90% of their activities involve frequent or continuous bending, which are resulting in spinal and back problems. Many labourers and farmers use alcohol as a painkiller. This had worst effects on their health, economic and social status. Painkillers can be a suppression but not the solution. Surgery of the spine is complex and can have severe side effects in addition to longer recovery times. What exactly requires is to minimize the load from the spine while allowing all natural and mutability tasks. That is what JaipurBelt does.Dr. Anil Jain, Head and Chief Consultant of Dr. P. K. Sethi Rehabilitation Centre of Santokhba Durlabhji Memorial Hospital (SDMH), mentioned that the belt is evaluated with EMG (Electromyography) tests and can share the load from spinal and abdominal muscles up to 50 percent. It is equally useful for the patients of spondylitis, kyphosis and slip disk. JaipurBelt can be used as a precautionary measure as well as for post-surgery treatments.Dr., Mentor and Technical Advisor of Newndra Innovations said, "JaipurBelt is a ray of hope for the millions of workers to overcome drudgery and physical pain. We are equally taking the devices to different sector. As the market matures, the demand for JaipurBelt products is also soaring across the vast population ofincluding metros and small towns. The problem is equally severe in developed and developing countries."JaipurBelt is also awarded 'India Today's Trail Blazer Award 2016' by TV Today Group and 'Top 5 Inclusive Innovations Award 2015' by Indian Merchant Chamber (IMC).Newndra Innovations was among the top three recipients of Indo-US Science and Technology Endowment Fund (IUSSTEF) Award 2015. Mr. Ganesh Ram Jangir, CEO of Newndra Innovations was invited tosponsored Global Entrepreneurs Summit held at. With a range of innovations, Newndra Innovations is now aiming to change lives of millions across the Globe. Newndra is actively looking for global collaboration, funding and portfolio investment.Newndra Innovations is a start-up focussing on disruptive and frugal innovations and recognized by DIPP. It designs, develops and markets the innovations to impact the human life, particularly the workers and labourers. Newndra Innovations has collaboration with prestigious institutions like Dr. P.K. Sethi Rehabilitation Centre of Santokhba Durlabhji Memorial Hospital (SDMH) and MedSpark, USA.For further information, please visit http://www.newndra.com or https://www.facebook.com/NewndraInnovations/: Ganesh Ram Jangir CEO Newndra Innovations Pvt Ltd ganesh@newndra.com +91-9461552772
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A surgeon who performs a single biopsy on a patient's tumor can decode only part of the tumor and its genetic variations. Additionally, cancer cells constantly change their makeup. "A tumor is not a single disease," said Dechen Lin, assistant professor and research scientist in the Division of Hematology and Oncology in the Cedars-Sinai Department of Medicine. "It's many diseases within the same person and over time. There are millions of cells in a tumor, and a significant proportion of them are different from each other." Lin was the project coordinator for the multicenter study.To create their catalog of mutations, the study's investigators called on high-powered computers to compile genetic data on 51 tumor samples taken from 13 patients. Through complex algorithms, they analyzed both the genes and the processes, known as epigenetics, that turned the genes' activities on and off within the cancer cells.Using these techniques, the investigators identified 2,178 genetic variations in the sampled tumors. Dozens of the variations involved genes known to be associated with enabling the development of cancer. The most striking finding was that many important mutations were detected only in some areas of a tumor, highlighting the complexity of the cancer cells. This finding also demonstrated the potential for inaccurate interpretation of a cancer's genetic makeup using the single-biopsy method, which is the standard approach in the clinic.Besides cataloging these genetic variations, the study's investigators reconstructed a "biography" of the tumors, showing when some of these variations first appeared in the life cycle of the disease."This study is on the leading edge of looking within a tumor for heterogeneity, or variations, across patients and within the same patient. It also is one of the very first studies to look at epigenetic changes from different areas within a single tumor in a global way," said Benjamin Berman, the study's co-senior author, an associate professor of Biomedical Sciences and co-director of the Cedars-Sinai Center for Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics.To meet the challenge of integrating this diverse data, Huy Dinh, a project scientist in Berman's laboratory and one of the study's co-lead authors, developed innovative computational methods.Looking ahead, the investigators plan to apply their analytic techniques to other cancers and explore the significance of the genetic and epigenetic changes that they have so far identified. They view their work as fundamental to developing effective, individualized therapies to combat the drug resistance that many cancer patients face during the course of their disease."Evidence suggests that tumor heterogeneity is one of the major causes of drug resistance and treatment failure in cancer," said H. Phillip Koeffler, professor of Medicine and the Mark Goodson Chair in Oncology Research at Cedars-Sinai. "In light of this situation, deciphering the genomic diversity and evolution of tumors can provide a basis for identifying new targets and designing personalized medicine strategies." Koeffler was the other co-senior author of the study.Source: Eurekalert


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Its that time of the year again where you dress by the dozens and put your best foot forward to dance your way into the New Year 2017, that is. And yes, it might have been a great year; it might have been a crappy year. But you gotta celebrate whats going so you can welcome whats coming.

So, if youre in the capital this time around, here are 15 places where you can definitely expect a great party scene happening on New Years Eve!

The Whats Hot Shuffle

Bringing together three of the best party venues in the city, Whats Hot is going all out to ensure your NYE is one of the most memorable parties of your life. With a host of the best DJs and music producers in town, playing some of the best party tracks you will ever have heard, its going to one rad do at the following three haunts!

1. BandStand

 BandStand

The New Year Shuffle, presented by Whats Hot will see artists, like Praveen Achary, Oozeundat and Hoax playing the best of the best at BandStand.

Time: 8pm onwards

Entry: Packages available at Whats Hot

2. Summer House Cafe

 Whats Hot

As part of the Whats Hot Shuffle happening in the city, DJs SU Real and N*hilate will be turning up the tempo at Summer House Cafe this NYE.

Time: 8pm onwards

Entry: Packages available at Whats Hot

3. Auro Bar & Kitchen

 Whats Hot

Continuing the NYE celebrations, the Whats Hot Shuffle has Joshi and Turban Raga stationed for all party hoppers at Auro Kitchen & Bar.

Time: 8pm onwards

Entry: Packages available at Whats Hot

4. Ek Bar

 Ek Bar

Featuring DJ Tony on the deck, plates piled with heavy snack and glasses brimming with unlimited premium alcohol; your NYE celebrations at Ek Bar will be heavy and high!

Time: 8pm onwards

Entry: INR 8,000/- per couple

5. Kitty Su

 Kitty Su

The NYE bash at Kitty Su will have you on your toes from start to end with the Resident Kittens turning up the volume as you party your night away.

Time: 9pm onwards

Entry: Details available on ClubGo

6. Fio Cookhouse

 Fio Cookhouse

Celebrate New Year's Eve in style and kickoff 2017 on a high note. Kick back, pull out your fanciest outfit and dress to impress at Fio Cookhouse and Bars Disco 17.

Time: 9m onwards

Entry: INR 10,000 per couple

7. Bottles & Barrels

 Bottles and Barrels

Dancing, music, food and beer, are the solution to everything. Welcome New Year 2017 at Bottles and Barrels on the Bollywood latka by DJ Vikram and desi dhol matka.

Time: 9pm onwards

Entry: INR 2,000 onwards

8. Kylin Sky Bar

 Kylin

Kylin Sky Bar is all set to make your New Year scintillating with live DJ music paired with special food & beverage packages.

Time: 9pm onwards

Entry: On request

9. Hive

 Hive

Bring in the New Year while you dance the night away at Hive with BO55 and Sallbi on deck duty, pumping out good vibes.

Time: 9pm onwards

Entry: INR 2,500 onwards

10. Hype

 Hype

Welcome the New Year with things that have never been; featuring angels and bunnies in a Playboy style. Let this be the wildest night of the year.

Time: 10pm onwards

Entry: On request

11. Privee

 Privee

To end your year with a bang, Privee brings to you the Hottest New Year's Bash in town featuring DJ Khushi.

Time: 9pm onwards

Entry: On request

12. Social Offline

 Social

The Morning After is the biggest night of the year. Incredible music, vibe, drinks and food are in the works. It is the biggest lineup of New Year's Eve parties in the country across all Social(s).

Time: 9pm onwards

Entry: INR 4,000 onwards
1. New York

 Flickr

For Christmas, nothing gets better than the Rockefeller Center Plaza. New York hosts one of the biggest New Years Eve event, the dropping of the 12,000 tonne ball, in an annual gathering of a million people in Times Square. And if big crowds are not your thing, New York literally has an amazing party at every corner. There is something for everyone.

2. Berlin

 carollux

For New Years Eve, the people like to celebrate with a Party Mile, a two-kilometer stretch of bars, international food stalls, laser shows, video screens, party tents, music stages, and more between Brandenburg Gate and Victory Column.

3. London

 Shutterstock

Londoners obviously bring in the New Year to the chiming of Big Ben at midnight. Over 250,000 people gather at the banks of the river Thames and its several bridges to witness the spectacular ten-minute lightshow and fireworks display. And since its London, its bustling with parties and a lot of other fun stuff.

4. Rio de Janeiro

 Wikimedia

One of the first words that comes to mind when thinking of Brazil is carnivals. Its no surprise that they bring in the New Year with a bang. The worlds largest New Years Eve party is held at the iconic Copacabana Beach where about two million people celebrate together in a two and a half mile stretch. Known as Reveillon, this uniquely Brazilian celebration blends religious, traditional, and superstitious beliefs and has oceanfront stages for live musical and dance performances, and a colorful fireworks display at midnight completes the scene.

5. Paris

 melis

The Eiffel Tower gets even better during the New Years Eve by becoming the site of an incredible and vibrant lightshow and fireworks display. Montmarte offers equally good views of the fireworks, or another option is to book a dinner cruise aboard a bateau-mouche on the Seine.

6. Amsterdam

 wikipedia

The Dutch capital has impromptu as well as organized parties at every corner, especially in places like Rembrandtplein, Nieuwmarkt, Museumplein and Dam Square. The best view for the firework display is from the various bridges the city has and after witnessing the amazing light show, people head into clubs to party till the sun comes up.

7. Brussels

 European Best Destinations

Is there a better way to bring in the new year than with an incredible selection of world renowned Belgian Beer? Along with that, there is a wide range of parties in the city, going from rock 'n' roll, hip-hop to house and techno, as well as gay friendly parties, for which Brussels is known for.

8. Las Vegas

 Dreamstime/Derrick Neill

While the Sin City is literally, always buzzing as hunting ground for party-goers, gambling enthusiasts and all other kinds of freakazoids are open all year round, its really during December that things get mighty interesting around Vegas. You can choose from locking yourself down on a stool at your favourite casinothink The Venetian, or The Ceasaror you could make merry midst the parades that take over the streets, along with pyrotechnics displays, live bands and dances throughout the streets of the city. Its the one place you can afford to forget where you came from, or what your issues are; especially this time of the year. Because what happens in Vegas can stay in Vegas, if you want it to.

9. Cape Town

 flickr

Its one of the maddest places to be during the party season because its simply the best. The celebrations leading up to the New Year spans across three whole days where theres a live concert organized at the Victoria & Albert Waterfront. Theres also a festive carnival at the Victoria Falls that is not one to be missed as it includes a carnival-themed train and live music that is every bit worth your time. New Years Day is all about the local beaches and the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival. Never a day thats dull!

10. Miami

 Wikipedia

Miami is known for its rad nightlife scenes. Picture yourself spending this time of the year by a beach in Miami, dressed down and ready for endless hours of dance, music and partying the night away. And you get to do all of this without freezing your arse off! The fancy hotels in the city usually have celebrated headlining musicians performing for the audiences to party till the wee hours of the night. But, if youre more of a laidback beach kinda guy, theres so much more to choose from without worrying about being locked down at one venue. The beach is your ultimate playground, after all.
Netanyahu's return to power is likely to see an upward trajectory in Indo-Israel ties.
The Greek Embassy in Brasilia was informed yesterday, by the family of the Greek Ambassador to Brazil, Kyriakos Amiridis  who traveled to the city of Rio during the Christmas holiday  that, as of Monday, 26 December, it has not been possible to contact him.



Following immediate actions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the full mobilization of all the competent Brazilian authorities was requested, and an investigation was launched to gather more information regarding the case.



The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Greek Embassy in Brasilia are monitoring the case closely and, in close cooperation with the Brazilian authorities, are taking all appropriate actions.
Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias called the text of the conclusions of the Slovak-chaired meeting of the EU General Affairs Council -- which took place ten days ago in Brussels and focused on the accession courses of Albania, FYROM and Turkey -- a very complex text that touches on a number of critical issues. In his interview with the AMNA, Mr. Kotzias expressed his particular satisfaction at the adoption of the Greek positions on Albania and especially on issues that concern the Greek minority and their properties, as well as good neighbourly relations.

"It is a very complex text that raises all of the issues concerning Albania's EU perspective and Albania's relations with Greece. There wasn't an issue we were interested in that wasn't included in the draft conclusions", Mr. Kotzias said.

In the conclusions of the Slovak chairmanship of the General Affairs Council, as the Minister explained -- in contrast with older, similar texts drawn up by the Commission and focused exclusively on judicial reform in Albania -- "all five key priorities are set down; priorities set as main prerequisites for considering a potential opening of EU-Albanian accession negotiations. These priorities include the promotion of judicial reform and the combating of organized crime -- particularly in the area of production and trafficking of narcotics -- and, certainly, respect for minorities".

"In the text of the conclusions," Mr. Kotzias added, "stress was put on the need to protect minority rights throughout Albanian territory, and not just in these zones. What's more, the protection of minority rights was for the first time directly linked to property rights. That is, it is now clearly set down how important it is to substantially take into account, in all of the actions of the Albanian state, the need to respect the property rights of these minorities and take the necessary measures in that direction".

"So these are two important issues. In the case of the issue of minority rights throughout Albanian territory, we had it added last year, and this year it was reiterated and extended to property rights issues. It is an issue that has been raised in a new way by Greek Foreign policy and has now been incorporated into the texts of the EU".

Asked about good neighbourly relation with Albania, an issue included in the text of the conclusions and raising the issue of the nationalist rhetoric that has been heard of late from Albania -- to Greece's detriment -- the Foreign Minister emphasized the "great clarity" with which the issue was treated. "Because, as you can see, Albania borders on FYROM, whose western region is populated by Albanian population, and thus the issue of good neighbourly relations cannot be referred to in its relations with this country. It is therefore crystal clear that reference is being made to good neighbourly relations and the nationalism certain parties frequently exhibit, with regard to Greece, in Albanian public life".

The Foreign Minister wished to underscore that Greece wants Albania's Europeanisation and its accession to the EU, but not through showing favour. "That is, all of the criteria in effect for all of the EU member states to date have to be maintained and applied to Albania as well." Greece, he stressed, "is very willing, whenever asked, to assist Albania in the effort to meet these criteria".

Asked whether, with the above, the dialogue is reopening for the resolution of pending issues with Albania, Mr. Kotzias stated that "the dialogue is continuing and, in fact, just a few days ago the Deputy Minister of Albania visited Athens and met with the Secretary General of the Foreign Ministry, Ambassador Dimitris Paraskevopoulos".

FYROM: "A solution has to be found on what we call the name issue. Greece demands that history be respected and that there not be irredentism".

Responding to a question regarding the noting of the positive role of the Greece-FYROM confidence-building measures (CBMs) in the General Affairs Council conclusions of the Slovak Presidency, Mr. Kotzias repeated what he often says to his international interlocutors regarding Athens-Skopje relations; that is, that "history is not a prison. It is a school, and this school has to teach the real history".

"The Greek side has taken care from the outset to develop good relations with everyone," Mr. Kotzias continued. "I have underscored that it is a good thing that our neighbouring country exists. We want its stability and we are the only state that did not express any opinion on the domestic developments in FYROM, respecting its autonomy, independence and sovereignty. So I think that the positive role of the CBMs is rightly stressed and acknowledged in the EU texts".

More specifically with regard to the CBMs -- which include the natural gas pipeline, the Bitola-Florina rail line and the collaboration between the police and fire-fighting services, as well as between universities and research centres of the two countries -- Mr. Kotzias stressed their added value, noting that "this is a multifaceted and intensive cooperation that breaks down preconceptions according to which Greece supposedly wants to destabilise FYROM. On the contrary, what Greece demands is that history be respected and that there not be irredentism." On the same issue, he added that "as I always say, I feel very proud that Egypt has a city named Alexandria -- which will be linked, in fact, with the port of Alexandroupoli -- but no one in Alexandria believes that, because Alexander the Great passed through there, Alexandroupoli or Greek history belongs to them".

"As a result, irredentism must be neutralised, like nationalism, which is flaring up among certain sides in the Balkans. So the CBMs are very helpful with this. It is characteristic that, when I initially made this proposal, I came under attack from everyone, both internationally and in our neighbouring country. Today everyone wants to forget that this has been Greece's proposal, as it is being presented as a proposal from all of the players together. But, in the end, this is a sign of success".

"So the issue we have, which is certainly also linked to irredentism, is that a solution has to be found on what we call the name issue. And because many consider the name issue to be of secondary importance, I need to make the reminder that it is a prerequisite for our neighbouring country's accession to the EU and NATO. In fact, the purpose of the Interim Accord, which is invoked by many sides, was to provide time for proposals on the name issue. We have set out thoughts on the issue and we are waiting to hear from the other side.

TURKEY: "Greece wants to help on Turkey's European path.

Whether or not Turkey has a European course and perspective depends not on us or the EU, but on Turkey's own choices".

"Greece is in favour of a European and more democratic Turkey," Mr. Kotzias stated, commenting on the conclusions of the Slovak chairmanship of the EU General Affairs Council and the Austrian proposal for "freezing" EU-Turkey relations.

"We supported the forces that opposed the coup attempted by a portion of the army. We are against these coups, albeit from the perspective of Democracy and the correct, effective and democratic functioning of institutions. Not from some other perspective. We believe that Turkey's path to EU accession must not be closed," the Minister stated, stressing that "whether or not Turkey has a European course and perspective depends not on us or the EU, but on Turkey's own choices and on its own will. With respect for European and international law -- that is, if it assimilates European standards, then it will always be welcome," clarifying that "I always point out that Greece wants to help on Turkey's European path. But it will be up to Turkey itself".
LINCOLN TOWNSHIP  A Lincoln Township resident has been battling township officials for months, seeking information related to the Board of Trustees August decision to become self-zoned.

Arlene Schipinski submitted her first Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in September, which asked for the identity of donors who contributed to the townships newly formed legal fund.

The township in August introduced an ordinance to establish its own planning commission, and an ordinance putting a moratorium on wind development.

At that same meeting, the township established the $10,000 legal fund, for which officials have since set aside another $20,000.

Schipinskis request drew criticism at the October meeting from Clerk Irvin Kanaski, who said the cost of the FOIA, which also included township financial information, totaled between $2,300 and $2,500 in legal fees.

However, the result of a subsequent FOIA that Schipinski submitted questioning how these numbers were calculated showed no proof that her original request cost that much.

At the October meeting, Kanaski called on residents to chide Schipinski for seeking the information and causing division in the township.

Since then, Schipinski and other residents have submitted several FOIA requests.

The result of one was the bill for legal services for August and September, for which the township was charged more than $10,000 by its attorney with Foster, Swift, Collins & Smith PC of Lansing.

The highest single item included in the bill was $2,500 for travel to and from and attendance at the Aug. 23 Huron County Board of Commissioners meeting. Ten hours were billed at $250 an hour, and there was a separate charge for mileage.

Meanwhile, the identity of the donors to the legal fund remains unknown.

The township, however, did clarify to Schipinski, and to the Tribune in a separate FOIA request that all donations were made by local citizens wishing to remain anonymous, and to be used toward legal funds in helping to establish our own zoning. No outside groups were involved.

Schipinski has also questioned the township for flip flopping on a June decision to remain county-zoned.

In June 2016, (Kanaski) motioned to remain Huron County zoned, and it was unanimously approved. That position was not challenged in the July meeting minutes and then in August, without any advance public notice to the citizens of Lincoln Township, they flip-flopped their position on zoning, Schipinski said.

My husband, Bob, and I both feel that the Lincoln Township board is using Lincolns tax money for their personal agenda to get out of their lease contracts, she told the Tribune in October.

Four of the five township board members have wind contracts; all except Trustee Timothy Pawlowski. That includes Supervisor Melvin Drake, Kanaski, Treasurer Patricia Weber and Trustee John Wisneski.
CARO  A Tuscola County doctor faces up to 20 years in prison after being arrested on a seven-count felony warrant.

According to the Tuscola County Prosecutors Office, Dr. Joseph E. Oesterling was charged Dec. 22 with criminal enterprise, five counts of delivery of a schedule 2 controlled substance and maintaining a drug building. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison.

The arrest came following a seven-month joint investigation involving the Federal Drug Enforcement Administrations (DEA) Tactical Diversion Squad and the Thumb Narcotics Unit into alleged overprescribing practices being instituted by Oesterling through his clinics in Caro, Saginaw and Mount Pleasant. Oesterling specializes in urology and the allegations include the massive overprescribing of the substances Norco (hydrocodone), methadone, amphetamines, phentermine, oxycodone and Xanax (alprazolam).

In late October, law enforcement executed several search warrants at multiple locations, including clinics and residences related to Oesterling and his practice. At that time, police seized multiple electronic records, controlled substances and financial records.

In addition to the criminal charges, the prosecutors office also instituted a civil forfeiture proceeding, concerning multiple items of personal and real property, which were previously seized in the October raid.

The Tuscola County Prosecutors Office would like to commend the dedication of the DEA Tactical Diversion Squad of Detroit, Michigan, and the Thumb Narcotics Unit, who have worked tirelessly to bring the cases to this point, said prosecuting attorney Mark E. Reene in a statement. Opioid abuse and addiction have been a growing concern in the Tuscola County area for some time. Irresponsible prescribing practices related to these very powerful controlled substances has likewise led to a rise in crime, including an increase in property crimes and drug trafficking activity. Stemming the trafficking of prescription controlled substances has become a priority for law enforcement across the state of Michigan, with action being taken routinely by the state of Michigan and the attorney general to curb the practices of these so-called pill mills.

The state of Michigan has suspended Oesterlings license to practice medicine pending a formal administrative hearing. Bond has not been set and no date has been set for Oesterlings first appearance in court.
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Ltd, Accenture S.C., Accenture S.L., Accenture S.R.L., Accenture S.p. z o.o., Accenture S.p.A., Accenture SASU, Accenture SG Services Pte Ltd, Accenture SRL, Accenture Saudi Arabia Limited, Accenture Sdn Bhd, Accenture Service Center SRL, Accenture Services (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Services AB, Accenture Services AG, Accenture Services AS, Accenture Services GmbH, Accenture Services Morocco SA, Accenture Services Oy, Accenture Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Services S.p. z o.o., Accenture Services SRL, Accenture Services and Technology S.r.l., Accenture Services s.r.o., Accenture Single Member S.A. Organization Information Technology & Business Development, Accenture Solutions Co. Ltd, Accenture Solutions Private Limited, Accenture Solutions Pte Ltd, Accenture Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Solutions S.p. z o.o, Accenture Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture State Healthcare Services LLC, Accenture Sub II Inc, Accenture Sub III Inc, Accenture Sub LLC, Accenture Systems Integration Limited, Accenture Sarl, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Accenture Technology Solutions (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (HK) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas S.A., Accenture Technology Solutions GmbH, Accenture Technology Solutions Oy, Accenture Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions S.A. de C.V., Accenture Technology Solutions S.r.l., Accenture Technology Solutions SASU, Accenture Technology Solutions SRL, Accenture Technology Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture Technology Solutions Slovakia s.r.o., Accenture Technology Ventures B.V., Accenture Technology Ventures SPRL, Accenture Tecnologia Consultoria y Outsourcing S.A., Accenture Uruguay SRL, Accenture Vietnam Co. Limited, Accenture Zambia Limited, Accenture do Brasil Ltda, Accenture plc, Accenture s.r.o., Acceria, Acquity Group, Adaptly LLC, Adaptly UK Limited, AddVal Technology, Adqptly, Advantium Inc., Advoco, Agilex Technologies Inc., Alfa Consulting, Allen International, AlphaBeta Advisors, Altevie Technologies S.r.l., Altima, Altima (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Altima Asia Ltd, Altitude, Altitude LLC, Altius Consulting Limited, Altius Data Solutions Private Limited, Analytics 8 LP, Analytics 8 Pty Ltd, Analytics8, Aorui Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Apis, Apis Group Pty Ltd, Appaloosa Technology SASU, AppsPro, AppsPro, Arca, Arca Ingenieros y Consultoria S.L., Arca Telecom S.L., Ariba - BPO, Arismore, Artio People (Payroll) Pty Ltd, Artio People Pty Ltd, Aspiro Solutions (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Automation Partners Pty Ltd, Avanade (Guangzhou) Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd., Avanade Asia Pte Ltd, Avanade Australia Pty Ltd, Avanade Belgium SPRL, Avanade Canada Inc, Avanade Consulting Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Denmark A/S, Avanade Deutschland GmbH, Avanade Europe Holdings Limited, Avanade Europe Services Limited, Avanade Finland Oy, Avanade France SASU, Avanade Holdings LLC, Avanade Hong Kong Ltd, Avanade Inc, Avanade International Corporation, Avanade Ireland Limited, Avanade Italy S.r.l., Avanade Japan KK, Avanade Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avanade Middle East Limited, Avanade Netherlands B.V., Avanade Norway AS, Avanade Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Schweiz GmbH, Avanade South Africa Pty Ltd, Avanade Spain S.L., Avanade Sweden AB, Avanade UK Limited, Avanade do Brasil Ltda , Avanade Osterreich GmbH, Avenai, Avieco, Axia Ltd., BABCN LLC, BCS Consulting, BCT Solutions, BCT Solutions Pty Ltd, BENEXT, BPO Servicos Administrativos Ltda, BRIDGE Energy Group, BRIDGEi2i, Beacon Consulting Group Inc., Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd., Beijing Zhidao Future Consulting Co. Ltd, Benext, Berico Technologies LLC, Bionic, Bionic Solution LLC, Blue Horseshoe, Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Bow & Arrow, Bow & Arrow Limited, Brand Learning, Brand Learning Group Limited, Brightstep AB, Byte Prophecy, Byte Prophecy Private Limited, CAS, CRMWaypoint, CS Technology (Australia) Pty Ltd, CS Technology (UK) Limited, CS Technology Group LLC, CS Technology LLC, CadenceQuest Inc., Callisto Integration Europe B.V., Callisto Integration Europe Limited, Callisto Integration LLC, Callisto Integration Ltd, Capgemini - North American health practice, Capital Consultancy Services Inc, Certus Solutions Consulting Services Limited, Certus Solutions Ltd, ChangeTrack Research Pty Ltd., Chaotic Moon Studios, Chengdu Mensa Advertising Co. Ltd., Cimation, Cirrus Connect Australia Pty Ltd, Cirrus Connect Limited, Cirruseo, Clarity Insights, ClearEdge Partners, Clearhead, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas Japan G.K., Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Limited, Cloudeasier SAS, Cloudpoint Limited, Cloudsherpas Inc, Cloudworks, Cloudworks Consulting Services Inc, Cloudworks Technology LLC, Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda, Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda, Context Information Security, Context Information Security LLC, Context Information Security Limited, CoreCompete LLC, CoreCompete Limited, CoreCompete Private Limited, Corliant Inc., Creative Drive LLC, Creative Drive US LLC, CreativeDrive, CreativeDrive Digital Content Services (Shenzhen) Co Ltd., CreativeDrive EMEA Limited, CreativeDrive Singapore Pte Ltd, CreativeDrive UK Group Limited, Cutting Edge Solutions Limited, Cygni AB, Cygni Norrsken AB, Cygni Stockholm AB, Cygni Syd AB, Cygni Vast AB, Cygni Ost AB, Cygni Ostersund AB, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Limited, DI Futures Corporation, Data Essential SARL, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings LLC, Decora Marketplace LLC, Decorado Marketplace Ltda-EPP, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digital Results Group LLC, Double Digit Limitada, Double Digit Pty SA, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Limited, Duck Creek Technologies, ESR Labs, ESR Labs AG, EdenOne Solutions Limited, Edenhouse ERP Holdings Limited, Edenhouse Solutions Limited, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting LP, End to End Analytics LLC, End-to-End Analytics, Endorphin Medici (M) Sdn Bhd, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Limited, EnergyQuote JHA, Enimbos, Enimbos Global Services S.L., Enkitec, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions LLC, Enterprise System Partners, Enterprise System Partners B.V., Enterprise System Partners Bilisim Danismanlik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Enterprise System Partners Global Corporation, Enterprise System Partners Limited, Enthusian Pty Ltd, Entropia, Entropia (M) Sdn Bhd, Entropia Holdings Pte Ltd, Entropia Intercraft Sdn Bhd, Epylon, Ergo, Espedia S.r.l., Ethica Consulting Group, Ethica Consulting S.p.A., Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Experity, Exton Consulting, Exton Consulting Spain Strategy&Management S.L., Exton Germany GmbH, Exton International SAS, Exton Italia S.r.l., Exton SAS, FGM LLC, Fairway Technologies Inc, Farah BidCo Limited, Farah MidCo Limited, Farah Topco Limited, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Formicary, Founders Intelligence, Fruendo S.r.l., FusionX, Future State Consulting LLC, FutureMove (Beijing) Automotive Technology Co. Ltd., FutureMove Automotive, FutureMove Automotive Co. Ltd., GRA Supply Chain Pty Ltd, Gagel Group S de R.L. de C.V., Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda, Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Genfour, George Group Consulting L.P., Gestalt LLC, Gevity, Gren utvikling AS, H.B. Maynard and Co. Inc., HRC Retail Advisory, Hagberg Consulting Group, Hahntel Ltda, Halo Partners LLC, Hamilton Holding Company S.A, Hangzhou Aiyunzhe Technology Co. Ltd., Happen, Happen GP Limited, Happen Limited, Headspring, Hjaltelin Stahl, Hjaltelin Stahl A/S, Hjaltelin Stahl K/S, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting Malaysia Sdn Bhd, IBB Consulting, ICM.S S.r.l., IMJ Corp, IMJ Corporation, INSITUM, IQSP Consulting LLC, IT One Company Limited, ITBS Servicios Bancarios de Tecnologia de la Informacion SL, Icon Integration, Icon Integration (NZ) Limited, Icon Integration Pty Ltd, Imagine Broadband (USA) Limited, Imagine Broadband USA LLC, Imaginea Inc, Imaginea Technologies LLC, Industrie IT (Hong Kong) Ltd, Industrie IT (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Industrie IT Group Pty Ltd, Industrie IT Pty Ltd, Industrie&Co, Infinity Works Consulting Limited, Infinity Works Holdings Limited, Infinity Works Management Limited, Infinity Works Midco Limited, Informatica de Euskadi S.L., Innotec International EAD, Innotec International S.p. z.o.o., Innotec Marketing GmbH, Innotec Marketing International Ireland Limited, Innotec- Marketing Spain S.L, Insitum Consultoria Argentina SRL, Insitum Consultoria S.A. de C.V., International Biometric Group LLC, International Biometric Group UK Limited, Intrepid, Intrepid Futureworks Sdn Bhd, Intrigo Systems Inc, Intrigo Systems India Pvt. Limited, Intrigo Systems LLC, Inventor Technology Ltd, InvestTech, Investtech Systems Consulting LLC, ItSafer Continuity Services S.L., JKD Consulting LLC, Javelin Group, K Comms Group Limited, KSC Studio LLC, Kaper Communications Limited, Karma Communications Debtco Limited, Karma Communications Group Limited, Karma Communications Holdings Limited, Karmarama, Karmarama Comms Limited, Karmarama Limited, King James Group, Knowledge Rules Inc., Knowledgent, Knowledgent Group LLC, Kogentix, Kogentix LLC, Kogentix Limited, Kogentix Singapore Pte Ltd, Kogentix Technologies Private Limited, Kolle Rebbe, Kolle Rebbe GmbH, Kream Comms Limited, Kunstmaan, Kurt Salmon, Kurt Salmon Canada LTD, Kurt Salmon US LLC, LEXTA, LINKBYNET, LINKBYNET Indian Ocean (L.I.O) Ltd, LabAnswer, Lexta GmbH, Lexta UK Limited, Lien par le reseau Inc, Lien par le reseau infrastructures Inc, Lin Bo (Shanghai) Network Technology Co. Ltd., Link By Net SAS, Link By Net SRL, Link By Net Vietnam Company Limited, Linkbynet East Asia Ltd, Linkbynet Singapore Pte Ltd., Loud & Clear Creative Pty Ltd, Lumenup S.A., MAXIM Systems Inc., MCG US Holdings LLC, Mackevision CG Technology and Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Mackevision Japan Co. Ltd., Mackevision Korea Ltd, Mackevision LLC, Mackevision Medien Design, Mackevision Medien Design GmbH, Mackevision Singapore Pte Ltd, Mackevision UK Limited, Maglan, Maglan Information Defense Technologies Research Ltd, Maihiro, Matter, Maud Corp Pty Ltd, Maxamine International, Measuretek LLC, Media Audits Ltd., Media Hive, Mediasenz Pty Ltd., Meredith Specialty LLC, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing LLC, Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., Mindtribe, Mistral Wind Operations  Servicos Empresariais Unipessoal Lda., MobGen, Mortgage Cadence LLC, Mortgage Cadence an Accenture Company, Most Champion Ltd, Mudano, Mudano Limited, Myrtle Consulting Group LLC, N3, N3 (Dalian) Business Consulting Co. Ltd., N3 Brazil Consultoria em Marketing Ltda, N3 Germany GmbH, N3 LLC, N3 North America LLC, N3 Results Australia Pty Ltd, N3 Results Ireland Limited, N3 Results Japan G.K., N3 Results Limited, N3 Results Malaysia Sdn Bhd, N3 Results Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., N3 Results S.A.S., N3 Results Singapore Pte Ltd, N3 Results Unipessoal Lda, NYTEC, Nanjing Demeng Advertising Co. Ltd., Nashco Consulting, NaviSys Inc., Nell'Armonia Israel Ltd, Nell'Armonia SAS, Nell'Participation SAS, NellArmonia, Neo Metrics Analytics S.L., Neo Metrics Chile S.A., New Content, New Content Editora e Produtora Ltda, New Energy Group, News Imaging LLC, NewsPage, NewsPage (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, NewsPage Pte Ltd, Northstream, Novetta Holdings LLC, Novetta LLC, Novetta Solutions LLC, Novetta Topco LLC, OCTO Technology, OPS Rules Management Consultants, Octagon Research Solutions Inc., Octo Technology Pty Ltd, Octo Technology SA, Odgaard ApS, Olikka, Olikka Pty Ltd, Olympus Systems Corporation, Openmind, Openmind S.r..l., Openminded, Openminded SAS, Operaciones Accenture S.A. de C.V., OpusLine, Orbium, Orbium AG, Orbium Consulting Limited, Orbium Inc., Orbium Ltd, Orbium Pte Ltd, Orbium Pty Ltd, Origin Digital, PCO Innovation, PLM Systems S.r.l, PRION GmbH, PT Accenture, PT Asta Catur Indra, PT Kogentix Teknologi Indonesia, PacificLink Group, Paja Finanssipalvelut Oy, Parker Fitzgerald Inc, Parker Fitzgerald International Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Limited, Parker Fitzgerald PTY Ltd, Parker Fitzgerald Services Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Solutions Limited, Pecaso Ltd., Pegasus Production A/S, Pegasus Production K/S, Phase One Consulting Group, Pillar Technology, Pollux, Pollux Automation Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pollux Canada Inc, Pollux S.A.S., Pollux USA LLC, Pragsis Bidoop, Pragsis Bidoop UK Limited, Pramati Technologies Europe Limited, Pramati Technologies Private Limited, Presence of IT Workforce Management North America LLC, PrimeQ, PrimeQ Australia Pty Ltd, PrimeQ Ltd, PrimeQ NZ Pty Limited, Procurian Inc., Prof. Homburg GmbH, Proquire LLC, PureApps Ltd., Qi Jie Beijing Information Technologies Co. Ltd., RBCP Fund 1-A Vapor Blocker LLC, RBCP Platform Vapor Blocker I LLC, REPL Consulting LLC, REPL Consulting Limited, REPL Digital Limited, REPL Group K.K., REPL Group Pty Ltd, REPL Group Worldwide Limited, REPL Pte Ltd, REPL Software Limited, REPL Technology Limited, Radiant Services LLC, Random Walk Computing Inc., Reactive Media Pty Ltd., Real Protect, Realworld OO Systems Ltd., Redcore, Redcore (New Zealand) Limited, Redcore Group Holdings Pty Ltd, Redcore Pty Ltd, Revolutionary Security, RiskControl, Root LLC, Rothco, Rothco Limited, S3 TV Technology Ltd., SALT Solutions GmbH, SEC Servizi, SOPIA Corp., Sagacious Consultants, Salt Solutions, Sandbox Studio LLC, Sapling Bidco Limited, Sapling Midco Limited, Sapling Topco Limited, Schlumberger Business Consulting, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace (UK) Limited, Seabury Consulting, Seabury Corporate Advisors LLC, Seabury Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Search Technologies BPO Inc, Search Technologies International LLC, Search Technologies LLC, Search Technologies Limited, Securiview SAS, Sentelis, Sentor Managed Secuirty Services AB, Servicios Tecnicos de Programacion Accenture S.C., Seven Seas Business Ventures LLC, Shackleton, Shackleton Chile S.A., Shackleton S.L.U., Shanghai Baiyue Advertising Co. Ltd., Shun Zhe Technology Development Co. Ltd., SigInt Technologies LLC, Silveo, Silveo Consulting India Private Limited, Simian Pty Ltd, SinnerSchrader, SinnerSchrader AG, SinnerSchrader Content GmbH, SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH, SinnerSchrader Praha s.r.o., Sirvart S.A., Sistemes Consulting S.L., Skylink SAS, Soltians Limited, Solutions IQ LLC, SolutionsIQ, SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services Private Limited, Somers Ventures Ireland Limited, Somers Ventures LLC, Spacelink SAS, Storm Digital, Structure Consulting Group LLC, Sutter Mills, Synership LLC, Systor AG, T.A. Cook, TXF LLC, Tambourine, TargetST8, Tech - Avanade Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Tecnilogica Ecosistemas S.A., Tecnilogica, The Brand Learning Partners Limited, The Callisto Integration Corporation, The Monkeys, The Monkeys Pty Ltd, The Myrtle Group, Total Logistics, Tquila, Trivadis, Trivadis AG, Trivadis Austria GmbH, Trivadis Denmark AS, Trivadis Germany GmbH, Trivadis Holding AG, Trivadis Partner AG, Trivadis Services AG, Trivadis Services SRL, Troop Studios Pty Ltd, VanBerlo, Vector Acquisition Company LLC, Vector Topco LLC, Verax Solutions, Vertical Retail Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd, Vertical Retail Consulting Ltd, Vivere Brasil Servicos e Solucoes SA, Vivere Brasil Solucoes De Credito Ltda., Wabion GmbH, WaveStrike LLC, White Cliffs Consulting LLC, Wire Stone, Wire Stone LLC, Wise Partners SAS, Wolox, Wolox Colombia S.A.S, Wolox LLC, Wolox Mexico S.R.L de C.V., Wolox S.A., Wolox SpA, Workforce Insight, Workforce Insight LLC, Yesler, Yesler LLC, Yesler Limited, Yesler Singapore Pte Ltd, Zag, Zag Australia Pty Ltd, Zag Limited, Zag USA LLC, Zebra Worldwide Australia Pty Ltd, Zebra Worldwide Group Limited, Zebra Worldwide Media Pty Ltd, Zenta, Zenta Global Philippines Inc, Zenta Mortgage Services LLC, Zenta Recoveries Inc, Zenta US Holdings Inc, Zestgroup, Zielpuls, Zielpuls (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zielpuls GmbH, avVenta, designaffairs, designaffairs Business Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., designaffairs GmbH, designaffairs group China Co. Ltd., dgroup, i4C Analytics, iDefense, solid-serVision.com GmbH, and umlaut.

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This is a current list of the top 250 companies by market capitalization on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Learn more .

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is one of the largest, and most recognizable, stock exchanges in the world. The NYSE is in New York City, New York at 11 Wall Street. The NYSE has been in existence since the earliest days of the United States becoming a nation, in 1792 and is primarily made up of blue-chip companies with large market capitalizations. In fact, many of the stocks that make up the Dow Jones Composite Index (i.e. The Dow) are listed on the NYSE.

This article gives a brief history of the New York Stock Exchange. In addition, it covers topics such as what kind of stocks trade on the exchange, what are the listing requirements, how trading is performed, and what the daily price movement of the NYSE tells investors about investor sentiment.

What Were the Origins of the NYSE?

Today, the New York Stock Exchange is known as the center of the financial universe. However, the exchanges origin is far more humble. On May 17, 1792, 24 stockbrokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement creating a centralized exchange to help provide order to the securities market in what was still a young nation. The "Buttonwood Agreement comes from the tree of the same name under which the founders signed the agreement.

An initial benefit of the exchange was how it removed the need for auctioneers when trading commodities like wheat and tobacco and to set a commission rate. The exchange initially focused on government bonds.

However, the exchange had no formal home. Business was usually conducted informally in the local coffeehouses. In 1817, the exchange changed its name to the New York Stock & Exchange Board which later became the New York Stock Exchange. At this time, the exchange adopted a constitution that set the rules for trading. A group of stockbrokers met twice a day at 40 Wall Street to trade 30 stocks and bonds.

Over time, the exchange moved became the financial hub of the country and moved to its current location in 1865.

What Kind of Stocks Trade on the NYSE?

As of June 2022, the NYSE includes approximately 2,400 companies with a market capitalization of over $28.2 trillion. Although the NYSE trades stocks of all market capitalizations, its best known for trading the stocks of large cap companies. These have the benefit of being mature companies in mature industries. And many of these companies reward shareholders with dividends.

However, that also means that many of these companies are better suited for value investors as opposed to growth investors. In bear markets this stability can be a benefit for investors as these stocks tend to perform less bad than more volatile stocks. But in a bull market, these stocks are not likely to provide investors with the growth that they look for.

An interesting fact about how the NYSE and NASDAQ operate is that the companies with the five largest market caps on the NYSE are also listed on the NASDAQ exchange.

What Are the Listing Requirements For the NYSE?

The NYSE has strict guidelines that govern the types of companies that can list on the exchange. Here are the major requirements that all companies must meet:

The company must have at least 2,200 shareholders

The company must trade over 100,000 shares per month

The company must have a market valuation of over $100 million

The company must generate more than $75 million in annual revenue

However, there is at least one advantage of having such stringent requirements. That is the companies that meet the requirements generally find it easier to get more investors funds when they hold their initial public offering (IPO).

Once a company begins trading on the NYSE, it must continue to meet these requirements. If it doesnt it can be delisted. In addition to these requirements, the stock must continue to trade above $1. If the price of a stock drops below $1 for more than 29 consecutive trading days, the stock receives an Initial Price Violation Notice.

At that point, the company has 10 days to provide the exchange with a plan for bringing their shares above $1.

How are Trades Executed on the NYSE?

For over a century, the floor of the NYSE was the place for investors to be. This meant trades were conducted by traders who ran buy and sell orders across the trading floor looking to broker a deal for their clients. But with the birth of the NASDAQ exchange in 1971, the New York Stock Exchange began conducting electronic trading.

However, the NYSE continues to conduct trades in an auction style. Brokers purchase stocks on behalf of their clients or firms. Every order features a broker who will enter the order electronically and a specialist who serves as the market maker for that stock. The specialist posts bid and ask prices and manages the actual execution of the trades. And there are still a handful of stockbrokers who still traffic buy and sell orders physically on the floor of the exchange.

How Does the NYSE Signal Investor Sentiment?

Like its counterpart, the NASDAQ, the NYSE measures the risk appetite of investors. When the NYSE is moving higher over a length of time, it signals that a risk on environment. Conversely when the NYSE moves lower over a significant period, it signals that investors are moving to a risk off position.

Some Final Thoughts on the NYSE

Financial news networks plan their programming schedule around the opening and closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange. Its still considered a distinguished honor when individuals or groups are invited to ring the opening bell. In fact, Warren Buffett is attributed with saying that in the short term, the stock market acts like a voting machine. A fact that many U.S. presidents will attest to.

The NYSE is the oldest and most recognizable of all the stock exchanges. It also has the most stringent requirements for inclusion. And those requirements must be maintained even after a stock begins publicly trading on the exchange.

Although the NYSE still has a small in-person Trading Floor, much of the trading is done electronically to provide traders with the speed to execute trades.
Varian Medical Systems, Inc. designs, manufactures, sells, and services medical devices and software products for treating cancer and other medical conditions worldwide. It operates through Oncology Systems and Proton Solutions segments. The Oncology Systems segment offers hardware and software products for treating cancer with radiotherapy, fixed field intensity-modulated radiation therapy, image-guided radiation therapy, volumetric modulated arc therapy, stereotactic radiosurgery, stereotactic body radiotherapy, artificial intelligence based adaptive radiotherapy, and brachytherapy, as well as quality assurance equipment. Its products include linear accelerators, brachytherapy afterloaders, treatment accessories, and quality assurance software; and information management, treatment planning, image processing, clinical knowledge exchange, patient care management, decision-making support, and practice management software. This segment serves university research and community hospitals, private and governmental institutions, healthcare agencies, physicians' offices, medical oncology practices, radiotherapy centers, and cancer care clinics. The Proton Solutions segment designs, develops, manufactures, sells, and services products and systems for delivering proton therapy for the treatment of cancer. The company has a strategic agreement with McKesson Corp. to supply treatment delivery systems and planning, services, and radiotherapy information system solutions to its U.S. Oncology Network and Vantage Oncology affiliated sites of care; and a strategic partnership with Siemens AG to represent Siemens diagnostic imaging products to radiation oncology clinics in the United States and other select markets. Varian Medical Systems, Inc. was formerly known as Varian Associates, Inc. and changed its name to Varian Medical Systems, Inc. in April 1999. The company was founded in 1948 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
Graham Holdings Company, through its subsidiaries, operates as a diversified education and media company worldwide. It provides test preparation services and materials; data science and training services; professional training and exam preparation for professional certifications and licensures; and non-academic operations support services to the Purdue University Global. The company also offers training, test preparation, and degrees for accounting and financial services professionals; English-language training, academic preparation programs, and test preparation for English proficiency exams; and A-level examination preparation services, as well as operates three colleges, a business school, a higher education institution, and an online learning institution. In addition, it owns and operates seven television stations; and provides social media management tools to connect newsrooms with their users, as well as produces Foreign Policy magazine and ForeignPolicy.com website. Further, the company publishes Slate, an online magazine; and two French-language news magazine websites at slate.fr and slateafrique.com. Additionally, it provides social media marketing solutions; home health and hospice services; burners, igniters, dampers, and controls; screw jacks, linear actuators and related linear motion products, and lifting systems; pressure impregnated kiln-dried lumber and plywood products; cybersecurity training solutions; digital advertising services; and power charging and data systems, industrial and commercial indoor lighting solutions, and electrical components and assemblies. The company also owns and operates 11 restaurants and entertainment venues; and engages in automobile dealerships business. The company was formerly known as The Washington Post Company and changed its name to Graham Holdings Company in November 2013. Graham Holdings Company was founded in 1877 and is based in Arlington, Virginia.
The following companies are subsidiares of Iron Mountain: AB Archyvu Centras, AB Archyvu Sistemos, AB Archyvu Sistemos Estonia Branch, AS Archivu Serviss, Accutrac Software Inc, ArchivesOne, Archyvu sistemos, Arhiv-Trezor d.o.o., Ausdoc Group Pty Limited, Ausdoc Holdings Pty Limited, Bonded Services (International) B.V., Bonded Services Acquisition Ltd., Bonded Services Group, Bonded Services Group Limited, Bonded Services International Limited, Bonded Services Limited, Box Butler, Britannia Data Management Limited, Capital Vision Holdings SAS, Capital Vision SAS, Connected Corporation, Cornerstone Records Management, Crozier Fine Arts, Crozier Schweiz Ag, Custodia S.O.S. SA, DBJ Limited, DMS Storage s.r.o., DigiGuard, Disaster Recovery Services Limited, Docscan Cape Town Proprietary Limited, Docscan Proprietary Limited, Docu-File JHB Proprietary Limited, DocuTar Iratrendezo es Tarolo Szolgaltato Kft., DocuVault, Docufile (Pty) Ltd, EAC Invest, Eurospags Investments ApS, EvoSwitch, F.T.S. (Freight Forwarders) Limited, F.T.S. (Great Britain) Limited, F.T.S. (Road Transport) Limited, FTS Bonded Limited, Fairfield Fine Art, File Express Limited, Film Media Services Limited, First International Records Management AG, First International Records Management LLC, Fleet Freight Limited, Fontis International GmbH, Fortrust, G4S Secure Data Solutions Colombia, Glenbeign Records Mangement (GRM) DWC-LLC, Global Logistics Worldwide Limited, Haworth Group Holdings (UK) Limited, Haworth Group Limited, Hays IMS, Helcom Limited, IG2 Data Security, IM Mortgage Solutions LLC, IMI Investments Two Ltd, IMSA Peru SRL, IO.com, Information Storage Consolidation Co, Iron Mountain (Deutschland) Service GmbH, Iron Mountain (Espana) Services S.L, Iron Mountain (Gibraltar) Holdings Limited, Iron Mountain (Ireland) Services Limited, Iron Mountain (Nederland) Data Centre B.V., Iron Mountain (Nederland) Data Centre Holdings B.V., Iron Mountain (Nederland) Data Centre Services B.V., Iron Mountain (Nederland) Services BV, Iron Mountain (Schweiz) AG, Iron Mountain (UK) Data Centre Limited, Iron Mountain (UK) EES Holdings Limited, Iron Mountain (UK) PLC, Iron Mountain (UK) Services Limited, Iron Mountain A/S, Iron Mountain Acquisition Holdings Pty. Ltd., Iron Mountain Argentina S.A., Iron Mountain Arsivleme Hizmetleri A.S., Iron Mountain Asia Pacific Holdings Ltd, Iron Mountain Asia Pte Limited, Iron Mountain Australia Group Pty. Ltd., Iron Mountain Australia Group Services Pty. Ltd., Iron Mountain Australia Property Holdings Pty Ltd, Iron Mountain Austria Archivierung Gmbh, Iron Mountain BPM SPRL, Iron Mountain Belgium NV, Iron Mountain Bulgaria, Iron Mountain Canada Operations ULC, Iron Mountain Ceska Republika S.R.O., Iron Mountain Chile S.A., Iron Mountain Chile Servicios S.A., Iron Mountain Cloud LLC, Iron Mountain Colombia S.A.S., Iron Mountain Cyprus Limited, Iron Mountain DIMS Limited, Iron Mountain Data Centers LLC, Iron Mountain Data Centers Services LLC, Iron Mountain Data Centre Pte. Limited, Iron Mountain Data Management (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Iron Mountain Data Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Iron Mountain Deutschland GmbH, Iron Mountain Do Brasil Ltda, Iron Mountain Document Holdings Sweden AB, Iron Mountain Document Storage Services LLC, Iron Mountain EES Holdings Ltd., Iron Mountain Enterprises Sdn. Bhd., Iron Mountain Espana SA, Iron Mountain Eswatini (Pty) Ltd, Iron Mountain Europe (Group) Limited, Iron Mountain Europe Ltd., Iron Mountain FZ-LLC, Iron Mountain Finland OY, Iron Mountain France S.A.S., Iron Mountain Fulfillment Services Inc., Iron Mountain Global Holdings Inc., Iron Mountain Global LLC, Iron Mountain Group (Europe) Limited, Iron Mountain Hellas SA, Iron Mountain Holdings (Europe) Limited, Iron Mountain Holdings (France) SNC, Iron Mountain Holdings Sweden AB, Iron Mountain Hong Kong Ltd., Iron Mountain Incorporated, Iron Mountain India Private Ltd, Iron Mountain Information Management LLC, Iron Mountain Information Management Services Canada Inc., Iron Mountain Information Management Services Inc., Iron Mountain Intellectual Property Management Inc., Iron Mountain International (Holdings) Ltd, Iron Mountain International Holdings BV, Iron Mountain Ireland Holdings Limited, Iron Mountain Ireland Limited, Iron Mountain Korea Limited, Iron Mountain Latin America Holdings Sociedad Limitada, Iron Mountain Lesotho (Proprietry) Limited, Iron Mountain Luxembourg Sarl, Iron Mountain Luxembourg Services S.a.r.l., Iron Mountain MDM Limited, Iron Mountain Macau Limited, Iron Mountain Magyarorszag Kereskedelmi es Szolgaltato Kft., Iron Mountain Management Services GmbH, Iron Mountain Mayflower Limited, Iron Mountain Mexico Holding S. de RL de CV, Iron Mountain Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Iron Mountain Mexico Servicios S. de RL de CV, Iron Mountain Mortgage Finance Holdings LLC, Iron Mountain Mortgage Finance I LLC, Iron Mountain Nederland B.V., Iron Mountain Nederland Holdings B.V., Iron Mountain New Zealand Limited, Iron Mountain Norge AS, Iron Mountain Participations SA, Iron Mountain Peru S.A., Iron Mountain Philippines Inc., Iron Mountain Poland Holdings Ltd, Iron Mountain Polska Services Sp z.o.o., Iron Mountain Polska Sp. z.o.o., Iron Mountain Receivables QRS LLC, Iron Mountain Receivables TRS LLC, Iron Mountain Records Management (Puerto Rico) Inc, Iron Mountain Records Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Iron Mountain SRL, Iron Mountain Sdn. Bhd., Iron Mountain Secure Shredding (Pty) Ltd, Iron Mountain Secure Shredding Canada Inc., Iron Mountain Secure Shredding Inc., Iron Mountain Services Private Ltd, Iron Mountain Services S.A.S., Iron Mountain Shanghai Co Ltd, Iron Mountain Singapore Pte. Ltd., Iron Mountain Slovakia s.r.o., Iron Mountain South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Iron Mountain South Africa Holdings (Pty) Ltd, Iron Mountain South Africa Information Management (Pty) Ltd, Iron Mountain South Africa Records Management (Pty) Ltd, Iron Mountain South America Sarl, Iron Mountain Southeast Asia Holdings Limited, Iron Mountain Sweden AB, Iron Mountain Taiwan Ltd., Iron Mountain UK Services (Holdings) Ltd, Iron Mountain US Holdings Inc, Iron Mountain Vietnam Company Limited, Iron Mountain d.o.o. Novi Banovci, Jigsaw Freight Limited, Jigsaw Pieces Limited, Jin Shan Limited, KDM Spectrumdata Pty Ltd, KH Data Capital Development Land LLC, Lane Archives Technologies Corporation, Livevault, Marshgate Morangis Sarl, Mimosa Systems, Nettlebed Acquisition Corp., Novo Group Limited, Novo Holdings Limited, Novo Overseas Limited, NxtGen Data Center & Cloud Services, OEC Records Management Company Private Limited, OSG Records Management (Europe) Limited, OSG Records Management Center LLC, OSG Records Management Centre LLC, OSG Records Management Crypto LLC, OSG Records Management Foreign LLC, OSG Records Management LLC, OSG Records Management LLC (Ukraine), OSG Records Management LLP, OSG Services sp. zoo, Oda International Management Corporation NV, Osrecki d.o.o., PT Iron Mountain Indonesia, Preferred Media Ltd, Prism Integrated Sdn Bhd, Recall, Recall (London) Limited, Recall (Shanghai) Ltd., Recall Europe Finance Ltd., Recall Europe Limited, Recall GQ Ltd, Recall Holdings, Recall Holdings Limited, Recall India Information Management Pvt. Ltd., Recall International Pty Limited, Recall Italy SRL, Recall Limited, Recall Overseas Holdings Pty Limited, Recall Shredding Limited, Recall Technology Pty. Ltd., Recall Total Information Management India Pvt. Ltd., Record Data Limited, Royal Seal S.R.O., SIA RIATech, Saracen Datastore Limited, Shanghai Iron Mountain Data Storage Co. Ltd., Shuttle SRL, Startify, Superior Storage Limited, UAB Confidento, and Xepa Digital.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Johnson & Johnson: 3Dintegrated ApS, ALZA Corporation, AMO (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., AMO (Shanghai) Medical Devices Trading Co. Ltd Beijing Branch, AMO (Shanghai) Medical Devices Trading Co. Ltd Guangzhou Branch, AMO (Shanghai) Medical Devices Trading Co. Ltd., AMO ASIA LIMITED, AMO Asia Limited (Korea Branch), AMO Asia Limited Taiwan Branch (Hong Kong), AMO Australia Pty Limited, AMO Australia Pty Limited (New Zealand Branch), AMO Canada Company, AMO Denmark ApS, AMO Development LLC, AMO France, AMO Germany GmbH, AMO Groningen B.V., AMO International Holdings Unlimited Company, AMO Ireland, AMO Ireland Ireland Branch, AMO Italy SRL, AMO Japan K.K., AMO Manufacturing USA LLC, AMO Netherlands BV, AMO Nominee Holdings LLC, AMO Norway AS, AMO Puerto Rico Manufacturing Inc., AMO Sales and Service Inc., AMO Singapore Pte. Ltd., AMO Spain Holdings LLC, AMO Switzerland GmbH, AMO U.K. Holdings LLC, AMO United Kingdom Ltd., AMO Uppsala AB, AUB Holdings LLC, Abott Medical Optics, Acclarent Inc., Actelion Ltd, Actelion Pharmaceuticals, Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Actelion Pharmaceuticals Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Actelion Pharmaceuticals US Inc., Actelion Treasury Unlimited Company, Akros Medical Inc., Albany Street LLC, Alios BioPharma, Alza Land Management Inc., Anakuria Therapeutics Inc., Animas Diabetes Care LLC, Animas LLC, Animas Technologies LLC, AorTx Inc., Apsis, Aragon Pharmaceuticals, Aragon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Asia Pacific Holdings LLC, Atrionix Inc., Auris Health, Auris Health Inc., Backsvalan 2 Aktiebolag, Backsvalan 6 Handelsbolag, Beijing Dabao Cosmetics Co. Ltd., BeneVir BioPharm Inc., Berna Rhein B.V., BioMedical Enterprises Inc., Biosense Webster (Israel) Ltd., Biosense Webster Inc., Branch of Johnson & Johnson LLC (RU) in Kazakhstan, C Consumer Products Denmark ApS, CSATS Inc., Calibra Medical LLC, Campus-Foyer Apotheke GmbH, Carlo Erba OTC S.r.l., Centocor Biologics LLC, Centocor Research & Development Inc., Cerenovus Inc., ChromaGenics B.V., Ci:Labo Customer Marketing Co. Ltd., Ci:Labo USA Inc., Ci:z Holdings, Ci:z. Labo Co. Ltd., Cilag AG, Cilag GmbH International, Cilag Holding AG, Cilag Holding Treasury Unlimited Company, Cilag-Biotech S.L., CoTherix Inc., Coherex Medical Inc., ColBar LifeScience Ltd., Company Store.com Inc., Conor MedSystems, Cordis International Corporation, Cordis de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Corimmun GmbH, DePuy Hellas SA, DePuy International Limited, DePuy Ireland Unlimited Company, DePuy Mexico S.A. de C.V., DePuy Mitek LLC, DePuy Orthopaedics Inc., DePuy Products Inc., DePuy Spine LLC, DePuy Synthes Gorgan Limited, DePuy Synthes Inc., DePuy Synthes Institute LLC, DePuy Synthes Leto SARL, DePuy Synthes Products Inc., DePuy Synthes Sales Inc., Debs-Vogue Corporation (Proprietary) Limited, Dutch Holding LLC, ECL7 LLC, EES Holdings de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., EES S.A. de C.V., EIT Emerging Implant Technologies GmbH, Ethicon Endo-Surgery (Europe) GmbH, Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc., Ethicon Endo-Surgery LLC, Ethicon Inc., Ethicon LLC, Ethicon PR Holdings Unlimited Company, Ethicon Sarl, Ethicon US LLC, Ethicon Women's Health & Urology Sarl, Ethnor (Proprietary) Limited, Ethnor Farmaceutica S.A., Ethnor del Istmo S.A., FMS Future Medical System SA, Finsbury (Development) Limited, Finsbury (Instruments) Limited, Finsbury Medical Limited, Finsbury Orthopaedics International Limited, Finsbury Orthopaedics Limited, GH Biotech Holdings Limited, GMED Healthcare BV, GMED Healthcare BV (Branch), Global Investment Participation B.V., Guangzhou Bioseal Biotech Co. Ltd., Hansen Medical Deutschland GmbH, Hansen Medical Inc., Hansen Medical International Inc., Hansen Medical UK Limited, Healthcare Services (Shanghai) Ltd., Hickory Merger Sub Inc., I.D. Acquisition Corp., Innomedic Gesellschaft fur innovative Medizintechnik und Informatik mbH, Innovative Surgical Solutions LLC, J & J Company West Africa Limited, J&J Pension Trustees Limited, J-C Health Care Ltd., J.C. General Services BV, JJ Surgical Vision Spain S.L., JJC Acquisition Company B.V., JJHC LLC, JJSV Belgium BV, JJSV Manufacturing Malaysia SDN. BHD., JJSV Norden AB, JJSV Produtos Oticos Ltda., JNJ Global Business Services s.r.o., JNJ Holding EMEA B.V., JNJ International Investment LLC, JOM Pharmaceutical Services Inc., Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy (Holding) Limited, Janssen BioPharma LLC, Janssen Biologics (Ireland) Limited, Janssen Biologics B.V., Janssen Biotech Inc., Janssen Cilag C.A., Janssen Cilag Farmaceutica S.A., Janssen Cilag S.p.A., Janssen Cilag SPA, Janssen Development Finance Unlimited Company, Janssen Diagnostics LLC, Janssen Egypt LLC, Janssen Farmaceutica Portugal Lda, Janssen Global Services LLC, Janssen Holding GmbH, Janssen Inc., Janssen Irish Finance Unlimited Company, Janssen Korea Ltd., Janssen Oncology Inc., Janssen Ortho LLC, Janssen Pharmaceutica (Proprietary) Limited, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Janssen Pharmaceutica S.A., Janssen Pharmaceutical K.K., Janssen Pharmaceutical Sciences Unlimited Company, Janssen Pharmaceutical Unlimited Company, Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. Japan Branch, Janssen Products LP, Janssen R&D Ireland Unlimited Company, Janssen Research & Development LLC, Janssen Sciences Ireland Unlimited Company, Janssen Scientific Affairs LLC, Janssen Supply Group LLC, Janssen Vaccines & Prevention B.V., Janssen Vaccines Branch of Cilag GmbH International, Janssen Vaccines Corp., Janssen-Cilag, Janssen-Cilag (New Zealand) Limited, Janssen-Cilag A/S, Janssen-Cilag AG, Janssen-Cilag AS, Janssen-Cilag Aktiebolag, Janssen-Cilag B.V., Janssen-Cilag Farmaceutica Lda., Janssen-Cilag Farmaceutica Ltda., Janssen-Cilag GmbH, Janssen-Cilag International NV, Janssen-Cilag Kft., Janssen-Cilag Kft. Branch Office, Janssen-Cilag Limited, Janssen-Cilag Manufacturing LLC, Janssen-Cilag NV, Janssen-Cilag OY, Janssen-Cilag Pharma GmbH, Janssen-Cilag Pharmaceutical S.A.C.I., Janssen-Cilag Polska Sp. z o.o., Janssen-Cilag Pty Ltd, Janssen-Cilag Pty Ltd (Branch), Janssen-Cilag S.A., Janssen-Cilag S.A., Janssen-Cilag S.A. de C.V., Janssen-Cilag de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Janssen-Cilag s.r.o., Janssen-Pharma S.L., Jevco Holding Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Johnson & Johnson (Angola) Limitada, Johnson & Johnson (China) Investment Ltd., Johnson & Johnson (China) Investment Ltd. Beijing Branch, Johnson & Johnson (Egypt) S.A.E., Johnson & Johnson (Hong Kong) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Ireland) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Jamaica) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Kenya) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Middle East) Inc., Johnson & Johnson (Middle East) Inc. (DHCC Branch), Johnson & Johnson (Middle East) Inc. (JAFZA Branch), Johnson & Johnson (Middle East) Inc. Service Center (DAFZA Branch), Johnson & Johnson (Mozambique) Limitada, Johnson & Johnson (Namibia) (Proprietary) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (New Zealand) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Philippines) Inc., Johnson & Johnson (Private) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Thailand) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson (Trinidad) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Vietnam) Co. Ltd, Johnson & Johnson - Societa' Per Azioni, Johnson & Johnson AB, Johnson & Johnson AB Eesti filiaal (Branch), Johnson & Johnson AG, Johnson & Johnson AG (Zuchwil Branch), Johnson & Johnson Belgium Finance Company BV, Johnson & Johnson Bulgaria EOOD, Johnson & Johnson China Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Consumer (Hong Kong) Limited, Johnson & Johnson Consumer (Thailand) Limited, Johnson & Johnson Consumer B.V., Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health Care Switzerland Branch of Janssen-Cilag AG, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Holdings France, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc., Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. (Dominican Republic Branch), Johnson & Johnson Consumer NV, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Saudi Arabia Limited, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Services EAME Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Del Paraguay S.A., Johnson & Johnson Dominicana S.A.S., Johnson & Johnson Enterprise Innovation Inc., Johnson & Johnson European Treasury Unlimited Company, Johnson & Johnson Finance Corporation, Johnson & Johnson Finance Limited, Johnson & Johnson Financial Services GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Financial Services GmbH (Branch Office), Johnson & Johnson Gateway LLC, Johnson & Johnson Gesellschaft m.b.H., Johnson & Johnson GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Guatemala S.A., Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc., Johnson & Johnson Health and Wellness Solutions Inc., Johnson & Johnson Hellas Commercial and Industrial S.A., Johnson & Johnson Hellas Consumer Products Commercial Societe Anonyme, Johnson & Johnson Hemisferica S.A., Johnson & Johnson Holding GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Inc., Johnson & Johnson Industrial Ltda., Johnson & Johnson Innovation - JJDC Inc., Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC, Johnson & Johnson Innovation Limited, Johnson & Johnson International, Johnson & Johnson International (Belgian Branch) (European Logistics Center), Johnson & Johnson International (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Johnson & Johnson International (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. (Branch), Johnson & Johnson International Financial Services Unlimited Company, Johnson & Johnson K.K., Johnson & Johnson Kft., Johnson & Johnson Korea Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Korea Selling & Distribution LLC, Johnson & Johnson LLC, Johnson & Johnson Lda, Johnson & Johnson Limited, Johnson & Johnson Limited (Sri Lanka Branch), Johnson & Johnson Luxembourg Finance Company Sarl, Johnson & Johnson Management Limited, Johnson & Johnson Medical (China) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medical (Proprietary) Ltd, Johnson & Johnson Medical (Shanghai) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medical (Shanghai) Ltd. Beijing Branch, Johnson & Johnson Medical (Suzhou) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medical B.V., Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices & Diagnostics Group - Latin America L.L.C., Johnson & Johnson Medical GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Medical Korea Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medical Limited, Johnson & Johnson Medical Mexico S.A. de C.V., Johnson & Johnson Medical NV, Johnson & Johnson Medical Products GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Medical Pty Ltd, Johnson & Johnson Medical S.A., Johnson & Johnson Medical S.C.S., Johnson & Johnson Medical S.p.A., Johnson & Johnson Medical SAS, Johnson & Johnson Medical Saudi Arabia Limited, Johnson & Johnson Medical Taiwan Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medikal Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Johnson & Johnson Medikal Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi (Ankara Branch), Johnson & Johnson Medikal Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi (Izmir Branch), Johnson & Johnson Middle East - Scientific Office, Johnson & Johnson Middle East FZ - LLC (Lebanese Branch), Johnson & Johnson Middle East FZ-LLC, Johnson & Johnson Middle East FZ-LLC (Ghana Branch), Johnson & Johnson Middle East FZ-LLC (Kenya Branch), Johnson & Johnson Middle East FZ-LLC Branch (TSO) (Saudi Arabia Branch), Johnson & Johnson Morocco Societe Anonyme, Johnson & Johnson NCB (Belgian Branch), Johnson & Johnson Nordic AB, Johnson & Johnson Pacific Pty Limited, Johnson & Johnson Pakistan (Private) Limited, Johnson & Johnson Panama S.A., Johnson & Johnson Personal Care (Chile) S.A., Johnson & Johnson Poland Sp. z o.o., Johnson & Johnson Poland sp. z o.o. oddzial w Warszawie "Consumer", Johnson & Johnson Private Limited, Johnson & Johnson Pte. Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Pte. Ltd. Korea Branch, Johnson & Johnson Pty. Limited, Johnson & Johnson Romania S.R.L., Johnson & Johnson S.A., Johnson & Johnson S.A. de C.V., Johnson & Johnson S.E. Inc., Johnson & Johnson S.E. d.o.o., Johnson & Johnson SDN. BHD., Johnson & Johnson Sante Beaute France, Johnson & Johnson Services Inc., Johnson & Johnson Surgical Vision Inc., Johnson & Johnson Surgical Vision India Private Limited, Johnson & Johnson Taiwan Ltd., Johnson & Johnson UK Treasury Company Limited, Johnson & Johnson Ukraine LLC, Johnson & Johnson Urban Renewal Associates, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care (Shanghai) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Inc., Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Ireland Unlimited Company, Johnson & Johnson d.o.o., Johnson & Johnson de Argentina S.A.C. e. I., Johnson & Johnson de Chile Limitada, Johnson & Johnson de Chile S.A., Johnson & Johnson de Colombia S.A., Johnson & Johnson de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Johnson & Johnson de Uruguay S.A., Johnson & Johnson de Venezuela S.A., Johnson & Johnson del Ecuador S.A., Johnson & Johnson del Peru S.A., Johnson & Johnson do Brasil Industria E Comercio de Produtos Para Saude Ltda., Johnson & Johnson for Export and Import LLC, Johnson & Johnson s.r.o., Johnson Y Johnson de Costa Rica S.A., Johnson and Johnson (Proprietary) Limited, Johnson and Johnson Sihhi Malzeme Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, LTL Management LLC, La Concha Land Investment Corporation, Latam International Investment Company Unlimited Company, Legal Entity Name, MDS Co. Ltd., McNEIL MMP LLC, McNeil AB, McNeil Consumer Pharmaceuticals Co., McNeil Denmark ApS, McNeil Healthcare (Ireland) Limited, McNeil Healthcare (UK) Limited, McNeil Healthcare LLC, McNeil Iberica S.L.U., McNeil LA LLC, McNeil Nutritionals LLC, McNeil Panama LLC, McNeil Products Limited, McNeil Sweden AB, Medical Device Business Services Inc., Medical Devices & Diagnostics Global Services LLC, Medical Devices International LLC, Medos International Sarl, Medos International Sarl succursale de Neuchatel (Branch), Medos Sarl, MegaDyne Medical Products Inc., Menlo Care De Mexico S.A. de C.V., Mentor B.V., Mentor Deutschland GmbH, Mentor Medical Systems B.V., Mentor Partnership Holding Company I LLC, Mentor Texas GP LLC, Mentor Texas L.P., Mentor Worldwide LLC, Micrus Endovascular LLC, Middlesex Assurance Company Limited, Momenta Ireland Limited, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Momenta Pharmaceuticals Inc., NeoStrata Company Inc., NeoStrata UG (haftungsbeschrankt), Netherlands Holding Company, NeuWave Medical Inc., Neuravi Limited, Novira Therapeutics, Novira Therapeutics LLC, NuVera Medical Inc., OBTECH Medical Sarl, OGX Beauty Limited, OMJ Holding GmbH, OMJ Ireland Unlimited Company, OMJ Pharmaceuticals Inc., Obtech Medical Mexico S.A. de C.V., Omrix Biopharmaceuticals Inc., Omrix Biopharmaceuticals Ltd., Omrix Biopharmaceuticals NV, Ortho Biologics LLC, Ortho Biotech Holding LLC, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical LLC, Orthospin Ltd., Orthotaxy, PT Integrated Healthcare Indonesia, PT. Johnson & Johnson Indonesia, Patriot Pharmaceuticals LLC, Peninsula Pharmaceuticals LLC, Pharmadirect Ltd., Pharmedica Laboratories (Proprietary) Limited, Princeton Laboratories Inc., Productos de Cuidado Personal y de La Salud de Bolivia S.R.L., Proleader S.A., Pulsar Vascular Inc., Regency Urban Renewal Associates, RespiVert Ltd., RoC International, Royalty A&M LLC, Rutan Realty LLC, SYNTHES Medical Immobilien GmbH, Scios LLC, Sedona Singapore International Pte. Ltd., Sedona Thai International Co. Ltd., Serhum S.A. de C.V., Shanghai Elsker For Mother & Baby Co. Ltd, Shanghai Elsker Mother & Baby Co. Ltd Minghang Branch, Shanghai Johnson & Johnson Ltd., Shanghai Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Sightbox LLC, Sodiac ESV, Spectrum Vision Limited Liability Company, Spectrum Vision Limited Liability Partnership, SterilMed, SterilMed Inc., Surgical Process Institute Deutschland GmbH, Synthes Costa Rica S.C.R. Limitada, Synthes GmbH, Synthes Holding AG, Synthes Holding Limited, Synthes Inc., Synthes Medical Surgical Equipment & Instruments Trading LLC, Synthes Produktions GmbH, Synthes Proprietary Limited, Synthes S.M.P. S. de R.L. de C.V., Synthes Tuttlingen GmbH, Synthes USA LLC, Synthes USA Products LLC, TARIS Biomedical, TARIS Biomedical LLC, TearScience Inc., The Anspach Effort LLC, The Vision Care Institute LLC, Tibotec LLC, Torax Medical Inc., UAB "Johnson & Johnson", UAB Johnson & Johnson Eesti Filiaal (Estonian Branch), Vania Expansion, Verb Surgical, Verb Surgical Inc., Vision Care Finance Unlimited Company, Vogue International, Vogue International LLC, Vogue International Trading Inc., WH4110 Development Company L.L.C., XO1, XO1 Limited, Xian Janssen Pharmaceutical Ltd., Xian-Janssen Pharmaceutical Ltd. Beijing Branch Office, Xian-Janssen Pharmaceutical Ltd. Shanghai Branch Office, Zarbee's Inc., and Zarbee's Naturals.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Caterpillar: Advanced Tri-Gen Power Systems LLC, Anchor Coupling Inc., Asia Power Systems (Tianjin) Ltd., AsiaTrak (Tianjin) Ltd., Banco Caterpillar S.A., Berg Propulsion International Pte Ltd., Bucyrus, Bucyrus Australia Surface Pty. Ltd., Bucyrus Europe Holdings Ltd., Bucyrus Europe Limited, Bucyrus International (Chile) Limitada, Bucyrus International (Peru) S.A., Bucyrus Mining Australia Pty. Ltd., Bucyrus Mining China LLC, Bucyrus UK Limited, Cat Rental Kyushu LLC, Caterpillar (Africa) (Proprietary) Limited, Caterpillar (China) Financial Leasing Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (China) Machinery Components Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (HK) Limited, Caterpillar (Huainan) Machinery Service Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Langfang) Mining Equipment Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Luxembourg) Investment Co. S.a r.l., Caterpillar (NI) Limited, Caterpillar (Newberry) LLC, Caterpillar (Qingzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Suzhou) Logistics Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Thailand) Limited, Caterpillar (U.K.) Limited, Caterpillar (Wujiang) Ltd., Caterpillar (Xuzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar (Zhengzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar Acquisition Holding Corp., Caterpillar Americas C.V., Caterpillar Americas Co., Caterpillar Americas Funding Inc., Caterpillar Americas Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Asia Limited, Caterpillar Asia Pacific L.P., Caterpillar Asia Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Asset Intelligence LLC, Caterpillar Belgium S.A., Caterpillar Brasil Comercio de Maquinas e Pecas Ltda., Caterpillar Brasil Ltda., Caterpillar Brazil LLC, Caterpillar Castings Kiel GmbH, Caterpillar Centro de Formacion S.L., Caterpillar China Limited, Caterpillar Commercial Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Commercial LLC, Caterpillar Commercial Northern Europe Limited, Caterpillar Commercial S.A., Caterpillar Commercial S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Commercial Services S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Communications LLC, Caterpillar Corporativo Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Cote DIvoire, Caterpillar Credito S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.N.R., Caterpillar DC Pension Trust Limited, Caterpillar Digital Services & Solutions SARL, Caterpillar Distribution International LLC, Caterpillar Distribution Services Europe B.V.B.A., Caterpillar East Real Estate Holding Ltd., Caterpillar Emissions Solutions Inc., Caterpillar Energy Solutions Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Energy Solutions GmbH, Caterpillar Energy Solutions Inc., Caterpillar Energy Solutions S.A., Caterpillar Energy System Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Engine Systems Inc., Caterpillar Equipos Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Eurasia LLC, Caterpillar FS (QFC) LLC, Caterpillar Finance France S.A., Caterpillar Finance Kabushiki Kaisha, Caterpillar Financial Acquisition Funding LLC, Caterpillar Financial Aftermarket Solutions Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Australia Leasing Pty Limited, Caterpillar Financial Australia Limited, Caterpillar Financial Commercial Account Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Corporacion Financiera S.A. E.F.C., Caterpillar Financial Dealer Funding LLC, Caterpillar Financial Funding Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Kazakhstan Limited Liability Partnership, Caterpillar Financial Leasing (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Financial New Zealand Limited, Caterpillar Financial Nordic Services AB, Caterpillar Financial Nova Scotia Corporation, Caterpillar Financial OOO, Caterpillar Financial Receivables Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Renting S.A., Caterpillar Financial SARL, Caterpillar Financial Services (Dubai) Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services (Ireland) plc, Caterpillar Financial Services (UK) Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services Argentina S.A., Caterpillar Financial Services Asia Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Financial Services Belgium S.P.R.L., Caterpillar Financial Services CR s.r.o., Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Services GmbH, Caterpillar Financial Services India Private Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services Leasing ULC, Caterpillar Financial Services Limited Les Services Financiers Caterpillar Limitee, Caterpillar Financial Services Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Caterpillar Financial Services Netherlands B.V., Caterpillar Financial Services Norway AS, Caterpillar Financial Services Philippines Inc., Caterpillar Financial Services Poland Sp. z o.o., Caterpillar Financial Services South Africa (Pty) Limited, Caterpillar Financial UK Acquisition Funding Partners, Caterpillar Financial Ukraine LLC, Caterpillar Fluid Systems S.r.l., Caterpillar Fomento Comercial Ltda., Caterpillar Forest Products Inc., Caterpillar France S.A.S., Caterpillar GB L.L.C., Caterpillar Global Investments S.a r.l., Caterpillar Global Mining America LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Equipamentos De Mineracao do Brasil Ltda., Caterpillar Global Mining Equipment LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Europe GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Expanded Products Pty Ltd, Caterpillar Global Mining Germany Holdings GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining HMS GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Holdings GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Hong Kong AFC Manufacturing Holding Co. Limited, Caterpillar Global Mining Hong Kong Limited, Caterpillar Global Mining LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Mexico LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Global Mining SARL, Caterpillar Global Mining U.S. Parts LLC, Caterpillar Global Services LLC, Caterpillar Group Services S.A., Caterpillar Holding (France) S.A.S., Caterpillar Holding Germany GmbH, Caterpillar Holdings Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Hungary Components Manufacturing Ltd., Caterpillar Hydraulics Italia S.r.l., Caterpillar IPX LLC, Caterpillar IRB LLC, Caterpillar Impact Products Limited, Caterpillar India Private Limited, Caterpillar Industrial Inc., Caterpillar Industrias Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Industries (Pty) Ltd, Caterpillar Insurance Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Insurance Company, Caterpillar Insurance Holdings Inc., Caterpillar Insurance Services Corporation, Caterpillar International Finance Designated Activity Company, Caterpillar International Finance Luxembourg Holding S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Finance Luxembourg S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Holding S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Luxembourg I S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Luxembourg II S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Product SARL, Caterpillar International Services Corporation, Caterpillar International Services del Peru S.A., Caterpillar Investment Limited, Caterpillar Investment One SARL, Caterpillar Investment Two SARL, Caterpillar Investments, Caterpillar Japan LLC, Caterpillar Latin America Services S.R.L., Caterpillar Latin America Services de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Latin America Services de Panama S. de R.L., Caterpillar Latin America Servicios de Chile Limitada, Caterpillar Latin America Support Services S. DE R.L., Caterpillar Leasing (Thailand) Limited, Caterpillar Leasing Chile S.A., Caterpillar Leasing GmbH (Leipzig), Caterpillar Leasing Operativo Limitada, Caterpillar Life Insurance Company, Caterpillar Logistics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Logistics (UK) Limited, Caterpillar Logistics Inc., Caterpillar Logistics ML Services France S.A.S., Caterpillar Logistics Services China Limited, Caterpillar Luxembourg Group S.ar.l., Caterpillar Luxembourg LLC, Caterpillar Luxembourg S.a r.l., Caterpillar Machinery Nantong Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Marine Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Marine Asset Intelligence, Caterpillar Marine Power UK Limited, Caterpillar Marine Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Maroc SARL, Caterpillar Materiels Routiers SAS, Caterpillar Mexico LLC, Caterpillar Mexico S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar Mining Canada ULC, Caterpillar Mining Chile Servicios Limitada, Caterpillar Motoren (Guangdong) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Motoren GmbH & Co. KG, Caterpillar Motoren Henstedt-Ulzburg GmbH, Caterpillar Motoren Rostock GmbH, Caterpillar Motoren Verwaltungs-GmbH, Caterpillar Netherlands Holding B.V., Caterpillar North America C.V., Caterpillar Operator Training Ltd., Caterpillar Overseas Credit Corporation SARL, Caterpillar Overseas Investment Holding SARL, Caterpillar Overseas Limited, Caterpillar Overseas SARL, Caterpillar Panama Services S.A., Caterpillar Paving Products Inc., Caterpillar Paving Products Xuzhou Ltd., Caterpillar Pension Trust Limited, Caterpillar Poland Sp. z o.o., Caterpillar Power Generation Systems (Bangladesh) Limited, Caterpillar Power Generation Systems L.L.C., Caterpillar Power Systems Inc., Caterpillar Power Ventures International Ltd., Caterpillar Precision Seals Korea, Caterpillar Prodotti Stradali S.r.l., Caterpillar Product Services Corporation, Caterpillar Propulsion AB, Caterpillar Propulsion International Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Propulsion Italy S.R.L., Caterpillar Propulsion Namibia (Proprietary) Limited, Caterpillar Propulsion Production AB, Caterpillar Propulsion Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Propulsion Singapore Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar R&D Center (China) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe LLC, Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe Servicios S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar Reman Powertrain Indiana LLC, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Drivetrain LLC, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services (Shanghai) Co. 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Wells Fargo & Company, a diversified financial services company, provides banking, investment, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance products and services in the United States and internationally. It operates through four segments: Consumer Banking and Lending; Commercial Banking; Corporate and Investment Banking; and Wealth and Investment Management. The Consumer Banking and Lending segment offers diversified financial products and services for consumers and small businesses. Its financial products and services include checking and savings accounts, and credit and debit cards, as well as home, auto, personal, and small business lending services. The Commercial Banking segment provides financial solutions to private, family owned, and certain public companies. Its products and services include banking and credit products across various industry sectors and municipalities, secured lending and lease products, and treasury management services. The Corporate and Investment Banking segment offers a suite of capital markets, banking, and financial products and services to corporate, commercial real estate, government, and institutional clients. Its products and services comprise corporate banking, investment banking, treasury management, commercial real estate lending and servicing, equity, and fixed income solutions, as well as sales, trading, and research capabilities services. The Wealth and Investment Management segment provides personalized wealth management, brokerage, financial planning, lending, private banking, and trust and fiduciary products and services to affluent, high-net worth, and ultra-high-net worth clients. It also operates through financial advisors. Wells Fargo & Company was founded in 1852 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- Many former presidents have a library in their namesake, showcasing many records and artifacts from their presidency. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California; the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston are two examples soon to be joined by a library in Chicago honoring the achievements of President Barack Obama.

However, the movement of items that exist inside those libraries and museums arent transferred like a typical household goods move. Specially formed teams from the military and the National Archives and Records Administration have worked with White House staff to coordinate the transfer since late 2016 with the final truckload of supplies expected to arrive in Chicago by early 2017.

Lt. Col. Vianesa Vargas, the chief of Joint Team Records, is leading the charge for the more than 700 mile trek from Washington D.C. to Hoffman Estates, Illinois, just on the outskirts of Chicago. Shes the lead logistician in charge of a joint team of Airmen and Soldiers whove prepared semi-trucks full of artifacts. In all, more than 20 trucks are expected to make deliveries.

Vargas described her team as the muscle behind the move. NARA is responsible for packaging the items from the White House and then coordinates with Vargas and her team for the shipment.

Our team will assist NARA in going over to the White House, picking up the documents, records or gift(s) and they bring it all to the National Archives and at that point its planned for onward movement, Vargas said.

On the receiving end at Hoffman Estates is a team of Sailors from Naval Station Great Lakes, Illinois, who combined with the team from Washington D.C., Vargas said, has been exceptional and one of the best NARA has said theyve worked with.

Vargas and her team are responsible for every record and artifact from the time its being loaded until its on the shelf at Hoffman Estates. She said her team has the ability to track and have visibility during the entire transit, including every stop along the route.

Growing up just outside Sacramento, California, Vargas said she never envisioned being put in the position shes currently in, having the responsibility of moving historical artifacts for one of the most prominent people on the planet.

When I left Sacramento I thought I was going to go to school and become a fitness trainer, one of the top fitness trainers in the nation, that was like my goal then  life has a way of kind of pointing you in the direction of where it needs you to go, Vargas said. So joining the Air Force ROTC program, that opened up my mind and my heart to something much bigger, much bigger than myself.

Vargas, who has been in the Air Force for 18 years -- her first 11 were active duty and the rest of her time served in the Air Force Reserve  said her various logistics jobs, including joint assignments, have prepared her well for her current assignment.

Aside from working with NARA and White House staff, Vargas has coordinated with multiple agencies from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, and the Air Force District of Washington.

Theres all these different parts that we have to all work with, and being a logistician, thats really where we excel  is being the integrator of all of that, she said.

John Laster, the director of the Presidential Materials Division for NARA, said Vargas and her team are very skilled and have been very efficient throughout the entire process thus far.

Obstacles have not been a factor for Vargas and her team, as Laster said theyve been very flexible and responsive to meet demands.

Laster said its too hard to plan too far ahead, as the current administration is still running the country, and theres a lot of decisions that are made very quickly and the military has been fantastic about understanding that.

Although the library isnt expected to open until sometime in 2021, Vargas said she cant wait to take her family to visit and tell them how she had a piece in making it all happen.
Camp Lejeune Town Halls Aim to Help Those Exposed to Toxic Water. Heres How You Can Go.

Retired Marine Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger made it his mission to tell the world that if they lived or served on Camp Lejeune...
Russian President Vladimir Putin bypassed the U.S. on Thursday in announcing agreement with Iran, Turkey and rebel groups on a ceasefire in Syria to be followed by peace talks aimed at ending the nearly six-year-old civil war.

"Peace talks are ready to begin," Putin was quoted as saying by the country's official TASS news agency. Russian officials and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said a truce guaranteed by Russia and Turkey would go into effect at midnight Thursday.

If the ceasefire holds, peace talks are to be held, possibly in mid-January, in Astana, Kazakhstan.

The U.S. was excluded from the ceasefire arrangements and also from talks in Moscow earlier this month involving the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey and Iran that led to the agreement. However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said President-elect Donald Trump would be welcome to bring the U.S. back into negotiations.

"I would also like to express my hope that when the administration of Donald Trump assumes its responsibilities, they may also join these efforts in order to work toward this goal in a friendly and collective manner," Lavrov said.

Guarded U.S. Approval

Despite the apparent snub to the Obama administration, State Department spokesman Mark Toner gave guarded U.S. approval to an agreement that offered the possibility of ending a civil war that has killed more than 450,000, displaced more than 10 million Syrians and spawned the worst refugee crisis since World War II.

"Any effort that stops the violence, saves lives, and creates the conditions for renewed and productive political negotiations would be welcome," Toner said. "We hope it will be implemented fully and respected by all parties."

Two previous efforts by the U.S. and Russia under the auspices of the United Nations to broker a ceasefire in Syria both failed, but Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said that under the new agreement there was "a real chance to reach a political settlement to end the bloodshed and establish the future of the country."

The possibility for a thaw in U.S.-Russia relations under Trump grew more complicated only hours after Putin's announcement on Syria as President Obama issued an executive order outlining wide-ranging sanctions on Russia for reportedly attempting to influence U.S. elections by hacking the Democratic National Committee.

The sanctions named Lt. Gen. Igor Korobov, head of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence unit, as part of what a senior administration official called a long-standing "pattern of behavior" aimed at undermining U.S. national security.

The executive order also cited 35 Russian officials in the U.S. under diplomatic cover as "persona non grata" and gave them 72 hours to leave the country.

Speaking on grounds of anonymity, the senior administration official said that Trump, who has voiced admiration for Putin, could reverse the executive order once he's in office, but "I don't think that would make sense."

In a joint statement, Sens. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and member of the committee, said, "The retaliatory measures announced by the Obama administration today are long overdue. But ultimately, they are a small price for Russia to pay for its brazen attack on American democracy,"

"We intend to lead the effort in the new Congress to impose stronger sanctions on Russia," said McCain and Graham, who also have called for a harder line against Russia and Assad in Syria, to include setting up no-fly zones and safe corridors for refugees.

Fragile Developments

Speaking in Moscow, Putin said that the Syrian ceasefire agreements "are no doubt very fragile and they demand special attention and follow-up in order to keep them and develop them."

"Now we need to do everything for these agreements to work, so that negotiators would come to Astana and would begin to work on a real peace process. I call on the Syrian government, armed opposition, all countries involved, to support these agreements," Putin said.

He described the agreements as having three parts: "The first was signed by the Syrian government and the Syrian opposition to stop hostilities in the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic. The second one is a set of measures to control the ceasefire. The third document is a declaration of intention for a Syrian [peace] settlement," Putin said.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said later that the agreements could lead to a drawdown of Russian forces, which entered Syria in October 2015. At Putin's direction, Russian warplanes have carried out a relentless bombing campaign that has shored up Assad and led to the fall earlier this month of rebel-held Aleppo.

Syria's National Coalition, a leading political opposition group based in Turkey, confirmed its support for the truce. A senior official, Hadi al-Bahra, described it as "a positive achievement" in a message posted to Twitter, saying his group would "make sure that this agreement will be implemented fully."

Russian and Turkish officials said the ceasefire proposal would not apply to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or to the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group, formerly known as the Al Nusra Front.

Frayed Relations with Turkey

The close cooperation of NATO ally Turkey with Russia on the ceasefire agreements is expected to complicate already frayed relations between Turkey and the U.S. and have implications for the U.S.-supported offensive by Syrian Kurdish and Arab forces against the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Embassy in Ankara took the unusual step of issuing a lengthy and heated denial of charges by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the U.S. was aiding ISIS to thwart efforts by the Turkish military to clear border areas inside Syria.

The embassy's statement used the term Daesh, an Arabic acronym, to refer to ISIS and said: "For those interested in the truths, here are the truths -- the United States government is not supporting Daesh. The USG did not create or support Daesh in the past. Assertions [that] the United States government is supporting Daesh are not true."

The embassy also denied frequent Turkish charges that the U.S. was "providing weapons or explosives to the YPG or the PKK -- period. We repeatedly have condemned PKK terrorist attacks and the group's reprehensible violence in Turkey."

The Syrian Kurdish YPG, or People's Protection Units, is the lead force in the drive on Raqqa by the rebel umbrella group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. The PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party, is a left-wing organization that has been branded a terrorist group by Turkey and the U.S.

Turkey has warned the U.S. against allowing the YPG to enter Raqqa and threatened to send its own forces to take the northeastern Syrian city. In a video conference to the Pentagon from Baghdad earlier this month, Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, said the plan was to have the YPG participate in an isolation phase against Raqqa but stay out of the city.

At the State Department on Wednesday, spokesman Toner said, "We're mindful, of course, of some of the tensions that exist" between the YPG and Turkey. He said the U.S. was in close consultation with Turkey on easing the tensions.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.

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Joseph V. Micallef is a best-selling military history and world affairs author, and keynote speaker. Follow him on Twitter @JosephVMicallef

On December 17, 2010, a street vendor in Tunis, named Mohammed Bouazizi, immolated himself in protest of the arbitrary seizing of his vegetable stand by a local government official. That act triggered the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia and a wave of public unrest throughout the Middle East that came to be called the "Arab Spring."

Six years later, little remains of the hopes that the West saw in the Arab Spring. Instead, that spring has given way to a winter of economic stagnation and political violence that has plunged Syria, Libya and Yemen into bloody civil war, has led to widespread unrest in Egypt, Iraq and Bahrain, and threatens to destabilize Arab governments from Morocco to Saudi Arabia. What went wrong? Should the United States have moved more forcefully to support the various Arab Spring movements or did Washington fail to understand the true nature of the popular revolts? Simply put, should we have done more or done less?

The Western media was quick to characterize the uprisings as popular democratic revolts against corrupt dictatorial regimes. As the noted international affairs commentator George Friedman has pointed out, "For the Western media, anyone under the age of 30 with an iPhone is by definition a liberal democrat." Add to that the use of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter for social mobilization and the presumption of political modernity appears validated.

That presumption was also reinforced by the fact that the "spokespeople" invariably identified and interviewed by Western media tend to be individuals who are fluent in English, typically have ties to the West and often times were educated in the U.S. or Europe. They come across as moderate, reasonable supporters of secular democratic government. The problem is that such spokesmen are rarely indicative of the nature or aims of these popular revolts.

The reality is that the Arab Spring was never the popular democratic revolt that Western governments or the media made it out to be. In fact, the Arab Spring had little to do with democracy; although it certainly included some liberal-democratic groups. It was instead a reactionary movement led primarily by conservative, religious and Islamist elements against secular Arab regimes.

The Arab Spring represented a rejection of the secular, socialist, pan-Arabism, nationalist, military regimes that had come to power in the period from the 1950s through the 1970s, and which have since devolved into little more that corrupt, crony governments ruling by brute force and a pervasive security apparatus.

The modern borders of the Middle East are largely the legacy of the post-World War I European dissection of the Ottoman Empire. A series of treaties, beginning with the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement, divided up the Middle East with little regard to ethnicity, religion, culture or historical association. Indeed, many of those borders were determined by a scramble for the region's oil wealth and a colonial policy of ruling by pitting various ethnic and religious groups against each other.

The post-World War II Pan-Arab movement sought legitimacy by appealing to a broader Arab cultural unity in the context of a nationalist, secular, socialist, modernist ideology. Spurred by military revolutions, inspired by the original military-led, secular Ataturk revolution in Turkey following WWI, these regimes sought to create the same modern, secular regimes in the Arab world.

That ideology failed to improve the livelihood of the average citizen. Instead, many of those military-led governments became increasingly corrupt, brutal and dictatorial. Often, they adopted the religious symbolism of the region's Islamic past in their search for popular legitimacy, while at the same time hanging onto their secular ideologies. A policy that brought them little political legitimacy, but encouraged the growth of Islamist, often conservative and Salafist inspired, religious movements.

In Libya, Syria and Yemen, the popular revolts would lead eventually to bloody civil wars that continue to rage and that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, perhaps even more than a million, although no one can really be sure, and more than seven million refugees. In Iraq, the Arab Spring led to widespread anti-government demonstrations in the Sunni triangle, which contributed, although it was not the only cause, to civil war there.

In Tunisia, the existing government was replaced, but what appeared to be a more democratic government was largely made up of retreads from the previous government of deposed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ruling in conjunction with the Islamist Ennahda party. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown. Subsequent popular elections brought the Muslim Brotherhood inspired government of Mohamed Morsi El Ayat to power. Morsi's de facto Islamist coup prompted a new outbreak of popular demonstrations and led the military, under Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, to overthrow Morsi and assume control.

In Bahrain, Shiite demonstrators, with political and financial support from Iran, demonstrated against the minority Sunni government of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The demonstrations prompted the intervention of a Saudi and Emirate military force to put down the demonstrations. Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Arab Spring sparked popular demonstrations and unrest, but had little lasting consequence.

What is the legacy of the Arab Spring? The most immediate consequence is three civil wars that have spawned horrendous human costs, destabilized the regions around them, and proven to be training grounds for large numbers of jihadists. These conflicts have resulted in the spread of illicit arms throughout these regions and the spread of jihadist movements that will be destabilizing to surrounding governments.

Libya has become a vortex of radical jihadism and political violence that is both drawing in a broad area of North Africa from Morocco to Somalia, while at the same time spewing unrest throughout the region. Syria has become a source of refugees that is swamping Europe and raising serious security concerns there. While Yemen, even more so than Syria, has become a bitter proxy contest between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The second consequence is widespread economic stagnation throughout the Middle East. In part this is the result of the political chaos that accompanied the Arab Spring. The spread of jihadist groups has also impacted economic growth. Tourism, a major industry in Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan, has been singled out by jihadist groups resulting in significant declines in the number of visitors. Overall, tourism revenues in Egypt and Tunisia are down by around 40 percent over the last several years. The decline in the price of oil has constrained the finances of Saudi Arabia and the other petro-states, further dampening economic growth and aid programs in the region; resulting in high rates of unemployment and human misery.

The political instability that has accompanied the Arab Spring, has created spaces where jihadist groups can flourish, resulting not only in the spread of such groups but also in the emergence of multinational jihadist organizations that have established franchises in multiple countries.

Moreover, in those countries where there are significant Sunni or Shia populations that do not hold political power, as in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain, popular discontent with ruling governments is being subsumed into a broader Iranian-Saudi/Shia-Sunni rivalry. In these cases, such conflicts can turn into proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies on the one hand and Iran and its allies on the other. Consequently, what began as domestic disputes can quickly morph into broader, Middle East wide conflicts that could also draw in the U.S. and Russia.

In retrospect, little good came from the Arab Spring. In those countries where the U.S. and its allies intervened, Libya and Syria, and to a lesser extent Yemen, brutal regimes were either replaced by even more brutal regimes, or existing regimes became even harsher or gave way to complete political chaos. Those countries that avoided political chaos did so by and large by making cosmetic changes while clamping down even harder on popular unrest. Ultimately, the Arab Spring did not solve the crisis of governmental legitimacy that plagues the Middle East, it simply resulted in just enough additional repression to defer the inevitable explosion to a later date.

The West ultimately misunderstood and mischaracterized the Arab Spring. Was this an intelligence failure, poor decisions by those in power, an ignorance of the region's history or simply an example of the hubris that presupposes we can reshape the rest of the world to fit our preconceived notions of what it should be like? Either way, our efforts to encourage it only spawned chaos and civil war, and will have only served to destabilize the region even more.

-- If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.
A new year, a new administration and new priorities. Here's what airmen need to know in the year ahead.

More Airmen, Squadron Boost

The U.S. Air Force will add 4,000 more airmen to its ranks next year under a compromise version of the defense authorization bill negotiated in December.

The move would boost the service's authorized end-strength for the active component to 321,000 airmen, according to a summary document on the negotiated fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act.

RELATED: Air Force Wants 350K Airmen by 2024

The Air Force in September had about 311,000 airmen serving on active duty, according to Pentagon personnel statistics. The size of the service peaked in 2004 at nearly 377,000 airmen during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before beginning a steady drawdown. Last year, the service was authorized to add more airmen for the first time in six years.

Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James, who is departing from her role in January, in recent months pushed for 4,000 to 8,000 more airmen, in part to address a shortage of fighter pilots and maintainers in the force. The service has not named her successor.

Adding the 4,000 troops will cost roughly $145 million, according to Air Force Times.

Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told audience members at the National Guard Association of the United States this summer that he also plans to review and revitalize the makeup of "the fundamental unit" of squadrons.

Goldfein wants to improve how the Air Force uses joint leaders to better work with sister services, and enhance command and control systems to better network and make faster decisions in any environment, Defense News reported.

While the move is still in planning stages, Goldfein in September named the three one-star generals who will have the task of carrying out his ambitious plan for revitalizing the service.

Brig. Gen. Stephen Davis, currently the Air Force director of manpower, will lead the effort to remake the function and formation of the basic squadron, which Goldfein called the "heartbeat of the Air Force."

Bonuses for Fliers

The Air Force this year asked Congress to increase the Aviator Retention Pay for manned pilots to $48,000 from the $25,000 cap, which has been in effect since 1999.

Pilots will see an increase, but not the hike the Air Force was hoping for.

The NDAA authorizes the Air Force to increase aviation retention pay from $25,000 to $35,000 per year and flight pay up to $1,000 per month "as needed to address manning shortfalls and challenges," the Air Force said in a release.

Simultaneously, the service plans to increase the number of fighter pilots in its ranks by as much as 20 percent a year in part by using more F-16 Fighting Falcons and trainer aircraft. The hope is to boost the number of fighter pilots it trains each year to 1,375 officers.

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In September, Air Force Chief Master Sgt. James Cody said enlisted drone pilots -- who became eligible to fly the RQ-4 Global Hawk in 2015 -- will qualify for the same bonuses the Air Force plans to offer its officers.

Cody, however, did not say when enlisted airmen would start receiving the bonus pay. The first class of enlisted drone pilots began training in October. It will take roughly a year before they're ready for their new duties, Lt. Gen. Darryl Roberson, the head of Air Education and Training Command, said at the time.

RELATED: Air Force Get More Airmen, No Extra Planes in Defense Bill

Aircraft Buildup

While the service has no plans to add extra warplanes to its arsenal, key programs budgeted in the 2017 request remain on the fast track for upgrades, testing and delivery.

The Pentagon expects to receive $10.5 billion for 63 F-35 fifth-generation fighters -- including 43 A models for the Air Force, 16 B variants for the Marine Corps, and four C models for the Navy.

However, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program has found a vocal critic: President-elect Donald Trump.

In the latest discussion about the over-budget aircraft, Trump fired another shot at Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 program Dec. 22 and hinted at the possibility of a renewed competition with rival defense contractor Boeing Co.

"Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!" he tweeted on Dec. 22.

Nevertheless, a smaller price tag may not be out of the question.

James acknowledged recently that the cost of the Joint Strike Fighter program remains an issue. The Pentagon estimates it will spend nearly $400 billion to procure 2,457 of the single-engine fighters -- and some $1.5 trillion in lifetime sustainment costs.

"Can the costs be driven down more? Perhaps," James said Dec. 19, adding that the president-elect may search for other ways to find a better deal for taxpayers.

The F-35 is poised to deploy for the first time this coming summer, James said. After being approved to fly initial operations in August, the aircraft will be ready to deploy to the European theater next summer in line with how "allies expect it will transform the battlefield, even in the ... anti-access area denial environment," she said.

Other programs the Air Force will be monitoring are the KC-46 tanker, B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber and an award for the new T-X to replace the fleet's T-38 Talon trainer aircraft.

In August, the service awarded Boeing, the world's largest aerospace company, a $2.8 billion initial production contract for 19 KC-46 refueling tanker as well as spare parts. The Chicago-based company plans to build a total of 179 of the 767-based refueling aircraft for the Air Force to replace its KC-135 Stratotanker fleet, Boeing said in a statement at the time.

Preliminary work has begun and will continue into 2017 on the B-21 "Raider," named this year in honor of the Doolittle Raiders. Northrop Grumman Corp. last October beat out Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense contractor, for the $21.4 billion initial contract as part of the LRS-B program.

Lastly, the Air Force has deferred replacing its T-38 trainer aircraft -- one which the service critically needs to train its pilots -- for years, but that could change in 2017.

RELATED: WATCH: Boeing's T-X Trainer Takes First Flight

The aircraft, first produced by Northrop in 1959, is used to prep pilots for "front-line fighter and bomber aircraft such as the F-15E Strike Eagle, F-15C Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, B-1B Lancer, A-10 Thunderbolt and F-22 Raptor," according to the service.

The Air Force hopes to buy 350 new trainer jets.

Boeing, collaborating with Saab, is competing with Northrop Grumman Corp. for a new design for the program. Boeing so far is the only team to offer a twin canted vertical tail design, mimicking fourth- and fifth-generation fighter jets such as the F-22 Raptor, F-35 and F/A-18 Hornet.

Other vendor teams, such as Lockheed Martin Corp. and Korea Aerospace Industries, and Raytheon Co., Leonardo-Finmeccanica and CAE Inc., are offering modification designs to current aircraft, but are not competing in clean sheet designs.

However, another competitor may join the running. Sierra Nevada Corp. and Turkish Aerospace Industries are said to be partnering on their own design for a T-X trainer, one that could be more fuel efficient, according to a recent report from Aviation Week.

Mock designs provided to AvWeek online also show the competitor to have twin canted vertical tails.

The A-10 Lives On

The latest NDAA will once again prevent the premature retirement of the A-10 Thunderbolt.

In February, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the aircraft's retirement would be delayed until 2022 after officials opined the Air Force was ridding the U.S. military of a "valuable and effective" close-air-support aircraft. However, fiscal 2017 budget documents revealed the Air Force still hoped to remove A-10 squadrons in increments between 2018 and 2022 in order to make room for F-35A Lightning II squadrons coming online.

Some members of Congress, most notably Arizona Republicans Sen. John McCain, a former Navy pilot, and Rep. Martha McSally, who flew A-10s during her Air Force career, fiercely opposed the move, and included language in the bill that would prohibit retirement of the A-10, popularly known as the Warthog, until the Air Force can prove the F-35 can sustain similar capabilities on the battlefront.

Air Force Materiel Command chief Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski in October said the depot line for the A-10 is cranking back up as part of an effort to keep the Cold War-era aircraft flying "indefinitely."

"They have re-geared up, we've turned on the depot line, we're building it back up in capacity and supply chain," Pawlikowski told Aviation Week at the time. "Our command, anyway, is approaching this as another airplane that we are sustaining indefinitely."

While many A-10 enthusiasts would like to see the planes flying "indefinitely," the general likely means "into the foreseeable future."

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.

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Hospital penalization

Flight nurses Mike Chesney, of Jackson, left, and David Roberts, of Michigan Center transport a young patient through the hallways of the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor after being flown to the hospital by the Survival Flight helicopter in this file photo.

(Dave Weatherwax | The Jackson Citizen Patriot )

ANN ARBOR, MI - Several southeastern Michigan hospitals, including the University of Michigan and St. Joseph Mercy health systems, face Medicare funding cuts because of data showing a lack of performance in combating hospital-acquired conditions.

Across the country, 769 hospitals were subjected to the current fiscal year cuts, including 27 Michigan hospitals, according to a report by Kaiser Health News.

The penalization comes in the form of 1 percent of Medicare payments for a 12-month period, starting in October 2016, which could cause losses in the hundreds of thousands for some of the nation's largest hospitals, according to the report.

It affects hospitals with higher rates of potentially avoidable patient complications and spread of antibiotic-resistant germs, as a result of the Affordable Care Act's Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program.

The program, which has gathered data since October 2014, is meant to provide incentives for hospitals to reduce hospital-acquired conditions that range from patient falls and burns to infections like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium difficile, or C. diff.

The University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor was one southeastern Michigan health system identified in data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services as having been penalized for 2017.

Haley Otman, associate multimedia communicator for the University of Michigan Health System, said in an emailed statement that the system was disappointed in the news.

"The outcomes measured are important. We are disappointed to be part of this penalty list - we have not been penalized in prior years. Patient safety and prevention of health care-associated conditions and infections is our first priority.

We have robust improvement processes in place and have made improvements since the time period these data reflect. Academic medical centers often see patients who are at higher risk for complications, and the data in this program is not adjusted for all potential risk factors, making comparisons across hospitals difficult."

According to Kaiser Health News, the University of Michigan Health System was not penalized in the first two years of the federal Hospital-Acquired Conditions Reduction Program along with more than 300 hospitals across the United States.

Two hospitals operated by the St. Joseph Mercy Health System are also being penalized. St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor is being penalized for 2017, and St. Joseph Mercy Oakland in Pontiac was penalized two years in a row starting in 2016.

According to a statement provided by St. Joseph Mercy Health System, the organization "will continue to find new and better ways to maximize patient safety and it is working with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and other state institutions to promote antimicrobial stewardship.

Its own formal program includes the "development of evidenced based practices and policies to promote judicious antimicrobial use," according to a company statement.

Dr. Anurag Malani, medical director of Antimicrobial Stewardship and Infection Prevention for St. Joseph Mercy Health System, said the antimicrobial stewardship program minimizes the negative effects of antimicrobial use and reduces the rate of C. diff infections.

The statement noted St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor received recognition by Consumer Reports for prevention of central-line infections in intensive care units over a five-year period.

There is also an antibiotic stewardship program at St. Joseph Mercy Oakland in Pontiac, and the health system has made investments in technology to support hygiene compliance and reduce hospital-acquired infections, according to the statement.

"Unfortunately, because of the retrospective nature of the data published, current efforts to reduce hospital acquired conditions are not reflected," a company statement read.

Other southeastern Michigan hospitals on the penalization list include five Beaumont Hospital locations, Detroit Receiving Hospital and University Health Center in Detroit, and Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit.
Christmas trees.jpg

Duke Wagetha, CEO at Flatsnoots Christmas Trees, center, picks up a tree to put it on display on Saturday, December 3, 2016 at Flatsnoots Christmas Trees at 2103 West Stadium in Ann Arbor. Katy Kildee | MLive.com

This post was updated to include information on Pioneer baseball's Christmas tree pick-up.

ANN ARBOR, MI - Huron High School's Parent Teacher Student Organization, Skyline High School's Friends of the Arts group and Pioneer High School's varsity baseball team are offering to help Ann Arbor residents dispose of their Christmas trees after the holidays.

For a suggested donation of $25, Huron PTSO volunteers will pick up trees from houses near Huron High School - south of M-14, west of Dixboro Road, north of Washtenaw Avenue and east of Hill Street. The pick-up will take place Jan. 7, 2017, and volunteers will take the trees to be chipped at Gallup Park.

To schedule a tree pick-up, call or text Sondra Bobroff at 734-221-0055. The tree should be at the curb by 9 a.m. on Jan. 7 with an envelope with the donation - in cash or check - taped to the tree. Checks are payable to Huron PTSO, and proceeds will go to Huron's grad party and the men's cross country team.

Volunteers with Skyline Friends of the Arts will pick up Christmas trees on Jan. 8 and 15. The suggested donation is $20 to $30 to benefit the band and theater, and donations can be made online through PayPal or by cash or check left with the tree. Checks should be payable to Skyline Friends of the Arts or SFA.

To schedule a pick-up from Skyline volunteers, visit this website. Email SkylineTreePickup@gmail.com with any questions.

Pioneer High School's varsity baseball team boosters club also is offering to pick up discarded Christmas trees as a fundraiser for their spring break 2017 trip to Cocoa Beach, Florida.

For a minimum donation of $15, baseball players will pick up trees on Jan. 7 and 8 and take them to a City of Ann Arbor disposal station. All decorations need to be removed and trees placed on the curb for pick up.

Donations will be accepted via PayPal to pioneerbaseballboosters@gmail.com, cash or check can be mailed to AA Pioneer Baseball Booster Club, P.O. Box 1022, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1022, or the donation can be left with the tree.

Donations are tax deductible and all proceeds go to the players providing the tree disposal service.
Dexter Creekside Intermediate School

Dexter sixth-graders work on their computers during a snack break at Creekside Intermediate School in Dexter on Tuesday, November 22, 2016. Melanie Maxwell | The Ann Arbor News

ANN ARBOR, MI - Public education will see a shift at the national level in 2017 as the Every Student Succeeds Act takes effect and Michigan native Betsy DeVos becomes U.S. Secretary of Education. In the meantime, local K-12 schools have their own plans to improve their students' education.

The Michigan Department of Education is planning to submit its Every Student Succeeds Act plan for assessment and accountability systems in March 2017, and the federal law that replaces No Child Left Behind will take effect with the start of the 2017-18 school year.

Locally, traditional public K-12 schools are planning to expand unique academic programs, get children younger than 5 involved in school and upgrade their buildings and technology offerings in the new year.

Here are some key things to watch for at Washtenaw County schools in 2017.

Ann Arbor Public Schools: International Baccalaureate world school authorization

In its third school year of implementing International Baccalaureate curriculum, AAPS is hoping to secure "world school" authorization for Mitchell Elementary and Scarlett Middle schools in 2017. Superintendent Jeanice Swift announced Dec. 23 that Huron High School has received its world school authorization, and the Class of 2019 will be the first to have a chance to complete Huron's Diploma Programme.

International Baccalaureate is a nonprofit that provides a framework for teaching and professional development for staff at thousands of schools around the world. IB offers different programmes that encompass every grade level based on five central pillars: student inquiry, global awareness, action and service, world languages, and equitable access to education.

AAPS will be one of two Michigan school districts to offer IB programs from preschool through 12th grade once Mitchell and Scarlett are named world schools.

Chelsea School District: strategic planning

Chelsea schools recently developed a "graduate learner profile" based on input from those invested in the school district on what skills and abilities graduates should have, said Superintendent Julie Helber in an email to The Ann Arbor News. In 2017, each school will work to specify how the graduate learner profile applies to different grade levels. Teams at each building are working to develop alternative approaches to instruction that promote the ideals in the graduate profile, Helber added.

Chelsea schools also is considering the possibility of starting a Young 5s program and expanding its foreign exchange program in the coming year.

Dexter Community Schools: growing enrollment and facility use

In recent months, Dexter Community Schools and the board of education have discussed potential facility renovations to accommodate growing student enrollment. In November, Superintendent Chris Timmis presented the board with a look at the current enrollment in each school building compared to targets set in 2008. Enrollment at Bates Elementary, Cornerstone Elementary and Mill Creek Middle schools all currently exceed the 2008 enrollment target.

The school board appointed an ad hoc facility committee consisting of trustees Ron Darr, Dick Lundy and Rob Mitzel to continue discussions about how best to use available space in the schools and maintain low class sizes.

Lincoln Consolidated Schools: improved math scores and technology investments

Lincoln Consolidated Schools Superintendent Sean McNatt is expecting to see a pay-off in 2017 from a new elementary math curriculum implemented this school year. After piloting the curriculum in recent years, it was implemented in all K-5 classrooms starting this fall, and McNatt expects to see positive results on the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) assessment, which students take three times over the course of the school year to measure their progress.

Now that Lincoln schools has exited its state-mandated deficit elimination plan, McNatt told The Ann Arbor News he is looking forward to investing in upgrades to the school district's technology infrastructure and completing some building and grounds work, including resurfacing or repairing the parking lots and repainting the buildings. He expects that work will be completed over the summer.

Manchester Community Schools: expanding STEAM classes and media center renovations

With support from the Kiwanis Club of Manchester, Manchester Community Schools is planning to transform the high school media center into a "Next Gen Student Center" in 2017 that will provide a modern learning space that accommodates more technology use, said Superintendent Cherie Vannatter in an email. Vannatter told the school board in October that the school district is applying for a $100,000 grant from the Kiwanis Club to support the project.

Manchester schools also is looking to expand its Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math (STEAM) offerings for students at all grade levels in the new year.

Milan Area Schools: 21st century learning skills and early literacy

Superintendent Bryan Girbach outlined some goals for the school district at a board of education meeting in October. He said the "Milan 21" initiative is working to define 21st century learning skills, authentic learning and project-based learning. Early literacy efforts for second, third and fourth graders are moving forward with support from the Washtenaw Intermediate School District, and Milan schools staff are completing professional development related to diversity.

Saline Area Schools: restart Young 5s and implement learner profiles

Saline Area Schools will again offer a Young 5s program in the 2017-18 school year, after discontinuing the program for the past three or four years, said Superintendent Scot Graden. The free preschool program will be open to students who turn 5 years old between Aug. 1 and Dec. 1. More details will be released in January 2017, and there's an interest survey available on the school website.

The new year also will bring increased focus on Saline's "learner profile," Graden said. This past year, teachers have begun finding ways to encourage communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity from their students, Graden said, and that work will continue in 2017.

"We're really using those attributes to drive our instruction," he said. "We need to think a little bit deeper than 'what is your score on the SAT and what is your score on the ACT.'"

In the summer, Saline will continue spending revenue from its 20-year, $67.5 million 2015 bond, with plans to invest $13 million in renovating classrooms at Liberty School, renovating the auditorium and media center at Saline Middle School, improving security at Saline High School and other site work.

Whitmore Lake Public Schools: putting sinking fund revenue to use

Since voters supported a new three-year, $1 million sinking fund millage in November, Whitmore Lake Public Schools will begin spending that additional revenue in 2017 on updates to the school district's wireless Internet system, replacing old HVAC equipment and other facility renovations, Superintendent Tom DeKeyser wrote in an email to The Ann Arbor News.

DeKyser would like to see Whitmore Lake approve a budget for next school year that continues to add to the district's fund balance, and he said preparations will begin to add foreign language classes at the elementary school and more Advance Placement and elective classes at the high school.

Ypsilanti Community Schools: new programs and middle school transitions

Ypsilanti Community Schools will add some new programs in 2017, said Superintendent Ben Edmondson, giving the example of a new movie reviewers club started by a high school English teacher that will allow students to develop their writing skills as they review films.

YCS also is considering relocating its middle school programs for the start of the 2017-18 school year, leaving the building at 235 Spencer Lane that currently houses Ypsilanti Community Middle School empty so it can be sold or leased to another entity.
BAY CITY, MI -- Alberto Gulino's family has been serving up slices of their Italian heritage from the day they came to Bay City from Sicily half a century ago.

And for the past six months, Gulino has been back at one of his family's original West Side locations cooking up wood-fired, Italian-style pies. Gulino's Pizza & Sons, 1406 N. Henry St., is open Tuesday-Thursday noon to 9 p.m. and noon to 9:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Alberto's uncle Sal began the Gulino's Bay City pizza dynasty in 1965, opening a pair of Roma's restaurants, one on each side of the Saginaw River. Alberto's father Antonino "Nino" Gulino worked for his brother Sal for several years before opening Nino's Family Restaurant on Columbus Avenue. In 1983, Antonino and his wife opened Josephine's Family Restaurant at 1406 N. Henry St.

Alberto, one of three children, left Bay City for a teaching job in south Texas, but says he missed the kitchen environment he'd grown up in.

In Texas, Alberto decided to revisit his Italian roots, outfitting a food truck with a French-made wood-fired oven and serving up pies with Italian-style thin crust and Americanized toppings. He named the truck after his father, operating as Nino's Rio Pizza.

"The goal in Texas was always a brick-and-mortar restaurant." Gulino said.

But that never happened.

After his father, who had retired to McAllen, Texas, passed away in March 2015, Alberto decided to return to Bay City and purchase the pizza parlor his father had opened with his mother on Henry Street.

Alberto purchased the building in September 2015 and opened business on July 14, 2016, serving pizza, pasta and Italian staples from a special-ordered Italian wood-fired oven.

The wood-fired method and Italian dough, which uses pure ground wheat with no bleaching or enriching, means Gulino can cook a 12" pie in just 90 seconds.

All his pizzas are made from scratch, but Gulino says he can serve up an order in as little as 6 minutes. At peak hours, that time can stretch to 15 or 20 minutes as Gulino makes several pies at once, cooking up to 6 pizzas at a time.

Gulino's delivers anywhere in Bay City for a fee of $1 per mile from their Henry Street location. He said he has already made several deliveries to the new Tri-City Brewing Co. location, 4170 Shrestha Drive, which doesn't serve food.

The secret to what Alberto says sets his pizza apart lies in the crust. Gulino makes his dough from unbleached, un-enriched ground wheat flour. In a wood-fired oven that cooks at almost 800 degrees, he says, the additives normally used in commercial flour will burn and impart the crust with an undesirable taste.

In cooking his thin Italian-style crust, Alberto aims for "leoparding," the pattern of spotted charring characteristic of a pizza cooked quickly and evenly at a high temperature.

To help achieve this, Gulino prepares his dough 12 hours in advance, and won't use dough more than 48 hours old. He also uses semolina, a type of ground wheat, in place of corn meal for his dough's crust because it won't burn in the wood-fired oven.

In order to cater that Italian style to American tastes, Gulino has developed a distinctly non-traditional approach to toppings.



Among the specialty pizzas he's serving up are the Mela Michigana, a pizza pie made with Michigan apples and caramel, the Bee Sting, featuring mozzarella, cayenne and honey, The Stanislaus, a Polish-inspired pizza with potato and polish sausage and even a Nutella pizza featuring strawberries and bananas.

"Italians always think there are too many toppings," Gulino joked. "Americans always say there aren't enough."

Gulino also serves more traditional pizzas, like Margherita-style and four cheese, alongside Italian staples including Caprese salad, Porchetta sandwiches and pastas.

Alberto says he's happy to be back in Bay City, bringing a little friendly family competition for his cousins, who still operate Nino's and Roma's. Most of all, he's happy to return to the kitchen he grew up in.

Over the years, Alberto's father slowly expanded the restaurant's space. The interior now features an enclosed kitchen and storage area that once served as a drive-through for the former Three Sisters restaurant.

Alberto uses the extra space to prepare his pasta, salads and sandwiches, and although he admits the building is strangely-shaped and in an odd location, he looks forward to growing his restaurant in his father's former establishment.

'It's old, but I have memories here," Gulino said. "This is home."
Jessica A. Leitner

UPDATE: Officials not saying how mom killed in I-75 crash still had baby

BAY COUNTY, MI -- When a Bay City woman abruptly drove into oncoming highway traffic, killing herself and another woman, it was not the first time she put her infant child in danger.

It was on Tuesday evening, Dec. 27, police say, when Jessica A. Leitner (also known by the surname Price) caused the fatal crash. With her in the silver 2003 Chevrolet Impala she was driving was her 4-month-old son, Jordan Leitner. He was not secured in a child safety seat at the time of the crash, police said.

After initially driving with traffic, Leitner did a U-turn on the interstate, and started heading north at a high rate of speed, police said. The 38-year-old Leitner collided head-on with a white 2017 Buick Lacrosse driven by George R. Garske, 83, and containing his 54-year-old daughter Ann Lynn Garske, both of Saginaw. Medical personnel pronounced Jessica Leitner and Ann Garske dead at the scene.

Leitner was on probation in both Bay and Arenac counties at the time of her death. On Aug. 13, Arenac County Sheriff's deputies pulled her over for improper lane use. She was driving a 2007 Pontiac Grand Prix.

With her in the car was her child Jordan, who was only a week old at the time. Court records show the child was unbuckled in an unsecured car seat. Deputies arrested her on drunken driving charges. An alcohol-testing device indicated Leitner's blood alcohol level was at 0.27.

In Michigan, a person is legally intoxicated when his or her blood alcohol level reaches 0.08. A person is "super drunk" when his or her blood alcohol level hits 0.17.

Leitner on Aug. 15 was arraigned in Arenac County District Court on charges of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, child endangerment, driving without insurance, driving on a suspended license, and driving with an open intoxicant. On Oct. 17, she pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated and driving on a suspended license.

A judge subsequently sentenced her to 45 days in jail with credit for two days already served. She was released on Nov. 22 and was to be on probation for one year.

It's unclear if Leitner's license had been reinstated prior to her death.

In August 2015, Leitner was arraigned in Bay County District Court on a domestic violence count, stemming from an assault she perpetrated against Drew A. Santos. She pleaded guilty to the charge on Oct. 5, 2015, and was court-ordered to have no contact with Santos.

A few weeks later, Santos called 911 when Leitner drunkenly came to his residence. Police again arrested her.

On Nov. 5, 2015, a judge sentenced Leitner to 45 days in jail with credit for 45 days already served. She was to serve eight months of probation and prohibited from consuming alcohol, a condition she repeatedly violated, according to court records. Her probation was extended and she was still on it at the time of her death.

Leitner had a tumultuous relationship with Santos, who in April 2015 was charged with two felonies after allegedly choking Leitner and punching her to the degree that he caused her to miscarry. When police responded to Leitner's complaint, she had a blood alcohol level of 0.22, court records show.

Santos told police Leitner had been threatening to jump in the river, court records show.

Santos later pleaded guilty to third-offense domestic violence and received a three-year probation sentence.

A troubled life

The morning of her death, Leitner changed the cover image on her Facebook profile to a hazy photo of the sun coming up over some trees. Her last five profile pictures are of her baby son.

A friend of Leitner, Amanda Anquetil, said Leitner had a troubled past. The pair met in 2014 at the Bay Metro station in downtown Bay City, having struck up a conversation on their similar situations.

"We were sharing little stories back and forth, talking about what we were doing from here on out," Anquetil said.

They ended up sharing a room at the Good Samaritan Rescue Mission for four months and became close, Anquetil said. Officials said they couldn't confirm or refute past residents of the homeless shelter.

On one occasion, Leitner tried talking her friend into committing suicide with her, she said.

Despite her troubles, Leitner strove to be a good mom and has at least one other child, a teenage son, Anquetil contends.

"She was beautiful and soft-spoken and had compassion," she said. "When she wasn't drinking and I got her on the level of opening up to me, she had the best outlook on life. Behind all of this mental illness, she was crying for help."

Ryan Strohkirch said he was driving south on I-75 just before the fatal crash and saw Leitner heading in the wrong direction. He called 911 to report it and the dispatcher told him they had already received several calls on the matter.

"You could see her lights up the way," he said. "You could see people moving over and flashing (their lights). You could immediately tell she was driving really fast, 90 to 100 mph. At that point, you kind of realize she's doing that on purpose. I saw her for at least three miles and she passed at least one turnaround. You assume she's trying to do something. Why else would she be going down the wrong way on expressway at 100 mph when no one was chasing her?"

Police have not said what might have prompted Leitner to drive toward traffic. Their investigation is ongoing and they are awaiting toxicology results, which could take weeks.

As of Thursday morning, both Jordan Leitner and George Garske remain hospitalized in critical condition, according to Michigan State Police Special 1st Lt. David Kaiser.

Garske is the grandfather of Bay City attorney Marcus Garske, who ran for Bay County prosecutor in the 2016 election. Ann Garske was his aunt.

"This was a terrible tragedy that has affected two families," Marcus Garske said. "I would just like to thank everyone for the overwhelming amount of support and condolences that we have received and ask that everyone keep my grandfather George and little Jordan in your prayers as they continue on their road to recovery."

Anquetil believes her friend suffered from mental illness.

"It's like her to want to die; it's not like her to inflict pain on others," she said. "She was the nurturing type. That's what's really bothering me about it. Something must have made her snap for her to do it at that instant."
Cimagine?s augmented reality platform allows consumers and retailers alike to better visualize the presence of products such as furniture and appliances in a room, on their mobile devices. The startup is Snapchat?s first foray into acquisitions in the Israeli market, and, its past success in scaling unique research and development initiatives out of all of its international offices suggests the same for Cimagine.





?Visual interaction is at the soul of Snap and as the lines between digital and physical engagement blur mix, reality services will rule the day,? said Michael Becker, managing partner at The Connected Marketer Institute. ?The future of visual engagement will be driven by augmented and virtual reality, the former will turn physical media (including space and distance) into interactive media, and the later shall immerse individuals into worlds that are limited only by a brand's imagination.





?There are a wealth of intriguing examples for the application of AR. For example, recent ISACA study reported that vast majority of individuals would like to use AR from training, retail, and shopping guides, to healthcare and home decoration services, as well as gaming and more.?





Cimagine

The acquisition continues Snapchat?s dedication in incorporating AR, making it essential to the application?s experience.





Applications of AR in Snapchat have culminated in many popular features, including many of the most popular filters.





No statement has surfaced yet from either company on the acquisition, which is not a surprise considering the history of notoriously press-averse Snapchat.









The acquisition also comes conspicuously close to dates mentioned during rumored discussions of a Snapchat IPO, which is said to be valued at as much as $25 billion, several magnitudes higher than the $3 billion from Facebook Snapchat turned its nose up at in 2014.





?This acquisition could certainly help Snap?s IPO,? Mr. Becker said. ?Mastering experiences will become a core competency to compete in the age of the connected individual.





?With this acquisition, Snap is skating to where the puck is going, not where it has been. It is acquiring the capabilities it will need to support brand marketers and members of its community.?





Snapchat success

The platform?s dedication to research and development has paid serious dividends this year, contributing to growth in advertising revenue. Sony Pictures? newest blockbuster film, Underworld: Blood Wars, got the mobile treatment with a Snapchat campaign that production company Screen Gems calls the world?s first 3D-interactive Snapchat lens ( see story ).





And ABC?s The Bachelor recently debuted a Snapchat companion show named Watch Party: The Bachelor ( see story ).









?It is hard to say what will happen as more AR and VR solutions are introduced,? Mr. Becker said. ?AR and VR are tools, and like any tool they can be wielded with skills to create beauty and value, or they can create damage.





?I suspect that these services will have a significant impact on society,? he said. ?They can bring people closer together while at the same time isolate them, they can simplify and streamline commercial experiences while potentially adding unnecessary complications and risks and they can create value for or from people.





?I suspect we?ll find situations in the near future where all these cases will become true. It is up to us as marketers to invest in and pick what's is right for our respective companies and the people and communities we serve."
Close

Amazon's intuitive new invention, the Amazon Echo, is a powerful device that is more than just an ordinary speaker. It turns out that the innovative speaker system has ended up recording the Arkansas Hot Tub Murder which happened a while back. The Bentonville, Ark police look forward to collecting the voice recordings data from the gadget to build up the murder case, but it seems like Amazon is not ready to cooperate with the law to hand over the data.

According to The Information, the police issued a warrant which requires Amazon to provide with all the audio recordings done by the Amazon Echo that belonged to the murder suspect, James Andrew Bates. Victor Collins, the victim, was found dead last November in Bates' hot tub which makes him a prime suspect in the murder case.

Products that use digital assistants like Alexa are programmed to listen for "wake up words" which gives the police an idea to check out the machine. They suspect that the Amazon Echo device was accidentally or intentionally turned on to record the audio during the Arkansas hot tub murder time.

However, Amazon is not cooperating with the police department to release the Echo device recordings. The only information that the company offered to the law enforcers was related to Bates' purchases and account details for the product.

Amazon had stated that it is not willing to release the customer information unless a legal and valid demand is served upon them. It "objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course."

There were other IOT (Inter of Things) devices present in the Arkansas Hot Tub murder room as well which police have used for gathering information for the case. For instance, a water meter connected to the hot tub displays that 140 gallons of water had been used between 1 am and 3 am during the time of the murder. According to the police, Bates tried hiding the evidence by hosing down his hot tub and patio.

Such disagreements to cooperate have occurred among many hi-tech giants and law enforcements in the past as well. For now, the police needs to rely on the information it has received for the Arkansas Hot Tub Murder case. Will Amazon Echo data be provided to the department for building up a stronger case? Surely, that is yet to be seen.

 Copyright 2020 Mobile & Apps, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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business No jail term for exchanging old notes: Law Ministry sources The government is speaking in multiple voices on the demonetisation ordinance. While Minister of state (MoS) for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal says that demonetisation ordinance does have a provision for jail, Law Ministry says otherwise.
business Here is why Tulsian bets on sugar and auto ancillary stocks In an interview with CNBC-TV18, SP Tulsian of sptulsian.com, bets on two sectors- sugar and auto ancillary. He is bullish on Dwarikesh Sugar Industries, Dalmia Bharat Sugar and Industries, Upper Ganges Sugar, Oudh Sugar, Balrampur Chini, Triveni Engineering.
Education

Montgomery County Community College will present the spring installment of the interview/talk show program Issues and Insights April 20 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in Science Center room 214, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The programs will be simulcast to the Colleges West Campus in South Hall room 216, 101 College Drive, Pottstown. Dr. Kolsky will offer a humorous presentation, Carrots, Sticks and Politics: A State of the Nation and the World Message. In this speech, he will provide his interpretation of domestic and international politics and then welcome questions from the audience for discussion. Issues and Insights, is free and open to the public. For information, contact Dr. Thomas Kolsky, professor of political science, at 215-641-6380 or tkolsky@mc3.edu.

Montgomery County Community Colleges STEM Scholars Program will host a STEM Jam! open house April 25 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the Advanced Technology Center at the Colleges Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The drop-in event is designed for students interested in learning more about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Activities will include STEM program information and career advising, STEM speakers throughout the day from industry and academia, micro-helicopter and robotics competitive obstacle courses and demonstrations and static models of STEM student and faculty work. For more information about STEM Jam! or STEM programs at MCCC, contact William Brownlowe at wbrownlowe@mc3.edu or 215-641-6644, or Robin Zuhlke at 215-619-7440 or rzuhlke@mc3.edu.

Temple Ambler, located at 580 Meetinghouse Road, presents the following events:

International Club Global Bazaar April 15 from 5 to 8 p.m. The Ambler Campus International Club invites all students, faculty, staff and the community to celebrate a multitude of diverse cultures, which will be showcased at the organizations Global Bazaar. This family friendly event will highlight cultural traditions and celebrations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South American, North America and Africa through music, entertainment, food and informative displays developed and presented by students at the Ambler Campus. Young visitors will be provided with passports, which they may get stamped at each country they visit. Prizes will be awarded to world travelers who talk to cultural representatives, answer questions about the countries theyve visited and take part in fun-filled activities designed to help them learn about the rich diversity of cultures found throughout the world. Refreshments will be served. The event is free. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail tuc36466@temple.edu.

EarthFest 2011 April 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. More than 75 exhibitors, including the Philadelphia Zoo, The Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Elmwood Park Zoo and the Insectarium, will take part in EarthFest 2011. School students of all ages are invited to attend and develop displays of their own. EarthFest partner the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society also offers its Kids Grow Expo, featuring the Junior Flower Show, as part of the event. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail duffyj@temple.edu.

Annual Spring Plant Sale May 7 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The plant sale  an Ambler Campus tradition dating back to the early 1900s  will feature woody plants and perennials in portable sizes, hardy trees, shrubs, and vines, native plants that are attractive to wildlife, herbs, and hanging baskets. There will also be numerous special plants for sale to highlight Amblers special anniversary year. Garden books and garden tools will also be available for sale. Students, staff, and volunteers from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture and the Ambler Arboretum Advisory Committee will be available to answer questions. All proceeds from the Spring Plant Sale will support the Ambler Arboretum Fund and the Pi Alpha Xi National Honor Society. Information: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary.

June Homecoming/Louise Bush-Brown Garden Dedication June 5 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. (June Homecoming), Bright Hall Lounge; 2 p.m. (Garden Dedication), Ambler Campus Formal Perennial Gardens. Tickets  June Homecoming: Participant  $18 per person; Sustainer  $25 per person; Benefactor  $40 per person. The 2011 June Homecoming, sponsored by the School of Environmental Design Alumni Association, will include the Alumni Association annual meeting and luncheon. June Homecoming will be followed by the formal dedication of Temple University Amblers Formal Perennial Gardens as the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Gardens. During this 100th anniversary of the campus, Temple University Ambler and the Ambler Arboretum of the Temple University is honoring Louise Bush-Browns many contributions to the history of the campus by formally dedicating the gardens in her honor. During the program, campus Executive William Parshall will welcome guests, Ambler Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey will speak about the Bush-Browns and the history of the garden, and an official ribbon cutting will be held for the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Garden. Following the ribbon cutting, guests are invited to take a tour of the gardens, which will wend their way to the Campus Greenhouse for the School of Environmental Designs annual Plant Auction. Information (Garden Dedication): 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Information (June Homecoming): 215-482-0722. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary.

Northview Garden Tour and Fundraiser for the Ambler Arboretum June 12 from noon to 5 p.m. Call for reservations. Tickets: $15 per person or $20 at the door. In addition to the gardens of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey has a garden oasis all her own right in Ambler  Northview. Visitors will have the opportunity to take self-guided tours throughout the many gardens, where garden experts will be available to answer questions about the various designs. The Ambler Keystone Chapter of the Womans National Farm and Garden Association will also provide tea and refreshments. All proceeds from the tours will support the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University. Information or to register: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary.

The Senior Adult Activities Center of Montgomery County, 536 George Street, Norristown, will hold the following events:

SAAC Adult Day Care, an alternative to Nursing Home Care is available  for information call 610-275-1960

Volunteers are needed for Meals on Wheels Program (call the number above)

SAACs Fifth Avenue Boutique opens Monday through Friday from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Exercise with Theresa will be held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1 p.m.

Dance class is held every Monday at 10 a.m.

Tai Chi is held every Monday at 10 a.m.

Yoga is held every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m.

Line Dancing is held every Thursday at 10:30 a.m.

Dancing with Joan is held every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m.

Sculpture Class is held Wednesdays from 2 to 3:30 p.m.

Why Should I Learn Spanish? will be held Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m.

Generations On-Line computer classes for seniors will be held Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.  4 p.m.  computers are available during those hours.

Health Living will be held every Tuesday at 1 p.m.

Boomer U will hold the following events. Boomer U is located at 45 Forest Avenue, Ambler. Registration & payment is required for all events: 215-619-8863.

Pilates Class is held Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:30 a.m. First class is free; please bring a mat. For information call 610-291-5376.

Blue Bell School of Dance, 921 Penllyn Blue Bell Pike, Blue Bell, hosts Argentine Tango Classes and a Milonga dance party every Friday evening. Lessons start at 8:30 p.m. followed by dancing at 9:30 p.m. Andrew Conway, master Argentine Tango dancer, instructor and performer and his partner Linda Chase will instruct. All levels welcome and no partner is needed. Refreshments will be served. Fee is $12 per person and includes lesson and dancing. Information: 215-634-1101 or www.amoretango.com.

The Montgomery Hospital Medical Center will offer the following classes:

Childbirth Education Class- all parents are invited to participate, including those who are delivering at

other hospitals. For more information on maternity services or classes, call 610-270-2020.

CPR and First Aid Courses are offered for beginners to experiences health care providers. Call 610-270-2313.

The Ambler SAAC (Senior Adult Activities Center), located at 45 Forest Ave in Ambler will hold the following events:

Tai Chi every Monday and Thursday at 11 a.m.

Yoga is every Tuesday at 1 p.m. and Friday at 10:30 a.m.

Strength and balance training every Wednesday at 10 a.m.

Armchair Aerobics is held every Monday at 10 a.m.

Gourmet Weight Wise every Thursday at 12:30.

Fitness Center and Pool Room open daily 8 a.m.-4 p.m.

The Diabetes Education Center will offer day and evening classes each month. Health insurance pays for diabetes education classes. Preregistration is required. Call 610-270-2301.

For Kids & Families

The Ambler Kiwanis Club will host its annual Easter Egg Hunt April 26 at 10 a.m. in Ambler Borough Park, located just off of the intersection of Hendricks Street and Valley Brook Road. Members of the Wissahickon Key Club will assist Kiwanians in hiding thousands of wrapped chocolate eggs in a designated area of the park. Also hidden will be plastic colored eggs, which are redeemed for prizes. Elementary school children are separated by age.

Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation will hold its 21st annual Storybook Egg-Stravaganza April 15 fom 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Upper Dublin Township Building. Toddlers and preschoolers love this annual event where photo opportunities with favorite friends abound! Treasures are collected from UDP&Rs assortment of lifesize cutouts of favorite cartoon characters from Disney, Sesame Street, Nickelodeon and other well-known animation. Children can have their picture taken with Bugsy OHare; bring your own camera. And dont forget a basket for goodies! $7 for UD residents; $12 for non-residents. Pre-register at 215-643-1600 ext. 3443.

Splash Week is a free week-long program that teaches children and families basic swimming skills and water safety practices. All YMCA branches will host multiple classes each day from April 11 to 15. For more information, contact the Ambler Area YMCA at 215-628-9950.

Healthy Kids Day is April 16 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The day is filled with fun, engaging and artistic activities that cultivate healthy living as part of the YMCAs larger efforts to help more kids and families become physically active. All activities are free and open to the community. For more information, contact the Ambler YMCA at 215-628-9950. No reservation is required.

The Ambler Area YMCA has added several new programs for area youngsters. Classes are held late afternoons or evenings on various weekdays. For more information, visit philaymca.org or call 215-628-9950.

Basic Beading: Ages: 10+. Wednesdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. This class will teach you the fundamentals of wiring and stringing along with how color can be used to create unique and vibrant beadwork design. You will create various jewelry including earrings, bracelets, charm pendants and much more! Supplies will be provided. Bringing your own jewelry pliers or tools would be a plus.

Messin with the Masters: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. Learn about some of the worlds greatest artists. You will be inspired to create your own Starry Night with oil pastels and tempera paints, a tissue paper painted Monet garden, a Picasso head using scraps of paper, a Georgia OKeeffe clay flower bowl and a Rousseau jungle collage.

Super Scientist: Ages: 5-7. Mondays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Well be concocting chemistry experiments such as making slime, mixing potions and having fun with magnet magic. Your budding little scientist will enhance his/her creative thinking and motor skills and to top it off will learn that science can be serious fun.

Wacky Junk Art: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 6 to 6:45 p.m. Why throw it away! Instead join us to make household junk into aliens from outer space, wacky specs, crazy hats, body masks or a recycled train.

Globe Trotters: Ages: 4-6. Tuesdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Youre never too young to start thinking globally. Each week, we explore a new country through crafts, games, music, stories and even some taste-testing. A perfect introduction to our great big world!

Crazy about Crafts: Ages: 5-7, Thursdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Let your childs creative juices flow with our fun arts and crafts projects each week. Fine motor skills and creative thinking skills will be enhanced with this crafty class.

Come out and join the Ambler Area YMCAs Teen and Junior Leaders Club. Participants are given the freedom to plan community service projects year round and truly make a difference in the lives of people in need. Those in Teen and Junior Leaders also attend leadership retreats all along the East Coast three times a year and meet other leaders who are doing the same great work in their respective areas. Dont miss out on this inspiring opportunity. Teen Leaders, ages 13-17, meet every Wednesday from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Junior Leaders, ages 10-12, will begin in the spring and will meet every Monday. For more information, contact Mike Miles, Teen Director, 215- 628-9950 x 1540 or mmiles@philaymca.org.

Did you know that the new Ambler Area YMCA holds childrens birthday parties at its site for members and non members as well. The Ambler Y does all the work from start to finish and birthday parties include a personalized cake, ice cream, beverage and paper products. Parties are held on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and include two party hosts to lead activities, set-up, clean-up and assist with serving. You can have a Splash Party for children ages six to 12 in the new zero depth entry pool with water slide and spray fountains. Up to 25 children have exclusive use of the pool area with 30 minutes in the party room. Sports Parties are offered for kids ages four to 12 with age appropriate activities and games, and sports such as floor hockey, soccer, basketball or dodge ball. Children ages three to five years of age will enjoy parties in the Family Active Center with use of the Moon Bounce and organized activities, such as parachute play and songs. For information, 215-628-9950 ext. 1583.

Community Events at the Ambler Y:

-YAchievers YMCA Achievers is a developmentally based, extracurricular, educational and team mentoring program designed to help students in grades five through 12 prepare for fulfilled livelihoods in college and beyond. Participation is free and all students in this program receive a free YMCA membership. Registration for the 2009 program begins now. You do not need to be a YMCA member to utilize these special services. Call 215-628-9950 to register.

Greater Norristown Art Leagues Childrens Weeklong Summer Art Camps will be held at 800 West Germantown Pike in East Norriton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday throughout the summer. The cost per session is $125 per student for ages 6 and up. Jo Ann Cooksey Bono teaches an introduction to basic drawing skills and techniques from 10 a.m. until the lunch break each day. In the afternoon sessions, Mary Vogel Lozinak involves the students in hands on projects such as collage, papermaking, T-shirt printing, 3D design and sculpy clay. Fridays Graduation Day includes an art show, awards ceremony and reception for parents, siblings, grandparents and friends. All supplies are included. Students provide their own lunch. A refrigerator is available and the building is air-conditioned. This is the 15th year to run this successful program. Both instructors are professional artists with State Police and Child Abuse Clearances. To register, call Jo Ann at 610-279-1008, or register on-line at www.gnal.org.

Health

Dresher Physical Therapy is hosting an interactive seminar discussing its Golf Assessment Progam April 30 from 10 a.m. to noon at Dresher Physical Therapy, 1075 Virginia Drive, Suite 200, Fort Washington. Physical therapist Chris Miller, certified through the Titleist Performance Institute, will discuss why your body may be the most important piece of golf equipment you invest in and how this can drastically improve your game. $10 in advance; $15 at the door. Call 215-619-4545 to reserve your spot.

The Chestnut Hill Center for Enrichment, Center on the Hill and Chestnut Hill Hospital will host a Senior Health and Resource Fair April 14 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, 8855 Germantown Ave. The event is free. For more information, call 215-248-0180 or e-mail chseniors@cavtel.net.

The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is hosting Help Yourself to Health, a new six-week workshop for older adults with ongoing health conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, heart disease and others. The free workshop will take place at the Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center, 45 Forest Ave. on six Thursdays, May 12 through June 16 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Although there is no charge to participate, registration is required. To register, call 215-619-8863.

The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is sponsoring an eight-week program called A Matter of Balance: Managing Concerns About Falls. Presented by the Montgomery County Health Department, this workshop will be held on Tuesdays, May 3 to June 21 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Ambler Center, 45 Forest Ave. If you pre-register by April 27, the fee is only $5! Registration at the first class is $10. (Checks should be payable to SAAC and will benefit our Meals on Wheels program that serves homebound seniors.) A workbook will be provided and refreshments will be served. Call 215-619-8863 to register or for more information.

Fort Washington Wellness Center classes are ongoing. There are several offered during lunch or right after work, for your convenience: Boot Camp from noon to 1 p.m. on Monday; Zumba is MWF from 11 a.m. to noon and Friday at 4 p.m.; there are 25 cycling classes; Ashtanga and Vinyasana Yoga and Pilates; and a group Womens Strength Training class M-F from 10 to 11 a.m. Questions, call Cathy DeMarco at 215-641-1245.

Following the success of other local area programs, Impact Sports and Upper Dublin Parks and Recreation are delighted to team up again to offer a spring program for the 2011 season! Upper Dublin area children ages 3-5 years old can attend a Sports Program featuring their favorite sports games; soccer, rugby, hockey, track and field, basketball, and more. The program will start on April 27 and run through June 1. Cost for the program is $85 for the six weeks. The classes will be running 12- 1 p.m.; 1- 2 p.m.; 2- 3 p.m. For more info or to register, call Upper Dublin Township on 215 643 1600 or visit their website a http://www.upperdublin.net.

Spring Aquatic Programs  UDHS Pool:

-Summer is just around the corner  Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool can help get you into shape! Programs begin in March; preregistration is required.

 Shallow Water Aerobics  Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 8-8:45 p.m., $40R/$50NR.

 Adult Swim Instructions  Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 7-8 p.m., $50R/$60NR

-Open Rec Swims are fun for the whole family! Come out on Fridays from 7-9 p.m. or Saturdays from 1-4 p.m. and enjoy use of the pool and diving area. Fridays are offered through June 17; Saturdays are offered March 12-May 21.

-Join a growing group of adult lap swimmers and water walkers. Lanes are set aside evenings and weekends for use; lanes are shared. Monday  Thursday from 7:30-9:30 p.m.; Fridays from 7-9 p.m. and Saturdays (March 12-May 21) from 1-4 p.m.

-Private Swimming & Diving Lessons for ages 3-adult are offered at the UDHS Pool through a partnership with the Upper Dublin Aquatic Club (UDAC). Visit the UDAC website for more information, www.udac.us, and click the link to UDHS Private Lessons.

-Looking for local programs for US Masters Swimming (adults) or Water Polo (all ages)? UDAC and UDSD are working together to develop programs that will be offered at the UDHS Pool. Add your name to Interest Lists by emailing slohoefer@upperdublin.net. emails will be sent about clinics and program start dates.

Questions about Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool, group use of the pool or pool rental? Contact Susan Lohoefer, Facility & Community Affairs Manager at slohoefer@upperdublin.net or call 215-643-8800 x8994.

SilverSneakers Fitness Program. The Healthyways SilverSneakers Fitness Program is a result-oriented program that enables older adults to take charge of their health. The program is an innovative blend of physical activity, healthy lifestyle and socially oriented programing. Members of the program are eligible for a free YMCA membership, with use of the pool and exercise equipment, along with customized classes designed for older adults who want to improve their strength, flexibility, balance and endurance. If you are a subscriber to Independence Blue Cross (Personal Choice 65 PPO) or Keystone 65 HMO, Bravo Health, or Health Options Programs (HOP), call the Ambler Area YMCA, 215-628-9950 or Hatboro Area YMCA, 215-674-4545. You can also visit www.silversneakers.com.

Zumba Fitness offers Zumba dance/fitness classes at Academy of Dance and Music/BBAD Studio located at 1524 DeKalb Pike in Blue Bell (behind Sherwin Williams). Classes are offered three times a week: Tuesdays at 6 p.m., Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 8 a.m. For a free trial pass for your first class, email us at info@danceandmusic.biz or call 610-277-2557. For more info, visit our site at www.academyofdanceandmusic.org.

Chestnut Hill Health Systems presents the following Health Education Programs:

FITNESS CLASSES

Golden Yoga: A Breathing, Stretching and Relaxation Class. Fridays, 2:30-3:30 p.m. Lea Auditorium, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. Registration for four classes at a time required. Golden Yoga is Classical Yoga, adapted by the SKY Foundation, to accommodate those who have difficulty getting up and down from the floor. The program includes postures, breathing, relaxation and meditation techniques, all performed while sitting in a chair and standing. Registration required. Call 215-247-3029. Cost: $20 for 4 classes per month.

Tai Chi: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8:30  9:30 a.m. Springfield Residence, 8601 Stenton Ave. Classes, for the novice or beginner/intermediate student, are designed to improve balance, power, posture, coordination, flexibility and mental focus. Slow, gentle movements are modified to most everyones abilities. For more information or to sign up for a free introductory class, call 215-882-2804. Cost: $8 per class/paid monthly.

SUPPORT GROUPS

Weight Loss Surgery Support Group: Fourth Wednesday of the month, 7-8 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. Join us for a monthly get-together where well share information for those interested in weight loss surgery, learn from guest speakers discussing current news on issues including lifestyle modification, nutrition and exercise and provide ongoing support for those who have completed surgery. Registration required. Call 215-753-2000.

Breast Cancer Networking Group: Fourth Tuesday of the month 5:30  7 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. A free, confidential support group for women living with a diagnosis of breast cancer designed to provide a forum for sharing information, feelings and concerns associated with breast cancer. Facilitated by Tish Wakefield, LCSW, Oncology Social Worker. Registration required. To register or for more information, call 215-248-8047.

New Moms Support Groups Tuesdays 10:30 a.m.  12 p.m.; contact Jeanine ORourke, MSW or 2:30  4 p.m.; contact Susan Schack, Ph.D Volunteer Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. The Center for Postpartum Depression at Chestnut Hill Hospital is pleased to offer two new support groups to support new moms. Both groups will be run by experienced mental health professionals who really get it when it comes to new motherhood and juggling relationships, extended family, work/family balance and self-care. If you are experiencing new mom challenges that often heighten anxiety and involve hormonally driven depression, join us for an informative and supportive forum to connect with other moms. Infants are welcome. $30 per session (flexible based on need). Registration is required. Call Dr. Schack, 646-265-2484, or Ms. ORourke, 215-206-2931.

Man to Man Prostate Cancer Support Group Third Thursday of the month 8-9 a.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. A networking group for men diagnosed with prostate cancer designed to provide education, support and encouragement. Spouses and partners welcome. Harry M. Baer, MD, Chief, Urology Division, will host Ask the Doctor. Registration required. Call 215-248-8325.

Contact the Senior Center by phone 215-248-0180 or email (chseniors@cavtel.net) with your questions about these programs or any of our on-going activities and classes.

Holy Redeemer HomeCare and Hospice seeks compassionate and emotionally mature volunteers to provide support to local hospice patients and their families in Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties. Volunteers may also assist with pet therapy and administrative work within the hospice department and are requested to have daytime availability. Hospice patient care volunteers visit with patients in their homes or nursing facilities once a week for two to three hours. They provide emotional support and companionship to patients and family members, assist with errands or provide respite for caregivers. Bereavement volunteers support the families of hospice patients following the loss of a loved one, while administrative volunteers assist with typing, mailings and/or filing. Hospice care workers provide a great service to families and loved ones of hospice patients. Many volunteers also report a great deal of personal satisfaction as a result of their services. Patient care and bereavement volunteers complete an application and attend an 18-hour volunteer training program that covers the medical, psychological and spiritual aspects of hospice volunteering. Day and evening training programs are offered. To sign up for volunteer opportunities in Pennsylvania, contact Holy Redeemer Volunteer Coordinator Jean Francis at 215-698-3737 or email jfrancis@holyredeemer.com.

Librarytalk

Upper Dublin Public Library, 805 Loch Alsh Avenue, Ft. Washington, 215-628-8744

www.upperdublinlibrary.org

APRIL CHILDRENS PROGRAMS:

Storytimes: Please register in the library.

o Wee Ones: 0 to 23 months Thursdays and Fridays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m.

o Tiny Tots: age 2. Wednesdays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m. and Fridays 11 to 11:20 a.m.

o Jr. Book Lovers: ages 3 to 6. Tuesdays 10:30 to 11 a.m.

o Bedtime Storytimes: 7 to 7:30 p.m. April 20 and 27. Wear your jammies, bring your teddy & hear Miss Barbara read bedtime stories! For ages 3 to 6.

APRIL TEEN PROGRAMS:

North Hills Library Teens April 28 from 4 to 6 p.m. Movie Matinee

APRIL UDPL ADULT PROGRAMS:

NEW! ESL Conversation Group. Tuesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. Interested in practicing your English in a safe and caring environment? Come to our conversation group and improve your skills! Please register with Kay Klocko at 215-628-8744 or kklocko@mclinc.org.

One-on-One Computer Mentoring. Get personalized assistance from experienced computer volunteers! Sign-up for a one-hour session. Limit one session per month. Please register  contact info above.

Book Groups Please register with Kay Klocko 215-628-8744.

o Daytimers: April 21 at 1:30 p.m. Tired of book groups where you all read the same book? Read any fiction or non-fiction book on this months theme: Explorers. Please register.

Meetings:

Annual Meeting of the Friends of UDPL: April 14 at 1 p.m.

Board of Directors: April 20 at 7 p.m.

Blue Bell Library www.wvpl.org Upcoming Events: The Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 650 Skippack Pike (Route 73) in Blue Bell, is diagonally across from the Blue Bell Inn. Call 215-643-1320 or visit their website at www.wvpl.org.

For children and teens at Blue Bell:

* Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian.

* Mondays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages.

* Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages.

* Fridays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages.

* Family Movies, new releases, second Saturdays of the month at 1:30 p.m.

* May 14  Despicable Me

* June 11  Alpha and Omega

* Special Events

* April  watch for date of spring/Easter events

* April 14 at 4:30 p.m.  Junior Lego Club for children ages 3 through 5. Parents and caregivers need to stay with children.

* April 14 at 7 p.m.  Jeopardy for ages 11 to 18. Test your book and library knowledge for prizes. Sign up to be a contestant. No sign up to be in the audience. Snacks provided.

* April 16 at 1 p.m.  Adult Mystery Book Group discussing The Beekeepers Apprentice by Laurie King.

* April 16 at 1:30 p.m.  Childrens event for One Book, Every Young Child celebration. Story and craft for book Whose Shoes?

* April 19 at 7 p.m. and April 26 at 1:30 p.m.- Adult book group discusses The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Group led by Adam Button.

* April 30 through May 3  Friends book sale with about 10,000 items for sale for children, teens and adults.

* May  sign up for Science in the Summer

* June  sign up for Enrichment Programs for Elementary-Age children

* June  sign up for Summer Reading, all ages

For adults at Blue Bell:

* Daytime Book Discussion Group  fourth Tuesday, Jan  April at 1:30 p.m.

* April 26  The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

* Night-time Book Discussion Group  third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m.

o April 19  The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

* Art Series with Dr. Sheldon Weintraub, docent at The Barnes and speaker at local colleges

o April 27 at 2 p.m. The Art of Looking at Art-Is She Nude or Is She Naked?

*Mystery Book Discussion Group, third Saturday of the month at 1 p.m.; new mystery theme each month; www.wvpl.org/programs

* Yoga on Mondays at 1:30 p.m. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop-in class.

* Tai Chi on Mondays at 3 p.m. with Dr. Kurt Findeisen. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop in class.

* Philadelphia Museum of Art presents class on their Marc Chagall exhibit, April 13 at 2 p.m.

* Giant Book Sale, April 29  May 3

o Starts with almost 10,000 items for children and adults!

o Held during library hours.

o Preview for members of the Friends of the Library, April 28 at 7 p.m.

o Join the Friends and attend the preview sale. Modest fee to join.

* Blooms at Blue Bell Gardening Series

o May 11 at 1 p.m.  Summer Bulbs by PA Horticultural Society

* Knitting group Mondays and Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Work on your project or observe and learn. The groups continue year-round in the community room.

* Socrates Cafe discussion group every Monday at 7 p.m. You pick the topic to discuss each week. No sign-up, nothing to read.

* Bridge every Friday at 12:30 p.m. New players welcome.

* Mah Jong every Wednesday at 1 p.m. New players welcome.

*Chess every Wednesday at 7p.m. for adults and teens 14 and older.

* Movie Matinee showing recent releases every Thursday at 2 p.m. April 14: Maos Last Dancer; April 21: Welcome to the Rileys; April 28: Conviction; May 5: Inception; May 12: Inside Job; May 19 The Kings Speech; May 26 The Fighter; June 2 Rabbit Hole; June 9 Black Swan; June 16 127 Hours

* Ongoing like-new, year-round book sale for adults & children during library hours

* Library opening at 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday!

Ambler Library, a branch of the Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 209 Race St., 215-646-1072. www.wvpl.org. All the following events occur at the Ambler Library.

* Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian.

* Tuesdays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages.

* Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages.

* For adults:

* Beading Group meets the first and third Monday of every month at 1 p.m. Work on your own projects or come to watch and learn.

* Free Family History Lookup with Connie Briggs. Email Connie for an appointment at the Ambler Library. conniebriggs@comcast.net

* Special Events:

* April 14 at 1:30 p.m.  Book Group discusses Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian.

* April 19 at 7 p.m.  Travel to Paris with world traveler Harry Balin. Tea and scones at 6:30 p.m.

* April 21 at 7 p.m.  Art with Sara for children in fourth through seventh grades.

*May 2 at 6:30 p.m.  Discuss the movie Lone Star with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time.

*May 10  Robert Capucci discusses Art into Fashion. Tea and scones served at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m.

*May 12 at 1:30p.m.  Book Group discusses The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.

*May 17  Tour the gardens of Devon and Southwest England with Lois McMullen. Tea and Scones at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m.

*June 13 at 6:30 p.m.  Discuss the movie Blade Runner with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time.

Meetings and Lectures

The Unisys Blue Bell Retiree Group will meet in the Church on the Mall in the Plymouth Meeting Mall April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Kathy Sacket Young, director/trainer with the North Penn YMCA, will speak on Keeping Fit in Retirement. For more information, contact Membership Committee Chairperson Jerry Feldscher at 610-275-3538 or President Al Rollin at 215-368-4833.

The next FWBA meeting will be April 28 at the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Networking begins at 11:30 a.m.; meeting from noon to 1 p.m. Leon Singletary, Principal, First Contact HR and FWBA Executive Board, will present: Social Media: How to Use It To Get More Business. Lunch is provided courtesy of the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Members are welcome to bring a guest. An RSVP is requested by return email or 215-628-0313.

Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern PA is hosting a information sessions over the next few weeks on how to become a Big Brother. The information sessions will take place: April 16 at noon, April 19 at 8 a.m. and April 28 at 6 p.m. All sessions will be held at the groups Norristown Office,t 530 DeKalb St., Norristown. For more information, call 610-277-2200.

The North Penn Chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) normally meets on the third Tuesday of each month from now until May. Meetings are held at the William Penn Inn on Route 202 and Sumneytown Pike, Upper Gwynedd, PA. Social hour starts at 5:30 p.m., dinner is served at 6:30 p.m., and the technical program begins at 7 p.m. Cost with reservation is $28 for members. Members without reservations and guests pay $30. Students with reservations pay $15. Reservations may be made by noon on the Monday preceding the meeting by phoning 215-371-1854 or emailing the reservation to northpennima@yahoo.com northpennima@yahoo.com. Information about the North Penn Chapter is available at http://northpenn.imanet.org/.

LeTip, a professional organization of men and women who are dedicated to the highest standards of competence and service meets every Tuesday at Cedar Brook Country Club, 180 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell at 7 a.m. -meeting officially starts at 7:16 a.m. and ends at 8:31 a.m. Our purpose is the exchange of business tips, leads, and referrals. Each business category is represented by one member and conflicts of interest are disallowed. Guests are welcome to visit any of our breakfast meetings.

Every third Thursday of month, Sunrise Assisted Living of Blue Bell (795 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell, PA 19422, 215-619-2777) serves as a satellite site to 148th Legislative district PA congressman Mike Gerber from 10 a.m. to noon. Stop by for help needed with things such as disability placards and license plates, vehicle registration, utilities issues, birth/death certificates,property tax/rent rebates, etc. Notary services arranged by appointment.

The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce is an action-oriented organization dedicated to promoting its members and the economic health of eastern Montgomery county. The Chamber is committed to serving as a catalyst by uniting business, community agencies, government and education to make our county a great place to live and work. For information, call 215-887-5122 or visit www.emccc.org.

Do you have a fear of public speaking? Blue Bell Toastmasters Club can help. We meet from 7 to 9 p.m., on the second and fourth Tuesday at the Marriott Courtyard, located on Route 202, directly across from the Montgomeryville Mall. Learn how to improve communication and leadership skills in a friendly and supportive environment. Guests are welcome. Admission fee: $5. For more info, visit www.bbtoast.org.

The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will hold the following meetings (for reservations to any of the following, email info@PennSuburban.org)

-Breakfast News Network, 7:30-8:45 a.m. at Normandy Farm Hotel (1401 Morris Road, Blue Bell, PA 19422) $15 members, includes full buffet breakfast. Join us for a networking program at Normandy Farm Hotel every Thursday morning for breakfast, business news, informative speakers, and plenty of networking. The cost includes a full breakfast buffet. Copies of the business cards will be made available to those who would like them.

The BNI, Fort Washington Chapter meets every Monday at The Hilton Garden Inn, 520 Pennsylvania Ave., Fort Washington for a networking meeting. Meetings are from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. Visitors are welcome. The only cost to attend is the cost of your meal. For information or a reservation to attend, please call Luanne Cram at 215-947-7784, or visit our Internet site at: http://www.BNIDVR.Com and click on the menu item Find a Chapter.

For the past seven years, people have enjoyed participating in WVWAs Adopt-a-Tree program. Individuals can support the Association in its reforestation efforts by purchasing native trees to be planted. Supporters can plant their adopted tree or have WVWA volunteers will plant it. Trees cost $30 each. If you would like to volunteer or purchase a tree(s), please contact: Bob Adams at Bob@wvwa.org or call: 215-646-8866 for more information. Check www.WVWA.org for directions and maps.

Sustainable Upper Dublin, http://sustainableupperdublin.org, meets the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m., at the Upper Dublin Township Building, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington, PA 19034. Please send any questions to suec@sustainableupperdublin.org or call 610-996-6316. To learn more about Sustainable Upper Dublin, view or join the discussion at http://googlegroups.com/group/sustainableupperdublin.

Special Events

The Mattie N. Dixon Community Cupboard will hold its first nutrition class April 19 at 10 a.m. at the Community Cupboard, 150 N. Main St., Ambler. Lynne Sinclair, a nutritionist from Abington Memorial Hospital specializing in diabetic nutrition, will conduct the class. Topics will include healthy eating, beneficial foods, recipes, making meals with every day foods, and how to use unfamiliar produce. A healthy snack will be provided.The class is is open to all residents in Montgomery County.

The Historical Society of Fort Washington presents The History of Conshohocken April 19 at 8 p.m. at the Clifton House, 473 Bethlehem Pike, Fort Washington. Jack Coll will present an illustrated program on the history of the Borough of Conshohocken. Coll is a longtime resident of Conshohocken and a member of the Conshohocken Historical Society. He is co-author with his son, Brian, of the Arcadia Then and Now Series book Conshohocken. He has also done books Conshohocken and West Conshohocken Sports and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Italian Feast. He has taken many photos for the Conshohocken Record and the Norristown Times Herald. This program is free. Refreshments will be served. For additional information, call 215-646-6065.

Taste of the White House Soiree featuring former White House Chef Walter Scheib will take place April 29 at 6 p.m. at Manufacturers Golf & Country Club in Fort Washington to celebrate HealthLinks 10th anniversary and honor its founders, the Eugene Jackson Family. The evening will heat up with a Chef Meet & Greet, followed by a specially selected presidential menu. Gala tickets are $150 per person. Proceeds benefit HealthLink, a free clinic providing compassionate, quality medical and dental care to uninsured, working adults in Bucks and Montgomery counties who fall in between the health care cracks. Go to http://tasteofthewhitehouse.charityhappenings.org to make reservations online or lend support through sponsorship. For event information, call 267-699-0124 or email jmarushak@healthlinkmedical.org.

The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association will hold an open house at the Evans-Mumbower Mill April 17 from 1 to 4 p.m. The Mill is at the corner of Swedesford and Township Line Roads in Upper Gwynedd. The open house is free but donations are welcome. For more information, call 215-646-8866 o email info@wvwa.org.

The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce will host Breakfast With Your County Commissioners and State Representatives April 21 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn Fort Washington, 432 W. Pennasylvania Ave. Commissioners: James R. Matthews (Chairman), Joseph M. Hoeffel (Vice Chair), State Representatives: Todd Stephens (District 151) and Josh Shapiro (District 153). Register onlineat www.emccc.org. $10 for EMCCC member; $20 for non-members.

Upper Dublins Districtwide Allied Art Show will be held April 27 from 5:30 to 9 p.m. in the Upper Dublin High School Athletic Complex.

The Rev. Alfred Muli, chaplain at Fort Washington Estates, will be the featured speaker at the Kiwanis sponsored breakfast observing the National Day of Prayer May 5 at 7 a.m. at the William Penn Inn. The breakfast is open to the public ($15). Reservations can be made by calling 215-646-4356 or by emailing georgesaurman@Juno.com.

The Upper Dublin Shade Tree Commission invites people to participate in its spring bare root planting events, sponsored in part by Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Friends of Robbins Park. On April 9, zix trees will be planted at the Evelyn B. Wright Park & Community Pool, 401 Logan Ave., North Hills, at 9 a.m., followed by the planting of 10 trees at Sheeleigh Park, Loch Alsh Avenue and Douglas Street, Ambler, at 10:15 a.m. On April 29, students from Upper Dublin High School will join the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to plant 16 trees in Robbins Park, Butler Pike and Meetinghouse Road, Ambler, to help launch the societys Million Trees campaign. This event will occur in conjunction with Temple Amblers EarthFest. Experienced tree-tenders are sought to assist the students. For more information,contact Ron Ayres at 215-653-0421 or 215-483-4348.

The Friends of the Wissahickon and the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association are teaming up once again to clean the Wissahickon Creek from top to bottom April 30 from 9 a.m. to noon. This spring marks the 41st anniversary of Wissahickon Valley Watershed Associations annual Creek Clean Up, and the second year that FOW has teamed up with WVWA. Volunteers of all ages will clean the creek, the surrounding trails and the many tributaries of the Wissahickon Creek. Armed with bags, volunteers will be assigned to sections of the creek. Following the clean up, all volunteers are invited to WVWAs Talkin Trash picnic in Fort Washington State Park, with food provided by Whole Foods Market of North Wales. The pavilion is located on Mill Road in Flourtown. To help out in Montgomery County, all volunteers must be pre-assigned a section of the Wissahickon Creek to clean. Please contact Bob Adams, WVWA director of stewardship, at 215-646-8866 ext. 14 or bob@wvwa.org. To work with the Friends of the Wissahickon in Philadelphia, meet at the pavilion along Forbidden Drive, a short distance south of the intersection of Forbidden Drive and Northwestern Avenue. Limited parking is available along Northwestern Avenue and other nearby streets. Volunteers are encouraged to bike or carpool to the event. To participate, register at www.fow.org. Contact Kevin Groves with questions at 215-247-0417 ext. 105 or groves@fow.org.

Montgomery County Community Colleges International Club invites the community to the second annual International Festival April 20 from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The rain date is April 26. The International Club will transform the outside quad area into multicultural celebration with various performances by dancers, singers and musicians. Artists will share their artwork at various display tables. Activities include games, raffles, Easter egg decorating and henna tattoos. Students will have samples of international cuisine at tables representing different countries and will serve food from various local ethnic restaurants. Throughout the evening, volunteers will accept donations and will raffle gift baskets and prizes to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity. Donations of food, international clothes and prizes are needed. Volunteers, including artists and performers, are welcome. For more information or to sponsor an activity, contact Gillian Nel, International Club president, at gnel9277@students.mc3.edu or 267-974-0163.

The Arts and Humanities Division at Montgomery County Community College is partnering with the Philadelphia Writers Conference to host Memoirs Matter: How Life Stories (Including Yours) Can Transform Your Relationship to Literature April 23 from 1 to 3 p.m. in Advanced Technology Center room 101, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The event is free and open to the public. In the first part of this two-hour seminar, professor and author Robert Waxler will explain how writing his two memoirs affected his life as well as his relationship to literature. In the second part, blogger and workshop leader Jerry Waxler will present a sequence of steps to help writers find their own story. For information, contact Dana Resente at dresente@mc3.edu.

The Maple Glen Garden Club will hold its fourth annual Plant Sale on May 7 from 8 to 11 a.m. Perennials, shrubs, vegetables and native plants grown by the club members will be sold. The club uses the plant sale proceeds to fund community projects, a college scholarship and community plantings. The sale will be held in the 500 block of Coach Road, Horsham, as part of a neighborhood garage sale. Plants will be sold at bargain prices. For more information, email MapleGlenGardenClub@gmail.com.

The Relay for Life Craft Show is looking for local crafters to participate in show, which will be May 21 from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Wissahickon High School track, 521 Houston Road, Ambler. There is a $10 entry fee, and 20 percent of sales are donated to the American Cancer Society. Participants will receive a 6-foot table under a tent. For information, contact Joanne at joannescoles@comcast.net or Mindy at mcamsilver@comcast.net.

Spring House Estates is hosting its annual book fair on April 18 from 4 to 7 p.m. and April 9 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Included will be hardback and paperback used books. Spring House Estates is located at 728 Norristown Road, Lower Gwynedd.

The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will present the Penn Suburban/Hatfield Joint Business Card Exchange April 20 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Univest Bank Lansdale Area Financial Service Center, 120 Forty Foot Road, Hatfield. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. Join Univest National Bank and Trust Co. for a spring-inspired Business Card Exchange at its newest office in the Hatfield Pointe Shopping Center. Come out and meet members of Univests executive management team while enjoying fine food and beverages.

13th Annual Community Reading Day Kick-off Breakfast Get Together April 26 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the North Wales Area Library, 233 Swartley St., North Wales. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. For more information, contact the chamber office at 215-362-9200 or info@pennsuburban.org. Join presenting sponsor Verizon, chamber staff and fellow members for the Community Reading Day volunteer get together. The Community Reading Day program allows volunteers to read a designated book to second-grade students throughout 38 area public and private schools and present the book as a gift to each class. Even if you are not a volunteer, you are cordially invited to stop by to network, enjoy coffee and pastries.

Ambler Mennonite Church is hosting a Spring Craft Show and Flea Market May 21 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Rain date will be May 28. The community is invited to shop the great craft booths, find some gifts and deals, as well as enjoy home baked goods and tasty lunch specials. Childrens activities are planned. All vendors are encouraged to contact the church at 215-643-4876 or AmblerMennonite@verizon.net. Advertising, signage, customer parking and a shuttle to auxiliary parking at nearby lots for vendors will be provided. 10 foot by 10 foot spaces can be rented for $5 each and tables for an additional $5 each. All proceeds from space and table rentals go toward school kits for children around the world. The church is located at the corner of East Mt. Pleasant Avenue and North Spring Garden Street, Ambler.

The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association presents The Life & Times of Aquatic Insects in the Wissahickon Creek April 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. Join WVWA for a hands-on program. RSVP required: www.wvwa.org or 215-646-8866. WVWA member fee: $5 per person / $15 per family. Non-WVWA member fee: $10 per person / $20 per family.

The photography exhibition Natures Palette by photo-artist Judy Miller will run March 18 to May 19 at the Art in the Storefront gallery, 41 E. Butler Pike, Ambler.

JPRN  Networking For People in Transition & People Who Can Help Them  Unemployment remains high. JPRN, the Jarrettown Professional Relationship Network can help. Are you trying to network your way to a new job? Do you have expertise or contacts that can help people in transition? Is your company or organization looking for people in the area? This is a free outreach program to support those seeking work, involve people with contacts and networking know how, and involve local companies. Meetings held monthly at Jarrettown United Methodist Church, Limekiln Pike.

Pennsylvanias Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) grant program is now open for the 2010-11 heating season. Grants are based on income, family size, type of heating fuel and region. Additional information, such as specific income limits, and applications for LIHEAP grants are available online via the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Access to Social Services (COMPASS) website at www.compass.state.pa.us. Applications are available at most public officals district offices, county assistance offices, local utility companies and community service agencies, such as Area Agencies on Aging or community action agencies.

Begin your holiday shopping at Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation! Entertainment books for 2011, Philadelphia North, are now on sale at $30 each. Regal/United Artists movie tickets are on sale for just $7.50 each, and tickets to the Adventure Aquarium, Baltimore Aquarium, and the Philadelphia Zoo are also available. Discounted ski vouchers to area mountains will be arriving in December; call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation office hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

RSVP of Montgomery County and the Wissahickon Valley Public Library have partnered again to offer the public their popular free mock interview sessions. The mock interviews are conducted by RSVP volunteers who are retired professionals, some of whom were in hiring positions themselves. Packets of information which include a sample employment application and interviewing tips with mock interview questions are available at the library to pick up prior to a scheduled mock interview or will be sent via email once the interview is scheduled. To schedule your interview, please contact Janis Glusman at RSVP 610-834-1040, ext. 16. The library is also offering a free resume review service. Bring in your current resume and the professional reference staff will assist you with hints and tips on capturing your work history accurately.

Registration for Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation summer playgrounds, Camp B.I.G. and Small Folks, X-Zone, and sports camps has began. Register online at www.upperdublin.net/store, or at the UDP&R office, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington. Call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information.

Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Danielles Espresso Cafe presents Mornings at Mondaug Bark Park April 16 and May 21 from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Meet fellow dog lovers. These events include complimentary coffee, treats for people and pups and raffles/giveaways.

Upper Dublins Annual Spring Flea Market will be held June 4 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Reserve a table, or come and shop. Tables are $15 for UD residents, $20 for non-residents. This successful event occurs rain or shine. Refreshments available. Call 215-643-1600 ext. 3443 to register for a table.

Regal movie tickets available for purchase at Upper Dublin Township Parks & Recreation. Reduced rate: $7.50 per ticket. Some restrictions apply. Call 215-643-1600 x3443.

Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation movie tickets $7.50 Regal Cinemas, United Artist & Edwards Cinemas on sale throughout the year Monday  Friday from 9 a.m.  4 p.m.

Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation Camp Sign-ups for Stony Creek Day Camp  Stony Creek Tracers and Park n Tots. Register on-line at www.whitpaintownship.org OrCome to Township Building with check or Visa MasterCard Monday  Friday from 9 a.m.  4 p.m. For additional information call 610.277-2400 ext. 374

Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation offers exciting new programs for the fall:

-Returning favorites include UK Elite Petite Soccer, Tiny Dancers, Kiddie Tennis, Fun-nastics, Messy Playtime, Little Chefs, and more. Babysitters Training will be offered in November and December. Continuing Adult Fitness Classes include Cardio Circuit, Core & More, Yoga, Boxing, and Adult G.Y.M. For more information call 215-643-1600 x3443. Register for programs online at www.upperdublin.net/store.

Music and Theater

The community is invited to a Cantors Concert April 16 at 8 p.m. Congregation Beth Or, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen. Listen and hum-along to the Yiddish, pop tunes and classical music performed by Congregation Beth Ors own Cantor David Green and his special guest, Cantor Irvin Bell, from Temple Beth Israel in Deerfield Beach, Fla. The cantors will be accompanied by Mark Sobol and his Klezmer musicians. Tickets are $18 in advance and $25 at the door. RSVP with payment to Barb Murtha, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen, PA 19002, or call 215-646-5806 ext. 220.

Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse will host the Jameson Sisters May 14. Doors open at 7:30 pm, performance at 8:00 pm. Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse is located at the corner of Rte. 202 & Sumneytown Pike, Gwynedd. $5 suggested donation. Light refreshment available at a modest cost. For further information, call 215-393-9576 or visit gwyneddmeeting.org/coffeehouse.html.

Celebrate patriotism through song with Gwynedd-Mercy Colleges choir, the Voices of Gwynedd, as it presents Hear America Singing April 15 at 8 p.m. The choir will perform song selections from all over the country, including Georgia on My Mind, New York State of Mind, and a medley including Philadelphia Freedom and Allentown. The performance will end with When the Saints Go Marching In to acknowledge the choirs upcoming tour in New Orleans. Hear America Singing will take place in the Julia Ball Auditorium, located in St. Bernard Hall. Parking is available in lots A, C and D. Admission is free.

The Choristers will present Anton Dvoraks Stabat Mater April 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in Ambler. The choir will be accompanied by a 41-piece orchestra. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for senior citizens, $10 for students and children are free. Tickets will be sold in advance or at the door. For more information, call 215-542-7871 or visit TheChoristers.org

Religious News

The Staircase Gallery at Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation in Fort Washington will feature the work of Emily Ennuat-Lustine. The artist will be showing paintings and graphics inspired by her own personal spiritual journey and quest for meaning. Some of the works to be shown have been inspired by Biblical Psalms and writings. Her work has been shown at Abington Art Center, Cheltenham Arts Center and Old City Gallery of Jewish Art among others. The exhibition is open Friday evenings starting Feb. 18 after Shabbat services. Gallery hours are: Mondays through Thursdays 10-4:30, Fridays 10-3 and following Shabbat Services and Sundays 10-1. The synagogue is located at 190 Camp Hill Road in Fort Washington. For additional information contact the synagogue office at 215-283-0276.

Reunions

St. Matthews High School Conshohocken Class of 1961 is looking for classmates. For details, contact Greg Marincola at 215-646-2239, 215-740-1296 or gregcola@comcast.net.

Olney High School Class of 1971 is Lloking for classmates for a 40th reunion Oct. 28. For details, contact Judy at ohsclassof71@yahoo.com or 215-870-7572.

Abington High School Class of 1961 is seeking classmates for a 50-year reunion to be held Oct. 14-15, 2011.Visit the website, www.abington61.com, for details or call 215-947-1779.

Overbrook High School class of January 1956 is having a 55 year reunion on May 22, 2011 at the Bala Golf Club in Philadelphia. For information please contact overbrookreunion56@comcast.net

Germantown High School Class Of January 1961 is looking for classmates for 50th year reunion to take place in May of 2011. Please contact: 215-362-9148, 856-577-0659 or samdelcomo@comcast.net

The June 1961 class of Germantown High School is holding their 50th reunion on May 15, which will be a brunch. For further details please contact Linda Dorfman Alten at lindaalten@yahoo.com or call 215-441-8411.

Support

New Life Presbyterian Church in Dresher, will host GriefShare, a special seminar and support group which will run on Monday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m., from March 7 through June 6. At each meeting there will be a DVD about the grief process, discussion and reference to a grief workbook. Preregistration is required to secure a place in the group and to purchase a GriefShare notebook (for a one-time fee of $15). The notebook goes along with the 13-week schedule covering such topics as: living with grief, the effects of grief, and stuck in grief. For more information or to register, call: Sandy Elder at 215-884-5149.

PUPS (People Understanding Parkinsons) A self-help group for those adjusting to a new diagnosis or dealing with the early stages of Parkinsons Disease. Meets fourth Tuesday of the month from 1 to 2:30 p.m., at Abington Health Center, Schilling Campus, Willowood Building, 2510 Maryland Road, Suite 251, Willow Grove. For more information or to RSVP, contact Lorna at 215-542-2931.

The North Penn Visiting Nurse Associations Meals on Wheels program is looking for volunteers to pack or deliver meals to the elderly and infirmed. Meals are packed and delivered mornings, Monday through Friday. You can volunteer for as many days per week or month as you would like. Packaging meals requires approximately 2-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves making sandwiches, packaging food into individual serving containers and packing coolers with the meals. Delivering meals requires approximately 1-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves loading coolers into your car and delivering a route of approximately 10 to 15 stops. The Meals on Wheels program is also in need of emergency, winter-weather volunteers to pack and deliver meals in bad weather. North Penn VNA is located at 51 Medical Campus Drive in Lansdale and delivers meals in the Lansdale, North Wales and Blue Bell areas. For more information or to volunteer, please call Bridget, North Penn VNA Meals on Wheels coordinator at 215-855-8296.

Elkins Park Area CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) meets the first Tuesday of every month, 7- 8:30 p.m., at Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital in Elkins Park. For information on CHADD or ADHD, please see our website www.chadd.net/249 or call Claire Noyes at: 215-779-6656.

Center for Loss and Bereavement, 3847 Skippack Pike, Skippack (610-222-4110) www.bereavementcenter.org Offers professional counseling for individuals, couples, children and families dealing with issues of loss and bereavement. Six-week adult support groups: Newly forming young adult grief support group  every other Wednesday, 7  8:15 p.m. (free of charge); Monthly loss of child support  second Mondays, 7-8:15 p.m.; Six-week young loss of spouse/partner  Thursdays, 10-11:15 a.m.; Other groups scheduled as interest is shown for suicide loss support, adult loss of parent, motherless daughters, adult loss of sibling, coping with chronic illness and disability and mens loss of spouse. Nellos Corner Family Bereavement program offers peer grief support groups for ages 4 through teen and their caregivers  Every other Tuesday or Wednesday (free of charge) Local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children also meets at the Center. Registration required. Call for further information.

CHADD is a national organization for children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, providing education, advocacy and support for individuals and their families with AD/HD. Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital, 60 Township Line Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027, will host children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder on the First Tuesday of each month 7  8:30 p.m. Free, no childcare provided.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphias Kehillah of Old York Road is sponsoring a free Caregiver Support Group for individuals who care for an elderly person with cognitive and/or physical impairments. The group meets at SarahCare Adult Day Care Center, 101 Washington Lane, Suite G-6, Jenkintown, Pa., on the first Wednesday of each month. Patty Rich,
NORRISTOWN  A court ruling on Tuesday ordering that undated Pennsylvania mail-in ballots be segregated wont change much in Montgomery County, according to election officials. With regard to dated and undated ballots, theres still some litigation surrounding them. So our plan is to handle that exactly how we did in the primary, Montgomery County Elections Director Dori Sawyer said on...
December 29, 2016

U.S. Embassy Turkey Openly Lies About U.S. YPG Support

U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Turkey - December 28 2016

The truth regarding misinformation in Turkish media concerning United States and Coalition operations against ISIL in Syria:

There is considerable misinformation circulating in Turkish media concerning U.S. and Coalition operations against ISIL in Syria. For those interested in the truths, here are the truths:

...

The United States government has not provided weapons or explosives to the YPG or the PKK  period.

Washington Post - December 28 2016

On the road to Raqqa:

At the heart of the issue is the U.S. militarys policy of sending arms to the area controlled by the main Syrian Kurdish militia, the Peoples Protection Units, widely known as the YPG. The decision has paid off so far. The YPG  which constitutes the Kurdish component of the SDF  has proved to be the United States most effective military ally in Syria, and it has retaken vast swaths of territory.

The embassy statement denying weapon and ammunition support for the YPG is obviously a lie. That the U.S. provides and provided weapons and ammunition to the YPG since 2014 is definitely true.

The same U.S. Embassy statement also denied that the U.S. supports or supported ISIS aka DAESH:

The United States government is not supporting DAESH. The USG did not create or support DAESH in the past. Assertions the United States government is supporting DAESH are not true.

There are many indications and that the U.S. actively supported ISIS aka DAESH in at least in its early years.

In 2013 the Georgian Special Forces officer of Chechen heritage Abu Omar al-Shishani, who had had extensive U.S. military training, was the ISIS commander that led ISIS and the U.S. supported Free Syrian Army under U.S. paid FSA Colonel Abdul Jabbar al-Okaidi in the capture of the Syrian Air Force base Menagh.

Who supplied and paid ISIS for that service?

Recent ISIS videos taken near al-Bab show ISIS attacks on Turkish Leopard 2A4 tanks with U.S. manufactured TOW anti-tank missiles. Those fell from the sky?

The statement by the U.S. Embassy in Turkey is easily proven to be an outright lie. Why the State Department believes it is smart to officially put out such blatant untruth is inconceivable. It surely does not add to the credibility of any of its other statements.



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Screenshot of the embassy statement:



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Posted by b on December 29, 2016 at 5:11 UTC | Permalink

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The teenager who police say hit an elderly woman on Christmas Day has been charged in the case.

Lendlee McPeters, 17, from Morganton, was charged Wednesday with reckless driving and misdemeanor death by vehicle, said North Carolina Highway Patrol Sgt. Rusty Jones.

McPeters is accused of hitting Betty Biggerstaff Causby, 81, on Christmas while she was getting her newspaper. Causby died early Monday morning at a Charlotte hospital after being airlifted to there from Morganton.

Causbys funeral was on Wednesday afternoon.

Troopers say McPeters was traveling north on N.C. 181 on Sunday evening when she ran off the right side of the road. McPeters told troopers she had fallen asleep and awoke when her vehicle was hitting mailboxes.

Falling asleep while driving is considered reckless and careless driving in North Carolina, Jones said.

McPeters told troopers she tried to bring the car back onto the road. Causby was hit as she was at her paper box. The wreck happened near Oak Hill Fire Department.
2016 was a nutty year  likely as nutty as I felt all year long. Theres no getting away from the losses of the year and the unusual events that have rocked the music world. In terms of music icons who died, 2016 is rivaled only by 1959 and 1970. Personally, Im still trying to make sense of it all and have realized that I just do best to identify that I feel out of sorts and vulnerable, probably the way my dog does after we get all of his hair cut off in the summer, like were in the midst of a transition.

In 2016, the world of rock lost, among some others, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Prince, Merle Haggard, George Michael, Maurice White, Leon Russell and Leonard Cohen. These are massive names in their respective categories. All of these gave us musical guidance for navigating our own internal confusion, our joys, our pains, our decisions, and our seeking whats really real. Personally, as a child of the 1980s, a world without David Bowie, Prince and Glenn Frey is hard to imagine. They always seemed so strong to me. Following the evolution of their music was like the evolution many experience (well, some folks work really hard at NOT evolving) as our interests, our visions of beauty change, and our viewpoint of reality change. Yet, there was always the stability of the huge hits that could play and remind me of how I saw the world when I first heard them.

Some folks are afraid of self-reflection, but Ive decided that unless I map my journey, Im destined to present folks an unexamined life in which everything I do is perfect  and anyone who knows me is fully aware that thats not true. For me, music is the most likely key to self-discovery and critique. Even as I listen to the songs the young and robust Bowie, Prince and Frey created, I cant help but get a bit introspective about my own mortality and the ways that I live out my own story. Through their songs, they asked the questions and shared the discoveries of life as they experienced them. These are some of the folks whove walked me through my own transitions  in other words, theyve helped me grow up.

My belief is that most people dont truly mind change, but the transitions can be terrifying because the transitions in most things are when we dont have the certainty that everything will be ok. You can get angry or take it all in stride (dont let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy). In fact, growing up is scary, but its what every transition in life represents.

The ch-ch-ch-ch-changes dont stop  ever. Change is inevitable. Weve already changed from who we were the first time we heard Little Red Corvette. We view the world differently from the days when we decorated our bedroom wall with the Star Wars poster with Princess Leia with her cinnamon-bun hair. Losing Carrie Fisher, then Debbie Reynolds (man, I loved Singin in the Rain as a kid!) makes us have to let go of something that they represented to us. Its the same with John Glenn, a larger than life persona who was almost matter-of-fact about the extraordinary things he did (I mean, he did realize he risked his life a lot, right?). Change forces us to grow up.

The death of legends has always served as reminder that we all die, no matter how extraordinary our accomplishments. We cant ignore the value, and sometimes controversy, of the lives and work of mere mortals like Antonin Scalia, Harper Lee, Umberto Eco, Nancy Reagan, Pat Conroy, Garry Shandling, Joe Garagiola, Fidel Castro, George Kennedy, Morley Safer, Muhammad Ali, Ralph Stanley, Pat Summit, Elie Weisel, Gary Marshall, Gene Wilder, W.P. Kinsella, Arnold Palmer, Shimon Peres, Gwen Ifil, Craig Sager, Janet Reno, and Florence Henderson  among so many others. These people were not just famous  they were legendary, massive presences who changed realities, asked us questions, made us angry, helped us escape, made us dream big, challenged us, and who comforted us. But just as important as any of the celebrities are the lives of the 450,000 Syrians who died this year, with 50,000 of them children, or anyone that you or I said goodbye to for the last time. 2016 was one very public reminder after another of our own mortal vulnerability  and for those honest and courageous enough to face the truth and give up self-delusions, it brings with it a lot of humility that can be tough to swallow.

Perhaps denying mortality is why some people childishly seek power for the sake of power, pass laws in the shadows, and wield power only to get more of it. But in the end, those who wield power end up just as dead as those whose names we never know. What did it all amount to? I always wonder what the powerful and the famous think about their lives deep down inside. Are they as aware of their anger and greed and weakness as church taught me to be of mine?

It is such a profound thump to the forehead to be forced to recognize that weve only got a little bit of time on this rock. Whats more important than the recognition we get from others is whether we spend our time on things that really matter. The illusion of media and politics is that its easy to live a vicarious fantasy through celebrities and politicians (which is really infantile, but so simple its almost irresistible). The reality has always been that its not up to them to make our lives better  its up to us to live lives we are proud to live.

2016 was a tough year and its effects will linger for a long time. It affected all of us on a personal level. Moving into 2017, we are living through a lot of transitions. How we get through them is not up to fate or the incoming administrations (though they will affect us for sure). We are always tested by the reality of change and our own process of maturity. How we get through the inevitable transitions will be up to us and how grown up were willing to be.

Jonathan Henley is the host of Road Signs radio show, which airs Sunday nights from 10 p.m. to midnight on 1065 The End. Contact Henley via email at roadsigns@1065.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/roadsignsradio. Read past columns and join his blog at www.1065.com/onair/road-signs-51152/.
The vicious attack on a Christmas market in Berlin last week reminds us that terrorism has become a fact of life in our world. How do we stop a hate-filled fanatic from ramming a truck into a crowd of holiday shoppers anywhere, anytime? Now that terrorist networks have decided that trucks can be as effective at mass killings as bombs, it will be increasingly difficult to discover and disrupt such attacks.

The planning and access to materials required to build, transport and detonate bombs demand a level of sophistication beyond the level of all but the dedicated and connected would-be terrorists. But hijacking a truck and using it as a weapon takes no more skill than that of a common criminal. The wonder is that there have not been more of these attacks on civilian populations in the West.

Increasingly, many people believe that the only way to stop the carnage is to shut our borders to those who might be terrorists. In the wake of the Berlin attack, President-elect Donald Trump said, "You know my plans." But he left open whether he was referring to the wholesale ban on Muslims entering the U.S. he proposed early in his campaign or his revised plan to limit travel from countries with a history of Islamic extremism, which would rule out much of the Arab world, South Asia and even Indonesia and the Philippines. Trump will find implementing such plans difficult, if not impossible. He will be challenged in court, will face serious backlash from the affected countries and could end up playing right into the hands of the terrorist propaganda machine.

Would that it were so easy as building walls and setting up more secure entry systems to stop the terrorist threat in our homeland. Most terrorists who have struck this country have been homegrown, either born in or living in the U.S. much of their lives, and not all of them have been Islamists. Think Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people, including 19 children, and injured 684 others by bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Even if we can stop new terrorists from entering the United States, it is nearly impossible to root out every aspiring terrorist already in our midst. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best, within constitutional means, but the sad fact is that we will no doubt fail to stop all future attacks.

We live in a time of permanent warfare. Our current wars are not on the same scale as previous wars, but the pain to victims' families is no less for their smaller numbers. The United States lost a half-million lives in the Civil War (at a time when our population was a fraction of today's), over 400,000 during World War II and some 58,000 during Vietnam. We've lost about 2,300 in Afghanistan and nearly 4,500 in Iraq. We have been fortunate throughout our history that most of our battles have been fought on foreign shores, but the war on terror has claimed victims on U.S. soil, as well as abroad. And there is no end in sight for this war.

Our best hope to be victorious in this war is to battle it at its source. We won't defeat the Islamic State group by treating all Muslims as if they are terrorists. Nor should we abandon our constitutional values in hopes of quashing an ideological enemy. But we do have a right to fight the clear and present danger of an Islamic State-led propaganda effort to recruit terrorists from among our residents. We need more and better resources to disrupt Islamic State communication networks. We need continued efforts to dismantle and destroy the terrorist networks in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. And we need the vigilance of the Muslim community to speak up when a member of the community appears to have succumbed to the attraction of radical Islam.

In the end, we will be victorious in this war because an ideology of hate and subjugation cannot survive forever. But that knowledge is cold comfort to those who will buried their dead this Christmas holiday.

Linda Chavez is the author of "An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal." To find out more about Linda Chavez, visit www.creators.com.
Reza Masoudi recently took the time to tell me how he and his wife came to open their couture shop Bahar & Reza in Oakwood (2308 Far Hills Avenue).

My wife and I first met when we were college students in Iran. Like many young Iranians  especially those interested in fashion  we dreamed of building a life outside of Iran. I left first, and studied at Wright State. Then Bahar joined me in Dayton and we were married eight years ago.

Before the revolution Empress Farah, wife of the late Shah of Iran, was known for the fashions she wore. She had gowns made for her that were modern in design but used fabric decorated with ancient Persian motifs. We decided to try something similar.

Our first venture was on Ebay, selling a few simple items like ties and scarves using fabric with Persian designs. We were amazed at how many we sold. So we tried a few more items and they also sold well. Next we put up a website and started taking part in some of the larger U.S. fashion shows. The business continued to grow. Our fashions have been worn on the red carpet in L.A. and Empress Farah, who now lives in exile in Washington D.C. and in Paris, is one of our customers.

People in the fashion industry advised us that our next step should be a shop in L.A. but we drug our feet. The cost to rent space in L.A. was very high, and we had both grown to like living in Dayton. Then 10 months ago I saw a For Rent sign in the window of this store. I was the first person to call the landlord and I signed the lease immediately. Results have been good so far, and we hope to be able to continue to grow our business while staying here in Dayton.


General Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party (LPRP) and President of Laos Bounnhang Volachith paid an official visit to Vietnam on April 25-27 at the invitation of Party Chief Nguyen Phu Trong and State President Tran Dai Quang.











During the visit, Mr Volachith and Vietnamese leaders discussed measures to enforce their traditional friendship, bring Vietnam-Laos ties to a new height, and benefit the two peoples for peace, stability, and development in the region.







US President Barack Obama paid his official visit to Vietnam on May 23-25 at the invitation of President Tran Dai Quang.







An official welcome ceremony for US President Barack Obama took place on May 23 morning at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi.









During talks with President Tran Dai Quang, President Obama said the US lifted the embargo on lethal arms sales to Vietnam.













At a meeting with Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong on May 23, the US President praised the Vietnamese Communist Party (CPV)'s vision in leading Vietnam to gain great achievements over the past years.









At a meeting with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc the same day, the two leaders discussed measures to bolster the Vietnam-US comprehensive partnership, with priority given to development cooperation.











US President Barack Obama toured the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex on May 23, accompanied by National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.













Vietnam and US presidents chaired an international press conference in Hanoi on May 23 to answer reporters queries on the outcomes of their talks and directions for the two countries relations going forward.











Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Vietnam on September 2-3 at the invitation of his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc.













The Indian PM visited the Stilt House of the late President Ho Chi Minh and his fish pond.













Vietnam and India PMs held talks.









On September 5, Frances President Francois Hollande began a three-day visit to Vietnam at the invitation of his Vietnamese counterpart Tran Dai Quang .













During the talks, the two presidents agreed that Vietnam and France need to have a long-term cooperation vision that can ensure their common interests. To do that, political connections must be tightened first.







Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc had a meeting with visiting French President Francois Hollande in Hanoi on September 6 to discuss measures to foster bilateral partnership in all fields and make their ties deeper and more effective.











President Francois Hollande met Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong,







and National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan







Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte arrived at Noi Bai International Airport in the afternoon of September 28, starting a two-day visit to Vietnam at the invitation of President Tran Dai Quang.











Talks were held between the two Presidents in Hanoi on September 29 during which both sides vowed to step up political and diplomatic cooperation through regular exchange of all-level visits and strengthened ties on the Party, government, State, National Assembly and people-to-people exchange.















Vietnam and the Philippines issued a Joint Statement on the official visit on September 28-29 of President of the Republic of Philippines Rodrigo Duterte to Vietnam.













An official welcome ceremony for Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen was hosted by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc with full honours on December 20 at Presidential Palace in Hanoi.













In the Joint Statement, the two sides agreed that strengthening and advancing the friendship and cooperation between Vietnam and Cambodia is of crucial importance for both nations. They committed to continually consolidate and promote the bilateral relations under the motto good neighborliness, traditional friendship, comprehensive cooperation, and long-lasting stability.






SECAUCUS, N.J. (AP)  The family of an 8-year-old New Jersey boy says he was kicked out of Cub Scouts because he is transgender, a move that could open a new front in the debate over discrimination in Scouting.

Joe Maldonado joined Pack 87 in Secaucus in October and was asked to leave about a month later, according to The Record (http://bit.ly/2i48erC).

"I'm way more angry than sad," Joe said in a story published Tuesday. "My identity is a boy. If I was them, I would let every person in the world go in. It's right to do."

Joe was born a girl but has identified as male for more than a year. His mother, Kristie Maldonado, said Joe is accepted as a boy at school and that it was complaints from parents  not Joe's fellow Scouts  that led to his ouster.

"Not one of the kids said, 'You don't belong here,'" Maldonado said.

The Boy Scouts of America endured years of controversy before ultimately lifting bans on gay Scouts and leaders in recent years. But spokeswoman Effie Delimarkos said in a statement the organization considers transgender children as a separate issue.

"No youth may be removed from any of our programs on the basis of his or her sexual orientation," she said, but added: "Gender identity isn't related to sexual orientation."

She declined to directly address Joe's situation or say if there's a written policy on transgender participants. The statement said Cub Scout programs are for those identified as boys on their birth certificates.

The Boy Scouts of America is not known to have rejected any Scouts over gender identity before the Secaucus case, said Justin Wilson, the executive director of Scouts for Equality.

Wilson said he knows of at least two transgender boys who are Cub Scouts, one in a southern state that he did not name and the other in New York. He does not know of any instances where Scouts asked for a birth certificate as a condition of membership.

Maldonado said she was not aware that anyone had a problem with her son being a member of the pack, which is hosted by Immaculate Conception Church, until she received a phone call from the Northern New Jersey Council of Boy Scouts.

A spokesman for the Newark Roman Catholic Archdiocese said it had nothing to do with the Boy Scouts' decision. He declined further comment.

Council executive Eric Chamberlin acknowledged calling Kristie Maldonado last month but declined further comment. He referred questions to the Scouts' national office and said the issue involved "our membership standards."

Earlier this year, the Boy Scouts told The Associated Press that it would admit transgender children to its coeducational programs, but not to programs that are for boys only, like the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts.

The national Girl Scouts organization, which is not affiliated with the Boy Scouts, has accepted transgender members for years.

The Boy Scouts did not respond to questions about whether the group would accept a transgender girl whose birth certificate indicates she is male.
Midland County Sheriff's Office and Midland Crime Stoppers need help on a theft.

Deputies were dispatched to Craddick Highway and State Highway 158 at about 7 a.m. Dec. 7 in reference to a theft. Someone broke into two company trailers by cutting the locks to the trailer doors. Once inside, the suspects took several machine-type items that are used in dealing with pipe. These items consist of Jeep testers, beveling machines and a Rigid pipe threader. The items are valued at more than $24,000.

If you are the first person to call with information leading to an arrest of the suspects involved in this theft, it will be worth a $1,000 cash reward. You will remain anonymous and no caller ID is EVER used. Call 694-TIPS (8477) or use mobile app 'P3 TIPS'

www.midlandcrimestoppers.com






An Iowa man was arrested Friday after allegedly assaulting a woman, according to court documents.

Roderick Johnson, 53, was being held Wednesday on a $30,000 bond for a third-degree felony charge of assault of a family/house member by impeding breath/circulation.

A Midland police officer was dispatched to a hotel at about 10:40 p.m. Friday in reference to a disturbance.

Johnson was arguing with a woman when he grabbed her by the neck and dragged her, according to his arrest affidavit. He allegedly increased pressure on the womans neck, impeding her breathing.

If convicted of the third-degree felony charge, Johnson could face up to 10 years imprisonment.






A Midland man was arrested Tuesday after allegedly stalking a man, according to court documents.

Christopher Michael John Snitker, 38, was being held Wednesday on a $10,000 bond for a third-degree felony charge of stalking.

A Midland police officer was dispatched to a residence at about 5:10 p.m. Monday in reference to criminal mischief.

Snitker broke a mans property and repeatedly drove by his house, according to his arrest affidavit.

If convicted of the third-degree felony charge, Snitker could face up to 10 years imprisonment.






For Tina Gillihan, the word Thrive is more than just a name for her local support group. As a survivor of sexual abuse, she wants to be a part of positive change in womens lives.

I picked Thrive because I think when you face the truth of abuse, it is freeing, Gillihan said. I want women to face that reality and thrive with their lives.

Gillihan, 44, serves with her husband as a pastor of Oasis Church, which is in the startup phase. Shes also making plans to establish a center for young adults in Midland who have aged out of foster care.







More Information Thrive support group Time: 7 - 8 p.m. Dates: Mondays from Jan. 23 - March 20 (no meeting March 13) Location: MRCCAC Contact: Shelly Weeks at 432-682-7273 or shelly@mrccac.org Registration is required for this confidential support group. Other sessions will be held from May through June and September through October. Volunteer orientation Time: 6 p.m. Date: Jan. 19 Location: MRCCAC Contact: Candace Garcia at 432-682-7273 or cgarcia@mrccac.org The orientation will provide information about volunteering at the center. See More Collapse

Leading a group

Gillihan facilitates the next Thrive session in January at the Midland Rape Crisis and Childrens Advocacy Center. The support group for female survivors of sexual assault covers a range of themes, including strength and forgiveness.

Those topics come up, Gillihan said. Its common with victims of abuse to feel those feelings, have questions in those areas.

Gillihan developed the idea for Thrive when she moved to Midland from the Chicago area four years ago. She had belonged to a support group and saw a need for a similar resource here, she said.

She plans to hold three eight-week sessions in 2017. During weekly discussions, at least one therapist will be available for free counseling.

For Gillihan, a combination of support group sessions and professional help made an impact.

Very successful support groups are led by a regular person  nobody whos been trained, Gillihan said. I have a past of abuse myself. I have overcome it through therapy and help in that area.

After hearing about Thrive, male survivors of sexual assault have expressed an interest in a support group in Midland.

We are in need of it, Gillihan said. We have people wanting to come. We just need a person willing to facilitate.

Gillihan also volunteers at the MRCCAC as a SANE (sexual assault nurse examiner) advocate. Through the program, Gillihan works on a call schedule to accompany people during sexual assault examinations at Midland Memorial Hospital.

For me, I have something in common with them, Gillihan said. Ive been in their shoes once. I didnt go to the advocacy center or the emergency room.

SANE advocates offer support to survivors and tell them about local resources. The volunteers have an essential role, according to Candace Garcia, MRCCAC volunteer coordinator and adult client advocate.

When anyone goes in for SANE, especially an adult, a lot of times theyre alone, Garcia said. Even if they come in with a friend, theyre in a state of shock. The nurses have their job, and theyre trying to do it correctly. The police have their job, and theyre trying to do it correctly.

Last year, 129 sexual assault incidents were reported in Midland County, according to Texas Department of Public Safety data. Gillihan said volunteering as an advocate sometimes takes an emotional toll.

Hospital on-call is a very hard experience, Gillihan said. If I dont do it, who would do it?

Starting a center

Gillihans past also inspired her to launch a nonprofit organization in Midland. Gillihan, who has three biological children and two foster children, hopes to start a center for people exiting the foster care system.

Though Gillihan wasnt a foster child, she lacked support as a teenager. Her proposed facility  Basin Dream Center for Orphans  would house young adults while they pursue higher education or vocational training.

We really want them to be successful, Gillihan said. We want to cheer them on. We want to inspire them. Ive had trauma in my life. At that age, I didnt have parents who would do that for me.

The project is still awaiting nonprofit status. Gillihan hopes to use future donations and grants to build or renovate a structure for the center. She and her family members would live in the space to interact with program participants full time.

I want them to feel like they belong to a family when I have them, Gillihan said. Most 18 year olds arent mature  especially not foster kids with the things theyve been through. They still need someone there.

For eligible Texans transitioning out of foster care, the state offers tuition and fee waivers at state higher education institutions. The state also has a voucher program for those young adults who enter college or vocational programs.

Jeff Gillihan, Tinas husband of 22 years, said people aging out of foster care need guidance to find these resources and steer them away from homelessness, incarceration or substance abuse.

We want to show them they dont have to settle, Jeff Gillihan said. Some do whatever it takes to get a roof over their heads. Theyre not just going to go to school or work toward a career.

In the future, Tina Gillihan also hopes to start a respite program for foster care parents. The program  not yet under nonprofit consideration  would allow parents within the system to take breaks while their foster children receive licensed supervision.

If we could do that, we would have more foster families, Gillihan said. People dont do that because they dont have any time for themselves.

She thinks increased participation would also help keep local foster children in the area. According to Texas Department of Family and Protective Services data from last month, 54.7 percent of children in foster care in Midland County were placed outside of the county.

As Gillihan prepares to embark on the projects, shes received guidance through her family members and Christian faith, according to her husband. He commended her for addressing needs within the community.

Shes chosen to take the junk thats been in her past to use it as fuel to help people, Jeff Gillihan said.






Anabolic Research On Orals & MCT Oil, Omega-6 & Taurine

Written by William Llewellyn

04 May 2018

Anabolic Research On Orals & MCT Oil, Omega-6 & Taurine

Orals With MCT Oil?

How to get the most bioavailability (BV-the extent to which a compound can be used by the body) from your oral steroids is a common point of discussion. After all, anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are expensive and for most users, illegal too. Being able to use the least number of pills to achieve your goals makes a lot of sense on more than one level. With that said, this is also an area that lacks consensus. With just a small number of relevant studies, were all doing a lot of speculating. Take with meals  take on an empty stomach  take with fats  avoid fats  there are many ideas. Crazy as it sounds, getting the most bang for your steroid buck has not been a big focus of the pharmaceutical industry. A new study is sure to stoke the fire of debate.

The paper in question looked at the use of oxandrolone in newborn infants following surgery for congenital heart disease.1 The study was very interesting, as it found oxandrolone to be safe and effective for diminishing muscle wasting following surgery. This is serious problem for this fragile neonatal population, potentially making oxandrolone a lifesaver here. Anyway, the finding relevant to our BV discussion involved the way the steroid was administered. In this case, the researchers prepared the drug in an oral solution, with either a water base or mixed with MCT (medium-chain triglycerides). In doing so, they noticed a significant BV advantage in one: when the steroid was dissolved in MCT oil. In fact, oxandrolone mixed with MCT remained more effective at half the dose!

This result seems to contradict recommendations to take oral steroids on an empty stomach. Instead, it suggests that for maximizing bioavailability, we might want to take them with a fatty meal, or even crushed and mixed with a small shot of MCT oil. Of course, there is reason to be cautious with this information. This was a small study. It also involved a very young group of ill patients, which may not relate fully to the effects noted with healthy adults. Without the benefit of additional larger adult studies, we really cant draw conclusions yet. However, it certainly does provide reason enough to think about this subject again. Perhaps oral oils would be best after all? Well see.

Omega-6 Breaks Plateau

If you are an experienced lifter, you know what a plateau is. Perhaps you call it training stagnation, hitting a wall or being stale, but it is all the same  it is that frustrating point where in spite of significant effort in the gym, significant progress (gains) are not made. You can be stuck for months, sometimes years. If that describes you, then you might want to pay attention to this. A new paper published in the Public Library of Science (PLOS) journal PLOS ONE found the omega-6 fatty acid arachidonic acid (X-Factor) to break stagnation, and induce new gains in experienced but plateaued lifters.2

The study gave a group of young men 1.5 grams of the omega-6 per day, or a matched placebo, over an eight-week period of weight training. During this time, the men taking arachidonic acid noticed significant new gains in lean body mass (2.9%), upper-body strength (8.7%) and peak power (12.7%). The subjects taking placebo, however, remained stagnant. This is the first supplement shown to break a plateau like this, and perhaps more importantly, the paper may help us understand more about how fats influence growth. Of course, I must disclose that the anabolic role of arachidonic acid is my discovery. The study was independently run, though my company funded it, and Ive long been the main proponent for using this fatty acid in bodybuilding. So with that, Id like to state a big I was right on this one.

Taurine and Blood Pressure

This is just a small note on the amino acid supplement taurine. Taurine is a common supplement, used for a variety of health reasons including the support of heart, liver and testicular function. A paper recently published in a Brazilian medical journal supports adding the stabilization of blood pressure in anabolic steroid users to that list.3 At least, that is a very early interpretation of a study conducted on rats. Researchers gave the animals a 12-week cycle of Deca (nandrolone decanoate). As expected, there were some unfavorable changes in blood pressure functioning due to the steroid use. However, taurine seemed to offset some of these changes, particularly with regard to systolic blood pressure changes. Of course, this is an early animal study. These results may not carry over to humans. Still, it all has to start somewhere. Ill be keeping an eye for more on taurine and AAS use in the future.

References:

1. Burch PT, Spigarelli MG, et al. Use of Oxandrolone to Promote Growth in Neonates following Surgery for Complex Congenital Heart Disease: An Open-Label Pilot Trial. Congenit Heart Dis 2016;Jun 3.

2. De Souza E, Lowery RP, et al. Effects of Arachidonic Acid Supplementation on Acute Anabolic Signaling and Chronic Functional Performance and Body Composition Adaptations. PLOS One 2016;May 16;11(5):e0155153.

3. Rosca AE, Stoian I, et al. Impact of chronic administration of anabolic androgenic steroids and taurine on blood pressure in rats. Braz J Med Biol Res 2016;49(6):e5116. Epub, 2016 May 31.

Got a question for William Llewellyn? You can ask him directly on the MD website and have William personally answer your question! Go to www.musculardevelopment.com, MD Forums, MD Staff and Pros, Q and A for William Llewellyn.

William Llewellyn is the author of the anabolic steroid reference guide, ANABOLICS 10th Edition. He is also a longtime team member at Muscular Development, having been a regular monthly columnist since 2002. William adapted this steroid profile from his work at anabolic.org. He is also credited with helping to develop ROIDTEST, an at-home steroid testing kit used to identify real and fake steroid products.

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"After I left the last treatment center, I knew what made me happy," Selena explains, "and it was a connection." But on the advice of her doctor, Selena's planned philanthropic visit to Kenya to see the schools she was helping to raise
New members inducted into Institute of ...
Dead trees along HWY 108 View Photos

San Andreas, CA  With more than 102 million dead trees estimated across California due to drought and the bark beetle infestation, finding money to help private property owners remove trees can be hard to find, unless you know where to look.

The funds are limited, according to the Calaveras County Tree Mortality Task Force, which acknowledges that dollars available through State and Federal Grant programs only address state and federal lands, local roads and infrastructure. For most property owners, taking down the dead and dying trees on their property is a daunting task not only physically and financially. The county provides this list of possible grants available to property owners:

Groups such as local Fire Safe Counsels and other non- profits have applied for SRA Grants each totaling up to $200,000. If they receive those grant dollars, the funds can then be used to help private property owners remove their trees. How those dollars would be dispersed is yet to be determined.

The National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) has grants available for those who have private forest lands. Applications for Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) grants can be found by clicking here.

The USDA Rural Housing Service has a program with low interest loans and grants up to $27,500. This program is incomed based and is focused on low income homeowners and the elderly to remove health and safety hazards from their property. To learn more click here.

Financial institutions are another option. There are home equity loans and lines of credit with fairly low interest rates available to qualifying applicants through their current lender or other financial institutions.

Service groups like Lions, Kiwaniss, and Area 12 Agency on Aging have developed a program called Tree Mortality Assistance Program or TMAP. They are raising money through several events and plan to use those dollars to help those that are not able to afford the cost of removing the trees. For more information on Tree Mortality click here.
Congressman Tom McClintock View Photos

Congressman Tom McClintock recently spoke on the US House Floor to discuss the National Park Services Centennial Act.

McClintock was Thursdays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. Here are his words:

This year marked the centennial anniversary of the National Park Service and of the uniquely American notion that our most beautiful and historic lands should be set aside for the use, resort and recreation of the American people as set forth in the original Yosemite Grant Act. Or, in the words of the Organic Act of 1916 that established the National Parks, to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same.

Yet, a century into this endeavor, the Park Service faces considerable challenges to achieving these objectives. The Park Services original charge was to manage just 35 national parks and monuments. Today, it is responsible for over 400 units across 84 million acres. This exponential growth has left many locations in disrepair, facing a growing backlog of deferred maintenance, now exceeding $12 billion.

In addition to desperately needed maintenance, the Park Service also faces challenges with fee collection, technological upgrades, management of concessions contracts for visitor services, and most disturbingly, a substantial decrease in over-night visitation. The decline has been particularly high among young people. Recent reports indicate that visits to parks by those 15 years of age and younger has fallen by half in the last decade.

The National Park Service Centennial Act provides the Park Service with new tools and authorities it can use to maintain and improve the system. Provisions in this bill help reduce the Services deferred maintenance backlog by generating new revenue to pay for needed capital improvements and leveraging private philanthropic donations to amplify this effort. In turn, these funds will be used to enhance visitor services, provide wi-fi and cellular access that young people demand and expand the Volunteers in Parks and Public Lands Corps programs that are so important in welcoming the public to the public lands.

I believe the three greatest challenges to federal lands management are to restore public access to the public lands, to restore sound management to the public lands, and to restore the federal government as a good neighbor to those communities directly affected by the public lands.

This bill does all three. It promotes public access and enjoyment of the parks by promoting the expansion, modernization and improvement of visitor services and amenities. It promotes good management by placing priority and generating funds to address the growing maintenance backlog. And it repairs the relationship between the federal and local governments by giving local officials a say in future historic designations.

I cant think of a better way to celebrate the last century and begin the next century of our National Park Service than to restore the vision of its founders.

The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.
A Fort Campbell, Kentucky, soldier has been arrested and accused of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a minor over the internet.

Peter Maxx Matlock, 23, taken into custody

Relationship reportedly occurred over 10 months

Deputies say Matlock confessed to allegations



Peter Maxx Matlock, 23, was charged with three counts of transmission of material harmful to a minor by electronic device, among other charges.

According to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, the incidents occurred between February and November in Pinellas County and in Fort Campbell.

The investigation began Dec. 7 when the alleged victim, 14 years old, told detectives she had a 10-month online relationship with Matlock.

The two communicated through Facebook, Skype and text messages, investigators said.

"During their communications, Matlock requested and obtained numerous nude photographs from the victim and the two simulated sex while on video utilizing the website Skype," the sheriff's office said in a news release.

Deputies said Matlock confessed to the allegations.



Matlock was arrested Wednesday.
PLAINVILLE  Norton Park has served several generations of the Tompkins family, and now a new playscape will pay tribute to the parents that started it all.



Norton Park was a big part of our parents lives, said Bob Tompkins. Its a big part of our life now.



The Florida resident, along with his two brothers Vernon and Steven Tompkins, decided to donate a $7,700 Orbx Climber for the new playground planned for the park.



The play area will be larger now thanks to their generosity, Town Manager Robert Lee said.



The new piece of equipment will be in memory of Brayton and Mary Tompkins. The climber will be blue and white to represent Plainville. A panel on the climber will have a plaque in memory of the Tompkins parents. Vernon Tompkins, of Southington, said his parents appreciated growing up in Plainville and used to walk in the park daily. Now his children and grandchildren, as well as his brothers families, hold a family reunion at the park every Labor Day. His first job was mowing grass at the park, Vernon Tompkins added. We have strong family and community feelings here, he said.



This is what makes a small town great, Lee said. Things like this allow the community to spread our dollars further.



Through a state grant, the parks playscape is expected to be replaced by spring.






An ex-employee of an East Bay Versace outlet store filed a discrimination lawsuit alleging he was instructed by his boss to use a code word to alert co-workers when an African American person entered the business.

In the Alameda County Superior Court lawsuit seeking class-action status, Christopher Sampino, 23, says he was fired in early October after working at the Versace USA store at the San Francisco Premium Outlets in Livermore for just two weeks. He said he was let go after he informed his boss that he is African American.

During Sampinos second shift at the high-end global fashion retailer, a training manager  who apparently was unaware Sampino is African American  asked him if he knew about the D410 code, otherwise known as the alert that a black person is in the store, the lawsuit charges.

The D410 tag was branded on Versaces all-black clothing, the lawsuit says, adding that Sampino was also given the option to hold a black shirt when using the code.

Taken aback, Sampino asked the manager whether his boss knew he was African American, and thats when the discrimination started, the lawsuit says, adding that Sampino is one-quarter black.

In seeking class-action status, Sampinos attorneys allege there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of employees of Versace who could qualify for the suit under similar illegal or discriminatory working conditions.

One hundred unidentified defendants  including Sampinos bosses and others involved with the company  are named in the suit, in addition to their employer. Sampino is seeking unspecified damages.

Managers treated (Sampino) differently after he announced that he is African American, the lawsuit says, adding he then didnt receive important information about rest breaks that are required under California labor law, as well as log-in information needed to get into an online database to view his pay stubs.

Two weeks later, Sampinos boss at Versace  with flagship stores that feature $4,595 leather biker jackets and $1,075 Triangle Toe Derby Shoes  dismissed him because he hadnt properly lived the luxury life, the lawsuit charges.

The lawsuit also alleges that Sampino was never paid for his last day of work and that he was also not paid for the 15-minute periods he was kept at the store after work to search through his belongings.

He was also denied legally required lunch and rest breaks and was wrongfully terminated, according to the court papers.

The company denied the allegations, saying it believes strongly in equal opportunity, as an employer and a retailer. The company has filed a motion to move the proceedings to federal court, filings show.

We do not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, national origin or any other characteristic protected by our civil rights laws, the company said.

We have denied the allegations in this suit, and we will not comment further concerning pending litigation.

Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @michael_bodley
A large industrial property recently purchased in southeast Houston will be redeveloped for a retailer.

The property, a 34,000-square-foot building with a rear loading facility at 8943 Gulf Freeway, has been sold, according to commercial real estate sales firm Marcus and Millichap, which arranged the sale.

The building is the former home of Radio Holland USA, a navigational communications business that a few months ago moved to a newer building along the Gulf Freeway closer to College Avenue.

RELATED: Houston's real estate sector isn't in too much trouble -- yet

Derek Hargrove, the firm's vice president of investments, and Matthew Mignerey represented the seller, a private investor.

The property had a list price of $2,650,000.
Joan Rivers was a funny person.

But Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses and Liberation of Joan Rivers by Vanity Fair contributing editor and The Feminine Mistake author Leslie Bennetts captures little of that humor.

Instead, it serves up lengthy quote after lengthy quote to illustrate fawning points: She was kind! She was charitable! She was humble! She was amazing, hysterically funny, awesome, unbelievable!

Not surprisingly, such comments shed little light on their subject.

Joan Rivers gained fame as a comedian with a cruel streak.

She is best remembered, perhaps, for her jokes about movie star Elizabeth Taylor, who struggled with her weight as she got older.

Every time Liz Taylor goes into McDonalds, the numbers on the sign outside start changing, Rivers said. Or, Elizabeth Taylors so fat, shes my two best friends.

Although Rivers also turned her cruelty on herself  Before we make love, my husband takes a painkiller  most of her jokes were put-downs of other women, usually noting that she thought they were fat, ugly or promiscuous. Slut, whore and tramp were some of her go-to insults.

The former Joan Molinsky began reaching national success when she appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show with host Johnny Carson in 1965.

More Information Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses and Liberation of Joan Rivers By Leslie Bennetts Little, Brown, $28 See More Collapse

Carson nurtured Rivers career, eventually making her permanent guest host of the show. Then in 1986, Rivers started her own late-night show with the fledgling Fox network. The shows time slot competed with Carsons. Worse, Carson learned about the show from Fox, not from Rivers. He never spoke to her again.

Fox fired Rivers and her manager/husband, Edgar Rosenberg, and in the aftermath, Rosenberg committed suicide.

But, endlessly craving work, Joan Rivers revived her career. Eventually, she became known for her program Fashion Police, insulting Hollywood actressess clothes and looks as they attended awards events.

She also became known for plastic surgery so extensive that her face became unrecognizable. She was arguably at the top of her game when she died after minor throat surgery in 2014 at age 81.

Last Girl Before Freeway could have used a good editor. The narrative meanders back and forth in time, starting with Rivers childhood in Brooklyn as the daughter of a stingy father and a spendthrift mother locked in an unhappy marriage.

The funniest anecdote in the book, about how her long-suffering boyfriend saves her from suicide by rounding up her eccentric family, reads like a stand-up routine. Although it brings a smile, it does not ring true.

The portrait that emerges of Rivers is contradictory, perhaps like the subject herself. Many of the people interviewed for the book take pains to describe Joan Rivers in adulatory terms. But the book also portrays her as holding grudges, bending the truth to suit her conscience, throwing things and cursing, sucking up to people with money, fame or power, and publicly shaming any woman who didnt meet her standards for weight or appearance. The author attributes the comics flaws to her insecurity, but this excuse quickly wears thin.
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Independent publishers feature a new play and a book of poetry by nationally known authors and two novels by talented Texans.

Damnatio Memoriae, the drama by Jeff Biggers and Carla Paciotto, revives the legacy of African and Arabic influences on ancient Rome (in particular the black Emperor Severus) in the clash of two contemporary ensembles, attempting to rehearse different interpretations of Shakespeares Titus Andronicus on the same stage.

The Italian troupe (led by their director) encounters a group of immigrant actors, reflecting the current refugee crisis that is less welcoming to immigrants than during Severus era. Romans called the act of damning (and deleting) ones name from all monuments by the current emperor as damnatio memoriae, which happened when one of Severus sons was murdered by his brother  re-enacted without blood in this clash of thespians.

Henry Louis Gates writes of the play: Recovering the extraordinary legacy of Africans and Arabs in Ancient Rome and modern Europe, it brings to life characters who have been left off the stage for too long.

Margaret Randalls new collection She Becomes Time includes poems of love, aging, memory and loss. She also writes of refugees in Not Your Neighborhood: Tens of thousands crowd rubber dinghies or creaking/boats, follow rail tracks, storm borders,/escaping countries dissolving in blood and dust,/carrying those who cannot walk, pushing/wheelchairs, pulling carts. Few are photogenic/or speak sufficient English/to muster sympathy on the six oclock news.

The poem focuses on memory: As all sides fight on, countries lose the definition /of country and the thugs remain convinced/they must fight harder, kill more,/destroy memory along with those who live/in its fragile wake. Fight to the finish is a dictate/ designed to make sure/everything dies, even the beloved stories.

More Information Damnatio Memoriae: A Play By Jeff Biggers & Carla Paciotto Wings Press, $16.95 She Becomes Time: Poems By Margaret Randall Wings Press, $15.99 The Jungle's Edge: A Novel By Jerry Craven Angelina River Press, $18.99 Troubadours: love death rumba: A Novel By Richard Lee Price MistySprings Press, $9.99 See More Collapse

The poem closes with: The small girl who is still alive/and the dead childs body washed ashore/share a heavy load. They labor beyond their years.

Jerry Cravens novel, The Jungles Edge, his sixth book of fiction in a body of work that includes the terrific novel Women of Thunder, weaves an exciting mystery set in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Craven knows the country and language from direct experience and, while not a cowboy like Nolan Fritch or a sketch artist like Kent Day, he understands these Texans inside out, along with the cast of varied characters.

The descriptions of Kents approach to sketching locals are particularly adept. The inherent danger of the place complicates the story, with shysters and con men on every corner, but also with the erroneous suspicions of secondary and tertiary characters.

It makes for fascinating anxiety and surprising events that lead the main characters on a deadly chase from the bustling city to the edge of the jungle. This group includes both Texans and the women to whom theyre attached, as well as some American doubters swept up in escaping from the city. The entertaining novel features characters in a spellbinding plot and in a compelling and exotic locale.

Equally entertaining  also featuring a chase (but from drug dealers)  comes Richard Lee Prices first novel set in Austin, the nearby Hill Country, with important scenes in Mexico at the end of this rousing novel.

Troubadours is written by a real musician, who draws on his experiences playing salsa in the live music capital of the world.

Price captures the atmosphere, especially in the salsa chapter when the character of Alba Rose brings her cousin Pachacho as a last-minute guest to sing.

With only a few words of English, he entrances the dancing crowd and improvises new verses in Spanish, translated by the author, who knows the languages and the settings well.

As with any novel, one does not want to give away too much, but Price gives us his all in this engaging work.

Roberto Bonazzis Poetic Diversity column appears regularly in the Express-News.
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SAN ANTONIO  Alamo Drafthouse locations across San Antonio and Texas honored the late Carrie Fisher with a lightsaber vigil and a free movie Wednesday, a day after her death.

The Austin-based theater franchise, which described Fisher as a fearless princess, quick-witted scribe, and Hollywood icon, hosted the franchise at several locations across Austin, New Braunfels and San Antonio at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.

RELATED: 'Star Wars' icon Carrie Fisher dead at 60

People came with lightsabers and dressed in Star Wars garb. The vigil was held to thank Fisher, who inspired people both on and off the screen, according to a release from the Alamo Drafthouse.

RELATED: Reports: 'Star Wars' actress Carrie Fisher suffers massive heart attack on airplane

After the ceremony, attendees were invited to celebrate Fishers memory further with $1 off drinks at the bar, as well as a free screening of The Blues Brothers, a film which Fisher starred in back in the '80s.

Aside from celebrating her film legacy, the theater also took donations before and after the show to DBSA San Antonio, a non-profit support group for people with mood disorders such as bipolar disorder and depression.

Fisher, known for portraying Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise and for speaking candidly about her substance abuse and mental health issues, died Tuesday at the age of 60. She had suffered a heart attack Friday while on a plane going from London to Los Angeles, according to previous reports. During Wednesday's vigil word spread that Fisher's mother, Debbie Reynolds, had also passed.

RELATED: Mark Hamill Posts Facebook Tribute to Beloved Space-Twin Carrie Fisher

Fishers role as Princess Leia redefined what it meant to be a female lead in action and Sci-Fi films for decades after the initial films release. She reprised her role as the now General Leia Organa in 2015s Star Wars: Episode VII  The Force Awakens. She also finished production on the next installment of the franchise, which will release on Dec. 15, 2017, according to previous reports.

Text "Breaking" to 48421 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

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Twitter: @tylerlwhite
SHELTONA former Shelton High School student was arrested Thursday and charged with felony computer hacking.

The arrest stems from city-wide and school internet outages in the fall of 2015 and spring of 2016, according to the Shelton Police Department.

An investigation launched by the Shelton Police revealed the juvenile was using a cell phone application to launch Distributed Denial of Service attacks or DDOS attacks on a daily basis against the schools internet service, said Department spokesman Detective Richard Bango.

The name and age of the suspect have not been released. They have been detained and are scheduled to appear in a juvenile court on Friday.

Internet servers connect users to information through requests. DDoS cyberattacks overwhelm servers by tricking them into thinking that a wave of users are asking for a torrent of information at the same time. Like a pizza parlor overwhelmed by prank calls, service ends for everyone.

Officials did not elaborate on how the attacks were distributed or if he or she was directly responsible for the outages that sparked the investigation.

However, the charge hints at the severity of the alleged attacks.

A computer crime in the third degree is a felony, that causes either more than $1,000 in damage or recklessly engages in conduct which creates a risk of serious physical injury, according to state statues.

Shelton High School officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case.
On Jan. 1, 1917, Texans were about to see their world change dramatically.

Perhaps the most obvious impact would be the entrance of the United States into World War I on April 6, provoked partly by a secret telegram from Germany offering to help Mexico regain lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
Keep that wrecking ball at bay is the subject of a wonderful article on my favorite subject in my favorite magazine, Yankee Clipper.

It is about the historic Smedley House in Williamstown, Mass., which  due to the interest of town resident Bruce MacDonald  is not going to go the way of houses in Greenwich. In short, being destroyed.

Bruce bought the house, created in 1934 by the WPA, although it was in need of everything.

He obtained a number of historical experts, a sum of money and, working from the detailed plans of the house, rebuilt the Old Smedley House and Tavern into a beautiful home. The old steam-heated radiator system was replaced by a hybrid five-zone electric heat and gas-fired air installation. The fireplaces have been restored and there are samples of the outside planks, three inches thick, thus qualifying the place in olden times as a fortified residence  meaning a place where nearby residents could take refuge in the event of an Indian attack.

It was in front of the massive brick and stone fireplace at Smedley Tavern that Benedict Arnold sat warming himself on the evening of May 6, 1775. He was planning to take Fort Ticonderoga from the British at a time before he turned traitor to the Revolutionary cause. The fireplace had a huge oven in which 300 loaves were baked before being sent by carriage to the soldiers fighting in the battle of Bennington in 1777. The huge beams in the ceiling of the tavern area still have some bark on them and some paint that had lasted through the centuries.

What a fine thing Bruce MacDonald and his family have done!

We too have people  such as the Snyders  who have done up old houses and made it impossible for people to tear them down. Needless to say, the residents of Williamstown are also grateful as they appreciate their history. Thank you, Bruce MacDonald.

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The recent water shortage has brought wells into the forefront as it seems that they contain not-so-good things in them.

As I have said many times, the ground water in Greenwich, no matter where you happen to be  obviously mostly in the backcountry  is not of the finest quality. The day we moved into our present dwelling 30 years ago, there was no water. The 200-foot well had gone dry. Fortunately, the well people arrived very quickly and therefore we were not out of water for any length of time.

Actually, according to the town, many homeowners with wells should be much more aware that their water is not 100 percent correct. Especially as far as the backcountry goes, given the dreadful building that goes on, the folks who live here are not aware that their well is not nearly as perfect as one would think a well should be.

To add to the problems, especially with old houses like mine, it may not be the well water, but the pipes going into the house, since in older houses there could be lead in the pipe system. As we all know, lead exposure is not good for those living in the house, especially children. I, every other year, take a sample of my water to the health department laboratory (telephone number 203-622-7843) to have it tested, which can pinpoint problems if there are any.

I am surprised that more has not been done about this problem with the wells, since so many of us do indeed live in the backcountry and this situation most assuredly does exist. Do take your water to the health department to make sure that all is well.

Being a homeowner in the backcountry, as Im sure my neighbors would agree with me, is not all that easy. If its not the water system, its snow plowing in the winter, to say nothing of the electrical system and the heating system. But as far as Im concerned, it is all worthwhile to live in our still beautiful backcountry. I can only hope it will stay that way.
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NORWALK  More than a month before a new state budget is proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, veterans across the state are mobilizing to ensure across-the-board funding cuts dont mean the end to Connecticut Honor Guard rifle salutes at military funerals.

Roughly $326,00 has been set aside annually to pay $50 to each member of a three-party firing detail to deliver a volley at veteran funeral services.

But as Malloys budget chief earlier this year asked state department heads to submit detailed plans as to what a 10 percent cut in their departments funding might look like, the states Military Department placed the funding for the firing detail on the chopping block.

"They are so heavily funded by the federal government that their state amount is low, relatively speaking," said Chris McClure, a spokesman for the states Office of Policy and Management. "Cutting 10 percent is hard to do when a bulk of state support is in paying staff salaries. So the general considered the firing party cut to meet the demand"

That move has led veteran group leaders to circulate a petition demanding that the withdrawal of the state funding for the funeral honors be stopped immediately  even though its not yet clear whether that cut will make it into the governors budget proposal or on to the Legislatures.

"These men join the military to protect this country and this state," said Salvatore V. Sena Sr., a U.S. Marine Corp. Veteran and State Commander of the Military Funeral Honors Detail. "They were willing to put their life on the line for this ... Its an insult when the state will not pay for their funeral in their final hour."

Sena has worked with other veteran leaders to construct a petition he hopes will be passed around and signed by veterans across the state. He is also planning a protest for late next week as legislators return to the capitol.

Leo J. Motyka, Jr., an army veteran and past commander of the American Legion of Connecticut Post 12 Norwalk, said he would be sure to participate in both the petition and picket.

"This is about veterans, some of whom served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam," Motyka said. "I mean they put their lives on the line for the country."

State Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, called the firing detail "an important component for final respects for veterans" and said he would continue to fight for its funding.

"I have made a strong effort on working to keep the veterans Honor Guard and to make sure there is funding for it," Duff said.

Duff helped lead an effort to oppose funding cuts to the Connecticut Honor Guard at veteran funerals in 2015.

Sena said veterans held a rally last year at state Capitol to oppose cuts, but that "we cant be picketing for funding for veterans funerals each year."

He said he has seen funding for veteran funeral services continue to dwindle over time and that he and other veterans have been forced to fight for what state funding they have.

"Now the state is going to eliminate it," Sena said. "Weve got to turn around and try to stop this before it gets any further. They are trying to remove it from the budget line. It cannot happen."

In line with federal regulations and paid for by the federal government, three service members would continue to attend veterans funerals to play Taps and fold and present the flag to mourners. Firing detail would be able to perform at veteran funerals on a voluntarily or privately paid basis.

There are an estimated 3,500 military funerals each year in Connecticut. The National Guard provides honor guards to 2,000 Army veterans and 400 Air Force veterans.

However, the number of veteran funerals this year has seen a large increase, Sena said, which has led to an early depletion in the available budget  effective at the end of January 2017.

In a memo sent out Dec. 1, Col. John T. Wiltse, the Military Departments Deputy Chief of Staff, said the Connecticut State Military Department did not receive an adequate amount of state funding to support all of the projected firing party missions this fiscal year.

"Once our state budget is depleted," Wiltse said in the memo, "we will no longer be able to centrally coordinate and assign firing party mission for those families interested in this supplemental honor."

Whether new funding would become available in July through the states new Fiscal year 2018 budget is yet to be determined.

Thats something Sena is afraid of.

"When these people die there wont be money to do these funeral honors for them," Sena said. "It just breaks my heart to see something like this is going to end."

KSchultz@hearstmediact.com; 203-354-1049; @kevinedschultz
#Yoon Suk-yeol Yoon pays 5th visit to mourning altar for Itaewon crush victims President Yoon Suk-yeol paid his fifth visit to a mourning altar for victims of the Halloween crowd crush on Friday in what has become a daily routine for the president. Yoon ar...
Midland County Sheriffs Office

A Midland man was arrested Tuesday after allegedly entering a residence without the consent of the owner, according to court documents.

Mickey Lamar Wright, 27, was being held Thursday on a $25,000 bond for a second-degree felony charge of burglary of a habitation, a $500 bond for a Class A misdemeanor charge of evading arrest and a $500 bond for a Class A misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest.
SAN ANTONIO  A male pedestrian was struck and killed Thursday by an oncoming train near Interstate 35 on the Northeast Side, according to police.

Emergency personnel responded at about noon to the intersection of Interstate 35 and Eisenhauer Road on the train tracks near the frontage road, where a body was found with serious injuries following a train crash. The man's body was dragged under the train.
One man was found dead Wednesday evening in front of an East Side home after multiple shots were fired in the neighborhood.

San Antonio police Lt. Scott Bell said it was unclear where exactly the victim was shot, but confirmed he was found in front of a home in the 100 block of Da Foste Avenue.
SAN ANTONIO  Police are looking for two suspects wanted in an aggravated robbery that occurred Tuesday at the Alamo Heights Home Depot.

The suspect in the pictures above, provided by police, allegedly went into the Home Depot on 435 W. Sunset Road on Tuesday and tried to steal items from the store. When a person at the store asked for his receipt, the suspect tried to force his way past the exit, according to a news release.
Seven oil companies, including petroleum giant Chevron, have been given until the end of the week by state officials to stop their decades-old practice of injecting oily wastewater into Central Valley aquifers or face penalties.

The state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources ordered the companies to stop pumping wastewater from drilling operations into 10 underground aquifers, which the oil companies were using after government agencies charged with enforcing federal groundwater regulations first gave clearance to do so in the 1980s, then rescinded their approval 30 years later.

Thirty active injection wells must be closed by Dec. 31 or we would pursue legal action and/or penalties, said Teresa Schilling, spokeswoman for the resources agency. Violations carry fines of $2,500 to $25,000 apiece. Schilling said most operators are complying or have already complied with the order.

None of the aquifers is now used for drinking water, but environmentalists say they could be tapped in the future. Most are in the Bakersfield area, but one is in Solano County, near the Bunker Gas Field south of Dixon.

This is a big deal because its about protecting underground drinking water, said Keith Nakatani, the oil and gas program manager for the environmental group Clean Water Action. We are increasingly reliant on groundwater because of the recent drought and a loss of snowpack  all the more reason to be protective of our resources. Yet the oil and gas industry has been allowed to pollute those resources for decades.

Disposal of oil and gas drilling wastewater is a big issue in the Central Valley, where most of Californias petroleum production takes place. Kern County, the top oil-producing area in the state, accounts for 80 percent of Californias oil.

The 10 aquifers in question were supposed to be protected by the state, but a bureaucratic snafu led officials to believe that the oil companies had obtained exemptions under the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act, which shields groundwater supplies from pollution.

The oil companies had been dumping leftover water from drilling for three decades by the time state regulators discovered a discrepancy a few years ago in the earlier approval. After further review, the state determined disposal in 10 aquifers needed to stop.

There is no evidence that drinking water in the Central Valley has been contaminated, but the revelation caused a furor and prompted lawmakers to demand reforms at the state agency that regulates oil-field operations.

Five companies including Chevron Corp., which manages nine of the injection wells, and Kern River Holdings Inc., which operates six, told the state they have set up replacement projects elsewhere.

Chevron has developed alternative plans and will not be injecting into the aquifer subject to the Dec. 31, 2016, regulatory deadline, company spokeswoman Isabel Ordonez said in a statement.

The biggest impact will be on California Resources Corp., which must shut down 10 active injection wells. Company officials could not be reached for comment.

The EPA ruled in 2015 that the 10 aquifers being used by the oil companies lie too close to the surface  in one case, as shallow as 200 feet. Shallower water is usually better quality, with less salt, making it more suitable for drinking. Regulators and conservationists believe the potential use of the aquifers for drinking water should be protected.

An 11th aquifer known as the Walker Formation has also been used by the oil companies since 1983, but a portion of that one is under review by the EPA for an exemption, which would allow continued wastewater injections.

The shutdown order this week is part of a major statewide crackdown. The state has issued a Feb. 15 deadline for oil companies to halt injections in at least 50 other aquifers in the Central Valley and elsewhere unless the operators obtain exemptions.

Californias oil fields contain large amounts of salty water, the remains of an ancient sea. As a result, oil drillers suck up 15 barrels of water for every barrel of oil they reap.

If the water is clean enough, it can be treated and used for irrigation. But most of it contains other substances too, including boron and toxins that can poison groundwater and kill birds. The recommended way to get rid of it is to inject it into the ground, preferably into the oil-bearing formation or deep enough so that it wont seep into an aquifer.

The problem is that for 33 years, state regulators have allowed oil companies to inject billions of barrels of wastewater into aquifers that contained water clean enough to be used for drinking or irrigation. Recent studies indicate that some of the injections may have caused earthquakes.

The division of oil and gas has identified a total of 178 wells that had injected wastewater into legally protected aquifers, a few of which were close to drinking water wells. Some of the injection wells had already been shut down, and others had been converted into oil extraction wells.

Over the past couple of years, the division, which is part of the California Department of Conservation, has shut down more than two dozen of the remaining wells, most of them in Kern County, with a couple in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

The state devised a schedule for the rest of the closures to give oil companies time to make other arrangements. The slow pace of the closures has infuriated environmentalists, who want state officials to follow up after the February closures and study the cumulative effects of all the injections instead of just wiping their hands clean after the deadline passes.

The oil and gas industry is the most influential lobby in Sacramento, so this is a big step in the right direction, but a lot more needs to be done, Nakatani said.

Editor's Note: This story was been corrected from earlier print editions.
A recent army crackdown on civilians has brought problems for the countrys servicemen whose superiors have banned them from putting on camouflage on their way home to avoid revenge attacks by civilians angered by brutalities visited upon them recently.

This was revealed in a memo circulated to all members by Zimbabwe National Army commander Lieutenant General Edzai Chimonyo.

The ban, according to the memo, was also influenced by reports that some criminals with nothing to do with the defence forces were now committing various offences while impersonating members of the military.

It has been noted with concern that ZNA uniform has been abused in offences being committed such as robbery, gold panning, fraud, theft and extortions among others. Some members have also been attacked by hostile civilians whilst in uniforms, read the memo, dated February 6.

Measures were then taken to ensure imposters abusing the uniforms will be easily identified and also ensure safety of members outside cantonment areas.

Commander ZNA has directed that with immediate effect no military uniform will be worn outside cantonment areas.

This applies to members commuting to and from places of work, intra and intercity commuting.

Take note that after working hours, members are to put on civilian clothes and leave their uniforms in cantonment areas.

The countrys military recently came under spotlight for all the wrong reasons following a brutal operation waged in urban residential areas in Harare, Bulawayo and some parts of the country in response to violent anti-government protests which coincided with a job stay away called by labour groups to register discontent over rising cost of living in the country.

At least 12 civilians were gunned down by soldiers during the protests while over 70 were also treated for gunshot wounds.

Claims of torture, rape and other heinous acts have been reported against the army, eliciting world condemnation over the heavy handed handling of public disturbances by the Emmerson Mnangagwa led administration.

Government has promised to investigate the offences but is yet to make a single arrest against any offending member of the army.

However, the ban in the wearing of uniform would likely come as a disappointment for many members who have used the distinctive clothing to enjoy free transport to work when spotted flagging for lifts by government vehicles, ZUPCO buses or private motorists with sympathy for the military.

Zimbabwes army, just like the rest of the civil service, is paid in the much resented RTGS electronic method while commuter transport operators demand cash from passengers.

 NewZimbabwe

Breaking News via Email
Yves here. This post contains some useful observations about the economics of the electricity market.

By Leonard S. Hyman, an economist and financial analyst specializing in the energy sector. He headed utility equity research at a major brokerage house and is author, co-author or editor of six books including Americas Electric Utilities: Past, Present and Future and Energy Risk Management: A Primer for the Utility Industry, and William I. Tilles is a senior industry advisor and speaker on energy and finance. Originally published at OilPrice

Donald Trump in the White House and Theresa May in 10 Downing Street. They will open the door to more nuclear spending, no doubt. Prime minister May has already given a green light to Britains most expensive energy project, a heavily subsidized nuclear power station at Hinkley Point. Based on the most recent federal budgeting approvals, we expect that no U.S. nuclear weapons programs will want for funds. But, despite all the post-election industry euphoria, should we anticipate a full renaissance for U.S. commercial nuclear power? Is that just a bridge too far, so to speak? Lets look at the what will go into some of these decisions.

1.Need for the product. With no growth in the market for electricity, the industry needs new power plants only to replace old ones and to decarbonize output in order to mitigate global warming. The Trump administration has declared an end to the so-called war on coal, which makes it less likely that the electric industry will have to close old coal fired generating stations soon and it has categorized global warming as a hoax, which removes an excuse to build non-carbon producing nuclear units. The nuclear industry will need another rationalization for expansion.

2.Economics. Nuclear power looks like an expensive means of producing base load electricity with significant known risks and ongoing waste storage/disposal issues. A new 1,000 MW nuclear plant ordered today for 2025 in service would cost about $10 billion. New renewables can produce power at no higher a cost per kwh, without the same long construction schedule and need to build so large a unit. A new base load gas fired unit of the same size capacity could be completed in a few years and cost one fifth as much per MW and produce at a lower cost per kwh. Producing a commodity like electricity at a relatively high price in a competitive market is not a winning business strategy. Nuclear has to offer something else.

3. Base load generation. Nuclear plants run as base load units, something renewables cannot do  at least not until economical energy storage comes into the picture because of the intermittency of their output. Still, renewables, particularly wind in the U.S. midwest and Texas, will temporarily displace more large central station power generation, forcing more units to cycle. Nuclear plants are less well suited for this duty. Flexibility and load following may become more highly valued than base load. This also reflects a change in the electric industry itself. The former command and control or paternalistic relationship between utility and consumer is changing. At a minimum consumers are dictating how their energy is produced, agreeing for example to pay premiums for greener forms of electricity. In other words, nuclear has something to sell in the base load market, but that market may be in decline.

4. Power markets. Neither U.S. nor UK power markets will support unsubsidized or non-mandated new generation. To the extent that the U.S. wholesale power markets remain both deregulated and regulated in parts, this is also a negative for new nuclear capacity. Deregulated power markets, both here and in the UK, arent permitting wholesale prices high enough to finance new gas fired capacity much less new nukes. Regulators will want a cost benefit analysis before approving a new nuclear facility. Basically, this means that a new nuclear project in order to proceed will need a subsidy of one sort or another. A carbon tax would do the job even better. But what GOP politician would vote for that tax, especially if some of their constituents view the issue of global warning as a hoax?

5. Nuclear as infrastructure. As currently built, nuclear projects require a large contingent of well paid labor and massive amounts of steel and concrete. A handful of qualified engineering firms, the usual suspects, also build other infrastructure and one can only think that these politically connected firms can lobby for nuclear projects as hard as they lobby for new bridges or highways. Nuclear construction then could play a role as a component of the as part of the infrastructure program needed to boost the economy. The problem, however, is that nuclear infrastructure has some drawbacks.

6. Resilience needed. Infrastructure should be resilient and anti-fragile. In battle, would we rather attack our enemy in a swarm formation as part of a horde of thousands or ponderously approach the fields of honor as a monolithic death star. The former is anti-fragile. The latter, as we all know from the movies (no spoiler intended), is powerful but most definitely fragile. The enemy here approaches from two sides: technological obsolescence (which is slowly confronting all central station power generators) and simple obsolescence from a harsher operating environment. In plain terms, stuff just wears out faster. Its a riskier business thats for sure.

7. Investor-owned operators needed. The two major U.S. electric utilities with an outsized presence in nuclear power, Entergy and Exelon, could be characterized as the Dogs of the UTY, thanks to their less than stellar stock performances. EDF, the builder of the new British station, almost didnt get to a positive decision on the new plant due to a revolt on the part of concerned directors. Do investors want more nuclear power? Probably not without subsidies or guarantees.

8. Coastal locations needed. One problem with commercial nuclear power is not that it produces expensive electricity via fission, but that its voracious need for cooling water requires mostly coastal or riparian sites. Ignore the technology for a moment. Rising seas, hurricanes, storm surges and the like could render an ever broader swath of coastline unsuitable for infrastructure of any sort. Even if the Trump administration sees no issues, property and casualty insurors as well as and bond investors might.

9. Using nuclear subsidies as corporate welfare. New York and Illinois both launched

programs best described as Welfare for the Nuclear Elderly. Its heart-warming to see such generosity just prior to the holiday season aimed at aging, uneconomic nuclear plants. This sounds to us like a job creation/preservation program for rural areas (where high paying jobs are scarce) masquerading as an environmentally beneficial, carbon mitigating proposal. There is nothing inherently evil about subsidizing private sector jobs in the electric utility industry. We just wish theyd drop the low carbon fig leaf as a rationale or change the market so it pays for the supposed virtues of nuclearinstead of making this a political handout. But note that handouts to old nukes do not encourage the building of new ones.

10. Nuclear for defense. Defense spending may crowd out civilian needs.Themilitary already plans to modernize its nuclear warfare capability over comingdecades. In fact, if we think about where nuclear power as an energy source has worked best, it is in military-maritime applications, things like submarines and arctic icebreakers. If a nuclear accident on a naval vessel at sea occurs resulting in all hands lostthat is clearly a tragedy. If Indian Point goes full metal Fukushima, rendering significant parts of Westchester County, NY uninhabitable, we dont even have the adjectives much less the liability coverage. We also doubt that military applications will take a back seat in the new administration. Beyond that, there are two big nuclear related projects in the U.S.: completion of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada and construction of a vitrification facility at the Hanford, WA site now holding significant amounts of highly radioactive materials in less than perfect circumstances. More than likely, the military, Yucca and Hanford will absorb the lions share of new nuclear-related infrastructure monies.

Without a rationale rooted in decarbonization or in shortage of alternative fuels or energy sources, the new administration in the U.S. can only make a weak case for commercial nuclear power. If it will not embrace direct subsidies (which the incoming Congress may be reluctant to do as a matter of principle), the administration may have a hard time finding private partners for nuclear projects. But it can, and probably will, make a strong case for completing the huge nuclear tasks already on the governments plate. That spending could boost the economy just as much as putting up new nuclear power stations.
Cat flats: designing human apartments for feline friends CNN (David L)

Canadian man punches cougar in the face to save his dog Guardian

29 incredible close-ups of snowflakes shot with a homemade camera rig Business Insider (David L)

The Divisions of Cyprus, by Perry Anderson Defend Democracy

The worlds largest hedge fund is building an AI engine to manage the company Business Insider (Robert S). Personality tests? Has Dalio forgotten the concept of garbage in, garbage out? Hardly any are well validated.

Google adjusts algorithm after neo-Nazi site gains top search result for did the Holocaust happen Daily Kos (furzy)

Facebook Safety Alerts Like Bangkok to Be Triggered More Often Bloomberg

Scientists have developed a breathalyzer to diagnose 17 diseases with one breath from a patient Quartz

Shes now with CarrieHollywood star Debbie Reynolds dies of suspected stroke after saying she wanted to be with her daughter Carrie Fisher Telegraph. One often reads about bereaved spouses dying of natural causes within hours or days of the death of their partner. I cant think of a case of it happening with a parent.

China?

Why Politicians Are to Blame for Most Terrorist Attacks Patrick Cockburn, Counterpunch

New Cold War

Indian banks warn against lifting cash withdrawal limits Financial Times

Syraqistan

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Tor and its Discontents: Problems with Tor usage as panacea Medium. Bill B, from the article: Download and run this and you get a free proxy / VPN; oh, yeah, but youll stand out like a fucking glow stick and you have no good reason to use it except as an evasion tool against state authorities. Good luck explaining that when they ask uncomfortable questions Popcorn! Peanuts! Iris Scan! NBA, MLB Teams Enter Biometrics Age Bloomberg. I know I should know better, but I cant believe how readily people give up biometric information.

Trump Transition

Is #TheResistance an Effort to Re-Brand Democrats? John Laurits (martha r)

My President Was Black Ta-Nehisi Coates Atlantic. Hagiography.

TPP: How President Obama Traded Away His Legacy Lori Wallach, Huffington Post

President Obama Signs Water Bill With Big Ag Poison Pill Rider Counterpunch (furzy)

Obama names new national monuments in Utah and Nevada despite possible legislative war Business Insider (David L)

U.S. appeals court revives Clinton email suit Reuters (furzy)

Will Obama pardon Clinton? And if he does, will she accept? The Hill (UserFriendly)

Judge orders preservation of torture report Politico

Womens March on Washington: a guide to the post-inaugural social justice event Guardian (furzy). Needs to have over 100,000 show up in DC to register. Organizers say theyll have over 200,000.

Another Native-led pipeline battle bubbles up in New Jersey Grist (fruzy)

Results of Gloucester ANGEL Initiative Studied in New England Journal of Medicine Article PARRI (Chris M)

SECs Use of In-House Courts Unconstitutional, Appeals Court Rules Wall Street Journal

Nearly 1,000 City staff at four big US banks given 1m in pay deals in 2015 Guardian

Manufacturers With No Employees Are on the Rise, and Thriving Wall Street Journal

Class Warfare

Antidote du jour (Tracie H):

And a bonus (furzy). Yes, this is a commercial, but good commercials are not common.

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
The fact that rentier capitalism usually operates in corporate form and that US courts have endowed corporations with the weird status of legal personhood, and with it, the right to First Amendment protections, has given business a worse name that it deserves.

The Japanese see a business a community and regard it as important to protect and preserve those communities, to a degree that has ossified the economy. But even one of the aggressive entrepreneur in my circle defined the purpose of business as having drinks with your buddies.

Perhaps its just a function of cross-currents in Manhattan, but I cant recall a year, even in the worst of the financial crisis, where so many businesses that I knew, either personally or by reputation, went under. And the part that bothers me is that a very high proportion were well established, as in theyd been around for more than ten years.

Mind you, weve had waves of various sorts of businesses failure over the last 25 years. Hardware stores and small retailers crushed by WalMart. Video rentals killed by downloads. Independent bookstores felled by Amazon. Clothing stores losing out both to e-tailing and more consumer dollars going to technology.

And even when its obvious why these displacements are taking place, that does not make it any less sad. The owners put not just money, but anxiety and years of their life into trying to make it a go. Having to make payroll, or even pay contractors, is a serious obligation. And I always worry about the workers. If we had any sort of decent economy, that wouldnt be a big concern. In the old normal, if their employer failed, they might not get as convenient a location or schedule, or the new boss might be a jerk, but theyd at least be able to provide for themselves in reasonably short order. That is hardly the case now.

But whats happening in my neck of the woods is a bit different. Landlords have been doubling rentals on Third Avenue, and I cant fathom the logic. A huge number of storefronts are vacant, not just on Third but on Madison as well, and they stay empty for a long time. For instance, when a busy health food store where I shopped regularly was put out of business by one of those rent increases, it sat vacant for a full year. Its replacement, an upscale frozen food business (really!) remains open despite having no customers. Perhaps its a vanity project for the wife of a rich man, or a money laundering operation, but it bears no resemblance to a viable business.

In a story last August, the New York Times bemoaned the loss of small businesses. I was as surprised as the author was when Tekserve, the biggest independent Apple sales and support store in the city, closed its doors, along with other mainstays I had known, like Krups Kitchen and Bath, due to rent increases:

Its not just a matter of my personal convenience or quirky shopping habits. The usually well-paying, stable jobs lost when family-owned shops close will not be replaced if chain stores with fast-changing work forces come in. And since many chains are already here, a lot of shop fronts will remain empty, producing no revenue  and no street life  at all Im far from the first person to notice the rapid deterioration of the citys street-level fabric. A writer who uses the pseudonym Jeremiah Moss has been bemoaning the problem on his blog Vanishing New York since 2007. His organization, #SaveNYC, is trying to hold back the tide through awareness and grass-roots lobbying. You can join in. Mr. Moss has called for curbs on tax breaks for chain stores, laws ensuring reasonable rent increases and fines on landlords who leave their storefronts empty. Hes also pushing for a cultural preservation program, which would protect businesses that have contributed significantly to a neighborhoods social fabric.

Im not sure what these landlords are smoking. Do they posit a fixed relationship between residential and storefront rentals? Thats broken down with more and more in retail sales moving to the Web; for years, the big story in commercial real estate has been the glut of retail space. Moreover, rental prices have fallen in Manhattan in the last year, which is almost unheard of in the absence of a big downturn on Wall Street. So why do they think the market will support ever rising street-level rentals?

From my vantage, anodyne terms like street life dont capture what is at issue. If you live in a city, where even if you are friendly with your neighbors, that almost never means, friendly enough to have them in for a drink. So the vendors you deal with regularly, even if you only know their faces and some of their quirks, become part of your routine. As one of my friends said, Thats what makes city life bearable. For instance, a couple of the coffee shops I frequented (one of which had its own daily visiting sparrow, that had figured out how to enter, clean the floor of crumbs, and escape) not only knew my regular order but would occasionally give me a freebie. Another stores overweight Tabby has a following. Even though I dont go often enough for him to remember me, I find it reassuring that the owner/operator of my local shoe store does many of the repairs himself (in view of the customers) as well as manning the register, and is clearly proud of his work.

So its even more disconcerting when a business which has created its own community fails. When I lived in Sydney, I adopted a local pub which had a great crowd, including many colorful regulars. It closed as a result of a major renovation of the building, which turned the pub and a neighboring space into a grocery store. Even though the neighborhood was lousy with bars, and we patrons tried finding a new venue where we could congregate, it never gelled. None of the other spaces were conducive to having a large group meet and mix easily.

To add to the stress of the Washington Post/PropOrNot Russian propagandist smear, one of my mainstays, my gym, closed permanently right before Christmas. Im religious about working out, both for health reasons but also as a desperately needed daily mental health break. My gym was small (which made it fast to get in and out), oriented towards weight training, open early and late, and well appointed (no fluorescent lights, big glass windows, leather banquettes). The evening crowd skewed older and was mainly self-employed people, and I had gotten friendly with quite a few of them. So it was both a shock and depressing to learn my gym had folded with no warning.

It must be horrible for the employees, like the women who tended the womens locker room, and the guys who cleaned and tied the floor and the mens room, to be turfed out right before Christmas. I lost most of a year of membership payments, but Im less bummed out by the monetary loss than by the fact that I was at that gym because I regarded the other options in the hood as less desirable for reasons including: too big and impersonal or too skanky, less good weights (this one had dumbbells in 2.5 lb. increments up to 40 lbs), less good terms (Id been a charter member, which was a fancy way of saying I joined before construction was fully complete, and the older membership terms, which Id gotten grandfathered, were better than the current ones), and for the better gyms, a lot of amenities that I didnt value (lots of classes, snack and juice bar, beauty services). And I dont know how many of my old buddies will wind up at the nearby upmarket gym, or if they do become members, if well see each other that much (with the exercise area on two large floors, we could miss each other even if we showed up at the same time).

So why did my old gym die? The closure message attributed it to an increasingly difficult competitive environment which had become unfavorable to its business model, especially in New York. Im not sure about all its locations, but the local one looked to personal training as a significant source of income. My sense is that that market has changed a lot in Manhattan, and possibly elsewhere, due to:

1. The rise of micro-gyms. I dont understand them, and think they are a fad about to die, but Ive seen tiny gyms spring up in those formerly vacant retail spaces, with small classes featuring full body workouts. Who wants to work out in view of people on the street? And how are you going to get enough variety in a setting like that? The dirty secret of exercise is anything you do repetitively becomes routine activity and you quit seeing gains. Thats fine if your objective is general health, but not if you want to train for a sport, get stronger, or change your appearance. 2. Better workout facilities in new apartment buildings. Gyms have been a long-standing amenity in new apartment complexes. However, that used to consist of a couple of treadmills and a bike or two. Now apparently they are much better. Not only have these workout rooms bled off some whod otherwise get a gym membership to work off winter weight gain, but also others who use trainers, since these in-house facilities are often well enough equipped that a trainer could work with clients there rather than in a full-service gyms. 3. Smartphones. I saw a lot of people at my gym using workout routines on their devices. Mind you, I didnt think this was a great idea. Some of the routines looked dangerous (for instance, calling for the user to do jumps when you need to be able to squat 150% of your body weight for that not to put your joints at risk). In other cases, the routine might not be bad, but I could see the person working out in poor form (I assume either due to the program not showing proper form from the front and side, or the program not giving enough verbal cues, or the person not having enough command of their stance to absorb the instructions, as in they would benefit more than most from oversight and feedback). I suspect this led to some clients reducing or even dropping their use of personal trainers.

This is a long-winded way of using the sad demise of my gym to illustrate that small and mid-sized businesses, even long-established ones with loyal, upmarket clienteles (my gyms branch had been open for 22 years) are facing unexpected pressures.

And this pattern raises a bigger set of issues. Economists have bemoaned a fall in entrepreneurship, as this chart from a 2016 Washington Post story illustrates:

But this should not be hard to understand. The level of business deaths has been hovering around the rate reached in the nasty 1980-1981 recession. That is consistent with what we have been saying for some time: with overall demand in the economy weak, small businesses for the most part have not been keen to expand. And that means starting a new enterprise is an even bigger gamble. On top of that, more young people are having to take menial jobs which may not give them the opportunity to identify unmet customer needs. Academic studies have ascertained that the new businesses that are most likely to survive are started by people whove worked for bigger firm and saw opportunities that industry incumbents were ignoring. And add to that the fact that student debt is another impediment to accumulating savings and/or having good access to credit.

But the death of my gym, along with other long-lived businesses (for instance, Gracious Home, a successful Manhattan retailer that seemed to have a secure niche, also closed in December), points to another impediment: it used to be, as another Washington Post chart showed, that if a businesses made it to the ten year mark, it was likely to continue:

But perhaps that is not the best interpretation of that chart. The data does say that longer-established businesses constitute a growing proportion of all businesses. But the fact that younger firms are dying at a more rapid rate than in the past may mask the fact that older businesses are also failing at a higher rate than before but that the rate of increase is much lower than that of newer concerns.

I have long said that that starting your own business has been unduly romanticized in the US, and most people can and should be on a payroll. Entrepreneurship hype has too often served as an excuse for lowering worker rights (why should employers provide job security if workers can all go out and create their own employment?). Working for yourself has become even riskier. Just because traditional workplace options are lousy does not mean that jumping from the frying pan into the fire is a good idea.
By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street

Monte dei Paschi di Siena sinks deeper into the mire.

Over the Christmas holidays, when no one was supposed to pay attention, and when the markets were closed, the bailout costs of Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the third largest bank in Italy, and the center of the Italian banking crisis, suddenly jumped by 75% to 8.8 billion ($9.2 billion)!

Just how immense the black hole inside of a bank really is remains unknown until the bank collapses entirely and the pieces are sorted out. No one wants to know, especially not bank regulators. But when banks are teetering, and a bank bailout, or rather a bondholder bailout is being discussed, the aspects of that hole begin to emerge, and the hole keeps getting bigger the longer someone looks at it.

Earlier this year, the ECBs stress tests of 51 large European banks determined that Monte dei Paschi was the shakiest among them. The ECB gave the bank until the end of 2016 to raise enough capital or contemplate the prospect of being wound down.

Last week, after Monte dei Paschi failed to work out a private-sector rescue deal led by JP Morgan, a taxpayer bailout was moved to the front burner. The banks shares and bonds were suspended from trading until the details of the bailout would emerge. This came after two prior capital increases from the private sector in recent years had failed to fill the holes. Each time, gullible investors had gotten crushed.

On Friday, the Italian government decided to shanghai its taxpayers into bailing out the banks bondholders with only a small haircut for holders of certain junior bonds. The decree it approved to that effect was based on the assumption that a 5-billion bailout  a precautionary recapitalization  would be needed.

A precautionary recapitalization is EU lingo for a taxpayer bailout of a bank that is illiquid but is still deemed solvent. If a bank is no longer solvent, it needs to be wound down, under the new EU regulations banning state aid. This would entail much bigger losses for bondholders and possibly some losses for uninsured depositors.

However, a precautionary recapitalization would only require that certain junior bondholders take a small first loss before a big capital contribution by the state would bail out the rest, on terms that need to be endorsed by EU state-aid officials in Brussels.

But the tab keeps ballooning.

On Monday, the second Christmas holiday in Germany and some other European countries, when markets were closed, and when people werent supposed to pay attention, the ECB responded to Monte dei Paschi  which the bank has meanwhile announced after leaks had spread the word  that it would need, not 5 billion but 8.8 billion to fill the hole.

The ECB said that the bank was solvent  because no one wants to even contemplate winding down the bank and dealing with the actual black hole. But it warned of the rapid deterioration of its liquidity position during the three weeks through December 21, caused by large outflows of deposits  a run on the bank via electronic means, as Italians were trying to haul their savings to higher ground.

Monte dei Paschi is going to deal with the ECBs reply this way, according to Monte dei Paschis statement:

The bank has quickly started talks with the competent authorities to understand the methodologies underlying the ECBs calculations and introduce the measures for a precautionary recapitalization.

Also on Monday, Jens Weidmann, Bundesbank President and ECB Executive Board Member, warned of a hasty taxpayer bailout, as many questions remain unanswered.

For the measures planned by the Italian government, the bank has to be financially healthy at its core. The money cannot be used to cover losses that are already expected. These [rules on state aid for failing banks] are meant especially to protect taxpayers and put responsibility on investors. State funds are only intended as a last resort, and that is why the bar is set high.

But bank bondholders are sacred and taxpayers are a dime a dozen, and bailouts by central banks are free since they can just print the money, though in the end, it all boils down to the simple fact that no bailout is free, that someone always pays for it, as long as its not the sacred bondholders.

This banking crisis is not an accident. The toxic loans on the books of the Italian banks are often a result of corruption, political kickbacks, fraud, and abuse. Read Italy Banking Crisis is Also a Huge Crime Scene
Fethard ICA presented a cheque to Jacquie Ryan, in aid of the Wells for Zoe project in Malawi.

The cheque was presented in the Fethard ICA Hall on December 21, proceeds of the recent Craft Fair and Cake Sale which took place in the hall on Sunday, December 4, where the sales of Christmas crafts and cakes raised a staggering 2,635 which will go towards helping many communities in Malawi.

Wells for Zoe was established in 2005 by Mary and John Coyne from Dublin, and since its formation has helped provide over 500,000 people in Northern Malawi with clean water while also running projects in sustainable farming and educating the girl child. The charity is voluntary, with all members paying their own flights, accommodation and expenses.

On behalf of Wells for Zoe (www.wellsforzoe.org) we would like to thank the Fethard ICA and everyone who took part in the event from those who baked cakes, donated crafts to those who called in, had a cup of tea and a chat. There was a real Christmas spirit in the hall, and the funds raised will make a huge difference to another rural community in Malawi.

As it is the womans job to carry the water we often find ourselves working with womens groups in Malawi. The money raised by Fethard ICA will go to such a group in a village called Lupaso on the outskirts of Mzuzu, the capital city of the north. The funds will help roof the pre-school/community centre, and install water pump, providing the community with clean water and reduce the incidents of Malaria and Cholera. Currently the women are taking water from a river some distance away, this river runs along the outskirts of the city and the water can easily be contaminated with sewage and chemicals. The women from the village will be thought how to maintain the well. We will organise teaching workshops for the women so they can get full potential out of the preschool. The building will also be used as a centre for the women to meet, and allow their womens group maintain relations with the Fethard ICA.

Jacquie Ryan from Knockbritt, Fethard, is travelling to Malawi in January for the year, while she will keep the ladies in Fethard ICA updated on the progress s in Lupaso.
The Department of Justice has agreed to a settlement with a pair of Cincinnati banks accused of redlining African-American neighborhoods in four cities in Ohio and Indiana.

State-chartered Union Savings Bank and Guardian Savings Bank, which has a federal charter, share common ownership and management. Both were accused of violating the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunities Act.

The DOJ alleged that between 2010 and 2014, the banks' "policies and practices had the effect of denying or discouraging an equal opportunity to the residents of majority African-American census tracts in the Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and Indianapolis [metro areas] to obtain residential home loans on account of the racial composition of those tracts," the consent order said.

Union Savings and Guardian Savings "strongly deny the violations of law alleged," the order added.

The companies reached a $9 million settlement with the government that includes a $7 million loan subsidy fund to increase the amount of credit they extend to residents of majority African-American census tracts. The other $2 million is to be spent on advertising, outreach, financial education and community partnership efforts.

Union will open two full-service branches in disadvantaged areas and Guardian will open a loan production office as well.

Louis Beck, chairman of both banks, said in an emailed statement that they "have a decades-long history of serving the needs of our diverse communities. While we strongly disagree with the government's assessment of our activity, we entered into a cooperative agreement that creates even more opportunities to improve the financial futures of individuals, families and our communities. We look forward to creating additional initiatives for accessible and affordable lending and to the ongoing collaboration with our employees, customers and community partners."

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said the settlement "embodies a win-win solution for all parties by increasing the volume of mortgage loans, driving economic activity and creating a level playing field for qualified borrowers."
The notion that the Trump administration should recapitalize government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a predicate to reforming them, risks the political overcorrection that proponents of this idea claim to want to avoid, while ignoring the critically-needed reforms necessary to ensure a stable housing finance system through all economic cycles.

First, proponents of "recap and release" misread the political risks and the depth of interest that key representatives and senators have in determining the long-term future of the GSEs. In early 2016, the largest housing groups (National Association of Realtors, National Association of Home Builders, American Bankers Association, Mortgage Bankers Association and National Housing Conference) united in a joint letter to voice our collective view that "[P]olicymakers need to continue to focus on the paramount objective of fixing the structural flaws that led to the breakdown of the housing finance system  the only outcome that will protect taxpayers, reserve access to credit, and ensure a stable housing finance system."

Moreover, recapitalization-before-reform could create an overreaction in response that could end up being harmful to these two companies and the housing finance system that relies on them. Any isolated move to modify the preferred stock purchase agreement and the net worth sweep might create a similar response to what we saw when the Federal Housing Finance Agency attempted to modify the pay of the CEOs of the GSEs. In that instance, Congress moved swiftly to pass an overwhelmingly bipartisan bill which established pay caps for the two CEOs.

Similarly, Congress overwhelmingly approved a bill to limit the Treasury's ability to execute any transaction using the government-owned GSE preferred shares absent an explicit act of Congress. Finally, a report this past fall from the Congressional Budget Office made clear that any modification of the sweep would negatively impact both the federal budget and the taxpayer. Congress has made clear in its actions that the only path to meaningful reform is through the legislative branch.

Second, the proponents of "recapitalization first" overestimate the risks of a GSE draw. The GSEs are backed by an explicit line of credit (not too different from the Federal Housing Administration) of more than $200 billion that is held explicitly by the Treasury Department. With that backstop, the risk of an adverse market reaction to a draw is minimal. In any recapitalization effort, it would take decades for the GSEs to build that amount of depth of backstop. Given the existing line of credit, it's just not necessary and the focus only diverts attention from the real work that is needed to resolve the stalemate of conservatorship.

We will continue to focus on securing responsible housing finance reform that ends long-term uncertainty over the future of the GSEs and protects the important role they play in our financial system. Recapitalization without reform risks an unnecessary Congressional overreaction, especially when any retention of capital would be insignificant compared to the existing massive line of credit that already explicitly protects the companies.

It is time to resolve conservatorship through a responsible reform legislative effort that focuses on core principles of protecting the functions that these companies provide in bringing liquidity and availability to the U.S. mortgage market while protecting taxpayers as well. These principles include insuring a level playing field for all lenders  large and small, bank and nonbank  with no special deals for anyone, deeper first-loss private capital ahead of an explicit government insurance fund covering only catastrophic risk with a full guaranty on the mortgage-backed security, a commitment to responsibly serve all markets, and appropriate limits to their retained portfolios that focus on maintaining a cash window and managing defaulted loans.

The concerns by some about the stability of these two important companies with calls to retain capital are likely founded on good intention but could risk a strong reaction just like we have seen before.

Capital is not a near-term risk to these two companies  the line of credit guarantees that. The real risk is the uncertainty of continued, long-term conservatorship. Congressional reform before recapitalization is the proper path forward.

David Stevens is the president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016 by: Ethan Huff Tags: Clinical trials , eli lilly , solanezumab This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author

(Natural News) What investors had hoped would build into yet another 2.68 percent dividend yield for pharmaceutical behemoth Eli Lilly has turned into a massive financial letdown after trials of solanezumab, a supposedly promising experimental drug for Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia, showed less than favorable efficacy in the latest clinical trials.

Reports indicate that the so-called safe haven stock plunged nearly 15 percent, erasing more than six years of dividends for Eli Lilly, after solanezumab failed to live up to earlier trials that apparently showed it helps slow the progression of mild forms of dementia by roughly one-third in early-stage patients. The drug apparently didnt perform as well this time around, prompting Eli Lilly to halt its research and development.

When asked about what happened, Eli Lilly chief executive officer John Lechleiter told FT.com that the results were not what we had hoped for, and that the company has no plans to push for regulatory approval. He added that while the results directionally favored the drug, the magnitudes of differences were small, which is really just fancy way of saying that solanezumab is barely effective, if at all.

Solanezumab isnt the only Alzheimers drug in Eli Lillys development pipeline, and the company says it wont necessarily abandon all plans to move forward in its development. But for now, it faces major fourth-quarter losses to the tune of $150 million, or about nine cents per share of its stocks.

We will evaluate the impact of these results on the development plans for solanezumab and our other Alzheimers pipeline assets, Lechleiter explained in his statements to the media.

99 percent of pharmaceuticals undergoing clinical trials never make it to market

Alzheimers drugs are currently a hot commodity in the world of pharmaceutical R&D, with many companies working on their own hopeful blockbusters for future release. But when one fails, everyone suffers, at least in terms of shareholder confidence. Competitor Biogen, for instance, which is working on its own trials for a new Alzheimers drug saw its stock prices plunge more than 7 percent in pre-market trading following the Eli Lilly announcement.

Its a risk that the drug industry faces every time it undertakes a new area of drug development, and yet Eli Lilly says it isnt phased by the loss. What one major media sourced described as the companys oversold stock prospects arent going to suffer, said David A. Ricks, Eli Lillys incoming CEO and president of Lilly Bio-Medicines, in a press release.

Lilly has strong growth prospects without solanezumab, Ricks says. Driven by new product launches, we continue to expect to grow average annual revenue by at least 5 percent between 2015 and 2020. Over that time frame, we also expect to increase our margins and provide annual dividend increases to our shareholders.

Truth be told, as many as 99 percent of all drugs in clinical trials never actually make it to market, so the loss of solanezumab isnt necessarily surprising. There are currently only four drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat Alzheimers, and Eli Lilly wasnt necessarily banking on solanezumab being added to the mix.

According to Business Insider, the target area for solanezumab was supposed to be the beta amyloid deposits in the brain that many experts believe are responsible for the progression of Alzheimers. The medical community refers to this as the amyloid hypothesis, or the accumulation of amyloid beta-peptide in the brain resulting in Alzheimers disease pathogenesis.

Sources:

ZeroHedge.com

FT.com

Lilly.com

BusinessInsider.com

NIH.gov
(Natural News) For the last eight years, Barack Obama has functioned as a kind of sleeper cell, achieving a number of devastating milestones of destruction against America that eerily parallel the strategies of nation-crushing subversion mapped out by the Soviet KGB (see video below). Apparently mirroring Yuri Bezmenovs described subversion plan with careful precision, President Obama has doubled Americas national debt and thrust 10.7 million more people onto food stamps all in just eight years all while subverting the culture, education, law enforcement and religion.

President Barack Obama added roughly $7.917 to Americas national debt, which amounts to a 68 percent increase from the $11.657 trillion debt level President George W. Bush accrued by the end of his presidency, reports Breitbart News.

Tragically, this sort of irresponsible debt spending is exactly what Obama ran in opposition to during his 2008 campaign:

While he was running for president, Obama criticized President Bushs deficit spending, calling it irresponsible and unpatriotic. Obama said at a presidential campaign event on July 3, 2008:

The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents  43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome. So we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back  $30,000 for every man, woman and child. Thats irresponsible. Its unpatriotic.

Obama, with what will be nearly $8 trillion tacked on to the national debt, has added by far more to the U.S. debt than any president in history.

You will not be the least bit surprised to learn that almost no one on the left has criticized Obama for his out-of-control debt spending. According to the left-wing media, debt spending is always good as long as it results in bigger government.

10.7 million more Americans now on food stamps, using government money to buy disease-promoting junk foods

In the nothing is quite as stupid as Big Government category, President Obama has also managed to put another 10.7 million Americans on food stamps. The number of food stamps recipients went up by 10.7 million people, a 32 percent jump, since President Obama took office in 2009, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA), reports Breitbart.

The cost of food stamps to taxpayers also increased over the time Obama was in office. As of 2009, all food stamp recipients received up to $50.3 billion in benefits. As of 2016, that number has increased to $66.6 billion, an estimated increase of $16.3 billion, says the article.

Keep in mind that food stamps can be used by buy processed junk food that promotes cancer and diabetes, both of which cost the government even more money on long-term sick care expenditures. In effect, Obama is making sure Americas long-term health care costs will skyrocket by handing out more money so that left-wing voters can eat themselves into chronic degenerative disease. Once again, its all perfectly aligned with the Soviet KGB plan (see video below).

As KGB propagandist Yuri Bezmenov explains:

The highest art of warfare is not to fight at all but to subvert anything of value in the country of your enemy until such time that the perception of reality of your enemy is screwed up to such an extent that he does not perceive you as an enemy, and that your system, your civilization and your ambitions look to your enemy as an alternative, if not desirable then at least feasible. Thats the ultimate purpose, the final stage of subversion, after which you can simply take your enemy without a single shot being fired.

Politically speaking, this is all widely considered an achievement on the left, whose very existence depends on keeping the voters trapped in a cycle of poverty and government dependence.

While Republicans would consider it a victory to get people off food stamps and back on their own two feet, Democrats measure success by increases in government dependence. Equality means making sure everyone is equally oppressed to the point of systemic poverty, from which the left-wing politicians promise more benefits if ignorant Americans will elect them into power. This is all designed to push America toward accepting the philosophy of communism.

The KGB couldnt have done a better job of subverting America

If you consider his real-world actions, it looks a lot like Obama is a sleeper cell agent working against America. Yes, even his birth certificate document has been proven to be fraudulent, according to a comprehensive recent analysis.

Via WND.com:

A years-long forensics investigation into the computer image of the long-form Hawaiian birth certificate image that Barack Obama released during a White House news conference during his first term and presented to the American people as an official government document concluded it is fake.

Now, what has been described as the only official law enforcement investigation ever done into the Obama birth certificate, ordered by Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, has concluded it is not authentic.

The sheriffs video said there were nine images on the Obama birth certificate that appear to be identical to, and copied from, another birth certificate issued in Hawaii just days after his birth.

That certificate belongs to Johanna Ahnee.

The copied items include the word Honolulu, Oahu twice, three different Xs. Their identical nature raised serious questions since they would have been applied to original documents by moving a typewriter carriage and roller at the time, a left date stamp and a right date stamp.

One of the experts who assisted in the investigation was Reed Hayes, a court-qualified handwriting and document examiner, who runs a business in Hawaii. He is on the board of the Scientific Association of Forensic Examiners and has been in business nearly 40 years.

We had two experts from two countries in separate disciplines of forensics that came to one conclusion: Barack Obamas long form birth certificate it not authentic, the report said.

Watch this KGB subversion video to learn more about Obamas tactics for subverting America



From the video (below):

The highest art of warfare is not to fight at all but to subvert anything of value in the country of your enemy until such time that the perception of reality of your enemy is screwed up to such an extent that he does not perceive you as an enemy, and that your system, your civilization and your ambitions look to your enemy as an alternative, if not desirable then at least feasible. Thats the ultimate purpose, the final stage of subversion, after which you can simply take your enemy without a single shot being fired.

* Espionage only occupies 10  15% of time, money and manpower activites of the KGB.

* The other 85% of the KGB activity is subversion.

* The aim is to destroy the country of your enemy.

* Subversion activity is overt and easily observable.

* According to western laws, subversion is not a crime.

* Subverters are exchange students, diplomats, actors

* Subversion is a two-way activity. The enemy must be willing to be subverted.

* You cannot subvert the Soviet Union because the borders are closed.

* Subversion can only be successful when the agent of subversion has a responsive target.

* The USA is a receptive target of subversion.

* Sun-Tzu was the first expert in subversion in ancient China.

* He said it is inefficient to fight on the battlefield.

* The basics of subversion are taught to every student of the KGB in the USSR.

THE FOUR STAGES OF SUBVERSION

Demoralization. Takes 15  20 years to demoralize a society. It includes influencing (infiltration, propaganda, etc.) of various areas where public opinion is shaped: Religion, educational system, social life, administration, law enforcement systems, military and labor-employer relations. Exploit the people within the society who are ideologically opposed to the system. Use small groups of agents from foreign nations. Distract people from real faith and replace it with artificial faiths in other systems.

In education, distract them from learning something constructive, pragmatic and efficient. Instead of mathematics, chemistry, history, teach them sexuality, home economy, anything to distract.

In social life, replace traditionally established institutions with fake organizations. Take away the initiative from people, take away the natural links between individuals and replace them with bureaucratically controlled systems. Establish social workers institutions ruled by bureaucracy. Eliminate the family and replace the main concern with the paycheck from the government.

In government, replace elected officials with unelected bureaucrats who control the people.

In the major media like the New York Times, you dont have to be an excellent journalist. You have to be exactly a mediocre journalist.

For power structure: It is slowly eroded by those who do not have qualifications nor the will of the people.

Law enforcement: Put into place a slow substitution of basic moral principles, where someone who used to be a criminal is now considered a victim.

Labor relations: Destroy the traditionally established links of bargaining between employer and employee. Obedient workers follow their leaders.

Learn more by watching the full lecture here:
(Natural News) If youre not familiar with George Soros by now, consider it a homework assignment to look him up. To scratch the surface lightly, Soros, a white male, has heavily funded the Black Lives Matter movement in an attempt to advance his left-wing globalist agenda.

Soros is now financing the group which is helping Facebook flag fake news. But Soros isnt the only left-winged financier of the new International Fact-Checking Network. The IFCN has drafted a code of five principles for news websites to accept. Facebook recently announced that it will work with third-party fact-checking organizations, who are signatories to the code of principles.

Stories on Facebook that have been determined to be fake by the fact-checking organizations will be flagged and disputed. There will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why, and disputed stories will rank significantly lower in the Facebook News Feed.

The INFC is hosted by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. A cursory search of the institute revealed that the IFCN is openly funded by George Soros Open Society Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and the National Endowment for Democracy. Its sad to note that the left-wing is solely in charge of disputing news stories. The mainstream media are just as guilty of being vilified news outlets when it comes to misconstruing things, but now all their news will be real, and all opposing views will be flagged. The fact checking organizations are basically granting the left-wing the ability to produce all the fake news they wish.

Poynter has hosted controversial journalism programs before, including one that got accused of downplaying the threat of global Islamic terror. FoxNews.com reported that the course suggested that reporters should keep the death tolls from Islamic terror in context by comparing the death tolls to those killed annually by malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other factors. The course went on to teach reporters that the term Jihad means internal struggle, and discussed right-wing activists as people who attempt to link American Muslims to terror.

Its clear how big of an impact the INFC will have on those who get their news from social media platforms, like Facebook. The course goes on to provide a good-journalism tip to reporters, suggesting that they check if an interviewee has a bias or stake in the material being covered, but only goes on to cite examples of anti-Muslim groups.

Its hard to believe that the left-wing is winning the war on news control. The American people continue to embrace the companies and technologies that are destroying us, ultimately destroying themselves.

Sources:

Breitbart.com

TheGatewayPundit.com
(Natural News) If you are 21 years of age or older and a Massachusetts resident, recreational marijuana is now legal for you after the law went into effect on Thursday, December 15, 2016. Massachusetts is the first state in the densely-populated U.S. Northeast that has legalized the drug for recreational use.

Despite the strong opposition from top politicians, the Catholic Church, doctors, business groups, and other civic leaders, Massachusetts is one of three states where ballot measures legalizing recreational use of marijuana passed on November 8, 2016, along with California and Nevada. The Governors Council certified those results on Wednesday, December 14, bringing the law into effect on Thursday. Voters in Arizona rejected the law, and a Maine ballot is still going through a recount.

A legal gray zone

Even though marijuana remains illegal under federal law, in Massachusetts, anyone who is 21 or older can now legally possess up to one ounce of pot in public and up to 10 ounces inside their home. Additionally, its also legal for Massachusetts residents to grow up to six plants per person, with a limit of 12 plants per household.

It will be at least another year before cannabis can be legally sold in the state, giving state officials time to figure out how to implement the new law. They have been given until January 2018 to regulate the marketplace and set up licensed retail stores. This, however, creates a temporary legal gray zone where buying up to an ounce of marijuana from a dealer is legal while the dealer is breaking the state law.

Supporters of the new law are very wary that Massachusetts officials might try to change the law or delay its full implementation over the coming months, ABC News reported.

I am both celebrating and worrying that the law might not be implemented properly, said Bill Downing, member liaison for the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition who has spent nearly three decades crusading for relaxed marijuana rules.

His concern stems from public statements made by Democratic legislative leaders and Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who were opposed to the law but had no choice other than to honor the will of the people. The Massachusetts marijuana legalization ballot passed last month with about 1.8 million people voting for and 1.5 million people voting against the measure, reported the Boston Globe.

Top leaders and politicians already stated that the law does not sufficiently protect public health and safety, trying to delay the opening of stores beyond the planned January 2018 date.

Massachusetts influence on neighboring states

Some people suggested that the legalization in Massachusetts could motivate neighboring states to consider similar steps. Given the close distances between cities in the West, it will be easy for people to cross state lines to acquire the drug.

Taylor West, deputy director of the Washington-based National Cannabis Industry Association, told the Huffington Post in a phone interview that it certainly makes sense for neighboring states to look at the policy and consider the benefits the state can get from putting this behind a regulated counter. Rhode Islands governor, Democrat Gina Raimondo, already communicated that she is willing to consider the idea.

According to a poll by Gallup, 60 percent of Americans support the legalization of marijuana for recreational use. Nonetheless, the future remains uncertain. While Trump has said that marijuana legalization was best left to the states during his campaign, his pick for attorney general is U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who criticized Barack Obamas administration for not enforcing the federal ban on marijuana aggressively enough.

Sources:

BostonGlobe.com

ABCNews.Go.com

HuffingtonPost.com
2016 has been a big year for technological developments. There's been a shift towards the consumer experience, and it will continue in 2017. However there is a need to redefine it to allow small businesses to compete with their larger counterparts.

According to Ann Marie Van Den Hurk and her Kentucky piece, 2017 will have two technologies facing the forefront of development: mobile and artificial intelligence.

Businesses should focus on putting their efforts on mobile. Everything they do should be accessible via phones as this has already been a trend in previous years. Google, the primary search engine of a lot of netizens, is making mobile its primary search.

They are even creating a separate mobile index, which will become the primary source of response to queries.

Given that nearly 60-percent of searches are conducted on mobile, businesshave to be mobile-friendly.

According to Small Biz Daily, this means websites and content should be geared towards serving customers on mobile devices. Customer preferences and Google demand that mobile experiences for customers be available or they may be left behind.This can be achieved through smart website design, SEO and content.

Customers are always looking for specific information, and they should be easy to find. Gone are the photo sliders and bulky graphics, simple is the key. This means it should be easy for core information such as products and services to be found anywhere. Navigation must not be complicated, and three-to-five pages with short menus should exist.

Meanwhile, AI is also making a resurgence. It's very helpful to perform common sense tasks, but it's also starting to focus on big picture issues. According to CNBC, AI can help in three ways: virtual assistance, insights and manual process automation.

Virtual assistance is something businesses need right away. Virtual assistant and chatbots can help assist with customer service tasks like scheduling meetings or answering simple and repetitive customer questions.

AI can also be helpful with generation of insights. We are collective massive amounts of data on customers but it's pointless if it's not in a usable form. AI can transform that data into practical insights and learn from it, this allows AI to adapt to market behavior changes.
Officials from the Department of Land and Natural Resources in Hawaii found three critically endangered Hawaiian crows dead at the Pu'u Maka'ala Natural Area Reserve less than two weeks after they are reintroduced into the wild.

According to the report from Hawaii News Now, the three dead birds found in the natural area reserve were part of the five young alala birds released in hopes to reintroduce the native bird species back into the wild. The two remaining alala were recaptured and returned to a Big Island aviary.

"The loss of these three birds is difficult for the entire community, including the many people who have cared for these birds since their hatch and have worked steadfastly to prepare for their release," said Bryce Masuda, project manager at San Diego Zoo Global's Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program, in a report from Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

The five native Hawaiian birds were released on December 14, 2016. DLNR officials observed the birds to be doing well at first, eating from feeders placed in the area. However, three of the birds suddenly died weeks later. The cause of death of the three birds is still not determined. Official necropsy reports could take several weeks to complete. Experts noted that some level of mortality is to be expected when trying to reintroduce bird species back in the wild.

This is not the first time that reintroduction efforts of the alala birds ended badly. In 1990s, conservationists, with state officials, released 27 alala in South Kona. However, 21 of the native birds succumbed to diseases and predation. The remaining six birds were then returned to captivity.

Alala is a native Hawaiian bird species that were listed as critically endangered. These birds were considered to be extinct in the wild since 2002, with captured population at the Keauhou and Maui Bird Conservation Centers managed by San Diego Zoo Global's Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program.


A Squadron commanding officer based at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar has been relieved of duty, U.S. Marine Corps officials announced Wednesday.

Lieutenant Col. Wade Workman was relieved of his duties as the commanding officer of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 232 Wednesday by Maj. Gen. Mark Wise, commanding general of 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, according to the Marine Corps.

Authorities said there was a loss of trust and confidence in Workman's ability to continue to serve in that position.

"This decision was based on issues concerning command climate within the squadron," a statement from U.S. Marine Corps officials read.

According to a biography on the U.S. Marines website, Workman graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1997 with a degree in computer science and ater completed TBS and flight school.

Workman deployed multiple times in support of Operation Southern Watch, Iraqi Freedom, Tomodachi, Enduring Freedom and New Dawn, according to his biography.

Later, he was assigned as an F/A-18 tactics instructor with the Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS-1), an Operations Officer and Maintenance Officer with VMFA-323, a Tac-Air Integration liaison officer at the Coronado Air Base and an Operations Officer with Marine Aircraft Group Eleven (MAG-11).

He has been awarded the Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal with Strike/Flight Numeral 3, and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with combat V, according to the biography.
Devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home claim to listen and record what we say only after we use trigger words. For the Echo, it's "Alexa." But could these cool, trendy devices be recording more of us than we think?

The Amazon Echo and Google Home devices were among the hottest-selling gifts this holiday season. Now they are being scrutinized, as police in Bentonville, Arkansas, are asking for evidence from such a virtual assistant in a murder case.

The case is raising new questions about privacy.

"Your home is your bastion of privacy, and you have Big Brother listening all the time," said Ajay Arora, CEO of Palo Alto-based Vera Security.

Amazon admits it stores the questions asked of Alexa on a server.

"We know Amazon has a copy because consumers can actually listen to all their Alexa requests, and they can delete them," privacy expert Bob Sullivan said.

But Arora says there's also a hacking concern.

"Just as someone could tap a phone call, anyone could tap into your Google Home or Amazon Echo and listen to every word that you say," Arora said.

Security experts say it's possible these devices also could start recording when they merely think they've heard the trigger word.

For its part, Amazon says it will not release customer information without a valid and binding legal demand properly served.
A family visiting from Brazil, on their first trip to the United States, had their car broken into Tuesday night at a San Jose Applebee's parking lot, and the thieves got away with much more than a few shopping bags.

The car was parked in a well lit area, just outside the restaurant when it was burglarized.

"They broke the car windows and took three backpacks and one purse," said Victor Camara.

Camara said the bags contained $6,000 and a laptop. He was devastated.

"It was all my savings. Im sad because I work a lot for this money," he said. "This is difficult for me because in Brazil, its like 3 is one dollar. The conversion is crazy."

The manager of the restaurant said there have been about five car break-ins in the parking lot in the past month or so. He said he will continue to encourage customers to bring valuables inside.

Camara and his family had just landed in San Jose and stopped for dinner, which is why all their luggage was still inside the rental car.

Surveillance video from a gas station next door shows two men approach the car. One leans into the side window while the other walks off with a bag. Their faces are not shown, but it appears they drove off in a dark sedan.

Camara called police and filed a report, but he doesn't expect the money to be returned. He received an email Wednesday morning from someone in Oakland claiming they found his passport. He has reached out to Oakland police to figure out a safe way to get it back.

"Im young; I can work again and make my money," he said. "This is not important."

Camara is hoping his loss will help other families avoid becoming a target.

"We didn't imagine that this would happen. It's difficult," Camara said. "I think this whole world is dangerous. You guys and your families need to take care, to be careful."
Once known as the "crack king" of Oakland, Darryl Reed officially became a free man Wednesday night after he and 110 others were granted clemency by President Barack Obama in August.

Reed had been living under home confinment until Wednesday. In his first Bay Area interview since being in prison for 26 years, he spoke with NBC Bay Area on a wide range of subjects.

First, he wanted it known that his street name, Lil' D, is behind him. Then, after briefly acknowledging his past, he talked about the future.

"I dont care what the district attorneys try to tell the public. Dont nobody deserve to do 30 to 40 years for selling no drugs," said Reed, who served 26 years of a 35-year sentence for manufacturing, possessing and selling crack cocaine. "Im going to take the negative about my journey and turn it into a positive."

With his limited freedom so far, Reed seems to be doing just that, donating toys to kids in Oakland this Christmas.

Twenty-eight years ago, he was a very different man. In the late 1980s, Reed became one of the most powerful drug dealers in the Bay Area, at 20 years old.

Today, he wants to make a difference.

"The things that I went through that got me where I'm at now are giving me the tools to take my life story and share it with the world," he said.

The Obama White House said Reed and the 110 others whose sentences were commuted with him were sentenced under outdated laws to unduly long prison terms. Inmates applying for a reduced sentence must be nonviolent.

"We must remember that these are individuals -- sons, daughters, parents, and in many cases, grandparents -- who have taken steps toward rehabilitation and who have earned their second chance," White House Counsel Neil Eggleston wrote at the time.

Former prosecutor Rus Giuntini contends that Reeds early release was inappropriate, saying the presidents decision to cut Reed's sentence short was like commuting a sentence for Al Capone.

Reed said he doesnt care what Giuntini thinks, and that he spent nearly 30 years behind bars "for a drug charge."

"First offender," Reed said. "So for him to question the decision the chief of us makes, it sounds like its something personal with him."
One housemate was stabbed and another was arrested after he was spotted hiding under a car Thursday morning in San Francisco near the Castro.

About 2:30 a.m. police said they responded to a stabbing involving housemates inside a home at Henry and Noe streets, police said. A man ran away and hid under a car in the neighborhood, police said. He was spotted about 3 a.m. and arrested.

The victim suffered non-life threatening wounds.

A motive was unknown.
A New York City Uber driver has been given a green light, and then some.

Noah Forman says he managed to hit about 240 green lights in a row earlier this month in Manhattan  and hes captured video to prove it.

It's not the first time he's attempted the feat: he hit 186 greens back in 2015 when he was driving a yellow cab. Video of that journey shows him driving from Battery Park to Central Park and back down to the World Trade Center.

But in the early morning hours of Dec. 6, Forman hit the streets with the aim of shattering his previous record.

During the nearly 30-minute trip, he zigzagged from Harlem down to Washington Square Park, then back up to 59th Street and down again to the Lower East Side, where he finally hit his first red light.

A friend edited Forman's uncut video down to four minutes and said the feat might just be a world record.

Forman confirmed reports that he'd like to eventually double his number to around 500 green lights  and bring new meaning to "going green."

Noah hits 240 green lights. from Shawn Swetsky - Post Producer on Vimeo.
The company at the center of last month's fatal trench collapse in Boston has been on the radar of Boston Police for months.

According to documents obtained by necn Investigates, officers knew of numerous Atlantic Drain Service employees allegedly using drugs on company property.

Kevin Otto, the owner of Atlantic Drain, was not interested in answering our questions. necn Investigates wanted to ask him about allegations that some of his employees were using the Roslindale company - and its trucks - to use and sell illegal drugs.

"I'm all set. You have to talk to the lawyer," Otto said.

According to Boston Police, a drug unit doing surveillance around the corner from Atlantic Drain in September spotted an Atlantic dump truck parked illegally in front of the home of a suspected drug dealer.

In the report, the officers noted they were "...aware that numerous employees of Atlantic Drain Service are chronic drug users," saying they had witnessed employees purchasing "...illegal narcotics in the past." They had received information that an employee named Dominick Revell "...was selling and using illegal narcotics out of the Atlantic Drain yard and an Atlantic Drain dump truck."

In court documents, the 45-year-old Revell is listed as a foreman at Atlantic Drain. According to Boston Police, he was at the wheel when they pulled over the dump truck in September. His passenger was his brother - Joseph Revell -also an Atlantic Drain employee at the time.

Police said the 54-year-old Joseph Revell admitted that he had drugs on him and pulled three bags of crack out of his sock. According to the report, he told the officers he had "...purchased the crack cocaine earlier in the day from someone in the Atlantic Drain yard."

When officers searched the dump truck, they allegedly found five crack filters inside Dominick Revells lunch cooler with "heavy crack cocaine residue." They also found he was operating the dump truck illegally. He didn't have a valid license and he doesn't have a CDL. In fact, his license has been suspended or revoked at least two dozen times in the last 15 years.

Martin Hewitt is the uncle of Robbie Higgins - one of two Atlantic Drain employees killed in last month's horrifying trench collapse in Boston's South End. What happened that day remains unclear and is under investigation, but the accident revealed Atlantic Drain's history of what OSHA calls serious and willful safety violations.

"He doesn't care. He just doesn't care," Hewitt said of Otto, the owner. "He goes home at night and he sleeps knowing that that's the type of people he has working for them."

Dominick Revell - who was in police custody at the time of the trench collapse - has been in and out of trouble for more than a decade for charges like operating under the influence of alcohol, drug convictions, prison time and pending charges in a police pursuit, all while listing his employer as Atlantic Drain, his position varying from back hoe operator to foreman. Of his four drunken driving charges, at least two were in Atlantic Drain vehicles.

While Revells troubles were brewing, Boston Police and EMS were called to Atlantic Drain last summer for two people overdosing on heroin. According to the report, an employee said he found a recently fired employee and a woman "unresponsive, lips purple, barely breathing."

The victims were given Narcan and transported to a hospital, but less than 12 hours later, police and EMS were called back - this time for another victim with ties to Otto, found dead inside Atlantic Drain. The cause of death was not released.

Revell is now behind bars awaiting trial for operating under the influence. He has two other pending cases.

We could not reach him or his brother, Joseph, for comment.

No charges have been filed against Atlantic Drain in connection with the trench collapse. State and federal investigations are ongoing. Camille Sarrouf, the attorney for Atlantic Drain, says he has been focused on the trench collapse and is unaware of the details of the drug allegations.
A Massachusetts man faced a judge on Wednesday after being accused of animal cruelty.

Earlier in December, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals removed dozens of cows, pigs, and sheep from the Westford Road property of Ralph McNiff. Court documents show that investigators visited the property and saw some animals standing in squalor, smelled decaying animals, and observed many living in poor conditions.

Ralph McNiff's son Troy, was the one who was arraigned on 7 counts of felony animal cruelty in Ayer District Court.

When necn stopped by the farm, he wasnt available for comment, but according to court documents, he admitted his wrongdoing to investigators in a statement.

I will tell you that the shelter is unsuitable, I do the best when I can. I have people who are supposed to be helping. I am 100 percent wrong.

Troy McNiff's nephew, Corey Arnold says the family was primarily involved in selling and buying animals at auction. Theyre now trying to figure out the next steps.

I just think its ridiculous what theyre doing to him, Arnold said.

Investigators said they did not find enough evidence to charge Ralph McNiff. Troy McNiff has another court date in February.

Town leaders say it will take months to clear the entire area, at the expense of tax payers.
The city of Chicago says it will repeal its plastic bag ban effective Jan. 1, 2017 and will delay its new bag tax until Feb. 1.

The city told businesses last week the delay was considered to give businesses time to the work the tax into point of sales systems, the newspaper reports.

Each time a store is visited without bringing a reusable paper or plastic bag, shoppers will be charged an additional seven cents for each bag needed to pack their goods.

The 7 cents-a-bag fee was a compromise decided on when Mayor Rahm Emanuel agreed to lift the plastic bag ban in the city. Its expected to generate roughly $13 million a year, with the city receiving about $9.2 million and the additional amount going to store merchants.
A 15-year-old boy has been charged with stealing a FedEx truck a gunpoint Wednesday morning on the South Side.

The teenager, who was not identified because of his age, faces one count each of aggravated vehicular hijacking with a firearm, possession of a stolen vehicle and aggravated fleeing, all felonies, according to Chicago Police.

About 9:15 a.m., a car with two people inside pulled up as a 46-year-old woman was delivering a package for FedEx in the 7500 block of South Green, authorities said. The teenager got out of the car with a gun, and made the woman hand over the keys to her truck.

He took off in the truck, which was spotted as it crashed into another car at the intersection of 67th Street and Wentworth, police said. The truck kept going south on Wentworth until it hit a fence.

The 15-year-old jumped out and was arrested after a short foot chase, police said. He was treated at St. Bernard Hospital for injuries in the crash and was listed in good condition. The FedEx driver was not injured.

The safety and security of our team members is always our priority, FedEx spokeswoman Sharon Young said in an email. We are grateful that no one was seriously injured in this incident, and we are working with the authorities in their investigation. FedEx continually evaluates and implements procedures that enhance our security systems.

About two hours later, another package delivery driver was robbed at gunpoint in the South Chicago neighborhood.

The 40-year-old woman was approached by a gunman wearing a ski mask about 11 a.m. in the 8000 block of South Saginaw, police said. He took two packages from the truck before running east. No one was in custody in connection with that robbery Wednesday.
Two people found dead in separate bedrooms of the same residence in suburban Morton Grove Wednesday died of natural causes, officials said Thursday.

The Cook County medical examiners office listed the deaths as natural causes Thursday afternoon after a death investigation conducted by police. Police said they believe the bodies had been in the home for more than a month's time.

The bodies of Lorraine Thorne, 94, and Walter Thorne, 62, were found in a home on the 8900 block of Meade Avenue after police were dispatched for a wellbeing check. Neighbors reported they had noticed mail gathering in front of the residence and snow had not been shoveled for some time. Responding officers examined the exterior of the home before making entry and finding the two bodies inside.

Police said Walter died before Lorraine. Neighbors said he took care of her.

Neighbors told NBC 5 they grew concerned after not seeing the Thorne's for some time.

"I noticed the snow wasn't shoveled when it did snow and the car didnt move for a while, neighbor Daniel Lim said. The son would move around but it seemed like the mother stayed at the house.

Police were looking for additional family members to notify as of Thursday afternoon.
One person was killed when a truck crashed into a tree on Route 14A in Sterling Wednesday.

State police said the victim, identified as Donald Gould, 50, of Foster, RI, was driving west on Route 14A when for some reason he went off the roadway and crashed into a tree near the Rhode Island line. Gould was fatally injured in the crash.

The road was closed for several hours while police investigated. The investigation is ongoing.
A 55-year-old former Derby bus driver faced a judge on Wednesday after police say he was driving as many as 30 Shelton intermediate students home from school and falling asleep at the wheel.

A twelve-year-old student wants to know why Paul Pixley would allegedly put her and her classmates in danger earlier this month.

"He hit the curb and we just kept driving, and then everyone started getting kind of confused," the student told NBC Connecticut.

The girl and other students captured Pixley on camera appearing to doze-off at the wheel.

"When we were in Huntington Center, he almost hit the back of the bus, everyone started yelling and screaming wake up and he started yelling back at us, that he's not sleeping," the student told the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters.

Pixley is accused of falling asleep nearly a dozen times in little more than two hours, according to the police report.

According to the arrest report, Pixley admitted to being on methadone and taking 80 mg prior to his shift starting that morning. After initially denying being asleep several times, he confessed he maybe shouldn't have been driving, one reason being, he may have taken NyQuil instead of DayQuil.

The girl called and texted her parents. They contacted police and the school. Her father was even able to follow the bus, until police arrived. They determined there was probable cause to make an arrest.

"I was getting really scared and confused, and really worried if he crashed and if anyone was going to get hurt," the student added.

The girl's mother Vienna DiPave is proud of the way her daughter handled the situation. "I'm just happy nothing happened to her or any of the other kids on the bus."

Lt. Rob Kozlowski with the Shelton Police Department confirmed that when officers arrived they had concerns about Pixley driving.

"It was determined his license was seized and he shouldn't be driving per opinion or the officer."

"If he was on a methadone program, why was he hired? after the bus was pulled over they definitely should have done a tox screening," DiPave added.

Greg Walter, Vice President of the bus company, Landmark Student Transportation, stressed that they do background checks on all employees and that Pixley's pre-employment background test and drug test came back clean.

"We are cooperating with everyone, we want to know what happened. Our number one priority is safety and if it can't be done safely we don't want to do it," Walter said.

Walter said police told them the arresting officer believed Pixley was having some kind of medical issue.

Superintendent Dr. Chris Clouet released the following statement:

"On December 16, we were alerted by parents and we immediately contacted the police and the bus company, Landmark. We were able to get the bus stopped, removed the driver from the bus, and his license was taken. We have been in touch with officials from the bus company and conducted interviews with students. In addition, we have had daily contact with the police department and have shared video records with them to contribute to their investigation. The driver was arraigned today and returned to jail. He will never drive in Shelton ever again. We have some concerns regarding Landmarks hiring practices and have asked our attorneys to review our contract with them. We are concerned about Landmarks hiring and monitoring of their employees and want a full review. We intend to meet with Landmarks regional leader next week to talk about changing practices to ensure the safety of our students and possibly take other actions."
Just a day after actress Carrie Fisher died, her grieving mother Debbie Reynolds passed away. She was 84.

She's gone to be with Carrie, her son Todd Fisher told NBC News. "She loved taking care of her and now she's gone to be with her."

The "Singing' in the Rain" star was rushed to a California hospital earlier Wednesday after suffering a medical emergency.

[NATL]Debbie Reynolds: Her Life in Photos

The double tragedy deals a blow to the Reynolds and Fisher families, which are still mourning Fisher's death.

Hollywood is also in shock over the successive losses of two icons. Fellow actors and celebrities took to social media to send condolences to the families.

"Carrie left too soon and now they are together again. My heart is literally broken," actress Debra Messing wrote on Instagram. Reynolds played the mother of Messing's character on "Will and Grace."

The post continued: "She was pure energy and light when she came on stage. A devoted mother and grandmother, and aunt and great aunt, and friend. I lost my mom a few years ago. She loved that Debbie was my TV mom. I hope they find each other and hug and kiss."

"A final curtain made of tears #DebbieReynolds #CarrieFisher," actress Rose McGowan wrote on Twitter.

Ellen Degeneres, actress Illeana Douglas and actor Albert Brooks expressed their disbelief over Reynolds' death one day after her daughter's.

"Debbie Reynolds was one of the last of Hollywood Royalty. It breaks my heart that she is gone. I'd hoped that my grieving was done for 2016." William Shatner tweeted.

A final curtain made of tears #DebbieReynolds #CarrieFisher  rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) December 29, 2016

Actress Lisa Rina noted the "unbearable loss of a child" and "Star Trek" star George Takei wrote on Twitter that "Debbie died of a broken heart, but she's with her daughter now."

"My thoughts and prayers are with the family during this time of unimaginable loss. Two generations in two days," Chaz Bono tweeted.

My thoughts and prayers are with the family during this time of unimaginable loss. Two generations in two days. https://t.co/TI4D4hWkbc  Chaz Bono (@ChazBono) December 29, 2016
Hunt County Sheriff's deputies said they arrested a 51-year-old man who fired at them during a high-speed chase through two counties early Thursday morning.

Sheriff's deputies said they tried to stop the man driving a white Cadillac on Texas 276 in Quinlan just before midnight, but he fled.

The man fired several shots during the chase, which deputies said exceeded speeds of 100 mph.

Authorities said the man stopped at a Shell gas station near the intersection of Texas 276 and Farm-to-Market Road 549 in Rockwall County. After a brief standoff, the man exited the vehicle with his hands up.

Deputies said they took the man into custody at about 1:50 a.m. and transported him to the Hunt County Detention Center where he will be arraigned on several felony charges.

No injuries were reported.

Quinlan and Rockwall police, Rockwall County Sheriff's deputies and Texas Department of Public Safety officers assisted.
An NBC 5 report helped an Allen mother, whose son was killed in a car crash six months ago, recover photos of the final moments of his life.

Shelly Weisens son Kaiden, 21, had lived the last year of his life away from home after joining the Navy.

In June, Kaiden was killed in a car crash in Virginia not far from his Navy base.

Only two things were saved from the crash  his dog tags and his broken cell phone.

Shelly never removes her son's dog tags from around her neck. She hoped to salvage some of her sons last memories by getting the data from his phone.

Maybe I was able to get his photos, Weisen said. "I have a few selfies he sent me, but I know there are lots more. Today marks a year since I last saw him."

In the days after Kaiden's funeral in July, she took her son's phone to uBreakiFix, a cell phone repair shop in Plano.

Weisen said the store was able to fix the screen on iPhone, but wasnt able to access it without a passcode. However, she said they told her if she could bring in Kaidens laptop, they could sync the two and bypass the phones passcode and retrieve the data she wanted.

"I said, 'Youre dealing with the military, it could be a while before I get his laptop,'" Weisen recalled. "He assured me that he would have it in safekeeping and he would keep it as long as I needed it to be there."

Weisen finally received Kaidens laptop from the military the week before Christmas and took it into the repair shop, only to be told the phone couldnt be found.

"They had misplaced the phone," Weisen said. "It wasnt just someones phone. That was the last little bits of his life and its gone now."

Its not the phone itself that matters, Weisen said, its only what is inside.

The owner of uBreakiFix in Plano, Robert Munroe, sent NBC 5 the following statement:

First of all, we are deeply sorry for Ms. Wiesen's loss and thankful for her son's service to our nation. The user experience is of utmost importance to us and every device is made a priority. We are looking into every possible option to retrieve the device and data associated."

A company spokesman told NBC 5 that they also have techs working to retrieve the data in another way.

On Thursday, the phone repair shop recovered 200 photos from Kaiden's iCloud account and overnighted Weisen a new phone with all of the photos on it.

Weisen said she's forever grateful for NBC 5's help.
A federal judge is ordering the state to disclose the number of heat-related deaths that have occurred since 1990 in Texas prisons, where less than a third have air conditioning in all housing areas.

U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison at a hearing Wednesday in Houston gave the state 30 days to comply, but not before questioning why its lawyers had not provided the information sooner, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The order comes as part of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in 2013 that contends at least 13 inmates being held by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice have died of heat-related deaths since 2007, including 11 in 2011 when a heat wave brought some of the hottest temperatures on record.

"We are not talking about how many widgets were sold out of a given factory," Ellison said during the hearing. "We are talking about human lives, and I would be very distressed if the answer is the TDCJ does not even keep count of how many people died of heat-related illness."

The lawsuit argues more than 1,400 prison inmates, most of them elderly and disabled, are suffering "cruel and unusual punishment" by enduring extreme summer heat without air-conditioning.

"The well-being of staff and offenders is a top priority for the agency and we remain committed to making sure that both are safe during the extreme heat," according to a statement by prison spokesman Jason Clark.

There are 109 state prison facilities in Texas, with 30 that are air-conditioned in all housing areas. Clark said all prison units now have at least some areas that are air-conditioned.

But Austin lawyer Jeff Edwards, representing prisoners on whose behalf the lawsuit was filed, said conditions in the prisons have "turned fraud into a death sentence, drunk driving into a death sentence."

If the number of people escaping from prison were as high as the number of people suffering heat-related deaths, Edwards said, "heads would roll and things would change."

Ellison also ordered TDCJ to provide figures on the number of heat-related injuries to staff and inmates at the Hodge Unit, a prison south of Tyler in East Texas that opened in 1995 without any air-conditioning.

Edwards said a key part of the case is to find out what prison officials knew about people being injured or killed by the heat and how they responded.

"It has always been a huge problem in the Texas prison system, and they ought to be able to tell us who died of heat-related illness in the Texas prison system," Edwards said during the hearing, "and if they can't, they ought to say it under oath."

TDCJ says a study has determined that just to outfit four prisons with air-conditioning would cost approximately $350 million.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller traveled to Florida Thursday for an interview with President-elect Donald Trumps transition team regarding the Cabinet-level position of Secretary of Agriculture.

Miller, called "Donald Trumps biggest cheerleader" by his own spokesperson, has been an outspoken supporter of Trump since early in the primary campaign.

I was out there when it wasnt really popular, when a lot of people  a lot of elected officials  kind of treated Donald Trump like he was radioactive, Miller said Thursday, prior to leaving North Texas for Palm Beach, Florida, and Trumps Mar-A-Lago estate.

The agriculture secretary position is one of the final Cabinet-level positions to be filled by the President-elect.

Dressed in his signature cowboy hat and six-shooter lapel pin, Miller, a Republican from Stephenville, emphasized his ties to Texas  an important Republican stronghold  and that as Agriculture Commissioner he has made great strides in the Lone Star State in the area of improving the market for locally-grown produce and streamlining the application and inspection process for a food producer to earn organic status.

A prolific presence on social media, who has drawn more than a fair amount of criticism for his tendency to share fake news, Miller said he likens his approach to that of Donald Trump, who he said, Tells it like it is.

Recently, Miller shared a Washington Post article titled Trump doesnt threaten only President Obamas legacy. He could ruin Michelle Obamas, too. to his Facebook page, and its 367,000 followers, that he said is indicative of the approach he would take to the Secretary of Agriculture position.

If reversing policies that removed school nutrition decision making from locally elected school boards, superintendents, principals, teachers, and parents, and rolling back policies that created healthy trash cans instead of healthy kids means ruining Michelle Obama's legacy than count me in, Miller wrote. In Texas we have empowered local school districts to make school nutrition decisions that are best for their districts and the children in their care. We don't need bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. or in Austin, Texas telling us how to raise our kids!

Among the policies Miller is referencing are his efforts as Agriculture Commissioner to reverse a statewide ban on soft drinks and fried food in public schools. Miller did so arguing that local school districts should have the power to make decisions on food choices at the local level.

About his impending job interview, Miller said he is not entirely sure what to expect  whether it will be much like a formal job interview or more of a casual conversation with members of the transition team. But Miller is adamant he did not have his sights set on this move when he decided to back Donald Trump.

It never really entered my mind during the campaign. My sole focus was getting to the winners circle. Its kind of like a dog chasing the bus. We were chasing the bus and then, Ill be darned, we caught it. And then we have to figure out what to do with the bus, Miller said with a laugh. So thats when the negotiation started and then the talks. But I certainly didnt join the Trump team looking for a place in the Cabinet. Ive got a really good deal and I love the job Im doing.
Adoptions begin Thursday for the 78 dogs rescued from deplorable, cramped living conditions in an El Cajon home earlier this month.

The dogs  mostly terrier mixes, dachshunds and Chihuahuas  were removed by the San Diego Humane Society from what officials described as a hoarding situation.

Over the past few weeks, the dogs have been evaluated by veterinarians. With their health and behavior cleared, the dogs are now seeking forever homes.

The San Diego Humane Society said all of the dogs are friendly and good-natured. However, the dogs never went outside and lived in rooms full of urine and feces. Because they lack those social skills, new owners will have to train the dogs on what its like to be a loved, social pet.

The San Diego Humane Society said 45 of the dogs will be up for adoption, for free, starting at 10 a.m. Thursday at the San Diego facility on Gaines Street. The dogs will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Last week, San Diego Humane Society officials said 2-year-old Lucy was one of the dogs nearly ready for adoption. When she was rescued, Lucy was covered in scabs and fleas and had thick, inflammed skin. She was missing large patches of fur near her tails and eyes. She had given birth to possibly multiple litters, officials said. Since her arrival, Humane Society officials have been documenting her journey.

Stephen MacKinnon, chief of the Humane Societys law enforcement, said officials declined to charge or cite the owner of the dogs because he was extremely cooperative in forfeiting the dogs and sought help for a mental health condition.
Designers in San Francisco are thinking outside the box in trying to rescue an old waterfront firehouse. More specifically, they're thinking on top of the water, with the creation of a floating fire station.

Station 35 is showing its age and sitting in a danger zone where its survival would be challenged by rising water levels and earthquakes. So officials are seeking a solution off shore.

"We know we need to make it more resilient for earthquakes and for sea level rise," said Rachel Gordon, of San Francisco's Public Works Department.

Just down the street from the station, water poured onto the Embaracdero during a king tide. Firefighters said the station hasn't flooded yet. But crews have moved fireboats to Treasure Island during stormy high tides to prevent them from damaging the dock.

With conditions changing, designers are looking for a safe station solution.

The fire commission and the port commission are supporting plans for a floating station, allowing the structure to go up and down with sea level rise and be more resilient in an earthquake.

Having fire fighters and fire boats ready to respond after an earthquake is crucial, Gordon said.

After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, crews used the fire boat to get water to crews in the marina. Without the boat pumping water, more homes would have burned, fire officials said.

But is a floating fire station cost effective?

"It's about $100,000 less than a fixed pier, where we sink piles down into the bay mud," Gordon said.

The project is expected to cost more than $6 million, paid for with voter-approved earthquake bond money. But the Department of Public Works said it still needs state and federal approval because of it's a waterfront location.
A Hanukkah miracle has occurred between a menorah maker in Massachusetts and a group of Chabad Jews in San Francisco.

After Yochanon "Mitch" Bogart, who studied physics at MIT and also happens to be a menorah maker extraordinaire, heard that a 6-foot, 100-pound brass menorah had been stolen from Washington Square Park over the Christmas weekend, he knew he had to take action.

And so, he sent Rabbi Peretz and Miryum Mochkin, who oversee the Chabad of North Beach in San Francisco, a new, wooden menorah overnight. He said he spent about $300 on FedEx, and valued the menorah, handcrafted out of fir, to be about $700.

But he was focused neither on the price, nor the effort of the mitzvah  a good deed. The menorah landed at the doorsteps of the Columbus Avenue Chabad house Wednesday morning, where the Mochkin brood quickly put it together. Chabad is a Hasidic Jewish organization with houses and chapters all over the world.

NBC Bay Area

"I just knew this was meant for them," Bogart told NBC Bay Area in a Skype interview Wednesday morning. "Never underestimate the power of individuals. One individual can have a tremendous effect. I feel very connected with the people of San Francisco."

Bogart said a business partner of his alerted him to the fact that the Mochkin's brass menorah was stolen either Saturday or Sunday from the park.

"They really feel bad that this was stolen from them," Bogart said. "They would like to have a beautiful 6-foot menorah and there are four days left. It looks like they want it, I want to give it, so were all happy."

Police say that it's possible the thieves wanted the Jewish symbol of Hanukkah to sell the brass candelabra sticks for the metal. As of Wednesday, no suspect has been arrested. Bogart started Menorahs to Go as a side business and is an inventor and CEO of Rampage LLC, which specializes in digital printing.

The Miraculous Tale of the Stolen San Francisco Menorah

This year, Bogart made 15 menorahs to sell, and had three left. He gave two to his sons, who are both rabbis. And the last remaining one? Well, that's the one he shipped to San Francisco.

As for the Mochkins, they're thrilled to have received such a nice Hanukkah present. (Although they say they're going to light the new one and then take it back in the house.)

"For him to just stop whatever he was doing and get this menorah over to us, a big thank you not just from us and our children, but also from our community and from our city," Miryum Mochkin said.

Since their menorah was stolen, the family has hosted a public party in the park, with dozens of people coming to light their own menorahs on a picnic table. On Wednesday night, they are hosting a pre-planned Hanukkah party and menorah lighting at Ghiradelli Square.

"I think this year the Hanukkah story came alive in a whole new way," said Rabbi Peretz Mochkin. "This adds to the idea that every situation spins to something positive."

The grateful Mochkins plan to light the new menorah on Friday before sundown and on New Year's Eve, the last night of the eight-day festival of lights.

"The miracle is in the message of the menorah," Miryum Mochkin said. "The light is an added ripple effect, to respond to hate with light. This Hanukkah miracle is that this was such a kind, generous act."

"They really feel bad that this was stolen from them." - Menorah maker who sent replacement for one stolen in SF. https://t.co/uRcs2SziCC pic.twitter.com/tbkTx47u3y  NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) December 28, 2016
For the eighth time this year, a newborn baby was safely turned over to authorities under the Los Angeles County Safe Surrender Program, Supervisor Janice Hahn announced Wednesday.

The baby boy was surrendered Tuesday at a hospital in Pomona, according to Hahn's office.

The infant is the 150th to be surrendered since the county's Safe Surrender Program began in 2001, at the behest of Hahn's predecessor on the Board of Supervisor, Don Knabe.

"We must continue to raise awareness so that any mother in L.A. County who finds herself in a desperate and impossible situation knows that they can get their baby to safe hands in a way that is safe, secure and anonymous," Hahn said.

Under the county's Safe Surrender law, a parent or guardian is allowed to surrender an infant who is no more than three days old at a hospital or fire station without repercussions if the baby shows no sign of abuse.
Authorities in Mexico have re-issued an Amber Alert for a missing 18-month-old girl after her mother was found dead in Baja California, saying the toddler could still be alive.

The young girl, Estefani Valeria Alba Gopar, disappeared with her mother in May 2016 when she was only 11 months old, police said. Days later, the mother was found dead in Mexico.

The child is still missing, according to a release from the Procuraduria General de Justicia del Estado, but new evidence suggests the child is still alive, and could possibly be found in other parts of Baja California. In light of the new evidence, authorities have re-issued the Amber Alert in hopes of finding the daughter.

Anyone with information is asked to call Mexican authorities at 01-800-00-854-00 or Amber Alert Baja California at 01 (664) 6346621 y 9007430, extension 1702 and 1703.

At the time she went missing, the girl was described as approximately 50 centimeters tall (approximately 20 inches tall) and 9 kilograms (approximately 20 pounds) heavy with short brown hair.

No other information was immediately available.

Check back for updates on this breaking news story.
A man in a stolen BMW led officers on a high speed chase from the Boyle Heights area through three counties before surrendering in Norco.

Deputies with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Transit Policing Division observed the vehicle in the area of the Hollywood (101) and San Bernardino (10) freeways about 8 p.m. and learned the vehicle had been stolen after running the car's plates, said sheriff's Lt. Jesus Carrasco.

They followed the sedan until the California Highway Patrol began a chase on the eastbound Pomona (60) Freeway at Atlantic Boulevard.

The BMW reached speeds around 90 mph as it was driven north on the San Gabriel River (605) Freeway then east on the San Bernardino (10) Freeway to southbound Interstate 15.

The driver exited in Norco and pulled into a fast food restaurant parking lot, where he surrendered about 8:40 p.m.

Riverside Highway Patrol officers recovered a large bag of methamphetamine from the BMW. During the chase, the driver was throwing a white powdery substance out the car window, said Sgt. Willie Bowen of Riverside CHP.

The driver, identified by authorities as 42-year-old Frank Gutierrez of Montebello, was on probation for a previous drug charge.
A pedestrian was struck and killed by a Metro train early Thursday morning, and commuters who take the Gold Line should expect delays.

A Gold Line train was traveling eastbound to the Arcadia station at 201 N. First Avenue at around 12:12 a.m. when the pedestrian was hit, according to Ramon Montenegro of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Transit Services.

Commuters should face delays since the Gold Line is running on a single track, according to Metro.

No further information was immediately available.
A 19-year-old woman from north of Tampa is behind bars on charges of hitting her ex-boyfriend after seeing him kiss her mother.

According to NBC affiliate WFLA-TV, cops went to a home in Spring Hill where Breanua Bolton told Hernando County deputies she found her mother sitting on her ex-boyfriends lap while they were kissing.

After breaking in through a window, Bolton says she began to cry and pushed the victim over a chair and punched him in the head when he tried to stand up.

Bolton says she dated the man for a year and a half and had recently broken up. The victim suffered minor injuries and was not taken to the hospital. Bolton was charged with domestic battery.
As we prepare to celebrate the New Year, Miami officials want to make sure everyone who is out brings it in makes it home safe.

Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado and Miami-Dade Commissioner Audrey M. Edmonson are urging people not to shoot celebratory gunfire during New Years Eve.

When a bullet goes up in the air, it always has to come down, and when it comes down we have no idea where that bullet is coming down to, said Edmonson.

Police say innocent people, including children, are struck down by bullets fired into the air by people celebrating the New Year - causing serious injuries and death. Officials are also looking to invest more in reducing gun violence.

We will get tougher on gun violence. The county has budgeted over $2.4 million to help fight gun violence, Edmonson said.
A 21-year-old Miami woman is being bars after police say she robbed three different men of thousands of dollars in expensive jewelry, clothing and other items after meeting them at various clubs.

Liz Rios was arrested Wednesday after being identified by several victims following an investigation. She is charged with multiple counts, including grand theft and drug possession.

According to their report, police say Rios met the men in July and August on three separate occasions at clubs in both Miami and Miami Beach. During the first incident on July 29th, Rios allegedly drugged her victims breakfast after meeting him at Club Eleven  making off with over $50,000 worth of jewelry.

Rios allegedly met her second victim on August 9th at LIV nightclub, following him to a hotel room and sleeping with him before stealing clothing, sunglasses and a Louis Vutton bag from the room and a safe.

During the third incident on August 18th, Rios allegedly met the victim inside Dream nightclub before having sex with him and stealing over $13,000 worth of items.

Police used fingerprints and surveillance footage from several incidents to help find Rios. She had her first court appearance postponed Friday until she could contact her lawyer.
A man accused of trying to kidnap several children in Miami since August appeared in bond court Thursday.

During the hearing, Marshawn Andrews, 25, said thi is a "case of mistaken identity." His family says the same thing.

Miami Police announced Wednesday that Andrews was arrested on Dec. 23. Officers say Andrews was spotted trying to lure females into his vehicle on Northwest 29th Street and 7th Avenue.

When police stopped Andrews for a traffic infraction they were able to connect him to the attempted abduction cases. Andrews faces aggravated battery, attempted sexual battery on a minor and lewd and lascivious molestation of a child.

Andrews' mother, Pamela Andrews, spoke to NBC 6, saying that her son is innocent. "They are trying to railroad my son, but that will not happen," said Andrews. His sister said her brother looks nothing like a police sketch. "It don't look nothing like hom. My brother has no dreads, he has plaits in his head. The beard don't match my brother," said Marsheby Andrews.

Detectives released a composite sketch of the suspect last week after three girls in separate incidents were targeted.

The first incident happened on August 31st when a girl who was walking to school near Northwest 65th Street and 7th Avenue was approached by a man in a car before she was able to get away and call police.

Two more incidents took place later in the year  the first on November 10th near NW 12th Avenue and 67th Street where the victim was able to flee.

The second incident happened on December 12th near Northwest 71st Street and 9th Avenue. The victim said she was walking home from Miami Northwestern Senior High when the armed man ordered her to get in his SUV. Once inside, he ordered to see her private parts, reportedly offering $500 to the victim before she was able to escape the vehicle and run away.

Andrews was being held without bond.
Donald Trump said Wednesday that Sprint will bring back 5,000 jobs to the United States while another company, OneWeb, will hire 3,000 workers.

"Because of what is happening and the spirit and the hope, I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they are going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States, they have taken them from other countries," Trump said outside his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

The president-elect said the deal "was done through" SoftBank CEO and the current chairman of Sprint Corp., Masayoshi Son, a Japanese billionaire and technology investor. Son also owns OneWest, a startup internet company.

The telecom mogul promised to invest $50 billion in the U.S. and create 50,000 jobs after a private meeting with Trump in December, The Wall Street Journal reported. A Sprint spokesperson told NBC News the jobs announced Wednesday are part of Son's earlier commitment, but that the 5,000 jobs will be funded by Sprint, not SoftBank.

Sprint has struggled under SoftBank. The carrier shed roughly 9,000 workers between 2012 and 2016, reducing its staff to 30,000, according to annual reports, The Associated Press reported.

In 2014, federal regulators objected to Sprint's attempt to join with rival T-Mobile, a merger that would have combined two of the four largest mobile telecom companies in the United States. But a Trump administration would be more likely to approve blockbuster mergers, including a deal between Sprint and T-Mobile, analysts say.

Sprint Chief Executive Marcelo Claure said in a statement that the company is "excited" to work with Trump.

We are excited to work with President-Elect Trump and his Administration to do our part to drive economic growth and create jobs in the U.S., Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said in a statement following the announcement. We believe it is critical for business and government to partner together to create more job opportunities in the U.S. and ensure prosperity for all Americans.

During his campaign, the New York businessman pledged to do more to protect workers' interest and singled out numerous companies for criticism.

Earlier this month, Trump brokered a deal to keep a Carrier plant in Indiana and save about 1,000 jobs. Under the proposed deal with Carrier's parent company United Technologies, the company would receive $7 million in financial incentives over 10 years in exchange for a guarantee that Carrier would retain at least 1,000 jobs and invest $16 million into its Indiana operation, a source familiar with the talks said, NBC News reported.

He has also called on Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp to lower their costs for U.S. military and government projects.

On Tuesday, Trump thanked himself for a surge in a key gauge of consumer confidence. He wrote on Twitter that the Conference Board had reported that its consumer confidence index had climbed to 113.7 in December, the highest the index has climbed in more than 15 years.

"Thanks Donald!" he wrote.

The Sprint announcement came after tensions rose and fell Wednesday between Trump and President Barack Obama. The president-elect accused president Obama of throwing up "inflammatory" roadblocks during the transition of power and said his administration has treated Israel with "total disdain and disrespect."

"Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks," Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. "Thought it was going to be a smooth transition  NOT!"

However, later Wednesday Trump told journalists at Mar-a-Lago that the changeover of power is going "very, very smoothly."

The reversal appeared to come after Trump and Obama spoke privately. He phoned me, Trump told reporters. We had a very nice conversation.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Obama phoned Trump. "Today's call, like the others since the election, was positive and focused on continuing a smooth and effective transition," Schultz said. "The president and president-elect committed to staying in touch over the next several weeks."
What to Know Actress Debbie Reynolds died a day after her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was highly critical of Israel, sparking strong reaction from U.S. and Israeli leaders

Russian President Vladimir Putin said a Syrian cease-fire agreement has been reached

Get the top headlines of the day in your morning briefing from NBC 4 New York, Monday through Friday. Sign up for our newsletter here.

Debbie Reynolds Dies at 84

Actress Debbie Reynolds, the star of the 1952 classic "Singin' in the Rain," died a day after her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher, 60. Reynolds was 84. "She's now with Carrie and we're all heartbroken," Reynolds son, Todd Fisher, said from the hospital where his mother was taken by ambulance on Wednesday. He said the stress of his sister's death "was too much" for Reynolds. The mother and daughter, separated by so many differences both personal and generational, are likely drawn closer in the public memory after their deaths on successive days. Carrie Fisher brought the sarcasm and cynicism of the Baby Boomers to her movies, books and stage shows, while Debbie Reynolds embodied the sunshine of postwar America on the screen. Heres how some stars are reacting to the news of Reynolds sudden death. In Austin, Texas, Star Wars fans paid tribute to Fisher with a lightsaber vigil.

Betty White Trends After Celeb Deaths

Actress Betty White was trending on Twitter Wednesday as thousands of her fans begged 2016 -- a year that has seen many celebrity deaths  to leave the 94-year-old actress alone. If you take Betty White from us this year, we will riot, a Twitter user posted. One fan even went so far as to start a GoFundMe to help protect Betty White from 2016, with a goal of raising $2,000.

Kerry and Netanyahu Clash

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said a two-state solution is "the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace" between Israel and Palestinians, and ensure Israel's future "as a Jewish and democratic state," in a farewell speech in Washington on Wednesday. "Here is a fundamental reality: If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish, or democratic. It cannot be both. And it won't ever really be at peace," Kerry said. Leaders in Israel and the U.S. shot back at Kerry's remarks. In a live broadcast on Israeli TV, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Kerry for a speech highly critical of Israel at a time when he said the region is "going up in flames."

U.S. Prepares to Retaliate Against Russia

The Obama administration is preparing retaliatory actions against Russia for its alleged involvement in cyber-attacks on Democratic Party institutions in order to interfere in the presidential election, two senior U.S. officials confirmed to NBC News. An announcement about the actions will come as early as Thursday or Friday, the officials said. Unannounced steps will be covert and involve a cyber option, but the U.S. will be careful to avoid engaging Russia in an all-out cyber war. When asked about possible sanctions against Russia, President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday that "I think we ought to get on with our lives.

New Syrian Cease-Fire Deal

Russian President Vladimir Putin says a Syrian cease-fire agreement has been reached with Turkey. Putin said Thursday that Russia and Turkey will guarantee the truce, which is set to begin at midnight. He says it will be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition, and that the Syrian parties would take part in talks to be held in Kazakhstan, without specifying a date.

Shot May Be Future of HIV Prevention

The Truvada pill is taken daily to prevent HIV and has been touted as a miracle drug responsible for lowering rates of the virus across the United States. But soon, the daily pill may be overshadowed by an even simpler method  a single flu shot-like injection at the doctor's office, once every two months. The National Institutes of Health announced last week that it was entering the first-ever global clinical trial of an injectable HIV-prevention drug called cabotegravir. The trial is taking place in eight countries across three world regions.

Knicks Carmelo Anthony Ejected for Hit

Carmelo Anthony was ejected from a New York Knicks game on Wednesday night after he elbowed the Atlanta Hawks' Thabo Sefolosha in the neck while fighting for a rebound. "He threw a punch," Sefolosha said. "A fist right to my face. Anthony and Sefolosha were tied up near the basket, positioned for a rebound, when the Knicks star lost his cool with a forearm jab to Sefolosha's face. Watch the video.
Two Long Island day care workers have been cleared of charges they physically abused infants and toddlers in their care.

Kathleen Culver and Sarah Dawber were acquitted of charges of endangering the welfare of a child after a bench trial in November.

The two women worked at the Side By Side Day Care Center in Southampton where they were responsible for children from four months to 18 months old.

They were accused in 2015 of force-feeding, pushing and slamming the children down on the floor.

Dawber's attorney had said the abuse claims were made up by an emotionally disturbed former employee.

In a statement after the decision, Culver said she was grateful that so many people stood behind her.
The leader of a Maplewood cub scout troop is petitioning the regional Cub Scouts council allow an 8-year-old boy to join the pack after he was kicked out of his Secaucus troop for being transgender.

Cub Scout Pack 20 leader Kyle Hackler told NBC New York Thursday that he disagreed with the Northern New Jersey Council of Boy Scouts' decision to give Joe Maldonado the boot from Pack 87 following complaints from parents.

"It breaks my heart to see that this little boy is going through this situation," he said. "All he wants to do is be with his friends."

Joe was born a girl but has identified as male for more than a year. He joined Pack 87 in Secaucus in October and was asked to leave about a month later, according to The Record. His mother, Kristie Maldonado, said Joe is accepted as a boy at school.

Though he can't cite any specfic reasons for opposition to Joe's membership, Hackler believes that a lack of knowledge about the transgender community and gender identity is what led to his dismissal. He chose to head the Maplewood troop because of the community's open and understanding nature, which is why the decision to give Joe the boot didn't sit well.

"This is a community that's supposed to be understanding," he said. "People who don't understand his situation are upset because they're letting a girl into Boy Scouts. It's deeper than that."

The Northern New Jersey Council of Boy Scouts did not respond to a request for comment.

Boy Scouts of America Spokeswoman Effie Delimarkos said Thursday in a statement to NBC New York that Joe doesn't meet the eligibility requirements to participate in the Cub Scout program. However, the organization did offer information on alternative program options.

"The BSA grants youth membership to Cub Scout to boys in the first through fifth grades, or 7 to 10 years of age," she said. "If needed we defer to the information provided for an individual's birth certificate and their biological sex."

She added that scouting "teaches its youth members and adult leaders to be respectful of other people and individual beliefs."

In a statement earlier this month, Delimarkos said the organization does not restrict members based on sexual orientation, but considers gender identity a separate issue, and that Cub Scout programs are for those identified as boys on their birth certificates.

Hackler said birth certificates aren't a required part of the application process, but noted that there is a question to indicate gender.

Earlier this year, the Boy Scouts told The Associated Press that it would admit transgender children to its coeducational programs, but not to programs that are for boys only, like the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts.

Although the private youth organization has the right to do as they choose, Hacker said understanding the complexities of all scouts, transgender members in particular, is important in successfully fostering morality. He implored the Boy Scouts to look beyond the birth certificate, which only tells half the story.

He's got a message for the opposing parents and councilmembers.

"Stop, listen to the situation. Open your mind and you might learn something."
What to Know The victim, 23-year-old Connor Rasmussen, was stabbed on Madison Avenue Dec. 18

The victim was able to pull the knife out of his own head, police said

He had come to the city to propose to his girlfriend

A 20-year-old man has been arrested in the stabbing of a tourist who came to the city to propose to his girlfriend earlier this month.



Steven Tlapanca was charged Wednesday with attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon in the Dec. 18 attack near Grand Central on 23-year-old Connor Rasmussen.

Rasmussen, who had flown into the city from Washington state to propose, was walking down Vanderbilt Avenue with a group of friends that morning when he noticed someone following him, he later told police. He turned the corner at 46th Street, and the man allegedly yelled, "Hey!"

Once they got to Madison Avenue, police said the man pulled out a steak knife and stabbed Rasmussen in the back of the head.

The victim was able to pull the knife out of his own head, police said. He went to the hospital but was barely injured, and returned home to Washington.

It wasn't immediately clear if Tlapanco had an attorney who could comment on the allegations.
A tow truck driver from Yonkers was hit and killed by a hit-and-run driver while he was loading a vehicle onto his truck bed Thursday morning, New York State Police officials said.

Salvatore Brescia, a driver for Vincent's Service Station, responded to a call just after 6:15 a.m. about a disabled vehicle near the White Plains/Mamaroneck Avenue exit on the I-95, officials said.

The 32-year-old was loading the vehicle onto his tow truck when he was struck by a passing motorist at around 6:53 a.m., according to police. The driver fled the scene.

Authorities said Brescia was taken to Greenwich Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.

In a statement posted on its Facebook page, Vincent's Service Station said it was mourning the death of Brescia, who was "not only an extremely talented and hard working young man, but an incredible and invaluable friend/brother."

New York State Crime Stoppers are offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for Brescia's death.

Anyone with information is asked to call the New York State Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-866-313-TIPS.

Anyone who witnessed the collision is asked to call the Bureau of Criminal Investigation at (914) 766-2600.

There are no arrests at this time, and the investigation is ongoing.
A young woman walking back to her car after leaving her job on Long Island was ambushed by a gunman in a ski mask, who forced his way into her car and sexually assaulted her, law enforcement sources say.

A Nassau County Police spokesman says the 4 a.m. attack Wednesday morning appears to have been random.

The victim was walking to her car in a commercial area of West Hempstead, home to roughly a dozen businesses. Law enforcement sources said she was just leaving her job when the gunman surprised her, forced his way into her car and ordered her to drive to a nearby location.

The masked gunman then sexually assaulted the woman and ran from the scene, police said. He's still on the loose.

Investigators have been reviewing surveillance video from nearby businesses to see if it might help identify the attacker.

The woman was treated at a hospital after the incident. The attack does not appear to be part of any wider pattern.

"It does appear as a random attack, a very troubling attack, and we're stepping up our patrols as it's concerning to us, and we want to make sure we bring proper closure to this case as soon as possible," said Nassau Det. Lt. Richard LeBrun.
Actress Debbie Reynolds, the star of the 1952 classic "Singin' in the Rain," has died. She was 84.

Her son, Todd Fisher, said Reynolds died Wednesday, a day after her daughter, Carrie Fisher, who was 60.

"She's now with Carrie and we're all heartbroken," Fisher said from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where his mother was taken by ambulance earlier Wednesday.

He said the stress of his sister's death "was too much" for Reynolds.

Reynolds enjoyed the very heights of show business success and endured the depths of personal tragedy and betrayal. She lost one husband to Elizabeth Taylor and two other husbands plundered her for millions. Fisher, who found lasting fame as Princess Leia in "Star Wars" and struggled for much of her life with drug addiction and mental health problems, died on Tuesday after falling ill on a plane and being hospitalized.

In her screen career, Reynolds was a superstar early in life. After two minor roles at Warner Bros. and three supporting roles at MGM, studio boss Louis B. Mayer cast her in "Singin' in the Rain," despite Kelly's objections. She was 19 with little dance experience, and she would be appearing with two of the screen's greatest dancers, Donald O'Connor and Kelly, who also co-directed.

"Gene Kelly was hard on me, but I think he had to be," Reynolds, who more than held her own in the movie, said in a 1999 Associated Press interview. "I had to learn everything in three to six months. Donald O'Connor had been dancing since he was three months old, Gene Kelly since he was 2 years old. ... I think Gene knew I had to be challenged."

"The Unsinkable Molly Brown" was based on the life of a Colorado woman who rose from poverty to riches and triumphed over tragedy, including the sinking of the Titanic.

The 1964 Meredith Willson musical, with Molly's defiant song "I Ain't Down Yet," brought Reynolds her only Academy Award nomination. She also received a Tony nomination in 1973 when she starred on Broadway in the revival of "Irene," in which her daughter also appeared.

After her transition from starlet to star, Reynolds became immensely popular with teenage girls and even more so when in 1955 she married Eddie Fisher, the pop singer whose fans were equally devoted.

The couple made a movie together, "Bundle of Joy," which seemed to mirror the 1956 birth of Carrie. The Fishers also had a son, Todd, named for Eddie's close friend and Taylor's husband, showman Mike Todd.

During this period, Reynolds had a No. 1 hit on the pop charts in 1957 with "Tammy," the Oscar-nominated song from her film "Tammy and the Bachelor." But the Cinderella story ended after Mike Todd died in a 1958 airplane crash. Fisher consoled the widow and soon announced he was leaving his wife and two children to marry Taylor.

The celebrity world seemed to lose its mind. Taylor was assailed as a husband stealer, Fisher as a deserter of his family. Reynolds won sympathy as the innocent victim, a role emphasized when she appeared before news cameras with diaper pins on her blouse. A cover headline in Photoplay magazine in late 1958 blared: "Smiling through her tears, Debbie says: I'm still very much in love with Eddie."

Fisher's singing career never recovered, but Taylor, who left him for Richard Burton in 1962, remained a top star. And Reynolds' film career flourished. She starred with Glenn Ford in "The Gazebo," Tony Curtis in "The Rat Race," Fred Astaire in "The Pleasure of His Company," Andy Griffith in "The Second Time Around," with the all-star cast in "How the West Was Won" and Ricardo Montalban in "The Singing Nun."

She also provided the voice of Charlotte the spider in the 1973 animated "Charlotte's Web."

But over the years, her marital woes continued.

In 1960 Reynolds married shoe magnate Harry Karl. The marriage ended in disaster when she discovered that Karl, a compulsive gambler, had devastated her assets and left her deeply in debt. She divorced him in 1973 and toured tirelessly with her song and dance show to pay off creditors.

Reynolds' third marriage, to Virginia businessman Richard Hamlett in 1984, proved equally disastrous. In 1992, against friends' advice, she paid $10 million to buy and convert the faded Paddlewheel Hotel in Las Vegas into the Debbie Reynolds Hotel and Casino. She performed nightly and conducted tours of her movie memorabilia, which she had collected since MGM auctioned its artifacts in 1970.

Reynolds, who ended up filing for bankruptcy in 1997 and selling the property at auction the next year, accused Hamlett of making off with her money. She once again went on the road.

"All of my husbands have robbed me blind," she asserted in 1999. "The only one who didn't take money was Eddie Fisher. He just didn't pay for the children."

In her later years, Reynolds continued performing her show, traveling 40 weeks a year. She also appeared regularly on television, appearing as John Goodman's mother on "Roseanne" and a mom on "Will & Grace." Her books included the memoirs "Unsinkable" and "Make 'Em Laugh."

In 1996 she won critical acclaim in the title role of Albert Brooks' movie "Mother," in which Brooks played a struggling writer who moves back home and works on his strained relationship with Reynolds' character. A few years earlier, she had wanted to play the mother in the film adaptation of Fisher's bittersweet autobiographical novel "Postcards From the Edge," which featured mother-daughter actresses. Director Mike Nichols cast Shirley MacLaine instead.

Reynolds and Fisher were featured together in the HBO documentary "Bright Lights," scheduled for release in 2017.

Mary Frances Reynolds spent the first eight years of her life in Depression-era poverty in El Paso, Texas, where she was born on April 1, 1932. Her father, a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad, was transferred to southern California and the family settled in Burbank, near Warner Bros. studio.

The girl flourished, winning 48 Girl Scout merit badges, excelling in sports and playing French horn and bass viola in the Burbank Youth Symphony. Girlfriends persuaded her to enter the beauty contest for Miss Burbank, and she won over the judges by lip-syncing to a Betty Hutton record.

She did team up with Taylor  long since divorced from Fisher  and two other veterans, Joan Collins and MacLaine, for the 2001 TV movie "These Old Broads." The script, co-written by Reynolds' daughter, was about aging, feuding actresses who get together for a reunion show. Reynolds would look back wryly on the Taylor affair, acknowledging that no man could have resisted her and that she actually voted for Taylor when she was up for best actress in 1960. The former romantic rivals had reconciled years before Taylor died in 2011; Reynolds recalled they had both been passengers on the Queen Elizabeth.

"I sent a note to her and she sent a note to me in passing, and then we had dinner together," she told The Huffington Post a few months after Taylor's death. "She was married to Richard Burton by then. I had been remarried at that point. And we just said, 'Let's call it a day.' And we got smashed. And we had a great evening, and stayed friends since then."
A feud between the grandson of an 81-year-old South Philadelphia grocery store owner and another man over a piece of jewelry ended in the well-liked woman's murder, homicide detectives said Thursday.

Suspected shooter Maurice Green, who believed the grandson stole a valuable chain from him, allegedly sprayed bullets into Marie's Grocery at S. Sixth and Titan streets just before 9 a.m. on Christmas Eve, police officials said at a press conference Thursday afternoon.

The findings were released as authorities officially charged Green, 31, with gunning down Marie Buck.

Buck was struck 11 times by gunfire, stamping out the woman's life in the mainstay she's owned for four decades.

Homicide Capt. James Clark said the suspect, who has 17 prior brushes with the law for mostly drug crimes, didn't even fully step into the store that day. Dressed in all black, he opened the door, saw the grandmother and began shooting, Clark said.

NBC10

There is videotape of him parking the vehicle, walking down towards the store minutes before the murder, right after the murder, fleeing the scene, getting back into that vehicle and leaving," Clark said.

"We also have help from the public, we got some anonymous tips that came in, a lot of different things that tie him into the scene, some of which I wont speak about now.

Investigators believe Buck was not Green's original target. Clark said the suspect went to the store that day to shoot her grandson, who was due to work that day but didn't show up.

Green allegedly told investigators the grandson, who hasn't been named by police, owed him money from an expensive jewelry chain, Clark said. Green estimated the chain's value to be between $5,000 and $10,000.

Green believed the grandson and another man broke into his home, stole the chain and pawned it, Clark said. A police report was never made and police have not confirmed whether the story is true.

Working through the Christmas holiday, homicide detectives narrowed their search for the shooter this week. Green was taken into custody in city's Overbrook section Wednesday night.

He was questioned overnight and charged Thursday with murder, aggravated assault and related offenses. It's not yet clear if he's retained an attorney.

"It's one of the more horrific murders I've dealt with," Clark said.

Clark said the grandson is "very sad" and has been cooperating with police. He is not facing charges.

Family Photo | NBC10

Buck's family spent Christmas trying to come to terms with a reason that someone would kill their beloved mother -- a woman who dressed as Santa every Christmas Eve as part of family tradition -- in such a violent manner.

Buck's daughter, Maria Buck, called her mother an angel. Many people in the neighborhood called her "Aunt Marie."

"She was the kingpin of everything," said Al Buck, Maria's brother-in-law. "And my brother, he doesn't even want to live."

The family plans to close down the grocery store.

Family Photo

The announcement of Green's arrest came the same day Buck's family prepared to say goodbye to her.

Hundreds of people lined up outside Baldi Funeral Home along S. Broad Street Thursday evening to pay their respects at a public viewing.

A funeral Mass set for Friday morning at St. Mary Magdalene De Pazzi Church at 8th and Montrose streets.
A building containing a popular University City hookah bar caught fire overnight.

No one was hurt after flames broke out on the second floor of the building containing Aloosh Hookah Bar Restaurant at 36th Street and Lancaster Avenue  not far from Drexel Universitys campus  early Thursday.

Medium to heavy smoke could be seen pouring from the building when firefighters arrived around 2:30 a.m., said the Philadelphia Fire Department.

The hookah bar carries a 4-star rating on Yelp.

No word yet what caused the blaze in the building that also includes apartments. NBC10 reached out to the hookah bar to find out the extent of damage.
Police in Montgomery County announced the arrest Thursday of a man wanted for an armed robbery at a King of Prussia bank ATM earlier this month.



Upper Merion Township Police charged Jamal Goodwin, 25, with robbery, aggravated assault and related charges in the Dec. 5 robbery at the Wells Fargo Bank location at 101 W. DeKalb Pike.



Officers responded to the bank around 8 that night after a man reported being robbed by an armed man while using the ATM. The robber took money from the mans wallet then drove off, said police.



Goodwin, of Carroll Street in Philadelphia would later confess to the crime as investigators recovered the gun, said police.



Goodwin, remains jailed on $200,000 bail in Chester County on unrelated armed robbery charges. His public defender didnt immediately return NBC10s call for comment. [[238427591, C]]
People across the region are sure to celebrate in their own special way during New Year's Eve. But Philadelphia officials warn that one form of celebration won't be tolerated as we ring in 2017.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross and District Attorney Seth Williams held an annual news conference Thursday warning residents not to ring in 2017 with gunfire.

"We deal with enough violence on the streets of America... you can make a conscious decision not to celebrate in this fashion," said Ross.

"Celebrate wisely," said Williams.

Joe Jaskolka and other victims of NYE gunfire joined the event to tell their stories. Back on Dec. 31, 1998, when he was only 11 years old, Joe was struck in the head by a so-called "celebratory" bullet while walking along Fernon Street near 2nd Street in South Philadelphia. Joe was left paralyzed on the right side of his body and face and also lost the use of his vocal chords on the left side.

"The bullet is still in my head," said Joe Thursday.

Joe has undergone dozens of brain and eye surgeries. His family estimates insurers have paid more than $15 million to cover the cost of surgeries. The bullet is still lodged in his head and even after the surgeries Joe still suffers from double vision and shaking in his eyes whenever he speaks. His shooter was never caught.

For several years Joe has joined the district attorney and police during their annual warning event to show a real life example of the consequences of firing guns in the air. But even with the yearly message, New Years Eve gunfire remains a serious problem.

"Use common sense," said Ross while noting that extra officers will be on patrol Saturday night. [[405044415, C]]
A proposed shopping center in Lewes, Delaware is drawing protests from a group who says the development would be built on a sacred Native American burial ground.

Media outlets report that residents gathered Tuesday to protest the Gills Neck Village Center. In addition to opposing construction on indigenous grounds, protesters say the construction will contaminate the area's water.

Protester Jules Jackson says the burial ground, known as the Townsend site, is on the National Historic Register.

Sussex County Council President Michael Vincent says that if this is the case, there are state laws that require developers to go through an authentication process. If any trace of a burial site is found, construction won't be permitted.

Vincent added that a water source protection is in place to prevent contamination.
A man was shot and killed outside a North Philadelphia Checkers restaurant Wednesday evening.

The unidentified victim, who was in his 20s, was on the 1300 block of W. Butler Street -- near Broad Street -- at 6:30 p.m. when at least one unidentified gunman opened fire. The man was struck once in the head and once in the back. He was taken to Temple University Hospital where he was pronounced dead at a short time later.

Police say 14 shots in all were fired from two different guns. They are unsure if two gunmen shot at the victim or if it was one gunman firing two guns. At least three of the bullets hit the Checkers restaurant while another bullet struck a car that was driving by. No one else was struck in the shooting however.

No arrests have been made. Police continued to investigate Thursday.




A Pennsylvania man who operated an auto dealership in New Jersey charged Russian citizens and others for high-end used vehicles that he never shipped overseas, the U.S. attorney's office charged in a criminal complaint released Thursday.

Sergey Kapustin, of Warminster, Pennsylvania, is charged with wire fraud and conspiring to commit wire fraud. According to U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, Kapustin used his auto dealership to defraud 140 Russian citizens and steal about $2 million.

According to the criminal complaint, between 2011 and 2014, Kapustin operated Global Auto Group in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and at least one Russian-language website that offered luxury vehicles below market value with a promise the autos would be delivered to Russian citizens.

Numerous prospective buyers wired money for the vehicles, which were typically priced between $20,000 and $50,000, with the expectation they would be shipped to Finland for pickup.

Kapustin often didn't have titles to the cars he was selling, and many were considered salvaged cars, with flood damage that wasn't discernible in pictures posted on his website, the complaint alleged.

Often, authorities said, Kapustin accepted payment for a car then claimed it was unavailable and offer the buyer another car of inferior quality, which required additional charges.

One alleged victim told investigators she wired $36,900 to Kapustin for a Lexus that, unbeknownst to her, had been auctioned off to another buyer. She said she didn't receive a refund.

Kapustin was scheduled to make a court appearance Thursday afternoon in Newark. He was being represented by the public defender's office, which didn't return a message seeking comment.
The deadly warehouse fire in Oakland, California, earlier this month has raised concerns about the safety of converted gallery spaces. In San Diego, one art gallery was recently inspected and forced to shut down.

Soon after the Oakland fire, the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department (SDFD) says it received an anonymous tip of possible overcrowding at La Bodega Gallery in Barrio Logan.

A fire marshal was sent to inspect the building, which resulted in city officials requiring the owner of the gallery, Chris Zertuchi, to make major changes to the space  renovations that will cost between $50,000 and $60,000.

Zertuchi told NBC 7 hes concerned his art venue has been unfairly targeted. La Bodega Gallery has been forced to close its doors until it can raise the money to pay for the changes.

Were looking at new doors, sprinkler system, new lighting and a fire exit toward the back, he said. They cracked down on three different venues -- ours, Bread and Salt and Glass House -- all walking distance from here.

Zertuchi said three shows were scheduled to debut at his art gallery next month, but now those plans are on hold.

SDFD Fire Marshal Doug Perry said La Bodega Gallery was not unfairly targeted.

The answer is absolutely no, Perry told NBC 7. The complaint was that it was overcrowded. We go to numerous complaints in the Gaslamp and Ocean Beach for overcrowding.

Perry said the Oakland warehouse fire was a wake-up call to city officials everywhere to be more vigilant of code compliance issues. He has talked to his staff about being more vigilant, physically going into buildings to inspect safety conditions and to conduct follow-ups on reports from the public.

Perry said the city did not shut down La Bodega Gallery. Rather, in its current condition, the space can only legally hold 49 people.

The one thing I noticed was there was only one door in front of the gallery, and when you only have one door, you can only have 49 people in a suite. So I was concerned, he explained.

Zertuchi said their events are often much larger than that, which is why the venue cant currently operate under those parameters.
Sometimes they were cute and cuddly. Other times, they got themselves into situations we simply couldnt believe. Either way, their tales had to be told. Heres a look at San Diegos most memorable animal stories of 2016.

Venomous Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake Washes Up on Coronado Beach

In January, following strong El Nino storms in San Diego, a 20-inch-long, venomous, yellow-bellied sea snake washed up on Coronados Dog Beach, near Naval Air Station North Island. The species, rarely seen in California, was distinct in appearance, with a black top half and bright yellow lower half. It was found by a citizen who brought the snake, which was barely alive, to the attention of lifeguards, who then placed it in a bucket. The snake did not survive; scientists believe it washed ashore due to the El Nino conditions.

A very poisonous snake rarely seen in this part of the world washed up on a local beach Monday. NBC 7s Greg Bledsoe reports from Coronado and explains why we may be seeing more of these in California.

Sea Lion Found Sleeping in Booth at Restaurant

Tiny sea lion, party of one. In February, The Marine Room restaurant in La Jolla got a visit from a very special, whiskered patron: a 20-pound sea lion pup who somehow got into the restaurant overnight and made his way into a cozy booth. Restaurant employees found the young sea lion the next morning curled up in the booth and sleeping. The Marine Rooms executive chef, Bernard Guillas, shared photos of the pup on Facebook and his post went viral. SeaWorld San Diegos Rescue Team was called to the restaurant to remove the little sea lion. Experts said this case was one of many unusual sea lion rescues in Southern California at the beginning of 2016 in part due to El Nino weather conditions, which caused very high and low tides and stormy weather, prompting sea lions to seek high ground, warm places and food.

[G] San Diego's Cutest Critters

San Diego Safari Park Welcomes Largest Cheetah Litter

When the San Diego Zoo Safari Park released new video of the largest cheetah litter delivered at the parks off-exhibit breeding center, our hearts swooned. The six adorable little cubs were born to mom Addison  a much larger litter than keepers ever expected.

'I Can't Believe This Dog is Alive': Owner Reunites With Pup Presumed Dead at Sea

Try not to cry on this one. In this true underdog tale, Luna  a puppy presumed dead for five weeks after falling off a fishing boat  was reunited with her owner, Nick Haworth, in San Diego after being rescued by the U.S. Navy. Luna fell off a fishing boat two miles off the coast of San Clemente, near Naval Auxiliary Landing Field San Clemente Island (SCI). More than a month after she disappeared, Navy staff spotted Luna on a road on SCI. Lunas reunion with Haworth followed  with lots of tail-wagging, hugs and kisses.

Video showing the reunion of Nick Haworth and his German Shepherd Luna who was lost at sea and then recovered weeks later.

Ball Python Discovered in San Diego Residents Bathtub

Yikes. In May, a woman in Golden Hill was getting ready to take a bath. As she drew the water and looked down, she came face-to-face with a snake in her drain. It was a ball python, which was successfully snaked from the drain by officers with the County of San Diego Department of Animal Services (DAS).

Caught on Camera: The Rescue of Mr. Ruffles

Poor Mr. Ruffles. In May, DAS officers had yet another interesting case of an animal stuck in a bathtub drain. This time, it was a pug mix named Mr. Ruffles who had gotten his paw stuck in the drain cover of his owners bathtub as he was hopping out of the bath. Animal specialists rushed to the aid of the pooch and performed a rescue that included sedating Mr. Ruffles and rotating his entire body at the same time as the drain cover. The rescue was captured on cellphone video and, after a while, Mr. Ruffles was finally free.

Raw cell phone video from the County of San Diego Animal Services of a rare rescue operation involving a dog named Mr. Ruffles who got part of his paw stuck in the drain cover of a bathtub.

Elderly Orangutan Dies at San Diego Zoo

In a heartbreaking decision in June, the San Diego Zoo euthanized Janey, a beloved, 55-year-old Bornean orangutan. Janey, born in 1961, had been suffering from respiratory problems that led to a series of cardiac arrests. Ultimately, the zoo said the best thing for Janey was to let her go peacefully. Janey was the oldest living Bornean orangutan in the United States.

Officers Find Abandoned Puppies at Kit Carson Park

In June, three Escondido Police Department officers discovered three puppies, shivering and abandoned, at Kit Carson Park. A woman jogging through the park stumbled across the pups; they were barely bundled in a coat thrown on the grass. The woman went to call police and, when she returned, she found the three officers each holding one of the puppies.

NBC 7s Candice Nguyen talks with Escondido Police Officers Jose Guerrero, Nathan Visconti and Christopher Dare and the call theyll never forget from Kit Carson Park. Photos of the pups courtesy Tracy Plowy.

Two Greater Flamingos Born at San Diego Zoo Safari Park

Over the summer, two greater flamingos were added to the flock at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. After these cute little chicks hatched in July, Safari Park officials said it brought the number of greater flamingos born through its breeding program to nearly 200.

Giant Panda Xiao Liwu Turns 4

Who doesnt love a good panda birthday? Over the summer, the San Diego Zoos giant panda, Xiao Liwu, celebrated his special day with gifts and treats, including a birthday cake made of ice, fruits and vegetables. At the ripe age of four, keepers now refer to the panda as Mr. Wu. At the time of his birthday he was up to 160 pounds  about the same size as his father, Gao Gao, and was on the cusp of the age of sexual reproduction for giant pandas. Mr. Wu is the sixth cub born to mother Bai Yun

Kokomo the Gorilla Shows Off Newborn

In October, the San Diego Zoo Safari Parks gorilla, Kokomo, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, estimated to weigh between 3.5 and 4.5 pounds. Just two days after the little ones birth, the park shared sweet, tender photos of the doting mother and her baby. Keepers said Kokomo was constantly holding the newborn, keeping her as close as possible. The baby girl joined the Safari Parks troop of eight other gorillas  one adult male, three adult females and three little gorillas ranging in age from two to eight.
Historians are protesting a controversial North Carolina law by moving the Business History Conference to Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

The event was originally planned to be held in Charlotte, North Carolina.

But a recent North Carolina law blocks cities from approving protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. It also states that in government buildings, individuals may only use restrooms that correspond to the sex identified on their birth certificates.

Business History Conference secretary-treasurer Roger Horowitz told local media outlets that the conference may have members who would be affected by the law.

The conference, scheduled for April 2018, is expected to bring 350 guests and $120,000 in spending to Baltimore. The historians -- who study the history of businesses and their role in society -- announced they would meet instead at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor.
A 17-year-old boy with mental disabilities who went missing has been found in good health in Reston, Virginia, police say.

Elliott Byrum was last seen in front of the North Point Giant grocery store in Reston, Virginia, about 2:50 p.m. Wednesday. He did not report for work.

"We have reason to believe he may be in danger due to mental disabilities and his family is concerned for his well being," police said in a release Thursday morning.

Elliott was found Thursday afternoon.
What to Know An armed suspect was fatally shot. He's been identified as James L. Rich II, 52, of Edmore Road in Chestertown, Maryland.

Dfc. Warren Scott Hogan suffered a close-range shotgun blast, which a surgeon called "a devastating injury."

A sheriff's deputy in Queen Anne's County, Maryland, was critically wounded after he was shot at close range Thursday as he helped a victim of domestic violence.

Deputy 1st Class Warren Scott Hogan, 32, was shot by a 52-year-old man as Hogan helped a woman get her belongings from the suspect's home after she reported an altercation between them, authorities said.

Hogan was able to fire back, and James L. Rich II was shot and killed.

Maryland State Police Public Information Officer Greg Shipley said Rich's girlfriend, who had been staying at Rich's home, sent a text message to her father about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday. She told her father she and Rich had been in a physical altercation and reportedly asked her father to call police.

Sheriff's deputies responded to Rich's home on Edmore Road in Chestertown and discovered the victim and Rich had left. They later learned the woman's father had picked her up and taken her to the sheriff's office.

While at the sheriff's office, the woman asked Hogan to take her to Rich's home to pick up her clothing.

Hogan, the woman and her parents went back to the home, and found Rich had returned. Rich's teenage son was also present, Shipley said.

After the deputy and the woman went inside, she and Rich argued.

According to the preliminary investigation, Rich walked into a back room, grabbed a shotgun and fired one shot. He walked toward Hogan, and he and the sheriff's deputy exchanged gunfire, Shipley said. Both men were hit.

Rich was pronounced dead at Chester River Hospital.

Hogan was struck at close range in the torso, said Dr. Thomas Scalea, physician-in-chief at R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Maryland.

"He was awake and talking, but clearly critically injured," Scalea said.

"...[A] close-range shotgun blast is a devastating injury," he said.

Hogan was flown to Shock Trauma, where he underwent surgery. He may need more surgery, and remains "quite ill, but we are hopeful," Scalea said. "It's a little early to tell what else we're going to have to do, and we'll see how things go over the next few days and few weeks."

No one else was shot.

Hogan was wearing body armor, but he was shot below the armor, Hoffman said.

Hogan was wearing a body camera during the incident. Investigators will review any footage available, Shipley said. The footage would be considered part of the ongoing investigation and would not be released, he said.

Hogan is a four-year veteran of the Queen Anne's County Sheriff's Office and served about seven years with another agency, Queen Anne's County Sheriff Gary Hofmann said.

"He's a really great guy," Hofmann said. "We've been here the entire time with him and his family, supporting them and help them get through this very traumatic event."

Hofmann said he visited Hogan as he awoke from surgery and appeared to be in "good spirits." Hoffman said Hogan's family was having a difficult time.

Earlier Thursday, the sheriff's office ;posted on Facebook, "Your prayers, posts and messages are appreciated."

The Maryland State Police homicide unit is investigating the case.

Calls related to domestic disputes are the most dangerous types of calls for responding officers, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund says.

More police officers were killed in 2016 after they responded to domestic disturbances than any other type of call, according to data the group released Thursday. Overall law enforcement fatalities rose this year to their highest level in five years, with 135 officers killed in the line of duty.

In our area, Prince William County Officer Ashley Guindon was shot and killed in February by a man who apparently shot and killed his wife before officers arrived. Guindon, who was 28, was called to the house for a reported domestic disturbance.

"Any officer realizes your next call could be your last," Guindon's uncle Mark Guindon told News4 earlier this year.
Federal officials are shutting down a Russian-owned compound on Maryland's Eastern Shore amid sweeping U.S. sanctions in response to election-related hacking.

President Barack Obama gave Russia until Friday at noon to leave the 45-acre property, which the Soviet government bought in 1972.

One of two Russian compounds that the U.S. plans to close is located in Centreville, Maryland, a State Department official confirmed to News4 Thursday afternoon. The other is in Glen Cove, New York.

Video shot from Chopper4 Thursday afternoon and again Friday morning shows a flurry of activity and multiple unmarked cars on the perimeter of the sprawling waterfront property in Centreville.

On Thursday, officials appeared to set up an antenna, plus lights at each entrance. A man in what looked to be a law enforcement boat appeared to watch the property by water.

White House officials said the facility is recreational but also used for intelligence activities.

Intelligence officials told NBC News the property was used for work to monitor the National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, and another NSA building on Kent Island.

The second compound U.S. officials ordered Russia to vacate is in Long Island, New York.

Obama said Thursday that his administration is kicking out of the country 35 Russian diplomats working as intelligence operatives.

"All Americans should be alarmed by Russia's actions," he said in a statement. He added: "Such activities have consequences."

These 35 people work in the Russian Embassy in D.C. and the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, the State Department said. They are being declared "persona non grata" and will be given 72 hours to leave the country.

Trump released this statement Thursday evening: "It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things. Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders on the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."

Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusation that the Russian government -- including President Vladimir Putin himself -- worked to influence the U.S. presidential election.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia's goal was to help Donald Trump win -- an assessment Trump has dismissed as ridiculous.

The president-elect was asked on Wednesday about possible sanctions against Russia.

"I think we ought to get on with our lives," he said.

Stay with News4 and NBCWashington.com for more details on this developing story.
A Bethesda, Maryland, man has been missing for more than two weeks and police are seeking a woman seen on camera using his credit card.

John Patrick Donohoe, 36, was last seen the morning of Dec. 13. Family members saw him at his home on Auburn Avenue about 10:30 a.m., driving a black SUV.

John Donahoe, of Bethesda, Maryland, went missing Dec. 13. A woman recently was seen using his credit card in Hyattsville. News4s Derrick Ward reports.

Montgomery County Police Department

Montgomery County police said Wednesday that a woman was caught on surveillance video Dec. 22 using Donohoe's credit card at a beauty supply store and other stores in Hyattsville, Maryland, about 10 miles east. She spent about $700.

Video shows a woman with a dark complexion and dark hair walk in at least one store with a young boy who is wearing a bright blue winter coat.

The missing man's father, Bob Donohoe, pleaded with the public for help finding his son.

"The credit card has been used and John's not here. We don't know what the link is. We need to find John. We have to find out what's going on," he said.

Bob Donohoe is the chairman and CEO of The Donohoe Companies, a prominent developer in the D.C. area.

Donohoe stands about 5-foot-11 and weighs about 145 pounds. He was driving a black 2011 Chevrolet Equinox with the Maryland license plate 2AK8853. The car has not been located.

Montgomery County Police Department

Anyone with information on the woman shown in the surveillance video, or Donohoe's whereabouts, is asked to call police at 240-773-5070.
Breaking a two-week lull in fighting, Iraqi troops backed by the U.S.-led coalition's airstrikes and artillery pushed deeper into eastern Mosul on Thursday in a multi-pronged assault against Islamic State militants in the city.

Elite special forces pushed into the Karama and Quds neighborhoods, while army troops and federal police advanced into the nearby Intisar, Salam and Sumor neighborhoods. Columns of dark smoke rose overhead as explosions shook the city and heavy machine gun fire echoed through the streets.

Stiff resistance by the militants, civilians trapped inside their houses and bad weather have slowed advances in the more than two-month-old offensive to recapture Iraq's second largest city, the extremist group's last urban bastion in the country. It is the biggest Iraqi military operation since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The battle began around 7 a.m. on a bright but chilly December day and continued until shortly before sundown.

The counterterrorism forces, also known as the Golden Brigade, captured about half of the Quds neighborhood by early afternoon.

A statement by the U.S.-led coalition said Thursday's offensive opened two new fronts in eastern Mosul, increasing pressure on the militants' "dwindling ability to generate forces, move fighters or resupply."

It said that, at the request of the Iraqi government, coalition warplanes had "re-struck" two bridges over the Tigris River in Mosul on Tuesday, and a day earlier "disabled" the last bridge crossing in the city.

"The strikes were conducted to reduce enemy freedom of movement, and to further disrupt ISIL's ability to reinforce, resupply, or use vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices in East Mosul," said the statement.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, commander of the special forces in eastern Mosul, said his forces have been bolstered by reinforcements and are were less than 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the Tigris River, which slices the city in half.

The special forces, officially known as the Counter Terrorism Service, have done most of the fighting, pushing in from the east. But regular army troops on the city's southeast and northern edges, as well as militarized federal police farther west, have not moved in weeks, unable to penetrate the city.

The troops have faced grueling urban fighting, often house to house against IS militants who have had more than two years to dig in and prepare. Even in districts that have been recaptured, Iraqi troops have faced surprise attacks, shelling and car bombs. The extremists have launched more than 900 car bombs against Iraqi troops in and around Mosul. Al-Saadi said 260 of them had targeted his men.

He said he expected Iraqi forces would drive IS from Mosul and the rest of Nineveh province within three months. Iraqi leaders had previously vowed to drive the extremists from Mosul by the end of the year.

IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014, when it swept across much of northern and central Iraq, and the group's leader declared the establishment of its self-styled caliphate from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque.

The city is still home to around a million people. Some 120,000 have fled since the operation began on Oct. 17, according to the United Nations.

Meanwhile on Thursday, separate attacks in and around Baghdad killed at least 13 people and wounded 35 others, police said. The deadliest attack took place in the capital's southwestern neighborhood of Maalif when an explosives-laden vest was detonated near an outdoor market, killing seven and wounding 12, police added.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.
Connecticut state police seized hundreds of thousands of dollars of Oxycodone pills during a routine traffic stop on Wednesday.

The police department reported the seizure of 10,000 pills on their Facebook page Thursday morning.

A trooper saw a suspicious male, later identified as John Carlos Torres, 30, of 38 Highside Ave. in West Haven, Connecticut, next to a pickup truck with numerous equipment violations at the I-95 southbound Service Area in Milford, Connecticut.

He was on the phone and appeared to be agitated, according to police. Torres entered the vehicle with another male and drove off before he was stopped on I-95.

A brief conversation with the two men revealed that narcotics might be in the vehicle. A Narcotics Detection K9 revealed a bag containing the pills, which have an estimated street value of approximately $200,000.

Torres was arrested and the passenger was released on scene. Due to the amount of drugs seized, the Drug Enforcement Administration has taken over the investigation. Torres was released to the custody of the DEA who will be filing criminal charges.
The death of a teenager found on Belle Isle in East Boston is being investigated as a homicide, prosecutors confirmed Thursday.

Sixteen-year-old Carlos Villatoro-Nunez was found dead on Dec. 9 at Belle Isle Marsh near the entrance on Bennington Street. His body was partially decomposed, complicating the investigation of his death.

Authorities believe the victim was stabbed to death, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office.

Villatoro-Nunez was reported missing by relatives on Nov. 13. His death is not believed to be random.

Anyone with information is asked to call (617) 727-8817.
A new year in Connecticut means more money for minimum wage workers, access to more advanced breast cancer screenings, changes to job applications and more.

"Ban the Box" Act (Fair Chance Employment Act)

Connecticut will become the ninth state to "ban the box" which prohibits employers from asking prospective employees about prior arrests, criminal charges or convictions on an initial employment application.

Employers will be required to include a notice on job applications that states that prospective employees are required to disclose these matters.

An employer may only ask about someone's criminal history if they are required to do so under state or federal law or the position requires the employer to obtain a security or fidelity bond.

The act follows similar steps taken by Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont. While Connecticut employers can't ask about criminal history on an "initial employment application", some other states don't allow employers to ask until an interview or job offer is made.

Coverage for Tomosynthesis for Breast Cancer Screens

Certain state health insurance policies will start to cover breast tomosynthesis, a type of three-dimensional mammogram, on Jan. 1.

The new law requires policies to cover baseline mammograms for women between the ages of 35 and 40, and annual mammograms for women older than 40, which may include 3-D mammograms at the beneficiary's request.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved digital breast tomosynthesis devices in 2015, however, access is currently limited, Breastcancer.org reports.

A report from 2010 says the added percision of a 3-D mammogram would "allow visualization (detection) and better characterization of non-calcified lesions."

Minimum Wage Increases

In 2015, Connecticut was among 13 states that vowed to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The hike calls for the increase to be phased in because the new eventual minimum was more than a 100 percent increase over the previous $7.25 federal minimum wage at the time.

Starting Jan. 1, 2017, the new state minimum wage will be $10.10, in an effort to eventually be $15 in the future.

No Prior Insurance Authorization For Anti-Opioid Drugs

The fight against the opioid epidemic: a new law which prohibits health carriers from imposing a prior authorization requirement for Narcan, or any similar overdose treatment drugs takes effect in J

New Access Symbol for People With Disabilities

All new constructed and renovated buildings will have a new access symbol for people with disabilities.

The modified access symbol will replace the international access symbol with a "dynamic character leaning forward with a sense of movement".

In addition to new buildings and renovations, the state will replace the international access symbol on "handicapped" and "reserved" parking signs.

accessibleicon.org/

For a full list of new laws in Connecticut, click here.
A man suspected of posing as an HVAC worker in order to gain access to employee break rooms, offices, and storage areas at businesses around Boston, was arrested Wednesday by police in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Brookline Police arrested Anthony Binsfield, 32, after a Panera worker recognized him and called police. Police said Binsfield tried robbing at least five stores on Wednesday in Coolidge Corner including a CVS, Bruegger's Bagels and The Paris Creperie.

Authorities believe Binsfield is the same man seen on surveillance that may be connected to almost 20 incidents in both Brookline and Boston.

Police said in every incident, the man posing as an HVAC worker gained access to private areas at businesses and then stole wallets and other personal belongings.

"He has victimized an awful lot of people especially during the holiday season," said Brookline Police Deputy Superintendent Michael Gropman. "For them to have their identities stolen, money, things like that, it seriously affects the holiday, so we're very relieved."

Police are advising local business owners and employees to ask for identification from any service personnel that request access to private or secure rooms in their establishments.

Binsfield pleaded not guilty Thursday. Among the charges he faced are several counts of larceny from a building and attempting to commit a crime  larceny. The judge imposed a $14,500 cash bail and was ordered to stay away from the businesses he allegedly robbed and to remain drug and alcohol free.

His next court date is Jan. 30.
A secret Santa is responsible for donating thousands of dollars to the Salem Police Department in Salem, Massachusetts, one week before Christmas.

"It's tough being a police officer during the holidays," said Salem Police Detective Lt. Conrad Prosniewski.

This year that changed with a donation from William Burke of William Burke Jr. Insurance in the amount of $10,000.

"He wanted to give each police officer a $100 bill to hand out to some of the needy people in Salem," said Prosniewski.

When a department wide e-mail was sent, 36 officers jumped at the chance to help.

"They filled out a form explaining why they wanted the money, who it was going to go to and how much," said Prosniewski.

Families received anywhere between $100 to $500 dollars making Christmas miracles real for them.

"I've been homeless before and I've gone through that so I know how hard it is," said Desiree Olsen, of Salem. "I wish everybody well."

Stacia Cooper, also from Salem, said the gesture warmed her heart.

"They're giving the gift back and paying it forward," she said.

Nearly 100 people were helped.

"Approximately 50 families benefited from this, over 90 children and I think there was also a few individuals," said Prosniewski.

Police said Burke didn't donate the money for the attention, but that the department had to be transparent about where the money came from.

"He did it because he wanted to help the police integrate with the community more and he hit it out of the park with that one," said Prosniewski.

Burke said all the money was given in the form of TD Bank cards which were passed out the Thursday and Friday before Christmas.
Singing valets are serenading visitors and patients at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Massachusetts.

"I love it. I'm a people's person," said Rob Nyekan.

He was a certified nurses assistant for seven years but now he's a parking valet trying to help lift people's spirits.

"I know how to handle and sympathize with them and just show them that love," said Nyekan.

While helping a patient to the car he decided to use his talent he discovered when he was 14.

"One lady I did it to out here, she was coming out, I just started singing to her while she was getting wheeled into the car," he said. "She loved it."

From that moment on he decided he'd sing to anyone willing to enjoy.

When singing "My Girl" by The Temptations his co-worker Shayne heard him and jumped in.

Fast forward two months later and the pair are now known as the "singing valets."

"God gave me the voice to do something with and that's what I'm doing," said Shayne Bowen. "I'm using my voice. I'm using my talent for the good."

Shayne is also a chef at the hospital and sings to people while they enjoy their meal.

He started singing at the age of eight, but never felt the stage was his place to be.

"It's about how the patients and visitors feel," said Bowen. "When they're coming in or when they're coming out."

When asked what brought them together, the answer is simple.

"It's fate," said Nyekan. "It's fate."
Police in Connecticut have arrested a man accused of killing another man during a fight in a Waterbury apartment on East Main Street Tuesday afternoon.

Police said the suspect, Irving Duggans, 43, of Waterbury, got into a fight with Luis Rodriguez, 59, of Waterbury, in Rodriguezs apartment at 475 East Main Street.

Rodriguez was later found dead in the apartments shower stall with significant trauma to his head, police said.

Duggans was arrested and charged with murder. He is being held on a $2 million bond.

The investigation is ongoing.
It's been a while since we floated terms like "nor'easter" and "1-2" snowfall rates", but it's time.

A storm is coming, but it's not worthy of a milk and bread run for everyone. Plainly put, we're too warm along the coast and deep into Southern New England. The track of the storm will pull more mild air in from the ocean and shove the rain/snow line back to outer Route 2 in Massachusetts. Elsewhere, the cold is sufficient and the hammer will come down on interior New England  especially the ski areas. The issue in this event isn't the snow, it's the wind. I'm expecting it to howl tomorrow night to 40-50 mph at times, and combined with heavy, wet snow in spots, power outages are possible.

Here are the details:

Precipitation starts late morning/early afternoon from west to east. We'll get a little burst of snow outside I-495 and into Northern Connecticut early on, then the rain will establish itself later in the afternoon with a mild southeast wind.

Rain/snow line is pushed north of Route 2 in Southern New England where it hovers for much of the evening.

As the storm deepens off Cape Ann, the rain/snow line will creep back down to Worcester and I-495 before midnight, before ending around midnight.

Fun keeps going for much of the night with snowfall rates of 1-3" per hour in Northern New England!

Winds will gust to near 40 through Thursday afternoon/evening along the coast, then ramp up to 50 mph elevated terrain/coast through midnight  a consequence of the storm strengthening.

It all wraps late Thursday night in Southern New England, so we should be good for the Friday morning commute. Northern New England will still crank snow until Friday morning.

More updates right here and on air!
A woman is wanted on Cape Cod on charges that range from drunk driving to breaking and entering, police said Wednesday.

Authorities are searching for 57-year-old Darlene F. Armstrong. There are eight active warrants for her arrest in Yarmouth and Barnstable, Massachusetts, according to police.

Armstrong is wanted on charges including breaking and entering, malicious destruction of property, trespassing, drunk driving and resisting arrest.

Her current address is unknown.

Anyone with information is asked to call Yarmouth Police at (508) 775-0445, extension 2122.
Residents in two subdivisions in Southbridge, Massachusetts, are worried no one will plow their streets after the developer told the town he can no longer afford to maintain them.

The letter came in early December from developer Jay Pelletz. He never finished the Hunter's Ridge development or another one on Hilltop Drive and now he claims he does not have the money to plow them.

"It was a sham from the start and now we're on our own," homeowner Kris Armstrong said.

The streets of the unfinished subdivision are already deteriorating and homeowners are fearing the worst with the next snowfall.

"He just abandoned us. They didn't have the money. They didn't do what they're supposed to do. It's a disaster," homeowner Scott Hoffman said.

Efforts to reach Pelletz were unsuccessful. His Worcester office is up for sale and his phone line is no longer in service.

Town officials say they have tried to reach him too, but have received no response. They say their hands are tied because the streets are private.

"We're frustrated and we want to help the citizens, but we can't be put in a liability if we go plow a road that doesn't meet town standards," Southbridge Town Manager Ron San Angelo said.

There is a DPW meeting Wednesday night at Southbridge Town Hall to discuss the issue, but San Angelo does not expect a solution anytime soon.

Meanwhile, homeowners are watching and waiting, knowing until the problem is cleared up, it's on them to clear their streets.

"We came out and plowed out here with our snow plows and snow blowers last time," Hoffman said. "But we can't do the whole thing. We will burn the machines out."
By Online Desk

Pathankot (January 2, 2016)

A day after the new year began in 2016, a heavily armed group attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station, part of the Western Air Command of the Indian Air Force, on January 2. Four attackers and two security forces personnel were killed in the initial battle, with an additional soldier dying from injuries hours later. The gun battle and the subsequent combing operation lasted about 17 hours, resulting in five attackers and three security personnel dead at the end of day 1.

A further three soldiers died after being admitted to hospital with injuries, raising the toll to six soldiers. On January 3, fresh gunshots were heard, and another security officer was killed by an IED explosion. The operation continued on January 4, and a fifth attacker was confirmed killed. Not until a final militant was reported killed on January 5 was the anti-militant operation declared over, though further searches continued for a few days.

Pampore (June 25, 2016)

The Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) complex at Sempora in Pampore came under an attack by militants twice in 2016, once in February and once in October. In the first encounter in February, five security personnel and a civilian lost their lives, but the forces were cautious the second time around. They managed to eliminate two militants, without losing anyone on their side; one soldier suffered injuries, however.

Kokrajhar (August 5, 2016)

Terror struck Assam when suspected NDFB(S) militants attacked a crowded market place in Kokrajhar district, killing 14 people and leaving more than 20 others injured. One of the attackers was killed when security forces who were patrolling the area rushed in and retaliated. AK-56 and 47 series rifles along with grenades were recovered from the spot. More than 15 persons were injured, most of them critically, and were admitted to various hospitals in the town.

Uri Attack (September 18, 2016)

A deadly militant attack on the Army brigade headquarters in Uri in North Kashmir left 17 soldiers dead and 30 others injured. Four Fidayeen, suspected to be members of Jaish-e-Mohammad stormed the Uri headquarters located close to the Line of Control (LoC) in North Kashmir. The soldiers faced a large number of casualties as their tents and shelters caught fire from the explosions triggered by militants.

An inquiry was launched to ascertain how the militants managed to infiltrate from across the LoC into what was meant to be a highly fortified army base without being detected. Three such attempts were foiled in Kupwara sector where four militants were killed. Four more militants were killed in Poonch in a three-day encounter.

Baramulla (October 2, 2016)

Militants carried out a fidayeen style attack on an Army camp located on the outskirts of Baramulla town. One BSF jawan was reportedly killed in the incident and two others injured. Both the militants involved in the attack were killed by the armed forces, media reports claimed.

The brazen attack came less than a week after Indian Special Forces are reported to have destroyed seven terror launch pads in what were termed surgical strikes on September 29 across the Line of Control. The Army camp was located about 50 km away from Baramulla town. The firing was reported at the 46 battalion of Rashtriya Rifles and the militants are believed to have entered the premises through the adjacent BSF camp.

Nagrota Army base (November 29, 2016)

Militants opened heavy fire at an army camp in Nagrota on the outskirts of the city, the headquarters of the Army's 16 Corps. Seven army personnel, including two officers, were killed in the attack before three militants were eliminated in an armed face-off which also involved a hostage-like situation with 12 soldiers, two women and as many children being held captive.

Pathankot (January 2, 2016) A day after the new year began in 2016, a heavily armed group attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station, part of the Western Air Command of the Indian Air Force, on January 2. Four attackers and two security forces personnel were killed in the initial battle, with an additional soldier dying from injuries hours later. The gun battle and the subsequent combing operation lasted about 17 hours, resulting in five attackers and three security personnel dead at the end of day 1. A further three soldiers died after being admitted to hospital with injuries, raising the toll to six soldiers. On January 3, fresh gunshots were heard, and another security officer was killed by an IED explosion. The operation continued on January 4, and a fifth attacker was confirmed killed. Not until a final militant was reported killed on January 5 was the anti-militant operation declared over, though further searches continued for a few days. Pampore (June 25, 2016) The Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) complex at Sempora in Pampore came under an attack by militants twice in 2016, once in February and once in October. In the first encounter in February, five security personnel and a civilian lost their lives, but the forces were cautious the second time around. They managed to eliminate two militants, without losing anyone on their side; one soldier suffered injuries, however. Kokrajhar (August 5, 2016) Terror struck Assam when suspected NDFB(S) militants attacked a crowded market place in Kokrajhar district, killing 14 people and leaving more than 20 others injured. One of the attackers was killed when security forces who were patrolling the area rushed in and retaliated. AK-56 and 47 series rifles along with grenades were recovered from the spot. More than 15 persons were injured, most of them critically, and were admitted to various hospitals in the town. Uri Attack (September 18, 2016) A deadly militant attack on the Army brigade headquarters in Uri in North Kashmir left 17 soldiers dead and 30 others injured. Four Fidayeen, suspected to be members of Jaish-e-Mohammad stormed the Uri headquarters located close to the Line of Control (LoC) in North Kashmir. The soldiers faced a large number of casualties as their tents and shelters caught fire from the explosions triggered by militants. An inquiry was launched to ascertain how the militants managed to infiltrate from across the LoC into what was meant to be a highly fortified army base without being detected. Three such attempts were foiled in Kupwara sector where four militants were killed. Four more militants were killed in Poonch in a three-day encounter. Baramulla (October 2, 2016) Militants carried out a fidayeen style attack on an Army camp located on the outskirts of Baramulla town. One BSF jawan was reportedly killed in the incident and two others injured. Both the militants involved in the attack were killed by the armed forces, media reports claimed. The brazen attack came less than a week after Indian Special Forces are reported to have destroyed seven terror launch pads in what were termed surgical strikes on September 29 across the Line of Control. The Army camp was located about 50 km away from Baramulla town. The firing was reported at the 46 battalion of Rashtriya Rifles and the militants are believed to have entered the premises through the adjacent BSF camp. Nagrota Army base (November 29, 2016) Militants opened heavy fire at an army camp in Nagrota on the outskirts of the city, the headquarters of the Army's 16 Corps. Seven army personnel, including two officers, were killed in the attack before three militants were eliminated in an armed face-off which also involved a hostage-like situation with 12 soldiers, two women and as many children being held captive.
By IANS

ABU DHABI:Amid the rush among Indian expatriates scurrying home to exchange the demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes before the December 30 deadline, a Dubai-based numismatist who hails from India, has advised his compatriots to "hold onto their old currency notes".



"Check the serial numbers of the currency notes. Special serial numbers, fancy and royal notes could fetch several times its face value in future," the Khaleej Times quoted numismatist Ramkumar as saying on Wednesday.



The collector will never make a loss, said the 36-year-old numismatist who is fond of rare notes and has been collecting them for the past 15 years.



Ramkumar, who is from Chennai, said people should "treasure" currency notes of any country. "How much profit one can make on these notes, purely depends on demand and supply. There is worldwide demand for fancy notes," Ramkumar told the newspaper.



He said that rare notes have a beautiful history and from an investment point of view they give very high returns in long term.



Ramkumar has a collection of royal number 000001 from 10 different countries. He also has an old note of Rs 1,000 which was demonetised in 1978 in India under the High Denomination Bank Notes Act.



Apart from the old Rs 1,000 bank note, he also has the recently-demonetised Rs 1,000 note, and both have same serial number 666666. According to him it is "the only known fancy number that survived".



He also has the oldest surviving Indian bank note, dated September 1812.



Asked about the value of such notes, Rajkumar said: "There are a few items for which price cannot be determined, as they are either one or two that are known to exist and there is no previous sale history of similar items to determine the value," he told the paper.



He said that solid (or continues) serial numbers are more valuable compared to royal numbers in bank notes



Ramkumar said he supported the demonetisation move by the Indian government.

ABU DHABI:Amid the rush among Indian expatriates scurrying home to exchange the demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes before the December 30 deadline, a Dubai-based numismatist who hails from India, has advised his compatriots to "hold onto their old currency notes". "Check the serial numbers of the currency notes. Special serial numbers, fancy and royal notes could fetch several times its face value in future," the Khaleej Times quoted numismatist Ramkumar as saying on Wednesday. The collector will never make a loss, said the 36-year-old numismatist who is fond of rare notes and has been collecting them for the past 15 years. Ramkumar, who is from Chennai, said people should "treasure" currency notes of any country. "How much profit one can make on these notes, purely depends on demand and supply. There is worldwide demand for fancy notes," Ramkumar told the newspaper. He said that rare notes have a beautiful history and from an investment point of view they give very high returns in long term. Ramkumar has a collection of royal number 000001 from 10 different countries. He also has an old note of Rs 1,000 which was demonetised in 1978 in India under the High Denomination Bank Notes Act. Apart from the old Rs 1,000 bank note, he also has the recently-demonetised Rs 1,000 note, and both have same serial number 666666. According to him it is "the only known fancy number that survived". He also has the oldest surviving Indian bank note, dated September 1812. Asked about the value of such notes, Rajkumar said: "There are a few items for which price cannot be determined, as they are either one or two that are known to exist and there is no previous sale history of similar items to determine the value," he told the paper. He said that solid (or continues) serial numbers are more valuable compared to royal numbers in bank notes Ramkumar said he supported the demonetisation move by the Indian government.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: A group of senior officials from ministries, including commerce and finance, will early next month deliberate on the incentives sought by US-based iPhone maker Apple to set up a manufacturing unit in the country.

Officials from departments of commerce, industrial policy and promotion (DIPP), revenue, environment and forest, electronics and information technology (DeITY) will attend the meeting.

The group is likely to meet in the first week of January to discuss the issue, sources said.

In a communication to the government, the Cupertino-based technology major has asked for several tax and other incentives to enter India in the manufacturing sector.

However, government sources said the technology-major should set up the manufacturing unit in India without seeking additional support.

"Several companies in India are manufacturing mobile phones in India. Nobody is asking for additional incentives. Currently, the government provides sufficient support to boost electronic manufacturing," they added.

The government provides benefits under Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme (MSIPS) to boost electronic manufacturing in the country.

The scheme provides financial incentives to offset disability and attract investments in the electronics hardware segment. It also gives subsidy for investments in Special Economic Zones, among other benefits.

Currently, Apple's products are manufactured in six countries, including Korea, Japan and the US.

Earlier, the finance ministry in May had rejected relaxing the 30 per cent domestic sourcing norms, as sought by the iPhone and iPad maker as a pre-condition for bringing in FDI to set up single-brand retail stores in the country.

The company had sought exemption on the ground that it makes state-of-the-art and cutting-edge technology products for which local sourcing is not possible.

The government had also turned down the firm's proposal to import refurbished phones and sell them in India.

The company sells its products through Apple-owned retail stores in countries like China, Germany, the US, the UK and France, among others. It has no wholly-owned store in India and sells its products through distributors such as Redington and Ingram Micro.

The government has announced incentives to promote electronic manufacturing in India and reduce the import bill.

Total import of electronics goods were valued at Rs 2.25 lakh crore in 2014-15 as against Rs 1.95 lakh crore in the previous year.

NEW DELHI: A group of senior officials from ministries, including commerce and finance, will early next month deliberate on the incentives sought by US-based iPhone maker Apple to set up a manufacturing unit in the country. Officials from departments of commerce, industrial policy and promotion (DIPP), revenue, environment and forest, electronics and information technology (DeITY) will attend the meeting. The group is likely to meet in the first week of January to discuss the issue, sources said. In a communication to the government, the Cupertino-based technology major has asked for several tax and other incentives to enter India in the manufacturing sector. However, government sources said the technology-major should set up the manufacturing unit in India without seeking additional support. "Several companies in India are manufacturing mobile phones in India. Nobody is asking for additional incentives. Currently, the government provides sufficient support to boost electronic manufacturing," they added. The government provides benefits under Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme (MSIPS) to boost electronic manufacturing in the country. The scheme provides financial incentives to offset disability and attract investments in the electronics hardware segment. It also gives subsidy for investments in Special Economic Zones, among other benefits. Currently, Apple's products are manufactured in six countries, including Korea, Japan and the US. Earlier, the finance ministry in May had rejected relaxing the 30 per cent domestic sourcing norms, as sought by the iPhone and iPad maker as a pre-condition for bringing in FDI to set up single-brand retail stores in the country. The company had sought exemption on the ground that it makes state-of-the-art and cutting-edge technology products for which local sourcing is not possible. The government had also turned down the firm's proposal to import refurbished phones and sell them in India. The company sells its products through Apple-owned retail stores in countries like China, Germany, the US, the UK and France, among others. It has no wholly-owned store in India and sells its products through distributors such as Redington and Ingram Micro. The government has announced incentives to promote electronic manufacturing in India and reduce the import bill. Total import of electronics goods were valued at Rs 2.25 lakh crore in 2014-15 as against Rs 1.95 lakh crore in the previous year.
Aishik Chanda By

Express News Service

KOLKATA: A day before completion of Prime Minister Narendra Modis promised ultimatum of 50 days for improvement of the situation brought in by demonetisation, workers at Reserve Bank of India (RBI) mint at Salboni in West Bengal  one of the four mints of the country where new notes are being printed  have refused to work for more than 9 hours every shift as opposed to the 12 hours they have to pitch in presently to meet the demands of new notes.

The situation has become even more complex as the Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited (BRBNMPL) employees union governed by Trinamool Congress, says that many employees have taken ill due to the long hours of duty post demonetisation Since November 14, the workers of Salboni and Mysuru mints have been working for 12 hours every shift to meet the huge demand of notes especially the Rs 100 and Rs 500 ones. Several of the employees have taken ill due to the long duty hours. This cant be continued, said BRBNMPL employees union president and Trinamool Congress MP from Kanthi and former Union rural development minister Sisir Adhikary.

Some 700 employees of BRBNMPL are working additional three hours every shift since November 14 to print currency notes of denominations Rs 10 to Rs 2,000 worth Rs 9.6 crore in every shift. Their demand to work in 9-hour shifts would amount to deficit printing of around Rs 2.8 crore every shift. This may cause a shortage of notes in the market. The notes from Salboni mint are circulated to as many as 12 states in eastern and northeastern India.

We are neither slaves nor robots that we will work for 12 hours every day for the greater good of the country. We are humans. We need rest, a BRBNMPL employee told Express.

We are not owned by some powerful people for whose erratic decisions, we have to give up our family life, said another BRBNMPL employee.

KOLKATA: A day before completion of Prime Minister Narendra Modis promised ultimatum of 50 days for improvement of the situation brought in by demonetisation, workers at Reserve Bank of India (RBI) mint at Salboni in West Bengal  one of the four mints of the country where new notes are being printed  have refused to work for more than 9 hours every shift as opposed to the 12 hours they have to pitch in presently to meet the demands of new notes. The situation has become even more complex as the Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited (BRBNMPL) employees union governed by Trinamool Congress, says that many employees have taken ill due to the long hours of duty post demonetisation Since November 14, the workers of Salboni and Mysuru mints have been working for 12 hours every shift to meet the huge demand of notes especially the Rs 100 and Rs 500 ones. Several of the employees have taken ill due to the long duty hours. This cant be continued, said BRBNMPL employees union president and Trinamool Congress MP from Kanthi and former Union rural development minister Sisir Adhikary. Some 700 employees of BRBNMPL are working additional three hours every shift since November 14 to print currency notes of denominations Rs 10 to Rs 2,000 worth Rs 9.6 crore in every shift. Their demand to work in 9-hour shifts would amount to deficit printing of around Rs 2.8 crore every shift. This may cause a shortage of notes in the market. The notes from Salboni mint are circulated to as many as 12 states in eastern and northeastern India. We are neither slaves nor robots that we will work for 12 hours every day for the greater good of the country. We are humans. We need rest, a BRBNMPL employee told Express. We are not owned by some powerful people for whose erratic decisions, we have to give up our family life, said another BRBNMPL employee.
Ejaz Kaiser By

Express News Service

As the Prime Ministers deadline for demonetization difficulties comes to an end, New Indian Express reporters track back to locations where they assessed the situation in the first two weeks and check if theres been an improvement.

Pathalgaon mandi, Chhattisgarh



At about the time Narendra Modi unleashed the winds of demonetization, tomato prices crashed in the markets of Chhattisgarh. Farm gate prices plunged as low as Rs 2 per kg and farmers werent bothering to go to the mandi to hawk their produce. It wasnt worth the transport costs.

Market veterans were puzzled by the sight of farmers dumping their produce, a scene more familiar down south. While traders blamed it on the Modi gale, farmers cribbed that the seths were using the cash crunch as an excuse to beat down the prices.

Seven weeks on, the situation has not changed much in the Pathalgaon vegetable mandi in Jashpur district. Prices are lower still, and buyers have gone AWOL. Farmers say this is the first time in 25 years that tomatoes have sold for less than a rupee per kg in the wholesale mandis. Earlier this month, when prices dropped to a staggering 25 paise per kg, farmers dumped nearly hundred tractor-trolley loads on the national highway.

On my second visit to the Pathalgaon vegetable mandi within this month, I espied Nanku Ram waiting for custom with two sacks of tomatoes straddling his bicycle. I asked him hows business and a vacant look crept into his eyes. I wont be able to recover even the cost of cultivation.

I stopped to ask another farmer, Iliyas Beg from Paraghati village, the same question. He had been standing the entire day and had managed to sell barely one-fourth of the lot he brought to the market. My family desperately needs this income, he said.

Ved Prakash Mishra, the president of the Kisan Sangh in Jashpur, still blames the agents. Usually prices come down during January-February and never in November when the fresh crop comes into the market. Big traders and middlemen are exploiting the situation, he said.

The big traders have stopped coming from Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Bihar. We dont even have retail buyers, said sarpanch Roshan Pratap of Chandagarh panchayat.

The traders have their woes as well. A lone wholesale trader from Jharkhand who had turned up at Pathalgaon said, We are not in a position to pay the entire amount in cash as demanded by the farmers. Payment problems have disrupted the transport of vegetables. I can barely recover 50-60 per cent of the money I spend here.

The administration has done a feeble bit for the tomato farmers, such as opening up the rabi crop insurance scheme to include them. And then some wee things that cut no ice with the distressed families. Jashpurs district collector Priyanka Shukla told me that 500 youngsters from tomato farmer families will be put under the skill development programme and trained for alternative jobs.



As the Prime Ministers deadline for demonetization difficulties comes to an end, New Indian Express reporters track back to locations where they assessed the situation in the first two weeks and check if theres been an improvement. Pathalgaon mandi, Chhattisgarh At about the time Narendra Modi unleashed the winds of demonetization, tomato prices crashed in the markets of Chhattisgarh. Farm gate prices plunged as low as Rs 2 per kg and farmers werent bothering to go to the mandi to hawk their produce. It wasnt worth the transport costs. Market veterans were puzzled by the sight of farmers dumping their produce, a scene more familiar down south. While traders blamed it on the Modi gale, farmers cribbed that the seths were using the cash crunch as an excuse to beat down the prices. Seven weeks on, the situation has not changed much in the Pathalgaon vegetable mandi in Jashpur district. Prices are lower still, and buyers have gone AWOL. Farmers say this is the first time in 25 years that tomatoes have sold for less than a rupee per kg in the wholesale mandis. Earlier this month, when prices dropped to a staggering 25 paise per kg, farmers dumped nearly hundred tractor-trolley loads on the national highway. On my second visit to the Pathalgaon vegetable mandi within this month, I espied Nanku Ram waiting for custom with two sacks of tomatoes straddling his bicycle. I asked him hows business and a vacant look crept into his eyes. I wont be able to recover even the cost of cultivation. I stopped to ask another farmer, Iliyas Beg from Paraghati village, the same question. He had been standing the entire day and had managed to sell barely one-fourth of the lot he brought to the market. My family desperately needs this income, he said. Ved Prakash Mishra, the president of the Kisan Sangh in Jashpur, still blames the agents. Usually prices come down during January-February and never in November when the fresh crop comes into the market. Big traders and middlemen are exploiting the situation, he said. The big traders have stopped coming from Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and Bihar. We dont even have retail buyers, said sarpanch Roshan Pratap of Chandagarh panchayat. The traders have their woes as well. A lone wholesale trader from Jharkhand who had turned up at Pathalgaon said, We are not in a position to pay the entire amount in cash as demanded by the farmers. Payment problems have disrupted the transport of vegetables. I can barely recover 50-60 per cent of the money I spend here. The administration has done a feeble bit for the tomato farmers, such as opening up the rabi crop insurance scheme to include them. And then some wee things that cut no ice with the distressed families. Jashpurs district collector Priyanka Shukla told me that 500 youngsters from tomato farmer families will be put under the skill development programme and trained for alternative jobs.
Harpreet Bajwa By

Express News Service

As the Prime Ministers deadline for demonetization difficulties comes to an end, New Indian Express reporters track back to locations where they assessed the situation in the first two weeks and check if theres been an improvement.

Gurdaspur



The market commission agent is not popular in the Indian imagination. In films, novels and the media, hes often depicted as a profiteer who gyps farmers out of their earnings. But in Punjab its been the commission agent who has retrieved the farmers fat from the fire in the seven weeks of demonetisation.

Commission agents are called arhtiyas in Punjab. They supply seed, fertilizer and other farm inputs on credit to farmers. There are some 26,000 registered commission agents in the state, each servicing 20-50 farmers. If Punjabs farmers have managed to complete their wheat sowing this season, it was largely because of the states strong arhtiya system.

But its not as if the hardships have ended for Punjabs farmers. Bank curbs continue to impede farm operations. In Gurdaspur, a farmer Bhagwant Singh told me he has been able to complete sowing by sourcing inputs kind courtesy of the arhtiya. But its been uphill all the way what with blocked access to procurement monies, borrowings and cash for incidental expenses.

Another Gurdaspur farmer Avtar Singh told me, I sowed my land despite the government not paying me for the paddy it bought from me months ago. My arhtiya gave me the seeds, DAP and urea on credit.

Another farmer I spoke to in Fazilka, Mukhtiar Singh said he was galled by the oddity of the government being tardy in procurement disbursals while curbing his access to their own money in the bank. My wife and children want to shop for a wedding thats coming up, but I have no money to give them, he complained.

The Punjab government has disbursed only Rs 19,350 crore out of a total of Rs 24,915 crore it owes to farmers for procuring 16.50 million tonnes of paddy from them at the end of kharif.

While banks in Chandigarh report shorter queues, its another story in rural Punjab. All the farmers I spoke to in Gurdaspur said they have stopped hiring daily wagers as they still have no cash to pay them. Migrant workers have been asked to go home and return when summoned.

While the arhtiyas did bail out the kisans, some took advantage of the chaos to launder their cash. One farmer told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity, that commission agents used farmers desperation to palm off demonetized notes, which they had to deposit in banks as their own agricultural income, which is tax-free.

Four weeks since I last visited Gurdaspur, traders continued to lament that business has been slack. One man, Jagmohan Singh, who owns a mobile phone shop, said, My business suffered a 30 per cent dip in the last two months. We have recovered from the initial shock but the difference now is that customers are insisting on using cards. Smaller traders said their sales have dipped by up to 50 per cent.

The industrial sector too continues to limp in Punjab. R S Sachdeva, the Punjab president of the PHD Chamber of Commerce, told me industrialists are constrained in paying wages online to their workers, many of whom do not have bank accounts aqnd the identification documents needed.

I have three units and wanted to open 200 accounts for my workers, but the rules have delayed the process. In the meantime, the government has notified that salaries cannot be paid in cash any more. So the woerkers salaries are getting delayed, said Rashpal Singh, an industrialist.

He added that production has fallen by 40-50 per cent and around 25-30 per cent of his workers have gone home.

As the Prime Ministers deadline for demonetization difficulties comes to an end, New Indian Express reporters track back to locations where they assessed the situation in the first two weeks and check if theres been an improvement. Gurdaspur The market commission agent is not popular in the Indian imagination. In films, novels and the media, hes often depicted as a profiteer who gyps farmers out of their earnings. But in Punjab its been the commission agent who has retrieved the farmers fat from the fire in the seven weeks of demonetisation. Commission agents are called arhtiyas in Punjab. They supply seed, fertilizer and other farm inputs on credit to farmers. There are some 26,000 registered commission agents in the state, each servicing 20-50 farmers. If Punjabs farmers have managed to complete their wheat sowing this season, it was largely because of the states strong arhtiya system. But its not as if the hardships have ended for Punjabs farmers. Bank curbs continue to impede farm operations. In Gurdaspur, a farmer Bhagwant Singh told me he has been able to complete sowing by sourcing inputs kind courtesy of the arhtiya. But its been uphill all the way what with blocked access to procurement monies, borrowings and cash for incidental expenses. Another Gurdaspur farmer Avtar Singh told me, I sowed my land despite the government not paying me for the paddy it bought from me months ago. My arhtiya gave me the seeds, DAP and urea on credit. Another farmer I spoke to in Fazilka, Mukhtiar Singh said he was galled by the oddity of the government being tardy in procurement disbursals while curbing his access to their own money in the bank. My wife and children want to shop for a wedding thats coming up, but I have no money to give them, he complained. The Punjab government has disbursed only Rs 19,350 crore out of a total of Rs 24,915 crore it owes to farmers for procuring 16.50 million tonnes of paddy from them at the end of kharif. While banks in Chandigarh report shorter queues, its another story in rural Punjab. All the farmers I spoke to in Gurdaspur said they have stopped hiring daily wagers as they still have no cash to pay them. Migrant workers have been asked to go home and return when summoned. While the arhtiyas did bail out the kisans, some took advantage of the chaos to launder their cash. One farmer told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity, that commission agents used farmers desperation to palm off demonetized notes, which they had to deposit in banks as their own agricultural income, which is tax-free. Four weeks since I last visited Gurdaspur, traders continued to lament that business has been slack. One man, Jagmohan Singh, who owns a mobile phone shop, said, My business suffered a 30 per cent dip in the last two months. We have recovered from the initial shock but the difference now is that customers are insisting on using cards. Smaller traders said their sales have dipped by up to 50 per cent. The industrial sector too continues to limp in Punjab. R S Sachdeva, the Punjab president of the PHD Chamber of Commerce, told me industrialists are constrained in paying wages online to their workers, many of whom do not have bank accounts aqnd the identification documents needed. I have three units and wanted to open 200 accounts for my workers, but the rules have delayed the process. In the meantime, the government has notified that salaries cannot be paid in cash any more. So the woerkers salaries are getting delayed, said Rashpal Singh, an industrialist. He added that production has fallen by 40-50 per cent and around 25-30 per cent of his workers have gone home.
Prasanta Mazumdar By

Express News Service

As the Prime Ministers deadline for demonetization difficulties comes to an end, New Indian Express reporters track back to locations where they assessed the situation in the first two weeks and check if theres been an improvement.

Guwahati



By the telling of the fishmongers in Guwahati, India has become stingy all of a sudden. With a few days to go for the end to the demon days, I went to the teeming Kachari fish market in Guwahati to sniff the mood. The traders I met said their takeaway from the last 50 days is that the shock treatment has left consumers wince if they have to reach for their wallets.

True, people initially struggled for cash initially. But the situation has improved substantially but people still are afraid of spending money. They are eating less! complained Moinul Khan, a trader.

Its indeed a bit much if you cant get a Bengali to spend on fish.

We all know how much Bengalis love fish but I havent seen my regular customers for weeks. Earlier, they would visit almost every day, Khan added.

The Kachari fish market is located at Rehabari, the posher quarter of Guwahati. Apart from several government buildings, the head office and residential enclaves of the Assam Police are located here. A lot of Bengalis live here. In the pre-demonetisation era, the market would buzz until 2 pm.

A big trader, Nurul Hussain told me his daily sales have plummeted from Rs.5 lakh to Rs 1.5 lakh.

The market has 22 traders. Three of them  Khursed Ali, Moinul Haque and Abul Hussain  have closed shop and moved back to Barpeta in western Assam to work as labourers. Half a dozen other traders are not doing any business every day.

Nurul Hussain has been rendered a bitter man. Demonetisation has snatched our livelihood. Winter is when our sales usually go up but the situation is worsening every passing day, he said.

The traders pique is that there is cash available aplenty in the ATMs of Guwahati. Its just that consumers are still in shock.

Another listless fishmonger I spoke to, Zuber Ali, said he had alternative vocation lined up. Im not earning even Rs.300 a day. Ive seen some autorickshaw drivers, hit hard by the arrival of Uber and Ola, trying their luck in gambling. If things dont improve, I too will take to gambling.



As the Prime Ministers deadline for demonetization difficulties comes to an end, New Indian Express reporters track back to locations where they assessed the situation in the first two weeks and check if theres been an improvement. Guwahati By the telling of the fishmongers in Guwahati, India has become stingy all of a sudden. With a few days to go for the end to the demon days, I went to the teeming Kachari fish market in Guwahati to sniff the mood. The traders I met said their takeaway from the last 50 days is that the shock treatment has left consumers wince if they have to reach for their wallets. True, people initially struggled for cash initially. But the situation has improved substantially but people still are afraid of spending money. They are eating less! complained Moinul Khan, a trader. Its indeed a bit much if you cant get a Bengali to spend on fish. We all know how much Bengalis love fish but I havent seen my regular customers for weeks. Earlier, they would visit almost every day, Khan added. The Kachari fish market is located at Rehabari, the posher quarter of Guwahati. Apart from several government buildings, the head office and residential enclaves of the Assam Police are located here. A lot of Bengalis live here. In the pre-demonetisation era, the market would buzz until 2 pm. A big trader, Nurul Hussain told me his daily sales have plummeted from Rs.5 lakh to Rs 1.5 lakh. The market has 22 traders. Three of them  Khursed Ali, Moinul Haque and Abul Hussain  have closed shop and moved back to Barpeta in western Assam to work as labourers. Half a dozen other traders are not doing any business every day. Nurul Hussain has been rendered a bitter man. Demonetisation has snatched our livelihood. Winter is when our sales usually go up but the situation is worsening every passing day, he said. The traders pique is that there is cash available aplenty in the ATMs of Guwahati. Its just that consumers are still in shock. Another listless fishmonger I spoke to, Zuber Ali, said he had alternative vocation lined up. Im not earning even Rs.300 a day. Ive seen some autorickshaw drivers, hit hard by the arrival of Uber and Ola, trying their luck in gambling. If things dont improve, I too will take to gambling.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: A private school owner was arrested on Wednesday on the charges of sexually assaulting seven students over the past few months. All the students are in primary school.

According to Sampigehalli police, the accused has been identified as Hussain (50), a resident of Thanisandra and the owner of Reliance Public School, which is in the same locality.

He was arrested based on a complaint filed by a victim in the presence of her parents.

The police said, According to the complainant, the accused was sexually assaulting students since three months. On Wednesday, many parents staged a protest in front of the school. On receiving information, police went to the spot. The parents said that the school owner was sexually assaulting the students since many days and the children were complaining of stomach pain.

The police took the victims and their parents to the police station where one of the victims filed a complaint which included statements of six other students.

According to the complaint, Hussain used to hold special classes for students studying in the 5th, 6th and 7th Standard.

It was then that he would allegedly sexually assault the girls.

The parent of one of the victims said, My child complained that Hussain was touching her inappropriately and so refused to attend special classes. On Wednesday morning, we came to know that the parents of one of the students was protesting in this regard. We went to the school and realised that at least seven students had complained to their parents about the sexual abuse. It has really shocked us.

The Reliance Public School has classes from nursery to 9th standard. It was Hussains wife who took care of the day-to-day affairs while Hussain visited the school once in a while. But since three months, he started taking special classes for the children, the parent said.

According to an officer from the Sampigehalli police station, Hussain was arrested based on a complaint from one of the girl students and was interrogated in the police station.

Police said that despite having adequate teaching staff, Hussain would conduct special classes on the pretext of revision and allegedly sexually assaulted the students.

Police have booked a case under Section 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and Section 354 of IPC (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty).

BENGALURU: A private school owner was arrested on Wednesday on the charges of sexually assaulting seven students over the past few months. All the students are in primary school. According to Sampigehalli police, the accused has been identified as Hussain (50), a resident of Thanisandra and the owner of Reliance Public School, which is in the same locality. He was arrested based on a complaint filed by a victim in the presence of her parents. The police said, According to the complainant, the accused was sexually assaulting students since three months. On Wednesday, many parents staged a protest in front of the school. On receiving information, police went to the spot. The parents said that the school owner was sexually assaulting the students since many days and the children were complaining of stomach pain. The police took the victims and their parents to the police station where one of the victims filed a complaint which included statements of six other students. According to the complaint, Hussain used to hold special classes for students studying in the 5th, 6th and 7th Standard. It was then that he would allegedly sexually assault the girls. The parent of one of the victims said, My child complained that Hussain was touching her inappropriately and so refused to attend special classes. On Wednesday morning, we came to know that the parents of one of the students was protesting in this regard. We went to the school and realised that at least seven students had complained to their parents about the sexual abuse. It has really shocked us. The Reliance Public School has classes from nursery to 9th standard. It was Hussains wife who took care of the day-to-day affairs while Hussain visited the school once in a while. But since three months, he started taking special classes for the children, the parent said. According to an officer from the Sampigehalli police station, Hussain was arrested based on a complaint from one of the girl students and was interrogated in the police station. Police said that despite having adequate teaching staff, Hussain would conduct special classes on the pretext of revision and allegedly sexually assaulted the students. Police have booked a case under Section 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and Section 354 of IPC (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty).
Ashmita Gupta By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: The IIT Madras's central library website and web pages of six of the institution's departments were allegedly hacked on Thursday by unknown persons who had posted messages reading 'Pakistan Jindabad'. A few students and alumnae of the premium technology institution told Express that they came to know of the hacking of the website at around 5.30 AM on Thursday.

SG Suryah, vice-president of BJP's Tamil Nadu state youth wing, who first tweeted about the incident said it was hacked at 5 AM and at around 6 AM, the website read "under maintenance". "We feel it was a part of conspiracy by some people who want to defame the digital India campaign of the Union government. I came to know from some alumnae of the institution," he said.

An alumnus of the institute, seeking anonymity, said that he got a message at around 5:30 AM from some students of the institution and a call around 6 AM saying that websites were hacked and a message has been posted saying 'Pakistan Jindabad'. "I feel this is a part of a bigger group," he said. He added that the students wanted to bring this to the notice of the institution authorities.

When Express spoke to a few students currently pursuing a course at the institute, many said they were not aware of the hacking of the websites.

Professor Shivakumar, dean of students, said that he has not received any information on this matter. "I am unaware of it and it is surprising that none of the students brought this into my notice so far," he said.

Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director of IIT Madras, said only a site in which events at the institute were announced was hacked, not the institute's official website. "That site does not have much security (because it not an important site). But the institution's website is secure," he told Express.

However, when Express checked at around 1 PM, the website of the institution and the web page of the central library and six departments read,  This website is currently down, We are working to bring it up. Sorry for inconvenience caused. 29th Dec 2016".

The departments are Humanities and Social Sciences, Management Studies, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Biotechnology.

CHENNAI: The IIT Madras's central library website and web pages of six of the institution's departments were allegedly hacked on Thursday by unknown persons who had posted messages reading 'Pakistan Jindabad'. A few students and alumnae of the premium technology institution told Express that they came to know of the hacking of the website at around 5.30 AM on Thursday. SG Suryah, vice-president of BJP's Tamil Nadu state youth wing, who first tweeted about the incident said it was hacked at 5 AM and at around 6 AM, the website read "under maintenance". "We feel it was a part of conspiracy by some people who want to defame the digital India campaign of the Union government. I came to know from some alumnae of the institution," he said. An alumnus of the institute, seeking anonymity, said that he got a message at around 5:30 AM from some students of the institution and a call around 6 AM saying that websites were hacked and a message has been posted saying 'Pakistan Jindabad'. "I feel this is a part of a bigger group," he said. He added that the students wanted to bring this to the notice of the institution authorities. When Express spoke to a few students currently pursuing a course at the institute, many said they were not aware of the hacking of the websites. Professor Shivakumar, dean of students, said that he has not received any information on this matter. "I am unaware of it and it is surprising that none of the students brought this into my notice so far," he said. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, director of IIT Madras, said only a site in which events at the institute were announced was hacked, not the institute's official website. "That site does not have much security (because it not an important site). But the institution's website is secure," he told Express. However, when Express checked at around 1 PM, the website of the institution and the web page of the central library and six departments read,  This website is currently down, We are working to bring it up. Sorry for inconvenience caused. 29th Dec 2016". The departments are Humanities and Social Sciences, Management Studies, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Biotechnology.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Chasing the cash trail of sand mining baron J Shekhar Reddy, who has been arrested by the CBI after the seizure of new currency notes of Rs 34 crore from his premises, the Enforcement Directorate here has arrested two money launderers and seized Rs 10 crore worth old currencies and 6.5 kg gold.

Joint Director of Enforcement Directorate K S V V Prasad said Mahavir Hirani and Ashok Jain were involved in exchange of old notes for new ones of about Rs 6 crore to Reddy. Investigations revealed that the duo had links with Kolkata-based businessman Parasmal Lodha, who was arrested for converting Rs 25-crore demonetised notes into new currency.

Their link to Reddy was corroborated through Lodha, and both Mahavir and Ashok helped Reddy obtain Rs 6-7 crore new currency in exchange of Rs 10 crore demonetised cash, said Rao.

He said the search at the premises of Ashok Jain resulted in seizure of Rs 10 crore of old currencies and 6.5-kg gold. Further verification revealed that Mahavir and Ashok were involved in exchange of old currencies for new currencies on commission basis.

The duo are arrested under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and are remanded in judicial custody till January 11.

Vivek fails to turn up

With the former Chief Secretary P Rama Mohana Raos son Vivek Pappisetti failing to turn up despite summons, Income Tax (I-T) officials are exploring alternatives, sources said. Vivek, whose house at Tiruvanmiyur was raided along with that of his fathers on December 21, was summoned by I-T Department to appear on Friday last at the Director-General of Income Tax (Investigation) office. In fact, Rao, too, had volunteered to come to the department that date, said sources. But we told him that his presence is not required. We are poring through the documents seized. We will summon him as and when required, official sources told Express.

Vivek expressed his inability to report on Friday, stating that he was attending to his pregnant wife. He assured that he will report to the office on Saturday, said the official. We waited for him on Saturday and messaged him. He said he will come on Monday, said the official.

Now for the last two days, he is ignoring our messages and not picking up calls, the official added.

CHENNAI: Chasing the cash trail of sand mining baron J Shekhar Reddy, who has been arrested by the CBI after the seizure of new currency notes of Rs 34 crore from his premises, the Enforcement Directorate here has arrested two money launderers and seized Rs 10 crore worth old currencies and 6.5 kg gold. Joint Director of Enforcement Directorate K S V V Prasad said Mahavir Hirani and Ashok Jain were involved in exchange of old notes for new ones of about Rs 6 crore to Reddy. Investigations revealed that the duo had links with Kolkata-based businessman Parasmal Lodha, who was arrested for converting Rs 25-crore demonetised notes into new currency. Their link to Reddy was corroborated through Lodha, and both Mahavir and Ashok helped Reddy obtain Rs 6-7 crore new currency in exchange of Rs 10 crore demonetised cash, said Rao. He said the search at the premises of Ashok Jain resulted in seizure of Rs 10 crore of old currencies and 6.5-kg gold. Further verification revealed that Mahavir and Ashok were involved in exchange of old currencies for new currencies on commission basis. The duo are arrested under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and are remanded in judicial custody till January 11. Vivek fails to turn up With the former Chief Secretary P Rama Mohana Raos son Vivek Pappisetti failing to turn up despite summons, Income Tax (I-T) officials are exploring alternatives, sources said. Vivek, whose house at Tiruvanmiyur was raided along with that of his fathers on December 21, was summoned by I-T Department to appear on Friday last at the Director-General of Income Tax (Investigation) office. In fact, Rao, too, had volunteered to come to the department that date, said sources. But we told him that his presence is not required. We are poring through the documents seized. We will summon him as and when required, official sources told Express. Vivek expressed his inability to report on Friday, stating that he was attending to his pregnant wife. He assured that he will report to the office on Saturday, said the official. We waited for him on Saturday and messaged him. He said he will come on Monday, said the official. Now for the last two days, he is ignoring our messages and not picking up calls, the official added.
Aishik Chanda By

Express News Service

KOLKATA: In a rare instance of 'on-the-spot judicial activism', a woman additional chief judicial magistrate (ACJM) of Nadia district in West Bengal single-handedly barged into a police station and rescued a 22-year-old woman who was illegally detained there for five days, returned with her to the court, recorded her statement and sent the young woman to a welfare home.

Upon hearing the petition of farm labourer Govinda Biswas -- who claimed to be father of a 22-year-old woman working as a house maid in Delhi -- that her daughter has been picked up by police from home in Mayurhat village near Indo-Bangladesh border on December 23 and illegally detained at Hanskhali police station, Ranaghat ACJM Sanghamitra Poddar on Wednesday straightaway went to the police station alone in her car, without even informing her bodyguards.

Upon enquiry in Hanskhali police station near Ranaghat, she found that not even a general diary has been done with regard to the detention of the woman. Sources revealed that on questioning, officer-in-charge Anindya Bose could not provide the grounds on which the young woman was detained.

The judge has directed OC Bose to give an explanation as to why the woman was not produced in the court even 24 hours after detention. The police had earlier stated that the woman was detained on the basis of suspicious movements and on questioning she could not give coherent details of her identity.

The portrayal of illegal detention is false. However, the matter is sub judice now so I cannot give any details, said Hanskhali officer-in-charge SI Anindya Bose.

Police sources said that presence of the woman in Mayurhat village near the Indo-Bangladesh border without proper identification was also a reason for their suspicion. Nadia Superintendent of Police Sheesh Ram Jhajharia has ordered an enquiry into the matter of illegal detention.

Earlier in the same district, another judge had created a record of speedy justice by delivering judgment in a sexual assault case within 15 days.

KOLKATA: In a rare instance of 'on-the-spot judicial activism', a woman additional chief judicial magistrate (ACJM) of Nadia district in West Bengal single-handedly barged into a police station and rescued a 22-year-old woman who was illegally detained there for five days, returned with her to the court, recorded her statement and sent the young woman to a welfare home. Upon hearing the petition of farm labourer Govinda Biswas -- who claimed to be father of a 22-year-old woman working as a house maid in Delhi -- that her daughter has been picked up by police from home in Mayurhat village near Indo-Bangladesh border on December 23 and illegally detained at Hanskhali police station, Ranaghat ACJM Sanghamitra Poddar on Wednesday straightaway went to the police station alone in her car, without even informing her bodyguards. Upon enquiry in Hanskhali police station near Ranaghat, she found that not even a general diary has been done with regard to the detention of the woman. Sources revealed that on questioning, officer-in-charge Anindya Bose could not provide the grounds on which the young woman was detained. The judge has directed OC Bose to give an explanation as to why the woman was not produced in the court even 24 hours after detention. The police had earlier stated that the woman was detained on the basis of suspicious movements and on questioning she could not give coherent details of her identity. The portrayal of illegal detention is false. However, the matter is sub judice now so I cannot give any details, said Hanskhali officer-in-charge SI Anindya Bose. Police sources said that presence of the woman in Mayurhat village near the Indo-Bangladesh border without proper identification was also a reason for their suspicion. Nadia Superintendent of Police Sheesh Ram Jhajharia has ordered an enquiry into the matter of illegal detention. Earlier in the same district, another judge had created a record of speedy justice by delivering judgment in a sexual assault case within 15 days.
By Express News Service

Aditya Roy Kapur fulfils a wish of a fan named Lunika Nagdev, who is suffering from a life-threatening sickness, and is being treated at a city hospital. She wanted to meet the actor since a long time. W

hen the Aashiqui 2 star learnt about Lunikas wish, he decided to visit her as soon as possible. A source says, Aditya went to meet the ailing girl at the hospital and spent the entire day with her and some other patients who gathered to meet him.

The team of the Make-A-Wish Foundation got in touch with Adityas team and facilitated this meeting. Aditya went to see Lunika with a few gifts and she gave him a return gift as well.

The Ok Jaanu actor is said to save the letters he receives from his fans, and is always touched by their heartfelt gestures.

Aditya Roy Kapur fulfils a wish of a fan named Lunika Nagdev, who is suffering from a life-threatening sickness, and is being treated at a city hospital. She wanted to meet the actor since a long time. W hen the Aashiqui 2 star learnt about Lunikas wish, he decided to visit her as soon as possible. A source says, Aditya went to meet the ailing girl at the hospital and spent the entire day with her and some other patients who gathered to meet him. The team of the Make-A-Wish Foundation got in touch with Adityas team and facilitated this meeting. Aditya went to see Lunika with a few gifts and she gave him a return gift as well. The Ok Jaanu actor is said to save the letters he receives from his fans, and is always touched by their heartfelt gestures.
By Express News Service

The actors arent really coming together for a movie, but for a commercial. Sources say that the two actors have shot for a leading jewellery brand together for Valentines Day.

The actress has been super busy for more than a year now with her Quantico series and the Hollywood flick, Baywatch. Soon as she wrapped up her shoot for the second season of Quantico, PC came to India to spend some time with her family in Christmas and to read the scripts and shoot some ad commercials which has come her way.

She is also working on her Home Production to support regional cinema. Sidharth is just back from his trip to New Zealand with his family after shooting for his film with Jacqueline Fernandez Reload which is said to be a second instalment of Bang Bang!

It is said that the ad film makers were caught between Ranveer Singh and Siddharth Malhotra as the choice to play the man with Priyanka in the commercial. Finally they zeroed in on Sid. It was a days shoot at Four Seasons Hotel. Apparently the major portion of the shoot is focusing on Priyanka, and Sid makes an appearance only for a proposal scene.

The actors arent really coming together for a movie, but for a commercial. Sources say that the two actors have shot for a leading jewellery brand together for Valentines Day. The actress has been super busy for more than a year now with her Quantico series and the Hollywood flick, Baywatch. Soon as she wrapped up her shoot for the second season of Quantico, PC came to India to spend some time with her family in Christmas and to read the scripts and shoot some ad commercials which has come her way. She is also working on her Home Production to support regional cinema. Sidharth is just back from his trip to New Zealand with his family after shooting for his film with Jacqueline Fernandez Reload which is said to be a second instalment of Bang Bang! It is said that the ad film makers were caught between Ranveer Singh and Siddharth Malhotra as the choice to play the man with Priyanka in the commercial. Finally they zeroed in on Sid. It was a days shoot at Four Seasons Hotel. Apparently the major portion of the shoot is focusing on Priyanka, and Sid makes an appearance only for a proposal scene.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Centre has communicated to the Election Commission that it is ready to provide 85,000 paramilitary personnel for deployment in the upcoming assembly elections in five States including Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.



The Union Home Ministry came following a request from the Election Commission to make available 1 lakh Central paramilitary personnel for smooth conduct of the Assembly elections likely to be held in the next two months.



At a high-level meeting with the EC officials on Thursday, the Home Ministry has expressed its inability to provide 1,000 companies of paramilitary forces sought by the EC but committed to providing 850 companies for the polls, official sources said.



A company of paramilitary force comprises 100 personnel and a battalion includes 1,000 personnel. The EC relies on the Central forces for the smooth conduct of the election as well as reporting the poll percentage from each booth in order to avoid rigging.



As many as 500 to 600 companies of the paramilitary forces will be required for the conduct of polls in UP where polling is generally held in a staggered manner.



The Central Reserve Police Force is the Lead force for the conduct of the elections and is likely to provide about 200 companies. Likewise, major paramilitaries like the BSF and Sasashtra Seema Bal are likely to spare 60 to 70 companies each. ITBP and CISF are also expected to provide about 50 companies each for the conduct of the polls. The Home Ministry will also rope in 150 companies from the State Armed Police forces and India Reserve Battalions from different states for poll-related duties.



In addition to the Central forces, police forces of all States will also pressed into election duties.



Assembly elections in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur are expected to be held in single phase but in Uttar Pradesh, it is likely to be held in a staggered manner.



The EC is likely to announce the election schedule within the next few days.

NEW DELHI: The Centre has communicated to the Election Commission that it is ready to provide 85,000 paramilitary personnel for deployment in the upcoming assembly elections in five States including Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. The Union Home Ministry came following a request from the Election Commission to make available 1 lakh Central paramilitary personnel for smooth conduct of the Assembly elections likely to be held in the next two months. At a high-level meeting with the EC officials on Thursday, the Home Ministry has expressed its inability to provide 1,000 companies of paramilitary forces sought by the EC but committed to providing 850 companies for the polls, official sources said. A company of paramilitary force comprises 100 personnel and a battalion includes 1,000 personnel. The EC relies on the Central forces for the smooth conduct of the election as well as reporting the poll percentage from each booth in order to avoid rigging. As many as 500 to 600 companies of the paramilitary forces will be required for the conduct of polls in UP where polling is generally held in a staggered manner. The Central Reserve Police Force is the Lead force for the conduct of the elections and is likely to provide about 200 companies. Likewise, major paramilitaries like the BSF and Sasashtra Seema Bal are likely to spare 60 to 70 companies each. ITBP and CISF are also expected to provide about 50 companies each for the conduct of the polls. The Home Ministry will also rope in 150 companies from the State Armed Police forces and India Reserve Battalions from different states for poll-related duties. In addition to the Central forces, police forces of all States will also pressed into election duties. Assembly elections in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur are expected to be held in single phase but in Uttar Pradesh, it is likely to be held in a staggered manner. The EC is likely to announce the election schedule within the next few days.
Fayaz Wani By

Express News Service

SRINAGAR: Senior Congress leader Meem Afzal on Thursday described as demonetisation as surgical strike on Indias poor, farmers and small businesses alleging that it has plunged the entire country in a state of economic anarchy.

Demonetisation is a surgical strike on Indias poor, farmers, labours, shopkeepers, small businesses, middle class and entire unorganized sector, Afzal said while addressing a press conference in Srinagar.

He said by scrapping 86% of currency in circulation on November 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has hit at 99 per cent of honest hardworking Indians while presumably targeting just 1 per cent black money hoarders.

Indias wheel of development has come to a standstill due to demonetization. It has plunged the entire country in a state of economic anarchy, the Congress leader said.

He said 130 crore people were forced to stand in queues for their money. The time people should have spent earning their livelihood was spent in the queues to withdraw money.

Afzal said 50 days of demonetisation have witnessed tragic deaths of over 115 innocent persons. PM Modi should unconditionally apologize and pay compensation to these families. We expect him to apologise when he speaks on the issue at the end of the 50 days he had sought.

He said RBI has changed its rules 126 times and it will take at least eight months to print the equivalent of the scrapped currency notes.

Afzal alleged that demonetisation has turned out to be the biggest scam of independent India.

Kolkatta unit of BJP was caught depositing Rs.500/ 1000 notes running into Rs 3 crore on the day of demonetisation. In the run-up to decision of demonetisation, BJP and RSS purchased properties running into hundreds of crores across the country, he alleged.

The Congress leader further alleged that Rs 500 crores were deposited in Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank, Ahmedabad within three days of demonetisation. BJP president Amit Shah is a Director of the bank and why has he not been investigated?

Mahesh Shah of Ahmedabad, Gujarat made a declaration of Rs.13,860 crore in the voluntary income disclosure scheme. As he was giving a TV interview disclosing names of politicians and bureaucrats, he was taken away by Income Tax authorities. Former Gujarat CM, Sureshbhai Mehta has openly spoken about links of Mahesh Shah with Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. Why have they not been investigated, he said.

The Congress leader also alleged that PM Modis credibility is under cloud as he is accused of "corruption" and receiving "black money" in Aditya Birla and Sahara Group cases.

Is Modi and BJP ready for an independent probe into both these serious issues of corruption, he said.

Afzal said Congress demands that restrictions on withdrawal of money be lifted with immediate effect. Till the time restrictions are in place, a special interest at the rate of 18% per annum should be given to all bank account holders and charges on digital transactions should be abolished forthwith.

Rs 25,000 should be deposited in the account of at least one woman belonging to each BPL family as compensation for the suffering caused to women due to demonetization, he said adding that number of guaranteed work days and the wage rate under MGNREGA should be doubled for a period of one year.

Afzal further demanded that an Income Tax and Sales tax rebate of 50% should be given to small shopkeepers and businesses. The Central government should compensate the State governments for the loss of revenue incurred on account of this exemption.

SRINAGAR: Senior Congress leader Meem Afzal on Thursday described as demonetisation as surgical strike on Indias poor, farmers and small businesses alleging that it has plunged the entire country in a state of economic anarchy. Demonetisation is a surgical strike on Indias poor, farmers, labours, shopkeepers, small businesses, middle class and entire unorganized sector, Afzal said while addressing a press conference in Srinagar. He said by scrapping 86% of currency in circulation on November 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has hit at 99 per cent of honest hardworking Indians while presumably targeting just 1 per cent black money hoarders. Indias wheel of development has come to a standstill due to demonetization. It has plunged the entire country in a state of economic anarchy, the Congress leader said. He said 130 crore people were forced to stand in queues for their money. The time people should have spent earning their livelihood was spent in the queues to withdraw money. Afzal said 50 days of demonetisation have witnessed tragic deaths of over 115 innocent persons. PM Modi should unconditionally apologize and pay compensation to these families. We expect him to apologise when he speaks on the issue at the end of the 50 days he had sought. He said RBI has changed its rules 126 times and it will take at least eight months to print the equivalent of the scrapped currency notes. Afzal alleged that demonetisation has turned out to be the biggest scam of independent India. Kolkatta unit of BJP was caught depositing Rs.500/ 1000 notes running into Rs 3 crore on the day of demonetisation. In the run-up to decision of demonetisation, BJP and RSS purchased properties running into hundreds of crores across the country, he alleged. The Congress leader further alleged that Rs 500 crores were deposited in Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank, Ahmedabad within three days of demonetisation. BJP president Amit Shah is a Director of the bank and why has he not been investigated? Mahesh Shah of Ahmedabad, Gujarat made a declaration of Rs.13,860 crore in the voluntary income disclosure scheme. As he was giving a TV interview disclosing names of politicians and bureaucrats, he was taken away by Income Tax authorities. Former Gujarat CM, Sureshbhai Mehta has openly spoken about links of Mahesh Shah with Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. Why have they not been investigated, he said. The Congress leader also alleged that PM Modis credibility is under cloud as he is accused of "corruption" and receiving "black money" in Aditya Birla and Sahara Group cases. Is Modi and BJP ready for an independent probe into both these serious issues of corruption, he said. Afzal said Congress demands that restrictions on withdrawal of money be lifted with immediate effect. Till the time restrictions are in place, a special interest at the rate of 18% per annum should be given to all bank account holders and charges on digital transactions should be abolished forthwith. Rs 25,000 should be deposited in the account of at least one woman belonging to each BPL family as compensation for the suffering caused to women due to demonetization, he said adding that number of guaranteed work days and the wage rate under MGNREGA should be doubled for a period of one year. Afzal further demanded that an Income Tax and Sales tax rebate of 50% should be given to small shopkeepers and businesses. The Central government should compensate the State governments for the loss of revenue incurred on account of this exemption.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The ED today arrested controversial lawyer Rohit Tandon here in connection with a money laundering probe in a case of seizure of Rs 13.6 crore after police raided a law firm premises as part of an anti-black money operation post demonetisation.



Officials said Tandon, who was being questioned by the Enforcement Directorate for the last few days, was placed under arrest late last night under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and will be produced in a court here for further custody.



The agency suspects Tandon was allegedly instrumental in the illegal conversion of demonetised currency worth about Rs 60 crore in purported connivance with Kolkata-based businessman Paras Mal Lodha and arrested Kotak Bank manager in Delhi Ashish Kumar.



With Tandon's arrest, the investigative agencies have now nabbed some of the major players of the two high-profile black money rackets unearthed post the note ban.



While Reddy has been arrested by the CBI from Chennai, Lodha and Kumar have already been arrested by the ED apart from two others in Chennai.



The agency has been questioning Lodha and Tandon here and even brought both of them face-to-face. Sources claimed that as the required information was not coming forth from Tandon, he had to be takne into custody.



"Tandon is required for custodial interrogation," they said.



Tandon's case pertains to an operation of Delhi Police's Crime Branch and the Income Tax department earlier this month when the agencies had seized Rs 13.6 crore, of which Rs 2.6 crore was in new currency, allegedly from a law firm here that he is associated with.



The ED had booked a PMLA case against him based on the police FIR.



The lawyer was earlier separately searched by the tax department where it was said that he declared undisclosed income worth over Rs 125 crore to the taxman.



The two cases involving Tandon and Reddy are being probed by at least four lead agencies of the country including the ED, I-T department, CBI and Delhi Police.



The Reddy case pertains to Chennai where the Income Tax department has made the biggest detection of unaccounted income of over Rs 142 crore.

NEW DELHI: The ED today arrested controversial lawyer Rohit Tandon here in connection with a money laundering probe in a case of seizure of Rs 13.6 crore after police raided a law firm premises as part of an anti-black money operation post demonetisation. Officials said Tandon, who was being questioned by the Enforcement Directorate for the last few days, was placed under arrest late last night under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and will be produced in a court here for further custody. The agency suspects Tandon was allegedly instrumental in the illegal conversion of demonetised currency worth about Rs 60 crore in purported connivance with Kolkata-based businessman Paras Mal Lodha and arrested Kotak Bank manager in Delhi Ashish Kumar. With Tandon's arrest, the investigative agencies have now nabbed some of the major players of the two high-profile black money rackets unearthed post the note ban. While Reddy has been arrested by the CBI from Chennai, Lodha and Kumar have already been arrested by the ED apart from two others in Chennai. The agency has been questioning Lodha and Tandon here and even brought both of them face-to-face. Sources claimed that as the required information was not coming forth from Tandon, he had to be takne into custody. "Tandon is required for custodial interrogation," they said. Tandon's case pertains to an operation of Delhi Police's Crime Branch and the Income Tax department earlier this month when the agencies had seized Rs 13.6 crore, of which Rs 2.6 crore was in new currency, allegedly from a law firm here that he is associated with. The ED had booked a PMLA case against him based on the police FIR. The lawyer was earlier separately searched by the tax department where it was said that he declared undisclosed income worth over Rs 125 crore to the taxman. The two cases involving Tandon and Reddy are being probed by at least four lead agencies of the country including the ED, I-T department, CBI and Delhi Police. The Reddy case pertains to Chennai where the Income Tax department has made the biggest detection of unaccounted income of over Rs 142 crore.
By PTI

MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court has rejected the plea of 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blast terror convict Rubina Suleman Memon, seeking her release on furlough.



"We are not inclined to release the petitioner (Rubina) on furlough as she had been convicted by a TADA court for her involvement in terrorist activities," said a bench of Justice V K Tahilramani and A M Badar in a recent judgement.



Rubina is also sister-in-law of Tiger Memon, believed to be living in Pakistan and one of the prime conspirators of the serial blasts that had rocked the city in March, 1993, claiming 257 lives and injuring more than 700 others.



Rubina was sentenced to life imprisonment along with three other family members by a Mumbai TADA Court in 2006, while her husband Sulieman was acquitted due to lack of evidence. Her brother-in-law Yakub was sent to the gallows on terror charges.



Rubina, currently lodged in Pune's Yerwada prison, had applied to jail authorities for furlough leave on January 22, 2015. However, her plea was rejected on January 15, 2016. Aggrieved, she filed an appeal which was dismissed in May this year.



Thereafter, she moved the High Court by a writ petition seeking furlough leave, which was rejected last week.



Rubina's lawyer Farhana Shah argued that the three co-accused, who have also been convicted under TADA in the same case, have been released from jail temporary on leave.



They are Sardar Shahwali Khan, who was released on furlough on June 9, 2014, Nasir Abdul Kadar, who was given furlough leave on June 27, 2014 and Isa Abdul Razak Memon, who was also released on furlough on June 10, 2016, Farhana said.



As the three co-accused, who were similarly placed with Rubina in the 1993 bomb blast case, had been given furlough leave, the petitioner should also be given the same facility, i.e furlough leave, Farhana argued.



Additional Public prosecutor H J Dedia submitted that Rubina's application for furlough was rejected under Rule 4(4) of the Prisons (Bombay Furlough and Parole) Rules, 1959.



This Rule states that prisoners whose release is not recommended by Commissioner of Police or District Magistrate on the ground of public peace and tranquillity, shall not be

granted furlough.

The prosecutor said that in the order jail authorities rejecting Rubina's furlough, it was stated that the petitioner is wife of brother of Yakub Memon. She will spend her period of furlough in Mahim area in Mumbai, where people of all communities reside.



"If she is released on parole people will turn up to meet her in large numbers and there would be a law and order problem, particularly in view of the fact that during the funeral of Yakub Memon, a huge crowd had turned up," the order stated.



The prosecutor also pointed out that as Rubina has been convicted under TADA hence under Rule 4(13) of Prison Tules, she would not be entitled to be released on furlough, as this rule states that prisoners who are convicted for terrorist crime shall not be released.



The prosecutor argued that admittedly, the petitioner (Rubina) is convicted under TADA, hence, she is not entitled to be released on furlough. He pointed out that the Bombay High court in two decisions has held that sub rule 13 to Rule 4 is not ultra virus.



Accepting the prosecutor's argument, the high court rejected the furlough leave petition of Rubina Memon.

MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court has rejected the plea of 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blast terror convict Rubina Suleman Memon, seeking her release on furlough. "We are not inclined to release the petitioner (Rubina) on furlough as she had been convicted by a TADA court for her involvement in terrorist activities," said a bench of Justice V K Tahilramani and A M Badar in a recent judgement. Rubina is also sister-in-law of Tiger Memon, believed to be living in Pakistan and one of the prime conspirators of the serial blasts that had rocked the city in March, 1993, claiming 257 lives and injuring more than 700 others. Rubina was sentenced to life imprisonment along with three other family members by a Mumbai TADA Court in 2006, while her husband Sulieman was acquitted due to lack of evidence. Her brother-in-law Yakub was sent to the gallows on terror charges. Rubina, currently lodged in Pune's Yerwada prison, had applied to jail authorities for furlough leave on January 22, 2015. However, her plea was rejected on January 15, 2016. Aggrieved, she filed an appeal which was dismissed in May this year. Thereafter, she moved the High Court by a writ petition seeking furlough leave, which was rejected last week. Rubina's lawyer Farhana Shah argued that the three co-accused, who have also been convicted under TADA in the same case, have been released from jail temporary on leave. They are Sardar Shahwali Khan, who was released on furlough on June 9, 2014, Nasir Abdul Kadar, who was given furlough leave on June 27, 2014 and Isa Abdul Razak Memon, who was also released on furlough on June 10, 2016, Farhana said. As the three co-accused, who were similarly placed with Rubina in the 1993 bomb blast case, had been given furlough leave, the petitioner should also be given the same facility, i.e furlough leave, Farhana argued. Additional Public prosecutor H J Dedia submitted that Rubina's application for furlough was rejected under Rule 4(4) of the Prisons (Bombay Furlough and Parole) Rules, 1959. This Rule states that prisoners whose release is not recommended by Commissioner of Police or District Magistrate on the ground of public peace and tranquillity, shall not be granted furlough. The prosecutor said that in the order jail authorities rejecting Rubina's furlough, it was stated that the petitioner is wife of brother of Yakub Memon. She will spend her period of furlough in Mahim area in Mumbai, where people of all communities reside. "If she is released on parole people will turn up to meet her in large numbers and there would be a law and order problem, particularly in view of the fact that during the funeral of Yakub Memon, a huge crowd had turned up," the order stated. The prosecutor also pointed out that as Rubina has been convicted under TADA hence under Rule 4(13) of Prison Tules, she would not be entitled to be released on furlough, as this rule states that prisoners who are convicted for terrorist crime shall not be released. The prosecutor argued that admittedly, the petitioner (Rubina) is convicted under TADA, hence, she is not entitled to be released on furlough. He pointed out that the Bombay High court in two decisions has held that sub rule 13 to Rule 4 is not ultra virus. Accepting the prosecutor's argument, the high court rejected the furlough leave petition of Rubina Memon.
Yatish Yadav By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: After launching his surgical strike against black money on November 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on several occasions hinted that he is watching those converting black into white through the backdoor and has gathered all information about money exchanges at banks and vaults. This was followed by a series of directives from Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to banks.

The Express spoke to several officials from regulatory and enforcement agencies, who said that PM Modi was not merely talking about eye-catching visuals of hoarders, who mastered the art of concealing illicit proceeds, but voluminous reports that were sent periodically to RBI since May, following the high value remittances by banks and Money Transfer Service Scheme (MTSS) in Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denomination.

The first such report containing detailed scrutiny was sent to RBI in June and it was just the beginning. The system of reporting on high-value transactions  deposits and withdrawal was strengthened and regularised by all the banks. But, of course, we did not know that the PM was preparing the ground for demonetisation, a top official said, adding that MTSS report on high-value remittances was also regularised and scrutinised by the banking regulator.

Another senior official, on condition of anonymity, said that all corporate houses and individual businessmen who withdrew huge sums in Rs 500 and Rs 1000 for the last six months were also included in the report while carefully reporting on serial numbers of the currency moving in and out of the banking system.

RBI had also asked the banks to ensure that pre-2005 banknotes were withdrawn from circulation. At the same time banks were told to tap every opportunity to get more and more customers to register for mobile banking services.

From the reports, it was very much clear which high-value transactions with serial numbers went to whom. It was a monumental task but without revealing the main objective, the official added.

As far as search and seizure operations against black money hoarders is concerned, PM Modi had confidently said in a public rally: We knew and now they are being caught. In some cases, yes, we knew in advance, a government officer privy to the ongoing investigations said.

NEW DELHI: After launching his surgical strike against black money on November 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on several occasions hinted that he is watching those converting black into white through the backdoor and has gathered all information about money exchanges at banks and vaults. This was followed by a series of directives from Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to banks. The Express spoke to several officials from regulatory and enforcement agencies, who said that PM Modi was not merely talking about eye-catching visuals of hoarders, who mastered the art of concealing illicit proceeds, but voluminous reports that were sent periodically to RBI since May, following the high value remittances by banks and Money Transfer Service Scheme (MTSS) in Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denomination. The first such report containing detailed scrutiny was sent to RBI in June and it was just the beginning. The system of reporting on high-value transactions  deposits and withdrawal was strengthened and regularised by all the banks. But, of course, we did not know that the PM was preparing the ground for demonetisation, a top official said, adding that MTSS report on high-value remittances was also regularised and scrutinised by the banking regulator. Another senior official, on condition of anonymity, said that all corporate houses and individual businessmen who withdrew huge sums in Rs 500 and Rs 1000 for the last six months were also included in the report while carefully reporting on serial numbers of the currency moving in and out of the banking system. RBI had also asked the banks to ensure that pre-2005 banknotes were withdrawn from circulation. At the same time banks were told to tap every opportunity to get more and more customers to register for mobile banking services. From the reports, it was very much clear which high-value transactions with serial numbers went to whom. It was a monumental task but without revealing the main objective, the official added. As far as search and seizure operations against black money hoarders is concerned, PM Modi had confidently said in a public rally: We knew and now they are being caught. In some cases, yes, we knew in advance, a government officer privy to the ongoing investigations said.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Coming out in support of former IAF chief S P Tyagi, an accused in the AgustaWestland bribery scandal, IAF chief Arup Raha on Wednesday said the latter is part of the Air Force family and is going through a rough patch in his life.

Virtually defending his former senior colleague, Raha said multiple agencies are involved in the procurement process, which makes it difficult to pin the blame on one particular person or organisation.

Addressing the media two days before he demits office, Raha said, Till hes proven guilty, we should give him some respect as he was the former chief of IAF.

A former air force chief is like a family member, extended family member. If anybody in my family goes through a rough patch, I think we should stand by that person. If the charges are proved, then we have no sympathy for him. Whatever charges are proved, whatever convictions are there, we will abide by it, he said and added, Corruption issues have come up like Bofors. Despite investigation, not much was achieved by investigating agencies.

Tyagi was arrested by the CBI on December 9 on allegations of receiving kickbacks for giving the go-ahead to procure 12 AgustaWestland helicopters for VVIP duty. On Monday, he was granted bail by a Delhi court.

On Tuesday, Raha had said the arrest obviously hurts the morale of the armed forces. If these corruption charges are proved, it is bad for the armed forces... It is not just the armed forces who are involved in the procurement. There are so many agencies involved. Therefore, you cannot pin the blame on one particular organisation or service, Raha said just days before he demits office on December 31.

Despite the inking of 36 Rafale fighter jet deal with France, the Air Force will be short of at least 200 warplanes to meet its sanctioned strength of 42 squadrons.

There is no doubt Rafale is an excellent aircraft and it will prove its worth in any campaign. But, we have only agreed to procure 36 warplanes. We would require 200-250 medium-weight fighter jets in the next 10 years, Raha said, while stressing the need for setting up a new production line in the country.

NEW DELHI: Coming out in support of former IAF chief S P Tyagi, an accused in the AgustaWestland bribery scandal, IAF chief Arup Raha on Wednesday said the latter is part of the Air Force family and is going through a rough patch in his life. Virtually defending his former senior colleague, Raha said multiple agencies are involved in the procurement process, which makes it difficult to pin the blame on one particular person or organisation. Addressing the media two days before he demits office, Raha said, Till hes proven guilty, we should give him some respect as he was the former chief of IAF. A former air force chief is like a family member, extended family member. If anybody in my family goes through a rough patch, I think we should stand by that person. If the charges are proved, then we have no sympathy for him. Whatever charges are proved, whatever convictions are there, we will abide by it, he said and added, Corruption issues have come up like Bofors. Despite investigation, not much was achieved by investigating agencies. Tyagi was arrested by the CBI on December 9 on allegations of receiving kickbacks for giving the go-ahead to procure 12 AgustaWestland helicopters for VVIP duty. On Monday, he was granted bail by a Delhi court. On Tuesday, Raha had said the arrest obviously hurts the morale of the armed forces. If these corruption charges are proved, it is bad for the armed forces... It is not just the armed forces who are involved in the procurement. There are so many agencies involved. Therefore, you cannot pin the blame on one particular organisation or service, Raha said just days before he demits office on December 31. Despite the inking of 36 Rafale fighter jet deal with France, the Air Force will be short of at least 200 warplanes to meet its sanctioned strength of 42 squadrons. There is no doubt Rafale is an excellent aircraft and it will prove its worth in any campaign. But, we have only agreed to procure 36 warplanes. We would require 200-250 medium-weight fighter jets in the next 10 years, Raha said, while stressing the need for setting up a new production line in the country.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Holding old notes would be treated as a crime and the person found having in excess of 10 old notes would be liable for punishment as the Cabinet on Wednesday approved an ordinance to impose penalties on anyone possessing the demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.

The penalty for holding old currency in excess of 10 notes may include financial fine and a jail term of up to four years in certain cases.

Officials said that the Narendra Modi government wants to put out a clear message to black money holders that nobody could conceal old notes.

The ordinance, cleared at the Cabinet meeting chaired by the Prime Minister, will be sent to the President for his approval. The Centre banned Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8 in a sudden anti-corruption move against black money. Old notes can be deposited in banks till Friday, December 30.

After that, only people who could not deposit their banned notes because of exceptional circumstances can do so, that too at the Reserve Bank of India.

There may be a fine of at least Rs 50,000 or five times the amount caught  whichever is higher. A magistrate will hear cases involving violation and decide on the punishment.

The ordinance, named as The Specified Bank Notes Cessation of Liabilities Ordinance, is to extinguish liability of government and RBI on the demonetised high-denomination notes.

The governments move took out 86 percent of the money in circulation. According to the RBI, more than Rs 13 lakh crore in old notes has already returned to the system as deposits.

People with undeclared money in old notes still have a one-time window to deposit their undeclared money in banned notes and pay 50 per cent in tax and penalty.

Officials said that fresh guidelines would be issued for an exchange of notes at RBI counters post-December 30. Notes would be allowed to be deposited with select branches of RBI till March 31 in exceptional circumstances.

Meanwhile, the BJP and Congress continue to engage in verbal fights as the demonetisation drive is set to reach its 50-day deadline. Hitting back at Rahul Gandhi, the BJP on Wednesday said that he should first answer who benefited from the VVIP chopper scam.

Soon after Rahul attacked the government on Congress Foundation Day, the BJP alleged that he lived under the impression that his lies would be taken as truth if he repeated them daily and loudly.

Partys national secretary Shrikant Sharma accused the Congress vice-president of doing politics over death, a reference to his criticism of demonetisation by pointing to deaths of people in queues outside banks and ATMs.

Rahul Gandhi has been asking a lot of questions and levelling baseless allegations. He should also answer who in the UPA government were beneficiaries of 2G, CWG and VVIP chopper scams running into Rs 1.86 lakh crore, Rs 72,000 crore and Rs 3,200 crore respectively, Sharma said at a press conference.

NEW DELHI: Holding old notes would be treated as a crime and the person found having in excess of 10 old notes would be liable for punishment as the Cabinet on Wednesday approved an ordinance to impose penalties on anyone possessing the demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. The penalty for holding old currency in excess of 10 notes may include financial fine and a jail term of up to four years in certain cases. Officials said that the Narendra Modi government wants to put out a clear message to black money holders that nobody could conceal old notes. The ordinance, cleared at the Cabinet meeting chaired by the Prime Minister, will be sent to the President for his approval. The Centre banned Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8 in a sudden anti-corruption move against black money. Old notes can be deposited in banks till Friday, December 30. After that, only people who could not deposit their banned notes because of exceptional circumstances can do so, that too at the Reserve Bank of India. There may be a fine of at least Rs 50,000 or five times the amount caught  whichever is higher. A magistrate will hear cases involving violation and decide on the punishment. The ordinance, named as The Specified Bank Notes Cessation of Liabilities Ordinance, is to extinguish liability of government and RBI on the demonetised high-denomination notes. The governments move took out 86 percent of the money in circulation. According to the RBI, more than Rs 13 lakh crore in old notes has already returned to the system as deposits. People with undeclared money in old notes still have a one-time window to deposit their undeclared money in banned notes and pay 50 per cent in tax and penalty. Officials said that fresh guidelines would be issued for an exchange of notes at RBI counters post-December 30. Notes would be allowed to be deposited with select branches of RBI till March 31 in exceptional circumstances. Meanwhile, the BJP and Congress continue to engage in verbal fights as the demonetisation drive is set to reach its 50-day deadline. Hitting back at Rahul Gandhi, the BJP on Wednesday said that he should first answer who benefited from the VVIP chopper scam. Soon after Rahul attacked the government on Congress Foundation Day, the BJP alleged that he lived under the impression that his lies would be taken as truth if he repeated them daily and loudly. Partys national secretary Shrikant Sharma accused the Congress vice-president of doing politics over death, a reference to his criticism of demonetisation by pointing to deaths of people in queues outside banks and ATMs. Rahul Gandhi has been asking a lot of questions and levelling baseless allegations. He should also answer who in the UPA government were beneficiaries of 2G, CWG and VVIP chopper scams running into Rs 1.86 lakh crore, Rs 72,000 crore and Rs 3,200 crore respectively, Sharma said at a press conference.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: PM Narendra Modi is likely to address the nation on the eve of new year on December 31 and sources claimed that he might announce some initiatives to ease cash flow after the demonetisation. He may also speak about some policies in the interest of common people.

Earlier, on November 8, the PM had addressed the nation and had spoken about a sudden ban on Rs 500 and 1,000 notes, a move aimed at eliminating corruption and black or undeclared money. The deadline for depositing old notes in bank accounts is going to end on December 30 and the nation is expecting some announcement which can provide relief from the continuing cash crunch. The days after the ban saw long lines at banks and ATMs as people rushed to exchange old notes for new currency over the counter.

After the note ban, PM Modi has spoken several times on demonetisation as an important step to tackle the menace of corruption and black money requesting people to bear the short-term pain for long-term gain.

Sources said that the PM can make some announcement on several initiatives including some loan relief for farmers.

Earlier, On December 27, PM Modi met economists and experts at a meeting in Niti Aayog to discuss the current economic situation. Before this, On December 25, he had addressed his last Mann ki Baat of the year when he introduced two new schemes to promote digital transactions - Lucky Grahak Yojana and Digi-Dhan Vyapar Yojana.

NEW DELHI: PM Narendra Modi is likely to address the nation on the eve of new year on December 31 and sources claimed that he might announce some initiatives to ease cash flow after the demonetisation. He may also speak about some policies in the interest of common people. Earlier, on November 8, the PM had addressed the nation and had spoken about a sudden ban on Rs 500 and 1,000 notes, a move aimed at eliminating corruption and black or undeclared money. The deadline for depositing old notes in bank accounts is going to end on December 30 and the nation is expecting some announcement which can provide relief from the continuing cash crunch. The days after the ban saw long lines at banks and ATMs as people rushed to exchange old notes for new currency over the counter. After the note ban, PM Modi has spoken several times on demonetisation as an important step to tackle the menace of corruption and black money requesting people to bear the short-term pain for long-term gain. Sources said that the PM can make some announcement on several initiatives including some loan relief for farmers. Earlier, On December 27, PM Modi met economists and experts at a meeting in Niti Aayog to discuss the current economic situation. Before this, On December 25, he had addressed his last Mann ki Baat of the year when he introduced two new schemes to promote digital transactions - Lucky Grahak Yojana and Digi-Dhan Vyapar Yojana.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The 132nd Congress Foundation Day provided yet another platform to Rahul Gandhi to vent his opposition to the demonitisation move, which he cited as an example of the fear politics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

This is the first time Rahul Gandhi, as the partys vice president, led the Foundation Day celebrations. Congress president Sonia Gandhi was absent.

Hoisting the Congress flag at the partys Akbar Road headquarters, Rahul sought to draw a distinction between Congress inclusive politics as against what he called BJPs divisive, fear inducing politics, meant to serve only a few and the privileged.

It was as if, in his mind, he was drawing a parallel between the colonial rule and the current ruler of Delhi. We have to struggle for the financial freedom of our people, he exhorted his party workers. The people, as in the poor, the farmer, the labourer, the middle classes and the youth.

However, the crux was demonitisation. He alleged that the opaque functioning style of the Prime Minister was the cause of the problems.

Putting out a Charter of Demands before the Government  basically, pressure for compensation packages for farmers and the rest hit by demonitisation  Rahul also sought answers to a few questions from the PM. One being, a clear statement of account on the black money recovered since demonitisation.

Also how much of the black economy was back in the system. Rahul tried to irk the ruling side by reminding that the 50-day deadline set up by the PM for sorting out the currency crisis, was coming to an end.

The BJP later snapped back asking Rahul Gandhi asking him to give an account of the alleged bribe paid to officials and politicians in the VVIP chopper deal.

Picking on the PMs Nov 8 speech, Rahul quipped: Modiji has performed demonetisation yagna for 50 families and one percent super rich people of the country....What is the loss incurred to the economy? How many people have died, have they been given any compensation? Who were the experts the PM consulted before the notes ban? Rahul Gandhi asked, in reiteration if he has been saying that the past few weeks. Even the BJP retaliation was on the same line.

The aim is to run a government of select few, take away the money from the poor and give it to a select few. Spread fear and anger and rule on that basis. We have shown that questions have been raised on Modiji. He should answer these questions, he said.

NEW DELHI: The 132nd Congress Foundation Day provided yet another platform to Rahul Gandhi to vent his opposition to the demonitisation move, which he cited as an example of the fear politics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is the first time Rahul Gandhi, as the partys vice president, led the Foundation Day celebrations. Congress president Sonia Gandhi was absent. Hoisting the Congress flag at the partys Akbar Road headquarters, Rahul sought to draw a distinction between Congress inclusive politics as against what he called BJPs divisive, fear inducing politics, meant to serve only a few and the privileged. It was as if, in his mind, he was drawing a parallel between the colonial rule and the current ruler of Delhi. We have to struggle for the financial freedom of our people, he exhorted his party workers. The people, as in the poor, the farmer, the labourer, the middle classes and the youth. However, the crux was demonitisation. He alleged that the opaque functioning style of the Prime Minister was the cause of the problems. Putting out a Charter of Demands before the Government  basically, pressure for compensation packages for farmers and the rest hit by demonitisation  Rahul also sought answers to a few questions from the PM. One being, a clear statement of account on the black money recovered since demonitisation. Also how much of the black economy was back in the system. Rahul tried to irk the ruling side by reminding that the 50-day deadline set up by the PM for sorting out the currency crisis, was coming to an end. The BJP later snapped back asking Rahul Gandhi asking him to give an account of the alleged bribe paid to officials and politicians in the VVIP chopper deal. Picking on the PMs Nov 8 speech, Rahul quipped: Modiji has performed demonetisation yagna for 50 families and one percent super rich people of the country....What is the loss incurred to the economy? How many people have died, have they been given any compensation? Who were the experts the PM consulted before the notes ban? Rahul Gandhi asked, in reiteration if he has been saying that the past few weeks. Even the BJP retaliation was on the same line. The aim is to run a government of select few, take away the money from the poor and give it to a select few. Spread fear and anger and rule on that basis. We have shown that questions have been raised on Modiji. He should answer these questions, he said.
By IANS

NEW DELHI: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday promised help to a family in Haryana in getting the body of their son, who was stabbed to death in New Zealand.

Hardeep Singh Deol, a 24-year-old from Rania in Sirsa district, was stabbed to death by a drunk girl in a Christchurch park in New Zealand on Christmas evening.

"Deol family - Rania (Sirsa): I hv (have) seen news report and given instructions to our High Commissioner in New Zealand," Sushma Swaraj said in a tweet.

"Please give me your number. I will spk (speak) to you on phone. You need not come to Delhi. My heartfelt condolences," the minister said.

The family had contacted the Indian High Commission in New Zealand as well as tweeted to the External Affairs Minister, pleading for the government help.

According to the family, Deol was on work visa in Christchurch after completing a course in hotel management from that country.

According to the information received by the family, the girl was arrested and charged with murder.

NEW DELHI: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday promised help to a family in Haryana in getting the body of their son, who was stabbed to death in New Zealand. Hardeep Singh Deol, a 24-year-old from Rania in Sirsa district, was stabbed to death by a drunk girl in a Christchurch park in New Zealand on Christmas evening. "Deol family - Rania (Sirsa): I hv (have) seen news report and given instructions to our High Commissioner in New Zealand," Sushma Swaraj said in a tweet. "Please give me your number. I will spk (speak) to you on phone. You need not come to Delhi. My heartfelt condolences," the minister said. The family had contacted the Indian High Commission in New Zealand as well as tweeted to the External Affairs Minister, pleading for the government help. According to the family, Deol was on work visa in Christchurch after completing a course in hotel management from that country. According to the information received by the family, the girl was arrested and charged with murder.
By PTI

SRINAGAR: Two soldiers were injured today in a militant attack on a search party of security forces in north Kashmir's Bandipora district, police said.



Acting on specific intelligence input about the presence of militants in Shahgund village of Hajin area of the district, security forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation, a police official said here.



As the forces were conducting the search operation, the hiding militants fired upon them triggering an encounter.



Two soldiers -- Naik Madan Singh and Sepoy H Krishna -- were injured in the firing by militants, who managed to escape from the spot, the official said.



He said the injured jawans were evacuated to Army's 92 Base Hospital here for treatment.

SRINAGAR: Two soldiers were injured today in a militant attack on a search party of security forces in north Kashmir's Bandipora district, police said. Acting on specific intelligence input about the presence of militants in Shahgund village of Hajin area of the district, security forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation, a police official said here. As the forces were conducting the search operation, the hiding militants fired upon them triggering an encounter. Two soldiers -- Naik Madan Singh and Sepoy H Krishna -- were injured in the firing by militants, who managed to escape from the spot, the official said. He said the injured jawans were evacuated to Army's 92 Base Hospital here for treatment.
Prof B M Hegde By

Medicine is flying blind. Thousands of medical journal articles are published every month on potential new treatments and diagnostic tests. Precious few of them measure how well doctors are doing in the real world, outside of controlled trialswhat they are doing right, what they are doing wrong and what they are forgetting to do entirely. No wonder our medical system wastes billions of dollars a year, writes Mathew Herper of Forbes. Last week, The Outlook published an extensive article on angioplastiesthe procedure to remove blocks in a blood vesseland their hazards. Most of what they wrote about was the cost of the stenta support placed inside a blood vessel to remove blocks and its abuse. Little did the article touch upon the crucial point: The coronary angiogram, the test to find if arteries are blocked, the main villain in the piece.

I had written about it and have been doing so even before some of the leading American researchers like Harlan Krumholz came on the scene. The only area where angioplasty has a proven track record is during an acute heart attack and during such times also, the procedure has to be done within minutes. Rest of the time, it is done just to make money by frightening patients and their relatives saying that there are blocks in the coronary arteries (vessels that supply blood to your heart). Almost every human being, including children, have one, two or, even three vessel blocks. This was shown in the post-mortem angiograms done on 205 young American soldiers shot dead in Vietnam and Korean wars.

So almost all our angioplasties are unnecessary. The blocks in fact do not usually critically restrict blood flow to the heart muscle. If the doctor studies the FFR (Flow Fraction Ratio) across a block, almost 90 per cent of the so called critical blocks become benign to be left alone. To my knowledge, no hospital in India does the FFR although they do sundry tests for money. In essence, the only indication for an angioplasty is immediately after a heart attack if the vessel blocked is the one causing the attack. Treatment is better. Asymptomatic patients have no indication for an angioplasty at all. Coronary artery blocks arent synonymous with coronary artery disease. Therefore, the angioplasties and exorbitant costs to patients can only be curbed if routine angiograms to diagnose coronary artery disease are banned! In 1991, a Harvard group under Professor Bernard Lown had shown that a moratorium on coronary angiography alone can save patients from greedy cardiologists. Tom Treasure, an aggressive cardiac surgeon, made this plea in the medical journal, The Lancet. The scientific role for angiogram is only when the patients clinical assessment demands either an angioplasty or bypass surgery for relief from chest pain. Legislations to control the cost of stents will not help patients who are exploited through unnecessary angiograms for diagnosing coronary artery disease. The government should make audits mandatory for such procedures.



For corporations, the idea that you cant manage it if you cant measure it is an old chestnut. General Electric, Toyota and other companies have had data-driven qualityimprovement efforts for years. But medicinesupposedly a more scientific profession has been slow to measure itself. Krumholz is one of the handful pioneers pushing to do this. There are many other reasons to work on banning diagnostic angiograms in asymptomatic patients. The faster, the better.



Modern medicine abounds in dogmas: many procedures are not scientifically audited. Every hypothesis is true until refuted by new ideas. Today, knowledge in the medical field is replaced by information. Thus, doctors rely only on data and not wisdom. The so called evidence based medicine is really evidence burdened.



So, it is time to audit all the technologies used in patient care just as we have placebocontrolled trials for drugs before releasing them for human use. Even in the case of drugs, in some rare instances, release of drugs before being audited by such trials had resulted in major damage resulting in their withdrawal. We should debate the issue of auditing untested technologies like angiograms.



For example, the unmeasured physiologic effects of indwelling cathetersa tube used to remove fluids from the body. The Swan-Ganz catheter was introduced without appropriate validating studies to compare with identical groups without the catheter. This catheter by itself could be an adverse factor for many critically ill patients. (Spodick DH the Swan-Ganz catheter. Chest 1999;115:857-858).



Coronary artery surgery is the next popular surgical procedure crying for proper audit. There was a demand for audit in this area way back in the early 1970s, indeed all new surgical procedures are better audited by controlled studies before being routinely performed in practice. (Spodick DH. Revascularization of the heartnumerators in search of denominators. Am Heart J 1971; 81: 149-157)



Writing a balanced editorial, Harlan Krumholz from Yale laments: In a fee-for-service system, cardiac procedures generated billions of dollars in revenues each year. A high volume of procedures brought prestige and financial rewards to hospitals, physicians, and the vendors of medical equipment. In this environment, the US health care system rapidly produced and expanded the capacity to perform cardiac procedures and training.This increased capacity may also have fuelled demand for procedures. This menace is spreading to other countries, more so to the developing countries in a big way where the auditing is non-existent.

Prof B M Hegde

Cardiologist & former vice chancellor of Manipal university

Email: hegdebm@gmail.com

Medicine is flying blind. Thousands of medical journal articles are published every month on potential new treatments and diagnostic tests. Precious few of them measure how well doctors are doing in the real world, outside of controlled trialswhat they are doing right, what they are doing wrong and what they are forgetting to do entirely. No wonder our medical system wastes billions of dollars a year, writes Mathew Herper of Forbes. Last week, The Outlook published an extensive article on angioplastiesthe procedure to remove blocks in a blood vesseland their hazards. Most of what they wrote about was the cost of the stenta support placed inside a blood vessel to remove blocks and its abuse. Little did the article touch upon the crucial point: The coronary angiogram, the test to find if arteries are blocked, the main villain in the piece. I had written about it and have been doing so even before some of the leading American researchers like Harlan Krumholz came on the scene. The only area where angioplasty has a proven track record is during an acute heart attack and during such times also, the procedure has to be done within minutes. Rest of the time, it is done just to make money by frightening patients and their relatives saying that there are blocks in the coronary arteries (vessels that supply blood to your heart). Almost every human being, including children, have one, two or, even three vessel blocks. This was shown in the post-mortem angiograms done on 205 young American soldiers shot dead in Vietnam and Korean wars. So almost all our angioplasties are unnecessary. The blocks in fact do not usually critically restrict blood flow to the heart muscle. If the doctor studies the FFR (Flow Fraction Ratio) across a block, almost 90 per cent of the so called critical blocks become benign to be left alone. To my knowledge, no hospital in India does the FFR although they do sundry tests for money. In essence, the only indication for an angioplasty is immediately after a heart attack if the vessel blocked is the one causing the attack. Treatment is better. Asymptomatic patients have no indication for an angioplasty at all. Coronary artery blocks arent synonymous with coronary artery disease. Therefore, the angioplasties and exorbitant costs to patients can only be curbed if routine angiograms to diagnose coronary artery disease are banned! In 1991, a Harvard group under Professor Bernard Lown had shown that a moratorium on coronary angiography alone can save patients from greedy cardiologists. Tom Treasure, an aggressive cardiac surgeon, made this plea in the medical journal, The Lancet. The scientific role for angiogram is only when the patients clinical assessment demands either an angioplasty or bypass surgery for relief from chest pain. Legislations to control the cost of stents will not help patients who are exploited through unnecessary angiograms for diagnosing coronary artery disease. The government should make audits mandatory for such procedures. For corporations, the idea that you cant manage it if you cant measure it is an old chestnut. General Electric, Toyota and other companies have had data-driven qualityimprovement efforts for years. But medicinesupposedly a more scientific profession has been slow to measure itself. Krumholz is one of the handful pioneers pushing to do this. There are many other reasons to work on banning diagnostic angiograms in asymptomatic patients. The faster, the better. Modern medicine abounds in dogmas: many procedures are not scientifically audited. Every hypothesis is true until refuted by new ideas. Today, knowledge in the medical field is replaced by information. Thus, doctors rely only on data and not wisdom. The so called evidence based medicine is really evidence burdened. So, it is time to audit all the technologies used in patient care just as we have placebocontrolled trials for drugs before releasing them for human use. Even in the case of drugs, in some rare instances, release of drugs before being audited by such trials had resulted in major damage resulting in their withdrawal. We should debate the issue of auditing untested technologies like angiograms. For example, the unmeasured physiologic effects of indwelling cathetersa tube used to remove fluids from the body. The Swan-Ganz catheter was introduced without appropriate validating studies to compare with identical groups without the catheter. This catheter by itself could be an adverse factor for many critically ill patients. (Spodick DH the Swan-Ganz catheter. Chest 1999;115:857-858). Coronary artery surgery is the next popular surgical procedure crying for proper audit. There was a demand for audit in this area way back in the early 1970s, indeed all new surgical procedures are better audited by controlled studies before being routinely performed in practice. (Spodick DH. Revascularization of the heartnumerators in search of denominators. Am Heart J 1971; 81: 149-157) Writing a balanced editorial, Harlan Krumholz from Yale laments: In a fee-for-service system, cardiac procedures generated billions of dollars in revenues each year. A high volume of procedures brought prestige and financial rewards to hospitals, physicians, and the vendors of medical equipment. In this environment, the US health care system rapidly produced and expanded the capacity to perform cardiac procedures and training.This increased capacity may also have fuelled demand for procedures. This menace is spreading to other countries, more so to the developing countries in a big way where the auditing is non-existent. Prof B M Hegde Cardiologist & former vice chancellor of Manipal university Email: hegdebm@gmail.com
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: Karnataka chief ministers media advisor filed a complaint alleging that a fake twitter account closely resembling CM's twitter handle is spreading derogatory tweets.



In his letter to the superintendent of police (SP), cyber crime division of CID, Siddaramaiah's media advisor Dinesh Amin Mattu said, "A twitter handle in the name of CMofKarnataka has been hindering the image of the chief minister and spreading false rumours.

The letter said, "Initially the twitter account of CMofKarnataka had posted few derogatory tweets. However, the account was deactivated later. But now, the new twitter handle is actively posting derogatory messages."



Cyber crime police have registered the complaint and the case is being investigated.

BENGALURU: Karnataka chief ministers media advisor filed a complaint alleging that a fake twitter account closely resembling CM's twitter handle is spreading derogatory tweets. In his letter to the superintendent of police (SP), cyber crime division of CID, Siddaramaiah's media advisor Dinesh Amin Mattu said, "A twitter handle in the name of CMofKarnataka has been hindering the image of the chief minister and spreading false rumours. The letter said, "Initially the twitter account of CMofKarnataka had posted few derogatory tweets. However, the account was deactivated later. But now, the new twitter handle is actively posting derogatory messages." Cyber crime police have registered the complaint and the case is being investigated.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: The Income Tax Department has detected unreported transactions to the tune of `7,636 crore carried out in cooperative banks across Karnataka during the current financial year. This was found after I-T sleuths conducted 14 inspections.

Speaking to reporters here on Wednesday, Income Tax Director (Intelligence and Criminal Investigation) Ravichandran Ramaswamy, said: We have identified 59,373 transactions reported in these banks during this financial year. Deposits worth `7,636 crore in these banks were not reported to the I-T department. We are now probing whether it was to facilitate money laundering to avoid the tax since most cooperative banks do not insist on PAN number.

He said the I-T department has already initiated action against 14 cooperative banks for not revealing information of account holders and deposit details.

After demonetisation, I-T inspections were conducted on two cooperative banks in the state and it was found that there were 2,000 entries amounting to `1,600 crore that were unreported.We have asked those banks to provide account details and other information about the depositors, he said.

Of the 285 banks in Karnataka, 80 cooperative banks have not been filing annual information returns for several years. We have intimated the Reserve Bank of India to conduct inspections on banks that are not disclosing information. We have also written to the Registrar of Karnataka Cooperative Societies to take action against such banks. They will have to face a penalty of `500 every day, Ramaswamy said.

We have also issued nearly 2,400 letters to account holders who have more than `50 lakh deposits in these banks, asking them to pay up taxes on their undisclosed deposits. Nearly 800 people have came forward so far to declare their income and to pay taxes and penalty, he said.

According to I-T department records, `116.44 crore worth of assets were seized this financial year from Karnataka and Goa. Last year the amount was `27.55 crore. A total of `3,265.16 crore has been disclosed under the IT Act compared to `876.81 crore last year.

BENGALURU: The Income Tax Department has detected unreported transactions to the tune of `7,636 crore carried out in cooperative banks across Karnataka during the current financial year. This was found after I-T sleuths conducted 14 inspections. Speaking to reporters here on Wednesday, Income Tax Director (Intelligence and Criminal Investigation) Ravichandran Ramaswamy, said: We have identified 59,373 transactions reported in these banks during this financial year. Deposits worth `7,636 crore in these banks were not reported to the I-T department. We are now probing whether it was to facilitate money laundering to avoid the tax since most cooperative banks do not insist on PAN number. He said the I-T department has already initiated action against 14 cooperative banks for not revealing information of account holders and deposit details. After demonetisation, I-T inspections were conducted on two cooperative banks in the state and it was found that there were 2,000 entries amounting to `1,600 crore that were unreported.We have asked those banks to provide account details and other information about the depositors, he said. Of the 285 banks in Karnataka, 80 cooperative banks have not been filing annual information returns for several years. We have intimated the Reserve Bank of India to conduct inspections on banks that are not disclosing information. We have also written to the Registrar of Karnataka Cooperative Societies to take action against such banks. They will have to face a penalty of `500 every day, Ramaswamy said. We have also issued nearly 2,400 letters to account holders who have more than `50 lakh deposits in these banks, asking them to pay up taxes on their undisclosed deposits. Nearly 800 people have came forward so far to declare their income and to pay taxes and penalty, he said. According to I-T department records, `116.44 crore worth of assets were seized this financial year from Karnataka and Goa. Last year the amount was `27.55 crore. A total of `3,265.16 crore has been disclosed under the IT Act compared to `876.81 crore last year.
By Express News Service

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Cabinet, which met on Wednesday, has decided to extend the term of PSC rank lists by six more months up to June 30, 2017. The PSC will meet on Friday to discuss the Cabinet recommendation. The rank lists which have never been extended to date and whose term expires on December 31 will get a six-month extension. Ranks lists whose term expires on March 31, 2017, will be extended by three months.



PSC members

The Cabinet also decided to recommend four names to the Governor for the post of PSC members. They are: Sureshan C, Executive Engineer, PWD (Buildings Division), Kasargod; Professor M R Byju, Department of Electronics and Communication, College of Engineering Thiruvananthapuram, Dr Jinu Zachariah Oommen, Manakuppiyil House, Edanadu, Chengannur, and Adv Reghunathan M K, Marath House, Kodannur, Thrissur.



NEW POSTS : The Cabinet decided to form 47 posts of assistant dental surgeons in various hospitals of the Health Department. The post of a medical officer (Panchakarma) will be created at the Government Ayurveda Panchakarma Hospital, Alappuzha. The posts of one clerk and two senior clerks will be created in the Career Guidance and Adolescent Counselling Centre under the Higher Secondary Education Department.

other decisions

1,860 prisoners to get special remission

The Cabinet on Wednesday decided to recommend special remission for 1,860 prisoners in connection with the 60th anniversary celebrations of the formation of the state. A recommendation will be made to Governor P Sathasivam in this regard. Eight convicts undergoing life imprisonment at the Kannur Central Prison will be offered remission as part of the decision. The decision is based on a recommendation of the prison advisory committee, the CMs office said.

increase in BENEFITS for judges

The Cabinet decided to increase the benefits given to retired chief justices and judges. The benefits to retired chief justices has been upped from Rs 10,000 to Rs 14,000, and that of retired judges, from Rs 8000 to Rs 12,000.

LIGHT METRO

The Cabinet has decided to allot 19.54 acres of land in Pallipuram village to the Kerala Rapid Transit Corporation Ltd for the Light Metro project.

Nod for Kerala Administrative Service

TPuram: The Cabinet has, in principle, decided to introduce the Kerala Administrative Service (KAS) in 30 departments, including General Administration and Finance Departments. Billed as the states own civil service, the government, during the UDF tenure, had faced opposition when it planned to introduce it in 18 departments including the Secretariat. The then UDF government in September 2013 formed a committee headed by then chief secretary E K Bharat Bhushan to study its feasibility.

The committee in its report A case for Kerala Administrative Service strongly recommended that KAS may be set up to ensure the availability of qualified SCS (state civil service) officers in the field of choice for induction into the IAS to improve the quality of the middle-level officers and to provide direct avenue for youth in the state to join public service. On coming to power in May, the LDF government had announced that it would implement KAS.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Cabinet, which met on Wednesday, has decided to extend the term of PSC rank lists by six more months up to June 30, 2017. The PSC will meet on Friday to discuss the Cabinet recommendation. The rank lists which have never been extended to date and whose term expires on December 31 will get a six-month extension. Ranks lists whose term expires on March 31, 2017, will be extended by three months. PSC members The Cabinet also decided to recommend four names to the Governor for the post of PSC members. They are: Sureshan C, Executive Engineer, PWD (Buildings Division), Kasargod; Professor M R Byju, Department of Electronics and Communication, College of Engineering Thiruvananthapuram, Dr Jinu Zachariah Oommen, Manakuppiyil House, Edanadu, Chengannur, and Adv Reghunathan M K, Marath House, Kodannur, Thrissur. NEW POSTS : The Cabinet decided to form 47 posts of assistant dental surgeons in various hospitals of the Health Department. The post of a medical officer (Panchakarma) will be created at the Government Ayurveda Panchakarma Hospital, Alappuzha. The posts of one clerk and two senior clerks will be created in the Career Guidance and Adolescent Counselling Centre under the Higher Secondary Education Department. other decisions 1,860 prisoners to get special remission The Cabinet on Wednesday decided to recommend special remission for 1,860 prisoners in connection with the 60th anniversary celebrations of the formation of the state. A recommendation will be made to Governor P Sathasivam in this regard. Eight convicts undergoing life imprisonment at the Kannur Central Prison will be offered remission as part of the decision. The decision is based on a recommendation of the prison advisory committee, the CMs office said. increase in BENEFITS for judges The Cabinet decided to increase the benefits given to retired chief justices and judges. The benefits to retired chief justices has been upped from Rs 10,000 to Rs 14,000, and that of retired judges, from Rs 8000 to Rs 12,000. LIGHT METRO The Cabinet has decided to allot 19.54 acres of land in Pallipuram village to the Kerala Rapid Transit Corporation Ltd for the Light Metro project. Nod for Kerala Administrative Service TPuram: The Cabinet has, in principle, decided to introduce the Kerala Administrative Service (KAS) in 30 departments, including General Administration and Finance Departments. Billed as the states own civil service, the government, during the UDF tenure, had faced opposition when it planned to introduce it in 18 departments including the Secretariat. The then UDF government in September 2013 formed a committee headed by then chief secretary E K Bharat Bhushan to study its feasibility. The committee in its report A case for Kerala Administrative Service strongly recommended that KAS may be set up to ensure the availability of qualified SCS (state civil service) officers in the field of choice for induction into the IAS to improve the quality of the middle-level officers and to provide direct avenue for youth in the state to join public service. On coming to power in May, the LDF government had announced that it would implement KAS.
By Express News Service

ANGUL: One of the two 600 mw units of independent power producer, Jindal India Thermal Power Plant Limited (JITPL), Kaniha remains closed for the last few days due to want of coal. The Kaniha independent power producer (IPP) is among the four power producers out of 27 companies that signed memorandum with State Government which have started energy supply. It supplies power to Odisha and other states as per the power purchase agreement.



The power plant, located near NTPC-Kaniha has two 600 mega watt units. According to a plant official, it requires about 15,000 tonne coal per day to run the plant on full load. It procures coal from nearby Kaniha coalmines and Talcher. While supply from Talcher is continuing, coal dispatch from nearby Kaniha mines has stopped for the last some days. It draws 5000 tonne to 10000 tonne coal on auction basis per day from Kaniha mine besides taking about 5000 to 6000 tonne from Talcher to run the plant.



Now, Kaniha mine is facing problems in land acquisition for which its daily production has come down from normal 40,000 tonne to barely 15,000. It is feared that the 15 MT annual capacity mine might shut down within a few months in absence of land to operate.

All high level meetings, even at Chief Secretary level, have failed to bail out the coalmine. Whatever is produced we give to NTPC-Kaniha. There is no coal left for auction because of which JITPL suffers like other consumers. The auction will resume once the coal output picks up, said a coal official.



Official sources in JITPL said, in such a situation they cannot draw coal from Talcher which is 30 to 35 km away for economic and logistic reasons. It says that now they get only 5000 to 6000 tonne from Talcher to operate one unit that is less than the requirement for which their plant is running not in full load.

ANGUL: One of the two 600 mw units of independent power producer, Jindal India Thermal Power Plant Limited (JITPL), Kaniha remains closed for the last few days due to want of coal. The Kaniha independent power producer (IPP) is among the four power producers out of 27 companies that signed memorandum with State Government which have started energy supply. It supplies power to Odisha and other states as per the power purchase agreement. The power plant, located near NTPC-Kaniha has two 600 mega watt units. According to a plant official, it requires about 15,000 tonne coal per day to run the plant on full load. It procures coal from nearby Kaniha coalmines and Talcher. While supply from Talcher is continuing, coal dispatch from nearby Kaniha mines has stopped for the last some days. It draws 5000 tonne to 10000 tonne coal on auction basis per day from Kaniha mine besides taking about 5000 to 6000 tonne from Talcher to run the plant. Now, Kaniha mine is facing problems in land acquisition for which its daily production has come down from normal 40,000 tonne to barely 15,000. It is feared that the 15 MT annual capacity mine might shut down within a few months in absence of land to operate. All high level meetings, even at Chief Secretary level, have failed to bail out the coalmine. Whatever is produced we give to NTPC-Kaniha. There is no coal left for auction because of which JITPL suffers like other consumers. The auction will resume once the coal output picks up, said a coal official. Official sources in JITPL said, in such a situation they cannot draw coal from Talcher which is 30 to 35 km away for economic and logistic reasons. It says that now they get only 5000 to 6000 tonne from Talcher to operate one unit that is less than the requirement for which their plant is running not in full load.
Amarnath Parida By

Express News Service

JAGATSINGHPUR: ISE in crime rate and protests over industrial pollution and rehabilitation marked the year for Jagatsinghpur, which also saw the much-awaited commissioning of the 15 million tonne (MT) Paradip Refinery project by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.



The commissioning, though, was followed by a clash between the ruling BJD and Opposition BJP. The refinery was inaugurated on February 7 but before that, a poster war ensued between the two parties leading to a clash over putting up of publicity materials, ahead of Modis visit.



The BJP workers had erected banners, posters and hoardings of Modi and other leaders of the party from Zero Point to Paradip Refinery site, a stretch of 7 km.

The party workers alleged that their BJD counterparts destroyed the publicity materials on the stretch and put up their banners and posters at several points on the same stretch. Subsequently, 11 workers of the BJP were arrested for attacking BJD MLA Pramod Kumar Mallick. The 11 workers were arrested following an FIR filed by Mallicks PSO Badal Kumar Bhoi against BJP supporters at Tirtol police station. He had alleged that he and Mallick were attacked while going to Paradip to attend the PMs meeting. Some BJD workers were also arrested for ransacking Tirtol police station during a demonstration over the issue.



Protests over rehabilitation was witnessed throughout the year. Hundreds of land losers and displaced families, under the banner of Gramya Surkhya Samiti, Handia, staged demonstrations in front of Essar company in Paradip demanding rehabilitation. Similarly, farmers of Kujang tehsil, who were displaced by Paradip Phosphates Ltd (PPL) in 1982, demanded their land back. Alleging that their land was acquired by force, the farmers organised a mass movement in front of PPL office here.



The rivalry between Cooperation and Excise Minister Damodar Rout and district unit BJD president-cum-MP, Bishnu Das, came to the fore during an egg attack on the former. During the Mahanadi Bachao Samabesh in Kujang, a miscreant hurled eggs at Rout. Apparently, neither Das nor Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik were informed about the meet. As there was a war of words between Rout and Das over the issue, supporters of Rout suspected involvement of supporters of the MP in the incident.



Fissures in the ruling BJD were out in the open at the inauguration of Kalinga Baliyatra. The festival, celebrating the maritime trade of the State with South-East Asia, was inaugurated by Minister Rout even as Revenue Minister Bijayashree Routray and Higher Education Minister Pradeep Panigrahi preferred to stay away from the event allegedly due to intra-party conflict.



Sources said the two Ministers had committed to attend as chief guest and chief speaker but did not turn up. Two MLAs, Chiranjib Biswal and Prasant Muduli, too did not attend.



In August, some criminals opened fire at the supervisor of Gangadhar Construction and Engineering Pvt Ltd and hurled bombs at camp office and a construction equipment at the Plastic Park of IOCL in Paradip. The supervisor, Jitendra Pradhan, sustained a bullet injury on his head.

The incident created panic among all contractors in the area who are working for the Plastic Park, being set up at a cost of `40 crore. The month also saw an attack on two BJD workers, Jyotikant Parida alias Bapu and Ashutosh Swain alias Baba, who are close associates of Damodar Rout at Tarenigada under Paradip police limits.



Prior to this, the Congress and the BJP leaders staged demonstration in front of the Kujang police station protesting rise in crime in both Kujang and Paradip. They also alleged that police were negligent in tracing the killers of a contractor, who was murdered in the first week of July. The contractor, Ganesh Swain, who was associated with Paradip Refinery of IOCL, had given lift to a person on his motorcycle while on his way home on July 7. The year ended with the sensational murder of SSL manager, Mahendra Swain, over stevedoring rivalry in Paradip Port which led to the arrest of OSL chief Mahimananda Mishra, his aide Basant Bal and Congress leader Bapi Sarkhel.

JAGATSINGHPUR: ISE in crime rate and protests over industrial pollution and rehabilitation marked the year for Jagatsinghpur, which also saw the much-awaited commissioning of the 15 million tonne (MT) Paradip Refinery project by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The commissioning, though, was followed by a clash between the ruling BJD and Opposition BJP. The refinery was inaugurated on February 7 but before that, a poster war ensued between the two parties leading to a clash over putting up of publicity materials, ahead of Modis visit. The BJP workers had erected banners, posters and hoardings of Modi and other leaders of the party from Zero Point to Paradip Refinery site, a stretch of 7 km. The party workers alleged that their BJD counterparts destroyed the publicity materials on the stretch and put up their banners and posters at several points on the same stretch. Subsequently, 11 workers of the BJP were arrested for attacking BJD MLA Pramod Kumar Mallick. The 11 workers were arrested following an FIR filed by Mallicks PSO Badal Kumar Bhoi against BJP supporters at Tirtol police station. He had alleged that he and Mallick were attacked while going to Paradip to attend the PMs meeting. Some BJD workers were also arrested for ransacking Tirtol police station during a demonstration over the issue. Protests over rehabilitation was witnessed throughout the year. Hundreds of land losers and displaced families, under the banner of Gramya Surkhya Samiti, Handia, staged demonstrations in front of Essar company in Paradip demanding rehabilitation. Similarly, farmers of Kujang tehsil, who were displaced by Paradip Phosphates Ltd (PPL) in 1982, demanded their land back. Alleging that their land was acquired by force, the farmers organised a mass movement in front of PPL office here. The rivalry between Cooperation and Excise Minister Damodar Rout and district unit BJD president-cum-MP, Bishnu Das, came to the fore during an egg attack on the former. During the Mahanadi Bachao Samabesh in Kujang, a miscreant hurled eggs at Rout. Apparently, neither Das nor Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik were informed about the meet. As there was a war of words between Rout and Das over the issue, supporters of Rout suspected involvement of supporters of the MP in the incident. Fissures in the ruling BJD were out in the open at the inauguration of Kalinga Baliyatra. The festival, celebrating the maritime trade of the State with South-East Asia, was inaugurated by Minister Rout even as Revenue Minister Bijayashree Routray and Higher Education Minister Pradeep Panigrahi preferred to stay away from the event allegedly due to intra-party conflict. Sources said the two Ministers had committed to attend as chief guest and chief speaker but did not turn up. Two MLAs, Chiranjib Biswal and Prasant Muduli, too did not attend. In August, some criminals opened fire at the supervisor of Gangadhar Construction and Engineering Pvt Ltd and hurled bombs at camp office and a construction equipment at the Plastic Park of IOCL in Paradip. The supervisor, Jitendra Pradhan, sustained a bullet injury on his head. The incident created panic among all contractors in the area who are working for the Plastic Park, being set up at a cost of `40 crore. The month also saw an attack on two BJD workers, Jyotikant Parida alias Bapu and Ashutosh Swain alias Baba, who are close associates of Damodar Rout at Tarenigada under Paradip police limits. Prior to this, the Congress and the BJP leaders staged demonstration in front of the Kujang police station protesting rise in crime in both Kujang and Paradip. They also alleged that police were negligent in tracing the killers of a contractor, who was murdered in the first week of July. The contractor, Ganesh Swain, who was associated with Paradip Refinery of IOCL, had given lift to a person on his motorcycle while on his way home on July 7. The year ended with the sensational murder of SSL manager, Mahendra Swain, over stevedoring rivalry in Paradip Port which led to the arrest of OSL chief Mahimananda Mishra, his aide Basant Bal and Congress leader Bapi Sarkhel.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: It appears that unless the body of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa is exhumed, the mystery surrounding her death would not come to an end, a vacation bench of the Madras High Court observed on Thursday.



"I too personally have a doubt (on the issue). Nothing has come out even after her demise," Justice S Vaidyanathan wondered in his oral remarks.



The bench of Justices Vaidyanathan and V Parthiban made the oral observations, while hearing a PIL from advocate PA Stalin, a primary member of the AIADMK, who relied on the precedent set by the Calcutta High Court in 1999 directing constitution of a one man commission of a retired Supreme Court judge to probe into death of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

He prayed for the appointment of a similar commission under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952 to find out the truth behind late chief ministers untimely and mysterious death.



The bench, however, after ordering notices to the authorities concerned, referred the matter to the Chief Justice in view of the serious issues involved in it.



The judges observed that after demise of former chief minister MGR, his photographs taken during the treatment was released. In Jaya's case, no photograph was issued. Even her relatives were not permitted to see her in the hospital. All this lead to nurture a doubt with regard to the death of the former CM in the minds of the generalpublic, the judge said and added that if the matter gets posted again

to the bench, it may order exhumation of the body.

CHENNAI: It appears that unless the body of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa is exhumed, the mystery surrounding her death would not come to an end, a vacation bench of the Madras High Court observed on Thursday. "I too personally have a doubt (on the issue). Nothing has come out even after her demise," Justice S Vaidyanathan wondered in his oral remarks. The bench of Justices Vaidyanathan and V Parthiban made the oral observations, while hearing a PIL from advocate PA Stalin, a primary member of the AIADMK, who relied on the precedent set by the Calcutta High Court in 1999 directing constitution of a one man commission of a retired Supreme Court judge to probe into death of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. He prayed for the appointment of a similar commission under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952 to find out the truth behind late chief ministers untimely and mysterious death. The bench, however, after ordering notices to the authorities concerned, referred the matter to the Chief Justice in view of the serious issues involved in it. The judges observed that after demise of former chief minister MGR, his photographs taken during the treatment was released. In Jaya's case, no photograph was issued. Even her relatives were not permitted to see her in the hospital. All this lead to nurture a doubt with regard to the death of the former CM in the minds of the generalpublic, the judge said and added that if the matter gets posted again to the bench, it may order exhumation of the body.
By Associated Press

YEREVAN: Officials say that at least three soldiers have been killed in a border skirmish between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops.

Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Ovanissian three Armenian servicemen died in fighting Thursday. Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said one of its troops was missing in action.

Armenia and Azerbaijan blamed each other for the fighting.

Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry claimed that its forces inflicted "heavy casualties" on the Armenian intruders, while Armenia's Defense Ministry said that it repelled an intrusion from Azerbaijan, killing seven enemy soldiers. The conflicting claims couldn't be independently verified.

The two ex-Soviet nations have been locked in conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Nagorno-Karabakh is officially part of Azerbaijan, but since a separatist war ended in 1994 it has been under the control of forces that claim to be local ethnic Armenians but that Azerbaijan claims include regular Armenian military. Efforts to negotiate a settlement have failed and sporadic clashes have continued.

An outbreak of fighting in April killed about 75 soldiers from the two sides.

YEREVAN: Officials say that at least three soldiers have been killed in a border skirmish between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops. Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Ovanissian three Armenian servicemen died in fighting Thursday. Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said one of its troops was missing in action. Armenia and Azerbaijan blamed each other for the fighting. Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry claimed that its forces inflicted "heavy casualties" on the Armenian intruders, while Armenia's Defense Ministry said that it repelled an intrusion from Azerbaijan, killing seven enemy soldiers. The conflicting claims couldn't be independently verified. The two ex-Soviet nations have been locked in conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh is officially part of Azerbaijan, but since a separatist war ended in 1994 it has been under the control of forces that claim to be local ethnic Armenians but that Azerbaijan claims include regular Armenian military. Efforts to negotiate a settlement have failed and sporadic clashes have continued. An outbreak of fighting in April killed about 75 soldiers from the two sides.
By PTI

BEIJING/KATHMANDU: Nepal and China will hold their first ever joint military exercise early next year. Chinese Defence Ministry Spokesperson Yang Yujun said China and Nepal had been in "initial communication" on the military exercise, and that the details would be released in due course of time.

Although Nepal has been holding joint military exercises with other countries including India and the United States, this is the first time Nepali military would be holding such an exercise with China.

According to reports, the military drill will be held in February next year and will focus on training Nepali soldiers in dealing with hostage scenarios involving international terror groups, My Republica reported.

The new development is seen as China's growing interest in the Himalayan republic since the deterioration of relations between Nepal and India due to the border blockade last year, the daily said.

BEIJING/KATHMANDU: Nepal and China will hold their first ever joint military exercise early next year. Chinese Defence Ministry Spokesperson Yang Yujun said China and Nepal had been in "initial communication" on the military exercise, and that the details would be released in due course of time. Although Nepal has been holding joint military exercises with other countries including India and the United States, this is the first time Nepali military would be holding such an exercise with China. According to reports, the military drill will be held in February next year and will focus on training Nepali soldiers in dealing with hostage scenarios involving international terror groups, My Republica reported. The new development is seen as China's growing interest in the Himalayan republic since the deterioration of relations between Nepal and India due to the border blockade last year, the daily said.
By Associated Press

BEIJING: Four people detonated explosives at a Communist Party office in the far western region of Xinjiang, killing one person and injuring three others, according to local authorities who described it as a terrorist attack. The attackers were then shot dead by police.

The report in Tianshan Net, a news portal run by Communist Party officials in Xinjiang, is the first such publicly reported fatal attack in Xinjiang for months in a region where information is strictly controlled by authorities and reporting access has tightened over the past couple of years.

Xinjiang has seen violence against civilians in recent years that authorities have blamed on radicals among the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority seeking independence from Beijing.

The report said four attackers drove vehicles into Moyu County's Communist Party courtyard on Wednesday afternoon and detonated homemade explosives, killing one person and injuring three others. It said that police shot the four attackers dead at the scene and called it a "terrorist attack."

Xinjiang has been under heavy security since deadly riots in 2009 that pitted Uighurs against ethnic Chinese migrants. Those measures were tightened further following a wave of attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of China blamed on Uighur separatists adhering to a radical form of Islam.

In November 2015, police killed 28 people who authorities said had killed 11 civilians and five police officers at a remote coal mine in Asku controlled by members of China's Han majority.

Some critics say the violence in Xinjiang stems from government policies that have marginalized the Uighurs, and also warn that Beijing's harsh crackdown may be radicalizing some Uighurs.

BEIJING: Four people detonated explosives at a Communist Party office in the far western region of Xinjiang, killing one person and injuring three others, according to local authorities who described it as a terrorist attack. The attackers were then shot dead by police. The report in Tianshan Net, a news portal run by Communist Party officials in Xinjiang, is the first such publicly reported fatal attack in Xinjiang for months in a region where information is strictly controlled by authorities and reporting access has tightened over the past couple of years. Xinjiang has seen violence against civilians in recent years that authorities have blamed on radicals among the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority seeking independence from Beijing. The report said four attackers drove vehicles into Moyu County's Communist Party courtyard on Wednesday afternoon and detonated homemade explosives, killing one person and injuring three others. It said that police shot the four attackers dead at the scene and called it a "terrorist attack." Xinjiang has been under heavy security since deadly riots in 2009 that pitted Uighurs against ethnic Chinese migrants. Those measures were tightened further following a wave of attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of China blamed on Uighur separatists adhering to a radical form of Islam. In November 2015, police killed 28 people who authorities said had killed 11 civilians and five police officers at a remote coal mine in Asku controlled by members of China's Han majority. Some critics say the violence in Xinjiang stems from government policies that have marginalized the Uighurs, and also warn that Beijing's harsh crackdown may be radicalizing some Uighurs.
By Reuters

TOKYO: The president of Dentsu Inc , Japan's largest advertising agency, will step down over the "death by overwork" of a young employee, a suicide which has prompted official probes and fresh hand-wringing over Japan's overtime culture.

Matsuri Takahashi, a promising graduate of Japan's top university, leapt to her death in December 2015, leaving behind a trail of grievances over relentless days. She clocked 105 hours of overtime in October 2015, before becoming depressed.

Her death, deemed by the government to be "karoshi" or death by overwork, has prompted raids on Dentsu offices, but has also been followed by Japan's first white paper on the issue.

That study found that in a country that imposes few limits on employers regarding overtime hours and pay, more than a fifth of companies had staff that worked more than 80 hours of overtime in a month - the government threshold.

"It is extremely regrettable that we could not prevent overwork by a new recruit," Dentsu President Tadashi Ishii told a news conference.

"In order to take full responsibility, I would like to resign as president at a board meeting in January."

Ishii said Dentsu and a company employee had been referred to prosecutors by the Japanese labour ministry's Tokyo labour bureau on suspicion of violating labour standards law.

Dentsu said it had not yet decided on a replacement for Ishii.

Ishii's resignation comes as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing a wide-reaching campaign to reform Japan's employment laws, which could include tighter overtime regulation.

Hard work and sacrifice have long been synonymous with Japan, and strong social expectations make it difficult for employees and unions to aggressively push for reforms.

Workers often feel a debt of gratitude for being hired and are reluctant to quit even if conditions are bad. Others, especially new hires, feel they have to work longer hours than their colleagues to get promoted.

"The problem is not with Dentsu alone," the Asahi Shimbun, the country's second-largest newspaper by circulation, said in an editorial on Thursday.

Noting that the newspaper itself had received an overwork warning from the government this month, the Asahi described the matter as "a difficult issue but a theme that relates to raising employees' morale and productivity and improving companies' profitability."

Takahashi's mother, Yukimi, said in a statement released to media by her lawyers on Sunday, that she wanted to "change the consciousness of every working person in Japan." The statement was released on the one-year anniversary of her daughter's death.

In recent years, the government has revised labour laws to encourage shorter working hours, but critics say these steps have relied too much on self-regulation.



Japan officially recognises two types of karoshi: death from cardiovascular illness linked to overwork, and suicide following work-related mental stress.

TOKYO: The president of Dentsu Inc , Japan's largest advertising agency, will step down over the "death by overwork" of a young employee, a suicide which has prompted official probes and fresh hand-wringing over Japan's overtime culture. Matsuri Takahashi, a promising graduate of Japan's top university, leapt to her death in December 2015, leaving behind a trail of grievances over relentless days. She clocked 105 hours of overtime in October 2015, before becoming depressed. Her death, deemed by the government to be "karoshi" or death by overwork, has prompted raids on Dentsu offices, but has also been followed by Japan's first white paper on the issue. That study found that in a country that imposes few limits on employers regarding overtime hours and pay, more than a fifth of companies had staff that worked more than 80 hours of overtime in a month - the government threshold. "It is extremely regrettable that we could not prevent overwork by a new recruit," Dentsu President Tadashi Ishii told a news conference. "In order to take full responsibility, I would like to resign as president at a board meeting in January." Ishii said Dentsu and a company employee had been referred to prosecutors by the Japanese labour ministry's Tokyo labour bureau on suspicion of violating labour standards law. Dentsu said it had not yet decided on a replacement for Ishii. Ishii's resignation comes as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing a wide-reaching campaign to reform Japan's employment laws, which could include tighter overtime regulation. Hard work and sacrifice have long been synonymous with Japan, and strong social expectations make it difficult for employees and unions to aggressively push for reforms. Workers often feel a debt of gratitude for being hired and are reluctant to quit even if conditions are bad. Others, especially new hires, feel they have to work longer hours than their colleagues to get promoted. "The problem is not with Dentsu alone," the Asahi Shimbun, the country's second-largest newspaper by circulation, said in an editorial on Thursday. Noting that the newspaper itself had received an overwork warning from the government this month, the Asahi described the matter as "a difficult issue but a theme that relates to raising employees' morale and productivity and improving companies' profitability." Takahashi's mother, Yukimi, said in a statement released to media by her lawyers on Sunday, that she wanted to "change the consciousness of every working person in Japan." The statement was released on the one-year anniversary of her daughter's death. In recent years, the government has revised labour laws to encourage shorter working hours, but critics say these steps have relied too much on self-regulation. Japan officially recognises two types of karoshi: death from cardiovascular illness linked to overwork, and suicide following work-related mental stress.
Express News Service

COLOMBO: Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said here on Thursday that he has no plans to visit India although Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had extended an open invitation to him when he was here in March 2015.

Resident foreign correspondents who met Rajapaksa asked him if he would visit India also since he had gone to China, Japan and Malaysia after being defeated in the January 8, 2015 Presidential election.

I have no plans to visit India. But when Prime Minister Modi visited Sri Lanka he told me that I can come at any time. There is a standing invitation, Rajapaksa said.

From 2010 to 2014, India was very displeased with Rajapaksa for getting too close to the Chinese, giving to a Chinese state-owned company, the construction of a second terminal at Colombo harbor, and then, at the end of 2014, allowing a Chinese nuclear submarine to dock at Colombo harbor without informing India of the visit. Rajapaksas plea that the Chinese had informed India about the visit was not accepted by India.

India has a strategic interest in Colombo harbour because 70 percent of the latters business comprises trans-shipment to and from India, India does not want China to be able to snoop on Indian shipping from Colombo harbour.

Rajapaksas plan to build an ultra-modern Colombo Port City with a large part of land reclaimed from the sea being given to the Chinese on the outright sale rang alarm bells in New Delhi. India protested through diplomatic channels but Rajapaksa turned a deaf ear.

Rajapaksa also disregarded New Delhis advice to devolve powers to the Tamil-speaking Northern and Eastern Provinces to solve the long-festering Tamil problem which had led to a 30-year destructive war. The then Sri Lankan President promised to go beyond the 13 th.Amendment of the constitution which was passed at the instance of India in 1987. But he reneged on the promise. He held elections to the Northern Provincial Council with great reluctance in 2013 four years after the war ended.

India was expecting Rajapaksa to deliver the goods in terms of the promises made in return for help to defeat the LTTE in Eelam War IV. But once the war was over, Rajapaksa ignored India.

Eventually, according to Rajapaksa, India joined in the Western plot to oust him. Asked in what way India helped bring about a regime change, Rajapaksa said:  That is what I am trying to find out!.

However, when Indian Prime Minister Modi visited Sri Lanka in March 2015, he had a one to one meeting with Rajapaksa at the Indian High Commissioners residence in Colombo. It was described as a courtesy meeting with a former President. During the meeting, a conciliatory Modi issued an open invitation to Rajapaksa to visit India.

COLOMBO: Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said here on Thursday that he has no plans to visit India although Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had extended an open invitation to him when he was here in March 2015. Resident foreign correspondents who met Rajapaksa asked him if he would visit India also since he had gone to China, Japan and Malaysia after being defeated in the January 8, 2015 Presidential election. I have no plans to visit India. But when Prime Minister Modi visited Sri Lanka he told me that I can come at any time. There is a standing invitation, Rajapaksa said. From 2010 to 2014, India was very displeased with Rajapaksa for getting too close to the Chinese, giving to a Chinese state-owned company, the construction of a second terminal at Colombo harbor, and then, at the end of 2014, allowing a Chinese nuclear submarine to dock at Colombo harbor without informing India of the visit. Rajapaksas plea that the Chinese had informed India about the visit was not accepted by India. India has a strategic interest in Colombo harbour because 70 percent of the latters business comprises trans-shipment to and from India, India does not want China to be able to snoop on Indian shipping from Colombo harbour. Rajapaksas plan to build an ultra-modern Colombo Port City with a large part of land reclaimed from the sea being given to the Chinese on the outright sale rang alarm bells in New Delhi. India protested through diplomatic channels but Rajapaksa turned a deaf ear. Rajapaksa also disregarded New Delhis advice to devolve powers to the Tamil-speaking Northern and Eastern Provinces to solve the long-festering Tamil problem which had led to a 30-year destructive war. The then Sri Lankan President promised to go beyond the 13 th.Amendment of the constitution which was passed at the instance of India in 1987. But he reneged on the promise. He held elections to the Northern Provincial Council with great reluctance in 2013 four years after the war ended. India was expecting Rajapaksa to deliver the goods in terms of the promises made in return for help to defeat the LTTE in Eelam War IV. But once the war was over, Rajapaksa ignored India. Eventually, according to Rajapaksa, India joined in the Western plot to oust him. Asked in what way India helped bring about a regime change, Rajapaksa said:  That is what I am trying to find out!. However, when Indian Prime Minister Modi visited Sri Lanka in March 2015, he had a one to one meeting with Rajapaksa at the Indian High Commissioners residence in Colombo. It was described as a courtesy meeting with a former President. During the meeting, a conciliatory Modi issued an open invitation to Rajapaksa to visit India.
Express News Service

COLOMBO: Authorities of the Lanka Indian Oil Corporation (LIOC) at the High-Security Oil Tank Farm in the Eastern Sri Lankan city of Trincomalee on Thursday stopped and questioned an official of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) who had entered the facility without prior permission.

LIOC Managing Director Shyam Bohora told Express that the unauthorised entrant was discovered on his way out. He was questioned and let off when he revealed his identity as a CPC staffer. However, he and others in his group filed a police complaint saying that three of them had been detained by LIOC officials.

Bohora said that the officials were not detained but were only questioned to ascertain the identity of the unauthorised entrant.

The officials had wanted to inspect the tanks in the Upper Tank Farm with a view to using them for storing fuel to generate electricity in the wake of warnings that Sri Lanka is heading for a power crisis.

But LIOC officials told them that this could not be done without a joint sanction from the Indian and Sri Lankan government as the LIOC is controlling the tanks as per a government to government agreement. There could be no construction of any kind on the basis of a unilateral decision of the Sri Lankan cabinet, it was pointed out.

Bohora told Express that he took up this matter with the Sri Lankan Ministries of Power and Petroleum on Thursday, and offered to collaborate with the CPC in using the tanks in the Lower Farm to store fuel. And the ministers agreed.

COLOMBO: Authorities of the Lanka Indian Oil Corporation (LIOC) at the High-Security Oil Tank Farm in the Eastern Sri Lankan city of Trincomalee on Thursday stopped and questioned an official of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) who had entered the facility without prior permission. LIOC Managing Director Shyam Bohora told Express that the unauthorised entrant was discovered on his way out. He was questioned and let off when he revealed his identity as a CPC staffer. However, he and others in his group filed a police complaint saying that three of them had been detained by LIOC officials. Bohora said that the officials were not detained but were only questioned to ascertain the identity of the unauthorised entrant. The officials had wanted to inspect the tanks in the Upper Tank Farm with a view to using them for storing fuel to generate electricity in the wake of warnings that Sri Lanka is heading for a power crisis. But LIOC officials told them that this could not be done without a joint sanction from the Indian and Sri Lankan government as the LIOC is controlling the tanks as per a government to government agreement. There could be no construction of any kind on the basis of a unilateral decision of the Sri Lankan cabinet, it was pointed out. Bohora told Express that he took up this matter with the Sri Lankan Ministries of Power and Petroleum on Thursday, and offered to collaborate with the CPC in using the tanks in the Lower Farm to store fuel. And the ministers agreed.
By AFP

BOGOTA: Colombia's Congress on Wednesday passed a law granting amnesty to FARC rebels as part of the country's peace deal, a development the government hailed as "historic."

"Thanks to the Congress which in a historic vote approved the amnesty law, first step toward consolidating peace," President Juan Manuel Santos said on Twitter.

The measure grants special legal treatment, amnesty and pardon to members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) accused of political and related crimes.

The Senate passed the bill 69-0, after the House of Representatives approved it 121-0.

The amnesty bill is part of the November 24 pact aimed at ending five decades of conflict.

Former president Alvaro Uribe spearheaded opposition to the peace deal after nearly four years of negotiations to end more than half a century of armed conflict.

The former president and his allies argue the deal grants impunity to rebels guilty of war crimes, giving them seats in Congress rather than sending them to prison.

After voters rejected the earlier deal by a narrow margin, the government and the FARC renegotiated it, deciding to have it ratified in Congress rather than risk a second referendum.

The conflict has killed more than 260,000 people and left 45,000 missing.

BOGOTA: Colombia's Congress on Wednesday passed a law granting amnesty to FARC rebels as part of the country's peace deal, a development the government hailed as "historic." "Thanks to the Congress which in a historic vote approved the amnesty law, first step toward consolidating peace," President Juan Manuel Santos said on Twitter. The measure grants special legal treatment, amnesty and pardon to members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) accused of political and related crimes. The Senate passed the bill 69-0, after the House of Representatives approved it 121-0. The amnesty bill is part of the November 24 pact aimed at ending five decades of conflict. Former president Alvaro Uribe spearheaded opposition to the peace deal after nearly four years of negotiations to end more than half a century of armed conflict. The former president and his allies argue the deal grants impunity to rebels guilty of war crimes, giving them seats in Congress rather than sending them to prison. After voters rejected the earlier deal by a narrow margin, the government and the FARC renegotiated it, deciding to have it ratified in Congress rather than risk a second referendum. The conflict has killed more than 260,000 people and left 45,000 missing.
By ANI

NEW DELHI: According to a US-based arms control organisation, a draft proposal for accepting new members into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) paves way for Indias entry but leaves out Pakistan.

Last week, the U.S. media reported that former NSG chairman Rafael Mariano Grossi had prepared a two-page document, explaining how a non-NPT state, like India and Pakistan, could join the group.

The document prepared by Grossi, acting on behalf of the current chairman Song Young-wan of South Korea, enjoys a semi-official status, reports the Dawn.

Grossis draft note proposes that one non-NPT member state should reach an understanding not to block consensus on membership for another non-NPT member state.

Arms Control Association (ACA) executive director, Daryl Kimball, said Pakistan still has grounds to object to the formula outlined by Grossi.

He explains the document will require Pakistan to meet the same criteria for membership as India, adding Islamabad will have to win a separate NSG exemption from the full-scope safeguards requirement to engage in civil nuclear trade with the NSG states.

Present NSG membership rules require a state to sign the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) before joining the exclusive club. India remains one of only three countries, with Israel and Pakistan, to have never signed the NPT.

Earlier this year, India formally applied for membership and was followed by Pakistan. The United States and a host of other western nations back Indias application, but China and some others are blocking New Delhis membership, which requires a consensus of all members.

The proposal requires a non-NPT state to declare that it has brought into force a clear and strict separation of current and future civilian nuclear facilities from non-civilian nuclear facilities and is willing to apply this principle to future facilities as well.

The new member also needs to assure NSG that it has provided and maintains a declaration to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that identifies all current and future civilian nuclear facilities.

NEW DELHI: According to a US-based arms control organisation, a draft proposal for accepting new members into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) paves way for Indias entry but leaves out Pakistan. Last week, the U.S. media reported that former NSG chairman Rafael Mariano Grossi had prepared a two-page document, explaining how a non-NPT state, like India and Pakistan, could join the group. The document prepared by Grossi, acting on behalf of the current chairman Song Young-wan of South Korea, enjoys a semi-official status, reports the Dawn. Grossis draft note proposes that one non-NPT member state should reach an understanding not to block consensus on membership for another non-NPT member state. Arms Control Association (ACA) executive director, Daryl Kimball, said Pakistan still has grounds to object to the formula outlined by Grossi. He explains the document will require Pakistan to meet the same criteria for membership as India, adding Islamabad will have to win a separate NSG exemption from the full-scope safeguards requirement to engage in civil nuclear trade with the NSG states. Present NSG membership rules require a state to sign the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) before joining the exclusive club. India remains one of only three countries, with Israel and Pakistan, to have never signed the NPT. Earlier this year, India formally applied for membership and was followed by Pakistan. The United States and a host of other western nations back Indias application, but China and some others are blocking New Delhis membership, which requires a consensus of all members. The proposal requires a non-NPT state to declare that it has brought into force a clear and strict separation of current and future civilian nuclear facilities from non-civilian nuclear facilities and is willing to apply this principle to future facilities as well. The new member also needs to assure NSG that it has provided and maintains a declaration to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that identifies all current and future civilian nuclear facilities.
By PTI

PESHAWAR: A Pakistani teenager today thrashed a lawmaker of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf over the alleged insult of a retired General in this northwestern city.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) MNA Azhar Jadoon was attending the launch ceremony of Sehat ka Insaf programme in his home district Abbotabad, the Garrison town of KP, when a teenager assaulted him.

"Jadoon was sitting on stage when a teenager rose from the audience and rushed towards him. The teenager then slapped and punched Jadoon repeatedly," an eyewitness said.

In a video which has gone viral on social media, the lawmaker can be seen slapping and kicking the teenager back. Police detained the teenager following the incident.

While talking to media outside Jala Baba Auditorium, the boy said he took the revenge of General (Retired) Saleem Rana and Pakistan Army's insult by Jadoon's acquaintances during the funeral prayers of three persons killed few days ago.

PESHAWAR: A Pakistani teenager today thrashed a lawmaker of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf over the alleged insult of a retired General in this northwestern city. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) MNA Azhar Jadoon was attending the launch ceremony of Sehat ka Insaf programme in his home district Abbotabad, the Garrison town of KP, when a teenager assaulted him. "Jadoon was sitting on stage when a teenager rose from the audience and rushed towards him. The teenager then slapped and punched Jadoon repeatedly," an eyewitness said. In a video which has gone viral on social media, the lawmaker can be seen slapping and kicking the teenager back. Police detained the teenager following the incident. While talking to media outside Jala Baba Auditorium, the boy said he took the revenge of General (Retired) Saleem Rana and Pakistan Army's insult by Jadoon's acquaintances during the funeral prayers of three persons killed few days ago.
By AFP

DAMASCUS: Syria's army said on Thursday that it would halt all military operations from midnight after Russia announced rebels and the regime had signed a ceasefire agreement.

"The general command of the armed forces announces a complete halt to all hostilities on Syrian territory from the zero hour of December 30th," it said in a statement.

It added that the halt excluded combat against the Islamic State group and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as Al-Nusra Front.

DAMASCUS: Syria's army said on Thursday that it would halt all military operations from midnight after Russia announced rebels and the regime had signed a ceasefire agreement. "The general command of the armed forces announces a complete halt to all hostilities on Syrian territory from the zero hour of December 30th," it said in a statement. It added that the halt excluded combat against the Islamic State group and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as Al-Nusra Front.
By PTI

WASHINGTON: US President-elect Donald Trump has hit out at the United Nations, saying the world body is causing problems instead of solving them.

"The UN has such tremendous potential, not living up to its potential. There is such tremendous potential, but it is not living up," Trump told reporters in Florida yesterday.

"When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They don't. They cause problems," he said.

He was responding to a question if America under his administration is considering leaving the United Nations.

In a series of tweets earlier this week, Trump criticised the world body, in particularly the Security Council for passing a resolution against Israel.

"So, if it lives up to the potential, it's a great thing. And if it doesn't, it's a waste of time and money," he said.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the US, but not anymore," Trump said in a tweet yesterday.

"The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!" he added.

WASHINGTON: US President-elect Donald Trump has hit out at the United Nations, saying the world body is causing problems instead of solving them. "The UN has such tremendous potential, not living up to its potential. There is such tremendous potential, but it is not living up," Trump told reporters in Florida yesterday. "When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They don't. They cause problems," he said. He was responding to a question if America under his administration is considering leaving the United Nations. In a series of tweets earlier this week, Trump criticised the world body, in particularly the Security Council for passing a resolution against Israel. "So, if it lives up to the potential, it's a great thing. And if it doesn't, it's a waste of time and money," he said. "We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the US, but not anymore," Trump said in a tweet yesterday. "The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!" he added.
By Associated Press

WASHINGTON: U.S. senators visiting eastern European allies to discuss security issues called for sanctions against Russia for interfering in the presidential election by hacking American political sites and email accounts. Their demands came amid ongoing discussions among U.S. officials on an imminent response that would ensure the U.S. takes action against Russia before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

"We have to sanction Russia for these cyberattacks (and) send a clear message to the incoming administration that there is a lot of bipartisan support in Congress for going after this," Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., told The Associated Press by phone from Latvia.

Klobuchar joined Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in their visits to some of Russia's neighbors  the Baltic states, Ukraine and Georgia  as well as Montenegro.

Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusation that the highest levels of the Russian government were involved in trying to influence the U.S. presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia's goal was to help Trump win  an assessment Trump has dismissed as ridiculous.

The Obama administration has said the U.S. will respond at a time and with a means of its choosing, and that all responses may not be publicly known.

The lawmakers on Wednesday reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the Baltics, saying the relationship with the three former Soviet states  Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania  "will not change" under the new administration.

"I predict there will be bipartisan sanctions coming that will hit Russia hard, particularly (President Vladimir) Putin as an individual," Graham told reporters in Riga, the Latvian capital. He didn't elaborate on possible sanctions.

The U.S. has already sanctioned Russia over its annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Ukraine, but it could potentially use an April 2015 executive order allowing for the use of sanctions to combat cyberattacks.

A year after the order was issued, Democratic Party officials learned their systems were attacked after discovering malicious software on their computers.

But the executive order isn't well suited to the Russian activities, said Stewart Baker, a partner specializing in cybersecurity for Steptoe & Johnson LLP. Baker said that order was primarily aimed at cyberespionage, such as spying by the Chinese military for commercial advantage.

The order covers a response to attacks on critical infrastructure, and Klobuchar called on the administration to amend it to include election systems.

A presidential policy directive in 2013 identified 16 sectors that are considered critical infrastructure, including energy, financial services and health care. The U.S. Homeland Security Department is mulling over adding election systems to that list.

The designation places responsibilities on the secretary of homeland security to conduct comprehensive assessments of vulnerabilities and track as well as provide information on emerging and imminent threats that may affect critical infrastructure.

More important, in this case, it would allow for a response to a cyberattack against election systems.

And while Trump could change back any amended or new order allowing for the U.S. to impose sanctions on entities involved in a cyberattack on election systems, "he would have a lot of explaining to do," Klobuchar said. "The executive order gives tools to respond."

Speaking to journalists at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate on Wednesday, Trump was not addressing the issue of sanctions, but said: "We don't have the kind of security we need." He added: "Nobody knows what's going on."

Trump said he has not spoken with senators calling for sanctions, but believes "we have to get on with our lives."

President Barack Obama has ordered intelligence officials to conduct a broad review of the election-season cyberattacks.

Russia's neighbors have long suffered the wrath of its hackers, whose actions have frequently complemented Moscow's political and military aims. In 2014, Ukraine's Central Election Commission was targeted by a pro-Russian hacking group.

The Russian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON: U.S. senators visiting eastern European allies to discuss security issues called for sanctions against Russia for interfering in the presidential election by hacking American political sites and email accounts. Their demands came amid ongoing discussions among U.S. officials on an imminent response that would ensure the U.S. takes action against Russia before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. "We have to sanction Russia for these cyberattacks (and) send a clear message to the incoming administration that there is a lot of bipartisan support in Congress for going after this," Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., told The Associated Press by phone from Latvia. Klobuchar joined Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in their visits to some of Russia's neighbors  the Baltic states, Ukraine and Georgia  as well as Montenegro. Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusation that the highest levels of the Russian government were involved in trying to influence the U.S. presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia's goal was to help Trump win  an assessment Trump has dismissed as ridiculous. The Obama administration has said the U.S. will respond at a time and with a means of its choosing, and that all responses may not be publicly known. The lawmakers on Wednesday reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the Baltics, saying the relationship with the three former Soviet states  Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania  "will not change" under the new administration. "I predict there will be bipartisan sanctions coming that will hit Russia hard, particularly (President Vladimir) Putin as an individual," Graham told reporters in Riga, the Latvian capital. He didn't elaborate on possible sanctions. The U.S. has already sanctioned Russia over its annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Ukraine, but it could potentially use an April 2015 executive order allowing for the use of sanctions to combat cyberattacks. A year after the order was issued, Democratic Party officials learned their systems were attacked after discovering malicious software on their computers. But the executive order isn't well suited to the Russian activities, said Stewart Baker, a partner specializing in cybersecurity for Steptoe & Johnson LLP. Baker said that order was primarily aimed at cyberespionage, such as spying by the Chinese military for commercial advantage. The order covers a response to attacks on critical infrastructure, and Klobuchar called on the administration to amend it to include election systems. A presidential policy directive in 2013 identified 16 sectors that are considered critical infrastructure, including energy, financial services and health care. The U.S. Homeland Security Department is mulling over adding election systems to that list. The designation places responsibilities on the secretary of homeland security to conduct comprehensive assessments of vulnerabilities and track as well as provide information on emerging and imminent threats that may affect critical infrastructure. More important, in this case, it would allow for a response to a cyberattack against election systems. And while Trump could change back any amended or new order allowing for the U.S. to impose sanctions on entities involved in a cyberattack on election systems, "he would have a lot of explaining to do," Klobuchar said. "The executive order gives tools to respond." Speaking to journalists at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate on Wednesday, Trump was not addressing the issue of sanctions, but said: "We don't have the kind of security we need." He added: "Nobody knows what's going on." Trump said he has not spoken with senators calling for sanctions, but believes "we have to get on with our lives." President Barack Obama has ordered intelligence officials to conduct a broad review of the election-season cyberattacks. Russia's neighbors have long suffered the wrath of its hackers, whose actions have frequently complemented Moscow's political and military aims. In 2014, Ukraine's Central Election Commission was targeted by a pro-Russian hacking group. The Russian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
By Associated Press

WASHINGTON: Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, continuing a nearly two-year trend that suggests a solid job market.

THE NUMBERS: Weekly requests for jobless aid fell 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 265,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The less volatile four-week moving average for claims was 263,000.

Over the past year, the number of people collecting benefits has fallen almost 5 percent to 2.1 million.

THE TAKEAWAY: The historically low number of people seeking jobless aid is a positive sign for the economy.

Weekly jobless claims below 300,000 often point to healthy hiring levels. The low level of applications indicates that employers are holding onto workers and possibly looking to expand. Claims have stayed below 300,000 for 95 straight weeks, the longest streak since 1970.

KEY DRIVERS: Consumer spending has been strong enough to sustain job growth, even though global pressures appear to have stunted overall economic gains during the 2016.

U.S. employers have added 2.25 million jobs over the past 12 months. And in November, the unemployment rate fell to a nine-year low of 4.6 percent.

WASHINGTON: Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, continuing a nearly two-year trend that suggests a solid job market. THE NUMBERS: Weekly requests for jobless aid fell 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 265,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The less volatile four-week moving average for claims was 263,000. Over the past year, the number of people collecting benefits has fallen almost 5 percent to 2.1 million. THE TAKEAWAY: The historically low number of people seeking jobless aid is a positive sign for the economy. Weekly jobless claims below 300,000 often point to healthy hiring levels. The low level of applications indicates that employers are holding onto workers and possibly looking to expand. Claims have stayed below 300,000 for 95 straight weeks, the longest streak since 1970. KEY DRIVERS: Consumer spending has been strong enough to sustain job growth, even though global pressures appear to have stunted overall economic gains during the 2016. U.S. employers have added 2.25 million jobs over the past 12 months. And in November, the unemployment rate fell to a nine-year low of 4.6 percent.
By AFP

BEIRUT: A nationwide ceasefire in Syria brokered by Russia and Turkey was in effect early Friday, a potentially major breakthrough in the nearly 6-year conflict, despite reports of isolated clashes.

The deal, which does not include designated "terrorists" like the Islamic State group, was announced hours earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin and confirmed by the Syrian army and opposition.

While the truce was standing in most parts of the country early Friday, some fighting broke out near a Christian town in central Hama province with Islamist factions attacking regime forces, according to a monitoring group.

"Fierce clashes took place between the two sides pushing regime forces to withdraw from a hill near Maharda," Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP.

"Small rebel groups and armed loyalists are seeking to destroy the truce because it puts an end to their presence," he said.

Elsewhere, the ceasefire was reported to be holding.

According to an AFP correspondent in Eastern Ghouta, the shelling and airstrikes stopped for more than one hour in the region after intensive shelling and raids on Thursday.

AFP correspondents in Damascus and Idlib said there had been no sound of shelling, airstrikes or clashes since midnight.

The agreement, hailed by Syria's government as a "real opportunity" to find a political solution to the war, comes a week after the regime recaptured second city Aleppo in a major blow to rebel forces.

The deal was brokered by Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides in the conflict, but does not involve Washington, which has negotiated previous ceasefires with Moscow.

Putin said Damascus and the "main forces of the armed opposition" had inked a truce and a document expressing a readiness to start peace talks.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the agreement as a "historic opportunity" to end the Syrian conflict, which has killed more than 310,000 people and forced millions from their homes.

Putin said he would also reduce Moscow's military contingent in Syria, which has been flying a bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad since last year.

The Kremlin strongman, however, said Russia would continue to fight "terrorism" in Syria and maintain its support for the regime.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said seven opposition groups, including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham, had signed the deal and those who failed to adhere would be considered "terrorists".

Erdogan indicated Turkey would press on with its four-month incursion into Syria against Islamic State group jihadists and Kurdish militia.

- Astana peace talks -

Syria's army said the deal did not include IS and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fateh al-Sham Front.

That could cause complications in areas like Idlib in northwestern Syria, where Fateh al-Sham is allied with rebel groups that have signed onto the deal.

Syria's political opposition and rebels had confirmed their backing for the truce, saying it applied to all parts of the country.

"The agreement is for all of Syria and contains no exceptions or preconditions," said Osama Abou Zeid, a legal adviser to rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.

The agreement comes after Turkey and Russia brokered a deal to allow the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians and rebel fighters from Aleppo.

Moscow and Ankara are now pushing for peace talks between Damascus and the rebels to start soon in Kazakhstan's capital Astana.

"Now we need to do everything for these agreements to come into force, for them to work, so that the negotiating teams that have been or are being formed promptly and as soon as possible arrive in Astana," Putin said.

UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura said he hoped the agreement would "pave the way for productive talks" in Kazakhstan, but also reiterated he wants negotiations mediated by his office to continue early next year.

- 'Positive development' -

Russia and Turkey have both said the peace talks they will supervise are meant to supplement UN-backed peace efforts, rather than replace them entirely.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia, Turkey and Iran were arranging for the talks and pressing for other key international players to get involved.

Lavrov said Moscow would invite Egypt and try to attract other regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Jordan.

He added Moscow would seek to involve US President-elect Donald Trump's administration once he takes office in less than a month, but the process does not appear to involve outgoing President Barack Obama's administration.

The US State Department called the ceasefire deal a "positive development" and said it hoped it would lead to fresh negotiations on Syria's political future.

Abou Zeid confirmed the truce deal was intended to pave the way for new talks in Astana, with the High Negotiations Committee that has represented the opposition at previous negotiations expected to participate.

Turkey has long backed Syria's opposition, and its relations with Russia soured last year after Ankara shot down a Russian warplane.

But the two countries have worked closely of late on Syria, and Turkey was conspicuously quiet as Assad's forces retook Aleppo.

BEIRUT: A nationwide ceasefire in Syria brokered by Russia and Turkey was in effect early Friday, a potentially major breakthrough in the nearly 6-year conflict, despite reports of isolated clashes. The deal, which does not include designated "terrorists" like the Islamic State group, was announced hours earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin and confirmed by the Syrian army and opposition. While the truce was standing in most parts of the country early Friday, some fighting broke out near a Christian town in central Hama province with Islamist factions attacking regime forces, according to a monitoring group. "Fierce clashes took place between the two sides pushing regime forces to withdraw from a hill near Maharda," Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP. "Small rebel groups and armed loyalists are seeking to destroy the truce because it puts an end to their presence," he said. Elsewhere, the ceasefire was reported to be holding. According to an AFP correspondent in Eastern Ghouta, the shelling and airstrikes stopped for more than one hour in the region after intensive shelling and raids on Thursday. AFP correspondents in Damascus and Idlib said there had been no sound of shelling, airstrikes or clashes since midnight. The agreement, hailed by Syria's government as a "real opportunity" to find a political solution to the war, comes a week after the regime recaptured second city Aleppo in a major blow to rebel forces. The deal was brokered by Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides in the conflict, but does not involve Washington, which has negotiated previous ceasefires with Moscow. Putin said Damascus and the "main forces of the armed opposition" had inked a truce and a document expressing a readiness to start peace talks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the agreement as a "historic opportunity" to end the Syrian conflict, which has killed more than 310,000 people and forced millions from their homes. Putin said he would also reduce Moscow's military contingent in Syria, which has been flying a bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad since last year. The Kremlin strongman, however, said Russia would continue to fight "terrorism" in Syria and maintain its support for the regime. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said seven opposition groups, including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham, had signed the deal and those who failed to adhere would be considered "terrorists". Erdogan indicated Turkey would press on with its four-month incursion into Syria against Islamic State group jihadists and Kurdish militia. - Astana peace talks - Syria's army said the deal did not include IS and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fateh al-Sham Front. That could cause complications in areas like Idlib in northwestern Syria, where Fateh al-Sham is allied with rebel groups that have signed onto the deal. Syria's political opposition and rebels had confirmed their backing for the truce, saying it applied to all parts of the country. "The agreement is for all of Syria and contains no exceptions or preconditions," said Osama Abou Zeid, a legal adviser to rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner. The agreement comes after Turkey and Russia brokered a deal to allow the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians and rebel fighters from Aleppo. Moscow and Ankara are now pushing for peace talks between Damascus and the rebels to start soon in Kazakhstan's capital Astana. "Now we need to do everything for these agreements to come into force, for them to work, so that the negotiating teams that have been or are being formed promptly and as soon as possible arrive in Astana," Putin said. UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura said he hoped the agreement would "pave the way for productive talks" in Kazakhstan, but also reiterated he wants negotiations mediated by his office to continue early next year. - 'Positive development' - Russia and Turkey have both said the peace talks they will supervise are meant to supplement UN-backed peace efforts, rather than replace them entirely. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia, Turkey and Iran were arranging for the talks and pressing for other key international players to get involved. Lavrov said Moscow would invite Egypt and try to attract other regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Jordan. He added Moscow would seek to involve US President-elect Donald Trump's administration once he takes office in less than a month, but the process does not appear to involve outgoing President Barack Obama's administration. The US State Department called the ceasefire deal a "positive development" and said it hoped it would lead to fresh negotiations on Syria's political future. Abou Zeid confirmed the truce deal was intended to pave the way for new talks in Astana, with the High Negotiations Committee that has represented the opposition at previous negotiations expected to participate. Turkey has long backed Syria's opposition, and its relations with Russia soured last year after Ankara shot down a Russian warplane. But the two countries have worked closely of late on Syria, and Turkey was conspicuously quiet as Assad's forces retook Aleppo.
By Associated Press

MILAN: Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni said today that there are no indications the Tunisian fugitive from the Berlin Christmas market attack, who was shot dead near Milan, had any significant contacts in Italy.

Italian investigators have been trying to determine whether Anis Amri tapped a jihadi network in Italy, his European port of entry when he left Tunisia in early 2011 and the end of his nearly four-day flight following the Berlin truck attack that left 12 dead.

"No particular networks have emerged in Italy," Gentiloni told reporters in Rome ahead of a security meeting in Milan headed by his interior minister.

But the prime minister said there still is a need to enhance anti-terror measures, including making it easier to deport migrants living in the country illegally. Existing measures already permit Italy to expel foreign nationals with suspected terror ties, with 66 carried out so far this year and 152 since the beginning of 2015.

They include a Tunisian man living in the northern province of Brescia who was expelled Thursday. The Interior Ministry alleged he received instructions last month to carry out an attack in Italy "in retaliation for operations by Italy in Libya."

Interior Minister Marco Minniti said the deported man apparently had no connection with fellow Tunisian Amri and there were no indications any attack was imminent.

"But the expulsion was important because he wasn't just any character. He had a profile that was potentially interesting," Minniti said.

Authorities in Rome, meanwhile, seized cellphones during a search of two apartments where Amri stayed in 2015, the news agency ANSA reported. One is home to a Tunisian currently jailed on a drug dealing conviction.

Amri died of a single gunshot wound last Friday after shooting an officer in the shoulder during a routine police stop in the working class Milan suburb of Sesto San Giovanni.

He was spotted alone outside a deserted train station in the early morning hours, drawing the officers' suspicion.

Minniti said such preventative policing was key to the terror fight.

"We are facing a high level of unpredictability, and the only way of avoiding these actions is to control the territory," Minniti said.

Amri had crossed the border from France by train hours earlier, getting off in the Italian border town of Bardonecchia, then taking a regional train to Turin and another to Milan. His ultimate destination remains unclear.

Gentiloni credited good police work for ending Amri's flight, but said the government would look at further strengthening anti-terrorism measures. That would include steps "to make more efficient the repatriation mechanisms from the migrant centers," he said.

MILAN: Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni said today that there are no indications the Tunisian fugitive from the Berlin Christmas market attack, who was shot dead near Milan, had any significant contacts in Italy. Italian investigators have been trying to determine whether Anis Amri tapped a jihadi network in Italy, his European port of entry when he left Tunisia in early 2011 and the end of his nearly four-day flight following the Berlin truck attack that left 12 dead. "No particular networks have emerged in Italy," Gentiloni told reporters in Rome ahead of a security meeting in Milan headed by his interior minister. But the prime minister said there still is a need to enhance anti-terror measures, including making it easier to deport migrants living in the country illegally. Existing measures already permit Italy to expel foreign nationals with suspected terror ties, with 66 carried out so far this year and 152 since the beginning of 2015. They include a Tunisian man living in the northern province of Brescia who was expelled Thursday. The Interior Ministry alleged he received instructions last month to carry out an attack in Italy "in retaliation for operations by Italy in Libya." Interior Minister Marco Minniti said the deported man apparently had no connection with fellow Tunisian Amri and there were no indications any attack was imminent. "But the expulsion was important because he wasn't just any character. He had a profile that was potentially interesting," Minniti said. Authorities in Rome, meanwhile, seized cellphones during a search of two apartments where Amri stayed in 2015, the news agency ANSA reported. One is home to a Tunisian currently jailed on a drug dealing conviction. Amri died of a single gunshot wound last Friday after shooting an officer in the shoulder during a routine police stop in the working class Milan suburb of Sesto San Giovanni. He was spotted alone outside a deserted train station in the early morning hours, drawing the officers' suspicion. Minniti said such preventative policing was key to the terror fight. "We are facing a high level of unpredictability, and the only way of avoiding these actions is to control the territory," Minniti said. Amri had crossed the border from France by train hours earlier, getting off in the Italian border town of Bardonecchia, then taking a regional train to Turin and another to Milan. His ultimate destination remains unclear. Gentiloni credited good police work for ending Amri's flight, but said the government would look at further strengthening anti-terrorism measures. That would include steps "to make more efficient the repatriation mechanisms from the migrant centers," he said.
A sad news came from Belgian royal family. Former Queen Paola of Belgium aged 79 was hospitalized due to spinal fracture that formed after falling down. In the statement made by Belgian royal press office, it was stated that the injury has no neurological complications but the rehabilitation of the Queen will last for a few months. Zara Tindall, granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth lost her baby. Queen Elizabeth, Queen Sonja and Queen Silvia were unable to attend the Christmas service because of common cold. Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg was hospitalized for bronchitis treatment. We wish all these royals a quick recovery.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Clear this evening then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 57F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Clear this evening then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low 57F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph.
New modular hotel is being constructed in Trafford City in Greater Manchester, UK. [Photo provided to China Daily]

A new hotel is under construction in Manchester - and it's being built entirely with shipping containers from China.

Set for completion in May 2017, the 220-room Holiday Inn Express near the EventCity exhibition center in Greater Manchester is the first large-scale modular building of its kind in the North West. The shipping containers are produced by Shenzhen-headquartered CIMC Modular Building Systems, a subsidiary of China International Marine Containers (CIMC). The company decorates the containers in China before shipping them to the UK.

Peter de la Perrelle, managing director of Tower Hotel Management, part of the Peel Group, which has the management contract to operate the hotel, said: "The containers are completely furnished on the inside, complete with bathrooms - all we have to do is lower them into position and bolt them in, then they are plumbed and plugged in and are operational."

The site was purchased from the Peel Group in a joint venture between real estate companies Topland, Marick Capital and Mill Lane Estates, which then approached CIMC to collaborate on the build. The Chinese company built a sample room which Holiday Inn Express' parent company IHG inspected in China before giving the go-ahead.

De la Perrelle says that while the novel approach is marginally cheaper than traditional methods, the real benefit is that the hotel can be built quickly.

He said: "With traditional methods it takes about 18 months - we are on schedule for a 41 week build. So, you're bringing your product to market a lot quicker and can start earning money on the investment sooner than you would with normal methods."

Each shipping container weighs 20 tons, and comprises two rooms and part of a corridor. All containers have now been installed on the Manchester site and the process of waterproofing and fitting the building's outer cladding is currently underway.

"It has gone beautifully. The main building contractor has been very impressed with the smoothness of the operation - the pods arrived on site on schedule and the build program is spot on,"de la Perrelle said. "It's been a great collaboration between the build contractor and CIMC."

CIMC Modular Building Systems has worked on more than 10 projects in the UK - clients include the InterContinental Hotels Group, Rezidor Hotel Group, Accor and Hilton.
Direct Relief today airlifted 82 tons of medical aid to Haiti to help treat cholera and other diseases that have spread widely since Hurricane Matthew struck in October, incapacitating the country's already overstretched health care system.

Direct Relief's warehouse staff worked through the holidays to prepare 258 pallets of essential medications and supplies with a wholesale value of $39.9 million. The shipment - the largest by value in Direct Relief's 69-year history - traveled by a chartered cargo jet from Los Angeles to Port-au-Prince.

While the Haiti crisis has faded from the headlines, the situation remains urgent. More than 1.4 million people require assistance months after the storm wiped out food crops and damaged more than 90 percent of fruit and forest trees, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Direct Relief responded to requests for help from Haiti immediately after the storm made landfall, but a critical and ongoing need for aid persists.

"The facilities receiving support from this airlift were especially hard-hit and are struggling to recover from the effects of Hurricane Matthew," said Andrew MacCalla, Direct Relief's Director of International Programs. "Many of their patients had homes damaged or destroyed and their livelihoods cut off."

"The situation in southern Haiti after Hurricane Matthew is dire, and the risks of disease and famine are dangerously high," said Conor Shapiro of the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, a Direct Relief partner that provides health care, educational opportunities and community development programs.

The supplies on this shipment were requested by 37 Haitian organizations, including St. Boniface, that represent more than 200 health care facilities in Haiti, which often are unable to access or afford the essential medicines they need to meet the demands of their patient populations.

Among the airlift's contents are 16 specially designed cholera modules that include infusion therapy supplies to help rehydrate patients, as well as antibiotics. Each module can treat 40 severe and 60 moderate cases of cholera.

Because cholera prevention hinges on the availability of safe drinking water, Direct Relief is also sending enough P&G Purifier of Water sachets to purify 1.5 million gallons of water. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the sachets were "designed to reverse-engineer a water treatment plant, incorporating the multiple barrier processes of removal of particles and disinfection."

Haiti has also seen a rise in cases of diphtheria, a potentially deadly bacterial infection. To help patients suffering from diphtheria, the shipment contains antibiotics and respiratory supplies. Also included in the shipment are hygiene products, soaps, detergent and bleach, and medications to treat chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension and depression.

This delivery adds to several from Direct Relief to Haiti since the storm hit, including a 17-ton consignment that FedEx delivered in October free of charge on a chartered 757 flight.
FastMed Urgent Care opened a new walk-in clinic today in Zebulon, North Carolina, further cementing its position as the nation's fastest-growing and largest urgent care provider in North Carolina. The new Zebulon clinic, located in the Zebulon Crossings Shopping Centeracross from the Walmart Supercenteroffers convenient, affordable, and accessible urgent care 365 days a year, including extended weekday and weekend hours.

The Zebulon location is the 58th North Carolina clinic for FastMed, which owns and operates a total of 100+ clinics throughout the U.S. Last year, FastMed provided care for more than one million patients of all ages. This also makes it the largest urgent care provider nationwide to earn the Joint Commission's Gold Seal of Approval recognizing quality and safety.

This latest FastMed Urgent Care provides the Zebulon community immediate care for the following, non-emergency healthcare needs:

"We're pleased to provide Zebulon with the same great urgent care we offer throughout North Carolina," says Sami F. Elbadramany, FastMed Executive Vice President, Corporate Development. "Our high marks in customer satisfaction and Joint Commission accreditation underline the premier patient care experience the Zebulon community can expect at a FastMed clinic."

The new FastMed will be open both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Walk-ins are welcome and convenient online check-in is available.

SOURCE FastMed Urgent Care
Advances in microscopy techniques have often triggered important discoveries in the field of neuroscience, enabling vital insights in understanding the brain and promising new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. A special section on "Super-resolution Microscopy of Neural Structure and Function" in the current issue of the journal Neurophotonics, published by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, details this work in reports on ground-breaking new research and reviews.

Starting with the Golgi technique at the end of the 19th century, to electron microscopy in the 1950s, to fluorescent confocal and two-photon microscopy at the close of the 20th century, microscopy techniques have driven important breakthroughs in neuroscience, note guest editors Valentin Nagerl and Jean-Baptiste Sibarita of the Universite de Bordeaux and the CNRS in their editorial for the special section.

"By providing higher spatial and temporal resolutions, as well as more contrast and specificity, these ground-breaking techniques have greatly informed our view of how the brain works," the editors write.

Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy "is the latest spoke in the revolutionary wheel," the guest editors note. "Recognized with the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2014 for overcoming the diffraction barrier of light microscopy, it unlocks a new potential to upend biological research at the molecular level. Ten years after their development in a handful of laboratories, super-resolution microscopy techniques have caught on like wildfire and are now routinely used in a large number of biology labs."

While super-resolution microscopy is a relative recent addition to the arsenal of tools available for neuroscientific research, said Neurophotonics editor-in-chief David Boas of Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, "the breadth of impactful applications is growing rapidly. This special section provides a snapshot of this growth with a collection of exciting papers illustrating the breadth of applications."

Neuroscience eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

Articles in the section, many of them accessible via open access, help validate and assess new techniques by comparing them with more established approaches. Among them:

In "Filling the gap: adding super-resolution to array tomography for correlated ultrastructural and molecular identification of electrical synapses at the C. elegans connectome," Sebastian Matthias Markert of the University of Wurzburg and co-authors describe a new method to correlate molecular information with ultrastructural context. Their aim is to allow researchers to dissect the molecular underpinnings of the ultrastructural organization and function of electrical synapses precisely and confidently.

Producing nanoscale maps of protein organization on cell surfaces or within organelles is another exciting prospect in super-resolution microscopy. In "Counting numbers of synaptic proteins: absolute quantification and single molecule imaging techniques," Angela Patrizio and Christian Specht of Ecole Normale Superieure describe how single-molecule-based microscopy techniques offer unparalleled opportunities to study protein content and dynamics in key functional compartments.

An early hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's is the misfolding and self-aggregation of proteins into amyloid structures that are believed to wreak havoc on neurons and synapses. In "Probing amyloid protein aggregation with optical super-resolution methods: from the test tube to models of disease", Clemens Kaminski and Gabriele Kaminski Schierle of the University of Cambridge explain the potential of new optical super-resolution techniques to provide insight on the molecular mechanism of the pathogenic self-assembly process in vitro and inside cells.

Source: SPIE--International Society for Optics and Photonics
Mumbai: After accusing former chairman Cyrus Mistry of breaching confidentiality rules, Tata Sons on Thursday asked the ousted chairman to return all classified papers and sign an undertaking within 48 hours that he would not disclose such information in future.



In a second legal notice in three days, Tata Sons alleged that Mistry had "wrongfully and dishonestly" taken confidential information out of the company premises without consent.



It asked him to "immediately return to the company all confidential information" in his possession and "not retain copies" of the same.



Asking him to cease from use or disclosure of confidential information, the holding company of the USD 103-billion salt-to-software group also asked Mistry to sign an undertaking within 48 hours that he "shall preserve the confidentiality of all the confidential information and not use or disclose" to anyone, including affiliates, relatives and family members.



On Tuesday, it had sent a legal notice accusing Mistry of breaching confidentiality rules by attaching dozens of confidential and sensitive company documents with the petition filed by his family investment firms before the National Company Law Tribunal against his removal.



It had threatened to take legal action against him, terming his action as "reckless failure" in discharging of

"fiduciary, legal and contractual duties".



In Thursday's notice served through its law firm, Tata Sons said Mistry was privy to confidential and commercially sensitive information and documents in his capacity as executive chairman and director of the company and its operating firms.



"Under applicable low, you are duty-bound to (a) preserve the confidentiality of all such information and data that you are privy to in your capacity as director and (b) not disclose or use such information for any purpose whatsoever," it said adding any breach of such legal duties would cause irreparable harm and injury to Tata Sons.



Mistry, it said, is in "possession of highly valuable information and documents" pertaining to Tata Sons and Tata Group companies, which he has "disclosed" without prior authorisation from the board.



"We have credible information that you have wrongfully and dishonestly taken movable property being Confidential Information, out of the possession of the company, from the premises of the company, without taking the appropriate consent of the company," the notice said adding such an act was an offence punishable by law.



It asked him to "immediately return to the company all confidential information" in his possession and "not retain any copies" as well as "cease any and all use or disclosure of Confidential Information".



Also, Tata Sons wanted Mistry to execute an undertaking stating that he has returned all the confidential information without retaining any copies.



The undertaking also wants Mistry to state that he will "preserve the confidentiality of all Confidential Information and not use or disclose such Confidential Information for any purpose whatsoever and shall not provide any such Confidential Information to any affiliates, relatives and family members".



The legal notice defined Confidential Information as all business, legal, commercial or technical information of the company.



Tata Sons wanted Mistry to return the undertaking within two days of receiving the notice.



Mistry had last week filed a petition seeking the intervention of the National Company Law Tribunal, accusing the conglomerate of shareholder oppression and mismanagement.
New Delhi: With only a day to go for the December 30 deadline set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ease cash supply after November 8 Demonetisation announcement, the hardship for the common man still persists.



Even as the verdict is yet to be out on whether the demonetisation was healthy for economy, here is a list of 66 notifications issued by RBI in the run up the 50-day deadline.



Notification No. 1



8 November: Prime Minister Narendra Modi announces at 8 pm that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes are scrapped. You were told that you could exchange these for Rs 4,000 at bank branches.



Notification No. 2



8 November: Government announces CCTV monitoring of jewellery shops.



Notification No. 3



8 November: Government announces that majority of the ATMs will start functioning from 10 November.



Notification No. 4



9 November: RBI notifies that all ATMs, cash deposit machines, cash recyclers and any other machine used for receipt and payment of cash will remain shut till 11 November.



Notification No. 5



9 November: RBI asks banks to configure ATM Machines to dispense only Rs 100 and Rs 50 banknotes once the ATMs are re-opened.



Notification No. 6



9 November: RBI sets withdrawal limit at Rs 2,000 per day per card up to 18 November 2016.



Notification No. 7



9 November: ATM withdrawal limit shall be raised to Rs 4,000 per day per card from 19 November 2016.



Notification No. 8



9 November: RBI asks banks to disable Cash Deposit Machines (CDMs) and Cash Recyclers (CRs) for dispensing banned bank notes.



Notification No. 9



9 November: Banks to remain open for public on 12 November (Saturday) and 13 November (Sunday).



Notification No. 10



9 November: RBI issues a circular specifying that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes shall continue to be legal tender at specific places until 11 November 2016.



Notification No. 11



9 November: Cash withdrawal from a bank account over the counter shall be restricted to Rs 10,000 per day, subject to an overall limit of Rs 20,000 a week till 24 November 2016.



Notification No. 12



10 November: RBI says payment systems such as NEFT (National Electronic Funds Transfer), RTGS (Real-time gross settlement systems) and cheque clearing will remain open on 12 and 13 November.



Notification No. 13



11 November: RBI assures you that enough time will be provided to exchange your old notes.



Notification No. 14



11 November: Government departments may be allowed to draw cash beyond the stipulated limit of Rs 10,000. Government also extends exemptions for using old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes till 14 November midnight.



Notification No. 15



11 November: In order to avoid any inconvenience to foreign tourists, RBI asks authorities to issue pre-paid instruments to foreign tourists in exchange of foreign exchange tendered.



Notification No. 16



12 November: RBI once again calls for calm and urges people to utilise alternative payment methods.



Notification No. 17



13 November: Exchange limit raised to Rs 4,500 per day. Daily ATM withdrawal limit increased to Rs 2,500 per day from Rs 2,000 in recalibrated ATMs.



Notification No. 18



13 November: The last date for submission of the annual life certificate for the government pensioners extended from November end to 15 January 2017.



Notification No. 19



13 November: Withdrawal limit from branches increased to Rs 24,000 a week; daily limit removed.



Notification No. 20



14 November: If you are a District Central Cooperative bank customer, you can withdraw Rs 24,000 per week. However, you cannot exchange old notes for new ones, or deposit old notes. DCCBs are the backbone of rural economy and the only banking apparatus available to farmers and farm labourers.



Notification No. 21



14 November: Current account holders can withdraw Rs 50,000 per week.



Notification No. 22



14 November: Banks shall waive levy of ATM charges for all transactions (inclusive of both financial and non-financial transactions) by savings bank customers from 10 November 2016 till 30 December 2016.



Notification No. 23



14 November: Banks may deploy their Micro ATMs (Bala Mitras, etc) near village panchayat offices, police stations/police and military outposts, government departments, offices of Public Sector Units, petrol pumps and other similar secure locations.



Notification No. 24



14 November: The cash withdrawal limit of Rs 24,000 per week is not applicable to withdrawal of cash by a DCCB from its account with any other bank.



Notification No. 25



14 November: Charges on ATM transactions waived till 30 December.



Notification No. 26



14 November: Government extended acceptance of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes for public utility and fuel payment till 24 November.



Notification No. 27



15 November: At this point, you may have got inked. Banks started using indelible ink to identify people queuing up to exchange old notes.



Notification No. 28



17 November: Exchange limit changed for the third time, reduced to Rs 2,000 per day.



Notification No. 29



17 November: Farmers and farm traders breathed a sigh of relief after farmers were allowed to withdraw Rs 25,000 per week.



Notification No. 30



17 November: The government had also decided that the time limit in crop insurance premium cases will be extended by 15 days.



Notification No. 31



17 November: Traders in agricultural mandis permitted to draw up to Rs 50,000 in cash per week to pay for sundry expenses like wages.



Government announces select Public Sector Unit (PSU) petrol pumps start dispensing Rs 2,000 per person in cash against swiping of debit cards. However, most pumps deny service on account of Point of Sale machines and lack of cash.



Notification No. 32



18 November: Cash withdrawal through Point of Sale (PoS) systems across all cities made uniform at Rs 2,000 per day per account. This is aimed at easing pressure on banks.



Notification No. 33



18 November: Now 2,500 petrol pumps with SBI PoS terminals can disburse cash up to a limit of Rs 2,000 by swiping debit cards.



Notification No. 34



21 November: If you were getting married, you were allowed to withdraw a maximum of Rs 2,50,000 from a single account. But you were asked to provide a host of reasons to prove that you needed the cash for your wedding.



Notification No. 35



21 November: Current, overdraft and cash-credit accounts, which were operational for three months or more, allowed to withdraw up to Rs 50,000 in cash per week.



Notification No. 36



22 November: Following the cash cruch post the note ban, RBI issues special measures to incentivise electronic payments.



Notification No. 37



22 November: The limit of semi-closed Prepaid Payment Instrument enhanced from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000.



Notification No. 38



22 November: Special rules were also announced for merchants.



Notification No. 39



22 November: Only a day in, RBI modifies rules for cash withdrawal for weddings. RBI asks for a detailed list of persons to whom the cash withdrawn is supposed to be paid, together with a declaration from the people that they do not have a bank account, where the amount proposed to be paid is Rs 10,000 or more. The list should indicate the purpose for which the proposed payments are being made.



Notification No. 40



22 November: RBI issues circular to banks, with a list of to-dos for banks to help them curb fraudulent practices with respect to the exchange and acceptance of demonetised bank notes.



Notification No. 41



22 November: NABARD would be utilising its own cash credit limits up to about Rs 23,000 crore to enable the DCCBs to disburse the required crop loans to PACS and farmers.



Notification No. 42



23 November: RBI says scrapped notes will not be accepted as deposits in small savings accounts.



Notification No. 43



23 November: Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das announced that central government employees up to Group C will be allowed to draw salary advance up to Rs 10,000 in cash. This amount will be adjusted against their November salaries.



Notification No. 44



24 November: The RBI changes exchange norms for the fourth time, scraps the facility altogether at bank branches.



Notification No. 45



24 November: The RBI issues a separate statement after the government says that over-the-counter exchange of notes would no longer take place at bank branches, with effect from midnight on 25 November.



The RBI informs that you can continue to exchange your old notes at one of RBI branches.



Notification No. 46



25 November: Foreign citizens allowed to exchange their currency notes up to a limit of Rs 5,000 per week till 15 December.



Notification No. 47



25 November: Circular sent out asking banks to stick to earlier weekly limit for withdrawal of Rs 24,000 per week.



Notification No. 48



27 November: New scheme for depositing old notes with designated currency chest at the district level, under guarantee agreement similar to the current facility available at the RBI offices.



Notification No. 49



28 November: The RBI said it would allow withdrawals beyond the stipulated limit if one deposited legal (new) currency.



Notification No. 50



29 November: Accounts under PMJDY which received deposits in old notes and are fully KYC-compliant account holders may be allowed to withdraw Rs 10,000 from their account in a month.



Notification No. 51



(Updated on) 29 November: Accounts under PMJDY which are non-KYC complaint will be allowed to withdraw Rs 5,000 per month from the amount deposited using old notes after 9 November.



Notification No. 52



30 November: RBI makes modifications to the deposit limit of Specified Bank Notes (SBNs) for banks.



Notification No. 53



30 November: RBI limits withdrawal from Jan Dhan accounts to Rs 10,000 a month.



Notification No. 54



1 December: Government says that old Rs 500 notes are valid till 2 December for fuel and purchasing air tickets, instead of 15 December announced earlier.



For convenience of passengers, Indian Railways decided not to levy service charges of Rs 20 for second class and Rs 40 for upper classes on purchase of reserved E-tickets up to 31 December.



Notification No. 55



15 December: Bank accounts with deposits of more than Rs 2 lakh since 8 November 2016, and a total balance more than Rs 5 lakh, were not given permission to withdraw/transfer funds without presenting a PAN card or Form 60 (for those who did not have PAN).



Notification No. 56



16 December: RBI extends permit for foreign citizens to exchange foreign exchange for Indian currency notes up to a limit of Rs 5,000 per week till 31 December.



Notification No. 57



16 December: RBI announces special measures upto 31 March 2017 for Rationalisation of Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) for transactions upto Rs 2,000.



For transactions upto Rs 1,000, RBI caps MDR at 0.25 percent of the transaction value.



For transactions above Rs 1,000 and upto Rs 2,000, MDR capped at 0.5 percent of the transaction value.



Notification No. 58



16 December: RBI announces relaxation in customer charges for Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), Unified Payment Interface (UPI) and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD). As a temporary measure, it decides that no charges will be levied on customers for transactions upto Rs 1,000 settled on the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), USSD-based *99#, and Unified Payment Interface (UPI) systems.



Notification No. 59



19 December: The RBI says the customer now needs to explain the delay in depositing old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in excess of Rs 5,000, and can deposit only once before 30 December (otherwise would invite scrutiny).



Notification No. 60



19 December: No limit on deposits in PMGKY. Further, an opportunity has been given to the public to make the payments towards tax, penalty, cess/surcharge and deposit under the PMGKY 2016 with the old bank notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination up to 30 December 2016, official statement from the government said. And if the accounts are not KYC-compliant, credits may be restricted up to Rs 50,000 subject to the conditions governing the conduct of such accounts, said the RBI.



Notification No. 61



20 December: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley clarifies that no questions will be asked if any amount of old currency is deposited in one go. However, he warned that repeated deposits may provoke queries.



Notification No. 62



21 December: The RBI changed the 19 December order, and exempted fully KYC-compliant bank accounts from the Rs 5,000 cap.



Notification No. 63



22 December: The RBI clarifies multiple deposits in KYC-compliant accounts allowed till 30 December.



Notification No. 64



22 December: Old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes can be used for payment under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) till 31 March.



Notification No. 65



28 December: Center passes Specified Bank Notes Cessation of Liabilities Ordinance, 2016 to permanently end the legal tender status of the old Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes.



The possession of notes over a certain amount will be a penal offence from 31 December, attracting a fine of Rs 10,000 or five times the amount, whichever is higher.



Depositing scrapped notes is allowed at certain RBI branches till 31 March. Furnishing wrong information will attract a fine of Rs 5,000 or five times the amount.



Notification No. 66



28 December: The RBI extends the loan repayment window of housing, car, farm and other loans worth up to Rs 1 crore to 90 days  a 30 day extension on top of the initial 60 day deadline.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modis tweet wishing Nawaz Sharif a long and healthy life on his birthday has been the subject of much discussion. After all it comes in the backdrop of the Uri and Nagrota attacks and increasing hostilities at the Indo-Pak border. The tweet was acknowledged by the Pakistani Prime Ministers daughter Maryam Nawaz who conveyed her fathers best wishes to Modi.



It has now emerged that Nawaz Sharif recently wrote to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj wishing her a speedy recovery. While the Indian government has refused to comment on the contents of the letter, Pakistan government sources say this is yet another proof of its seriousness to initiate dialogue and have good relations with India.



Reacting to Sharifs letter, former MEA secretary Vivek Katju said: "Nawaz Sharif has known Sushma Swaraj and it is common courtesy that he would write to her when she has been extremely ill. It also once again shows Nawaz Sharifs eagerness to resume the dialogue process."



Nawaz Sharifs letter is one of the many attempts by Pakistan to show it is committed to the dialogue process. Sartaj Aziz's visit to India for the Heart of Asia Conference was also aimed at restarting talks. Pakistan government sources say their goodwill gesture to release 220 Indian fishermen is also a step in that direction.



So does Narendra Modi's tweet wishing Nawaz Sharif show that India is now ready to resume talks? "While this is nothing but an exchange of pleasantries, it does show an attempt on the part of the Prime Minister to keep the doors for dialogue open. After all you have to start talking one day and you can't suspend talks forever, a source said.



Former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal said: "It would be childish on our part to take gestures like a birthday tweet as a change in policy. It is nothing but standard diplomatic practice. Sibal warned that India should not think of restarting dialogue before seeing tangible proof of Pakistan rooting out terror groups and taking action against the likes of Hafiz Saeed, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and Maulana Masood Azhar.



Sibal also said Pakistan's recent overtures are a pretence for the international community, which wants peace between India and Pakistan.



"Pakistan is only putting up this show to counter India's strategy to isolate it diplomatically. They want to earn brownie points by showing they want peace, he said.



Foreign policy experts also warn that it would be baffling for India to restart dialogue after mounting this diplomatic campaign after Uri attacks, carrying out surgical strikes and isolating Pakistan globally. Officially, the Indian government has given no indication of resuming bilateral dialogue, with the foreign ministry spokesperson saying talks and terror can't go together. Any change from the stated stand without tangible action from the Pakistani side would invite tremendous criticism from the Opposition, which has been questioning the Prime Ministers foreign policy.
Possession of more than 10 junked Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes will be a penal offence punishable with a minimum Rs 10,000 fine, but the harsher four-year jail term has been dropped.

An ordinance to the effect will soon be sent for approval to President Pranab Mukherjee.

The Congress has announced a nation-wide protest against demonetisation on January 5, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address the nation on Saturday, New Years Eve, where he is expected to reiterate his governments push for a digital India.

Heres a look at the days developments

Read all the Latest News , Breaking News , watch Top Videos and Live TV here.
President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday while inaugurating the 77th Session of Indian History Congress at Thiruvananthapuram said, The freedom to doubt, disagree and dispute intellectually must be protected as an essential pillar of our democracy. Nothing should lie outside the realm of reason, and therefore of discussion and argument. Such freedom is vital for progress in any field, especially a calling and a craft like history.



An objective pursuit of history requires an impartial mind of a judge and not the mind of an advocate.



We must keep our eyes open for unfamiliar ideas and be ready to consider a range of different inferences or assumptions. This necessarily bars intolerance of contrary opinions or judgement, he added.



On the ongoing intolerance debate in the country, President Mukherjee said: There has been an unfortunate tendency in our country from time to time to take umbrage at the expression of any view perceived to be hostile to our social or cultural institutions, past or present.



The President said that it is his firm conviction that Indias pluralism and social, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity are our greatest strength. Our traditions have always celebrated the argumentative Indian not the intolerant Indian. Multiple views, thoughts, and philosophies have competed with each other peacefully for centuries in our country and freedom of speech is one of the most important fundamental rights guaranteed by our Constitution, he said.



Appreciating the work of Indian History Congress, he said: The body has a creditable record of standing up for freedom of expression and asking historians to be faithful to the cause of reason. It has often taken cudgels against distortions of history.



He expressed hope that the Indian History Congress will continue to remain alert and vigilant in the cause of an objective study of history.




China opened two major high-speed rail lines on Wednesday, linking the country's less developed southwest with built-up coastal areas.

It also marks Yunnan province's entry into the nation's high-speed railway network. The new lines link its capital, Kunming, with Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Twenty-nine of 31 provincial-level regions on the Chinese mainland are now served by high-speed railways, excluding only the Tibet and Ningxia autonomous regions.

The 2,252-kilometer Shanghai-Kunming rail line traverses five provinces  Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan  and cuts rail travel time between the two cities from 34 to 11 hours, according to China Railway Corp, the nation's rail service provider.

It's the nation's longest east-west high-speed railway. Trains run from 300 to 350 kilometers per hour, depending on topography.

The new Kunming-Guangzhou line cuts travel time from 16 1/2 hours to 8 hours and 52 minutes, running at 200 to 250 km/h.

A high-speed grid of four north-south lines and four east-west lines is taking shape. In 2008, China set a target to build the grid by 2020. Only two sections have not opened yet, the Jinan-Shijiazhuang and Baoji-Lanzhou lines.

"The two new high-speed lines and the newly opened transportation hub at Kunming South Railway Station are important basic infrastructure to link with neighboring countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia," China Railway Corp said in a statement.

The system also aims to help eradicate poverty by transforming the high-speed rail industry into an economic driving force.

Peng Wan, a 28-year-old train fan from Kunming, took a day off work on Wednesday to catch the first bullet train departure from his hometown.

"In the early 1990s, I took a train from Kunming to Guiyang for the first time. It took about 20 hours. The travel time from Kunming to Guiyang has been reduced, to 17 hours and then to 10 hours, and now to only 2 1/2 hours. Guizhou is our neighbor and we can travel back and forth in the same day," he said.

In July, the National Development and Reform Commission issued an updated national railway development plan envisioning 38,000 km of high-speed railways by the end of 2025, up from more than 20,000 km now.

The current system accounts for 60 percent of the world's high-speed railroads, according to China Railway Corp.

"We will accelerate the construction of railways in central and western parts of China. We will also boost the expansion of intercity and suburban rail links," Zhang Dawei, deputy head of the Transport Ministry's planning department, said in July.

By the end of 2020, plans call for more than 80 percent of mainland cities with a population of at least 1 million to be covered by high-speed railways.
New Delhi: The central government on Thursday said it has released Rs 250 crore for the completion of the nearly Rs 7000-crore Lucknow Metro Rail project in Uttar Pradesh where polls to elect a new government is due early next year.



The Union Ministry of Urban Development in a statement said it had earlier released Rs 300 crore, taking the total amount of its promised assistance to Rs 550 crore for the completion of the flagship project, which is a joint venture between the central and the Uttar Pradesh governments.



The statement said Home Minister Rajnath Singh, a potential Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief ministerial candidate for the assembly polls, "has ordered speedy execution" of the 23-km long metro line.



The first phase -- between Transport Nagar to Charbagh -- is expected to open for the public in March 2017. Its first trial run was conducted on December 1 this year.





The union ministry said the Lucknow Metro is estimated to cost Rs 6,928 crore. Of this, the central government would provide Rs 1,003 crore as its share of equity, Rs 297 crore as subordinate debt and Rs 3,500 crore as loan assistance.



The Uttar Pradesh government has to mobilise the remaining Rs 2,128 crore as its share of equity.




New Delhi: The Centre has issued a gazette notification lowering citizenship registration fees for minority communities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan from Rs. 15,000 to Rs. 100.



This comes at a time when the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, which plans to give citizenship to all illegal migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan barring only Muslims; is drawing huge criticism for being unconstitutional.



This drastic reduction in the fees specifically for minorities has been made via an amendment to the Citizenship Rules of 2009. The minorities will include Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians.



Pradeep Bhattacharyya, a Congress Leader and a member of the Rajya Sabha Parliamentary Committee discussing the bill, said that the move to remove Muslims from the ambit of the bill was a later planned move of the government.



When I was the Chairman of the Home Standing Committee in 2015, this issue had cropped up before us in the face of the large influx of migrants in the border areas of Assam, Rajasthan and other areas. It was decided that something needs to be done to address this growing problem, he said.



According to international media, Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar are one of the most persecuted sections of population in the world. Though Rohingyas often travel from Myanmar to Bangladesh, they end up taking refuge in Assam, Delhi, Jaipur or other Indian states and stay with bare-minimum facilities at refugee camps.



Mohammed Salim, a CPI (M) leader from West Bengal and a member of the Lok Sabha parliamentary committee discussing this bill said that it has opened a Pandora's box of problems.



Some of the people in the committee have questioned that the people who come to India with valid visa & passport from these countries often overstay but have these people ever approached their embassies or the central government complaining about the religious persecution they are facing? The answer is a No, he said.



While the government deliberates on whether to grant Brahumdagh Bugti asylum and as Baloch Nationalist leader Naela Qadri Baloch hopes for a Baloch government in exile, this new Citizenship bill raises questions of hypocrisy and uncertainty, Salim said.



I had raised this point at a committee meeting that in the face of this bill, how the government is pushing for the Balochi freedom? Doesnt a bill like this defeat the entire purpose of such a foreign policy move? he said.



However, BJP MLA from Rajasthan, Surendra Pareek, who had last year opposed the move to rehabilitate Bangladeshi migrants from Jaipur, now doesnt seem to mind the position taken by the new bill.



I think this is an absolutely correct move. Look at Pakistan and how they treat the Pakistanis with respect but that is not the case with the minorities. Hence similar move should be in India as well. I do not agree that this violates the constitution in any way (sic), Pareek said.



Bhattacharyya says that this tussle between the aggrieved people and the government could be resolved by targeting the persecuted population and not only the religiously persecuted.



I had intimated the chairman of the committee that instead of religious persecution it should be persecution in general. This discrimination would be completely violative of the constitution and would create a lot of problems for the Muslims who fearing the growing problem of terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan take refuge near Rajasthan and other areas, he said.


New Delhi: Possession of more than 10 junked Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes will be a penal offence punishable with a minimum Rs 10,000 fine, but the harsher four-year jail term has been dropped.



The Specified Bank Notes Cessation of Liabilities Ordinance, approved on Wednesday by the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, allows individuals to hold no more than 10 notes of the old currency. It allows 25 such currencies to be held by research scholars.



Top sources said the ordinance, which will be sent to the President for his assent shortly, will come into effect from December 31.



It provides for making holding of old 1,000 and 500 rupee notes after March 31 a criminal offence that will attract a fine of Rs 10,000 or five times the cash held, whichever is higher.



Furnishing wrong information while depositing the old currency between January 1 and March 31  a window provided only for exigencies  will attract a fine of Rs 5,000 or five times the amount, whichever is higher.



The ordinance also provides for amending the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act to provide legislative support for extinguishing the demonetised banknotes that are not returned.



The 50-day window for depositing the old notes in bank accounts and post offices expires on Friday.



Sources said the proposal for a four-year jail term for anyone possessing large number of demonetised currency after March 31, 2017 was not approved.



The ordinance, which will have to be converted into proper legislation by passing of a law in Parliament within six months, makes possession, transfer or receiving an amount of over Rs 10,000 in the now-demonetised 500 and 1,000-rupee notes a punishable offence.



(With PTI inputs)


New Delhi: With the 50-day period for depositing of demonetised notes expiring on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to address the nation before the dawn of the New Year.



"Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to address the nation before dawn of the New Year," sources said.



However, it was not clear as to whether he would address the nation on Friday or Saturday.



In his address, the Prime Minister may speak about the roadmap post the demonetisation period especially on the steps likely to be taken to ease cash flow that has been a major problem ever since demonetisation took place.



He may also speak on the steps to deal with the problems the economy faces after the demonetisation was announced on November 8.







The Prime Minister in his public meetings in the last few weeks has been urging the people to bear with the pain following the government's decision and that it would start easing gradually once the 50-day period is over.



On Tuesday, Modi met economists and experts at a meeting in Niti Aayog to discuss the current economic situation.
Hyderabad: About 24 hours after daring Bollywood style gold heist here, Telangana police traced the black Scorpio used in the crime near Gulbarga in the neighbouring state in Karnataka.



The police are yet to trace and arrest the five robbers behind the heist at a Muthoot Finance branch on the outskirts of Hyderabad on Wednesday.



Police said five armed robbers reached the Muthoot Finance branch in RC Puram in a black Scorpio around 9.15am. They entered the branch claiming to be CBI officials, a senior police official said.



"First one of them dressed as a traffic cop went inside and said officers from the CBI have arrived. Then another one posing as a CBI official said they were there for a search after receiving information that people were converting black money into gold post demonetisation," Cyberabad CP Sandeep Shandilya said.



The modus operandi seemed very similar to the plot of 2013 movie Special 26 starring Akshay Kumar where a group posing as CBI officials raids a jewellery store in Mumbai. The film itself was inspired by the 1987 Opera House Heist at a Mumbai branch of Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri (TBZ) Jewellers.



Telangana DGP Anurag Sharma said, "We are investigating the case in real time. Seven teams are on the job. We have released sketch of the suspects. CCTV footage along the highways is being checked for their movement."



While leaving, the robbers also took with them the CCTV system at the branch. Employees and eyewitnesses told the police that they had dressed like officials and spoke Hindi and English.



Police suspect that an organized gang is behind the heist. Telangana police is also probing a similar robbery that took place in October in Karnataka.
Kolkata: The employees of the currency printing press at Salboni in West Bengal's West Midnapore district have decided not to work overtime anymore, saying they stick to their normal nine-hour-shifts.



Until a few days ago, the employees, at the request of the management, had agreed to work in 12-hour-shifts for the "interest of the country".



The employees union, the Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited (BRBNMPL) Employees Association, has connections to Trinamool Congress with party MP Sisir Adhikari being its president.



"The workers were working in a 12-hour-long shift but they could not take the pressure any longer. It is not possible physically to work 12 hours at a stretch. They have told management that they will work for nine hours only," Adhikary said.



A worker also said they had decided to stop overtime work.





"Since December 14, the workers were working in 12-hour shift. When the management wanted us to work longer we agreed for the interest of the nation. But it cannot go on," he said. A



Around 700 employees of the 1,200 staff (including officers) working at the Salboni facility are affiliated to BRBNMPL Employees' Association.



The management of BRBNMPL-Salboni facility will now have three shifts, the first starting from 6 a.m. to 2.45 p.m., second from 2.45 p.m.to 11 p.m. and the last night shift of seven hours from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.


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Gone are the days when female actors were second fiddles in Bollywoods top grossers, Now, they take the lead and defend the throne with utmost talent. 2016 has been a revelation  not only because female actors were out there doing what they wanted to, when they wanted to and how they wanted to, but because they took the onus on themselves and rejected roles they didnt think justified their ideologies. They led the films on their shoulders, let the big bucks come in but at the same time contributed to the resurgence of strong female characters in Bollywood.As the year comes to an end, we salute our leading ladies for the choices they made and the benchmarks they set this year. We bring you 10 of the boldest arcs created by women onscreen in 2016.Drug trafficking in Punjab is not a news but a woman standing up to it is. Alias portrayal of a helpless migrant worker sucked into the murky business of drugs was one of the finest performances to have come out of mainstream cinema in the recent times. She revealed as much as she concealed  whether it was her desire to be loved or her tryst with the heroin peddling land  the bolder shade underlining her characters plight struck the right chords.Sonam played the titular role of Neerja Bhanot, a 23-year-old airline purser who lost her life saving the lives of passengers on the Pan Am Flight hijacked by Palestinian terrorists in Karachi in 1986. The valour of an ordinary girl doing an extraordinary deed comes as a breath of fresh air and probably as an inspiration to young girls out there. Sonam, in most of the critics views, outdid herself with her low-key and realistic performance. Its not something usual that womans chronicle of service to country and humanity is brought to the screen.Pink is a significant film  it makes amends to the ever-lasting Bollywoods funda of considering stalking as romantic and a no meaning a yes. The film makes it pretty clear that no is not a word but an entire sentence  no means no. Taapsee played the role of a financially independent young woman who lives her life on her own terms. Shes just like one of us  living in a PG with her roommates, carefree when it comes to partying but bold enough to voice her opinion against unjust. Despite repeated threats, she continues to hold her ground and doesnt succumb under societys influence, inspiring women to speak up when things go wrong.The first Kahaani saw Vidya as a heavily pregnant woman in search of her missing husband, the second one sees her as a helpless mother looking for her kidnapped daughter and at the same time a woman on the run for murdering and kidnapping. In both of these, theres a presence of a strong female character which Vidya turns into a solid fleshed out character. She makes the character her own so much so that you literally start empathising with her agony.Breaking the set gender stereotypes, Ki and Ka assayed the journey of a married couple wherein the wife is the bread-earner of the family and the husband a housemaker. Most of the people couldnt come to terms with the depicted role-reversal but still accepted the film as an entertaining flick. Even though the step was a flawed one, the film and Kareenas role as a career-driven woman deserves appreciation for coming out of the closet and taking a stand. Not just her role but even her mothers character in the film was that of a progressive and an open-minded lady.Bollywood hasnt been open in accepting sexually-liberated woman characters vis-a-vis sexually-liberated mens roles. But with Aishwarya as the sensuous shairaa Saba in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, comes yet another unflinching performance and yet another brownie point for women.Sonakshi Sinha stepped to claim the throne of a bonafide action star with Akira. Playing the titular role, she is seen packing a punch in its most literal sense. To a viewers delight, the film chronicles the journey of a little girl, who very early in life understands that submitting to any wrong-doing is not right. She stands up for herself and for others and kicks some serious butts throughout the running time.Radhika Aptes nuanced portrayal of an uneducated, infertile village woman Lajjo became a voice to many others. The fact that women can put an end to abuse and violence made this film and Lajjos character a paramount role of 2016. By opting for a role like this, Apte proved that unless women become a little more empathetic to their own kind, the real change will not come about.Anushka Sharma is known as the actress who walks her talk but with this film, the actress raised a lot of eyebrows. Most of them went out and questioned her for doing a role that depicted the blatant patriarchy that exists in the society but on second thoughts, did it? Aarfa, who plays Sultans (Salman Khan) wife gives up her career to raise a family because she wanted to and not because the husband forced her to. While the role came under scrutiny for various such reasons, it was still a courageous choice for Anushka to accept it.Directed by Ashwini Iyer Tiwari, the film depicted Swara Bhaskar in the shoes of a high-school dropout maid and single mother of a sullen young girl, Apeksha. The film goes beyond borders and proves that theres no barrier to dreaming, not even ones social status. Considering the fact that her role dealt with the stereotypes set for adult education, this one marks an important milestone in women empowerment.Popularly known as Dangal sisters, the two proved that theres nothing women cant do. While the film is centered around Mahavir Phogats relentless struggle to make his daughters the best wrestlers in the country, the daughters' characters create hope for women being treated at par with men, even in rural areas. The film also questions the deep-rooted thinking of Indians to have a son as an heir and takes a significant step in changing the stereotypical notions set against women.
Chennai: AIADMK on Thursday passed a resolution to work under the leadership of Sasikala Natarajan, the close aide of late Tamil Nadu Chief minister Jayalalithaa.

Sasikala will be formally elected as the general secretary as per party by-laws only after she completes five years as a party member.

Sources told CNN-News18 that for the first time in the history of the party, elections will be held for the post of the general secretary according to rule 20, section 2 of the by-laws.

Earlier, rebel MP Sasikala Pushpas husband was arrested by the Tamil Nadu police.

On Wednesday, the meeting called to decide the successor for the late Tamil Nadu chief minister turned violent after party workers thrashed Sasikala Pushpas husband and a few lawyers accompanying him who were on a visit to the party office.

As it happened.

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Chennai: A day after the ruckus outside AIADMK's office in Chennai where rebel MP Sasikala Pushpa's lawyers were attacked by party workers, her husband has been arrested by the Tamil Nadu police on Thursday.



The arrest comes on a day when the party is all set to announce the successor of former Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa who passed away on December 5.



As per new Election commission rules, the general secretary of the party has to be elected before December 31.



Two resolutions are set to be passed by the party in the General council meeting which will set the stage for the official appointment of Sasikala Natarajan as the successor of Jayalalithaa.



On Wednesday the meeting called to decide the successor for the late Tamil Nadu chief minister turned violent after party workers thrashed the lawyers and Sasikala Pushpa's husband who were paying a visit to the party office.



According to reports, a team of four lawyers representing Sasikala Pushpa had gone to the party office during which they were attacked.



Visuals outside the party office flashed across TV channels suggested that the meeting turned violent after which the police had to use force to disperse the supporters who were seen physically manhandling the lawyers from the rebel camp.



It is, however, unclear as to why the lawyers visited the party office.



Party spokesperson C R Saraswathi told CNN-News18 that Pushpa is no more with the AIADMK and has no no right to be present in any meetings.



Reacting to the incident Sasikala Pushpa said, "Through the media I came to know that they are giving false complaints against him and have accused him of theft at AIADMK office. He is being accused of stealing documents from the party office. This is a pure law and order crisis and a human rights violation. It is a civil rights violation."



"They had gone to the office but then they were attacked and the police are now filing a complaint against him as if he is a thief," Pushpa added.







Sasikala Pushpa was expelled from the AIADMK after an altercation with DMK MP Tiruchi Siva at the Delhi airport earlier in July.



Post Jayalalithaa's death, Sasikala Pushpa had moved the Supreme Court seeking a CBI probe or a judicial investigation by an apex court judge into the matter.



In her petition, Pushpa had alleged that Jayalalithaa's death was "suspicious" as her actual medical condition was not disclosed, no one was allowed to visit her, her funeral photographs showed embalming marks and everything from her hospitalisation to her death "was kept under wraps".


Both a Taiwan affairs official and researchers have indicated the island's "diplomatic ties" will likely continue to suffer if Taipei continues to shun the 1992 Consensus on one China.

An Fengshan, spokesman of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, China's Cabinet, said on Wednesday that the Chinese mainland and Taiwan have achieved peaceful development of their relationship since 2008 based on sticking to the 1992 Consensus and opposing Taiwan "independence".

That's why they have avoided frictions in dealing with "diplomatic affairs", An said at a regular news conference.

But the relationship changed on May 20, he said, because Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party assumed office in Taiwan that day, and she has denied the 1992 Consensus.

An said Taiwan leader Tsai's refusal to support the Consensus has undermined the common political ground and political trust.

"The prospects ... and the achievements of the development of their relations have been through severe blows, and the impact has come in many aspects," An said. "The mainland has always upheld the one-China principle in dealing with Taiwan's 'diplomatic affairs'. Any attempt to create 'two Chinas', or 'one China, one Taiwan', is doomed to fail."

China resumed diplomatic relations with Sao Tome and Principe on Monday, after the African nation cut "diplomatic ties" with Taipei.

Liu Guoshen, director of the Taiwan Research Institute at Xiamen University, said Beijing is prudent in dealing with the resumption of diplomatic ties with former allies of Taiwan.

"Beijing puts the relationship with Taiwan first. However, if the tension between the mainland and Taiwan continues to grow, it is inevitable that Beijing will consider the requests for establishing diplomatic relations from former allies of Taiwan," Liu said.

Sheng Jiuyuan, head of the research center of Taiwan affairs at Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said there is an irresistible trend that Taiwan's "diplomatic allies" now hope to establish diplomatic relations with the mainland because it is in their political and economic interests.
Akhilesh's candidates were likely to contest on a separate symbol, other than SP's 'Cycle' symbol, paving the way for a wide split in the party grappling with dissensions and unprecedented feud at a time when the crucial polls were knocking at the door.

"The Chief Minister called us. He instructed us to go to our respective constituencies and prepare for the elections," Indal Singh, SP MLAs from Malihabad, said.

The Samajwadi Party seemed headed for a vertical split on Thursday with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav declaring a parallel list of candidates for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh elections. Akhilesh gave tickets to 235 candidates, including 171 sitting MLAs, many of whom were ignored in the list released by party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav a day earlier.The list was not officially released by Akhilesh but was put out in the public domain, probably to gain the upper hand in the ongoing power tussle in the party.Ateeq Ahmad, Rampal Yadav, Amanmani Tripathi, Shadab Fatima, Narad Roy and OP Singh, who were given a ticket by Mulayam find no mention in Akhilesh's list. Prominent among those figuring in the list are ministers Arvind Singh Gope, Pawan Pandey and Ram Govind Chaudhary, who are the hardcore Akhilesh loyalists denied ticket by Mulayam.Akhilesh Yadav has refrained from announcing candidates for several seats that are currently held by the Congress. The move came after hours of hectic parleys with Mulayam and a meeting with disgruntled loyalists in the morning, who vowed to return to power with Akhilesh as CM.Minutes after Akhilesh finalised his list, Shivpal Yadav met Mulayam and later released another list of 68 candidates, which like the party's first list had no mention of Akhilesh. Only nine seats remain for the party's final list.Thursdays showdown, the worst in the last few months, reached a flashpoint after Mulayam publicly snubbed his son by announcing a list of candidates that created bitterness in the pro-CM camp, prompting the upset Chief Minister to take up the matter with the SP supremo to convey his strong displeasure over the choice of names.On a day of hectic political developments, Akhilesh met the disgruntled MLAs at his 5, Kalidas Marg residence in the morning and drove straight to Mulayam's residence to convey the belligerent mood of those who did not get re-nomination."We will contest the upcoming elections, come what may," said a defiant MLA Atul Pradhan."The Chief Minister has done a lot for the development of the state and we will contest and win in his name," he said.In a new twist to the day-long high drama, Mulayam's cousin and SP General Secretary Ramgopal Yadav said many in the party do not want to see Akhilesh as chief minister again. "But, the fact remains that people of the state want him back as CM," he claimed.The factional feud in the Samajwadi Party came out in the open a day after Mulayam declared candidates for 325 of the 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh and ruled out projecting Akhilesh as the Chief Ministerial candidate.Here's a look of Akhilesh's candidate list:
Hussainiwala(Pb): Punjab BJP chief Vijay Sampla on Thursday launched 'Vijay Sankalp Yatra' here signalling the beginning of his party's poll campaign in the state and said the Modi government is fighting for "economic freedom" of the country, but Congress is nurturing "British culture".



"Congress bred and nurtured British culture in the country. While BJP is working to transform the nation into a 'Soney Ki Chidia' (golden bird), the 'English' Congress is trying hard to convert the country into 'Sonia (Gandhi) Ki Chidia'," he claimed.



He also accused AAP of "betraying" the people of Delhi and claimed that voters of Punjab won't fall into his "trap". After paying tributes to freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev at Martyr's Memorial here, Sampla, while addressing a gathering of party workers, said, "Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi the country is fighting for economic freedom."



"The bane of corruption, unemployment, poverty and black money has been brought upon the nation by Congress and Punjab has always been given step-motherly treatment," Sampla alleged, adding, "The party pushed Punjab into the black days of terrorism and subjected its water and farmers to loot."



Hitting out at state Congress chief Amarinder Singh, the BJP leader said, "He has no time to meet the people of his state but does have ample time to meet his friends across the border."



Sampla also accused AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal of betraying the people of Delhi, and said, Punjab's voters won't fall into his "trap".



From the Martyr's memorial here, the 'Vijay Sankalp Yatra', on its first day, proceeded towards Ferozepur with a cavalcade of motorcycles and cars rode by party workers and supporters.
U.S President-elect Donald Trump said wireless carrier Sprint Corp (S.N) will bring 5,000 jobs back to the United States and OneWeb, a new company, will be hiring 3,000 people.



"I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they are going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States, they are taking them from other countries," Trump told reporters outside his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.



"And also OneWeb, a new company, is going to be hiring 3,000 people. So that's very exciting," he added.
Paris: A woman who killed her abusive husband and became a symbol of the suffering of France's domestic violence victims walked free from prison on Wednesday after receiving a presidential pardon.



President Francois Hollande granted the pardon because he "considered that (Jacqueline) Sauvage's place was no longer in prison but with her family," the president's office said in a statement earlier.



Sauvage, 69, was serving a 10-year sentence at a jail southeast of Paris for shooting her husband Norbert Marot dead a day after their son hanged himself in 2012.



A police source said a car seen leaving the prison was carrying Sauvage and three family members. Hordes of journalists were on hand, but the car did not stop.



Sauvage's daughter Carole Marot told French radio earlier that she was on her way to the prison. "I'm crying, it's wonderful," she said. "Endless thanks to the president."



One of her lawyers, Nathalie Tomasini, said today she was "overcome by joy and emotion" over the pardon.



The case, a cause celebre in France, has seen many twists and turns since Sauvage shot her husband three times in the back.



Sauvage testified that she endured 47 years of violence including sexual assault at the hands of Marot.



Her three daughters testified against their father, saying they too were beaten and raped.



Feminist groups, celebrities and politicians rallied behind her, with a petition gathering nearly 436,000 signatures.



Hollande accorded Sauvage a partial pardon in January this year for killing Marot, a violent alcoholic who she said raped her and her daughters.



The gesture allowed Sauvage to seek provisional release through the courts, but these efforts failed, with an appeal court saying she had not shown sufficient remorse.



Sauvage was found guilty of murder in 2012, a verdict that was upheld on appeal in 2015.



The French president's power to commute or suspend prison terms was enshrined in the constitution in 1958.



Under a 2008 reform, the president may no longer decree blanket pardons, just individual ones.
Washington: US President-elect Donald Trump has accused Barack Obama of putting roadblocks in the path of a smooth transition.



Trump made this accusation in a tweet but did not give any details about it.



It is believed that he was apparently referring to the some of the policy decisions, including those related to Israel being taken by the outgoing Obama Administration.



"Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!" Trump said in a tweet.



Later the President-elect told reporters in Florida that he spoke over the phone with Obama, who is currently on his annual vacation in Hawaii.



"He phoned me. We had a very nice conversation," he said.



"Did you bring up any of your concerns about these roadblocks?" he was asked.



"We had a general conversation. I think the secretary's speech really spoke for itself. But we had a very general conversation; very, very nice. Appreciated that he called me," Trump said.


When students return to Lynchburg City Schools on Tuesday, theyll be welcomed with words of encouragement by possibly 100 or more men from around the community.

Dubbed Men 2 School, the idea is to get more than 100 volunteers to show up and cheer students on as they begin the second part of their school year. The initiative first was organized in August.

Our kids really need that extra push sometimes, and were hoping an encouraging word or a smiling face can do it for them, said Jonathan Willis, co-organizer of the event and pastor of Prayer Faith Temple.

Willis said the goal not only is to encourage students to take education seriously and do their best in school but also to provide positive male role models for children who may not have one in their lives.

James Coleman, co-organizer, pastor of Providence Transformation Church International and a member of the Lynchburg City School Board, hopes the effort lets students know people care.

"We hope that we can bring some joy and encouragement to the students and the staff, he said.

A Men 2 School event at the start of the school year in August saw 100 men turn out to welcome students. Coleman said an excellent response from volunteers should produce similar results.

In August, Sterling Wilder, co-organizer, executive director of the Jubilee Center and a Lynchburg City Council member, said the emphasis was on men in order to provide positive male role models.

Oftentimes, those role models can be hard to find in schools, where most teachers are female.

According to the National Education Association, only 17 percent of Virginia teachers are male. Virginia has the lowest percentage of male teachers in the nation, per the NEAs May report, Rankings & Estimates: Ranking of the States 2015 and Estimates of School Statistics 2016.

In Lynchburg, those numbers are slightly higher, with male teachers accounting for 21 percent. However, in LCS, where 64.8 percent of students are minorities, only 3.3 percent of teachers are minority males, according to a division personnel report released in September.

Men 2 School volunteers will greet students at Heritage High, E.C. Glass High, Paul Laurence Dunbar Middle School for Innovation, Linkhorne Middle, Dearington Elementary School for Innovation, Heritage Elementary, Linkhorne Elementary and Robert S. Payne Elementary schools.

Interested participants are required to sign up in order to join the Men 2 School effort.

For more information or to participate in Men 2 School, contact Wilder at (434) 444-0558 or swilder@jubileefamily.org.
Police officers dropped off a little post-holiday cheer Wednesday for about 40 seniors living at the Hillcrest Apartments off of Birchwood Drive.

The Lynchburg Police Departments Community Action Team started delivering 10-pound boxes of food to seniors in different Lynchburg communities in late November as part of an ongoing partnership with the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. The five-member Community Action Team (CAT) was launched in April as part of LPDs larger community policing initiative.

Lynchburg Police Sgt. J. J. Rater said Wednesdays delivery was the second time officers visited Hillcrest. The deliveries will be a monthly occurrence for residents at either Hillcrest or the James Crossing Apartments.

Weve gotten a lot of positive feedback from the individuals receiving food, he said.

On other occasions, he said the team will deliver the boxes to a central location in either community.

Today we can actually deliver it to the people who are in need and chat with them a little bit, which is the whole idea; thats the bottom line, he said.

Officer Luther Rose, whos assigned to the apartments, called residents by name when he knocked on doors to deliver his packages. Some were surprised to get a reminder it was food box day.

The Blue Ridge Area Food Bank is one of two food banks in Virginia piloting the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides USDA food to low-income seniors, according to Trevor Pauley, a partner services coordinator with the food bank. Between the 25 counties and eight cities served by the food bank, about 2,500 seniors are receiving monthly boxes with about $50 worth of food through the new program.

Pauley said box contents are selected with seniors in mind: the food has high nutritional value, tends to be low in sodium and has no added sugar.

People can enroll in SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] or they can go to food pantries  but this is an extra program that the state just got funding for, he said.

One part of the food box is government cheese: processed cheese that reminds a few Hillcrest residents of the USDA dairy surplus cheese distributed to welfare recipients in the past.

Elizabeth Miller, who got her second box from CAT officers Wednesday, said shes used the cheese to make omelets and macaroni. Since shes the only person living in her apartment, she said the box lasts her a little while.

Everything in that box I can use, she said. Theres nothing I would get rid of; I use everything thats in there.

Pauley said officials will evaluate how the programs pilot year went in August and determine how future funding will be allocated. No matter what, he said those who already have signed up will continue to benefit from the program, which will not end even after the pilot comes to a close, according to Pauley.

Charese Chambers, property manager at Hillcrest, said she encouraged the residents to sign up after a presentation from Pauley in June. Along with coupon deals and assistance from groups like Meals on Wheels, she said the Commodity Supplemental Food Program helps further subsidize residents food supplies.

I feel like a lot of residents dont know about the programs, so we want to make sure they get all that they qualify for, she said.

At the same time, she said police participation in the program hearkens back to the days of the neighborhood cop all the kids on the block know.

It doesnt just go for the young people; the older people  feel more comfortable to have a relationship with someone, she said.
Central Virginia will play host to one of the first national conferences on the use of drones for public safety, as first responders from around the country converge on Piedmont Virginia Community College in late February.

PVCC  which offers the states only workforce certificate in drone operation  will host its first National Unmanned Aerial Systems Summit from Feb. 27 to March 1. According to organizers, the list of planned attendees includes officials from Georgia, Texas, Utah, Florida and Ontario, Canada.

Over the course of three days at Roseland Farms in Crozet, theyll share ideas and best practices on the use of drones for public safety purposes  mostly search and rescue, but also weather imaging, damage assessment and disaster response, said Darren Goodbar, a drone instructor at PVCC. The list of topics does not include surveillance, Goodbar said.

Drones are becoming an increasingly important tool in public response to disasters. The Albemarle County Fire Rescue Division is one of many public agencies incorporating drones into their operations  most notably in the 2014 search for missing University of Virginia student Hannah Graham, who was later found murdered.

Elsewhere, rescue workers have used drones to gather crucial data and map out a disaster area so relief workers could focus their efforts where theyre needed most. In Southern California, fire departments use them to monitor the speed and movement of wildfires. They were used to find victims trapped in the rubble following a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Nepal in 2015.

Public agencies everywhere are incorporating drones into their arsenal, Goodbar said, but theres little sharing of information across jurisdictions.

Its a new technology and its got to be used differently, Goodbar said. The conference, he said, is about getting experts together so were not learning from a Facebook group or a sales pitch.

Because of their small size and because theyre unmanned, drones can get closer to a dangerous situation than a manned aircraft. Fire and rescue departments might use them to identify victims in a fire or a flood, or to get closer to a hazardous materials spill.

But there are still risks associated with flying up close to a dangerous scene, and poor piloting could make a bad situation even worse, Goodbar said. Carelessly flying an electrical vehicle with a battery could add fuel to the fire  literally.

During the conference, officials will share their experiences in panel discussions and before putting some of their new knowledge to the test in a series of field exercises at Roseland.

The people coming to this will get realistic training, Goodbar said. Not only will they get to see how the technology is used, but how it plugs into a real-world scenario.

Virginia is trying to position itself as a national leader in this area, and PVCC is right at the center of it, said Valerie Palamountain, director of workforce services at the college.

The Virginia Department of Emergency Management, which a co-organizer of the conference, is trying to help responders from across the commonwealth to coordinate with one another by adopting uniform standards and protocols.

Its about making sure multiple agencies and jurisdictions are on the same page, Palamountain said. VDEM is looking at it from the standpoint of needing standardization.

Part of that push is getting the public to understand the value of drones, which most people associate with spying and extrajudicial killings. Palamountain said people are beginning to see that drones are not necessarily a surveillance tool  they can be used to minimize casualties in an emergency.

These are useful tools that are going to save lives, Palamountain said. Not only the lives of [victims] but the people rescuing them.

More information on the summit is available at pvcc.edu/uassummit.
BY BRYAN DeVASHER AND BRANDON SHULLEETA

Four days after New Jersey resident Barbara Briley, 71, and her great-granddaughter, LaMyra Briley, 5, went missing, the two were found by a property owner Wednesday afternoon near their vehicle in a wooded area in Dinwiddie County, according to Virginia State Police.

No foul play is suspected in their disappearance.

Police said Barbara Briley was unconscious when discovered and was evacuated by helicopter to VCU Medical Center, where she was listed in serious condition Wednesday night.

Her great-granddaughter was alert, talkative and appeared to be in good shape, authorities said. She was taken from the rescue scene for medical evaluation and is now in the custody of a family member.

The two were discovered about 45 feet from their Toyota RAV4 on rural private property in the 16000 block of Nash Road, at least a mile from the nearest public road. They were sitting together against a tree.

According to state police, Barbara Briley appears to have turned off Nash Road and onto a dirt road, which she followed about three-tenths of a mile before pulling off into the woods.

At one point, she drove over a small tree and attempted to back up, only to have the RAV4 get stuck in a remote area of the property, police said. The two apparently had enough drinks and snacks on hand to sustain them for several days.

A Dinwiddie resident called authorities upon spotting the SUV shortly before 5 p.m. The man had seen news reports, realized who the Brileys were and called 911, said Maj. William Knott of the Dinwiddie Sheriffs Office.

This person probably saved them, Knott said.

The FBI got involved Tuesday in what already had been an extensive search by police. Barbara Briley and her great-granddaughter were last seen Christmas Eve at an Exxon station in Caroline County. They were traveling to Morven, N.C., where they were to celebrate Christmas with family.

Prior to the Brileys having been found Wednesday evening, a niece of Barbara Brileys said her aunt used to work as a driver for New Jersey Transit and had made the nine-hour trip to North Carolina numerous times.

Driving is not an issue when it comes to my Aunt Barbara, said Ginger Bittle, who added that she didnt know her aunt to have any medical problems.

Relatives had repeatedly tried to reach her by phone and retraced the route they believed she was traveling, but to no avail.

On Tuesday, Barbara Brileys cellphone pinged off a Sprint tower in Dinwiddie County, prompting authorities to search an area between Petersburg and the county airport.

Surveillance video taken Christmas Eve a little after 5:30 p.m. shows Barbara Briley at the Exxon station in the 23800 block of Rogers Clark Boulevard in Ruther Glen.

Gas station clerk Joanna Strange told local media outlets Briley came inside to say she was lost and that Strange helped Briley with her GPS before she went on her way.

Officers spent much of Monday searching the Ruther Glen area and then shifted their efforts to an area south of Richmond after police in New Jersey learned that the Brileys may have been there early Tuesday, state police Sgt. Stephan Vick said.

State troopers looked up and down the Interstate 85, Interstate 95 and U.S. 1 corridors, going all the way to the North Carolina state line without luck, Vick said. They used a helicopter and hunted for signs of guardrail damage or other evidence that a car may have run off the road, he said.

Police in Hamilton Township, N.J., led the investigation.
People visit the Fourth Biennial of Chinese Traditional Painting at the Zhejiang Art Museum in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, on Dec 28, 2016. [Photo by Li Zhong/Asianewsphoto]

The Fourth Biennial of Chinese Traditional Painting opened at the Zhejiang Art Museum in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, on Dec 28, 2016.

Themed as "upright manners", or "Zheng Da Qi Xiang" in Chinese, the exhibition showcases more than 256 pieces of art created by 41 artists, which reveals the overall artistic accomplishments in Chinese traditional painting.

Since 2011, the Biennial of Chinese Traditional Painting has become the art's largest and most influential biennial event.

The exhibition will last until Feb 17.
The Salvation Army of Greater Lynchburg today announced that its 2016 Red Kettle Campaign raised $269,314, surpassing its $250,000 goal.

This is the largest amount raised to date since the Red Kettle Campaign came to Lynchburg in the 1950s (it originated in San Francisco in 1891). The fundraiser runs annually from the first week in November through Dec. 24.

It is part of an overall budget of $2.7 million that enables The Salvation Army of Greater Lynchburg to maintain the Center of Hope homeless shelter, the community feeding program, the emergency financial assistance program and several youth and adult enrichment programs in the community.

In addition to the amount given in the Red Kettles, the community donated gifts for more than 1,800 children and elderly during this years Angel Tree program, which runs simultaneously with the Red Kettle Campaign.

Visit http://virginiasalvationarmy.org/lynchburgva for more information.
Vision, Falcon, Black Widow, and 7 more Marvel characters you might not know date back to the '30s and '40s

Marvel's Golden Age of the '30s and '40s had a much bigger influence on the modern Marvel Universe than you may realize
ATHENS - Greek government pledged on Wednesday to improve living conditions for refugees stranded in the debt-ridden country in 2017.

During a press briefing in Athens, Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas elaborated on the progress achieved in recent months and the plans for the new year regarding the management of the refugee crisis.

The Greek official acknowledged shortages and mistakes and underlined the solidarity Greek society has demonstrated to the more than one million people who fled war and poverty and landed on Greek shores since 2015.

Mouzalas promised efforts from the Greek side to provide more aid to the 62,000 refugees and migrants trapped in Greece after the closure of the Balkan route to central Europe last winter, urging other European countries to offer more support and share the burden with the countries at the frontline of the crisis.

With a few exceptions, most refugees and migrants will spend this winter in decent accommodation centers with heated containers, prefabricated houses or hotel rooms and apartments under a UNHCR program, he stressed.

Last winter, thousands of people stayed in tents in makeshift camps or organized facilities with no sufficient food or medical care.

Currently the refugees and migrants are accommodated in 36 organized sites nationwide with average capacity of 600-900, the minister noted, recognizing that the situation remains difficult for those trapped on the northern Aegean Sea islands in overcrowded hot spots.

Under the European Union-Turkey agreement reached in March to stem the refugee influx, all new arrivals remain on the islands until the asylum bids are assessed. Those who were not eligible for asylum were returned to Turkey.

Although the number of arrivals has dramatically declined in recent months compared to 2015, due to delays in the asylum procedures, the hotspots on Lesvos, Chios and other islands are currently hosting 15,500 people, almost doubling their capacity.

Mouzalas promised on Wednesday that in early 2017 the understaffed Asylum Service will be strengthened and new small detention centers will be created on the islands to decongest the existing facilities and ease tensions in the hotspots.

In addition, in springtime the Greek government plans to replace the free meals offered to refugees with a 400 euros ($415.65) per family monthly allowance. Electronic identification cards will be issued for all migrants and refugees living in Greece, the minister announced.

Speaking to reporters, the Greek official put emphasis on the issue of the unaccompanied minors, vowing more hard work to create more special facilities for this vulnerable group of refugees and migrants and tackle the challenge.

Out of the some 20,000 underage refugees and migrants currently stranded in Greece, approximately 2,200 minors are unaccompanied. Due to the lack of adequate special facilities in several cases, they are accommodated in closed areas within hot spots or in police custody for their own protection.

"The facilities for unaccompanied minors are special facilities. There should be 20-30 minors hosted in each one. They receive special support. Old tools are insufficient. We are trying to create new tools, such as the safe zones inside the existing camps," Mouzalas said.

"We believe that as long as the EU-Turkey agreement is still valid by Easter time, perhaps a little later, we will have addressed also this issue of the unaccompanied minors in Greece," the minister said, reiterating Athens' commitment to the deal.
Economist: All hands needed on deck for return to growth in 2017

An indication of how trying, economist and UWI lecturer Dr. Roger Hosein told Business Day, is that the ECLAC projection of the economys contraction by 4.5 percent may actually be under reporting.

The actual growth performance may be worse, said the economist. He said the first quarter of 2016 saw an economic growth rate of -5.6 percent, while the second quarter registered eight percent. But even if the economic growth rate of 4.5 percent is used, Hosein said this would make it the worst contraction Assuming that the UNECLAC forecast is correct, the level of GDP in TT would have shrunk to that midway between what occurred in 2016 and 2007 and would be seven percent lower than that of 2013, Hosein said. (see GDP graph) However, according to economist, several oil and gas projects already on stream or coming into play, may make 2017 potentially brighter.

I do not think economic growth in 2017 would be negative, said Hosein, I think that the TROC and Juniper projects would help by the middle of 2017 to increase the production of crude oil and natural gas in TT. The limited degree of buoyancy offered to hydro carbon prices by the OPEC production cut decision, would, other things being constant, help to buoy the Trinidad and Tobago economic a bit. (for list of projects see table) He offered this opinion with several important caveats.

The first said Hosein, was OPEC members sticking to their decision to cut production.

OPEC members have a tendency to cheat and any increase in supply of crude oil can adversely affect prices.

Libya and Nigeria were also exempt from the production cuts, so, as they increase production, market prices would dampen, he said.

A Trump administration decision to increase production may also act as a strong headwind against prices remaining buoyant. If this is coupled with a strengthening dollar which Hosein thought likely as the American economy improved, this could dampen international demand for crude oil.

The possibility that TTs oil and gas production may not improve as much as expected may also dampen prospects next year.

If the slide in the production of crude oil and natural gas continues with only marginal increases in the price of oil and natural gas, then this can potentially undermine economic growth in 2017 as well, said Hosein.

As government fights to raise revenues, the economist said the State had made significant headway, in curbing expenditure.

The level of government expenditure down from approximately $63 billion to around $54 billion, Hosein told Business Day.

He said though, he remained concerned by the level of capital expenditure, which is only ten percent of total government expenditure and which has the effect of crowding in private sector investment in the economy.

At the same ti me there seems to be some degree of hesitancy by the State to reduce transfers and subsidies to programmes such as CEPEP, observed Hosein, In the current economic climate and the expected medium term situation for the energy sector, the State needs to engage in deeper forms of structural adjustment. Even if it does it on its own, without the formal guidance of the multi laterals. He also saw conflict between government and the countrys major trade unions over subsidies in the coming year, which would not be helpful to the economy.

These are trying times, and only amicable, reasoned solutions, will move the economy forward.

He said government also had to continue to explore ways to raise revenues through taxation.

Hosein said even though adjustments to the VAT regime were not as successful as they could have been, there still was much potential in an amended property tax regime.

The purpose of State borrowing was also a source of concern for the economist. Hosein said while much of the debt incurred by the government was necessary, too much of it was still centered on recurrent expenditure and consumption, rather than sustainable long term investment.

Diversification has gone nowhere in this country and economic hopes and aspirations seems to be hinged around a recovery in some miraculous way in the energy sector. In the next three years, barring some major external shock, this will not happen, predicted Hosein.

The UWI lecturer also told Business Day that a downgrade of the value of this countrys currency relative to the US dollar may be in order. Adjustments already made, he believed, have not worked because they are not yet at a level to stimulate a response from exporters and import substituters within the economy.

My view is that the State, following the footsteps of other oil producing countries, will want to consider bringing the currency closer to its market value of around TT$9 to US$1. While we may not wish this, the structural realities point in this direction, he said.

The experience of the depreciation of the TT dollar associated with its floatation in 1993 was not entirely terrible and indeed by 1994 and 1995 growth returned to the economy.

Overall, Hosein noted that the responsibility for a return to economic growth in 2017 resided with multiple stakeholders and not just government.

As we recalibrate the economy, it is expected that everyone should contribute to get Trinidad and Tobago back to optimal production capacity. All hands on deck are urgently required at this stage and these hands must pull in the same direction, he said.
A season to be thankful

We at the T&T Chamber would like to first thank our members who understand the values for which we stand. The principles and objectives that have guided our establishment since 1879 are indeed as valid today as they were at that time.

In rolling out its many initiatives, the T&T Chamber has sought to be proactive and constructive, in dialogue and in its undertakings. We remain open to partnership with all relevant stakeholders to provide our country with the best possible chance of becoming a comprehensively diversified world class economy.

With a mandate to advocate for the interests of business in Trinidad and Tobago, the T&T Chamber undertook a wide range of responsibilities towards this goal during the past year. Apart from the annual recommendations for the national budget, which were acknowledged by the Minister during his budget presentation, the T&T Chamber has provided meaningful input to legislation, foreign exchange, Tobagos economic development, the inter-island transportation system, labour, trade, crime, governance, FATCA and social responsibility, to name but a few. We have accomplished this through our presence on over 50 national committees and boards, and through collaborative relationships with a range of national stakeholders and government. In the coming year, commit to again working tirelessly for improvements in the business environment in TT.

We fully recognise that the world today is in a state of flux and that we live in unprecedented times. Global events have impacted Trinidad and Tobago very directly as energy prices have plummeted in the past months, severely impacting government revenue. As a country, we have had no choice but to adjust to what has been called a new normal. With the future remaining largely unpredictable, however, we must evidently pay more than lip service to diversification and economic sustainability.

Open market economies such as ours operate in cycles, and economic downturns can be important teachers to those who are paying close attention. It stands to reason that we should learn from past mistakes and take preventative action. Meticulously monitoring and modifying our expenditure where necessary will ensure that a measured balance between expenditure reductions and revenue flows keeps our economy as robust as possible. In doing so, we will strategically programme Trinidad and Tobago to be in the best position for when the next economic upturn begins hopefully, this will be sooner rather than later.

At the end of another challenging and eventful year, we at the Chamber would like to take this opportunity to wish our members, as well as the national community, a very bright and most prosperous New Year. At the same time, we wish to reiterate that each of us has a huge responsibility to put country first and participate in ways that assume a far greater role in the development of our economy; if not for ourselves, then for the generations to come.

A Happy New Year to all.
Sustainability reporting: its time for the Caribbean to come on board

And over the last few weeks, Ive been thinking about the global trend towards reporting on sustainability, and the ways in which this could be both applicable and beneficial for our local companies.

In October this year, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) launched GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards: the first global standards for companies to use when explaining their sustainability impact. The Standards cover a range of non-financial areas where a company may have an impact, including its economic, environmental and social footprint.

This idea of more holistic, non-financial company reporting is not new: Integrated Reporting, or , has been around for many years. Indeed, ACCA starting using for our own financial reports in 2014. Under , companies are expected to report on financial and non-financial elements of their performance, giving investors a bigger picture of their activity, with a nod towards the future sustainability of their actions. This type of reporting has been prioritised on a global scale, with the United Nations, under their Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs), encouraging countries around the world to adopt such practices.

According to the Caribbean Corporate Governance Institute, at the onset of 2016 there were no known applications of integrated reporting in the Caribbean, despite the significant advantage that such application would offer to early adopters. The global move towards non-financial reporting indicates a desire from investors to see a more holistic picture of a company, and offering such information would certainly make Caribbean businesses more attractive to local and international investors.

According to The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) State of Disclosure report 2016 Sustainability Disclosures usually Fall Short Caribbean Cruises and Carnival Corporation both submitted extensive disclosures related to the sustainability topic fuel use & air emissions for the cruise lines industry in fiscal year 2015.

Royal Caribbean reported a 21.4 percent improvement in energy efficiency from 2005 to 2014, while Carnival reported achieving its goal of a 20 percent reduction in emissions over the same period. Carnival also pledged to reach a 25 percent reduction by 2020. While both companies submitted metrics and a full report on energy efficiency, unfortunately the reporting failed to provide investors with comparable data for a like-to-like evaluation. This is an on-going problem in sustainability report; inconsistency. Even when companies included metrics, non-standardised data in the reports makes it near impossible for investors to understand metrics between companies in the same industry.

Perhaps the onset of 2017 is the time for us to start considering this change. Its clear that non-financial reporting is here to stay: More than 1,000 businesses around the world use to communicate with their investors, and 70 percent of the worlds 300 biggest companies already use GRI Standards.

To use a Christmas metaphor, it appears that the proof is in the pudding when it comes to the benefits of a holistic reporting approach. Not only does it promote economic, environmental and social sustainability in business practices, but it can also improve a companys ability to attract and retain investors. Research conducted by the International Integrated Reporting Council indicates that investors want more information than just pure financial data, and that the provision of such information has led to an improved relationship between the company and the investor.

However, despite the benefits that have been linked to non-financial reporting, it does seem like the biggest barrier to adopting such an approach is time and resources. That is why I am excited by the introduction of the GRI Standards: they are short and relatively simple and easy to use.

So if youre after a New Years resolution for your business, perhaps you could take a quick look and consider how you could put sustainability higher on your business agenda? Even if youre not a business leader or decision maker, it may be helpful to think about the ways your business could better improve its social and environmental footprint. And if you are a business leader or decision maker, you could incorporate some tenets of sustainability into your next set of financial reports: its time for the Caribbean to come on board.
Being you

Now, in the real world, this scenario plays out quite differently. I am certain many can recite a number of experiences where the lines of what is acceptable in terms of the Corporate Look are very blurred, with the military being the only organisation with grooming demands that are not negotiable. In fact, just recently in Trinidad and Tobago, a young man was removed from his job for not conforming to the required look  as a result of his hairstyle. This debate can and most definitely will rage on, with many sharing modernist views, and others sticking to the conventional views on what is acceptable for the corporate look.

Personal grooming for the corporate world goes hand in hand with many pre-conceived notions, including how you are perceived, if you will be taken seriously, if you will be afforded respect, if you will receive referrals, and in some instances, if you get the job. Always remember, first impressions are lasting, and many times, peoples minds are already made up about you, your organisation and your brand, within the first ten seconds of meeting you. Hence, ensuring you look and feel your best is crucial to your output. It is important to underscore here, that looking and feeling your best does not equate to donning a supremely expensive business suit, in fact, what should matter most is the man in the suit.This simply means that some effort must be made in your attire, grooming and outlook, and the results will follow.

The following question must be answered when attempting to identify the appropriate look:

1. What type of organisation am I entering? What is the policy of the organisation?

If the organisation has a clear policy on such matters in terms of acceptable dress codes, and grooming, it will help to acquaint yourself with these policies. If you may be unclear as to the definitions put forward, then the next step is to discuss with your Human Resource representative for clarification. Now, if you are already employed with the organisation, and decidedly made a change to your look, that may be outside of the organisations remit, then it would also help to understand the boundaries that will be accepted.

If your organisation is more focussed on results and delivery, then perhaps this may not be much of an issue, further, many IT based organisations are more focussed on ensuring the employees comfort to encourage creativity, and actually encourages employees to dress comfortably, whilst creating the workspace into more lounge and play-based creativity centres  they encourage you to be whomsoever you are.

I recall a few years ago, I invited a supremely talented IT specialist to meet with a high level corporate executive at the executives office. The executive was finally convinced to open his doors to meet with IT minds outside of his corporate network, which would perhaps bring him unique and visionary ideas. On the morning of the meeting, my assistant advised that the young man had arrived.

When my assistant ushered him into my office, I almost fell off my chair, he obviously forgot to comb his hair, he wore a crumpled, washed out T-Shirt, a pair of dishevelled looking jeans without a belt, a pair of dirty sneakers, and a satchel slung over his shoulder. The corporate executive is still waiting that meeting. The moral being, being you is your prerogative, just as it is my prerogative to be me.
Some good fortune needed

In upstream production of oil, some modest gains in output are anticipated despite strong declines in mature fields. In 2017, a modest rise in production is expected as LGOs GY-50 well in the onshore Goudron field will take place. The project came online in May 2016. The company is targeting an additional five wells. It should be noted that there are downside risks to investment if there are prolonged low oil prices which can hamper future production increases.

In upstream gas production the gas shortages experienced in 2016 will improve as new projects come online. First gas from new upstream projects should improve supply from late-2017. Technip was given a contract in 2014 to develop BPs Juniper project which is situated off the southeast coast of Trinidad. The facility is estimated to have a processing capacity of 16.5mcm/d or around 6bcm per annum. First gas from the Juniper project is expected in late-2017 and it is anticipated that increased gas stabilisation and recovery in output should result from this date, although there are downside risks as output slips from other maturing fields. Should planned investment in exploration and production materialise, production is likely to recover over the medium term. In this regard work continues on new fields such as cross-border Loran-Manatee field shared with Venezuela in which first gas is likely around 2020.

Refining activity saw a recent upgrade which can see the production of more profitable fuels, however, the downstream sector remains under pressure in Trinidad and Tobago. While there are plans for a 430,000b/d export-oriented refinery, no final decision has been made on the project.

While this is but a few of the many moving parts that make up the energy sector, the idea is to identify the key issues that can affect the performance of the energy sector and ultimately affect the economy. Clearly there is optimism about a number of the projects in the energy sector. The return to growth and upbeat sentiment will take good negotiation skills, improvement in prices on the international market, proper revision of the tax regime affecting the energy sector, ability to attract investment and exploration and some luck. We will need some good fortune going forward.
Celebrating 70... Positioning Ourselves for Beyond!

It is important therefore, that as we move from Christmas to the New Year that we utilise this special time of year to reflect, revisit, assess and redirect our thoughts on Jesus Christ and his word. We must evaluate our actions, thoughts and deeds. Is it in line with the life Jesus lived? Do we forgive and forget? Do we embrace everyone in love? Are we our Brothers Keeper? Joh 13:35 says By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Christmas is a time to put aside all differences and to reach out to our fellowman in a spirit of love and forgiveness. It is also a time when the less fortunate are recipients of a heightened form of goodwill from those who are better placed to so do. It is a time to spread joy, peace and forgiveness. More importantly, however, this joy, peace and forgiveness must be not be short-lived, it must be sustained in order for us to change the world. We need change not only in Trinidad and Tobago, but everywhere!

John 10:10 says the thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. Let us follow Christ so that we will rise above the attacks of the enemy and enjoy the fullness of life.

Let us not be caught up into the celebrations, decorations and shopping and lose focus of the true meaning of what it is really about  The Birth of Jesus Christ and what it means for the world. We must remember to keep focus on the glory that His birth has brought to us.

The League reflects on the challenges of the economic situation, the impending credit union legislation, unemployment and under-employment, the rapid increases in criminal activity and other issues but we are not daunted. In fact, we will look at the positive things that the Lord has brought us, such as the increase in our Movements membership to 600,000 and the increase in our asset base to $13 billion along with the continuous good work of our member credit unions in their service to humanity.

We are preparing to embrace 2017 with much faith and anticipation. We are remaining focused on our goals and dreams as we celebrate our 70th year as the National Umbrella Body for credit unions under the theme Celebrating 70.Positioning Ourselves for Beyond

January 2017 will commence with a Calendar of Events packed with educational and social activities all aimed at enhancing the image and brand of the League and the Co-operative Credit Union Movement. On January 17 we will host our Special General Meeting at the Cascadia Hotel at 9.30 am to approve of 2017 Operational Budget; on January 21 we will host our 70th Anniversary Thanksgiving Service and Launch our 2017 Calendar of Events at the Signature Hall, Montrose, Chaguanas at 5.30 pm and on January 24 we will officially launch our Electronic Payment Platform for our credit unions.

We continue to focus heavily on the development of our members and embrace every opportunity to keep them a step ahead of others in the financial marketplace. While some may attempt to emulate, the task of surpassing the quality of our products and services will always remain a dream.

In closing, I wish to remind us all that there are some persons who may be hurting, some disadvantaged, some hungry, some victimised. I urge us all to join the rest of the international community and engage in the sharing of genuine love, peace and goodwill to all men. This season provides us with the opportunity to bring out the best in us and to give true meaning and action to the message of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by the way we treat with each other. Let us also do good to them that hurt us and endeavour to walk as Jesus walked. It is the best way to achieve the fullness of His abundant blessing each and every day.

May you, my dear members and the national community, enjoy the fullness of the Lords blessing today, in 2017 and throughout your lives. Accept the best of my love and appreciation for all that you have contributed to the growth and success of our League and more importantly, the growth and development of this wonderful Credit Union Movement that serves you with pride!

A safe and blessed year-end and a Prosperous 2017 to all! God bless you richly!

Email:creditunionleague@ gmailcom
Tourism in dire state

This was the call of Hassel Thom, president of the Trinidad Hotels, Restaurants and Tourism Association (THRTA).

Without future growth, the sector will not be able to materially continue...Tobago has been stuttering and (some of) their doors are closed while in Trinidad, some of our doors are closed at times because we cannot afford to carry the cost.

Just as the PM saw it fit to take the mantle and support the Energy Minister to drive the process, nothing less (is needed) in tourism.

Thom issued his call for action by the PM during a press conference co-hosted by the THRTA, the Tobago Hotel and Tourism Association (THTA) and the Trinidad and Tobago Incoming Tour Operators Association (TTITOA) at Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain on December 15.

Thom cited a downward trend in the amount invested by the current and previous administrations in marketing destination Trinidad and Tobago (DTT) as a major reason why Rowley needs to pay personal attention to declining visitor numbers in Tobago and stagnant visitor numbers in Trinidad while other Caribbean destinations have recorded growth in 2016.

We have always lobbied the Government that the Hotel Accommodation Tax (HAT) should be used more meaningfully to enhance DTT. In 2015, the private sector; hotels, contributed TT $62 million, the Government injected $50 million.

In 2016, the private sector injected $60 million, the Government put back or utilised $29 million. Brian Frontin (CEO of THRTA) said, for 2017, that figure (Government) has dropped to $19 million. I think something is woefully wrong, Thom declared.

He made the point that as people, we are judged by our actions and if we make a judgement based on Governments declining contribution to marketing DTT, it doesnt give us any hope moving forward.

Making reference to the many direct and indirect forms of employment created by tourism-related businesses, Thom said as a private sector, we cannot afford to just shut doors.

He then called for full collaboration between the public and private sectors on how best to market DTT.

Weve been clamouring, weve been emphasising, weve been trying our best to get them (Government) to do more marketing for the destination. No one, ten or 15 members could promote this destination (properly on their own). This needs public sector involvement and with that, we need to see a regulated industry.

Poor destination marketing, as well as a roughly 50 percent shortfall in required international quality room stock, were cited by THTA president, Christopher James, during his presentation on the dire state of Tobagos tourism.

Tobagos occupancy rates in October (2016) were about nine percent. Last month, November, they were only slightly better - ten percent. We are beyond the critical position for Tobago.

James said international arrivals to Tobago are down by 25.84 percent, a continuation of decline for the last ten, 11 years.

Where as back in 2005 we had just under 88,000 arrivals, this year were looking at about 19,000 or a little less than that in international arrivals.

In terms of room stock, Tobago actually needs 2,500 rooms to make us a year-round sustainable product. At the moment, we only have about 1,000 international quality rooms.

It remains unclear if and when a Sandals resort would be built in Tobago but James cautioned that this alone would not be enough to save Tobago.

We need help now. We have certain criteria that need to be fulfilled (such as) money at lower rates of interest to help us get through this. We need incentives in other areas; our incentives, compared with the rest of the region, are pretty poor.

James made the case that not having competitive incentives is a major reason why TT is lagging behind its neighbours.

The region grew by about 7.2 percent last year (2015). They had over 30 million visitors to this region last year... We get accused in Tobago; the hotels, of not marketing our (product) but without (national) destination marketing, any marketing hotels do is lost. You need that focus on the destination before anything that people or individual hotels do, makes any sense, James declared.

The THTA head added that this is why collaboration is needed between Government/ the relevant ministries and the private sector.

First of all, we need to agree on a destination marketing plan for TT. Then we can, as individual hotel or business owners, fit our marketing into those strategies, James stated.

Another person who didnt mince words at the joint presser was TTITOA president, Lorraine Pouchet.

She criticised Government and the private sector alike for abdicating their responsibilities.

For this partnership to yield positive and sustainable results, Pouchett argued, tourism must be a priority for the government of the day. Unfortunately, successive governments have all dropped the ball and only paid lip service to the industry. The private sector has also surrendered its role and responsibility, by allowing the government to take almost

complete control of the process.

Pouchett said unless the situation is rectified urgently, tour operators will be among the first stakeholders to go out of business.

Over the last four to five years, there has been a steady decline in business for the tour operating sector. Members of TTITOA have reported declines ranging from five percent per annum in previous years (2010 to 2014), to a 30 percent decline over the past two years. This is an untenable situation.

Pouchett argued that if attention had been paid to the sector over the last 15 years or so, as a destination, (TT) would today have a viable tourism sector...bringing in foreign exchange and ensuring the economy would not have been in a state of impending collapse.

When will we recognise that tourism has the potential to create more jobs than the energy sector and needs to be part of a serious diversification strategy? Pouchett asked.

The TTITOA president identified nine areas which she said require immediate action (both macro and micro):

1) Branding/Imaging of TT - positioning on search engines is critical;

2) Development of a strategic plan for the industry - stakeholder participation is critical but actioning the recommendations even more so; 14 months into this dispensation of Government, and many, many consultations later - no action to date that is yielding tangible results.

Environmental issues must be an integral part of this process - travellers are very concerned about a destinations approach to protecting the environment;

3) Appropriate funding for marketing - TT $19 million is a drop in the bucket if we are serious about tourism. We need to increase the allocation;

4) Review and training of the service provided in all areas. Example, at the ports of entry, one and a half hours to process immigration is not user-friendly;

5) Access to funding/grants for business development - tour operations are an intangible product - banks are not willing to lend;

6) Licensing of vehicles for tourism - not only concessions - but amendment to the Tourism Development Act to allow for the licensing of such;

7) Development of International Standards criteria - all providers need to be licensed and to be members of a bona-fide umbrella association;

8) Develop and upgrade sites and attractions on both islands in keeping with international standards. For example, what is happening at Maracas is a travesty (and) Pigeon Point is being eroded; and

9) Install and maintain toilet facilities at strategic locations on the islands, ensuring access for the differently-abled.

Pouchett spoke of the need for DTT to be one ofvthr top results in online searches for Caribbean holidays, as well as the vital importance of having an application (app) that puts DTT at the fingertips if business and leisure travellers alike.

Until we start understanding that social media, Internet marketing, is what is taking the world by storm, and adjusting our marketing efforts to put money into that specific area, we (TT) are going to always have problems.

She lamented that several years after the TTITOA first recommended to the Tourism Development Company (TDC) that an app for DTT be created, its unbelievable that nothing of the kind exists.

Five days after Pouchetts lament, the Tourism Ministry announced at the welcome ceremony for the first flight of Air Canada Rogues non-stop route between Toronto and Trinidad, that the TDC will be launching, early next year (2017), a new tourism mobile application that will provide users with a comprehensive insight into our myriad events and festivals, as well as provide feedback regarding the quality of visitor experiences whilst in TT.

Business Day asked what all three groups would consider progress, given their warnings about the dire state of TTs tourism sector.

THRTA chief executive officer, Brian Frontin, responded, Progress for us means confirming, collectively and collaboratively, what are the next actionable steps that move this destination from the best-kept secret to something that is internationally known and recognised.

We want to be at that table, Fontin added, informing, driving, concluding and confirming that process in the shortest time possible with all ministries; because tourism cuts across several ministries.

Referring to Thoms call for PM Rowleys intervention, Fontin said, This is why you see the consistent call for the leadership position by the PM as weve seen in energy, to ensure that this priority is filtered through to development
Women, man robbed and left naked on roadside

The incident occurred at about 8 pm along the M2 Ring Road close to Gandhi Village in Debe.

A police report stated that two men were standing on the side of the road when they flagged down a passing vehicle, a maroon-coloured Nissan Almera. The vehicle, which contained two women and the male driver, stopped. The police report stated that the two men who were standing at the side of the road, pointed guns at the women and man and ordered them out of the car.

According to the report, the bandits then ordered all three victims to take off their clothes.

When the three complied, struggling to hide their nakedness at the side of the road, the bandits rummaged through the discarded clothing and seized cellular phones and money. The bandits then threw the clothes into the car which they entered and sped off in. After several hours, a relative of one of the female victims, became worried when she did not return home and went in search.

This relative found the naked trio stooping at the side of the roadway, trembling from the biting night-time cold. The three got into the car while a report was made to the police. Officers used the GPS system which was on in one of the victims stolen cellular phone to track it as being somewhere in the Enterprise, Chaguanas area. An All Points Bulletin (APB) was issued and officers were in hot pursuit of the bandits who by this time had reached Longdenville. However, the bandits managed to evade capture and both the bandits and the stolen car were unaccounted for up to press time. Investigations are continuing.
Shannons mom feels others pain

As a mother you dont want to know your child is out there missing.

I would have preferred not to choose, but given the options closure is what we would have to go with. My heart really goes out to all those mothers and families who still have missing children and I will always keep them in my prayers, Lopez said. Nowhere is safe anymore. I am pleading with the younger generation, please be vigilant wherever you go, always move in groups for safety and be alert at all times. Yesterday, at Newsdays head office in Chacon Street, Port-of- Spain, Lopez indicated that nothing is too little to overlook and crime not only takes place at night but can happen anytime and anywhere.

Community Defence recently launched an app where you can call SAFE and submit anything that looks suspicious. I think it is an excellent app and I am advising young people not just to continue to be careful but if they see anything or feel uncomfortable where their safety is concerned, report it. Lopez added, I also want to encourage them to speak up because you may see something and may over look it, like nothing is too little to over look. It is not just late at night anymore, crime is taking place in our country anywhere at any time. Lopez explained that at the moment she cannot find it in her heart to forgive anyone over the murder of her daughter. It is unbearable to live with the loss of my child on a daily basis. I will never get to see her walk down the aisle or fulfil her dreams. Her life was taken away too soon. Shannon was a role model to others and everywhere she went she left a positive impression on others especially children, Lopez said.

On December 8, Banfields body was found on a shelf hidden under cardboard boxes in a room on the third floor of the IAM & Co Ltd warehouse store on Charlotte Street in Port-of-Spain, three days after she was first reported missing.

An autopsy revealed that she was murdered via smothering.
Steel union meets on ArcelorMittal

which has always been, not for Government to buy the facility but for Government to ensure that the facility remains in Trinidad and Tobago, that it remains operational.

profitable, and for the benefit of the economy. The ball is now in the unions court to provide further information to Government. Bailey spoke with Newsday after SW UTT President, Christopher Henry, and a team of executives.

President of the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM), Ancel Roget.

and JTUM General Secretary Ozzie Warrick met yesterday morning with Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, Stuart Young, and Minister of Labour and Small Enterprise Development, Jennifer Baptiste-Primus, at the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs tower, Richmond Street, Portof- Spain. According to Bailey, the union went through its proposal - to restart the steel industry under new investors - that was sent to Rowley in September. The union, he said, raised issues they experienced following the closure of steel giant ArcelorMittals local operations in March that sent some 2,000 workers on the breadline.

and how union members felt Government was treating with the situation. He said, we considered it a national issue and not just merely a steel workers issue. The tone of the meeting, he said, was very encouraging in that the Government representative appeared to have understood our position. Government representatives, he said, have asked for some additional information. We have given ourselves a time line of up to January 5 to make that available to them. Once the outstanding information was forwarded to Government.

he said, most likely we will have a follow up meeting. Asked what was the information required, Bailey said that the union could not make the information public at the moment because it has signed a confidentiality agreement with the liquidator in relation to the purchase of the plant. He believes that Government now understands that the union never intended that Government should spend a single red cent but facilitate and enable the investor to have utilities to carry out its functions.
A man rides a bicycle near damaged ground in the rebel held besieged al-Sukkari neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria, Oct 19, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyp Erdogan praised in a phone conversation Thursday a ceasefire agreement in Syria reached with the mediation of the two countries, the Kremlin said.

The two leaders stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to organize intra-Syrian talks in Astana, Kazakhstana, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Both sides called for further strengthening anti-terror cooperation and noted, in particular, that the latest truce does not apply to terrorist groups in the Middle East country, it added.

Earlier on Thursday, the Syrian government and the core groups of the so-called moderate opposition reached a ceasefire agreement from midnight on Friday and expressed their readiness to start intra-Syrian talks.

Putin and Erdogan earlier agreed that such talks could take place in Astana, a proposal that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the United Nations special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura have approved.

Also on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held phone talks with his Turkish, Iranian and Egyptian counterparts respectively. The Russian foreign minister discussed with them the newly-clinched truce agreement and preparations for the talks between Syria's conflicting sides in Astana.
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(Newser)  A herbicide-resistant weed strong enough to damage farm equipment has been spread on acres of conservation land in states like Ohio, Texas, Indiana, and Illinois under government programs, reports Illinois Farmer Today. Palmer amaranth, or pigweedwhich the Minneapolis Star Tribune notes is "one of the most prolific and devastating weeds in the country for corn, soybeans and other row crops"is typically found in the American Southwest but has been spreading to outside areas in recent years. Government programs like the Conservation Reserve Program meant to benefit bee and other wildlife habitats have inadvertently helped the spread: Officials say native seed mixes planted by farmers on conservation land were contaminated with pigweed seed.

It's not yet clear who is at faulta scientist notes seed companies likely had no idea their mixes were contaminatedbut in Minnesota, for example, the mistake has allowed pigweed to spread into two counties for the first time. All 13 affected landowners received seed mix from the same company, which hasn't been named. The annual weedwhich grows so thick a scientist says it's "almost chain saw material"has also spread to 49 counties in Iowa, up from five at the start of the year. The farmers there purchased seeds from areas like Kansas and Texas, where pigweed is found. Crews have been torching the weeds to prevent seeds from falling next springa single plant can produce 1 million, per the High Plains Journalbut eradicating the weeds entirely could take years. ("Cheatgrass" is invading the West.)
(Newser)  A large, double blind study out of Denmark suggests that fish oil during pregnancy may help lower a child's risk of asthma, reports the New York Times, reducing rates from 24% in women given placebos to 17% in those given fish oil in the final trimester, amounting to a 31% reduction in risk. And while they're not ready to recommend that pregnant women take fish oil, the lead researcher tells NPR his team was surprised by the "magnitude" of the reduction. The difference was more pronounced among children of mothers who had low levels of fatty acids called EPA and DHA in their blood: By age 3, 17.5% of children whose mothers took fish oil had developed asthma, while that number was 34.1% among those of mothers who took the placebo. That's a reduced risk of 51%. An NIH expert writes in an accompanying editorial that factors such as these may allow development of "precision medicine" aimed at women most likely to benefit.

Reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers suggest that in spite of the conflicting conclusions in previous studies, fish oil's effect on inflammatory diseases is becoming more clear. Because small airways in the lungs further restrict when they are inflamed, and lab studies have found that lipids in fish oil could help infant airways counteract inflammation, fish oil may, at the right dose and in the right population of pregnant women, have a positive effect on developing fetuses. But until more large studies are done replicating these findings and determining when and how much which pregnant women should take fish oil to reduce their offspring's risk of asthma, doctors aren't likely to start recommending it. (Is fish oil more like snake oil?)
(Newser)  A woman who killed her husband in 2012 was released Wednesday after receiving a full pardon from the president of France, the BBC reports. According to the Guardian, 69-year-old Jacqueline Sauvage shot her husband three times in the back with a hunting rifle the day after their son killed himself. Sauvage says she had been physically abused by her husband for 47 years; she says her son was also abused, and two of her three daughters say they had been sexually abused. Sauvage was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2014. But Sauvage became a symbol in France, where rates of domestic violence are higher than in Europe as a whole, the New York Times reports. Dozens of politicians supported her, and more than 430,000 people signed a petition calling for her release.

Last January, French President Francois Hollande issued a partial pardon of Sauvage, allowing her to seek parole. But courts twice refused to grant it. This month, Sauvage's daughters sent a letter to Hollande, and he granted Sauvage a full pardon Wednesday. Two hours later, she was seen leaving prison. One of Sauvage's daughters offered "infinite thanks to the president," and Sauvage's lawyer says the pardon is a "very strong message ... to all women victims of domestic violence." But magistrates are left wondering why Hollande didn't just offer a full pardon months ago to avoid essentially overruling the courts. The head of the magistrates union accuses him of acting "to please public opinion" and making a "deplorable" decision that "challenges the functioning of our institutions." (Read more domestic violence stories.)
(Newser)  President Obama has delighted conservationists but angered conservatives with the creation of two more national monuments in the closing weeks of his presidency. The Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and the Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada add huge stretches of desert areas known for sandstone formations and Native American artifacts to a total of 550 million acres of land protected by Obamamore than twice as much as declared by any previous president. Supporters, especially the Native American tribes that will co-manage Bears Ears, cheered the move, but critics dubbed them "midnight monuments" because of their last-minute nature and described them as a federal land grab that goes against the wishes of many Nevada and Utah residents, report the AFP and High Country News.

The designation will honor existing oil and mining rights but bans new development in a total of 1.6 million acres of rugged land beloved by hikers and climbers. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, accused Obama of an "astonishing and egregious abuse of executive power" that was an "affront of epic proportions and an attack on an entire way of life," the Deseret News reports. In Nevada, Harry Reid thanked Obama for protecting an area he called "quintessential Nevada," the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. "Gold Butte is a glimpse of what Nevada once was," Reid said. The new protected area in Nevada is visible from the ranch of Cliven Bundy, who clashed with federal officials in 2014 over use of the land. (Last year, Obama created the world's largest protected zone.)
(Newser)  John Kerry fired what was widely seen as a frustrated parting shot at Israel amid rising tensions Wednesday, warning, as "a friend," that the country needs to hear some "hard truths" about its settlement policy, which he believes is jeopardizing any hope of a two-state solution. The Wall Street Journal notes that the Kerry speech also appeared to be a warning to the Donald Trump transition team about the danger of breaking with longstanding US policy on working toward a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Before the speech, Trump tweeted that Israel shouldn't be treated with "such total disdain and disrespect." He urged the country to "stay strong" because Jan. 20 is "fast-approaching." A round-up of coverage:

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not welcome the criticism: The Times of Israel reports that he attacked and ridiculed Kerry's speech in Hebrew, then in English. "Is that all he's got?" wondered Netanyahu, slamming Kerry for attacking the "only democracy in the Middle East" and vowing to work with Trump to "repeal" a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements, which the US, to the fury of Israel, did not veto.

The Washington Post looks at the background to Obama's decision to abstain instead of vetoing the UN resolution. Its sponsors were determined to call a vote before Obama left office, insiders sayand Obama, with "nothing to lose," decided to take a stand.

Kerry's remarks were greeted warmly in Europe, the New York Times reports, but they were condemned by US lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called it "wrong" and said it was painful to watch, while Sen. John McCain said it was "at best a pointless tirade in the waning days of an outgoing administration," and at worst another "dangerous outburst."

The BBC reports that Kerry's remarks could help "set the scene for future diplomacy," with a peace conference set to take place in France in mid-January, the week before Trump takes office.

Netanyahu has a lot more than Kerry's remarks on his plate: Reuters reports that Israel's attorney general has ordered a criminal investigation of the prime minister on two unspecified matters.

At Politico, Gregg Carlstrom warns that while Netanyahu may believe the "partner of his dreams" will soon be leading the US, the relationship with Trump could become a nightmare for him. "Israel is betting all its chips on an unpopular, untested president with no knowledge of the region and a history of breaking his campaign promises," he notes. And if Trump does keep his promises, he will pursue policies unpopular with many Americans, Jews included, that could undermine the longstanding bipartisan consensus on supporting Israel.

The Guardian reports that while Kerry's remarks were the toughest from the US in years, there is some precedent: Bill Clinton set out some very similar parameters for a two-state solution in a speech in December 2000, a few weeks before leaving office.

(Read more Israel stories.)
(Newser)  A young man in Milwaukee was beaten, urinated on, forced to eat cat litter, and dumped in a freezing alley to die the week before Christmas, all for the heinous crime of trying to steal a bong, police say. According to a criminal complaint, videos showing the brutal treatment of 20-year-old Delvin Mendoza-Chaparro were posted to the victim's own Snapchat account, the Washington Post reports. In one, a suspect identified as Devin Katzfey, 20, can be heard telling the badly injured man: "You hear me, that's what happens when you try to steal." Katzfey, his brother Branden, 19, and Sarah Zakzesky, 20, have been charged with first-degree homicide in Mendoza-Chaparro's Dec. 19 death.

Police say Zakzesky told investigators that after a night of marijuana smoking at her apartment, the Katzfey brothers accused Mendoza-Chaparro of trying to steal a bong and other items they said they found in his jacket, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports. She said they attacked him when he was sleeping and he never had "a chance to raise his fists and fight man to man." According to court papers, Zakzesky said she told the brothers that the victim needed to go to a hospital but after driving around, the trio left the unconscious man in an alley instead. Police say Mendoza-Chaparro was found dead in 14-degree weather wearing only a sweatshirt and jeans that had been pulled down. All three suspects, including Devin Katzfey, who was captured after going on the run, are being held in the Milwaukee County jail. (Read more Milwaukee stories.)
(Newser)  A Texas couple is suing Apple, claiming its FaceTime app is responsible for the death of their 5-year-old daughter. James and Bethany Modisette say Apple was granted a patent in 2014 for a FaceTime design that would've used GPS tracking to determine speed of travel to prevent people from using the app while driving, reports Courthouse News. Yet Apple never implemented the design, nor did it strongly warn drivers against using the app, per the lawsuit filed Friday. As a result, Garrett Wilhelm, 22, was able to use FaceTime while driving 65mph on Interstate 35 near Dallas on Christmas Eve in 2014, when he slammed into the back of the Modisettes' vehicle, which had slowed with other vehicles because of a traffic accident, say police.

Wilhelm's vehicle rolled "up and over the driver's side of the Modisette car," the lawsuit states. Driver James and 5-year-old Moriah, seated behind him, were both critically injured. James, Bethany, and 8-year-old daughter Isabella were taken by ambulance to Denton Regional Medical Center, along with Wilhelm, while Moriah was airlifted to Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, where she died of her injuries, reports the Denton Record-Chronicle. Wilhelmwhose FaceTime app was still active when officers arrived on the scene, say policenow faces a manslaughter charge. But Apple's failures "were a substantial factor in causing the plaintiffs' injuries and decedent's death," the lawsuit states. Apple has not responded. (This woman was on FaceTime when a deadly tornado struck.)
(Newser)  DC yoga instructor Tricia McCauley was "violently sexually assaulted" before she was beaten and strangled, a prosecutor says, per NBC Washington. The man accused of her murder tells a very different story. McCauleya stand-in in the film Step Uptold friends she was on her way to a Christmas party at 4:30pm Sunday but then disappeared, reports ABC News. It isn't clear what happened next, though McCauley's brother says a dish she made for the party was left on her counter, per WJLA. Her 2013 Toyota Scion iQ was found early Tuesday outside a CVS. Adrian Duane Johnson was inside the store with the keys and told police he'd recently met McCauley and the pair had sex on a curb. Johnson said McCauley then told him he could have all of her belongings and hanged herself in her car as he stood outside, police say.

Johnsonwho couldn't say what McCauley used to hang herself, per ABC7then admitted to driving around in her car, using her credit cards, and picking up a prostitute while McCauley's body was concealed on the floor of the back seat, her legs restrained by a seat belt, according to police documents. When officers asked why he'd kept McCauley's body, he said he thought she might have been asleep, police say. At one point, he also asked, "If someone is suicidal and gives you all their stuff, is that illegal?" according to police documents. WUSA9 reports Johnson spent three days in jail due to a theft charge before he was released on Dec. 20. He was to be fitted with a GPS monitoring device the next day, but he never arrived at the scheduled appointment. A warrant was never issued. He's due in court for the murder charge on Jan. 13. (Read more murder stories.)
(Newser)  President Obama chose to communicate in a relatively old-fashioned way this week after Donald Trump used Twitter to indicate relations between the two men had gone south. "Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks.Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT!" was Donald Trump's Wednesday morning tweet, perhaps referencing either the US' abstention in a recent UN vote about Israeli settlements or Obama's comments at Pearl Harbor about not demonizing others. Bloomberg reports that after Trump's tweet, Obama called Trump on the phone, with White House spokesman Eric Schultz noting the call, "like the others since the election, was positive and focused on continuing a smooth and effective transition." Schultz added the men agreed to "[stay] in touch" and work together up through the inauguration.

The call apparently worked, at least in the short term, as Politico reports Trump's tune softened after what Trump describes as a "very nice conversation." "Appreciated that he called," the president-elect told pool reporters, adding later to reporters outside his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida that "I actually thought we covered a lot of territory," that his and Obama's staffs are getting along "very well," and how they resolved issues that no one else will ever be privy to because "we're never going to be going against each other in that way." When he was specifically asked how the transition was going in the wake of his latest tweet, Trump responded, "Oh, I think very, very smoothly. Very good. You don't think so?" (One of the two is the most admired man of the year.)
(Newser)  "It's 4am. My body's trembling. I'm going to die." That was reportedly one of Matsuri Takahashi's tweets not long before she killed herself last year by leaping from a dorm at Dentsu, the ad company where the 24-year-old worked, per the New York Times. This week, Dentsu's head quit, taking responsibility for Takahashi's suicide and his firm's culture of overwork. That culture is prevalent throughout Japan, and even has its own term, "karoshi," or "death from overwork." Tadashi Ishii offered his "heartfelt apology" Wednesday and said he'd offer his resignation to Dentsu's board in January; he apologized to Takahashi's family in person on Sunday, per the Japan Times. A labor department probe found Takahashi had been putting in more than 100 hours of overtime a month leading up to her death, and she'd noted on Twitter and to family that her bosses had harassed her and made sexist remarks.

Per the AP, an October survey in the country's first white paper on karoshi found 93 suicides or attempted suicides in 2015 tied to overwork (the Guardian says that number is more like 2,000 suicides a year), with 96 deaths from heart attacks, strokes, and other maladies linked to karoshi. Business Insider reports Japan "has been trying desperately" to tamp down this deeply ingrained work ethic, including a "work style reform" panel led by PM Shinzo Abe. Some firms have started encouraging more work-life balance, including Dentsu, which has a reputation as being particularly hard-core (a slogan dating to the '50s implored workers to do their job "even if it kills you"). Now Dentsu flicks the lights off at 10pm and makes workers take a minimum of five days off every six months. "[I want to] change the consciousness of every working person in Japan," Takahashi's mom says, per the Guardian. (A deeper look at karoshi.)
(Newser)  Adam Rosenblatt wishes politicians would stop saying "drain the swamp"and it's not because he's worried about the reputation of the nation's capital. "My extensive experience working in and studying swamps allows me to see just how terrible the analogy is," the American Association for the Advancement of Science ecologist writes for the Washington Post. "Swamps can be sources of resource abundance and protection from natural disasters, which are exactly some of the functions a responsible government should promote." He argues that swamps help prevent flooding, protect against storms, act as natural water filters, lessen the effects of climate change, and provide a home for multitudes of plants and animals that are both economically important as well as darn pretty to look at.

Rosenblatt offers the Florida Everglades as an example. The state drained the swamps, but instead of rich farmland, it ended up with "barren and dry" land that "actually caught fire and burned for years in some places." He argues the US might be be better off if it actually protected and expanded swamps instead of draining them. He says swamps should "be regarded as wonderful and valuable parts of nature rather than objects of derision and hatred" and don't "deserve to be co-opted as a lazy, inept political metaphor." Besides, Washington DC wasn't actually built on a swamp anyway. Read the full piece here. (Read more swamps stories.)
(Newser)  A woman who was shot in the eye at a South Carolina gun range earlier this week has died, the AP reports. Sarah Bonner died early Thursday after being on life support for several days, Anderson County Coroner Greg Shore told local media. The 24-year-old from Georgia was shot Monday afternoon at Skip-J Range while visiting friends and family for Christmas. Deputies said range members were target practicing at the time. An autopsy is being done, and the bullet will help show which gun fired it, Shore said.

Investigators are still trying to determine whether the shooting was an accident, said Anderson County Sheriff's Lt. Sheila Cole. Range owner Jerry James believes it was. He says it's the first accidental shooting at the private pistol and rifle club since it opened 24 years ago. He said the range's safety protocols are "serious," and accidents shouldn't occur if they're followed. The club's members can use the range without supervision. Members have the combination to the range's gate lock to use the range from 9am to dark Mondays through Saturdays. Its 10 separate bays consist of dirt berms down both sides as well as at the end, according to the range's website. The range re-opened Tuesday. (Read more gun range stories.)
Leftist tolerance on display as unhinged liberals call for genocide against whites and attacks on conservative cripples

As the unhinged political left continues to unravel into what can only be called sociopathic mental illness, I thought it might be educational to bring you four recent, shocking episodes of left-wing tolerance on display.

As you review these, remember that tolerance of the left is selectively applied only to those who agree with every important political narrative of liberalism. Anyone who disagrees with the false narratives of the left is targeted for extreme hatred, death threats and now even a call to be exterminated via actual genocide.

This is what happens when the party of love wins loses the election: They turn to hatred, violence and deeply rooted desired to literally kill everyone who doesnt agree with them.

Example #1: Left-wing hate monger attacks Texas Governor Greg Abbot for being a cripple

Via Breitbart.com:

A Twitter user attacked Texas Governor Greg Abbott for his religious faith and asked him why God has never helped him walk again.

Abbott has been confined to a wheelchair since July 1984 when a tree fell on him, breaking his back. He was running with a law school friend at the time through a neighborhood in Houston.

The Twitter user, @dschlick, tweeted out Hey @GregAbbott_TX, since youre so holy and close to God, when is he going to make you walk again? #crippledgreg #charlatanabbott.

For the record, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is far more of a courageous man and visionary leader than Obama or any left-winger could ever hope to be. Theres simply no comparison. Gov. Abbott is a man I would be honored to call President one day.

Example #2: Left-wing Drexel University professor calls for genocide against whites

Via Breitbart.com:

A professor at Philadelphias Drexel University has a heartwarming Christmas message: Associate Professor of Politics and Global Studies George Ciccariello-Maher is wishing for a white genocide.

Taking to his Twitter account on Christmas eve, Ciccariello-Maher, himself a white man, tweeted, All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide  The professor who describes himself as a visiting researcher at El Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales in Mexico also had praise for the massacre of whites.

The professors Twitter feed is filled with hateful, obnoxious messages, anti-Americanism, slams of President Donald Trump, attacks on Jews, as well as pro-Black Lives Matter and pro-communist sloganeering.

Yes, this is the love and compassion from the left, demonstrating the tolerance for all humankind that were told is exclusive to liberals.

Gosh, achieving diversity is almost instantaneous if all whites are exterminated in a new left-wing Holocaust, isnt it? Good thing we have the Second Amendment, I would argue, so that we can defend ourselves against violent left-wing whackos when they try to commit genocide against innocent women and children who happen to be Caucasian.

Example #3: Extreme harassment of a female college student by Clinton supporters causes her to drop out

Via DailyCaller.com:

A freshman student [Andi Moritz] at Bryn Mawr College has dropped out after what she says was unbearable harassment from her fellow students for supporting President-elect Donald Trump.

Moritz told the English House Gazette, a Bryn Mawr student blog, that a low point came when she was approached by a peer mentor in her dorm, who instead of offering support began to vilify her. The peer mentor said Moritz had personally attacked other students by expressing support for Trump.

Moritz told Philly.com the response was so hostile she ended up calling a suicide hotline for support. Later, she visited a campus counselor, who she says wasnt very helpful.

So, according to college student snowflakes, merely supporting Donald Trump is a personal attack on the entire student body. Yes, this is how insane and mentally ill the left-wing colleges and universities have become in America. To them, genocide against whites is good but supporting a Republican is an attack against everyone.

Example #4: Ivanka Trump stalked, harassed on commercial flight by insanely angry left-wing nut job

Via Breitbart.com:

Ivanka, who was with her husband Jared Kushner and three children, was harassed by a male passenger who told her that Your father is ruining the country, before declaring that She should be flying private.

As the man continued his tirade, he was removed from the flight and could be heard screaming, Youre kicking me off for expressing my opinion, as he was taken by security.

The husband of the passenger, Matt Lasner, later took to Twitter to recount the event, where he boasted how his husband was chasing them down to harass them.

To summarize the lefts tolerance, if you agree with genocide, verbal assaults and extreme threats against cripples, then you are tolerant (and even progressive)



So now we really get down to the root of liberalism, which is best described at this point as a mental disorder. The most fervent advocates of liberalism are violent, unstable nut jobs, conspiracy theorists and whackos who fake hate crimes against themselves with shocking frequency (nearly every hate crime reported by the Huffington Post, MSNBC or CNN later turns out to be a false flag hoax committed by leftists against themselves).

The mass psychosis of the unhinged left stems from the deep linguistic programming of the hypnotic left-wing media which has literally programmed left-wingers into near-Manchurian candidates to be activated at any moment against conservatives. To top it all off, left-wing whackos are now convinced that the KKK is everywhere, Russians hacked the election, genocide against whites is diversity, and chopping up living human babies for organ harvesting is womens health.

The extreme violence, delusional narratives and unbridled hatred now being demonstrated by those on the left isnt merely amusing; its dangerous to society.

Hillary Clintons FEMA Fun Camps now have a whole new use under President Trump

I sense we are rapidly approaching the day where We the People are going to have to quite literally institutionalize many of these left-wing nut jobs and subject them to some sort of deprogramming therapy in the hopes of being able to allow them to eventually return to society with their mental faculties restored. Some of them have become so unhinged and completely out of touch with reality that they can no longer function in society without posing a very real threat to the people around them.

Perhaps after January 20, President Trump can help American heal by calling for a nationwide treatment program for delusional, paranoid leftists who have been put into a state of mental derangement by CNN, the NYT, WashPost, MSNBC and left-wing hate spewing political grunts like Michael Moore. A mere 30-day time out from the left-wing media might allow a large number of its victims to finally come to their senses and wake up from their hypnosis programming.

Good thing we already have Hillary Clintons fun camps built and ready to be put to good use, eh? Now we finally know their greater purpose: Serving as de-hypnosis centers for mentally ill leftists who can no longer function in a democratic society.
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New Delhi:

Are you homeless and facing numerous challenges? A new French study shows that homeless people are likely to suffer from insomnia, fatigue and lack of sleep.

Once you are away from home there are countless challenges that you face, the biggest problem comes at night when you don't get proper sleep. New research has found that lack of sleep could be a major reason why so many homeless people struggle to get their lives on track.



To stay healthy it is very much necessary to get enough and peaceful sleep as previous studies have showed that not getting enough sleep with high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, depression, anxiety, lowered immune function and higher consumption of alcohol.

Also Read: In real science the only pigment for eye color is brown and not blue or green

Sleep is important for good health and necessary to the ability to work and successfully perform daily activities, a team of French researchers write in the new issue of JAMA. Improving the quality and duration of sleep in the homeless may, therefore, improve alertness, health, and the ability to face daily tasks.

Researchers from Paris Descartes University in France analysed responses from 3,453 people who met the definition of homeless in French cities; most of the participants were men and had an average age of almost 40. They were living on the street, in short-term shelters, small social services paid hotels and other facilities for homeless people with children.

Also Read: Know how to heal wounds without leaving scars: Study

Sleep is part of good health, but the homeless often have no access to safe and warm beds at night. A questionnaire was used to ask about total sleep time a night and over the past 24 hours. Responses from the homeless were compared to individuals in the general population who participated in a large surveyof the French adult population.

The homeless reported shorter total sleep (6 hours 31 minutes vs 7 hours 9 minutes). Among the homeless, eight per cent reported less than four hours of total sleep over the past 24 hours compared with three per cent of the general population, according to the results. Homeless women also were twice as likely as men to report that they slept less than four hours and insomnia was reported by 41 per cent of the homeless compared with 19 per cent of the comparison group.

Also, 33 per cent of the homeless reported day time fatigue compared with 15 per cent of the general population. Among the homeless, 25 per cent also reported regularly taking a drug to help them sleep compared with 15 per cent of the control group, the results suggest. "We believe that improving sleep deserves more attention in this vulnerable group," the researchers said.

"We strongly support strategies other than hypnotic agents to improve sleep in the homeless, including more careful control of noise, lighting, heating and airconditioning at night," they said. "Facilities could provide residents with sleep aids, such as earplugs, eye sleep masks and pillows.

Screens between beds could offer some sense of privacy, even in collective dormitories, and addressing issues of personal security should promote better sleep," they added.

The study was published the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

(With PTI Inputs)
Tirunelveli:

A 58-year-old man was on Wednesday sentenced to 14 years of rigorous imprisonment by a special court for allegedly sexually harassing eight children in an orphanage run by him at a village in Tuticorin district in 2012.

Judge Abdul Khader of Protection of Civil Rights court sentenced Stephen Joseph to 14 years rigorous imprisonment and also slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on him besides directing him to pay Rs one lakh to each of the eight girls.

Joseph had been running the orphanage with 41 inmates,including 23 girls, at Mookuperi near Nazareth in Tuticorin. He was arrested on January 19, 2012 following a complaint against him and booked under IPC Sections 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty),342 (punishment for wrongful confinement), among others andSection 23 of Juvenile Justice Act and Section 3(1)XII ofSC/ST Act.

When the case came up for hearing on Wednesday, the court heardthe evidence of witnesses and sentenced Joseph to 14 years.

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New Delhi:

Enforcement Directorate arrested Delhi-based lawyer Rohit Tandon on Thursday in connection with money laundering case registered against him post demonetisation. He will be produced before Saket court on Thursday.

The lawyer was previously searched by the Income Tax department officials after the reports that he declared undisclosed income worth over Rs 125 crore.

Officials said Tandon, who was being questioned by the Enforcement Directorate for the last few days, was placed under arrest late last night under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and will be produced in a court here for further custody.

The agency suspects Tandon was allegedly instrumental in the illegal conversion of demonetised currency worth about Rs 60 crore in purported connivance with Kolkata-based businessman Paras Mal Lodha and arrested Kotak Bank manager in Delhi Ashish Kumar.

With Tandons arrest, the investigative agencies have now nabbed some of the major players of the two high-profile black money rackets unearthed post the note ban.

While Reddy has been arrested by the CBI from Chennai, Lodha and Kumar have already been arrested by the ED apart from two others in Chennai.

The agency has been questioning Lodha and Tandon here and even brought both of them face-to-face. Sources claimed that as the required information was not coming forth from Tandon, he had to be takne into custody.

Tandon is required for custodial interrogation, they said.

Tandons case pertains to an operation of Delhi Polices Crime Branch and the Income Tax department earlier this month when the agencies had seized Rs 13.6 crore, of which Rs 2.6 crore was in new currency, allegedly from a law firm here that he is associated with. The ED had booked a PMLA case against him based on the police FIR.

On Wednesday, ED arrested bank manager from Kotak Mahindra Bank KG Marg branch in New Delhi and there were initial reports from sources that ED may soon arrest Delhi-based lawyer too for questioning along with the manager form Kotak Mahindra and Kolkata-based businessman Paras Mal Lodha, whom the ED had arrested earlier. The arrest was made on alleged charges that the manager was in connection with Hawala agents.

The Enforcement Directorate arrested manager of Kotak Mahindra Bank in connection with Kolkata-based businessman Paras Mal Lodha and Delhi-based advocate Rohit Tandon.

ED and Income Tax department are on vigil post demonitisation and raids have been conducted across India to nab the black money holders and also those involved in converting black money into white post currency ban on November 8.

Also Read: ED arrests Kotak Bank manager on charges of money laundering in Delhi

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New Delhi:

From highlighting custodial deaths to putting a spotlight on poor fire safety compliance in hospitals, the NHRC championed the upholding of human rights in 2016 and is looking ahead with a hope to earn more teeth to enforce its orders on violations.

The National Human Rights Commission, since its inception, has impacted human lives and striven for justice, liberty and equality for all, with some landmark cases, punctuating its eventful journey of over 20 years.

Chairperson of the rights panel Justice H L Dattu has pitched for vesting NHRC with more power, and as it clocks another year, the Commission would be looking forward to move in that direction.

Everyone wants to have more power. We (NHRC) also want to have more power, he had said on its Foundation Day celebrations in October.

Dattu had termed NHRC a toothless tiger that needed some teeth to enforce its orders on remedial measures in cases relating to any violations.

In many cases, due to our active intervention, we have addressed human rights issues... And, with more power, it (NHRC) should roar like a tiger, he had told PTI.

Since its inception in 1993, the NHRC has come a long way by addressing several issues of human rights violations as well as giving inputs on key legislations impacting human rights, he said.

Whenever an issue of human rights violation comes to the notice of the NHRC, it has to take cognisance without bothering for the permutations and combinations of electoral politics or caste and creed equations, Dattu said.

And, indeed the rights panel has taken up a whole gamut of issues, and highlighted cases of human rights violations with timely intervention.

According to NHRC, Uttar Pradesh registered highest number of cases of custodial deaths in the country between October 2015 and September 2016, with as many as 401 deaths taking place in judicial custody and 27 in policy custody.

Between October 2015 and September 2016, the NHRC has registered 1,05,664 cases on the basis of complaints, intimation from police and prison authorities etc, and on suo motu basis.

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New York:

Rapper Troy Ave has thanked fans for their prayers after surviving a shooting in his native Brooklyn, New York on Christmas Day.A

The 31-year-old music star was on his way to visit family for the holidays when an unidentified shooter walked up to Troy's red Maserati, while it was stopped at an intersection, and opened fire.

The hip-hop star was taken to Brookdale Hospital, where he was treated for bullet wounds, including one to the head, but he was well enough to chat with 50 Cent, who paid him a visit on Monday.A

Hours later, Troy was discharged, and he took to Instagram to share video footage of himself walking out of the medical centre to continue his recovery at home, reported New York Daily News.A

"Shot in my head, shot in my back, GOD is Great Ya boi is back," he captioned the post. "From the bottom of my heart thank y'all 4 all the prayers (sic)."A

shot in my head, shot in my back, GOD is Great Ya boi is back from the bottom of my heart thank y'all 4 all the prayers #WhiteChristmas4 Y(link in bio) A video posted by Troy Ave (@troyave) on Dec 26, 2016 at 5:17pm PST

A

It's the second shooting Troy Ave, real name Roland Collins, has been involved in this year. He was backstage at T.I.'s Irving Plaza gig in Manhattan in May when shots were fired, killing one man and leaving three others injured, including Troy.

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New Delhi:

The Narendra Modi-led government had in 2015 agreed to go in for 36 Rafales in a direct deal with France, and by the end of 2016 Indian defence was able to test the inter-continental nuclear capable missile Agni V. India augmented its naval strike capabilities by inducting the indigenously developed nuclear submarine Arihant. Indian Army's artillery firepower was boosted by the purchase of M777 Howitzers from US.

Here is the list of major defence deals made by the armed forces in 2016:

1) Inter-continental nuclear capable missile Agni V

Even though the Defence Ministry was not directly involved, investigating agencies carried out raids against a number of defence middlemen while cases were registered against some staying abroad in connection with alleged corruption. Another big development that came towards the end of 2016 was the successful fourth test of the indigenously developed inter-continental nuclear capable missile Agni V that has a range to cover entire China.

The missile is now ready for user trials and eventual induction into the Strategic Forces Command.

2) 36 Rafales:

The file for a medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) was first moved in 2000. The Narendra Modi-led government had in 2015 agreed to go in for 36 Rafales in a direct deal with France while terminating the original tender for 126 MMRCA.

The aircraft, equipped with latest weapons including the 150 KM range beyond visual range missile 'Meteor', can even carry nuclear bombs, will add to the strategic assets of the country.

3) Indigenously developed Submarine Arihant:

Another big move was the induction of the indigenously developed nuclear submarine Arihant. The government has still not officially announced the induction. The understanding between India and Russia to lease a second nuclear sub marine was another important strategic move.

The terms and conditions are still being worked out. The Inter-Governmental Agreement on the purchase of S400 Triumf air defence system is also a big development eventhough the nitty gritty are yet to be worked out.

4) Light Combat Aircraft Tejas:

The decision to finally induct the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft Tejas was also a big move. India and Russia restarted talks on the fifth generation fighter aircraft programme after a hiatus of about a year.

5) M777 light weight Howitzers:

The contract for the purchase of M777 light weight how itzers was also welcomed by the army which will deploy mostof them along the borders with China.

The M777 was the first artillery deal cleared by the Indian government since the Bofors scandal of late 1980s. To ensure better deployment of these guns, the ministry also struck a deal for 15 heavy lift Chinook helicopters.

6) Apache attack helicopters:

Giving the IAF yet another fillip to its strength, 2016 saw signing of a deal with the US for 22 Apache attack helicopters. The signing of the much-debated logistics agreement withthe US was also an important development. The UPA government had refused to sign it but Parrikarwent along after the US rewrote the agreement as per India'sconditions.

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New Delhi:

A video has gone viral on social media showing a swindler running away with jewellery worth Rs 1.2 lakhs. The video shows a customer walking into Kudhooru Jewellery Store in Vijayanagar area of Bangalore who swiftly attempts to fool the employees with a non-functional credit card and suddenly runs away the jewellery.

But an active Shubha, owner of the sop promptly jumps across the counter and succeeds in catching the swindler customer. Later, the man was handed over to police. The whole episode was captured on CCTV and proved that how promptness and spontaneity foiled the swindlers bid.

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Pune:

A youth from Bengaluru, who was detained in connection with the brutal murder of a young woman IT professional in Pune, has been arrested, with police suspecting it to be a case of one-sided affair.

Santosh Kumar (25) was arrested late on Thursday, days after he was detained for questioning, police said. "During investigation, it was revealed that Santosh Kumar had very smartly planned the murder. The accused claimed that he was present in Bengaluru on the day of the incident," Additional Superintendent of Police Rajkumar Shinde said.

Antara Das, 21, was attacked with a sharp weapon near Kanbay Chowk in Talawade on the outskirts of Pune on Friday night, barely 500 metres from her workplace. She was declared dead upon arrival in a hospital. Her parents had alleged that a youth was stalking andharassing her for some time. The ASP said it was found that Kumar, who hails from Bengaluru and is also an IT professional, had tasked someoneto execute the attack. A search is on to nab that person, he said.

"We have arrested Kumar under IPC sections 302 (murder)and 120(b) (criminal conspiracy) and he will be produced before court today," Shinde said. The accused had provided CCTV footage to the police, claiming that he was in Bengaluru on the day of the incident. Shinde said it was suspected to be a case of one-sided affair from Kumar's side. The victim, however, treated him just as a friend. "There are messages between them which showed that Kumar was forcing her to have a relationship with him. However, she was non-responsive and even reprimanded him for harassing her. We are looking out for the other person in this connection and the manhunt has been intensified," he said.

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Seoul:

South Korean investigators on Thursday summoned the countrys ambassador to France as they widened their inquiry into a corruption scandal involving impeached President Park Geun-hye to include allegations as her administration blacklisted thousands of artists for their political beliefs.

The special prosecution team was planning to question Mo Chul-min over a supposed blacklist of 9,000 artists deemed unfriendly to Parks administration and allegedly denied government support. Mo served as Parks senior secretary for education and culture in 2013 and 2014.

South Koreas opposition-controlled parliament impeached Park on December 9, weeks after state prosecutors accused her of colluding with a longtime confidante to extort money and favors from companies and allow the friend to interfere with government affairs.

The political turmoil came after years of frustration over Parks heavy-handed leadership style that critics blamed for setbacks in freedom of speech. Her government pushed to dissolve a leftist party and arrested union leaders, while journalists were pressured with legal and other threats.

Artists have complained about censorship. In 2014, organizers of the Busan International Film Festival clashed with the citys mayor who unsuccessfully tried to block a documentary on a ferry sinking earlier that year that killed more than 300 people, a disaster partially blamed on government incompetence and corruption.

The mayor of another city, Gwangju, recently acknowledged he was pressured by the government to exclude a painting satirizing Park from an art fair in 2014.

Parks alleged backlist reportedly included some of South Koreas most famous cultural figures, including Oldboy film director Park Chan-wook and poet Ko Un, whose name frequently surfaces in discussions for the Nobel literature prize.

They had signed statements criticizing the government for its handling of the 2014 ferry disaster and supporting opposition candidates during presidential and mayoral elections, according to Do Jong-hwan, an opposition lawmaker who broke the list to the media.

Artists groups say that the allegedly blacklisted individuals, including actors, painters and musicians, have been inexplicably denied financial support available under government programs and prevented from using state venues.

Former Culture Minister Yoo Jinryong, who stepped down in 2014 amid fallout with Park, said in a recent radio interview that the blacklist was passed to the ministry through Mo or another presidential secretary.

Cho Yoonsun, the current culture minister who was Parks senior secretary for political affairs from June 2014 to May 2015, denied Yoos accusation that she was involved in creating the list, telling lawmakers she has never seen such a list.

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New Delhi:

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday slammed the opposition for levying corruption charges on the Modi government at the Centre.

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Prasad said that Congress must learn from its losses. We have won every election, even after demonetisation, Opposition has to accept that they have lost and we have won.

NDA-led government has punished each and every person who has been found guilty of corrupt activities. Oppositions repeated charges of inaction against corruption are completely bogus, Prasad said.

Earlier in the day, Congress had accused BJP chief Amit Shah of indulging in corrupt behaviour in Ghaziabad post demonetisation.

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New Delhi:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that a Syrian ceasefire agreement has been reached in which Russia and Turkey will act as guarantors.

Further, Putin claimed that the truce will begin from Thursday midnight and subsequently peace talks will occur between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and the opposition in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana.

Russia's defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said that the truce would constitute 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria and a hotline has been established by Russian and Turkish militaries to monitor compliance.

Turkish state-run news agency Anadolu said on Wednesday that Turkey and Russia had agreed on a nationwide truce plan for Syria but none of the key players in the conflict had offered any immediate confirmation.

Also Read: Iran troops to join Syria war; Russia targeting not only IS, but rebels trained by CIA

The Syrian army too said on Thursday that it would halt all military operations from midnight, under the deal brokered by Russia and Turkey.

"The general command of the armed forces announces a complete halt to all hostilities on Syrian territory from the zero-hour of December 30th," Syria's army said in a statement carried on state television.

It added that the halt excluded combat against the Islamic State group and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fatehal-Sham Front.

Syria's leading opposition National Coalition body, a political entity based in Turkey, confirmed its support for the truce. "The National Coalition expresses support for the agreement and urges all parties to abide by it," spokesman Ahmed Ramadan told AFP. He said key rebel groups including the powerful Ahraral-Sham and Army of Islam factions had signed the ceasefire deal, though there was no immediate confirmation from rebel officials.

The agreement comes after Syria's government recaptured the country's second city Aleppo from rebels, in the worst blow to opposition forces since the war began. The ceasefire will be the first nationwide halt in fighting since a week-long truce from September 12-19 that collapsed after several incidents of violence.

A previous truce was implemented in February, with both of those deals organised by Russia and the United States. Thursday's agreement is the first nationwide ceasefire brokered with the involvement of Turkey, a backer of the Syrian opposition. Russia is a key supporter of Syria's President Bashar-al-Assad and began a military intervention in support of his government in September 2015.

Despite backing opposing sides in the conflict, and souring of relations after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in November 2015, Ankara and Moscow have worked increasingly closely on Syria. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from Aleppo after a ceasefire was brokered earlier in December by Ankara and Moscow.

Also Read: Syrian war 'cancer on a global scale', says UN chief Antonio Guterres

With PTI inputs

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Lucknow:

Samajwadi Party Uttar Pradesh chief Shivpal Singh Yadav on Monday night issued the complete list of candidates for the upcoming UP state elections. The list came out at around midnight as an emergency measure after current UP CM and his nephew Akhilesh Yadav issued a parallel list of candidates, including his loyal supporters who were dropped from the original list.

In an act of defiance to his family, Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday released the list of 235 candidates out of 403 seats for the upcoming state assembly elections.

The 235 candidates include 171 current MLAs in Akhilesh Government along with some new names. The candidates for the rest of the seats will be announced soon, a party notification said.

The list will be construed as an act war against his uncle Shivpal Yadav and father Mulayam Singh Yadav, as Samajwadi Party supremo has already issued a list of candidates for 325 candidates earlier on Wednesday.

Also read | UP CM Akhilesh Yadav releases list of 235 candidates for upcoming UP Assembly elections

UP CM #AkhileshYadav releases list of 235 candidate out of the total 403 seats for upcoming #upelections2017 pic.twitter.com/tp6DFt4cfW  News Nation (@NewsNationTV) December 29, 2016

The feud within the Samajwadi Party appeared to deepen on Thursday as an upset Akhilesh Yadav assured tickets to the MLAs who didnt find a place in party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadavs list of candidates announced on Wednesday for Uttar Pradesh polls.

Here are the latest updates:

#11:40PM

List of MLA Candidates Declaration for Vidhan Sabha 2017 pic.twitter.com/p9fJR9dHxU  Shivpal Singh Yadav (@shivpalsinghyad) December 29, 2016

List of MLA Candidates Declaration for Vidhan Sabha 2017 pic.twitter.com/mutf6Zb07T  Shivpal Singh Yadav (@shivpalsinghyad) December 29, 2016

#10:45PM

Shivpal Yadav reaches Mulayam Singh's residence in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh: ANI



#10:30PM

Shivpal Yadav to issue his complete list of 403 candidates for UP assembly elections: Reports

9:00PM

#Ateeq Ahmad,Rampal Yadav,Amanmani Tripathi,Shadab Fatima,Narad Roy, OP Singh (included in Mulayam's list) find no mention in Akhilesh's list

# UP polls 2017: Akhilesh includes Pawan Pandey,Indal Rawat,Arvind Singh Gope, Atul Pradhan, Brij Lal Sonkar, Ram Govind Chaudhary in his list

Till 7:00PM

#Several MLAs and ministers reach Mulayam's residence

#Shivpal Yadav reaches Mulayam Singh Yadav's residence

#According to sources, Akhilesh will announce a new list of 167 candidates shortly

#Scores of Akhilesh supporters have gathered outside his residence in UP

#Akhilesh Yadav has assured tickets to MLAs who were left out in Mulayams list of candidates

#We want Akhilesh to be UP CM again and in 2019 we will take him to Delhi to make him the PM: Brijlal Sonkar, SP MLA

#With Mulayam Singh Yadav's public snub to his son in announcement of candidates list for UP polls leaving bitterness in the ruling camp, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday spoke to the SP supremo to convey his displeasure over the choice of names.

#The factional feud in the Samajwadi Party was again in the open, a day after Mulayam Singh Yadav declared candidates for 325 of the 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh and ruled out projecting Akhilesh as the Chief Ministerial candidate.

Jo log Mukhyamantri ji ke nazdeeki hain unke ticket kaate gaye hain: Indal Rawat,SP MLA pic.twitter.com/a0wbYP73lR  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) December 29, 2016

#A clearly upset Akhilesh on Thursday met his supporters at his 5-Kalidas Marg residence and later spoke to his father and party patriarch Mulayam Singh to convey his displeasure over the list of candidates from which names of his close confidants were missing, party sources said.

#Hectic political activities began right from the morning with party leaders gathering outside the residences of Akhilesh and Mulayam. A big crowd also assembled outside Shivpals residence.

ALSO READ | UP polls: Fresh Akhilesh-Shivpal tussle after Samajwadi Party releases list of party candidates

#Party sources said the Chief Minister, before meeting Mulayam, met legislators and office bearers who do not figure in the list of nominees.

The list, which includes 176 sitting MLAs, announced by Mulayam and Shivpal in the absence of Akhilesh, has left out several pro-Akhilesh ministers, including Ram Govind Chaudhary, Pawan Pandey and Arvind Singh Gope, and does not carry names of over 50 sitting MLAs.

Besides, 10 ministers, including Shivpal, sacked by the chief minister over the past few months have got tickets. These former ministers were in open defiance of Akhilesh and it paid off.



Within hours after release of the list, which clearly bore the stamp of Mulayam and Shivpal, Akhilesh who was away in Bundelkhand yesterday, had said he would take up the choice of candidates with the party chief.

ALSO READ | UP polls: After open snub, Akhilesh conveys displeasure to Mulayam over SP candidates' list

"The list does not include names of certain candidates who are sure to win. I will take it up with the SP chief and tell him that some of them have done really good work and they should be given tickets," an upset Akhilesh had said last night.

In a late night tit-for-tat action, the Chief Minister struck back sacking two Shivpal loyalists -- Surabhi Shukla, vice-chairperson of UP Awas Vikas Parishad and her husband Sandeep Shukla from the post of advisor of Rajkiya Nirman Nigam. Sandeep has been fielded from Sultanpur Sadar seat.

(With inputs from PTI)
New Delhi:

A war of words broke out on Twitter between Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal with the former daring the AAP chief to contest against him in the upcoming Punjab polls.

Kejriwal said he was not contesting Punjab assembly elections and was fighting the Badals and state minister Bikram Singh Majithia to help free the state from the menace of drugs, following which Amarinder demanded an apology from him for making "false personal commitments".

"Always knew your screeching in Punjab was pure drama! Now that you've conceded, apologise for your months of lies & false personal commitments," Amarinder said on Twitter.

His reply came after Kejriwal said, "I m not fighting punjab elex. So, ur challenge hollow. We r fighting Badals/Majithia, who sunk Punjab in drugs. N u r fighting us, not them?"

Always knew your screeching in Punjab was pure drama!Now that you've conceded,apologise for your months of lies & false personal commitments https://t.co/Yigu9ZlQj3 a Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) December 29, 2016

I m not fighting punjab elex. So, ur challenge hollow. We r fighting Badals/Majithia, who sunk Punjab in drugs. N u r fighting us, not them? https://t.co/yxtvCGv0Xo a Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) December 29, 2016

The Twitter war started with Aam Aadmi Party nominating former journalist and Delhi MLA Jarnail Singh to contest against Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal from Lambi constituency.

Amarinder termed Jarnail as a "weak candidate" and alleged that AAP was "colluding" with the Badals.

"Jarnail's nomination bid from Lambi shows AAP-SAD collusion to ensure Badal's victory. Reeks of an underhand deal!" the PCC chief tweeted.

Jarnailas nomination bid from Lambi shows AAP-SAD collusion to ensure Badalas victory. Reeks of an underhand deal! a Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) December 28, 2016

Kejriwal replied, "Sir, r u fighting against Prakash Badal ji or Sukhbir Badal or Majithia or safe seat?"

Amarinder then dared Kejriwal to contest against him and tweeted, "Badals' story is over. You tell me where you're contesting from and I will come fight you there!"

The AAP chief retorted, "So, u r fighting me, not Badals/drugs. Badals also say they will fight against me. U n Badals wish to fight agnst me not agnst each other."

Badals' story is over. You tell me where you're contesting from and I will come fight you there! https://t.co/rpghXJoSwo a Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) December 28, 2016

The former Punjab chief minister shot back with a tweet saying, "I've defeated Jaitely-Majithia combine when you didn't even know a thing about Punjab. But tell us, why are you so scared of fighting me?"

I've defeated Jaitely-Majithia combine when you didn't even know a thing about Punjab. But tell us, why are you so scared of fighting me? https://t.co/qXKFNluReM a Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) December 29, 2016

Kejriwal then replied that he was not contesting Punjab polls and was only seeking to free Punjab from the menace of drugs mafia allegedly patronised by the present dispensation.

Congress, which has been in political wilderness for a decade now after losing two successive elections at the hands of the ruling Akali Dal-BJP combine, is seeking to wrest back power.

Amarinder, who is contesting his last elections, is Congress' face in Punjab, but is pitted against entrant AAP which is giving Congress a good fight. Punjab assembly elections are slated for early next year and the announcement of its schedule is likely soon.

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New Delhi:

Celeb couple Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli, who have preferred keeping their love affair under the wraps since beginning, are planning to take their relationship to the next level now.

As per the recent buzz, Anusha and Virat are getting engaged on January 1.

The media reports suggest that the couple will be exchanging the rings A in Uttarakhand. Their engagement is likely to take place in hotel Ananda, Narendra Nagar in Uttarakhand. While the coupleas parents will also reportedly be flowing down to the venue for the ceremony, Anushka-Viratas reception A is said to be attended by bigwig of tinselvile including Bachchans, Kapoors and Ambanis.

While no official announcement has been made in this regard so far, but Anushka and Virat have been spotted holidaying in Uttarakhand for a couple of days now.A

In fact, the Uttarakhand Chied Minister Harish Rawat too had welcome the couple to the state on micro-blogging site Twitter, saying aWelcome to #Uttarakhand @AnushkaSharma @imVkohli Hope you have memorable moments throughout your visit #VisitUttarakhand #UttarakhandTourisma.

A

Interestingly, the couple has been sharing their pictures from the their stay in the hilly area. Though, they havenat shared a picture together so far, but there have a striking similarity in their pictures.

Both Anushka and Virat have been spotted wearing Rudraksha necklace with a similar background.

In the end, It's all about cherishing the simple things in life Yai#nature A video posted by AnushkaSharma1588 (@anushkasharma) on Dec 26, 2016 at 11:07pm PST

Merry Christmas everyone YY. Have a good day YYS A photo posted by Virat Kohli (@virat.kohli) on Dec 25, 2016 at 1:11am PST

A

On the other hand, a fan page on Instagram also shared a picture of the couple together from Uttarakhand.

Merry Christmas everyone YY. Have a good day YYS A photo posted by Virat Kohli (@virat.kohli) on Dec 25, 2016 at 1:11am PST

A

Notably, Anushka and Viratas relationship has been through a rocky path this year. It was reported that the couple had parted ways early this year.

However, the couple resolved the differences and chose to give their relationship a second chance.

We wonder if Anushka and Virat will be making an official announcement for their engagement anytime soon.





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New Delhi:

Urban Development Ministry on Thursday released Rs 250 crore for Lucknow Metro Rail project, a joint venture between central and Uttar Pradesh governments.

The Ministry had released Rs 300 crore earlier this year, taking the total assistance provided to the Lucknow Metro to Rs 550 crore, an official release said.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh also discussed the progress of Lucknow Metro with Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and sought its speedy implementation, it added.

The 23km Lucknow Metro is estimated to cost Rs 6,928 crore. Of this, central government provides Rs 1,003 crore as its share of equity, Rs 297 crore as sub-ordinate debt and Rs 3,500 crore as loan assistance.

Uttar Pradesh has to mobilise the remaining Rs 2,128 crore as its share of equity and other means.

Central government entered into a loan agreement with the European Investment Bank in March this year for providing a loan of Rs 3,500 crore to the Lucknow Metro Project.

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Berlin:

India has cautioned its nationals to be careful while travelling in Germany in the aftermath of the truck attack at a Christmas market in Berlin last week in which 12 people were killed and nearly 50 others injured.



The Indian embassy in Berlin in its advisory to the nationals also asked them to avoid crowded tourist areas during the holiday season.



During the Holiday Season all Indian Nationals are advised due caution while travelling in Germany, particularly in view of the incident at the Berlin Christmas Market on December 19, 2016.



It is advised to avoid crowded tourist areas during the holiday season, the advisory said.



On the evening of December 19, a truck was driven into a crowded Christmas market, killing 12 people and injuring 48 others in a terror strike which was claimed by the dreaded ISIS.

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Mumbai :

Producer Guneet Monga is relieved that her latest project Haraamkhor has been cleared by the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) after it was denied a certificate by the censor board.

Directed by Shlok Sharma, the film chronicles a relationship between a 14-year-old girl (Shweta Tripathi) and her tuition teacher, played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui, in a small town.

Earlier this year, the Examining Committee of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) had declined to pass the film citing that its theme was unacceptable.

The Tribunal, however, has cleared the film which is now scheduled to release on January 13.

Guneet says the panel at Tribunal was more forthcoming and understood the point Haraamkhor was trying to make.

It took us around six months for the whole case in tribunal. But the panel at tribunal saw the film and said it is actually educational, this should go to the larger audience. This is exactly what we were saying, Guneet told.

Tribunal was just outstandingly phenomenal. Everybody on the panel were great, there were women on the panel too. I am deeply grateful to them because this is a landmark judgement, she added.

Also read: Censor board declines to pass Nawazuddin's 'Haraamkhor'

Guneet, who has backed films like The Lunchbox, Peddlers and Monsoon Shootout, says the movie has now been given a U/A certificate with certain cuts which the makers agreed to.

At the censor board, they outrightly denied to give a certificate. We went to the revising committee and they said cut few scenes and that is what we challenged. If we were to accept those cuts, we would get an A certificate. We challenged that at FCAT.

There is a scene where he (Nawazuddin) is hitting the girl, and a few scenes, where they (tribunal) have said can you reduce them to a certain percentage. So we are ok in accepting that. We are open to work with reasonable conversation, she said.

Guneet says the Tribunal was at least open to have a dialogue and even the makers were not mindlessly trying to put up a fight.

They are not saying to cut the scenes in a flash, they are saying if you do these things we will give you a U/A. It opens up the avenue. I am very happy doing that. We are not trying to mindlessly fight something.

One wants to have a conversation, but if you say this is just not possible then what is the counter argument to that? In todays day and age, with Internet booming and cell phones, what is hidden from public?, she said.

Haraamkhor premiered at 15th annual New York Indian Film Festival, where Siddiqui received the Best Actor award for his performance.

The film was also presented the Silver Gateway of India trophy at the 17th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.

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Dhaka:

Some 50,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar, the foreign ministry in Dhaka said on Thursday, seeking shelter from a bloody crackdown by the army.



Bangladesh has stepped up patrols to try to stem the tide of refugees crossing the border since an eruption of unrest in Myanmars western state of Rakhine in early October.



The foreign ministry summoned Myanmars ambassador to express deep concern at the continued influx of tens of thousands of members of the stateless ethnic minority into its territory.



(We) mentioned that around 50,000 Myanmar citizens took shelter into Bangladesh since 09 October 2016, the ministry said in a statement.



Rakhine borders Bangladesh and is home to the Rohingya a Muslim minority group loathed by many of Myanmars Buddhist majority.



Dhaka also demanded early repatriation of all Burmese citizens who have been living in the Muslim-majority nation for years, including some 300,000 Rohingyamost of them illegally.



A spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told AFP that at least 43,000 Rohingya have taken shelter in Bangladesh since October.



The vast majority of those who arrived took refuge in makeshift settlements, official refugee camps and villages in Bangladeshs resort district of Coxs Bazar.



Many of those interviewed by AFP told horrific stories of gang-rape, torture and murder at the hands of Myanmar security forces.



Myanmar has denied allegations of abuse but has banned foreign journalists and independent investigators from accessing the area.



Bangladeshs government has been under pressure to open its border to the fleeing refugees, in a crisis which has been described as a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.



But it has reinforced its border posts and deployed coastguard ships to prevent fresh arrivals.



In the past three months, its border guards have prevented hundreds of boats packed with thousands of Rohingya women and children from entering the country.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Massachusetts joins the list of legal marijuana states

If you are 21 years of age or older and a Massachusetts resident, recreational marijuana is now legal for you after the law went into effect on Thursday, December 15, 2016. Massachusetts is the first state in the densely-populated U.S. Northeast that has legalized the drug for recreational use.

Despite the strong opposition from top politicians, the Catholic Church, doctors, business groups, and other civic leaders, Massachusetts is one of three states where ballot measures legalizing recreational use of marijuana passed on November 8, 2016, along with California and Nevada. The Governors Council certified those results on Wednesday, December 14, bringing the law into effect on Thursday. Voters in Arizona rejected the law, and a Maine ballot is still going through a recount.

A legal gray zone

Even though marijuana remains illegal under federal law, in Massachusetts, anyone who is 21 or older can now legally possess up to one ounce of pot in public and up to 10 ounces inside their home. Additionally, its also legal for Massachusetts residents to grow up to six plants per person, with a limit of 12 plants per household.

It will be at least another year before cannabis can be legally sold in the state, giving state officials time to figure out how to implement the new law. They have been given until January 2018 to regulate the marketplace and set up licensed retail stores. This, however, creates a temporary legal gray zone where buying up to an ounce of marijuana from a dealer is legal while the dealer is breaking the state law.

Supporters of the new law are very wary that Massachusetts officials might try to change the law or delay its full implementation over the coming months, ABC News reported.

I am both celebrating and worrying that the law might not be implemented properly, said Bill Downing, member liaison for the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition who has spent nearly three decades crusading for relaxed marijuana rules.

His concern stems from public statements made by Democratic legislative leaders and Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, who were opposed to the law but had no choice other than to honor the will of the people. The Massachusetts marijuana legalization ballot passed last month with about 1.8 million people voting for and 1.5 million people voting against the measure, reported the Boston Globe.

Top leaders and politicians already stated that the law does not sufficiently protect public health and safety, trying to delay the opening of stores beyond the planned January 2018 date.

Massachusetts influence on neighboring states

Some people suggested that the legalization in Massachusetts could motivate neighboring states to consider similar steps. Given the close distances between cities in the West, it will be easy for people to cross state lines to acquire the drug.

Taylor West, deputy director of the Washington-based National Cannabis Industry Association, told the Huffington Post in a phone interview that it certainly makes sense for neighboring states to look at the policy and consider the benefits the state can get from putting this behind a regulated counter. Rhode Islands governor, Democrat Gina Raimondo, already communicated that she is willing to consider the idea.

According to a poll by Gallup, 60 percent of Americans support the legalization of marijuana for recreational use. Nonetheless, the future remains uncertain. While Trump has said that marijuana legalization was best left to the states during his campaign, his pick for attorney general is U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who criticized Barack Obamas administration for not enforcing the federal ban on marijuana aggressively enough.

Sources:

BostonGlobe.com

ABCNews.Go.com

HuffingtonPost.com

Submit a correction >>
/ Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

RIDGEFIELD - A Vietnam War Marine with a four-decade art career and an artist whose watercolors and drawings during a tour of Iraq were published in the 2005 book Bagdad Journal, will discuss their influences in January during a presentation at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.

Exhibiting artist Kim Jones - the Marine - will speak with artist and author Steve Mumford during a one-hour afternoon conversation on Jan. 7 at the Aldrich on Main Street.
HARTFORD  Josh Scussell has fought his non-Hodgkins lymphoma for years, enduring stem-cell transplants and rounds of chemotherapy as doctors worked to sustain his life.

But the Guilford resident on Wednesday said the real reason hes still among the living is the federal Affordable Care Act  otherwise known as Obamacare  that the newly elected Republican majority in Congress intends to repeal.

I stand here alive and almost cured because of many facets of the ACA, Scussell said, noting the law allowed him to stay on his parents health care plan for the bulk of his treatment and prevented insurance companies from implementing lifetime benefit caps and denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Scussell joined U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn, in calling on Republican congressional leadership to hold on plans to immediately repeal Obamacare after President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.

In a week, Ill be returning to Washington and will be greeted by a Republican Congress intent on ripping health care from 250,000 Connecticut residents and (giving) nothing in return, Murphy said.

There is no replacement plan, only repeal, he said. What the Republicans are talking about is cruel and brutal. There is no rush. Lets fix whats wrong with the ACA without throwing it out.

Murphy acknowledged Republicans plan to phase out the coverage over time, and have pledged to replace the act with a better plan. But Murphy said repeal would cause the health insurance exchange markets set up to help residents buy affordable insurance to dry up, as insurance companies pull out.

They are talking about a postponement, but premiums will go up and the market will collapse, said Murphy, who added that Democrats across the country are holding similar news conferences to rally support for Obamacare.

We are making the case to take a breath, step back and wait, Murphy said. They need 50 votes in the Senate, and we are hopeful Republicans are going to hear us. It only takes a few Republicans to stand up.

Obamacare has endured withering criticism over rising premiums and its core mandate that everyone purchase health insurance. Democrats have agreed to alter the law to fix various, problems but oppose outright repeal.

Jonathan Miller, a Meriden resident who suffers from cystic fibrosis, said his disease has progressed to the point where he can no longer work and is on long-term disability, which offers 60 percent of his previous pay.

(Obamacare) is so important, Miller said. It saves the lives of someone like myself in many ways. Im able to get medication and treatments. A lot of folks never have to worry about insurance, but for many of us that is not the way it is.

Isabelle Endicott, of Farmington, said her second son was born with serious heart problems and required open-heart surgery shortly after birth. She said her insurance company was soon paying bills totaling more than $250,000 for the first few weeks of his life.

I now worry about his future in terms of what it would mean to us if significant parts of the ACA are repealed, Endicott said.

A recent report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services noted the uninsured rate in Connecticut has fallen 34 percent since Obamacare was enacted in 2010, and that millions of state residents who have insurance through their employer, the private market or Medicaid and Medicare have benefited from the laws protections.

We need to build on our progress and continue to improve health care access, quality, and affordability, not move our system backward, said HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell.
Amnesty for FARC rebels sails through Colombian Congress

Colombia,Immigration/Law/Rights, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Bogota, Dec 29 (IANS) Not a single "no" vote was cast on Wednesday as both houses of Colombia's Congress approved a bill granting amnesty to members of the FARC guerrilla group who lay down their arms under the peace accord signed last month.

The initiative also offers legal guarantees for police and soldiers who committed crimes in the context of an armed conflict that began in 1964, Efe news agency reported.

"With 69 votes in favour and zero opposed the full Senate approves the Amnesty Law. The bill passes now to the Constitutional Court for their review," Senate Chief Mauricio Lizcano said on Twitter.

The lower house passed the bill by a margin of 121-0.

The amnesty applies to security force members and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fighters as long as they are not accused of committing offenses classified as crimes against humanity under the UN Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

More than 6,000 FARC combatants indicted for political offences including rebellion and conspiracy are expected to benefit from the measure.

In a video message, the armed forces commander, Gen. Juan Pablo Rodriguez Barragan, expressed gratitude for congressional approval of a bill "so important" to the military.

Analysts say that once the bill is signed into law by President Juan Manuel Santos, FARC fighters are likely to have more confidence about gathering in the designated demobilization zones.

--IANS

vgu/
Russia ends crashed military plane's salvage operations

Russian Federation,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Moscow, Dec 29 (IANS) Russian emergency services on Thursday concluded operations in the Black Sea where a Russian military aircraft crashed on Sunday, killing all 92 passengers and crew on board.

"The active phase of the search (for human remains and aircraft debris) has now concluded," said a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations.

Divers have managed to recover "the bodies of 20 persons and remains of nearly all the victims," explained a rescue operation spokesperson.

The aircraft impacted the water at about 510 km/hour on Sunday, Efe news reported.

According to the latest official report of the Russian Ministry of Defense, issued on Wednesday, 239 human fragment remains have been recovered and would be used to identify the victims using next-of-kin DNA.

A Russian military spokesman, who announced the conclusion of the rescue search, said, "All the debris of the Tu-154 plane has been pulled from the water."

Five days after the tragedy, the precise cause of the accident remained unknown, although rescue services have already recovered the three on-board "black boxes".

The third flight data recorder tape recovered from the Tu-154 has been damaged but may be partly deciphered.

The black box itself, located in the tail section, was destroyed.

Local media have already published the leaked flight cabin's final conversation, seconds before the impact, where the co-pilot can be heard yelling at the commander that the flaps have failed.

Experts and investigation teams have not yet discarded other possible causes of the catastrophe.

On board the doomed aircraft, apart from its crew of eight, were 64 members of the famous Alexandrov Army Choir, orchestra and dance ensemble, nine journalists, eight military members, two Russian civil servants, doctor Elizaveta Glinka, a Russian celebrity known as Doctor Liza, a humanitarian worker, a charity activist and the president of the Fair Help Russian NGO.

The Russian military song and dance ensemble were travelling Syria to perform at the Hmeimim air base of Russia for New Year's celebrations.

--IANS

ksk/vt
Michelle's 'ape in heels' caller fired

United States,Politics,Business/Economy, US Elections, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Washington, Dec 29 (IANS) The woman whose controversial "ape in heels" comment about First Lady Michelle Obama invited scathing criticism has been fired from her job, media reports said on Thursday.

The decision to fire Pamela Taylor, who was director of the Clay County Development Corp, came on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported.

The sacking was prompted by Taylor's November Facebook post, in which she celebrated incoming First Lady Melania Trump, while calling Obama an "ape in heels".

The small West Virginia town of Clay County was propelled into an embarrassing national spotlight with Taylor's unsavoury comment.

The move came as officials were keeping a closer watch on the nonprofit, which uses government funds to provide services to elderly and low-income residents, by placing it under a state agency.

Robert Roswall, commissioner for the West Virginia Bureau of Senior Services, told The Washington Post that the controversy exposed loopholes in how the nonprofit was being run.

The Clay County Development Corp was required by contract with the state to have open meetings, to respond to public records requests and to have nondiscrimination policies.

The fact that those rules weren't being followed became apparent after the public outrage over Taylor's comments.

"We started getting lots of reports about different things that we were checking," Roswall said. "There was little things popping up all over."

State officials said they had two options: They could either withdraw government funding or take over the agency. Roswall said they chose the latter.

According to a statement released Tuesday by Governor Earl Ray Tomblin's office, the Appalachian Area Agency on Aging would manage and oversee the Clay County Development Corp on a daily basis for six months.

In that period, the nonprofit would have the opportunity to make necessary changes to make sure it was following conditions set out by its contract with the state. It also must hire a new director.

--IANS

in/
Boat with 100 people capsizes in Indonesia, 77 rescued

Indonesia,Crime/Disaster/Accident, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Jakarta, Dec 29 (IANS) A boat carrying nearly 100 people sank in the waters off North Maluku province of eastern Indonesia on Thursday. Rescuers recovered four bodies and were searching for missing persons, a local disaster management agency official said.

At least 77 people were rescued and were being treated at a nearby hospital for injuries, the official told Xinhua news agency via phone.

The boat, KM Karamando, was headed for Jailolo sub-district of Halmahera Barat district after departing from a seaport in Ternate town, the official said.

"The boat suffered engine failure when huge waves and strong winds hit the waters," he said.

Ten children were among the people on board, the official added.

--IANS

soni/bg
US may call for sanctions on Russia

United States,Politics,Business/Economy,Diplomacy, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Washington, Dec 29 (IANS) Three prominent US senators have warned that Russia may face sanctions over the country's alleged interference in the recently concluded presidential election, media report said on Thursday.

Outgoing President Barack Obama is expected to announce retaliatory measures as early as Thursday, the BBC reported.

The Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and Democrat Amy Klobuchar, voiced their support for sanctions on Wednesday.

They were visiting the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which are Nato members close to Russia's western edge, when they talked about the sanctions and said the move had cross-party support.

President-elect Donald Trump, however, has rejected claims of Russian interference.

The sanctions could include economic sanctions and changes to diplomatic relationships.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded in a statement: "If Washington really does take new hostile steps, they will be answered.

"Any action against Russian diplomatic missions in the US will immediately bounce back on US diplomats in Russia."

Earlier in December, CIA officials told the US media they had "high confidence" that Russian hackers had attempted to sway the US election in Trump's favour.

The Trump team responded to those reports by saying "these are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction".

Graham told CNN the proposed sanctions would "hit Russia hard, particularly (President) Putin as an individual. I would say that 99 of us (senators) believe the Russians did this and we're going to do something about it."

He told reporters: "Russia is trying to break the back of democracies all around the world. It is now time for Russia to understand - enough is enough."

--IANS

in/
Navy Chief takes over Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee

Delhi,National,Defence/Security, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS) Navy Chief Sunil Lanba will take over charge as Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee on Saturday afternoon, and has been handed over the ceremonial baton by outgoing incumbent, IAF Chief Arup Raha.

The seniormost of the service chiefs is given the charge of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.

On Thursday, Air Chief Marshal Raha handed over the baton to Admiral Lanba at a ceremony in the South Block, which houses the Defence Ministry.

Lanba will assume the charge from the afternoon of December 31, the day Raha retires.

Army chief, Gen Dalbir Singh, who also retires from service on December 31, and Principal Staff Officers of all three Services and the Integrated Defence Staff were present on the occasion, an official statement said.

Admiral Lanba assumed command of the Indian Navy on 31 May 2016. He is a Navigation and Direction specialist and has served onboard numerous ships in both the Eastern and Western Fleets.

He is an alumnus of National Defence Academy (NDA), Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), Wellington, College of Defence Management (CDM) and Royal College of Defence Studies, London.

Air Chief Marshal Raha, the outgoing Chairman, COSC had taken over as Chairman COSC on August 1, 2014, and under his stewardship, she Services received a "vital boost in jointmanship", the statement said.

"During his tenure the Defence Communication Network got operationalised and training standards of the Tri Service Institutes such as NDA, DSSC and CDM were enhanced," the statement said.

"The much awaited National War Museum got approval from the government. He was instrumental in enhancing the role of military diplomacy with friendly foreign countries. Various humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations during crisis situations both within and outside India such as J&K floods, Chennai floods, evacuation of Indian and foreign nationals from Yemen and Nepal Earthquake were successfully conducted," it said.

"He also played a pivotal role in formulation of DPP-16 thereby streamlining and fast tracking Defence Procurement which has so far been plagued by laborious procedures and long delays," it said.

--IANS

ao/vd
US strike kills 2 Al Qaeda militants in Yemen

Yemen,Terrorism, Thu, 29 Dec 2016 IANS

Sana'a, Dec 29 (IANS) Two militants from the Yemen-based Al Qaeda branch were killed in a US drone strike in Yemen's central province of al-Bayda on Thursday, a military official said.

"The US drone targeted a vehicle carrying the militants in the Sawmaah area of al-Bayda province, killing two Al Qaeda operatives at the scene," the local military official told Xinhua news agency.

The deceased militants were identified as Jalal al-Saydi and Abu Bilal al-Lawdari and they participated in several terrorist attacks in Yemen.

The Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), known locally as Ansar al-Sharia, emerged in January 2009.

Since then it has claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks against Yemen's Army and government institutions.

--IANS

soni/bg
Commemorating 70th Anniversary of the First Canadian Citizenship Ceremony in 1947

OTTAWA, Dec. 22, 2016 /CNW/ - In celebration of the 70th Anniversary of the Canadian Citizenship Act, and the first ever Canadian citizenship ceremony, the Honourable John McCallum, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship will host a special citizenship ceremony in the same location as the ceremony of 1947- the Supreme Court of Canada. This ceremony marks the first in a series of enhanced citizenship ceremonies celebrating Canada 150 in 2017.

The first Canadian Citizenship Act came into force on January 1, 1947, marking the beginning of Canadian citizenship as a legal status. On January 3, 1947, 26 candidates, including Prime Minister Mackenzie King, received Canadian citizenship at the Supreme Court of Canada.



Date: Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Time: 1:30 p.m. (local time)

Place:

Supreme Court of Canada

301 Wellington Street

Ottawa, Ontario

K1A 0J1

Notes for media:

Journalists who are not members of the National Press Gallery will require accreditation from the Press Gallery in advance. For more information, contact Marc Fortier at [email protected] .

SOURCE Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada

For further information: (media only): Media Relations, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, National Headquarters, 613-952-1650, [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.cic.gc.ca


ONEIDA, N.Y. -- A 28-year-old South Carolina man was killed this morning when his vehicle collided head-on with a pickup truck in Oneida County, according to officials.

Stephen P. Hall Jr. lost control of his vehicle and collided with a pickup truck on Route 5 in the town of Westmoreland just after 11:25 a.m., Oneida County Sheriff's deputies said.

Hall was driving a 2015 Chevrolet Camaro west on Route 5 and crossed over into the eastbound lane, deputies said. Hall's vehicle collided with a 2014 Dodge Ram, which was operated by Scott Kinville, 36, of Oneida, deputies said.

Hall was pronounced dead at the scene, deputies said. Kinville was not injured.

No tickets have been issued and the accident remains under investigation, deputies said.
Dave Majumdar, the defense editor for The National Interest, assessment is that an Advanced Super Hornet could perform could offer a less costly 80 percent solution for the U.S. Navys requirements. Once developed to its full potential, the Advanced Super Hornet could perform most of the missions envisioned for the F-35C except penetrating strikeit would have to rely on stand-off weapons for that mission.

The Marines would simply be out of luck since a short takeoff/vertical landing variant of the Advanced Super Hornet is simply a physical impossibility

Switching to mostly Advanced Super Hornets could save around $15 billion per year or more for 30-50 years.

Sensor Fusion can be matched

When development is complete, the F-35 will be able to correlate all of the data from its various sensors and data networks and then present that information in a single coherent and easily understandable display. Currently, only the Lockheed Martin F-22 and F-35 have such a capability, but the Navy is working on adding a similar sensor fusion system to the Super Hornet. The Navys Multi-Sensor Integration effort for the Super Hornet is being developed in three phasessome of which have been fieldedwith the goal of developing a sensor fusion capability similar to the F-22 and F-35.

According to Navy officials, the Super Hornets MSI program drew lessons from both the F-22 and F-35. However, one major difference between the Super Hornets sensor fusion and the F-22 and F-35 is the limited capabilities of the F/A-18E/Fs current displays. Boeing, however, has an option to fit a new large 11X19 high-definition color display into the Super Hornet cockpit that would address that issue.

Stealth will decrease in importance a lot over the next ten years and the F-35 will not really be ready for 4 years

Stealth will remain the end all and be all of survivability as Lockheed Martin and the Air Force publicly contend. The Russians and the Chinese are developing low-frequency radars that can track fighter-sized stealth aircraft that arejust by the laws of physicsoptimized to defeat radars in the fire control bands (Ku, X, C and part of S). Electronic warfare will become increasingly necessary to support stealth aircraft as time goes on as low frequency radars proliferate. [Stealth] is needed for what we have in the future for at least ten years out there and there is nothing magic about that decade, then chief of naval operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert said at the U.S. Naval Institute annual meeting in Washington, D.C, in 2014. But I think we need to look beyond that. So to me, I think its a combination of having aircraft that have stealth but also aircraft that can suppress other forms of radio frequency electromagnetic emissions so that we can get in.

The F-35 Chief tester said the F35 will not be ready for combat testing til 2019-2020 and F35C wings are not strong enough to carry missiles.

US still has a lot more and lot better planes than Russia and China

Russia has about

Russia has about 58 Su-35 and is building about 10 per year China has four Su-35s and has 20 more on order.

412 Su-27s

Russia has 89 Su-30 planes and has about 88 more on order.

The US Air Force has a couple thousand more aircraft, Gen. Mark Welsh, Air Force chief-of-staff, told the House Appropriations Committees subcommittee on defense on March 2, 2016. At the rate theyre [China] is building, the models theyre fielding, by 2030 they will have fieldedthey will have made up that 2,000 aircraft gap and they will be at least as bigif not biggerthan our air forces.

Chinas Peoples Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) will be able to match or exceed the United States Air Force in the number of fielded combat aircraft by 2030. Moreover, while American forces will still maintain an edge, the technological gap between the two great powers will have closed significantly between now and then.
About 1, 237 Nigerians were stopped from entering Germany this year, as German police are on track to turn away some 20,000 migrants at ...

About 1, 237 Nigerians were stopped from entering Germany this year, as German police are on track to turn away some 20,000 migrants at the countrys borders, airports and sea ports in 2016.From January until the end of November, 19,720 people were stopped from entering the country, the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung, NOZ, reported, citing numbers from the German Federal Police. Statistics for December are yet to be compiled, the newspaper said.The 2016 number marked a more than 100 per cent increase in comparison to 2015, when 8,913 migrants were stopped from entering the country over the course of the whole year.Despite the overall increase, the newspaper reported that the number of people turned away by police has been going down in recent months. This is partly due to the fact that Germanys border controls now only take place at the border to Austria, NOZ said. Afghan asylum seekers were turned back most often, with 3,695 people affected in 2016 so far.In addition, 2,142 Syrians, 1,794 Iraqis and 1,237 Nigerians have been stopped from entering Germany so far this year. Despite being part of the control-free Schengen area, Germany decided in November to extend border controls at the Germany-Austria border until February.German Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere, said Germany had to take the step until the European Union was able to sufficiently control its external borders.
The Rivers State Governor, Chief Nyesom Wike, has accused the leaders of the All Progressives Congress in Rivers State of planning to b...

The Rivers State Governor, Chief Nyesom Wike, has accused the leaders of the All Progressives Congress in Rivers State of planning to bomb him while travelling in a plane. Wike explained that the target was for the APC in the state to get rid of him in its desperate bid to unseat the Peoples Democratic Party-led government in the state.The governor said the opposition party in the state was not happy that he was paying workers salaries and pensions to pensioners despite the economic recession and the failure of some state governors to pay salaries.Wike, who spoke on Thursday at a thanksgiving service in Port Harcourt organised by the state PDP, criticised those calling for bloodshed in the state for selfish reasons and cursed that blood would continue to flow in their families.He explained that God would continue to grant him victory no matter how hard APC leaders in the state planned to eliminate him.They said they will blow the plane that I will enter. You are plotting, do you know whether God will blow your own plane before that time, the governor said, adding that the state was under constant assault by leaders of the opposition party.Describing Rivers as a peaceful state, Wike stressed that the APC was planning to cause crisis in order to create a wrong impression.
Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola yesterday granted amnesty to four death-row prison inmates in three Southwest prisons.

Director of Public Prosecutions and Secretary to the State Advisory Council on Prerogative of Mercy Pomade Adeniji announced this in a statement in Osogbo.He said the governors gesture was in commemoration of the New Year celebration.Pursuant to the advice and recommendations of the State Advisory Council on Prerogative of Mercy, Aregbesola, in exercise of his powers, has granted amnesty to the prison inmates, the statement said.The statement said the inmates were serving jail terms at federal prisons in Ilesha, Ibara and Abeokuta as well as Maximum Security Prison, Kirikiri in Lagos.It listed the inmates as Kolawole Adediji and Madelon Adediji, both on the death row.The statement added that Ekanade Muyiwa and Adewole Olusoji, also on the death row, had their sentences commuted to 20 years imprisonment each.News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the governor made a similar gesture last September, when he pardoned six inmates.The governor was reported then to have granted the amnesty to mark Nigerias 56th Independence anniversary.
The West African Examinations Council says blind candidates also cheat during examinations. They cheat by colluding.

The West African Examinations Council says blind candidates also cheat during examinations.They cheat by colluding.The Head of Test Administration of WAEC in Nigeria, Mrs Frances Iweha-Onukwu, in Lagos on Wednesday said the reason could be that the candidates were usually not well equipped individually for the examinations.She added that this had been responsible for what she described as not too wonderful performance among the blinds.She said, We have discovered that there is usually high incidence of collusion among blind candidates during examinations.That is why their performance has not really been anything wonderful.Our society is such that there have not been adequate and conscious efforts to take care of the challenged.There have not been enough trained personnel to guide blind candidates before being exposed to major external examination.She lamented a situation where just one teacher who studied Special Education in higher institution is employed to cater for the needs of physically challenged persons of various dimensions. She said the situation must be reviewed.She said, I cannot explain how one teacher, who studied special education can be given the singular task of meeting the academic needs of the deaf, dumb, the blind and all others.Meanwhile, there are candidates who need personalised attention on one-on-one basis.If we intend to give the best and all-inclusive education, Federal Government must employ more trained teachers in special education to take care of the different defects among the physically challenged students.There must also be consciousness in policy formulation that will take care of these persons.This is because there is ability in disability. These persons can do better if adequate care is given.NAN
A 21-year-old a Cameroonian, Ledjou Kouemou, on Thursday appeared in an Ebute Meta Chief Magistrates Court, Lagos, for allegedly stabbing...

A 21-year-old a Cameroonian, Ledjou Kouemou, on Thursday appeared in an Ebute Meta Chief Magistrates Court, Lagos, for allegedly stabbing his employer to death in her residence.Kouemou, a domestic servant, was arraigned on a charge of murder of his employer before Chief Magistrate Oluyemisi Adelaja.Adelaja ordered the remand of the accused at the Ikoyi Prisons pending legal advice from the Directorate of Public Prosecution.She adjourned the case till Feb. 24, 2017 for mention.Prosecutor Chinalu Uwadione told the court that the accused committed the offence on Dec. 20 at about 9.30pm at Parkview Estate, Ikoyi.Uwadione said the accused had asked the deceased for an increase in his salary and she declined.He said the accused decided to bury a kitchen knife into her chest resulting to her death.The prosecutor said the offence contravened Section 221 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2011, which on conviction attracts death sentence.
James Ibori, a former governor of Delta State, has described the death of Second Republic Senator, Francis Spanner Okpozo, as a great loss...

James Ibori, a former governor of Delta State, has described the death of Second Republic Senator, Francis Spanner Okpozo, as a great loss to the South-South and Nigeria.Okpozo, 81, who hails from Ozoro in Isoko North Council Area in Delta, died on Monday in Benin, the Edo State capital.In a press statement on Wednesday signed by his media aide, Tony Eluemunor, Ibori said that Senator Okpozo was an indefatigable fighter for the betterment of the Niger Delta.We can all recall that during the last national confab, Pa Okpozos voice was strident in calling for increased derivation per centage for the oil producing states, even as he warned of the consequences of the injuries that would be done to Nigeria if fiscal federalism was not made a reality in the country, he noted.Ibori recalled that the leadership qualities in Okpozo came to the fore when he emerged a Deputy-Speaker of the defunct Bendel State House of Assembly.Since then, he always remained a voice of reason whenever serious national issues was being discussed, he said.Ibori added that Okpozo was a tireless peacemaker who toiled night and day to ensure that peace reignedin Delta State, and prayed to God to grant Okpozos immediate family the strength to bear the irreparable loss.
Manchester United will not try to bring in Benfica defender, Victor Lindelof, during the January transfer window.According to BBC Sport, United manager Jose Mourinho, is ready to call off the chase for the 22-year-old Sweden defender, because of the form of Phil Jones and Marcos Rojo.The Portuguese also has cover in central defence in Eric Bailly, Chris Smalling and Daley Blind.Reports from Portugal had claimed Lindelof would become the clubs most expensive defender of all-time, costing between 38m and 42m. There were even speculations that he had been assigned a squad number at Old Trafford.The Red Devils have gone unbeaten for 11 matches, since Jones and Rojo were first paired together in the 3-1 win over Swansea on November 6.
In the leaked telephone conversation between Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State and Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti, the two governors wer...

Listen to audio below...

In the leaked telephone conversation between Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State and Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti, the two governors were heard having an excited conversation about how Mr. Wike stormed a collation center during the election. The tone of the exchanges makes it clear that Mr. Wikes aim was to manipulate the results of the elections in favor of his candidates. In a tone that shows how he outmanouvred the Nigerian Army, Wike declares in the conversation that, "Nigeria Army does not exist again."In what appeared to be a confessional, Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State has told Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State how he used his office to influence the election rerun in his state.As if to show utmost contempt for the Nigerian State, the duo of Fayose and Wike thrashed the Nigerian Army, describing it in crass manner.The two governors are members of the Peoples Democratic Party, on whose platform they were elected into office.No less than three people had died during the elections that were marred by violence and horrendous electoral malpractices.In a second of such recorded audios where Wike could be heard boasting about his criminal exploits during the election, the following exchange took place between him and Fayose.
A 33-year-old man, Kema Akejelu on Thursday appeared before an Ikeja Chief Magistrates Court accused of beating up his wife and throwing ...





A 33-year-old man, Kema Akejelu on Thursday appeared before an Ikeja Chief Magistrates Court accused of beating up his wife and throwing her off a storey building.The accused, a carpenter, who resides at Seun Nwachi St., Idimu, a suburb of Lagos, is facing a two-count charge bordering on assault.The prosecutor, Insp. Simeon Inuoha told the court that the offence was committed on Nov. 13 at the accuseds residence during a fight between the accused and his wife, Oghenekvewe over her coming back home late.The accused beat up his wife and pushed her from a storey building which caused her two ankles to dislocate,  he said.The offences contravened Sections 170 and 171 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2011.The accused, however, pleaded not guilty, and the Chief Magistrate, Mrs B. O Osunsanmi granted him bail in the sum of N50,000 with one surety in like sum.She adjourned the case to Feb. 15, for mention.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has not printed the small naira denominations for about a year, causing the scarcity of the notes in the...

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has not printed the small naira denominations for about a year, causing the scarcity of the notes in the economy.Sources at the CBN hinted that for a year now, the apex bank did not award contract for the printing of the notes such as N5, N10, N20 and N50 usually done abroad.NAN gathered that the recently printed notes in circulation, N200, N500 and N1,000 , were produced by the Nigeria Security Printing and Minting plc (NSPM). NSPM produces currency notes and coins for the CBN and a wide range of security documents for the federal, state and local government establishments, commercial banks and blue chip companies. According to the NSPM website, the company has the ability to print over 40 million notes weekly.However, the sources said the high cost of printing banknotes was the reason the apex bank did not give contracts for their production.The cost of printing N50 is almost the same as N1,000. Printing small denominations costs more than the value and with the present economic situation, it makes sense to print higher notes which can be done locally by NSPM. A worker at the First Bank Plc, told NAN that throughout the 2016 festive seasons, there were hardly smaller currency notes to give to customers.We usually request for cash from the CBN through our Cash Management Centre, but recently, we have not been able to get mints of N100 and below. We had N50 at one point but it wasnt in the quantity we are used to getting.We have been telling our customers who call to request for mints that the smallest currencies they can get is N200, the worker ,who also preferred anonymity, said. Mr Jude Ndukwe, a Political Economist, said the implication of the situation was that prices of goods were likely to increase since there were no smaller currencies in circulation.A bread seller is likely to increase the cost of bread from N350 to N400 simply because he does not want to deal with the difficult task of getting change.The same goes to a bus conductor and so forth. This act alone is enough to add to the hardship of the average Nigerians.N10, N50 may not mean anything to some, but it means a whole lot to millions of Nigerians living in poverty. So the government should do something about this, he said.But the CBN Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Mr Isaac Okorafor, denied the allegation that the apex bank had not contracted the printing of smaller denomination currencies since 2015. There is no scarcity of smaller denomination in the market.People are complaining because we did not make provision for mints to be supplied in smaller denomination during the festive season. You see people are fond of abusing these denominations by spraying them to be stepped on during weddings and other ceremonies.The abuse is even worse during the festive season, so we decided to make scarce the denominations. But its not that we have not been printing them.  Yes we havent printed abroad but we also print locally which we have been doing, he said.When asked the last time Nigeria actually had these smaller denominations printed, he promised to get the details.He reiterated that it was still a crime to hawk or sell mint notes in the country, saying there was still an enforcement committee comprising CBN and the security agencies to check the menace and arrest culprits.Okorafor said that the CBN was collaborating with the police to ensure that the Nigerian currencies were not abused.Naira scarcity: CBN fails to print small denominations in 1 yearThe Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has not printed the small naira denominations for about a year, causing the scarcity of the notes in the economy.Sources at the CBN hinted that for a year now, the apex bank did not award contract for the printing of the notes such as N5, N10, N20 and N50 usually done abroad.NAN gathered that the recently printed notes in circulation, N200, N500 and N1,000 , were produced by the Nigeria Security Printing and Minting plc (NSPM). NSPM produces currency notes and coins for the CBN and a wide range of security documents for the federal, state and local government establishments, commercial banks and blue chip companies. According to the NSPM website, the company has the ability to print over 40 million notes weekly.However, the sources said the high cost of printing banknotes was the reason the apex bank did not give contracts for their production.The cost of printing N50 is almost the same as N1,000. Printing small denominations costs more than the value and with the present economic situation, it makes sense to print higher notes which can be done locally by NSPM. A worker at the First Bank Plc, told NAN that throughout the 2016 festive seasons, there were hardly smaller currency notes to give to customers.We usually request for cash from the CBN through our Cash Management Centre, but recently, we have not been able to get mints of N100 and below. We had N50 at one point but it wasnt in the quantity we are used to getting.We have been telling our customers who call to request for mints that the smallest currencies they can get is N200, the worker ,who also preferred anonymity, said. Mr Jude Ndukwe, a Political Economist, said the implication of the situation was that prices of goods were likely to increase since there were no smaller currencies in circulation.A bread seller is likely to increase the cost of bread from N350 to N400 simply because he does not want to deal with the difficult task of getting change.The same goes to a bus conductor and so forth. This act alone is enough to add to the hardship of the average Nigerians.N10, N50 may not mean anything to some, but it means a whole lot to millions of Nigerians living in poverty. So the government should do something about this, he said.But the CBN Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Mr Isaac Okorafor, denied the allegation that the apex bank had not contracted the printing of smaller denomination currencies since 2015. There is no scarcity of smaller denomination in the market.People are complaining because we did not make provision for mints to be supplied in smaller denomination during the festive season. You see people are fond of abusing these denominations by spraying them to be stepped on during weddings and other ceremonies.The abuse is even worse during the festive season, so we decided to make scarce the denominations. But its not that we have not been printing them.  Yes we havent printed abroad but we also print locally which we have been doing, he said.When asked the last time Nigeria actually had these smaller denominations printed, he promised to get the details.He reiterated that it was still a crime to hawk or sell mint notes in the country, saying there was still an enforcement committee comprising CBN and the security agencies to check the menace and arrest culprits.Okorafor said that the CBN was collaborating with the police to ensure that the Nigerian currencies were not abused.
The police have foiled an attempt by a notorious Niger Delta militant group operating from the creeks of Ikorodu and Arepo on the outs...

The police have foiled an attempt by a notorious Niger Delta militant group operating from the creeks of Ikorodu and Arepo on the outskirts of Lagos and Ogun states to blow up the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos.A top commander of the group, Abiodun Amos, who is also known as Senti, an Ijaw from Arogbo, Ese-Odo Local Government of Ondo State, who is also said to be the groups explosive expert, was arrested by operatives of the Inspector General of Police Special Intelligence Response Team (IRT), who trailed him to a river bank at Majidun, Ikorodu, Lagos.Two AK47 rifles hidden in a Ghana-Must-Go bag were found with the suspect. He led the IRT operatives to a vehicle parked discreetly within Ikorodu, where a large catche of dynamite and detonators was recovered from its boot.It was also learnt that Amos arrest followed intelligence generated by the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA), which was passed on to the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, indicating that the group was at its final stage of carrying out an attack on the Third Mainland BridgeAfricas longest at 13 kilometres.The IGP, who was said to have been miffed by the report, directed his operatives at the IRT, led by Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) Abba Kyari, to investigate the report. It was confirmed that the group was actually planning to blow up the bridge at the end of November. The group, detectives discovered, had acquired large quantities of dynamite and several other explosives for the attack.In October 2016, the group, which has no known identity and was notorious for pipeline vandalism, kidnapping and bank robberies, demanded for amnesty, threatening to disrupt the economy within Lagos and Ogun states if the Federal Government did not dialogue with it and grant its members pipeline protection contracts.The leader of the militant group, known as General Ossy Ibori, who coordinated most of the bank robberies and high profile kidnappings, including that of three schoolgirls at Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary School in Ikorodu, four landlords at Isheri North, Oniba of Ibaland, Oba Goriola Oseni and many others within Lagos and Ogun states, boasted in an interview that his group had over 21 generals commanding 7,800 battle-ready boys.He added that the group was rich enough to fight the Federal Government as it had acquired thousands of military grade arms and ammunition, which he said would be deployed in disrupting the economy within Lagos and Ogun states, should the Federal Government fail to dialogue with the group and grant its wishes.Sources disclosed that the IRT operatives made several arrests within Ikorodu and other parts of Lagos State. One of the suspects is said to have given the police the information, which they used in trailing and arresting Amos, who was on his way into the creeks.The 43-year-old suspect confessed that his group was formerly into pipeline vandalism but they resorted to kidnapping when it became difficult for them to vandalise and sell their stolen petroleum products. According to him;  we went into bank robberies and kidnapping because we wanted to get government attention and all we wanted was for them to grant us amnesty and also offer us pipeline protection contract. We have made several appeals and the government is not listening to us. General Ossy said if we dont blow up the Third Mainland Bridge government they would not listen to us. We had concluded plans and we decided to carry out the attack by November ending. I am the groups explosive expert and before I was arrested we were going into the creek to conclude plans on how to carry out the attack.Police spokesman Don Awuna, a deputy Commissioner (DCP) said: Yes, an individual was arrested. On sighting the policemen, the second suspect jumped out of his car and escaped into the bush, abandoning the operational vehicle.On searching the vehicle, two cartons of Gelatine dynamite explosives and hundreds of detonators were recovered in the boot of the car. Efforts are in progress to arrest the remaining gang members.
President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday assured that as the Chairman of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Contact Group on...

President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday assured that as the Chairman of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Contact Group on Guinea Bissau, he will ensure that the country did not relapse into crisis.He gave the assurance when he received the Prime Minister of Guinea Bissau, Umar El-Mukhtar Sissoco-Embola, at the State House, Abuja. The President, in a statement by the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, expressed satisfaction on the gradual return of normalcy to the West African country.He urged the leaders to work hard to reach a lasting solution to the countrys political crisis. The President congratulated the Prime Minister on his appointment and urged him to put the interest of the country and its people ahead of everything else.Sissoco-Embola described Buhari as his role model, adding that his country would continue to thank the government and people of Nigeria for standing by them in their moment of crisis.
Arik Airs United States and South Africa-bound passengers, who were stranded due to bad weather condition, on Wednesday disrupted the air...

Arik Airs United States and South Africa-bound passengers, who were stranded due to bad weather condition, on Wednesday disrupted the airlines services at the international wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos.The airlines members of staff at a point abandoned their duty posts as the passengers became uncontrollable.Arik, like other domestic airlines, has been unable to fly its international passengers to their destinations since Tuesday, December 27, thereby creating a backlog.The development is coming barely a day after the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority sanctioned the airline for violating passengers rights and contravening the provisions of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Regulations.It was gathered that since Monday, Arik Air had not been able to operate flights to London, New York in the United States and Johannesburg in South Africa.Passengers lamented that despite the backlog and the inability of the airlines flights to depart for these destinations, Ariks officials at the international terminal sold tickets to unsuspecting passengers.As of Wednesday afternoon, the airline had not airlifted its London-bound passengers, while its Johannesburg passengers were still waiting.In a reaction, Ariks spokesperson, Adebanji Ola, said the airline had ferried an aircraft back from the John F. Kennedy Airport to fly its Lagos-New York passengers.He said that due to the damage to its Boeing A330-200 aircraft by a ground-handling company at the JFK airport a few days ago, the airline had to charter a B767-300ER aircraft from a European charter operator to minimise the disruption and inconvenience to booked passengers on its Lagos-New York service.He said, This arrangement was put in place to cover for the period until the return to service of our A330-200 aircraft on December 28, 2016.The Lagos-New York flight, which was scheduled to be operated by the charter company and depart Lagos on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 at 11:00am, could not operate due to the closure of the airspace for several hours due to bad weather. Despite the airlines repeated appeals to the charter operator to operate the next fight, they insisted on positioning their crew and aircraft back to Europe on Wednesday, December 28, 2016.He said Arik immediately commenced the ferry back of its A330-200 aircraft from New York to Lagos on Wednesday, and that the aircraft was expected to arrive Lagos today (Thursday).Passengers originally booked on Arik Airs flight W3 107 on Tuesday, December 27, 2016 from Lagos to New York JFK will now be accommodated to travel on Thursday, December 29, 2016 at 06:00am, Ola added.
Again President Muhammadu Buharis visit to Bauchi State has been cancelled due to some unforeseen circumstances.





Again President Muhammadu Buharis visit to Bauchi State has been cancelled due to some unforeseen circumstances.The first visit which was scheduled earlier on the 13th of December 2016 was postponed because the President on that day went to Banjul, the Gambian Capital as part of the mediation team in that country election.Buhari and other Nigerian leaders led by the Economic Committee of West African States(ECOWAS) were mandated to mediate in Gambian electoral crisis where President Yahaya Jammeh, after conceding to a defeat in the elections, vowed not to step down for what he described as election characterized by irregularities.President Buharis visit to the state was rescheduled for today December 29, 2016 for the second time but was cancelled three hours to his arrival to Bauchi for what weather experts from Abuja described as hazy weather condition.The President in a telephone message to the government and people of Bauchi State, expressed his displeasure for his inability to be in Bauchi, Thursday for bad weather condition.He however appealed to the people of the state for the cancellation for the visit, assuring that a new and suitable date will be announced for the proposed visit to the State.Reaction to the new development, the State Governor, Mohammed Abubakar urged the people of the state to show understanding over the development, saying the cancellation was done in good fate and has no political undertone.
President Muhammadu Buharis visit to Bauchi was again cancelled for the second time on Thursday.

President Muhammadu Buharis visit to Bauchi was again cancelled for the second time on Thursday.Speaking in a broadcast to the people of Bauchi on Thursday, the state Governor, Mohammed Abubakar, said that the cancellation of the visit was due to the poor visibility of the weather caused by the harmattan.Abubakar apologized to the people for the failure of the President to visit the state for the second time stating that it was not intentional.He said that a later date will be fixed for the Presidents visit.Because of the prevailing weather condition in Abuja this morning up to this moment that I speak with you (11:45am), visibility is less than 300 meters in Abuja. To that extent even International flights have not landed or taken off at the Abuja Airport.For that reason, Mr. President was advised to put off his visit to Bauchi. I assure you, another date will be fixed and this time, for a state visit in which he will spend the night in Bauchi, Abubakar stated.Abubakar apologized to the people for the failure of the President to visit the state for the second time stating that it was not intentional.
UPDATE: Homeowner found missing N.J. woman, great-granddaughter in woods

MAYS LANDING -- A 71-year-old woman and her 5-year-old great-granddaughter have been found alive in Virginia after disappearing on Christmas Eve, Hamilton police reported.

An intensive search was launched for Barbara Briley and and the child, La'Myra, who went missing during a trip to visit family in North Carolina. The two had last been seen at an Exxon gas station 30 miles north of Richmond, Va.

The family had been unable to contact her since, although police searched an area south of Richmond after Briley's phone gave off a brief signal from there Christmas morning.

The pair were found inside Briley's Rav 4 on private property in Dinwiddie County, Va., around 5 p.m., Virginia State Police reported. Briley was taken to VCU Medical Center for treatment. The child appeared unharmed but was also hospitalized for evaluation.

Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
HACKENSACK -- City police were legally justified in shooting a suspect in the killing of his girlfriend and their 4-year-old son, prosecutors said Thursday.

Jose R. Santos-Alvarez was shot by a Hackensack police officer in 2015. (Hudson County Prosecutor's Office)

An unidentified Hackensack Police Officer shot Jose Santos-Alvarez on Oct. 15, 2015.

Santos-Alvarez survived.

The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office ruled that it did not have to present the case to the grand jury because "there are no material facts in dispute" in the shooting, Bergen County County Prosecutor Gurbir S. Grewal said.

Santos-Alvarez pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder in July. He was charged in connection with the deaths of Monika M. Potoczniak, 27, and Christopher R. Potoczniak, 4, in their Jersey City home.

The 27-year-old was strangled to death while the 4-year-old was suffocated, the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office said.

Hudson County detectives and Hackensack police tracked Santos-Alvarez to Clay Street in Hackensack days after their deaths. Four Hackensack officers forced their way into a room in a three-story duplex on Clay Street, according to the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office summary of evidence.

Santos-Alvarez was crouched in a corner of the room with knife with a 9-inch blade that he had pointed at his own neck, the prosecutor said. The officers ordered him to drop the knife, but he refused.

The officer who shot Santos-Alvarez told him to drop the knife 15 to 20 times, he or she said in an interview with investigators from the prosecutor's office. Santos-Alvarez eventually pointed the knife at the officer and lunged, the prosecutor said.

The officer shot once, hitting Santos-Alvarez in the abdomen, the prosecutor said. Santos-Alvarez dropped the knife and fell.

Santos-Alverez told detectives from the prosecutor's office that he planned to kill himself. He stabbed himself in the stomach before police arrived, according to a summary of his interview with the detectives, conducted Oct. 16, 2015 at Hackensack University Medical Center.

He said police shot him after he re-positioned the knife to plunge it into his own neck.

Doctors at Hackensack University Medical Center said Santos-Alvarez had three superficial stab wounds to the neck and three stab wounds to his abdomen, as well as a bullet entrance wound. There was no exit wound.

"In light of all the attendant circumstances, Officer 1 reasonably believed that Mr. Santos-Alvarez was actually pointing the knife at him/her and was about to attack him/her," Grewal said. "Officer 1 had no choice but to fire his/her weapon in self-defense."

The state Attorney General's Office reviewed the prosecutor's office report and agreed the shooting was justified.

The shooting was the second by Hackensack Police in 2015. An officer also shot a 22-year-old with a knife in May.

The prosecutor's office said that shooting was justified as well.

Myles Ma may be reached at mma@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MylesMaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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Live larvae from the MedFly was found in a shipment of clementines at the port in Camden earlier this month, officials said. The shipment of fruit, bound for U.S. markets, was turned away. (Submitted | U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

CAMDEN -- One of the world's most destructive agricultural pests was found in a shipment of clementines at a South Jersey port, officials said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said U.S. Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialists found the Mediterranean fruit fly, also known as the MedFly, in a shipment of the fruit from Morocco that was destined for markets in the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, of which the U.S. Customs and Border Protection is a part, announced the find on Thursday.

Agents discovered one live MedFly larvae among many dead larvae when they inspected a sampling from nearly 105,000 cases of the fruit at the Camden docks on Dec. 14. Testing later showed that the larvae found was in fact that of the MedFly.

The MedFly can cause extensive damage to a wide range of fruit crops. It is native to the Mediterranean area, but has spread invasively to many parts of the world, including Australia and North and South America, according to officials.

The female medfly attacks ripening fruit, piercing the soft skin and laying eggs in the puncture. The eggs hatch into larvae (maggots) that feed inside the fruit pulp and make the fruit inedible.

"Given that the Mediterranean fruit fly is one of the world's most destructive agriculture pests, this is an extremely important find," said Kevin Donohue, CBP's Acting Port Director for the Area Port of Philadelphia, in a statement announcing the find.

"If Mediterranean fruit flies were to take hold in the United States, the estimated agricultural and economic loss would be devastating. Safeguarding America's agriculture industries remains an enforcement priority for CBP, and it's a mission that we take very seriously."

U.S. agriculture and customs officials have been very vigilant in efforts to make sure U.S. crops are not damaged by the MedFly. An infestation several years ago caused billions of dollars in damage to crops in California.

The affected clementines were allowed to leave the Camden port and were shipped to markets in Canada by the importer, officials said.

Bill Gallo Jr. may be reached at bgallo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Bill Gallo Jr. on Twitter @bgallojr. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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Errick Young is seen in this file photo appearing at his arraignment in Superior Court in Bridgeton in April 2014. He was sentenced to 22 years in state prison for the murder of Benjamin Broughton on Friday.(File Photo)

BRIDGETON -- A man has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for fataly shooting a Commerical Township resident in the face during an argument, authorities said.

Errick Young, 23, of Millville, fired a single shot at Benjamin Broughton, 29, after an altercation outside of Broughton's Port Norris home over a child custody issue on March 22, 2014, Cumberland County Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae said Wednesday.

Young fled the scene and Broughton later died. Young remained on the lam until being captured in Clementon in April 2014.

The sentencing took place Friday in Bridgeton before Superior Court Judge Robert G. Malestein, Webb-McRae said.

Young must serve 85 percent of his sentence before he is eligible for parole. Once he is released from prison, Young will face an additional five years of parole supervision.

Young had pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter in October in the case.

Young had entered his guilty plea that allowed the judge treat him as if he were convicted of the charge against him by a jury with no specific agreed recommendation of a sentence from the state, the prosecutor said.

Broughton's family members spoke at the sentencing Friday, telling the court the impact that Young's actions had on them. Young had faced anywhere between 10 and 30 years in prison.

Cumberland County Senior Assistant Prosecutor Michael Ostrowski noted that while this was Young's first adult criminal conviction, he had a "readiness with a loaded gun, as well as his flight and fugitive status after the homicide" as reasons for a stiff sentence, according to the prosecutor's office.

Bill Gallo Jr. may be reached at bgallo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Bill Gallo Jr. on Twitter @bgallojr. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
I put on a few pounds this year.

You would have, too, if you spent an entire month eating nothing but Italian food, as I did for our N.J.'s best Italian restaurant showdown, and another month eating ice cream nonstop, as I did for our N.J.'s best ice cream shop showdown.

Throw in 40-plus dishes sampled in one day at the Jersey Shore Food Truck Festival at Monmouth Park in May; 30-plus dishes at the BBQ and Craft Beer Festival, also at Monmouth Park, in September; our three-weekend-long search for Rutgers' greatest tailgate; a week-long search for N.J.'s best barbecue joints, another week tracking down the state's best grilled cheese sandwiches, and it's no wonder I packed on the poundage.

Oh, did I mention the week and a half I spent eating pizza all over the state while updating the N.J. Pizza Power Rankings?

Yeah, I know I have the best job in New Jersey -- people keep saying so -- but they don't see the long hours, the nonstop driving; I racked up 7,000 miles alone on our N.J.'s best Italian restaurant, best ice cream shop and best sub/hoagie shop showdowns.

I know I won't get any sympathy here, so let's proceed directly to the 25 best dishes of my food year. As you can see, they are all over the map, both geographically and culinary-wise. These are best dishes, not best restaurants.

Do you have favorite dishes or restaurants from 2016? Let me know below. For a list of my favorite restaurants and dishes of 2015, visit here.

For tasty photos of my top dishes, see the gallery above. The dishes are in no particular order.

BEST DISHES

1. Roasted chicken dinner sub, Neil's Kitchen, Long Branch. Like Thanksgiving in a sandwich, with homemade stuffing, gravy and cranberry sauce.

2. French vanilla ice cream, Ice Cream by Mike, Hackensack. Tiny ice cream shop big on flavors.

3. Pulled pork, Hambone Opera, Trenton Farmers Market, Lawrence. This was the farmers market of my youth, but it sure didn't have great BBQ back then.

4. Bleu Jack grilled cheese sandwich, Nip n Tuck Bar & Grill, Long Branch. Yes, a neighborhood bar can make great grilled cheese, here with blue cheese, tomato and bacon on rye, cooked on a skillet.

5. Falafel plate, Falafull food truck. Track down this truck for tasty Middle Eastern food.

6. Chicken cacciatore, Chick and Nello's Homestead Inn, Hamilton. Like eating in someone's big old house. Classic, unfussy dishes, like the chicken cacciatore.

7. Rose's Special sub, Carmen's Deli, Bellmawr. South Jersey's best sub shop. Period. Get the Rose's and go from there.

8. Pork chops, Augustino's Kitchen & Bar, Hoboken. Good luck finishing these meaty behemoths. Fun place -- and bring plenty of cash.

9. Mango habanero ice cream, OWowCow Creamery, Lambertville. Winner of our N.J.'s best ice cream shop showdown, in one of N.J.'s best small towns. Everything tasted fresh and unique.

10. Pork dumplings, Little Purse Dumpling Den, Terminal C, Newark Liberty International Airport. Who says airport food is awful and expensive? The dumplings will set you back all of $6.25.

11. Whole chicken, Lino's Mexican Cafe, Red Bank. Just walking across the street and getting a whiff of barbecued chicken almost made me swoon. Prices are reasonable, too.

12. Creme brulee pie, Vidalia Restaurant, Lawrence. Killer dessert at one of the state's best restaurants.

13. Roast beef and mozzarella sub, Fiore's, Hoboken. The best sandwich from one of the state's great old-school eateries.

14. Beef brisket sandwich, Red White and Que Smokehouse, Kearny. I named them my barbecue newcomer of the year; they're about to open in Little Ferry and Scotch Plains.

15. Pete's Special Tuna sub, Andrea Salumeria, Jersey City. The best sub from our N.J.'s best sub/hoagie shop winner. Imported tuna and great bread, from Dom's in Hoboken.

16. Fried chicken, Henri's Hotts Barbecue, Folsom. Roadside BBQ joint; look for the smoker out front. Crispy, crunchy, delicious. I want some right now.

17. Tacos al pastor, Panchos Mexican Taqueria, Atlantic City. Best tacos I had all year. You can't miss this place; it's right next to fabled White House Sub Shop.

18. Coconut cream cheesecake, Cafe 2825, Atlantic City. A delicious dessert from our N.J.'s best Italian restaurant winner. Don't forget the tableside mozzarella, either. Or any of the entrees.

19. Sicilian rib-eye, Bottagra, Hawthorne. It may be better known for its epic Sunday brunches, but Bottagra is an excellent Italian restaurant at its core.

20. Vanilla/chocolate soft serve, Serene Custard, Vineland. Supremely cool, creamy custard from an ice cream stand literally on the other side of the railroad tracks.

21. Jerk empanadas, Ann's Catering food truck. Spicy Caribbean twist on that favorite handheld food.

22. Half mushroom/half sausage pizza, Denino's Pizzeria, Brick. A thin-crust right up there with Star Tavern in Orange.

23. Roasted lamb chops, ITA101, Medford. Tough to pick just one dish from this terrific restaurant, but I'm still dreaming about those lamb chops. And end your memorable evening with the tableside tiramisu.

24. Not Your Mama's BLT, Lost in the Woods BBQ truck. The best dish at the Beer BBQ Bacon Showdown in Morristown in the spring.

25. Langostinos, Sapore Italiano, West Cape May. My favorite food shot of the year; look at the gallery and you'll see why.

Peter Genovese may be reached at pgenovese@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @PeteGenovese or via The Munchmobile @NJ_Munchmobile. Find the Munchmobile on Facebook and Instagram.
NEWARK -- Screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport seized a loaded gun from a passenger who took it to a security checkpoint Wednesday morning in a carry-on bag, officials said.

It was about 10:30 a.m., when the loaded .25 caliber handgun was spotted while the bag was being X-rayed at a checked-in in Terminal C, said Lisa Farbstein, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration.

Farbstein said the male passenger told screeners he hadn't realized the gun was in the bag.



The passenger was detained while screeners called Port Authority Police, who arrested the man on weapons charges.



Peter Russell, 59, of Giblberts, Ill., was arrested at Checkpoint 1, in Terminal C, Port Authority Police spokesman Joe Pentangelo said.



"Port Authority police arrested him without incident, there was no interruption to airport operations," Pentangelo said.

It was the second time this month that a man was arrested at Newark Liberty after TSA screeners detected a loaded weapon.

On December 19th, a man was charged with trying to take a .40 caliber semi-automatic handgun through a checkpoint in a knapsack, the TSA said.

"As a reminder," the TSA stated, "weapons--including firearms, firearm parts and ammunition--are not permitted in carry-on bags. Travelers who bring firearms to the checkpoint are subject to criminal charges from law enforcement and civil penalties from TSA of up to $12,000."

Details on how to travel with a firearm are posted on the TSA website.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.




BAYONNE -- In line with a projection made by the city Municipal Utilities Authority in 2015, water rates in Bayonne are slated to go up by 3.5 percent at the beginning of 2017.

The change means a monthly increase of $3.60 for the city's average residential user, MUA Executive Director Tim Boyle said.

Boyle said the combined residential rate will be increasing from $1.33 to just under $1.38 per 100 gallons of combined service, or an increase of about 5 cents per 100 gallons.

The 3.5 percent increase will be taking effect one year after the MUA increased city water rates by a whopping 13.25 percent.

In December 2015, city officials said the large increase was necessary because the MUA realized it wasn't going to be able to pay the city's water contractor -- a joint venture between SUEZ (formerly United Water) and the investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. -- all the money it was obligated to pay for 2015 and 2016.

Officials blamed the predicament on the previous administration, asserting it was overly optimistic in its estimates of how much revenue would be collected from residents. Former Bayonne Mayor Mark Smith has contested that accusation.

At the time of the 13.25 percent increase, Boyle told The Jersey Journal the hike would allow annual rate increases going forward to stay roughly around four percent, barring any extreme situations -- a prediction that so far appears to have been borne out.

While providing information about next year's 3.5 percent water rate increase, the MUA stressed that it shouldn't be taken out of context, adding that people ought to "fully consider the complexity, age and extensive nature" of the city's water systems.

Water is collected at the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission's Wanaque and Monksville reservoirs in Passaic County; treated and chlorinated there; transmitted to Bayonne through an aqueduct; distributed to residents; returned as sewage; transmitted to the Oak Street plant in Bayonne and then to Newark; treated again; and released into the New York Harbor, according to the MUA.

Asked for data showing how the city's water rate has changed over time, the MUA said the cost per 100 gallons of water and sewer service was kept the same from 2007 through 2012 -- at $1.04 -- but stressed that doing so had caused the MUA to operate at a deficit.

After Bayonne entered into its current 40-year water deal in 2012, the water rate for each year from 2013 through 2016 was as follows: $1.13, $1.13, $1.17, $1.33.

News of the city's most recent rate increase comes days after The New York Times published a story examining the pros and cons of private equity firms getting involved in public water systems.

The Dec. 24 report said water rates in Bayonne have risen nearly 28 percent since 2012, with the number of government liens issued against local properties due to water bill delinquencies tripling between 2012 and 2013 and remaining elevated as of 2015.

The 28 percent figure can be arrived at by taking the city's $1.04 per 100 gallons rate in 2012 and comparing it to the $1.33 rate in 2016. Meanwhile, comparing the 2012 rate to the $1.38 rate slated for 2017 yields a nearly 33 percent increase.

The Times reported that supporters of deals like the one in Bayonne have said that private equity firms are required to spend millions of dollars annually to improve infrastructure and sometimes millions more upfront, as in Bayonne's case.

In another recent story, The Wall Street Journal reported that the investment firm in the joint venture managing Bayonne's water system is seeking a buyer for its 90 percent stake in the venture.

The Times report called the potential move "a common strategy" private equity firms use to accelerate their returns.

Jonathan Lin may be reached at jlin@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @jlin_jj. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
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A super PAC linked to Mayor Steve Fulop has seen fundraising slow to a crawl.

(Reena Rose Sibayan | The Jersey Journal)

Fundraising has slowed dramatically for Coalition for Progress, the super PAC linked to Mayor Steve Fulop's now-abandoned gubernatorial run.

Meanwhile, the city's pay-to-play laws, which Fulop was instrumental in implementing when he was a councilman, may keep the the PAC from using its $3.2 million war chest to aid the mayor in his re-election bid next year. The bulk of its cash haul has come from individuals and businesses who work in Jersey City or with city government, some of which are barred from working for the city and donating to local political campaigns.

The PAC's president, Bari J. Mattes, has said Coalition for Progress was formed to support multiple candidates. Sources have told The Jersey Journal that it was formed to boost Fulop's chances of becoming governor. Fulop has largely declined to comment.

"We don't have any authority in how any dollars from that PAC are spent, as it is independent," city spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said yesterday.

Coalition for Progress reported raising $21,500 between Sept. 28, the day Fulop announced he would not seek the Democratic nomination for governor in 2017, and Nov. 28, the last day for which fundraising figures are available from the Federal Election Commission.

In the same time period last year, the group reported raising $757,750.

Overall, the super PAC is in roughly the same financial position it was at the beginning of 2016, when it reported it had $3.2 million cash on hand. It has made a total of four political contributions, all to the Democratic-friendly House Majority PAC.

Two emails seeking comment from the PAC's spokesman were not returned.

As for what the PAC will do with its $3 million war chest, it appears it will not be able to use it to support Fulop in next year's mayoral race because of the city's strict pay-to-play laws and the number of its donors who do business with the city.

According to an analysis by The Jersey Journal, at least $2.6 million of the $4.3 million raised by the PAC since its inception has come from donors to Fulop's mayoral campaigns, developers that have received city subsidies, city vendors or companies that have contracts with the city's autonomous agencies.

The local pay-to-play laws restrict many of these donors from donating locally and receiving city contracts or tax breaks.

In February, after Fulop critics aired concerns that Coalition of Progress donors were seeking the mayor's influence for city matters, Morrill said, "Any PAC or super PAC that receives donations from Jersey City vendors should not be involved in any Jersey City election, as per our pay-to-play laws."

Asked if that is still the administration's position, Morrill said, "The administration will abide by all pay-to-play regulations."

Craig Holman, a campaign finance expert with D.C.-based advocacy group Public Citizen, said it is unclear whether a court would use the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision to void provisions of pay-to-play laws like Jersey City's that restrict vendors from contributing to independent expenditure PACs like Coalition for Progress. So far, Holman said, no court has done so.

Connecticut's pay-to-play ban applies to super PACs, he said, adding, "In Jersey City that is also how the law should be applied."

Bill Matsikoudis, the former city corporation counsel who is challenging Fulop's re-election bid next year, joined with Civic JC to pen a letter to Coalition for Progress' treasurer in September telling her the PAC is barred from spending to aid Fulop in any city race. Matsikoudis called the letter "preemptive."

"Now that he's reaffirmed that he's not running for governor ... we want to make sure that none of the money gets spent here," he told The Jersey Journal.

Asked to respond, Morrill made reference to "Bid Rig III," the 2009 federal corruption sting that landed a number of city officials behind bars for taking bribes.

The sting happened under Matsikoudis' (and Morrill's) former boss, ex-Mayor Jerramiah Healy, and it has become a frequent attack line Fulop lobs at Matsikoudis.

"It is ironic Matsikoudis is concerned since we know he was the city's chief legal counsel during the largest corruption and bribery scandal in Jersey City's history," she said.

Matsikoudis shot back: "Doesn't Jen Morrill realize that her silly repetitive comments about my being corporation counsel during Bid Rig are idiotic since I had literally zero connection to it and since she was the city spokesperson at that time as well? She regularly attacked Fulop then and her repetitive, inane comments would be laughable if it weren't so sad"
TRENTON - A Trenton man smashed a store register with an ax and demanded a bag full of lottery tickets in his third gas station robbery this month, authorities alleged Thursday.

Anthony Hunter

Anthony Hunter, 39, was arrested Monday after he allegedly robbed a gas station and bit a police officer while he tried to escape, Mercer County prosecutors said at a bail hearing Thursday.

It's the third robbery offense that prosecutors believe Hunter has committed in the span of just a few weeks.

The first occurred on Dec. 10 when Hunter was accused of brandishing a stick and stealing a milkshake from a Shell gas station's mini mart on Chambers Street. He was caught running down the street and told police a man had pulled a gun on him.

Hunter posted bail and almost two weeks later, committed another robbery, according to prosecutors.

On Dec. 23, Hunter went into a Shell gas station on the 800 block of Greenwood Avenue and threatened the store clerk there.

Prosecutors said Hunter put his hand in his jacket pocket in the shape of a gun and demanded money from the clerk. The clerk, thinking Hunter had a real gun, handed over around $60 before Hunter fled.

Hunter wasn't arrested until a few days later, when he went into a Lukoil gas station in Ewing brandishing an axe, according to authorities.

Hunter threatened two employees at the store, damaged property and smashed the cash register with the axe. He then demanded one of the employees fill a plastic back with scratch off lottery tickets before running from the store, prosecutors said.

Outside of the store, Hunter charged into and bit a police officer before he was taken into custody, prosecutors said.

He was charged with two counts of robbery for the incidents.

A defense attorney representing Hunter said his client maintains his innocence and added that he's a lifelong Trenton resident with strong ties to the community.

A superior court judge maintained Hunter's bails. He is being held on a combined $350,000 bails for the crimes.

Anna Merriman may be reached at amerriman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @anna_merriman
TRENTON -- City police officers arrested a state prison parolee shortly after he allegedly escaped from St. Francis Medical Center Wednesday night, officials said.

Officers apprehended Andre Jones, 28, at about 11:45 p.m., not long after the department was alerted to his flight from the hospital on Hamilton Avenue, police said.

Andre Jones

The department's Street Crimes Unit and a K-9 officer located Jones at Hamilton and Olden avenues - about a half mile east of the medical center.

Officers had to briefly chase down Jones, who ran when officers spotted him, a police spokesman said.

Jones was charged with obstructing the law and resisting arrest, and later released to state parole officers.

St. Francis is home to a secured unit used to treat inmates from state agencies.

State records show Jones - whose address is listed as Egg Harbor, Atlantic County - was paroled from a state prison on Nov. 17 where he was serving a 10-year term for robbery in Hudson County.

The records show he was also paroled in April and re-incarcerated in September. Jones also has a prior assault conviction from Cumberland County.

Trenton police say Jones was reportedly at the Albert M. "Bo" Robinson Assessment & Treatment Center on Enterprise Avenue before he was taken to the hospital.

A spokesman for the state parole said Thursday that Jones fled the hospital while in the custody of Bo Robinson employees.

The Robinson center provides halfway-house services, treatment and education for up to 900 male and female residents under contracts with the New Jersey Department of Corrections and New Jersey State Parole Board.

Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NEWARK -- It's been more than 10 years since anyone saw or heard from Carla Vicentini.

The 22-year-old native of Brazil was last seen in the early morning of Feb. 10, 2006, leaving Adega Bar and Grill in Newark with an unknown man after telling a friend she was going to his car to look at a photograph.

She never returned. And she's not the only one.

It's been seven years since anyone saw John T. Weisbecker. Twenty-five years since Mark Himebaugh disappeared. Just over 64 years since William Ebeneezer Jones Jr. vanished from his neighbor's front yard.

But rather than disappear into the rolls of the thousands of people reported missing across the country, the cases are among a number in New Jersey to have drawn the attention of the nation's top law enforcement agency: the FBI.

According to Assistant Special Agent in Charge Bradley Cohen in Newark, the common factor in all of the cases is some sort of suspicious circumstance that allows the bureau to get involved.

If a person is believed to have been abducted and taken out of state, the bureau gets jurisdiction under federal kidnapping statues.

The agency also takes an active role in the disappearance of children under 12 years old, although Cohen says that age "doesn't necessarily have to be fixed."

In many cases, the FBI simply functions as a "collaborative partner" for local agencies, providing support for complex investigations.

While Cohen declined to go into detail about specific investigative techniques, he says resources the bureau can provide to local agencies range from its crime lab in Quantico, Va., to cadaver dogs to search for human remains.

Cohen says it's a misconception that a person has to be gone for more than 24 hours before law enforcement can consider them missing, and take action.

"The 24-hour period has mostly gone away," he says. "We pretty much get involved right away."

In cases where foul play is suspected and local departments can't afford to post a reward themselves, he says, the FBI is often able to work with them to obtain the needed funds.

In Vicentini's case, the agency is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for her disappearance.

While Cohen says "every little thing helps" when it comes to building these investigations, there are often specific times and dates from which information would be particularly useful to investigators.

In one case, the 25-year-old disappearance of Himebaugh, then 11, that time is around 4 p.m. on Nov. 25, 1991.

That was when a park security guard, who Cohen says is now deceased, reported seeing Himebaugh and a girl his age walking in Cape May County Park South in Middle Township.

The only trace of Himebaugh that's been found since is his left sneaker, found not far from where he was last seen.

Cohen says anyone who thinks they have information about the cases can contact either their local law enforcement agency or the FBI directly (the Newark Division's number is 973-792-3000).

"Ultimately, an investigator will get that information," he says.

Scroll through the gallery at the top of the page to view photos of the missing persons currently sought by the FBI's Newark Division.

Jeff Goldman contributed prior reporting. Thomas Moriarty may be reached at tmoriarty@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ThomasDMoriarty. Find NJ.com on Facebook
NEWARK -- The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says weather conditions have disrupted flights at Newark's airport.

The bistate agency on Thursday urged flyers to check with their airlines on the status of flights at Newark Liberty International Airport.

As of 11:10 a.m., 14 flights out of Newark had been cancelled and another 30 delayed, according to FiightAware.com. Delays were averaging 31 minutes.

There were also a handful of delays and cancellations at John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in New York as well as Philadelphia International Airport.

NJ Advance Media staff writer Jeff Goldman contributed to this report.
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A fire on Wednesday morning destroyed a single-family home in Manchester.

(Manchester Police Department)

MANCHESTER -- A blaze Wednesday morning destroyed a home on Beckerville Road, police said.

No one was inside the home at the time of the fire, Manchester police Lt. Vincent Manco said. A pet dog was able to escape unharmed after neighbors let it out, the lieutenant said.

The first officer responded to the house shortly after 9 a.m. and saw flames shooting from the front of the single-family home, Manco said.

Firefighters from five area departments responded to the blaze and were able to contain it to the home.

A photo of the fire's aftermath shows a gaping hole in the middle of the ranch-style house, with charred debris on the front porch.

No was injured in the fire, Manco said.

The following volunteer fire departments responded to the fire: Whiting, Manchester, Ridgeway, Lakehurst and New Egypt. The Quality Medical Transport and Manchester Township Office of Emergency Management also responded to the blaze.

Authorities have not yet determined what caused the fire. It remains under investigation by the Ocean County Fire Marshal's Office.

Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexnapoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
There is more than Hollywood...



EFSP is also an elementary database. Here you can find bios, rare - and not so rare - postcards and film clips. EFSP is a non-commercial educational blog. If you own copyright protected material and do not wish it to appear on this site it will be promptly removed after contacting us.



Or do you like to share scans of your vintage postcards or maybe your choice of 10 Favourite European Film Star Postcards?



European Film Star Postcards is a blog, dedicated to the stars of the European cinema. And to their photographers, the publishers of their postcards, and to the fans who collected them.EFSP is also an elementary database. Here you can find bios, rare - and not so rare - postcards and film clips. EFSP is a non-commercial educational blog. If you own copyright protected material and do not wish it to appear on this site it will be promptly removed after contacting us.Or do you like to share scans of your vintage postcards or maybe your choice of 10 Favourite European Film Star Postcards? Mail us, and join our exploration.
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.
To get workers' comp benefits for an on-the-job injury or illness, you need to follow your state's rules for reporting the injury and filing a claim. Learn how to file a claim and where to get more information and help.

If you've suffered a work-related injury or illness, you may be entitled to workers' comp benefits, including medical care, part of your lost wages while you're off work during your recovery, and permanent disability benefits if the injury left you with long-lasting limitations.

To get these benefits, you must report your injury and file a claim according to your state's procedures. While each state has its own workers' comp system, the procedures for filing a claim are generally similar. Below we'll discuss the workers' comp claims procedures that all states share.

Report Work Injury to Employer

In nearly all states, the first step to getting workers' compensation benefits is to report your injury or occupational illness to your employer. States have very different time limits for notifying an employer of a work injury or illness. The deadline is often 30 days or so, but it can be as short as a few days and as long as a year.

Regardless of how much time you have, you should inform your employer of your injury as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more skeptical your employer or its insurance company will be of your claim. And, the sooner you file your claim, the sooner you can receive benefits.

You should also get immediate medical attention if your injury requires it. For emergency treatment, you can go to the nearest emergency room or urgent care. For all other treatment, you will need to follow your state's rules for seeking medical treatment.

File a Workers' Comp Claim

Once you report your injury, your employer should give you any necessary forms to fill out. Typically, the employer will submit these forms to its insurance company and the state workers' compensation agency. In some states, this will be the official start to your workers' compensation claim. In these states, you will need to file official paperwork with the state workers' comp agency only if your benefits are denied and you want to appeal the decision.

In other states, you will also need to file an official workers' comp claim form with the state workers' compensation agency at the start of your case. The deadline for this step also varies from state to state. While workers often have a year to file the claim, the timeline could be significantly shorter in some states. (Learn more about the various time limits in workers' comp cases and details on the filing procedures for workers' comp claims in certain states.)

You can get information, forms, and assistance from your state's workers' compensation agency. In the unlikely event that your employer refuses to cooperate with you in filing a claim, a call to your local workers' comp office will usually remedy the situation.

Federal employees are subject to a completely different workers' compensation system. You can find forms and instructions for filing claims at the website of the Division of Federal Employees' Compensation.

What Happens After You File a Workers' Comp Claim

The insurance company will conduct an investigation before approving or denying your claim. The insurer must tell you what it decided, usually within two to four weeks. In some states, if your claim isn't denied by the deadline, it will automatically be considered approved.

If the claim is approved, you'll start receiving benefits. If your claim is deniedwhich often happensyou have the right to appeal.

When to Contact a Workers' Comp Attorney

If your claim has been denied, you should speak with a lawyer as soon as possible. There are many reasons for denials, from missed deadlines to disputes over whether your medical condition is related to work.

The appeals process is complicated, with strict deadlines. An experienced workers' comp attorney can help your case in many ways, from gathering evidence that bolsters your claim to negotiating with the insurance company or representing you in hearings.

And a lawyer usually won't cost you anything up front. In almost all states, workers' comp attorneys charge a percentage of your benefits if you winand nothing if you lose.
Understand Rhode Island's statute of limitations as it applies to property damage lawsuits, or your case could be over before it even starts.

If you've had your property damaged through someone else's careless or intentional action in Rhode Island, and you're considering filing a lawsuit over what happened, it's critical to understand the statute of limitations and how it applies to your potential civil case.

A "statute of limitations", for those not familiar with the term, is a state law that puts a strictly-enforced limit on how much time can pass before you must file your case. Miss the deadline and you effectively lose the right to bring your case to court. Every state has these laws on the books, with different time limits depending on the kind of case being filed.

In this article, we'll explain the property damage lawsuit filing deadline in Rhode Island, the consequences of missing the deadline, and a few rare situations in which you might be able to extend the time limit.

The Lawsuit Filing Deadline in Rhode Island

In Rhode Island, whether your potential case involves damage to real property (your house or your land, for example) or personal property (including vehicle damage), it must be brought to the state's civil court system within 10 years, which is the "catch-all" deadline for the filing of many civil lawsuits as set by Rhode Island General Laws section 9-1-13(a).

So, if a homeowner wants to bring a lawsuit for physical damage to the exterior of his/her house caused by someone else's negligence, that case must be brought within 10 years in Rhode Island. The same goes for a vehicle damage claim after a car accident.

In case you're wondering, Rhode Island's 10-year window is one of the most plaintiff-friendly among all states. Most states adhere to a two- or three-year time limit for filing property damage lawsuits.

Missing the Filing Deadline in Rhode Island

What happens if you try to file your Rhode Island property damage lawsuit after the time limit has passed? In that situation, it's a safe bet that the defendant (the person you're trying to sue) will file a motion asking the court to dismiss the case. And the court is certain to grant the dismissal unless rare circumstances make an extension of the deadline appropriate (more on these rules later).

If your lawsuit is dismissed as time-barred under the statute of limitations, you've essentially lost your right to any legal remedy for your damaged property. Even though 10 years is a long time, it's still crucial to pay attention to (and comply with) the Rhode Island statute of limitations for property damage cases, even if you're fairly certain you'll be able to resolve the situation without resorting to a lawsuit.

Extending the Lawsuit Filing Deadline in Rhode Island

For most kinds of civil lawsuits in Rhode Island -- including property damage claims -- a number of (relatively rare) situations could serve to extend the two-year lawsuit filing deadline.

For example, special rules usually apply if, at the time the property damage occurs, the property owner is under the age of 18 or "of unsound mind" (having been declared insane or legally incompetent). In those situations, the property owner is considered to be under a "legal disability," and once the period of disability ends -- meaning the property owner turns 18 or is declared sane or competent -- he or she will have the full 10 years to get a civil lawsuit filed over the property damage. This rule can be found at Rhode Island General Laws section 9-1-19.

And if the person who is alleged to have caused the property damage leaves the state of Rhode Island before the lawsuit can be filed, "and does not have or leave property or estate in the state that can be attached by process of law," the period of his or her absence probably won't be counted as part of the 10-year time limit for filing suit, according to Rhode Island General Laws section 9-1-18.

Other circumstances may affect the Rhode Island statute of limitations, and how it's calculated. If you've got questions about the statute of limitations as it applies to your potential property damage lawsuit, an experienced Rhode Island attorney will have the answers. Learn more about Finding an Excellent Lawyer.
Youd think this time of year that cookies would be the last thing Id be wanting to make now that Ive done most of my holiday baking and have been given, in return, platters of sweet stuff that are totally irresistible. But then my friend Carrie Bachman sent me a copy of Dorie Greenspans latest cookbook call, simply enough, Dories Cookies (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2016; $35). Now Dorie, who is good friends with Carrie which means I always get copies of her cookbooks, is someone who I could really get into hating. An IACP and James Beard awardwinning chef and New York Times bestselling cookbook author, she lives in New York City, Westbrook, Connecticut and Paris, Franceall fabulous places. Shes cooked with Julia Child and spent years working with Parisian patissier Pierre Herme and though I havent met her, in her photos she looks bone thin. That is so unfair. It turns out that one of Dories big dreams was to write a book sharing all of her cookie recipes, the ones she makes for her family and friends. Since she says she has more than 300 of them, she may have to write another book. But here is what she has turned outa 357-page cookbook full of lovely photos with 170 cookie recipes including those from Beurre & Sel, the cookie shop she once owned. The cookie on the cover of her book is her World Peace Cookies because, she says, if everyone had some, there would be peace throughout the world. A nice sentiment and since its the holidays, the name is perfect for this season. Dorie notes that when a friend of hers goes to a party, he brings a bag of baked World Peace cookies and also an unbaked log to freeze which I think would make a wonderful gift. If you want the chance to get to meet Dorie, shes doing book signings in Chi cago this Wednesday and Thursday. I know its a little last minute but heres the information: December 6: Talk and Book Signing starting at 7 pm (Central)/Andersons Bookshop La Grange 26 S La Grange Rd, La Grange, IL/Free event. December 7: Read It and Eat/Talk and Book Signing starting at 4:30 pm (Central)/Chicago French Pastry School 226 W Jackson Blvd., Chicago, IL This one is a ticketed event so heres how to purchase a ticket: eventbrite.com/e/author-talk-dorie-greenspan-presents-dories-cookies-tickets-27572765885 Shes also doing a Q&A on December 7 at 6:30 pm (Central) with Tim Mazurek/City Lit at Floriole Cafe & Bakery 1220 W Webster Ave, Chicago, IL. This is also ticketed, so to order brownpapertickets.com/event/2709729. The cost includes a copy of her cookbook. World Peace Cookies Makes about 36 cookies 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 1/3 cup unswee tened cocoa powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (11 tablespoons; 5 1/2 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into chunks, at room temperature 2/3 cup packed light brown sugar 1/4 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel or 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 5 ounces best-quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped into irregular sized bits Sift the flour, cocoa and baking soda together. Working with a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat the butter and both sugars together on medium speed until soft, creamy and homogenous, about 3 minutes. Beat in the salt and vanilla. Turn off the mixer, add all the dry ingredients and pulse a few times to start the blending. When the risk of flying flour has passed, turn the mixer to low and beat until the dough forms big, moist curds. Toss in the chocolate pi eces and mix to incorporate. This is an unpredictable dough (see above). Sometimes its crumbly and sometimes it comes together and cleans the sides of the bowl. Happily, no matter what, the cookies are always great. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and gather it together, kneading it if necessary to bring it together. Divide the dough in half. Shape the dough into logs that are 11/2 inches in diameter. Dont worry about the length  get the diameter right, and the length will follow. (If you get a hollow in the logs, just start over.) Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and freeze them for at least 2 hours or refrigerate them for at least 3 hours. When youre ready to bake: Center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 325 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Working with one log at a time and using a long, sharp knife, slice the dough into 1/2-inch-thick rounds. (The rounds might crack as youre cutting them  dont be concerned, just squeeze the bits back onto each cookie.) Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between them. (If youve cut both logs, keep one baking sheet in the fridge while you bake the other.) Bake the cookies for 12 minutes  dont open the oven, just let them bake. When the timer rings, they wont look done, nor will they be firm, and thats just the way they should be. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest until they are only just warm, at which point you can munch them, or let them reach room temperature (I think the textures more interesting at room temperature). Bake the remaining dough.
Joyce Russell Porter County Reporter Joyce has been a reporter for nearly 40 years, including 23 years with The Times. She's a native of Merrillville, but has lived in Portage for 39 years. She covers municipal and school government in Porter County. Follow Joyce Russell Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

Names may end up being my downfall in genealogy.

First, I tackled Scottish names when tracing my daughter-in-law's heritage and now I'm wrangling with Norwegian names as as look into my boyfriend's family's roots.

Compared to the Norwegian's, the Scots had it easy.

My boyfriend's surname is Sandberg. His great great grandparents immigrated here from Norway in the late 1800s. I had worked on his tree off and on and got stuck on his great grandfather Oskar Karl Sandberg, who was a child when he immigrated with his parents, landing first in Illinois and then the Vigo County, Indiana area. Family lore had been that the family's surname wasn't really Sandberg, but was Mortensen and some how changed.

After a little bit of a search, I thought I had found the answer. I found a Charles Sandberg (he Americanized his name after immigrating) in the 1910 census living with what I thought was his mother Mary and stepfather Wilhelm Sandberg. The dates, the places, everything seemed to make sense. I had a couple of documents supporting my theory. Satisfied, I placed the search aside.

Then, just recently, I decided to pick it up again and work on his family's history some more (I am working on the family histories of four or five people now and tend to take turns when I hit a brick wall, get bored or reach a certain point with a family).

I was surprised when some additional records popped up and I learned my first work was totally wrong and it was all because of the Norwegian naming pattern.

I found a Severin Mortensen Sandberg married to a Johanne Hendriksdatter who had a son Oskar Karl Sandberg. Following them, they immigrated first to Illinois where Severin died and Johanne remarried. I knew they were the right family when I found that Johanne was buried in the same cemetery in Terre Haute as Charles.

Prior to the 1860s in Norway, there were no family surnames. Sons were given a first name, but their last name was the first name of their father with "sen," meaning son, added. It was the same with daughters. They had their given names, but their last name was the first name of their father with "datter," or daughter added.

In this case Severin's father's name was Morten and Johanna's father's name was Hendrik. Back then when couple's married, the bride maintained her name.

That stumped me a bit, because with the traditional naming pattern, Oskar Karl's last name should have been Severinsen.

According to the web site Norwegian Ridge, sometime in the mid 1800s that Norwegians began to adopt family surnames and by 1923, it was required by law.

But that still doesn't explain where the Sandberg comes in. Like the Scottish, when there were so many common names, Norwegians often adopted the name of a farm or geographic area in which they lived as a surname to differentiate themselves from people with the same name, according to Norwegian Ridge. And guess what, there's a Sandberg Farm in eastern Norway, just north of Oslo.

It appears at some point, whether still in Norway or when they immigrated, the family decided to adopt the surname Sandberg or it was given to them by immigration officials.

To make a long story short, when you are having problems tracking folks, it is often important to look into the culture of their home country to get an understanding of what may have happened.

Drop me a line at joyce.russell@nwi.com with any tips, stories, advice or questions. Until then, happy hunting.
HOBART  Police are looking to ID a suspect in a theft at Southlake Mall.

Police have surveillance video of a suspect opening a drawer to a kiosk in the mall and removing items at about 4:40 p.m. Friday.

According to police the suspect is white or Hispanic and is in his late teens or early 20s. It appears he was wearing a gray and black Adidas-style zip-up jacket and blue jeans.

Police said the suspect was with a white or Hispanic female in her late teens or early 20s who was wearing a black jacket.

Anyone with information should contact Lt. James M. Gonzalez at (219) 942-4405 or jgonzales@cityofhobart.org.
GARY  Having exhausted all leads, the city's police department is seeking the public's help in locating a 65-year-old man who has been reported missing.

Ray Charles Barnes, of Gary, was described as a black male with brown eyes and black hair. He is about 6 feet tall and weighs approximately 185 pounds, according to Gary Police Lt. Dawn Westerfield. His clothing is unknown at this time, she said in an email.

Barnes may have traveled to an unknown destination in Chicago, Westerfield said, but travels by foot and does not drive. Barnes has no known mental or physical disabilities and there is no known cause for his absence, Westerfield said.

Anyone with information on Barnes' whereabouts of Ray Charles Barnes is urged to contact Detective Lt. Nelson Otano at (219) 881-1209. To remain anonymous, call the Crime Tip Line at 866-CRIME-GP.
HAMMOND  Two more people were wounded Wednesday night in the city's third shooting in two days, police said.

Hammond police were dispatched about 9 p.m. Wednesday to the 4900 block of Elm Street for a report of shots fired.

Police learned a 17-year-old Hammond boy and his 22-year-old brother, of East Chicago, were wounded and taken to a local hospital by a family member, police Lt. Richard Hoyda said.

The 17-year-old was shot in the right leg, and the 22-year-old had a graze wound to his chest. Their wounds were not considered life-threatening, police said.

The brothers told police a tan vehicle pulled up on the street just before the shooting.

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Detective Lt. Mark Tharp at (219) 852-2906.

Three other people, including another teenager, were wounded Wednesday afternoon and Tuesday night in two other shootings separated by miles.

Police did not believe as of Thursday morning that any of the shootings were connected, nor did investigators have any definitive information they were gang-related, Hoyda said.

Police responded about 12:45 p.m. Wednesday to a shooting at an apartment complex in the 6500 block of Grand Avenue.

An 18-year-old Gary man was shot in the chest. Gunfire struck a 17-year-old Hammond boy in the left arm and chest, police said.

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Detective Sgt. Steve Guernsey at 219-852-2906.

About 5 p.m. Tuesday, police received a report of a shooting in the 100 block of Sibley Street.

A 20-year-old East Chicago man told police he was walking when he heard gunshots, realized he'd been shot in the left arm and waved down a passer-by for a ride to a hospital.

The man told police he saw a red car speeding away after he was shot. Anyone with information about this case is asked to call Detective Sgt. James Lietz at (219) 852-2983.
HAMMOND  Two teens remain hospitalized in "serious but stable condition," according to police, after someone opened fire on them Wednesday afternoon in the 6500 block of Grand Avenue.

The 17-year-old victim, of Hammond, told police he was leaving his apartment unit at about 12:45 p.m., but was still inside the building when the shooting occurred, according to Hammond police Lt. Richard Hoyda.

An 18-year-old man, of Gary, was shot in the chest, Hoyda said. The 17-year-old from Hammond was shot in the left arm and chest, Hoyda said.

No suspect information is available at this time. Both victims were transported to a local trauma hospital where they were undergoing treatment, Hoyda said.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Sgt. Steve Guernsey at (219) 852-2906.

Check back with nwi.com for more details.
LYNWOOD  The identity of a second car crash victim recovered Tuesday morning from an icy retention pond has been identified as Leandre L. Scotts, 26, of Chicago.

Scotts' cause and manner of death are pending, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

Authorities on Dec. 19 had recovered a car and a Chicago Heights man's body from a pond in Lynwood, but later learned of the possibility that a second person may have been in the car when it went into the pond Dec. 18, officials said.

The first body was identified as Christopher L. Stone, 27, of Chicago Heights, who was found dead inside the car, officials said. He was not wearing a seat belt, so investigators could not determine if he was the driver or a passenger.

The black Pontiac Grand Prix went into the pond Dec. 18 after leaving eastbound Lincoln Highway, police said.

The car left the roadway, traveling about 200 feet through a farm field before it ended up in the pond, said Sophia Ansari, spokeswoman with the Cook County Sheriff's Department. The car entered the pond through an area where there were no barriers, she said.

Ansari said Thursday she could not provide additional details. The crash remains under investigation, she said.
It's easy to dwell on the negatives of our Region. Human nature makes it inevitable.

But a recent report out of Porter County reminds us of one of many positive aspects Northwest Indiana offers to the greater Chicago area: relatively safe sanctuary for residents.

Porter County is on track to end 2016 with zero homicides classified as murders.

For the folks who live in Northwest Indiana, that may not be all that surprising, but it's something to celebrate nonetheless.

An entire county free of slayings for a whole year is a sharp contrast to many of Porter's neighboring realities.

We're all familiar with the constant news reports of Chicago homicides. Multiple cases every week -- sometimes every day -- fill news reports flowing from the Second City.

Lake County also has its struggles. Though plenty of communities in that county remain just as safe as Porter, Lake County reported at least 72 homicides in 2016 as of early this week.

Lake County Coroner Merrilee Frey noted the numbers may change as final counts are ongoing.

Eight of those Lake County cases resulted from Illinois violent crime victims dying in Indiana, and it was unclear Wednesday how many of the remaining 64 cases were charged or investigated as actual murders.

Our Region and its neighbors must continue to deal with the social ills that lead to violent crime and murder.

But the absence of slayings in Porter County as the year draws to a close is a positive attribute our Region shouldn't overlook.

Areas with low crime rates offer a more attractive alternative to residents and potential commuters -- and thus opportunity for growing tax bases.

More importantly, such communities provide a measure of Region pride.
INDIANAPOLIS  A man who was among five people convicted in a deadly Indianapolis house explosion received a three-year prison sentence, with one year suspended Wednesday, becoming the final defendant sentenced for the blast prosecutors said was a plot to claim insurance money.

A Marion County judge ordered Glenn Hults to serve 1  years in the Indiana Department of Correction and six months on work release. He also received one year of probation. Hults, 50, had faced between six months and three years in prison.

He agreed in November to plead guilty to a felony count of assisting a criminal. He reached the plea agreement as jury selection was underway in his trial for conspiracy to commit arson. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop the conspiracy charge.

Hults and four others were charged in the November 2012 blast that killed Jennifer and John Longworth, who lived next door to the home that exploded.

Prosecutors said a natural gas line was tampered with and a microwave on a timer was used to ignite the explosion, which damaged or destroyed more than 80 homes in a neighborhood on Indianapolis' south side.

Court documents alleged Hults, the last suspect charged in the case, knew of the plot to blow up the home. But Hults only admitted to failing to cooperate with police after the explosion, hindering their investigation by helping his co-defendants elude arrest for a time.

Marion Superior Court Judge Sheila Carlisle said Hults reluctantly took responsibility for his role in the crime and could have helped authorities resolve the case more quickly if he had cooperated from the outset, The Indianapolis Star reported.

"Come on, you know what you did," Carlisle told Hults during the hearing.

The four other defendants have already been sentenced. The owner of the home destroyed by the blast, 51-year-old Monserrate Shirley, was sentenced last week to 50 years in prison. She had pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit arson.

Prosecutors said Shirley's former boyfriend, Mark Leonard, spearheaded the plot to destroy the house with a natural gas explosion to claim $300,000 in insurance money. Leonard was convicted last year of murder, arson and other charges, and received two life sentences without parole, plus 75 years.

Leonard has appealed his convictions. His half brother, Bob Leonard, was convicted in February of murder, arson and other charges, and was sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without parole, plus 70 years.

Another defendant, Gary Thompson, was sentenced on Dec. 2 to 20 years behind bars after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit arson.
A small but growing program in Brooklyn treats violence like a disease and it is trying to prevent it from spreading through the schools. Our education reporter, Lindsey Christ, filed the following report.

Dr. Robert Gore works in the emergency room at Kings County Hospital, where he sees many young people.

"They were coming into the emergency room on stretchers, sometimes alive, sometimes dead, but we start looking at the root cause analysis of why violence takes place, you realize it is avoidable," Dr. Gore said.

Four public high schools sit in the shadow of the massive hospital complex. In 2011, Gore went to work when he was not in scrubs, establishing a violence prevention program that earned the support of the city's hospital and school systems.

"So a couple of questions," said Gore to students in a group discussion. "How many times do you guys feel like you have to defend yourself because of the friends you hang out with?"

The program is called the Kings Against Violence Initiative, or KAVI. He currently serves 120 students that meet every week in small groups or one-on-one.

The goal is to approach violence like a disease and treat it with preventative medicine in the form of advice, mentorship and empathetic support that is delivered to students, who schools say are most at risk.

Students say they show up because they genuinely enjoy the discussions and look up to Dr. Gore and his team.

"The older generation, they influenced me to do a lot," said Zane Paton, a student at The School of Human Rights. "They made me change for the better. And every time I was going to go back to my old ways, they pulled me aside and made sure I wasn't doing the old things that I used to do."

Funding for the program comes from an usual source. The wealth accumulated long ago by the Pinkerton family, former owners of the detective agency that bares the name and has its own bloody past, now works to fight violence.

"It's a good idea that we're happy to nurture," said Richard Smith of The Pinkerton Foundation. "We hope it grows but even if it doesn't grow, it's helping kids today."

Kids who say they have been equip to step away, with pride.

"You're walking away with another day to live, your integrity and you have ability to see friends, family and loved ones," said Paton.
The year 2016 has not been kind to Mayor de Blasio. He and his aides are the subject of a staggering number of investigations and more than a year after promising to tackle the city's homeless crisis, the number of people sleeping in shelters has hit a new high.

But with his re-election fight on the horizon and an opponent soon-to-be-installed in the White House, de Blasio is surely hoping next year will be better. NY1's Grace Rauh filed the following report.

"Looking back on the year in general, I feel very satisfied with the year," said de Blasio.

Even Mayor de Blasio is struggling to put a positive spin on his exceptionally challenging year.

There have been five separate investigations into his fundraising and political activities with grand juries now hearing evidence. Record levels of homeless New Yorkers and the death of two young children revealing failures at the city's child welfare agency.

"Our job is to save every child. It's as simple as that," said de Blasio.

The investigations, though, have proved most problematic. They have hounded the mayor since the spring.

"We hold ourselves to the highest standard of integrity. Everything we have done from the beginning is legal and appropriate," said de Blasio.

He's been forced to defend raising money for his outside non-profit group from real estate developers, unions and others, many of which had business before the city. The transactions are triggering questions about pay-to-play politics and end-runs around the city's strict campaign finance limits.

"No one was lining their pockets. No one was doing this for personal gain," he said.

Homelessness is also a persistent problem and one that has grown, despite promises to tackle it around this time last year.

"We are going to take the homeless crisis on, just head on, every day," said de Blasio.

Also, he is engaged in a legal fight with NY1 and the New York Post over his refusal to turn over emails from his outside consultants, also known as the Agents of the City.

However, there have been bright spots. Crime is at historic lows.

Even though the election of Donald Trump seems like a loss, but for de Blasio, politically it is shaping up as a win.

"I let him know that so many New Yorkers are fearful. That more had to be done to show that this country can heal. That people be respected," he said.

In Trump, the mayor has an ideal foil. The mayor is eager to act as a check on the future president, ideally, as long as New Yorkers are rallying behind him.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and other lawmakers are urging President Barack Obama to do more to help immigrants before he leaves office.

De Blasio, along with mayors and county executives from 30 other cities, issued an open letter to the president.

They want the Obama administration to accept early renewal applications for DACA. That's the program that protects undocumented immigrants from being deported if they came to the U.S. as children.

They also want him to review and revamp measures to help immigrants who cannot return to their native countries because of violent conflicts or natural disasters.

In a statement, de Blasio said, "Our immigrant residents help make New York City stronger economically, culturally, and socially. We have benefited from President Obamas actions to protect vulnerable immigrants during his time in office. In the wake of the election, many of our residents are uncertain about the future. Thats why I am standing with my fellow mayors to thank the President for his leadership and call on him to take additional, lawful steps to help immigrants before leaving office."
Alphonse Mouzon, a powerful jazz drummer who made his greatest contributions with a funk backbeat, forging a standard for 1970s fusion, died on Dec. 25 at his home in the Granada Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 68.

The cause was cardiac arrest, his son Jean-Pierre Mouzon said. Alphonse Mouzon learned this fall that he had neuroendocrine cancer and used a crowdfunding platform to help pay for treatment.

Few other drummers were as integral to the development of fusion as Mr. Mouzon, who combined volcanic intensity with a brisk attunement to dynamic flow. He played in the first edition of Weather Report, and was a charter member of another defining jazz-rock band, the Eleventh House, led by the guitarist Larry Coryell.

Mr. Mouzon had a productive association with the pianist McCoy Tyner, playing in a volatile acoustic setting on albums like Sahara (1972) and Song for My Lady (1973). He also served as the propulsive engine on notable fusion albums by the keyboardist Herbie Hancock, the flutist Bobbi Humphrey and the guitarist Al Di Meola, among others.
In a move that promises to raise new questions about electronic privacy, detectives investigating a murder in Arkansas are seeking access to audio that may have been recorded on an Amazon Echo electronic personal assistant.

So far, the online retail giant has resisted demands by the police and prosecutors in Bentonville, Ark., for the information. Without addressing the specifics of the case, Amazon said in a statement that, as a matter of course, it objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands.

The tug of war over access to the audio, which was reported by the website theinformation, began when the police started to investigate the death of Victor Collins, who was found on Nov. 22, 2015, in a hot tub at the home of James Bates, according to court records. Investigators discovered signs of a struggle, including spots of blood, broken bottles and pieces of the spa that were on the ground.

Detective Cpl. Josh Woodhams of the Bentonville Police Department wrote in an affidavit that he found an Amazon Echo on the homes kitchen counter. The voice-activated device has seven microphones, and is equipped with sensors to hear users from any direction up to about 20 feet. Among other things, it can play music, make to-do lists, stream podcasts and provide real-time news and information.
The site has 700 lawyers, many in the Chicago area  but not all  who pay $250 a year to be listed with their areas of expertise.

Clients post summaries of legal disputes, list their geographic location and select a payment preference. The choices are hourly, a fixed fee or contingency, which is a portion of whatever is recovered in a successful lawsuit. There is no cost for posting.

Lawyers can then respond, providing their name, practice specialties, experience and a cost or a range of prices for the legal service being sought. The lawyer also states what a problem of that type can cost. The client can compare the responses and decide whether to contact any of the lawyers for more specifics  and, possibly, to hire one.

Mr. Horn, together with his partner, Ryan Caltagirone, operates and monitors the platform to make sure only licensed lawyers use the site and handle complaints that arise.

There is no guarantee that a client will find an affordable lawyer  a consumer may find that a legal service is too costly  but the online platform helps pinpoint possible lawyers and allows the consumer to compare prices.

So far, the online service has had 600 clients and 500 legal needs posted. There have been about 300 matches where clients found a lawyer  usually one who practices individually or in a small or medium-size firm.

While state bar associations offer lawyer referral lists, a recent study, Report on the Future of Legal Services in the United States, found they were not working well. Most poor people and a majority of moderate-income individuals lack basic civil legal assistance, including help on evictions, mortgage foreclosures, child custody disputes, child support proceedings and debt collection cases, the American Bar Association report said.
In January 2009, Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, gave a speech in Washington that might have seemed impossible even a few years before. He announced that his company supported a carbon tax to help fight climate change.

Carbon taxes are a fee on fuel use, based on how much carbon dioxide that fuel puts into the atmosphere. As a businessman, it is hard to speak favorably about any new tax, Mr. Tillerson told reporters in his speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. But, he said, it was a more direct, a more transparent and a more effective approach than an alternative gaining support in Congress known as cap and trade, which would set an upper limit on carbon dioxide emissions and then rely on a permit-trading system to meet the target.

Mr. Tillersons speech was years in the making  part of a turnaround after decades of public denial that the planet was warming, even as Exxons own research suggested that it was. It had paid outside organizations to spread doubts about the science. But pressure on the company was building, and the newly elected President Obama had pledged to fight climate change and had singled out Exxon as an example of corporate greed.

Mr. Tillerson  President-elect Donald J. Trumps nominee to be secretary of state  presided over the companys shift, which appears to have begun with public statements delivered without fanfare by the company in 2006. In 2007, he personally acknowledged that climate change was happening and that human activity was a contributing factor. Now, at the Wilson Center, he was taking it further, saying that Exxon was willing to accept action from Congress on the problem.
When Mr. Todd died in a private-plane crash in 1958, Ms. Reynolds and Mr. Fisher rushed to comfort Ms. Taylor. Mr. Fishers comforting, however, turned into a very public extramarital affair. He and Ms. Reynolds were divorced early the next year, and he and Ms. Taylor were married weeks later. That marriage lasted five years. Ms. Taylor left Mr. Fisher for Richard Burton, whom she had met in Rome on the set of Cleopatra (1963).

Almost 40 years later, in an interview with The Chicago Sun-Times, Ms. Reynolds said of Ms. Taylor, Probably she did me a great favor. In her 1988 autobiography, Debbie: My Life, she described a marriage that was unhappy from the beginning.

He didnt think I was funny, Ms. Reynolds wrote of Mr. Fisher. I wasnt good in bed. I didnt make good gefilte fish or good chopped liver. So what did he have? A cute little girl next door with a little turned-up nose. That was, in fact, all he actually ever said he wanted from me. The children, he said, better have your nose.

Mary Frances Reynolds was born on April 1, 1932, in El Paso. Her father, Ray, worked for the railroad and struggled financially during the Depression. Her mother, Maxene, took in laundry to help make ends meet. As members of the Church of the Nazarene, they considered movies sinful.

With the promise of a better job, Ray moved to California when Mary Frances was 7, and the family soon followed. Her career dream was to go to college and become a gym teacher, she often said, but when she was named Miss Burbank 1948, everything changed. Two of the judges were movie-studio scouts, and she was soon under contract to Warner Bros., which changed her name.
Construction workers who dug the tunnels. Leaders who pushed for funding. East Siders who yearned for an easier commute.

Many New Yorkers never lived long enough to witness this bit of history  the opening on Sunday of the first section of the Second Avenue subway.

But for longtime supporters and the many skeptics in their golden years, it is a joyous moment that took a very long time to arrive. As the project dragged on for nearly a century, they lost spouses and colleagues. They watched New York City decline and flourish, and plans for the Second Avenue line start up again.

Now they will make a pilgrimage to the Upper East Side in the new year for a ride some thought they might never take on a subway that has been dreamed of since the 1920s.
For those of you confused over the latest fight between President Obama and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, let me make it simple: Barack Obama and John Kerry admire and want to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in the Land of Israel. I have covered this issue my entire adult life and have never met two U.S. leaders more committed to Israel as a Jewish democracy.

But they are convinced  rightly  that Netanyahu is a leader who is forever dog paddling in the middle of the Rubicon, never ready to cross it. He is unwilling to make any big, hard decision to advance or preserve a two-state solution if that decision in any way risks his leadership of Israels right-wing coalition or forces him to confront the Jewish settlers, who relentlessly push Israel deeper and deeper into the West Bank.

That is what precipitated this fight over Obamas decision not to block a U.N. resolution last week criticizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The settlers goal is very clear, as Kerry put it on Wednesday: to strategically place settlements in locations that make two states impossible, so that Israel will eventually annex all of the West Bank. Netanyahu knows this will bring huge problems, but his heart is with the settlers, and his passion is with holding power  at any cost. So in any crunch, he sides with the settlers, and they keep pushing.
Over the past week, differences between Israel and the United States have boiled over into a scalding diplomatic confrontation between these closest of allies. The dispute reflects not any change in American policy, but a dangerous evolution in Israeli policy, under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, away from an acceptance of a negotiated two-state resolution to Israels conflict with the Palestinians. The dispute also arises from Mr. Netanyahus lamentable practice of making his government a more nakedly partisan player in American politics than any foreign government in memory, save Russia.

It is hard to see how either move by this Israeli government serves Israels long-term interest.

The spark for this confrontation was a United Nations Security Council resolution, adopted on Friday, that condemned Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Obama administration chose to abstain from the vote rather than exercise its veto to block it. The United Nations is shamefully biased against Israel, and President Obama has used the American veto and its diplomatic muscle more assiduously than any previous American president to shield Israel from unwarranted criticism. But nowhere is it written that an American president is obliged to shelter Israel from international criticism that is consistent with decades-old American policy and with American interests.

The American abstention has triggered more than the usual amount of outrage, name-calling and threats from Mr. Netanyahu and his allies. Personalizing the dispute to an astonishing degree, they have accused Mr. Obama of betraying Israel.

Theyre wrong. Many of Mr. Netanyahus accusations and those of his supporters misrepresent the history of Israeli-American relations, malign Mr. Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, and confuse what should be a serious debate over the future of a negotiated peace between Israelis and Palestinians, which seems further away every day. With less than three weeks before Mr. Obama leaves office, Mr. Kerry on Wednesday finally gave the speech he wanted to give two years ago  a passionate, blunt and detailed warning about why the two-state solution is in jeopardy and how it might yet be salvaged before incalculable damage is done to Israel and the region.
We should be embarrassed as a city, every single one of us, that weve allowed this city to become the poster boy of violence in America, said the Rev. Michael Pfleger, an activist and pastor of a Catholic church on the South Side. Are we just going to shake our heads and say, What a terrible year in Chicago?

Father Pfleger, who often spars with elected officials, said he was searching for fresh ways to draw attention to the plague of gun violence. He is planning a rally on Saturday on Chicagos Magnificent Mile, a downtown avenue lined with high-end shops and restaurants, that will be attended by marchers carrying two-foot-high wooden crosses bearing the names of victims. Some victims relatives are expected to attend.

Chicago had more criminal homicides this year than New York and Los Angeles combined, despite having fewer residents than either city. Los Angeles had 288 through mid-December, up slightly from last year, and New York had 325, a decline from 2015. Still, Chicagos per capita murder rate remains much lower than in several smaller cities, such as St. Louis and Baltimore.

Across the country, some cities have seen upticks in homicides while others have seen their numbers hold steady or decline. St. Louis, which had one of the countrys highest murder rates in 2015, had 183 criminal homicides as of Wednesday, roughly in line with its 188 in 2015. Milwaukee had 142 as of Wednesday and 146 in 2015. Criminal homicides have increased this year in Kansas City, Mo., Indianapolis and Dallas, and have declined in Cincinnati and Baltimore.

In Chicago, the surge in violence has become a national flash point.

Ive never seen so much attention and energy and focus being put on this epidemic of violence, said the Rev. Ira Acree, whose church is on the West Side. And yet instead of things getting better, it feels like things are getting worse.
President-elect Donald J. Trump took credit on Wednesday for a decision by Sprint to add 5,000 jobs in the United States as he tried to deliver on his promise to force corporate America to focus on job creation at home rather than abroad.

I was just called by the head people at Sprint, and they are going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States, Mr. Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. They have taken them from other countries. They are bringing them back to the United States.

Sprint later said that the jobs were part of a previously announced commitment by Japans SoftBank, which owns a controlling stake in the mobile phone carrier, to invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 positions. That announcement, made by Masayoshi Son, the chief executive of SoftBank, followed a meeting with Mr. Trump this month.

SoftBank is also a major investor in OneWeb, a satellite start-up that Mr. Trump said Wednesday would create an additional 3,000 jobs in the United States.
Ed Reinecke, a former California congressman and lieutenant governor under Ronald Reagan whose political career was derailed by a 1974 perjury conviction in a case pressed by a Watergate prosecutor, died on Saturday in Laguna Hills, Calif. He was 92.

The death was confirmed by his daughter Judy Harger.

In April 1974, Mr. Reinecke was cruising toward victory in his campaign to win the Republican nomination for governor and face Jerry Brown, the secretary of state, in the general election. After serving as Reagans lieutenant governor for six years and as chairman of the state party for two, he held a commanding lead in the polls over his chief rival, Houston I. Flournoy, the state controller.

Without warning, he became ensnared in an investigation begun by Leon Jaworski, the Watergate special prosecutor.

Investigators for the special prosecutors office were looking into possible collusion in 1971 between the Justice Department and the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation.
HONG KONG  Long celebrated as Chinas largest freshwater lake, Poyang reaches more than three times the expanse of Los Angeles in the summer wet season. It is home to the rare Yangtze finless porpoise, and its mud flats are the primary winter feeding grounds for thousands of birds that fly south each autumn to escape Siberias chill, including the critically endangered Siberian crane.

Now it is Poyang itself that is at risk.

In recent years, the average expanse of the lake, in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, has been shrinking, and winter water levels have declined sharply.

The local government has a proposed solution, but it faces a chorus of opposition from scientists and environmental groups in China and beyond who argue that it could have disastrous effects on the lakes fragile ecosystem and drive the Siberian crane and other migratory birds further toward extinction.



Water levels in the lake have always fluctuated radically between the summer rains and winter dryness, but there is now concern that the levels are off balance. Culprits include the Three Gorges Dam, which stores water upstream on the Yangtze for winter electricity generation, lowering a nearby river channel and sucking water from the lake. Dredging to collect sand for construction projects has also lowered the lakes bed and caused more runoff. This year, drought turned much of the lake into grassy plains.
Conversely, the impending arrival of Mr. Trump and his unqualified support for Israel have already inspired the Israeli right to press for more aggressive policies that would move the country even further from compromise. After nearly eight years with Mr. Obama, Mr. Netanyahu for the first time may feel little or no American pressure to make concessions.

The status quo in the meantime is an uneasy coexistence with no obvious resolution in the near term.

Palestinians live under military occupation surrounded by miles of walls and fences. Israelis build more homes for themselves while their forces raid communities, control movement through checkpoints and respond to provocations with decisive force.

Israelis live under the constant threat of terrorism, enduring sometimes daily assaults by attackers wielding knives or driving cars into crowds. The Palestinian authorities venerate such martyrs and compensate their families financially.

It is against that backdrop that the struggle of the four major figures in the twilight of an expiring presidency has played out in recent days and weeks. Underlying it was a deep divide over who was to blame for the long impasse in this part of the world.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry, while careful to call on the Palestinians to curb terrorism and incitement, seem to save most of their emotional energy for denouncing Mr. Netanyahu, who has come to grate on both of them. To the extent that the United States has presented itself as an honest broker in the conflict over the years, Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry are viewed by many in Jerusalem as tilted to the Palestinian cause, despite the $38 billion they pledged to Israels defense over the next 10 years.

Mr. Netanyahu has reacted to the United Nations resolution and Mr. Kerrys speech as if they were a declaration of war, a phrase he reportedly used before the Security Council vote last week in trying to persuade New Zealand to drop the measure. Mr. Trump, after initially saying he wanted to be a neutral figure in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has thrown in his lot with Mr. Netanyahu, especially since the election, perhaps encouraging the prime minister to castigate the departing president and secretary.
WARSAW  A significant private art collection that includes a rare painting by Leonardo da Vinci, as well as works by Rembrandt and Renoir, will be owned by the Polish government under an agreement signed Thursday with the family foundation that has administered the collection since its inception.

Piotr Glinski, the deputy prime minister and minister of culture who signed the agreement, to buy the collection, said that his main intention was to ensure that the artworks receive proper care and never leave Poland. Earlier this month, he said that was a possibility as long as they belonged to the privately owned Princes Czartoryski Foundation.

The Czartoryski collection has been one of Europes most important private art collections. It contains 250,000 historic manuscripts and documents, some of which used to belong to Polish kings. It also has 86,000 museum artifacts that include 593 precious artworks, most notably Leonardos Lady With an Ermine (1489-1490); Rembrandts Landscape With the Good Samaritan (1638); and sketches by Rembrandt, Auguste Renoir and Albrecht Durer.

The decision changes only the status of the collection, which was set up more than 200 years ago by Princess Izabela Czartoryska. The artworks will remain where they are today. Most are housed and displayed in the National Museum in Krakow, in southern Poland, with the exception of Lady With an Ermine, which is on display at the Wawel Royal Castle in Krakow.




Here comes Johnny Yen again

With the liquor and drugs

And the flesh machine

Hes gonna do another striptease

So sang Iggy Pop in Lust for Life (1977), a song he wrote with David Bowie that became an underground anthem for the post-Nixon, post-Vietnam era. Now 69 years old, Iggy Pop has been conscripted into a different form of striptease as the subject of a life drawing class organized by the British artist Jeremy Deller and presented at the Brooklyn Museum as an exhibition, Iggy Pop Life Class by Jeremy Deller.

When Mr. Deller approached Iggy Pop with the idea 10 years ago, he refused. He was worried a museum would reject the resulting drawings. But you can see why hed be concerned, since, on one level, the project feels like a perverse joke. Life drawing is a conservative practice, dating to the Renaissance, when artists wanted to draw from nature, and Iggy Pop (born James Newell Osterberg Jr.) is the antithesis of conservative. Even Mr. Deller, a product of post-conceptual art education, acknowledges in the catalog that this was only his second time in a life drawing class.

Moreover, traditional artists-model bodies were supposed to look like Greco-Roman statues: smooth, muscular and young. Iggy Pop is known for his sinewy, androgynous body banged up by decades of rough performance (and early, compulsory rock n roll drug use). The project also overturns the usual equation in which artists are the masters and their models are known only through the art. (Think of Andrew Wyeths Helga or any of Picassos women.) Wouldnt it be belittling to have an aging rock star pose for a bunch of unknown art students? Or kind of great?
By 1956, however, he was settled in Los Angeles and making decidedly nonfunctional pot assemblages. With the devilish Rocking Pot of that year, an upside-down bowl riddled with holes and affixed to skids, he flouted the idea that a well-made piece of ceramic art should be a stable, leakproof container. A fellow ceramics teacher in Southern California coined the phrase lift and life to describe the qualities of an ideal pot; Voulkos responded with his own mantra, dump and death.

His next breakthrough would require some technical innovation: a factory-size kiln, an industrial dough mixer and the kind of warehouse-size humidifiers used to keep fruit moist, as well as some tweaking of the clay recipe to enable monumental forms. Sharing a studio with the artist John Mason, Voulkos fired up his new equipment and made ever bigger and wilder ceramics: craggy, hulking creations like Little Big Horn and Sitting Bull, which look monolithic but are actually composed of multiple wheel-thrown forms and clay slabs fitted together.

These works drew comparisons to muscular abstract paintings by Franz Kline, Jack Tworkov and others. Voulkos fostered such associations with brightly colored glazes and epoxy-based paint, and in forays into actual paint on canvas (which look oddly timid compared with his ceramics). He also started to give public demonstrations that amounted to action painting in clay, a practice he continued well into his career: A photograph from 1976 shows him elbow-deep in a tall vase of stacked wheel-thrown cylinders. Often, as in the 1961 vessel Josephine, he would build up such a form only to pound it down, slash it and splatter it with slip and glaze.
Street artists often labor hastily, installing their work under the cover of night, to try to avoid detection. But the Indonesian artist and polymath Eko Nugroho will be working on his own street-inspired mural in front of visitors at the Asia Society Museum for three days, starting Saturday, Jan. 7.

Mr. Nugrohos work is frequently playful, as in his collection of wearable paper masks, and takes inspiration from pop culture and Indonesian tradition. The Asia Society Museum is also showing three of his animated works, including Let Me Love Me, a beat-driven take on industrial alienation.

Mr. Nugroho is also known for theatrical works and puppetry with his company Wayang Bocor, which will be featured in a commissioned performance that runs Jan. 12-14. The mural will remain on view at the museum through April 16. (asiasociety.org/NY)
2. James Madison by Chester Harding (1829-1830)

This warts-and-all likeness was captured in Madisons old age. But reports from the time said that when he came to the White House, he was already careworn after a long and arduous political career. Washington Irving described Madison as but a withered little apple-John.
Many funny actors will go an entire career without landing a lead role in a television sitcom. Meanwhile, Kaitlin Olson is holding down two of them simultaneously: Since 2005, she has played the beleaguered bartender Sweet Dee on Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the proudly unrefined ensemble comedy that begins its 12th season on Wednesday, Jan. 4, on FXX.

And on Sunday, Jan. 1, she takes center stage in the new Fox comedy The Mick, playing its title character, Mackenzie Murphy  a.k.a. Mickey  a bad seed who must abruptly become a surrogate parent to her niece and nephews when her wealthy sister and brother-in-law flee the country to avoid federal fraud charges. Now she is unwillingly raising three children she never wanted, in a suburban mansion she could surely get used to.

The Mick, which Ms. Olson works on in the months when she is not making Its Always Sunny, is hardly a side project; she is also an executive producer on the Fox show, where she helped to hire the cast and writing staff, and gives notes on scripts and editing. That triples your workload, said Ms. Olson, who has two sons with her husband, Rob McElhenney, the creator and co-star of Its Always Sunny.

My children have trained me well for multitasking, she added.

In a rare moment of down time from these responsibilities, Ms. Olson spoke by phone about what shes learning she can and cannot get away with on Fox. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
The Broadway playwright Matthew Lombardo has sued the owner of copyrights for Dr. Seusss works, arguing that his new play does not infringe on the classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in United States District Court in Manhattan, said Mr. Lombardos 75-minute one-woman play, Whos Holiday!, is highly transformative, and therefore constitutes fair use. The play, Reuters reported, features a profane 45-year-old woman who recently served time in prison for murdering her husband, the Grinch, with whom she has a daughter.

Mr. Lombardo, whose play High ran on Broadway in 2010 starring Kathleen Turner, is seeking $130,000 in damages, including costs for the cancellation of Whos Holiday! It was to begin performances Off Broadway at New World Stages on Nov. 2.

The production was canceled after Dr. Seuss Enterprises complained. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which has brought other copyright suits in the past, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
His pilgrimages ultimately took him to St. Petersburg, which was in the thrall of the occult and the supernatural. Seances were a fad; so were hypnotism, chiromancy and telepathy. This search for spirituality coincided with a growing belief in Dark Forces haunting a country in the midst of profound change at the turn of the 20th century.

Image Douglas Smith Credit... Robert Wade

Nicholas and, especially, Alexandra were not immune. Rasputin was not the first healer whose influence they fell under. A French charlatan, Philippe Nazier-Vachot, conducted seances for the royal couple, and for a time convinced them of his ability to predict the future. They believed he helped them conceive Alexei, who was born in 1904.

They first met Rasputin a year later: We made the acquaintance of a man of God, Nicholas recorded dryly but mystically in his diary. While much has been made of Rasputins ability to treat  or at least console  Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia, Mr. Smith argues that the monk provided succor about the state of Russia as much as the state of the heir.

With the country rebelling around them, here came a humble peasant who told Nicholas just what he wanted to hear  of the need to trust in God and his miracles, to be the rightful master of Russia, and to demand submission and obedience in his subjects, for the health of the tsar was inseparable from the health of Russia, Mr. Smith writes.

Rasputins scandalous behavior with society ladies and prostitutes, his unseemly intimacy with the royal family, and his influence over policies and appointments (though Mr. Smith also points out where that influence was most likely exaggerated) had the effect of eroding the authority of the czar. The gossip that Rasputin and Alexandra were lovers, for example, was unfounded but so widespread that postcards depicting them in sexual trysts openly circulated.

Nicholas was repeatedly warned, but would hear none of it. He appreciated the calming effect Rasputin had on his anxious wife and ailing son. Better ten Rasputins, he told his prime minister, Pytor Stolypin, than one of the empresss hysterical fits. Once the aura of the czar was punctured, though, revolution became inevitable.

Mr. Smith can seem too forgiving of his subject at times. He explains away behavior that, even if exaggerated, was nonetheless horrendous, including accusations of rape. He dismisses Rasputins crude endorsement of vigilantism against Jews  so they wont even dream about asking for equality  as an isolated utterance. He acknowledges Rasputins personal ambition, but does not dwell on his evident avarice or scheming.
Suggested reading by editors at The New York Times.

CHRISTMAS DAYS: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days, by Jeanette Winterson. (Grove, $24.) A gift book from the British novelist, containing dark, otherworldly and wickedly funny stories about Christmas, along with holiday-themed recipes.

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF THE TUDORS: Uncovering the Secrets of Britains Greatest Dynasty, by Tracy Borman. (Grove, $27.) Bormans authoritative social history teems with delightful details.

A RADICAL FAITH: The Assassination of Sister Maura, by Eileen Markey. (Nation, $26.99.) A meticulous re-creation of the life of one of the American nuns murdered in El Salvador in 1980.

HIERONYMUS BOSCH: Painter and Draughtsman. Technical Studies, by Luuk Hoogstede and others. (Mercatorfonds/Yale University, $150.) Paintings are juxtaposed with images of the layers beneath, offering a thrilling look at the artist at work.
Last year in this space I looked ahead to 16 anticipated books being published in 2016. This year Ill list 17. Pray for me that Im not writing this column in 2055.

The Korean author Han Kang made our 10 Best Books of 2016 list with The Vegetarian, her first novel to be translated into English. Human Acts, the next, will be published in January. Also that month, Ottessa Moshfegh, whose debut novel, Eileen, met with critical acclaim in 2015, returns with a collection of stories, Homesick for Another World. And Emily Ruskovich publishes her debut novel, Idaho, about a woman investigating the mystery of her husbands first marriage.

February brings the short story master George Saunderss first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, as well as Katie Kitamuras A Separation, in which a wife and husband agree to split and the husband soon after disappears. The experimental novelist Steve Erickson returns with Shadowbahn, which imagines the twin towers suddenly reappearing in South Dakota.

Notable nonfiction in March includes Joan Didions South and West, two extended essays from her notebooks, and Ariel Levys The Rules Do Not Apply, a memoir that builds on her powerful 2013 essay in The New Yorker about a miscarriage she suffered during a reporting trip to Mongolia. Mohsin Hamids fourth novel, Exit West, is a story of love and migration set against a civil war in an unnamed country. Elif Batumans debut novel, The Idiot, is about a young woman navigating her first year at Harvard.
 John Kerry, the departing U.S. secretary of state, dropped the diplomatic niceties and used one of his last speeches in office to rebuke Israel, warning that it was undermining any hope of a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians.

Mr. Kerry spoke knowing that the incoming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump may well abandon decades of American policy toward Israel.

Hours earlier, Mr. Trump had posted on Twitter that the Obama administration had treated its ally in the Middle East with total disdain and disrespect.
BEIJING  An angry mob ransacks a terminal. A frustrated passenger tries to leave the plane while it taxis. A pilot, who has had it up to here, advises fliers to leave the plane and mill about the tarmac  and they do.

Welcome to Chinas unfriendly skies. The worlds second-largest economy boasts some of the worlds worst flight delays and missed connections. Angry passengers have become such a fixture of flying in China that the government has developed a blacklist for the dangerously unruly.

Chinese leaders are aware of the problem. Spurred by the strain on the air traffic system as well as a slowing economy, China has begun a huge airport building project that could give the country 60 more airports beyond the current total of about 200 by 2020. It committed to spending $12 billion on airport construction and revamping this year alone.

A $12 billion airport under construction 30 miles southwest of Beijings center will eventually more than double the citys air traffic capacity. The new airport, Daxing International, will have up to seven runways and 7.5 million square feet of floor space.
Moreover, a few of Silicon Valleys most prominent start-ups suffered significant blows in the past year. Theranos, the once highly lauded blood-testing company, laid off about 40 percent of its workers and closed its laboratory operations amid heightened skepticism about its technology.

Zenefits, a business software start-up, replaced its chief executive after BuzzFeed News reported on its use of unlicensed health insurance brokers. Zenefits has since settled investigations with a number of states, and the company has sought to turn itself around.

Of course, heavyweight start-ups had little trouble raising money. Uber alone raised $3.5 billion from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, putting its cash hoard from outside investors at more than $11 billion. Lyft, Palantir and Snap Inc., the parent of Snapchat, all raised enormous sums as well, as did big non-American start-ups like the Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing.

And some start-ups sold out to bigger companies for multibillion-dollar valuations. Jet.com, an e-commerce company that began selling goods only within the last two years, sold itself to Walmart for $3.3 billion.

Investors are betting 2017 will be better. Renaissance Capital pointed out that the average total return of I.P.O.s in 2016 reached 23 percent, a sharp reversal from the negative 2.1 percent return of 2015 offerings and surpassing the 21 percent return of two years ago.

And some boldface names are preparing to begin trading in the public markets next year, potentially providing ballast for a bigger wave of debutantes. Leading the way could be Snap, whose shares are expected to begin trading as soon as March with a valuation that could exceed $30 billion.

Other big names, like Spotify, the music-streaming darling, are also poised to hold initial offerings as soon as 2017.
The auto parts maker Takata is nearing a sweeping settlement with federal prosecutors over airbags that can violently explode, according to two people briefed on the discussions. The devices have been linked to many deaths and injuries and prompted the largest recall in automotive history.

A deal could come as early as the next few weeks, and Takata is expected to pay a penalty of up to $1 billion, the people briefed on the discussions said.

One point that remains unresolved is whether there will be any guilty plea to criminal misconduct, either by the company or one of its subsidiaries.

Such a plea would be an escalation of punishments against auto companies for defective products. In settlements with General Motors and Toyota Motor, for example, the companies agreed to pay large fines over defects, but did not plead guilty.
The octopus trap can grab any heart, healthy or not, young or old, and most people survive, doctors say. The sudden flood of stress hormones causes a temporary weakening of the heart muscle itself, unlike a classic heart attack, in which a clot blocks blood flow.

Ive seen estimates that about 1 percent of perceived heart attacks are because of broken-heart syndrome, said Dr. Anne Curtis, chair of medicine at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, and that seems about right. I think every cardiologist has seen cases. We tell people that many will return to normal or near-normal heart function.

Ms. Reynoldss did not, though the timing of her death may have just coincided with her daughters. In her 2013 memoir, Ms. Reynolds wrote about suffering a mini-stroke and partial kidney failure. In 2015, she was awarded an honorary Oscar but was too sick to attend the ceremony.

In interviews, Ms. Fisher had talked about how frail her mother was. Its a lot of times terrifying, but watching my mother, whos incredibly resilient, coping with certain health issues that shes had, she told National Public Radio this fall. In an interview with People magazine in May, she said her mother had had a spinal issue but had recovered amazingly.

Ms. Fisher, 60, died on Tuesday after suffering a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles a few days earlier. On Wednesday, Ms. Reynolds was rushed to an emergency room amid reports that she had possibly had a stroke.
PHOENIX (AP) -- The Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday refused to temporarily block a minimum wage boost approved by voters, a decision that means hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers will get a raise on New Year's Day.

The high court decided against granting a stay intended to block the increase until justices decide whether to take up a full challenge to the new law at their February conference.

Proposition 206 was approved by 58 percent of Arizona voters in November. It raises the minimum wage from $8.05 an hour to $10 an hour on Jan. 1 and to $12 in 2020.

The Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry sued, saying the measure didn't have a funding source for new state costs and illegally included a second subject, mandatory sick pay.

Gov. Doug Ducey and the incoming House and Senate leaders filed a friend of the court brief Wednesday urging the court to block the measure, saying they were "gravely concerned about the new demands it will place on the general fund and the Legislature's ability to meet those demands."

A trial judge previously rejected the arguments by opponents of the higher wage in a ruling that was appealed by the Chamber.

Tomas Robles, chairman of the group that backed the initiative, said the last-minute effort by the governor and Legislature to weigh in on behalf of the Chamber efforts showed a disdain for the will of voters.

"To me it showcases their true colors, what they actually care about  which isn't Arizona's workers or Arizona's voters, it's their own pocketbooks," Robles said.

Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said the governor's office will review the court order.

"We are going to continue to work through the budget numbers and ensure that our agencies are complying with the law as it stands," Scarpinato said.

The state Supreme Court order was just one sentence, saying the request for a stay was considered by five justices and denied. Two new justices that joined the court earlier this month under an expansion law signed by Ducey didn't participate.

Story continues

Chamber lawyers urged the high court to overturn the lower court judge's ruling, saying that if it were allowed to stand, crafters of initiatives would be able to ignore a state constitutional provision requiring a funding source for new expenditures.

The measure exempts the state itself from having to pay the higher minimum wage. But the state Medicaid agency said it plans to increase payments to nursing homes and other contractors that provide services to state-covered clients to compensate them for having to pay higher wages.

The increase approved by the Medicaid agency is expected to cost $48 million for six months, more than $11 million from the state, $3 million from counties and the rest from the federal government.

Agencies charged with enforcing the measure also said they would have higher costs.

Proposition 206 backers said the judge was right when he rejected the single-subject argument and found that the measure didn't trigger mandatory state spending. Even if it did, they argued that blocking the entire law isn't warranted because the state isn't obligated to spend any additional cash.

By the time the wages hit $12 an hour, an estimated 30 percent  more than 700,000 workers in Arizona would see an increase in pay, according to an analysis by the Grand Canyon Institute.

Garrick Taylor, a spokesman for the state Chamber, said the group was disappointed by the ruling.

"However, we look forward to making our case, hopefully before the state Supreme Court in February," Taylor said. "By that time we anticipate that we will see the damage to state-contracted service providers that we anticipated."

Arizona was one of four states where voters approved minimum wage increases in November. Colorado and Maine voters also passed measures phasing in a $12 an hour minimum wage, while voters in Washington state approved one raising that to $13.50 an hour by 2020.

The actions came after Congress was unable to agree on an increase in the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour
In a phone interview, Mr. Schiller, 80, whose name was often stripped from the photo as it spread across the internet, described what he remembered of the relationship between the two actresses. He said that Ms. Fisher, who was 6 years old at the time, seemed content to sit and stare at her mother for hours.

Her daughter was really mesmerized by her mother always, he said. Thats what really stood out.

He said he had noticed the quality early on, when he was taking portraits of Ms. Reynolds at her home on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills. Ms. Fisher would sit in the corner and watch as he took picture after picture, he said.

In Las Vegas, where Ms. Reynolds was performing at the Riviera Hotel, Mr. Schiller said he saw that dynamic crystallized: As Ms. Reynolds took the stage, someone who was watching over Ms. Fisher brought a stool to the wing. Ms. Fisher clambered up on top of it all by herself, he said, and sat through the entire performance.

Ms. Reynolds began performing a singing-dancing act at the Riviera in the early 1960s. By 1966, she would regularly perform seven nights a week at the venue over the course of a month and a half, according to a Los Angeles Times article from that year.

Youre waiting for the moment in which something youve seen is illustrated, Mr. Schiller said. And then you dont even stop and think. The image is there and your camera is like a sponge to absorb the moment.
To reach senators on both sides of the aisle, we stressed that this wasnt about the Second Amendment or gun rights, but about states having the right to set their own public safety standards, said John Feinblatt, president of Mr. Bloombergs group, Everytown for Gun Safety. Its efforts will continue into the Trump administration.

Indeed, on issues where the partisan divide is greater, mayors have formed similar spinoff groups.

These predate Mr. Trumps election but have taken on increased importance, especially for Democrats. More than one is focused on climate change. And then there is Mr. de Blasios group, Cities for Action.

Tangibly, if there honestly is an attempt to do mass deportation, for example, I think youll see a very coordinated effort from mayors all over the country, Mr. de Blasio said, to draw clear lines where our police forces will not participate. Or if there is an attempt at a Muslim registry, to do all that we can to inhibit that from being actualized.

The road ahead may be difficult. Time is running out for the Obama administration, and any potential last-minute executive action could be reversed by the Trump administration.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston, a Democrat, has joined with his counterparts, but he said the first order of business for mayors everywhere was to take care of their own citizens.

Theres only so much you can do on a nationwide level, he said. Right now, the feeling is that were a little bit of an island.
The Buffalo Board of Education on Thursday demanded that Carl Paladino resign from his post on the board after making racist comments about President and Michelle Obama last week. If he refuses to step down, the board will ask the state education commissioner to remove him, it said in a resolution.

The resolution  read aloud in a raucous room that exploded in applause when Mr. Paladinos critics spoke, and in jeers at a board member who called for forgiveness and an apology  passed, 6 to 2. Mr. Paladino was not present.

Words matter, Mr. Paladino, said Barbara Seals Nevergold, the president of the board.

The words in question came in response to a survey about hopes for 2017, sent to members of the Buffalo community by Artvoice, a local weekly newspaper.

In it, Mr. Paladino said he wished Mr. Obama would die of mad cow disease. He also wished Ms. Obama would return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla. Mr. Paladino, a wealthy builder and political ally of President-elect Donald J. Trump, ran for governor in 2010 as the Republican nominee.
Donald J. Trumps daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, are said to be interested in working in the White House  and the president-elect is looking for a way to have them. There are rumors that Mr. Kushner may work out of the West Wing, including advising the president on foreign policy, while Ms. Trump may host White House events and play a role in policies affecting working mothers.

We and others have expressed concerns about the nepotism inherent in this arrangement when so many people are qualified to serve. Nevertheless, if Mr. Trump chooses this course, we have some suggestions for how he could meet the minimum requirements of the law.

The presidential appointment of relatives was less complicated before 1967. That was the year the federal anti-nepotism statute was enacted. The law came about after President John F. Kennedy raised eyebrows by appointing his brother Robert as attorney general. At the time, members of Congress often put their spouses and other relatives on their staff. To put an end to all that, Congress forbade public officials to hire family members in agencies or offices over which they have authority.

The president is specifically mentioned in the anti-nepotism statute, and it explicitly lists daughters and sons-in-law as prohibited employees. Nowhere does it say that appointments in the White House are exempt. As chief White House ethics lawyers, both of us had to tell senior White House officials that the law applied to them, and that their relatives could not be hired to work in our building.
BRISBANE, Australia  Australians got coal for Christmas.

This autumn, the Indian-owned conglomerate Adani got approval from the Australian government to begin construction on an enormous coal mine, a 30-mile-long project in Queensland. While the mine has the potential to create 10,000 jobs, there is a risk that Adani will repeat the mistakes made by companies during the last mining boom by using workplace practices that hurt workers and their families.

That previous surge in demand for Australian coal  from 2003 to 2015  was met by a transient work force. Employees would fly to remote mines from major cities to work weeks at a time, and fly home for several days off before starting the cycle again. These so-called fly-in, fly-out jobs, which offer hefty pay, are widely known here as fifo.

At the peak of the boom in 2012, some 276,000 people worked in the mining sector; more than 100,000 of these held fifo positions.

Fifo employees fill a big labor gap at mines sites in remote areas. Mining companies are encouraged through tax incentives to use the transient workers. Some costs associated with a fifo worker  meals, transportation and airline tickets  can be claimed as production expenses, helping to lower a companys tax bill.
When I learned that Mr. Bakiyev lived in London, I decided to research the ownership of the mansion he lives in. But this one simple thing is impossible to discover; the true owner, and the true origins of the money, are cloaked under an anonymous offshore company registered in Belize.

The watchdog group Global Witness is calling for an investigation into Mr. Bakiyevs affairs. The Kyrgyz authorities, according to Global Witness, believe that this Belize-registered company is linked to an alleged money-laundering scheme used to funnel state funds out of Kyrgyzstan. Global Witnesss 2015 report on Maxim Bakiyev, Blood Red Carpet, criticizes British authorities, lawyers and real estate agents for failing to prevent a man linked to corruption and violence from setting up home in a luxury suburb in London.

But how would it be otherwise? British law is on the side of the kleptocrats. All an autocrat on the run has to do is create a shell company to hide his identity and the source of his illicit wealth, and then use this instrument to purchase property incognito. Britains best-paid brokers and lawyers are here to help  and will ask no awkward questions about the provenance of their clients cash.

Such anonymous companies now own nearly 40,000 London properties. Some of these purchases may be entirely legitimate and innocent, but these tools of secrecy are well known to be favored by money launderers: The anticorruption organization Transparency International has found that this technique has been used for three-quarters of properties whose owners have been investigated for corruption in Britain.

Just because there arent bodies on the streets of London doesnt mean London isnt abetting those who pile them up elsewhere. The British establishment has long feigned ignorance of the business, but the London Laundromat is destroying the countrys reputation. Across the former Soviet Union, Britain is now seen as a partner in corruption, not democracy, for elites seeking to asset-strip their own states. The elected president of Kyrgyzstan, Almazbek Atambayev, has repeatedly called  in vain  for Britain to stop sheltering a guy who robbed us.

Amid this shame and gloom, one ray of light has emerged: a serious chance of the reforms we need to stop human rights abusers from using London real estate to hide their wealth. In Parliament, a growing cross-party band of members is seeking to amend the Criminal Finances Bill, now making its way through the legislative process.
To the Editor:

Re Israel and the Two-State Solution (editorial, Dec. 29):

Regrettably, developments over the last few days will likely worsen the very point that Secretary of State John Kerry identified as the critical hurdle to reaching a two-state solution: the lack of trust and confidence between the parties.

The Security Council resolution and Mr. Kerrys harsh and hectoring speech will confirm to Israelis  even those most supportive of a two-state solution  that the Jewish state is being held to a different standard, and that it is being dictated to without real reciprocal demands being made of Palestinians, even as they promote destructive international initiatives that circumvent direct negotiations.

We recognize the concern regarding policies and dynamics that may jeopardize the path to a viable and secure two-state solution. But the unjust action at the Security Council and at the State Department only pushes those prospects further out.

MARVIN D. NATHAN

JONATHAN A. GREENBLATT

New York

Mr. Nathan is national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League. Mr. Greenblatt is its chief executive and national director.
Even before President Obamas decision last week to abstain on a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements, it was safe to assume that the Israeli government was eagerly awaiting his departure. In the eyes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Obama  who skipped Israel on his first trip to the Middle East and later undertook secret nuclear talks with Iran  seemed unable to appreciate the depth of Israels security needs or the difficulties of Mr. Netanyahus domestic politics.

Mr. Netanyahu was officially neutral during the United States election campaign, but its a good bet that he privately rejoiced over the election of Donald J. Trump and the prospect of an American administration ready to align itself across the board with Israeli government positions. Mr. Trumps immediate condemnation of Wednesdays scathing anti-settlement speech by the departing secretary of state, John Kerry, no doubt only reinforced the feeling in Jerusalem that better days lay ahead.

But any celebrations in Mr. Netanyahus office may prove premature. By giving the Israeli prime minister all he claims to want and more, Mr. Trump could make his life vastly more difficult.

Consider some of the possible changes to American policy on the Palestinian issue. After the Obama administrations clashes with Israel over its settlement policy and lack of action on a two-state solution, the new administration appears ready to embrace the notion of greater Israel, breaking with decades of American policy.
Spencer Frank, who grew up primarily on the Upper East Side, left the city for four years at Syracuse University and later roomed with a friend in Midtown East. He rode the 4 or 5 train to his office in the financial district, where he works in mobile advertising technology.

Almost three years ago, he met Bethany Paquin, a dancer and former aerialist at Tokyo Disney Resort, who is from northeastern Connecticut. She was living with her sister in Harlem.

The couple planned to find a place together. Last year, Mr. Frank moved in with his mother on the Upper East Side to lower his rent and save for a security deposit and broker fee. Ms. Paquin returned temporarily to Connecticut, teaching dance and working toward a physical therapy degree.

Mr. Frank, now 30, spent his nights online looking for an East Side rental convenient to a subway station that wasnt the 77th Street Lexington Avenue stop. The 6 train in the morning is miserable, he said. Everybody gets on and nobody gets off.
Chinese regulators have been penalizing overseas companies, like the American mobile chip giant Qualcomm, which was forced to reduce prices for companies that sell smartphones within the country. It is a market increasingly dominated by Chinese brands like Huawei and Xiaomi that undercut Apple and Samsung on price.

China is also scrutinizing Western technology companies over national security issues. Beijing has increased oversight of the internet with new cybersecurity rules and forced state companies to reduce spending on overseas technology. It pressed Apple to hand over its source code. Apple said it refused.

Apple has agreed to the governments request to store more of its local data on Chinese servers. It must also undergo security audits on new models of the iPhone before gaining approval to sell the product.

Beijing also expects American companies to help develop Chinas own capabilities. Apple is teaming up with UnionPay, a state-backed financial services company. It has invested $1 billion in the Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing, which has significant backing from state companies.

Mr. Cook, Apples chief executive, has also carefully cultivated Apples image as a big employer, a good corporate citizen and a major economic contributor. He comes to China regularly. He has donned factory uniforms and walked the assembly line in Zhengzhou. He has courted regulators, the heads of state telecom giants and the countrys top leaders, including Mr. Xi.

In an interview with Chinese state television last year, Mr. Cook explained how Apple was planting trees in the country, calling the effort a pillar of its environmental strategy. He detailed plans to build a massive solar project to power Apples stores, headquarters and offices throughout the country. He also boasted about creating over three million jobs in China, half of them in manufacturing.

At the Hall of Purple Light in the governments walled leadership compound in Beijing, Mr. Cook promised in August to build the companys first research and development center in the country and to support the governments big focus on high-end manufacturing.

Opposite him sat the vice premier, Zhang Gaoli. Beside him sat his partner. There was the chairman of Foxconn, Mr. Gou. Also present was the party leader of the province where Zhengzhou is located, Xie Fuzhan.
The iPhone is Apples most profitable and best-selling product. More than a billion have been sold since the first one was released.

About half of all iPhones now are made in a huge manufacturing facility in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou. This is the story of how an iPhone made there can end up in your hands.

Getting the Parts

Components from more than 200 suppliers go into each iPhone.

Apple buys many of the components for iPhones  like the memory chip, the modem, the camera module, the microphone and the touch-screen controller  from more than 200 suppliers around the world. Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that runs the Zhengzhou facility, even produces some smaller parts, such as metal casings.

Apple orders many of the components from global suppliers, and then sells them, en masse, to one of its contract manufacturers based in China. In Zhengzhou, that means Foxconn.
The Dead, 1904

Irish hospitality is on warmly elegant display every night at this Irish Repertory Theater production, staged in the stately Fifth Avenue home of the American Irish Historical Society, just across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On New Years Eve, the audience for the 8:30 p.m. performance is welcome to linger later, for post-show Irish music and dancing, and more of the drink that flows generously throughout the evening.

Whether to take a glass of whiskey or sherry is, in fact, the first choice you make after Lily, the maid, shows you upstairs and youre thrust into the party  an annual affair held by the Morkan sisters, Kate and Julia, with songs on piano and violin. Theres also a big sit-down dinner for the family and their guests, including all 40 or so audience members.

The setting makes the performance a great deal more upscale than the affair James Joyce describes in his short story The Dead, from Dubliners, yet this adaptation, by the poet Paul Muldoon and Jean Hanff Korelitz, is scrupulously faithful in many of its details. The Morkans favorite nephew, Gabriel (Boyd Gaines), and his wife, Gretta (Kate Burton), do conveniently stay the night instead of repairing to a hotel, but thats only so we can trail them to their bedroom for the final scene, after weve had our port.

The production is gentle with its audience, though you will be chided if you try to chat over the actors  who will, by the way, take part in the post-show festivities on New Years Eve.

As immersive theater goes, this is a high-end, boutique affair. General admission costs $300 on an ordinary night, and double that for the special performance on New Years Eve. Still, the whole run is sold out, and there is no wait list. (irishrep.org)
Q. How has the Kalimantan changed?

A. In 1971 when I first went there, it was one of the wildest places left on earth. There were still headhunters on the interior. There were no roads. Rivers were the only highways.

How has tourism changed?

Tourism began in this area only about 20 years ago. I remember a pamphlet that the government issued that told people what a tourist was, what you did with a tourist. One of the wonderful things about Indonesia is the warm, gracious people. They treat tourists as guests.

We have encouraged tourism. We wanted to bring tourists to increase awareness of the orangutans. At Camp Leakey, we see up to 15,000 a year from all over the world. The local people saw them coming in and built up the tourism industry. The good thing is that the money stays in the area. The cooks are local. The guides are local. The boats are local. Thats one of the reasons the local people are so supportive.

What do visitors do or see at Camp Leakey?

After you go into the education center, you can walk to the feeding station. Once a day, the orangutans are provided with fruit and they usually come through the trees to the feeding platform. The feeding lasts two hours and some people watch them the whole time.

The time to come is now. I went to see the gorillas in Rwanda and there are only a limited number of visitors allowed. There are very strict rules. Its wise. The national park at Tanjung Puting has investigated what it would take to set up a system like that. Theres no limit at this point. Its not necessary yet. You get very intimate encounters with the orangutans at Camp Leakey.
OMICS is also in the less well-known business of what might be called conference fraud, which is what led to the call from John. Both schemes exploit a fundamental weakness of modern higher education: Academics need to publish in order to advance professionally, get better jobs or secure tenure. Even within the halls of respectable academia, the difference between legitimate and fake publications and conferences is far blurrier than scholars would like to admit.

OMICS is on the far end of the definitely fake spectrum. Real academic conferences evaluate potential participants by subjecting proposed papers and presentations to a rigorous peer-review process. Some 15,000 people attend the American Educational Research Associations annual conference, for example, and only about a third of submitted proposals are accepted.

In October, a New Zealand college professor submitted a paper to the OMICS-sponsored International Conference on Atomic and Nuclear Physics, which was held last month at the Hilton Atlanta Airport. It was written using the autocomplete feature on his iPhone, which produced an abstract that begins as follows: Atomic Physics and I shall not have the same problem with a separate section for a very long long way. Nuclear weapons will not have to come out the same day after a long time of the year he added the two sides will have the two leaders to take the same way to bring up to their long ways of the same as they will have been a good place for a good time at home the united front and she is a great place for a good time.

The paper was accepted within three hours.

An OMICS employee who identified himself as Sam Dsouza said conference papers are reviewed by its experts within 24 hours of submission. He couldnt provide a list of its reviewers or their credentials.

Having dispensed with academic standards, OMICS makes money on volume. Its conferenceseries.com website lists hundreds of so-called academic meetings, many at vacation destinations like Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla. On Dec. 1 and 2, the 2nd International Congress on Neuroimmunology and Therapeutics, the 13th International Conference on Vaccines, Therapeutics and Travel Medicine: Influenza and Infectious Diseases, and the International Conference on Clinical and Medical Genetics were all held, simultaneously, at the Hilton Atlanta Airport.
Or consider, for example, the small passenger and freight airline called Warbelows Air, based here in Fairbanks in east-central Alaska. The company needs about nine full-time pilots to meet its weekly schedule, serving tiny towns north of the Arctic Circle and beyond. But nine pilots these days have become hard to come by. So this year the company began recruiting Air National Guard pilots to work part time on their days off, with six part-timers now adding up to one full-time pilot.

One pilot out of six, thats how we fix that problem, said Greg Probst, Warbelows chief pilot.

Matt Gallagher, a Warbelows pilot since 2014, is leaving next spring for a job in Colorado to be closer to his family, and to seize the chance to move on to bigger and faster aircraft.

I want to fly jets that go 40,000 feet in the air for two hours at a time, Mr. Gallagher said. There are great opportunities for guys like me.

That flying small planes in Alaska is a very dangerous line of work is part of the shifting dynamic. From 1990 to 2009, more than a third of all commuter and air taxi crashes in the nation, and about a fifth of the fatal crashes, occurred in Alaska, according to federal figures. With only about 730,000 people, Alaska has less than a quarter of 1 percent of the nations population.

The states plane crashes and flat-out disappearances are the stuff of legend. In 2012, a military transport plane missing since 1952 was found on a melting glacier. A plane that left Anchorage for Juneau in 1972 carrying two members of Congress, Representative Hale Boggs of Louisiana  the House majority leader at the time  and Representative Nick Begich of Alaska, has yet to be found.

Just this year there have been 91 aircraft accidents or incidents in the state, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, 13 with one or more fatalities. Alaska also has most of the nations active volcanoes, which can spew corrosive ash into flight paths and engines; Bogoslof, in the Aleutian Islands, erupted just this month.

Those hazards, on top of a worsening pilot shortage, are making some researchers and entrepreneurs see opportunity for pilotless drone aircraft to fill the gap, especially for work that pilots refer to as the three ds: flying jobs that are dirty, dull or dangerous.
(Among hard-fought measures that didnt make the cut: expanded leave for new parents, a repeal of the so-called tampon tax and the abolition of the death penalty, which was defeated at the ballot box).

Some of the new laws:

 No more Instagram updates behind the wheel.

Its already illegal to hold a phone and talk or text while driving. Starting Jan. 1, motorists cannot hold their phone for any reason. Hands-free functions will still be allowed.

 A minimum-wage bump.

Californias minimum wage will rise to $10.50 an hour, up from $10. Yearly increases under the new law will bring the wage to $15 an hour by 2022. All told, 29 states and the District of Columbia now have minimum wages above the federal base of $7.25 per hour.

 Tougher sentencing after the Brock Turner case.

Anger over the six-month jail sentence for Mr. Turner, the Stanford swimmer who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman, led the state to make a sexual-assault conviction ineligible for probation. Other measures removed a statute of limitations on rape, and broadened the legal definition of the word to include all forms of nonconsensual sexual assault.

 Stricter gun control.

New measures were passed in the wake of the San Bernardino massacre, then voters approved more on the Nov. 8 ballot. Among them: the expansion of an assault weapons ban, first-in-the-nation background checks on ammunition purchases, and a ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
There is no relief in sight. Already confronting a $1.3 million shortfall this year, the courts are preparing for more cuts. Earlier this month, Arthur W. Pepin, director of the states Administrative Office of the Courts, asked magistrate and district judges to send him a memo listing ways they can trim expenses further.

We are strained and we consistently hear prosecutors and public defenders tell us there are not enough of them to do the job that they ought to do, Mr. Pepin said. Weve reached a point where the judges have grave concerns about the systems ability to deliver justice.

Mr. Baur had tried cajoling defenders assigned to other parts of the state to move to Hobbs, where housing remains relatively expensive and scarce. He had met with judges and the Lea County district attorney, Dianna Luce, to brainstorm solutions. He had advertised for two open positions and two new slots, hoping to bring the number of lawyers in the office to eight.

Months passed and no solution was in sight. One new hire resigned a week ahead of his start date. Most applicants, Mr. Baur said, were not even qualified enough to be interviewed. One who got hired this month was not experienced enough in criminal trials to take on a full caseload.

By then, Mr. Baur had already taken the dramatic step of turning down any new cases. Theres no cavalry going over the hill, said Mr. Baur (pronounced BOW-er). Were going to have to figure this out on our own.
The best episode of TV this year was Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. Though it aired in March, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the end of 2016: Public scrutiny of a successful woman. A hotshot man hellbent on defeating her. It even featured a crotch-grab. The opening account of O. J.s grabbing Nicoles crotch primes us for the misogyny this episode confronts. He grabs, claims ownership of, and then reduces Nicoles self worth to the biological function of a body part. Marcia Clark is the woman advocating for Nicole, while sacrificing aspects of her own life to do so. Shes then criticized, mocked and punished for it. And it hurts. Thats what makes this episode great: that we see her hurt. That a female public figure can exist as both capable and hurt. That shouldnt be groundbreaking, and yet. ... The 2016 TV news cycle capitalized on coarse spectacle  but Marcia, Marcia, Marcia examines the private spaces of a public figure. By making Marcias story whole, it engages our empathy, informing the choices we make in our politics and in our lives. Its not only the best episode, but the best of what TV can do for us. (Add The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story to your Watchlist.)

 Constance Wu stars in Fresh Off the Boat on ABC.
WATERBERG, Namibia  In this faraway corner of southern Africa, scores of German soldiers lie in a military cemetery, their names, dates and details engraved on separate polished tombstones.

Easily missed is a single small plaque on the cemetery wall that gives a nod in German to the African warriors who died in the fighting as well. Nameless, they are among the tens of thousands of Africans killed in what historians have long considered  and what the German government is now close to recognizing  as the 20th centurys first genocide.

A century after losing its colonial possessions in Africa, Germany and its former colony, Namibia, are now engaged in intense negotiations to put an end to one of the ugliest chapters of Europes past in Africa.

During German rule in Namibia, called South-West Africa back then, colonial officers studying eugenics developed ideas on racial purity, and their forces tried to exterminate two rebellious ethnic groups, the Herero and Nama, some of them in concentration camps.
BEIJING  Five people were killed in a clash at a branch of the Communist Party in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, the state news media reported on Thursday.

The authorities described the violence, which occurred on Wednesday, as a terrorist attack. They said that assailants armed with knives and a bomb stormed the Moyu County party offices in western Xinjiang, killing an official and a security guard. The police shot dead three people at the scene, according to Xinhua, a state news agency.

The confrontation was the latest outburst of violence in a region plagued by tensions between the government and the Uighurs, a mostly Muslim minority who inhabit Xinjiang, a desolate area that borders Kazakhstan, Mongolia and several other countries. It has been months since the government last reported an attack in the region.

China has waged a far-reaching campaign against what it calls Islamic extremism in the region in recent years, warning that separatists in Xinjiang are coordinating with jihadist groups abroad to carry out terrorist attacks in China.
A man indeed threw five firecrackers from the roof of a bank toward the Government House building in Bangkok on Tuesday, apparently in a bid to get attention, according to The Bangkok Post. Onlookers ran away in panic, the English-language newspaper reported.

The shouting man appeared to be seeking help with a financial problem, Khaosod English reported. The protest never rose to the attention of international media, but Facebook said enough people were discussing it to trigger the Safety Check.

At its best, the Facebook tool can be an efficient way to relieve concerns for friends and loved ones who might be in danger, based on their location data and profile information. In its first two years, Facebook activated it 39 times for major events like the earthquake in Nepal and the terror attacks in Paris. People in the dangerous areas are prompted to check in as safe, an action that would send a notification to their friends who would likely be worried.

For those two years, Facebook employees decided when a situation warranted Safety Check to be activated, but that opened the company to criticism of how it determined what a worthy event would be. Some wondered why the feature was turned on for attacks in Paris, Brussels and Orlando, but not for attacks in Iraq.
Great walls built to repel the other have recently become part of the global conversation, sparked by politics and popular culture. The global hit Game of Thrones has an ice wall that separates so-called civilization from an army of the undead. President-elect Donald J. Trump, who promised to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, has compared his plan to the Chinese Great Wall. He even said it would be named the Great Wall of Trump.

This month, theaters in China began showing The Great Wall, a fantasy action movie starring Matt Damon, directed by Zhang Yimou and produced by Chinese and American companies. The films conceit is that the wall was built to keep out monsters. Mr. Zhang, Chinas most famous director, shot scenes in the deserts of Gansu Province, where Jiayuguan is, though not at the fort itself.

We definitely did make the connection with Gansu Province as the terminus, or start, of the Silk Road and the perfect area for our heroes to enter China, said Peter Loehr, a producer.

I visited Jiayuguan while on a recent high-speed train trip across Gansu. I had been here once before, as a backpacker in 1999, when few tourists came. My father had passed by nearly a half-century earlier.

The high-speed rail route opened in 2014 and follows the old Silk Road along the barren Hexi Corridor, a strip of high plains that runs between two mountain ranges and that historically bridged the ethnic Han regions of interior China to the western edge of the empire.

Jiayuguan is already benefiting from the arrival of the high-speed railway and growing interest in the Great Wall. During Chinas big October holiday week, Jiayuguan received 442,800 visitors, a 22 percent increase over the same time last year, according to the China National Tourism Administration.
BEIJING  For the past two years, Wu Dongmeis 14-year-old son has been attending a private school in Shanghai that offers an international program that prepares students for higher education abroad. All had proceeded smoothly  until recently, she said.

On Oct. 19, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission summoned the principals of 21 local private schools to explain draft regulations that would restrict international programs in Grades 1 through 9, the years of compulsory education in China. The commission accused schools that had replaced the officially mandated curriculum, which includes classes in political ideology, of infringing on Chinas education sovereignty.

The commission said that under the proposed regulations the authorities would no longer approve the establishment of any new private schools with foreign influence and would bar foreign investment in private schools. School curriculums would be monitored to ensure that they uphold national sovereignty and ideology. Private schools could not be named after foreigners.

The rules would not apply to international schools set up primarily to educate foreign students.

A woman who answered the telephone at the commissions office this week said that it was unclear when the new regulations, if approved, might take effect, but that any information would be posted on the commissions website. The woman declined to give her name.
HONG KONG  President-elect Donald J. Trumps golden quiff, bushy eyebrows and preening gestures were immortalized this week in China  though perhaps not in a way that he would like.

They appeared on a giant rooster statue, just above some three-toed feet and a blood-red wattle that hangs below a gilded nose and mouth.

The statue, which was installed outside a shopping mall in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan, was built to celebrate the coming Year of the Rooster in the Chinese lunar calendar and comes less than a month before Mr. Trumps inauguration. It is 23 feet tall.

Relations between Washington and Beijing have been especially jittery in recent weeks. The tension is due in large part to Mr. Trump, who belittled China during his presidential campaign and caused a diplomatic stir this month by making clear that he views the central basis for diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing  known as the One China policy  as up for negotiation.
BERLIN  The German authorities released a 40-year-old Tunisian man on Thursday who had been detained a day earlier as a possible accomplice in the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market, a spokeswoman for the public prosecutor general said.

The man, whose name has not been made public, was held on Wednesday after police officers searched a home and offices in Berlin as they hunted for someone with whom the driver of the truck, Anis Amri, may have communicated by text and video before the attack, the spokeswoman, Frauke Kohler, said.

Further investigation showed, however, that the man who was temporarily detained was not the possible contact person of Anis Amri, Ms. Kohler said, and so he had to be released again.
MOSCOW  Russian investigators said on Thursday that they had found no evidence that an explosion occurred aboard a Russian military plane that crashed into the Black Sea, killing all 92 passengers and crew, but that they had not ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack.

It was obvious that the equipment worked abnormally, the Russian transportation minister, Maxim Sokolov said, adding that it would be up to experts to find out why that happened.

The plane crashed Sunday en route to Syria after a refueling stop in the Russian resort city of Sochi.

In the aftermath, the Russian authorities stressed that they believed it was unlikely that an attack had brought down the jet, a Tupolev 154, but they made clear at the news conference on Thursday that they were leaving open the possibility.
In the battle against the Islamic State for Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city, there is no continuous front line, but a patchwork of battlegrounds in the city and all around its edge.

When the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, retreats from a position, it tries to leave as much damage behind as possible, including burning oil field wells to provide concealment ahead of a government advance. Snipers are also in place, ready to strike.

A village or neighborhood that is retaken by government troops could soon be flooded again with extremist fighters, who are rarely far away.

I recently spent three weeks in this volatile zone, first with the Iraqi Army in eastern Mosul and then, after setbacks for the army, whose block-by-block battle of attrition was not going the way it had hoped, with units of the Iraqi federal police.

The police, traveling in armored vehicles, are playing a significant role in the battle for Mosul, sometimes supporting the army. They are also responsible for holding their own territory around the city.
The two-state solution would establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel  two states for two peoples. In theory, this would win Israel security and allow it to retain a Jewish demographic majority (letting the country remain Jewish and democratic) while granting the Palestinians a state.

Most governments and world bodies have set achievement of the two-state solution as official policy, including the United States, the United Nations, the Palestinian Authority and Israel. This goal has been the basis of peace talks for decades.

Why is the solution so difficult to achieve?

There are four issues that have proved most challenging. Each comes down to a set of bedrock demands between the two sides that, in execution, often appear to be mutually exclusive.

1. Borders: There is no consensus about precisely where to draw the line. Generally, most believe the border would follow the lines before the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, but with Israel keeping some of the land where it has built settlements and in exchange providing other land to the Palestinians to compensate. Israel has constructed barriers along and within the West Bank that many analysts worry create a de facto border, and it has built settlements in the West Bank that will make it difficult to establish that land as part of an independent Palestine. As time goes on, settlements grow, theoretically making any future Palestinian state smaller and possibly breaking it up into noncontiguous pieces.

2. Jerusalem: Both sides claim Jerusalem as their capital and consider it a center of religious worship and cultural heritage. The two-state solution typically calls for dividing it into an Israeli West and a Palestinian East, but it is not easy to draw the line  Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites are on top of one another. Israel has declared Jerusalem its undivided capital, effectively annexing its eastern half, and has built up construction that entrenches Israeli control of the city.
Apparently, the group still had not signed when the cease-fire began at midnight. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict, said in a statement on Twitter early Friday that rebels had breached the cease-fire in Hama Province. A spokesman for the rebel group Jaish al-Nasr told Reuters that government forces had violated the truce, shelling areas in Atshan and Skeik, villages in Idlib Province, which borders Hama.

Even before the new clashes were reported, Ahrar al-Shams status and other issues had left many analysts skeptical.

It looks like the Russians are trying to jam this through and make it happen through pure positive thinking and momentum, said Sam Heller, a fellow at the Century Foundation who studies Syria. All indications are that there are still major unresolved questions and issues that will sabotage its implementation.

Many past efforts to quell the fighting, including two agreements this year between Russia and the United States, have failed, and Mr. Putin himself called the deal fragile. But in recent months, major shifts have occurred in the war and among the foreign powers embroiled in it, creating an opening for the new agreement.

The rebels loss of eastern Aleppo this month was a major blow to their movement, leaving them without footholds in any of Syrias largest cities. That has made it harder for their foreign backers to see them as a realistic alternative to Mr. Assad. Even Turkey, which is a longtime supporter of the opposition and is supposed to ensure rebel compliance with the cease-fire, has backed away from its demand that Mr. Assad step down.
BERLIN  German prosecutors said Wednesday that they have detained a Tunisian man they think may have been involved in last weeks truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin.

The 40-year-old, who wasnt identified, was detained in Berlin during a search of his home and business, federal prosecutors said.

The mans telephone number was saved in the cellphone of Anis Amri, a fellow Tunisian believed to have driven a truck into the market on Dec. 19. Amri, 24, was killed in a shootout with Italian police in a suburb of Milan early Friday.

Of the new suspect, prosecutors said in a statement that further investigations indicate that he may have been involved in the attack.

Twelve people died and dozens more were injured in the truck attack. Islamic State has claimed responsibility.

Prosecutors have until Thursday evening to determine whether the case against the 40-year-old is strong enough for them to seek a formal arrest warrant. That would allow them to keep him in custody pending possible charges.

Investigators are trying to determine whether Amri had a support network in planning and carrying out the attack, and in fleeing Berlin. Theyre also trying to piece together the route he took from Berlin to Milan.

Italian police have said Amri traveled through France, and French authorities said on Tuesday that he made a stop in the eastern French city of Lyon.

On Wednesday, Dutch authorities said it appeared Amri first had fled through the Netherlands, Germanys western neighbor.

Jirko Patist, a spokesman for the Dutch national prosecutors office, said its highly likely that Amri had been in Nijmegen, in the eastern Netherlands, during his journey from Berlin to Milan.

Camera images recovered in Nijmagen found someone we think, rather of whom we say it is highly likely, is the same person appearing in photos from Lyon in France, Patist told Netherlands public broadcaster NOS.

Patist added that there was no reason to think the suspect was accompanied by anyone while in the Netherlands.

A SIM card found on the fugitive after he was shot led authorities to the Netherlands.

We can see that the SIM cards like this have been distributed in several locations in the Netherlands, he said.

Amri had no phone with him in Milan, only the loose SIM card.

According to Italian police, Amri also had a pocket knife and a few hundred euros in cash in a backpack that he was carrying when officers on a routine patrol stopped him to ask for identification in the Milan suburb of Sesto San Giovanni on Friday.

He also carried a .22 pistol that he then used to shoot a police officer, hitting him in the shoulder.

The Italian investigator said the weapon appeared to be the same one used in Germany to kill the Polish driver of the truck that was commandeered for the Christmas market attack, but that final ballistic tests were still being carried out.

The body of the Polish driver, Lukasz Urban, was returned to Poland on Tuesday, said Aldoma Lema, a spokeswoman for prosecutors in the Polish city of Szczecin.

There has been speculation over whether Urban still was alive at the time of the attack and struggled with Amri. His body was found in the trucks cab.

German daily Bild reported Tuesday, without citing sources, that autopsy results showed Urban was shot in the head several hours before the attack and would have been dead or unconscious by that time.

Lema said she could not give the time of his death. Another autopsy was performed in Poland on Wednesday and preliminary findings wont be known for three weeks, she said.

In Belgium, Interior Minister Jan Jambon said the apparent ease with which Amri traveled through Europe after the attack showed that passenger watch lists used to flag terror suspects should be extended from airplanes to other modes of public transportation, including buses.

Jambon, who has said he wants the European Union to pursue the idea, told public broadcaster VRT that the (passenger) information would need to be checked with lists of international terrorists that we have had warnings about. So, someone who is known or warned to be a violent extremist could be kicked off that transport.

German media reported Wednesday that investigators believe an emergency braking system in the truck may have prevented more deaths.

Daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and public broadcaster NDR cited unnamed officials familiar with the investigation saying the tractor unit had a mechanism that automatically slams the brakes when a collision is detected.

The news outlets also reported that Amri, whom German authorities had deemed a potential threat months before the attack, allegedly searched the internet for instructions on how to make explosives and first attempted to contact the Islamic State group in February.
This hasnt been the greatest of times for the hardcore saloon. You know, the kind of late-night joint where Frank Sinatra pours his aching heart out to Joe the bartender in One More for the Road, and where poet W.H. Auden grieves, I sit in one of the dives On 52nd Street,/ Uncertain and afraid,/ As the clever hopes expire/ Of a low dishonest decade  

With steady narcotic hits of social media feeding through our collective IV drip, nobody dares cop to loneliness anymore, or deep philosophical misgiving  both staples of the barfly condition. The medical advisories are in on serious boozing, and none of the reports is good. In California, drinking-and-driving laws are justifiably severe. Then theres the tyranny of trendiness. Ferns, flaming torchieres, multiple flat-screen TVs; and, in an ever-developing social movement, the notion that a bars hipness is defined by the bludgeoning decibel level of everyone shouting at once  if you cant hear yourself speak, youre in the right place.

Turcs in Sunset Beach is the opposite of all that, a somewhat cramped, oddly shaped joint with a spartan pool room and patio and a bar that makes the place feel like its 1953 all over again. The beach version, that is, where the Conradian notion of interpenetrating sea, sky and humankind was of a scruffy sufficiency that made the very idea of pricey digs a vulgar afterthought.

A ceiling made of bamboo, decoupage-finished furnishings, a south wall lined with abalone shells dulled from decades when smoking was legal and every saloon interior was choked with acrid fog, all suggest a throwback (smoking is restricted to the patio). So does the overhead wooden sign, which looks hand-lettered by someone on a rickety ladder seconds before the ladder collapsed, and is easy to miss as you drive by on PCH.

And thats all right. What great bars offer are history and continuity, rare elements in a business-driven culture presently enamored of the concept of disruptive change. Turcs doesnt have the classic beery bar rag smell  fresh sea breezes move through its open doors, and it does have a flat-screen TV.

But it has an old black and white photo of the original Turk, who may actually have been Armenian and whose full name no one remembers. You need a flashlight to see the overhead image of the professional wrestler and movie stunt man who strongly resembles The Incredible Hulk and was cohort to John Wayne and his hard-drinking crew. The reason for the different spelling is to distinguish it from another joint Turk opened in Dana Point. That one famously had a large aquarium under its bar, which collapsed one night when someone accidentally fell through.

A less dramatic folklore attaches to Turcs. The two-story building includes an upstairs apartment whose original tenant regularly lowered a bucket through a hole in the ceiling for a refill of beer bottles. No one mentions delivery of actual food. Rumor has it that at one time, if you were willing to pony up for booze and brewskis and were a familiar face, management somehow failed to notice when you barbecued dinner on the patio.

Turcs is noted for its friendly female bartenders and a generous pour. At 10 oclock on a recent Friday night, Andi, who was on duty, mentioned how Turc loyalists, aside from women who come in because men buy them drinks, tend to be people who want to get away from it all.

My grandfather used to come here, she said. Theres no place quite like Turcs. People come in all the way from Ventura.

The bars in Huntington Beach are too corporate, said Tino Desiertio, a 42-year-old airplane mechanic who lives in Fountain Valley and was one of the people at the bar.

Orange County has suburbanized values. It isnt about community, like L.A. You dont much hear ideas discussed. This place is the exception.

A few days later, owner Bob Campregher sat amiably with his back to the bar as the place filled up with late-afternoon sunlight and the sound of PCH traffic drowned the joints rock soundtrack. An elderly gent rose from a nearby bar stool and exclaimed, I drink only to underscore my genius.

At 69, Campregher is still a smoothly muscled ex-arm-wrestler who was an amateur light-heavyweight world champion and technical adviser to Sylvester Stallone and the 1987 movie Over the Top. He knew Turk, who bought the place in 53 and sold it 17 years later (his son was killed by a drunk driver).

He had a lot of movie people friends. His nickname was Daisy. He loved to arm wrestle. He lifted 80-pound barbells, and when he dropped them on the floor, dust would fly up.

Campregher was born and raised in San Clemente but didnt begin tending bar until he left the Navy in 1970. It seemed a natural transition. His father owned several in Los Angeles, and Campreghers brother still co-owns The Irisher in Seal Beach.

My dad was good with people. If you made a deal with a handshake, it was a deal. Society has changed. Growing up, I was taught to be respectful. He didnt drink; I dont drink. We struggled, but you always had a buck in your pocket.

As for this place, we like to see people have a good time. My girls are trained to spot trouble before it starts. A bad argument or a fight is bad for business. I live seven minutes away. If somebody gets too drunk, Im not beyond taking them home myself. I may lose a little sleep, but its better than seeing someone get hurt.

Contact the writer: Got a favorite local restaurant thats decades old? Email lrchriston@hotmail.com
Back in 2003 when former first lady of California Sharon Davis found out that her husband Gray was facing a gubernatorial recall election, she said it was like, finding out that you have cancer.

Davis went on to further explain to the Los Angeles Times, Its terrible news, and you think, My gosh, what am I going to do? Very few people say, Im going to go home and die. What Im going to do is fight it.

Fast forward to this year. Hillary Clintons election night victory party at the Javits Convention Center in New York was described by U.S. News and World Report as a mourning site. And one guest at Clintons holiday party at the Plaza Hotel, also in the Big Apple, told the New York Post that the event was like a wake with a band.

In keeping with the death theme, after a political party loses an election, top party strategists and donors usually demand that a proverbial autopsy be performed so that everybody knows what went wrong and they theoretically dont repeat the same mistakes in future elections.

But that may not happen this time around. Why? Top Democrats say its not their fault.

Democrats seem to think that they ran a great campaign with a fantastic candidate but had the election stolen from them thanks to Russian interference, FBI Director James Comey and the proliferation of fake news.

While speaking to a group of donors earlier this month, Clinton took direct aim at Vladimir Putin and the Russians. Make no mistake, as the press is finally catching up to the facts, which we desperately tried to present to them during the last months of the campaign  This is not just an attack on me and my campaign, although that may have added fuel to it. This is an attack against our country. We are well beyond normal political concerns here. This is about the integrity of our democracy and the security of our nation, she said.

She also deflected blame of her loss onto James Comey and the FBI, stating, Swing-state voters made their decisions in the final days breaking against me because of the FBI letter from Director Comey.

And then in a speech at the retirement ceremony for outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Clinton theorized that people didnt like her because they couldnt tell the difference between fact and fiction while reading their Facebook feed. Its now clear that so-called fake news can have real world consequences. This isnt about politics or partisanship. Lives are at risk, she theorized.

Rank and file Democrats appear to be buying into this narrative.

Nothing says owning your loss like blaming The Onion.

I can just picture the opening benediction at the next DNC meeting. Dear Lord, please give us the strength to blame those who did this to us and accuse those who didnt.

Amen.

Theres only one problem with this theory, Hillary Clinton isnt the only Democrat who got clobbered this cycle.

Take the U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin, for example. In that race, freshman incumbent U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, a conservative Republican, was up against former Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat. Wisconsin is a purple state, that leans blue, and has no business re-electing an unapologetic right-wing senator in a presidential year.

But they did.

The same thing happened to U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey in the blueish state of Pennsylvania.

Nationally, the Democrats are now down to controlling only 11 governors mansions, theyve lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives, theyve lost control of the U.S. Senate and get this, at the state level theyve lost approximately 900 legislative seats over the last six years.

Their problem isnt fake news, its fake excuses.

John Phillips is a CNN political commentator and can be heard weekdays at 3 p.m. on The Drive Home with Jillian Barberie and John Phillips on KABC/AM 790.
Her Princess Leia character took imaginations to distant galaxies, but any chance of Carrie Fisher being immortalized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is far, far away.

Thats because of a little known tradition set in stone by Hollywoods late honorary mayor Johnny Grant, who initiated a mourning period for the famous who die without a star.

There is a five year waiting period before anyone can nominate her, Walk of Fame producer Ana Martinez said Wednesday. As much as wed like to do it, theres a policy. Many people want us to waive it, but we cant.

Once the five years pass, applications and fees are accepted by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and a selection committee then considers the request.

Martinez said Fisher has never been nominated to receive a star.

That surprised many of Fishers fans Wednesday who came from far and wide to visit a makeshift memorial on Hollywood Boulevard made for her by an admirer.

Youre kidding me! said a shocked Nasreen Patel, a Los Angeles resident who was visiting the Walk of Fame with family. I think thats awful. It shouldnt take that long for her to have a star.

Nicole Ruffino, 17, said she was heartbroken that Fisher had died, and also disappointed to hear the actress and author had no star.

I think she deserves a star as soon as possible, she added.

Both of Fishers parents, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, have been memorialized with stars on the Walk of Fame.

It could have been that the Star Wars actress wasnt interested in getting a star, Walk of Fame producer Martinez said. That was the case with Prince.

The late musicians fans were surprised earlier this year when they learned he had no star. As early as 1999, Prince was approached twice by fans, and both times, the Purple One refused. There are plenty of other A-list celebrities who dont want one either, such as Clint Eastwood and Julia Roberts.

Sometimes, fans will nominate the celebrity, then raise the $30,000 sponsorship fee themselves. Liza Minnellis fans held bake sales. Oscar-nominated actor Dean Stockwells admirers recycled cans and bottles for the environmentalist who was born in North Hollywood.

At least once a year, a star is installed posthumously on the Walk of Fame, Martinez explained. This year, it was for Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. Next year, it will be for Selena, the Queen of Tejano music, who was shot and killed in 1995. She was 23.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, there will be a moment of silence at 12:30 p.m. in front of the TCL Chinese Theatre to honor Carrie Fisher.

For now, her fans continue to pay tribute at the makeshift star at Hollywood Boulevard and Orange Drive. Some left flowers, rosary beads and there was a cinnamon bun in tribute to Princess Leias famous hairdo. The blank pink terrazzo marble star has the words: May the force be with you always.

Fidel Tellez, a tourist from San Antonio, said he thought it was a real star. When he learned it was a recreation, he wasnt disappointed.

I think this is a great tribute that someone was able to do something like this to commemorate her legacy, Tellez said

Martinez said there are no immediate plans to remove the memorial.

People need to find a place to mourn, she said.
SANTA ANA  City Manager David Cavazos was placed on paid administrative leave after a controversial special meeting Wednesday afternoon from which three council members supportive of Santa Anas top employee were absent.

Council members Mayor Miguel Pulido, Juan Villegas, Jose Solorio and Michele Martinez voted 4-0 to place Cavazos on leave as the council continues to review and investigate current and former issues arising from his personal performance evaluations, including but not limited to the impacts of personal workplace relationships and the development of a romantic relationship policy, City Attorney Sonia Carvalho reported out of closed session.

Cavazos was not present at the meeting, called by the mayor during a holiday week.

All I can say is, I didnt have a chance to be at the meeting and Im committed to Santa Ana, Cavazos told the Register in a phone interview Wednesday afternoon. And Im very grateful for all the people who spoke on my behalf and we made tremendous progress in the last three years.

Cavazos is Santa Anas highest-paid city manager ever, with an annual salary of $372,165, including bilingual pay, a housing allowance and medical cash back, and an additional $107,450 in medical, dental and retirement benefits.

During public comment before the vote, all but one of the 15 speakers praised Cavazos for bringing the city that had been on the brink of bankruptcy to a surplus, and cried foul for what has been perceived as backroom deals and political favors.

Councilman Sal Tinajero said he was notified of the meeting around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday when he and council members Vincent Sarmiento and David Benavides, fellow Cavazos supporters, were traveling, and newly elected council members Villegas and Solorio did not respond to a request by Tinajero to postpone the meeting until early 2017.

In his first council meeting on Dec. 20, Villegas agendized an evaluation of Cavazos and no action was taken with all members present.

Pulido, Villegas and Solorio were all backed by the Santa Ana Police Officers Association, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars during the November election to get their slate elected and has criticized Santa Ana Police Chief Carlos Rojas.

Tinajero said Pulido clashed with Cavazos from the time he started serving the city in 2013, and made a deal with police union President Gerry Serrano.

They have to do whatever they can to pay back a political debt, Tinajero said on Tuesday of the three police union-endorsed council members, a quid pro quo, where you fire the city manager and the chief of police.

Four votes were needed to place Cavazos on administrative leave, according to the city charter, and five are required to terminate him. The city manager has the authority to fire the police chief.

Martinez was considered the swing vote Wednesday. She and Pulido this year voted against a performance bonus for the city manager as well as an extension of his contract through February 2019, both approved when the City Council had five pro-Cavazos members.

While Cavazos has been credited with steering the city toward economic prosperity, his tenure has been contentious.

A private investigation initiated by Pulido and Martinez in June revealed that the city manager failed to disclose a romantic relationship with a subordinate city employee until a year after the fact, and that his complaint of sexual harassment by Martinez was merit-less.

The report did not indicate Cavazos violated city personnel policies.

Also in June, Cavazos was publicly censured by the International City/County Management Association for his relationship with the Santa Ana employee.

Cavazos leave is indefinite according to the city attorney, Benavides said.

I think its unfortunate that Miguel Pulido and Solorio, Villegas and Martinez are more interested in seemingly paying back political favors than looking out for the best interest of the city, Benavides said.

Serrano, who has denied a pact with Pulido for the election, wrote in a text message Wednesday: I just hope that as changes occur inside city hall, that the Council and staff dont lose focus on key community issues like public safety.

Deputy City Manager Robert Cortez confirmed Wednesday evening that he is serving as the acting city manager.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7762 or jkwong@ocregister.com Twitter: @JessicaGKwong
GREEN STATE

California was known as a major marijuana-producing state before it legalized recreational use. Just how big of a producer may surprise you.

Click to view full page

LOCALLY GROWN

As of Nov. 9, adults in California were allowed to grow up to six marijuana plants per household as long as the area is locked and not visible from a public place. Rules may vary depending on municipal restrictions. Purchasing marijuana for recreational use will not be allowed until 2018.

Major growth

One indication of how much marijuana is grown in California is the number of plants seized by law enforcement on federal lands. Here are some of the largest areas where trespass cultivation occurred in 2013 in national forests.

Why on public lands?

A lot of outdoor cannabis cultivation in California occurs on public lands, where cultivators take advantage of remote areas to avoid risk of forfeiture of property.

Outdoor growing can yield more per plant and have less overhead than indoor growing.

California has 1.3 million acres of state park land and more than 8 million acres of national forest and wilderness.

Estimated market total

The United Nations World Drug Report estimates that law enforcement around the world seizes only 10 to 20 percent of drugs produced. If the marijuana plants seized in 2015 (2.64 million) are considered to be 20 percent of Californias production, the state would have had 13.2 million plants. If each plant produced a conservatively estimated 1 pound with a market price of $1,765 per pound, the total value would equal about $23.3 billion.

WHATS HAPPENED IN OTHER STATES

Colorado voted in 2012 to legalize recreational use of marijuana, which led to legalization in 2014. The charts below show how prices for marijuana declined in the state, while the taxes raised from it increased. California is likely to have the same situation but on a much larger scale.

Prices down

After-tax prices for recreational cannabis in Washington state after legalization show the cost to consumers was nearly cut in half.

Tax revenue rises

Monthly revenue from retail sales tax, excise tax, and fees for licenses and applications in Colorado. Note: California has more than seven times the population of Colorado.

The map below uses data from the website PriceOfWeed.com, which tracks prices on the black market and at legal dispensaries. It shows that the states that legalized recreational marijuana have the lowest prices, whereas states such as North Dakota, where marijuana is strictly prohibited, have the highest.
SANTA ANA  A 40-year-old Yorba Linda man pleaded guilty Wednesday in a real estate fraud scheme and was immediately sentenced to four years in prison.

Andres Oman Pacheco was accused of taking at least $540,000 from victims in real estate deals, according to Senior Deputy District Attorney George McFetridge.

The victims put money on deposit to buy property and when the deals fell through Pacheco would not refund the money, McFetridge said.

Its not the most sophisticated of crimes, McFetridge said.

Pacheco owned Santa Ana-based Franklin Equity Corporation/Signature Escrow, McFetridge said.

The worst loss for one of the victims was $185,000, McFetridge said. The defendant issued a refund check to one client, but it bounced, McFetridge said.

The properties that the victims were trying to acquire were in Inglewood, Victorville, Moreno Valley and Santa Ana, McFetridge said.

Pacheco pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of grand theft, both felonies, and admitted a sentencing enhancement allegation for aggravated white collar crime exceeding $500,000. Multiple other felony charges were dismissed in the plea deal, according to court records.

When Pacheco was charged in April, prosecutors said he had ripped off at least five victims, according to McFetridge.

Messages left with prosecutors and the defendants attorneys after business hours were not immediately returned.
YEKATERINBURG, Russia  Its a stirring exhibition of Russias struggle to win rights and freedoms that the country no longer fully enjoys. Its a shimmering memorial to a late president few Russians miss and an era most would rather forget. And although its overseen by the Kremlin, its also a tacit symbol of defiance to President Vladimir Putins authoritarian rule.

Not surprisingly, many influential people want to shut down, or at least tone down, the unbridled take on 1990s Russia that is on display at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center, a state-of-the-art archive and museum dedicated to the countrys first freely elected president.

The drumbeat of disapproval has only gotten louder amid this months 25th anniversary of the most profound event in which Yeltsin played a leading role, also something most Russians wish had never happened: the dismantlement of the Soviet Union.

In recent weeks, one of Russias best-known filmmakers lacerated the work of the center. The countrys Communist Party leader told parliament to close it. And a prominent mufti suggested that it might be better to blow it up.

That last idea came from Ismail Berdiyev, a Muslim leader known for hard-line positions and a member of Putins council on outreach to religious groups. Berdiyev said in an interview widely reported by Russian media that if it is found to be destructive to the state, this center should be blown to hell.

What has drawn the most ire is the first exhibit at the museum, nestled in a glistening building 900 miles east of Moscow, in Yekaterinburg, the capital of Yeltsins home region and the place where his career as a Soviet party boss took off in the late 1970s.

Visitors are shown an animated film that depicts the history of Russia as a millennium-long brutal and bloody effort by despots, monarchs and communists to crush rule by the people, for the people. The film concludes with the arrival of Yeltsin, whose leadership of the country up to and after the December 1991 Soviet collapse is hailed as the beginning of a new era of democracy and freedom.

This treatment of history flies in the face of Putins efforts to create a national identity for Russians that smooths out the rough parts of a long and difficult past. Putin, whom Yeltsin named to replace him on Dec. 31, 1999, with the words Take care of Russia, has depicted his predecessors decade in office as an era of decline and ineffective leadership that played into the Wests post-Cold War strategy to keep Russia weak. To meet this perceived external threat, Putin has repudiated many of the political freedoms initiated by Yeltsin in the name of consolidating society.

Putin, at the opening of the museum in November 2015, approved of the center as an honest story of what was done in that difficult time.

Asked about the controversy during his annual news conference recently, Putin said the way history is treated raises questions, and that it might be necessary to present some things more accurately. Russia has always had its battles between Westernizers and traditionalists, he said, but the debaters should not let their passions get out of control.

This came after one of the Kremlins cheerleaders, the Russian actor and director Nikita Mikhalkov, sounded off about the center.

Each day, the center is carrying out injections of destruction of peoples self-identity, Mikhalkov proclaimed in an address to Russian legislators.

Yeltsins widow, Naina, fired back, denouncing the criticism as lies and insults, and pointing out that Mikhalkov, who campaigned for Yeltsin in 1996, had never been to the museum. (Hes since been, and said he hated it even more now that hes seen it.) She also took a shot at communist leader Gennady Zyuganovs calls to close the museum, pointing out that seven decades of communist rule led Russia to the socioeconomic mess that occurred in 1991.

The exhibits, divided into seven critical days in the decade, do not attempt to glorify that time or its protagonists. A country on the brink of total collapse and hunger, shock therapy reforms that led to the shutdown of industrial giants that employed millions of workers and the cream of the countrys scientists and engineers, the withholding of salaries, empty shelves, the shelling of parliament in 1993 and military campaigns in Chechnya from 1994 on, the questionably fair presidential elections of 1996, the infirmity of the president in his second term  all of these are on display, largely unvarnished and accompanied by striking visual and audio artifacts.

Its not just a museum of the first president, its really a museum of that period, of our country, of that history, said Dina Sorokina, the museum director, in nearly flawless English honed while earning a masters degree at New York University. We do not necessarily avoid the sharp edges.

No, they do not. Although the animated historical film at the beginning of the exhibit has attracted most of the negative attention from the museums critics, the most stunning moment comes at the end.

On a bank of screens flashing the blue, red and white of the Russian tricolor, celebrities, athletes and politicians emphatically read out rights that are guaranteed in the countrys 1993 constitution  freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to privacy  and that have been methodically eroded under Putin.

Despite this apparent open challenge to Putin, the museum received a glowing review from the state-run news agency.

An explanation can be found in the origins of the museum, which was established under a 2008 law stipulating the creation of presidential centers similar to the libraries that commemorate former U.S. presidents. Russia tapped Ralph Appelbaum Associates, which designed the museum exhibit space at the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, to help design the Yeltsin Center. Under the law, the chairman of the board of the Yeltsin Center is appointed by the Kremlin, which creates an interesting historical novelty for Russia: Its current leaders are now charged with preserving the legacies of their predecessors.

Sorokina said that the museum had hosted about 250,000 visitors since it opened. This is despite the continuing lack of popularity of Yeltsin, who died in 2007.

According to a poll by the Yuri Levada Analytical Center last December, just 14 percent of Russians saw the countrys first president as a positive figure. The Levada Center has published other polls that suggest that a majority of Russians regret the fall of the Soviet Union, think that it could have been avoided and feel as though the Yeltsin years brought more harm than good.

That feeling is present even in Yekaterinburg, a closed city under Soviet rule (when it was called Sverdlovsk, after a Bolshevik leader) that benefited as much as any in Russia when the communist state collapsed.

Freedom started here with Yeltsin, said the citys mayor, Yevgeny Roizman, 54. This was a gray, closed city. When the city became open, everything changed.

Roizman recalled more than 100,000 people turning out for a rally in Yekaterinburg in August 1991, when Yeltsin famously stared down communist coup plotters from atop a tank in Moscow. That day used to be a cornerstone in the new Russian history. This year, the museum was one of the few institutions in the country to mark it.

The old system was bankrupt, Roizman said in an interview. When the communists say how good it was, I say, Dont tell me fairy tales. I was there. 

Opponents of the museum counter that the exhibits skirt the truth. While it has an emotional display dedicated to Yeltsins final address on New Years Eve 1999, and plays up his distinction as that rare Russian ruler who voluntarily left office, the museum barely recognizes the powerful oligarchs who divided up Russias wealth while the nation suffered (perhaps because some are among prominent donors listed on a wall in the center).

The calls to shut it down may involve political grandstanding by the likes of Mikhalkov, who thrived in the 1990s by making movies that never would have made it into Soviet theaters. But a petition on Change.org to close down the Yeltsin Center is accompanied by genuine expressions of pain.

My family also suffered from the 1 / 8Soviet 3 / 8 collapse and its consequences, and we survived, commented one of the signers, Marina Vasiliyeva. The museum and the respect it affords Yeltsin, she wrote, spits in the face of ordinary people.

Sorokina, 32, gets this. Her parents were scientists whose relatively comfortable Soviet lifestyle took a huge hit in the new Russia. She recalls her mother not being able to buy bread, and not being able to buy milk to bake bread. The family relied on her grandparents, who had a house in the country with a small farm.

It was a very difficult time, Sorokina said. But it was worth it, she said, for the opportunities we were able to gain, the new freedoms we fought for.

Sorokina avoids openly criticizing the Putin administration. But she does not back down from what she considers her mission.

We are constantly under criticism, we are constantly under watch, we are constantly criticized, she said. But if were criticized, there must be something right that we are doing.
Have I been blinded by love all these years? Could I have simply been so smitten that I was unaware that Santa (sob) was seeing (blowing nose) other people? I am generally an extremely realistic person. Its simply that I dont believe this happened to me with other relationships.

My guys are usually extremely loyal lovers. I even nicknamed one Labrador as he jumped up and ran to the door to greet me when I returned from my newspaper job. As reassuring as that was, I ended it because I hated the sniffing.

Insight was needed. I decided to do an inventory of my complete romantic life. Was there a pattern to my naivete in choosing a fickle partner? Had I overlooked anything?

I went back to my earlier diaries. Oh no! Oh yes! There it was  clear as day, on parchment.

I was dating a postal worker and my favorite song was Please Mr. Postman, sung by the Carpenters, when I sorrowfully learned my man was delivering his mail to others.

I was reminded of the short fling I had with a carpenter who was usually hammered. I shined him off as he always had splinters in his hands, which irritated me.

Then, according to my secret revelations, at one time I was enamored with a fellow with a huge brown truck who wore brown shorts, until a gossip said she saw him bringing his packages to a neighbor.

While in high school I had dated the box boy at a market who said I was his one and only. He was poetic. I saved one of his love notes.

I want to feel your sweet embrace, but dont take the paper bag off your face. If we met today, Id probably have to use my own bag.

Im happy to say I recently met two guys from Italy. Im now dating one of them. I am certain he will be loyal. Hes a great cook and makes yummy pizzas. I think hes the one and I am convinced Im his one and only.

Humorologist Jan Marshall,

a village resident, is author

of satirical survival books.
MOSCOW  Search teams on Wednesday recovered another flight recorder from a military plane that crashed in the Black Sea, killing all 92 people aboard, the Defense Ministry said.

The first flight recorder was found the previous day and experts have started analyzing its data, seeking to identify the cause of the crash.

The Tu-154 of the Russian Defense Ministry crashed into the sea early Sunday, two minutes after taking off in good weather from the city of Sochi. It was carrying members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, widely known as the Red Army Choir, to a New Years concert at a Russian military base in Syria.

The Defense Ministry said 15 bodies and 239 body fragments have been recovered from the crash site. It previously said 17 bodies had been found.

A massive recovery effort has involved 3,600 people, including about 200 navy divers flown to the site from all over Russia. They have been aided by drones and submersibles.

Investigators were looking into whether the crash might have been caused by bad fuel, pilot error, equipment failure or objects stuck in the engines. The top Russian investigative agency said it had taken samples from a fuel tank used to fill the plane, which flew from Moscows Chkalovsky military airport and stopped in Sochi for refueling.

The Komsomolskaya Pravda daily and online publication Life.ru published what they described as a script of cockpit conversation, with a pilot yelling about a problem with the planes flaps and then shouting: Commander, we are falling! It was impossible to verify the report, but both publications were known to have good connections with Russian security agencies.

Flaps are moveable panels mounted on the edge of the wings to increase lift.

The Kommersant daily also said that investigators believed that the crash was caused by a combination of malfunctioning flaps and pilot error, which caused the plane to lose speed and stall.

However, Nikolai Antoshkin, the former deputy chief of the Russian air force, dismissed the claim, saying that responding to flap malfunctions is part of standard pilot training. If flaps fail to retract or extend in time  pilots know how to deal with it, its not a problem at all, he said in remarks carried by state RIA Novosti news agency.

Russias main domestic security and counter-terrorism agency, the FSB, said it found no indications or facts pointing at the possibility of a terror attack or an act of sabotage.

However, some aviation experts have noted that the crews failure to report any technical problem and the large area over which fragments of the plane were scattered could point to an explosion on board.

The Tu-154 is a Soviet-built three-engine airliner designed in the late 1960s. Russian airlines decommissioned the noisy, fuel-guzzling aircraft years ago, but the military and other government agencies continue using the plane, which is still loved by crews for its maneuverability and sturdiness.

The plane that crashed Sunday was built in 1983 and underwent factory checkups and maintenance in 2014, and earlier this year. Investigators have taken relevant documents from the plant that did the job.
Roughly 55,000 migrants to Germany who were refused asylum or deemed ineligible chose to leave the country between January and November of this year, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

According to Suddeutsche Zeitung, citing government data from the German Office for Migration and Refugees, this was approximately 20,000 more than the total number who voluntarily left in 2015.

Those who left mostly originated from Balkan nations such as Albania, Kosovo and Serbia  as well as Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq.

On top of this figure, Germany also deported an estimated 25,000 migrants from the country in the same time period.

From January to September of 2016, 210,000 people came to Germany seeking asylum, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said at a news conference at the end of September, as reported by Reuters.

Migration in Germany continues to be a contentious issue. Seven migrants originating from Libya and Syria have been charged with attempted murder for setting a homeless man on fire at a Berlin underground station on Christmas Eve, the city's Public Prosecutor's Office confirmed via e-mail to CNBC Wednesday. The homeless man was not harmed, they added.

The news is the latest to contribute to hardening public opinion towards migrants in Germany, particularly following news that Anis Amri, the man suspected of being responsible for a lorry attack on a Berlin Christmas market earlier in December and later shot dead by police in Milan, was a failed asylum seeker from Tunisia. Reuters reported Wednesday that German authorities have detained another Tunisian man who may be been involved.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said before Amri's identification and subsequent death that it would be "particularly sickening" if he was a refugee.

Merkel will contest her fourth term as German chancellor in 2017. A key battleground for the upcoming election is migration, and Merkel's implementation of a controversial open door policy for those trying to enter the country.

In 2015, Germany admitted 890,000 migrants.

Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.
It is hardly even news anymore when another report comes out detailing waste and inefficiency at the Pentagon. But when it was revealed that military leaders who had pressed for a study had a change of heart when they heard just how much was being wasted, and then tried to suppress the report, it raised eyebrows.

The study, requested by Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work and conducted by the Defense Business Board, an advisory group comprised of corporate executives, and consultants from McKinsey and Co., estimated that the military could save $125 billion over five years, primarily by reducing its civilian workforce through attrition and early retirements, reducing spending on defense contractors and improving its use of information technology.

Administrative bloat was a major theme of the study. Nearly a quarter of the Pentagons $580 billion budget goes to overhead and administrative services, and the number of civilian workers, uniformed personnel and contractors now exceeds 1 million  nearly as many support staff as the 1.3 million troops on active duty. Moreover, an average administrative job in the Pentagon costs more than $200,000 a year in salary and benefits.

Pentagon leaders were initially excited by the prospect of finding savings and redirecting it for troops and weapons. But the sheer size of the waste was a bit too revealing. After all, The money could cover the operational costs for 50 Army brigades, or 3,000 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for the Air Force, or 10 aircraft-carrier strike groups for the Navy, the Washington Post noted in an investigative report.

If the impression thats created is that weve got a bunch of money lying around and were being lazy and were not doing anything to save money, then its harder to justify getting budgets that we need, Frank Kendell III, the Pentagons chief weapons-buyer, told Work, according to the Post. No kidding. And, apparently, it is much more than just an impression.

So, in typical bureaucratic fashion, the internal report, issued in January 2015, was buried. In a September speech, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump said he wanted to pay for more troops, fighter jets and Navy ships by eliminating government waste and budgeting gimmicks. Now he knows where to start looking for it.
A Round Table Pizza franchisee closed six locations in Orange County this month.

Restaurants in Irvine, Costa Mesa, Foothill Ranch, Rancho Santa Margarita, Newport Beach and Lake Forest shut down because the franchisee ran into financial troubles, an official said.

Ted Storey, senior vice president of business development for Round Table, said the company is hoping reopen them.

The closed restaurants are all owned by the same franchisee and were closed as a result of financial issues solely related to this franchisee, Storey said in statement. We are currently working with the landlords of these locations to get them reopened as soon as is possible.

Bill Larson founded the first Round Table Pizza in Menlo Park in 1959. The Concord-based chain primarily operates in the West. The chain recently opened a new concept, Round Table Pizza Wings Brew, in Vallejo. The new eatery emphasizes Round Tables new line of crispy Ulti Wings, the company said.

The franchise closures come as other restaurant brands have called it quits as the year comes to a close.

On Monday, Cypress-based Real Mex Restaurants, the nations largest operator of casual dining Mexican restaurants, closed 14 locations.

Of those, six were in Southern California: an Acapulco in Los Angeles; El Torito restaurants in Burbank, Long Beach (PCH), Riverside (La Sierra) and Temecula; and an El Torito Grill in Torrance. The restaurants were targeted for a variety of reasons, including natural lease expirations, cost of deferred maintenance, fiscal performance or unfavorable lease terms, the company told the Register in a statement.

The other restaurants were an Acapulco in San Marcos, El Torito restaurants in National City and Rohnert Park and Chevys Fresh Mex locations in Fresno, Modesto, San Ramon, South Lake Tahoe and Henderson, Nev. Last month, the company closed an El Torito in Mira Mesa.

Real Mex said the closures strengthen the companys portfolio as it tries to acquire a new concept. With the recent closures, Real Mex now operates 84 restaurants. The core brands are El Torito (43), Chevys (26) and Acapulco (9).
PARIS  In an unexpected move, President Francois Hollande of France granted a full pardon on Wednesday to a woman who had been sentenced to prison for murdering her husband after decades of domestic abuse.

The woman, Jacqueline Sauvage, was found guilty by a criminal court in 2014 of shooting her husband, Norbert Marot, three times in the back with a hunting rifle in 2012. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The president of the republic has estimated that Ms. Sauvages place was no longer in prison, but with her family, said a statement from the presidents office announcing her full pardon. Hollande had commuted part of her sentence in January.

Sauvage was released from a prison near Paris within hours of the announcement.

Im deeply shaken, I wasnt expecting it, Carole Marot, one of Sauvages daughters, told French radio. An infinite thanks to the president of the republic.

Sauvage had spent more than four years in prison, and she became a symbol of domestic abuse in France. Violence against women occurs at a higher level in France than in Europe overall, according to a 2014 report by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.

Her case led to a fierce debate about when self-defense is justified. At her trial, her lawyers argued that she had shot her husband after enduring years of violence.

The couples three daughters testified that their father had physically and sexually abused them as teenagers.

Sauvage first attracted public attention when a petition calling on the president to grant her a full pardon collected more than 400,000 signatures.

The call resonated deeply across the country. Committees supported by prominent political figures like Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris helped persuade Hollande in January to commute part of her sentence. That partial pardon enabled Sauvage to apply for parole.

A court rejected her parole application, and Sauvage appealed that decision, but a court rejected her appeal last month.

This month, Sauvages daughters sent Hollande a letter asking him to grant her a full pardon.

Hollandes announcement was praised across the political spectrum, but some magistrates questioned the timing of his decision and accused him of flouting the independence of the judiciary.

He could have granted that pardon months ago, Marie-Jane Ody, the vice president of a union representing magistrates, told French radio. Why didnt he do it the first time?
President Barack Obama phoned his successor, Donald Trump, after the Republican accused Obama of hobbling the transition to his administration in a tweet that alleged unspecified inflammatory statements and roadblocks.

The tweet on Wednesday morning brought tensions between the two men into the open less than a month before Inauguration Day, though the presidents phone call later may have smoothed over relations.

We had a very nice conversation, Trump told reporters gathered at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. We had a general conversation.

Earlier, Trump erupted on Twitter with attacks on actions and statements by the president, chiefly Obamas direction that the U.S. abstain from a United Nations Security Council vote declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal. By declining to veto the resolution, the U.S. allowed it to pass unanimously, enraging Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks, Trump tweeted on Wednesday. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition  NOT!

As president-elect, Trump has taken an unusually activist role with a series of interventions into business decisions, federal contracting and foreign policy despite Obamas insistence that only one person can govern the U.S. at a time. The Republican has promised that his administration will be friendlier to Israel, a theme he emphasized on Twitter Wednesday.

Regulatory actions

Other recent moves by Obama are also emerging as challenges to the incoming administration. Last week, the president announced that more than 100 million acres of the U.S. Arctic and undersea canyons in the Atlantic Ocean would be protected from new offshore oil and gas drilling. He has encouraged Americans to enroll in Obamacare before the Jan. 31 deadline for 2017 sign-ups despite Trumps vow to repeal the law, and the Environmental Protection Agency is moving rapidly to finalize mileage requirements for automakers months earlier than expected.

Obama has also needled Trump in recent public statements. In an interview published by CNN on Monday, the president said that he would have beaten Trump had he run for a third term. In a speech in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Tuesday commemorating the 1941 Japanese surprise attack that ushered the U.S. into World War II, Obama cautioned against tribalism and the urge to demonize those who are different, without mentioning the president-elect.

During the past 24 hours, Trump has been busy on Twitter, a medium that has become his favorite channel to communicate with the America public. He tweeted on Tuesday about his election win, after Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the memorial to the USS Arizona, a battleship sunk at Pearl Harbor, and just before their speeches.

President Obama campaigned hard (and personally) in the very important swing states, and lost, Trump wrote. The voters wanted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Thanks Donald

Later, he appeared to try to create his own version of the Thanks, Obama meme that the presidents supporters and opponents have used in commentary on his record.

The U.S. Consumer Confidence Index for December surged nearly four points to 113.7, THE HIGHEST LEVEL IN MORE THAN 15 YEARS! Thanks Donald! Trump tweeted.

Years of insults between the two men predated Trumps run for the White House. Yet the real estate developer met with Obama shortly after the election and praised his character while promising to retain some initiatives, including parts of Obamas signature health-care law.

Both men have said theyve spoken by phone more than once after that meeting. But their relations, at least in public, have recently been rocky.

In response to Obamas claim that he would have won a race between the two, Trump tweeted on Monday: I say NO WAY!  jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.
Donald Trump is set to inherit an uncommon number of vacancies in the federal courts in addition to the open Supreme Court seat, giving the president-elect a monumental opportunity to reshape the judiciary after taking office.

The estimated 103 judicial vacancies that President Barack Obama is expected to hand over to Trump in the Jan. 20 transition of power is nearly double the 54 openings Obama found eight years ago following George W. Bushs presidency.

Confirmation of Obamas judicial nominees slowed to a crawl after Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015. Obama White House officials blame Senate Republicans for what they characterize as an unprecedented level of obstruction in blocking the Democratic presidents court picks.

The result is a multitude of openings throughout the federal circuit and district courts that will allow the new Republican president to quickly make a wide array of lifetime appointments.

State gun control laws, abortion restrictions, voter laws, anti-discrimination measures and immigrant issues are all matters that are increasingly heard by federal judges and will be influenced by the new composition of the courts. Trump has vowed to choose ideologues in the mold of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon  a prospect that has activists on the right giddy.

Im optimistic hell come at this right out of the gate, said Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative group that has opposed many of Obamas court choices.

Every president can expect to make a huge impact, Severino added. [Trump] is unique in having campaigned really hard on this issue  the significance of the courts, and of the Supreme Court in particular.

The Supreme Court vacancy created by Scalias death in February was a motivating issue for many conservative voters, especially evangelical Christians, to turn out for Trump. Senate Republicans refused to hold even a hearing on Obamas nomination of Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, for the Scalia seat.

Democrats accuse Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, of intentionally denying Obamas nominees a fair hearing and running out the clock in hopes that a Republican would succeed him, as Trump has.

Twenty-five of Obamas court nominees were pending on the Senate floor, after having been approved out of the committee with bipartisan support, but did not get a vote before the Senate ended its two-year term before the holidays, according to White House spokesman Eric Schultz.

Republican tactics have been shameful and will forever leave a stain on the United States Senate, Schultz said. Republican congressional dysfunction has now metastasized to the third branch of government, and that is not a legacy to be proud of.

Trump spoke frequently about his intentions to put forward a more conservative Supreme Court nominee as a way to galvanize the right.

The replacement of our beloved Justice Scalia will be a person of similar views, principles and judicial philosophies, Trump said in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Very important. This will be one of the most important issues decided by this election.

Although Trump spoke little on the campaign trail about the many vacancies on lower courts, remaking the federal judiciary overall has been a priority of his and of Vice President-elect Mike Pence, aides said.

Trumps older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, is a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. First appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan, Barry was later elevated to the circuit court by President Bill Clinton and is known for her relative moderation. She has spoken out against womens claims of sexual harassment yet also struck down a New Jersey law banning late-term abortions as unconstitutional.

Trump transition officials declined to comment on the process of selecting nominees, but incoming White House Counsel Don McGahn is expected to play a key role. Such groups as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation have been working with the Trump team to suggest possible candidates.

The judiciary also is a top priority for McConnell, who stands ready to help the Trump White House identify candidates and grease the sometimes-laborious Senate confirmation process.

The Trump administration and the Senate will be under pressure to quickly install judges in courts around the country where cases are severely backlogged because of long-vacant seats.

There are 38 so-called judicial emergencies, according to the nonpartisan Judicial Conference, including in Texas, where seven seats have sat empty for more than one year. The Obama administration and the states two conservative Republican senators could not come to an agreement on nominees for the many openings.

There is a real impact on real people, said Neil Eggleston, Obamas White House counsel. There are people and companies who are not having their cases heard because there are no judges around.

The politics surrounding judicial vacancies are more poisonous than at any time in recent memory, as the Garland episode has shown, with Democrats and Republicans at loggerheads for much of the two years since McConnell took leadership of the Senate.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, Vt., the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, issued a 4,200-word statement this month saying that by blocking Garland, Republicans had committed the most outrageous act of obstruction and irresponsibility that he had seen in his 42 years in the Senate.

Speaking more generally about circuit and district court vacancies, Leahy added: Despite the fact that there are dozens of qualified, consensus nominees pending on the Senate floor right now, we will finish this Congress having confirmed just 22 judicial nominees in two years. That is the lowest number since Harry Truman was president.

As with many subjects, judicial nomination data can be subject to interpretation. Judicial vacancies ebb and flow somewhat randomly, considering judges serve lifetime appointments until they choose to retire or die.

It is a challenge to make apples-to-apples comparisons at the end of a term because vacancies dont happen in the same regular basis as they do in the Senate or the White House, said Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell. To make an apples-to-apples comparison on a snapshot in time doesnt work.

Despite Obamas difficulty winning confirmation for his nominees, the Senate has confirmed more of his nominees during his eight years as president, 329, than it did Bushs during his eight years in office, 326.

Beth Levine, a spokeswoman for Grassley, said, The White House has very little to complain about because no matter how they spin it, the fact is that President Obama had more judicial nominees confirmed than President Bush.

Obama has used his nominations to systematically diversify the federal courts to look more like the fast-changing country. He appointed far more female and minority judges than any other president in history, and he has paid particular attention to sexual orientation. When Obama took office, there was only one openly gay or lesbian judge, and he appointed 11 more.

The president, my predecessors and I spent a significant amount of time looking for all different kinds of diversity  racial, sexual orientation, gender and professional background, Eggleston said.

When Obama took office, only one of the 13 regional circuit courts had a majority of Democratic-nominated judges, and as he leaves, nine do. While the Supreme Court hears roughly 75 cases a year, tens of thousands are decided at the circuit court level, affecting all who live in the states within those circuits.

Russell Wheeler, an expert on judicial nominations at the Brookings Institution, said Trump has a great opportunity to change the partisan split in the federal courts. He predicted that by mid-2020, Republican appointees would hold about half of the 673 district judgeships, as opposed to the current 34 percent. And among the 179 circuit court judgeships, Democratic appointees now hold a slim majority, 51 percent, but that could fall to about 43 percent.

But Wheeler warned that there are important limitations to Trumps power. For one thing, many of the judges most likely to leave their appointments in the coming years were appointed by Republican presidents, meaning there will be fewer opportunities to shift the partisan makeup.

And perhaps more importantly, 28 of the 50 states will be represented by at least one Democratic senator, including large ones such as California, Florida and New York. Senate leaders have a tradition of considering nominees only if they are supported by both senators representing their state  and Democratic senators are expected to bargain hard with the Trump administration, just as Republican senators did with Obamas.

The president doesnt always get exactly who he wants, Wheeler said.
Coming up with effective hand protection in dangerous environments like construction sites has been an elusive goal for many years, but Chilean inventor Jorge Sgombic claims to have finally come up with a truly safe solution.

Boots with built-in toe protection have become a requirement on most construction sites these days, so foot safety is no longer an issue, but the human hands are an infinitely trickier problem. Protective gear companies are actively trying to strike the perfect balance between functionality, mobility and safety when creating new work gloves, but so far the results have been unimpressive. Workers still have to put up with the excruciating pain of banging their fingers with large hammers, or, even worse, slice part of them off in gory work accidents. But Jorge Sgombics innovative Mark VIII safety gloves aim to fix this problem.

Photo: Resafe

Adding too much protection to a work glove inhibits movement, preventing workers from properly using their hands on the job, while too little protection leaves the hands open to potentially devastating injuries. The award winning Mark VIII gloves feature rigid protection only around the finger tips  the part of the hand most exposed to accidents  while otherwise ensuring full mobility.

Sgombics invention uses a shatter-proof thermoplastic material to shield the fingertips against hammer blows, all sorts of cuts, punctures and crushing. Promotional videos for the Mark VIII show the gloves handling all kinds of abuse with ease, offering both safety and perfect mobility at all times. While the first layer of the gloves can be easily penetrated, the protective cover seems virtually indestructible.

The Chilean inventor sees his Mark VIII gloves being used from maintenance and operation to entire industries such as mining, forestry and the fishing industry. They can be used for domestic activities in general, for any activity where there is a degree of exposure to an accident involving the hands.

Mark VIII gloves come in four different varieties ranging from nitrile gloves with a short cuff kidskin to leather gloves with a long cuff for things like welding.

The Mark VIII gloves won a gold medal at the Invention & New Product Exposition, in Pittsburgh, in the Safety and Security-Personal category.

The prricing and availability of these innovative gloves are still a mystery, but Sgombic is reportedly looking to work with large distribution companies to sell his invention worldwide.

via PlanSwift
Every holidays season for the past six years, Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker receive hundreds of letters to Santa Claus at their New York apartment. No one knows why this has been happening, or when exactly it started, but the two dont much care. Theyre just focused on making sure that every sender receives a Christmas present from Santa.

Even before 2010, Jim and Dylan used to receive a few letters addressed to Santa Claus, but they simply brushed them off as a weird occurence. But that year they got almost 400 of them, for some reason. It was one batch after another, Jim recalls. We would dread opening up the mailbox because we knew 25, 30 letters would pour out.

The letters are mostly from kids in the New York area, or from parents writing on behalf of their kids and asking for a miracle, explaining that they have fallen on hard times and could use a bit of help with presents from Santa Claus. Most letters ask for clothes, toys, and even turkeys for the Christmas dinner, and Jim and Dylan do everything in their power to make sure that their wishes get fulfilled.

Photo: Redglass Pictures video screengrab

When they got those first hundreds of letters, the two men realized they couldnt simply ignore them anymore. I was telling people about the letters and didnt feel right about it at all, Glaub said. My friends were like, why dont we each take a letter? It inspired me.

So he started distributing letters to whoever wanted to step into the shoes of Santa  family, friends, people at work,, even random strangers on the street. I was desperate, Jim adds. Somehow they got the job done.

The next year it happened again, and the year after that as well. The couple now live in London, United Kingdom, but always make sure to answer the Christmas letters they receive at their old address on 22nd St. in Manhattan. They have a friend pick them up from the mail box, scan them and send them in digital format, over the internet. This year was a busy one as well, with over 350 letters to Santa to honor. But with the help of their friends and their Facebook group, they pulled it off.

Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker dont really know why people send all these letters to their old home, but they have a few theories. They suspect that their address was printed in a school newsletter or mistaken for Macys, or that the person living in the apartment before them did the same thing, and they just inherited his legacy. Everyone wants an answer to this, and maybe the answer is just that its a mystery, Glaub says.

They dont like to think that some of the letters might be scams, but that possibility is real, especially now that their story has gotten some attention from big media outlets like the New York Times. However, Jim told TODAY.com the story of a New York woman who tracked her present all the way to the return address just to make sure it wound up in the right hands.

She was across the street watching, and like it was out of a movie, a bunch of kids run outside and catch the postman, the man said. She was crying, mascara going down her face. So yeah, maybe some of them are (scams). But God, I really think a lot of them are real.

Jim and Dylan now want to set up a non-profit called Miracle on 22nd Street, and they are also in talks with Tina Fey about doing a movie based on their incredible story. Everybody wants to help, Glaub said. So were going to create a nonprofit to help families in need hopefully year-round.

The story of this annual Christmas miracle has already been captured in a short documentary by RedGlass Pictures.
The Onomichi Denim Project, a chic boutique in Onomichi, Japans Hiroshima Prefecture, is a popular destination for denim enthusiasts looking for a pair of truly special jeans. The shop is well-known around Japan and even abroad for selling premium jeans that have been worn by select members of the local community for at least one year.

Selling used jeans, or any other type of clothing for that matter, is not exactly a new business model, but Onomichi Denim Project is not your average second-hand denim retailer. Created in 2013, as a collaborative effort between local designer Yoshiyuki Hayashi, textile expert Yukinobu Danjo, and Discoverlink Setouchi, an organization that aims to supports local industry, the minimalist boutique aims to draw attention to the citys top-quality craftsmanship and its people in a unique way. Plus, while used denim is generally sold at a discount, these particular jeans actually get about twice as a expensive after being worn by somebody almost daily, for at least a year.

Photo: Onomichi Denim Project/Facebook

Denim aficionados know that jeans usually require breaking to look their best, but theres an art to how to wear, wash and dry them to achieve that desired look. Thats what makes Onomichi Denim Project so special  they hand-pick the wearers from the local community and closely monitor their transformation over the course of one year. Wearers rotate through two pairs of jeans that they promise to wear almost every day for the entire period, and bring them to the shop every week, to be laundered at a special denim processing facility, which ensures that every pair retains the evidence of each wearers life and work.

Meridian Magazine reports that Onomichi Denim Project recruits wearers from various walks of life to achieve various patterns. For example, a pair of jeans worn by a fisherman has faded lines left by knee-high rubber boots, a factory workers will feature the marks of a years worth of iron powder penetrating the fabric, while a wild boar hunters jeans will have permanent traces of blood. Every pair is obviously unique.

Photo: Onomichi Denim Project/Facebook

But getting people to agree to wearing one or two pairs of jeans for an entire year was tough, in the beginning. Some were intrigued by the idea but were reluctant to wear jeans almost exclusively, especially in the hot summer months, while others simply wondered who in their right mind would want to buy used jeans at premium prices. But soon a local architect jumped at the opportunity, thinking it would be fun, and others joined the program as well, to help boost their citys travel industry.

When the pre-wearing period ends, each pair of jeans is washed according to color, hang-dried or tumbled, checked for individuality, tagged with detailed descriptions and put on sale at the minimalist Onomichi Denim Project boutique for anywhere between 25,000 ($215) and 48,000 (415). Thats about twice as they usually cost when new, but these are not just any jeans, they are cultural artifacts.

Its not clear whether some of the proceeds from the sales go to wearers, but most of them are just happy to not have to spend money on jeans for a year.

via RocketNews24
Tadishi Ishii, CEO of Dentsu, ad/PR firm with $1.67 trillion in income and 47,300 employees, resigned Dec. 25 after 24-year-old Matsuri Takahashi committed suicide, claiming overwork.

Takashi cited workloads that lasted through the weekend and totaled more than 100 hours a month in overtime.

Ishii told a news conference he was taking the suicide seriously. The company has started to turn off office lights at 10 p.m. as part of reforms.

A report of the Japanese Labor Bureau in October found that nearly a quarter of companies surveyed said some of their employees were putting in more than 80 hours of overtime monthly. The Bureau in October ruled the death of Takahashi was due to overwork.

The Bureau raided four Dentsu offices in October. It said the company was "cooperating fully" but attempts to address the culture of overwork were "superficial."

Takahashi was in the digital account division which was charged with "systematic overbilling and cheating of customers."

Dentsu PR is a small part of the parent, reporting $11 million in revenues and 243 employees for 2015. Young & Rubicam is Dentsu's U.S. advertising affiliate.

Dentsu PR, calling itself Japan's largest PR firm, in 2010 allied with the MSL Group of Publicis. However, Maurice Levy, Publicis CEO, said today the tie ended years ago. Publicis is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. Dentsu has offices in the U.S. but no one could be reached today by phone or email.

Takahashi Tweeted Complaints

Takahashi tweeted that not only was she made to work too many extra hours but that she was bullied by her bosses who found fault with her work.

Tweets said bosses complained that she was coming to work with messy hair and bloodshot eyes and her appearance lacked femininity.

In one of her final messages before she jumped to her death from a Dentsu dormitory last Christmas, she tweeted, Theyre making me work Saturdays and Sundays again. I seriously want to end it all. Its 4 a.m. and my bodys trembling. I'm going to die. I'm so tired."

The charges against Dentsu have been referred to the prosecutors office for alleged violations of the Labor Standards Act. A successor to Ishii is to be named in January. This is the first instance of a Dentsu executive resigning ahead of schedule in at least 40 years, said Japanese media. Criminal charges are possible against those involved, said media.
FILE - In this June 30, 2007, file photo, a surfer catches a wave at Kakaako Waterfront Park as the Hawaii Superferry approaches Aloha Towers in Honolulu. Hawaii officials are exploring what it would take to run a ferry between islands. But they're facing skepticism over costs and whether there's a ferry system residents would accept. But the idea is bringing back memories of the Superferry, an emotional and expensive failure in Hawaii history. Years ago protesters blocked the Superferry from docking in Kauai. And a court later ordered the ferry to stop running because the state didn't do a proper environmental review. (AP Photo/Marco Garcia, File)

HONOLULU (AP)  When a 30-foot-tall ferry loomed outside a Kauai harbor in 2007, surfers and kayakers  looking like tiny ducks in comparison  blocked its path, preventing it from unloading hundreds of passengers and sending the giant catamaran back to Oahu.

The emotional standoff where surfers bobbed in the water for hours marked the end to an expensive failure in Hawaii's history: the Superferry. Now the state is exploring bringing back a ferry to run between islands, facing skepticism over financing and whether there's a ferry system residents would accept.

Lawmakers approved $50,000 in May to study a possible inter-island ferry, and the state Department of Transportation received a $500,000 grant from the federal Maritime Administration to hire consultants to explore potential routes and boats.

"The feasibility study might come back and say maybe it's not financially feasible for us to do this," said Ford Fuchigami, director of the state Transportation Department. "But right now, using federal money which is available ... we want to be sure that we use that money to see whether or not this is possible."

The Hawaii Superferry ran primarily between Oahu and Maui from 2007 until 2009, but was shut down after a judge ruled the state broke the law by not completing required environmental reviews.

It was a costly gamble. Hawaii spent at least $34 million on equipment for the ferry, which it later sold for just $425,000. The barges and ramps were custom-made for the Superferry, complicating the sale, said Tim Sakahara, Department of Transportation spokesman.

Hawaii Superferry filed for bankruptcy, leaving $136.8 million in debt to the Maritime Administration  which repossessed the ferries  and a $22.9 million debt to Austal USA, which built two ferries for Hawaii for $190 million. The Navy later paid the Maritime Administration just $35 million to buy both ships. One now serves as a ferry between Maine and Nova Scotia.

Story continues

"In the beginning, people believed what they were reading, that it was going to be this really low-cost way to go inter-island and it sounded like a great thing," said Irene Bowie, former executive director of the Maui Tomorrow Foundation, which opposed the ferry based on environmental concerns. "But the devil is always in the details."

The new study will explore public or private ownership of vessels and operations. If the state owns the vessels, it could get federal subsidies, Fuchigami said. But it might be cheaper for a third party to operate a ferry system, he said.

"Almost no ferry system in the country is self-sustaining," said Lauren Brand, an associate administrator for the Maritime Administration. "The vast majority of them have to have public dollars to help them keep on."

Washington State's ferry system, which Fuchigami has identified as a potential model for Hawaii, gets about 30 percent of its operating costs from subsidies and 70 percent from the fare box, ferry experts said. The Staten Island Ferry in New York, where customers ride for free, is also subsidized by taxpayers.

Hawaii's open ocean geography, deadly channels and protected marine life pose unique challenges.

But Hawaii can learn from ferry systems operating in the Greek Islands, the Philippines and between Argentina and Uruguay, said David Moseley, a former director of Washington Ferries and senior consultant with Carus, a firm that may compete to conduct the Hawaii study.

"There are places all over the world where ferry systems with similar situations to Hawaii are operating very successfully," Moseley added.

Fuchigami is considering a red-eye trip from Honolulu to Hawaii Island and inter-island trips from Oahu to Kauai and Maui. He also wants commuter ferries on Oahu and Maui.

"Everyone talks about traffic," Fuchigami said, proposing a ferry from Oahu's West side  where homes are less expensive  into urban Honolulu.

To ensure a steady revenue stream, Fuchigami hopes inter-island ferries could carry cargo such as farm produce.

"The main thing is that we're going to be very, very careful," Fuchigami said.

Superferry wasn't the only failed sea vessel attempt in Hawaii. In 2009, the same year the Superferry shut down, Honolulu ended a passenger ferry service called "TheBoat" which shuttled passengers between downtown Honolulu and West Oahu for $2.

"It didn't really attract ridership," said Michael Hansen, president of the Hawaii Shippers Council. "Most of the people being carried were just tourists taking a boat ride."

A ferry running from Molokai to Maui shut down this year amid financial losses.

The Sierra Club, which opposed the Superferry, worries ferries could spread invasive species and rapid ohia death, a fungal disease killing native ohia trees, said director Marti Townsend.

"If there is a way to operate a ferry that can guarantee against the spread of invasive species, then we will keep an open mind, but from what we know now, it's an inherent fatal flaw," she said.
When mid-December rolls around I start my nonscientific process of deciding which restaurants I reviewed over the past year were the best.

It involves a yellow ruled tablet, a pencil and an afternoons worth of research. Sometimes the competition is tough; sometimes its not much of a contest. This year, I had a number of new restaurants and a couple of old favorites vying for that top spot. One notable trend: This year was perhaps the year I reviewed the most healthy restaurants, something I expect to continue into 2017.

As a reminder, this list is compiled only from the restaurants The World-Herald reviewed over the past calendar year.

Until next year, happy dining.

In 2016, this-ahead-of-its-time restaurant has settled comfortably into its spot in our citys dining scene. Its one of Omahas most adventurous and creative dining experiences. Its service is precise and thoughtful. Its menu, now under the talented hand of chef Tim Nicholson, is refined and rustic, confident and full of contrasts. (Longtime chef Paul Kulik plans to step away from the restaurant at years end.)

Omaha may not have been ready for the Boiler Room when it opened in 2009. Today it is. Among Nicholsons best efforts: tagliatelle topped with a hearty ragu Bolognese, Grana Padano and a swirl of olive oil; and culatello, a salumi that took two years to make in-house, served with silky burrata, salsa verde, a twist of black pepper and a drizzle of oil. Sublime might be the right word for that culatello, which matched the burrata with its buttery texture as, bite after bite, they warmed and melted into one another.

The Boiler Rooms cocktail program is one of the best in the city, and bartender Alec Candelaria offers an ever-changing list of drinks. Yes, hell make the classics, but its worth trying the original creations; our favorites included the Scotch and Campari-forward My Bloody Valentine and the Madeira and absinthe-focused Forbidden Fruit.

A note: You wont find any of these dishes on the menu now because Nicholson changes the lineup every day.

The Boiler Room has figured out how to remain relevant when more and more new Omaha restaurants are doing what it does: local and seasonal, craft cocktails, wine pairings. Its done that by, more than most, knowing what it wants to be. I remain excited to see what comes out of Nicholsons Old Market kitchen in the coming years; his talent, and the experience of dining at one of our citys finest, are not to be missed.

Baela Rose, which opened over the summer in Dundee, might be a good illustration of whats next in Omaha dining.

The restaurant serves pretty special-occasion food, but at an everyday price point. Think $12.

Its bridging the gap between fine and casual dining, and proving that you can enjoy a well-composed, creative meal on a regular basis for a price that wont make you gasp.

The $5 bowl of vegetable chips, which we liked so much that we ordered them both evenings we visited, are a crisp-salty snack relying on local produce, whatever looks best at that moment. Owners Kyle and Rose Anderson are working almost exclusively with local purveyors.

The whole fried steelhead trout is a must-try. Ours arrived perfectly cooked, its flesh flaky and exterior crisp and herbaceous, creating a lovely contrast.

We tried a variety of other small plates: simple brioche served with butter and jam; nuts and pork, a saucy blend of warm almonds and squares of fatty pork in a sweet-spicy sauce; and a pretty serving of roasted beets that arrived topped with fennel shaved thin enough to be transparent, orange, horseradish, creme fraiche and more thinly shaved Rosa Maria cheese, Spanish-style aged goat cheese from local Dutch Girl Creamery.

Baela Rose has adopted the best parts of some of the citys fine dining spots  local and seasonal focus, attention to detail, creativity and excellent service  and put them within reach of the everyday.

Id be hard-pressed to think of another chef-owner partnership that found success so quickly this year as the one between Paul Kulik and Ethan Bondelid. The result is a restaurant thats new but already feels comfortable, in both atmosphere and menu. I get why people are already making themselves at home, with the vibrant, chic atmosphere; pasta and pizza made with the right amount of sophistication; and a wine list where every bottle sits at just $30.

One of the six pastas made my list of the years favorite dishes, too. The gutsy ingredient here comes in the form of chicken livers, but dont be frightened by their funk, which ends up in the background, adding robust depth to the sauce over a pile of hand-crafted, house-made wide tubes of rigatoni. The ragu, with its savory richness, creamy texture and pops of fresh basil and thyme, is so good. Its the life-changing, eye-opening kind of pasta, the kind that makes anything less than homemade suddenly feel unacceptable. While youre there, sample the pizzas, the Aperol and Campari-focused drinks and the shaved Brussels sprouts salad.

Ugly Duck Ramen was a fun experiment for A.J. Swanda. The pop-up served his brand of ramen combining classic Japanese broth and noodle technique with toppings like fried chicken, and bacon, lettuce and tomato. People waited in long lines to try it.

The new Ugly Duck brick-and-mortar location in Midtown Crossing is perhaps at its most exciting when its got nothing to do with soup.

The creamy edamame is like a spicy, savory, bright green version of a chunky hummus dip made with edamame pods, sesame seeds, wasabi peas and a drizzle of nutty sesame oil. The bowl comes with spicy puffed shards of airy rice crackers for dipping. Not only does it taste great, it also looks super cool. My favorite of the small plates: the silky smooth tofu, Swandas vegan take on the classic mapo tofu dish. Here, he loses the pork in favor of pickled peppers, shallots, cilantro, a house mapo sauce and candied peanuts over cold, super spicy blocks of tender tofu. Get adventurous. Try it.

The biggest issue I took with Swandas new ramen bowls was that the broth, one of ramens key factors, lacked complexity and sometimes had a too-greasy finish. Swanda pledges to work out the kinks, and I hope he does.

If theres one thing you can say about restaurateur Willy Theisen, its that he knows how to open a hot, hip spot. Hes done it again with Paragon Dundee.

The atmosphere makes diners  this one included  feel like theyre part of something vibrant and fresh. And though I had concerns with a few dishes that struck me as too down-home, I like the restaurant a lot.

Paragon, like Theisens former Dundee effort, Pitch Pizzeria right across the street, hits the nail on the head in terms of look: cool gray walls, warm lighting, big windows facing Underwood Avenue and a white marble bar against warm wood and modern subway tile. Omaha has restaurants known for their atmosphere; Ms Pub was one. Paragon has that same timeless style.

I really liked Paragons burger, hearty but refined. The medium-thick wagyu beef patty comes topped with thick-cut smoked bacon, a slather of house-made pimento cheese and two thick pickled green tomatoes, all on a potato bun made in the neighborhoods Le Quartier bakery. Its a burger that sits somewhere between fancy and down-home, and when Paragon hits that bulls-eye, its at its best.

Paragon has a clear focus, and I know what it wants to be. I like what it wants to be. With Theisens promised refinement, I think it will quickly become a favorite for its atmosphere  maybe the best in Omaha at the moment  and, eventually, for its menu, too.

If a place called High Vibe Cafe served anything but good vibes, well, Id have been pretty disappointed. Theres no reason to worry.

This little Aksarben Village spot  a walk-up window inside the Lotus House of Yoga  gives off nothing but positivity and, you guessed it, super healthy vibes.

Ive written much about the new trend in restaurants focused on healthy foods and so far, High Vibe is easily my favorite of these kinds of eateries.

Its succinct, well-executed menu is full of juices, smoothies and bowls that are good for you, yes, but also that dont overlook one essential thing: They have flavor, and lots of it.

The Husker bowl  yes, thats the name  is a good place to start. The superfood puree made of frozen acai berries and banana is topped with granola, dried coconut and sliced fresh bananas and strawberries. Another day, I had mine topped with almond butter, shaved coconut and goji berries. Both were tasty and kept me full until dinner. Even my husband  generally a skeptic when I bring him along to a healthy spot  loved his bowl.

Owner Mary Clare Sweet has plans to eventually add kale salads and vegan wraps.

I like the fun, not-too-serious feeling at High Vibe. Its healthy but not boring  the kind of food thats nutritional value is masked by its outstanding flavor and freshness.

I had reviewed Le Bouillon, in the Old Market, before it started serving lunch. This year, after the fire at Ms Pub in January, the restaurant stepped up with a classic Old Market daytime menu thats worth noting again, if you havent tried it.

Theres a view of bustling brick streets and, on the menu, French onion soup, hearty sandwiches and satisfying but artful entrees. With lunch, the restaurant becomes more approachable and more affordable than it had been before; the most expensive item at the noon hour is $16.

The French onion soup, a nod to the French Cafes menu if there ever was one, is even better than the one diners might remember from the previous restaurant. Rich with flavor  the broth is made with foie gras  its served in a hot bowl crowded with sweet caramelized onions, a crunchy slab of toast and a rich melt of comte cheese with crispy brown edges. It is a meal in itself.

I couldnt review lunch at Bouillon without going in for the primo item and personal favorite: tender wagyu beef skirt steak and frites. Mid-rare steak came sliced thin and charred on the edge, topped with salty fried capers, rich anchovy butter, a small pile of dressed arugula and hand-cut, crisp-tender fries.

When it comes to lunch, Le Bouillon is offering a sophisticated, approachable alternative.

Be Lam is the reason that the pho at Saigon is so dang good.

Lam has been at the helm of Saigons kitchen since she and her husband opened the restaurant close to 20 years ago, said her daughter, Ngoc Nguyen. Nguyens father, Hien Nguyen, came to the U.S. after the Vietnam War as a refugee. The rest of the family came to Omaha later, in 1997. They opened the restaurant soon after.

Lam doesnt believe in shortcuts when it comes to her cooking, Nguyen said. Her mother speaks little English, so Nguyen described her process:

Each day, Lam makes broth, the heart of any Vietnamese soup, from scratch, using beef bones and chicken and cooking them until the meat and bones fall apart. Lam adds ginger, star anise, coriander, basil and other spices and lets that broth sit overnight, flavors mingling. The next morning, she starts simmering it again before serving it.

Then she starts over again, making more broth for the next day. Every day.

Her house-made soups are some of the restaurants most popular dishes. In fact, soup is so popular at Saigon that the restaurant regularly goes through hundreds of pounds of noodles.

I can see why.

El Basha is so consistently good its not a stretch to call it one of the most underrated spots in the city for gyros, kabobs, shawarma and especially falafel.

The falafel is firm and flaky, and bright green on the inside thanks to a blend of parsley, mint and scallion. The bean cakes are hearty and flavorful; the homemade pickles and sauce made with tahini, a thick sesame seed paste, and served on the side set off the herbacious cakes perfectly.

It seems impossible to get a bite of food at El Basha thats not seasoned within an inch of its life; not one dish here suffers from the blands. Another thing worth noting: I estimated that at least a third of the menu items were meatless, which makes this a fun spot for one of my vegetarian dining partners.

I left El Basha feeling satisfied with both the simple dining experience and the wonderfully flavored food. When I have so little to take issue with, one thing is guaranteed: Ill be back, and soon.

Whats really exciting about this little restaurant is that it has a lot of dishes that youve likely never had before. Thats when things get fun. Its a risk the restaurant takes, and its consistently hitting out of the park dishes such as mapo tofu, garlic spinach and egg and tomato.

An order of Chinese garlic spinach arrived sizzling hot, verdant and very garlicky. Spooned over white rice with a bit of its sauce, it hit the spot. Tingle-inducing Sichuan peppercorns appeared in two dishes: mapo tofu and fish cooked in chili oil. Loads of soft tofu filled the giant bowl of mapo tofu, along with bits of ground pork, peppercorns and a dark, rich sauce.

The zingy peppercorns took center stage in another big bowl, this one with fish and vegetables cooked in hot chili oil. The bowl comes with a little mesh strainer on the side, which diners use to scoop out the tender, flavorful white fish and hunks of greens from the broth, which is covered with crisp, hot red chilis and peppercorns. Its a fun dish to eat, a beautiful one to look at and my favorite of anything I sampled.

If you couldnt tell, I really like Blue & Fly. Im thrilled that the restaurant is closer to midtown, because until now, all my favorite Chinese spots  including Canton House and New Gold Mountain  have been west of 72nd Street.

Midtowners and downtowners, along with the rest of the city, take note: Theres a food experience waiting to be had. Get there.
TEKAMAH, Neb.  Its cold and dark as a group rolls out of pickup trucks, crunches through thin snow past oodles of bird decoys and huddles into a long, rectangular box placed just so, right under the horizon, near the banks of the Missouri River. Blue light starts to brighten the sky. Its just before 7 a.m., and the duck blind is quiet.

Anyone whos gone on a hunt knows this drill and this scene, or one like it. But this duck blind, owned by Pheasant Bonanza, is different.

Its heated. Theres a line of camouflaged men munching chocolate croissants and cinnamon twists and drinking hot, percolated coffee made on the blinds two-burner gas stove. And, on this morning, there will be three courses from chef Nick Strawhecker, there to participate in the hunt but also to cook the style of Italian hes become known for at his Dante Ristorante.

This is the greatest duck blind for eating, said Pender native Mark Lorensen. Thats for sure.

It also might be the most Nebraska version of the farm-to-table trend yet: Hunters will eat local food prepared by a local chef while hunting local food less than an hour from Omaha.

Flight to table came about after Strawhecker met hunting guide Aaron Schroder, who led the chef on a few hunts this fall. Schroder told Strawhecker about this blind, posh by most standards, and how he regularly cooked breakfast for hunters on site, things like scrambled eggs and biscuits and gravy. Strawhecker proposed taking over the cooking in the blind one morning, and an idea was born.

The hunters each paid $250 for this daylong experience, which begins quietly with those sweets from Omaha bakery Le Petit Paris, and lots of hot, black coffee.

Schroder sits on a high stool between two long benches, each holding about four hunters, their shotguns propped in front of them, illuminated by the red glow of the whirring heaters.

Schroder, in a tan stocking cap and glare-reducing sunglasses, pokes his head just above the Duracover  a plastic, straw-like material  covering the blinds opening. His eyes scan the sky for ducks and geese.

Around 7:45 a.m., he calls for quiet, his eyes darting back and forth over the horizon, as he grabs one of the four calls hanging from his lanyard and starts calling.

To his left, another hunter furiously waves a big black plastic flag, called a goose flag. From a distance, the motion resembles birds wings. Despite the effort, the birds pass.

Theres a lot of hurry up and wait, Schroder says, chuckling.

While they wait, theres plenty of time to talk, and cook. Around 9 a.m., Strawhecker gets to work at the stove: Lets cook some pasta.

He pours half-frozen water into a big pot and in another starts heating chicken brodo, a chicken stock, made at Dante. He seasons the brodo with fresh thyme stalks, lemon juice and salt. Homemade tortellini, each filled with boar meat  it came from a regular customer who shot the animal in Texas  lemon zest and Grana Padano cheese, goes into the water. A few minutes later, hunters quietly slurp down with plastic spoons the first course: warm, rich broth, tender pasta, hearty meat.

Strawhecker drops a rounded spoon of duck fat into a hot, heavy-duty cast iron skillet, which sizzles and smokes in the small space.

He drops rounds of tigelle, an Italian quick bread served in Bologna thats topped with all sorts of things and served as a snack, into the oil and then sprinkles the golden rounds liberally with salt. Hunters top theirs first with local raspberry jam and Dantes house-made coppa salumi, an Italian pork cold cut Strawheckers been saving for a special occasion. A second round comes with local honey and fennel pollen.

Strawhecker talks about what wines hed pair with the tagelle, reading the ones he brought for post-hunt enjoyment.

I have some tall boys in my truck, Schroder jokes between bites. But that sounds good, too.

The duck blind sits just two miles from where Schroder grew up, outside Tekamah.

He moved first to Seattle and then to New York before returning. Pheasant Bonanza, the company Schroder works for, acquired the blind and installed it last summer about 300 yards from the banks of the Missouri, on a river bend. They built a lake near the river and installed the blind on a peninsula.

The blind was the last to belong to renowned Nebraska hunter and guide Ralph Kohler, who retired in 2014 after more than 75 years of guiding hunts near Tekamah.

Theres some kind of mojo in it, Schroder said.

He invested thousands of dollars in decoys and, in the off season, trains hunting dogs. One of them, Stormy, a svelte black Labrador, lies in wait in her own blind behind Schroders.

Now he runs hunts for ducks and geese in this blind and always serves breakfast.

There is a lot more to this than pulling the trigger, he said.

Conversations fade into one another as the group waits, with hunters talking about the best brands of waders and meals they had at restaurants outside Omaha. One man dozes.

As the clock rolls past noon, the hunters get another opportunity. Schroder repeats the process  eyes fixed on the sky, asking for quiet, a burst of calling and then, one word: Go!

Hunters pop out of the blind like theyre part of a human game of whack-a-mole, and after a flurry of shots, one bird goes down. Schroder calls on Stormy, who bounds back and forth until she returns proudly toting a green-headed drake mallard.

Because theres only one, the hunters wont eat this duck this afternoon, but Strawhecker came prepared with duck confit and large duck eggs in his cooler. He whips them into the days final course: tomato posole, a thick stew made with chili paste, guanciale (Italian cured pork), and hominy from South Carolinas Anson Mills. He poaches the duck eggs, and, after theyre done, tops the bowl with tender duck confit and the soft-cooked, runny egg. Part chewy, part crunchy, the aromatic corn stew is topped by lots of homemade condiments: kimchi and pickled jalapenos. The hunters eat this final course with appreciative silence.

Though this food is higher-end than usual for the hunters and Schroder, this style of in-blind dining is, really, nothing new. In fact, he calls breakfast in the blind a Burt County tradition.

This has been going on here for years, Schroder said. Its special to be doing this. I think this area is a pretty good-kept secret. Its one of the last places to do this.
Conservation officers are investigating the shooting of a trumpeter swan this week near Plattsmouth. Its the second swan shot in the area in the past 10 days.

A Nebraska Game and Parks Commission officer said the swan was killed Monday at a sandpit lake near the Schilling Wildlife Management Area northeast of Plattsmouth near the Platte and Missouri Rivers.

Two Omaha area men, who may have been hunting for ducks or geese in the area, are being investigated in connection with the shooting, the officer said.

There is no trumpeter hunting season in Nebraska, but other states allow hunting of the birds.

The officer said trumpeters are migrating through the area. The snow-white birds will roost at the sandpit lake near Plattsmouth, fly across the Missouri River into Iowa to feed and then return.

When returning from Iowa to the Plattsmouth area, the birds are low-fliers, the officer said. That could make them easy targets for waterfowl hunters.

Trumpeter swans can have a wingspan of 10 feet and weigh 25 to 30 pounds.
Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert named interim Fire Department head Dan Olsen as the citys fire chief Wednesday, calling him the most qualified applicant even as the Omaha firefighters union president accused her of subverting the citys hiring process so she could pick her favored candidate.

He is tested, he is trusted and he is a very strong leader, Stothert said of Olsen.

She cited what she called a wide range of experience in his nearly 24-year career that helped make him the most well-rounded candidate. She said Olsen had earned her trust in his ability to manage the Fire Departments operations and its budget.

Olsen said he is excited to lead the department. He said he really was that kid who dreamed of becoming a firefighter.

This has been a lifelong goal of mine, to be a servant of the City of Omaha, he said.

Olsen has served as interim chief since May, following the retirement of Bernie Kanger.

Steve LeClair, president of the firefighters union, acknowledged Olsens service, said he has done an adequate job as interim chief and said the union was ready to work with him.

But LeClair accused Stothert of subverting the citys required process so she could pick her preferred candidate over two qualified union members who made the finalist list above Olsen.

LeClair said he would not rule out a union grievance or lawsuit to challenge the selection of Olsen, but he said thats a discussion for the unions executive board and membership after discussions with the Mayors Office.

Ten candidates applied to be fire chief. Eight completed a testing process done by an outside consultant. According to city code, the top four are referred to the mayor for interviews and possible selection as chief. The original group of finalists had two internal candidates  Omaha Battalion Chiefs Robert Gottsch and Dan Stolinski  and two external candidates.

Olsen was not among the initial four finalists, although Stothert mentioned from the beginning of the search that he could still be a possibility.

One of the finalists, an assistant chief from Spokane, Washington, dropped out soon after his name was announced. And Stothert recently eliminated another, retired Colorado Springs Fire Chief Christopher Riley, after an interview and background search. Stothert said that moved Olsen, who had scored sixth in the testing, into the top four finalists.

Stothert said she followed city code in doing so.

But LeClair said adding finalists to the original list subverted the citys prescribed process for promotions in sworn Fire Department positions.

He said if one finalist dropped out and another was disqualified, Stothert should have chosen from the remaining two of the original list of finalists.

The impression I got was she went through the process to validate and legitimize a decision that was made back in April, LeClair said, referring to Stotherts selection of Olsen as interim chief.

State Sen. Heath Mello, whos running against Stothert for mayor, also criticized the choice.

The mayors my way or the highway approach has turned this routine hiring process into a purely political circus to get the one person she appointed interim fire chief back in April into the position of her choosing, Mello said.

Noting that Stothert had tried in 2013 to remove civil service protection for the fire chief, Mello called the selection process rigged.

He said Stothert appeared to be incorrectly applying a part of city code that does not apply to promotions to sworn Fire Department positions.

But Stothert said she and other city officials followed city code to the letter.

Heath Mello is uninformed about what is in city code, she said, accusing Mello of politicizing the hiring. He needs to get himself educated.

As for LeClairs statement that she did an end run around the process to hire her preferred candidate, Stothert said, Absolutely not.

Marty Bilek, Stotherts chief of staff and a participant in the selection process, said city officials struggled to choose among highly qualified candidates.

The fix was not in, Bilek said.

Stothert said she and other city officials considered all the candidates. She said the top several candidates, including Olsen, were very close to one another in qualifications.

She said the national search process reaffirmed her choice of Olsen as interim chief.

We looked at it very objectively, Stothert said. Chief Olsen was the best qualified candidate I interviewed.

Stothert said Olsens wide range of experience includes fire suppression, multi-alarm fire command, homeland security training, emergency medical training and arson investigation.

She said Olsen has managed the Fire Departments budget, and she expects the department to come in under budget for the time he has been interim chief.

The decision that we have made is in the best interests of the citizens of Omaha and also the Omaha Fire Department, Stothert said.

Olsen was hired in 1993 as a firefighter. He has been promoted to numerous command positions, including captain, battalion chief, assistant chief and interim chief. He also is a certified police officer, graduating from the police academy in 2001.
Madras HC judge raises doubts over Jayalalithaa's death

Chennai

oi-Anusha

A judge of the Madras High court created a flutter after he expressed doubts over Jayalalithaa's death. Justice Vaidyalingam made an oral observation while hearing a petition seeking probe into the former Tamil Nadu chief minister's death. The petitioner, Joseph sought a probe into the death of Jayalalithaa stating that it took place under mysterious circumstances.

The judge while speaking in his personal capacity said, he too had doubts after few media organisations had raised doubts over Jayalalithaa's death. He further sought to know why the union government was mum on the issue despite having all details about the treatment that was given to Jayalalithaa. The judge also observed that there were contradictory statements given about her health and hence the truth be made public at least after her death.

[Also Read: The era of 'Chinnamma' begins for AIADMK]

The judge however did not take up the matter and referred it to Chief Justice to place it before an appropriate Bench. The matter will be heard on January 9. A private person had filed a petition in the Madras High Court seeking probe into the 'mysterious' death of J Jayalalithaa by a commission.

OneIndia News
Admiral Sunil Lanba appointed as chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Dec 29: Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba on Thursday took over the baton of the chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (CoSC) from outgoing IAF chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha even as the government plans to create a new post to focus exclusively on inter-services issues and acquisitions.

He would, however, be assuming charge as Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee with effect from afternoon of December 31. Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh, who also retires from service on December 31, and Principal Staff Officers of all three Services and HQ Integrated Defence Staff were present on the occasion.

The government is working on either creating a post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) or a permanent chairman COSC chairman. While the contentious CDS is likely to be a five star post, the permanent Chairman COSC will be a four-star, a post that that the three Services have agreed to.

Admiral Lanba assumed command of the Indian Navy on May 31 this year. He is a Navigation and Direction specialist and has served on board numerous ships in both the Eastern and Western Fleets.

Air Chief Marshal Raha had taken over as Chairman COSC on August 1, 2014. Under his stewardship, the Services received a vital boost in jointmanship, a statement by the Defence Ministry said.

During his tenure the Defence Communication Network got operationalised and training standards of the Tri Service Institutes such as NDA, DSSC and CDM were enhanced. The much awaited National War Museum got approval from the government. He was instrumental in enhancing the role of military diplomacy with friendly foreign countries, the statement added.

Various Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Operations during crisis situations both within and outside India such as J&K floods, Chennai floods, evacuation of Indian and foreign nationals from Yemen and Nepal Earthquake were successfully conducted. He also played a pivotal role in formulation of the new Defence Procurement Procedure, thereby "streamlining and fast tracking defence procurement which has so far been plagued by laborious procedures and long delays".

PTI
Crucial AIADMK meet: Will Sasikala step into Amma's shoes?

India

oi-Anusha

By Anusha Ravi

Chennai, Dec 29: In the outskirts of Chennai, anxious AIADMK cadres have gathered as part of a crucial general council and executive meet. Led by Tamil Nadu Chief minister O Panneerselvam the meet is expected to give the AIADMK it's new leader.

Select members of the AIADMK have been invited to be part of the meet and heavy police deployment is seen at the venue following the ruckus outside the party office in Chennai on Wednesday.

Sources from the party reveal that the meet will pass two important resolutions. One of them is a demand to confer late J Jayalalithaa with the Bharat Ratna and another and more important resolution to make Sasikala Natarajan the next general secretary of the party.

The cadres have decided to choose Sasikala to lead them despiteher remaining mum over the same.

OneIndia News
Stage 4 of pollution action plan: Here's what will be affected in Delhi

Lunar eclipse 2022: Things you should not do during Chandra Grahan

Delhi court sends Lodha, Tandon to four-day ED custody

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Dec 29: A Delhi court on Thursday sent city- based lawyer Rohit Tandon and businessman Paras Mal Lodha, arrested in connection with a money laundering case, to four- day custody of the Enforcement Directorate.

The duo were produced before Metropolitan Magistrate Ashok Kumar, who allowed their custodial interrogation till January two. The ED had arrested Tandon in the national capital this morning in connection with a money laundering probe, which involves seizure of Rs 13.6 crore post demonetisation after the police raided his law firm premises as part of an anti-black money operation.

Lodha was arrested on December 21 and later the court had sent him to seven-day ED custody on December 22.

Lodha is a Kolkata based real estate developer who has a stake in mining, consultancy and finance firms. He is alleged to be close to Chennai based sand mining tycoon J Sekhar Reddy who was arrested by the CBI. It is suspected that Reddy during his questioning gave out the name of Lodha.

PTI
Disability Bill got the Parliament nod in 2016

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Dec 28: The passage of the much-awaited disability bill in Parliament and enforcement of the amended legislation on prevention of atrocities against SCs, STs stood out for the Social Justice Ministry in 2016 during which when it largely struggled with disbursal of funds to states meant for scholarship schemes.

The nod to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill 2016, by Parliament towards the fag end of the year despite disruptions, has encouraged the ministry to push for early enactment of a law aimed at ending discrimination against transgenders, which is a long-pending issue.

"In the coming year we will strive for the passage of the Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, which at present, is before the Standing Committee. "We are waiting for the Standing Committee to give its recommendations. We will then see what changes are to be made and what not and then try to push the bill in the next session of Parliament," Union Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Thaawar Chand Gehlot told PTI.

He said bringing in a stricter national policy on senior citizens which seeks to toughen provisions dealing with the abuse of old people and lays emphasis on good and affordable healthcare for them also figures high on his agenda for the new year. The draft cabinet note on the policy is under the consideration of the PMO at present.

The ministry, however, had to grapple with the Finance Ministry throughout the year to get requisite funds for disbursal to states under the post-matric scholarship scheme for SC students. The ministry is yet to release arrears to the tune of Rs 6,500 crore for the fiscal 2014-15 and 2015-16 as on date, to the states and has written to the Finance Ministry in this regard. Amount of Rs 2,791 crore allocated for this fiscal under the scheme was also used in the payment of arrears.

"We have written to the Finance Ministry a number of times asking for the funds but there is no progress on this front," Gehlot said, hoping the new year will bring some good news.

PTI
Manmohan Singh to release Congress manifesto for Punjab

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Dec 29: The Congress manifesto for the 2017 Punjab assembly elections will be released soon by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose inputs were sought by the party during its drafting, a party statement said here on Thursday.

The opposition party is yet to finalise the release date for the manifesto. All India Congress Committee in-charge of Punjab affairs Asha Kumari and Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh held a meeting here on Thursday on the matter.

Manmohan Singh is a well known economist who is credited with ushering in the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the early 1990s as Union Finance Minister in the Cabinet of then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.

Also read: Congress gets boost in Punjab, several SAD,AAP and BJP leaders join

"Asha Kumari and Amarinder discussed with Manmohan Singh the key points of the manifesto, which will now be given the final shape by the Punjab Congress Manifesto Committee led by former Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal," said the statement.

Asha Kumari said: "The party decided to take Manmohan Singh's views on the manifesto draft in view of his expertise on economic issues."

"The Congress does not believe in taking arbitrary decisions, without understanding the nuances of the subject, and felt it was important to involve the former Prime Minister in the manifesto's finalisation, given its impact on the people of Punjab," Asha Kumari said.

Amarinder said: "The former Prime Minister gave his valuable inputs on the manifesto -- a comprehensive document addressing issues relating to every section of Punjab's people."

He said the manifesto will be simultaneously released in key cities of Punjab to coincide with its release in New Delhi by Manmohan Singh to ensure it reaches the maximum number of people.

IANS
Flashback 2016: High growth, maiden policy propel aviation sector

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Dec 29 A maiden integrated policy and over 20 per cent month-on-month traffic growth gave wings to the country's civil aviation sector in 2016.

The sector reaped benefits out of a rise in domestic disposable income, lower jet fuel prices and enhanced services to the non-metro cities, which accelerated India's passenger traffic growth in 2016. According to the latest data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), passenger traffic during January-November 2016 zoomed by 23.10 per cent to 90.36 million.

This rise and other contributing factors have led global airlines' industry body International Air Transport Association (IATA) to estimate that India will displace the UK as the third-largest aviation marketplace by 2026. It is currently at 9th.

Recently, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha elaborated that the sector has "dramatic headroom" for growth as India has only 150 million passenger trips a year as compared to China's 450 million and the US' 800 million. In the backdrop of such high growth, the sector finally got its maiden integrated National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP).

The long-awaited policy envisages a roadmap to support 300 million air travellers in five years and steps to make flying affordable and convenient. Broadly, the policy dwells on upgrade of airports, regional connectivity, easing of norms for flying abroad, liberalisation of the open skies regime, development of cargo hubs, chopper services, attracting investments in maintenance and ground-handling and security.

The ambitious policy did away with one of the most contentious rules of the sector known as '5/20' -- five-years operation and a 20-aircraft fleet -- to qualify for flying abroad. The five-year wait was done away with, but airlines will need 20 aircraft or fly 20 per cent of their capacity on domestic routes.

The policy may be far away from achieving its intended target, but its showpiece sub-segment -- the 'UDAN' (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) -- is expected to become a reality from early 2017. According to Civil Aviation Minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, the first flight under the RCS is expected to be operated by January 2017.

The Udan scheme, meant to enhance air passenger traffic in the country by stimulating demand on regional routes, will be in operation for a period of 10 years, provide air connectivity to unserved and remote routes with airfare being capped at Rs 2,500 for an hour's journey of around 500 km.

The RCS is expected to support airlines by providing direct financial support namely VGF (viability gap funding), which would be given to the interested airlines to kick off operations to an un-served or underserved airport, and also keep passenger fares affordable.

The central government is expected to provide concessions in the form of reduced excise duty and service tax, whereas state governments will have to lower the VAT (value added tax) on ATF (air turbine fuel) to one per cent or less.

Besides, the state governments would not charge on security and fire services while electricity, water and other utilities would be provided at concessional rates. Minister of State Sinha elaborated that through Udan, the central government is also working to expand the aviation map of India from 75 to 150 airports, adding that the Kanpur and Bhatinda airports have become operational under the scheme.

Among other highlights of 2016 -- the government has initiated a trial run for "non-stamping" of passengers' baggage tags at the time of boarding the aircraft at six airports to facilitate hassle-free movement of passengers with hand baggage. In other major developments, the government appointed B.S. Bhullar as chief of the country's civil aviation regulator, DGCA.

IANS
Flashback 2016: Mixed year for armed forces in 2016

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Dec 28 Signing of long-pending deals including one for Rafale fighters, a logistics agreement with the US, new blacklisting and defence procurement policies besides induction of indigenous nuclear submarine were some of the achievements of the defence ministry in 2016, which was a mixed year for the armed forces.

The high point for the military was the daring surgical strike carried out by the special forces on terror launch pads across the LoC it lost a number of soldiers during the year. Jammu and Kashmir alone saw over 80 security personnel being killed while countering Pakistan's proxy war.

The army managed to eliminate about 160 militants in the state including the poster boy of militancy Burhan Wani. Many security personnel were also killed fighting armed insurgency. Deadly attacks on the Pathankot air base, and army camps in Uri and Nagrota were a setback that led to the loss of several lives.

The armed forces also had a mixed year when it came to administration and compensation issues. While the government drastically increased the ex-gratia for the armed forces, the 7th Pay Commission recommendations and a controversial letter on parity with their civilian counterparts for administrative duties left a bad taste.

The decision of the government to bypass the long-followed principle of seniority when it came to selecting an army also led to lot of heartburns in the military especially the Armoured Corps. But one thing that the armed forces seemed to be most happy with was Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's push for modernisation.

Even as the government brought in a new defence procurement policy emphasising on 'Make in India' and a blacklisting policy offering a mixture of heavy fines and graded punishment rather than blanket blacklisting, the Ministry moved fast on procurements. A lot many deals pending for years were cleared by the Defence Ministry besides giving nod to many other proposals. The biggest deal to be struck during 2016 was the one for 36 Rafale fighter jets for 7.8 billion Euros.

PTI
Flashback 2016: The year cash-strapped Andhra moved to its new capital

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Vijayawada, Dec 29 For the residual state of Andhra Pradesh it was an eventful year marked by numerous post-bifurcation challenges -- the biggest being the shifting of the administration from Hyderabad to Amaravati, the new state capital coming up near here.

Though under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act of 2014 Hyderabad was declared the common capital of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh for 10 years, the latter preferred to shift the administration in the third year itself.

Almost all departments have moved from Hyderabad to the Interim Government Complex (IGC) built at Velagapudi village. It was an emotional moment for thousands of government employees to bid adieu to Hyderabad and shift to a remote and deserted place, bereft of any infrastructure.

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, who had been operating from here since last year but was shuffling between Vijayawada and Hyderabad, too started functioning from his new IGC office.

As someone who has the distinction of being the longest-serving Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh (1995-2004) and who played a key role in catapulting Hyderabad to what it is today, Naidu left the city with misty eyes. His emotions were visible after attending the last session of the state assembly.

Now the new legislature complex is coming up near the IGC and the first session is likely to be held in January-February. The foundation stone has also been laid for the permanent government complex in what is expected to be the core area of the capital city.

The shifting of the secretariat helped the government to not only better focus on administration but also use it as the launch pad for the development of the capital. The process has gathered pace with the government allocating lands for a few universities and a hospital group to set up their campuses.

The cash-strapped state's plans for capital development received a shot in the arm with the World Bank, Hudco and Andhra Bank together in-principle sanctioning Rs 17,500 crore ($2.5 billion). The state plans to spend Rs 32,000 crore over the next four years to create infrastructure in the greenfield capital city.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) government in the state continues to face a financial crunch with the revenue deficit mounting to Rs 6,641 crore in the first half of 2016-17 though for the whole year it is estimated at Rs 4,868 crore. The Chief Minister himself admitted that the state has no money to pay salaries to the employees and is already running on a huge overdraft.

The demonetisation of high-value currency has further dented the state's revenues. Naidu, an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance government, initially claimed credit for demonetisation but later publicly expressed his displeasure over the manner in which it was implemented.

However, the biggest blow to Naidu came when the Centre refused to accord special category status to the state as announced by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in parliament in 2014. Interestingly, the BJP, during the 2014 general election campaign, had promised the status for 10 years against Manmohan Singh's five.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley clarified the announcement can't be implemented as, according to the 14th Finance Commission's recommendations, special status can be given only to hill states and the northeastern states. Jaitely instead promised equal monetary compensation to Andhra Pradesh through externally-aided projects. This was seen as a big jolt to Naidu, who had been demanding central hand-holding till the development in Andhra Pradesh is at par with its neighbouring states.

With no alternative, the TDP chief gave up the demand without a fight. He, however, was satisfied with the Centre allowing the state to execute the Rs 16,000 crore Polavaram irrigation project. The Centre will provide the entire funding for the project, which is expected to become the state's lifeline. However, Naidu came under attack from the opposition, which accused him of surrendering to the Centre to wriggle out of a "cash for vote" case in Telangana.

The U-turn also saw the TDP-BJP alliance's ally and popular actor Pawan Kalyan turning its bitter critic. Lashing out at Naidu for hurting the self-respect of Telugu people, the Jana Sena chief announced plans to launch a public movement. He also declared his intention to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. These are political challenges Naidu will have to face, but it is how well he manages the state's economy -- and the transition to the new capital -- that will be closely watched.

IANS
Flashback 2016: When India chanted the money mantra with no god to bank on

India

oi-Maitreyee

By Maitreyee

Bengaluru, Dec 29: One fine day in November, India suddenly turned godless. 'Our' Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked us to part away with our money (or black money) for the greater good of the nation. We, the law-abiding citizens, could not refuse the diktat. After all, we are the footsoldiers of the nation, fighting against black money, counterfeit currencies and terror funding.

[Also Read: 50 days of demonetisation: A reality check]

All our sarkar wanted us to do is to stand in long queues in front of banks and ATM kiosks for hours on end. This is the least we could do for Bharat Mata. In those never-ending rows reside our nation's unity.

In case anyone's forgotten, we even stand in queues to enter public toilets. There is nothing new about being part of these serpentine lines for any of us; it is the great leveller of castes, class, colour and gender.

Thus, since the announcement was made, we forgot all our worldly desires and duties and ran to our nearest banks and ATMs. Some of our more adventurous brethren even travelled miles to get access to a working bank.

Like an ardent faithful we made pilgrimage to those crammed banks floors and oft times hidden ATMs; we religiously made queues and patiently waited for our newly minted lord to appear.

Thirst, hunger and fatigue tested our patience, but we did not give up. A few, however, unfortunately gave up their battle in midway. They (around 100 of them) died (or became martyrs) right before they could have a glimpse of the new notes.

These dead are the symbol of the ultimate sacrifice we are willing to make for our elected gods. The passion to prove our patriotism is at its peak now. Even if the government asks us to go and fight a nuclear war with public enemy number 1, we should be proud to do so, lest we wish to be labelled anti-national? We are the hyper-nationalists and gau rakshaks of our times. Our progeny (we know we will have billions of them as our leaders want us, especially the Hindu women to have 10 children at least) will take pride in their ancestors' efforts to turn the country from sickular to sacred saffron.

The chest-thumping netas have given us the prasadam of notebandi and we the bhakts now stand in queues of our banking temples. Unfortunately, as we rise from our stupor of heightened patriotism there is neither moolah nor maula, all we've is the illusion of money in our accounts.

OneIndia News
TRS, BJP are two sides of same coin: Rahul Gandhi in Telangana

Hyderabad: Three arrested for raping a minor

India

oi-PTI

Hyderabad, Dec 30: Three persons have been arrested in Hyderabad for allegedly raping a 15-year-old girl after luring her with promise of dance roles' in Tollywood films.

Ganesh, Akbar and Venka Reddy, all working in the film industry, were arrested on Wednesday after the girl, a class nine drop-out, filed a complaint that the trio, along with two others, sexually exploited her.

Inspector K Srinivas of Banjara Hills Police Station said the girl, who was interested in dance, had gone missing from her house on December 3.

She allegedly came in contact with the accused and stayed with them after they promised to help her with getting roles in films. However, they allegedly raped her many times, she told police. Police are looking for other two accused in the case. Probe is underway.

PTI
Opposition needs to understand that right to religion is not a right to convert

Is Islamic outfit Sathya Sarani involved in forced conversions?

India

oi-Vicky

On Wednesday the BJP in Kerala demanded that the National Investigation Agency probe into the activities of the Sathya Sarani, an Islamic centre in Mallapuram, Kerala. The charge levelled was that the institute was indulging in large-scale conversions and was even backed by fundamentalist group Popular Front of India.

A memorandum was submitted to the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh seeking an in-depth probe into the activities of the institute. While there have been scores of allegations made against institute in the past, the group itself has denied all such allegations.

The group in fact on its website states that Christian missionaries are targetting poor Muslims in different parts of the state.

"They are brainwashed and driven to Christianity exploiting their poverty and lack of religious awareness. Sathya Sarani identifies such people and brings them back to their faith," claims the institutes's website.

Sathya Sarani's office is situated at Cherani near Manjeri, Kerala which is a Muslim-dominated are. Locals say that there is a bit of mystery around this organisation. The lane that lead up to the organisation's office is blocked for the public.

This was visible during an August event when members of a Hindu group were barred from taking out a march to the office of the Sathya Sarani. The Popular Front of India under which the Sathya Sarani functions, had even said that it would protest any such march. Hindu group Aikya Vedi which planned the march however sought to know why was there so much secrecy around this organisation.

BJP's chief in Kerala Kummanam Rajasekharan has termed the organisation as illegal and demanded that it be shut down immediately. He has branded the institute as a centre for large-scale conversions which is also promoting extreme religious ideology.

In August, Kottayam resident had moved the Kerala high court stating that his daughter was in the custody of the organisation.

The court had directed the state police chief to ensure that the girl does not leave the country to join any terror outfit. Based on the directive, the police conducted a raid, but failed to find the 23-year-old girl. The high court was also seized off a similar matter filed by a person from Thiruvananthapuram.
Comedian Atul Khatri's joke on seatbelt becomes one on him as Mumbai Police responds

It is official: Islamic State recruit from Maharashtra Aman Tandel is dead

India

oi-Vicky

Mumbai, Dec 29: Aman Tandel, one of the four youths from Kalyan, Maharashtra, who joined the Islamic State in Syria, has been killed. OneIndia had reported on November 29 that Tandel had been killed and that the information was being verified by the Indian security agencies.

[Also Read: 4 ISIS recruits: 2 dead, 1 returned, 1 to go]

The news of Tandel's death was made known to his family by a caller from Syria. It is believed that a man of Turkish origin had called the Tandels and informed them about his death.

While there was no official confirmation, Indian security agencies now say that he has indeed died in Syria.

Tandel, who went by the alias Abu Umar Al Hindi, was killed in an air strike in Syria on November 26. The caller of Turkish origin informed the family about the same on November 28, following which Indian agencies began investigations into the matter.

On December 28, several pro-IS sites hailed him as a 'martyr'.

1 to go:

Tandel had left for Syria in 2015 along with Areeb Majeed, Shaheem Tanki and Fahad Shaikh. It may be recalled that Majeed returned to India. He had said that he was given menial jobs to do and was treated shabbily, as a result of which he returned to India.

Another youth, Shaikh who is in Syria, had few months ago called his parents and told them he was happy. "I am happy doing Jihad," he allegedly told his parents at Kalyan over phone.

Shaikh during his conversation said that the other operative Tanki was dead. He confirmed the news stating that Tanki had died in an air strike in Syria.

OneIndia News
Separatist or terrorist: Why it is time to silence Asiya Andrabi

Has any separatist lost their child to terrorism?

J-K: Masrat Alam re-arrested after release

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Separatist leader Masrat Alam, who was released from Kathua district jail on Thursday, has been re-arrested, said reports.

The hard-line Hurriyat leader was in custody under the Public Safety Act since April 2015.

He was released earlier in the day following a Jammu and Kashmir High Court's order on Tuesday. His subsequent arrest is said to be in connection with another case.

Last year, he was arrested in Srinagar for raising Pakistan flag and shouting anti-India slogans.

Alam is currently the general secretary of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

OneIndia News
Modi hits back at Manmohan, says 'organised loot' remark must have been for UPA

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Dec 29: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday hit back at his predecessor Manmohan Singh, and said the former PM's reference to "organised loot" during his speech on demonetisation in Parliament must have been in the context of his own government.

"Regarding Manmohan Singh ji, it is interesting that the words 'monumental mismanagement' came from a leader who has been at the helm of India's economic journey for around 45 years," Modi said in an interview to India Today.

"His reference to organised loot was perhaps a reference to the unending string of scams under his leadership... From the coal scam, to 2G and CWG scam. Demonetisation on the other hand is an unprecedented step to confiscate the loot of the corrupt," he said.

Manmohan Singh, participating in a debate on demonetisation in the Rajya Sabha called demonetisation a "monumental management failure" and "a case of organised loot and legalised plunder". The debate that started in the upper house could not be concluded amid disruptions, and the winter session was almost a washout.

Modi announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8.

IANS
'If I have nominated even one person using authority, I'll resign': Kerala governor on VC row

President Mukherjee says freedom to doubt, disagree and dispute must be protected

India

oi-PTI

Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 29: Lamenting the "unfortunate tendency" to take umbrage at the expression of any view considered hostile, President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday said the "freedom to doubt, disagree and dispute" must be protected.

Mukherjee also said patriotism should not result in "blinkered" approaches in interpreting history or a compromise with truth in order to justify an argument of choice.

Asserting that the greatest strength of India is its pluralism and social, cultural, linguistic diversity, he said the country's traditions have always celebrated the "argumentative Indian and not the intolerant Indian."

The President made the remarks after inaugurating the 77th session of the Indian History Congress in Thiruvananthapuram.

There has been an "unfortunate tendency" in the country from time-to-time to take umbrage at the expression of any view perceived to be hostile to our social or cultural institutions past or present, Mukherjee said. Similarly, critical appraisals of heroes and national icons of the past have been met with hostility or sometimes even violence, he pointed out.

"Freedom to doubt, disagree and dispute intellectually must be protected as an essential pillar of democracy. Nothing should lie outside realm of discussion and argument and such freedom is vital for the progress in any field especially in a craft like history," he said.

In his address, the President asked historians to be as objective as possible in their approach to history. Advocating that reason and moderation should be the guide, Mukherjee said, "It is natural to love one's country and see as much glory in its past as one can detect. But, patriotism should not result in blinkered approaches in interpreting history or a compromise with truth in order to justify an argument of choice."

"No society is perfect and history must be also seen as a guide on what went wrong and what were the contradictions, deficiencies and weaknesses of the past," he said.

"An objective pursuit of history, such as our best historians have attempted, requires an impartial mind of a judge and not the mind of an advocate," the President said.

"We must keep our eyes open for unfamiliar ideas and be ready to consider a range of different inferences or assumptions," he added.

He also said there should not be any conflict or contradiction between the promotion of regional history and the pursuit of the country's history as a whole.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala alleged that attempts were being made by vested interests to distort history to suit the present government at the Centre.

Mukherjee released the first copy of the proceedings of the Congress by presenting it to the Chief Minister.

PTI
SIMI encounter killings haunted Shivraj Singh Chouhan in 2016

India

oi-PTI

Bhopal, Dec 28: 2016 saw Shivraj Singh Chouhan firmly in the saddle as he completed his 11th year as Madhya Pradesh chief minister though he had to grapple with the situation arising out of the controversial police encounter in which eight suspected SIMI operatives were killed.

Chouhan also managed to win back RSS' confidence after all did not seem to be well following police allegedly beating up Sangh pracharak Suresh Yadav in September at Balaghat district over a WhatsApp message with communal overtones. He was also upbeat after CBI, the prosecution agency in the multi-crore Vyapam admission and recruitment scam, told the apex court that the electronic evidence in the rip-off was not tampered with.

The Congress has been alleging that the electronic evidence in the scam were tampered with by the state police to save Chouhan and his family. Cow vigilantes too were seen in action in the first half of the year and in one such case, two Muslim women were beaten up at Mandsaur railway station on suspicion of carrying beef in July.

The state witnessed communal unrest in some parts. After the encounter killings of suspected SIMI operatives who had mysteriously escaped the highly-fortified central jail here on Diwali night allegedly killing a security guard, questions were raised but Chouhan's defence was that the police action was taken "for public good".

Also read: Madhya Pradesh: Low on terror strikes, high on anti-national activities

Minutes after the encounter, Chouhan, who seldom speaks to the media, hurriedly convened a press conference to dub the undertrials as "terrorists" who posed a serious threat to society after escaping from the jail. After the encounter, Muslims huddled in a mosque, on being denied permission to hold a public meeting. They claimed the killing was stage-managed.

Earlier, the community had often found the moderate Chouhan in their midst on Eids, once wearing a Muslim skull cap which Prime Minister Narendra Modi had refused to don. After initial resistance, the state government agreed to a judicial probe into the encounter after the outcry and criticism by media and public.

Also read: The Great SIMI escape: Who inside the jail helped them?

The month-long Simhasta-Kumbh mela in the ancient city of Ujjain in April-May too made a political splash when BJP chief Amit Shah took a holy dip with the Dalit seers. This drew the wrath of seers who said they were being divided on caste line for the first time.

The event also took a political hue with Congress blaming BJP for hijacking the event for political gain and siphoning off crores of rupees from the state exchequer. Besides, the mela, considered to be one of the biggest congregations of Hindus, saw the participation of eunuchs for the first time despite the reservation of Hindu clerics.

After police action on Suresh Yadav, local Sangh Parivar leaders took to the streets in Balaghat and a confrontation between the RSS and the Chouhan government seemed imminent.

PTI
Tripura announces Rs 5 lakh ex-gratia for slain soldiers' families

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Agartala, Dec 29 The Tripura government announced an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh and government jobs to the families of two soldiers who were killed last month in Jammu and Kashmir, a minister said here on Thursday.

"The state cabinet in its meeting on Wednesday decided to provide jobs to the wives of the slain soldiers and an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh," Tripura Finance Minister Bhanulal Saha told IANS.

He said 34-year-old Border Security Force soldier Sambhu Satmura was killed in a landmine blast along the India-Pakistan border in Poonch district on November 22. On November 29, the Indian Army's 36-years-old Naik Chitta Ranjan Debbarma along with his six colleagues were killed in a gun battle with militants at an army camp in Nagrota, 15 km from Jammu.

IANS
All is not well between US, Israel? Netanyahu unhappy with Kerry's Middle East policy speech

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Jerusalem, Dec 29: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the United States State Secretary John Kerry's Middle East policy speech, denouncing Kerry as "obsessed" and "biased."

[Also Read: John Kerry to offer US vision of Israel-Palestinian peace today]

Speaking in a televised statement on Wednesday, Netanyahu said that "Kerry deals obsessively with the settlements instead of touching on the root of the conflict", Xinhua news agency reported.

Netanyahu said he was "disappointed" and "surprised" by Kerry's speech. "Is that what the Foreign Minister of the world's largest power has to focus on?"

The Prime Minister also said he looks forward to working with the President-elect Donald Trump administration to "repeal" Friday's resolution by the UN Security Council, which condemned Israel's continued expansion of the settlements.

In his 70-minute speech, only weeks before the end of the Obama administration term, Kerry warned that Israel's construction of settlements was imperiling the chance of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel and achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

A few hours before the speech, Trump sent a message of support to Israel, telling the Jewish state to "stay strong" until January 20 when he takes office.

In a response tweet, Netanyahu wrote: "President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!"

The historic UN resolution demands Israel to stop the settlements construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and denounced the settlements as a "flagrant violation" of international law.

About 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands that Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast War and has been controlling them ever since, despite international condemnations.

IANS
Israel: Probe ordered against PM Netanyahu

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Tel Aviv, Dec 29: Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has ordered a full criminal probe into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over two separate cases involving bribery and fraud, local media reported. One of the cases was reported to have emerged newly.

The Prime Minister was expected to be called in by the police for questioning in coming days, the Times of Israel reports, adding that he faces allegations of bribery and fraud.

Meanwhile, Israeli TV Channel 10 reported that Netanyahu will be investigated over two separate matters. Both the Justice Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office refused to comment on the issue.

Hours before the report, lawyer and Labour Party activist Eldad Yaniv wrote on Facebook that Mandelblit "realised there was no other choice but to open an investigation" due to what he said was "weighty proof linking Bibi, as Netanyahu is popularly called, to suspicions of bribery and fraud" allegedly available to police.

Yaniv, joined by Erel Margalit of the Zionist Union, petitioned the High Court of Justice in December, demanding to clarify why the Attorney General had not opened the probe earlier.

Mandelblit's decision reportedly comes after police have obtained new documents in a secret probe against Netanyahu by special police unit Lahav 433, which was launched in June. The probe was approved by police chief Roni Alsheich, who demanded secrecy and that no details of the investigation be leaked to the media.

Earlier, it was reported that Mandelblit reportedly instructed employees in the state prosecutor's office to investigate the allegations that Netanyahu accepted $1.04 million from Arnaud Mimran, a French businessman currently serving eight years in prison for committing carbon tax fraud.

Mirman claimed he donated money for Netanyahu's 2009 election campaign -- an allegation that the PM has repeatedly denied.

The subject of the second probe was, however, not known to the public, Channel 10 reported.

Netanyahu's spokesperson has lately dismissed the allegations of bribery and fraud as "nonsense". The new reported dual probe was the latest in the string of investigations involving Netanyahu.

In November, Mandelblit opened a probe into the Prime Minister's decision to buy submarines from a German defence company, which was suspected to have been taken under the influence of a personal friend, a lawyer with alleged business ties with the submarine builder.

In May, State Comptroller Yosef Shapira issued a report criticising Netanyahu's foreign trips taken between 2003 and 2005 when he was the finance minister. At the same time, Netanyahu's wife, Sara, was accused of misusing public funds.

In July 2015, then Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein announced a criminal investigation into alleged misconduct at Netanyahu's residences.

IANS
Japan defence minister visits Yasukuni war shrine: Media

International

oi-PTI

Tokyo, Dec 29 Japan's defence minister went to a controversial war shrine in Tokyo today, media reports said, the day after accompanying Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a highly symbolic visit to Pearl Harbor. The shrine honours millions of mostly Japanese war dead and has been criticised by countries such as China and South Korea which suffered under Japan's colonialism and aggression in the first half of the 20th century.

Tomomi Inada, Abe's hawkish new defence chief, visited Yasukuni for the first time since taking the key cabinet post in August, according to national broadcaster NHK, the Asahi Shimbun and Jiji Press. The timing of the visit is likely to prove highly contentious coming so soon after Abe's pilgrimage with President Barack Obama to the site of Japan's December 7, 1941 attack on a US navy base in Hawaii that drew the US into World War II. Defence ministry officials could not be reached for immediate comment.

Abe and Obama paid homage to the more than 2,400 Americans killed in Japan's surprise attack against the major US naval base 75 years ago. They offered flowers and stood in silence before a memorial to those lost on the USS Arizona -- roughly half of all those killed in the assault. The pair issued declarations about the power of reconciliation and warned against fomenting conflict.

Abe, a staunch conservative who has called for strengthening Japan's military, has himself avoided visiting Yasukuni in an apparent attempt to prevent controversy after going there three years ago to celebrate his first anniversary since being elected prime minister. His trip there sparked fury in Beijing and Seoul and earned a diplomatic rebuke from close ally the United States, which said it was "disappointed" by the action.

He has stayed away after that, but Japanese conservatives have called on him to visit the shrine again. Dozens of conservative lawmakers visit the shrine on the anniversary marking Japan's surrender in World War II. Cabinet members also often journey to the leafy religious site during its spring and autumn festivals. Yesterday,

Masahiro Imamura, the minister in charge of the reconstruction of northern Japan after the massive 2011 tsunami, went to Yasukuni hours after Abe paid tribute in Hawaii. Imamura claimed his visit had "nothing to do with" Abe's trip, saying he wished to express gratitude and prayed for Japan's peace and prosperity. Japanese media quoted him as saying the timing of his visit to the shrine was "a coincidence".

AFP
What does the US actually want in Syria?

Syria army, opposition agree on ceasefire from midnight

International

oi-PTI

Damascus, Dec 29: Syria's army on Thursday said it would halt all military operations from midnight, under a deal brokered by Russia and Turkey. Earlier, Russia's President Vladimir Putin announced the deal, saying the Syrian regime and "main forces of the armed opposition" had agreed to halt hostilities.

"The general command of the armed forces announces a complete halt to all hostilities on Syrian territory from the zero hour of December 30th," Syria's army said in a statement carried on state television.

It added that the halt excluded combat against the Islamic State group and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate previously known as Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fateh al-Sham Front. Syria's leading opposition National Coalition body, a political entity based in Turkey, confirmed its support for the truce.

"The National Coalition expresses support for the agreement and urges all parties to abide by it," spokesman Ahmed Ramadan told AFP.

He said key rebel groups including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham and Army of Islam factions had signed the ceasefire deal, though there was no immediate confirmation from rebel officials. The agreement comes after Syria's government recaptured the country's second city Aleppo from rebels, in the worst blow to opposition forces since the war began.

The ceasefire will be the first nationwide halt in fighting since a week-long truce from September 12-19 that collapsed after several incidents of violence. A previous truce was implemented in February, with both of those deals organised by Russia and the United States.

Thursday's agreement is the first nationwide ceasefire brokered with the involvement of Turkey, a backer of the Syrian opposition. Russia is a key supporter of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and began a military intervention in support of his government in September 2015.

Despite backing opposing sides in the conflict, and a souring of relations after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane last year, Ankara and Moscow have worked increasingly closely on Syria. They jointly brokered a ceasefire for Aleppo this month that allowed the last remaining rebels and civilians in the city's east to leave to opposition territory elsewhere.

More than 310,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with protests against Assad's government.

PTI
United Nations is not living up to its potential: Donald Trump

International

oi-PTI

Washington, Dec 29: US President-elect Donald Trump has hit out at the United Nations, saying the world body is causing problems instead of solving them. "The UN has such tremendous potential, not living up to its potential. There is such tremendous potential, but it is not living up," Trump told reporters in Florida on Wednesday.

Also read: Donald Trump slams 'inflammatory' Barack Obama

"When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They don't. They cause problems," he said. He was responding to a question if America under his administration is considering leaving the United Nations.

The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016

In a series of tweets earlier this week, Trump criticised the world body, in particularly the Security Council for passing a resolution against Israel. "So, if it lives up to the potential, it's a great thing. And if it doesn't, it's a waste of time and money," he said.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the US, but not anymore," Trump said in a tweet on Friday. "The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!" he added.

PTI
US designates 2 LeT leaders as terrorists, exposes international links

International

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By Ians English

New York, Dec 29 Designating two Pakistan-based leaders of Lakshar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), the United States (US) has exposed the long tentacles of the group that stretch from Gaza and Syria to Bangladesh and Myanmar and the activities of two of its front organisations.

The Treasury Department announced on Wednesday that it was adding LeT financial officers Shahid Mahmood and LeT Lahore "emir" Muhammad Sarwar to the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists and gave an extensive report on their activities.

In a separate announcement, the State Department said LeT's youth recruitment arm, Al-Muhammadia Students (AMS), was added to the list of foreign terrorist organisations. The terrorist designations ban providing money or material support to those organisations or people or having any transactions with them and it freezes their property.

The State Department said that since LeT was designated as a foreign terrorist organisation in 2001, the group has repeatedly changed its name and created front organisations. The AMS was one such "alias", which was founded in 2009 and "is a subsidiary of LeT and has worked with LeT senior leaders to organise recruiting courses and other activities for youth," the department said.

Mehmood and Sarwar "are responsible for raising and moving funds to support the terrorist group's operations," said John E. Smith, the acting director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). "Today's action not only aims to expose their activities, but also disrupts Lashkar-e Tayyiba's financial network and ability to carry out violent terrorist attacks."

"Mahmood claimed that LeT's primary concern should be attacking India and America," the Treasury Department's announcement said. He was the Vice Chairman of LeT's fundraising front, Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), which has been designated a terrorist organisation by both the State Department and the United Nations, the department said.

A member of the LeT operations group, Karachi-based Mehmood was in charge of Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh and had traveled extensively to Myanmar, Gaza, Syria, Turkey and Bangladesh, the department said. He was also put in charge of FIF operations in Syria and Turkey and had distributed funds in Myanmar refugee camp to recruit members for LeT, according to the department. Mehmood, 36, also uses the name Rehmatullah.

Lahore-based Sarwar was "directly involved in LeT fundraising activities and uses the formal financial system in Pakistan to raise and move funds on behalf of LeT," the department said. Sarwar worked with LeT's foreign affairs chief Hafiz Abdul Rahman Makki, who was put on the terrorist list in 2010, and Makki asked Sarwar pay for his travel in Pakistan, the department said.

To help raise donations for the LeT, Sarwar led delegations of businessmen to the organisation's facilities, the department said without identifying the delegations' members or the group outfits. Sarwar, who is between 48 and 50 years old, was born in Sheikhupura and uses the aliases Abul Hashim and Rabbani.

IANS
US may call for sanctions on Russia

International

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By Ians English

Washington, Dec 29 Three prominent US senators have warned that Russia may face sanctions over the country's alleged interference in the recently concluded presidential election, media report said on Thursday.

Outgoing President Barack Obama is expected to announce retaliatory measures as early as Thursday, the BBC reported. The Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and Democrat Amy Klobuchar, voiced their support for sanctions on Wednesday.

They were visiting the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which are Nato members close to Russia's western edge, when they talked about the sanctions and said the move had cross-party support. President-elect Donald Trump, however, has rejected claims of Russian interference. The sanctions could include economic sanctions and changes to diplomatic relationships.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded in a statement: "If Washington really does take new hostile steps, they will be answered. "Any action against Russian diplomatic missions in the US will immediately bounce back on US diplomats in Russia."

Earlier in December, CIA officials told the US media they had "high confidence" that Russian hackers had attempted to sway the US election in Trump's favour. The Trump team responded to those reports by saying "these are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction".

Graham told CNN the proposed sanctions would "hit Russia hard, particularly (President) Putin as an individual. I would say that 99 of us (senators) believe the Russians did this and we're going to do something about it." He told reporters: "Russia is trying to break the back of democracies all around the world. It is now time for Russia to understand - enough is enough."

IANS
Signing of long-pending deals including one for Rafale fighters, a logistics agreement with the US, new blacklisting and defence procurement policies besides induction of indigenous nuclear submarine were some of the achievements of the defence ministry in 2016, which was a mixed year for the armed forces. Find out more interesting facts in this video.
Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Delhi lawyer Rohit Tandon in connection with the money laundering case. The lawyer had recently declared unaccounted income worth over Rs 125 crore after searches were carried out against him. He allegedly also has links with Parasmal Lodha, a Kolkata-based businessman arrested earlier for money laundering.
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A new year, a new you.

But it isn't just health-conscious consumers who are hitting the reset button in 2017.

GNC (GNC), the Pittsburgh-based chain of nutrition stores, has temporarily shuttered all 4,464 of its U.S. locations, as it rolls out its revamped pricing strategy.

The one-day closures come two months after the retailer admitted that inconsistent prices on its website and in stores  as well as discrepancies over what it charged loyalty members versus casual buyers  were making its locations confusing to shoppers.

They also come during the busy post-Christmas stretch, when shoppers exchange unwanted gifts and spend money they received on gift cards.

Investors didn't appear to be sold on GNC's strategy, which was designed to stem a slide in revenue. They sent the company's shares 3 percent lower on Wednesday, contributing to a nearly 64 percent drop over the past year.

"The new GNC leaves the old, broken model behind," interim CEO Robert Moran said in a news release. Moran, who joined GNC's board in 2013, was appointed to the interim role in July, when Michael Archbold exited after two years.

GNC tested its changes in seven markets, and said it was "encouraged by the improvements" it saw. The cost consumers pay for its products will go down on about half of its items; stay the same on about a quarter of them; and go up on another quarter.

While GNC expects its new, simplified pricing structure will bring more shoppers into its stores, there will be repercussions  at least in the short term. When the company raised prices on its website to better align with what shoppers pay in stores, the changes sparked a 30 percent quarterly decline in same-store sales.

"It will take time for the changes to take hold and translate to improved financial results," Moran admitted in a news release.

GNC isn't the only retailer to learn how difficult it can be to wean shoppers off of discounts. In the first full quarter after Tailored Brands (TLRD) eliminated the famous Buy-One-Get-Three Free sales at its Jos. A. Bank label, that brand's same-store sales plummeted 32 percent. J.C. Penney (JCP) is still trying to recover from a failed strategy under former CEO Ron Johnson, who did away with coupons.

Story continues

In addition to reworking its prices, GNC is upgrading its cash registers and supply chain so that it can move customers through the checkout line quicker, and keep more items in stock.

"We're making these investments because we believe in this business," Moran said.

In May, GNC began working with Goldman Sachs to review its strategic options, including a potential sale of the company.

Correction: This story was revised to correct that the 3 percent decline in the stock price was Wednesday.





More From CNBC


VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Dec 29, 2016) - Sabina Gold & Silver Corp. (SBB.TO), ("Sabina" or the "Company") provides an update on the timing on a decision by the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada ("INAC").

On June 15, 2016, the Nunavut Impact Review Board ("NIRB") recommended to the federal Minister of INAC that the Back River Project not proceed to the next phase of permitting at this time. INAC has since been reviewing the NIRB Report and the Minister has three options:

Reject the NIRB Report/recommendation; Accept the NIRB Report/recommendation; or Send the project back to NIRB for reconsideration.

The federal government had originally suggested that its decision would likely be made before the end of Q4, 2016, however, they continue to consider the NIRB recommendation carefully.

Since the NIRB recommendation Sabina has continued to work with the Kitikmeot Inuit Association ("KIA") and various responsible agencies to define additional measures to address the NIRB uncertainties stated in the report. This work includes a two-day workshop on wildlife management and mitigation held in Yellowknife in October and multiple visits to the Kitikmeot communities resulting in an additional 25 meetings with the KIA, hamlet councils, hunters and trappers' organizations, advisory groups and the public since the last Company update.

Sabina continues to receive broad based Inuit support for the Project both at the final hearings in April and since the NIRB report in June. Letters written to the Minister on behalf of Sabina and the Project have been received from the KIA (the land owner) hamlet councils, hunters and trappers' organizations, community representatives, as well as the Government of Nunavut. Additionally, the Company has also been working with the KIA to progress the Inuit Impact and Benefit Agreement required for the Project.

"We had hoped to receive a decision from INAC before the end of the year," said Bruce McLeod, President & CEO "We have been working diligently with all appropriate parties in the interim towards this end. However, despite these efforts it is likely that we will not receive word from the Minister's office until early in 2017. Although this is disappointing to our shareholders, we appreciate INAC's careful consideration of the NIRB Report. We have continued to work with parties to bolster our plans and remain confident that there are no issues on the Project that cannot be addressed. We also appreciate the strong support we have received from Kitikmeot stakeholders and responsible parties: support that I believe is unprecedented for a mining project in Nunavut."

Story continues

Sabina Gold & Silver Corp

Sabina Gold & Silver Corp. is a well-financed, emerging precious metals company with district scale, world class undeveloped assets in one of the world's newest, politically stable mining jurisdictions: Nunavut, Canada.

Sabina recently released a Feasibility Study on its 100% owned Back River Gold Project which presents a project that has been designed on a fit-for purpose basis, with the potential to produce ~200,000 ounces a year for ~11 years with a rapid payback of 2.9 years. At a US$1,150 gold price and a 0.80 exchange rate, the Study delivers a potential after tax internal rate of return of approximately 24.2% with an initial CAPEX of $415 million.

In addition to Back River, Sabina also owns a significant silver royalty on Glencore's Hackett River Project. The silver royalty on Hackett River's silver production is comprised of 22.5% of the first 190 million ounces produced and 12.5% of all silver produced thereafter.

The Company has approximately C$41.5 million in its treasury (September 30, 2016) and plans to end the year with approximately C$38 million.

Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws (the "forward-looking statements"), including our belief as to the extent, results and timing of test programs and various studies, permitting and environmental assessment outcomes, and access to project funding. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the future circumstances, outcomes or results anticipated in or implied by such forward-looking statements will occur or that plans, intentions or expectations upon which the forward-looking statements are based will occur. While we have based these forward-looking statements on our expectations about future events as at the date that such statements were prepared, the statements are not a guarantee that such future events will occur and are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors which could cause events or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors and assumptions include, among others, the effects of general economic conditions, commodity prices, changing foreign exchange rates and actions by government and regulatory authorities and misjudgments in the course of preparing forward-looking statements. In addition, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements.

Known risk factors include risks associated with exploration and project development; the need for additional financing; the calculation of mineral resources and reserves; operational risks associated with mining and mineral processing; fluctuations in metal prices; title matters; government regulation; obtaining and renewing necessary licences and permits; environmental liability and insurance; reliance on key personnel; the potential for conflicts of interest among certain of our officers or directors; the absence of dividends; currency fluctuations; labour disputes; competition; dilution; the volatility of the our common share price and volume; future sales of shares by existing shareholders; and other risks and uncertainties, including those relating to the Back River Project and general risks associated with the mineral exploration and development industry described in our Annual Information Form, financial statements and MD&A for the fiscal period ended December 31, 2015 filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators and available at www.sedar.com. Although we have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. We are under no obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements except as required under applicable securities laws. This news release has been authorized by the undersigned on behalf of Sabina Gold & Silver Corp.
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Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest of the country at the crossroads of Central Asia and East Asia. Being the largest province-level division of China by area and the 8th-largest country subdivision in the world, Xinjiang spans over 1.6 million square kilometres (620,000 sq mi) and has about 25 million inhabitants. Xinjiang borders the countries of Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. The rugged Karakoram, Kunlun and Tian Shan mountain ranges occupy much of Xinjiang's borders, as well as its western and southern regions. The Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract regions, both administered by China, are claimed by India. Xinjiang also borders the Tibet Autonomous Region and the provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. The most well-known route of the historic Silk Road ran through the territory from the east to its northwestern border.
888's Research Highlights Lack of Enthusiasm among Britons for the New Year

According to the latest 888 Casino research, for many Britons the New Years Eve will be yet another night spent indoors.

The New Years Eve party used to be one of the most anticipated nights of the year. For Britons however, as a new 888 Casino research shows, the beginning of a new year is likely to happen quietly and without any champagne popping at midnight. Those who have plans for the New Years Eve should read how to get lucky in 2017 and learn more about strange traditions from around the world.

Nearly Half of Brits Will Be Asleep by Midnight

The research suggests that 42% wont stay awake to see the clock strike midnight. 6% of them are expected to be too drunk and the rest will call it a night before the New Year arrives. A massive 77% of those interviewed plan to stay at home this New Years Eve, although only 8% blame illnesses for their choice. Most are happy to see 2016 end, as 31% of Britons consider it to be one of the worst years in recent years. Even so, few consider that the beginning of a new year is worth celebrating.

What Is Keeping the Brits Home on New Year's Eve?

The main reason for why UK residents wont take it to the streets to celebrate the New Year is costly food and drinks. Bars and restaurants charge much more than they usually do and Britons are unwilling to pay for overpriced products right new. The inflated transport costs were cited as the second reason, while a general lack of money caused 56% to skip the celebrations. Apparently Christmas shopping took its toll and people are still reeling, waiting for the January paychecks.

The winter holidays proved to be exhausting for 37% of those questioned, who indicated fatigue as the reason for staying indoors. Perhaps the saddest argument was given by 21% of those interviewed, who dont have anyone to celebrate with. One in six Britons said that family commitments and childcare made it impossible to celebrate the New Years Eve outdoors.
This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.



CIA Director John Brennan warns of Russian hacking

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Have we seen this before? Informed by the same intelligence officials of ill repute who were responsible for the fraudulent evidence concocted to explain the need for war on Iraq, the U.S. is preparing to "retaliate" against Russia for leveraging Donald Trump into the presidency.

The difference this time around is that the deluge of evidence-free, pre-retaliation propaganda has been so effective that those lusting for "retaliation" are getting a totally free pass in virtually all U.S. media. The government is not required (or even asked) to provide ANY evidence -- real or fraudulent -- beyond what anonymous CIA officials whisper to tame media stenographers.

Yesterday, I discussed media reports of imminent U.S. "retaliation." Watch it below...

The supreme irony: Yes, there was gross interference in the U.S. electoral process -- but the culprits were Hillary Clinton and functionaries in the Democratic National Committee who stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders. Chapter and verse describing that theft is found in the content of the emails leaked to WikiLeaks -- by some insider who could not stomach the corruption is my best guess. (Does it tell you anything that the top five DNC officials had to resign immediately, two days before the Democratic convention?)

The U.S. media circus orchestra, conducted by maestro John Brennan, made a herculean effort to divert attention from the content of the emails, by confecting a successful story line that diverted attention to "the Russians," blaming them for "hacking" highly embarrassing (albeit authentic) emails depicting the screwing of Sanders.

Smugly, the Democrats and the media were convinced Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in for the presidency, once she fly-swatted Bernie Sanders away. Had the Democratic primary and nomination process not been so clearly corrupted, we would surely be preparing to inaugurate President-elect Bernie Sanders in three weeks.

Enough irony for today?
From WSWS



Israeli Flag

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Flatly defying last week's United Nations Security Council resolution, the Israeli government has announced that it will move ahead with thousands of new homes in East Jerusalem and elsewhere in the occupied West Bank territories seized by force nearly 50 years ago in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Jerusalem's municipal government was expected to approve more than 600 housing units in East Jerusalem at a meeting today, in what the city's deputy mayor, who is in charge of the zoning authority, called a first installment on 5,600 new homes.

"We remain unfazed by the UN vote, or by any other entity that tries to dictate what we do in Jerusalem," Meir Turgeman told the Israel Hayom newspaper. "I hope the Israeli government and the new US administration will support us so we can make up for the lack [of construction] during the eight years of the Obama administration."

Despite this disparaging reference to Obama, the Zionist program of expansion in Palestinian territories moved ahead by leaps and bounds during his presidency. The Jewish population of East Jerusalem rose from 194,000 when Obama took office in 2009 to 208,000 by the end of 2014, an increase that is small only by comparison with the expansion of settlements in the West Bank proper, whose settler population skyrocketed from 297,000 to 386,000. The combined increase in the two areas is more than 100,000, nearly 21 percent.

The conflict between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government has intensified throughout this period, with Washington clearly regarding its client state as engaging in unwarranted meddling in broader Middle East policy, particularly Netanyahu's vehement opposition to the nuclear agreement with Iran. The Israeli leader took the unprecedented step of going to Washington without a White House invitation and addressing a joint session of Congress to declare his hostility to the deal.

Last week, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, abstained rather than vetoing a Security Council resolution criticizing Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It was the first time since 1979 that the UN Security Council adopted a resolution critical of Israeli settlement policy. Every attempt since then has been blocked by a US veto.

Despite the subsequent furor, Resolution 2334 is completely toothless, lacking any enforcement mechanism. If Clinton rather than Trump were preparing to assume the presidency, there is little doubt that the White House would have instructed Power to veto the resolution. The abstention is a cynical effort to posture as evenhanded under conditions where Washington remains the principal financial, military and diplomatic sponsor of Israeli aggression and oppression of the Palestinians.

The Netanyahu government responded to the passage of the resolution, by a 14-0 vote with only the US abstaining, by immediately downgrading diplomatic relations with 12 of the countries voting for it. Two more, Venezuela and Malaysia, have no diplomatic ties with Israel.

Israeli officials summoned the ambassadors of the 12 countries for a tongue-lashing by Netanyahu, including the representatives of such powers as Russia, China, Britain, France, Japan and Spain. Netanyahu also cancelled a scheduled visit by the prime minister of Ukraine and summoned home Israeli ambassadors to Senegal and New Zealand, two of the resolution's cosponsors.

Netanyahu and his ambassador to Washington, former Republican Party operative Ron Dermer, went further in assailing the Obama administration, declaring that the US State Department had actually engineered the resolution and insured its passage, and claiming that they had "nonpublic information" to prove the charge. Dermer said he would share this evidence with the new US administration after Donald Trump becomes president on January 20.

In his formal statement, Netanyahu declared, "The Obama administration not only failed to protect Israel against this gang-up at the UN, it colluded with it behind the scenes," adding, "Israel looks forward to working with President-elect Trump and with all our friends in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, to negate the harmful effects of this absurd resolution."

The extraordinary and unprecedented vitriol of Netanyahu's attacks on Obama, despite the token character of the UN resolution, can only mean that he knows he has the support of the incoming administration for a major shift in policy toward the Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Netanyahu has been under increasing pressure from ultranationalist elements among the settlers, spearheaded by his coalition partner Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home party, who are demanding the outright annexation of large portions of the West Bank, scrapping the pretense of a "two-state solution" in which the Palestinian Authority would become the internationally recognized government of a West Bank puppet state.

In the American media, this new direction was indicated in an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal by John Bolton, the UN Ambassador during the George W. Bush administration who is a foreign policy adviser to Trump and may obtain a top position in the new administration. He claimed that the "two-state solution" was dead as of January 20 and should be replaced by what he called a "three-state solution," in which Gaza was turned over to the Egyptian military dictatorship, parts of the West Bank were turned over to Jordan, and the rest annexed to Israel. Bolton did not spell out the fate of the Palestinians in the annexed territory, but Israeli extremists have called for their outright expulsion to Jordan or other Arab countries.

Trump has selected as the next US ambassador to Israel an individual very much in sympathy with such plans for a form of "ethnic cleansing" on the West Bank. David Friedman is the real estate billionaire's personal bankruptcy lawyer. He has no diplomatic experience, but a long record as a fundraiser for West Bank settlements. Friedman has repeatedly denounced the "two-state" solution and advocated moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something Trump has pledged to do as president.

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From Wallwritings

In a hard-hitting, long-overdue speech, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday strongly criticized Israel's government, saying that Israel's settlements put the two-state solution "in jeopardy."

Barak Ravid, diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz, reported that Kerry said "trends on the ground are leading to a one-state solution."

In his speech, delivered 23 days before the U.S. turns the presidency over to Donald Trump, Kerry said:

"If the choice is one-state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both and it will not ever live in peace."

Kerry also presented the principles of what he described as a "future final status agreement: An Israeli and a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines; full rights to all citizens; a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue; Jerusalem as the capital of both states; an end to the occupation, while satisfying Israel's security needs, with a demilitarized Palestinian state; an end to all claims by both sides."

One key foreign policy voice agrees with Kerry. David Rothkopf wrote for Foreign Policy that "The settlements are hurting Israel, and true friends have the courage to tell each other what they need to hear, even when they don't want to hear it."

From the Palestinian side of what has always been an unequal "two sides," Ali Abunimah, director of the Electronic Intifada, was harsh in his reminder of the past:

"John Kerry just gave an eloquent eulogy for the two-state solution. His detailed critique of Israeli settlements and occupation was striking in its forthrightness -- rare from US officials. But it serves more than anything as an indictment of the United States, which funded, enabled and protected the brutal reality Palestinians have lived under for so long. Weeks before Obama leaves office, Kerry's speech only underscores what a total failure this administration's policies have been. Why did Obama wait until now when it is too late for him to do anything meaningful?"

The Guardian provided a short video of key moments in the speech. (Click at left to view.)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office was ready with its rebuttal:

"Just like the resolution that John Kerry advanced at the United Nations, the speech he delivered was biased against Israel. For more than an hour Kerry dealt obsessively with the settlements and almost did not touch on the source of the conflict -- Palestinian opposition to the existence of a Jewish state with any borders."

This is a repeat of Israel's narrative which treats "existence of a Jewish state" as a sacred mantra which excites its loyalists and infuriates the Palestinian people held under a military occupation.

Kerry was aware that the new Trump administration brings a strongly pro-Israel attitude to the issue. Since the American voters have just delivered the presidency to the most right-wing government in this nation's history, it was left to the Secretary to leave Trump with this warning:

"Although Netanyahu said he supports the two-state solution, his government was the most right wing in Israel's history, and its agenda was driven by the 'most extreme elements.'"

Unspoken, but implied, was the current White House leadership saying to the next White House leadership, when the Middle East sinks deeper into a quagmire of grief and destruction, "we told you so."

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From Robert Reich Blog

President-elect Donald Trump is accusing President Obama of putting up "roadblocks" to a smooth transition.

In reality, I think President Obama has been too cooperative with Trump.

In the waning days of his administration, I'd recommend Obama take the following last stands:

1. Name Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution gives the President power to fill any vacancy during the recess of the Senate. The Supreme Court is no exception: Justice William Brennan began his Court tenure with a recess appointment in 1956. Any appointments made this way expire at the end of the next Senate session. So if Obama appointed Garland on January 3, the appointment would last until December 2017, the end of the first session of the 115th Congress.

2. Use his pardoning authority to forgive "Dreamers." With a flick of his pen, Obama could forgive the past and future civil immigration offenses of the nearly 750,000 young people granted legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Without an immigration offense on their records, they could more easily apply for legal status.

3. Impose economic sanctions on Russia for interfering in the 2016 presidential election -- including blocking all loans or investments by Russian nationals in all real estate ventures in the United States.

4. Protect the civil service from the Trump transition. Instruct all cabinet departments and agencies not to respond to any Trump transition team inquiry that might intimidate any individual members of the civil service.

5. Issue an executive order protecting the independence of all government fact-finding agencies: Included would be the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Center for Education Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Energy Information. (Trump could repeal the order, but that would be politically costly.)

6. Issue an executive order protecting the independence of all Inspectors General in every cabinet department and agency. (Ditto.)

7. Issue a report on possible tax and benefit cuts, showing which state's citizens will most benefit from tax cuts going to the richest Americans and largest corporations (overwhelmingly the citizens of blue states), and which will lose the most from cuts in Medicaid and repeal of Obamacare (overwhelmingly red states), along with estimates of such gains.
See original here

By Leslie Salzillo

Not only has Donald Trump threatened and hate-mongered immigrants in this country throughout his campaign, the Republican Party has done so with the same vigor for years -- just not with the same dangerously ignorant verbiage Trump uses. Nonetheless, the combined force of the 2017 GOP-led Congress and the incoming Trump administration has many Americans fearing for millions of immigrant families -- documented and undocumented.

Now, a progressive idea has just been thrown into the loop. Political activist, historian and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky is urging, and asking others to urge President Obama into using his presidential executive powers to grant a "general pardon" to 11 million immigrants for infractions before Trump is sworn in and Republican immigration threats become reality.

Here is the transcription of Chomsky's public message to President Obama followed by the YouTube video statement lasting just over one minute.

Transcription:

"I'm Noam Chomsky. I would like to make a statement about a very critical problem that we face.



"President Obama, to his credit, has given -- issued personal pardons and deserving cases, but he should go far beyond. He should proceed to what is, in fact, an urgent necessity to grant a general pardon to 11 million people who are living and working here -- productive citizens and, all but name, threatened with deportation by the incoming administration. This would be a horrible humanitarian tragedy. "Moral outrage can be averted by a general pardon for immigration infractions, which the President could issue. And we should join to urge him to carry out this necessary step without delay."

Here is the video:

Much thanks to Noam Chomsky for his mostly controversial -- but always honest commentary. How great it would be to see this idea come into fruition. If Chomsky can suggest it, it most likely can be done. The decision may depend upon whether President Obama wants to go out "gracefully" or go out swinging. I'm hoping he'll choose Door #2.

H/T Telesur
From Smirking Chimp

I admit it: it's hard to find empathy for the liberal Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton and are now shocked, shocked, shocked that That Horrible Man Donald Trump is about to become president. We lefties kept saying (and liberals kept scoffing) that Bernie would have beaten Trump; now that we've been proven right it's only natural to want to keep rubbing the Hillarites' faces in their abject wrongness.

But what's the point? Empirical evidence can't convince a squishy liberal to move left. Liberals are congenitally attached to the big status quo, the capitalist system itself. Unlike leftists, liberals just want to reform capitalism into something less savage. This, of course, is impossible. Yet liberals' fears -- of revolution, of violence, of the chance they'll lose their current status -- block their ability to see the truth.

Anyway, many of my best friends are liberals. And they're terribly depressed at the prospect of four to eight years of President (or more for President-for-life) Trump.

I hate to see so many people so miserable (even though the very same people gloated over their Bernie-supporting brethren's pain last May). More importantly, they're right about Trump. He is a dangerous mofo for sure. We on the left, accustomed to do all the protesting and carrying on ourselves, are going to need all the help we can get from sad Hillary Clinton Democrats to take on Trump, his Republican House, his Republican Senate, his soon-to-be Republican Supreme Court and, oh yeah, his thousands of police departments, soldiers and killer drones.

So this, my dear dismayed Democrats, is for you. Things will be OK -- eventually. Between now and then, they're going to get a lot worse. But those eventual improvements will only come about if you buck up, roll up your sleeves and prepare for a lot of hard work.

The first thing I want you to understand is, there are no quick fixes to Trumpism. You already saw the futility of silly games like asking the Electoral College to throw the election after the fact. Only two "faithless electors" defected from Trump; five dumped Hillary! Also, please stop thinking Trump will be impeached. It's technically possible, but highly improbable since no president has ever faced impeachment by a Congress controlled by his own party. The system will not correct itself. The system is broken; that's why Trump won.

So what to do? Work outside the system. Resistance must take many forms, but creating a crisis of governance by militant -- i.e., unpermitted, uncooperative -- action in the streets is essential to dislodging the tyranny which many of us suspect Trump will bring into being. But not yet. First, we must allow the system's failure to become evident for all to see.

As Che Guevara wrote: "Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted."

At first, the left-liberal anti-Trump coalition must keep its powder dry. Let Trump and his junta cabinet of ultra-right generals and billionaires commit their atrocities. Let the media report on them, with little result. Watch Congress fail to exercise its constitutionally mandated oversight. Count on Democratic resistance that never materializes. See the Supreme Court validate some of Trump's horrors and reject others only to be ignored and thus exposed as impotent.

Those of us who follow politics closely know that Trump is a fascist-in-waiting. Most Americans, however, are in wait-and-see mode. If we protest too early (c.f., the anti-Trump demonstrations following Election Day), people won't support us. Let the possibilities of peaceful struggle exhaust themselves first.

Another advantage of waiting is that it allows us to study our incoming enemy. Trump will inherit Obama's police state. But he will alter its structure, tactics and strategies in ways no one can predict with certainty. We're outarmed, outequipped and outnumbered. Let's watch, and wait to see what we're up against before lashing out.

Here I take a cue from the Afghans. Poor and remote, these fierce people have repeatedly repelled invasion forces launched by far richer, better-equipped enemies: Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States. When foreign armies arrive, the Afghans melt away into the mountains. They let their adversaries settle into Kabul and other cities. They study them, poking and prodding in search of weaknesses. Then, when the time is right -- typically many years after the other side declared "victory" -- the Afghans unleash a ferocious assault that drives out the interlopers.

Trump was born in Queens. But it helps to think of him as an invader. His mish-mash protofascism, ferocious gracelessness and aversion to linear thinking or consistency are foreign to American politics and culture. He doesn't belong here. He's un- and anti-American. He's got to go.

But we have to be smart about this. That starts with you liberal Democrats: stop staring down the barrel of 2017 with fear and loathing. It's time to start planning.

We have to take our country back.


President Obama Grant Diplomatic Recognition to Palestine.

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[Preamble: Diplomatic relations with a new power are properly, and customarily inaugurated at the request of that power, expressed through an envoy sent for the purpose. The reception of this envoy, as pointed out, is primarily the act of the President. The Senate can take no part in it at all, until the President has sent in a nomination. Then it acts in its executive capacity, and, customarily, in 'executive session.' The legislative branch of the Government can exercise no influence over this step except, very indirectly, by withholding appropriations [HERE]"



Free Palestine, Open Gaza, End the Illegal Occupation, Recognize Palestine's Right to Exist

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After eight years in the main-stream propaganda media (MPM) wilderness, Palestine was granted 24 hours of the 24/7 news cycle. The public has a short memory, amnesia really, so this too will pass as have other homage to real news that informs and educates the public.

Already the lead story in the Guardian today is the death of "the Hollywood legend" Debbie Reynolds. All due respect to Ms. Reynolds and her family, but where are the reports in the MPM of the weekly Palestinians shot dead by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF); the Palestinian home demolitions in Jerusalem; the unprovoked teargassing of Al Quds University; illegal Israeli settlers beatings of 10 year old Palestinian children; and many other crimes against humanity by Israel.

To see those reports one can go to International Solidarity Movement (here), B'Tsalem (here ), Christian Peacekeeper Teams (here ), and other human rights websites for those reports. There have been at least 248 Palestinians murdered by the IOF in 2016, according to the Palestinian Chronical (here ).

One speech by President Obama and his mouthpieces every eight years is not going to resolve the daily humiliation and suffering of the Palestinians caused by Israel. To bring a just peace the United States has to join the international community in sustained criticism of Israeli human rights violation, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Strong words are needed to bring Israel ambitions of a Greater Israel to heel.

Strong words and strong actions. The U.S. has to halt the policy of unconditional support for Israel no matter what horrors they commit, stop rewarding Israel's bad conduct unconditionally with Billions of dollars in military aid every year, stop saying that Israel and Palestine are equally at fault, stop saying that the only solution is for direct negotiations between Israel and Palestine, stop lying that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East (more to follow), formally recognize the State of Palestine as 136 countries of the international community have, recognize the right of Palestine to exist and their right of self-defense, no different than any other sovereign country.

That is a long list of what the U.S. must do, but it is not a complete list. The short list is that the U.S. has to put its actions where its Obama's mouth is when it comes to democracy, human rights and American values.

About Kerry's speech yesterday, it is gratifying that the Obama administration has put light on the plight of Palestine no matter how briefly it shined. But in Secretary of State John Kerry's speech he focused on long outdated misconceptions, falsehoods and fantasy. There were only a few gems of truth and reality in his speech.

The most impressive of Kerry's soundbites, (but it was a fantasy when he spoke of the path to a two state solution), was his statement that "Israel can be either a Jewish state or a democracy, but not both".

Kerry deserves credit for even bringing up the contradiction between a Jewish State and a democratic state. Credit because in Israel's opinion Kerry crossed the line into speaking anti-Semitism. Israel considers almost any criticism of Israel to be anti-Semitism. And to question Israel as a democracy is one of the worst criticism in their opinion. To say that Israel can not exist as a Jewish and a democratic state is blasphemy according to Israel, punishable by torture and jail.

Two state solution or not, Israel cannot be a democracy as long as it insists on being a Jewish state. One out of five of Israel's citizens living inside Israel's internationally recognized border are Palestinians and non-Jewish. A democratic state cannot exclude 20% of its citizens from equal political, economic and civil rights. A Jewish state would still be a theocracy and an apartheid state. This is why Israel has never been able to write a constitution as it was required to do within six months of its establishment in 1947. It is also why the call for "one state for all its citizens" is also a crime of incitement according to Israel.

Palestinians themselves are still debating whether there should be a two state solution or a one state solution. A glance at a map (above) of the reality on the ground of what is left of Palestine's territorial integrity shows the immense difficulty of establishing a two state solution, one based on the internationally recognized border of 1967. Estimates are that only 10 to 20 percent of Palestine's 1967 territory is left intact.

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The news on cabinet picks from the Trump team is making my head spin. For that reason, I am continuing to drill down on the importance of impact at the hyperlocal level.

During the next four years, this is where the most important work will happen.

For all those discouraged people who lament, "I can't make a difference," meet Bettyann Sheats.

I spoke with Sheats by telephone, and we discussed her trajectory to becoming an elected representative of the people.

On November 8, Sheats won the race for Maine's 64th District State House seat. You may not have heard of Sheats, but the politics of Maine got plenty of coverage this past election cycle. The state's governor, Paul LePage, created his own side show which ran several news cycles when he made a series of outrageous comments. This included leaving an "unfriendly" voice message for a Democratic state legislator.

Fortunately, Sheats will not be easily intimidated. Her background includes graduating from West Point (1980-1984). Sheats was on active duty for eight years, during which time she served as a helicopter pilot.

Military training has clearly influenced the way Sheats approaches and assesses a situation. It's about evaluating the mission and carrying it out; being proactive and getting the job done.

Case in point: When Sheats' daughter was young, they enjoyed making beaded charm bracelets together. Sheats discovered that there was lead in the charms. Immediately, she took it upon herself to research her concerns.

Sheats concluded that there could be lead, cadmium, BPA and a range of other toxic chemicals in products that were common to household use -- and specifically to children.

"I also found that all of these chemicals can lead to serious health affects like learning disabilities, reproductive harm, and cancer," Sheats related. "That's why I became involved with passing the Kid Safe Products Act in Maine, which has helped ban BPA (Bisphenol A) from baby bottles, sippy cups, baby food and infant formula packaging."

While getting involved with this issue, Sheats learned that she enjoyed engaging her neighbors about concerns that were impacting them. "I liked talking to legislators about how to fix the problem. That's how I got involved in politics," she said.

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Even though he has yet to enter the Oval Office it appears that President-elect Donald Trump is already showing clear signs of how he intends to conduct his presidency. Let's call what we are currently seeing under Trump's direction the initiation of his agenda of intimidation, i.e., a political inquisition.

Additionally the GOP and, especially Paul Ryan, are making it clear that they want to repeal Obamacare as quickly as possible even though they have no plan of any kind to provide medical coverage to the many millions of Americans who are now enrolled in it. And this is just the start of the coming GOP attacks on important American social programs.

The Inquisition Begins

Trump's first act under this political inquisition began when his transition team requested the Energy Dept. to furnish it with a list of the names of that department's employees who were engaged in work related to the issue of climate change.

This from the Washington Post: "Donald Trump's transition team has issued a list of 74 questions to the Energy Department, asking agency officials to identify which employees and contractors have worked on forging an international climate pact as well as domestic efforts to cut the nation's carbon output."

As the Post pointed out, "Trump and his team have vowed to dismantle specific aspects of Obama's climate policies, and Trump has questioned the reality of climate change." After that request was received and reviewed by officials of the Energy Dept. they replied that, though the department would cooperate with the new administration, it would not furnish the names of the individuals doing this work.

Then this transition team directed another email to the State Dept. asking for it to furnish a list of individuals who are working on anti-extremism programs. It said, "Please indicate names of people serving in those roles and status (political or career)." The very ominous part of that request has to do with asking about these employees' career status.

A similar request was also made of the Dept. of Homeland Security which operates within the jurisdiction of the State Department. The request was made because Homeland Security handles threats posed by foreign extremists and terrorist groups such as ISIS.

One of the next targets of this administration will be the Consumer Protection Agency, created through the efforts of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and which has the responsibility of taking actions against companies violating consumer financial laws, including engaging in unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices. This is the agency that recently fined Wells Fargo $100 million for the widespread illegal practice of secretly opening unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts.

Trump has promised to dismantle this agency and the question is why in the world would he want to tear down an agency that guards against companies doing things that hurt the American people financially? The answer is that he is going to do anything he can to advance the interests of the Corporatists of America.

So this is how his Political Inquisition has begun and we, no doubt, are soon going to see which government agencies are his next targets.

Let's turn to a different subject, but one that is also another good example of how Trump is already going in all the wrong directions. Recently he made these Twitter comments about nuclear weapons; "The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." Well as soon as that message about increasing America's already huge arsenal of these weapons of mass destruction hit the news alarms should have sounded across this entire nation.

What exactly does he mean when he says, " until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes?" Except for North Korea's constant threats about using nuclear weapons against America and other nations, which of the current nuclear powers in the world have lost their senses about these weapons of mass destruction?

In fact, the danger of some nation using those monstrous weapons has been lessened somewhat in recent times when the Obama administration, together with Russia and several other countries, concluded an important agreement with Iran so that country would not move ahead with a program to develop nuclear weapons. So what is Trump talking about?

Trump's friend Putin announced that "Moscow must "strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces, especially with missile complexes that can reliably penetrate any existing and prospective missile defence systems." Right now out of the 9 nations that possess nuclear weapons only three, the U.S., Russia and North Korea are the ones that should "come to their senses" and stop talking about ways that would even increase this threat.

What might Trump do when he becomes president and has the capability of launching an attack using nukes? Here's a critically important question: does a U.S. president have the authority to launch a nuclear attack without proper justification?

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Renal Denervation Devices Market to Reach a value of US$1.9 Billion by 2021

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The study comprises of a strategic analysis of the global market for renal denervation devices, and growth forecast for the period from 2012  2021. The scope of the report includes competitive analysis of various market segments based on the product, technology and in-depth scrutiny for different regional markets such as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world. The Porters Five Forces analysis included in the report provides an insight into market dynamics and industry competition. The report also offers a PESTLE analysis on the market segments with regards to the future, segregated in different chapters. The report details across from 2012 to 2021 which includes the information of all projected activities in every phase of the report. The market forecast has been separated in three groups of years (2012-2015, 2015-2018 and 2018-2021) to include a separate analysis of each group. The unique analysis in this way covers all current and predicted future activities though this period and highlights key milestones in the progress of this market in the coming years.Download Exclusive Global Strategic Business Report:This report provides complete insights on the RDN devices market and also analyzes various factors responsible for market growth. These factors determine various existing trends and their impact on market growth. In all, the report includes a holistic analysis of the global renal denervation devices market, and provides an estimate of growth for the period 2012  2021, keeping in mind the various factors affecting the market.This report also analyzes current trends for hypertension treatment methods and advantages of renal denervation systems over other methods which act as a catalyst for the growth in the market. The report provides analysis of the most popular RDN device platforms such as Medtronics Symplicity, Covidiens OneShot, Boston Scientifics (Vessix Vascular) V2 system, and other emerging devices which will enable stakeholders to map their strategies.The report also analyzes growth strategies implemented by existing players which will guide emerging players to develop their own strategies and helps existing players to structure their planning process. The report also includes entry barriers to be considered to cater to the exact business opportunities in this market. Additionally, to aid in tactical decision making, the report also includes competitive profiling of leading players, recent developments in the industry and various business strategies adopted by them. This report will help manufacturers, suppliers and distributors in the renal denervation field to plan and implement their roadmap in different market areas such as emerging geographies and new technologies.1.2 Renal Denervation Devices: Market SegmentationThe study segments the market by technologies used for denervation such as Radiofrequency, Ultrasound, Micro-infusion of drugs (Chemical) and radiation. The report also segments the market according to the brand of products available in the market, particularly, Symplicity, EnligHTN, OneShot, V2 and others. Finally the report has given an in-depth analysis of the epidemiology, growth drivers and restraints by geography in the final section.Browse Full Research Report on Renal Denervation Devices Market:About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Browse market research blog:
Mobile Applications for Melanoma Detection Market Impact Analysis of Opportunities

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With the presence of a large pool of mobile applications vendors for melanoma detection, the Europe and Israel market for mobile applications for melanoma detection demonstrates a highly fragmented structure, finds a report by Transparency Market Research (TMR). The competition within the market is exceptionally high as players are constantly engaged in product innovation and advancements in current offerings.Over the forthcoming years, the leading players, namely, Dr. Mole, Spot Mole, and Melanoma Watch, are expected to shift their focus towards mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships in order to minimize the competition and improve their visibility.As per the research study, the market for mobile applications for melanoma detection in Europe is likely to progress at an exponential CAGR of 47.0% and reach US$1.4 mn by the end of the forecast period. On the other hand, the market for mobile applications for melanoma detection in Israel will register a strong rise at a remarkable CAGR of 61.20% over the period of the forecast.Request a PDF Brochure with Report Analysis:Greece to Emerge Leading Market for Mobile Applications for Melanoma Detection in EuropeThe research report also offers an analysis based on the geographical segmentation of the Europe and Israel market for mobile applications for melanoma detection. The market in Europe has been segmented into Greece and the Rest of Europe while the market in Israel has been studied separately.Due to the rise in the number of melanoma cases over the last few years, the market for mobile applications for melanoma detection in Greece has witnessed a robust growth despite the economic volatility. Apart from this, the growing penetration of smartphones has also been adding to the progress of the Greece market for mobile applications for melanoma detection. In the Rest of Europe, Sweden, the U.K., Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, and the Netherlands have been driving the demand for mobile applications for melanoma detection, on account of the high incidence rate of melanoma, and the trend is likely to continue over the forthcoming years.On the similar lines, Israel has also reported a significant rise in the market for mobile applications for melanoma detection due to the growing prevalence of melanoma and the increasing user base of smartphones. Further, the rising preference for mHealth tools among customers in this country is likely to reflect positively on the demand for mobile applications for melanoma detection over the next few years, notes the market study.Rising Incidence of Melanoma and Skin Cancer to Impact Europe and Israel Market for Mobile Applications for Melanoma Detection GreatlyThe augmenting incidence of melanoma and skin cancer has been influencing the demand for mobile applications for melanoma detection in Europe and Israel, states the author of this study. The North and West European countries are more severely affected by melanoma in comparison with the East European nations, which as a result, is leading to a rather high demand for mobile applications for melanoma detection in this part of the region.The growing trend of mHealth, boosted by the increased penetration of Internet and smartphones, is another key factor behind the growth of the market for mobile applications for melanoma detection in Europe and Israel, reports the research study.With the significant advancement in mHealth technologies, researchers expect this trend to continue to drive this market over the next few years. However, the rising concerns over the accuracy of the detection test and the high cost of regulation processes may limit the adoption of mobile applications for melanoma detection in Europe and Israel to some extent in the near future, states the report.The study presented here is based on a report by Transparency Market Research (TMR) titled Mobile Applications for Melanoma Detection Market - Europe and Israel Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 20142022.Browse Full Research Report on Mobile Applications for Melanoma Detection Market:About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Browse market research blog:
Forensic Technologies Market Forensic Tools and Products by 2019

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Used for the identification, examination, and evaluation of physical evidence gathered from a crime scene, forensic technologies are highly sought in the defense and the homeland security sectors. At an exceptional growth rate of 12.40% during the period from 2013 to 2019, the demand for these technologies are likely to register a strong growth over the next few years. According to Transparency Market Research (TMR), the opportunity in the global market for forensic technologies to expand from US$8.3 bn in 2012 to a value of US$17.6 bn by the end of 2019.In this blog post, TMR analysts answer significant queries about the worldwide market for forensic technologies:What factors will shape the future of the global forensic technologies market?Predominantly, the escalating crime rate, coupled with the sophistication of crime, has the most prominent influence on the global market for forensic technologies. Over the years, the sophistication of crime has evolved drastically. The prevalence and supply of illicit drugs have increased to great extent. Nowadays, almost every week, a novel type of illicit drug is synthesized, creating severe issues for experts in the examination of the evidence. Due to this scenario, developers of forensic technologies are being exposed to a whole new set of promising opportunities, which is likely to boost the market substantially in the long run.Download Exclusive Global Strategic Business Report:On the flip side, the decline in the government expenditure on forensic services in almost all economies will reflect negatively on this market over the next few years. However, the impact of this factor will not be much strong as the demand for these technologies will largely be unaffected in the near future.Which of the regional market will take the lead in the coming years?North America, which is the leading contributor to the global market for forensic technologies, will retain its position in the forthcoming years; however, its share in the overall market will decline sharply.Asia Pacific, on the other hand, will gain significant momentum in the next few years. DNA profiling, specifically, will witness a remarkable rise in the demand over the years to come. The untapped status of this region is alluring key market players, which are increasingly engaging into partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions with local participants.What are the most favored strategies among leading players?For business development, leading companies are relying on advancements in technologies. Recently, Bio-Rad, a global leader in forensic technologies, introduced Prime PCR probe assays for quantitative amplification. These new assays are to be utilized in qPCR gene expression analysis for human genomes. With this addition to their product portfolio, the company hopes to expand its client base.Other prominent players in this market are GE Healthcare Life Sciences, SPEX Forensics, Pyramidal Technologies Ltd., Eurofins Medigenomix Gmbh, LGC Forensics, and NMS Labs Inc.Browse Full Research Report on Forensic Technologies Market:About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Browse market research blog:
Atherectomy and Thrombectomy Devices Market Key Trends by 2023

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Atherectomy is one of the important peripheral arterial disease treatment, in which, atherosclerosis from large blood vessels are removed by using minimally invasive surgical approach. In addition, this technique is used for the treatment of coronary arterial diseases. Thromboctomy, also known as pulmonary thromboctomy, is an emergency medical treatment, by which thrombus (blood clot) is removed from arteries and veins. Thromboctomy can be performed by two technologies, by using surgery or by percutaneous techniques. However, surgical thromboctomy technique is used rarely, due to less efficient results and high cost.Atherectomy technique is a popular substitute for stents and angioplasty treatment. In case of latter, the deposited plaque is pushed inside blood vessel, however, in former, the plaque is removed by using surgical or mechanical technique. This technique has certain advantages over angioplasty and stents, such as, increased wound healing rate, reduction in claudication, reduction in threat of cardiac and other medical complications, less invasive nature, faster patient recovery, high repeatability, ease-of-performance and many others. The device is inserted in the body by making small incision to certain locations of body, such as, common femoral artery, political artery, bronchial artery and others.Download Complete Healthcare Analytical Brochure:The market of Atherectomy devices is segmented on the basis of type and mechanism of device functions, such as, orbital, laser, rotational and directional devices. However, preference of device is based on factors such as, nature and size of plaque, anatomical place to be treated, and surgeons expertise. The market for thromboctomy is also segmented on the basis of device type, such as, rotational, ultrasound enhanced and rheolytic thromboctomy devices. In addition, the market is segmented on the basis of geography, such as, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). At present, the North American region is the most prominent market, owing to increasing technological intervention in cardiac disease management. However, Asia-Pacific and some countries in RoW region are expected to show very lucrative growth in the upcoming period, owing to enhanced awareness and growth in prevalence of cardiac patients and technologies.The market for atherectomy and thromboctomy devices is expected to grow in the upcoming future at a lucrative rate, due to various market drivers, such as rapid increase in the cardiac diseases, changed life-style, increasing preference towards less invasive cardiac disease management practices, less risks involved in the procedure, decreased use of surgical practices for cardiac diseases treatment and technological growth in the development of advanced devices. Rising prevalence of cardiac disorders is one of the most important market driver. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 0.6 million of Americans die every year due to cardiac diseases, and around 720,000 Americans have a heart attack every year. Further, changed life-style is another contributor for the market growth. Due to consumption of junk food, addiction and lack of exercise, the prevalence of cardiac diseases have been increased and it contributes the market growth of Atherectomy and thromboctomy devices. On the contrary, major restraints that impose hurdles in the market growth include high cost, limited awareness in certain region of the world. Key opportunities include development of cost-effective therapy and strong focus on APAC region (since, India and China possess the largest number of cardiac patients).Some of the major players operating in the market include Bayer AG, Cardiovascular Systems, Inc., St. Jude Medical Inc., Boston Scientific Corporation, C.R. Bard, inc., Teleflex Medical Inc., and Covidien, Inc. among others.Browse Full Research Report on Atherectomy and Thromboctomy Devices Market:About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Browse market research blog:
Multilayer Ceramic Capacitor (MLCC) Market: In-depth market segmentation by 2021

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Ceramic capacitor is endowed with the alternate layers of ceramic and metal. The ceramic material acts as a dielectric. Demand for these ceramic capacitor is rising owning to increasing usage in approximately all the electronics devices. The growth of new designs of MLCCs with improved bypassing, higher capacitances, decoupling and filtering capabilities is estimated to increase ceramic usage. MLCC designs results are ensuring ever thinner layers: even less than one micron thick. With this technological advancement, MLCCs are not only smaller in size, but have better charge capacity owning to the increased number of layers. The industry trend in the direction of finer layers is creating the role of filtration more critical for MLCC manufacture.Request for Sample Report:MLCC are used in several applications such as AC-AC and DC-DC converters and for EMI suppression. Ceramic capacitors of particular styles and shapes are used for RFI/EMI suppression and as power capacitors in larger dimensions for transmitters. The multilayer ceramic capacitor market is expected to show the double digit growth at a CAGR during forecast period.The major key factor that contributes to growth of this market is the increasing demand for multilayer ceramic capacitor in the electronics industry. The demand for MLCC is rising in the electronics industry with continuous increase in requirement of high-specification electronic gadgets. The demand for MLCC is majorly created by computers, televisions, mobile phones and other consumer electronics. The companies of high-end electronic devices and equipment have increased the use of MLCCs in electronic device. The multilayer ceramic capacitor has also been witnessing a constant decline in prices. However, the inherent drawback of ceramic capacitor is MLCC has ceramic as dielectric material that is flat to physical damage and may easily get cracked.The MLCCs should be handled with utmost care; otherwise the lifetime of MLCCs would get shorten. The different geographical regions for this market include North America, Europe, Asia-pacific and Rest of the World. The APAC region is the key manufacturing land for electronic device manufacturers. The constant demand for MLCCs in Asia Pacific has led to the appearance of manufacturers from several Asian countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and China. Manufacturers from Asian countries are increasing the production with the improved technologies for production of MLCCs. Moreover, these Asian companies offer MLCCs at comparatively low cost than the companies from other countries. Development and Market size trends of main MLCC application fields in China include computers, mobile phones and TV.Request for Table of content:Some of the major vendors for multilayer ceramic capacitor are Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Taiyo Yuden Co. Ltd., Fenghua Advanced Technology, Murata, Kyocera, YAGEO, Walsin Technology Corp., Chaozhou Three-Circle and Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co. Ltd. Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Murata stress the Chinese market than other markets. Samsung Electro-Mechanics set up four MLCC production plants in Tianjin, Suzhou and Dongguan to generate almost all the types of products. Murata has already established plants in Wuxi and Beijing and its product portfolio covers a wide range.About Us:Persistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact Us:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Costume Jewelry Market is Anticipated to Grow with an Effective CAGR By 2020

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Costume jewelry (also known as fashion jewellery, trinkets, junk jewelry, fake jewelry and fallalery) is a jewelry made of less valuable materials as compared with valuable materials such as gold, diamond, platinum and other precious metals and gem. The raw material used for these jewelleries include base metals, glass, plastic, synthetic stones, semi-precious stones, beads, ivory, lac, leather, terracotta, pearl and metals such as silver, aluminum and brass. On the basis of products, the costume jewelry industry is broadly categorized as bracelets, brooch, earrings, necklaces, chokers, bangles, finger rings, toe rings, anklets and pendants.Request to view Sample Report @The costume Jewelry industry operates as a true global industry as the raw materials are mostly sourced from Australia, Africa, Russia and Canada, manufacturing takes place in China, India, Italy and Turkey whereas the largest markets is North America, followed by Europe.The developing economies such as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are the fasted growing market with double digit growth rates. Asia Pacific is the largest producer of costume jewelry and expected to take over North America in terms of consumption in the coming years. High growth rate in Asia Pacific region is attributed to the rising income of the consumers in these countries. Further, with the massive urbanization and westernization taking place, the consumers are now becoming more fashionable and trendy. Moreover large population of young consumers (average age is 29 year and 37 year respectively for India and China) are also a key contributor in overall growth of costume jewelry in these countries.The key drivers for the costume jewelry include increasing prices for gold and other precious gems and pearls, internationalization of brands and increasing demand of men costume jewelry. Some of the key challenges for the costume jewelry industry include rising raw material cost and fad sensitive market of fashion jewelry. The unorganized supply chain of the raw materials in costume jewelry industry also act as a major restraint for the industry as it sometimes lead to steep hike in the prices of raw materials. Online channels, which are still new trend, offer new opportunity for the market.Request to view Table of content @Some of the major player in operating in the industry includes, Buckley Jewellery Limited, The Colibri Group, Avon Products Inc, Swank Inc, H. Stern Com. & Ind. S.A., Cartier SA, Channel S.A., Louis Vuitton North America, Inc., Stuller, Inc., Yurman Design, Inc., Billig Jewelers, Inc. and Gianni Versace S.p.A.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each PMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With a wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve clients and satisfy their overall research requirement.For information regarding permissions, contact:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesTel: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWebsite:media@persistencemarketresearch.com
Crystal Oscillator Market: Explores New Growth Opportunities By 2024

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Crystal oscillators are the main components of an electronic device. It uses piezoelectricity exhibited by certain crystals. It creates the waveforms which gives exact frequency which is based on mechanical vibration of the precision machined crystal.Request for Sample Report:The key drivers of this market includes increase in advancement of smartphones and tablets, placement of 3G and 4G networks, advancement in healthcare equipments and increasing demand for sophisticated and discerning automotive customers among others. The main factor restraining the market growth is the development of Si-Mems oscillators in the market. The biggest opportunity of this market is the evolution of Quartz Mems technology.The market is segmented on the basis of applications which includes telecom and networking, aerospace and military, consumer electronics, measurement and research, automotive, medical equipment and industrial among others. In addition, the market is segmented on the basis of technology which includes AT Cut, BT Cut and SC Cut oscillators.Request for Table of content:Some of the key players in the embedded system market are Aker Technology, Connor Winfield, Croven Crystals, CTS Corporation, East Crystal Electronic, Fox Electronics, Mercury Electronics, Siward Crystal Technology, Tongfang Guoxin Electronics and Vectron International among others.About Us:Persistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact Us:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Asia Pacific and Middle East to lead Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) Antibodies Market by 2015-2021

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EGFR is the primary receptor recognized in a group of receptors and is a cell surface protein that binds to epidermal growth factor. EGFR is a cell membrane growth factor receptor characterized by tyrosine kinase receptor which plays very important role in the control of key cellular transduction pathways in both normal and cancerous cells. EGFR is the first molecular target against which monoclonal antibodies (mAb) have been developed in cancer therapy.Get a copy of free Sample Report @On the basis of types, the global epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) antibodies market is segmented into cetuximab, panitumumab, and nimotuzumab. Cetuximab and panitumumab are the most favored EGFR antibodies which are utilized for treatment of cancer. Nimotuzumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody that recognizes the EGFR antibody. These antibodies are used in the treatment of colorectal tumor as single chairmen and in mix with routine chemotherapy.The report covers forecast and analysis for the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) antibodies market on a global and regional level. The study provides historic data of 2015 along with a forecast from 2016 to 2021 based on revenue (USD Million). The report also offers detailed competitive landscape of the global epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) antibodies market. It includes company market share analysis, product portfolio of the major industry participants. The report provides detailed segmentation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) antibodies market based on type segment. Cetuximab, panitumumab, and nimotuzumab are different type of EGFR antibodies.Get in-depth TOC (Table of Contents) with Tables and Figures @Increasing rate of cancer around the world, and advancement in the treatments are few drivers for EGFR antibody market. Prevalence of cancer is high in North America specifically in U.S. Cancer cases globally are escalating at an alarming rate. Cancer represents a key challenge to development, undermining economic and social advances all over the world. Breast cancer is most common diagnosed cancer and second leading cause of death amongst women in the U.S. According to World Cancer Report, produced by the WHO's specialized cancer agency, predicted that new cancer cases would rise from 14 million annually in 2012 to 22 million within two decades.Geographically, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) antibodies market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. EGFR antibody market was dominated by North America followed by Europe. Key players in this market are Biocon ltd, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Vaccinex, NovelMed Therapeutics, Janssen Biotech (J&J), Merck, Angiochem , Bio-Synthesis, Antibody SystemsInquire more before buying this report @Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) Antibodies Market: Type Segment AnalysisCetuximabPanitumumabNimotuzumabEpidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) Antibodies Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East & AfricaBrowse detail report @About Us:Syndicate Market Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Syndicate Market Research cover more than 30 industries including energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with the one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Contact Us:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8138Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@syndicatemarketresearch.comWebsite:
Document Imaging Scanner Market to generate strong growth by 2015-2021

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Document imaging or electronic imaging is a technology that allows users to scan hard copy documents into a computer system. Scanned documents are stored digitally in a system called digital version of the document. Microfilm, printers, copiers, facsimile machines, document scanners, multifunction printers, archive writers and computer output microfilm (COM) are some forms of document imaging systems. Due to growing standardization of imaging from the business point of view, document imaging scanner modernizes various business processes. Additionally, improved effectiveness also generates competitive advantage and better customer satisfaction of document imaging scanner.Get a copy of free Sample Report @The advancement in technology coupled with the adoption of compliance initiatives and the need for minimization in operating cost are the key factors associated with the development of document imaging scanner market. The increasing demand of network scanners has affected the growth of document imaging scanner market positively. Document imaging scanners are referred as a larger infrastructure strategy. Document imaging scanner increases the sales potential for the resellers, especially when it is considered as a standalone solution.The report covers forecast and analysis for the document imaging scanner market on a global and regional level. The study provides historic data of 2015 along with a forecast from 2016 to 2021 based on revenue (USD Million). The report also offers a detailed competitive landscape of the global document imaging scanner market. It includes company market share analysis, the product portfolio of the major industry participants. The report provides detailed segmentation of the document imaging scanner market based on application segment and region. Home, corporation, public office, retail store, medical institution, bank, educational institute, insurance and others are application segment of document imaging scanner market.Get in-depth TOC (Table of Contents) with Tables and Figures @Major regional segments analyzed in this study include North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa. This report also provides further bifurcation of the region on the country level. Major countries analyzed in this reports are U.S., Germany, France, UK, China, Japan, India, and Brazil.The report covers detailed competitive outlook including company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Newgen Software, Inc., Epson America, Inc., Fujitsu Technology Solutions, Canon, Inc., Hewlett-Packard Company, and Eastman Kodak Company.Inquire more before buying this report @The report segments the global document imaging scanner market into:Global Document Imaging Scanner: Application Segment AnalysisHomeCorporationPublic OfficeRetail StoreMedical InstitutionBankEducational InstituteInsuranceOthersGlobal Document Imaging Scanner: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East & AfricaBrowse detail report @About Us:Syndicate Market Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Syndicate Market Research cover more than 30 industries including energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with the one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Contact Us:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8138Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@syndicatemarketresearch.comWebsite:
Truck Manufacturing Market is Expected to Rise at a Remarkable CAGR During 2015 to 2021

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Global truck manufacturing market is increasing mostly due to the growing population and increasing industrialization which is leading to the growth of logistics. After the Second World War, the industry and commerce activities grew at a rapid pace in the key developed countries which pace up the growing truck manufacturing market. With the growing e-commerce industry, the demand for shipping has increased which in turn has been creating propelling the truck manufacturing market. New emission regulations have been leading to the old truck models needs to be dumped which is creating new demands for the truck manufacturing industry.Request to view Sample Report @Truck manufacturing market can be segmented in five categories namely light rigid commercial trucks, medium rigid commercial trucks, heavy rigid commercial trucks, heavy combination commercial trucks and multi combination commercial trucks. Trucks are segmented on the basis of their Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM). Light rigid commercial trucks include trucks of small sizes that have a GVM of about 4,500-8,000 kilograms. Medium rigid commercial trucks have two axles and a GVM of 8,000-9,000 kilograms. Heavy rigid commercial trucks have three or more axles and have the same GVM as of medium rigid commercial trucks. Heavy combination and Multi combination commercial trucks have GVM of over 9,000 kilograms. A mover plus semi-trailer combination is an example of heavy combination rigid commercial trucks, whereas road trains are the types of multi combination commercial trucks.One of the key restraints for the global truck manufacturing market is the unstable crude oil prices which is affecting the profitability of the fleet owners. Poor road infrastructure in the developing countries has been a prevailing challenge for the trucks manufacturing market which is making the trucking activities strenuous and prone to frequent breakdowns. The global truck manufacturers have been increasing the number of their service stations in order to build customer relationships which are to a great degree dependent on servicing facilities provided by the companies. Besides, the increasing price of raw materials including iron and steel is leading to the hike in the prices of trucks.Germany is known to be the logistics hub of Europe due to its high level of industrial and commercial activities. With the recovering European economy, the truck manufacturing industry in the region is also gaining the lost confidence due to the Euro-zone crisis. Commerce and trade are developing at a fast pace in Brazil and the Middle East countries. The increasing number of vendors for the components of truck is providing ample growth opportunities for the truck manufacturing market.Among regions, Asia Pacific was the largest truck manufacturing market, followed by North America. North America and Europe have been constantly losing their shares, which is being gained by the emerging markets in Asia Pacific and Middle East. Among countries, China was the largest truck manufacturing market globally by volume in 2013.Request to view Table of content @The major players in truck manufacturing market include Daimler Trucks, Volvo Trucks, Scania, MAN, Paccar, Iveco and Isuzu. Most of the key players in the truck manufacturing market are operating with their subsidiaries. Daimler operates with its subsidiaries Mercedes Benz, Freightliner, Western Star and Mitsubishi Fuso. Volvos subsidiaries include Volvo, Renault Trucks, Mack and UD Trucks. Paccar operates with its subsidiaries Kenworth, Peterbilt and DAF Trucks.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each PMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With a wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve clients and satisfy their overall research requirement.For information regarding permissions, contact:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesTel: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWebsite:media@persistencemarketresearch.com
US to announce new sanctions against Russia in response to election hacking

The White House is preparing to announce retaliatory measures against Russia for its role in directing cyber attacks in the United States, two senior officials confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday.

In October, the United States formally blamed Russia for political hacking attacks , saying they were intended to interfere with American elections. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Interfax that the accusations are "nonsense."

The new actions, which would be an update of a 2015 executive order, could be announced as early Thursday or Friday, the officials said. They would also likely include economic sanctions coordinated by the Treasury department.

The unannounced measures will be covert and include cyber options, NBC News reported.

Earlier on Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham said Russia and Vladimir Putin should expect "bipartisan sanctions coming that will hit Russia hard, particularly Putin as an individual."

In response to Graham's statements, a spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry promised retaliation in the event of new economic sanctions.

"To be honest, we are tired of lie about the 'Russian hackers', which is being poured down in the United States from the very top," Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.



She also called reports of possible new sanctions a "provocation directed by the White House".



 NBC News' Andrea Mitchell and Reuters contributed to this report.
Military Land Vehicles Market : Evaluation of Recent Industry Developments For 2015 to 2021

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Land military is one of the basic forms of border defense of a country. Military land vehicles have been growing at a rapid pace due to increasing purchases by the emerging economies with large population who need increased land-protection. However, the military land vehicles market is expected to grow at a sluggish rate in the short term due to austerity in several major markets. The economic slowdown in Europe is another factor for the low growth in the short term. The traditional markets for military land vehicles such are the U.S. are mostly up-grading and maintaining their existing military fleets rather than replacing them with the new ones.Request to view Sample Report @The expected cuts in the U.S. vehicle programs are expected to lead to a slowdown of military land vehicles market in the region in the short term. The major land military vehicles of the U.S. include Stryker program, MI I3 replacement, Abrams/Bradley/Paladin Capability enhancement, Ground Combat Vehicle JLTV and FMTV. The major land vehicles owned by other countries include FRES, OUVS, Warrior & Challenger (the U.K.), Boxer (Netherlands), Future AIFV (Spain), PUMA AIFV (Germany), Freccia (Italy), Strategic Military Program (Brazil), Altay MBT (Turkey), K21 AIFV and K2 MBT (South Korea), Abrams Tank up-gradation (Iraq), Future MBT and Abhay (India), Land 121 and Project Overlander (Australia), Project Vistula, Sepula, Hoefyster (South Africa), TSS MBT up-gradation (Peru) and Main battle tank (Columbia) .The asymmetric warfare and increasing operation pressures are compelling the governments to focus on new breed of military land vehicles with focus on mobility and transportation, propulsion, transportability, interoperability with other elements, logistics footprint and lifetime cost. The increasing need for agile and efficient vehicles is driving the market for lightweight and hybrid military land vehicles. The U.K. which played significant role in Iraq and Afghanistan operation faced a defense budget deficit of USD 60billion post operation which led to an aggressive Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR) to recover from this. The legacy vehicles in France including AMX-10 RC, VAB and ERC-90 are to be replaced by VBMR and EBRC vehicles.Request to view Table of content @The governments in the western countries are practicing lean military force and are therefore downsizing their armed forces. However, they are replacing their cold-war era equipments and investing in new technologies. The Department of Defense (DOD) in the U.S. is planning to downsize its soldiers strength by 80,000 and the marine corps by 20,000. Among regions, North America dominated global sales followed by Asia Pacific. With the economic recovery of Europe by the mid of the decade the military land vehicles market in the region is expected to grow at a fast pace. Military land vehicles market is consolidated with small number of players operating in the market. The key players in military land vehicles market are General Dynamics, BAE Systems, Oshkosh Corporation, Rheinmetall, ST Engineering and Navistar. The military land vehicle manufacturers are increasing their focus on Asia Pacific and Middle East markets. In the decade 2001-2010, the series of wars led to Urgent Operational Requirements (UORs) where the manufacturers of military land vehicles enjoyed great profits. The present decade mostly features cold war thus marring the scope for UORs. However, any eruption of war can give the military land vehicles industry a skyrocketing growth.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each PMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With a wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve clients and satisfy their overall research requirement.For information regarding permissions, contact:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesTel: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWebsite:media@persistencemarketresearch.com
Fire Sensors and Detectors Market will generate new growth opportunities by 2021

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Fire sensors and detectors are designed to detect and respond to the presence of a fire or smoke in the areas. Fire sensor and detector system has the property to sense radiations coming out the fire. Fire sensors and detectors are security systems that provide protection against fire. Fire sensor and detector systems integrate a variety of technology such as gas detection and smoke sensing technology, which help to speed up response time. There are different types of fire sensors and detectors such as carbon monoxide and smoke sensors that provide early fire warnings.Get a copy of free Sample Report @The fire sensors and detectors market is mainly driven by the increasing security issues and accidents. The presence of government regulations regarding citizen and worker safety is also expected to propel market demand in the near future. Fire sensor and detector systems offer various benefits such as rapid fire detection, location identification, and easy maintenance and are expected to positively impact the fire sensor and detector market growth over the forecast period. However, the high cost of installation and maintenance may hamper the market growth over the years. Nonetheless, technological advancement is expected to open up new growth avenues in the near future.The study provides historic data of 2015 along with a forecast from 2016 to 2021 based on revenue (USD Million). The global fire sensor and detector market is segmented on the basis of application, end-user, and region. Some of the key applications include the fire sensor and detector markets such as perimeter security, port security, energy security, public safety and security and others.Get in-depth TOC (Table of Contents) with Tables and Figures @Based on different end-user, fire sensor and detector market is segmented as manufacturing, mining, transportation & logistics, healthcare & life science, energy & utilities, retail and wholesale distribution, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) and government sector. Fire sensor and detector systems are widely used in hospitals or medical facilities.Geographically, the fire sensor and detector market have been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East & Africa, further bifurcation of a region on the country level, which includes U.S., Germany, UK, France, China, Japan and India. North America has witnessed a significant growth of fire sensor and detector market in recent past years on account of increasing technological advancement in this region. Asia Pacific is expected to exhibit significant growth in the near future.Inquire more before buying this report @Some of the key players in the global fire sensors and detectors market includes Tyco International Ltd, Bosch Security Systems, United Technologies Corporation, Siemens AG and Honeywell International, IncThis report segments the global the fire sensor and detector market as follows:Fire Sensors and Detectors Market: End-User Segment AnalysisManufacturingMiningTransportation & LogisticsHealthcare & Life ScienceEnergy & UtilitiesRetail And Wholesale DistributionBankingFinancial Services And Insurance (BFSI)Government SectorFire Sensors and Detectors Market: Application Segment AnalysisPerimeter securityPort securityEnergy securityPublic safety and securityOthersFire Sensors and Detectors Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East & AfricaBrowse detail report @About Us:Syndicate Market Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Syndicate Market Research cover more than 30 industries including energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with the one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Contact Us:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8138Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@syndicatemarketresearch.comWebsite:
Bath And Shower Market - Global Industry Size, Share, Trends, Analysis 2018

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OverviewA key growth driver for the global bath and shower market is the establishment of product innovations to create new designs and types of bath and shower accessories. The use of nature-based ingredients is another driving factor for the market. The emergence of new manufacturers has created a much broader scope of growth, promoting new innovations in product as well as packaging, changes and influences in lifestyle, competitive pricing, and more distribution avenues. Multi-functional products is a fast-catching trend in the bath and shower market, with the skin care sub-sector posing the greatest challenge due to increasing consumer attention.The report categorizes the global bath and shower market according to product application, into the segments of baby care, color cosmetics, depilatories, fragrances, deodorants, hair care, mens grooming, mass cosmetics, power toothbrushes, oral care, kits, sun care, and skin care.Download Research Brochure PDF@According to regions, the Asia-Pacific zone leads the global bath and shower market. Latin America, especially Brazil, is showing the fastest growth rate in this market. Most small retail services have started to diminish in number due to the extension of services provided by grocery stores and shopping malls.Companies mentionedMost of the key players mentioned in the report are based in North America and Europe. This exhaustive list contains the top names in the bath and shower market such as American Lorain Corporation, H.J. Heinz Company, Johnson & Johnson, Campbell Soup Company, Annies Inc., Colgate-Palmolive Company, Procter and Gamble, Unilever, Archer Daniels Midland Company, B&G Foods Holdings, and ConAgra Foods Inc.The report generates an overview of the global bath and shower market by explaining its most important areas of applications, consumer demographics, and major products. All values, both estimations and actual sums will be given in US Dollars. Our analysts investigate the deeper aspects of this market with respect to its growth rate and overall capacities, and expand on each topic in the intelligence report. It investigates both pre-existing and modern information to offer the most unique perspectives on the global bath and shower market, by involving all known growth factors and constraints gone through by it.Major geographies analyzed under this research report are:EuropeNorth AmericaAsia-PacificRest of the WorldThis report gives you access to decisive data such as:Market growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for the coming yearsBrowse Full Report@About Us:-Transparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact Us:-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
Thermal Spray Coatings Market Worth US$ 7,983.1 Mn by 2016 end

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The long-term outlook for the global thermal spray coatings market remains positive, with market value expected to increase at a CAGR of 5.9% during the forecast period. Cold spray and High-Velocity Oxy-fuel (HVOF) segments are expected to expand at highest CAGRs over the forecast period.Global sales of thermal spray coatings are estimated to be valued at US$ 7.6 Bn by 2016 end, witnessing a Y-o-Y growth of 5.6% over 2015. North America and Europe are estimated to collectively account for a market value share of over 50% in the global thermal spray coatings market by 2016 end and are anticipated to remain dominant throughout the forecast period.The aerospace and power generation industries are actively focusing on the development of advanced surface coating processes. The presence of hexavalent chromium and environmental issues related to it has caused various end-use industries to look for alternatives. As a result of this, thermal spray coatings have gained traction as a replacement for hard chromium plating in the aerospace industry. Revenue generated from sales of thermal spray coatings is expected to increase at a CAGR of 5.9% over the forecast period. Thermal spray coatings are used in medical implants as well. Increasing use of titanium and hydroxyapatite coatings in biomedical implants using thermal spray technology, is expected to drive the growth of the thermal spray coatings market over the forecast period. However, thermal spray coating is a line-of-sight coating process, i.e. it covers only the part which is in a line of the coating system. Moreover, robotic functions and frequent adjustments in case of complex geometries lead to high cost of thermal spray coatings, which is expected to inhibit the growth of the market over the forecast period.By material type, ceramics segment is expected to continue to dominate the market in terms of value throughout the forecast period. This segment is also expected to witness high growth over the forecast period. Metals, alloys, and carbides are estimated to collectively account for a market value share of over 50% by the end of 2016. On the basis of process type, cold spray segment is expected to expand at double-digit CAGR in terms of value over the forecast period. This is mainly attributed to it being suitable for depositing a wide range materials on various types of substrate materials, especially those that are temperature sensitive.On the basis of application, aerospace segment is expected to account for a market value share of 37.4%, valued at US$ 4.7 Bn by 2024 end. Industrial gas turbines segment is expected to expand at the highest CAGR in terms of value over the forecast period. Increasing energy requirements across the globe are expected to increase demand for high-performance engines and turbines. This, in turn, is projected to fuel demand for thermal spray coatings, as this process provides excellent coatings and exhibits superior resistance to wearing and corrosion. Hence, Industrial gas turbines segment is anticipated to be the fastest growing segment during the forecast period.Request Report Sample @Sales of thermal spray coatings in North America is estimated to account for highest share by the end of 2016. Sales in Asia Pacific is expected to increase at the highest CAGR over the forecast period.For More Information Request TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report @Key players in the global thermal spray coatings market include Sulzer Ltd., Oerlikon Group, Praxiar Ltd., Bodycote plc., Abakan Inc., Curtis-Wright Corporation, Metallisation Ltd., Thermal Spray Technologies Inc., and ASB Industries, Inc. The thermal spray coatings market has witnessed various merger and acquisition activities, leading to industry consolidation over the last few years. Most of these activities were undertaken by market leaders in North America and Europe markets.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
New Trends of Agriculture Equipment Market with Worldwide Industry Analysis to 2025

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Agriculture equipment are the machine tools used in the various stage of agriculture such as harvesting, planting, threshing and agro processing. Agriculture equipment are replacing traditional tools: for traditional practice in land development, tillage and seed bed preparation plough and blade harrow were used but current practice includes tractors, mould board plough and power tiller.Agriculture Equipment Market: Drivers & RestraintsGrowing population at faster pace is the main driver for agricultural equipment market as it spurs the need of food which aggressively demand for better equipment for agriculture. Though agriculture equipment help in the cultivation but farmers are in having financial issues to replace the old equipment with new machinery, which hindered the growth of the global agriculture equipment market. Asia Pacific is one of the major user of tractor.Agriculture Equipment Market: SegmentationOn the basis of product type, agriculture Equipment market is broadly segmented as:TractorCombine HarvesterThrasherRotavatorRequest Free Report Sample@Self-Propelled Vertical Conveyer ReaperZero Till Seed DrillMulti Crop PlanterPower TillerLaser Land LevelerRice TransplanterPower SprayPower WeederDrip Irrigation EquipmentSprinkler Irrigation EquipmentOn the basis of process, the market is segmented into:Land Development, Tillage, Seed Bed PreparationSowing & PlantingWeed Inter CultivationPlant ProtectionHarvesting & ThreshingPost-Harvest & Agro ProcessingAgriculture Equipment Market: Region  Wise OutlookAsia  Pacific region is expected to dominate the market during the forecasted period aided by China and India the fastest growing agriculture equipment market. Growing population will increase the demand of food in these countries, which in return increase the demand of better harvesting machinery. Europe and North America agriculture equipment market is expected to show a moderate growth. With rapid technological advancement and growing population agriculture Equipment market is expected to increase at a double CAGR during the forecast period.Request For TOC@Agriculture Equipment Market: Key PlayersSome of the players in the market we identified includes, CNH Industrial NV, AGCO Corp, J.C. Bamford Excavators Limited, Iseki & Co. Ltd, Mahindra & Mahindra Limited, Deere & Company and Kubota Corporation.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Business Email Market Analysis and Segments 2016-2026

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Electronic mail solution or preferably called email solution, specializes in the day-to-day management of your email services which allows users to remain focused on more critical operations of business. Email solution providers make it simple for organizations and enterprises to communicate across as well as get tasks implemented by offering a reliable, business suited email software to meet such needs. The business email solution offers multiple layers of premium virus and spam protection and keep hosted email advertisement free. Business organizations across the globe are now steadily adopting the strategy of migrating their email to cloud to reduce costs. The enumeration of organizations migrating to cloud-based email and collaboration services has continued to build over the past few years, where previously small and medium business (SMB) were the key end-users of business email solutions, now larger organizations are aggressively moving to the cloud. The current number of email users worldwide in 2015 is recognized to be about 2.6 billion, and this figure is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR till 2026. While total worldwide email traffic estimated to about 200 billion email per day in 2015, the corporate emails represent the major share of this total value.Business Email Market: SegmentationBusiness email market is segmented on the basis of deployment model, end-user and region. According to deployment model, business email market can be segmented into on-premise and cloud-based deployment. On the basis of end-user, business email market can be segmented into small business, medium business and large enterprises. Regionally, business email market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa (MEA), Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) and Japan.Request Free Report Sample@Business Email Market: Regional OutlookBusiness email market is witnessing stable growth and is expected to grow steadily during the projected period. North America is the dominating region in business email market and is expected to remain dominant followed by Western Europe during the forecast period. Asia-Pacific is expected to exhibit highest CAGR due to rapid progress in enterprise sector across evolving economies of countries like India, China and Philippines.Business Email Market: DriversBusiness email market is being primarily driven by organizations need for a formal communication platform. Growing influx of SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) and SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) across the globe is driving the growth of business email market. Furthermore, increasing popularity of cloud-based business email solutions is expected to fuel the growth of business email market during the projected period. However, security concerns regarding cloud-based email solutions coupled with need for dedicated internet connection are expected to restrain the growth of business email market amidst the forecast period 2016-2026.Request For TOC@Business Email Market: Key PlayersThe key vendors in the Business email market include Google Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Yahoo Inc., Rediff.com India Ltd., Rackspace Hostings Inc., GoDaddy Inc., IBM Corporation, Intermedia.net Inc., Fastmail, Zoho Corporation and others. Major players in the business email market boost their market share by mergers & acquisitions with other players in the market. Furthermore, long-term collaboration with cloud-based storage providers is another strategy followed by major business email providers to gain competitive edge.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Pine Derived Chemicals Market Analysis and Value Forecast Snapshot by End-use Industry 2016-2026

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The chemicals derived from pine tree and its parts occur naturally. Thus, pine is a renewable source of chemicals that find applications across a diverse set of industries. Pine trees occur predominantly in regions like North America, Latin America, Asia and Scandinavia. Traditionally, these pine derived chemicals have been used in adhesives industry, construction industry and healthcare sector among the others. In the recent past, these pine derived chemicals have been used in applications such as in printing inks, adhesives, soaps & detergents, resins, plasticizers, surface coatings, fragrance chemicals among the others. The pine chemicals are obtained from distillation of semi-solid extracts of resin and fatty oil. Primarily, pine based products are derived from gums, stumps and by products of Kraft pulp. Pine chemicals include rosin, tall oil, turpentine, resin etc. Major chemicals like turpentine, tall oil fatty acids (TOFA) and resin acids among the others are derived from by-product of sulphate pulping process.Global Pine Derived Chemicals Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe chemicals derived from pine trees are naturally occurring and thus environmentally friendly. Their use results in lower carbon dioxide emissions as compared to those from use of traditional sources. In the recent past, extensive use of products derived from crude oil and natural gas have led to increased pollution and environmental concern. Hence, there is a pressing need to decrease the consumption of fossil fuels in order to reduce carbon footprints and carbon dioxide emission. Thus, demand for these eco-friendly pine derived chemicals is expected to witness a steady growth over the forecast period. Pine trees, the source of these pine derived chemicals do not occur abundantly across the globe but are concentrated in regions of North America, Latin America, and in some European & Asian countries. As such, the limited availability is expected to create a challenge to the growth of the global pine derived chemical market during the forecast period.Request Free Report Sample@Global Pine Derived Chemicals Market: SegmentationThe global pine derived chemical market is segmented on the basis of application, type and geographical region.Based on the type of chemical, global pine derived chemical market is segmented in to the following key market segments:Tall Oil Rosin (TOR)Tall Oil Fatty acid (TOFA)Gum RosinGum TurpentineSterolsOthersAlso depending on the End-use industry, the global pine derived chemical market is segmented as below:Printing inksAdhesives & paintsRubberPaper and pulpOthersGlobal Pine Derived Chemicals Market: Regional OutlookThe global pine derived chemical market is segmented on the basis of geography into seven key regions namely North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) and Japan. North America region has a strong presence in global pine derived chemical market followed by Asia Pacific. The United States accounted for the largest share in global pine derived chemicals market. Increasing demand for environmentally friendly products in order to reduce the carbon footprints is expected to drive the global pine derived chemical market during the forecast period.Request For TOC@Global Pine Derived Chemicals Market: Key playerskey players operating in global pine derived chemical market are as follows:Eastman Chemical CompanyIngevity (MeadWestvaco Corporation)Arizona Chemical Company, LLCGeorgia-Pacific Chemicals, LLCHarima Chemicals GroupArakawa Chemical Industries, Ltd.Renessenz LLC.Foreverest Resources Ltd.Mentha and Allied Products Pvt. Ltd.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Growing Geriatric Population Fuels Demand from Elderly and Disabled Assistive Devices Market

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Elderly and disabled assistive devices comprise of all the devices that are utilized by the population for movement, listening, reading and other activities of life. Geriatric population are not self dependent for various day to day activities of life, they need support of various equipments and devices to perform different needful things of life.Download Exclusive Sample of this Report:In the same manner, disabled people also require these devices. The devices which make their life easy, comfortable and independent are classified as elderly and disabled assistive devices. The overall elderly and disabled assistive devices market is segmented into medical mobility aids and ambulatory devices, medical furniture and bathroom safety products, vision and reading aids and hearing aids.Each of the segments has been further classified into various sub-segments based on the types of products. Medical mobility aids and ambulatory devices include wheelchairs, medical scooters, cranes and crutches, door openers, walkers and rollators and transfer lifts. Medical furniture and bathroom safety products include medical beds, commodes and showers chairs, ostomy products and bars and railings. Vision and reading aids include Braille translators, reading machines and video magnifiers.Hearing aids include receiver-in-the-ear aids, behind-the-ear aids, in-the-ear aids, canal hearing aids, bone anchored hearing aids and cochlear implants. The market size and forecast for the period 2011 to 2019, in terms of USD million, considering 2012 as the base year has been provided for each segment and sub-segment in the report. The compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) for each segment has been provided for the forecast period from 2013 to 2019.The global elderly and disabled assistive devices market has been segmented geographically in four regions, namely, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). The market size and forecast of each region coupled with their market growth has been provided. The report also provides market overview that includes drivers, restraints and opportunities of the market. In addition, it also provides Porters five forces analysis and market attractiveness analysis for the elderly and disabled assistive devices market.The report concludes with competitive landscape and company profiles of the market. Competitive landscape provides the market share of major players in the industry for the year 2012.Browse Research Report:Some of the significant players in this market include Sonova Holding AG, William Demant Holding A/S, Invacare Corporation, Sunrise Medical LLC, GN ReSound Group and Ai Squared. These market players have been profiled on the basis of attributes such as company overview, strategies adopted by the market leaders to ensure growth, sustainability, financial overview and recent developments.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact UsTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Spectroscopy IR Detector Market - An Insight On The Important Factors And Trends Influencing The Market.

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Spectroscopy is a branch of science that covers the measurement and investigation of dissemination of light that is emitted by an object into colors that constitute the light. A detector that reacts to Infrared rays is called Infrared or IR detector. Photonic and thermal detectors constitute the two main types of detectors.Infrared or IR spectroscopy is an analytical technique that is considered most important for the scientist. IR spectroscopy enables study of any kind of specimen in any form. With judicious option of sampling, various states of an object such as like gases, films, powders, solutions, pastes, surfaces and fibers are being investigated and studied. The type of sample that is being used for IR spectroscopy determines the sampling procedure of IR spectroscopy. The basic theory of IR spectroscopy encompasses the process wherein infrared rays are made to pass or through a sample. The sample, however, takes in some of the radiation and transmits or passes through the remaining of the radiation. Transmission and Molecular absorption is thus formed out of the resulting spectrum, thereby leading to the production of fingerprint of the specimen. Molecular structures are unique in itself as in no two molecular structures, like a fingerprint, is able to generate the similar infrared spectrum. Thus for various types of analyses, infrared spectroscopy is considered quite useful. Fourier Transform InfraRed or FT-IR is considered one of the most chosen method of infrared spectroscopy and thus Fourier Transform InfraRed spectrometers is the most widely used one.PDF Sample For Technological breakthroughs is @Spectroscopy IR detectors are now applied in a wide variety of scientific fields. Polymers, organic and inorganic molecules, industrial and biological applications constitute some of its widely used implementations.The demand for spectroscopy is driven by the surge in demand and growing number of consignments of spectroscopy IR detectors that is being shipped. With the upgradation of previous spectroscopy IR devices with the new ones, the market witnesses a growth in this category of medical device. The detectors are now increasingly being used in the biological sector to pinpoint various diseases. Setting an example, to monitor brain injuries, the Polish Academy of Sciences NaAAcZ Institute of Biocybernetics & Biomedical Engineering of Warsaw, Poland has invented an NIR spectroscopy instrument. Such developments in this field are acting as drivers for the spectroscopy IR detector market.The market for spectroscopy IR detectors is forecasted to grow at a substantially high rate.However, availability of substitute products of spectroscopy IR detectors in abundance hinders the growth to a significant extent, thereby becoming the major restraining factor.On the basis of detector technology, the market of spectroscopy IR detector can be divided into deuterated triglycine sulfate (DTGS), mercury cadmium telluride (MCT), indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs), and others. With the increasing implementation of InGaAs-based IR detectors in NIR spectroscopy devices, the role played by the InGaAs-based IR detectors are expected to grow in the IR detector market.On the basis of product type, the market is divided into microspectroscopes, portable spectroscopes, hyphenated spectroscopes and benchtop spectroscopes. The spectroscopy IR detector market is also expected to grow during the forecast period and the same is expected to be driven by the increasing demand of portable IR spectroscopy device.Geographically, the spectroscopy IR detector market is divided into North America, Europe, APAC, and RoW. The region of North America accounted for the largest market share of spectroscopy IR detector market in 2015, however, APAC region, due to rapid industrialization, is forecasted to witness highest growth rate during the forecast period.Market Insight can be Viewed @There are many players in this market, however, the major ones include UTC Aerospace Systems (U.S.), Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. (Japan), LASER Newport Corporation (U.S.), Components GmbH (Germany), Excelitas Technologies Corp. (U.S.), and others.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Motion Controllers Market - New Tech Developments and Advancements to Watch Out for 2023

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Motion Controllers control the velocity and position of machines. These controllers can be implemented with the help of both analog and digital computers. A motion controller comprises of load, prime mover, sensors and controlling machine for proper functioning of prime mover and load. Moreover, it is used to accomplish speed accuracy, increased position, fast reaction time, smooth movements, cost reduction, integrated automation, improved efficiency and consistency, elimination of hazards and better diagnosis and troubleshooting among others. These devices incorporate high force magnet materials, precise dimensional tolerance and innovative design machines. Motion controllers are widely used in printing, packaging, textile, assembly industries, semiconductor production and many other automation systems.PDF Sample For Technological breakthroughs is @The key driving factors for motion controllers market are increasing venture by manufacturing companies and rising concern for industrial safety. Moreover, immense developments of automation market along with rapid globalization have collectively increased the demand for huge production capacity within limited time frame. Thus there has been a surge in implementation of automation systems in industries worldwide. Different geographical drivers are also accountable for the growth of this market. In addition, demand from developing countries, such as India, China and Brazil are expected to create opportunities for motion controllers market in the future. However, high manufacturing cost and lack of skilled workers are hindering the growth of the market. This challenge has to be addressed by manufacturers in order to ensure efficient applications of motion controllers.Global motion controllers market can be broadly classified on the basis of technology, application and geography. By technology, the market for motion controllers has been broadly segmented into computerized numerical control and general motion control. Usage of these controllers is much simpler in general motion control machines compared to computerized numerical control machines. The market can be subdivided by application into automotive, machinery manufacturing, logistics, aerospace and defense, electronics and semiconductor, food and beverage, medical, paper and printing, oil and gas and energy. Machinery manufacturing, logistics and electronics and semiconductor are the major sectors which are expected to grow at a significant rate during the forecast period from 2015 to 2021. The major reason is attributed to potential demand for process automation and industrial safety in these sectors. By geography, the global market for motion controllers has been classified into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World.In the present scenario, the market for motion controllers is dominated by Asia Pacific in terms of revenue, followed by North America and Europe. The major factor responsible for potential development of this market in Asia Pacific is huge adoption of these devices coupled with rapid technological advancement. However, North America and Europe is anticipated to grow at a significant rate in the future, primarily due to huge investment by manufacturing industries along with increase in industrialization.Market Insight can be Viewed @Some of the major players in this market are Schneider Electric (France), Siemens AG (Germany), Parker Hannifin Corp. (U.S.), Yaskawa Electric Corp. (Japan), ABB Ltd. (Switzerland), Moog Inc. (U.S.), Bosh Rexroth AG (Germany), Altra Industrial Motion Corporation (U.S.), Dover Motion Systems (U.S.) and Rockwell Automation (U.S.).Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
upside down

A recent report from China Beige Book, a survey of the country's economy, is challenging Wall Street's prevailing notion about China in 2017.

It all hinges on one word: stability.

The expectation on Wall Street is that since the Chinese Communist Party will be holding its 19th National Congress  a process in which the party chooses its top leadership positions  in 2017, President Xi Jinping will want to keep the economy stable so there's no distraction from his relentless effort to consolidate power.

"The Chinese leadership will likely face significant political uncertainty both internally and externally, and in response they will likely place social and economic stability as a top priority throughout 2017," a Credit Suisse research team led by Vincent Chan wrote in a recent note. "We believe the government will adopt pro-growth measures to boost economic growth ahead of the political transition."

That means the government will provide the most dangerous part of the economy  massive, indebted quasi-state companies  with enough cash to continue powering through the year, and that it will support banks so they can support the corporate sector and the country's GDP growth. Things will stay stable. Nothing to see here.

The problem with that is, it seems like that's not the stability the Chinese government really cares about.

Words

What the Chinese government really cares about is employment. Unemployment leads to social unrest, and social unrest makes Xi Jinping look bad. (In China it's always politics first, economics second).

Now, as China Beige Book points out, net hiring looks good in China, as 43% of firms hired, up from 30% this time last year. These measures are looking good even after the government stopped juicing the economy in the first quarter of 2016. (You'll recall that the beginning of 2016 was somewhat rocky.)

Story continues

"If the jobs picture deteriorates later next year, then Beijing is likely to respond forcefully," said the China Beige Book report. "But even an effective response will not take effect immediately and its effects, as always, will be transient. The stability the Party wants is a solid but not certain bet. The stability investors want is a crapshoot."

What all this means is that the country has no reason to put its foot on the gas as it did early in 2016 unless the jobs picture really gets bad.

Last week, Xi already told a group of Communist Party members of the economic and finance group not to worry if they don't hit their target of 6.5% GDP growth (down from 6.7%). In fact, he told them not to try to hit it if doing so would create too much risk.

In other words: Xi is not scared of a slow down, he's more scared of the unrest that unemployment and a full blown debt crisis could bring.

That means investors worried about growth can't be sure the government will help them along. Some companies may very well be losers. We've already seen 55 corporations go bankrupt in 2016, up from 24 in 2015.

So be careful, one man's bankruptcy could be another man's perfectly stable, healthy-enough economy.

NOW WATCH: This is what Bernie Madoff's life is like in prison





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Orthopaedic Prosthetics Devices Market Expected to Reach US$ 1.76 Bn in 2017

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Global demand for orthopaedic prosthetics devices market is projected to reach US$ 1.76 Bn in 2017, up from US$ 1.69 Bn in 2016. Demand for orthopaedic prosthetics devices will be fuelled by increasing baby boomers & geriatric population. Availability of advanced prosthetics that offer customisation and enhanced functionality will continue to witness increasing demand in developed markets. However, high cost and lack of favourable reimbursement policies will continue to pose challenges to wider adoption. North America will continue to remain the largest market for orthopaedic prosthetics devices, owing to strong demand in the U.S. Sales of orthopaedic prosthetics devices in the Western Europe  the second largest market globally  will remain concentrated in EU5.Other key factors expected to fuel demand for orthopaedic prosthetic devices include increase in the number of accidents, higher emphasis on physical sports, and increase in prevalence of conditions that require amputation. Replacement of older prosthetics with lighter, durable materials is also expected to complement demand during the forecast period.FMIs report offers insights on the regulations on orthopaedic prosthetics devices in key markets of the U.S., Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. In the U.S., orthopaedic prosthetics devices are regulated by U.S. FDA and Centre for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). In Europe, a majority of prosthetic and orthotic devices are class I with CE marking.To provide a detailed analysis on the orthopaedic prosthetic market, FMIs report offers forecast and analysis on the basis of product type, technology, end-use, and region.Request For Report Sample@Prosthetics Devices Market SegmentationBy product type, the key segments include lower extremity prosthetics, upper extremity prosthetics, liners, sockets, and modular components. Among these, lower extremity prosthetics account for the highest demand, followed by upper extremity prosthetics. All the aforementioned product types will lose market share to lower extremity prosthetics during the forecast period.By technology, electric powered prosthetic devices account for the highest demand and the trend is projected to remain unchanged during the forecast period. Electric powered prosthetic devices are expected to gain 467 BPS during the forecast period and account for over 50% revenue share of the market by 2026. Ease of operation is one of the key factors for high adoption of electric powered prosthetics devices.By end-use, prosthetic clinics accounted for the highest revenue share of the global market, followed by hospitals and rehabilitation centres. Prosthetic clinics will continue to remain the largest end-user segment during the forecast period, gaining 293 BPS between 2016 and 2026.Send An Enquiry@North America is the largest market for prosthetics devices market, accounting for a significant share of global revenues. The U.S. is the leading market for prosthetics devices, accounting for over 78% share of the global market in 2016. The U.S. will continue to be the largest market for prosthetics devices during the forecast period.Leading players in the global prosthetics devices market include Hanger Inc., Blatchford Ltd., Otto Bock HealthCare GmbH Ossur, Touch Bionics Inc., and The Ohio Willow Wood Co.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Nanomaterial Supercapacitors Market size and forecast, 2016-2026

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The ever-increasing need for electrical energy storing devices will continue to influence the growth of the nanomaterial supercapacitors market during the forecast period 2016-2026. The surging end-use applications of nanomaterial supercapacitors in transportation, consumer electronics, wind turbines and sensors will continue to drive the growth of the market during the forecast period. Increasing preference towards compact devices that have high electric storage capacity will continue to create sustained demand during the forecast period.High cost and low availability continue to remain persistent challenges with nanomaterial supercapacitors.Global nanomaterial supercapacitors market: SegmentationOn the basis of the product type, the global nanomaterial supercapacitors market can be segmented as follows:IndustrialConsumerTransportRequest Free Report Sample@On the basis of applications, the global nanomaterial supercapacitors market can be segmented as follows:SensorsInstrumentationElectric & hybrid vehiclesWind turbinesPhotovoltaic modulesOn the basis of end-use industry, the global nanomaterial supercapacitors market can be segmented as follows:HealthcareEnergyElectronicsTransportationOthersGlobal nanomaterial supercapacitors market: Region Wise OutlookThe global nanomaterial supercapacitors market can be divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific dominates the global nanomaterial supercapacitors market due to the mature electronics industry in the region. Strong demand from China will be key to the growth of the market in the region. North America is the second largest market globally, and demand is on account of its flourishing medical and healthcare industry.Demand for nanomaterial supercapacitors in Europe will continue to be driven by the booming automobile sector in Europe. Latin America is witnessing a modest CAGR in terms of value in global nanomaterial supercapacitors market because of the strengthening information technology in this region. Middle East and Africa (MEA) is at a nascent stage in the global nanomaterial supercapacitors market but is expected to have a healthy CAGR in the forecasted period.Request For TOC@Global nanomaterial supercapacitors market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in the global nanomaterial supercapacitors market are:Nippon electrical Co.Panasonic Electronic Devices Co. LtdTTI, IncMAXWELL TECHNOLOGIES, INCNesscap Co., LtdAxion Power International, Inc.Cap-XXSPELMurata Manufacturing Co., LtdAbout Nanomaterial SupercapacitorsABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Research report explores the Industrial Energy Management System Market for the forecast period, 2016-2026

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The major operating cost expense of todays industries is the energy consumed in the production and other activities of the factory. These industries includes the automobiles, chemicals, aluminium, oil refineries, steel, paper and various other industries. Also industries are trying hard to make their manufacturing processes more efficient and clean. Moreover, industries are also abide of energy management standards and stringent environmental regulations regarding the consumption and utilization of energy. To cater with all these issues there is a need of energy management system, energy management system is an energy consumption monitoring at factory level and centralizes the operations and monitoring of the energy systems. Energy management system is an effective way for energy utilization in a rational manner, energy distribution optimization. Mostly, energy management system is used in steel enterprises to handle their complex energy system for energy balance optimization, low energy consumption, energy management efficiency, higher productivity, and low coal gas discharge. The global energy management system market is expected to expand at a modest CAGR in the forecast period.Global Industrial Energy Management System Market: Drivers and RestrainsThe ever increasing steel plants globally and their need for energy management and to lower their production cost are the factors driving the global industrial energy management system market. Also the rising concerns for the environment and the restraints imposed by the environmental bodies are pushing the factory owners to implement energy management system for their production units, leading to the growth in global industrial energy management system market.However, the high cost involved in the initial set up of the energy management system and the long recovery period of that cost is expected to hamper the growth of global energy management system market. Also skilled operators are required to operate this energy management systems that can further act as a damping factor in the global energy management system market.Request Free Report Sample@Global Industrial Energy Management System Market: SegmentationsOn the basis of technology, the global industrial energy management system market is segmented as follows:Energy PlatformDistributed Control System (DCS)Meter Data Management (MDM)Peak Load Control System (PLCS)Programmable Logic Controls (PLC)Energy AnalyticsOn the basis of service, the global industrial energy management system market is segmented as follows:ConsultingSystem IntegratorsMaintenance & Support ServicesOn the basis of end-use industry, the global industrial energy management system market is segmented as follows:ElectronicsOil & GasPetrochemicalFood & BeveragesAutomobilesSteelGlobal Industrial Energy Management System Market: Region Wise OutlookThe global industrial energy management system market can be divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific is the most dominant player in the global industrial energy management system market due to its flourishing steel, oil & gas industry and the need to comply with the rules and regulations of the environmental regulatory bodies. North America is the next major contributor in the global energy management system market for its booming food & beverages sector, and petrochemical industry and the rising concern for the efficient management of energy. Europe is well known for its automobiles market and due to which it is witnessing a healthy growth rate in the global industrial energy management system market. Latin America and Middle East and Africa are at a nascent stage in the global industrial energy management system market and is anticipated to have a significant growth rate in the forecast period.Request For TOC@Global Industrial Energy Management System Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in the global industrial energy management system market are:Emerson Electric CoOperation Technology, IncCapterra Inc.LuxoftGeneral ElectricShanghai Baosight Software Co., Ltd.Rockwell Automation, Inc.Hatch LtdEFTAzbil CorporationABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Tahini Market on track to 423,854 tonnes in 2025, Globally

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Driven by growing popularity across the globe and steady adoption by the F&B industry, global tahini market volumes are estimated to surpass 314 thousand tonnes in 2016, up from nearly 305 thousand tonnes in 2015. According to the latest report published by Persistence Market Research titled Global Market Study on Tahini: Paste and Spreads Product Type Segment Projected to Remain the Largest Segment During the Forecast Period, global volumes are projected to reach 423,854 tonnes in 2025.Besides the availability of myriad flavors, rising adoption by local eateries are most likely to impact the global tahini market. Market Research Expert, Persistence Market ResearchGrowing popularity of authentic Middle Eastern food flavors is expected to escalate the demand for tahini-based products, such as hummus and tahini spread. The surging significance of social media marketing will play a pivotal role in the promotion of tahini and derived products. Emerging tahini applications in hummus, butter and spreads, halva, salads, bakery products, toppings, and traditional Middle Eastern recipes such as Baba Ghanoush will also influence the market favorably.By product type, tahini paste and spreads will witness the highest demandPaste and spreads segment will account for over 55% share in terms of revenues by 2025Desserts and sweets segment, aggravated by growing popularity of halva, will maintain a market share of over 25% during the assessed periodSustained consumption of tahini dips and sauces will fuel the sauces and dips sub-segment, capturing over 18% market value shareBy distribution channel, major tahini sales will be directed through exportsConventional retail will lose its market share over 2015-2025; from over 37% market share in 2015, this sub-segment will settle at around 34% in 2025Modern trade is expected to witness decent growth, accounting for a revenue share of over 29% by 2025 endExports will, however, exhibit the fastest growth in terms of a distribution channel. With over 20% share of the revenues, this sub-segment is anticipated to reach US$ 465.9 Mn with a promising CAGR of 6.1%Considering product size, the tahini market is projected to gain the highest traction in the 50-150 gm size sub-segmentWith over 56% value share in 2025, the 50-150 gm size sub-segment will reportedly reach a consumption of around 243,189 tonnesAbove 150 gm size sub-segment is likely to witness an uptick over the forecast period, capturing a considerable 28% market value share in 2025Below 50 gm product size will be the fastest growing sub-segment at 5.9% CAGRDepending on the production process, industrial production process will remain dominant over conventional processRequest Report Sample @With a slight setback from 76% share in 2015 to around 73% share estimated by 2025 end, industrial production process will witness moderate growth with a CAGR to the tune of 5.3%Conventional process will experience significant growth over the forecast periodAccording to Persistence Market Researchs regional analysis, Western Asia will continue to be the largest market, whereas GCC will emerge lucrative by 2025 endWest Asia, identified as the most lucrative market for tahini, will predictably cross US$ 608 Mn by 2025 end, accounting for maximum revenues in the global marketGCC countries will exhibit the fastest growth at 5.9% CAGR, primarily driven by Kuwait, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. GCC tahini market revenues will reach around US$ 202 Mn by 2025 endNorth Africa, followed by the U.K., are projected to grow moderately at respective CAGRs of 5.7% and 5.4%For More Information Request TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report @Dipasa International S.A., Sunshine International Foods, Inc., Kevala International LLC, Joyva Corp, Premier Organics, Haitoglou Bros S.A., Halwani Bros. Co., Prince Tahina Ltd., El Rashidi El Mizan, Al-Wadi Al-Akhdar S.A.L, Carleys of Cornwell Ltd., Balsam Tahini, Ismail Termurcugil, and Alseedawi Sweets Factories Co. constitute some of the key players in the global market for tahini. While major export opportunities lie in Asia and North America, a majority of leading players are based in the Middle East and North America. Halwani Bros. Co. and Haitoglou Bros. are top Middle East companies, whereas Joyva Corp, Dipasa, and Kevala Int. are the key North American players. Alwadi Al Akhdars new factory in Lebanon is due in 2017 and Sabra Dipping Co. will soon double its tahini hummus production capacity.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Acetochlor Market 2016 - Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, Beijing Nutrichem, Shandong Binnong Technology

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In depth analysis Covers Major Manufactures of Acetochlor Market  Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, Beijing Nutrichem, Shandong Binnong Technology, Dalian Raiser Pesticides, Jiangsu Changlong Chemicals, Jiangsu Lvlilai, Hangzhou Qingfeng Agro-chemical, Shandong Qiaochang Chemical with detail like Company Profile, Product Picture, Specifications, Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross, Revenue and Contact Information.Request For Report Sample Here :The Acetochlor report created by Markets N Research includes in-depth study of variable market trends and statistics by dynamic team of researchers. The report provides detailed information about the definition and specification, and focuses on overall analysis of the manufacturing process along with in-depth classification of segments based on applications, end-users, and products physical properties. The report delivers precise data relevant to competitive analysis based on regional insight along with future forecasts.The Acetochlor report provides exhaustive information of overall manufacturers, vendors, and suppliers with complete summary of specification, future trends of the company, and historical data along with statistics. In order to present the analyzed data for better clarity related to the latest trends, the report comprises number of pictorial represented data in the form of figures, tables graphs, and diagrams. The Global Acetochlor Market 2016 report has also accounted Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) in % value for specific period for Acetochlor market, which would help users to conclude decision based on futuristic chart.Do Enquiry Before Purchasing Here :The report is developed based on collated data from secondary sources, databases, and directories to widen the information based on technical terms, market orientation, and commercial characteristics related to the Acetochlor market. In addition, the report also highlights the driving factors and arising opportunities for the development of the global market as well as emphasizes on factors responsible for the growth restrains.About Us:Markets N Research is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. Markets N Research also carries the capability to assist you with your customized market research requirements including in-depth market surveys, primary interviews, competitive landscaping, and company profiles. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics. Markets N Research is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air.3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138, Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,
Cosmetic Skin Care Market: Top Manufacturers (LOreal S.A., Unilever Group, Procter & Gamble, Beiersdorf AG, and Avon Products) - Forecast 2024

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Consumer trends for cosmetic skin care products vary from region to region. While skin lightening and brightening products are in greater demand in Asia Pacific, anti-aging creams have been witnessing higher demand in Europe and North America. On the other hand, consumers in countries with dry weather, such as Brazil and Argentina, are more prone to purchasing sun protection products.Cosmetic skin care is one of the most dynamic markets in the personal care industry and is driven by evolving consumer trends and innovations on the part of manufacturers. The opportunity in the global cosmetic skin care market stood at US$127.1 bn in 2015 and this is projected to rise to be worth just over US$200 bn by 2024, expanding at a 5.1% CAGR therein.PDF Sample Brochure can be Downloaded atMulti-utility Skin Creams Gain Prominence among ConsumersCosmetic skin care products include those for anti-aging, skin whitening, sensitive skin, anti-acne, dry skin, warts removal, infant skin care, anti-scars solutions, mole removal, and multi-utility products such as beauty and balm, color correcting, and daily defense creams. In terms of revenue, anti-aging creams led the global cosmetic skin care market in 2015 owing to their diversified applications. Multi-utility skin care cosmetics, on the other hand, are expected to be the fastest growing product segment by the end of 2024.The main applications of cosmetic skin care products include stem cell protection against UV, flakiness reduction, skin rehydration, minimizing wrinkles, and increasing the viscosity of aqueous. Among these, the segment of wrinkle minimization led the cosmetic skin care market in 2015. The stem cells protection against UV segment, on the other hand, is anticipated to expand at a rapid pace due to increasing awareness regarding the harmful effects of ultraviolet rays.MEA to Offer Stiff Competition to APAC in Cosmetic Skin Care MarketBased on geography, the global cosmetic skin care market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa. While Asia Pacific is the leading cosmetic skin care market in the world, the Middle East and Africa is predicted to be the fastest growing regional segment.Accounting for a share of more than 40.0% during the forecast period, Asia Pacific is expected to retain its lead in terms of revenue through 2024. The rising adoption of beneficial skin care products in the emerging economies of China and India is one of the key factors driving the APAC cosmetic skin care market. These developing countries have been witnessing rapid changes in consumer living standards, which in turn, is expected to result in high market growth. Increasing purchasing power of the urban population, coupled with rising product awareness in rural areas, is also fueling the demand for cosmetic skin care products in the region.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Container Shipping Market : New Business Opportunities & Investment Research Report

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Containers are used to transport objects from one place to another. Unlike conventional shipping, container shipping uses containers of various standard sizes20 foot (6.09 m), 40 foot (12.18 m), 45 foot (13.7 m), 48 foot (14.6 m), and 53 foot (16.15 m)to load, transport, and unload goods or objects. As a result, containers can be moved by trains, ships and trucks. Most commonly and important container sizes are 20-foot and 40-foot lengths. The 20-foot container is generally referred to as a Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) and the 40-foot container is known as the Forty-foot Equivalent Unit (FEU).Request to view Sample Report @Containers are generally made up of aluminum and steel . The size and type built of each container comply with specifications and regulations formulated by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).Shipping containers are of various types . The most important type of container is dry cargo . Dry cargo containers are often referred to as special containers. These special containers include open side, open end, open top, half-height, flat rack, refrigerated, liquid bulk, and modular. These containers are built as a same exterior lengths and widths as the standard dry cargo containers.In addition, open top containers are used for easy loading of cargo such as odd-sized goods and machineries. Flat racks are used for vehicles, boats, machineries and industrial equipment . Open side containers are used for transporting vegetables such as onions and potatoes. Tank containers are used to transport liquids such as chemicals, wine, and vegetable oils.Each container has its own unique unit number , often known as box number. Box numbers are used by crew members, ship captains, coastguards, customs officers, dock supervisors, and warehouse managers to identify the owner of a container and who is using it to ship goods, and to track the container's location across the world.The container sizes need to be standardized so that they can be stacked most efficiently. It transport one on top of the other in trains, ships, trucks and cranes at the ports can be specially fitted or built to a single size specification. Container size standardization is carried out by the ISO whose primary work is to set standard sizes for all containers .The most important step in container shipping is proper loading of containers in trucks, ships, and trains. Several government associations such as the World Shipping Council (WSC), together with the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), published the Transport of Containers by Sea - Industry Guidance for Shippers and Container Stuffers. It provides specific guidelines to shipping companies to transport containers in a safe and efficient way.In terms of geography, North America dominates the global container shipping market . This is due to improved transportation services in this region. The U.S. represents the largest market for container shipping followed by Canada in North America. In Europe, Germany, the U.K., Spain, Italy, and France hold the major share of the container shipping market. Asia is expected to witness high growth rates in the next five years, as many companies are constructing manufacturing facilities in this region. The rising number of manufacturing units would result in significant rise in demand for containers. Improving transportation services are boosting growth of the container shipping market in this region. Japan, China, and India are expected to be the fastest-growing container shipping markets in Asia.Increasing demand for transportation services is a key driver of the global container shipping market. Rising number of factories and manufacturing units has fueled growth of the global container shipping market. In addition, several government associations are also boosting growth of the global container shipping market by providing specific guidelines to shipping companies.Request to view Table of content @Some of the major companies operating in the global container shipping market are China Shipping Container Lines, HANJIN, China Ocean Shipping Company, HAPAG-LLOYD, Mediterranean Shipping Company, and MAERSK.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each PMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With a wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve clients and satisfy their overall research requirement.For information regarding permissions, contact:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesTel: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWebsite:media@persistencemarketresearch.com
Automotive Steering Wheel Market to hit INR 1,214.6 Cr by 2023 | TMR

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Automotive Steering Wheel Market: SnapshotThe automotive steering wheel market in India is anticipated to experience steady growth during the forecast period of 2015 to 2023. The rapid expansion of the automotive sector in India is the primary factor responsible for the robust growth of the automotive steering wheel market.The automotive sector in the country is presently driven by the increasing disposable income of the middle-class populationand the rising investment on automobiles by manufacturers. Initiatives taken by the government under the Make in India campaign has also encouraged the development of the automotive sector. Considering the direct impact of the growth of the automotive sector in Indiaon the demand for automotive steering wheels, the market is poised for a stable future ahead.The value of the automotive steering wheel market in India was pegged at INR 634.9 Cr in 2014 and this is expected to rise to INR 1,214.6 Cr by 2023. The market is expected to record a 7.1% CAGR from 2015 to 2023.Download PDF Brochure atLeather Steering Wheels Attracting Increased Attention from ConsumersDepending on the diameter of the steering wheel, themarket in India is led by the small diameter steering wheel and this segment accounted for a share of 77% in 2014.The surging demand for smaller passenger cars is the key factor driving this segment.Among the variousmaterials used for making steering wheels, polyurethane led the automotive steering wheel market in India in 2014. The demand for polyurethane from various steering wheel manufacturers in the country stems from the fact that it is cheaper than other materials and also highly durable. The leather segment in the India automotive steering wheel market is anticipated to record the highest growth during the forecast period owing to the increasing demand for steering wheels with better grip and a sleek look.Passenger Cars Most Sought After Vehicle Type for Automotive Steering Wheel CompaniesBy application, the automotive steering wheel market in India is driven by the passenger car segment. The dynamic outlook of the Indian economy and the growing purchasing power of the consumer are two of the most important factors responsible for the rising demand for passenger cars in India. This, in turn, is predicted to drive the automotive steering wheel market at an exponential growth rate during the forecast period.Controls-embedded steering wheels and normal steering wheels are the two main types based on technology. Normal steering wheels without airbags led the automotive steering wheel market in India in 2014 owing to extensive demand from the light and medium commercial vehicles segment.Controls-embedded steering wheels with airbags present a highly lucrative option for players owing to the rising demand for high-end passenger cars and the increasing awareness of vehicle safety among drivers in India.Some of the key players in the India automotive steering wheel market are Emdet Engineers Private Limited, Autoliv, Toyoda Gosei co. Ltd., Takata Corporation, and Rane TRW.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Janitorial Services Market : Popular Trends And New Business Opportunities

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Janitorial services, also known as cleaning services, are generally used to keep workplaces free from unsightly dirt and provide a clean and germ-free environment. Cleaning is one of the most commonly outsourced services in various facilities such as educational buildings, corporate buildings, hotels, hospitals, retail outlets, and commercial and residential buildings. Janitorial services include both indoor and outdoor cleaning services, which include cleaning, trash pickup, floor polishing, and window washing.Request to view Sample Report @The global janitorial services market is primarily segmented into two categories: residential and commercial. The residential market consists of maid services, window, carpet, window and other services. The commercial cleaning segment primarily focuses on window cleaning, vacuuming, floor care, and related services.Among the two segments, the commercial segment accounts for a relatively larger share of the janitorial services market. Janitorial service is a highly labor intensive market and growth of the market largely depends on growth of the real estate market.Due to its dependence on the real estate market, the janitorial services market suffered a downturn during the economic recession post-2008. The market also suffered a decline due to collapse of various mortgage obligations. Many government entities and industrial companies make a long-term contract to clean facilities, such trends help in the growth of global janitorial services market.Many companies outsource their building maintenance and cleaning services, in order to reduce the cost .Through outsourcing, the janitorial services industry creates many employments. Introduction of latest janitorial equipment in the market provides a competitive edge to the janitorial service industry. Such new cleaning equipment provides better janitorial service and this also helps in the growth of janitorial services market.Some of the major global companies such as ABM Industries and ServiceMaster offer various janitorial services. They together hold more than 35% share of the global janitorial services market. Introduction of new technologies and solutions to clean properties efficiently and safely and process improvements are expected to boost growth of the global janitorial services market during the forecast period.Asia Pacific is one of the prominent markets for janitorial services. Rising economy and escalating construction of commercial and non-commercial buildings in the region further increase demand for janitorial services. China and India are the two major countries in Asia Pacific, which hold the highest share of the janitorial services market. In North America, the U.S. holds the largest market share and is expected to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period. The global janitorial services market is expected to grow at a single-digit growth rate during the forecast period from 2014 to 2020.Request to view Table of content @Some of the major companies operating in the global janitorial market areABM Industries, CleanNet USA, Jani-King Internationa,ServiceMaster, Anago Cleaning Systems, Chem-Dry, Jan-Pro International, Aramark,Stanley Steemer, BONUS Building Care, Coverall, Pritchard Industries, Red Coats, UGL Unicco Services, Sodexo, and Vanguard Cleaning Systems.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each PMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With a wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve clients and satisfy their overall research requirement.For information regarding permissions, contact:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesTel: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWebsite:media@persistencemarketresearch.com
Water and Wastewater Pipe Market : New Business Opportunities & Investment Research Report 2015 to 2021

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Water pipe is a water supply pipe, while wastewater pipe flushes all the wastewater into sewers. Pipes are generally made of polyvinyl chloride, steel, cast iron, polypropylene and copper. Water and wastewater pipe can be segmented on the basis of product into plastic pipe, concrete pipe, steel pipe, ductile iron pipe and others. On the basis of application, water and wastewater pipe market is divided in five categories: sewer & drain pipe, sanitary sewer, potable water, transmission pipe and others. Plastic pipe segment is expected to show a strong growth in the forecasted period. Despite increased competition from plastics, concrete and ductile, iron pipe is expected to retain largest share of the sewer, drainage, and water transmission markets during the forecasted period.Request to view Sample Report @North America is the largest market for water and wastewater pipe, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific region is expected to be the fastest growing market. China and India hold the key for future market trends in water and wastewater market owing to increasing urban population, increase in living standards due to higher disposable income and high growth in the building and construction sector. Rising disposable income increase the living standard of customer and leads to more spending on houses, which indirectly drives the demand for water and wastewater pipe.According to the National Bureau of Statistics China, annual per capita disposable income of urban households in China increased from USD 2,271.0 in 2008 to USD 3408.5 in 2012. The overall annual disposable income in India medium household income increased from USD 1,366.2 billion in 2010 to USD 1,587.6 billion in 2013. Currently more than half of the population dwells in cities. The number is expected to increase to more than 60.0% by 2030. According to United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) in 2013, largest urban population growth took place in Asian countries such as India and China. By 2050, India is expected to add 404 million urban dwellers while China 292 million. Urban population is more concerned about their water and wastewater system, this leads to increase in the demand for water and wastewater pipe.The market of water and wastewater pipe is expected to witness a double digit growth rate in the coming years. Some of the major drivers contributing the overall market growth of water and wastewater pipe include increased demand for housing in urban areas, increasing non-residential building construction and increasing municipal market. Governments and private sectors across the globe are investing in better infrastructure facilities. Construction of residential and non-residential buildings leads to the demand for water and wastewater pipe market. For infrastructure development, the U.K governments public sector investment is expected to rise by USD 4.9 billion to about USD 77.7 billion in 2013-14 over 2012-13. It is further expected to increase to about USD 83.0 billion in 2014-15. With the increase in infrastructure investment, demand for water and wastewater pipe will increase.Request to view Table of content @The major companies operating in the water and wastewater pipe market include CEMEX, Hanson Pipe, JM Eagle, Synalloy Corporation, Saint-Gobain, Tyco International Limited, Vianini Pipe Incorporated, Viega GmbH & Company KG, Westlake Chemical Corporation, Roscoe Incorporated and Pacific Corrugated Pipe Company.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each PMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With a wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports strive to serve clients and satisfy their overall research requirement.For information regarding permissions, contact:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesTel: +1 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWebsite:media@persistencemarketresearch.com
Recent cutbacks and turbulence at Alphabets Google Fiber service are generating speculation about a possible sale or spin off of the business.

Now operating as part of the company Access in Alphabets other bets division, the fiber service has recently seen its CEO depart without being replaced, halted expansion in new cities, and laid off almost 10% of its staff.

On Thursday, that convergence of factors prompted speculation by the tech news web site The Information that Google is likely getting ready to dispose of the service, which was a pioneer in bringing gigabit Internet download speeds to consumers. Telecom operator --which is in the process of buying Communications for $34 billion--is a possible acquirer, the web site said without citing a source.

Get Data Sheet, Fortunes technology newsletter.

Fortune reached out to Google for comment and will update this story if any response is received. CenturyLink declined to comment.

Just two months ago, CFO Ruth Porat had defended the project publicly, telling analysts on a quarterly earnings call that the fiber service was making great progress and remained committed to growth in its already active markets.

The likelihood of the speculated sale would depend heavily on the fiber businesss financials as there is no obvious reason the unit would be appealing to any buyer. Stringing fiber optic high speed Internet connections to homes around the country is exceedingly expensive--as Google has discovered--and requires competing with deeply entrenched monopoly cable and telephone operators. The service has not reached critical mass in any of the eight scattered markets from Austin to Nashville to Salt Lake City that it has entered in the past six years.

CEO Craig Barratt left in October and has not been replaced. At that time, the unit also reportedly laid off about 130 out of 1,500 workers. A few months prior, the service had announced it was revamping its business model to use more wireless technology as it paused all planned expansions into brand new cities.

Story continues

Google is hardly the first company to run into cost issues while trying to provide consumer Internet and cable TV service, even before the era of high-speed fiber optic connections. Dozens of upstart carriers went bankrupt in the 1990s and early 2000s trying to break into the telecommunications and cable markets.

See original article on Fortune.com

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Industrial Explosives Market Set for Expansive Growth Over Next 10 Years

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Industrial explosives are blasting explosives with significant hazards, which are majorly used in construction, quarrying and mining industries. To enter into the industry, manufacturers require an explosives license to sell as well as sore industrial explosives or in some cases, they are exempted by the Explosives Act and Regulations. Various types of explosives and their accessories are manufactured in the industry such as safety fuse, detonating fuse, detonators, gun powder, nitro compound, ANFO (Ammonium nitrate  Fuel Oil) based explosives, cartridge explosives, bulk explosives and nitrate mixtures. Asia Pacific dominated the global industrial explosives market in terms of production with more than 30 key players involved in industrial explosives industry. Some of them include Indian Oil Corporation, Hubei Kailong Chemical Group Co., and Solar Industries India Limited among others. Europe accounts for the second largest manufacturer for industrial explosives, followed by North America, particularly United States and Canada.Request to view Sample Report @The global industry for industrial explosives has been witnessing significant growth due to growth of its end user industries such as mining and construction. Emerging economies such as India serves as a huge opportunity for the industrial explosives industry and its accessories. The industry in India has noticed a major shift from complete dependence on imports over the past few decades to increased production and exportable surplus currently. The industry for industrial explosives comprises the activities such as selling and producing the explosives in bulk, catridge, gun powder, and ANFO based explosives of the nitrate mixture, nitro compound including boosters and PETN as well as explosives accessories such as safety fuse, detonating fuse and detonators. The mining industry accounts for the largest market share in overall industrial explosives market with coal mining dominating the mining industry for explosives, due to increasing demand for coal. This growth can be mainly attributed to the increasing demand for coal, cement and electricity in the country thus driving the market. The global market is largely driven by bulk explosives. In addition, accessories such as detonators are also leading the market due to its strong governmental policies and regulations coupled with growing usage in initiating an explosive charge. The industry for these explosives remains concentrated with various companies such as Solar Industries India Limited being one of the prominent players on account of the companys thriving record of project execution as well as a strong brand name in the field of industrial explosives.Rising construction activities as well significant growth of the mining industry is expected to boost the demand for various materials such as coal, electricity and cement. This factor is expected to drive the demand for industrial explosives which are to be used in the mining and construction activities. However, price variations in explosives are expected to slow down the growth of the market. Increasing focus towards product innovation and technological advancements as well as focus on market expansion in developing and emerging regions is expected to provide new opportunities for the industrial explosives market.Request to view Table of content @AEL Mining Services Ltd., Enaex, EPC Groupe, Gulf Oil Corporation Limited, Guizhou Panjiang Chemical Plant, Hubei Kailong Chemical Group Co., Ltd, Indian Oil Corporation Limited, and Solar Industries India Limited are some of the major players present in the industrial explosives industry.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Synthetic And Bio Based Butadiene Market - Global Industry Analysis 2023

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Transparency Market Research has published a new report titled Butadiene (Synthetic and Bio-based) Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2015 - 2023. According to the report, the global synthetic & bio-based butadiene market for was valued at US$ 15.24 Bn in 2014 and is anticipated to reach US$ 23.45 Bn by 2023, expanding at a CAGR of 4.9% between 2015 and 2023.Get Free PDF Research Brochure for more Professional and Technical Insights:Butadiene is one of the major petrochemical and holds significant importance in end-user industries such as automotive and tire. High demand from tire and automotive industries is driving demand for synthetic & bio-based butadiene during the last few years. Butadiene derivatives such as SB rubber, ABS, and butadiene rubber are used in the processing of tires and automotive parts. SB rubber products such as S-SBR and E-SBR are primarily consumed raw materials in the production of tires. These materials provide low rolling resistance and better grip, thus resulting in reduced CO2 emissions and improved fuel economy. Rise in demand for ABS in Asia Pacific, especially in China and Southeast Asia, is another key factor propelling growth of the market for synthetic & bio-based butadiene. Furthermore, development of innovative technological processes for the production of bio-based butadiene is likely to fuel the butadiene market in the near future. However, volatility in raw material prices coupled with stringent environmental regulations are expected to hinder the market growth during the forecast period.Synthetic butadiene was the largest product segment, accounting for a significant share of the global synthetic & bio-based butadiene market in 2014. Synthetic butadiene is produced from a mixture of C4 feedstock and is further processed to obtain derivatives such as ABS, SB rubber, and SB latex. These derivatives are employed in tire and automotive industries. Bio-based butadiene is likely to be the fastest-growing product segment of the synthetic & bio-based butadiene market in the next few years. Stringent regulations are primarily boosting growth of the bio-based butadiene market. Alignment towards eco-friendly and cost-competitive production is estimated to drive the market growth during the forecast period.In terms of demand, butadiene rubber has been dominating the synthetic & bio-based butadiene market in the past years. Butadiene rubber is primarily used in tire production; however, it is also used as an additive in plastics such as polystyrene and ABS. SB rubber accounted for the second-largest share of the synthetic & bio-based butadiene market in 2014. SB rubber is a synthetic rubber obtained through copolymerization of butadiene and styrene and is used in the production of tire and its products. ABS and adiponitrile are considered to be among the fastest-growing application segments of the synthetic & bio-based butadiene market. A similar trend is anticipated to continue during the forecast period.Asia Pacific accounted for over 50% share of the global synthetic & bio-based butadiene in 2014. Increasing demand from China and Southeast Asia is expected to drive growth of the synthetic & bio-based butadiene market in this region. Europe and North America are likely to exhibit decline in the market growth due to lower demand and stringent regulations related to butadiene. The Middle East & Africa is expected to be one of the fastest-growing regions for synthetic & bio-based butadiene during the next decade. Growth in tire and automotive industries in this region is likely to provide potential opportunities for the butadiene market in the next few years.Browse the full Butadiene (Synthetic and Bio-based) Market for Styrene Butadiene Rubber, Butadiene Rubber, Styrene Butadiene Latex, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, Adiponitrile and Other Applications - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023 report atThe report provides a comprehensive view of the synthetic & bio-based butadiene market in terms of volume and revenue. It includes current demand analysis and forecast for product segments and applications in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. Furthermore, the report provides detailed country-wise analysis of the synthetic & bio-based butadiene market in the regions mentioned above. The synthetic & bio-based butadiene market has been divided into the following segments:Synthetic & Bio-based Butadiene Market  Product Segment AnalysisSynthetic ButadieneBio-based ButadieneSynthetic & Bio-based Butadiene Market  End-user AnalysisSB RubberButadiene RubberSB LatexABSAdiponitrileOthers (Including Nitrile Rubber, Chloroprene Rubber, etc.)About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Blog :
Global E-Book Reader Market: Headed for Growth and Global Expansion by 2022

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E-book reader or electronic book reader is a handheld computer device carried by user that enable user to read digital books or periodicals better call e-books, the advantages of using e-book readers instead of smart phones or tablets are they are more efficient having longer battery life its display is more like physical paper, more environment friendly and user friendly as well. E-book reader appeared in the market late 1990s, but it took around a decade to gain attraction because there are many formats of e-books present in the market, there has been continuous advancement in the technology used in e-book reader but the popularity of e-book readers did not really take off until 2009 and 2010 when some big players come up with their extremely different and user friendly e-book reader. Usually matte monochromatic display used up by most of e-book reader because of its advantages like it is more energy efficient, gives better view in direct sunlight as compare to LCD or LED display. Now e-book readers are also coming with LCD or LED display with some more features apart from reading e-books like web browsing and viewing multimedia content.Request for Sample Report:The key trend responsible for the growth of global e-book reader is emerging trend of collecting information online for research or educational purpose is adding to the growth. The key growth drivers of global e-book reader market are the sensitivity of books to wear and tear and need of adequate care, combined with high cost is further increasing the demand for books. Also the region where customers prefer to read books in both the English language and in their mother tongue boosting the demand of e-book reader which is having direct impact on volume of e-book reader sales in particular geography, also the globalization and digitalization (internet) bring this market to a new height. On the other hand there are also some factors which are hindering the growth of global e-book reader market, those restraints are lack of awareness refer to the content of e-books and also the replacement of e-book readers by latest smart phones and tablets are acting as a key restraints of global e-book reader market.Segmentation of e-book reader market is done on the basis of screen type, connectivity type & Geography. On the basis of screen type, global e-book reader market is segmented as monochrome eInk screens, LDC screen and LED screen. These segments further sub-segmented into its sub-segments as; eLink screen technology is further sub-segmented into eInk Pearl (grayscale), eInk VizPlex (Greyscale), eInk Triton (color) and SiPix (grayscale). LCD screen segment is further sub-segmented into LCD TFT (color), LCD IPS (color), LCD LTPS (color), LCD FFS (color) and eInk & LCD - double screen e-readers. Among all the above segments eLink screen segment is the most popular segment has been used by most e-book readers. On the basis of connectivity, global e-book reader is segmented as always on radio connection type, wireless connection enabled and 3G cellular data connection enabled.Request for Table of content:Geographically, e-book reader is segmented into seven regions which are ; North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), and Middle East and Africa (MEA). Among all the regions North America is the highest contributor in term of revenue in global e-book reader market followed by Western Europe & Asia Pacific and it is expected that same trend is being followed in near future as well.About Us:Persistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact Us:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
U.S. Asset Management IT Solution Market: Scope and Methodology Outlook 2024

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U.S. Asset Management IT Solution Market: OverviewAsset management refers to managing tangible or intangible assets. An asset management company serves as an advisor to clients, with a goal to maximize returns. Asset management firms are hired by institutional investors such as pension funds, corporations, and high net worth individuals. The asset management firms need IT solutions for managing assets such as equity, fixed income, real estate, commodities, and international investments. These IT solutions consist mainly of software solutions for business operations including portfolio management, compliance, and trade execution among others.U.S. Asset Management IT Solution Market: Scope and MethodologyThe U.S. asset management IT solution market report provides an analysis of the U.S. asset management IT solution market for the period 2014  2024, wherein 2015 is the base year and the period from 2016 to 2024 is the forecast period. Data for 2014 has been included as historical information. The report covers all the prevalent trends playing a major role in the growth of the asset management IT solution market over the forecast period. It also highlights various drivers, restraints, and opportunities expected to influence the market growth during the said period.Get More Information:The study provides a holistic perspective on market growth, throughout the above forecast period in terms of revenue estimates (in US$ Mn), across different geographies in the U.S., which include Northeast, Midwest, West and South. The report provides cross-sectional analysis of the U.S. asset management IT solution market in terms of market estimates and forecasts for all the segments across different geographic regions. This research report provides in-depth analysis of the U.S. asset management IT solution market on the basis components, deployment model and geography.The report also includes U.S. asset Management player profile and asset managers IT viewpoint deploying IT solutions and services for managing assets.Some of the key analytical pointers in the research study include Porters Five Force Analysis, and key market indicators which include industry outlook of investment management firms (asset managers) in the U.S. and key mergers and acquisition in the field of asset management IT solutions from vendor as well as buyers point of view.Applications encompassed in the research study include portfolio management, compliance, risk management, client statements & reporting, trade order management, workflow automation, benchmarking, and cash flow & accounting. Whereas services encompassed in the report scope include enterprise data management, data integration, reporting solutions & services, operation support & monitoring, application development and maintenance, and resource managementThis research study on the U.S. asset management IT solution market provides a detailed analysis of various components and their respective applications and services. The report also offers in-depth analysis of various factors such as market drivers, restraints, and growth opportunities affecting the market dynamics. These factors enable the analysis of various trends that would impact the market during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024. The report includes a comprehensive coverage of the underlying economic and technological factors under key trend analysis influencing the asset management IT solution market.U.S. Asset Management IT Solution Market: Competitive DynamicsThe report aims to provide strategic insights about the investment management firms deploying IT solutions with the detailed analysis of their requirements pertaining to IT solutions. Some of the key industry players in the asset management IT solution include Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP, FundCount, SoftTarget Inc., SimCorp Inc, QED Financial System, eFront Financial Solutions, Broadridge Investment Management Solutions, ProTrak International, SunGard Financials and CreditPoint Software.Key asset managers profiled in the research study along with their IT viewpoints and requirements include Barings Corporate Investors, Geode Capital Management, The Carlyle Group LP, Voya Investment Management, Lazard Asset Management, Bridgewater Associates and Hartford Investment Management. Co among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Coal Bed Methane Market Global Industry Forecast - 2024

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This report is designed for measuring the performance of global coal bed methane market. The report provides an in depth analysis of coal bed methane market in geographies like North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World with market volumes and revenues for each geography which are estimated from 2010 and forecasted till 2018. As the U.S is the biggest market for coal bed methane, we have analyzed U.S. market for CBM separately. Along with it, the report also covers analysis of CBM market in China, Russia, India, Australia and Indonesia along with market volumes and revenues for each country from 2010 to 2018. Additionally, the report also covers in depth value chain analysis for coal bed methane market.This research report also covers the applications for which CBM is currently being used. The report segments the application market for CBM as industrial, power generation, residential, commercial and transportation. The report includes in depth analysis for each of the application segment mentioned above with their revenues and volumes analyzed from 2010 and forecasted till 2018.Get PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights :This report also provides company profiles of the major players in the coal bed methane market. Our company profile includes company and financial overview, strategies adopted by the companies and their recent developments which can help in assessing the competition in the market. Some of the major companies included in this report include Queensland Gas, Arrow Energy, Sydney Gas, BPI Industries, Dart Energy, Great Eastern Energy, Green Dragon Gas, PetroChina among some other companies. In order to provide our clients with best competition assessment we have included the company market share of major players operating in the global CBM market. In addition, this report also covers Porters five forces analysis for global CBM market.This research is specially designed to estimate and analyze the demand and performance of coal bed methane market in global scenario. The study presents a comprehensive assessment of the stakeholder strategies and winning imperatives for them by segmenting the coal bed methane market as below:ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207
Global Pneumatic Valve Actuators Market 2016 : Industry Growth with CAGR in Forecast-2022

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MRS Research Group addsGlobal Pneumatic Valve Actuators Market 2016 Share,Size,Trends and Forecast to 2022 Market Research Reportreports to its database.This report provides a strategic analysis of the Pneumatic Valve Actuators market and the growth estimates for the forecasted period.The market research analyst projects the global Pneumatic Valve Actuators market to grow at a considerable CAGR,in terms of revenue,over the forecast period.The report will provide the client with market insights and in-depth analysis of multiple market segments on the basis of applications,end-users,and geographical cross-sectional study across the globe.This report also provides market sizing and forecasts for the Pneumatic Valve Actuators market.In addition,it provides a copious view on the market dynamics such as market drivers,market restraints,and opportunities for each of the micro markets.Get Free Sample Research Report @The report provides detailed information with respect to competitive landscape along with the top competitors in the Pneumatic Valve Actuators market.Furthermore,to help the clients make strategic decision,the report highlights a comprehensive profiling of leading players,their detailed analysis,their key developments along with the market positioning.The report also foregrounds current and future market trends in order to justify the forthcoming attractive markets within the Pneumatic Valve Actuators market.Moreover,clients are also provided with segment-wise,region-wise,and country-wise analysis of the Pneumatic Valve Actuators market.To convey a proper analysis of all the data,the report comprises a number of figures,graphs,tables,and diagrams,which will help the clients get a crystal clear idea of the current trends in the market.Additionally,the report also strategically analyzes the Pneumatic Valve Actuators market with regards to individual growth trends,future prospects, and contribution of each segment to the market.Various competitive developments such as contracts and agreements,new product developments,expansions,and mergers & acquisitions in the Pneumatic Valve Actuators market are also included in the report.This research study incorporated the use of extensive secondary sources,directories,and databases in order to identify and gather information useful for the technical,market-oriented,and commercial study of the market.This report is an effort to identify driving factors for the Pneumatic Valve Actuators market and sub-markets in the near future.The research report also presents an exhaustive evaluation of the market and comprises contemplative insights,historical data,facts,and statistically supported market data that is industry-validated.It comprises estimations using an appropriate set of assumptions and necessary methodologies.The research report provides analysis,statistics,particulars,and information with respect to the market segments such as geographies,applications,and others.Mainly covers the following product typesLinear ActuatorsQuarter-turn ActuatorsMulti-turn ActuatorsThe segment applications includingdownstream oil and gas facilitiespower generation plantsmining facilitiesSegment regions includingUSAEuropeChinaJapanThe players listAir Torque(IT)Rotork(UK)Pentair(US)Emerson(US)Festo(DE)SMC(JP)Cameron(US)Crane(US)ATI(US)Omal(IT)Nihon KOSO(JP)CCI(US)ABB(CH)Humphrey(US)Highlights of the report:A complete backdrop analysis, which includes an assessment of the parent market.Important changes in market dynamics.Market segmentation up to the second or third level.Historical, current, and projected size of the market from the standpoint of both value and volume.Reporting and evaluation of recent industry developments.Market shares and strategies of key players.Emerging niche segments and regional markets.MRS Research Group is the worlds giant collection of the Market research Reports. Where we specialized in global publisher, tailor made reports and specialists consulting. Global Publisher provides in-depth analysis of global and Chinese market. Tailor-made reports represent methodologies deliverable to proper insight of the client. While, expertise research specialist helps to provide strategic solution in specialists consulting. It consists of head such as, latest report, category, niche market and news. Reports published on the million of category like chemical, machinery and equipment, consumer goods, manufacturing and construction etc. Latest national, international, business News published under news portal.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free : +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@mrsresearchgroup.com
Isopropyl Alcohol Market Expecting Worldwide Growth by 2021

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Isopropyl alcohol is a chemical compound, which is colorless, flammable and has a strong alcoholic like odor. The compound is manufactured by combining water and propene by either direct hydration or indirect hydration. Isopropyl alcohol is a flammable compound and has a high vapor pressure. This compound is completely miscible in water and is an acceptable solvent for acrylic and epoxy resins, ethyl cellulose, natural resins, gums, polyvinyl butyral, alkaloids and other essential oils. Isopropyl alcohol is immiscible in salt solutions. However, unlike ethanol and methanol, this compound can be separated from various solutions with the addition of salts, which include sodium chloride, sodium sulphate and various other inorganic salts, as this alcohol is not very soluble in saline solutions. This compound increases in viscosity with the increase in temperature. This compound is relatively non- toxic and non-harmful and readily evaporates like acetone.Request to view Table of content @Isopropyl alcohol is a readily available alcohol. It dissolves a wide range of non-polar compounds. Its main application lies in its use as a solvent, a cleaning fluid and a disinfectant. Besides its use as a solvent, the compound is also used as an intermediate to give other compounds; it has its use in the medical, automotive and laboratory field. In earlier days, it was used as an anesthetic but due to its drawbacks, which include respiratory irritation, internal bleeding and visual, and hearing problems, its use in this field was discontinued. This compound is also a major component in gas dryer fuel additives. It is also used to get rid of brake oil fluid traces from hydraulic braking systems. This compound is toxic to some extent and acts as a central nervous system depressant. Poisoning can occur if ingested, inhaled or even absorbed hence, usage has to take place in well-ventilated areas and protective gloves are always recommended. However, it is not as toxic as methyl alcohol. Isopropyl alcohol is also acts as a skin irritant.The main drivers for the isopropyl alcohol market include its use in the automobile industry and its use as a disinfectant and a cleaner. The global automobile market is growing at a rabid rate and hence the need for isopropyl alcoholis also accelerated. The compound is used in combination with either ethyl alcohol or N-propyl alcohol in disinfectants, which include hand sanitizers, surface cleaners, and clinical instrument cleaners among others. The demand for isopropyl alcohol is growing more in developing countries due to the growing economy, growing hygiene awareness and the rise of automobile industries in this region. Isopropyl alcohol soes not have major side effects and hence there are no stringent rules against its use especially in north American and European countries.Te key segments considered for this market include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). The U.S., Europe, and Japan are major manufacturers of Isopropyl alcohol. The market for isopropyl alcohol is maximum in north America followed by Europe and is expected to be almost double in the next few years. The market for this compound is Asia Pacific is also high and is expected to rise as a very fast rate. This is due to the increase in automobile industries in this region, which is also expected to drive the isopropyl alcohol market. In addition, the growing hygiene awareness in Asia Pacific countries drives this market.Request to view Sample Report @The main companies profiled for the manufacture of isopropyl alcohol include Avantor, Crystal Clean Chemicals, Denoir Ultra Pure, DongYing Naire Technology, Guangfu Fine Chemicals, Huate Gas, OM group, Tokuyama Corporation, Linde, and Puritan Products among others.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Global Point Of Use Water Heater Market 2016 : Industry Growth with CAGR in Forecast-2022

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MRS Research Group addsGlobal Point Of Use Water Heater Market 2016 Share,Size,Trends and Forecast to 2022 Market Research Reportreports to its database.This report provides a strategic analysis of the Point Of Use Water Heater market and the growth estimates for the forecasted period.The market research analyst projects the global Point Of Use Water Heater market to grow at a considerable CAGR,in terms of revenue,over the forecast period.The report will provide the client with market insights and in-depth analysis of multiple market segments on the basis of applications,end-users,and geographical cross-sectional study across the globe.This report also provides market sizing and forecasts for the Point Of Use Water Heater market.In addition,it provides a copious view on the market dynamics such as market drivers,market restraints,and opportunities for each of the micro markets.Get Free Sample Research Report @The report provides detailed information with respect to competitive landscape along with the top competitors in the Point Of Use Water Heater market.Furthermore,to help the clients make strategic decision,the report highlights a comprehensive profiling of leading players,their detailed analysis,their key developments along with the market positioning.The report also foregrounds current and future market trends in order to justify the forthcoming attractive markets within the Point Of Use Water Heater market.Moreover,clients are also provided with segment-wise,region-wise,and country-wise analysis of the Point Of Use Water Heater market.To convey a proper analysis of all the data,the report comprises a number of figures,graphs,tables,and diagrams,which will help the clients get a crystal clear idea of the current trends in the market.Additionally,the report also strategically analyzes the Point Of Use Water Heater market with regards to individual growth trends,future prospects, and contribution of each segment to the market.Various competitive developments such as contracts and agreements,new product developments,expansions,and mergers & acquisitions in the Point Of Use Water Heater market are also included in the report.This research study incorporated the use of extensive secondary sources,directories,and databases in order to identify and gather information useful for the technical,market-oriented,and commercial study of the market.This report is an effort to identify driving factors for the Point Of Use Water Heater market and sub-markets in the near future.The research report also presents an exhaustive evaluation of the market and comprises contemplative insights,historical data,facts,and statistically supported market data that is industry-validated.It comprises estimations using an appropriate set of assumptions and necessary methodologies.The research report provides analysis,statistics,particulars,and information with respect to the market segments such as geographies,applications,and others.Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeGermanyUKFranceAsia PacificChinaJapanHighlights of the report:A complete backdrop analysis, which includes an assessment of the parent market.Important changes in market dynamics.Market segmentation up to the second or third level.Historical, current, and projected size of the market from the standpoint of both value and volume.Reporting and evaluation of recent industry developments.Market shares and strategies of key players.Emerging niche segments and regional markets.MRS Research Group is the worlds giant collection of the Market research Reports. Where we specialized in global publisher, tailor made reports and specialists consulting. Global Publisher provides in-depth analysis of global and Chinese market. Tailor-made reports represent methodologies deliverable to proper insight of the client. While, expertise research specialist helps to provide strategic solution in specialists consulting. It consists of head such as, latest report, category, niche market and news. Reports published on the million of category like chemical, machinery and equipment, consumer goods, manufacturing and construction etc. Latest national, international, business News published under news portal.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free : +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@mrsresearchgroup.com
Global Antibody Drug Conjugates Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Antibody Drug Conjugates Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020" to its huge collection of research reports.Antibody drug conjugates are defined as the monoclonal antibodies attached with biologically active drugs by chemical linkers through labile bonds. By combining the targeting ability of molecular antibodies with cancer ability of cytotoxic drugs, antibody drug conjugates allows targeted therapy for the treatment of cancer patients. They allow sensitive discrimination between healthy and cancerous tissues.The market for antibody drug conjugate is in infancy stage. So far, only three antibody drug conjugates have received market approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, the first among them, Mylotarg was withdrawn from the market by its manufacturer Wyeth, Inc., group company of Pfizer, Inc. in June 2010. Myotarg was used to treat acute myelogenous leukemia but a clinical trial showed that the drug has accelerated the mortality rate among the myelogenous leukemia patients and had added no benefits over conventional cancer therapies. Therefore, the market for antibody drug conjugates can be segmented on the basis of other two approved drugs which include:- Adcertis- KadcylaTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Adcertis (Brentuximab vedotin) is an antibody drug conjugate directed to the protein CD30 which is expressed in Hodgkin lymphoma and systemic anaplastic large cell lymphoma. In February 2011, Seattle Genetics submitted Biologics License Application (BLA) to the U.S. FDA for use in relapsed or refractory Hodgkins lymphoma and refractory or relapsed anaplastic large cell lymphoma. The drug was granted accelerated approval by the U.S. FDA in August 2011. Adcertis dominated the antibody drug conjugate market as only approved drug from August 2011 till February 2013. The drug also received marketing authorization from the European Medicines Agency in October 2012.Kadcyla (Trastuzumab emtansine) is an antibody drug conjugate consisting of the monoclonal antibody trastuzumab linked to cytotoxic agent mertansine DM1. In the Emilia (Italy) clinical trials of women suffering from HER2 positive breast cancer who were only resistant to trastuzumab alone, kadcyla improved survival by 5.8 months. Based on this trial, the drug received approval from U.S. FDA in February 2013. Kadcyla was developed by Genentech, Inc., a subsidiary of F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG and is manufactured by Lonza group. The introduction of kadcyla assisted the antibody drug conjugate market in its steep growth from 2012 to 2013.Extensive research and development is the major factor which is driving the antibody drug conjugate market. Majority of the antibody drug conjugates under development are for oncological indications propelled by the availability of monoclonal antibodies targeting different types of cancer. Some market players are also looking outside the oncology domain to develop antibody drug conjugate, though, such drugs are limited in number are in preclinical stage of development. As the large number of large pharmaceutical companies are now involved in antibody drug conjugates market, therefore it is expected that this market will grow rapidly during the forecast period. More than thirty antibody drug conjugates are under pipeline currently, among which Inotuzumab Ozogamicin by Pfizer, Inc., Glembatumumab Vedotin by Celldex Therapeutics, Lorvotuzumab Mertansine by ImmunoGen, Inc., SAR3419 by Sanofi S.A. and PSMA-ADC by Progenics Pharmaceuticals are currently under phase II clinical trials. However, the high cost associated with research activities and sunk cost involved in R&D activities restrains the antibody drug conjugates market. Other players which are involved in research activities of antibody drug conjugates development include Biotest Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Bayer AG, Synthon BV and Immunomedics, Inc.This research report analyzes this market on the basis of its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. Geographies analyzed under this research report include- North America- Asia Pacific- Europe- Rest of the WorldThis report provides comprehensive analysis of- Market growth drivers- Factors limiting market growth- Current market trends- Market structure- Market projections for upcoming yearsThis report is a complete study of current trends in the market, industry growth drivers, and restraints. It provides market projections for the coming years. It includes analysis of recent developments in technology, Porters five force model analysis and detailed profiles of top industry players. The report also includes a review of micro and macro factors essential for the existing market players and new entrants along with detailed value chain analysis.Reasons for Buying this Report- This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics- It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth- It provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow- It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future- It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors- It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments- It provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segmentsMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global Microbial Identification Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast Research Report 2014 - 2020

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Microbial Identification Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020" to its huge collection of research reports.The microbial characterization by a restricted spectrum of tests pre-selected and appropriate to various types of research studies is termed as microbial identification. Microbial identification is applied for accurate identification of environmental isolates to actively support the environmental monitoring programs. These programs are carried out in pharmaceutical manufacturing environment as a part of cGMP, and to reduce risk of contamination and are implemented with Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPAs). The microbial identification of bacteria and fungi as per species is recommended under guidelines of the U.S., European and Japanese Pharmacopeia. The two types of microbial identification techniques are genotype and phenotype. Genotype includes collection of organisms detailed hereditary information and phenotype covers information of organism related with its morphology, chemical behavior and other physical properties. The phenotypic methods consist immunological methods, fatty acid profiles, fourier transform infrared (FITP) spectroscopy, mass spectroscopy and biochemical essay. The genotypic method consists of applications such as nucleic acid amplification techniques and genetic fingerprinting. The microbial identification market can be segmented on the basis of products such as PCR, high-power microscopes, mass spectrometers, automated microbial detection systems, polystainers, flow cytometers, microarrays, and other instruments. The accessories that are used in this product market are plates, media, reagents, kits and other accessories. The application market of microbial identification technique can be segmented as human and animal diagnosis, environmental applications, pharmaceutical applications and food and beverage testing. The end users present in this market comprises government/private institutes and diagnostic laboratories, hospitals, blood banks, food and beverage manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, environmental study agencies, NGOs, research laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, independent research laboratories and culture collection repositories.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Some of the major factors driving the growth of microbial identification include rising prevalence of infectious diseases, technological developments and upgradation in products, rising food safety concerns are also accompanied by other government initiatives. The government initiatives taken with respect to microbial identification are focus on antimicrobial identification, bioterrorism surveillance, and emerging geographies. However, stringent regulatory framework and high costs of these instruments may limit the future growth of microbial identification market.According to market experts, the application of microbial identification technique in regions such as Western Europe and North America was high due to presence of modern technology, presence of leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Regions with rare cases included Asia-Pacific and other geographic regions as some of the organizations and universities do not follow standard guidelines and accompanied by modern diagnostic technologies. North America was observed to be the largest market due to increasing awareness related with infectious diseases and high R&D investments in prevention technologies. Due to presence of leading R&D laboratories and presence of major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies Europe was observed to be the second largest microbial identification market. Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World are the most potential markets for microbial identification. This growth was observed due to the presence of emerging economies and growing healthcare and food industry. Increasing government initiatives against standard cGMP and maintenance of manufacturing environment regulation are expected to boost the market in emerging economies such as China, India, and Brazil.Some of the key players in microbial identification market are Qiagen N.V., Becton, Dickinson and Company, Charles River Laboratories Inc., Siemens Healthcare, Biomerieux SA, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Bruker Corporation Biolog Inc., Shimadzu Corporation, Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, and others.This research report analyzes this market on the basis of its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. This report provides comprehensive analysis of- Market growth drivers- Factors limiting market growth- Current market trends- Market structure- Market projections for upcoming yearsThis report is a complete study of current trends in the market, industry growth drivers, and restraints. It provides market projections for the coming years. It includes analysis of recent developments in technology, Porters five force model analysis and detailed profiles of top industry players. The report also includes a review of micro and macro factors essential for the existing market players and new entrants along with detailed value chain analysis.Reasons for Buying this Report- This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics- It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth- It provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow- It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future- It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors- It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments- It provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segmentsMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global TFT-LCD Panel Consumption 2016 Market Research Report | Now Available at Researchmoz.us

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global TFT-LCD Panel Consumption 2016 Market Research Report" to its huge collection of research reports.The Global TFT-LCD Panel Consumption 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the TFT-LCD Panel market.First, the report provides a basic overview of the TFT-LCD Panel industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. And development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures.Secondly, the report states the global TFT-LCD Panel market size (volume and value), and the segment markets by regions, types, applications and companies are also discussed.Third, the TFT-LCD Panel market analysis is provided for major regions including USA, Europe, China and Japan, and other regions can be added. For each region, market size and end users are analyzed as well as segment markets by types, applications and companies.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information. Whats more, the TFT-LCD Panel industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.In a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of TFT-LCD Panel1.1 Definition and Specifications of TFT-LCD Panel1.1.1 Definition of TFT-LCD Panel1.1.2 Specifications of TFT-LCD Panel1.2 Classification of TFT-LCD Panel1.3 Applications of TFT-LCD Panel1.4 Industry Chain Structure of TFT-LCD Panel1.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of TFT-LCD Panel1.5.1 Industry Overview of TFT-LCD Panel1.5.2 Global Major Regions Status of TFT-LCD Panel1.6 Industry Policy Analysis of TFT-LCD Panel1.7 Industry News Analysis of TFT-LCD Panel2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of TFT-LCD Panel2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of TFT-LCD Panel2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of TFT-LCD Panel2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of TFT-LCD Panel2.4 Other Costs Analysis of TFT-LCD Panel2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of TFT-LCD Panel2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of TFT-LCD Panel3 Global Market Size (Volume and Value), Sales and Sale Price Analysis of TFT-LCD Panel3.1 Global Market Size (Volume and Value) and Growth Rate of TFT-LCD Panel 2011-20163.2 Global Market Size (Volume and Value) of TFT-LCD Panel by Regions 2011-20163.3 Global Market Size (Volume and Value) of TFT-LCD Panel by Types 2011-20163.4 Global Market Size (Volume and Value) of TFT-LCD Panel by Applications 2011-20163.5 Global Sales Volume and Sales Revenue of TFT-LCD Panel by Companies 2011-20163.6 Global Sale Price of TFT-LCD Panel by Regions 2011-20163.7 Global Sale Price of TFT-LCD Panel by Types 2011-20163.8 Global Sale Price of TFT-LCD Panel by Applications 2011-20163.9 Global Sale Price of TFT-LCD Panel by Companies 2011-20164 USA Market Size (Volume and Value), Sales, Sale Price and End Users Analysis of TFT-LCD Panel4.1 USA Market Size (Volume and Value) and Growth Rate of TFT-LCD Panel 2011-20164.2 USA Market Size (Volume and Value) of TFT-LCD Panel by Types 2011-20164.3 USA Market Size (Volume and Value) of TFT-LCD Panel by Applications 2011-20164.4 USA Sales Volume and Sales Revenue of TFT-LCD Panel by Companies 2011-20164.5 USA Sale Price of TFT-LCD Panel by Types 2011-20164.6 USA Sale Price of TFT-LCD Panel by Applications 2011-20164.7 USA Sale Price of TFT-LCD Panel by Companies 2011-20164.8 USA Regional Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of TFT-LCD Panel 2011-20164.9 USA End Users with Contact Information and Consumption Volume of TFT-LCD Panel by Applications5 Europe Market Size (Volume and Value), Sales, Sale Price and End Users Analysis of TFT-LCD Panel5.1 Europe Market Size (Volume and Value) and Growth Rate of TFT-LCD Panel 2011-20165.2 Europe Market Size (Volume and Value) of TFT-LCD Panel by Types 2011-20165.3 Europe Market Size (Volume and Value) of TFT-LCD Panel by Applications 2011-20165.4 Europe Sales Volume and Sales Revenue of TFT-LCD Panel by Companies 2011-20165.5 Europe Sale Price of TFT-LCD Panel by Types 2011-20165.6 Europe Sale Price of TFT-LCD Panel by Applications 2011-20165.7 Europe Sale Price of TFT-LCD Panel by Companies 2011-20165.8 Europe Regional Supply, Import, Export and Consumption of TFT-LCD Panel 2011-20165.9 Europe End Users with Contact Information and Consumption Volume of TFT-LCD Panel by ApplicationsMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
At a CAGR of 5.87%, Global Bio-fuels Market to rise over Forecast period 2016-2020

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Albany, NY, Dec 29: Across the world, there has been an unprecedented interest in biofuels over the past decade. The main reason for this is the volatility in crude oil prices, which is affecting the economic condition of many countries that do not have significant oil and gas reserves to support their growing economy. High dependence on non-renewable fuels has created economic as well as environmental concerns, such as rising greenhouse gas emissions. Several developing and developed economies have implemented regulatory reforms, blending targets, and statutory norms while using biofuels to offset the growing environmental risks associated with conventional fuels.The global biofuels market to grow at a CAGR of 5.87% during the period 2016-2020. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global biofuels market for 2016-2020. The report also presents the vendor landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the top four vendors operating in the market.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEAGet a Sample Research PDF with TOC:Technavio's report, Global Biofuels Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendors- ADM- INEOS Enterprises- Neste- Renewable Energy GroupOther prominent vendors- Archer Daniel Midland- Cosan- Fujian Zhongde Energy- Guangzhou Devotion Thermal Technology- Gushan Environmental Energy- Henan Tianguan Enterprise Group- Jiangsu Hengshunda Bio-Energy- Jiangsu Yueda Kate New Energy- Jilin Fuel Ethanol- Longyan Zhuoyue New Energy- Louis Dreyfus Commodities- Ningbo Tech-Bank- Petrobras- Shandong Jinjiang Bioenergy Technology- Shell- Tangshan Jin Lihai Biodiesel- Zhenghe BioenergyEnquiry at:Key questions answered in this report- What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:
Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Telehealth by Component Report Industry 2016, Trends and Forecast Report" to its huge collection of research reports.

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2016 Global Telehealth by Component Report Industry Report is a professional and in-depth research report on the world's major regional market conditions of the Telehealth by Component Report industry, focusing on the main regions (North America, Europe and Asia) and the main countries (United States, Germany, Japan and China).The report firstly introduced the Telehealth by Component Report basics: definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain overview; industry policies and plans; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures and so on. Then it analyzed the world's main region market conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, capacity utilization, supply, demand and industry growth rate etc. In the end, the report introduced new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis.The report includes six parts, dealing with: 1.) basic information; 2.) the Asia Telehealth by Component Report industry; 3.) the North American Telehealth by Component Report industry; 4.) the European Telehealth by Component Report industry; 5.) market entry and investment feasibility; and 6.) the report conclusion.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Table of ContentsPart I Telehealth by Component Report Industry OverviewChapter One Telehealth by Component Report Industry Overview1.1 Telehealth by Component Report Definition1.2 Telehealth by Component Report Classification Analysis1.2.1 Telehealth by Component Report Main Classification Analysis1.2.2 Telehealth by Component Report Main Classification Share Analysis1.3 Telehealth by Component Report Application Analysis1.3.1 Telehealth by Component Report Main Application Analysis1.3.2 Telehealth by Component Report Main Application Share Analysis1.4 Telehealth by Component Report Industry Chain Structure Analysis1.5 Telehealth by Component Report Industry Development Overview1.5.1 Telehealth by Component Report Product History Development Overview1.5.1 Telehealth by Component Report Product Market Development Overview1.6 Telehealth by Component Report Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.1 Telehealth by Component Report Global Import Market Analysis1.6.2 Telehealth by Component Report Global Export Market Analysis1.6.3 Telehealth by Component Report Global Main Region Market Analysis1.6.4 Telehealth by Component Report Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.5 Telehealth by Component Report Global Market Development Trend AnalysisChapter Two Telehealth by Component Report Up and Down Stream Industry Analysis2.1 Upstream Raw Materials Analysis2.1.1 Upstream Raw Materials Price Analysis2.1.2 Upstream Raw Materials Market Analysis2.1.3 Upstream Raw Materials Market Trend2.2 Down Stream Market Analysis2.1.1 Down Stream Market Analysis2.2.2 Down Stream Demand Analysis2.2.3 Down Stream Market Trend AnalysisPart II Asia Telehealth by Component Report Industry (The Report Company Including the Below Listed But Not All)Chapter Three Asia Telehealth by Component Report Market Analysis3.1 Asia Telehealth by Component Report Product Development History3.2 Asia Telehealth by Component Report Process Development History3.3 Asia Telehealth by Component Report Industry Policy and Plan Analysis3.4 Asia Telehealth by Component Report Competitive Landscape Analysis3.5 Asia Telehealth by Component Report Market Development TrendChapter Four 2011-2016 Asia Telehealth by Component Report Productions Supply Sales Demand Market Status and Forecast4.1 2011-2016 Telehealth by Component Report Capacity Production Overview4.2 2011-2016 Telehealth by Component Report Production Market Share Analysis4.3 2011-2016 Telehealth by Component Report Demand Overview4.4 2011-2016 Telehealth by Component Report Supply Demand and Shortage4.5 2011-2016 Telehealth by Component Report Import Export Consumption4.6 2011-2016 Telehealth by Component Report Cost Price Production Value Gross MarginChapter Five Asia Telehealth by Component Report Key Manufacturers Analysis5.1 Company A5.1.1 Company Profile5.1.2 Product Picture and Specification5.1.3 Product Application Analysis5.1.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.1.5 Contact Information5.2 Company B5.2.1 Company Profile5.2.2 Product Picture and Specification5.2.3 Product Application Analysis5.2.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.2.5 Contact Information5.3 Company C5.3.1 Company Profile5.3.2 Product Picture and Specification5.3.3 Product Application Analysis5.3.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.3.5 Contact Information5.4 Company D5.4.1 Company Profile5.4.2 Product Picture and Specification5.4.3 Product Application Analysis5.4.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.4.5 Contact Information......Chapter Six Asia Telehealth by Component Report Industry Development Trend6.1 2016-2020 Telehealth by Component Report Capacity Production Overview6.2 2016-2020 Telehealth by Component Report Production Market Share Analysis6.3 2016-2020 Telehealth by Component Report Demand Overview6.4 2016-2020 Telehealth by Component Report Supply Demand and Shortage6.5 2016-2020 Telehealth by Component Report Import Export Consumption6.6 2016-2020 Telehealth by Component Report Cost Price Production Value Gross MarginMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Recent Survey Reveals Global Outdoor Ip Cameras Industry Research Report 2016 | Researchmoz

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Outdoor Ip Cameras Industry 2016, Trends and Forecast Report" to its huge collection of research reports.2016 Global Outdoor Ip Cameras Industry Report is a professional and in-depth research report on the world's major regional market conditions of the Outdoor Ip Cameras industry, focusing on the main regions (North America, Europe and Asia) and the main countries (United States, Germany, Japan and China).The report firstly introduced the Outdoor Ip Cameras basics: definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain overview; industry policies and plans; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures and so on. Then it analyzed the world's main region market conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, capacity utilization, supply, demand and industry growth rate etc. In the end, the report introduced new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis.The report includes six parts, dealing with: 1.) basic information; 2.) the Asia Outdoor Ip Cameras industry; 3.) the North American Outdoor IpCameras industry; 4.) the European Outdoor Ip Cameras industry; 5.) market entry and investment feasibility; and 6.) the report conclusion.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Table of ContentsPart I Outdoor Ip Cameras Industry OverviewChapter One Outdoor Ip Cameras Industry Overview1.1 Outdoor Ip Cameras Definition1.2 Outdoor Ip Cameras Classification Analysis1.2.1 Outdoor Ip Cameras Main Classification Analysis1.2.2 Outdoor Ip Cameras Main Classification Share Analysis1.3 Outdoor Ip Cameras Application Analysis1.3.1 Outdoor Ip Cameras Main Application Analysis1.3.2 Outdoor Ip Cameras Main Application Share Analysis1.4 Outdoor Ip Cameras Industry Chain Structure Analysis1.5 Outdoor Ip Cameras Industry Development Overview1.5.1 Outdoor Ip Cameras Product History Development Overview1.5.1 Outdoor Ip Cameras Product Market Development Overview1.6 Outdoor Ip Cameras Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.1 Outdoor Ip Cameras Global Import Market Analysis1.6.2 Outdoor Ip Cameras Global Export Market Analysis1.6.3 Outdoor Ip Cameras Global Main Region Market Analysis1.6.4 Outdoor Ip Cameras Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.5 Outdoor Ip Cameras Global Market Development Trend AnalysisChapter Two Outdoor Ip Cameras Up and Down Stream Industry Analysis2.1 Upstream Raw Materials Analysis2.1.1 Upstream Raw Materials Price Analysis2.1.2 Upstream Raw Materials Market Analysis2.1.3 Upstream Raw Materials Market Trend2.2 Down Stream Market Analysis2.1.1 Down Stream Market Analysis2.2.2 Down Stream Demand Analysis2.2.3 Down Stream Market Trend AnalysisPart II Asia Outdoor Ip Cameras Industry (The Report Company Including the Below Listed But Not All)Chapter Three Asia Outdoor Ip Cameras Market Analysis3.1 Asia Outdoor Ip Cameras Product Development History3.2 Asia Outdoor Ip Cameras Process Development History3.3 Asia Outdoor Ip Cameras Industry Policy and Plan Analysis3.4 Asia Outdoor Ip Cameras Competitive Landscape Analysis3.5 Asia Outdoor Ip Cameras Market Development TrendChapter Four 2011-2016 Asia Outdoor Ip Cameras Productions Supply Sales Demand Market Status and Forecast4.1 2011-2016 Outdoor Ip Cameras Capacity Production Overview4.2 2011-2016 Outdoor Ip Cameras Production Market Share Analysis4.3 2011-2016 Outdoor Ip Cameras Demand Overview4.4 2011-2016 Outdoor Ip Cameras Supply Demand and Shortage4.5 2011-2016 Outdoor Ip Cameras Import Export Consumption4.6 2011-2016 Outdoor Ip Cameras Cost Price Production Value Gross MarginChapter Five Asia Outdoor Ip Cameras Key Manufacturers Analysis5.1 Company A5.1.1 Company Profile5.1.2 Product Picture and Specification5.1.3 Product Application Analysis5.1.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.1.5 Contact Information5.2 Company B5.2.1 Company Profile5.2.2 Product Picture and Specification5.2.3 Product Application Analysis5.2.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.2.5 Contact Information5.3 Company C5.3.1 Company Profile5.3.2 Product Picture and Specification5.3.3 Product Application Analysis5.3.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.3.5 Contact Information5.4 Company D5.4.1 Company Profile5.4.2 Product Picture and Specification5.4.3 Product Application Analysis5.4.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.4.5 Contact Information......Chapter Six Asia Outdoor Ip Cameras Industry Development Trend6.1 2016-2020 Outdoor Ip Cameras Capacity Production Overview6.2 2016-2020 Outdoor Ip Cameras Production Market Share Analysis6.3 2016-2020 Outdoor Ip Cameras Demand Overview6.4 2016-2020 Outdoor Ip Cameras Supply Demand and Shortage6.5 2016-2020 Outdoor Ip Cameras Import Export Consumption6.6 2016-2020 Outdoor Ip Cameras Cost Price Production Value Gross MarginMake an Enquiry of this report @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Elastomeric Coatings Market Globally to register highest growth by 2024

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Elastomeric comes from the term an elastomer. Elastomer can be defined as a polymer having viscosity along with elasticity and fragile inter-molecular forces. It is a rubber-like polymer that shows its elasticity property at the time of loading. It is also one of the coatings used in roof coating. It is widely used for the purpose of repairing and to extend the life of the roof or the surface on which it is applied. Heating and cooling of roof surfaces cause cracks and weakening of the surface. Thus, elastomeric coating expands and contracts, resulting in an extraordinary protection in any season throughout the year.Request Free Sample Report @On the basis of end-user, the global elastomeric coatings market is segmented as industrial, textile, marine, and others. Based on the technology used, the global market is segmented as water-borne and solvent-borne coatings. On the basis of composition, the global market is segmented as acrylic, silicone, polyurethane, and butyl. Of which, acrylic, silicone, and polyurethane segments are the most dominating segments in the elastomeric coatings market in the building & construction industry. These types of compositions vary irrespective to the technical specification. On the basis of application, the global elastomeric coatings market is further segmented as floor coating, roof coating, wall coating, and others.Increasing building and constructional projects, high elasticity, crack fixing ability, reliable waterproofing feature, and extraordinary qualities of elastomeric coatings compared to conventional coating methods are some of the factors driving the growth of the global elastomeric coatings market. In addition, the increasing demand for energy-efficient cool roof concept may boost the elastomeric coatings market in the near future. Increasing population and advancements in new technologies related to the coatings may impact the growth the elastomeric coatings market in a positive way. Moreover, growing awareness of elastomeric coating process in the construction sector, fairly priced, easy handling, and reliable performance are the leading growth factors driving ht global elastomeric coatings market around the world.Request Report TOC (Table of Contents) @North America is leading player in the global elastomeric coatings market. High demand in Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the major growth driver of elastomeric coatings market. In addition, increased industrial production of elastomeric coatings of raw materials in China also boosts the growth of the market in Asia Pacific. Furthermore, Europe is anticipated to witness a steady growth owing to the stringent government regulations over VOC emissions from coatings and saturated end-user markets. The Middle East and Africa is expected to experience considerable growth in the elastomeric coatings market in the near future.Some of the major plays dominating the elastomeric coatings market are Henry Company, The Dow Chemical Company, Nippon Paints, The Sherwin-Williams Company, BASF SE, PPG Industries, Inc., The Valspar Corporation, Clariant AG, Jotun A/S, and Dulux Australia. Other key players influencing the global market are Rodda Paints, 3M, Univar Inc., BEHR Process Corporation, Progressive paints, and Axalta Coating Systems LLC.Browse detail report @Elastomeric Coatings Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East and AfricaVisit Our Blog:About UsZion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristic, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from cardinal industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the clients needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to usafter allif you do well, a little of the light shines on us.Contact US:Zion Market Research4283, Express Lane,Suite 634-143,Sarasota, Florida 34249, United StatesTel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll-Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@zionmarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Textile Chemicals Market: Industry Facts, Figures, Size, Share and Segment Analysis by 2016-2024

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The chemicals that are used during various processes of fabric or yarn manufacturing are known as textile chemical. As per the defined process in textile industries, it has numerous finishing procedures including pretreatment, dyeing, printing, and enhancement of fabrics. The chemicals include a list of the specialized chemicals such as flame retardants, biocides, and water repellents as well as normal chemicals such as greases, starch, waxes, and others. The various sources of the raw materials used in textile chemicals are extracted from nature or produced synthetically.Get a copy of free Sample Report @On the basis of products, the global textile chemicals market is segmented as finishing agents, surfactants, bleaching agents, yarn lubricants, colorants, and coating and sizing chemicals. There are certain processes wherein the chemicals are utilized. Based on the process used, the global market is further segmented as scouring, bleaching, de-sizing, softening, mercerization, dyeing, and others. Of which, the sizing and coating segment dominates the textile chemicals market. On the basis of end-user, the global textile chemicals market segmented as apparel, home furnishing, industrial, and medical apparel. Of which, the home furnishing segment was witnessed as the major segment in the textile industry.Read TOC of Report @Rising demand for environment-friendly fabrics has led the development of eco-friendly chemical solutions by chemical manufacturers. The rigid growth of the real estate and housing segment has boosted the home furnishing requirements, which in turn impacts the growth of the textile in a positive way. Therefore, this indirectly augments the growth of the textile chemicals market. An increasing number of new brands launched globally as well as constantly growing SMEs for apparel manufacturing has increased the growth of the global textile chemicals market. Moreover, the introduction of nanotechnology in the textile process resulting in the development of fabrics with exceptional chemical resistance, strength, water repellence, antibacterial properties, elasticity, flexibility, durability, and other properties is one of the factors driving the growth of the global market. In addition, the demand from medical industry for surgical apparels is also a key element for rising textile chemicals market growth. Furthermore, increasing utilization of greenhouse fabrics, automotive fabrics, and fireproof fabrics used in the household application may boost the growth of the textile chemicals market. Conversely, the large use of the hazardous textile chemical in the manufacturing process and consumer preferring hygienic products with the low concentration of chemicals may restrain the growth of the global textile chemicals market in the future.Browse detail report @Asia Pacific is dominating the overall textile chemicals market globally. North America is anticipated to grow at steady a speed. In addition, owing to growing urban development in the Middle East, this region may fuel the market growth.Some of the major companies dominating the global textile chemicals market are BASF, Clariant International, BASF, Bayer Material Science, Huntsman International, The Dow Chemical Company, Kiri Industries Limited, Sumitomo Chemicals Co. Ltd., and Omnova Solutions. Other key players influencing the global market are Lubrizol Corporation, Archroma, Kemira, and Shaw Industries, Inc.Textile Chemicals Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East & AfricaAbout UsZion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristic, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from cardinal industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the clients needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to usafter allif you do well, a little of the light shines on us.Contact US:Zion Market Research4283, Express Lane,Suite 634-143,Sarasota, Florida 34249, United StatesTel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll-Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@zionmarketresearch.comWebsite:
Bills release multiple artist renderings of new stadium The morning of Oct. 27 was a day Buffalo Bills fans have been patiently waiting for  a reveal of what the new stadium will potentially look like. The team...

County officials, law firm representatives host public hearing on new stadium SEQR Erie County officials, representatives from Phillips Lytle LLP, power players for a new stadium and interested Buffalo Bills fans packed into one of the community rooms of the Brush Mountain...
eric_hoffman_crop.jpg

Son of the company's founder, Eric Hoffman led its shift into commercial building and directed its transition to employee ownership.

(Hoffman family photo)

Eric Hoffman, whose Portland construction company built many of the city's best-known buildings, died Tuesday at age 93.

Founded by his father L.H. Hoffman in 1922, Hoffman Construction built Memorial Coliseum, the Wells Fargo Center, the Oregon Convention Center and the Fox Tower. Eric Hoffman ran the business from 1965 until 1974 and was chairman for years afterward.

Eric Hoffman attended Stanford University, interrupting his studies during World War II to serve in the U.S. Army. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge, according to his family. He received the Purple Heart, awarded to those injured in combat, after being wounded by shrapnel late in 1944.

A 1970 Oregonian article on Hoffman Construction.

Wayne Drinkward, Hoffman Construction's current president, said that in the late 1960s Eric Hoffman shifted the business from its roots serving the paper and forest products industry to focus on the more promising commercial construction market. Hoffman eventually gave up his executive role, according to Drinkward, hiring new managers with experience in that space.

"It takes quite a bit to step back and bring people in who complement you," Drinkward said.

In 1992, Drinkward said, Eric Hoffman directed that the company shift from family control to employee ownership, a structure that remains in place today.

"He felt the employees earned it," Drinkward said. "He saw it in the long-term as a way the company could continue."

Eric Hoffman served on the board of the Portland Art Museum and Oregon Health and Science University. He was a past president of the University Club and the Arlington Club.

His wife, Ronnie Hoffman, said he died following a five-year fight with bone cancer.

Other survivors include daughter Joan Hoffman, daughter Susan Hoffman and her partner Fred Trullinger, daughter Sally Hoffman Miller and her husband Peter, and son Eric Hoffman and his wife Jan. Other survivors include four stepchildren, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

The family plans a celebration of his life at noon, January 4 at Waverly Country Club. They suggest memorial donations to the OHSU Cardiology Institute, the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, the Oregon Historical Society, or the Portland Art Museum.

-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; 503-294-7699
Oregon has added more than 55,000 jobs in the past year, growing twice as fast as the nation. State forecasters expect many more jobs over the next decade -- but many pay low-end wages. Here's why.

And here are the 20 positions forecast for the most growth between 2014 and 2024.

(AP photo)

Help wanted: Top 20 job categories

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AP photo

No. 20: Maids and Housekeepers

Average annual job openings: 590

Median hourly wage: $10.95

Number employed in 2014: 14,475

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required

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Benjamin Brink/The Oregonian

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 19: Accountants and auditors

Average annual job openings: 607 (corrected)

Median hourly wage: $29.96

Number employed in 2014: 12,623

Educational qualifications: Bachelor's degree

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AP photo

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 18: Food preparation

Average annual job openings: 607

Median hourly wage: $10.91

Number employed in 2014: 13,915

Educational qualifications: Less than high school

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Stephanie Yao Long

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 17: Counter attendants (coffee shops, cafeterias)

Average annual job openings: 612

Median hourly wage: 10.48

Number employed in 2014: 8,122

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required

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Stephanie Yao Long/The Oregonian

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 16: Bartenders

Average annual job openings: 652

Median hourly wage: $9.84

Number employed in 2014: 10,518

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required

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AP photo

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 15: Truck drivers

Average annual job openings: 690

Median hourly wage: $19.96

Number employed in 2014: 23,686

Educational qualifications: Postsecondary training

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Oregonian file photo

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 14: Stock clerks and order fillers

Average annual job openings: 723

Median hourly wage: $13.76

Number employed in 2014: 17,071

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required

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Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 13: Janitors

Average annual job openings: 845

Median hourly wage: $12.40

Number employed in 2014: 26,152

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required

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AP photo

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 12: Farmworkers

Average annual job openings: 850

Median hourly wage: $10.47

Number employed in 2014: 22,343

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required

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Brent Wojahn/The Oregonian

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 11: Office clerks

Average annual job openings: 1,005

Median hourly wage: $15.76

Number employed in 2014: 33,978

Educational qualifications: High school diploma or equivalent

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United HomeCare Services home health aide Wendys Cerrato talks with Robert Granville after shaving him in his home on December 14, 2009 in Miami, Florida. (Getty images)

No. 10: Personal care aides

Average annual job openings: 1,005

Median hourly wage: $11.19

Number employed in 2014: 19.347

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required

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AP photo

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 9: Hand laborers and stock movers (dockworkers, receiving, shipping, warehouse workers)

Average annual job openings: 1,049

Median hourly wage: $13.05

Number employed in 2014: 23,972

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required

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Dana E. Olsen/The Oregonian

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 8: Customer service representatives

Average annual job openings: 1,112

Median hourly wage: $16.15

Number employed in 2014: 26,451

Educational qualifications: High school diploma or equivalent

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Michael Lloyd/The Oregonian

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 7: General and operations managers

Average annual job openings: 1,121

Median hourly wage: $39.52

Number employed in 2014: 27,869

Educational qualifications: Bachelor's degree

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Stephanie Yao Long/The Oregonian

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 6: Restaurant cooks

Average annual job openings: 1,162

Median hourly wage: $11.50

Number employed in 2014: 22,006

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required

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Benjamin Brink/The Oregonian

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 5: Registered nurses

Average annual job openings: 1,284

Median hourly wage: $41.55

Number employed in 2014: 33,421

Educational qualifications: Bachelor's degree

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Benjamin Brink/The Oregonian

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 4: Food prep and serving

Average annual job openings: 1,787

Median hourly wage: $9.81

Number employed in 2014: 32,775

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required

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AP photo

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 3: Cashiers

Average annual job openings: 1,868

Median hourly wage: $10.74

Number employed in 2014: 38,188

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required

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Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 2: Waiters and waitresses

Average annual job openings: 1,967

Median hourly wage: $9.73

Number employed in 2014: 28,303

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required

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Randy Rasmussen/The Oregonian

Mike Rogoway | The Oregonian/OregonLive

No. 1: Retail salespeople

Average annual job openings: 3,192

Median hourly wage: $11.54

Number employed in 2014: 63,827

Educational qualifications: No high school degree required
Oregon is sprouting jobs at its fastest rate in years. And while growth will inevitably slow, economists expect hiring to continue at a modest pace for most of the coming decade.

That's creating many new openings across all fields. Among broad occupational groups, Oregon forecasters say work in such industries as construction and health care will be the fastest growing in the coming years.

Many factors are benefiting job seekers, including the prolonged economic expansion and the aging work force. Josh Lehner, an Oregon state economist, wrote this month that the number of people who retire annually will jump by as much as 7,000 in the coming years as the state's population ages.

Among narrow job categories, though, the largest number of raw openings will be in comparatively low-wage service work. To some degree, economists say, that reflects national job polarization as high- and low-end jobs expand while middle-income work in manufacturing and specialty trades decline.

As Lehner noted earlier this year, recessions exacerbate that trend. In March, he wrote, Oregon had 62,000 fewer middle-income jobs than it did before the Great Recession - even while the broader economy had rebounded quite strongly, cutting the state's jobless rate to 5.3 percent.

"The bulk of these losses are in the traditional blue collar occupations of construction, installation, maintenance and repair, production, and transportation," Lehner wrote.

There's another factor, according to economists: Openings in service jobs have always been more prevalent.

That's partly because there are more of them, relatively speaking, and partly because service workers tend to leave low-paying jobs more frequently. Sometimes they're fired, sometimes they're entry-level workers leaving for better-paying jobs as they gain experience.

"A large number of replacements will be necessary as young workers leave these occupations," said Felicia Bechtoldt, an economist with the Oregon Employment Department.

As the economy improves, the department says fewer people are working for minimum wage jobs than at any time since 2002.

#Oregon's 75,700 minimum wage #jobs made up 3.9% of all jobs in first quarter 2016, down from 5.3% (100,200 jobs) in first quarter 2015. pic.twitter.com/feNlPJW4i6  Oregon Employment - Workforce & Economic Research (@ORemployment) December 29, 2016

Here's Oregon's forecast of the 100 most in-demand jobs from 2014-2024. You can sort it by job category, projected number of openings, wages or the education level required.

A note on the average annual job openings: The number of openings exclude people who left one position for another within the same organization, and those who leave an organization for the same position in another organization.

-- Mike Rogoway

mrogoway@oregonian.com

503-294-7699

@rogoway
A new state audit says Oregon's economic development agency needs to do a better job evaluating the tax incentives it uses to attract businesses to the state and be more transparent about their results.

The Secretary of State's office audit found that property tax breaks for Intel and similar exemptions for data centers consumed the lion's share of Business Oregon's incentives.

"We recommend that Business Oregon develop additional metrics and targets for incentive and loan performance, using them to evaluate the awards and report performance to policymakers and the public," the auditors wrote.

Oregon's biggest tax incentives, 2015-2017

Strategic Investment Program

: Large manufacturers received property tax exemptions worth $406.3 million. Intel received 80 percent of those tax breaks.

Standard Enterprise Zone

: Property tax exemptions for three to five years saved employers $71.9 million.

Rural Enterprise Zone

: Data centers received most of these incentives, worth $56.8 million altogether.

Oregon Production Investment Fund

: Tax credits for film and TV productions, worth $22.9 million.

Manufacturing Business Energy Tax Credit

: Manufacturers received tax credits for using renewable energy worth $22.6 million.

Source: Audit by Oregon Secretary of State's office

Data centers' tax exemptions received particular scrutiny: For each job the tax breaks brought in, the auditors found, local communities gave up property tax revenue between $87,000 and $800,000.

Beneficiaries of those exemptions include Amazon (in Morrow County), Google (The Dalles), Facebook and Apple (both in Prineville). Local cities and counties decide whether to grant the exemptions under Oregon's enterprise zone program.

"State and local jurisdictions need to periodically examine the zones in-depth to identify potential improvements and weigh the tax breaks against the zone benefits," the auditors wrote. "An evaluation of data center tax incentives could also include a broader range of community benefits and costs tied to these projects."

Oregon offers some of the nation's most attractive incentives for data centers, providing broad property tax exemptions coupled with the absence of a state sales tax. That combination can save individual projects several million dollars a year.

Even large data centers, though, typically employ no more than several dozen people. State auditors said Oregon should undertake a more careful analysis to weigh the size of the tax breaks against the jobs created.

Roger Lee, executive director of Economic Development for Central Oregon, said the data centers would never have come to small towns like Prineville and The Dalles without the tax breaks. So those communities aren't giving up anything when they grant the incentives, he said.

"It doesn't take away from the tax base, the existing tax base," Lee said. "It's only on new investment."

The state audit notes that community service and franchise fees offset some of the data centers' property tax breaks, but says Oregon doesn't adequately quantify those benefits.

Other findings in the audit:

Oregon granted $680 million in tax incentives through Business Oregon during the state's last two-year budget cycle. Three-quarters of that was awarded to programs under local control, including the data center and Intel tax breaks.

Oregon's incentives are relatively small compared with those in other states. For example, Texas distributed $86 million through its enterprise fund in 2015, compared with $4 million in the comparable Oregon program.

Most awards during 2011 and 2012 went to businesses that paid average wages below that of the county where they operated.

Enterprise zone property tax breaks were concentrated on relatively well-off regions, in contrast to the program's initial aim to help poorer parts of the state.

Oregon's enterprise zone programs haven't had a thorough review since 2009, and aren't scheduled for another until 2025. Most Business Oregon incentives aren't subject to a "sunset" review to determine whether the state should continue offering them.

Oregon's history with tax incentives has been poor. The Business Energy Tax Credit was little short of a catastrophe, gobbling up 40 times more than lawmakers expected when they approved the program. A recent state audit found nearly a quarter of all projects funded by that tax credit "seemed improper, violated statutes or rules, or exhibited suspicious activity."

The Oregon Energy Department administered that program, however, and it was separate from the Business Oregon tax incentives cataloged in this month's audit.

In a formal response, Business Oregon said it "generally agrees with the audit recommendations." The agency committed to update its website with more information, but said sunset reviews are beyond its mandate and said additional transparency must "balance the public's right to know with individual businesses' rights to privacy."

-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; 503-294-7699
fressen.JPG

Fressen has baked its earthy potato breads, dense volkenbrot and super-chewy pretzels for over a decade. Look for the bakery to reopen in a new Montavilla location early next year.

(Anna Marum | The Oregonian/OregonLive)

Most of Portland's celebrated bakeries -- Ken's Artisan Bakery, Pearl Bakery and Little T, and even Kim Boyce's all-whole-grain Bakeshop -- are inspired by the techniques and traditions of French baking. But though France deserves its privileged place in the world of bread and pastry, there are more things in heaven and earth than croissants and brioche. In addition to Oyatsupan, which began baking Japanese treats in Beaverton this spring, here are five Portland-area bakeries that celebrate the breads and sweets of other nations throughout the world.

Russian Elegant Food

This Russian bakery and grocery store can be tricky to find -- look for the signs reading "Euro Foods" and "PYCCKII MAGAZIH" -- but once you're inside there's no doubt you're in the right place. Under a shingled awning with a sign reading "European Bakery" are rows of cakes and sweet pastries; at the back of the store, with the produce, are racks of fresh loaves. The dense, lightly sweet rye is my new favorite sandwich bread. Best of all, and worth crossing town for, is the case of piroshki, fried to a blistered crisp and filled with calf liver, potatoes, chicken, mushrooms, or cherry jam. I favor the silky fattiness of the chicken. The piroshki run $1 to $1.95.

10121 NE Glisan St., 503-262-6733

Gary's Bakery and Bistro

The tables at this Hong Kong-style bakery and teashop in the heart of the Jade District are filled with customers sipping yuanyang, a blend of coffee and milk tea, and snacking on tiny egg custard tarts. Grab a tray and tongs and load up on braided raisin rolls, custard buns, impossibly large barbecue-pork bao, chicken handpies, coconut tarts and fist-size fritters filled with minced shrimp and vegetables. If you're tempted to nab the cylindrical brioche roll wrapped in omelet and dusted with dried pork shavings, first consider just how much mayonnaise you'd like to eat today -- it's packed with the stuff.

8615 S.E. Division St., 503-954-2883

Fressen

This outfit has been serving Portlanders German specialties like rich Swabian rye, earthy potato bread, dense vollkornbrot and super-chewy pretzels for over a decade. They're currently in the midst of building out a new bakery cafe in a former auto repair shop in Montavilla, but in the meantime you can find their breads and pastries -- including, at Christmastime, an excellent stollen fruit bread -- every weekend at the Hillsdale and downtown Portland farmers markets.

503-953-2817, fressenartisanbakery.com



India Sweets and Spices

You won't find much in the way of breads at this grocery store in an anonymous business park off Highway 26, but you will find plenty to sate your sweet tooth. The deli case is filled to bursting with trays of Indian confections: crisp coils of jalebi, fried balls of gulab jamun soaked in rose syrup, soft petha candy, dense, and squares of chewy barfi milk fudge made from cashews, pistachios, dried fruits, or chocolate, running from $6 to $9 per pound. Treat yourself to a samosa while you're there.

16205 NW Bethany Court, 503-690-0499, indiasweetsspices.com



Los Chapines

This Guatemalan restaurant and bakery tucked next to a Bi-Mart on the Southern edge of Hillsboro is also home to a fairly delightful little bakery. The pastries come in myriad shapes and patterns but mostly taste like poundcake, yeast rolls, or scones, flavored with vanilla, orange, or anise. Some have pineapple jelly inside. Imagine a really good hotel breakfast basket and you'll get the general idea. All are remarkably cheap, at around 60 cents apiece. Los Chapines' goods can also be found at Kaah Market in the Portland Mercado.

2055 S.E. Tualatin Valley Highway #17, 503-640-8018

-- Ben Waterhouse, Special to The Oregonian
Liquor store.jpg

When Oregonians head to the liquor store, they're picking up HRD Vodka the most by volume. But when it comes to alcohol sales by dollar, they're spending the most on Jack Daniels, according to new figures released by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.

(The Associated Press)

When Oregonians head to their neighborhood liquor store, they're buying lots of cheap vodka, but spending the most money on Jack Daniels, according to newly released sales figures.

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission this week revealed its annual list of the top 10 spirits sold in the state from Dec. 1, 2015 through Nov. 30, 2016. At the top of the list of alcohol sold by volume is HRD Vodka, which is sold by Oregon-based Hood River Distillers. Oregonians bought 852,000 liters of the spirit this year, accounting for more than $8.3 million in sales.

Jack Daniels Old No. 7 was ranked at the top of annual dollar sales, with more than $14.2 million in sales. The whiskey just cracked the sales by volume list at No. 9, with 458,000 liters in sales.

HRD is one of the most-inexpensive brands of vodka sold at liquor stores. But it's not the only vodka Oregonians are drinking a lot of. Four other brands of vodka were in the top 10 list of sales by volume, including mid-range priced Smirnoff and Monopolowa.

Here's a break-down of the top 10 sellers by volume and sales.

2016 sales by volume (in liters)

HRD Vodka: 852,000 Fleischmann Royal: 752,000 Fireball Cinnamon: 558,000 Black Velvet: 556,000 Potters Vodka: 482,000 Smirnoff Vodka: 471,000 Monopolowa Vodka: 468,000 Seagram's Seven: 461,000 Jack Daniels Old No. 7: 458,000 Platinum 7X Vodka: 437,000

2016 sales by dollar

Jack Daniels Old No. 7: $14,215,000 Fireball Cinnamon: $11,921,000 Pendleton: $11,814,000 Jameson Irish Whiskey: $11,368,000 Crown Royal: $11,329,000 Monopolowa Vodka: $9,044,000 Smirnoff Vodka: $8,811,000 HRD Vodka: $8,321,000 Black Velvet: $7,385,000 Maker's Mark: $6,980,000

All amounts rounded to the nearest thousand.

-- Grant Butler

503-221-8566; @grantbutler
Some people make New Year's Eve plans far in advance, but if you're reading this, that's probably not you.

Like a lot of people, you may have nothing planned at all, preferring to let the spirit of the night guide you to some celebration, somewhere around town. Thankfully, there's plenty going on: free concerts, expensive balls, mountaintop fireworks, a 10K run - even a sobriety powwow.

Below is a partial list of some of the standouts, curated with last-minute planners and urban adventurers in mind. So head out there, you crazy revelers, you! Raise a glass to Jimmy Mak's, do some midnight snow tubing, take a stroll down Peacock Lane, or strap on your running shoes and race through Waterfront Park.

Whatever you do, have a happy and safe start to 2017, Portland.

Free TriMet

If you're really going to go out with a bang, consider taking TriMet, which offers free rides on all trains, buses and streetcars after 8 p.m. on Dec. 31. Service will run on regular weekday service and will go late, extended to about 3 a.m. around the city.

Sobriety Powwow

One of the most popular New Year's Eve events in Portland, the annual sobriety powwow draws huge crowds to the Oregon Convention Center for a full day and night of dance, music and culture. The free event, hosted by the Native American Rehabilitation Association, is in its 31st year. Alcohol, tobacco and recreational drugs are prohibited.

1 p.m. through midnight @ Oregon Convention Center; free

Mountain Parties

Mount Hood is home to a whopping three New Year's Eve parties: the wild New Year's Eve Extravaganza at Ski Bowl, the new Brew Year's Eve party hosted by Full Sail at Meadows and the classy New Year's Eve dinner at Timberline. You can enjoy a fireworks display at each.

Ski Bowl: 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. @ Mt. Hood Ski Bowl; free admission

Meadows: 8 p.m. through midnight @ Mt. Hood Meadows; $15 at the door

Timberline: 6 p.m. through midnight @ Timberline Lodge; $80 to $125 per person

Say Goodbye to Jimmy Mak's

Portland's beloved jazz club is shutting its doors, throwing one last party on New Year's Eve. A measly $20 to $25 will get you into a historic night that includes music from northwest veterans Soul Vaccination.

10 p.m. @ Jimmy Mak's; $25 reserved, $20 general admission

McMenamins

In a pinch? You can always head to your local McMenamins. Just about every McMenamins property is hosting a New Year's Eve party of some kind, ranging from sell-out concerts to small shindigs - most offering live music and champagne for free or on the cheap.

Peacock Lane

Portland's popular neighborhood light display, Peacock Lane, is open for New Year's Eve, offering a gentler, more twinkling entrance into 2017.

Champagne Ball

There are still tickets available for the sweaty, swanky Champagne Ball, a massive party at the Hilton Portland and Executive Tower with 17 bars, three dance floors and throngs of people making a wild entrance into the new year.

8 p.m. to 2 a.m. @ Hilton Portland and Executive Tower; $109 to $249

First Run 2017

If you want to really get serious about that New Year's resolution, consider signing up for the First Run 2017, a 5K and 10K run/walk that will take over Waterfront Park at the stroke of midnight. That's dedication.

10 p.m. to midnight @ World Trade Center; $35 to $50

Ode to Joy

The Oregon Symphony is bringing some beautiful music to New Year's Eve, once again performing their Ode to Joy program on Dec. 30 and 31 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. The show runs from Big Band to Beethoven to ring in 2017.

7:30 p.m. @ Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall; tickets start at $45

--Jamie Hale | jhale@oregonian.com | @HaleJamesBAfter tough year, Americans hopeful for a better 2017
yarndogs.JPG

Larger-than-life replicas of Bo and Sunny, made with more than 25,000 yarn pompoms, are displayed in the East Wing Hallway of the White House during a preview of the 2016 holiday decor at the White House on Nov. 29, 2016, in Washington. More than 25,000 pompoms! Can you imagine?

(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Knitted Wit is having a New Year's Day party from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 1. "We'll serve up Hoppin' John, corn bread, and mimosas!" Knitted Wit writes. "We'll cast on our new knit, and make plans for crafting the whole year long. Need a new knit inspiration? We'll have yarn and fiber out for sale!" Knitted Wit's studio is at 7434 N.E. Sandy Blvd. in Portland.

Fiber Rhythm Craft & Design has some special events this week related to the Pussyhat Project. "Diane Smith Wright and I are scheduled to be on KGW's Portland Today on Thursday, December 29th sometime during the one-hour show (starts at 11am)," Dawn writes. "We'll have yarn, hooks and needles and example hats-- mostly made by Diane Smith Wright. We're hoping to get more folks involved in knitting, sewing or crocheting pink hats for folks to wear in Washington DC for the Women's March on Washington." And there's more: The store's hosting a knit- and crochet-along for the Pussyhat Project starting at 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 31. "Diane Smith Wright will be here to help crocheters and Dawn will be here to help knitters!" the store writes. "Please let us know via our Facebook Event Page if you will be able to attend. Remember that we are offering 10 percent off pink yarns for folks who are working on their own hats or hats to donate!" Fiber Rhythm Craft & Design is at 3701 S.E. Milwaukie Ave. in Portland.

The Traveling Ewe is taking reservations for its latest Sheepish in Seattle adventure. It's Saturday, April 8, to Sunday, April 9. Here's the (partial) description: "By popular demand we will once again travel from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington this April 8th and 9th! Join us and return to favorites Maker's Mercantile, Tolt Wool and Yarn, Churchmouse Yarns and Teas, Ewe and I, and Serial Knitters - as well as new this year shop Bad Woman Yarn." The trip costs $349-$448.

UPDATE I: Knotty Lamb is having a sale on Addi Olive Wood Needles. They're 20 percent off. Knotty Lamb is at 2003 19th Ave. in Forest Grove.

UPDATE II: The Naked Sheep Knit Shop will be open on Sunday, Jan. 1, from noon to 4 p.m. "Join me for an afternoon of fiber, food and friends!" Cheri writes. "Bring a healthy snack to share (New Year's Resolutions, right?), your current project and your lovely self!" The Naked Sheep Knit Shop is at 2142 N. Killingsworth in Portland.

-- Mary Mooney

mmooney@oregonian.com

503-412-7020; @MaryKnitsPDX
Oregon reached peak driving a decade ago

Portland rush hour traffic crawls eastbound on Oregon 26 near Sylvan. Doug Beghtel/2012

(Doug Beghtel/2013)

Bruce Seiler

Traffic congestion has quadrupled in the past ten years and yet neither the state, city or county are building new roads and when they do talk about transportation, it's usually light rail or bicycles. I think that Gov. Kate Brown, incoming Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County commissioners must seize the opportunity to address the biggest concern of working Oregonians.

I estimate that the average working Oregonian in the Portland metro area is spending over two to three hours per day stuck in traffic. It did not help that the Port of Portland lost a major supplier of the container shipping business. All the goods that used to travel by the Columbia River must now be trucked to Seattle and elsewhere, with the wages paid to dock workers there. That has dramatically increased semi-tractor truck traffic.

None of our elected officials seem to want to re-open talks with Washington leaders about the Columbia River Crossing bridge. We need it even more now than we did two or three years ago. Clark County commuters who work in the Portland area cannot be happy stuck in traffic every day and they are paying Oregon income taxes. What are the taxpayers getting for their 9 percent taxes?

A major reason that Measure 97 failed is that the state said nothing about building roads or improving transportation. Voters feel like their current taxes are not being well managed. Why give the state more money to waste while taxpayers sit in traffic? Their employers were threatened by a 2.5 percent gross receipts tax that voters defeated.

Share your opinion

Submit your essay of 500 words or less to commentary@oregonlive.com. Please include your email and phone number for verification.

The City of Portland had a plan to fix the roads and even got approval for a 10-cent per gallon gas tax but where are the road improvements? At the state level, there has not been a lane added to Interstate-5 in the past 40 years to my knowledge. No major expansion on Interstate 84, Interstate 205 or Highway 26 east that I can see.

There has been some expansion on Highway 26 west and it helped, but traffic has grown. There are good jobs in Hillsboro if you can get to them.

The political slogan for Bill Clinton 24 years ago was, "The economy, stupid." In 2017-18, it should be "The traffic, stupid." If the governor and mayor fail to do anything in the next term to build roads, bridges and improve traffic congestion, they can forget about new taxes and enjoy their one and only term in elected office.

Bruce Seiler lives in Northeast Portland.
A few days after Christmas is over I always start thinking about plans for New Years Eve. Over the years, I have welcomed in the New Year in many different places. It has always been interesting to see how people in different countries celebrate the evening. Even though my wife, Susanne, and I have children and our Dec. 31 is now spent with family and friends, we often incorporate traditions and foods from our previous celebrations into our local festivities  and there is lots to draw from.

One of the most exciting places I ever spent New Years Eve was Paris, France. The French capital looked magical as it was full of light for the holidays. My sister Laurie had come to visit and my new Danish friend Susanne (who later became my wife) spent New Years Eve with us. Our first part of the evening took place at the American Church in Paris, where Susanne and I were members of the choir. There was an international gathering there and everyone brought a dish from his or her country to pass. I remember seeing blood pudding from the Caribbean, couscous from North Africa, cheeses from France, cookies from the US and Canada and many other interesting dishes. I really enjoyed the cheese quiches that an Alsatian (a region in the eastern part of France) friend prepared. She thought it would be just the right thing for those who wanted something French yet avoided meat. That evening Grace Jones, who wasnt a pop star yet, joined us and played the piano and sang. After that, Laurie, Susanne and I wandered around Paris until midnight arrived. It was interesting to see all the cars suddenly stop, drivers get out and greet total strangers!

When I lived in Austria, I welcomed in the New Year with friends in a country home nestled in the mountains. The setting was absolutely breathtaking and the food was delicious. In fact, it seemed that there was a never-ending assortment of sausages, cheeses and salads made of carrots, cabbage and beans. There was a lentil salad prepared for the occasion, which is said to bring luck in the New Year. Since it was Austria, we also had all sorts of pastries, including Gugelhupf a cake that is baked in a beautiful round mould similar to a Bundt cake pan. At midnight, we prepared glasses of sparkling wine, toasted and danced the Vienna waltz. I could actually hear the music echoing in the mountains outside. It was like being in a movie.

Four years ago, when we had our Danish exchange student David living with us, we decided to take the whole family to Mexico City to spend the holidays with family members there. The weather was certainly a lot warmer and it was fun to see how Mexicans decorate and celebrate the holidays. The city was full of poinsettias, since they are native to Mexico and in the many malls which dot the city the Three Kings waited for children to sit with them and tell them what gifts they would like to receive on Three Kings Day (which is Jan. 6). For the 31st, our relatives in the Mexican capital rented a hall along with tables, dishes and wine glasses so we could have a special celebration together. Each family brought at least one dish to pass. There many local specialties such as bacalao, a fish that is actually dried to preserve it and then soaked and prepared with spices and vegetables, roast lamb, thick tamales made with either savory or sweet fillings (the cranberry ones were good) and ponche a fruit drink prepared with pieces of fruit. I really enjoyed all the food my relatives had prepared but it was hard to try them all. After all the food, there was dancing and before welcoming in the New Year we were all given 12 grapes each. This is originally a Spanish tradition. As the clock strokes 12 times before reaching midnight, each person eats one grape to bring good luck in the New Year. After toasting in the New Year we went outside to hear fireworks and to give the kids a chance to break the huge pinata my relatives bought.

Even though my family is not in any of those places now it is fun to take some of the things we enjoyed and make them part of our celebration here. We have always done the grapes with friends here in Midland and throughout the years made some of the foods we have enjoyed in the past. The evening doesnt have to be complicated especially since friends and family members spending the 31st together can contribute various foods and beverages to the celebration. Over the years I have come to the conclusion that the most important thing is to spend the evening with people one likes, to have some fun and appreciate the fact the fact that we can all be together! Have a wonderful and safe New Years Eve!

Greg Lopez is a Midlander who enjoys food and travel. He combines both in a monthly column for the Daily News.

Cheese quiche

1 unbaked pie crust

4 eggs

1/2 cup low-fat sour cream or whipping cream

1/2 cup grated Swiss cheese

Salt and white pepper to taste

Pinch of nutmeg

1 tablespoon dried parsley flakes

Whisk the eggs in a large mixing bowl. Add the sour cream or whipping cream and grated cheese. Whisk in salt, pepper, nutmeg and parsley. Carefully pour into the pie crust and bake in a preheated 425 degrees Fahrenheit oven for about 35 minutes or until the filling has set and the crust in completely cooked. Allow to cool a bit before serving. Note: If you want to make a vegetable quiche, you can add some baked or roasted vegetables to the filling before baking. Although the quiche can be heated up in the microwave the dough tends to get soggy. It is best to reheat it slowly in the oven  about 20 minutes at about 250 F.

Gugelhupf - Austrian round cake

17 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar

1 teaspoon grated lemon peel from an organic lemon

4 eggs, separated - one bowl of eggs yolks and the other with the egg whites

Pinch of salt

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour mixed with 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

In a large mixing bowl, beat the softened butter and confectioners sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, and beat for about 30 seconds after adding each one. Carefully add the flour and baking powder using a wooden spoon until the mixture is well blended. In a separate mixing bowl, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt for several minutes until light and fluffy. Carefully fold into the dough using a wooden spoon. Spray the round baking pan with a bit of baking spray and a light layer of flour. Bake in a pre-heated 350 degrees Fahrenheit oven for about 35-40 minutes or until the cake tests done. That means if you put a very thin needle in the cake or a very thin knife there is no batter on the needle or knife when you remove it from the cake. Allow the cake to cool before serving. Note: One can add some raisins and slivered or ground almonds to the cake before baking.
President Barack Obama is winding down his final days in the Oval Office while his nemesis Donald Trump prepares to take his place in the White House.

It's too soon to see what the history books will say about Obama and his presidency. But what is certain is that there are plenty of images of the president in action, from meeting with foreign leaders to smiling as he meets people from all across America.
To the editor:

It seems that the selective immigration ban is already law.

Known as the McCarran-Walter Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 allows for the Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by the President, whenever the President finds that the entry of aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States. The President may, by proclamation, and for such a period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants, or impose any restrictions on the entry of aliens he may deem to be appropriate.

Jimmy Carter used the act in 1979 to keep Iranians out of the United States.

He made all Iranian students check in with the government. Carter deported a total of 15,000 Iranians in 1979.

So, what say you about all of the criticism that Donald Trump received from the Democrat senators, representatives and the Obama administration?

WAYNE WARREN

Midland
NORMAL  Residents will have a chance to sample community education classes during Community Scope from 9 a.m. to noon Jan. 7 at Heartland Community College.

This is our fourth year for Community Scope, said Angela Coughlin, Heartland's director of community education.

Participation has grown from 150 people the first year to 215 last year, according to Coughlin. The college is hoping to see that growth continue  and continue the good luck with weather that's been experienced in previous years.

We wanted to do an open house to showcase our programs, our instructors and our facilities, she said.

It's an opportunity to see what the classes and instructors are like before signing up, said Coughlin, adding, Sometimes people want to try something before they buy.

There will be 30, 35-minute class sessions from which to choose, plus an 80-minute Rendezvous with a Comet mini-mission at the Challenger Learning Center. Participants can take up to four sample classes for free. You can pre-register by calling 309-268-8160 or register at check-in, which begins at 8:30 a.m. in the Workforce Development Center Atrium.

If you register for one or more community education classes while attending Community Scope, many have discounts of about 25 percent. The discount cannot be combined with other discounts.

A lot of people come for the missions at the Challenger Learning Center, said Coughlin. It's an opportunity for parents and children to do one together.

Stacey Shrewsbury, lead flight director at the Challenger Learning Center, said, We partner with NASA, ISU Physics Department, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and others to provide state-of-the-art simulated space missions and science programs.

Cooking and personal finance classes are also popular, said Coughlin, along with technology classes.

Sample classes include Crocheted Granny Square Basics, Birdwatching, Beginning Geneology and Explore Welding.

A complete list is available through a link at www.heartland.edu/continuingEd.

As she did last year, Sonja Reece will do a presentation on putting together a financial records notebook.

There will also be demonstrations throughout the morning in the atrium on model railroading and 3-D printing, with opportunities to ask questions.

The Heartland Songbirds, a choral ensemble made up of Heartland faculty, staff and community members, also will perform.
BLOOMINGTON  A list of demands for changes in Bloomington police policies from the local Black Lives Matter group will not be discussed behind closed doors with police officials, Police Chief Brendan Heffner said Wednesday.

The request from the group to meet privately follows a Dec. 15 public session attended by about 300 people in which Heffner was not allowed to respond to statements from audience members critical of local police. Ground rules laid out by BLM limited Heffner to yes-or-no responses to the statements.

The format for the meeting "was unfair to me, to the department I represent and to the citizens," said Heffner.

In lieu of a private meeting, Heffner said he has invited BLM representatives to attend the Minority and Police Partnership meeting Feb. 1 where the police issues will be addressed.

The invitation to the MAPP meeting has been accepted, BLM member Ky Ajayi said Wednesday.

"We're absolutely open to any dialogue in any venue," said Ajayi, a political science instructor at Illinois State and Illinois Wesleyan universities.

An agenda sent to Heffner several days before the Dec. 15 meeting organized by BLM listed body cameras, officer training, use of surveillance cameras by police and citizens' rights to record officers as discussion items. The chief said he agreed to meet with the group after about 50 BLM members came to a Nov. 2 focus group sponsored by Heffner.

Not included on the agenda for what BLM called a "Community Accountability Meeting" and receiving brief attention at the end of the session was a proposed police substation at a house at 828 W. Jefferson St. The day after the city announced plans to open the satellite office there, BLM issued a statement raising concerns about an increased police presence in the west side neighborhood.

The City Council has tabled a vote until Jan. 23 on the substation that would cost the city $12 annually under an agreement with Mid-Central Community Action, which owns and rehabbed the house. The proposal is on Heffner's Jan. 4 focus group agenda.

The purpose of the Dec. 15 meeting "was to provide an opportunity for law enforcement to hear uninterrupted the feelings of the community about how they are being policed," said Ajayi.

Heffner challenged a BLM statement released after the Dec. 15 meeting that claims he agreed to four of the group's demands and rejected five others. The right to video police officers and do so without harassment is allowed by law, and the release of data on police policies was planned in 2017 before BLM requested it, said Heffner.

Heffner said he has no plans to release the location of hidden cameras or create a civilian oversight committee to review police department practices. Input from community groups on a policy for body cameras and officer training for "a more positive community policing environment" are among the other demands the department has no plans to satisfy, said Heffner.

Guidelines for body cameras are outlined in state law and officer training is developed to meet law enforcement certification standards, making community input inappropriate, said Heffner.

Details of how police are trained and information on the general location of cameras could improve the police department's record of transparency and dispel the perception that the city's west side is more heavily targeted by police for surveillance, said Ajayi.

On the issue of specific complaints lobbed at police during the forum, the police chief said he was aware of some of the incidents but not others. A situation involving an 13-year-old boy who felt he was profiled by police during a traffic stop could have been addressed if the boy's parents had contacted police administration, said Heffner.

"We're not perfect. We do the best we can and officers know they have to be held accountable," said Heffner.

It was the officer's comments to the black youth about an unsolved car theft that made the boy feel less like a passenger and more like a suspect, according to his comments at the BLM meeting. The driver of the vehicle, a white teen, was allowed to leave the traffic stop without a ticket for driving without his license, according to the speaker.

Heffner conceded that improvements to the officer's approach  perhaps explaining to the youth that black suspects in his age group were stealing cars  may have been suggested by his supervisors but because parents didn't raise the issue, that counseling never took place.

The number of citizen complaints in 2016 dropped about 40 percent, said Heffner, with fewer than 20 written reports submitted by residents.

Fear of retaliation by Bloomington police has been expressed by people who are reluctant to file complaints, said Ajayi. "Community trust is at the heart of the matter," he said.

Heffner remains hopeful that the substation will open and provide officers a place to write reports and take breaks.

The chief said he suggested the concept of a substation after Community Action's offer of a home as a residence for a police officer was not accepted.

The concerns raised by BLM about the substation don't apply to everyone, said Heffner.

"They don't speak for all African-Americans in the community, every person on the west side or the community as a whole," said Heffner.
Parents post about their kids online without the intention to ignite malice or cause harm. Sharing facts about the children on the internet could only be spurned by enthusiasm and pride from the moms and dads. But what if they share photos, videos and anecdotes on social media that their children might be embarrassed to find when they are older?

Parents always remind their children to be careful on what they do on the internet because their digital footprint will remain there forever. But ironically, it is the parents who are the first to create their children's online profile by sharing the kids' photos, videos and anecdotes on social media  even before the children can articulate and tell their parents to stop what they are doing. So, what's the best approach for parents to follow when it comes to posting about kids online?

According to the Wall Street Journal, by the time a child reaches 5-years-old, his parents have already shared 1,000 photos of him on the internet. For some, it's about the connection between friends and families. For others who also share to strangers in groups or forum, it is about support and community building. It is about empathizing with other parents who share the same enthusiasm or frustration about parenthood.

But a study from experts at the University of Washington reveals that most parents have not considered the reach and lasting impact of a digital content. Social media is still developing and accelerating at this point, but it has also been around long enough for parents to bombard the platforms with photos, videos and anecdotes of the children.

The French police thinks sharing photos of kids online is unsafe. It also might be unfair. https://t.co/GGFww1Sx6U  NYT Styles (@NYTStyles) April 26, 2016

In the same study, kids expressed that they would rather not have their parents share facets about them. They also expressed that if this is unavoidable, they would want their parents to ask them about it first. Experts agree that letting the kids have digital control over their profile is the best approach, as supported by another study, according to Eurekalert.

But what about babies who are unaware of what their parents are sharing? The best approach would be to resist posting what could potentially become embarrassing for the children when they are older. Parents has enumerated some of these to include photos or videos of bath time, sickness or injuries, potty-training and other shaming anecdotes that might look amusing today but damaging to the child in the future.
An elementary school that used planking to discipline misbehaving students has been absolved by the San Diego Unified School District. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a complaint against Horton Elementary School over an incident that happened last Oct. 14. But school district officials said that the school authorities didn't use corporal punishment.

During recess on the said date, a group of fourth and fifth graders caused a ruckus at the school cafeteria. According to the San Diego Tribune, it sprung from when a student stole a bathroom pass from one of the employees. The riot was pacified by the school's uniformed officers.

Days following the incident, the erring children were then ordered to do structured exercises during its regular free-play recess. This included push-ups and planking on hot asphalt or concrete.

According to KPBS, parents complained to Principal Staci Dent about the blisters they saw on their children, but the school defended that it was not corporal punishment. The activities were "to reinforce the importance of safety and following directions, as well as engage in exercise."

Further, the parents of some of the students involved were banned around the premises of Horton Elementary School for 14 days. The school also threatened the parents of arrest and have asked them to attend meetings that have been disruptive of the parents' work schedules.

LA Times ~ 'Planking' as punishment is in line with district policies, San Diego Unified says in response to comp... https://t.co/YgT4JyjRTC  Good Feet Dana Point (@GoodFeetCA) December 28, 2016

Acting on behalf of the families of the students, the ACLU officially filed a complaint to the San Diego School District superintendent, KPBS cited in a separate report. The organization also said that the school district should have its staff undergo training in handling children.

Upon deliberation, the school district didn't find enough evidence against the school and it also did not believe that the officers should be sanctioned for how they disciplined the children. In its response to the ACLU complaint, the San Diego Unified School District was not able to confirm if there were students who indeed suffered blisters from the three-day physical activities.

"It could have been a result of playing on the monkey bars," Lynn A. Ryan of the school's uniformed officers wrote in her report. The ACLU has criticized the decision.
Police officials responded to a call about a disturbance at an apartment in Anchorage, Alaska and said that the six-year-old son of the slain parents said that ninjas came to his home and killed his family. The child witnessed the slaying of his parents.

The victims were identified as 38-year-old Christopher Brooks and 32-year-old Danielle Brooks. Christopher was shot multiple times in the head and in the body, People reported. Danielle, on the other hand, was covered with a lot of blood that it was not initially clear what injuries did she suffer from. Neighbors said they heard gunshots but believed at first that they were fireworks.

The boy, who was not identified, was the son of Danielle and the stepson of Christopher. The boy was not harmed.

One person was first arrested and identified as Jaylyn Franklin, 20. He was reportedly an accomplice to the killings while the other two people arrested were identified as Lamarkuss Mann and Deanthony Harris.

Mann was the person who pulled the trigger. Franklin told authorities that the three men were dressed in all black and were driven by a fourth person to the area, who has not been arrested yet. They then went inside the apartment of the Brooks and asked for drugs and money.

Christopher reportedly begged the three men to take whatever they wanted while Danielle was screaming. The three men then told the boy to go inside his bedroom. Franklin, Christopher and Mann then started to wrestle for the gun and Mann eventually shot Brooks a number of times.

Mann also shot Danielle because she was a witness, ADN.com reported. The three men left the apartment after the killings. They have been charged with first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery and second-degree murder.

Meanwhile, the child was placed under the care of his relatives. It was not stated yet if the robbers really found drugs and money they were initially looking for.
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The IP litigator that led Apple's 2012 smartphone "trial of the century" has formally retired after 40 years with Morrison & Foerster. He officially began his retirement last night in Italy, according to sources.



McElhinny was "born into the one true law firm," as he calls it, after graduating from University of California, Berkeley law school in 1975. During the 1980s, MoFo's then-chairman, Robert Raven, steered him toward intellectual property cases, notably Fujitsu Ltd.'s defense of copyright claims by IBM Corp. The case was transformative: McElhinny battled with legendary IBM general counsel Nicholas Katzenbach and Cravath, Swaine & Moore partner Thomas Barr. He also gained entree into MoFo's growing Japanese client base. Afterward McElhinny split his time between Tokyo and San Francisco.

McElhinny headed up MoFo's litigation department from 1996 to 1999. He co-chaired the firm's IP group from 2006 to 2009, then served as firmwide co-managing partner before taking the leading role for Apple in its 2012 patent trial against Samsung Electronics Co. That trial, which made him a big name in Silicon Valley, ended with $930 million in damages. He tried a second case between the same companies over different patents that produced a $119 million verdict in 2014.

Samsung has already paid Apple a little more than half the original $930 million verdict. But the U.S. Supreme Court put much of it back in play last month by tweaking the law of design patent damages. Both McElhinny and MoFo IP chief Michael Jacobs said they could not comment Tuesday on who would assume the leading role at any retrial on the design patents or the other handful of patents that remain scheduled for retrial before U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California.

"Apple is one of the most interesting, most important, most successful companies ever founded in this country," McElhinny said. "It's really an honor that they asked me to participate in those cases."

About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus.
In early November Patently Apple posted a report titled "The Politics over Opening an iPhone Plant in India Takes another Twist as Apple Seeks Government Incentives up Front." On December 20 the WSJ basically covered the same news. Today the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has followed-up on their report with newer information.

According to a new WSJ report, "Indian government officials will likely meet early next week to evaluate the incentives sought by Apple Inc. to manufacture its products in the country, two people familiar with the matter said.

Senior officials from the Ministries of Trade, Finance, Electronics and Information Technology, Forests and Environment are expected to participate in the meeting, one of the people said.

The Indian government has incentives to promote local manufacturing under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Make in India' campaign, and it remains to be seen whether they would agree to more concessions for Apple.

The country has a program that provides capital subsidies for companies manufacturing electronics in India. Another program provides subsidies for investments in special economic zones and allows tax-free imports of some components used to make mobile handsets.

"The government will have to see if it can tweak its rules for one company, though we want it to produce in India," a government official said. For more on this read the full WSJ report here.

Perhaps Apple should just be blunt and make the Indians around the negotiations table, one at a time, yell and repeat the line: Show me the Money! Okay, maybe not ... it was just an idea.

About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus.
This is a statement of a position held by many libertarians as well as some on the political left:

http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/12/28/mideast_self-reliance_isnt_a_problemits_our_ticket_home_110554.html

I find it a stimulating thought, but I do worry about the general perils of isolationism. These matters require considerable serious reflection.

Im not among those, by the way, who think that the Iraq War and (even more) the war in Afghanistan were totally wrong and unjustifiable. Given what the intelligence agencies of multiple nations (e.g., Germany, Russia, Israel, and Egypt, as well as the United States) were telling us, President Bushs decision to go into Iraq was understandable. Had he done nothing, and had we been subjected to a domestic chemical, biological, or nuclear attack launch from Baghdad, he would have been roundly (and justly) condemned for having done nothing to defend us despite what seemed solid intelligence information. These things always involve judgment calls. Sometimes those calls will be wrong.
Gods Name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.

This is the ugly face of prolife Christianity in the tank for Trump. This is the ambient noise that is everywhere emitted by the Christian Trump supporter. This is the kind of filth the Christian prolife Trump supporter will be spewing for the next four years. And when it is all done, it will have completely destroyed the credibility of the Old Prolife Movement by such vile tactics. Indeed, men like Miller are already dancing on the cinders. Because it is no longer about defending the unborn. It is about defending Trump, its own catastrophic choice to back him, and whatever culture of death priorities the Party of Trump advocates, including mocking the death of a culture war enemy on the day that enemys beloved mother literally died of grief.

The hell with that shit.

The New Prolife Movement is much simpler: defend human life from conception to natural death. Also, do not tempt the wrath of God Almighty by gloating over a culture war enemys death on the day her mother, beloved by millions of people, dies of a broken heart.

#notinmyname

Prolife Wisconsin: Miller has quietly taken the post down off his Facebook page. But it has already gone viral. If the sun sets and this guy has not issued an apology and still has a job, your credibility is gone for good.

And, by the way, the other distinguishing feature of the OPLM vs. NPLM is that the former sees attacks on this meme and its promoter as discrediting the Prolife movement while the latter knows that the meme and its promoter are the ones discrediting the Prolife Movement. We want the Prolife Movement to succeed. Filth like this only ensures its failure.
Patna: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, after spending half of the day in Patna with Buddhist spiritual leader and Tibetan monk in exile the Dalai Lama, reached Rajgir on late Wednesday evening from where he will begin the next leg of his ongoing 'Nishchay Yatra' on Thursday.

In Rajgir, the Chief Minister's home turf, Kumar was given a warm reception by the party leaders and district officials.

Kumar first visited the home of Brijnandan Singh, a political colleague of the Chief Minister who died a few days ago, at Teera village in Harnaut and offered his condolence to the grieving family members.

Singh's sons Nitish Kumar and Tarun Kumar, Singh's widow Sushila Devi, daughter Sangita Devi and other family members were present on the occasion.

The Chief Minister then left for Rajgir where he talked to villagers and listened to their complaints.

On Thursday, Kumar is scheduled to kick off his 5-day tour of the region from Bhui and Pahitia village in Rajgir. He will also take part in a public rally at the Biharsharif police line, officials said.
Patna: Tibetan monk and spiritual leader the Dalai Lama arrived in Patna on Wednesday to take part in the 10-day Kalchakra puja being held at the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya.

{gallery}newsimages2016/dec/122816{/gallery}The Buddhist religious leader was warmly received by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, other ruling party leaders, and top government officials at the Patna Airport from where he was brought to the Buddha Smriti Park where they all participated in a Buddhist prayer.

On the occasion, the Buddhist leader took part in planting a sapling of the Bodhi Tree.

Praising Kumar for imposing prohibition in Bihar, the Tibetan leader in exile said that he was very pleased with his decision and supported the idea of a liquor-less society where people, instead of running away from their problems and drowning their sorrows in drugs and alcohol, would rely on mind-relaxing practices like yoga and other techniques.

The Dalai Lama also had some very nice words for India in general saying being an ancient nation that India is, it was like a teacher while rest of the world was its student.

"India is like a guru to us; we are merely its students," he said.

The Buddhist leader then offered prayers at the Bodhi Tree at the Chief Minister's residence on 1 Anne Marg where he also joined Kumar and others for lunch.

Later, the Dalai Lama left for Bodh Gaya to participate in the 10-day long Kalchakra puja that kicks off on Thursday.



More than four lakh people from 60 countries are expected to participate in the 10-day event.
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PHOTOS: Tehran 6th Artwork Auction Fetches 3 Million Dollars

12/27/16

Photos by Asghar Khamesh, Mehr News Agency



The 6th Tehran Auction of artwork, held on December 24th, hosted 120 works of 112 illustrators and painters. The highest sold works belonged to Reza Derakhshani, Hossein Zendehroudi, Kourosh Shishegaran, Monir Farmanfarmaian, Farideh Lashai, Bahman Mohasses, Manouchehr Yektaei, and Farhad Moshiri, along with other works of diverse names.

Farhad Moshiri's mixed media on canvas 'Dark Digits on White Background,' of 2002, went under the hammer for final price of $218,000. Second comes a posthumous work by Bahman Mohasses, 'A Player of Flute,' cast in bronze, earned $154,000 for the artist. Two artworks shared the third place; Reza Derakhshani's oil and glitter on canvass painting 'Green Hunting Green' and an item from Farhad Moshiri's collection 'Jars' which is mixed media on canvas 'Sleep Delicate Flower' earned $125,000.

The edition had a peculiarity in that it hosted first-artist works. The regular date for the edition was June of the year, but beginning in August 2016, the 5th edition of the auction hosted 80 art works from 50 classical and modern artists. Alireza Sami' Azar, the auction director told reporters on Saturday that the auction would host in separate editions (generally 2 editions) to give opportunity to younger generation of artists and illustrators; "the June 2016 edition, the majority of works belonged to deceased illustrators and their work had been hammered posthumously; however, in this edition, the younger artists are the majority," he added. "The $3mn sales of the present edition compared to $6mn in the August edition indicates that visual arts new to the market or belonging to less known illustrators had been the majority in the 6th edition."

"In terms of medium, sculpture and photography dominated the auction, with 20 sculptures and 13 photography items statistically outstanding; however, the collection owners still see the photography art with a tinge of doubt, since an item by Mohsen Rastani of 'Iranian Family' collection failed to realize a predicted price of $6,000," he detailed.

"A novelty and a surprising item was from 'Tale of 84,' a collection of photography of War (1980-88) by Saeid Sadeghi which was hammered above the predicted price. Five photography items had realized prices above the predictions; Abbas Kiarostami, Reza Kianian, Bahman Jalali, Saeid Sadeghi, and Soroush Milanizadeh," said the auction director.
































































Donya Fannizadeh, "mother" of Iran's most popular puppet Kola-Qermezi, dies at 49

12/28/16

Source: Tehran Times

TEHRAN - Puppeteer Donya Fannizadeh who was mostly known for manipulating Kola-Qermezi, Iran's most popular puppet character that features a playful boy, died on Wednesday at 49 after about ten years battling sarcoma.





Donya Fannizadeh:

Mother of Kola-Qermezi, Daughter of Parviz

Source: 40Cheragh magazine



The illness severely affected the muscles of her right hand so that she had to use her left hand in the sixth episode of the Kola-Qermezi TV series broadcast in March 2015.



"She passed away at Tehran's Day Hospital today morning," her husband, Abtin Sahami, said in a statement.



Donya was the daughter of actor Parviz Fannizadeh who rejected a proposal from celebrated Iranian director Bahram Beizai for Donya during her childhood to act in one of his works.



Once, in an interview, Donya had said that his father was opposed to her collaboration in cinema as an actress.



"I never understood his reason for the objection, but I respected his view, shifting my focus to puppetry," Donya had said.







artwork by Mahyar Charehjou, Ghanoon daily





Donya began her career in a puppet show with the TV puppet series "Umbrella with the Song of Rain" in 1985 and then collaborated in other TV puppet series including, "The Curious Little Raven", "The Goat with a Bell Foot", "Hadi and Hoda", "Aunt Spider" and "Salty Mouse".



Donya shot to fame with her collaboration in "Kolah-Qermezi and Pesar-Khaleh", director Iraj Tahmasb's box-office hit in 1992.



She also worked in two episodes of the Kolah-Qermezi series "Kolah-Qermezi and Sarvenaz" in 2001 and "Kolah-Qermezi and Mama's Boy" in 2012.



Her collaboration continued with Tahmasb in the TV series "Kolah-Qermezi" in 2009 and five other episodes.



Once, she had said that she would feel really sad if one day she is told to leave her work with Kolah-Qermezi.



In late September, Donya did a phone interview with anchor Reza Rashidpur on TV program "Hala Khorshid", saying "Kolah-Qermezi is my elder son."



She is survived by her husband, Abtin Sahami, and their twin sons, Siavash and Arshia.







A tribute to Donya by the staff of Ghanoon daily



In statements published in Persian media, colleagues expressed their deep sadness over Donya's death.



"We never thought we would lose her so soon," Tahmasb and actor Hamid Jebelli, who lent his voice to Kolah-Qermezi in all projects, said in a joint statement.



"But, since the merciful God is the real possessor of man, we wipe our tears and surrender ourselves to this great grief," they stated.



The statement also read, "She had a profound love of children, whose smiles made her happy. Perhaps not every child will know her, but her influence on children will remain for years."



Kolah-Qermezi producer Hamid Modarresi said, "She made children happy for 22 years and left the stage bitterly."



"Her death is deeply sorrowful," he added.




Revolutionary Court Sentences More Than 70 Iranians to Prison for Celebrating "Cyrus Day"

12/29/16

Source: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

Islamic Republic Represses Commemoration of Pre-Islamic Era History





More than 70 people who were arrested in October 2016 at a peaceful gathering celebrating Cyrus the Great were tried in mid-December without legal council and sentenced to long prison terms by the Revolutionary Court in the city of Shiraz.

"The exact number of those arrested is not known because the court has not publicized their cases and their relatives have been ordered not to speak about them," an informed source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. "The suspects have been handed one or all of these charges: 'propaganda against the state,' 'disturbing public order' and 'assembly and collusion against national security.'"

The father of one of the accused told the Campaign that the authorities had warned the detainees' relatives that if they provided "fodder to foreign media," their loved ones would be punished more severely.

"The initial number of those arrested [at Pasargad] is between 300 and 700 people," said the source. "More than 100 were detained for two months. They were interrogated for two weeks and then taken to Shiraz Central Prison, next to Adelabad Prison. Then, around mid-December, Branch 1 of the Shiraz Revolutionary Court sentenced more than 70 of them to prison terms ranging from three months to eight years. They are appealing their sentences."

One of the accused, activist Homayoun Panahi from the city of Arak, was arrested after singing a poem at the gathering that was later uploaded to YouTube.

"The interrogators initially said that this was not a special case and there was no need to get a lawyer," continued the source. "The suspects' appearance in court was so unexpected that none of them got a chance to get a lawyer. The trial date was not provided in advance. It was only after the sentences were issued that the families decided to get a lawyer for the appeal process."

For the past decade, a growing number of Iranians have been gathering every October 28 around the tomb of King Cyrus the Great at Pasargad (a UNESCO world heritage site and the former capital of the Achaemenid Empire), near Shiraz to commemorate the anniversary of the king's entrance into Babylon.

Iran's security establishment has become increasingly sensitive to what it regards as efforts by nationalists to portray pre-Islamic Iran as the "golden age." This year marks the largest number of state-backed prosecutions for celebrating "Cyrus Day."

Many of the families of the accused tried to get their loved ones released on bail for the duration of the appeal process, but the court refused to comply.

Senior Iranian clerics widely criticized the peaceful marking of this year's "Cyrus Day," which is not recognized by the Islamic Republic but is increasingly being celebrated by Iranians living inside and outside Iran.

"I'm surprised that there can be a gathering at Cyrus' burial place, where the same slogans we hear for the supreme leader of the revolution [Ali Khamenei] are shouted for Cyrus," said senior theologian Hosseini Nouri Hamadani on October 30.
Oman, Iran's Closest Gulf Ally, Signals Change By Joining Saudi Alliance

12/29/16

Source: RFE/RL

Oman, Iran's closest ally in the Persian Gulf region, has signaled that it may be changing course by joining a Saudi-led coalition of Muslim countries fighting terrorism.







Arab news outlets said on December 28 that Oman's defense minister sent a letter to Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announcing the decision to join the Islamic Military Alliance Against Terrorism.



Gulf sources say the prince will go to Oman in the coming weeks to pave the way for a visit by Saudi King Salman to reestablish security, military, and economic cooperation between the two Gulf neighbors.



Oman's ties with Saudi Arabia have been strained in the past because of its close relationship with Iran, the kingdom's biggest regional rival.



By maintaining good relations with Tehran, the sultanate has previously sought to play the conciliator amid worries that a wider confrontation between the two regional powers could threaten its own stability.



Riyadh formed the Islamic alliance against terror a year ago in a move welcomed by Washington as it encouraged greater regional involvement in the global campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.



The coalition includes neither Tehran nor its allied government in Iraq, though it is not explicitly aimed at countering Iran.



Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite-led Iran are on opposite sides of Middle East conflicts from Syria to Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. The kingdom suspended ties with Iran last year after its embassy in Tehran was attacked in a protest over the execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric.



Saudi Arabia's Gulf allies also took diplomatic steps against Tehran, who they accused of fueling Shi'ite dissent throughout the region. But Oman, which sits across the narrow Strait of Hormuz from Iran, did not join that effort to isolate Tehran.



That was in keeping with Oman's role as a regional mediator. It played a critical part in making Iran's recent nuclear agreement with world powers possible by facilitating secret talks with the United States that led to the deal.



While other Gulf Arab countries gave money and political support to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in his 1980-88 war with Iran, Oman maintained relations with Tehran and helped to mediate a cease-fire that ended the fighting.



Some analysts said Oman may be changing course because it has not seen many benefits recently from maintaining good relations with Iran.



The Arab News, which bills itself as the Middle East's leading English-language daily, said Oman's decision to join the Saudi alliance was a "victory" for Saudi Arabia that heralds "a new chapter in regional and Muslim unity."



A newspaper editorial said the move "will isolate those who have been trying to exploit disunity in regional ranks," in an apparent reference to Iran.



Oman's Foreign Minister Yousef Bin Alawi Bin Abdullah was ambivalent, however, in voicing the nation's current views in an interview with Egypt's Al-Akhbar newspaper published this week.



He said his country "has common interests with everybody, but each country has its own ways of achieving these interests and goals."



With reporting by Bloomberg, Reuters, and Arab News

Copyright (c) 2016 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org
Sweden's Prime Minister to lead trade delegation to Iran

12/29/16

Source: Tehran Times

TEHRAN - Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, leading a trade delegation, is due to visit Tehran in February 2017, Sweden's ambassador in Iran, Helena Sangeland, said on Tuesday. In a meeting in Tehran with the chairman of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA), Gholam-Hossein Shafeie, the Swedish envoy expressed her country's willingness to expand mutual cooperation with Iran, saying, "Sweden puts great importance on ties between the two countries."



Ambassador Helena Sangeland meetign with Gholam-Hossein Shafeie



Referring to opportunities created after the lifting of sanctions on Iran, the Swedish official noted that the two countries exchanged several delegations and held official meetings over the past year, the ICCIMA website reported.br />

The resumption of Sweden's economic center activities in Tehran has created an opportunity for small and medium sized enterprises to make investment and launch joint ventures in Iran," she said.



Both officials also stressed the need for removing banking barriers to help boost the trade between the two countries.



Earlier this month, Presidential Chief of Staff Mohammad Nahavandian met members of the International Council of Swedish Industry (NIR) to exchange views on promoting economic ties.



In the meeting, Nahavandian described Iran's economy as an opportunity for the members of the Swedish council, ISNA reported.



The Iranian official called on Swedish companies to get more engaged with Iran's private sector, stressing that the country's private sector is increasingly involved in the economy.




Iran's President Rouhani links 'grave-sleeping' to corruption

12/29/16

Source: Tehran Times

TEHRAN - President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday linked social ills in the Iranian society to corruption, reacting to a letter on Tuesday by Oscar-winner director Asghar Farhadi who had said he felt "filled with shame" once he learnt about the homeless spending their nights in dug graves in a city near Tehran.



Source: Shahrvand



"Who can accept that dozens of his countrymen who have suffered social ills take refuge to graves at night because of homelessness?" Rouhani said on Wednesday at a session in Tehran.



A report by the Shahrvand daily on Tuesday stirred a row among the Iranians. Allegedly, 50 homeless people had been seen sleeping in dug graves in Nasirabad, a district near Shahriar, eastern Tehran.



Subsequent formal reports said the grave-sleepers were homeless addicts who avoided attending special shelters considered for them by municipalities.



"For 25 years now, I've been an addict and street dweller," the report quoted one of the so-called grave-dwellers as saying.







cartoon by Ehsan Ganji, Ghanoon daily





Whatsoever the reason, this is unacceptable, Rouhani stated, urging all parties and political currents to join hands to address corruption as the cause root of social ills.



"This is bearable neither for the government nor for the people," he lamented.



He added, "To solve such issues we need to unify and stop partisanship... The government and nation both have responsibility to fight corruption.



"Short of an anti-corruption campaign, social solidarity isn't achieved and social capital is damaged."





cartoon by Reza Jangi, Etemad daily



In his campaign speeches in 2013, Rouhani pledged an economic recovery, lower unemployment, and flourishing business.



He also vowed a tougher stance on corruption.



The grave-sleeping report came nearly two weeks after Rouhani declared a Citizens' Rights Charter.



The charter, which has 120 articles, emphasizes the right to a "decent life," including the rights to freedom of speech, access to information, health services, a clean environment, clean water, food, etc.



Also, it comes against a backdrop of revelations that senior government employees were being paid astronomical salaries, a signal of growing income gap in the contemporary Iranian society.



Related Articles:



Iran's 'Grave Sleepers' Prompt Calls For Action



PHOTOS: Homeless Iranians seek shelter in empty graves
Republicans are expected to lose control of the South Coast Air Quality Management District board when an outspoken liberal Democrat is sworn in this week to serve on the panel.

Supervisor Sheila Kuehl of Santa Monica will serve as Los Angeles Countys representative, replacing conservative Republican Michael Antonovich, who served on the air board since 1988. He was termed out of office.

In addition, the Dec. 26 death of Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit, a Republican, leaves another opening on the air district board. He had a year left in his appointment to the air board.

Riverside County supervisors will pick his successor on the board.

The district regulates air pollution in the sea-to-mountains air basin covering Orange County and the urban portions of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

The shift could bring policy changes to an important board that last year turned to the right.

In early 2016, the air district shifted toward a more business-friendly approach after Dwight Robinson, a Lake Forest councilman, joined the board, giving Republicans a one-vote majority.

The board then voted 7-6 along party lines to fire the air districts 19-year Executive Officer Barry Wallerstein  despite objections from public health and clean-air advocates, who credited him for years of steady air quality improvement.

The board later hired former Bush administration official Wayne Nastri to run the agencys staff. Nastri has since proposed a 15-year air cleanup plan that emphasizes cash incentives for polluters to reduce emissions.

Now Kuehl, 75, will have a say on the plan, which is expected to go to the air board in February. Her offices were closed for the holidays, and she could not be reached for comment. But she is a former state legislator who has been critical of boards shift to the right.

She has for a long time supported strong policies in Sacramento that protect the health of people, said Adrian Martinez, a Los Angeles attorney for the national environmental group, Earthjustice.

Martinez said its not clear whether Kuehls addition will bring a dramatic shift in policies. She is expected to be sworn in Friday.

He noted that some of the boards Democrats last year voted for an industry-backed plan to cut factory emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxides by 12 tons day by 2022  even after Wallerstein recommended a reduction of 14 tons day.

Wallerstein said such cuts were needed to meet federal health standards.

John Husing, an Inland economist and consultant for the warehousing industry, said he expects Kuehl to find that the incentives proposed by Nastri are needed.

Command-and-control regulations have done just about everything they can do, he said.

Both Husing and Martinez praised Benoit, who died of pancreatic cancer, as a thoughtful and independent voice on the air board.

He had the ability to find compromise and work with industry, Husing said.

He understood the issues and would listen to people, and I appreciated that, Martinez added.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9471 or ddanelski@scng.com
Obamas eleventh hour betrayal of Israel

As I watched John Kerry try to rationalize the Obama administrations betrayal of Israel, I realized how delusional they really are.

If a two-state solution is ever achieved, the Palestinian state will just become a staging area for the final assault on Israel and will be absorbed by Syria and Jordan afterwards.

Kerry knows this, Obama knows this, every member of the U.N. knows this and yet they still push this lie to convince the American people that their goal is Middle East peace when their real goal is the final destruction of the Jewish state.

The truth is that there will never be peace in the Middle East. If Israel disappeared tomorrow, the Muslims, Sunni and Shiites would be killing each other until the end of time. Our best hope for peace in the Middle East is a balance of power like on the Korean Peninsula where no side is strong enough to defeat the other.

The real question is why the Obama regime decided to push Middle East peace in the last two weeks of their time in office. Is it sincere or is it a diversion from some other criminal act or betrayal before Obama and his accomplices are through? January 20th cant come soon enough.

 Michael A. Pacer, Pomona

Work with Trump

California legislators should resolve to work with Donald Trump to help California. President Trumps policies will greatly benefit California. Building up our military will give aerospace companies much needed military contracts and well-paying jobs. President Trumps plan to get rid of unnecessary regulations will greatly help companies in California to create new jobs. Many other Trump policies will create many well-paying jobs for California. Get over petty politics and work for California before it is too late.

 Arthur A. Nussberger, Riverside

Climate change is real

Re: Fake news comes from many sources [Letters, Dec. 25]: Greg Roberg is entitled to his own opinion and his own reality but not his own facts. Climate change is real, its here and getting worse every year. The Koch brothers unsuccessfully spent millions of dollars to prove that other factors or events, and not our increased dependence on fossil fuels, was creating climate change. Engaging in the worse form of fake news is repeating a lie to give credence to that falsehood.

 Michael Kinsman, Riverside
Moreno Valley Councilwoman Victoria Baca kicked off her new term in city government by calling for the repeal of a transparency measure extending the amount of time the public may read and review City Council agendas.

For the most part, what comes before city councils are perfunctory matters like formal approval of city contracts and purchases, minor tweaks to ordinances and other matters that arent particularly consequential. But sometimes matters of particular significance, or at least public interest, come before councils to debate and discuss.

This often comes along with dozens, if not hundreds, of pages of dense material  presentations, reports, letters of support and opposition.

Under state law, governments are required to post their official meeting agendas 72 hours in advance. While this has more or less sufficed for many, particularly smaller cities, many governments throughout the state have opted to give the public more time to digest and review what is on the agenda.

Last year, the city of Riverside led the way in the Inland Empire by approving a Sunshine Ordinance, which requires 12 days of public notice before the City Council will discuss and potentially approve an item. Practically speaking, this hasnt posed any significant problems in Riverside, which allows for emergency items to be placed on the agenda for fewer than 12 days if its truly important.

Soon after Riverside passed the ordinance, Moreno Valley followed suit, with that City Council unanimously approving the proposal in October 2015, seeing the value in what then-Councilman Jesse Molina said was making government more of an open book.

Yet on Dec. 12, Baca, who was recalled by voters in 2014 but elected again this past November, made a point of calling for repeal of the ordinance, finding it inconvenient. We should go back to three days, she said. Twelve days is too long. I would like more time to get things on the agenda.

We have yet to see any disadvantage in extending the amount of time city residents can actually review what their governments are up to. Personal convenience alone shouldnt undo a policy that enhances public trust and access in local government.
On Dec. 22, President-elect Donald Trump startled the worldwide community of arms-control experts with a message on Twitter.

He wrote, The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.

The next day, Trump spoke off-camera with Mika Brzezinski of MSNBCs Morning Joe program and reportedly told her, Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.

But on the same day, President Obama signed legislation that could do more to set off an arms race than anything the president-elect has said. The National Defense Authorization Act, an annual bill affecting every aspect of the U.S. military, for the first time strikes the word limited from the language that describes the nations missile defense system.

Another provision in the law calls for the Pentagon to begin research, development and testing of space-based missile defenses.

That opens the door for virtually unlimited spending on new missile defense systems aimed at countering a nuclear threat from Russia and China, an escalation from current systems designed to stop smaller threats from nations like North Korea.

This significant change in U.S. policy was made quietly on Capitol Hill and approved by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress. Although President Obama issued a four-page signing statement criticizing parts of the bill, he was silent on the changes in the nuclear defense policy.

A 2012 study of missile defense technologies conducted by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences at the request of Congress estimated the minimum cost of building a space-based missile defense system at $200 billion, not including hundreds of billions of dollars to operate it. The co-chair of the panel, retired Lockheed Corp. executive L. David Montague, said in an interview that a missile defense system could never ensure against a dedicated attack, but was an opportunity to waste a prodigious amount of money.

Of course, to some members of Congress, its not a waste of money if it creates a brand new defense facility and high-paying jobs in their districts.

But the new arms race is not solely of U.S. making. Trumps message on Twitter followed a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin vowing to strengthen the strategic nuclear forces of his nation, and calling for an upgrade of non-nuclear forces so they are capable of neutralizing any military threats.

The Washington Posts Bob Woodward reported that military and intelligence sources see a giant buildup of Russias nuclear arsenal while the U.S. relies on aging weapons from the Kennedy and Reagan eras. Trumps national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, told Woodward the president-elect is convinced the United States has to modernize and spend vast amounts of money to maintain a position of strength.

The so-called peace dividend that followed the end of the Cold War in the 1990s appears to have run its course. The U.S. is headed for a major expansion of military spending, set in motion by lawmakers of both political parties and by two presidents.

The biggest fight may be between Congress and the White House about where the money will be spent first.
The federal Bureau of Land Management wants to halt new mining claims from sprouting up on more than 1 million acres of land in the California desert.

On Wednesday, the bureau will propose the temporary withdrawal of more than 1.3 million acres of the states National Conservation Lands from the adverse impacts of mining.

The stoppage will take effect immediately until a thorough evaluation is completed in two years. The evaluation will decide if the ban will become permanent.

The proposal would not prohibit ongoing or future mining on valid existing claims, only new claims, according to bureau spokeswoman Martha Maciel.

The step is the first in a series to more fully protect important areas within the California Desert Conservation Area, Beth Ransel, the bureaus California desert district manager, said in a statement.

The proposal targets four priority areas including 418,000 acres in the Amargosa Valley of Inyo and San Bernardino counties, the 95,000-acre Big Morongo area of San Bernardino County, the 590,000-acre Chuckwalla Bench/Dos Palmas area of Riverside County and 236,000 acres in the Eastern Sierra, Maciel said.

The proposal is to be published Wednesday in the Federal Register and initiates the temporary ban on new claims.

This is something that is going to be welcomed by the conservation and scientific community, hunters and those areas where (desert land) tourism is important to their local economy, said Frazier Haney, conservation manager for the Mojave Desert Land Trust in Joshua Tree.

Officials with the National Mining Association, the American Exploration and Mining Association and the Gold Prospectors Association of America could not be reached for comment.

This is the last step in the process of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, Haney said, which identified these lands as being vital to biological and cultural resources.

The plan took effect Sept. 14 and is intended to direct large-scale alternative energy projects away from sensitive lands.

Before making a final decision, the bureau will conduct studies to weigh considerations of the environment versus the impacts of taking these areas out of new mining development.

There also will be a series of meetings to consider information from the public and others on the mineral potential of the affected areas, according to the bureau.

Contact the writer: jsteinberg@scng.com@JamesDSteinberg on Twitter
Debbie Reynolds, who lit up the screen in Singin in the Rain and other Hollywood classics despite a tumultuous life, has died a day after losing her daughter, Carrie Fisher. Reynolds was 84.

Her son, Todd Fisher, said Reynolds died Wednesday.

Shes now with Carrie and were all heartbroken, Fisher said from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where his mother was taken by ambulance earlier Wednesday.

He said the stress of his sisters death on Tuesday was too much for Reynolds. Carrie Fisher, who was 60, had been hospitalized since Friday.

She said, I want to be with Carrie, her son said. And then she was gone.

PHOTOS: Debbie Reynolds dies day after daughter Carrie Fishers death

Reynolds enjoyed the heights of show business success and endured the depths of personal tragedy. She lost one husband to Elizabeth Taylor and two other husbands plundered her for millions. Fisher, who found lasting fame as Princess Leia in Star Wars and struggled for much of her life with drug addiction and mental health problems, died after falling ill on a plane.

Reaction to Reynolds death was swift.

Debbie Reynolds, a legend and my movie mom. I cant believe this happened one day after Carrie, Albert Brooks, who played opposite Reynolds in Mother, said on Twitter.

I cant imagine what Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds family are going through this week. I send all of my love, Ellen DeGeneres tweeted.

Reynolds found superstardom early. After two minor roles at Warner Bros. and three supporting roles at MGM, studio boss Louis B. Mayer cast her in Singin in the Rain, despite Kellys objections. She was 19 with little dance experience, and she would be appearing with two of the screens greatest dancers, Donald OConnor and Kelly.

Gene Kelly was hard on me, but I think he had to be, Reynolds, who more than held her own in the movie, said in a 1999 Associated Press interview. I had to learn everything in three to six months. Donald OConnor had been dancing since he was three months old, Gene Kelly since he was 2 years old.

Singin in the Rain had its preview at the De Anza Theatre, 4225 Market St., Riverside, on Dec. 21, 1951, according to some film historians.

The 1964 Meredith Willson musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown, with Mollys defiant song I Aint Down Yet, brought Reynolds her only Academy Award nomination. She also received a Tony nomination in 1973 for her starring role in the Broadway revival of Irene, in which her daughter also appeared.

After her transition from starlet to star, Reynolds became popular with teenage girls and even more so when in 1955 she married Eddie Fisher, the pop singer whose fans were equally devoted.

The couple made a movie together, Bundle of Joy, which seemed to mirror the 1956 birth of Carrie. The Fishers also had a son, Todd, named for Eddies close friend and Taylors husband, showman Mike Todd.

During this period, Reynolds had a No. 1 hit on the pop charts in 1957 with Tammy, the Oscar-nominated song from her film Tammy and the Bachelor. But the Cinderella story ended after Mike Todd died in a 1958 airplane crash. Fisher consoled the widow and soon announced he was leaving his wife and two children to marry Taylor.

The celebrity world seemed to lose its mind. Taylor was assailed as a husband stealer, Fisher as a deserter. Reynolds won sympathy as the innocent victim, a role emphasized when she appeared before news cameras with diaper pins on her blouse. A cover headline in Photoplay magazine in late 1958 blared: Smiling through her tears, Debbie says: Im still very much in love with Eddie.

Fishers singing career never recovered, but Reynolds film career flourished. She starred with Glenn Ford in The Gazebo, Tony Curtis in The Rat Race, Fred Astaire in The Pleasure of His Company, Andy Griffith in The Second Time Around, with the all-star cast in How the West Was Won and Ricardo Montalban in The Singing Nun.

She also provided the voice of Charlotte in the 1973 animated Charlottes Web.

But over the years, her marital woes continued.

In 1960 Reynolds married shoe magnate Harry Karl. The marriage ended in 1973 when she discovered that Karl, a compulsive gambler, had devastated her assets.

Reynolds third marriage, to Virginia businessman Richard Hamlett in 1984, proved equally disastrous. In 1992, against friends advice, she paid $10 million to buy and convert a faded Las Vegas hotel into the Debbie Reynolds Hotel and Casino. She performed nightly and conducted tours of her movie memorabilia.

Reynolds, who ended up filing for bankruptcy in 1997 and selling the property at auction the next year, accused Hamlett of making off with her money.

All of my husbands have robbed me blind, she asserted in 1999. The only one who didnt take money was Eddie Fisher. He just didnt pay for the children.

In her later years, Reynolds continued performing her show, traveling 40 weeks a year. She also appeared regularly on television, appearing as John Goodmans mother on Roseanne and a mom on Will & Grace. Her books included the memoirs Unsinkable and Make Em Laugh.

In 1996 she won critical acclaim in the title role of Albert Brooks movie Mother. Reynolds and her daughter were featured together in the HBO documentary Bright Lights, scheduled for release in 2017.

Mary Frances Reynolds spent the first eight years of her life in Depression-era poverty in El Paso, Texas, where she was born on April 1, 1932. Her father, a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad, was transferred to California and the family settled in Burbank, near Warner Bros. studio.

The girl flourished, winning 48 Girl Scout merit badges, excelling in sports and playing French horn and bass viola in the Burbank Youth Symphony. Girlfriends persuaded her to enter the beauty contest for Miss Burbank, and she won over the judges.

Eventually, she teamed up with Taylor  long since divorced from Fisher  and two other veterans, Joan Collins and MacLaine, for the 2001 TV movie These Old Broads. The script, co-written by Reynolds daughter, was about aging, feuding actresses who get together for a reunion show. Reynolds would look back wryly on the Taylor affair, acknowledging that no man could have resisted her and that she actually voted for Taylor when she was up for best actress in 1960. The former romantic rivals had reconciled years before Taylor died in 2011; Reynolds recalled they had both been passengers on the Queen Elizabeth.

I sent a note to her and she sent a note to me in passing, and then we had dinner together, she told The Huffington Post a few months after Taylors death. She was married to Richard Burton by then. I had been remarried at that point. And we just said, Lets call it a day. And we got smashed. And we had a great evening, and stayed friends since then.

Reynolds received an honorary Oscar in 2015, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, but was too ill to attend the ceremony. Her granddaughter, actress Billie Lourd, accepted the statuette in her honor.

Im so sorry that Im sick, but I am thrilled beyond words, shocked, and you couldnt be more amazed that a little girl from Burbank even came near this sort of accolade, she said in a pre-recorded statement.

She was recognized for her decades-long commitment to various charities, including the mental-health organization she founded, the Thalians.

AP entertainment reporters Hillel Italie in New York and Sandy Cohen and Anthony McCartney in Los Angeles, and staff writer fielding Buck contributed to this report. The late Associated Press writer Bob Thomas contributed biographical material to this report.
Brian David Saunders, a San Bernardino Superior Court judge of nearly 20 years and a former county prosecutor, died Tuesday at his home. He was 63.

Elected San Bernardino Superior Court judge in 1998, Saunders previously served as a county prosecutor for 12 years. He joined the San Bernardino District Attorneys Office on Feb. 18, 1986 as a member of its felony trial unit, district attorney spokesman Christopher Lee said in an e-mail.

As a county prosecutor, Saunders also worked in the career criminal prosecution unit and handled many significant cases, including the 1991 prosecution of former Adelanto police Chief Philip Genaway, charged with 36 felony counts of embezzlement, Lee said.

In a statement Thursday, District Attorney Mike Ramos called Saunders one of his mentors and someone he looked up to when he first started as a prosecutor at the office.

He was an excellent prosecutor and judge who sought justice with ethics and integrity. He will truly be missed, Ramos said.

Prior to joining the DAs Office in 1986, Saunders served as a judge advocate general for the U.S. Navy.

As a San Bernardino Superior Court judge, Saunders presided over criminal, civil, juvenile and family law cases, as well as serving as a drug court judge. In 2010, he was re-elected to serve another six-year term on the bench.

Saunders was a longtime friend and colleague in the DAs Office and on the bench. He was well respected for his hard work and willingness to take on challenging judicial assignments, said San Bernardino County Presiding Judge Raymond L. Haight III in an announcement to court staff via e-mail on Wednesday informing them of Saunders sudden, unexpected death.

At the time of his death, Saunders was working in the courts Family Law and Probate division.

Saunders is survived by his wife and two sons.

Funeral arrangements are pending.
A San Bernardino man pleaded not guilty to assault with a deadly weapon and felony evading after he allegedly spray painted several Redlands police vehicles then led officers on a chase through Redlands where he allegedly rammed into one police unit, officials said.

Steven Webb, 25, was in San Bernardino Superior court Tuesday to answer to the charges, according to court records.

Around 7 p.m. on Dec. 22, officers noticed a man acting suspiciously outside the police annex at Vine Street and Cajon Boulevard, according to police officials. When officers went outside to speak to the man, later identified as Webb, he reportedly ran off then jumped into a vehicle and drove away.

Officers then realized Webb had just spray painted several of the police vehicles parked on Vine Street, officials said.

Officers chased after Webb who drove north and then toward the westside of the city, Lt. Travis Martinez said.

He went through the Home Depot parking lot, Martinez said, thats where the officers had him boxed in and thats where the subject drove over a curb and struck an officers vehicle and kept going.

Webb began driving east until officers conducted an unsuccessful PIT maneuver near Orange Street and Western Avenue, Martinez said.

The pursuit went back westbound on Colton Avenue and at Colton and Tennessee, they conducted another PIT and were able to disable the vehicle, he said.

Webb jumped out of the vehicle and started running, reportedly using a skateboard to swing at pursuing officers, including a police K-9, he said.

When Webb ran from his vehicle, it was still in gear and ran into three officers, running over one officers leg. All suffered only minor injuries.

Following a struggle, Webb was finally handcuffed and arrested, Martinez said.

According to Martinez, Webb gave personal issues as a reason for his behavior.

Through an investigation, detectives learned Webb was responsible for similar vandalism to two other police vehicles about two weeks prior to his arrest.

Webb is being held at Central Detention Center in San Bernardino in lieu of $200,000 bail. He is expected to be back in court Jan. 5.
The Christmas weekend storm brought snow and bad manners to Southern California mountains.

With more snow expected this weekend, authorities are urging people to abide by laws when traveling in the San Bernardino, San Jacinto and San Gabriel mountains.

Winter visitors took home loads of snowy White Christmas memories over the past few days. But they left behind monstrous amounts of litter and traffic headaches from Wrightwood, Running Springs and Big Bear south to Idyllwild, said state and local officials at a press conference Wednesday, Dec. 28, in San Bernardino.

Please dont trash California, John Bulinski, California Department of Transportation District 8 director, said at a bilingual rooftop press conference at the Rosa Parks Memorial Building garage.

Officials offered tips to teach snow newbies better mountain manners.

California Highway Patrol Officer Juan Quintero, speaking in English and later Spanish, warned mountain visitors to avoid citations by carrying tire chains in their vehicles, not blocking roadways to install chains or play in snow, and not leaving plastic sleds or garbage behind.

Its illegal to litter, said Quintero, based in Lake Arrowhead. Make sure you dont trash the mountains when you come up here.

Traffic problems began Friday night and continued into Wednesday. The worst congestion has been on highways 330, 18, 38 and 138. Highways 189 and 173 also have seen problems, Caltrans spokeswoman Terri Kasinga said.

More than 100 vehicles were stuck on Highway 38 in the San Bernardino mountains for more than four hours on Christmas Eve because drivers didnt have chains, she said.

Others were blocked on Highway 2 in the San Gabriel Mountains after people parked on the highway to rent snowboards from a nearby shop.

Some visitors actually played in the snow on highways in front of traffic, Kasinga added.

Blocking mountain roadways is illegal and creates driving hazards. That also prevents snow plows from clearing ice and snow off highways and emergency vehicles from responding to crimes, medical emergencies, fires or rescues.

Resident volunteers and businesses in mountain communities and inmate crews clean tons of trash left in the mountains by visitors each winter. Some who are tired of whats become a big annual headache vented their frustration against flatlanders on social media this week.

Litter harms animals, people and the environment  and attracts more litter, damaging a communitys image, Bulinski said.

Garbage  most commonly food and drink containers, plastic sleds, cigarette butts and used diapers  are eyesores whose toxic materials create health and fire risks, said Liz Brown of CalFire.

San Bernardino County Supervisor Janice Rutherford, whose Second District includes San Gabriel and Rim of the World mountain communities, asked visitors not to discard garbage or snow toys in the national forests, roadsides or other peoples yards.

You wouldnt want anybody to come to your neighborhood and leave dirty diapers or fast food trash in your yard, she said. We ask that you have the same respect for the residents of our mountains.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9444 or shurt@scng.com
Sometimes when I look at Sankor, the village where I was born, I wish the place never changed. It was a small environmentally friendly village of less than 100 people, with barely twenty houses, cut off from Winneba.



It had no light. Homes did not have running water and toilet yet we had nearly a perfect sanitation situation. We were homogenous happy people, everyone in the village was my relative, and everyone was known to me, as me to them.



Today Sankor is not only fully merged with Winneba, but it has also become the biggest single community within Winneba township. Between the days of Sankor my village, and now Sankor my town, is a story that will be told in due course.



A story was told that over 80% of the people of Winneba were primarily fishermen/fishmongers. However my village was primarily a farming community. Nearly 70% of the population of my village was farmers and hunters.



Because we were hunters, Sankor was deployed during the times when the Winneba town was under attack from our neighbors. Every male (not female) born in Sankor will own a gun by age 17 or less.



I was late in learning how to shoot a gun. This was because my childhood was truncated by my migration out of the village. Even so, by age 14 I knew the skills of hunting, and by age 15 I could go hunting.



As I grew up I came to love fishing. I will sneak to the beach and stowed myself away with the fishermen, and we will go fishing. I learnt all aspects of ocean fishing, casting various types of fishing nets, driving outboard motor, mending nets, and the arts of preparing the nets for casting. Till today I am able to perform everyone of these fishing activities.



Sadly I have a very limited childhood memories. My memories of living with my parents are extremely limited, as that was so small, and primarily of adolescent stage.



Nearly all my childhood friends were acquired from my adolescence, and nearly all of them either never went to school or dropped out of school, and left the village to towns and cities by the time they were 18. This deprived me of opportunities to develop friendships, and to grow up with my friends.



But I do recall the Kaakaamotobi days. This was the days when the Winneba Masqueraders came around the village in their masks, and fancy dress, to ask for gifts and donations towards their participation in the festival.



This began usually on Christmas day through to the eve of the New Year. At that time there was nothing like watch-night, crossover, or walk over, there was nothing like that.



As children we would have had our new clothes sewn by mid December. I recall a few times when my mother had sponsored my New Years clothes. Otherwise I and a few of my other friends had to work for our own new years clothes.



You will recall that I mentioned last week that the people of Winneba do not celebrate Christmas. It is not as though we do not recognize it. We do. But throughout my growing up life, I do not recall any day that my household undertook any form of preparations towards Christmas. All preparations were towards New Year.



So on the first of January, all of us children will dress up in our new clothes, and we moved in groups, traveling from Sankor to Winneba to attend the Fancy Dress event, which still takes place on the Winneba Advanced park. It was, and it still is, the biggest paid festival event in Ghana.



There were, and there still are, four fancy dress groups; Nobles (number one), Egyaa (number two), Tumus (number three), and Red Cross (number four). I will encourage you to read more about this festival and how these groups came about in my last week Thursdays article titled Winneba Fancy Dress Festival, Onaapo!, I was published in Daily Guide and on all relevant networks in Ghana.



The competition starts with inspection of costumes. This put to test the ingenuity of the masqueraders. A lot of arts go into the costumes. Each Masquerader is in a partnership of three, or four, or five depending on the competing strategy of the group.



Costume designs are selected by the participating masquerader himself, together with his partners. These are discussed with the leadership, and once consensus is achieved, the tailor who will consummate the design is brought in.



Tailors who sew these costumes are sent into hiding, either in the bush or in very inaccessible locations, just to avoid any pirating of costumes by opposing masqueraders. Costumes are known and seen only on the competition day.



Before I go further, let me confess that I have wondered to myself, many times, what I could do to ensure that everyone associated with Winneba, whether born here or born elsewhere, whether living here or living elsewhere, will be able to feel this same pride that I feel, and get connected to this solemn piece of art.



Our fathers left it for us. Many fathers have come to meet it in its purity. My prayer is that I should not allow my personal interest stand in the way of our collective interest, so that our generation can also preserve its purity, to enable my children harvest the economic benefits thereof.



I have always reminded myself of this duty to preserve this magic store for our collective destiny.



Anyway, before the day of the festival, there would be ensuing debates and speculations of who are those likely to win the costume of the day. Supporters of the various groups will obviously claim victory ahead of the outdooring of the costumes.



In some extreme cases, there would be speculations about the importation of especially talented Tailors from the nearby towns, and that is usually predicted as signs of superior costume war.



This is because the more sophisticated the designs of the costumes, the less likely an ordinary Tailor is able to sew. And so the importation of such Tailors is seen as a prediction for victory.



My village produced two masqueraders who were twins; Kow Panyin and Kow Kakra. They spent their entire year working and saving for their participation. Remember the masqueraders are not paid to participate. They bear their own cost of costumes, and they rather pay participation fees. Such is the strength of the passion we hold.



I did mention last week that membership of the masqueraders is either by inheritance or by exhibiting exceptional creativity, creativity not only in dancing, but in ones ability to design costumes, and to suggest superior dancing prowess. One cannot just walk in and ask to be a member of any group.



You have to show a certain level of self-discipline, and mental readiness.



Each senior masquerader is required to have a whistle. This whistle serves as a siren for masqueraders to be given priority on our streets. They need to walk carefully not to lose any of their costume patches and decorations before the competitive inspection on the field of the competition.



So on January first, (please kindly take note that this year it is happening on January 2nd) by 7:30am when we would have began our journeys to the park, we would be looking out for the first masquerader to announce his presence on the street, and when the first one finally does, there was wow, there was celebration, there was awe, it was a delight my brother, it was a delight to watch. The entire village went gay!



The colors, the design, the shinning Christmas balls, the dots of mirrors, yes, you heard me, mirrors designed into the costumes, the hats designed to surprise the gods, the newness of the masks won to precision, the shoulder pads flowing through the back to the envy of our women, the bouncing footwear colored and pumped into celebration.



The entire appearance is not only salivating, it is an adorning of the streets of color. The appearance of that one person alone is worth every pound of excitement.



When we say the Winneba Fancy Dress is a festival of color, magic is what we mean.



It is the congregation of these masqueraders on one park, that defines us as a people. So even before the thrilling dancing competition begins, before the gods come down, we stand in awe of our heroes, heroes of creativity, we hold in our hearts the beautiful solid and inspiring military created for ourselves.



And as I look at each group lined up on the park, each masquerader standing in military precision, each costume line arranged, color to color, star to star, mirror to mirror, to match to match, and as I watched these young heroes line themselves up, I allow my own tears to share the story, and I bow in adoration, in adoration of them that gave their stories, to those who preserved it, and those who gave their spirit.



I have nothing more to say, just come to Winneba.

Source: James Kofi Annan/ email: [email protected]









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The seven day ultimatum given to Gbese Mantse, Nii Ayi Bonte II to abdicate his throne will expire today, Wednesday 28, 2016.



The Spokesperson for the five members of the Gbese Dzase said theyre meeting with their lawyers to initiate legal action towards restoring the dignity of the Gbese throne.



Nii Ayi Bonte II has come under intense pressure to vacate his stool following pronouncements he made which his Kingmakers say were a breach of Royal ethics.



But there is currently controversy over claims that the Gbese Mantse, Nii Ayi-Bonte II, should vacate his throne after his alleged unpopular assertion that if President Mahama does not win the 2016 presidential election, he would destool himself.



While one group, the Gbese Dzase Kingmakers, has given him an ultimatum for him to vacate the seat in seven days, two other groups are claiming that the chiefs speech was taken out of contest.



Gbese Shippi Numo Okai Keteku, a member of the Dzase said in an interview with Accra-based Joy FM that they will seek legal redress in the matter.

Source: Kasapafmonline









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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resh investigations by the New Crusading Guide has revealed that some police officers have resorted to using highway patrol duties for their personal benefit, intimidating civilians at will, flexing their guns and threatening to beat up and kill those who question their authority.



In a series of ongoing exposes by this newspaper and its readers, we begin with the story of police officer Justice Nunekpe of the Ghana Police service.



Over the course of two weeks, this police officer has been observed mounting random checks and stopping cars between Nsawam and Anyinam on the main Accra to Kumasi road.



In a day, police officer Justice Nunukpe together with some colleagues park their police car at over seven points within the short stretch to intimidate, extort money or abuse drivers and road users who question their authority. Brandishing AK 47 assault rifles and dressed in helmets and heavy police gear, these officers do not just check cars, they end up assaulting some passengers.





Source: Anas Aremeyaw Anas









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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President-elect Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has urged Krobo settlers on Akyem lands to feel free and live peacefully with their families because he has no intention of driving them away as had been propagated by the outgoing National Democratic Congress (NDC).



The NDC told the Krobos during the electioneering campaign that if voted into power, Nana Addo would drive them away from the Akyem lands in the Eastern Region.



Konor of Odumase Krobo, I want to debunk the propaganda by my opponents that I will deal with Krobos on the Akyem lands when voted into power. I want to assure you all that I have no issues with anyone; all the Krobos are secure and should feel free to live wherever they are. Im determined to work with all people from all parts of the country and bring prosperity and progress to all, Nana assured.



Nana Akufo-Addo, addressing traditional rulers from Upper Manya, Yilo Krobo and Odumase Krobo on his Thank you tour on Wednesday, said he would never sack anybody as had been speculated.



According to the president-elect, he would not do anything that would jeopardize the peace and security of the country when sworn into office as president.



Rather, he is determined to work with any individual, respective of tribe, culture or religion and bring prosperity and progress to all parts of the country.



Nana Addo added, For that matter, I need peace and unity to work with any individuals to develop the nation.



Nana, who was accompanied by the Vice President-elect, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and some party national executives, added that his government is going to open a new page with the Krobo State that would bring rapid development and progress to the area, adding that he would fulfill all promises he made during the campaign period.



Nana Addo gave the assurance that his government would offer some positions to people from the area and also open his doors to the chiefs to come and share ideas with him.



Konors Pledge



Nene Sakite II, Konor of Odumase Krobo, congratulated Nana Addo on his electoral victory in the December polls.



He also pledged his support for Nana Akufo-Addo and his government to achieve their goals in the interest of the nation.



The Konor, who was overexcited to receive Nana Addo, appealed to him (Nana) to fulfill the promises he made during the campaign period.





Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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A 30-year old woman was beheaded at a small remote village in the Latti in Sar-e-Pul province of Afghanistan after she went shopping in the city market without her husband or any male relative.



The Village of Latti is under Taliban control and a provincial Governor in Afghanistan revealed that the people who murdered her were Taliban fighters.



Under the Taliban rules women are not allowed to go alone to public places without any close male relative accompanying them.



Although her identity is yet to be revealed officials say the reason why the victim went to the market alone was because her husband was away in Iran and they do not have any children.



They havent made an arrest yet and the Taliban are denying any involvement in the death of the 30 year old woman.



This story gives me the chills, how very unfortunate. We can only imagine what her family and friends are going through now.







Source: Independent









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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Two people died while 12 others sustained injuries in an accident at Daboya in the West Gonja District of the Northern Region, DAILY GUIDE has gathered.



The driver reportedly lost control of a 15-seater mini bus with registration number AS 2304-15 which somersaulted, killing two women between the ages of 40 and 45 instantly.



The paper gathered that the passengers of the bus were travelling to Daboya to attend a wedding ceremony in the town.



The passengers, who sustained injuries, were rushed to the Tamale Teaching Hospital for treatment.



The bodies of the deceased were transported to the morgue of the hospital for preservation.



One of the injured persons is currently receiving treatment at the Damongo Hospital in the West Gonja District.



The West Gonja District Police Commander ASP Seidu Wemeh told DAILY GUIDE that the accident happened on Tuesday evening.



He explained that the bus veered off the road and somersaulted.



According to him, the police would launch a thorough investigation into the accident.



Some residents believe the gory accident could be attributed to the deplorable nature of the roads in the area.

Source: Daily Guide









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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Pockets of Melbourne have been hit with flash-flooding after some intense storms this afternoon, all but confirming that the citys inclement weather isnt just some stale punchline: its legitimately garbage right now, people.

Usually busy streets in several south-eastern suburbs, including Prahran, St. Kilda and East Bentleigh, have been inundated with floodwaters as a result of this afternoons downpour.

Another view of saint Kilda road after 15 mm rain in 10 min! #melbweather pic.twitter.com/CUhlk6okip  Shooting star (@DechanAngmo) December 29, 2016

Several public transport routes have been disrupted because of the floodwaters, with passengers on the citys Sandringham line demonstrating exactly how wild conditions are.

The Bureau Of Meteorology blames the sudden downpour on a low-pressure system thats barreled in from the west of Victoria, resulting in thunderstorms across large swaths of the state.

Heres the BOMs latest Severe Weather Warning map, to give you some context:

The storms are expected to keep up throughout the evening, progressing south-east through the region. As always, stay on top of updates from the Bureau of Meteorology here, Yarra Trams here, and Metro Trains here.

Oh, dont drive or walk through the floodwaters, either. Not only is it dangerous, the water is probably full of poop.



Source: Bureau Of Meteorology.

Photo: @katerynaaheyeva / Instagram.
A Perth bar has issued a mea culpa after displaying some bafflingly gross banners to promote its American frat-themed New Years bash, saying they meant no offence or harm for the messages.

The Brass Monkey Hotel had hung banners along its railing proclaiming our couch pulls out but we dont (sic) and you teach her morals, well teach her oral. Also included: a banner proclaiming the bar wants freshman sons, too.

The whole deal was was intended to promote the hotels Frat Party event, with the banners mimicing similar ones displayed at (particularly rank) American college campuses.

After a pretty vehement backlash, in which detractors claimed the hotel was normalising the kind of sickening culture of sexual assault present in some US colleges, a statement from the hotel now reads we have been contacted by concerned people from the WA community regarding the banners.

The team meant no offence or harm to anyone by the messages written on these banners and can see how they are inappropriate. These banners have now been taken down and will not be put up again. The team at the Brass Monkey Hotel would like to apologize for any one affected by these messages and hope that you have a great New Years.

While it appears the event is still going ahead, another bar nearby has unfurled a banner of its own to stand against The Brass Monkeys promotion.

Look, everyone likes getting sozzled like the Yanks do, but hinging an entire events premise on a corner of American culture consistently criticised for being degrading  let alone dangerous  may not have been the most ace idea.



Source: The West Australian.

Photo: @1dumblonde_vsg / Instagram.
The prevailing rhetoric in the final few weeks of this year has been that 2016 was a royal fuck up.

Its understandable. We have, as a peoples, experienced some heavy blows this revolution round the sun.

The United States of America elected a Dorito as their leader and Brexit actually happened. But whats been most devastating (from a pop-culture aspect, at least)? The seemingly non-stop loss of our heroes.

Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, Muhammad Ali, Harper Lee, George Michael and Carrie Fisher are just a few of the hugely influential figures we laid to rest this year.

And while theres only two and a half days left of the year, anything is possible.

Thats why some bloke has set up a GoFundMe page in an attempt to make sure 2016 keeps its filthy mitts off our fave 94-year-old, Betty White.

Set up by a South Carolina man by the name of Demetrios Hrysikos, the pages aim is to raise funds so that he can travel to wherever White is and ensure she is safe from 2016s wrath. The page description reads:

Help 2016 catch these hands if it goes anywhere near Betty White! If shes okay with it I will fly to where ever Betty White is and keep her safe till Jan 1 , 2017. Now , assuming she doesnt want a strange Greek standing gaurd outside her door all monies will be donated to the Spartanburg little theater to help craft new stars of stage and screen to carry mantle of the legends that have left is this year.

The fact that Hrysikos is using the page to gain funds for his local theatre is genius and far more effective use of time than just whinging about the years shitness. At time of writing, the page has raised $4,272, donated by a generous 409 Betty lovers.

While were sure the gem could damn well take care of herself, the page is a right laff and a cute way of bringing some joy to an otherwise unwell year.

Source: Mental Floss.

Photo: Vincent Sandoval / Getty.
Three people were airlifted today from Fraser Island for probable irukandji jellyfish stings, after another poor sod was medevaced from the Queensland island yesterday.

Two of the swimmers, a teenager and a woman in her 20s, were stung in the Woralie Creek region just after midday. Another woman in her 30s was hit in the Coongul Creek vicinity earlier in the morning.

All of that follows another woman in her 20s being airlifted from Woralie Creek on Wednesday. They are all being treated in hospitals on the mainland, and at least one of the stings has been 100% confirmed as being caused by irukandji.

FWIW: Irukandji are the worlds smallest and most venomous box jellyfish, and are only found in Australian waters. While their bell is often no more than 20mm in diameter, their tentacles can be up to a metre long.

A photo posted by Morten Hafs (@mortenhafso) on Oct 21, 2016 at 4:48am PDT

That means theyre small enough to slip through stinger nets and long enough to wrap around unsuspecting limbs, allowing them to deliver (this is a technical term) a shitload of venom.

The little buggers are stealthy about it too.

The thing with an irukandji sting is that theres often a significant delay, it averages around 30 minutes, but in these cases today it was around an hour after they were stung that they showed symptoms, Queensland Ambulances Martin Kelly told the Brisbane Times.

Stings from the irukandji cause something known as irukandji syndrome, which brings on excruciating muscle cramps, pain in the back and kidneys, burning of the skin, headaches, nausea, sweating, restlessness, vomiting, blood pressure issues, and (not surprisingly) a sense of impending doom.

Kelly has cautioned swimmers against going into waters known to be home to stingers. After reading about the effects of a little brush up against one of the tiny murder-bags: same.

Source: Brisbane Times.

Image: Pete Karas / Getty.
Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Worst Year Ever? 16 reasons why 2016 let us down

Yes, we acknowledge that this is hyperbole - those years with the Black Plague were definitely worse, as were the ones with world wars. The point is, though, that there were a lot of people who were not having a good time this year.

Here are our 16 reasons why 2016 felt like a huge downer, and why we all deserve an extra glass of champagne on New Year's Eve.

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Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Celebrity deaths

A lot of awesome famous people passed away this year - frankly, Gene Wilder's expression in this image sums up our feelings about it. It's gotten so bad that we had to add several more to our list since we originally published it:

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French President Francois Hollande, second left, speaks with the Mayor of Aleppo, Brita Hagi Hasan, left, and Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, second right, during a round table meeting at an EU Summit in Brussels on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2016. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Political panics

Between Brexit putting the EU into a panic, China's aggressive posturing in the Pacific, Russia's meddling in the Syrian conflict and in our own election process, there's no shortage of concerning political moves throughout the year. Let's hope that the instability and tension between the world's major powers sees a bit of a decline in the coming months. Fingers crossed.

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Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

The presidential election

Regardless of who you voted for, this election was an ugly one. Not only did it last for the entire year, long before either the Democratic or Republican conventions, but the two main contenders were the most disliked and distrusted in recent history. There was plenty of dissent from within both parties, and a new scandal or gaffe every week.

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FILE - In this Tuesday Aug, 16, 2005 file photo an iceberg melts in Kulusuk, Greenland near the arctic circle. (AP Photo/John McConnico, File)

Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Extreme weather

Global temperatures reach record highs and Arctic ice reaches record lows. California's drought rages on. There was massive flooding in Texas, West Virginia and across the southeast due to hurricanes. The northeast was hammered with powerful winter storms early in the year. Snow fell both in Hawaii and the Sahara Desert. Generally, everywhere is crazy everywhere.

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Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Bigger, louder, angrier, dumber movies (and how they're all guaranteed to get sequels)

DC Comics' "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" and "Suicide Squad" are just two examples of tentpole action films that came out this year. Both did well enough financially, but they weren't he success that Warner Bros. was hoping for and only one in four critics liked them. More and more massive blockbusters are getting released, whether they be remakes like "Ben-Hur," adaptations like "Warcraft" or sequels like "Independence Day: Resurgence." But even bad movies tend to make their money back if they're big and flashy enough, especially in overseas markets like China. And forget just a sequel or trilogy: they're all planned as part of a franchise now. Four movies, minimum.

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Wearing a homemade mosquito costume, an expectant father from Washington who asked not to be named, protests the lack of Congressional approval to fund a federal response to the Zika virus, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Everyone freaking out about "Ghostbusters"

The new "Ghostbusters" film isn't likely to replace the original in anyone's hearts any time soon, though it was hardly bad enough to warrant a place on our list (I'd give it a B- personally). But the outrage over the movie was abnormally high, even for 2016. Leslie Jones became the target of absurd levels of online abuse, topped off with hackers posting her personal photos. Say it with me: it's just a movie, I should really just relax.

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Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Syria

We like to keep things light here in the Life & Culture side of things, but there's really no jokes to be had here: the Syrian conflict is beyond horrible. A rebel uprising against the Assad regime has led to civilian massacres, war crimes, proxy conflicts by foreign powers and the fostering of terrorist and extremist groups. The refugee crisis across Europe and the Middle East continues and the death toll continues to climb. And the crisis in Aleppo only got worse over the past few weeks.

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Samsung on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016, has delayed shipments of Galaxy Note 7 smartphones in South Korea for quality control testing after reports that batteries in some of the jumbo smartphones exploded while they were being charged. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon. File)

Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Exploding cell phones

Many people have come to rely on cell phones for just about everything in their day-to-day life. So when South Korean company Samsung released their Galaxy Note 7 phone, it was expected to be a big deal. However, the devices were soon recalled after overheating caused a few phones to burst into flames, causing damage and injury. Even after a recall, some replaced phones still overheated.

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Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Zika and the Rio Olympics

The Rio Olympics were off to a bad start with Brazil's political instability and infrastructure issues. Add in the rise of the Zika virus and sanitation problems, and the world was bracing for trouble. And while most of the events went off without a hitch, there was the time where American swimmer Ryan Lochte claimed he was mugged, when it turned out he and his friends may have actually caused some damage to a convenience store.

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Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Clown threats

If there's anything that sums up how bad 2016 was, it might be the fact that suddenly every neighborhood seemed to have a story about a creepy clown running around and attacking people. Most of them turned out to be fake, but it was enough to close schools put the police on alert. We ended up speaking to a real clown to get his take on the matter.

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Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Harambe

Celebrity deaths weren't limited to humans, either. A gorilla named Harambe earned posthumous fame after a tragic incident at the Cincinnati Zoo, when he was shot by zoo staff in order to protect a four-year-old fell into the gorilla enclosure. It was a horrible turn of events, even if the outpouring of genuine sadness was eventually replaced with ironic memes.

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Terry DeCarlo, executive director of the LGBT Center of Central Florida, center, is comforted by Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan, right, after a shooting involving multiple fatalities at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, June 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Shootings and terror attacks

The shooting at the Orlando nightclub in July was one of the worst mass shootings in American history, with 50 dead and over 50 wounded. It was one of many this year - six were killed in Wilkinsburg, Pa. in March, another in New Orleans this November killed one and injured nine. It becomes even more heartbreaking when you add in other attacks of terrorism - numerous bombings across the world, and a very recent attack in Berlin when a truck drove into a crowd, killing 12 and injuring nearly 50.

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Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Racial tensions

Black Lives Matter protests continued throughout 2016, as did the backlash - celebrities such as Colin Kaepernick and Beyonce made waves on the football field about their stances. The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag appeared after the Academy Awards acting nominees included no people of color for the second year in a row. And Donald Trump's controversial statements about Mexican and Arab immigrants led to his endorsement by white supremacists - some of whom held a rally at our capitol building just before the election.

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FILE - In this Friday, Nov. 11, 2016, file photo, Stephen Bannon, campaign CEO for President-elect Donald Trump, leaves Trump Tower in New York. Trump on Sunday named Republican Party chief Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff and conservative media owner Bannon as his top presidential strategist, two men who represent opposite ends of the unsettled GOP. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Post-truth era

Stephen Colbert coined the phrase "truthiness" in 2005 - it means when something feels like it's true, despite having no evidence to support that opinion. Eleven years later, social media has made it easier than ever to disseminate misleading, poorly-researched or even completely fabricated stories. Add to this the vocal distrust that many hold for established news media sources, and you've got a perfect recipe for lies and half-truths to gain traction, further polarizing political opponents and keeping everyone in a confirmation-bias bubble.

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Rally at the Capitol Rotunda against the Opioid epidemic by Legislative Heroin, Opioid, Prevention and Education (H.O.P.E.) Caucus in Harrisburg, Pa., Sept. 20, 2016.Mark Pynes | mpynes@pennlive.com

Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Opioid epidemic

Opioid painkillers being over-prescribed has been one factor that has helped lead to a massive rise in addiction and deaths. This issue has become a crisis, both nationally and in Pennsylvania in particular. PennLive did lengthy investigations into the crisis in our state, with reflection on the greater national picture.

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FILE - In this May 4, 2016 file photo, drinking fountains are marked "Do Not Drink Until Further Notice" at Flint Northwestern High School in Flint, Mich. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is calling for a halt of administrative investigations into how two state agencies dealt with the Flint drinking water crisis after being warned they are hampering state and federal criminal probes. Snyder's office released letters Thursday May 26, 2016, from the state attorney general and a federal prosecutor. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster File)

Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Distrust and disfunction of institutions

In January, Flint, Michigan was finally declared a site of national emergency due to the water contamination. Armed protestors took over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, and a massive protest took place at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation over the Dakota Access Pipeline. People are mad all across the country, and feel like they aren't being heard by the organizations and government that ought to be helping them. It seems sometimes that there's very little trust go to around these days.

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Sean Adams | sadams@pennlive.com

Want to feel better about 2016?

It wasn't all bad this year. No, really!

Keep an eye on PennLive for more end-of-year retrospectives, some of which will include good things that may have happened. Maybe. Here, why not start with the favorite stories that our reporters worked on this year? And here's a list of the most heartwarming stories we worked on, too.
Debbie Reynolds, whose star rose with the success of "Singing in the Rain" and who quickly made a name for herself as a Hollywood staple, died Wednesday -- a day after her daughter, actress Carrie Fisher, TMZ reported.

TMZ reported that Reynolds and son Todd Fisher, were making funeral arrangements for Carrie at his Beverly Hills home when he called 911 to report a possible stroke.

Debbie was married to Eddie Fisher, Carrie and Todd's father, in 1959 but divorced him after his affair with Elizabeth Taylor. Debbie Reynolds was born Mary Frances Reynolds in El Paso, Texas.

She also was famous for iconic roles in "Tammy and the Bachelor" and "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" ... for which she earned an Oscar nomination.

"Family sources" told TMZ that 911 was called "to report a possible stroke." The website cited son, Todd.

The Los Angeles Times reported that unnamed sources told them Reynolds was rushed to the hospital Wednesday afternoon after paramedics were called to her son's home.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokeswoman Margaret Stewart earlier told the AP paramedics transported a woman from a home in the Coldwater Canyon neighborhood, where her son lives, in fair to serious condition.

She could not confirm it was Reynolds, citing medical privacy laws.

On Tuesday, Reynolds wrote on Facebook, "Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop. Love Carries Mother."

Fans immediately took to social media in disbelief and mourning.

Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher. pic.twitter.com/QC4BE35AHk  History In Pictures (@HistoryInPix) December 29, 2016

Carrie Fisher watches her mom, Debbie Reynolds, on stage at the riviera hotel in las vegas (1963). Rest in peace to both of them pic.twitter.com/152hmac92X  History In Pictures (@HistoryInPix) December 29, 2016

"I miss her so much, I want to be with Carrie." -Debbie Reynolds told Todd Fisher (Carrie's brother) earlier this morning. :(  Gary Fisher (@Gary_TheDog) December 29, 2016

Debbie Reynolds: Thank you for sharing your incredible gift with the world. What an iconic talent. pic.twitter.com/tcRHjB0cIF  Raymond Braun (@raymondbraun) December 29, 2016

Debbie Reynolds was one of the last of Hollywood Royalty. It breaks my heart that she is gone. I'd hoped that my grieving was done for 2016.  William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) December 29, 2016
Molly's Pub in Lancaster city is expected to reopen in early 2017 under new ownership, according to a report by LancasterOnline.

Jason Brandt told the newspaper final settlement of the property and a transfer of the liquor license for the restaurant at 253 E. Chestnut St. will take place on Jan. 5.

Molly's is owned by Anthony Maglietta, who along with four other men, was charged earlier this year in an Dec. 25, 2015 incident that left an East Petersburg, Lancaster County man unconscious outside of the pub.

Brandt indicated that the sale of the property and liquor license transfer was slowed down due to Maglietta's legal issues. He said he turned to politicians for help.

LancasterOnline reported Brandt called the office of Scott Martin, who was elected this year to represent the 13th District in the state Senate. His office contacted the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board to help resolve the matter.

Magiletta is charged with aggravated assault and related counts.

Police say they identified Maglietta, 43, and Raymond Lee, 39, as two of the assailants. Three others were later identified as 32-year-old Joshua Ellis; 25-year-old Alexander Rodriguez-Cruz; and 28-year-old Francisco G. Camacho.

Brandt, who also owns The Station House Tavern in Lancaster County, said he plans to incorporate Irish pub foods as well as fresh made pastas and sausage to Molly's menu.
Russia Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a New Year reception in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016. U.S. President Obama announced sanctions against Russia on Thursday over hacking during the election.

(Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama has imposed sanctions on Russian officials and intelligence services in retaliation for Russia's interference in the U.S. presidential election by hacking American political sites and email accounts.

The State Department also has kicked out 35 Russian diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco, giving them and their families 72 hours to leave the U.S. The diplomats were declared persona non grata for acting in a "manner inconsistent with their diplomatic status."

Obama said Russians will no longer have access to two Russian government-owned compounds in the United States, in Maryland and in New York.

As part of the administration's response, the FBI and Homeland Security Department also were set to release a report with technical evidence intended to prove Russia's military and civilian intelligence services were behind the hacking to expose some of their most sensitive hacking infrastructure.

"All Americans should be alarmed by Russia's actions," Obama said in a statement. "These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government. Moreover, our diplomats have experienced an unacceptable level of harassment in Moscow by Russian security services and police over the last year. Such activities have consequences."

Russian officials have denied the Obama administration's accusation that the Russian government was trying to influence the U.S. presidential election.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia's goal was to help Donald Trump win -- an assessment Trump has dismissed as ridiculous.

Putting him directly against his party's President-Elect @SpeakerRyan calls US sanctions on #Russia "appropriate" and "overdue" pic.twitter.com/GyiA03aKXX  Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) December 29, 2016

The moves will ratchet up tensions with Russia less than a month before Trump's inauguration. The president-elect, who has said the hacking could have been the work of "somebody sitting in a bed someplace," told reporters Wednesday that "we ought to get on with our lives."

They also raise the possibility of an escalating cycle of finger-pointing and retaliation between Washington and Moscow despite Trump's pledge to seek better relations with Putin. The Russian government, which has denied responsibility for the hacking, has vowed to respond to any new sanctions with unspecified counter-measures.

The Washington Post contributed to this report.
7647150980_47a5056623_o.jpg

Robert Hulseman, the developer of the iconic red Solo cup, has died at age 84.

(Steven Depolo (stevendepolo)/Flickr)

Raise a glass to Robert Hulseman, the developer of the red Solo cup. The Associated Press reported that the 84-year-old Hulseman died Dec. 21 at his home in Illinois.

Hulseman's obituary credits Hulseman, who worked for nearly 60 years at the Solo Cup Co., with nuturting the development of the iconic red plastic cup, as well as the Traveler lid that adorns the top of most disposable coffee cups.

The Solo red cup was introduced in the 1970s, a decade before Hulseman succeeded his father in becoming CEO of the Solo Cup Co. It was an evolution of Solo's original paper cone cups and wax-lined cups that had become popular since the company started in the 1936.

The Party Cup, as the line was officially known, originally had four colors and four sizes. But 18-ounce red cup by and large became the favorite.

As kitchn notes, the lines on the cup served a practical purpose, despite claims to the contrary.

Yep, the lines on the classic cup design aren't just for aesthetics or grippiness -- in an act of kismet, they correspond to common fluid-ounce measurements. Starting from the bottom up, they mark one ounce (a perfect shot of bourbon for your Boulevardier or gin for your Negroni); five ounces (a standard wine pour); 12 ounces (a typical can of soda or beer); 16 ounces (aka a pint); and the final 18-ounce mark for any overflow from ice.

Hulseman's exact role in creating the Party Cup line hasn't been detailed beyond his obituary.

"The history is a little sketchy," Kim Healy, VP of consumer business for Solo, told Slate in 2011. "We know we were one of the first to introduce a party cup."

In 1984, Solo filed its patent for the Traveler lid, crediting the lid design to Jack D. Clements. Three years later, Solo joined forces with Starbucks to create a partnership that made Solo cups adorned with Traveler lids ubiquitous.
Warning: This video depicts violence and might not be suitable for all viewers.

A vicious dog attack occurred in a Cumberland County kitchen Thursday morning.

It began when Arlo's owner grabbed his tug toy. Arlo, a mini Australian shepherd, really likes that toy, especially if someone is trying to pull it out of his mouth.

The battle raged for seconds. Arlo growled ferociously refused to let go. It sounded like he was trying to bring down a wildebeest.

In the end, he rushed away with his prey, huddled under the kitchen table and dared his opponent to take it back.

By the way, Arlo ran and hid when this video was played back.
A convicted Lancaster County sex offender is looking at a reduced prison term after his case was ordered back to the county for resentencing.

Christ E. Harsh, 35, of Elizabethtown, was originally convicted in 2014 of charges related to the sexual abuse of a 7-year-old girl, and he was sentenced to 18 to 45 years in state prison, according to the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office.

Christ E. Harsh.

Harsh, however, became eligible for a lesser sentence because his case involved a mandatory term, which the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has since determined was unconstitutional.

Harsh was resentenced last week to 15 to 30 years.

The victim continues to suffer from the effects of the abuse, which occurred in 2011 and 2012, Assistant District Attorney James Reeder told the court when asking the judge to consider the nature of Harsh's offenses while resentencing.

And Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman said in a statement released Thursday that he is concerned Harsh will not be the last sex offender to receive a reduced sentence.

"These are some of the most at-risk offenders. Studies have shown sex offenders have life-long, incurable afflictions, making them perhaps of highest risk to re-offend," Stedman said. "The sooner those individuals return to society the sooner our children will be back at risk."
state police

A state court dismissed an unlicensed driver's claim that his rights were violated when a state trooper randomly checked his license plate.

(Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.)

An unlicensed driver fumbled the ball badly when he tried to convince a state appeals court that a state trooper violated his civil rights by pulling him over after running random checks of the license plates of passing cars.



John Diliberto's appeal of his conviction by a Dauphin County judge for driving without a license was so incoherent a Superior Court panel concluded this week that it had to dismiss his challenge.



The 44-year-old Wilkes-Barre man's legal tussle began in July 2015 when Trooper Konstantin Dyakov pulled him over on Route 283. Dyakov was running the license plates of cars he was passing hough his cruiser's computer to see if the drivers had outstanding warrants or other legal issues, Senior Judge Correale F. Stevens wrote in the state court opinion.



After running a check on Diliberto's plate, Dyakov determined Diliberto's driver's license had expired nearly two years earlier.



Dyakov testified at a court hearing that he was running the license plate checks at random. Diliberto argued that was unconstitutional since the officer had no reasonable suspicion to conduct such checks. A district judge convicted him of the driving without a license charge anyway.



When Diliberto appealed to county court, Senior Judge Lawrence F. Clark Jr. upheld the conviction and imposed a $200 fine. Diliberto served as his own lawyer when he appealed to the state court.



Stevens noted that court procedures require those who file appeals to include concise statements of the issues at hand. Diliberto's filing was "not sufficiently concise, contained numerous vague assertions and failed to coherently set forth non-frivolous issues," the state judge wrote.



So the state judges affirmed Clark's ruling.



In a footnote to his opinion, Stevens observed that Diliberto conceded a 2003 Superior Court ruling allows police to check vehicle license plates without any level of suspicion because the plates are in plain view. However, Diliberto claimed that ruling has turned Pennsylvania into a "surveillance state."




Sharon Budd attends court proccedings in rock throwing case

Brett Lahr is led from jail to the Union County Courthouse June 23, 2015, for sentencing in the rock throwing incident along Interstate 80 that severely injured Sharon Budd. He received an 18-month to 20-year state prison sentence.Mark Pynes | mpynes@pennlive.com

(Mark Pynes | mpynes@pennlive.com)

LYKENS -- One of the young men convicted in the Interstate 80 rock-throwing case in which an Ohio school teacher was critically injured has been accused of being under the influence of prescription drugs when he crashed his car in Dauphin County earlier this month.

State police at Lykens Wednesday charged Brett M. Lahr with driving under the influence of a controlled substance plus four other vehicle code violations.

The results of blood tests showed Lahr was under the influence of non-prescribed depressants Clonazepam and 7-Amino Clonazepam, the charges state.

The accident occurred about 6:20 p.m. Dec. 16 when, according to state police, Lahr feel asleep while northbound on Route 147 north of Tarry Hall Road in Upper Paxton Township and his car struck a utility pole.

Troopers said that when they arrived, Lahr was visibly shaking and unsure of his footing outside his car, which was on railroad tracks.

Lahr told troopers he was coming from a friend's house, had fallen asleep, was not using a seatbelt and had not consumed alcohol or illegal drugs, charges state.

He also was charged with careless and reckless driving, not using a seatbelt and failure to keep his car in the proper lane.

A preliminary hearing for Lahr, who is detained as a parole violator, is scheduled for Feb. 1 before District Judge Rebecca J. Margerum.

He was paroled Oct. 3 after he completed the minimum of his sentence of 18 months to 20 years on a charge of conspiracy to commit aggravated assault.

Lahr and three others -- his younger brother Dylan, Keefer L. McGee and Tyler Porter, all from the New Columbia area -- were charged in the July 10, 2014, incident in which a rock thrown from an overpass smashed the windshield of the car in which Sharon Budd was a front-seat passenger.

Lahr had pleaded no contest in March 2015 and voluntarily surrendered the following month to begin his jail term although he had not been sentenced.

His positive behavior in prison, completion of prescribed institutional programs and acceptance of responsibility for the crime were reasons cited when he was granted parole.

Budd, who suffered serious head injuries and the loss of an eye, continues her recovery at home in Uniontown, Ohio.

Porter and Dylan Lahr still are serving their prison terms, while McGee was paroled in August over the objection of Union County District Attorney D. Peter Johnson.

McGee, who claimed he drove the car the night rocks were thrown from the Gray Hill Road overpass west of Route 15, had completed the minimum of a 111/2- to 23-month sentence.
Radnor Township

A former Pennsylvania commissioner is charged with indecent assault for groping a 103-year-old woman in a Radnor Township nursing home.

Bill Spingler

A former Pennsylvania commissioner was arrested and charged with three counts of indecent assault on a person with a mental disability after police said he groped a 103-year-old woman with dementia.

Bill Spingler, a 75-year-old Chester County resident who previously served as a commissioner in Radnor Township and Delaware County, is accused of touching the victim's breasts during three visits this month, according to court documents.

Staff at Wayne Nursing Home in Delaware County observed the incidents on Dec. 15, 17 and 23, Radnor police said.

Police were first called to the nursing home on Dec. 16 for reports of an assault after two employees said Spingler put his hand under a blanket and touched the victim's breasts.

When Spingler saw the employees, he stopped, according to a police report.

Spingler returned the following day and again put his hand under a blanket and rubbed her breasts, the report said.

When he saw a nursing home employee watching him, "his face turned red and he immediately left the facility," according to court documents.

Police were called on Dec. 23 after a nursing home employee said she saw Spingler touch the victim a third time.

According to court documents, the nursing home employee confronted Spingler during that incident. He said, "What?" and left the facility, the report said.

An arrest warrant was issued Dec. 23.

Spingler was arraigned Friday. Bail was set at $10,000, and he was released on his own recognizance and ordered to have no contact with the nursing home patient.

A preliminary hearing is set for Jan. 5 before District Justice Leon Hunter.

Spingler, a Democrat, served as a commissioner for 34 years. He was a Delaware County commissioner from 1972 to 1980, and Radnor Township commissioner from 1969 to 1971 and 1991 to 2015.

He was serving as president of the township's board of commissioners when he retired last year.
UPDATE: Coroner releases more details, says no fight occurred.



Update: Suspect was on the lam at the time of the shooting

HARRISBURG-- A fight inside a corner bar in Harrisburg led to a fatal shooting early Thursday that killed a 44-year-old man, police said.

The victim was identified in court records as Derick Garner of Harrisburg.

Garner had been inside the bar when he and Eric A. King got into a physical confrontation, said Police Chief Thomas Carter. During the confrontation, police said, King pulled a gun and shot Garner. Police were called to the scene at 12:45 a.m.

A neighbor said Garner stumbled outside and collapsed near a tree in front of OD's Plantation at 16th and Sycamore streets. Police identified King, 34, as the shooter and tracked him down later, according to a police news release.

Police did not reveal what sparked the confrontation. The bartender working at OD's on Thursday afternoon said she did not have any information about the shooting. She referred all questions to a law firm that represents the bar.

Eric Alan King

No signs of the killing lingered inside or outside of the bar Thursday. A neighbor, however, said someone had washed blood from the sidewalk earlier that day. The neighbor also said the victim's van remained parked outside the bar.

Harrisburg police charged King with homicide, aggravated assault, carrying a firearm without a license, person not to possess a firearm, reckless endangerment, and receiving stolen property. He was in the Dauphin County Prison Thursday without bail.

There have been at least two previous shootings inside the bar, which was formerly known as the Cloverly Heights bar. A man was shot in the chest in September 2015 and a man was shot in the leg in August 2010.
Mariner East II pipeline

The Mariner East II pipeline would cut through Cumberland County as it courses across souther Pennsylvania. (Sunoco Logistics)

(Sunoco Logistics)

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday refused to hear an appeal by Cumberland County property owners who are fighting the drive by Sunoco Logistics to seize their land for the Mariner East II natural gas transmission pipeline.



The decision by the state's highest court comes five months after a divided Commonwealth Court panel rejected a plea by the three couples. The Supreme Court justices did not state a reason for refusing to hear the landowners' appeal of the Commonwealth Court ruling.



The pipeline opponents - R. Scott and Pamela Martin and Douglas and Lyndsey Fitzgerald of North Middleton Township, and Harvey and Anna Nickey of Lower Mifflin Township - have lost every round of the court fight.



They went to Commonwealth Court after county President Judge Edward E. Guido dismissed objections they filed to try to bar Sunoco from taking parts of their land through eminent domain.



In siding with Guido, the majority on the seven-member panel of Commonwealth Court judges found that Sunoco is a "public utility corporation" that has the power to seize private land for its multi-state pipeline. Commonwealth Court Judges Patricia A. McCullough disagreed with that decision. McCullough claimed it will "gravely undermine" property rights.



Mariner East II is to run from Washington County across Pennsylvania to Marcus Hook in Delaware County. The pipeline is to extend into Ohio and West Virginia as well. It is to have off-load points in Pennsylvania, but its products also are to be shipped out of state.



Sunoco is proposing to permanently take 1.5 acres of the Martin's land on Longs Gap Road; 0.14 acres of the Fitzgerald's land along Pine Creek Drive and 0.7 acres of the Nickey's property off the Blain McCrea Road.




If your dog barks, or even moves, when a police officer searches your home, a federal-court ruling says that police are authorized to shoot it.

The ruling stems from a recent case in which police in Battle Creek, Michigan, shot two pit bulls while searching a home for evidence of drugs in 2013, Fox 31 out of Denver is reporting.

Mark and Cheryl Brown, the owners of the two dogs, filed the suit against the police department, claiming the killing of the dogs was a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights, amounting to an unlawful seizure.

But the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit sided with the police officers, ruling the dogs posed an imminent threat to their safety, according to reports.

The original lawsuit claims the owner warned police of the dogs inside and offered a front-door key, but the officer, who said he did not hear the comment, broke down the door, resulting in the first dog "lunging" at him.

According to testimony, Officer Christof Klein shot at the first dog, which retreated into the basement. As the officer then tried to clear the basement, the dog was blocking his path, barking, leading to the officer firing the fatal round.

The second dog, also in the basement, was "just standing there... barking" and the officer fired two rounds at that dog, according to reports.

A second officer shot that dog because she was moving in his direction, according to reports, and a third officer shot the dog "to put her out of her misery."

The court ruled, however, that it was reasonable for the officers to use force in this case because they had reasonable evidence that a known gang member used the home to distribute cocaine and heroin, and the raiding officers did not know whether or not gang members would be there, according to reports.
classroom---shutterstock-4dd9d63001805e99.jpg

A ruling by a federal judge quashed hopes for reviving the New Hope Academy Charter School.

(Shutterstock)

More than two years after it closed, a federal judge has dismissed a bid by parents and students to revive the New Hope Academy Charter School in York.



The ruling U.S. Middle District Judge John E. Jones III issued this week marks the latest in a string of legal defeats for the school's proponents. The end of the federal dispute came when Jones honored a plea by York City School District officials to dismiss a lawsuit the school's backers filed in 2013.



Jones rejected claims by New Hope supporters that the district had no legitimate grounds for refusing to renew the charter for the school, which opened in 2007 and ultimately served about 800 students in grades 5 through 12.



School backers claimed the district refused to renew the charter because New Hope was siphoning too much money away from the fiscally- and educationally-troubled city schools.



Jones concluded, however, that the renewal rejection followed proper procedures. He credited the reasons the district gave - including sub-par academic performance - for ending New Hope's operation.



Earlier legal defeats for New Hope's advocates included a 2013 decision by the Pennsylvania State Charter School Appeal Board that found the refusal to renew the school's charter was proper. Commonwealth Court also sided with the school district in an April 2014 ruling that guaranteed New Hope's closure that June.
In general, children during the first year of life are put on regimented visits to the pediatrician. Their physical development is closely monitored, as well as their welfare.

That regimented schedule eases up in the subsequent years and it's in the years before elementary school that children can fall off the radar.

That could have played a role in what happened with the three Dauphin County children who were removed from their Halifax Township home earlier this month near starvation and profoundly neglected and abused.

The three children - ages 4, 5 and 6 - were taken to Penn State Hershey Medical Center. As of Dec. 27, one of the children remained hospitalized. Two had been released into foster custody.

Josh Weyant, 33, and Brandi Weyant, 38, face charges including aggravated assault, false imprisonment, unlawful restraint and child endangerment and are jailed in lieu of $1 million bail each.

Cathleen Palm, founder of The Center for Children's Justice, points out that in spite of the systems in place, there is an added level of vulnerability that comes with very young children. Mandated reporters - professionals such as teachers and doctors who work with children - are by law required to report suspected abuse, but very young children may not have that connection.

"We forget how often children may not connect with a mandated reporter," Palm said. "In some of these cases if the kids are not going to the doctor or child care or church there are very limited ways that mandated reporters would have access to them."

The three children apparently had minimal contact with people or agencies who might have reported the alleged abuse. Josh Weyant told police he and Brandi hadn't enrolled them in school. According to the arrest affidavit, none of the children had been taken for a medical appointment in more than two years. Josh had faced criminal charges in 2015, which prompted Dauphin County Children and Youth to visit the home and interview the children. A county official said Tuesday "all the kids were doing well."

Michele M. Orner, superintendent of Halifax Area School District, on Wednesday said district officials had no knowledge of the Weyant children.

"We knew nothing," she said.

Orner explained that this past spring the district census records indicated that one child in the home was eligible for kindergarten. She said the district send along a registration packet and invitation to visit to the Weyant home. Orner said the registration was never returned nor did either of the Weyants contact the school district.

Orner said the district at that point had done its due diligence. In Pennsylvania, compulsory school attendance begins at 8. Kindergarten is not mandatory, and districts are not required to report parents for failing to register children for kindergarten.

"I'm not sure what role we play here," Orner said. "There's not a statutory right to kindergarten in this state. The state school code is very clear. My heart breaks for what occurred but the school district has no role in this."

According to the criminal complaint, Josh Weyant indicated to authorities that he and Brandi had withheld the children from school because they had not completed the proper paperwork.

"He stated that he would teach the kids himself at home," the affidavit states.

Orner said the district never received the appropriate paperwork required to homeschool a child.

With regards to the 17-year-old minor who lived at the Weyant home, Orner said that the minor was enrolled in the school district. She said she had no knowledge of whether that student had raised concerns to school officials about the conditions in the home.

Palm underscored the complexities of the child welfare and protective services system, which in spite of seeming checks and balances can be hampered by cracks in the system.

"Even once Dauphin County got involved, did anyone understand the dynamics by which the children ended up in their care and custody?" she said. "Even the courts - was it apparent to people in 2015 what the dynamics were?

Palm said too often the child welfare system operates from a "situational" standpoint, meaning caseworkers tend to focus on what is being investigated, such as a lack of food in the house.

"That might be the overriding thinking. They may overlook other red flags," Palm said.

Palm, however, was quick to defend caseworkers and children welfare officials.

"This is the nature of the system," she said. "It's time for state leaders and lawmakers to take a step back and ask what is this child protection? It's about do we expect too much? How many checks and balances can they put in place if on the surface everything seems ok?"
Donald Trump Campaigns at Cumberland Valley High School

Donald Trump making his remarks. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump campaigns at Cumberland Valley High School in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania on Monday August 1, 2016. Daniel Zampogna, PennLive

(Daniel Zampogna, Pennlive)

(

Editor's Note:

During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump wasn't shy about his hostility toward journalists. His unexpected victory proved his doubters - which included many in the media - wrong.

The Conversation, a politics and public affairs website, gathered a group of media experts to explore the challenges facing journalists and the public under a Trump administration: restoring trust, sifting through propaganda, resisting being manipulated, reviving local news outlets and parsing fake news.)

By Gerry Lanosgra

When historians look back on Donald Trump's unexpected political rise, his mastery of media manipulation will undoubtedly be one of the key factors they consider.

Gerry Lanosgra (Indiana University photo)

During a campaign that made journalists a constant target of his anti-establishment rhetoric, Trump was also able to capture a disproportionate share of media attention by making outrageous, unpredictable statements.

Remarkable as it was, this was not entirely uncharted territory. Trump is hardly the first politician to attack the press (Thomas Jefferson once claimed newspapers "raven on the agonies of their victims, as wolves do on the blood of the lamb"). And his tactic of cutting out the media middleman by using direct-to-audience messaging through Twitter? That, too, has precursors, from FDR's fireside chats to Harry Truman's whistle-stop tour, an echo of similar 19th-century campaigns.

More broadly, presidents have always tried to influence the news media for political ends. "News management" is a relatively recent term, but the idea goes back at least as far as Andrew Jackson, whose publicity machine churned out news releases and choreographed press events.

Trump's unique contribution to all this is his showman's instinct for creating news diversions that tend to draw attention away from his opponents or from more damaging stories.

For example, Politico's Jack Shafer pointed out that the media uproar from Trump's attack on the cast of "Hamilton" booted the Trump University lawsuit settlement right out of the news cycle.

Journalists will need vigilance and discipline to resist such manipulation. Those things haven't always been hallmarks of the White House press corps, which is often criticized as timid, pack-oriented and overly chummy with official Washington.

Such criticisms are reflected in declining public trust in news media. At the same time, recent surveys have shown that Americans place high value on fact-checking and investigative reporting.

But providing those things is challenging given today's reactionary news environment and the realities of the shrinking ranks of journalists covering the federal government.

Trump's White House is sure to provide plenty of fascination for reporters, making it too easy for them to devote their time to his pronouncements or latest Twitter dust-up. Meanwhile, the shiny object at the top may distract from important news happening in lower precincts, namely the dozens of executive branch agencies that are key players on federal policy and trillions in spending.

With the incoming administration promising to dramatically reshape federal government, the duty to provide vigorous accountability reporting has never been more important.

Jerry Lanosgra is an assistant professor of journalism, Indiana University, Bloomington.
Skiers and snowboarders arrive at the Cypress Mountain ski resort in West Vancouver, Thursday, Dec.29, 2016. Rescue teams on Vancouver's North Shore are on standby, hoping a break in the weather and a reduced avalanche risk will allow them to resume a search for two missing snowshoers. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
JUNEAU (AP)  Alaska lawmakers could take another run at revising statutes governing alcohol when the legislature convenes next month.

A Soldotna state senator, Republican Peter Micciche, is expected to again push for reforms that were partially addressed in his bill in 2015, the Juneau Empire reported.

The Alaska Alcoholic Beverage Control Board and interested parties since 2012 have worked on new drafts of Title 4, the chapter of state statutes that regulates the manufacture, possession and sale of alcoholic beverages.

I dont want to say revising so much as bringing Title 4 into...
New steeple to be dedicated Nov. 6 at First Presbyterian Church of Petoskey


Petrobras sell noncore business for $587 million , biodiesel and petrochemical assets





Brazil's state-run Petrobras, on Wednesday said it agreed to sell stake in ethanol company Guarani for $202 million

SAO PAULO

Petroleumworld.com 12 29 2016

Brazilian state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA on Wednesday, said it agreed to sell certain noncore business assets for $587 million, amid its efforts to raise cash and reduce debts.

Petrobras, as the company is also known, will sell its 45.97% stake in sugar and ethanol producer Guarani SA to France's Tereos Internacional, for $202 million.

In a separate statement, Petrobras said it agreed to sell certain petrochemical assets to Mexican petrochemical company Alpek S.A.B. de C.V. for $385 million.

The Brazilian company will sell its petrochemical units Petroquimica Suape and Citepe to Alpek. The subsidiaries operate a plastics plant in the country's northeast Pernambuco state, with capacity of 700,000 tons a year of purified terephthalic acid, or PTA, and 450,000 tons of polyethylene terephthalate, or PET. Citepe also operates a plant on the site which produces 90,000 metric tons a year of texturized polyester filament.

Alpek, a unit of industrial conglomerate Alfa SAB, said the deal requires some corporate and government approvals.

Monterrey, Mexico-based Alpek has annual output capacity of 5.6 million metric tons and had revenues of $5.3 billion in 2015. The acquisition will expand its presence in Brazil, where it operates an expandable polystyrene plant.

Wednesday's announcements were part of Petrobras' plan to sell certain assets to reduce its debt. With those sales, Petrobras said it sold $13.6 billion in assets in the 2015-2016 period.

For the 2017 and 2018 period, Petrobras said it is planning to sell $21 billion in assets.

With the ambitious asset-sale plans, Petrobras said it seeks to reduce its net debt-to-earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ratio to 2.5 times in 2018; it was 5.3 times at the end of 2015. Petrobras is the most highly leveraged oil major in the world with $123 billion in gross debt.






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Taipei, Dec. 29 (CNA) Costco, an American membership-only wholesale club, said on Thursday that it plans to offer discounts to members at the opening of its new store in New Taipei's Xinzhuang District instead of free breakfast and gifts as it did in the past.
In June, Ikea recalled 29 million dressers that the company acknowledged were at serious risk of tipping forward and injuring children. Almost immediately, the recall hotline was overwhelmed.

Consumers reported being disconnected. Some who got through waited on hold for more than an hour. Inquirer reporters called 27 times and reached a person just once.

In the months since, more consumers have taken to social media to say they had trouble taking part in the recall, which allowed consumers to receive repair kits, to return their dressers to an Ikea store or to have an Ikea crew come to their home.

The recall is unprecedented and believed to be the largest furniture recall in U.S. history.

We want to know: How is Ikea handling the challenge of repairing or removing millions of potentially deadly dressers from U.S. homes?

EMAIL US: Let us know what happened when you tried to take part in Ikea's recall. Was it smooth sailing? Or were there frustrations along the way? Anyone still waiting? You can send your stories to reporter Tricia L. Nadolny at tnadolny@phillynews.com

SOCIAL MEDIA: Tweet your stories to us at @phillydotcom using the hashtag #IkeaRecallResponse. You can also contact Tricia L. Nadolny on her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/tnadolny/

WANT TO READ MORE?

Preventable tragedies: Ikea dressers at risk of tipping over

Inquirer sues safety agency for records in Ikea tipovers

Feds confirm 7th child death from Ikea dresser tip-over

Video: Why recalled dressers are so dangerous

You have a recalled Ikea dresser. Now what?
Candles burning for fallen officers during National Police Week. (Photo: Police Magazine/Lynn Cronquist)

Law enforcement fatalities nationwide rose to their highest level in five years in 2016, with 135 officers killed in the line of duty, according to preliminary data compiled and released today by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) in their 2016 Law Enforcement Fatalities Report.

The 135 officer fatalities in 2016 are a 10 percent increase over the 123 who died in the line of duty last year and is the highest total since 2011 when 177 officers made the ultimate sacrifice.

Firearms-related incidents were the number one cause of death in 2016, with 64 officers shot and killed across the country. This represents a significant spike56 percentover the 41 officers killed by gunfire in 2015. Of the 64 shooting deaths of officers this year, 21 were the result of ambush-style attacksthe highest total in more than two decades. Eight multiple-shooting death incidents claimed the lives of 20 officers in 2016, tied with 1971 for the highest total of any year since 1932. Those incidents included five officers killed in ambush attacks in Dallas (TX) and three in Baton Rouge (LA) spanning 10 days in July.

Fifty-three officers were killed in traffic-related incidents in 2016, which was 10 percent more than the 48 killed on roadways in 2015. Of the 53 traffic-related deaths, 28 died in automobile crashes, 15 were struck and killed while outside of their vehicle and 10 were killed in motorcycle crashes. Prior to 2016, traffic-related incidents have been the number one cause of officer fatalities in 15 of the last 20 years.

Eighteen officers died from other causes in 2016, including 11 who died from job-related illnessesmostly heart attackswhile performing their duties. Other causes included beatings (3), a drowning, a fall, an aircraft crash and a stabbing.

Among the states, Texas had the highest number of officer fatalities, with 17, followed by California with 10, Louisiana with nine, Georgia with eight, and Michigan with six. Six Federal law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in 2016, along with four from the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico and one tribal officer.

Six of the fallen officers in 2016 were female. Among the officers who died this year, the average age was 40, and the average length of service was 13 years.

"Public safety is a partnership and, too often, the service and sacrifice of our law enforcement professionals is taken for granted," observed NLEOMF President and CEO Craig W. Floyd. "We must never forget that 900,000 law enforcement officers nationwide risk their lives every day for our safety and protection. And, this year, 135 of those men and women did not make it home to their families at the end of their shift. As we begin the new year, let us all resolve to respect, honor, and remember those who have served us so well and sacrificed so much in the name of public safety."

There are currently 20,789 names of officers killed in the line of duty inscribed on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, DC, dating back to the first known death in 1791. Over the past decade (2006-2015) the average annual number of officer fatalities has been 151. The deadliest year on record for law enforcement was 1930 when 307 law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty. The last time officer fatalities dipped below 100 for a single year was 1944.

The statistics released are based on preliminary data compiled by the NLEOMF and do not represent a final or complete list of individual officers who will be added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in 2016. For a complete copy of the preliminary 2016 Law Enforcement Fatalities Report, go to: www.LawMemorial.org/FatalitiesReport.
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*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*

For a significant segment of the population, 2016 will go down as a very bad year. There has been some good news, but it always comes from the lone Democrat with authority to prevent a totally bad year from becoming much, much worse. It was, quite frankly, hilarious to hear Democrats claim that when Donald Trump enters the White House he will face powerful opposition that no other president has experienced. No matter how much anyone wanted that fierce opposition to be true, it was historically unlikely and yet it was worth waiting to see just how oppositional Democrats in Congress would be towards Trump.

For the second time in a week, it is glaringly apparent that the leading Democrat in the Senate, Charles Schumer, is embracing Donald Trump like a long lost Democratic lover. Of course Schumer, a senator representing Israel, harshly criticized and condemned fellow Democrat and President Barack Obama for not ardently supporting Israels illegal aggression against Palestinians because it is precisely what one expects of a politician representing Israel. But when Schumer embraced Trumps remarkably transparent infrastructure improvement scam, he revealed what many already knew was on the horizon; a fracturing in the so-called Democratic opposition to Trumps agenda. That fracturing just came quicker than expected and before the Trump is in the White House.

It was reported in Politico late, last week that the incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said he is embracing Trumps proposed $1 trillion infrastructure scam. As noted in Talking Points Memo, Mr. Schumer might be more aligned with Trump on the infrastructure plan than Republicans. Republicans initially are warning against spending any money on helping Americans, but when they comprehend that the Trump scam is a monumental gift to corporations and the filthy rich, including giving them ownership of Americas infrastructure, they will be rushing to join Schumers bear hug embrace of the Trumps infrastructure scam.

Obviously, Mr. Schumer likes the idea of spending a trillion dollars on Americas infrastructure; all Democrats would if it was a valid plan. He also probably believes all of the Trump hype that his fabulous plan is a winner for everyone involved. However, dreadful Don doesnt do anything that allows everyone to win, because his only regard is for his and his wealthy cabals profit and pecuniary enrichment.

It is curious that Schumer intimated he didnt know much about Trumps plan when there has been a wealth of assessment provided by real economists and people in the know. However, Schumer should also be well aware that the concept of everyone winning or benefitting from a Trump proposal is the farthest thing from dirty Dons infrastructure plan. There is a good reason for the preponderance of complaints and criticism over the Trump infrastructure plan Schumer is already embracing; it is just a mammoth tax scam to benefit the rich at the expense of the taxpayers who arent the rich.

Trumps plan is so much more than just tax breaks for the rich, though, and one wonders why Schumer would even feign to like a plan that gives the rich more tax breaks. It cant be just to cause division between the Trump and congressional Republicans who warn they will reject the plan out of hand due to the alleged cost. Surely Schumer took the time to consider what real economist Paul Krugman said the plan entailed before embracing it with a bear hug.

The Nobel laureate in economics said besides monumental tax breaks for the rich, Trumps plan is a gift of ownership of Americas infrastructure to corporations in the ultimate privatization scam; and it is all at taxpayer expense. And, it is the ultimate privatization scam that the incoming Senate Minority Leader, a Democrat, is embracing it with a big bear hug and it should give all Democrats pause.

It is the second time in a week that Charles Schumer has aligned himself with dirty Don and it should be a portent that the so-called solid Democratic opposition to Trumps agenda is beginning to crack before either the opposition or agenda officially begins. For many Americans, it was nauseating to see the high-ranking Democrat Schumer join with Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu to harshly condemn the sitting Democratic President over his rejection of Israels aggression, but embracing a Trump proposal benefitting no-one but the rich is sickening.

It remains to be seen exactly how the Republicans in Congress align with Schumer and Trump on an infrastructure scam, but it is safe to say that when Republicans realize the scam gives the rich monumental tax breaks and complete private ownership of Americas infrastructure, they too will embrace Trumps scam with a bear hug. More importantly, it remains to be seen how many other Democrats jump on the Trump train and if history is any indication, there will be more than enough of them to put an abrupt end to whatever fierce opposition a couple of Democrats had planned for Trump.
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Donald Trump tweeted this morning that he was coming to Israels rescue, to just hold on until January 20th. That was not the message Secretary of State John Kerry sent today in a speech at The Dean Acheson Auditorium in Washington, DC.

Kerry was highly critical of Israeli foreign policy: Friends need to tell each other the hard truths, he said, and friendships require mutual respect.

Ignoring ideology and wishful thinking, Kerry stuck to hard truths:

The Israeli prime minister publicly supports a two-state solution, but his current coalition is the most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by its most extreme elements.

He might well have been speaking about American foreign policy at this same time next year.

He added that,

The result is that policies of this government  which the prime minister himself just described as more committed to settlements than any in Israels history  are leading in the opposite direction, toward one state.

Kerry stressed Americas own long-term support for a two-state solution and that Benjamin Netanyahus actions put that future in jeopardy.

Throughout his administration, President Obama has been deeply committed to Israel and its security, and that commitment has guided his pursuit of peace in the Middle East. This is an issue which Ive worked on intensely during my time as Secretary of State for one simple reason: because the two state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It is the only way to ensure Israels future as a Jewish and democratic state, living in peace and security with its neighbors. It is the only way to ensure a future of freedom and dignity for the Palestinian people. And it is an important way of advancing U.S. interests in the region.



I would like to explain why that future is now in jeopardy, and provide some context for why we could not, in good conscience, stand in the way of a resolution at the United Nations that makes clear that both sides must act now to preserve the possibility of peace.

While Republicans want to basically give control of Americas foreign policy over to Israel, Kerry stressed that the primary job of a secretary of state  and it goes without saying, a president of the United States  has as his first responsibility the defense of this country, a point Republicans seem more and more willing to forget:

I want to stress that point: My job, above all, is to defend the United States of America  to stand up for and defend our values and our interests in the world. If we were to stand idly by and know that in doing so we are allowing a dangerous dynamic to take hold which promises greater conflict and instability to a region in which we have vital interests, we would be derelict in our own responsibilities.

Obviously, much of what Kerry said needed to be explained to Republicans, as he broke down the UN vote in terms even they should be able to understand:

[W]e cannot properly defend and protect Israel  if we allow a viable two state solution to be destroyed before our eyes.



And thats the bottom line: the vote in the UN was about preserving the two state solution. Thats what we were standing up for: Israels future as a Jewish and democratic state, living side by side in peace and security with its neighbors.

Diplomacy for Trump seems limited to what can be managed via 140-character sound-bytes, and you cannot develop complex thoughts in 140-characters or less. Simply reacting to every imagined slight, or every challenge to his preconceptions, does not reveal a president-elect who understands the complexities of the world beyond his fantasy visions.

Trump insists he is a smart guy but he has steadfastly refused to demonstrate that fact, and the mischief he and Netanyahu can make in the next four years is frightening in a world returned to arms races and nuclear proliferation.

Kerry concluded with a sober assessment, saying there is simply too much at stake  for future generations of Israelis and Palestinians  to give in to pessimism, especially when peace is in fact still possible. We must not lose hope in the possibility of peace.

Our own right wing has become too extreme to compromise, and it is clear than Israelis right wing, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, suffers from the same character defect. Responding to Kerrys speech, the Israeli prime minister said Kerry was blaming Israel for the lack of peace, and that, Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders.

Donald Trump has not responded yet, but when he does, it is sure to be in the form of some highly volatile and ill-thought out tweets expressing the sum total of his intellectual capacity. And thats not saying much.

You can manage dogmatic assertions in 140 characters. You cannot achieve peace.
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Working to secure his strong environmental legacy from incoming President Donald Trump, President Barack Obama designated two new national monuments on Wednesday. The move will protect nearly 1.5 million acres of federal land in Utah and Nevada.

The full statement from President Obama:

Today, I am designating two new national monuments in the desert landscapes of southeastern Utah and southern Nevada to protect some of our countrys most important cultural treasures, including abundant rock art, archeological sites, and lands considered sacred by Native American tribes. Todays actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes. Importantly, today I have also established a Bears Ears Commission to ensure that tribal expertise and traditional knowledge help inform the management of the Bears Ears National Monument and help us to best care for its remarkable national treasures.

Following years of public input and various proposals to protect both of these areas, including legislation and a proposal from tribal governments in and around Utah, these monuments will protect places that a wide range of stakeholders all agree are worthy of protection. We also have worked to ensure that tribes and local communities can continue to access and benefit from these lands for generations to come.

While Native American tribes and environmentalists are applauding Obamas steps to protect the land, Republicans in Congress are already attacking the move and vowing to reverse it when Trump takes office.

In a statement, GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah called the presidents move an attack on an entire way of life. Hatchs response is unsurprising given his zero percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters last year and a 10 percent lifetime score. Hatch wants to use some of the protected land for development.

Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz also expressed his opposition to Obamas designations, saying hes outraged that Obama would protect the land. Chaffetz called it a slap in the face to the people of Utah.

Once Trump takes over next month, Republicans say they are planning to limit future presidents power to designate national monuments without Congressional approval under the 1906 Antiquities Act.

Despite the predictable response from the GOP, President Obamas legacy  he has protected more federal land and water than any single previous president  will endure long after he is out of the White House.
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Donald Trump emerged from hiding on Wednesday to do what he has done via Twitter for the past several days: Take credit for President Barack Obamas strong economy.

In a brief statement delivered outside of his Mar-a-Lago Estate, Trump claimed that Sprint plans to bring 5,000 jobs back to the United States and a new company, OneWeb, will be hiring 3,000 U.S. workers.

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While any job created in America is a good thing, the announcement from these two companies, if it turns out to be true, is small potatoes compared to the 15 million jobs created during Obamas tenure.

It should also be noted that despite Trump now taking ownership of an economy he claimed was in bad shape during the campaign, its not his until he is sworn in on January 20.

Trumps remarks today come after he posted several tweets taking credit for Obamas economic successes:

The world was gloomy before I won  there was no hope. Now the market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016

The U.S. Consumer Confidence Index for December surged nearly four points to 113.7, THE HIGHEST LEVEL IN MORE THAN 15 YEARS! Thanks Donald!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016

Its obvious what Trump is doing  taking credit for things that have nothing to do with him  because hes done it before. But we have one president at a time and right now that president is Barack Obama  thank goodness.

Also, Im not sure if the president-elect paid much attention to the state of the country before he decided to run for office, but things were going pretty well prior to his candidacy.

Since 2009, under President Obamas leadership, the country has fought back from the most devastating economic downturn since the Great Depression, ultimately leading to a much stronger economy that has created millions of new jobs during the longest streak of private sector job growth in history.

Before the Trump campaign was even an idea, the economy was growing, the stock market was soaring, and deficits were falling.

The economic picture before the election was the same as it is now  pretty positive. Trumps existence didnt make that possible.

The only thing that has changed is that we now have a president-elect who will shamelessly take credit for things he wishes he couldve done  and millions of his supporters who will eat it right up.
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Donald Trump was back to tweeting about Israel this morning, attacking the UN and promising January 20th is fast approaching! No doubt his anti-Semitic supporters are completely thrilled by this.

We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016

In the second tweet, he couldnt resist taking a swipe at Obama over his Iran Deal:

not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2016

Donald Trump seems intent on presenting himself as a knight on a white charger racing to the defense of Israel, but if the Bible tells you anything, it is that you dont want the guy coming to save you to be riding a white horse.

As Revelation 6:2 says, I looked, and there was a white horse! Its rider had a bow; a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering and to conquer. This is universally recognized to be the anti-Christ, the harbinger of the apocalypse, a false messiah.

A description, given his vow to renew the nuclear arms race, that fits Trump very well. Israel should not be cheered by Trumps promise of help, but worried by its implicit threat.
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It should probably come as no surprise given Donald Trumps reputation as a man who worships wealth, that there will be prosperity gospel preachers among the six faith leaders present at the inauguration of Donald Trump will.

There are two of them: Paula White, a friend of Trumps who was investigated by the Senate Finance Committee in 2011 for her shady fundraising practices  and like Trump refused to cooperate with investigators; and Detroit Bishop Wayne T. Jackson. This is a first for the United States. But then this is Donald Trump, the man with a golden toilet.

And Jesus so loved the rich he gave his life for them. Or so youd think. Jesus evolution into a plutocratic champion of the ultra-wealthy beggars belief. That is certainly the outlook of the prosperity gospel, the idea that Jesus will make you rich.

The other four are Billy Grahams son, Rev. Franklin Graham, who thinks secular government is new to the United States (maybe he missed Gods absence from the Constitution); the nations highest-ranking Catholic, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB); Evangelical Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; and the Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Jewish human rights center, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, named for Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

Trump told CNN in 2007 that, Paula White is not only a beautiful person, both inside and out, she has a significant message to offer anyone who will tune in and pay attention. She has amazing insight, the ability to deliver that message clearly, as well as powerfully. You can be pretty sure he meant to say anyone who will tune in and pay.

Franklin Grahams bigotry is well known. He said the 2012 Election was this nations last call. We survived and prospered and ended up with Trump, who somehow isnt our nations last call. Graham also said ISIS would bow down to Jesus but Trump thinks theyll bow down to him, so that might get interesting.

Dolan is no better and his USCCB lobbied vociferously against the Defense of Marriage Act and Californias Proposition 8. In one controversial incident in 2013, he was alleged to have used the NYPD to bar gay Catholics from St. Patricks Cathedral. He did, however, pen an op-ed to attack Trump over his views on immigration last year.

Bishop Jackson, who owns Impact Network, a TV station, is the pastor whose church Trump visited in a blatant propaganda opportunity this summer. Jackson sells blessed water and the Detroit Free Press relates that He owns one of Detroits biggest mansions, a 39,000-square-foot home in Palmer Woods with 10 marble fireplaces, so he should be a comfortable fit for the money-worshiping and profane Trump.

Rodriguez, though he criticized Trumps plan to deport immigrants, wrote in July of this year that Democrats had failed Hispanics, blaming Obama and party rather than an obstructionist Congress for failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Rodriguez says he will ask God to inspire and guide our new president. It might be better to ask God to inform him. It turns out Trump, who cant think past 140-characters, doesnt know what Israeli settlements are, or what to call the West Bank. Or just about anything else.

Except for supporting Trumps position on Israel, Democrats will have nothing to complain of in Rabbi Hier. He was named by Newsweek in 2007 and 2008 as the Most Influential Rabbi in America and is also the recipient of two Academy Awards. His inclusion among these others is interesting, however, given his centers earlier criticism of Trumps attacks on Muslims, and his statement that,

The greatest threat to mankind comes not from secularists and atheists, but from religious fanatics and zealots.

He will be sharing the stage with some of them, at the inauguration of a man who encourages religious fanatics, and indeed, let himself by anointed by them as a sanctification of his bigotry.

Inaugural Committee Chairman Tom Barrack called this a diverse set of faith leaders, though there is really not much diversity as they are three Christians and one Jew, with no Mormon and not a Muslim among them, let alone a faith leader of any other religion. But then, of course, there are no women in Trumps cabinet either. He has never shown that he needs their blessing in anything.

Barrack insists these men will honor the vital role religious faith plays in our multicultural, vibrant nation.

How Donald Trump has organized the cast around him says a great deal about him. He did not invite a mainline Protestant pastor of the sort Rick Santorum assures us are lost to Satan. He did not invite a Muslim or a representative of a minority religion, which would have been a meaningful step toward inclusion if multiculturalism was what he truly planned to embrace.

Except for Rabbi Hier, there is nothing normative about this group. These are the outliers, the fringe being mainstreamed, the same extreme right-wing elements Kerry warned of in Israel, their unholy, un-American quest publicly sanctified by God.
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Studies are finding that repealing Obamacare will unleash a healthcare catastrophe on the very same people who voted for Donald Trump.

The Wall Street Journal highlighted the findings of a Gallup/American Communities Project survey, Swaths of largely rural Graying America, Rural Middle America and Working Class Country counties make up large parts of Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the states that led to Mr. Trumps victory. Trump won with working class country voters by 46 points. He won with graying American voters by 22 points. He won evangelical hubs by 51 points. Those three groups made up a 16.9% growth in the insured rate due to the ACA.

The LA Times noted that 4 of the 5 states that receive the most subsidies (North Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Georgia) were won by Trump. Florida alone will lose $5.2 billion in ACA subsidies. These numbers arent including the disaster that is set to occur in states that Donald Trump won if Republicans immediately kill the Medicaid expansion subsidies to the states.

A 2009 study found that 45,000 annual deaths in the United States were linked to a lack of affordable healthcare before the ACA. Those numbers can be expected to return or reach even higher levels if the ACA is repealed, and the political problem for Republicans is that the areas that are likely to be the hardest hit are those that were carried by Trump in 2016.

It appears that voters who supported Donald Trump may have unwittingly cast a ballot for their own demise. The choice to believe that a law that was benefiting them was a bad could unleash a healthcare crisis in red states that could annually cost Trump voters or their loved ones their lives.

A healthcare crisis is coming and may end up doing the most damage to the people chose to vote for Donald Trump on election day.
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Saying All Americans should be alarmed by Russias actions, President Obama today released a new statement on sanctions against Russia, ordering 2 Russian compounds in Maryland and New York be shut down and 35 diplomats expelled.

These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior.

Russia, knowing new sanctions were coming, had already warned the White House not to do anything in response to what Russia had done or they will do some more stuff that requires a response:

People in the White House need to understand clearly that if Washington really takes new hostile steps, then it will receive a response.

Vladimir Putin can try to play the victim. He is about as good at it as Donald Trump, which is to say, not at all. Nobody is fooled by this saber rattling.

Lindsey Graham wanted President Obama to not be president for the rest of his term and just let Donald Trump handle it, saying Wednesday,

Putin has cleaned his clock. Heres what Id prefer: Let the new Congress and new president deal with Russia.  If I were President Trump, Id call President Obama and say Dont start something that you cannot finish. 

Sorry, Mr. Graham. We have a president. And his name is not Trump.

This is advice which suggests Graham doesnt really want sanctions, because presumably, though by no means guaranteed, he is intelligent enough to know that Donald Trump is not going to bite the hand that controls his puppet strings.

Predictably, Donald Trump, the beneficiary of Russias hacking, just wants to forget the whole thing, saying Wednesday,

I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly  the whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on.

Trumps response is the uninspiring babble of a weak leader: So our democratic processes were interfered with by a hostile power. Meh.

Actually, we know all about whats going on, and a strong leader, President Obama, has just done something about it.

The president reminded the world that he is still POTUS and not Donald Trump, promising that these steps need not be the only ones he takes:

These actions are not the sum total of our response to Russias aggressive activities. We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicized.

And that is how the leader of the free world leads. Hope youre taking notes, Mr. Trump.
In this Dec. 22 photo, a boy plays with Pepper the robot at Westfield Mall in San Francisco. While merrily chirping, dancing and posing for selfies, Pepper looks like another expensive toy in the San Francisco mall where it will be entertaining shoppers through mid-February. But it would be a mistake to dismiss Pepper as mere child's play, even though kids flock around the 4-foot-tall humanoid as it speaks in a cherubic voice that could belong to either a boy or girl. AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
The massive amount is unusual for a local school board race  and thousands more than any of the other 31 candidates have managed to raise. Read moreA CCSD board candidate has raised almost $100K in campaign funds
Kelvin Cole, 56, died Oct. 28 after being struck by multiple cars on Interstate 26. Investigators later determined he had active arrest warrants from Charleston County's Family Court and the S.C. Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. Read moreJohns Island man provided fake name before jumping from I-26 overpass, report says
As parts of South Carolina continue to struggle with the effects of one of the strongest, costliest American storms on record, some automakers appear poised to destabilize one of the most important and effective public safety tools being used in the states recovery efforts. Read moreCommentary: Hurricane Ian a reminder of the importance of AM car radios
A man accused of using and selling drugs out of a home  and keeping a loaded handgun within reach of a 4-year-old child  was sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison.

Derek Ty Cobb, 31, pleaded guilty Dec. 22 to one count each of first-degree drug sale, a felony, and possession of a pistol as a user of a controlled substance, a gross misdemeanor. In exchange, one count each of first-degree drug sale, first-degree drug possession, fifth-degree drug sale, fifth-degree drug possession, storing methamphetamine paraphernalia in the presence of a child, and causing a child to be exposed to meth, all felonies, were dismissed.

Olmsted County County District Court Judge Robert Birnbaum handed down concurrent terms of 74 months in prison and 365 days in jail, with credit for 286 days already served.

His co-defendant, Sarah Marie Walsh, 23, pleaded guilty in August to felony second-degree drug sale. In exchange for the plea, two counts of first-degree drug sale, and single counts of storing methamphetamine in the presence of a child and causing a child to be exposed to meth, all felonies, were dismissed at her sentencing in October.

She received 57 months in prison, stayed for 25 years, and 97 days in jail, with credit for 97 days already served. She was also ordered to complete drug treatment and 100 hours of community work service.

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The couple was charged after members of the Southeast Minnesota Violent Crime Enforcement Team executed a warrant about 5:50 a.m. April 17, 2015, at 3208 U.S. Hwy. 52 North after receiving information about drug activity at the home.

When they entered the house, Walsh and Cobb were inside with the child, who was sitting on top of a backpack on the couch.

An investigator opened the backpack, and found a loaded and uncased 9 mm handgun in the side pocket, the criminal complaint says. A second loaded magazine was located next to the gun in the same pocket.

Beside the couch was a desk with a bag of meth and a meth pipe on top, the report says. Meth paraphernalia with residue was also allegedly found on the counter and in the cabinet of the bathroom.

Investigators recovered 21.4 grams of methamphetamine, 25 grams of cocaine and 102 grams of marijuana, carrying an estimated street value of $7,000. About $1,000 in cash was also found.

The criminal complaint also outlines the following: Cobb said he purchased one or two ounces of meth about every three days, and had been selling meth for about a year. He sold it five times a day in Winona, and less often in Rochester. Walsh sold it for him "a couple of times," and admitted knowing she put her son in harm's way.

Cobb admitted to selling marijuana, too, and said the drugs in the home were his.
At age 84, Rochester developer and builder Joe Weis still comes into work every day with this trademark unlit cigar in hand.

"I don't plan on retiring. I'll die with my boots on," he said with a chuckle. His office walls are plastered with building plans and photos of him with famous politicians. "I have no hobbies other than politics, and that's not too healthy."

Since 1971, Weis has led Weis Development Corp. to build almost 30 low-income housing projects in Rochester and elsewhere in Minnesota. He also has long been a key figure at Weis Builders, one of Rochester's top construction firms founded by his father in 1939.

With major projects almost every year, he could be spotlighted as a notable business leader many times throughout his long career. Today, he becomes the 2016 Post Bulletin Business Person of the Year.

His latest affordable-housing project, being built at First Avenue and Fifth Street Northwest, really stands out in 2016. The city approved the construction of about 1,000 new, predominately high-end apartments for the year, but Weis' 68-unit First Avenue Flats project was the only one that could be called affordable. It is expected to open in May.

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Every year, Weis and his staff identify a location to propose an affordable-housing project and apply to the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency to qualify for its tax credit program. The deadline to apply is in June. Many developers apply and the competition is always stiff. By October, the state selects a handful of projects to receive the valuable tax credits.

"About four projects apply for every one that the state decides to fund," Weis said.

While no housing project is simple, vying for the affordable housing tax credits is a long and complicated process with 16 pages of detailed criteria used to judge each proposal. Adding to the difficulty, the developers identify a proposed site, but they don't want to buy it until the project is approved.

It's a tightrope Weis has mastered. He built his first affordable housing project - Rochester Square - with backing from the federal Housing and Urban Development agency in 1971.

"We originally got into it to generate business for our construction company," he said.

He worked with federal housing programs until the rules changed in the 1980s. Starting in 2001, Weis began applying for the state tax credits.

While affordable housing is "a profit center" for his firm, Weis concedes there are a lot easier ways to make money building housing. However, building good places for low-income and sometimes homeless people to live offers more rewards than just profit.

"It is satisfying work," he said.

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Dick Landwehr, who worked closely with Weis for six years, said that Weis' love of the work is obvious.

"He enjoys what he does every day and he's very good at it," he said., "I think it keeps him young."

Landwehr said Weis often likes to look like a tough customer, but he really cares about treating people right.

"He's not a pushover, but he is a straight shooter. You always know where stands," he said of Weis.

Joe Weis and his brother took over Weis Builders in 1952, and there's plenty of family help available. His sons, Erik and Jay Weis, run Weis Builders. Their father manages the housing development business, often with help from his grandsons.

The Weis companies now do hundreds of millions in business a year. While they have offices and a strong presence in the Twin Cities, Rochester is still the heart of the business.

"I love Rochester," said Weis, who grew up here and attended Lourdes High School. "It's a good, growing town, as you can tell from all of the competition moving in here."

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Having been raised during the Great Depression and lost his own dad when he was 17, Dr. Malcolm Campbell was imbued early on with a strong sense of duty and service.

His father had been a physician, and he become one, too.

That ethic was woven through the major chapters of his life, first as a military physician for a prisoner-of-war hospital during the Korean War, then later as a doctor at the then-Olmsted Medical Group, where he worked for 33 years. In 1990, he was coaxed out of retirement to treat another kind of prisoner  the patients at the Federal Medical Center.

Even family vacations combined fun and relaxation with Campbell's military obligations. Andrew Campbell, his youngest son and a clinical scientist in San Mateo, Calif., recalled one vacation spent at Fort Lewis, Wash., where his dad fulfilled his military commitments as a member of the Army Reserve.

"Our vacation that year was on a military base," Andrew Campbell said. "He led an interesting and colorful life. He did a lot of good for a lot of people."

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Campbell passed away in his sleep on Dec. 19. He was 91.

During the Korean War, Campbell treated North Korean POWs at a hospital at Koji Island on the peninsula's southern coast. To determine their loyalties, many prisoners were taken to the Demilitarized Zone, the area that split the country's two halves, and given a choice of heading north or south. Campbell returned with those prisoners who chose the south.

Although removed from the war and stationed on the picturesque island of Koji, the brutality of the war was borne home to Campbell by the condition of North Korean POWs. He worked to contain rampant parasitic infections, but some prisoners apparently were convinced they faced not treatment but torture and hanged themselves before Campbell could care for them.

Later, Campbell was transferred to hospitals in Japan, which the doctor described as a "delightful change" from the horrors of Koji Island.

In 1957, Campbell joined what is today Olmsted Medical Center. Only eight years removed from its founding, the center was then a small but thriving community hospital, a microcosm of what it would become today, and Campbell was among a handful of doctors at the time.

That same year, Campbell married his wife, Marlys, and the couple had four children: twins Judith and David, then Bruce and Andrew. Campbell enjoyed both being a physician and living in Rochester.

"Where else can you live and have a five-minute commute in Rochester," Andrew Campbell recalled his father saying.

Campbell retired in 1990, but then was lured out of retirement to work at the Federal Medical Center a year later. Campbell filled a vacancy created when his predecessor, an Atlanta doctor, spent a year in Rochester before deciding he wanted nothing more to do with the area's winters. The then-associate warden, Ruth Connolly, led the charge to hire Campbell.

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It was one last medical hurrah for a doctor with a duty-first, play-later ethos, and the five years he worked there turned out to be among the most fascinating of his career.

"It was the most interesting years of his practice," Andrew Campbell said. "It kept him busy, and he enjoyed it. It gave him another opportunity to serve."

Campbell was introduced to a very different sort of patient than the ones he was used to seeing at Olmsted. AIDS cases and prisoners suffering from drug addiction were among those he treated. The medical center also was home to several famous criminals, whom Campbell met as they were cleaning up his office.

"He was quite surprised who he would see from time to time," Andrew Campbell said.

"He always enjoyed helping people," he added. "I think that kind of shone through his entire career."
MAR-A-LAGO, Fla.  President-Elect Donald Trump met Wednesday with industry leaders in health care, including Mayo Clinic President and CEO John Noseworthy, in what could be a precursor to his expected push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act after years of Republican criticism.

The meeting was held at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Trump's holiday residence and also included Paul Rothman of Johns Hopkins Medicine, David Torchiana of Partners HealthCare and Toby Cosgrove of the Cleveland Clinic. Those four men represent institutions that have all been heavily affected by ACA, and would be similarly affected by any changes made after Trump is sworn into office on Jan. 20.

Mayo issued a notice as the meeting commenced that Noseworthy was "pleased for the opportunity to discuss the Mayo Model of Care and Mayo Model of Research as potential roadmaps to excellence in all of American health care and share Mayo Clinic's views on critical success factors needed to solve our nation's most pressing and complex health challenges."

Noseworthy was not available for comment following the meeting, but a Mayo Clinic spokesman reported that the meeting "touched on many aspects of healthcare, including research as a driver of innovation and economic growth, as well as the barriers posed by overregulation of healthcare."

Mayo's CEO has been critical of President Obama's health care overhaul, which many have dubbed Obamacare. While Obamacare has expanded insurance coverage for millions, Noseworthy has said it doesn't focus enough on patient health.

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Noseworthy has been in contact with Trump's transition team about offering his insight since the Nov. 8 election that saw the Republican stun Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton at the polls.

"We're really talking about replace and repair, rather than repeal," Noseworthy told The Washington Post last month. "But we haven't seen a full approach yet from the administration. Personally, this is me speaking.  We're basically optimistic we can create a better system together."

Mayo has been criticized locally, including last week by Wabasha City Administrator Chad Springer, for contributing to rising insurance costs in Southeast Minnesota. Rates in the area are often double the state average. Minnesota's MNsure system has faced its own challenges. Website glitches and enrollment limits have caused headaches, and providers have pulled out due to cost overruns.

Noseworthy hopes Trump can help return the focus of health care to the patient, similar to Mayo's longstanding motto of "the needs of the patient come first."

"We've been talking much more about premiums and websites than we have about what patients need," Noseworthy recently told the Washington Post. "The voice of the patient and, I would argue, the voice of the medical professional, hasn't been at the table for a long, long time. I think we could help."

Cosgrove, of the Cleveland Clinic, criticized the Affordable Care Act this fall on CNBC's "Squawk Box" over increasing demands for documentation.

"The number of quality metrics that we have to report to the government every year is just going up like crazy," Cosgrove said. "We're now reporting well more than 100 quality metrics on a regular basis," describing regulation paperwork as coming in seven-foot-tall stacks of 16,000 pages.

The meeting with influential health care executives comes shortly after Trump and his transition team held similar meetings with other industry giants, including technology, finance and mainstream media. However, the latest meeting may have prompted an immediate response from Democrats.

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DFL leaders Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer released a letter Wednesday calling for a "day of action" on Jan. 15 to "save health care." They warn that 30 million people may lose health insurance if Republicans successfully repeal ACA, which some have declared as their top priority.

"Rallies will be held across the country to vigorously oppose the Republican plan to end Medicare as we know it and throw our health care system into chaos," the letter states.
A staff member of the Rochester Downtown Alliance is making a career change and will join Rochester Community and Technical College, according to a Wednesday news release.

Laura Engelman will leave her post as Rochester Downtown's community engagement manager. Engelman accepted a positing with Rochester Community and Technical College as director of student life, a Rochester Downtown Alliance news release said.

Engelman was a part of the Rochester Downtown staff for two years, beginning in January 2015.

"During her time with the organization, the RDA has added three new events to our core portfolio. Two of these events saw over 9,000 attendees in 2016. We wish Laura all the best as she takes on this new role," RDA Executive Director Jenna Bowman said in the release.

The downtown alliance will hire for a new community engagement manager. Details are available on the organization's website, downtownrochestermn.com .
Arbitrator reinstates officer fired over video

RICHFIELD  An arbitrator has reinstated a Minnesota police officer who was fired after a Twitter video appeared to show him hitting a Somali-American teen last year.

Richfield police say the arbitrator reversed Nate Kinsey's termination Wednesday.

The Hennepin County Attorney's Office and a special prosecutor reviewed the case and declined to charge Kinsey. But the 10-year department veteran was fired after an internal investigation.

Police Chief Jay Henthorne said the city's weighing appeal options.

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Sean Gormley, executive director of Law Enforcement Labor Services, the union representing Kinsey, said he's pleased with the arbitrator's decision and that the incident "illustrates the pitfalls of jumping to conclusions based on partial video and audio recordings."

In the cellphone video on Twitter, an officer tells a 19-year-old to leave Adams Hill Park. The teen says the officer pushed and hit him.

Plane makes emergency landing in Chicago

CHICAGO  A Minnesota-bound American Airlines flight has made a safe emergency landing at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein says the plane was traveling from Charlotte, N.C., to Minneapolis when an indicator in the cockpit reported a potential mechanical issue. The plane landed safely around 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Feinstein said there were 149 passengers and 5 crew members on board the Airbus 320 and that everyone exited the plane through a gate.

American Airlines brought a different plane into service. It's scheduled to take passengers to Minnesota later Wednesday.

Feinstein says the Airbus 320 has been taken out of service for evaluation by mechanics.

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Police investigate officer's threat to shoot

BROOKLYN CENTER  Brooklyn Center police are investigating after a video shows an officer threatening to shoot a suspect.

In a statement, Police Chief Tim Gannon said the video was brought to the police department's attention on Facebook Wednesday. The video, shared on social media, shows the officer ordering a suspect to get out of a vehicle in a parking lot and to get down on the ground.

The officer tells the suspect not to reach for anything and asks, "You want to get shot?" As the suspect lies on the ground, the officer is heard threatening to "put two" in the back of the suspect's head if the suspect moves again.

Gannon says while using "a forceful command" may be necessary, "threatening language is never appropriate or acceptable."

No one was hurt.

Remains found near Fargo those of missing woman

FARGO, N.D.  A University of North Dakota pathologist says human remains found during a search west of Fargo earlier this month are those of a missing Twin Cities woman.

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Forty-five-year-old Michelle Newell, of Vadnais Heights, was last seen alive in Cass County, North Dakota, in late August. Authorities say the suspect in Newell's death, 51-year-old Timothy Barr, of Lakeville, Minn., provided information that led deputies to the remains.

Prosecutors have alleged Barr indicated to informants that he argued with Newell over methamphetamine and accidentally ran her over before disposing of her body.

Barr is jailed on felony charges of manslaughter and failing to stop in an accident involving death or injury. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Jan. 17.

Barr's public defender, Mark Beauchene, declined to comment.
SOUTH ST. PAUL  A Minnesota elementary school teacher and his husband had sexual conduct with eight underage boys, according to a police report following a four-month investigation.

South St. Paul police closed the investigation into teacher Aric Babbitt and his husband, Matthew Deyo, and released the documents this week. The couple was found dead Aug. 25 in an apparent murder-suicide on Lopez Island in Washington state.

Neither was charged in relation to the abuse allegations.

The deaths came shortly after a 16-year-old boy and his parents went to South St. Paul police to report an ongoing sexual relationship between the teen and the men.

The 134-page investigative file obtained by the St. Paul Pioneer Press shows the case went beyond the 16-year-old's allegations. According to the documents, seven other boys came forward after the teen's allegations became public and police confiscated photos and videos from the couple's phones, computer and other media devices.

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The case file says the alleged abuse took place at the home of the married couple, at Babbitt's family cabin in Crow Wing County, at Minneapolis hotels and at Deyo's parents' farm near Hastings.

Police said that in many instances, Babbitt, 40, and Deyo, 36, gave their alleged victims alcohol and marijuana and bought them phones or other devices to stay in touch.

The first accuser told police that Babbitt was his former teacher and volunteer work supervisor. The boy said Babbitt was a mentor for him when he came out as gay to his family and that the teacher gave him gifts of underwear and yoga shorts and also asked for photos before he was 16, according to the investigative reports.

"As a school district, we strive to provide a safe and secure learning environment for our students," South St. Paul schools Superintendent Dave Webb said in an email to the Pioneer Press. "This has been very hard on our entire South St. Paul community."

Babbitt was a teacher at Lincoln Center Elementary since 2002 and was put on paid leave after the district learned of the allegations Aug. 17.
County officials are seeking a delay in implementing a law designed to prevent runoff pollution into lakes and streams.

There's wide support for the concept of buffers, but counties say there is confusion and questions about details of the law for it to be successful.

"I'm not suggesting that this should go away because I think this is part of the solution," said Roseau County Commissioner Jack Swanson, "but I think we need to understand better what it is that needs to be done instead of rushing to put it in place."

The buffer program, set to take effect in November, was a signature issue for Gov. Mark Dayton last legislative session. The idea is that 50-foot strips of permanent vegetation will filter runoff, mostly soil, fertilizer and chemicals from farm fields, before it reaches rivers and lakes.

Swanson, the past president of the Association of Minnesota Counties, said he heard from many county officials about the buffer law. A key concern is who will pay to implement and enforce the measure, he said.

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Last year, the Legislature included $10 million in the tax bill to help counties cover the cost, but the governor vetoed the bill, leaving the program unfunded.

"What I'm hearing from counties, especially in the north, is if the money's not there, the county has no interest in taking on that enforcement role," Swanson said. "We have to make that decision by the end of March, and it seems unlikely there will be a tax bill ready by that point."

If counties choose to not enforce the buffer law, that responsibility would fall to the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources.

John Jaschke, the board's executive director, expects the Legislature will approve funding for counties to manage the buffer program.

"It does make the most sense by a long shot to have something like this done as a local land management program," Jaschke said.

Another big issue for counties is how landowners will be compensated for land taken out of crop production and planted with permanent buffer vegetation.

Some farmers planting buffer strips now are able to enroll in the federal Conservation Reserve Program and get an annual per-acre payment for that land.

But after the state buffer law takes effect, farmers won't be able to enroll the land in the CRP program. Jaschke said the state is negotiating with the federal government to adjust the rules.

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Barry Nelson, a Becker County commissioner and chair of the Association of Minnesota Counties Natural Resource and Environment policy committee, sees adequate compensation for farmers as perhaps the biggest unresolved issue with the buffer law.

"This is a taking. The state can't just take control of our land," he said. "This is our livelihood, so it's a real concern for farmers, and as you know, the commodity prices are down, and there are some struggling farmers out there, so it's a real problem."

Nelson farms near Detroit Lakes and has enrolled buffer strips in the CRP program. He estimates he could get $140 per acre in CRP compensation.

"If you're only doing three acres, that doesn't sound like much," he said, "but you multiply that over the whole state, and that's a lot of money."

Jaschke said he's hopeful the federal government will agree farmland where buffers are required will be eligible for the Conservation Reserve Program.

But even if that happens, he said, there's no guarantee the federal government will provide enough CRP funding to cover all Minnesota farmers who want in.

"We're also looking at trying to do everything we can to get additional federal and possibly state money to local governments to offer landowners some financial assistance if they want to use that as a way to accomplish getting the buffers installed," Jaschke said.

Another contentious issue BWSR is working to address is exactly what farmers need to do to comply with the buffer law. The law includes a provision for "alternative water quality practices" to mitigate the need for a buffer. Counties say they've been getting confusing and sometimes contradictory information about what alternative practices are acceptable under the law.

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BWSR is developing a list of examples farmers might use.

"I think it's very much more helpful to put some things out of that we can say are already considered to be sufficient alternative practices rather than wait for people to ask us," Jaschke said. "We expect to have some of that out by spring."

Rep. Dan Fabian, R-Roseau, said he is willing to consider delaying or modifying the buffer law to address concerns raised by county officials. Fabian, the House Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Finance committee chair, said the law will need the support of local officials to be successful.
WASHINGTON  "Spare us the kissy-face."

It was June 2001 and I was covering President George W. Bush's trip to Slovenia, where he had just met Vladimir Putin for the first time. I and others were struck by Bush's praise for the Russian leader as "trustworthy." Said Bush: "I was able to get a sense of his soul."

But back in Washington, my editor had no interest in such talk. He rewrote my lede with other news  a tidbit about missile defense  and he moved the "kissy-face" stuff about Putin's soul down to Paragraph 18.

In retrospect, that moment in Slovenia defined the Russia relationship for years to come. Putin had seduced Bush, who only slowly came to understand he had misjudged this adversary's soul. Putin opposed Bush in Iraq and was unhelpful with Iran. He shut down independent television, sent business leaders who criticized him into exile and prison, ousted democratic parties from government, canceled the election of governors and invaded Georgia.

The kissy-face happened all over again when President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to "reset" relations. Russia responded by working against the United States in Syria, sheltering Edward Snowden, invading and occupying parts of Ukraine, and hacking and meddling in the U.S. election to defeat Clinton.

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Now it's Donald Trump's turn for kissy-face, and the president-elect is practically groping the Russian dictator. After Putin gloated Friday that Democrats need to learn "to lose with dignity," Trump tweeted Putin a sloppy kiss: "So true!" he said of Putin's comments.

Trump also celebrated a letter he received from Putin calling for more collaboration between the two countries. "His thoughts are so correct," Trump said.

Trump's blush-inducing embrace of the strongman has included repeated praise of Putin's leadership, deflected questions about Putin's political killings and disparagement of U.S. intelligence for accusing Russia of election meddling.

In three weeks, Trump will assume the presidency, and we'll learn what his embrace of Putin really means. Perhaps Trump is just a dupe and he'll realize over time that Putin is no friend. The alternative, supported by Trump's choice of Putin-friendly advisers Michael T. Flynn and Rex Tillerson, is that Trump really is pro-Putin and will grant the Russian dictator more latitude internationally and will emulate his autocratic tendencies at home.

The former would require us to endure some policy failures as Putin proved himself again to be an adversary. The latter would test the limits of our democratic institutions.

In either case, it would be useful for Americans to have at least a cursory sense of the man our new president proposes to embrace. Here's a quick glimpse into Putin's soul to get us started:

Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was killed outside the Kremlin as he walked home one night last year. Putin's regime blames Chechens, but Nemtsov's is one of a dozen high-profile murders of opponents widely thought to have been sanctioned by Putin's government.

Another Putin opponent, Alexander Litvinenko, was killed in London by polonium poisoning in 2006. The British government said Putin "probably" approved the hit. That same year, opposition journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot and killed outside her apartment.

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Among the many business leaders imprisoned or ousted under Putin are Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was head of the oil giant Yukos, and associate Platon Lebedev. The Russian human rights group Memorial says there are 102 people held in Russian prisons for their political or religious beliefs.

The Kremlin has provided funding and training for far-right nationalist parties in Europe, and it used its state media and an army of hackers and social-media trolls to spread disinformation in the United States, in continental Europe and in Britain before the Brexit vote. The goals: to weaken European unity and the NATO alliance and to keep Europe dependent on Russian energy.

Russia also used disinformation to destabilize the Ukrainian government as Russia annexed Crimea. In Syria, where Russia propped up the Assad regime with indiscriminate bombing in Aleppo and elsewhere, Britain, France and the United States have blamed Putin's government for the mass slaughter of civilians.

An Amnesty International summary of Putin's rule leaves no doubt about his totalitarian state: "Journalist Killed  Human Rights Lawyer Killed  Gay Rights Protesters Attacked  Repressive Laws Enacted  Fines for 'Promoting Homosexuality' Imposed  President Putin Signs Law to Re-criminalize Defamation  USAID Expelled  Federal Treason and Espionage Act goes into effect  Moscow Authorities Detain Protesters and Opposition Party Members."

This, Mr. President-elect, is the man you are embracing. Please spare us the kissy-face.

Dana Milbank is a columnist for the Washington Post.
I havent paid a lot of attention to the Democrats whining about fake news, since it appears to be just another feeble excuse for losing. Still, I was interested to see that the Associated Press undertook to fact-check a fake news story yesterday. I assumed this must be a particularly important instance of the genre, for the AP to bother. The headline was, AP FACT CHECK: Ex-agent didnt write book outing Obama.

A widely shared story that claimed a former Secret Service agent outed President Barack Obama as a gay man and a radical Muslim is false.

I should hope so, although circulating rumors that political opponents are gay has been common practice in Washington for quite a while. It didnt start in 2016.

The fake story says an ex-agent named Paul Horner published the claims in a book titled The Black House. The article also features an interview that the former agent conducted with a supposed senior political analyst with NBC News named Tom Downey. NBC News confirms that no one named Tom Downey has ever worked for it as a political analyst. Secret Service spokesman Joe Casey says records dating back to 1990 reveal no agent named Paul Horner. And the book cannot be found listed for sale by any retailer.

So it wasnt a very well-disguised fraud. The story that the AP fact-checked is here. The site looks somewhat like an NBC News page, and its URL is a deceptive nbc.com.co. The first thing one notices is that the story appeared on October 2, nearly three months ago. Why is the Associated Press just now getting around to exposing a nearly three-month-old hoax?

Especially since anyone who read the story would recognize it as a fraud, or, as the sites creator says, a satire:

In an interview with NBC News, [former agent Paul] Horner told Senior Political Analyst Tom Downey that he is one-hundred-percent positive that President Obama is not only gay, but a radical Muslim as well. Everyone on the inside knows that Obama is gay and a Muslim, it is common knowledge, Horner said. I saw many men coming and going from Obamas room, at all hours. I would say a good portion of the men, over fifty-percent, were Muslim.

More:

Downey: Your book spends a whole chapter devoted to the various tortures that Obama and the First Lady would subject you to. Can you explain? Horner: Because I was white, Obama would force me to listen to Diana Ross at full volume, every day, at all hours of the night. It was horrible, I never got any sleep. This is one of the main reasons I finally had to quit. Downey: Can you give us any insight on Obamas feelings towards the American people? Horner: He constantly made jokes about Americans, frequently referring to them as mongoloids and idiots. Christians were his favorite verbal punching bags. He has absolutely no respect for the Christian religion. I believe he actually hates Christians, and finds their ideology to be old fashioned and ignorant. Downey: What are some of the things the public will find the most shocking? Horner: Probably the sheer amount of men he welcomed into his bed quarters. I am in no way homophobic, but Obamas insatiable lust for homosexual liaisons is like nothing Ive ever witnessed. Were talking 10-15 partners in a single day. Downey: Thats amazing, 10-15 in a single day? Wow. Horner: Also, at least once a day, Obama would have us log on to Facebook and report a page about a Dolphin named Fappy who travels around the country speaking to elementary school children about the dangers and consequences of masturbation. It was all very, very strange stuff. Downey: Is there anything else you can tell us? Horner: Yeah (Horner smiles), buy the book.

I suppose it is remotely possible that a gullible person could read this and not understand that it is a joke. But I sincerely doubt that it had a major impact on the election, especially since, long before the AP undertook its fact-check, author Paul Horner had become notorious as the biggest purveyor of fake news on the internet.

Horner was interviewed by Anderson Cooper of CNN earlier this month about his false news stories. He defended them as satire. Horner is an anti-Trump activist, as he told the Washington Post last month:

One wonders why the AP would bother to fact-check an article by a self-described hoaxerthe most notorious one on the internet, we are toldwho self-identifies as an anti-masturbation dolphin and says that President Obama has sex with 10-15 men per day. I dont think the AP was prompted to belatedly investigate this story by a concern that it would be taken seriously. Rather, I suspect that liberal news organs like the AP, having made fake news into a major theme, now feel obligated to follow through by producing an example or two.

If this is the best they can do, my sense that fake news is just a feeble Democratic Party excuse is confirmed.
Today, John Kerry delivered his much anticipated (by the media) oration on the Middle East. It was long and it was timeworn. Herb Keinon of the Jerusalem Post reports:

What a tired-looking, hoarse Kerry did for more than an hour was pretty much compile the greatest hits from numerous speeches he and US President Barack Obama have given over the last number of years on the Mideast. He talked about the detrimental effects of the settlements; how Israel needs to chose whether it wants two states or one state, meaning it can either be a Jewish state or a democratic one, but not both; and how the settlements are making a two state-solution impossible. All of this has been said multiple times before by the Administration, no surprises there. A good part of the speech, however, was devoted to defending the US abstention at the UN last week  a sign that the harsh criticism by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus, ambassador to the US Ron Dermer and other government ministers had unnerved him a bit.

That last sentence may be giving Kerry too much credit. He seems incapable of being unnerved  not by repeated humiliation by Russia, not by the carnage in Aleppo, and not by earning Israels lasting enmity. Its impossible to take this man seriously.

Keinon argues that, contrary to Kerrys central assertion, there are alternatives between a one-state and a two-state solution. John Bolton has made the same argument.

But if Kerry is right, the Palestinian reaction to Kerrys speech confirms that in the foreseeable future there can only by a one-state solution  the solution thats in place now and is serving Israel rather nicely, thank you.

Mustafa Barghouti of the PLO executive committee delivered the Palestinian reaction. He stated flatly that the Palestinian leadership cannot accept the parameters of Kerrys proposed two-state solution. Barghouti explained that Kerrys principles pertaining to refugees, recognition of the Jewish state, and Jerusalem are unacceptable.

First, said Barghouti, you cannot make the issue of Palestinian refugees only an issue of compensation; you cannot deny people their right to return to their home. This was in response to Kerrys statement that most refugees will not return to their historic homes, e.g., in Tel Aviv and Haifa, and instead should receive compensation.

Second, he added, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would deny the right of the Palestinian people who are citizens of Israel and that is totally unacceptable. In other words, the solution must be one state, not two states.

So thats that  and has been for decade upon decade.
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke at what seemed like Castroite length in defense of the infamous UN Security Council resolution that passed with the abstention of the United States this past Friday. The text of Kerrys speech is posted here. Elliott Abrams capably parses it here. Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to Kerrys speech in Hebrew (accessible in the video posted here) and in English. The brief excerpts of Netanyahus response appearing on television dont do it justice. Here is his English statement in its entirety:

Before I explain why this speech was so disappointing to millions of Israelis, I want to say that Israel is deeply grateful to the United States of America, to successive American administrations, to the American Congress, to the American people. Were grateful for the support Israel has received over many, many decades. Our alliance is based on shared values, shared interests, a sense of shared destiny and a partnership that has endured differences of opinions between our two governments over the best way to advance peace and stability in the Middle East. I have no doubt that our alliance will endure the profound disagreement we have had with the Obama Administration and will become even stronger in the future.

But now I must express my deep disappointment with the speech today of John Kerry  a speech that was almost as unbalanced as the anti-Israel resolution passed at the UN last week. In a speech ostensibly about peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Secretary Kerry paid lip service to the unremitting campaign of terrorism that has been waged by the Palestinians against the Jewish state for nearly a century.

What he did was to spend most of his speech blaming Israel for the lack of peace by passionately condemning a policy of enabling Jews to live in their historic homeland and in their eternal capital, Jerusalem.

Hundreds of suicide bombings, thousand, tens of thousands of rockets, millions of Israelis in bomb shelters are not throwaway lines in a speech; theyre the realities that the people of Israel had to endure because of mistaken policies, policies that at the time won the thunderous applause of the world. I dont seek applause; I seek the security, and peace, and prosperity and the future of the Jewish state.

The Jewish people have sought their place under the sun for 3,000 years, and were not about to be swayed by mistaken policies that have caused great, great damage.

Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders. Israels hand has been extended in peace to its neighbors from day one, from its very first day. Weve prayed for peace, weve worked for it every day since then. And thousands of Israeli families have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend our country and advance peace.

My family has been one of them; there are many, many others.

No one wants peace more than the people of Israel. Israel remains committed to resolving the outstanding differences between us and the Palestinians through direct negotiations. This is how we made peace with Egypt; this is how we made peace with Jordan; its the only way well make peace with the Palestinians. That has always been Israels policy; that has always been Americas policy.

Heres what President Obama himself said at the UN in 2011. He said: Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations. If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now.

Thats what President Obama said, and he was right. And until last week this was repeated over and over again as American policy. Secretary Kerry said that the United States cannot vote against its own policy. But thats exactly what it did at the UN, and thats why Israel opposed last weeks Security Council resolution, because it effectively calls the Western Wall occupied Palestinian Territory, because it encourages boycotts and sanctions against Israel  thats what it effectively does, and because it reflects a radical shift in US policy towards the Palestinians on final status issues  those issues that we always agreed, the US and Israel, have to be negotiated directly, face to face without preconditions.

That shift happened despite the Palestinians walking away from peace and from peace offers time and time again, despite their refusal to even negotiate peace for the past eight years, and despite the Palestinian Authority inculcating a culture of hatred towards Israel in an entire generation of young Palestinians.

Israel looks forward to working with President-elect Trump and with the American Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, to mitigate the damage that this resolution has done and ultimately, to repeal it.

Israel hopes that the outgoing Obama Administration will prevent any more damage being done to Israel at the UN in its waning days. I wish I could be comforted by the promise that the US says we will not bring any more resolutions to the UN. Thats what they said about the previous resolution.

We have it on absolutely incontestable evidence that the United States organized, advanced and brought this resolution to the United Nations Security Council. Well share that information with the incoming administration. Some of it is sensitive, its all true. You saw some of it in the protocol released in an Egyptian paper. Theres plenty more; its the tip of the iceberg.

So they say, but we didnt bring it. And they could take John Kerrys speech with the six points. It could be raised in the French international conference a few days from now and then brought to the UN. So France will bring it, or Sweden  not a noted friend of Israel  could bring it. And the United States could say, well, we cant vote against our own policy, weve just enunciated it.

I think the United States, if its true to its word, or at least if its now true to its word, should now come out and say we will not allow any resolutions, any more resolutions in the Security Council on Israel. Period. Not we will bring or not bring  we will not allow any (further resolutions), and stop this game, the charades.

I think that the decisions that are vital to Israels interests and the future of its children, they wont be made through speeches in Washington or votes in the United Nations or conferences in Paris. Theyll be made by the Government of Israel around the negotiating table, making them on behalf of the one and only Jewish state  a sovereign nation that is the master of its own fate.

And one final thought  I personally know the pain, the loss and the suffering of war. Thats why Im so committed to peace. Because for anyone whos experienced it, as I have, war and terror are horrible. I want young Palestinian children to be educated like our children, for peace. But theyre not educated for peace. The Palestinian Authority educates them to lionize terrorists and to murder Israelis.

My vision is that Israelis and Palestinians both have a future of mutual recognition, of dignity, mutual respect, co-existence. But the Palestinian Authority tells them that they will never accept, should never accept the existence of a Jewish state.

So, I ask you, how can you make peace with someone who rejects your very existence?

See, this conflict is not about houses, or communities in the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, the Gaza district or anywhere else. This conflict is and has always been about Israels very right to exist. Thats why my hundreds of calls to sit with President Abbas for peace talks have gone unanswered. Thats why my invitation to him to come to the Knesset was never answered. Thats why the Palestinian government continues to pay anyone who murders Israelis a monthly salary.

The persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state remains the core of the conflict and its removal is the key to peace.

Palestinian rejection of Israel and support for terror are what the nations of the world should focus on if they truly want to advance peace, and I can only express my regret and say that its a shame that Secretary Kerry does not see this simple truth.

Via Times of Israel.
Donald Trump is an inveterate trash talker, and Im old-fashioned enough to consider this a bad thing in a president-elect. But even assuming that Trump keeps talking trash as president (a fair assumption, I think), he will not bear primary responsibility for this latest manifestation of civic decline.

Primary responsibility for normalizing trash talk from the White House falls instead on President Obama.

Obamas latest display consists of his claim that he could have defeated Donald Trump and won a third term. Maybe yes  Obama is more popular than Hillary Clinton and a better campaigner  maybe no  Americans probably arent inclined, absent exigent circumstances, to grant a third term to their president.

Regardless of the merits, it was unseemly of Obama to boast he would have won a third term. And Obamas claim wasnt just a shot at Trump. It was, as Sam Stein of the Huffington Post says, an attack on Hillary.

Indeed, the shot at Clinton was really the point of Obamas boast. He knows that he has left the Democratic Party in terrible shape and that some are holding him accountable for what Stein calls, with some exaggeration, the partys destruction. Obama is desperate to shift the blame.

But blaming Hillary wont cut it. Losing a presidential race in which the standard bearer carries the popular vote by more than 2 percentage points does not signal the possible ruin of a political party.

This is especially true when the party has held the White House for eight years. History shows that its difficult for a party to win three straight presidential elections. The Democrats failure to accomplish this in 2016 is comparable to their failures, in a very close elections, to do it in 2000 and 1968, and to the GOPs failure in 1960, another extremely tight contest.

No one suggested that the Dems were a train wreck in 2000 or that the Republicans were in 1960. If this suggestion was mooted in 1968, it was because the Vietnam War had so bitterly divided the party, not because Richard Nixon edged past Hubert Humphrey.

The reason for hand-wringing about the future of the Democrats now is not Hillary Clintons narrow defeat. Rather, it is the loss during Obamas presidency of 12 Senate seats (from 60 to 48) and 63 House seats; of 12 governors; and of around 1,000 seats in state legislatures. Republicans now control 68 of 99 state legislative bodies and 33 state houses.

The GOP didnt fare nearly this badly during the presidency of George W. Bush.

Obama cant blame Hillary Clinton for the devastating losses Democrats have sustained in non-presidential elections since he won the White House. The blame rests largely with our trash talking president and his efforts, which eventually became relentless, to ram leftist policies down the throat of a centrist nation.

With a record like this, it takes a lot of nerve to indulge in political trash talking. Nerve is the one thing Obama has never lacked.

Its reasonable to expect the Democrats to bounce back. How quickly depends partly on Donald Trumps performance as president and partly on forces more or less beyond anyones control.

But until the Dems rally, Obama must take most of the blame for their exile from power at all levels. Thereafter, he must take it for the time spent in the wilderness.
Having written a book more than 10 years ago making the case that Jimmy Carter was Americas worst ex-president, Ive been pondering the near metaphysical certainty that Barack Obama will easily eclipse Carters turpitude, and preparing the first take on the idea. But Karl Rove beat me to the punch in the Wall Street Journal this morning, with A Preview of Obamas Post-Presidency. (Try this link to work around the paywall if youre not a subscriber.)

Roves rave:

In two interviews over the holidays, President Obama signaled how hes likely to conduct himself once out of office: whiny, self-justifying and bursting with excuses. . . Mr. Obama will be the first ex-president since Woodrow Wilson to remain in Washington. Given the tone of his interviews, he could well become a carping, persistent presence in our nations capital.

But just how will we calibrate and score Obamas awfulness relative to Jimmy Carter? After all, Carter has a huge head start.

I propose the following scoresheet/drinking game for Obamas post-presidency. You can either take one shot for every five points, or just keep a running total if youd prefer to save your liver instead. If we peg Carter as the baseline of 100 score for the Power Line Post-Presidential Awfulness (hereafter the PPPA Scale), grant the following points to Obama as follows:

Calls for formal recognition of a Palestinian state: 20 points. (Even Carter has stopped short of this.)

Signs a book deal for more than $10 million: 5 points.

Snarls Washington traffic more than once a month with his about-town outings for which he demands a motorcade: 5 points.

Whines about Fox News: 5 points.

Publicly attacks Trump within 30 days: 10 points.

Expresses regret that he was unsuccessful in stopping the Syrian civil war: 10 points.

Creates for himself the persona as a citizen of the world, because he is too good for the United States: 5 points.

Accepts donations from Iran for the Obama Foundation: 10 points.

Travels to North Korea: 10 points.

Comes back from North Korea: 5 points.

Travels to Iran: 15 points.

There is a time value to this scale. After all, it took Jimmy Carter more than a decade to perfect his perfidy. These scores should have double weight for each one accomplished in Obamas first year out of office. Hence, I predict that Obama will exceed the Jimmy Carter 100 baseline on the PPPA Scale by September.

(Additional scoring items welcome in the comments section.)

PAUL adds: I would subtract 10 points if Obama expresses regret for being unsuccessful in stopping the Syrian civil war. However, I would add 20 points if he expresses regret but says his only option other than inaction was to have the U.S. fight a major land war.

This alone might get the former president to 100 points within two or three years.

STEVE rejoins: I thought about making the sign for those points negative for exactly this reason, but in the end decided to keep it as is because it will be an expression of Obamas moral vanity. And it also reminds me of how Bill Clinton said he regretted not doing anything about Rwandas genocidal civil war in the 1990s. In both cases, such admissions are mostly virtue signaling.

I do disagree that the only serious option in Syria was a major land war. Obama should have enforced his red line by bombing the hell out of Assads personal palaces at the very least. And we could have sent swarms of drones into the area to make life miserable for Syrian forces, along with bombing their airfields.

PAUL agrees: Absolutely. Obamas major land war vs. doing nothing dichotomy is a classic false choice, to use a phrase that itself could have been the basis for an Obama drinking game a few years ago.
Raqqa is headquarters for ISIS shrinking caliphate. It is where the ISIS terrorists say they planned major attacks on Paris and Brussels, and where new attacks against the West undoubtedly are being hatched.

The fall of Raqqa wouldnt mean the end of the threat ISIS poses. Due to the Obama administrations obliviousness and indifference, ISIS had time to spread its tentacles and its influence. Nonetheless, expulsion from its seat power would be a big blow to ISIS.

Will ISIS be expelled next year? This insightful report by Liz Sly of the Washington Post suggests that it probably will not be. Kurdish forces are within 17 miles of Raqqa. However, there apparently are no plans for an offensive against that city, and politics may stand in the way of formulating and carrying out an effective plan.

The main political problem is that the YPG, the Syrian Kurdish militia that has spearheaded the fight against ISIS in Eastern Syria, is anathema to Turkey, the other main anti-ISIS player in the region. It may also lack sufficient support among the local Arab population.

The resurgent Assad regime also looms. It opposes Kurdish expansion, and having conquered Aleppo, might well move on Raqqa with Russian backing. This prospect perhaps increases the possibility that Raqqa will fall in 2017, but raises major questions about what would happen next. Four powers  ISIS, the YPG, the Assad regime, and the Free Syrian Army  might find themselves entangled.

One of Donald Trumps first foreign policy challenges will be to navigate the U.S. through the Raqqa conundrum. He has indicated (1) that hes committed to seeing ISIS defeated in Raqqa and (2) that he envisages accomplishing this with Russian help.

Unless he performs a near miracle of diplomacy, however, taking Raqqa with Russian help will entail turning against both the Free Syrian Army and the Kurdish forces were presently backing  forces that have already succeeded in taking substantial chunks of territory from ISIS. It will also entail handing Raqqa back to Assad and his Iranian backers.

This would be an evil in itself. It might also pave the way for the rise of instability and/or rebellion, which could easily play into the hands of ISIS or a like-minded successor.

Such are the problems bequeathed to Donald Trump by his feckless predecessor. Happy New Year, Mr. President-elect.
Ouch. Broke up in mid flight? Keenly interested to see what the cause is.RIP, gents, another "routine training mission" ends up with loss of brothers in arms.EDIT: I looked through the photo gallery. That isn't just the blade that is detached from the helicopter. Still attached to it are what look to be parts of the hub and the blade grip/retention. (Terminology may be off due to me not being familiar enough with that aircraft's nomenclature for those parts). From the pictures of the blade and attached elements, I am wondering if the blade strap had a failure, or if something else failed and this blade, plus hardware, went one way and other parts went elsewhere with the main body of the aircraft ending up in the water. Cant find my old TM, nomenclature still probably wrong.EDIT 2: From this picture , I am not sure if that is showing a part of the mast attached or not. It does appear that one blade with attaching pieces is lying next to the fence, and the attaching bits without a blade are attached to all that.
2017: Europe's year of rage

31 December 2016The SpectatorAfter the tumult of 2016, Europe could do with a year of calm. It wont get one. Elections are to be held in four of the six founder members of the European project, and populist Eurosceptic forces are on the march in each one. There will be at least one regime change: Francois Hollande has accepted that he is too unpopular to run again as French president, and it will be a surprise if he is the only European leader to go. Others might cling on but find their grip on power weakened by populist success.The spectre of the financial crash still haunts European politics. Money was printed and banks were saved, but the recovery was marked by a great stagnation in living standards, which has led to alienation, dismay and anger. Donald Trump would not have been able to win the Republican nomination, let alone the presidency, without that rage  and the conditions that created Trumps victory are, if anything, even stronger in Europe.European voters who looked to the state for protection after the crash soon discovered the helplessness of governments which had ceded control over vast swathes of economic policy to the EU. The second great shock, the wave of global immigration, is also a thornier subject in the EU because nearly all of its members (with the exception of Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Republic of Ireland, Romania and the United Kingdom) surrendered control over their borders when they signed the Schengen Agreement. Those unhappy at this situation often have only new, populist parties to turn to. So most European elections come down to a battle between insurgents and defenders of the existing order.Nowhere is this more the case than the Netherlands. The Dutch will vote on 15 March and the election will essentially be Geert Wilderss Freedom Party versus the rest. Wilders, who was convicted of inciting discrimination earlier this month, is expected to top the ballot. His party, which defined itself by antipathy to Islamification and a desire to quit the EU, regularly leads in the polls, often by double-digit margins. Normally, the party that comes top on election day in Holland provides the prime minister. But if Wilders triumphs, few other parties would support him and he wont come to power. For a populist, to come top and then be kept out of office by an establishment stitch-up is almost the perfect result.Even without winning the premiership, Wilders is already influencing Dutch politics. The House of Representatives recently voted for a partial ban on the burqa; Wilders made his name calling for a ban on the Quran. Wilderss power also means that no Dutch government is going to be prepared to sign off on the fiscal transfers that would be needed to make the eurozone function properly as a currency union.It is not the Dutch election that causes the most European concern, however, but the French one. There we have a similar story: Marine Le Pen versus the rest. She will probably make the final round in April and face Francois Fillon, the 62-year-old former Prime Minister. It wont be the first time that the Front National has made the run-off, but back in 2002 Jean-Marie Le Pen won only 18 per cent of the vote. His daughter will run her opponent far closer.Le Pen will distance herself from her old party and her father as much as possible; her campaign branding is all about Marine  leaving out her surname and her party identification. Someone who talks to her regularly says that she will seek, like Trump, to run almost as an independent. Her strategy will be to portray Fillon as a Thatcherite hatchet man out to dismember the French social model. This could be a fertile line of attack as she seeks to garner more support from female voters and public-sector employees. She already commands strong support among working-class voters. Like Trump, she will pander to protectionist instincts as well as campaigning on Islamification and immigration.Fillons economically right-wing views and Catholic social conservatism will make it hard, perhaps impossible, for the left to vote for him. But theis surely still strong enough to keep the Front National out. And it is worth remembering that Le Pen has long believed that it is the election after next, in 2022, that offers her best chance of victory.The election most likely to damage the European project is the Italian one  if it happens. Matteo Renzis resounding defeat in the recent constitutional reform referendum shows how angry Italians are. By some measures, southern Italy is now poorer than Poland, while manufacturing in northern Italy is struggling to compete because the euro has inflated its costs. Across the country as a whole, economic growth has been flat for 15 years. The IMF predicts that it will take Italy until the mid-2020s to return to its pre-crisis peak  after two lost decades. In these circumstances, one can see why voters there might regard a leap into the unknown as preferable to the status quo.What makes Italy different from other countries is that there is not just one political party there that opposes the euro. Both main opposition parties are anti-euro, with a third increasingly so. Depending on the electoral system that ends up being used, the leading opposition party, Beppe Grillos Five Star Movement, has either more potential anti-EU support in a run-off round, or potential allies in parliament to help it form a government. Grillo says he wont do deals with other parties to get into power, which limits Five Stars prospects. But to have an anti-single-currency government come to power in Italy would be an even bigger shock to the EU than Brexit.Germanys elections promise to be far less dramatic. Angela Merkel is well-placed to secure another term as Chancellor, even if Alternative fur Deutschland, the most vocal opponents of her handling of the refugee crisis, will probably win seats in the Bundestag for the first time. But AfD hasnt quite worked out who will challenge Merkel. Most money is on Frauke Petry, a chemist and a mother of four who serves as co-chair of the party. Dubbed Adolfina by her foes, her approach is milder than many of her colleagues. Marcus Pretzell, one of AfDs seven MEPs, referred to those killed in the Islamist attack on the Christmas Market in Berlin as Merkels dead. Even the head of Merkels sister party, the CSU leader and Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer, has called for a rethink on her immigration policy because we owe it to the victims.Merkel is still by far the most powerful politician in Europe  and her 57 per cent approval rating makes her an overwhelming favourite to win re-election. But those hoping she will secure a Brexit compromise will be as disappointed as David Cameron was by her failure to help him more during the renegotiation. The more she sees populism on the rise, the more shell feel the need to defend the EU project.The established order could scrape through this year in Europe. Dutch voters could shy away from Wilders when faced with the reality of voting for him; in France the ceiling on Le Pens support could turn out to be nearer 35 per cent than 50. The Italians, past masters at muddling on, might avoid fresh elections. But the populists will almost certainly end the year in a stronger position: that much closer to winning someday. Le Pen, for example, will almost certainly find her party with a sizeable presence in the National Assembly after the parliamentary elections.The British, it is said, always underestimate the sheer political determination to keep the European project moving forward. But doing so now demands contradictory measures. If the insurgents in the south are to be kept at bay, then the eurozone must become a full transfer union, with proper burden-sharing on refugees. And that would create perfect conditions for insurgents in the north. Until  or unless  European leaders can resolve this conundrum, they will continue to dread elections.
The heads of two key federal agencies who are also close allies of President Muhammadu Buhari have been sparring over allegations and counter allegations of unprofessionalism and illegality.

The disagreement by the two officials appear to confirm insinuations of division among some leading lights of the Buhari administration.

The turf war stems from a letter written by the Director-General of the State Security Service (SSS), Lawal Daura, to Mr. Buhari on September 8.

In the letter, the security chief accused the Nigerian Customs Service, (NCS), of introducing a $25,000 as new Temporary Import Permit (TIP), levy on each vessel that berths to discharge petroleum products in Nigeria.

PREMIUM TIMES sighted correspondences revealing wrangling between Mr. Daura, a kinsman of the President, and the Director-General of NCS, Hameed Ali, a retired colonel and ally of Mr. Buhari.

The said levy, as Mr. Daura reported to the President, was illegal as it was not provided for on the PPRA template, not receipted, and could increase the cost of petrol by 56 kobo per litre.

In international trade circle, TIP is a customs procedure under which certain goods can be brought into a country without payment of duties or taxes and without import prohibition and restriction.

Ports insiders further explained that it is a condition that the goods will be issued for certain period of time and exported back at the expiration of TIP.

But before it is issued, those knowledgeable about NCS operations regarding the issuance said an applicant must post a bond to cover the import duty and other charges inclusive of the 25 per cent penalty in case of violation of the terms.

In Mr. Dauras memo, he further reported that the alleged introduction of $25,000 TIP levy followed the detention of a vessel, MT Histria Ivory, at Apapa by NCS operatives.

He reported to the President that Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) made the complaint that formed the basis of his memo.

A week after receiving the memo, Mr. Buhari forwarded it to Mr. Ali, demanding his summary report of your considered view.

In his response, Mr. Ali told the President that the SSS under Mr. Daura appeared to be more interested in smear campaign and personal vendetta than in thorough investigation and anti-corruption efforts of the administration.

He explained that the said vessel, MT Histria Ivory, was truly detained but that was after it was sighted discharging cargo at Apapa Jetty.

He said the detention was to ascertain whether it had TIP or liable for payment of duty.

While the investigation was ongoing, before Mr. Dauras memo to the President, MOMAN alleged imposition of $25,000 TIP levy per vessel by the NCS via a letter copied to the Minister for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu; Minister for Finance, Kemi Adeosun; the SSS and the Customs chief.

MOMAN, PREMIUM TIMES learnt, wrote the complaint letter one week before Mr. Daura sent the memo to the president.

Mr. Ali told the President: It was this letter copied to the DSS that the Department relied on without any investigation and reported to Mr. President that NCS is collecting $25 thousand TIP levy without issuing receipt any receipt.

The DSS copied all the allegations of MOMAN almost verbatim without any input from them. The Department should have investigated the matter with a view to bringing the perpetrators of the alleged dastardly act to justice.

This would have been in line with the Federal Governments efforts of stamping out corruption in the country. It seems however that the DSS is more interested in smear campaign than doing what is right.

Mr. Ali insisted that the issuance of TIP does not involve payment of money and that the NCS had stopped conducting cash transactions since 2001.

He further reported to the President that MOMAN which made the original complaint was invited by the NCS to bring evidence its members were being charged TIP levy.

In the MOMAN statement understood to have been attached to Mr. Alis reply to the President, the body reportedly said the payment which increased from $5,000 to $25,000 was made through shipping agents.

Mr. Ali said the NCS further pressed MOMAN to help identify culpable Customs officials involved in such shady deals.

However, up to the time of writing the letter no response was received from MOMAN despite numerous follow-up telephone calls, the retired colonel said.

He added that the agent of the detained ship, Integrated Shipping Service Limited, was also interviewed, and that stated no Customs officer demanded for an unreceipted payment of $25 thousand from us or our client

The agents statement was attached to the NCS reply to the President, PREMIUM TIMES understands.

Proper investigation should always be carried out on complaints such as this which casts serious doubt on the integrity of services and organisations with a view to ascertaining the truth or otherwise of such allegations before reporting such to the Mr. President.

The DGSS should therefore be advised to approach issues professionally and not allow sentiments or personal vendetta to drive his actions, Mr. Ali told the President and copied Mr. Daura, saying above for your information please.

The disagreement between the officials came to light weeks after Mr. Daura was caught in another controversy after he levelled allegations against the acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, to frustrate the confirmation of his appointment by the Senate.

A fact-check by this newspaper showed that the allegations made by the SSS were substantially false.
Representatives of the Pan African Lawyers Union and the African Bar Association are engaged in a war of words over the resolution of the general election in The Gambia.

While the AfBA says it had arranged a meeting with relevant parties in The Gambia to resolve the election impasse, PALU described the association as a fraudulent organisation that does not represent anyone other than its few individual promoters.

Yahya Jammeh, The Gambias president who came to power in a bloodless coup in 1994, suffered a surprise defeat in the hands of Adama Barrow in the December 1 presidential election.

After initially accepting defeat, Mr. Jammeh, who had ruled the country with an iron fist, reversed his position and called for fresh elections, angering regional blocs like the Economic Community of West African State and the African Union.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the ECOWAS Chair, said Mr. Jammehs new position that the election was flawed is totally unacceptable.

Our common commitment to the precepts in the Charters and Treaties of these regional, continental and global institutions are binding and prescribe consequences for non-compliance, Mrs. Sirleaf, the president of Liberia, said in a statement on December 11.

Lawyers at war

While PALU describes itself as an umbrella association of African lawyers and Law Societies bringing together the continents five regional and 54 national Lawyers Associations, as well as individual members; AfBA says it was created by a group of progressively-minded lawyers as a federation of national legal associations, corporate and unincorporated legal entities and individual lawyers.

Trouble began last week after representatives of the AfBA arrived in Banjul, The Gambias capital, to hold meetings with Mr. Jammeh; president-elect, Mr. Barrow; members of the countrys electoral body and other relevant parties.

In a letter to the Gambian Bar Association, PALU dissociated itself from the AfBA.

I have been instructed by the President and the Executive Committee (Board) to write you to continue to express our solidarity with you at this sensitive time in your country, and also to dissociate ourselves from and condemn the statements and actions apparently undertaken by the African Bar Association (AfBA), Donald Deya, PALUs Chief Executive Officer, said.

We highlight that we, as PALU, have nothing to do with AfBA. We consider AfBA to be a fraudulent organisation that does not represent anyone other than its few individual promoters. It has no known membership on the African continent. It does not speak for African lawyers of lawyers associations (Bar Associations and Law Societies). It has no known constituency.

If it considered the Gambian Bar Association (GBA) to be its member association, there is no way it would have parachuted directly into the State House of The Gambia, to meet the outgoing president of The Gambia without consulting its member.

In a statement on Tuesday, Nigerias human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, described the AfBA as an illegal outfit.

From 2000-2002, the late Peter Ala Adjeteh (ex-president of Ghana Bar Association) was the President of the defunct African Bar Association (ABA) while I was its Secretary General, Mr. Falana, a senior advocate of Nigeria, said.

Since ABA was largely a society of lawyers in the anglophone countries the national bar associations and law societies in Africa resolved to form the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU). Consequently, the PALU was formed and inaugurated in Addis Ababa in 2002.

Having midwived the birth of PALU, the ABA decided to dissolve into it.

Mr. Falana said PALU has since remained the only continental membership forum for African lawyers and lawyers associations.

Since the African Bar Association has dissolved into PALU, the few Nigerian lawyers who are currently parading themselves as its officials should not be allowed to cause unnecessary division within the rank of African lawyers.

However, Adewale Adebayo, a member of the AfBA, said the association has been a legitimate one since its formation in 1971.

He said PALU was formed when AfBA was undergoing some issues.

Relaunched in 2004, AfBA is a platform and a gathering for African lawyers, Mr. Adebayo told PREMIUM TIMES on Wednesday.

It is the biggest platform for African lawyers, same way we have ABA, the American Bar Association, the International Bar Association, but in Africa here, AfBA is an association of African lawyers.

Mr. Adebayo said the disagreement is because of the happenings in The Gambia, and that the statement of Hannibal Uwaifo, AfBAs president, after his meeting with Mr. Jammeh was largely misconstrued.

He added that the AfBA has set up a meeting with Messrs Jammeh and Barrow, representatives of the electoral body for January 4, 2017.

Most of the statements coming out of Gambia are propaganda from the opposition, Mr. Adebayo said.

Our president (Mr. Uwaifo) said that AfBA cannot take a position on what the facts should be until we verify the actual issue, what transpired in Gambia. AfBA is after is a free and fair electoral process in Gambia and a peaceful handover.
When Jeff Schneider was selected as Cornerstone Bible Churchs new pastor more than a year ago, he was reluctant to relocate his family from Hastings to Fremont.

Over the course of seven years, we had formed a lot of friendships. It was a tough decision, and we prayed about it as a family, he said.

Schneider urged his wife, Suzanne, and their children to seek Gods guidance. He didnt want their decision to be based on what they wanted but what God wanted for them.

This is really not something you want to do unless its a calling, Schneider said.

Although the move required significant adjustment for all of them, it was particularly challenging for the three teenagers. As a father, Schneider wanted to shield his kids from as much difficulty as he possibly could. But as a servant, he had to go where God was sending him.

Being a high school teacher and the owner of a construction company had given Schneider plenty of leadership experience. Yet church leadership was a different matter entirely.

I ran from the idea of being in ministry, he said.

It wasnt until he and his family attended Hilltop Community Church in Carson City, Nev., that Schneider considered the possibility of leading a flock.

Joel Burger, Hilltops teaching pastor, saw Schneiders potential and encouraged him to take on more responsibility in the church.

Because of his experience as a high school teacher, it was natural for Schneider to start out in youth ministry.

While pastoring the Berean church in Hastings, Schneider was approached by Frank Van Campen about coming to Fremont.

As a member of the Berean Fellowship of Churches, Van Campen had been serving as the interim pastor at the Cornerstone Bible Church (formerly the Fremont Berean Church) for more than a year while helping its search committee find a permanent pastor.

Frank is good with people, Schneider said, recalling how supportive Van Campen was when it came time for the Schneider family to make Fremont their new home and Cornerstone their new church.

The decision to relocate is a difficult one, but a few years ago Cornerstone was faced with an equally tough decision:

Close its doors or give it one more try.

With the help of the Berean Fellowship of Churches, Cornerstone assembled a search team, got the word out that they were in need of a new pastor, and then said they waited for God to provide.

One of the things I noticed right away, said Kathy Brumbaugh, who headed up the search team, is that Jeff and Suzanne are a team. That was very important to me.

Another factor that helped Brumbaugh decide in favor of the Schneiders was their love for God.

Ive been blessed so much by this family, she said.

Coleen Wilson, wife of Cornerstones former pastor Wes Wilson, is glad to see the church focusing on community outreach.

Instead of making sure everybodys following the rules, Jeff encourages us to walk in Gods grace and show that grace to others, she said.

In addition to finding a new pastor, Cornerstone was also needed a worship leader. That call was answered by Logan Krug, a senior at Midland University.

Krug had been performing worship music wherever he was invited, but he had been yearning for a church home where he could serve on a regular basis.

I was thrilled when I got the call to come to Cornerstone, Krug said. I love being a part of this church family.

Along with Krug and Brumbaugh, Lisa Stork also serves on Cornerstones worship team.

I love to sing. This is where I belong. Its home, she said.

Although the move from Hastings to Fremont has involved a certain amount of culture shock for Pastor Jeff Schneider and his family, they have seen many lives changed for the better.

Schneider appreciates his family.

Aidan is an architectural student at UNL; Toby is training for missionary work in Singapore, Cambodia, and Indonesia; and McKenna attends Cedar Bluffs High School.

We are really impressed with each of our kids, Schneider said. They are much better kids than we were parents!

He noted something else:

Living by faith, Schneider said, is one of the things I try to help people do.

Since Cornerstones near-death experience a few years ago, its members are seeing more and more evidence that, as their pastor put it, Gods still doing something here.
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New Delhi,Chairman of Guangdong Merchants Construction Group and Vice Chairman of Pacific Construction Group, China Mr.Deng Shuguang met with Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Shri PP Chaudhary in the Electronics Niketan, New Delhi. He was accompanied by a group of officials from the organisation.During the meeting, Mr Deng expressed that Pacific Construction Group is interested in making investments in Pali region. The Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) project being set up in Jodhpur-Pali was also extensively discussed during the meeting with the officials from the Chinese Construction giant expressing keen interest in the same.Pacific Construction Group, China is one of the largest construction groups in the world valued at 80 billion US Dollars and ranked at 99th position among the prestigious Fortune 500 companies' list.Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Shri PP Chaudhary informed to delegation that Rajasthan's Jodhpur-Pali area Proposed to be developed as an Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR). The proposed ITIR will have three major activities. These are research and development; software and hardware product development; and manufacturing in the electronics, IT and ITeS sectors.
AICTE Smart India Hackathon workshop today

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Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, envisages the 'Digital India' initiative to bridge the digital divide in our country and further promote digital literacy in order to make development a comprehensive mass movement and put governance within everyones reach. He also believes that, to ensure development youth should be involved in large numbers as they are capable of offering new, innovative solutions for some of the daunting problems faced by our nation e.g. water management, sanitation, affordable healthcare, sustainable environment, etc.



In order to work towards the vision of Prime Minister, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), under the aegis of Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India in association with Inter Institutional Inclusive Innovation Center (i4c), and Persistent Systems is organizing 'Smart India Hackathon 2017', a unique initiative to identify new and disruptive digital solutions for solving the challenges faced by our country.



A Hackathon is a 36 hrs non-stop digital programming competition during which student teams compete simultaneously at 25 different centers across India to offer innovative digital solutions for any given problem. Smart India Hackathon 2017 will be the biggest Hackathon initiative in the world, as it will reach out to 30+ lakhs technology students across all technology institutions in India recognised by AICTE. Through this initiative, student community to will think out-of-the-box and offer innovative, disruptive yet sustainable ideas to build smart applications which will help in national development.



The Council is organizing an awareness workshop on Smart India Hackathon at Udaipur on 29th Dec, 2016 : 2:00 pm at Auditorium, Electronics Department, College of Technology and Engineering (CATE), Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture & Technology, Udaipur, Rajasthan - 313001.

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ATLANTIC CITY  The first phase of a cleanup of a former manufactured gas plant near the foot of the Atlantic City Expressway is about half done and should be finished in March, property owner South Jersey Gas said this week.

Three structures have been removed, said Ken Sheppard, project manager for environmental affairs at South Jersey Gas, and underground utility work along North Georgia Avenue, Turnpike Road and Island Avenue is complete.

Sheppard said the company is now preparing a section of Turnpike Road for a 9-foot-deep soil excavation, which should start next month.

Coal tars and chemicals from their breakdown have contaminated a square block between North Georgia Avenue and Turnpike Road, bordered on one side by the bay and the other by Island Avenue.

The plant operated from 1900 to 1918 and was later acquired by South Jersey Gas from its operator, Atlantic City Gas and Water Co. A gas similar to natural gas was created by heating coal and oil in the days before natural gas could be mined and delivered by pipeline.

The gas-manufacturing process produced byproducts and residues that may include tars, sludges and light oils, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The wastes contain known and suspected cancer-causing agents.

South Jersey Gas community liaison Kelly Henry has said tests have shown the underground pollution plume ends under Turnpike Road and does not continue under nearby homes.

She also has said the pollution is underground and there are no pathways of exposure for the people in the area.

Sheppard said the company is keeping up with its anticipated schedule, which predicted finishing in early March.

Many neighbors have said they hoped the large property will be redeveloped to help the neighborhood.

The second phase of the project will tackle heavier contamination in the heart of the property, said Barry Raus of GEI Consultants, a technical consultant to South Jersey Gas, at a September meeting to explain the project to neighbors.

There, pollutants were found to a depth of about 28 feet, he said, where they were stopped by a clay layer.

South Jersey Gas has completed remediation work at manufactured-gas sites over the past five years in Vineland, Bridgeton, and Glassboro and Swedesboro in Gloucester County, the company has said. It is also remediating a site in Hammonton.

Anyone with questions should call the SJ Gas Project Information Line at 609-674-8414 or visit the project website at atlantic citymgp.com, Henry said.
Atlantic City was about to turn the page on a roller-coaster year with a nationally televised act on New Years Eve.

But officials dropped the New Years ball: Promoters hired by the state couldnt find the right performer at the right price. Atlantic City lost a chance to be in the spotlight.

It was a fitting end to a weird year in Atlantic City, where the resort would attract thousands to the beach by day, then nearly default on a state loan by night. The city, desperately trying to reinvent itself after four casinos closed in 2014, faced more ups and downs in 2016.

Here's how much Jeffrey Chiesa is being paid per hour to fix Atlantic City ATLANTIC CITY  Jeffrey Chiesa will make $400 an hour as he heads a state takeover of the ci

The state took over the city. Construction started on a new campus for Stockton University. A fifth casino closed. A former owner of that casino was elected president of the United States.

Atlantic City is known for being strange, said Matthew Hale, a political science professor at Seton Hall University. But this was a strange year even by Atlantic City standards.

The drama began in January when Senate President Steve Sweeney introduced the so-called takeover bill. The measure would give the state vast power over the citys dire finances.

City officials vowed to fight and sparked a months-long battle. A political Gordian knot was tied in Trenton that put the city at the edge of insolvency. There were betrayals, back-room deals and too many dueling news conferences.

There arent that many cities in New Jersey that have been taken over in all or in part, said Sharon Schulman, executive director of the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University. Its not something that anyone wants to do, so the different factions have a tug of war until they come up with what works the best.

Lawmakers ultimately agreed in May to give the city 150 days to draft a recovery plan. The city produced a plan in October, but the state rejected it and took over the citys finances in November.

While words like takeover, shutdown and bankruptcy loomed, it wasnt all doom and gloom.

Jimmy Buffett and the Zac Brown Band drew thousands for beach concerts. The Atlantic City Airshow brought an estimated 450,000 tourists to the Boardwalk.

And crucial development projects got started. The Atlantic City Development Corp. broke ground on the Gateway Project, which will include a Stockton University campus and South Jersey Gas headquarters in the citys Chelsea neighborhood.

Bart Blatstein quietly re-opened Showboat Atlantic City, one of four casinos to close in 2014, as a hotel in July. Boraie Development began work in December on a 250-unit housing complex in the Southeast Inlet.

But that side of the Boardwalk still suffered in 2016. Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort closed its doors in October amid a labor strike by Unite Here Local 54. The closing put 2,800 people out of work.

And TEN, the casino formerly known as Revel, remains closed. Owner Glenn Straub insisted the place would re-open June 15  his self-imposed deadline  even as he wore a hard hat and didnt have crucial permits the day before. Officials are now planning an opening early next year.

The Taj strike and ensuing closing also brought national attention to the city because of the casinos old owner, President-elect Donald Trump. Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton came to town to campaign against Trump. Clinton held a rally outside the empty Trump Plaza.

How much is Atlantic City's casino industry worth now? ATLANTIC CITY  Despite losing half its value over the past decade, the gaming industry repr

Despite the nonstop news, maybe it wasnt a weird year after all, says Schulman.

Major cities, and Atlantic City is a major city, go though these different ups and downs and renaissances. And they dont come easy, she said. So I dont think this was much more difficult than any city that goes through a hard time. Its just that were here and it feels hard to us.

And 2017 could be just as crazy.

Its not over yet, Hale said, referring to the takeover and the citys finances. Theres a whole lot of work that still needs to get done.
MIDDLE TOWNSHIP  The Cape May County Zoo is rated among the best in the world, but money for future projects is up in the air amid a court battle involving the attractions official fundraising group.

A lawsuit filed by county employees claims the Cape May County Zoological Society, which solicits donations for the county-owned zoo, is run improperly and could have financial management issues.

But the societys executive director, Bill MacQueen, says the lawsuit is an attempt by county government to wrestle control of the nonprofit.

As soon as were successful, the county administration sees an opportunity to take the assets, or the money or whatever, said MacQueen, who is named as a defendant in the case.

County Counsel Jim Arsenault, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of county Parks Director Ed Runyon and Zoo Director Hubert Paluch, said the county has no interest in taking over the society, which is an independent nonprofit corporation.

The complaint was originally filed in March. The latest development is that the court recently received a financial report on the society written by a court-appointed fiscal agent. The complaint claims MacQueen made decisions  especially regarding the pricey new snow leopard exhibit  without convening the societys governing board of trustees, which includes Runyon and Paluch.

There needs to be a board of directors running the zoo society, Arsenault said. It cant just be one person running the society.

The lawsuit also alleges that MacQueen illegally appointed new members to the board.

All of these concerns, coupled with the societys continued flagrant disregard for its own bylaws, led the county to conclude that the society as presently managed cannot be a partner with the county for the purposes of the license agreement, the complaint reads.

In addition to its fundraising efforts, the 20-year-old society operates the zoos rock-climbing wall, train ride and carousel, and all three could be shut down for the summer season if no resolution is reached, according to the lawsuit.

Arsenaults complaint asked a Superior Court judge to place the society into the hands of a receiver, but instead the judge appointed attorney Alan Gould as a fiscal agent, a position with less authority than a receiver.

Gould has been looking into the nonprofits finances for months and recently filed a report with the judge, Arsenault said.

Gould could not be reached for comment.

Lou McFadden, the attorney representing MacQueen and the society, said he feels the county is headhunting for MacQueen.

Its all kind of preposterous because the county, as you can imagine, has veto power over everything the society does, McFadden said.

MacQueen said contributions to the society will plummet if the county, or its employees, make up a majority of the board.

Most people dont want to donate to local government, he said.

The free public zoo was ranked 13th best in the world by TripAdvisor in 2015, ahead of much bigger zoos in places such as Beijing, Moscow and London.

The park and zoo is one of the best attractions the county offers, Arsenault said. Everyones interest is to make sure the county remains the gem that it is.

If a settlement agreement is not reached after both sides review and respond to the report, a judge could decide the societys future, Arsenault said.
So, New Jersey cant afford to keep giving senior citizens property-tax relief, to make government-worker pension payments under a bipartisan agreement or to make full school-aid payments  but it can spend $300 million to renovate the Statehouse.

Unsurprisingly, the Christie administration plans to borrow the money, through a bond sale by the N.J. Economic Development Authority. Never mind that the states excessive indebtedness and unsustainable finances have resulted in 10 debt-rating downgrades during the administration.

Gov. Chris Christie proposed the admittedly long overdue renovation mainly to the executive wing of the Statehouse about a month ago. The general proposal was quickly supported by Republican and Democratic leaders.

Christie said he could push the potentially unpopular project because he doesnt have to face voters again (his second and final term will end in about a year). Two who hope to replace him in the Statehouse, though, raised concerns about the plan.

Republican candidate Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli questioned the additional debt and wondered why it wasnt subject to the 2008 constitutional amendment requiring voter approval for major new debt.

Democratic candidate Phil Murphy wondered whether the renovation plan is the most efficient approach and whether the process will be transparent.

The need for an updating is unsurprising. A part of the Statehouse dates to 1792, and the executive branch section hasnt been significantly renovated in 60 years.

Christie said the project will make the building safer, more accessible, more energy efficient and less shameful. The work is expected to start almost immediately and take four years, with the Governors Office relocated for at least three years  meaning Christies successor will be displaced until 2019. He also said the expected $300 million cost includes a $50 million cushion.

That probably wont be enough. New Jersey doesnt have a good record of finishing projects on time and within budget.

State leaders expressed confidence there will be sufficient oversight of the Statehouse renovation to minimize the waste of taxpayer funds. We cant imagine taxpayers have such confidence and encourage them to scrutinize the process closely  or even demand greater fiscal responsibility in Trenton as a condition of state officials fixing up their place.

Even if the state doesnt overpay connected contracting firms on this project, its already wasting taxpayers money by continuing to borrow excessively and at ever greater cost.
Letters to editor should go beyond talking points

The political information people receive typically comes through a filter that affirms whatever assumptions they already hold. It would be helpful to move beyond divisive dialogue and at least put forward in their letters to the editor ideas that are not merely repetitions of talking points.

Letters are helpful when they bring forward ideas that are original or come from sources not commonly accessible.

Robert Martindale

Linwood

Adoption community got support from Christie

The adoption community certainly believes Gov. Christie should write a book. With only a few weeks until the Adoptees Birthright Act goes into effect, we are still amazed that Christie signed adoption reform legislation back in 2014.

Ending 34 years of legislative wrangling and standing up to the Catholic Church and the N.J. Bar Association, Christie ensured adopted adults the basic human right to their true identity. Christie has a sister who is adopted, but the governor vetoed a very similar bill in 2011. Proponents intensified their lobbying efforts and in a rare case Christies position evolved, leading to the end of secret adoption in New Jersey.

Prior to passage of this legislation, many adopted persons and birth parents moved heaven and earth to find each other. Today the adoption community is grateful that the state will no longer mandate secrecy.

Peter Franklin

Wanaque, Passaic County

Election, Trump flawed

Donald Trump did not receive a mandate to govern. Nearly 3 million more voters nationwide selected Hillary Clinton to be president.

Secondly, the Electoral College system of selecting a president remains grossly flawed. It has distorted the will of the people since the Kennedy-Nixon election of 1960. It diminishes the vote in states like New Jersey, Texas and California while enhancing voting in states like Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

As for draining the swamp, Donald Trump has nominated a number of Washington insiders. I wonder what the prime minister of Israel must be thinking about the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be attorney general. The nominee for secretary of state has done business with Russian companies.

Trump should put away his campaign rhetoric and start to act presidential. These persistent tweet tirades and outrageous statements are not fit for a prospective leader of the free world.

Trump may or may not make America great again. His recent actions and appointments make it obvious that he has no intention of reconciling the great divide that exists in this country.

Stephen Gring

Ocean City

Election OK, Dems flawed

I am amazed at the nastiness of comments from liberal Hillary Clinton supporters. They claim love trumps hate yet they are the ones full of hate.

Clinton lost because she was the worst of two poor choices. The voters for Donald Trump are none of the things theyve been accused of. We conservatives have had to put up with the worst president in history for eight years now without protesting in the streets.

The sad thing about this election is that there never was such an opportunity for a good third party to take root. This country desperately needs a party to replace the Democratic Party, which is dedicated to its own power rather than whats best for this country.

The country has the Electoral College because it is a republic with governing by representatives, not a mob-rule democracy.

Tony Perry

Egg Harbor Township

Local Air National Guard should get latest fighters

States being considered for the latest fighter jets are Alabama, Idaho, Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin? What is there?

The 177th Air National Guard at Atlantic City International Airport protects the nations capital and New York City, the financial capital of the world.

Dropping it from consideration is a terrible decision. I hope President-elect Donald Trump changes this.

Ludwig Jaros

Egg Harbor Township
After 15 years of exemplary service, Evis Zamora has decided to retire and spend more time with her family. Help us wish her well from 4:30- 6 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 3, in the library auditorium.

Evis was born in Capetown, South Africa, and met the love of her life when he spent a week there while in the Air Force. She has worked the front desk of the library since January 2002 and has provided excellent customer service. She knows many patrons by name and greets everyone with a smile.
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.




LONDON, December 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

European businesses put single market access to the UK as their primary priority in negotiations

41% of European businesses think UK is less attractive investment destination following EU vote

The UK's vote to leave the EU poses a threat to the European business community, according to new research conducted for RSM, the 6th largest audit, tax and consulting network, by the European Business Awards. The research asked almost 700 of Europe's successful business leaders their views on Brexit. 41% think that the UK is now a less attractive investment destination and 54% believe Brexit poses a threat, compared to 39% who see it as an opportunity.

Which aspect of the Brexit negotiation is most important to European businesses with UK operations? Single Market Access 29% Tax breaks 22% Free movement of labour 22% Tariff levels 21%

Three months ahead of the government's plan to invoke article 50, 14% of European businesses are already feeling the effects of Brexit, with twice as many (32%) expecting to be affected once the separation is complete.

European businesses are most concerned about increases to their cost base. Of those European businesses who will be affected by the vote to leave the EU, 58% expect the cost of doing business to rise and 50% expect a hit on their bottom line. Moreover, these businesses are concerned about the effect the Brexit vote will have on their suppliers, with 42% expecting it to have a negative impact in the years to come.

As Theresa May prepares to publish her Brexit plans, European firms with UK operations are calling on the two sides to come to an agreement on the single market. Continued access to the single market is the number one priority for European firms with operations in the UK, followed by tax incentives and free movement of labour.

Anand Selvarajan, Regional Leader for Europe, RSM International, commented:

"The UK's decision to leave the EU is not just a challenge for British businesses but for companies across Europe, uncertain about what Brexit means for their international ambitions.

It is vital, in this period of uncertainty, that businesses focus and prepare for the future based on the emerging facts and are not paralysed by the countless doomsday theories out there. Trade will continue and businesses need to be agile in responding to the evolving political and economic landscape."

European businesses are more despondent when it comes to the impact on the UK. 58% believe Brexit poses a threat to UK businesses with 41% of European businesses saying the UK is now a less attractive destination for investment, compared to 35% who do not.

Indeed 25% of respondents who intended to invest in the UK reported that the decision is now under review, with 9% saying they have been approached by organisations looking to attract investment into other EU states following the UK's decision to leave.

Adrian Tripp, CEO, European Business Awards said:

"Surveys conducted both before and after the referendum show us the continuing belief of many European businesses that Brexit has made the UK a less attractive place to do business. To stop this becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy the UK Government needs to get an agreement in place with the EU as soon as possible."

The European Business Awards is the largest cross sector business competition in Europe. Its primary purpose is to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community.

Note to Editors

About the survey

Research was undertaken among European businesses who have entered the European Business Awards which are sponsored by RSM. The majority of businesses surveyed were European middle market businesses which are here defined as having employees in the hundreds or thousands. The sample included businesses from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, UK, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Turkey, Spain and Sweden and more.

About RSM

RSM is the sixth largest network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms, encompassing over 120 countries, 760 offices and more than 38,000 people internationally. The network's total fee income is US$4.64 billion.

RSM is the lead sponsor and corporate champion of the European Business Awards promoting commercial excellence and recognition of entrepreneurial brilliance.

RSM is a member of the Forum of Firms, with the shared objective to promote consistent and high quality standards of financial and auditing practices worldwide.

RSM is the brand used by a network of independent accounting and advisory firms each of which practices in its own right. RSM International Limited does not itself provide any accounting and advisory services. Member firms are driven by a common vision of providing high quality professional services, both in their domestic markets and in serving the international professional service needs of their client base.

About the EBA

The European Business Awards' primary purpose is to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community throughout Europe.

For all citizens of Europe, prosperity, social and healthcare systems are reliant on businesses creating an even stronger, more innovative, successful, international and ethical business community - one that forms the beating heart of an increasingly globalised economy.

The European Business Awards programme serves the European business community in three ways:

 It celebrates and endorses individuals' and organisations' success

 It provides and promotes examples of excellence for the business community to aspire to

 It engages with the European business community to create debate on key issues

The European Business Awards is now in its 10th year. This year it engaged with over 33,000 businesses from 34 countries. Last year's public vote generated over 227,000 votes from across Europe. Sponsors and partners include RSM, ELITE and PR Newswire.

http://www.businessawardseurope.com

SOURCE European Business Awards and RSM
RIO DE JANEIRO, December 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Sustainable tourism is being requested more and more. Touristic services suppliers are developing several green programs and governments are setting up new policies to stimulate sustainable practices in tourism. And Barcelo Bavaro Beach has been awarded with the prestigious Green Globe Award.

Recently, The Spanish hotel chain Barcelo has got the Green Globe Certificate in one of the properties that make part of the complex Barcelo Bavaro Grand Resort, the Barcelo Bavaro Beach. From now, the customers of the resort in Playa Bavaro (Punta Cana) will enjoy their stay with a sustainable tourism and with the quality of the Barcelo service.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161124/442827LOGO )



(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/452500/BARCELO.jpg )



Green Globe is the main global certification and improvement of sustainability for leaders in green travel and responsible and eco-tourism. Green Globe helps organizations to improve economic, social and environmental sustainability and to be awarded and recognised for it.

The Green Globe Standard provides to the organizations a guide to evaluate their performance in environmental sustainability, where they can monitor improvements and document achievements leading to certification of their enterprises' sustainable operation and management.

The Global Criteria for Sustainable Tourism is a process of harmonization to a sustainable tourism, and represent the minimum principles of the sustainability performance of travel and tourism businesses and their supply chain partners. They are based on the following standards: a Sustainability Management System; maximization of employment and economic growth of the local community through the development of the business; cultural heritage improvement; and the reduction of the negative environmental impact.

Alfonso Lopez - alopez@3aww.com - +34-626-00-35-71

SOURCE BARCELO HOTELS & RESORTS
RIO DE JANEIRO, December 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

More and more people are looking to celebrate their wedding in an original way. Barcelo Maya Grand Resort, conscious of this, offers a fantastic place, in the heart of the Riviera Maya, for all those couples who want something different and special in the most important day of their lives.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161124/442827LOGO )

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/452501/Barcelo_Maya_Grand_Resorts_New_Offers.jpg )

The Riviera Maya in Mexico is a dream destination, a perfect mix of paradisiac beaches and Mayan culture. The large all-inclusive resort Barcelo Maya Grand Resort is located on one of the most beautiful beaches in the Mexican Caribbean, stretching along 2 km of white sand, crystal clear water and a coral reef.

In this magnificent environment, the Spanish hotel offers several wedding packages and renewal of vows that are adapted to the needs of each couple. The Barcelo hotel complex has different locations available to celebrate the ceremony according to the preferences of each couple: the Gazebo with a frontal sea view for an intimate and romantic wedding, a Catholic church for a religious ceremony, and a beach for the lovers of the sea.

In the five wedding packages offered by the hotel (Coconut Paradise, Blueberry Dream, Mint Breeze, Strawberry Passion and Tangerine Sunset),the location for the ceremony, the wedding cakes, as well as the services of a wedding planner are all included.

However, for couples already married who want to renew their vows; Barcelo Maya Grand Resort has created a special package. After a vow renewal ceremony,, the couple will enjoy a romantic dinner and a honeymoon package under the sun.

A privileged environment and a quality service together make a special day even more extraordinary.



Contact:

Alfonso Lopez

alopez@3aww.com

+34 626 00 35 71

SOURCE BARCELO HOTELS & RESORTS
TRANAS, Sweden, Dec 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

This acquisition is not expected to affect the price on the shares, which incorrectly appeared in the earlier press release.

OEM International has today signed an agreement to acquire all shares in Sitek-Palvelu Oy. The company, with head office in Jyvaskyla in Finland, develops and market products especially for industrial automation and process applications. The company has a yearly turnover of approximately 5 MEUR.

- For more than two decades now, Sitek has built a unique strong market position and we are looking forward to be a part of the future development. Some parts of the product range are the same as OEM are selling on other geographical markets which will give synergy effects. The acquisition will also strengthen our position on the Finnish market, says Jorgen Zahlin, Managing Director and CEO for OEM International.

The acquisition is expected to have a marginal impact on OEM's profit for the current year.

The information was made public on 29th December 2016 at 12:00 CET.

Tranas, 29th December 2016

OEM International AB (publ)

CONTACT:

For further information, please contact:

Jorgen Zahlin,

Managing Director and CEO for OEM International,

Phone number : +46(75)242 40 22.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/oem/r/correction--oem-international-acquires-sitek-palvelu-oy,c2158045

The following files are available for download:

http://mb.cision.com/Main/1937/2158045/609041.pdf Correction: Press release Sitek-Palvelu Oy

SOURCE OEM
SINGAPORE, Dec. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cyber security received heightened interest in 2016 due to a spate of cyber attacks in the region. These included cyber attacks on the database of 55 million voters at the Philippines Commission on Elections (COMELEC), the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), US$81 million cyber heist at the Bangladesh Central Bank and the massive data leaks as shown by the Yahoo data incidents.

As evidenced by the above, cyber attacks can impact any industry at any time. In fact, as more industries become increasingly connected to the Internet due to the Internet of Things, it is more essential than ever to consider if your organisation is cyber ready for 2017.

Frost & Sullivan's Asia Pacific Cyber Security practice analysts share their key cyber security predictions for 2017.

1. Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks will overtake Ransomware and Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks

BEC generally happens when email accounts of key executives are compromised and involves payments made to fraudulent bank accounts. In Singapore alone, about S$19 million has been lost through BECs between January to September 2016. There was an increase of 20% in number of such cases as compared to the same period last year. Police investigations revealed that the scam usually involves businesses with overseas dealings with email as the main form of communication in the dealings.

"As BECs are relatively easier to execute and evades cyber defense tools better than other popular attack vectors such as ransomware and APTs, it can potentially be the main cyber threat in Asia," noted Charles Lim, Industry Principal, Cyber Security practice, Frost & Sullivan, Asia Pacific.

2. DDoS attacks might cause the Internet to be down for an entire day in a country

Globally, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) volumetric attacks hit over 1 Tbps of traffic and shut down several popular online services in 2016. Whilst government authorities grapple with ensuring strict security regulations and manufacturers continue to deliver insecure IoT devices to the market, coupled with the fact that internal volumetric attacks to DNS servers for service providers are not well defended, cyber attackers will most likely attempt to exploit the vulnerability to the next level and bring down the internet in a country for at least a day.

3. Greater enforcement expected for Internet of Things devices to meet cyber security standards

As authorities become increasingly concerned about the threats unsecured IoT devices will pose to the community, it will be illegal for these manufacturers to sell their products in countries that demand these devices comply with security standards. The recent Mirai botnets exploiting the vulnerabilities of IP cameras are an example of how manufacturers did not include a security process of changing default passwords when connecting the devices to the Internet.

4. The healthcare sector will have more stringent regulations towards ensuring uptime of computer systems handling critical operations.

Globally, ransomware attacks on computer systems of healthcare providers in 2016 had infected computer systems and disrupted operations hence patients in need of immediate attention had to be diverted to other hospitals. While major healthcare providers in Asia had initiatives to comply with security standards such as HIPAA, their use of legacy security tools to meet minimal compliance standards could not keep up with the new types of cyber attacks.

These days, stolen personal healthcare records are worth more in the dark web than credit card information and medical machines are increasingly connected to the Internet which pose as a possible safety risk to patients. The healthcare industry needs a good 'cyber health check' before it is too late.

5. New technologies such as Blockchain may be used to enhance trust between stakeholders and facilitate exchange of threat intelligence among industries

The setup of more Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISAC) will form platforms for both the private and private sector participants to share threat intelligence. However, participants are wary of exposing their weak security posture when contributing intelligence due to a successful attack, and there are issues of untrusted sources that may contribute the wrong intelligence. Blockchain may emerge as the technology to facilitate the exchange as it authenticates the trusted party to contribute, obfuscates the contributor's detail with anonymity, and offers a tamper proof system that prevents unauthorized alteration of any data shared.

6. More adoption of technologies that focus on threat actors and "hunting" for their next attack

Traditionally, enterprise security teams have adopted a "wait and see" posture, and try to build up their defenses to mitigate the possible threats they are aware of. However, more enterprises are working towards trying to know what the attackers are innovating in terms of cyber attack techniques, their next moves, and build up their defenses to counter the new attack vectors.

7. More enterprises will offer bug bounty programs, which are seen as a measure to deter talents from taking up black hat hacking

The idea is simple yet effective: pay the attackers for finding and reporting major vulnerabilities in enterprise and/or developed applications. Enterprises will be able to strengthen their security defenses through the crowdsourcing model and encouraging potential hackers to discover more and do more of the good rather than the bad.

8. More drones will be used to facilitate cyber attacks

A group of researchers from iTrust, a Center for Research in Cyber Security at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, demonstrated that it is possible to launch a cyber attack using a drone and a smartphone. In the future, it is expected that drones will be an easy way to scan for unsecured wireless traffic as a way of performing war driving attacks.

While more applications are developed for drones in commercial use, inevitably cyber criminals will think of new techniques in launching a cyber attack. Other possible types of attacks include delivering GPS jamming signals to a vessel or dropping USB drives containing malware to air-gapped critical infrastructures.

Contact

Melissa Tan

Corporate Communications  Asia Pacific

P: +65 6890 0926

F: +65 6890 0999

E: melissa.tan@frost.com

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies? Contact us: Start the discussion

http://www.frost.com

Related Links

http://www.frost.com



SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
Concrete admixture and waterproofing products create growth opportunities, finds Frost & Sullivan's Visionary Innovation Team

LONDON, Dec. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The ongoing recovery in European construction activity is set to boost the demand for construction chemicals, including concrete admixtures and solutions for waterproofing, grouts and concrete repair, and industrial flooring. Stringent enforcement of environmental regulations will boost revenues, while increasing cement and concrete consumption is expected to drive demand for concrete admixtures.

"Regional variances based on climatic conditions, building practices, and technology preferences have urged global construction chemicals manufacturers to establish strong local presence," said Frost & Sullivan Visionary Science Senior Research Analyst Vinay Venkatesan. "Manufacturers must develop products that conform to customer specifications and add value to the end-user applications in order to carve a niche in a highly competitive and mature market."

As discussed in Analysis of the European Construction Chemicals Market, a new analysis from Frost & Sullivan's Future of Chemicals & Materials in Infrastructure & Mobility Growth Partnership Service programme, customer preference for advanced concrete properties such as superior rheology, low viscosity, and reduced carbon footprint, apart from workability and flowability, will increase research and development in admixtures.

Click here for complimentary access to more information on this analysis and to register for a Growth Strategy Dialogue, a free interactive briefing with Frost & Sullivan's thought leaders.

Other trends and developments driving market growth include:

Rising construction opportunities in Eastern European countries such as Poland , Hungary , and the Czech Republic ;

, , and the ; Inflow of refugees in 2015 in countries such as Germany and Norway , spurring demand for residential housing and public infrastructure projects;

and , spurring demand for residential housing and public infrastructure projects; Customer preference for high-performance products that meet Construction Products Regulation (CPR) and sustainability norms;

Customers' moving towards pre-cast construction that is less labour intensive, provides better control over concrete production, and ensures faster completion of work.

Integral waterproofing admixture products will play an important role and witness faster growth due to their ability to reduce project cost and time. The Bituminous waterproofing membranes segment will also be benefited by government subsidies for the installation of green roofs in commercial buildings.

"BASF and Sika are actively seeking to collaborate on landmark projects and introduce innovative solutions that address specific challenges and add value to products in order to expand their market share and strengthen technology expertise. For instance, BASF introduced the MasterEase admixture range in 2015 developed for low-viscosity concrete," noted Venkatesan.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion

Analysis of the European Construction Chemicals Market

MC89-39

Contact:

Evgenia Oleynikova

Corporate Communications  Europe

P: +48 224816210

E: Evgenia.Oleynikova@frost.com

www.frost.com

Related Links

http://www.frost.com



SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
Implements Strategy to Support Growth

WALTHAM. Massachusetts, Dec. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- EuroSite Power Inc. (OTCQX: EUSP, the "Company"), an On-Site Utility solutions provider, offering clean electricity, heat, hot water and cooling solutions to healthcare, hospitality, housing and leisure centers in the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe, today announced its decision to file Form 15 to voluntarily effect deregistration and to suspend its reporting obligations under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act").

Speaking about the decision, Dr. Elias Samaras, EuroSite Power's Chief Executive Officer, noted, "We have been working diligently to set the company on a sustainable long term path toward growth and profitability. At the same time we have been striving to reduce, or even eliminate, unnecessary expenses that do not benefit the Company and its shareholders. With the implementation of our four pillars strategy completed, the Board of Directors appointed an Independent Special Committee to review progress and current expenditures. After careful deliberation, it was the unanimous recommendation of the Independent Special Committee, concurred in and voted by the full Board, that being an SEC registered and reporting company was not in the best interests of the Company and its shareholders at this time."

EuroSite Power believes it is currently in compliance with all of its current listing requirements for being traded on the OTCQX, operated by OTC Markets Group, a centralized electronic quotation service for over-the-counter securities. The Company is eligible to deregister its common stock by filing a Form 15 under Section 12(g) of the Act because the Company currently has fewer than 300 holders of record of its securities. Upon filing of the Form 15, the Company anticipates its common stock will be traded on OTC Pink Market, so long as market makers demonstrate an interest in trading in the Company's common stock.

The decision of the Company's Board of Directors to deregister its common stock and suspend its reporting obligations was based on the consideration of numerous factors, including, among others, (i) the very significant proportion of the Company's operating expenses consumed by registration and reporting costs and expected further substantial increase in accounting, legal, filing, SEC compliance and other costs associated with remaining a registered public company, particularly in view of the size of the Company's assets, revenue and operating losses; (ii) the benefits of permitting senior management to devote full time and attention to the Company's strategy and operations, focusing solely on fostering the long term growth of the Company; (iii) the Company's status as a registered public OTCQX-traded company or under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 has not necessarily enhanced its corporate image, improved financing opportunities, provided the Company the ability to utilize its stock for acquisitions, or increased incentives associated with being a public company for management and employees.

Mr. Jacques de Saussure, EuroSite Power Chairman, added, "We value the transparency afforded to shareholders from public financial filings and other investor communications and have implemented a shareholder information plan that we believe will continue to provide our investors valuable information about the progress of our business. We fully believe in the strength of EuroSite Power's On-Site Utility business model and are excited to move forward with management's complete focus and seek robust financial support for our growth initiatives in 2017."

Under the Company's post deregistration shareholder information plan, EuroSite Power intends to provide its stockholders with quarterly unaudited financial information and annual audited financial statements. Similarly, the Company will update its stockholders with information about the Company periodically and when appropriate and the Board will continue to monitor the impact of deregistration.

On-Site Utility

EuroSite Power sells the energy produced from an onsite energy system to an individual property as an alternative to the outright sale of energy equipment. On-Site Utility solution customers only pay for the energy produced by the system and receive a guaranteed discount rate on the price of the energy. All system capital, installation, operating expenses and support are paid by EuroSite Power.

About EuroSite Power

EuroSite Power Inc. is committed to providing institutional, commercial and small industrial facilities with clean, reliable power, cooling, heat and hot water at lower costs than charged by conventional energy suppliers - without any capital or start-up costs to the energy user - through our On-Site Utility offering. For more information about our unique efficient power solutions please visit www.eurositepower.co.uk and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, as disclosed on the Company's website and in Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including its annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015. This press release does not constitute an offer to buy or sell securities by the Company, its subsidiaries or any associated party and is meant purely for informational purposes. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, even if subsequently made available by the Company on its website or otherwise. The Company does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.

Investor Contact:

Ariel Babcock

EuroSite Power Inc.

+1.781.466.6413

ariel.babcock@eurositepower.co.uk

Related Links

http://www.eurositepower.co.uk



SOURCE EuroSite Power Inc.
QINGDAO, China, Dec. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- QNLM is currently seeking talented researchers around the world to join them, building up a great career and a wonderful life there.

Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (QNLM) was launched in Qingdao, a seaside city in Shandong Province of China, in 2015. It is designed to become a world-class comprehensive marine research center and an open platform for collaborative innovation, focusing on basic research as well as R&D of cutting-edge technologies related to marine science.

Major research areas of QNLM include: ocean dynamic processes and climate change, marine life processes and resource utilization, evolution and protection of marine ecological environments, benthic processes and oil and gas resources, extreme environments and resources in deep sea and polar regions, and marine technologies and equipment. Around the six research areas, QNLM has established eight functional laboratories and nine joint laboratories with other domestic research institutions and large state-owned enterprises. Eleven large research platforms are under construction.

For more information, please refer to: http://www.qnlm.ac

I. Positions and job descriptions

1. Principal investigators (PI) for the six major research areas

Build a high-quality research team to conduct frontier research and train talented researchers; set strategic development plans; manage major projects throughout the whole lifecycle.

2. Director for each of the following joint labs:

High-End Ocean Equipment, Ocean Observing and Detecting, Blue Fishery, Smart Ocean, Intelligent Marine Computing and Big Data, Ocean Oil-Gas Resource Prospecting, New Marine Materials, Sustainable Ocean Energy, Deep-Sea Extreme Environment

Make development plans and propose strategic research directions; organize and lead state-level or international major scientific projects; build high-level research teams.

3. Chief engineer for each public research platform (R&D Center for Marine Instruments and Apparatuses, Center for Marine Isotopes and Geochronology)

Lead the planning, construction and operation of public research platforms; provide technical support for the operation and maintenance of equipment; lead equipment testing and R&D for major state projects; build a high-level technical support team.

II. Qualifications

1. For PIs and directors:

Having held professorship (or principal investigator) or other senior positions

World-recognized academic achievements in relevant areas

Outstanding leadership skills

Full-time affiliation or at least six months for PIs in QNLM each year

2. For chief engineers:

Relevant experience of equipment maintenance and R&D at world-famous institutions, along with rich management experience for major research projects

Excellent R&D track

Full-time affiliation or at least six months each year in QNLM during the transition period (up to two years for overseas applicants)

III. Remunerations

1. For PIs:

Allowance: RMB 1-1.2 million per year

Research subsidy: RMB 3-5 million

RMB 5 million home purchase subsidies on a contract of six years or longer with QNLM; or a rental-free apartment of around 180m2 on a less-than-six-year contract with QNLM.

2. For directors and chief engineers:

Open to face-to-face negotiations; refer to relevant QNLM Aoshan Talent policies.

IV. How to apply

Applicants need to submit a CV, previous research achievements (a list of up to ten most significant publications or patents), a research plan and work objectives and three references, all in PDF.

The complete submission, referenced as "Application for QNLM Aoshan Recruitment Program", should be emailed to: jwzheng@qnlm.ac

V. Deadline

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the positions are filled.

Tel: +86-532-5871 9798

Fax: +86-532-5871 9758

E-mail: jwzheng@qnlm.ac

Website: www.qnlm.ac/en/index

SOURCE Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology
SHANGHAI, Dec. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Audio Lighting Industry CEO Summit and Top 10 Award Ceremony were hosted in Guangzhou on 8th December. The events were organized by Hc360.com, a leading B2B e-commerce platform in China.

Five pro audio equipment manufactures from Enping City won awards at ceremony. See the list below.

Enping Sanfeng Sound Technology Manufacturing Co Ltd awarded Top 10 Accessories Manufacture

Enbao Electronic Co Ltd awarded Top 10 Microphone Manufacture

Enping Bardl Sound Equipment Co Ltd awarded Top 10 Microphone Manufacture

YEAMIC Electronic Co Ltd awarded Top 10 Microphone Manufacture

Haitian Electronic Technology Company awarded Top 10 Conference Systems Manufacture

The city of Enping, located in Guangdong province, is an economic powerhouse in southern China. It is renowned the world over for its high quality microphone and professional audio equipment manufacturing industry.

Enping Microphone has quickly risen to the top ranks in China's pro-audio equipment manufacturing industry. Found success in customer satisfaction, market performance and global expansion in recent years, Enping Microphone is continuing to upgrade its core technology's advantages, attracting more buyers all over the world.

"The innovation and entrepreneurship of Enping Microphone is now stronger than ever, and this trend not only affects investors and consumers, but also extends brand awareness globally," said Wu Zhonghuo, General Manager of Enbao Electronic Co Ltd. "More and more enterprises in Enping have passed the international standard ISO accreditation and CCC accreditation, while good quality products have also been making their way onto the global market."

Figures from the Enping Electro Acoustic Component Trade Association showed that production capacity is booming as Enping captures increasing market share.

Last year, Enping's electro-acoustic industry total production volume exceeded more than 100,000,000 units, which realized total industrial product revenues of over RMB 3.4 billion, accounting for more than 70% of China's export market share. For Enping Microphone, success is ubiquitous, the future is bright.

Media contact: Vicky Fu

+86-21-6295-3191

fuhaiqiang@shanghai-intex.com

SOURCE Enping Bureau of Science & Industry & Commerce
PETACH TIKVA, Israel, December 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Healthy table grapes, no residues

Stockton specializes in the development and marketing of botanical based biopesticides, announced today that the New Zealand Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) has approved Timorex Gold for use in grape against powdery mildew (Uncinula necator).

Timorex Gold has proven prophylactic and curative efficacy against a broad spectrum of diseases in a wide range of crops and is suitable to be used in conventional and organic agriculture and can be applied year-round without inducing fungi resistance. Its components provide multiple action mechanisms against fungal and bacterial crop diseases, offering effective and sustainable control.

"We are pleased we can now offer Timorex Gold in New Zealand, providing growers with an environmentally responsible and effective solution for disease resistance management in conventional and organic crops." explained Guy Elitzur, CEO of Stockton "This is an ideal plant protection solution for vineyard production, which meets high quality standards and the demands for export. We intend to expand our label soon and to offer the products in other crops in New Zealand soon."

Timorex Gold is a registered trademark of the Stockton and is sold in over 30 countries and now it is expected to be launched soon in New Zealand.

About the Stockton STK

Stockton STK specializes in the development and marketing of botanical-based biopesticides. Its core focus is on the incorporation of these biopesticides into integrated agriculture spraying programs that use conventional chemical products, thus creating a balanced, cleaner and sustainable agricultural environment.

Stockton is a global company established in 1994 and has an active R&D Center for the development of future natural products for crop protection. Its unique research and development center in Israel invests substantial resources in developing 'green' products. Stockton has a variety of products adapted to different agro ecological areas, biological parameters and regulatory guidelines.

Stockton's flagship product Timorex Gold is used to control a broad spectrum of diseases in diverse crops. The product demonstrates an efficacy equivalent to chemical fungicides and is suitable to be used in conventional and organic agriculture.

Contact: For more information, please visit our website: http://www.stockton-ag.com or contact Judy Jamuy at: +972 52 7599242 or judy@stockton-ag.com.





SOURCE Stockton
KYIV, Ukraine, December 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

On July 18, 2016, the District Court of Limassol (Republic of Cyprus) rejected the claim of "The DNS Trust Settlement" trustee to appoint management in "Agrein Holding Limited" company, which was in the process of acquiring major assets in the agrarian sector of Ukraine. The court made a ruling after finding out that the claim was based on false testimony and misleading accusations.

Thus, the Cyprus court prevented an attempt to establish control over the group of large agricultural companies in Ukraine that owns a total of 130 thousand hectares of land worth more than USD 100 million. The current management of Agrein has called the attempt a raiding attack.

Notably, this is not the first attempt to establish control over Ukrainian assets of "Agrein Holding Limited" company. The Court's decision stated that Lesya Sofiyenko, the plaintiff and the primary beneficiary in the lawsuit, used her family and personal connections in the government, being spouse of a Ukrainian MP, to launch a series of criminal investigations probing the bank loans received by the subsidiaries of the respondent company. After investigation, it was found that the criminal proceedings were unfounded and the case was closed.

While referring to the testimony of the parties in the case, the District Court of Limassol established that Mrs. Sofiyenko lied under oath. Mrs. Sofienko provided judges with false information. According to the court, Mrs. Sofiyenko failed to reveal her obligations to "Agrein Holding Limited" and about violation of such obligations.

It is not uncommon for Ukrainian enterprises to protect their property and avoid raiding attacks by registering holding companies in foreign jurisdictions like Cyprus. However, when the right to seize assets goes beyond the reach of Ukrainian courts the perpetrators try to exploit the judicial system of foreign countries by providing false information and fake evidence.

Ukraine is not immune to the practice when dishonest companies involve courts to seize assets of others. In fact, Ukraine occupied 115th place out of 128 countries according to the International Property Rights Index 2016, whereas last year it ranked 109th among 129 countries.

According to Anti-raider's Union of Entrepreneurs of Ukraine, there are more than 30 groups of raiders that operate in the country. In 2015, out of 3,000 raider's attacks 2,700 ended successfully for the perpetrators, reported the Union.

SOURCE Agrein Management Ltd
QINGDAO, China, Dec. 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- QNLM is currently seeking talented researchers around the world to join them, building up a great career and a wonderful life there.

Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (QNLM) was launched in Qingdao, a seaside city in Shandong Province of China, in 2015. It is designed to become a world-class comprehensive marine research center and an open platform for collaborative innovation, focusing on basic research as well as R&D of cutting-edge technologies related to marine science.

Major research areas of QNLM include: ocean dynamic processes and climate change, marine life processes and resource utilization, evolution and protection of marine ecological environments, benthic processes and oil and gas resources, extreme environments and resources in deep sea and polar regions, and marine technologies and equipment. Around the six research areas, QNLM has established eight functional laboratories and nine joint laboratories with other domestic research institutions and large state-owned enterprises. Eleven large research platforms are under construction.

For more information, please refer to: http://www.qnlm.ac

I. Positions and job descriptions

1. Principal investigators (PI) for the six major research areas

Build a high-quality research team to conduct frontier research and train talented researchers; set strategic development plans; manage major projects throughout the whole lifecycle.

2. Director for each of the following joint labs:

High-End Ocean Equipment, Ocean Observing and Detecting, Blue Fishery, Smart Ocean, Intelligent Marine Computing and Big Data, Ocean Oil-Gas Resource Prospecting, New Marine Materials, Sustainable Ocean Energy, Deep-Sea Extreme Environment

Make development plans and propose strategic research directions; organize and lead state-level or international major scientific projects; build high-level research teams.

3. Chief engineer for each public research platform (R&D Center for Marine Instruments and Apparatuses, Center for Marine Isotopes and Geochronology)

Lead the planning, construction and operation of public research platforms; provide technical support for the operation and maintenance of equipment; lead equipment testing and R&D for major state projects; build a high-level technical support team.

II. Qualifications

1. For PIs and directors:

Having held professorship (or principal investigator) or other senior positions

World-recognized academic achievements in relevant areas

Outstanding leadership skills

Full-time affiliation or at least six months for PIs in QNLM each year

2. For chief engineers:

Relevant experience of equipment maintenance and R&D at world-famous institutions, along with rich management experience for major research projects

Excellent R&D track

Full-time affiliation or at least six months each year in QNLM during the transition period (up to two years for overseas applicants)

III. Remunerations

1. For PIs:

Allowance: RMB 1-1.2 million per year

Research subsidy: RMB 3-5 million

RMB 5 million home purchase subsidies on a contract of six years or longer with QNLM; or a rental-free apartment of around 180m2 on a less-than-six-year contract with QNLM.

2. For directors and chief engineers:

Open to face-to-face negotiations; refer to relevant QNLM Aoshan Talent policies.

IV. How to apply

Applicants need to submit a CV, previous research achievements (a list of up to ten most significant publications or patents), a research plan and work objectives and three references, all in PDF.

The complete submission, referenced as "Application for QNLM Aoshan Recruitment Program", should be emailed to: [email protected]

V. Deadline

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the positions are filled.

Tel: +86-532-5871 9798

Fax: +86-532-5871 9758

E-mail: [email protected]

Website: www.qnlm.ac/en/index

SOURCE Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology
SHENYANG, China, Dec. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In the new German-Chinese Industrial Park in Tiexi district, German companies can not only work like in their home country, with top infrastructure and reliable service. The park is also a milestone for the transformation of the Chinese province of Liaoning into one of the leading Chinese high-tech locations.

The capital Shenyang was long considered as the Ruhr area of the East, the cradle of China's industrial development, which was closely linked to the rise of the heavy industry and mechanical engineering. But smoking chimneys are becoming less common. Today, the province of Liaoning, with an economic output of around 400 billion euros, is ranked seventh among the 31 provinces of China.

For more than twelve years, the capital Shenyang has been the location for BMW and its supplier Continental, Delphi and ZF, with technology that is world-leading. To date, Munich-based companies have built more than 1.3 million vehicles there.

The new German-Chinese Industrial Park is the logical advancement of the location. One year ago, it was approved as a national pilot project by the Chinese State Council. It is part of the Chinese "Made in China 2025" strategy and is to serve as one of the central gateways for the German "Industry 4.0" initiative. New methods of "Intelligent Manufacturing" will be tested in the park.

However, the park not only offers linkage to high-tech, but also very concrete practical advantages for companies that are looking for partners in China or want to gain a foothold in the Chinese market. A team of service personnel takes care of all administrative matters, from finding an apartment to applying a visa. A network of contacts is available to the companies. Small and medium-sized German companies are allowed to store their products at no charge. A discount of 50 percent of the market value is granted on office rent. If the company decides to stay and expand, discounts of up to 30 percent are granted for buying the land or expanding the production facilities. There is interest from all over the world. Inquiries not only come from Germany but also from Japan, Switzerland, Australia and Spain.

More than 50 German companies have already settled in Tiexi, including Festo, Siemens and BASF. They are connected with Duisburg by a direct train connection once a week. BMW is bringing automotive parts to Shenyang by this route. The 48 square kilometer (12 km x 4 km) area with ideal infrastructure is therefore an internationally competitive location for high-end technologies.

The German-Chinese Industrial Park is located in an industrial area in Tiexi district, with market leaders such as Shenyang Machine Tool Group (SYMG), the turbine manufacturer Shenyang Blower Works, or a plant for mining machinery by the company Sany, which is one of the largest construction equipment manufacturers in the world.

The Stuttgart-based architecture and city planning office SBA drew up the framework planning of the Tiexi industrial park. "The 'green' project wants to combine industry and living on a human scale," explains Oliver Lambrecht, senior city planner at SBA. The objective is the livable "city 4.0" with a great deal of usable green space and little emissions.

The excellent location makes the German-Chinese Industrial Park particularly attractive. Several metro lines connect the German-Chinese Industrial Park with the city center. The latest growth is shown by the fact that the park not only convinces German companies but also international companies. Tian Fang, China sales manager with the US wagon and locomotive manufacturer Wabtec, has just invested in the German-Chinese industrial park. "The labor costs are lower, the policy supports where it can and the transparency of the authorities is higher than at other locations in China," said the businesswoman. Wabtec plans to invest heavily in the next five years. For German and international companies it is a confidence bonus that BMW is on site.

In order to build trust, a service company was recently founded to further facilitate the access of German companies to the Chinese market. The managing director of the German-Chinese Service Center Kaiqing Liang wants to build up an education network to provide basic and continued training to employees on the spot. The dual training based on the German model is just as much the goal, as also to provide schools with international standards for the children of newly arrived families. So far, students can attend the German school up to 10th grade, then they have to go to Beijing. Soon, however, they will be able to graduate from high school in Shenyang. It is also planned to locate a German doctor on the site of the German-Chinese Industrial Park.

For Harald Kumpfert, chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce in Shenyang, who moved to Shenyang six years ago, this is just as important for his son as for the "high-profile" skilled workers he can hire in Shenyang. He himself has already settled near the German-Chinese Industrial Park at an early stage. "For those who come to Shenyang, the German-Chinese Industrial Park can be an excellent opportunity. Especially when the products come from the field of intelligent manufacturing". He himself is satisfied with the business. For the cold days in winter, his company Eco-WIT New Energy produces smart heating systems for production halls.

Image Attachments Links:

http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=281758

http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=281759

SOURCE Shengyang Municipal Bureau of News
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Dec. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As millions of Americans plan to travel for the New Year's weekend, Winter Storm Fortis will bring heavy snow, rain and high winds to the Northeast, including New York, where many will gather to ring in the new year. Leading travel insurance comparison site Squaremouth, explains coverage for this storm and future winter storms.

Too Late to Get Travel Insurance for Winter Storm Fortis

As of December 28th , it is too late to buy travel insurance to provide coverage related to Winter Storm Fortis , now that it has been named by The Weather Channel

, it is too late to buy travel insurance to provide coverage related to , now that it has been named by The Weather Channel Travelers who purchased a travel insurance policy before December 28th may be covered to cancel or interrupt their trip, due to travel delays related to the storm, once they meet their policy requirements

When to Buy Travel Insurance for Future Winter Storms

Travel insurance policies must be purchased before any storm is named, this includes winter storms named by The Weather Channel, after that point, the storm is considered foreseeable by travel insurance providers

by travel insurance providers Policies can be purchased up until the day before a traveler's departure if a storm has not been named

What Travel Insurance Can Cover for Future Winter Storms

If a traveler wants to cancel a trip they can be covered for prepaid and non-refundable trip costs once a flight has been delayed by weather for at least 12-48 consecutive hours, depending on the policy

they can be covered for prepaid and non-refundable trip costs once a flight has been delayed by weather for at least 12-48 consecutive hours, depending on the policy If a traveler's flight is delayed , they can be reimbursed for meals, hotel costs and local transportation fees once their flight has been delayed for at least 3-12 hours, depending on the policy

, they can be reimbursed for meals, hotel costs and local transportation fees once their flight has been delayed for at least 3-12 hours, depending on the policy If a traveler misses a connecting flight or cruise, they can file for reimbursement of costs associated with catching up to the rest of the trip

or cruise, they can file for reimbursement of costs associated with catching up to the rest of the trip If a traveler wants to interrupt a trip and return home they can be covered for prepaid and non-refundable trip costs once a flight has been delayed by weather for at least 12-48 consecutive hours, depending on the policy

Related: Winter Storm and Travel Insurance Information Center

ABOUT SQUAREMOUTH

Squaremouth compares travel insurance policies from every major travel insurance provider in the United States. Using Squaremouth's comparison engine and third-party customer reviews, travelers can research and compare insurance products side-by-side. More information can be found at www.squaremouth.com.

Available Topic Expert:

Carolyn Leckie

[email protected]

(727) 260-5012

SOURCE Squaremouth

Related Links

http://www.squaremouth.com


If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
Beijing, Dec 24 : After 28 years of talks between Beijing and Moscow, construction has finally started on a modern highway bridge connecting China and Russia across the Heilongjiang river, the first between the two countries.

The main span of the bridge is 1,283 metres and links Heihe to the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The bridge is an important international link and part of the China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor. It will strengthen cooperation between the neighbouring two regions," said a Chinese official.

Costing 2.5 billion yuan (about $360 million), the bridge will open in October 2019.

Passenger flow between the two cities is expected to reach 1.5 million a year by 2020, double the current figure. Cargo volume will reach three million tones by then, ten times today's figure.
Patna, Dec 28 : Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama offered a special prayer at Budha Smriti park here after participating in a tree plantation drive on Wednesday, officials said.

"The Dalai Lama visited Budha Smriti park along with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and offered a special prayer after participating in a function to plant saplings of Bodhi tree," a district official said.

It was the Dalai Lama who inaugurated the 22-acre Buddha Smriti park in the heart of Patna in 2010.

Earlier, Nitish Kumar received the spiritual guru at Patna airport and thanked him for visiting the state capital.

According to officials, he has left for Bodh Gaya in a state government airplane to participate in 34th Kalchakra puja, beginning on Thursday.

The Dalai Lama will stay in Bodh Gaya, about 110 km from here, till January 10 for the puja. "Tight security arrangements have been made for his stay in Bodh Gaya in view of threat perception to him."

The Dalai Lama has been living in India in self-imposed exile since 1959 when he fled his homeland after Chinese Communist troops took over Tibet.
Tokyo, Dec 29 : Toshiba shares fell more than 20 per cent on Thursday, the third straight day of heavy losses.

The Japanese industrial giant has now had nearly half its market value wiped off since Monday, the BBC reported.

It comes after the firm warned that its US nuclear business may be worth less than previously thought.

Shares were down 25 per cent at one stage in Tokyo, having lost 20 per cent and 12 per cent in previous sessions.

Toshiba said the possible heavy one-off loss was linked to a deal done by a US subsidiary, Westinghouse Electric, the BBC noted.

Toshiba President Satoshi Tsunakawa apologised for "causing concern".

Rating agencies Moody's and R&I have both downgraded Toshiba's credit rating, which will make it more expensive for the company to borrow. R&I warned that it could issue further downgrades.

While the share price slump is a blow for investors, 2016 had still been a pretty good year, with the stock rising more than 77 per cent before this week's falls.
Los Angeles, Dec 29 : Actor Steve Martin received backlash on Twitter for a tribute he paid to late actress Carrie Fisher. He deleted the tweet later.

"When I was a young man, Carrie Fisher was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She turned out to be witty and bright as well," the actor tweeted on Tuesday. It has been deleted, reports foxnews.com.

Some said Martin's tweet had a sexist undertone.

However, many fans came to Martin's defence and said backlash over his tweet was uncalled for.
Buenos Aires, Dec 29 : Former Manchester United and Argentina star Juan Sebastian Veron will reportedly come out of retirement to play for Estudiantes next season.

Veron, who will be 42 in March and has not played for more than two years, signed an 18-month contract on a minimum salary, which will be donated back to Estudiantes, the Argentine club said on Wednesday, reports Xinhua news agency.

Having begun and ended the first part of his career at Estudiantes, the former midfielder is currently the club's president.

He has been seen training in recent weeks after vowing to play again if supporters bought 65 percent of viewing boxes at the club's new stadium.

Veron, capped 73 times for Argentina's national team, said he will be available for Estudiantes' 2017 Primera Division campaign and the Copa Libertadores, South America's top club competition.
Dhaka, Dec 29 : Bangladesh applicants with confirmed travel tickets will be able to submit their Indian tourist visa applications without prior appointments in a bid to ease the process, a media report has said.

The Indian High Commission made the announcement in a press release on Wednesday.

The move to eliminate the E-token system was part of efforts to ease the process of securing Indian visas, it said.

The date of journey should be after seven days but within one month of submission of the visa application form, bdnews reported.

The Indian Visa Application Centre in Mirpur from January 1 will receive walk-in tourist visa applications from confirmed travellers and senior citizens.

Those who already have appointment dates can continue to submit their tourist visa applications in the centres at Gulshan, Uttara, Motijheel, Mymensingh, Barisal, Khulna, Jessore, Rangpur, Rajshahi, Chittagong and Sylhet.

The Indian High Commission also announced that its pilot scheme started in October for allowing walk-in visa application facility to women and their immediate family members was 'very successful'.
Hyderabad, Dec 29 : AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi and four legislators of his party, who included his brother too, got relief when a court in Telangana on Thursday acquitted them in a case related to demolition of a mosque 11 years ago.

A court in Sangareddy town, some 65 km from here, acquitted the Lok Sabha member from Hyderabad and four state legislators of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM).

Asaduddin Owaisi, his brother Akbaruddin Owaisi, Ahmed Pasha Khadri, Mumtaz Ahmed Khan and Muazzam Khan were booked by the police on March 16, 2005, for obstructing officials from demolishing a mosque to facilitate road extension at Muttangi village.

Asaduddin Owaisi had surrendered before court on January 21, 2013, and was sent to jail after the court dismissed his petition for cancellation of the non-bailable warrant pending against him.

The AIMIM chief was later granted bail in the case.

Meanwhile, reacting to Thursday's court order, Asaduddin asked if the Congress party, which was in power in the then undivided Andhra Pradesh, would apologise for booking the false case.

He tweeted that the mosque was demolished without following due process of law.
Damascus, Dec 29 : At least six persons were killed on Thursday in bombings across Syria after a truce was struck between Russia and Turkey effective from midnight, according to a war monitoring group.

An attack carried out by government forces in the southern city of Daraa killed five people, including a child and two women, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.

The SOHR recorded another bombardment in the Damascus suburb of Zamalka, which killed one person and injured 10 others, mostly women and children, Efe news reported.

No casualties were reported following attacks conducted by government forces on the town of Kafr Hamrah in the northern province of Aleppo.

Meanwhile, rebel forces launched attacks on government-controlled areas of Aleppo, the SOHR said.

An explosion in Damascus was caused by a projectile falling in the Al-Mazraa district, where the Russian embassy is located, according to sources consulted by the SOHR.

Turkey, which is backing the Syrian opposition, and Russia, the main ally of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, announced on Wednesday a truce agreement spanning the whole country.

The ceasefire was due to come into effect at midnight local time the same day.
Islamabad, Dec 29 : Pakistan on Thursday said it wanted to "amicably" resolve all outstanding issues with India, including those related to the Indus Waters Treaty.

Radio Pakistan quoted Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria saying during his weekly media briefing that the government was assessing "India's activities" within the framework of the water sharing agreement between the two countries.

Zakaria said the treaty didn't allow unilateral abrogation of the agreement and "Pakistan is keeping an eye on the evolving situation and would follow its strategy in case of any violation".

"There is an arbitration mechanism to resolve the dispute regarding implementation of the treaty and many IWT disputes were resolved amicably in the past," the state-run radio quoted Zakaria as saying.

"Pakistan is pursuing the policy of peaceful neighbourhood."

The IWT was signed in 1960 to allocate the three eastern rivers of the Indus basin -- the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej -- to India, while 80 per cent waters of the three western ones -- the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab -- were allotted to Pakistan.

India has recently said it would fully utilise its 20 per cent share of the Indus waters and that the proposed water projects would not be in violation of the treaty. Pakistan has disputed India's contention and sought a World Bank intervention.

Zakaria said said the Kashmir dispute was a "bone of contention between Pakistan and India" and urged the international community to "play its role" in resolving the issue.
Kolkata, Dec 29 : The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) on Thursday said that it has awarded the contract for constructing a Rs 517 crore multi-modal terminal at West Bengal's Haldia as a part of development of National Waterway-1 on the Ganga to infrastructure firm ITD Cementation Ltd.

The terminal is to be completed by August 2019, the IWAI said.

As much as 7.95 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of cargo traffic at the Haldia terminal is expected to be handled by 2020. The cargo projection for 2025 is 15.59 mtpa, growing up to 24.04 mtpa in 2045, it said.

"The Rs 517 crore inland water transport terminal at Haldia, with rail and road interconnectivity, is one of the three multi-modal terminals to come up on river Ganga under the Jal Marg Vikas Project (JMVP)," said IWAI Chairman Amitabh Verma.

The terminal will be used to transport coal, fly ash, chemicals, petroleum and gas, construction materials, fertilisers and edible items.

"Six bids were received from major infrastructure companies and following a rigorous evaluation process, ITD Cementation Ltd was awarded the contract," the authority said.

The contract for multi-modal terminals at Varanasi at Rs 170 crore and Sahibganj in Jharkhand at Rs 280 crore were awarded earlier this year and construction work has started at both the locations.

In November, the authority awarded Rs 359 crore contract for construction of a modern navigation lock at Farakka in West Bengal.

The Haldia terminal that will be spread across 61 acres of land at the Haldia Dock Complex will have facilities including berthing space for four vessels, stockyard for storing, belt conveyor system with fixed hoppers, barge loader, shore protection works, roads, ramps and parking area, and other terminal buildings.

The government is developing the National Waterway-1 under the Jal Marg Vikas Project, with technical and financial assistance of the World Bank at an estimated cost of Rs 5,369 crore.

The project would enable commercial navigation of vessels with capacity of 1500-2,000 tonnes.
Unlike in the rest of the world, December is a sad month for Pakistan. It marks the anniversaries of two of our most prominent victims of terrorism.

Last week, we mourned the death of my lion-hearted colleague Bashir Ahmed Bilour. A suicide bomber killed him on December 22, 2012, shortly after attending a party meeting -- a staple of Pakistani political culture. Bilour never gave up mingling with ordinary people despite years of threats and failed assassination attempts.

As the world prepares to welcome the new year, we remember the cruel murder of our former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27. She was killed amid a crowd of cheering supporters nine years ago.

Her murder is yet to be resolved.

Bhutto and Bilour are among more than 60,000 Pakistani victims of terrorist violence since 2003. Their suffering and the injustices that millions of Pakistanis have endured speak volumes of the failures, hypocrisy, and double-dealings of the state institutions responsible for counterterrorism in the country.

Foremost among these is the failure of the countrys security institutions to put the lives and well-being of Pakistanis before any perceived and often wrong notions and paradigms of security. It is no secret that since the 1970s, Pakistan has recruited, trained, and empowered the greatest number of jihadists anywhere in the world to undermine its enemies and secure a stable future. But tens of thousands of Pakistanis paid with their lives when many, if not all, of these zealots turned against their erstwhile allies and masters in Islamabad.

Despites the toll Pakistanis paid, terrorist networks are still considered strategic assets and used as instruments of policy in both internal and external affairs. The countrys civil and military leadership often make pious anti-terrorism noises -- perhaps to cover their tracks, deflect attention, or absolve themselves of the bloodshed that has defined recent Pakistani history.

Their failure, however, is institutional and systematic. While the world focused on Pakistan and Afghanistan as the locus of contemporary terrorism after the 9/11 attacks, Islamabad squandered years by denying the nature and scope of the terror problem it faced. Even when it grudgingly came to concede the existence of the problem, it failed to muster the political will to eliminate the threat all together.

Former military dictator General Pervez Musharrafs mantra of enlightened moderation and the current governments National Action Plan (NAP) proved to be camouflage for the policy of double-dealing. At most, Pakistan eliminated the bad terrorists responsible for attacks in the country but is still tolerant of the good terrorists who often target neighboring Afghanistan and India.

Fortunately, all is not lost in the complicated struggle that more than 190 million Pakistanis must wage to secure a terror-free tomorrow. I agree with a recent judicial report on one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in the country. Justice Qazi Faez Isas objective 110-page report on the killing of 75 people, mostly lawyers, nailed it. A generation of attorneys was killed in the suicide attack on August 8 inside a hospital in Quetta, capital of southwestern Balochistan Province.

Isa notes that Islamabad doesnt need to reinvent the wheel. The solution to the menace of extremism and terrorism is straightforward. Abide by the laws, he recommends. But as he rightly notes, It is an abomination to have laws and not enforce them.

Islamabad must now enforce the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), overhaul the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA), and implement various provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code. It must also implement all 20 provisions of the NAP, which is only possible if Pakistan remains a representative democracy under the current constitution.

The entire Pakistani political and military leadership united behind NAP after nearly 150 students and teachers were killed in a school massacre by terrorists in December 2014. But Islamabad has even failed to implement a complete ban on militant factions, which had topped the NAP agenda.

Among the range of legislative and administrative measures aimed at curbing terrorism, only the creation of military courts was fully implemented. Reforms in religious schools, preventing banned organizations from opening shops under new names, mainstreaming the northeastern tribal areas, and security sweeps against militants in the eastern province of Punjab were put on the backburner. It is worth noting that the federal government initially agreed to parliamentary oversight in implementing the plan. But it later backtracked -- perhaps as an indication of its limitations and covert designs.

NACTA is a good example of how serious Pakistani civilian and military leaders are about uprooting terrorism. This organization, mandated to play a pivotal counterterrorism role, has been robbed of that mandate by the arrogance of the Interior Ministry and intelligence agencies. NACTA's calls for cooperation and coordination among various government agencies have fallen on deaf ears.

It is not surprising that in an atmosphere of uncertainty, suspicion, and mistrust, Islamabad has failed to formulate a counter narrative to extremism and terrorism. Many religious schools remain unregistered and unreformed. They play a major role in first radicalizing and then pushing young recruits toward terrorism through their syllabus, which is rife with sectarian hatred. Perhaps Islamabad lacks the political will to combat terrorism because such measures will unseat the good terrorists -- militant groups that mostly fight in Afghanistan or launch attacks in India.

Pakistan can open a new chapter in its antiterrorism struggle by probing major recent terrorist incidents in an open, transparent, and comprehensive judicial inquiry. Its findings and abiding recommendations will end the current games being played in the name of countering terrorism and provide a road map for an effective and meaningful war on terrorism.

Politician and public intellectual Afrasiab Khattak is a former member of the Senate, the upper house of Pakistani parliament. He also led the nongovernmental Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. These views are the author's alone and do not represent those of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

as/fg
Ankara, Dec 29 : A prominent Turkish journalist was detained on Thursday after he tweeted against the government.

Ahmet Sik also confirmed his detention on his Twitter account, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

"I am being detained. I will be taken to the prosecutor's office regarding a tweet," he tweeted.

Meanwhile, Baris Yarkadas, Republican People's Party (CHP) Istanbul deputy and a member of the party's media commission, said on Twitter that Sik had told him he was being accused of terror propaganda.

Sik is one of the country's best known investigative journalists and was jailed in 2011 for publishing a book critical of cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the Turkish government accuses of orchestrating the failed coup in July, Efe news reported.

Gulen and his followers, who had prominent positions in the judiciary, police and army, were close allies of the ruling Justice and Development Party in Turkey until a power struggle erupted in 2013.

A total of 128 journalists are currently jailed or remanded in Turkey, almost half of them accused of belonging to the media empire created by Gulen.

Turkey is the country with the largest number of journalists arrested worldwide, according to NGO Reporters Without Borders.
New Delhi, Dec 29 : Set to assume office as Delhi's Lieutenant Governor on Saturday, former bureaucrat Anil Baijal faces a tough task ahead of him to create a balance between the city's elected government and the central government he represents, experts feel.

The enormity of the challenge ahead of Baijal could be gauged from the fact that even before he assumes office, the Congress is already putting pressure on him to release the Shunglu Committee report that reportedly slams the Arvind Kejriwal government for its alleged irregularities.

On the other hand, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government has expressed that Baijal, unlike his predecessor Najeeb Jung, will clear several of its development projects which have been stuck for a while.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), meanwhile, wants Baijal to follow in Jung's footsteps and act within the "consitutional guidelines".

The Delhi government has been at loggerheads with the Lt. Governor ever since AAP came to power in February 2015.

The tussle saw several ugly spats between Jung and Chief Minister Kejriwal, with the former ordering a probe into several decisions taken by the Delhi government and Kejriwal comparing Jung to Hitler.

The Delhi High Court on August 4 ruled in the favour of the Lt Governor recognising him as the administrative head of the national capital, prompting Delhi government to move Supreme Court.

Former Lok Sabha Secretary General P.D.T. Achary told IANS that till the apex court gives its final verdict, it is for the new Lt Governor to harmonise the situation by sitting with the Chief Minister and spelling out areas where the elected government can take final decisions and where the Lt Governor will do so.

"The High Court has given him (Lt Governor) all the powers. Now it is for him to decide the kind of relation he wants to have with the elected government and how he can create a balance between the state government and the central government," Achary said.

"If he thinks that he should use all the powers vested in him by the High Court instead of discussing with the state government while taking decisions, then the conflict won't subside," he added while hoping for the Supreme Court to settle the matter once and for all.

Constitutional expert and former Lok Sabha Secretary General Subhash C. Kashyap said that it is important for Baijal and Kejriwal to act in "cooperation" instead of "confrontation".

"Though High Court had given primacy to Lt Governor in Delhi's administrative affairs but there is an elected government too so it will be a challenge for Baijal to strike a rapport with the government," Kashyap told IANS.

"Both will have to come together for the benefit of Delhi. Lt Governor can try to accomodate the wishes of the elected government within the limits of the law and constitution," he added.

Meanwhile, Delhi Tourism and Culture Minister Kapil Mishra welcomed Baijal's appointment and said he was hopeful of cooperation from him.

"I welcome his appointment. I am hopeful that the new Lt Governor will clear several development projects of the government which have been stopped. Hopefully the blockade will end now," Mishra told IANS.

Several decisions of the Delhi government were stalled after Jung set up Shunglu Committee to probe over 400 files related to various decisions taken by the Delhi government since coming to power.

The probe panel was set up after the Delhi High Court recognised Lt. Governor as the administrative head of the Delhi government.

Hours after Baijal's appointment was confirmed by President Pranab Mukherjee, BJP secretary R.P. Singh said: "The fight between former Najeeb Jung and the AAP government was not personal. He only followed constitutional steps which were opposed by the Delhi government. We hope that being a senior bureaucrat, Baijal too will follow the constitutional guidelines."

Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken hoped that Baijal would be "impartial in his dealings" and will release the Shunglu Committee report "soon after taking over".

(Vishav and Ashish Mishra can be contacted at vishav@ians.in and ashish.m@ians.in)
Patna, Dec 29 : Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama offered prayers at the Buddhist holy shrine of Bodh Gaya on Thursday, a day after he arrived there to attend the Kalachakra puja in early January, officials said.

"The Dalai Lama offered prayers at the 1,500-year-old Mahabodhi Temple," said an official of the Kalchakra arrangement committee at Bodh Gaya, about 110 km from Patna.

The spiritual guru reiterated that India is his 'guru' and he is proud to stay in the country -- the "land of religions".

According to police officials in Bodh Gaya, the Dalai Lama will inaugurate the 34th Kalachakra puja on January 2.

Officials said foolproof security has been arranged for the Dalai Lama at Bodh Gaya as he faces a serious threat to his life.

Nearly two lakh devotees from all over the world are likely to attend the 10-day-long puja to hear a discourse by the Dalai Lama. Thousands of Tibetans have already arrived at Bodh Gaya.

He arrived in Patna on Wednesday and visited Budha Smriti Park along with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and participated in a tree plantation drive.

The Dalai Lama has been living in India in self-imposed exile since 1959 when he fled his homeland after Chinese Communist troops took over Tibet.
New Delhi, Dec 29 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to address the nation on New Year's Eve, informed sources said on Thursday.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to address the nation before the dawn of the New Year. The address is likely at 7.30 p.m. on December 31," the sources said.

Modi last addressed the nation on November 8, when he announced demonetisation of the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.

The Prime Minister may speak on demonetisation in his December 31 address, as the 50-day period sought by him to ease out cash crunch situation across the country gets over on December 30.

After demonetisation, Modi had said: "... help me for 50 days and I will give you the India you desired".

Opposition parties have attacked the government over the implementation of the demonetisation decision, with a few choosing to oppose it altogether.

The winter session of Parliament from November 16 to December 16 was almost a washout over the issue, as the opposition demanded a debate along with voting in the Lok Sabha and the Prime Minister's presence in the Rajya Sabha during the discussion.

The demonetisation debate was taken up in the upper house, but could not be concluded, while in the Lok Sabha, only A.P. Jithender Reddy laid a statement on the table of the house on the debate initiated under Rule 193, which is for a short duration discussion.

Reddy was not allowed to speak in the Lok Sabha amid a ruckus by other opposition parties, prominently the Trinamool Congress and the Congress.

While the Prime Minister did not speak in Parliament, he addressed more than a dozen rallies where he spoke on the benefits of demonetisation, promising to rid the country of black money.

Meanwhile, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, who too said he was not allowed to speak in Parliament, also took to public rallies to oppose the government on demonetisation.

In his national radio address 'Mann ki Baat' on December 25, the Prime Minister spoke extensively on demonetisation and encouraged "cashless transactions".
Ankara, Dec 29 : Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticised its Nato allies on Thursday, particularly the US, for not supporting Ankara's struggle against the Islamic State in Syria.

Erdogan accused the US of supplying weapons to Kurdish fighters in Syria.

"NATO allies must stand by their partner Turkey in Syria, not the terrorist groups," said the Turkish President, referring to the People's Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Xinhua reported.

"You sent arms to terrorist organisations, then said 'we sent ammunition, not arms,'" Erdogan said. "We're not buying it, nor accepting it."

"Despite our NATO alliance, you support terrorist organisations, instead of us," the Turkish president said. "Are the terrorist organisations your partners in NATO?"

"If we are NATO strategic partners, then you should support us," Erdogan said, addressing the US administration.

"Terrorist organisations will eventually attack nations supporting them too," he warned.
London, Dec 29 : Sikh campaigners have urged the British government to release the secret files said to hold details of its involvement in Operation Blue Star conducted by the Indian Army in 1984 to evict heavily-armed militants holed up in Amritsar's Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest shrine, a media report said.

A report in the Guardian on Thursday quoted members of the Sikh Federation as saying that the documents will point to greater cooperation between the British and Indian governments than previously acknowledged in the June 1-7 operation to establish control over the shrine and and remove militant religious leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed followers from the buildings in the complex.

Nearly 500 people, including civilians, were killed in the operation, official estimates say.

The Federation sought greater transparency over Britain's involvement in the operation against the Sikh militants, who were seeking a separate homeland.

"The public has a right to know the truth about what happened 30 years ago. We believe these files are being held back - not for security reasons but for political reasons that would prove embarrassing to the Conservative Party, since it was Margaret Thatcher and her discussions with the Indian regime (that led to Britain's cooperation)," the Guardian quoted Davinder Singh of the Sikh Federation as saying.

Whitehall correspondence released in 2014 said that a British SAS officer had been asked to plan the operation, which then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi approved, one letter said.

But an inquiry ordered by former British David Cameron found no evidence of British involvement in the operation.

The campaigners, however, believe the closed files will shed more light on the extent of Britain's involvement.

One of the four files relates to "Britain/India relations, situation in Punjab, activities of Sikh extremists", as well as a visit to Britain by Rajiv Gandhi, who took office after his mother, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards in October 1984 in retaliation for the Amritsar attack.

Another file covers meetings between Margaret Thatcher and an aide to Indira Gandhi, as well as the latter's assassination and Thatcher's visit to India to attend her funeral. The final document is entitled simply: "India: Political".

Some of the information has already been released to the National Archives, while other portions have been withheld from the public.

"The first-tier tribunal will consider this case in the new year and it would be inappropriate to comment any further," the Guardian quoted a Cabinet Office spokesperson as saying.
Washington, Dec 29 : Google is refusing to censor the rants of Al Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who reportedly influenced the attackers who committed the 7/7 London bombings.

Dubbed the "pied piper of Jihad," al-Awlaki's hateful teachings were, according to RT online, easily searchable using Google's enhanced search function and are believed to have inspired jihadist terrorists and radicalised many more.

When users search al-Awlaki's name, Google's autocomplete function - which uses algorithms based on what others have searched before - suggests they view his "quotes" and "lectures," a media report said.

An easily found downloadable PDF urges: "Martyrdom operations; we must refrain from calling it what the West labels it, 'suicide bombings,' since suicide is haram in Islam; and shahada [martyrdom] is not suicide."

The top hit for "Anwar al-Awlaki quotes" was a website that includes comments from the preacher such as: "Jihad is still flourishing like a blessed tree sprouting through an earth of waste and pollution."

Al-Awlaki, who is an American and Yemeni imam who was implicated in the planning of several Al Qaeda attacks, lived in London for 18 months before moving to Yemen in 2004, where he was a leader of the group.

He was killed in an American drone strike in 2011, but lives on in many YouTube videos.

The prompting of these extra search terms has been described as "incredibly dangerous" by terrorism experts.

Julie Shain of the Counter Extremism Project told the Times: "This incentivizes people to search for these things and suggests it's normal to do so.

"In combination with the thousands of videos and pages calling for attacks on the West, it's incredibly dangerous."

Google recently changed its algorithms to prevent autocomplete suggesting anti-Semitic and misogynist searches. The company has also moved to prevent white supremacist and Holocaust denial websites from appearing in high or top results for certain searches.

Google's director, Matt Brittin, told Radio 4's Today programme the company works "very hard" to remove hateful and illegal content, but said autocomplete does save people time.

"It's algorithmic, and I think people understand that these are suggestions based on what other people are searching for.

"So we can always improve that and we work hard to do that, but I think people are smart and they realize that not everything you find on the internet is accurate and there's a range of opinions there.

A YouTube spokesman said: "YouTube has clear policies prohibiting content intending to incite violence and we quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users."
Geneva, Dec 30 : UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura welcomed the announcement of a nationwide ceasefire between the Syrian government and the country's armed opposition groups, which is to come into effect on Friday.

The special envoy on Thursday, through a statement issued by his spokesperson, noted that a comprehensive cessation of hostilities remains a "cornerstone" for the peace process in the war-torn country, Xinhua news reports.

He wished that the implementation of the agreement will save civilian lives, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance across Syria, and pave the way for productive talks in the Kazakhstan's capital city Astana.

"These developments should contribute to inclusive and productive intra-Syrian negotiations to be convened under UN auspices on February 8 of 2017," Mistura added.

The Syrian government and the core groups of the so-called moderate opposition reached a ceasefire agreement and expressed their readiness to start intra-Syrian talks on Thursday. The Syrian army then declared that a nationwide cessation of hostilities will go into effect as of midnight Friday.
Moscow, Dec 30 : Moscow criticized the cartoons published by French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo mocking the victims of the Russian military plane which crashed on Sunday with 92 passengers and crew on board.

Russian Deputy Speaker of the Duma Irina Yarovaya said the cartoons violate the law and are against human morals, Efe news agency reported.

"This is extremism that has nothing to do with journalism and creativity," Yarovaya added.

Russian Defence Ministry's spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov slammed the cartoons saying "If such, I dare say, 'artistry' is the real manifestation of 'Western values', then those who hold and support them are doomed."

The crashed plane had Russian personnel, nine journalists and 64 members of the Alexandrov military choir, who were on their way to Syria to celebrate the New Year at Hmeimim airbase, where Russia has deployed its warplanes.
Congress must stop Big Pharma predators from ripping off American consumers by acting like hedge funds, buying up decades-old, off-patent drugs and jacking up prices on long-standing gold standard prescription medications, a Senate committee has recommended after a bipartisan industry investigation.

The Senate Special Committee on Aging, chaired by Maine Republican Susan M. Collins and with ranking member Claire McCaskill, the Democrat from Missouri, (both seen in photo above) ended 2016 by issuing its scathing critique of companies like Valeant, Turing Pharmaceuticals, Retrophin, and Rodelis Therapeutics. Those companies and their ilk buy out other firms to control drugs long on the market to treat conditions like: parasites that afflict HIV-AIDS patients, kidney stones in those with a rare disease, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and heart and other medications for those with an uncommon inherited ailment. As soon as they seize control from others, who often had borne the big costs to research and develop drugs for which patents had expired, Valeant, Turing, Retophin, and Rodelis sent the medications cost through the roof.

After examining their practices for a year and hearing from their sometimes smirking and resistant executives (notably the smug pharma bro, aka Turings Martin Shkreli), senators described their skyrocketing product pricing with words like: egregious, predatory, and immoral. As USA Today bluntly described the senators findings with its story headline: Senate report shows Martin Shkreli is just as bad as you think he is.

The committee on aging said Congress should enact legislation to speed to market lower-cost generic alternatives to off-patent prescription medications, including by providing expedited review to such alternative drugs where there arent competitors to pricey brands. Lawmakers should bar Big Pharma from exploiting existing laws to keep generic makers from getting samples to prove their medications work as well existing productslarge drug companies have claimed this creates safety issues and has refused to cooperate. Senators also raised concerns about Big Pharmas so-called consumer assistance programs. These efforts, including the issue of discount vouchers, actually steer patients to expensive products, increase companies business, and undercut valid complaints about unfair pricing, committee members said.

The committee also said regulators should consider select situations in which patients, doctors, and hospitals could import off-patent prescription medications when their prices soar and they become less available. Although millions of cost-conscious Americans at some risk buy their prescriptions abroad or through international online pharmacies, Congress long has resisted allowing broad importation of prescription medications. The drugs often are made to high U.S. standards but are sold abroad at much lower pricespartly because governments of other nations negotiate pricing with drug makers and wont allow the excruciating charges that Americans bear because Big Pharma says it must recoup its R&D costs for drugs. The committee on aging said any imported drugs should come from nations with proven safety and quality measures.

These recommendations all sound to me like a good start, though Ill continue to insist that Congress keep Big Pharma and its regulators, especially the federal Food and Drug Administration, in the glare of adverse public opinion over issues including quality, safety, affordability, and access. Drug prices arent just soaring for products like the much publicized off-patent meds, including the EpiPen. As Ive written, cancer drugs, especially those tied to innovative immunotherapies, are carrying jaw-dropping prices, some hitting more than $250,000 a year. An anti-viral that attacks Hepatitis C so effectively that it is described as a virtual cure for patients is creating huge pain for states that try to pay for the tens of thousands of dollar a year treatments for the many poorer citizens who cant afford but could benefit from it.

But there are now so many hands in the Big Pharma money pot, with each adding costs at every step of the way, that individual patient-consumers, much less powerful hospitals, are reeling to keep up with soaring drug prices. It also is distressing to know that, even with generic drugs, the long-promised lower-cost option, there is a widening scandal about price fixing. Although Ive written that there are steps individuals can take to be smarter about prescription drugs and their costs, theres no escaping that a huge driver of the overall rise in health care expense in this country can be attributed to soaring drug costs. Were all mad as heck about this. Lets see whether 2017, no matter the political party in power, turns that anger into productive actions that benefit our health.
Serbian police say a car carrying at least 12 migrants crashed on a highway, killing two Afghan nationals and injuring 10 other passengers, including five children.

Police said the suspected people smuggler who was driving the car fled the scene of the crash.

It occurred early on December 29 near the town of Nis in central Serbia, on a highway that links Bulgaria and Greece to northern and western Europe.

The car hit a protective barrier on the highway, police said in a statement.

State TV cited doctors at an emergency hospital in Nis as saying that many of the injuries were grave and that one victim had to have both legs amputated.

The patients have "extremely severe head and limb injuries. ... We are doing everything we can to save their lives," doctor Miodrag Lazic told state boadcaster RTS.

Thousands of migrants are stranded in Serbia looking for ways to reach wealthier Western European countries, which have sought to curb the influx.

Based on reporting by AFP and AP
"We are elated to be a part of this marketing partnership, said Larry Lee of the Carolina Clash.

RacingJunk.com, the world's largest online motorsports marketplace, is pleased to announce that it has been named the Official Classifieds of the Carolina Clash Super Late Model Series. This partnership will help to increase awareness of events in the racing series, and will also help to increase brand recognition for RacingJunk.com among the series fans and drivers.

RacingJunk.com is a subsidiary of MotorHeadMedia.com. With over 850,000 registered members, the website connects to more than 2.0 million buyers and sellers every month, generating 30 million+ page views.

The Carolina Clash dirt track series was founded in 2000. It is a touring series, with races all over the southeast in states like Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and the Carolinas. The racing season spans from March to the end of October.

Jim Sweener, Director of Sales for RacingJunk, said, "The Carolina Clash series is an exciting addition to our partnership network. Were honored to be a partner and know the classifieds on RacingJunk.com will be a valuable resource to all the racers and fans involved with this series."

"We are elated to be a part of this marketing partnership, said Larry Lee of the Carolina Clash. We at the Carolina Clash know how important our racers are and how tight their dollars can be squeezed. This site provides a superb platform to buy and sell used racing parts and supplies at a price our racers can afford. We look forward to working with the great team at Motorhead Media and RacingJunk.com for years to come."

For more information on Carolina Clash, visit their website at http://www.carolinaclash.com. For more information on RacingJunk.com, go to http://www.racingjunk.com.
Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert, owner and founding attorney of The Gore Law Firm, has been recognized by Georgia Trend Magazine as Legal Elite in Personal Injury Law.

Each year, Georgia Trend invites all Georgia lawyers to submit online nominations for those they consider the best in their field. Respondents cannot vote for themselves, and places on the list cannot be purchased. The honorees are determined by lawyers votes only. This years group of Legal Elite represent close to 300 different law firms, in more than 30 Georgia cities, in 14 different categories of law.

Jennifer says she is honored to be included in this esteemed group: Thank you to all my colleagues who nominated and voted for me to be recognized by Georgia Trend Magazine as Legal Elite 2016 in Personal Injury Law! I am grateful for my team in their hard work, striving to provide clients an excellent experience. I am grateful for our clients, who place their trust in our firm.

Georgia Trend is Georgias only statewide business publication. For more than 30 years, the award-winning magazine has presented a balanced analysis of business and political trends around Georgia. The monthly magazine boasts more than 50,000 subscribers. For the full Legal Elite list: http://www.georgiatrend.com.

About Attorney Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert:

Jennifer Gore-Cuthbert is committed to building a close working relationship with her clients to provide quality, compassionate and efficient legal representation. Jennifer works to move injury cases, wrongful death claims, property damage and diminished value cases to settlement or trial as quickly as possible without sacrificing results. She is also particularly attentive to the stress that being injured or in a collision can have on a persons overall life. Prior to working in this field, Jennifer was injured in a serious accident herself and brings this unique perspective to all her cases.

About The Gore Law Firm:

The Gore Law Firm believes that the victims of serious accidents deserve compensation for their injuries. They should not have to deal with uncooperative insurance companies and get the runaround while trying to recover physically, financially, and emotionally. The Gore Law Firm represents victims of auto collision, motorcycle collisions, truck collision, victims hit by drunk drivers, those injured in a slip-and-fall, as well as wrongful death cases. http://gorelawatlanta.com/
Advocate Health Care is pleased to announce the appointment of Ibe Mbanu, MD as senior medical director for Advocate Operating System (AOS) and Advocate Medical Group (AMG) Ambulatory and Hospitalist services.

Dr. Mbanu has served as a physician executive in various leadership positions with a focus on the delivery of services along the care continuum. He has also maintained clinical practice for over a decade.

In this role, Dr. Mbanu will leverage his clinical expertise and experience in medical management to optimize quality, safety and the patient experience for the medical group. As senior medical director for AOS, he will work closely with site and system leadership to identify operational opportunities; thus providing strategic direction and management of the operational functions through the AOS team.

Dr. Mbanu is a passionate physician and executive with extensive experience and a proven track record of success, said William Santulli, executive vice president/chief operating officer for Advocate Health Care.

Prior to joining Advocate, Dr. Mbanu served in a dual capacity as chief of the adult hospitalist department and director of medical affairs for St. Marys Hospital, flagship facility for Bon Secours Health System in Marriottsville, Md. He has also served as board director and executive for various medical societies and state organizations.

Dr. Mbanu obtained his Lean-Six Sigma Green Belt certification, and subsequently served as project manager for the creation of a hospitalist-led intermediate medical critical care unit and as project management advisor for the clinical observation unit at St. Marys Hospital in Richmond, Va.

Dr. Mbanu is dual-board certified in internal medicine and occupational medicine. He received his medical degree from Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, Mich. and completed his fellowship training at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Mass. Dr. Mbanu received a masters in business administration from Yale University in New Haven, Conn. Additionally, he received a masters of public health from the University of Michigan.

For more information about Dr. Mbanu, connect via LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/IbeMbanuMD.
Breast milk helps establish a healthy gut microbiome, which is essential for lifelong health.

Praeclarus Press will host a webinar on January 19th with Dr. William Parker, entitled The Role of Breast Milk in the Biome of the Human Body. The ecosystem of the human body is comprised of microbes (bacteria, yeast, and viruses) and other organisms that are critical for health. Within the context of the body as an ecosystem, breast milk is critically important in establishing and maintaining healthy gut bacteria, which is essential in human health. Infant formulas can disrupt this delicate ecosystem, leading to health problems. Dr. Parker will describe recent research that explores the advantages of breast milk, and the shortcomings of infant formula, for the ecosystem of the human body.

Dr. William Parker has worked on the ecosystem of the human body at Duke University for more than 20 years, publishing more than 100 peer reviewed scientific articles during that time. He is most well-known for discovering the function of the human appendix as a safe-house for beneficial bacteria, answering a 400-year old question first posed by Leonardo da Vinci. His current work involves the study of how Western Society has modified the bodys ecosystem, leading to epidemics of neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., migraine headaches and anxiety disorders), heart disease, and a variety of other inflammatory-related illnesses.

The webinar is January 19, 1 p.m. EST. Participants can register on the Praeclarus Press website. Continuing education units have been applied for.

Praeclarus Press is a small press dedicated to women's health. Founded by health psychologist, Dr. Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, the mission of the press is to publish materials that change people's lives. Praeclarus Press is based in Amarillo, Texas.
Milgard volunteers

In the spirit of giving back locally, Milgard Windows & Doors provided gifts and holiday cheer to the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound for the 4th year in a row.

The Milgard Matching Gift/Community Action Team (MG/CAT) is passionate about many charitable projects in the Tacoma, Washington area. The volunteer program that began with Carol Milgard and her dedication to community service is still going strong today. This particular event started when the Al Davies branch of the Boys & Girls Clubs came to Milgard asking for help with gifts for kids who were not going to be receiving any at Christmas.

The initial commitment was for Milgard employees to buy gifts for the kids, wrap them, and then deliver them to the club for distribution. But, the MG/CAT team had other ideas. Four years later, the event has turned into not only a time to deliver gifts, but, also have fun with the kids through sports, crafts, a photo booth, and this year, even a video game truck.

I love being part of this event, said Tim Large, ERP core team member at Milgard, shown here with Santa (aka Fred Herzberg). Playing games with the kids, enjoying fellowship with the Milgard team and seeing the looks on everyones faces filled with joy makes all the planning and preparation worthwhile.

The mission of the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound is to enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens. Milgard helped lift the spirits of over 150 kids spreading kindness and making lasting memories that they can carry with them through their lives.

Words fail me. You have lead a team, more like an army, of dedicated, kind and compassionate colleagues to give our kids a wonderful holiday, said Teri Moore Vice President of Philanthropy for the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

About Milgard Windows & Doors Corporation

Milgard Windows & Doors, a Masco company based in Tacoma, Washington, offers a full line of vinyl, wood, fiberglass and aluminum windows and patio doors for builders, dealers and homeowners, all backed by a Full Lifetime Warranty, including parts and labor. The company has been recognized for manufacturing the nations highest quality vinyl windows eight times in a yearly survey sponsored by Hanley-Wood Inc., publishers of BUILDER Magazine. Milgard has approximately 3,800 dealer locations nationwide. For more information, visit milgard.com or call 1.800.MILGARD.

About Masco Corporation

Masco Corporation (NYSE: MAS), parent company of Milgard Windows & Doors, is a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of branded home improvement and building products. Our portfolio of industry-leading brands includes Behr paint; Delta and Hansgrohe faucets, bath and shower fixtures; KraftMaid and Merillat cabinets; Milgard windows and doors; and HotSpring spas. We leverage our powerful brands across product categories, sales channels and geographies to create value for our customers and shareholders. For more information about Masco Corporation, visit Masco.com.

About Boys & Girls Clubs of America

For more than 150 years, Boys & Girls Clubs of America has enabled young people most in need to achieve great futures as productive, caring, responsible citizens. Today, more than 4,200 Clubs serve nearly 4 million young people annually through Club membership and community outreach. They provide a safe place, caring adult mentors, fun, friendship, and high-impact youth development programs on a daily basis during critical non-school hours. Priority programs emphasize academic success, good character and citizenship, and healthy lifestyles.

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LTF 1713 Penta Dieboard Laser by AdamsTech We have been honored to have Kay Automotive as a partner since the early 2000s. Now, we are proud to provide this new Penta laser and second EasyBender, and to continue our close relationship.

AdamsTech announced today their installation of a Penta LTF-1713 dieboard laser at Kay Automotive Graphics, one of the industry leaders in creation and supply of distinctive automotive trim. Kay Automotive purchased the laser to augment their existing diemaking operations.

With over 40 years providing decals, badges, and other graphic products for the automotive industry, Kay has unique needs for steel rule diemaking. As an existing AdamsTech customer, having purchased their first EasyBender in 2002, Kay was aware of AdamsTechs strong reputation for service.

According to Mike Adams, CEO of AdamsTech, We have been honored to have Kay Automotive as a partner since the early 2000s. Now, we are proud to provide this new Penta laser and second EasyBender, and to continue our close relationship.

When evaluating dieboard laser systems, one of the major requirements that companies like Kay demand is fast, reliable service and support. Penta chose AdamsTech as their dieboard laser distributor in the Americas in part because of the service and support infrastructure AdamsTech brings to the table. With their headquarters, equipment showroom and parts inventory located in Boulder, CO, companies like Kay can expect a quick response when technical support is needed. With technicians based in regional service offices in New York, Missouri, and California, their coverage extends across all four North American time zones.

Committed to their Latin American customers as well, AdamsTech has a service office and showroom in Mexico City. They have fully-trained service technicians based in Mexico City and Brazil who facilitate support for their Central and South American customers.

More information on AdamsTech can be found at http://www.adamstech.com or by calling 303-798-7110.

About AdamsTech:

AdamsTech sells, supports and services automated machines for the steel rule die making and die cutting industry. Their equipment includes SDS EasyBender automated steel rule benders, Penta die board laser systems, and Delta routers, rubber cutters, and sample makers. AdamsTech is a full-service, turn-key supplier of innovative solutions dedicated to helping their customers maximize the productivity, quality, and profitability of their die making operations
Xcaret will continue with conservation programs for endangered species, Figueras said.

A species ravaged by its own environment has come full-circle. Because of environmental efforts led by the National Autonomous University of Mexico, non-profit organizations, state and federal authorities, and Xcaret Park, the Macaw is thriving once again.

In a little more than three years, the population of the Wild Scarlet Macaw in Mexico has nearly doubled, thanks to the birds reintroduction to the states of Chiapas and Veracruz.

Xcaret Wildlife Manager Rodolfo Raigoza Figueras said the reintroduction process began in 2013 in Palenque, Chiapas; a 2004 study by Eduardo Inigo-Elias showed the Scarlet Macaw population was approximately 250, Figueras said. The most recent reintroduction took place on August 10, 2016 in Nanciyaga, Veracruz when 23 individuals led the charge to increase the total number of Macaws to their original habitats.

Therefore, from 2013 to 2016, the population of this incredible bird, which was first recognized by the Pre-Hispanic cultures of Mesoamerica, increased by a whopping 82 percent, with a survival rate of 91 percent.

"This is considered a great success," Figueras said.

The Scarlet Macaw was nearly extinct because of poaching and habitat loss. The reintroduction program considers the genetic viability and optimal conditions for the growth and development of the specimens that were born in the Environmental Management Unit of Xcaret. Conservation efforts take place in the Natural Protected Area of Palenque, Chiapas, and in the region of Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz.

The dedication of the team of specialists from the Biology Institute of UNAM, coordinated by Dr. Patricia Escalante, has been tremendous. Additionally, the commitment of organizations such as "The Other Option," "Nanciyaga," the community of "Benito Juarez" in Veracruz, "Ecoparque Aluxes" in Palenque, Chiapas and Dr. Alejandro Estrada has led to exponential growth.

Xcaret will continue with conservation programs for endangered species, Figueras said.

About Xcaret:

Xcaret is one of Mexico's ecotourism destinations located on the shore of the Caribbean Sea. There are three Underground Rivers surrounded by magnificent natural scenery. The area also features amazing marine and land species, protected by Xcarets conservation programs. More than 300 performers portray the history, culture and folklore of Mexico. Xcaret Park was recognized as the Best International Theme Park and the Best Water Park in the world by US travel agents, in the 2016 Travvy Travel Awards.
After 25 years, Uzbekistan has elected its second president. Former Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyaev won the December 4 election easily, as expected, receiving nearly 90 percent of the vote.

Mirziyaevs December 14 inauguration officially marked the start of a new era for Uzbekistan, one without late President Islam Karimov, who died in office at the start of September after leading Uzbekistan for all its years as an independent country.

There are all sorts of predictions, and renewed hopes, for Uzbekistans future now that there is a new leader.

What should Mirziyaev change? What must he change to keep the country together or to move it forward? What changes has he already initiated and why?

These are some of the topics that were addressed in the latest Majlis podcast (listen below). But this one differed a bit. This Majlis podcast was an in-house talk for RFE/RL colleagues at our Prague headquarters.

Moderating the talk was Tom Kent, RFE/RLs president and formerly a longtime journalist at the Associated Press, including time as its Moscow bureau chief. Alisher Sidik, the director of RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, known locally as Ozodlik, was also on the panel, as was Noah Tucker, who now works for RFE/RL but has been well-known for years for his work on Central Asia, including heading the Registan website. I also sat in on the panel and spoke about the promising changes to Uzbekistans regional foreign policy since Mirziyaev took over.

Sidik provided a brief history of the means by which Mirziyaev became acting president, which included circumventing the constitution. He also talked about some of the moves Mirziyaev made in his three months as interim president: "Businesses were relieved of adverse pressure and bribe extortion [and] the law on protection of businesses was immediately approved."

And Sidik said that Mirziyaev appeared to be reaching out to the people: "[Mirziyaev] improved accountability by establishing a virtual hotline -- people can address their problems directly to the prime minister and hope that the problems [are] resolved."

One of Uzbekistans biggest problems is its economy. Reported figures, often backed by international financial organizations, paint a picture of a thriving economy. For 2016, the IMF predicts 6 percent GDP growth, while the Asian Development Bank forecasts 6.9 percent growth, and the Uzbek government says 7.8 percent.

Testimony from the ground suggests something different.

There are shortages of gasoline, despite the fact that Uzbekistan has oil and refineries. There are still power outages, and every winter dozens of villages, towns, and even parts of cities are suddenly cut off from natural-gas supplies. The black market rate for the U.S. dollar is more than twice the official rate.

Uzbekistans population is approaching 32 million, according to state statisticians. At least 2 million people from the eligible workforce -- possibly twice that number -- are migrant laborers, working mainly in Russia and Kazakhstan.

"Tashkent," Tucker recalled, "was once the location of most of the big international organizations [and] media organizations. Everything really happened in Tashkent, and it had enormous international investment from participation in the national economy throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s."

That has largely dried up, mainly due to the policies of Karimovs government and voracious elites.

"International investors dropped away, as more of them were expropriated of the investments that they made, as people were cut out of the country and it became increasingly unattractive for them to try to participate," Tucker said.

Uzbekistan became semi-isolationist. The country obstructed cargo transiting its territory en route to neighboring Central Asian states. It chose a few mainly East Asian countries as its trade partners and sources of investment.

Tucker suggested that the wealth that accumulated inside Uzbekistan during the 1990s and early 2000s has dwindled, and he argued that this will force Mirziyaevs government to change Uzbekistans economic and trade policies.

"The elites that are in power have divided up everything that they can. Theyve cut out as many of their competitors as they can," Tucker said. "Its no longer in their interests to live in an economy, in a political economy, thats as closed as this one has become."

Uzbekistans government has already stated it will move toward currency convertibility in 2017. The panel suggested that that will be a challenging process, particularly since powerful people are allegedly involved in the black-market currency exchanges.

The Majlis podcast also considered the possibilities for Russia. Moscow and Tashkent had tense relations for most of the Karimov years. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev attended Karimovs September 3 funeral in Samarkand. Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived a few days later on his way from a G20 summit in China. Mirziyaev said before his inauguration that his first foreign visit as Uzbekistans president will be to Russia.

Sidik mentioned that Russias LUKoil boosted its ties with Uzbekistan once Mirziyaev took over. So has Gazprom. Sidik said Mirziyaev has close contacts with Russia, and Uzbekistans population tends to view Russia positively.

Responding to a question about possible Russian interference in Uzbekistans succession process, Tucker said that appeared unlikely, but he added that the Kremlin seemed to want people to believe it had a hand in making Mirziyaev Uzbekistans second president.

A recurrent topic in the discussion was whether these early fair words and a few fair deeds denote a genuine change in policy.

Mirziyaev has released two aging political prisoners, but there is no indication that any of the thousands of other people seemingly imprisoned on dubious charges will be set free. In a bid to boost tourism, the government released a list of 27 countries whose tourists could travel to Uzbekistan without a visa.

But as Sidik pointed out, Mirziyaev has given no signals about his policies toward the independent media or the return of foreign NGOs to Uzbekistan, for example.

And domestic politics has not changed much under Mirziyaev so far. The use of forced labor in the cotton fields at harvest time continued again this season. There are still reports of security forces raiding flats, looking for Islamic extremists or sympathizers.

It took Islam Karimov 25 years to construct Uzbekistans current system, and Mirziyaev is a product of that system. Changing it will not be easy.

These issues and more were discussed during the podcast, and the panel took questions from an audience that included members of RFE/RL's other Central Asian services, as well from our Afghan and Iranian broadcasters.

Listen to or download the latest Majlis podcast above or subscribe to the Majlis podcast on iTunes.
Iowa's first labyrinth spillway The annual competition recognizes engineering projects that demonstrate an exceptional degree of innovation, complexity, achievement, and value.

Lake Delhi Dam received the top award, the Grand Conceptor, in the annual engineering excellence competition held by the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of Iowa. The annual competition recognizes engineering projects that demonstrate an exceptional degree of innovation, complexity, achievement, and value.

Designed by Stanley Consultants, the reconstructed dam features a labyrinth spillway, the first of its kind in Iowa and one of the largest in the Midwest. Rarely seen in the Midwest, the labyrinth design can pass high volumes of water across a short distance without using mechanical gates or electrical systems. The accordion shaped spillway makes it possible, tripling its capacity to pass water as compared to a conventional spillway design.

A community-wide celebration was held at Lake Delhi last summer to mark the dams completion and the lakes rebirth. It also marked the restoration of the small lakeside community. The event was held exactly six years from the devastating day when 12 inches of rain caused lake levels to raise 8.5 feet. The floodwaters overtopped and breached the earthen dam. In just a matter of hours the popular recreational lake had drained, and the regions economic engine was reduced to 450 acres of muck.

The community rallied, determined to rebuild the dam and restore the 9-mile-long lake, raising $1.7 million as seed money for the rebuilding. Lakefront property owners taxed themselves to the highest extent possible for a 20-year, $6 million dam reconstruction bond.

Rebuilding the dam met with opposition on multiple levels. Stanley Consultants, an Iowa-based engineering firm, played an essential role navigating the $13 million project through multiple roadblocks for the next six years. Completing the vast array of classification, permitting, and funding requirements took four years, followed by two years of construction.

During those six years the community of Delhi, pop. 470, and the entirety of Delaware County, felt the economic impact caused by the loss of the lake. Property tax revenue plummeted, property values plunged, construction around the lake slowed to a stop, and income streams for local businesses who depended on the lake traffic dried up. The recent reopening of the lake has reinvigorated the community. The lake is a beehive of recreational activity, construction has resumed, and local businesses are struggling to keep up with demand.

In October 2016, just weeks after the lake reopened, the dam was put to the test by the lakes fifth largest recorded flood. The automated gates performed flawlessly and the floodwater passed with no significant rise in the water level near the dam

#

Stanley Consultants provides program management, planning, engineering, environmental and construction services worldwide. Recognized for its commitment to client service and a passion to make a difference, Stanley Consultants brings global knowledge, experience and capabilities to serve clients in the energy, water, transportation and Federal markets. Since 1913, Stanley Consultants has successfully completed more than 25,000 engagements in all 50 states, U.S. territories, and in 110 countries. For more information on Stanley Consultants, please visit http://www.stanleyconsultants.com.
Drug Rehabilitation and Alcohol Treatment Center Staff from our Centres Trauma Program attended the annual forum for the Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research in November.

Sunshine Coast Health Centre (https://www.sunshinecoasthealthcentre.ca/), one of the top drug rehabilitation and alcohol treatment programs in British Columbia, Canada, is proud to announce that Centre staff attended the annual forum for the Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research (CIMVHR) November 21-23, 2016. The conference brings together healthcare providers that treat both the physical and psychological traumas experienced by veterans.

Staff from our Centres Trauma Program attended the annual forum for the Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research in November, explained Casey Jordan, Chief Marketing Officer. Staff members who attended last year found it a valuable experience, and were excited to attend again this year. Continuing education is critical for our staff to retain our commitment to being one of the best drug rehab and alcohol treatment programs in Canada.

The CIMVHR forum, now in its 7th year, was held in Vancouver, and this year had both the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria as Forum co-hosts. Over the course of three days it offered over 180 lectures by researchers from Canada, but also a large international presence with researchers from around the world presenting. The research showcased at this Forum is tremendously important to advancing the field of military, veteran and family health. It is invaluable in combining health research that covers not only the physical traumas experienced, but in addition the hidden psychological wounds that can lead to mental health issues such as depression and substance abuse.

CIMVHR provides professionals in the drug rehabilitation and alcohol treatment community with a venue to learn, network, and engage with those working to improve the health of military personnel, veterans and their families. Interested parties can learn more about CIMVHR at their website.

It should be noted that information about alcohol treatment programs at Sunshine Coast Health Centre can be found at https://www.sunshinecoasthealthcentre.ca/alcohol-treatment/, while information on drug rehab can be found at https://www.sunshinecoasthealthcentre.ca/drug-rehab/.

About Sunshine Coast Health Centre

Sunshine Coast Health Centre is a 36 bed drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility exclusively designed for men, officially opened on the 15th of March, 2014. The Centre has a philosophy of care that goes beyond just addiction to include personal transformation based on three key therapeutic principles: interpersonal relatedness, self definition (autonomy & competence), and intrinsic motivation. The Centre offers both drug rehabilitation and alcohol treatment near Vancouver, BC, but serving patients across Canada, particularly British Columbia and Alberta and cities such as Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer. Sunshine Coast Health Centre uses a form of drug rehabilitation based on the methodology of Viktor Frankl, namely 'Meaning Centered Therapy'.

Website. http://www.sunshinecoasthealthcentre.ca
Corporate Housing Long Beach CA Long Beach is one of our busy hubs for visiting executives, medical contractors and other out-of-town employees.

Key Housing, one of the top corporate housing services in Long Beach, California, is proud to announce a post concerning the value-add of extended stay apartments. Contracted employees or executives flying in to conduct business in Long Beach and nearby Southern California communities can cost companies thousands in hotel stays and miscellaneous expenses. Corporate housing can provide contracted employees with a fully-furnished apartment to help lower daily expenses and provide a more "at home" feel to their stay in the city.

Long Beach is one of our busy hubs for visiting executives, medical contractors and other out-of-town employees, explained Robert Lee, President of Key Housing. Many times, a business has come to us only after theyve had contractors stay at a hotel. The hotel may have seemed like a cheap idea at the time, but then the extra expenses arrive and CEOs realize little bills add up fast. In addition, the employees often actually prefer 'apartment style' living to the sterile and impersonal environment of a hotel.

Accordingly, the company has updated its listings for Long Beach, just in time for the post-Holiday rush as businesses seek out hard-to-find rentals in Los Angeles county. Interested parties can review the updated page at http://www.keyhousing.com/rightside.asp?location=Long%20Beach. Information about furnished short-term apartments and studio rentals for Long Beach and the surrounding area can be found. Many extended stay properties may include gourmet kitchens, gyms, outdoor barbecue, pools and concierge services. In addition, those interested in fun things to do and local attractions can visit the updated blog listings at http://blog.keyhousing.com/tag/long-beach-corporate-housing/.

Value-Add Extended Stay and the Best Deal in Corporate Housing for Long Beach, CA

Keeping company expenses in the black can be a top priority for a company CEO. Services offering extra benefits at a reasonable cost may be known as a value-add to corporate leaders. If part of a business model includes housing temporary employees, value-add solutions can be the key goal. Extended-stay hotels may seem like a smart idea, until the extra expenses begin to arrive. Daily charges such as laundry, parking fees and restaurant expenses can add up quickly. An employee could be spending more than what is normally spent at home. Long Beach corporate housing could be the cost-effective solution extended stay employees need.

Key Housing, a corporate housing service for Southern and Northern California locations, has just updated its Long Beach information in time for 2017. Extended stay apartments for temporary employees can offer cost-saving amenities that add up over time. A fully-functioning kitchen may encourage employees to stay in and cook rather than dine out. Easy access to laundry and gym facilities could also help cut down transportation and parking fees. Small daily expenses can add up to become budget-busting issues. Furnished apartments with full kitchens and other on-site conveniences can bring a great value-add to temporary corporate housing.

About Key Housing

Based in Folsom, California, Key Housing Connections Inc. specializes in corporate housing and corporate rentals in large cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles or San Jose as well as smaller cities like Fresno, San Diego and Sacramento. Whether the need if for a serviced apartment or a short term rental, corporate housing or short term apartments, just browse our listings to find the rental that fits ones short term corporate housing needs. We are competitive with extended stay hotels in cities such as Cupertino, Santa Clara or even Long Beach, and many nurses, interns and people seeking pet friendly corporate rentals or corporate relocation services depend on us for their furnished apartment or other temporary housing needs. Whether after Los Angeles corporate housing, short term rentals in San Francisco, or a serviced apartment in San Diego - we can aid the search for the right apartment in the Golden State. After all, we're among the top-rated short-term apartment listing service in places like Redwood City, Santa Monica, Newport Beach and just about every city in California. Whether it's serviced apartments or a furnished rental, just search, click or call today!

Key Housing

(800) 989-0410

http://www.keyhousing.com/
Businesses today understand that social media is vital to their success, yet many don't have the time, resources or expertise to be successful. With our new SocialMediaBuilder service, Porter Consulting can help.

Porter Consulting is now offering SocialMediaBuilder as part of their expertise in marketing and sales services. Located in the Silicon Valley, Porter Consulting provides technology companies with sales, corporate marketing and product marketing services. The SocialMediaBuilder service is geared for small to mid-sized companies in technology and other industries.

"When the Internet became popular twenty years ago, every business needed an online presence via the Web. Today, businesses understand that social media is also vital to their success, explained Brad Porter, principal of Porter Consulting. Yet, many businesses dont have the time, resources or know-how to implement a successful social media program. If not done well, it won't help your business--and even worse, it could actually hurt by creating an inconsistent social media presence that is not properly maintained.

Porter Consultings SocialMediaBuilder includes 5 key components:

1) Audit of current social media effectiveness (includes 1:1 time with social media expert and detailed report with specific recommendations for improvement)

2) Setup of up to 3 social media platforms (includes cleanup of existing presence to make you more efficient)

3) Management of complete social media presence for 3 months (includes multiple posts per week and blogging, working toward short and long term goals)

4) Measurement of results (includes an audit at the end of the 3-month period to evaluate performance, next steps and recommendations)

5) Strategy and training (includes once a month meetings to discuss strategy and approach; also includes a 90 minute training session at the end of month 3 to successfully hand off the program.)

Our goal is to help businesses use social media more effectively, concluded Porter. We believe that our clients can become more competitive and more successful by implementing a few easy to understand tips and techniques. And the benefits that can be achieved by an increased social media presence are huge.

To start off the New Year, SocialMediaBuilder is available for a limited time for $2,499 -- 50 percent off the regular price of the service.

About Porter Consulting

Founded in the Silicon Valley in 1997, Porter Consulting has grown to be a multi-national marketing and sales consulting firm. The firms large team of talented resources is ready to take on the most complex marketing projects. Expertise includes technical pre-sales support, collateral development, digital media creation, social media, program management and support. To deliver complete solutions, Porter Consulting also maintains a network of affiliate companies that include service delivery, training development, and technology implementation firms. Headquartered in Los Altos, Porter Consulting also has offices in Houston, Texas, Singapore and near Paris, France. http://www.porterconsulting.net
San Francisco Oral Surgeon If I see a patient with impacted wisdom teeth and theyve been suffering with it for some time, its a big concern.

One of San Franciscos top-rated oral surgeons, Dr. Alex Rabinovich is proud to announce a revised information page for wisdom teeth extraction just in time for 2017. San Francisco Bay Area locals suffering from impacted wisdom teeth may experience difficulty in chewing, and erupted wisdom teeth can also cause serious infections in the mouth if left unchecked. However, many patients put off the procedure until after the busy Holiday season comes to a close. In preparation for the January burst of interest in health-related activities, Dr. Rabinovich is announcing an updated page on wisdom teeth extraction.

If I see a patient with impacted wisdom teeth and theyve been suffering with it for some time, its a big concern, explained Dr. Alex Rabinovich, chief oral surgeon of SF Dental Implants. Erupted wisdom teeth can seriously affect a person's overall health and daily comfort. By updating our page, now, we are ready to provide information online in early 2017.

To review the updated web page please go to; http://www.oralsurgery-sf.com/wisdom-teeth/

Information regarding how an impacted wisdom tooth can cause problems in the mouth can be seen. Details about wisdom teeth extraction, chewing problems and infections from impacted wisdom teeth can also be evaluated. Note: persons interested in dental implants should visit http://www.sfdentalimplants.com/our-advantage/, which is Dr. Rabinovich's site specific to dental implants.

2017 New Years Goal: Wisdom Teeth Extraction from a Top San Francisco Oral Surgeon

San Francisco locals may have taken goal-setting into high-gear during the holiday season. Gift shopping and party planning could have been at the top of the checklist. Toward the end of December, many Bay Area residents could be looking ahead to New Years celebrations and creating resolutions for 2017. Self-improvement goals that can help locals live a happier more active life might be first on the list. Losing weight and eating healthier are two normally popular New Years resolutions, but one more important goal could be added; wisdom teeth extraction.

Dr. Alex Rabinovich, San Franciscos leading oral surgeon has recently updated the wisdom teeth extraction web page. Losing teeth may not appear to be a good New Years resolution at first, but if it means losing impacted wisdom teeth, it could be a good idea. Erupted wisdom teeth can cause pain, trouble chewing and possible infections. A professional oral surgeon skilled in wisdom teeth extraction can easily evaluate the damage being done. Losing weight and eating healthier can be constructive New Year plans. Removing impacted wisdom teeth can be the first step to a healthier 2017 for San Francisco residents.

About San Francisco Dental Implant Center

San Francisco Dental Implant Center, under the direction of Dr. Alex Rabinovich, a top-rated oral surgeon. Dr. Rabinovich focuses on the placement and restoration of dental implants, making it among the top-rated dental implant clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dr. Rabinovich is a Board Certified Oral Surgeon specializing in wisdom teeth extraction and dental implants. This additional training in maxillofacial surgery along with years of experience, sets Alex Rabinovich MD DDS apart from the growing number of general dentists offering dental implant treatments. San Francisco Dental Implant Center serves the San Francisco Bay Area including Palo Alto, San Mateo, Redwood City and Mountain View.

Contact:

San Francisco Dental Implant Center, Media Relations

Web. http://www.sfdentalimplants.com/

Email. visage.sanfran(at)gmail(dot)com

Tel. 415-817-9991
ST. ANSGAR | Necessity is the mother of invention, or so the saying goes, and that is never more precise than in rural Iowa where necessity has given birth to numerous businesses and manufacturing practices.

One such place is Wold Rim and Wheel, St. Ansgar, one of several stops in Mitchell County visited by Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey on Thursday, Dec. 29.

Northey, who is currently severing his third term as Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, has made it a point to visit every county, each year he has been in office. These tours have allowed him the unique opportunity of seeing what was going on in the state, how the agricultural industry was evolving and the progress being made in terms of integrating the usages of scientific and technological advances in preserving the natural resources of the state.

Also attending the tour of Wold Rim and Wheel was Senator-Elect District 26 Waylon Brown, newly-elected House District 51 representative Jane Bloomingdale, Northwood City Clerk Amber Julseth and Mitchell County Economic Development Commission Executive Director Brenda Dryer, who helped organize the tour.

Its about exposure, said Dryer. We want to use every opportunity we can to expose elected officials at the federal, state and local levels to our agricultural manufacturers and the businesses and markets they work in.

Secretary Northey travels all over the world and is able to share all of the meaningful things taking place in the state of Iowa with others involved in the agricultural industry.

Serving as a gas station in the 1930s, Wolds was expanded in the 1950s to include the servicing of tractor tires and the construction of custom rims to fit the different sizes of tires available for tractor usage. They would go on to extend their business to widening rims for combines and adding an entire product line of rims and wheels to fit the wide variety of machinery available in the agricultural market.

The tour included each part of the manufacturing process from the different stations involved in the shaping, welding, powder coating and finishing of the rims to discussions on which resources were fabricated in-house and which were outsourced.

Its fun to see these small towns industries like this, said Bloomingdale.

Ag is so different, said Northey. It is easy to look at a tractor and think all of them are the same. But what you dont see are the specific features or the needs of the farmer who will be using it. Little gems like this one let you see what is done to allow farmers to customize them to their needs.

In touring Iowas counties, Northey said he is able to witness first hand, the growth and change in the agricultural industry and draw inspiration from tours like this one; a helpful thing when sharing techniques and tips with those outside of Iowa.

You almost forget about all it takes to create jobs in communities and all the sophistication there is, let alone the variation that exists within the industry, said Northey. You get used to seeing walls with cars and trucks parked outside but it changes things when you get to go inside. It reminds you that someone has to make the stuff we use and organize the production.

It takes ingenuity and the hard work of a lot of people. Someone had to see a need and be willing to meet it, and thats whats happened here.

Wold Rim and Wheel sells products not just in Iowa and surrounding states, but in Canada as well.

And to think, said Northey, that it all started because someone wanted to help their neighbor put tractor tires on their tractor.

Following his stop in St. Ansgar, Northey traveled to Riceville were he toured Riverside Feed, CATapult  a business incubator in Riceville.
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Every week we close the print issue of PW with the Soapbox column, a venue that industry people have used this year to sound off on everything from Brexit to Amazon reader reviews to trying to find a literary agent, and more. Here are the ten most popular Soapbox columns from 2016.

10. How the Book Coverage Sausage Gets Made

"They say you dont want to know how sausage is made. Book coverage is like sausage in that way: better not to know exactly how the gatekeepers of mainstream media choose which books to crown as must-reads each seasonjust swallow it down with a cold beer and call it a night."

9. When a Bookstore is Also a Safe Haven

"This new world we find ourselves in isnt a known world. Even after we hear who the bombers or shooters are and what may have motivated them, there is so much left unexplained, so much at once terrifying and puzzling. Where better to go for answers, or, if not answers, shared bewilderment, than to an independent bookstore?"

8. Ever Try to Sell a Book? It's Not Easy

"As an independent book publisher for the past 24 years, Im often asked to participate in Small Business Saturday, that counterpart to Black Friday and Cyber Monday that encourages holiday shoppers to patronize small and local stores. When I agreed last year to set up at an author fair in a local shopping mall, it seemed like a good idea."

7. What Does Brexit Meat for Publishing?

"No doubt, there are a few people in the book world who voted to leave, but I dont know who they are. We are a broad-minded bunch, generally speaking. Books make us so. When we land in Beijing, Bologna, Frankfurt, Guadalajara, or Sharjah, we feel part of an international community. So what does Brexit mean for publishing?"

6. 10 (Practically) Cringe-Less Self-Promotion Ideas for Authors

"Ive made peace with self-promotion as a necessary affliction that perhaps cant be cured, but most certainly can be treated. When played right, self-promotion can have a resounding ROIReturn on Investmentespecially when guided by a few rules."

5. We Regret to Inform You

An author considers the rejection notice as fodder for humor.

4. 40 Reasons to Learn a Dead Language

"I began learning Latin six years ago, as I was approaching the age of 60. My baffled friends understood making the effort to learn a language that would facilitate foreign travelFrench, Italian, even Hindi. But Latin? No one anywhere speaks it, and its notoriously difficult. To my friends it seemed a lot of effort for something 'useless.' Which is part of why I wanted to learn it."

3. Why Most Amazon Reader Reviews are Worthless

"Ive been an agent for 40 years. Publishers may not like what Im about to say, but my observation is that most Amazon and Barnes & Noble reader reviews are either fraudulent or, at best, useless in assessing the true merit of any given title."

2. Trying to Find a Literary Agent is the Worst Thing Ever

"Anyone whos ever dated regularly, tried to score against LeBron James, or been a transplanted organ knows what its like to face rejection. But no one understands the pain of rejection better than a first-time novelist looking for an agent."

1. My Very Rough Two Weeks Working for Barnes & Noble

After a stint in her neighborhood chain bookstore, a publishing professional discovers that you cant always go home again.
DAVENPORT -- Fresh from winning a vacant state Senate seat on Tuesday, Iowa Rep. Jim Lykam said Wednesday he will resign his seat in the House on Monday, which will set the wheels in motion for yet another special election.

Lykam handily won the District 45 Senate seat Tuesday, defeating Republican Mike Gonzales, 73.2 percent to 25.3 percent, with Libertarian Severin Gilbert getting 1.5 percent of the vote, according to unofficial totals from the Scott County Auditor's Office.

The Scott County Board of Supervisors has scheduled a special meeting for Thursday to canvass the election.

Lykam will be sworn in as a senator on Jan. 9, he said.

Lykam's resignation will leave people in the 89th House District without representation in the upcoming session for days, if not a couple weeks or more. State law says that Gov. Terry Branstad must call for a special election at the "earliest practical time" but that there must be at least 18 days notice.

The election also must be held on a Tuesday. The new session will begin Jan. 9.

Ben Hammes, a spokesman for the governor, said Wednesday he is waiting on word of a resignation before setting a date in accordance with the law.

"As soon as we receive the resignation, well set the special election," he said.

Local party leaders, meanwhile, are preparing for yet more special nominating conventions. Democratic Chair Thom Hart and GOP Chair Judy Davidson said their parties had not set dates yet, but they would move quickly. There will be some lag time, however, because there must be 10 days public notice before conventions can be held, they said.

Depending on when a special election date is set, there could be limited time to compete for absentee ballots, which were pivotal in the state Senate race.

Scott County Auditor Roxanna Moritz said it took eight days to prepare ballots and program machinery for the state Senate race. If it takes that long in the House special election  again, depending on when a special election date is set  that could limit the amount of time to collect absentee ballots. Absentees made up roughly half of the votes cast in the Senate election, with Lykam gaining a solid 5-1 edge over Gonzales.

Monica Kurth, a longtime activist, has said she will seek the Democratic nomination for the House seat. Gonzales has said it's possible he might run for the Republican nomination.

Nominations are taken from the floor of the parties' conventions, so others could run, too.

Lykam has represented the area since 2003.
Celebrate early in Bettendorf

Ring in the new year 12 hours early Saturday at the Bettendorf Family Museum's Noon Year's Eve party.

Teens and adults get to count down to the new year, and this party offers the chance for kiddos and families to do the same.

Festivities include crafts, activities for the whole family, live music, and a countdown to noon with noisemakers, party hats, balloons and confetti.

The fun begins at 9 a.m. at the museum, 2900 Learning Campus Drive, Bettendorf. The party is free with admission, which is free for children under age 1 and Family Museum members, and $7 for everyone ages 2 to 59; $4 for adults ages 60 years and older, 1-year-old kids, and active military personnel, their spouse, and children residing in the household.

For more information, call 563-344-4106, or visit familymuseum.org.

Neon New Year

Grab your black-light party gear and ring in the New Year at Rock Island Brewing Company (RIBCO) with Have Your Cake and Earth Ascending.

The two bands will alternate sets beginning at 9 p.m.

Have Your Cake is a Cake tribute band comprised of local musicians from several other Quad-Cities area bands, including Ragaman. Since 2012, it has played the music of Cake throughout the Q-C and a handful of other Midwestern cities.

Earth Ascending is a Q-C progressive groove-rock band that formed in 2014, according to its Facebook page.

The show's event page on Facebook suggests to bring glowsticks and "trippy shirts ... for a full-out blast-off into the stratosphere of mind-bending, Earth-Ascending awesomeness."

Admission is $10 at the door. For more information, visit facebook.com/EarthAscending, facebook.com/HaveYourCakeBand or RIBCO.com.

First in, last out

For more than four decades, Saukenuk Paddlers Canoe and Kayak Club have opened and closed each year by paddling the Mississippi. Cheer them on Saturday and Sunday at 1 p.m. each day.

As the clock nears 1 p.m., groups of paddlers will gather with their canoes and kayaks at the Marquette Street boat ramp in Davenport to be some of the last folks in the Mississippi River in the current year, and some of the first folks in the water after the New Year.

Bundled up from head to toe, they will make their way to the water. In past years, they have put in their boats at the Marquette Street ramp, paddled to the Centennial Bridge and back, which is a roughly 30- to 45-minute trip.

Earlier this week, the National Weather Service forecast Saturday's and Sunday's temperatures to be in the mid- to upper-30s, which is fairly warm for the paddlers, as past paddles have been completed while temps were in the teens.

The event is free to attend for spectators. For more information about paddling events and to join the paddlers, visit saukenuk.org.

Talk, mediate, ring in 2017

The Lamrim Kadampa Buddhist Center in Davenport will host a free New Year's Eve celebration Saturday from 8 p.m. to midnight.

The event, New Year  New You, will feature a public talk with meditation from 8 to 9 p.m., a party from 9 to 11 p.m., and prayer and mantras from 11 p.m. to midnight at the center, 502 W. 3rd St., Davenport.

According to the center's website, meditateiniowa.org, the event will help attendees to start the year with determination to improve their minds.

"Learn how to find the happy, meaningful life longed for," the website states. "Connect with the pure potential that exists within your mind and become the person you wish to be: peaceful, happy, kinder, wiser, and more loving."

The event is open to the public, and registration is not required.

For more information, visit the website or call 563-322-1600.
NORTHWOOD | One of three people accused of breaking into cars at a Rockwell nursing home faces additional charges in Worth County.

Blake Peterson, 23, of Kensett, remained jailed Thursday in Northwood on charges of felony first-degree theft, felony second-degree theft and misdemeanor third-degree burglary.

Investigators believe Peterson took part in three burglaries and thefts on Nov. 21 in the Northwood area.

Worth County Deputy Sheriff Zach Schrupp said Peterson and one of his co-defendants from the Rockwell case, Logan Warland, stole tools from a construction site on Highway 105, a coin machine from a laundromat in Northwood and items from a residence near Northwood.

3 accused of Rockwell car burglaries ROCKWELL | A Kensett man and two Webster County residents are accused of breaking into cars 

Charges are pending against Warland, 26, of Fort Dodge, who was jailed Thursday in Webster County for an alleged parole revocation, multiple Webster County charges and on holds for authorities in Cerro Gordo and Henry counties.

The Cerro Gordo hold is for charges filed Wednesday against Warland, Peterson and a Gowrie woman, Jodi Mohr.

Authorities say the trio broke into multiple cars Nov. 28 in the parking lot of Rockwell Community Nursing Home, 707 Elm St. E.

Warland was charged in the Cerro Gordo County case with felony ongoing criminal conduct, felony third-degree burglary and misdemeanor driving while barred.

Peterson and Mohr were charged with misdemeanor aiding and abetting in the Rockwell case.
LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. (AP)  Authorities say a 37-year-old man fatally shot another man in suburban Chicago after seeing the victim attend a movie with a woman he was likely stalking.

Kenneth S. Seplak of Round Lake Beach is charged with first-degree murder for the Dec. 23 death of 30-year-old David E. Gorski of Libertyville. A Lake County judge on Wednesday ordered Seplak held on $3 million bond.

Sgt. Christopher Covelli is spokesman for the Lake County Major Crime Task Force. He says Gorski was seeing a woman who was being stalked by Seplak. Covelli says that after seeing Gorski and the woman go to the movies together, Seplak followed Gorski in his car and shot him.
Today is Thursday, Dec. 29, the 364th day of 2016. There are 2 days left in the year.

1866  150 years ago: Ladies have you noticed that fancy little store on Washington Street, near the ferry landing? J. Litzen carries only the finest in lace articles.

1891  125 years ago: W.J. Kahlke was elected as president of Arsenal Council No. 171.

1916  100 years ago: Browns Business College moved its location from the Hurst Building to the London Building.

1941  75 years ago: Harvey Pierson of East Moline High School led the school's choral group in its first appearance on WHBF Radio.

1966  50 years ago: A plea is being made for clothing, furniture and household goods for the Larry Martin family who lost all their possessions in a fire early Tuesday night in Rapids City.

1991  25 years ago: A barge and towboat were expected to arrive in Rock Island today to remove the Dutch Gap, the tow discovered partly submerged near Arsenal Island on Sunday. Six days ago, an Arsenal police officer discovered the sunken Dutch Gap leaking diesel fuel near the islands power plant. The towboat, owned by Illinois Construction Corporation, was anchored near the plant because the company was building cofferdams to allow Arsenal workers to repair and maintain plant generators and turbines.
MOLINE  The responsibility of knowing when to file election petitions for the city's 7th Ward was on the candidate and the city's clerk, state and county officials said Wednesday.

The 7th Ward  whose alderman, Mike Waldron, was appointed  was not listed as an open seat in the April 4, 2017, municipal elections, though circumstances required it under state law.

The oversight means people interested in the seat must file as write-in candidates since the deadline for filing petitions of candidacy has passed.

The vacancy itself is the trigger, according to Rock Island County deputy county clerk John Brown and Bernadette Matthews, of the Illinois State Board of Elections. The candidate and the clerk must then determine when the office is open.

Ald. Waldron and Moline city clerk Tracy Koranda have said they were unaware the seat was to be listed for the April 2017 election. Ald. Waldron said he was notified by the city attorney's office after the petition-filing deadline that he was up for re-election. He has since filed as a write-in candidate.

Ald. Waldron was appointed in July to replace Sean Liddell. Mr. Liddell ran uncontested in the April 2015 election but resigned in June when he moved out of Moline. His term does not expire until April 2019.

State election law states that, if a four-year seat becomes vacant 130 days before a general election and with at least 28 months remaining in the term, then the seat will be open for that election.

The law also states the municipal clerk must certify the seat and candidates to the county.

Mayor Scott Raes on Wednesday morning said he was unaware of the issue until Ald. Waldron told him about it late last week. Mayor Raes said at that time that he did not know where the problem in the city's process was to be found.

"I think we've found a flaw in the system, and I am sure we'll take the proper steps to make sure it doesn't happen again," Mayor Raes said.

Amy L. Keys, Moline's deputy city attorney, declined to comment on the issue Wednesday.
BEIRUT (AP)  A cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey went into effect in war-ravaged Syria at midnight Thursday, a potential breakthrough in the six years of fighting that have left more than a quarter-million people dead and triggered a refugee crisis across Europe.

If it holds, the truce between the Syrian government and the country's mainstream rebel forces will be followed by peace talks next month in Kazakhstan, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in announcing the agreement. He described it, however, as "quite fragile" and requiring "special attention and patience."

It was not immediately clear whether the truce  which excludes extremist factions such as the Islamic State group and al-Qaida affiliate in Syria  was holding. It is expected to at least reduce the violence that has gripped the country, including government airstrikes.

Opposition activist Mazen al-Shami told The Associated Press that half an hour before midnight, the situation became "very calm" in the suburbs of the capital Damascus.

He added that a government offensive on the rebel-held Barada Valley northwest of Damascus that had been going on for days had stopped.

The truce had the backing of both Russia and Turkey, which have been supporting opposing sides in the war, and was welcomed by Iran and the United Nations. Russia said the deal was signed by seven of Syria's major rebel factions.

Several previous cease-fires all collapsed, some of them in a matter of days. Nevertheless, the deal this time raised hopes for a political settlement to the ruinous war in the coming months, in part because the landscape has significantly shifted recently.

For one thing, the tide has turned in Syrian President Bashar Assad's favor militarily over the past year, with the government retaking the city of Aleppo from the rebels just days ago. Also, Turkey, which is fighting Kurdish and Islamic militants at home, appears more willing to strike a bargain with Russia if it means protecting its borders.

"This is a different political scene, and one would expect some outcomes to emerge," said Hilal Khashan, political science professor at the American University of Beirut. He cautioned, however, against expecting immediate results from the first round of talks.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem welcomed the cease-fire agreement said there is a "real chance" for a political settlement.

In comments made to Syrian TV, he said the Syrian government will attend the peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana "with an open mind," but suggested it would not be willing to compromise on Assad's fate.

"Everything is negotiable except national sovereignty and the people's right to choose its leadership," he said.

Putin said the cease-fire will be guaranteed by Moscow  Assad's chief patron and battlefield ally  and by Turkey. Turkey is a main backer of the opposition forces, who use the country's long border with Syria to cross back and forth, and has wide influence on them. Iran, for its part, has been one of Assad's strongest backers.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance. Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said President-elect Donald Trump's administration will be welcome to join the peace process once he takes office.

Putin said he ordered the Russian military to scale back its presence in Syria, where it has provided crucial support to Assad's forces. Putin didn't say how many troops and weapons will be withdrawn. He said Russia will continue "fighting international terrorism in Syria" and supporting Assad's military.

The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, welcomed the cease-fire announcement, saying he hopes the agreement will save civilian lives, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid and pave the way for productive peace talks.

Earlier Thursday, Turkey called on Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters from Syria. The Iranian-backed extremist group has sent thousands of fighters to support Assad and has been playing an instrumental role in the civil war since 2013.

Foreign fighters from around the world have joined both sides of the Syrian conflict, which has displaced half the country's population and produced more than 4 million refugees. Many of those refugees have been streaming into Europe, fueling anti-immigration sentiment and terrorist fears that are reshaping the continent's political landscape.

Syria's military noted that the cease-fire comes after the "successes achieved by the armed forces," an apparent reference to the fierce fighting in Aleppo.

Osama Abo Zayd, a spokesman for mainstream Syrian opposition groups, told reporters in the Turkish capital of Ankara that 13 armed opposition factions have signed the five-point agreement and that they have agreed to abide by the cease-fire.

He said the peace talks will be based on the Geneva 2012 declaration that calls for a governing body with full executive powers to run affairs in Syria during a transition period. "This means that there will be no presence for Assad in the future," he said.

Assad's future has been the main sticking in previous negotiations between the warring sides, and he is seen as unlikely to step down, particularly when he's on the winning side.

Khashan, the political analyst, said Assad's exit is "out of the question."

"Neither the Russians nor the Iranians would allow it to happen," he said.

Saeed Sadek, a professor of political sociology at Cairo's Future University, said Assad has no power to accept or reject any deals.

"He is now under the control of Moscow, Tehran and Ankara. All these countries will decide his future," he said.
Cheryl was a joy to be around and will be missed by all those whom she loved and who loved her. Cheryl never met a friend who didn't become family, and next to God, she loved her family more than anything. Cheryl's memory will be be cherished, and she will be remembered for the heart that she had to help others and be there when she was needed.
Operated by Yiwu Timex Industrial Investment, the train will travel from Yiwu, Zheijiang province, in eastern China to London Barking freight terminal, and is scheduled to arrive on January 16. The train will return to China shortly afterwards, taking 21 days for the return leg.

Brunel Project Cargo says the service is 50% cheaper than the equivalent air freight journey, and takes half the time as sea freight. In addition, customs clearances including declarations and inspections will be completed together and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, saving time.

We believe this is going to change the way a lot of forwarders and shippers view their imports and exports for China, says Mr Mike White, group operations director at Brunel Project Cargo. Particularly with air freight, as instead of 30 days import from China, there is now a rail option of 14 days. Also, for any shippers who were booking sea freight, then turned to air freight if goods were late in being manufactured, they will now have this option at 50% less cost and time.
The MBTA is reintroducing its weekend ski train.

The train will operate from North Station in Boston to take skiers to Wachusett Mountain Ski Area. Customers may board at North Station, disembark at the new Wachusett Station on the Fitchburg Line, and travel on a free shuttle to Wachusett Mountain.

The fully accessible Wachusett Station opened in September 2016.

Ski trains are specially equipped with ski and snowboard racks. The MBTA will evaluate snow and ski season later in the winter.
ST. ANSGAR | Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey visited businesses in Mitchell County on Thursday, part of his tour of all 99 counties.

Northey, who is serving his third term as Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, has visited every county each year he has been in office. He said the tours allow him to see how the agriculture industry is evolving and how science and technology are being used to preserve natural resources.

Sen. Waylon Brown, R-St. Ansgar; Rep. Jane Bloomingdale, R-Northwood; Northwood City Clerk Amber Julseth; and Mitchell County Economic Development Commission Executive Director Brenda Dryer also attended a tour of Wold Rim and Wheel, which Dryer helped organize.

Its about exposure, Dryer said. We want to use every opportunity we can to expose elected officials at the federal, state and local levels to our agricultural manufacturers and the businesses and markets they work in.

Sec. Northey travels all over the world and is able to share all of the meaningful things taking place in the state of Iowa with others involved in the agricultural industry, Dryer said.

Serving as a gas station in the 1930s, Wolds was expanded in the 1950s to service and construct custom rims for tractor tires. It then expanded to widen rims for combines and add product lines to fit agriculture machinery.

The tour included each part of the manufacturing process from the different stations involved in the shaping, welding, powder coating and finishing the rims to discussions on which resources were fabricated in-house and which were outsourced.

Ag is so different, Northey said. It is easy to look at a tractor and think all of them are the same. But what you dont see are the specific features or the needs of the farmer who will be using it. Little gems like this one let you see what is done to allow farmers to customize them to their needs.

In touring Iowas counties, Northey said he is able to witness the growth, change and inspiration in the agriculture industry, helpful when sharing techniques with those outside the state. .

You almost forget about all it takes to create jobs in communities and all the sophistication there is, let alone the variation that exists within the industry, said Northey. You get used to seeing walls with cars and trucks parked outside, but it changes things when you get to go inside. It reminds you that someone has to make the stuff we use and organize the production.

It takes ingenuity and the hard work of a lot of people. Someone had to see a need and be willing to meet it, and thats whats happened here, he added.

Wold Rim and Wheel sells products in the U.S. and Canada.

And to think, said Northey, that it all started because someone wanted to help their neighbor put tractor tires on their tractor.

After his stop in St. Ansgar, Northey traveled to Riceville were he toured Riverside Feed and CATapult, a business incubator.
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Spains Boomerang TV has sold the series Old Bridges Secret for the first time in Asia.





El Secreto de Puente Viejo will premiere on 1 January on Vietnams public signal VTV2, the first Asian network to broadcast the Spanish fictional series Originally produced for Atresmedias Antena 3, the series continues its international success, having been broadcast in over 60 countries. The sixth season is also airing in Spain, where almost 1,500 episodes have been shown.In addition to Spain, the series has seen success in Italy, where its usually the most watched programme in its time-slot, as well as some Latin American territories.This year, the soap opera has been sold for the first time to Georgia, Cyprus and Lithuania. Among other territories, El Secreto de Puente Viajo continues to air in Chile , Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and the US.
U.S. prosecutors agree to delay convicted hacker Seleznevs sentencing till April

MOSCOW, December 29 (RAPSI)  U.S. prosecutors have announced in response to a motion to continue sentencing of Russian national Roman Seleznev, who has been found guilty of committing cybercrimes which allegedly caused $170 million damage around the world, that the hearing may be postponed until mid-April 2017.

RAPSI obtained a copy of the U.S. officials response on Thursday.

Attorney Igor Litvak, who was retained by Seleznev about three weeks ago, has filed a motion with a court in Seattle seeking to adjourn sentencing of his client until June 2017.

According to the lawyer, he expected to be adequately prepared by this date but it became clear that it would be impossible, in particular because of Christmas and New Year holidays.

He said that he would obtain the trial transcripts from a court reporter, in the best-case scenario, in the end of January 2017. He will not be able to work on the sentencing memorandum in this case until he reviews the transcripts. Litvak explained that he is to study enormous scope of documents in the amount of 3 TB or 3,000 GB.

Prosecutors did not resist the motion for postponing the hearing but they objected to the length of defendants request to continue the sentencing. According to the U.S. officials, the case has been pending an extraordinarily long time.

Seleznev was found guilty in August by a federal jury on 38 of 40 counts, including wire fraud, possession of unauthorized access devices and intentional damage to a protected computer.

Seleznev was arrested in the Maldives in 2014 and taken to the U.S. territory of Guam. Later he was transferred to Seattle and put in jail.

Russia's foreign ministry said that Seleznev was "kidnapped" as he attempted to board a plane in the Maldives.

U.S. prosecutors claim that between October 2009 and October 2013 Seleznev hacked into retail point of sale systems and installed malicious software to steal credit card numbers from various businesses. He allegedly created and operated the infrastructure to facilitate the theft and sale of credit card data, used servers located all over the world to facilitate his operation, and sold stolen credit card data on the internet. In total, Seleznev stole and sold more than 2.9 million credit card numbers, according to prosecutors.

After having been brought to Seattle, Seleznev changed a number of defense lawyers. He retained attorneys from such law firms as Fox Rothschild LLP, Garvey Schubert Barer, Corr Cronin Michelson Baumgardner Fogg & Moore LLP, Calfo Eakes & Ostrovsky PLLC. Until recently, John Henry Browne represented Seleznev.
MASON CITY | A 15-year-old girl reported missing on Wednesday has returned home on her own, according to the Mason City Police Department.

Angel Herman had last been seen on Christmas Day.

Her family notified police of Herman's return about 8 p.m. Wednesday, said Mason City Police Lt. Rich Jensen.

He said an officer went to the family's residence and verified that the teen was home and unharmed.

The Police Department, in a news release, thanked the public for its assistance and concern.

-- Mary Pieper
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By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 12/29/2016



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.
FOREST CITY | James H. Petersburg, 96, of Hanlontown, died Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016, at the Lake Mills Care Center.

Memorial services will be held 11 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 31, 2016, at Pilot Knob Lutheran Church, rural Forest City.

Visitation will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 30, at the church. Burial will be in Brush Point Cemetery, rural Fertile.

In lieu of flowers memorials may be made to the Salvation Army, Pilot Knob Lutheran Church or charity of choice.

Arrangements are with Cataldo Schott Funeral Home in Forest City.
TITONKA | A benefit account has been set up for a Titonka family whose home was destroyed by a fire on Tuesday.

Daniel William Planz, 59, died in a fire that broke out about 7:30 p.m. in his family's home at 147 Second Ave. N.W.

His parents, John and Elsie Planz, and another relative were able to escape.

The fire is still under investigation.

An account for the family has been set up at Titonka Savings Bank.

Contributions marked "Planz Family Benefit" can be mailed to the bank at PO Box 309, Titonka, Iowa, 50480. Donations also can be dropped off in person in Titonka or at the bank's other branches: 101 Highway 69 North in Forest City and 11723 Highway 9 in Thompson.

Check back at www.globegazette.com for more on this developing story.

Update: Investigators comb debris of fatal Titonka fire

2:15 p.m. Update

TITONKA | State investigators were in Titonka on Wednesday trying to determine what caused a deadly house fire.

Daniel William Planz, 59, died in the fire that broke out about 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at 147 Second Ave. N.W.

The home is owned by Daniel's parents, retired minister John Planz and his wife, Elsie Planz.

Titonka Fire Chief David Trunkhill said firefighters helped John, Elsie and another relative, who were all older, from the home.

Officials were still investigating why Daniel was unable to get out of the home.

His body will undergo an autopsy at the Iowa Medical Examiner's Office in Ankeny.

Investigators with the State Fire Marshal's Office were sorting through the fire debris Wednesday morning. Titonka firefighters were also on scene.

The first task was to determine what caused the fire.

The house was completely destroyed.

Update: Boy, 3, identified as victim in Mason City fire MASON CITY | Firefighters on Monday released the name of a 3-year-old boy killed in a house 

In addition to the fire damage, crews used heavy equipment to pull apart the wreckage to allow firefighters to get to stubborn hot spots, said Kossuth County Sheriff Steve Kollasch.

Neighbors said the fire burned for hours.

The bulk of the home was reduced to an approximately 12-foot-tall pile of broken boards and household items. A mattress, portions of the chimney, furniture and other items were scattered on the snow.

The back corner of the home was the only portion of the house left standing. A breezeway and sheds connecting the garage to the home also were damaged by fire, although the garage remained intact.

Two firefighters had minor injuries from slipping or falling at the icy scene.

The city of Titonka is about 22 miles west of Forest City.

It has approximately 470 residents.

Check back at www.globegazette.com for more on this developing story.

Man dies in Titonka fire

10 a.m. Update

TITONKA | A Titonka man died in a house fire Tuesday evening.

The fire at 147 Second Ave. N.W. claimed the life of Daniel William Planz, 59. It was reported at 7:34 p.m.

Two firefighters were transported to Kossuth Regional Health Center for treatment, according to the Kossuth County Sheriff's Office.

The house was occupied by four people. It is owned by John and Elsie Planz, according to county assessor's records.

The fire is under investigation.

Update: Boy, 3, identified as victim in Mason City fire MASON CITY | Firefighters on Monday released the name of a 3-year-old boy killed in a house 

The Titonka Fire Department, Burt Fire Department, Titonka EMS, Algona EMS, Kossuth County Sheriff's Office, Hancock County Sheriff's Office, West Hancock Ambulance Service, Kossuth EMA, Kossuth County Medical Examiner, Kossuth County Secondary Roads, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, State Fire Marshal's Office and the American Red Cross responded.

The Algona Police Department assisted with the investigation.

Check back at www.globegazette.com for more on this developing story.
Marc Buslik, Chicago Police Department 19th District Commander, discusses the department's body camera policies and demonstrates their use on Dec. 28, 2016, at the district headquarters. (Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune) (Michael Tercha/Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

Amid city budget woes, continued mistrust of police in minority communities and an ongoing federal investigation into police practices, Chicago police announced a plan to equip patrol officers with body cameras in every police district a year earlier than initially planned.

The move means that by the end of 2017, the chest-mounted devices will become a new watchful eye over Chicago police officers and those they encounter.

Just months after police first revealed plans to expand a 2015 body camera pilot program into all 22 police districts by the end of 2018, City Hall and the Police Department announced on Wednesday an accelerated plan to outfit thousands of patrol officers with the new AXON II cameras and training by late 2017.

"The citywide use of body worn cameras within the Chicago Police Department will provide a greater sense of self-awareness to both officers and the individuals that they interact with," police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a news release announcing the change.

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After starting with the pilot program in the Shakespeare District on the Northwest Side, about 2,000 cameras are now in use in seven police districts, but officials didn't have a precise timetable for when the cameras would hit the streets in the remaining 15 districts.

Use of the cameras ramped up after the public outcry over the release of 2014 squad car video showing Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times as the teenager, who was holding a knife, was walking away.

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"Body cameras, while not a panacea, are a win-win for officers and the public," Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in the same announcement. "They provide a firsthand look at the dangerous situations officers encounter on a daily basis, and improve transparency while building trust."

In recent months, the mayor made the use of body cameras and the hiring of hundreds of new officers the cornerstone of a new public safety strategy to lower skyrocketing shootings and homicides and restore public trust in law enforcement that had been shaken by the deadly police shootings of McDonald and 18-year-old Paul O'Neal.

Marc Buslik, Chicago Police Department 19th District Commander, discusses the deparment's body camera policies and demonstrates its use at the district headquarters on Dec. 28, 2016. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)

The move comes as the U.S. Department of Justice continues examining police policies and procedures in the wake of the 2015 release of the McDonald video.

Body cameras have been championed by community activists and civil libertarians as a way of monitoring possible police misconduct, while critics say it could violate the privacy of working police officers. But they aren't foolproof. Police were criticized in late July when a body camera worn by a Chicago officer who fatally shot O'Neal was not operating  and didn't capture the pivotal moments of the foot chase and shooting behind a South Shore home. An autopsy determined that O'Neal, who was unarmed, died of a gunshot wound to the back.

Town Hall District Cmdr. Marc Buslik, who oversaw the implementation of the body cameras while working in the Shakespeare District, suggested that the officer who shot O'Neal may have been still getting used to the device as his district had only begun using body cameras when the shooting occurred. He added that the department adopted body camera policies backed by the federal officials.

"Our policies were originally based on best practices of the Justice Department," said Buslik, who had also acted as the department's liaison with the Justice Department during its investigation. "We knew what they were likely to be looking for in terms of policy. We're very comfortable with our policy, and any other commentary from the DOJ will be favorable."

The commander said he didn't know the status of the federal investigation, and a spokesman for Chicago-based U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon , whose office is aiding in the Justice Department probe, declined to comment.

After the announcement of the body camera expansion, Buslik and officers at the Town Hall District in Lakeview demonstrated how the flip-phone-size camera can be clipped on to an officer's bulletproof vest and switched on to record video and audio.

Officers using the body cams will turn on the cameras at the start of every tour and activate them "only" as they encounter citizens, Buslik said. At the end of each shift, footage of the officers' cameras will be downloaded into a hard drive. The mass of video footage will be managed by the department's public safety information technology staff, who also manage all of the department's police audio-visual infrastructure, the commander added.

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Officials with the local Fraternal Order of Police, which represents the department's rank-and-file, did not respond to a request for comment.

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The tab for the cameras was expected to be around $8 million. The city set aside some money in the 2017 budget for expansion of the body camera program, but will also tap into unused dollars in a property tax rebate program.

Last year, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed into law a comprehensive body camera bill that sets statewide standards for use of the cameras, expands police officer training to include topics like use of force and requires an independent investigation of all officer-involved deaths. The cost of body cameras and new training is covered by a $5 extra fee on criminal and traffic offenses that result in a guilty plea or conviction, but doesn't apply to parking, registration or pedestrian offenses.

Buslik said benefits of the body cameras far outweighed the negatives, saying it could provide a fuller picture than short clips of supposed police misconduct posted on social media.

"I think any of those concerns is offset by the fact that having our own recording of an incident provides a much better, much fuller description of what took place than a 40-second clip on YouTube," the commander said.

wlee@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @MidNoirCowboy
A Prince tribute, a new wine bar and more things to do in Chicago on Thursday, Dec. 29.

EAT

All-You-Can-Eat Crab Night

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Smack Shack

326 N. Morgan St. 312-973-1336

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Take advantage of the West Loop restaurant's weekly special and feast on unlimited seafood, sausage, corn and salad. 6-9 p.m. $39.



DRINK

Now Open

Income Tax

5959 N. Broadway 773-897-9165

The wine-focused Edgewater spot offers glasses and bottles representing a mix of famous and lesser-known old-world regions plus a spirit collection focused on brandy and absinthe. Pair your drinks with a mix of Spanish, French, Italian and German fare including Black Forest duck ($24) and housemade pasta with lamb meatballs and red pepper ragu ($15). 5-11 p.m.



DO

End-of-Year Comedy Showcase

The Comedy Bar

500 N. LaSalle St. 312-836-0499

Sam Norton hosts a night of performances from comedians Calvin Evans, Sean Flannery and Natalie Jose. 8-9:30 p.m. $20-$30. Tickets: eventbrite.com

Paisley Park (Free!)

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Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

Punch House

1227 W. 18th St. 312-526-3851

Traxx & Jordan pay tribute to Prince by playing rare and unreleased recordings, B-sides, rehearsal songs, outtakes and unofficial fan club records. 9 p.m.-2 a.m. Free.



Happy Holidyes Extravaganza

Bottom Lounge

1375 W. Lake St. 312-666-6775

Keep the holiday cheer going with sets from The Polkaholics, The Dyes and DJ Bailey Dee. 8 p.m. $8.



HAPPY HOUR OF THE DAY

Wildfire (159 W. Erie St. 312-787-9000) offers half-price appetizers and $8 select cocktails in the lounge from 3-6 p.m.

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For more Eat & Drink news, click here.
IMAGE: Many people use mobile wallets only to avail discounts or cashbacks and did not store money in the wallets. Photograph: Shailesh Andrade/Reuters.

Sai Manish & N Sundaresha Subramanian offer a fresh perspective on the digital wallet business.

Paytm might now be riding the demonetisation wave, adding wallet users by the millions and transactions in crores. But as of March, most of its wallets had little or no money. The average balance of Paytm wallets at the end of September was Rs 22, meaning a good number of these had balances less than that.

Business Standard accessed the auditor's quarterly certificate of the escrow account filed by One97 Communications, the company that operates Paytm, with the ministry of corporate affairs. These filings offer a fresh perspective on the wallet business as these numbers are not cited or analysed often.

As on September 30, the balance in the account was Rs 332.7 crore.

Paytm's public statements have quoted 150 million as the number of active customers before demonetisation. The average wallet balance for these customers thus works out to around Rs 22.

This is lower than the figures six months ago, when the firm had fewer customers and a slightly higher escrow balance. As on March 31, the balance in the account was Rs 339 crore.

In April, Peng Yije of Ant Financial, One 97's largest investor, claimed it had 122 million active users at the end of March. This translates into roughly Rs 28 on an average in every wallet.

Wallet sizes of competitors ranged between Rs 6 and Rs 40.

Mobikwik, a relative new entrant with 32 million users, had an escrow balance of Rs 20.5 crore, filings showed. This worked out to Rs 6 per wallet.

Similar filings for others such as Oxigen and Freecharge were not available.

According to Reserve Bank of India regulations, wallet companies are required to keep their money in a segregated escrow account. An escrow account is one in which a third party holds the money of the customer to be paid to another party. Money in the account cannot be diverted for any other use, except for the one for which it is meant.

Paytm's escrow account submissions show its lowest quarterly balance during the last quarter of 2015-16 was Rs 2.5 crore. At this level, the average wallet size was about 20 paise. Even if the maximum quarterly balance of Rs 367 crore is taken into account, it works out to roughly Rs 30 in every account.

Madhur Deora, chief financial officer, Paytm, referred e-mail questions, seeking average size of wallets and other financial details to the company spokesperson. E-mails and subsequent reminders to the spokesperson last week did not elicit a response.

Pramod Saxena, managing director, Oxigen Services, said the average sleepover balances was around Rs 40 for Oxigen. He said averages could vary, depending on the parameters companies use to define active users and the mechanisms used such as cash collection systems and proportion of cashbacks.

Assuming a portion of the users maintained significant balances in their wallets, there is a high possibility that a large number of Paytm wallets had zero balances, said an analyst with one of the big four consultants. The analyst added that many people use mobile wallets only to avail discounts or cashbacks and did not store money in the wallets themselves.

Even the average balance of Rs 22 was an improvement over the previous year.

On April 30, 2015, the average balance in Paytm's escrow account with a private sector bank was only Rs 13. It had around Rs 128 crore in the account with 100 million users in its kitty during the time.

However, the number of registered merchants fell to 39,671 at the end of FY16 from 54,665 at the end of FY15. At the end of September 2016, this jumped to 73,846 merchants. Share of funds transfers in total payments made increased to 20.7 per cent in September from 11.6 per cent in March and 2.4 per cent the previous year.

In comparison, Mobikwik had 1,100 merchants and a funds transfer ratio of 27 per cent.

As part of these disclosures, the firm said a portion of the payments went to One 97 itself. A column in the annexure to the escrow account statement reads 'liability to One 97 as merchant'. Account details, pertaining to March 21-31 this year, reviewed by Business Standard, shows the highest "liability to One 97 as merchant" was almost Rs 44 crore on March 27. Between April and June in 2015, the highest "liability to One 97 as merchant" was around Rs 17 crore.

Mobikwik did not have such liabilities to own company as merchant.

Company documents show in India, similarly-named companies include One 97 Communications India and One 97 Enterprise Mobile Solutions. It also has subsidiaries of the same name in African countries like Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Benin, South Africa and Ivory Coast.
From the November 2014 price of $106 per barrel crude oil prices dipped to as low as $26 per barrel in January 2016 and remained flat for much of the year.

Did the fuel prices reflect that, asks Monali Sarkar.

'This decision to hike #petrol prices taken a day after the ending of Parliament session is a stinging rebuke to the dignity of Parliament,' Narendra Modi had tweeted in May 2012 when he was the chief minister of Gujarat and the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government was in power at the Centre.

But in in announcing its latest fuel price hike -- as many observers have pointed out -- Prime Minister Modi's government made an almost identical decision.

The price revision was to come into effect on December 15, but was deferred till the night of December 16 -- the last day of the winter session of Parliament -- possibly to save the demonetisation-battered government from any blushes in both Houses.

The petrol price was hiked by Rs 2.21 a litre and diesel by Rs 1.79 per litre, excluding local levies.

Rates were last revised on December 1 when the petrol price was hiked by a marginal 13 paise a litre, but diesel rates were cut by 12 paise.

Prior to that, rates were hiked by Rs 1.46 a litre in the case of petrol and Rs 1.53 per litre for diesel, excluding local levies, on November 16.

A look back at how petrol and diesel became dearer in 2016.
The ordinance on demonetised currency does not propose a jail term for those holding more than 10 junked notes, but imposes a minimum fine of Rs 10,000.

The draft ordinance, which will be sent to President Pranab Mukherjee for his assent, will come into force from December 31.

There was a proposal for prescribing a four-year jail term, but the draft ordinance does not contain any such provision.

Those keeping the junked notes for "study, research or numismatics" purposes would be exempt from penalty provided they hold not more than 25 number of such notes irrespective of the denomination.

Besides, people authorised by RBI or its agencies or those holding junked notes under directions of a court would also not be penalised, as per Section 5 of the draft ordinance.

It provides for making holding of old 1,000 and 500 rupee notes after March 31 a criminal offence that will attract a fine of Rs 10,000 or five times the cash held, whichever is higher.

According to Section 6 of the 'Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Ordinance, 2016', whoever knowingly and wilfully makes any false declarations regarding junked notes would be liable for a fine "which may extend to Rs 50,000 or five times the amount of the face value of specified bank notes tendered, whichever is higher".

The ordinance also provides for amending the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act, 1934 to provide legislative support for extinguishing the central bank and government's liability on the demonetised banknotes that are not returned.

While the deadline for the deposit of old currency in bank or post office accounts expires on Friday, there is time till March 31 for depositing them at select RBI counters with stiff conditions.

Sources said a proposal for a four-year jail term for anyone possessing large number of demonetised currency after March 31, 2017 was not approved by the Cabinet.

As per the draft ordinance, citizens who were abroad between November 9 and December 30 are entitled to deposit the junked notes till March 31 with RBI.

The government would also bring out a separate notification for "such class of persons and for such reasons as may be specified" to ensure that people are not harassed

and those with genuine reasons can deposit the cancelled notes.

At the time of announcing demonetisation of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8, the government had allowed holders to either exchange them or deposit in bank and post office accounts.

According to the government, the main reason for bringing out the ordinance is to "have clarity and finality to the liabilities of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the central government" arising from the demonetisation of high value currency notes.

In case of companies found holding more than 10 junked notes, action would be taken against the officials concerned.

Proceedings could be initiated against "any director, manager, secretary, or other officer or employee" of the particular company.

The ordinance also provides safeguard for the government and the central bank from facing any legal proceedings.

"No suit, prosecution or other legal proceeding shall lie against government, RBI or any of their officers for anything or intended to be done in good faith under this ordinance," it noted.

In 1978, a similar Ordinance was issued to end the government's liability after Rs 1,000, Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 notes were demonetised by the Morarji Desai-led government.

Sources said the legal amendments are needed every time the government decides to scrap any legal tender to put an end to its promissory note.

Of the Rs 15.4 lakh crore worth of currency that was scrapped, about Rs 14 lakh crore has been deposited in banks or exchanged.
Whether or not such an overhaul will be carried out depends on the government's comfort level.

Arup Roychoudhury and Dilasha Seth report.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com

A government-appointed panel, headed by former chief economic adviser Shankar Acharya, has recommended changing the financial year from the current April to March to the calendar year.

But whether or not such an overhaul will be carried out depends on the government's comfort level. No decision has been taken on it yet.

The report was submitted to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley earlier this week.

The panel members have studied the government's Budgets and accounting, and feel that a shift is feasible. Members of the panel said they would not be able to comment on the report till the Centre decided to make it public.

"Whether the proposals are accepted or not depends on the government's comfort level with them," said a person aware of the developments.

A senior government official had told Business Standard before the submission of the report that changing the financial year would be a long-drawn process, spanning at least a year-and-a-half.

"If only the government changes its financial year, the Income-Tax Act and Companies Act need to be amended. This is assuming a scenario where India Inc is free to decide whether it wants to follow suit or not," said the official.

"You have to have discussions with multiple stakeholders, including corporate entities and, especially, the states," he added.

Experts have voiced their reservations regarding any such move.

"Once you change the financial year, the tax timelines will also change, which will be an additional burden for companies," said Rahul Garg, leader, direct taxes, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

"In the first year of any such transition," Garg added, "typically, things do not remain comparable. People will have to compare 12-month data with nine months, which will be a challenge. The government will need to ensure that when it changes, the financial year is applicable for everyone."
India's first transgender college principal Manabi Bandopadhyay has submitted her resignation after about one-and-a-half years in office, expressing frustration at "non-cooperation" of a section of teachers and students of her institution.

Also Read: 'If you excel, the very society that hated you will be in awe'

Nadia District Magistrate Sumit Gupta on Thursday said he had received her letter of resignation from the post of Principal of Krishnagar Women's College in the district on December 27 and forwarded it to the state Higher Education department on Wednesday.

Manabi alleged that she started facing non-cooperation from a section of teachers soon after she took over as the principal of the well-known women's college on June 9, 2015.

On the other hand, the teachers also levelled the same allegation against the principal, resulting in a standoff.

A four-member team, led by Joint Director of Public Instruction RP Bhattacharjee, visited the college recently on a fact-finding mission and talked to the principal and teachers.

Manabi said, "All of my colleagues went against me. Some of the students went against me. I tried to bring back discipline and an atmosphere of education in the college. Most probably, that is why they went against me. I always got co-operation from the local administration, but never got it from my colleagues and students."

She went on to say that she had been under tremendous mental pressure and could not take it anymore, forcing her to resign.

"I feel tired due to the agitation and gherao by the students and teachers. I faced a lot of legal notices from their end. I had come to this college with new hopes and dreams but I was defeated...," she said.

Manabi (51), whose earlier name was Somnath, underwent a series of operations in 2003-2004 and became a woman. In 1995, she published the country's first transgender magazine, 'Ob-Manab' (sub-human).

What Manabi Bandopadhyay told Rediff.com in June 2015 when asked about society's outlook towards her...

"I was angry, mad and also helpless at times. I knew I was not at fault, yet I was being victimised. Why is everybody so cruel, I asked myself. Where can I find some peace?

Having overcome the hardships, now I feel we, people who constitute society, are also to blame. Society has some set notions and we just blindly follow them.

Why is it always thought that women are 'delicate darlings' and they need men around them to feel secure? Why would married women be besotted about their husbands? Women should be happy, independent and confident.

Society, even today, refuses to respect women and we, women, just accept it hands down..."

Read the full interview HERE...
The New York Police Department will allow its Sikh officers to wear turbans and maintain beards, relaxing its uniform policy, a move aimed at inclusiveness.

New York Police Commissioner James ONeill announced the measures being taken towards ensuring religious accommodation to its officers following a graduation ceremony for new police recruits on Wednesday.

Under the revised policy, officers from the Sikh faith will be allowed to have beards that extend up to one-half inch from the face. The officers may also wear blue turbans -- with a hat shield it affixed to it -- in place of the traditional police cap.

Were making this change to make sure that we allow everybody in New York City that wants to apply and have the opportunity to work in the greatest police department in the nation, to make sure we give them that opportunity, the commissioner said.

Standing alongside Sikh officers after the grand graduation ceremony, ONeill the measures were aimed at making the NYPD as diverse as possible.

We changed our beard policy and our head covering policy. It is a major change in our uniform policy, so we had to go about it carefully, he said, as quoted in a New York Post report.

The commissioner said there are about 160 Sikh officers currently in the ranks and he was looking to expand those numbers. He said the religious accommodation will give people from the faith the opportunity to join the police department.

Weve been working with the Sikh officers to try to make sure we get this done. I had the opportunity to make the change and I thought it was about time that we did that. We want to make the NYPD as diverse as possible and I think this is going to be one way to help us with that, he said.

Sikh Officers Association, a group of Sikh officers welcomed the move, posting on Twitter that Thank you @NYPDONeill for allowing Sikh Officers to wear a turban in the @NYPDnews. This is a proud moment for Sikh Community.

Of the 557 recruits who graduated from the police academy, 33 are Muslims and two are Sikhs, according to the police department.

According to the police departments patrol guide, officers are prohibited from having beards and headdresses that are not part of the uniform. However, exceptions have been made for officers who receive a medical or religious accommodation to wear facial hair up to one millimetre in length.

Sikh advocacy group Sikh Coalition welcomed the move, saying it will send a strong message that there should be no discrimination against members of the community, which has contributed significantly to the city and the country.

The Sikh Coalition has been working for over a decade to change the NYPDs policy that discriminated against Sikhs, the group said in a post on Facebook adding that in recent years, that work has continued with community partners, like the NYPD Sikh Officer Association.
Congress on Thursday demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologise to the nation for the suffering caused to the people by the note ban when he speaks on New Years eve and vowed to hold country-wide protests from January 6.

Attacking Modi, who is set to address the nation after end of the 50-day period he had sought from the people to ease their problems due to cash crunch, Congresss chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said that the PM is good at making announcements that are far from reality.

Even after 50 days of demonetisation step, normalcy has not been restored.

PM Modis demonetisation move has turned out to be Deshbandi (lockdown of country). Development has come to a standstill. It is a scam and an uncalled move. It has resulted into economic instability in the country. Several people have died due to cash crunch across the country. It is a surgical strike on the countrys poor and has caused them immense suffering, Surjewala said at a press conference in Jaipur.

He claimed that note ban has led to 115 deaths in last 50 days, Reserve Bank of India has changed its rules 126 times and it will take eight months to print the equivalent currency notes.

Starting from January 6, we will continuously hold protests across the country against demonetisation. We demand compensation for aggrieved family members, income and sales tax rebate to traders and common man, he said.

Congress leader Meem Afzal said the PM has so far not had a word of sympathy for the victims, forget about an apology.

But we expect him to apologise when he speaks on the issue at the end of the 50 days he had sought, he told reporters in Srinagar.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to create two crore new jobs every year but only 1.5 lakh jobs have been created in two and half years. After announcing demonetisation last month, at least 10 crore people have been rendered jobless, he claimed.

Afzal claimed as many as 11 crore man-hours were spent every day in queues outside banks and ATMs as people struggled to withdraw their own money.

Money was taken from peoples pockets and put in the banks. Over 130 crore people of the country were made to queue up for their money. The time people should have spent earning their livelihood was spent in the queues, he said.

He said the Congress party demands an apology from the PM to the nation for these deaths and also compensation to the next of kin of the victims.

Afzal said the Congress party also demands that 18 per cent interest be paid to the people on the money they have deposited in the banks.

Alleging that some Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have been caught with stashes of new currency notes, Surjewala demanded a high-level inquiry.

Ordinary people are standing in bank lines to withdraw money, but a parallel black market flourishes in converting black money into white by charging commission up to 30 per cent commission, he alleged.

Surjewala also said that PMs credibility is under cloud as his named has allegedly surfaced in Birla and Sahara dairies for receiving kickbacks when he was the Gujarat chief minister. BJP has rejected these charges, terming them as false, baseless and malafide.
Slain journalist Rajdeo Ranjan's wife Asha Ranjan has lodged an FIR alleging threats received asking her to back out from pursuing a case against Rashtriya Janata Dal strongman and former Siwan MP Mohammad Shahabuddin in connection with the killing of her husband who was a working with a prominent vernacular newspaper.

Rajdeo, who was the Siwan bureau chief of the newspaper, was shot dead on May 13 at a busy fruit market near Siwan railway station.

Mufassil police station SHO Vinay Kumar Singh said Asha filed the FIR on Wednesday where she alleged receiving a phone call from Dubai, threatening her to withdraw the case against Shahabuddin in the Supreme Court in connection with the killing of her husband.

She stated in the FIR, "I got a call from +671 at 12:28 am (on the intervening night of December 26-27). The caller asked me if I knew Shahabuddin. Once I replied in the affirmative, he said a lot of drama has been done and now, I should withdraw the case filed in the Supreme Court against Shahabuddin.

"I should stop pursuing the case failing which they (Shahabuddin's henchmen) would chop us into pieces, so that it would be difficult for anyone to recognise us. I am terrified. Please help me as we have repeatedly been getting threat calls. Even the security provided to our family is only on paper."

The widow of the scribe had moved the apex court seeking transfer of the probe and trial of her husband's murder case to Delhi from Siwan as she feared that a free-and-fair trial against Shahabuddin was not possible if he was lodged in a Bihar jail.

Shahabuddin is currently lodged in Siwan jail after the apex court had, on September 30, cancelled his bail after hearing the two petitions filed by the Bihar government and lawyer Prashant Bhushan on behalf of the slain scribe's family.

The Bihar government had, on May 16, within three days of the murder, handed over the probe to the central agency.
United States President-elect Donald Trump has accused Barack Obama on putting roadblocks in the path of a smooth transition.

Trump made this accusation in a tweet, but did not give any details about it.

It is believed that he was apparently referring to the some of the policy decisions, including those related to Israel being taken by the outgoing Obama administration.

Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition -- NOT! Trump said in a tweet.

Later the President-elect told reporters in Florida that he spoke over phone with Obama, who is currently on his annual vacation in Hawaii.

He phoned me. We had a very nice conversation, he said.

Did you bring up any of your concerns about these roadblocks? he was asked.

We had a general conversation. I think the secretarys speech really spoke for itself. But we had a very general conversation; very, very nice. Appreciated that he called me, Trump said.
I lay among friends, huddled and cold in our sleeping bags. We listened to the lashing wind and the drums and prayer chants coming from the sacred fire, and we reflected on why we, four Iraq War veterans, were here.

Police floodlights shone from the drill site of the Dakota Access Pipeline, scheduled to cross under the Missouri River, the water source for millions of people.

Members of the Standing Rock Sioux, concerned not only about polluted water but also the desecration of sacred sites, began resisting the pipeline in 2014. In mid-2016, finally, these water protectors gained major support.

Over 200 tribal nations pledged solidarity. Thousands of non-natives traveled to North Dakota to stand on the front lines. Then, as images of police violence against protectors got increasingly disturbing, some 4,000 veterans  including me  joined the resistance in early December.

Why had so many veterans taken up the cause of the Native Americans and environmentalists at Standing Rock?

My own reasons are rooted in western Pennsylvanias coal country, where I grew up. There, I rode my bicycle on trails crossing abandoned strip mines. Bulldozers had left precarious shale formations and streams ran orange with iron runoff.

When a sanitation corporation threatened to open a landfill at a reclaimed mine near homes in our community, residents finally resisted.

At age 15, I joined the fight to stop the dump, gaining a deeper appreciation for the wildlife  and water  of my region.

Good jobs are scarce in my hometown, so military service is something nearly every boy  and now girl  considers. My grandfathers both served along with several uncles.

Back home, the military is sacrosanct. But I wasnt especially proud of my five years in the Army, two of which were spent in Iraq.

My job as a radar operator, like so many military specializations, got privatized, so I found myself tasked out for other duties. I guarded poor Iraqis while they filled thousands of sandbags for the contractor Kellogg, Brown, and Root, only to see those sandbags rot in the sun as they sat unused.

I also loaded caskets onto cargo planes  an image often hidden from the American public.

And I escorted high-ranking officers on unnecessary trouble-provoking missions (how else could one earn the Combat Infantry Badge?).

Like many post-9/11 veterans, I left the military seeking redemption. Perhaps thats why, after I saw those images of police violence against water protectors, I went to Standing Rock.

There, instead of helping military contractors make money, I felt like I was finally serving the people.

While we were there, on Dec. 4, the Army Corps of Engineers finally denied the pipeline company its permit to drill under the river. Police pulled back and the water protectors celebrated.

The indigenous community had worked months for this ruling. They sacrificed the most. But I like to think the result was also influenced by the prospect of police tear-gassing and firing rubber bullets at unarmed veterans.

A ceremony followed where Wesley Clark Jr., key organizer of the Veterans Stand for Standing Rock campaign, offered an apology to Native Americans on behalf of the military, citing decades of broken treaties and violence. Five hundred of us went to our knees.

I hope to participate in a forgiveness ceremony one day in Iraq, in the spirit of Standing Rock.
Moldovan Legislative Changes to Reinforce the State Capture

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Vladimir Socor Publication Date 16 December 2016 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Moldovan Legislative Changes to Reinforce the State Capture, 16 December 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5864c72e4.html [accessed 4 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Moldova's Socialist leader Igor Dodon won the presidential election on November 13, was duly confirmed by the Constitutional Court as president-elect on December 13, and is due to be sworn in on December 23. Moldova's de facto ruler, billionaire Vladimir Plahotniuc, is using this six-week presidential interregnum to drive through a series of laws designed to reinforce his grip and that of his clients on state institutions (see EDM, December 14).

The reinforcement of Plahotniuc's power does not primarily aim to contain the challenge from the outspokenly pro-Russia president Dodon. The latter's constitutional powers are stringently circumscribed, and he has no real levers to exceed those powers in practice. Moldova's Western partners correctly assess that Plahotniuc can easily contain the new pro-Russia president. He is controllable and deal-prone.

Plahotniuc, however, feels seriously threatened by two nascent pro-Western parties, the Solidarity Action Party (PAS) and the Dignity and Truth Party (PDA), who are not prone to compromising with him and are immune to his control. These two parties are poised to mobilize not only the electorate of former pro-Western, now-discredited parties, but also the wider protest vote that has accumulated in Moldova across ethno-linguistic divisions.

This situation explains why Plahotniuc fully backed Dodon against Maia Sandu, PAS leader and joint candidate of PAS and PDA. Plahotniuc's decision was predictable and prescient. Dodon won by 52 percent to 48 percent thanks to Plahotniuc's intervention, without which Sandu could have won. PAS and PDA shaped their campaign message largely against Plahotniuc, conflating him and Dodon with each other as representing the corrupt system and captured state.

The score of 48 percent achieved by two parties in their infancy, with almost no financing, no real organizations, no access to state or even local administrations, and only minimal media support, presages a strong challenge to Plahotniuc's captured state system in the 2018 parliamentary elections (which he may trigger pre-term). Anticipating that possible watershed, and using the interregnum in the presidential office (see above), the Coordinator of the Parliamentary Majority (Plahotniuc's unconstitutional title and role) is accumulating additional levers of powers through a rapid series of enactments.

On December 8, outgoing President Nicolae Timofti approved the nomination of Plahotniuc's loyalist, Eduard Harunjen, as Prosecutor-General, for a seven-year term. "The struggle against corruption has thus been postponed by seven years," according to opposition and civil society circles. As a potential consequence, Harunjen is likely to remain in office beyond 2018 even if the pro-Western opposition wins the parliamentary elections that year.

Under recent amendments to the constitution and the relevant law, the Prosecutor-General is no longer appointed by parliament, but instead is nominated by his own peers (the Higher Council of Prosecutors) and approved by the head of state. Harunjen is himself a member of the Council that nominated him; and the nominating body did not consult with civil society representatives on the nomination, as the revised law requires. Harunjen had previously been Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor and forms part of the team that Plahotniuc placed at the top of the Prosecutor-General's institution in 2013. In his inaugural public statement, he threatened critical journalists with possible "civil suits" (Ziarul National, Unimedia, Infotag, December 8  12).

President Timofti has, for more than one year, complained privatelyand, on at least one occasion, told the assembled Western ambassadors in Chisinauthat his family was being "blackmailed" by the Prosecutor-General's Office (it is common knowledge that one of Timofti's sons left the country after being threatened with criminal prosecution to scare his father).

The institution of the Prosecutor-General is the apex of Moldova's "kompromat state." This system uses real or fabricated criminal evidence to influence the behavior of state officials, politicians and businessmen by initiating or threatening criminal proceedings or, alternatively, offering to refrain from doing so, in order to enforce or induce compliant behavior. Political influence over the courts is a necessary auxiliary of this system, but control over the Prosecutor-General's Office is essential, and some of its former members, who turned into critics, describe the Prosecutor-General's Office as the most important lever of control over the country.

On December 14-15, Parliament's Chairman Andrian Candu (who is Plahotniuc's godson) invited civil society representatives and nongovernmental experts to exchange views on the pending Bill of Fiscal Amnesty. The bill enables Moldova's citizens and firms to declare their hitherto undeclared or partially declared property of all types (businesses, real estate, vehicles, stock), or income from such properties, in return for legal immunity and exemption from taxes. The only condition is a two percent tax on the assessed value of those declared properties. The fiscal amnesty bill covers properties held in Moldova as well as offshore. The declared goal is "liberalization of capitals" and the stimulation of legal investments in an investment-starved Moldova.

This bill (pending in parliament since December 1) is widely seen as benefiting first and foremost bribe-taking officials and privileged businessmen with state contracts. The bill is also assumed to aim at repatriating funds hidden in offshore zones by Moldovan participants in the recent, massive bank thefts and laundering schemes. Critics further note that the amnesty (if enacted) would allow the corrupt individuals to remain in the system, persist in their ways and perhaps count on another amnesty in a few years' time.

One significant political consequence would be to consolidate the incumbent clienteles that have grown in recent years with Plahotniuc's system of centralized corruption (replacing the earlier, free-for-all corruption in Moldova). Hence the comments that the proposed "fiscal amnesty looks like a penal amnesty" (RFE/RL, December 12; Ziarul National, December 1114; Transparency International Moldova press release, December 11).

On December 9, the parliamentary majority voted to transfer Moldova's Intelligence and Security Service (SIS) from the head of state's jurisdiction into that of parliament. This SIS Director shall henceforth be appointed by a simple majority of votes in parliament (upon a proposal by at least 10 deputies) for a five-year term. The Parliament shall also be able to dismiss the SIS Director by a simple majority (upon a motion by at least one third of the chamber's deputies). Plahotniuc currently controls ("coordinates") some 60 deputies out of the 101 in the chamber.

This new legislation changes the previous procedure, whereby the SIS Director used to be nominated by the state president. The former law, moreover, stated that the "president coordinates the activity of the SIS, subject to parliamentary control," but the new legislation changes this to "the SIS activity is subject to parliamentary control," thus eliminating the role of the head of state. These changes are understood as safeguards against president-elect Dodon exercising any oversight on the SIS or even accessing secret information. At the same time, however, the SIS Director's dismissal procedure could make it difficult for a different parliamentary majority after 2018 to dismiss a director that Plahotniuc would now pick (Infotag, Unimedia, December 10, 11).

The SIS has decided (or perhaps been ordered) to miss the multi-billion dollar bank thefts and laundering schemes entirely in recent years. The new legislation changes do not seem to address this problem at all.

This is probably not the end of legislative changes designed to reinforce the incumbent authorities in the face of challenges from a pro-Russia president and the new pro-Western opposition. Earlier this year, Plahotniuc had "guaranteed" before US, European, and Romanian officials that he would keep pro-Russia forces such as Dodon away from the seats of power, thus maintaining "stability." It was widely understood that the acceptance of Plahotniuc's informal rule was a part of this bargain. Nevertheless he has facilitated Dodon's rise to the presidency because PAS and PDA pose a real challenge to the existing system, whereas Dodon and his Socialists are containable with the existing methods.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Disclaimer

This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.
A new rule from the Department of Health and Human Services makes it clear that state agencies should not be determining how to distribute millions of dollars of federal Title X family planning funds based on anything other than a health clinic's ability to provide those services.

This is a provocative but smart move that aims to restore federal funding for health care centers serving lower-income populations that have been disqualified by some states simply because they also provide abortions.

This regulation does not suddenly fund abortions. By statute, no federal funds can be used to pay for such services. Instead, it bars recipients of federal family planning dollars -- usually state health departments -- from refusing to pass that money along to health care providers for reasons unrelated to their ability to deliver Title X services.

According to HHS, more than 4 million people get these services, which include contraception, pregnancy testing, preconception health services, screening and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, basic infertility services and screenings for cervical and breast cancer. Planned Parenthood officials estimate that about a third of the people getting Title X services are getting them at their clinics.

However, a dozen states set irrelevant criteria for eligibility, effectively cutting off funding for private clinics that also offer abortions. Those restrictive laws have eroded services, especially for low-income women. As a result, HHS says, the number of people receiving Title X services has decreased in those areas. Often, the clinics that are best able to reach a large swath of lower-income people end up hamstrung by state regulations. For example, after Kansas passed a law prohibiting private family planning clinics from getting Title X funds, HHS reported, the number of clients served under Title X dropped more than 37 percent from 2011 to 2015.

The rule won't take effect until Jan. 18, and it could be blocked by a GOP Congress primed to reverse regulations adopted in the waning months of the Obama administration. Or states could decide to forgo federal family planning dollars to the detriment of the clinics that millions of lower-income people have come to rely on for basic health care. Some congressional Republicans are even talking about killing the entire Title X program.

But lawmakers shouldn't hold women's health services hostage to their crusade against abortion, which women have a legal right to seek. The HHS rule will help more lower-income women get the reproductive-health and screening services they need. That's a goal both parties should embrace.

-- By the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune News Service newspaper
CLEARWATER, Fla., Dec. 28, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On January 18th the Church of Scientology is hosting their bi-monthly Charity Coalition luncheon, by starting the New Year with a positive look forward to the year ahead.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/94df025a-2e7c-4ac4-8053-f54035fe1680

The highlighted non-profit organization speaker is from HIPPY (Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters). They work with young at-risk youth and help them attain a better education for their futures.

Also featured, is an educational speaker who will talk about success and how to achieve it in the world we live in today.

Over 50 members of non-profit organizations will enjoy a luncheon put on by the gold medal winning chefs of the Fort Harrison. After which, all those in attendance can continue networking with the other like-minded members attending the luncheon.

The Charity Coalition was first established in September 2014. Since then Tampa Bay organizations have been able to come together every other month to get educated on many topics from Marketing to Fundraising, while they network and build strong lasting relationships, said Dylan Pires the Community Affairs Director for the Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization.

The Fort Harrisons doors are open for non-profit organizations and charities to hold their own events and seminars.

To RSVP or for more information about the Charity Coalition, please contact Dylan Pires at 727-467-6860 or email him at dylanpires@churchofscientology.net.

About the Church of Scientology

The Scientology religion was founded by humanitarian and philosopher, L. Ron Hubbard. The first Church of Scientology was formed in the United States in 1954 and has expanded to more than 11,000 churches, missions and affiliated groups, with millions of members in 165 nations. Scientologists are optimistic about life and believe there is hope for a saner world and better civilization, and actively do all they can to help achieve this. The Church of Scientology regularly engages in many humanitarian programs, such as anti-drug campaigns, human rights campaigns and global educational programs. To learn more, visit www.scientology.org.

The Fort Harrison:

Since its restoration in 1927, the Fort Harrison has been the home to many charitable organizations. The latest owner, the Church of Scientology, completed a top to bottom restoration of the For Harrison in 2009, and since then has hosted over 300 community events there.
CLEARWATER, Fla., Dec. 28, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In honor of the January 27th International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) of Florida, a mental health watch-dog group that investigates and exposes mental health abuses, is holding a month long open house beginning on Monday, January 2, 2017 at its headquarters in downtown Clearwater. The anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau was designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the United Nations General Assembly to honor the victims of the Nazi era and to encourage the development of programs aimed at preventing another Holocaust. In accordance with these aims, CCHR Florida will tour visitors through its Industry of Death Museum and educate them on abuses to mental health laws.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3589bb39-cae3-473e-844e-238630f4b6a7

One example is The Baker Act, the mental health law in Florida which covers all aspects of mental health. This act was originally designed to prevent the incarceration of individuals without just cause. It was named after Maxine Baker, a former State Representative from Miami, who stated In the name of mental health, we deprive them of their most precious possession  liberty. Unfortunately, the Baker Act is now being used to deprive both adults and children of their liberty.

A 2015 Annual Report of Baker Act Data prepared for the Agency for Health Care Administration noted that there were 193,410 involuntary examinations initiated in calendar year 2015 with 32,882 initiated on minors. In Florida, a child may be removed from school grounds and sent for involuntary examination without parental consent or knowledge.

Our Abuse Case Hotline receives calls every day and unfortunately many of these calls are from the friends and families of individuals who did not meet the criteria for Baker Acting but were still sent to and detained in a mental health receiving facility, said Diane Stein, President of CCHR Florida.

The CCHR Florida headquarters is located at 109 N. Fort Harrison Avenue, Clearwater. For more information, call 727-442-8820 or visit www.cchrflorida.org.

About CCHR:

Initially established by the Church of Scientology and renowned psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz in 1969, CCHRs mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections.

It was L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, who brought the terror of psychiatric imprisonment to the notice of the world. In March 1969, he said, Thousands and thousands are seized without process of law, every week, over the free world tortured, castrated, killed. All in the name of mental health.
Center for Performance is finished, more to do at Hall of Fame Village

local
Protestors in Poipet demand the release of local CNRP official Din Puthy charged with assault for allegedly hitting border policeman Chhean Pisith with his car, Dec. 29, 2016.

More than 50 protestors seeking the release of a local opposition party official who is facing a criminal charge in what many people think was a fake auto accident blocked National Road 5 near the Poipet International Border Checkpoint on Thursday.

The demonstrators carried banners and signs calling for justice for Din Puthy, the CNRPs deputy head of operations in Poipet City, who was arrested on assault charges in connection with the Dec. 22 incident. Din Puthy is also president of a labor association that advocates for local moto-taxi drivers, cart pullers and other informal workers, formally known as Cambodia Informal Economy Reinforced Association.

Some of the protesters were crying and shouting, saying the charge is a grave injustice and claiming Din Puthy did not hit immigration police officer Chhean Pisith with his SUV on Dec. 22.

Mang Puthy was charged with intentional violence with aggravating circumstances on Dec. 24 and sent to Banteay Meanchey provincial jail.

While the demonstrators were mostly friends and supporters of Din Puthy, the protest grew larger when authorities started to break it up. Two protest leaders were arrested, but later released when the demonstrators agreed to stop.

Civil society organization officials observing the protest said it was held without authorization from authorities since most protesters did not understand the legal procedures and they were in a rush as Din Puthy has been held for several days.

While Chhean Pisith was taken away in an ambulance wearing a neck brace, video footage of the incident raises questions about whether the policeman was actually hit by Din Puthys SUV. Many observers of the video say he was acting.

Witnesses told reporters the vehicle never touched Chhean Pisith, calling his account of the incident into question.

The car stopped, and the police stood in front of the car pretending to collapse on his own or to be unconscious, a witness told RFAs Khmer Service. I see unfairness in this incident as the car did not hit [the victim]."

The exact whereabouts of the police officer is unclear. According to sources, he is either getting medical treatments at a military hospital in the Aranyaprathet district of neighboring Thailands Sras Keo province, or he has already been transferred to a private hospital in Bangkok with a brain injury and that the military hospital could not treat.

Reported by Hour Hom for RFA's Khmer Service. Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
Myanmar villagers who fled fighting between government troops and Ta'ang National Liberation Army soldiers take shelter in a school in Kyaukme, Myanmar's northern Shan state, Dec. 29, 2016.

More than 150 villagers have fled to camps in Kyaukme township in the northern part of Myanmars volatile Shan state to escape intensified fighting between government soldiers and Taang National Liberation Army troops, a local lawmaker said Thursday.

Sai Tun Nyan of the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party, who represents the town of Kyaukme, said he and another state lawmaker took residents of Nyaung Maung village to safety in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in Kyaukme.

The two Shan state parliamentarians intend to take more people to the camps there as villagers fear for their safety during the ongoing bout of fighting that began on Dec. 26.

Because the government army used airstrikes, people were killed and injured, and houses were damaged, said Sai Tun Nyan.

People are afraid, and more than 150 IDPs have arrived in Kyaukme, he said.

One more truck has gone to the fighting area to bring more IDPs to Kyaukme, he said. We havent been able to send any of the IDPs home recently because they feel insecure and have emotional wounds.

So far, three men have been killed, and eight other villagers, including three Buddhist monks, have been injured in the latest round of fighting.

The TNLA is part of the Northern Alliance of four ethnic militias that launched coordinated attacks on Nov. 20 on 10 government and military targets in war-torn northern Shan state.

The other members of the alliance are the Arakan Army (AA), Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA).

The TNLA has also been fighting another ethnic armed groupthe Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army (RCSS/SSA)in the region since late November 2015, about six weeks after the signing of a nationwide cease-fire agreement (NCA) between the government and eight of the countrys more than 20 ethnic armed groups.

The TNLA was excluded from signing the accord because of its ongoing hostilities with Myanmar armed forces.

Group leader abducted

Meanwhile, a northern branch leader of the All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF) was abducted by the military on Wednesday while he was on his way to Laiza, the capital of KIA-controlled territory in neighboring Kachin state on Myanmars border with China, the groups general secretary said Thursday.

Soldiers abducted and arrested Min Htay as he was on his way home from a meeting about state-level peace talks in Mae Sot, Thailand, said ABSDF general secretary Sonny Mahinder.

No one from the ABSFD, which is a signatory to the NCA, knows where Min Htay is, but the group is working with government military officers and local authorities to try to secure his freedom, he said.

We found out about him at around 9 p.m. last night, and we are still searching for him, he said.

Min Htay played a Myanmar military officer in the American movie Rambo 4 with actor Sylvester Stallone.

Clashes between the KIA and government army have intensified this week, forcing more than 2,000 IDPs to flee their camps and look for safer places.

Government soldiers have captured KIA battalion headquarters and stations, including the militias strategic mountaintop Gidon outpost in Waingmaw township on Dec. 16.

The fighting has resulted in an increase in the number of internal refugees and civilian deaths and has stymied the governments efforts to bring warring ethnic militias to the negotiating table.

The United Nations estimates that more than 100,000 people have been displaced by fighting between government soldiers and ethnic armed groups in Kachin and the northern part of neighboring Shan state.

Reported by Ko Kan Thar and Aung Moe Myint for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
A third Muslim man whom the Myanmar government said had worked closely with local administrative officials in restive northern Rakhine state has been found dead in violence-ridden Maungdaw township, the State Counselors Office announced on Wednesday.

Authorities are investigating the murder of the man who was a former ward administrator in Badakar village and had been working with local authorities on regional development activities, the announcement said.

The death is the third to have occurred in the past week of local Muslims who are said to have collaborated with authorities as they continue to try to round up militants who raided three border guard stations on Oct. 9 and killed nine officers.

The body of the man, identified as Sirazuhut from Wet Kyein village in northern Rakhine, was reportedly found Monday near a creek that runs between Wat Kyien and Badakar in Maungdawan area inhabited primarily by Myanmars stateless Rohingya Muslim minorityaccording to Myanmar media reports. He had been missing since Dec. 16.

The government has blamed the October attacks and subsequent violence in the area on Rohingya insurgents who received training and financial support from Islamists abroad.

Myanmars foreign affairs ministry has said that about 50,000 Rohingya have fled the region to adjacent Bangladesh during a security crackdown following the border post attacks. Some of them have accused soldiers of murder, rape, torture and arson.

On Sunday, a Muslim man named Rawphi, a 28-year-old administrator in Yedwingyun village, was found dead with knife wounds.

The State Counselors Office said the following day that the victim had been working with security forces in administrative duties, the online journal The Irrawaddy reported.

On Dec. 22, the decapitated body of Shuna Mya, a Muslim man from Ngakhura village, where one of the attacks on three area border guard stations took place, was found floating in a river on Dec. 22, a day after he had spoken with reporters who visited the area.

A statement issued by the State Counselor's Office on Facebook the next day said Shuna Mya had been killed after he told the media that the government army had committed no acts of rape or arson and did not make arbitrary arrests. No arrests have been made in the case.

Indonesia sends aid

In the meantime, majority-Muslim Indonesia sent 10 shipping containers of food, baby food, and clothes for Rohingya affected by the violence in northern Rakhine state, according to a report in The Nation.

A Malaysian Muslim organization plans to send an aid flotilla to Rakhine on Jan. 10 with nearly 200 metric tons of rice, medical aid, and essential supplies for Rohingya communities in northern Rakhine, despite a warning by the Myanmar government on Wednesday that it will turn back the boats if official permission to enter the country is not obtained.

The two predominantly Muslim countries called on Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmars de facto leader, to allow unimpeded humanitarian access to the areas affected by violence when they and other member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met with her on Dec. 19 to discuss the crisis in northern Rakhine.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Hundreds of Han Chinese and Western students living at Sichuans Larung Gar Buddhist Academy have been quietly ordered to leave as Chinese authorities continue the forced, and better publicized, removal of larger numbers of Tibetan monks and nuns, sources say.



Several hundred Han Chinese, many of them living at Larung Gar as lay practitioners but some also monastically ordained, have already been evicted from the center, a local source told RFAs Tibetan Service.



Many of them had lived in Larung Gar for many years, while others joined later in order to study and practice, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



They came from different parts of China, the source said.



There were also many students from Western countries, including the United States and countries in Europe, who were studying at the center, and they too were forced to leave without any publicity, he said.



Tibetan monks and nuns have so far made up the largest number of Larung Gar residents forced to leave, though, RFAs source said.



The brunt of the hardship was faced by the monks and nuns who were sent back to their home counties in the Tibet Autonomous Region, the source said.



They were not allowed to go straight back to their family homes but first had to undergo a month of patriotic reeducation programs, after which they were allowed to return.



More nuns expelled



Following the eviction last week of hundreds of monks and nuns who had come to Larung Gar from counties in Golog (in Chinese, Guoluo) in neighboring Qinghai, another large group of nuns was sent away by bus on Dec. 28, the source said.



At that time, many other nuns who had gathered at the station cried out in pain and distress at the departure of their friends.



Chinese work crews are still carrying out the destruction of monks and nuns houses at Larung Gar, he said.



Many thousands of Tibetans and Han Chinese once studied at Serthar (Seda) countys sprawling Larung Gar complex, which was founded in 1980 by the late religious teacher Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok and is one of the worlds largest and most important centers for the study of Tibetan Buddhism.



Many have already been expelled from the makeshift dwellings that once lined the hillsides around Larung Gar as authorities seek to reduce the centers population by about half to a maximum level of 5,000 by next year, sources told RFA in earlier reports.



Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFA's Tibetan Service. Translated by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney.




A group of thugs and police officers attacked a civil society training class in Ho Chi Minh City this week, breaking up the class and beating two of the participants, RFAs Vietnamese Service has learned.

Activist Nguyen Ho Nhat Thnanh (aka Paulo Thanh Nguyen) told RFA that thugs invaded the class, beat him up and threatened him with a gun before taking him to a police station.

A group of more than 10 young people with tattoos all over held me down on the ground and beat me on the head, he said. They even took out a gun and pointed at my head. They told me stay still or else I will shoot you.

Nguyen told RFA he was beaten so severely that he began to have trouble seeing.

Then they covered my head and took me to a police station, he said. At the station they told me that I organized a training class with the purpose of overthrowing the government and that is deemed as dangerous.

While Nguyen was under attack from the tattooed thugs, attendees to the class were dealing with a cadre of uniformed and plainclothes police.

They escorted me to the police station, Cao Tran Quan, a class attendee, told RFA. They did not let me take the elevator, but forced me to use a staircase where it was very dark. They beat me.

Police and hired thugs have often harassed activists in Vietnam, a one-party state that brooks little dissent. Nguyen told RFA that the authorities fear training programs like the one that was broken up.

A more democratic way

They think such activities are aimed at building up forces to overthrow the government, he explained. They said that according to the executive agencies opinion, this activity is deemed as a plot to topple the administration.

While harassment and detention of activists is common in Vietnam, Nguyen and Cao say they are still determined to bring democratic change to their country.

I want our society, our country, to change in a more democratic way and respect human rights, Nguyen said. I am willing to pay the price by being jailed just to speak out about freedom and pursue the cause that previous generations have sacrificed their lives for.

Mathematics professor Pham Minh Hoang, a pro-democracy activist and former political prisoner who has organized civil society skills classes, told RFA that Vietnam is making a mistake by harassing people like Nguyen and Cao.

Vietnam has taken a huge step back in the area of protecting human rights, when authorities harass and detain people for hours like that, he told RFA. I think this is a humiliation for Vietnam when it is still a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The Geneva-based Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system made up of 47 States responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe.

Council members serve for three year terms and are ineligible for immediate re-election after serving two consecutive terms. Vietnams term expires this year.

Reported by Chan Nhu for RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
An officer who commanded special-police units in Sarajevo during the siege of the city by Bosnian Serb forces in 1992-95 has been charged with war crimes.

Prosecutors in Bosnia-Herzegovina indicted Dragan Vikic in connection with the execution of eight captured enemy combatants in 1992.

The prosecutor's office in the Balkan country said in a statement on December 29 that Vikic and three other former police officers were charged over their roles in the killings of the Bosnian Serb soldiers, who had been captured after their armored personnel carrier broke down on the outskirts of the city.

Vikic and one officer were charged with "failing to arrest, process, and sanction" people responsible for the crime and "failing to prevent removal of evidence and hiding of the bodies." Two other officers were charged with participation in the crime.

Vikic, whose forces fought to defend Sarajevo from Bosnian Serb attacks during the siege, dismissed any connection with the incident.

"My hands, and the hands of the people under my command, are clean," he told the Sarajevo website Klix.

Bosnian Serb forces supported by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) held Sarajevo under siege from April 1992 until December 1995.

About 11,000 people died during the siege.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters
Breda, the Netherlands / Ghent, Belgium - argenx (Euronext Brussels: ARGX), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on creating and developing differentiated therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of cancer and severe autoimmune diseases, today announced the publication of new preclinical data on the CD70/CD27 pathway that provide further rationale for ARGX-110 therapy for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). ARGX-110, a SIMPLE Antibody(TM) targeting CD70, is currently being evaluated in a Phase I/II study in combination with azacitidine in newly diagnosed AML patients.

Data published by argenx collaborator Prof. Adrian Ochsenbein at the University of Bern, demonstrate that CD70/CD27 is highly expressed on AML blasts and leukemic stem cells in newly diagnosed AML patients, regardless of cytogenetic factors, or the patient's risk class. The published data show the CD70/CD27 pathway to be critical in the biology of leukemic stem cells, and therapeutic intervention using a CD70-targeted antibody to enable selective targeting of leukemic stem cells without impacting hematopoietic stem cells, resulting in a survival benefit in preclinical AML models.

"The published data from Prof Ochsenbein's lab continue to support our rationale to evaluate ARGX-110 in newly diagnosed AML patients based on the important presence of the CD70 target in the disease pathogenesis and its demonstrated role in survival," commented Nicolas Leupin, MD, Chief Medical Officer of argenx. "We are very committed to our recently initiated Phase I/II study of ARGX-110 in combination with standard of care azacitidine as we believe this target represents an innovative and differentiated approach to the disease, further proven by this seminal data underscoring the role of CD70 in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML)."

A link to the abstract can be accessed at: http://jem.rupress.org/content/early/2016/12/27/jem.20152008

About ARGX-110

ARGX-110 is a SIMPLE Antibody(TM) targeting CD70, an immune checkpoint target involved in hematological malignancies, several solid tumors and severe autoimmune diseases. ARGX-110 works in three ways: i) blocks growth of tumor cells, ii) kills cancer cells and iii) restores immune surveillance against tumors (Silence K. et al. mAbs 2014; 6 (2):523-532). ARGX-110 is currently being evaluated in hematological and solid tumors. Preclinical work on ARGX-110 in AML was done in collaboration with the Tumor Immunology Lab of Prof. A. F. Ochsenbein at the University of Bern. Prof. Ochsenbein won the prestigious 2016 Otto Naegeli Prize for their breakthrough research on CD70/CD27 signaling with therapeutic potential for cancer patients.

About AML

AML is a neoplasia of the myeloid line of blood cells, characterized by the rapid growth of abnormal white blood cells that build up in the bone marrow and interfere with the production of normal blood cells. AML has the lowest 5-year survival rate of all blood malignancies (~5-20%) and primarily affects the eldery. Patients above 65 years old are unfit for stem cell transplantation and are often put on palliative treatment. Around 40% of these patients receive azacitidine, as it has been shown to improve the overall survival rate.

-Azacitidine (Vidaza, Celgene)-

About argenx

argenx combines the diversity of the llama immune system with antibody engineering to advance a clinical pipeline to treat patients with cancer and autoimmune diseases. Our platforms allow us to unlock novel and complex targets and develop antibody-based drugs designed for longer duration of effect and greater efficacy. The strength of our team, our deep understanding of the biology, and our committed collaborations with industry leaders contribute to the success of our journey.

For further information, please contact:

Joke Comijn, Corporate Communications Manager

+32 (0)477 77 29 44

+32 (0)9 310 34 19

info@argenx.com

Beth DelGiacco (US IR)

Stern Investor Relations

+1 212 362 1200

beth@sternir.com

Forward-looking Statements

The contents of this announcement include statements that are, or may be deemed to be, "forward-looking statements". These forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, including the terms "believes", "estimates", "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "may", "will", or "should", and include statements argenx makes concerning the intended results of its strategy. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. argenx's actual results may differ materially from those predicted by the forward-looking statements. argenx undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements, except as may be required by law.
If it were merely a Bosnian reality show, it might be good fun. But it happened in real life -- and created a diplomatic storm in a teacup.

Milorad Dodik, the president of Republika Srpska, the predominantly ethnically Serb part of Bosnia, announced that he had received an invitation to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. It would make him the only Balkan politician present at the January 20 event in Washington.

Convinced that an honor had been extended to him that was denied even to heads of state in the region, Dodik duly applied for a diplomatic visa as required for travel to the United States.

But almost immediately following Dodik's announcement, Bosnian Foreign Minister Igor Crnadak made it clear that only ambassadors are invited to the inauguration and that Bosnia would be represented by its Washington envoy. He also explained that any such invitation is normally sent through the Foreign Ministry and would not arrive in the form of a private letter, as Dodik was suggesting.

In response, Dodik presented his "invitation" during a live interview on N1TV, albeit without revealing the letterhead or the signature.

It has since become clear, however, that Dodik has not been invited to Trump's official inauguration ceremony but to a private ball organized by religious and conservative groups (including the Tea Party) on the margins of Trump's inauguration.

The U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo subsequently confirmed that Dodik was not on the guest list at its disposal of invitees to the inauguration. It added that it did not have a list of planned attendees for events on the sidelines of the inauguration.

And in fact, the U.S. Embassy did not issue Dodik a diplomatic visa, reportedly because he would not be representing his country at the event.

But Dodik seemed to be suggesting that there was a more sinister reason behind the perceived snub.

"For procedural reasons, I had applied for the visa earlier, but my request had been denied on the grounds that I am not an official representative of the Bosnian state and am therefore ineligible for that visa, which I have previously been granted on a regular basis," Dodik explained.

He went on to give a detailed account of a conversation he purportedly had a week ago with Hoyt Brian Yee, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs. According to Dodik, Yee asked him to renounce his party's policies -- seen by critics as ethnically divisive -- and advised him to cooperate with the Bosnian state prosecutor over the legality of the recent referendum he had engineered in Republika Srpska. He described the dialogue with Yee as "a harangue organized by U.S. Ambassador in Bosnia Maureen Cormack."

"I said that the current Bosnian crisis is mostly the fault of the outgoing U.S. administration, and I asked them to leave Bosnia and stop interfering. I also made it clear that my party will not give up its policies," Dodik insisted.



He added that Cormack had been a part of the telephone conversation.



The U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo gave its own account of Dodik's exchange with the State Department official and reiterated its commitment to the Dayton peace accords.

"As a sign of continued U.S. commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia, and the strengthening of democratic values and institutions in this country, the Deputy Assistant Secretary Hoyt Yee and Ambassador Maureen Cormack had a conversation with the president of the Serb Republic in order to express our concern over his recent public statements and actions, and to reiterate our previously stated position -- that refusal to cooperate with the [Bosnian] constitutional court is a violation of the rule of law, and that those responsible must face the consequences. We take very seriously every attempt to undermine the Dayton peace accords."

However, on December 27, Dodik was back in Sarajevo to apply for a regular U.S. visa, as he is determined not to miss the ball.

"What is the purpose of presenting a private invitation to a private function as an official summons extended by the U.S. administration to the presidential inauguration? It doesn't make sense. This was an embarrassment that could have been avoided," Minister Crnadak said in an interview with RFE/RL's Balkan Service.
Ukrainian forces are facing Russian attacks in multiple locations, where heavy shelling and air strikes damaged infrastructure as Moscow stepped up its offensive, the Ukrainian military said on November 3.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

The Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine was again disconnected from the power grid after shelling damaged the remaining high voltage lines, leaving it with just diesel generators, Ukraine's nuclear firm Enerhoatom said.

Enerhoatom said it believes Russia will soon try to repair and connect Europe's largest nuclear station toward the Russia-occupied Crimea and Donbas regions.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said in its November 3 briefing that heavy fighting was under way in the east, with Russian troops conducting offensive operations in the Bakhmut, Avdiyivka, and Novopavlivka areas of the Donetsk region.

Russia launched attacks on 12 settlements in Donetsk and the neighboring Luhansk region. Ukrainian forces repelled the attacks, the military said.

In Luhansk, the Ukrainian military accused Russian forces are using civilians as human shields. The claim could not be independently confirmed.

Russian strikes were also reported in the central area of Kryviy Rih and in the northeast in Sumy and Kharkiv.

"The enemy is trying to keep the temporarily captured territories, concentrating its efforts on restraining the actions of the defense forces in certain areas," Ukraine's military said.

Russia has targeted Ukrainian civilian and energy infrastructure in recent weeks, prompting power and water outages and causing casualties among civilians.

Russia keeps denying targeting civilians, though the conflict has killed thousands, displaced millions, and razed some Ukrainian cities to the ground.

In the south, Ukraine's counteroffensive has left Russian forces fighting to hold their ground around the city of Kherson, on the right bank of the Dnieper River.

Moscow-installed authorities are urging residents to evacuate, the Ukrainian military said.



Residents of the town of Nova Zburiyvka had been given three days to leave and were told that evacuation would be obligatory from November 5, it said.

Russian authorities have repeatedly said Ukraine could be preparing to attack the massive Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper and flood the region. Kyiv denies that.

Russia and Ukraine will each hand over 107 captured fighters on November 3 in the latest prisoner exchange between the two sides, Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-installed administrator of Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine's Donetsk region, said in a post on his Telegram channel. He said 65 of those released by Ukraine will be separatist fighters from Donetsk and Luhansk.

Seven ships carrying agricultural products left Ukrainian Black Sea ports on November 3, a day after the resumption of a grain deal aimed at delivering Ukrainian food to foreign markets, the Infrastructure Ministry said.

The vessels were loaded with 290,000 tons of food products and were headed toward European and Asian countries, the ministry said in a statement without elaborating.

The British ambassador arrived at the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow on November 3, Reuters reported, after she was summoned to discuss Moscow's claims that Britain was involved in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Crimea.

WATCH: RFE/RL asked people in Moscow how they thought the war in Ukraine -- which Russian President Vladimir Putin maintains is a "special military operation" -- is going.

Russia's Defense Ministry has said the attack was carried out under the guidance and leadership of British Navy specialists, an assertion Britain has dismissed as false.

Meanwhile, two U.S. officials told CBS News on November 2 that senior Russian military leaders discussed last month how and when they might use nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin was not involved in the talks, they told CBS News.

The White House said it has grown "increasingly concerned" about the potential use of nuclear weapons in the past few months. But it stressed Washington saw no signs of Russia preparing for such use.



In September, Putin escalated his nuclear and anti-Western rhetoric, mentioning that Russia could use all means at its disposal to protect itself and the occupied Ukrainian territories.

With reporting by Reuters and BBC
The commander of Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Hossein Salami, warned protesters that October 29 would be their last day of taking to the streets.

"Do not come to the streets! Today is the last day of the riots," Salami was quoted as saying by state media.



Iran has been gripped by protests triggered by the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Tehrans morality police.



Since Aminis death on September 16, thousands have been demonstrating across the country against the clerical establishment.



Protests were reported on October 29 at several universities across the country where students chanted, Death to the dictator, and, Woman, life, freedom.



Iran has blamed its foreign enemies and their agents for the unrest.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA) posted videos on Twitter showing protests at several universities. One of the protests showed people holding hands in a large circle and chanting: "If we don't unite, we will be killed one by one."

HRANA said 272 protesters had been killed in the unrest as of October 28, including 39 minors. Some 34 members of the security force have also been killed and nearly 14,000 people have been arrested, it said.

The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights also posted a video of a protest at a university campus and said that in the city of Arak state security forces fired tear gas as mourners gathered for the funeral of Mehrshad Shahidinejad, a young aspiring chef who reportedly was killed after being arrested during a protest.

The IRGC warning on October 29 came as the United Nations expressed "increasing concern" about reports of deaths in the antiestablishment protests in Iran.

"We condemn all incidents that have resulted in death or serious injury to protesters and reiterate that security forces must avoid all unnecessary or disproportionate use of force against peaceful protesters, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York on October 28.

Those responsible must be held to account, he said, adding that the UN was urging Tehran to address the legitimate grievances of the population, including with respect to womens rights.

The United Nations urged the Iranian government in Tehran to respect human rights, noting that the crisis can and should be brought under control through dialogue.

In a separate statement, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also expressed concern about "rising fatalities and injuries" to protesters in Iran.

"Its essential that unfettered access to health care is provided to those in need, [including] the appropriate use of medical vehicles, facilities & the ability of health workers to help patients," WHO chief Tedros said on Twitter on October 28.

Protesters clashed again with security forces on October 28 in Zahedan, a city in southeastern Iran were dozens of people were killed in clashes four weeks ago during anti-government protests.

Activists posted videos on social media showing protesters in the city calling for the death of "dictator" Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and against the Basij militia, which has played a major role in a crackdown on the demonstrations.

The United States and Albania will hold an informal UN Security Council gathering on November 3 that will focus on the protests in Iran, according to a note outlining the event seen by Reuters. Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi and Iranian-born actress and activist Nazanin Boniadi are set to address the gathering.

"The meeting will highlight the ongoing repression of women and girls and members of religious and ethnic minority groups in Iran," the note said. "It will identify opportunities to promote credible, independent investigations into the Iranian government's human rights violations and abuses."

Javaid Rehman, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, is also due to address the meeting, which can be attended by other UN member states and rights groups.

"The meeting will underscore ongoing unlawful use of force against protesters and the Iranian regime's pursuit of human rights defenders and dissidents abroad to abduct or assassinate them in contravention of international law," read the note about the planned meeting.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and dpa
Pakistani police say a German woman of Pakistani origin was shot dead allegedly by her husband during a visit to the country.

The husband was taken into custody after the death of his wife, a doctor, in the Jhelum district of Punjab, police spokesman Abdul Rehman said on December 29.

The husband reportedly told the police that his wife, Uzma Khan, was killed in an accident while he was teaching his son how to fire a pistol.

But Pakistani media reported that Khan's sister said that her sister was shot dead by her husband during a heated argument and that he tried to make it look like an accident.

She also told the police that Khan's husband had subjected her to domestic violence, claiming she had seen multiple signs of torture on her body.

Mian Mazhar Hayat, a doctor at Jhelum hospital, said he could not confirm reports of torture.

"We have found three marks on [her] body including a bullet wound, which was the cause of death," he said.

When asked whether Khan's death was a possible "honor killing," a police spokesman said it was "a bit premature" to talk about a motive.

The family had come to Pakistan on December 19 to visit relatives.

Based on reporting by dpa, Dunyanews.tv, and Express Tribune
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The leader of a major religious political party in Pakistan called on the government to stop prosecuting terrorist suspects in military courts. The head of Jamiat Ulema-e Islam said several innocent people had been wrongly convicted. (RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal)
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, have discussed what the Kremlin said were "plans for the resumption of regular flights between Moscow and Cairo in the near future."

Russia suspended all flights to Egypt amid security concerns after a Russian jet exploded over the Sinai Peninsula on October 31, 2015, killing all 224 people on board.

The extremist group Islamic State claimed it had placed a bomb aboard the plane, which was carrying Russian holidaymakers back to St. Petersburg from the Egyptian beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The suspension of flights was a major blow to Egypts economy, which relies heavily on tourism. More than 30 percent of the tourists who visited Egypt in recent years before the bombing were from Russia.

The Kremlin statement, issued on December 29, did not say exactly when flights could resume. It comes two days after Russian Transport Minister Maksim Sokolov said flights might resume in January 2017.

Russian state news agency TASS reported on December 28 that Russian aviation security specialists were at the Cairo international airport "checking special equipment and security measures in the second terminal reopened this fall after repair and upgrade."

With reporting by TASS and Interfax


A Russian military official says there was was no explosion aboard a jet that crashed in the Black Sea en route to Syria but that terrorism has not been ruled out as a possible cause.

Authorities are trying to determine what caused the Defense Ministry Tu-154 aircraft to crash shortly after takeoff from the coastal city of Sochi on December 25, killing all 92 passengers and crew.

"There was no explosion on board, I can say that for certain," said Sergei Bainetov, the Russian Air Force flight safety chief who heads a commission investigating the crash.

"But an act of terror is not necessarily an explosion...It could have been any type of mechanical impact, so we are not discarding this version," Bainetov said.

The remark indicated that investigators haven't ruled out the possibility of a deliberate impact aimed at bringing the plane down.

Transport Minister Maksim Sokolov, however, repeated what he has said previously: that "a terror attack is not being considered as the main theory" of the cause of the crash.

Russia's top domestic security and counterterrorism agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), said earlier in the week that investigators had found "no indications or facts pointing at the possibility of a terror attack or an act of sabotage."

The FSB said possible causes included bad fuel, pilot error, equipment failure, and objects stuck in the engines.

The crew of the plane, which had stopped in Sochi to refuel after flying from Moscow, did not report any problem to air-traffic controllers before the plane crashed less than 2 kilometers offshore.

More than 60 passengers were members of the military's Aleksandrov song-and-dance ensemble, also known as the Red Army Choir, which was to perform for Russian servicemen deployed in Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad's government in the war there. Nine Russian TV journalists and prominent charity worker Yelizaveta Glinka, or Doctor Liza, were also among the dead.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, TASS, and Interfax
German English

Basel, Switzerland, December 29, 2016 - Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. (SIX: BSLN) announced that, as of January 1, 2017, Ursula Eberhardt will take the role of Head of Global Human Resources and join the Extended Management Committee which reports to the Chief Executive Officer. Ms. Eberhardt succeeds Heidi McDaid, who retires as of December 31, 2016. Ms. Eberhardt has served in various positions in Basilea's Corporate Department and Human Resources team since joining Basilea in 2006 and most recently was deputy Head of Global Human Resources.

Ronald Scott, Basilea's Chief Executive Officer, indicated: "Basilea greatly appreciates Ms. McDaid who built Basilea's human resources department and operations from our founding to a level of industry excellence. Basilea's human resources activities will continue to be in good hands under Ms. Eberhardt, who has been our deputy Head of Global Human Resources for the last seven years. We wish Ms. McDaid all the best in her retirement and much success to Ms. Eberhardt in her new position."

About Basilea

Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is a biopharmaceutical company developing products that address increasing resistance and non-response to current treatment options in the therapeutic areas of bacterial infections, fungal infections and cancer. The company uses the integrated research, development and commercial operations of its subsidiary Basilea Pharmaceutica International Ltd. to discover, develop and commercialize innovative pharmaceutical products to meet the medical needs of patients with serious and potentially life-threatening conditions. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX: BSLN). Additional information can be found at Basilea's website www.basilea.com.

Disclaimer

This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For further information, please contact:

Peer Nils Schroder, PhD

Head of Corporate Communications & Investor Relations

+41 61 606 1102

media_relations@basilea.com

investor_relations@basilea.com

This press release can be downloaded from www.basilea.com.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says the Syrian government and its opponents have signed an agreement on a nationwide cease-fire and a declaration expressing willingness to begin peace talks.

Putin said on December 29 that a document outlining measures to implement the cease-fire was also signed.

The truce due to take effect at midnight local time would be the first nationwide halt in fighting since a weeklong cease-fire in September that collapsed after several incidents of violence.

The Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition, a major Syrian opposition group, confirmed its support for the truce.

The Syrian Army also confirmed the planned nationwide halt to fighting.

"It has just been reported that an event occurred several hours ago that we had not just waited a long time for but have worked to speed up. Three documents have been signed," Putin said in televised remarks at a meeting with his foreign and defense ministers.

He said that that "all the agreements that have been reached are very fragile and require special attention and patience, a professional approach toward these issues, and constant contact with our partners."

The announcement came days after forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government took full control of the northern city of Aleppo, forcing out rebels who had held the eastern part of the city since 2012. The key victory for Assad followed an intense offensive that drew condemnation from Western governments, human rights groups, and Syrian activists.

The announcement was welcomed by the United States, which had been pointedly left out of these latest negotiations despite being an ally of Turkey.

"We hope [the cease-fire] will be implemented fully and respected by all parties," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement. "Any effort that stops the violence, saves lives, and creates the conditions for renewed and productive political negotiations would be welcome."

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russia and Turkey would be guarantors of the cease-fire, which he said included more than 60,000 rebels and that "these groups control most of central and northern Syria."

The AFP news agency quoted a spokesman for the National Coalition, Ahmed Ramadan, as saying the group "expresses support for the agreement and urges all parties to abide by it."

Ramadan said that key rebel groups including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham and Army of Islam factions had signed the cease-fire deal, though there was no immediate confirmation from rebel officials.

Russia To Continue 'Fighting Terrorism'

The Syrian Army said the cease-fire did not apply to combat against the extremist group Islamic State (IS) and the Al-Nusra Front, which now calls itself the Fateh al-Sham Front and says it is no longer affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, Osama Abu Zaid, said the agreement also excluded the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia and that the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) political wing would not be part of the upcoming talks to be held in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.

That aspect of the deal was a direct concession to Turkey, which fears that a stronger Kurdish fighting force in Syria will further embolden Turkish Kurds.

Ankara supports the Free Syrian Army, a loose alliance of moderate rebel factions, some of which it is backing in operations in northern Syria designed to sweep IS and Syrian Kurdish fighters from its southern border.

Putin said that the Russian military would scale down its presence in Syria, but he didn't say how many troops and weapons would be withdrawn.

Putin said Russia will continue "fighting international terrorism in Syria" and supporting the Assad government.

The Russian military will maintain its presence at both an air base in Syria's coastal province of Latakia and the naval facility in the Syrian port of Tartus, Putin added.

Putin spoke hours after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey and Russia had prepared a cease-fire agreement and a document outlining a political solution to the conflict. He did not say where the agreements had been signed.

Russia and Turkey have backed opposing sides in the war, which has killed more than 250,000 people in Syria since it erupted following a deadly government crackdown on pro-democracy protests in March 2011.

It was unclear if Assad had made any public announcement, but the Kremlin released a statement saying Putin and Assad had spoken by telephone, and that Assad was committed to abiding by the cease-fire.

Moscow has given crucial diplomatic and military support to Assad and helped avert his government's possible defeat by launching a campaign of air strikes in September 2015, while Turkey has supported rebels seeking Assad's ouster.

However, Ankara and Moscow have started to cooperate more closely on Syria in recent months.

Last week, Putin said that Turkey, Russia, and Iran were expected to take part in proposed peace talks to be hosted by Kazakhstan.

A few hours after Putin's announcement, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman said he and Putin discussed the cease-fire and the planned talks in the Kazakh capital, Astana, during a telephone conversation on December 29.

Erdogan later told a news conference in Ankara that the cease-fire was a historic opportunity to end the conflict.

"This is a window of opportunity that has been opened and should not be squandered," he said.

"The fight against terror groups, including [Islamic State], will continue with determination until the security of our citizens is assured," he said.

During the meeting with Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on December 29 that Egypt will be invited to join the process and that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan could eventually join as well.

Lavrov also said he hopes that after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office, his administration "will also join the efforts in order to channel this work in one direction based on friendly and collective cooperation."

President Barack Obama's administration worked closely with Russia in efforts to end the fighting in Syria, where it leads a coalition combating IS militants and has accused Moscow of failing to deliver on previous cease-fire agreements.

The deal comes after a localized truce, also brokered by Russia and Turkey, that set the stage for the removal of civilians and rebels from the eastern part of Aleppo earlier this month.

Putin's announcement also came amid expectation that Obama's administration will impose new sanctions on Russia over allegations that it hacked and leaked e-mails of Democratic Party organizations and operatives.

The CIA has concluded that effort was an attempt to help Trump -- who has said he would seek to improve badly strained relations with Moscow -- defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the November 8 election.

With reporting by Interfax, TASS, Reuters, AP, and AFP
KYIV -- Between classes in Kolkata, India, 17-year-old Svyatoslav Yurash was glued to a video stream of almost a million of his compatriots rallying in Ukraine's capital when he decided to join the protest that would soon swell into a revolt.

The night before in Kyiv -- on November 30, 2013 -- hundreds of demonstrators, most of them students, had been bludgeoned by riot police. The idealistic Yurash couldn't stand by any longer. He flew home and rushed to Independence Square -- better known as simply the Maidan. Soon, he would launch the influential Euromaidan PR agency that amplified voices from the barricades in half a dozen or so languages across almost as many platforms.

Out on the Maidan, the "loss of hope" that had driven Yurash out of Ukraine after the 2010 election victory of pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych faded. As he and his fellow protesters pressed their case for closer ties to the West and greater transparency, fighting back the ranks of riot police, passion swelled within him. He sensed that his country was finally on the right track, which for him meant the path toward Europe as a thriving new democracy and away from Russia's smothering sphere of influence.

Three years later, that passion has turned to frustration.

Yanukovych might be in Russian exile, but many of Ukraine's would-be revolutionaries say they are disillusioned by the lack of progress and complain that the country is now dangerously close to being rerouted from the European track set out by the uprising.

The past year has seen the collapse of the second postrevolutionary government and the departure of a number of reform-minded ministers and other officials. For the most part, they have been replaced by old-guard politicians -- including some with close ties to the president, Petro Poroshenko -- who critics say have resumed the opaque ways of Ukrainian politics.

"The post-Maidan leadership has betrayed our hope for rebuilding Ukraine anew," Yurash, now 20, tells RFE/RL. "These people kept the country together, but there has been little desire to change. Instead, they've worked in the usual corrupt way."

Indeed, corruption remains rampant in Ukraine. Moreover, prosecutors have failed to bring current or former senior officials to justice for serious crimes, including the killings of more than 100 protesters during the unrest.

And Ukraine's economy is still reeling from the 2014 chaos and subsequent conflicts with Russia and Russia-backed separatists. Its currency, the hryvnya, has plunged to historic lows. Some three-quarters of Ukrainians, who make just $200 a month on average, consider themselves poor; almost 82 percent think their lives are worse since the revolution, according to recent surveys.

Meanwhile, the passionate idealism that drove many Euromaidan demonstrators to hit the streets three years ago might have ebbed; only around 1 in 4 Ukrainians in a fresh study by pollster SOCIS expressed a willingness to participate in Euromaidan today. But the perception remains that something is amiss; nearly half of respondents in the same poll think such a protest is "likely" or "very likely" in the first half of 2017.

Chants of "Bandits out!" and "Shame!" -- popularized during the 2013-14 uprising -- are again being shouted during street protests aimed at the government and president. More than 1,000 demonstrators at a Ukrainian Federation of Trade Unions rally in front of Ukraine's parliament on December 8 chided lawmakers, saying they should be ashamed of themselves for not doing more to increase social benefits for workers as utility costs rise. Members of far-right groups returned to Independence Square on November 21, the anniversary of the start of the uprising, to demand the resignation of Ukraine's "criminal" leadership. Kyiv, which has been ground zero for two revolutions in 12 years, has been rife for months with talk of a third revolt.

"I have a strong feeling that if you leave everything as it is, awaiting us is a counterrevolution," Mustafa Nayyem, a former journalist turned lawmaker whose Facebook post on November 21, 2013, is widely viewed as the catalyst for Euromaidan, as the movement came to be called, wrote on that same social media platform on its third anniversary.

Many Ukrainians have placed the blame for the slow pace of progress on one person in particular: President Poroshenko. Several embittered reformers who have quit government accuse him and his perceived cronies of blocking their efforts to fight graft and nepotism. Most recently, a member of parliament now in self-exile accused the president and his inner circle of massive corruption -- which his administration vehemently denies.

Aivaras Abromavicius, the Lithuanian-born former economy minister, quit Ukraine's government in February, saying he wouldn't be a "puppet" for Poroshenko allies, whom he accused of blocking economic reforms and pressuring him to appoint "dubious people" to senior positions in state-controlled companies.

Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili last month resigned from his presidential appointment as governor of Odesa in the south, accusing Poroshenko and his circle of unbridled corruption. Saakashvili ally Yulia Marushevska, known for her English-language "I am a Ukrainian" video before Poroshenko appointed her to head the Odesa customs department, tells RFE/RL that in the Black Sea port city she and Saakashvili found their "green light [to reform the region] turned to a red light." Almost immediately, she says, they were confronted by "a complete absence of political will and an absence of any real desire to change" from Poroshenko's allies in government, especially Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman. Marushevska resigned a week after Saakashvili.

Anticorruption campaigner Oleksandra Drik, president of the Kyiv-based Civic Lustration Committee, an NGO that monitors anticorruption reforms, says that Poroshenko and the government of Volodymyr Hroysman are treading the line between making "just enough" changes to appease Ukraine's Western backers and preserving the "old, corrupt system" that has enriched oligarchs and bled state coffers since the country's independence in 1991.

Of course, some impediments are beyond Kyiv's control. The ongoing, Russia-backed war in Ukraine's east, which exploded in the weeks after Yanukovych's ouster, and the Kremlin's forcible annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, are also strangling Ukrainian reform efforts. Poroshenko announced during a trip to the front line on December 6 that after 31 months of fighting, the conflict had reached a grim milestone: More than 10,000 people, including at least 2,500 troops and 7,500 civilians, have been killed since April 2014. Moscow has used the war as a lever to destabilize Kyiv, dialing up when it sees fit a war that Poroshenko has said costs Ukraine about $5 million a day.

The West has sought to be supportive of Kyiv. But Washington and Brussels have become increasingly annoyed by the slow pace of reforms in Kyiv and Poroshenko's personal lack of commitment to change, two diplomats from Western embassies tell RFE/RL. Officials from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) visited Kyiv in November but left without assuring it another aid tranche, saying decisive steps must first be taken to combat corruption and prosecute and convict corrupt high-level officials. A European Court of Auditors report published on December 7 said that EU funds meant to help Ukraine reform have had "limited impact."

Dmytro Shymkiv, a deputy head of the presidential administration, tells RFE/RL that keeping a steady pace is more important than being speedy.

"If we stop, that's going to be a challenge for the country," he says. "I don't think there is a way back."

It hasn't been all gloom and doom. Ukraine has managed to launch new government anticorruption agencies, introduce electronic systems for the disclosure of public officials' assets and public procurement, modernize its military, and decrease its energy dependence on Russia (Kyiv has not purchased Russian gas for over a year), among other things.

Perhaps the most visible reform has been that of its police forces, infamous for being corrupt and violent.

"Three years ago, we were standing against the police, and now we are standing for them," says Kateryna Kruk, 25, an activist who gained notice outside of Ukraine by informing the world of Euromaidan events through Twitter.

And in December, the government adopted a series of landmark reforms that the current health minister, U.S.-born Ulana Suprun, tells RFE/RL will overhaul Ukraine's notoriously bureaucratic and corrupt health-care system. Suprun, who played an instrumental role in the makeshift medical services provided at Euromaidan, says the "revolutionary" improvements being unveiled on January 1 will guarantee that all Ukrainians have access to primary health and emergency care.

Ukrainian officials have hoped it is all enough to convince the European Union that it is worthy of a special relationship -- including a freshly minted deal to allow Ukrainians visa-free travel to the EU's Schengen zone, a key demand of Euromaidan.

But it may not be enough to convince many disaffected Ukrainians that there's still momentum for change here.

"The chance for real reforms died with the breakup of the 'Dream Team,'" Abromavicius says, in a reference to the technocratic government that he was a part of under former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. It also included an American-born finance minister, Natalie Jaresko, another favorite in Washington. That government was ousted in April.

Now, as 2016 rumbles to a close and Yurash sits in the shadow of the burned-out Trade Unions building that once housed his Euromaidan PR operation, he says he remains optimistic, despite everything. But, he adds, he is disappointed in Ukraine's leadership and what he sees as a squandered opportunity.

"Those now in power don't realize that they missed their chance to go down in history as the new Ukraine's founding fathers," he says. "Poroshenko could have been the Ukrainian George Washington. He's lost that chance."
The United States on December 28 added the student wing of the Pakistan-based militant organization Lashkar-e-Taiba to its list of "foreign terrorist organizations."

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or Army of the Pure, is an anti-Indian militant group with historical ties to Pakistan's top spy agencies. It has been accused of orchestrating numerous attacks, including a 2008 assault in Mumbai that killed 166 people.

The State Department's move against the student group, Al-Muhammadia Students, came as the Treasury Department added two Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders to the U.S. list of "specially designated global terrorists," subjecting them to U.S. sanctions that bars Americans from doing business with them.

LeT was banned by the Pakistani government in 2002 but it has continued operating through front organizations, according to U.S. officials, and their leaders conduct public rallies and interviews.

The State Department announced that it amended the designation of LeT as a "foreign terrorist organization" to include what it called the group's student wing.

The Treasury Department added Muhammad Sarwar, LeT's leader in Lahore, and Shahid Mahmood, an LeT leader in Karachi, to the U.S. list of "specially designated global terrorists."

Based on reporting by Reuters and Dawn.com


A truck driver from Uzbekistan who held up traffic on a U.S. freeway for hours during the holiday weekend in an armed standoff with police has pleaded not guilty to charges of making a terrorist threat.

Khurshed Haydarov, 25, was charged with the felony after confronting police in a four-hour standoff along Interstate 29 near Kansas City, Missouri.

Haydarov pleaded not guilty during a brief court appearance on December 27 in which he required a Russian interpreter. Authorities said he lives in Philadelphia but that he's from Uzbekistan and speaks little English.

A judge scheduled a January 3 hearing in his case.

The incident began when witnesses reported that a man was pointing a long gun at passing vehicles from the cab of a tractor-trailer parked at a rest stop on December 23. No shots were fired.

Police ordered the freeway closed in both directions near the rest stop.

The ensuing standoff ended when authorities breached one of the truck's windows and arrested Haydarov.

Haydarov's weapon later was identified as a pellet gun, which usually is not lethal when fired.

Police said Haydarov was disoriented but was not found to be legally intoxicated.

Based on reporting by AP and The Kansas City Star


The United States says it is expelling nearly three dozen Russian diplomats as it announced new economic sanctions and other punitive measures in response to alleged Russian hacking during the presidential election.

The moves, announced on December 29 by the White House, had been widely publicized ahead of time, including by President Barack Obama in an interview earlier this month.

But the moves also come less than a month before Obama leaves office and his successor, Donald Trump, assumes the presidency. Trump has repeatedly brushed aside intelligence assessments and White House statements about the alleged Russian hacking, raising the question about whether the new sanctions will remain in place after his inauguration on January 20.

A White House statement said two Russian diplomatic compounds in Maryland and New York, believed to be involved in intelligence gathering, were ordered closed, and 35 Russians, identified as intelligence operatives, were being expelled from the country.

Additionally, nine top officials and entities associated with the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU, and the main Russian security agency, the FSB, were being hit with new financial and travel sanctions.

A senior U.S. administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the four GRU officials were directly involved in computer hacking, including that of U.S. political parties. Three companies hit with sanctions provided "material support" to GRU hacking efforts, the official said.

"These actions are not the sum total of our response to Russia's aggressive activities. We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicized," Obama said in a statement.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied it was behind any computer intrusions of U.S. political parties or e-mail systems, though President Vladimir Putin has also made cryptic comments suggesting possible involvement of Russian officials.

Responding to the White House announcement on December 29, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told news agencies that Moscow regretted the new measures, calling them unlawful and saying they would "destroy diplomatic relations with Russia."

Russia Accused Of Backing Trump Over Clinton

The CIA, the FBI, and the broader U.S. intelligence community have concluded that hackers, likely operating with the authority of the highest levels of the Russian government, broke into Internet servers and e-mail accounts belonging to the U.S. Democratic Party, and other officials during the election campaign.

On December 9, The Washington Post reported that the CIA had determined the intent of the Russia hackers was to help Trump win the presidency, not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system.

The New York Times also reported that intelligence officials had concluded Russian hackers accessed Republican Party computers but didn't release potentially damaging e-mails or other materials.

That led analysts to conclude that the intent of the Russian hacking was to in fact help propel Trump to the White House. He ultimately prevailed in the November 8 election, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Those conclusions have been repeatedly dismissed by Trump, most recently on December 28, in remarks at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

"I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I'm not sure we have the kind of security we need," Trump told reporters.

In a December 11 television interview, he asserted that the CIA conclusions were being used by Democrats to undermine his electoral victory.

But Trump has also faced growing pressure in Congress, including by top Republican lawmakers, who have called for a full inquiry into the extent of Russian hacking.

At least three separate Senate committees are slated to launch investigations in January.

Administration officials indicated the targeting of the 35 Russian diplomats, whom the White House identified as intelligence officers, was partly in response as well to what they said was sustained harassment against U.S. diplomats in Russia.

Those U.S. complaints have been mounting for months now, what one administration official called "behavior unprecedented in the post-Cold War era."

In conjunction with the new measures, the Department of Homeland Security released a new report detailing some of the Russian hacking, which included not only state electoral databases but other "critical infrastructure."

"To be very clear here, they have been interfering in the American democratic process and the conduct of American diplomacy, this should be of concern to all Americans and members of both parties," one administration official said.

In addition to punishing Russian activities, U.S. officials said the new measures were aimed at deterring future activity, in the United States and in what they said were U.S. allies.

"Russia is not going to stop. We have every indication that they will continue to interfere in democratic elections in other countries," the official said.
U.S. media report that the United States will soon announce retaliatory measures against Russia for allegedly leaking hacked U.S. Democratic e-mails during the presidential campaign in what the CIA and others believe was an effort to help Donald Trump win the election.

The measures could include targeted economic sanctions, indictments of known hackers, restrictions on Russian diplomats, as well as covert leaks of embarrassing information about Russian officials, media outlets including Reuters and The Washington Post reported, citing unidentified U.S. officials.

Some reports said an announcement is expected on December 29.

Officials said the moves will be on par with Russia's own alleged hacking ventures so as to avoid the possibility of a cyberconflict spinning out of control.

The FBI, CIA, and the Office of Director of National Intelligence agree that Russia was behind the hacking into the U.S. Democratic Party organizations ahead of the November 8 presidential election.

The CIA has concluded the hacks and leaks were aimed to help Trump, a Republican, defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

President-elect Trump has suggested he doubts Russia interfered, despite the broad agreement in the U.S. intelligence community that it did.

Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and Democrat Amy Klobuchar, who are on a trip to the Baltic states, Ukraine, Georgia, and Montenegro, said that Russia should expect a tough U.S. response over the hacking.

Graham said on December 28 that "bipartisan sanctions...will hit Russia hard, particularly Putin as an individual."

"I would say that 99 of [the 100 U.S. senators] believe the Russians did this and we're going to do something about it," Graham said.

He said that Russia is trying to break the back of democracies all around the world.

It is now time for Russia to understand -- enough is enough," Graham told reporters.

Trump seemed to suggest the United States should not impose new sanctions on Russia. Asked about Graham's remarks, he told reporters: "I think we ought to get on with our lives."

President Barack Obama said recently that "we need to take action and we will" against Russia for interfering in the U.S. election.

According to the Reuters news agency, Obama may choose to invoke an April 2015 executive order that empowered him to impose sanctions in response to cyberattacks perpetrated by foreign groups targeting U.S. infrastructure or done for economic purposes.

Reuters quoted an unnamed U.S. government official as saying one option would be leaking material on Russian officials or actions that Washington already has obtained in a way that would "parallel what the Russians did, but be impossible to prove."

According to Reuters, another option would be new, tougher economic sanctions against Russia. Washington has already imposed sanctions on Moscow over its seziure of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 and its involvement in the war between pro-Russia separatists and Ukrainian government forces, which has killed more than 9,750 people since the conflict began in eastern Ukraine in April 2014.

However, according to Peter Harrell, a former senior State Department official, Washington is still unlikely to impose blanket embargoes against Russia because of the danger it could harm the economies of Western Europe.

Harrell, who worked on sanctions policy, said the United States may instead target specific Russian intelligence officials or military divisions believed to be involved in the cyberintrusions.

"The Russian defense sector would be fair game," Reuters quoted Harrell as saying.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, asked about reports of U.S. retaliation, said on December 28 that Russia would respond in kind to any measures announced by the White House.

Based on reporting by Reuters, MSNBC, The Washington Post, CNN, BBC, and AFP
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Finnish English

CapMan Real Estate Press release 29 December 2016 at 10.30 a.m. EET

CapMan Real Estate advises BVK on the acquisition of three residential properties in a growing area in Copenhagen

CapMan Real Estate advises BVK, Germany's largest pension scheme group, on the acquisition of three prime residential properties in Strandholmen, a growing residential area in Copenhagen. The acquisition is the second portfolio transaction completed under CapMan Real Estate's 400 million mandate to invest in residential real estate in the Nordics.

Strandholmen is a former industrial area located four kilometres from the Copenhagen city centre. The area has been redeveloped in to a lively neighbourhood close to recreational areas, public transport connections and services. The three buildings to be developed comprise a total area of 19,523 m2, including 176 apartments and 86 underground parking spaces. Two of the properties are under construction and expected to be completed in July 2018. The third property is conditional on obtaining the planning consent. The properties are developed and sold by CASA A/S. The investment volume once the development is completed is approx. 85 million euros.

"We are very pleased to announce our second investment under the 400 million residential investment mandate awarded by BVK. Copenhagen's residential market is continuing to grow and the rental occupancy rates are high. In addition, Strandholmen has an attractive location making the investment a perfect match for the investment strategy under the mandate." comments Torsten Bjerregaard, Senior Partner at CapMan Real Estate.

In April 2016, CapMan Real Estate advised BVK on the acquisition of an approx. 80 million prime residential portfolio in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area under the investment mandate.

For further information, please contact:

Torsten Bjerregaard, Senior Partner, CapMan Real Estate, tel. +46 (0)8 445 1051

CapMan

www.capman.com

twitter.com/CapManPE



CapMan is a leading Nordic investment and asset management company. For more than 25 years, we have been developing companies and real estate and supporting their sustainable growth. We are committed to understanding the needs of our customers in an ever-changing market environment. Our objective is to provide attractive returns and innovative solutions for our investors and value adding services for professional investment partnerships, growth-oriented companies and tenants. Our independent investment partnerships - Buyout, Real Estate, Russia and Nest Capital - as well as our associated company Norvestia are responsible for investment activities and value creation. CapMan's service business offering includes fundraising advisory services, purchasing activities and fund management services. CapMan has 100 professionals and assets under management of 2.8 billion.

Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK)

www.versorgungskammer.de



Bayerische Versorgungskammer is the competence and service centre for occupational and communal pension schemes and Germany's largest pension scheme group under public law. It is the joint executive body of twelve liberal professions' and communal pension schemes. BVK covers about 2 million insured persons in total, with contributions of 4 billion and 2.9 billion pension payments annually. It currently has 62 billion assets under management and 1,200 employees.
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A Henrico County police officer who was acquitted of any criminal wrongdoing after shooting a woman passenger in a car has settled out of court a civil lawsuit brought by the passenger.

Kimberly McNeil who was struck four times, including once in the back of the head, in the December 2015 incident sought $75 million from officer Joel D. Greenway of Sandston. The suit was filed in May.

The settlement agreement, which was reached last week, was not disclosed openly in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, so the details remain unclear and the case was dismissed with prejudice, according to online court records.

Henrico County Attorney Joseph P. Rapisarda Jr. said the settlement will be paid in full by the county, though he couldnt say immediately how much the county would owe.

In October, a Henrico jury acquitted Greenway of all charges stemming from the shooting after more than 10 hours of deliberation.

It was about 10:30 p.m. on Dec. 15, 2015, when Greenway, who was on duty and in uniform, spotted what he called a suspicious vehicle at an Exxon station on Nine Mile Road, in an area known for drug activity. When Greenway approached the car, the driver, Robert Davis, attempted to drive off and the officer opened fire, striking the car seven times.

McNeil was a passenger in the car that Davis, her ex-boyfriend, was driving. Both McNeil and Davis admitted to using cocaine that day.

McNeil now walks with a cane and suffered a traumatic brain injury from the incident. During the final day of Greenways trial, she suffered a seizure in the courtroom.

Greenway is still a Henrico County employee but is not actively doing police work, according to the police department.
FORM 8.3

PUBLIC OPENING POSITION DISCLOSURE/DEALING DISCLOSURE BY

A PERSON WITH INTERESTS IN RELEVANT SECURITIES REPRESENTING 1% OR MORE

Rule 8.3 of the Takeover Code (the "Code")

1. KEY INFORMATION

(a) Full name of discloser: Jupiter Asset Management Ltd (b) Owner or controller of interests and short positions disclosed, if different from 1(a):

The naming of nominee or vehicle companies is insufficient. For a trust, the trustee(s), settlor and beneficiaries must be named. (c) Name of offeror/ offeree in relation to whose relevant securities this form relates:

Use a separate form for each offeror/offeree Deutsche Boerse AG (d) If an exempt fund manager connected with an offeror/offeree, state this and specify identity of offeror/offeree: (e) Date position held /dealing undertaken:

For an opening position disclosure, state the latest practicable date prior to the disclosure 28th December 2016 (f) In addition to the company in 1(c) above, is the discloser making disclosures in respect of any other party to the offer?

If it is a cash offer or possible cash offer, state "N/A" Yes

London Stock Exchange Group PLC





2. POSITIONS OF THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE

If there are positions or rights to subscribe to disclose in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 2(a) or (b) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security.

(a) Interests and short positions in the relevant securities of the offeror or offeree to which the disclosure relates following the dealing (if any)

Class of relevant security:



Tendered Ordinary



Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled: 6,477,230 3.46 (2) Cash-settled derivatives:



(3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell:



TOTAL: 6,477,230 3.46

All interests and all short positions should be disclosed.

Details of any open stock-settled derivative positions (including traded options), or agreements to purchase or sell relevant securities, should be given on a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions).

(b) Rights to subscribe for new securities (including directors' and other employee options)

Class of relevant security in relation to which subscription right exists: None Details, including nature of the rights concerned and relevant percentages: None

3. DEALINGS (IF ANY) BY THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE

Where there have been dealings in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 3(a), (b), (c) or (d) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security dealt in.

The currency of all prices and other monetary amounts should be stated.

(a) Purchases and sales

Class of relevant security Purchase/sale



Number of securities Price per unit Ordinary - Tender Sale 40,193 EUR 77.7484

(b) Cash-settled derivative transactions

Class of relevant security Product description

e.g. CFD Nature of dealing

e.g. opening/closing a long/short position, increasing/reducing a long/short position Number of reference securities Price per unit None

(c) Stock-settled derivative transactions (including options)

(i) Writing, selling, purchasing or varying

Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Writing, purchasing, selling, varying etc. Number of securities to which option relates Exercise price per unit Type

e.g. American, European etc. Expiry date Option money paid/ received per unit None

(ii) Exercise

Class of relevant security Product description

e.g. call option Exercising/ exercised against Number of securities Exercise price per unit None





(d) Other dealings (including subscribing for new securities)

Class of relevant security Nature of dealing

e.g. subscription, conversion Details Price per unit (if applicable) None





4. OTHER INFORMATION

(a) Indemnity and other dealing arrangements

Details of any indemnity or option arrangement, or any agreement or understanding, formal or informal, relating to relevant securities which may be an inducement to deal or refrain from dealing entered into by the person making the disclosure and any party to the offer or any person acting in concert with a party to the offer:

Irrevocable commitments and letters of intent should not be included. If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none"



None





(b) Agreements, arrangements or understandings relating to options or derivatives

Details of any agreement, arrangement or understanding, formal or informal, between the person making the disclosure and any other person relating to:

(i) the voting rights of any relevant securities under any option; or

(ii) the voting rights or future acquisition or disposal of any relevant securities to which any derivative is referenced:

If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none"







None

(c) Attachments

Is a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions) attached? NO

Date of disclosure: 29th December 2016 Contact name: Nabeel Ashraf Telephone number: 0203 817 1407

Public disclosures under Rule 8 of the Code must be made to a Regulatory Information Service and must also be emailed to the Takeover Panel at monitoring@disclosure.org.uk. The Panel's Market Surveillance Unit is available for consultation in relation to the Code's disclosure requirements on +44 (0)20 7638 0129.

The Code can be viewed on the Panel's website at www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk.
There is no shortage of incongruity surrounding the debate over how to treat controversial books in Virginias public schools. The states Department of Education has proposed a new rule that would require districts to notify parents about sexually explicit works and allow students to study different works instead. The proposal resembles the so-called Beloved bill, passed by the General Assembly in its most recent session but vetoed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

Such proposals enjoy the backing of conservative Republicans  who generally can be counted on to make fun of trigger warnings on college campuses and who usually favor local control instead of mandates from the state or federal government. Liberal Democrats  who usually distrust local control  argue in this case for the greater wisdom of the officials closest to the people.

Incongruities aside, the issue is complicated. Both sides make good points.

As the ACLU recently noted, many works of great literature contain material that could be considered sexually explicit, depending on how elastic your definition of that term is. Under Supreme Court precedent, schools also cannot discriminate against ideas merely because they find them objectionable or inappropriate. Curriculum decisions belong in the hands of local school divisions, the ACLU of Virginia argued.

The recent controversy in Accomack over The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird provides a pointed reminder that parents will not always be judicious or wise, and will sometimes yelp about works of profound literary merit. Under the Department of Educations proposal, schools could find themselves with a painful logistical headache: trying to develop parallel curricula for those who want to opt out of the regular one.

Yet as state Sen. Amanda Chase notes, students who showed up wearing T-shirts inscribed with the language used in some books would be suspended. Moreover, not every work that uses strong language is a literary classic. Sometimes school systems make poor choices. When a Georgia county placed stickers on science textbooks describing evolution as a theory, not a fact, the ACLU did not maintain that curriculum decisions were a matter of local control; it sued the county to have them removed.

In fact, curriculum decisions in Virginia are not entirely matters of local control. The states Standards of Learning dictate curricula to a great extent. There is nothing wrong with having a uniform state standard regarding sexually explicit material, too  at least in theory.

How it might work in practice is an entirely different matter. Color us doubtful. In this case, liberals skeptical of the new rule might borrow a conservative argument: If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change. Has some terrible offense created a need for this new policy? If not, then why enact it?
Napa, California, Dec. 29, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

Jameson Animal Rescue Ranch (JARR), a world-class animal rescue organization that exemplifies the values of quality, commitment, and generosity of the Napa Valley, has hired animal advocate Julia Orr to lead its communications programs. In this role, Julia will be responsible for driving and implementing the organizations national communications and marketing strategies.

Prior to joining JARR, Orr was principal of Orr PR Associates, a communications agency largely dedicated to nonprofits, with an emphasis on animal advocacy and rights. For more than five years, Orr has focused her expertise on assisting animal protection agencies raise their profiles and bring attention to their causes. Her clients and campaigns included The Animal Museum, Farm Animal Rights Movement, Animal Justice Projects, Deadly Doses campaign, and Beagle Freedom Project. Before starting her own business, she worked for more than ten years in Global Publicity for the Walt Disney Studios and at the DDA Public Relations Agency.

Julias addition coincides with the demand for Jameson Animal Rescue Ranchs service to our community and beyond. Were working harder than ever to help find solutions for the growing number of animals in need," said Monica Stevens, founder of Jameson Animal Rescue Ranch. Julias years of dedication to animal protection issues and her a strong background in companion animal and farmed animal issues will be invaluable as we move into this much anticipated phase of growth and need, including the establishment of our sanctuary."



Said Orr of her new position: I am joining the most remarkable team of accomplished people at Jameson Animal Rescue Ranch who are dedicated to changing the way animals are viewed and treated. It is truly exciting to be a part of a vision and goal to establish a state-of-the-art animal, world-class rescue and sanctuary in Napa Valley.

About Jameson Animal Rescue Ranch (JARR)

Founded in June 2014 by David and Monica Stevens (proprietors of 750 Wines), Jameson Animal Rescue Ranch (JARR) is a no-kill rescue and sanctuary in the Napa Valley for companion and farmed animals in need. Named for Jameson, their 14 year old Great Pyrenees who crossed the rainbow bridge in 2013, the nonprofit provides transitional and permanent shelter, adoption and rescue services, humane education, animal advocacy, and is committed to ending animal hunger, cruelty, and overpopulation. JARR also collaborates with and acts as a liaison for various animal rescue groups locally and statewide.

JARRs vision includes building a state-of-the-art, cage-free animal rescue and sanctuary uniquely serving the physical and emotional needs of all of its companion and farmed animal residents. Renowned architect Howard Backen of Backen, Gillam & Kroeger Architects and Tim McDonald of Centric Construction are leading the building and design team for the Ranch.

Jameson Animal Rescue Ranch is a 501(c)(3) registered nonprofit organization. To learn more about the Ranch and how you can help, please visit: http://www.jamesonanimalrescueranch.org or follow on Facebook. For more information contact media@jamesonrescueranch.org.

###






A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
GAITHERSBURG, Md., Dec. 29, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) announced today that a member of the companys senior management team will participate in the following investor conferences during the first quarter of 2017.



35th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

San Francisco, CA

January 9-12, 2017

Presentation: January 10, 2017





Wells Fargo Specialty and Generic Drug Summit

Orlando, FL

February 13, 2017

Presentation time TBD





Orlando, FL February 13, 2017 Presentation time TBD Cowen & Co. 37th Annual Health Care Conference

Boston, MA

March 6-8, 2017

Presentation day and time TBD

Presentation dates and times will be updated on the Emergent website www.emergentbiosolutions.com under Investors as this information becomes available.

For these conferences, the company will be webcasting its presentation, which may include a discussion of the company's recent business developments as well as its most recently reported financial results and guidance. The webcasts will be available both live and by replay, accessible from the Emergent website.

About Emergent BioSolutions

Emergent BioSolutions is a global specialty biopharmaceutical company dedicated to one simple missionto protect and enhance life. We develop, manufacture, and deliver a portfolio of medical countermeasures for biological and chemical threats as well as emerging infectious diseases. Through our work, we envision protecting and enhancing 50 million lives with our products by 2025. Additional information about the company may be found at www.emergentbiosolutions.com. Follow us @emergentbiosolu.
Re: In its 1903 decision in the case of Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, the United [ #permalink

6 Kudos
Although Porter was born and raised in Boston, his parents and family hail from the Beehive State. Porter has made many trips to Utah and was a visiting political science scholar at Brigham Young University before becoming an attorney.

Its been really great because even though Im not a native Utahn, I spent so much time there, Porter said in a recent phone interview. Working for and on behalf of the people of Utah has been something of a coming home for me.

Porter has also worked for Utahs junior Republican senator, Mike Lee. Porter was working at a law firm when Lee called him out of the blue to talk about an open position.
POLICE are urging the public to help keep tabs on a gang member barred from entering part of Mexborough.



Jahmaine Watson (27), a member of the towns Pitsmoor Shotta Boys gang, is due for release from prison next month.



He is subject to a Criminal Behaviour Order until March 2019 that prohibits him from entering the Roman Estate or Highwoods  an area bounded by Main Street, West Road, Maple Road and Willow Drive.

Watson was jailed for three years last year for a firearms offence.

A police spokesman said officers were keen to hear from the public if Watson breached the order by entering the area covered by the ban.


The awarding ceremony was held at the inauguration of the exhibition bearing the same name, Russian Diamond Line 2016. The contest, which is held once every two years, aims to attract jewelry connoisseurs to the best creations of Russian jewelers and give new incentives for domestic jewelry production and export intensification. As it was stressed by Alexey Shcherbina, the publisher of the Jewellery Review Magazine and Chairman of the Jewellery Exporters Club, Russian jewelers have perfect goods to reach out to foreign markets, and the Russian Diamond Line Contest is an event regularly promoting Russian artists to the global elite of jewelry design, which is very important for the countrys prestige, as well as for commercial success. The contest is traditionally attended by the most famous Russian jewelry companies and designers. This time, the announced winners were the jewelry pieces produced by Cluev, Bronnitsky Jeweler, Tsvetnaya Raduga, White Diamond, as well as by jewelry designers Natalia Tarasova and Tatiana Tarasova, Eduard Nikitin, Andrei Mikhailov, Anna Teplinskaya and others.

It should be noted that the first time Russian jewelers received three top awards was 160 years ago, at the 1st World Exhibition in London. That was the epoch of Carl Faberge, Pavel Ovchinnikov, Pavel Sazikov, Mikhail Perkhin and other jewelry luminaries. The next major international jewelry victory came only 100 years later, in 1996, when the Sphinx of Giza Diamond Necklace designed by Elena Opaleva from Ekaterinburg was named among the 28 best jewelry pieces at Diamond International Award held by De Beers in 1952-2000.

In 2011, the Bullfinches Pendant made by Ilgiz Fazulzyanov was deservedly awarded the Grand Prix in Hong Kong at the International Jewellery Design Excellence Award after it won in the competition with 108 jewelry pieces named best at national contests. In 2013, the two jewelry pieces, being winners at Russian Diamond Line 2012, including the Secret of the First Drop Ring produced by the Aesthete Jewelry House, were among the top 8 at this global competition. Finally, the Champion of the Champions Title and Grand Prix of the International Jewellery Design Excellence Award-2015, which examined 191 works from 31 countries, were again given to a Russian jewelry piece, which was the Life Ring made by Almaz-Holding (designer Anna Teplinskaya). Thus, Sazikov and Faberge do have their successors.

The Life Ring (Almaz-Holding)



One of the winners of Russian Diamond Line - 2016 was White Diamond (Kostroma), which presented a jewelry set named "Water" included in the Gold Series nomination. Dedicated to one of the four elements of the Universe, this set of jewelry, per its author Anna Teplinskaya, represents the inner inconstancy and purity.









The Water Jewelry Set (White Diamond)









Anna Teplinskaya, Creative Director and Mikhail Kuznetsov, CEO of White Diamond





The winners of Russian Diamond Line 2016 were the jewelry pieces produced by Cluev, Bronnitsky Jeweler, Casting House, Svyat-Lake (all based in Moscow), Natalia Tarasova and Tatiana Tarasova (Nevsky-T, St. Petersburg), Magiya Zhizni (Rostov-on-Don), Darkhan Gold (Ulan-Ude), well-known designers Eduard Nikitin and Andrei Mikhailov (Moscow), Elena Skvortsova (Simferopol), Nikolai Romanov (Nizhniy Tagil).

TM Ulyana Kravtsova (Kostroma), Uzor-Utum (Yakutsk), Metropolitan Jewellery Manufactory (Moscow) and Liliya Fadeeva (Moscow) received Special Diplomas of the Jury.

A jewelry set named "Firebird Feather" produced by the Moiseikin Jewelry House (Ekaterinburg) received the Grand Prix of this contest for the authorial design, impeccable implementation and use of exceptional stones and its own patented tack, Waltzing Brilliance.

The Firebird Feather Jewelry Set (Moiseikin)





The winners of Russian Diamond Line 2016 have been traditionally sent to take part in the Hong Kong international jewelry competition, the results of which will be announced on March 2, 2017.

The Russian Diamond Line contest was founded by the Jewellery Review Magazine in 2008. Every two years, an international jury selects 20 best works from among the winners of various competitions in Russia and CIS, as well as the works of our compatriots living in other countries. The name of the competition - Russian Diamond Line, - in the words of its founders, is symbolizing the national idea in jewelry design as a product of creativity embraced by the multinational ethnos, which is uniting the space of the former Union and our fellow citizens in dozens of countries around the world."

The founders of Russian Diamond Line recently addressed a proposal to ALROSA to support this contest. The diamond mining company is known for its contribution to the domestic jewelry art: 15 years ago, the worlds major diamond miner initiated and sponsored the "Diamonds of Russia  the 20th Century" Project. Incidentally, the unique collection of "Brilliant in the Russian Avant-Garde Style" created at that time was generously handed over by ALROSA as a gift to the Moscow Kremlin Museums.







The Magic Night Necklace (Cluev)



The International Jewellery Design Excellence Award (IJDEA) is a prestigious international event held since 2009 by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC). The biennial contest is aimed to choose the best jewelry pieces made by winners of national competitions. IJDEA is a contest of contests as it is attended by winners of national and regional competitions. Hence, the title awarded to the holder of Grand Prix is "Champion of the Champions." The IJDEA jury is composed of well-known persons in the jewelry world: for example, its 2015 judging panel included famous Italian jeweler Roberto Coin, President and Owner, Roberto Coin S.P.A.; Louisa Lo, Associate Director, Client Advisory, Christies China; Barney Cheng, Couture Designer at Yenrabi LTD; Carina Lau, a world-famous actress and the winner of many awards; Sarah Sevier, Head of Buying & Brand Development at the British Victoria and Albert Museum; and Juliet Weir-de La Rochefoucauld, an art critic from France.

In March 2017, Lawrence Ma, the veteran Chairman of the Jury and Head of the Organizing Committee of the Hong Kong International Jewellery Show will be assisted by Michelle Ong of Carnet, Jeff Chan of Christie's Asia, Emme Wong of Galtiscopio Limited, Irina Slesareva of Jewellery Review Magazine, Fei Liu of Fei Liu Fine Jewellery, Christina Ko of Prestige Magazine, Ruth Faulkner of Retail Jeweller Magazine.

At a press conference in the Central House of Journalists dedicated to the results of the Russian Diamond Line 2016, Eduard Utkin, General Manager of the Russian Jewelers Guild said the share of domestic jewelry goods in the global jewelry exports (which currently stands at only $ 120 million or 0.12%) could be much higher, given the rich tradition of Russian jewelry art and the success of the countrys contemporary jewelry designers. Jewelry manufacturing in Russia has turned to be cheaper than in China at the current ruble exchange rate. An additional advantage is the countrys own unique resource base. In short, there are all conditions for increasing jewelry exports, but the Russian jewelers are in dire need of state support, and above all this regards the simplification of customs procedures and introduction of a declarative jewelry export regime - both for the purpose of exhibitions and shipping export consignments.

Galina Semyonova for Rough&Polished




De Beers announced it will start flooding its Snap Lake mine in Canada in January.

The company received regulatory approval for the project's flooding earlier this year. De Beers attempted to sell the mine but failed to reach an agreement with potential buyers.

De Beers said it plans to preserve the Snap Lake resource until market conditions and technical methods improve such that it can operate the mine more economically. The program of extended care and maintenance will preserve the ore bodys long term viability and reduce costs while minimizing the environmental impact of keeping Snap Lake dormant, it added.

Meanwhile, De Beers pulled out of a joint venture with CanAlaska Uranium to explore for diamonds at Western Athabasca in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. A drilling program undertaken by De Beers in September found seven anomalies were most likely associated with magnetic minerals within organic material in the overburden, CanAlaska reported.

Even so, the currently underexplored Western Athabasca is still worth probing for diamonds, CanAlaska said.



Theodor Lisovoy, Rough&Polished, Moscow




Singapore's producer prices declined further in November at a slower pace, figures from the Department of Statistics showed Thursday.

The manufactured products price index fell 2.3 percent year-over-year in November, following a 2.7 percent drop in October. The measure has been falling since May 2014.

The oil and non-oil indices dipped 1.3 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively in November from a year ago.

The domestic supply price index rose 0.4 percent annually and edged up 0.1 percent from the previous month.

Month-on-month, producer prices increased at a steady rate of 0.3 percent in November.

Data also showed that import prices climbed 0.9 percent yearly in November, reversing a 1.1 percent decline in the prior month.

At the same time, export price index continued its declining trend in November. However, it slipped at a slower pace of 1.2 percent, following a 2.7 percent fall seen in October.

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oodl wrote:

I was in a similar situation several years ago, deciding between Cornell full scholarship and INSEAD. I emailed Soumitra Dutta who was an INSEAD professor before becoming the dean at Johnson. He basically said go to INSEAD if you want to work outside of the US and Cornell if you want to work in the US. In the end, I went to neither as I eventually got off the waitlist at Kellogg, but was able to study abroad at INSEAD for a quarter while at Kellogg.



After attending both a US program and INSEAD and seeing where my classmates of both programs landed afterwards, I'd say post-mba geography is a good filter for deciding between the two. The connections you make and job opportunities you are presented at Stern will be very US (and probably East Coast) centric while at INSEAD will be very Euro/Asia centric.



I don't know many Stern folks and less familiar with their program, but I'd largely agree with your pros/cons list of both programs. One thing I think you might be over emphasizing is the summer internship, which for consulting specifically is less of an issues. If you are comfortable with being a consultant and can kill a case interview, you don't need a summer to "feel it out" or "break in".



You are right that that many INSEAD folks go to MBB afterwards, but the large majority go to international (non-US) offices, typically their home country where they know the language and culture. I'll also mention that INSEAD has very little brand recognition in the US. Even those who have heard of INSEAD in the US don't really know how good it is.



I'll end by saying I loved INSEAD and would absolutely recommend it to anybody considering it. The students were some of the smartest, most interesting people I've met with very diverse backgrounds. And they 100% know how to party! The experience of living in Fonty, traveling Europe on the weekends, was so unique to me as an American. From an international, multicultural, "global citizen" perspective, no US program, can touch what INSEAD offers.

Thank you oodl - a very insightful and detailed response. I'm definitely leaning towards NYU Stern at the moment and I think, based on your comments, I'm leaning in the right direction. Would love to hear from anyone that went to NYU or INSEAD what they would do.
Sweden's foreign trade gap decreased notably in November from a year ago, as exports grew faster than imports, figures from Statistics Norway showed Thursday.

The trade deficit narrowed to SEK 1.1 billion in November from SEK 5.2 billion in the corresponding period last year. In October, the shortfall was SEK 2.0 billion.

Exports surged 13.0 percent year-over-year in November and imports climbed by 9.0 percent.

Trade with countries outside the EU resulted in a surplus of SEK 14.9 billion, while EU trade ended in a deficit of SEK 16.0 billion.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the net trade surplus came in at SEK 0.4 billion in November versus SEK 0.3 billion in October.

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In a move angering Republicans, President Barack Obama announced Wednesday he is designating two new national monuments in the desert landscapes of southeastern Utah and southern Nevada.

Obama announced the creation of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and the Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada.

The Bears Ears National Monument encompasses roughly 1.35 million acres of federal land, while the Gold Butte National Monument spans nearly 300,000 acres.

Obama said his actions will help protect the country's cultural legacy and ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate the scenic and historic landscapes.

"Following years of public input and various proposals to protect both of these areas, including legislation and a proposal from tribal governments in and around Utah, these monuments will protect places that a wide range of stakeholders all agree are worthy of protection," Obama said.

He added, "We also have worked to ensure that tribes and local communities can continue to access and benefit from these lands for generations to come."

Nonetheless, the designations have drawn considerable criticism from Republicans, who accused Obama of executive overreach amid concerns about restrictions on the development and usage of the lands.

Congressman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, claimed the president's designation of the Bears Ears monument politicizes a long-simmering conflict and threatens to further inflame controversies that were near resolution.

"The midnight move is a slap in the face to the people of Utah, attempting to silence the voices of those who will bear the heavy burden it imposes," Chaffetz said.

"We look forward to working with President-elect Trump to follow through on his commitment to repeal midnight regulations," he added. "We will work to repeal this top-down decision and replace it with one that garners local support and creates a balanced, win-win solution."

Utah Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, also said he would work tirelessly with Congress and the incoming Trump administration to undo the designation.

However, Christy Goldfuss, managing director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the Antiquities Act gives the president the authority to create monuments but does not provide explicit authority to undo them.

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Secretary of State John Kerry has argued the U.S. decision to abstain from the vote on a United Nations resolution banning Israeli settlement construction was intended to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution, but Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., warned the move could have the opposite effect.

In an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Thursday, Murphy claimed the U.N. is not a fair forum for the Israelis and said the U.S. should have vetoed the resolution.

"It may be pushing Donald Trump further and further into Netanyahu's camp such that he's not going to be able to be an honest broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians," Murphy said of the decision to abstain.

He added, "So in the long run, this may actually be counterproductive to the sort of goals and precepts of Kerry's speech yesterday."

Kerry argued that the U.S. "could not, in good conscience, stand in the way" of the resolution, which passed by a vote of fourteen to zero.

"If we were to stand idly by and know that we were allowing a dangerous dynamic to take hold in a region in which we have vital interests, we would be derelict in our responsibilities," Kerry said.

The secretary of state dismissed the idea that the U.S. must accept any policy put forward by the Israeli government and argued the U.S. cannot be true to its own values if it allows a viable two-state solution to be destroyed.

Murphy suggested President-elect Trump could build a better relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but noted the U.S. has been most productive when perceived by both the Israelis and Palestinians as being able to bring the two sides together.

"We are always going to first, second and third be Israel's friend, but that also means being able to criticize the Israelis when we think they're wrong and being able to bring both sides to the table," Murphy said. "I'm just not sure that Trump is setting himself up to be able to do that."

Trump has argued the Obama administration has damaged the friendship between the U.S. and Israel but suggested things would be different once he is sworn in.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but not anymore," Trump said in a post on Twitter on Wednesday.

He added, "The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!"

Netanyahu responded with a tweet of his own thanking Trump for his warm friendship and clear-cut support for Israel.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Facing criticism his incoming administration lacks diversity, President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly scrambling to appoint a Hispanic official to serve in his Cabinet.

A transition official told Politico that Trump has narrowed his focus to Agriculture Secretary, which is among the few remaining openings along with Secretary of Veterans Affairs and U.S. Trade Representative.

Former Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety Dr. Elsa Murano and former California Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach on Wednesday to discuss the Agriculture Secretary position.

However, Politico said the candidates for Agriculture Secretary have generated complaints among farmers who supported Trump, who want him to appoint a farm insider to head the agency.

Mario Rodriguez, head of the Latino PAC Hispanic 100, told Politico that Trump is "absolutely looking for qualified Latinos for a Cabinet post."

"I think some appointments are going to be pretty quick," Rodriguez said. "President-elect Trump was very impressed by the candidates. He wants to put a Latino in the Cabinet, he's not doing it just for show."

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is also seen as a possible nominee for Agriculture Secretary and is scheduled to meet with Trump on Friday.

(Photo: Gage Skidmore)

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

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Fox17 wrote:

Hello ! I want to apply to MBA next year (and actually start the MBA Fall 2017 or Spring 2018) and would highly appreciate review of my profile.



My Profile



Nationality: Latvian

Age: 33 years

Gender: Female / married 2 children

GMAT score: 670 (Q45 V37)



Work experience: 10+ years (incl two maternity leaves)

Industry: FMCG, marketing



I have 10+ years of marketing experience within FMCG sector.incl lead of New Product Development. My carrier started from go-to-market marketing/category management roles in top international beauty companies in the Baltics (3 countries, 8 mil. consumers). After c. 6 years of this experience I moved to nr1 local Dairy producer. So, last 4 years have been dedicated to dairy industry in the Baltics and Russia, both NPD and go-to-market responsibilities.





Education:

Master of science in Mathematical Economics. With honors.

Bachelor in Analytical Economics.

Summer courses from Saint Martins School in London

Certificate in Category Management

10+ international company internal trainings / different countries





Extracurricular activities:

 Sports: crossfit, jogging, swimming

Coding for children (studying the course targeting to educate children in the community)

 passion for traveling (United States (incl 4 mnth of living), Canada, Venezuela, China, over 10 countries in Europe and many places in Russia)



Languages: Russian (native), English and Latvian (fluent), German (modest)



Short-term career goal: Move to other country and get a position in business development or marketing management infashion/beauty industry. Preferably, the role related to product development.

Long-term career goal (more than 5 years post MBA): own business, most probably marketing consulting



Target schools: INSEAD (top choice), Essec, I.E. Madrid, IMD, Said



Thank you in advance!

Nisha Trivedi

mbaMission Senior Admissions Consultant

35 positive reviews on GMATClub, 2020 Top 20 of admissions consultants across the industry per P&Q: https://poetsandquants.com/2020/08/26/best-mba-admission-consultants-of-2020/



Sign up for a free 30-minute consultation at https://www.mbamission.com/consult/mba-admissions/

Read our Insider's Guides to the top b-schools: http://www.mbamission.com/guides.php?category=insiders Signature Read More

Hi - thanks for writing! It sounds like you have some strong work experience that's highly transferrable to your goals. While INSEAD is likely a reach school, it's not out of range for you, and I think that the other schools are within your target range. In your essays, be sure to talk about your passion for the beauty industry and product development since those are points of continuity in your career.Hope that helps!_________________
Kansas men's basketball wins exhibition game against Pittsburg State

The Jayhawks may not have started this exhibition game well Thursday, but they were able to recover and come away with a win.
Many look at the Islands and think simple life.

That may be the case but theres more to it than that. According to Faye Kelepi, from the village of Faleula, life in Samoa may be simple but there are times when things get tough.

In comparison to how westerners live their lives, Faye says that while westerners can afford to save up to travel and enjoy, we have to save up to deal with so much like taking care of our big families, dealing with cultural activities and so on.

Its not as easy as how the brochures show it to be.

Life for us Samoans are very different to the westerners, Faye told the Village Voice.

They work hard and save up their money to travel and enjoy but for us Samoans, we work hard and save up our money to use on all the many things that we need to do.

Life may be simple but it can be tough at times but no matter what, we still try our best to do whatever it takes to look after our family.

But on the other hand, there are times when the simple life is simply great.

Faye explains that if we also compare ourselves to overseas countries, we are better off in many social areas.

My humble answer to how life is in Samoa, life is great in this country, she said.

There are struggles everywhere around us but if we compare ourselves to people overseas who know real struggle, we are better off.

The struggles within our nation can be dealt with easily especially with our people who rely so much on the Lords goodness.

If people have a relationship with God then anything is possible.

And like they always say, there is no place like home.

To be honest with you, I would never want to leave Samoa because life here is great, Faye said.

This is home for me even if I grow poor or if I get rich, no matter my situation, I will always want to live here in Samoa over any other country, I am happy here.

If you look at my house, its a Samoan traditional house (faleoo). It has been wrecked from many different cyclones but we always manage to get back up again.

My family and I stand on our own two feet.

And when it comes to taking care of your own families, Faye says that the Prime Minister is right, you can always work the land to take care of those you love.

I agree with what the Prime Minister says, she said.

People only have problems when they dont work hard for what they want. If you work hard to grow your taro, bananas or other crops then you wont face many issues and you will have the means to survive.

Just like myself here in my village, we dont need too much money for food because we grow all that we need. Thats how easy life can be for us.

Look around to the children of my family, they are running around smiling and laughing, everyone is happy. Even with Christmas, we didnt spend much on gifts yet they had so much fun.
For many people who enjoyed a lovely Christmas with their family, they forget that the Glory for such joy belongs to no one else but the Lord.

Thats the view of Maryanne Petelo, from the village of Nuu-Fou. She explains that the Christmas holiday was nice and peaceful and there was nothing that her and her family had to worry about.

And the best part of it all was the time spent with those she loved.

I think the greatest part of Christmas is the joy you feel when you come together as a family, Maryanne told the Village Voice.

Just like I mentioned before, my family is doing really well and the spending we had during Christmas was also great.

I think the glory for a very merry Christmas belongs to God because in whatever you do in life, prayer is the key. Glory for my family doing well in life also belongs to him.

Maryanne reminds the nation that through the Lord, you can do all things.

Everyone forgets that if you rely on the Lord, then you can do all things, she said.

My family lives off the taro plantation we have round the back and other vegetable crops that we grow. We earn a bit of money from it and every now and then we use what we grow for food.

For my family and many others in Samoa, we have no worries because we have enough to survive.

Asked how life in general is in Samoa, Maryanne says that Samoa is blessed.

The only honest answer I can give right now is that life is great here in Samoa, she said.

I dont how things are with other families but for my family, everything is going well and we are making ends meet.

The reason I feel that life in Samoa is great is because prices for goods are dropping and Its great to see so many people making good use of their lands to provide for their families.

Hard work is always nice to see.

And compared to the type of life people overseas live, Maryanne says that Samoa is very nice and simple.

Speaking on how simple life is here in Samoa, if we dont have any money then its easy to just get our food from the land or the sea, she said.

We can also earn money from creatures we catch in the sea and the crops we grow on the land. On the subject of Christmas, this years Christmas was very nice and peaceful.

The holiday seasons here are better than overseas countries that go through so many issues. We are a lucky nation.
Just three days before Christmas  on 22 December 2016 - Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi shocked everyone with an astounding proclamation that revealed a bill to amend the Constitution to define Samoa as a Christian State, had been tabled in Parliament the day before.

Titled Constitutional Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2016, the proposed amendment is apparently aimed at inserting in the Constitution the assumption that Samoa is a Christian nation and in doing so declare the dominance of Christianity in Samoa.

So why was everyone shocked?

First, because everyone knew then that freedom of religion was already enshrined anyway in Samoas Constitution as sacrosanct, inviolable, sacred.

Besides, Samoa being predominantly Christian ever since it became independent 46 years ago, even as other countries around the world have been embroiled in unstoppable turmoil and brutal wars all that time up to now, why is Prime Minister Tuilaepa worried about the sanctity of Christianity now?

Or is there method in thy madness that he is not letting everyone know about?

Second, since Samoa is a one-party government and the Human Rights Protection Party lorded over by Prime Minister Tuilaepa is that party, shouldnt they be concentrating instead on making life a little bearable for the poor majority in this country who are living in utter squalor, even during these Christmas times?

Indeed, why are they wasting time, effort and money on that lousy amendment when all that Tuilaepa has to do is sign it, and then without ceremony have it passed into law anyway?

After all he is the law, isnt he?

Anyway, what about freedom of religion that is enshrined in Samoas Constitution, where it clearly says:

11. Freedom of religion - (1) Every person has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in a community with others, and, in public or private, to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

(2) Nothing in clause (1) shall affect the operation of any existing law or prevent the State from making any law in so far as that existing law or the law so made imposes reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred under the provisions of that clause in the interests of national security or of public order, health or morals, or for protecting the rights and freedom of others, including their rights and freedom to observe and practice their religion without the unsolicited interference of members of other religions.

12. Rights concerning religious instruction - (1) No person attending any educational institution shall be required to receive religious instruction or take part in any religious ceremony or attend religious worship, if that instruction, ceremony or worship relates to a religion other than his own.

(2) Every religious community or denomination shall have the right to establish and maintain educational institutions of its own choice and to provide therein religious instruction for pupils of that community or denomination.

(3) Nothing in clause (2) shall prevent the State from making any law requiring the inspection of educational institutions and the maintenance therein of standards in keeping with the general educational level in Samoa.

And so we repeat: The aim of Prime Minister Tuilaepas Constitution Amendment is to declare the dominance of Christianity in Samoa.

Fine.

But then had it not been dominant all that time up to now?

So why is everyone shocked?

Please be kind enough and tell the rest what you think.

In the meantime, as for poverty and squalor in Tuilaepas Christian paradise, well thats another disturbing ugliness that should have never been seen anywhere in this country anyway.

The other day, just a few days from Christmas, a slovenly-dressed old man was seen on the streets of Apia begging for money.

He told the Samoa Observer he was from Savaii.

At age 62, he had apparently been admitted at the hospital in Apia for two weeks, and now he was asking people for some money so that he can pay for his fare back home for Christmas.

I was hospitalized because of my leg, he explained. So I am here trying to find some money for my fare because I want to go back to Savaii.

Hes apparently asked his children to send him money for his fare but then he couldnt wait for them any longer, which was why he was now begging on the streets of Apia.

He said: I called them to send me some money for my fare. I have been here since morning and some people have given me money already but its not enough for my fare.

I dont have family in Apia but my sisters children took care of me at the hospital. I have been here for too long. I want to go to Savaii and spend Sunday there with my family and children.

By the way, did not think about asking his government just down the road for some money to pay for his fare to Savaii? After all, it is his government, and its called the Human Rights Protection Party.

In other words, it is supposed to protect the human rights of its subjects just like him, so that he can be home with his family in Savaii during Christmas?

And so, let us say this one more time.

Uncontrolled bureaucratic corruption is the perennial scourge that is dragging this country deeper and deeper into the very dregs of poverty and violence, and whether or not you like it not even a change of the Constitution to declare the dominance of Christianity in Samoa can solve that little problem.

Only a complete elimination of bureaucratic corruption throughout the government can; and yes, only Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi can make that happen.
Dear Editor,

Thank you Le Mafa P for your letter. I would like to respond as follows:

Le Mafa: We have to remember that Democracy was an introduced system which was forced upon the people by imperialist invaders who were basically looking for riches to blunder [sic] from unsuspecting peace loving indigenous people around the world. Just like sexually transmitted diseases and influenza, our forefathers suffered terribly from deceptions and were never prepared for the subtle destruction of our way of life by the conniving imperialist invaders.

LV: First, lets start with a familiar academic suggestion: Perspective. Perspective. Perspective. You seem to dwell unbendingly on the plunders and pillages of the papalagi (foreigners/white man). Your diction is one of accusation and vilification and therefore youre slow to show a little open-mindedness and tolerance. You sound quite vengeful and resentful - if not patronizing. Of course the so-called invaders with their three Gs (Glory, Gospel and Gold) banner committed some atrocities and other sins, and I understand your apparent never-ending grudges and grievances; but are they enough to justify the life-long animosity that youre harboring? Cmon. Im sure there has to be some good that has come about as a result of these past building blocks, as disturbing as they may have been.

Le Mafa: Yes, we have our own ways of doing things - the Faasamoa. Whether it was head hunting or wars or chasing red men out of Samoa, every event in history was basically a building block or stages of development or evolution pattern you allude to that defines our culture and society and our identity as Samoans.

LV: True. Sometimes even bad experiences and events can contribute favorably to defining ones culture and society as you said. However, in the case of your far-flung positions, you need to be careful about using those events exclusively to spite the papalagi since you are bordering on, if not actively, advocating insularism, isolationism and ethnocentrism in the process. All of them, in this day and age are feckless, vacuous and shortsighted. Now, since we both agree on the evolutionary patterns of society, what, therefore, according to your seemingly informed historical prognostication, would have been an alternative and/or better path for Samoas evolution and development, sans the papalagi experience? Or you would not want anything to do with the conniving imperialist invaders?

Le Mafa: I think its very unfair to postulate that va fealoai can be equated to utopia because that is far from the Truth. Va fealoai is simply Respect and in a hierarchal indigenous culture like our culture, maintaining social order, social status and honour can only be achieved with va fealoai Our forefathers were never warmongers or blood thirsty savages as you painted but they only resort to war as a last resort to decide pressing issues (paramount chief) - they were noble warriors  not noble savages. European explorers/invaders of the last century use the term savages to describe conquered indigenous people all over the world.

LV: Unless youre trying to assign a radical or rudimentary meaning to utopia other than its basic one of a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions. according to Merriam-Webster, you simply cannot dissociate respect (va fealoai) from utopia. Moreover, va fealoai is a Samoan word, but the concept is universal and Christian, entrenched in the do unto others ... canon. As I said, the flaw that youre perpetrating is painting Samoa of the pre-contact years with a broad brush of bliss and blessedness. Inasmuch as Id like to join with you in putting our pre-contact ancestors on your pedestal of civilizedpeace loving and noble warriors, I cannot - and will not. They still lacked many of the things that would have qualified them as equals of their European counterparts in terms of civilized culture. Youd have to swallow your pride and accept that. For example, one of the most important signs and characteristics of a civilized and advanced culture and society is a written language. Our ancestors did not have one; it was introduced. And thats just one example.

Le Mafa: It was a psychological fix to boost their egos but our ancestors were brilliant navigators and they navigate the sea by reading the stars, not the map so how can our ancestors be savages then?

Another thing worth noting is that in our culture, we never refer to the old days as the dark days or dark ages This is a flawed and perplexing stratagem by the Church to insinuate their superiority over indigenous cultures. If we are living in the light ages why is the world still suffering savagery like the people of the so called dark ages?

LV: Heres a question, albeit slightly hypothetical: If the two cultures, Samoan and European, were left to separately and independently develop, by today, where do you think the Samoan culture/society would be in terms of advancement? We know where the European culture is, but what about the Samoan culture/society, again, without the fusion? Will we have already worn similar modern clothes of our own making or still wearing siapo and/or leaves? Would we have already been communicating using similar technologies (phones, emails, texting, etc.) or are we still using drums to send messages? Actually, on a second thought, the question is not hypothetical - slightly or substantially. Because we have a modern day example of societies that have been left on their own for thousands of years without outside influence. Im talking about the tribes in the jungles of the Amazon that even predate Samoan society by thousands of years. You seem an informed enough person to know about these tribes. So perhaps the more poignant and stimulating question is: Today, would you rather live like the Amazon tribes or in modern day Samoa? I hope you see my point because based on your obvious extreme anti-imperialistic positions, you would definitely opt for the former, Im sure.

If youre a genuine Samoan, especially a Samoan Christian, then you would know and understand the meaning and godless connotation of the words faapaupau and pogisa.

Hence, Jesus Christ is the difference. Jesus Christ is the truth and the light.

Le Mafa: Faasamoa is a perfect system in its own environment, it was a system designed by the Samoans for Samoans and so was democracy to the Greeks. The issue with Democracy in Samoa is that, the population needs to be highly educated for them to understand the many complex facets of the system. With Faasamoa not completely decimated by the introduced system, the few intellectuals in government are wittingly traversing the blurred boundaries of Faasamoa and Democracy/Church to get away with dishonesty violations committed under Democracy laws (OPC Report 2010).

LV:I agree that the faa-Samoa is perfect in its own environment, but that environment keeps changing. Samoa of the 21st century is not conducive to the application of the faa-Samoa of the 1800s. In fact the faa-Samoa of the 1800s is not the same as the faa-Samoa of the last fifty years. In other words, faa-Samoa can be relative and should be defined within a specific time backdrop for it to be intelligible. As for democracy, it - in its simplest, direct and pure form - does not necessarily need a highly educated population as you said. Samoa is perhaps the ideal place for pure democracy. According to Cleisthenes and the Greeks democracy works better and easier in a small monistic and homogeneous society, like Samoa.

Le Mafa: If theres an interrelationship between state and church under the watchful eyes of Democracy, then what exactly is the role of Church in Democracy and when exactly should they come into the big picture?

LV: Good question. You have to understand the history of the church and politics; hence church and state - specifically the politicization of religion, historically and in modern times. Ironically and interestingly (and Im glad you asked), Samoa is going to be a stimulating case study which may provide an answer for your question. As you may have read recently (here) that the government will now pass a law establishing a state religion (Christianity), and so you will certainly be edified and kept apprised. And maybe surprised.

Finally, as I said in another response of mine, the issues are broad and need to be examined, analyzed and weighed within their totality. An open-minded, educated and balanced perspective, perspective, perspective, Im convinced, is always the better approach.

Sincerely and Open-mindedly Yours!

LV Letalu

Lalomanu and Utah
The Chairman of the National Council of Churches, Reverend Kasiano Leaupepe, says the governments decision to amend the Constitution to emphasise that Samoa is a Christian state is unnecessary.

Rev. Leaupepe is referring to the Constitution Amendment Bill (No. 2) tabled in Parliament last week.

According to the Chairman, the Constitution of Samoa already speaks about Samoa being founded on God based on Christian principles, Samoan customs and tradition.

The declaration he pointed out is highlighted in the Preamble of the Constitution.

I dont know what other Christianity they want to be inserted in there its already there, Rev. Leaupepe told the Samoa Observer.

In May this year when Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi revealed the governments intention, he said Samoa must be cautious about embracing religions that promote violence and murderous rage as a form of worship.

Christianity, he said, does not do this.

The government will make the amendment to the Constitution to put it boldly in the Constitutions body that the official religion of Samoa is Christianity, said Tuilaepa.

But the Chairman disagrees.

What makes a person is their head going down to their feet, argued Rev. Leaupepe.

I dont know how the preamble could be different from the body and the conclusionthere are different philosophies.

Rev. Leaupepe said the National Council of Churches opens up the door for other religions to be part of the group.

He explained that people should put aside their religious differences and come together before God and be united.

No matter the colour of their skin and religion, everyone is equal before the eyes of God, he said. The Council of Churches is doing its work in urging other religion to join forces and work together and once that is done the body of Christ is complete.

Looking back at the past, Rev. Leaupepe said the Constitution of Christian church is based on the holy trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

He added since new churches emerged some church only accept the father and the son or only the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Those churches were not known as Christians, he said.

So when a church accepts the Constitution (of Christian church) then we inform the government to register them as Christian church and if they didnt they were told to go back where they came from.

But nowadays there is no longer that relationship between the Council of Churches and the government where the government does whatever it pleases with its changes. So its being opened to any church to enter and the reason why there are so many other small churches emerging.
Samoa is a special place in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

With smiles seen everywhere around the island, the simple way of life and the option of reducing spending through the full reliance on the land and the ocean, makes it almost paradise.

For Feagai Sua, from the village of Faleasiu, life in Samoa is almost perfect.

When I look around, I notice how great life is here in Samoa, she told the Village Voice as she pointed around to all the green vegetation.

Those who really suffer in this nation are the ones who refuse to put in the work. If you want to live a good life then you must get used to working hard for it.

We do have poor people here and there but they are only that way because they are lazy.

Feagai explains that even the way of life is great; people have many options to fall back on when it comes to taking care of their families.

When it comes to taking care of your family, there are so many options you have to earn a bit of money, she said.

Theres nothing complicated about life in Samoa. We can live freely off of the land and sea, you have peace unlike other war-torn nations and people are happy.

If we compare ourselves to overseas nations, we are a paradise.

Aged 30, Feagai walks the talk by earning as much as she can from many different options available to her.

I earn what I can through different methods, she said.

I make different handicrafts like handheld fans, I also make some koko cups to sell and I have also grown a few pineapples around the house which I also sell.

The money I make goes towards feeding my children and taking care of what needs to be done around the house. My only advice for Samoa is to try and work hard because life is moving very fast.

But this is where the almost paradise part comes into play. Feagai admits that one of the problems faced here in Samoa is the rising crime rates.

From small crimes such as stealing a taro or two from your neighbor to bigger crimes evident in Samoas crowded court rooms at Mulinuu, Feagai says that the rise in crimes is alarming.

Dont get me wrong, we do have our own problems, she said.

One of the issues I have noticed is that there are more and more rule and law breakers nowadays. I speak mostly on the youth who cause so much grief for others.

The way I see it, the blame for all these criminals belongs to the criminals themselves. Its simple really; those who are lazy and refuse to look for ways to get what they want always resort to crime.

The rise in criminals is a real concern for everyone.

But aside from that, Samoa is almost perfect in the eyes of Feagai.
Fau Fetau, from the village of Faleasiu-Uta, is sure about one thing. Life was simple and a lot more affordable in the past.

He explains that back in the days, there werent many jobs and people never earned as much money but the cost of living was a lot more manageable than what it has become now.

Today, there are more jobs and more disposable income circulating in the economy but with the high cost of living hitting people hard, life has become more and more difficult.

How is life in Samoa? I guess, life in Samoa is very different from what it used to be, Fau told the Village Voice.

Back in the days there were not many jobs and the education was very low but although not much money was made, everyone was still doing fine with life because the cost of living was low.

You see, everything at the shops was very affordable and it was great. You could get a lot of sugar for just 50sene but now things are different.

Fau continued on to explain the problems were facing with unemployment, unaffordability and the minimal pay people are making.

Nowadays, education is getting better and so are the jobs available, he said.

The bad part of it all is that with education getting better, the pays for those who complete education increases and so does the cost of living.

But there are many of our children who cant get that level of education so the pay they get is very limited. Thats why you have youths walking around unemployed.

Families suffer because the cost of living is now high but they cant match it because not everyone has access to higher education.

On top of everything, no Samoan is safe when it comes to family functions or gatherings (faalavelave).

Another issue here in Samoa is the many faalavelave, Fau said.

With the Christmas holidays just passing, there were many different faalavelaves everywhere that took more money than people care to admit.

You have family reunions, funerals and other gatherings that forces people to dig deep into their pockets. Its tough; especially with the level of pay we have in this country.

And then theres that issue of your entire extended family relying on the few who hold steady jobs rather than earning their own living.

On top of it all, our people have a way of relying too much on those who have jobs, Fau said.

They ask for money for this and that and have the excuse of being unemployed. There are many pieces of land scattered around for families to grow crops and with that, you can earn quite a bit of money.

Just because you didnt finish school, it doesnt mean its over. You can earn so much money through your plantations and thats what you use to take care of your loved ones.

Those are the only issues I can think of but in regards to our village, we are doing very well because our village council keeps order and peace in the area.
HONOLULU (AP)  It took eight years of backbiting and pretending they got along for relations between President Barack Obama's administration and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to finally hit rock bottom.

Though they've clashed bitterly before, mostly notably over Iran, the two governments seemed further apart than ever after a speech Wednesday by Secretary of State John Kerry and last week's United Nations resolution.

The key question for the Obama administration, newly willing to air grievances with Israel on live television, is why now?

"We cannot, in good conscience, do nothing and say nothing when we see the hope of peace slipping away," Kerry said in a speech that ran more than an hour.

Yet in just over three weeks, Obama will no longer be president, Kerry will no longer be secretary of state, and the U.S. will have a new leader under no obligation to embrace any of what Kerry said. President-elect Donald Trump has assured Israel that things will be different after Jan. 20, when he's to be inaugurated, and lamented how the Jewish state was "being treated very, very unfairly."

Kerry took pains to voice America's staunch commitment to Israel's security and support for its future, and to detail U.S. complaints about Palestinian leadership and its failure to sufficiently deter violence against Israelis. He laid out a six-point framework for a potential peace deal that it will be up to the next U.S. government to try to enact, if it chooses to do so.

The White House has portrayed Obama's decision to break with tradition by abstaining from  rather than vetoing  a U.N. Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements illegal as a reaction forced by other countries that brought it up for a vote. Obama didn't seek this out, his aides have argued.

Yet the White House has also acknowledged that Obama had long considered the possibility of taking some symbolic step before leaving office to leave his imprint on the debate. For much of the year, his staff pored over options that included a U.N. resolution outlining principles for a peace deal and a presidential speech much like the one Kerry gave Wednesday. Yet there was reluctance to act before the U.S. election, given the way it would have thrust the Israeli-Palestinian issue into the campaign.

Kerry acknowledged Trump appears to favor a different approach. Yet, frustrated by years of Israeli actions he deemed counterproductive for peace, Obama appeared to have decided it was better to make his administration's views known while still in office, even if it risked a blockbuster clash with America's closest ally.

In his speech, Kerry tore into Israel for settlement-building, accusing Netanyahu of dragging Israel away from democracy. He defended the move to allow the U.N. vote, the spark that set off an extraordinary and deepening diplomatic spat between the U.S. and its closest Mideast ally.

"If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both, and it won't ever really be at peace," Kerry said

Shortly afterward, Netanyahu appeared on camera in Jerusalem and suggested he was done with the Obama administration and ready to deal with Trump. The Israeli leader faulted Kerry for obsessing over settlements while paying mere "lip service" to Palestinian attacks and incitement of violence.

"Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders," Netanyahu said.

Trump wouldn't say whether settlements should be reined in. But he told reporters Israel was being "treated very, very unfairly by a lot of different people."

In a nod to Netanyahu's concerns that Obama would take more parting shots, Kerry seemed to rule out the possibility Obama would support more U.N. action or, even more controversially, recognize statehood.

A day after the speech, the European Union seemed to rally behind Kerry's message. EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic says his speech showed "the international community does not give up on peace in the Middle East."

The U.S, the Palestinians and most of the world oppose Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians for an independent state. But Israel's government argues previous construction freezes didn't advance peace and that the settlements  now home to 600,000 Israelis  must be resolved in direct Israelis-Palestinian talks.

While Israel's Arab population has citizenship rights, the roughly 2.5 million Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank do not, and most in annexed east Jerusalem have residency rights but not citizenship.

Kerry said a future deal would have to ensure secure borders for Israel and a Palestinian state formed in territories Israel captured in 1967, with "mutually agreed, equivalent swaps." He said both countries must fully recognize each other, ensure access to religious sites and relinquish other existing claims. Kerry also called for assistance for Palestinian refugees.
By most measures, Oceansides economic outlook has improved in the last three years, making up ground lost in the fallout of the Great Recession.

Unemployment is down, hotel tax revenues are up and more businesses are moving into local industrial parks.

Despite that progress, however, the citys financial worries may not be over, officials said.

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With hotel taxes, sales tax and property taxes all up, thats good news, said Assistant City Manager Deanna Lorson. But the citys general fund expenses are (also) up, so we need to continue to make progress increasing revenues to address the citys ongoing revenue needs.

Last week, Lorson gave the City Council a brief presentation on the citys economic outlook, including data on employment and revenue streams.

The rebounding tourism industry has especially been good to Oceanside, Lorson said. Revenues from hotel room taxes  called transit occupancy tax, or TOT  have increased more than $2 million, from $4.2 million in 2013 to $6.5 million this year.

Still, officials are worried those gains could be wiped out by rising costs, especially an increase in the citys payments to the California Public Employees Retirement System, or Calpers, which covers most of the citys employees.

Facing dwindling returns on its investments, the Calpers board voted earlier this month to increase the amount employers such as Oceanside contribute to the system each year.

The city paid about $21.1 million to Calpers this fiscal year, and thats expected to rise to roughly $23.5 million by 2019-20 and $25.9 million by 2020-21, City Manager Michelle Lawrence said.

City Councilwoman Esther Sanchez said the city is lucky to have rising revenues to cover those pension costs.

If we didnt have those extra $2 million from TOT, we would really be in a lot of trouble, Sanchez said.

The citys efforts to revitalize the downtown area over the last two decades by luring new hotels and trendy restaurants are starting to pay off, Sanchez said.

In recent years, the SpringHill Suites opened on Myers Street and the Wyndham Oceanside Pier Resort opened on Pacific Street, near the citys iconic pier.

Several more hotels are expected to be built downtown in the near future. Those projects include a beachfront resort on Pacific Street by S.D. Malkin, the renovated Dolphin Hotel on Coast Highway and the Belvedere project, which will feature a 124-room hotel on Mission Avenue, Lorson said.

Other parts of the economy are also ramping up. Over the last year, roughly 10,000 new jobs were created in Oceanside, leading to an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent in October, compared to 8 percent three years ago, officials said.

The citys jobs-to-housing ratio has gone from .64 in 2013 percent to .75 percent this year. A one-to-one jobs-to-housing ratio is considered optimal.

Another bright spot is the citys industrial parks filling up with businesses, Lorson said. Vacancy rates have decreased from nearly 15 percent in 2013 to just 2.4 percent this year.

Still, there are areas of concern, officials said.

For example, the retail vacancy rate has increased sightly from 6.8 percent in 2013 to 7.1 percent this year  a reflection of national trends, Lorson said.

The retail industry has taken a hit because people are increasingly turning to online shopping, she said.

Its not anything unique to Oceanside but its definitely something that we are experiencing, Lorson said.

A fuller picture of how these trends are effecting Oceanside will be available in early 2017 when the city releases its draft budget for the coming fiscal year.

edward.sifuentes@sduniontribune.com

@EdwardSifuentes
The new year will be barely a week old when it sees its first local theater openings  and one of the first out of the gate will be the Welk Resorts Theatres My Fair Lady.

The unstoppable Eliza Doolittle gets her shot at high society once again in the Welks revival of the classic Lerner & Loewe musical, which centers on that tough-minded London flower girl and her uppity professor pal. (The work is based on George Bernard Shaws play Pygmalion.)

The Welk production boasts an ace director in Kathy Brombacher, founding artistic chief of Moonlight Stage Productions, who appeared in a production of the piece there two years ago.

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San Diego favorite Lance Arthur Smith stars in the show alongside Shaina Knox; those two will be joined in the cast by Ben Williams, Ralph Johnson and Randall Hickman.

With songs like I Could Have Danced All Night and Wouldnt It Be Loverly, it stands to be a love(er)ly way to bring in the new year.

My Fair Lady

When: 1 and 8 p.m. Thursdays and Saturdays; 1 p.m. Sundays. Through April 2.

Where: Welk Resorts Theatre, 8860 Lawrence Welk Drive, Escondido.

Tickets: $51 ($21 additional for preshow meal).

Phone: (888) 802-7469

Online: welkresorts.com.

San Diego Theater  On Now Video: Bruce Springsteen's solo trip to Broadway On Now Video: Inside the rehearsal room of SDMT's Damn Yankees! 2:22 On Now Video: La Jolla Playhouse-bred shows earn key Tony nominations 3:05 On Now Video: Broadway moment has arrived for La Jolla Playhouse's 'Come From Away 0:33 On Now Video: Lamb's Players Presents "An American Christmas" 2016 1:21 On Now Old Globe's 'Grinch' ready to rumble again 0:52 On Now Little Miss Sunshine at La Jolla Playhouse On Now Working the Magic On Now San Diego Repertory Theatre presents "Federal Jazz Project" On Now An American Christmas

Twitter: @jimhebert

jim.hebert@sduniontribune.com
A Dec. 16 canopy explosion on an electronic warfare jet that seriously injured two crew members triggered the Navys temporary grounding of its entire fleet of Growler and Super Hornet jets, according to an initial report.

The Naval Safety Center has classified the incident at the Navys Whidbey Island air station near Seattle as a Class A Mishap, which refers to accidents that cause $2 million or more in damage or result in permanent and total disability to a crew member.

Although the damage to the Whidbey Island Growler is marked as $0 on the initial report, Naval Safety Center spokeswoman Margaret Menzies said investigators have not assessed the total cost of the damage and the probe continues.

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The canopy explosion on a Boeing E/A-18G Growler assigned to Electronic Attack Squadron 132 caused unspecified but serious injuries to both of its aircrew shortly before a scheduled 11 a.m. takeoff on Dec. 16 at the Puget Sound airfield.

A Whidbey Island search and rescue helicopter raced the Scorpions crew to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for treatment.

On Thursday, Lt. Cmdr. Jeanette D. Groeneveld, spokeswoman for Naval Air Forces, told The San Diego Union-Tribune that both pilots remain hospitalized. The investigation continues, she said, adding that the Growler did not catch on fire following the explosion.

Because Boeings highly advanced Growlers and F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets rely on similar aircraft systems, Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker  commander of Naval Air Forces  temporarily suspended flight operations for both types of jets in the wake of the canopy explosion.

Navy officials blamed the accident on a combination of frigid and soggy weather and the routine washing of the aircraft.

An initial investigation triggered immediate changes to the aircrafts water-wash procedures and other ground maintenance efforts in order to mitigate the effects of icing.

Those reforms were disseminated to the entire F-18 fleet of jets operated by the Navy and Marine Corps, including Hornet strike fighters, and Shoemaker restored all flight operations on Dec. 19.

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cprine@sduniontribune.com
Third Marine Aircraft Wing leader Maj. Gen. Mark Wise has relieved another commander following a loss of trust and confidence in his ability to continue to serve at the Miramar air station, according to a written statement provided to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Citing issues concerning command climate within Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232, the Corps announced the firing of Lt. Col. Wade Casper Workman on Wednesday. A highly decorated fighter pilot, Workman took command of the Red Devils on Jan. 15, following a stint as the Operations Officer of Marine Aircraft Group Eleven.

Miramar spokesman Capt. Kurt M. Stahl indicated that Workman was not relieved over allegations of misconduct or criminal activity but rather an unhealthy command climate that negatively impacted trust within the unit that is critical to effective operations.

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Workman, 41, told the Union-Tribune, It just didnt work out.

A 1997 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with a degree in computer science, Workman did his initial fleet replacement training at Miramar in 2001 with Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 101.

A native of Columbus, Ohio, Workman flew two aircraft carrier tours over Iraq with Fighter Attack Squadron 323  the Death Rattlers  between 2001 and 2003. He rejoined the Snakes in 2009 and deployed to combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a 2011 humanitarian relief mission in the wake of a devastating earthquake in Japan.

He deployed back to the Middle East in 2012 with the Black Knights of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314, which operated out of the Kuwait and Bahrain under U.S. Central Command.

Workmans official Marine biography notes that he compiled more than 2,900 flight hours without a mishap. His awards include the Meritorious Service Medal, the Air Medal with Strike/Flight Numeral 3 and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with a combat valor designation.

In 2013, Workman became the Tac-Air Integration liaison officer to the Commander of Naval Air Forces before joining Miramars Marine Aircraft Group Eleven two years later.

Lt. Col. Douglas R. Miller replaces Workman at the helm of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232. Already slated for command, Miller has been serving as the Officer in Charge of the Personnel Support Detachment at Marine Aircraft Group Eleven, Stahl said.

Workman is the second squadron leader fired by Wise over the past four weeks.

On Dec. 2, the Corps announced he relieved Lt. Col. Michael E. Hernandez as commander of Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 11 due to a loss of trust and confidence in his ability to continue to lead.

That squadron is now commanded by Lt. Col. Kevin Boyce until a new leader arrives.

Boyce was the Deputy of the Aviation Logistics Department for the Miramar-based 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing.

cprine@sduniontribune.com
A former Escondido woman accused of going on a cross-country rampage against the fur industry reached a new plea deal with prosecutors this week  six months after a San Diego federal judge rejected her initial plea agreement.

Nicole Kissane pleaded guilty Tuesday to a charge of conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, admitting to damaging the operation of an animal enterprise and freeing mink from farms across the country, causing more than $100,000 in damage. She also admitted to vandalizing the Furs by Graf store in Kearny Mesa on July 14, 2013, as well as the La Mesa and Spring Valley homes of the business owner and owners parents, according to the plea agreement.

Kissane had pleaded guilty in February at the same time as her co-defendant, Joseph Buddenberg. Their plea agreements were unusual in that they were binding, meaning that rather than allow the judge to set the sentence, the judge had to accept or reject the specific sentence spelled out in the plea agreement.

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Buddenberg was sentenced in May to two years in prison, as agreed upon in the plea deal.

When it came time to sentence Kissane in June, U.S. District Judge Larry Burns scoffed at the term in the plea deal  six months  saying the punishment didnt seem in the interest of justice.

I dont want my name on this, Burns said. He called the crime a campaign of terror against an industry that goes multi-state, involves great planning and coordination by the defendants.

Both prosecutors and the defense said they arrived at the agreement because Kissane played a smaller role in the rampage than Buddenberg, and they accused Buddenberg of dominating the younger Kissane and leading her into trouble.

The two had met at a lawful animal-rights protest and moved to Portland together in 2012, according to Kissanes defense team.

Burns said he didnt hear any of that evidence when he sentenced Buddenberg and told the lawyers in June that he felt he made a mistake in sentencing him to a low-end term.

In the new agreement, which is not binding, the sentence will be left up to Burns. Prosecutors are expected to recommend 18 months, while the defense will argue for 15 months. Sentencing has been set for Jan. 17.

Kissane has also agreed to pay $423,477 in restitution, to be shared by Buddenberg. The amount includes damages to paid to the Grafs and several mink farms.

The pair were accused of traveling about 40,000 miles, freeing thousands of mink from farms and targeting others they felt were sympathetic to the fur industry. The damage to the Furs by Graf store included spray-painting the words killer and murder on the building, etching its windows and spraying acid into the shop, according to court records.

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis
The call from the governors office was unexpected, but was an offer that couldnt be refused.

I was caught quite off guard, and very honored, Adam Day said about receiving a call from the governors office offering an appointment to the California State Universitys Board of Trustees in 2014. I hadnt even filled out a formal application.

Since that appointment to fill the term of a trustee who died, Day has been re-appointed to a full eight-year name and named vice chairman of the board.

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Its been a busy two years, with trustees appointing eight new presidents to the 23-campus system, approving $1 billion in bond sales for projects over the next five years and successfully negotiated new labor agreements.

Day, the only Republican and San Diegan on the 25-member board, said hes especially proud that seven of the eight new campus presidents are women, and two are Pacific Islanders.

But Day also is anxious about whats ahead.

We are in good economic times right now, but history tells us thats going to change soon, he said.

Compounding the troubling forecast, economists have predicted the state will have a shortfall of one million college-educated employees by 2025 or 2030, and CSU Chancellor Timothy White said the system cant generate enough bachelor degrees to meet the demand without additional revenue.

The resources we receive from the state, theyre just simply not enough to educate the students who are qualified to get in, Day said. Were turning down tens of thousands of students who are qualified each year. To be able to educate those high school graduates takes money.

Day, who chaired the CSU Finance Committee last year, said the system must become more efficient, the state must provide more money and, as a last resort, students may have to pay more tuition in the near future.

Although Days background is not in education, he has strong personal ties to the system. His father, Thomas Day, was president of San Diego State University from 1978 to 1996.Adam Day, 47, graduated from SDSU with a degree in political science in 1991 and two of his children attend the school,

Professionally, the Kensington resident and father of four children and one stepson is the assistant tribal manager to the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, a job hes held since 2002.

Similar to a city manager, Day oversees 400 employees, combined budgets of more than $55 million and 12 departments, including a police department and a fire department the size of La Mesas.

The youngest of nine children, Day was born in Washington, D.C., where his father was a physics professor and vice chancellor of the University of Maryland at College Park.

After the family moved to San Diego in 1978 Day attended Patrick Henry High School and SDSU, where as a political science student he internd and briefly worked for then-Sen.Pete Wilson..

While in the capital, Day got a call from his father one day, asking if he had met county Supervisor George Bailey. Yes, he told his father, he had met him the day before at a breakfast along with other members of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce and Wilson.

He said, You need to get here as soon as possible; he wants to offer you a job, Day said. I was still in college and had a year to go. At the time I was working at Dixieline Lumber and had bussed tables at Marie Callenders.

His duties in Baileys office included answering phones, helping people get their welfare checks on time and dealing with wild animal control.

It was fun, a good way to start, he said

Bailey had only a year left in his term, but Day found a new job when the supervisors chief of staff, Diane Jacob, hired him to run her campaign for the office.

Day was hired as Jacobs senior policy adviser after her 1993 election, then later was hired as deputy chief of staff to Supervisor Greg Cox, who had been appointed to fill a vacancy left when Brian Bilbray was elected to Congress in 1995.

Two years later he was back with Jacob as her chief of staff, but left after three years to be a consultant.

I had been doing that job and was very happy doing it, but it failed to stimulate me intellectually anymore, he said. I wanted to do new and different things and solve bigger problems.

His first client as a consultant in 1999 was Sycuan, and as his duties grew he was offered a full-time job in 2002.

Around that time, Day accepted an appointment to the San Diego Planning Commission, where he served for 12 years.

I think I get it from my dad, to really be involved in a volunteer capacity, he said about taking on the duty at a time when he was raising a young family.

In 2007, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Day to the 22nd District Agricultural Association Board of Directors, which oversees the Del Mar Fairgrounds. A couple of years later, the board was at odds with the governor, who proposed selling the land to help balance the state budget.

I guess my proudest moment was defending the fairgrounds from the sale, Day said. It was difficult for me to go against the governor. There was an enormous amount of pressure, but it was like burning the furniture to keep the house warm. It was very short-sighted.

Day was reappointed to the board by Gov. Jerry Brown, who squashed the proposed sale in 2011.

In 2013, Day caught up with Brown at a Christmas party in San Francisco and said he remembered talking to him about higher education.

A few months later, Day got an out-of-the-blue call from the governors office. Somebody on the CSU Board of Trustees had died and Brown wanted to appointment him to serve out the remaining year on his term.

There was a month or two when I was on the Planning Commission, the fair board and CSU all at once, he said. It was overwhelming.

Day resigned from the other two positions to focus on CSU, but still found time to serve on Mayor Kevin Faulconers Citizens Stadium Advisory Group in early 2015. After three and a half months, the group developed a financing plan and recommended the city build a new stadium in Mission Valley rather than downtown.

The group didnt sway the Chargers to redevelop the Qualcomm Stadium site and Day said he ended up supporting Proposition C, a proposed hotel-tax increase which would have financed a downtown stadium and convention center. With the proposition defeated and the teams decision still unknown, Day said he hopes the city and Chargers can continue to negotiate, but he also sees a great potential for SDSU to use the Mission Valley site.

Day has high praise from SDSU President Elliot Hirshman and CSU San Marcos President Karen Haynes, and attended commencement ceremonies at both schools this year.

Despite some anxieties about the future, he speaks optimistically about the system as a whole.

Its an enormous responsible knowing the decisions youre making are setting the stage for future generations, he said. The most rewarding thing is working with a team thats very dedicated and very qualified. The systems in good hands.

gary.warth@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @GaryWarthUT

760-529-4939
New leadership, a new school, successful programs and bond-funded improvements to facilities are among 2016s highlights at school districts throughout South County.

Chula Vista Elementary School District

Construction should be complete in the coming months on Saburo Muraoka Elementary School, which is expected to open for the 2017-18 academic year. Its the the 46th campus for the states largest elementary school district, and will serve 800 students in kindergarten through sixth grade.

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When the $48 million school opens in Otay Ranch, it will be the first public school in the county named for a Japanese-American, according to the county Office of Education.

Muraoka, a successful businessman and farmer in Chula Vista, was forced to give up his home and land when he and his family were sent to detention camps during World War II.

He did so much, and he lost so much. But he was able to come back, his son, Roy Muraoka, said. I think he would have liked this.



Arroyo Vista Charter School was one of 329 schools in the country to be named a 2016 National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education.

The award in given each year to recognize public and private elementary, middle, and high schools based on overall academic excellence or progress in closing achievement gaps among student subgroups.

Schools are recognized in one of two performance categories:

The states highest-performing schools, as measured by state assessments or national tests, student subgroup performance and high school graduation rates, are Exemplary High Performing Schools

The states highest-performing schools in closing achievement gaps between a schools subgroups and all students over the past five years, are Exemplary Achievement Gap Closing Schools.

Arroyo Vista was honored as a Exemplary High Performing School.



With an eye on preparing students for 21st century careers, the Innovation Station opened in an unused basement room at the Civic Center library branch.

Its modeled on Qualcomms Thinkabit Lab and created through a collaboration of the technology giant, the Chula Vista Elementary School District and the city of Chula Vista.

Its not the first Thinkabit-inspired learning lab in the district, however. An engineering lab at Feaster Charter School received the Qualcomm stamp of approval last December when the company announced it would bring the concept it created in its Sorrento Valley corporate headquarters to three schools in the county - Feaster, Lewis Middle School in the San Diego Unified School District and the Vista Innovation and Design Academy in the Vista Unified School District.

National School District

In November, voters passed Proposition HH, a $30 million school bond measure to finance facilities repairs and improvements. It was the second time in the districts 145-year history that it has asked the public to approve borrowing money.

The district is completing the first part of a four-phase plan to upgrade its buildings and infrastructure, and has nearly tapped out the current bond funds from Proposition N, the $24.6 million bond measure approved by voters in 2014.

Proposition N funds have paid for adding air conditioning at eight school sites, new fire alarms and other safety features, and upgraded electrical systems and fiber optics to support new technology.

District officials said new bond funding would cover the reconfiguration of student drop-off zones, new safety locks for classroom doors, exterior safety lighting, security fence upgrades and repair and updating water and sewer systems.



Leighangela Brady was named the new chief executive of the K-6 district in July. She succeeds Chris Oram, who served the district for 37 years  seven of those years as superintendent.

Brady, 45, is the first woman to lead the district, which was formed in 1871. She holds a doctorate in educational leadership from San Diego State University, and earned bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Connecticut.

Her annual salary is $195,000, plus fringe benefits.

San Ysidro School District

Work is under way to modernize campuses. As part of the upgrades and renovations at Smythe and La Mirada schools, new heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems were installed at both sites in November.

Construction of the districts long-delayed solar power project from Manzana Energy is expected to be complete in February at all sites except for Smythe and La Mirada, said Arturo Sanchez-Macias, the districts assistant superintendent.

The planning, final designs, and soil studies are in progress right now, Sanchez-Macias said.

Installation at Smythe and La Mirada is expected to be done by August, he said.

San Ysidro first signed an $18 million solar deal with Manzana Energy subsidiary EcoBusiness Alliance in 2008. When it was abruptly cancelled by former Superintendent Manuel Paul, the company sued the district and won a $12 million jury verdict. The judgment was set aside last year when the two sides negotiated a rebooted contract.

The project is being paid for with Proposition C bond funds at a cost of $23.7 million.

To keep an eye on the rest of its bond spending, trustees this year approved a independent citizens oversight committee. Its an added measure of transparency for the district. Proposition C was passed before the state began to require the oversight.

Board member Marcos Diaz said last month he hoped committee members would be appointed by the start of 2017.



Irene Lopez was elected to the school board in November. She won a short-term seat in a landslide over appointed trustee Steven Kinney. Lopez received 71 percent of the vote. The seat is up for election again in 2018.

Southwestern Community College District

Kindred Murillo was named to the helm of the college district, which serves about 19,000 students at campuses in Chula Vista, San Ysidro, Otay Mesa and National City.

The governing board appointed her superintendent and president early this month. She has served in that position at the Lake Tahoe Community District since July 2011.

The new chief executive holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Pepperdine University. She will earn a $256,235 annual salary, plus fringe benefits.

She is expected to be on the job by the time the spring semester starts Jan. 30.



Proposition Z, a $400 million bond measure to finance repairs and construction at Southwesterns four South County campuses, was approved by voters in November.

The district has spent about $290 million on renovations in recent years that were funded by Proposition R, the $389 million bond measure approved by voters in 2008. Those funds are currently tapped out, however, because Southwestern cant sell the remaining bonds until assessed property values in the district increase.

Officials said the new bond money will be used to renovate aging classrooms, upgrade the colleges infrastructure and technology, complete a performing arts and cultural center started under its current bond measure, and construct a new student union complex that would house an expanded veterans services center.

Follow me on Twitter: @HuardSDUT
The head of an influential labor union has been sued by two former employees, including a woman who said she was pressured into an ongoing sexual relationship with the union boss.

The other woman said she was fired after she was incorrectly suspected of being on the wrong side of a political issue.

In their two separate complaints against United Food and Commercial Workers Local 135 and union president Mickey Kasparian, two women described a workplace where the labor leader intimidated employees to the point where they were too scared to complain. Four additional women who did not sue but also worked for the union gave similar descriptions of their time working under Kasparian.

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The former employees who have sued, Isabel Vasquez and Sandy Naranjo, are being represented by attorney Dan Gilleon, who represented some women that accused former Mayor Bob Filner of sexual misbehavior and harassment.

Gilleon drew a comparison between Kasparian and Filner, who left office in 2013 upon pleading pleaded guilty to charges related to kissing and grabbing three women. About 20 women had come forward to make accusations against Filner.

Theyre from a generation of powerful men who believe fear and intimidation is the mark of a leader and they think their power entitles them to sexualize their subordinates, Gilleon said.

Kasparian denied all of the allegations contained in both of the lawsuits. He said he has never had any sort of intimate relationship with Vasquez, even so much as a kiss on the cheek, and that Naranjo was properly fired for falsifying her time card.

Its totally false, Kasparian said in an interview. Absolutely no. Nothing.

Vasquez, whose lawsuit was first reported by NBC 7, said she began suffering sexual abuse under Kasparian, her boss, almost immediately after she was hired in April 2001 until she retired in July.

Through the course of her employment Kasparian, who was elected the unions president in 2003, would occasionally demand oral sex in his office as well as sex in hotel rooms paid for by the union and in his car outside of union events, according to her lawsuit.

At first I was just kind of starstruck, in a way that he liked me. Then, right away, he dismissed me after sex, she said in an interview.

Gilleon said Vasquez did not welcome the sexual relationship, but felt compelled to accept Kasparians advances and said her repulsion grew over time.

According to her complaint, the demands for sex occurred as frequently as three or four times per year, but at times as infrequent as one or two years apart.

At one point a colleague walked in on Vasquez while she was performing a sex act on Kasparian. Despite that the union did nothing to investigate Kasparian or protect Vasquez, the lawsuit said.

Vasquez said she was afraid to report Kasparian, or to turn him down out of fear she would be fired. Shes a single mother and was working toward a pension, and she was worried that she would no longer be able to support her child or retire, she said.

She didnt tell anyone until she began dating the man who is now her fiancee. A union representative himself, he encouraged her to retire in order to get Kasparian out of her life.

My life has been very messed up because of carrying this secret so long, Vasquez said in the interview. I finally felt like I had someone to tell. He told me that I cannot work there because I am not safe, Vasquez said.

Kasparian said that he and other members of the unions staff have worked hard to hire more women and minorities, and he implemented procedures to allow employees to make complaints, including accusations against him.

Women who feel that they might have been sexually harassed can speak with Rosalyn Hackworth, the unions secretary-treasurer, to discuss the problem. She can then bring the issue to their lawyers, even if the complaint is about him, Kasparian said.

If anybody went to Rosalyn and went to talk about anything that was improper, any improper behavior by me, the first thing she would do is call legal, he said.

Hackworth ultimately reports to Kasparian.

In her lawsuit, Naranjo described a workplace that was hostile to women from the day she started as an organizer in January 2013 until she was fired on Dec. 9.

At first, it was her dream job, she said. She always wanted to work in labor, and liked UFCW and admired Kasparian, one of her bosses, she said.

I asked him to be my mentor. At one point I thought of him as my father, she said in an interview.

She said she heard rumors during her first year about how Kasparian treated employees, but as the new person in the office, she didnt know the back stories and the details didnt make sense until she was approaching her two-year anniversary.

Then it was just putting the pieces together, she said. This happened to that person. That happened to this person, maybe they werent fit for that local. But then seeing Mickey for who he really is.

In September she was hurt in a car crash while on the job and she needed ongoing care for her recovery.

On Dec. 2 Naranjo went to a medical appointment. Coincidentally, while she was out of the office receiving medical care, Kasparian had became frustrated with San Diego City Councilman David Alvarez and procedural issues surrounding the vote related to a downtown development, according to the lawsuit.

Kasparian erroneously concluded that Naranjo was caused the problem, according to the suit, and he also blamed Naranjos husband, Andrew McKercher, the assistant business manager at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 569. McKerchers union had backed Alvarez, putting the organization against Kasparian, according to the lawsuit.

Kasparian had made it known to the staff at Local 135 his disdain not only for Councilmember Alvarez, but also for those who supported Mr. Alvarez, including Naranjos husband, Andrew McKercher, and others at his union, IBEW Local 569, the lawsuit says.

Three days later Kasparian suspended Naranjo without pay because she was not at work on Dec. 2. Kasparian didnt seem to know or care that Naranjo was out to receive medical care, but was rather paranoid that she was involved in the recent dust-up at City Hall, the lawsuit said.

Two days after she was suspended, the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, a coalition of unions led by Kasparian, gave Naranjo an award for outstanding work and dedication.

Its signed and dated by him, Naranjo said.

A week after her medical appointment Kasparian fired her, the lawsuit said.

Kasparian said that any issue involving disagreements between two unions had no bearing on Naranjos termination.

Sandy Naranjo was terminated for falsifying time records, falsifying mileage sheets, and then destroying union records to cover it up, he said.

Kasparian said that the criticisms given by six women to the media were without merit and came from disgruntled employees, and his office, like any other business, is not immune to people who leave on bad terms.

Theres always going to be a handful of disgruntled people, and theyre the ones who are going to come forward in times like this, he said.

Both Naranjo and Vasquez are suing for damages and attorneys fees and costs, but did not specify in their complaint how much money are are seeking.

Twitter: @jptstewart

joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1841
A six-hour SWAT standoff in Clairemont Thursday ended with the arrest of a woman suspected of firing shots at a neighbor.

One round went through the victims front door, missing her and her children, police said.

We had a very close call this morning, but thankfully no one was hurt, San Diego police Lt. Scott Wahl said.

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The 35-year-old woman was taken into custody peacefully about 2 p.m.

The shooter was upset because police had gone to her Beadnell Way apartment about 1 a.m. and issued her a warning for a noise complaint, Wahl said.

Police then got a 911 call shortly after 5 a.m. from a woman saying her neighbor just shot at her and into her apartment. A round went through the front door and an interior door and lodged in the bathroom, Wahl said.

The woman with a handgun had also threatened a male resident, Wahl said.

Officers went to the complex on the south side of Beadnell near Mount Abernathy Avenue. They began evacuating neighbors as a safety precaution but had the victim and her two children hide inside her apartment. Wahl said it was too dangerous to try to get them out.

A full SWAT team was called in about 8 a.m. Police started closing down roads, including Balboa Avenue between Mount Abernathy and Cannington Drive.

A preschool across Balboa Avenue had children stay indoors while the SWAT operation continued.

Several members of the Metro Arson Strike Team bomb squad also were sent to the incident. A spokesman said they were there in a support role for the police action.

Wahl said negotiators talked to the suspected shooter over the course of several hours, trying to persuade her to surrender peacefully.

At one point, she showed up in a window naked and yelled at the officers. She also told them they werent going to get into her apartment without a warrant.

She finally agreed to come out and was taken into custody a little before 2 p.m. She faces felony charges including assault with a deadly weapon, shooting at an inhabited home and making threats, Wahl said.
In the 10 years that have passed since a 22-year-old Navy sailor was slain, his familys pursuit for justice hasnt wavered, the victims mother said Wednesday.

Ron Harnish was fatally shot after confronting men who were flashing gang signs in the community of Golden Hill on Dec. 27, 2006. The Navy supply clerk had recently qualified for SEAL training.

He deserves justice, said his mother, Tracy Wild. He was so brave and loyal. He was such a good person. Of any person that Ive met in the world that deserves justice, its him.

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Wild, who lives in Chico, is in San Diego for the tenth anniversary of her sons death to continue fueling interest in the case. She remains hopeful that someone who knows what happened will be swayed to come forward. A reward of up to $53,000 has been offered for information that leads to an arrest.

I believe that circumstances change, that people mature and that we reevaluate our relationships, she said. I see someone who pulls a gun on an unsuspecting person as a coward. Perhaps people who have a relationship to this case have come to see it that way and are more willing to come forward.

Harnish was in a car with other sailors when they stopped to confront the two or three men on 30th Street near C Street about 10 p.m. An argument erupted and Harnish was shot with a rifle. Another sailor was wounded in the arm.

Billboards publicizing the case have been put up twice near the location of the shooting in the hope that someone would come forward with a lead that would kick-start the investigation.

Were still torn up about this, every day of our lives, Wild said tearfully. Anybody that comes forward with information about this case would be creating so much peace for our family.

San Diego homicide Lt. Mike Holden said anyone with information should call detectives at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at (888) 580-8477.

Any information, no matter how small, could be very important to us, Holden said.

The governors office contributed $50,000 to the reward, while Crime Stoppers and family members put up the rest.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

(619) 293-1546

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com
In the wake of a deadly fire at an Oakland warehouse, authorities in San Diego are cracking down on two art venues in Barrio Logan for fire code violations.

San Diego Fire Marshal Doug Perry said the Dec. 2 blaze that killed 36 people served as a wake-up call to officials in San Diego.

It did heighten our awareness and made us maybe a little more critical or suspicious, Perry said. But a lot of these places are inspected annually and have no issues.

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There are, however, problems at two buildings.

Inspections of Barrio Logans La Bodega and The Glashaus uncovered a lack of safety features considering the large public events the venues host, Perry said. Inspectors have prohibited large events at the venues until the violations are addressed.

At La Bodega, fire alarm and sprinkler systems are absent, and the building needs one more emergency exit, Perry said. San Diego fire marshal and city code inspectors are finalizing a list of violations that will be given to the owner.

La Bodega, which opened its doors in 2011, was inspected after the fire department received an anonymous tip shortly after the Oakland fire, Perry said.

Before that, the gallery, which includes 10 art studios, hadnt been on inspectors radar because they typically check up on buildings with fire alarm and sprinkler systems  features that were not required before the Logan Avenue spot became an art gallery.

Little by little we were doing what we thought was right, or what we thought was safe, said Sony Lopez Chavez, assistant manager of La Bodega. We never really knew the extent of what codes were or what the city demanded.

Lopez Chavez said La Bodega is committed to being in compliance.

We do understand and do agree that safety is a priority for any venue that is hosting art shows  or any event, she said.

The Glashaus, which was inspected before the Oakland fire, has been making needed changes, such as adding exit signs and improving emergency exits. Inspectors more recently have pressured to the venue to meet code requirements, Perry said.

The art galley includes 15 studios, according to its website. The venue did not respond to a request for an interview.

Unlike Oaklands Ghost Ship warehouse, neither of the two San Diego art venues serve as live-work spaces, which is commonplace for artists and musicians who disregard danger for cheaper rent in desirable cities.

The conditions in La Bodega and The Glashaus are nothing like Ghost Ship, Perry acknowledged.

The Oakland warehouse was a clear fire hazard, according to those who frequented the spot. City officials have said inspectors had not been in the structure for the past three decades even though complaints had been made for years.

Perry said San Diego is better suited than Oakland to enforce safety regulations. There are 31 fire marshal inspectors here compared to Oaklands two full-time inspectors.

Typically, when inspectors show up at the door of a business, most owners or managers are amendable. In the five years as a fire marshal, Perry can recall only one instance in which inspectors had to obtain a warrant.

The tip about La Bodega was the only one officials have received since the Oakland blaze, Perry said. While most places seem to be up to code, the fire marshal said he re-committed himself to cracking down on unsafe structures and investigating complaints from the community.

We do not want to repeat what happened up in Oakland, Perry said. We would much rather take 15 minutes to half hour to get in our vehicle and go look at (a building) than to have something happen like it did in Oakland.

We owe it to the community to at least do our part and try to investigate everything that we can.

Breaking News

Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez
This month, Alzheimers San Diego celebrated its first anniversary as an independent organization  a year that decisively proved having a local organization focused on the urgent needs of our community is not only critical for addressing the Alzheimers epidemic but is what San Diegans need and want.

Last fall, the San Diego chapter was faced with a major decision when the national Alzheimers Association decided to consolidate its independent chapters into one entity, with all the decisions and funds centralized at its headquarters in Chicago. The local board of directors made the decision to remain independent and separate from the national organization because of their steadfast belief that local control was crucial to building the compassionate, in-person support services the community had relied on for more than 30 years.

With unwavering support of leaders like Darlene Shiley, Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Supervisor Dianne Jacob and Sheriff Bill Gore, and with our strong mission, research partnerships, generous donors and a tireless experienced team, a new local organization was launched, Alzheimers San Diego.

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Alzheimers San Diego took over the programs and partnerships once provided by the former San Diego chapter, growing and expanding services to better help families in ways only a local organization with boots on the ground can do.

In our first year, we helped more than 32,000 San Diegans through free in-person programs and services, and worked closely with San Diegos premier research institutes to advance an unprecedented joint local drug discovery initiative, Collaboration4Cure.

We are the only local organization in San Diego providing a broad range of free in-person programs and services targeted specifically to families affected by a dementia diagnosis and provided by masters level social workers. We strongly believe that in the absence of a cure, the best treatment is good care and that will remain our driving force for the years ahead.

This year alone, our team directly met and talked to more than 10,000 individuals looking for support, information and local resources. Our Alzheimers experts taught more than 225 classes throughout the county and, since the beginning of the year, more than doubled attendance at our weekly social activities (art, music, exercise and outings), reaching nearly 8,000 attendees. To top it off, our two Alzheimers Walks grossed nearly $700,000  100 percent of which will stay in San Diego to support free programs and advance local research for a cure.

Through direct service to local families and our partnership in the San Diego County Alzheimers Project, we were inspired to develop several new programs, such as free memory screenings and a GPS Wandering-Prevention Program.

All of these strides were made while pushing through confusion about the separation that has been created by the national Alzheimers Association making little effort to let the public know about losing seven chapters: San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, New York City, New Jersey, Mississippi and Central Texas. Those losses came after losing North Carolina, Tennessee and parts of Wisconsin in 2009 following the national organizations mandate that 40 percent of unrestricted local dollars be sent to Chicago.

Well kick off 2017 as one of only two locations in the nation trained to provide Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST), a research-proven, medication-free treatment program designed to improve memory and slow the progression of early dementia.

CST will lead the way to our future focused on helping San Diegans to possibly reduce their risk of dementia by improving their brain health and empowering them to feel hopeful even in the face of a dementia diagnosis. The 2011 World Alzheimers Report recommended, CST be routinely given to all people with early-stage dementia, and yet it has been unable to break through in the United States as a widely available therapy option. We hope to change that.

San Diegans can also look forward to our new local clinical trial registry. As a local organization with strong relationships with San Diegos premier research institutes and health systems, we have the unique ability to work closely with their lead researchers and directly connect the families we help to the appropriate trial. A lack of trial volunteer participation has been a major drag in the worldwide quest to finding a cure. We plan to ease that burden from the ground floor, as San Diego is one of the worlds epicenters of Alzheimers research.

As we look to the future and all that we have on the horizon, the team at Alzheimers San Diego feels invigorated by the local support it received this year and energized to continue helping the thousands of San Diegans who will need our help until a cure is found.

Ball is president & CEO of Alzheimers San Diego. Website: www.alzsd.org
The environmental community recently celebrated a victory in halting the Dakota Access Pipeline from proceeding.

The Army Corps of Engineers agreed to postpone the project. However, this is under President Barack Obamas administration which has been supportive of environmental protection efforts.

We have to brace ourselves for 2017. On Jan. 20, President-elect Donald Trump will be officially sworn into office and he may forcefully implement an executive order for the Dakota Access Pipeline to continue.

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Therefore, local, state, and national environmental groups must have a plan to counter these efforts.

President-elect Trump has sent a clear signal that he has stacked the deck with pro-business Cabinet members who have a clear track record of being anti clean air and clean water. They are clearly in favor of big corporate petro-businesses such ExxonMobil.

Native Americans have set the example that even though they are small in population numbers, their commitment to protect public lands and natural resources is gigantic. Many have risked their lives in protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Now, environmental groups must return to their community organizing roots. Many environmental groups have grown tremendously through the decades and they now have budgets in the hundreds of millions and billions such as the Nature Conservancy.

The Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, League of Conservation Voters and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) must do a better job of diversifying its staff at all levels.

These organizations must commit to diversify the U.S. environmental movement.

It is currently not ethnically diverse enough and, to make matters worse, funding sources inadequately support minority-led environmental efforts.

Environmental justice work is too often seen as merely hiring one or two people of color to do community organizing. Many times, this work is expected to be done for free.

Poor, minority communities, especially Native Americans, are the most impacted by environmental contamination. Ironically, they are the least empowered to push back, since they typically have no minority-led environmental organizations to take on their specific battles.

Mainstream environmental organizations have been around for decades, and they sometimes have massive budgets. The Nature Conservancy has assets of more than $6 billion. Imagine if such outfits would choose to fund small, minority-led grass-roots environmental groups to continue fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

This is not just about breaking the green ceiling, even though opportunities inside the environmental movement are scarce for people of color  especially at the executive level. We know that professional search firms are set up as a ploy (legal mechanism) to say that they searched for minorities but could not find any qualified individuals. Eventually, they already know who will be hired from the inside or as a political favor.

What is needed even more is a revolution where black, Asian, Latino, and Native American community members organize to create their own environmental nonprofits. It is not easy, but it is possible.

The California Latino Environmental Advocacy Network, the organization I helped establish, has taken the initiative to create the first statewide, Latino-led and founded environmental nonprofit in California. Its a big step since the system makes it difficult for such groups to obtain nonprofit status and start-up sustainable funding.

Now the question is: Will funders help such an organization get off the ground? Or will CLEAN meet the fate of many environmental justice efforts, such as Madres del Este de Los Angeles, Santa Isabel, which disappeared due to lack of support and funding?

A recent report, The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations: Mainstream NGOs, Foundations & Government Agencies, published by the Green 2.0 organization has some useful recommendations on this issue. Foundations, nonprofits and government agencies should integrate diversity goals into performance evaluations and grant-making criteria, it says, and environmental associations should showcase leaders. The report recommends that increased resources be allocated for diversity initiatives and that sustainable funding be provided for networking and support.

A scorecard also should be developed to see which environmental groups are making progress in relation to diversity. Similar criteria should be applied to foundations and green corporations  to assess if they are making solid progress in helping to identify and fund minority-led environmental efforts. These steps and other such efforts need to be implemented as soon as possible.

By 2017, national environmental groups should make significant progress on diversity within the environmental movement. Especially to be ready to fight and to keep the Dakota Access Pipeline from being built  which would destroy lands and natural resources. Now that would be something to celebrate and applaud: a unified and diversified environmental movement!

Let us make sure that the Access Dakota Pipeline does not get approved under the Donald Trump regime.

Jurado Ertll is executive director of the California Latino Environmental Advocacy Network.
Everyone who has a stake in a well-run, humane San Diego Unified School District should hope the districts formal rejection of allegations that students were mistreated this fall at Horton Elementary School  and its refusal to apologize for Principal Staci Dents bullying some of the students parents after they complained  was dictated by district lawyers wary of a lawsuit over illegal corporal punishment. If this is not a legal strategy, it is awful.

In October, after a large group of students badly misbehaved, all fourth- and fifth-graders were punished by being required to do physical activities during three recess periods, including two in which they were forced to stay in the upright position for push-ups on the blacktop exercise area. Some students complained to their parents of pain and blistered hands from the hot blacktop. Dent refused to meet with parents who were upset about this. Later in October, after some parents complained vigorously to Dent at a previously scheduled meeting, at least four were temporarily banned from campus. The ACLU says this was done with zero evidence that the parents acted in a threatening manner.

Yet in its response to the complaint filed by education activist Sally Smith on behalf of the Spanish-speaking parents, the district refused to believe students who said they were in pain because of forced exercise; a students blister could have been a result of playing on the monkey bars or falling, the official response noted. Really? This is all a conspiracy cooked up by conniving 10-year-olds?

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The district says it will continue to investigate what happened at Horton. Nevertheless, unsatisfied with the districts initial response, Smith said she is appealing its conclusions to the state.

Stay tuned. This troubling saga isnt going away.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: UTOpinion
The article in the local section states in bold headline Blacks stand out as crime victims (Dec. 24).

Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can also leave a comment below

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However, the detailed statistical record, published without comment, shows that blacks are even more likely to be perpetrators than victims. For example, blacks who number only 4 percent of the county population are victims in 20 percent of the homicides  but are suspected perpetrators in 33 percent.

For robbery, blacks are 11 percent victims and 31 percent perpetrators. For whites, the victims outnumber the perpetrators.

Do you think the texts emphasis on blacks as victims is responsible journalism? And do you think that this kind of mainstream press bias is partly responsible for the surprising election results last November?

Thomas Leary

Coronado

It is time to embrace one person, one vote

J. B. Harringtons letter to the U-T (Vote total misleading; electoral process works, Dec. 27) just drives home the point that the Electoral College is not needed nor fair. What is more fair than a majority vote?

The U.S. presidential race is the only one in the country that uses such a ridiculous method of election of a public official.

No state uses it for the election of governors, senators, representatives or any other office; such elections are based on who wins the most votes.

It is time to change this outdated method of electing our president.

W. Reed

San Diego

What steps were taken to offset indiscretion?

Regarding Nazi jokes made as teenager follow county GOP director (Dec. 24): Sage Naumann wore a German military uniform on Halloween when he was a teen, even posting on social media that he was a sad Natsi that Hitler was dead.

A youthful indiscretion? This affair came to light a couple of years ago. I would like to ask, having been accused of being a Nazi sympathizer, what has Naumann done to show he is a decent, open-minded human being worthy of holding high office in the countys Republican Party?

Has he attended the annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfasts? Has he supported the Jewish community when it has been victims of hateful attacks?

Does he belong to and support any human rights organization? Is he a hater?

If he isnt, then it has been up to him for years to demonstrate with word and deed that he is not.

Has he?

Kirby Wohlander

San Diego

Trump shows he is the leader we should fear

Regarding Mr. President-elect Donald Trump, please explain yourself (Dec. 23): Vladimir Putin says something about building up Russias nuclear arsenal and Donald Trump has to respond via a tweet.

He is not even in office yet and Russia, Iran and China have already learned that Trump can indeed be baited.

Americans have feared for years that a mentally unstable bully might get access to nuclear weapons. We just thought it would be a foreign leader, not our own.

What demeaning nickname is he going to give a foreign leader who criticizes one of his tweets?

Michele Rose

Oceanside

Trump is smart to avoid leftist filters of media

The U-T editorial board laments the fact that Donald Trump is not holding news conferences.

Do these people think an intelligent man should allow left-wing Trump-haters in the mainstream media to present their interpretation of his views to the American people?

Tweet on, Mr. President.

Dick Larsen

San Diego

San Diego must help influence water policy

Regarding Trump, water policy and California: Big changes coming? (Dec. 27): Your well-written editorial was on a subject that is the most crucial to Southern Californias future  water.

Yet I couldnt sort out your position. Yes or no on the water project? Yes or no on protecting the fish? Yes or no on federal interference?

Because San Diego is at the little end of the long, fragile pipe with a small spigot, our leadership, including our local papers, should have strong and unambiguous statements of our position. But I couldnt find one in your editorial.

Thanks for your hard work and service to San Diego.

Kevin Leahy

Oceanside

Dont be too hasty in forgiving criminals

After reading about the editors support of releasing criminals early (Browns pardons are sensible and humane, Dec. 28), I wonder if the editors will identify the criminals when, not if, they break the law again?

Im also sure that none of the editors live in the neighborhoods where the criminals will be going to once free. It is easy to support something when living in an ivory tower.

Bruce Kent

San Diego

Concern for Christians appears to be lacking

Regarding the uproar at the U.N. over Israeli settlements (Readers react to the U.N. censure, Dec. 28): Muslims have been driving Christians from their homes and livelihoods for years in the Holy Land and other areas of the Middle East, with hardly a ripple of protest from the rest of the world.

But then, Christians are lightly regarded in most parts of the world anyway, including this country.

Craig Sayre

El Cajon

Want to see more letters that appear only online? Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook.
A Honolulu cafe has taken down its owner's handwritten note on the door that told those who voted for Donald Trump that they would not be allowed to eat there, but the online backlash to the note continues to grow.

If you voted for Trump, you cannot eat here! No Nazis, read the sign at Honolulus Cafe 8. It was posted earlier this week and a photo of it was shared widely on social media.

The sign has since been taken down, per the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, but many people are still upset about it. The restaurants Yelp and Facebook pages have been flooded with critical comments and calls to boycott the venue.

Fox News caught wind of the story and broadcast an interview with the cafes owner, Robert Warner, who said the sign wasnt meant to be offensive.

It wouldnt be offensive. Id just be more like, oh, its a heads up, thanks for the info, man, Warner said. It was a reaction to the election. It wasnt sour grapes because I didnt vote.

Airing political grievances is risky for a restaurant but not unique to Cafe 8. The owner of Jeff Rubys Steakhouse faced a similar backlash in March when he said Trump would not be welcome at any of his restaurants because of remarks the then-candidate made about prisoners of war. Ruby later retracted his ban and welcomed Trump to any of the restaurants.

Cafe 8/12s Yelp page was so flooded with negative reactions to the sign that the website posted its standard Active Cleanup Alert, which tells visitors that the page is undergoing a cleanup of both positive and negative posts that appear to be motivated more by the news coverage.

Others took to the cafes Facebook Page to give it a one-star review and criticism.

The restaurant received its share of positive reviews from those who didnt disagree with the cafes politics. Several Yelp reviewers who agreed said the business was merely exercising its right to free speech and its right to refuse service to anyone it chooses.

"Will definitely visit next time in Honolulu! Thanks for not being afraid to take a stand. I wish you well and hope your business flourishes. #firstamendment," wrote one Yelp user.

"Amazing Mom and Pop cafe with fantastic food. Kudos to the owners for taking a strong stand on their beliefs. Highly recommended," another one wrote.

Offended or not, do you its wise for a restaurant to air political views and alienate people based on who they vote? Is the restaurant crossing into legal territory by refusing service to a category of people much like those who refuse service to others based on gender, race or religious beliefs?

Share your thoughts with me via email or in a tweet.

Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez
City Council members in April tackled a good problem  how best to spend some of the city budgets abundant reserve funds.

At the end of a non-binding workshop, the council wholeheartedly endorsed a staff recommendation that the largest chunk, about $9.2 million, be applied as a down payment toward construction of the new Mickey Cafagna Community Center at Community Park. The project at the time was projected to cost $19.2 million, including proposed upgrades to the nearby municipal swim center. The balance of the construction costs were to be financed through sale of certificates on participation, the same financing tool used to build City Hall and the sheriffs station a decade ago.

The idea of tearing down the existing, aging community center and nearby senior center, and combining the two uses into one building had been discussed on and off for over a decade. The idea was shelved during the Great Recession and by the 2012 dissolution by the state of local redevelopment agencies, but was revived again about a year ago.

Councilmembers one year ago endorsed a mission-style design theme and this summer began the process of selecting a contractor for the project. But later in the year, when it became clear the center alone would cost well in excess of $20 million, several councilmembers began having second thoughts. Should the project be scaled back or sent back to the drawing board, they wondered.

Enter the San Diego YMCA.

In October, the non-profit submitted a proposal to build a branch building at the park for roughly $9 million instead of one constructed and operated by the city. How soon the building could be constructed would depend on what percentage of its cost the city would be willing to assume.

Without committing one way or the other, the council in October supported having the YMCA conduct and pay for a public opinion survey to determine if there is a need for a branch in Poway, what programs and services might be desired and whether local families would be willing to join the organization.

The telephone survey, launched last week, will include between 600 and 800 randomly selected households in Poway and the surrounding area, City Manager Tina White said. (The YMCA is also considering building a branch in the Rancho Bernardo/4S Ranch area.) Several of the questions will be Poway-specific, she said. A report on the surveys results should be ready for council review in late-January or early-February, she said.
JUBA, South Sudan (AP)  Hundreds of young South Sudanese men marched in protest of the United Nations on Monday following the discovery of land mines inside a U.N. truck that was marked as carrying food.

The rally participants marched through the city and shouted slogans of support for President Salva Kiir while also denouncing Hilde Johnson, the top U.N. official in the country. Protesters accused Johnson of supplying arms to rebels fighting South Sudans government.

An internal U.N. security situation report over the weekend said the government impounded 12 U.N. trucks and the deputy governor of Lakes state requested the official cargo list. Last Thursday three South Sudan soldiers stopped and searched U.N. military vehicles on orders from superior officers following the impounding of the 12 trucks, the report said.

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On Friday U.N. spokeswoman Ariane Quentier said it was regrettable a 12-truck U.N. convoy marked as food was discovered carrying weapons.

The transport of cargo of general goods belonging to the Ghanaian battalion on its way to Bentiu. Several containers were wrongly labeled and inadvertently contained weapons and ammunition, she said.

The discovery  as well as a video showing guns and land mines taken from the U.N. trucks that has been making the rounds on social media  has fueled even more skepticism of the U.N. here. Anti-U.N. sentiment began growing in January when President Kiir described the organization as a parallel government and ardent supporter of rebels.

Quentier declined to comment further on Monday and the U.N. has not explained why its soldiers would need land mines.

If the guns found are going to U.N. troops, why do they have land mines too? Does the U.N. use land mines? said Deng Gerang, one of Mondays rally participants, voicing a common concern among the protesters.

Another protester, Deng Djames, 24, said South Sudan residents appreciate the U.N.'s assistance, but he said there needs to be a regime change at the top of the U.N. structure. We want her to go. She assists the rebel leader Riek Machar, he said.

South Sudan Vice President James Wani Igga told the protesters that the U.N. is was a colonial system trying to run the governments administration. He was also critical of international aid groups for driving their agenda in South Sudan.

If its a colonial system we need to fight, then that is good because now I am old. It makes me young again and I will go into the bush to fight, he said to cheers and laughter.

The governments major criticism of the U.N. is the protection its bases around the country provide for close to 70,000 citizens mostly from the Nuer tribe who say they fear reprisal attacks from the dominant Dinka tribe who support the government and Kiir.

Widespread violence broke out in South Sudan in mid-December, splitting the countrys military in two, with some supporting the government and others defecting to support the former vice president, Machar, an ethnic Nuer.

Aid groups estimate that thousands of people have died in the violence. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced. The top U.N. aid official has said that if residents dont go home to plant crops before the coming seasonal rains the country will face severe hunger.

The latest mass violence occurred last week, when fighting broke out at a military barracks outside Juba. Government and military officials blamed the outbreak over a disagreement over pay, and officials said that five people were killed.

However, the death toll was later revised upward to 65 by a military spokesman. Several soldiers who refused to give their names, however, told The Associated Press the actual death toll was more than 100.
Many Americans were surprised to hear of the CIA report that Russian hackers had intervened in the presidential election. They were also surprised when supporters of President-elect Trump dismissed the CIAs charges, claiming they were politically motivated.

Such criticism of the governments intelligence agency goes well back in our history. Traditionally, Americans have felt that espionage is basically dishonorable and somehow un-American.

Back in 1929, for example, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson was disturbed to learn that the Armys Cipher Bureau was reading the coded messages of foreign diplomats. Gentlemen, he sniffed, do not read each others mail.

Another reason for Americans historic dislike of intelligence operations has been its unreliability. During the Civil War, for example, the Union army was continually misled by intelligence reports that often exaggerated the size of enemy forces by as much as 50 percent.

Intelligence workers earned new respect during the Second World War when they were able to crack the enemies military codes. But in the Cold War that followed, suspicions grew that covert-intelligence agencies were becoming too powerful. Also, as Thomas Braden recounts in Im Glad the CIA Is Immoral, legislators wouldnt fund intelligence operations that didnt support their personal political agendas.

The CIA, along with the media that reported its findings, left itself open to criticism because it collaborated for years in shaping the news. In the 1950s the CIA launched the covert Operation Mockingbird to build anticommunist sentiments at home and abroad. Thomas W. Braden was a key player.

In his article, he describes how the operation countered the Soviets propaganda and fake grass-roots campaigns in neutral countries. The operation channeled money to anticommunist labor leaders and student organizations in western Europe and launched a cultural magazine to promote anti-Soviet ideas. It also built goodwill by financing cultural exchanges like the Boston Symphonys triumphant tour of Europe.

In this article, Braden was responding to criticism from The New York Times, which had called the CIAs programs immoral and scandalous. Braden considered his programs simply beating the Soviet Union at its own game. Overall, Bradens piece makes a good case for the CIAs program.

But one fact diminishes the effectiveness of his argument: Operation Mockingbird also worked to influence American media. Working with nearly unlimited funds, the CIA paid newspapers and wire agencies to present its doctored versions of news stories. Post contributor Stewart Alsop was part of the Mockingbird operation, as was his brother Joseph. For decades, these journalists presented major news events with a slant that the Agency approved. Despite a federal law that prohibited domestic operations, Operation Mockingbird continued for decades at home and abroad with little oversight.

The legacy of programs like Mockingbird is that, today, Americans cant be certain whether a CIA report is completely true, mostly true, somewhat true, or simply a lie it would like us to believe. Even the best information from the agency is vulnerable to doubt.

Im Glad the CIA is Immoral

By Thomas W. Braden

Originally published on May 20, 1967

On the desk in front of me as I write these lines is a creased and faded yellow paper. It bears the following inscription in pencil:

Received from Warren G. Haskins, $15,000. (signed) Norris A. Grambo.

I went in search of this paper on the day the newspapers disclosed the scandal of the Central Intelligence Agencys connections with American students and labor leaders. It was a wistful search, and when it ended, I found myself feeling sad.

For I was Warren G. Haskins. Norris A. Grambo was Irving Brown, of the American Federation of Labor. The $15,000 was from the vaults of the CIA, and the piece of yellow paper is the last memento I possess of a vast and secret operation whose death has been brought about by small-minded and resentful men.

It was my idea to give the $15,000 to Irving Brown. He needed it to pay off his strong-arm squads in Mediterranean ports, so that American supplies could be unloaded against the opposition of Communist dock workers. It was also my idea to give cash, along with advice, to other labor leaders, to students, professors and others who could help the United States in its battle with Communist fronts.

It was my idea. For 17 years I had thought it was a good idea. Yet here it was in the newspapers, buried under excoriation. Walter Lippmann, Joseph Kraft. Editorials. Outrage. Shock.

Whats gone wrong? I said to myself as I looked at the yellow paper. Was there something wrong with me and the others back in 1950? Did we just think we were helping our country, when in fact we ought to have been hauled up before Walter Lippmann?

And whats wrong with me now? For I still think it was and is a good idea, an imperative idea. Am I out of my mind? Or is it the editor of The New York Times who is talking nonsense?

And so I sat sadly amidst the dust of old papers, and after a time I decided something. I decided that if ever I knew a truth in my life, I knew the truth of the Cold War, and I knew what the Central Intelligence Agency did in the Cold War, and never have I read such a concentration of inane, misinformed twaddle as I have now been reading about the CIA.

Were the undercover payments by the CIA immoral? Surely it cannot be immoral to make certain that your countrys supplies intended for delivery to friends are not burned, stolen, or dumped into the sea.

Are CIA efforts to collect intelligence anywhere it can disgraceful? Surely it is not disgraceful to ask somebody whether he learned anything while he was abroad that might help his country.

People who make these charges must be naive. Some of them must be worse. Some must be pretending to be naive.

Take Victor Reuther, assistant to his brother Walter, president of the United Automobile Workers. According to Drew Pearson, Victor Reuther complained that the American Federation of Labor got money from the CIA and spent it with undercover techniques. Victor Reuther ought to be ashamed of himself. At his request, I went to Detroit one morning and gave Walter $50,000 in $50 bills. Victor spent the money, mostly in West Germany, to bolster labor unions there. He tried undercover techniques to keep me from finding out how he spent it. But I had my own undercover techniques. In my opinion and that of my peers in the CIA, he spent it with less than perfect wisdom, for the German unions he chose to help werent seriously short of money and were already anti-Communist. The CIA money Victor spent would have done much more good where unions were tying up ports at the order of Communist leaders.

As for the theory advanced by the editorial writers that there ought to have been a government foundation devoted to helping good causes agreed upon by Congress  this may seem sound, but it wouldnt work for a minute. Does anyone really think that congressmen would foster a foreign tour by an artist who has or has had left-wing connections? And imagine the scuffles that would break out as congressmen fought over money to subsidize the organizations in their home districts.

Back in the early 1950s, when the Cold War was really hot, the idea that Congress would have approved many of our projects was about as likely as the John Birch Societys approving Medicare. I remember, for example, the time I tried to bring my old friend, Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium, to the U.S. to help out in one of the CIA operations.

Paul-Henri Spaak was and is a very wise man. He had served his country as foreign minister and premier. CIA Director Allen Dulles mentioned Spaaks projected journey to the then Senate Majority Leader William F. Knowland of California. I believe that Mr. Dulles thought the senator would like to meet Mr. Spaak. I am sure he was not prepared for Knowlands reaction:

Why, the senator said, the mans a socialist.

Yes, Mr. Dulles replied, and the head of his party. But you dont know Europe the way I do, Bill. In many European countries, a socialist is roughly equivalent to a Republican.

Knowland replied, I dont care. We arent going to bring any socialists over here.

The fact, of course, is that in much of Europe in the 1950s, socialists, people who called themselves left  the very people whom many Americans thought no better than Communists  were the only people who gave a damn about fighting Communism.

But let us begin at the beginning.

When I went to Washington in 1950 as assistant to Allen W. Dulles, then deputy director to CIA chief Walter Bedell Smith, the agency was three years old. It had been organized, like the State Department, along geographical lines, with a Far Eastern Division, a West European Division, etc. It seemed to me that this organization was not capable of defending the United States against a new and extraordinarily successful weapon. The weapon was the international Communist front. There were seven of these fronts, all immensely powerful.

The International Association of Democratic Lawyers had found documented proof that U.S. forces in Korea were dropping canisters of poisoned mosquitoes on North Korean cities and were following a systematic procedure of torturing civilians, individually and en masse. The World Peace Council had conducted a successful operation called the Stockholm Peace Appeal, a petition signed by more than two million Americans. Most of them, I hope, were in ignorance of the councils program: The peace movement  has set itself the aim to frustrate the aggressive plans of American and English imperialists.  The heroic Soviet army is the powerful sentinel of peace. The Womens International Democratic Federation was preparing a Vienna conference of delegates from 40 countries who resolved: Our children cannot be safe until America warmongers are silenced. The meeting cost the Russians $6 million. The International Union of Students had the active participation of nearly every student organization in the world. At an estimated cost of $50 million a year, it stressed the hopeless future of the young under any form of society except that dedicated to peace and freedom, as in Russia. The World Federation of Democratic Youth appealed to the nonintellectual young. In 1951, 25,000 young people were brought to Berlin from all over the world, to be harangued (mostly about American atrocities). The estimated cost: $50 million. The International Organization of Journalists was founded in Copenhagen in 1946 by a non-Communist majority. A year later the Communists took it over. By 1950 it was an active supporter of every Communist cause. The World Federation of Trade Unions controlled the two most powerful labor unions in France and Italy and took its orders directly from Soviet Intelligence. Yet it was able to mask its Communist allegiance so successfully that the CIO belonged to it for a time.

All in all, the CIA estimated, the Soviet Union was annually spending $250 million on its various fronts. They were worth every penny of it. Consider what they had accomplished.

First, they had stolen the great words. Years after I left the CIA, the late United States Ambassador Adlai Stevenson told me how he had been outraged when delegates from underdeveloped countries, young men who had come to maturity during the Cold War, assumed that anyone who was for Peace and Freedom and Justice must also be for Communism.

Second, by constant repetition of the twin promises of the Russian revolution  the promises of a classless society and of a transformed mankind  the fronts had thrown a peculiar spell over some of the worlds intellectuals, artists, writers, scientists, many of whom behaved like disciplined party-liners.

Third, millions of people who would not consciously have supported the interests of the Soviet Union had joined organizations devoted ostensibly to good causes, but secretly owned and operated by and for the Kremlin.

How odd, I thought to myself as I watched these developments, that Communists, who are afraid to join anything but the Communist Party, should gain mass allies through organizational war while we Americans, who join everything, were sitting here tongue-tied.

And so it came about that I had a chat with Allen Dulles. It was late in the day and his secretary had gone. I told him I thought the CIA ought to take on the Russians by penetrating a battery of international fronts. I told him I thought it should be a worldwide operation with a single headquarters.

You know, he said, leaning back in his chair and lighting his pipe, I think you may have something there. Theres no doubt in my mind that were losing the Cold War. Why dont you take it up down below?

It was nearly three months later that I came to his office again  this time to resign. On the morning of that day there had been a meeting for which my assistants and I had been preparing ourselves carefully. We had been studying Russian front movements, and working out a counteroffensive. We knew that the men who ran CIAs area divisions were jealous of their power. But we thought we had logic on our side. And surely logic would appeal to Frank Wisner.

Frank Wisner, in my view, was an authentic American hero. A war hero. A Cold War hero. He died by his own hand in 1965. But he had been crushed long before by the dangerous detail connected with Cold War operations. At this point in my story, however, he was still gay, almost boyishly charming, cool yet coiled, a low hurdler from Mississippi constrained by a vest.

He had one of those purposefully obscure CIA titles: Director of Policy Coordination. But everyone knew that he had run CIA since the death of the wartime OSS, run it through a succession of rabbit warrens hidden in the bureaucracy of the State Department, run it when nobody but Frank Wisner cared whether the country had an intelligence service. Now that it was clear that Bedell Smith and Allen Dulles were really going to take over, Frank Wisner still ran it while they tried to learn what it was they were supposed to run.

And so, as we prepared for the meeting, it was decided that I should pitch my argument to Wisner. He knew more than the others. He could overrule them.

The others sat in front of me in straight-backed chairs, wearing the troubled looks of responsibility. I began by assuring them that I proposed to do nothing in my area without the approval of the chief of that area. I thought, when I finished, that I had made a good case. Wisner gestured at the Chief, Western Europe. Frank, came the response, this is just another one of those goddamned proposals for getting into everybodys hair.

One by one the others agreed. Only Richard G. Stilwell, the Chief, Far East, a hard-driving soldier in civilian clothes who now commands U.S. forces in Thailand, said he had no objection. We all waited to hear what Wisner would say.

Incredibly, he put his hands out, palms down. Well, he said, looking at me, you heard the verdict.

Just as incredibly, he smiled.

Sadly, I walked down the long hall, and sadly reported to my staff that the day was lost. Then I went to Mr. Dulless office and resigned. Oh, said Mr. Dulles, blandly, Frank and I had talked about his decision. I overruled him. He looked up at me from over his papers. He asked me to.

Thus was the International Organization Division of CIA born, and thus began the first centralized effort to combat Communist fronts.

Perhaps combat does not describe the relative strengths brought to battle. For we started with nothing but the truth. Yet within three years we had made solid accomplishments. Few of them would have been possible without undercover methods.

I remember the enormous joy I got when the Boston Symphony Orchestra won more acclaim for the U.S. in Paris than John Foster Dulles or Dwight D. Eisenhower could have brought with a hundred speeches. And then there was Encounter, the magazine published in England and dedicated to the proposition that cultural achievement and political freedom were interdependent. Money for both the orchestras tour and the magazines publication came from the CIA, and few outside the CIA knew about it. We had placed one agent in a Europe-based organization of intellectuals called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Another agent became an editor of Encounter. The agents could not only propose anti-Communist programs to the official leaders of the organizations but they could also suggest ways and means to solve the inevitable budgetary problems. Why not see if the needed money could be obtained from American foundations? As the agents knew, the CIA-financed foundations were quite generous when it came to the national interest.

I remember with great pleasure the day an agent came in with the news that four national student organizations had broken away from the Communist International Union of Students and joined our student outfit instead. I remember how Eleanor Roosevelt, glad to help our new International Committee of Women, answered point for point the charges about germ warfare that the Communist womens organization had put forward. I remember the organizations of seamens unions in India and in the Baltic ports.

There were, of course, difficulties, sometimes unexpected. One was the World Assembly of Youth.

We were casting about for something to compete with the Soviet Union in its hold over young people when we discovered this organization based in Dakar. It was dwindling in membership, and apparently not doing much.

After a careful assessment, we decided to put an agent into the assembly. It took a minimum of six months and often a year just to get a man into an organization. Thereafter, except for what advice and help we could lend, he was on his own. But, in this case, we couldnt give any help whatsoever. The agent couldnt find anybody in the organization who wanted any.

The mystery was eventually solved by the man on the spot. WAY, as we had come to call it, was the creature of French intelligence  the Deuxieme Bureau. Two French agents held key WAY posts. The French Communist Party seemed strong enough to win a general election. French intelligence was waiting to see what would happen.

We didnt wait. Within a year, our man brought about the defeat of his two fellow officers in an election. After that, WAY took a pro-Western stand.

But our greatest difficulty was with labor. When I left the agency in 1954, we were still worrying about the problem. It was personified by Jay Lovestone, assistant to David Dubinsky in the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

Once chief of the Communist Part in the United States, Lovestone had an enormous grasp of foreign-intelligence operations. In 1947 the Communist Confederation Generale du Travail led a strike in Paris which came very nearly to paralyzing the French economy. A takeover of the government was feared.

Into this crisis stepped Lovestone and his assistant, Irving Brown. With funds from Dubinskys union, they organized Force Ouvriere, a non-Communist union. When they ran out of money, they appealed to the CIA. Thus began the secret subsidy of free trade unions which soon spread to Italy. Without that subsidy, postwar history might have gone very differently.

But though Lovestone wanted our money, he didnt want to tell us precisely how he spent it. We knew that non-Communist unions in France and Italy were holding their own. We knew that he was paying them nearly $2 million annually. In his view, what more did we need to know?

We countered that the unions were not growing as rapidly as we wished and that many members were not paying dues. We wanted to be consulted as to how to correct these weaknesses.

I appealed to a high and responsible leader. He kept repeating, Lovestone and his bunch do a good job.

And so they did. After that meeting, so did we. We cut the subsidy down, and with the money saved we set up new networks in other international labor organizations. Within two years, the free labor movement, still holding its own in France and Italy, was going even better elsewhere.

Looking back now, it seems to me that the argument was largely a waste of time. The only argument that mattered was the one with the Communists for the loyalty of millions of workers. That argument, with the help of Lovestone and Brown, was effectively made.

By 1953, we were operating or influencing international organizations in every field where Communist fronts had previously seized ground, and in some where they had not even begun to operate. The money we spent was very little by Soviet standards. But that was reflected in the first rule of our operational plan: Limit the money to amounts private organizations can credibly spend. The other rules were equally obvious: Use legitimate, existing organizations; disguise the extent of American interest; protect the integrity of the organization by not requiring it to support every aspect of the official American policy.

Such was the status of the organizational weapon when I left the CIA. No doubt it grew stronger later on, as those who took charge gained experience. Was it a good thing to forge such a weapon? In my opinion then  and now  it was essential.

Was it immoral, wrong, disgraceful? Only in the sense that war itself is immoral, wrong, and disgraceful.

For the Cold War was and is a war, fought with ideas instead of bombs. And our country has had a clear-cut choice: Either we win the war or lose it. This war is still going on, and I do not mean to imply that we have won it. But we have not lost it either.

It is now 12 years since Winston Churchill accurately defined the world as divided intellectually and to a large extent geographically between the creeds of Communist discipline and individual freedom. I have heard it said that this definition is no longer accurate. I share the hope that John Kennedys appeal to the Russians to help us make the world safe for diversity reflects the spirit of a new age.

But I am not banking on it, and neither, in my opinion, was the late president. The choice between innocence and power involves the most difficult of decisions. But when an adversary attacks with his weapons disguised as good works, to choose innocence is to choose defeat. So long as the Soviet Union attacks deviously, we shall need weapons to fight back, and a government locked in a power struggle cannot acknowledge all the programs it must carry out to cope with its enemies. The weapons we need now cannot, alas, be the same ones that we first used in the 1950s. But the new weapons should be capable of the same affirmative response as the ones we forged 17 years ago, when it seemed that the Communists, unchecked, would win the alliance of most of the world.
New York City, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/28/2016 -- Incontinence or Incontinent may refer to the involuntary excretion of bowel contents or urine. Difficulties with using the toilet, accidents and incontinence, can all be problems for people with dementia, particularly as the condition progresses. According to a report published by WHO, 5% to 7% of the world's population is suffering from incontinence. These problems can be upsetting for people and for those around them. Today a variety of products are available in the market, which can provide practical solutions to those people suffering from such ailments. Some of these are Protective Underwear & Briefs, Pads & Liners, Overnight diapers, Tab Style Diapers, skin care products to name a few.



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Incontinence products are a part of personal care segment, which is growing at a faster pace. This is due to the rise in aging population, increasing awareness and acceptance of incontinence products. Product innovations to customize the products is also driving the incontinence care industry. The WHO report projects that in almost every country the proportion of people aged over 60 years is growing faster than any other age group, as a result of both longer life expectancy and declining fertility rates. Also the rise in the population of diabetic Mellitus patients worldwide provides a good platform for this market. However, there are some bigger challenges faced by this industry like the threat of alternates and substitutes and the threat from low-cost manufacturers.



The incontinence products market can be segmented based on product type, into, external & internal. External products include; absorbent products, hand wash, gloves, body wash, barrier cream, repair cream, hand held urinals, bed pads, shampoo caps, whereas, internal products include; tampons, disposable urethral Inserts, pessaries. Based on raw material used- plastic, cotton fabric, super absorbents, cotton fiber, latex, others (water proof materials).



In terms distributional channel, the market is segmented into institutional & homecare and retail trade. Out of which institutional & homecare is estimated to be the major end-users, accounting approximately 60% of the global market for incontinence products and the retail market owns remaining 40% of the market.



Geographically, the incontinence products market is segmented into seven regions which are ; North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), and Middle East and Africa (MEA) and Japan. Among all the regions, Western Europe is the highest contributor in term of revenue in global incontinence products market followed by Asia Pacific, North America & it is expected that in near future, Asia Pacific is going to lead this market.



Japan, having the highest proportion of elderly citizens could be a big market for this segment. The ever growing population of China will drive the demand for healthcare products, consequently resulting in the growth of the incontinence market in country. Saudi Arab, Kiribati, Kuwait, Bahrain are world's leading diabetic prevalent nation. These countries also have a good market potential for incontinence products.



Some of the key players across the value chain dominating this market are Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget SCA, Unicharm Corporation, HARTMANN GROUP, ONTEX International N.V., Hypermarcas SA, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, First Quality Enterprises Inc., Pro Descart Industria e Comercio Ltd, Coloplast A/S, C. R. Bard Inc., B. Braun Melsungen AG, Covidien plc and Medline Industries Inc, etc.



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The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geographies, types, and applications.
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/29/2016 -- Arthritis refers to inflammation of the joint, accompanied by joint pain and stiffness. It may be acute or chronic. Redness of the affected part and swelling are some of the common symptoms of arthritis. Obesity, infections, crystal deposition, joint injury, and old age are some of the common causes associated with arthritis. Osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis are two common types of arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is an auto-immune disorder, which results in inflammation of joints of the hands and feet. It occurs when an individual's immune system attacks his/her own body tissues. Osteoarthritis is a chronic disease, which affect joints, including ligament, cartilage, joint lining, and underlying bones. This disease results in joint pain and stiffness due to the breakdown of cartilage. It is also known as Degenerative Joint Disease (DJD). Primary osteoarthritis and secondary osteoarthritis are the two commonest forms of osteoarthritis. Primary osteoarthritis results from abnormal stress on weight bearing joints. This is mostly common in the aging population. Secondary osteoarthritis refers to sudden and chronic injury in the joints. Metabolic disorders, trauma, joint surgery, poor bone alignment, and diabetes are some of the common causes leading to osteoarthritis. Some of the commonest tests used to diagnose osteoarthritis include joint fluid analysis, blood tests, X-rays, and magnetic resonance imaging scans. Medications such as acetaminophen and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are used for osteoarthritis treatment. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs include ibuprofen and naproxen. Physical therapy, occupational therapy, chronic pain class, and braces are some of the therapies associated with osteoarthritis. Moreover, osteoarthritis treatment includes surgical procedures such as lubrication injections, cortisone shots, and joint replacement.



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Currently, North America dominates the global osteoarthritis market, followed by Europe. This is due to the rising prevalence of osteoarthritis diseases and growing geriatric population in these regions. In addition, increasing access to health care insurance, especially in the U.S., is also influencing the growth of the osteoarthritis market. Asia is expected to be the fastest growing market in the next five years. This is due to the rising health care infrastructure and increasing government initiatives for better health care facilities in this region. Moreover, a large patient population base is driving the growth of the osteoarthritis market in this region.



Rising incidences of surgeries, increasing technological advancements, increasing number of pipeline drugs, and rising awareness about health care are some of the key factors driving the growth of the global osteoarthritis market. In addition, rising disposable income in developing countries is also fueling the growth of the global osteoarthritis market. However, stringent regulatory policies and less adoption of osteoarthritis treatment are restraining the growth of the global osteoarthritis market. In addition, side effects associated with osteoarthritis medications are also impeding the growth of this market.



Emergence of new and cost effective medication options for the treatment of osteoarthritis could open up new opportunities for new players in the global osteoarthritis market. In addition, emerging markets, such as India and China, could also open new opportunities for new players. Increasing number of strategic alliances between various companies, rising number of product innovations, and increase in the number of clinical trials for pain reliving biologic drugs, such as anti-NGFs, are among the recent market trends in the global osteoarthritis market.



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The major companies operating in this market are Abbott Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson Limited, Novartis AG, Pfizer, Inc., and Eli Lilly and Company. Some of the other companies operating in this market are Ampio Pharmaceuticals, Abiogen Pharma, and BioDelivery Sciences International, Inc.
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/29/2016 -- With the presence of a large pool of mobile applications vendors for melanoma detection, the Europe and Israel market for mobile applications for melanoma detection demonstrates a highly fragmented structure, finds a report by Transparency Market Research (TMR). The competition within the market is exceptionally high as players are constantly engaged in product innovation and advancements in current offerings.



Over the forthcoming years, the leading players, namely, Dr. Mole, Spot Mole, and Melanoma Watch, are expected to shift their focus towards mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships in order to minimize the competition and improve their visibility.



As per the research study, the market for mobile applications for melanoma detection in Europe is likely to progress at an exponential CAGR of 47.0% and reach US$1.4 mn by the end of the forecast period. On the other hand, the market for mobile applications for melanoma detection in Israel will register a strong rise at a remarkable CAGR of 61.20% over the period of the forecast.



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Greece to Emerge Leading Market for Mobile Applications for Melanoma Detection in Europe



The research report also offers an analysis based on the geographical segmentation of the Europe and Israel market for mobile applications for melanoma detection. The market in Europe has been segmented into Greece and the Rest of Europe while the market in Israel has been studied separately.



Due to the rise in the number of melanoma cases over the last few years, the market for mobile applications for melanoma detection in Greece has witnessed a robust growth despite the economic volatility. Apart from this, the growing penetration of smartphones has also been adding to the progress of the Greece market for mobile applications for melanoma detection. In the Rest of Europe, Sweden, the U.K., Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, and the Netherlands have been driving the demand for mobile applications for melanoma detection, on account of the high incidence rate of melanoma, and the trend is likely to continue over the forthcoming years.



On the similar lines, Israel has also reported a significant rise in the market for mobile applications for melanoma detection due to the growing prevalence of melanoma and the increasing user base of smartphones. Further, the rising preference for mHealth tools among customers in this country is likely to reflect positively on the demand for mobile applications for melanoma detection over the next few years, notes the market study.



Rising Incidence of Melanoma and Skin Cancer to Impact Europe and Israel Market for Mobile Applications for Melanoma Detection Greatly



"The augmenting incidence of melanoma and skin cancer has been influencing the demand for mobile applications for melanoma detection in Europe and Israel," states the author of this study. The North and West European countries are more severely affected by melanoma in comparison with the East European nations, which as a result, is leading to a rather high demand for mobile applications for melanoma detection in this part of the region.



The growing trend of mHealth, boosted by the increased penetration of Internet and smartphones, is another key factor behind the growth of the market for mobile applications for melanoma detection in Europe and Israel, reports the research study.



With the significant advancement in mHealth technologies, researchers expect this trend to continue to drive this market over the next few years. However, the rising concerns over the accuracy of the detection test and the high cost of regulation processes may limit the adoption of mobile applications for melanoma detection in Europe and Israel to some extent in the near future, states the report.



The study presented here is based on a report by Transparency Market Research (TMR) titled "Mobile Applications for Melanoma Detection Market - Europe and Israel Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 20142022."



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About Transparency Market Research

Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.



Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.



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New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/29/2016 -- Major depressive disorder, also known as major depression and clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by loss of interest and pleasure in enjoyable environment. People are affected in different ways by major depression. Some people have trouble sleeping, feel agitated and irritable, and have sudden weight loss. Moreover, they can have other mental and physical symptoms such as fatigue, memory loss, feeling of hopelessness, body aches, headaches, and thoughts of suicide.



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Major depressive disorder can affect people in any stage of life. In adults, major depressive disorder is most common in those who are 25-44 years of age. Within an entire lifetime, major depression affects 10% - 25% of women and 5% - 12% of men.



It is estimated that 10% - 25% of people who develop major depressive disorder are previously diagnosed with dysthymia (dysthymic disorder), a form of depression. Some people may suffer from dysthymia and major depressive disorder at the same time. The presence of both conditions at the same time is known as double depression.



The development of major depressive disorder may be related to certain medical conditions. Approximately 20% - 25% of people who have cancer, diabetes, stroke, and myocardial infarctions are likely to develop major depressive disorder.



The global major depressive disorder market is categorized based on various types of therapeutic drugs used to manage this medical condition. Based on type of therapeutic drug, the report covers selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, antidepressants, and antipsychotics. Major brands of selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors include Lexapro (Escitalopram), Viibryd (Vilazodone), Effexor (Venlafaxine), Cymbalta (Duloxetine), Pristiq (Desvenlafaxine), Fetzima (Levomilnacipran), and Savella (Milnacipran). Antidepressants, such as Noradrenaline, Specific Serotonergic Antidepressants, Norepinephrine-Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitors, Tricyclic Antidepressants, Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors, and Brintellix (Vortioxetine), are commonly used in the management of major depressive disorder. Major brands of antipsychotics include Abilify (Aripiprazole) and Seroquel XR (Quetiapine).



In terms of geography, North America dominates the global major depressive disorder market due to increased awareness about various depression conditions in the region. The U.S. represents the largest market for major depressive disorder in North America, followed by Canada. In Europe, Germany, France, the U.K., Italy, and Spain account for a major share of the major depressive disorder market. This market in Asia is expected to expand at a significant rate over the next five years. This is due to various companies setting up manufacturing facilities in the region. Moreover, increasing awareness about various depression episodes and rise in geriatric population are also driving the growth of the market in the region. India, China, and Japan are expected to be the fastest growing major depressive disorder markets in Asia.



In recent times, increased demand for therapeutic products for the treatment of this medical condition is a key driver for the global major depressive disorder market. Increased investments in R&D in the pharmaceutical sector and introduction of innovative drugs have also fueled the growth of this market. The ongoing development of drugs with properties, such as improved safety and high patient compliance, are also supporting the growth of the global major depressive disorder market. Therapies, such as biological therapy, meditation, and physiotherapy, have immense potential to spur the growth of this market.



However, stringent regulations imposed by various governments hamper the growth of global major depressive disorder market. Moreover, the patent expiries of some blockbuster drugs (drugs that have an annual sale of USD 1.0 million and above) and risk of complications and side-effects associated with antidepressants have hindered the growth of the market. Increasing mergers and acquisitions of drug manufacturing companies and rapid product launches are some of the major trends in the global major depressive disorder market.



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The major companies operating in this market are H. Lundbeck A/S, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., AstraZeneca Plc, Alkermes, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Naurex, Euthymics Bioscience, Inc., e-Therapeutics plc, Eli Lilly and Company, and Pfizer Inc.
Deerfield Beach, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/29/2016 -- Global and Taiwan Semiconductor Inspection Equipment Market is an in-depth report that offers a unique mix of specialist industry knowledge and the region-wise research expertise. The report delivers the market size and the trends for each sector. A detailed estimation of the market's regions like United States, EU, Japan and China as well as worldwide. This Research Report provides a Major Manufacturers Analysis of Semiconductor Inspection Equipment- with detail like Company Profile, Product Picture, Specifications, Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross, Revenue and Contact Information. The report estimates the current size of the Semiconductor Inspection Equipment market and all important segments within it.



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The report on Global and Taiwan Semiconductor Inspection Equipment industry begins with an overview of the market. The report details the historical data of the Global and Taiwan Semiconductor Inspection Equipment market along with the current scenario. Then the report covers the trends shaping the Global and Taiwan Semiconductor Inspection Equipment market. The drivers and restraints that will shape this industry during the forecast period have been evaluated in detail. Moving on, the report dwells on the market opportunities and their impact on the key players operating in the market. Moreover, the key threats the Global and Taiwan Semiconductor Inspection Equipment market will experience during the forecast period are discussed.



The next part of the report features an in-depth segmentation of the market. The report includes valuable information about the key segments in the Global and Taiwan Semiconductor Inspection Equipment market along with their sub-sectors. Revenue share and size along with insightful forecasts of these key segments and other prominent sub-segments are available in this report. The report explores the trends that will impact the growth of the emerging regional sectors in the Global and Taiwan Semiconductor Inspection Equipment market.



The recent findings along with the promise they hold for the future in the Global and Taiwan Semiconductor Inspection Equipment market have also been analyzed. The report features contributions from several key industry participants along with scientists that are leading figures in their respective fields.



Towards the end, the report scrutinizes the competitive landscape of the Global and Taiwan Semiconductor Inspection Equipment market. Most prominent players with their business overview are featured in this research study. The key players' market revenue, top strategies, innovations, collaborations, and other developments are mentioned in detail in the report. These insights about the top companies in the Global and Taiwan Semiconductor Inspection Equipment market will let the user know about the market opportunities they can tap on to, with the best of tactical decisions.



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New York City, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/28/2016 -- "Besides the availability of myriad flavors, rising adoption by local eateries are most likely to impact the global tahini market."



 Market Research Expert, Persistence Market Research



Growing popularity of authentic Middle Eastern food flavors is expected to escalate the demand for tahini-based products, such as hummus and tahini spread. The surging significance of social media marketing will play a pivotal role in the promotion of tahini and derived products. Emerging tahini applications in hummus, butter and spreads, halva, salads, bakery products, toppings, and traditional Middle Eastern recipes such as Baba Ghanoush will also influence the market favorably.



By product type, tahini paste and spreads will witness the highest demand



Paste and spreads segment will account for over 55% share in terms of revenues by 2025

Desserts and sweets segment, aggravated by growing popularity of halva, will maintain a market share of over 25% during the assessed period

Sustained consumption of tahini dips and sauces will fuel the sauces and dips sub-segment, capturing over 18% market value share

By distribution channel, major tahini sales will be directed through exports



Conventional retail will lose its market share over 2015-2025; from over 37% market share in 2015, this sub-segment will settle at around 34% in 2025

Modern trade is expected to witness decent growth, accounting for a revenue share of over 29% by 2025 end

Exports will, however, exhibit the fastest growth in terms of a distribution channel. With over 20% share of the revenues, this sub-segment is anticipated to reach US$ 465.9 Mn with a promising CAGR of 6.1%

Considering product size, the tahini market is projected to gain the highest traction in the 50-150 gm size sub-segment



With over 56% value share in 2025, the 50-150 gm size sub-segment will reportedly reach a consumption of around 243,189 tonnes

Above 150 gm size sub-segment is likely to witness an uptick over the forecast period, capturing a considerable 28% market value share in 2025

Below 50 gm product size will be the fastest growing sub-segment at 5.9% CAGR

Depending on the production process, industrial production process will remain dominant over conventional process



With a slight setback from 76% share in 2015 to around 73% share estimated by 2025 end, industrial production process will witness moderate growth with a CAGR to the tune of 5.3%

Conventional process will experience significant growth over the forecast period

According to Persistence Market Research's regional analysis, Western Asia will continue to be the largest market, whereas GCC will emerge lucrative by 2025 end



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West Asia, identified as the most lucrative market for tahini, will predictably cross US$ 608 Mn by 2025 end, accounting for maximum revenues in the global market

GCC countries will exhibit the fastest growth at 5.9% CAGR, primarily driven by Kuwait, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. GCC tahini market revenues will reach around US$ 202 Mn by 2025 end

North Africa, followed by the U.K., are projected to grow moderately at respective CAGRs of 5.7% and 5.4%



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Dipasa International S.A., Sunshine International Foods, Inc., Kevala International LLC, Joyva Corp, Premier Organics, Haitoglou Bros S.A., Halwani Bros. Co., Prince Tahina Ltd., El Rashidi El Mizan, Al-Wadi Al-Akhdar S.A.L, Carleys of Cornwell Ltd., Balsam Tahini, Ismail Termurcugil, and Alseedawi Sweets Factories Co. constitute some of the key players in the global market for tahini. While major export opportunities lie in Asia and North America, a majority of leading players are based in the Middle East and North America. Halwani Bros. Co. and Haitoglou Bros. are top Middle East companies, whereas Joyva Corp, Dipasa, and Kevala Int. are the key North American players. Alwadi Al Akhdar's new factory in Lebanon is due in 2017 and Sabra Dipping Co. will soon double its tahini hummus production capacity.



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To help address Africas R&D challenges, increased funding and citizen science are needed, writes Esther Ngumbi.

Climate change, HIV/AIDS, recurring droughts, and food insecurity are some of the most pressing issues the African continent has had to deal with in 2016. [1,2,3] These issues pose a significant threat to economic, social and environmental development in Africa and create health and economic challenges to the continent.

Yet, all of these challenges can benefit from research results spinning off from African universities and research institutions. But to get these results, the institutions must have the funds.



Low R&D funding for agriculture

Take the case of agriculture, which is the greatest contributor to Africas gross domestic product. Disappointingly, with the exception of South Africa, investments and budget allocations by African national governments to agricultural research and development (R&D) and extension stand at less than 10 per cent. [4]

Ethiopia, for example, allocated 0.19 per cent of its 45 per cent agricultural gross production to research. The same situation applies to R&D in general. African countries such as South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda invest less than one per cent of their GDP on R&D. [4]

To generate impact and create sustainable solutions, research should be more inclusive, especially to the end users, the citizens. Esther Ngumbi

The majority of these funds come from different sources, including national governments, donor contributions, loans from development banks, and initiatives by the private sector. [5]

This minimal allocation of funds to R&D begs the question: Can the current existing African research funding  both external and internal  be used to solve these challenges? If not, how can we leverage the current funding of African research and development to solve some of the most pressing problems that our societies are facing?



Funding solutions

First and foremost, to bridge the societal expectations and help solve the current needs, there must be more collaborations. Researchers at both public and private institutions and other research entities that are working on these challenges need to collaborate and work with on-the-ground partners such as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) because such entities frequently interact with the end users, the people affected by these challenges. Furthermore, NGOs are driven to get results.

For example, external donor agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)  invests in solving todays challenges. They sometimes administer their research funds through local NGOs. [6] Just recently, USAID announced US$127 million to help address the needs of those affected by drought and El Nino in Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. [6]

Governments can also do the same and encourage universities and other national research institutes to partner NGOs to deliver solutions to communities.

Another innovative way to leverage available funding is for African institutions to partner with philanthropic funding agencies. It is refreshing that a partnership involving institutions such as the African Academy of Sciences, the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has launched Grand Challenges Africa to address societal challenges. [7]

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, has invested over US$450 million since 2003, and is one of the largest contributors to R&D in Sub-Saharan Africa. Through the grand challenges model, an approach that creates innovations for addressing key global health and development problems, many of Africas pressing challenges have been solved. [8] The grand challenges model has also been used by USAID for initiatives such as powering agriculture, fighting Ebola and securing water for food. [9]

Moreover, through Grand Challenges Canada, innovations supported as of March 2016 in developing countries could save between 500,000 and 1.5 million lives and improve between 14 and 30 million lives by 2030. [10]

It is time for universities, research institutions, governments, private partners, NGOs and citizens to join forces to solve Africas challenges. Esther Ngumbi

A deeper look at innovative solutions to todays challenge shows that many of the initiatives have some external donor funding. A major setback with this kind of funding is that African countries do not have the chance to set their own research agendas. This can be counteracted by having African governments allocate budgets to fund some of the most pressing issues affecting their citizens.

Moreover, to generate impact and create sustainable solutions, research should be more inclusive, especially to the end users, the citizens. Citizens must feel that they are part of the process of research. They should play an active role in defining, implementing and evaluating research intended to improve their livelihoods.



Focusing on citizen science

One creative way of engaging citizens would be through citizen-science research projects. [11] African governments and donor agencies should fund such projects. Citizen science enlists society members who care about the issue and engages them in the process of inquiry and discovery of new knowledge. It also goes a long way in making participants feel important because they are engaged in learning how to create solutions and affect change for the future. Citizen science is a win-win experience both for the participants and scientists. Participants get to experience what it is like to obtain data, the backbone of science. Scientists on the other hand, get the science done while helping them draw meaningful conclusions from the very large datasets. At the same time, citizen science will ensure that members of the society know exactly what is happening.

There are numerous successful initiatives that have used citizen science. NASA, for example, is using citizen science to map global soil moisture. [12] Data gathered from the ground complements and validates data collected from space and allows scientists to gather information on soil moisture conditions, which is important for monitoring drought and many other applications related to agriculture. Citizens who participate are able to get feedback about the quality of their soils and are able to compare their soils to others.

Finally, African research institutions can take advantage of the widespread use of mobile phones to boost citizen science. For instance, new technologies and transformational research results could be shared with citizens through mobile phone technology.

Helping Africa to deal with todays challenges requires investment, innovation and collaboration. It is time for universities, research institutions, governments, private partners, NGOs and citizens join forces to solve Africas challenges.

Esther Ngumbi is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at Auburn University in Alabama, United States. She serves as a 2015 Clinton Global University (CGI U) Mentor for Agriculture and is a 2015 New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute. She can be contacted at [email protected]



This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk with the support of IDRC.
The character of Wolverine from Marvel Comics may be true to life. Scientists developed a highly stretchable, self-healing, transparent material that can be used to start up artificial muscles.

The new product is low cost because it is made with a soft, rubber-like material. It can stretch up to 50 times its original length. It can also heal by itself from a scissor cut in the space of 24 hours at a room temperature. The material can stretch two times its original length in just a span of 5 minutes after being cut, according to Science Alert.

Also, the material is an iconic conductor, of which it is capable of conducting electricity over the flow of ions. It is the first time that scientists connected an iconic conductor with the self-healing properties.

The study team from the University of California, Riverside and the Univerity of Colorado shared that it could be used in robotics, batteries, electronic devices and biosensors. A researcher from UC Riverside and also a fan of Wolverine, Chao Wang, said that, "Creating a material with all these properties has been a puzzle for years. We did that and now are just beginning to explore the applications."

Though the stretchable and transparent iconic conductors have been developed before, combining these with the self-healing properties has proven to be tricky. For the material to self-heal, the researchers usually need non-covalent bonds between the individual molecules, which cannot share electrons.

The challenge is that to pass electricity through these bonds, it would degrade them. It is a problem for the self-healing material to keep self-healing.

As follows, Chao Wang searched for a solution. He used an ion-dipole interaction to hold the molecules together. It enables to combine charged ions with polar molecules, wherein the one end of the molecules has a positive charge and the other end has a negative.

In a report by Science Daily, the experts used two layers of the new material that have a transparent membrane in between, for them to create the artificial muscle prototype. It can move in return to the electrical signals. The response is the same way how the human muscles move when the brain gives the signal.

However, researchers need more time to perfect the material. But, the unique combination of properties could make the future robots and electronic devices much more resilient.
Shanghai, China -- customs officials seized literally tons of pangolin scales being smuggled into the country. According to China's Xinhua news agency, around 3.1 tons in 101 bags were found, amounting to around 7,500 individuals.

The Smithsonian noted that the scales came from a group of eight unusual-looking armored mammal species from Asia and Africa and were hidden in a shipping container marked as timber from Nigeria to China. So far, three people have been arrested, one of which confessed to smuggling pangolins into the country since 2015. Customs officials noted that estimates put the scales at a street value of over $2 million.

These creatures, known as scaly anteaters, are hunted for their scales, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine for everything from cancer to asthma. However, as The Huffington Post noted, there have been no scientific basis to such claims -- the scales are said to be made from the same material as human fingernails, after all.

Pangolins, which are racoon-sized, artichoke-like animals with legs, are still considered the most heavily trafficked animal in the world. Besides being used for medicine, their meat is also considered a delicacy in China and Vietnam.

Authorities have busted several pangolin smuggling rings over the past few years. But it did not stop them from being poached. Over a million were said to have been trafficked over the past decade, and all eight species have now been listed as "vulnerable," "endangered" or "critically endangered," as over 10,000 are poached every year despite the protective measures set for the species.

In 2013, 6 tons of live pangolins were seized in Vietnam, as well as 1.2 tons of their scales. In June, another 4 tons of scales were seized in Hong Kong. The IUCN, which monitors endangered species. estimates the total of pangolin scales seized to represent up to 30,000 individual animals.

The pangolins are not the only animals to have become endangered due to traditional Chinese medicine. Tiger bones, turtles, shark fins, bear bile and rhino horns are also part of this trade.
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A group of 31 mayors on Thursday released an open letter asking President Obama to extend protections for undocumented immigrants, as he enters the final weeks of his presidency.

Writing under the umbrella of the nationwide organization Cities for Action, the mayors, including NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, asked the Obama Administration to fast-track applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which offers a temporary shield from deportation to certain undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. They also recommended expediting applications for Temporary Protected Status, a special designation for immigrants from countries deemed unsafe to return to, and asked Obama to consider expanded the designation to cover more countries.

The mayors further called upon Obama to institute strict privacy measures for participants in DACA, many of whom now fear that information they provided to federal immigration authorities when they registered may be used by the coming Trump Administration to identify and deport them.

Obama has been frequently criticized by immigrants' rights groups for the scale of deportations that have been carried out on his watch. He's presided over the deportation of more than 2.5 million undocumented immigrants, the most of any president.

But with the most openly anti-immigrant presidential candidate in recent memory poised to take office, the mayors struck a conciliatory tone, thanking Obama for policies like DACA, as well as the decision last week to dismantle the Bush-era National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, which required men from Muslim-majority countries to register with immigration authorities.

"As mayors and county executives in the Cities for Action coalition, we write to thank you for your leadership on behalf of immigrant families and urge you to take action to ensure continued support for vulnerable immigrants in our communities before you leave office," the signatories wrote.

Since Donald Trump's election, Mayor de Blasio has promised to shield New York's large undocumented populationestimated at 500,000from any attempts by the Trump administration to deport New Yorkers en masse. New York already has policies on the books that prohibit city agencies from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, but de Blasio has said he will take further steps if necessary to protect the city's undocumented. He is currently embroiled in a lawsuit filed by several Republican lawmakers over plans to scrub vital identifying information about undocumented immigrants from databases for the city's municipal ID program, ID NYC.

"Our immigrant residents help make New York City stronger economically, culturally, and socially. We have benefited from President Obama's actions to protect vulnerable immigrants during his time in office," de Blasio said in a press release accompanying the Cities for Action open letter. "In the wake of the election, many of our residents are uncertain about the future. That's why I am standing with my fellow mayors to thank the President for his leadership and call on him to take additional, lawful steps to help immigrants before leaving office."

In addition to de Blasio, mayors of many of the nation's largest cities signed the letter, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuelwho delivered a letter in support of DACA to Trump earlier this monthand L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, as well as the mayors of Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, and Denver.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, issued a statement in support of the letter's message. "Donald Trump poses an unprecedented threat to civil rights, civil liberties, and democratic values," she wrote. "Resistance is vital, and mayors have an important role to playcombating hate, protecting public dissent, supporting sanctuary cities, protecting privacy, ending discriminatory police practices, and more. Now is the time for elected officials to show backbone."
According to The Palm Beach Post, Sheehan, along with entrepreneur Oneil Khosa, is among the owners of Paradise Cruise Line, a new venture formed to operate Grand Celebration's Bahamas jaunts.

The Post reports port commissioners have approved an operating agreement with the entity, which leases Grand Celebration.

Sheehan joined Scientific Games Corp. as ceo and president in August. He also serves on the board of the company, a developer of technology-based products and services for the worldwide gaming, lottery and interactive markets. Before, Sheehan was with Norwegian for seven years.

Khosa, who works as a shipping finance adviser and is managing partner of the new venture, told the Post Paradise Cruise Line plans to increase capacity. Grand Celebration sails year-round to the Bahamas from Palm Beach every other day, so it's possible a second ship could be added to the route.

Grand Celebration's usual destination is Freeport, but since Hurricane Matthew hit Grand Bahama Island in October, the ship has called at Bimini. Service to Freeport is scheduled to resume in early January.

Grand Celebration has operated the Bahamas service since February 2015. The ship is the former Costa Celebration, which previously sailed as Grand Celebration for Iberocruceros. It was built in 1987 as Celebration for Carnival Cruise Line.

In 2009, Khosa was ceo of Indian Ocean venture Blue Ocean Cruises/Louis Cruises India. He earlier worked as a vp at DVB Bank for five years where he was involved in managing a private equity fund that invested in cruise and ferry assets. Before that, he served as a first officer with Royal Caribbean.
Ted Blamey, principal of CHART Management Consultants was tapped by DOT and USAID to lead the team in undertaking an extensive field work, interviews, analysis, and direction-setting in 2015 to finalize the cruise strategy.

Joining him were CHARTs Associates, Capt. Luigi Nappa, Rod Davies and Consultant Miles Griffiths.

A series of workshops were conducted this month in Manila by CHART for the many stakeholders under the auspices of Philippine Department of Tourism. Two of the days were foused on Cruise Port Manila and the two primary transit ports, Boracay and Puerto Princesa, assisted by Mark Ittel, vp of Miami-based Bermello Ajamil.

In 2016, the Philippines attracted 72 cruise calls. With its more than 7,000 islands it provides many excellent opportunities for cruise tourism. The Philippines offers rich diversity  from ancient Spanish heritage, culture and history through bustling metropolitan centers to pristine beaches and stunning scenery.

'We also boast of world-class shopping, dining, gaming, and perhaps the warmest welcomes on the planet,' said Undersecretary Benito C. Bengzon, Jr. who heads the Cruise Tourism Development Committee for the Philippines.

Another strength is the predominance of Philippine nationals serving on the worlds cruise fleet, bringing great credit to their homeland, he added.

'As a key element of our strategy, we are determined to build new dedicated cruise facilities, most especially in Manila. A superior cruise port and terminal in the capital, with its extensive airlift and ground facilities, will create a compelling reason for large ships to spend time in the Philippines. Once here, they can achieve outstanding port density with efficient cruising speeds,' said Undersecretary Bengzon.

The Cruise Strategy also identified developments in the Turquoise Triangle linking the popular tourist destinations of Manila, Boracay, and Puerto Princesa in Palawan. The potential for new cruise destinations in the north of Luzon, where ships departing East Asian hubs can arrive after one day at sea, has likewise been pinpointed in the plan.

'Developing the Philippines will be great for the Asian cruise industry' said Blamey. 'As the mainstream Asian source markets begin to develop, slightly longer cruise durations will become popular. This is especially because they will allow much more diverse itineraries, offer distinctively different destinations and optimize winter deployment. The DOT is to be congratulated for their foresight in commissioning and moving forward with the strategy. It is perfect timing,' he added.

Tourism Secretary Wanda Tulfo-Teo, who is championing the new direction within the Philippine government commented: 'We are confident that this comprehensive strategy and our plans will set a course for the Philippines to become a much more prominent cruise destination in the future.'

The Philippines expects not only to dramatically increase the number of transit calls, but also position itself as an alternative homeport between Singapore and China/Hong Kong, Secretary Teo enthused.
The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) has been steering Singapore to adopt the use of MFM since 2014, as the regulator has been actively engaging the industry to prepare for the operational transformation and working with technical committees to draw up new bunkering standards.

The MFM is in fact not a new technology as they are already widely used in landbased power plants, but they are new to the marine industry, which up to today continues to rely on manual fuel measurements such as tank dipping and sounding.

The fuel quantity variance of using MFM is estimated at a maximum of 0.5%, lower than the traditional sounding tape method of up to 0.7%.

The benefits of using MFM in bunkering include enhanced transparency to reduce malpractices and disputes, greater efficiency with time savings and higher productivity for quicker bunker tanker turnaround without the need to expand port capacity.

The use of the meters has been proven to reduce bunkering time by about 2-3 hours per vessel and increase bunker tanker turnarounds to 10-12 times a month from the present eight on average.

Bunker deliveries conducted using the meters, however, will apply only for high-viscosity grade bunker fuel deliveries, excluding the low-viscosity marine gas oil (MGO). The MPA has said that it will follow up on a compulsory implementation of MFM for MGO sometime in early 2017, as tests are already underway and results so far have been encouraging.

There will be an estimated 132 fuel oil bunker tankers fitted with MFM to carry out bunker deliveries, allowing Singapore to continue meeting demand volumes every month.

Singapore is the runaway leader in bunker fuel sales with 45.2m tonnes sold in 2015, and volumes sold in January-November 2016 have reached 44.71m tonnes, up 838% year-on-year, according to MPA statistics.

The cost of installing MFM on bunker tankers can range from a low of $30,000 to a high of $200,000, depending on the condition of the vessel. The MPA has offered assistance to the industry with a lump sum incentive of SGD80,000 ($55,200) for each existing bunker tanker delivering fuel within port waters.

With the new regulation in place and a ready fleet of Singapore-flagged MFM-fitted bunker tankers, ships buying bunker fuels in Singapore from 2017 would have to agree to the meter readings of the MFM installed on the bunker tankers.

A technical reference standard for MFM, termed the TR48:2015, was launched in February this year. The standard covers a set of core requirements for metering system qualification, installation, testing procedures and documentation for bunker custody transfer using MFM.

The technical reference has been developed under the auspices of the Technical Committee (TC) for Bunkering of the Chemical Standards Committee (CSC). Back in March 2009, the TC for Bunkering agreed to undertake the MFM project and to form a Working Group to develop the standard.

While the MFM process of bunker custody transfer from bunker tankers to receiving vessels is ready for commercial practice, one grey area remains and that is the fuel custody transfer from onshore oil terminals onto the receiving bunker tankers. Terminal operators, like shipowners, are not bounded by the MFM regulation and bunker suppliers have questioned whether they will accept the readings on the bunker tankers MFM, in the event of a major quantity difference.

A source familiar with the matter told Seatrade Maritime News that the TC and the relevant regulators are aware of this missing piece of jigsaw in the entire MFM bunkering chain, but it is not a stumbling block as all custody transfer meters used in terminals follow requirements set by national standards and conformance body SPRING Singapore, which has similar requirements for MFM.
The 1997-built bulker Eleni P is the oldest dry bulk vessel in the companys fleet and is expected to be delivered to the scrapyard in the beginning of January 2017.

The purchase of the 1998-built feeder container vessel RT Dagr was made via funds raised from the issuing of 900,000 shares of the companys common stock.

Aristides Pittas, chairman and ceo of Euroseas, commented: This transaction is an overall positive development for Euroseas and showcases our ability to take advantage of market opportunities to renew our fleet.

For a nominal incremental investment, the Eleni P will be replaced by a larger and younger vessel, the Capetan Tassos, a 75,100-dwt 2000-built dry bulk vessel, whose acquisition we announced on 23 November 2016. We will continue positioning our fleet for a potential market recovery and exploiting investment opportunities in the present market environment.

After the sale of Eleni P, the delivery of RT Dagr, and the previously announced acquisitions of Alexandros P and Capetan Tassos, to be delivered to Euroseas in January 2017, the company's fleet will consist of 14 vessels, including one kamsarmax, three panamax, one ultramax and one handymax bulker, and eight feeder containerships.
PEACEMAKING, PEACEKEEPING AND PEACEBUILDING

Conflict Prevention

Expected Council Action

In January, the Council will hold a ministerial-level open debate on conflict prevention and sustaining peace. Margot Wallstrom, Swedens Minister of Foreign Affairs, is expected to preside. Newly appointed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will be the sole briefer. At press time, it did not appear that there would be a Council product; however, it is anticipated that Sweden will produce a summary of the debate.

Key Recent Developments

On 29 June 2015, the Advisory Group of Experts (AGE) submitted its report on the UNs peacebuilding architecture. The AGE report was a product of the review process mandated by the Security Council and the General Assembly for the tenth anniversaries of the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) and the Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO).

The AGE reports overarching thesis was that peacebuilding is an activity that happens not only in post-conflict situations but also as a process before, during and after conflict. Peacebuilding should therefore be seen as a responsibility of the entire UN system, and greater emphasis should be placed on conflict prevention. The AGE suggested that a more appropriate term to reflect this broader understanding of peacebuilding could be sustaining peace.

The report triggered an intergovernmental review process, led by Angola on behalf of the Council and Australia on behalf of the General Assembly, to consider the findings of the AGE. That culminated in the concurrent adoption by the General Assembly and the Security Council of identical resolutions on the peacebuilding architecture on 27 April 2016. According to the resolutions, sustaining peace includes activities aimed at preventing the outbreak, escalation, continuation and recurrence of conflict  and should flow through all three pillars of the UNs engagement [peace and security, human rights and sustainable development] at all stages of conflict.

New Secretary-General Antonio Guterress views on conflict prevention are in keeping with the sustaining-peace agenda. In his April 2016 vision statement, he called for the development of a comprehensive, modern and effective operational peace architecture, encompassing prevention, conflict resolution, peacekeeping, peacebuilding and long-term developmentthe peace continuum. Emphasising that prevention is a priority for the UN, he said during his 12 December 2016 swearing-in ceremony that prevention must be integrated into the three pillars of the UNs work.

The Advisory Groups review of the peacebuilding architecture was one of three major reviews of the UNs peace and security work produced in 2015; the others were the report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) and the Global Study on Women, Peace and Security. Like the Advisory Groups report, the HIPPO report and the Global Study underscored the need for improved conflict prevention. Yet implementation of the recommendations of these reports with regard to conflict prevention has been limited at best.

Guterres takes office at a time when the Security Council and the broader UN community are failing to effectively discharge their prevention mandate under the UN Charter. The number of civilian casualties from warfare has been on the rise in recent years. Also, in large part because of the proliferation of conflicts, there are over 60 million displaced worldwide, the highest number in the post-World War II era.

Sweden has circulated a concept paper in preparation for the debate. The concept note describes the conflict prevention and sustaining peace debate as an opportunity for the new Secretary-General to outline his vision for a renewed focus on conflict prevention. It says that the debate will offer member states the chance to discuss how the Council can support the sustaining-peace agenda. The concept note further says that the discussion will explore how the Security Council and the Secretary General can work together more productively on conflict prevention.

As a springboard for the discussion, Sweden has proposed a series of questions for the consideration of member states. Among the issues are how the Council can make better use of its tools to prevent conflict and sustain peace, how the relationship between the Council and the Secretary-General on conflict prevention can be made more effective and how the Council and the broader UN membership can provide the necessary political leadership to advance the sustaining-peace agenda.

The Councils last open debate on conflict prevention occurred on 17 November 2015, focusing on security, development and the root causes of conflict. A ministerial-level debate at which UK Secretary of State for International Development Justine Greening presided, it featured briefings by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon; Ambassador Olof Skoog (Sweden) in his capacity as Chair of the PBC; and Ouided Bouchamaoui, President of the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts and a member of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, a collection of four civil society organisations awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for their decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia after the 2011 revolution. Ban called for a greater emphasis on conflict prevention, noting that this would require an enhanced focus on human rights, increased coherence in UN system and sufficient financial support for the UNs good offices work, country teams, and the Peacebuilding Fund. Skoog underscored that building peace is a primarily political process that requires sustained and long-term engagement. Bouchamaoui noted that Tunisia had been able to avoid conflict through dialogue and compromise and that it is important for the Tunisia model to succeed to demonstrate that Islam and democracy are indeed compatible.

Key Issues

The primary issue is how the Council can use the debate as a springboard to implement the sustaining-peace agenda into its country-specific work in concrete and effective ways. Several related matters for the Council include:

generating the political will to engage meaningfully in situations not yet on its agenda;

strengthening coherence and coordination in prevention among the Council, the broader UN system, regional and subregional organisations, member states and civil society;

enhancing the flow and quality of information between the Council and other actors engaged in prevention; and

determining what combination of tools and actors is most effective in different types of scenarios that constitute a risk to peace and security.

Options

One option is for the Council president to produce a summary of the meeting that is circulated to the wider membership.

The Council might also consider adopting a presidential statement that:

welcomes the new Secretary-Generals commitment to conflict prevention and encourages cooperation between the Council and the Secretariat on this issue;

highlights that conflict prevention should integrate political, human rights and development approaches;

underscores the importance of developing synergies among the Council, the Secretariat and other UN entities to implement the sustaining peace agenda; and

emphasises the need to continue to integrate human rights, including through the Human Rights Up Front initiative, into all aspects of the UNs work.

Council Dynamics

All Council members have expressed their support for conflict prevention. However, the Councils recent track record on preventionevident from recent failures in the cases of Syria, Mali, South Sudan and Yemen, among othersdoes not match the thematic support. The indecisiveness of the Council in prevention stems from the resistance of member states to early international engagement and to political divisions, especially among the P5, which tend to block action by the Council in cases where national interests could be at stake.

There have also been differences among members on what situations belong on the Councils agenda and what measures might be appropriate. Some members, including Russia, seem to be wary of the Councils taking on issues that they perceive as beyond the Councils mandate to maintain international peace and security. For example, at the Councils 17 November 2015 debate on conflict prevention, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said, Questions of international law, human rights and developmentshould fall to the General Assembly. Other members, including the P3, have a more expansive view of what constitutes a threat to international peace and security; thus, they are generally more amenable to discussing the connections among human rights, development and peace and security in the context of the Security Council.

UN DOCUMENTS ON CONFLICT PREVENTION

This was a concurrent resolution with the General Assembly on the review of the UN peacebuilding architecture. This was report of the Secretary-General on conflict prevention. This was the meeting at which resolution 2282 was adopted. This was a ministerial level open debate on Security, development and the root causes of conflict. This was the report of the Advisory Group of Experts on the Peacebuilding Architecture.
EUROPE

Cyprus

Expected Council Action

In January, the Council is expected to renew the mandate of the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) for another six months ahead of its 31 January expiry. Elizabeth Spehar, Special Representative and head of mission, is likely to brief on the latest UNFICYP report, which is due by 8 January 2017. In addition, the Special Adviser of the Secretary-General, Espen Barth Eide, is expected to brief on the developments in the negotiations between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

Key Recent Developments

During the current round of unification talks, which officially started on 15 May 2015, the Cypriot leaders managed to maintain an overall positive momentum while making noteworthy progress on some of the core issues. Notwithstanding minor setbacks, the Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci have continued to meet regularly during the past 18 months.

When the Council last met on Cyprus in July 2016, it unanimously adopted resolution 2300, which renewed the mandate of the UN mission. In addition to welcoming the progress in the unification talks, the resolution requested the Secretary-General to intensify transition planning in relation to a settlement, guided by developments in negotiations. In a media stakeout following the July consultations with the Council members, Eide explained that the need for contingency planning did not suggest that the plan itself would be implemented, but rather that it would be due diligence to have a plan. Eide also noted that it was important for Cypriot leaders to use the current window of opportunity (referring to an increased momentum in the negotiating process) to negotiate the settlement because the opportunity would not last forever.

Under the auspices of Special Adviser Eide, the Cypriot leaders held a series of meetings in September and October. According to media reports, the leaders have made progress on the issues of governance and power-sharing. However, there seemed to be no movement on the more divisive issues of territorial adjustments and security guarantees. On 7 November, outgoing Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon accompanied Anastasiades and Akinci at the new round of talks in Mont Pelerin, Switzerland. On the first day of the talks, Ban told the media that the Cypriot leaders had reached a critical point in negotiations and that both leaders should make use of the positive momentum surrounding the negotiations. Furthermore, he called on guarantor powers Greece, Turkey and the UK, as well as the wider international community, to support the leaders in overcoming the remaining divisions. After five days of negotiations, the leaders concluded the current round of talks, citing significant progress. They also agreed to continue the negotiations later in November.

On 20 November, the Cypriot leaders reconvened for a second round of UN-facilitated talks in Mont Pelerin. The negotiations collapsed after two days when the Cypriot leaders failed to reach an agreement on territorial adjustments and border demarcation between the two future constituent states in a unified Cyprus. In addition, the leaders reportedly remained divided on the issue of security guarantees. The Greek Cypriot side seems to be in favour of ending the system of security guarantees and withdrawal of all foreign troops from Cyprus. The Turkish Cypriot side apparently holds the view that the system of guarantees should be maintained, at least for a certain period after unification. After the talks in Mont Pelerin broke down on 21 November, thousands of Greek and Turkish Cypriots held rallies in the buffer zone in the divided city of Nicosia in support of the unification talks.

After attending a dinner hosted by Eide on 1 December, the Cypriot leaders agreed to resume the negotiations with the aim of achieving conclusions on the outstanding issues. The leaders agreed to meet in Geneva from 9 to 11 January 2017 to exchange their proposals on territorial adjustments while a summit-level meeting involving guarantor powers Greece, Turkey and the UK will take place on 12 January, also in Geneva when the issue of security guarantees will be discussed.

On 2 December, Eide travelled to Greece, where he met with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias. Three days later, Eide met with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara. The purpose of both trips was to discuss the issues related to the January conference involving guarantor powers.

Key Issues

In addition to the UNFICYP mandate renewal, a key issue for the Council will be how to assist in maintaining a positive atmosphere and facilitate progress in the unification talks between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders.

Given that the leaders renewed their commitment to continue negotiations and the possibility that they could reach a final agreement at the January meeting in Geneva, an issue for the Council will be to consider reconfiguring the mandate of the UN mission in case the agreement is indeed reached.

Options

The most likely option is for the Council to renew UNFICYPs mandate for an additional six months in its current configuration.

Considering that UNFICYPs presence in Cyprus has lasted more than 50 years, an option for the Council would be to recognise the current positive atmosphere around the unification talks while adding a sense of urgency to the issue by noting that the ongoing process cannot be open-ended.

Should the current negotiations result in a major breakthrough, the Council could issue a statement welcoming the positive development. Furthermore, the Council could explore ways to adjust the mandate of the UN mission to better facilitate the implementation of the possible agreement.

Council Dynamics

Cyprus has remained an issue of relatively low intensity on the Councils agenda, followed closely only by some Council membersmainly France, Russia and the UK. Over the course of the past several years the US seems to have become increasingly more engaged in finding a solution to the Cyprus question as the island continues to gain strategic importance because of its potential hydrocarbon resources and its strategic location vis a vis the ongoing fight against terrorism in the Middle East.

Although all Council members support the ongoing negotiations, divergences exist between some members regarding the conditions and timeframe related to the unification talks. The UK and a number of other Council members seem to share frustration over the longevity of the process. In this context, these members seem to be of the view that it would be beneficial to stimulate the negotiations by putting pressure on both sides to stress that this process cannot be open-ended. On the other hand, Russia has strongly opposed any attempt to speed up the negotiations or pressure both sides to reach a solution because of its view that the negotiations must be Cypriot-led and Cypriot-owned for the results to be effective.

The Council dynamics in 2017 should not change dramatically as a result of the rotation of five non-permanent members. Given the current positive political environment in Cyprus, it seems likely that discussions of the UNFICYP mandate renewal will not be contentious and that the Council will support the ongoing negotiation process on the island. However, should the unification talks result in a final agreement, new dynamics will likely emerge in the Council in relation to different ways of modifying the nature of the UN presence in Cyprus.

UN Documents

This was a resolution extending UNFICYPs mandate for six months. This was a vote on resolution 2300. This was a press statement welcoming the resumption of the settlement talks.
AFRICA

Sudan (Darfur)

Expected Council Action

In January, the Council will receive a briefing, and hold consultations, on the Secretary-Generals report on UN/AU Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), whose mandate expires on 30 June 2017. Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous is expected to brief. While unconfirmed at press time, it is possible that an AU representative may brief as well. No outcome is expected.

Also in January, Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko (Ukraine), the new chair of the 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee, will provide the quarterly briefing on the Committees work, which is expected to focus on the final report of the Panel of Experts.

Key Recent Developments

The political process in Darfur continues to falter. In late November, representatives of the government and two Darfur rebel groupsthe Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army-Minni Minnawi (SLA-MM)convened in Addis Ababa for peace talks. However, the continued reluctance of the rebels to provide information on the location of their forces has stalled the negotiations.

In spite of the failed talks, there has been progress in alleviating the fighting between the government and rebel forces. On 10 October 2016, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir declared a two month unilateral cessation of hostilities against rebels in the country. Shortly thereafter, on 31 October 2016, three Sudanese rebel groupsthe JEM, the SLA-MM and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N)announced a six-month unilateral cessation of hostilities. The one major rebel group that did not commit to the cessation of hostilitiesand that has also failed to participate in recent negotiations with the governmentis the Sudan Liberation Army-Abdul Wahid (SLA-AW).

While fighting between the government and rebel groups has subsided in Darfur, inter-communal violence, criminal activity and high-levels of displacement are key features of the difficult security and humanitarian environment. Between January and November 2016, OCHA has reported that over 97,000 people were newly displaced, although unverified reports suggest that tens of thousands of additional people may have been displaced as well.

On 9 October 2016, participants in Sudans National Dialogue Conferenceincluding the government of Sudan and some armed and political opposition groupsendorsed a national document providing broad recommendations on the structure of government (for example, it calls for additional seats in the parliament). Key rebel groups and opposition parties have boycotted the national dialogue process, dubious of the governments commitment to genuine reform.

The Council received a briefing, followed by consultations, on UNAMID on 4 October 2016 from Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous. Ladsous said that heavy fighting had been reported since 17 September in the Jebel Marra region between government and the SLA-AW forces, but that the mission had been unable to verify the reports because of access restrictions imposed on UNAMID by the government. Ladsous urged Sudan to cooperate with any OPCW investigation regarding claims made in a 29 September 2016 Amnesty International report that it had used chemical weapons in the Jebel Marra region of Darfur in 2016. However, the government has denied the claims, and on 22 October, in his first public response to the report, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir called the claims empty lies in a speech given to members of the ruling National Congress Party.

On 27 September 2016, Ambassador Rafael Ramirez Carreno of Venezuela, then chair of the Sudan Sanctions committee, provided the quarterly briefing to Council members on the Committees work. He reported that a new Panel of Experts had been appointed in September and that the final report of the 2015 Panel of Experts had been published. Both the appointment of the Panel and the publication of last years final report had been held up for several months by Russia. Ramirez also conveyed the contents of the 8 July briefing to the Sanctions Committee by Zainab Bangura, the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, who expressed concern at the high rate of sexual violence in Darfur.

The Sudan Sanctions Committee met with the newly appointed Panel of Experts on 28 October. During the meeting, the Panel presented its programme of work and underscored its commitment to provide the Committee with impartial and balanced reporting.

Key Issues

The underlying issues for the Council are the continuing instability of the security and humanitarian environment in Darfur and the lack of progress on the political front.

Another serious issue is the continuation of impediments on UNAMIDs operations. In recent months, there have been delays in customs clearances for the shipment of military and police equipment to the mission and denials of visas for civilian staff, particularly those in the Human Rights section. Furthermore, UNAMID continues to experience restrictions to its freedom of movement.

Options

One option is to invite Thabo Mbeki, chair of the AU High-Level Implementation Panel, to address the Council on his efforts to reinvigorate the negotiations between the government and the rebel groups. Mbeki was in Khartoum on 20 December 2016 where he met with President Omar al-Bashir about the political process and could share his views on next steps in the mediation.

A demarche by the Council president to the Sudanese permanent representative regarding the importance of removing impediments on the shipment of equipment to UNAMID could be a useful option.

Another option would be for the Council to adopt a resolution or presidential statement that:

encourages negotiations between the government and the opposition forces and calls on SLA-AW to join the talks; and

urges the government to eliminate restrictions on the shipment of equipment to the mission.

Council Dynamics

Views of Council members on the situation in Darfur vary widely. Some states, including France, the UK and the US, tend to be critical of the government of Sudan for contributing to the instability in Darfur, referring to human rights violations committed by government forces, the impunity for these violations and the governments lack of cooperation with UNAMID. These states have emphasised the difficult security and humanitarian environment in Darfur. Given this view, the US argued during its explanation of vote on resolution 2296 on 29 June 2016, which renewed the UNAMID mandate, that any calls for the mission to leave the Sudan are woefully premature and would have to be linked to the achievement of specific benchmarks related to an inclusive peace process and the protection of civilians, among other factors.

Other Council members, including China, Egypt and Russia, stress the importance of Sudans sovereignty and maintain that the government is making a good-faith effort to bring peace to Darfur. These member states have argued that a clear exit strategy for the mission should be developed sooner rather than later.

Like Egypt, incoming member Ethiopia is a key regional player, with peacekeepers in Darfur, that will most likely take keen interest in this issue on the Council.

The UK is the penholder on Darfur, while Ukraine chairs the 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee.

UN Documents on Darfur

The was a resolution that renewed UNAMIDs mandate for one year. This was a resolution renewing the mandate of the Panel of Experts until 12 March 2017. This was a briefing on UNAMID.
AFRICA

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Expected Council Action

In January, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous is likely to brief the Council on developments in the country and the latest report of the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO).

Maman Sambo Sidikou, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of MONUSCO, and Said Djinnit, the Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region, may also brief the Council.

The Council will closely follow political and security developments in the DRC and may convene additional meetings as necessary.

The mandate of MONUSCO expires on 31 March 2017.

Key Recent Developments

On the political front, the final day of President Joseph Kabilas second andaccording to the Constitutionfinal term was 19 December 2016, yet he did not leave office. At press time, the National Episcopal Conference of Congo (CENCO), was mediating between the government and representatives of the opposition.in an effort to come up with a political solution and an electoral calendar that would be acceptable to all actors and prevent destabilisation of the country.

On 18 October, participants in the national dialogue on elections signed an agreement on a new electoral calendar. According to the proposed agreement, provincial, parliamentary and presidential elections would be held in April 2018, and local elections would be held simultaneously or within half a year from the other elections. Kabila would remain in office until the installation of a newly elected president, and a prime minster from the opposition was appointed in the interim. The possibility of Kabilas running in the elections is not addressed in the agreement.

The dialogue between the government and opposition groups was boycotted by several of the main opposition groups, which in June 2016 formed a coalition called Rassemblement. It has vowed to organise popular protests on the 19th of every month to pressure Kabila to step down. The nationwide demonstrations on 19 September turned violent, resulting in the deaths of several dozen protesters and some police. On 19 October, a general strike took place in Kinshasa. Many of the capitals 10 million residents adhered to the strike, and streets were largely empty, with little traffic.

With large numbers of police and military deployed in the cities, Kinshasa was mainly empty as people stayed in their homes on 19 December 2016. However in a press release on 23 December, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that at least 40 people were killed during protests since 19 December, 107 have been injured and that 460 opposition activists have been arrested throughout the country. Rassemblement leader Etienne Tshisekedi urged people on 20 December to resist the illegitimate regime by peaceful means.

Angola and France co-led a Council visiting mission to the DRC and Angola from 11 to 14 November 2016, focusing on the political crisis. On 12 November, the Council members met in Kinshasa with Kabila and several of his cabinet ministers, leaders of Rassemblement and members from the opposition parties that participated in the dialogue, among others. In all the meetings, Council members stressed the need to consider the national dialogue as a first step towards an agreement that would be inclusive and lead to a fully democratic electoral process. An overarching concern was seeking ways to avoid violent reactions likely to be prompted by the 19 December expiry of Kabilas second term by establishing a broadly accepted electoral calendar and a commitment that Kabila would not seek a third term. Council members attempted to mediate between the various actors to find a solution to the impasse but without conclusive results.

On 13 November, Council members visited Beni in eastern DRC, where they were briefed by the MONUSCO force commander and its civilian leadership, local politicians and civil society representatives.

In Luanda, Angola, on 14 November, Council members were scheduled to discuss the situation in the DRC with Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos in his capacity as Chair of the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region and with the President of the National Assembly. Instead, however, Council members met with Angolas vice president and the vice president of the National Assembly, as both the President and the President of the National Assembly were not in Luanda.

The co-leads of the visiting mission, Ambassadors Francois Delattre (France) and Ismael Abraao Gaspar Martins (Angola), briefed the Council on 23 November.

On 5 December, Sidikou and Assistant Secretary-General Taye-Brook Zerihoun briefed the Council, followed by consultations. At the beginning of the meeting, the Council adopted a presidential statement expressing its concern about the DRCs risk of becoming destabilised and welcoming CENCOs mediation efforts. The Council called on all political stakeholders to continue to work towards a swift political solution before 19 December 2016 that would pave the way for peaceful, credible, inclusive and timely elections as soon as possible in the DRC. Furthermore, the statement welcomed commitments to respect and preserve the constitution.

Sanctions-Related Developments

The 1533 DRC Sanctions Committee met with Special Representative for Sexual Violence in Conflict Zainab Bangura on 9 November 2016. The coordinator of the Group of Experts assisting the Committee, Michael Sharp, briefed the Committee on 14 December 2016 on the Groups midterm report. The report canvasses the activities of several armed groups in the eastincluding violations of international humanitarian lawthat gravely affect civilians. It reports on the illicit extraction of natural resources, including by elements of the Congolese military. At the meeting, the coordinator presented the Committee with names for designation on the sanctions list for exploitation of natural resources and child recruitment. The Committee adopted all of the reports recommendations except for one about the destruction of old stockpiles of munitions, as one Council member was of the position that this was outside the scope of the Groups mandate. On 12 November 2016, the US imposed sanctions on DRC Deputy Prime Minister Evariste Boshab and the head of the national intelligence agency, Kalev Mutondo; on 13 November the EU imposed sanctions on seven individuals for their role in the violent clashes of 19-20 September.

Human Rights-Related Developments

On 1 December 2016, the special rapporteur on freedom of expression David Kaye said in a statement that the government was silencing critics in clear violation of international human rights law, including jamming radio broadcasts and arresting journalists, and targeting the independent media at a time of high political tension. The statement highlighted examples, including a decree issued by the Minister of Information and Media on 12 November that prohibits the international media from operating in the DRC unless they sign an agreement with a local media outlet or establish such an outlet subject to Congolese regulations. It also noted that since the beginning of November, five journalists had been arrested.

Key Issues

A key issue for the Council is ensuring that the political situation does not destabilise the country and the region and widespread violence does not ensue.

Assisting the DRC government and opposition in reaching a political solution to the electoral crisis is a related main issue.

The continued violence by rebel groups in the east remains a serious threat to peace and security. The violence in the east may worsen if the political crisis does not abate.

Options

The Council could request regular updates from the Secretariat as the situation unfolds. Furthermore, as needed, it could adopt statements:

calling on all actors for calm and the cessation of violence;

calling on the government to take confidence building steps such as releasing political prisoners and restoring freedom of expression;

strongly encouraging stakeholders to engage in good faith efforts to find a solution to the political crisis; and

expressing its support for the CENCO efforts.

Through the Sanctions Committee, the Council may impose sanctions on actors, both in the government and the opposition, who destabilise the DRC by contributing to or inciting violence.

Council Dynamics

Council members share concerns over the potential destabilisation of the DRC. During the visiting mission, Council members were able to present a united front and attempted to apply pressure on both the government and the opposition to compromise and find middle ground to end the political impasse. In particular, a commitment from Kabila to step down at the end of the election period was thought by all Council members to be politically desirable.

However, after returning to New York without a commitment to that effect, the Council is again split in their views. In the absence of widespread violence, some Council members view the political crisis mainly as an internal constitutional matter that should be dealt with through local institutions and dialogue among political actors. Other Council members are of the view that addressing actions that seem to have been taken to override the constitutional order and human rights abuses related to the political process are integral to solving the crisis.

France is the penholder on the DRC and Egypt chairs the Sanctions Committee.

UN Documents on the DRC

This resolution renewed the DRC sanctions regime and the mandate of the Group of Experts. This was a resolution renewing the mandate of MONUSCO for a year. This called on all political stakeholders in the DRC to continue to work towards peaceful, credible, inclusive and timely elections. This was a briefing by Special Representative Maman Sidikou and Assistant Secretary-General Taye-Brook Zerihoun, during which presidential statement S/PRST2016/18 was adopted. This was a briefing by the co-leads of the visiting mission to the DRC. This was a briefing by the Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region, Said Djinnit, followed by consultations, on the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework and other developments in the region. This was a letter with the terms of reference for the visiting mission to the DRC. The 1533 DRC Sanctions Committee met with Special Representative for Sexual Violence in Conflict Zainab Bangura.

Other Relevant Facts

Special Representative of the Secretary-General

Maman Sambo Sidikou (Niger)

MONUSCO Force Commander

Lieutenant General Derick Mbuyiselo Mgwebi (South Africa)

MONUSCO Size, Composition and Cost of Mission

Strength as of 31 August 2016: 16,735 troops (including 478 military observers and 1,407 police), 816 international civilian personnel, 2,654 local civilian staff and 364 UN volunteers.

Approved budget (1 July 2016-30 June 2017): $1.23 billion

Mission duration: July 2010 to present
SECURITY COUNCIL AND WIDER UN STRUCTURE

In Hindsight: The Security Council and the International Court of Justice

The UN Charter envisioned a symbiotic relationship between the Security Council and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the UN. However, the Council has scarcely made use of the ICJ as an instrument, or tool, in the exercise of its responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. In its latest research report on the rule of law of 20 December 2016, Security Council Report examines the relationship between the Security Council and the ICJ, including options for enhancing that relationship to assist the Council in its work.

The ICJ was established in 1945 by the same constitutive instrument as the Security Council, the UN Charter, to act as the principal judicial organ of the UN. The Statute of the Court is annexed to the Charter itself, meaning that all UN member states are automatically parties to the Statute. The ICJ is mandated to settle contentious legal disputes submitted by states against other states in accordance with international law. Judgments given in contentious cases between states are binding on the parties. The Court also gives advisory opinions to the Council, the General Assembly and other authorised bodies on legal questions referred to it by these entities.

One of the tools available to the Council to peacefully settle international disputes affecting international peace and security is to make use of the ICJs jurisdiction in such cases (Article 36 (3) of the UN Charter) or to ask it to provide advisory opinions on legal questions that arise in the Councils work (Article 96 (1)). At the same time, the Charter also gives the Council responsibility for addressing instances of non-compliance by states with the Courts judgments brought before the Council (Article 94 (2)). In addition, the Counciljointly with the General Assemblyelects the judges of the ICJ, and the President of the ICJ briefs the Council in a private meeting annually.

To date, the Council has only recommended that states refer their dispute to the ICJ under Article 36 (3) on one occasion, in the Corfu Channel Casethe first proceeding of the ICJwhen on 9 April 1947 in resolution 22 it recommended that Albania and the UK immediately refer their dispute to the Court. The resolution was adopted with eight votes in favour and two abstentions, from Poland and the USSR, while the UK, as a party to the dispute, abstained from voting in accordance with Article 27(3) of the Charter. Similarly, the Council has requested only one advisory opinion from the Court, on 29 July 1970 in resolution 284, when it asked for an advisory opinion on the legal consequences for states of South Africas continued presence in Namibia. As for non-compliance, the Council has yet to use its powers under Article 94(2) to enforce a judgment. However, one attempt to have the Council exercise that authority was when Nicaragua requested, in a letter to the president of the Council on 17 October 1986, an emergency meeting to consider the failure of the US to execute the ICJs judgment of 27 June 1986 against it in the Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua Case. The US vetoed a draft resolution calling for full and immediate compliance with the ICJ judgment on 28 October 1986.

Over the years, not only the Council but also other member states and the Secretariat have largely refrained from taking advantage of the possible contribution the ICJ could make to the successful execution of the Councils mandate, in contrast to the potentially fruitful interaction between the two organs envisaged in the UN Charter. The Charter gives much discretion to the Council in how to use the tools at its disposal, including the ICJ, but after more than 70 years it is evident that the Council has failed to effectively resort to the Court or press disputing states to do so, where relevant.

This failure is part of a larger Council dynamic: the Council has been reluctant to resort to other UN organs and external actors that it does not control and whose actions it cannot necessarily predict. Instead, the Council has opted to retain control and decision-making powers at the possible expense of effectiveness while not taking full advantage of its options. From the perspective of the P5, when it comes to the Court more specifically, the Courts jurisprudence has, at times, been perceived as hostile to their interests.

Of course, not every international conflict situation on the Councils agenda could or should be brought before the ICJ. Yet, as a general rule, the Council could make a more concerted effort to use all of the tools at its disposal to resolve and avoid conflicts or, at the very least, consider the utility of these tools when solutions to conflicts are sought. The potential usefulness of the ICJ to the work of the Council should not be overlooked, and interaction with the Court, as envisioned by the UN Charter, could regularly be considered.

The Secretariat and other entities briefing the Council should likewise bear in mind, in their interaction with the Council, the possible role the ICJ could play in assisting the Council in the successful execution of its responsibilities.

The relationship between the Council and the ICJ could also benefit if certain changes occur and decisions are taken outside the Council. One such change concerns the ability of the Secretary-General to request advisory opinions of the ICJ on legal issues that arise within the Secretariats work, including work related to matters of international peace and security. At present, the Secretariat is the only principal UN organ not authorised to make such requests. This power could be conferred on the Secretariat by the General Assembly under Article 96(2) of the UN Charter. Various proposals to this effect have been made over the years, including by several Secretaries-General: Trygve Lie, Dag Hammarskjold and Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The latter included such a proposal in his 1992 report An Agenda for Peace. The intention was that the Secretary-General would then be able to use this power to assist his role as mediator and provider of good offices between states.

Requesting an advisory opinion on a specific legal issue between states could help resolve matters that cause an impasse and assist the relevant parties in moving forward to resolve further issues. It could also help the Secretary-General overcome legal uncertainties that might arise in the context of the Secretariats work while performing tasks given to it by the Council. In addition, the ability of the Secretary-General to request an advisory opinion from the Court would be the equivalent of his power under Article 99 of the Charter to bring issues to the attention of the Council on his own initiative. The fact that the Secretary-General would have the discretion to make such requests, as opposed to needing to obtain agreement from a majority of states in other UN organs, would simplify the request process and remove the politics involved in obtaining a majority in those other organs.

A more prominent role for the Court with respect to the Security Councils work, whether on the Councils initiative or otherwise, would likely strengthen the effectiveness and enhance the legitimacy of the Council as an institution.
MIDDLE EAST

Iran

Expected Council Action

In January, the Council will consider the implementation of resolution 2231, which endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Irans nuclear programme. Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman is expected to brief the Council on the Secretary-Generals report on the resolutions implementation, due by early January according to a 16 January 2016 note from the Council president. In addition, briefings are expected by a representative of the EU in its capacity as coordinator of the Joint Commission, the body responsible for overseeing the JCPOAs implementation, and Ambassador Sebastiano Cardi (Italy), the incoming 2231 Council facilitator, who succeeds Ambassador Roman Oyarzun (Spain) on 1 January.

Key Recent Developments

On 18 July the Council received its first briefing on resolution 2231 since the JCPOAs implementation day on 16 January, when all previous Council resolutions on Iran were terminated and the provisions in annex B of the resolution came into effect, imposing new restrictions on nuclear, ballistic missile and arms-related transfers as well as a travel ban and assets freeze on designated entities and individuals. Feltman presented the Secretary-Generals first report on the implementation of the resolution. Almeida briefed on the work of the Joint Commission and Oyarzun spoke in his capacity as the Councils 2231 facilitator.

The Secretary-General said in his report that he had seen no evidence since implementation day of any nuclear-related transfers to Iran in contravention of the relevant provisions of resolution 2231. He expressed concern, however, about the ballistic missile launches conducted by Iran in March 2016 as not consistent with the constructive spirit of the JCPOA. He also expressed concern about the seizure of an arms shipment reported by the US. The US report, which was annexed to the Secretary-Generals report, concluded that the arms had originated in Iran and were bound for Yemen. Moreover, the Secretary-General noted that an entity on the 2231 asset freeze list, the Defence Industries Organisation, had participated in an exhibition in Baghdad and that, according to media reports, a listed individual, Qasem Soleimani, had travelled to other parts of Iraq.

In the period since the July Council briefing, no further ballistic missile launches by Iran have been reported, but new allegations have been made about unauthorised weapons transfers and travel by individuals listed under resolution 2231. In a 14 September letter to the Council president, Saudi Arabia asserted that Iran had supplied weapons and ammunition to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. While Saudi Arabia reported the transfer as a violation of resolution 2216, which imposed an arms embargo on the Houthis and forces loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, it would also contravene resolution 2231. In a 27 September letter, Iran firmly rejected the pure fabrications and unsubstantiated allegations made by Saudi Arabia. In a 21 November letter to the Secretary-General and Council president, Israel alleged that Irans Quds Force was using commercial flights from Iran to Lebanon to transfer arms and related material to the Shia militant group Hezbollah and called on the Council to condemn both Iran and Hezbollah for the violation of its resolutions. The following day, Iran said in a letter to the Council that the letter from Israel contained a flurry of baseless and unsubstantiated accusations. In addition, there were reports of Souleimani again violating the travel ban, with a visit to Aleppo in Syria in December.

The IAEA, which is responsible for verification and monitoring of Irans nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA, submitted reports to the Council on 9 September, 9 November and 7 December. In its November report, the IAEA said that Irans stockpile of heavy water had reached the agreed maximum limit of 130 metric tonnes on 25 October and that it had expressed concern in this regard to the Iranian authorities on 2 November. On 9 November, Iran informed the IAEA that it planned to transfer five metric tonnes of heavy water out of the country. In a 7 December follow-up report, the IAEA confirmed that 11 metric tonnes of heavy water had been shipped out on 19 November, thus reducing the stockpile to less than 130 tonnes again. According to media reports the destination was Oman.

In the period since the Councils last briefing, five new requests were submitted through the procurement channel, the mechanism established by the JCPOA to handle requests for advance approval of transfers to Iran of nuclear-related technology, technical assistance, financial services or investments. Such requests are first considered by the procurement working group of the Joint Commission, which then makes a recommendation to the Council. At press time, two of the requests had been approved by the Council, while three were pending. In addition, South Africa submitted a request to the Council on 22 November for approval to export 100 missiles to Iran, as required by paragraph 5 of Annex B of resolution 2231. The Council has yet to respond.

On the political front, the election of Donald Trump as US president on 8 November has raised doubts about the future commitment of the US to the agreement. During his campaign, Trump characterised the JCPOA as a disaster. Although, since the election, Trump has not explicitly called for dismantling it, some of his key cabinet appointees appear to be staunch opponents.

On 15 November, the US House of Representatives voted to extend the Iran Sanctions Act for another year. On 6 December, Iran asserted in a letter to the Secretary-General that the action was a violation of the US commitments under the JCPOA and called on the Secretary-General to write about it in the upcoming report on implementation of resolution 2231. Iran also called for a meeting of the Joint Commission. In a 15 December statement, however, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that the extension of the sanctions act was entirely consistent with the JCPOA and said he had informed Iran that existing US sanctions waivers were unaffected by the extension.

Key Issues

A key issue for the Council is whether any of the parties to the JCPOA or any other member state has failed to comply with resolution 2231 and, if so, what the appropriate response should be.

A further issue is the uncertainty about the commitment of the US to the JCPOA created by the signals sent so far by the incoming Trump administration.

Another issue is how to respond to the exemption request from South Africa.

Options

Options for the Council at this stage are limited. The briefing in January does provide, however, an important opportunity for Council members to clearly express their views on the implementation of the JCPOA and send a message to the new US administration about any attempts to undermine the agreement. The briefing also provides an opportunity to assess progress relating to the lifting of sanctions.

Council and Wider Dynamics

There seem to be some differences between key Council members and Iran in their views of what the Secretary-General should report on. During the preparation of the first report, Iran argued that the Secretary-General should also review the implementation of the commitments in the JCPOA related to the lifting of sanctions, which in the context of resolution 2231 are contained in annex A, as opposed to reporting just on the implementation of annex B, which focuses on the implementation of restrictions on Iran.

The Secretariat decided to resolve this issue by annexing the views expressed by Iran to the report, including assertions that it had not been able to fully benefit from the lifting of sanctions due to deficiencies and non-performance by the EU and the US and rejection of the allegations concerning arms transfers. It seems this led to a strong reaction from the US, which saw inclusion of Irans views as going beyond the Secretary-Generals reporting mandate. Perhaps as a result of the US reaction, Feltman emphasised in his briefing to the Council in July that the report focused strictly on the measures in annex B. This is expected to be the case for the Secretary-Generals upcoming report as well.

With regard to the request from South Africa, Council members are divided about how to respond. Some Council members have argued that the proposed items do not fall under any of the seven categories established by the UN Register of Conventional Arms and that no Council approval is therefore necessary. Others take the opposite view, however, and believe the request should be denied. At press time, it was not clear how this issue might be resolved.

UN Documents

This was a resolution that endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran. This was the report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of resolution 2231. This was a briefing on the implementation of resolution 2231. This was Irans response to the letter from Israel. This was the letter from Israel. This was Irans response to the letter from Saudi Arabia. This was the letter from Saudi Arabia. This was an IAEA report on Iran. This was an IAEA report on Iran. This was a note by the president that outlined the practical arrangements and procedures for how the Council would carry out the tasks related to the implementation of the new provisions that came into effect on implementation day under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Israel/Palestine

Expected Council Action

In January, the Council is expected to hold its regular quarterly open debate on the Middle East, with a focus on Israel/Palestine.

Key Recent Developments

On 23 December, the Council adopted resolution 2334, which condemned Israeli settlement building, with 14 votes in favour and a US abstention. The resolution, the first in the Security Council since 2009, reaffirmed that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution; reiterated the Councils demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem; and underlined that it will not recognise any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations. It also stressed that the cessation of settlement activities is essential for salvaging the two-State solution, and called upon all States to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967. It also called upon both parties to act on the basis of international law and to observe calm and restraint, and to refrain from provocative actions, incitement and inflammatory rhetoric.

The text, originally drafted by the Palestinians, was tabled by Egypt on the night of 21 December and put in blue for adoption the following day. The vote was to be held on the afternoon of 22 December, however, that morning Egypt abruptly cancelled the vote. That evening, the drafts co-sponsors, Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela, told Egypt that it had until midnight to decide to proceed with the text, and that if it did not reschedule a vote, they would proceed to re-table the same text. The next morning (23 December) Egypt withdrew its text and the other sponsors put the text to a vote.

US Ambassador Samantha Power, in her explanation of vote, stated it had been a long-standing position of her country that settlements undermined Israels security and eroded prospects for peace and stability. She emphasised, however, that the vote had not been straightforward, as Israel has been treated differently from other states for as long as it had been a member of the UN. She said it was because of that bias, and because the US did not agree with every word in the resolution, that the US chose to abstain instead of vote for the resolution. She added that her delegation would not have let the resolution pass had it not addressed terrorism and incitement to violence.

Following the adoption, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 26 December announced that Israel would move ahead with building thousands of new homes in East Jerusalem and warned nations against further action, declaring that Israel does not turn the other cheek. A spokesman for Netanyahu on 25 December accused the Obama administration of having orchestrated the resolution, and Netanyahu also called for Israels foreign ministry to temporarily limit working ties with the members who voted in favour of the resolution.

On 16 December, Ban Ki-moon gave his final briefing to the Council on Israel/Palestine as UN Secretary-General. He expressed a lack of optimism and pointed out that during his ten years as Secretary-General the Security Council had adopted only two resolutions on the Middle East peace process. He noted that Israels settlement-construction activities beyond the 1967 line were in flagrant violation of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

He continued to emphasise that the framework for peace remained the establishment of two States on the basis of the principle of land for peace, and a just and comprehensive regional peace settlement consistent with relevant Council resolutions and with existing agreements signed by the parties. He also pointed out that the Council had made clear that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, had been under military occupation since 1967. He urged Israel to take bold steps to empower the Palestinian Authority (PA), which would bring benefits to the Palestinian people and increase Israeli security. He also acknowledged that progress on that front would be difficult unless the Palestinian authorities took concrete steps to address incitement and violence. He called upon the Council to reaffirm without reservations that there is no alternative to the two-State solution. We must not give up on the right of Palestine to exist, just as we must protect the right of Israel to exist in peace and security with its neighbours, he said.

Human Rights-Related Developments

On 8 December, the High Commissioner for Human rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein released a statement that expressed deep concern over the unprecedented proposed legislation in Israel that, if adopted, would allow the retroactive legalisation of so-called Israeli outposts constructed on privately owned Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and violate international law. This would further add to the fragmentation of the Palestinian territory and consequently undermine any viable future Palestinian state on that territory, the statement said.

Key Issues

The overarching issue is determining how the Council can encourage the resumption of direct negotiations between the parties to achieve a two-state solution.

An immediate issue is how not to lose the momentum created by the adoption of the first resolution on Israel/Palestine in nearly eight years.

Options

One option is for the Council to simply receive the briefing. Another option is to issue a statement in response to the information conveyed by the Secretariat concerning compliance with resolution 2334. A further option would be to pursue another resolution aimed at salvaging the two-state solution before the 20 January change in US administrations.

Council and Wider Dynamics

With US-led talks having failed more than two years ago, other Council members are attempting to bring the parties back to the negotiating table. France intends to hold the second meeting of its international conference on the conflict on 15 January. Also, Russia in September 2016 announced that the parties had agreed to meet in Moscow for talks, however, this has not yet materialised. Among elected members, Egypt has voiced its willingness to act as a broker between the parties.

The January open debate will afford the five incoming membersBolivia, Ethiopia, Italy, Kazakhstan and Swedenan opportunity to put forth their perspectives on the conflict and the Councils role in resolving it. UN members at large will likely voice their ideas for the next steps to be taken in the wake of the adoption of the Council resolution condemning the settlements.

Israel remains staunchly opposed to international initiatives on the issue, including involvement of the Council, preferring direct negotiations with the Palestinians, while the PA favours international participation.

US President-elect Donald J. Trump has signalled that his administration will be staunchly supportive of Israel and will work to hinder the Councils involvement on the issue.

UN DOCUMENTS ON ISRAEL/PALESTINE

This was a resolution that condemned Israeli settlements, adopted with 14 votes in favour and a US abstention. This was the meeting where a resolution was adopted condemning Israeli settlements. This was Ban Ki-moons final briefing to the Council on Israel/Palestine as UN Secretary-General.
AFRICA

Mali

Expected Council Action

In January, the Council expects to receive a briefing on Mali from the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), Mahamat Saleh Annadif.

The mandate of MINUSMA expires on 30 June 2017.

Key Recent Developments

The implementation of the 2015 Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in Mali continues to be marked by obstacles and delays. In a 3 November presidential statement, the Council urged the parties to take urgent and concrete action to fully deliver on their obligations under the peace agreement without further delay. A communique issued after a 28-29 November meeting of the Comite de Suivi de lAccordthe main follow-up mechanism to the agreementexpressed concern at the lack of progress and established a working group to focus particularly on the deployment of joint patrols, which should have started in November 2015, and on the establishment of the Operational Coordination Mechanism in Gao and Kidal.

Among the outstanding issues is the fact that the cantonment of armed groups has yet to begin even though all members of the commissions on integration and the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of armed combatants have been appointed by the parties. In addition, a national reconciliation conference has been postponed until early 2017. And although candidates to fill positions in the interim administrations have been appointed, divisions among the parties and within armed groups have prevented the interim administrations from being established. On 20 November, local elections were held, despite criticism by the Coordination, a coalition of armed groups, which argued that these elections could only be organised once the interim administrations were in place. Among the northern regions, some polling took place in Timbuktu and Gao, but no elections were held in Kidal, Taoudeni and Menaka. On 19 December, following three days of internal consultations, the Coordination suspended its participation in the Comite de Suivi de lAccord and called for a high-level meeting of the parties with the mediation in light of the slow implementation of the agreement.

Tension among armed groups continues in the north, resulting in occasional violence and violations of the ceasefire. Members of the Ifoghas ethnic group, who are part of the Coordination, have clashed with GATIA, a rebel group drawn mainly from the Imghad ethnic group, which is part of the coalition of armed groups known as the Platform. In addition to these clashes, over the last months several armed groups have formed within the Coordination, challenging the Ifoghas prominent role within the coalition. Despite the tension, the minister of water and energy, Malick Alhousseini, successfully carried out a visit to Kidal on 2 December, the first visit by a cabinet member since 2014.

Briefing the Council on 10 November on policing issues, MINUSMAs Police Commissioner Issoufou Yacouba highlighted the magnitude and geographical expansion of terrorist attacks to the centre and south of the country. Since MINUSMA was established in 2013, at least 71 peacekeepers have been killed as a result of malicious acts. On 7 November, Council members condemned a 6 November attack near Douentza, in central Mali, during which two Malian civilians and one Togolese peacekeeper were killed. The regional reach of terrorist groups was also demonstrated by recent complex attacks in Niger and Burkina Faso close to the Malian border.

Despite the adoption in June 2016 of resolution 2295which requested MINUSMA to take a more proactive and robust posture and increased its force levels to a ceiling of 13,289 military and 1,920 police personnelthe additional personnel and capabilities for the mission have not been deployed. In a briefing on 6 October, Council members were told that instead of receiving reinforcements, MINUSMA would soon be facing the loss of key enablers, particularly three helicopter units in early 2017. MINUSMA has also not been able to fill its long-standing deficit of armoured personnel carriers. On 7 November, the Council held an open debate at the initiative of Senegal that focused on the peace operations facing asymmetrical threats, in which challenges to the implementation of MINUSMAs mandate were widely discussed.

On 30 November, General Amadou Sanogo and 17 other affiliates were brought to trial in an effort to ensure accountability for crimes committed during the March 2012 coup detat.

Human Rights-Related Developments

On 16 November, the independent expert on human rights in Mali, Suliman Baldo, said in a statement after a visit to the country that he was deeply concerned about the deteriorating human rights situation caused by insecurity in the north and centre of the country. The statement called on the signatories of the peace agreement to redouble efforts to start cantonment measures and disarmament of combatants and to accelerate the agreements implementation. Baldo will present a report to the Human Rights Council in March 2017.

Key Issues

The disconnect between the mandate that the Council adopted in June and how it is being carried out on the ground given the insufficient capacities and resources of MINUSMA is a key issue for the Council.

An overarching issue is the slow implementation of the agreement and the lack of progress in such areas as confidence-building measures, reconciliation and return of basic services to the north. Ensuring that cantonment and the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of combatants take place within a broader context of security sector reform and accountability for human rights violations is an important issue.

The deterioration of the security situation in northern and central Mali and the spate of inter-ethnic violence are urgent issues for the Council.

Addressing the grievances and frustrations of different communities that are not benefiting from the dividends of the peace agreement in their daily lives, including youth at risk of being recruited by violent groups, is a related issue.

The frequent terrorist attacks and their reach, the deliberate targeting of MINUSMA and the safety concerns of troop- and police-contributing countries are further key issues for the Council.

Options

The Council could:

collectively identify ways to support the implementation of MINUSMAs mandate including through urging member states to supply key capacities and personnel that the mission is lacking;

discuss the challenges to the implementation of the agreement in an informal interactive dialogue with the participation of Algerias foreign minister, Ramtane Lamamra, and Annadif in order to develop a common political strategy;

establish a sanctions regime targeting those violating the ceasefire and undermining the implementation of the agreement; and

request the Monitoring Team of the 1267/1989/2253 Al-Qaida/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant Sanctions Committee to report on ways to curb the terrorist threat in Mali, including from non-listed terrorist groups.

Council and Wider Dynamics

Overall, Council members remain united in support of accelerating the implementation of the agreement. Resolution 2295 of 29 June 2016 expressed the Councils readiness to consider targeted sanctions against those undermining the implementation of the agreement, those violating the ceasefire and those who attack MINUSMA and other international presences. However, diverging views over how to articulate the threat to impose sanctions effectively blocked a press statement from being issued in October (the language was incorporated in the November presidential statement). Despite evidence of the role that organised crime plays in the financing of some terrorist and armed groups in Mali, the Council has not delved into this issue. A recommendation of the Secretary-General in a March 2013 report that the Council consider establishing a group of experts to investigate the identity and activities of those involved in organised crime in Mali and the subregion with the possibility of imposing targeted sanctions went unheeded.

France is the penholder on Mali.

UN Documents

This resolution renewed MINUSMAs mandate for a year. This was a presidential statement that strongly condemned repeated ceasefire violations in Mali over the last few months and urged the parties to expeditiously carry out all their commitments under the 2015 Agreement on Peace and Reconciliation. This was a briefing on Mali and the absence of concrete progress in implementing the Agreement. This was a press statement condemning an attack on a complex near Douentza, in the centre of Mali, during which two Malian civilians and one Togolese MINUSMA peacekeeper were killed. This was a press statement condemning the multiple terrorist attacks that occurred earlier that day against MINUSMA, during which two peacekeepers from Chad were killed and others injured.
Overview

Sweden takes on the presidency of the Security Council in January and has planned a ministerial-level open debate on conflict prevention and sustaining peace, chaired by its foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom. Incoming Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will present his ideas for how he plans to approach the issue of prevention.

Council members will be closely following developments in Syria, and meetings are planned on the chemical weapons, humanitarian and political tracks. There will also be the quarterly open debate on Israel/Palestine.

Council members will continue to monitor developments in South Sudan. Other African issues that will be considered are:

CAR, the renewal of the sanctions regime and the mandate of the Panel of Experts;

DRC, an update on developments in the country following the 19 December expiry of the term of the countrys president and the latest report on MONUSCO;

Mali, a discussion on MINUSMA;

Somalia, an update on the activities of UNSOM and AMISOM;

Sudan, on the activities of UNAMID in Darfur and the work of the 1591 Sudan Sanctions Committee: and

UNOWAS, update on the activities of the UN Office in West Africa and the Sahel.

Other issues on the January programme of work include:

Cyprus, the quarterly discussion on UNFICYP and renewal of the missions mandate; and

Iran, on the implementation of resolution 2231, which endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Irans nuclear programme

Throughout the month, Council members will be monitoring developments in Burundi, Guinea-Bissau and Yemen.
AFRICA

Somalia

Expected Council Action

In January, the Council expects to receive the report of the Secretary-General on the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) and the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). The Secretary-Generals options and recommendations for the UN presence in Somalia in the post-electoral phase requested by resolution 2275 were also expected in January, however, with the electoral process not yet complete, it is unclear when these will be transmitted. The mandate of UNSOM expires on 31 March 2017.

Key Recent Developments

Somalias electoral process remains ongoing. The conduct of elections for the upper and lower houses has been widely criticised. Somalias auditor general, Nur Jimale Farah, said in an interview in late November that vote-buying was a common practice. Farah reported that candidates in some regions, including the port city of Kismayo and the southwestern city of Baidoa, had been prevented from entering election halls, resulting in the other candidate being elected, and that some delegates in the electoral college had been threatened and as a result had abstained from voting. He also noted that cases in which government resources were used for vote buying in the election had also been documented.

On 27 December, Somali officials announced that the presidential election would not be held on 28 December as previously scheduled, but was being delayed for the fourth time until late January.

The security situation remains troubling. On 5 December, Somali security forces clashed with fighters claiming allegiance to the Islamic State militant group, which would reportedly be the first military confrontation with the Islamic State in Somalia. The governor of Bari in Puntland state said that Puntland security forces had killed seven militants after encountering a landmine laid by the group, which the security forces proceeded to dismantle. All of the militants killed were Somalis.

A surge in attacks by the rebel group Al-Shabaab continues. On 12 December, Al-Shabaab militants briefly seized a strategic town near the Somalia-Kenya border reportedly occupying the administrative headquarters and police station before government forces pushed them back. On 15 December, a bomb blast killed five soldiers and injured a dozen others in Mogadishu, hours after a car bombing at a checkpoint; an Al-Shabaab spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack on the soldiers. On 17 December, Al-Shabaab fighters moved into Somalias Mahaday district in the Middle Shabelle region, killing two government soldiers before withdrawing, residents and officials said. On 18 December, 12 people were killed, including nine civilians and three Al-Shabaab militants, in clashes near Kismayo in south Somalia, officials said; the militants also reportedly stole 2,000 camels from the local population.

On 5 December, the US designated Al-Shabaab as part of the armed conflict that the US Congress authorised against the perpetrators of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, according to senior American officials. The move was intended to shore up the legal basis for the US intensifying campaign of airstrikes and other counterterrorism operations carried out in support of AMISOM and Somali government forces.

The AU says it is investigating two recent incidents in which AMISOM troops allegedly killed 11 civilians in Somalia. An AMISOM armoured vehicle reportedly crashed into a house, killing a mother and five children in the southern port of Marka on 18 December. Earlier that same day, soldiers allegedly fired into a minibus killing six passengers in Qoryooley town in Lower Shabelle state.

On 17 December, AMISOMs Burundi contingent embarked on an operation code-named Antelope to open up key supply routes in HirShabelle state. The operations objective is to open the roads to facilitate humanitarian access, allow the local population to move their crops from farms to markets and facilitate access for the military.

The humanitarian situation is also dire. On 2 December, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Peter de Clercq, appealed for an urgent scale-up in humanitarian assistance as the country faces severe drought conditions, including food and water shortages. Describing the situation as extremely worrying and one that could deteriorate rapidly without a stepped-up response, he added that humanitarian organisations are in urgent need of additional resources to address the situation and help the country cope with other crises. He reported that the 2016 Humanitarian Response Plan had received just 47 percent of the total $885 million request with only four weeks left in the year.

Sanctions-Related Developments

On 8 November, Council members were briefed by the outgoing chair of the 751/1907 Somalia and Eritrea Sanctions Committee, Ambassador Rafael Dario Ramirez Carreno (Venezuela), on the final reports of the Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group (SEMG). On 10 November, the Council adopted resolution 2317, renewing until 15 November 2017 the partial lifting of the embargo set out in resolution 2142, the humanitarian exemption and the authorisation for maritime interdiction. Concerning the SEMG, the resolution extended its mandate until 15 December 2017. China had proposed language requesting the SEMG to present a report within 120 days to the Committee on recommendations for lifting sanctions measures imposed on Eritrea, including benchmarks and a timeframe for lifting the sanctions. (The report of the SEMG had found for the third year in a row that Eritrea was not supporting Al-Shabaab.) However, the proposal was not accepted by the penholder, the UK, in the draft placed under silence on 8 November. Angola, China, Egypt, Russia and Venezuela all broke silence when this proposal was not incorporated into the draft. As a compromise, text was included in the draft in blue expressing the Councils intention to review measures on Eritrea in light of the upcoming midterm update by the SEMG due by 30 April 2017, and taking into account relevant Security Council resolutions. Some members believed that this compromise had the benefit of not prejudging the review of the sanctions on Eritrea, which in their view was the case with the Chinese proposal. However, Angola, China, Egypt, Russia and Venezuela all abstained, and the resolution was adopted with only ten affirmative votes.

Key Issues

A key issue is ensuring that Somalia completes the electoral process and proceeds to make progress on state-building issues, including the constitutional review and completion of federal state formation, with support from UNSOM.

On security concerns, a main priority is strengthening the Somali national security forces and enhancing their ability to work with AMISOM in the fight against Al-Shabaab, particularly in light of AMISOMs plan to begin transitioning out of Somalia in October 2018.

Options

The most likely option for the Council is to receive the January briefing without taking action.

Another option would be to issue a statement in response to the current situation regarding the electoral process.

A further option would be to consider the forthcoming recommendations of the Secretary-General on the UNs presence in Somalia in the post-electoral phase and pursue action in that regard as necessary.

Council Dynamics

Council members are united in supporting Somalias electoral and state-building processes and in their support for AMISOM, as demonstrated by unified messages conveyed during the Councils visit to Somalia in May and the uncontentious adoption of several recent Council outcomes on Somaliaincluding its 23 May press statement, 7 July AMISOM reauthorisation and 19 August presidential statement.

On sanctions, the Council is divided among those members who believe it should consider lifting the measures against Eritrea, such as China, Russia and Egypt, and those who remain concerned about Eritreas other activities in the region and seem to view cooperation with the Monitoring Group as a precondition for any changes in the sanctions regime.

Ethiopia, which has long been engaged militarily in Somalia and is a major troop-contributor to AMISOM, joins the Council in January. It remains to be seen how its presence will affect the Councils discourse on Somalia. Ethiopia is likely to oppose the lifting of sanctions on Eritrea, advocated by some members.

The UK is the penholder on Somalia, and Kazakhstan will be the chair of the 751/1907 Somalia/Eritrea Sanctions Committee for 2017.

UN Documents

This was a resolution on Somalia and Eritrea sanctions with ten votes in favour. This was a resolution reauthorising Somalia anti-piracy measures. This was a resolution which extended AMISOMs authorisation until 31 May 2017 with no major changes. This was a resolution extending the mandate of UNSOM. This was a presidential statement that welcomed the meeting of Somalias NLF on the implementation of the 2016 National Electoral Process and regretted the delayed electoral timetable. This was the report on Eritrea of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea. This was the report on Somalia of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea.
AFRICA

South Sudan

Expected Council Action

In January, the Council will closely follow the situation in South Sudan. There is likely to be a meeting to consider the Secretary-Generals 30-day assessment of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), including the deployment and future requirements of the Regional Protection Force (RPF), obstacles to setting up the force and impediments to UNMISS in carrying out its mandate. Given the gravity of the situation, other meetings could be scheduled on South Sudan during the month depending on developments in the country.

The UNMISS mandate expires on 15 December 2017.

Key Recent Developments

The security and humanitarian environment in South Sudan continues to deteriorate amidst a faltering political process. Fighting in the Equatoria region, in Western Bahr el-Ghazal state and in Unity state between government and opposition forces has deepened the security crisis, with reports of rape, looting, and destruction of property by armed actors. There are now more than 1.87 million internally displaced people in South Sudan, while 1.15 million refugees have fled to neighbouring countries since the start of the civil war in December 2013. OCHA has estimated that 4.8 million people, more than one-third of the population, were confronted with food insecurity in 2016. Hunger could get worse in 2017, in large part because of persistent fighting and a weak economy.

Violations of the Status of Forces Agreement have continued in various parts of South Sudan, while impediments to humanitarian access have gotten worse. The government continues to demand that UNMISS notify it in writing prior to the movement of mission personnel, and UNMISS staff face harassment.

On 30 November 2016, the Council received a letter from Martin Elia Lomuro, South Sudans Minister of Cabinet Affairs, indicating that the government had agreed to accept the RPF, which is mandated to include 4,000 troops intended, among other things, to facilitate safe and free movement in and around Juba, protect the Juba airport and other key infrastructure and protect UN staff, humanitarian actors and civilians. Since then, South Sudan has challenged any distinct and exclusive right of UNMISS to protect the Juba airport, other than the missions own facilities there. The RPF, originally mandated through resolution 2304 in August 2016, has yet to be deployed, although Ethiopia and Rwanda have agreed to commit infantry battalions to the force.

Kenya, which has originally pledged to participate in the Force, rescinded its offer on 2 November 2016 and decided to withdraw its more than 1,000 troops already in South Sudan, following the dismissal of the UNMISS Force Commander, a Kenyan national. The Force Commander was relieved of his duties after the findings of the independent special investigation regarding the violence in Juba in July, publicly released on 1 November, strongly criticised his performance.

On 19 December 2016, President Salva Kiir issued a presidential decree authorising a South Sudan national dialogue process. Kiir had outlined his plans for the national dialogue in an address to the national legislative assembly on 14 December, during which he said that the objectives of the dialogue would be to end violent conflicts in South Sudan, reconstitute national consensus,  save the country from disintegration and usher in a new era of peace, stability and prosperity. Kiir envisions that the dialogue would include local-level consultations, followed by regional peace conferences and, lastly, a national conference in Juba. Opposition leader Riek Machar has criticised plans for the national dialogue, reportedly saying that negotiations to end the civil war must take place first.

The Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) issued a communique on South Sudan at its summit in Addis Ababa on 9 December. The communique underscored that an arms embargo or sanctions on South Sudan will not provide the solution being sought for permanent peace and stability in the country and stressed the need for all parties in South Sudan to engage in dialogue and reconciliation to implement the August 2015 peace agreement.

On 16 December 2016, following a one-day technical roll-over resolution, the Security Council adopted resolution 2327, which reauthorised the mandate of UNMISS, including the Regional Protection Force. The resolution maintains the core-elements of the mandatethe protection of civilians, monitoring and investigating human rights, creating the conditions conducive to the delivery of humanitarian assistance and supporting the implementation of the [August 2015] Agreement. It further calls for appropriate measures in case of impediments to making the RPF operational or obstructions to UNMISS in fulfilling its mandate as a result of the actions of the government and all other parties to the conflict in South Sudan.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Stephen OBrien briefed the Council on South Sudan on 19 December 2016, after which members discussed the issue in consultations. Ban said that the responsibility for the crisis in South Sudan lies with the countrys leaders, who have betrayed the public trust. Calling genocide a process, Ban warned that process is about to begin unless immediate action is taken, given the ethnic nature of the fighting. He reiterated his call for an arms embargo on South Sudan and emphasised that the parties must reinvigorate an inclusive political process that is deemed credible by the people of South Sudan and the international community. OBrien underscored that the humanitarian situation in the country had significantly deteriorated and that it would cascade beyondcontrol if there was no political solution to the conflict.

On 23 December 2016, the Council voted on a draft resolution to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan and targeted sanctions (assets freezes and travel bans) on three key government and opposition figuresPaul Malong, Chief of Staff of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) (i.e. the governments army); Michael Makuei Lueth, South Sudans Minister of Information; and opposition leader Riek Machar. The US had originally intended to put this draft to a vote in late November, but the draft was not tabled because of concerns that it would not receive the nine votes needed for adoption. When the vote finally took place, positions had not changed. The draft resolution failed to be adopted, receiving seven affirmative votes (France, New Zealand, Spain, Ukraine, Uruguay, the UK and the US) and eight abstentions (Angola, China, Egypt, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Senegal and Venezuela).

On 9 December, the Security Council approved the Secretary-Generals appointment of David Shearer of New Zealand as Special Representative for South Sudan and head of UNMISS. Shearer is expected to take up his post in January.

Human Rights-Related Developments

On 2 December 2016, the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, established by the Human Rights Council (HRC) on 23 March for one year, released a statement after a 10-day visit to the country, saying sexual violence has reached epic proportions in the conflict in South Sudan and requires the urgent attention of the world. The scale of gang rape of civilian women as well as the horrendous nature of the rapes by armed men belonging to all groups is utterly repugnant. According to the statement, a UN survey found 70 percent of women in Juba had suffered sexual assault since December 2013. The pattern of sexual violence is targeting women all over the country, with rape being used with absolute impunity as one of the tools for ethnic cleansing, it said. The Commission intends to call for the establishment of a special investigative team to go to South Sudan to collect evidence of the rapes so as to form the basis of prosecutions in the future, the statement said. On 14 December 2016, the HRC held a special session on South Sudan at the request of the US, which was supported by 40 countries. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein, one of the briefers, said: The highest priority must urgently be given to protection for those most at risk from killings, sexual violence and other serious human rights violations. It is time for all national and regional actors to advocate decisively for a political process that was both inclusive and implemented on the ground. Chairperson of the Commission Yasmin Sooka, Chairperson of the Coordination Committee of Special Procedures Yanghee Lee and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng also briefed. A resolution was adopted, without a vote, that condemned the ongoing violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law in South Sudan, including those involving alleged targeted killings, ethnically targeted violence, rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, the widespread recruitment and use of children, arbitrary arrests and detention, alleged torture, arbitrary denial of humanitarian access and attacks on schools, places of worship, hospitals and UN and associated peacekeeping personnel, by all parties (A/HRC/S-26/L.1). It also reaffirmed the mandate of the Commission, with renewed emphasis on the need to establish the facts and circumstances of alleged violations and abuses of human rights with a view to ensuring accountability; requested the Commission to suggest priority recommendations for the government on how to end sexual and gender-based violence and urged the government to appoint a Special Representative on sexual and gender-based violence. The resolution requested submission of the Commissions reports to the Security Council, General Assembly, and AU. The Commission will present its report to the HRC in March 2017.

Key Issues

The underlying key issue for the Council is what role it can play in developing a new political framework to bring peace to South Sudan and in supporting those aspects of the August 2015 peace agreement that can be salvaged. In the shorter term, the Council will need to determine how it can help prevent the inter-ethnic conflict in South Sudan from descending into full-blown genocide, given the warning signs that this is a possibility.

Another key issue for the Council is the governments continuing obstructions to the operations of UNMISS and humanitarian actors, as well as whether it will make good on its commitment to cooperate with the RPF.

A further issue is the fact that the RPF, which was originally authorised for an initial four month period ending on 15 December 2016, had to be reauthorised through resolution 2327, even though it has yet to be deployed and still may not be deployed in the near term future.

Options

One option is for the Council to meet with key AU, IGAD and UN officials to develop a concrete strategy for reinvigorating the peace process. The strategy could build on elements of the August 2015 peace agreement that are still workable, but would need to create a coherent plan for the way forward.

A further option is for the Council to adopt a statement encouraging member states to provide operational support for the mediation efforts of the AU High Representative for South Sudan, Alpha Konare, given indications that resource constraints have hindered his work.

The Council could also consider holding a briefing on ways to combat hate speech and incitement to ethnic violence in South Sudan, inviting the participation of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, international NGOs with a presence in South Sudan and key South Sudanese religious figures, among others.

Council Dynamics

There is a widespread recognition that the political process needs to be revitalised to bring peace to South Sudan. However, sharp divisions about how to interpret the situation in the country and on the way forward continue to hinder the Councils engagement. These divisions were manifested by the failure of the Council to adopt a draft resolution on an arms embargo and targeted sanctions on 23 December, with only seven Council members (France, New Zealand, Spain, Ukraine, Uruguay, the UK and the US) supporting the draft and the rest of the members abstaining.

Views assessing the governments level of cooperation with UNMISS and its commitment to peace vary. Some members, including China and Russia, have pointed to the governments statement committing to the deployment of the RPF without conditions and the announcement of the national dialogue as signs that the government is acting in good faith. Others, including the P3 and some elected members, are very critical of the government, noting that its deeds have not matched its words, that the situation is deteriorating and that the violence is spiralling out of control.

The US is the penholder on South Sudan while Senegal chairs the South Sudan Sanctions Committee.

UN DOCUMENTS ON SOUTH SUDAN

This extended the mandate of UNMISS for one year and reauthorised the Regional Protection Force. This was a one-day technical rollover of the UNMISS mandate. This resolution authorised the Regional Protection Force. This was a technical rollover, renewing the UNMISS mandate until 12 August 2016. This was an UNMISS report. This was the draft resolution on an arms embargo and targeted sanctions that failed to receive the necessary support to be adopted. It received seven affirmative votes (France, New Zealand, Spain, Ukraine, Uruguay, the UK and the US) and eight abstentions (Angola, China, Egypt, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Senegal, and Venezuela). This was the Executive Summary of the report of the special independent investigation into the July 2016 violence in Juba.
Status Update

Colombia

On 1 December, Council members welcomed the ratification by the Colombian Congress of the new Final Peace Agreement between the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of ColombiaPeoples Army and congratulated all those who worked constructively in the consultations over recent weeks to produce a new Agreement (SC/12606). Also in December, through an exchange of letters with the Secretary-General, the Council noted that the UN Mission in Colombia is proceeding to implement the full range of its mandated tasks as set out in resolutions 2261 and 2307, following the signing, ratification and entry into force of the final peace agreement (S/2016/1063 and S/2016/1070).

Liberia

On 2 December, the Council met on the situation in Liberia (S/PV.7824) and was briefed by Herve Ladsous, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations; Mr. Per Thoresson (Sweden), Vice-Chair of the Peacebuilding Commission; and civil society representative Victoria Wollie of the Women in Peacebuilding Network in Liberia. Ladsous presented the Secretary-Generals report of the assessment mission to Liberia which outlined options for the future of UNMIL (S/2016/968). Liberian Ambassador Lewis Garseedah Brown II asked the Council to extend the mandate of UNMIL for another year. At press time, the Council was expected to renew the missions mandate before it expired on 31 December.

Women and Peace and Security

On 5 December, Uruguay chaired an Arria-formula meeting on synergies between Security Council resolutions on women, peace and security and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Yannick Glemarec, UN Womens Deputy Executive Director for Policy and Programmes; Pramila Patten, Chair of the CEDAW Task Force on General Recommendation 30; and Maria Victoria Cabrera-Balleza, International Coordinator for the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, briefed.

Libya

On 6 December, Special Representative Martin Kobler briefed the Council (S/PV.7827) on the latest Libya report (S/2016/1011). The chair of the 1970 Libya Sanctions Committee, Ambassador Ramlan Ibrahim (Malaysia), briefed the Council as well. After the meeting, Council members issued a press statement expressing deep concern over the challenging political and security context in Libya and reaffirming their full support for the Libyan Political Agreement and calling on all parties to accelerate its implementation (SC/12613). On 13 December, the Council adopted resolution 2323 renewing UNSMILs mandate until 15 September 2017.

Georgia

At the request of Ukraine, Council members met under any other business on 6 December to address the situation in Georgia. Ukraine wanted to raise the issue of the 23 November agreement between Russia and Georgias region of Abkhazia on the establishment of a joint military force. Ukraine also proposed to issue a press statement reiterating the support for the territorial integrity of Georgia. The statement was not adopted due to an objection by Russia.

UNOCA (Central Africa)

On 7 December, Acting Special Representative and head of UNOCA, Francois Lounceny Fall, briefed the Council (S/PV.7828) on the Secretary-Generals report on UNOCA and the implementation of the UN regional strategy to combat the Lords Resistance Army (S/2016/996).

International Criminal Tribunals

On 8 December, the Council held a debate on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in which the presidents and prosecutors of these bodies briefed (S/PV.7829). The meeting focused on the assessment reports of the Residual Mechanism and the ICTY (S/2016/975 and S/2016/976). On 19 December, the Council adopted resolution 2329, the final extension of the ICTY judges and the prosecutors terms until 30 November 2017 (S/PV.7842).

DPRK (North Korea)

On 9 December, the Council held a meeting on the human rights situation in the DPRK, with briefings by Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson and Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Andrew Gilmour (S/PV.7830). The meeting was convened in response to a joint request from France, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain, Ukraine, the UK, the US and Uruguay conveyed in a 1 December letter to the Council president (S/2016/1034). At the beginning of the meeting there was a procedural vote to adopt the agenda at the request of China, which said that the Security Council was not a forum for discussing human rights issues, still less for the politicisation of such issues. The agenda was subsequently adopted by a vote of five against (Angola, China, Egypt, Russia and Venezuela), one abstention (Senegal) and nine in favour. On 2 December, the DPRK sent a letter to the Council (S/2016/1023) rejecting the sanctions resolution adopted on 30 November 2016 (S/RES/2321).

Counter-Terrorism

On 12 December, the Council adopted resolution 2322 on international judicial cooperation on counter-terrorism at a briefing chaired by Spanish Justice Minister Rafael Catala (S/PV.7831). Jean-Paul Laborde, Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, Dorcas Agik Oduor, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions in Kenya, and Robert Strang, Executive Secretary of the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law in Malta briefed. To help prepare for the meeting Spain circulated a concept note to frame the discussion (S/2016/1030). Council members condemned several terrorist attacks in December: attacks in Egypt against a Coptic church on 11 December and in Giza on 9 December (SC/12617); in Turkey there was a 10 December attack in Istanbul (SC/12618) and the 19 December assassination of Russias ambassador to Turkey (SC/12643); and the 20 December Berlin attack (SC/12649). There were also several counter-terrorism meetings in the Councils subsidiary bodies. From 30 November to 1 December, the Counter-Terrorism Committee held a special meeting on Preventing the exploitation of information and communication technologies for terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms. From 12 to13 December, the 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Daesh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee, the 1373 Counter-Terrorism Committee, and the Financial Action Task Force held a special joint meeting on Depriving terrorist groups from accessing, raising, and moving funds: practices and lessons learned.

Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict

The Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict met on 14 December to adopt its conclusions on the Secretary-Generals report on Children and Armed Conflict in the Central African Republic.

Western Sahara

On 13 December, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Herve Ladsous briefed Council members under any other business at the request of Uruguay and Venezuela. Ladsous updated Council members on the situation on the ground in Al Guergarat and on MINURSOs return to full functionality.

Tribute to the Secretary-General

On 14 December, the Council adopted resolution 2324 paying tribute to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (S/PV.7836). Following the vote, the president of the Security Council made a statement in which he conveyed the Councils gratitude for the support provided by the Secretary-General to the Council and cited the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement on Climate Change as notable successes. In his statement, the Secretary-General highlighted examples of innovative thinking from the Council over the years and concluded that the Council was strongest when united.

Non-Proliferation (1540 Committee)

On 15 December, the Council held an open debate titled Preventing Catastrophe: A Global Agenda for Stopping the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction to Non-State Actors, marking the conclusion of the second comprehensive review of the status of implementation of resolution 1540, which seeks to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to non-state actors (S/PV.7837). The Council adopted resolution 2325 endorsing the review and noting the findings and recommendations contained in the report of the review, which was agreed by the 1540 Committee on 9 December (S/2016/1038). Ahead of the debate, Spain circulated a concept note outlining key objectives, main findings of the review and suggested topics for discussion (S/2016/1013). The meeting was chaired by Spains Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alfonso Maria Dastis with briefings by Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson; Kim Won-soo, the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs; Brian Finley, President of the Stimson Center; and James Min, DHL Express Vice President of International Trade Affairs and Compliance. More than 60 countries, including Council members, and 12 organisations spoke.

Subsidiary Bodies

On 19 December, the Council held the annual briefing for subsidiary body chairs from outgoing elected Security Council members, which this year were Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain and Venezuela (S/PV.7845).

UNDOF (Golan Heights)

On 19 December, the Council adopted resolution 2330 renewing UNDOF for six months after considering the Secretary-Generals latest report (S/2016/1037) on the observer mission during 13 December consultations.

Lebanon

On 19 December, Council members issued a press statement on the announcement earlier that day of the formation of a national unity government in Lebanon and congratulated Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his Cabinet (SC/12645). The members of the Council stressed the importance of the holding of parliamentary elections by May 2017, in accordance with the Constitution, in order to sustain Lebanons democratic tradition.

Afghanistan

On 19 December, the Council held its quarterly debate on Afghanistan (S/PV.7844), during which it considered the Secretary-Generals report on UNAMA (S/2016/1049). Special Representative Tadamichi Yamamo, briefed along with the chair of the 1988 Afghanistan Sanctions Committee, Ambassador Gerard van Bohemen (New Zealand), and Yury Fedotov, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Human Trafficking

On 20 December the Council held a ministerial-level open debate on trafficking in persons in conflict situations, chaired by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy Brey (S/PV.7847). The meeting was organised by Spain which had circulated a concept note in preparation for the debate (S/2016/1031). At the debate, the Council adopted resolution 2331, its first ever resolution on human trafficking, which condemned the phenomenon and stressed how human trafficking can exacerbate conflict and foster insecurity. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presented his report on trafficking in persons (S/2016/949) with Yury Fedotov, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and Special Representative for Sexual Violence in Conflict Zainab Bangura also briefing. Two Iraqi women of the Yazidi faith also participated: Nadia Murad, who was trafficked by ISIL and is now a UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking, and Ameena Saeed Hasan, a human rights activist who works to free people captured by ISIL.

Iraq

On 30 December 2016, the Council unanimously adopted resolution 2335, which authorised the Secretary-General to continue to maintain the escrow account authorised by resolution 1958 (2010), and to retain the funds contained in there until 30 June 2017 (S/PV.7854).
MIDDLE EAST

Syria

Expected Council Action

In January, Council members expect to receive a briefing on the chemical weapons track as well as their regular monthly briefings on the humanitarian and political situations in Syria. Other activity could not be ruled out, given the urgent nature of the Syrian crisis.

It is possible that a draft resolution to impose sanctions on the Syrian government for the use of chemical weapons against its own population may be put to a vote in January.

The Board of Inquiry report on the 19 September 2016 attack on a humanitarian convoy outside of Aleppo was transmitted to the Security Council on 21 December 2016. It was unclear if the Security Council would respond the reports findings.

Key Recent Developments

On 18 October 2016, Russia announced a unilateral pause in hostilities for rebel-held eastern Aleppo, an area that has been besieged by the government since July 2016. This pause was largely observed until 15 November 2016, when Russia and the Syrian government renewed their offensive. As the government advanced into eastern Aleppo, reports emerged of government-allied militias executing opposition fighters family members, disappearances and men being inducted into government forces against their will.

The humanitarian penholdersEgypt, New Zealand and Spaincirculated a draft resolution in late November that called for a 7-day end to all attacks in Aleppo. Russia asserted that a truce in Aleppo should only go into effect after the country-wide separation of Al Nusra terrorist fighters from other armed opposition groups. The humanitarian penholders, the P3 and several other Council members maintained that counterterrorism was being used as an excuse by Russian and Syrian forces to justify targeting all opposition groups and civilians in eastern Aleppo. On 5 December 2016, the draft resolution was put to a vote and was vetoed by China and Russia.

On 13 December, France and the UK called for an emergency meeting of the Council where the Secretary-General reported that after 48 hours of unprecedented levels of bombardment, the UN had seen an almost complete collapse of the armed oppositions front lines in eastern Aleppo. He said that civilian deaths and injuries continued at a brutal pace. At that meeting, a majority of Council members called on Russia and Syria to allow impartial observers into Aleppo to monitor the situation of civilians.

Outside of the Council, Russia and the US had tried to broker an Aleppo truce without success. Meanwhile, by 13 December 2016, Turkey and Russia had reached a deal for the evacuation of fighters and civilians from what remained of rebel-held eastern Aleppo. Russia announced on 15 December 2016 that its bi-lateral talks with the US over Aleppo had been suspended.

The evacuations began and stalled repeatedly amid reports of convoys coming under fire, evacuation routes being cut off by government-allied militias, individuals being removed from buses leaving eastern Aleppo, summary executions, and an additional government demand, not part of the original agreement, that evacuations from eastern Aleppo would be conditioned on evacuations from two rebel-besieged villages: Foah and Kefraya.

By mid-December 2016, the government had wrested control of 95 percent of eastern Aleppo from armed opposition groups. At that point, tens of thousands of civilians remained trapped in a very small and densely populated besieged area. By 22 December, the government announced that it was in full control of all of Aleppo.

Evacuation of civilians from eastern Aleppo took place under limited international observation by ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. The exodus echoed a series of smaller surrenders in 2016 which the opposition characterises as a forced population transfer following years of government-imposed sieges that are disguised as a local truce. Other evacuations, under almost identical circumstances, occurred in the opposition-held Khan al-Shih and Al Tal suburbs in November, Moadamiyeh in October, Al Waer in September, and Daraya in August. Opposition fighters from these areas have been evacuated to Idlib, raising the spectre of that province becoming a new epicentre of fighting after eastern Aleppos fall to the government.

Against this backdrop OCHA head Stephen OBrien briefed Council members under any other business on 16 December. He reiterated that the UN stands ready to help but that it had only been granted very limited access to Aleppo. He reported that the UN was waiting for the Syrian government to approve the redeployment of existing UN staff already in Syria to Aleppo and permission for the UN to access all affected areas there.

Following OBriens briefing, France called for a vote on a draft resolution that called for evacuations to be carried out in line with international humanitarian law, and for direct observation, independent monitoring of and reporting on the evacuations and the situation of civilians inside eastern Aleppo. However, during the consultations preceding the scheduled vote on Sunday, 18 December 2016, Russia raised objections regarding UN access to eastern Aleppo and made clear that it would veto the French draft. After three hours of negotiations between France, Russia and the US, a deal was reached and resolution 2328 was adopted unanimously the next day.

The Russian amendments added to the French text required the UN to coordinate security guarantees with all parties in Aleppo prior to carrying out monitoring activities and added references to the UN working with all relevant institutions, an implicit reference to the Syrian government. Russias interpretation of these amendments was further clarified in a letter to the Council, emphasising that the UNs humanitarian work on the ground would be done in coordination with the Syrian government.

OCHA briefed the Council again on 23 December in fulfillment of the request in resolution 2328 for an implementation report within 5 days of adoption. OCHA said that the evacuation of eastern Aleppo had most likely concluded and that most evacuees had chosen to continue on to opposition held areas in Idlib. The government had approved 20 UN staff to be redeployed to Aleppo for monitoring purposes, but had not granted access to monitor evacuation assembly points, checkpoints that the convoys had to traverse during evacuations, or drop off points.

In another development on the humanitarian track, the Council adopted resolution 2332 on 21 December 2016, renewing UN authorisation for cross-border aid delivery until 10 January 2018.

On the political track, the Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura briefed Council members on 8 December 2016 on the implications of the Aleppo offensive on a political solution to the crisis. He said that now was the time to resume talks in order to test whether the Syrian government was serious about a political transition. During these consultations, Council members agreed to issue press elements on the need to save civilians in Aleppo and to urgently call for a political solution in line with resolution 2254. However, Russia refused to agree to a third point: calling for UN access to eastern Aleppo. On 19 December, de Mistura announced that UN-facilitated talks would resume in Geneva on 8 February 2017.

Separately, on 20 December 2016, Iran, Russia and Turkey met in Moscow and issued a joint statement that they would create the necessary momentum toward the resumption of a political process in line with resolution 2254 by:

acting as guarantors of a prospective ceasefire arrangement in Syria; and

working together to fight ISIL and to separate Al-Nusra from other armed opposition groups.

The Moscow meeting apparently sidelined the US and the joint statement made no specific reference to UN-facilitated talks, rather it noted the offer of Kazakhstan to host relevant meetings in Astana.

On 30 December, Council members met in consultations to discuss a draft resolution to endorse the ceasefire in Syria agreed in late December between Russia and Turkey. Several concerns were raised about the draft resolution. There was a lack of clarity about which armed groups and which areas were covered by the arrangement; whether the Astana talks sidelined the UN mediation process; a lack of clarity about how the opposition delegation would be formed; and that there were no references to humanitarian access in the text. Many Council members expressed a strong preference to discuss the text further with a view to adopt it in early January 2017. However, Russia insisted on an immediate vote and after further negotiations the draft was adopted unanimously on 31 December. The resolution, as adopted, takes note of Russia and Turkeys agreement and acknowledges that the Astana talks are an important step ahead of UN-facilitated talks in Geneva on 8 February 2017.

On chemical weapons, the next report of the UN-OPCW Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) is due in mid-February. The JIMs previous four reports have concluded that of the nine cases investigated, the Syrian regime used chlorine gas against its own population in three cases and that ISIL used mustard gas in one case. There was insufficient evidence to make a determination in the remaining five cases. Subsequent to those findings, on 19 December 2016, France and the UK circulated a draft resolution seeking to impose sanctions on the Syrian government for the use of chemical weapons against its own population. At press time, it was unclear when the draft would be tabled for a vote.

In other developments, the UN Board of Inquiry that investigated the 19 September 2016 attack on a humanitarian convoy outside of Aleppo delivered its report to the Secretary-General, who in turn shared a summary of the report with the Security Council on 21 December. The summary reported that the attack was an airstrike and that only the aircraft of the US-led anti-ISIL coalition, Russia or Syria had the capabilities to carry out the attack. The Board reported that it was highly unlikely that the US-led coalition carried out the attack and no party had alleged that it had done so. The Board received reports that Syrian forces were highly likely to have perpetrated the attack, but the Board was not given access to the required data or access to the attack site to determine responsibility. Russia and Syria deny they carried out the attack.

In the General Assembly, two Syria specific resolutions were adopted in December 2016. On 21 December, a resolution to establish a mechanism to assist in the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for crimes under international law committed in Syria since March 2011 was adopted. On 9 December, a resolution focused on the humanitarian situation in Aleppo was adopted.

Key Issues

With Syria approaching its sixth year of a war that has exacted a death toll approaching 500,000, left 700,000 living under siege after the evacuation of eastern Aleppo and displaced half of the Syrian population, including 4.83 million refugees, the essential issue for the Council is to exert effective leadership in supporting a cessation of hostilities and efforts to reach a political solution.

Regarding chemical weapons, the JIMs findings mean that the Council is in a position to consider whether Syria is in breach of resolutions 2118, 2209 and 2235.

Options

While the Council has many tools at its disposalsuch as imposing an arms embargo or targeted sanctions, referring Syria to the ICC or authorising a no-fly zone to deter Syria from using its aerial capacityP5 divisions have made it impossible for the Council to fulfil its role in maintaining international peace and security in the case of Syria.

The Council could, however, vote to refer Syria to the General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace procedure, which would allow the General Assembly to recommend collective action. This would be a procedural vote and therefore could not be vetoed by any of the P5, requiring only nine affirmative votes.

Regarding chemical weapons, if the Council is able to determine that Syria has violated resolutions 2118, 2209 and 2235, it has the option to pursue the threat of sanctions implicit in all three resolutions.

Council Dynamics

There is broad recognition by Council members that the Syrian government and its allies have demonstrated they can take territory, in particular population centres. However, it is less certain if they can hold territory in the absence of a negotiated settlement. Two-thirds of Syrian territory remains outside of government control. In this context, Council members are unsure whether the governments retaking of Aleppo will pivot it toward a meaningful re-engagement with a political process while it holds a significant military advantage, or whether it will continue to exhibit a preference for prolonged armed conflict.

At press time, Council members had held one round of negotiations on a draft resolution to impose sanctions against Syria over its non-compliance with resolutions 2118, 2209 and 2235 on chemical weapons. Most Council members expect that if the sanctions draft is put to a vote then Russia would cast its seventh veto on a Syria resolution.

Egypt will continue to lead on humanitarian issues along with Sweden, replacing New Zealand and Spain which rotate off the Council as of 31 December 2016. Of the new Council members starting their term on 1 January 2017, it is expected that Bolivia, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan may tend to be supportive of Russian positions on Syria. Italy and Sweden are expected to align more closely with the P3 and other like-minded Council members.

UN Documents

Welcomed efforts by Russia and Turkey to end violence in Syria and jumpstart a political process. This resolution renewed the authorisation for cross-border aid delivery until 10 January 2018. This resolution demanded UN access to monitor evacuations from Aleppo. Renewed the mandate of the UN-OPCW Joint Investigative Mechanism for a further year. This resolution was adopted unanimously by the Council and required the verification and destruction of Syrias chemical weapons stockpiles, called for the convening of the Geneva II peace talks and endorsed the establishment of a transitional governing body in Syria with full executive powers. This was a resolution that endorsed the cessation of hostilities and called for the resumption of political talks. This was the first resolution focused exclusively on a political solution to the Syrian crisis. It was adopted unanimously. This was a report on the humanitarian situation. This was the 38th OPCW report on chemical weapons. This was the Secretary-Generals five-day report on the situation in Aleppo following the adoption of resolution 2328. This was an emergency meeting on Aleppo. Was from Russia summarising the agreement reached with Turkey on a ceasefire and political talks for Syria. Was a summary of the UN Board of Inquiry report on the 19 September 2016 attack on a humanitarian convoy outside of Aleppo. This was a letter from Russia regarding their interpretation of resolution 2328 on the UN monitoring the evacuation of eastern Aleppo. This was the vetoed draft resolution submitted by Egypt, New Zealand and Spain that called for an end all attacks in Aleppo for seven days. The vote was 11-3-1. Russia and China vetoed the resolution, Venezuela voted no and Angola abstained. Established the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism to assist in the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the most serious crimes under international law committed in Syria since March 2011. The resolution was drafted by Liechtenstein and was passed with 105 votes in favour to 15 against with 52 abstentions. Expressed outrage at the recent escalation of violence, particularly in Aleppo, and demanded an immediate and complete end to all attacks on civilians and civilian objects and to all sieges throughout the country. The resolution was drafted by Canada and was passed by 122 votes in favour to 13 against with 36 abstentions.
AFRICA

UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel

Expected Council Action

In January, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the head of the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), will brief on the semi-annual UNOWAS report.

At press time, UNOWASs mandate was expected to be renewed until 31 December 2019 through an exchange of letters between the Secretary-General and the Council before the current mandates expiry on 31 December 2016.

Key Recent Developments

Gambian President Yahya Jammehs rejection of the results of The Gambias 1 December 2016 presidential election provoked a political crisis and concerns of possible violence. Jammeh first conceded defeat to challenger Adama Barrow on 2 December. One week later, he rejected the results and called for new elections. He cited his concerns over the credibility of the Independent Electoral Commission, which had made a mistake in the initial tallying of the results that resulted in a reduction of Barrows margin of victory from approximately 50,000 votes to fewer than 20,000.

Jammehs action was condemned by the Security Council and strongly criticised by the AU and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which all called for Jammeh to respect the election results. ECOWAS dispatched a mission to The Gambia on 13 December led by the ECOWAS chair, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (Liberia), who was accompanied by the presidents of Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Ghana, as well as Chambas. Jammeh appeared unwilling to back down from his position. ECOWAS Commissioner Marcel De Souza said that military intervention might be considered while Chambas said in an interview that Jammeh under no circumstances could continue as president once his term ends and suggested the possibility of sanctions. At a summit of heads of state and government in Abuja on 17 December, West African leaders, according to the summit communique, agreed to undertake all necessary actions to enforce the result of the election and to guarantee president-elect Barrows safety and protection.

Council members followed these developments closely. Members received briefings in consultations from Political Affairs Under-Secretary-General Jeffrey Feltman on 12 December, 16 December and 19 December. On 21 December, the Council adopted a presidential statement that welcomed the decisions on the political situation in The Gambia from the ECOWAS summit, and reiterated its request for Jammeh to accept the results.

Boko Haram remained a threat despite military gains made against the terrorist group by Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. In August, there were signs of divisions within Boko Haram when the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), to which Boko Haram declared loyalty in March 2015, announced that it recognised Abu Musab al-Barnawi (believed to be the son of Boko Haram founder Muhammed Yusuf) as the groups leader. Abubakar Shekau, who is sanctioned under the ISIL (Daesh)/Al-Qaida sanctions regime as Boko Harams leader, released a video saying he remained in charge. Al-Barnawi has criticised Shekaus indiscriminate violence against Muslims.

On 9 December, suicide bombers killed 56 people in the town of Madagali in Adamawa State, Nigeria. On 13 December, the AU Peace and Security Council renewed the mandate of the Multinational Task Force (MNJTF), which is comprised of regional countries fighting Boko Haram, until 31 January 2017.

OCHA has said the humanitarian crisis as a result of the conflict has worsened. As of December 2016, OCHA said 11 million people across the Lake Chad basin were in need of humanitarian assistance, including 2.4 million displaced people. High levels of food insecurity affect 4.7 million people in Nigerias north-eastern Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. Famine-like conditions have been reported in some displaced persons camps in parts of Borno State. A 19 July 2016 UNICEF press release said that in Borno State, 134 children would die per day from causes linked to acute malnutrition if the humanitarian response was not quickly scaled up. UNICEF reiterated a similar warning in a 13 December press release.

On 7 December, OCHA announced a $1.5 billion appeal to meet emergency needs during 2017 in the Lake Chad basin. Of the $739 million requested in 2016 for the humanitarian crisis, only 49 percent had been received as of 8 December 2016.

Terrorism remains a concern elsewhere in the region. On 16 December, 12 soldiers from Burkina Faso were killed in Nassoumboi near the Mali border, in an attack attributed to extremist groups. Previously, on 21 October, Burkina Fasos government announced that it had foiled a coup plot by ex-members of the disbanded Presidential Security Regiment, an elite unit during the rule of President Blaise Compaore.

An independent evaluation of the UNs Sahel strategywhich the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) had commissioned following the Councils decision to merge the UN Office for West Africa (UNOWA) with the Office of the Special Envoy for the Sahel (OSES), establishing UNOWASwas completed at the end of November. The evaluation, which has not formally been shared with the Council, determined that the strategys implementation has been a failure. It criticised the UN agencies, including their shortcomings to work in a regional and joint manner as the strategy had envisaged. It also questioned the Councils decision to mandate the strategy without providing financial resources to implement it. The evaluation said the strategy had correctly identified the regions problems when it was developed in 2012. It contended, however, that since the UNs strength was as a convening body, the strategy should be rebranded into an issues-based consultative platform that brings together the different actors in the region, noting the existence of 17 different Sahel strategies. The evaluation claimed that DPA was not suited to develop programmatic work, though it recommended that the strategys nine flagship projects be completed, in part to avoid further damage to the UNs credibility.

Key Issues

A key issue is UNOWASs mediation and good office activities, particularly regarding the The Gambia.

The terrorism threat to West Africa and the Sahel continues to be a major issue.

Related to this is the Boko Haram threat, including regional efforts to defeat the group and the humanitarian crisis caused by the conflict.

Another important issue is progress in the merger, including further consideration of changes to the Sahel strategy based on the findings of the independent evaluation and the impact of these developments on UNOWASs mandate.

Options

During January, the Council is likely to monitor developments in The Gambia and may take further measures to support regional efforts. This may include issuing a statement following the briefing on UNOWAS, reiterating Council support for the mediation efforts of Chambas and ECOWAS, while addressing other issues covered in the UNOWAS report.

Regarding the Boko Haram conflict, one option is a Council fact-finding mission in early 2017 to countries in the Lake Chad basin to better understand the security and humanitarian challenges and to raise awareness about the largely overlooked humanitarian crisis.

In its exchange of letters with the Secretary-General to renew UNOWASs mandate, Council members could express support for a UN decision to rebrand the Sahel strategy as recommended in the independent evaluation.

Council and Wider Dynamics

Members perceive positively UNOWASs good offices and mediation activities undertaken by Special Representative Chambas, viewing the office as playing a significant conflict-prevention role. Regarding The Gambia, this is an important issue for Senegal, and it has had a key role in ensuring Council attention to the issue. Among ECOWAS members, Senegal appears to be the strongest proponent of a possible military option. Council members are united in their position that Jammeh should hand over power to Barrow while most stress the importance of exhausting mediation efforts.

At press time it appeared that, compared with past renewals, this years UNOWAS renewal could require more revisions to its mandate as a result of the merger and evaluation of the implementation of the Sahel strategy. While the independent evaluation has not been shared with the Council, the Secretariat has consulted with several members who seem generally supportive of its recommendations. It seems that Council members believe the next steps regarding UNOWAS and the strategy are primarily for the Secretariat to determine. Some members anticipated that the merger would eliminate redundancies between UNOWA and OSES, resulting in cost savings. They may push for areas where UNOWASs mandate or functions can be streamlined.

The Group of Five for the Sahel  Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger  opposed the merger. To address some of their concerns, a UNOWAS liaison office has been established in Nouakchott.

Senegal is the penholder on West Africa and the Sahel.

UN DOCUMENTS ON UNOWAS

This statement welcomed the decisions at the 17 December 2016 ECOWAS summit related to The Gambia. This was a presidential statement on West Africa and the Sahel and UNOWAS activities. This was a report on the activities of UNOWAS. This was a briefing on the humanitarian, political and security situation in the Lake Chad basin as a result of the Boko Haram conflict by Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman and OCHA head Stephen OBrien briefed the Council. This was a press statement that commended the people of the Islamic Republic of the Gambia for the peaceful and transparent holding of elections on 1 December 2016.
Searching for signs of life, or life's precursors, on the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa could spoil the hunt before it begins - which is why many scientists advocate going underground.

An ocean containing twice as much water as all of Earth's seas is thought to slosh beneath Europa's 10-to-15-mile-thick (15 to 25 kilometers) ice shell. For this reason, astrobiologists regard the 1,900-mile-wide (3,100 km) Jovian moon as one of the solar system's best bets to host extraterrestrial life.

Furthermore, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted evidence of water-vapor plumes emanating from Europa's south polar region, suggesting that material from the ocean may fall back onto the moon's icy surface. [Europa May Harbor Simple Life-Forms (Video)]

That's an exciting prospect for NASA, which aims to put a lander on Europa in the 2020s to look for chemical evidence that the moon could support life. (NASA's Europa mission began as a flyby-only affair, but the U.S. Congress ordered the inclusion of a lander late last year.)

RELATED: NASA: Activity Spied on Europa, But It's 'NOT Aliens'

However, the very landing could complicate this search greatly. Firing thrusters to slow the spacecraft's descent "will be like hosing down the ground with ammonia, and this is a very inconvenient thing to do," said Ralph Lorenz, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.

It's inconvenient because ammonia contains nitrogen, he said. "Everything in our body has nitrogen," Lorenz told Space.com. "If you are interested in nitrogen as a prerequisite for life, then finding even traces of it at Europa is important, and so even a little thruster contamination matters a lot."

If such contamination were to occur, scientists would struggle to figure out if nitrogen detected at Europa was native or imported from Earth, he said.

In a study published in the journal Planetary and Space Science this past August, Lorenz found that putting a 440-lb. (200 kilograms) spacecraft down on Europa would disturb the surface out to 30 feet (9 meters) around the lander. He concluded this after studying images of past surface disturbances caused by spacecraft landings on Earth's moon and Mars.

Scientists cannot assume that the Europa lander will be able to move away from such a contaminated site. NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has wheels, so it drove away from its Red Planet landing site back in 2012. But scientists know little about the hazards on Europa's surface, Lorenz said.

"The distribution of rocks could cause a lander to tip over, or it could fall into a crevasse," Lorenz said. "In space exploration, it's not good enough to speculate that this will work. Why throw 1 [billion] or 2 billion [dollars] into it?"

The issue of nitrogen contamination on Europa is more problematic than it is on Mars or Earth's moon because the Jovian satellite is much colder than these other worlds, Lorenz said. At its warmest, temperatures on Europa don't rise above minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 160 degrees Celsius). Under such frigid conditions, ammonia is more likely to stick to Europa's surface, allowing it to interact with other molecules and perhaps make a mess of observations, Lorenz said.

RELATED: Europa's Deforming Ice Is a Surprising Heat Generator

Other researchers think that sampling Europa's surface is important, but that the best samples lie deeper. "We have to go down, beneath the surface," said Britney Schmidt, a planetary scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who has worked on NASA's Europa lander mission concept.

This means drilling into Europa's ice. Schmidt thinks a mission needs to drill at least 4 inches (10 centimeters) down, to a place where the thrusters haven't contaminated the ice and space radiation hasn't destroyed biogenic molecules - the stuff necessary for life's processes to take place.

"If we get 10 centimeters, or a meter [about 3 feet], down, this area hasn't been blasted with the thrusters," Schmidt told Space.com. "Maybe a portion, but the confidence for getting a pristine sample goes up the further you go down."

The Europa lander won't just be looking for ammonia or nitrogen, stressed Peter Willis, a chemist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Still, he said, the Europa lander mission will take precautions; the lander will likely bore into the ice, Willis said. NASA also plans to employ the sky-crane landing method, which put Curiosity down on Mars, with the Europa craft, he added. After descending toward Europa, a hovering spacecraft will fire thrusters into the air to stay aloft while it uses a cord to lower the lander down to the surface. Then, it will let go. [How Curiosity's Sky Crane Landing Worked (Infographic)]

In such a case, "the spacecraft actually falls, but we hope not too far," Willis said.

Limiting the amount of Earthly organics being sprayed on Europa's surface will help NASA's quest to find extraterrestrial life - even if what researchers are looking for doesn't walk or swim, Schmidt said.

"People want us to drill into Europa and find a fish," she said. "But right now, this is not realistic; the hope is to land there and detect biogenic molecules, the molecules essential for life."

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
It's that time of year again. Year-end, when people like to make (and hopefully read) lists. If 2016 taught us nothing else about the animal kingdom, it's that surprise and wonder are givens, old things can be new again, and new species can pop up by the thousands.

Here are some of the critters that wowed us this year. We hope you enjoyed reading about them as much as we enjoyed writing about them. Here's hoping 2017 is just as kind to animal lovers. For now, enjoy this walk back through 2016:

To kick things off, here's a little fella everyone really loved. This Stubby squid (Rossia pacifica) made a splash in August when it was spotted by a remotely operated vehicle patrolling the seafloor for the scientists from Nautilus Live.

Only a couple of inches long fully grown, the purple wonder, despite its innocent looks, is actually a clever predator. It digs into the sand, leaving just its eyes sticking out, and waits to haul in unsuspecting shrimp with its tentacles.

Who can forget the tardigrade? Sometimes called "water bears," tardigrades come in more than 1,000 species and are considered among the hardiest creatures on Earth. Just more than 1 mm long, with eight legs, these microscopic creatures are everywhere  underneath moss on land, in the ocean, on every continent, in all climates. They can withstand boiling water and absolute-zero temperatures and are the only animals known to have survived in the vacuum of space.

What put them in the news early this year was the finding that one of its kind was frozen for 30 years and then revived, whereupon the tiny wonder went on to reproduce after its long slumber. You can read more about that here.

Arabian sand cats (Felis margarita harrisoni) like this little critter really captured hearts when we wrote about them in August. The elusive creature  ranked "near threatened" on IUCN's "red list" of threatened species  was seen for the first time in a decade, in the United Arab Emirates, when three individuals of the species were photographed by Shakeel Ahmed, of The Environment Agency.

These cute, shy animals can handle the heat and the cold, as temperatures in their desert homes fluctuate wildly. About a foot tall and three feet long, weighing 4 to 8 pounds, Arabian sand cats look a lot like domestic cats. They've also mastered the art of seeming invisibility: They'll burrow into sands to stay cool and the fur on their foot pads means they leave barely any tracks in their wake.

We may be cheating a bit by including a chunk of vomit in a year-end list of animal stories we loved. However, it was vomit from a whale, so we think it's fair game. And it's not really vomit, though it's called that colloquially. It's actually a substance called ambergris, an intestinal secretion in sperm whales. It seems fishermen in Oman came upon 176 pounds of ambergris floating in their midst. The find stood to make them rich. Amberbgris has the curious benefit of helping scents such as perfume last longer on human skin. That makes the substance valuable to fragrance companies. In this case, about US $3 million valuable.

Here's a long-lost beast that must have been impressive in its day. January of this year brought news of a fascinating fossil discovery: an enormous ocean-dwelling crocodile that would have been twice the size of anything like it today. Dubbed Machimosaurus rex, the animal weighed at least 6,600 pounds and would have stretched to about 32 feet long.

"The skull itself is as big I am," said the University of Bologna's Federico Fanti, who was on the team that made the discovery. "Just the skull is more than five feet long. It's a massive crocodile."

You thought this huge croc was a big deal, and so did we.

A fish that climbs walls? Er, why not? Mother Nature is full of surprises, after all. Early in the spring, we learned that a species of cavefish in Thailand had been observed walking and climbing walls underwater, behaving a lot like salamanders in the process. Scientists studying the strange fish said anatomical features of its pelvis and vertebrae had previously been seen only in four-limbed vertebrates such as reptiles and amphibians. Neat trick for a fish, no?

In early August, we learned about this crazy creature and the most common question surrounding it. Namely: "What is it?"

Found in a Siberian diamond mine, the mystery mummy was speculated to be either a previously unknown species of dinosaur or something a bit less fantastical -- a wolverine, a young bear or a marten.

The remains were found in Udachny, in the Mirinsky district of the Sakha Republic, Russia, in a mine created by an underground detonation of an atomic bomb in 1974.

Another spring entry that captivated us was the blockbuster dino news that the remains of a pregnant Tyrannosaurus rex had been discovered. About 68 million years old and found in Montana, the fossil contained a special type of bone found only in pregnant female "living dinosaurs" -- birds -- just before birth and during egg laying. Once the egg-laying is finished, the bone is no longer present, a professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State explained to Seeker.

The mom-to-be was estimated to be between 16 and 20 years old at the time of her death, the circumstances of her passing undetermined. The kicker in all of this? The find could also contain dino DNA.

Some pets are more attention-grabbing than others, and Atlas the rabbit really stood out when we posted a story about him back in February. The seven-month-old continental giant rabbit was taken in by the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) when his owner could no longer take care of him.

The SPCA described Atlas as being about the size of a West Highland white terrier, in its call to the internet for a new home for the sizable bunny.

The giant bundle of rabbit did not last long on the open adoption market, however. Good news came just a month later, when the SPCA announced Atlas had found a new home.

March 2016 brought news of a Pleistocene puppy.

It might resemble a giant clod of dirt, in the photo above, but zoom in a bit and you can see the paws of a dog -- a 12,400-year-old dog, according to scientists who found the animal frozen in permafrost in Tumat, in the Sakha Republic of Russia. The remains were found close to a known human settlement area of the same vintage, which caused researchers to suggest the puppy may have been a pet.

Of particular interest to the scientists was the animal's brain, which they reported was 70 to 80 percent intact.

"We can say that this is the first time we have obtained the brain of a Pleistocene canid, Moscow researcher Pavel Nikolsky told the Siberian Times.

We hope you enjoyed this look back. It's time now to move on. We'll see you back here next year!
The end of December is the traditional time for year-in-review roundups of all sorts. They pop up online like strange perennial media flowers as we take stock of the year. For this year's look back at technology in 2016, we decided to fiddle with the dials on the wayback machine and take the long view. Bouncing off five busy areas of technology in 1916, we check in on what was happening with phones, computers, cars, weapons and appliances exactly 100 years ago. There's nothing like a full century to lend perspective. Telephone to Mobile Phone

Science fiction writers have a pretty good track record of prognostication when it comes to future technology. But the utter ubiquity of the mobile phone is a development that slipped under everyone's radar. Estimates suggest there are more than 4 billion mobile phones in use and the average device, circa 2016, is millions of times more powerful than the computers NASA used to send astronauts to the moon. While there were no earthshaking innovations with new mobile phone models in 2016, technical specs on storage and battery life continued to rise steadily, and Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 phones introduced exciting new detonation options. (For a taste of the future, how about a cell phone that talks to your contact lenses?) Yes, phones have come a long way. It turns out that phones were making big news in 1916, too. Long-distance telephone networks had already connected big cities like Boston and Chicago, but the first official transcontinental telephone call was placed just a year earlier, in 1915. Alexander Graham Bell, in New York City, dialed up his assistant Thomas Watson, 2,500 miles away in San Francisco. According to lore, Bell repeated the words from his famous first phone call by saying, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you," Bell said. Watson's reply: "It will take me five days to get there now!" Always with the funny, those guys. By the end of 1916, AT&T has established full transcontinental telephone service. Punch Card to Supercomputer

Computer systems in 2016 advanced in every direction, but we're in the Information Age after all, so that's been the case for several decades now. In June, China unveiled what's generally acknowledged as the world's most powerful supercomputer. The Sunway TaihuLight can perform 93 petraflops (quadrillions of calculations per second) on the standard benchmark tests for these things. With more than 10 million processors, depending on how you do the math, the world's fastest computer is particularly useful for advanced climate and weather modeling. Of course, computers as we know them today didn't exist 100 years ago, but there were several semi-automated, electromechanical tabulating systems in use. These mechanisms processed binary data by use of punch cards, in which numbers are incremented by the presence or absence of a hole at a particular coordinate. The 1916 U.S.Census used a punch card system invented by Herman Hollerith and his recently consolidated Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR). Eight years later, the company would be renamed International Business Machines Corporation, or IBM. Ford Model T to Driverless Car

The year 2016 will be remembered as a big one for the advent of driverless cars. In September, Uber deployed its first fleet of automated vehicles - with backup human drivers - and the year featured strange news on driverless boats and beer trucks. By 1916, the motor vehicle (which first appeared on the scene in 1769 as the Cugnot Steam Trolley) was well on its way to making fundamental changes to society. The introduction of the Ford Model T eight years earlier brought affordable cars to the middle class and fierce competition drove technological advances. By 1916, dozens of small manufacturers were making vehicles. State-of-the-art tech advances included electric ignition and four-wheel braking. In the U.S., this period is sometimes referred to as the Brass Era, due to the widespread use of the alloy in manufacturing. By the end of 1916, around 3.5 million cars and trucks were registered in the United States. Today, there are more than 250 million cars and trucks nationwide, and well over a billion in the world. Mark I Tank to Automated Weaponry

Concerns about artificial intelligence and automated weaponry made headlines throughout 2016. Over the summer, more than 1,000 scientists and industry leaders, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, signed an open letter calling for a worldwide ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems, a.k.a. killer robots. In December, the United Nations voted to take action on the issue. In 1916, the world was coming to grips with another kind of mechanized monstrosity. World War I was raging across Europe when the first tank was deployed on the battlefield. On the morning of September 15, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, Britain debuted the Mark I tank by sending 50 of them across the muddy fields toward the German line. At eight feet tall and 28 tons, the Mark I was designed to break the bloody stalemate of trench warfare. The propulsion system was state-of-the-art, so far as that goes: a 100-horsepower six-cylinder Foster-Daimler petrol gas engine. Top speed was four mph, with a range of about 30 miles. The 10-mm steel armor plating was ostensibly bulletproof, but each bullet that hit caused shrapnel to fly in the hull, forcing crews to wear leather or even chain mail armor. Electric Appliances to the Internet of Things
The key to the material's self-healing properties? Electricity. Researchers say that the artificial skin represents the first time scientists have created an ionic conductor that's stretchable, transparent and able to heal itself. Previous materials have incorporated self-healing polymers, but were limited by troublesome electrochemical reactions that diminished performance.

Wang and a group of collaborators have developed a transparent and stretchable material that could give future robots the ability to heal rapidly, similar to Wolverine's handy superpower. According to the research team, the space-age material could power artificial muscles that mend themselves after injury or normal wear-and-tear.

Now an assistant professor of chemistry at University of Califormia, Riverside , Wang recently paid tribute to his childhood hero, in a chemical engineering sort of way.

Along with an entire generation of comic book fans, Chao Wang grew up following the exploits of Wolverine , a.k.a Logan, the razor-clawed mutant with uncanny healing powers.

It gets technical, but essentially the team found a way around the problem by throwing charged ions into the mix. As a result, the material can function as an artificial muscle - or dielectric elastomer actuator - that contracts or expands when triggered by voltage.

And the stuff can really expand. The rubber-like material can stretch out to 50 times its original length, evoking images of another comic book hero. Should the material tear or break, the two edges will reattach on their own, knitting together within 24 hours at room temperature.

Tim Morrissey, Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering with the University of Colorado, Boulder, was one of the researchers who worked on the project.

"Human skin can feel and sense a variety of different stimuli such as pressure, heat, and pain," Morrissey said. "Our material can also respond to many of these stimuli. The material could be put in high wear applications, such as hands or outer skin, and perform different sensing tasks. If the material receives modest cuts or damage, the material can heal and continue to sense just like a human's skin."

RELATED: Here's Why Your Skin Doesn't Rip Easily

Indeed, the research team ran experiments in which the new material reacted just like organic muscle tissue, moving when triggered by electric stimulation. They also showed the material mimicking the natural process of wound healing. After being lacerated, the material healed itself without any external stimuli and eventually returned to the same level of performance.

"With our material, we can construct simple systems that behave quite similarly to real muscles," Morrissey said. "Our device expands when it receives a signal. This expansion is the building block for soft muscles on next generation robots."

With further tweaks, the self-healing material has other potential applications beyond robot muscles, researchers say. The ionic conductivity properties could extend the lifetime of lithium ion batteries, for instance. As a kind of synthetic skin or tissue, the material might have uses in the medical field, too.
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Ferry service on the bay, which was revitalized by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, is now riding the wave of an economic boom, and these days public transportation by water is thriving.

The two major carriers, Golden Gate Ferry and San Francisco Bay Ferry, have seen ridership surge by more than a million passengers in the past four years to just over 5 million passengers a year.

Ridership has gone up by 72 percent in the last four years, said Nina Rannells, executive director of the Water Emergency Transportation Authority, the government agency that does business as San Francisco Bay Ferry. Its exciting.

The reason, Rannells said, is the traffic jams the current economic boom has produced on the regions highways and the overcrowding it has caused on BART. A boom in tourism has also had an impact, particularly on Golden Gates Sausalito ferries.

There is another factor as well: The commute on the ferryboats is pleasant. The morning and evening commute is the best part of my day, said Donna Brennan, who rides the Golden Gate ferry from her home in Sausalito to her job in San Francisco.

Golden Gate Ferry runs to Marin only, while San Francisco Bay Ferry operates five regular routes crossing the bay and to South San Francisco.

The ferry business is so good that sometimes the boats have to leave passengers on the dock because there isnt enough room. This happens with some frequency on the Oakland-Alameda-San Francisco run, and has become a major problem during tourist season on the Sausalito ferries, when bicycle riders crowd the boats.

On some summer weekends, passengers have a two-hour wait on the Sausalito dock. On Labor Day this year, Golden Gate had to use three boats instead of a single vessel as in years past.

The solution is more boats: The Water Emergency Transportation Authority  or WETA, for short  will add seven new boats over the next four years. The first one  the Hydrus, named after a constellation  will arrive this spring. Each of the new boats can carry 400 passengers, cruise at 35 mph and will cost $21 million.

Golden Gate, which had a fleet of four boats a few years ago, now has seven vessels.

WETAs San Francisco Bay Ferry operation just opened a new $40 million maintenance operation at Mare Island, across the strait from its Vallejo terminal, and plans a similar one at a site in Alameda.

In addition, WETA is considering new routes. One would go from Richmond to the San Francisco Ferry Building and, down the line a bit, two new terminal gates would operate just south of the Ferry Building in the space that used to house the old Sinbads restaurant.

We are also looking at possible service to Treasure Island and perhaps Mission Bay in partnership with the Port of San Francisco, Rannells said.

The longest ferry run on the bay is 26 miles, from San Francisco to Vallejo. It is run by San Francisco Bay Ferry with boats and crews operated under contract by the Blue and Gold Fleet.

The busiest ferry is Golden Gates San Francisco-to-Larkspur run, which carries 8,200 passengers every weekday.

The ferry with the fewest riders is the run from Oakland and Alameda to South San Francisco, averaging only 541 customers a day. But even that run is up 17 percent over last year.

Besides commuter services, private operators run ferry services to Alcatraz, Angel Island and midday tourist runs to Sausalito and Tiburon.

The ferry boom was a long time coming, though ferry travel has a long history on the bay. Before the Golden Gate and Bay bridges opened, ferries carried as many as 40 million passengers a year, and San Franciscos Ferry Building was the busiest passenger terminal in the country.

The bridges and automobile travel made them obsolete. The last of the old fleet of ferries that ran from San Francisco to Oakland made its last trip in 1958, and the very last of the old ferries  from Martinez to Benicia  made its final run in 1962.

But ferry advocates always saw a potential for a renaissance, and in 1970, the Golden Gate Bridge District went into the ferry business with a single boat service from San Francisco to Sausalito and back. Later, it added service to Larkspur. But the boats were expensive to operate and took a long time to catch on. They often ran more than half empty.

In 1986, service began between San Francisco and Vallejo with a single boat operation. Three years later, the Loma Prieta earthquake shut down the Bay Bridge, and suddenly, ferries looked like a real alternative for commuters.

The cities of Alameda, Oakland and Vallejo all started ferry services, and in 1999 the Legislature established the Water Transportation Agency to plan a regional system. The agency, now WETA, took over the Oakland-Alameda and Vallejo systems.

Like most public transportation, the ferries operate at a deficit. Rannells said fares pay about 60 percent of the cost, with the difference made up in bridge tolls. Golden Gates numbers are similar.

Anthony Intintoli, who was mayor of Vallejo for 16 years, had a big role in reviving ferry service in the North Bay. He saw the need long ago.

Every time I take the highways, I see that the traffic is worse, he said. The other day, I had a meeting in San Francisco and Im ashamed to say I missed the boat, so I had to drive. The trip took longer than the one-hour ferry run and I had to pay for parking in San Francisco, too.

The ferry is competitive with the car both on price and convenience, he said. The future for ferries is very bright, compared (to) the future of other transportation in the Bay Area, which is dark.

There is another dimension to ferry travel: Its more comfortable than BART or driving. Back in the day, said historian Nancy Olmsted, ferries were floating social clubs.

They still are. I love the ferry, said Tamara Tanner, a regular on the 5:30 p.m. commute boat to Sausalito. I like the fellowship on the boats, the other passengers and the ferry crews. She knows many of them by name.

They are like family, she said.

But big crowds seem to have doomed one tradition: a last-Friday-of-the-month party on the Oakland boat, with food and music.

Thats stopped, I think, said WETA spokesman Ernest Sanchez. Theres no more room.

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @carlnoltesf
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Full disclosure: Ive never stayed at Sea Ranch. But like anyone interested in design and steeped in Northern California lore, I know how it influenced everything from the architecture of individual buildings to the landscape values of our coast.

The question now, 51 years since the first buildings went up, is whether the 10-mile stretch of Sonoma County shoreline still influences what might come next. Or if it should be viewed as a piece of history, though history of the most scenic sort.

This either-or is prompted by two very different tributes to the 5,200-acre settlement dotted with 1,800 houses, perhaps a third of them occupied year-round, and a handful of commercial and community buildings.

One tribute is in Washington, D.C., where the National Building Museum is hosting The Landscape Architecture of Lawrence Halprin, an exhibition organized by the Cultural Landscape Foundation.

Halprin, a Bay Area treasure who died in 2009, was hired by developer Alfred Boeke in 1963 to craft the master plan for the former sheep ranch along Highway 1. The exhibition runs through April and highlights Sea Ranch as an example of Halprins role as a pioneer of large-scale environmental design.

The other is The Sea Ranch Songs by Kronos Quartet, commissioned by Sea Ranch residents as part of the Sea Ranch Associations 50th anniversary celebrations and composed by Aleksandra Vrebalov.

Kathleen Duncan / The Chronicle

It felt very, very natural to think about how we might celebrate the community, said violinist David Harrington, one of the founders of the avant-garde string quartet. It has always seemed like a very successful marriage of development and the environment, with a beautiful respect for the land and the place.

Some songs stand on their own as musical pieces, such as Creatures with its propulsive rhythms supposedly based on everything at Sea Ranch that doesnt come with mortgage payments or property taxes. Most, though, are laced with sounds and oral fragments that cant be separated from their source.

Numbers laces prickly strings behind resident Mike Lanes brisk reading of such statistical minutiae as the longitude and latitude of various local landmarks. In Ideas: Condominium One, Kronos spare lines emerge as architect Donlyn Lyndon talks about the origins of the first Sea Ranch building to attract national attention.

Lyndon and his wife, Alice Wingwall, live at Sea Ranch for much of the year.

Kathleen Duncan / The Chronicle

There was some resistance: Who are they? What kind of music is that?, admitted Lyndon, who has designed eight or nine houses since Condominium One and its 10 interconnected units put the firm of Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull, Whitaker on the map in 1965. The argument that carried the day was that the 50th anniversary couldnt be all about looking back to the beginning, but also toward the future. And who better to do that musically than Kronos?

Vrebalovs song cycle was performed three times last year at the Knipp-Stengel barn, an 1880 structure restored as a community gathering place. The quartet released a studio recording of the work this September, with an accompanying DVD that includes imagery and animation by Andrew Lyndon.

Donlyn Lyndon remains dedicated to the initial notion of Halprin to live lightly on the land  or with the land, as Lyndon would prefer.

There remain a number of us passionately committed to what the place is about, said Lyndon. He chairs the Sea Ranch Commons Landscape Committee, which tends to the rugged weave of natural and crafted terrains. Theres an extraordinary range of experiences here. Its not just a place to sit and look at the ocean.

Thats obvious even to those of us whose encounters are casual: driving through at a relaxed pace, glimpsing the wood houses with their sloped roofs and weathered walls amid clusters of trees and the wind-muffling hedgerows that Halprin played up in his plans. Or navigating the trails along the coast that feel both choreographed and timeless.

What you dont encounter is the long-ago sense of surprise.

Sea Ranch attracted attention in the 1960s as a place of innovation, environmental planning with a distinct California bent. Houses continue to be added, a dozen or more each year. At this point, though, its less a trend-setter than the embodiment of a particular sensibility in our past.

From my standpoint, Sea Ranch is a point in time, suggested architect George Homsey, who is stepping down from the property owners associations design review committee after 15 years. In the 1960s, as part of the firm now known as EHDD, he took part in the creation of Joseph Eshericks renowned Hedgerow Houses. Larry (Halprin) and Al Boeke and a whole bunch of people were really caught up in that beautiful landscape.

The place still casts a spell  but as a landscape being maintained, not reimagined.

And thats OK.

At its core, the triumph of Sea Ranch is that setting and structures were conceived as something integral, interlocked, with a balance to be preserved even as building sites filled in. The environment was something to be enhanced, not simply fenced off or filled in.

For many people today, this might translate to nothing more than a spot for a thunderously romantic or relaxing getaway. Yet the fact that Sea Ranch survives, with its message carried forward on gallery walls and in musical forms as well as the actual place, leaves open the chance that it can spark the inspiration for other triumphs yet to come.

Place is a column by John King, The San Francisco Chronicles urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron
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Tom Lutz has a project  he wants to visit every country on Earth. The project began when Lutz was a teenager and his girlfriends parents took her to Switzerland. Lutz, the story goes, saved up the money to fly to Europe and take her away on a motorcycle. Hes been traveling ever since. Whether for a day or a week, as of August, Lutz claims to have gone to no less than 117 countries. And wherever he goes, he writes.

Dispatches from Lutzs comprehensive travel project form the 70 anecdotes in And the Monkey Learned Nothing. Lutz listens to jazz in Chile. He rides a boat across the porous Botswanan border. Outside the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia, maimed beggars ask for money; Lutz complies, but when he wont give a local con man money, the con man tucks up his leg and pretends to be dismembered. Give me money too! The locals, including the amputee beggars, laugh.

Wherever he goes, Lutz talks to the locals. On the subway in Seoul, a woman wearing black finds out that Lutz writes books and proceeds to follow him in a perplexing state of near-silence that begins, Lutz writes, funny, like a Mr. Bean episode, and grows increasingly strange as the woman eats with him at a restaurant and follows him home to the lobby of his hotel.

Lutz exits the scene in an elevator and the woman is gone as silently as she appeared. Not one of these anecdotes, Lutz says, has an argument; theyre closer to koans than essays.

A structural metaphor throughout And the Monkey Learned Nothing comes from the titular piece, set in Indonesia. In Bali, at the top of the Ulawatu sea temple, Lutz observes a German tourist in round red glasses taunting nearby monkeys with bananas.

One particular monkey understands the Germans game, and instead of hopelessly reaching for a banana, steals the mans glasses. The German freaks out and proffers the whole bunch. In response, the monkey throws the glasses off the sea temple cliff and swings away with the bunch of bananas.

Triangulated in the monkey/German/Lutz interaction is assumed knowledge, or the guise of understanding. The German assumes he can outsmart the primate, but when the primate breaks the rules and takes his glasses, Lutz pulls back the curtain to reveal a more complicated situation.

This motif repeats in many pieces: When assumed knowledge falls away, a mystery is revealed. On the Great Wall in Mutianyu, China, a man dressed like Genghis Khan growls to tourists that they should get their picture taken with him or die. Lutz, understanding the Disneyland-esqe-Khan through his own experience of the Chinese-tourism industry (loud, bartering hawkers), says, No thank you.

Khan does not budge. His sword is real, Lutz realizes. And sharp. Lutz isnt sure where the act ends and the person begins. Through specific detail, Lutz renders the world in a guise of understanding that, once undermined, reveals greater complexity.

When Lutz says the monkey learned nothing, its no knock on a primates cognitive potential. A more compelling read on the monkeys take-away from its spectacles-shattering romp concerns Lutzs own shortcomings as observer of other people and cultures that he can see but will never fully understand. Lutz is happiest at the end of an actual road, he says, and again and again he arrives at a place where the road ends not only actually, but also in metaphor.

Founder and editor in chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, Lutz has also written several cultural histories: Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums, Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears, and American Nervousness, 1903: An Anecdotal History. In And the Monkey Learned Nothing, Lutz foregrounds himself and his identity as an American tourist.

The lack of self-consciousness is either refreshing or frustrating, depending on how you feel about an affable and slightly baffled dad pulling up a bar stool beside you and talking about his travels. The occasional oafishness can be a strategy. Bumbling around a dangerous city street with an expensive camera is an effective way to talk about crime. At its worst, Lutzs opinion is empty editorializing.

At its best, Lutzs American identity is defamiliarized and comes into conflict with his own understanding of the world around him, especially in countries where the U.S. has a complicated history, like Salvador and Cambodia. Lutz arrives with assumed knowledge and finds people living lives that dont factor him into the equation.

In these pages, Lutz has condensed spatiotemporal coordinates from a decades-long project into anecdotes. The information can be obscure, but valuable.

There is no story here, Lutz writes. Instead there is, in small pieces, and with misgivings, a life.

Hayden Bennett is the deputy editor of the Believer. Email: books@sfchronicle.com

And the Monkey Learned Nothing

Dispatches From a Life in Transit

By Tom Lutz

(University of Iowa Press; 245 pages; $16 paperback)
For a child growing up in the West, animals may talk in books like Black Beauty and in films like Bambi. But by the time we are adults, aside from some deviations like Animal Farm, we mostly stick with the humans.

Not so in Japan, where every animal and object has a voice and for any audience of any age. Ive come to realize that this panoply of dynamic characters is partly a reflection of the animistic underpinnings of Japanese culture, which is vastly different from our inherited Judeo-Christian tradition.

One effect of this cultural difference is reflected in Japanese advertising, where most products have a mascot: hello, effortlessly digested pile of human waste smiling to advertise a laxative! I think this is one reason why so many Japanese things can, at first blush, strike the Western eye not only as strange but also as that most un-PC of terms, childlike.

Memoirs of a Polar Bear, the profoundly imaginative novel by the Japanese author Yoko Tawada, translated by Susan Bernofsky, may raise such questions with readers.

The novel opens in the guileless, unpretentious voice of a polar bear, who learns to do basic tricks for a circus in the U.S.S.R. Then one day, she discovers writing. Id used language primarily for transporting an opinion to the outside. Now language remained at my side, touching soft spots within me.

The bear publishes an autobiography  and unexpectedly becomes famous.

Our heroine struggles to assimilate in the human world  she is so pale, fluffy and large. But Memoirs of a Polar Bear refuses to become a shrill statement on displacement, or a cloying book about successfully fitting in. By maintaining a control over both the surreal quality of the situation  a wide-eyed polar bear famous for her autobiography  and the frank voice of an animal, Tawada instead imparts how bizarre is the world of man, the only animal in the animal kingdom who can lie.

As the bear makes her way through life, she calmly shares her observations.

Homo sapiens is sluggish in its movements, as if it had too much superfluous flesh, but at the same time it is pathetically thin. It blinks too often, particularly at decisive moments when it needs to see everything. When nothings happening, it finds some reason for frenetic movement, but when actual danger threatens, its response are far too slow.

Tawada was born in Japan in 1960, before moving to Germany and finally settling in Berlin in 2006. With a style writer Rivka Galchen characterizes as possessing magnificent strangeness  no image or sentence is predictable  Tawada writes in both Japanese and German.

Writers addressing the cultural divide between East and West often settle around vague tropes like eternity or notions of selfhood. Tawadas fiction, though, probes our differences to a degree that feels almost molecular; its as if she is unearthing nothing less than the potentiality of the human mind at work and the boundaries separating all forms of matter.

The middle section of Memoirs of a Polar Bear is devoted to Tosca, the daughter of the polar bear in Part 1, though it is the human Barbara whose voice we mostly encounter: Id entered a realm where it was forbidden to set foot. And there, in the darkness, the grammars of many languages lost their color, they melted and combined, then froze solid again, the drifted in the ocean and joined the drifting floes of ice. I sat on the same iceberg as Tosca and understood every word she said to me.

Such digressions on animals and the nature of language bring to mind the pioneering work of Temple Grandin, who uses her autism to be the most successful architect of livestock processing facilities; she says she can see and feel the world as an animal might. Tawada seems aware of the implications of such neurodivergence. In an interview online Tawada writes:

Last year I held a seminar at NYU with the title Can Animals Think? Some of the students came from the universitys animal-studies program, and they complained, saying that the title should be rephrased as, How Do Animals Think? It reminded me very much of the feminism debates of the Seventies  How Do Women Think? Before that the question was, Can Women Think?

The third section of Memoirs of a Polar Bear features Knut, Toscas offspring, who is born in a zoo to human keepers who use him to protest climate change. Here, too, Tawada uses her singular ability to probe the boundaries between culture, language and life. Packed with scenes of snow, cold and dark, Memoirs of a Polar Bear is a compact novel, perfect for guiding the imagination inward during this dark time of the year.

Marie Mutsuki Mockett is the author of Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey. Email: books@sfchronicle.com

Memoirs of a Polar Bear

By Yoko Tawada; translated from the Japanese by Susan Bernofsky

(New Directions; 252 pages; $16.95)
Charities are changing the way they do business in the midst of a monumental explosion of wealth in the Bay Area. For some, this means acting more like the startups and tech firms from which their big donors hail. For others, facing higher costs and more competition for contributions, it means losing ground.

New tech donors, they say, want clear measurements and results  which not all nonprofits are prepared to deliver.

Most of these tech entrepreneurs started their companies to solve problems, said Abra Annes, a nonprofit consultant and charity auctioneer who works largely with tech workers and entrepreneurs. So when they see that there are some big social problems going on, they want to take the same approach; they see the problems as something they can fix.

The problem arises, experts said, when nonprofits arent equipped to respond to new demands.

This younger generation (of donors) wants to be more hands-on. They want results, they want it quantified, and they want it quickly, said Jane Sullivan, a spokeswoman for Build, a nonprofit that provides entrepreneurship-based learning to underserved high schoolers. Thats a really big shift. They want results. Theyre not necessarily thinking Were going to eliminate poverty over the next several decades. Theyre like, We want to change high school right now.

Some Bay Area organizations have been able to adapt to the new landscape of giving and are flourishing thanks to big money from tech executives and financial giants. Theyve hired data crunchers, incorporated giving events like charity auctions and lavish fundraising galas, and learned to appeal to wealthy tech elites.

But many others are struggling to survive, according to a recent study conducted by philanthropy adviser Alexa Cortes Culwell and social sector expert Heather McLeod Grant on the state of philanthropy in Silicon Valley.

Locally, nonprofits run deficits above state and national averages  and 47 percent of them have less than three months of operational cash on hand, the study found.

As these groups seek to meet demand for their services, which has increased over the past five years for more than 80 percent of the groups surveyed by Culwell and Grant, they also struggle to rent local offices and pay salaries their workers can afford to live on.

The study cites several gaps in understanding between the donor class of Silicon Valley and the regions nonprofits: Many groups simply dont know whats out there or how to relate to big-money donors, the authors wrote. Nonprofit leaders dont move in the same circles as the Bay Areas high-powered technocrats and often dont speak the same language, the study found.

In talking about the world and about their work, most nonprofit leaders speak a moral language that emphasizes social responsibility, social justice, equity, and the common good, Culwell and Grant wrote. The new philanthropists are far more transactional when describing their work and their strategies. Theirs is a language of finance, of metrics, of power, of capitalism, of winners and losers.

The success of technology companies has ushered in a new class of benefactors looking to help solve social ills, Annes said. That they and their industry have been culpable in creating such disparity is also not lost on them, she added.

Some of the richest people in the world call the Bay Area home. More than 76,000 millionaires and billionaires live in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, and about 12,550 households in the region have more than $5 million in investable assets, according to regional research group Joint Venture Silicon Valley.

Meanwhile, nearly 30 percent of residents in those same counties rely on public or private assistance as the middle class continues to erode.

Homelessness, education and poverty are among the tech crowds favorite causes, insiders said.

Even still, many organizations that support efforts to aid the homeless, bolster education and lessen the pains of poverty struggle to attract dollars and attention.

I think that consciously or unconsciously, (tech workers) feel guilt for making this a bigger problem, Annes said. Trying to help these organizations is their way of saying, Hey, were not just here clogging up the streets with Uber drivers and making meal delivery easier. We have more to offer.

Some groups like Build, which began in Palo Alto as a social startup of sorts, have learned to speak techs new language.

Build hired a full-time staffer last year charged with tracking and reporting the groups impact.

Thats obviously not something that every nonprofit does undertake or has the ability to undertake, said Kristina Ver Foley, vice president of development and communication for Build. But it informs the program and points to the outcomes were seeing in a really compelling way. And that has been game-changing for Build, because that has been what these bigger-bet philanthropists are looking for us to show.

The organization also holds an annual gala during which tech executives, venture capitalists and other industry insiders get to meet the children their money goes to support  at-risk high schoolers who are learning the ins and outs of entrepreneurship while being encouraged to stay in school and prepare for college.

Galas, Annes said, are widely popular among the Bay Areas upper crust. Successful galas, she has found, tend to center on celebrating the achievements or philanthropy of someone who is well connected, someone who will bring their friends, colleagues and peers to the gala, where they, too, will donate to the cause at hand.

Several local institutions credit big donors for keeping them afloat, including Illuminate the Arts, the nonprofit behind the Bay Lights art project; the Golden Gate National Conservatory; SFJazz; and the California Academy of Sciences.

Galas are like the ultimate first date, Annes said. You have to make them fall in love with you every year, all over again. While also getting new people to fall in love with you for the first time. Successful nonprofits get really good at this.

These big-bet events can result in big-number donations.

Annes estimates that on a given gala night, she might see anywhere from $300,000 to nearly $1 million in charitable giving.

Of course, not all organizations can afford to host annual galas.

Thats why, some nonprofit organizers believe, nonprofits seeking to accomplish similar goals may start pairing up to combine forces and appeal to donors desire to solve big problems quickly and comprehensively.

Culwell and Grant, the authors of the Silicon Valley philanthropy study, offered more immediate solutions, concrete steps meant to bridge the so-called empathy gap between nonprofits and wealthy tech executives.

When you have a big-bet donor coming to you and saying, How can we fix this?, most nonprofits will say, Well, we cant fix that entire problem, but we have a great solution for one slice of it, Foley said. Being able to partner in a way that theres a continuum of service or care ... I think its what funders want to see.

Marissa Lang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mlang@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @Marissa_Jae
Kale Williams

An 18-year-old man was found shot to death in Bay Point Wednesday morning after police responded to a medical call about a person bleeding.

Contra Costa Sheriffs deputies were called to the 2200 block of Willow Pass Road at 9:40 a.m. and found the victim suffering from a gunshot wound.
The suspected drunken driver who slammed head-on into a familys car in San Jose on Christmas morning, killing herself and a 14-year-old boy, had been wanted on a misdemeanor DUI warrant, according to officials.

Jessica Zamora, 25, was behind the wheel of a 2012 Chevrolet Malibu that crossed into oncoming traffic while heading west on Capitol Expressway near Snell Avenue when she crashed into a 2004 Lexus, said Sgt. Enrique Garcia, a San Jose Police Department spokesman.

Zamora, a San Jose resident, had been wanted on a DUI warrant issued weeks before the crash. The bench warrant was issued Dec. 1 for failing to appear in court for sentencing, said Cynthia Sumida, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County district attorneys office.

The double-fatal crash occurred around 12:30 a.m. on Christmas when Zamora slammed head-on into the Lexus, containing a 14-year-old boy and his parents, police said. The boy was sitting in the right backseat of the Lexus, while his mother was in the front passenger seat and his father was driving.

The teen, identified by the Santa Clara County coroners office as San Jose resident Andrew Nguyen, died at the hospital. His parents are expected to survive their injuries, police said.

Zamora was also taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Andrew Nguyen was a student at Evergreen Valley High School in San Jose, said Chris Funk, superintendent of the East Side Union High School District.

An investigation into the crash is ongoing, but police suspect Zamora was driving while under the influence of alcohol.

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Andrew Nguyen and Zamora were the 49th and 50th victims of fatal crashes this year in San Jose.

Zamoras father declined to speak with The Chronicle when reached on the phone Thursday. On his public Facebook profile, he wrote several posts about his daughter, including one that read, Dad will always love you Jess, and another that read, Please dont Drink and Drive, I just lost my daughter on Christmas day because she made a really bad choice.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
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A 38-year-old father, who was gunned down in Hayward last July, was targeted in a murder-for-hire plot by the operator of a sophisticated illegal marijuana grow operation, officials said Wednesday.

Antioch resident Adan Katami  who was on the way to pick up his 4-year-old daughter from day care on July 13  was shot to death as he sat in his truck in a broad-daylight ambush.

But while deputies arrested the gunman and his suspected getaway driver shortly after the killing, detectives soon began to unravel a more elaborate plot involving a soured relationship between business partners in a shady weed enterprise and hired killers from across the country.

Authorities said 37-year-old San Leandro resident Tikisha Upshaw, who also goes by the name Tikisha Ong, had hired the killers to knock off Katami  her former associate.

Upshaw allegedly orchestrated the hit with Berkeley resident Wessley Brown, 38, who hired Johnny Wright Jr., 46, and Chariot Burks, 25, both of Memphis, to carry out the deed, said Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriffs Office.

Around 1 p.m. on July 13, Wright hopped out of a Jeep Wrangler driven by Burks and opened fire on Katami inside his red Dodge pickup truck at Meekland Avenue and West Blossom Way, officials said.

Deputies found Katami slumped in the drivers seat, while a childs car seat sat empty in the back.

Wright fled on foot, but he and Burks were separately arrested later that day. Investigators learned the pair were from Tennessee, but were perplexed about a motive because they seemingly had no connection to the victim.

Detectives later discovered that Katami and Upshaw had been business associates in the illegal pot trade, and had some sort of falling out, Kelly said.

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Based on what we learned, she hired this duo to kill Katami, Kelly said.

Investigators raided Upshaws San Leandro home Dec. 22 and discovered a sophisticated and illegal marijuana grow operation, Kelly said.

Upshaw was charged Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court with a special circumstance murder along with other drug charges. Brown, Wright and Burks have all been charged with murder in the slaying.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
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.
SACRAMENTO  I made the worst mistake of my life.

I had a drug and alcohol problem.

I was just a kid with low self-esteem and felt hopeless.

Those are the words people convicted of felonies in California wrote to Gov. Jerry Brown in recent years, asking him to pardon their crimes. Their clemency applications describe bad decisions and reckless adolescences, lives of poverty and addiction. Drug deals. Accidental shootings. Drunken driving.

But they also show transformation through hard work, self-reliance and a devotion to living clean. Steady jobs. Responsible parenting. Sobriety.

Theyre the kind of letters that were arriving on Browns desk as he prepared for his Christmastime tradition of granting pardons to felons who have served their sentences and stayed crime-free for at least a decade. The fourth-term Democratic governor has pardoned more felons than any governor in recent state history, bringing back a custom that faded during the tough-on-crime politics of the 1990s.

With the 112 pardons his office announced Friday, Brown has granted more than 850 pardons since 2011, many for drug crimes  a stark contrast to his recent predecessors. From 1991 to 2010, three California governors granted a total of just 28 pardons.

Browns pattern resembles those of earlier governors from both political parties. His father, Pat Brown, a Democrat, and Republican Ronald Reagan each granted a few hundred pardons.

The younger Browns swing back in favor of mercy reflects a larger trend, also evident in Illinois, Michigan and at the federal level, said P.S. Ruckman Jr., a political scientist who edits the Pardon Power blog. He pointed out that President Obama has commuted more sentences for people convicted of federal crimes than any president since Woodrow Wilson nearly a century ago.

The social landscape is definitely changing, Ruckman said. There is kind of a sea change going on, with respect to attitudes about clemency and the pardon power.

Even Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez  a conservative Republican from Lake Elsinore (Riverside County) who has been critical of Browns progressive approach to criminal justice  isnt complaining. Ive looked at who he is pardoning, she said, and I cant find one particular case that jars my anger.

Theyve already done their time. Its not lessening their punishment, and they had to prove to the court that they are upstanding citizens and have stayed out of trouble. So I dont view that aspect of his role as governor as being soft on crime.

In California, a pardon does not erase a criminal record but restores rights people lose when convicted of a felony, such as the ability to get certain professional licenses, serve on a jury or own a gun. A pardon is different from a commutation, which reduces a prison sentence.

Brown, who keeps a large Bible on the coffee table of his office, usually announces pardons at Christmas and Easter. Its a reflection of his Jesuit training as well as a political custom that dates back at least to the 19th century.

In 1868, President Andrew Johnson granted a Christmas Day pardon to everyone who could have committed treason by rebelling during the Civil War. Christmastime amnesty became more common in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Ruckman said, when prison wardens would make lists of inmates who should be freed on the holiday.

Browns actions are consistent with his liberal stance on other criminal justice matters. Most recently, he backed Proposition 57 on the November ballot to give more nonviolent offenders a shot at parole.

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Passage of that measure and Proposition 47 two years ago, which moved low-level criminals out of state prisons and into local supervision, demonstrates voters leniency toward people convicted of drug crimes, also a common theme in Browns pardons. On Christmas Eve 2015, Brown pardoned actor Robert Downey Jr. for narcotics crimes he committed in the 1990s  a move that was criticized by some because Downey had donated money to Browns re-election campaign and a charter school he founded. This year, Downey and his wife gave $70,000 to Browns campaign for Prop. 57.

But celebrities and political donors are not the norm among the criminals singled out by Brown, who declined to comment for this story. Most recipients are regular people who say in their applications to Brown that a pardon will allow them to get a better job, go hunting or volunteer in a school.

I would like to be able to get a passport, wrote Kerry Cassidy, who did a year in prison for manufacturing drugs and was pardoned in 2013.

I want to be able to vote again, wrote Alan Michael Sanders, who served eight months in prison for possession of cocaine for sale and was pardoned in 2012. Although California state law allows felons who are not in prison to vote, Sanders needed the pardon to be able to vote in the state where he now lives.

Its an example of the collateral consequences of a felony record that ripple through society, said Gabriel Chin, a law professor at UC Davis. If felons cant rent an apartment or obtain professional licenses, he said, it makes it harder for them to support themselves and stay away from crime.

Obviously if somebody has been convicted of real estate fraud, then maybe they shouldnt be allowed to be a real estate agent, Chin said. But should they not be allowed to have a license as a barber or a taxi driver? Thats very different.

Chin added, Is America the land of second chances, or if somebody does something when they are ... 19 or 20, are they still going to be under this shadow when theyre 80?
Evan Sernoffsky / The Chronicle

An 80-year-old-woman returning home from a morning walk in her Concord neighborhood was sexually assaulted by a man she fought off as he tried to steal her purse, police said Wednesday.

Steven Minor, 49, of Concord was arrested on suspicion of sexual battery, elder abuse and attempted robbery following the 9 a.m. incident Tuesday near the front door of the victims home on Graymont Circle, according to the Concord Police Department.
A flyer hung in the elevator of the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine proclaiming the bevy of benefits that come when one practices free Laughter Yoga every other Wednesday. The elevator doors open onto the fifth-floor waiting lounge high above Divisadero Street. To the left, a cheery blond woman is setting up holiday decorations and laughter yoga pamphlets in an empty conference room. I am clearly in the right place.

Registered nurse and biofeedback practitioner Teresa Corrigan has been teaching laughter yoga at UCSF for seven years. If we had a pill that could do the same thing laughter does, says Corrigan, oh, my God, wed be billionaires.

Corrigan is wearing a Laughter Yoga black T-shirt she brought back from laughter yoga training in India. Shes quick to smile, and warm, like a compassionate high school teacher who takes the personal problems of teenagers seriously. I introduce myself as Corrigan arranges a dozen hospital waiting-room armchairs into a circle and chats about laughter yoga, warning me that her class might be smaller than usual. I know some of my regulars are away for the holidays, she says.

Holly Kaufman arrives with her 9-year old-daughter, Mien, and looks around the room, delighted. Weve been wanting to try this forever, Kaufman says as she signs in. A very confident Mien decorates her name tag with a reindeer.

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We are 10 participants in all, with three attendees accepting Corrigans offer to wear a Santa Claus hat for the class. Each of us is asked to wear a name tag and sign in with our email addresses. As every participant enters, the room is warned that I might be taking notes and pictures and to please let me know if that isnt OK. My cheeks redden. Ten of us, of many ages and walks of life, then take our seats and begin a yoga lesson that involves little actual yoga.

Its not a very exciting story, honestly, Corrigan confesses of how she began to practice laughter yoga. I did it for continuing education.

But she soon connected with the concept. I just really got it, she says. Its a way that lets us out of our mind in a way that might be more relatable to us than meditation.

Corrigan often brings laughter yoga to people in hospitals. She casually refers to her work as the healing arts, which is my new favorite phrase.

You can do laughter yoga anywhere, and anyone can do it, Corrigan proclaims.

The first part of UCSFs laughter yoga class is to learn the mantra of, Ho, ho, ha, ha, ha. Its a forced laughter designed to get your body breathing from the diaphragm. Our bodies dont know the difference between authentic laughter and faking it, which, when you think about it, is the philosophy behind canned laughter for TV sitcoms. Creative movement components, like prancing around the room or speaking in gibberish while paired with a stranger, are designed to get us to lighten up.

There is a strong improvisational aspect to laughter yoga. I struggle with self-consciousness. It is a challenge to get out of my head and stop worrying about looking like an idiot, especially when everyone else in the room seems to be on board with riding an imaginary elevator and wandering through imaginary hot fudge.

Corrigan oozes non-judgment. The Wyoming native welcomes anyone into her classes and doesnt bat an eye when someone arrives late or takes a break.

Yay! Thats very creative! she smiles when someone suggests we put on invisible snowshoes. We stomp around the room. A few people even pretend to have some sort of snowshoe mishap. We laugh like Santa, we stand in a circle and share a funny laugh that is then mimicked by the rest of the group, and we do a Soul Train dance line. There are many self-hugs.

Halfway though the one-hour class, young Mien Kaufman suggests we wander through marshmallows. It is only then that I am able to shed my totally unnecessary embarrassment and fully commit to the class activities. When a 9-year-old tells you to wander through marshmallows, you really wander through those marshmallows.

Our class winds down with a purposefully silly protest. We carry imaginary picket signs and march while chanting, My laughter matters, my laughter matters. Finally we walk from class member to class member and announce, You are amazing to one another.

I ask Mien what her favorite part of laughter yoga was. Laughing, she smiles and cocks her head. Isnt that the point of the class?

Beth Spotswoods column appears Thursdays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com
Paths that cross will cross again  Patti Smith

Like every great metropolis, San Francisco is a city of ghosts. Each year the passing of those who made our burg famous, or infamous, adds another layer of history to our still young city. Besides being one of the darkest political years in American history, 2016 marked the transition  as some prefer to call it  of many Bay Area luminaries. For some, these departures, along with those of internationally beloved icons like David Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen, only added to the years deepening mood of gloom. But I prefer to think these shimmering men and women are still with us, the latest additions to a growing ghost world that adds luster and dimension to San Francisco.

On the evening after Christmas, I strolled through North Beach, on the way to Gino & Carlo, where I paid liquid tribute to one of the cocktail lounges late, great denizens: journalist Warren Hinckle, the one-eyed pirate who crossed swords with the powerful and pompous, and always made it look like good raucous fun. Hinckle died in August after making it, rather miraculously, to age 77. Doctors told Hinckle after a lifetime of epic drinking with such fellow rogues as Hunter Thompson that his liver should be preserved in a jar at the Smithsonian.

A working-mans Herb Caen, someone called him. He was the last of his breed, a magazine editor and newspaperman who knew the best stories were to be found not in newsrooms or at news conferences, but in precinct stations and bars, where he could be spotted with his inevitable companion, one of a series of lowly but loyal basset hounds. The portly but dapper Hinckle cherished the basset above all other breeds because they required perhaps even less exercise than he did, and they folded themselves quietly under a bar stool.

At Gino & Carlo, which was still bathed in a post-Christmas glow (or at least I was), I was joined by his 51-year-old daughter, Pia Hinckle. One of her late fathers favorite sidekicks, she is a writer and entrepreneur who launched a successful food delivery company, the FruitGuys, with her husband, company CEO Chris Mittelstaedt. Nearly two decades later, the FruitGuys is the No. 1 supplier of fresh fruit to schools and companies all over the country  a business track record never matched by her father, who was better at spending investors money at magazines like Ramparts than at making it.

As Pia and I drank, from above the bar we were watched over by a portrait of Hinckle and Bentley, his friendly if too moist four-legged companion during his run at the old Hearst-owned Examiner. I grew up in this bar, recalled Pia fondly, as she looked around the cozy confines of the joint all done up in holiday twinkle. I still feel my dads presence here. He liked places like this, and the Dovre Club in the Mission or Reds Place in Chinatown, where everyone from garbage men to socialites hung out. Hinckle would make pit stops at his favorite watering holes with Pia and her sister Hilary, while he and his two young beasts  as he called the girls  sailed around town in the familys 1964 Chevy Impala convertible. He was a very sweet father  and fun.

Hinckle watched the rise of Donald Trump with morbid fascination as his body grew weaker and he prepared to make his exit. He stuck with the candidates macabre duel through the presidential conventions, glued to his TV in his book-lined Red Room, so named because he painted the study in every domicile where he lived a dark, royal red (despite being a proud Irishman). My dad wouldve loved to cover Trump  like Nixon, hes the perfect villain, said Pia.

Hinckle was appalled by Trumps authoritarian politics, but he marveled at his mastery of communication. As an expert headline writer, the old journalist appreciated the way Trump captured the publics attention with his Twitter word bursts. Hinckles own smart and slashing style of journalism  equal parts George Orwell and Damon Runyon  is just what we need these days. He was not above the outrageous showmanship of tabloid journalism. He used to say, If you got nothing, run it big, chuckled Pia.

Hinckle bemoaned the homogenization and corporatization of newspapers, which has hushed the saloon wallow of competitive journalism, as he wrote in one of his colorful publishing vehicles, the Argonaut. He thought journalism went to hell after Watergate, when it was taken over by graduates of elite schools who never left the newsrooms and didnt know how to connect with average Americans, Pia said. Thats what people like Roger Ailes at Fox News and Steve Bannon at Breitbart figured out  how to grab people, even if their stories arent true. If left-wing journalists could get their heads out of their asses, theres more than enough shocking stuff about Trump to report, and its all true. They just need to package it the right way.

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My dad was a fighter and brawler. He knew that the political and media establishments needed to be seriously disrupted, and he kind of admired Trump for doing that. But he also knew how to fight someone as dangerous as Trump.

Walking back to my car, the ghosts of 2016 were all around me. There was Papa Giovanni Giotta, the late founder of Caffe Trieste. And outside, at his favorite table, was the spirit of the Jefferson Airplanes Paul Kantner, huddled over his newspaper and cappuccino as always. He injected the San Francisco Sound with political grit and psychedelic soul and hell always be part of the citys chorus on high. Down the street, I made a quick stop at 12 William Saroyan Place and lit a metaphorical candle for Richard Simmons, the legendary saloon keeper better known as Specs.

May all these San Francisco ghosts, good and true, watch over us in the perilous times to come.

Chronicle columnist David Talbot appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Email: dtalbot@sfchronicle.com
Half a percent sounds like a rounding error, but in the $300 billion world of California state pensions its monumental. After years of weak earnings and timid fixes, the nations largest retirement pool is facing reality by shaving down its investment goals.

The California Public Employees Retirement System, better known as CalPERS, is dropping its target rate of return to 7 percent from 7.5. Future investments arent expected to earn as much, a realization thats overdue and comes with major consequences.

If the state pool responsible for some 1.7 million present and future retirees cant earn as it once did, then employers such as cities, counties and the state will have to kick in more. That goes for public employee unions, too. The pain will need to be spread around.

Its a result that all sides have seen coming but done little about until now. CalPERS had dropped its predicted return from 7.75 percent four years ago, a small step that only added to pressure for the latest bump downwards. Gov. Jerry Brown pushed through modest changes in state worker contracts in 2013, limiting the burden higher pension deductions to new hires. Unions have fended off the calls for tougher reforms by pinning hopes on revived investment returns. The CalPERS board, filled with labor and elected officials, hasnt wanted to provoke trouble.

Finally, the dismal science of economics is doing the convincing. Last years investment returns barely reached 1 percent. The prior year was 2.4 percent. The fund is paying out $19 billion in benefits while taking in $14 billion in contributions. As of June 30, the pension pot had 68 percent of the money needed to pay future obligations. In October, Wilshire Consulting, a prime adviser to CalPERS, said a lower return rate of 6.21 percent was likely in future years. The funds glory years when it raked in double-digit returns on its bets are likely over.

This sea of numbers makes cutting the investment expectations obvious. But the behemoth fund is still playing it cautious. Even the reduced number will be phased in over three years.

The funds leaders are taking the long view with a pool this enormous and important. The return figure can be adjusted as conditions warrant, which means that CalPERS has a duty to cut expectations if need be.

A severe whack in fund returns will only switch the pain to local communities where cities and counties now contend with budgets that already total 20 percent or more in pension benefits. These retirement obligations played a major role in driving Stockton, Vallejo and San Bernardino into bankruptcy in recent years.

There are other political choices as well. Public employee contracts that push pension payments on to local budgets must be minimized. If not, there will be pressure to break up such agreements, a strategy that will antagonize unions and create strike conditions.

A parsimonious governor is saluting the CalPERS move, which he has prodded the board to take. Theres no doubt CalPERS needs to start aligning its rate of return expectations with reality, he said. The governor is right to emphasize that the task is just beginning.

This bow to reality is probably far too modest, but its a step in the right direction. The rosy projections were setting up a long-term budget disaster.
The time is now to approve the long-awaited bus rapid transit project on Geary Boulevard in San Francisco. This critical transportation corridor cannot wait for much needed upgrades that will create safer, faster and more reliable transit for our neighborhoods.

On Jan. 4, the Geary Bus Rapid Transit projects Citizens Advisory Committee will meet to recommend a design. On Jan. 5, the Transportation Authority Board, comprised of the Board of Supervisors, will consider certifying the projects environmental report and vote on a preferred design alternative.

The Geary BRT project combines bus-only lanes, upgraded bus stations, new traffic signals, and several other street and infrastructure improvements. The project will reduce bus delays, saving transit riders as much 20 minutes per round trip.

Bus rapid transit is a globally proven solution to improve transit now and allows for the addition of rail in the future. Over the past eight years, Ive ridden and observed construction of other bus-rapid transit lines from Mexico City to Guangzhou, China, and East San Jose to East Oakland to learn from their experiences.

Our recommended plan to upgrade Munis 38-Geary bus line to bus rapid transit will not only vastly improve transit, but also help in our effort to make Geary  one of the citys designated high injury corridors  safer for everyone. A person crossing Geary on foot is eight times more likely to be hit by a car than the citywide average. The city needs to address these problems.

The 38-Geary carries more than 52,000 transit riders every day, making it one of the busiest bus corridors west of the Mississippi. Even with recent improvements, bus trips on Geary today involve extremely crowded buses, unpredictable wait times and challenging intersections.

This tailor-fitted plan for Geary is also the result of a decade-long community process that has enriched the projects design, balancing the needs of those who live, work, shop and play along this important corridor. The project includes intersection upgrades to make walking safer, street repaving, added landscaping and lighting, and modernized utilities.

Community input has resulted in a plan that extends the bus-only lanes to the Outer Richmonds Washington High School, maintains the Japantown/Fillmore District Webster Street Pedestrian Bridge, prioritizes stops near senior and other activity centers, and preserves more than 95 percent of parking within one to two blocks of Geary. It will also address the much-needed repairs on Gearys road surface.

The Geary BRT project will meet the many different community needs along the corridor, make Geary safer for all, and ensure that tens of thousands of transit riders will have fast and reliable public transportation.

Join me in showing your support for this transformational project. Our neighbors depend on public transportation and safer streets to get to school, medical appointments, shops and work. We simply cannot delay improvements to safety and transit on Geary any longer.

Eric Mar is the San Francisco Supervisor representing District One. Tell your supervisor that you support Geary BRT and want to see safe streets and reliable transit move forward at www.sfbos.org. Learn more about the project at www.gearybrt.org.
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SACRAMENTO  Sales of semiautomatic rifles in California more than doubled this year, a dramatic increase gun rights advocates say was driven by the states aggressive pursuit of gun-control measures in 2016.

California Department of Justice statistics show that semiautomatic rifle purchases rose from 154,000 weapons registered with the state in 2015 to 365,000 registered with the state between Jan. 1 and Dec. 9 this year. The year began with state lawmakers returning to session vowing to tighten gun-control laws in the wake of last Decembers San Bernardino massacre.

California gun store owners say they expect the 2016 sales numbers to climb even more due to a spike this month in sales of semiautomatic rifles with so-called bullet buttons from customers rushing to get their hands on the specially outfitted weapons before a new state law removes them from shelves Jan. 1.

The bullet button is a tool developed by gun manufacturers that allows magazines to easily detach for rapid replacement. The new law adds guns featuring the device to its list of assault weapons already prohibited in the state.

What we're hearing is that busy gun retailers have been selling pallets of rifles over the past month or so, said Brandon Combs, president of the gun rights group, Firearms Policy Coalition, who added that many gun buyers were rushing to beat the clock for buying bullet-button weapons.

Because of the states 10-day waiting period to purchase a firearm, the last day to buy a bullet-button weapon was Dec. 21. People who purchased bullet-button weapons before 2017 can keep the weapons but must register them with the state Department of Justice.

Todd Settergren, CEO of Setterarms LLC gun shop in Walnut Creek , said he saw a huge spike in sales, particularly for bullet-button weapons.

Nearly 1 million firearms have been sold in the state between Jan. 1 and Dec. 9, according to Department of Justice statistics. Thats up from 704,000 for all of 2015.

Im getting a lot of first-time buyers right now, not just men, but families and women, Settergren said earlier this month. Suppliers are running out of firearms to sell.

The bullet-button ban and other gun-control laws passed this year in the state are part of Californias arsenal of gun control laws aimed at curtailing mass shootings and keeping weapons and ammunition away from those who mean to do harm. The laws add to the states reputation as having the strictest gun regulations in the nation.

Eric Kayne/Special to The Chronicle

New laws for 2017:

Limit whom gun owners can lend their weapons to; allowing only for lending to family members.

Create new criminal punishments for falsely reporting a gun lost or stolen. Lawmakers said the law is needed to fight gun traffickers who claim guns are lost or stolen when a weapon is linked to them.

Require gun owners, starting in July, to report a gun lost or stolen to law enforcement within five days of realizing the weapon is missing.

Make it illegal to possess a large-capacity magazine beginning in July. Previously, only buying or selling large-capacity magazines was illegal. The new law will make it illegal to possess magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Anyone who owns a large-capacity magazine will be required to destroy it, surrender it to law enforcement or take it out of the state.

Require law enforcement officers to lock their firearms in a box in the trunk when exiting their vehicles.

Many aspects of new gun-control laws and the voter-approved Proposition 63, also known as Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsoms Safety for All ballot initiative, will go into effect in 2018 and 2019.

Beginning in 2018, for example, ammunition dealers who sell more than 500 rounds a month will be required to apply for a license from the state. Also, people who want to purchase ammunition will have to undergo a background check beginning in 2019.

Also in 2018, the state will update a law that requires people who are barred from owning guns, due to serious or violent offense convictions, to provide the court proof that they got rid of their weapon.

Violence prevention groups say some of the states gun-control measures have been discussed for more than a year and that some of the biggest changes  such as background checks for ammunition purchases  were purposefully given delayed start dates to give the state time to educate gun owners about the new restrictions.

It was a mass shooting by terrorists at a San Bernardino holiday party that left 14 people dead and 22 injured on Dec. 2, 2015, that drove California lawmakers to put talk into action.

Ari Freilich, a staff attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in San Francisco, which helped write Prop. 63, said that while there are quite a few new restrictions, the new gun laws should not come as a surprise.

These are lethal weapons, Freilich said. These are ideas that were talked about in the Legislature and with California voters for over a year. The biggest changes will be implemented over time so we can get the word out. These arent radical new proposals, but they implement what we think are smart, targeted regulations to bring accountability to gun sales in California and to encourage responsible ownership.

Freilich said he expects the success gun-control measures had last year will mean lawmakers will push for other long-sought measures when introducing bills in 2017.

We can expect the momentum for gun reform will continue in California, he said.

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez
The two-story home on Joo Chiat Terrace is packed with porcelain, jewelry, silver, clothing, shoes, and intricately carved display cases. A woman prepares tea in the kitchen. Her husband dusts the colorful tiffin carriers stacked on the stairwell. Their son, Alvin Yapp, cant keep still as he describes the house.

Which also is a museum.

When I was growing up, I didnt know what it was like to be Peranakan, Yapp says, perching on a chair inlaid with mother-of-pearl in the front of the house in Singapores Joo Chiat neighborhood. Im not full Chinese, but because multiethnic cultures werent emphasized, I felt like something less.

At 15 years old, he was inspired to learn more about his Peranakan heritage. I began collecting, and it helped me understand the culture.

In a city-state that tends to emphasize its hyper-modern, glitzy skyline and its complex collections of cultures, it can be difficult to find Singapores deeper roots. The Joo Chiat and Katong neighborhoods, however, are the countrys most dense enclaves of Peranakan life  past and present.

Strolling among the pastel shophouses, past women dressed in sarong kebayas (a traditional blouse-dress combination with elaborate costume embroidery), Im seeking to find out not just if the 400-year-old Peranakan Chinese culture is still thriving here, but whether experiencing it offers a different, older view of Singapore that most visitors never see  or realize the significance when they do.

And while, in many cases, learning about a culture is limited to museums and galleries, Singapores living Peranakan world cant stay contained in a building  even a brightly colored shophouse.

Peranakan Chinese, or Straits Chinese, in Singapore can trace their origins to 15th century Malacca, where their ancestors were Chinese traders who married Malay women. Peranakan, meaning locally born in Malay, was used to distinguish early from later immigrants.

While many of the Straits Chinese have assimilated into the broader Chinese community, they retain distinctive cultural traits  most notably in their traditional dress and their cuisine, which features strong Malay and Indonesian influences with its use of spices and coconut milk.

One of the most extensive introductions to this culture is at the Peranakan Museum. It is here  as I duck into galleries covering language, fashion, weddings, religion, public life and food  that I learn that while Chinese Peranakans are the majority, there are also Peranakan communities of other ethnicities in Southeast Asia, including Arab, Indian and Eurasian.

Many pieces in the museum come from family donations. The addition of the owners photo next to a display adds a personal touch to the different styles of sarong kebaya, which illustrate how the silhouette of the dress style changed over time with shifting notions of fashion and femininity.

Another step into the Peranakan past is at the Baba House, one of Singapores last remaining untouched Straits Chinese houses. Baba is an honorific term for a Peranakan male, while Nyonya is used to distinguish Peranakan females. Once home to descendants of 19th century Chinese shipping tycoon Wee Bin, this home has been restored to showcase the domestic culture of the Peranakan in context.

As my tour moves from the first (reception) hall to the second (ancestral) hall, and on to the kitchen in the belly of the home, the display of household items allows me to see more easily how some belongings may suggest the familys affluence, but the mix between rare and common items are as varied as the Peranakan blend of cultures.

Asia Images/Getty Images/AsiaPix RF

My hands are full with containers of liquid beet root, carrot, pandan and suji leaves, blue pea flower, and coconut milk. This rainbow of colors (red, orange, green, blue and white) counts among the key ingredients for kueh lapis  nine-layer cake. As I help his mother assemble the ingredients, Edmond Wong explains why I shouldnt just bite into the popular snack without a second thought.

The real Peranakan way to enjoy kueh lapis is to savor it layer by layer, he says. It reminds you that life is best enjoyed moment by moment.

While there are nearly endless opportunities to sample Peranakan food  a combination of Chinese cuisine with influences from Malays, Indonesians, Thais, Indians, Portuguese, Dutch and English  one of the best ways to get an in-depth taste is to participate in a cooking class.

Wong is a third-generation family member behind Kim Choo Kueh Chang, a maker of traditional Nyonya rice dumplings and snacks, and the companys workshops in cooking and bead work provide a more extensive look into the Straits Chinese culture.

The spicy cuisine is named after Peranakan women. Nyonya recipes are passed from generation to generation, and the women in the family are expected to master them.

Theres so much in the Peranakan heritage thats not written, says Singaporean cooking grande dame, Violet Oon. That includes recipes. If you are cooking with a Nyonya, you learn the dish on the spot.

As I frantically scrawl recipe notes while helping to make the kueh lapis, I suppose Im cheating by not committing them to memory. But between laying banana leaves in the bottom of the pan, mixing the rest of the ingredients, and pouring layers of color to set and steam for five minutes each, its more than likely Ill forget how to make this at home unless I write it all down.

When the kueh is ready and displayed on a turquoise and pink plate, Wong explains that the phoenix on Peranakan pottery represents the passing on of culture through the matriarchal side, as opposed to the patriarchal dragon on Chinese pottery.

I peel the kuehs top layer first, enjoying life as it should be, Peranakan style.

Jill K. Robinson/Special to The Chronicle

If the Peranakan Museum and Baba House are a little akin to snorkeling, in terms of allowing a broad understanding of the Straits Chinese culture in Singapore, the Intan is like scuba. Having Yapp as a personal guide through his collection helps understand both past and present Peranakans.

Peranakan Chinese culture is a mix of Chinese and local culture with European influence, which you see in our language, our attitude, and our material items, says Yapp. The ladies wear these beaded shoes, called kasot manek, and the beads would have originally come from France, the motifs and designs began as European flowers, but the slip-on shoes are a little short, so to keep them on, the ladies would have to shuffle in whats known as a Nyonya gait.

The beaded shoes at the Intan are lined up in a rainbow of colors as if a perch of tropical birds. And in fact, the bright colors of Peranakan clothing and porcelain are because were tropical, according to Yapp.

But despite the rich display of hues, jewelry did not follow that trend. Victorian fancy gold and diamonds were considered everyday wear for wealthy Nyonyas. However, silver and pearls were favored for funerals  a practice thats still generally followed today.

Although much of Yapps collection is from earlier times in Peranakan history, he maintains that the culture is more alive now than its ever been.

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We are Asians, but we are not your typical Asians, nor are we completely Westerners, he says. Historically, at home we are very Malay. When we went to work, we would put on a Chinese suit. And then, when it came to celebrations, we wore bow ties and drank Champagne like Europeans.

As we talk, other visitors pass through Yapps museum-home  less than 2 miles from Singapores thoroughly modern downtown core, with its modern-art skyscrapers and gleaming plazas  soaking up the history and tropical colors from the shoes, the clothing and the Phoenix displayed on porcelain bowls stacked on the family altar.

More than the sum of its parts, Peranakan culture is one of Singapores essential elements, a flavor and color without which the rainbow-like kueh lapis wouldnt taste the same. You just have to find the layers.

Jill K. Robinson is a Half Moon Bay freelance writer. Email: travel@sfchronicle.com. Twitter and Instagram: @DangerJR

If you go

Getting there

Daily direct flights from San Francisco to Singapore on United Airlines began in June, cost about $1,200 and take nearly 16 hours. In October, Singapore Airlines began offering a daily nonstop on this route, as well. Other airline options require connections.

Where to stay

Hotel Indigo Singapore Katong: 86 East Coast Road, Singapore. +65 (6) 723-7001, www.ihg.com/hotelindigo/hotels/us/en/singapore/sinki/hoteldetail. Housed in the former Joo Chiat police station, this hotel honors local Peranakan roots in its old-school fixtures and colorful decor. Rates start at about $129 per night.

Hotel Vagabond: 39 Syed Alwi Road, Singapore. +65 (6) 291-6677, www.hotelvagabondsingapore.com. This glamorous boutique hotel with Art Deco roots provides a home base in Kampong Glam, near the citys Little India district. Rates start at about $182 per night.

Where to eat

National Kitchen by Violet Oon: 1 St. Andrews Road No. 02-01, National Gallery Singapore, Singapore. +65 (9) 834-9935, www.violetoon.com/national-kitchen-by-violet-oon-national-gallery-singapore. Grande dame of Singaporean cooking Violet Oon learned the dishes of her Peranakan heritage from aunts and grand aunts. Menus lean toward authentic Peranakan cuisine. Entrees about $8-$29.

House of Peranakan Petit: 42 Eng Hoon St., Singapore. +65 (6) 222-1719, www.houseofperanakan.com.sg. The newest of three Peranakan restaurants run by the Seah family, this intimate spot in Tiong Bahru serves traditional Nyonya cuisine. Entrees about $8-$14.

Lynnettes Kitchen: www.lynnetteskitchen.com. These home dinner parties are hosted by Singapore Symphony Orchestra violinist Lynnette Seah, and include a variety of dishes, including Peranakan favorites. All night, a Peranakan man kept muttering, This is better than my grandmas. Six-course dinners (including dessert) for about $84 per person.

What to do

The Intan: Joo Chiat, Singapore. +65 (6) 440-1148, www.the-intan.com. This Peranakan home-museum is run by Alvin Yapp, an antiques collector. Personal tours make the experience a deep dive into the culture. One-hour tours include tea and refreshments and are about $45 per person (minimum six people), or $85 per person for two people.

Baba House: 157 Neil Road, Singapore. +65 (6) 227-5731, cfa.nus.edu.sg/visit/nus-baba-house. Once the ancestral home of shipping tycoon Wee Bin, this prewar terrace house is one of the few traditional Peranakan shophouses in Singapore with its interiors still intact. Tours are free, but advance booking is required.

Peranakan Museum: 39 Armenian St., Singapore. +65 (6) 332-7591, www.peranakanmuseum.org.sg. This museums galleries illustrate the cultural traditions and distinctive visual arts of Peranakan communities in Southeast Asia. Admission: $7 adult, $4 students and seniors, free for children 6 and under.

More Information

Singapore Tourism Board: www.yoursingapore.com

Side Trips

While museums are a great help in understanding the history and traditions of Peranakans, its important to remember that the culture is alive, not merely something to view in museums and shops. Get an inside peek at modern-day Peranakan culture with experiences offered by two Peranakan-owned boutique shops located side-by-side on East Road Road in Katong.

At Kim Choo Kueh Chang, shoppers can buy Peranakan Chinese porcelain wares, clothing and food. The shop is especially well-known for delicious, savory Nyonya dumplings, sticky rice packages (with a choice of other fillings, from pork to chili prawn) wrapped in fragrant pandan leaves. The shop is also where you can find Raymond Wong, in-house fashion designer (who recently created a shawl for Michelle Obama), if youre looking to customize your kebaya. Go deeper yet with a workshop at the artist residence in Joo Chiat, where you can learn Peranakan beading techniques or cook traditional cuisine from Itek Tim to nine-layer kueh.

At Rumah Bebe, shop for porcelain, jewelry, clothing and food, or take a private tour that includes a beading demonstration, dressing up in Nyonya attire, and tasting Peranakan savory snacks. Beginner classes are also offered for those who want to learn Nyonya beading style and make their own creations. Even if you have excellent eyesight, extended time working with the little beads may make you wish you had glasses.

Kim Choo Kueh Chang: 109 East Coast Road, Singapore. +65 (6) 741-2125, www.kimchoo.com.

Rumah Bebe: 113 East Coast Road, Singapore. +65 (6) 247-8781, www.rumahbebe.com
Ransom is a perfectly adequate, by-the-numbers broadcast TV thriller. There are a lot of shows just like it, some better, some worse, and they help pay the bills for broadcast networks.

Thats about the only reason Ransom exists. The show has a special premiere on Sunday, Jan. 1, before moving to its regular Saturday time slot Jan. 7. Even in the time-shifting era, Saturday is still considered like Gods waiting room for shows that the networks arent all that high on.

Luke Roberts stars as Eric Beaumont, a specialist in crisis and hostage negotiations, loosely based on the career of Laurent Combalbert. Beaumonts core team includes Zara Hallam (Nazneen Contractor) and Oliver Yates (Brandon Jay McLaren). In essence, this could have been easily mistaken for CSI: Kidnapping.

The pilot episode involves the cold case of a boy kidnapped as a toddler. After several years, kidnappers notify the boys parents that they have him and will release him for a $5 million ransom.

The premiere episode is less about Beaumont getting the kid back and more about setting the details of the shows premise. A young woman named Maxine Carlson (Sarah Greene) has been rejected for employment by Beaumont but isnt about to give up. Although shes been offered major jobs in security and the law, she only wants to work for Beaumont and insinuates herself into his current case to get him to hire her.

She has reasons for wanting the job beyond the need to pay the rent, and as the episode ends, it becomes more about who she is and why she wants to work for Beaumont than actually saving the kid from being killed by kidnappers. Accordingly, it is oddly devoid of drama.

The series was created by Frank Spotnitz, creator of Amazons Man in the High Castle, and David Vainola, and is a multinational production with participation from French, Canadian, German and U.S. entities. Maybe it will play better in other countries than it does in the U.S., where it feels pretty run of the broadcast mill.

David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and the TV critic of The San Francisco Chronicle and co-host of The Do List every Friday morning at 6:22 and 8:22 on KQED FM, 88.5 FM in San Francisco, 89.3 FM in Sacramento. Follow him on Facebook. Email: dwiegand@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @WaitWhat_TV

Ransom: Dramatic series. Special premiere 8:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 1; time slot premiere 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 7, on CBS.
The owners of a statewide chain of sleep clinics based in the South Bay have agreed to pay $2.6 million to settle the governments claim that they defrauded the Medicare program.

The U.S. attorneys lawsuit against Bay Sleep Clinic, its owners and related companies followed a private suit filed in 2012 by a former Bay Sleep technician, Elma Dresser. She will receive about $545,000 of the settlement under a federal whistle-blower law, the U.S. attorneys office said Wednesday.
Rabbi Peretz Mochkins Hanukkah is starting to shine a little brighter after a kind stranger 3,000 miles away sent him a 6-foot-tall, fold-up wooden menorah to replace a metal one stolen from San Franciscos Washington Square Park on Christmas Day.

The rabbi received the new menorah Wednesday after it was sent to him overnight via FedEx from the good Samaritan in Massachusetts.

Mochkin quickly organized a candle-lighting ceremony in Washington Square Park in North Beach for sundown on New Years Eve to celebrate the eighth and final night of Hanukkah.

We want the message of Hanukkah to be real. Its pretty amazing how real it was this year, said Mochkin, the rabbi at the North Beach Chabad. If nobody wouldve done that then it still wouldve been about the missing menorah than the one we got.

The shock of the six-foot, steel, 100-pound menorah that was stolen from Washington Square Park on Sunday was starting to wear off when Mochkin was greeted with a package Wednesday morning from Mitch Bogart of Sharon, Mass.

Inside was a 6-foot-tall, wooden, fold-up menorah  a Menorah To Go  that Bogart sent to Mochkin overnight as soon as he received news that Mochkins original menorah had been stolen.

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Bogart said that he happened to have the menorah that he made several years ago in his garage and he sent the fold-up overnight.

It was unbelievable, said Mochkin, who put the menorah together with his five children. The world was as small as I was hoping it was.

And he plans on keeping the gift forever, Mochkin said, adding that he was already making plans to paint it with water resistant coating to preserve the wood.

Meanwhile, police reported little progress in the investigation of the menorah theft, saying no suspects have been identified in the case.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
ZHENGZHOU, China  A vast, boxy customs center acts as a busy island of commerce deep in central China.

Government officers race around wooden pallets piled high with boxes  counting, weighing, scanning and approving shipments. Unmarked trucks stretch for more than a mile awaiting the next load headed for Beijing, New York, London and dozens of other destinations.

The state-of-the-art facility was built several years ago to serve a single global exporter: Apple, now the worlds most valuable company and one of Chinas largest retailers.

The well-choreographed customs routine is part of a hidden bounty of perks, tax breaks and subsidies in China that supports the worlds biggest iPhone factory, according to confidential government records reviewed by the New York Times, as well as more than 100 interviews with factory workers, logistics handlers, truck drivers, tax specialists and current and former Apple executives. The package of sweeteners and incentives, worth billions of dollars, is central to the production of the iPhone, Apples best-selling and most profitable product.

It all centers on Zhengzhou, a city of 6 million people in an impoverished region. Running at full tilt, the factory here, owned and operated by Apples manufacturing partner Foxconn, can produce 500,000 iPhones a day. Locals now refer to Zhengzhou as iPhone City.

The local government has proved instrumental, doling out more than $1.5 billion to Foxconn to build large sections of the factory and nearby employee housing. It paved roads and built power plants.

It helps cover continuing energy and transportation costs for the operation. It recruits workers for the assembly line. It pays bonuses to the factory for meeting export targets.

All of it in support of iPhone production.

We needed something that could really develop this part of the country, said Li Ziqiang, a Zhengzhou official. Theres an old saying in China: If you build the nest, the birds will come. And now, theyre coming.

U.S. officials have long decried Chinas support of its state-owned companies, calling the subsidies and other aid an unfair competitive advantage in a global marketplace. But the Zhengzhou operation shows the extent of Chinas effort to entice overseas multinationals to set up production in the country.

Local and provincial officials have courted manufacturers with incentive packages that make it easier and cheaper to do business. Beijing, for decades, has encouraged such efforts at the national level, by developing special economic zones that offer tax breaks to multinationals and exempt them from costly and cumbersome rules.

In this way, China is not unlike other countries, including the United States, where states and cities vie for companies. To compete in the era of globalization, multinationals, which face pressures from shareholders and customers, must seek the best opportunities, increasingly by relying on a highly interconnected supply chain spread across the world.

In China, the competition for companies is secretive and rarely exposed to public scrutiny or debate  and it is often focused on manufacturing partners, rather than multinationals themselves.

While Apple came later than many technology companies, it now generates nearly a quarter of its revenues from sales in China and has some of the fattest profit margins in the business. As such, the Zhengzhou operation provides an especially illustrative look at Chinas importance to U.S. technology companies  and specifically iPhone production and, more recently, Apples consumer sales.

A 32-gigabyte iPhone 7 costs an estimated $400 to produce. It retails for roughly $649 in the United States, with Apple taking a piece of the difference as profit. The result: Apple manages to earn 90 percent of the profit in the smartphone industry worldwide, even though it accounts for only 12 percent of the sales, according to Strategy Analytics, a research firm.

It is difficult to tally the total value of government benefits for the Zhengzhou operation or to determine the exact effect on the profit of Foxconn or Apple. The subsidies arent disclosed by the Chinese government or Foxconn. They arent available in public records. And Apple says it was not a party to Foxconns negotiations.

As Chinas largest private employer, Foxconn, a Taiwanese company, has enormous leverage in the negotiations for those incentives. The companys size and scale is connected to Apple. Foxconn is Apples largest supplier. Apple is Foxconns largest customer.

The two companies are intertwined in Zhengzhou. When the factory opened, Apple was Foxconns only customer here. Even now, the U.S. technology company accounts for almost all of the production at the Zhengzhou plant, where about half of the worlds iPhones are made. Apple is also the main exporter using the customs facility here.

A growing backlash against globalization puts Apple and other big multinationals directly in the sight lines of two increasingly combative giants: the United States and China.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to bring down the full force of the government on U.S. companies that move jobs overseas, threatening punitive tariffs on the goods they sell back at home. Apple has been a frequent target of Trump.

China, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, is growing less tolerant and more suspicious of Western influence, particularly U.S. technology companies and the huge influence they have over Chinese consumers. A state-owned publication called Apple one of the guardian warriors that have seamlessly penetrated China and may pose a threat to national security.

China, no longer content with just being the worlds factory floor, is moving aggressively to develop its own technology giants. Beijing is pressuring local governments to cut subsidies that the country encouraged just a few years ago. And big exporters, courted and protected for decades by Beijing, now face broad scrutiny.

Regulators shut down Apples iTunes Movies and iBooks Store last spring. The Chinese authorities fined the Cupertino company for failing to pay taxes. And Apple went through a national security review in China for the iPhone 6, delaying its release in the country.

Apple is now engaged in the corporate version of shuttle diplomacy. In December, CEO Tim Cook, along with other Silicon Valley executives, met with Trump in New York, part of an effort to build bridges with the incoming administration. It followed a similar goodwill tour in China in August, when Cook sat down with the countrys vice premier at Zhongnanhai, the governments walled leadership compound in what was once part of Beijings Imperial City.

The two countries are playing a high-stakes game.

Apple, like many multinationals, depends on a vast global supply chain that includes multiple companies and countries, each with its own expertise and advantages  a complexity that is often lost in the political debate over trade. The iPhone is a collection of intricate parts that are made around the world and assembled in China, spurring employment in many countries; Apple says it supports 2 million jobs in the United States.

As China and the United States both brandish a new form of economic nationalism, they risk disrupting the system, without necessarily achieving their goals. And multinationals and their manufacturing partners would face serious financial trade-offs.

As the Zhengzhou operation shows, China not only provides a large pool of labor; it also offers incentives that would be difficult to replicate in the United States or anywhere else. The benefits in Zhengzhou flow through the production process for the iPhone, from the factory floor to the retail store.

Foxconn receives a bonus when it meets targets for exports. Those subsidies, according to the government records, totaled $56 million in the first two years of production, when the factory was exclusively dedicated to the iPhone.

The Zhengzhou government eliminated corporate taxes and value-added taxes that Foxconn pays for the first five years of production; they are half the usual rate for the next five. The city lowered Foxconns social insurance and other payments for workers, by up to $100 million a year.

The customs operation is also in a so-called bonded zone, an area that China essentially considers foreign soil, subject to different import and export rules. This setup allows Apple to sell iPhones more easily to Chinese consumers.
TOKYO  In the months before she jumped to her death from a company dormitory last Christmas, a young employee at a Japanese advertising agency told friends on Twitter of enduring harassment and grueling long hours on the job.

Theyre making me work Saturdays and Sundays again, the employee, Matsuri Takahashi, 24, wrote in one post. I seriously want to end it all.

Its 4 a.m. My bodys trembling, she said in another. Im going to die. Im so tired.

On Wednesday, the president and CEO of Takahashis agency, Dentsu, one of the worlds largest advertising firms, said he would resign to take responsibility for her death, as well as the larger problem of dangerously long work hours at the agency that has been laid bare in its wake. Before her suicide, Takahashi was putting in more than 100 hours of overtime a month, according to an investigation by labor authorities, much of it unreported and unpaid.

Japan has struggled for decades to tame the issue of excessive working hours and its consequences, including karoshi, the Japanese word for death from overwork, which gained currency in the 1980s.

Takahashis death in 2015 has led to a new bout of soul searching. It has also damaged Dentsus reputation and brought scrutiny from labor authorities and prosecutors.

We are taking this seriously, Dentsu President Tadashi Ishii said at a news conference. I offer my heartfelt apology.

He said he would tender his resignation to Dentsus board next month but would remain in his post until March to give the company time to choose a replacement.

In a government report on karoshi published in October, nearly a quarter of companies surveyed said some employees were working more than 80 hours of overtime a month. The true percentage is probably higher, since the survey relied on self-reporting.

Takahashi told her Twitter followers and family members that she not only worked too much, but that she was bullied by her bosses. The harassment, she said, took the form of faultfinding about her work and sexist comments about her appearance.

As her exhaustion deepened, she said on Twitter, her supervisors chided her for coming to work with messy hair and bloodshot eyes and told her she had no femininity.
Donald Trump wants us to dream bigger about the economic future. We shouldnt be content with the roughly 2 percent annual growth that has been the norm this century, he has said. And he thinks he can bring about the kind of robust growth of 4 percent or more that was commonplace in decades past.

But the closer you look at the math of economic growth, the more you see the inherent contradictions in trying to make that happen. The two strategies that would most directly help achieve that goal clash with other planks of Trumps economic agenda.

Economic growth can happen two ways: More hours are worked, or more economic output is generated from each hour of labor.

But if the economy quickly became more productive, it would, at least in the short run, also risk the livelihoods of some of the very working-class people whom Trump pledges to help. And the surest way to increase the number of hours worked is to allow more immigration, which would be directly at odds with Trumps get-tough stance on that topic.

In other words, if an era of faster growth is really going to arrive, it will probably involve some changes that Trumps supporters very much dont want to happen.

Low productivity growth has been one of the chronic problems of the economy in the past decade, and an important contributor to the low growth rate, even if economists arent entirely sure why its happening. If we want living standards to rise over time, we need productivity to rise.

But the connection between productivity gains and higher incomes can take time to play out. Often it means unemployment for workers whose jobs are rendered unnecessary.

And that has been especially true for the past few decades, and for people at the middle and lower end of the pay spectrum. Innovations that improved productivity have often wiped out well-paying manufacturing jobs.

These advances have made the United States richer  with jobs like designing software systems and taking medical images. But thats not much solace for former manufacturing workers who havent found lucrative or rewarding work in growing fields, a group that is at the core of Trumps campaign appeals.

Its not just manufacturing. Consider one innovation that could plausibly become a reality in the years ahead: trucks that drive themselves. Over time, that will make the U.S. economy more productive and raise incomes.

But if you are one of the 1.7 million U.S. long-haul truck drivers, making an average of $42,500 for a job that doesnt require advanced education, it should be concerning. Its plausible to imagine a majority of those jobs going away over the next decade, which will be a boon for the countless industries that rely on trucks to bring in supplies and distribute finished goods. That will raise GDP, the broad measure of economic growth.

But it would be daunting for any of those drivers who cant find a job with similar pay, especially during some lag period.

The experience with manufacturing does not give much reason for optimism that less-educated workers will have success finding lucrative jobs after a productivity-enhancing innovation the way that economics textbooks might predict.

Its possible that the next wave of productivity gains could come from industries that affect white-collar professionals more than the blue-collar workers who form the core of Trumps coalition. Think of artificial intelligence software that could one day replace doctors in diagnosing diseases (or at least make them able to serve more patients at once).

If that happens, the question will be whether those displaced workers can adapt any better than the steelworkers of 30 years ago  and if not, how to deal with masses of white-collar workers who are as disconnected from the modern economy as their blue-collar counterparts seem to be.

The simple, brutal math behind the GDP is that more people can make more stuff, and its the other central challenge of reconciling Trumps economic growth ambitions with his other policy priorities. By extension, the more people there are in the United States with the desire to work, the higher the nations economic output will be.

One major factor in the sluggish growth of the past few years is that the U.S. labor force isnt growing the way it used to. The peak of the Baby Boom generation is nearing retirement age. And unlike in the second half of the 20th century, the proportion of women who work is stable, not rising.

A straightforward way of increasing the labor force would be to increase the number of immigrants, especially those with advanced skills, whose economic output is the highest.

Heres some fun with labor force math. There are about 1 million legal immigrants per year. If you doubled the rate of legal immigration and ensured that 75 percent of those extra million people would join the labor force, it would mean a boost to the labor force of 750,000 people per year over current levels.

The Congressional Budget Office currently projects that the labor force will grow by 0.5 percent a year over the coming decade. But if you add in those extra people under this hypothetical, that rate would rise to 1 percent.

It would put a president a good bit closer to achieving an ambitious economic growth goal, all else being equal.

Of course, Trump has made hostility to immigration a hallmark of his campaign, and there seems to be little appetite for any major expansions of immigration in Congress or in public opinion, let alone a doubling.

Trump has argued that there is a vast untapped pool of U.S. workers who are not in the labor force at all, and there is truth to that. But the pool may not be as large  or have as much potential to improve growth  as he suggests.

The Economic Policy Institute, for example, calculates that these missing workers  prime-age people who are neither working nor looking for work but would be in a fully healthy economy  number about 2.3 million people. If they were successfully pulled into the job market over the next decade, they would provide only about an 0.15 percentage point annual boost.

In other words, unless Trump wants to entertain immigration policies that are contrary to his campaign messages, demographics will be a major headwind making his growth promises all but impossible to achieve.

Perhaps there is a broader lesson in all of this. Life is full of trade-offs. And so is economic policy.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.  Authorities investigating the death of an Arkansas man whose body was found in a hot tub want to expand the probe to include a new kind of evidence: any comments overheard by the suspects Amazon Echo smart speaker.

Amazon said it objects to overbroad requests as a matter of practice, but prosecutors insist their idea is rooted in a legal precedent thats as old as Methuselah.

The issue has emerged in the slaying of Victor Collins, who was found floating face-up last year in the hot tub at a friends home in Bentonville, about 150 miles northwest of Little Rock. The friend, James Andrew Bates, was later charged with murder.

Prosecutors have asked the court to force Amazon to provide data from the Echo that could reveal more clues about the night of Nov. 22, 2015, when Collins was apparently strangled and drowned.

Benton County Prosecuting Attorney Nathan Smith said Wednesday that he has no idea if the device recorded anything related to the death. But looking for clues is simply a question of law enforcement doing their due diligence.

Like any investigation, law enforcement has an obligation to try to obtain evidence of the crime, Smith said.

The device is a cylinder-shaped speaker with Internet-connected microphones that debuted in late 2014. Similar to other gadgets, it listens for a users voice and responds to commands  to play music, read the morning headlines or add an upcoming event to a calendar, for instance. The Echo can speak back to the user in a female voice known as Alexa.

The search warrant, signed by a judge in August, requests all audio recordings, transcribed records, text records and other data from Bates Echo speaker.

So far, authorities have obtained only basic subscriber and account information. Smith said Wednesday that his office has had discussions with Amazon but that the bulk of the request remains unfulfilled.

The prosecutions request was first reported this week by the Information, a news site that covers the technology industry.

Amazon spokeswoman Kinley Pearstall declined to comment specifically on the Arkansas case but said in a statement that the company will not release customer information without a valid and binding legal demand. Amazon, Pearsall added, objects to overbroad or otherwise inappropriate demands as a matter of course.

On its website, the company says the Echo streams audio to cloud-based storage after it detects the users wake word, and that it stops recording once a question or request has been processed.

Smith compared his request to routine warrants that seek a record of cell phone pings, which can be used to track a users location.

It is a search warrant for a new device, but the legal concept is old as Methuselah, he said.
The suspected drunken driver who slammed head-on into a familys car in San Jose on Christmas morning, killing herself and a 14-year-old boy, had been wanted on a misdemeanor DUI warrant, according to officials.

Jessica Zamora, 25, was behind the wheel of a 2012 Chevrolet Malibu that crossed into oncoming traffic while heading west on Capitol Expressway near Snell Avenue when she crashed into a 2004 Lexus, said Sgt. Enrique Garcia, a San Jose Police Department spokesman.

Zamora, a San Jose resident, had been wanted on a DUI warrant issued weeks before the crash. The bench warrant was issued Dec. 1 for failing to appear in court for sentencing, said Cynthia Sumida, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County district attorneys office.

The double-fatal crash occurred around 12:30 a.m. on Christmas when Zamora slammed head-on into the Lexus, containing a 14-year-old boy and his parents, police said. The boy was sitting in the right backseat of the Lexus, while his mother was in the front passenger seat and his father was driving.

The teen, identified by the Santa Clara County coroners office as San Jose resident Andrew Nguyen, died at the hospital. His parents are expected to survive their injuries, police said.

Zamora was also taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Andrew Nguyen was a student at Evergreen Valley High School in San Jose, said Chris Funk, superintendent of the East Side Union High School District.

An investigation into the crash is ongoing, but police suspect Zamora was driving while under the influence of alcohol.

Andrew Nguyen and Zamora were the 49th and 50th victims of fatal crashes this year in San Jose.

Zamoras father declined to speak with The Chronicle when reached on the phone Thursday. On his public Facebook profile, he wrote several posts about his daughter, including one that read, Dad will always love you Jess, and another that read, Please dont Drink and Drive, I just lost my daughter on Christmas day because she made a really bad choice.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
Someone who forcefully steals a car can be punished for either carjacking or robbery but not for both, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday.

The ruling in a San Diego case gave a broad interpretation to a California law that allows criminal defendants to be convicted of multiple crimes for a single act but to be punished for only one of them, the one that carries the longest sentence. The justices took a similar view in 2012 when they said a drunken driver could not be punished separately for driving with an expired license.

Thursdays ruling will subtract one year from the sentence imposed on Tory Corpening for a July 2012 auto theft.

The court said Corpening was identified as the planner of the robbery of Walter Schmidt, a dealer in rare coins. Schmidt was about to pull out of his driveway with a van carrying about $70,000 worth of coins to be sold at a swap meet when a man pointed a gun at him and ordered him to get out, the court said. Schmidt complied but then grabbed the steering wheel and was dragged down the driveway before falling.

Corpening pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years for carjacking, one year for robbery and an additional eight months for intimidating a witness in the case.

A state appeals court upheld his sentence, saying Corpening and his accomplices had taken several different actions, such as forcing Schmidt out of his van and then driving off, and had separate intentions of stealing the coins and using the vehicle to escape. But the states high court saw it differently.

The forceful taking of Schmidts van was a single physical act ... because that act simultaneously accomplished the (lawbreaking) requirement for both the robbery and the carjacking, Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar said in the 7-0 decision.

Because a single physical act served as the basis for convicting the defendant of two separate crimes, even if he intended to commit both crimes, only one can be punished, Cuellar said.

The case is People vs. Corpening, S228258.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko
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A 38-year-old father, who was gunned down in Hayward last July, was targeted in a murder-for-hire plot by the operator of a sophisticated illegal marijuana grow operation, officials said Wednesday.

Antioch resident Adan Katami  who was on the way to pick up his 4-year-old daughter from day care on July 13  was shot to death as he sat in his truck in a broad-daylight ambush.

But while deputies arrested the gunman and his suspected getaway driver shortly after the killing, detectives soon began to unravel a more elaborate plot involving a soured relationship between business partners in a shady weed enterprise and hired killers from across the country.

Authorities said 37-year-old San Leandro resident Tikisha Upshaw, who also goes by the name Tikisha Ong, had hired the killers to knock off Katami  her former associate.

Upshaw allegedly orchestrated the hit with Berkeley resident Wessley Brown, 38, who hired Johnny Wright Jr., 46, and Chariot Burks, 25, both of Memphis, to carry out the deed, said Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriffs Office.

Around 1 p.m. on July 13, Wright hopped out of a Jeep Wrangler driven by Burks and opened fire on Katami inside his red Dodge pickup truck at Meekland Avenue and West Blossom Way, officials said.

Deputies found Katami slumped in the drivers seat, while a childs car seat sat empty in the back.

Wright fled on foot, but he and Burks were separately arrested later that day. Investigators learned the pair were from Tennessee, but were perplexed about a motive because they seemingly had no connection to the victim.

Detectives later discovered that Katami and Upshaw had been business associates in the illegal pot trade, and had some sort of falling out, Kelly said.

Based on what we learned, she hired this duo to kill Katami, Kelly said.

Investigators raided Upshaws San Leandro home Dec. 22 and discovered a sophisticated and illegal marijuana grow operation, Kelly said.

Upshaw was charged Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court with a special circumstance murder along with other drug charges. Brown, Wright and Burks have all been charged with murder in the slaying.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
Like every good father, Tyrone Griffin wanted to make sure he was being fair when it came to his childrens Christmas gifts.

When his 4-year-old son had one more gift than his 5-year-old daughter, Griffin needed to make it right with a last minute stop at a Target in Hayward on Christmas Eve.

That trip to the store cost Griffin his life, when he was stabbed in front of his 4-year-old son in the toy aisle after he asked his attackers to turn down their loud, vulgar music, family members said Wednesday.

Griffin, a 36-year-old Hayward resident, was stabbed about 8 p.m. Saturday inside the Target at 2499 Whipple Road, police said.

When he overheard two men playing loud music with inappropriate language that degrades women in the aisle, he asked them to turn the music down, prompting the fatal encounter, said Yolanda Sherraine Lindsey, Griffins mother.

Not only, did he dislike the fact that they were cussing in front of his children, but he disliked the fact that they were doing it on Christmas Eve in front of the kids, Lindsey said. So they got in a fight. And they just started stabbing him.

Griffin was transported to Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, where he died from multiple stab wounds, police said.

Frankie Archuleta, 22-years-old, and Jesse Archuleta, 25-years-old, were arrested about half a mile away on the 30000 block of Industrial Parkway Southwest. Police would not say if the suspects are related.

The suspects, both residents of Hayward, were booked at the Hayward Police Department Jail on homicide charges.

They were arraigned Wednesday.

He was a beautiful son, his 54-year-old mother said. He would do anything to help anyone. Thats how he was raised. He was very polite.

Griffins family set up a Go Fund Me page to raise money to pay for his funeral.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
Local Italian restaurant chain Pasta Pomodoro has shuttered its 15 locations one day after Christmas  and let its employees know via text message, according to reports.

Workers at one of the restaurants told KTVU that the move to close all locations was sudden, and that they were unaware that the business would be shutting down.

"I understand there are financial difficulties with companies," one worker told the news station. "I understand they have to go down. But my main thing is just we obviously want to get paid, and it's just not right the way it was gone about."

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The text message alerted employees not to come into work on Dec. 26, and that all locations would be "closed for business effective immediately."

The Pasta Pomodoro chain first opened its doors in San Francisco in 1994, according to its website, expanding to 12 locations by 2000, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

By 2010, founder Adriano Paganini sold the chain when there were 30 locations open in both Northern and Southern California. Restaurants have since closed in various locations and dwindled down to its present 15 local restaurants, which were open until Monday.

Employees were told they would be able to pick up their final paycheck on Friday.

SFGATE has reached out to Pasta Pomodoro for comment, but messages were not immediately returned. This post will be updated accordingly.
We're fascinated by homes that rise above the rest in terms of popularity. Each week, we count the clicks and run down the most popular homes on realtor.com. Now, we're ready to close the books on 2016 (in all ways imaginable)so we're counting down the most popular properties of the entire year.

Nearly 365 days' worth of your clicks have been tabulated, and we weren't completely shocked by this year's winner. The country's biggest fixer-upper was the subject of one of our most popular articles of the year. Located in Texas, the mammoth structure is still looking for a buyer willing to spend $3.6 million on a home that's only a little more than halfway done.
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LOS ANGELES  Debbie Reynolds has been taken to the hospital after suffering a medical emergency one day after her daughter Carrie Fisher died, multiple media outlets reported Wednesday.

The Los Angeles Times and celebrity website TMZ, which was first to report the incident, said unnamed sources told them Reynolds, 84, was hospitalized Wednesday afternoon after paramedics were called to her sons home.
An unknown number of diplomats in San Franciscos busy Russian Consulate were among the 35 Russian government personnel who were banned from the U.S. by President Obama on Thursday and given 72 hours to leave the country.

All the expulsions were technically in response to what a State Department briefing paper described as harassment of U.S. diplomats in Russia that has gone far beyond international diplomatic norms of behavior. But the persona non grata designations were announced at the same time that the Obama administration slapped tough new sanctions against Russia for cyberattacks U.S. government officials said were intended to influence the (2016) election.

Russias brazen assault on our elections demands the strongest response from the administration and the Congress, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco said in a statement Thursday. President Obama has taken action to punish Russia for its outrageous conduct, now Congress must meet its responsibility to respond to this threat. The American people deserve to know their leaders will not tolerate Russias meddling in our democracy.

There are other Russian consulates in Houston, Seattle and New York City, but the only expulsions were from the local consulate and the embassy in Washington, D.C. While the State Department announcement was careful to separate the ousters from the sanctions linked to the cyberattacks, it likely isnt a coincidence that the diplomats sent packing come from the Russian consulate closest to the high-tech Silicon Valley.

The State Department didnt immediately identify the diplomats being expelled or say how many were working in San Francisco. All 35, department officials said, were acting in a manner inconsistent with their diplomatic status, which is political-speak for spying.

Complaints about the harassment of American diplomats in Russia have been growing for years, with U.S. officials suggesting that the behavior is a none-too-covert response to Western sanctions after Russias 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and its military efforts in and around the former Soviet state.

We remain troubled by the way our diplomatic and consular staff (in Russia) have been treated over the past two years. We have raised our concerns at the highest level, Elizabeth Trudeau, a State Department spokeswoman, told reporters in June.

Former Ambassador Michael McFaul told the Washington Post that he was hounded by government-paid protesters and that his children were followed to school, with little or no effort to disguise the surveillance.

There have been other reports that Russian security agents have broken into the homes of American diplomats and, in one case, reportedly killed the dog of a defense attache during a break-in.

Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the concerns with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting in March, Trudeau said.

We see an increase (in harassment), and we take it seriously, she said.

Despite the Obama administrations announcement, it appeared to be business as usual Thursday afternoon at the Russian Consulate in San Francisco.

The six-story building at the corner of Green and Baker streets in Pacific Heights had a Russian flag on the roof flying at half-staff in a salute to the 92 people, including members of the Red Army Choir, who died Sunday when a Defense Ministry passenger jet crashed into the Black Sea on its way to a New Years concert at a Russian base in Syria.

Flowers and candles lined a white, wrought iron fence bordering the property, in a spontaneous memorial to the victims of the crash.

Vitaly Telely, 28, of Sacramento, who moved to the United States when he was 11, was visiting the consulate Thursday to process his Russian passport. The consulate was operating the way it always does, he said.

Standing outside the building, Telely said he hadnt heard about the expulsions or the sanctions Obama had imposed.

I guess Ill read about it when I get home, he said.

Olga Chervyakova of San Jose was at the consulate with her mother, who needed help with passport issues.

I think we should be friends, she said. While were in America, we should learn from each other.

Asked about cyberattack allegations, Chervyakova shrugged. I dont believe gossip, she said. Give me the facts.

Few others were willing to talk to the reporters gathered outside the consulate, a choice backed by consulate officials.

We would ask you to please leave, said a voice from a speaker on the consulates fence as a reporter attempted to interview someone exiting the building.

When the reporter tried to pose a question to the voice on the other end of the speaker about the announced bans, he was quickly cut off.

Excuse me, sir, have you just heard what I told? No comment. Please leave this territory, the voice said.

Evan Sernoffsky and John Wildermuth are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com, jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @evansernoffsky @jfwildermuth
A restaurant in Hawaii is being battered on social media after posting a sign that said Trump voters were not welcome.

Cafe 8 1/2, an Italian eatery in Honolulu, posted a sign on its door after the election that read, "If you voted for Trump you cannot eat here! No Nazis." The restaurant was founded by San Francisco hair stylist Robert Warner and his wife Jali, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Jali Warner told Fox News that "Robert just wants to express how much he doesn't like Trump. If people take it personally or it hurts them, we cannot help. That's why we say they have [a] choice if they want to come or not come. We don't force them."

And many have chosen to express their feelings about the cafe on Facebook and on Yelp, where the restaurant now has a two-star rating and over 1,500 reviews.

"You will never see me there. Typical liberal crybaby sore loser rhetoric. My only regret is I can't give you zero stars," one person posted on Yelp. "You have bitten many hands that feed. May you go down in bankruptcy in 2017."

"I was going to go there out of pity for them, but I couldn't get past the smell and make it in the door. The smell of hate, and bigotry is nauseating, and this place is disgusting because of it," another wrote on the cafe's Facebook page.

Yelp has temporarily put Cafe 8 1/2's page on "active cleanup alert" due to the spike in media coverage.

"While we don't take a stand one way or the other when it comes to these news events, we do work to remove both positive and negative posts that appear to be motivated more by the news coverage itself than the reviewer's personal consumer experience with the business," Yelp said in a statement.

The anti-Trump sign has since been taken down.
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On a sunny November afternoon in this historic city, birthplace of the Pony Express and death spot of Jesse James, Lauranda Mignery watched her son Kadin, 2, dig in their front yard. As he played, she scolded him for putting his fingers in his mouth.

In explanation, she pointed to the peeling paint on her old house. Kadin, she said, has been diagnosed with lead poisoning.

He has lots of company: Within 15 blocks of his house, at least 120 small children have been poisoned since 2010, making the neighborhood among the most toxic in Missouri, Reuters found as part of an analysis of childhood lead testing results across the country. In St. Joseph, even a local pediatrician's children were poisoned.

Last year, the city of Flint, Michigan, burst into the world spotlight after its children were exposed to lead in drinking water and some were poisoned. In the year after Flint switched to corrosive river water that leached lead from old pipes, 5 percent of the children screened there had high blood lead levels.

Flint is no aberration. In fact, it doesn't even rank among the most dangerous lead hotspots in America.

In all, Reuters found nearly 3,000 areas with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint during the peak of that city's contamination crisis. And more than 1,100 of these communities had a rate of elevated blood tests at least four times higher.

The poisoned places on this map stretch from Warren, Pennsylvania, a town on the Allegheny River where 36 percent of children tested had high lead levels, to a zip code on Goat Island, Texas, where a quarter of tests showed poisoning. In some pockets of Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia, where lead poisoning has spanned generations, the rate of elevated tests over the last decade was 40-50 percent.

Like Flint, many of these localities are plagued by legacy lead: crumbling paint, plumbing, or industrial waste left behind. Unlike Flint, many have received little attention or funding to combat poisoning.

To identify these locations, Reuters examined neighborhood-level blood testing results, most of which have not been previously disclosed. The data, obtained from state health departments and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tracks poisoning rates among children tested in each location.

The resulting portrait provides a granular look at places where decades-long U.S. efforts to stamp out lead poisoning have fallen short.

"The disparities you've found between different areas have stark implications," said Dr. Helen Egger, chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center's Child Study Center. "Where lead poisoning remains common, many children will have developmental delays and start out behind all the rest."

In children up to age 6, the CDC threshold for an elevated blood lead level is 5 micrograms per deciliter. Any child who tests high warrants a public health response, the agency says; even a slight elevation can reduce IQ and stunt development.

Nationwide, the CDC estimates that 2.5 percent of small children have elevated levels. In the communities identified by this analysis, a far higher rate of children who got tested had lead poisoning. In most cases, the local data covers a 5- or 10-year period through 2015.

Reporters visited several of the trouble spots: a neighborhood with many rundown homes in South Bend, Indiana; a rural mining town in Missouri's Lead Belt; the economically depressed North Side of Milwaukee. In each location, it was easy to find people whose lives have been impacted by lead exposure. While poverty remains a potent predictor of lead poisoning, the victims span the American spectrum - poor and rich, rural and urban, black and white.

MAPPING LEAD HAZARDS

Most U.S. states disclose data on the percentage of child blood tests that show elevated levels of lead. Yet this data, often for statewide or county-wide populations, is too broad to identify neighborhoods where children face the greatest risk.

Instead, Reuters sought testing data at the neighborhood level, in census tracts or zip code areas, submitting records requests to all 50 states.

U.S. census tracts are small county subdivisions that average about 4,000 residents apiece. Zip codes have average populations of 7,500. In each area, a relatively small number of children are screened for lead poisoning each year.

Reuters found 2,606 census tracts, and another 278 zip code areas, with a prevalence of lead poisoning at least twice Flint's rate.

The test results allow for local analysis, pinpointing neighborhoods whose lead poisoning problems may be obscured in broader surveys.

For example: Across Maryland, 2 percent of childhood lead tests were high in recent years, just a small fraction of the rate in the worst-affected Baltimore tracts. In Flint, while 5 percent of children citywide tested with high blood lead levels, the highest rate was in the downtown zip code, where about 11 percent tested high.

"I hope this data spurs questions from the public to community leaders who can make changes," said epidemiologist Robert Walker, co-chair of the CDC's Lead Content Work Group, which analyzes lead poisoning nationwide. "I would think that it would turn some heads."

The findings, Walker said, will help inform the public about risks in their own neighborhoods and allow health officials to seek lead abatement grants in the most dangerous spots.

There isn't much federal help available. Congress recently directed $170 million in aid to Flint. That's 10 times the CDC's budget for assisting states with lead poisoning this year.

The nationwide map constructed through this analysis has empty spaces: The available data includes 21 states, home to around 61 percent of the U.S. population. Health departments in some states didn't possess the data or respond to records requests. Others wouldn't share it, saying they weren't required to, or citing patient privacy laws.

Even with these gaps, the data shows that despite broad national progress in curbing poisoning, lead hazards continue to imperil many communities.

Since the heavy metal was phased out from paint and gasoline in the late 1970s, children's average blood lead levels have dropped by more than 90 percent. That success story masks a sober reality in neighborhoods where risk abatement has failed.

"The national mean doesn't mean anything for a kid who lives in a place where the risks are much higher," said Dr. Egger.

TINY PLUMES OF DUST

St. Joseph, Missouri, is filled with old homes that for a century featured lead paint and plumbing. From 2010 to 2015, more than 15 percent of children tested in seven census tracts here had elevated lead levels - well beyond the Missouri average of 5 percent.

Dr. Cynthia Brownfield's family lives in a Victorian home on Museum Hill, overlooking City Hall. Built in the 1880s, it has restored tiger-stripe oak floors and an antique clawfoot bathtub.

As a pediatrician, Brownfield treats lead-poisoned children. A decade ago, her children were among them. Soon after moving into the home in 2006, her two youngest daughters tested high.

"It was dramatically shocking to get a call from the health department," said Brownfield, who had sought to make her home safe.

Inspectors found the home's old windows released tiny plumes of lead dust. There was lead in the tiles near the fireplace, the original stenciled wallpaper and the bathtub. The family did extensive work to fix the hazards.

Residents take pride in preserving old homes, said St. Joseph's community development manager, Gerald McCush. But many aren't aware children can be poisoned during renovations. Others ignore explicit warnings.

McCush, a certified lead inspector, says his office told one family that sanding paint off their walls was poisoning their son. "The dad said we were full of baloney," he said. "He wasn't going to stop working."

The Mignery family's situation helps explain why problems persist.

When Mignery moved into an old, affordable home, the mother of four was aware of dangers like street crime. She didn't know the neighborhood also had alarming rates of lead poisoning. Over the past five years, 20 percent of tested children in the census tract showed poisoning.

At son Kadin's one-year doctor visit, Mignery was told his lead levels were so high that, without quick intervention, he would need to be hospitalized. An inspector visited the home and found the culprit: old peeling lead paint.

The family could only afford a partial fix. "It wasn't easy having to repaint all the rooms downstairs," she said. "We want to do the outside here, too."

Children in at least 4 million U.S. households are exposed to high levels of lead, the CDC says.

'MESSED UP IN THE HEAD'

Lead continues to plague many industrial cities in the Midwest.

In Milwaukee last year, 11.5 percent of children tested had elevated lead. In a half dozen depressed North Side census tracts, about a third of tests showed poisoning from 2010 to 2014. One in 10 was highly elevated, at 10 micrograms per deciliter or more.

Childhood poisoning victim Brandon, now 20, lives with his mother DeeDee in an old two-story home. The family agreed to meet a reporter but asked that their last names not be published, citing the stigma attached to lead poisoning.

Across the street is the old rental house where, as a baby, Brandon was exposed to peeling lead paint. Health records show that before age 2, his levels reached nearly 10 times the current CDC threshold. He was hospitalized and received chelation treatment. The drugs remove heavy metals from the body and help prevent further damage, but once a child is exposed, the impact can be irreversible.

Brandon, who is easily excited, was at turns cheerful and mournful during an interview. He never finished high school and hasn't held a job. He has cognitive impairment, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and outbursts of anger. He was recently arrested after a dispute with a convenience store clerk over soda pop, and is now on probation.

"Ever since I caught the lead, I've been messed up in the head. I can't control my anger or feelings," Brandon said. "I could have been better than I am."

A mile away, in Milwaukee's census tract 88, Isaiah Martin, 18 months old, recently ingested old paint in a family home and on the porch outside, where he loved to watch a neighbor's dog. Isaiah's initial lead test, in June, showed a level four times higher than the CDC threshold.

"As a first-time mom, I freaked out," said Isaiah's mother, Shantrice, who moved her family to an apartment in another neighborhood.

Milwaukee's health department inspected Isaiah's old home and has monitored his lead testing. The city's poisoning rates remain high, but are improving as public health officials and outreach groups combat the problem.

Federal law requires owners of homes built before 1978, when lead paint was banned, to disclose hazards to tenants or buyers. Pamphlets and warning statements, however, can't make the dwellings safe. Laws that can require owners to remediate lead from properties vary across the country.

Milwaukee frequently takes legal action against "slumlords" who rent dangerous properties, said Health Commissioner Bevan Baker. He also said childhood blood screening has more than doubled in the city since the late 1990s.

The city still has 135,000 prewar dwellings with lead paint, and 70,000 with lead water service lines. Most of its poisoning occurs in a few zip codes, where Baker says $50 million has been spent to protect children.

"We need to do more," said Baker.

On a recent evening, hundreds of people lined up in a cold drizzle at Kosciuszko Park on Milwaukee's south side, where poisoning rates are also high. The Sixteenth Street Clinic, a non-profit, was giving away tap-water filters.

Among them was Rebeca Velazquez, a mother of five. Her 5-year-old daughter was recently diagnosed with lead poisoning. "I don't want to take a risk with her," Velazquez said, motioning to her youngest child, age 4 months.

TOXIC IN BALTIMORE, CLEVELAND, PHILADELPHIA

Like Brandon, many children with lead poisoning fall into a vicious cycle: Cognitive deficits breed poor school performance, high dropout rates, few job opportunities, and brushes with the law.

Last year, one man mired in that cycle met a notorious end. At 25, Baltimore resident Freddie Gray sustained a fatal spinal cord injury in a police van, setting off months of tension in the city and fueling the national debate over policing in black communities.

In the 1990s, starting at age 2, Gray lived in a row house in Baltimore's Sandtown-Winchester area tainted with old lead paint, according to a 2008 lawsuit filed by Gray and his siblings against the property's landlord. He was exposed and suffered developmental problems, the legal filings say. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount.

Gray's former home sits in an area where children's lead exposure has persisted at shocking levels, testing data shows.

In several nearby census tracts, elevated lead levels were found in between 25 percent and 40 percent of children tested from 2005 to 2015.

Cleveland has similar problems. In the city's east side St. Clair-Superior area, nearly half of kids tested in the last decade had elevated lead. The state health department refused to provide census tract testing data; the news agency obtained the information from the CDC.

"Cleveland is my home, so it's deeply personal every time we see new numbers on lead exposure in our neighborhoods," said U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Brown has pressed federal and state agencies to increase childhood blood testing rates and fund more lead abatement efforts.

Pennsylvania has a dubious distinction. The state contains the most individual census tracts - 1,100 in all - where at least 10 percent of childhood lead tests were elevated over the last decade. In 49 different tracts, from inner city Philadelphia to capital Harrisburg, at least 40 percent of children tested had high lead.

Those figures are disturbing - but not surprising - to health officials in the state.

"I believe that," said Dr. Loren Robinson, Pennsylvania's deputy secretary for health promotion and disease prevention. "Beyond the history of industry, our state has some of the oldest homes in the country."

The state's health department has partnered with schools, daycare centers and nonprofits to remove lead from properties, and is working on drafting new municipal codes to ensure rental properties are free of lead hazards, Robinson said.

'FUNDING DRIED UP'

Even in some of the highest risk areas around the country, many small children go untested for lead, Reuters reported in June. The gaps make tracking poisoned children more daunting.

In South Bend, Indiana, where health officials face a cash crunch, lead testing is in sharp decline even as existing data points to a serious problem.

In one tract there, 31 percent of small children tested from 2005 to 2015 had high levels - more than six times Flint's rate last year. The area, 1.5 miles southwest of the University of Notre Dame's idyllic college campus, is home to about 250 children. Filled with old dwellings, it has one of the highest poverty rates in town.

Dr. Luis Galup, a pathologist and the county health officer, said funds to tackle the problem in South Bend have dwindled. "We are the lowest of the low in terms of public health funding," he said.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg said the evidence that poisoning is widespread in parts of South Bend could cause public health administrators to seek more state funds or reallocate resources.

"It's an eye-opener," he said of the Reuters study. "As a community with lots of low income residents and lots of old housing, we're vulnerable ... The county health department does everything they can just to keep up with child immunizations and restaurant inspections."

The county, with around 265,000 residents, has two nurses and one environmental inspector tasked with lead poisoning prevention. Thinly spread, they conduct home inspections only when a child's lead levels reach double the CDC's elevated threshold.

Finding those children is getting harder.

Housing and Urban Development grants that paid for South Bend lead testing ended in May. For years, the local Women, Infants and Children program, or WIC, conducted hundreds of childhood blood lead tests annually. That testing, which has stopped, relied on outside funds from HUD and others.

South Bend pediatricians and the local Head Start program still order screenings, but many children go untested.

"I bet there are hardly any tests being done now," said WIC program director Sue Taylor. "The funding dried up."

Edward Brown Jr., 2, was first tested last year. He'd been living with his mother, Victoria Marshall, in a central South Bend home. An inspector found lead paint inside and contaminated soil outside.

Marshall says Edward's blood lead reached 90 micrograms per deciliter. Levels that high can be life threatening, provoking seizures or coma. Edward's blood levels have receded since he was hospitalized for a week.

Now in a new home, Edward danced around and shared applesauce with his baby sister. He has met many of the typical developmental milestones for his age. Still, Marshall worries.

"He's got a lot of energy. Some people say he might have ADHD," she said. One-in-five cases of ADHD may be linked to lead poisoning, a recent American Academy of Pediatrics report concluded.

'GETTING LEADED'

In Missouri, it's a six hour drive southeast from St. Joseph to rural Viburnum in Iron County, situated in a mining district known as the Lead Belt. Viburnum's tract had the sharpest rate of elevated childhood tests in the state, or 30 percent since 2010.

"Really? I didn't know about it," said Viburnum Mayor Johnny Setzer.

Mark Yingling, an executive in charge of health and safety at The Doe Run Company, which operates nearby mining and smelting works, said the high rates were "news to me."

Doe Run deploys safety measures, Yingling said, such as washing all of its trucks that may come into contact with lead, and containing tailings and emissions. Lead workers shower and change outfits at the end of their shifts, to avoid tracking toxins into their homes.

Health officials haven't recently informed Doe Run of any local children with lead poisoning, he said. Iron County's health department said it isn't required to provide such information, and never has.

In fact, lead contamination in the community is pervasive. The Environmental Protection Agency has mandated so-called Superfund cleanups of two contaminated lead sites in and around Viburnum.

And Doe Run and other mining firms are currently under federal orders to clean up lead contamination from 150 properties in the region and test the soil at 250 more. The order, issued by the EPA in June, says these activities should "prioritize" properties where children have had high lead tests.

Among the spots the EPA ordered to be cleaned or tested: playgrounds, daycare yards or other places where small kids gather.

For some locals, poisoning is a cost of living in this mining town. They use a colloquial term for the syndrome - getting leaded. "You can get very leaded," said Antonin Bohac, a mechanic at the nearby Brushy Creek Mine. "But I make good money."

Bohac said he was nearly taken off the job a few years ago after he was poisoned himself, with a lead level four times higher than what federal officials consider healthy for adults.

(Editing by Ronnie Greene)
California must reimburse its counties for the legal costs involved in determining whether sex offenders who have completed their prison terms should be sent to mental hospitals, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday.

A lawyer for local governments said the statewide cost would be about $25 million a year for the reimbursements, which the state stopped paying in July 2013.

If the state wants to create a new program, they also need to think about how it gets funded at the local level, said Jennifer Henning, who represented the California State Association of Counties and the League of California Cities in the case. When you dont do that, you risk (losing funding for) other services.

The case involved Californias sexually violent predator law, a 1995 statute that allowed the state to keep sex offenders locked up after their prison sentences if they were found to be mentally ill and potentially dangerous.

Although the state pays the costs of their continued confinement in psychiatric hospitals, the legal proceedings are financed by county governments  an investigation and jury trial to determine an offenders mental condition, payment of court-appointed lawyers for defendants who cant afford their own attorneys, and high-security housing for defendants standing trial.

The California Constitution requires the state to foot the bill for costs it imposes on local governments, and in 1998 the Commission on State Mandates ordered the state to reimburse counties for their costs of the sex offender program.

But in 2013, the commission lifted that order, at the request of Gov. Jerry Browns administration, because of a 2006 ballot measure, Proposition 83, that had changed the sex offender law by increasing criminal penalties, extending hospital confinement and prohibiting released offenders from living near schools and parks.

Because the costs were now mandated by the voters rather than the Legislature, the commission said, the state was no longer responsible for them.

A judge in San Diego County agreed but was overruled Wednesday by the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Diego. The court said Prop. 83, while changing some laws, had simply reaffirmed the previous requirements for jury trials and legal representation at the local level, so they remained the states responsibility.

The measure did not change any of the duties the law imposed on the counties, Justice Richard Huffman said in the 3-0 ruling. When the Legislature mandates a new program or higher level of service on a local government, the state is constitutionally required to reimburse the locality for the costs.

Henning said the amount of each countys reimbursement would depend on the number of sex offenders whose cases it handles. She said the ruling could also help local governments challenge other state-mandated costs, a potentially significant issue in view of limits on local taxing authority imposed by Proposition 13 in 1978.

Representatives of the Commission on State Mandates could not be immediately reached for comment. The state could ask the California Supreme Court to review the ruling.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko
The city may have a love-hate relationship with rideshare companies Lyft and Uber, but the locals nevertheless use the apps in spades.

This year, it seems we used Lyft at least everywhere difficult or impossible to reach by Muni trains, instead opting to digitally hail cars to take us to the Mission, Marina, and some of the outer edges of the city.
HAMILTON -- A Hamilton businessman charged in connection with the sexual assault of two girls was sentenced Wednesday to 100 years in the Montana State Prison.

Randall Bryce Walker, 46, was convicted in August of assaulting an 11-year-old girl on Valentines Day in 2015 after she confided in a day care worker.

During a subsequent investigation, allegations arose that Walker had previously assaulted another girl over a four-year period until she was 12.

That girl  now a 27-year-old woman  testified against Walker during a four-day-long trial. The jury took two hours to find Walker guilty of four charges involving the two girls.

Walker, the owner of Frontier Auto Plus, has been out on bail since the conclusion of the trial.

On Wednesday, nearly 40 people filled half the courtroom to support Walker, who maintains his innocence.

Walkers attorney, Quentin Rhoades, asked the judge for an exception to mandatory minimum sentences set by the Legislature for sexual assault of a minor.

Rhoades said that since Walker says he is innocent, he will not be able to enroll in the second phase of sex offender treatment and therefore wont be rehabilitated. A probationary sentence would allow Walker to enroll in a community-based program that accepts deniers.

Family members and friends took the stand to say they would support Walker both financially and with their time should he be allowed to remain in the community.

Walker also took the stand to say that he would abide by whatever rules are placed on him. When asked if he had support of family and friends, he told his attorney to look behind you. Anyone there will support me.

Several people in the crowd shouted amen.

Ravalli County Attorney Bill Fulbright acknowledged that people have been willing to support Walker all along, but no one was interested in protecting the victims in this case.

In the older victims statement, Fulbright said she talked about having to live with this, having to live through it and believing it was her fault  There was nobody to tell, and if she did tell it meant she was the one at fault. She avoided it for years, buried it for years. She certainly did not want to be here testifying.

When the younger girl told what happened to her, Fulbright said her own mother told a deputy that the victim was a liar in order to protect Walker.

At that point, someone from the crowd yelled out: Maybe there is a reason for that.

Ravalli County District Judge Jeffrey Langton immediately asked for that person to identify himself and then said he would be removed if there was another outburst.

Langton said he received a voluminous number of letters in support of Walker. Most of those letters based their focus on the assumption of Walkers innocence and said he was wrongfully convicted by the jury.

That limits their usefulness to me, Langton said.

In this countrys legal system, the determination of guilt is made by the jury, Langton said.

I do not question jury verdicts unless I have very good cause to do so, he said. That cause does not exist in this case.

These are serious offenses, Langton said. They are ones that the Legislature has continually seen fit to increase the penalties forthe intent of the Legislature is anyone who offends a girl at this tender age will be sentenced for 100 years. Thats what the public demands and what the Legislature has enacted.

Langton said he didnt see treatment in the community as an option in this case.

The reality of the situation as I understand is that rehabilitation will never be an option as long as Mr. Walker denies his guilt, he said.

According to testimony presented earlier, Langton said a community rehabilitation program would have to break Walker down to admit his guilt before progress could be made.

Until that occurred, Langton said Walker would be an untreated sexual offender free in the community.

Theres no way on Earth that I could say that affords better protection to society That would be a square peg in a round hole, Langton said.

The judge said he understands that many in the community find Walker to be a good businessman and father to his children and stepchildren.

But with Montana law being as it is, none of that makes any difference, Langton said. The law is the law and Im not here to bend it or distort it.

Langton then sentenced Walker to 100 years for each of the four counts he faced, with the sentences to run concurrently.

Walker was taken into custody immediately.

Just before he walked out the courtroom door, he turned to the crowd and waved while saying thank you.

The courtroom was filled with sounds of sobbing as people filed out.
My fellow Americans,

Its over. Get over it. Well have a new president in January. Tough, writing to so many who are not pleased with the results of our free election. Yes. Free election. We are citizens of the Untied State of America. We can vote. We are free to live with all the wonderful freedoms of being an American citizen. There are so many people who have come to our country, legally, who have worked hard to get what a lot of us quite often forget, and what it means. Citizenship, in this great nation so that they also may enjoy the freedom and privileges we were fortunate enough, because our families at one time came to this country looking for that very freedom, we can all share now.

That is how I feel about this election. Im not sure that many of us felt real good about going to the polls to vote. Most of us had a lot of misgivings about our two candidates. But we did vote, and then went home to spend a long day and finally as it turned out a good share of the night, watching the results of that election. Yes, quite an upset for many, and a feeling of appreciation for others.

And now the rioting. Why? For vindication? Their candidate didnt get elected. I can only wonder, if a number of those young people and those who know better egging them on even took their rights as a citizen to vote. If not, those votes might have turned the tide for the electoral votes, and your choice for president. Please go home, back to your schools, and know this is the way a free democracy works in America. And next time, get out and vote and be counted.

Were in our season of family, friends and loved ones afar to celebrate our many blessings. Our season to look forward to better times for all our people. The election is over. We will have a new president. Well need to give him our support as our president. Give him the chance now, and let us all come together as free Americans.

Betty J. Notbohm

Clancy
A historic preservation advocate is questioning the timing of Tuesday's initial meeting on the possible demolition of Central School.

Chere Jiusto, executive director of the Montana Preservation Alliance, said the lack of notice for the pre-application meeting between Helena Public Schools officials and the city of Helena's historic preservation officer was a missed opportunity for public dialogue.

School district trustees have not yet decided whether to raze the school -- built in two phases occurring in 1915 and 1921 -- or extensively remodel the interior. The school has been empty since March 2013 because of seismic safety concerns.

The fate of the school building has been a contentious and polarizing issue in the community.

On Tuesday, Jiusto sent emails to the Helena school district and Helena City Commission to express her concerns.

In her email to the city commission, she stated that she learned of Tuesdays meeting during the holiday weekend prior to its occurrence.

We question the decision by City officials not to have this pre-application meeting open to the public, she wrote. "We would like to know, in a matter of such great interest to the community, why and how your staff made the decision to hold a pre-application meeting on demolition of Central School and the Seventh Avenue Gymnasium at this very inconvenient time between the holidays, with no prior word to the public?

A request for comment was made to Sharon Haugen, the citys community development director, but not returned in time for this report.

The pre-application meeting between school district officials and Pam Attardo, the heritage preservation officer with the Helena/Lewis and Clark County Heritage Tourism Council, is among the requirements for the school district to obtain a demolition permit for the school.

The meeting included an explanation of the permit process. A demolition permit would be required regardless of whether the building is razed or extensively remodeled.

School trustees are expected to be presented with costs for both options at a Jan. 10 meeting.

In her email to the school district, Jiusto wrote, It was a surprise to learn on Christmas Eve that the meeting was planned for (Tuesday), during the holiday week when it is very difficult for anyone to hear of the meeting, much less attend and share information that the district and the city may not yet have or had time to consider related to the proposal to demolish these important historic buildings.

It is worth noting that this is in sharp contrast to the last meeting of this nature, when the pre-application meeting was a publicly noticed meeting in which (Helena School District) Supt. Kultgen, members of the school board and district representatives met with the full heritage tourism/preservation council, as well as professionals from the MT State Historic Preservation Office, Montana Preservation Alliance and members of the public.

That meeting provided an opportunity for a meaningful dialogue which was informative to city and school district officials. With a different superintendent, new school board members and a new district facilities director, today's meeting might have been taken as an opportunity to learn about a range of options available to the district in charting the future of the schools in our community.

It is our belief that open discussion and transparency in your process will aid the district in your ultimate goal, which is to move forward with a bond proposal that this community will support and vote for at the polls, her email to school district officials stated.

A request for comment was to be relayed by school district office staff to Superintendent Jack Copps, who was out of the office attending a meeting.

The Helena/Lewis and Clark County Heritage Tourism Council will make a recommendation on whether to issue a demolition permit, and the city commission will make the decision. Any action by both the council and commission would involve public hearings.

Jiusto said the pre-application meeting could have provided an opportunity for conversation about options for Central School.

Unlike public hearings where people are able to provide comment, the pre-application meeting could have contained dialogue with questions and answers, she said.

A 7 p.m. meeting is planned by the Montana Preservation Alliance for Jan. 9 at the Montana Historical Society auditorium, Jiusto wrote in her email to the school district.

The meeting will be to recognize the significance of the school and gymnasium, which was built in 1907, present pathways to renovation that other school districts have used and to offer alternatives seen as cost-saving measures for taxpayers, she said.

And we reiterate our request that the district formally set out a public work session and time for serious discussion of Central School and your bond proposal soon, while there is still time to have a constructive conversation on this topic, her email to the school district concluded.
Montana's medical marijuana dispensaries lost and then regained the ability to serve more than three patients this year.

Initiative 182, approved in November by 58 percent of voters across Montana and more than 61 percent of those in Lewis and Clark County, struck down a law passed by the state Legislature in 2011 that limited medical marijuana providers to three patients each.

The three-patient limit took effect Aug. 31 of this year after a five-year court battle, forcing the closure of medical marijuana dispensaries across the state and leaving thousands of registered users without providers.

The initiative also says law enforcement is no longer allowed to conduct unannounced inspections of medical marijuana facilities, although annual state inspections are authorized.

Physicians were also given a measure of protection through the ballot initiative, which repealed the requirement that physicians who prescribe the drug to 25 or more patients annually be referred to the state board of medical examiners.

Though an error in the ballot initiative threatened to delay its implementation until July 1, District Court Judge James Reynolds ruled in December that dispensaries could reopen immediately.

As medical marijuana providers return to business, Gov. Steve Bullocks proposed budget includes a 6 percent tax on sales.

While the Republican controlled Legislature has objected to Bullocks budget proposal, House leadership said it wants time to review specifics of the tax but noted its general opposition to new taxes.

As of mid-November, perhaps 10 bills were being prepared for the legislative session that starts Jan. 2. Lawmakers were considering options that included negation of the law to efforts to reform it.

Patient advocates are opposing the tax while the industry, as of late November, was considering its response.

As of November, the most recent statistics available on the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services website showed 7,558 patients were enrolled and 6,557 of those were without providers.

There were 171 physicians associated with currently enrolled patients.

Statewide, 4,631 of those with cards allowing them to use medical marijuana were enrolled because of severe chronic pain, which was by far the largest single category.

Lewis and Clark County had 30 registered medical marijuana providers and 628 people with cards allowing them to use medical marijuana.
In the wake of recent anti-Semitic threats and online harassment in Montana, members of the Jewish community gathered in the Capitol Wednesday for the annual menorah lighting ceremony.

The gathering celebrated Hanukkah, and Jewish leaders emphasized the importance of bringing light into an often dark world.

Gov. Steve Bullock joined the ceremony, and spoke to over 60 people in the rotunda. He co-authored an open letter to Montanans with Attorney General Tim Fox, Rep. Ryan Zinke and Sens. Steve Daines and Jon Tester earlier this week to denounce threats made toward the Jewish community in Whitefish. The letter said the officials will stand together despite any political differences to stand up for whats right.

On Wednesday, Gov. Bullock reiterated his support for the Jewish community in Montana. He called on Montanans to recommit to shared values of humility, charity and tolerance.

We gather here to do more than light a candle. We gather to celebrate the triumph of light over darkness, spirituality over materiality, and of purity over adulteration, Bullock said. May we continue this commitment long beyond Hanukkah and the holiday season.

On Dec. 20, a column was published in the Missoulian by Laurie Franklin, a spiritual leader of Har Shalom in Missoula. She was unable to make it to Helena on Wednesday, but her letter was read in full.

After the Jewish people defeated Antiochus IV and his invading forces, she explains, they rededicated their Holy Temple by lighting the temple lamp with the one remaining jug of holy oil. It was only supposed to keep the menorah lit for one night, but instead lasted eight days.

Hanukkah, or the festival of lights, celebrates the miracle by lighting one candle each night until all eight are lit. The word Hanukkah means dedication, and Franklin wrote that she will be rededicating herself to freedom.

Once again, I declare to the world, I am a Jew, and I love my religious and cultural heritage, my ancestors, my family and my Jewish community, she wrote.

Franklin invited Montanans to join her in placing a menorah in their window in solidarity after neo-Nazi fliers were distributed in Missoula.

We will not remain silent when fellow citizens applaud the ugliness of the Nazi regime and dare to suggest that it offers a model for society. We will do everything in our power to oppose the rise of hateful rhetoric and action directed towards Jews and all other groups," she wrote.

Rabbi Chaim Bruk of Bozeman provided a teaching on why the menorah has nine candles. The ninth candle is called the shamash, or the helping candle, and typically sits higher than the other eight candles.

Bruk said he encourages people to embody the helping candle by going above and beyond to help others and perform simple acts of kindness, especially in a time when Jewish people in Montana are being threatened and harassed. Instead of reacting to evil with anger, Bruk called for the community to respond to hateful people with love.

They are absolutely allergic to light, he said. Respond with something they cant counter with.

While the Jewish community has a history full of persecution, Rabbi Ed Stafman of Bozeman acknowledged the need to stand up for any group who faces oppression. He said the Bible repeatedly says people should not mistreat or oppress foreigners, because they were strangers themselves in Egypt.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were almost 900 incidents of harassment or intimidation in the 10 days after the election. Of the reported incidents, 100 were anti-Semitic and 49 were anti-Muslim. President-elect Donald Trump has called for a ban on Muslim immigration, and said he was open to a registry of Muslims already in the country.

Ill be the first one to register, Stafman said.
BILLINGS -- The Montana Republican Party has instituted a $1,740 fee for candidates looking to take the seat of U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke.

State Rep. Jeff Essmann, R-Billings, chairman of the party, said the fee is to defray the costs for delegates traveling to the nomination convention. There, the party will choose who will run in the special general election.

The fee will be paid to the state GOP and is equal to the amount a candidate would pay the state to run in a normal primary election. State law sets the fee at 1 percent of the position's salary. In this case, it's $174,000.

Essmann said party leaders met Dec. 21 when they decided on the fee amount. He said he knew of no potential candidates who have paid the fee as of Thursday.

The fee is set in Montana statutes when a candidate would file to run in either a Democrat or Republican primary," he said. "So our state committee meeting will be performing the same purpose as a primary.

Democrats jumped on the news Thursday, calling the fee a "democracy tax" and a "fundraiser" for the GOP.

"Leave it to the leaders of the Montana Republican Party to turn democracy into a fundraiser and limit its candidates to only those with thick wallets," said Nancy Keenan, Montana Democrats executive director, in a press release.

She added that Democrats won't introduce a similar fee.

A number of Republicans have expressed interest in taking over for Zinke, who won re-election in November but was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the Department of the Interior. Zinke is a Republican.

Those hopefuls include state legislators Ed Buttrey of Great Falls, Daniel Zolnikov of Billings and Scott Sales of Bozeman. Others include District Court Judge Russell Fagg of Billings, Corvallis party activist Gary Carlson and Bozeman businessman Eugene Graf IV.

State legislators Amanda Curtis of Butte and Casey Schreiner of Great Falls have announced that they will seek nomination from Montana Democrats.

The parties won't convene to nominate until after Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, as well as Zinke's confirmation as Interior Secretary by the U.S. Senate.

After Zinke officially resigns from the U.S. House, an election must be held within 85 to 100 days.

Montana Secretary of State-elect Corey Stapleton said that the special general election could cost as much as $2 million.
MISSOULA - The men who kidnapped a family and led police on a high-speed chase after they robbed a convenience store in the spring are scheduled to be sentenced in February after reaching plea agreements with federal prosecutors.

In early November, Thomas Earl Dempsey and Nick West pleaded guilty to some of their charges at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Missoula.

The pair were arrested May 27 after an early-morning robbery at Deanos gas station on West Harrier Street. During the robbery a man and his son came into the store and were ordered to leave. They got back in the vehicle where the rest of the family was waiting and drove a short distance away before calling 9-1-1. West and Dempsey, who had followed them, pulled the doors open and took the family hostage in their vehicle.

The pair led law enforcement officers on a chase through Missoula, which included a pair of stops where the men let family members out, and one point where Dempsey shot at a deputys patrol car. The men abandoned the vehicle  with the family's parents  north of Missoula. They were arrested later that day.

Dempsey pleaded guilty to conspiracy, carjacking and kidnapping, as well as using a firearm during a crime. West pleaded guilty to the same charges except for the count of kidnapping. They are scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 9.

Wests plea agreement called for 180 months in prison. Dempseys does not have a recommendation.

Carissa Lynn Kopp and Hannah Nichole Parker, who were charged for lesser roles in the robbery, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy in October and are set to be sentenced Jan. 27.
BUTTE -- Anaconda Police Chief Tim Barkell said Thursday that police have identified the body of a victim found yesterday in the Hearthstone Apartments as tenant Victoria Lynn Smith, age 49.

Barkell said Smith was stabbed fatally in the neck, and they are investigating the death as a homicide. The body has been sent to the state crime lab.

Police are still reviewing video surveillance footage and interviewing neighbors and relatives, but have arrested Smith's ex-boyfriend, 35-year-old David Richmond, who Barkell said was the last person to leave Smith's apartment.

Barkell said Richmond is not speaking with police. Richmond was arrested on Nov. 6 for vehicle theft, disorderly conduct and partner family member assault. Barkell said Smith was not the victim of that assault.
MOSUL, Iraq  Breaking a two-week lull in fighting, Iraqi troops backed by the U.S.-led coalitions air strikes and artillery pushed deeper into eastern Mosul on Thursday in a multipronged assault against Islamic State militants in the city.

Elite special forces pushed into the Karama and Quds neighborhoods, while army troops and federal police advanced into the nearby Intisar, Salam and Sumor neighborhoods. Columns of dark smoke rose overhead as explosions shook the city and heavy machine-gun fire echoed through the streets.

Stiff resistance by the militants, civilians trapped inside their houses and bad weather have slowed advances in the more than 2-month-old offensive to recapture Iraqs second-largest city, the extremist groups last urban bastion in the country. It is the biggest Iraqi military operation since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The battle began around 7 a.m. on a bright but chilly December day and continued until shortly before sundown.

The counterterrorism forces, also known as the Golden Brigade, captured about half of the Quds neighborhood by early afternoon.

A statement by the U.S.-led coalition said Thursdays offensive opened two new fronts in eastern Mosul, increasing pressure on the militants dwindling ability to generate forces, move fighters or resupply.

It said that, at the request of the Iraqi government, coalition warplanes had re-struck two bridges over the Tigris River in Mosul on Tuesday, and a day earlier disabled the last bridge crossing in the city.

While U.S. officials have acknowledged that 173 civilians have died in coalition air strikes since the opening of the campaign against Islamic State in the summer of 2014, Airwars, a London-based project that tracks coalition air strikes, said the number of civilian casualties is at least 1,500.
1 Berlin attack arrest: A 40-year-old Tunisian man has been detained as a possible accomplice of Anis Amri, the man identified as the terrorist who carried out the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people, German officials said Wednesday. The detention occurred after a search of a home and offices associated with the man, whose name was not released. Information about him was found in the cell phone of Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian, who was killed Friday during a shootout with police officers outside Milan. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Berlin attack, releasing a video in which Amri pledged his allegiance to the groups supreme leader.

2 Going home: German authorities approved government funding for more than 54,000 refugees to return to their homelands this year, authorities said Wednesday  paving the way for a significant increase in voluntary departures. Germany is keen to increase the number of rejected asylum seekers leaving the country after last years influx of 890,000 refugees. Of the more than 50,000 people awarded grants to leave voluntarily in the years first 11 months, refugees from Albania comprised the single biggest group, numbering 15,749. Other nations with significant numbers included 5,754 from Serbia, 5,373 from Iraq, 5,130 from Kosovo, 4,310 from Macedonia and 3,242 from Afghanistan.
There are many Southwestern Native American legends about Grandmother Spider swirling through time. This is my favorite one: She tossed her freshly woven web laced with sparkling dewdrops into the darkness and it became the glittering stars, sun and planets. Bang! The universe was born. She sang her song and danced across the heavens spreading her web of light, fanning the vital flame. The fireworks of life burst up, exploding. Anchoring us all with her magical braided cords to The Great Mystery, she made sure that we were all connected to one another. All of us with our unique purpose for our Earthwalk. Interwoven. Never alone.

When I saw the aubergine, tangerine and greeny-gray muslin wraps by Natasha Naragis many years ago I would gaze at them for, well ... a loooong time. My husband would say, "Hey, I'll meet you back here in an hour." And there I would stand, absorbing her work, lapping up the subtle moon glow of colors, an infinite tapestry of delicate textures. It felt like gossamer, indeed, a spider's web. Unimaginably light. "Etheric" barely does it justice. So imagine my surprise when a talented designer and teacher of two production sewing courses at the Santa Fe Community College named Estelle Norris-Smallwood invited me to a freshly-baked style-forward pop-up in the Railyard, and there was Naragis.

Woven silk scarf by Natasha Naragis Ceramic wrap pins by Pam Knob Earrings by Bessie Berman All available at natasha santa fe (Amy Davis)

As I entered this very SoHo-circa-1985-NYC-drizzled-in-Left-Bank-Paris space, the snooty smoke of doubt cleared. Norris-Smallwoods passion for bias-cutting is apparent on an elegantly draped, deep midnight gown topped with a shimmering satin pistachio jacket. The dark grey ombre fringe on the back of the semi-bolero, though, is the juiciest cherry on top. It is true couture and only available at a new boutique dubbed

natasha santa fe

(403 Guadalupe St., 913-9236)

, which is open 10 am-4 pm Wednesday-Sunday or by appointment.

That's right, style fiendsthe Railyard has it going off! Better than Barneys, nicer than Neiman's and you can buy direct  no middle man. Snap up Naragis' scrumptious and sumptuous woven wraps, scarves, outerwear and tunics, done in a muted palette with contrasting selvages. Hot roses bleed into luminous kumquat and plums meet indigos. These bright edges make the granites and lighter softer tones vibrate with sunshine made from linen, cashmere, silk, muslin and alpaca. She also loves the Indonesian technique of ikat, wherein threads are wrapped and colored before weaving, as well as shibori, an eighth-century Japanese art that reminds one of grown-up tie-dye. They are butter-soft and gorgeous. YUM! At the moment she is showcasing Amanda Speer and Dain Daller, both of whom live off the grid in Abiquiu and create fabulous woven wraps. Bright-toasty roasted yellow corn with matcha tea greens dripping into electric blues; reds next to sun kissed caramels. Their work recalls smoldering embers, salty oceans and pinky-chocolate earth.

Bobbie Sumberg has knitted pieces that are like the lovechild of a poncho and a wee capelet. Lush and sublime colors; vivid azures to icy slates to lilac frost and persimmon sunrise.

Karim Jaekel is another one of the showstoppers in this boutique of chic. Being Naragis' only son and proof that the apple does indeed fall not far from the tree, his works are done in cotton and raw silk. Hand-woven scarves and wraps, but with a bit of a more heavy and rustic bent  juicy sherbet hues welcoming you. Jaekel adores grassy greens, lemon drop and happy cerulean. These are primaries with a twist. He informed me that both mom and son will soon make large bolts of fabric which interior designers can snatch up and use to create masterpieces.

Pam Knob showcases ceramic wrap pins. Open hearts, squares and circles all shimmering in pearly pastels, plus super-fun felted and handwoven scarves. The bright amethyst and oyster one caught my eye.

Bessie Berman has created earrings of warm metals, thin as potato chips, fashioned out of bottle caps with zias, hammered copper hoops and discs and wooden loops. Frida Khalo, the Blessed Virgin and ravens all make cameos in Berman's work and they promise not to give you drooping Buddha ears. They dangle feather-light like flashing icicles.

On the walls of natasha santa fe you'll spy another nod to underground cool: Cissie Ludlow's photographs from a 1980's NYC performance piece/fashion show of which Naragis was a part. Dubbed Trashiquea sly play on tres chicher photos wink at you from the walls. A sexy sculpture from Trashique also makes an appearance with Michael Motley's fire-engine-red, life-sized paper skeleton complete with no flesh other than his nether regions (with a curly cue glittery carpet). Peckerman, Naragis' pet name for him, greets you in a very "Toto, we are not on Canyon Road anymore!" way.

This is the real deal, fashion folk of the high desert. Naragis shines and has given Santa Fe a place not only to shop but to also experience. Let's relish the splendor of being human and thank Grandmother Spider for all of our lavish and magnificent gifts. Happy New Year, Santa Fe.



Santa Fe Reporter
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Spotlight, New Zealand's largest fabric, craft and home decor retail chain owned by one of Australia's wealthiest families, posted a decline in profit for the first year in five in 2016, as it marked two decades in this country.

The local unit of the Melbourne-based chain posted a 14 percent drop in profit to $5.2 million in the year ended June 26, according to its financial statements posted with the Companies Office last month. Revenue increased 3.8 percent to $103.4 million. Costs rose across the areas of marketing, personnel, and its support group, led by a 36 percent jump in distribution costs to $4 million, and a tripling of 'other' costs to $3.7 million. The company wasn't immediately available to comment.

Spotlight has grown from the humble beginnings of a single dress fabric stall at Melbourne's Queen Victoria Market in the early 1970s to a chain of more than 100 sew, craft, party and home decorating superstores across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia. The first New Zealand store was opened in Wairau Park in Auckland in January 1996, and in a March press release the company noted it had sold 540,000 cushions, 300,000 costumes, 3 million buttons and 30 million metres of fabric in the ensuing 20 years, with 18 stores now spread across the country from Invercargill to Whangarei.

The family empire was established by brothers Morry Fraid and the late Ruben Fried, whose differently spelt surnames have caused trouble ever since the school administrative error that caused it.

Spotlight was ranked 40th on this year's BRW Rich List, with an estimated wealth of A$1.22 billion. The business is now run by Fraid alongside Fried's son Zac and its operations include Spotlight Property Group, which develops and owns large-format retail centres, often with its own stores as anchor tenants.

Its SPG Properties unit in New Zealand, which owns $23.5 million of investment properties, posted a 7.8 percent decline in profit to $1.4 million in the year ended June 30, as revenue slid 11.5 percent to $2.2 million, according to its latest financial statements.

In Australia, the company has branched out from haberdashery into the outdoor equipment business with the camping and sporting goods chain Anaconda, and has an investments division, Alara, with holdings in venture capital, private equity, local and global shares and managed funds.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported last month that the rich listers were part of a group of wealthy private families which secured the 61 stores and 21 development sites of the failed Masters hardware chain in Australia. Zac Fried told the paper SPG had picked up 19 of the 21 development sites, most of which would be converted to homemaker centres, and the deal would also see new Spotlight and Anaconda stores opening in converted Masters buildings.

Fried noted that some sites had residential potential, adding to signs the family empire is expanding its property development operations after The Australian newspaper reported in July that the billionaire family would develop an Aloft hotel in Melbourne as part of a A$120 million mixed-use project in Chapel Street, South Yarra, dubbed '402 Chapel'.

(BusinessDesk)

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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Ok everyone, you have to read this very short short story. Firstly because it is good, (check out the Bligh story within it too), but also because I'm ...

1 year ago
DECATUR  More than 20 years ago, Jamie Rutherford was a student in Bethany schools entering various art competitions. I won a few ribbons here and there, she said.

Now as the executive director for Decatur's Gallery 510 Arts Guild, she organizes educational competitions and exhibits, including the Young Artists' Showcase. Beginning Jan. 8, local student artists will have their work displayed in the exhibit at the Madden Arts Center. Organizers selected 100 pieces for the exhibit, which runs through January.

Students submitted their work for an opportunity to be awarded prizes in fifth/sixth grade and seventh/eighth grade categories. A best of show award is given in each division with a ribbon and a cash reward.

Students from 11 schools entered various mediums of art, such as charcoal portraits, collages, sculptures, paintings and photography. New to the art scene is artwork created from recycled materials. Rutherford has seen many professional artists using objects often thrown away. The materials are readily available, she said. It kind of forces kids to be creative with what they have. Anytime you are pushing creative thinking, that's a good thing.

Organizers requested retired art teacher Teresa Toler as judge for the competition. After 35 years as a teacher, she has seen schools struggle to keep art classes available to students. You have to really get creative with supplies and the money with budget cuts, she said.

When evaluating art, Toler looks for the student's knowledge of the subject matter, as well as the use of colors and neatness. Those are the basics, she said. But the creativity, those are the ones who think outside the box.

Toler has seen how such art competitions encourage students to put more effort into their work. As a teacher, she saw a difference in pieces that would be seen by the public versus those that were going home. I always thought I got quality work, she said. The competition spurs the kids on if they knew their work would be seen.

Rutherford also sees the positive effects to art competitions. Her own experiences as a young artist supported her plans for her current career.

(The competitions) always encourage you when you're not sure about the future, she said.

Rutherford and others in the art community often assist students and young artists through various events. They emphasize the importance of support at a young age. It is also important to show what kind of impact art can have on an individual, she said. If they make a place for it in their lives, whether they go into art, it makes life better.

December Art Exhibits

ANNE LLOYD GALLERY. The Madden Arts Center gallery will feature the Young Artist's Showcase Jan. 8-30. The exhibit displays the work of area students grades five through eight. Awards will be presented during the exhibit opening on Sunday, Jan. 8. Fifth and sixth graders will receive awards at 2 p.m. Seventh and eighth grade students will receive their awards at 3 p.m.

BICENTENNIAL ART CENTER. The Paris art center will display Points of View-Along the Way, an exhibit of Ed Gillum photographs, Jan. 13-Feb. 10. A reception will be 5 to 6:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 13.

DECATUR AIRPORT GALLERY. The artwork of Carol Kessler will be displayed in January.

FLOURISHES GALLERY AND STUDIOS. The downtown Shelbyville gallery will exhibit the paintings of Jessica Disbrow.

Art produced by students from Pana's Sacred Heart School will be in Studio D. The Beaux Arts Ballroom will house several exhibits, including artwork from the Illinois Student Art Association and Shelbyville School Elementary students. The displays will be featured until Jan. 20.

For an appointment, call (217) 827-5690.

GALLERY 510. Gallery 510 will display the artwork of Richard Colbeck. His work involves pen and ink. A reception will be held during First Friday Gallery Walk, 5 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6. Refreshments will be available.

GIERTZ GALLERY. The Parkland College gallery will feature the 2016 State of the Art, Drawing Invitational. The exhibit runs through Feb. 4. For more information, visit www.artgallery.parkland.edu.

KRANNERT ART MUSEUM. The University of Illinois art museum will display Making and Breaking Medieval Manuscripts until Feb. 11 on the main level of the west gallery. The exhibit features Western European manuscripts from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries.

The exhibit Did You Know We Taught Them How to Dance? by Zina Saro-Wiwa will feature artwork from popular Nigerian culture, folklore and traditions through photographs, video and sound installation. The exhibit will be displayed through March 25.

PERKINSON ART GALLERY. Kirkland Fine Arts Center's art gallery will display the oil paintings of David Linneweh until Jan. 20.

The exhibit Peace, Love and Posters will immediately follow on Jan. 20 with a collection featuring the posters of social and cultural impact. Visitors can view the display until Feb. 24.

ROCK SPRINGS NATURE CENTER. Rock Springs Nature Center's north wing art gallery will display pieces from the Decatur Camera Club. The exhibit will feature flowers, animals and other nature scenes.

The photography of Decatur Audobon will be exhibited in the south gallery of the nature center. Photos of birds seen throughout Central Illinois will be featured.

Both exhibits will be on display until the end of the February.

TARBLE ARTS CENTER. Eastern Illinois University's main art gallery will display Vessels of Genealogies by Firelei Baez until Feb. 12. Also in the main gallery will be the exhibit by Chul Hyun Ahn Reaching Into Infinity. The display will be featured until Feb. 9.

In the Brainard Gallery, an exhibition by artist Eli Craven titled P.S. will be featured until Feb. 12.

The EGallery will present the works of the Blackbox exhibition titled Phantasmagoria until Feb. 12

Tours are available by appointment only. To schedule a tour, call (217) 581-2787 or email tarble@eiu.edu.

UPSTAIRS GALLERY. The artwork of the Barn Colony Artists will be displayed at the Decatur Public Librarys second-floor gallery throughout January.

WILDFLOUR ARTISAN BAKERY AND CAFE. The paintings of Jane Eckles will be on display at the artisan cafe during January.
NEW DELHI: The cheapest one came for just Rs 251 while another made global headlines for catching fire. Year 2016 has indeed been the year of smartphones -- for right reasons or wrong -- as these powerful-yet-affordable devices pushed India ahead of the US as the world's second-largest Internet userbase, with 2017 promising to be even better.



The year started with a little-known company called 'Ringing Bells' making global noise with its Rs 251- smartphone. While the industry was up in arms to say manufacturing such a device was not feasible even in China, customers stayed logged onto their computers for hours together in the hope of being able to register to buy the device.

Ringing Bells did manage to deliver a few of the promised handsets, but it was not without its share of controversy, with allegations that the company had merely cloaked and passed on another company's device as its own.



A trend that clearly emerged from the event was India is hungry for affordable innovation. So, it is no surprise that the sub-Rs 10,000 category forms over 50 per cent of the Indian smartphone market. The category has flourished further, with domestic majors like Micromax and Lava bringing in multiple devices.



However, this segment was also one of the worst-hit by the government's move to scrap old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. In the days that followed the announcement, companies saw their sales dipping by as much as 50 per cent, hurt by the double-whammy of cash shortage and cyclical dip that is seen post Diwali.



According to Gartner Research Director Anshul Gupta, smartphone shipment in India is expected to be a little lower at about 120 million units this year, impacted by demonetisation.



"Despite this, Indian market is growing at a healthy pace compared to 4-5 per cent growth being seen in global markets. India would continue to be one the fastest growing markets globally," he added.



Companies are hopeful that 2017 will ring in good news and sales will return to healthy growth clip like that seen in the previous year.



A gamechanger this year was the entry of Reliance Jio into the Indian market. With its promise of free calls for lifetime and data at one-fifth of the market rates, Reliance's foray sent sales of 4G phones in India skyrocketing, especially in the second half of the year.



"Over the past few years, there has been a tremendous growth in consumers' mobile data demand and consumption patterns. Digital revolution in India has further led to a paradigm shift from 3G to 4G, and to tap this trend, various mobile players are offering innovative and affordable devices bundled with offers and cost-effective VAS services," Intex Director Nidhi Markanday said.

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NEW DELHI: Giving its digital economy drive a shot in the arm, the government through its outreach campaign 'DigiDhan Abhiyan' has enrolled over 1 crore rural citizens for digital methods of payment since its launch earlier this month, an official statement said here on Wednesday.

Over 3 lakh merchants have started offering digital payment options to rural customers across many districts and blocks in rural India, the statement said.

"The rapid pace at which rural citizens are adopting digital methods of payment demonstrates their support and enthusiasm to be a part of the digital transformation story of our country. It is very encouraging to see our Prime Minister's dream of honest and transparent digital governance turn into reality," said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister for Electronics & Information Technology.

On November 8, the Modi government demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes across the country. Since then the government has been planning to convert the country's economy into a more digital one.

Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have recorded the highest number of enrolments with citizen enrolment crossing 15 lakh and 12.5 lakh respectively, the statement said.

Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh have recorded the highest number of merchant enrolments crossing 60,000 merchants each, it added.

The common service centres (CSC) and the village-level entrepreneurs have reached out to citizens innovatively to impart digital literacy.

The DigiDhan Abhiyan aims to cover 2 lakh CSC across the rural areas and enable them to become Digital Financial Education centres.

The CSCs will train people about the various digital financial solutions and also enable them to use various modes of electronic payment systems (EPS). The campaign also aims to sensitise merchants and vendors on the use of EPS.

"The DigiDhan Abhiyan outreach in rural India through the common service centres reflects citizen's willingness to go digital and the acceptance of new methods of digital transactions which are convenient and easy to access or use," said Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY).

"We will continue to leverage newer technologies to build smart digital tools for easy use to enable this massive digital transformation," she added.

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Some Staten Islanders apparently still aren't getting the message: Lock your car doors!

According to the 122nd Precinct Twitter feed on Thursday, there were several larcenies from vehicles reported on the borough this week -- and the common denominator from each was that the vehicle's doors were left unlocked.

Several larcenies from vehicles were reported this wk.Common denominator:ALL DOORS WERE LEFT UNLOCKED! #LockIt #ProtectYourProperty pic.twitter.com/az2XMOfBIU  NYPD 122nd Precinct (@NYPD122Pct) December 29, 2016



Top police officials, including Assistant Chief Edward Delattore, the NYPD borough commander, discussed the trend of car break-ins in an exclusive interview with the Advance earlier this month.



In 2016, there were 243 stolen vehicles on Staten Island, compared to 213 this time last year -- a 14-percent increase, according to CompStat numbers.



As of Dec. 18, nearly half of the stolen cars were taken with the keys in the car or ignition, police said.



"Each winter we see certain types of crimes start to emerge as trends," said NYPD Assistant Chief Edward Delatorre, the borough commander. "We're noticing cars being stolen on Staten Island... people leave keys in cars or leave cars running, which is worse."
nws RMA macys

Police seek a man and woman for questioning in connection with a grand larceny at Macy's. (NYPD)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Police seek the public's help identifying a man and woman wanted for questioning in connection with the use of a fraudulent credit card at Macy's.

On Dec. 16 at around 7:15 p.m., two individuals entered a Macy's Department store in New Springville and purchased over $500 worth of clothing using a fake Macy's credit card, according to a written statement from the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Public Information office.

The victim is a 54-year-old male who still has his credit card, police said.

Police released a surveillance photo of the two individuals sought for questioning, taken from inside the department store, police said.



The male is described as a 30-40 year-old with a dark complexion who was last seen wearing a black and blue winter jacket, police said.



The female is described as a 30-40 year-old with a dark complexion who was last seen a white sweater and white winter hat. She was also pushing a baby stroller with a child inside, police said.

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577. All calls are strictly confidential.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Police seek the public's help identifying a man wanted for questioning in connection with a car break-in in West Brighton.

On Dec. 9, 2016 at 6:25 p.m., an unknown individual pried open the back window of a parked vehicle in front of 699 Delafield Ave., and removed a handbag containing credit cards, according to a written statement from the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner for Public Information office.

The individual is described as a male Hispanic, approximately 30-years-old, 5'8" with a light complexion, and was last seen wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans, police said.

Police released surveillance video of the individual removing the bag, obtained from the incident location, police said.

Footage previously obtained by the Advance shows a man, wearing a gray sweater and black pants, allegedly scoping out the block near a minivan on Delafield Avenue.

The individual can be seen forcing open the car's rear passenger window, and then crawling inside the car.

About 10 minutes later, the man got out of the car from the same window.

"My neighbor called me saying that I had left the rear window open," said the vehicle's owner, who wishes to remain anonymous. "When I went there to close it, I realized someone had broken into my car."

The resident alleges her pocketbook, her wallet and her husband's wallet were stolen.

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577. All calls are strictly confidential.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After achieving much success with the opening of New York City's first Pinot's Palette in Tottenville in 2014, owners Fred Fadell, Rich Barton and Dorothy Fadell Ferlanti needed to find a North Shore location to accommodate their growing clientele.

It wasn't long after the trio introduced the paint and sip concept at their Ellis Street location that the venue became a favorite for "girls' night" outings, date night, birthday celebrations, bachelorette parties and anniversaries.

"We love being a place where people can come to put down their cell phones -- except for photos -- and reconnect over a fun experience and a glass of wine," said Ferlanti, of the national franchise with roots in Houston, Texas.

"Staten Islanders loved having something new and fun to do right in their hometown. Our classes filled up quickly and people booked their parties with us as well," she added.

But Tottenville can be a far trek for many North Shore residents.

NORTH SHORE LOCATION

"People on the North Shore kept asking us to open something closer to home for them, and we were happy to do so. The response from the community has been really positive so far," said Fadell, of the new location on Forest Avenue in Port Richmond.

The second location for the trio opened in November and has already become a popular venue for a night out, said Ferlanti.

"Pinot's Palette aims to bring art to anyone. We specialize in beginners who haven't picked up a paintbrush since grade school, but are looking for a fun and relaxing night out with friends and family - and of course, some good wine and beer," said Barton.

"Seeing people spending time with one another and having a blast is what makes us all happy. Knowing that we have a part in their experience make us want to do more of this and is a big reason we opened another location. Plus, we have so much fun at work," he added.

HOW THEY GOT STARTED



After a visit to a Pinot's Palette in Texas, Fadell, a New York City firefighter who has owned franchise businesses in the past, and Barton, an attorney, fell in love with the concept and wanted to bring it to their hometown.

"Fred and Rich were long-time buddies. When they decided to open this business, they realized they needed more marketing expertise, as well as a woman's perspective for this business with a largely female clientele," said Dorothy Fadell Ferlanti.

They asked Dorothy, who is Fred's sister, to join them and the rest is "paint and sip history."

And the three owners work well together.

"Dorothy handles marketing, staffing and operations. Fred does a lot of marketing and networking on the Island. I am in charge of back office functions, like payroll and taxes," said Barton.

Networking on the Island, which has a close-knit small business community, has been integral to their success.

"We spend time networking at events held by the Chamber of Commerce or the local business guilds. We handle all of our social media marketing and responses. Keeping in touch with our studio managers is also an important part of our daily activities. And of course, chatting with our wonderful guests is something we do every day," said Fadell.

KEY TO SUCCESS

Since opening their first location, other painting operations have popped up across the borough. With that comes the need for good marketing.

"We realize that we are only successful because we make sure our guests have a great time with us. We hire great staff to lead fun paint parties. We are also dedicated to our community and love supporting local charities and schools," said Ferlanti.

PINOT'S PALETTE NORTH SHORE AT A GLANCE

Address: 1367 Forest Avenue, Port Richmond

Websites: www.pinotspalette.com/northshore

New Businesses in Focus is a weekly column that relates the stories of new Staten Island businesses owners.

If you have a new business on Staten Island, e-mail porpora@siadvance.com.

FOLLOW TRACEY PORPORA ON FACEBOOK
DECATUR  Unity throughout the community was encouraged during an event event Wednesday as part of the celebration of Kwanzaa.

The gathering in the Madden Auditorium at the Decatur Public Library, sponsored by the African American Cultural & Genealogical Society of Illinois Museum highlighted the seven principles of Kwanzaa, which started Monday and runs through Sunday.

The principles fit into anybody's lifestyle, mistress of ceremonies Ada Owens said. They don't have color per se. They're so good to fit any culture.

Children from the Decatur Boys and Girls Club lit candles to celebrate each of the seven principles, which include Umoja (unity); Kujichagulia (self-determination); Ujima (collective work and responsibility); Ujamaa (cooperative economics); Nia (purpose); Kuumba (creativity); and Imani (faith).

Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by political and cultural scientist Maulana Ron Karenga to celebrate the African heritage and contemporary culture of black people. Wednesday was the third day of the activity, based on the tradition in many African countries of celebrating the harvest at the end of the year.

The third day highlights Ujima, which guest speaker Pat West said can make a difference for people in Decatur.

It's fitting we come together for Ujima, said West, publisher of the Torch newspaper and chairwoman of the Metro Decatur Black Chamber of Commerce. Decatur is at a crossroads. We can remain with the status quo or make the changes we want to see.

By facing problems collectively, West said community members can influence change.

Everyone has a voice, West said. We have the ability to understand our power and what we bring to the table.

The celebration included the Pledge of Allegiance with members of Girl Scout Troop No. 3593 from Antioch Christian Academy, a violin performance and poem from Te Be Zalango, a Freedom Dance from the Jackson family and a musical selection from Theodore Fisher. It included food representing a Taste of Africa.

It is the community that makes the difference, Hood said.

She said special exhibits and events are being planned next year at the museum.
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Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612e822f9d8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e9278258)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612e822f9d8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e9278258)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612efe50ef0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e9278258)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e9278258)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e9283060)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612eaff11d8)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612eaff11d8)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f021dcf0)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f02ea308)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f021dcf0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f02ea308)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f029c900)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f02ea308)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f02ea308)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612e927f278)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f020b638)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f020b638)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
Zach Rolfe and his mum Debbie. Officer Rolfe and Acting Sergeant Kirstina Jamieson and a member of the public, Michael Priestly, took off their shoes and clothes to swim to the man and rescue him with the help of just a rope. "The water was pretty wild at that point," he said. "It was deep and the current was extremely strong." Zach Rolfe at his police graduation on December 7 when he was named dux of his class. The trio was able to get the man to tie the rope around the chest and then inch him back across the water onto a small island in the river.

Officer Rolfe then volunteered to swim to the other side of the river and walk downstream in search of the woman. Zac was able to calm her down and explain to her that her husband was alive. "She said to him they'd now have to wait for the police and Zac, in his pink underpants, had to explain that he was the police. Richard Rolfe on his police officer son Zac's amazing rescue of two tourists from a flooded river in the Northern Territory. "Sarge said she did not want me going into the water unless I was confident I could get to the other side," he said. "I just got in and swam as hard as I could." He travelled about 5km downstream in search of the missing woman, all in in his underwear, sometimes in the water, going past sheer rock faces, sometimes on land being scratched by thick vegetation.

"I didn't think there were crocodiles in the water but I wasn't sure because I'm not from the Northern Territory," he said, with a laugh. Officer Rolfe kept calling out the woman's name until he heard a faint reply, the woman lying on an island where the river forked into two. "I kind of just jumped in and used the current to push me into the trees where I'd have a rest until I got to her," he said. "In the middle of the river, I did think, 'This is a dumb decision' but it turned out pretty sweet." His father, Richard Rolfe, told The Canberra Times, the woman was extremely distressed, thinking her partner had drowned.

"Zach was able to calm her down and explain to her that her husband was alive," Mr Rolfe said. "She said to him they'd now have to wait for the police and Zach, in his pink underpants, had to explain that he was the police." Well, the undies were black with a pink trim, Officer Rolfe confirmed. "They're Tradie's, good undies," he said. Officer Rolfe said the woman was extremely weak so he carried her across the river. "She just clung to my neck," he said. The pair then walked barefoot back to the other police, taking almost an hour to get to safety.

The woman was taken by helicopter to hospital; her partner by ambulance. "Everyone was pretty happy to see us," Officer Rolfe said. What made the rescues even more incredible was that the police were working in isolation, there was no mobile or radio signal and emergency personnel could initially not get through due to another flooded creek. Officer Rolfe had only praise for his superior, Acting Sergeant Jamieson and the civilian Michael Priestly, deflecting praise from himself and the fact he put his own life at risk. "I think every cop does that at some point and if I didn't do it, someone else would have," he said.

Mr Rolfe said Zach was his and Debbie's "baby" but they had faith in the capabilities of their super-fit son. "All I can say as a parent is we are very confident in Zac's ability to do anything and we are completely comfortable with the decision to let Zach take the initiative [in the rescues]," Mr Rolfe said. "He's a very resourceful young man. We're obviously incredibly proud of him." Acting Superintendent Brendan Muldoon, from Northern Territory police, said the actions of the police officers were "very courageous" and they had undoubtedly put themselves in harm's way to rescue the tourists.
The legendary US investor reclaimed his spot as the world's second-richest person two days after Trump's victory ignited a year-end rally that pushed Buffett's wealth up 19 per cent for the year to $US74.1 billion. "2016's been event-driven with global news driving prices rather than fundamentals," said Michael Cole, president of Ascent Private Capital Management, which has about $US10 billion of assets under administration. "The belief that Trump is going to come in and deregulate big parts of the economy is driving the markets right now." Microsoft's Bill Gates rented a place of Neville Crichton. Credit:Chris Goodney The individual gains for the year were dominated by Americans, who had four of the five biggest increases on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the world's richest person with a fortune of $US91.5 billion, and oilman Harold Hamm. The country's richest were largely opposed to a Trump presidency during the election, including Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who told the media in May that stocks could fall as much as 20 per cent if Trump were to win the election.

Strength to strength: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Credit:Getty Images Trump's wealth cabinet U.S. billionaires -- including Buffett -- favoured Trump's rival Hillary Clinton. Still, they profited from his victory when they added $US77 billion to their fortunes in the post-election rally fuelled by expectations that regulations would ease and American industry would benefit. The New York real estate mogul is building a cabinet heavy on wealth and corporate connections, and light on government experience, a mix that hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio said last week would unleash the "animal spirits" of capitalism and drive markets even higher. Dalio is the world's 63rd-richest person with $US14.1 billion. Investors and executives welcomed Trump's choices - including billionaire Wilbur Ross to lead the Department of Commerce and former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin as his Treasury secretary -, who have a combined net worth of at least $US5.6 billion, according to the index.

"You know, I was not opposing Trump as much as most people," Saudi Arabian billionaire Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber said in an interview on December 11. "He's capable and -- as a businessman -- he's shrewd about the bottom line. The people he's surrounding himself with have baggage but they're also successful and shrewd." France's Bernard Arnault was the sole non-American representative among the five best performers, adding $US7.1 billion to take his fortune to $US38.9 billion. His LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton said the Chinese luxury-goods market is improving. Gates remained the world's richest person throughout the year. Amancio Ortega, Europe's richest person and founder of the Zara clothing chain, was in second place on the index for most of the year until he ceded it to Buffett in November. Ortega, who dropped $US1.7 billion in 2016, is the world's third-richest person with a $US71.2 billion fortune. Mining cash

Wildcatter Hamm's fortune was propelled by a strengthening oil price and expectations a Trump administration will slash fossil-fuel regulations. Hamm added $US8.4 billion to more than double his fortune to $US15.3 billion. He led the 49 energy, metals and mining billionaires, who were the best-performing category on the ranking, adding $US80 billion and reversing the $US32 billion fall they had in 2015. Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch each dropped $US2 billion after Koch Industries reported on its website that annual revenue is estimated to be "as high as $US100 billion," compared with the estimate of "as much as $US115 billion" that the conglomerate published on the site previously. Company spokesman Rob Carlton stated in an email on November 17 that Koch revenue fluctuates with the price of commodities. Tech winners Technology fortunes were the second-best performing on the ranking, with 55 billionaires adding $US50 billion to their fortunes over the year, despite worries that a Trump presidency might introduce policies that could hurt their companies.

"I think we'll have to see what the policies of the administration are," Google co-founder Sergey Brin told the media gathered on the red carpet of the annual Breakthrough Prize gala in Silicon Valley in December. "I certainly hope they will be pro-science, pro-technology and all the things this world has really benefited from." Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who doubled his fortune to $US60 billion in 2015, led gains among technology executives again this year, gaining $US7.5 billion in 2016 on robust sales growth at the online retailer. He was followed by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who added $US5.4 billion. Hidden wealth Some of the industry's biggest relative gains went to the founders of the world's leading startups, such as Uber's Travis Kalanick and Snap's Evan Spiegel. The so-called "unicorn" billionaires, which include Spotify co-founder Martin Lorentzon, who was identified as a billionaire for the first time in 2016, secured a series of mammoth funding rounds while moving closer to testing their fortunes on the public markets. Other billionaires uncovered by the Bloomberg index in 2016 included the father and son behind Jose Cuervo tequila, New York real estate developer Axel Stawski and Kosovo construction tycoon Behgjet Pacolli.

The index also unveiled 11 surviving family members of reclusive Thai entrepreneur Chaleo Yoovidhya, the inventor of Red Bull, whose heirs share a combined $US22 billion net worth, the world's largest energy-drink fortune. Three billionaires emerged in Argentina, including the country's first technology billionaire Marcos Galperin, as markets rose on enthusiasm for President Mauricio Macri's finance-friendly economic policies. Most fortunes outside of the U.S. didn't get the same boost from Trump's victory, and were hurt by fluctuating commodities prices and the rise of the US dollar, the currency used for the Bloomberg ranking. Nine of the 10 biggest decliners in 2016 were from outside the US, led by China's second-richest person, Wang Jianlin, who lost $US5.8 billion. Wang ended the year as the world's 21st-richest person with $US30.6 billion. Nigeria's Aliko Dangote, the richest person in Africa, lost $US4.9 billion - or one-third of his wealth - as the combined effect of falling oil prices and the June devaluation of the naira pushed him to No. 112 with $US10.4 billion. Dangote was the world's 46th-richest person in June. Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Al Saud's fortune fell by $US4.9 billion, a 20 per cent drop. Alwaleed said in November that all of his stakes in public companies including Citigroup are potentially for sale, reversing a longstanding policy that some of his most prized shareholdings were "forever."

Chinese downturn Wealth creation in China turned negative for the first time in five years, with the country's richest losing $US11 billion in 2016 amid a slump in the Shanghai Shenzhen CSI 300 index and a 7 per cent decline for the yuan against the US dollar. Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma closed the year with $US33.3 billion, adding $US3.6 billion in 2016. He dropped in and out of his place as Asia's richest person for the first four months of the year before claiming it for good in May after Alibaba's finance affiliate, which is laying the groundwork for an initial public offering expected as soon as next year, completed a record $US4.5 billion equity fundraising round. China has 31 billionaires on the index with $US262 billion, trailing the US. which has 179 billionaires who control $US1.9 trillion, and Germany, whose 39 individuals own a combined $US281 billion. Russian billionaires also began to put the negative effects of US and European sanctions behind them, reversing the combined $US63 billion declines for 2014 and 2015 and adding $US49 billion in 2016. 'Expect the unexpected'
A woman who headed a one-time tech darling that specialised in software for one-page resumes is insisting she will not have to draft up her own CV.

Joanna Riley, the chief executive officer of struggling Silicon Valley group 1-Page, has taken the unusual step of "clarifying" a statement by the company about her "resignation".

1-Page executive director Joanna Riley co-founded the company with her father, Patrick Riley.

Ms Riley, a former elite college rower based in the tech hub of San Francisco, sought to soothe investors' concerns about her stepping down as CEO to become an executive director of the company that makes HR software in an announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange on Thursday.

Her missive, described as a "supplementary disclosure", followed a separate statement released by the board of the company two days ahead of Christmas entitled "CEO Resignation and Appointment".
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Cloudy skies early, then off and on rain showers overnight. Low 71F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, then off and on rain showers overnight. Low 71F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Donald Trump's assault on trade is escalating. First the foes were China and Mexico. Now it is the world.

The Trump transition team has mooted an import tariff of 10 per cent across the board, doubling down on earlier talk of a 5 per cent tax. Such thinking is of a different character to Mr Trump's campaign rhetoric, which mostly hinted at trade sanctions to force concessions.

A catch-all tariff is a change of belief systems. It overthrows the free trade order that has been upheld and policed by Washington since the 1940s.

Congress cannot stop Mr Trump imposing his will by "executive action" under existing US law. The president may impose tariffs of up to 15 per cent for 150 days without having to demonstrate any damage. All he has to do is utter the words "macroeconomic imbalances", or invoke "national security", and he can do what he wants.
The International Earth Rotation Service has announced there will be a Leap Second inserted at 23:59:59 UTC on the 31st December, due to the earth slowly slowing down, writes Dave Horsfall of North Gosford. "It's fun to listen to see how the time beeps handle it; will your GPS clock display 23:59:60, or will it go nuts? I actually have a recording of the last one (yes, I am a tragic geek)."

Your obituary for Richard Adams was brief but sufficient to summarise what this author's life amounted to: dedication in the face of repeated rejection, says Peter Skrzynecki of Eastwood. "It contains a line which aptly sums up what is happening in Australian politics. Watership Down... is 'the tale of a band of rabbits searching for a home'. Should be compulsory reading for politicians."

"In 1950, I flew in P.G. Taylor's Catalina from Rose Bay to Hobart and back. I believe the aircraft was named Frigate Bird III. Does anyone know if the aircraft has been preserved?" Roland Churches of Beecroft.

More from Mary Watson, of Balgowlah Heights. "Geoff stop worrying about whether the charger is using electricity (C8) and instead be grateful you have one plugged into the wall. Despite personalising mine, using pink cords and secret power points they still disappear."

A phone charger has a transformer in it, states Kevin Mitting of Pymble. "The primary coil of the transformer is 'connected' to the secondary coil via a magnetic field which consumes a leakage current even if the secondary coil is 'open circuit'."
The normally polite and restrained world of international diplomacy has been anything but since last Friday's United Nation's Security Council resolution condemning illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The resolution was carried 14 votes to 0  with the United States failing to veto it as expected. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by calling in the ambassadors of all the western countries which voted for the resolution and reprimanding them. Special condemnation was reserved for Barack Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry, whom Mr Netanyahu accused of secretly orchestrating the "shameful" resolution.

More diplomatic ructions followed on Wednesday when Mr Kerry gave a speech saying Mr Netanyahu's continued support of settlements was undermining any hope of a two-state solution, and that this was a deliberate strategy to appease right wing elements of his governing coalition.

Mr Netanyahu has made plain his growing aversion to the Obama administration this year  criticising the Iran nuclear deal the US helped broker as "bad and dangerous" and travelling to Washington to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress without informing the White House as to its contents. So it's possible there was an element of retribution in Mr Kerry's Washington speech. Another interpretation, however, would that it indicated the Obama Administration's frustration at what it considers to be repeated Israeli intransigence and duplicity over illegal settlement-building had finally boiled over.

Mr Netanyahu's furious reaction to the speech was entirely to be expected given his testy relationship with Mr Obama. That incoming president Donald Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli settlement-building, along with most of Congress, may have added to Mr Netanyahu's pique. However, Mr Kerry's speech was no more than a statement of the obvious, which is that while Israel professes to be committed to a two-state solution, it has effectively derailed any possibility of a negotiated peace settlement by allowing Jewish settlers to build homes on land seized from Palestinians in the Arab-Israel war of 1967.
Illustration: Simon Letch Worried, sleep-deprived mothers ask their Facebook communities for help settling their sleepwalking children. Should they put a baby gate at the top of the staircase for their 10-year-old nightcrawler? Or tie cowbells to the ankles of their eight-year-old who materialises, expressionless, behind the couch? Sleepwalking has a dark mysticism for some that harkens back to folktales of people possessed by spirits and virgins controlled by sexy vampires. Kate Aubusson Credit:Steven Siewert But for the most part Sleep Kate is a lovable rogue. On Wednesday night she threw her arms over my partner on and told him "it's OK, everything is going to be all right". If you catch her mid-dream she'll take you with her on fantastical adventures; rescuing explorers trapped inside petrified amber, or finding a boat that will sail you to Thailand.

She might walk into a cupboard, get stuck and need rescuing herself, but she's generally pretty independent. Sure, I once dreamt I was strangling an assailant only to have my then boyfriend shake me awake to tell me I had been pawing at his neck, but he was fine (I never told him about the dream. I like to think that was a benevolent kindness). On a snowboarding trip in Canada the same boyfriend had to drag me back to bed after he found me  barefooted and in cotton pyjamas  standing on the threshold of the warm room doorway that led to the snowfields and minus 15 degree temperatures. There is an invidious, deeply disturbing side to sleepwalking. Highly publicised cases of murders committed by sleepwalkers, and stilnox car crashes would be the stuff of nightmares if they weren't a horrific reality of the victims and their families.

In 1943, a 16-year-old girl in the US was found not guilty after she shot her father and six-year-old brother during a sleepwalking episode in which she had dreamed she was under attack. In 2015, a father in North Carolina who strangled his four-year-old son to death and attacked his two other children was acquitted of murder after his defence argued he was "violently sleepwalking". It's a plausible defence in Australia. Our laws stipulate a person cannot be guilty of an offence if they were unconscious or asleep at the time that the act was committed. In 1950, 50-year-old Ivy Cogdon became the first person in Australia to successfully use the sleepwalking defence in a murder trial after she killed her daughter with an axe while she slept. Cogdon said she was trapped in a nightmare in which she thought she was protecting her daughter from Korean soldiers who had invaded her suburban home. The defence fails more often than it vindicates.

In 2010, Perth man Vernon Robert Silich claimed he had sleepwalked into his parent's room after drinking heavily over dinner. He killed his mother and father in their sleep by kicking them to death with his steel-capped boots. The sleepwalking defence didn't convince the jury, who sentenced him to life imprisonment. I interviewed an expert witness on the Silich case, a psychiatrist who tore apart the claims of multiple convicted murderers who had invoked the sleepwalking defence. He told me the actions were too complex for someone to execute in their sleep; including Silich finding and lacing up his steel-capped boots. I didn't tell him I was a sleepwalker. I trusted his expertise. Still do. And I'm not about to question the decision of a jury. I just don't know what to make of the seeming intricate tasks I perform on my nighttime jaunts. I once got dressed, slung a bag over my shoulder, grabbed the car keys and made my way out to the carport. Luckily I grabbed my parents' keys instead and woke up fumbling at the car door.

I've sat up in bed and carried on an in-depth job interview with an invisible manager. (I got the job.) Sometimes I remember a fair chunk of my sleep jaunts, which according to some sleep boffins means I might not really be sleepwalking; it doesn't fit the deep sleep stage non-REM parasomnia diagnosis that characterises sleepwalkers. But most of the time I have to rely on other people to fill me in once I've woken up. I asked my father if he and mum worried when I was a child. He said they always locked the doors and made sure they could reach the keys in a hurry just in case I lit a fire. I don't think I'll share the fire scenario with the concerned mothers on Facebook. But I would like to tell them that sleepwalking is far more common than once thought. One in 10 children and one in 50 adults are thought to sleepwalk at some stage.
For years Telstra was well placed to build a nationwide broadband service, but failed to deliver. History will show this to have been one of the greatest missed opportunities in recent Australian telecommunications history.

So, it is sadly ironic that we find ourselves stranded at around No. 50 in global broadband speed rankings. Once the leader, now a follower, in the race towards a digitally enabled global future. Hardly destined to become an innovation nation. Imagine what would happen if we came 50th in the next Olympics medal tally!

Without it, the internet might still be largely the plaything of geeks and academics. At the very least, we would not be browsing online via smartphones or other wireless devices, something that we all take for granted.

In the 1990s Australia's innovation power house, the CSIRO, invented Wi-Fi. Without it, the internet could not have become the omnipresent foundation of modern telecommunications.

Dumping optical fibre and using ageing copper wires and old pay TV cables will be remembered in times to come as the equivalent of rejecting motor vehicles in favour of faster horses. Credit:Glenn Hunt

Telstra's forebear, the Postmaster General's Department, was given the task of building the telegraph 150 years ago, and subsequently the telephone system. In its later guise as Telecom it was charged with ensuring that anyone who wanted one could have what telco engineers call a POTS (plain old telephone service). Nobody suggested that the size of our continent meant only people living in, or very near to, our major population centres could have the phone. Nor was it reserved for the wealthy. Australia's much-vaunted egalitarianism meant universal service was deemed mandatory.

When the then federal government enthusiastically embraced the idea of the National Broadband Network in 2009 it declared we would use the most technically advanced and future-proofed technology available  a service based around optical fibre to the premises for 93 per cent of us and modern fixed wireless, or satellite, for the small minority in more remote areas.

Tony Abbott famously told us he wasn't going to build a broadband network so people could watch television. In government, he ordered our now Prime Minister to take the knife to the NBN. Dumping optical fibre and using ageing copper wires and old pay TV cables will be remembered in times to come as the equivalent of rejecting motor vehicles in favour of faster horses.

NBN recently admitted what most telco engineers south of the equator knew long ago. The 25-year-old Optus pay TV cables, its Hybrid Fibre Coaxial network, are unusable. In the original NBN business plan Optus was to be paid to decommission the HFC network and sign over its customers. Its cables were never intended to be used. Which bright spark told Turnbull to incorporate them in his so-called multi-technology mix model? A model that also has millions of homes being connected to the internet via Telstra's copper wires which are, in some cases, more than 50 years old and destined to need replacing in 10 to 15 years, if not sooner?
Australia claims that the ban treaty process has not taken into account the security needs of "all nations" (for which read the US), a curious claim given that our ally stands out as more vulnerable than most to a nuclear weapons attack. In any event, is she really suggesting that the security needs claimed by the nine nuclear-armed nations outweigh the right of the other 187 of us to be rid of this diabolical threat?

One might have expected that our Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, who likes spruiking Australia's commitment to a "rules-based international order", would welcome the imminent closure of this legal anomaly. On the contrary, however, Australia has been leading the charge to undermine the process.

To realise the full significance of this, consider the fact that other weapons of mass destruction  chemical weapons, biological weapons, landmines, cluster bombs  have all been prohibited by their respective treaties, and the threats posed by these weapons dramatically reduced as a result. But for nuclear weapons, which literally threaten life on Earth, there is currently no equivalent.

It's about time for some good news. Heaven knows, we need it after 2016's litany of human failures to find peace between ourselves and with our struggling planet. But as a Christmas gift of historic proportions, the UN  which is to say its member states  has taken the most promising action in decades to lead us towards the elimination of the world's worst weapons. Late on December 23 in New York, the UN General Assembly resolved by a strong majority to begin talks in March on a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons.

That's a bit like cutting President Bashar al-Assad some slack over his alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria because he has "security needs". Weapons of mass destruction are not somehow more acceptable because a handful of nations claim that they, and only they, must have them. But, the ban treaty critics say, nuclear weapons are different, and the countries with the weapons will just thumb their collective noses at it.

Not according to a letter in October from the US mission to NATO to its European allies, urging that they oppose the treaty. With an air of desperation to sabotage the whole thing, the US stated that efforts to delegitimise nuclear weapons are at odds with its policy of nuclear deterrence, including extended deterrence for its allies (such as NATO members and Australia). Further, horror of horrors, it "could make it impossible to undertake nuclear planning or training". Well, yes, that's the general idea, to delegitimise every aspect of nuclear weapons possession and planning; and all indications are that that goal will be achieved, regardless of who signs the treaty. So much for the toothless tiger notion.

Nevertheless, Australia presses on with its defence of US nuclear weapons, including their possible use on our behalf, not veering from its chosen "progressive" approach to disarmament. This consists of a number of steps that have progressed more slowly over decades than a drunken snail.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has languished since it was completed in 1996, with little prospect of ever coming into force, and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty has been moribund for even longer. In other words, we are told that a stagnant business-as-usual agenda is the way to go, even as 15,000-plus nuclear weapons  1800 of them still on hair-trigger alert  continue to threaten human suffering of the most grotesque proportions, and all warnings point to increasing risk of their use.

Australia's position takes on even greater significance following a tweet on December 22 from US President-elect Donald Trump that stated, "The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." Russia's President Vladimir Putin has made a similar call for his country.
The federal government spent a record amount on digital advertising in Australia last financial year, with growth in spending on new platforms outpacing all traditional media except for television.

Figures published by the Department of Finance in December showed total government advertising spending for major campaigns cost taxpayers $174.7 million in 2015-16, the highest levels since 2007-08 and up by nearly $70 million from the previous year.

Growth in digital advertising by government departments reached $57.4 million in the period, second only to television advertising spending at $66.6 million.

Departments and agencies are required to report all advertising campaigns costing more than $250,000 each year, with the report showing $36.5 million in combined newspaper, magazine and radio advertising in that period.
Australia has broken ranks with the United States and New Zealand over Israel, indicating that it would most likely have opposed the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israel recalled its ambassador to New Zealand for consultations after NZ co-sponsored the resolution demanding that Israel "immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem", and saying the settlements had "no legal validity and [constitute] a flagrant violation under international law".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned New Zealand's Foreign Minister, Murray McCully, to warn him the resolution was a "declaration of war", according to a leading Israeli newspaper.

After the resolution, Israel's government said it would move ahead with thousands of new homes in East Jerusalem and said it had received "ironclad" information that Washington had helped craft the resolution.
Labor has joined calls for Centrelink's automated debt recovery system to be halted or scrapped, amid reports low-income Australians are wrongly receiving letters of demand for thousands of dollars in possible overpayments.

Changes in the federal government agency's compliance processes in July have seen welfare recipients' Centrelink records compared with other government records, including reported income information collected by the Australian Tax Office.

Recipients of contested welfare payments are given three weeks to establish their eligibility to have received the payments. Credit:Marina Neil

The Australian Council of Social Service and some MPs have criticised the processes after some Centrelink clients reported receiving computer-generated letters demanding thousand in repayments during the Christmas period, many of which could be in error.

Recipients of contested welfare payments are given three weeks to establish their eligibility to have received the payments.
Police have arrested a 40-year old man at Sydney Airport over alleged online threats made in relation to New Year's Eve celebrations.

The man was arrested as he stepped off a flight from London, and his home in Chippendale was raided, police say.

Police say they were tipped off about the man by a member of the public.

Police searched a home in the inner city suburb of Chippendale and a storage facility in the city's inner west where they collected documents and hard drives as evidence.
Two years ago the Center of Excellence for the Prevention of Childhood Blindness (CEPCB) was established in Yerevan. Dr. Chien Wong - one of the main mentors of the CEPCBs medical staff  asserts that the achievements of the Armenian ophthalmologists working in the Center are desirable for many developed countries in the world.

Premature babies are experiencing problems potentially leading them to blindness. Previously, there has not been such an issue since the mortality rate among extremely premature babies was very high. Now, when they live thanks to the development of neonatal services, there is a need to give them proper ophthalmic care. This is how Nune Yeghiazaryan, Country Director of the Armenian EyeCare Project presents the CEPCB establishment history.She states that several countries, including the USA, have passed through that boom, which Armenia experienced in late 2000s.

The Armenian EyeCare Project (AECP) is a charitable foundation established in 1992 in the USA by American-Armenian ophthalmologist Dr. Roger Ohanesian. In 2010, in cooperation with the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, they started the National Screening and Treatment Program for Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP). We started to screen babies and identify those who are in the risk group forexperiencing eye problems. We were screening about 1,000 babies a year and were providing laser treatment to those who needed it. But for surgeries, they had to travel to St. Petersburg, Russia, said Nune Yeghiazaryan.

Armenias Ministry of Health of the RA instructed the AECP that Armenian babies should be treated in Armenia. In 2014, theAECP, in cooperation with USAID, established the Center of Excellence for the Prevention of Childhood Blindness. Theaim was to develop professional ophthalmology capacities to eliminate preventable blindness among children in Armenia and the region.

In 2014 Dr. Chien Wong from London (Moorfields Eye Hospital, Royal Free London Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children) visited Armenia with a medical mission and enthusiastically agreed to perform those surgeries and to train Armenian doctors.

This year, on December 19-21, Dr. Chien Wong performed surgeries in the CEPCB. This was his ninth visit during the past two years.

I continue sharing my experience with the CEPCB medical staff to help them treat children with unusual eye conditions. Two and a half years ago, Dr. Roger Ohanesian (the Founder and President of the Armenian EyeCare Project - S.P.) enticed me to Armenia to provide eye care to premature infantswith ROP. Another reason for my visit was my cooperation with Dr. Thomas Lee from the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. The visit, intended as a one-time activity,has become the ninth. Our aim was to provide children with the whole cycle of eyecare services from screening to surgeries. The CEPCB is a unique facility. Until recently, babies of Armenia and neighboring countries had no possibility to get treatment in Armenia, and there were children who went blind due to the disease. The main aim of my visits is to train local doctors and to lead them to a professional level where there is no more need of my visit. Today we are very close to it.

The Armenian doctors team has become very professional. One of our most recent cases is yesterdays patient, a six-year-old girl, who has come to Armenia from a neighboring country. Her parents were very disheartenedsince they knew nothing about her condition and nothing about the treatment possibilities. Here, not only did they receive proper treatment, but also information about her eye problems and what to expect.

Dr. Wong, what keeps you coming back to Armenia?

Kebab, Armenian coffee and cognac.

And, on a more serious note?

The warmth of Armenian people and their readiness to obtain new knowledge. This helps me to continue my job in Armenia. The team here is very open to get new information and is working not only to treat the baby, but also to cooperate with families in the decision-making process. I give importance to it also. We have a fantastic team in Armenia. Technical skills are very important, and this team has it, but no less important is the ability to make correct decisions on time.

But you still monitor the work of staff.

Because I cant go without kebab and coffee.

Is the number of children with ROP high in Armenia?

The program of the initial screening of premature babies in Armenia started in 2010. Since then more than 12,000 screenings have been held. About 5% of those babies underwent laser treatment to prevent dangerous developments. About 5% of those babies have a risk of blindness. This seems to be a small number, but its not relative to 10,000. The hospital in London where I work treats children with ROP from all overGreat Britain. I am able to transfer that comprehensive expertise to my colleagues in Armenia, and they successfully garner knowledge from that expertise. ROP surgery is ranked as one of the most complicated of eye surgeries. Its like the iceberg of surgeries, even though other procedures have their unique problems.

In 2016, there were no cases of retinal detachment in Armenia that would need a complicated surgery. This is a desirable result even for many developed countries in the world. Its important to organize childrens treatment correctly in order not to need surgeries but to treat them in early stages with lasers.

2010-2016: Findings of the ROP National Program

Create bar charts

What is your treatmentssuccess rate?

The treatment has a positive outcome for 70% of patients. In London and in Armenia we use an innovative method of treatment that doesnt damage the intraocular lens during the surgery.

What worries eye doctors more, congenital or acquired blindness? What are the trends today?

I think that blindness is mostly acquired. It depends on what age group you look at. The first group consists of premature babies and children up to 8 years old, when the connections between eye and brain are forming. This is the time when a child, via the eyes, learns and understands the surrounding world. If a child goes blind, they remain blind for their entire life. However, a child that goes blind at a very young age learns more, than a person who goes blind at the age of fifty, by adapting to that condition.
More than nine times as many violent offences are committed in the New Year's Eve window between 9pm and 3am than at other times over the festive period.

With Sydney's hospital emergency departments bracing for a flood of patients on New Year's Eve, crime statistics show an average of 312 assaults recorded in that six-hour window, with the night the year's worst for violence.

"You can have lives destroyed": Dr Tony Grabs. Credit:Steven Siewert

Over the past five years, 125 violent offences on average were committed in the final three hours of New Year's Eve, soaring to an average of 433 in the first three hours of New Year's Day, an analysis of NSW Police records by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research found.

It is a similar story in Victoria, where significantly more assaults and sexual assaults occur in the week leading up to New Year.
Hunter woman Kathleen Evans was farewelled at a funeral on Wednesday, more than two decades after her "miraculous" cancer recovery that led to Mary MacKillop becoming Australia's first saint.

In her first media conference in January, 2010 Mrs Evans joked that she had "absolute faith that I'll never get cancer" again and would die of a heart attack.

Kathleen Evans (centre) for the Canonisation of Mary MacKillop in Rome. Credit:Joe Armao

She died, aged 73, on December 18, six months after she was diagnosed with the lung cancer her doctors said was unrelated to the lung and brain cancer she recovered from in 1993.

Her funeral at Kincumber's Holy Spirit Catholic Church  in the suburb where she lived her final two years and where St Mary MacKillop established an orphanage in 1887  heard of the woman praised by a nun as "this wonderful woman, this great human being".
Police have released CCTV of a white van after a 67-year-old man was hit and killed outside his home in Sydney's south-west on Wednesday.

Zac Andreou was getting into his car, which was parked on Clarence Street in Condell Park, just before 4pm when he was hit by the van.

He was thrown several metres down the road. The Toyota HiAce van continued driving north along the street and did not stop, police said.

Family members, including Mr Andreou's son Andrew Zacharia, rushed to the scene to help him.
The gang behind the largest cocaine bust in Australian history have been described by police as a "robust, resilient and determined syndicate" behind a number of alleged attempts to import large quantities of drugs into the country.

Authorities smashed the 15-member ring on Christmas Day, seizing 500 kilograms of cocaine from a boat at Parsley Bay near Brooklyn on the Hawkesbury River.

Police allege the gang were involved in five attempts to import drugs into Australia, including 32 kilograms of heroin that was seized in Fiji in December 2014 and 600 kilograms of cocaine that was seized in Tahiti in March this year.

Officers from the Australian Federal Police, Australian Border Force and NSW Police have worked with international authorities for the past 2  years to break the syndicate.
Good morning.

For the penultimate day of 2016, temperatures are forecast to hit 36 in the CBD and 38 in Parramatta. There's an even chance of storms from the late afternoon, the Bureau reckons.

Time to pass, prices to rise

Life is about to become more expensive for drivers, asthmatics, pensioners, home-owners and people with sweet tooths. Few consumer groups are unaffected by yearly changes to laws and regulations.

Opal fares are frozen till July but tolls will increase between 1 and 8 for cars using several motorways, so too will fares for the Manly Ferry East.
"Abandoned" homeless camps will be the target of a new street clean-up operation in Melbourne, the city's lord mayor Robert Doyle said.

A council-led crackdown began this week, with five camps along Bourke and Swanston streets cleaned up.

Cr Doyle said he was frustrated that people continued to give homeless people items such as garden chairs, doonas and tents.

"That is not a pathway out of homelessness and in fact what happens is the homeless just leave them sitting there and walk away from them," he said.
A cyclist attempts to cross a fallen tree at the Creek Parade Bridge at Nothcote on Friday morning. Credit:Eddie Jim Trains are still feeling the effects of yesterday's downpour, with part of the Belgrave line suspended and services across the network cancelled. It is not just the train lines that were impacted - water damage to the ceiling at South Yarra Station forced the closure of half of the platforms until about 10am. Elwood resident cleans up on Friday morning. Credit:Neelima Choahan Platforms four to six had to be closed, and trains on the Frankston and Pakenham/Cranbourne lines had to skip the station until the ceiling was repaired.

Seven train lines were suspended on Thursday and while the lines are open again this morning, last night's disruption has left trains out of position. Mitford st in Elwood after Thursday's flash flooding. Credit:Wayne Taylor A Metro Trains spokesman said the cancellations would be in the early morning, and would clear once the network got back to normal speed. But a section of the Belgrave line between Upper Ferntree Gully and Belgrave remains closed while crews inspect tracks for flood damage, and replacement buses have been organised for the affected area. Brighton beach goers cross Brighton Rd as the wild weather hit Melbourne. Credit:Penny Stephens

It means anyone travelling into the city from Belgrave on Friday is set for a lengthy commute, having to take two sets of replacement buses as trains are not running further along the line between Ringwood and Box Hill because of level crossing works. The Metro spokesman apologised for the delay and urged Belgrave passengers to allocate extra travel time. But Melbourne's roads have mostly recovered from the downpour, and traffic is running smoothly along major roads this morning. A VicRoads spokeswoman said there had not been any major delays, but urged motorists to call 13 11 70 if they spotted any debris on roads. Melburnians again endured a hot and humid night, but it was not as uncomfortable as Wednesday night, which was the warmest night of the year.

The overnight temperature did not drop below 20 degrees, but high humidity levels trapped the heat and made it seem up to three degrees warmer. Bureau of meteorology senior forecaster Beren Bradshaw said the fog and humidity should dissipate within the next few hours as the temperature rises on Friday. And after a week of nights with temperatures in their 20s, tonight is expected to be a cool one in the mid-teens. "It will be a welcome relief," Ms Bradshaw said. She said torrential rain during Thursday's thunderstorms fell so rapidly that it would have been in excess of a one in-a-100 year event in some places.

"In a lot of those locations we are looking at at least a one-in-10 year event. But in some locations we have recorded rainfall in excess of a one-in-100-year event," In metropolitan Melbourne, the rain fell most rapidly in places like Viewbank in Melbourne's north east, and Scoresby, in the east, which received more than one month's rainfall in mere hours. A severe weather warning remains in place for heavy rain in the state's east. The area for which the flash flooding warning has been issued. Credit:Craig Butt

As of 7pm on Thursday, more than 35 SES crews were working across suburban Melbourne. Emergency services rescued motorists stranded in cars in floodwater, and numerous "good samaritan" rescues of trapped motorists also occurred in the suburbs. In Elwood, residents were forced to wade along footpaths in water that was knee-deep, and water inundated verandahs and at least one home in the suburb. One Elwood resident told Channel Nine that "at the worst of it, we had four inches of water through the entire house". He also said: "It was like a river coming up the side of the house, filling the backyard, coming up under the door, under all the doors ... under the floor, through the floor, under the skirting boards, everything, everything. It just came in every angle. You just couldn't get towels down quick enough."

Geoffrey Love, secretary of the Elwood Floods Action Group, said the flooding that hit Elwood had caused "significant" damage in the suburb. Mr Love said Wave Street was flooded after the Elwood Canal broke its banks, while Mitford Street was flooded by water from the sudden downpour, which damaged properties. Mr Love urged the four councils that were home to the Elster Creek catchment, Melbourne Water and the state government to work cooperatively to reduce the risk of flooding in Elwood. The Elster Creek flows into the Elwood Canal. Loading He called for consistent council policies that would help reduce the amount of stormwater run-off, the use of permeable surfaces instead of hard surfaces and the construction of levees to catch and contain floodwater.
Lives and homes are in danger from an out-of-control blaze burning in Perth's northeast.

A bushfire watch and act alert has been issued for people near Bingham Road and Pine Road in the northern part of Bullsbrook in the City of Swan.

The fire is moving fast in a north-easterly direction and burning embers are likely to be blown around homes, the Department of Fire and Emergency Services warns.

Residents in the area need to leave or get ready to actively defend their homes.
Jakarta: Indonesia's police chief has attributed a sharp rise in the number of alleged terrorists handled by his force to the influence of Islamic State and the defeats it is experiencing in the Middle East.

The number of alleged terrorists dealt with by Indonesian police in 2016 was more than double the previous year, as IS encouraged terror cells to carry out attacks beyond Syria.

National police chief Tito Karnavian revealed there had been 170 alleged terrorists processed by police this year, compared to only 82 in 2015.

Of the 170 cases, 40 militants were sentenced, six were returned to their families, 36 are facing trial, 55 are being investigated and 33 were killed.
Three Armenian soldiers were killed early this morning near the Tavoush province village of Chinari in a firefight to prevent an Azerbaijan military unit attempting to cross the border.

The news was reported by Artzrun Hovhannisyan, a spokesman for Armenias Ministry of Defense, in his Facebook page.

Hovhannisyan wrote that the firefight erupted around 10:17 a.m. The spokesman reported that sniper and mortar fire was continuing 40 minutes after his post.

Update: Armenias Ministry of Defense later confirmed the death of the three soldiers  Senior Lieytenant Shavarsh Melikyan, and privates Edgar Narayan and Erik Abovyan. The ministry reports that Armenian defense units repelled the attempted Azerbaijani incursion, inflicting an unspecified number of dead and injured.

Later this afternoon, Artzrun Hovhannisyan posted in Facebook that at least seven Azerbaijani soldiers were killed in today's firefight. Azerbaijan has refuted this claim, arguing that Armenian forces, not Azerbaijani, had attempted to cross the border.
Moscow: Russia's embassy in Damascus was hit by a mortar shell on Thursday afternoon, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

The blast caused no casualties, Zakharova said in a statement on the ministry's website.

The embassy had been hit by shells twice on Wednesday. The ministry said the attacks were a provocation aimed at derailing a peace settlement.

Reuters
Beirut: A nationwide ceasefire in Syria, brokered by Russia and Turkey which back opposing sides in the conflict, got off to a shaky start after midnight local time on Friday, in the latest attempt to end nearly six years of bloodshed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, announced the ceasefire on Thursday after preparing the agreement with Turkey, a longtime backer of the opposition. He said it had been reached with the Syrian government, certain Syrian rebel groups, Iran and Turkey. Notably absent from the peace process was the United States.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the US could join the peace process once President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20. He also wanted Egypt to join, together with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Jordan and the United Nations.

In a statement posted to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), the military declared a "comprehensive" cessation of hostilities following "victories and advances" by Syria's armed forces.
Hong Kong: US President-elect Donald Trump's golden quiff, bushy eyebrows and preening gestures were immortalised this week in China - though perhaps not in a way that he would like.

They appeared on a giant rooster statue, just above some three-toed feet and a blood-red wattle that hangs below a gilded nose and mouth.

The giant rooster sculpture resembling US President-elect Donald Trump to celebrate the upcoming Chinese Year of the Rooster in Taiyuan, China. Credit:AP

The statue, installed outside a shopping mall in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuan, was built to celebrate the coming Year of the Rooster in the Chinese lunar calendar and comes less than a month before Trump's inauguration. It is 7 metres tall.

Relations between Washington and Beijing have been especially jittery in recent weeks. The tension is due in large part to Trump, who belittled China during his presidential campaign and caused a diplomatic stir this month by making clear that he views the central basis for diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing - known as the One China policy - as up for negotiation.
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PHILIPSBURG:--- The people of Sint Maarten expect a higher level of functioning from our Parliament in the New Year. Following a trial and error period of six years, our MPs should begin to raise the bar in 2017.

We expect our MPs, while on the floor of parliament, to stick to the business at hand and not be carried away by personal or emotional circumstances. According to article 53 of the Constitution, parliamentarians should refrain from debating and voting on issues related to their person, their spouses or family members to the second degree. If MPs are not pleased with the way family members are treated, this should be handled privately and not addressed on the floor of Parliament. MPs should not be bringing family issues to the floor of Parliament.

Parliamentarians should also be aware that they are being heard, not only in Sint Maarten, but regionally as well as internationally. The language used in Parliament should be adjusted for a wider audience. We do not expect our parliamentarians to use Oxford or American English, but we do expect them to express themselves in such a manner that our regional and international audiences can also understand them and are not turned off by their grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation or speech content. I am not degrading our local English, but there is a place and time for its use. In addition, parliamentarians should be consistent in the way they address the President of Parliament. If the President is female, then according to Roberts Rules of Order, she should be addressed as Madame Chairman. In English, the word chairman is considered gender neutral, just like the words governor, director or ombudsman. We dont say governess or directress or ombudswoman. Also, according to Roberts Rules of Order, when the chairman gives a parliamentarian permission to speak he does not give him/her the word but rather the chairman gives him/her the floor.

Parliamentarians should refrain from walking out of the hall unnecessarily or from texting during public meetings. When the camera does a pan shot of the hall of our parliament, it is shameful to see most of the MPs engrossed in texting, or to see so many empty seats. Walking out during parliamentary meetings may be a carry-over from the days of the Parliament of the Netherlands Antilles. But in those days, meetings were broadcasted via radio, so people did not see what was going on. Today, our meetings are live video-casted and can be viewed later at everyones convenience. It looks very bad to see a lot of empty seats and MPs walking in and out, or texting. This gives the voters the impression that our MPs do not care about what their colleagues are saying. Basic courtesy and ethics teach us to respect a speaker by giving him or her our undivided attention. MPs must also take into account the example they are setting in our society by this type of behavior.

Parliament should also take into consideration, that the public, watching and listening, has little information about the meeting. The President, therefore, should give an explanation, not for the sake of the MPs, who are in possession of the agenda and the relevant documents but for the sake of the general public, who does not have much of a clue as to what the meeting is all about. Case in point is the recent meeting concerning the appointment of members to the various parliamentary committees. No information was given to the public about the various committees and how they function. At the end of the meeting, the public had no clue which MPs were appointed and to which committees. This information was published several days later in the newspaper. I believe that the President of Parliament should ensure that the public is duly informed concerning the meetings. The agenda alone does not say much.

For the people of Sint Maarten who are unable to attend the live committee or public meetings, or listen or watch the live broadcast, the SMCP strongly recommends that all meetings should be recorded and made available via Parliaments website or via YouTube. Unfortunately, not all central committee and public meetings concerning the 2017 Budget have been recorded. SMCP also requests Parliament to improve the audio archives by labeling and dating them more clearly so that the public can better select the meeting or meetings they want to listen to. The same applies to the video archives.

SMCP proposes that, in 2017, our Parliament institutes a regular Meet the Press Hour once a month. During this hour, the President of Parliament and the Chairpersons of the various Parliamentary Committees should inform the press, regarding meetings, outcomes, plans, projects, and activities. Seeing that Parliament is a fairly new institution, these sessions can also be used to enlighten the public, as to the duties, rights, responsibilities, and functioning of Parliament. MPs, please help to make Parliament more accessible to the public and raise the bar in Parliament in 2017. Happy New Year Sint Maarten!

Wycliffe Smith

Leader of the Sint Maarten Christian Party
SEB Announces Closing of Second Tranche of $5 Million Unit Offering

MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO  (Marketwired)  12/28/16  Smart Employee Benefits Inc. (SEB or the Company) (TSX VENTURE: SEB) announces that is has closed a second tranche of its $5 million unit offering (the Offering). The Offering was previously announced on October 20, 2016 and its extension was announced on December 5, 2016.

Aggregate proceeds of $1,551,560 were raised on this second tranche closing. 7,757,800 units (each a Unit) were issued at a price of $0.20 per Unit. Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company and one transferable common share purchase warrant of the Company (a Warrant). Each Warrant is exercisable into one common share of the Company at a price of $0.30 per share and has a term of 18 months from the date of issuance.

Approximately $501,560 of the subscriptions on this second tranche was from Company insiders.

A finder for the Offering was paid cash compensation of $70,000, which is equal to 7% of the gross proceeds it assisted with under the Offering, as well as 350,000 finder warrants (each a Finder Warrant), which is equal to 7% of the number of Units sold it assisted with pursuant to the Offering. Each Finder Warrant entitles the finder to acquire one Unit at an exercise price of $0.20 per Unit and has a term of 18 months from the date of issuance.

All securities issued in connection with this second tranche of the Offering will be subject to a four-month hold period expiring April 23, 2017. Proceeds from this second tranche of the Offering will be used for repayment of debt and working capital purposes.

This brings the total closed financing to $3,204,445. Of the remaining $1,795,555 of the $5,000,000, over $600,000 has been committed from insiders of the Company. It is anticipated that insiders of the Company will subscribe for over $2.0 million of the $5.0 million equity financing. It is expected that the remainder of the Offering will close in January, 2017.

About SEB

Smart Employee Benefits Inc.s global infrastructure is comprised of two operating divisions: Technology and Benefits. The Technology Division currently serves corporate and government clients across Canada and internationally. The Benefits Division focuses on offering SAAS and BPO back-office processing and automation solutions in the Health Benefits Sector to corporate and government clientele. The Benefits Division operates as a client of the Technology Division. The Technology Division is a critical competitive advantage in supporting the implementation of SEBs benefits processing solutions into client environments. Benefits Processing is a high-growth specialty practice area.

The core expertise of both divisions is data processing. Emphasis is on automating business processes utilizing SEB proprietary software solutions combined with solutions of third parties through joint ventures and partnerships.

Acquisitions, joint ventures, and RFP wins will continue to be dominant influences in driving growth in both divisions. The Company has increased sales approximately 500% since Fiscal 2014.

For further information about SEB, please visit .

The statements made in this release that are not historical facts contain forward-looking information that involves risks and uncertainties. All statements, including statements regarding the Companys areas of focus, other than statements of historical facts, which address the Companys expectations, should be considered as forward-looking statements and therefore subject to various risks and uncertainties. The words may, will, could, should, would, suspect, outlook, believe, plan, anticipate, estimate, expect, intend, forecast, objective, hope and continue (or the negative thereof), and words and expressions of similar import, are intended to identify forward-looking statements.

Such forward-looking statements are based on knowledge of the environment in which the Company currently operates, but because of the factors listed herein, as well as other factors beyond the Companys control, actual results may differ materially from the expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation, and does not intend, to update, revise or otherwise publicly release any revisions to these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof, or to reflect the occurrence of any unanticipated events, other than as required by applicable law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

MEDIA AND INVESTOR CONTACT:

John McKimm

President/CEO/CIO

Office (888) 939-8885 x 354

Cell (416) 460-2817
Armenian Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, during a critique of the countrys Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, said that the government had created a sytem in which able-bodied individuals prefer receiving state handouts than working.

He implied that many are simply faking their socio-economic status to get on the government dole.

Because of this, the number of state social benefits is going up. We are discouraging people to work or to look for work, the prime minister said.

Karapetyan expressed this sentiment at todays government cabinet session.

The prime minister said that the labor ministry should not try to solve issues that other government agencies can do better. In his evaluation, Karapetyan noted that the ministry is trying to solve problems in the agricultural, business and education sectors; issues not in its purview.
Former Warren City Council at-large candidate Gary Boike said he has been planning since the Nov. 2019 election to request appointment to Council President Patrick Greens seat once it becomes vacant.
A guide to voter rights in Indiana. What you need to know before you cast a ballot

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More than 300 ostriches die of hunger. Tigran has no money to feed them.

Heres another ostrich story from Armenia.

Tigran Khachatryan, a surgeon by profession, started raising ostriches just over seven years ago. He imported 24 one-month old baby ostriches from Iran. He put down his scalpel and devoted himself fully to the business.

Khachatryan claims that many holiday tables in Armenias villages now feature ostrich legs, replaced the omnipresent khozi bout (pork thigh). At one time, you could have bought ostrich meat, imported in small quantities, in Armenia for $40-$50 a kilogram.

Weve reached a point where one kilogram of ostrich meat sells for 3,000-4,000 AMD ($6-$8). You can say its the worlds cheapest ostrich meat. But when it comes to feeding the animals, we use the most expensive feed, Khachatryan said.

Tigran now has thirty ostriches. He wants to sell them or, if necessary, to slaughter them. The one-time surgeon says ostrich breeding in Armenia is passe.

He says he took all risk factors into account before starting the business; all but one. He never expected a top government official to import a large number of ostriches to Armenia, thus destroying the market for the small operators.

Things started to go downhill when former Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Armen Movsisyan (now deceased), imported some 3,000 ostriches from Iran. He sold the meat for next to nothing; 1,000 AMD per kilo. After Movsisyan died in September 2015, the operation shut down. But by that time, many smaller businesses had already closed or were about to.

Khachatryan says that banks in Armenia dont take into account the life cycle of ostriches when giving out loans. Ostriches become sexually mature at the age of 3-4, and thats when breeders take out loans to make needed investments. But, says Khachatryan, the turn-around time to see results is four years. Repayments on loans start after the third or fourth month.

Tigran is now in court for late loan payments. Heeding the message of Armenias new prime minister regarding government support to small and medium sized business, Khachatryan requested a meeting with agricultural minister Ignaty Arakelyan. The two met, but the ostrich breeder says the minister only offered platitudes, nothing specific.

He told me to do the best I can and to set-up a cooperative with the big breeders. I told him that in this country the big outfits want to destroy anyone else, and thats how things operate between the small and big firms. The big guy isnt a businessman and doesnt have a business mentality. The big outfits get their money from who knows where, from unknown sources, Khachatryan says.

The government argued that banks and credit agencies are private firms and that the state cant get involved. Khachatryan explained that he invested $230,000 into the business and that he has debts of $45,000. Hes placed all he owns as collateral, even his house. He now faces the possibility of losing it all.

We have no other option but to sell the farm and relaunch the business in Russia, says Khachatryan. Hes researched the Russian market and says that ostrich meat fetches a price 2.5 times more than in Armenia and that feed is three times less expensive.

He says that many ostrich farms have closed in Tavoush province. Hetq has recently written about the failed ostrich business of Slavik Zournachyan in the Tavoush village of Haghtanak.

Khachatryan says that in the past 1.5 years, 100 of his ostriches due for slaughtering and 220 baby ostriches, died from hunger. He didnt have the money for feed.

The bank has seized our last bit of cash as payment on the overdue loans. I dont understand the reasoning. The only conclusion is that if you have a problem, its best if you just fold and go under. I also dont understand the idea of penalties. Certain credit agencies levy 1% per day in fines and penalties for late payments. Thats 30% every month. Ive never heard of such figures, Khachatryan complains.

Khachatryan advises anyone thinking of going into business to first ponder the possibility that they might wind up in his predicament.

The surgeon turned ostrich farmer says hes dealt with Armenias customs officials on two occasions and he doesnt want to step inside the office again.

They just place artificial obstacles in front of you. I want nothing more to do with them, says a frustrated Khachatryan.

Photos: Davit Banuchyan
After working together for more than 47 years, attorney Bill Doar and paralegal Libby Lambert, of the Pawleys Island-based McNair Law Firm, are retiring at the end of 2016.
Armenias government has given the green light to launch free weapons training courses to eligible individuals.

The governments rationale is that citizens should be proficient in the use of arms to defend the countrys borders.

The countrys Ministry of Sport and Social Affairs proposed the program and now has six months to draft an agenda for ratification.

Given the complex political situation, an inseparable aspect of the Armenian peoples national culture must include proficiency in small arms as the number one strategic sport, since mastering shooting skills is a necessity for every Armenian in order to be ready to defend the territory of Armenia and its borders, the decision reads.

The program, if ratified, would envisage the construction of shooting ranges in Yerevan and the provinces starting in 2018 that would offer free lessons. Some shooting ranges would operate on a paid basis.

The government has even gone so far to specify the number of bullets to be fired by those attending classes. It states that individuals must attend classes twice a year and fire ten rounds.

One assumes that these are the minimum requirements to receive a weapons license.

The ministry reports that of the twelve shooting ranges now operating, only three are fully operational. The other nine are not in good condition and also lack arms and ammunition.
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President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence appear together during a stop on his 'USA Thank You Tour 2016' on Dec. 16 in Orlando, Florida. The Trump administration has expressed interest in reviving the National Space Council, which the vice president traditionally chairs, to oversee U.S. space policy.

As the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump kicks into high gear, the future of the country's civil and military activities in space is on the table.

Late in the 2016 presidential race, the Trump campaign aired the idea of relaunching the National Space Council (NSC) to oversee U.S. space policy. When NASA was formed, the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 mandated an aeronautics and space advisory group as a mechanism to help guide America's space agenda. Over the following decades there has been an on-again, off-again history of a National Space Council to serve the U.S. President.

The idea of such a Council is seemingly in play again in the wake of the 2016 election. But just how politics, agency cultures, personalities, and budget constraints play nice with each other in 2017  in terms of resuscitating a National Space Council  is anybody's guess.

Under such a plan, the council would be established within the Executive Office of the President of the United States, and would likely be chaired by Vice President Mike Pence after the new administration takes office.

In a pre-presidential election speech in Florida, Pence sketched out elements of the campaign's space policy  one that reconstitutes the National Space Council to focus on human space exploration and the augmented use of public-private partnerships. "Our space program needs new leadership, and a new vision," he said. [Related: What a Trump Administration Means for NASA]

But if a National Space Council were to be re-established, how useful would it be? Space.com interviewed a variety of space experts, both for and against the idea, to find out.

U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower looking at a nose cone in the White House during a November 1957 television speech about science and national security. He judged that he did not need a separate council for space matters, handling those issues through the National Security Council. (Image credit: White House)

American priorities in space

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, told Space.com that a NSC led by the incoming vice president would be "absolutely critical in ensuring that the president's space priorities are clearly articulated, and effectively executed."

However, Marcia Smith, editor of SpacePolicyOnline.com, added a cautionary note.

"A White House National Space Council can be useful if the president wants one and is willing to back it up when other White House offices, like the Office of Management and Budget, balk at its recommendations. If not, then it is a waste of resources," Smith told Space.com.

Smith added that a National Space Council would be more effective if there were to be a positive relationship between its personnel and those in the departments, agencies and industries whose activities it is seeking to coordinate.

"Adversarial relationships will undermine the entire enterprise," she said.

At the height of the "space race," U.S. President John F. Kennedy found a Space Council viable, and with the Vice President as its chair. Attempts by the Space Council to develop a comprehensive statement of national space policy were not successful, with the Council staff apparently not exerting any influence on defense and national security space issues. (Image credit: NASA)

Dismantling NASA?

Apollo astronaut Harrison "Jack" Schmitt also weighed in on the prospect of a National Space Council. After his Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972, Schmitt served in the U.S. Senate, in a six-year stint representing New Mexico. [50 Years of Presidential Visions for Space Exploration]

A few years ago, Schmitt proposed dismantling NASA and advocated the creation of a new, National Space Exploration Administration (NSEA).

"If the Trump administration pursues a vigorous and permanent deep-space exploration program  one that looks at the moon as a necessary springboard to Mars  all that would be necessary would be to give the NASA administrator, or new agency administrator, full authority and necessary funding to implement that program," Schmitt told Space.com

An NSC chaired by the vice president, Schmitt said, "might add clear White House support for the program, but it also probably would add another layer of bureaucracy on top of the [Office of Management and Budget]."

During the tenure of U.S. President Johnson, Vice President Hubert Humphrey was tagged as chairman of the Space Council in 1965. Humphrey advocated for better use of the space program as an instrument of foreign policy. During his visit to the Marshall Space Flight Center in June 1967, Humphrey was briefed by center director, Wernher von Braun. (Image credit: NASA)

Historical record

John Logsdon, professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at The George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, has debated the idea of whether a National Space Council is necessary.

He said he wonders whether there is one organizational structure or presidential approach that would serve the United States best in aximizing the contributions of its civilian, military, intelligence and commercial space capabilities. However, "Experience suggests that there is no one 'best' way of organizing the presidency for space," Logsdon said. [In Photos: President Obama and NASA]

According to Logsdon, the idea of a National Space Council to coordinate U.S. civilian, defense, intelligence and commercial space activity is far from new. It was tried from 1958 to 1973, he said, and then again from 1989 to 1993, and did not demonstrate enough value to be made a lasting part of the institutional presidency.

Obama raised the idea again during his 2008 presidential campaign, but it never came to be, Logsdon added.

Requested by U.S. President Richard Nixon. Vice President, Spiro Agnew, headed up a "Space Task Group" to review the nation's space future. Shown here is Agnew congratulating the launch control team after liftoff of Apollo 17 in 1972. Earlier, Apollo 8 astronaut, Bill Anders, in June 1969 was appointed as executive secretary of the Space Council, with a mandate to revitalize the organization. But in early 1973, Nixon abolished the National Aeronautics and Space Council. (Image credit: NASA)

Better option

Logsdon said many approaches to organizing White House space policy management are possible; most have been tried in the last half century.

However, "a separate White House space council has not been successful in demonstrating its superiority as an organizational approach," Logsdon noted.

"It seems to me that giving the National Security Council the staff it would need to play this coordinating role is a better option," Logsdon said, "since from the president's perspective, the U.S. space program is a tool of broader economic, foreign policy and security goals, and the NSC and its staff are best positioned to link U.S. space capabilities to those goals."

Heady day on July 20, 1989, at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.  a celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Apollo 11 and chosen venue for President George H.W. Bush's announcement of a proposed Space Exploration Initiative. In April 1989, President Bush created the National Space Council by "Executive Order 12675," chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle. Left to right, Chair of the National Space Council, Vice President Dan Quayle, President Bush, and the crew of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. (Image credit: NASA)

Mixed results

Also taking a hard look at the history and potential of a National Space Council is James Vedda, a senior policy analyst at The Aerospace Corporation's Center for Space Policy and Strategy in Arlington, Virginia.

In a recent paper on the topic, Vedda reviewed the on-again, off-again history of the National Space Council.

Space advisory groups in the Executive Office of the President "have produced mixed results, more negative than positive," Vedda wrote. "It should not be surprising that from 1958 through today, the senior management of NASA and DoD [Department of Defense] have not favored a National Space Council, viewing it as a barrier between themselves and the president that will do little more than slow things down."

This relatively unproductive history, Vedda noted, "will be repeated if the administration establishes a space advisory mechanism that is too cumbersome, too far removed from senior decision makers, or poorly staffed."

Vedda added that the effectiveness of such groups has varied depending on their organizational structure and staffing, the president's level of interest, relationships with Congress and relevant agencies, the events driving the agenda, and individual personalities.

Senator Barack Obama as a presidential hopeful pledged to reestablish the National Aeronautics and Space Council, but no such organization emerged from the presidential transition. President Obama delivered a speech at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on April 15, 2010, espousing a new course the Administration is charting for NASA and the future of U.S. leadership in human space flight. (Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Boon or bust?

On the other hand, a National Space Council conducted properly "could go a long way toward efficiently setting goals and addressing issues that cut across the civil, commercial and national security space sectors, and therefore across several agencies," Vedda said.

Some of the cross-cutting issues flagged by Vedda include the following:

Export control and acquisition reform;

The health of the space industrial base;

Space debris mitigation and space traffic management;

The facilitation of emerging commercial space industries; and

The determination of goals and priorities for space activities beyond low Earth orbit.

The bottom line, according to Vedda, is that a space council in the Executive Office of the President "can be a boon if it works well  aligning policy and strategy across the civil, commercial and national security space sectors to serve national interests  or a wasteful exercise if it doesn't," Vedda wrote.

Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," published by National Geographic. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel six-part series, Mars. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
At a time when NASA earth scientists are concerned their research may be scuttled by the incoming Trump administration, the space agency's top science official is preaching pragmatism and unity.

The names of the two key Trump administration figures who will have the most significant impact on NASA's future  the new NASA administrator and the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy  have not been announced. To put that in scientific terms, all the rumor and discussion swirling around the scientific community about NASA's future under a Trump presidency is noise, "not signal," said Thomas Zurbuchen, who took over as the leader of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in October.

"You are leaders in your community, please be a source of signal, not a source of noise," Zurbuchen said Dec. 12 during the annual Earth Science Town Hall meeting at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. [Analysis: The Biggest Space Issues Facing the Trump Administration]

Although it is possible that NASA's Earth Science program "might get somewhat smaller in the new administration, it is not at all obvious to me that is going to happen," said Michael Freilich, NASA Earth Science Division director. "I am actually optimistic the benefits will be recognized as they have in the past."

"You have earned tremendous credibility from your work over the years," Freilich said through a two-way internet link that allowed him to interact with people at the town hall from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, where he was awaiting the launch of NASA's Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System. "You earned that credibility by being good scientists, by being logical, attacking problems and letting the data speak for themselves. We don't do policy in NASA. We provide the information for all the policymakers to draw their own conclusions."

Even if NASA's Earth science program shrinks, scientists should focus diligently on their work instead of "spending time pining for what could have been," Freilich said.

Zurbuchen also emphasized the importance of producing high-quality research. "Let's behave like scientists and deal with absolute ethics with our science," he said. "At the end, history will judge us by whether we did the right thing."

Funding for NASA's Earth science program has traditionally waxed and waned with changing administrations. Funding as a percent of NASA's overall budget declined sharply from 2001 to 2006, the early years of the George W. Bush presidency, dipping from about 11 percent of NASA's budget to six percent. It was not until NASA's first Earth science decadal survey published in January 2007 declared that the space agency's Earth-observing satellite system "was in danger of collapsing" that funding began to rise, Freilich said.

Since 2007, NASA's Earth science budget has climbed back up to comprise about 10 percent of the agency's budget, nearly $1.93 billion in 2016. With the money appropriated since 2007, NASA has "truly revitalized our space-based Earth-observation system," Freilich said.

NASA has 19 major Earth science missions flying on satellites and instruments mounted on the International Space Station. The space agency plans to launch about 20 Earth science missions between late 2016 to 2023, including small satellites, cubesats and space station instruments. "We will continue launching several missions per year on average," Freilich said. [50 Years of Presidential Visions for Space Exploration]

(Image credit: SpaceNews graphic)

No Ordinary Time

NASA's Earth Science Division also is working with other U.S. government agencies to identify Earth-observation data they are interested in acquiring in 2017 through a new program, Interagency Satellite Needs-Collection Process, led by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

"We have embraced that process," Freilich said, noting that agencies have submitted requests for 77 data products that NASA might be able to obtain from Earth-observation satellites. "Perhaps subtle changes to our programs could address the needs of other federal agencies," Freilich said. "In a time of transition, demonstrating that we do support other agencies is of paramount importance."

That type of comment was a clear indication that this was no ordinary town hall, which traditionally is a relatively well-attended meeting of scientists keeping tabs on NASA's Earth science portfolio. This year, many scientists claimed seats in the meeting room before the previous session ended. By the time Freilich began to speak, every seat was filled and latecomers lined the walls. [In Photos: NASA's 16 Best Earth Photos from Space by Astronauts]

Scientists in the room clearly recognize their work could be affected by the incoming administration, which includes cabinet nominees skeptical of climate change and a space policy adviser, Robert Walker, former chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Science Committee, who has publicly questioned the value of NASA's Earth science work.

While NASA officials did not mention any names or specific threats to the future of the agency's Earth science program, Zurbuchen preached unity. "United communities are a lot harder to beat," he said Dec. 13, during NASA's Planetary Science Town Hall. "Lets stick together and stick up for each other. Together our narrative is a lot stronger than any small narrative any one of us could come up with in a small segment of the community."

Since it is not clear how NASA programs will fare in the coming years, it is natural for scientists to feel worried, Zurbuchen said. Nevertheless, he is operating under the assumption that "when everything is said and done, we will have a community that does Earth science."

"Earth is a planet that is worthy of scientific investigation and discovery," Zurbuchen said. "The research not only teach us about nature, but it also affects our lives directly on a daily timescale, a yearly timescale or beyond."

NASA's Earth science research also ties in with much of the agency's other work. "When we are thinking about other planets or the early solar system, the Earth is an important part," Zurbuchen said. "The instruments that we are flying elsewhere were invented to look at the Earth first."

Instead of speaking in general terms about the benefits of NASA's Earth science program, Zurbuchen told scientists to point to concrete contributions of their work. On Nov. 29, for example, Louisiana experienced severe thunderstorms and tornadoes while wildfires broke out in Tennessee. Space-based sensors developed by NASA helped firefighters battle the Tennessee blazes and assisted forecasters in Louisiana.

Pointing to that type of vivid example helps people understand the value of Earth science instruments such as the the Geostationary Lightning Mapper developed by NASA and flying on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R. "That instrument is on that GOES-R spacecraft because NASA invests in these kinds of instruments and matures them until the day when they change our lives," Zurbuchen said.

Zurbuchen told SpaceNews that his emphasis on making NASA's scientific work concrete is not a reaction to the changing presidential administration, but rather a reflection of his background.

Before becoming NASA's associate administrator for science, Zurbuchen was a scientist whose research focused largely on solar and heliospheric physics. As a professor at the University of Michigan, he also established the Center for Entrepreneurship in the College of Engineering.

Entrepreneurs focus on solving a problem for a community in a way that changes lives, Zurbuchen said. When he looks at NASA programs, Zurbuchen said he wants to see the data showing how the agency's work is solving programs for farmers or helping other groups.

"That's how I look at the world," he said.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
I have written about the massive tax burden that the Town of Pelham faced beginning in the 1880s after New York City began acquiring lands within the Town of Pelham to create Pelham Bay Park. A

judicial decision released by the New York Court of Appeals was construed as permitting New York City to own the lands without having to pay the Town of Pelham any property taxes on those lands.





Suddenly, Pelham taxpayers faced a major burden. Although they remained responsible for maintenance of the roads and the provision of services such as constable protection, schools and the like for the area acquired by New York City, the costs of providing those services town-wide was being spread over a much smaller tax base. In addition, the smaller tax base suddenly found itself responsible for discharging the entirety of the Town's bonded indebtedness that was originally incurred to provide infrastructure for much of the area acquired by New York City.





Pelham residents made impassioned pleas to their elected officials to pass legislation to require New York City to pay property taxes to the Town. Local residents wrote letters to the editors of regional newspapers complaining of the injustice.

For more background regarding this significant period in Pelham's history, see:





Fri., May 20, 2005:

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Fri., Sep. 23, 2005:

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Mon., Jan. 21, 2008:

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Wed., Feb. 04, 2009:

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Thu., Feb. 05, 2009:













The injustice Pelham faced at the time was very real. After New York City acquired Pelham lands to create Pelham Bay Park, New York owned about 1,700 acres of land within the Town of Pelham, assessed at about $500,000. The remainder of the entire town was only roughly 1,300 acres, assessed at about $750,000. Though much of the cost of maintaining the roads and infrastructure on the lands acquired by New York City would remain the same, owners of a much smaller proportion of the land in the town would be required to bear the tax burden. .





The local tax rate applicable to the poor citizens who owned land in the portions of Pelham that were not purchased by New York City for use in Pelham Bay Park skyrocketed to 6% -- multiples of the previous tax rate. As Pelhamites repeatedly pointed out, if New York City were to be required to pay taxes on the Pelham lands it owned, New York City residents would experience a tax increase of only one-eight-hundredth of one percent! Pelham was outraged and battled the issue as New York City worked to annex Pelham Bay Park (as well as City Island and other portions of the surrounding region) in the mid-1890s.





Today's posting to the Historic Pelham Blog transcribes the text of a brief article regarding the issue published in The Sun of New York City on February 5, 1888. The text is followed by a citation and link to its source.









1905 Map of Pelham Bay Park. Source: Office of the President

of the Borough of the Bronx Topographical Bureau, Topographical

Survey Sheets of the Borough of the Bronx Easterly of the Bronx

River, Sheet 29 "Map of OPelham Bay Park City of New York

of the Bronx River" (1905) (Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map

Division, The New York Public Library). NOTE: Click Image to Enlarge.





* * * * *





"Rough on Pelham, but Must We Pay for It?





The city of New York insisted that if it had got to buy 1,700 acres of the town of Pelham for a park that it didn't want, at least it should not be compelled to pay taxes to the town of Pelham on the land. It got this condition enacted into the law.





Now W. R. Lamberton writes to Mayor Hewitt asking him to support a bill introduced in the Assembly providing for the continued taxation at the present assessed value new parkland laid out outside of the city. He puts his plea on the ground that otherwise the tax rate of Pelham, which town has only 1,300 acres left, will be raised to six per cent., and that that will bankrupt the town, which has already a flourishing bonded debt.





Mr. Lamberton does not say that the city is responsible for the unfortunate condition of the town, but he says that the city is rich, or, as he puts it:





'Do you think it is right to aid in oppressing the poor fishermen of City Island and the day laborers of Pelhamville, and in destroying the values of their little homes merely to save New York 1-800 of 1 per cent. in the New York city tax rate?'





The 1,700 acres are assessed at $500,000, and the rest of Pelham $700,000, Mr. Lamberton says that the town never encouraged the park scheme."









Labels: 1888, Annexation, Assessment, Pelham Bay Park, Property Taxes, Real Estate, taxes, W. R. Lamberton
It's been a busy year for NASA, which has been pushing frontiers in robotic space exploration, human missions, scientific research and more. Here are some of the projects that the space agency pursued in 2016.

Solar system

NASA's Juno spacecraft successfully reached Jupiter on July 4. While robotic spacecraft have visited the planet many times before, Juno will focus on learning more about the gas giant's atmosphere, magnetosphere, origins and structure.

The agency also launched an asteroid-sampling mission called Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-Rex). The probe is heading out to visit asteroid Bennu and is expected to return in 2023 with a sample of the space rock, which will help scientists better understand the early solar system.

Construction of the James Webb Space Telescope was completed in November, putting the largest-ever space telescope right on track for its launch date in 2018. The instrument's primary mirror segment was assembled in February at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Now the telescope  which is expected to reveal information about the origins of the universe  is being readied for transport to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the instrument will undergo pre-launch tests in 2017.

NASA unveiled its newly completed James Webb Space Telescope on Nov. 2, 2016, after more than 20 years of construction. The telescope is the largest ever built, with its shiny, golden mirror assembly spanning 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) in diameter. Webb will be launched into orbit in 2018, when it will replace the aging Hubble Telescope and capture new images of the cosmos. (Image credit: NASA/Chris Gunn)

NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) got the formal thumbs-up to start the mission design this year. Using a Hubble-class telescope that once was intended for spying, the mission will allow astronomers to study dark matter, dark energy and the universe's evolution. WFIRST is expected to launch in the mid-2020s.

The Kepler mission, which searches for planets outside the solar system, verified 1,284 newfound alien planets in May of this year. Kepler's long-term goal is to find a planet like Earth, circling a star like the sun.

Closer to home, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope caught a glimpse of the elusive water vapor plumes erupting from Europa, Jupiter's icy, ocean-harboring moon. Europa's underground ocean has twice as much water as Earth and could be a good spot to look for life.

NASA's long-running robotic missions Cassini (at Saturn) and New Horizons (which flew by Pluto in 2015) also achieved major milestones. Cassini entered its final year of operations and is looking at Saturn's rings up-close before a planned crash into the planet in April 2017. New Horizons beamed the last of its Pluto data to Earth in October and is currently sailing on to a Kuiper Belt object known as 2014 MU69, which the probe will reach in 2019.

Other milestones include:

Research in May showing that solar explosions may have sparked life on Earth 4 billion years ago

NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) winning a Guinness World Record for the highest altitude fix of a GPS signal, at 43,500 miles (70,000 kilometers)

Reorganizing of NASA's near-Earth object tracking program under the new Planetary Defense Coordination Office

International Space Station

Two space travelers  NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko  concluded nearly a year in space (340 days) on March 1, when the men returned safely to Earth. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) in November, is set to become the U.S. astronaut with the most cumulative time spent in space, exceeding Jeff Williams' record of 534 days, achieved in 2016. Whitson will also be the first woman to command the ISS twice.

Orbital ATK and SpaceX successfully launched four missions to the ISS in 2016 replete with supplies and equipment. Two of the most notable experiments were Saffire-I and Saffire-II, which examined fire in microgravity inside uncrewed Cygnus spacecraft after they'd undocked from the space station and were falling back to Earth. Also, a billion base pairs of DNA were sequenced for the first time by astronauts aboard the orbiting lab. Three Russian and one Japanese cargo re-supply missions also launched to the space station, but one Russian Progress spacecraft failed during launch, in December.

An inflatable module called BEAM (Bigelow Expandable Activity Module) was successfully deployed on the ISS in May on the second try. The module will run for two years to test whether it is feasible to use inflatables on deep-space missions. [An Inflatable Space Room: The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module in Pictures]

The Commercial Crew Program continues as Boeing and SpaceX do the final designs, manufacturing and testing of their vehicles to launch crewed spacecraft from U.S. soil. The ISS will also undergo changes to accommodate the new spacecraft, like the International Docking Adapter installed earlier this year.

Journey to Mars

NASA has said it hopes to send humans to Mars in the 2030s. The agency is still selecting the next class of astronauts, who will be flying into space during that time frame and will arrive at NASA in summer 2017 for training. A record-breaking 18,300 Americans applied to become astronauts in 2016.

Meanwhile, the Space Launch System  NASA's next-generation rocket for deep-space missions  is still expected to launch in late 2018, along with the Orion spacecraft. The Kennedy Space Center has been upgraded to support this flight.

NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission hit a milestone in August when it left the planning phase and moved on to further design and development. It's possible that cubesats, or microsatellites, will fly along with this mission, following on from 13 cubesats expected to launch with the SLS and Orion in 2018.

While the Insight lander's 2016 launch to Mars was delayed, the spacecraft is now on track for a landing in 2018 to put a drill in the planet's surface. The Mars 2020 rover has been approved for final design and construction. NASA has also asked five private spaceflight companies to come up with concepts for a potential future Mars orbiter, which will include upgrades in telecommunications and will provide high-resolution images of the Red Planet.

The Curiosity rover found chemicals suggesting that Mars had more oxygen in its distant past than it does now. The rover also looked at active sand dunes and picked its own rock targets using a laser spectrometer. Two Mars rovers, Curiosity and Opportunity, also tested a radio relay with the European Trace Gas Orbiter after that probe's arrival at Mars in November.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is being used to take high-resolution pictures of potential landing sites for future human and robotic missions. Scientists are looking at seasonal dark streaks called recurring slope lineae, which are possible signs of liquid water. MRO also found evidence of an ice deposit beneath the Utopia Planitia feature on Mars; the deposit contains as much water as Lake Superior (the largest Great Lake.)

Earth, aeronautics, tech and public outreach

NASA's Earth-observing activities include:

Looking at global sea-level rise with the new Jason-3 mission, which will also help the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) better forecast tropical cyclones

Launching Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R (GOES-R) on Nov. 19: The satellite is expected to improve weather-forecasting capabilities.

Launching the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission on Dec. 15: The mission sent a swarm of eight satellites to study weather patterns and improve hurricane forecasts.

Preparing the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III (SAGE III) experiment, which will document Earth's ozone layer, for launch: Both Sage III and another storm-monitoring instrument, called the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS), will launch to the International Space Station next year.

Learning how much water is stored on planet Earth through the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) twin satellites

NASA's aeronautics research activities include:

Developing a passenger jet called QueSST that flies at supersonic speeds without creating a sonic boom

Testing "green" technologies with X-planes, such as the X-57 Maxwell, an experimental aircraft that has 14 propellers

Partnering with the Department of Transportation to streamline airplane traffic at Charlotte Douglas International Airport as part of the Obama administration's NextGen initiative

Testing how to safely manage traffic for uncrewed aircraft systems by flying 22 drones at six test sites across the country

Selecting five green aviation-technology concepts for further study, including alternative fuel cells and ways to change an aircraft wing's shape in flight

NASA's technology work includes:

Choosing three companies to develop the technology for robotic manufacturing and assembly in orbit

Pushing forward research on solar electric propulsion, which will cut spaceflight costs by using more efficient technology and which has already been demonstrated in space on the Dawn mission to the asteroid belt

Launching a self-contained, wax-based heat exchanger to the ISS to better regulate temperatures in spacecraft

Moving dozens of NASA's patents into the public domain

NASA's citizen science and public activities include:

Participating in many public events, including those related to the "Star Trek" 50th anniversary

Communicating via social media: NASA's 20 million followers on Twitter make it the most-followed agency in the federal government. The agency also started using Snapchat, Pinterest and GIPHY.

Launching 28 citizen scientist challenges, which brought in almost 122,000 participants: Some of these challenges included a Vascular Tissue Challenge for regenerative medicine on long-term space missions and the "Star Trek" Replicator Challenge for preparing food in space.

Honoring women, especially African-Americans, who participated in early NASA missions by providing resources and other input for the making of the new movie "Hidden Figures"

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Russia has tentatively scheduled the next Progress launch for early February, pending the outcome of an ongoing investigation.

The Progress MS-04 spacecraft was lost during a Dec. 1 launch to the International Space Station when the spacecraft prematurely separated from the Soyuz rocket's upper stage.

Russian industry sources say the next Progress mission, Progress MS-05, is currently scheduled for Feb. 2, provided an investigation into the failure is completed by the end of the month. [Sputnik]

More News

Two Chinese remote sensing satellites launched Tuesday night are in the wrong orbit. Tracking data from the U.S. Air Force show that the two SuperView satellites launched on a Long March 2D are in elliptical orbits ranging from 214 to 524 kilometers, rather than the planned circular sun-synchronous orbits, apparently because of a problem with the launch vehicle. Neither the Chinese government nor Siwei Star Co. Ltd., the company that owns the two satellites, have formally commented on the incident. The satellites have onboard propulsion that may allow them to raise their orbits, but at some cost to their lifetime. The Long March also carried a student-built smallsat deposited into the improper orbit; that spacecraft does not have any propulsion. [Spaceflight Now]

The latest delay in the Proton launch of EchoStar 21 is not related to an earlier problem with the rocket. International Launch Services confirmed Wednesday that the launch, planned for this week, has been delayed, but offered no information on the reason for the delay or when the launch would be rescheduled. ILS did state that the cause of this delay is not related to an engine malfunction during the previous Proton launch in June. [SpaceNews]

NASA officials are urging calm among Earth scientists worried about what the incoming Trump administration might do to their field. At this month's AGU Fall Meeting, scientists expressed concern that the new administration might cut or eliminate entirely NASA's Earth science funding, citing statements by Trump advisors both before and after the election. NASA officials at the conference said they were optimistic that Earth science programs would remain a key part of the agency's science portfolio, and urged scientists to "please be a source of signal, not a source of noise." [SpaceNews]

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft performed its first deep space maneuver since its launch in September. The maneuver on Wednesday put the spacecraft on track for a September 2017 Earth flyby, according to NASA, which did not disclose the duration of the engine burn. OSIRIS-REx will arrive at the near Earth asteroid Bennu in 2018 to study the asteroid and collect samples for return to Earth. [NASA]

SpaceX released Wednesday the first photo of hardware for its Falcon Heavy rocket. The image, posted on the company's Instagram account, shows the interstage section that connects the first stage core booster with the rocket's second stage, and is similar to the interstage flown on the Falcon 9. The company has not disclosed a specific launch date for the long-delayed inaugural flight of the Falcon Heavy other than some time in the first half of 2017. [Ars Technica]

President-elect Donald Trump cited satellite broadband company OneWeb's plans to hire 3,000 people Wednesday. Trump mentioned those jobs, enabled by a $1.2 billion funding round earlier this month led by Japanese company SoftBank, along with 5,000 jobs Sprint is moving back to the U.S. as part of "the spirit and the hope" after his election. SoftBank, which owns 80 percent of Sprint, had pledged to Trump earlier this month to invest $50 billion in the U.S. and create 50,000 jobs. OneWeb executives said last week that discussions with SoftBank started a few months ago, prior to both the election and SoftBank's later pledge to Trump. [CNBC]

Trump, meanwhile, reportedly has shown an interest in the moon. Historian Douglas Brinkley met with Trump on Wednesday and told reporters after the meeting that the president-elect was "was very interested in a man going to the moon and the moon shot." It wasn't clear if that interest was in past lunar exploration or any plans for the future. [Washington Examiner]

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2016 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement All images and articles appearing on Space Media Network have been edited or digitally altered in some way. Any requests to remove copyright material will be acted upon in a timely and appropriate manner. Any attempt to extort money from Space Media Network will be ignored and reported to Australian Law Enforcement Agencies as a potential case of financial fraud involving the use of a telephonic carriage device or postal service.
This blog was originally posted December 7, 2015

I was 16 or 17 years old, and my dad sent me out with the John Deere tractor and hayforks to pick up straw bales sitting on the edge of a field. There were only six bales, but they had been rained on and were in less than ideal condition. I fought those bales for 30 or 45 minutes going from mildly irritated to irate to tears.By the time my dad showed up to assist, I had broken three of the bales and was working on my fourth. I was furious, but I was learning. Specifically, I was learning resiliency. My dad crawled in the cab, and although I wanted nothing more than to hand over the controls, he made me stay in the driver's seat and talked me through picking up the last three nearly destructed bales to get them up to the barn.Since the beginning of the fall semester, I have watched many comments come across my Facebook newsfeed discussing why college students aren't as able to handle the pressure of college education today. Ablog titled "Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges" discussed this most directly.In it, Dr. Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College, lays out the framework for an argument that the sheltered nature of young people today has led to their inability to function in a higher learning environment. Specifically, he discusses the plague of emotional crises that have overwhelmed college counseling services in the past several years. Many of these he deemed common, everyday challenges. Gray said, "We have raised a generation of young people who have not been given the opportunity to learn how to solve their own problems."As a recent college graduate, there's no doubt that I encountered some students that behaved in the same manner described in theblog. On the other hand, many of my agriculture classmates, particularly those from farming backgrounds, were better equipped to ride the waves of college and find ways to solve their own problems.In a large way, this is to the credit of their farming background. Those hours and hours of fighting soggy straw bales and uncooperative calves taught them to buckle down and persist. Farm kids learn to adapt to failure, enjoy success and use duct tape when all else fails.
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Madrid (Spain) December 29, 2016 (SPS) - Dozens of people, members of the Spanish movement for solidarity demonstrated Tuesday outside Morocco's embassy in Madrid, Spain, to demand "the immediate release of Saharawi political prisoners in Moroccan jails."

The protesters, who responded to the call to demonstrate launched by Spanish coordination for associations friends of Saharawi people (CEAS-Sahara) demands "the immediate release of Saharawi political prisoners detained by Moroccan prisons," and especially those of Gdeim Izik group, unjustly and illegally incarcerated since 2010.

Carrying flags of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the demonstrators denounced the "systematic violations of human rights in Western Sahara territories."

They chanted various slogans like "Struggle will continue and Polisario will win" and "Morocco guilty, Spain responsible."

All "Gdeim Izik" Group prisoners are "human rights defenders who struggle for the freedom of their people," said Jose Taboada, the Spanish coordinator of associations supporting Western Sahara people.SPS

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STAMFORD  The City That Works closes 2016 after another year of major corporate moves that shaped the local economy.

Stamford continued its run of recruiting major companies and seeing its large firms broker multi-billion dollar deals, cementing the citys status as a corporate destination. And a blockbuster sale earlier this month showed the strength of the local residential market. But the city also dealt with significant setbacks  especially in its financial sector  showing that the city is still grappling post-recession headwinds as it continues to grow.

We won some, and we lost some, said Jack Condlin, president and CEO of the Stamford Chamber of Commerce.

Major deals

State officials announced in October that Henkel Corp. would move to Stamford its beauty, laundry and home care businesses from Scottsdale, Ariz. and its recently acquired Sun Products from Wilton. Some $20 million in state aid and a $30 million investment from Henkel are funding the relocation.

"When an international company of Henkel's stature decides to relocate to our state, expand its operations and create hundreds of new jobs, it sends a message to the rest of the world that Connecticut is serious about working with companies to grow, generate capital investment and strengthen our economy for the residents of our state," Governor Dannel P. Malloy said in October.

Henkel will lease 135,000 square feet at 200 Elm St., in the downtown BLT Financial Centre. It is scheduled to make its move in the summer of 2017, with an initial roster of about 270 employees. The tax, auditing and consulting firm RSM will join them in the same building around the same time, after announcing earlier this month a lease for approximately 28,000 square feet.

The residential sector, meanwhile, produced robust results for a number of firms. Manhattan-based Gaia Real Estate earlier this month bought from Stamford developer Building and Land Technology five apartment buildings in the Harbor Point development in the South End for approximately $395 million. The transaction represented the citys largest property sale since the last recession.

And several Stamford-based companies closed on multi-billion dollar deals during the past year.

Cable provider Charter Communications produced the largest deal involving a local corporation. In May, it completed a $55 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and $10 billion purchase of Bright House Networks. Those additions made Charter the No. 2 cable carrier in the country after Philadelphia-based Comcast.

The company expansions has yielded big financial gains in the past few months. Charter tripled third-quarter profits and quadrupled revenues from the same period last year.

Charter, under the Spectrum brand, provides high-quality products and service at attractive prices, allowing us to grow our residential and business customer relationships, Tom Rutledge, Charters CEO and chairman, said in November. "The integration of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks is on track.

In September, Marriott completed its approximately $13 billion acquisition of Stamford-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, a union that created the largest hotel company in the world.

In November, Samsung announced that it would acquire Stamford-based Harman International Industries for approximately $8 billion.

Samsung executives described the acquisition as a move that would allow the Korean technology giant to maximize its potential in a market for connected-car technologies and services that is projected to grow to more than $100 billion by 2025.

Setbacks

From January through November, Stamford added about 1,600 jobs. It recorded last month a 3.1 percent unemployment rate, compared with a state rate of 4.7 percent.

But some of the citys largest employers have significantly reduced their contingents in the past year. The absorption of Starwood into Marriott meant that Starwoods home at One StarPoint in the citys South End would no longer operate as a corporate headquarters because Marriott is based in Bethesda, Md.

Marriott told state officials in late October that it would lay off 163 Stamford-based employees at the turn of the year. The layoffs mostly affect executive and managerial positions.

Royal Bank of Scotland continued the downsizing of its Americas headquarters on Washington Boulevard. It laid off about 250 employees in 2016. Since early 2015, the firm has cut about 500 Stamford-based positions.

Across the street, financial-services UBS giant faced its own retrenchment. During the past year, UBS moved employees out of the approximately 720,000-square-foot 677 Washington Blvd. complex into available offices in RBS building.

The 677 Washington Blvd. property, which includes a 167,000-square-foot trading floor reputed to be the worlds largest, now languishes without tenants. Its approximately $148 million mortgage is for sale, after its owners defaulted in October.

UBS departure highlighted the travails of the commercial real estate market, which still grapples with citywide office vacancy rates exceeding 20 percent. Shortly before the recession hit, the vacancy rate hovered around 15 percent.

Condlin, of the Chamber of Commerce, said that he is hoping for increased economic growth in Stamford in 2017.

Unfortunately, I believe we lost more than we gained in 2016, Condlin said. But I think there will be opportunity in 2017. I think 2017 is going to show a positive turnaround, and that will definitely ended up impacting Stamford, which will, in turn, benefit Connecticut.

pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; twitter: @paulschott
Just in case you thought Grubhub wasn't paying attention to your orders  it was.

The food ordering company recently released data on what, exactly, its customers have been ordering this year.

Grubhub took a look at orders placed with its system from January to November 2016, comparing the statistics against the same months in 2015 and 2014 to sort out the food trends.

Among the questions the company tried to answer with the data was to find the most popular dishes for the year and what was ordered the most in major cities.

The company also tried to find correlations between cultural events of the year and what people were ordering that same day. While it's not entirely clear how the company equated the breakup of Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris with an uptick in orders of General Tso's shrimp and crab rangoon, other delivery-event links do seem to ring (mostly) true. For instance, the company reported a spike in hot dog orders in Chicago following the Cubs' World Series win, while Super Storm Jonas apparently inspired a 230 percent increase in tomato soup orders on the East Coast.

And just when you thought you've been spending too much money on delivery, consider the person who earned the dubious "honor" of being Grubhub's best customer. The delivery service reported that one person placed 751 orders in 2016 ... a year that is not quite over yet. That works out to ordering from Grubhub about twice a day  the stat should make you feel (somewhat) better about your own ordering habits.

To see the most popular dishes delivered in 2016 (and what will become more popular in 2017), click through the gallery above.
Even as voters in more U.S. states approved legalized recreational marijuana this November  and 28 states have legalized medical marijuana  the federal government still lists marijuana as an illegal drug.

However, just north of the border, Canadian leaders have started moving in the opposite direction.

Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada and leader of the Liberal Party, created a committee in the summer of 2016 to look into the issues surrounding making marijuana legal for recreational use across the entire country.

The panel recently submitted its findings. They call for a tightly controlled, heavily regulated recreational market that aims to provide adults who want to use cannabis a safe and legal way to buy it, while at the same time cracking down on the marijuana black market.

Related: How to Retain More Customers Without Spending a Dime

The panel, chaired by former Canadian Deputy Primate Minister Anne McLellan, wrote in its report that if put into action their recommendations will strike a balance between implementing appropriate restrictions, in order to minimize the harms associated with cannabis use, and providing adults access to a regulated supply of cannabis while reducing the scope and scale of the illicit market and its social harms.

Trudeau has said he expects to file legislation based on the panels recommendations in the spring of 2017.

Different approach in Canada.

In the U.S., some in the marijuana industry have voiced concerns about President-elect Donald Trumps position on legalized marijuana, particularly since his nominee for attorney general, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, have been a vocal opponent of legalized marijuana.

In Canada, the Liberal Party has taken a clear stance on making recreational marijuana legal. On the partys website, it states: We will legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana.

Canadas current system of marijuana prohibition does not work, they further state. It does not prevent young people from using marijuana and too many Canadians end up with criminal records for possessing small amounts of the drug.

Related: The Next Entrepreneurial Gold Rush

The party hopes that legalizing recreational marijuana will reduce the amount available to young people and also keep the profits out of the hands of criminals.

Getting there, according to the panel, will take a great deal of work on the part of the national government.

Key recommendations.

The lengthy panel report focuses on taking a public health approach to regulating legalized marijuana. In doing so, the panel considered health issues such as chronic use of marijuana, mixing it with abuse of other substances (such as alcohol) and young people having too much access to cannabis. They also took into consideration the dangers of interaction with the illicit marijuana market.

Some of the key recommendations include.

Regulating advertising so it will not appeal to young people, or associate marijuana with use of other substances such as tobacco or alcohol

Set the legal age limit at 18

Requiring packaging that clearly states what the product contains, including strain of cannabis and amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the ingredient in marijuana that causes the high

Conducting sales only through specialty stores licensed by the government

Homeowners could have up to four cannabis plants, and individuals could carry up to 30 grams in public

Creating a seed-to-sale tracking system for recreational cannabis production

Extending the restrictions on public smoking of tobacco products in Canada to include cannabis

Strengthening penalties for selling cannabis outside the legal system

Related: Entrepreneur.com Staffers Pick Their Favorite Solutions of 2016

While the panel concludes that creating a government-run infrastructure for cannabis sales will take time and effort, they conclude that Canada is well-positioned to undertake the complex task of legalizing and regulating cannabis carefully and safely.

Related:

Canada Takes Next Step Toward National Marijuana Legalization

Thomas Jefferson University Receives $3 Million Marijuana Research Grant

Survey Finds Oregon Residents Support Banks Working With Marijuana Industry



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
STAMFORD - Many families this holiday season took politics off the table as a topic of conversation at get-togethers.

The 2016 election provokes too many arguments.

Part of the reason is that, for the fifth time in the history of Americas 58 elections, the winner lost.

Republican Donald Trump will become president Jan. 20 even though 2.9 million more Americans voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton. Recent polls show Trump is the least popular president-elect in two decades.

He won the White House because Americans do not vote for president directly. Instead, they choose which candidate gets the electors allotted to their state. Trump got more electors than Clinton.

The indirect voting system, called the electoral college, has been challenged several times in the last 50 years. Now Connecticut may join other states that are trying to reform the system.

The reform movement, National Popular Vote, organized in 2005, calls for states to make a pact. States would agree to allocate all their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote. That way, reformers say, the will of the American people prevails.

As it is now, each state  with two exceptions, Maine and Nebraska  gives all its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state. The result is that ballots cast in that state for other presidential candidates are meaningless.

Theres another problem. Most states vote rather reliably for one party or the other. Those states get ignored in presidential politics. The states that are up for grabs, usually about a dozen, get all the attention.

They are called the battleground states.

Swinging red or blue

Whats been happening is that as many as 38 states, including Connecticut, get left out of the election, said Barry Fadem, a Connecticut native and president of National Popular Vote. We end up electing a president of the battleground states, not the United States.

Connecticut, for example, usually votes for the Democratic candidate. So except for a few quick fundraisers in Fairfield County  Clinton, feeling assured she would win Connecticuts seven electoral votes, didnt bother campaigning here. Trump made a stop in Fairfield and ended it there, likely figuring Connecticut was a lost cause, which proved true.

Nationwide, Clinton and Trump made 399 campaign stops during the presidential election, Fadem said. An impressive 94 percent of the rallies, speeches and other public events were held in just 12 states  the battlegrounds of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Twenty-three states, including New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, had no events.

If you live in a non-battleground state, you know your vote for president doesnt count, Fadem said.

The same states also got all the attention in the previous two presidential elections.

Only 12 states have any influence, Fadem said. Thirty-eight states have no influence, and that goes beyond elections.

Swing states are more likely to get federal money, legislative aid, disaster relief and other benefits, he said.

Protecting the battlegrounds

Those states historically have thwarted efforts for change. In the 1970s, two attempts to eliminate the electoral college by amending the U.S Constitution were blocked, which is not hard to do because it requires the approval of two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states.

But National Popular Votes pact among states would circumvent the need for a Constitutional amendment, since states have the power to allocate their electoral votes as they choose.

States get an elector for each of their two U.S. senators and for each of their U.S. representatives. Since the country has a total of 538 electors, a candidate needs at least 270 to win the college.

So the states that sign the pact need a combined 270 electoral votes. To date, 10 states, including New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, plus the District of Columbia have signed on, with a total of 165 electoral votes.

Were 61 percent there, Fadem said. We only need 105 more electoral votes.

The goal is reachable, he said, because support has been bipartisan and National Popular Vote bills have made headway in 12 additional states, including Connecticut, where the House of Representatives approved it in 2009. The bill did not make it to the state Senate.

But its expected to come up again when the Legislature convenes Jan. 4, Fadem said. Surveys have shown that nearly three-quarters of Connecticut voters favor a National Popular Vote bill.

When a state introduces a bill, we are there to support it, Fadem said.

Reason to oppose

Opponents say if a president were chosen by the national popular vote, candidates would focus only on places with large concentrations of voters. Fadem said that wouldnt work because only 15 percent of voters live in cities.

Another 15 percent live in rural areas and the remaining 70 percent live everywhere else, he said. Candidates would have to go after all of them.

Opponents also say candidates would have to raise enormous amounts of money to reach voters nationwide. Fadem said thats already happening. Candidates now raise millions in Connecticut, he said, but they spend it in the swing states.

Opponents also say states shouldnt bypass the electoral college without Congress signing off on it. Fadem said U.S. Supreme case law supports the right of states to allocate their electoral votes.

We fully expect it will be litigated before the Supreme Court, Fadem said. We look forward to it.

Where does the president-elect stand on it? Hard to say.

In November 2012, when it looked like fellow Republican Mitt Romney might win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, Trump tweeted, The electoral college is a disaster for democracy.

In November 2016, after he won the presidency, Trump tweeted that the electoral college is genius.

acarella@scni.com;
One half of the powerhouse fashion duo that is the Hadid sisters, Gigi Hadid this month clinched the coveted Model of the Year gong at the Fashion Awards in London.

Up against little sister Bella and best friend Kendall Jenner, the accolade cemented the fact that this year belonged to Gigi.

Having landed her first American Vogue cover and a 'Model of the Year' gong from Daily Front Row in 2015, 2016 has seen the 21-year-old's career go global.

Walking for Versace, Chanel, Elie Saab, Fendi, Miu Miu, Balmain, Marc Jacobs, Tommy Hilfiger and Diane Von Furstenberg - to name just a few - she has also spent the year dipping her toe into the world of designing.

But - this being Gigi Hadid - 'dipping her toe' resulted in a hugely successful capsule collection which she designed in collaboration with Tommy Hilfiger. It was released in the autumn during an enormous fashion show extravaganza at New York fashion week.

During the same season, Hadid released her own boot collection for Stuart Weitzman and was later revealed as a brand ambassador for Reebok.

She was also chosen to co-host the American Music Awards in November alongside former Saturday Night Live cast member Jay Pharoah, before making her second ever appearance in a Victoria's Secret fashion show in December where she earned her first set of wings.

Victoria's Secret 2016 Fashion Show - In pictures 1 /62 Victoria's Secret 2016 Fashion Show - In pictures Victoria's Secret fashion show Gigi Hadid walks the finale Victoria's Secret fashion show Kendall Jenner Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Adriana Lima, Lily Donaldson, Alessandra Ambrosio, Taylor Hill and Martha Hunt Victoria's Secret fashion show Gigi Hadid Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Adriana Lima and Elsa Hosk lead the finale David Fisher/Rex/Shutterstock Victoria's Secret fashion show Models celebrate on the finale runway Charles Platiau/Reuters Victoria's Secret fashion show Bella Hadid Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Lady Gaga and Lily Donaldson Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Bella Hadid Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Lily Aldridge Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Alessandra Ambrosio Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Lady Gaga performs while Gigi Hadid WALKS THE RUNWAY AFP/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Jasmine Tookes Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Joan Smalls Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Kendall Jenner Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Lily Donaldson Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Irina Shayk Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Rachel Hilbert Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Grace Elizabeth Francois Mori/AP Victoria's Secret fashion show Lady Gaga performs during the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Adriana Lima Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Adriana Lima and Elsa Hosk Getty Images for Victoria's SecretDimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show A model walks the runway Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Gigi Hadid Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Sanne Vloet Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Maria Borges Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Jourdana Phillips Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Josephine Skriver Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Sara Sampaio Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Bridget Malcolm Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Devon Windsor Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Martha Hunt Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Lais Oliveira Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Leomie Anderson Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Maria Borges Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Stella Maxwell Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Taylor Hill Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, The Weeknd and Victoria's Secret Models walk the runway Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Cindy Bruna Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Lily Donaldson Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Josephine Skriver Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Valerie Kaufman Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Zuri Tibby Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Ming Xi Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Bruno Mars sings on the runway Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show The Weeknd Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Victoria's Secret fashion show Models pose at the end of the finale runway AFP/Getty Images

Joining her on the runway in Paris was little sister Bella, who was walking her debut for the lingerie brand.

Closing the year, Hadid was awarded her Model of the Year gong by designer and good friend Donatella Versace at the Fashion Awards.

Gigi Hadid - Style File 1 /85 Gigi Hadid - Style File February 27, 2020 Walking in the Off-White show alongside sister Bella and mum Yolanda Rex Features February 26, 2020 Attending the Harper's Bazaar Exhibition alongside sister Bella Getty Images November 13, 2019 Attending the Country Music Awards Getty Images August 26, 2019 Backstage at the VMA's with sister Bella and friend Taylor Swift Getty Images for Republic Record April 23,2018 Gigi Hadid celebrates her 23rd birthday Felipe Ramales / Splash News March 29, 2018 Gigi Hadid wears an oversized shirt with Cara Delevingne kisses Adwoa Aboah when out and about in New York Splash News February 11, 2018 Gigi Hadid attends the Maybelline New York x V Magazine Party at the Nomo Soho Hotel Cindy Ord/Getty Images February 23, 2018 Gigi Hadid carrying a dog, presents a creation by Tod's during the women's Fall/Winter 2018/2019 collection fashion show in Milan Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images November 13, 2017 Gigi Hadid attends Glamour's 2017 Women of The Year Awards at Kings Theatre Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images May 1, 2017 Gigi Hadid attends the "Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between" Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images June 27, 2017 Gigi Hadid attends Gigi Hadid for Vogue Eyewear #ShowYourParty event Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images September 19, 2017 Gigi Hadid walks the runway at the Tommy Hilfiger TOMMYNOW Fall 2017 Show during London Fashion Wee Ian Gavan/Getty Images November 3, 2017 Gigi Hadid attends the Gigi Hadid x Maybelline New York International Launch Party Cindy Ord/Getty Images November 7, 2017 Gigi Hadid attends the Gigi Hadid X Maybelline party held at "Hotel Gigi" in London Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images February 10, 2017 Gigi Hadid walks the runway for the Jeremy Scott collection during, New York Fashion Week: The Shows at Gallery 1, Skylight Clarkson Sq Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images September 29, 2016 Gigi Hadid walks the runway during the Balmain show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Spring/Summer 2017 Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images October 2, 2016 Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid attend the Givenchy show as part of the Paris Fashion Week Womenswear Spring/Summer 2017 Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images November 30, 2016 Gigi Hadid walks the runway during the 2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images November 30, 2016 Gigi Hadid walks the runway during the 2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images November 30, 2016 Gigi Hadid attends the 2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show after party Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images December 5, 2016 Gigi Hadid attends The Fashion Awards 2016 Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images June 4, 2016 Gigi Hadid attends Spike TV's 10th Annual Guys Choice Awards at Sony Pictures Studios Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) June 19, 2016 Gigi Hadid arrives at the 2016 iHeartRADIO MuchMusic Video Awards Sonia Recchia/Getty Images September 9, 2016 Gigi Hadid attends the #TOMMYNOW Women's Fashion Show during New York Fashion Week Grant Lamos IV/Getty Images March 20, 2016 Gigi Hadid attends the Daily Front Row "Fashion Los Angeles Awards" at Sunset Tower Hotel Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images May 2, 2016 Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik attend the 'Manus x Machina: Fashion In An Age Of Technology' Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images February 16, 2016 Gigi Hadid attends the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2016 - NYC VIP press event Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images September 15, 2015 Attending the Serena Williams show at New York Fashion Week Grant Lamos IV/Getty Images September 16, 2015 Spotted around New York Fashion Week Mike Coppola/Getty Images May 21, 2015 At amfAR's 22nd Cinema Against AIDS Gala Tristan Fewings/Getty Images August 4, 2015 Talking on stage at Myer Macquarie Centre Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images August 30, 2015 Attending the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards Jason Merritt/Getty Images September 14, 2015 Spotted around New York Fashion Week Larry Busacca/Getty Images September 14, 2015 Walking the Tommy Hilfiger runway Randy Brooke/Getty Images February 22, 2015 At the 2015 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images March 5, 2015 With Kendall Jenner at the Balmain Aftershow Dinner as part of the Paris Fashion Week Jacopo Raule/Getty Images March 14, 2015 Attending the Ultimate Spring Break Bash hosted by Victoria's Secret John Parra/Getty Images April 10, 2015 At the Official H&M Loves Coachella Party Michael Kovac/Getty Images May 4, 2015 Attending the MET Gala Rob Kim/Getty Images January 22, 2015 At The Daily Front Row 'Fashion Los Angeles Awards' Show Jason Kempin/Getty Images February 11, 2015 With Lily Aldridge at the Sports Illustrated 2015 Swimsuit Takes Over Nashville With Kings of Leon event Rick Diamond/Getty Images February 17, 2015 On the front row at Tory Burch Cindy Ord/Getty Images February 22, 2015 At the Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images November 18, 2014 On the 2015 Pirelli Calendar Red Carpet Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images February 6, 2014 Walking the Desigual runway Frazer Harrison/Getty Images February 20, 2014 At the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Beach Volleyball Tournament Frazer Harrison/Getty Images September 27, 2014 Walking for Jean Paul Gaultier Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images February 18, 2014 At the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 50 Years of Swim in NYC Celebration Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images February 19, 2014 Attending Club SI Swimsuit hosted by Sports Illustrated Neilson Barnard/Getty Images February 20, 2014 At the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit South Beach Soiree Frazer Harrison/Getty Images March 2, 2014 With her then-boyfriend Cody Simpson at the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images March 29, 2014 Attending Nickelodeon's 27th Annual Kids' Choice Awards Frazer Harrison/Getty Images August 28, 2014 At DuJour Magazine's Jason Binn celebrating Kendall and Kylie Jenner's Bruce Weber shoot Mike Coppola/Getty Images September 5, 2014 At The Daily Front Row Second Annual Fashion Media Awards Rommel Demano/Getty Images September 5, 2014 Attending Harper's BAZAAR Celebrates Icons By Carine Roitfeld Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images September 11, 2014 Backstage at Marc Jacobs Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images September 29, 2014 Walking the Sonia Rykiel runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images September 30, 2014 Walking the Chanel runway Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images October 20, 2014 At Angel Ball 2014 hosted by Gabrielle's Angel Foundation Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images October 28, 2014 Attending the Sportmax and Teen Vogue Celebrate The Fall/Winter 2014 Collection event in New York Monica Schipper/Getty Images November 4, 2014 Arriving at the Emirates Marquee on Melbourne Cup Day Cameron Spencer/Getty Images March 23, 2013 At Muhammad Ali's Celebrity Fight Night XIX Michael Buckner/Getty Images April 13, 2013 At the GUESS Hotel pool party John Sciulli/Getty Images May 10, 2012 At The Heart Foundation Gala Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

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D ance fans, get out a pen and paper  its going to be a brilliantly packed 2017.

Weve rounded up the best things to see next year, from ballet to ballroom, so read on if you dont want to miss a thing.

Woolf Works

Wayne McGregors critically acclaimed ballet triptych, based on the works of Virginia Woolf, will receive a revival at the Royal Opera House in January. With original music from Max Richter, the work is based on Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves and was loved by critics the first time round.

(Tristram Kenton)

January 21  February 14, Royal Opera House Main Stage; roh.org.uk

Sergei Polunin

Described as the most gifted male ballet dancer of his generation, the Ukrainian ballet dancer Sergei Polunin became the Royal Ballets youngest principal ever. He promises to challenge perceptions of dance with his new production Project Polunin  regardless of whether he manages to do so, itll be a treat to see him dance.

March 14-18, Sadlers Wells; sadlerswells.com

Men and Girls Dance

Dance company Fevered Sleep brought together professional adult male dancers and girls who dance for fun to celebrate the right of adults and children to dance together. It comes to London for a limited run after a successful national tour, and promises to explore empathy and care.

April 13-22, The Place; theplace.org.uk

Romeo and Juliet

(Jason Bell)

Shakespeare + Nureyev + Prokofiev, all brought together by the English National Ballet? Sounds good to us. The company bring Nureyevs classic choreography to the Royal Festival Hall to transport audiences to Renaissance Verona.

August 1-5, Southbank Centre; southbankcentre.co.uk

Nuclear War

Something different from the Royal Court  they have programmed a slot in their season for choreographer Imogen Knight to make her directorial debut. The text is written by acclaimed playwright Simon Stephens, and the show promises a series of suggestions on desire, death and time.

April 19 - May 6, Royal Court Upstairs; royalcourttheatre.com

Julie Cunningham and Company

This double bill on gender and identity brings a rare combination of dance and spoken word. Julie Cunningham choreographs the first half to the recording of Kate Tempests Hold Your Own, a reworking of the ancient Greek myth about Tiresias, whilst the second half uses tracks by Anohni as a soundtrack.

March 8-11, Barbican Centre; barbican.org.uk

London International Mime Festival

Marteen Vanden Abeele

The citys biggest celebration of mime and movement takes place at the start of the year at some of Londons most brilliant venues. As a tribute to visual theatre, its unrivalled, and this years line-up is as exciting as ever. Kiss & Cry at the Barbican is a story of love and loss told by dancing hands, whilst Theatre Res The Nature of Forgetting at Shoreditch Town Hall explores losing ones memories.

January 9 - February 4, venues across London; mimelondon.com

BBC Young Dancer

This is the place to look for the next Darcey Bussell and Carlos Acosta, so be sure not to miss the grand finale to find the best of young British dance talent. It takes place at Sadlers Wells, with dancers competing in four categories: ballet, contemporary, South Asian dance and street dance.

April 22, Sadlers Wells; sadlerswells.com

Matthew Bournes Early Adventures

(Roy Tan)

Matthew Bournes dance company New Adventures celebrate their 30th anniversary in 2017, so they will revisit some of the early pieces that helped launch his career, including a pastiche the cliches of 1930s Paris and sketches based on Watch With Mother.

April 3-8, Sadlers Wells; sadlerswells.com

Casanova

Northern Ballet have been on a roll, having scored a recent hit with their ballet production of George Orwells 1984. Their new production takes the story of decadent 18th century rascal Casanova and will premiere in Leeds before coming to London in May.

May 9-13, Sadlers Wells; sadlerswells.com

Tree of Codes

This show premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2015 and promises to be quite something. It is the co-creation of Sadlers Wells Associate Artist Wayne McGregor, Jamie XX and artist Olafur Eliasson, and is based on Jonathan Safran Foers book Tree of Codes. It also features dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet and Company Wayne McGregor, so prepare for a dance feast.

March 4-11, Sadlers Wells; sadlerswells.com

Mayerling

ROH / Bill Cooper

If you want some high drama ballet, look no further than this tale of extreme passion choreographed by the late ballet legend Kenneth MacMillan. It tells the true story of the suicide pact between the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his teenage mistress in 1989, and is performed to a sweeping score by Franz Liszt.

April 28 - May 13, Royal Opera House Main Stage; roh.org.uk

And two bonus picks from our critic, Lyndsey Winship

Arthur Pita & Headspacedance

Choreographer Pita joins forces with some excellent dancers to make a pair of grisly and grotesque fairy tales with inspirations ranging from Hansel and Gretel to the Violent Femmes.

March 2-11, The Place; theplace.org.uk

Crystal Pite

A new commission by the Canadian choreographer for the Royal Ballet. The first ballet shes made for a British company, it will be set to music from Goreckis swoonsome Symphony No 3.

March 14-24, Royal Opera House; roh.org.uk

Visit standard.co.uk/arts for the latest news and reviews from Londons arts scene

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S hocking CCTV footage shows the risk Londoners face every day from light-fingered thieves on mopeds snatching mobile phones.

Two thieves were caught on camera speeding onto a pavement in central London and effortlessly swiping the victims phone before he even realised what was happening.

Police have released the alarming footage as part of a warning to Londoners about the new crime trend of mobile phone snatching which is sweeping the capital.

The video  recorded just days before Christmas  shows the two suspects with helmet riding the moped onto a pavement in Holborn Viaduct.

Swipe: the moped thieves mount the pavement and take the victim's phone

The pair slow down and swerve alongside a man, who is using his phone, before seamlessly swiping the device out of his hands. They then speed away.

City of London Police said phone snatchers race around on motorbikes and scooters to steal from people who are walking around with their mobile phone out in Londons Square Mile.

Some victims have even been attacked by the thieves as they steal the mobile phone while others have the phone knocked out of their hands.

Fleeing: CCTV footage shows the moment two thieves swipe a victim's mobile phone. / City of London Police

City of London police is now joining with the Met to launch Operation Attrition to crack down on the criminals.

The clip was recorded shortly before 2.40am on Thursday, December 22 and officers have issued a public appeal to help find the pair of thieves.

Detective Constable David Harrigan said: We have yet to have a victim report this stolen phone and we would encourage them, or anyone else who noticed this moped, to get in touch if they think they may be able to assist our investigation.

Sadly, phone thieves on mopeds do operate within the city and we would urge people to avoid putting their phones on display whenever possible, and to consider using a hands-free device to make a call.

If you see any suspicious activity or have any information about anyone involved in this crime, contact City of London Police on 020 7601 2999 or on Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
A hunt is underway for a gunman who threatened officers with a firearm after his car crashed during a police chase in west London.

Armed officers and a police helicopter assisted in the search for the lone gunman following a collision in North Acton on Thursday morning.

Police said they attempted to stop a car seen in Harlesden High Street shortly before 8.45am on Thursday.

They spotted the car again in Victoria Road, North Acton shortly afterwards at which point the car sped away and a police chase ensued.

Moments later the car collided with another vehicle at the junction with the A40.

Police said a man got out of the car and threatened officers with what appeared to be a gun, before fleeing the scene on foot.

Armed police were called to the scene along with a police helicopter but no man was found.

Eyewitnesses described seeing swarms of police at the scene, some armed with guns.

A Met spokesperson said: Shortly before 8.45am on Thursday, 29 December officers in a marked police vehicle attempted to stop a car initially seen on Harlesden High Street.

The car was spotted again in Victoria Road and made off at speed. The police vehicle pursued the car with blue lights and sirens in operation.

A short while later the car was in collision with a member of the public's vehicle at Victoria Road junction with the A40.

A male from the car that was being pursued then threatened officers with what appeared to be a firearm, he subsequently made off on foot.

No arrests have been made and no one was reported injured.

Detectives from the Trident and Area Crime Command are investigating and enquiries are on-going.
A London University student who was reported missing after she did not return home to her family for Christmas has been found, police confirmed.

Isabel Gayther, 21, was located at an address in north London on Thursday five days after a disappearance the Metropolitan Police described as "extremely out of character".

Officers had seen and spoken with Ms Gayther and were "satisfied that she is safe and well", Scotland Yard said.

Relatives raised the alarm after she did not turn up at the family home in Oxford on Christmas Day.

Police in Lewisham had appealed for the public's help to trace the student, who lives in halls of residence on Goodwood Road in New Cross, south-east London.

She had not been seen or heard from since about 11.30am on Christmas Eve but messages had been posted on her Facebook account two days later suggesting she was fine.

A message posted on her account said: Am not on my way to Syria or being held hostage.

A day and half I'm out of contact and this is what happens??? I AM NOT MISSING peace."

It added: How embarrassing, this is the second time my mum has filed a missing persons report, for a missing person I just keep coming back...

Now I look like a c***.

Scotland Yard thanked the media and the public for their assistance.
A third man has been charged with murdering an inmate in Pentonville prison.

New father Jamal Mahmoud, 21, died after being stabbed at the north London jail during an attack which left two others injured on October 18.

On Thursday, police said Joshua Ratner, 26, had also been charged with the killing.

He will appear by video link before Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court on January 5.

Two other men, Basana Kimbembi, 34, and Robert Butler, 30, have previously appeared in court accused of the murder.

Mahmoud was killed by a single stab wound, a post-mortem into his death determined.

The young father's murder ignited calls for an inquiry into the state of jails in England and Wales, with his family accusing the prison of "neglecting him".

Cuts to staff and resources by the Government meant the "tragedy" at the north London site was "no massive surprise", the Prison Governors Association (PGA) said at the time.

It followed a slew of warnings about safety behind bars, while Pentonville was last year singled out by former justice secretary Michael Gove as "the most dramatic example of failure" within the estate.
A n enormous rat has been filmed running amok inside a window display of a London Primark store.

The shocking footage shows the rodent running up and down the window after hours on Christmas Eve.

Stunned passers-by stopped to film and photograph the animal from the other side of the glass in Bexleyheath.

But the rat appeared unperturbed - at one point even appearing to pose for a photgraph on its hind legs.

The rat on its hind legs in the shop (Twitter/@n_s_martin ) / Twitter/@n_s_martin

Martin Peaple, 28, from Sidcup, spotted the rat while having a cigarette after enjoying Christmas drinks nearby.

'Running loose': Shoppers spotted the rat in Primark in Bexleyheath (Twitter/@n_s_martin ) / Twitter/@n_s_martin

He posted a video on social media alongside the caption: Rat running loose in Primark Bexleyheath.

Mr Peaple told the Standard he was surprised and a bit shocked to see the creature inside the store.

He added: I had heard people talk about it but did not believe them until I went for a fag and saw it just walking up down inside the shop.

Its not the sort of thing you expect to see in a shop.

Cheeky critter: The rat appeared not to be phased by people watching it (Twitter/@n_s_martin ) / Twitter/@n_s_martin

Others took to social media to express sympathy for the rodent.

While some suggested the rat was doing some late night Christmas shopping.

Stunned shoppers: A rat was spotted running amok Bexleyheath's Primark store / Google maps

Michelle Boyer wrote: Poor little thing looks so scared.

Kassy Lozano added: So cute!! He just wants to escape and stay warm.

A spokeswoman for Primark said: "We can confirm that pest control were called on site and following an investigation, have stated this was an isolated incident which has now been dealt with."
A mazon has filed a patent for flying airship warehouses to house a fleet of delivery drones.

A patent document filed in 2014 in the US, discovered by analyst Zoe Leavitt from CB Insights, describes giant airships as "airborne fulfilment centres" (AFC) that could be stationed above cities.

They could be used to store and quickly deliver items at times of high demand, using drones dispatched directly from the airship.

The technology and e-commerce giant is already testing drone deliveries in the UK, and made its first commercial delivery under the trial in Cambridgeshire earlier this month.

The patent filing also suggests smaller aircraft and other unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could ferry workers to and from the ship as well as replenish stock.

"The AFC may be an airship that remains at a high altitude (e.g. 45,000 feet) and UAVs with ordered items may be deployed from the AFC to deliver ordered items to user-designated delivery locations," the filing reads.

"As the UAVs descend, they can navigate horizontally toward a user-specified delivery location using little to no power, other than to stabilise the UAV and/or guide the direction of descent.

Shuttles (smaller airships) may be used to replenish the AFC with inventory, UAVs, supplies, fuel, etc. Likewise, the shuttles may be utilised to transport workers to and from the AFC."

Many firms experimenting with drone technology have had difficulty increasing the range of the craft, which can be restricted by the size and weight of the battery.

Currently Amazon's UK drone trial is limited to items weighing 5lb or less that can be delivered in 30 minutes.

Amazon has not commented on the patent filing, which suggests the unfixed position of an airborne warehouse could be used to meet demand in different areas as needed, as well as reduce delivery times.

The documents suggest that in some instances, airships could be moved close to sporting arenas or festival sites and used to sell merchandise.

Additional reporting by the Press Association.
P olice have released a Tunisian man they had suspected of helping carry out the Berlin Christmas market truck attack.

German police had arrested the 40-year-old on suspicion of being involved in the rampage which killed 12 people in the Breitscheidplatz.

Prosecutors initially though the mans phone number had been found on the mobile phone of main suspect Anis Amri.

Investigators had suspected Amri might have sent a message and a picture to the man just before the December 19 attack.

Anis Amri, 24, is believed to have driven the truck into the market. / German police via AP

But on Thursday, investigators concluded he had not been in contact with Amri immediately before the massacre.

Tributes: People gather to lay down flowers near the area where a truck ploughed into a crowded Christmas market / REUTERS

Frauke Koehler, spokeswoman for the prosecutors, said: Further investigations determined that the man who was provisionally detained isn't this possible contact person of Anis Amri, so he had to be released from custody,"

Amri, 24, who had links to known Islamists, was shot dead by police four days after the attack.

He is believed to have driven the truck that plowed into the market.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack and released a video showing Amri pledging allegiance to its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Investigators have determined that the video is genuine, Ms Koehler said.
A man who was wrongly arrested over the terror attack on a Berlin Christmas market has said he fears for his life.

Naveed Baloch, 24, told the Guardian that he fears for his familys safety after he was accused of driving a truck into a crowd, killing 12 people and leaving 48 people injured.

Mr Baloch, who is now in hiding for his safety, said he fled persecution as a member of the secular separatist movement in the Pakistani province of Balochistan, a group which is often targeted by religious extremists.

He said he is afraid his family will now be targeted because the Pakistani nationalists and religious extremists will know he has fled.

Mr Baloch told the paper: Before the attack for which I was arrested, no one in Balochistan knew I had disappeared.

Now they all know I fled to Germany, fearful of my life, and that I am claiming asylum here. It leaves my family very vulnerable and theres nothing I can do to protect them.

Berlin terror attack: Horror as lorry ploughs into crowds 1 /32 Berlin terror attack: Horror as lorry ploughs into crowds A tow truck operates at the scene where a truck ploughed through a crowd at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters A trail of devastation is left behind, the day after a truck ran into a crowded Christmas market Markus Schreiber/AP Debris at the Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square Markus Schreiber/AP Firefighters look at the debris after the trailer has been towed away from the crime scene in Berlin Markus Schreiber/AP The damaged towing truck is towed away Matthias Schrader/AP A tow truck operates at the scene where a truck ploughed through a crowd at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters A damaged windscreen of a truck which ploughed through a crowd at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters The smashed window of the cabin of a truck which ran into a crowded Christmas market Markus Schreiber/AP A tow truck operates at the scene where a truck ploughed through a crowd at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters Rescue workers gather outside a tent in the area after a lorry truck ploughed through a Christmas market Sean Gallup/Getty Images An aerial view shows the extent of the damage at the scene where a truck crashed into a Christmas market close to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church Bernd von Jutrczenka/EPA A candle and flowers are seen near the site where a truck ploughed through a crowd at a Berlin Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters Smash: The truck that crashed into a Christmas market, close to the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church in Berlin. Clemens Bilan/EPA Investigation: A German police officer looks into a truck at a Berlin Christmas market following an accident with the truck on Breitscheidplatz square Christian Mang/Reuters Horror crash: The damaged front part of a truck is pictured at the scene after it crashed into a Christmas market, Rainer Jensen/EPA Security: Policemen and rescue workers secure the site next to a truck at the scene, after it crashed into a Christmas market. Rainer Jensen/EPA Mayor: Berlin's Mayor Michael Mueller (left) speaks to the media at the scene where a truck crashed into a Christmas market, close to the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church in Berlin, Germany. Maurizio Gambarini/EPA Christmas: Parts of a Christmas market decoration stick in the windscreen of a truck following an accident. Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters Inspection: A specialist in a protective suit talks to police near a truck at a Christmas market in Berlin, Germany. Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters Wounded: An injured person is carried on an stretcher by fireman at the scene where a truck crashed into a Christmas market Clemens Bilan/EPA Christmas market: German police officers secure the site of an accident with a truck at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square near the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm avenue Christian Mang/Reuters Forensic: Experts of the police investigate the crime scene after a truck ran into a crowded Christmas market and killed several people in Berlin, Germany. Michael Sohn/AP Survivors: A survivor of an accident with a Polish truck is rescued on a stretcher near a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square near the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm avenue Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters Injured: Rescue workers push a person on a stretcher in the area after a lorry truck ploughed through a Christmas market Sean Gallup/Getty Images

German police also believe Mr Baloch could be in danger from Pakistani nationals or German rightwing extremists.

Mr Baloch told how he was running across a road in central Berlin on December 19 to avoid a car when he realised it was a police vehicle.

He said he was beckoned over by police who asked to see his ID.

The police initially let him go before calling him back and arresting him, tying his hands behind his back and stuffing him in the back of the car.

(Anis Amri the Berlin attack suspect German police via AP) / German police via AP

Mr Baloch told the paper how two police officers dug the heels of their shoes into my feet and how one put great pressure on my neck with his hand.

Later, at a police station, he was told to undress before they started taking pictures. Mr Baloch said: When I resisted, they started slapping me.

Within hours police and German interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, had identified Naveed B as their prime suspect.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere addresses a press conference in Berlin / AFP/Getty Images

He was released when no evidence linked him to the truck and he was found to be uninjured after what would have been a violent struggle between the Berlin attacker and the lorrys driver.

By the time they cleared Mr Baloch of all blame police were already searching for Anis Amri, 24, a Tunisian whose documents had been found in the footwell of the truck which had ploughed into the market.

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R ussia has reached a Syrian ceasefire with Turkey, Vladimir Putin has said.

Mr Putin said Russia and Turkey will guarantee the truce, which is set to begin at midnight.

He said it will be followed by peace talks between Syrian president Bashar Assad's government and the opposition.

Syrian parties will take part in talks to be held in Kazakhstan at a later date.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria, and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance.

Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said US president-elect Donald Trump's administration will be welcome to join the Syrian peace process once he takes office.

Russia is a key ally of Mr Assad, while Turkey is one of the main backers of the opposition.

Several previous attempts to halt the Syrian civil war have failed.
A 40-year-old man arriving in Sydney from London has been charged by anti-terror police for allegedly making threats against the Australian citys New Years Eve celebrations.

Autralian police detained the man as he got off a plane at Sydney International Airport on Thursday.

A home in the inner city area of Chippendale was raided by police, along with a storage facility in west Sydney.

Police say they seized a number of documents and hard drives.

The man was later charged with having documents containing threats contrary to Section 31 Crimes Act 1900 concerning online blogs.

He has been remanded in custody to appear in court on Friday.

The arrest came after police foiled an alleged terror plot in Melbourne last week.

Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said: Investigations into this matter so far indicate this was an isolated incident.

"As a consequence, we are confident that there are no current or specific threats to New Years Eve and, while we ask people to remain vigilant, people should enjoy the celebrations.

"The community should be also reassured that we will take swift action to ensure the ongoing safety of the public.
T he Coldplay frontman dropped into a Crisis Centre in west London on Wednesday to play a special version of Wham!s Last Christmas.

According to the volunteers, the 39-year-old arrived with no fanfare and dedicated the set to Michael, who passed away on Christmas Day.

As well as performing some of his own hits, Martin reportedly asked member of the crowd to join him for duets and later made cups of tea.

Despite wanting to keep the performance under the radar, a number of Crisis volunteers tweeted their thanks.

Huge shout out to the amazing @coldplay #chrismartin for dropping by to our @crisis_uk West London shelter to play for guests. What a legend, wrote Nish Manek on Twitter.

Diana Gornall added: Wonderful day volunteering for @crisis_uk. Massive thanks to #chrismartin of @coldplay for helping out and entertaining us all!

Penny White, who was on her first shift, wrote: @crisis_uk loved first shift at #crisisxmas at West London centre. Brilliant guests & volunteers Cool duet by one guest & Chris Martin .

Another volunteer posted a selfie with Martin, writing: That moment when Coldplay's Chris Martin drops into the Crisis at Christmas shelter, with no fuss, no fanfare and no press, to help make tea and coffee and also play guitar so the guests can have a sing song.

George Michael dies: Stars pay tribute

Thank you for coming down and getting stuck in. #crisis #christmas #chrismartin #coldplay.

Since Michaels tragic death at the age of 54 on Sunday, fans have been sharing stories of his charitable nature.

George Michael - In pictures 1 /29 George Michael - In pictures An iconic shot of George Michael, when he was performing at Live Aid in 1985 PA With Wham! partner Andrew Ridgeley in March 1984 PA The pair in October 1984 PA Wham! at Heathrow on their way to play in Japan in January 1985 PA On stage for Wham's last sell out concert at Wembley Stadium in June 1986 PA Michael collecting his Ivor Novello award at London's Grosvenor House in 1989 for his album Faith as international hit of the year PA With BBC Radio 1 DJ Steve Wright in August 1990 PA Singing onstage at Wembley for the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in April 1992 PA Talking to Princes Diana ahead of a concert of Hope at Wembley Arena in London, to mark World Aids Day in December 1993. Diana was patron of the National Aids Trust. Mick Hucknall looks on PA Leaving Westminster Abbey after Diana's funeral in September 1997 PA Looking dapper at a press conference in September 1999 PA Performing a duet with Tom Jones during a tribute concert to Sir Paul McCartney's late wife Linda, held at the Royal Albert Hall in London in April 1999 PA Arriving at the 95.8 Capital FM London Awards with Spice Girl Geri Halliwell in April 2000 PA Arriving with Kenny Goss for Attitude Magazine's 10th Birthday Party at the Atlantic Bar & Grill in central London PA Outside Brent Magistrates' Court after he was sentenced to 100 hours community service for driving while unfit in June 2007 PA A day later he was performing at Wembley Stadium PA Leaving Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court in August 2010 after he appeared charged with driving under the influence of drugs after his car crashed into a high street shop PA Outside his house in Highgate after being released from prison in October of that year PA Smiling for the cameras in May 2011 PA Pop's elder statesman in May 2011 PA On stage at the 2012 Brit Awards at the O2 Arena PA In concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London during his Symphonica Tour in September 2012 PA

TV host Richard Osman recalled a time when Michael anonymously donated money to a woman who couldnt afford IVF.

A woman on 'Deal Or No Deal' told us she needed 15k for IVF treatment. George Michael secretly phoned the next day and gave her the 15k, he wrote on Twitter.

Dame Esther Rantzen revealed that Michael had given all the royalties from his 1996 number one single Jesus To A Child to Childline.

For years now he has been the most extraordinarily generous philanthropist, giving money to Childline, but he was determined not to make his generosity public so no-one outside the charity knew how much he gave to the nation's most vulnerable children, she said.
H ollywood legend Debbie Reynolds has died just a day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher.

The 84-year-old Singin' In The Rain star died on Wednesday, her son Todd Fisher confirmed.

She suffered a suspected stroke and was rushed to hospital at about 1pm local time on Wednesday from her sons Beverley Hills home, where they were making plans for Ms Fishers funeral, according to reports.

Actor and director Mr Fisher, 58, speaking outside Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre where Reynolds was taken by ambulance, said: She's now with Carrie and we're all heartbroken.

He added: She said, 'I want to be with Carrie. And then she was gone."

Carrie Fisher, right, presents her mother Debbie Reynolds with the Screen Actors Guild life achievement award / Vince Bucci/Invision/AP

Mr Fisher said the stress of his sister's death on Tuesday at 60 "was too much" for their mother.

Ms Fisher, who rose to fame for her role playing Princess Leia in Star Wars, died in hospital days after suffering a heart attack on a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles.

After news of Ms Reynolds own death broke, Ms Fishers daughter, Billie Lourd, posted a picture on Facebook of herself with her late mother and grandmother at the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Billie Lourd, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds at the Screen Actors Guild awards in Los Angeles last year. (REUTERS) / Mike Blake/Reuters

Ms Reynolds was just a teenager when she landed a role in the 1950 film Three Little Words, for which she won a most promising newcomer Golden Globe.

She was perhaps most famous for playing Kathy Selden in 1952 musical Singin' In The Rain alongside Gene Kelly.

Her first of three marriages was to musician Eddie Fisher in 1955 and with him she had Carrie and Todd.

Debbie Reynolds - In pictures 1 /34 Debbie Reynolds - In pictures Debbie Reynolds poses for a portrait in Beverly Hills in 2013 Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Debbie Reynolds poses backstage with her Lifetime Achievement award with her granddaughter Billie Catherine (right) and daughter actress Carrie Fisher (left) at the 21st annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles, California on 25 January 2015 Mike Blake/Reuters Debbie Reynolds as Kathy Selden, Donald O'connor as Cosmo Brown and Gene Kelly as Don Lockwood in 'Singin' In The Rain' (1952) MGM Actress Debbie Reynolds poses atop her newly unveiled star in the live theatre and stage category on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 17 January 1997 Reuters Carrie Fisher, right, presents her mother Debbie Reynolds with the Screen Actors Guild life achievement award at the 21st annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles Vince Bucci/Invision/AP Debbie Reynolds in London celebrating her 78th birthday in 2010 Stefan Rousseau/PA Debbie Reynolds arrives at The Greenbrier for the gala opening of the Casino Club in White Sulphur Springs in 2010 Jeff Gentner/AP Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley MacLaine and Joan Collins sar in 'These Old Broads' in 2000. The two-hour comedy is written by Carrie Fisher ABC via Getty Images Debbie Reynolds returns for a curtain call after a performance of 'Woman of the Year' at New York's Palace Theatre on 8 March 1983 AP Debbie Reynolds at the Bob Hope gala rehearsal in 1985 Mike Hollist/Associated Newspapers Debbie Reynolds poses on a grand piano at a New York restaurant, as she promotes the revival of the hit musical 'The Unsinkable Molly Brown' on 8 September 1982 Marty Lederhandler/AP Debbie Reynolds performing on the opening night of her run at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA on 09 April 1974 Las Vegas News BureauEPA US musical artist Liberace (R) holding a candelabra as Welsh singer Tom Jones (C) blows out the candles at his birthday party as (L-R) Joan Rivers, Sonny Bono, Dionne Warwick and Debbie Reynolds look on at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 05 June 1974 Las Vegas News Bureau/EPA Debbie Reynolds in her dressing room at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA on 09 March 1971 Las Vegas News Bureau/EPA Debbie Reynolds joking around with Chuck Norris at the Stardust in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA on 29 March 1967 Las Vegas News Bureau/EPA Debbie Reynolds with her children Carrie and Todd on the set of 'Say One For Me' in 1959 AP Debbie Reynolkds and Glenn Ford in 'It Started with a Kiss' (1959) MGM Eddie Fisher and first wife Debbie Reynolds in 1957 PUBLICITY PICTURE Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds hold their baby daughter, Carrie Frances Fisher, as the pose for a photo in the Hollywood on 2 January 1957 AP Debbie Reynolds entertains at 8th Army headquarters in Seoul, South Korea on 22 May 1955 AP Singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds are pictured during their wedding at the Catskill Mountain Resort in Grossinger, New York in 1955 AP Eddie Fisher gets a final once-over from his fiancee Debbie Reynolds, before making his first performance at the London Palladium in 1955 Associated Newspapers ctress Debbie Reynolds signs autographs on her way into the ice show in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles on 7 May 1951 Frank Filan/AP Debbie Reynolds and daughter Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the original Star Wars movie, joining a Darth Vader and a Stormtrooper character as they arrive for the premiere of 'Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith' in Washington, DC, USA on 12 May 2005 Mike Theiler/EPA Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher arrive at the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on 10 September 2011 Chris Pizzello/AP Debbie Reynolds in London celebrating her 78th birthday on 01 April 2010 Stefan Rousseau/PA

But their relationship ended sourly after news emerged of his affair with movie star Elizabeth Taylor.

Reynolds continued to have a loving relationship with her ex-husband's children, including Joely Fisher, 49, who tweeted "God speed mama" after she was taken to hospital.

Stars were quick to pay their respects on social media.

Dame Joan Collins tweeted: "Truly heartbroken to hear @DebbieReynolds1 has died. She was a wonderfully warm friend and colleague. Praying for Todd & Billie. #RIPDebbie."

Jeff Gentner/AP

William Shatner wrote: "Debbie Reynolds was one of the last of Hollywood Royalty. It breaks my heart that she is gone. I'd hoped that my grieving was done for 2016."

His fellow Star Trek actor George Takei added: "There is nothing harder than having to bury a child. Debbie died of a broken heart, but she's with her daughter now."

Reynolds had paid an emotional tribute to her daughter on Facebook.

She wrote: "Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop. Love Carrie's Mother."

Carrie Fisher captured the hearts of a generation of young men as the blaster-toting, bikini-wearing princess and tough resistance leader in the three original Star Wars films.

But off screen she battled drink, drugs and mental illness and later emerged as a widely-lauded mental health advocate who inspired others by writing about her struggles.

In 1987 she published her semi-autobiographical novel Postcards From The Edge about a recovering drug addict film star. It became a bestseller and was turned into a 1990 film starring an Oscar-nominated Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine and Dennis Quaid.

She wrote and performed in an autobiographical one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, which went to Broadway and was turned into a book.
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In this file photo from 2014, John Scocos, Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs, speaks at a ceremony to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, held at the state Capitol.
A man speaks with police in a park in Milwaukee Aug. 15 following the fatal shooting by a police officer Aug. 13 of Sylville Smith.
BRIGGSVILLE  Going wherever help is needed is a big goal for anyone, no matter the circumstances. Briggsville native Paige Lindner plans to do this in 11 countries for 11 months.

And shes done this kind of thing before.

Lindner, 21, will next month begin a World Race, doing service work in Asia, Europe and Africa through November. Shes a 2013 Wisconsin Dells High School graduate who just received a degree from Marquette University, where she was a double-major in marketing and finance  people and numbers, you might call it, she said. But unlike most college graduates, Lindners not applying for jobs or planning her career.

Not yet.

Im leaving it open, she said of her future.

Her World Race itinerary  a program of the faith-oriented organization called Adventures in Mission  begins Jan. 9 in India. Over the next 11 months Lindner will work in underprivileged areas in Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and South Africa.

When asked why shed do so much for so long, Lindner said she subscribes to the idea you should leave a piece of yourself behind wherever you go, that she wants to step away from everything thats made me, me. She wants to realize how lucky I am, and to evolve into whatever the next step is after.

In that respect, she expects World Race will be a transformative year  similar to an experience she had a year ago.

They became faces

Lindners path to the World Race began when she learned that Milwaukee has one of the biggest underground sex trades in America. Confronted with that, Lindner felt helpless. You cant walk into a bar in Milwaukee and see that a girl or child is enslaved, she said, but I knew you could in a different country.

Lindner would eventually find the nonprofit organization Wipe Every Tear, which sends groups to the Philippines to fight a rampant sex trade. The Boise, Idaho-based organization has made its mark throughout the U.S., including the the Bridgepoint Mission Center in Wisconsin Dells, which operates the Bella Goose Coffee Shop as a gathering spot for such missions.

Lindner participated in a mission to the Philippines last Christmas, helping 30 girls find new life. She and others targeted an Angeles City red-light district, essentially an entire street dedicated to sex. Every establishment you walk into, you know each girl is working against their own will, Lindner said of the district. They look different in every country, but you could see it (plainly) in the Philippines.

During her first week in the Philippines Lindner talked to mothers who sell their daughters into the trade. Many mothers, at first, are dumbfounded by the idea that change is even possible, Lindner said. They dont understand what theyre doing. In the second week she went into the bars and other establishments. Lindner and others sought girls who wanted education or seemed interested in a different life, proposing options to pursue if they got out.

Those two weeks were a big success. But when the rest of Lindners team went home, Lindner decided to stay longer.She wanted to live in the safe house that Wipe Every Tear established there. For two more weeks she showed the rescued women simple things many people take for granted  like brushing teeth, grocery shopping and how to make cookie dough.

This was the stuff no ones ever done for them, Lindner said. That was the biggest part.

The experience of those final two weeks is why Lindner wants to do more. It wasnt easy to go back to school and forget about it, she said. (I saw them) get their birth certificates, their IDs, and it all became more real.

They became faces.

World Race

Her choice to participate in World Race wasnt made on a whim. Lindner made the decision to go in March, from which point she raised $17,017 for the trip in about seven months.

Every month Lindner has a different mission field.

The cool part is you dont know what youre doing until you step in that country, she said. In Europe, for example, Lindner might help refugees or give vaccinations. In Africa she might help in areas with a lot of hunger or AIDs. Thailand, like the Philippines, has a huge sex trade, so Lindner expects shell be asked to help there.

We can expect to be working in orphanages, schools, clinics ... she said. In each country Lindner will work with a service organization thats well-established in whatever community shes in. You dont get to choose what youre doing. The organizations ask you what youre good at, and they play off your strength.

The oldest of six children, Lindners biggest strength might be her personality. Im a big people person, she explained. Im not sure yet if I can live this as a lifestyle, but I know for at least a year of my life its doable.

Its basically exactly what it sounds like, Lindner said of World Race. Its service.

Its at the mercy of where the help is needed.
The man accused of killing a Cool Springs woman over Christmas weekend faces a slew of new sexual assault charges.

Gary Steven Love, 47, of Ohio, faces 10 felony counts of statutory sex offense with a child 15 or younger, as well as felony charges of indecent liberties with a child and sexual servitude of a child.

He was also charged with felony first-degree kidnapping and misdemeanor assault on a female. The new charges were added on Wednesday.

Love is believed to be responsible for the death of Robin Denman, 46, who was found dead in her home on Cool Springs Road Monday. Authorities have determined that blunt force trauma was the cause of Denmans death, Iredell County Sheriff Darren Campbell said.

A teenage family member of Denmans said she was tied up in the home over the weekend and sexually assaulted multiple times. On Monday, she managed to text a friend for help, and Iredell County deputies were sent to the home.

After arriving at the home, deputies apprehended Love and discovered the body. Love was charged with murder.

Love and Denman were old acquaintances and she allowed him to stay on her couch for the last three months after he moved to North Carolina from Ohio, according to Campbell.

Love was given a $3 million secured bond on the new charges. He is being held without bond on the murder charge. His next scheduled court date is Jan. 24, according to court officials.
By MARK EVANS STE. GENEVIEVE HERALD Scott Schmieder, county road and bridge foreman, reported to the county commission last Thursday that temperatures are getting too cold at night for much more asphalt work to be done. He said potholes had all been patched. His crews were working on Bodine Road and made call-ins to locate
RACINE  A 38-year-old Illinois man is facing several charges after he allegedly battered a woman he met on an online dating application and held against her will.

Robert E. Gunn, 38, of Evanston, Ill., was charged Tuesday in Racine County Circuit Court with a felony count of false imprisonment and misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and battery.

According to a criminal complaint:

On Dec. 24, Racine police officers responded for a welfare check on the 3200 block of Washington Avenue, after receiving a call from a woman who claimed her sister had sent her a text message saying she was with a man who wouldnt let her leave.

Upon arrival, officers met with Gunn and a woman who claimed they met a few days before through a dating app. The woman told officers that both of them had been drinking and they had got into an altercation over an undisclosed matter.

Gunn allegedly choked the woman, put her in a headlock and struck her in the face multiple times with a closed fist.

The woman also claimed that Gunn prevented her from using her phone to call for help and physically restrained her from leaving the residence by standing in her way in the kitchen. When the woman tried to get past him, Gunn reportedly put her in a headlock.

The woman was eventually able to message her sister when Gunn left to use the bathroom.

Gunn is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on Jan. 5 at the Racine County Law Enforcement Center, 717 Wisconsin Ave. On the felony charge alone, Gunn, if convicted, could face up to three years in prison with three years of extended supervision or a fine up to $10,000.
Mike Krogman is doing some long-distance apartment hunting.

Hell be leaving the lakeshore house he rents in Pardeeville and heading to Iowa, probably sometime this spring.

Krogman, 48, has worked for Oscar Mayer in Madison since April 1990, first on the sanitation crew and now as union secretary/treasurer and chief steward.

But the plant is scheduled to close by the end of March 2017, so Krogman plans to transfer to Oscar Mayers factory in Davenport so he can put in the three more years he needs to earn a pension. He doesnt know what job hell get in Iowa or how much it will pay.

Id rather not go down there, but its a part of life, I guess. You have to do what you have to do, Krogman said.

Madison city officials also are trying to prepare for the unknown.

Mayor Paul Soglin said planning for the future of the longtime Oscar Mayer site at 910 Mayer Ave.  at the intersection of Packers and Commercial avenues  will get serious in 2017.

We are planning a meeting ... sitting down with some business leaders here in the city, just discussing the future of the site and what may be done with it, from a technical standpoint, Soglin said.

Thats our highest priority  to start doing some planning, he said. But the mayor said it could be 10 years before the site comes alive again, with a new identity.

Just a few months before Madisons near-century of meat production at Oscar Mayer will end, many questions remain unanswered: Questions about the hundreds of remaining workers whose jobs will disappear; questions about the fate of the 72-acre site and the 1.7 million square feet of offices and factory it houses  the place where hot dogs and processed meats began production in 1919 and where, at its peak, more than 4,000 people once worked.

One thing is certain: With the impending closing of Oscar Mayer, 2017 will see a big shake-up in the citys economic base and in the rhythm of the North Side neighborhood that is not likely to be resolved anytime soon.

Dwindling jobs

When parent company Kraft Heinz announced in November 2015 it would close Oscar Mayer operations in Madison as part of a restructuring that will shutter seven plants in the U.S. and Canada, about 1,000 people worked in the local factory and offices, including 650 union members at the plant.

Today, there are 450 employees left  fewer than half  company spokesman Michael Mullen said. Of those, 420 are union members, said Doug Leikness, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 538.

They wont be there much longer. Leikness said hes been told 42 plant workers jobs will end Saturday, and at least 44 more at the end of January.

Another 240 jobs will disappear in February when the round and square products  lunch meats such as bologna, ham and turkey  will cease production, Leikness said.

I believe some of these product lines that we have are going to start up in January in Kirksville, Missouri, he said.

Kraft Heinz officials are not offering details, but Mullen gave this emailed statement:

Kraft Heinz will end production at the Madison factory in the first quarter of 2017, and we are in the process of transitioning production to other facilities within the United States, Mullen wrote.

We continue to work with local officials and potential buyers on the sale of our Madison facility. We remain committed to keeping the community apprised of our progress. For now, the process remains ongoing. Once a decision has been reached, our employees will be the first to know.

We sincerely thank our employees for their hard work and commitment to the facility. As always, we remain committed to treating our people with the utmost respect and dignity, Mullen wrote.

Headed to Iowa

Krogman is among about 50 of Madisons Oscar Mayer workers who intend to transfer to Davenport, Leikness estimated. When they do, they will have bumping rights over the Iowa employees.

Under a clause in the unions contract, if Madisons Oscar Mayer plant closes, its employees have the right to take over a job thats held by a worker with the least seniority at the Davenport factory.

Quite a few employees, though, are choosing to retire instead, Leikness said, and some are drawing pensions of $2,000 a month or more.

Employees who are at least 50 years old and have worked for the company at least 20 years can get a double-pension, Leikness said. Some even qualify for a $750 bonus on top of that.

Those who are not eligible to receive a pension will get a separation agreement with smaller payments.

Leikness said newer Oscar Mayer employees have a 401(k) retirement account instead of a pension and wont get company-paid health insurance when they eventually retire.

Krogman, who grew up in Eau Claire and went to high school in DeForest, wound up at Oscar Mayer by accident. He had earned an associate degree in police science at Madison Area Technical College but was not able to land a law enforcement job right away. When the Oscar Mayer job emerged, he took it.

The pay at Oscar Mayer at the time was more than most police jobs, Krogman said.

Oscar Mayers been a good place to work. You can work a lot of hours and earn extra money. Ive been able to buy houses, he said.

The Davenport operation also is undergoing a big change. Kraft Heinz will close Davenports current plant and is building a new one  with the help of at least $15 million in state and local incentives  that will provide jobs for several hundred fewer employees.

Whats next

When Oscar Mayer ceases operations here, it will affect more than just the employees.

Local utilities will take a big hit:

Madison Gas and Electric Co. has told state regulators Oscar Mayer is the source of more than $3 million in revenue each year.

Oscar Mayer has long been the largest customer of the Madison Water Utility, typically using 400 million to 450 million gallons of water a year and providing the water utility with more than $1 million a year in revenue, or 2.8 percent of its total annual revenue, spokeswoman Amy Barrilleaux said.

The Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District says Oscar Mayer is the No. 2 contributor of wastewater  after only UW-Madison  and treating that wastewater has generated more than $500,000 a year in revenue for the sewerage district, on average, over the past 10 years.

Soglin said the citys 2017 budget includes $100,000 to hire a private planning consultant to help city staff develop a strategy for the soon-to-be-vacant property.

Most people agree we want a solid employment base at the site. Were not interested in housing, not interested in retail sales  which isnt to say none of that will be there. But the key has to be something that creates employment, good jobs, Soglin said.

He said the city has been in contact with Oscar Mayer officials at Krafts base in Chicago on a monthly basis.

So far, no word has been forwarded about any serious interest in buying the buildings, and no developer has approached the city, Soglin said.

They will notify us when they have a buyer. When the property was listed in the summer, I know that there was interest, said Soglin.

The citys main objective now is to get the site cleared for new development, he said. Soglin said he has told Kraft Heinz that if a developer comes forward, the city will apply for federal brownfield cleanup funds, which cannot be awarded to private companies.

Conversely, if there are no takers, we have told Oscar Mayer that if the site were cleaned up, we would take it for a dollar. But it cant come with any liabilities, Soglin said.

He estimated it would cost $10 million to $12 million to demolish the buildings, remove the materials and prepare for a grounds cleanup.

With no other business waiting in the wings to move into the location, it could take up to a decade before anything happens, Soglin said.

Impact on local businesses

In the meantime, things will slow down for area businesses that have catered to the Oscar Mayer crowd  the groceries, hardware stores, restaurants.

Those crowds already have diminished in recent years, said John Kavanaugh, whose family has owned Kavanaughs Esquire Club, 1025 N. Sherman Ave., since 1947.

With only an open field separating the businesses, Oscar Mayer workers used to congregate at the old-fashioned supper club for lunch, bowling banquets and Christmas parties. Even members of the Mayer family would come by.

When the meat processing plant traditionally closed for a holiday break at noon on Christmas Eve day, workers would stop in and hold an impromptu cocktail party at the Esquire Club, he said. That was always a very festive day for us, Kavanaugh said.

He said the closing is a concern for other members of the North Side Business Association, as well. When people dont have the money to spend, (and there are fewer) people working, it makes a difference to everyone.

Kavanaugh said at least a couple of people have suggested that Epic Systems Corp., the huge electronic health records software company in Verona, might be interested in taking over the Oscar Mayer site.

What a wonderful thing that would be  if (Epic founder) Judy Faulkner would want to put a training center in the area, close to the airport and close to the Interstate (highway), Kavanaugh said.

An Epic presence would likely draw a major hotel to the area as well, he speculated.

She certainly has the wherewithal, the funding to do that. What a great thing that would be for the North Side, Kavanaugh said.
RENWICK, Iowa  Once-bustling Renwick, Iowa, lost its grocery, hardware store, school and Ford dealership years ago, but when its sole bar closed last June, it seemed to some residents there wasn't much of a town left.

So a group of seven friends and spouses who had met for beers at the bar for decades took matters into their own hands. One of them bought the place and the others pooled their money to fix it up, showing up after work to replace floors and walls on steamy summer nights before reopening in September as the Blue Moose Saloon.

It was an impressive achievement but one that is becoming more common as population continues to trickle away from rural America. Residents of some towns are scrambling to hold on to at least a few places where people can still get together. It's not just bars but groceries, cafes and other stores.

They don't expect to turn around their communities' prospects, but after watching so many businesses shuttered, they feel they had to draw the line somewhere.

"There are two places not too far, over in Lu Verne, but it's not our place," said one of the Blue Moose owners, Ron Oberhelman, a 59-year-old farmer who has seen the population fall from about 500 to 235 residents. "It's not our home town.

"When your local place closes up, you're pretty much lost."

Renwick's wide streets are usually empty, apart from a trickle of people who stop at the small post office, do business at the towering silver Gold Eagle grain elevators or work at a seed production plant. But cars and pickups begin pulling up to the Blue Moose not long after it opens each afternoon at 4, offering a refuge from the icy December wind that blows off the snowy farmland surrounding the community about 90 miles north of Des Moines.

It's a similar situation in the Missouri River village of Decatur, Neb., where a dozen people put up money to help the owners rebuild when the Green Lantern Steakhouse burned in 2008. The restaurant, established in 1956, was what brought people into town and served as the main meeting spot in the community of 450 an hour's drive north of Omaha.

"It's not very easy to have a strong, active small town," said Matt Connealy, who lives on a farm just outside town. "You have to do things that don't always make the best sense financially."

Once reopened, the restaurant resumed its place as the community's hub, home to high school graduation parties and baby showers. Near the entrance, notices cram a bulletin board, so as Connealy notes, "If you want to find out what's happening, that's where you go."

U.S. Census figures show more than one-third of rural counties have lower population now than in 1930. In Iowa, about two-thirds of the state's 99 counties have lost population for decades. In addition to fewer potential customers, businesses in rural areas face stiff competition from online shopping and from urban chain stores offering big savings for those willing to drive another 30 or 40 miles.

Charles Fluharty, who heads the Rural Policy Research Institute at the University of Iowa, said he's seen an increase in rural neighbors joining to save local spots. Some create cooperatives or seek government and private grants.

Without gathering places, the residents fear that people in town won't know each other. They won't know who's getting married, who's sick, who needs help.

"There's a sense of, "We've got to take care of ourselves, and that means we've got to take care of one another because we're all we've got," Fluharty said.

In Kiester, Minnesota, the 486 residents went so far as gaining approval from the Legislature for the city to own the local food store. Residents later formed a co-op, and the Kiester Market sign notes, "Proud to be community owned."

Marcia Dahleen, until recently the market manager, said the grocery store relies increasingly on volunteer help. It delivers to elderly people at home and takes special orders for meat.

"We try to bend over backward to help people in town," she said.

Residents of Bowdon, North Dakota, population 135, also created a co-op to save a meat-cutting plant after the owner died. Although it only employed a few people, co-op board member Larry Crowder said it was "the busiest place on Main Street," and that residents feared Bowdon's cafe and co-op grocery could fail if the plant wasn't there to draw people into town. They managed to sell 100 shares at $5,500 apiece to fund a new plant along with grants.

"They did it to save the town," Crowder said.
Teslas license to sell cars at its Missouri showrooms expires Saturday after a circuit judges decision this week.

The California-based electric car maker lost a court battle in August when Cole County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Green ruled that Tesla is not a franchisee and its motor vehicle dealer licenses should not be renewed by the Missouri Department of Revenue.

On Wednesday, the judge denied Teslas motion to stay, or temporarily halt, the judgment while the ruling is appealed. Teslas motor vehicle licenses for its stores in University City and Kansas City expire Saturday.

In 2015, after Tesla was issued dealer licenses for its two Missouri stores, the Missouri Auto Dealers Association sued the revenue department, alleging Teslas direct-to-consumer model violates state law. MADA is a Jefferson City-based trade group that represents new-car and new-truck dealers.

In his ruling in favor of MADAs motion for summary judgment in August, Judge Green wrote that a single entity may not manufacture vehicles for sale in Missouri and possess a Missouri new motor vehicle dealer license, under state law.

Tesla, led by billionaire CEO Elon Musk, had argued that the judgment should be stayed while the case is appealed, but Judge Green denied that request.

I think it was correct under the law as we argued before the court, Lowell Pearson, MADAs attorney, said of the judges decision.

Its unclear what will happen to Teslas facility near Olive Boulevard and Interstate 170 in University and its facilities in Kansas City. The University City store opened in 2013; Kansas City, in 2014. An employee at Teslas University City store Thursday said the sales operations were up in the air because of the court case.

Our online renewal was rejected, a Tesla spokesman confirmed Thursday. In some states where manufacturers sale of vehicles directly to customers is barred, Tesla operates service centers for its customers.

Tesla said it planned to immediately ask the Court of Appeals to issue a stay of the trial courts decision in order to prevent an immediate and unnecessary loss of jobs, tax revenue, consumer convenience, and consumer choice for Missourians, the company said in an emailed statement.

Tesla has been selling cars in Missouri for almost four years and employs numerous people at its Missouri sales locations, Teslas statement said. We do not believe that we should have to close up those sales operations while the Court of Appeals considers whether we may continue selling in the state.

Missouri Department of Revenue spokeswoman Michelle Gleba declined to comment on the departments appeal of the circuit courts ruling, citing a policy of against commenting on pending litigation.
If youve been meaning to visit some of the citys art galleries, why not make the time during the holiday season? Particularly when you never know when therell be another ice storm on the horizon.

Whether youre into traditional art or pieces that reflect the avant-garde, youre almost certain to come across something that will catch your eye  and perhaps change the way you look at the world.

To help you along, Go! Magazine has compiled a selected list of current exhibitions, including some that are soon to close. Dont miss them.

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

Through Saturday, the museum presents two exhibitions by multidisciplinary artist Kelley Walker: Schema, a collaboration with local teens, and Direct Drive, his first American solo show, which includes several new bodies of work and has drawn criticism for its depictions of African-Americans.

When Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday-Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday-Sunday  Where Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 3750 Washington Boulevard  How much Free  More info 314-535-4660; camstl.org

Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts

Addoley Dzegede: Fare Well (at Fort Gondo) and David Johnson & Philip Matthews: Wig Heavier Than a Boot (at Fort Beverly) are both on view through Jan. 7.

When Noon-4 p.m. Saturday and by appointment  Where Fort Gondo, 3151 Cherokee Street; Fort Beverly, 3155 Cherokee Street  How much Free  More info fortgondo.com

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

Real/Radical/Psychological: The Collection on Display, through Jan. 15, is the largest selection from the Kempers permanent collection ever shown. The exhibition is arranged chronologically and divided into three galleries.

When 11 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Tuesday; 11 a.m.-8 p.m. on first Friday of the month  Where Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 1 Brookings Drive, Washington University  How much Free  More info 314-935-4523; kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu

Pulitzer Arts Foundation

On view through May 13, Medardo Rosso: Experiments in Light and Form features works in bronze, plaster and wax created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by a lesser-known but influential Italian sculptor.

When 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday and Friday  Where Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 3716 Washington Boulevard  How much Free  More info 314-754-1850; pulitzerarts.org

St. Louis Art Museum

Conflicts of Interest: Art and War in Modern Japan, on view through Jan. 8, traces Japans history as a military power from the 19th century to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

When Various hours  Where St. Louis Art Museum, 1 Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park  How much Free-$12  More info 314-721-0072; slam.org

Sheldon Art Galleries

The recently opened exhibition Wallace Smith: Paintings and Drawings, on view through May 13, focuses on the work of a St. Louis-born artist who absorbed the visual language of artists like Henri Matisse and Edward Hopper.
Choreographer Mandy Moore was lying under a car on the hot pavement while more than 100 dancers above her twirled through gridlocked LA freeway traffic during the opening number of La La Land.

The sequence was months in the making  the most complicated ever undertaken by Moore, whos been creating routines for TVs Dancing With the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance for years.

Im going to call it #panicattack, the Emmy-nominated choreographer says of the freeway routine, which required dozens of cars, several stuntmen, 30 professional dancers and more than 100 extras to have perfect timing during long takes.

She had to be close enough to call out cues but not be seen on camera, so she hid under a car, watching on a wireless monitor. She could feel the magic from there when they got the shot.

I still get goosebumps when I think about it, she says.

Creating that show-stopping (or starting) number and the celestial routines Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone perform in La La Land wasnt Moores only role in the dreamy musical. She also spent months personally teaching the stars to dance.

A tribute to Old Hollywood and modern Los Angeles, the film is a love story set to original music, with Stone and Gosling dancing throughout.

Each started with individual lessons at a small studio in Burbank, Calif.  not far from the restaurant where their characters, Mia and Sebastian, first meet onscreen. Moore began with the same basics she would for any new student: connecting movement to music and repeating classic jazz, tap and waltz patterns. Along the way, she worked to build a general love of dance in the actors.

If these people dont love to dance, theyre going to hate me by the end of this ... and I know that cant be part of this equation, she says. They have to love to dance.

Stone picked up the footwork first, Moore says, then focused on style and delivery. Gosling was the opposite.

With Ryan, he was like, I dont know what step youre doing, but if you give me the style ... she says.

Her job is to kind of see the diamond in the rough, Gosling says, calling his teacher a wonderful person and choreographer.

Shes very confident she can get it out of you if youll stick with her.

Once they got the basics down, Moore put the stars together and taught them Mia and Sebastians moves, which were based in part on preferences the actors showed during their private lessons. For example, a foot-scrape move that Gosling liked became one of Sebastians signature steps.

Planning and executing large-scale performances  such as the freeway routine  and creating intimate dances that suit real strengths and imaginary characters tapped all aspects of Moores talents. The opening scene was big picture, then work on the details, she says, where Ryan and Emma was very detail (first), then get the big picture.

Moores story isnt unlike Mias. Musicals both classic and contemporary  movies like La La Land  are what inspired the dancer to leave her small Colorado hometown for Los Angeles after high school.

Its supercliche, Moore says. I was 18. I had 500 bucks and my suitcase.

She performed with contemporary dance companies and in film and TV productions before a series of events brought her to La La Land. She worked with Dancing With the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba, who introduced her to So You Think You Can Dance creator Nigel Lythgoe. Moores work on that show earned her two Emmy nominations and the attention of a Silver Linings Playbook producer, who hired her to create the dance Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence perform in that film.

For La La Land writer-director Damien Chazelle, the most important thing about the choreography was that it be as much about character as about bodies moving.

What I told Mandy is that in this movie, dancing, singing and acting are all just one thing  there is no separation between them, Chazelle says. Ultimately the dancing really emanated from how Ryan and Emma relate to one another.

Moore would love it if the film inspires viewers to discover their inner Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers  ballroom dance is very accessible to people who arent dancers  but she really just hopes people feel the kind of joy watching it that she did working on it.
Wisconsin bankers are more optimistic about the direction of the states economy than they were a year ago, but their upbeat attitude may not translate into a lot of new jobs.

A survey of the states banking executives  conducted by the Wisconsin Bankers Association  shows 57 percent of them expect Wisconsins economy will grow in the first six months of 2017 while 43 percent think conditions will remain about the same. None said they anticipate a decline.

Thats an improvement over last year when only 30 percent predicted improvement in the economy, 63 percent thought it would hold steady and 7 percent expected conditions to worsen.

Its also the first time since 2014 that a majority of the bankers have projected growth.

Loan demand has been very healthy in Wisconsin for the past year, which is always a key indicator that our states economy continues to do better, Rose Oswald Poels, Wisconsin Bankers Association president and CEO, said in a statement.

Thirty-nine percent of the bankers said they expect businesses to add staff in 2017, up from 26 percent a year ago.

Most of those who replied were upbeat about Wisconsins current economy, as well. Seventy-five percent characterized it as good; 24 percent: fair; and 1 percent rated the state economy as excellent.

Eighty bankers responded to the survey, which was conducted between Nov. 28 and Dec. 15.

The Wisconsin Bankers Association will hold its annual Economic Forecast Luncheon next Thursday at the Alliant Energy Center. Anthony Chan, chief economist with JPMorgan Chase, will be one of the keynote speakers.
In a galaxy, far, far away, there is going to be one doozy of a New Years Eve party this year. Its going to be a rocking and rolling soiree.

The evening starts with Prince and Princess Leia dancing to George Michaels singing. Debbie Reynolds smiles, and everyone guesses Florence Henderson might drop by. Later, Leonard Cohen and David Bowie will take the stage. Across the ballroom, Willie Wonka and Professor Snape propose a toast. Garry Shandling looks uncomfortable seated next to Justice Antonin Scalia, but soon Garry Marshall walks over and breaks the ice by pitching an idea for a new sitcom. He thinks it would be great to see Shandling co-star with Abe Vigoda, Alan Thicke and maybe even Zsa Zsa Gabor. Who knows?

Meanwhile, Muhammed Ali floats like a butterfly as he cha-chas with Nancy Reagan. Joe Garagiola makes the rounds, glad handing John Glenn and Arnold Palmer. Elie Wiesel, Harper Lee and Edward Albee engage in a deep literary conversation. Out of the blue, someone asks, Has anyone seen Fidel?

There has been a fair share of celebrity deaths in 2016  and there is still time on the clock. No wonder Queen Elizabeth decided to stay home for Christmas. Someone should go and check in on Betty White before the ball drops in Times Square.

As we cross into 2017, we are leaving behind a long list of pop culture icons. But that is just part of the story. In other ways, 2016 could also be described as the end of the 1980s. We lost so many contributors to 1980s culture that the Grim Reaper was probably wearing Jordache jeans and a fanny pack just for grins.

At first I wondered why so many of my friends seemed personally impacted by these deaths. Then the connection became as big as shoulder pads. This year was the finale to the 1980s.

Back then we had big hair and Nancy Reagan, Miami Vice tuxedoes and music on MTV. It all seems so quaint now. Cable television is now passe, and the Full House kids would need to be multi-millionaires to live in the Tanners old house. So much is slipping away, and it isnt just velour tracksuits that we are mourning.

The 80s were good to me. My Ford Escort had an FM radio, I graduated from college and shocked my journalism teachers by going to seminary. I met my wife, wore Ray-Ban Wayfarers and parted my hair in the middle. I even lived in the same town as Brooke Shields. Sometimes you can hear me hum The Heat is On.

For sure.

Among those who came of age in the 80s, the past year has forced the bitter pill of mortality down our throats. And this hurts deeper than the pain in our knees. This is not just a midlife crisis  it is an opportunity for profound spiritual growth.

Yuppies and Preppies, take note. Its time to learn how to mourn. Grieving well is essential to healthy living, and each generation does it differently.

Funerals of individuals from the World War II era are generally filled with swing music and traditional hymns. Baby Boomers frequently cue up the Beatles. Ive yet to hear Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, which may point to the real spiritual dilemma facing my generation.

For those who count themselves as spiritual, but not religious, what traditions will be used to grieve? Where will we find meaning and purpose? As the old year fades, it seems to be a good time to consider those and other questions of faith and spirit.

Theres an old Presbyterian catechism that essentially asks, What is the purpose of human beings? The answer: Our purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever.

Its something to think about this New Years Eve, and if youre headed out, be sure to wake me up before you go-go.

Keating serves as pastor of the Woodlawn Chapel Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Wildwood. He is a regular Faith Perspectives contributor to STLtoday.com/religion
EAST ST. LOUIS  The ex-wife of former Columbia Police Chief Joe Edwards has dismissed a federal lawsuit against public school officials she claimed worked with him to illegally access her cellphone.

Carla Edwards filed suit in November against Columbia Community School District No. 4, where she works, and 10 employees.

She filed a notice to dismiss the case Wednesday in federal court in East St. Louis.

A judge has not yet accepted the dismissal.

Her suit claimed several school employees accessed and took possession of the cellphone without her permission, then contacted public agencies to launch investigations into private matters meant to embarrass her.

She also claimed her ex-husband, while in uniform, passed information he illegally obtained from her cellphone to 10 school district employees.

An affidavit filed by the couples teenage daughter as part of the school districts Dec. 8 motion to dismiss the suit says she voluntarily shared text messages from her mother with her father and school officials because I wanted the school employees to stop my mother from texting me during the school day.

Carla Edwards had alleged that her ex-husband saved text messages to a thumb drive and delivered it to school district employees.

An affidavit filed by Superintendent Gina Segobiano says Carla Edwards has worked for the district as a paraprofessional since 2009.

Segobiano said she was aware Joseph Edwards delivered a thumb drive containing text messages to school officials but that she didnt know how he obtained them.

She also said Carla Edwards suffered no adverse employment action during the investigation into her sending text messages during school hours but did receive a reprimand letter for violating the districts policy barring use of electronic devices during school hours.

It is clear that our school district employees did not violate any state or federal laws and that Ms. Edwards lawsuit was filed without any basis in fact or law, Segobiano said in a statement.

About a week before filing suit against the school district, Carla Edwards and the city of Columbia settled another federal lawsuit for $150,000 in which she claimed her ex-husband used spyware and police resources to hack her phone for personal information.

Joe Edwards retired April 30. He received more than $40,000 for compensation time and unused vacation.
ST. LOUIS  Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and her staff say they lack resources to retry a man for murder in the 1991 killings of two sisters on the Chain of Rocks Bridge.

On Wednesday, Joyces chief prosecutor, Rachel Smith, argued before Circuit Judge Rex Burlison that he should appoint the Missouri Attorney Generals Office as special prosecutor in the case against Reginald Clemons. She said the circuit attorneys office had limited resources.

We are not given the luxury of handling one case at a time, Smith told the court.

Smith suggested that expected staff turnover within the circuit attorneys office after Kim Gardner is sworn in as the new circuit attorney next week puts the office at a disadvantage, and said the attorney general had the necessary years of experience and knowledge of the Clemons case to take over.

Smiths request is a reversal of her argument before the judge in September, when she said prosecutors would be ready to try Clemons cases. She was objecting to Clemons push for more time to prepare for trial as he sought pro bono help from a law firm.

Burlison took the request for a special prosecutor under advisement Wednesday without making a decision.

Conviction overturned

Sisters Julie Kerry, 20, and Robin Kerry, 19, were killed on the closed Chain of Rocks Bridge in April 1991. Authorities have said Clemons was among four men who encountered the Kerry sisters and their cousin on the bridge, attacked them and forced them to jump to their deaths in the Mississippi River.

Clemons was convicted in the killings in 1993. The Missouri Supreme Court overturned that conviction in November 2015 and sent the matter back to circuit court. That ruling found that Clemons did not prove he was innocent but that prosecutors had wrongly suppressed evidence and detectives had beaten Clemons into confessing to the crimes.

Joyce announced in January that her office would retry the first-degree murder charges against him and again seek the death penalty. Clemons trial in the murder case is tentatively set for August.

Joyce was in court Wednesday accompanied by Smith and Chief Trial Assistant Beth Orwick. They asked that the hearing be closed to the public and held in chambers, but Burlison denied the request. He did allow both sides in chambers to discuss personnel matters related to the circuit attorneys office after Gardner takes charge next week.

Clemons public defenders argued that the case should stay with the circuit attorneys office and fall to Gardner to handle.

They are taking a bold move to silence any say the democratically elected circuit attorney may have, Clemons public defender Heather Vodnansky said.

Its not clear Gardner would handle the case any differently. Gardner, whose father died Dec. 19, was unavailable for comment Wednesday because she was attending his funeral. Smith said Gardner had told the office that she thought Joyce should make whatever decision she felt was best regarding the Clemons case.

Vodnansky said state law allowed special prosecutors only when conflicts of interest arose regarding previous employment or when prosecutors were related to defendants. Claiming a lack of resources, she argued, does not constitute a conflict. She pointed out the irony of the states complaining of a shortage of resources when the public defenders office has traditionally voiced that claim. The defense has done so in this case in asking for more time to prepare for trial.

Assistant Attorney General Susan Boresi, who was in court Wednesday, said the office would accept whatever decision Burlison made. She told Burlison that she had talked to a representative of the transition team of Attorney General-elect Josh Hawley, a Republican, and that the representative had indicated that they would be ready to try the cases.
ST. LOUIS  An inmate at the St. Louis city jail attacked and tried to sexually assault another prisoner after they argued over the television in their pod, and another inmate joined in the attack, court documents say.

Chaviez A. Bell, 25, and Darwin D. Stevenson, 26, were charged Dec. 22 in the attack at the St. Louis Justice Center, 200 South Tucker Boulevard.

Charges say that about 8 p.m. Dec. 18, Stevenson followed a man to his cell after arguing over the television. Stevenson demanded oral sex and then started striking the victim. The man, identified in court documents as D.M., fought back by biting the inside of Stevensons thigh.

Court documents say Bell then joined in the attack on D.M., who was knocked unconscious and suffered a broken jaw.

Bell and Stevenson then attacked another inmate, Christopher Shead, 31, when Shead tried to intervene, charges say.

Much of the assault was captured on video surveillance, authorities say.

Stevenson was charged with first-degree sodomy or attempted sodomy, first-degree assault and misdemeanor assault. Bell was charged with first-degree assault and third-degree assault.

Bell, of the 5600 block of Janet Avenue in Jennings, is awaiting trial for murder in the shooting on Jan. 18, 2015, of Omar Britt, 32, in the 4500 block of Evans Avenue.

Stevenson, of the 9200 block of Catalina Drive in Jennings, has been held in jail for months on assault and armed criminal action charges for allegedly firing several shots at two adults and a child on March 6 in the 4800 block of Anderson Avenue.

Shead is being held on charges of shooting and robbing a woman near Tower Grove Park in September 2015.
ST. LOUIS  Missouri would no longer impose a cap on rising college tuition under a set of legislative recommendations released Thursday that would also redefine how University of Missouri System students are charged for their education.

The University of Missouri System Review Commission was created in the wake of upheaval at the university last year that toppled top leadership. The panel was set up to essentially audit the system and provide recommendations to the Legislature and the university Board of Curators.

The committee  chaired by Jeanne Sinquefield, a member of the Columbia campus steering committee and frequent Mizzou donor  focused the analysis and recommendations on four areas: governance and accountability; workforce readiness; diversity and Title IX; and research, extension and online education.

The report largely sticks to those areas, offering a host of directives addressing issues such as a perceived lack of transparency in the university systems governance.

One of the more stark recommendations was directed toward the Legislature.

It calls on lawmakers to overhaul a 2007 law that prohibits all state schools from raising tuition costs more than the Consumer Price Index each year. The index value hovered around 1.8 percent since 2008, giving universities little wiggle room.

If changed, this would affect all state universities.

Gary Forsee, former University of Missouri System president and vice chair of the commission, calls it a push for local control. Governing boards of each university are appointed to be financial stewards, and yet the law forbids them from making these decisions.

Let the boards control that, and if a campus gets out of line, the students and parents will let them know, Forsee told the Post-Dispatch.

The task force also strongly recommends a new approach to the concept of tuition.

Under the recommendation, the four system schools would shift to differential tuition, meaning that the price tag of a students tuition would be based on the field of study. For example, an engineering student, who is more expensive to educate, would pay more than an English major.

The task force also suggests the Legislature switch to a two-year state funding cycle, rather than annual, to allow leaders to better plan ahead.

The recommendations are largely not new. Some are already being discussed by the curators or university administrators, and at least one legislative recommendation surfaced in a state audit during the fall.

Missouri House and Senate leaders were the first to receive a copy of the report as they were the ones to convene the panel.

A Missouri House spokesman said House Speaker Todd Richardson was expected to release a statement on the report after he reviewed it.

Greater transparency

Among the recommendations for the university is a review of the Collected Rules and Regulations, the governing rules for all four system campuses.

These rules dictate everything from the handling of sexual harassment and discrimination cases under the federal Title IX, to the procedures for hiring, firing and tenure.

Many legislators took a keen interest in such procedures in the wake of a controversy surrounding Melissa Click, a former assistant professor at Mizzou.

Click attracted national attention when she helped remove a student journalist from the scene of protests at Mizzou in November 2015. The protests, triggered by reports of racist incidents, led the system president and the campus chancellor to step down.

Some lawmakers immediately called for Click to be fired, a step that the curators eventually voted to take.

Forsee said it was time the Collected Rules and Regulations were reviewed and updated regardless, calling some of the rules antiquated.

In a statement, Board of Curator chairman Maurice Graham, a lawyer from St. Louis , said the idea of reviewing the Collected Rules was already a discussion point for the board. He called it a process that will involve faculty and administration participation.

The task force calls for curators to wrap up the review and schedule of proposed changes for the Legislature by the end of 2017.

A theme of recommendations for the university system and campus leaders is greater transparency and accountability to the public.

In one section, the task force calls for an accountability scorecard to be in place by January 2018. Under it, campuses would be measured by their top missions: teaching, research and economic development. In another section, the task force laments the difficulty of accessing student, faculty and staff diversity data.

David Steelman, a curator from Rolla, said the report acted as a reminder that the university has an obligation for transparency that perhaps hasnt been placed high enough as a priority.

I, as a curator, have even found it very frustrating to learn something from the press first, rather than (within the system), Steelman said. But hes sure that change is forthcoming.

Im confident this will change with people like (Graham), (incoming system president) Mun Choi and Gov.-elect Eric Greitens, who will stress the need for transparency with future board appointees, he said.

Greitens can nominate as many as five of the nine curators when he takes office next month, through vacancies from terms expiring and those members who havent been confirmed by the Senate.

If we as an institution can make some of these changes, and gain control of our own destiny, I think youll find the University of Missouri System will reach unprecedented heights, Steelman said.

More efficiency

The task force had a slew of other recommendations, ranging from compiling and comparing data on institutional performance to strategies on expanding research opportunities.

In addition to system leaders, the task force met on each of the four campuses and talked with those chancellors. In the process, the group identified a few areas where the University of Missouri System could and should better coordinate the four campuses handling of services, such as human resources and information technology.

We were reinforced by the role the system plays to make sure state money is used wisely, and the idea that the role of the system is to support the campuses, not the other way around, Forsee said.

Other task force members include former gubernatorial candidate and St. Louis area businessman Dave Spence, former Mizzou research administrator Rob Duncan, conservative radio show host Renee Hulshof, Missouri Soybean Association board member Neal Bredehoeft, Maryville University professor Pam Washington and Kansas City lawyer Michael Williams.

The task force was initially given $900,000 for travel and other operational costs, but those funds were later withheld by Gov. Jay Nixon. According to the report, the lack of funds limited the depth in which the committee was able to operate during the last seven months.
ST. LOUIS  Leaders from the University of Missouri System announced a committee of 22 people charged with finding the next Mizzou chancellor.

Interim Mizzou Chancellor Hank Foley is the only person to publicly express interest in the permanent position. He's held the interim role since November 2015 after R. Bowen Loftin stepped down.

Chaired by University of Missouri-Kansas City Chancellor Leo Morton and Mizzou engineering school dean Elizabeth Loboa, the search committee will start hosting meetings and forums with Mizzou stakeholders in January.

Vairam Arunachalam, business school professor

Ted Ayres, president of the Mizzou Alumni Association

Jeri Doty, chief planning officer for MU Health

Sean Earl, president of the Missouri Students Association

Michael Hendricks from the Graduate Professional Council

Chrissy Kintner, chair of the Mizzou Staff Advisory Council

Kevin McDonald, chief diversity officer for the university system

Joi Moore, education professor

Pelema Morrice, vice provost of enrollment management

Kim Nyoni, senior director of advancement

Neil Olson, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine

Jim ONeill, Mizzou alumnus

Elizabeth Parks, School of Medicine professor

Katherine Reed, associate journalism professor

Sarah Reesman, senior associate athletic director

David Singh, professor, College of Arts & Science

Marshall Stewart, vice chancellor for MU Extension

Marty Townsend, acting president of Mizzou's Retiree Association

Ben Trachtenburg, Faculty Council chairman

Robin Wenneker, Mizzou alumna

Interim University of Missouri System President Mike Middleton announced plans to conduct a national search for the next Mizzou chancellor earlier this month. Similar to the search for system president, the chancellor search will be private.
WASHINGTON  Donald Trump really did have a "bigly" year.

The year's end is a good time to assess just how bigly it was.

Trumps election victory in Missouri in 2016 was the biggest margin of any presidential candidate since Ronald Reagans 20-point win in the Show-Me State during Reagans 49-state landslide in 1984.

Trumps 18.5-point win margin was even slightly better larger than native son Harry Trumans 16-point-plus advantage over Thomas Dewey in Missouri in 1948, another election that made fools out of national prognosticators.

Trumps win also stitched up a long-term trend of Missouri being a national bellwether state of voting for the winning candidate. That trend had come apart the previous two elections when Republican presidential nominees John McCain and Mitt Romney, in 2008 and 2012 respectively, narrowly beat the national winner, Barack Obama, in Missouri. Prior to that, Missouri had voted for the national winner in 12 straight elections, dating to John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Will Trumps 16 win reinstate that trend of Missouri as national barometer? That's too far off for speculation.

What we do have is history.

Since 1900, there have been 30 presidential elections. Trumps 56.88 percent of the vote in Missouri was surpassed only by Reagan in 84 (60.2); Richard Nixon in 1992 (62.29); Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964 (64.05 percent); Truman in 1948 (58.11); and Franklin Delano Roosevelt twice (60.76 in 1936 and 63.69 in 1932).

In other words, Trump did better in Missouri than 23 of the previous 29 winners of the state.

By the numbers:

26  Number of times, out of 30 presidential elections since 1900, that Missouri voted for the man who won nationally. The exceptions were Romney in 2012, McCain in 2008, Adlai Stevenson over Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, and William Jennings Bryan over William McKinley in 1900.

5  Number of times out of 10 presidential elections between 1860 and 1896, that Missouri voted for the national winner. The exceptions were Stephen A. Douglas over Abraham Lincoln in 1860; Horace Greeley over Ulysses S. Grant in 1872; Winfield Scott Hancock over James Garfield in 1880; Grover Cleveland over Benjamin Harrison in 1888; and Bryan over McKinley in 1896.

On the web:

Missouri presidential election voting history: http://www.270towin.com/states/Missouri

They said it:

Trump voters are typically labeled angry or racist, I think some of what we saw ... might be a backlash against those labels. If youre a voter who genuinely opposes Hillary (Clinton) on a policy basis, youll recoil at being called a bigot or misogynist because of your opposition to a womans ideas. Southeast Missouri State University political scientist Jeremy Walling, on how Trump won.
An occupant of a town of Madison duplex suffered smoke inhalation Wednesday night in a fire that heavily damaged the residence.

The fire was reported at about 10 p.m. at the Grandview Boulevard duplex, the town of Madison Fire Department said.

The fire was confined to one side of the duplex, with the other side getting some smoke and heat damage.

Damage was estimated to be $60,000; no cause of the fire was given.

The smoke inhalation victim was taken to a local hospital. All other occupants safely got out of the building.

The town of Madison Fire Department was assisted by the Fitchburg Fire Department.
Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday harshly criticized Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying that their growth threatens to destroy the viability of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the United States was obliged to allow passage of a U.N. resolution condemning the activity in order to preserve the possibility of peace.

Kerry noted that the number of Israelis living in settlements has grown significantly and that their outposts are extending farther into the West Bank  in the middle of what, by any reasonable definition, would be the future Palestinian state.

No one thinking seriously about peace can ignore the reality of what the settlements pose to that peace, he said.

Kerry, in the hour-long speech delivered at the State Department, also condemned Palestinian incitement to violence as a barrier to direct negotiations. But his focus was on defending President Barack Obamas administrations policies and highlighting Israels actions at a moment of high tension between the two governments after the passage of the U.N. resolution.

Regrettably, some seem to believe that the U.S. friendship means the U.S. must accept any policy, regardless of our own interests, our own positions, our own words, our own principles  even after urging again and again that the policy must change, he said. Friends need to tell each other the hard truths, and friendships require mutual respect.

He said the vote at the United Nations was about Israels future as a Jewish and democratic state, living side by side in peace and security with its neighbors. Thats what we are trying to preserve, for our sake and for theirs.

Saying the two-state solution was in serious jeopardy, Kerry said Israel would never improve its relations with Arab countries if it precludes the possibility of a separate state for Palestinians.

If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, he said. It cannot be both.

Some Israeli politicians applauded Kerrys speech. Former prime minister Ehud Barak tweeted: Powerful, lucid speech. World & majority in Israel think the same.

But most Israeli leaders and the political right immediately took umbrage, accusing Kerry of trying to dictate policy to an elected government. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the speech a big disappointment.

He deals obsessively with the settlements; he fails to deal with the Palestinian failure to recognize a Jewish state, Netanyahu said, adding, If he put the same emphasis on Palestinian incitement and terror that he did on settlements, then maybe we will be on the way to peace.

Kerry acknowledged that his vision is not shared by President-elect Donald Trump.

President Obama and I know that the incoming administration has signaled that they may take a different path, and even suggested breaking from the long-standing U.S. policies on settlements, Jerusalem  and possibly the two-state solution, Kerry said. That is for them to decide  thats how we work. But we cannot, in good conscience, do nothing, and say nothing, when we see the hope of peace slipping away. This is a time to stand up for what is right.

Trump has said that he will move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, a move freighted with political significance in advance of any peace agreement, and his nominee to be ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has said Jewish settlements in the West Bank are legal.

About two hours before Kerry started speaking, Trump tweeted his criticism of the Obama administration: We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but ... not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!

Later in the day, Trump told reporters: When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They dont. They cause problems, so if it lives up to its potential, its a great thing. If it doesnt, its a waste of time.

Netanyahu, in turn, promptly tweeted his gratitude: President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!

Although he did not mention Netanyahu by name, Kerry addressed head-on the Israeli leaders assertions that the United States had colluded in and orchestrated last weeks U.N. resolution affirming that settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution.

Kerry denied that the United States drafted or promoted the resolution. But he acknowledged that the United States took part in preliminary discussions, as is routine. Kerry said the diplomats told other Security Council members they would oppose a resolution that did not condemn Palestinian incitement to violence. They also said that if the text were more balanced, it was possible the United States would not block it.

Kerry called the current Israeli governing coalition the most right-wing in the countrys history and said it is driven by an extremist settler agenda inimical to a two-state agreement.

The result is that policies of this government, which the prime minister himself just described as more committed to settlements than any in Israels history, are leading in the opposite direction, Kerry said. Theyre leading towards one state.

The vote in the United Nations was about preserving the two-state solution, he added. Thats what we were standing up for.

Kerry offered six principles that he said would satisfy Israeli security needs and Palestinian aspirations for a homeland. Most have been proven sticking points in previous negotiations  among them, Jerusalem as a mutual capital for two states; normalized relations with Arab states in the region; and financial compensation for Palestinian refugees, along with acknowledgment of their suffering.

Outrage in the Israeli government has been matched among some members of Congress.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called Kerrys speech at best a pointless tirade in the waning days of an outgoing administration.

The U.S. abstention has been condemned by several Democrats as well, including Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), who is the partys incoming leader.

But for Kerry it was a speech that captured the pent-up frustration that has grown in the two years since his nine-month effort to broker a peace agreement collapsed, and his attempts to tamp down Palestinian violence came to nothing.

And Kerry, famous for always sounding a hopeful note, was clearly pessimistic about whether his words would make any difference.

We can only encourage them to take this path, he said. We cannot walk down it for them.
I took my children into the voting booth with me and later my grandchildren so they could learn the procedure and why it is so important.
Like many Missourians, I was upset when I heard that the future first lady of our great state was robbed at gunpoint in St. Louis Central West End. It is proof that crime is everywhere  no matter your neighborhood or public status  and it underscores the urgency with which we must address this problem.

However, it was the next days press conference led by Missouri Gov.-elect Eric Greitens that caught my attention.

After thanking law enforcement for their swift action in finding the one adult and two juvenile suspects, Greitens offered to sit down with the suspects mothers. In making this offer, Greitens affirmed a truth that those of us who work with the juveniles perpetrating and affected by criminal activity know all too well: Addressing the problem of crime in our community begins at home.

But in offering to meet with the suspects mothers only, Greitens made a glaring omission: Children have fathers, too. In a country in which one in three children are growing up without involved fathers, Greitens omission is understandable. We dont know, yet, if these young men have fathers who are actively involved in their lives. But statistics suggest they probably arent. Compared to children growing up with an involved father, children growing up in fatherless homes are 20 times more likely to wind up in prison, nine times more likely to drop out of high school and end up in a juvenile institution, 10 times more likely to abuse drugs, and 14 times more likely to commit rape (boys) and get pregnant in high school (girls).

My organization, Fathers Support Center, has dedicated the past 19 years to turning these statistics around.

Since 1997, Fathers Support Center has reached more than 14,000 fathers and made a difference for more than 35,000 children in the St. Louis community. Our Youth Development and Leadership Program creates opportunity for youths ages 14-24. We also have job training and placement, a re-entry project for previous offenders, and a mothers project that is built on the premise of communication, so custodial and noncustodial parents can work together in raising their children.

At the end of the day, its all about improving the lives and futures of local children through responsible parenting.

Fathers have an immensely positive effect on their childrens development and future. This is true even when a father does not live under the same roof. We work with noncustodial fathers to help them gain employment so they can provide for their children. But a father is so much more than a provider. He is a daughters first love and a sons first superhero. He is an emotional outlet. He is an inspirational resource. He is the paver of a strong path to a bright future.

In addition to the work we do helping uninvolved fathers get back into the lives of their children, Fathers Support Center, along with many other local and statewide nonprofits geared toward families, makes a daily effort to deplete the stereotypes that hold these men back. All men not caring to raise and support their children is one of them. They may not live under the same roof. Visitation and custody rights may be limited. But there are many fathers in St. Louis and across the state who are actively involved in raising their children.

Yes, there are men who have abandoned their children. Yes, there are men who do not make an effort to support their children, financially or otherwise. But as we acknowledge this problem, lets remember that it is not like that in every household.

I do not know if the suspects in the Sheena Greitens robbery case have involved fathers. But I do know that sitting down with one parent is not enough. Excluding one parent from efforts to better the lives of children in the community will not work.

So, Eric Greitens, I commend you for wanting to tackle crime at the family table. But please dont forget to invite fathers to pull up a chair. Our children will certainly be the better for it.

Halbert Sullivan is CEO of the Fathers Support Center, St. Louis.
The Southwest Illinois Division of United Way of Greater St. Louis recently awarded Collinsville-based Got Your Six Support Dogs a $5,000 one-time grant through the Carol F. Martin Trust Grant Fund, according to a press release.

Got Your Six Support Dogs was established in 2015 to support veterans who struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury and sexual trauma.

United Way is thrilled to provide this grant to Got Your Six, an organization devoted to helping our veterans and first responders who have sacrificed so much for our country, said Joann Barton, auxiliary board chair for the Southwest Illinois Division of United Way of Greater St. Louis. Through one-time grants and the generosity of our region, United Way is able to invest into specific community or emerging needs like this.

Got Your Six Support Dogs provides fully-trained and certified dogs to veterans at no cost, along with lifelong training support. Research has shown dogs positively affect an individuals physical and psychological state and improves overall quality of life. The average cost to train a PTSD service dog to certification is approximately $15,000.

Approximately 15 percent of veterans suffer from PTSD or other major depressive disorders. Our mission is to help these men and women regain their lives through the healing power of dogs and, thanks to United Ways generous gift, we can continue furthering this mission, said Nicole Lanahan, founder and head trainer of Got Your Six Support Dogs. We are so grateful for their continued support of veterans and our community.

The Carol F. Martin Trust Grant was established in 2015 to provide one-time grants to organizations providing health and human care within the Southwest Illinois Division of United Way of Greater St. Louis area. The receiving organization was determined by a standing committee of the Southwest Illinois Division Auxiliary Board. This is the first one-time grant awarded through the fund.
Update: Janesville police arrested a 15-year-old boy they say was involved in the shots fired Thursday morning. He faces tentative charges of being a party to endangering safety by use of a dangerous weapon.

The occupants of a house in Janesville escaped injury early Thursday morning when shots were fired at the residence.

The shots were reported at about 4:30 a.m. at 305 Rockport Road, Janesville police said.

"Officers found evidence that several shots were fired at a residence, but that none of the occupants were injured," said Sgt. Aaron Ellis.

Police said it was an isolated incident and the public is safe, but police in surrounding communities have been notified of the investigation and more officers have been called in to work on the case.
By Catherine Ngai

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil futures dipped on Thursday after a surprise build in U.S. crude inventories reversed an advance in prices that had boosted the benchmarks to their highest levels since July last year.

U.S. crude stocks unexpectedly rose for the second straight week, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showed, gaining 614,000 barrels last week versus analysts' forecasts of a decline of 2.1 million barrels.

At the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub for U.S. crude futures, inventories rose 172,000 barrels, the EIA said.

U.S. crude futures settled 29 cents, or 0.5 percent, lower at $53.77 a barrel while Brent crude fell 8 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $56.14 a barrel.

Traded volumes were thin, with many investors away for year-end holidays. Front month U.S. distillate and gasoline futures expire on Friday, which could add to price swings, analysts noted.

"The petroleum markets are mixed in light-volume trade amid a general wait for fresh fundamental news that might push prices out of their established ranges," Tim Evans, an energy futures specialist at Citi Futures, said in a note.

Both crude benchmarks have made big gains this month, touching year-to-date highs after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers agreed to curb production in an attempt to balance an over-supplied fuel market.

"The market is in good shape although it might fail to make significant advances this year," said analyst Tamas Varga at London brokerage PVM Oil Associates. "If that is the case, the uptrend should continue in early January."

"Either way, the odds are still on higher numbers."

A committee of OPEC and non-OPEC producers will meet in Vienna on Jan. 21-22 to discuss compliance with the production agreement that is set to kick in on Jan. 1, Kuwaiti oil minister Essam Al-Marzouq told state news agency KUNA.

(Additional reporting by Christopher Johnson in London and Mark Tay in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
Singapore, SG (PRWEB) December 29, 2016

Indoor agriculture is one of the fastest-growing industries in Asia as consumer demand for "clean food" benefits this form of farming that uses few pesticides and shields crops from environmental pollution. Indoor Ag-Con the premier industry conference will be returning to Singapore for the second year on January 24-25, 2017 to discuss the prospects for this increasingly important contributor to the global food supply chain.

The two-day seminar will be hosted at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, and is tailored toward corporate executives from the technology, investment, vertical farming, greenhouse growing, and food and beverage industries, along with hydroponic, aquaponic and aeroponic startups and urban farmers.

The event will consist of keynotes from industry leaders and extended networking breaks, along with an exhibition hall. More than 20 confirmed speakers include Professor Kozai of Chiba University, author of 'The Plant Factory', and executives from 808FACTORY, Autogrow, Intravision, Kajima Corporation, MIRAI, Pegasus Agriculture, and Urban Crops. "Our speakers will cover topics as diverse as automation for plant factories and financing an indoor agriculture startup" commented Nicola Kerslake, founder of Newbean Capital, the event's host. Participants will receive an exclusive hard copy of the newest edition in our popular white paper series, which is sponsored by Pegasus Agriculture and will be the first published on global indoor agriculture policy. Agriculture technology companies, suppliers and automation companies will have the chance to meet and mingle with leading vertical farmers and commercial greenhouse operators at a drinks party on the first evening of the event. The platinum sponsor for the event is Lighting Science Group, and other sponsors include Autogrow, Kennett Township, Microsoft BizSpark, Pegasus Agriculture, Upgrown Farming and Urban Crops.

Beginning farmers, chefs and entrepreneurs can win passes to the event through the Nextbean program, which awards a limited number of complimentary passes to the event to those who have been industry participants for less than two years. Applications are open through December 31, 2016 at Indoor Ag-Con's website. The program is supported by Newbean Capital, the host of Indoor Ag-Con, and Kennett Township, a leading indoor agriculture hub that produces half of the US's mushrooms.

In the lead up to the main event, Indoor Ag-Con has partnered with Startup Weekend Singapore to add an indoor agriculture theme to a Startup Weekend on January 20-22, 2017, and will host a VIP reception with local fresh salad restaurant chain SaladStop!.

Indoor Ag-Con has also hosted events in Las Vegas, NV and New York, NY in the past year, and will host its first event in Dubai in partnership with greenhouse major Pegasus Agriculture in November 2017. Since it was founded in 2013, Indoor Ag-Con has captured an international audience and attracted some of the top names in the business. Events have welcomed over 1,500 participants from more than 20 countries.

Newbean Capital, the host of the conference, is a registered investment advisor; some of its clients or potential clients may participate in the conference. The Company is ably assisted in the event's production by Rachelle Razon, Sarah Smith and Michael Nelson of Origin Event Planning, and by Michele Premone of Brede Allied.

2nd Annual Indoor Ag-Con Asia

Date January 24-25, 2017

Place Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

Exhibition Booths available from US$1,599 at indoor.ag

Registration available from US$349 at indoor.ag

Features Two-day seminar, with keynote speakers, an exhibition hall, an after-party, and VIP reception

For more information, please visit http://www.indoor.ag/asia or call +1.775.623.7116 in the US and +65.3159.1305 in Singapore

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/12/prweb13949501.htm
LAS VEGAS, NV -- (Marketwired) -- 12/29/16 -- KSIX Media Holdings, Inc. (OTC PINK: KSIX), a Las Vegas, Nevada-based publicly traded company under the ticker symbol KSIX on the OTC was happy to announce, December marked a major shift in the Lifeline phone program for True Wirelsss by expanding its subsidized voice service to included both broadband and voice. During the next five years the program will gradually shift to include more broadband access to its participants.

The new rules allow for current ETC's (Eligible Communications Carriers) to provide the broadband service in their designated service areas. "Knowing this is the direction the program is going we wanted to be at the forefront of the shift," Said True Wireless President Mike Fina. "True Wireless has always been a leader in the industry and we wanted to offer our customers this incredible opportunity the minute it was available," he added.

A new benefit to True Wireless is the customer will remain with the carrier for twelve months. Previously subscribers were allowed to change carriers after sixty days. "We give credit to the FCC for this well thought out rule change. Requiring customers to stay with a carrier for a longer period of time allows us to provide better plans and equipment to our customers. The capital investment to onboard customers can now be annualized." CEO Brian Cox said.

True Wireless is offering the Broadband program in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Maryland, Rhode Island and parts of Texas.

Late in 2016 KSIX Media Holdings, Inc. (OTC PINK: KSIX), entered into a definitive agreement to purchase the Oklahoma based wireless company. "The change to broadband was a major contributor to our decision to purchase True Wireless. The FCC has made significant changes to the program that have made this acquisition a very attractive addition to our portfolio of companies," KSIX CEO Carter Matzinger said.

True Wireless has already converted the majority of its customer base to the new program and is currently signing up all new eligible subscribers in the broadband program. The company is offering Wi-Fi enabled and hot-spot capable equipment to new and current customers. The National Broadband Program guarantees the subscriber a minimum of 500 voice minutes and 500mb of data.

ABOUT KSIX MEDIA HOLDINGS KSIX Media Holdings, Inc. (OTC PINK: KSIX) is an SEC fully reporting media and Internet company located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Currently, there are three divisions, KSIX, LLC, DigitizeIQ, LLC and Blvd Media Group, LLC. The largest, KSIX, LLC is a digital advertising network utilizing proprietary technology and intellectual properties designed to create new revenue streams and increase measurable audiences for clients. KSIX provides performance-based marketing solutions to drive traffic and sales. KSIX manages offer tracking, reporting, and distribution on the third-party platform.

ABOUT TRUE WIRELESS, LLC True Wireless LLC, an Oklahoma company, is an eligible telecommunications carrier providing discounted and subsidized wireless (cell phone) service to those who qualify. We provide government sponsored/supported cell phone service in Texas (TX), Oklahoma (OK), Arkansas (AR), Maryland (MD) and Rhode Island (RI). The service is subsidized under the Lifeline program. Americans who enroll in the program must qualify and maintain compliance.

[email protected] Source: KSIX Media Holdings, Inc

Investor Contact OmniVance Advisors [email protected] 858-381-5740

Source: KSIX Media Holdings, Inc
Senator Alejandro Guillier is seen inside at the Chilean congress in Valparaiso, Chile September 27, 2016. Picture taken September 27. REUTERS/Rodrigo Garrido

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - An independent leftist senator running for president in Chile's 2017 election is leading in a head-to-head matchup against the right's front-runner, a poll released on Wednesday showed, spicing up a race once expected to feature only establishment favorites.

The survey by pollster MORI shows Alejandro Guillier, a journalist turned politician, winning a potential runoff election by 5 points against Sebastian Pinera, a conservative, investor-friendly ex-president.

When asked who they would vote for in a race between the two, 35 percent of survey respondents said Guillier and 30 percent favored Pinera.

In a potential first round, the survey showed Guillier would take 19 percent while Pinera would take 23 percent, far short of the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff.

Up until a few months ago, Guillier was a relative unknown in Chile, and most observers believed any runoff likely would be between Pinera and Ricardo Lagos, a moderate ex-president. However, far reaching political and corporate corruption scandals, as well as a sluggish economy, have fueled disenchantment will politics as usual in the South American nation, boosting outsiders.[nL1N1EF0PP][nL1N1E20RN]

The results of the most recent poll will be welcomed by left-leaning sectors of Chilean society, who believe profound reforms are necessary to soften the nation's biting inequality. However, it complicates the outlook for investors who had previously seen the race as devoid of political risk.

"For Sebastian Pinera, vacation's over," said MORI director Marta Lagos. "Now he has a competitor and he has to go out and defend his position."

In elections for mayors and councilmen in October, an anti-incumbent mood led to huge losses for the left-leaning Nueva Mayoria coalition, which held majorities at practically every level of government, in what was seen as a boost for Pinera.[nL1N1CU021]

But leftist independents unaffiliated with traditional parties also did historically well in many places, which could bode well for Guillier. A left-wing candidate affiliated with Chile's student movement, for instance, won the mayor's race in the country's second largest city.

The MORI poll, which took place between December 7 and 15, included responses from 1,200 Chileans. It has a margin of error of 3 percent.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery; Editing by Bill Trott)
Handout pictures released on December 21, 2016 and acquired from the web site of the German Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) Federal Crime Office show suspect Anis Amri searched in relation with the Monday's truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin. REUTERS/

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch police said on Wednesday they were investigating whether the man believed responsible for last week's deadly Christmas market attack in Berlin may have traveled through the Netherlands.

Twelve people died in the Dec. 19 attack. The Tunisian suspect, 24-year-old Anis Amri, was shot dead Dec. 23 by Italian police.

Wim de Bruin, spokesman for the National Prosecutor's Office, said there were "signs" 24-year-old Amri had passed though the Netherlands on his way to France, and an investigation was ongoing.

(This version of the story corrects the job title in paragraph 3)

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; editing by John Stonestreet)
Refugees and migrants line up for food distribution at the Moria migrant camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece October 6, 2016. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis/File Photo

By Angeliki Koutantou

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece, a frontline country for migrants fleeing to Europe from war and poverty, vowed on Wednesday to improve living conditions in its overcrowded island camps.

The number making the sea crossing from Turkey to Greece has fallen sharply this year under a European Union deal with Turkey. It stipulates that people arriving after March 20 are to be held on five Aegean islands and sent back if their asylum applications are not accepted.

According to figures from U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, 173,208 people have reached Greece this year, down from 856,723 in 2015.

Some 60,000 migrants, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, are still scattered across the country, which is struggling to emerge from a debt crisis.

About 15,000 are in overcrowded island camps that have grown violent as the slow processing of asylum requests adds to frustration over living conditions.

"We are planning to have new, small venues on the islands, either by setting up small, two-storey houses, in order to empty the tents, or by finding other places ... to improve conditions," Greek Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas told reporters.

"It will need time but we will do it."

He said authorities would also set up small detention centres and boost policing.

Mouzalas acknowledged that slow processing of asylum requests was an "Achilles heel" but said Athens was hiring more staff to speed it up.

(Editing by Andrew Roche)
ANKARA (Reuters) - One Turkish soldier and two Kurdish militants died as a result of clashes overnight in the eastern province of Tunceli, security sources said on Wednesday.

The clashes broke out in the Tunceli countryside, where security forces were carrying out an ongoing operation against militants, broadcaster NTV said.

The outlawed militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has repeatedly targeted security forces, especially in the country's southeast, since abandoning a 2-1/2-year ceasefire in July 2015.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since the autonomy-seeking PKK took up arms in 1984. It is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by David Dolan)
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian embassy in Syrian capital of Damascus was shelled twice on Wednesday afternoon, Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, calling it a provocation aimed at derailing peace settlement in the country.

It said a shell hit an inner yard of the embassy complex, while another shell landed near the diplomatic mission. De-mining specialists have been working in the hit area.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Alison Williams)
The headquarters of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are seen in Washington, July 6, 2009. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

MAPUTO (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating the sale of $850 million in bonds issued by Mozambique by Credit Suisse , Russia's VTB Group and BNP Paribas , the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The southern African nation said in October its debt was unsustainable and the International Monetary Fund suspended assistance to Mozambique when evidence of $2 billion in secret loans emerged.

The bonds were sold in 2013 to finance Mozambican state-owned fishing company EMATUM's plans to develop tuna fishing in the impoverished nation, but the government later said it had also bought military equipment with the funds.

VTB Group's press office said in a statement on Thursday that it executed the transactions with Mozambique state-owned companies "in compliance with appropriate policies".

"The government of Mozambique confirmed to us that they were following the necessary internal and external legislation and that comprehensive information on the transactions was disclosed to creditors and investors," VTB said, adding it followed strict internal policies in these local deals.

Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas declined to comment.

Credit Suisse shares were down 2.1 percent at 1041 GMT (5:41 a.m. ET), and a Zurich-based trader said the drop was likely partly related to the report about the SEC investigation.

BNP Paribas' shares were down 1.0 percent, broadly in line with the European banking sector , while VTB was up 1.1 percent.

The SEC in November asked bondholders for documents provided by Credit Suisse, VTB and BNP Paribas during the sale of the bonds, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a letter sent to bondholders.

The letter also asked investors to share with the SEC all communications with the banks related to the bonds.

Two emerging market investors told Reuters they were aware the SEC is investigating the EMATUM loan.

"The SEC got in touch several months back, in fact in July. The SEC was looking to gather all relevant information and communication from VTB and CS to investors to Mozambique notes," a bondholder told Reuters, declining to comment further.

The SEC declined to comment to both the WSJ and Reuters. Mozambique's Ministry of Finance did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Financial watchdogs from Switzerland and Britain are also looking into Credit Suisse's and VTB's involvement.

Mozambique's state news agency said on Wednesday the country would pay government employees only half their annual bonus.

(Reporting by Manuel Mucari; Additional reporting by Joe Brock in Johannesburg, Maya Nikolaeva and Matthieu Protard in Paris, Kira Zavyalova in Moscow, Karin Strohecker in London and Silke Koltrowitz, Ruppert Pretterklieber and Oliver Hirt in Zurich; Writing by TJ Strydom; Editing by Alison Williams and Susan Thomas)
MADRID (Reuters) - Two men were arrested in Madrid on Wednesday on suspicion of spreading Islamist militant propaganda, the Interior Ministry said.

Police released video footage that showed officers uncovering gun magazines and bullets from under rocks in a disused building covered in graffiti in the outskirts of Madrid.

They uncovered four Kalashnikov AK-47 magazines and over 30 bullets but no weapons, the ministry said, adding that the arrested men were Spaniards of Moroccan and Gambian origin.

Separately, two women who traveled to Syria in 2014 from the Spanish north African enclave of Ceuta were arrested in Turkey as they attempted to return to Europe, the ministry said.

The women had gone to Syria with their Islamist militant partners in order to join Islamic State, the statement said.

The women were attempting to make the return journey with young children, and Turkish authorities arrested them after tip-offs from Spanish police.

Spain has arrested 177 people in connection with Islamist militancy since 2015, when it raised its security alert level to 4 out of 5 after an Islamist militant attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

(Reporting by Sonya Dowsett; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Pedestrians walk past a logo of Toshiba Corp outside an electronics retailer in Tokyo, Japan September 14, 2015. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Photo

TOKYO (Reuters) - Shares in Toshiba <6502.T> fell more than 19 percent on Thursday, clocking a third day of heavy losses after the Japanese tech-to-nuclear conglomerate said earlier this week it faced a potential multi-billion dollar writedown.

Bond yields have also surged and the cost of insuring against its debt have soared.

Earlier this week, Toshiba said cost overruns at a U.S. nuclear business it bought from Chicago Bridge & Iron (NYSE: CBI) last year, CB&I Stone & Webster, meant it could face "several billion dollars" in charges, acknowledging a bruising overpayment.

Ratings agencies were quick to respond. Late on Wednesday, Moody's became the second agency to downgrade Toshiba's rating, pushing it deeper into "junk", or non-investment grade territory, with a Caa1 rating, from B3.

"Although Toshiba is still assessing the exact amount of the impairment loss, its financial metrics will likely deteriorate further, potentially resulting in a negative equity position," said Masako Kuwahara, Moody's lead analyst for Toshiba.

Moody's said the downgrade also reflected "mounting concerns" over corporate governance, especially in relation to due diligence for acquisitions. It said the ratings are under review for a further downgrade because of "potential for a further deterioration in Toshiba's operating and financial performance".

Since Tuesday's warning, Toshiba's share drop has wiped about $6.5 billion off of its market value.

The shares plunged 20 percent at the market open on Wednesday and at 0529 GMT (12.29 a.m. ET) on Thursday were down another 18 percent at 255 yen.

The cost of insuring against a Toshiba credit default had soared by late Wednesday in the most actively traded London market. Five-year insurance, or credit default swaps, was quoted at 437/467 bps compared with Monday's 75 bps.

The quote suggested it would cost $437,000 - $467,000 per year for five years to insure $10 million in bonds.

Toshiba bond yields have spiked as well. The company's 1.68 percent bonds due 2020 were yielding 5.57 percent late Wednesday, up from 1.77 percent on Tuesday, Thomson Reuters data shows.

(Reporting by Ayai Tomisawa; Additional reporting by Umesh Desai in HONG KONG; Editing by Sam Holmes and Neil Fullick)
UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, DC 20549

FORM 8-K

CURRENT REPORT PURSUANT TO

SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE

SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

Date of Report (Date of earliest event reported): December 22, 2016

Zoned Properties, Inc. (Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in its Charter) Nevada (State or Other Jurisdiction of Incorporation)

000-51640 46-5198242 (Commission File Number) (IRS Employer Identification No.) 14300 N. Northsight Blvd., #208 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 (Address of Principal Executive Offices) (Zip Code)

(Registrants telephone number, including area code): 407-257-0400

Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions (see General Instruction A.2.)

 Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425)  Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12)  Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b))  Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c))

Item 1.01. Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement.

On December 22, 2016, Zoned Properties, Inc. (the Company) entered into a Commercial Real Estate Purchase Contract (the Agreement) with Big Lake Estates, LLC (the Purchaser) pursuant to which the Company agreed to sell, and the Purchaser agreed to purchase, the property located at 422 S. Madison Drive in Tempe, Arizona, for an aggregate purchase price of $2.125 million. Pursuant to the terms of the Agreement, the Purchaser paid a deposit of $20,000 within three days of entry into the Agreement, which amount will be held in escrow. In addition, the Purchaser agreed to deposit an additional deposit of $20,000 upon satisfaction of the Purchasers financing contingency. The remainder of the purchase price ($2.085 million) is due at closing. Pursuant to the terms of the Agreement, the purchase will close no later than March 16, 2017.

Closing is subject to certain conditions, including but not limited to, a 30-day due diligence period. The Purchaser may, in its sole discretion, terminate the Agreement during the due diligence period and the initial $20,000 deposit will be returned to the Purchaser. The purchase is also contingent upon the Purchaser obtaining a satisfactory financing commitment within 60 days of entry into the Agreement. The Agreement also contains standard warranties and closing conditions.

The foregoing description of the Agreement is not a complete description of all of the parties rights and obligations under the Agreement and is qualified in its entirety by reference to the Agreement, a copy of which is filed as Exhibit 10.1 to this current report on Form 8-K and incorporated herein by reference.

Item 9.01. Financial Statements and Exhibits.

The exhibits listed in the following Exhibit Index are furnished as part of this current report on Form 8-K.

Exhibit No. Description 10.1 Commercial Real Estate Purchase Contract dated December 22, 2016 by and between Zoned Properties, Inc. and Big Lake Estates, LLC.

2

SIGNATURES

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized.

ZONED PROPERTIES, INC. Dated: December 29, 2016 /s/ Bryan McLaren Bryan McLaren Chief Executive Officer

3

Exhibit 10.1

RECEIPT

Offer Received From: ("Buyer") Big Lake Estates, LLC

Agency Confirmation: Broker named on Line 18 is the agent of (check one):

 the Buyer exclusively; or  the Seller exclusively; or  both the Buyer and Seller

Amount of Earnest Money: Twenty Thousand $20,000.00

All earnest money shall be deposited into a federally insured account acceptable to Buyer and Seller and any interest earned thereon shall also be included as earnest money ("Earnest Money"). Buyer agrees that, if Buyer breaches this Contract, Earnest Money is subject to forfeiture. If any check for Earnest Money is dishonored for any reason, Seller may, at Seller's option, immediately cancel this Contract pursuant to lines 308-312. Unless otherwise provided herein, all Earnest Money is considered to be part of the Purchase Price for the Property described below.

Earnest Money shall be: (check one)

 Delivered by Buyer to Escrow Company upon mutual execution of this Contract.

 Held by Broker until mutual execution. Upon mutual execution, Broker shall promptly deposit the Earnest Money with the Escrow Company to which the check is payable. If the check is payable to Broker, Broker shall deposit the check in Broker's trust account or endorse the check without recourse and deposit it with a duly licensed Escrow Company. Form of Earnest Money:  Personal Check  Other: Wired to Title within 3 days of acceptance Deposited with:  Broker's Trust Account  Escrow Company

Offer Received By: Andrew Ostrander A0034

(PRINT SALESPERSON'S NAME AND AGENT CODE)

Keller Williams Professional Partners KWPPO2 (collectively "Broker")

(PRINT NAME OF FIRM) (OFFICE CODE)

PROPERTY AND PURCHASE PRICE

Property Description and Offer: Buyer agrees to purchase and Seller agrees to sell the following real property:

Property Address: 422 S Madison Dr

City: Tempe County: Maricopa AZ, Zip Code: 85281-7221

Assessors Parcel # 124-39-037

Legal description: To be provided by title

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

which includes, at no additional cost to Buyer, all fixtures and improvements thereon, as well as the following items, if any, owned by Seller and presently located on or in the real property: electrical distribution systems (power panels, ducting, conduits, disconnects), lighting fixtures, computer wiring, telephone distribution systems (lines, jacks and connections), heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment, evaporative coolers, air lines, carpets, window coverings, wall coverings, security and fire detection systems/alarms, and _____________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________ (collectively the "Property"). All fixtures and improvements shall be free of liens and encumbrances unless otherwise specified.

Leased Equipment NOT Included: _________________________________________________________________________________

Personal Property Included: ______________________________________________________________________________________

Personal property shall be transferred in AS-IS CONDITION, FREE AND CLEAR OF ANY LIENS AND ENCUMBRANCES, and SELLER MAKES NO WARRANTY of any kind, expressed or implied (including, without limitation, ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY).

Addenda Incorporated:  Schedule of personal property  Lead-Based Paint Disclosure  Other _______________________________

$ 2,125,000.00 Full Purchase Price, paid as outlined below. Buyer acknowledges that failure to have funds deposited as required to close escrow on the date specified herein shall constitute a material breach of Contract.

$ 20,000.00 Earnest Money _______________________________________________________________________ ___________

$ 20,000.00 Additional Earnest Money deposited upon satisfaction of buyer's financing contingency

$ 2,085,000.00 Due at Closing

_______________________________________________________________________________________________ _______________

Commercial Real Estate Purchase Contract  Page 2 of 9

Escrow: This Contract shall be used as escrow instructions. The Escrow Company employed by the parties to carry out the terms of this Contract shall be:

Chicago Title Agency Stephanie Fife (ESCROW COMPANY) (CONTACT PERSON) 14200 N. Northsight Blvd. #100, Scottsdale, AZ 85260 (480)538-1940 (ADDRESS) (TELEPHONE) (480) 483-5676 [email protected] (FAX) (E-MAIL)

Opening of Escrow: The term "Opening of Escrow" shall mean the date when a fully executed Contract and the Earnest Money have been delivered to Escrow Company. Escrow Company shall immediately notify Buyer, Seller and Broker(s) in writing of the date of the Opening of Escrow.

Close of Escrow: Seller and Buyer shall comply with all terms and conditions of this Contract and Close Escrow 30 days after completion of due diligence but in no event later than 03/16/2017 . Any other closing date requires the written mutual agreement of Seller and Buyer. MO/DA/YR Seller and Buyer hereby agree that the Close of Escrow shall be defined as recordation of the deed and any other documents required to complete the transaction. The parties expressly agree that the failure of any party to comply with the terms and conditions of this Contract by the scheduled Close of Escrow shall constitute a material breach of this Contract.

Possession and Keys: Possession and occupancy of the Property shall be delivered to Buyer at Close of Escrow, or  ______________, subject to the rights of tenants under existing leases. Seller shall provide keys and/or means to operate all locks, mailboxes, security system/alarms, access to all common area facilities and

DUE DILIGENCE AND INSPECTIONS.

Due Diligence: Buyer's due diligence and inspection period shall be thirty (30) days or  _______ days after Opening of Escrow ("Due Diligence Period"). During the Due Diligence Period, Buyer shall satisfy itself with respect to the physical condition of the Property, the condition of title to the Property and as to the feasibility and suitability of the Property for Buyer's intended purpose. REFER TO LINES 66-85 FOR IMPORTANT TERMS.

Buyer Disapproval: If prior to the expiration of the Due Diligence Period or as otherwise provided herein, Buyer, in Buyer's sole discretion, disapproves of the Property, Buyer shall:

(a) immediately cancel this Contract pursuant to Lines 308-312 without further written consent of the parties, in which event all Earnest Money shall be returned to Buyer; or (b) deliver to the Seller written notice of the items disapproved and provide Seller an opportunity to correct the items. If Buyer elects option (b), Seller shall respond in writing within five (5) days or  ___________ days after delivery to Seller of Buyer's notice of items disapproved. If Seller is unwilling or unable to agree to correct any of the terms disapproved by Buyer, including making any repairs in a workmanlike manner, Buyer may either:

(a) cancel this Contract within five (5) days after receipt of Seller's response or after expiration of the time period for Seller's response, whichever occurs first, in which case all Earnest Money shall be returned to Buyer; or

(b) proceed with the transaction, in which case Seller is not obligated to correct those items Seller has not agreed to correct in writing.

If Buyer cancels this Contract, Buyer shall return all documents provided by the Seller and provide Seller with copies of all reports or studies generated by Buyer, provided, however, that Buyer shall not be required to deliver any such report or study if the written contract that Buyer entered into with the consultant who prepared such report or study specifically forbids the dissemination of the report or study to others.

BUYER'S FAILURE TO GIVE WRITTEN NOTICE OF CANCELLATION OF THIS CONTRACT OR DISAPPROVAL OF ITEMS WITHIN THE SPECIFIED TIME PERIODS SHALL CONCLUSIVELY BE DEEMED BUYER'S ELECTION TO PROCEED WITH THE TRANSACTION WITHOUT CORRECTION OF ANY DISAPPROVED ITEMS THAT SELLER HAS NOT AGREED IN WRITING TO CORRECT.

Inspections: During the Due Diligence Period, Buyer shall have the right, at Buyer's expense, to select an inspector(s), and to make economic, environmental and physical "inspections" (including tests, surveys, and other studies) of the Property, including but not limited to square footage, wood infestation, roof, designated flood hazard areas, structural, plumbing (such as galvanized or polybutylene pipes), sewer/septic, well, heating, air conditioning, electrical and mechanical systems, built-in appliances, soil, foundation, pool/spa and related equipment, cost of compliance with swimming pool regulations, possible environmental hazards (such as asbestos, formaldehyde, radon gas, lead-based paint, fuel or chemical storage tanks, methamphetamine, LSD, ecstasy, hazardous waste, other substances, materials or products, and/or location in a federal or state Superfund area), water damage, mold, conditions conducive to mold, geologic conditions, location of property lines, water/utility use restrictions and fees for services such as garbage, water/utility or fire protection, sign usage, zoning regulations, variances, use permits, and compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act. If the presence of sex offenders in the vicinity of the Property or the occurrence of a disease, natural death, suicide, homicide or other crime on or in the vicinity of the Property is a material matter to the Buyer, it must be investigated by the Buyer during the Due Diligence Period.

Square Footage: BUYER IS AWARE THAT ANY REFERENCE TO THE SQUARE FOOTAGE (OR NET ACREAGE) OF THE REAL PROPERTY (LAND) OR IMPROVEMENTS THEREON IS APPROXIMATE. IF SQUARE FOOTAGE (OR NET ACREAGE) IS A MATERIAL MATTER TO THE BUYER, IT MUST BE VERIFIED BY BUYER DURING THE DUE DILIGENCE PERIOD.

Commercial Real Estate Purchase Contract  Page 3 of 9

Wood Infestation Inspection: IF CURRENT OR PAST WOOD INFESTATION (SUCH AS TERMITES) IS A MATERIAL MATTER TO THE BUYER, IT MUST BE INVESTIGATED DURING THE DUE DILIGENCE PERIOD. If the lender requires an updated Wood Infestation Report, it shall be performed at Buyer's expense. If wood infestation is disclosed in any Wood Infestation Report, REFER TO LINES 66-85 FOR IMPORTANT TERMS.

Flood Hazard: If the Property is situated in an area identified as having any special flood hazards by any governmental entity including, but not limited to, being designated as a special flood hazard area by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Buyer's lender may require the purchase of flood hazard insurance at the Close of Escrow or some future date. Special flood hazards may affect the ability to encumber or improve the Property now or at some future date. Flood hazard designation of the Property or cost of flood hazard insurance shall be determined by Buyer during the Due Diligence Period.

Survey: A survey  shall be performed  is waived by the Buyer.

If a survey is to be performed, Buyer shall have the survey completed by a licensed surveyor in accordance with the Arizona State Board of Technical Registration's "Arizona Land Boundary Survey Minimum Standards" and review the receipt of results of survey or map during the Due Diligence Period.

Cost of the survey shall be paid by:  Seller  Buyer  Other: Most recent existing survey provided by seller

Surveyor's instructions are:  A boundary survey and survey plat showing the corners either verified or monumentation.  A survey certified by a licensed surveyor, acceptable to Buyer and the Title Company, in sufficient detail for issuance of an American Land Title Association ("ALTA") Owner's Policy of Title Insurance showing all boundary, encroachment or survey exceptions and all improvements, utility lines and easements on the Property or within five (5) feet thereof.  Other survey terms

Buyer's Responsibility Regarding Inspections: Buyer shall keep the Property free and clear of liens, shall indemnify and hold Seller harmless from all liability, claims, demands, damages, and costs and shall repair all damages arising from the inspections.

Final Walkthrough: The Seller grants Buyer and any representative of Buyer reasonable access to conduct a final walkthrough of the Property for the purpose of satisfying Buyer that any repairs agreed to by the Seller have been completed and, further, that the Property is in substantially the same condition as on the date of the mutual execution of the Contract. Seller shall make the Property available for the final walkthrough. If Buyer does not conduct such walkthrough, Buyer specifically releases Seller and Broker(s) of any liability.

Seller's Responsibility Regarding Inspections and Final Walkthrough: Seller shall make the Property available for all inspec tions during the Due Diligence Period and final walkthrough. Seller understands that the inspections and final walkthrough require that all utilities be on and the Seller is responsible for providing same at Seller's expense.

Sanitation and Waste Disposal Systems: Buyer is aware and Seller warrants that the Property is on a:

 sewer system  septic system  alternative system

Seller's Obligations Regarding On-Site Wastewater Treatment Facility (conventional septic or alternative system) ("Facility"): If such a Facility has been installed on the Property, Seller shall deliver to Buyer copies of Facility permits and any other Facility documents of record within five (5) days after Opening of Escrow. During Due Diligence Period, any Facility on the Property shall be inspected as required by law at:  Buyer's expense  Seller's expense by an inspector recognized by the applicable governmental authority. Seller shall deliver to Escrow Company, at Seller's expense, any certification and/or documentation required. Escrow Company is instructed to file any transfer form(s) with applicable county authority. Buyer shall pay any Facility transfer fees.

Seller's Obligations Regarding Wells: If any well is located on the Property, Seller shall deliver to Escrow Company, before Close of Escrow, a copy of the Arizona Department of Water Resources ("ADWR") "Registration of Existing Wells." Escrow Company is hereby instructed to send to the ADWR a "Change of Well Information." Seller does not warrant the gallons per minute as reflected on the ADWR certification of registration. Buyer may verify gallons per minute during Due Diligence Period through a certified flow test.

Changes During Escrow: Seller shall immediately notify Buyer in writing: (i) of any changes in the disclosures made herein, in the Seller Property Disclosure Statement, or otherwise; (ii) if Seller modifies any existing lease or other agreement affecting the Property; or (iii) if Seller enters into any new leases, rental agreements, service contracts or other agreements affecting the Property. Buyer shall be allowed five (5) days after receipt of such notice to provide written notice to Seller of any items disapproved. REFER TO LINES 66-85 FOR IMPORTANT TERMS.

DISCLOSURES

Seller Property Disclosure Statement ("SPDS"):

(a)  Buyer has received, read, and approved the SPDS.

(b)  Buyer waives review and approval of the SPDS. (BUYER'S INITIALS REQUIRED TO WAIVE SPDS BUYER BUYER

(c)  Seller shall deliver the SPDS to Buyer within five (5) days after Opening of Escrow.

Commercial Real Estate Purchase Contract  Page 4 of 9

Additional Seller Disclosures and Information: Seller shall provide to Buyer the following disclosures and information pertinent to the Property in writing within five (5) days or days after Opening of Escrow: (1) any information known to Seller that may adversely affect the Buyer's use of the Property, (2) any known pending special assessments, association fees, claims, or litigation, (3) copies of covenants, conditions, and restrictions, articles of incorporation; by-laws; other governing documents; and any other documents required by law, (4) financial statements, copies of current rent rolls, lists of current deposits, personal property lists, copies of leases, rental agreements, service contracts, (5) a copy of the most recent survey, if available, and (6) any and all other agreements, documents, studies, or reports relating to the Property in Seller's possession or control provided, however, that Seller shall not be required to deliver any report or study if the written contract that Seller entered into with the consultant who prepared such report or study specifically forbids the dissemination of the report to others. The Buyer shall provide written notice to Seller prior to the expiration of the Due Diligence Period of any items disapproved. REFER TO LINES 66-85 FOR IMPORTANT TERMS. Seller shall deliver all original documents and estoppel certificates executed by all tenants to Buyer at Close of Escrow.

No Seller or Tenant Bankruptcy, Probate or Insolvency Proceedings. Seller has no notice or knowledge that any tenant on the Property is the subject of a bankruptcy, probate or insolvency proceeding. Further, Seller is not the subject of a bankruptcy, insolvency or probate proceeding.

Seller's Notice of Violations: Seller represents that Seller has no knowledge of any notice of violations of City, County, State, or Federal building, zoning, fire, or health laws, codes, statutes, ordinances, regulations, or rules filed or issued regarding the Property. If Seller receives notice of violations of any of the aforementioned prior to Close of Escrow, Seller shall immediately notify Buyer in writing. Buyer shall have five (5) days after receipt of such notice to provide written notice to Seller of any items disapproved.

REFER TO LINES 66-85 FOR IMPORTANT TERMS.

DISCLOSURES FOR PROPERTY USED FOR RESIDENTIAL PURPOSES

(If Property is not used for residential purposes, GO TO LINE 194.)

Notice to Buyer of Swimming Pool Barrier Regulations (Initials Required): The State of Arizona has swimming pool barrier regulations that are outlined in the Arizona Department of Health Services Private Pool Safety Notice. The county or municipality in which the Property is located may have different swimming pool barrier regulations than the state. During the Due Diligence Period, Buyer agrees to investigate all applicable state, county, and municipal swimming pool barrier regulations and, unless disapproved prior to the expiration of the Due Diligence Period, agrees to comply with and pay all costs of compliance with said regulations. BUYER'S INITIALS ACKNOWLEDGE 1) EXISTENCE OF SWIMMING POOL BARRIER REGULATIONS and 2) If this Property contains a swimming pool, RECEIPT OF THE ARIZONA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES APPROVED PRIVATE POOL SAFETY NOTICE AS REQUIRED BY A.R.S. 36-1681 (E).

(BUYER'S INITIALS REQUIRED) BUYER BUYER

Lead-Based Paint Disclosure (Initials Required): If the Property was built prior to 1978, Seller shall: (1) notify the Buyer of any known lead-based paint or lead-based paint hazards in or on the Property; (2) provide the Buyer with any lead-based paint risk assessments or inspections of the Property in the Seller's possession; (3) provide the Buyer with the Disclosure of Information on Lead-based Paint and Lead-Based Paint Hazards, and any reports, records, pamphlets, and/or other materials referenced therein, including the pamphlet "Protect Your Family from Lead in Your Home" (collectively "Lead-Based Paint Information").

 Lead-Based Paint Information was provided prior to Contract acceptance and Buyer acknowledges the opportunity to conduct lead based paint risk assessments or inspections during Due Diligence Period.

 Seller shall provide the Lead-Based Paint Information to Buyer within five (5) days after Opening of Escrow. Buyer may within ten (10) days or  days after receipt of the Lead-Based Paint Information conduct or obtain a risk assessment or inspection of the Property for the presence of lead-based paint or lead based-paint hazards ("Assessment Period"). Buyer may within five (5) days after receipt of the Lead-Based Paint Information or five (5) days after expiration of the Assessment Period cancel this Contract in Buyer's sole discretion by delivering written notice of cancellation to Seller Pursuant to Lines 308-312.

Prior to 1978: If Property was constructed prior to 1978, BUYER'S INITIALS REQUIRED BUYER BUYER

1978 or Later: If Property was constructed in 1978 or later, BUYER'S INITIALS REQUIRED BUYER BUYER

IF THIS IS AN ALL CASH SALE, GO TO LINE 208.

FINANCING

(If financing is to be other than new financing, see attached addendum.)

This sale  is  is not contingent upon Buyer obtaining a satisfactory financing commitment within Financing Commitment Contingency Period. (If sale is not contingent on a financing commitment, go to line 209.)

Financing Commitment Contingency Period: If the sale is contingent upon Buyer obtaining a satisfactory financing commitment, Buyer shall have thirty (30) days or  60 days after the Opening of Escrow ("Financing Commitment Contingency Period") to obtain a financing commitment satisfactory to Buyer in Buyer's sole discretion, for a loan to purchase the Property or Buyer may cancel this Contract pursuant to Lines 308-312 and receive a refund of the Earnest Money. PRIOR TO THE EXPIRATION OF THE FINANCING COMMITMENT CONTINGENCY PERIOD, BUYER SHALL DELIVER TO SELLER AND ESCROW COMPANY WRITTEN NOTICE THAT BUYER HAS NOT RECEIVED SUCH SATISFACTORY FINANCING COMMITMENT OR BUYER SHALL BE DEEMED TO HAVE WAIVED THE FINANCING COMMITMENT CONTINGENCY AND ANY RIGHT TO CANCEL DUE TO FINANCING.

Financing Application: Within ten (10) days after the Opening of Escrow, Buyer shall submit a formal loan application to a lender of Buyer's choice. Buyer and Seller shall promptly provide to such lender all materials and documents lender deems appropriate to facilitate such lender's processing of such loan application. Buyer agrees to pay such fees as required by the lender and all other financing costs. Buyer authorizes the lender to provide financing status updates to Broker(s).

Commercial Real Estate Purchase Contract  Page 5 of 9

TITLE AND ESCROW

Title and Vesting: Taking title may have significant legal, estate planning and tax consequences. Buyer should obtain legal and tax advice.

Buyer will take title as determined before Close of Escrow or  Other: _________________________________________

Title Commitment and Title Insurance: Buyer shall be provided at Seller's expense a Standard Owner's Title Insurance Policy showing the title vested in Buyer as provided in Line 210. Buyer may acquire extended coverage(s) at Buyer's own additional expense. Escrow Company is hereby instructed to obtain and distribute to Buyer and Broker(s) a Commitment for Title Insurance in sufficient detail for the issuance of an Extended Owner's Title Insurance Policy together with complete and legible copies of all documents that will remain as exceptions to Buyer's policy of title insurance ("Title Commitment"), within fifteen (15) days after Opening of Escrow. Buyer shall have until the expiration of the Due Diligence Period to provide written notice to Seller of any items disapproved. Buyer shall have five (5) days after receipt of any amendments to Title Commitment or notice of any subsequent exceptions to provide Seller written notice of any amendment or exceptions disapproved. REFER TO LINES 66-85 FOR IMPORTANT TERMS.

Seller shall convey title by special warranty deed or  _________________________________________________ deed.

Additional Instructions: (a) If the Escrow Company is also acting as the title agency but is not the title insurer issuing the title insurance policy, the Buyer and Seller hereby instruct the Escrow Company to deliver to the Buyer and Seller upon Opening of Escrow a closing protection letter from the title insurer indemnifying the Buyer and Seller for any losses due to fraudulent acts or breach of escrow instructions by the Escrow Company. (b) All documents necessary to close this transaction shall be executed promptly by Seller and Buyer in the standard form used by Escrow Company. Escrow Company is hereby instructed to modify such documents to the extent necessary to be consistent with this Contract. (c) All closing and escrow costs, unless otherwise stated herein, shall be allocated equally between Seller and Buyer in accordance with local custom and applicable laws and regulations. (d) Escrow Company is hereby instructed to send to Broker(s) copies of all notices and communications directed to or from Seller or Buyer. Escrow Company shall provide Broker(s) with access to escrowed materials and information regarding the escrow.

Prorations, Expenses and Adjustments:

Taxes: Real property taxes payable by the Seller shall be prorated through Close of Escrow, based upon the latest tax bill available. The parties agree that any discrepancy between the latest tax bill available and the actual tax bill when received shall be handled as a Post Closing Matter and Buyer or Seller may be responsible for additional tax payments to each other.

Insurance: If Buyer takes an assignment of the existing casualty and/or liability insurance that is maintained by Seller, the current premium shall be prorated through Close of Escrow.

Rents, Interest and Expenses: Rents; interest on existing notes, if transferred; utilities; and operating expenses shall be prorated through Close of Escrow. The Parties agree to adjust any rents received after Close of Escrow as a Post Closing Matter.

Deposits: All deposits held by Seller pursuant to rent/lease agreement(s) shall be credited against the cash required of Buyer at Close of Escrow or  paid to Buyer by Seller at Close of Escrow.

Post Closing Matters: The parties shall promptly adjust any item to be prorated that is not determined or determinable at Close of Escrow as a Post Closing Matter by appropriate cash payment to the other party outside of the escrow when the amount due is determined. Seller and Buyer agree that Escrow Company and Broker(s) are relieved of any responsibilities for said adjustments.

Insurance: Buyer shall insure that any fire, casualty, or other insurance desired by Buyer, or required by any Lender, is in place at Close of Escrow. Buyer specifically releases Broker(s) from any obligations relating to such insurance.

Assessments: The amount of any assessment that is a lien as of the Close of Escrow, shall be:

 paid in full by Seller  prorated and assumed by Buyer  paid in full by Buyer.

Any assessment that becomes a lien after Close of Escrow is the Buyer's responsibility.

IRS and FIRPTA Reporting: Seller agrees to comply with IRS reporting requirements. If applicable, Seller agrees to complete, sign, and deliver to Escrow Company a certificate indicating whether Seller is a foreign person or a non-resident alien pursuant to the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act (FIRPTA). Buyer acknowledges that if the Seller is a foreign person, the Buyer (or Escrow Company, as directed by Buyer) must withhold a tax of up to 15% of the purchase price, unless an exemption applies.

RESPA: The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) requires that no Seller of property that will be purchased with the assistance of a federally-related mortgage financing shall require, directly or indirectly, as a condition of selling the property, that title insurance covering the property be purchased by the Buyer from any particular title company.

TAX DEFERRED EXCHANGE: Seller and Buyer are advised to consult a professional tax advisor regarding the advisability of a tax-deferred exchange pursuant to I.R.C. 1031 or otherwise. Seller and Buyer agree to cooperate in a tax deferred exchange provided that Close of Escrow is not delayed. All additional costs in connection with any such tax deferred exchange shall be borne by the party requesting the exchange. The non-requesting party and Broker(s) shall be indemnified and held harmless from any liability that may arise from participation in the tax deferred exchange.

WARRANTIES

Seller Warranties: Seller warrants and shall maintain and/or repair the Property so that, at the earlier of possession of the Property or Close of Escrow, all heating, cooling, mechanical, plumbing, and electrical systems (including swimming pool and/or spa, motors, filter systems, cleaning systems, and heater, if any), and built-in appliances will be in working condition or as otherwise agreed in this Contract. Seller also warrants that, at the earlier of possession of the Property or Close of Escrow, the Property shall be in substantially the same condition as on the date of the mutual execution of the Contract.

Buyer Warranties: Buyer warrants that Buyer has disclosed to Seller any information that may materially and adversely affect the Buyer's ability to close escrow or complete the obligations of this Contract. At the earlier of the removal of all contingencies, possession of the Property or Close of Escrow, (a) Buyer warrants to Seller that Buyer has conducted all desired independent investigations and accepts the Property and (b) Buyer acknowledges that there will be no Seller warranty of any kind, except as stated in Lines 259-263.

Commercial Real Estate Purchase Contract  Page 6 of 9

Warranties that Survive Closing: Prior to the Close of Escrow, Seller warrants that payment in full will have been made for all rental and/or privilege taxes, labor, professional services, materials, machinery, fixtures, or tools furnished within the 150 days immediately preceding the Close of Escrow in connection with the construction, alteration, or repair of any structure on or improvement made to the Property. Seller warrants that the information on Lines 131-139 regarding connection to a public sewer system, septic tank or other sanitation system is correct to Seller's knowledge. Seller warrants that Seller has disclosed to Buyer and Broker(s) all material latent defects and any information concerning the Property known to Seller, which materially and adversely affect the consideration to be paid by Buyer.

REMEDIES

Remedies: The parties agree to the remedies for breach of Contract indicated below.

If Buyer is in breach: (check one)

 All Rights and Remedies: Seller may cancel this Contract pursuant to Lines 308-312 and/or proceed upon any claim or remedy that the Seller may have in law or equity.

 Liquidated Damages: The parties agree that it would be impracticable or extremely difficult to fix the actual damages that Seller would suffer if Buyer fails to perform Buyer's obligations pursuant to this Contract. Therefore, if Buyer breaches this Contract, Seller shall be entitled to the Earnest Money as Seller's sole remedy and Buyer shall be released from any further liability to Seller. In such event, this Contract shall be cancelled and Seller shall pay any Escrow Company cancellation fees.

(INITIALS REQUIRED)

If Seller is in breach:

All Rights and Remedies: Buyer may cancel this Contract pursuant to Lines 308-312, shall be entitled to the return of the Earnest Money and/or proceed upon any claim or remedy that the Buyer may have in law or equity.

Mediation: Buyer and Seller agree to mediate any dispute or claim arising out of or relating to this Contract, any alleged breach of this Contract, or services provided in relation to this Contract, claims for Earnest Money or representations made by the Buyer or Seller in connection with the sale, purchase, financing, condition, or other aspect of the Property to which this Contract pertains, including, without limitation, allegations of concealment, misrepresentation, negligence and/or fraud before resorting to court action. Mediation is a process in which the parties meet with an impartial person who helps to resolve the dispute informally and confidentially. Mediators cannot impose binding decisions. The parties must agree and sign an agreement before any settlement reached at the mediation is binding. Mediation shall take place in the State of Arizona. All mediation costs shall be paid equally by the parties to the Contract.

Exclusions from Mediation: The following matters are excluded from mediation hereunder: (a) any action brought in the Small Claims Division of an Arizona Justice Court (up to $3,500), so long as the matter is not thereafter transferred or removed from the Small Claims Division; (b) judicial or nonjudicial foreclosure or other action or proceeding to enforce a deed of trust, mortgage, or agreement for sale; (c) an unlawful entry or detainer action; (d) the filing or enforcement of a mechanic's lien; or (e) any matter that is within the jurisdiction of a probate or bankruptcy court. The filing of a judicial action to enable the recording of a notice of pending action, or order of attachment, receivership, injunction, or other provisional remedies shall not constitute a waiver of the obligation to mediate under this provision, nor shall it constitute a breach of the duty to mediate.

Attorneys Fees and Costs: If Buyer or Seller files suit against the other to enforce any provision of this Contract or for damages sustained by reason of its breach, all parties prevailing in such action, on trial and appeal, shall receive their reasonable attorney's fees and costs as awarded by the court. In addition, both Seller and Buyer agree to indemnify and hold harmless all Brokers against all costs and expenses that any Broker may incur or sustain in connection with any lawsuit arising from this Contract and will pay the same on demand unless the court grants judgment in such action against the party to be indemnified. Costs shall include, without limitation, reasonable attorney's fees, expert witness fees, fees paid to investigators, and court costs.

Cancellation: Any party who wishes to cancel this Contract as provided herein or because of any material breach by another party, and who is not in material breach except as occasioned by a material breach by the other party, may cancel this Contract by delivering written notice of cancellation to either the breaching party or to the Escrow Company stating the basis for cancellation or nature of the breach. Cancellation shall become effective immediately upon delivery of the written notice of cancellation to either the breaching party or Escrow Company.

Release of Earnest Money: In the event of a dispute between Buyer and Seller regarding Earnest Money deposited with Escrow Company, Buyer and Seller authorize Escrow Company to release Earnest Money pursuant to the terms and conditions of this Contract. Buyer and Seller specifically authorize Escrow Company to act in its sole and absolute discretion in the release of Earnest Money. Buyer and Seller agree to hold harmless and indemnify Escrow Company against any claim, action or lawsuit of any kind, and from any loss, judgment, or expense, including costs and reasonable attorneys' fees, arising from or relating in any way to the release of Earnest Money.

Recommendations: If any Broker recommends a builder, contractor, inspector, vendor or any other person or entity to Seller or Buyer for any purpose, such recommendation shall be independently investigated and evaluated by Seller or Buyer, who hereby acknowledge that any decision to enter into any contractual arrangements with any such person or entity recommended by any Broker will be based solely upon such independent investigation and evaluation. Seller and Buyer understand that said contractual arrangement may result in a commission or fee to Broker, which shall be disclosed in writing to the Seller and Buyer as required by law.

Commercial Real Estate Purchase Contract  Page 7 of 9

ADDITIONAL TERMS

This offer is contingent upon Buyer receiving the following items: (1) a commitment to lend to Buyer a sum equal to at least 70% of the Purchase Price, at terms reasonably acceptable to Buyer. Such loan ("New Loan") shall be secured by a first trust or mortgage on the Property. Buyer hereby agrees to diligently pursue obtaining the New Loan, (2) the Buyers approval of the existing lease and obtaining appropriate estoppel certificate discuss at least 15 days prior to closing, (3) right to lease terms with the tenant during due diligence; and Seller receiving the following items: (1) appropriate financing with terms at the Sellers sole discretion to pay off Deed of Trust and Closing Costs and Commissions, within 30 days of execution of this contract.

Buyer to have a 60 day financing contingency period, at the end of which time, the buyer shall deposit an additional $20,000 earnest money into escrow. All escrow monies become non-refundable and released to seller if buyer fails to perform. Contingency Period to commence upon execution of the contract.

Buyer and Seller acknowledge that it is the intention of the Buyer to acquire/sell property as part of a tax-deferred exchange under Internal Revenue Code Section 1031. The Seller agrees to cooperate as long as it does not delay the closing or cause additional expense to the other. Buyer will assign the rights (but not obligations) of this agreement to a Qualified Intermediary. Cooperation means that parties will approve an assignment, agree to release the Intermediary from any claim made by other, and agree to all other appropriate action or sign any other document which does not create additional liability or expense.

Risk of Loss: If there is any loss or damage to the Property between the date of mutual execution of this Contract and the Close of Escrow or possession of the Property, whichever is earlier, by reason of fire, vandalism, flood, earthquake or act of God, the risk of loss shall be borne by the Seller, provided, however, that if the cost of repairing such loss or damage would exceed ten percent (10%) of the purchase price, either Seller or Buyer may elect to cancel the Contract by written notice pursuant to lines 308-312.

Permission: Buyer and Seller grant Broker(s) permission to advise the public of the existence of this Contract.

Arizona Law: This Contract shall be governed by Arizona law and jurisdiction is exclusively conferred on the State of Arizona.

Time is of the essence: The parties acknowledge that time is of the essence in performance of the obligations described herein.

Broker's Fee: Buyer and Seller each represent and warrant to the other that he/she/it has had no dealings with any person, firm, broker or finder in connection with the negotiation of this Contract and/or the consummation of the purchase and sale contemplated herein, other than the Broker(s) named herein, and no Broker or other person, firm or entity, other than said Broker(s) is/are entitled to any commission or finder's fee in connection with this transaction as the result of any dealings or acts of either Buyer or Seller. Buyer and Seller do each hereby agree to indemnify, defend, protect and hold the other harmless from and against any costs, expenses or liability for compensation, commission or charges that may be claimed by any broker, finder or other similar party, other than said named Broker(s) by reason of any dealings or act of the indemnifying party.

Compensation: Seller and Buyer acknowledge that Broker(s) shall be compensated for services rendered as previously agreed by separate written agreement(s). Any separate written agreement(s) shall be delivered to Escrow Company for payment at Close of Escrow, if not previously paid, and shall constitute an irrevocable assignment of Seller's proceeds at Close of Escrow and/or payment shall be collected from Buyer as a condition to Close, as applicable. If any Broker hires an attorney to enforce the collection of the brokerage fee payable pursuant to this Contract and is successful in collecting some or all of such brokerage fee, the party(ies) responsible for paying such brokerage fee agree(s) to pay such Broker's costs including, but not limited to: reasonable attorneys' fees, expert witness fees, fees paid to investigators, and court costs.

COMMISSIONS PAYABLE FOR THE SALE, LEASING, OR MANAGEMENT OF PROPERTY ARE NOT SET BY ANY BOARD OR ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS OR MULTIPLE LISTING SERVICE, OR IN ANY MANNER OTHER THAN BETWEEN THE BROKER AND CLIENT. THE SELLER AND THE BUYER ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE BROKER(S) REFERENCED HEREIN ARE THIRD-PARTY BENEFICIARIES OF THIS CONTRACT.

Commercial Real Estate Purchase Contract  Page 8 of 9

Additional Compensation: The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act ("RESPA") prohibits the paying or receiving of any fee, kickback, or thing of value for the referral of any business related to settlement or closing of a federally regulated mortgage financing, including, but not limited to, any services related to the origination, processing, or funding of a federally regulated mortgage financing, and includes settlement related business. RESPA does not prohibit fees, salaries, compensation, or other payments for services actually performed. If any Broker performs any such services for a fee, Seller and Buyer consent to the payment of this additional compensation as follows:________________________________________________

Subsequent Offers: Buyer acknowledges that Seller has the right to accept subsequent offers until Close of Escrow. Seller understands that any subsequent offer accepted by the Seller must be a backup offer, namely, contingent on the cancellation of this Contract.

Entire Agreement: This Contract, and any addenda and attachments, shall constitute the entire agreement between Seller and Buyer, and shall supersede any other written or oral agreements between Seller and Buyer. This Contract, including any extensions of any time periods referenced herein, can be modified only by a writing signed by Seller and Buyer. A fully executed facsimile copy of the entire Contract shall be treated as an original Contract. This Contract and any other documents required by this Contract may be executed and delivered by facsimile and in any number of counterparts, which shall become effective upon delivery as provided for herein. All counterparts shall be deemed to constitute one instrument, and each counterpart shall be deemed an original. The failure to initial any page of this Contract shall not affect the validity or terms of this Contract. All references to days in this Contract shall be construed as calendar days.

Assignment: Except in the event of a tax-deferred exchange, Buyer shall not assign this Contract without the prior written consent of Seller. Any such assignment shall not release Buyer from Buyer's obligations under this Contract.

Release of Brokers: SELLER AND BUYER HEREBY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THEY HAVE BEEN AND ARE NOW ADVISED BY THE BROKER(S) TO CONSULT AND RETAIN THEIR OWN EXPERTS TO ADVISE AND REPRESENT THEM CONCERNING THE LEGAL AND INCOME TAX EFFECTS OF THIS CONTRACT, AND THE CONDITION OF THE PROPERTY. SELLER AND BUYER HEREBY EXPRESSLY RELEASE, HOLD HARMLESS AND INDEMNIFY ALL BROKER(S) IN THIS TRANSACTION FROM ANY AND ALL LIABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY REGARDING THE CONDITION, SQUARE FOOTAGE/ACREAGE, LOT LINES OR BOUNDARIES, VALUE, FINANCING, RENT ROLLS, INCOME AND EXPENSE PROJECTIONS OR PROFORMAS, ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS, SANITATION SYSTEMS, ROOF CONDITION, WOOD INFESTATION AND WOOD INFESTATION REPORT, COMPLIANCE WITH BUILDING CODES, ZONING OR OTHER GOVERNMENTAL REGULATIONS, OR ANY OTHER MATERIAL MATTERS RELATING TO THE PROPERTY.

(INITIALS REQUIRED)

Time for Acceptance: This is an offer to purchase the Property. Unless acceptance is signed by Seller and a signed copy delivered in person, by private or United States mail, or facsimile, and received by Buyer or by Broker named on Lines 17-18 by: December 22 , 2016 at 11:59  AM  PM, Mountain Standard Time, or unless this offer to purchase has been previously withdrawn in writing by Buyer, this offer to purchase shall be deemed withdrawn and the Buyer's Earnest Money shall be returned.

THIS CONTRACT CONTAINS NINE (9) PAGES EXCLUSIVE OF ANY ADDENDA AND ATTACHMENTS. PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU HAVE RECEIVED AND READ ALL NINE (9) PAGES OF THIS OFFER AS WELL AS ANY ADDENDA AND ATTACHMENTS.

The undersigned agree to purchase the Property on the terms and conditions herein stated and acknowledge receipt of a copy hereof.

/s/ Michael Tenuta dotloop verified

12/21/16 3:55PM EST 4TWW-JGEA-EXNH-MJGC ^ BUYERS SIGNATURE MO/DA/YR ^ BUYERS SIGNATURE MO/DA/YR

Big Lake Estates, LLC BUYER NAME PRINTED BUYER NAME PRINTED

By: Michael Tenuta Its: Member

ADDRESS ADDRESS

CITY, STATE, ZIP COPE CITY, STATE, ZIP COPE

Broker: Keller Williams Professional Partners Andrew Ostrander (COMPANY NAME) (LICENSEE)

7025 W. Bell Rd., Ste. 10 Phoenix, AZ 85308 (480) 229-6999 (480) 295-7608 (ADDRESS) (TELEPHONE) (FAX) (E-MAIL)

Commercial Real Estate Purchase Contract  Page 9 of 9

ACCEPTANCE

Agency Confirmation: The following agency relationship(s) is hereby confirmed for this transaction:

Listing Broker: Joseph Lewis The Real Estate Brokers, LLC (602) 740-3916 (PRINT SALESPERSONS NAME AND AGENCY CODE) JL306 (PRINT FIRM NAME AND OFFICE CODE) B675 (TELEPHONE)

Is the agent of (check one):  the Seller exclusively; or  both the Buyer and Seller

Seller Receipt of Copy: The undersigned acknowledge receipt of a copy hereof and grant permission to Broker named on Lines 17-18 to deliver a copy to Buyer.

 Counter Offer is attached, and is incorporated herein by reference. Seller must sign both the Contract and the Counter Offer. If there is a conflict between this Contract and the Counter Offer, the provisions of the Counter Offer shall be controlling.

The undersigned agree to sell the Property on the terms and conditions herein stated.

/s/ Bryan McLaren 12/22/16 ^ SELLERS SIGNATURE MO/DA/YR ^ SELLERS SIGNATURE MO/DA/YR

ZONED PROPERTIES, INC. SELLERS NAME PRINTED SELLERS NAME PRINTED

By: BRYAN MCLAREN

Its: CEO

ADDRESS ADDRESS

CITY, STATE, ZIP COPE CITY, STATE, ZIP COPE

Broker: The Real Estate Brokers, LLC Joseph Lewis (COMPANY NAME) (LICENSEE)

(602) 740-3916 (ADDRESS) (TELEPHONE) (FAX) (E-MAIL)

ACCEPTANCE BY ESCROW COMPANY

Date of Opening of Escrow: ________________________

The provisions of this Contract are hereby acknowledged and agreed to.

Escrow Company: Chicago Title Agency

By: ________________________________

Its: ________________________________
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Democracy is to tolerate each other, said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday who was attending the 53rd budget session of Azad Jammu and Kashmir Council along with his delegation.

Speaking to the participants of the council the premier said, We cannot do much if anyone does not adhere to the Charter of Democracy (COD) in a clear reference to the opposition parties.

PML-N has received an ideal mandate, usually given by fate only to any political party, he said.

President AJK Muhammad Masood Khan and Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider welcomed PM Sharif upon his arrival in the capital city of Muzaffarabad earlier today.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Minister for Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan Barjees Tahir, Commerce Minister Khurram Dastagir and Senator Pervaiz Rasheed also accompanied the premier.

During the session, the prime minister also administered the oath of the nine new elected members of the council.

PM Sharif was in Mianwali with Water and Power Minister Khawaja Asif and Adviser to Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz on Wednesday in a bid to inaugurate Chashma- III nuclear power plant in the city, another milestone in Pak-China joint collaborations.

The 340-mega watt nuclear power plant is a joint collaboration of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), said a press release issued from the PMs media wing.
Town squares and parks in Athens, Greece, are filled with migrants who idle there, trapped in limbo between Turkey and Europe. Its almost impossible for them to find work or decent housing, so they while away their days in public spaces. Despite the continuing efforts of numerous NGOs, some young migrants  especially unaccompanied minors  find themselves caught up in illegal trades, including drugs, human trafficking and, most frequently, prostitution.

Most of the young migrants you see in these public squares are Afghan and some are very young. Their young age  some of them are barely 15  makes them especially vulnerable in already precarious conditions. With no source of income, most end up living in tent cities with no hot water or electricity. Migrants of all ages also face widespread discrimination.

Because they have no access to the labour market, many end up having to turn to illegal trades, such as prostitution, to survive. Every night, several dozen young men congregate in Victoria park, Pedion tou Areos park and on the Omonia Square to sell themselves. Sometimes, the actual act is carried out at the clients house but, more often than not, the boys end up just going into the bushes with their client.

Mohammad Mirzay works with a humanitarian orgranisation based in Athens. He sees Afghan refugees on a daily basis.

When people are just trying to survive and to fulfil their most basic needs, they are capable of doing all kinds of things. These young boys are in a desperate situation. They are living in tents in refugee camps and they dont have any other work. Some of the problem comes from the fact that Afghan refugees face a lot of discrimination. They also dont get any governmental aid. These young people have no adequate shelter and no way of making money and, ultimately, they are just left to fend for themselves as best they can.

At best, these young people are paid 50 per client, sometimes less than 10. I dont know the nationality of their clients but almost all of them speak Greek and most of them are much older than the boys.

I sometimes work as an interpreter at the local hospital. One day, I translated for a young Pakistani man who had just tested positive for HIV. I had to explain everything to him. He had no idea what his diagnosis meant  he had never heard of AIDS. He had also never heard of a condom. He had no idea if he had contracted the virus during a sexual relation or while using drugs. Sometimes, clients dont use condoms simply because they dont care about these young people. These careless practices put many lives in danger.

As a way to share the burden of having so many refugees, the European Union now has a quota system, which means that asylum seekers who enter Greece could be moved to another country. However, the only people eligible are asylum seekers from countries like Syria or Iraq where 75% of EU asylum claims submitted by its nationals receive positive responses. Because only 63% of claims from Afghans are approved on average, people from Afghanistan dont qualify for this programme.

Moreover, several of Greeces neighbours, including Macedonia and Serbia, have closed their borders to Afghans. This means that the only way for Afghans to reach countries like Germany or Sweden quickly is to pay high fees to hire smugglers.

A lost generation

Khatija Sacranie, who is British, works for the humanitarian organisation Goodwill Caravan. Several months ago, she saw about a group of about a dozen adolescent boys congregated on Place Victoria.

Most of them were Afghan, but there were also several Syrians and a few Egyptians. Older men, who werent refugees, were prowling around them like pimps.

Some of these older men were in cars and would stop to talk to the boys. I didnt see any transactions made with my own eyes, but it was clear that there was prostitution going on between the refugees and the locals in the park.

With Ali, our Syrian photographer and guide. We are in Victoria Square in the centre of Athens. This is a generation lost. Stuck in no mans land. Can't go forward. Can't go back. The youth. Lost boys. Minors still, some alone, some abandoned, some having fallen through the regulatory cracks. Young boys, like my nephews, like my cousins. We witnessed pimps, men on the prowl, ready to take advantage, ready to exploit. The common statements from these boys. "If you want to help us, send us back home. Send us back to Syria".

"Help us. Let us work. Give us something that we can do, somewhere we can work."

Two or three with the same syringe

Soon caught up in a violent night life, these young people start to use drugs. Very soon, they are enmeshed in a vicious circle that it is hard to break free from.

Syringes and spoons, which are used to consume heroin, are scattered in Park Pedion tou Areos. This photo was posted on Facebook by a page dedicated to the park.

The most dangerous aspect is that, sometimes, two or three of them use the same syringe. If one of them has AIDS, the others risk becoming infected. They also drink a lot of alcohol. For them, life no longer has any sense or meaning. Three weeks ago, a young refugee died after overdosing. Sadly, there are many such cases, explains Mohammad Mirzay.

This explosive cocktail comes together on Filis Street, which is right next to Victoria Square. For the past few decades, its been one of the hubs of prostitution and drug trade in Athens. There, you can find Samis Bar, which is known as a place where gay hook-ups between young foreigners and older Greek men are orchestrated.

The building is in a poor state and seems to be deserted. The local resident who posted this photo on Facebook even claimed that his image showed an abandoned bar. However, according to several locals contacted by FRANCE 24, the rooms in Samis bar that are decorated in a Middle Eastern style are full from Wednesday through Saturday.
Alondra Ponce came to Madison from Hildalgo, Mexico, at age 7 not knowing her father and unable to speak any English.

As recently as a year ago, after a falling out with her mother, she was homeless and not yet a legal adult.

But the plucky 18-year-old Madison Area Technical College student in training to be a dialysis technician has persevered with some help from her boyfriends family and local education and social service programs.

She graduated from the Madison School Districts Middle College program, which in conjunction with the Department of Workforce Development and MATC offers students opportunities to pursue high school and college credits in fields such as manufacturing and health care. She participates in the transitional living program at Briarpatch Youth Services, which helps with food and shelter while she builds credit and sets aside funds for a down payment on an apartment.

Her long-term dream is to become a pediatrician. To get there she hopes to use her bilingual skills to land a good-paying job to help afford medical school.

Ponce recently received a Wisconsin Job Honor Award from Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which recognizes Wisconsinites who have overcome a barriers to employment.

One key to Ponces determination: She begins each day with a mantra she first read last year while drifting between housing: Today I will do what others wont so tomorrow I can do what others cant.

What was it like coming here from Mexico?

When we got here it was snowing. That was the first thing I saw. In Mexico it doesnt snow, so it was very shocking, and as a little kid I just wanted to go play in the snow. It was very difficult because I didnt know English, so I was placed in ESL classes. I was always with the Spanish-speaking students. I was never in the normal classes.

Why did your family come to the United States?

My grandma died when I was 7 years old and my mom had been thinking about coming here because my aunt had been here before. She always thought here in the United States gave better opportunities for education and we would have a more stable place. Back in Mexico you pay to go to school and if you dont go to school they dont really care. And most kids end up dropping out of school and going to work. My mom didnt want that. She wanted us to keep studying so we could get a career.

Why do you want to go into health care?

It all started back when I was in Mexico. My grandma, she died of cancer, and she had diabetes and all that. We couldnt afford all the care. She died in the house and I was there. Some of my family still doesnt have the best health care opportunities, like insurance, just being able to pay or being able to have a good hospital to go to. I knew that I wanted to help people. In the beginning I wanted to be a veterinarian. My first job was as a babysitter. I just knew I wanted to work with kids.

How did you acquire the ability to persevere through adversity?

I just grew up with my mom. My dad, he left when I was 2 years old. It was hard for school. In a lot of my ceremonies I was alone. (Other students) would take their parents and I didnt have my dad and my mom couldnt come because she was working a lot. I knew I was alone. I had to do this. I had to work hard.

What advice do you have for people facing those kinds of challenges?

Always think about your options. With Briarpatch, there were other shelters, and I kept insisting for me to be accepted into that transitional living program. They were very impressed that I was so well put together. Make the most out of the opportunities that you have.

 Interview by Matthew DeFour
After enduring two attacks by vandals, the Tay Street lifeguard tower in Mount Maunganui is back up and running, thanks to some generosity from a local builder.

Cole Carmichael of Proform Homes turned up yesterday and installed a new work bench to replace the one broken last week.

Surf Life Saving Eastern Region Lifesaving manager Leigh Sefton says Cole got in touch via Facebook.

I shared the SunLive story on our Facebook page, and Cole made a comment that hed love to come and fix it.

Leigh says it was fantastic for Cole to do it, especially during his holiday break, and at his own cost in materials.

Cole says it was a pretty straightforward job.

I went and met Leigh first, got all the measurements, bought the materials and made it in my workshop. The install was the easy part  it only took 30 or 40 minutes, says Cole.

When they were climbing through the window they put all their weight on the old benchtop, which snapped it in half. Ive made this one out of 21mm ply, so it wont be breaking again.

He had his 11 year-old son Cory helping him out too, which made the job easier.

He works with me in the holidays, and gives me a hand when he can. He was a good help yesterday.

He hopes that this it, and no one disrupts the tower anymore.

Leigh says the glass has also been repaired, and a second-hand ladder sourced.

Initially we thought the ladder was missing. But it was broken in half, and half of it was buried, with the other half having been thrown through the window. It was completely wrecked.

The tower is now fully functional again, though, and hopefully will stay that way.

As for the vandals, Leigh thinks hes nailed the description of them.

Theyre brainless idiots. Now the story has gone far and wide, hopefully people will keep an eye on the tower and if they see anything suspicious, call the police.
A unique native frog now has a safe space in the Western Bay of Plenty.

The Order in Council upgrading the status of public conservation land, which contains a population of rare Hochstetter frogs, was gazetted early this month and became official today.

The 400-hectare Otawa Sanctuary Area has been the subject of much debate over the past 20 years. In 1992, the first frog in Otawa was discovered by a volunteer on a Forest & Bird walk.

Since then, members of the Tauranga and Te Puke branches have spent years, and thousands of dollars, advocating for the frogs protection. The area had been mined since the 60s, which posed a major threat to the habitat.

The mining ceased in 2009 but the land is still unstable and human disturbance is an issue. The tiny frogs can easily be crushed by walkers, horses or passing vehicles. Despite all these hardships, the population of frogs has persisted.

Hochstetter frogs are as unique to New Zealand as the kiwi and kakapo. They belong to an ancient genus called Leiopelma, which split off from other frog species around the time of the dinosaurs. Thus they exhibit many strange and primitive traits such as being voiceless, lacking external ears and giving birth to tiny froglets instead of tadpoles.

Hochstetter frogs are divided into 19 genetically distinct populations. The Otawa population is believed to be the smallest, at possibly just 200 individuals, and has been identified as nationally critical  one step off extinction.

In 2015 Forest & Bird hosted a meeting in Te Puke to launch the campaign to save the frogs and ask the public to make submissions requesting that the area be protected. A community driven, voluntary committee, named Te Whakakaha Conservation Trust, was established to allow discussions about restoration of the quarried area.

Now, after years of collaboration between the Department of Conservation, tangata whenua, the two Forest & Bird branches and the Trust, the land status has been successfully changed from stewardship area to sanctuary area.

The frogs now have a chance and the sanctuary land status provides an opportunity for DOC and the community to restore the frogs habitat, protect it from animal pests and ensure access for the public is restricted to give priority to the frogs recovery and protection, says trustee Carole Long.
Whiritoa could be one of the most at-risk towns of being cut off in an earthquake, according to a local Civil Defence controller.

Hauraki District Councils Steve Fabish made the assessment after visiting the small rural community of Waiau in the South Island.

Waiau is town of approximately 280 people, about 30 kilometres east of Hanmer Springs in North Canterbury. After the Kaikoura earthquake they were cut off by damaged roads and bridges, and had been fending for itself for several days before he arrived.

The community did a great job of self-responding for the first few days. In typical small rural community style, the local primary school was open and serving sausages and coffee within an hour or two of the big shake, he says.

Over the next few days he worked with community stalwarts and other Civil Defence volunteers to organise respite for an exhausted local fire brigade, the distribution of food and water for thirsty families and stock, the establishment of emergency welfare and recovery centres, and robust communication networks.

Steve learnt a lot from the experience, and can see how some communities back home can benefit from being prepared.

He says its not only earthquakes that pose a threat to the Coromandel region.

Even a major weather event could cause movement on that coast road in the way of slips could isolate that community, like many Coromandel communities. So were working with Whiritoa now to have good systems in place to make sure they can cope by themselves if necessary, until we could get help in there.

He says much of the initial response in townships like Whiritoa would be self-driven.

Its called a community response plan. It involves the community managing their own situation.

It basically means ensuring they have enough supplies in the town and have generators to keep the public toilets going, that sort of thing.

Such a community-driven response is what kept Waiau up and running.

They actually self-managed for about three days before Civil Defence could get in.

He says the advice to the public is to take some steps themselves towards preparing for a disaster.

Ideally people should have a go-bag packed and be ready to take responsibility for themselves, their families, and their neighbours in an emergency. They shouldnt be waiting around for us to come in and tell them what to do.
The Knights surged into second place on the McDonalds Super Smash standings, after they defeated the Canterbury Kings at the Bay Oval yesterday afternoon.

Bay of Plenty off-spin bowler Jono Boult again opened the Knights bowling attack, after the visitors won the toss and elected to bat.

The Knights bowlers strangled the Canterbury top order attempts to hit out, to have them three down with just 49 runs on the board after eight overs.

Scott Kuggeleijn sent Ken McClure back to the pavilion, when he propelled the Canterbury batsmans off stump cart -wheeling through the air in the fourth over. Just when Black Cap Peter Fulton was looking to hit out, Jono Boult caught and bowled the Canterbury number four to have the visitors bogged down.

For the second game in a row, Knights new recruit Peter Bocock took another stunning catch to have the Kings in further trouble at 60 for four. Todd Astle steadied the ship to top score with an unbeaten 37, as the Canterbury team reached 127/6 in their allotted overs.

The Knights opening partnership of skipper Dean Brownlie and BJ Watling again took control in their second successive outing at the Bay Oval, to reach the 62 run mark before Brownlie was removed for 36 off just 22 balls.

While three cheap wickets fell, BJ Watling was a rock at the other end, to take his side home to victory with an undefeated 52 runs. Nick Kelly (23no) and Watling combined to produce a 42 run winning partnership.

Victory against the Wellington Firebirds at Seddon Park in Hamilton on Friday, should book the Northern Districts side a berth in the McDonalds Super Smash playoffs, which will be contested on the January 5 and 7, 2017.

McDonalds Super Smash December 29, 2016  Result

Canterbury Kings 127/6 (TD Astle 37no, HM Nicholls 25; Scott Kuggeleijn 2/22, Trent Lawton 2/34) lost to Knights 129/4 (BJ Watling 52no, Dean Brownlie 36, Nick Kelly 23no; TD Astle 2/21)

Points Table:

Central Stags 22, Knights 18, Auckland Aces 16, Canterbury Kings 16, Wellington Firebirds 12, Otago Volts 12.
The Top 100 Movie 2016

Every year, Superyachts.com presents a forecast of the largest yachts to enter the water. This list of yachts - pre-delivery and beyond - shapes the Top 100 as we know it. In 2016, not only did we forecast a fantastic array of yachts, but journeyed the world speaking with their builders, designers and brokers for the insight behind the Superyachts.com Top 100 Movie.

The 2016 American Market Feature

Weve been following American market activity closely since our first re-emergence feature back in Miami 2014. Since then, it has been a huge joy to travel stateside and deliver our informative releases surrounding the activity across America, speaking with industry experts at each Miami and Fort Lauderdale Boat Shows.

BVI InDepth

Created to promote the British Virgin Islands as a superyacht destination, the inaugural edition of InDepth takes readers on a captivating journey through the islands myriad attractions, both natural and man-made. Proudly launched at the Monaco Yacht Show, InDepth is Superyachts.com's first move into print and a publication free for all to read in the link above.

The Monaco Yacht Show Breaking News Centre

Our Round Up of Monaco is something that we continually try to best each year, as is our dedication to bringing you each and every angle of insight possible from the hub of expertise that is the Monaco Yacht Show. Reaching 72 interviews over the four days of the 2016 MYS was no easy feat, but we would not have achieved this without our sponsors, guests and interviewees at the Breaking News Centre village.

America's Cup: BWA Superyacht Programme

Hosting journalists in Leicester Square, London for an exclusive cinema screening to show our BWA Superyacht Programme movie was a highlight of the year. Welcoming names from across Americas Cup, Bermuda Tourism and CEO of BWA Stefano Tositti himself for a Q&A with guests and cocktails after.

Superyachts.com Interviews of 2016

Each and every interview set delivered by Superyachts.com across 2016, as well as before and beyond, has been both a joy and a feat of no small measure to achieve.

Travelling across the world this year alone, weve delivered insights from Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Monaco, China, Italy and Montenegro with people such as HRH Prince Albert II of Monaco, to rockstars such as Simon Le Bon and the Blue Marine Foundation. Its been an incredible year with well over 100 interviews on our roster, with many more to come over 2017.
Black Pearl

Originally dubbed Project Solar, the 106m (347.9ft) Y712 or Black Pearl uses the signature Dyna Rig masts first seen on the 88 metre (288ft) The Maltese Falcon and features stunning a Ken Freivokh and Nuvolari Lenard exterior style. The progressive technology on board, the solar powered sails and the effortless style makes this one of the most important projects to hit the water this year and a milestone for her builders at Oceanco.

Jupiter

This incredible 124 metre (406.8ft) superyacht emerged from the Lurssen Yachts shipyard in the latter phases of 2016 and sparked great intrigue thanks to the revolutionary exterior styling by H2 Yacht Design. While the project entered the water as a mystery, we quickly uncovered the identity to be Jupiter. Secrecy being in Lurssen Yachts DNA, the global media was then baffled once more as two more yachts above 100 metres entered the water just days after.

Galactica Super Nova

Heesen Yachts largest superyacht, Galactica Super Nova measures 70.7m (229.10ft) and made an outstanding impact at both the Monaco and Fort Lauderdale Yacht Shows. The progressive Espen Oeino design and the cutting-edge capabilities of the Heesen engineers combined to create a yacht with high-speeds, sleek exteriors and high-efficiency; not to mention huge front-page coverage across the world.

Aquarius

In its own right, the Dutch yacht builder Feadship should have a dedicated list given their contribution to the global yacht fleet this year; however, few yachts stand out more than the Sinot-designed Aquarius. While both works of art, the 92-metres (301ft) Aquarius makes the list just ahead of the 96m Vertigo - which also arrived this year - due to the cutting-edge lines and sleek modern look.

Joy

The first exterior design to hit the water from London-based design studio Bannenberg & Rowell, Joy was a remarkable introduction to a brand-new style. This 70-metre (229.7ft) triumph features a new level of futuristic design elements with expert Feadship construction and a world of amenities on deck.

Bartali

WIDER Yachts emerged from Italy with new project sets across 2015 and then introduced the WIDER 150 (a.k.a. Bartali) to the water in 2016. After stepping on board for sea trials across Monaco Bay, we discovered the cutting-edge technical prowess which is putting the WIDER Yachts brand at the forefront of a younger generation of owner.

Ulysses

Launched in 2015 and delivered this year, the 107-metre Ulysses finds its way on to this list due on two fronts. Her unrivalled world debut stole the show at the Monaco Yacht Show, but more importantly, her younger and bigger sistership - the 116m Kleven 370 - launched in 2016. The importance of the Kleven style is, only after a short time, now synonymous with adventure yachting.

Sailing Yacht A

While technically launched in 2015, the ongoing sea trials of 2016 means that this yacht continued to hold its importance - and global following - over the following 365 days. Launched by Nobiskrug, the German-built revolution-on-the-water was designed by Philippe Starck, measures 142.80 metres (468.6ft) and split opinions across industry and aficionado; acting as a poster-child for the signature evolution of yachting in 2016.

With so much activity and so many superyachts to choose from, these are just some of the revolutionary yachts we've seen enter the water this year. Think we've missed any? We'd love to hear your thoughts for a follow up list. So, feel free to get in touch via our Facebook, Twitter or Instagram feed. Alternatively, you can get in touch over email here.
After several days of a constant barrage from all sides in the United States  including attacks from fellow Democrats, though these were primarily just for show  failed to show signs of letting up, Secretary John Kerry (D-Cervelo) took to the airwaves to justify the administrations actions.

The prior week, the Obama administrations representative at the United Nations  Ambassador Samantha Power  engineered the passage of a remarkably anti-Israel resolution at the UN. The resolution condemns Israel for building housing units on its own land, and grants legal status (to the extent that the United Nations has such power, which of course is dubious) to the Palestinian Authority, a terrorist organization guilty of a decades-long crime wave on that very soil.

On December 28, 2016, the outgoing Secretary of State of the outgoing Obama administration held a press conference. He spoke to the cameras for almost an hour and a half, hoping to wear down his opposition on one of the great political miscalculations of modern times.

The Resolution

Lets begin by clarifying what this latest resolution means. The kleptocrats, one-worlders, pedophiles and other petty criminals who make up the United Nations are well known for their anti-Jewish bias; the organization has been a hotbed of anti-Semitism for as long as it has existed (see Pedro Sanjuans splendid book, The U.N. Gang, for details). The U.N. is always writing new resolutions and reawakening old ones, to act out their ancient bigotry.

The United States has a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, so a part of the U.S. Ambassadors job has, for decades, been to veto all the stupid, shortsighted, anti-American, and anti-Semitic resolutions that his or her fellow ambassadors propose. Since the U.S. has the power to veto anything the U.N. proposes, for this to have passed proves that the Obama administration approved it.

More than that, however, intelligence indicates that the Obama administration was actually behind this particular resolution. The Democratic Party knows they could not survive voting for it, but if they let it be known that they would pass on the resolution and not use their veto, there would be nothing to stop another country from proposing it, so thats exactly what happened.

Resolution 2334  as John Kerry explained with pride  finally deals with the problem of the ages: the fact that Israel has been building housing units on land that it won fifty years ago, some 30,000 apartments and homes over the past few years, despite the fact that the U.N. never gave its permission to do so (as if such permission should be needed!). Resolution 2334 declares this land  Judea and Samaria, East Jerusalem, and Gaza  to be the proper land of the Palestinian Authority, off-limits to Israel. Kerry maintains that the U.N. had no choice but to cede this land to the Palestinian Authority, and that we shouldnt accuse the Obama administration of anti-Semitism for it, because after all, the administration has sometimes defended Israel in the past.

A weak argument, and an odd justification, when it is abundantly clear that this one action renders irrelevant any good that the administration had done in the U.N. during the last eight years. Israel is utterly undefendable without Judea and Samaria. The Palestinian Authority has been nothing but a terrorist organization, raising its children to hate non-muslims, sending suicide bombers against Israeli civilians, even shooting rockets and other weapons into Israel, often on a daily basis.

And this  the Palestinian Authority  is the entity that the Obama administration chooses to reward, by orchestrating what is intended to be a death sentence for the majority-Jewish state of Israel.

The Two-State Solution

All this foolishness is based on a warped political theory, one which has been presented to the West for 50 years, but which is utterly unfounded: it is known as the Two-State Solution.

The idea  which both the Republican and Democratic Parties of the United States have long supported  is that after World War II ended, and the horrific attempted genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of Germanys National Socialists (NAZIs) was fully understood, the area of the Middle East known as Palestine ought to be split into two countries, one for the palestinian muslims who had been there for centuries, and one as a homeland for the worlds Jews.

And the claim  central to the Leftist and islamist position  is that this split has never happened that the Israelis have refused to abide by the deal, and have instead denied these decent, honorable palestinian arabs their half of the country.

The problem is that its all a lie three key lies, in fact:

The palestinian muslims have never dealt with Israel in good faith. They started out by joining Israels neighbors in attacking Israel the day Israel became an independent nation in 1948. Every agreement with them has led to a return to violence; the palestinian muslim leadership has uniformly cheered on its member groups  first the PLO, then Hamas, then Fatah, and others  every time theyve performed a suicide bombing or rocket attack. Treaty or no treaty, the palestinian muslims have been a terrorist organization, nothing more. Not exactly the kind of people whom any sane arbiter would choose to empower with their own nation.

The claim that Palestinian muslims had been there for centuries is utter hogwash. By the mid 1800s, the area known as the Palestinian Mandate in the first half of the 20th century was largely empty. Mid-19th century travelogues such as those of Mark Twain reported how barren the area we call the Holy Land was at the time. There were still Jewish towns, certainly, as there had been for millennia, but arabs tended to live to the west, in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and beyond, and to the east, in Lebanon, Persia and beyond. Only after the global Zionist movement started a return of the Jews in the late 1800s did muslims start moving into the area again, in search of jobs. For the most part, the palestinian muslims who claim to have been displaced since 1948 had only been there a generation or two themselves.

Most importantly, the Two State Solution has already been done; it is already in place! In 1948, the old British Mandate was split into two countries; Israel to the west, and the Kingdom of Transjordan, now simply known as Jordan, to the east. As the homeland for native palestinians, Jordan got the lions share of the land; Israel hardly got any. But Israel accepted it, and tried its best to make do with the fraction of land left to it. Both Jordan and Israel exist to this day, some 68 years later.

So when the islamists and their stooges in Washington claim they favor a two-state solution, they are lying: What they really favor is a three-state solution, because they want to leave Jordan alone, and just split Israel in half to create yet another country for the Palestinians.

And where would that leave the region? In peace? There would be no peace after such a split. With Israel returned to undefendable borders, and with the Palestinian terrorists empowered by U.N. endorsement, it would be 1948 all over again; the arabs would be sure to start another war, or at least another intifada.

Because in fact, the goal is not a two-state solution at all or a three-state solution, or even a four-state solution. There are currently over 23 muslim nations in that region, and even that isnt enough for them. Their goal has nothing to do with how many muslim nations there are. Their goal is to change the number of Jewish states there are.

Make no mistake: what the islamists really want has never changed; they demand a No State Solution for the Jews.

The Palestinians and the Israelis

If there is one thing we should be sure of, from our vantage point in the West, it is that people are people at birth. Blessed by the marvelous arrangement our Founders set in place for us, we enjoy equality under the law and equal opportunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the United States regardless of whether one is born rich or poor, black or white, Hispanic or Asian, white collar or blue collar.

Once one is born, however, the changes begin. Environment plays a role. Even here in America, the child born into a Welfare State existence is likely to remain in it the child born into a crime gang is likely to adopt the affiliation of his parents the blue collar child may grow up a hard worker in the factories, the white collar child may grow up an equally hard-working entrepreneur or professional. We are all alike in the womb, but once the doctor welcomes us with that first spank, environment takes over.

By the same token, the environments of the Israelis and the palestinians are critically different. However much two children may be alike before theyre born, the few miles that separate a Fatah neighborhood from a Likud neighborhood make all the difference in the world.

Israeli children  Jewish, Christian, or muslim  are raised with an appreciation of republican government, a fondness for the free market, a mutual respect for people of different faiths and ethnicities. By contrast, the palestinian children raised in the lands controlled by Fatah and Hamas are raised with jealousy, hatred, and bigotry. The Palestinian Authority has ensured there would be madrassahs and community centers to indoctrinate their youth from birth, to believe that suicide bombings and other such terrorist acts are the godliest of acts, the very ticket out of this world and into Paradise.

Where on earth can one find middle ground between two such groups? And what kind of a politician could be so suicidal as to empower these Palestinians with the tacit approval of having their own nation?

The Israeli-American Relationship

Middle East relations represent the problem with the American Lefts worldview in a microcosm.

Clearly, there are differences between cultures  some are good, some are bad, some are mixed. There are cultures that are utterly destructive and abusive to women, to other races, to minority religions and castes. And there are cultures that at least make an honest effort to treat both men and women with respect, both the young and old with respect, both the majority and minority religions and occupations with respect.

The muslim countries of the world, especially the most sharia-based ones, the ones ruled by the islamists as theocracies, fall into the abusive category of cultures. They may be a great place in which to be a mullah, or a huge landowner, or a businessman, but they are a terrible place to be a woman, an Indian, a Bahaii, Christian or Jew. Its not just about voting rights, but about the protection of the rule of law, the right to practice ones religion or to speak, write, or assemble freely. Such lands are virtual prisons for the wives, children and slaves their society abuses.

By contrast, Israel is a western republic, with voting rights for all citizens  Jewish, Christian, muslim, Hindu, etc. Muslims serve in the Knesset, and serve as mayors and aldermen all over the country. (Try naming a majority-muslim country in which Jews can say the same)

Israels freedoms of press and assembly would be recognizable to any student of the American Founding Fathers; Israel respects property rights, the sanctity of contract, the duties inherent in signed treaties Israel is so like the United States, in so many ways, that two of their prime ministers were raised here; both Golda Meir and Binyamin Netanyahu spent their childhoods in the United States.

For this reason, we have a special relationship with Israel, a relationship based not on the friendship between a couple of ambassadors or heads of state, but a relationship based on similar worldviews.

The American dream  in foreign policy terms  has long been for a replication of the Israeli model across the Middle East. We have dreamed of other countries seeing Israels success, and copying that form of government, that engine of entrepreneurship, that open and respectful society.

And the United States Ambassador to the United Nations has always known that his or her job is to use the bully pulpit of the UN to encourage such a spread of the freedom philosophy around the world.

Until now.

The Democrats

The Democratic Party has long danced a dangerous dance. They abandoned principle  years ago, perhaps generations ago  in support of their desire for electoral victories. They built an array of wedge issues to win donor blocks and voting blocks... and it usually worked.

But the Obama administration went too far, and exposed the dirty secret: for decades, Democrats had been building ties with very anti-American interests: the Wahabi islamists of Saudi Arabia may build a lot of radical mosques, but their money is green. The Chinese communists may practice bribery at the highest levels at election time, blatantly violating Federal Election Campaign law, but their money is green. The Russians may want control of our uranium mines; the Chinese may want to build our power turbines; the Iranians may want planes and satellites that could be used for either civilian or military purposes, but hey, their money is green too.

The need to win elections drove the Democrats to sell out our country and our allies, again and again, and again in recent years. Their regulations and taxes have killed tens of millions of manufacturing jobs; theyve supervised the migration of whole industries to foreign shores. And theyve weakened our friends in Europe and Israel, leaving them susceptible from attack by enemies that we  through the Obama administration  have empowered.

Its been going on for years, but only in the final weeks of the Obama administration has the tarp been torn back, revealing the true heart of the modern Democratic party. They will sell out their own people, their alleged friends and supporters, their nation and its allies, for the resources that help them win elections. And their joy at Barack Obamas back-to-back national victories blinded them to the reality of how destructive his policies have been.

Barack Obama  and his foreign policy staff  have undone decades of efforts by better administrations to bring peace to the world. This current crop of Democrats has empowered our enemies, and our allies enemies, and sat back as churches and synagogues burn, as thousands are slaughtered, as whole nations weaken and cultures diminish.

The Obama administration has one final parting shot still  they have set the chess pieces in place for a January 2017 summit to recognize statehood for their terrorist friends in the palestinian authority. What is their endgame? To provoke a war with Israel? To disrupt the policy agenda of the incoming Trump administration? To endorse and enable the spread of sharia across the United States?

Whatever their intended endgame, one thing is certain: the modern Democratic Party has demonstrated its utter moral bankruptcy for all to see. That party must never again be trusted with the reins of power.

January 20 cannot come soon enough.

Copyright 2016 John F. Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based international trade expert, writer and actor. His columns are regularly found in Illinois Review. Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included.
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Bixby, the name of the artificial intelligence-powered digital voice assistant that Samsung will be incorporating into the upcoming Galaxy S8, has been the subject of various rumors ever since it was first reported.

An exclusive report by SamMobile sheds more light into how Samsung is planning to use Bixby in the Galaxy S8, after the company's acquisition of AI startup Viv Labs in October.

Bixby In All Galaxy S8 Native Apps

Samsung will be using Bixby, powered by Viv's AI, in almost all the native apps of the Galaxy S8 that come pre-installed in the upcoming flagship smartphone, according to SamMobile. Bixby is said to be a very advanced digital assistant compared with the previously used S Voice technology, and it will be working throughout the entire system of the Galaxy S8.

One of the examples given on how Bixby will work in the Galaxy S8 is that the digital assistant can be used within the smartphone's Gallery app to request to search for pictures and videos that would meet certain criteria. Bixby, like Google Assistant and Apple's Siri, will be able to answer questions and perform tasks based on context.

With Bixby to run throughout the entire Galaxy S8 system, Samsung will be changing the user interface of the company's first-party apps in the smartphone into a design that gives them a more unified look, the report added.

How Will Google React To Bixby?

Samsung will be replacing S Voice with Bixby, with the new digital assistant to offer much more than what the previous technology is capable of doing. What Bixby can do are not exactly groundbreaking features, as most of them can also be performed through Google Assistant and Apple's Siri, but the big question is how Google will react to Samsung's introduction of Bixby to the Galaxy S8.

Google is heavily pushing for users to begin utilizing Google Assistant, so there will certainly be a clash within the Android-powered Galaxy S8 on which digital assistant should take center stage. Samsung is the biggest Android hardware partner for Google, but will Google strain that relationship by forcing Google Assistant over Bixby?

The problem is that Google legally could. As previously reported, in a patent-sharing agreement signed between Google and Samsung in 2014, there was a non-compete provision that prevents Samsung from releasing services in its smartphones that will compete with Google's offerings.

How the brewing conflict between Bixby and Google Assistant in the Galaxy S8 will be resolved remains to be seen, though we will know more about it once the rumored release date of April 2017 comes.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
As previously reported, the Nexus 6P is experiencing several issues that some fear are part of a move to age the device prematurely.

Now, one of its problems involving battery drainage curiously manifested itself in some Google Pixel devices, further complicating the issue and possible attempts to develop a fix.

Google Pixel's Early Shutdown Problem

The report first surfaced at Reddit as user vrski_15 started a thread asking for help since his 32 GB Google Pixel has been recently shutting down even when it still has enough juice to power 3 to 4 hours of usage.

"Twice in last 5 days, has the phone shutdown abruptly while I am in middle of something," the Reddit user posted. "In both instances, battery was between 25-35% ... the customer service wasn't really helpful. All they could come up was that I should factory reset my phone and wait for it to happen again, and then visit them."

The Reddit thread would have been dismissed as an isolated incident but more users began posting that their Pixels are also suffering the same issue.

"It's a shame because it was really great before this. Right now I'm at 50% and 1 hour SOT," another poster stated. "This is unacceptable."

One should note that the Pixel early shutdown bug seemed to have manifested after the Android 7.1.1 update whereas the problem started for several Nexus 6P after the installation of the Android 7.0 Nougat version.

There are reports that some Pixel handsets are also experiencing a freezing issue.

Poor Customer Support

Affected users have also been complaining about the Google customer support service since the fixes that the support staff were able to suggest are not solving the problem.

Nexus 6P owners could only hope for the best now that Google's flagship is experiencing the same bug. They have been suffering for some time since the battery drainage issue emerged several months ago. What is particularly jarring for these customers is the way the issue has been labeled as low priority at Google's support page.

Google's Pseudo-Fix

A Google technician finally responded at Reddit in the latter part of December, urging Nexus 6P owners to contact Google Store Support. Without any other options, these users called the suggested resource only to find that they have to wait several days more for Google to determine how to handle the case.

This suggests that the company has been sitting on the problem since the very first round of complaints hit their hotlines in October when the Nougat update for the Nexus 6P was released and triggered the early shutdown bug.

Observers believe that the early shutdown is caused by the Android 7.0 Nougat update and could be easily resolved by a firmware patch. So far, the company has not released any official statement regarding the issue.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Health officials in New Hampshire revealed on Tuesday, Dec. 27, that a former psychiatric patient at a state hospital posted thousands of pieces of private information on a social media website.

Jeffrey Meyers, commissioner of the state's Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), said the patient used a computer in the New Hampshire Hospital's library in October 2015 to illegally access the personal data of 15,000 individuals who had received services from the department.

During that time, one of the hospital staff noticed that the culprit discovered nonconfidential information on the department and informed a supervisor about it. However, the incident was never reported to the hospital's management or to the state.

Confidential Information Breach

As early as August 2016 there had been indications that the psychiatric patient may have posted some of the illegally retrieved information online.

A security officer at the New Hampshire Hospital told the state that the individual may have already done so, but no evidence of a breach was found during the subsequent investigation.

The posting, however, was later confirmed after hospital security found that the patient had indeed added the breached confidential information online. They informed authorities about it in November.

Officials said the personal data included the names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of people who had received services from the DHHS. Authorities removed all of the confidential information online within 24 hours and launched a criminal investigation immediately.

There is no evidence that the private data was misused or that any of the banking or credit card information was accessed.

The DHHS is already contacting individuals who may have been affected by the data breach. It also advises that any person who received services from the department before November 2015 to review their bank and credit statements and monitor their credit for any suspicious activity.

Reviewing Computer Systems And Data Policies

Meyers offered an apology to individuals possibly affected by the data breach. He also assured that the DHHS takes the privacy and security of its clients' confidential information seriously.

The DHHS informed clients that steps are being undertaken to find out what happened exactly and to mitigate any of its potential effects. Officials have also begun reviewing the department's computer systems, procedures and policies.

Jake Leon, a spokesman for the DHHS, clarified that the breached confidential information involved records of clients who received services from the department. It does not include private data of patients at the New Hampshire Hospital.

He said the leaked data included a combination of names, addresses, Social Security numbers or Medicaid ID numbers.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Aliens may be communicating to us in the form of fast radio burst (FRB) signals, scientists believe.

Two separate groups of astronomers have recently discovered radio bursts coming from the Auriga constellation, which is about 3 billion light years away from the Milky Way galaxy.

According to a report filed in The Astrophysical Journal, the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia discovered five radio bursts coming from the Auriga constellation, which has been dubbed by researchers as FRB 121102. Another one was discovered by an observer from the Arecibo Conservatory in Puerto Rico.

Other FBRs coming from the same region were also discovered earlier this year as well as in 2012, upping the total number of FRBs discovered to 17. This number is significant considering that this is the only known instance that the FBR signals came from the same location.

A single instance of FRB can be easily explained, but seventeen FRBs that all came from the same region could indicate that something else is at play.

What Are Fast Radio Bursts?

A fast radio burst is an astrophysical phenomenon that occurs when a transient radio signal materializes for only a fraction of a second on space. This kind of radio signals are extraordinarily bright but are short on duration, making them very hard to document and study.

What Science Has To Say About FBRs

John Learned, a physicist from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, argued in a paper that repeating FRBs have a 1 in 2,000 chance of being coincidental. The paper also mentioned that FRBs are a result of either a dense star or a manmade spy satellite that disguises the signals it makes by making them appear as though they came from deep space.

For most observers, the frequent radio bursts coming from the Auriga constellation means that it is not a one-time event that happened due to an explosion or a collision between stars.

Scientists also say that these mysterious radio signals could be the cause of solar flares coming out of a neuron star. On the other hand, some astronomers believe that this is the work of an extra-terrestrial trying to make its presence felt.

A Word Of Caution From Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking is less enthusiastic and cautious on the topic of aliens, and would probably avoid delving deeper into the FRB phenomena. For him, it will be better if we leave aliens alone and try not to establish any contact with them. In an interview, the physicist firmly believes that once discovered, the Earth will be attacked and colonized by aliens.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome could be much like when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," said Hawking.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Researchers have discovered that individuals who undergo a weight loss procedure known as laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass are likely to develop food intolerance and lasting digestive problems.

In a study featured in the journal British Journal of Surgery, Dr. Thomas Boerlage and his colleagues at MC Slotervaart in the Netherlands examined the effects of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery on extremely obese individuals.

Laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass is a medical procedure wherein the size of the patient's stomach is reduced, making it as small as an egg-sized pouch.

Despite being a difficult operation to perform, the surgery became popular because of its associated benefits such as less scarring, minimal incisional hernia risk, reduced discomfort, faster recovery time, and a shortened hospital stay for the recipient.

Laparoscopic Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass

For their study, Boerlage and his team analyzed medical data from more than 200 extremely obese patients who had undergone Roux-en-Y gastric bypass.

The researchers wanted to confirm if the weight loss procedure does indeed cause an aggravation of gastrointestinal problems following the operation. Previous studies have only examined its impact on the health of patients one year after the surgery.

By examining data from two years after the gastric bypass, the research team discovered that patients were able to lose as much as 31 percent of their total body weight on average.

However, when compared to those of 295 obese individuals who didn't undergo the weight loss procedure and served as the control group, the gastric bypass patients had a higher likelihood to develop indigestion and lose the ability to tolerate multiple foods.

Boerlage and his colleagues also surveyed both the gastric bypass patients and members of the control group for 16 different digestive problems. They discovered that those who received the procedure had an average of 2.2 gastrointestinal symptoms, while those from the control group had only 1.8.

Most of the weight loss patients suffered from digestive problems such as flatulence, belching, stomach gurgling, indigestion, and hard or loose stools.

Members of the control group, on the other hand, experienced issues with hunger pains.

As many as 71 percent of weight loss patients developed a tolerance for food such as fried foods, pastries, and carbonated drinks. The 17 percent from the control group that developed similar food tolerance pointed to fried foods and milk as the ones most problematic.

The researchers weren't able to find a direct correlation between the amount of weight shed and the number of food intolerances experienced by the participants.

Boerlage and his team also noted that their study only involved a small number of participants. They also lacked enough data on the patients' symptoms before they underwent gastric bypass surgery, which makes it difficult to find out what gastrointestinal issue was caused by the procedure.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Three years after Ford launched its first-ever Fusion Hybrid autonomous research car, the car manufacturing company is now planning to release a new version of it in January 2017.

Ford will be debuting its self-driving Fusion Hybrid sedan just in time for the CES 2017 trade show in Las Vegas and the North American International Auto Show in Detroit next month.

In August this year, Ford announced its plans to come up with a self-sufficient, self-driving, and fully autonomous car by the year 2021. The cars are intended to be used in the ride-sharing space.

According to Chris Brewer, chief program engineer of Ford, the new version of the Fusion Hybrid sedan will still be using the Ford Autonomous vehicle platform. The company has also improved two main things on the updated version: the processing power and sensor technology.

"It's been three years since we hit the streets with our first Fusion Hybrid autonomous research vehicle, and this latest version takes everything we learned and builds on it," Brewer said.

Processing Power

The processor of the next-generation Fusion Hybrid is now located in the trunk of the car, and it is pretty impressive: the car now comes with more powerful hardware that can generate 1 terabyte of data per hour. This will come in handy during street navigation and object recognition while driving.

LiDAR Sensors

Ford was able to cut down the number of LiDAR sensors on the car from four to two. The dual sensors are now attached to an insect antennae-like contraption just above the sideview mirrors of the car. Each sensor provides the car with a 360-degree view and allows it to have a targeted field of vision of up to 200 feet in every direction. There are now three cameras on the roof and a fourth one beneath the windshield, which will provide a steady stream of images of pedestrians and vehicles to help the car drive by itself.

Other Competitors

Other car manufacturers are also coming up with their own versions of driverless cars. GM said that it will soon be testing its Chevrolet Bolts on open roads, while Google's Self-Driving Car project (now called Waymo) claims that its cars have already driven more than 2 million miles. Ford could also be facing competition from Uber's self-driving cabs and Tesla's AutoPilot.

Ford is now planning to build at least 90 Fusion Hybrid self-driving cars, which will be test-driven in both closed and public roads in Arizona, California, and Michigan. The company hopes that these cars can be used by ridesharing services by 2021.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Panasonic has announced plans to invest $256 million in Elon Musk's electric car company Tesla. The funding will be used to finance and boost Tesla's production plant in Buffalo, New York. The facility currently makes photovoltaic cells and modules.

This investment move by Panasonic is seen by many as a way to strengthen the company's partnership with Tesla, as well as a strategic move away from producing consumer electronics to focus more on doing business with corporate clients.

After the deal was announced, Tesla's shares increased by 3 percent to $219.84.

Panasonic And Tesla's Partnership

In a joint statement on Tuesday, the two companies said they are reinforcing a long-time commitment to each other and will start the production of solar cells and modules in the summer of 2017. These products will be used to create solar panels and solar glass tile roofs. Research and development for Tesla's solar roof tiles are now in progress in the company's factory in Fremont, California.

"When production of the solar roof begins, Tesla will also incorporate Panasonic's cells into the many kinds of solar glass tile roofs that Tesla will be manufacturing," said Tesla in a blog post. "All of these solar products will work seamlessly with Tesla's energy storage products, Powerwall, and Powerpack."

The agreement will allow Panasonic to cover the capital costs incurred in Tesla's Buffalo facility. In return, Tesla will be making a long-term commitment to exclusively buy solar cells and modules from Panasonic. The said investment will increase the New York facility's output to 1 gigawatt by 2019. It will also create 1,400 new jobs in the plant, 500 of which will involve jobs in the manufacturing field.

Panasonic is also working with Tesla on the latter's Gigafactory in Nevada. The company serves as Tesla's exclusive supplier of lithium-ion batteries for its electric cars such as the Model S, Model X, and the up-and-coming Model 3, which is now being touted as the company's first affordable, mass market electric car.

SolarCity Is Acquired By Tesla

The Buffalo production plant has been funded $900 million due to an economic development initiative started by the New York government. It was recently acquired by Tesla from SolarCity, but will still operate under its founding company's name.

Once the 1.2 million square foot facility becomes fully operational, it will produce as many as 10,000 units of photovoltaic modules per day, making it the largest manufacturer in North America.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
It has been quite an interesting for the Indian smartphone market. With the launch of affordable 4G handsets, LTE connectivity saw rapid expansion. The boom in the e-commerce sector further facilitated the mobile phone business to grow. Mobile phones with biometrics became readily available at cheaper rates, which once seemed like a distant dream a few years back. Of course, all this was spearheaded by emerging brands from our neighbouring country. Xiaomi, OnePlus, Lenovo, Honor, and Le Eco received warm welcome in India. Heres how they stack-up in terms of sales.



Xiaomi Redmi Note 3

Price: Rs 9999 (16 GB); Rs 11,999 (32 GB)

The Redmi Note 3 has become the best-selling online handset in India. The all-round performance of this budget friendly smartphone has helped it catapult its position.

Lets take a look at its features:

Aircraft grade all aluminum body construction

Dual SIM (Micro-SIM/Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)

5.5-inch IPS screen, Resolution- 1080 x 1920 pixels

Qualcomm MSM8956 Snapdragon 650

Card Slot- MicroSD, up to 256 GB (uses SIM 2 slot)

2 GB RAM and 16 GB internal storage / 3 GB RAM and 32 GB internal storage.

Cameras: 16-megapixel main, 5-megapixel selfie

Fingerprint Sensor

Li-Po 4050 mAh battery







OnePlus 3

Price: Rs. 27,999 (64 GB)

The OnePlus 3 has given most flagship phones a run for their money. It is a prime example of a value product that does not cut corners when it comes to the quality and features:

5.5-inch AMOLED screen, with Full HD resolution

Aircraft grade aluminium unibody construction

Ceramic coated Fingerprint scanner

16-megapixel primary camera, 8-megapixel front-facing snapper

Oxygen OS based on Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 operating system

Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset

6 GB RAM, 64 GB internal storage

3000 mAh battery with Dash Charge







Lenovo Vibe K4 Note

Price: Rs 10,999 (16 GB)

Lenovos answer to the Redmi Note 3 runs Android 5.1 Lollipop. Dubbed as the Vibe K4 Note, the phone features a 5.5-inch Full HD screen. However, it is backed by the not-so-reliable MediaTek chipset.

5.5-inch Full HD IPS screen

TheaterMax technology and Dolby Atmos surround speakers

13-megapixel camera with 5P lens element, 5-megapixel front-camera

Mediatek 6753 chipset

3 GB RAM, 16 GB internal storage

3300 mAH Li-ion battery with Fast charger 2.0







Honor 5X Price

Price: Rs 12,999 (16 GB)

Thanks to the Honor line-up, Huawei had a great run in 2016. Especially, the Honor 5X did quite well in the first half of the year.

5.5-inch IPS screen with Full HD resolution

Full aluminium body

Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2 chip

2 GB RAM, 16 GB internal storage, microSD card slot

13-megapixel main camera, 5-megapixel selfie camera

Android v5.1 Lollipop operating system

3000 mAH battery with smart power 3.0 technology







Coolpad Note 5

Price: Rs 10,999 (32 GB)

Thanks to Coolpad, Indian consumers had one more option in the budget category. Much like its competitors, the handset boasts of full metal body. It specifications are as follows:

5.5 inch Full HD IPS Full HD screen

Android 6.0 + CoolUI 8.0 operating system

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 617 MSM8952 chip

4 GB RAM, 32 GB internal storage, microSD card slot

13-megapixel camera, 8-megapixel front-facing snapper with flash

Fingerprint sensor, accelerometer, proximity, compass

4010 mAh battery







Though Ajinkya mostly writes about gadgets, he prefers things that guzzle gasoline more than those running on lithium-ion batteries. He is a content guy at Couponraja.in

Xiaomi, Coolpad, OnePlus
Gadgets are created by using the technological ingenuity, which enables us to perform daily tasks efficiently. Sometimes though, these devices want to marry luxury and the outcome is ridiculously expensive price tags. The sole purpose then is, well, to flaunt the hordes of money one doesnt know how to spend. Here we bring five insanely expensive gadgets you can still buy in 2016 that are either luxurious in the eyes of few, or pure snake-oil.



Vertu Signature Touch

Talk about luxury mobile phones and Vertu is the first name that pops-up in anyones mind. From a hardware and software point of view, these phones offer nothing out of the ordinary. For instance, the Signature touch series is powered by the Snapdragon (not a typo) 810 chipset, 5.2-inch Full HD screen protected by sapphire crystal, 64 GB internal storage, 4 GB RAM, and Qi wireless charging running. The phone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system. However, it costs between  9000 to  18 000 depending on what materials you choose. Luxury is subjective, hard to quantify. According to Vertus perspective, luxurious means a choice between calf, lizard and alligator leather accents with titanium or red gold metal construction in various finishes. Owning the phone gets you access to Vertus dedicated concierge who promise to make your every wish come true. You would also get privileged access to exceptional events and personal dining experiences especially handpicked for you. At the end of your experience you still foot the bill though. That is not all, you would also get their limited access to a global Wi-Fi network  because even international roaming data-connection charges are beyond stupidly expensive.







Solid Platinum iPad 1st gen

Stuart Hughes is an English man who in started with the simple idea of letting technology embrace luxury. So simple that, one of his companys product includes a solid platinum iPad 1st gen that has diamonds encrusted on the Apple logo. The price of this rare earth iPad is 300000! Basically we could include every item from his companys catalogue in this article as each one of them costs a fortune. They also made most expensive phone in the world by modifying iPhone 4S with the most rare gem and metal they could lay their hands on. If you wonder whether it made the iPhone scratch resistance, then the answer is no. You might want to consider buying their alligator skin luxury mobile phone case.







AudioQuest Diamond HDMI cable

For a change, this product is not build out of gold. It does have a diamond though, but only in its name. Audioquest, the company behind this $1500 HDMI cable claims it has a bunch of tech to make your audio-video experience better than all other cables. However, the brand also mention that its other 30$ HDMI cables also transfer 100% of the video. Therefore, going by the trend so far, simply using the word diamond in a product name can make it costly.







Pono player

Pono player was launched on Kickstarter by raising millions with one promise for music lovers  enjoy music exactly as the artist created it, at the recording resolution they chose in the studio. This Toblerone shaped music player now retains around $330 on Amazon.com. It supports FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, AAC and DSD music formats and also lossless playback up to 192/24 bit resolution via an Ayre DAC. You can store songs on its 64 GB internal memory. Unfortunately, this music player failed to impress anyone considering the price-point.







Apple Watch Edition

More and more companies are beginning to believe that luxury comes with exquisite design and materials. Apple is no exception. If you have around $1300 to spare, then you can buy their Apple Watch Edition made from white ceramic case.







Durgesh Kawale is a wannabe scientist completing his PhD at the Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. You can reach out to him on twitter: @durgeshkawale

vertu, Apple
Samsung To Unveil Galaxy A Series (2017) On Jan 5 | TechTree.com

It looks like Samsung is sending out media invites for an event to be held on January 5. As you can see in this media invite attached in this story, Samsung has clearly mentioned about Galaxy A 2017 edition, and the venue is not visible, though it is shown that, it is held somewhere in Kuala Lumpur.

The company is, however, not giving complete details, and instead, we can see vague information in the invite. Samsung has put it bluntly that it is going to reveal an all-new Samsung Galaxy A Series (2017) smartphone. We still do not know whether it is going to be one smartphone or two, or how many for that matter.

However, the upcoming A-series devices from Samsung are said to feature powerful hardware with water resistance, along with better front and back camera modules, according to a post published on GSMArena.

[Image via Gadgets 360]

In-fact, a lot of buzz has been spreading around recently, about the new A Series smartphones to be unveiled in 2017. We may have to wait and watch for the actual event to see what phone(s) will the company unveil.

Having said this, we can make a rough expectation considering the recent leaks and rumours we have witnessed, and expect the company to unveil Galaxy A7, Galaxy A5, Galaxy A3 smartphones. Keep in mind, all 2017 editions.

Source

TAGS: Samsung
Israeli Scientists Develop A Breathalyser That Can Detect 17 Diseases | TechTree.com

Israel is hard to beat when it comes to innovations. A team of scientists at the Israel Institute of Technology, led by Hossam Haick, have built a breathalyser that that can diagnose up to 17 diseases including certain type of cancer.







For over a couple of thousand years, physicians evaluated their patient's condition based on breath. Instead of physician's expertise though, the newly developed system uses complex AI (Artificial Intelligence) to search for patterns that hint at a certain disease. The breathalyser has an array of sensitive gold nanoparticles, which react differently with nearly 100 volatile compounds each person breaths out. Scientists have run this test twice on more than 1400 patients.







The experiments show that the device can achieve 86 percent accuracy. For the breathalyser to be deployed at the clinics, it needs to reach the 99 percent accuracy. Let's hope that happens soon, so that people will no longer have to go through painful diagnostics tests that involve blood samples.

TAGS: Science
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Sharon Weston Broome recently won the distinction of being the first female who East Baton Rouge voters elected to the parish's top leadership position. But six decades earlier, another woman beat her to the title of first female mayor-president.

Mary Jones Webb was sworn in as Baton Rouge's mayor-president after her husband, former East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Jesse L. Webb, Jr., died in a plane crash on April 28, 1956. Webb served the remaining seven-and-a-half months left in her husband's term as she juggled being a single mother of four with the parish's top leadership post.

"Our lives kind of changed a little bit because she had to get someone to help at home because she was a stay-at-home mom before then," recalled her daughter, Cathy Webb Forest, who is now 68 and lives in San Antonio.

The Webbs met at a Baptist church in Baton Rouge during World War II. They were married "at 18 or 19," their daughter said, and Jesse Webb, Jr. went on to join the U.S. Army, study law at LSU and pass the bar exam. His father, Jesse Webb Sr., was the East Baton Rouge Parish assessor.

Forest said her dad was a natural in politics. He was 30 when he started his term in 1953 as the youngest mayor-president in East Baton Rouge Parish history  a record he still holds. He was also the first to hold the title of "mayor-president," with the title being simply "mayor" before him.

An outgoing man, Webb, Jr. enjoyed having neighbors over for crawfish boils and liked walking neighborhoods and telling voters about his plans for Baton Rouge, his daughter said.

One of Webb's early ordinances made national news. He passed a law that eased restrictions on Jim Crow bus seating, and allowed black people to ride in front seats of buses after back seats were full, Jet Magazine reported in 1953. White bus drivers went on strike to protest the ordinance, and the state's attorney general struck it down. Black riders then began a boycott of the public bus system, and the Baton Rouge bus boycott of 1953 has since become a landmark of the national civil rights movement.

Webb was 33 and in the final year of his term when he took a trip to Lansing, Michigan, for a conference at Michigan State University on metropolitan problems. Joining him were LSU professor Kimbrough Owen and special Sheriff's Deputy Paul Pittman, who piloted their plane.

Their plane lost a wing, crashed to the ground and exploded, killing all three inside of it in Michigan, the Morning Advocate reported on April 28, 1956.

Forest was only eight years old, but she remembers it vividly  how she had begged her dad not to take the trip because she would miss him, the phone call to her mother, the bulletins flashing across the black-and-white television to let the city know their mayor was dead.

She remembers being ushered to a neighbor's house to spend the night, and how she and her younger sister, Charlotte, climbed out of a window and sneaked back home. It was buzzing with people who had come with food and condolences.

A week after Webb's death, Metro Council members offered the job to his widow in the living room of the couple's Clinton Avenue home off Winbourne Avenue. The city-parish's Plan of Government allowed the Metro Council to appoint a mayor-president to fill a term with less than a year left to serve.

Mary Jones Webb was just 32 when she closed her eyes, bowed her head and prayed before taking the oath of office. She wore a beige linen sheath, a black bolero and a beige linen hat with clusters of cherries on it, the Advocate wrote  and Forest said her mother was known to have a "certain fashion flair."

Mary Webb said it was "a great honor" to take over her husband's position and that she was humbled to do it.

"She is an outstanding lady and is eminently qualified to fulfill his term," former councilman W.D. McCants was quoted as saying at the time. "My endorsement of Mrs. Webb was not motivated by charity, but by the honor that it would bestow upon her and her late husband and at the same time give her an opportunity to serve the people of Baton Rouge and the parish of East Baton Rouge for this brief period of time."

Forest said her sharp, gregarious mother thrived serving as mayor-president. She hired a housekeeper to take care of the kids when she was at work, but worked mostly normal hours. Council members occasionally came over to the house to do business on weekends, rather than making Webb go to City Hall.

Being mayor-president also had some perks for the kids. Forest recalled her mom pulling her daughters out of school once so they could meet the famous actor Jock Mahoney. Forest got to give the "Yancy Derringer" star a key to the city.

"I know she enjoyed doing it," said Annie Webb, who is married to Clint Webb, one of Mary and Jesse Webb Jr.'s sons. Annie, 62, and Clint, 65, live in Central. "And to me, the reason she took it over was to keep her mind occupied during that time. It was a pretty rough time."

Mary Webb continued to work once she finished her time serving as mayor, but Forest said she turned down requests from council members to run for another term. She worked as a purchasing agent for the city, a house mother for the former LSU fraternity Sigma Pi and a real estate agent, according to her obituary.

She remarried in the 1970s, Forest said, and loved spending time with her children and grandchildren. Annie Webb said the two of them used to cook together for holidays, while her mother-in-law often took her grandkids to the LSU lakes to feed the ducks.

Webb died in 1995 when she was 71 years old. She had four children Cathy, Clint, Charlotte and Jesse III, who is now deceased. Her obituary listed 11 grandchildren, and her daughter-in-law said she now has 10 great-grandchildren.

Incoming Mayor-President-Elect Broome said Mary Webb's story was inspiring and reminded her of Lindy Boggs. Boggs became a U.S. Representative from New Orleans after her husband, former U.S. House Majority leader Hale Boggs, disappeared on a flight over Alaska and was presumed dead.

Lindy Boggs dies WASHINGTON (AP)  Former Rep. Lindy Boggs, a plantation-born Louisianan who used her soft-sp

"Those particular instances, while they were unfortunate because of the death of someone, they certainly opened up doors for women at that time," Broome said. "I believe that both of those women [Webb and Boggs] stepped into their assignments and certainly fulfilled them with dignity."
The number of police killed in the line of duty rose sharply in 2016, driven by shootings of police around the country, most notably ambushes in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

From Jan. 1 through Wednesday, 135 officers lost their lives. Some died in traffic accidents, but nearly half were shot to death.

That's a 56 percent increase in shooting deaths over the previous year. Of the 64 who were fatally shot, 21 were killed in ambush attacks often fueled by anger over police use of force involving minorities.

"We've never seen a year in my memory when we've had an increase of this magnitude in officer shooting deaths," said Craig Floyd, president and chief executive of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. "These officers were killed simply because of the uniform they wear and the job they do. This is unacceptable to the humane society that we are."

In Dallas, a sniper on July 7 attacked at the end of what had been a peaceful rally against police brutality. He killed five law enforcement officers and wounded nine others  the largest death toll among law enforcement from a single event since the 9/11 attacks, which killed 72 officers. Months later, Dallas businesses and residents still display blue ribbons and banners declaring, "We support our Dallas police officers."

But even amid community support, the police department remains unsettled. Hundreds of officers have retired or left the force over the past six months as the city struggles to find a way to increase pay and save a failing police and fire pension. Former Chief David Brown, who became a national figure in the aftermath, was among those who opted to retire. And interim Dallas Police Association president Frederick Frazier said that morale is "almost nonexistent."

"A lot of us are going through the motions at work. We're hoping things will get better with our struggle," he said. Frazier added that the attack was a "game changer. It changed the perception of law enforcement. It reversed the roll after Ferguson. We were the pursuer and now, we're being pursued."

Less than two weeks after the Dallas attack, a lone gunman in Baton Rouge shot and killed three officers and wounded three others outside a convenience store in the weeks after a black man, 37-year-old Alton Sterling, was shot and killed by police during a struggle.

Baton Rouge Police Cpl. Lester Mitchell was partners with Matthew Gerald, one of the three slain officers, and was among the officers who raced to the scene of the shooting that also killed sheriff's deputy Brad Garafola and officer Montrell Jackson. Mitchell has daily reminders of the deadly shootout, driving past the scene on his way to police headquarters.

"Just passing there, you can't help but replay it over and over again," he said.

Mitchell said the shooting has made him more alert and aware of potential dangers on patrol, sometimes in situations that wouldn't have alarmed him before, like a hand in a pocket. "You learn to cope with it, because if you don't, you can drive yourself crazy," he said.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund's Floyd said the impact of this year has been profound on law enforcement. Agencies are struggling to recruit officers to their ranks and those who continue to serve "talk about how their head is now on a swivel."

"They're always looking over their shoulder, always worrying about the next attack that could come at any time from any direction," Floyd said.

That was underscored by the slaying in November of a San Antonio detective who was fatally shot and killed outside police headquarters as he was writing a traffic ticket. The man accused of shooting him said he was angry about a child-custody battle and simply "lashed out at somebody who didn't deserve it."
Injured East Baton Rouge sheriffs deputy Nick Tullier has shown another sign of progress in his recovery by giving his mother a special birthday gift.

On Wednesday, Tullier wrote Happy Birthday Mom to his mother, Mary, while she watched, his father James Tullier posted on Facebook.

The best birthday present Mary could get, James Tullier wrote in the post, which was shared to the public Nick Tullier Strong page. This was written today by Nick with Mary watching.

Nick Tullier, wounded in an ambush attack on law enforcement on July 17 that left three other officers dead, was transported to Houston on a special medical flight in November following four months of intensive treatment at Our Lady of the Lake.

Earlier this month, doctors at TIRR Memorial Hermann Hospital said Tullier has made remarkable progress in his rehabilitation and is now in a "fully conscious" state.

A video previously released by the hospital shows Tullier communicating with hospital staff members, providing non-verbal answers to "yes" or "no" questions and writing his initials as staff members help to steady his hand.

Can't see the video below? Click here.
A Greensburg woman was arrested early Thursday in the Dec. 20 fatal hit and run on Juban Road, Louisiana State Police said.

Debra Bridges, 49, was found at a home in Greensburg around 2 a.m. Thursday, along with the blue 2001 Ford F-150 pickup truck that struck and killed 36-year-old Corey Peeples, of Denham Springs, as he walked along Juban Road, south of Interstate 12, Trooper 1st Class Bryan Lee said in a news release.

Denham Springs man killed in hit and run; State Police searching for vehicle DENHAM SPRINGS  Authorities are searching for the driver of a 1997 to 2002 Ford pickup with

Bridges was booked into the Livingston Parish Detention Center on hit and run and obstruction of justice, both felonies. She remains in jail in lieu of $35,000 bail, according to jail booking records available online.

Bridges' truck was taken to the State Police Crime Lab for processing, Lee said.

Peoples was struck and killed just before 6 p.m. Dec. 20 as he was walking on Juban Road. The vehicle that struck him was last scene fleeing down Juban road.
Gunter Bischof is the Marshall Plan Professor of History at UNO and the director of Center Austria and a serves as a presidential counselor at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. He regularly teaches courses on World War II.
Former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial doesn't get involved in electoral politics anymore, at least not explicitly. As head of one of the nation's foremost civil rights groups, the National Urban League, his official agenda is now issue rather than party-based.

That doesn't mean he's abandoned his old political compass.

+5 Urban League of Greater New Orleans to begin statewide expansion with Baton Rouge office The Urban League of Greater New Orleans is going statewide in an expansion that will begin w

Speaking at an Urban League awards luncheon in New Orleans Wednesday, Morial, who was once considered a possible cabinet secretary had Democrat Al Gore won the presidency in 2000, painted the incoming Donald Trump administration as an existential challenge to the causes the group supports, from economic opportunity for all to equity at the ballot box.

Ever in fighting mode, Morial singled out U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, one of the day's honorees and the incoming chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, as a bulwark against the new order.

Were about to sail into some ferocious headwinds. Headwinds coming down from Manhattan and Trump Tower, Morial said, adding that "there's an art to sailing into a headwind."

"This is your time," he told Richmond.

Before a friendly invitation-only crowd, Morial allowed that he does have one superficial thing in common with the president-elect: Both have degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. Richmond playfully added a second. Back when Morial was mayor and Richmond a young, arguably overeager upstart thinking of challenging a sitting city council member, he recalled, Morial once told him he was fired.

Morial also identified one possible area of agreement. He said he'd be open to supporting Trump's plan to invest $1 trillion in infrastructure  under the right conditions. If it winds up being a program of toll roads all over America rather than one aimed at meeting needs of Americans across the board, he said, then put him down as an opponent.

On this, he appears to be on the same page as his protege-turned-ally on Capitol Hill. In a recent Huffington Post story weighing whether the black caucus might provide key support for Trump's program, Richmond said he too would reserve judgment until the new president coughs up some details.

I have not talked to him, so I have no idea, to tell you the truth," Richmond said. "And the caucus has not seen anything or been presented with anything, or [been] contacted in any way, so its really just hypothetical right now. Its not a yes. Its not a no. You know, well see what he does.
A new survey has found more than half of the ACT's disability service providers believe the impact of the transition to the National Disability Insurance Scheme has been negative.

More than 150 community sector organisations answered the ACT Council of Social Service's request for a rating on the impact of the NDIS in the territory.

ACT Council of Social Service director Susan Helyar. Credit:Jay Cronan

About 29 per cent felt the impact had been positive or strongly positive and one in three were neutral or unsure. More than 37 per cent believed it had been broadly negative, with 16.3 per cent of those describing it as "strongly negative".

Disability service providers were more divided in their opinion. More than a third described the impact of the NDIS as positive but 55.1 per cent said it was negative.
Five degrees of separation? In Canberra, it's more like one degree. And, in a nice twist, Cross of Valour recipient Allan Sparkes knows the family of our latest rescue hero, Zach Rolfe.

We told you about the remarkable rescue this week of two tourists in the Northern Territory by police officer Zach Rolfe, a former Canberra Grammar student and the son of Canberra identities Debbie and Richard Rolfe.

Allan Sparkes in 1996 going down a manhole to rescue a child stuck in a flooded stormwater drain.

Mr Sparkes, meanwhile, is one of only five recipients of Australia's highest bravery decoration and civilian award, the Cross of Valour.

The then NSW police officer received the honour for rescuing a boy from a flooded stormwater drain in Coffs Harbour in 1996.
The head of the ACT's Land Development Agency has said the agency is releasing enough land to provide for demand of about 5000 new residents each year, after releasing land for up to 4515 new dwellings this year.

The agency has released between 3299 and 4354 blocks of land for free-standing homes each fiscal year for the past four years, but has faced criticisms for not releasing enough land in Canberra, driving up the cost of housing.

Head of the ACT Land Development Agency David Dawes says the agency is releasing enough land. Credit:Graham Tidy

But LDA chief David Dawes said the agencies' staff had worked very hard over the past year to "make sure that we are meeting the ever-increasing demand for land".

"In 2016 the LDA released  4515 dwelling sites, including 1365 greenfield dwellings in new suburbs like Moncrieff, Throsby and Coombs," he said.
One of Queanbeyan's best-known and well-respected citizens, Jim Woods, a former co-owner of The Queanbeyan Age, has died at the age of 103.

Mr Woods passed away on Tuesday, leaving a long legacy with the city he championed as well as his other beloved communities, Temora and Crookwell.

Former owner of The Queanbeyan Age, Jim Woods, with his wife Rene on their 60th wedding anniversary in 1998.

He had been a printer, journalist, editor and publisher over a career spanning 66 years. He was the Queanbeyan Citizen of the Year in 1993 and the force behind such community initiatives as the Queanbeyan Sporting Gallery and the town's Printing Museum.

He participated in the life of the small towns in which he lived, from joining the town band to becoming a member of the local fire brigade.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has hit out at one of his most loyal supporters, Liberal senator Cory Bernardi amid talk the South Australian is preparing to form a breakaway conservative party movement, predicting it would be wildly successful but harm the Coalition.

Writing in his favoured News Corp newspaper The Australian, Mr Abbott warns Senator Bernardi against leaving, saying MPs should remember they are only in the Parliament because of the party and it's their duty to "try and fix it and not to leave it" if they identify problems.

But Mr Abbott predicts that if Senator Bernardi does split he could win 10 per cent of the vote and have senators elected under the conservative banner in every state.

"My guess is that a new entity called the Conservative Party could win up to 10 per cent of the total vote here in Australia but almost all of it would be at the expense of the Liberal-National Coalition," Mr Abbott writes.
He followed her everywhere. And she loved to talk about him.

He would be Gary, the French bulldog, and she his owner, actress Carrie Fisher, who died Tuesday morning in Los Angeles after suffering an in-flight heart attack Friday.

Carrie Fisher and her dog Gary Fisher sign copies of her new book The Princess Diarist in Los Angeles on November 28. Credit:Araya Diaz

Gary, a striking ball of brindle-coloured fur with pointy ears and white chest markings, is a petite but sturdy dog who strutted with Fisher down many red carpets. He was with her at this year's White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in April.

He was also at a screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in December 2015. The actress, who played Princess Leia in the Star Wars films, described the experience: "It was very loud, so he couldn't go to sleep and he watched it, panting. So I think that's a good review. The animal world will like it."
The prestigious World Press Photo Contest is now open to entries for 2017.

A jury of photojournalism professionals from around the world will judge the 2017 contest, which celebrates the best in visual journalism.

The prestigious World Press Photo Contest is now open to entries for 2017. Credit:Francesco Zizola

Winning photographs will be assembled into an exhibition that travels to 45 countries and, the organisation says, will be seen by "more than 4 million people each year".

"Our contests are the occasion to put a worldwide audience in contact with the best visual stories, whether through digital storytelling or photography. Winners of a contest are hereby offered a unique platform as they find a huge new audience through the travelling exhibition," World Press Photo's Barbara Bufkens told Fairfax Media.
The first of two men arrested over the alleged savage rape of a woman at South Brisbane in 2011 has briefly appeared in Brisbane Magistrates Court.

The 24-year-old from Auchenflower, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had a beard, shoulder-length hair and wore a simple brown T-shirt as he said nothing in court on Thursday morning.

Barrister Cliff Crawford represented one of the accused rapists in Brisbane Magistrates Court on Friday. Credit:Tony Moore

Defence barrister Cliff Crawford asked for 24 hours to prepare a bail application after receiving the police brief of evidence on Thursday morning.

Outside court, Mr Crawford confirmed his client would apply for bail, but declined any further comment.
A woman has been airlifted to hospital, after being stung by a suspected irukandji jellyfish on Fraser Island.

The RACQ LifeFlight rescue helicopter winched a woman in her early 20s off the beach at Fraser Island after she suffered a marine sting.

A woman has been airlifted to hospital after suffering a marine sting. Credit:RACQ LifeFlight Rescue

The Sydney woman was taken to Hervey Bay hospital in a stable condition.
Children facing criminal charges will remain at the adult maximum-security Barwon Prison despite Victoria's highest court ordering the state to remove them.

The Andrews government has re-classified the prison's Grevillea unit as a youth justice and remand centre in a bid to maintain that it is a lawful place to hold the teen inmates in custody.

The children's legal team is expected to take the state back to the Supreme Court as early as Friday to challenge its latest move, in a growing political headache for the Andrews government's tough-on-crime response to youth crime.

The move comes after the Court of Appeal on Wednesday upheld a ruling that Children's Minister Jenny Mikakos had unlawfully failed to consider the inmates' legal rights when she declared the unit a youth justice and remand centre last month.
A climber who fell 10 metres down a cliff at Mount Arapiles in western Victoria on Wednesday has been rescued.

It took emergency services more than five hours to extract the 27-year-old man, who tumbled down the rock face about 3pm on Wednesday.

Mount Arapiles, in Victoria's west, is a popular destination for climbers. Credit:Tourism Victoria

Windy weather conditions and the difficult area in which the man fell made the rescue operation difficult, an Ambulance Victoria spokeswoman said.

The rock climber was stranded some 45 metres above ground, police said, which made his extraction particularly difficult.
Beijing: Quoting a poem by the founder of Communist China Mao Zedong, China's government said on Wednesday that the efforts by Hong Kong and Taiwan independence movements to link up were doomed to fail, as they would be dashed to the ground like flies.

Chinese leaders are increasingly concerned about a fledgling independence movement in the former British colony of Hong Kong, which returned to mainland rule in 1997 with a promise of autonomy, and recent protests in the city.

Newly elected Hong Kong lawmakers Yau Wai-ching, left, and Sixtus Leung, march along with thousands of people through downtown Hong Kong last month. Credit:AP

China is also deeply suspicious of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, elected earlier this year, who Beijing suspects is pushing for the self-ruled island's independence.

She says she wants peace with China, which considers the island an unruly, breakaway province.
Paris: Rocked by terror attacks and wracked by national gloom over mass unemployment and economic stagnation, France is going through an identity crisis with just four months to go before presidential elections

Yet salvation could come from an unlikely quarter, it has been claimed: the return of politeness and courtesy.

In the land of notoriously surly waiters, a new wave of politeness has arrived.

That is according to Frederic Rouvillois, a Gallic author who has charted the history of politeness in France from the Revolution to the present day.

"There is undoubtedly a link between the economic and social crisis, the rise of unemployment and the rising awareness of the importance of being polite," Rouvillois said.
New York: In a rare press conference, US President-elect Donald Trump gathered on Wednesday to announce his plan for the US economy and job creation, announcing wireless carrier Sprint will relocate 5000 jobs back to the US and OneWeb, a new company, will be hiring 3000 people.

"I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they are going to be bringing 5000 jobs back to the United States, they are taking them from other countries," Trump told reporters outside his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

President-elect Donald Trump talks to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Wednesday. Credit:AP

"And also OneWeb, a new company, is going to be hiring 3000 people. So that's very exciting," he added.

Meanwhile Trump has privately told several visitors to his winter retreat in Florida that he is writing the first draft of his inaugural speech and is looking to Presidents Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy for inspiration, according to three people familiar with the conversation.
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TACH'S TAKE: Fuel Cell Madness (SLAP!) Thanks I Needed That

PARISWhat better way of introducing its solution to CES 2017 than by celebrating the 350 000 kilometers/220 000 miles reached with zero-emissions? Symbio, fuel-cell systems integrator experts, have delivered their 150th hydrogen electric vehicle this year. Symbio will be introducing its green mobility solutions and how it can make a difference to improve air quality in urban areas at Sands Expo, Level 1 Hall G, Eureka Park, Booths 51720  51531, from January 5th to 8th.

Indeed, Symbio has deployed the biggest hydrogen fleet of commercial H2 vehicles thanks to the support of its partners Michelin and ENGIE. Symbios core mission is to engineer complete fuel cell systems for electric vehicles, from prototyping to product.

Symbio offers an end-to-end hydrogen fuel cell system compatible to different usage-cycles and types of vehicle (commercial vehicles, van, bus, trucks and boats) and from 5 kW to 300 kW.

We are very pleased to be leading this hydrogen momentum in Europe, and to introduce our 100% zero-emission and 100% electric mobility solution to Vegas. This solution is today a real pollutant free alternative, improving air quality. Said

Pierre-Yves Le Berre, VP at Symbio.

The company innovates, transforming dreams of a green mobility into reality. To highlight its ambition to spread its green mobility solution worldwide, Symbio will unveil a new H2 vehicle with 500 km of autonomy in March 2017 in Tokyo. Watch this space!

About Symbio

Symbio is the French leader in hydrogen fuel cell systems designed for the transportation markets. Symbio offers innovative green mobility solutions that extend electric vehicle autonomy and contributes to a low-carbon economy. We design, manufacture and sell hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and systems.
if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi...
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For some, Donald Trumps presidential campaign was so nightmarish it quite literally disrupted their sleep, with many describing bizarre and terrifying visitations from our soon-to-be-president long before a Trump administration was a reality.

Shrinks saw an uptick in (Democrat) patients seeking Xanax prescriptions and solace on the couch as early as September. Now that a good portion of the American electorate has emerged from a state of shock and is anxiously counting down the days until Trump takes office, here are a few lifestyle strategies for coping in President Trumps America.

Create a cozy, safe hygge living space

For those whose dream of an America transformed into a Scandinavian-style social democracy was dashed when Bernie Sanders lost the primary election, theres hope yet in hygge, the Danish lifestyle phenomenon that gripped America this year.

While theres no direct English translation, the closest definition of hyggepronounced hoo-guhis cozy, and it just might be the next best thing to fleeing to Denmark (or any other Scandinavian country) for the next four years.

If a Trump presidency is a dark, years-long winter storm, hygge is your refugea life replete with flickering candles and fireplaces, knitted scarves, shearling blankets, warm milk, muesli, and friends or family.

The first step to achieving hygge would be to transform your home into a hyggekrog, a nook-like safe space where youre insulated from the sound and fury of the Trump administration.

Surround yourself with hyggelig people (hyggelig, pronounced hoo-guh-lee, is apparently the adjectival form of hygge) and fill your home with hyggelig decor like light-colored wooden tables and woven textiles, available on websites like Hyggelife.com.

Avoid CNN, Twitter, and other news outlets where talk of Hurricane Trump is relentless: These are not conducive to hygge. Instead, learn how to make grogg and keep copies of How to Hygge: The Nordic Secrets to a Happy Life and The Little Book of Hygge, among other hygge-themed reading, on your Danish-style bedside table.

Let the hate flow through you

When not cocooned in your hyggekrog, youll need ways to adjust to President Trumps rhetorical assault on the media, Muslims, and our constitutional rights.

As little as 10 minutes of meditation a day could help you cope with all the hate, and would go something like this: Envision Trumps bigotry; observe your feelings as it hovers around your third eye; let it pass through you like a bout of nausea; then watch it evaporate like a plume of smoke.

If our soon-to-be-presidents misogyny and other hateful rhetoric continues to nag and overwhelm, you might have to go all in with dream meditation, the latest mindfulness craze (Livestrong.com editor in chief Jess Barron recently described it as conscious dreaming and like visualization practice on steroids).

For those who live in Los Angeles and have $145-a-month to spare, you can get a membership at Beverly Hills new Dream Reality Cinema where, for 45 minutes, youll recline in a zero gravity chair while watching a 3-D film that teaches you how to meditate while you sleep.

Dream meditation supposedly enables you to control your dreams, which would certainly help those who cant even escape Trump in their sleep.

Or tune out the hate

Routine sound baths might be another way of muting Trumps bigotry and grating voice, especially given the latter will be broadcast on television during his forthcoming State of the Union and in times of crisis over the next four years.

Once only known to hippie fringes, sound baths have recently made their way to the New Age mainstream and are meant to facilitate deep relaxation and other mind-body health benefits, including improved brain functioning and a more balanced nervous system.

There are no tubs involved; rather, a sound bath technician tweaks instruments like tuning forks, crystal singing bowls, and gongs, which tickle and echo in the bathers ear like a whirring fan. While we have little scientific proof of sound therapys myriad benefits, our country will soon be governed by a man who says theres little scientific proof that climate change is real. Anecdotally, I can attest that a good sound bath will temporarily distract you from your anxieties about the fate of the free world under President Trump. And in these trying times, as Oxford Dictionaries declared post-truth 2016s international word of the year, faith and feelings are everything.

Enter the WOOM, where nothing is too orange

Multisensory wellness centers are popping up in coastal cities like Los Angeles and New York, promising New Age seekers a yoga-inspired practice that stimulates all the senses, incorporating sound therapy, meditation, and healing elixirs in one experience. WOOM in Manhattan is one of the most buzzed-about centers in this particular categoryand the spaces bright, minimalist aesthetic is a respite from the sloppy opulence that weve come to associate with everything Trump.

Escape to Iceland

With its otherworldly, Lord of the Rings-esque landscapes, geothermal hot springs, geysers, waterfalls, Northern Lights, and concerts inside volcanoes, Iceland seems about as far away from Trumps America as one can get without traveling halfway around the world. It also happened to be one of 2016s top travel destinations, according to Google search, which means theres still time to go before its passe.

Those disenchanted with the state of our country can commiserate with members of Icelands anti-establishment Pirate Party, which is devoted to fundamental system change, according to party leader Birgitta Jonsdottir. In other words, we consider ourselves hackersso to speakof our current outdated systems of government. Make friends while immersing yourself in hot springsand, maybe, gain some perspective before returning to the States.

Embrace anti-Trump flair

Pins, patches, stickers, and other forms of flair are forecasted to be one of the biggest fashion trends in 2017, according to the in-house data team at Pinterest, the image-collecting platform and website.

So while we end 2016 with visions of Make America Great Again hats dancing in our heads and Trump endeavoring to deliver on his campaign slogan, we can begin the New Year satisfied knowing that anti-Trump flair will likely come across the president-elects transomand certainly get under his skin.
For months one of the worst-kept secrets in foreign-policy circles was that Secretary of State John Kerry would give a speech about his vision for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, just as soon as the 2016 elections were safely over. Gossip revolved around which staffers were getting pulled in to write, which wonks were being brought in to vet, how far it would go, and so on. A few weeks ago, Kerry even nudge-winked about just how much of an open secret his plans had become, telling an audience in London that hed be moved to speak on the issue some time in the next weeks, months, or over the year.

What few people expected is how totally irrelevant Kerrys performance would end up. The secretarys remarks, which extended for over an hour, have already generated the expected heap of praise and criticism. But the praise feels like writers rationalizing how they wasted a day on what will ultimately become a footnote in American diplomatic history, and some of the criticism is crankiness over the same thing.

Kerrys speech was already going to be drowned out by the global din around United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed in recent days after the U.S. abstained, and which among other things lumped Judaisms holiest sites in East Jerusalem together with the West Bank and declared all of them occupied Palestinian territory. It has been criticized first as a diplomatic gambit that detonated the peace process and, second, as an abandonment of Israel contrary to decades of U.S. diplomacy aimed at blocking international assaults on the Jewish state.

The resolution presented another rhetorical problem for Kerry: To even get to the parameters, he was going to have to get past those two criticisms. He needed to paint a world in which the UNSCR built on the peace process rather than detonated it, and boosted Israel rather than abandoning it.

He did exactly that, but at the cost of whatever relevance the speech might have had left, because the world he painted has very little in common with the one we live in. He couldnt even craft a single version in which everything fell into place, but had to leap from one alternate reality to another. Those who work on the Middle East as it actually exists dont have anything in the speech for them.

To address concerns that UNSCR 2334 blew apart the peace process, Kerry described it as in line with past Middle East-related resolutions. That version might have been a legitimate diplomatic achievement. But its not the real Resolution 2334.

The real Resolution 2334 describes all of East Jerusalem and the West Bank as occupied Palestinian territory. Nonetheless Kerry said that a previous resolution built to avoid exactly that conclusion, Resolution 242, was still enshrined in international law and remains the basis for an agreement today. Even the text of the new resolution had settled for only a perfunctory throat-clearing reference to 242, reaffirming it in opening line far above the operative part of the text.

The real Resolution 2334 calls for a Palestinian state but not a Jewish state. Nonetheless Kerry said that a previous resolution, which calls for both, Resolution 181, was still fundamental [and] incorporated into the foundational documents of both the Israelis and Palestinians. A little while after Kerry finished speaking Wednesday, Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee, reportedly rejected the idea of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

To address concerns that the U.S. abandoned Israel in an unprecedented way by abstaining, Kerry sketched a version of past U.S. diplomacy where the abstention was nothing new. In that alternate timeline, the U.S. would not have made a radical move by reversing past policy, and would be merely upping the volume against Israeli settlements. But thats not our timeline.

In our timeline the abstention reversed past U.S. policies on a range of core issue, perhaps nowhere more dramatically than in declaring East Jerusalem occupied Palestinian territory. Kerry said on Wednesday Now you have heard that some criticize this resolution for calling East Jerusalem occupied territory. But to be clear, there was absolutely nothing new in last weeks resolution on that issue.

In our 1994, Madeline Albright told the United Nations We are today voting against a resolution in the Commission on the Status of Women precisely because it implies that Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory We simply do not support the description of the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war as occupied Palestinian territory we oppose the specific reference to Jerusalem in this resolution and will continue to oppose its insertion in future resolutions.

There were other claims that, had they been true, might have justified the Obama administrations gambit. Kerry said that no American administration has done more for Israels security than Barack Obamas, and maybe in that world it would have been productive to coerce Israel into territorial concessions.

In the real world, the Obama administration legalized Irans nuclear program, flooded Iran with billions of dollars, and ceded the Levant to it and its proxies.

Kerry said that the Israelis had started over 30,000 settlement units after the U.S. vetoed an anti-settlement resolution in 2011, and maybe in that world it would have been diplomatically necessary to shove the Israelis on settlements. In the real world, that number is misleading, which is exactly why Kerry had to use the strange phrasing through some stage of the planning process at the end of that line.

In fairness, that settler unit claim probably counts more as plain semantic dishonesty than anything else.

Kerry got to his vision for the Middle East. He outlined five parameters, and they make the most sense if one imagines the U.S. slipped through a wormhole and landed in the mid-1990s.

The guidelines are mostly indistinguishable from what American diplomats have been pushing in the Middle East for decades: Jewish and Palestinian states, secure Israeli borders and contiguous Palestinian territory, compensation for Palestinian refugees, a Jerusalem thats not divided but is also a Palestinian capital, and security for everyone.

Kerry had spent an hour listing how American policies had failed for decades, then summed up by advocating functionally those same policies, which would make sense only if those policies hadnt already failed, except their failure was the premise of the speech.

An appropriately fantastical, head-spinning end.
Milo Yiannopoulos claims he spends thousands of dollars every month. He claims he is professionally thriving and his brand is stronger than ever. So why cant he distribute the scholarship money he collected and promised to give?

The alt-right professional agitator reportedly inked a book deal worth at least $250,000, according to the Hollywood Reporter on Thursday. The deal is to publish an autobiographical work in the spring of 2017 with Threshold Editions, a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster.

I met with top execs at Simon & Schuster earlier in the year and spent half an hour trying to shock them with lewd jokes and outrageous opinions, Yiannopoulos gloated to The Hollywood Reporter. I thought they were going to have me escorted from the buildingbut instead they offered me a wheelbarrow full of money.

The 320-page tome, entitled Dangerous, is set to be released on March 14 and it features an image of the frosted-tip author making a steely glance out into the distance. It is another entry in his successful literary career following his 2007 self-published book of poetry called Eskimo Papoose, which plagiarized lyrics from Tori Amos songs.

DANGEROUS will be a book on free speech by the outspoken and controversial gay British writer and editor at Breitbart News who describes himself as the most fabulous supervillain on the internet, a statement provided to The Daily Beast by Simon and Schuster read.

Earlier this year, Yiannopoulos announced the creation of a Privilege Grant college scholarship to be given to white men only. The Daily Beast reported that the charity had collected in excess of $100,000 and distributed none of it long past the time it had promised to do so. In fact, the money was housed in an account owned by Yiannopoulos, he admitted.

In an update announced a day before the book deal, the Privilege Grant site said it plans to finally distribute grants in spring 2017almost a year after it was promised.

We will open applications for our first grants to students in late January, the release reads. We will close the applications after several weeks, and grants will be awarded in March. Grant money will be sent to students as soon as the IRS clears the Privilege Grant to disburse funds. We expect that clearance in late March or early April.

When reached for comment about the grant and information about the collection and distribution process, Yiannopoulos accused The Daily Beast of having lied about my charity.

You think I need $100k that badly? he wrote in an email Thursday. You think Id blow up my career over that kind of money? I spend $50k A MONTH. My tour cost over a million dollars. My book advance is over $250k. What planet are you living on?

Yiannopoulos didnt respond to a follow-up question seeking more information but said you are going to be left deeply embarrassed when we start handing out checks.

Margaret MacLennan, a self-described Canadian conservative YouTube personality, tweeted a number of accusations about the status of the charity earlier this week. She previously told The Daily Beast she was at one time tasked with running the grant.

Privilege Grant took bank transfers because unlike PayPal, transfers cant be disputed :) or refunded in case of false advertising, she said on Monday. In a series of other tweets, MacLennan claimed that she wasnt paid for her work on the grant and that the new statement about a pledge to distribute money was a bunch of promises with fancy words thrown in.

MacLennan has not responded to questions from The Daily Beast about the grant in direct Twitter messages but was incredulous that Yiannopoulos would be receiving this big of a book advance.

Its unclear if other people are actively involved in the grant at this stage.

Yiannopouloss payday was met with calls for a boycott of Simon and Schusters entire catalogue, which spans 35 imprints, including a call by a literary journal to not review any of the companys books in 2017.

A representative for the company did not confirm the reported financial advance amount and said they do not comment on those figures. The literary agent working with Yiannopoulos has not responded to a request for comment from The Daily Beast either.

In response to the announcement, The Chicago Review of Books vowed not to review a single Simon & Schuster book in 2017 due to the new book deal. The company typically publishes about 2,000 books per year.

In response to this disgusting validation of hate, we will not cover a single @simonschuster book in 2017, the journal announced on its Twitter account.

Some Simon & Schuster authors struggled with the boycott of their own publisher, noting that they dont agree with Yiannopoulos views, but still need to sell books.

(That face when your) publisher signs a hate troll & people call for a boycott & youre like well yeah but um, Simon & Schuster author Michael Robbins wrote on Twitter. (Its the) same imprint (that) published Trumps Crippled America.

Another Simon & Schuster author, Karen Hunter, wrote that Yiannopoulos book deal has made her reconsider her future with the publisher.

I am rethinking my relationship with @simonschuster #Milo, she wrote.

Even if the deal does lead to Yiannopoulos distributing the promised cash, some in the publishing community want nothing to do with it.

I suppose I shouldnt be surprised that the publisher of Trump, Cheney, Rove, Limbaugh, and Beck would give this despicable, racist misogynist a voice, a former Simon & Schuster executive told The Daily Beast. Im all for free speech, but I wonder how his rhetoric could possibly stand up to S&Ss commitment to excellence and rigorous reporting standards.

Additional reporting by Noah Shachtman
In his news conference of the year two weeks ago, U.S. President Barack Obama said that he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin to refrain from any further hacking of the U.S. election. In Obamas words, he told Putin to cut it out during a tense tete-a-tete at a summit in China just weeks before the national vote that saw a prominent Putin-flatterer win the White House. Obama intimated that the hacking was also done with Putins express permission, if not indeed ordered by him personally. The goal of the digital tradecraft, the CIA and the FBI now agree, was to further the election of Donald Trump.

Whether the former KGB spy accused by the British government of probably approving the murderous irradiation of a Russian dissident at a central London hotel was impressed by cut it out remains unclear. But intensified sanctions may be a very different matter. And the stage is now set in the United States for a potential showdown between the Republican-controlled Congress and the new Putin-apologist Republican president.

On Thursday, Obama announced that by executive order he has sanctioned nine entities and individuals over the Russian governments alleged cyber-espionage against the Democratic Party in general and Hillary Clintons presidential campaign in particular. He has also given 35 unnamed Russian intelligence operatives 72 hours to leave the United States, and has ordered restricted access to two Russian-government-run compounds, one in Long Island, the other in Maryland.

The Obama administration sanctioned both Russia's domestic and military intelligence services, the FSB and GRU, respectively, on Thursday. The U.S. also targeted four top-ranking officials of the latter organization, including its current chief, Igor Valentinovich Korobov, and three of his subordinatesSergey Aleksandrovich Gizunov, Igor Olegovich Kostyukov, and Vladimir Stepanovich Alekseyev. None of these men is known to be a frequent or even occasional traveler to the United States, however, and so the punishment is largely symbolic.

Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev and Aleksey Alekseyevich Belan, accused of "activities related to the significant misappropriation of funds or economic resources, trade secrets, personal identifiers, or financial information for private financial gain," were also sanctioned, along with a signals intelligence center based in St. Petersburg, Russia, a digital security firm and the Autonomous Non-commercial Organization Professional Association of Designers of Data Processing Systems, an under-the-radar and verbosely named organization said by U.S. officials to be a training facility for hackers, according to the New York Times.Bogachev and Belan were both already on the FBI's Most Wanted list for hacking predating the DNC penetration. Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda called Belan the "Most Dangerous Hacker in the World."

The compound in Long Island being shuttered is a 14-acre estate called Norwich House in Upper Brookville. A nearby Russian compound, the mansion Killenworth, was the site of minor Cold War drama. During the early 1980s, the city council of Glen Cove banned Soviet officials banned from using public beaches and tennis courts and argued with the federal government over the loss of property taxes, owing to the compound's ownership by a foreign government. Arkady Shevchenko, at the time the highest-ranking Soviet diplomat to defect to the United States, told Canadian television that Killenworth was a prominent listening station. ''All the top floors of the building are full of sophisticated equipment...to intercept all conversations of anything which is going on," Shevchenko said in 1982. "At least 15 or 17 technicians were working...to do this job.''

***This is not the first executive order Obama has taken against Russia. Early sanctions, passed in the spring of 2014, took aim at Russian power brokers in Putins inner circle, including billionaire oligarchs whose fortunes are intertwined with those of the state. Other targets were the presumed architects of the Ukraine Anschluss such as Vladislav Surkov, Russias chief ideologist, and Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the nations military-industrial complex. As the Ukraine war wore on, Russian state-owned banks, energy and military companies were added to the U.S. Treasury Departments banned list, as was the then-head of the GRU, Igor Sergun. Sergun died in January 2016.

These measures were narrowly tailored, in the words of Juan Zarate, the Treasury Department's former assistant secretary for the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, to hurt but not collapse Russias economy.

The 11th-hour Obama administration retaliation comes amid a growing, if fragile, bipartisan consensus, premised on the findings of all U.S. intelligence services, about Russias interference in American democracy.

Former Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham told CNN this week that the U.S. Senate was united in its view that online hackers connected to Russias domestic and military intelligence services stole thousands of internal emails from Democratic National Committee (DNC) accounts and also from the personal account of Hillary Clintons campaign chief John Podesta.

I would say that 99 of us believe the Russians did this and were going to do something about it, Graham said.

Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, was more tart in his statement, saying, "Russia does not share Americas interests. In fact, it has consistently sought to undermine them, sowing dangerous instability around the world. While todays action by the administration is overdue, it is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia. And it serves as a prime example of this administration's ineffective foreign policy that has left America weaker in the eyes of the world."

Graham, for his part, has advocated leveling sanctions against Putin personally. The closest the U.S. has come to targeting the Russian president was to name him as an investor in Gunvor, a Swiss commodities trader, in the passage of the first suite of U.S. sanctions against Russia for its invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014. Gunvor denies the U.S. Treasury Departments allegation.

Then, a year ago, Adam Szubin, the acting undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, sat for an interview with BBC Panorama and called Putin a kleptocrat. We've seen him enriching his friends, his close allies and marginalizing those who he doesn't view as friends using state assets, Szubin said. Whether that's Russia's energy wealth, whether it's other state contracts, he directs those to whom he believes will serve him and excludes those who don't. To me, that is a picture of corruption.

The Kremlin has vowed to respond in kind if new sanctions are passed, as it has done in the past by blacklisting U.S. legislators and American prosecutors of Russian nationals accused of arms trafficking and other crimes.

The most notorious retaliation came after Congress passed the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act in 2012, named for a framed and murdered Russian tax attorney. The law authorized the U.S. government to implement travel bans and U.S. asset freezes of any officials complicit in that crime and/or found to have committed gross human rights abuses. The Russian parliament responded by penning a law barring Americans from adopting Russian orphans.

* * *

In response to Thursday's actions, Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson of Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, issued a statement posted on the Ministrys website: If Washington really does take new hostile steps, they will be answered ... any action against Russian diplomatic missions in the U.S. will immediately bounce back on U.S. diplomats in Russia." She concluded, "Frankly, we are tired about the lies about Russian hackersit's misinformation by Obama administration aimed at providing an excuse for its own failure.

Zakharova has previously dismissed the U.S. allegation of Russian hacking by saying that Trump won the presidency because he catered to what she considers the bellwether constituency: "If you want to know what will happen in America, who do you have to talk to? You have to talk to the Jews, naturally.

She said this on a pro-government television program in mid-November, at one point adopting a stereotypical Jewish accent to describe what her putative sources for this information in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, relayed to her.

One person who seems to agree with Zakharova, at least on the question of her governments innocence, is President-elect Donald Trump.

Having dismissed the Russian hacking claims as unfounded and possibly the work of an obese person sitting in a basement, and having denigrated the U.S. spy agencies that he is about to command as unreliable, Trump again waved off the matter from his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. Standing next to a flag-flapping and bejeweled Don King, Trump told reporters on Wednesday, I think we ought to get on with our lives."

Trump also cast doubt on the digital forensics that go into determining the source of a breach. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly, the whole you know age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what's going on, he said.

When asked about Lindsey Grahams suggestion that Putin be personally brought to book on the hacking, Trump replied that he hadnt spoken to the South Carolina senator but reminded the press that he ran against Graham for the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump has often exonerated the Russian government from bad behavior well documented by Western governments and independent investigators. He said he did not believe that Russian military hardware, operated by Russian soldiers, was responsible for the downing of a civilian airliner over Ukraine in the summer of 2014. He denied that Putin had invaded Ukraine at all and vowed that he would not do so under a Trump administration, while also, contradictorily, claiming that most Crimeans wanted to be citizens of the Russian Federation. Such apologetics have prompted international suspicions about Trumps financial and political closeness to Moscow.

Since the U.S. election, Putin also has denied having any involvement in cyber espionage efforts to help Trumps victory along, although his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, did once coyly leave open the possibility. In an interview with CNNs Christiane Amanpour in October, when asked about the hacking accusations, Lavrov responded: We did not deny this, they did not prove it.

The stolen Democratic correspondence was distributed to WikiLeaks and DCLeaks.com, an apparent cutout used by Moscows spy agencies to scandalize the Democratic front-runner. The Clinton campaigns coziness with the DNC, at the expense of her primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, led to the resignation of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Podestas emails also contained full transcripts of Clintons private speeches delivered to major Wall Street audiences, which the Trump campaign alleged undermined her credibility on holding malfeasant bankers to account. Some of the content gave rise to bizarre and ultimately violent conspiracy theories, or fake news, pertaining to the Clinton camp.

Trump has previously said that his team would consider lifting all Ukraine-related Russian sanctions. His appointee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has had a personal and professional stake in seeing them lifted and has said publicly in the past that he opposes them.

As the head of Exxon Mobil, he holds around $218 million in unvested company stock, the price of which would surely increase if the oil conglomerate were allowed, under U.S. law, to engage in long-term direct investment in Russia again.

Exxon claims it lost more than $1 billion because of U.S. sanctions. Tillerson brokered a landmark strategic partnership between Exxon and Russian oil giant Rosneft in 2011 for the joint exploration of the Kara Sea, in the Russian Arctic.

That deal, which saw Rosnefts valuation skyrocket by $7 billion in the days following its announcement, has stalled since the Ukraine crisis and the attendant U.S. financial proscriptions on doing business with Russias energy sector.

Tillerson appears to have been a close personal friend of both Putin and Rosneft chairman Igor Sechin, who was sanctioned by Treasury in April 2014. Tillerson, it was revealed by the Guardian, is also the director of a Bahamas-registered Russian subsidiary of Exxon called Exxon Neftegas.

In 2013 Putin personally awarded Tillerson Russias Order of Friendship, the highest possible decoration for a foreign national.
In the movie The Martian, Matt Damon proves he can science the shit out of his situation to survive on a toxic planet. We, unfortunately, will not be so lucky.

Ive written some 30 novels, where invariably our planet is threatened, but by and large its due to the usual suspects: a despot seeking power, science run amok, a ticking nuclear crisis, a global terrorist threat. And, as is often the case, we are frequently our own worst enemies. Thats certainly the situation in my latest thriller, The Seventh Plague.

The current novel deals with the looming threat of climate change and addresses the likelihood of our being able to science our way out of this crisis. Over the past decade, weve seen the debate on global warming shift from It aint happening to OK, its happening, but theres not much we can do about it. Of course, this helpless shoulder-shrugging is just another shade of denial, manifesting as the rejection of any immediate need for a solution. I believe such sentiment is buried in a very human desire to put off the inevitable, a willingness to foist a present problem off to a future generationin other words, to cross that bridge when we get to it.

Unfortunately, that bridge is already burning. November was the hottest November on record; the winter Arctic ice cap is nearly the smallest it has ever been. And with all that ice melting, cruise companies are now selling seats on ships slated to sail along the Northwest Passage, a voyage once considered too hazardous to even contemplate and that led to the deaths of countless explorers. In fact, the Jet Propulsion Lab recently announced that the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets is even causing the Earths axis to shift.

So where are we headed next? I suspect many of those in the denial camp are secretly hedging their bets, trusting that in some distant future, if the situation proves dire enough, the whiz-bang of science will pull our butts out of the fire (in such a case, perhaps literally).

So lets science the shit out of that future scenario. What can be done when were past the proverbial point of no return? By that time, the more conservative approach of reducing carbon emissions and switching to green energy sources wont be enough. It would take a truly massive engineering project, one on a global scale, in order to reverse course and steer this giant ship to safety. The scientific term for such projects is geoengineering. The non-scientific term is a Hail Mary pass, one last-ditch effort before all is lost.

What do such geoengineering projects look like? In a word: big. Some of the proposals already under consideration include flooding Death Valley to stave off the rise of ocean levels, or wrapping Greenland in a reflective solar blanket to slow the melting of its ice fields, or constructing a 100,000-square-mile solar shield made up of trillions of tiny lenses that could deflect a portion of the suns ray. Even Bill Gates teamed up with NASA to consider the viability of shooting seawater into the skies to increase cloud cover as a means of cloaking the planet from the sun.

As one might imagine, such projects would be astronomically costly and require the international coordination of many governments. Even NASAs seawater-spraying project was estimated to involve 2,000 ships at a cost over $7 billion, and still there would be no guarantee of success. And thats assuming the current stagnated government could even manage such an act.

It will likely take the participation of an individual like Bill Gates, someone with the freedom and financial resources to pull off such a project. At the beginning of the 20th century, when the American government was gridlocked and unable to deal with rising global threats, it was wealthy entrepreneursgreat barons of industry Henry Ford and John Rockefellerwho wrested control from complacent politicians and faced those challenges head-on, ushering in the technological age. And now with governments again stultifying, with politicians deadlocked and mired in one-upmanship, it may very well take a new set of forward-thinkers to step in, to advance new technologies.

The Norwegians coined a phrase for such projects, calling them stormannsgalskap, or the madness of great men. While the term was meant to be disparaging, it might very well become a badge of honor in the future. If rising carbon levels are left unchecked, the world will need pioneering innovation. It will need great individuals who are willing to defy governments and do what is necessary to make hard, bold choices.

But better yet, lets do that now.

Even if one of these massive geoengineering projects could be developed, financed, and implemented in the future, the question arises whether it will do more harm than good. When youre talking about trying to control climate via an engineering project, there are a thousand variables at play. Pull the wrong string and everything could unravel. An international team of researchers ran models for a dozen different geoengineering projects and concluded that such massive endeavors would likely have disastrous unintended consequences. Their final conclusion was even more disturbing. Even if a project was successful at controlling carbon levels for 50 years, once the project was stopped, the rebound effect could actually accelerate climate change.

So in the end, geoengineering is a lose-lose scenario. Its a scientific pipe dream. We will not be able to science our way out of a climate collapse. Instead, we must act now. Rather than slamming on the brakes in the future, lets start tapping that brake before we skid into oblivion.

What can be done? Instead of searching for that Hail Mary global engineering project, look closer at hand, at fine-tuning the science already at our disposal: improving solar energy, making nuclear energy safer, building a better battery, lowering the cost of desalination, expanding biofuel use. These projects arent as exciting as wrapping Greenland in a blanket, but theyre more likely to be successful and last longer.

So maybe, in the end, science will save usbut only if we act now.

James Rollins is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seventh Plague.
The lead-up to and fall-out from John Kerrys speech at the State Department highlighted what may be a tough new normal for Democrats: As they seek to reinvent themselves (or rediscover, depending on who you ask) in the wake of the brutal losses in November, the party faces a percolating internal tension over an issue that has vexed would-be peacemakers for decadesthe Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Even before Kerry took to the podium for what would be one of the longest speeches in State Department history, members of his own party were already taking aim at him. House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat who has been in Congress since 1981, pre-empted his address by releasing an acerbic statement the day before. Because the U.S. didnt veto the UN Security Council resolution regarding Israeli settlements, Hoyer said, Israels enemies were strengthened. And then he all but urged Kerry not to give his speech.

Now, it is my understanding that Secretary Kerry, in the last few days of this Administration, intends to outline the parameters of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Hoyer said. This flies in the face of the United Statess longstanding position that such a formulation should be reached only through negotiations by the parties and not by the United States, the United Nations, or any other third party.

I urge Secretary Kerry and the Administration not to set forth a formula, which will inevitably disadvantage Israel in any negotiation, he concluded.

That didnt stop Kerry. Obviously. The secretary of State proceeded to give a lengthy address, in which he laid out theoretical principles to provide a possible basis for serious negotiations when the parties are ready. Hoyer didnt seem impressed.

Resolutions at the U.N. or one-sided declarations that impose preconditions on the parties do not help, he said in a statement released after Kerrys speech.

On the Senate side, Chuck Schumerthe New Yorker and Senate Minority Leaderalso lambasted Kerry.

While he may not have intended it, I fear Secretary Kerry, in his speech and action at the UN, has emboldened extremists on both sides, he said in his own post-speech statement.

Beyond these warring words, though, some argue theres a deeper, and growing, rift among Democrats regarding Israel. Jeremy Ben-Ami, who heads the liberal advocacy group J Street, told The Daily Beast he sees two emerging camps: One that believes the U.S. government should be a more vocal and active critic of certain Israeli government policies (including settlementswhat Kerry did on Wednesday) and one that doesnt endorse that route.

The latter group would include Schumer and Hoyer, as well as House Foreign Affairs ranking member Eliot Engel, all of whom opposed the Iran deal and argue that speeches like Kerrys undermine the peace process.

Ben-Ami said he believes far more Democrats are comfortable with U.S. governmental criticism of Israeli policies than with Schumers view on the issue. He pointed to the growing number of settlers as particular concerns for Democrats in Congress.

Those things make a very large portion of the Democratic caucus uneasy at this point, and I think thats where the rift is at, he said. Its not a question of supporting or not supporting Israelits a question of how.

Hoyer and Schumer, he argued, are out of touch.

The loudest voices coming from established institutions reflect a minority view, he said.

Jim Manley, a former staffer to Harry Reid whos been critical of Congressional Democrats taking stances like Kerrys, said the rift is real, and may grow.

This issues not going away for Democrats, he said, noting efforts from Bernie Sanderss allies to put language into the party platform at the DNC that would have rebuked the Israeli government over the settlements.

Theres still going to be plenty of folks on the left that have a strong anti-Israeli bias, Manley added, but most Democrats are going to continue to be strong supporters of Israel.

Others suggested the Hill acrimony might not necessarily foreshadow intra-party ugliness. One longtime Democratic Senate staffer said he thought Schumers and Hoyers angry responses had more to do with anger about the White Houses poor communication with Congressional Democrats than with deeper policy differences. If Kerry and his team had done more to partner with Hill offices and try to get them on board with a broader strategy, he argued, then the worst of this unpleasantness might have been avoided.

Regardless, Democrats are going to have an interesting few years.
Conservation board tables property lease program, examines deficit

The Des Moines County Conservation Board on Wednesday tabled a proposed program that would have generated revenue for the conservation department.
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DANBURY  As a businesswoman, LiQing Danny Lin knows you have to change things up on occasion in order to continue to thrive.

Lin recently renovated her Koo Restaurant and part of the upgrades include 10 Korean barbecue and Mongolian hot pot tables. The tables, which cost Lin about $5,800 each, include a rectangular grill in the middle and four round indentations for a cooking pot to heat meats and vegetables, and make soup.

No matter how much we describe it to customers they dont really know exactly what it is until they try it, Lin said. Then they say, Oh, this is terrific. You can cook it yourself, or our staff will cook for you. Most people want to cook themselves.

It was all part of a $400,000 renovation - about twice as much as Lin originally planned for - that involved complete interior and exterior improvements for the restaurant on East Pembroke Road. Lin, who moved to the U.S. from southern China 10 years ago, purchased Koo eight years ago.

After eight years it needed a new look and idea, Lin said. I own the building now so I wanted it to look nice.

Lin, 36, also owns Kusulyn, a fine dining restaurant at Danbury Fair, as well as several real estate investment properties in the greater Danbury area.

In addition to the new Korean barbecue and Mongolian hot pot, Koo continues to have Asian fusion, sushi, Thai and hibachi offerings. It also expanded its bar as part of the renovation.

Koo is a leader in hibachi-style cooking as well as sushi and other products. Now theyve added the Korean grill concept, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton said. The restaurant did a substantial expansion. Danny Lin has done a fantastic job and offers a great product and service.

Boughton was among more than 50 people who attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony this week. The event included festive attire and long strings of party poppers.

Danny has been in business for a long time and shes made substantial improvements to the restaurant, Stephen Bull, president of the Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce, said. Its another testament to Danbury. We have not only a lot of restaurants, but a great diversity of restaurants. This is totally different than anything else around.

Lin brought the Korean barbecue concept to Danbury after she and her daughter Sofia had to wait more than an hour to get seated at a restaurant in New York City.

I said, what if I bring this concept to Connecticut? I did my research and there was only one other restaurant doing this and that was in Bridgeport. There was also one in White Plains (N.Y.), she said. After trying it I decided to bring it to Danbury. I did a lot of research first.

Lin expanded Koo to include the new tables. The Korean barbecue area is where the patio used to be. The staff has been trained by Lin and her brother on how to use the grills and hot pots. The new tables also required electrical upgrades and ventilation systems.

I already feel people will like this. People are calling about it already, Lin said. We have a good night crowd here, its busy all the way to 1 a.m., but this could bring in more people for lunch.

In addition to owning two restaurants in Danbury and investment properties in the area, Lin has a business with her father in China. She said she learned her business acumen from him, but her inspiration to succeed comes from both her father and daughter. She also includes her brother in all her business ventures.

Thats family. In Chinese culture family is always bonded together, she said. I want self-value and I want to be successful. In the U.S., boys and girls are equal. In China, no. Men have the power in China. I didnt want that type of life so we moved for a better life.

Mike Florio started working for Lin two years ago as a delivery driver. He is now supervisor at Koo. He knew right away he could learn a thing or two about business from Lin.

I was amazed by her business sense, he said.

cbosak@hearstmediact.com; 203-731-3338
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A plan by House Republicans to discourage another live-streamed sit-in protest like the one Democrats staged this summer demanding a vote on gun control is drawing sharp criticism from Connecticuts congressional delegation.

This draconian rule that Republicans have come up with is in essence a gag order on victims of gun violence and does not allow the minority an opportunity to vote, said 1st District U.S. Rep. John Larson of East Hartford, who organized the 25-hour sit-in on the House floor in June with Rep. John Lewis of Georgia. It fines us for protesting, and in essence is a surrender to the gun lobby.

The proposed rule change would fine a member of Congress $500 for using electronics to transmit videos or images from the House floor. The fine, which would increase to $2,500 for a second offense, would be deducted from the lawmakers salary.

To be fining people for free speech is wrong and I will take on that challenge, said 5th District U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, a third-term Democrat whose district includes Sandy Hook, where 26 school children and educators were massacred in 2012.

U.S. Rep. Jim Himes agreed in a statement on his Facebook page, likening the GOPs proposed rule change to an effort to silence free speech.

This will only strengthen our resolve and encourage us to fight until we end all senseless gun violence, said Himes, a Democrat who represents Bridgeport, Stamford and Greenwich as part of Connecticuts 4th District.

Esty, Larson and fellow Democrats shut down the House of Representatives for a day in late June after majority Republicans refused to allow a vote on two gun policy amendments.

It came weeks after 49 people werer murdered in an Orlando nightclub, and because Congress had not voted on any gun safety legislation since the Sandy Hook massacre.

When Republicans turned off the microphones and cameras that feed C-SPAN coverage of the House, and walked out on the protesting Democrats, some lawmakers, in violation of House rules, used cell phones to transmit their dissent live on social media.

It caught fire with the American people, and I think the Republicans were embarrassed, Esty said on Wednesday. What we were doing was borne out of frustration about not getting any action of any sort on a debate with life and death importance.

The House will vote on the rule change as part of a larger package when Congress convenes on Jan. 3.

A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday that the fines were designed to preserve decorum, so that lawmakers could govern effectively.

One political expert agreed with the premise of the rule change, saying it would discourage Democrats and Republicans equally from creating high-profile disruptions.

I think this is a sensible rule, said Dennis Hale, associate professor of political science at Boston College. The availability of social media is only going to make this type of protest more attractive, and you dont want to multiply opportunities to shut down the business of the House in order to make a point when you dont have the votes to win.

Larson on Wednesday conceded that the House needs rules of order to function responsibly. He said that he and Lewis did not tell their own partys leaders ahead of time about their sit-in plans in June, because they knew they were breaking House rules.

But Larson pledged to fight the rule change, in spite of the GOPs 241-194 advantage in the House.

There is the need for decorum and protocol, but there is also the need to redress grievances, Larson said. Is this (fine) going to stop people from speaking out? No. But it is trying to suppress free speech, and we will vigorously oppose this rule.

rryser@newstimes.com; 203-731-3342
NORWALK  After two decades in the corporate world, Tom Forst had had enough.

So when his wife told him theyd finally paid off the last of their childrens college tuition, his response, naturally, was, Im quitting.

That was eight years ago. Back when he had a tight haircut and wore a full suit to work every day. Back when the idea of playing music full time was nothing more than a daydream supplied by a memory.

I started playing guitar when I was 8 years old, Forst said. I always played and I became a professional at 15, sneaking into clubs because you could do that back then. The minute I graduated from college I was on tour. I came off the road after two years and instantly became a first-grade teacher. I realized there was no money in teaching and I got into the corporate world. I did that for 20 years, but I never really stopped playing on the side whenever I could.

With the blessing of his wife, Forst gave his six months notice  as it turns out, you dont just quit when youre the regional vice president of sales at Cox Communications  and returned to a life he always knew hed find again someday.

I think if I have a message its that you should never give up on your dreams, Forst said. The dream was always to start again. It never occurred to me that being older would be a problem, and it hasnt been.

Forst, now 65, will release his first solo album, On Fire, Jan. 14. Produced by Grammy-winning guitarist, producer and songwriter Paul Nelson and recorded at Norwalks Factory Underground, the album features musicians from the Johnny Winter Band, Popa Chubby Band, Allman Brothers Band, Saturday Night Live Band and Steven Colbert Band.

Known as The Suit, Forst hasnt given up his corporate identity entirely. Though a little more eccentric, his face framed by shoulder-length gray hair and classic Chuck Taylors on his feet, he still dons a suit jacket everywhere he goes. Some are more flamboyant, decorated with elaborate embroidery, and others are classic, well-fitting and subtle.

His 11 track blues-rock album also features the songwriting of Forsts longtime friend, the late Gary Youell of Norwalk, whose suggestion that Forst cut a song about a world where women have taken over was the inspiration for a single Forst plans to release in January called Women of the World.

He came to me and said, The world is such a mess. What if women took over the world instead of the good old boys? And thats how we came up with this song, Forst said. I wanted females involved in a least the mixing and mastering of it because I thought they would have a different sensibility, and they did. Weve got some great female vocals on the track and it turned out great. Its got a great message and Im going to be pushing that.

The father of two daughters, he said the song was also informed by their experiences as women of the world, as well as the glass ceilings he saw in the corporate world.

Thats a big part of this, Forst said. Watching my daughters and seeing the issues they went through, and the issues in the corporate world, that all went into this track.

Though he said he doesnt want to get too political, Forst said the timing of the song and album release  roughly a week before the inauguration of President-elect Donald J. Trump  isnt a coincidence. Its also not the first time hes tried to impart the wisdom hes gained over the past 65 years. In addition to his music, hes created a line of The Suit Says... bumper stickers and online-memes, sharing his whimsical outlook and experience-based wisdom. The current one reads, The Suit says ... make America GrateFUL Again.

I joke that Im the only musician with an MBA, Forst said. ... So Ive used some of that business background and what Ive learned through the years and this is what weve come up with.

While the blues genre gets its name from the melancholy lyrics of personal woes and harsh realities written by the early artists who coined the phrase, Forst said his album is different.

It sounds like a blues album, Forst said. But you have to listen to it again, and theres a lyric booklet included, because its important to know every song has a double meaning. It sounds like blues but its more than that and I hope people hear it. I also cant say enough that its also a rock album.

When he is not writing, recording and performing his own music, he is a full time member of the Jason Gisser Band, signed to Mervilton Records, and has opened for artists including Hoobastank, Marshall Tucker Band, Lucas Nelson, Atlanta Rhythm Section, 3 Dog Night, Gideon Luke and Grand Funk.

Forst, who lives in Wethersfield, will celebrate the release of his album with a show in Hartford Jan. 14. Hes planning a Fairfield County release at Factory Underground sometime in February, though the details are still in the works. The full digital album will be available on Apple Music, iTunes and Spotify in January 2017.

KKrasselt@scni.com; 203-354-1021; @kaitlynkrasselt
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NORWALK  Officials this week cleared one of the last paperwork hurdles in the long-planned effort to rebuild Washington Village.

On Thursday, Mayor Harry W. Rilling signed documents allowing the transfer of city-owned parcels at 13 and 20 Day St. to the Norwalk Housing Authority.

The deed transfers will allow Boston-based developer Trinity Financial, LLC to begin construction in the coming weeks on 80 new apartments at the development site in South Norwalk.

This allows the first phase of the Choice Neighborhoods at Washington Village to finally move forward, Rilling said. This will be a tremendous development for the residents of Washington Village whose quality of life will be significantly improved. This public/partner partnership is a housing model that other communities will want to replicate in the future.

On Wednesday, the Norwalk Redevelopment Agency released its interest in the two parcels, clearing the way for city to sell the land to the Housing Authority.

The Housing Authority has to be able to evidence that it had clear title to the properties, said Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Timothy T. Sheehan.

Under the plan, the Housing Authority will purchase the parcels for $1 apiece and lease them to Trinity Financial.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and upward of 170 others gathered at the parcels on Nov. 28 for a ceremonial groundbreaking. Officials had hoped to see construction start this month.

But as recently as several weeks ago, 165 documents remained to be finalized and signed as part of the pre-construction checklist, according to Thomas J. Ivers, Choice Neighborhoods director at the Housing Authority.

Were down to the last handful, Ivers said Thursday. I think the Day Street ones are the only ones that are left. With the property transfers and everything else, its like dominos.

Ivers said the general contractor for phase one  Dimeo Construction Co. of Providence, R.I.  was at 13 and 20 Day St. on Wednesday and is awaiting authorization to begin work.

Theyve got a fully executed construction contract but theyll need a notice to proceed, which will be issued once the actual (property) closing and funds fall into place, Ivers said.

Work will continue throughout 2017 with a new three-story apartment building opening at 13 Day St. at the end of 2017 and a five-story building opening at 20 Day St. in early 2018. Of the new apartments, 40 will be for public-housing residents, 18 for moderate-income households and 22 will be priced as market-rate units, according to the Housing Authority.

The larger Washington Village Transformation project  a roughly $140 million undertaking  calls for razing Washington Village and its 136 apartments and building in their place 136 public-housing units, 67 workforce housing units and 70 market-rate units in two, three and four-story buildings.

The complex is being rebuilt under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Developments Choice Neighborhoods Program, which seeks to replace distressed public housing with quality mixed-income units while providing residents job training, educational opportunities and other support services.

The Housing Authority secured a $250,000 planning grant and later $30 million implementation grant from HUD to help rebuild Washington Village in three phases.

Trinity Financial had planned to break ground on phase one last year but a lawsuit filed by The Friends of Ryan Park prevented work from starting. The nonprofit volunteer group, which was formed to beautify the two-acre public park adjacent to Washington Village, argued against rebuilding housing in a flood plain.

A New Britain Superior Court judge in April dismissed the groups appeal, allowing the Housing Authority and Trinity Financial to re-start phase one and hire a general contractor.

In October 2012, Superstorm Sandy struck Norwalk and flooded parts of Washington Village.

The Washington Village Transformation Plan calls for rebuilding the complex with parking at ground level and apartments above. Improvements to Ryan Park are also part of the plan.

rkoch@hearstmediact.com
With several hundred laws taking effect on Jan. 1, many will have impacts on drivers.

One particular new law doubles the fine for not stopping at a railroad crossing.

SB 2806 makes the first violation of not stopping at a railroad crossing $500, up from $250. The second or subsequent violations increase to $1,000.

Another law is aimed at drivers education.

HB 6131 requires drivers education teachers to include instruction concerning police procedures during traffic stops. The new law applies to both public school drivers education as well as private education courses. The new education program demonstrates the proper actions to be taken during a traffic stop and details appropriate interactions with law enforcement.

HB 5912 gives a person riding a bicycle all the rights applicable to the driver of a vehicle, including right-of-way.

Other new traffic and transportation laws are:

HB 4105, which allows motorcycles to be equipped with a blue light or lights on the rear of the motorcycle as part of the motorcycles rear stop lamp or lamps.

HB 4315 and HB 5649, which allow the Secretary of State to issue Illinois Fire Fighters Memorial and Route 66 license plates to motorcycles having engines over 150cc.

HB 6006, which codifies that an individual driving on a highway of at least four lanes  with at least two going in the same direction  must make a lane change into a lane not next to a disabled vehicles with lighted hazard lights. A violation of this law is considered a petty offense.

For a list of all the new laws that take effect on Jan. 1, 2017 visit www.illinoissenatedemocrats.com.

Illinois Lawmakers return to the Capitol the second week in January to begin another session of the General Assembly.
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Linkedin Mario Rustan (The Jakarta Post) Bandung  Thu, December 29, 2016

I was fortunate to be taught by Robert Manne, a prominent Australian academic and public commentator who was a conservative in the 1980s and a leftwing liberal in the 21st century.

He is a man of many interests  20th century European politics (with an emphasis on the Holocaust and communism), Australias treatment of asylum seekers and indigenous Australians, and climate change. I studied two subjects under him  political ideas in the 20th century and the Holocaust.

I was interested in the Holocaust because I wanted to understand the May 1998 riots and the prevalence of anti-Chinese sentiment in Southeast Asia. In explaining anti-Chinese sentiment in Southeast Asia, Western correspondents and writers often use the analogy of European Jews to describe how Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese are seen by other Asians.

Like the Jews of Europes Industrial Age, the ethnic Chinese of Southeast Asia have a different religion and culture to the majority; they live as traders or professionals in their new homes and emphasize education for their children.

Intermarriage, religious conversion and assimilation happens, but these cases are not enough to end the antipathy of others toward them. Hatred against them is encouraged by religious, business and political leaders. They were the victims of 20th century nationalism, fundamentalism and communism.

The ethnic Chinese of Southeast Asia never experienced anything close to the Holocaust, but they are in constant fear that another riot is around the corner. By learning how Europes anti-Semitism and pogroms led to the Holocaust, I wished to understand the nature of the long term anti-Chinese hatred that led to the May 1998 riots.

I learned about fascism and totalitarianism and their terrifying uses of language, ideas and rhetoric. Fascist leaders saw themselves as the saviors of the masses, who would renew the nation with purity and justice by exterminating the corrupt and greedy old orders. Instruments such as the party, the secret police and the media were used to force obedience, to scare established businesses and politicians and to tell the public that resistance was futile.

Many European writers spent their lives trying to understand what happened before 1945, and what continued to happen until 1991. George Orwell wrestled with the question of how socialism, supposedly a potent force for good against imperialism and colonialism, could evolve into the monster that was Stalinism. Vaclav Havel dealt with an authoritarian puppet government, where people were forced to live within a lie.

Meanwhile, Jewish writers tried to make sense of the Holocaust. Primo Levi lived with survivors guilt throughout his life, believing he survived not only because of his qualifications in chemistry, but also because he shed his humanity. Hannah Arendt examined the similarities of Nazism and Stalinism and then the human nature of evil in the figure of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi figure who was put on trial by Israel. Two intellectuals who died in this decade, Tony Judt and Eric Hobsbawm, reflected on their past as left-wing Jews who constantly examined prewar totalitarianism.

Studying the Holocaust and 20th century Europe, of course, didnt really answer my question on modern Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese. There are no ethnic Chinese public intellectuals who constantly write and speak about racism, Chinese identity and how they relate with Southeast Asian politics. Studies on ethnic Chinese diaspora have a place in universities and think tanks, but not in the cinema or in the blockbuster book market.

But what I learned has helped me think about the nature of racism, nationhood and hatred.

For years, I struggled with my Chinese-Indonesian identity (which is a taboo topic for most Chinese-Indonesians) before accepting my biracial heritage. Ive met Chinese-Indonesian progressives who admit that it is never easy to discuss their politics, identities and even sexualities with their families and social circles.

We have seen that while radical Islam is the main actor of intolerance and hate in Indonesia, Islam and Muslims are not the problem. People of different religions and creeds (including the non-religious) are also hounding the gays, women and the minorities using a similar language and similar methods to what the bigots here are using, whether online or in the streets.

These are testing times for our world. It is thought by some that 2017 will be a bleaker year than 2016, and not just in the West. There might be a change of guard in Jakarta, while progressive and democratic Indonesia and Taiwan remain minorities among Asian societies. Many of us are surprised to discover bigotry from our childhood friends and family members, uncovered through our Facebook and WhatsApp accounts.

There will be no wars between states in 2017, but there will be plenty of expressions of hate, anger and intolerance in the worlds greatest cities. There will be more discriminatory and reactionary regulations passed by governments against minorities, against women and against foreigners.

While Americans and Europeans will deal with hateful youth and isolationist politicians, we will deal with religious thugs and corrupt members of the government. They are driven by the same things, no matter how ideologically different they are: fear, hate and insecurity.

Our greatest hope is ourselves. More people voted for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump. There are so many people speaking out against the bullies of Bandung, Yogyakarta and Jakarta, even when they dont take to the road. They might express their voices at the ballot box.

We cannot afford another murderous, ignorant and selfish government in the world. Whether youre an Indonesian or a European, you must help keep your country and your region safe in 2017. You know who to vote for. You know what is at stake. Youve learned what happened. You have seen the price of ignorance and of cynicism.

---------------

We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to community@jakpost.com. For more information click here.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin Ibrahim Kholilul Rohman (The Jakarta Post) Seville, Spain  Thu, December 29, 2016

The Indonesian government has just enacted the new Industry Ministry Regulation No. 65/2016 on local content. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies, especially those producing laptop computers, smartphones and tablets, are the main targets. They are now required to meet a threshold of 30 percent domestic content in terms of hardware, software or investment.

In response, Apple, a United States giant tech company headquartered in Cupertino, California, has pledged to dedicate funding of about US$44 million to support a three-year Research and Development (R&D) program in Indonesia. In return, Apple now has the right to market all types of its iPhone in the country.

Apple lags slightly behind its competitors. Samsung is now leading the Indonesian smartphone market, obtaining a quarter share, followed by Chinas new baby Oppo with one-fifth. Thus, for some, the R&D policy offered by Apple might be seen solely as an effort to facilitate penetration of its latest iPhone 7 in Indonesia, the largest market in Southeast Asia.

However, irrespective of its motives, we can still perceive the initiative as a big milestone that will potentially re-address the pathways of the Indonesian economy toward a more knowledge based-nation.

Previous studies have defined the importance of investment in R&D and human resources. Renowned economist Paul Romer (1990) explains these two aspects are essential elements for countries aiming to achieve a greater economic output. Robert Barro (1991) empirically studied the performance of 98 countries from 1960 to 1985 and assured poorer countries they could catch up with richer nations provided that they invested in a higher level of human capital.

Therefore, Apples commitment has sent Indonesia at least three important signals.

First, R&D has long been missing vocabulary. Indonesian R&D performance remains very, very weak. At the country level, we trail far behind other developing nations, let alone advanced ones.

The ratio of Indonesias gross R&D expenditure (GERD) to gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010 was only 0.08 percent, the lowest among Asian countries. Taiwan, Japan and Korea are not only leading the region but also the world. Mulyanto (2014) recapped that Indonesias ratio was among the lowest in ASEAN, compared to Thailand (0.25 percent), the Philippines (0.11 percent) and Vietnam (0.19 percent)

At the industry level, Indonesian companies have disappeared from the map of the 2,500 most R&D intensive companies in the world (European Commission, 2015).

There is not even one Indonesian company on the list, against 24 Indian firms, six each in Hong Kong and Singapore, three Malaysian, a Thai and couple of hundred Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese companies combined. Just to remind us, Indonesia is the third most populated country in Asia and fourth in the world.

Second, Indonesia as a knowledge economy is still quite up in the sky.

The knowledge economy is all about innovation. The Oslo Manual defines R&D as input for innovative capabilities. Consequently, the amount spent on R&D by a country or a company should support both technical and non-technical innovations. Moreover, activities should go far beyond the confines of research labs. They can occur in both the public and private sectors and are conducted across borders, sectors and institutions.

Nevertheless, the policy directed toward increasing the role of private R&D in Indonesia is also somewhat limited. To exemplify, given the importance of R&D data, the Indonesian Central Statistics Agency (BPS) has even dropped the questions that address research activities carried out by industry. Consequently, the last release of the annual manufacturing survey in 2011 served as the lone and the latest data point to observe this variable.

Hence, talking about the triple helix in R&D stages and innovative capabilities of industry, they are still a long way off this goal.

Third, the importance of becoming an ICT R&D hub.

High-tech ICT companies are now leading the landscape of world industries. Companies like Google, Facebook and Apple are not only making big sales but are also among the most R&D -intensive companies in the world. ICT industries are, in general, five times more R&D intensive than non-ICT companies (European Commission, 2015).

Just to better imagine the size of these companies, based on the Industrial Scoreboard (European Commission, 2015), Google recorded net sales of 77 billion (US$80.6 billion) in 2014, which equals 60 percent of Indonesian government revenues. It also spent 10 billion on R&D, which equals one-third of Indonesias education budget. Facebook spent 2.2 billion on R&D.

Apples $44-million R&D funding commitment in Indonesia only accounts for 0.8 percent of its total R&D spending in 2014.

Based on the classification of ICT industries defined by the OECD (2009), we can only identify 22 Indonesian ICT players among 23,370 companies covered in the annual manufacturing survey (BPS, 2011)  indeed an atomistic portion. They performed less convincingly in R&D and innovation.

Thus, if domestic Indonesian firms cannot rival top-notch ICT companies, we can alternatively serve as an ICT R&D hub. In return, the country is always endowed with a large and enthusiastic market where all tech-gadgets are sold out just in seconds. To give a stronger emphasis, ICT R&D hubs should go beyond building factories in, for instance, Bekasi or Karawang, both east of Jakarta.

Moreover, the Apple success story can be used as a blueprint for other tech giants to engage Indonesia not only as a solid final consumer  which has been well proven  but also as an important partner in building a sustainable ICT ecosystem.

To conclude, as a long awaited gift, we should identify closely with these signals from Apple, secure the commitment and provide a clear action plan involving all stakeholders, including universities, and make sure that the R&D activities are mutually beneficial.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin Cara Anna (Associated Press)  Thu, December 29, 2016

"The Princess Diarist" (Blue Rider Press), by Carrie Fisher

"I've spent so many years not telling the story of Harrison and me having an affair on the first 'Star Wars' movie that it's difficult to know exactly how to tell it now," Carrie Fisher announces on page 49 of her brisk but vague new memoir, "The Princess Diarist."

"Excellent, here we go," any solid fan of the real "Star Wars" movies (certainly not the prequels) will think, settling in for the literary equivalent of an ice-cream sundae of the more offbeat flavors.

But Fisher, who accepts that she will be known as Princess Leia until the end of time, lets the reader down. Having waited 40 years to publish what one expects to be a dishy tell-all about the romance behind the iconic movie of a generation (that generation mournfully sandwiched between the baby boomers and millennials), the actress, writer and raconteur only offers a few wisps of the goods.

This cover image released by Blue Rider Press shows "The Princess Diarist," by Carrie Fisher.(Blue Rider Press via AP/File)

(Read also: Reactions to Carrie Fisher death: '#Devastated,' Hamill says)

Fisher blames her hazy recall of the behind-the-scenes affair with Harrison Ford on the potent marijuana they smoked on their lost weekends between scenes. She also decides that "with uncharacteristic reservation and scruples that I quash any details" of their first weekend together. Sex is private, she says.

No problem, but she also draws the curtain over the interesting bits: their chemistry, their conversations, her point-blank impressions of a man poised to become one of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Or maybe we're supposed to believe, as she insists, that Ford just didn't talk a lot when they were together. In any case, we are left with a few interesting glimpses wrapped around excerpts of the diaries Fisher says she kept while shooting "Star Wars" and recently discovered. Even the diary bits are not very revealing, being the moody musings, including poetry, of a young woman on the cusp of 20 years old.

It's clear from the final two chapters of the book, one of them titled "Leia's Lap Dance," that Fisher published this book with making money in mind. Her closing meditation on fame leaves Ford and the affair far behind. However, many "Star Wars" fans will read this book anyway or likely did so the instant it appeared.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

The Manpower Ministry has said 18 foreign workers from China had been detained for questioning by immigration authorities after an unannounced inspection of a local company in Bogor, West Java, found that the workers had allegedly breached their work permits.

The inspection, held on Wednesday evening at the PT Huaxing compound, found that the company, which engages in steel smelting, employs 38 workers from China. Although all the foreign workers have work and stay permits, 18 of them are indicated to have breached the conditions of their work permits.

Some of them have been assigned to a position that is different from the specified occupation in their permits. For example, there was an electrical technician who worked as a marketer. There was also an employee whose work permit only permitted him to work in Tangerang, Banten, but he was working in Bogor

Those who were indicated to have violated their work permit conditions were taken into custody by the Bogor immigration office for questioning, Manpower Minister Hanif Dhakiri said, as quoted by kompas.com.

(Read also: Jokowi dismisses concerns over Chinese workers in Indonesia)

Hanif said the investigation would determine the specific offenses they had committed, with sanctions ranging from fines to possible deportation.

He said the Chinese nationals had worked for PT Huaxing for between two months and a year and lived in a dormitory provided by the company. (win/hwa)
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Linkedin Ina Parlina and Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29 2016

The Indonesian Military (TNI) has launched an investigation into the Air Forces controversial decision to purchase an AW 101 helicopter from Italian-British manufacturing company AgustaWestland.

The Defense Industry Policy Committee (KKIP) has strongly criticized the Air Force for making the purchase, which it has said may violate the 2012 Defense Industry Law. The law stipulates that the state may import defense products only if the country has yet to or cannot produce similar products.

The Air Forces move has baffled many parties, including President Joko Jokowi Widodo, who rejected a plan to buy similar helicopters from the same company in 2015, as they were considered too expensive. One AW 101 helicopter cost around US$55 million at the time.

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Linkedin Winny Tang (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

The Indonesian Retailers Association (Aprindo) emphasized on Wednesday that the collection of small change at retail stores was justifiable because the practice was done for donation purposes only.

The association made the statement in response to a Central Information Commission (KIP) ruling instructing publicly listed minimarket chain Sumber Alfaria Trijaya (Alfamart) to disclose the companys data on public donations last week, questioning the transparency of donations collected by convenience stores from the small change consumers do not want to take.

(Read also: Minimarket donations called into question)

All funds collected from consumers are given to the foundations chosen by retailers. So, we trust the foundations completely, Aprindo chairman Roy N. Mandey said, highlighting that Alfamart had been working with reliable foundations such as the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI), Unicef and the Indonesian Care for Cancer Kids Foundation (YKAKI).

Last week, the KIP instructed Alfamart must publish the companys data on public donations. The commission ruled in favor of a petition by a customer named Mustholih who filed the request for Alfamart to provide information on donations raised in its minimarkets.

Alfamart, however, appealed the ruling on Dec. 21, corporate affairs director Solihin said in a press statement. (evi/hwa)
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Linkedin Syamsul Huda M. Suhari (The Jakarta Post) Gorontalo  Thu, December 29 2016

Every weekend, Gorontalo Park is filled with the laughter of children. There, in the company of their parents, the children play, read, sing and learn about many things, including tolerance.

The afternoon activities were initiated by the Perpustaman community, which collects reading books for children, ranging from books on science to fairy tales, all donated by various parties.

Tolerance is among the things taught to the participating children, aged between six and 10 years. The children are introduced to different houses of worship such as mosques, churches, Buddhist temples, Hindu temples and Confucian temples.

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Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

As terrorism is still regarded as one of the nations most pressing security issues, the National Police will continue Operation Tinombala to pursue the remaining members of the East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT), also known as the Santoso terrorist cell, in Poso, Central Sulawesi, next year.

National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar said on Wednesday that the counterterrorism operation in Poso would be carried out simultaneously with a clamping down on terrorist networks across the country.

We will hunt down the remaining members of the Santoso group, Boy said at the National Police headquarters.

Santoso, aka Abu Wardah, was one of the most infamous terrorists in the country. He was shot dead in July this year after being wanted for five years. His group declared allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) movement in 2014.

Boy said the police would also monitor the movement of members of terrorist cells connected with Bahrun Naim, who is suspected to be fighting with IS in Syria. Bahruns group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), which also supports the IS movement, is perceived as one of the most dangerous active terrorist groups.

We will beef up cooperation with Malaysia and Turkey because many of them [Indonesian militants] are flying to and returning [from Syria] via these countries, Boy said. (evi)
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Linkedin Indra Budiari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

Former Jakarta councilor Mohammad Sanusi was sentenced to seven years in prison in a bribery and money laundering case related to the controversial Jakarta Bay reclamation project.

A panel of judges at the Jakarta Corruption Court declared Thursday that the businessman-turned-politician had accepted a Rp 2 billion (US$148,500) kickback from Ariesman Widjaja, then president director of developer company PT Agung Podomoro Land, and laundered billions of rupiah of his unaccountable wealth.

The defendant was proven guilty on corruption and bribery as charged, presiding judge Sumpeno said.

Sumpeno, however, said the judges could not accept the demand from the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) for prosecutors to strip Sanusis political rights as the court had no authority on that issue. The judges also ordered Sanusis assets, including apartment units and luxury cars, to be impounded.

In December 2015 and February this year, Sanusi, who held an important role in the North Jakarta Coast zoning plan draft bill discussion, initiated at least two meetings with Sugianto Kusuma, the chairman of Agung Sedayu Group, and Ariesman, in which the ex-councilor was asked to pass the draft.

On follow-up meetings in March, Ariesman had promised that he could deliver Rp 2.5 billion to Sanusi if he could pass the reclamation projects draft bylaw and lower the developers 15 percent contribution clause in the bylaw to only 5 percent. The request was later accepted by Sanusi. (evi)
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Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

President Joko Jokowi Widodo will gather on Thursday a number of ministers and law enforcement leaders in a closed meeting to discuss the governments strategy to clamp down on provocative rumors and hoaxes on social media, National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian has said.

Tomorrow [Thursday], the President will hold a closed meeting on how to integrate efforts between ministries and [state] institutions to handle provocative content on social media, Tito said on Wednesday evening, after sharing with the press the outlook for the countrys security situation in 2017.

(Read also: Terror tops Indonesias security agenda)

Earlier in the day, Tito had said combating the spread of hoaxes, half-truths and fake news on the Internet was among law enforcers top security priorities for next year, as they could potentially create conflict at the grassroots level.

He pointed out, for example, that rumors claiming that millions of Chinese workers had arrived in Indonesia and taken jobs from locals were not just untrue but also created uneasiness. (hwa)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

Law and Human Rights Minister Yasona Laoly said in Jakarta on Thursday that his ministry would strengthen the monitoring of foreign visitors.

The most important thing is monitoring. If there are 9 million arrivals of foreigners, there should also be nine foreigners departing Indonesia, even more, Yasona said in Jakarta on Thursday as reported by kompas.com.

He stressed that the rumor of an influx of about 10 million Chinese people to Indonesia was false and that Communication and Information Minister Rudiantara had identified the people that had allegedly started the rumor.

Previously, Peoples Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker Zulkifli Hasan and several lawmakers called on the government to review the free-visa policy to prevent the inflow of foreign workers to Indonesia.

Yasonna stressed that the free-visa policy was needed to boost the arrival of foreign tourists to Indonesia. He said neighboring countries had also applied the same policy to attract foreign tourists.

This policy is to boost foreign tourist arrivals. We are a larger country with many tourist destinations, but tourist arrivals are less than those to Malaysia, the minister added. (bbn)
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Linkedin Fachrul Sidiq (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

The government might enter the private sphere of its citizens when it implements a plan to monitor conversations in instant messaging applications.

Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara said his ministry plans to monitor conversations on applications, including WhatsApp and Blackberry Messenger, as he alleged that many hate-fueled, false and provocative messages were widely circulating through them.

Chatting is included on social media. We will have a different approach [to monitor it], the minister said after a limited meeting at the State Palace on Thursday as reported by kompas.com.

He said that the minister would file a police report when it finds messages deemed provocative or slanderous.

We can trace the initial source, he added.

President Joko Jokowi Widodo on Thursday met a number of ministers and law enforcement leaders in a closed meeting to discuss the governments strategy to clamp down on provocative rumors and hoaxes on social media.

One of the circulating rumors is the claim that millions of Chinese workers had arrived in Indonesia and taken jobs from locals. (bbn)
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

The Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry is striving to push local governments to issue bylaws next year that prohibit the fishing of endangered sea species as their populations have continued to decline.

The ministrys director general for aquaculture, Slamet Soebjakto, said it was getting harder for fishermen to catch several sea creatures such as crabs, lobsters and eels. Certain fish species in local waters, such as chitala, a species endemic to the Musi River, South Sumatra, were on the brink of extinction.

Therefore, the rules must be set up specifically for each region because endangered fish species in every area are different, said Slamet during a year-end press conference at the ministrys office in Jakarta on Thursday.

The Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry has banned the fishing of certain types of lobsters and crabs since 2015.

Slamet said the ministry was ready to help local administrations identify endangered species. He said fish from several rare species were still difficult to cultivate and therefore depended heavily on natural breeding. Their populations continued to decline because of excessive fishing as people need them to produce traditional dishes.

There has been an overfishing of chitala as people need it to make pempek (fish cake). Pempek makers do not use it anymore, as its now quite difficult for them to find it in the markets, said Slamet. (ebf)
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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29 2016

Press freedom has suffered a huge setback in 2016, with violence against journalists becoming more rampant amid the governments inaction, the Legal Aid Institute for the Press (LBH Pers) says.

The year 2016 saw more journalists facing violence and disruptions when doing their jobs. LBH Pers recorded 83 cases of abuse against journalists nationwide this year, almost double the number of cases in 2015, which stood at 47.

The figure includes 26 cases of physical abuse, followed by 25 cases of barring reporters from carrying out their duties and 12 cases of intimidation. As in previous years, police personnel reportedly carried out most of the violence against journalists, with 16 cases.

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Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam  Thu, December 29, 2016

The Indonesian Navy has provided training to 15 ex-pirates who once operated in the Malacca Strait to grow seaweed in Natuna and Anambas waters in Riau Islands province.

Navy base commander in Tanjung Pinang, Comm. S. Irawan, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday that the Navy was monitoring 70 people previously arrested for piracy in the busiest maritime strait and the world, and had trained 15 of them to become seaweed farmers.

Irawan guaranteed that with the arrest of the 70 pirates, the Malacca Strait, which is also notorious for its high level of piracy, would be safe for at least the next 10 years. The Navy is also employing drones to monitor activity in the Malacca Strait.

The 70 pirates who regularly operated in the Malacca Strait are being monitored closely by the Navy, he said. He said the 70 had already been convicted and released but only 15 were willing to join the seaweed training.

He added that the 70 were key figures in Malacca Strait piracy. (evi)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jambi  Thu, December 29 2016

The Jambi provincial administration plans to disburse Rp 2 billion (US$148,555) to Rimba Park Zoo in Jambi city to improve its facilities and attract more visitors.

The zoo had big potential to become one of Jambis main tourist attractions, Jambi Governor Zumi Zola said on Wednesday. The administration would disburse the funds for the zoo next year.

We will improve the facilities such as building a connecting bridge from outside to inside the zoo, he said.

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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

Japan has responded positively to Indonesia's request to extend funding for the construction of a Jakarta-to-Surabaya railway over a period of more than 40 years, according Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan.

The Jakarta-Surabaya medium-speed railway is expected to shorten the trip to six hours from the current 13 hours needed by the regular trains belonging to state railway company PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI).

"In terms of financing, we have asked them not to limit it to just 40 years but to make it longer than that so that it would be softer. It seems that Japan has responded positively," he said on Thursday.

On Thursday morning, Luhut met with Japan's minister of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism, Keiichi Ishii, to discuss several key areas of cooperation between the two countries, including the railway project, the Patimban deep sea port project in West Java and the development of the gas-rich Masela block in Maluku.

Luhut added that he hoped everything would be finalized by mid-January and Japan may become one of the biggest investors in Indonesia. (evi)
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

Fast Food Indonesia, the franchise holder of American fast food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), expects to see its revenue grow by between 8 and 10 percent next year with the opening of dozens of new outlets across the country.

FFI director Justinus Dalimin Juwono said the company planned to open 30 new restaurants and 20 smaller outlets under the KFC Box brand to push for expansion.

With the expansion, the firm hopes to see its revenue reach Rp 5.4 trillion (US$400.92 million) in 2017.

"The KFC Box [outlets] is our [sales] volume booster, as they are located in strategic places, like train stations and bus terminals. The investment for the outlets is also lower than for regular ones, and the menu is cheaper," Justinus said Thursday during the companys public expose.

FFI currently operates 570 KFC outlets across the archipelago, home to more than 250 million people.

In 2016, Justinus added, the company had opened 35 new outlets. Next year, it will allocate Rp 350 billion in capital expenditure, up from Rp 300 billion capex allocated this year.

"The Indonesian market is not stagnant yet for KFC, in Malaysia, there are 790 outlets for its 28 million population. However, we are here challenged by geographical conditions that make expansion more expensive," he said. (hwa)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

The General Elections Commission (KPU) has been urged by an elections watchdog to pay more attention to regional elections outside Jakarta as coverage of next years simultaneous elections is thought by some to be too capital-centric.

Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) head Titi Anggraeni said the KPU should create a balance in exposure so that regional elections outside Jakarta could get proper attention from the public.



I think the KPU should take bold action and find a solution so that regional elections in other regions are not overlooked, Titi said during a discussion with the election organizer in Jakarta on Wednesday as reported by kompas.com.

(Read also:No door prizes during election campaigns: KPU)

Titi said she was afraid voters in other regions were more exposed to the issues and candidates in the Jakarta gubernatorial election, rather than the candidates in their own respective areas.

This happens in many regions. Voters discuss the issues in the Jakarta election, even though their houses are in Banten, she said. (fac/jun)
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Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

The National Police are not expecting any major disruptions of security during the celebration of New Years Eve across the nation.

National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian said the polices measures against groups and individuals believed to have been planning attacks during Christmas and New Years Eve celebrations had significantly lowered the security risk during the holiday season.

After all the efforts we have made, the potential [for disturbances] is small. Among areas still prone to security threats are Central Java and Jakarta, Tito told journalists during a press conference at the National Police headquarters in Jakarta on Wednesday. In the press conference, he explained the polices security threat report for 2017.

The Jakarta Police recently shot dead two alleged terrorists and arrested two others in Jatiluhur, West Java. They were believed to have been planning to carry out attacks on the police during New Years Eve.

Tito said terrorism was still one of the most important security issues and the police would continue to prioritize hunting down the remaining members of the East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT) terrorist cell in 2017. The group was formerly led by notorious terrorist Santoso, aka Abu Wardah, who was shot dead in Poso, Central Sulawesi, in July.

They will also continue to monitor the movements of terrorist cells connected with Bahrun Naim, who was reported to have joined the IS extremist group in Syria, he added.

Tito further said the police would improve their cyber-surveillance capabilities to limit the spread of radical ideology online. (ebf)
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Linkedin Ni Komang Erviani (The Jakarta Post) Denpasar  Thu, December 29, 2016

Bali Police chief Insp. Gen. Sugeng Priyanto has reassured Bali residents and tourists that they can celebrate New Years Eve peacefully. He stressed that no indications of a terrorist threat to the resort island had been detected.

"Based on intelligence reports, there is no serious threat involving terrorism in Bali," said Sugeng in Denpasar on Thursday.

He said the police were doing their best to ensure the safety of residents and tourists during New Years Eve celebrations, but added that no country could guarantee an absence of security disturbances, including acts of terror.

"However, we are doing our best to ensure safety for people," he said.

At least 3,726 police personnel will be deployed across Bali to safeguard New Years Eve celebrations, he added.

"We will increase security measures at all gateways into Bali -- seaports and the airport  and at vital installations and other places visited by crowds, such as nightclubs and shopping centers. (bbn)
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Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post)  Thu, December 29 2016

Ilham Ahmadi, a Yogyakarta-based mid-sized breeder, has long pinned his hopes on the governments goal to reach self-sufficiency in beef production.

He surely wants to be part of the ambition and hopes a relatively small-scale breeder, like himself, can receive, at the minimum, assistance in an introduction to new farming methods and favorable prices.

Hope, however, has hit the wall as breakthroughs to reach the official target of meeting national beef demand locally by 2021 do not seem to be on the horizon.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

Local media sources have reported that murder victim Dodi Triono, 59, who died along with five others inside a small bathroom in Pulo Mas, East Jakarta, had recently married a young model, Agnesya Kalangi, 19, who was not at the house when the crime occurred.

A commissioner of the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI), Erlinda, said that Agnesya had come to visit one of Dodis children, Zanette Kalila Azaira, 13, at the hospital.

"She came here, the beautiful one, with long hair, fair skin, Erlinda said as quoted by kompas.com on Wednesday. Erlinda said the widow came on Tuesday night and she was seven-months pregnant. She also claimed that Agnesya lived with Dodi and his three children in Pulomas.

(Read also: Ramlan 'the captain' in Pulo Mas murder shot dead during raid)

Dodis neighbor who requested anonymity told tribunnews.com that Dodi married Agnesya about a year ago in a religious ceremony but had not registered the marriage with the governments civil registry. Such marriage in Islam is called siri.

The neighbor gave a different account from Erlinda, saying Agnesya lived in an apartment.

Edi Saputra, Dodis employee, said Dodi had been married and divorced twice before marrying Agnesya. He had three children from the first marriage and three from the second with Almyanda Saphira, the mother of Diona Arika Andra Putri, 16, Zanette, and Dianita Gemma Dzalfayla, 9. Diona and Gemma died during the crime while Zanette survived.

Edi said Dodi and Almyanda divorced about three years ago. (evi)
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Linkedin Indra Budiari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29 2016

A dramatic police raid in Rawalumbu, a densely-populated area of Bekasi, West Java, on Wednesday, ended with the arrest of Erwin Situmorang and the death of Ramlan Butar Butar, who was shot by detectives after he fought back against the police.



The two are suspects in the horrific mass murder in a luxurious house in the upscale residential area of Pulomas, East Jakarta, a day earlier. Six people died and five others suffered injuries after 11 people were locked up inside a 1.5 by 1.5 meter toilet.



The polices swift investigation led detectives to trace Ramlans whereabouts at his brothers house in Rawalumbu.



The police said that Ramlan, who has been arrested by the police for other crimes in the past, was the leader of the gang as he was nicknamed captain.



Ramlan is an old player. He and his men are known as specialists in house burglary, especially during holidays, National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian said, adding that Ramlan was notorious for the sadistic violence he inflicted on his victims.



The police have also arrested a man identified only with the initial R for allegedly helping the suspects hide. However, two other suspects are still at large.



Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Mochamad Iriawan said early investigations indicated that the criminals intruded into the house, belonging to 59-year-old architect Dodi Triono, and stole two bags, cellular phones and a number of precious items such as a Rolex watch and cash worth millions of rupiah. The police have seized some of the items as evidence.



Dodi, his daughters, 16-year-old Diona Arika Andra Puti and nine-year-old Dianita Gemma Dzalfayla, as well as the girls friend, identified as Amel, and the familys drivers, Yanto and Tasrok, were killed in the incident.



Iriawan said the investigation was assisted by footage from a number of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras installed around the house.



In one of the clips, a man, wearing a black jacket and a cap, is seen entering the houses unlocked gate.



Another man, suspected as Ramlan, is seen following him with a limp. Another clip shows one of the suspects pointing a gun at several people inside the house, while two other men  one of them holding a sickle  round up the victims in the living room before forcing them into the bathroom in which they were eventually locked up for several hours.



Police autopsy reports found the cause of death to be asphyxiation. Iriawan said there was no signs of violence on the victims bodies.



It was Ramlan who locked them up. The bathrooms key was disposed of, he said.



According to Iriawan, the perpetrators allegedly put them inside the bathroom to let them search for valuables in the house more freely as well as to prevent the victims from calling for help.



Iriawan also said that the bathroom, which was usually used by the familys domestic helper, did not have ventilation.



He said the suspects had been charged with articles 338, 363 and 333 of the Criminal Code on murder, robbery and kidnapping, which carry a maximum punishment of 15 years in jail.



He also said investigators were yet to find any motive behind the murder other than robbery.



The incident was first discovered by 16-year-old Sheila Putri who went the house to meet Diona on Tuesday morning. Sheila found the gate unlocked and heard moaning sounds from the bathroom.



Sheila ran for help and notified nearby security officers and local residents who then arrived at the house to discover eleven people cramped inside the bathroom with blood on the floor.



The five surviving victims include another of Dodis daughters and the familys domestic worker, Santi. They were treated at Kartika Hospital in Pulomas.

_______________________________________



Timeline



Dec. 26



* 2:30 p.m.: Three or four suspects arrive at the house of the victims. They point a gun and machetes at the victims shortly after they manage to sneak their way in after the houses main gate is left unlocked.



* 2:45 p.m.: The suspects round up the victims and force them to squeeze into a 1.5 by 1.5-meter toilet located on the ground floor of the house.



* 3:00 p.m.: Dodi, the father, arrives home only to be greeted by the suspects, who also squeeze him into the toilet. A total of 11 people are squashed into the same toilet.



* 3:20 p.m.: The suspects leave the house.



Dec. 27



* 6.30 a.m.: Sheila Putri, 16, a friend of murdered victim Dionika Arika, 16, arrived at the scene after Diona did not return her call even though the two promised to hang out in the morning. She found that the front gate of the house was not locked and she later heard faint moaning from inside one of the houses toilets. Sheila asked for help from the neighbors and the police who forcedly opened the toilet only to find a pile of bodies.



Murdered victims



1. Dodi Triono, 59, owner of the house who works as an architect and a businessman.



2. Diona Andika Andra Putri, 16, Dodis eldest daughter from his second marriage.



3. Dianita Gemma Dzalfayla, 9, Dodis youngest daughter from his second marriage.



4. Amalia Calista, 9, Dianitas friend staying for the night at the house.



5. Tasrok, 40, Dodis driver



6. Yanto, Dodis driver



Survivors



1. Zanette Kalila Azaria, 13, Dodis second oldest daughter from his second marriage



2. Emi, 41, babysitter



3. Santi, 22, housekeeper



4. Fitriani, 23, housekeeper



5. Windi, 23, housekeeper

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Linkedin Indra Budiari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

A dramatic police raid in Rawalumbu, a densely populated area of Bekasi, West Java, on Wednesday, ended with the arrest of Erwin Situmorang and the death of Ramlan Butar Butar, who was shot by detectives after he fought back against the police.

The two are suspects in the horrific mass murder in a luxurious house in the upscale residential area of Pulo Mas, East Jakarta, a day earlier. Six people died and five others suffered injuries after 11 people were locked up inside a 1.5 by 1.5 meter bathroom.

The polices swift investigation led detectives to trace Ramlans whereabouts at his brothers house in Rawalumbu.

(Read also: Pulo Mas murder victims buried in Tanah Kusir)

The police said Ramlan, who had been arrested by the police for other crimes, was the leader of the gang as he was nicknamed captain.

Ramlan is an old player. He and his men are known as specialists in house burglary, especially during holidays, National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian said, adding that Ramlan was notorious for the sadistic violence he inflicted on his victims.

The police have also arrested a man identified only by the initial R for allegedly helping the suspects hide. Two other suspects are still at large.

Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Mochamad Iriawan said early investigations indicated that the criminals intruded into the house, belonging to 59-year-old architect Dodi Triono, and stole two bags, cell phones and a number of precious items such as a Rolex watch and millions of rupiah. The police have seized some of the items as evidence.

Dodi, his daughters, 16-year-old Diona Arika Andra Putri and 9-yearold Dianita Gemma Dzalfayla, as well as the girls friend, identified as Amel, and the familys drivers, Yanto and Tasrok, were killed in the incident.

Iriawan said the investigation was assisted by footage from a number of CCTV cameras installed around the house.

In one of the clips, a man, wearing a black jacket and a cap, is seen entering the houses unlocked gate.

Another man, suspected as Ramlan, is seen following him with a limp. Another clip shows one of the suspects pointing a gun at several people inside the house, while two other men  one of them holding a sickle  round up the victims in the living room before forcing them into the bathroom in which they were eventually locked up for several hours.

Police autopsy reports found the cause of death to be asphyxiation. Iriawan said there was no signs of violence on the victims bodies.

It was Ramlan who locked them up. The bathrooms key was disposed of, he said.

According to Iriawan, the perpetrators allegedly put them inside the bathroom to let them search for valuables in the house more freely as well as to prevent the victims from calling for help.

Iriawan also said the bathroom, which was usually used by the familys domestic helpers, did not have ventilation.

He said the suspects had been charged under articles 338, 363 and 333 of the Criminal Code on murder, robbery and kidnapping, which carry a maximum punishment of 15 years in prison.

He also said investigators were yet to find any motive behind the murder other than robbery.

The incident was first discovered by 16-year-old Sheila Putri who went the house to meet Diona on Tuesday morning. Sheila found the gate unlocked and heard moaning from the bathroom.

Sheila ran for help and notified nearby security officers and residents who then arrived at the house to discover 11 people cramped inside the bathroom with blood on the floor.

The five surviving victims include another of Dodis daughters and the familys domestic worker, Santi. They were treated at the Kartika Hospital in Pulo Mas.
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Linkedin Mario Rustan (The Jakarta Post) Bandung  Thu, December 29 2016

I was fortunate to be taught by Robert Manne, a prominent Australian academic and public commentator who was a conservative in the 1980s and a left-wing liberal in the 21st century.

He is a man of many interests  20th century European politics (with an emphasis on the Holocaust and communism), Australias treatment of asylum seekers and indigenous Australians, and climate change. I studied two subjects under him  political ideas in the 20th century and the Holocaust.

I was interested in the Holocaust because I wanted to understand the May 1998 riots and the prevalence of anti-Chinese sentiment in Southeast Asia. In explaining anti-Chinese sentiment in Southeast Asia, Western correspondents and writers often use the analogy of European Jews to describe how Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese are seen by other Asians.

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Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam, Riau Islands  Thu, December 29, 2016

Immigration Checkpoint Authority (ICA), an institution responsible for the security of Singapores borders, deported on Tuesday two Indonesian citizens, who were reportedly trying to depart for Syria via the country, to Batam, Riau Islands, under security escort. It is suspected that the two people intended to join the extremist Islamic State (IS) movement.

Riau Islands Police spokesperson Adj. Sr. Comr. Saptono Erlangga said the two were, MNA, a 40-year-old man who was born in Medan, North Sumatra, but now lived in Batam, and SI, a 40-year old woman who was born in Cirebon, West Java.

They have been handed over to the police. The Batam Police, together with the Immigration Office, are now investigating the two individuals, Erlangga told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

He further explained that the ICA had investigated MNA and SI after they were interrogated during a security inspection at an immigration checkpoint at Harbor Front Center, a Singaporean seaport, which serves Batam-Singapore ship routes.

During the interrogation, they admitted they were planning to depart for Syria. Regarding whether they intended to join IS, we still need to carry out an intensive examination, said Erlangga.

It was reported that MNA and SI departed to Singapore using the fast boat Queens Star Sindo on Monday afternoon. They were deported back to Batam after an almost 24-hour interrogation. The two are only the latest among many Indonesian citizens Singapore has deported for allegedly trying to join IS militants in Syria. (ebf)
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Linkedin Safrin La Batu and Marguarite Afra (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

Terrorism, which is thought to have been one of the biggest threats confronting national security in 2016, will continue to threaten the country next year along with the distribution of fake news through social media, which the National Police said had the potential to create grassroots conflict.

National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian said in his outlook on the countrys security situation in 2017 on Wednesday that the force would make combating terrorism and clamping down on individuals responsible for fake news and hoaxes a priority.

As part of efforts to deal with terrorism, the police, Tito said, would continue with Operation Tinambola in the restive region of Poso in Central Sulawesi to hunt down members of the terrorist group the East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT). The MIT was founded by Santoso, one of the countrys most infamous terrorists.

Santoso was shot dead in July this year after police ramped up their offensive operations in the area.

Tito also said the police would monitor people flying to and coming back from Syria to prevent the dissemination of the radical ideology espoused by the Islamic State (IS) group. In doing so, Indonesia expects to work with countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Turkey.

Our priority is [to monitor] those returning to Indonesia. Once they are found [to have joined IS] we will name them suspects, Tito said.

(Read also: 220 Indonesians deported from Turkey)

On alert: Police personnel guard a neighborhood in Bekasi, West Java, on Dec. 10 after the National Polices Densus 88 counterterrorism squad found a high explosive bomb in one of the houses in the area, along with a woman who was allegedly designated to detonate the bomb at the Presidential Palace compound in Jakarta.(Antara/Risky Andrianto)

Around 600 Indonesians are thought to have traveled to Syria to engage in jihad. Some have remained in the country while others have made their way home or have lost their lives in the war.

With regard to hoaxes, half-truths and fake news, which mainly circulate on the internet, Tito said they could grow into a severe security threat in 2017 and that the police were working to improve their capacity in dealing with threats coming from online sources.

The statement came as government officials scrambled to counter rumors that millions of Chinese workers have arrived in the country.

President Joko Jokowi Widodo has insisted that the rumors claiming that more than 10 million Chinese nationals had been permitted to work in Indonesia were baseless and that in reality there were only 21,000 Chinese nationals legally working here.

National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Boy Rafli Amar said rumors about millions of Chinese workers staying in the country had been spread to damage the governments reputation.

The people will say oh the government has been doing this and that while in fact it is not true, he said.

Separately, Indonesian Military (TNI) commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo said the rumors and hoaxes were planned and orchestrated by external parties that wanted to create unrest, which could eventually tear the nation apart.

It is aimed at provoking and dividing our people, he said.

Tito said to deal effectively with hoaxes and fake news would require concerted effort from numerous government agencies. He said the government was now devising a mechanism to deal with the threat.

Tomorrow, the President will hold a meeting on how to integrate all ministries and agencies to crack down on provocations on social media, Tito said.

(Read also: Jakarta remains vulnerable to terror attacks with leading IS terrorist on the loose)

Final check: The National Police's bomb squad personnel run a sweeping inside the Jakarta Cathedral on Dec. 24, several hours before the cathedral runs a series of Christmas Eve masses.(JP/Wendra Ajistyatama)

Tito himself has taken the issue of fake news seriously, especially after a legislator claimed that the police had decided to ramp up their counterterrorism campaign to create a diversion from the blasphemy case implicating Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama.

Tito, who once served as chief of the Densus 88 antiterror squad, said he would resign from his post if any evidence could be found that the police had orchestrated the antiterrorism campaign as a diversion from the politically-charged case involving Ahok.

The use of the internet to spread radical ideology will also become a concern of the police. Indonesian militants such as Bahrun Naim, a tech-savvy jihadist who is waging war in Syria, has allegedly used the internet to recruit new militants. It is thought that Bahrun has created a number of cells across the country through online chat groups.

In the past 12 days following the foiled plot to attack the State Palace on Dec. 10, Densus 88 has uncovered at least 13 terrorist cells in West Java, Central Java, Banten, North Sumatra, West Sumatra and Batam, arresting a total of 21 people and shooting dead five suspects, who were allegedly planning attacks during Christmas and New Years Eve this year.

Tito said such raids were only possible because the police had stepped up their cybersurveillance efforts.
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Linkedin Safrin La Batu and Marguarite Afra (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29 2016

Terrorism, which is thought to have been one of the biggest threats confronting national security in 2016, will continue to threaten the country next year along with the distribution of fake news through social media, which the National Police said had the potential to create grassroots conflict.

National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian said in his outlook on the countrys security situation in 2017 on Wednesday that the force would make combating terrorism and clamping down on individuals responsible for fake news and hoaxes a priority.

As part of efforts to deal with terrorism, the police, Tito said, would continue with Operation Tinambola in the restive region of Poso in Central Sulawesi to hunt down members of the terrorist group the East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT). The MIT was founded by Santoso, one of the countrys most infamous terrorists.

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Riding merely on his fathers coattails, Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, 38, was once touted as an unlikely rival to challenge the overwhelmingly popular incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama in the upcoming gubernatorial election.

Not only that, the eldest son of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has no knack for politics and was considered too young and lacking management experience. His 15-year career in the military was largely spent studying overseas.

But Agus guerilla strategy to win the hearts and minds of middle to lower-income voters seems to have paid off.

Agus has ascended to become the frontrunner, according to several recent surveys, amid a blasphemy case that has hurt the electability of Ahok, a Christian of Chinese descent, as Muslim voters find an alternative in Agus.

I have been underestimated, as many said I am only riding on the popularity of my father.

But thats OK. I consider such an assumption as a whip on my back for me to prove that they are wrong, said Agus in an emotional tone during a visit to The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

(Read also: SBY overconfident in picking son for Jakarta election: Analyst)

Candidate No. 1 Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono and Sylviana Murni participate in the Jakarta gubernatorial election parade on Oct. 29. (JP/Seto Wardhana.)

Agus said his father had not dictated his campaign strategy and that he considered his father a mentor from whom he could learn the best things in life.

Ive never carried around my fathers picture during campaign stops, said Agus, whose body language and speaking manner closely resembles that of his father.

I would like to be known as AHY [his initials], not SBY. I have my own distinctive character and strengths, he said.

When asked of his strategy to win the election, Agus said he would primarily focus on luring voters in the middle- to lower-income bracket, which he believed to account for around 70 percent of voters.

Agus also took the time to clarify his enormous wealth, which was fielded to the authorities as a requirement to participate in the election.

Front-runner: Jakarta gubernatorial candidate Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono takes a selfie with a member of The Jakarta Post's editorial team during his media visit on Dec. 28.(JP/Wienda Parwitasari)

(Read also: Agus more wealthy than SBY, declared assets suggest)

As an Army officer with the rank of major and a take-home pay of less than Rp 6 million (US$447) a month, Agus has accumulated a wealth valued at Rp 15.2 billion and US$551,332.

The amount is higher than his fathers wealth in 2009 when Yudhoyono ran for a second term as president. At that time, the retired three-star army general reported wealth of Rp 7.6 billion.

Agus claims his wealth came mostly from his wife, who is a model and celebrity.

Before she married me, Annisa [Pohan] was an artist with income, which certainly was much higher than mine, said Agus.

Agus refused to elaborate, and affirmed that he had the right to not reveal the details of his wealth to the public.

His wealth report previously aroused heated debate on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, with internet users questioning the source of his wealth, considering that he was only a middleranking officer.

Some even focused their attention on Annisas expensive clothing and accessories, including a Hermes bag, and said Agus would not likely be able to afford such goods.

The debate grew harsh with some netizens starting to mock him and his family, including his 8-year-old daughter.

In response to the critics, the graduate of Harvards John F. Kennedy School of Government disabled the comment section on his personal Instagram account.

This is my personal account, and it is in my power to disable the comment section, said Agus, adding that all feedback from the public pertaining to the election should be directed to his social media accounts.

Dont get me wrong, I love criticism. Constructive criticism is wonderful, but I just dont have time to respond to haters.
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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, December 30 2016

The Indonesian governments wooing of its Japanese counterparts may have succeeded as the latter has agreed to strengthen bilateral ties on several infrastructure projects, including the deep-sea port development in Patimban, West Java.

Following a meeting with Japans Land, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism Keiichi Ishii, Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan claimed that the two parties aimed to finalize agreements on infrastructure projects by mid-January.

We hope that by the middle or end of January, the issues surrounding Patimban, the Masela block, the Jakarta-Surabaya railway project and coast guard cooperation will be finalized, he said on Thursday.

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Linkedin Ivany Atina Arbi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, December 30 2016

Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama said he wanted to be remembered like Ali Sadikin, the legendary Jakarta governor who people adore long after the end of his term in 1977.

That is why the governor has been stern in his decision to carry out evictions in the capital this year, to make way for river restoration projects he has claimed are badly needed to mitigate flooding.

I dont care [if my approval rating is going down], Ahok, who is seeking reelection in February 2017, said when asked if he feared his controversial eviction policies would take a toll on his electability.

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Linkedin Jessicha Valentina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, December 29, 2016

Indonesian students from Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and Diponegoro University (Undip) have reportedly entered the second round of the world's aviation competition hosted by aerospace company Airbus Group.

The students were part of three teams, namely Garuda Ganesha and Pocket Rocket from ITB and Swing from Undip.

Held in partnership with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Airbus Fly Your Ideas competition challenged students across the globe to contribute new and innovative ideas related to the aviation industry, including efficiency in flight operation, new systems for passenger experience and innovative business models.

The Indonesian teams proposed three different ideas: a new overhead bin concept to improve passenger comfort and loading efficiency, an artificial intelligence program to increase fuel efficiency and improve aerodynamics and the development of Airbus Skyland, a revenue-generating marketing theme park where unused Airbus airplanes can find new lives.

(Read also: Ministry tells Indonesian airliners to hire 900 jobless local pilots)

The ideas were assessed by a group of 60 Airbus experts and the evaluation process took place at four different Airbus locations in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Airbus executive engineering vice president Charles Champion said in a press release that the competition offered the students opportunities to interact with senior specialists. "In turn, these experts will benefit from direct interaction with young talent from across the globe, sharing the same passion for one of the worlds most exciting industries."

In the second round, the teams will start developing ideas and share updates with photos, sketches and stories on the program's website, in which five teams will be selected to continue to a third round.

Participants who enter the final round will be given the opportunity to spend a week at the ProtoSpace base at the company's headquarter in Toulouse, France, to create prototypes of their ideas. Slated to be announced in May 2017, the winners will receive a 30,000 (US$31,317) prize. (kes)
In an exciting development for New Jerseys Jewish residents, NJ State Senator Patrick Diegnan, Vice Chairman of the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee, announced that he will be a primary sponsor of Senate bill S2634, which will provide crucial security funding for New Jersey synagogues, non-public schools and other non-profit institutions.

The Senate bill is identical to Assembly bill A4253, introduced by Assemblywoman Annette Quijano, Chairwoman of the Assembly Homeland Security Committee. The legislation allocates $500,000 a year for homeland security grants of up to $15,000 each. Grants will be distributed to New Jersey nonprofit organizations through a competitive process during which applying entities will articulate their security needs.

The funds in this legislation are in addition to federal homeland security grants for nonprofit organizations, which are limited to expenditures that improve an institutions security infrastructure, such as security cameras and barriers. The state funds can also be spent on live security guards, which are in particular demand by these institutions during high profile events and holidays.

We live in dangerous world, where Jews and other minorities are a particular target, says Rabbi Schnall, Agudath Israels New Jersey Director. On behalf of our community, I thank Assemblywoman Quijano, Senator Diegnan, and Senator Weinberg, another primary sponsor, for leading the effort to make this legislation a reality. We look forward to celebrating its implementation, which will result in enhanced security for vulnerable communities across our state.
The story within the story then picks up, following the spooked family as they appear to be tormented by Krampus' warnings. All the while, Fulcher continues to interject with comments on the filming, signifying all of the tricks and slip-ups that are carefully embedded within the story on screen.

It is then that the programme within the programme takes on another twist, as it is revealed that Kathy has staged the demon's invasion in a successful attempt to rid herself of her loathesome mother and son-in-law, and scare Julian into a heart attack so that she can finally be with her lover (and father of her unborn child)... Klaus (otherwise known as Simon).

A strange, self-referential story made distinct by it's 1970s stylings, deliberately melodramatic overtones and shocking plot twists, this latest anthology piece by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton is a refreshingly dark and different Christmas special that spices up the festive TV schedule with its macabre wit.Set in an alpine chalet in Austria in 1977, the episode starts as if it were a schlocky TV drama in which an upper class British family arrive at the cabin for a two week festive ski holiday. When Julian Devonshire (Pemberton), his pregnant wife Kathy (Jessica Raine), son Toby (George Bedford) and overbearing mother (Rula Lenska) arrive at the cabin, they are greeted by their creepy caretaker/guide, Klaus (Shearsmith) who startles them with the legend of Krampus, the holiday demon who visits naughty children in the night as a warning to change their ways. It is told that children who don't heed Krampus' warnings - first a switch left in their shoes, then three gruesome scratches that appear as if from nowhere - will be taken by the demon into the fiery depths of hell for all eternity. At this dramatic point in the exposition of the plot, Shearsmith and Pemberton issue the first of their trademark plot twists, as the film begins to rewind and is interrupted by a voiceover from director, Dennis Fulcher (Derek Jacobi).Switching up the format of the tale into what certainly (at first) seems to be a DVD commentary of the original TV movie, Fulcher comments on the various continuity errors within the set and the terrible, hammed up performances of the lead actors. I knew we were losing Brian at six oclock, he explains at one point. He had a voiceover for Findus.Indulging unabashedly in the cliched melodrama of this moment, Shearsmith and Pemberton prepare us for the shocking, final twist. The final scene, for which the naive young actress playing Kathy is not prepared, sees a menacing man in a krampus mask stand in for Klaus, with a machete raised above his head... As the girl's screams filter into white noise, the voiceover returns revealing the true nature of the commentary: a police interview investigating the murder within what is suggested to be a snuff movie. An ingeniously intricate episode of dark, ambigious twists and ever subversive meaning, Shearsmith and Pemberton's return to No.9 is just as wickedly clever as we have come to expect in previous series. Though not quite as humourous as previous episodes, this tale is still a masterclass in the weaving of dark anthology stories that should be commended for it's fiercely intelligent writing.
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Danielle Bruce and her father Rob Conti recently spent the day together delivering cheer, and some presents to local seniors in need.

Bruce, who works for the American House Foundation, and her father helped to collect items such as shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant and other household items to fill nearly 2,000 care packages that were then given out to seniors in and around areas where The American House operates senior living communities. About 1,100 of those care packages stayed in Michigan.

RELATED: 8 things to know about The American House Foundation

Bruce was the founder of the Foundation, which has been making similar donations each year since 2011.

My dad is a mail carrier who works six days a week, she said. He still makes time to get together with me and do this every year. Its a tradition that we both look forward to.

Bruce said each year gets a little better in terms of how many packages they give out and how many people they are able to help.

Weve delivered all over, she said. This year we were in Downriver.

Bruce said the seniors are all very grateful for the supplies.

They are all on fixed incomes, she said. This time of the year can get tough on many of them.

One example of senior who was extra special this year was a lady who opened the door with a towel on her head as she was just out of the shower.

She asked if we were Santa and told us she had been a Good girl this year, Bruce said. She said she was so blessed, and tried to give to people all the time. That sometimes left her without though. She was very thankful for the supplies.

The woman, identified as Geneva, had been worried about staying warm during the winter.

She told my dad that because we donated all that to her that she could afford to buy a blanket for herself, Bruce said. Thats the reason we do this. You cant get a better feeling than helping someone so much in need.

All of the items donated through the foundation are the types that cant be bought with a Bridge Card, making it extra special for those in need.

It gives us a warm and fuzzy feeling to help out like that, Bruce said. Some of these people have no one to talk to all day, or are shut-ins. We make sure they get someone to talk to at least for a few minutes when we go out.

The American House has communities for seniors in Brownstown, Southgate, Riverview and Taylor.
Foreigners arrested, coke, crystal meth, ecstasy seized

BANGKOK: Two foreign nationals were arrested after 4 kilograms of cocaine were found in their bags when they arrived at Suvarnabhumi Airport from Africa and a third, their alleged contact, was later apprehended at a Bangkok hotel.

crimedrugstransportpolice

By Bangkok Post

Thursday 29 December 2016, 09:08AM

Narcotics suppression police question Francis Mukwamba, a Zambian passport holder whose real nationality is uncertain, at a hotel room in Sukhumvit area of Bangkok on Dec 26. Photo: Narcotics Suppression Bureau Facebook page

Maj Gen Sommai Kongwisaisuk, acting commissioner of the Narcotics Suppression Bureau, said Johnny Halop Sajulga, a Filipino, and a Vietnamese woman, Chao Thi Thuong, 37, arrived from Ethiopia on Flight ET 628 on Monday (Dec 26).

Police thought they were acting suspiciously and asked that their baggage be examined. The search found a total of 4kg of cocaine in the two bags.

The Vietnamese woman allegedly admitted the drugs in her bag belonged to her, but gave no further further details, said Maj Gen Sommai.

The Filipino man confessed to have been hired to smuggle the drugs into Thailand. The cocaine was to be delivered to a man at a hotel in the Sukhumvit area of Bangkok.

Sajulga was instructed to make the delivery as planned, and kept under close watch. At the hotel the third suspect, Francis Mukwamba, a Zambian passport holder whose real nationality was being investigated, was caught when he showed up to collect the drugs.

Authorities searched his room and found 85grams of crystal meth (ya ice) and 1,640 ecstasy pills.

The trio were being held in custody at the NSBs division 3 for legal action.

Read original story here.
French woman deported for Phuket overstay, banned for five years

PHUKET: A French woman living in Phuket was deported from the Kingdom of Thailand on Tuesday (Dec 27) after being found to have overstayed her tourist visa by 103 days.

crimeimmigrationpolicetourism

By Tanyaluk Sakoot

Thursday 29 December 2016, 10:17AM

The woman was banned from re-entering the Kingdom for five years as she did not surrender herself to officials. Photo: Tanyaluk Sakoot

The woman has also been banned from re-entering the Kingdom for five years as she did not surrender herself to officials.

The 47-year-old Catherine Laurence Bardot, was arrested by Immigration Police and officials from Phuket Provincial Employment Office while riding a horse at the Cooling Horse House on Krong Cheap Thepkrasattri Rd in Thalang District on December 21, police confirmed.

Lt Chitsanut Juthichai, an Investigator from the Phuket Immigration Office, told The Phuket News yesterday (Dec 28), A French woman was deported out of country yesterday after we found her while she was riding a horse at 7:30pm on Dec 21.

We arrested the woman with the cooperation of the Phuket Provincial Employment Office, he said.

When asked what the consequences were for the overstay, Lt Chitsanut confirmed, She has been banned from re-entering the Kingdom for five years as she did not surrender herself.

That is all I have to say on the matter for now, he said.

Stricter punishments for those overstaying their visas took effect from March 20 as part of government efforts to crack down on transnational crime. (See story here.)

The website ThaiVisa.com on July 22 reported that the Immigration Bureau posted a new announcement regarding its rules for overstay, confirming that details of blacklisting for long overstays by foreigners are now in force. (See story here.)
Kenny Rogers Roasters

Thursday 29 December 2016, 12:58PM

Kenny Rogers Roasters is a casual dining restaurant with rotisserie-roasted chicken as its main core item complemented by a rich variety of hot and cold side dishes. Fresh chickens are marinated with citrus, herbs and spices. They are then rotated in a wood-fired rotisserie, allowing fat to escape, while sealing in the roasted flavour.
Korean name found scratched on coral off Phuket causes concern

PHUKET: The discovery of a large brain coral with a Korean name scratched on it at a reef off the coast of Phang Nga has once again raised concerns about conservation awareness among tourists diving in the area.

environmentmarinetourism

By Bangkok Post

Thursday 29 December 2016, 05:31PM

A photo of the scratched coral has been shared on Social Media. Photo: Kapookdotcom/Twitter

A diver working for Sign Scuba Co took a photo of the damaged brain coral at a depth of 20 metres west of Koh Similan in Khura Buri district of Phang Nga last Saturday (Dec 24). The diver was leading clients from the Turtle Rock dive site southwards to the Waterfall Bay site when he came across the damage, according to media reports. The characters scratched into the coral were Korean, and it was a persons name, according to the reports. The diver expressed concerned it could lead to even more damage in the area, with copycats doing the same thing, as the number of tourists diving there was growing. Read original story here.
NZ man plunges 20 floors to death in Patong

PHUKET: A 55-year-old New Zealand man was found dead behind a hotel in Patong before dawn this morning (Dec 29), the victim of an apparent suicide after falling 20 floors from his hotel room, say police.

patongdeathpolicesuicidetourism

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Thursday 29 December 2016, 11:02AM

The man fell 20 floors to his death from the Royal Paradise hotel in Patong. Photo: The Phuket News / file

Security at the Royal Paradise Hotel notified police of the mans death at 4:10am, after Patong Municipality garbage collectors found the mans crumpled body behind the hotel.

The man checked into the hotel alone on Tuesday (Dec 27), said Maj Theerasak Boonsang of the Patong Police.

We checked the hotel CCTV and the man* returned to the hotel alone at 3:11am, Maj Theerasak said.

He took the elevator to the 20th floor and entered his room unaccompanied. There were no signs of fighting in the room and it seems that nothing has been stolen, he added.

We will investigate this further, but at this stage we believe the man committed suicide, Maj Theerasak noted.

* The mans name is being withheld until his next of kin have been notified.

If you or anyone you know is depressed or in need of mental health services, please contact the Samaritans of Thailand on their 24-hour hotline 02-713-6791 (English), 02-713-6793 (Thai) or Thai Mental Health Hotline at 1323 (Thai).




Phuket readies for New Year long, long weekend shutdown

PHUKET: Most of the key government offices across Phuket will start shutting down from tomorrow (Dec 30) as the nation heads into a five-day holiday for the New Year.



By The Phuket News

Thursday 29 December 2016, 02:25PM

Many key offices across Phuket will close /for the New Year long weekend. Photo: The Phuket News

This year the Royal Thai Government has decreed two extra days  next Monday and Tuesday (Jan 2-3)  to be public holidays to honour the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who passed away on Oct 13.

The decree brings the total number of public holidays for the New Year festive period to five, from Dec 31 through to Jan 3.

The move also allows many Thais to head back to their home provinces to celebrate the New Year with family, with the bulk of the populace returning to work next Wednesday (Jan 4).

Government offices such as the Immigration, District Offices and the local Department of Land Transportation office will all be closed, as will main branches of banks, but with some bank branches in shopping malls remaining open.

The Class Act Media offices will be closed tomorrow (Dec 30) in lieu of the extra public holiday granted by the Cabinet next Tuesday, and as such will re-open next Tuesday (Jan 3).

For news tips and emergencies, contact us as follows:

 The Phuket News  click here

 Live 89.5  click here

 Phuket News TV  click here

 Novesti Phuketa  click here

 Puji Dao Xinwen  click here

For enquiries about our upcoming Thai-language newspaper Khao Phuket, which will launch on Jan 6, email here.
Police remain baffled about wanted monk

BANGKOK: National Police Chief Chakthip Chaijinda yesterday (Dec 28) declined to confirm whether Phra Dhammajayo, the embattled former abbot of Wat Phra Dhammakaya, has fled to a border province in the North as rumoured.

constructioncrimecorruptionlandpolicereligion

By Bangkok Post

Thursday 29 December 2016, 08:55AM

Disciples of the Dhammakaya sect leader say they havent seen Phra Dhammajayo since April. Photo: Post Today graphic

Neither did Gen Chakthip confirm nor reject rumours quoting temple followers as saying they had not seen Phra Dhammajayo since April. The National Police Chief only said that could be a lie.

Gen Chakthip said he didnt want to go into detail about the matter and the truth was that no time frame had been set for the arrest of the monk.

Yesterday, the Democrat ex-MP Chanchai Issarasenarak said a source had told him that Phra Dhammajayo had left the temple for a northern region, which is why police forces did not raid the temple in their latest siege on Tuesday (Dec 27).

Phra Dhammajayo was indicted on money-laundering charges in connection with the multi-billion-baht Klongchan Credit Union Cooperative embezzlement scandal. The monk is also the subject of warrants for alleged forest encroachment by the temples meditation facilities in Nakhon Ratchasima and Loei provinces.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and his deputy, Gen Prawit Wongsuwon, had aired concerns about the possibility the attempt to deal with the temple and its former abbot risked going awry and affecting a large number of people.

He also said the move on Tuesday by several temple supporters taking a public road to perform prayers was believed to be a tactic created to lure authorities into a trap.

At Wat Phra Dhammakaya in Pathum Thani, another rumour was spread yesterday that five additional companies of crowd-control police would be deployed to bolster existing security forces stationed near the temple, in a bid to pressure the temple.

But there was no sign of such a deployment throughout the day.

On Tuesday about 1,000 police together with Department of Special Investigation officials launched an operation to surround the temple, which led many to assume it was the start of a move to raid it.

However, the forces ended their operation in the afternoon after only removing barriers which were preventing access to the temples gates.

Deputy Police Chief Srivara Ransibrahmanakul insisted the police deployed outside the temple early on Tuesday were not there to arrest the former abbot. He rated Tuesdays operation as satisfactory.

Several tents erected by the temples followers on a public road that lies between Khlong L1 and L2 still were still there yesterday, despite the temples promise to police on Tuesday to remove them immediately.

More green plastic nets and several concrete posts were installed as additional barriers on the public road. The overall situation at the temple, however, appears more or less as normal as it was before Tuesdays operation.

Gate 7, the main entrance to the temple on Bang Khan-Nong Suea Rd in Khlong Luang district was reopened yesterday, and security guards began allowing cars to enter. The gate was shut on Tuesday.

At gates 5 and 6 of the temple, four temple monks were seen coming out to take alms as usual, while a number of temple followers were seen praying on a nearby public road. Those who wanted to enter Gate 5 were required to show their ID cards.

Trucks took food and fruit to those temple followers who continued their prayers on the public road.

Soldiers and DSI officers stationed at the polices security checkpoint on Bang Khan-Nong Suea Rd, meanwhile, maintained stringent security to deter any attempts to stir up violence.

Read original story here.
Young Stamp seen as underdog to Ioka

BOXING: Thailands Stamp Kiatniwat will enter the ring as the underdog when he takes on WBA flyweight champion Kazuto Ioka of Japan on New Years Eve.

Thursday 29 December 2016, 04:42PM

Thailands Stamp Kiatniwat (right) during a training session. Photo: Hanif Hassan via Bangkok Post

The 18-year-old Thai challenger left for Osaka, Japan on Monday (Dec 26) in the hope of snatching the 112-pound belt from Ioka in the mandatory fight.

Stamps manager Taweesin Laosuwanwat said his boxer, who is the interim champion in the 112-pound division, was four pounds over the limit but would not have any problems in shedding the excess weight in time for the bout.

The biggest concern for Taweesin is Stamps lack of experience.

I admit that at the age of 18, Stamp is less experienced than Ioka, he said.

And I am sure that Iokas punches are more powerful as well. .

Asked about Stamps chances of taking home the belt, Taweesin said: It will be 60-40 in favour of the Japanese.

Stamp, who has trained for three months for the fight, successfully defended his interim WBA flyweight title with a majority decision over Gregorio Lebron of the Dominican Republic in Bangkok in February.

The 27-year-old Ioka will be a much tougher opponent for the teenage Thai. The Japaneses only loss in his professional career was against Thailands Amnat Ruenroeng in May 2014.

Ioka won the title from Juan Carlos Revoco of Argentina in April last year and has successfully defended it three times so far. In his third title defence in July, he stopped Keyvin Lara of Nicaragua in the 11th round in Japan.

Ioka won three world titles before moving up to the flyweight class. He took the WBC minimumweight belt in November 2011, claimed the WBA minimumweight title in June 2012 and six months later, landed the WBA light-flyweight crown.

Read original story here.
After 20 years as the Codington County auditor, Cindy Brugman retires

Codington County Auditor Cindy Brugman will see through one more election night ballot count before passing her title down to Brenda Hanten.
Strong low pressure will move into Maine on Friday. Montreal will be on the western edge of the storm, with 10 to 15cm of snow forecast.
In this Oct. 31, 2016 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, gestures during a speech at the Knesset, Israel's Parliament in Jerusalem, Monday, Oct. 31, 2016. Israel's Justice Ministry and police issued a brief statement late Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016, that said they will issue an update "in due time" about an ongoing probe into suspicions surrounding the prime minister. Israeli media are reporting that the attorney general is soon expected to announce a criminal investigation into Netanyahu. The Justice Ministry would not confirm the reports. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, listens to Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow, Russia on Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016. Putin is ordering to scale down the Russian military presence in Syria. Putin made the statement Thursday while declaring that a cease-fire in Syria brokered by Russia and Turkey will start at midnight. (Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - In this April 14, 2016, file photo, a Russian military camp is seen at the ancient city of Palmyra in the central city of Homs, Syria. U.S.-Russian talks on their separate fights against the Islamic State group are improving and becoming more frequent, American officials said. In the discussions, Russia has made clear its counterterrorism priority in Syria is retaking the ancient city of Palmyra, officials said. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)
In this Dec. 9, 2016, file photo, President-elect Donald Trump arrives to speak to supporters during a rally, in Grand Rapids, Mich. Trump is facing an early test with fellow Republicans over U.S. relations with Russia. Lawmakers are seeking to investigate Russian interference in the November election and issue warnings over the incoming president's potential pick for secretary of state. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
LETTER: Instead of dropping 'The Ode,' find another way to honour Labrador

Many writers to the Telegram have chimed in, some with vitriol, on the decision by MUN not to sing "The Ode to Newfoundland" at the recent or future graduation convocations. I am astonished, however, at the number who see no problem with changing its ...
Job Title: Secretary

Organisation: United Nations

High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

Position No.: 10026827

Vacancy Notice: 33/2016

Duty Station: Arua, Uganda

Post Grade: GL4

About UNHCR:

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was

established on December 14, 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly.

UNHCRs mandate under the Statute of the Office of the United Nations High

Commissioner for Refugees is to lead and co-ordinate action for international

protection to refugees; seek permanent solutions for the problems of refugees

and safeguard refugee rights and well-being. UNHCR has an additional mandate

concerning issues of statelessness, as it is given a designated role under

Article 11 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Job Summary: The Secretary

will provide secretarial and administrative support to the Unit as a whole. The

incumbent will receive regular guidance from his/her supervisor. As per

specific instructions, the incumbent will require liaising with other internal

or external entities, to ensure effective delivery of services and achievement

of objectives. The assignments are mostly standard tasks including limited

interpretation of subject matter and information exchange between staff in the

office, at the duty station and external officials of other institutions to

ensure mutual understanding.



Responsibilities: Key Duties andResponsibilities:

Prepare correspondence for signature,

checking enclosures and addresses, and draft correspondence on routine

matters.

Arrange appointments/meetings both

internal and external, some involving high ranking officials.

The incumbent will receive visitors, place

and screen telephone calls, respond to routine requests for information

and take notes at meetings as and when required.

Type a wide variety of material from

drafts and printed texts using a word processor. Proof-read for

correctness and maintain office records and reference files on various

subjects.

Assist in making travel arrangements.

The incumbent will receive, review, sort

and distribute all incoming and outgoing material, highlight priority

items and attach necessary background information.

May be required to maintain/update

confidential files.

Perform any other relevant duties as

required.

Key Performance Indicators: The

UNHCR Office has sufficient secretarial and administrative support thus better

able to meet its objectives. TheUNHCR Office has sufficient secretarial and administrative support thus betterable to meet its objectives.



Experience: Qualifications, Skills andExperience:

The ideal candidate for the United Nations

UNHCR Secretary job placement should have secondary education or hold

equivalent technical or commercial school with Secretarial training and/or

certificate.

At least three years of previous job experience

Computer skills (MS office and People soft

applications).

Fluency in English and working knowledge

of another relevant UN language.

How to Apply:

All interested Ugandan nationals who wish to join the United Nations

High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the aforementioned capacity are

encouraged to click on the link below and follow the application instructions

after reviewing the job details.

th

January, 2017 Deadline: 4January, 2017
Job Title: Driver

Organisation: United Nations

High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

Position No.: 10026774

Vacancy Notice: 31/2016

Reports to:

Administrative/Finance Associate Assistant

Administrative/Finance Associate Assistant

Duty Station: Yumbe, Uganda

Post Grade: GL2

About UNHCR:

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was

established on December 14, 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly.

UNHCRs mandate under the Statute of the Office of the United Nations High

Commissioner for Refugees is to lead and co-ordinate action for international

protection to refugees; seek permanent solutions for the problems of refugees

and safeguard refugee rights and well-being. UNHCR has an additional mandate

concerning issues of statelessness, as it is given a designated role under

Article 11 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Job Summary: The Driver is

mainly responsible for up keep and maintenance of the assigned UNHCR vehicle(s)

as per technical guidance and specifications established by the organisation.

The incumbent will be required to follow strict instructions and security

guidance provided by the supervisor. While the basic function of a driver is to

drive the official vehicles of UNHCR, he/she may be called upon to perform

minor maintenance and repair of UNHCR vehicles. The incumbent has regular

contacts with staff within UNHCR office and with service providers outside UNHCR

involving a limited exchange of information.



Key Duties and Responsibilities:

Drive UNHCR vehicles for the transport of

authorized passengers and delivery and collection of mail, documents,

UNHCR pouch and other items.

Meet official personnel at the airport and

facilitate immigration and customs formalities as required.

Carry out the day-to-day maintenance of

the assigned vehicles; check oil, water, battery, brakes, tyres, etc. and

ensure that the assigned UNHCR vehicles are road worthy and maintained up

to the established security standards.

Conduct minor repairs and arrange for

other repairs and ensure that the vehicle is kept clean.

Ensure that the steps required by rules

and regulations are taken in case of involvement in accident.

Log official trips, daily mileage, gas

consumption, oil changes, greasing, etc.

Perform any other related duties as

required by the Administrative/Finance Associate

Key Performance Indicators:

Assigned UNHCR vehicles are properly

maintained and equipped as per technical guidance and specifications

established by the Organisation.

Local traffic rules and regulations are

strictly observed.

Instructions and security guidance

provided by the supervisor and security focal point are strictly followed

by the Driver and the passengers during the journey



Experience: Qualifications, Skills andExperience:

The ideal candidate for the United Nations

UNHCR Driver job vacancy should have completed Primary Education or

equivalent technical or commercial school.

At least two years of previous job experience

relevant to the function.

Driving licence, knowledge of driving

rules and regulations and skills in minor vehicle repair.

Good knowledge of English, Aringa and

Lugbara

Good mechanical skills are desired

Ability to work in remote areas.

How to Apply:

All interested Ugandan nationals who wish to join the United Nations

High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the aforementioned capacity are

encouraged to click on the link below and follow the application instructions

after reviewing the job details.

th

January, 2017 Deadline: 4January, 2017
President Pranab Mukherjees term in office comes to an end in July 2017, and election of the next president of the country will be held early that month in all probability. The name of L.K. Advani, 89, has often been mentioned as a likely candidate for the post, and the BJP would like to see a champion of its ideology in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. But, of late, there have been reports that Advani may not be considered, in view of his age and his criticism of the powers that be. However, there is an outside chance of the veteran politician throwing his hat in the ring nonetheless, which would leave Narendra Modi and his team embarrassed. In 2013, while the BJP was finalising Modi as its prime ministerial candidate, Advani had openly opposed it.

The BJPs allies in the NDA say they have no problems about Advani being projected as the next president. Said Manohar Joshi, former Lok Sabha speaker and Shiv Sena leader, to THE WEEK, Advani is a great leader. I know him well. But first there has to be a consensus in the NDA on the candidate for the post of the president. As far as I know, it is only at the eleventh hour that a candidates name is put forward.

Said Thota Narasimham, Telugu Desam Party MP, to THE WEEK, We dont have any problems in Advani being declared as the next president. But there has to be a general agreement on it. Our party president [Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu] would take a call on it soon.

Advani, it is said, was assured by senior BJP leaders in 2014 that he would be appointed as the next president. But most party leaders are now wary of supporting his candidature in the Modi-dominated era of the BJP. It is also said that the top leadership in the BJP fears that Advani on his own might reach out to other political parties, if the BJP does not nominate him.

RSS ideologue K.N. Govindacharya told THE WEEK that it was not the time to discuss candidates. I have not thought about it yet, he said

Many leaders in the BJP who are close to Advani sympathise with him. O. Rajagopal, BJP MLA in Kerala and a senior leader, is one among them. I will be very happy if Advani becomes president. But at this juncture, before the party makes its decision, I will not be able to say anything more, said Rajagopal to THE WEEK.
The law ministry has appointed a committee, headed by former Supreme Court Judge N.N. Srikishna to study India's varied arbitration laws, rules, procedures and agreements and give a report in 90 days.

Representative image

Our idea is to make India a [global] hub of arbitration, said Law Minister Ravi Shanakr Prasad. A need was felt that we ought to have a structured view of not only the laws, rules, procedures and agreements governing arbitration, but the entire eco-system of alternate disputes redressal mechanism.

The committee will have, as members, former Supreme Court judge R.V. Raveendran, former Delhi High Court Judge Ravindra Bhatt, jurists and other legal scholars such as K.K. Venugopal, P.S. Narasimhan and Indu Malhotra. Secretary, legal affairs will be member-secretary of the committee. Industry associations such as CII and FICCI will also send their representatives.

Several jurists have been saying that India has the potential to emerge as a global hub of arbitration, given the large legal talent and scholarship available in the country, and high-class institutions to train more.
Looking for the safe passage of crucial assembly elections in five states, the Union home ministry is marshalling resources as it called a meeting of the DGPs of these states on Friday to discuss the requirement of the Election Commission for smooth conduct of the polls.

The home ministry is finding it difficult to provide 85,000 security personnel, at least which is the demand of the poll panel. The commission had asked the MHA for one lakh security personnel initially. But the ministry has expressed difficulty in providing such a mammoth number of central security personnel already stretched in internal security duties in Jammu and Kashmir and northeast .

As a first, forty companies (40,000 personnel) from Jammu and Kashmir have been returned to the Centre and are available for deployment during elections. Similarly top cops of the states have also been asked to brainstorm on the actual requirement of central forces in their states. On the outcome of these back to back meetingsfirst with the EC and then with the DGPsthe MHA will formalise its security blueprint for the forthcoming assembly polls.

"The dates for the elections will be finalised after this exercise," said an MHA official. Crucial states like Punjab and Uttar Pradesh have to go to polls shortly and their election schedule depends on the MHA providing security forces.
The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeITY) is coming up with an app that will clean up malwarea software specifically designed to disrupt or damage a computer system. "Consumers can download this free app on any of their deviceslaptops, smartphones or tablets, and it will help in cleaning up the malware," said IT secretary Aruna Sundararajan, in an interaction with THE WEEK.

CDAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) that comes under MeITY is working on the app, which is expected to be launched shortly.

The ministry is also working on a Botnet systeman IT tool that will check telecom networks and inform internet service providers about the possibility of a bot in the system. Steps are being taken to ramp up cyber security in the country in the wake of government's cashless drive. IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad informed on Wednesday that a separate section for digital payments had been created at CERT-IN (Computer Emergency Response Team).

Approximately 94,344 unique users were attacked by mobile ransomware last year in comparison to 18, 478 users in 2014.

The Annual Mobile Virusology (AMV) report by the Kaspersky Lab anti-malware research group, showed that a whopping 884,774 new malicious software programs were detected in 2015a three-fold increase from 2014.

Among all the malwares, ransomwaresmalwares capable of obtaining unlimited rights on an infected device, and data stealersproved to be the most dangerous threats .

The research report said: Once a device is infected with this type of malware, the malicious app blocks the device with a pop-up window carrying a message that the user has committed illegal actions. In order to unlock the device the user has to pay a ransom ranging between $12 and $100.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani reacted to the controversial images of the people sheltering from the cold winter in the empty graves in the suburbs of the capital Tehran as an "unacceptable" condition in the country.

"Who can accept that dozens of the countrymen who have suffered social ills take refuge to graves at night because of homelessness?" Rouhani was quoted as saying by Tehran Times Daily on Wednesday.

Local media on Tuesday said 50 homeless people had been seen at nights sleeping in the empty graves near Shahriar town to the east of Tehran, Xinhua news agency reported.

Whatsoever the reason, this is unacceptable, Rouhani said, urging all parties and political groups in the country to join hands to address corruption as the cause root of social ills.

He said it is unbearable both for the government and for the people, urging solidarity and stop of partisanship.

He also noted that the government and nation "both have responsibility to fight corruption".

In his campaign speeches in 2013, Rouhani pledged to recover the economy, lower unemployment and stop recession, vowing a tougher stance on corruption.
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Aharon and Esther W. are not sure what the future holds for their special daughter. Tzipora must always be on a soft surface or wear a helmet because at any moment she can fall down and hit her head when trying to walk, or she may experience an unexpected but powerful seizure.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When Tziporas mother Esther was expecting her newest child, doctors noticed something unusual in prenatal testing but they couldnt determine exactly what the issue was. Nevertheless she and her husband Aharon were overjoyed at the birth of their daughter Tzipora about four and a half years ago. They couldnt wait to get to know their baby and raise her in their Jerusalem home with their beautiful family.

Tzipora grew each day as expected until something unexpected happened when she was three months old. She experienced an episode of unusual muscle spasms. Esther and Aharon took Tzipora to the doctor and didnt want to believe what they heard: Tzipora was having a seizure, and after further testing she was diagnosed with Aicardi syndrome, a rare disorder (there are only about 1,000 documented cases in the U.S. and several thousand worldwide) where missing nerve fibers in the brain prevent the left and right sides from communicating.

Aicardi syndrome is characterized by seizure activity. Many children with the condition have difficulties walking or speaking and experience developmental delays (because the brain isnt sending complete messages to the body). Sadly in Tziporas case, as she got older it became clear that she was affected in all of these ways.

CLICK HERE to help this family

Tziporas parents did everything possible to get all the help they could, for their daughter. She underwent various therapies for an extended time but they noticed that she wasnt making significant progress in any of the areas she was lacking. They were discouraged and didnt know what to do. Finally they learned some new information after getting in contact with other parents whose children had the same condition: There was a physiotherapist in Canada who specialized in developing treatment plans for Aicardi children. Esther and Aharon scrambled for funds to take the trip abroad and see him.

The investment was a costly one. Aharon and Esther went into substantial debt to cover the three week trip-something the hard working couple never would have expected to be forced to do. It also threw family life into upheaval, as the parents tried to figure out how to make arrangements for the other children left at home. But the well-being of their daughter was paramount and thankfully the investment paid off. The therapist developed a course of unique treatments that could be implemented by his students in Israel, which the family began immediately upon their return. Not long into the therapies Aharon and Esther began to see improvements in Tziporas abilities: When approaching a step while using her walker and leg braces, she now knows it is a sign for her to lift her leg. She is better at bringing a piece of bread closer to her mouth than she used to be. She is working on learning to drink from a cup. These seemingly simple types of activities are big milestones for this smiley, happy four and a half year old.

CLICK HERE to help this family

The results have brought some encouragement into the lives of Aharon and Esther, although they face a frightening hurdle. There is a window of ideal time to work with Tzipora , with a main goal of getting her to walk using this specific method, but it is only open for one more year. Still in significant debt from their previous trip abroad, they know Tzipora has a long road ahead of her and they cant imagine how they will be able to fund additional consultations and treatments.

We can help Tzipora-we need to. But the clock is ticking and we cant help her without you. Our goal is to raise $18,000. With these funds we will be able to make a lifetime investment ourselves, in the future of a little girl. Money will go toward another appointment with the specialist and cover the resulting costs of flights, the vital therapies themselves and loss of income due to the trip.

We hope these therapies will improve Tziporas quality of life.

Please help us get Tzipora the vital help she needs and say a Tefilla for Tzipora Feiga bat Esther.

CLICK HERE to help this family

Milkas Fund, founded and managed by Yad Eliezer is a safe and secure way of donating money to help individuals with compassion and enable them to live a life with their problems solved.
Anya Eldan, Director of the Startup Arena at the Israel Innovation Authority: The reputation of the State of Israel as a global hub of innovation and entrepreneurship in the hi-tech industry attracts entrepreneurs from around the world. Supportive frameworks will give foreign entrepreneurs a soft landing in the local ecosystem in order to develop their innovative initiatives and start companies in Israel.

As part of the Innovation Visas track, entrepreneurs will be able to stay in Israel for a period of up to 24 months during which they can receive support as part of the Israel Innovation Authoritys Tnufa Program. Then, if the initiative turns into a company, a foreign entrepreneur can file a request to receive support from the IIA. After receiving approval, an entrepreneur can receive an expert visa to work on the initiative for a period of up to 5 years.

The innovation visa will enable foreign entrepreneurs from around the world to develop their technological initiatives in Israel. At the beginning of their time in Israel, a foreign entrepreneur will be hosted within a supportive framework that will give them exposure to Israels climate of innovation, work spaces, technological infrastructure, as well as business and logistical support systems.

As part of a call for submissions, 12 supportive frameworks will be selected from the first 15 submissions.

Chairman of the Israel Innovation Authority and Chief Scientist at the Israeli Ministry of Economy, Avi Hasson, said: Israels unique ecosystem draws many foreign entrepreneurs interested in setting up initiatives and partnerships here. This track will attract high quality entrepreneurs from the entire world with knowledge, experience and groundbreaking ideas to Israel, and will thus strengthen the countrys position as a world leader in innovation and entrepreneurship.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
As 2016 comes to an end, the Shin Bet reports Bchasdei Hashem it prevent over 400 significant terror attacks. This was made known in the presence of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who was attending the awards ceremony for the Prime Ministers Prize for Intelligence-Operational Achievements on Tuesday evening the eve of 28 Kislev at Shin Bet Headquarters.

The prize is awarded once every two years in appreciation for high-level planning, flawless professional operation and outcomes that significantly contribute toward achieving goals of the service in the field of preventative action and state security.

PM Netanyahu and Shin Bet Director Nadav Argaman attended the ceremony at which prizes were awarded for six pioneering operations; certificates of appreciation were awarded to personnel who took part in leading them.

The operations that were chosen were among the most unique, sophisticated and highly creative that were carried out by the Shin Bet over the past two years in the areas of operations, intelligence, technology and cyber in both near and distant arenas. Among these were: The development of sophisticated technological capabilities to deal with the wave of lone terrorists, carrying out an operation to achieve access to high-value and pioneering intelligence information, foiling a dangerous terrorist infrastructure that worked to carry out severe attacks, and the development of secret methods of operation and operational tools vis-a-vis various elements that the Shin Bet must deal with.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said, The Shin Bet carries out many hundreds of operations annually that constitute a protective shield against the terrorism that seeks to harm the security of Israel and its citizens. Shin Bet personnel who took part in some of these operations showed exceptional creativity, daring, sophistication and courage. The quality intelligence provided in these operations is beyond price. The lives of many citizens were saved thanks to the amazing pre-emptive operations led by the Shin Bet and which incorporated advanced technological means, pioneering cyber and especially boundless creativity and determination. On behalf of the citizens of Israel, I salute you and thank you for your work as an unseen shield.

Director Argaman added, We have gathered here this evening to express appreciation to our people, thanks to whom unique and unprecedented operations were advanced and implemented, operations which led to significant intelligence and pre-emptive achievements. Thanks to quality intelligence, advanced technologies and outstanding human capital, this year the Shin bet foiled over 400 significant terrorist attacks.

In your achievements, you saw everything that we saw but you thought what nobody thought before you. You had the courage to think and act beyond the boundaries of what is known and certain, and to make things happen. You saw the difficulties that reality placed before us as challenges and you found the way to deal with them.

Excellence also contains within itself an element of innovation and creativity: The ability to create something from nothing, to think outside the box, to believe in an idea even if it seems crazy at first, and not to slacken in the face of the difficulties that pile up along the way. You were successful in this test as well and you proved to all pf us that the sky is the limit.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
The Jerusalem District Court sentenced 22-year-old Abed el-Aziz Mari from Abud Dis to 35 years imprisonment for assisting the terrorist who murdered Rav Nechemia Lavie HYD and Aaron Bennett HYD near Shar Shechem.

The terrorist purchased the knife used in the deadly attack and he is also compelled to pay NIS 258,000 to each of the families of the victims.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Health Minister Yaakov Litzman amended regulations to ban non-healthy foods from public schools. He then spoke out against Eating a mountain of jelly donuts on Chanukah and now his ministry is taking on a new Tnuva Dairy product, ganache with 39% fat content sold under the Yolo line.

The product contains a mixture of bitter chocolate with 60% cocoa, and ganache which is a mixture of the chocolate and cream. It appears the product, manufactured for Tnuva in Belgium, has been introduced to the market to determine if it will be picked up by consumers, only planned until April 2017 unless it becomes a hit.

The product is sold in packages of four 45-gram puddings, advertising to contain less sugar than other comparable daily items, boasting only 194 calories per container. Perhaps more impressive is each 45-gram contained has 16.6 grams of carbohydrates per 100 grams and 13.1 grams of sugar per 100 grams (5.9 grams per container).

Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar-Siman Tov is angered over the large food companies, which are releasing such unhealthy products; citing this product from Tnuva and that its competitor, Strauss Dairy on Friday will be releasing a new pudding which contained six spoons of sugar. He explains the ganache from Tnuva has three times the fat as compared to any other similar product on the market today. He told Channel 2 News the food companies are not worrying about the health of consumers to the ministry is taking a stand.

The ministrys Committee to Advance Regulations in late November 2016 a regulation that will compel companies to put a red sticker on foods containing too much sugar, sodium and saturated fat. Stage one of this regulation takes effect in the beginning of 2018 however it will still permit many unhealthy products to be marketed without the sticker. The regulation goes into full effect in July 2019.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
The High Court of Justice on Wednesday, 28 Kislev, heard yet another petition connected to the egalitarian prayer area at the Kosel. Today however, religious women whom have disconnected themselves from the Women of the Wall (WoW) organization petitioned for permission to bring Sifrei Torah into the ezras noshim of the Kosel. They filed in the High Court against Kosel Rav Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, who refuses to permit them to bring Sifrei Torah.

During the court session the petitioners asked to have the mechitzah removed from the Kosel, explaining if there are chareidim who insist on a separate area, the dividers can be set up in certain areas for a number of hours daily to accommodate tefilos.

Justice Elyakim Rubinstein asked Rabbi Rabinowitz what he thinks the solution should be, to which he replied the prayer area delegated at the area known as Robinsons Arch. The women however reject this, insisting they have every right to daven at the Kosel and should not have to settle for a place nearby.

The women also told the court that to the best of their knowledge, the rabbi is exceeding the authority of his position by preventing them from bringing in Sifrei Torah.

The justices explained they wish to hear the opinions of the Chief Rabbis of Israel and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit before ruling on the matter.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
A Hamas terrorist apprehended after infiltrating into Israel in November 2016 was taken into custody and has since presented the intelligence community with information pertaining to Hamas tunnel network. According to the Shin Bet release to the media, the terrorist has been a member of the organizations military wing for at least a decade.

Balel Razaina, 24, of Gaza, was apprehended after crossing into Israel in November. His brother is the Chief of the Hamas Internal Security Force Mustafa Razaina.

According to the report, Balel was very active in the tunnels and provided invaluable information since being apprehended as well as providing information pertaining to Hamas and Islamic Jihad operations.

It is also reported that during the war in the summer of 2014, Operation Protective Edge, Balel was a go-between with his brother and other Hamas commanders and was among those hiding in a Gaza hospital to avoid being marked by the IDF.

Balel was indicted in the Beersheva District Court on Wednesday, 28 Kislev.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Shin Bet spokesman unit)
Arab MK Basel Ghattas has been released from jail, however he is not free, but sent to house arrest. He was also compelled to pay NIS 50,000 bail. Ghattas was taken into custody last week after agreeing to remove his parliamentary immunity. He is suspected of smuggling cellular telephones and components into terrorists imprisoned in Israels Ketziot Prison. He continues to deny the allegations against him, insisting the proceedings are nothing more than an attempt to neutralize him politically.

Ironically, he is still permitted to participate in Knesset plenum sessions and will travel to and from his home with a police guard. This is a parliamentarian who is accused and seen on video passing SIM cards to terrorists in prison.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
With MK Bazel Ghattas under house arrest as an investigation against him for smuggling phones to terrorists in Ketziot Prison continues, one has to wonder why there is a noticeable increase in the number of visits made to terrorists imprisoned in Israel by Arab MKs.

According to a Shin Bet report, the frequency of requests for visits with convicted terrorists continues to increase, citing in 2016 no less than thirteen requests were made to see convicted Fatah Tanzim faction leader Marwan Barghouti, who is serving multiple life sentences for his terror-related actions. Fourteen requests were made to visit with the head of the Israel Islamic Movement Northern Branch, which has been declared illegal, Sheikh Raid Salah.

Arab MKs visited other terrorists as well including Mahmoud Jabarin who murdered three IDF soldiers in 1992.

The sharp increase in the visits has the Shin Bet concerned, adding these visits are not held in the regular visitation area but they are given private rooms. Even the guards are not permitted in the rooms during visits.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
A stormy session of the Knesset Lobby on Religion & State addressed two very controversial issues; accepting giyur from abroad as well as the egalitarian prayer area at the Kosel.

Opening the session was the co-chair, MK (Yesh Atid) Elazar Stern, who acknowledged the sensitive nature of the matters on the agenda. Stern expressed disappointment that coalition members did not bother to attend the session, pointing out he feels if ties between Israel and Diaspora Jewry were stronger, the UN Security Council last week would not have passed Resolution 2334. Joining in was Yesh Atid colleague and another co-chair, MK Aliza Lavie, who had harsh words for Prime Minister Netanyahus policies and his betrayal of Diaspora Jewry.

Coming to the defense of PM Netanyahu was Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, who pointed out it was Mr. Netanyahu who initiated the dialogue on an egalitarian prayer area, adding no one is more keen on the importance of the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry than Netanyahu.

Sharansky explained he was at the Sunday cabinet meeting where he explained about Reform and Conservative Judaism. Sharansky opines most secular MKs and cabinet ministers are clueless regarding Reform and Conservative Judaism, and this ignorance is what is preventing the plan for the egalitarian prayer area. There is an ignorance one doesnt expect added Sharansky, stating the lack of knowledge about liberal Judaism is the problem at hand. He explains most are unaware the Reform Movement is not a fringe group but those who label themselves liberal Jews number 3 million word wide.

Sharansky added that many blame Reform and Conservative for assimilation, but he feels this is not so, citing there is a great deal of assimilation in France but the Reform and Conservative do not exist in that country.

A number of rabbis affiliated with the Reform and Conservative from both Israel and the United States addressed the forum, stating many more would make aliyah if only they could live a full Jewish life but today, this is not so.

It is pointed out that 4,000-5,000 persons convert annually via the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. On the other side, there are some 400,000 persons living here viewed as not halachically Jewish and they give birth to 4,000-5,000 children annually, hence a zero-sum-game.

Israeli demographer and statistician Sergio DellaPergola predicts that by 2030, the majority of world Jewry will be living in Israel while today, that figure stands at about 45%.

Former Shas MK Rabbi Chaim Amsellem was also there, commenting that there are some who are stringent when it comes to giyur, which in turn becomes an easy path to assimilation.

Itim head Rabbi Seth Farber, who deals with giyur, added the regulations for giyur are becoming increasingly stringent in Israel and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel is building walls and not a bridge. He added that in the eyes of Itim, giyur is not a problem but rather a solution.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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Frances foreign minister is hailing Secretary of State John Kerrys speech on Middle East peace.

Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called Kerrys speech clear, courageous and committed and said France shares Kerrys belief in a two-state solution that envisions Israel and the new nation of Palestine living side by side in peace and security.

Ayrault says Kerrys speech reinforced the necessity and the urgency to implement this two-state solution.

(AP)
The text of Secretary of State John Kerrys speech defending the Obama administrations decision to allow the U.N. Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal, as provided by the Federal News Service:

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you for your patience, all of you. For those of you who celebrated Christmas I hope you had a wonderful Christmas.

Happy Hanukkah. And to everybody here, I know its the middle of the holiday week. I understand, but I wish you all a very, very productive and happy new year.

Today, I want to share candid thoughts about an issue which for decades has animated the foreign policy dialogue here and around the world  the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Throughout his administration, President Obama has been deeply committed to Israel and its security. And that commitment has guided his pursuit of peace in the Middle East.

This is an issue which all of you know I have worked on intensively during my time as secretary of state, for one simple reason, because the two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It is the only way to ensure Israels future as a Jewish and democratic state, living in peace and security with its neighbors.

It is the only way to ensure a future of freedom and dignity for the Palestinian people, and it is an important way of advancing United States interests in the region.

Now, Id like to explain why that future is now in jeopardy and provide some context for why we could not in good conscience stand in the way of a resolution at the United Nations that makes clear that both sides must act now to preserve the possibility of peace.

Im also here to share my conviction that there is still a way forward if the responsible parties are willing to act. And I want to share practical suggestions for how to preserve and advance the prospects for the just and lasting peace that both sides deserve.

So it is vital that we have an honest, clear-eyed conversation about the uncomfortable truths and difficult choices. Because the alternative that is fast becoming the reality on the ground is in nobodys interest  not the Israelis, not the Palestinians, not the region, and not the United States.

Now, I want to stress that there is an important point here. My job above all is to defend the United States of America, to stand up for and defend our values and our interests in the world. And if we were to stand idly by know that in doing so we are allowing a dangerous dynamic to take hold, which promises greater conflict and instability to a region in which we have vital interests, we would be derelict in our own responsibilities. Regrettably, some seem to believe that the U.S. friendship means the U.S. must accept any policy, regardless of our own interests, our own positions, our own words, our own principles, even after urging again and again that the policy must change. Friends need to tell each other the hard truths, and friendships require mutual respect.

Israels permanent representative to the United Nations, who does not support a two-state solution, said after the vote last week, quote, It was to be expected that Israels greatest ally would act in accordance with the values that we share, and veto this resolution. I am compelled to respond today that the United States did, in fact, vote in accordance with our values, just as previous U.S. administrations have done at the Security Council before us.

They fail to recognize that this friend, the United States of America, that has done more to support Israel than any other country, this friend that has blocked countless efforts to delegitimize Israel, cannot be true to our own values or even the stated democratic values of Israel. And we cannot properly defend and protect Israel if we allow a viable two-state solution to be destroyed before our own eyes. And thats the bottom line.

The vote in the United Nations was about preserving the two-state solution. Thats what we were standing up for.

Israels future is a Jewish and democratic state living side by side in peace and security with its neighbors. Thats what we are trying to preserve for our sake and for theirs.

In fact, this administration has been Israels greatest friend and supporter with an absolutely unwavering commitment to advancing Israels security and protecting its legitimacy.

On this point, I want to be very clear; no American administration has done more for Israels security than Barack Obamas. The Israeli prime minister himself has noted our, quote, unprecedented military intelligence cooperation.

Our military exercises are more advanced than ever. Our assistance for Iron Dome has saved countless Israeli lives. We have consistently supported Israels right to defend itself by itself, including during actions Gaza that sparked great controversy.

Time and again we have demonstrated that we have Israels back. We have strongly opposed boycotts, divestment campaigns, and sanctions targeting Israel in international for a, whenever and wherever its legitimacy was attacked, and we have fought for its inclusion across the U.N. system.

In the midst of our own financial crisis and budget deficits, we repeatedly increased funding to support Israel. In fact, more than one-half of our entire global foreign military financing goes to Israel. And this fall we concluded an historic $38 billion memorandum of understanding that exceeds any military assistance package the United States has provided to any country at any time.

And that will invest in cutting-edge missile defense and sustain Israels qualitative military edge for years to come. Thats the measure of our support. This commitment to Israels security is actually very personal for me. On my first trip to Israel as a young senator in 1986, I was captivated by a special country, one that I immediately admired and soon grew to love.

Over the years, like so many others who are drawn to this extraordinary place, I have climbed Masada, swum in the Dead Sea, driven from one biblical city to another. Ive also seen the dark side of Hezbollahs rocket storage facilities just across the border in Lebanon, walked through the exhibits of the hell of the Holocaust at Yad Vashem, stood on the Golan Heights, and piloted an Israeli jet over the tiny airspace of Israel, which would make anyone understand the importance of security to Israelis.

Out of those experiences came a steadfast commitment to Israels security that has never wavered for a single minute in my 28 years in the Senate or my four years as secretary. Ive also often visited West Bank communities where I met Palestinians struggling for basic freedom and dignity amidst the occupation, passed by military check points that can make even the most routine daily trips to work or school an ordeal, and heard from business leaders who could not get the permits that they needed to get their products to the market, and families who have struggled to secure permission just to travel for needed medical care.

And I have witnessed firsthand the ravages of a conflict that has gone on for far too long. Ive seen Israeli children in Sderot whose playgrounds had been hit by Katyusha rockets, and visited shelters next to schools in Kiryat Shmona that kids had 15 seconds to get to after a warning siren went off.

Ive also seen the devastation of war in the Gaza strip where Palestinian girls in Izbet Abed Rabo played in the rubble of a bombed-out building. No children, Israeli or Palestinian, should have to live like that.

So despite the obvious difficulties that I understood when I became secretary of state, I knew that I had to do everything in my power to help end this conflict. And I was grateful to be working for President Obama who was prepared to take risks for peace and was deeply committed to that effort.

Like previous U.S. administrations, we have committed our influence and our resources to trying to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict because yes, it would serve American interests to stabilize a volatile region, and fulfill Americas commitment to the survival, security and well-being of an Israel, at peace with its Arab neighbors.

Despite our best efforts, over the years, the two-state solution are now in serious jeopardy. The truth is that trends on the ground, violence, terrorism, incitement, settlement expansion and the seemingly endless occupation, they are combining to destroy hopes for peace on both sides and increasingly cementing an irreversible one state reality that most people do not actually want.

Today, there are a number  there are a similar number of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. They have a choice. They can choose to live together in one state or they can separate into two states. But here is a fundamental reality: If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or Democratic, it cannot be both. And it wont ever really be at peace.

Moreover, the Palestinians will never fully realize their vast potential in a homeland of their own with a one-state solution. Now most, on both sides, understand this basic choice and that is why it is important that polls of Israelis and Palestinians show there is still strong support for the two-state solution in theory. They just dont believe it can happen.

After decades of conflict, many no longer see the other side as people, only as threats and enemies. Both sides continue to push a narrative that plays to peoples fears and reinforces the worst stereotypes, rather than working to change perceptions and buildup belief in the possibility of peace. And the truth is, the extraordinary polarization in this conflict extends beyond Israelis and Palestinians. Allies of both sides are content to reinforce this with a with and us or against us mentality, where too often anyone questioning Palestinian actions is an apologist for the occupation, and anyone who disagrees with Israel policy is cast as anti-Israel, or even anti-Semitic. Thats one of the most striking realities about the current situation. This critical decision about the future, one state or two states, is effectively being made on the ground every single day despite the expressed opinion of the majority of the people. The status quo is leaning towards one state and perpetual occupation. But most of the public either ignores it or has given up hope that anything can be done to change it.

And with this passive resignation, the problem only gets worse, the risks get greater and the choices are narrower. This sense of hopelessness among Israelis is exacerbated by the continuing violence, terrorist attacks against civilians and incitements which are destroying belief in the possibility of peace. Let me say it again, there is absolutely no justification for terrorism and there never will be. And the most recent wave of Palestinian violence has included hundreds of terrorist attacks in the past year including stabbings, shootings, vehicular attacks and bombings. Many by individuals who have been radicalized by social media. Yet the murders of innocents are still glorified on Fatah websites, including showing attackers next to Palestinian leaders following attacks.

And despite statements by President Abbas and his partys leaders, making clear their opposition of violence, too often they send a different message by failing to condemn specific terrorist attacks and naming public square, streets and schools after terrorists.

President Obama and I have made it clear to the Palestinian leadership countless times, publicly and privately, that all incitements to violence must stop. We have consistently condemned violence and terrorism and even condemned the Palestinian leadership for not condemning it. Far too often the Palestinians have pursued efforts to delegitimize Israel in international forum. We have strongly opposed these initiatives, including the recent wholly unbalanced and inflammatory UNESCO resolution regarding Jerusalem.

And we have made clear our strong opposition to Palestinian efforts against Israel at the ICC, which only sets back the prospects for peace. And we all understand that the Palestinian Authority has a lot more to do to strengthen its institutions and improve governance. Most troubling of all, Hamas continues to pursue an extremist agenda. They refuse to accept Israels very right to exist. They have a one-state vision of their own. All of the land is Palestine.

Hamas and other radical factions are responsible for the most explicit forms of incitement to violence. And many of the images they use are truly appalling and they are willing to kill innocents in Israel and put the people of Gaza at risk in order to advance that agenda. Compounding this, the humanitarian situation in Gaza exacerbated by the closings of the crossings is dire.

Gaza is home to one of the world densest concentrations of people. Enduring extreme hardships with few opportunities, 1.3 million people out of Gazas population of 1.8 million are in need of daily assistance, food and shelter. Most have electricity less than half the time and only 5 percent of the water is safe to drink. And yet, despite the urgency of these needs, Hamas and other militant groups continue to rearm and to divert reconstruction materials to build tunnels, threatening more attacks on Israeli civilians that no government can tolerate.

Now at the same time, we have to be clear about what is happening in the West Bank. The Israeli prime minister publicly supports a two-state solution. But his current coalition is the most right-wing in Israel history with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements. The result is that policies of this government, which the prime minister himself just described, as more committed to settlements than any in Israels history are leading in the opposite direction. They are leading towards one state.

In fact, Israel has increasingly consolidated control over much of the West Bank for its own purposes. Effectively reversing the transitions to greater Palestinian civil authority that was called for by the Oslo Accords. I dont think most people in Israel, and certainly in the world, have any idea how broad and systematic the process has become, but the facts speak for themselves.

The number of settlers in the roughly 130 Israeli settlements east of the 1967 lines has steadily grown. The settler population in the West Bank alone, not including East Jerusalem, has increased by nearly 270,000 since Oslo. Including 100,000 just since 2009 when President Obamas term began.

Theres no point in pretending that these are just in-large settlement blocs. Nearly 90,000 settlers are living east of the separation barrier that was created by Israel itself. In the middle of what, by any reasonable definition, would be the future Palestinian state. And the population of these distant settlements has grown by 20,000 just since 2009.

In fact just recently, the government approved a significant new settlement well east of the barrier, closer to Jordan than Israel. What does that say to Palestinians in particular, but also to the United States and the world about Israels intentions? Let me emphasize, this is not to say that the settlements are the whole or even the primary cause of this conflict. Of course they are not. Nor can you say that if the settlements were suddenly removed, youd have peace without a broader agreement. You would not. And we understand that in a final status agreement, certain settlements would become part of Israel to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 49 years.

We understand that. Including the new democratic demographic realities that exist in the ground; they would have to be factored in. But if more and more settlers are moving into the middle of Palestinian areas, its going to be just that much harder to separate, that much harder to imagine transferring sovereignty. And that is exactly the outcome that some are purposefully accelerating.

Lets be clear. Settlement expansion has nothing to do with Israels security. Many settlements actually increase the security burden on the Israeli defense forces and leaders of the settler movement are motivated by ideological imperatives that entirely ignore legitimate Palestinian aspirations. Among the most troubling illustrations of this point has been the proliferation of settler outposts that are illegal under Israels own laws.

Theyre often located on private Palestinian land and strategically placed in locations that make two states impossible. There are over 100 of these outposts and since 2011, nearly one-third of them have been or are being legalized despite pledges by past Israeli governments to dismantle many of them. Now leaders of the settler movement have advanced unprecedented new legislation that would legalize most of those outposts.

For the first time, it would apply Israeli domestic law to the West Bank rather than military law, which is a major step towards the process of annexation. When the law passed first reading in the Israeli Parliament in the Knesset, one of the chief proponents said proudly, and I quote, Today, the Israeli Knesset moved from heading towards establishing a Palestinian state towards Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.

Even the Israeli attorney general has said that the draft law is unconstitutional and a violation of international law. Now, you may hear from advocates that the settlements are not an obstacle to peace because the settlers that dont want to leave can just stay in Palestine like the Arab Israelis who live in Israel. But that misses a critical point, my friends; the Arab Israelis are citizens of Israel, subject to Israels law.

Does anyone here really believe that the settlers will agree to submit to Palestinian law in Palestine? Likewise, some supporters of the settlements argue that the settlers could just stay in their settlements  settlements and remain as Israeli citizens in their separate enclaves in the middle of Palestine, protected by the IDF. Well, there are over 80 settlements east of the separation barrier, many located in places that would make the continuous  a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.

Does anyone seriously think that if they just stay where they are, you could still have a viable Palestinian state? Now, some have asked, Why cant we build in the blocks which everyone knows will eventually be part of Israel? Well, the reason building there or anywhere else in the West Bank now results in such pushback is that the decision of what constitutes a block is being made unilaterally by the Israeli government without consultation, without the consent of the Palestinians, and without granting the Palestinians a reciprocal right to build in what will be, by most accounts, part of Palestine.

Bottom line, without agreement or mutuality, the unilateral choices become a major point of contention and that is part of why we are here where we are. Now, you may hear that these remote settlements arent a problem because they only take up a very small percentage of the land. Well, again and again we have made it clear its not just a question of the overall amount of land available in the West Bank; its whether the land can be connected or is broken up into small parcels like Swiss cheese that could never constitute a real state. The more outposts that are built, the more the settlements expand, the less possible it is to create a contiguous state.

So in the end, a settlement is not just the land that its on, its also what the location does to the movement of people; what it does to the ability of a road to connect people, one community to another; what it does to the sense of statehood that is chipped away with each new construction.

No one thinking seriously about peace can ignore the reality of what the settlements pose to that peace. But the problem obviously goes well beyond settlements. Trends indicate a comprehensive effort to take the West Bank land for Israel and prevent any Palestinian development there. Today, the 60 percent of the West Bank known as Area C, much of which was supposed to be transferred to Palestinian control long ago under the Oslo accords, much of it is effectively off limits to Palestinian development.

Most today has essentially been taken for exclusive use by Israel simply by unilaterally designating it as state land or including it within the jurisdiction of regional settlement councils. Israeli farms flourish in the Jordan River valley, and Israeli resorts line the shores of the Dead Sea. A lot of people dont realize this. They line the shore of the Dead Sea where Palestinian development is not allowed.

In fact, almost no private Palestinian building is approved in Area C at all. Only one permit was issued by Israel in all of 2014 and 2015, while approvals for hundreds of settlement units were advanced during that same period.

Moreover, Palestinian structures in Area C that do not have a permit from the Israeli military are potentially subject to demolition, and they are currently being demolished at an historically high rate. Over 1,300 Palestinians including over 600 children have been displaced by demolitions in 2016 alone  more than any previous year. So the settler agenda is defining the future of Israel. And their stated purpose is clear. They believe in one state  greater Israel. In fact, one prominent minister who heads a pro-settler party declared just after the U.S. election, and I quote, The era of the two-state solution is over, end quote. And many other coalition ministers publicly reject a Palestinian state, and they are increasingly getting their way, with plans for hundreds of new units in East Jerusalem recently announced and talk of a major new settlement building effort in the West Bank to follow.

So why are we so concerned? Why does this matter? Well, ask yourselves these questions. What happens if that agenda succeeds? Where does that lead? There are currently about 2.75 million Palestinians living under military occupation in the West Bank, most of them in Areas A and B; 40 percent in the West Bank, where they have limited autonomy. They are restricted in their daily movements by a web of checkpoints and unable to travel into or out of the West Bank without a permit from the Israelis.

So if there is only one state, you would have millions of Palestinians permanently living in segregated enclaves in the middle of the West Bank with no real political rights, separate legal education and transportation systems, vast income disparities, under a permanent military occupation that deprives them of the most basic freedoms. Separate and unequal is what you would have, and nobody can explain how that works.

Would an Israeli accept living that way? Would an American accept living that way? Will the world accept it? If the occupation becomes permanent over the time, the Palestinian Authority could simply dissolve, turn over all the administrative and security responsibilities to the Israelis. What would happen then? Who would administer the schools and hospitals, and on what basis? Does Israel want to pay for the billions of dollars of lost international assistance that the Palestinian Authority now receives?

Would the Israeli defense force police the streets of every single Palestinian city and town? How would Israel respond to a growing civil rights movement from Palestinians demanding a right to vote? Or widespread protests and unrest across the West Bank? How does Israel reconcile a permanent occupation with its democratic ideals? How does the U.S. continue to defend that and still live up to our own democratic ideals?

Nobody has ever provided good answers for those questions because there arent any. And there would be an increasing risk of more intense violence between Palestinians and settlers and complete despair among Palestinians that would create very fertile ground for extremists.

With all the external threats that Israel faces today, which we are very cognizant of and working with them to deal with, does it really want an intensifying conflict in the West Bank? How does that help Israels security? How does that help the region? The answer is it doesnt, which is precisely why so many senior Israeli military and intelligence leaders, past and present, believe the two-state solution is the only real answer for Israels long-term security.

Now one thing we do know, if Israel goes down the one-state path, it will never have true peace with the rest of the Arab world, and I can say that with certainty. The Arab countries have made clear that they will not make peace with Israel without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thats not where their loyalties lie, thats not where their politics are. But there is something new here. Common interests in countering Irans destabilizing activities, in fighting extremists, as well as diversifying their economies, have created real possibilities for something different if Israel takes advantage of the opportunities for peace.

I have spent a great deal of time with key Arab leaders exploring this. And there is no doubt that they are prepared to have a fundamentally different relationship with Israel. That was stated in the Arab peace initiative years ago. And in all my recent conversations, Arab leaders have confirmed their readiness in the context of Israeli-Palestinian peace, not just on normalize relations, but to work openly on securing that piece with significant regional security cooperation.

It is waiting, its right there. Many have shown a willingness to support serious Israel-Palestinian negotiations, and to take steps on the path to normalization to relations, including public meetings, providing there is meaningful progress towards the two state solution. My friends, that is a real opportunity that we should not allow to be missed.

And that raises one final question. Is ours the generation that gives up on the dream of a Jewish-Democratic state of Israel, living in peace and security with its neighbors? Because that is really what is at stake.

Now that is what informed our vote at the Security Council last week, the need to preserve the two-state solution, and both sides in this conflict must make response ability to do that. We have repeatedly and emphatically stressed to the Palestinians that all incitement to violence must stop.

We have consistently condemned all violence and terrorism, and we have strongly opposed unilateral efforts to delegitimize Israel in the international forum. We have made countless public and private exhortations to the Israelis to stop the march of settlements. I mean literally hundreds of conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu; I have made clear that continued settlement activity would only increase pressure for international response.

We have all known for some time that the Palestinians were intent on moving forward in the U.N. with a settlements resolution and I advised the prime minister repeatedly that further settlement activity only invited U.N. action.

Yet the settlement activity just increased, including advancing the unprecedented legislation to legalize settler outposts that the prime minister himself reportedly warned could expose Israels action at the Security Council and international prosecution before deciding to support it.

In the end, we could not, in good conscience, protect the most extreme elements of the settler movement as it tries to destroy the two-state solution. We could not, in good conscience, turn a blind eye to Palestinian actions that fanned hatred and violence. It is not in U.S. interests to help anyone on either side create a unitary state. And we may not be able to stop them, but we cannot be expected to defend them. And it is certainly not the role of any country to vote against its own policies.

That is why we decided not to block the U.N. resolution that makes clear both sides have to take steps to save the two-state solution while there is still time. And we did not take this decision lightly. The Obama administration has always defended Israel against any effort at the U.N. and any international fora or biased and one-sided resolutions that seek to undermine legitimacy or security and that has not changed, didnt change with this vote.

But remember, its important to note that every United States administration, Republican and Democratic, has opposed settlements as contrary to the prospects for peace. And action at the U.N. Security Council is far from unprecedented. In fact, previous administrations of both political parties have allowed resolutions that were critical of Israel to pass, including on settlements.

On dozens of occasions under George W. Bush alone, the council passed six resolutions that Israel opposed, including one that endorsed a plan calling for a complete freeze on settlements, including natural growth. Let me read you the lead paragraph from a New York Times story dated December 23rd. I quote, With the United States abstaining, the Security Council adopted a resolution today strongly deploring Israels handling of the disturbances in the occupied territories, which the resolution defines as including Jerusalem. All of the 14 other Security Council members voted in favor.

My friends, that story was not written last week. It was written December 23rd, 1987, 26 years to the day that we voted last week when Ronald Reagan was president. Yet despite growing pressure, the Obama administration held a strong line against U.N. action  any U.N. action. We were the only administration since 1967 that had not allowed any resolution to pass that Israel opposed.

In fact, the only time in eight years the Obama administration exercised its veto at the United Nation was against a one-sided settlements resolution in 2011. And that resolution did not mention incitement or violence.

Now, lets look at whats happened since then. Since then there have been over 30,000 settlement units advanced through some stage of the planning process. Thats right, over 30,000 settlement units advance notwithstanding the positions in the United States and other countries. And if we had vetoed this resolution just the other day, the United States would have been giving license to further unfettered settlement construction that we fundamentally oppose. So we reject the criticism that this vote abandons Israel.

On the contrary, it is not this resolution that is isolating Israel, it is the permanent policy of settlement construction that risks making peace impossible. And virtually every country in the world other than Israel opposes settlements. That includes many of the friends of Israel, including the United Kingdom, France, Russia, all of whom voted in favor of the settlements resolution in 2011 that we vetoed, and again this year along with any other member of the council.

In fact, this resolution simply reaffirms statements made by the Security Council on the legality of settlements over several decades. It does not break new ground. In 1978 the State Department legal adviser, advised the Congress of his conclusion, that Israels government program establishing civilian settlements in the occupied territory is inconsistent with international law. And we see no change since then to affect that fundamental conclusion.

Now you have heard that some criticize this resolution for calling East Jerusalem occupied territory. But to be clear, there was absolutely nothing new in last weeks resolution on that issue. It was one of a long line of Security Council resolutions that included east Jerusalem as part of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, and that includes resolutions passed by the Security Council under President Reagan and President George H.W. Bush.

And remember that every U.S. administration since 1967, along with the entire international community, has recognized east Jerusalem as among the territories that Israel occupied in the Six-Day War.

Now, I want to stress this point. We fully respect Israels profound historic and religious ties to the city and to its holy sites. Weve never questioned that. This resolution in no manner prejudges the outcome of permanent status negotiations on east Jerusalem, which must, of course, reflect those historic ties and the realities on the ground. Thats our position. We still support it.

We also strongly reject the notion that somehow the United States was the driving force behind this resolution. The Egyptians and Palestinians had long made clear to all of us, to all of the international community, their intention to bring a resolution to a vote before the end of the year. And we communicated that to the Israelis and they knew it anyway. The United States did not draft or originate this resolution, nor did we put it forward. It was drafted by Egypt  it was drafted and I think introduced by Egypt, which is one of Israels closest friends in the region, in coordination with the Palestinians and others.

And during the time of the process, as it went out, we made clear to others including those on the Security Council that it was possible that if the resolution were to be balanced and it were to include references to incitement and to terrorism, that it was possible the United States would then not block it, that  if it was balanced and fair. Thats a standard practice with resolutions at the Security Council. The Egyptians and the Palestinians and many others understood that if the text were more balanced, it was possible we wouldnt block it.

But we also made crystal clear that the president of the United States would not make a final decision about our own position until we saw the final text. In the end, we did not agree with every word in this resolution. There are important issues that are not sufficiently addressed or even addressed at all. But we could not, in good conscience, veto a resolution that condemns violence and incitement and reiterates what has been for a long time the overwhelming consensus and international view on settlements and calls for the parties to start taking constructive steps to advance the two-state solution on the ground.

Ultimately, it will be up to the Israeli people to decide whether the unusually heated attacks that Israeli officials have directed towards this administration best serve Israels national interests and its relationship with an ally that has been steadfast in its support, as I described. Those attacks, alongside allegations of a U.S.-led conspiracy and other manufactured claims, distract attention from what the substance of this vote was really all about.

And we all understand that Israel faces very serious threats in a very tough neighborhood. Israelis are rightfully concerned about making sure that there is not a new terrorist haven right next door to them, often referencing whats happened with Gaza, and we understand that and we believe there are ways to meet those needs of security. And Israelis are fully justified in decrying attempts to legitimize their state question the right of a Jewish state to exist.

But this vote was not about that, it was about actions that Israelis and Palestinians are taking that are increasingly rendering a two-state solution impossible. It was not about making peace with the Palestinians now, it was about making sure that peace with the Palestinians will be possible in the future. Now, we all understand that Israel faces extraordinarily serious threats in a very tough neighborhood and the Israelis are very correct in making sure that there is not a terrorist haven right on their border.

But this vote, I cant emphasize it enough, is not about the possibility of arriving at an agreement that is going to resolve that overnight, or in one year or two years. This is about a longer process. This is about how we make peace with the Palestinians in the future, but preserve the capacity to do so.

So, how do we get there? How do we get there to that peace? Since the parties have not yet been able to resume talks, the U.S. and the Middle East quartet have repeatedly called on both sides to independently demonstrate a genuine commitment to the two-state solution, not just with words but with real policies.

To create the conditions for meaningful negotiations, we called for both sides to take significant steps on the ground to reverse current trends and send a different message, a clear message that they are prepared to fundamentally change the equation without waiting for the other side to act.

We have pushed them to comply with their basic commitments under their own prior agreements in order to advance a two-state reality on the ground. We have called for the Palestinians to do everything in their power to stop violence and incitement, including publicly and consistently condemning acts of terrorism and stopping the glorification of violence.

And we have called on them to continue efforts to strengthen their own institutions and to improve governance, transparency, and accountability. And we have stressed that the Hamas arms buildup and militant activities in Gaza must stop. Along with our quartet partners, we have called on Israel to end the policy of settlement construction and expansion, of taking land for exclusive Israeli use and denying Palestinian development.

To reverse the current process, the U.S. and our partners have encouraged Israel to resume the transfer of greater civil authority, the Palestinians in Area C, consistent with the transition that was called for by Oslo. And we have made clear that significant progress across a range of sectors, including housing, agriculture, and natural resources can be made without negatively impacting Israels legitimate security needs.

And weve called for significantly easing the movement and access restrictions to and from Gaza with due consideration for Israels need to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks. So, let me stress here, again, none of the steps that I just talked about would negatively impact Israels security.

Let me also emphasize this is not about offering limited economic measures that perpetuate the status quo. Were talking about significant steps that would signal real progress towards creating two states. Thats the bottom line. If were serious about the two-state solution, its time to start implementing it right now.

Advancing the process of separation now in a serious way could make a significant difference in saving the two-state solution and in building confidence in the citizens of both sides that peace is indeed possible. And much progress can be made in advance of negotiations that can lay the foundation for negotiations as contemplated by the Oslo process.

In fact, these steps will help create the conditions for successful talks. Now, in the end, we all understand that the final status agreement can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties. Weve said that again and again. We cannot impose the peace.

There are other countries in the U.N. who believe it is our job to dictate the terms of the solution in the Security Council. Others want us to simply recognize a Palestinian state absent an agreement. But I want to make clear today, these are not the choices that we will make.

We choose instead to draw on the experiences of the last eight years, to provide a way forward, when the parties are ready for serious negotiations. In a place where the narratives from the past powerfully inform and mold the present, its important to understand the history. We mark this year and next a series of milestones that I believe both illustrate the two sides of the conflict and form the basis for its resolution. Its worth touching on them briefly.

One hundred and twenty years ago, the first Zionist congress was convened in Basel by a group of Jewish visionaries who decided that the only effective response to the waves of anti-Semitic horrors sweeping across Europe was to create a state in the historic home of the Jewish people, where their ties to the land went back centuries; a state that could defend its borders, protect its people and live in peace with its neighbors. That was the vision. That was the modern beginning. And it remains the dream of Israel today.

Nearly 70 years ago, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 finally paved the way to making the state of Israel a reality. The concept was simple  to create two states for two peoples, one Jewish, one Arab; to realize the national aspirations of both Jews and Palestinians. And both Israel and the PLO referenced Resolution 181 in their respective declarations of independence.

The United States recognized Israel seven minutes after its creation. But the Palestinians and the Arab world did not. And from its birth, Israel had to fight for its life. Palestinians also suffered terribly in the 1948 war, including many who had lived for generations in a land that had long been their home, too. When Israel celebrates its 70th anniversary in 2018, the Palestinians will mark a very different anniversary  70 years since what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe.

Next year will also mark 50 years since the end of the Six-Day War, when Israel again fought for its survival, and Palestinians will again mark just the opposite  50 years of military occupation. Both sides have accepted U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which called for the withdrawal of Israel from territory that it occupied in 1967 in return for peace and secure borders as the basis for ending the conflict.

It has been more than 20 years since Israel and the PLO signed their first agreement, the Oslo accords, and the PLO formally recognized Israel. Both sides committed to a plan to transition much of the West Bank and Gaza to Palestinian control during permanent status negotiations that would put an end to their conflict. Unfortunately, neither the transition nor the final agreement came about. And both sides bear responsibility for that.

Finally, some 15 years ago, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia came out with a historic Arab peace initiative which offered fully normalized relations with Israel when it made peace  an enormous opportunity then and now which has never been fully embraced. That history was critical to our approach to trying to find a way to resolve the conflict. And based on my experience with both sides over the last four years, including the nine months of formal negotiations, the core issues can be resolved if there is leadership on both sides committed to finding a solution.

In the end, I believe the negotiations did not fail because the gaps were too wide, but because the level of trust was too low. Both sides were concerned that any concessions would not be reciprocated and would come at too great a political cost. And the deep public skepticism only made it more difficult for them to be able to take risks.

In the countless hours that we spent working on a detailed framework, we worked through numerous formulations and developed specific bridging proposals. And we came away with a clear understanding of the fundamental needs of both sides. In the past 2 1/2 years, I have tested ideas with regional and international stakeholders, including our quartet partners. And I believe what has emerged from all of that is a broad consensus on balanced principles that would satisfy the core needs of both sides.

President Clinton deserves great credit for laying out extensive parameters designed to bridge gaps in advanced final status negotiations 16 years ago. Today, with mistrust too high to even start talks, were at the opposite end of the spectrum. Neither side is willing to even risk acknowledging the others bottom line and more negotiations that do not produce progress will only reinforce the worst fears. Everyone understands that negotiations would be complex and difficult and nobody can be expected to agree on the final results in advance. But if the parties could at least demonstrate that they understand the other sides most basic needs and are potentially willing to meet them if theirs are also met at the comprehensive negotiations, perhaps then enough trust could be established to enable a meaningful progress to begin.

It is in that spirit that we offer the following principles. Not to prejudge or impose an outcome, but to provide a possible basis for serious negotiations when the parties are ready. Individual countries may have more detailed policies on these issues as we do, by the way, but I believe there is a broad consensus that a final status agreement that could meet the needs of both sides would do the following.

Principle No. 1: provide for secure and recognized international borders between Israel and a viable and contiguous Palestine negotiated based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed equivalent swaps. Resolution 242, which has been enshrined in international law for 50 years, provides for the withdrawal of Israel from territory it occupied in 1967 in return for peace with its neighbors and secure and recognized borders. It has long been accepted by both sides and it remains the basis for an agreement today.

As secretary, one of the first issues that I worked out with the Arab League was their agreement that the reference in the Arab peace initiative to the 1957 lines would from now on include the concept of land swaps, which the Palestinians have acknowledged. This is necessary to reflect practical realities on the ground and mutually agreed equivalent swaps that will insure that the agreement is fair to both sides.

There is also broad recognition of Israels need to ensure that the borders are secure and defensible and that the territory of Palestine is viable and contiguous. Virtually everyone that I have spoken to has been clear on this principle as well; no changes by Israel to the 1967 lines will be recognized by the international community unless agreed to by both sides.

Principle 2: fulfill the vision of the U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 of two states for two peoples, one Jewish and one Arab, with mutual recognition and full equal rights for all their respective citizens. This has been the fundamental  foundations principle of the two-state solution from the beginning, creating a state for the Jewish people and a state for the Palestinian people where each can achieve their national aspirations. And Resolution 181 is incorporated into the foundational documents of both the Israelis and Palestinians.

Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state has been the U.S. position for years, and based on my conversations in these last months, I am absolutely convinced that many others are now prepared to accept it as well, provided the need for a Palestinian state is also addressed.

We also know that there is some 1.7 million Arab citizens who call Israel their home and must now and always be able to live as equal citizens, which makes this a difficult issue for Palestinians and others in the Arab world. Thats why it is so important that in recognizing each others homeland, Israel for the Jewish people and Palestine for the Palestinian people, both sides reaffirm their commitment to upholding full equal rights for all of their respective citizens.

Principle No. 3: provide for a just, agreed, fair and realistic solution to the Palestinian refugee issue. With international assistance that includes compensation, options and assistance in finding permanent homes, acknowledgment of suffering another measures necessary for comprehensive resolution consistent with two states for two peoples. The plight of many Palestinian refugees is heartbreaking, and all agree that their needs have to be addressed.

As part of a comprehensive resolution, they must be provided with compensation; their suffering must be acknowledged and there must be the need to have options and assistance in finding permanent homes. The international community can provide significant support and assistance. I know we are prepared to do that, including and raising money to help ensure the compensation and other needs of the refugees are met. And many have expressed willingness to contribute to that effort, particularly if it brings peace. But there is a general recognition that the solution must be consistent with two states for two peoples, and cannot affect the fundamental character of Israel.

Principal 4: provide an agreed solution for Jerusalem as the internationally recognized capital of the two states and protect and ensure freedom of access to the holy sites consistent with the established status quo. Now Jerusalem is the most sensitive issue for both sides. And the solution will have to meet the needs, not only of the parties but of all three monotheistic faiths. That is why the holy sites that are sacred to billions of people around the world must be protected and remain accessible, and the established status unmaintained.

Most acknowledge that Jerusalem should not be divided again like it was in 1967, and we believe that. At the same time there is broad recognition that there will be no peace agreement without reconciling the basic aspirations of both sides to have capitals there.

Principle 5: satisfy Israels security needs and bring a full end, ultimately, to the occupation. While ensuring Israel can defend itself effectively and that Palestine can provide security for its people in a sovereign and non-militarized state. Security is the fundamental issue for Israel, together with a couple of others mentioned. But security is critical.

Everyone understands that no Israeli government can ever accept an agreement that does not satisfy it security needs or risk creating an enduring threadlike Gaza transferred to the West Bank. And Israel must be able to defend itself effectively, including against terrorism and other regional threats. In fact, there is a real willingness with Egypt, Jordan and others to work together with Israel on meeting key security challenges. And I believe that those collective efforts, including close coordination on border security, intelligence sharing, joint cooperation, joint operation, can all play a critical role in securing the peace.

At the same time, fully ending the occupation is the fundamental issue for the Palestinians. They need to know that the military occupation itself will really and after an agreed transitional process. They need to know they can live with freedom and dignity in sovereign state while providing security to their population even without a military of their own.

This is widely accepted as well. And it is important to understand there are many different ways without occupation for Israel and Palestine and Jordan and Egypt and the United States and others to cooperate in providing that security. Now balancing those requirements was among the most important challenges that we faced in the negotiations. But it was one where the United States has the ability to provide the most assistance.

And that is why a team that was led by Gen. John Allen who was here, to whom I am very grateful for his many hours of effort, along with he is one of our foremost military minds and dozens of experts who the Department of Defense and other agencies, all of them engaged extensively with the Israeli defense force in trying to find solutions that could help Israel address its legitimate security needs.

They developed innovative approaches to creating unprecedented multilayered border security, enhancing Palestinian capacity, enabling Israel to maintain the ability to address threats by itself, even when the occupation had ended. General Allen and his team were not suggesting one particular outcome or one particular timeline, nor were they suggesting that work technology alone would resolve these problems, they were simply working on ways to support whatever the negotiators agreed to. And they did some very impressive work that gives me total confidence that Israel security requirements can be met.

Principle 6: end the conflict and all outstanding claims, enabling normalized relations and enhanced regional security for all as envisioned by the Arab peace initiative. It is essential for both sides that the final status agreement resolves all the outstanding issues and finally brings closure to this conflict. So that everyone can move ahead to a new era of peaceful coexistence and cooperation.

For Israel, this must also bring broader peace with all of its Arab neighbors. That is the fundamental promise of the Arab peace initiative, which key Arab leaders have affirmed in these most recent days. The Arab peace initiative also envisions enhanced security for all of the region. It envisages Israel being a partner in those efforts when peace is made. This is the area where Israel and the Arab world are looking at perhaps the greatest moment of potential transformation in the Middle East since Israels creation in 1948.

The Arab world faces its own set of security challenges. With Israel-Palestinian peace, Israel, the United States, Jordan, Egypt, together with the GCC countries, would be ready and willing to define a new security partnerships for the region that would be absolutely ground breaking.

So, ladies and gentlemen, thats why it is vital that we all work to keep open the possibility of peace, that we not lose hope in the two-state solution matter how difficult it may seem. Because there really is no viable alternative.

Now, we all know that a speech alone wont produce peace, but based on over 30 years of experience and the lessons from the past four years, I have suggested, I believe, and President Obama has signed on to and believes it, a path that the parties could take.

Realistic steps on the ground now, consistent with the parties own prior commitments that will begin the process of separating into two-states. A political horizon to work towards to create the conditions for a successful final status talk and a basis for negotiations that the parties could accept to demonstrate that they are serious about making peace.

We can only encourage them to take this path. We cannot walk down it for them. But if they take these steps, peace would bring extraordinary benefits in enhancing the security and stability and prosperity of Israelis, Palestinians, all of the nations of the region. The Palestinian economy has amazing potential in the context of independence, with major private sector investment possibilities. And are talented, hungry, eager to work  a young work force.

Israels economy could enjoy unprecedented growth as it becomes a regional economic powerhouse, taking advantage of unparallel culture of innovation and trading opportunities with new Arab partners. Meanwhile, security challenges could be addressed by an entirely new security arrangement, in which Israel cooperates openly with key Arab states.

That is the future that everybody should be working for. President Obama and I know that the incoming administration has signaled that they may take a different path. And even suggested breaking from the long-standing U.S. policies on settlements  Jerusalem and the possibility of a two-state solution.

That is for them to decide, thats how we work. But we cannot, in good conscience, do nothing and say nothing, when we see the hope of peace slipping away. This is a time to stand up for what is right. We have long known what two-states, living side by side and peace and security looks like. We should not afraid to say so.

Now, I really began to reflect on what we have learned and the way ahead when I recently joined President Obama in Jerusalem for the state funeral for Shimon Peres. Shimon was one of the founding fathers of Israel and became one of the worlds great elder statesmen  a beautiful man. I was proud to call him my friend. And I know that President Obama was as well.

And I remember the first time that I saw Shimon in person, standing on the White House lawn for the signing of the historic Oslo accords. And I thought about the last time at an intimate, one-on-one Shabbat dinner just a few months before he died when we toasted together to the future of Israel and to the peace that he still so passionately believed in for his people.

He summed it up simply and eloquently, as only Shimon could, quote, The original mandate gave the Palestinians 48 percent; now its down to 22 percent. I think 78 percent is enough for us. As we laid Shimon to rest that day, many of us couldnt help but wonder if peace between Israelis and Palestinians might also be buried along with one of its most eloquent champions. We cannot let that happen.

There is simply too much at stake for future generations of Israelis and Palestinians to give in to pessimism, especially when peace is in fact still possible. We must not lose hope in the possibility of peace. We must not give in to those who say what is now must always be; that there is no chance for a better future.

It is up to Israelis and Palestinians to make the difficult choices for peace, but we can all help. And for the sake of future generations of Israelis and Palestinians, for all the people of the region, for the United States, for all those around the world who have prayed for and worked for peace for generations, lets hope that we are all prepared, and particularly Israelis and Palestinians, to make those choices now.

(AP)
The administration is playing defense, offering contradictory justifications for its abstention at the U.N. Security Council on a resolution declaring everything  including all of East Jerusalem  to be an illegal occupation and virtually inviting boycotts and international sanctions against Israel. Among the strongest critics of President Obamas decision are Democrats like incoming minority leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and House minority whip Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md. Even his former Middle East envoy George Mitchell says it was a mistake not to veto the resolution.

On one hand, the presidents apologists claim the administration did not draft it. This might be technically true, but highly misleading. Eli Lake reports:

Obamas decision to break precedent by declining to veto Fridays resolution looks entirely premeditated.

Lets start with what the Israelis themselves are saying. After the vote, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would be sharing information with the Donald Trump transition team that proves how the U.S. lobbied other countries behind the scenes to support the resolution. He has not made this public, but Israeli officials tell me it is based in part on what many Arab envoys told Israeli diplomats in private.

We also know, because it has been publicly reported, that Secretary of State John Kerry spoke about this resolution last month with his counterpart in New Zealand, whose envoy introduced the resolution. . . . Another piece of supporting evidence is that this kind of U.N. action was included in a 2015 policy memo drafted after Netanyahu won re-election and promised supporters there would be no Palestinian state while he was in power. Netanyahu reversed himself after the victory.

(A purported transcript of a meeting between U.S. and Palestinian officials seems to corroborate the charge of collusion.)

And, of course, if this was a result the United States did not want, it could have vetoed the resolution. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., in a radio interview vowed, You heard Ambassador [Ron] Dermer, Israels ambassador to the United States say they will present their evidence and factual support for these claims to the incoming administration. He continued, I suspect Donald Trump and his administration may reveal that information to the American people, but the bottom line is this: Any American with any common sense knows that Senegal and Malaysia dont set the agenda for the Security Council, the United States does. And this resolution would not have gone forward if the United States did not want it to go forward. That is not just abstaining from a veto, but making it clear to the other 14 members of the Security Council that the United States wanted the resolution to move ahead.

Then administration flacks claim Israel had this coming because of an aggressive settlements policy. Thats not remotely true. Elliott Abrams, former deputy national security adviser in charge of Israel policy in George W. Bushs administration, explains, In fact settlement growth has not accelerated significantly since 2011, whatever [Obama adviser Ben] Rhodes says. His most disingenuous remark is about the failure of negotiations. Indeed the Obama/Kerry efforts failed, because the Palestinians refused to come to the table even when Israel undertook a ten-month construction freeze.

And failing all that, the administration claims the resolution is no big deal, pretending that this is not the first to make new housing for Jews illegal. (Abrams notes, Yes, the resolution expresses the consensus international view on Israeli settlement activity, which calls them illegal, and that is the point: until the Obama administration, the United Statess position was that they were unhelpful but not illegal. Therefore the resolution is not consistent with longstanding bipartisan U.S. policy.')

What, if anything, can the incoming administration do to minimize the damage to Israel and fend off the jackals at the United Nations? Abrams tells Right Turn, The resolution fairly begs for boycotts of Israel. Many states have anti-boycott laws. The new administration and new Congress should work together to make it clear that banks and companies that boycott Israel may not do business in the United States. He adds, We should also react by moving the United States embassy to Jerusalem, which would be an extremely powerful political and symbolic step.

Other possibilities including finally cutting off funding to the Palestinian Authority; using financial leverage to demand changes in the dues and voting structure at the United Nations; renegotiating the recently concluded defense funding memorandum with Israel (wherein Obama squeezed Israel and attempted to preclude Israel from asking for additional funding); and a resolution passed by the Congress and signed by the new president condemning the United Nations vote as a blatant effort to delegitimize Israel and predetermine a final outcome in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Additionally, Trump could order the State Department to allow Americans born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their place of birth. (Legislation attempting to do this was struck down as an infringement on the presidents powers; Trump could exercise that same power to change U.S. policy.) Trump might also consider an early trip to Israel, including a visit to the Western Wall, which the United Nations says is illegally occupied by Israel. Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies shares a few more possible moves including reprisals for European nations that wage economic warfare against Israel and measures to discourage [PA president] Mahmoud Abbas from attempting to mobilize the ICC against Israel.

In this case, the more ways to signal an abrupt, dramatic change in U.S. policy, the better.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post  Jennifer Rubin
The attached image is via YWN Instagram page @TheYeshivaWorld. This incident occurred on Tuesday night in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, when a Jewish woman was assaulted by an African American male. The suspect was chased by a Muslim man, who confronted him and held him until police arrived.
The Chasidic man you see in this photo is Hershel Waldner. Today, he made a tremendous Kiddush Hashem, and YWN is happy to share this story with our readers.

Mr. Waldner was walking in Manhattan on Wednesday when he found a wallet on the floor near 35th Street and 8th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. The wallet had a drivers license, credit cards, and cash. Unfortunately, there was no contact information in the wallet  but Waldner got to work.

In the wallet, he found a business card with a hard written phone number on the back, and called it. It turned out to be the boss of the man who had lost his wallet. The boss told him that he was located in Delaware, but the owner of the wallet lived in Arizona, and the man was just vacationing in New York City for a few days.

The boss contacted the owner of the wallet, and came to B&H Photo  Where Waldner works  to retrieve it.

Although the man was ecstatic to get his wallet back, along with all his credit cards and cash, Hershel Waldner was even more ecstatic by being able to fulfill the Mitzvah of Hashovas Aveida and making a tremendous Kiddush Hashem.

(Chaim Shapiro  YWN)
The following is via Yated, and appears in this weeks newspaper:

The Yated has for years documented and exposed the invalid claims of the Open Orthodox movement to be Orthodox. Open Orthodoxys innovations of giving women semicha, celebrating toeivah marriage, having women lead parts of davening (referred to as partnership minyanim), and espousing hashkafos that are contrary to the Torah make this movement little different than other deviant movements in the history of Klal Yisroel, such as the modern-day Conservative and Reform movements. In fact, a lot of what Open Orthodoxy has been doing strongly resembles the Conservative movement in its development.

Lately, Open Orthodoxy has begun to dabble in psak halacha. The heads of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, the Open Orthodox rabbinical school of Avi Weiss, have written teshuvot on many topics and have created a website to share them called the Lindenbaum Center for Halachic Studies. These people have now gathered an assortment of progressive Orthodox leaders (including a woman rabbi) for their first Yom Iyun, which took place on the first day of Chanukah, to discuss the role and attitudes toward halacha in progressive Orthodoxy.

Open Orthodoxy wants people to take its heads seriously as halachic authorities. These heads, such as Rabbi Dov Linzer, YCTs rosh yeshiva, and Rabbi Ysoscher Katz, YCTs chairman of the Talmud department and head of the Lindenbaum Center, have written teshuvot on very serious issues, such as geirus, eiruvin, kashrus, yichud and other topics. The authors of these teshuvot have never been recognized as poskim, have never been part of a bais din, and dont have the backing of any recognized poskim. Despite this, they have taken upon themselves to pasken for the tzibbur, including teshuvos being mattir women to lead Selichos, to receive aliyos, and to publicly nurse babies in shul.

Let us look at some of this more closely, using a few of the examples that appeared and were analyzed by Rabbi David Rosenthal in his acclaimed book, Why Open Orthodoxy is Not Orthodox:

Rabbi Linzer penned a letter encouraging people to donate money to assist in the rebuilding of churches:

Given the recent horrific attack in Charleston and the terrible burnings of churches that has occurred in the last few days, I encourage all of you to show your support for those who have been attacked, and to act in a way of kiddush sheim Shomayim to counteract these terrible hate crimes. One way you can do this is by donating money to help in the rebuilding of these churches Rav Moshe (YD 1:68) ruled that an architect can draw up the plans for the construction of a church, and that miikar hadin [according to the strict letter of the law] it is permitted to actually participate in the building of a church (and this is even without the argument that it is not avodah zarah for them!). 

Rabbi Rosenthal explains that while Rav Moshe Feinstein writes that it is technically permitted to serve as an architect for a church  far from the implication given by Linzer that Rav Moshe allowed a Jew to donate money to a church  Linzer neglects to cite that Rav Moshe qualifies his ruling by limiting it only to situations where not to do such a job would entail a serious financial loss to the architect, or as pertains to the exigencies of a poor mans livelihood, or when not doing so would generate hatred. Linzer also neglects to mention that Rav Moshe calls the practice improper.

Moreover, Linzer omits mention of the fact that Rav Moshe explicitly forbids donating money to a church in another teshuvah.

In another Open Orthodox teshuvah analyzed by Rabbi Rosenthal (this teshuvah is by the rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Maharat, the Open Orthodox school that gives semicha to women), it was ruled that it is not necessary even lechatchilah to have a bais din in the room when a person is tovel for geirus, in contradiction to Yoreh Deah 268:2-3. This teshuvah ignores a teshuvah in Igros Moshe that affirms the opposite, and it selectively quotes the first part of a teshuvah from Rav Ovadiah Yosef for support, but fails to include Rav Ovadiahs conclusion that such a geirus may not be done and is entirely wrong.

Rabbi Avrohom Gordimer recently took Katz to task for a teshuvah on kashrus where Katz misread a Rashi and created a heter out of his error:

Katz wrote: Rashi (Chulin 105a) thinks that the reason we wait is because heavy foods take time to digest, and until they are fully digested, they are still present and come up in your mouth. Eating the opposite food than the one you ate would, therefore, be considered medrabanan as a form of mixing milk and meat. Melted cheese, the Badai Hashulchan explains, does not get stuck in the gums or teeth and therefore obviates the concerns of Rambam, but the taste, he claims, remains in the digestive system for a while even if it was melted, keeping Rashis concern intact. The Badai Hashulchan, as a result, believes that according to Rashi one would have to wait extra time even when eating melted hard cheese.

I do not agree. The reason hard cheese takes longer to digest, according to Rashi, is because of its hard texture. If the food is softened, it will obviously digest faster. Therefore, based on the YY, one would not have to wait additional time when eating a pizza that has melted cheese on top, even according to Rashi.

Rabbi Gordimer pointed out: Rashi does not write that one must wait after heavy foods because they take time to digest and come up in the mouth until digested. Rather, Rashi writes (Chulin 105a, dh assur leechol gevina): (One must wait after meat) because meat exudes fat(ty residue) that adheres to the palate and causes a lingering (meaty) taste (in the mouth). This is referred to as meshichas taam (lingering taste) by people who study Yoreh Deah, and this is how the Badei Hashulchan quotes Rashi. (2) Rabbi Katz writes that he does not agree with the Badei Hashulchans assertion that, according to Rashi, one may have to wait after eating aged cheese that has melted, because, according to Rabbi Katz, the reason hard cheese takes longer to digest, according to Rashi, is because of its hard texture. If the food is softened, it will obviously digest faster. Therefore, based on the YY, one would not have to wait additional time when eating a pizza that has melted cheese on top, even according to Rashi. Rabbi Katzs rejection of the opinion of the Badei Hashulchan is based on Rabbi Katzs erroneous reading of Rashi; Rashi cites meshichas taam and not hardness as the reason for waiting after meat  it has nothing to do with hardness. Thus, Rabbi Katzs critique of the Badei Hashulchan falls away.

Katz also wrote: The Taz holds that there is no need to wait after eating aged cheese (unless one normally conducts himself with extra [optional] strictness). This is common (halachic) practice.

Rabbi Gordimer refuted this: Accepted psak (e.g., Pri Megadim, YD 89 [1], Chochmas Adam 40:13, Aruch Hashulchan, YD 89:11, and many others) is that one must indeed wait after eating aged cheese, like the Shach (YD ibid., sk 15). Halacha has been codified as such, in contradiction to Rabbi Katz assertion that this is not the halacha.

There are so many other cases of Open Orthodox rabbis misunderstanding basic mekoros and intentionally omitting opinions that disagree with their conclusions in teshuvot. In any other profession, this would be malpractice, but here, it seems okay, so long as these Open Orthodox poskim arrive at their desired agenda and result.

Open Orthodox clergy have made it no secret that their goal in halacha is to fulfill an agenda. Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, the senior Open Orthodox rabbi who has removed the brachos of shelo asani goy and shelo asani isha from his davening, stating that these brachos are offensive, wrote: In the end, though, the halakhic scholarship simply paints a bulls eye around the target that I  and many others before me  had already identified. Halacha for this rabbi is not emes, but a way to reach an agenda.

Shmuly Yanklowitz, a famous activist YCT graduate who has called some parts of Torah evil, wrote: The nuanced teachings were progressive in their time, but our sacred responsibility is now to reinterpret them (as our sages have always done) to be moral lights in our time. Within Jewish law, the principles, not the rules, are eternal.

The YCT rosh yeshiva wrote: Should we be bending the halakhah to conform to our modern notions of egalitarianism? is a reasonable question to ask and a hard one to answer.

Another very important YCT graduate wrote about his agenda with halacha while he was in YCT: My immediate goal for my years in Rabbinical School is to acquire the tools that are necessary to overcome the halakhic and social impediments to change.

And from Rabbi Katz again: One of the most pressing tensions in the community is how to reconcile our values with our convictions; what to do when halakha points us in one direction and our values in another direction. We are tempted to follow our values but pulled to abide by our halakhic commitments. A proper resolution requires an emboldened stance towards tradition, one that allows us to cajole the tradition to reconcile itself with our modern sensibilities. [Using, of course, legitimate halakhic mechanisms developed by our predecessors when they were confronted with similar challenges.]

These startling statements are not from Reform or Conservative rabbis; they are from people who call themselves Orthodox  Open Orthodox to be exact  and they are on an aggressive campaign to spread their poison and set themselves up as poskim. They have no inhibitions, as they lock horns with gedolei haposkim of earlier generations and feel confident to argue against them: I rule like Tzitz Eliezer, As a matter of psak, I am inclined against following Tazs approach, and, There is no halachic issue with congregational Torah reading for women, nor any need to be concerned with kavod hatzibur when taking part in this kind of minyan. It is permissible for women to be called up to the Torah, to read from it, and to recite its blessings.

These are quotes from some of the teshuvot of YCTs heads.

Hashem yeracheim.

Open Orthodoxys veering so far off the course of Torah and mesorah is breeding a generation of assimilated followers and even clergy, for whom being part of secular culture trumps being a Torah Jew. A popular graduate of YCT, who sends his four-year old daughter to public school in New York City, wrote last week about his daughters experience during this holiday period:

Our 4-year-old is learning that different people celebrate differently and that some Jews celebrate [X-mas] and some Jews celebrate Shabbat. She felt confident enough to ask and to ask openly. I hope she continues to trust her instincts, love her faith and culture deeply, and never stop seeing the interconnectedness in everything.

This is what Open Orthodoxy is reaping, and its now sowing seeds and claiming the mantle of halachic authority.

(Source: Yated)
Sources in the poll panel said elections for Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur will be held in the first phase.

By India Today Web Desk: The Election Commission is likely to announce the dates for five state elections, including the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, next year on January 4.

Sources in the poll panel said elections for Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur will be held in the first phase.

Election in Uttar Pradesh - India's most populous state - is likely to be the longest in seven phases.

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Also read | BJP welcomes Election Commission's efforts to rid political parties of black money: PM Modi

The Home Ministry is also expected to call a meeting soon to discuss security cover for the poll-bound states.

The government may provide the states with central armed police for the elections.

--- ENDS ---
According to latest reports, a plea bargain agreement is being worked out by which former Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Yona Metzger will accept a prison term rather than take his chances in a trial. While there have been cabinet ministers, a former Prime Minister and even a former President, he will be the first former Chief Rabbi to be imprisoned RL.

Channel 2 News correspondent Yoav Even reported on Wednesday, 28 Kislev that the defense is ready to discuss plea bargain which includes Rabbi Metzger admitting to accepting NIS 10 million in bribes and he will take a jail term as well.

Rabbi Metzger abused his position, accepted bribes and took handsome commissions from tzedaka monies he raised in his capacity as Chief Rabbi. Charges against him include breach of trust, money laundering and tax evasion.

He is estimated to have received about NIS 8 million, which is the equivalent of about NIS 10 million today, hence the inflated sum. The report states he pocketed NIS 5 million (NIS 7 million in todays terms). In most cases, his driver and close confidant Chaim Eisenstatt was used to collect the money.

It does not stop there however. He maintained a connection with Los Angeles Dayan, and they had an arrangement by which the Dayam would probe the Jewishness of persons when required as well as working together with candidates for conversion, all for profit. Half of the sum received by the Dayan for a conversion was passed to Rabbi Metzger and received via a Change store in Bnei Brak. One case that has been documented by the prosecution dating back to 2011 deals with a Russian businessman who approached the Chief Rabbi, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union. He was seeking assistance in converting.

The second portion of the accusations against them according to the prosecution is that Metzger and Eisenstatt pocketed 30-40% of tzedaka funds they collected as their commission. In one case, a NIS 105,000 donation was made to the Beis HaTavshil soup kitchen NGO, an organization working to feed the hungry. The kickback that had to be given to Metzger by the NGO was 30%, without the knowledge of the donor.

The third component of the case has to do with receiving favors during his tenure from 2003-2013. Metzger reportedly pocketed handsome sums of money which he received in return for doing favors for others.

In one case, in July of 2010, Rabbi Metzgers son was married. In a conversation prior to the wedding between Eisenstatt and two invited guests, it was agreed they would give the rabbi a gift for the honor of participating in the event to the tune of $500,000. This was given directly to Rabbi Metzger, in ten payments. The chilul Hashem continues in dealings with Yeshiva Aish Hatorah. The two allegedly raised money for the yeshiva, money which later when to the Beit Tzvi Shul in Tel Aviv where Metzger served as rav. One of the donations, NIS 28,000, was divided between Eisenstatt and Metzger without the yeshiva receiving anything.

Another component of the allegations against Metzger dates back to 2009. A person close to a wealthy Moscow resident was appointed the head of the Caucasian Jewish community in Israel. The rav allegedly received $70,000 for the ceremony that took place.

Tax Authorities calculates he failed to report about NIS 1 million in earnings. There are other charges as well and despite the severity of the cases, the evidence against the defendants, the state is still willing to cut a deal. There will be a fine and a minimal jail term which is not being specified at this time.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has ordered a police investigation into alleged illegal activity involving Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Channel 10 News reports. It was also announced that Mandelblit has ordered the closure of a number of pending cases against Mr. Netanyahu. There were a number of cases against him that are being closed after it was determined there is no evidence calling for a criminal indictment.

When asked to detail or provide additional information, officials in Mandelblits office explain they are not in the habit on commenting on news reports.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan set off for a family vacation with their li'l one yesterday.

By India Today Web Desk: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan has had a great year professionally - while Sarbjit made it to the long list of 336 films eligible for Best Picture at the upcoming Oscars, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil grossed over Rs 200 crore worldwide. Ash is taking a much-deserved vacation to ring in the new year with hubby Abhishek Bachchan and daughter Aaradhya.

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PHOTO: Aaradhya Bachchan asleep in mommy Aishwarya's arms is the cutest thing you'll see today

PHOTOS: Unseen photos of Aishwarya and Aaradhya from the li'l cutie's birthday bash

The picture-perfect family was spotted at the Mumbai airport heading off to a holiday. Abhi-Ash looked their casual best in their white-on-denim combo, while Aaradhya wore pink pants with silver stars on them and a white top with the Eiffel Tower on it.

Photo: Yogen Shah

Photo: Yogen Shah

Photo: Yogen Shah

The little munchkin, who is quite accustomed to the shutterbugs by now, walked past them cool as a cucumber.

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 28 (PTI) Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal were engaged in a war of words on Twitter with the former daring the AAP chief to contest against him in the upcoming Punjab polls.

Kejriwal said he was not contesting Punjab Assembly elections and was fighting the Badals and state minister Bikram Singh Majithia to help free the state from the menace of drugs, following which Amarinder demanded an apology from him for making "false personal commitments".

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"Always knew your screeching in Punjab was pure drama!Now that youve conceded,apologise for your months of lies & false personal commitments," Amarinder said on Twitter.

His reply came after Kejriwal said, "I m not fighting punjab elex. So, ur challenge hollow. We r fighting Badals/Majithia, who sunk Punjab in drugs. N u r fighting us, not them?"

The Twitter war started with Aam Aadmi Party nominating former journalist and Delhi MLA Jarnail Singh to contest against Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal from Lambi constituency. Amarinder termed Jarnail as a "weak candidate" and alleged that AAP was "colluding" with the Badals.

"Jarnails nomination bid from Lambi shows AAP-SAD collusion to ensure Badals victory. Reeks of an underhand deal!" the PCC chief tweeted.

Kejriwal replied, "Sir, r u fighting against Prakash Badal ji or Sukhbir Badal or Majithia or safe seat?"

Amarinder then dared Kejriwal to contest against him and tweeted, "Badals story is over. You tell me where youre contesting from and I will come fight you there!"

The AAP chief retorted, "So, u r fighting me, not Badals/drugs. Badals also say they will fight against me. U n Badals wish to fight agnst me not agnst each other."

The former Punjab chief minister shot back with a tweet saying, "Ive defeated Jaitely-Majithia combine when you didnt even know a thing about Punjab. But tell us, why are you so scared of fighting me?"

Kejriwal then replied that he was not contesting Punjab polls and was only seeking to free Punjab from the menace of drugs mafia allegedly patronised by the present dispensation.

Congress, which has been in political wilderness for a decade now after losing two successive elections at the hands of the ruling Akali Dal-BJP combine, is seeking to wrest back power. Amarinder, who is contesting his last elections, is Congress face in Punjab, but is pitted against entrant AAP which is giving Congress a good fight.

Punjab Assembly elections are slated for early next year and the announcement of its schedule is likely soon. PTI SKC AAR

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It sounds ludicrously cheap, but next summer you could be flying to New York for under 60.

Norwegian Air has announced that the super low 56 ($69) fare will be possible as a result of its new fleet of extra fuel-efficient Boeing aircrafts.

The catch? You'll have to fly from Edinburgh airport, to a 'secondary' New York airport - not JFK - and you'll have to pay extra to bring a suitcase, have a meal and choose your seats.

How low can you go? Norwegian Air has announced a new 56 ($69) one-way fare from Edinburgh to New York starting next summer

According to iNews, the Oslo-based airline's CEO Bjorn Kjos said: 'Our planes are very, very fuel efficient. We have a totally different set up to other airlines. The Boeing 737MAX has a very modern engine.'

Six new Boeing 737MAX's are reportedly being acquired in April 2017, with the new Edinburgh to New York service being launched in the following months.

Trains from London to Edinburgh cost from 25 with advance bookings, and the journey takes around four hours.

Mr Kjos added that avoiding primary airports like London Heathrow and New York's JFK means 'we dont pay as much and can charge cheaper fares'.

Norwegian Air currently runs flights from Gatwick to New York with the lowest fare for the next three months set at 179 one-way.

You'll have to fly to New York, pictured, from Edinburgh airport, to a 'secondary' New York airport - not JFK

Extra charges for checked-baggage vary according to season but generally cost in the region of 40 for an international flight.

Earlier this month, Norwegian said it would add 50 per cent more flights between Britain and the US next summer, after it was granted extra flying rights.

It is also working on routes from Irish cities like Cork, Dublin and Shannon.

Close competitor Wow air already operates a flight from Edinburgh airport, pictured, to New York with prices starting at 139 over the next three months

Since launching its first transatlantic routes in 2014, Norwegian set a new bar in terms of low fares.

It now competes with the likes of Icelandic-owned Wow air. This airline already operates flights from Edinburgh to New York with prices starting at 139 over the next three months - 40 cheaper than Norwegian at present.
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Growing rift between the Peoples Party of Arunachal and its ally BJP lead to the suspension of seven lawmakers by PPA. Section within PPA is irked by the growing influence of BJP over a section of its own leadership.

By Indrajit Kundu: In a move that can put the BJP supported new government of Arunachal Pradesh in fresh turmoil, the Peoples Party of Arunachal (PPA) has suspended seven party lawmakers including current chief minister Pema Khandu.

This comes in the backdrop of serious differences within the PPA which now seems to have been divided into two factions - one consisting of old PPA members versus the new joinees who had defected from the Congress earlier this year led by chief minister Pema Khandu.

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Today, PPA president Kahfa Bengia wrote to the state assembly speaker intimating him about the party's "disciplinary action" against seven lawmakers and subsequent decision to place them under "temporary" suspension.

Speaking to India Today, Bengia accepted that there were "differences" within the ranks of the party over leadership and a possible change in guard could not be ruled out in the days to come. He said a large section of the PPA members were "concerned" about the autonomy of the party in running the government.

Of late, members of the PPA have been irked by the growing proximity of the newcomers from Congress led by Pema Khandu with alliance partner BJP. Many feel that the BJP, being a national party was trying to curb the influence of the PPA in running the government.

PPA is a crucial constituent of North-East Democratic Alliance (NEDA) and have played a pivotal role in overthrowing the Nabam Tuki led Congress government in the state earlier this year when ruling Congress legislators resigned enmasse to join its ranks.

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Asin took to Instagram to share pictures from her vacation in France with hubby Rahul Sharma.

By India Today Web Desk: Ever since Asin tied the knot with entrepreneur Rahul Sharma earlier this year, she has taken a sabbatical from films. But once in a while, the gorgeous actor gives us a glimpse into her life post marriage through social media.

PHOTOS: Asin and husband Rahul join Akshay and Twinkle on their Italian vacation

Asin and Rahul have taken off to a ski resort in France to celebrate the New Year, and she took to Instagram to share a picture from her holiday in the snowy locale. In a selfie of the couple, Asin is seen pouting.

?? A photo posted by Asin Thottumkal (@simply.asin) on Dec 28, 2016 at 1:21pm PST

A photo posted by Asin Thottumkal (@simply.asin) on Dec 28, 2016 at 2:43pm PST

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Photos of the picture-perfect couple holidaying together are giving us major vacation goals!

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MBABANE  Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ezulwini Town Board Vusumutiwendvodza Matsebula has denied reports that councillors were locked out of a proposed meeting last week.



Matsebula also said that even if the meeting became fruitful, he was not going to attend it as he was not feeling well. The CEO was responding to reports that the Councillors had to abandon their first meeting after being granted an order that their suspension by Minister of Housing and Urban Development Phiwayinkhosi Mabuza had been set aside.

While the five councillors showed up for the proposed meeting, the CEO was nowhere to be seen. This is despite the fact that he is the legal secretary of council. The councillors had taken the minister to court after he suspended them and further instituted a commission of inquiry into the affairs of the Town Board.



Matsebula alleged that he was not aware of the said meeting as he was not informed by the responsible councillors as per the standing orders which guide the organisation.

On the day I was on sick leave. I was in the office in the morning and left before lunch since I was not feeling well. By the time I left I had not been informed about a council meeting. The council boardroom was open. No one was locked out, Matsebula said.



Some councillors, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told this newspaper that the CEO was aware of the meeting but allegedly showed no interest in it as he argued that he had not received feedback from the minister.



The councillors said while they did receive the message from his PA that he was not feeling well, they were not convinced as they had heard that he had said he was going to wait for correspondence from the minister.




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By Bill Parry

Lawmakers in western Queens are calling for an investigation into the Astoria Christian ministry for evicting low-income residents during the holiday season in order to turn a dormitory into a shelter.

U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Jackson Heights), state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) and Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas (D-Astoria) urged state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate possible mismanagement by the non-profit, the New York School of Urban Ministry, for blindsiding 39 tenants from a dormitory in Astoria during the holiday season.

Pastor Peter DeArruda, executive director and vice president of NYSUM, met with the building residents just before Thanksgiving and told them they had to move out by years end. He then signed a Notice of Termination that said proceeding would begin.

In their letter to the attorney general letter dated Tuesday, the lawmakers said the majority of the residents pay rent between $400 and $500 a month, and would not be able to afford market-rate apartments in New York City and pointed out NYSUM confirmed that they intend to remove these tenants in order to operate a homeless shelter on the site, which these tenants may very well need due to NYSUMs actions. They said Pastor Peter DeArruda suggested the non-profit organization was losing money on the residence and is generally facing hardships.

Its unconscionable that the New York School of Urban Ministry would look to evict its tenants in the midst of the holiday season and literally leave families out in the cold, Crowley said. At a time, when our city is grappling with an unprecedented homelessness crisis, we need to make sure were doing everything possible to keep people in their homes and protect them from unscrupulous landlords or any undue hardship that might result from their poor management.

DeArrudas attorney could not be reached for comment.

NYSUM claims a net rental income of $446,881, according to its 990 filing from 2014. This income appears to be sufficient to cover operational costs that may exist, given the tax status of the organization, they wrote. The lawmakers also included a document that indicates the property is fully paid off and owned by NYSUM, clear of any mortgage,

Claiming financial hardship to pressure low-income tenants out of their homes during the holidays is a new low, Gianaris said. Needy residents should not be victimized by poor management looking to make more money off of their misery.

The lawmakers continue to urge the residents to remain in their homes and avail themselves of their legal rights while the Legal Aid Society continues to examine all documents and assist the tenants. The offices of Gianaris, Crowley and Simotas offered DeArruda the opportunity to meet and discuss a potential solution to the situation but he did not respond to the request.

The abrupt and shameful manner in which the New York School of Urban Ministry tried to force out its low-income tenants raises serious concerns about how this tax exempt, not-for-profit organization is operating, Simotas said. Because the organizations actions towards these residents is so contrary to its stated mission and its plans for the building where they are living are so secretive, I think its important to investigate all of NYSUMs practices as a so-called charity.

Schneiderman has received the letter and will discuss it with the state Education Department, which has primary jurisdiction over educational institutions, according to spokeswoman Amy Spitalnik.
Union Minister of State for Railway Rajen Gohain's residence in Assam came under grenade attack this morning. The minister was away at the time of the incident.

By Manogya Loiwal : The residence of Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain was attacked on Thursday by unidentified men, who hurled a grenade which did not explode.

In what could be termed as a lucky escape, the grenade failed to go off after it was hurled at the residence of Rajen Gohain in Nagaon in Assam in wee hours.

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Rajen and his family were not at home, when the grenade was hurled at their residence. The police was promptly informed and swung into action.

Devraj Upadhayay, Superintendent of Police of the district, said, "It is not confirmed yet whether the grenade is a live one or dead. When the police was informed about the grenade, we reached Rajen Gohain's house and kept the grenade aside and covered it with a blanket and surrounded it with sand bags as a precautionary measure.

"We have called our bomb squad to know whether the grenade is still dangerous or not. We are investigating the matter right now," Upadhyay said after the attack.

But, the bigger question for police to solve is the motive behind the grenade attack on the residence of the union minister.

The blame game is likely to get ugly between the political parties as the police investigation gets underway on priority.

(With Pankaj Sharma at Nagaon, Assam)

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By Bill Parry

When three NYCHA resident associations endorsed Mayor Bill de Blasios proposed $2.5 billion Brooklyn Queens Connector streetcar project Monday, it raised some eyebrows among members of the growing anti-gentrification movement in western Queens, who see the BQX as an expensive boondoggle for luxury real estate developers with properties along the waterfront.

Claudia Coger, the president of the Astoria Houses Residents Association, and colleagues April Simpson-Day at Queensbridge and Carol Wilkins at Ravenswood backed the controversial plan and joined the board of directors of the Friends of the BQX, a non-profit created to support the 16-mile line along the waterfront from Astoria to Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

We each have our own views, but for me its most certainly about connection, Coger said. Many of us in public housing in northwest Queens need to get to downtown Brooklyn because thats where the city has moved all the offices for public assistance, Social Security and pensions for our retirees. The lack of sufficient transportation, especially for us out here on Hallets Peninsula where we live, its a great need.

Coger, 81, raised seven children during her 57 years living at the Astoria Houses. For 25 years she was an assistant train dispatcher with the New York City Transit Authority before retiring in 1993.

I get a free transportation pass as part of my retirement benefits, but it means I have to go to downtown Brooklyn every time I need to renew it, she said. To get there you have to go through Manhattan and it can take much more than an hour each way. With the streetcar its a shortcut in comfort with great views. I dont like the underground.

The three resident association presidents join a growing list of groups from Queens that have endorsed the project and taking seats on the organizations board of directors, such as the Long Island City Partnership, the Queens Chamber of Commerce, JetBlue and the Coalition for Queens.

These leaders know first-hand the challenges a community cut-off from reliable transit faces, where its difficult to get to jobs, school, medical appointments, or frankly anywhere to want to go, Friends of the BQX Executive Director Ya-Ting Liu said. I look forward to working with the new board members to ensure that all New Yorkers have a voice in bringing better transit to our city.

Transit advocate Melissa Orlando, the founder of 7 Train Blues and Queens Access, helped organize the Jobs Homes Hoods public meetings in Sunnyside and Woodside, where leaders of the anti-gentrification spoke against the project to large crowds this summer.

I find it interesting that they would endorse the BQX, although I can see some benefits for NYCHA residents, Orlando said. Just the funding issue alone. They say theyll push up real estate prices along the corridor and thats not good for any of us with all of the concerns about gentrification along the waterfront that will lead to displacement of low- and working-class residents and the mom-and-pops and many other small businesses.

Coger said that was considered by all three women before they endorsed the project and joined the board of the Friends of the BQX.

You cant close your mind to the fact that these things can happen, but in the future there is going to be change. You can see the spread of development in every corner of the city, Coger said. We dont know where it is all heading. But you have to take it one day at a time and you have to stay on top of it.
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By Patrick Donachie

Townsend Harris High School Interim Principal Rosemarie Jahoda is facing increased pressure from school faculty, parents and students, with many calling for the Department of Education to remove her from the post.

Students gathered outside the school Dec. 22 for a rally to demand her ouster with members of the Parent Teachers Association, elected officials and faculty present in support. They also called for a more transparent process when hiring a permanent principal.

Chancellor Farina, we need action and we need action now! PTA Co-President Susan Karlic said during the rally.

Karlic was joined by state Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Fresh Meadows), who said many of his constituents had children enrolled at Townsend Harris. The schools PTA, alumni association, Weprin, Councilman Rory Lancman, Councilwoman Toby Stavisky and Queens Borough President Melinda Katz have all supported the calls for a transparent C-30 process to choose a permanent principal.

Last week, the Queens High School Presidents Council also called for the DOE to find a different permanent principal in a letter to District Superintendent Elaine Lindsey. The council represents all high school PTAs in the borough.

We do not believe that Ms. Jahoda can regain the trust, support and confidence of her school community. Confirming her appointment would simply leave the school in turmoil, the letter stated. We are confident that the DOE can find other candidates that can successfully lead Townsend Harris High School.

Jahoda took the role of interim principal at Townsend Harris in September. Students and teachers have accused her of being inattentive to their concerns, with student Alex Chin saying her tenure was marked by aggression and intimidation.

At the rally, Karlic ran through a litany of alleged issues, including canceling and delays in school trips and not supporting students in the Muslim Students Association who faced discriminatory insults in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election.

Instead of supporting these students and sending a message that bullying is not tolerated at this school, one student left her office in tears, she said.

Additionally, students and parents were frustrated by the actions of Jahoda and District Deputy Superintendent Leticia Pineiro in a video taken by The Classic, Townsend Harris student newspaper, during a sit-in by the students held Dec. 8. Students and parents said Pineiro was dismissive towards students concerns, and thought it was inappropriate that Jahoda accompanied her.

These are high school kids, from 14 to 17 years of age, not college students, not adults, and she just left them feeling bullied by the official, Karlic said. Her reasoning? It was not her place to interfere.

Calls to Principal Jahodas office for comment were not answered.

The PTA passed a resolution Dec. 15 calling for the immediate removal of Principal Jahoda and requested an independent person from within the Department of Education be appointed to manage the C-30 principal selection process. Members of the PTA said they did not trust Pineiro or Lindsey to be involved in the decision.

Jahoda was previously an assistant principal at the Bronx High School of Science, where she was accused by 20 of the 22 mathematics teachers under her direction of creating an intimidating atmosphere. An independent fact finding arbiter determined she should be removed, though the DOE decided against acting on this assessment.

A parent of a junior at the school said he was shocked when Jahoda was appointed at Townsend Harris, saying that many parents decided against sending their children to Bronx High School of Science because of the news coverage of Jahodas tenure at the school.

Its like taking a driver with a suspended license and giving them a Ferrari, the parent said.
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By Gina Martinez

A Whitestone teacher has been named National American Miss. Katherine McQuade, 20, won the national title representing New York State over Thanksgiving week in Hollywood, Calif.

McQuade has a lot on her plate. She is currently a junior at Marymount Manhattan College, where she is on the deans list. She also models for designer Ashley Lauren, a bridal, prom and pageant gown designer, and for magazines like Prom Cool Book 2017. One of her goals is to perform with the famous Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.

McQuade also dabbles in philanthropy. She created her own charitable foundation that she says is near and dear to her heart called Promoting Hope- Pot holders for Pancreatic Cancer Awareness.

I created that organization in honor of my grandmother, who died of that terrible disease in 2005, she said in an interview. I sell or give pot holders as gifts and all proceeds are funded to help the organization. So far Ive raised over $5,000.

As part of her National American Miss duties, McQuade will be traveling across the country over the summer representing her title during the Pageant Program Summer Tour. McQuade will also be traveling to Houston to participate in the National Photo Shoot and next summer she will return to California to crown her successor and enjoy a free day in Disneyland along with a tour of Hollywood with her mother.

McQuade said she is thankful and surprised at her win.

There were 36 contestants, she said, It was amazing considering I have been competing since the age of 10 and winning the national title has been a dream come true. Winning is very difficult. You cant always do it on your first shot, Most girls take years to win the National titles.

McQuade currently works as a teacher at the Landrum School of Performing Arts in her hometown of Whitestone, the school she attended.

I work as an acting and dance teacher, she said. Sometimes I help with the competition kids as well. Ive been dancing at the school since the age of 3, so being a part of competition team now, its been cool to see that transition from student to teacher.

As far as the future, McQuade says she wants to continue doing pageants and continue her education.

Ive been doing this since I was 10, she said, so I definitely want to go big or go home. I want to compete in Miss America or Miss USA, but first I have to finish up my year as National American Miss in 2017. Im excited to get my foot into that door. But, of course, I love to teach. Its definitely a fun experience, I learn so much from the kids. As far as school, Im a commercial arts major with concentration in creative media. I want to enter the film world as a film editor. Im good at working with computer software, I enjoy it so much.

For now McQuade wants to enjoy every second of winning National American Miss.

I plan to use this platform to empower young women across the country, Im super excited.
Syria\s army and key ally Russia on Thursday announced a nationwide ceasefire to take effect at midnight, in a potential major breakthrough after nearly six years of civil war.

The deal was brokered by Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides in the conflict, but does not involve Washington, which has negotiated previous ceasefires with Moscow.

The agreement, hailed by Syria\s government as a "real opportunity" to find a political solution to the war, comes a week after the regime recaptured second city Aleppo in a major blow to rebel forces.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who announced the deal, said Damascus and the "main forces of the armed opposition" had inked a truce and a document expressing a readiness to start peace talks.

"Several hours ago, the event occurred that we have not only been waiting for but been working so much to hasten," Putin said in a meeting with his defence and foreign ministers.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the agreement as a "historic opportunity" to end the Syrian conflict, which has killed more than 310,000 people and forced millions from their homes.

Syria\s army said it would halt all military operations from midnight (2200 GMT on Thursday) and a leading opposition body, the National Coalition, voiced its support for the truce.

Putin said he would also reduce Moscow\s military contingent in Syria that has been flying a bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad since last year.

The Kremlin strongman, however, said Russia would continue to fight "terrorism" in Syria and maintain its support for the regime.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said seven opposition groups, including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham, had signed the deal and those who failed to adhere would be considered "terrorists".

Erdogan indicated Turkey would press on with its four-month incursion into Syria against Islamic State group (IS) jihadists and Kurdish militia.

Syria\s army said the deal did not include IS and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fateh al-Sham Front.

That could cause complications in areas like Idlib in northwestern Syria, where Fateh al-Sham is allied with rebel groups that have signed on to the deal.

Syria\s political opposition and rebels confirmed their backing for the truce, saying it applied to all parts of the country.

"The agreement is for all of Syria and contains no exceptions or preconditions," said Osama Abou Zeid, a legal adviser to rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.

The agreement comes after Turkey and Russia brokered a deal to allow the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians and rebel fighters from Aleppo.

Moscow and Ankara are now pushing for peace talks between Damascus and the rebels to start soon in Kazakhstan\s capital Astana.

"Now we need to do everything for these agreements to come into force, for them to work, so that the negotiating teams that have been or are being formed promptly and as soon as possible arrive in Astana," Putin said.

UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura said he hoped the agreement would "pave the way for productive talks" in Kazakhstan, but also reiterated he wants negotiations mediated by his office to continue early next year.

Russia and Turkey have both said the peace talks they will supervise are meant to supplement UN-backed peace efforts, rather than replace them entirely.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia, Turkey and Iran were arranging for the talks and pressing for other key international players to get involved.

Lavrov said Moscow would invite Egypt and try to attract other regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Jordan.

He added that Moscow would seek to involve US President-elect Donald Trump\s administration once he takes office this month, but the process does not appear to involve outgoing President Barack Obama\s administration.

The US State Department called the ceasefire deal a "positive development" and said it hoped it would lead to fresh negotiations on Syria\s political future.

Abou Zeid confirmed the truce deal was intended to pave the way for new talks in Astana, with the High Negotiations Committee that has represented the opposition at previous negotiations expected to participate.

Turkey has long backed Syria\s opposition, and its relations with Russia soured last year after Ankara shot down a Russian warplane.

But the two countries have worked closely of late on Syria and Turkey was conspicuously quiet as Assad\s forces retook Aleppo.

In the hours before the ceasefire was to take effect, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, reported at least 17 civilians, including six children, were killed in air strikes and artillery fire on rebel-held territory near Damascus.

SOURCE: AFP
Beaver County preparing for robust Election Day turnout

As the Nov. 8 midterm election approaches, nearly 114,000 people are registered to vote in Beaver County.
Instead of the photo voter slips in the form of small chits, the electorate in the five poll-bound states will get A4 size papers of good quality with the snapshot of the polling station on Google-Maps.

Assembly elections in five states are due in early 2017. (PTI Photo)

By Kumar Shakti Shekhar: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has added some new features in the voters' slip for the upcoming elections in five states of Goa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh to be held early 2017.

Instead of the photo voter slips in the form of small chits, the electorate in these five poll-bound states will get A4 size papers of good quality with the snapshot of the polling station on Google-Maps.

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The ECI, in a letter to the chief electoral officers of these five states, has issued instructions regarding the modifications of the photo voter slips.

EVERYTHING ABOUT THE NEW NOTIFICATION:

The ECI aims at further enhancing the effectiveness of the photo voter slips as an important instrument of voter facilitation and awareness. The Commission also intends to improve the utility of the photo voter slips in establishing the identity of the voters on the poll day. To these ends, the Commission has decided to improve the design of the voters' slip to make it more perceptible, informative and useful. The existing size of the voter slip has been substantially increased, with a much larger photograph of the voter for better and easy identification. The voter slip will be printed in the size of half of A4 paper 8 inches by 6 inches. The slip will be printed with proper accounting on both sides, showing the front and the reverse print. The states have been instructed to use good quality paper for printing the slips. The chief state electoral officers have also been asked to ensure that the printing quality is of high standard to ensure clear, legible and unambiguous image and content. Further, to aid and guide the voters regarding the polling station location, the snapshot of polling station's Google Maps has been added to the reverse of the voter slip. The reverse side also contains other crucial information and Dos and Don'ts for the poll day.

The list of important information is as follows:

All the voters who are in the queue at the closing time of the poll shall be allowed to cast their vote.

There are separate queues for women.

Senior citizens are given priority for voting.

Blind and infirm voter can be permitted to take an adult companion in the voting compartment for recording the vote.

Gadgets like mobile phones and cameras are not allowed inside the polling booth.

Offering or accepting money or any other gratification to vote for a particular candidate is a corrupt practice under law.

The slip ends with the message "No voter to be left behind: Every voter counts.

ALSO READ:

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Two Corinth men were charged with burglary after they broke into a Greenfield Center home and stole cash, Saratoga County Sheriff's said.

Robert J. Place 111, 24, of 204 Center St. #1, and Derek S. Galusha, 23, of 119 Main St. burglarized the home on Oct. 19, said Sheriff Investigator Jeffrey Brown. After an investigation, both men were charge with the felony. Galusha was charged with allegedly providing a false statement to the police.
Albany

A Romanian citizen pleaded guilty Wednesday to stealing $127,000 through skimming devices he secretly installed on Capital Region ATMs, federal authorities said.

Ilie Sitariu, 37, admitted to FBI charges that he and an unnamed co-conspirator used skimming devices and pinhole cameras to capture account and personal identification numbers at First Niagara Bank, Trustco Bank and Berkshire Bank branches in Chatham and Delmar as well as Great Barrington, Mass., the officials said.

The crimes took place between Aug. 30 and Oct. 24, 2015, U.S. Attorney Richard S. Hartunian and Special FBI Agent in Charge Andrew W. Vale said.

Authorities say the skimming devices captured the information encoded on the magnetic strips of customers' bank debit cards, while the pinhole cameras allowed conspirators to record the PINs used by the customers at ATMs.

The conspirators used the information to steal the $127,000 from the customers' accounts by making withdrawals at ATMs in New York City.

Sitariu faces at least two years and up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. That could include a post-imprisonment, supervised release of up to three years.

Sentencing is scheduled for May 10 by Senior United States District Judge Lawrence E. Kahn.

RDownen@timesunion.com  518-454-5018  Follow @RobertDownenTU
I have defeated Jaitely-Majithia combine when you didn't even know a thing about Punjab. But tell us, why are you so scared of fighting me, Captain Amarinder Singh challenges Kejriwal.

By Supriya Bhardwaj: Punjab Congress chief Captain Amarinder Singh and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal engaged in a heated argument on Twitter with the former Punjab Chief Minister challenging Kejriwal to contest election.

Twitter became another arena for the already politically-charged Punjab polls as Captain Amarinder Singh and Arvind Kejriwal engaged in a war of words on social media.

Captain Amrinder Singh fired the first salvo and tweeted today morning, tagging Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. "I've defeated Jaitely-Majithia combine when you didn't even know a thing about Punjab. But tell us, why are you so scared of fighting me?," Captain Amarinder said.

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Also read | Arvind Kejriwal's Twitter war with Amarinder: Ready for debate, but with your bosses Sonia, Rahul

AMARINDER'S CHALLENGE HOLLOW: KEJRIWAL

Clearing the air about whether he will contest Punjab election, Arvind Kejriwal tweeted, "I m not fighting punjab elex (elections). So, ur (your) challenge hollow. We r fighting Badals/Majithia, who sunk Punjab in drugs. N u r (And you are) fighting us, not them?"

Replying to this tweet, Captain Amarinder tweeted, "Always knew your screeching in Punjab was pure drama!Now that you've conceded, apologise for your months of lies & false personal commitments."

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COHOES -- Police are asking for the public's help to find 13-year-old Jeanetta "Nettie" Lopez, who has been reported missing by her family.

Cohoes police said they do not suspect foul play because Lopez has run away from home many times.
Troy

Convicted pedophile Louis VanWie, who told police he molested more than 100 children, will not get out of prison Thursday after the state rejected his plans to move in with a relative in the city.

VanWie had a tentative release date of Dec. 29 after serving two-thirds of his prison sentence. In 1997, then-Rensselaer County Court Judge Patrick McGrath sentenced VanWie to 11 years to 30 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to first-degree sodomy and first-degree sexual abuse.

As long as the 74-year-old VanWie cannot find suitable housing, he will remain incarcerated for the foreseeable future, according to the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. VanWie is being held in the Gowanda State Correctional Facility.

"As part of the discharge planning process, all inmates convicted of sex offenses must have approved housing prior to being released to Community Supervision," Thomas Mailey, a DOCCS spokesman, said Wednesday in a statement. "Inmate VanWie has yet to identify a residence that is acceptable and therefore will remain in DOCCS custody until such time that appropriate housing is located and approved."

DOCCS considers many factors such as risk levels, vulnerable populations and the law before housing is approved for sex offenders to be released into their home community.

VanWie's guilty plea and admissions city to police in 1997 about sexual contact with more than 100 youths over a 40-year period is an unfading memory in Troy.

"We hope he continues to remain incarcerated and serves the rest of his sentence," said Troy police spokesman Capt. Daniel DeWolf.

VanWie had been rejected for parole five times. He was slated for the conditional discharge before his housing arrangements were found to be unsatisfactory.

Three groups  Fighting for Children PAC, Stop Abuse Campaign and Brooklyn Bridge Walk  and Kayla Wittman, the victim in the case that led to VanWie's incarceration have been lobbying for the state to keep VanWie off the street.

"Louis VanWie is a serial child rapist who must never be allowed back into any community, anywhere," said Gary Greenberg, founder of Fighting for Children PAC, who at VanWie's sentencing said he was sexually abused by him at Cohoes Hospital.

"If given the opportunity VanWie will rape and abuse children," Greenberg said. "New York state and Gov. Andrew Cuomo must confine this living monster until he is dead and no longer a threat to our children."

VanWie's next parole hearing is scheduled for August 2017, according to DOCCS online inmate records. VanWie's will have served his entire 30-year prison sentence by Dec. 29, 2026.

kcrowe@timesunion.com  518-454-5084  @KennethCrowe
Berlin

A 40-year-old Tunisian man has been detained as a possible accomplice of Anis Amri, the man identified as the terrorist who carried out the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people, German officials said.

The Tunisian was held in Berlin, news agencies reported Wednesday, after a search of a home and offices associated with the man, whose name was not released. Information about him was found in the cellphone of Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian, who was killed Friday during a shootout with police officers outside Milan.

The development on Wednesday was announced by the office of Peter Frank, the public prosecutor general.

"The investigations indicate that he could have been involved in the attack," Frank's office said in a statement, adding that officials expected to know by late Thursday if there were enough grounds to press criminal charges. "To what extent suspicions about the arrested person will be firmed up remains to be seen, after further investigation."

The truck attack, on Dec. 19, was Germany's deadliest terrorist attack in decades. The Islamic State claimed responsibility and released a video that Amri had recorded, in which he pledged his allegiance to the group's supreme leader.

But it is not known if Amri had accomplices. Nor is it clear precisely how Amri made his way back to Italy, where he lived from 2011 to 2015.

Italian and French officials have said Amri most likely traveled by train on the evening of Dec. 22 from Lyon, France, transferring trains at the town of Chambery, near the border with Italy, before making his way to Turin and then Milan. From Central Station in Milan, he went to the northern suburb of Sesto San Giovanni, where two police officers on a routine patrol stopped him early Friday and asked for identification; Amri opened fire and was fatally shot.

How Amri reached Lyon from Berlin remains unclear, but Agence France-Presse, citing unidentified Dutch officials, reported on Wednesday that he took a bus from Amsterdam or the Dutch city of Nijmegen to Lyon on Dec. 21.

"The suspect in the Berlin attack was very likely at the Nijmegen station two days after the attack," Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the Dutch national prosecutor's office, said in a statement Wednesday. In a phone interview, he said officials believed that Amri obtained in Nijmegen a free cellphone SIM card that Italian police found on his body after he was killed.

De Bruin said that the police were following up on reports from people who thought they might have seen Amri. "We have to investigate the reports because we would like to reconstruct the route he took in the Netherlands to get from Germany to France," he said in the interview.

He added that investigators were working closely with their counterparts in Germany, France and Italy.

Amri is said to have careened into a Christmas market at the symbolic Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin just after 8 p.m. Dec. 19. Police initially detained a Pakistani man who was found to have no connection to the truck and thus the assault. The error ended up giving the suspect a head start of almost 20 hours to flee, before investigators scouring the cab found a migration document that led to Amri.

Amri, who had a history of petty crime and used several aliases in his odyssey around Europe, applied for asylum in Germany in April. His application was rejected in June, and he was ordered deported, but he managed to slip through the cracks.

He may have benefited from Germany's decentralized political system. Power is spread over 16 states, and police, judicial and migration officials have distinct spheres of authority.

For example, Amri was detained for two days in the southern German town of Friedrichshafen on July 30, after trying to take a bus to Zurich, when police noticed he was under deportation order. But an office for registering foreigners in Kleve, in the far northwest of Germany, which was responsible for the order, said it did not have the papers from Tunisia necessary to carry out the deportation, so Amri was ordered released.

Adding to the confusion, on leaving jail in the south, he gave an address in Karlsruhe, hundreds of miles from Kleve.

This jumbled state of affairs  a reaction to the abuses of centralized power under fascist and communist governments  has been criticized, and with the new focus on terrorism, both politicians and ordinary Germans are again clamoring for change.
Vendors in one of Delhi's biggest mandi situated in Okhla feel that demonetisation has ruined their lives. Take a look at how cash crunch has ruined their business.

By Ashutosh Mishra: As demonetisation is all set to meet its deadline on December 30th in few hours, it is also obvious that it's going to affect our nation's economy and daily business for a long time. Even though the situation has improved a bit as compared to the beginning but it is not enough to fast track the economy's pace.

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Indeed, there is a noticable change of people preferring the digital methods as compared to the traditional cash dealings now but it also calls for a proper availability of infrastructure and technology reform on the grassroot level.

To understand the impact and analysis of cashless India after 50 days of Demonetisation we reached out to one of the largest Mandi of Delhi in Okhla.

A unanimous voice says that Demonetisation has led to major cash crunch and has ruined their business as this large scale trading Mandi still drives its business from cash.

However, there is a start of digital mode of payment at few stopovers in the market. But except a few, this wholesale Mandi is affected drastically due to cash crunch. No awareness of digital payments from both the consumer or vendor's end is seen which is a major pitfall for many.

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Bea Grause, president of the Healthcare Association of New York State, started her career as a nurse and worked for many years in the emergency room of a county hospital, the safety net for people who didn't have health insurance. It motivated her to go to law school, because she was passionate about health care coverage  how to make it better and how to make it affordable. More than 20 years later, it is still the unifying thread of Grause's work.

Grause was hired as president of HANYS in July after 14 years as president and CEO of the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems. HANYS' job is to lobby on behalf of the provider community. The group represents 500 nonprofit and public hospitals, nursing homes, home care agencies and other health care organizations.

"Our health care system would be better if providers had more control over where they practice and how patients are making decisions. No matter if we're talking about finance, health care technology or regulations, if we're not focused on patients' ability to make better choices for their care, we are rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic," Grause said.

To call health care complex is a vast understatement."It's a highly regulated service requiring federal and state standards, all used to assess the individual lying in front of you," Grause said. "Changing how health care is organized and delivered is not an overnight fix. The Affordable Care Act is working, but not on the timeline people think it should be happening. There is no magical solution."

More Information This story also appears in the January/February issue of Women@Work magazine. For more inspiring stories about Capital Region working women and articles that offer career advice, sign up today for $25 at tuwomenatwork.com. You'll get a year's subscription to the magazine and become part of a network of 1,700 Capital Region women who want to grow their careers and help other women grow, too. See More Collapse

The election of Donald Trump added a challenge, because it's unclear what he's going to do.

"The effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act has long been a GOP and Trump campaign battle cry. There are many interrelated pieces of this complex law, and the legislative process to address it will be more like pick-and-shovel work than a blackboard eraser," Grause said.

Some changes Congress can make immediately because of the GOP majority; others require a supermajority of 60 votes to pass.

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"The question is, do they want to pass a bill as one party or as a bipartisan effort, marginal as that may be?" Grause said. "Given the polarized electorate, some effort toward unity would, in my humble opinion, be a wise consideration."

In the meantime, Grause is sitting with officials around the state from the Department of Health to talk about regulatory barriers to how medicine is paid for and delivered. She and her family are also settling into a new home in Glenmont and sorting out how their active lifestyle will play out in a new place.

"I want to be as active as I can possibly be so I can continue to do the things I love to do," Grause said about her health care routine. She is a lifelong swimmer, mountain bike rider, skier and hiker. Grause and her husband have two children, a son who is 16 and daughter 12.

"In a busy work life, it's good to squeeze things in; in the past I found friends in health care, too, and we worked in a bike ride or a walk while we talked about the things we needed to talk about."
Dwight and Caroline Moss take the saying "80 and fabulous" to a new level.

The couple celebrated its 1,000th musical show in August but are far from slowing down. "We put on these shows and will continue to for as long as we can, because we love making everyone happy," said Caroline Moss. "It's really such a great feeling to bring joy to so many people."

The couple, both in their early 80s, have been putting on shows and programs in the Brook Pointe Senior Apartments in Schodack since 2003. They sing classic songs that the residents can sing along to, as well as performing a few dances, using props, and getting the crowd clapping and swaying along.

"We try to keep things upbeat," said Moss. "Usually about 80 percent of the audience is singing along with us as we perform."

Along with these shows, Dwight teaches tai chi classes to seniors in the center in Schodack and Rensselaer. Caroline has arranged weekly breakfasts at the Schodack center to bring the residents together in the cafe. "It's something that gets all of the seniors out of their rooms, to have some company and talk with one another," said Moss.

The shows began when Caroline saw a group of seniors rehearsing skits at the center. When she noticed that it was an older group that might be in need of a new member, she quickly asked to join and began singing and playing instruments with them. Dwight and Caroline then joined a variety of singing groups in the Capital Region and began traveling with them to perform.

"Over time, we stopped traveling with these groups and began performing as just the two of us," says Moss. "We named ourselves M&M, for our last name Moss."

Performing was not a major part of their lives before these programs at the senior centers began. "I was in a few plays in high school, but that's about it," said Moss. "Dwight really didn't start singing and performing until he was in his 60s, doing these shows. Before that, he would only sing in the shower and the kids would yell at him to stop."

Even though Moss emphasizes that they are far from "professionals." The upbeat atmosphere of their shows brings people together and makes their performances a truly heartwarming experience.

"It's so wonderful to look out and see everyone singing along with you and clapping along to the music. Other older residents will be dancing along right with us," said Moss. "I know how fortunate we are to be able to do this, and we really enjoy bringing happiness to everyone. It's a two-way street, really. We see how happy it makes everyone, and in return, it makes us happy."

The nurses at the senior center praise Dwight and Caroline for their ability to get residents out of their rooms and staying active.

In Moss's eyes, it is the people that she gets to interact with that make performing such a great experience.

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"It's been so wonderful to meet so many people through these shows," she says. "I love to go out and greet everyone at the show while my husband sets up our props and things like that. We really have a personal connection with many of these people, and will be greeting and hugging them before and after the show."

The Mosses have known each other since high school and have been married for 62 years. "We started dating in high school. Dwight was a junior and I was a freshman," said Moss. "We got married right out of school, which most people did at the time. And we've been together ever since."

With five of their own children, as well as many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Moss says she feels fortunate to have raised her children and to have some of her grandchildren living in this area. The couple is originally from West Virginia, but moved to the area when Dwight's company transferred him here. The move, though, is something that Moss is grateful for. "It's really a great place for children to grow up and get an education," said Moss.

Her love for this area has inspired her passion to bring people in the Capital Region together for their shows and programs. "Instead of just sitting at home and watching television, we get to interact with people and do something active. We all need someone to talk to and bring happiness into our lives. And doing these shows really just makes us happy, as simple as that sounds," said Moss.

With a loving marriage, a happy family and successful shows, Moss has learned that in a marriage and in life, "it's all about a little give and a little take." As she reflects on her marriage, Moss feels that any successful relationship in life is all about giving to others which will lead to receiving this goodness back.

"I've learned that it's really about being there for each other in a marriage," said Moss. "As we've gotten older, we've grown even closer and through performing these shows, we continue to learn from each other and have fun along the way."
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Looking back over the course of the year, I'm forced to acknowledge an embarrassment of food has crossed my lips.

In close to 70 visits to 50 restaurants this year, crisscrossing the Capital Region from the Catskills to the Adirondacks, there have been commendable meals and a few dishes that badly missed the mark. But there's no greater reward than a well-executed plate. It doesn't have to be complicated. Perfection can be beautifully simple or a juxtaposition of intriguing flavors ricocheting across the tongue. In no particular order, these were some of my favorite upstate bites in 2016:

1. Oxtail Stew and Roti at Trinbago: Beautiful oxtail bones in brown sugar gravy. Humming with thyme, ginger, garlic and Trinidadian chadon beni, it's a rich, multicultural delight perfect mopped up with torn 'buss-up-shot' roti bread and washed down with clove-scented sorrel: 123 Madison Ave., Albany 776-4418 trinbagocaribbeanrestaurant.com

2. Pan-Crisped Sweetbreads at John Andrews Farmhouse: Pairing pan-crisped sweetbreads with a vibrant arugula-pesto, porcini butter and salty brittle prosciutto chips is nothing short of genius: 224 Hillsdale Road, South Egremont (413) 528-3469 johnandrewsrestaurant.com

3. Sea Scallop Crudo at Yono's: The bright citrus, cucumber and soy liquor bathing these meltingly-thin sea scallop slivers is made only more irresistibly brilliant with fiery chile shards for an unexpected kick: 25 Chapel St., Albany 436-7747 yonos.com

4. Ricotta Gnudi at Fish at 30 Lake: Ethereally light, these warm ricotta pillows drizzled in frothy Parmesan emulsion stand out as swoon-worthy bites: 30 Lake Ave., Saratoga Springs 539-3473 fishat30lake.com

5. Poutine at Warehouse Grill & BBQ: French fries swamped with gooey cheese curds and gravy is a Canadian classic, but this fond-rich caramelized onion beef gravy is studded with unctuous cubes of pork belly and topped with two sunny-side-up eggs. Outrageously good: 219 Wolf Road, Albany 489-5227 warehousegrillbbq.com

6. Pizza at Restaurant Navona: Crusty, blistered wood-fired pizza bases are augmented by inspired toppings like the flavorful Gorgonzola, arugula, fig and balsamic preserve in the Baker's Pie: 289 New Scotland Avenue, Albany 435-0202 restaurantnavona.com

7. Chicken and Waffles at Savoy Taproom: Craggy chickpea-battered chicken is a killer combo on a fluffy cornbread waffle with spicy habanero honey. Guaranteed to brighten your Sunday morning: 301 Lark St., Albany 599-5140 savoyonlark.com

8. Pickle Plate at the City Beer Hall: Creatively traded flavors elevate the pickle plate trend with sweet-spicy pineapple, sumac-pickled watermelon rind, floral hibiscus plums, briny Brussels sprouts and soy-soaked garlic cloves: 42 Howard St., Albany 449-2337 thecitybeerhall.com

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9. Chateaubriand at The Bears:, With beautifully concentrated dry aged flavor, these huge, beautifully thick cut, rare slices are soft enough to cut with a fork: 8254 Duanesburg Road, Duanesburg 895-2509

10. Doughnuts at Gracie's Luncheonette: These perfectly sprung yeast-raised doughnuts avoid any cloying sweetness and come in enticing flavors from caramel apple and Boston creme to maple bacon. Start and end breakfast with them and take some to go: 969 Main St. (Route 23B), Leeds 943-9363

11. Caramelized Bacon at the Shakin' Bacon: Coated in finely ground dehydrated brown sugar and black peppercorns, baked and then caramelized in a pan, this bacon is a game-changer whether stacked in an egg sandwich or eaten alone: 138 Broadway, Rensselaer. 977-3602 theshakinbacon.com

12. Burgers at Grazin': These hyperlocal, grass-fed, umami-packed, organic, animal welfare-approved Angus beef burgers raise the bar so far above the fast casual crowd, they're almost impossible to beat. Prepared one animal at a time, not blended, their ground beef burgers hold different flavor profiles, depending where they grazed. A new benchmark in freshness and flavor: 717 Warren St., Hudson 822-9323 grazinburger.com

Susie Davidson Powell
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The water contamination crisis in Hoosick Falls has sparked a push for a state constitutional amendment that would enshrine the right of New Yorkers to a cleaner environment.



"For New York to be a true leader, we are going to need a constitutional amendment to ensure the state proactively protects our air and water, and responds with full force when a crisis occurs," said Peter Iwanowicz, executive director of Environmental Advocates of New York, which is joining forces with the reform group Effective NY to push for the change in 2017.



The nascent campaign has enlisted two Hoosick Falls youngsters who speak in separate online videos about the impact that revelations of perfluorooctanoic acid contamination in the water have had on their community.



"The water situation takes the fun out of being a kid," says Ashlynn Sagendorf, one of the speakers. "At home we drink bottled water. ... There have been lots of houses for sale."



The Rensselaer County village and surrounding areas have for more than a year been struggling with revelations that PFOA has seeped into the municipal water supply and numerous private wells from nearby factories and dumping sites.



The substance is associated with thyroid disease and cancer; residents have criticized state and federal officials for reacting too slowly to the findings that even low levels of exposure can be harmful.



Sagendorf in the video borrows a page from earlier campaigns to draw attention to the problem by noting the PFOA level in their blood. "My PFOA Level is 31,'' Ashlynn, notes in the video referring to the parts per billion, far beyond national averages.



In June, town residents launched a Twitter feed with photos of themselves holding placards displaying their PFOA blood levels to draw attention to the high amounts of the substance in the community's drinking water.

While the state constitution calls for abatement of air and water pollution in the Adirondack Forest Preserve, supporters of an amendment say an "Environmental Bill of Rights" would further enshrine such protections across the state.



They also want guarantees of a "safe climate," which would address issues of climate change, which have come to the fore in the years since the 19th-century creation of the state Forest Preserve.

A similar amendment was recently approved in Pennsylvania, noted state Sen. Liz Krueger, D-Manhattan.



She said environmentalists there have used the amendment to challenge the leeway the Keystone State's constitution gives to natural gas drillers who employ the controversial technique known as hydraulic fracturing.



For a constitutional amendment to become law, it must first be passed by two successively elected legislatures, which mean it would have to pass in 2017 or 2018 and again in 2019 or 2020. Were that to happen, voters statewide could decide on an amendment in November 2019 at the earliest.



An alternate route could be provided by a state constitutional convention, the prospect of which will be put before voters  as it is every 20 years  next November. Bill Samuels, the businessman-advocate who leads Effective NY, is pushing for approval of such a convention.



Gov. Andrew Cuomo has pointed to a convention as a possible route to achieve the sort of ethics reforms that have so far eluded passage by the Legislature, though he has not discussed it as a route to stronger environmental protections. In last year's State of the State address, he said that a convention could be a worthy "citizen-government relationship reboot," though his advocacy has been muted in recent months. Funding for a commission to prepare the way for a convention, proposed by the governor in his 2016 executive budget proposal, failed to make it into the approved spending plan.



Some environmental groups have expressed worry that a constitutional convention could have the opposite effect, and result in the weakening of protections such as the "Forever Wild" clause in the New York constitution that impedes development within the Forest Preserve in the Adirondacks (where 2.6 million acres are covered) and the Catskills (286,000 acres).

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A recent report by the state Bar Association  one of several groups that have stepped in to perform the education groundwork in advance of November's vote  suggests that fears that the Forever Wild clause could be reduced are unwarranted.



The report also looks back to the "Conservation Bill of Rights" that was proposed at the state's most recent constitutional convention, in 1967. That convention's proposed slate of amendments were rejected by voters that year, but the conservation plank was reintroduced and approved two years later and now appears as Section 4 of Article XIV of the constitution.



The Bar Association report, however, notes that the amendment's language is more "aspirational" than durable, and is "arguably ... insufficient to address New York's environmental changes."

If such changes were proposed by a constitution convention, November 2019 is likely the earliest they could be voted on by statewide vote.



Enshrining a constitutional right to clean air and water could also possibly lay the groundwork for constitutional lawsuits over environmental issues.



School funding advocates, for example, have pointed to the state constitution's call for educational rights as a basis for legal action such as the years-long Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit that sought more money for New York City schools.



Casey Seiler contributed.

 rkarlin@timesunion.com  518-454-5758  @RickKarlinTU
I started working for Uber before Christmas last year. All I wanted for the holidays was a good job, and that's exactly what Uber was advertising with billboards saying I could make $1,500 a week.

But instead I ended up struggling to survive on poverty pay. Some weeks I earned as little as a penny after Uber took car leasing fees and other expenses out of my paycheck.

I applied for unemployment after I quit driving for Uber. The New York state Department of Labor determined that I was an employee of the company and eligible for benefits. Because Uber tells drivers we are independent contractors, many of us don't even know that we have the right to apply for unemployment benefits.

I'm sharing my story so that no one else ends up in my situation.

More Information Jeffrey Shepherd lives in Huntington, Long Island. See More Collapse

When I contacted Uber to sign up as a driver, Uber referred me to a leasing company that told me I could lease a vehicle for $450 a week with no prior credit. That seemed like a lot of money but I figured I could afford it if I earned $1,500 a week like Uber advertised.

I made a decent living picking up fares around New York City when I first started driving for Uber. But then Uber began to flood the streets with more drivers so that every time I logged into the app my screen was filled with little black icons representing other drivers all around me vying for the same fares.Uber took the gas card fees, insurance and leasing payments straight out of my paycheck and I only received the money that was left over to use for my own expenses and for car maintenance.

Then Uber slashed fares for passengers in January. It seems like a great deal for New Yorkers to get dirt cheap rides around the city, but for me it meant that I was making less money for each ride I did. Uber continued to take its commission, and my leasing fees stayed the same, so now I had to work more hours to cover my expenses.

When I was unable to work because of bad weather or illness, my leasing fees continued to accrue and eventually almost everything I earned was going toward paying the car lease and other expenses deducted from my check.

I often made below minimum wage. My pay stub for the week of Jan. 4, shows that I made less than $6.50 per hour after working 49 hours and logging 45 fares. Another pay stub for the week of Feb. 29 shows that I made less than $72 for 33 hours of work  that's about $2.20 per hour. My pay stub from the week of June 27 shows that I made just a penny in income after completing 15 rides.

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Eventually my car was repossessed because I couldn't make the payments. I read the news about the lawsuit that two other former Uber drivers had filed along with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and I reached out for help. Once I had support with my case from NYTWA and from Brooklyn Legal Services, the state Department of Labor determined that I, like the other two former Uber drivers, was an employee of Uber.

Uber tells drivers how to behave with customers and sets fare rates. But Uber doesn't provide drivers with a guaranteed wage or contribute to unemployment funds, Medicare or Social Security. Most Uber drivers in New York, like me, are people of color. Many are immigrants. Uber's business model is another obstacle to getting our fair shot at the American dream.

Now I am finally receiving unemployment benefits and trying to dig myself out of the poverty that I fell into driving for Uber. At least I can afford bus fare to go to job interviews.

All I want this year is for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to put working people first and not deregulate taxi services to allow Uber to expand its model of poverty pay.
[December 29, 2016] 300and Counting! Children's Hospital Los Angeles Performs Milestone Liver Transplant

At 7 months old, Donovan Daniels of Westminster may not understand for some time just how serious his medical condition, biliary atresia, really is. It may be years before he knows he was the 300th pediatric liver transplant ever performed by doctors at Children's Hospital Los Angeles and Keck Medicine of University of Southern California. But one day he'll know his father Dejon Daniels went under the knife so that a portion of dad's liver could help him live a longer, healthier life. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161229005321/en/ Top: Lydia Hand as an infant post-transplant in 1998, with her mother, grandmother and liver transplant team. Bottom: Baby Donovan Daniels and his parents post-transplant in 2016, joined by doctors and Lydia, now 18. (Photo: Children's Hospital Los Angeles) In the meantime, Dejon and Donovan's mother Jessica Valdepena got a glimpse of what that life might look like, thanks to a meeting with a young woman named Lydia Hand. Lydia, now 18, was CHLA's first living donor liver transplant patient. As an infant, she also was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a rare life-threatening disease where bile ducts cannot expel bile from the liver. In 1998, Lydia received a liver from her grandmother. Today, the Lancaster resident is a college freshman majoring in music, and says her donated liver is still going strong. "It's pretty amazing how far she has come," says Jessica. "I want Donovan to grow up and have a bright future just like Lydia is having." CHLA's Liver and Intestinal Transplant Program has since grown to become one of the largest programs in the country - the hospital is now a consistent leader in the volume of living donor liver transplants performed nationwide among pediatric centers, with success rates well above national averages. "But statistics are not the real story," says Daniel Thomas, MD, medical director of the Liver and Intestinal Transplant Program at CHLA. "It is seeing patients like Lydia Hand grow, accomplish, and live to be a happy young woman with a life full of dreams and hopes."



Coincidentally, the same team that worked on liver patient No. 1 also treated patient No. 300. Dr. Thomas, a Glendale resident, is both Lydia's and Donovan's hepatologist while Yuri Genyk, MD, of La Canada, was their transplant surgeon. "Donovan's success is truly the culmination of the knowledge and skills from the 299 liver transplants that preceded him, including Lydia's," says Dr. Genyk, surgical director of the Pediatric Liver Transplant Program at CHLA and associate professor of clinical surgery in the Division of Hepatobiliary Surgery and Abdominal Organ Transplantation at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. "It speaks to the expertise and dedication of the entire liver transplant team, as well as the collective support we receive from all the services CHLA provides."

When Donovan's parents brought him to Children's Hospital Los Angeles in October, doctors told them Donovan urgently needed a new liver. Dejon volunteered and was found to be a match. The transplant took place Nov. 18, with Dr. Genyk performing both parts - Dejon's surgery at USC in the morning and Donovan's transplant at CHLA several hours later. Dejon was released and finally was able to visit Donovan just in time for Thanksgiving. Lydia and Donovan's family met in Donovan's hospital room on Dec. 1, the day he was discharged. "I've heard all the stories about my transplant from my family, but to actually see and hear what their family is going through is a special experience," says Lydia. "Donovan is me, I was once him, and it's incredible to know that hundreds of other kids have received this life-saving procedure at CHLA in the years between us," Lydia said. By the day Donovan left the hospital, CHLA doctors had already performed three more pediatric liver transplants. [High resolution photos available on request] About Children's Hospital Los Angeles Children's Hospital Los Angeles is a nonprofit pediatric health care organization dedicated to creating hope and building healthier futures for children. Founded in 1901, CHLA is one of the nation's leading children's hospitals and is acknowledged worldwide for its leadership in pediatric and adolescent health. CHLA is one of only 11 children's hospitals in the nation-and the top-ranked pediatric facility in California-to be named to the prestigious U.S. News & World Report Honor Roll for 2016-17. For more information, visit CHLA.org. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, or visit our blog: CHLA.org/BLOG. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161229005321/en/

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[December 29, 2016] Launch of 'Geek-For-Good' Open Design Challenge

BEIJING, Dec. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- China's first ever UN-led open design challenge kicked off today in Beijing, designed to provide a platform to galvanize citizen engagement and inspire people to find tech-based innovative solutions for some of the toughest development challenges in China. Supported by technology giant Baidu, "Geek-For-Good" was launched by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in China, encouraging people across the country to utilize design thinking and innovative concepts such as reverse engineering to design, adapt and prototype public services. It invites Chinese individuals or teams with a passion for tech-based solutions to submit a proposal to tackle a development challenge in China on the official website (innovation.baidu.com) by March 10, 2017. Specifically, solutions should utilize new technologies and provide innovative plans to address challenges in four focus areas: poverty, transport, disaster management and environment. "The competition will provide a platform to combine advanced technology with the innovation power from Chinese community-led groups to find solutions for some of the toughest development challenges in China," said Patrick Haverman, Deputy Country Director of UNDP China.



The shortlisted individuals and teams will then have the opportunity to pitch their solutions in front of a top-notch judge panel comprised by renowned international and national experts from the technology, investment, and development world at the Responsible Innovation Summit, which will take place in April 2017. Eight winners (two from each category) will be selected, with each provided a seed funding of 100,000 RMB to materialize their solution ideas. These winners will also get advisory support from both UNDP and Baidu during the implementation period. Across the world, prize challenges are designed to galvanize individuals, inspire ambition and provide a platform for innovative solutions. There are many successful prize challenges in the past including the UNDP "Big Ideas Competition for Sustainable Cities". Leveraging on cutting-edge technology and UN's development expertise, "Geek-For-Good" will be the first one focusing on promoting sustainable development in China.

For more information about the competition, please visit: http://innovation.baidu.com/ UNDP partners with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis, and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves the quality of life for everyone. On the ground in around 170 countries and territories, we offer global perspective and local insight to help empower lives and build resilient nations. www.undp.org Get in touch: UNDP on Weibo | Media Contacts | WeChat ID: undpchina, QR code: More resources: Our work | UNDP News

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[December 29, 2016] Simit Sarayi Launches "Circle of Love" Campaign, Brings Cheer to Holiday Season with "Pay It Forward" Initiative

LONDON, December 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Simit Sarayi, a global Turkish bakery cafe chain, recently launched its "Circle of Love" campaign, promoting the spirit of sharing happiness with loved ones during the holiday season. The Turkish culture is known for its hospitality and values, which cherish family and friends as well as sharing joy. Established in 2002, the company lists "friendship" as the most important ingredient in its dough. "Circle of Love" is not only a reference to friends and family, but also to the traditional simit, a staple of the traditional Turkish flavour. To bring a fresh start to the New Year, as part of the campaign, Smit Sarayi is now running a promotional "Pay it Forward" initiative. The initiative allows customers who buy one cup of coffee or one simit to get the second one for free!!!



Simit Sarayi customers can take advantage of the promotional offer and share their experiences using a mobile web site: https://www.circleoflove.me Here's how you do it:

Visit website on your mobile and snap a selfie Decorate your selfie with awesome New Year themed stickers Receive your own treat coupon and enjoy it in one of the Simit Sarayi stores located at Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus, Southampton Row and Villiers Street Share a similar treat with up to your 5 loved ones via WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, e-mail or Twitter

The "Circle of Love" campaign will continue until 15 January 2017. Simit Sarayi continues to provide fresh simit as well as a variety of products baked with love to its customers at 7 different locations in London and will continue its strong growth in the UK market in 2017.



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[December 29, 2016] End of the Year List Announces That China's Outstanding App Camera360 Has Received Warm Welcomes in Overseas Markets

CHENGDU, China, Dec. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Recently, Google Play and AppStore have officially announced their 2016 annual heavyweight apps lists. Camera360, an app developed by one of China's outstanding developers, Pinguo Technology, received awards on both platforms. On AppStore's top 10 best apps of the year, Camera360 was awarded "Best of 2016" and "Top Charts of 2016" in Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan. At the same time, in the Google Play market, from its annual heavyweight "Best of 2016" ranking, Camera360 was awarded the "Top Trending" award in Malaysia.



In fact, whether it's Google Play or AppStore, Camera360 has been one of the few excellent Chinese apps that have invested deeply in overseas markets for many years. As early as 2011, Pinguo Technology began chiseling at the global market, becoming a benchmark for Chinese developers looking to take their products abroad. Its main product, Camera360, a mobile photography platform, has always been committed to providing users with simple yet innovative and in-depth mobile photography services. Camera360 has over 700 million users around the world at present, with an average of 200 million photos taken with the app on a daily basis. With years of accumulated experience, utilizing true localization on a global scale and fine-tuned operations, Camera360 has set the bar fairly high. 2016 is quickly drawing to a close. In this modern age of artificial intelligence, big data and mobile app development, year-end rankings have summarized that while constant technology development is important, "users have the final say" is the trend these days. It is this kind of thought process, putting user experience and requirements first, allows Camera360 to break through the fierce competition in 2016.

Photo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20161229/0861614190

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Delhi LG has referred the appointment of Health Minister Satyendra Jain's daughter Soumya Jain as Advisor in his own ministry to the CBI for probe.

By Kumar Kunal: Appointment of Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain's daughter Soumya Jain as the advisor in the health department may land Arvind Kejriwal government in further trouble.

With the recommendation from Delhi LG, the case of Soumya's appointment as the Advisor to the Mission Director, Delhi State Health Mission has been referred to the premier investigating agency, CBI to further investigate into the matter.

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The letter, which has been forwarded from Delhi government after getting direction from LG office, has cited several reasons for the investigation in the matter of Soumya's appointment by the CBI.

READ| Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain slapped with Rs 25,000 fine by Supreme Court

LETTER SENT TO CBI

The letter was written to the Superintendent of Police, Central Bureau of Investigation earlier this month to look into the points in which irregularities are being suspected.

The copy of the letter is in Exclusive possession of India Today, in which government has asked for detailed investigation into the matter by CBI.

The letter gives a detailed overview about the manner in which the Health Minister's daughter was appointed as the Advisor in the same department, where Satyendra Jain is a minister.

ALSO WATCH:

A CASE OF NEPOTISM?

Forwarding letter to the CBI mentions that Soumya Jain was appointed as Advisor to the Mission Director, State Health Mission, Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of NCT of Delhi, to look health sector reforms with retrospective effect from 18th April 2016, in response to her application made on 1st April 2016.

Interestingly, the letter says that although the appointment has been made on 18th April but the Mission Director under, which she has to work has given approval for her appointment on 10th May 2016.

The letter to CBI also mentioned that as per her application and Bio Data she doesn't seem to have any experience of health sector as Soumya has the background in the field of architecture.

APPOINTMENT WITHOUT A SELECTION PROCESS

The case, which has been made against Soumya's appointment, further says that her appointment was in response to her request and not a result of selection through open and transparent process.

The letter also says that she offered her services without any financial consideration, but the information provided by the Administrative Department reveals that an amount of Rs 1.15 lakhs was spent on her tour and training.

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It further says that the proposal regarding her appointment is silent about the existence of the post of Advisor, Mission Director at the relevant time.

SERIOUS QUESTIONS UNANSWERED

Pointing fingers on the Kejriwal government's intention to appoint Soumya Jain as the Advisor, the letter raises some serious points too.

One of the points in the five-point-letter also says that the selection process in the government cannot be reduced to favoritism and it must offer opportunity to all concerned to apply and compete so as to attract the best talent around.

READ| BJP MLA and supporters demand Satyendra Jain's removal, shave head in protest

The letter also quoted Article 14 of the constitution in the forwarding letter to the premier investigating agency, which provides insight on the process of appointment in government organizations.

It says that since an Advisor can influence decision of government with consequential bearing on finances and hence the selection process needs to be neutral.

APPOINTMENT FILE AMONG THOSE UNDER THE SCANNER

The letter also clearly mentions that in view of the direction of LG office to submit the files which require approval of Lieutenant Governor, the file related to Satyendra Jain's daughter Soumya as Advisor to the Mission Director, Delhi State Health Mission was also submitted by the Health and Family Welfare department to the LG office.

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On the basis of facts mentioned, the Lieutenant Governor has directed the matter be referred to CBI for detailed investigation.

Now, it has been learnt from the sources that CBI has further taken the matter with the concerned department and asked to furnish further detail related to the high profile appointment.

The investigation agency may soon question some of the Delhi government officials, who are related to this controversial appointment.

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Symbio: Leader of Hydrogen Green Mobility Solutions Celebrating 220 000 Miles Travelled with Top 20 Hydrogen Vans Kangoo ZE H2 Zero-Emission at CES 2017

What better way of introducing its solution to CES 2017 than by celebrating the 350 000 kilometers/220 000 miles reached with zero-emissions? Symbio (News - Alert), fuel-cell systems integrator experts, have delivered their 150th hydrogen electric vehicle this year. Symbio will be introducing its green mobility solutions and how it can make a difference to improve air quality in urban areas at Sands Expo, Level 1 Hall G, Eureka Park, Booths 51720 - 51531, from January 5th to 8th.

Indeed, Symbio has deployed the biggest hydrogen fleet of commercial H2 vehicles thanks to the support of its partners Michelin and ENGIE. Symbio's core mission is to engineer complete fuel cell systems for electric vehicles, from prototyping to product.

Symbio offers an end-to-end hydrogen fuel cell system compatible to different usage-cycles and types of vehicle (commercial vehicles, van, bus, trucks and boats) and from 5 kW to 300 kW.

"We are very pleased to be leading this hydogen momentum in Europe, and to introduce our 100% zero-emission and 100% electric mobility solution to Vegas. This solution is today a real pollutant free alternative, improving air quality." Said









The company innovates, transforming dreams of a green mobility into reality. To highlight its ambition to spread its green mobility solution worldwide, Symbio will unveil a new H2 vehicle with 500 km of autonomy in March 2017 in Tokyo. Watch this space!

About Symbio

Symbio is the French leader in hydrogen fuel cell systems designed for the transportation markets. Symbio offers innovative green mobility solutions that extend electric vehicle autonomy and contributes to a low-carbon economy. We design, manufacture and sell hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and systems.

Follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) - http://bit.ly/Symbio-Twitter

Join the discussion on LinkedIn (News - Alert) - http://bit.ly/Symbio-LidIn

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161229005212/en/
Abortion doctor sues to stop Indiana AG from accessing medical records

An Indianapolis doctor thrust into national news on abortion is suing to stop Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita from obtaining medical records.
A 54-year-old woman in town from Georgia was arrested this week at a local hotel after she allegedly left her dog and cat in a car overnight and into the next day without food and water and the windows shut. The cat was rescued; the dog did not survive.



https://www.toacorn.com/articles/hotel-guest-accused-of-animal-abuse/
China is vying to increase its influence in landlocked Nepal, which serves as a natural buffer between China and India.

By Reuters: China will hold its first military drills with Nepal next year, China's Defence Ministry said today, in a move that could unnerve neighbouring India.

China is vying to increase its influence in landlocked Nepal, which serves as a natural buffer between China and India, challenging India's long-held position as the dominant outside power.

While China and India have tried to improve ties, a festering border dispute and deep mutual suspicions remain.

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Speaking at a monthly news conference, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said that China and Nepal's militaries had in recent years had many forms of exchanges.

China and Nepal had been in "initial communication" about joint army exercises, and details would be announced in due time, Yang said without giving details.

The ministry said on its website this would be the first joint military exercises between the two countries.

ALSO READ:

Indian Army denies 'incursion' by China after stand-off over construction work in Ladakh's Demchok

To counter China, Indian Air Force lands Boeing C-17 Globemaster III in Arunachal Pradesh

WATCH: Indian, Chinese troops locked in stand off in Ladakh division

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By PTI: Kathmandu/Beijing, Dec 29 (PTI) Nepal and China will hold their first ever joint military exercise early next year.

Chinese Defence Ministry Spokesperson Yang Yujun said China and Nepal had been in "initial communication" on the military exercise, and that the details would be released in due course of time.

Although Nepal has been holding joint military exercises with other countries including India and the United States, this is the first time Nepali military would be holding such an exercise with China.

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According to reports, the military drill will be held in February next year and will focus on training Nepali soldiers in dealing with hostage scenarios involving international terror groups, My Republica reported.

The new development is seen as Chinas growing interest in the Himalayan republic since the deterioration of relations between Nepal and India due to the border blockade last year, the daily said. PTI SBP PMS

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EK Water Blocks is celebrating its tenth anniversary in the water cooling business, and the company is doing something special to cap off the year. EKWB is building 100 commemorative collectors edition Supremacy EVO 10th Anniversary water blocks to celebrate its achievements over the last decade.

The Supremacy EVO 10th Anniversary block features a special design, and each one has an engraved production number. EKWBs Supremacy EVO block is usually covered by a uniform square piece of Acetal or clear acrylic. The 10th Anniversary block is the same square shape as the typical Supremacy EVO, but it features a 3D low polygon mesh that covers much of the Acetal cover. EK Water Blocks said the polygon mesh symbolize the companys never-ending pursuit to optimize performance. The block also includes gold colored hardware that matches the blocks face.

EK Water Blocks is treating the 10th Anniversary water block as a collectors piece. Each limited-edition block comes in a fancy black and gold box, which also includes a second block. Each 10th Anniversary kit includes a gold-plated EK-Wave water block, EKWBs first flagship CPU block from 2006. EKWB included the EK-Wave blocks to show how far [it has] come in the field of liquid cooling[]

From my humble beginnings and experiments with liquid cooling, we managed to establish EK as a top brand in the industry, with a wide portfolio of products and solutions for our global partners. All this would not be possible without passion and enjoyment in the work we do every day. This 10th Anniversary Supremacy EVO is the result of our journey so far and thank you, the fans and enthusiasts, for sharing this journey with us.  Edvard Konig, founder of EK Water Blocks and President of the Board.

EK Water Blocks usually releases pricing information and more often than not launches the announced product the day of the announcement. As they say, theres an exception to every rule, and it appears the Supremacy EVO 10th Anniversary is EKWBs exception. EKWB said the pre-order page for the 100 limited blocks would go live next week and the company is keeping the price to itself until that time.
Cyprus government spokesperson said the Greek Cypriot side needs to be careful on the issue raised by Turkish Cypriot leader challenging the Republic of Cyprus role in public debate

Cyprus government spokesperson Nikos Christodoulides has said the Greek Cypriot side needs to be careful on the issue raised by Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, challenging the Republic of Cyprus role in public debate.

In statements to Sigmas Protoselido, he said that it is wrong to doubt the existence of the Republic, because the Turkish Cypriot side does it.

We should understand that the Republic of Cyprus is a member state of the EU and the UN, and is recognised by all states. Only Turkey does not recognise it, but that doesnt affect the legal status of the state, Christodoulides said.

THE PRESENCE OF THE ROC AT THE GENEVA TALKS

Regarding the presence of the Republic at the Geneva talks on January 12, the government spokesperson said: No discussion on an international treaty, which the Republic is part of, can occur without its presence. Since 1963, Turkey has supported that the Republic of Cyprus does not exist. This is occurring because it [Turkey] is serving its own interests.

He added that the issues that involve the evolution of the Republic of Cyprus, are issues that cannot be legally doubted or interpreted differently.

The Republic of Cyprus is not just secure because we make public statements about it, nor because it could potentially be written down in the first page of a solution. The security comes from the specific benefits in all the chapters of the Cyprus problem, he said.

Christodoulides told Radio Proto that President Anastasiades also has the proposals of how best to represent the Republic in his hands.

PARTICIPANTS IN THE CONFERENCE

Christodoulides has said that the EU will be present in a high-level at the conference on Cyprus.

He added that the UN is working under the instructions of the Security Council and that no one can deny the permanent members from taking part in such a conference.

However, the government spokesperson added that substantial involvement in the process is not guaranteed.

To have active involvement at the table, they will have to be invited, he said.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
The Greek foreign ministry confirmed on Thursday that Greeces Ambassador to Brazil, Kyriakos Amiridis, has been missing since Monday

The Greek foreign ministry confirmed on Thursday that Greeces Ambassador to Brazil, Kyriakos Amiridis, has been missing since Monday.

In a press release, the ministry said embassy in Brasilia was informed on Wednesday from the ambassadors family that they had not been able to contact Amiridis since Monday, when he visited Rio for the Christmas holidays.

Following the immediate actions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs it requested the full mobilization of all the authorities in Brazil, which began an investigation to gather more information on the case, the ministry said.

The ministry and the Greek embassy in Brasilia are monitoring closely the case and shall, in close cooperation with the Brazilian authorities, proceed with all the necessary actions, it added.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
Cyprus President Anastasiades will be travelling to Athens tomorrow morning for a meeting with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras

Cyprus President Anastasiades will be travelling to Athens tomorrow morning for a meeting with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras at 10:15am, and announcement from the Presidential Palace said on Thursday.

The meeting will be held in the framework of the close cooperation between Cyprus and Greece on the Cyprus problem, the announcement added.

Nicosia and Athens will seek to increase their coordination ahead the conference on Cyprus in Geneva on January 12.

Government spokesperson Nikos Christodoulides and Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides will be present at the Presidents meetings in Athens.

The President is set to return from Athens on Friday.

In an interview with state TV on Thursday Christodoulides said that the President would inform the public before heading to Geneva.

Aside from informing the political party leadership and the National Council on January 5, the President of the Republic will inform the public on the latest developments, before heading to Geneva, he said.

The President will be informed on the results of a first meeting held between Greek and Turkish diplomats on Wednesday, he said.

Regarding the presence of political party leaders at the Geneva talks, Christodoulides said that some of the leaders have already accepted.

President Anastasiades is expected to represent the Republic of Cyprus at Geneva talks.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Russian President Vladimir Putin have discussed the Cyprus reunification issue, according to a Kremlin announcement

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Russian President Vladimir Putin have discussed the Cyprus reunification issue, according to a Kremlin announcement on Thursday.

Aside from the Cyprus issue, a range of key international issues have been also discussed during the Putin-Tsipras phone call including the situation in Syria, the Kremlin said.

Tsipras also expressed his condolences to Putin over the Tu-154 plane crash in the Black Sea near Sochi and over the death of Andrei Karlov, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey.

The Secretary General of Cyprus' AKEL party Andros Kyprianou met Greek Prime Minister in Athens today where they held discussions on the Cyprus issue ahead of President Anastasaides meeting with the Greek PM which is scheduled on Friday. The two leaders are expected to discuss developments regarding Cypruss peace negotiations ahead of the crucial multilateral summit in Geneva on January 12.

President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci decided on December 1 to meet in Geneva on January 9 next year. On January 11 they will present their respective maps on the territorial chapter of the problem and on January 12 a Conference on Cyprus will be convened with the additional participation of the guarantor powers, UN Security Council members while other relevant parties shall be invited as needed.

Russia has also announced that they want to be present at the Geneva conference.

Russia has alway expressed its strong support of the inter-communal negotiating process to promote a lasting, viable, and just solution in the interests of both communities of Cyprus.

Last week Russias Foreign Ministry has said in a statement that the most effective system of guarantees during a transitional period in Cyprus could be security guarantees from the UN Security Council.

Source: ANA-MPA

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
The privatization of the Kassiopi plot on the island of Kerkyra (Corfu) is set to conclude after four years. The total area of the plot is 490,000 square meters, with the investor having the right to develop tourist infrastructure of 36,000 square meters for 99 years.

According to a report in Ta Nea upon signing the deal between the privatization fund TAIPED and NCH Capital, the American firm will make a payment of 10 million euros. The full amount agreed was 23 million euros. NCH Capital's plan includes investments worth 77 million euros.

The Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund announced the the signing of the transfer of the equity capital of New Corfu Property Investments SA, a special purpose vehicle set up by HRADF for the exploitation of the property and the payment of a first tranche worth 10 million euros.

The Board of Directors of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF) had approved the binding financial offer by a joint venture by NCH New Europe Property Fund II LP and NCH Balkan Fund LP. NCH Capital will pay 23 million euros the right of use, while an additional 2.3 million euros will be a possible participation of HRADF for a future increased value of the property after six years through an earn-out clause. The investment is expected to reach 75 million euros.

Evangelia Tsitsogiannopoulou, HRADF Director, said that the exploitation of the Hermit region in Corfu will have significant benefits to the local society and noted that the project was expected to create touristic, economic and social developmet in the Ionian islands in general, strengthening the regions tourism product and tourist arrivals.

Development of the island

NCH Capital Inc on Thursday announced the completion of all procedures and the signing of a contract to transfer 100 pct of shares in a Special Purpose Vehicle company through Hellenic Republic Asset Development Funds privatization programme.

The company said that implementation of the project will fundamentally contribute in the development of the island through creating new job positions, attracting additional investment interest and upgrading Corfus tourist product.

The investment envisages the creation of a high-quality hotel complex, under the umbrella of a world famous international hotel chain, with a construction budget of more than 100 million euros. The project will focus on sustainable and green development, emphasizing on protecting, promoting and upgrading the regions natural resources. NCH Capital Inc said it will prefer a Greek architect for the project.

Andreas Santis, CEO for Greece and the Balkans said: We are very satisfied that such an important project for Corfu and Greece begins. Our vision is to create a unique way of life, in a destination, where every citizen of Corfu, every Greek will feel proud.

NCH Capital is based in New York, USA, and has over 3.5 billion US dollars of capital under management, with funds across four asset classes: listed equity, real estate, agribusiness and private equity. It operates 21 investment funds.

Photo Source: tovima.gr

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
Russian authorities have not ruled out the crash of the Tu-154 plane into the Black Sea being caused by a terrorist act"

Russian authorities have not ruled out the crash of the Tu-154 plane into the Black Sea being caused by a terrorist act, the air force head has said on Thursday.

The air forces dead of flight safety, Sergey Bainetov has said: There was no explosion on board, but this isnt the only type of terrorist act.

It could have been any type of mechanical impact, so we don't rule out a terrorist act, Bainetov said.

92 people were killed in the crash near Sochi, including 64 members of Russias Red Choir.

On Wednesday the second flight recorder was found.

Source: Reuters

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
By PTI: From K J M Varma

Beijing, Dec 29 (PTI) In a brazen attack, three suspected Uyghur militants crashed a vehicle into the ruling Communist Partys office in the restive Xinjiang province and set off an explosive device, killing two persons before being shot dead by the police.

The car carrying the attackers crashed into the yard of the office building of the local Communist Party committee in Karakax county and "detonated an explosive device".

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The attack killed an official and a security guard and injured three others.

Police shot and killed the three attackers, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Previous reports said the attack was carried out by four people, causing one innocent persons death.

Social order had been restored, a website of the Xinjiang government said, adding without identifying the attackers.

The attack was reported after several months of lull in terrorist violence in the province where the Uyghur Muslims were restive for years over the settlements of majority Han Chinese in the resource-rich province, bordering Pakistan- occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Afghanistan.

China has been blaming separatist outfit, East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), for the violent attacks in the province and the rest of the country.

ETIM was blamed for suicide blast in the Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan in September this year in which one person was killed and five others injured.

In November 2015, 28 suspected militants were killed over the course of a 56-day manhunt following an attack on a colliery in Aksu two months earlier that left 16 people dead.

In March 2014, 31 people were knifed to death at a train station in Kunming, in southwestern China, with four attackers killed.

Xinjiang had generally been quiet in 2016 with no major reported attacks or other violent incidents. PTI KJV UZM NSA AKJ UZM

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The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) is studying funding possibilities for range of new development projects proposed by the Moroccan government, a report said.



A special delegation from ADFD recently conducted a high-level meeting with representatives from a number of Moroccan ministries including the Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Training and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, reported Morocco World News.



Moroccan officials highlighted strategies to promote sustainable development in key sectors such as health, education and energy.



The proposed initiatives of the Moroccan government will drive socio-economic growth across all key sectors and create new job opportunities. This latest round of talks highlights the ADFDs commitment to facilitating the UAE government grants to meet Moroccos development goals, Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, the director-general of the ADFD was quoted as saying in the report.



Reports indicate the ADFD has already given $952 million to Morocco in the form of concessionary loads. The funding was used to finance projects in transportation, housing, water, healthcare and education.



The visit took place within the framework of the UAE government grant contribution as part of the Gulf Development fund, a grant programme designed by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the report said.
Gulf Contracting Company (GCC) has started the structural concrete works for the first phase of the Al Majed Tower, a 50-storey building located at the West Bay Area in Lusail City, Qatar, said a report.



Al Majed Group has signed up GCC and Arab Engineering Bureau for the project, reported The Peninsula.



One of the foremost construction and infrastructure contractors in Qatar, GCC held a ceremony to mark the commencement of the structural concrete works on the new tower.



The ceremony coincided with the commencement of the first phase of towers 14,000 cu m raft foundation concrete pour, which was expected to take 43 hours of continuous pouring, stated the report.



Group chairman Ahmed Al Majed said it was a proud moment to be part of Qatar Vision 2030 by developing a well-equipped commercial complex in future business hub Lusail City.



Ibrahim Al Jaidah, Group CEO for Arab Engineering Bureau, said: "This is a special moment to build a new landmark for Al Majed and we are quite keen and happy to work again and again with GCC, one of the leading and well reputed Contractors in the State of Qatar."



"We certainly look forward for this unique masterpiece to be completed," he stated.



Yousuf Al Darwish, the chairman of GCC, lauding the initial pouring of concrete for the Al Majed Real Estate Tower, said: "Over the past four decades we have compiled an impressive portfolio of projects in Qatar and in doing so have established a solid reputation for delivering excellence."



"The Al Majed Tower will without doubt compliment that portfolio," he added.
Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), a leading aluminium smelter in the world, today (December 29) marked the Bahraini Womens Day by honouring its women employees with a celebration at the Oasis Hall, Alba.



The event was chaired by Albas chief financial officer Ali Al Baqali and was attended by its executive management, directors and managers, which displayed the companys commitment towards empowering women at all levels, said a statement from Alba.



During the celebration, Alba hailed the contribution of its women employees and held a luncheon where they were felicitated with a small gift as a token of appreciation, it said.



Al Baqali said: Bahraini Womens Day is a symbol of the achievements of the women in our kingdom, and the progressive path that has been set by them.



I applaud our women employees for their dedication and support as well as their key role in the development and success of our company. We will also continue to provide equal opportunities for the women in our society, he added.



Alba currently has one of the largest number of women employees as an industrial company in Bahrain.



The company is widely praised for its gender equality and merit-based opportunities for women at all levels, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service
Japan's oil imports from the UAE totalled 23.12 million barrels of crude in November 2016, according to data released by the Agency of Energy and Natural Resource in Tokyo.



This accounted for 24.5 percent of Japan's total crude imports for the period, the agency, part of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, was quoted as saying by a Wam report.



Saudi Arabia provided 36.961 million barrels, or 39.2 percent of the total, while Iran, Qatar, Russia and Kuwait, provided 7.6 percent, 7.5 percent, 5.3 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively.



The agency noted that imports from Iran have been increasing steadily, and that the first Algerian crude in a long time was imported in November.



Japans total crude oil imports in November amounted to 94.197 million barrels, the agency said.


Dubai has welcomed almost 1,000 travel industry professionals and conference organisers from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, during the final quarter of 2016 to showcase the emirates impressive range of tourism offerings through a series of familiarisation trips organised by Dubai Tourism.



The familiarisation trips highlight the organisation's commitment to promoting new leisure experiences such as Dubai Opera, IMG Worlds of Adventure and Dubai Parks and Resorts in key international markets, said a Wam news agency report.



Delegates visited from a range of markets, including Brazil, China, Commonwealth of Independent States, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Turkey.



Issam Kazim, chief executive officer of Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing, said: "Its been an exceptional year for Dubai regarding the colourful spectrum of new tourism offerings available for visitors. We are excited by the prospect of finishing on a high note and engaging with the international travel industry on a truly global scale. The familiarisation trips represent a fantastic opportunity for delegates to experience our new leisure and family attractions for the first time, while witnessing how theyre contributing to the wider business environment.



"These trips are vital as we work towards our goals of achieving 20 million visitors a year by 2020, and fostering strong relationships between the Dubai tourism industry and travel agents, tour operators and conference organisers around the world. Our success is based on strong involvement from local stakeholders, such as Emirates, the hotel community and destination management companies who continue to show unwavering support in pursuit of our shared vision," he said.



As part of the schedule of familiarisation trips, Dubai hosted several specific groups from the emerging economies of Brazil and China, with Sino-UAE relations benefiting from visas on arrival between both countries as part of initiatives to strengthen bilateral ties.



The city also hosted high-level conference planners and association executives as part of the 2016 BestCities Global Forum which was organised in partnership with the BestCities Alliance, an international network of convention bureaus connecting 11 meeting destinations, unified by a commitment to deliver exceptional standards. - TradeArabia News Service


Four Points by Sheraton, Bur Dubai, has launched its first Italian restaurant, Ricetta.



Ricetta features the authentic ambience of an Italian trattoria with mustard yellow walls, endearing red and white checkered tablecloths and black and white posters featuring scenes from Italy.



Ricettas dishes are made with bona fide Italian ingredients to enhance the flavours of home-cooked Italian meals. Guests are offered such classics as Gamberi Piccanti or Ossobucco alla Milanese, in addition to numerous vegetarian options.



Guests may also experience a number of homemade dishes including homemade ravioli featuring pumpkin and cheese (Provola Affumicata) or lamb and broccoli (Agnello e Broccoli), the statement said.



Multilingual head chef Alex Sebastianutti hails from a 13-year career and extensive expertise in the realms of Italian cuisine and fine dining. The Italian chefs professional culinary journey includes positions as Chef de Partie and Chef de Cuisine in Italy, Germany, Abu Dhabi and now Dubai.



Italian cooking calls for great recipes, high quality, authentic ingredients and a good dose of passion. You can be sure youll find the heartiest homemade meals at Ricetta the kind of meals that intrigue, satisfy and keep guests returning for more. High end comfort food at its finest, said Sebastianutti.  TradeArabia News Service




By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 29 (PTI) Centre today launched an initiative which aims to achieve high levels of sanitation, hygiene and infection control practices in and around public health care facilities in country.

Financial assistance of Rs 10 lakh will be given to the community health centres (CHCs) located in 708 Open Defecation free (ODF) blocks so that they can be strengthened under the Swachh Swasth Sarvatra initiative.

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The programme was launched by Union Health Ministry in collaboration with Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation and Human Resource Development here.

Noting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked all ministries to work in collaboration and synergy and not in silos, Union Health Minister J P Nadda said that launch of this initiative was a step in that direction.

"The objective of the Swachh Swasth Sarvatra is to strengthen community health centres (CHCs) in 708 Open Defecation free (ODF) blocks across country to enable them achieve higher levels of cleanliness and hygiene to meet Kayakalp standards.

"Similarly, the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation will help the gram panchayats, where Kayakalp-awarded Primary Health centres (PHCs) are located, to become ODF," Union Health Minister J P Nadda said.

According to a health ministry official, the financial assistance will act as an added incentive for various blocks and health facilities to achieve ODF status and higher standards of hygiene and sanitation.

On the occasion, Nadda along with the HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar released an illustrated booklet Swasth Bacche Swasth Bharat which through pictures would provide tips to school children about leading a healty life and importance of hygiene.

"Achieving cleanliness is not all about building infrastructure and toilets. It is achieved through change in mindset and by focusing on improving behaviour.

"And students here can play an important role as they can learn how to lead a healthy lifestyle and how to maintain sanitation and in turn can go home and educate their parents," Javadekar said.

The initiative, a part of the Swachh Bharat Mission, under the National Health Mission was launched to commemorate Good Governance Day, and is focused on the twin objectives of constructing toilets and enabling behavioural change with the goal of making India ODF by October 2, 2019.

The Health Ministry, in May last year, launched the Kayakalp Award Scheme under which public health facilities are awarded based on their performance on various parameters, including sanitation, cleanliness and infection control. PTI PLB RT

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Just as everyone thought everything is settled between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, the heat is on again as the actor demands for $100, 000 from Heard's side. The ex-couple continues to deal with their divorce battle since May of this year.

According to E! News, Johnny Depp's team accuses Amber Heard of continuously pursuing a case that has been already settled months ago. The "Magic Mike XXL" actress was also allegedly using the media to desperately get attention thus extending her "fifteen minutes of fame" added the report.

The "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" actor's legal team also claims that in case Amber Heard failed to comply within the span of 10 days to his Lawyer's fees and costs, Johnny will have to deduct the same amount from his divorce settlement pay.

News.com.au also reported that according to Laura Wasser, Johnny Depp's divorce attorney, Amber has been uncooperative throughout the said case proceedings. She even added that the Request for Order filed by Heard on December 13 was unnecessary given that the 53-year old actor's failure to pay the two installments for the US $7 million settlement was untrue.

Amber's camp also accused the actor of not donating everything to the charity as well as not following the allotted time by the court to fulfill the said settlement including the division of their personal property, and shipments of Heard's belongings from his home in Bahamas. Depp's also allegedly failed to transfer a Range Rover to her name and many more, as per E! News.

Wasser said in a statement that Amyber Heard's malicious accusations had caused her client (Depp) damages on both his personal and professional reputation as well as his and his family's emotional welfare. Johnny Depp's finances also appear to be of "no interest to Amber" added Wasser in the court filing.

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard married in February 2015 without any prenuptial agreement. However, months later, Amber accusing Depp of domestic violence, filed a restraining order against the actor.

The two confirmed their divorce settlement on August after months of controversies including Amber's alleged bruises caused by Johnny which his ex-wife Vanessa Paradis and daughter Lily-Rose Depp denied on separate statements. Another court hearing regarding their divorce settlement issues is set to happen on January 2017.

What do you think will be the end for Johnny Depp and Amber Heard? Will the two be able to settle their divorce issue? Let us know your view down in the comment section below.

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There is no shortage of food trucks in Los Angeles, from gourmet options touring the high-priced neighborhoods, to the workaday loncheros serving from sun up to sun down. Below are only 5 of the city's most essential options, those that have become famous inspite of the crowded competiton. These are some of the most highly qualified food trucks one should consider the next time you're searching for a mobile meal in L.A.

The Ta Bom truck serves Brazilian Street food. They are the first and currently the only one that serves original Brazilian street food.

One should try the Coxinha. These are teardrop-shaped treats that start with a filling of shredded chicken and cream cheese, which are wrapped in potatoes, then battered and fried. It comes in 2 types: spicy and original. Each Coxinha costs $3, but you can order 3 with soda for $10, or 6 for $15. Ordering the 6 is recommended for it can easily be re-heated at home. Find out why why these "Coxinhas" are called "little drops of heaven".

Ta Bom is usually open only for lunch and seldom for dinner. For the next 3 days starting Dec. 27, they will have trucks at Grand Ave. Courtyard, at First Financial Plaza, and at Winter Fest.

Kogi started a food truck craze that swept the country. Its Korean fusion tacos helped bring Los Angeles to the forefront of national culinary landscape.

While some food trucks have come and gone, Roy Choi's kimchi quesadillas and double caramelized short rib tacos will always represent the ethnic collision that makes L.A.s dining scene so vibrant. The main eats are tacos which you can have for $2.50. They have Short Rib, Spicy Pork, Chicken, and Tofu.

The Grilled Cheese truck is the ultimate treat for the grilled cheese fanatics. They have Cheesy Mac & Rib, Cheesy Mac Melt, French Onion Soup Melt, and many more in their menu.

The Cheesy Mac & Rib is their signature melt and a crowd favorite since they started! One can enjoy sharp cheddar cheese with rich, house-smoked BBQ pork, their proprietary recipe for Southern macaroni & cheese and caramelized onions on French bread. You can find trucks in Ventura/Santa Barbara, Orange County, and in the Los Angeles Metro.

Dos Chinos is a fusion of Asian and Latin food. It's what they are made of - every sinew is built on years of carne asada and Vietnamese food.

They have TACO PLATE Choice of 2 corn tacos, DC salsa verde, cabbage, onions & cilantro, BURRITO Fresh flour tortilla, choice of meat, chimichurri jasmine rice, cabbage, DC salsa verde, onions, & cilantro, BOWLS Chimichurri jasmine rice, choice of meat, cabbage, cotija cheese, DC salsa verde, onions, & cilantro., and many more on their menu.

Guerilla Tacos builds daily menus only on what they could get fresh from local vendors. They created world-class tasting dishes, inspired by the flavors of the city and served on a tortilla.

On their menu are Roasted Sweet Potato, Sword Fish Taco, Beef Rib Eye Taco, and many more!

The Roasted Sweet Potato has Almond Chile, Fried Corn, Scallions, and Feta Cheese. It costs $4

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Tourists who want to visit Niagara Falls this 2017 will get a whole new range of excitement as the bi-national tourist attraction got a major lighting makeover last December 1. The Niagara Falls Illumination board unveiled their new project that cost over $4 million.

People who attended the lighting ceremony "oohed and aahed" as the majestic falls got covered in LED lights that burst in spectacular rainbow colors at night. Mark Thomas, western district director for New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, was given the honor to turn on the switch.

"I'm thrilled," Thomas said. "The richness of the colors is fantastic. Being able to project multiple colors at the same time - this is exactly what we envisioned."

"For the last three years the Illumination Board has been working diligently on this."We are dealing with 20-year-old lighting and some of it dates back to post-World War II. It was really time to do an upgrade."

Niagara Falls first lit up on 1860 to commemorate the Prince of Wales' visit to Canada. It was not until 1925 that the illumination of Niagara Falls became a tourist attraction, but the technology of their time limited them to use the same kind of searchlights seafarers usually install in their watchtowers.

In 1974, The Niagara Falls Illumination Board improved the lights with Xenon system, making the lights shine brighter. With this year's upgrade however, everything is several times livelier, making any color of the spectrum to show and glide against the falls' cascading waters.

Plus, this new LED light installation is energy efficient. It requires no maintenance and its energy consumption will drop by 60 percent.

"What you used to see on the falls for illumination was the impression that the waterfall was there, but what you are seeing now is the intensity and clarity. You are actually seeing the water fall. You are getting the impression of depths of the falls - you are left with the impression if you threw a drop of water over the falls you would able to see it go down," Ed Gesch, president of ECCO Electric said.

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Apart from Syria and Iraq, it is often difficult to take news stories about terrorism with a grain of salt. But in Egypt, one needs to tread lightly when it comes to sifting hard facts through a cacophony of mass hysteria. In terms of security here are two of the most terrible recent updates that occurred in Egypt:

Just this month

December 9, 2016: An explosion on the Pyramid Road in Giza killed 6 police officers and injured 3 other civilians. December 11, 2016: An explosion in the Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo claimed at least 20 lives. Over 35 people were injured during this recent bombing.

Northern Sinai Insurgency

Is terrorism actively occurring in Egypt? Yes. But not within the same scale as ISIS-controlled territories in the Levant region. The regional violence that occurred in other unsafe zones in the country is a residue strife following the collapse of president Hosni Mubarak's administration in 2011. The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office strictly forbids tourists from traveling to the Northern Sinai due to the current increase of lawlessness in the region.

Three No Man's Lands

Egypt has serious problems maintaining order, as with other countries in the world. Then what contributes to the stigma of Egypt as an unsafe country? It is the fact that it shares three extremely unsafe borders.

The eastern Gaza strip is still a turbulent region due to the ongoing conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian belligerents. The southern border of Sudan, the sight of the famous Abu Simbel heritage site, is demarcated as a danger zone due to the state's civil strife. The western border of Libya has also kept off limits as anarchy still ensues after its violent revolution in 2011.

Where Is Safe?

There remain three safest tourist locations in Egypt, namely: Alexandria, Luxor, and Cairo. Despite the recent bombing incident in Cairo, the nation's capital is also the most heavily guarded city in Egypt (or else the whole country collapses). Hence, it is far from being categorized as a 'traveler's red zone.'

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In the northern areas of Europe across the Schengen region is Norway -- a place many consider to be out of reach and only a vacation ambition. For the wise traveler, backpacking makes Norway affordably enjoyable by eating in specialty-dish Deli Trucks, camping in city camp grounds and using a special pass to access Norways tourist traps on the cheap

Norways food trucks specialize in multicultural street food. According to Stuff, food on the go from these food trucks -- serving burgers, Mexican-style street food such as tacos or burritos -- only cost around $16. The news website suggests eating in Deli de Luca, Norways version of 711 that appears sophisticated and will only cost you $8 for pastas or a baguette.

To eat cheaper but better food, make the right decision when it comes to choosing a prime restaurant. A great restaurant has a small menu of specialties; a restaurant that has many translations for food is a crowd-pleaser that one can assume has lackluster but expensive food. Better yet, ask locals the best places to eat great but on the cheap.

Norways cities also have city camping grounds aside from hostels and conventional lodging. City camping through Bogstad Camping makes for cheaper lodging inside caravans and tent-pitching sites. Stuff said camping grounds could have their seasonal schedules such as Ekerberg Camping only open during summer.

Travelers on a shoestring budget could better enjoy Norways tourist traps by saving up for an Oslo Pass. The pass costs $40 during the off-peak season and could be half-price higher otherwise. The pass grants access to 36 Norwegian historic museums and attractions, and it could even grant free public transportation with some limitations making it perfect for day-tourists. According to Virtual Tourist, here are Norways most common tourist traps -- if you wish to see them.

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Africa is an amazing tropical paradise allowing travelers a natural escape from the regular urban and modern-cultural tourism offered mostly by the West or the Eastern spiritual sophistication. In Africa, mother nature is their way to connect through natural tropical beaches and virgin forest. Despite its luxurious offerings, Africa is best suited for adventurous backpackers because it makes everything more affordable and enjoyable.

Ugandas Ssese Islands, according to TrekEffect, is a great destination because it is just emerging -- meaning fewer tourist competition in the area and cheaper prices. Backpackers can land in Uganda and head to Buggala Island where a ferry will leave to Ssese Island from 8AM to 2PM twice a week. In Ssese Island is a paradise built on fresh seafood, lodging near beaches and cheap but tasteful beer.

Another adventurous trip would be in Inhambane, Mozambique. Landing into South Africa, take a flight to Inhambane from Johannesburg every Monday, Wednesday and Friday or drive through Nelspruit, Maputo and Xai xais towns. Whichever you choose, hammock retreats along white-sand beaches, coconut specialty drinks -- both alcoholic or not -- and bamboo huts await backpackers for prices cheaper than Southeast Asia probably.

Planners for multi-destination Africa tours should combine wildlife and exciting activities. According to The Guardians starter guide for African backpackers, the South Africa - Naimbia - Botswana - Zambia route is best for adventurers. Travelers can enjoy amazing activities such as sandboarding, skydiving and dune-buggying and through an expedition in Botswanas Okavango Delta with this route.

Another recommendation is the Tanzania - Kenya - Uganda - Rwanda route that goes through palm beaches and nearer the Kilimanjaro Mountain. Specialist hotels near the mountain also offer hikes to the mountain in conjunction with locals familiar with its trail. Top things off with a memorial of the Kigali genocide before leaving this slightly laid-back vacation option.

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Japan is probably one of the places that should be on every traveler's bucket list. The place is just so rich in culture and attractions that it might take a whole lifetime to experience everything. But here's a list of the top 5 things that travelers shouldn't miss when staying in Japan.

Tsukiji Fish Market Experience

You haven't been to Japan if you don't experience the world's largest fish market at Tsukiji, Tokyo. According to World Travel Guide, the action starts at 4 AM but tourists and visitors must register at 5 AM to witness the one of a kind market that sells the freshest fish and other seafood. There are also restaurants in the area if ever you'd get hungry.

Whale And Dolphin Watching

Japan had a few whaling ports before but thought that it's environmentally healthy to offer whale-watching tours to tourists as a source of income. It would be best for tourists to visit Japan from January to April to witness these majestic mammals.

Temple 88, Okubo-Ji

According to Lonely Planet, the last temple of the Shikoku Pilgrimage is something to lookout for. The 88th temple is really a prize for those determined travelers who want to finish the pilgrimage but tourists can just visit the temple too without having to go through the whole journey.

Studio Ghibli

If you're into anime, then Studio Ghibli is definitely for you. Aside from Japan's Universal Studios and Disney Resort, the Ghibli museum is full of art based on animated movies which anime lovers would really enjoy.

Hokkaido

If you want to experience real Japanese culture, then Hokkaido is the place for you. It's considered as Japan's own version of the Wild West which would give tourists a feel of the nation's indigenous Ainu culture.

These are the 5 things that travelers shouldn't miss out when going to Japan because it's really a one of a kind experience. Now, all that's left to do is to plan your itinerary and to board that plane.

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By PTI: Bhubaneswar, Dec 29 (PTI) Congress workers staged a protest demonstration here today demanding immediate resignation of city Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena in connection with a purported sex video and death of an engineering student.

Continuing their protest over the issue, a large number of Congress activists including workers of the partys womens wing staged a sit-in outside the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) office here shouting slogans against the Mayor.

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The demonstrators also demanded a CBI investigtion into the sex clip, purportedly featuring Jena, and into the death of engineering student Asutosh Mohanty alias Rishi in May alleging that the youth had been murdered.

Claiming that the police failed to probe the matter because of pressure from the ruling party as the Mayor happened to be a General Secretary of BJD, state Congress womens wing Chief, Sasmita Behera warned that the party would intensify the stir to press for the Mayor?s resignation to ensure a fair probe.

Noting that serious charges have been levelled against the Mayor, Behera said though around 15 days have elapsed since the purported sex video and its (the videos) alleged link with Rishi death case were reported, Jena continued to remain in his position.

"Investigation will be affected if he does not step down. The investigation by police is direction-less while the Chief Minister is trying to shield the Mayor," she alleged.

She said the party would continue the agitation till the Mayor tenders resignation. The Congress leaders said the case is very serious as there are allegations that the sex video had links with the murder of Rishi.

The party leader alleged Jena was being shielded by the BJD government. PTI SKN SUS TIR

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The most tempting things in life are often those that are forbidden. For travelers, this sparks most interest and fascination on the places they are not allowed to visit.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Norway

Svalbard Global Seed Vault is located 120m inclusive in a sandstone mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. The place is1,300km from the North Pole, in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is the utmost secured, strongly guarded seed bank in the world.

It opened in February 2008; Express reported that the vault contains Earth's crops against global cataclysm events. It has 250 million crop seeds from around the world packed in specially designed four-ply packets and heat-sealed to protect against moisture. The vault provides samples of seeds that may be lost due to equipment failures, accident, natural disasters, and funding cuts. Unless you are a titled researcher or plant breeder, you are not allowed to even just visit not get inside the vault.

Ni'ihau, Hawaii

Ni'ihau, the smallest populated Hawaiian island. This 180sqkm Pacific island is off-limits to outsiders. The island has banned outsiders since 1915. The island has 130 permanent residents, who are Native Hawaiians, living rent-free, without concreted roads, plumbing, running water or stores, and telephone services.

Horses and bicycles serve as their transportation, solar power is the source of their electricity and barges brings groceries from neighboring Kaua'i. The island remains off-limits today, the Coast Guard guards the island to guarantee that no landings are attempted. No one is allowed to visit without an invitation from someone living on the island.

Vatican Secret Archives, Vatican

The Vatican Secret Archives is possibly the most reserved library in the world. It encloses the personal documents of all the popes from the 8th century up to the present. Since 1881, the place was closed to all non-Vatican figures. According to BBC, the archive preserves top-secret documents under a long and intricate application process for those who want to access its secrets.

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Luxuriously built for their owners, these mansions were once glorious and majestic. Here is a rundown of mansions abandoned by their wealthy owners.

Carleton Villa

The Carleton Villa was constructed in 1894 for William Wyckoff, typewriter magnate, as a summerhouse and big spot for entertaining. A month before he moved in, Wycoff's wife died of a heart attack and apparently, on his first night in the mansion he suffered a heart attack and died. Wycoff's youngest son inherited the villa but lost most of their fortune in the Great Depression. The villa was then sold to General Electric, who offered the materials to anyone who would salvage them. When World War II happened, General Electric abandoned the property.The villa, is situated on 7 acres with stunning river views, is currently listed for $495,000.

Huguette Clark Mansion

When withdrawn copper heiress Huguette Clark passed away in 2011, it was discovered that she lived the last few spans of her life in a hospital room, leaving extravagant properties abandoned in three states. Clark possessed a 42-room apartment in Manhattan on the Fifth Ave., a $24 million Connecticut estate, and Bellosguardo, a luxurious Santa Barbara estate esteemed at $100 million. All properties were preserved by caretakers and maintained at $40,000 every month reported by NBC. Clark had not visited Bellosguardo since 1960 and never actually set foot in the Connecticut chateau.

Round Mansion

The Round Mansion in Belgium was discovered and revealed to the public by urban explorer Andre Govia. The nine-bedroom mansion was abandoned perhaps in the early 1990s. The rooms are still loitered by posh furniture and personal belongings. The whereabouts of the occupants are unknown.

Chaonei No. 81

The abandoned Chinese mansion was built in 1910 and is alleged by Beijing locals to be haunted. It has remained unoccupied and dilapidated for several years. The home was built about 100 years ago as a gift to British colonists and by the end of 1949, a high-ranking nationalist official fled Beijing for Taiwan as the Communists marched in. According to NY Times, because of misery, his wife hanged herself from the beams of the home. The spirit of the rejected woman, locals say, has haunted the house ever since.

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Many dreams of being able to see the beauty of the world - to travel, learn and experience different cultures had become a major goal. The thing is; traveling can be undeniably expensive. But like how the old saying goes "If there's a will, there is a way," if the determination is enough, anyone can be like the man who had been traveling the world for three years for free.

Meet Dane Torbjrn C. Pedersen, the man who sailed from one country to another on container ships. Reports say that Pedersen, also known as Thor, had been crossing oceans since October 2013 and is dreaming of setting foot in every country on the globe. He had been in several countries, 122 all in all - including Europe and South America. He also traveled to Caribbean and Indian Ocean.

Back in 2013, Thor Pedersen set a goal and that is to travel the world without spending a lot and without having to ride an airplane. But how else is he going to travel the world without stepping on a plane? Claiming the fact that he didn't want to damage his pockets, that's when the 37-year old decided to sail the globe through container ships.

Traveling through container ships is mostly free, that mean he only gets to take out his wallet whenever it's meal time. According to Travel and Leisure, the man spends at least a day in each country and spends more or less than $20. So basically, he only spends $20 to travel to a country.

As he travels he drops off some reviews, "Greenland and Cuba have surprised me the most as countries I cannot compare with others. They are absolutely unique and memorable." Other than Greenland and Cuba, Thor suggested several countries that are totally worthy to visit too such as - Iran, San Marino, Serbia, Poland, Ice Land, Ecuador and more.

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The New Year is an excellent time to travel and enjoy the holiday season in different cities and destinations with different cultures as well rather than staying home and waiting for the countdown next year.

Exploring a different vibe and almost understanding how a culture is built during the New Year in another state or country is one way to spend time with your significant other on your chosen romantic getaway trip. Here are some romantic locations in the country and overseas that you could visit in lieu of the New Year.

If you are into cabins, a quiet place, drinking wine with your loved one, and a classic fireplace then there are cabins that are for rent in Lake Placid located in New York City according to Home Away. For people who would like to explore the city it is best to choose Chicago, Illinois, there you could rent a condominium, have a wine, see the high skyscrapers around and more.

If you want to chill by the sea side, head over to Maui, Hawaii. with the clear water and humid weather, relaxing in Maui is one to remember and cherish with your partner. If you do not like snow then this is the place to be during the New Year.

Love music? Then no worries as New Orleans offers the best music from Jazz to Blues and more. There is no other city that has reputation for partying than New Orlean.

For out of the country locations, you could try to visit and explore Ocho Rios, Jamaica. According to Travel and Leisure, the tropical climate of Jamaica is an excellent choice if you want to escape the freezing cold temperatures. Taking a trip to the Almond Tree Restaurant in the Hibiscus Lodge to see the whole view of the ocean while having dinner will take your breath away.

Another country to visit is the French Capital Paris, France. Paris has always been known to be the city of eternal love making it a special place during the holiday season for lovers and couples.

For the New Year, there is no better place for lovers than Paris during the holidays. You and your loved one could take a trip to Chateau de Vaux le Vicomte located just outside Paris for you to see a beautiful castle in the area or if not, you could visit Seine River to take your dinner while cruising. For more of the latest details and current news feel free to visit Travelers Today.

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This 2017, the tourism sector will celebrate the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development. And with that in mind, the third International Congress on Ethics and Tourism will again take place, but this time they will be hosted by Poland on April 27-28, 2017.

The main focus of the third meeting of the Congress is to provide a more ecological tourism sector, where all stakeholders must now practice and sustain responsible tourism practices. This event is organized by the World Tourism Organization in partnership with the European Commission and the Government of Poland.

Other agendas to be discussed in the Congress are responsible consumption patterns, corporate social responsibility, and providing more benefits concerning tourism development particularly to the women, youth, the disabled, and the indigenous people in a certain local community.

The Congress also aims to inspire the tourism sector of other countries as well and not just in Europe. Sustainable tourism development is an important issue tourism companies and big corporations must integrate, so that the harmonious relationships between and them and the local community they belong to will be strengthened.

UNWTO secretary general, Taleb Rifai said, "With more than 1.2 billion international tourists crossing international borders in one single year and the prospects of continuous growth, it is crucial that we manage growth in an ethical and responsible manner. The tourism sector needs to build equitable partnerships and adopt effective national policies and sustainable business strategies in all areas of development."

Several contracts and partnerships will also be fostered in the event as well. A signing ceremony will take place about the Private Sector Commitment to the UNWTO Global Code of Ethics for Tourism by a group of prominent companies and trade associations with sound CSR policies and strategies.

The process of giving back to the local communities and practicing socio-economic policies in the tourism sector will be a great change to both sides. Members of the Congress hopes global sustainability will be a stronghold for the tourism sector in the whole world in the near future.

Witold Banka, Minister of Sport and Tourism, said, "I have gladly accepted the decision of the World Tourism Organization to choose Poland as a host for the third edition of the International Congress on Ethics and Tourism. Poland is actively channeling efforts to implement ethical standards among the tourism organizations in their everyday business. I am confident, that the great atmosphere of Krakow, one of the most beautiful sites in Europe will foster thoughtful discussions and yield positive results of the Congress."

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Greece's unique experiences are culture-based and not truly experience-based. Culture-based travel to famous Greek historic sites and museums and less on beaches and physical activities in vacation spots make Greece a hot vacation spot for Americans interested in its history -- and these visitors only visit once.

According to Marketing Greece Chief Iossif Parsalis, to create gains for Greek tourism, the focus should shift from history to a more personal tour of Greece showcasing the "unique experiences" the country offers to vacationers worldwide -- such as what Eco hotels and a focus on luxury tourism could bring.

According to Thema News, Iossif Parsalis believes that Greek tourism should steer away from the common museum and heritage tourism and focus more on the "natural and biological products" that "offer the ideal environment" for helping people relax and specifically detoxify "from people's digital dependence." This could mean bad news to internet-savvy tourists posting away in their respective social media sites -- but it could also mean a fresher and "personal" experience described by Parsalis.

Parsalis believes that elite-class luxury vacations existing in Greece should be enriched. Citing Turkey's cruising market success, Navigation Travel & Tourist Services CEO Andreas Stylianopoulos believes Turkey's cruising market can impede on Greece's own service providers -- but not so if it is further developed. He estimates that the market's 33 million potential customers could use their average income of $50,000 to at least enjoy the leisure of cruising once and see major improvements to the market upon their return.

Greece's tourism can see immense boost from the Mediterranean Panorama exposition in Sweden on March 17-19, 2017. According to the Greek Reporter, Greece, Croatia, Malta, Portugal, Cyprus, Tunisia, Israel and Turkey's tourism will be featured but Greece takes the spotlight as the main pillar. The event in Scandinavia all Scandinavian major tour operators would supplement for the attending public.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Bathing in hot springs are practiced all over the world, but nobody does it better than the Japanese. Over 3000 hot springs-or "onsen", as they are commonly called, are located in the country.

However, there are certain etiquettes to follow when bathing in Japanese hot springs. The most common is that no swimwear is required to enter the pools. In this case, men and women are separated. In public hot springs however, it is okay to bring swimwear.

But if you want to get the ultimate Japanese onsen experience, there are a couple of places you should check out. Here are some of them:

Shirahama, Wakayama-ken, Kansai. Here in Shirahama, you get two good things in one place: hot spring and beach. Have you ever tried swimming in a hot spring after frolicking on the beach? You should. It feels amazing. The onsen is free in the southern beach town of Shirahama.

Noboribetsu Onsen. Less than an hour away from the New Chitose Airport, you could get a stunning experience in the best onsen in Hokkaido. The hot spring here is surrounded by a 360 view of the natural scenery, and you can relax in the hot spring while feasting your eyes in the snowy landscape around you.

Oedo Onsen Monogatari. If you don't to travel far for the best hot spring experience, then head over to Oedo Onsen Monogatari. It is located in Tokyo on the artificial island of Oidaba in the Tokyo Bay, and in here you get several options of pools to choose from, and restaurants, spas, and massage parlors are nearby as well.

Beppu Onsen. "Beppu Hatto" is the largest swimmable hot spring in the world, with over 8 different naturally formed hot springs to choose from. Each of them has different qualities, so you could pick one that you like or try experiencing them all in a day. The Hells of Beppu is also located here, where you can take pictures and explore the surroundings. You can't swim here, though. It's called Hells of Beppu for a reason because their hot springs are so hot no human body can withstand their temperature!

Hida Takayama Onsen. If you want to step back in history in Japan, then go to Hida Takayama Onsen. This hot spring is found in Hida Takayama, a beautiful, culture-rich Japanese town that still retains their castle-like buldings, making it look like 19th century Japan. You also wouldn't get a hard time strolling this area, as most residents know how to speak English.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Facebook's Safety Check feature has been very helpful in emergency situations as it allows users who are either living or located in an area where an emergency occurs to remind their friends and loved ones that they are okay. However, one particular Security Check in Thailand did the opposite as it instead spread false reports of an explosion in Bangkok. This latest incident serves as another example of the social media leader's algorithms failure to distinguish false news sources from reliable ones.

The Safety Check for Bangkok was activated on December 26, and Facebook cited "media sources" as confirmation that there was an explosion in Thailand's capital. As it turns out, the "explosion" was caused by a lone man protesting on a roof while throwing out firecrackers towards the Government House. The Government House is where the prime minister of Thailand works. According to the Bangkok Post, no one was hurt in the incident.

The "source" of the @Facebook Safety Check for Bangkok: A fake news site that scrapped stuff from elsewhere! pic.twitter.com/i6Q2k8XBxP  Saksith Saiyasombut (@SaksithCNA) December 27, 2016

The activation of this feature caused confusion as the social media site also promoted a link of a false news report regarding a major "explosion." The link redirected users to the website of the Bangkok Informer where they were greeted with a headline that read "Thailand: Explosion Rocks Central Bangkok" along with the "breaking news" image used by BBC.

On Wednesday, the website of the Bangkok Informer was "down for maintenance." The link in question also appeared to use a 2015 video from a BBC story about a bomb explosion in Bangkok that left 19 people dead and 120 injured. According to the Telegraph, the Bangkok Informer is not known for being a reliable news source as it only reposts news stories from other sources.

A Google search for it will yield results showing only the main website and its Twitter account which has around 1,645 followers. The Facebook Safety Check feature was first implemented back in 2014 and was originally intended for use during natural disasters, but it has since been extended after the attacks in Paris last year. It sends notifications to a user's friends and family informing them that they are safe.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Anthony Bourdain makes his way to Hong Kong to explore the country's faced paced style and fascinating city in the middle of summer. Tony fights the scorching heat as he attempts to try and taste different dim sum's, roasted meat and Chiu Chow cuisine before he heads back home.

Here are some of the best spots as reported by Discover Hong Kong. We also compiled together a selection of Tony's best tips for a memorable experience.

According to Travel Channel, population wise, this country is one of the most heavily packed cities worldwide, not only that but it is also packed with different kinds of food from great restaurants to street foods. The cuisine that Hong Kong offers is quite unique whie others are weird and a bit crazy, but its worth a try to experience a new culture once in a while.

Transporation wise, there is the Hong Kong Airport Express which offers high speed transportation from the tarmac to the center of town. It only take around 24 minutes which costs just around $13. Once you arrive in the center of town, it is easy to get a cab and you can go almost anywhere you want in the city to explore the culture and sceneries of Hong Kong.

If you wanna take a train around the city, the subways are available and convenient. The clean subways are easy to navigate and could get you to almost all destinations around the city easily and much lesser cost than the cab rides.

Tired and want to chill? No Problem as Hong Kong has a lot of tea restaurants around the area or what they call cha chaan tengs. They also have this carbonated drinks that has fruits in it like lemons, etc.

Most people in Hong Kong wear nicely tailored suits that fit them quite well. Hong Kong is known for their tailors who drill up the best suits fast and very cheap as well.

For dinner or late night foods, the Chiu Chow cuisine offers different Cantonese flavors. Chiu Chow is made up of different natural and fresh ingredients which is prepared in advance then served well at the right room temperature making it one of the best foods to try on late nights.

In conclusion, Hongkong is indeed one city to visit if you are a food lover. From the spices to the herbs they put in their noodles to the roasted duck, their food taste and looks amazing all the way. For more of the latest news and current updates stay tuned to Travelers Today.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
The decision will bring down the currency production at the Reserve Bank of India press by nearly 25 per cent from 45 million units per day to around 34 million units per day.

By Manogya Loiwal : Just when the government is trying hard address the demonetisation crisis there could be more trouble in hands for it as workers of a currency printing press in West Bengal have refused to do over time.

The employees of Salboni-based Bharitya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited (BRBNMPL) said they cannot work for 12 hours a day any longer bringing down the production of currency notes from 45 billion per day to 34 million.

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There are about 700 employees besides 150 officers working in the Salboni Currency Printing Press.

WHY WORKERS HAVE REFUSED TO WORK EXTRA HOURS

Employees are under contract of working for 9 hours but were working for around 12 hours per day considering the crisis post the November 8 note ban decision. More than 14 employees have fallen sick and many have complained of stress-related health issues. "The union members are falling sick and workers are not being paid what they were promised for doing overtime. We understand the crisis and it is not due to any political affiliation but they cannot work on humanitarian ground. The employees have been working for more than 12 hours, however, now it is no more possible to continue working for 12 hours," Sishir Adhikari, TMC MP and President of Bhartiya Reserve bank Note Mudran Employees Union said. Salboni is a Maoist infested region and employees claim that the basic minimum facilities are not enough to ensure proper health care in the premises. Even the nearest hospital is 25km away in Midnapore. The employees, though, admitted that Assam Rifles and Air Force Base in Kalaikunda are extending all support but the basic precision and training is only given to the employees so the work cannot be shared due to the expertise required. An employee said that there will be a shortfall of around 25 per cent of currency notes with the employees not working overtime.

POLITICS BEHIND WORKERS' REFUSAL TO WORK?

Congress MP Pradip Bhattacharya backed the decision of workers, saying if concerned authorities want them to work for extra hours then they should be paid accordingly.

"Our leader Rahul Gandhi has announced a natio-wide protest against demonetisation. We are with the workers and will take the protest to villages to explain how this note ban has hurt country's economy. The workers can only work for 8 hours and if they are required to do overtime then they should reimbursed for thei hardwork," Congress MP Pradip Bhattacharya said.

"The problem is that the government banned old notes without printing enough new notes. Now, if printing of new notes is going to get affected obviously problems will rise. There is a secret understanding between the TMC and BJP over this issue. Workers refusing to work will actually work in favour of BJP," CPI (M) leader Faud Halim said.

(With inputs from Shah Jahan)

ALSO READ: RTI on demonetisation: RBI says it proposed note ban hours before Modi's speech

ALSO READ: Forbes magazine slams Modi's demonetisation, calls it immoral, theft of people's property

ALSO WATCH

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Tropical Sails Corp has availability on Idaho and Wyoming Solar Eclipse Tours



(TRAVPR.COM) UNITED STATES - December 29th, 2016 - SURPRISE, Arizona, December 28, 2016 / The first total solar eclipse since 1979 is to cross the USA on August 21, 2017. Tropical Sails Corp has organized three tours to observe the eclipse Idaho and Wyoming.

The total solar eclipse will cross into the USA in the morning in Oregon, sweeping southeast to South Carolina in the early afternoon. The path will cross Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, southern Illinois, Tennessee and South Carolina. Weather statistics indicate that the west has the highest probabilities of clear skies.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and earth. For two plus minutes, the moon will be black with the suns corona, or rays of light bending around the moon creating a mystical experience for the observer. The sun will set in all directions. Day turns to night for a couple of minutes.

"Weather and high probability of clear skies are important when trying to observe a total solar eclipse," according to Daniel Oppliger, President of Tropical Sails Corp. I have been doing eclipse tours since 1991, and shake my head when I see tours to predicted cloudy areas. The whole of Shanghai missed it in 2009, while we had a group inland on top of a mountain reservoir, above the clouds.

Rexburg, Idaho is hosting one of our groups. Interested parties may join a 3 or 4 night Idaho solar eclipse tour from Salt Lake City. The tour will prepare for the big day touring Idaho and staying in Idaho Falls. On eclipse morning, they will proceed to Rexburg, which is anticipating many observers. The Idaho Eclipse tour runs August 20-23 and is priced from $1,090 pp. A Friday night stay in Salt Lake City is optional.

For those wanting a more western experience, we have a solar eclipse tour Denver to Mt. Rushmore, the eclipse in Wyoming, Yellowstone and Tetons National Parks ending in Salt Lake City. The 8-day 7-night adventure includes a chuck wagon dinner and a float trip on the Snake River. The Total Solar Eclipse Tour with Mt. Rushmore & Yellowstone is priced from $2,359 and runs August 18-25, 2017.

For those desiring an inside the park experience we have a 12-day 11-night solar eclipse tour going from Phoenix, visiting Sedona, the Grand Canyon, the Parks of Utah, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone and off to Mt. Rushmore. The solar eclipse will be seen from the Jackson, WY area and is priced from $3799.

Tropical Sails Corp has been offering solar eclipse tours since 1991 when we led 35 motorhomes down the Baja Peninsula. Since then we have taken groups to Africa (01, 02) Australia (02, 11), Caribbean (98, 04, 06), China (08, 09), El Paso (94), Faroe Islands (15), Indonesia (16), Tahiti (12), and Turkey (99, 06).

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Chief Minister Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan has said that one more wide master plan will be chalked out for water tourism in Hanuvantiya area in which Dharaji, Sailani areas including Omkareshwar will be included. He said, it will be developed as 'Madhyadwip'. Shri Chouhan said master plan incorporating four nodal points will be prepared. Development work will be carried including proposed aquacity in Hanuvantiya and water reservoir and Hanuvantiya will become international center of adventure tourism.



(TRAVPR.COM) INDIA - December 29th, 2016 - Chief Minister Shri Chouhan was addressing inaugural function of the second Jal-Mahotsav today in Hanuvantiya. Referring Hanuvantiya, Shri Chouhan said that it is his creation and brain child. He is attached with it. Government will make its efforts utmost to bring Hanuvantiya on international map. Quoting houseboat, he said, imagination to introduce houseboat in Madhya Pradesh has materialized today. Tourists will enjoy boating in night and stay here. The peaceful environment here makes us feel happy. Shri Chouhan said that people should spend some time sparing from busy schedule. Place like Hanuvantiya is the best for this. Shri Chouhan said that there should not be mechanical life and enjoys tourism with family for some time. Mentioning importance of happiness in human life, he said that the happiness derives from inner itself. Joy, zeal and happiness have special place in life. The government is making efforts for enhancing comfort and happiness in life of public in the state. Department of happiness has been constituted for that. He called upon people to enjoy and make happiness in other's life.

Referring Hanuvantiya, Shri Chouhan said that company like Mahindra Holiday home is becoming our partner. Entire area of Hanuvantiya and forests area will be developed through the master plan and people will get employment. Shri Chouhan said that land value has gone up surrounding Hanuvantiya in last one year. Our effort is to increase earning and generate more employment opportunities. Tourism is the second generating the highest employment opportunities.

Shri Chouhan said that he had seen similar water tourism spot at Sentosa in Singapore. Since then he saw dream and now it has materialized in the form of Hanuvantiya. Beauty has spread more in Hanuvantiya than Sentosa. It sprawls in 950 sq km area. He said that team of Madhya Pradesh tourism has played important role in materializing the dream. Shri Chouhan exhorted to bring Madhya Pradesh on new heights in tourism sector.

Minister of state for tourism and culture (independent charge) Shri Surendra Patwa said, water tourism will be developed at Gandhi Sagar, Ban Sagar, Tava and other places along with Hanuvantiya. Separate tourism cabinet has been constituted as per wishes of the chief minister and new investor-friendly tourism policy has been rolled out. Around 300 way side amenities would be developed. Fifty seven of them have already constructed. Over eight crore tourists visited the state last year and considering this, facilities for tourists are being increased. Shri Patwa said that all would work together to make the state no one under the guidance of Chief Minister Shri Chouhan.

Chairman State Tourism Development Corporation Shri Tapan Bhoumik said that today will be registered in the history, when house boat is being gifted to the state. Tourists from more than 40 countries are expected to take part in Jal Mahotsav including our country. Shri Bhoumik further mentioned that where there is a view of sea in Madhya Pradesh, it is in Hanuvantiya. Also, Hanuvantiya has crafted its place in the country and as well as abroad in one year period.

Chief Minister Shri Chouhan and the guests inaugurated the second Jal-Mahotsav lighting the lamp at the beginning. An attractive presentation of Gangore dance was presented by Nimadi folk dancers. Guests were welcomed by the Chairman Shri Tapan Bhoumik and Secretary Tourism and M.D. Tourism Development Corporation Shri Hariranjan Rao. Shri Rao apprised about the important points of master plan of Hanuvantiya.

Member of board of directors of tourism development corporation Shri Rajesh Dongre, MLA Sushri Yogita and wife of the Chief Minister Smt. Sadhana Singh were present on the occasion. Shri Chouhan presented adventurous training certificate to 17 youths. He also released poem collection and CD of Shri Kamar Singh Chouhan focusing Jal Mahotsav Hanuvantiya.

For more information on destinations & points of interest in Madhya Pradesh, please visit our website http://www.mptourism.com/ or reach out to us on our toll free helpline at 1800-233-7777 available 24 x 7.

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The arrest comes hours after a branch manager of Kotak Mahindra Bank was arrested by Enforcement Directorate on charges of helping Tandon convert black money into white.

By India Today Web Desk: Delhi-based lawyer Rohit Tandon, who saw his house being raided by Income tax officials on phone, was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case on Wednesday night.

The lawyer will be produced in a court today over charges of converting black money to the tune of Rs 70 crore into 'white'. The arrest comes after a branch manager of Kotak Mahindra Bank was arrested and remanded in ED custody for five days in connection with the case.

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ALSO READ: Kotak Mahindra bank manager took Rs 1.5 crore commission from lawyer to convert Rs 35 crore: ED

More case details: According to the Enforcement Directorate, Tandon had confessed that the branch manager took a commission of Rs 1.5 crore to convert Rs 35 crore into legitimate currency. Lawyer Tandon's house was first raided on October 6. He had then declared an undisclosed income of Rs 125 crore to the Income Tax department. On December 10, his house in Greater Kailash-I was raided by I-T sleuths who recovered Rs 13.65 crore cash, of which Rs 2.62 crore were in new Rs 2,000 notes. The police, which had been keeping a close watch on him, had received a tip-off that a huge consignment of new currency was reaching his house. Tandon, who runs a firm T&T Law, spent Rs 100 crore at his son's wedding last year. He owns a house in Dubai, two luxury farm houses in Delhi's Chhattarpur area and two houses in posh Panchsheel locality. A week ago, Kolkata-based businessman Paras Mal Lodha was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on charges of money laundering. Lodha had allegedly helped Tandon convert demonetised currency. Both Lodha and Tandon are believed to have links with Chennai-based mining baron J Sekhar Reddy. Reddy was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in connection with the money laundering case.

ALSO READ: 10 things we know so far about Rohit Tandon, caught with Rs 13 crore in cash

ALSO READ: Delhi: Lawyer watches own house getting raided on phone, Rs 2.62 crore found in new notes

ALSO WATCH

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By Mayuresh Ganapatye: Mumbai Congress has come up with a unique way to protest against government's decision of demonetisation. About 50 Congress workers in Mumbai got a tattoo on their hand which reads "huamara pradhan mantri rishwatkhor hain."

According to these Congressmen, even after 50 days of demonetisation there is no respite for the people and that the situation has only worsened.

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"We wanted to question PM Modi on Saturday when he was on a visit to Mumbai about the allegations levelled against him by Rahul Gandhi, but police kept us under house arrest. Rahul asked him about the money that he received from big business houses but PM doesn't want to answer and thus we have decided on these temporary tattoos. It is our way to protest against PM who is still silent on such serious charges," said Sanjay Nirupam, Mumbai Congress Chief.

Also Read: Congress hits out at BJP for not investigating Amit Shah's bank accounts

Tattoo on the hands of the Congress workers.

From December 30 midnight, Mumbai Congress will start a missed call line where people who feel they are hit by the decision of demonetisation can give a missed call and register their protest.

The Mumbai Congress has also planned to do a mass rally against demonetisation on January 6 and gherao the collector office's in western suburban area of the city. On January 8, Mumbai Mahila Congress will hold a protest rally from Mahalxmi temple where they will do 'taal katora andolan'.

Earlier, the Congress had intended to intensified its agitation on demonetisation. A recent meeting of State Congress chief chaired by Rahul Gandhi in Delhi gave a green signal to corner BJP on the issue of demonetisation. Sources within Mumbai Congress said that they will lead its BMC poll campaign from new year targeting government on the issue of demonetisation. Congress workers will conduct a door to door campaign telling people about the adverse effects of demonetisation.

ALSO READ:

What was demonetisation's real motive, asks Rahul; Mamata asks if Modi will resign after 50 days

Mamata calls raid on Tamil Nadu chief secretary vindictive, asks why Amit Shah spared

--- ENDS ---
Tribune News Service

Bathinda, December 28

Owing to the increased work pressure on bank employees due to demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, members of the Punjab Bank Employees Federation today staged a protest outside the zonal office of State Bank of Patiala, located on Amrik Singh Road.

Addressing the staff members, federation leaders said before demonetising the high value currency all of a sudden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley didnt think about the affects of it, which resulted in acute cash crunch.

They said while the Reserve Bank of India was not supplying enough cash to all bank branches, the bank employees had to face the ire of customers.

Since the bank employees have been working overtime to cater to the manifold increase in exchange and other monetary transactions, they should be remunerated accordingly, they said.

As its been close to two months of demonetisation, enough cash should be sent to all bank branches, they added.
Lt Gen Baljit Singh (retd)

George Orwell was born in India in 1903, to British parents. As was the practice in those times, he was banished to spend most of his childhood and adolescent years in England; schooling at the exclusive Eton College, followed by graduation from Christchurch College, in Cambridge University. Again, as was the done thing for such well born and aspiring young men, he qualified for entrance to the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and was appointed to the Imperial Police cadre, to serve in Burma.

By all counts, George Orwell was a distinguished police officer but he had made a poor choice of profession as he was intellectually inclined, or rather driven, for seeking equitable social opportunities for the teeming economically poorer segments of human society. He espoused his dream brilliantly through the book Animal Farm, which after numerous rejections was ultimately published in early 1945.

As may be imagined, the characters of the book are essentially pigs, horses, et al, who are harnessed to toil at the Manor Farm for their human master, Mr Jones. And one fine day, all animals assemble and in a kind of coup take over the farm to usher in Utopia, and adopt seven commandments, the most important being: All animals are equal, and whatever goes on two legs is an enemy.

However, George Orwell had witnessed how the principle of equality was soon turned into dictatorial tyranny by Stalin in the USSR. So the utopian philosophy in Animal Farm is modified by the leader of animals to read: All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Now it may be tad oversimplification of what in the armed forces today goes as the system of Selection Grade Promotions, but in essence that is what it is.

There are very well-honed step-by-step merit-evaluation checks applied at multiple levels of the screening process on all aspirants for the next elevation in rank. It would be hard to fault the system per se, particularly as it also provides opportunity for redress by those who may deem it rightful.

Having said all this, let me go back to the mid-1950s for the selection of the successor to General SM Shrinagesh. As this has been brought to my notice by a friend, retired Maj General PK Mallick, by quoting from the book, Leadership in the Indian Army: Biographies of Twelve Soldiers, by Maj General V K Singh of the Corps of Signals published by SAGE Publications, 2005; I find it most appropriate for all Indian citizens to be better informed:

In May 1955, Thimayya was appointed GOC-in-C, Southern Command. His tenure was uneventful, except for an attempt by Pakistan to infiltrate in the Chad Bet region of the Rajasthan desert, which was effectively dealt with by a motorised battalion. In September 1956 he moved to the Eastern Command, thus becoming the first officer to command all three field armies in India. In the Eastern Command he had to deal with insurgency by the Naga tribes, in North-East India. At that time, General S.M. Shrinagesh was the Chief of Army Staff. He was due to retire in May 1957, and there were several contenders for the post. Lieut Generals Sant Singh and Kalwant Singh were from the same Sandhurst batch, having passed out on 29 January 1925. The other two were Thimayya and PN Thapar, who had also passed out from Sandhurst together, on 4 February 1926. Thimayya had been placed 15th in order of merit (Sic. at Sandhurst), while Thapar was 18th. Hence, he was technically senior to Thapar. However, the most important factor was Thimayya's impressive war record  he had won the DSO, and was the only Indian to have commanded a brigade in battle. The others did not have any notable achievement to their credit. As expected, Thimayya was selected for the top job in the Army, and on 8 May 1957, he was promoted to General, and took over as Chief of Army Staff. He superseded Lieut General Sant Singh, who resigned, as well as Lieut General Kalwant Singh, who decided to continue....

What is not stated about General KS Thimayya and what additionally may have singled him out in the deep selection process is that he was in command of Siri Division (later 19 Infantry Division), which oversaw practically all operations to include the capture of Zozi La on November 1, 1948, personally led the first Dakota landing at Leh (an improvised landing strip) on May 24, 1948, and the liberation of Ladakh right up to the Karakoram Pass!

Subsequently, after two years of stalemate at the UN General Assembly, when it was finally agreed to set up the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission, Maj General Thimayya became its Chairman on July 27, 1953, and his delicate and impartial handling of the acrimony was universally applauded. It was to his credit that North Korea amicably accepted 70,183 of their prisoners of war.

I had less than two years service at the time, but I recall that General Thimayya as the Chief was the toast of the entire Army. And with his vast experience of war from up front, he was believed not to favour showing the flag posts deployed in Ladakh and along the McMahon Line in the East. In terms of numbers, fire power and logistic access, these posts were a push over for the better placed Chinese.

General Thimayyas war wisdom and political astuteness proved correct. Sometime in August-September 1959, the Chinese in a short and swift move inflicted heavy loses to our isolated post at Longju, in the Siang Valley close to where the Brahmaputra river descends into India. Another post at Machuka was so terribly isolated that our troops chose to abandon it when challenged by the Chinese. Admittedly, that was a disgraceful soldierly conduct but that is how it ended.

These foregone defeats imposed on the military against the better judgement of their Chief, and Defence Minister Krishna Menons inability to engage the Army Chief in a meaningful discussion, was the fundamental reason that drove General Thimayya to tender his resignation. Far worse was to follow when Prime Minister Nehru persuaded the Chief to retract his resignation and in the next breath, berated him in the Lok Sabha.

So when a Chief assumes office through deep selection and superseding two equals, he must stand by his better military judgement and follow his conscience to even resign, if need be.

And lastly, when General KM Cariappa became the first Indian Chief on January 15, 1949, he had followed the age-old tradition, that is, the incumbent Chief demits office at the stroke of midday and the Chief-designate quietly walking into his office the following morning. And performs his first duty to his Army by way of the Special Order of the Day, which basically is a motivational epistle focused on upholding the oath of fidelity, come what may. Of late, an unsavoury deviation has crept in, that is, the Chief-designate walks into the office accompanied by his wife, where they are received by the incumbent Chief together with his spouse. This does not go well with the dignity of that exalted office.
Sandeep Dikshit

WHEN Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the Indonesian President Joko Wikodo earlier this month, they were trying to finish the work started by the previous regimes of turning the clock back on 50 years of polite estrangement.

The Manmohan Singh government accelerated efforts for closer ties between the world's second and fourth most-populated nations. Modi had picked up the threads and met Wikodo within months of becoming the Prime Minister.

Meeting Modi after two years, Wikodo's aim was to cast off Pakistan's shadow that has dogged their ties. During the Cold War, both Indonesia and Pakistan had tilted towards the West. They conducted economic business in the D-8 grouping that accounted for 60 per cent of the world's Muslim population. Indonesia also supported Pakistan's venting on Kashmir at the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC).

India also had strategic reasons to be wary of Indonesia because the latter had signed a Friendship Treaty with China in 1961, just when Sino-India ties were going downhill. A military pact with Pakistan some years later buried the Nehru-Sukarno bonhomie of the 1950s. Indonesia then opted to side with Pakistan in the 1965 and 1971 wars.

The Manmohan Singh government began the process of de-hyphenating India-Pakistan ties by inviting an Indonesian President as the chief guest for the 2011 Republic Day parade. India then ended the practice of its envoy in Jakarta doubling up as the Ambassador to ASEAN. Indonesia too had realised the importance of partnering India, the regional naval heavyweight, after the 9-11 attacks with a series of coordinated naval patrols in the region.

Manmohan Singh, however, was unable to find the glue that has held together India's ties with Vietnam and Japan. The last summit with an Indonesian President in 2013 was unable to produce a common vision statement. The backing of the Indian strategic community was also lacking as it tends to overlook Indonesia and prefers the more exciting and fruitful relationships with Vietnam and Japan, which have an element of common cause against China.

But Indonesia offers opportunities that are vastly different. The practice of liberal democracy in both countries resoundingly negates the common narrative about its incompatibility with Islam. The combined Muslim population of Indonesia and India outstrips that of the Middle East and North Africa whose strands of fanatical jihadism have shaped the stereotypical image of Muslims the world over. As their approach to China is not the chronic antagonism of the West, they can both act in concert as balancers, if need be. India has maintained a peaceful border with China but is not averse to verbal skirmishing on issues like the Dalai Lama, NSG and Hafiz Saeed. There is an in-built wariness towards China in Jakarta's political calculus as well.

Modi seems to have tied up the loose ends during his meeting with Wikodo: they agreed to meet annually on the sidelines of multilateral events and raise bilateral trade to $ 50 billion. Modi also ensured a joint panel held three sittings before Wikodo's arrival and came out with five strategic focus areas. The icing on the cake was the statement on maritime cooperation that used the code for expressing annoyance at Chinese naval activity in disputed waters.

But the proviso for annual summits was not a new initiative. Manmohan Singh had worked it out during his interactions with the Indonesian leadership. The trade figure of $ 50 bn by 2025 is an overstatement: in 2005, both countries had fixed the bilateral trade target at $ 25 billion but the actual achievement in 2015 was $ 9 billion. It will be impossible to achieve a four-fold increase in trade in 10 years on the back of such an unimpressive performance.

The five focus areas are not a Modi innovation. They were an exact copy of the priority areas mentioned during Manmohan Singh's visit to Jakarta in 2013. Modi's contribution thus gets reduced to the joint statement on maritime security and India's launch of two Indonesian micro satellites.

Indonesia could have avoided getting embroiled in the formulation on South China Sea. Its approach on China's maritime claims has been to bank on its military strength and political gestures like convening a cabinet meeting on a warship anchored off its Neptune Island.

Indonesia also has a strong card against Beijing its 28 lakh citizens are of Chinese origin. Beijing would not have forgotten how a resolute Indonesian leadership forced it to wring its hands in helplessness when it tried to intervene in the anti-Chinese riots of 1998. If Indonesia still agreed to a statement on maritime security, it is signalling a convergence of views. Indirectly, it is also bidding adieu to strategic ties with Pakistan that is firmly aligned with China.

Both countries need a measure of support in the oceans. Like India, Indonesia has updated its maritime doctrine to venture further out in the seas as well as defend its maritime waters more aggressively. But New Delhi will have to produce concrete deliverables rather than copy-pasting the previous regime's formulations to take the relationship forward.

An energy relationship especially in the petroleum downstream segment could offset the collapse of the coal trade as well as provide a concrete dimension to the strategic relationship. The Pakistani monkey is off their back but both countries still need to add economic ballast to give the relationship a pair of fresh legs.

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Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 29

After the Indian High Commission in New Zealand decided to bear the cost of sending mortal remains of the youth, Hardeep Singh Deol, who was stabbed to death by a girl at Christchurch on Christmas, assurance from Union Minister Sushma Swaraj also came in for help.

Swaraj tweeted in the morning expressing her condolences and sought contact number of the family so that she could speak to them.

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Also read: Youth stabbed in NZ, kin seek help in bringing body

She said she had read the news and has instructed the Indian High Commission in New Zealand to expedite the bringing back of the dead body.

She also spoke to the family and assured full support of the government

Earlier, assurance of help was given by Sandeep Sood, Second Secretary in the Indian High Commission in New Zealand, on Thursday in reply to an email by Sirsa Deputy Commissioner Sharandeep Kaur Brar.

He had also assured that the Indian High Commission will be helping the family in whatever way is possible to expedite the process of sending mortal remains of the youth to his native place.

The Tribune had reported that family of 24-year-old youth Hardeep Singh Deol, who was stabbed to death by a girl at Christchurch in New Zealand on the Christmas day, is helplessly waiting for his dead body at his native place Rania town of Sirsa.

Hardeep Singh Deol, who was on work visa in Christchurch after completing a course in hotel management from that country, was allegedly stabbed by a 22-year-old woman on the Christmas day.

According to information received by the family, the girl was arrested and has been charged with murder.
Jalandhar, December 28

Residents of Surya Enclave Welfare Society today held a demonstration in front of the office of the Jalandhar Improvement Trust (JIT) alleging negligent attitude of the authorities concerned towards their problems.

Led by president Gurcharan Singh Pabla and secretary Om Dutt Sharma, members of society said they were bereft of basic civic amenities in the colony, including good connecting roads and streetlights. We purchased properties in this colony as it came up under the government scheme of the JIT. However, the authorities have given us the same treatment like any other private coloniser. Despite our repeated reminders in writings and meetings, officials have not paid any heed to our demands, they rued. TNS
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, December 29

Two soldiers of the Armys counter-insurgency battalion were injured in a brief gunfight in north Kashmirs Bandipora district this morning.

The gunfight erupted this morning when joint teams of the Special Operations Group of the J&K Police and 13 Rashtriya Rifles Battalion cordoned off Gulshan Mohalla Shahgund at Hajin, over 30 km from Srinagar, after an input about the presence of two or three foreign militants.

As the cordon was being laid, the militants opened indiscriminate firing, injuring two Army jawans, a police officer said. The injured soldiers were shifted to the Armys Srinagar base hospital, where the condition of one of them is stated to be critical.

Police sources said the forces retaliated, triggering a brief gunfight. The militants, however, managed to escape from the area. The forces later carried out searches in the area, but could not trace the militants.

The sources said it was the same group of militants that had recently managed to escape from a neighbouring village in the area.

This year the security forces have suffered heavy casualties. Government figures say 87 security personnel were killed in J&K, the highest since 2008. These men have been killed in militant ambushes, ceasefire violations, counter-infiltration and Border Action Team operations of the Pakistan army on the Line of Control.
Islamabad, December 29

Pakistan on Thursday said it wanted to amicably resolve all outstanding issues with India, including those related to the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) and Kashmir, as there can be no peace in the region unless the Kashmir issue was resolved.

Radio Pakistan quoted Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria as saying during his weekly media briefing that the government was assessing Indias activities within the framework of the water-sharing agreement between the two countries.

Zakaria said the treaty did not allow unilateral abrogation of the agreement and Pakistan is keeping an eye on the evolving situation and would follow its strategy in case of any violation.

There is an arbitration mechanism to resolve the dispute regarding implementation of the treaty and many IWT disputes were resolved amicably in the past, the state-run radio quoted Zakaria as saying.

Pakistan is pursuing the policy of peaceful neighbourhood, he added. Zakaria also urged the international community to play its due role in resolving the longstanding Kashmir issue. He accused India of continually violating the UN Charter, saying a country that did not abide by international law should not be granted membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. India had recently said it would fully utilise its 20 per cent share of the Indus waters and that the proposed water projects would not be in any violation of the treaty. Pakistan has disputed Indias contention and sought intervention by the World Bank. Zakaria said the Kashmir dispute was a bone of contention between Pakistan and India and urged the international community to play its role in resolving the issue. IANS
Jammu, December 29

The Pakistan Army on Thursday fired at Indian positions on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, defence sources said here.

Sources told IANS that the Indian Army retaliated the violation by Pakistan of a 2003 ceasefire between the two countries.

However, no casualties were reported on the Indian side in the firing in Gulpur sector of Poonch district along the Line of Control -- the de facto border that divides Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

The firing from Pakistan started at 9 am. Our troops have effectively retaliated. So far, no casualty or damage was reported from our side, an army spokesperson said.

Exchanges of fire were still going on in the area hours after the Pakistan Army opened an unprovoked fire, the spokesperson said.

It was a fresh border firing between the two countries after a lull following weeks of heavy exchange of fire on the LoC and the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir since the September 29 surgical strike by the Indian Army targeting terror launch pads in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. IANS
Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, December 28

On a call given by the All-India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) and the All-India Bank Officers Association (AIBOA), the Punjab Bank Employees Federation (Ludhiana) today held a protest in front of the State Bank of Patiala, Zonal Office, Miller Ganj.

While addressing the bank employees, leaders of the federation said: Rs 14 lakh crore worth of currency notes were withdrawn from circulation with the hope that a bulk of it, which is black money, will be removed from the economy. But we observe almost the entire money has come back to the banks, belying all expectations of the Centre.

The fact that the announcement of demonetisation was made without proper planning to supply replacement cash is now creating so much problems for the public, bank customers and bank employees and officers, they said.

News reports that huge amounts in new currency were recovered from some eminent persons are putting bank staff under suspicion. Hence, the government should immediately order a CBI inquiry to find out how such huge cash is going out, they added.

They have asked the government to ensure supply of adequate cash to all banks and ATMs, stop favouritism in supply of cash and provide compensation to families of members of the general public, bank customers and bank staff who have lost their lives due to demonetisation.
Jaswant Shetra

Jagraon, December 28

A high drama was witnessed outside the Food Corporation of India (FCI), Jagraon depot, today when members of the Rice Millers Association, Jagraon, held a protest outside it.

While raising slogans against the FCI authorities, the members of the association led by its Jagraon president Hari Om alleged that the FCI officials demanded bribe from them for dumping their rice in the depot.

Earlier, we used to pay bribe to the FCI officials but after demonetisation, we are not able to pay bribe to them due to which we are being harassed, alleged Hari Om.

He also objected to the presence of RTI activist Kapil Bansal in the FCI office claiming that the FCI authorities accept bribes from rice millers through Bansal.

Bansal, on the other hand, said he had sought information about some rice mills under the RTI Act due to which some rice millers were targeting him.

I visited the FCI office today to ask about the status of information I had sought under the RTI Act, claimed Bansal.

After some time, a police team also reached the spot. The police tried to pacify the protesting rice millers. But they continued raising slogans.

When the SSP, Jagraon, Opinderjit Singh Ghuman, got information about the matter, he rushed DSP (D) RS Bhullar to the spot. The rice millers also lodged a written complaint with the police alleging that the FCI authorities demanded bribe from them.

Confirming that the police have received a complaint from the association, Bhullar said they would investigate the matter and an appropriate action would be taken in this regard.

Denying the allegations of demanding bribe, Ravi Srivastav Assistant Manager, FCI Jagraon depot, said the protest was the result of an internal dispute between the rice mill owners and they were wrongly blaming the FCI authorities for the same.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that majority of the demonetised currency has been replaced.

By India Today Web Desk: As the government nears its 50-day deadline to end the cash crisis following the demonetisation drive, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said that "remonetisation has advanced" and "not a single incident of unrest has been reported" so far.

Here is all that he said:

Thanking people for supporting the Narendra Modi-led demonetisation drive, the Finance Minister allayed fears of cash crunch and said "the Reserve Bank of India has a large amount of currency available".

"Majority of the old currency has been replaced. More Rs 500 notes are coming in circulation," said Arun Jaitley. Jaitley's assurances come after workers at the RBI printing press in Salboni, West Bengal, refused to work overtime, a move set to impact currency production.

Promising an improved cash situation in 2017, the Finance Minister said, "things will be better than what they were in the last six weeks or so".

The Finance Minister said tax collections have increased across segments. "Till November 30, there has been an increase of 26.2 per cent in central indirect tax, including an increase of 43.5 per cent in excise duty, 25.7 per cent in service tax and 5.6 per cent in custom duty," he said.

The minister also countered reports on Rabi crops taking a hit due to demonetisation, and said, "the Rabi crop sowing is 6.3 per cent higher as compared to last year".

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ALSO READ: PM Modi's New Year eve address to nation likely at 7.30 pm. What next on demonetisation?

ALSO READ: Demonetisation: Cash crunch eases in urban areas, chaos prevails in rural India

ALSO WATCH

--- ENDS ---
Kabul, December 29

The head of the Sikh community in Afghanistans restive Kunduz city was shot dead by unknown gunmen today, the second such incident within three months, triggering fear among the minority group members.

Lala Del Souz was gunned down at about 9 am in the Haji Gulistan Kochi Haman area of the city, Tolo News reported. He was reportedly on his way to his shop when the shooting occurred. He died of injuries while being taken to hospital, the report said.

According to relatives of the deceased, he had been shot five years ago but survived the attack. Kunduz security chief Masoum Stanikzai confirmed the incident and said police have arrested three suspects.

Investigations will however continue, he said.

Del Souzs uncle Prem said the deceased was well liked and had no enemies.

The shooting, meanwhile, sparked an outcry on social media with hundreds of people condemning the incident and sending condolences to his family. Prem, however, called on the government to thoroughly investigate the incident and make sure those responsible are brought to justice. He said if this does not happen, the few remaining Sikhs will sell up and leave the province.

Following the collapse of Kunduz to Taliban, many Sikhs left the province. Currently only three families are still there, the report said.

Sikhs have lived in Kunduz for over 30 years and at one time there were as many as 40 families in the area.

After the collapse of Kunduz city last year, Del Souz apparently moved his family to India. He stayed on in Kunduz and lived with his uncle. Close to 99 per cent of Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan have left the country over the past three decades. Sikh and Hindu population numbered 220,000 in the 1980s. It is now estimated that only 1,350 Hindus and Sikhs remain in the country, the report said.

Hindus and Sikhs suffered huge setbacks after the Taliban regime collapsed in 2001. This forced many of them to leave rural areas and move to Kabul in order to make a living.

In October, a Sikh man was abducted from his home and gunned down by suspected militants in Afghanistans restive Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan.  PTI
Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 29

The BJP on Thursday hinted at legal action against Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala who today alleged close ties between Gujarati businessman Mahesh Champaklal Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah.

Surjewala made the allegations today in Jaipur.

Read: Congress to launch three-phase agitation against note ban from Jan 6

A day before the December 30 deadline for the acceptance of old currency, Surjewala asked the PM to apologise to the nation for the suffering caused to the people by the note-ban when he speaks to the nation on the New Years Eve.

Surjewala also linked him and Shah to Ahmedabad-based real estate dealer Mahesh Shah, who voluntarily declared Rs 13,860 crore under the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS).



Rubbishing any such link, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad dubbed the Congress as the biggest patron of corruption and dared it to come out with a proof, if it had one.

If Congress has any proof, it should talk about it. Otherwise, we will consider taking legal action under the law dealing with levelling of baseless allegations, he said.



Prasad also rejected Congress charge against Amit Shahwho is one of the directors in a Gujarat bank in which deposits of over Rs 500 crore were made. The bank, he said, had over 200 branches and would give an explanation independently.



The Congress is shamelessly making these wild allegations in the hope that it will weaken this governments resolve and action against the corrupt would be slowed, but it is mistaken. This government will not yield to any pressure, no one will be spared, he said.



Meanwhile, amid speculations of a thanksgiving address by the PM before the dawn of the New Year, party leaders are also expecting a big announcement by him from Lucknow on January 2.

Notably, the 50-day time period sought by him to ease out the situation gets over on December 30.



Next, the party is preparing to deal with the negative fall-outs of the move in poll-bound statesGoa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhandthe election dates of which are expected to be announced anytime soon.

Handling peoples perceptions will be the top agenda of the BJP when it gathers for the national executive meeting in New Delhi on January 6 and 7.



The party will also announce candidates for the five states soon thereafter. Hoping to cash in politically on demonetisation and PMs slew of actions against corruption, the BJP is dismissive of Congress threat of countrywide protests from January 6.






Washington, December 29

According to a US-based arms control organisation, a draft proposal for accepting new members into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) paves way for Indias entry but leaves out Pakistan.

Last week, the US media reported that former NSG chairman Rafael Mariano Grossi had prepared a two-page document, explaining how a non-NPT state, like India and Pakistan, could join the group.

The document prepared by Grossi, acting on behalf of the current chairman Song Young-wan of South Korea, enjoys a semi-official status, reports the Dawn.

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Grossis draft note proposes that one non-NPT member state should reach an understanding not to block consensus on membership for another non-NPT member state.

Arms Control Association (ACA) executive director Daryl Kimball said Pakistan still had grounds to object to the formula outlined by Grossi.

He explains the document will require Pakistan to meet the same criteria for membership as India, adding Islamabad will have to win a separate NSG exemption from the full-scope safeguards requirement to engage in civil nuclear trade with the NSG states.

Present NSG membership rules require a state to sign the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) before joining the exclusive club.

India remains one of the only three countries, with Israel and Pakistan, to have never signed the NPT.

Earlier this year, India formally applied for membership and was followed by Pakistan. The United States and a host of other western nations back Indias application, but China and some others are blocking New Delhis membership, which requires a consensus of all members.

The proposal requires a non-NPT state to declare that it has brought into force a clear and strict separation of current and future civilian nuclear facilities from non-civilian nuclear facilities and is willing to apply this principle to future facilities as well.

The new member also needs to assure NSG that it has provided and maintains a declaration to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that identifies all current and future civilian nuclear facilities. ANI
Kabul, December 29

The head of the Sikh community in Afghanistans restive Kunduz city was shot dead by unidentified gunmen on Thursday, the second such incident within three months, triggering fear among the minority group members.

Lala Del Souz was gunned down at about 9am in the Haji Gulistan Kochi Haman area of the city, Tolo News reported.

He was reportedly on his way to his shop when the shooting occurred. He died of his injuries while being taken to hospital, the report said.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

According to relatives of the deceased, he had been shot at five years ago but survived the attack.

Kunduz security chief Masoum Stanikzai confirmed the incident saying police had arrested three suspects.

Investigations will however continue, he said.

Del Souzs uncle, Prem, said the deceased had been well-liked and had no enemies.

The shooting, meanwhile, sparked an outcry on social media with hundreds of people condemning the incident and sending condolences to his family.

Prem, however, called on the government to thoroughly investigate the incident and make sure those responsible were brought to justice. He said if this did not happen, the few remaining Sikhs would leave the province.

Following the collapse of Kunduz to Taliban, many Sikhs left the province. Currently only three families are still there, the report said.

Sikhs have lived in Kunduz for over 30 years and at one time there were as many as 40 families in the area.

After the collapse of Kunduz city last year, Del Souz apparently moved his family to India. He stayed on in Kunduz and lived with his uncle.

Close to 99 per cent of Hindu and Sikh in Afghanistan have left the country over the past three decades.

Sikh and Hindu population numbered 2.2 lakh in the 1980s.

It is now estimated that only 1,350 Hindus and Sikhs remain in the country, the report said.

Hindus and Sikhs suffered huge setbacks after the Taliban regime collapsed in 2001. This forced many of them to leave rural areas and move to Kabul to make a living.

In October, a Sikh man was kidnapped from his home and gunned down by suspected militants in Afghanistans restive Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan.

Sardar Rawail Singh, who lived in Jalalabad, was kidnapped from his house by militants wearing military fatigues and killed in Khalis Famil area. PTI
Washington, December 29

The outgoing Obama administration is planning a series of fresh sanctions against Russia for its alleged role in cyber hacking into servers and emails of American political parties and leaders in the run up to the general elections, multiple media reports have said.

Quoting unnamed senior administration officials, CBS News and CNN said the new set of sanctions is likely to target the Russian intelligence agency and its official.

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US officials believe that the spy agency operated with the blessing of the Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The sanctions could be announced as early as Thursday, CNN reported.

Obama has already announced investigations into the alleged Russian hacking. The report is expected early January.

US president-elect Donald Trump told reporters that the administration "should do the best they can, figure it all out."

CBS News said the White House is seeking measures the incoming administration can't reverse. Trump has so far refused to acknowledge Russia's role in the cyberattacks.

Administration officials would also like to make it difficult for President-elect Donald Trump to roll back any action they take.

"Part of the goal here is to make sure that we have as much of the record public or communicated to Congress in a form that would be difficult to simply walk back," one senior administration official told The Washington Post.

Reacting to media reports, Russia has said such a move by the US would be considered as provocative and warned of retaliation.

The sanctions is likely to name individuals associated with the hacking and having close contacts with the government.

"If Washington really does take new hostile steps, they will be answered...any action against Russian diplomatic missions in the US will immediately bounce back on US diplomats in Russia," a spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

According to CNN, the US actions are expected to include expanded sanctions and diplomatic measures.

In October, the United States formally blamed Russia for political hacking attacks, saying they were intended to interfere with American elections. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Interfax that the accusations are "nonsense."

Earlier this month, CIA officials told US media they had "high confidence" that Russian hackers had attempted to sway the US election in Trump's favour.

The Trump team responded to those reports by saying "these are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction". PTI
Washington, December 29

US President-elect Donald Trump has accused Barack Obama of putting roadblocks in the path of a smooth transition.

Trump made this accusation in a tweet, but did not give any details about it.

It is believed that he was apparently referring to some of the policy decisions, including those related to Israel being taken by the outgoing Obama Administration.

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Doing my best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition - NOT! Trump said in a tweet.

Later the President-elect told reporters in Florida that he spoke over phone with Obama, who is currently on his annual vacation in Hawaii.

He phoned me. We had a very nice conversation, he said.

Did you bring up any of your concerns about these roadblocks? he was asked.

We had a general conversation. I think the secretarys speech really spoke for itself. But we had a very general conversation; very, very nice. Appreciated that he called me, Trump said. PTI
All top ministers of the Modi Cabinet have been asked to inform people in their respective constituencies about the benefits of note ban.

Modi ministers have been asked to explain to people the benefits of demonetisation (PTI Photo)

By Reema Parashar: The Narendra Modi government is planning a massive campaign in support of demonetisation which has been widely criticised by Opposition parties. All top ministers of the Modi Cabinet have been asked to inform people in their respective constituencies about the benefits of note ban.

The deadline for depositing old Rs 500, 1000 notes ends December 30 and sources within the government say that there is a realisation in the top brass that issues concerning demonetisation is likely to continue for some more days. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while announcing the note ban on November 8, had asked people for 50-day time before things start to normalise.

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HERE'S HOW GOVT PLANS TO TACKLE DEMONETISATION DEMON AFTER 50-DAY DEADLINE

All minister's have been asked to visit at least 10 places and hold rallies/mass contact event. The towns visited by each minister to be mix of rural and urban places. More focus on poll bound states such as Uttar Pradesh, Punjab. Leaders have been asked to focus more on rural areas. A detailed dossier on demonitisation has been given to all the central ministers explaining need of note ban and various milestones achieved along with success stories. There is a realisation in the government that demonetisation related problems is likely continue for some time. Therefore common people must be engaged. All mass media platforms from radio, TV to field publicity to be used for the special campaign. Radio and TV advertisements have already been rolled out. Sources disclosed to India Today that a 60-page document has been distributed to all ministers by the finance ministry in which every aspect of demonetisation has been described. The booklet answers questions such as why the step was needed, future action plan and impact on major policies concerning education, agriculture, development of the nation.

PM LIKELY TO ADDRESS NATION ON DEC 31

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing the nation on December 31 at 7.30 pm. PM Modi is likely to focus on the 'success' of his government in view of the November 8 announcement of banning old Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes.

The PM has already indicated that he is planning some more sweeping reforms after demonetisation. The PM's speech will be closely watched as it will come a couple of days after the 50-day deadline that the prime minister had sought for things to normalise after note ban. In his public meetings since demonetisation, PM Modi has been promising people that their problems would start to ease after the 50-day period.

Despite the government claiming that it has been doing everything to contain the adverse effect of demonetisation, people across the country are still struggling to cope with the sudden move.

Long queues outside ATMs across the country has become a common sight since November 8, and experts say it will take months before things normalise.

ALSO READ:

PM Modi's New Year eve address to nation likely at 7.30 pm. What next on demonetisation?

Demonetisation puzzle: How will PM's black money scheme work after Dec 30?

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--- ENDS ---
President-elect Trump speaking during the election campaign. Image: DonaldJTrump.com

Donald Trump has yet to be sworn into office as the 45th President of the United States, so its still far too soon to confidently predict how his stated goal of reducing the federal regulation of American business will be met in 2017.

Trump has already pledged to issue a temporary moratorium on new agency regulations that are not compelled by Congress or public safety. He has also stated that all department heads will submit a list of every wasteful and unnecessary regulation which kills jobs, and which does not improve public safety, and eliminate them. So, he is not clearly not expecting Congress to roll over on its authority to mandate rulemakings. Whats more, Trumps policy statement does not define what constitutes public safety, which could well include rules aimed at improving highway safety.

Even if a presidential moratorium is put in place, major lobbies, such as the American Trucking Associations, will keep pushing their respective agendas on Capitol Hill. Any new safety-related rules sought by the trucking industry, such as hair-testing for driver drug use, legislated into law as Congressional mandates will have to be enacted by the Trump Administration.

The other main avenue for regulatory rollback is the rarely used Congressional Review Act. Although enacted in 1996, it has been leveraged but once. In March, 2001, CRA was used to overturn an OSHA ergonomic rule issued the year before in the last months of the Clinton Administration. CRA is an oversight tool, but no magic wand.

CRA is of limited use because it has a critical time clock built into it. Under CRA, a resolution can be used to overturn an executive rule only if the rule was enacted within 60 legislative days, which in this case covers only rules that were enacted by a federal agency going back to the end of May, 2016.

Here then, in no particular order, are summaries of the status of seven trucking-critical rules that may come into effective or change this year:

Hours of Service

President Obama signed a bill in mid-December that contains language to permanently fix a glitch in previous legislation that threatened use of a 34-hour restart as part of the hours-of-service rule. The Continuing Resolution was passed by Congress to avert a year-end government shutdown.

The provision in the CR requires DOT to follow the existing 34-hour restart Hours of Service rule for truck drivers to ensure continuity in federal rest regulations, should the report on the rule (mandated in prior Acts) not meet the criteria set by Congress.

A policy rider attached to an earlier bill had been so poorly written it inadvertently added requirements to a mandated Department of Transportation study (still under way) on the effectiveness of the restart provisions. As a result, language was cut on which HOS rule would apply if the goals to be weighed by the study were not met.

If the study was to find that some restrictions on the restart imposed by DOT in 2013 do not provide specific health and safety benefits to drivers, the entire restart-- not just the restrictions- could be eliminated. Those restrictions were suspended while DOT performs the study. So, the CR provision simply reinstated the pre-July 2013 restart.

Electronic Logging Devices

FMCSA announced a final rule earlier this month that mandates the use of electronic logging devices for all trucks of model-year 2000 or newer used in interstate commerce. Carriers and drivers must transition to ELDs by December 17, 2017. However, those carriers and drivers using automatic onboard recording devices prior to December 18, 2017, may continue using AOBRDs through December 16, 2019. Suppliers of ELDs must conform to technical specifications, certify their ELDs, and register them with FMCSA.

Given that the ELD rule was mandated under a GOP House majority (in 2012), it is highly improbable the new Congress will move to roll it back. Its just as unlikely that the latest legal challenge to the rule brought by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association will succeed. In October, a three-judge panel ruled against OOIDA in its lawsuit against FMCSA, which claimed the rule violation truck drivers Fourth Amendment rights of privacy. OOIDDAs latest petition calls for a full court to hear the case.

GHG Phase 2

The Phase 2 greenhouse gas/ fuel efficiency sets CO2 limits for Model Year 2021 to 2027 trucks and tractors and Model Year 2018 to 2027 trailers as entire vehicles. The rule also sets separate engine fuel-efficiency standards for each category of commercial vehicle and, for the first time, also regulate trailers.

Taken as a whole, the rule requires engine manufacturers to reduce CO2 emissions by 4%-5% from 2017 through 2027 and to attain fuel efficiency improvements of 16% or better for vocational and heavy-duty vehicles.

Because the rule was initiated by federal agencies, the incoming Congress could opt to roll it back or slow down its implementation.

Meal/Rest Break Exemptions

In 2017, trucking lobbyists will again seek a legislative provision that would prevent individual states from enacting their own meal and rest break rules for CDL drivers as well as to prohibit states from requiring that those drivers be paid certain types of added compensation, such as detention pay. That effort failed on Capitol Hill no less than three times in 2016.

Proponents of the reform measure have been pushing hard for Congress to more directly address state preemption of federal driver rules ever since a Supreme Court ruling in May 2015 upheld a California statute requiring a paid 10-minute rest break every four hours and a paid 30-minute meal period every five hours for truck drivers.

Sanitary Food Transportation

A final rule issued by the Food and Drug Administration will require motor carriers that haul human and animal food to use certain sanitary practices. The rule will take effect on June 6 for carriers with revenues over $27.5 million and private fleets with more than 500. Smaller carriers will have to be compliant a year later.

The rule aims to prevent practices that create food safety risks, such as failure to properly refrigerate food and inadequate cleaning of vehicles between loads. It will require carriers to constantly monitor temperatures and humidity levels inside reefer and dry trailers and vans when they haul certain perishable food for human or animal consumption.

While FDA will be the primary enforcer, carriers could see enforcement by state DOT inspectors once they become more familiar with the requirements.

Compliance Safety Accountability

In the fall, FMCSA announced a set of proposed changes to CSA. These would increase the minimum number of crashes needed for determining whether a carrier receives a score in the Crash Indicator BASIC from two to three and assigning BASIC percentile ratings only to carriers that have had an inspection with a violation in the past year vs. within the current 24-month period.

In addition, FMCSAs Safety Measurement System could come under fire by the Trump Administration due to concern over the use of SMS by trial lawyers. That concern fits under the tort reform posture favored by many GOP lawmakers by contrast, Democrats on Capitol Hill tend to favor the right of accident victims to sue.

Speed Limiters

After a decade-long push by trucking and safety advocates, back in August NHTSA and FMCSA jointly proposed a rule that would require that heavy-duty vehicles be equipped with speed-limiting devices.

The rule would require each vehicle, as manufactured and sold, to have its device set to a speed not greater than a specified speed and to be equipped with means of reading the vehicles current speed setting and the two previous speed settings through its onboard diagnostic connection. And carriers would be required to maintain the speed-limiting device for the service life of the vehicle.

But no speed limit has been proposed yet for the proposed limiters. DOT has only proposed discussing the benefits of setting the maximum speed at 60, 65, and 68 miles per hour and that it will consider other speeds based on public input.

Final comments on the proposal, after a 30-day extension because of high interest, were due on Dec. 7. At that point, more than 5,400 comments had already been filed. Given that, its unlikely this rule will move forward very quickly and if it is ever finalized, it will be with the speed-differential issue addressed.

Time and, above all, politics will tell what happens to each of these rules-- and whatever new ones may pop up-- as 2017 plays out.
Its happened every year for a quarter century, and its as impressive and touching each time. Thats Wreaths Across America, the annual effort in the weeks before Christmas to load, haul and distribute evergreen wreaths to military cemeteries for placement on the graves of deceased service members. That happens on the third Saturday in December.

Thousands of volunteers do it, and many are truckers who know that freedom is bought and paid for by the sacrifices of soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen, so many of whom have died while serving our country.

The Truckload Carriers Association and American Trucking Associations are among the organizations sponsors, and some of its members participate by lending equipment used in the haul. Some of the vehicles carry special graphics honoring the military. One of TCAs member companies involved is Dart Transit, which outfitted three tractors and trailers for this years occasion.

Missing Word Solutions, which produces podcasts for Dart, alerted us to that fleet's involvement, and sent us a link to the Wreaths Facebook page where scores of photos show scenes from this years effort. Click through it and youll see rigs from companies you know, like Schneider out of Green Bay, Wisconsin, and some you might not know, like Poland Springs, which bottles water near Portland, Maine. And you'll see the faces of the many men, women and children volunteers.

Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia was the destination of the first shipment of Christmas wreaths in 1992, and is still included. ATA's Share the Road program sponsored a rig this year, and it carried 3,500 wreaths to Arlington. More than 1 million wreaths were hauled to cemeteries around the country and overseas, an ATA statement said.

Many other cemeteries now get them. One is the relatively obscure North Dakota Veterans Cemetery at Bismarck, where 472 people came to place the wreaths. "Many cleared snow for those who weren't able to so that wreaths would be leaning against headstones properly," according to a Facebook posting.

A Dart o-o, Pat Wortham, hauled a load of wreaths there. In an interview with Greg Thompson of Missing Word, Wortham explains why he did the run. That podcast also tells the inspiring history of Wreaths. Its well worth a listen.
Photo via U.S. Department of Transportation

In addition to Heavy Duty Trucking magazine's news coverage of the trucking industry, our editors also provided commentary to give insight and context to 2016's stories - both big and small.

Here are the most-read blog posts from 2016:

1. Bernie Sanders vs. Trucks  and the Importance of Context

Bernie Sanders was just one of the politicians in 2016 who's words were sometimes taken out of context finds HDT Editor in Chief Deborah Lockridge in her All That's Trucking blog.

2. Of Spuds, Sleep, and Faulty Statistics

Deborah Lockridge writes that an accident that closed I-77 in North Carolina illustrates how driver fatigue is a problem that is a lot more complex than just creating regulations saying when truckers can and cant drive  and how enforcement sometimes erroneously targets truckers in the name of safety.

3. NTSB Confirms Tesla Was Speeding When It Hit That Trailer

Senior Editor Tom Berg examines the circumstances that led to a Tesla car on autopilot to hit a big white trailer in broad daylight in his Trailer Talk blog.

4. Whose Infrastructure Ours or Theirs?

Listen carefully when you hear a politician or a lobbyist speak of infrastructure. To really mean anything, that big ugly word has got to be qualified cautions Executive Editor David Cullen in this Passing Zone blog entry.

5. Phase 2 GHG Regs for Trailers Both Simple and Complex

Trailers have long been regulated for safety. But trailers contributions to fuel economy and reduced emissions are new matters for federal authorities.

6. Tailgating Driver Not a Complete Idiot

A motorist doing some high-speed tailgating on an Interstate highway in Arizona loses control, bumps a semi and crashes big time.

7. Whole Lotta Leasin' Goin' On

Anyone who knows trucking knows an awful lot of the trucks running around this big country are not owned by the company whose name is stenciled on the trucks door or emblazoned, logo and all, along the side. Maybe even more than you think.

8. Powered Trailer Axle Provides an Off-Road Boost

SAF Trak axle is powered from the tractors hydraulic wet kit. On the trailer, two hydraulic motors, one at each axle end, turn the wheels to help get the rig moving in slippery conditions.

9. Leaky Roofs, Plugged DPFs and a Rainbow of Coolants: TMC Tackles Them All

What Equipment Editor Jim Park learned from sessions like TMC's Fleet Forum is that you probably aren't the only truck owner having a particular problem. It puts the boots to the oft-heard comment from dealers, "Gee, I've never heard that one before."

10. What Does a Skateboarder Have to do with CSA?

A tragic accident illustrates why carriers want the Compliance, Safety, Accountability program to include crash accountability.
The bank manager helped a senior citizen withdraw his pension money on a priority basis and sent him home in his own car after the man fell ill while standing in bank queue.

By Manogya Loiwal : In the current scenario where on one hand people are dying in the bank queue and no one is paying heed to their condition, the bank employees of the South Dinajpur branch of the State Bank Of India, on the other hand, assisted a senior citizen who fell ill in the queue.

They helped him to withdraw his pension on a priority basis and sent him home in their own car.

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79-year-old pension holder Jyotish Bose had gone to the bank to withdraw his pension. While standing in the long queue he felt dizzy and was immediately assisted by the bank staff and other people standing there. The bank manager then helped Bose by withdrawing his money and handing it over to him.

READ: What was demonetisation's real motive, asks Rahul; Mamata asks if Modi will resign after 50 days

The bank manager then arranged for a car for Bose who was later dropped to his home. The 79-year-old came back on the next day with his family to thank the manager.

Jyotish Bose with SBI South Dinajpur branch bank manager. (Photo: MRIDUL HORE)

"Today I came here to thank the manager of the bank. Yesterday I had come to the bank and it was very crowded after which I suddenly became ill and felt dizzy. After that the staff and the customers made me sit. The bank manager came and he gave me my money and after that he sent me home by his car," said Jyotish Bose.

Bose's relative, Raja Bose who was very touched by the bank manager's considerate action, said, "Today I came to the bank to thank the manager who yesterday helped my ill uncle in withdrawing his pension money".

This gesture by the bank authorities has restored faith of the people in the bank and is being appreciated by the locals.

(With inputs from Mridul Hore in South Dinajpur)

Also Read:

Withdrawal of specified bank notes will impart far reaching changes going forward: RBI Governor

Why does Lalu believe demonetisation is a bad idea for India

Lalu to India Today: Modi like Uncle Podger, people will punish him for notes ban

Mamata calls raid on Tamil Nadu chief secretary vindictive, asks why Amit Shah spared

--- ENDS ---
Update: Rep. Dan Kirby on Thursday said that he was wrongfully accused of sexual harassment, while the incoming House speaker said he was authorizing an investigation into a settlement agreement related to the allegation.

Kirby, R-Tulsa, also said the settlement using $44,500 in taxpayer funds was made without his knowledge or consent.

Kirby, who had earlier indicated that he intended to resign, released a statement Thursday morning about his decision to stay in office:

"After speaking with my family and friends, I sent a letter rescinding my resignation so that I might have an opportunity to clear my name and complete my term. When I was wrongfully accused of sexual harassment, I was told that I should refrain from making any statements to the media. I followed that advice under the assumption that I would be able to deny the allegations at some point in the future. On December 21, 2016, I found out that the claim against the Oklahoma House of Representatives had been settled without my knowledge or consent when I read an article in the Oklahoman newspaper. I have never seen the settlement agreement nor do I have any knowledge of the terms contained in the settlement agreement. I would like to make it clear that the allegations of sexual harassment are untrue and I had no role in settling the claims made against the Oklahoma House of Representatives."

Also on Thursday, House Speaker-elect Charles A. McCall said in a news release that he is authorizing an investigation into the wrongful termination settlement paid out of House funds. The bipartisan House Rules Committee in January will look into the sexual harassment allegations and review the authority of the House to use operational funds to settle claims.

McCall said all findings by the committee will be made public, and the House will take any available actions against lawmakers warranted by the investigation.

Below is the article as it appeared in Thursday's Tulsa World:

OKLAHOMA CITY  Rep. Dan Kirby, who announced his resignation last week in the midst of a controversy over sexual harassment accusations and secret settlements, now says he has decided to remain in office.

Kirby, R-Tulsa, last week notified leadership that he was resigning after a story in The Oklahoman indicated the House had paid $44,500 to his fired executive assistant and her attorneys to settle a sexual harassment claim.

In a fax Wednesday to House Speaker-elect Charles McCall, R-Atoka, Kirby said his Dec. 23 email and telephone call indicating his intention to resign did not comply with state law.

I have determined that my decision to resign was hasty and based upon bad advice, the fax said. I have no intent to resign my office as Representative for District 75  House of Representatives for the State of Oklahoma.

I believe it in the best interests of my constituents that I serve out the term that they graciously elected me to serve.

Kirby confirmed for the Tulsa World on Wednesday evening that he has rescinded his resignation.

Jason Sutton, a spokesman for McCall, said McCall had not spoken with Kirby. McCalls office had only received the fax, Sutton said.

Michael McNutt, a spokesman for Gov. Mary Fallin, confirmed that the Governors Office also received a similar notice by fax.

Kirbys email on Friday night to McCall said he was resigning his position because distractions from recent events would keep him from serving his constituents in the manner they deserve.

The resignation was supposed to be effective Dec. 31.

A report by The Oklahoman on Dec. 20 stated that records show the Oklahoma House of Representatives quietly paid Kirbys former assistant, Hollie Anne Bishop, and her attorney $44,500 in state funds on Nov. 22 to resolve her claim to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Newly released records showed former House Speaker Jeff Hickman, in his last days in that position, approved the confidential settlement to Bishop.

In a tort claim filed in January, Bishops attorney said Kirby began sexually harassing Bishop shortly after she started working for him in January 2015. The claim called Kirbys actions unwanted and unwarranted and said they created a hostile work environment.

Kirby recently was elected to his fifth term in House District 75, representing parts of Tulsa and Broken Arrow.
A Princes Town homeowner says he believes a water leak is to blame for a landslip affecting their home.

He tells our reporter Cindy Raghubar-Teekersingh that his investigations reveal that it' a WASA leak, and although he's made numerous reports to the authority, they continue to ignore his complaints.
By PTI: Mumbai, Dec 28 (PTI) Maharashtra Election Commission today asked the Aurangabad district collector to file an FIR against state BJP president Raosaheb Danve for his statement where he asked voters to accept "Laxmi" before the polls.

Danve had made the controversial statement at a campaign rally in Paithan in Aurangabad district on December 17 before the municipal council polls.

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"On the eve of elections, Laxmi comes to your house and you should accept it," Danve had said at Paithan rally.

An Election Commission official said here that the Commission had asked Aurangabad collector to file a first information report against the BJP leader for violation of model code of conduct.

Earlier the Commission had served a show-cause notice to Danve who had defended himself, saying he did not mean money when he referred to "Laxmi".

Congress and AAP had complained to the Election Commission demanding action against the state BJP chief. PTI MR KRK KIS

--- ENDS ---
Hi, my name is Scott C. Waring and I wrote a few books and am currently a ESL School Owner in Taiwan. I have had my own UFO sighting up close and personal, but that's how it works right? A non believer becomes a believer when they experience their first sighting. You witnessed it, your perceptual field changes, so now you need to share it.





I created this site to help the UFO community get a little bit organized. I noticed that there was a lot of chaos when searching for UFO sighting reports, so I hope this site helps. I wanted to support those eyewitnesses who have tried to tell others about what they have seen, yet were laughed at by even closest of friends.





More and more each day the governments of the world leak bits and pieces of UFO information to the public. They have a trickle down theory in hopes of slowly getting citizens use to the idea that we are not alone in universe and never have been. The truth is being leaked drop by drop until one day we look around and find ourselves neck high in it.





The discovery of alien species in existence is the most monumental scientific event in human history, suppression of that information is a crime against humanity.





About me:

I live in Taiwan. I OWN MY OWN ENGLISH SCHOOL, AND ONCE HAD 5 SCHOOLS.

Am Former USAF at SAC base (flight line).

Age: 42

Educ: BA in Elem ed. Masters in Counseling ed.





I had two UFO sightings, (30+bus size orbs) in military and in 2012 personally saw the UFO over Taipei 101 building on New Years Day (and recored it).
The Infrastructure Ministry plans to allocate UAH 2-3 billion to restore bridges across the country.

Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelian said this in an interview with the Fakty i Kommentarii (Facts and Comments) newspaper.

We plan to allocate about UAH 2-3 billion for the restoration of bridges. Unfortunately, this is a common problem for the whole of Ukraine There are a lot of uncompleted construction projects: a bridge is completed by 80-90 %, but due to the lack of small amount [of funds] it cant be put into operation. I hope that well manage to complete them in 2017, he said.

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Ukraines Infrastructure Ministry is now in talks with two investors, who are ready to build the first section of toll road in Ukraine.

Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelian said this in an interview with Censor.net Ukrainian news portal.

"We have held talks with the two western companies, which are theoretically willing to take small sections of several dozens kilometers in order to simply conduct an experiment. I think we'll launch this work next year," Omelian said.

The Minister stressed that the investors would be able to start construction works next year, and the road would be ready in two or three years.

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Large investments may enter Ukraine thanks to cooperation with the world's major port operators, such as Hutchison Ports (Hong Kong) and DP World (Dubai).

Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelian has stated this in an interview with Fakty newspaper.

We have started negotiations with the world's largest port operators, Hutchison Ports (Hong Kong) and DP World (Dubai), this year. Hopefully, Hutchison Ports will come to Chornomorsk Port next year, which is a key port for the Silk Road and transit traffic via Ukraine. They are set to make large investments. Memoranda have already been signed, Omelian said.

According to him, Hutchison Ports' specialists have already evaluated the port's capacity, logistics and cargo traffic.

We are working with the largest operators only, because we do realize they will bring additional cargo to Ukraine. It also means advanced high technologies, cost effectiveness and additional jobs, Omelian noted.

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In an exclusive - and his first since November 8 when he announced the banning of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes - interview to India Today magazine, Modi said demonetisation has forced all "black money out into the open."

By India Today Web Desk: While the jury is still out on whether or not demonetisation was a gamechanger for India's economy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has shrugged off all criticisms of his drive as it completed 50 turbulent days this week.

READ FULL INDIA TODAY MAGAZINE INTERVIEW HERE

Prime Minister Modi told India Today Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa, "Black money has all been forced out into the open, whomsoever it may belong to-whether it is corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen or professionals. Counterfeit notes, which our intelligence agencies had reported to be available in high volumes with our enemies, have been instantly neutralised. The media has extensively reported on districts famous as counterfeiting hubs being badly hit. Similarly, cash held by terrorists, Maoists and other extremists has also been neutralised. There has been a crippling impact on dangerous and highly damaging illegal activities, such as human trafficking, and the narcotics trade as well."

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In an exclusive - and his first since November 8 when he announced the banning of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes - interview to India Today magazine, Modi said demonetisation has forced all "black money out into the open" and claimed the decision was taken "not for some short-term windfall gain, but for a long-term structural transformation".

"You must understand that we took the decision on demonetisation not for some short-term windfall gain, but for a long-term structural transformation. Our objective clearly was to clean our economy and society of the menace of black money, purging the distrust, artificial pressures and other ills that came with it," he said.

India Today Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa in conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Prime Minister's Office.

10 BEST QUOTES FROM MODI'S INTERVIEW OF THE YEAR: I believe India is standing at a watershed moment, on the cusp of actualising its inherent potential as a developed nation and global leader. An India which is Swachh from all forms of filth. Regarding the frequent modifications, one must be able to distinguish between niti (policy) and ran-niti (strategy) and not put them in the same basket. The decision of demonetisation, which reflects our niti, is unequivocally clear, unwavering and categorical. Our ran-niti, however, needed to be different, aptly summarised by the age-old saying of 'Tu daal-daal, main paat-paat'. To stay a step ahead of the enemy. If you act with clarity and with the purest of motives, the results will be there for any to see. Whatever my critics may say, I seek no personal benefit from all this, only the greater good. This decision (demonetisation) is so huge that even our best economists remain confused in their calculations. India's 1.25 billion citizens, however, have welcomed it wholeheartedly and supported it even in the face of great personal difficulties, intuitively understanding its impact and importance. I pity some of our opponents, especially the Congress leadership, for the desperation they have been exhibiting. On the one hand, they say I took this decision for political dividends, and on the other, they say the people have been troubled and are deeply unhappy. How can the two go together? The government tried its best to keep Parliament functioning. I was keen to speak in both the Houses. Yet, there was a concerted attempt by the Congress to derail the functioning of the Houses rather than have a proper debate. This fashion of reducing any talk of corruption to politics is a dangerous trap. It creates a cover for the many others guilty of the same to get away with it. But, this doesn't mean I condone corruption in politics. I have also repeatedly expressed concern about how our current system of multiple elections not only raises political expenditure, thereby hurting the economy, but also results in the nation perpetually remaining in election mode, stalling governance. I welcome the Election Commission's initiative to explore the possibility of simultaneous assembly and parliamentary elections. It is interesting that the words 'monumental mismanagement' come from a leader (Manmohan Singh) who has been at the helm of India's economic journey for around 45 years - from being the chief economic advisor to the DEA secretary, RBI governor, Planning Commission deputy chairman, finance minister and prime minister - all the while during which large sections of our society have continued to live in poverty and deprivation. If one does an unbiased, objective evaluation of my government's programmes and priorities over the past two and a half years, the one thing that will unambiguously emerge is the centrality of the poor, downtrodden and marginalised.

The full interview is published in this week's India Today magazine. On stands now.

ALSO READ: Not elected to cut ribbon but act against black money: 10 takeaways from Modi's speech in Uttarakhand

ALSO READ: Arun Jaitley assures better new year: More Rs 500 notes in circulation, remonetisation to improve

ALSO READ: Demonetisation: Govt's post Dec 30 strategy includes a massive media campaign

WATCH: Interview of the Year with PM Narendra Modi, Newsmaker of the Year - his first since demonetisation

--- ENDS ---
The Government of Costa Rica has introduced a visa-free regime for Ukrainian citizens for visits for up to 90 days.

Ukraines Foreign Ministry consular service department posted this on Facebook.

"The Government of Costa Rica introduces a visa-free regime for Ukrainian citizens, bearers of all types of passports, for visits for up to 90 days starting from December 2016, "the statement reads.

As noted, a fee of $29, regardless of the type of a visitors passport, should be paid when leaving the territory of Costa Rica.

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Rumours of Shraddha Kapoor and Farhan Akhtar's romance have been doing the rounds for a few months now.

By India Today Web Desk: Ever since Farhan Akhtar's 15-year-long marriage with his hairstylist wife Adhuna Bhabani came to an end, his name has been linked to his leading ladies. But while rumours of his romance with Aditi Rao Hydari fizzled out shortly after the release of Wazir, Farhan and Shraddha's link-up continues to be the talk of the town.

ALSO READ: Is Farhan's Wazir co-star Aditi Rao Hydari the reason behind his split with Adhuna?

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If a report in SpotboyE is to be believed, Shraddha even moved in with Farhan last week. However, her father Shakti Kapoor was livid and reached Farhan's apartment with his sister-in-law Padmini Kolhapure. Reportedly, Shakti forced Shraddha to cut short her live-in arrangement and return home.

It is being said that Shraddha's parents are unhappy with her choice - Farhan is still legally married to his estranged wife and even has two kids.

However, Shakti Kapoor later confirmed that the news of him manhandling Shraddha and getting her out of Farhan's house is entirely false.

"That's total crap! It's all shit. Somebody else also called me to inform me about this, but don't believe it. It's total, total, total crap," Shakti told Bollywoodlife.com.

When asked about his opinion on the entire episode, he added, "See I have been in this industry for over 35 years now. I know what happens so we don't react to such things. It's okay."

--- ENDS ---
No society is perfect and history must also be seen as a guide on what went wrong and what were the contradictions, deficiencies and wellness of the past.

There has been an unfortunate tendency in our country from time-to-time to take umbrage at the expression of any view perceived to be hostile to our social and cultural institutions past or present.

Similarly, critical appreciation of our heroes and national icons of the past have been met with hostility and sometimes even violence.

The freedom to doubt , disagree and dispute intellectually must be protected as an essential pillar of democracy.

Nothing should lie outside the realm of reason and therefore of discussion and argument.

India 's pluralism and social, culture, linguistic and religious diversity are our greatest strength.

Our tradition has always been the argumentative Indian and not the intolerant Indian.
While many are thinking of what President-elect Donald Trump is going to do once he takes his seat in the Oval Office and moves into the White House, some are wondering what current President Barack Obama is going to do once he exits in 2017.

Will he live a life of retirement and peace, or will he go back into politics? According to a prediction, Barack Obama is going to fill his next few years with university lecture tours and then go to Harvard and teach part time on international law, as reported by Page Six.

But some say that Barack Obama is going to continue his primary causes. Especially those geared towards education. Like his wife, current First Lady Michelle Obama, they look at the missed opportunities in the world of education and assist in providing possibilities however they can.

And it looks like Barack Obama's post-White House plans will include My Brother's Keeper, as reported by NPR.

What is My Brother's Keeper? It is an initiative started by President Barack Obama after the death of Trayvon Martin. He needed to show the young black and brown men of the United States that their country does care about them.

During an interview, after Michelle Obama and the POTUS return from their vacation, he will devote his time to help these men through My Brother's Keeper. This is Obama's way of valuing everyone in the country especially those who are coming from a racially disadvantaged and economically disadvantaged end.

One outcome from My Brother's Keeper comes in the form of Malachi Hernandez. Because of the initiative, he has now become a student of Northeastern University. As a young boy, he grew up without a father and was at a disadvantage with his brothers.

Barack Obama has not fully released his plans just yet for next year. But one thing is for sure, the Obamas are planning to stay in Washington after his term so his daughter (Sasha) can graduate from high school in 2019.

Watch Barack Obama's launch on My Brother's Keeper below:
Artificial intelligence has been a source of amazement and curiosity for human beings as we imagine how machines can develop human-like sentience and intelligence. Not only were writers captivated by that thought but scientists as well, who have managed to develop AI by leaps and bounds. On the other hand, there are also intellectuals who expressed their fear if artificial intelligence will be brought to the same level as humans. But how should we really feel about artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence can greatly impact our society as a whole in any aspect whether it be in medicine or in economics. That AI can make the quality of life much better is what motivates a lot of AI proponents to keep on pushing for a stronger AI system. Some scientists say that it is possible but there is also a possibility that an intelligence explosion will occur as these machines program and re-program themselves to become much better than us. If this happens, humans might not be able to keep up.

Machine learning works typically like the human brain where years of repetitive learning process can develop to a more complex set of actions and thinking. By feeding a simple algorithm and feeding it into the computer, the machine will naturally learn through 'experiences.' As it learns, it eliminates the need for human control. Thus, in the quest for a higher and stronger AI, there is a fear for the loss of human functionality.

When a much more intelligent species detects that the other one is weaker, it will seize control from that weaker species. More so, there is no way we can detect how AI will behave if it becomes more intelligent than us. Therefore, this concern for artificial intelligence has nothing to do with malevolence but the fear of losing control.

Will AI rebel against its creators or will it coexist and merge with us? Will we be able to control it? These are just the pervading questions now which will probably have an answer only when we achieve it.
When it comes to charity, there are a lot of ways to get people's attention. In this case, a group of students from the James Cook University Veterinary Science class is hoping to raise money for mental health by taking their clothes off and get their pictures taken.

These Aussie students think it is an ingenious way to raise funds for a mental health charity, as reported by the Daily Star. Stripping and getting their pictures taken in a farm, these students show off their bare behinds. The future veterinarians of Australia gladly sits on fences and ride horses but they are not fully nude. The set ensures strategically placed ornaments to hide any unmentionables.

Standing and riding bare, they risk sunburn while feeding cows and kangaroos and other animals they are going to care for in the future. The publication also reports that there is also a helicopter involved. This is all in an effort to raise awareness about depression which is one of the leading mental health issues in the country and also around the world.

The students from James Cook University is teaming up with "Tie Up the Black Dog." It is a charity organization in rural Queensland that supports people who are struggling with mental health issues in some isolated rural areas in Queensland.

For Chloe Trompf, a student at James Cook University, the idea happened when they were thinking of having a fund raising event for their graduation ball. For Trompf and the rest of the students, taking their clothes off also raises awareness and removes the stigma about the human naked body. She mirrors this with their cause about how they are removing the stigma of mental illness.

Trompf goes on to say that there is nothing sexual in what they are doing. All in the name of good cause, the James Cook University calendar can be purchased from Vets Uncovered. This is the second naked calendar from the school.

Watch the calendar's behind the scenes in the video below:
Some might have already excluded Motorola Nexus 6 in the Motorola x Google Android 7.1.1 Nougat bandwagon but to everyone's surprise, the said update is rolling out to the device next January. The similar treatment could have been neglected but the reason behind Android 7.1.1 Nougat roll out delay is something different and valid.

When the final version of Android 7.1.1 Nougat started launching to supported Nexus and Pixel devices earlier this December, fans of Nexus 6 are early to dismiss the possibility of Nougat update coming on their phones. But looking back during the Android 7.0 update, Nexus was one of the last to receive the update too. Now, history repeats itself, Nexus 6 is again the last Nexus unit to receive the Android 7.1.1 Nougat.

Bug Problems

Google is quick to clarify the reason why Nexus 6 is receiving the Android 7.1.1 Nougat late. The company noted that a last minute bug original from the phone caused the delay of Nougat roll out to Nexus 6.

Google then issued an official statement to Android Police to address the query regarding the Nexus 6 Android 7.1.1 Nougat roll out dealy:

Unfortunately, we found a last minute bug that was specific to the Nexus 6, which has caused the delay of the 7.1.1 OTA rollout. We've since fixed the issue and will be rolling out an update in early January.

Nexus 6 Android 7.1.1 Benchmarks

The Android 7.1.1 Nougat update brings several improvements to Nexus 6 features. Here are some updates to come on your Nexus 6:

App shortcuts

Support for circular app icons

Keyboard image insertion

New emojis

However, Gadgets360 noted that it is good to note that since Nexus 6 phones did not have an Android 7.1.0 update, this Nougat update holds a very important role for the devices.
A lawmaker has expressed his outrage over a certain class at the University of Wisconsin. "The Problem of Whiteness" is a course that will be taught by Damon Sajnani next semester.

The Washington Post reported that students enrolled in the course will be discussing the problems caused by white people every Wednesday next semester. The course is intended to explore the experiences of white people and the privileges they benefit from.

"The Problem of Whiteness" will talk about "what it really means to be white." It is focused on understanding how a race, specifically "whiteness," is socially constructed and experienced in order to dismantle white supremacy.

Students enrolled in the course will also be learning how white people perpetuate institutional racism, whether consciously or unconsciously. The controversial class has catapulted the school right in the middle of a debate on whether government-funded educational institutions should talk about current issues or leave them be.

It will be taught in the African Studies Department of the University of Wisconsin. It was noted that only 2 percent of the student population are black while over 75 are white.

The course has been met with outrage. One of its most vocal opponents is David Murphy, a Wisconsin lawmaker, who called the class "garbage." He can't believe that it will be funded by taxpayers' money.

Murphy explained that he is outraged over the underlying premise that white people are racist. He also urged the school to discontinue the class or risk the removal of government funding.

Speaking to the Wisconsin State Journal, Gov. Scott Walker revealed that he will not be cutting the funding to the University of Wisconsin System. There is a possibility, though, that he will try to reduce the tuition fees.

He also rejected Murphy's proposal of withholding funding from the school if it does not discontinue the controversial course. Walker noted that the budget's focus should be on overall performance and not on individual classes.
By PTI: Los Angeles, Dec 29 (PTI) As legendary actress Debbie Reynolds died just one day after the passing of her daughter Carrie Fisher, Hollywood celebrities remembered the iconic star best known for her roles in musicals "Singin in the Rain" and "The Unsinkable Molly Brown".

Reynolds died on Wednesday after suffering a stroke. She was 84.

"She was beautiful and generous. It seems like only yesterday she was having lunch here at the house and we were discussing the possibility of working together in a new show. I have such fond memories of appearing with her here at the McCallum Theater in Palm Springs. So many laughs. My prayers go out to the family. She will be missed," fellow actress and friend Carol Channing said of Reynolds.

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"I was blessed to work with this remarkable woman for 45 almost 50 years. That makes for a very rare bond and unique relationship. She was generous to a fault, never caring who got the laugh from the audience. I Will always love her. I am absolutely devastated tonight!" Reynolds costar Rip Taylor.

Albert Brooke posted, "Debbie Reynolds, a legend and my movie mom. I cant believe this happened one day after Carrie. My heart goes out to Billie."

Debra Messing wrote, "So heartsick. Debbie went to be with Carrie. It?s such a devastating 1,2 punch. She was my "mom" for years & I loved her dearly. A legend."

"It is beyond astonishing that both @carrieffisher & @DebbieReynolds1 have left this earth. I overwhelmingly adored & admired them both," Sean Hayes wrote.

Bette Midler wrote, "#DebbieReynolds has just died. This is too hard to comprehend. Beautiful, talented, devoted to her craft, she follows Carrie, dead days ago."

Mark Hamill wrote, "#CruelCruelYear".

"Debbie Reynolds was one of the last of Hollywood Royalty. It breaks my heart that she is gone. I?d hoped that my grieving was done for 2016," tweeted William Shatner.

Sarah Paulson wrote, "This. Just this devastatingly moving photograph. Just this."

"Today is officially a sad day. As a mother my heart goes out to Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher. RIP DB and CF," tweeted Zoe Saldana.

"There are no words left. RIP #DebbieReynolds," wrote Josh Gad.

Kevin Smith wrote, "Heartbreakingly, #DebbieReynolds passes away a day after her daughter @carrieffisher. Now rewatching her be genius in @AlbertBrooks MOTHER."

"Wow...... this sad news makes me wanna hug my mama and never let go......" tweeted Miley Cyrus.

"For Carrie and Debbie. My thoughts and love are with their family," posted Brie Larson.

Octavia Spencer tweeted, "Lord, Debbie and Carrie. RIP 2016 has seen a lot of sadness. Prayers for their families & so many others affected by loss."

Dwayne Johnson wrote, "So blown away and saddened by this Debbie Reynolds news a day after her daughter, Carrie passes away. So much luv & strength to their family."

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Ellen DeGeneres posted, "I cant imagine what Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds family are going through this week. I send all of my love."

Anna Kendrick wrote, "American treasure."

Constance Zimmer wrote, "The most incredible love is when one cant live without the other?#RIP #DebbieReynolds"

Ariana Grande tweeted. "I love you Billie. So so much. rest in peace, Debbie Reynolds."

Mira Sorvino wrote, "What a tragedy! First Carrie, now her legendary mother Debbie Reynolds- my deepest and condolences to their family!!"

"Ill never say no to you...," tweeted Lin-Manuel Miranda. PTI SHD SHD

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The University of Kansas libraries gave students pronoun pins to help them easily make their preferred pronouns known to others. This is part of the school's effort for inclusion and diversity.

Lawrence Journal-World reported that the school's library system has developed a "You Belong Here" marketing effort to make sure that students feel welcome regardless of their gender. Employees are also wearing the gender-identity buttons.

A sign posted on the library explained that it gender is fluid and is dependent on the individual. The school believes that everyone has the right to identify their own pronouns.

The pins are helpful in letting others know how students should be addressed. Using the wrong pronoun can led to the other person being hurt, disrespected and invalidated.

There are three variations of the "My pronouns are" pins. The first two are traditional male and female: "He him his" and "She her hers" while the third is for people who don't identify themselves as any of the two: "They them theirs."

Employees at the circulation and information desks are the ones who came up with the idea. They also enlisted the help of KU's Office of Multicultural Affairs to help write posts to advertise that libraries are inclusive spaces.

KU dean of libraries Kevin Smith explained that the campaign aims to show the system's commitment to diversity and inclusion. He added that libraries have always been committed to First Amendment values.

WHEC.com noted that other schools have also adopted the gender-identity buttons. Some institutions that increased their inclusion efforts are Vermont's Champlain College and the University of Vermont.

It was previously reported that Oxford University has urged students to use "ze" in place of traditional pronouns like "he" and "she." The students' union revealed that the move was intended to decrease the risk of offending transgender students.

Last September, the University of Michigan in the United States announced that it has allowed students to indicate their preferred gender pronoun on class rosters.
Nokia will mark their biggest comeback by launching at least 5 Nokia Android phones as previously reported. People can expect the Nokia Android phones to come in installment from the first quarter to the last quarter in entry level, mid-range and high-end.

According to Digitimes, HMD Global will unveil the first Nokia Android phone with two versions at the MWC 2017. Reports suggest that the first version is high-priced as it will come in better specs, a 3GB of RAM and 5.5 inch Full HD display for a price of $200, while the cheaper version will come out with 2GB of RAM and 5inch Full HD display. The other four models will come out with a display ranging from 5 inch to 5.7 inch, all with full HD display which will be supplied by LG Display, Century Technology and Innolux.

There have been reports that all of the Nokia Android phones are currently under development so we may not expect any delay of its release. The new leaked images of Nokia Android phone may confirm that the unit which will be unveiled at the MWC in Barcelona is now ready. The leaked image revealed that the Android phone is designed with a button on the front face of the camera with two soft-touch, Latin Post reported.

Now that the MWC is only few months away, awaiting Nokia fans may expect more leaks on features and specs of the Nokia Android phones in the coming days. This is to keep the excitement level while waiting for the release of the Nokia handsets that will mark their comeback to the mobile technology.

With the leaked features and images of the upcoming Nokia Android phones could simply mean the rise of Nokia in mobile industry yet again. As recalled, Nokia was the leading mobile phone makers before Android and iOS hit and then the company was partly purchased by Microsoft.
CyanogenMod community project's holding company, Cyanogen Inc., has announced that it will be terminating its operations. The website and infrastructure of the website had been offline during the Christmas weekend. Nonetheless, CyanogenMod will continue to remain available for individuals who want to build it personally.

CyanogenMod's official Twitter page confirmed the closure of the project. As the CyanogenMod community project is shutting down, the new community-driven custom ROM, dubbed as the Lineage Android Project, continues the remaining portion, according to Android Authority.

This has been a sudden move of Cyanogen Inc., but CyanogenMod community got their hopes up as something good is coming. The developers, as well as the brain behind CyanogenMod, Steve Kondik, are picking things up regarding Lineage OS to serve as CyanogenMod's fork.

Rumor has it that the latest version of CyanogenMod community project has been out, and updated with the most recent Android Security Bulletin patches. Also, it has been said that mountains of source code are in the process, the Lineage Android Distribution, Android Central reported.

According to the CyanogenMod blog's final post, the fork returns to the grassroots community effort that used to define CyanogenMod. Even if they were to regroup and rebuild their own infrastructure and continuing development of CyanogenMod, it would mean to operate with the threat of sale of the brand looming over their heads.

That being the case, CyanogenMod has served the community well for over 8 long years. It has been their home, bringing together friends across the world to celebrate their joy of building and giving. In spite of that, there are no updates regarding the Lineage OS details. Nevertheless, a post on the new project's official Twitter page appears to be the start of a bright future ahead.

UPDATE: As of this morning we have lost DNS and Gerrit is now offline - with little doubt as a reaction to our blog post yesterday. Goodbye  CyanogenMod (@CyanogenMod) December 25, 2016

Watch The Video Here:
A survey conducted in a top-ranking university reveals that while students think they are performing quite well in academics, their teachers think the opposite.

A survey conducted among 1,410 undergraduate students at Aarhus University in Denmark reveals that nearly three-fourths (72 percent) of students believe they are well prepared for their lessons in school, Times Higher Education reported. Their teachers, however, do not agree as much, with only 43 percent saying their students are indeed prepared.

The study, which was presented earlier this month at the Society for Research into Higher Education's annual research conference in Wales, said less than half of all 283 teachers surveyed agreed that their students submitted thorough assignments, while 83 percent of students think they did.

Hanne Balsby Thingholm, assistant professor in education at Aarhus' Centre for Teaching Development and Digital Media and a co-author of the study, said most students think they're are doing a good job in school, but teachers do not agree with that.

Thingholm notes that based on the survey results, there appears to be a lack of effective communication between students and their teachers. Educators should give more effort in explaining their expectations to their respective students.

The survey also revealed that 68 percent of students thought they were good at organizing their personal study times, but only about half (51 percent) of their teachers said they agree with them.

Thingholm notes that the study wasn't meant to check if Aarhus University had poor-performing students or exceptional educators. Rather, it was meant to look into the reasons why both students' and teachers' expectations are unmet.

She said that, according to the study, almost all (89 percent) of the teachers believe they had set clearly defined learning goals and made it known to their students, but only 59 percent of students agreed.

Teachers need to discuss their learning goals with their students, and not just focus on formulating them, Thingholm adds. They shouldn't just think about what they will teach to their students, but also whether their students are learning how to study what they teach.
All the five men were armed and escaped with gold ornaments worth Rs 10 crore.

By Ashish Pandey: Five persons, claiming to be CBI officials, looted 40 kg gold from a Muthoot Finance branch in Hyderabad.

The robbers reached the RC Puram branch of the gold financing company in a red Scorpio. All the five men were armed, with one of them dressed as a traffic police constable, said an eyewitness. They decamped with gold ornaments worth Rs 10 crore.

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Here is how the robbery took place: The men entered the branch as soon as it was opened on Wednesday morning, and spent nearly half an hour inside it. According to the police, the robbers told the staff that they were Central Bureau of Investigation officials and wanted to check records and gold in the lockers as they were investigating a case of theft. When the branch manager said he was not in a position to show the lockers without permission from top officials, the unidentified men threatened action against him for disobeying orders of CBI officials. When the lockers were opened, the intruders started collecting the gold ornaments in their bags. As the employees raised alarm, one of the men whipped out a gun, threatened the branch manager and other employees and locked them in a bathroom. Cyberabad Police Commissioner Sandeep Shandilya said they also looted Rs 1 lakh cash. The robbers also took away the hard disk of the CCTV cameras with them. The Cyberabad Police has formed special teams to nab the robbers. Police in neighbouring Sangareddy district are also on the lookout for the robbers. The borders along both the districts have been sealed.

(with inputs from IANS)

ALSO READ: Hyderabad: ACB constable, 3 others arrested for looting Rs 12 lakh

ALSO READ: Gunmen loot Rs 13 lakh from Jammu and Kashmir Bank's Budgam branch

ALSO WATCH

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By PTI: Berlin, Dec 29 (PTI) India has cautioned its nationals to be careful while travelling in Germany in the aftermath of the truck attack at a Christmas market here last week in which 12 people were killed and nearly 50 others injured.

The Indian embassy here in its advisory to the nationals also asked them to avoid crowded tourist areas during the holiday season.

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"During the Holiday Season all Indian Nationals are advised due caution while travelling in Germany, particularly in view of the incident at the Berlin Christmas Market on December 19, 2016.

"It is advised to avoid crowded tourist areas during the holiday season," the advisory said.

On the evening of December 19, a truck was driven into a crowded Christmas market, killing 12 people and injuring 48 others in a terror strike which was claimed by the dreaded ISIS. PTI PYK SAI AKJ SAI

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At present, the chances of an armoured corps officer commanding a Rashtriya Rifles or an Assam Rifles unit are rare.

By Ajit Kumar Dubey: With counter terrorist experience helping Lt Gen Bipin Rawat become the next Army chief, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar is now planning to give more postings to armoured and artillery corps officers in anti-insurgency operations to avoid the situation faced by superseded officer Lt Gen Pravin Bakshi.

Despite being the senior most and competent, the government chose to appoint Lt Gen Rawat over Lt Gen Bakshi due to the former's experience in counter-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir and the northeast.

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Senior government sources told Mail Today that Lt Gen Bakshi had discussed the issue of armoured corps officers being in a disadvantageous position in light of the recent approach of the government to give weightage to counter insurgency experience in appointing Army chiefs.

MINISTRY TO OPEN NEW AVENUES

"We would find out ways to give more exposure to armoured and artillery corps officers in counter insurgency operations so that they don't miss out on important appointments due to lack of stints in anti-terrorist missions and operations," senior Defence Ministry sources told Mail Today.

Also read: Government may assign post at par with Army chief to superseded Lt Gen Praveen Bakshi

Also read: Why Indian Army Special Forces are way behind US Navy SEALs or Israel's IDF despite upgrade

At present, officers from infantry get to command their units in Jammu and Kashmir and Northeast but officers of the armoured corps generally get that opportunity in the deserts of Rajasthan or plains of Punjab, as they have to command tanks and mechanized combat vehicles as they can operate in that terrain only.

Tanks and infantry combat vehicles cannot be deployed in hills and mountainous terrain of Jammu and Kashmir except for the China border in eastern Ladakh, which has vast plains where the tanks can have a free run. Moreover, tank regiments are supposed to penetrate and soften any Pakistani resistance in case of a conventional war and Punjab and Rajasthan are perfect terrain to do so in case of hostilities.

Officers from armoured and artillery corps get to do their mandatory stint in counter insurgency force Rashtriya Rifles in Kashmir valley but that is done when they are relatively very young in their military lives.

OFFICERS NO LESS THAN INFANTRY MATES

"We don't want that the officers from these arms to feel that they are any less from their infantry mates and that is why we will find out ways how they can be given command of battalions, brigades and divisions in the regions where we have antiterrorist operations," the sources said.

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Also read: Why Lt General Bipin Rawat, man who led surgical strikes in Myanmar, is best suited to be Army chief

Sources in Indian Army Headquarters said such a thing can be done by the army by fixing vacancies for armoured corps and artillery officers in Rashtriya Rifles units so that they can also get counter insurgency operations if they want to.

At present, the chances of an armoured corps officer commanding a Rashtriya Rifles or an Assam Rifles unit are rare. The government is of the view that more than conventional wars, the biggest security challenge before India is from non-state actors and small groups of terrorists. Along with Bakshi, Southern Army Commander Lt Gen PM Hariz was also senior to Rawat and was overlooked. Hariz is from the Mechanised Infantry, which handles infantry combat vehicles.

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Big shot Hanoi buyers are looking to spread the wealth to the provinces

A range of real estate projects have been introduced to Hanois market from Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Danang and Nha Trang. The projects include The Charm, Sunrise City, Ocean Villas, Hyatt Regency, Olalani, Fusion Alya, Azura and Blooming Park.

Talking with VIR at a recent road show to introduce Sunrise City, located in Ho Chi Minh, in Hanoi, Novaland Joint Stock Company marketing deputy director Huynh Du An said many units were sold to Hanoians and those from northern provinces.

Meanwhile, a range of other central and southern projects have been rushing into Hanoi. Setia Becamex launched Binh Duong provinces Ecolakes My Phuoc in the capital late last week, a week before TD Group introduced the Costa Nha Trang to Hanoians. This week Singapores Guoco Lands Canary, located at the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park in Binh Duong province, will be unveiled to northern customers.

Bringing Ecolakes My Phuoc to Hanois market is one of our key marketing strategies. Hanoians are paying more attention to higher standards of living and are interested in ecological housing, said Khoo Teck Chong, general director of Setia Becamex.

VIR was told that for many projects in the central and southern parts, roughly 70 per cent of customers were from Hanoi and other northern provinces.

Matthew Koziora, sales director of VinaCapital - developer of the Azura in Danang, said the first 60 units, out of 225, were launched in Hanoi recently.

Out of the 40 units sold, 90 per cent of the buyers had come from Hanoi.

Hanoi has, according to Koziora, proven itself to be a key market for most new projects in Vietnam, given the demographics of these immediate catchments.

While condominium offerings will always be available in Hanoi due to previous pent-up demands, we can see that not all projects will enjoy a healthy sell-through, as was seen 12 months ago.

We do see, however, given the price differentials between house and land packages in Hanoi versus Ho Chi Minh City, that this market will be better received in the current marketplace and over the next six months as opposed to condominium project offerings at this time, Koziora said

Ngo Huu Truong, managing director of a real estate agency in Ho Chi Minh City, said many customers from Hanoi and Haiphong had come to Ho Chi Minh City to find out information about new projects there.

Demand is real and many projects investors have realised this trend and they are coming to Hanoi to promote their projects, Truong said.

He also said the jury was still out on how effective the promotions were.

I think that these developers [who bring their projects to Hanoi] have at least seen their target to raise their image and brand names in northern customers, Truong said.
Toral is scheduled to appear at the 2016 Green Star Awards in Ho Chi Minh City and make a special appearance at several local events in the city of Can Tho, according to a statement released by her publicist.



She started her career with advertisements for brands like Amul and Shoppers Stop.



Then she made her debut on television with Rishton Ki Dor, where she played the role of Shaina. She was last seen in Choti Si Zindagi on Zee tv. She was last seen as Anandi in Colors' daily soap Balika Vadhu.
Data collected from multiple government sources shows that it is for the first time since 2011 that there has been a significant drop in transgressions from the Chinese side into India.

By Jugal R Purohit: "We do not seem to be able to cooperate as effectively as we should", said Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar earlier this month in New Delhi.

He was referring to the disjointed approach of India and China on a variety of issues including terrorism and a seat for India into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), among other things.

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Running from north to the east of New Delhi is the 3488-km-long, unmarked and imaginary Line of Actual Control (LAC) that separates the two Asian powers. It has been the barometer of the warmth (or the lack of it) between the two.

Apart from witnessing a full-blown war in 1962, the LAC has also played host to several skirmishes, incursions and transgressions in the later years.

RECORDS GIVE INDIA CONFIDENCE

Notwithstanding the lack of cohesion in ties, the LAC has cooled down. Transgressions (distinct from incursions) from the Chinese side into India show a sharp fall.

Data collected from multiple government sources shows that it is for the first time since 2011 that such a drop has been witnessed.

Typically, transgressions occur during the summer months when mobility on either side is the most.

A Home Ministry official explained, "The period starting April is (the time), when activities pick up and the peak activity is seen from June to September till the winter sets in."

Perhaps as a measure of India's confidence, he added, "We can spot and predict their moves in most sectors now".

Also read | Exclusive: How China's transgressions of Indian borders have decreased over 7 years MOMENTS OF TENSION ON BORDER

The India-China border, though peaceful for decades, has not been free from surprises. When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited India in September 2014, his arrival was punctuated with the arrival of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Ladakh, where a tense stand-off followed.

Days before Chinese Premier Li Keqiang was to visit India in May 2013, the Chinese forces were locked in a bitter face-off with the Indians in the Depsang, Ladakh. Then the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had called it a 'low' and said, "The thaw in India-China border relations was also broken in April, when Indian Army was once again challenged by Chinas People's Liberation Army (PLA) by their repeated incursions into Ladakh Sector on the LAC".

This is the cause for the multiple interpretations about what this drop may imply.

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BETTER UNDERSTANDING OR EFFECTIVE DETERRENCE?

While the Army refused to share information or respond to the query, a source in the Ministry of Defence said, "This only indicates a better understanding at the local level between the two. It would be premature to see any larger design or a change of intent".

Indian Army's ability to detect and thwart Chinese efforts of intrusion has improved manifold and is showing results.

That apart, better coordination and understanding fostered by high level visits have helped explained an officer who did not wish to be quoted.

On the Indian side, the Army and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA)-administered Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) have their boots on the ground at the LAC.

Meeting of Indian, Chinese delegation leaders at Chushul.

ITBP IN PLAY

While the ITBP is said to have nearly doubled its battalions within the last decade, the Army has ramped up efforts with enhanced manpower and resources.

The Army also identified 14 Strategic Rail Links of which in July, the government accorded 'in principle' approval for four. The Army has also moved it its most advanced 'Heron' Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for long endurance surveillance and response.

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The Border Roads Organisation has over 40 roads totalling over 3000km to build.

Also read | Indo Tibetan Border Police becomes first force to use yaks to sustain troops at China border AIR FORCE IS ALSO THERE

On its part, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has activated Advanced Landing Grounds at Walong, Ziro, Along, Mechuka, Tuting and Pasighat.

One at Tawang and Vijaynagar will take longer. IAF has also based its heavy, Sukhoi 30 jets at Tezpur and Chabua and will soon activate the second squadron of C130 special operations plane at Panagarh which is home to the Army's Mountain Strike Corps, a China-centric formation being raised.

Outgoing IAF chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha said on Wednesday that India was aware of the Chinese build up and was doing what was necessary for its security.

Writer and China-watcher Claude Arpi said, "It is definitely a combination of factors. However it is also a fact that China is wary of opening another front, that too against India. Lastly, Jinping's military reforms initiated last December have left the Chinese with a lot of new arrangements to cater for."

Before the reforms, India would face the Chengdu and Lanzhou Military Regions (MRs). Now, there is simply the Western Theatre Command.

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STICKING POINTS

India says: China illegally occupies 38,000 sq km in Jammu and Kashmir. China also accepted the illegal ceding of 5180 sq km in March, 1963 from Pakistan. China's tightening embrace of Pakistan, manifested in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor that passes through the Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (PoK) has been a cause of serious concern for India.

China maintains: India illegally occupies 90,000 sq km of 'South Tibet', which corresponds to the state Arunachal Pradesh. China also believes India's coming closer to the US is directly aimed at containing its influence.

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Satellite images indicate North Korea may have another missile launch facility. The Philippines says it isnt worried about Chinas activity. Plus, Taiwans President will swing through the US, but what will that mean for relations with Beijing? VOAs Steve Miller has your Asia news, in a minute.
Japan is being roundly criticized by neighboring countries after its top military official Thursday visited a controversial shrine that honors its war dead, including convicted war criminals.

Defense Minister Tomomi Inada's visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine drew sharp rebukes from China and South Korea, which consider the shrine a symbol of Japan's wartime atrocities before and after World War II, when it colonized or invaded much of the East Asia region.

"Regardless of differences in historical views, regardless of whether they fought as enemies or allies, I believe any country can understand that we wish to express gratitude, respect and gratitude to those who sacrificed their lives for their countries," Inada told reporters after the visit.

China's relationship with Japan has been strained by what China sees as Japan's reluctance to apologize for the country's past. China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, voiced disapproval of the visit, saying, "This not only reflects some Japanese people's obstinately wrong view of history, it also forms a great irony with the Pearl Harbor reconciliation trip."

Earlier this week, Inada accompanied Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a historic visit to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, home to the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, bringing the United States into World War II.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said Inada's visit to Yasukuni was "deplorable," and that Inada visited a shrine that "beautifies past colonial invasions and invasive war and honors war criminals."

Inada's visit to Yasukuni was her first since becoming defense minister in August, although she has visited it numerous times in the past.

She has defended Japan's wartime atrocities and led a committee tasked reevaluating the judgements of wartime judicial panels that were led by the victorious allies of World War II.
Prime Minister Hun Sen has announced he will hold an annual dinner for journalists, the first of its kind since U.N. administered elections in 1993.

Ouk Kim Seng, Ministry of Information spokesman, said the event would be held each year on January 14 and Information Minister Khieu Kanharith would also attend.

Hun Sen said he did not want the event to be seen as a form of corruption or attempted bribery.

Kim Seng said that about 700 journalists, from both government-friendly and critical media outlets, would be invited to attend.

Ou Virak, founder and president of the Future Forum think tank, said it was likely that the gathering would benefit the ruling party.

Some of the most influential people are journalists. Meeting like this with journalists is considered a good thing because it allows them to get to know each other, he said.

In a democracy it is considered a smart move and theres nothing wrong about that, he added.

However, Moeun Chhean Narridh, director of Cambodia Institute for Media Studies, cautioned that the event would somehow affect the professionalism of the journalists.

When you sit at a table with the leader, whether you want to or not, your attitude will change somehow, he said.
Ly Sokna and his colleagues worked until nearly dawn on a night in late November to perfect their tech project.

For months they labored over their new creation, an application called Guide Insider, as part of their big dream for technology in their homeland.

Having seen increasing numbers of tourists visiting Cambodia each year, a member of his group, a third-year university student, came up with the idea of creating a telephone application that links up new arrivals with recommended tour guides.

Their hard work has paid off.

At least 5 million tourists visited Cambodia this year, according to official data.

Guide Insider was one of 10 projects awarded by the Cambodians in Tech (CIT) event in Phnom Penh last month.

The projects on show included smartphone apps that provide medical advice to rural people who lack access to modern medical facilities, as well as an app that puts farmers in touch with customers.

We are excited since we have been trying hard all together. In short we invest in it, so when we get what we wish for, we are very happy and excited, Sokna said of winning the award.

I think [apps] could help a lot since technology is advancing and it eases our livelihood, he said.

Despite the advances in Cambodian tech-awareness, there are still many challenges to be overcome. However, increasing Internet access, the proliferation of smartphones even in some of the more remote areas of the country, and the rise in information technology professionals are helping to flatten the learning curve.

Almost half of all Cambodians now has a smartphone, a report by the Asia Foundation released earlier this year found, while official figures suggest upwards of 7 million people have Internet access.

One of the studys most interesting findings is that almost a third of Cambodians now use the internet to read and write  activities once limited to the classroom or office. This reading and writing activity allows them to access more information, enhance their communication skills, and increase their level of social participation, read a statement from Asia Foundation.

Sokna said as well as CIT, other events, such as hackathons, were encouraging more Cambodians to overcome their tech phobia.

He also moderates a Facebook group where Cambodians share news articles about advances in technology, which so far has about 300 members.

Allen Dodgson Tan, the founder of local NGO STEM, said the major issue was a lack of funding.

In the developed world, there are many competitions, workshops, after school programs and other supplementary learning opportunities, he said.

Khut Sophors, a member of CIT, said funding to repeat the event next year was in doubt.

David Josar, U.S. Embassy spokesman, said: We are especially supportive of steps to ensure young people have the skills and opportunity to work in this industry.

He added that in September, the U.S. Embassy funded a two-day technology camp in Phnom Penh that brought together 50 young people with trainers and experts that helped the youth build their skill sets.

Also last month, the U.S. embassy hosted an event that encouraged youth to learn about coding and computer programming.

The U.S. embassy is one of the sponsors of BARCAMP ASEAN, an international technology conference and exhibition for technology professionals, business leaders, and innovators. The Embassy is also a sponsor of the annual Cambodia Science and Engineering Festival.
Officials and experts gathered at a recent forum in Washington agreed that policy towards Cambodia should focus on renewing the goals of the Paris peace settlement of 1991 that ended the civil war and committed the country to democratic elections.

At a meeting of the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, experts from Cambodia and the United States met to discuss the future of the country ahead of elections scheduled for 2017 and 2018.

Mark Storella, deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, said the peace accords had a start date when they went into force. There was no ending date, he said.

The Paris Accords are still in force, and the commitments of the different parties in those accords still apply including the Cambodian, but also for the international community.

Storella, who was involved in the negotiations, said it was the obligation of the international community to not take their eyes away from Cambodia.

We should continue to work on this issue because the job is not done, he said.

The Paris Peace Agreement was signed on October 23, 1991, by 18 parties, including four warring Cambodian armed factions.

It committed the country to U.N.-administered elections, which were held in 1993, and to upholding the tenets of democracy and political freedoms.

However, many now think that the goals of Paris have been lost along the way.

Thun Saray, president of Adhoc, a local human rights organization, said 2016 had been the worst year of all for the group, which has seen several members arrested on charges widely believed to be politically motivated.

This year four of my present colleagues and one former colleague was put in jail until now. That means almost 7 months already.

He said that the move was unprecedented in the organizations 25-year history.

While the peace agreement makes specific mention of the link between democracy, human rights and development, many have been hurt by the rapid pace of unequal development since 1993, Saray said.

Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, urged the signatories to recommit to the values of the agreement.

It would be great to have a compact among the donor community and Cambodias friends about what is expected in 2018 and be very explicit about it, he said.

Despite losing the 1993 election, Hun Sen refused to accept the result and forced the United Nations to accept him as co-prime minister.

Ahead of the next general election, in 2018, opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who was recently sentenced to five years in jail by a court in Phnom Penh, said the international community must be ready to act if the election was not conducted fairly.

If it happens again, the international community should not recognize any government formed as the result of the violation of the election. If the CPP still does not give up power, there should not be any recognition, he said.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 29 (PTI) A 26-year-old youth from Sirsa in Punjab was stabbed to death allegedly by a girl in New Zealand last week and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has stepped in to help his family bring back home his mortal remains.

Swaraj directed the Indian High Commission in New Zealand to help the family of deceased Hardeep Singh after they reached out to her on twitter.

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"Deol family - Rania (Sirsa) : I hv seen news report and given instructions to our High Commissioner in New Zealand," the External Affairs Minister tweeted.

According to Hardeeps grandfather Baldev Singh Deol, he had gone to New Zealand on a study visa to pursue a course in hotel management.

According to reports in New Zealand media, Hardeep suffered serious injuries during an assault on Christmas on Sunday at Cashmere house. He was taken to Christchurch Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.

Local police said a 22-year-old woman has been arrested and charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, adding the charge was likely to be replaced with a murder charge.

They said the inquiry has been upgraded to a homicide investigation.

The Minister, who is recuperating after undergoing a kidney transplant on December 10, is known for her prompt response to Indians who are in distress abroad, many of whom approach her through twitter for help. PTI MPB RT

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Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry unveiled his vision for a possible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a speech Wednesday, Kerry warned that a two-state solution is in "serious jeopardy" and that one state is not in Israel's best interest. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promptly condemned Kerry's speech, saying it was skewed in favor of the Palestinians. President-elect Donald Trump has promised staunch support for Israel. VOA's Zlatica Hoke has more.
China says it will soon launch a powerful anti-corruption system in the capital city of Beijing and the provinces of Shanxi and Zhejiang.

Officials say the new scheme is designed to be more independent, with supervision commissions to oversee public officeholders, including within the judicial system.

Some observers praise the establishment of the new scheme, calling it a positive step toward a more integrated and autonomous watchdog system. Others doubt if the commission can be independent of the party and worry that with its expansive powers it may lead to more corruption.

In China, almost more than 98 percent of comrade leaders or public officeholders are [Communist] party members. So, its common in China that the party always overrides the government to have a full grip on power, Liao Ran, senior program coordinator of Transparency International, told VOA.

The new scheme has more to do with the partys continued rule in China than Chinese President Xi Jinpings own grip of power, the Oslo, Norway-based observer added, dismissing concerns that the move was connected to power struggles within the party.

State supervisory reform

The National Peoples Congress (NPC) Standing Committee on Sunday approved a pilot reform program to centralize the nations supervisory bodies in a bid to step up the nations efforts to counter deep-seated graft.

Under the program, supervisory commissions will be established at both the central and provincial level that will report to the NPC. They will run independently from the central and local governments, the judicial and the procuratorate branches to provide a check on public office holders nationwide.

The commissions, whose chairperson and deputies will be appointed by the NPC and their respective local chapters, are further designed to integrate the power and duties of the governments existing anti-graft agencies, including the supervision department and the corruption prevention department.

They will be charged with investigating and punishing bribery, dereliction of duty and prevention of duty-related crimes by those on government payrolls, while transferring cases involving suspected criminal offenses to prosecutors for further court trials, according to state media Xinhua News.

The pilot program will be put to a test in Beijing and the provinces of Shanxi and Zhejiang first before a national rollout.

Expansive powers

With expanded power, the status of the new anti-graft institution will rise in the political hierarchy and enjoy the same legal footing as the government. That, by design, will make it more independent, said Ho Bing, a law professor at China University of Political Science and Law.

The former design put the supervision department under the government, which wasnt given enough autonomy, Ho said, The new design will heighten the newly created supervision committees level of independence, which, in a way, puts the [governments] anti-graft work on the right track.

The professor, however, warned of potential conflicts between the commission and the court, as the new body will be charged with censuring corrupt court officials, whose criminal offenses will then be tried in the court.

The future relation between the commission and the court is hinged on the independence of judges or how to safeguard the impartiality of judges. Both the impartiality of judges and supervision committee should be upheld, which may lead to conflict, the professor added.

Transparency Internationals Liao Ran, in addition, argued that because the new supervisory system is under the NPCs monitor it may bend easier to the will of party-elected members, who often serve to ratify decisions handed down by the state.

Chinas NPC has long been known as a rubber-stamp [parliament]. The parliament, which has no solid power, is now asked to supervise a [government] watchdog. So, how effective the commission will be remains to be seen, he added.

More corruption?

Lu Liangbiao, a lawyer with Dacheng Law Office in Beijing, described the new plan to tackle corruption as a risky move and questioned the new bodys check-and-balance of powers.

Lu wrote Wednesday on his WeChat micromessaging account that the new mechanism, deeply imbedded within the power structure, is like shooing away flies on a pile of dung and may lead to more corruption given the new schemes expansive powers.

He concluded that any efforts to counter graft will only succeed in a full-fledged democracy where the rule of law is respected, the judiciary system runs independently and the general publics participation is guaranteed along with the free press and sound elected representation.

In contrast, the ruling Communist party said the countrys fight against corruption has gained crushing momentum and huge progress has been achieved, with no let up expected in 2017, state media Xinhua News reported late Wednesday, following a meeting of the partys Politburo, chaired by Xi.

Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has waged war against deep-rooted graft, a problem he warned could affect the partys long-term grip on power
Turkey says Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group should withdraw from Syria and a nationwide cease-fire should come into effect before the end of the year.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to back President Bashar Assad's forces.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with the Turkish A Haber news channel on Thursday that Ankara and Moscow are close to reaching an agreement on a nationwide cease-fire. Turkey would serve as guarantor of rebel compliance, while Russia would guarantee adherence by the government.

He says Iran stated during talks earlier this month in Moscow that it will act as a guarantor for the Syrian government as well as allied Shiite groups, including Hezbollah.
Officials say that at least three soldiers have been killed in a border skirmish between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops.

Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Ovanissian three Armenian servicemen died in fighting Thursday. Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said one of its troops was missing in action.



Armenia and Azerbaijan blamed each other for the fighting.



Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry claimed that its forces inflicted "heavy casualties" on the Armenian intruders, while Armenia's Defense Ministry said that it repelled an intrusion from Azerbaijan, killing seven enemy soldiers. The conflicting claims couldn't be independently verified.



The two ex-Soviet nations have been locked in conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.



Nagorno-Karabakh is officially part of Azerbaijan, but since a separatist war ended in 1994 it has been under the control of forces that claim to be local ethnic Armenians but that Azerbaijan claims include regular Armenian military. Efforts to negotiate a settlement have failed and sporadic clashes have continued.



An outbreak of fighting in April killed about 75 soldiers from the two sides.
In September, three people attacked a police station in Mombasa, Kenya. They stabbed one police officer and set fire to the building before being shot dead, according to Kenyan police. The incident drew international attention, not only for the brazenness of the attack, but for the gender of the attackers: all three were women.

Experts say female extremism is on the rise in Kenya and across the continent, as terror groups look for recruits who are less likely to elicit suspicion and can move through cities and checkpoints without being searched by police.

The results are deadly. For instance, in northeast Nigeria and Cameroon between June 2014 and April 2016, officials recorded more than 200 female suicide bombers killed more than 1,000 people.

Phyllis Muema is the executive director of the Kenya Community Support Center based in Mombasa that works with young people and their families at risk of being indoctrinated by violent extremist groups. Muema said she has noticed in the past year that extremist groups are focusing more attention on recruiting women.

"The local culture here is extremely respectful of women and police don't find it ideal to search women because culturally it's very wrong," she said. "And extremists take advantage to say that if they're not searched and nobody pays attention to them, then they are extremely good targets in terms of their use, especially in crowded areas."

Islamic State has deployed female suicide bombers around the world, including 10 would-be suicide bombers arrested in October in Morocco. They were said to be planning attacks on tourist sites. An IS affiliate claimed responsibility for the Mombasa attack, according to media reports.

Womens motivation

But the question remains: Why would women join a group whose ideology states they should be subservient to men and tells them they do not deserve equal rights?

Muema said many girls in coastal Kenya have no job opportunities and are desperate. Extremist groups such as IS offer them the ability to have a leadership role.

"Women in our culture are not recognized or given the right place," she said. "Therefore, extremists are giving them the opportunity to be the star in the movie. And that excites the girls a lot."

Muema said the Mombasa attack was particularly stunning because the perpetrators were local students who had graduated with high grades.

"It was like a reawakening of the fact that more attention needs to be given to girls and to women," she said. "Because no one expected that that type of bold girls would conduct that type of an attack."

Fredrick Ogenga, founding director of the Center for Media, Democracy, Peace and Security at Rongo University in Kenya, recently completed a study examining female extremism in Kenya while serving as a Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. He found that women who become what he calls "jihadist brides" tend to come from middle-class or upper middle-class families, and have an average to above average education. He found that they come to the ideology willingly.

"I can tell you, in West Africa most women who get involved in violent extremism are women who get coerced," he said. "What you've witnessed in Kenya is a different trend. You are seeing women willingly subscribing to the idea of jihadi bride-ism.  these are women who are romanticizing the fantasy of being involved with a partner who is an al-Shabab terrorist."

Fears of escalation

Ogenga went on to warn that incidents like the one in Mombasa are harbingers of what is yet to emerge in Kenya.

"I think that is why we need to be vigilant, so that we can nip this in the bud so that we know how to address it before it can escalate," he said. "We are seeing women who are determined to come to the front line in order to execute the attacks."

He added that the government should support moderate Muslim clerics, who are sometimes victims of terrorist attacks for their work in "the true teaching of Islam," and who play a vital role in educating youth about the dangers of extremism. He also said the media needs to do a better job of informing the public, while not sensationalizing or glorifying acts of terror.

"They have to report terrorism and radicalization in a special way, in a way that will not advance the interest of terrorism," he said.
A prominent Bahraini rights activist was to have been freed Wednesday on bail, until authorities ordered that he remain in jail for other charges.

Nabeel Rajab has been in prison for seven months pending a trial on charges of circulating inaccurate information and posting a series of insults on Twitter.

Rajab's lawyer said his client was to be released after a long court hearing on Wednesday.

But prosecution chief Mohamed Salah said in a statement reported on by the state news agency BNA that he will remain in jail until an investigation handled by the public prosecution is concluded.

Rajab was arrested in June for the tweets. He also is under investigation for letters that were published in his name by The New York Times and the French newspaper Le Monde while he was incarcerated.
President Barack Obama has named two new national monuments in Utah and Nevada, sites considered sacred lands by Native Americans and that each boast thousands of cultural artifacts that are at risk.

The designations Wednesday were not without controversy, however, as the western United States has become a flashpoint over use of public lands.

Administration and conservation officials who support the measure say both sites have cultural relics that are threatened by looting and vandalism.

But the national monument designation is a blow for Republican leaders in Utah and Nevada, and many rural residents who see it as adding another layer of federal control. They say it would not only close the areas to gas and oil development, but to some recreational uses as well.

Bears Ears, Gold Butte

The Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah will cover nearly 550,000 hectares (1.35 million acres), the White House said. The move is considered a victory by Native American tribes and conservationists.

The Bears Ears site is considered sacred land by local tribes, and is also home to more than 100,000 cultural sites that include ancient cliff dwellings, burial sites and rock carvings. Tribal members currently use the site to perform ceremonies and healing rituals, and to collect herbs and wood for medicinal and spiritual purposes.

The Gold Butte National Monument, located outside Las Vegas, will preserve more than 120,000 hectares (300,000 acres), according to the White House.

The area is an ecologically fragile region that includes rock art, artifacts and rare fossils, and also is currently used by tribes for traditional purposes, the White House said.

"Today's actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes," Obama said in a statement announcing the new national monuments.

In making the decision to protect the two sites, "President Obama has taken unprecedented steps to elevate the voices of native peoples in the management of our natural resources," a White House statement said.

Use of Antiquities Act

Obama has the power to set aside the areas through the Antiquities Act, which was signed in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt. The law allows the president to establish that archeological sites on public lands are important public resources.

Republican criticism, however, was swift Wednesday.

Utah's governor and state lawmakers condemned the designation, with Governor Gary Herbert saying in a statement that Obama "has misused his authority," and promising an aggressive challenge of the order.

U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah called Obama's action an "attack on an entire way of life" and an "astonishing and egregious abuse of executive power" that far exceeds the intent of the Antiquities Act.

"In the next Congress under President[-elect Donald] Trump, I will do everything in my power to reverse this travesty," Hatch told The Salt Lake Tribune.

Meanwhile, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye praised the designation, calling it an exciting day for his tribe and people of all cultures.

"Today, President Barack Obama has signed a proclamation to protect this land as a national monument for future generations of Navajo people and for all Americans. Thanks to his action, this land will be finally given the legal reverence and protection it deserves," Begaye said in a statement.

In Nevada, retiring Democratic Senator Harry Reid has been opposed by Republicans in his state as he pushed for protections at Gold Butte.

Governor Brian Sandoval said he would have preferred a more collaborative approach that included opinions of those affected, but said he worked with federal officials "to mitigate any disruption a potential designation may cause the surrounding private land owners, communities and recreationists."

Federal use of land

The site is near where rancher Cliven Bundy and his followers were in an armed standoff over public land use with government agents in 2014. Bundy does not recognize federal jurisdiction in the area.

Earlier in 2016, Bundy's sons, Ryan and Ammon Bundy, also led a group of armed, anti-government militants in staging a 41-day occupation of an eastern Oregon wildlife refuge in a protest against federal control of lands.

Obama, who leaves office in less than a month, has used the Antiquities Act and other measures to protect more land and water than any other administration in history, a White House statement said. Most recently, he banned offshore oil and gas drilling in an area off the Alaska and Atlantic coasts.
The relatives of a Chinese man who died in a high-profile, alleged police brutality case have decided not to sue, citing immense pressure, their lawyer said Thursday. The move comes despite thousands among Chinas middle class signing online petitions to protest the dropping of charges against police in a rare but concerted display of white-collar outrage with Beijing.

The signatories of at least two online petitions organized through university alumni networks are infuriated by the Beijing prosecutors decision last Friday to drop charges against five police over the death of Lei Yang, a 29-year-old graduate of prestigious Renmin University, in police custody in May.

The five police were previously accused by investigators of using improper force and covering up Leis death.

The outcry over the authorities handling of Leis death is the latest manifestation of simmering urban discontent in China, where Communist Party leaders are facing higher expectations  and increasing questions  from the expanding middle class over hot-button issues ranging from environmental pollution to unfairness in the judiciary.

When something occurs in society that is so dark, so impossible to accept, then its like an inner fire in our bones thats been sparked, said Yu Li, a signatory who works in the IT sector in Beijing.

Family felt pressure

Leis family had initially planned to sue the five men directly if the decision to drop charges was upheld by higher authorities. By Wednesday night, however, they had chosen to drop further legal action, the familys lawyer, Chen Youxi, confirmed Thursday.

Chen cited the family as saying: Due to our own reasons, the pressure is too great, the effort involved in a long litigation will be more than we can bear.

University communities

As news of the decision spread, supporters from various university alumni circles said the signature drive for the petitions should continue, with one group saying they refused to accept the case was over and would continue protesting.

The organizers of the petitions said they did not wish to take the protest to the street for fear of swift government retribution. For the same reason, they spoke on condition of anonymity. But the case has threatened to erode the legitimacy of the party among an influential social segment thats impatient with such social woes as food safety scandals and widespread corruption.

The petitions, which sought a correction of the decision to not prosecute the officers, have gathered more than 2,400 signatories of former students of Renmin and some of Chinas other top universities. They include graduates of 1980s chemistry departments and students who received graduate business degrees in the 2000s, as well as prominent academics and the current CEO of a foodstuffs company.

The list has expanded to include alumni of Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Zhejiang University and Fudan University in eastern China. Organizers of the movement said many of the signatories have gathered in more than two dozen WeChat messaging groups, where they were venting and sharing legal analyses, essays and even poetry about Leis case.

Discussion control

As the online campaign spiraled this week, authorities scrambled to squelch discussion. Censors blocked all searches on Chinas popular microblog site, Weibo, for Lei Yang case, while propaganda authorities distributed notices against carrying the story in news outlets, according to China Digital Times, an overseas website that publishes what are believed to be official censorship orders.

In a country seemingly inured to police brutality against migrant workers or farmers, commentators say the Lei case has attracted nationwide attention precisely because of his white-collar background as an environmentalist with a state-affiliated think tank.

Zhang Wen, a well-known liberal Chinese social commentator, said China has often had cases of social justice that involved farmers or migrant workers clashing with local authorities, but because of their class status, their cases do not mobilize this mass opposition or create awareness.

But Lei Yangs case has broken through geographic or even class barriers, he said. If it could happen to him it could happen to any of us. Any of us could be Lei Yang.

Not lost on many in Chinas educated class is the fact that Renmin University, which means Peoples University, was founded by the Communist Party in its early guerrilla days. Its unusual for organized criticism to emerge from a school that boasts a long tradition of producing political thinkers, economists and historians who join the party establishment.

Yu, the signatory from Beijing, said he never characterized himself as politically active until news of the Lei case this year stunned him.

We expected the case to be open, to be conducted according to law in due time, said Yu, who entered Renmin Universitys business school in 1996.

Instead, what we saw was that they judge cases from a political perspective with stability as the first consideration, he said in an interview. They value more the loyalty of the police force rather than the cries of the people.

The Beijing procuratorate press office did not immediately respond to a fax seeking comment.

Confidence undermined

Leis case adds to an increasing number of incidents in recent years that threaten to undermine confidence in the government among the middle class, a segment of society that Chinas Communist leaders have traditionally counted on placating by delivering steady economic growth.

Susan Finder, a Chinese law expert at Peking Universitys School of Transnational Law, said Leis case sparked furor among Chinas legal establishment, including corporate lawyers who normally pay relatively little attention to social justice cases.

What struck many of the establishment professionals, Finder added, was the sense that debate over a legitimate legal issue was being muzzled  a feeling many were not accustomed to. Several prominent legal professionals this week declined interviews.

You wouldnt think that the big firm lawyers would be so upset, Finder said. People feel like theres no space for any other views.

Censorship erratic

It was difficult to ascertain what online commentary was permitted. Censors took down an essay by a judge from Lanzhou city and even briefly blocked a legal analysis posted by a former Beijing government prosecutor surnamed Li, defending the citys decision to drop charges.

Li, who refused to provide AP her full name though said she was now working in the private legal sector, said her post was unblocked after a day. In a follow-up post, she expressed incredulity at how she was censored in the first place.

Did the relevant authorities hear the cries? she wrote. Freedom of speech is truly important.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday said the failure of the United States to thwart Chinas island building in the South China Sea showed there was no serious concern about its militarization or reclamation work.

The firebrand leader reiterated he wanted to avoid confrontation with China and saw no need for urgency in pressing it to abide by a July ruling by an international tribunal on its South China Sea claims that went in favor of the Philippines.

Asked during a television interview when he would address the issue, Duterte said it would happen during my time but he was not yet ready to discuss the ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and neither was China.

I cannot let is pass and be neglected, he told CNN Philippines, referring to the ruling that rejected Chinas extensive claims in the South China Sea.

He said he had no intention of aggressively pursuing the Philippine maritime claim and taking on China and that the only power capable of doing so was the United States.

Foreign policy move

Duterte made a stunning U-turn in foreign policy a few months ago when he made overtures toward longtime rival China and started berating traditional ally the United States.

He has previously played down the arbitration case, saying it would take a back seat during his talks in China in October. He has frequently praised China and said he wants it to play a prominent role in his economy.

Duterte also played down concerns that China was militarizing the South China Sea and he appeared unperturbed by its dredging work and building activity on reefs, several of which were within Manilas Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

Asked if he was worried, he said. No. Because if it was really a serious concern, then the United States should lead the way and stop it.

I said, right at the beginning, when the first spray of soil was tossed out to the area they [China] reclaimed, why did their [U.S.] think-tank not think?

Natural resources

Duterte said the one situation where he would take a stand against China was if it were to start exploiting natural resources within Philippine sovereign territory. He likened it to children bickering over inheritance.

The Philippines has within its EEZ deposits of oil and gas but lacks the expertise to exploit them. It has also been complicated by China laying claim to the same waters.
Much remains unclear about the nationwide Syrian cease-fire that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Thursday  a truce that Moscow says can pave the way for Russian-brokered talks on a settlement of the five-year-long war.



But Turkey's participation gives the cease-fire added significance, say Western diplomats, who have been sidelined by the deal. Ankara can do much to strangle rebel militias that break the cease-fire, having the ability to block arms resupplies crossing its border.

The Syrian National Coalition, the main Western- and Gulf-backed political opposition group, said it would abide by the truce but warned it would respond to cease-fire violations.

The coalition issued a formal statement later Thursday, saying it could count "on all parties to work to ensure the success of the cease-fire agreement and to abide by its terms." But the coalition warned that it feared "Iran will attempt to undermine the agreement as it seeks to further escalate the violence in Syria."

It added: "The coalition confirms that the FSA groups will abide by the cease-fire agreement, but will reserve the right to respond to any violations by regime forces and the Iranian militias who violated all previous cease-fire agreements."

Abiding groups

Russian officials released a list of rebel groups that have so far signed on to the cease-fire deal. They include Faylaq al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam, Thuwwar Ahl al-Sham, Jaysh al-Mujahidin, Jaysh Idlib and Al-Jabhah al-Shamiyah. Their apparent agreement is testimony to Turkish influence.



"The big difference is the role of Turkey," said a Western diplomat based in Ankara.

He and other diplomats say the latest development is part of an unfolding process that has Moscow, Ankara and Tehran increasingly working to plot a mutually beneficial end to the war that could see Syria, in effect, diced into separate zones of influence, although Russian officials insisted Thursday there will be no partitioning of the war-ravaged country.

It was deal-making between Russia and Turkey that cleared the way for the final evacuation of rebel fighters and civilians from eastern Aleppo earlier this month. Moscow and Ankara agreed to several cease-fires that failed, but a final one held, allowing the completion of evacuations of tens of thousands from the city's eastern neighborhoods.

Iran and Russia share an interest in ensuring the survival of Assad regime, a long-term ally of both Moscow and Tehran. For Turkey, the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad has taken a back seat to blocking the emergence of a Kurdish state in northern Syria, the very existence of which would encourage Kurdish separatists in Turkey itself, fear Turkish officials.

"As is known, we have long been working hard to launch negotiations between the regime and the opposition for a comprehensive political resolution of the conflict, to cease violence and to provide humanitarian aid. As a result of our efforts, an agreement between fighting parties in Syria to begin a cease-fire as of 00.00 on Dec. 30, 2016, has been reached. We welcome this development," Turkey's Foreign Ministry declared in a written statement released Thursday.



Geographical considerations

The agreement stipulates the cessation of all armed attacks, including airstrikes. No group  including the Syrian regime  should try to make territorial gains.

"Groups deemed terror organizations by the U.N. Security Council are excluded from this agreement," Turkey's Foreign Ministry stated, adding that Turkey and Russia would act as joint guarantors overseeing the cease-fire. The deal, in effect, would exclude the Islamic State terror group and al-Qaida-linked Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the armed group formerly known as the al-Nusra Front.

There also are exclusions of certain geographical areas. Labib Nahhas, a spokesman for Ahrar al-Sham, a powerful Islamist rebel group, told the AFP news agency, "Russia wants to exclude Eastern Ghouta from the cease-fire, which is not acceptable." Eastern Ghouta is a rebel-held suburb of Damascus.

Leaders of the Western-backed Free Syrian Army say Russia also is insisting on the exclusion from the cease-fire of rebel-held Douma, 10 kilometers northeast of the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The exclusions are prompting rebel leaders to complain that Moscow and the Assad regime are gerrymandering the map, excluding areas they want to move on while prohibiting' rebels from trying to seize territory important to them.

"The agreements reached are, of course, fragile, need a special attention and involvement," Putin acknowledged Thursday when announcing the truce. One key challenge will rest in persuading foreign Shi'ite militias, including Hezbollah, the Lebanese movement, to observe the truce.



Remaining issues

On Thursday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called for Hezbollah to be withdrawn from Syria altogether, though analysts say it is unlikely Hezbollah commanders will want to withdraw their forces from the strategic mountainous Qalamoun region running adjacent to Lebanon's Beqaa Valley.

Another major challenge for the fate of the cease-fire will rest with the course of any subsequent peace talks. Turkey says it backs political negotiations between the regime and opposition groups in Astana in mid-January. But Turkish officials say they will not sit at a table with Assad's representatives or discuss anything directly with them. The Turks say they still don't believe a political transition can occur while Assad remains in power.

"We have not negotiated the al-Assad issue," Cavusoglu said. He indicated for now that to ensure a cease-fire takes hold, Ankara is prepared to leave aside Assad's future. Another wrinkle could well come with Ankara's insistence that the Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, be excluded from proposed peace talks in Astana.
The main objective of the Indo-Bangla automotive show is to share the experience of Indian Automobile industry and government to create a thriving automobile manufacturing industry.

By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: First ever Indo-Bangla automotive show will be held from February 2-4 in Bangladesh's capital Dhaka. Society of Indian Automotive Manufactures (SIAM) will organise the show as part of an effort to strengthening the bilateral relationship between India and Bangladesh.

What we know about the event:

1. Latest automotive products manufactured by the members of SIAM will be showcased in the event.

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2. The main objective to organise the show is not only to showcase the world class offerings from the Indian automobile manufacturers but also to share the experience of Indian Automobile industry and government to create a thriving automobile manufacturing industry.

3. This event is supported by Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, government of India, High Commission of India in Dhaka, Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India (ACMA), India-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IBCCI), The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI), Bangladesh Automobile Assemblers and Manufacturers Association (BAAMA), Bangladesh Motorcycle Assemblers and Manufacturers Association (BMAMA).

4. A number of Indian and Bangladeshi automobile manufacturers including Ashok Leyland, Bajaj Auto, Eicher, Hero MotoCorp, Honda, Mahindra, Maruti-Suzuki, Piaggio, Renault, SML Isuzu, Tata Motors, TVS Motors, Yamaha, ACI Motors, Honda Bangladesh, Ifad Autos, Nitol- Niloy Motors, Rancon Motors, Rangs Motors, Runner, Uttara Motors will participate in the show.

5. Along with the automobile and automotive companies, various government departments, dealers and service agents will also participate in the event.

6. Director General of SIAM Vishnu Mathur while speaking about the show said it will provide a unique platform for the automotive companies from India and Bangladesh to come together and explore their combined potential from the point of view of expanding the market as well as establish vehicles and component manufacturing and assembly bases in Bangladesh.

7. He added the Indian and Bangladesh automotive markets have a lot in common with similar levels of purchasing power, road and traffic conditions etc.

Also read: 5 suspected Bangladesh mujahideen militants detained in Dhaka with 30 kg explosives

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Movie fans, celebrities and friends have been paying respects to actress Carrie Fisher, who died Tuesday morning in Los Angeles. She had been in a hospital since Friday, having suffered a medical emergency on a flight from London to Los Angeles.

On Hollywood Boulevard, movie fans gathered alongside Star Wars impersonators to honor the late actress, who found enduring fame as Princess Leia in the original film from the series.

"I think it's really sad. I thought, too, that she was getting better in the hospital after she had a heart attack, so it feels really sad. It's a big loss," Melody Silveira, a Boston tourist, told Reuters.

"She was a huge star. Star Wars was an amazing film, she was an amazing part of it and it's a great loss that she's died so young," British tourist Lee Scott said.

Under a Yoda statue, outside the Lucasfilm campus in California, Fisher's fans left flowers and messages.

Her brother, Todd, told KABC in Los Angeles that the family had hopes she eventually would do better.

"Everybody is just a little bit in shock because she's so young and was doing so great, and to have her have a cardiac arrest at this age, to say the least, is unexpected," he said. "We've really been close our whole lives, and it's a very strange place to be looking at the world without her."

Author, host

Fisher published best-selling books, hosted a television show and played numerous characters in television series, including Entourage and 30 Rock.

Los Angeles-based film critic and historian Leonard Maltin spoke to VOA about Fisher's film legacy and said Star Wars overshadowed "everything that Carrie Fisher did for the rest of her life."

"She's been busy as a writer, as a performer, as a participant in documentaries, as a novelist, but all people know her for and cared about is that she played Princess Leia," Maltin said.

The film critic also said that in addition to writing novels and a recent memoir, the late actress was a well-known script doctor.

"Directors would bring screenplays to her to add humor, to add a love interest, and she became one of the most reliable script doctors in town," he said.

Maltin's favorite memory of Fisher is "her self-deprecating sense of humor."

The actress was the first to speak openly about her own struggles. She was a mental health advocate who endured cocaine addiction and bipolar disorder.

"She made the jokes before anyone else could," Maltin said. "She beat them to the punch  or beat them to the punchline, you could say. She did a one-woman joke, Wishful Drinking, about her problems with alcohol and with abuse and about her turbulent life growing up in the spotlight."

Berkeley Repertory Theater artistic director Tony Taccone, who directed Fisher's solo theater production of Wishful Drinking, called her a "comic genius."

Wishful Drinking played at Berkeley in 2008 and 2009, and also made its way to Broadway.

"It's a great loss.  I've never met anyone who could craft a comic line better than she could," Taccone said in a statement.

A 'lovely lady'

Former co-star Peter Mayhem, who played Chewbacca in the Star Wars movies, said he remembered his friend as a "lovely lady" who was always glad to see him.

"A friend is gone, departed, and is hopefully happy where she has gone to," Mayhem said.

Actor Mark Hamill, who played Princess Leia's brother, Luke Skywalker, wrote a tribute on Twitter with the caption "#AFewWords."

"Carrie was one-of-a-kind who belonged to us all  whether she liked it or not. She was our princess," Hamill wrote. "I am grateful for the laughter, the wisdom, the kindness [and] even the bratty, self-indulgent crap my beloved space-twin gave me through the years."

Harrison Ford, another Star Wars co-star, with whom Fisher said she had a three-month affair 40 years ago, wrote in a statement that she was funny and emotionally fearless.

"She lived her life, bravely.  We will all miss her," Ford wrote.
Prosecutors in western Germany say they opened a fraud investigation earlier this year against Anis Amri, the main suspect in last week's Berlin truck attack, suspecting that he simultaneously claimed benefits in two towns under different identities.



Detlef Nowotsch, a spokesman for prosecutors in Duisburg, said Thursday the investigation was opened in April but shelved in November because Amri's whereabouts were unknown. Amri was accused of receiving asylum-seeker benefits in both Emmerich and Oberhausen for a few days in late 2015.



Amri is believed to have driven the truck that plowed into a Christmas market December 19, killing 12 people. His fingerprints and wallet were found in the truck.



The Tunisian arrived in Germany in July 2015. Authorities later put him on a list of potentially violent Islamic extremists.

Amri was killed last Friday in a shootout with police in Milan, Italy.
German authorities have released a Tunisian man who had been detained for alleged links to Anis Amri, the suspect who carried out the deadly attack on a Berlin Christmas market.

Prosecutors said they have determined the the person detained on Wednesday "is not the suspected contact of Anis Amri."

Amri used a truck to plow through the crowded market, killing 12 people and injuring 56 others. Before the attack he made a video in which he pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State terror group and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

After migrating illegally from Tunisia in 2011, Amri was imprisoned for burning down a migrant detention center in Italy. When freed, attempts to deport him to Tunisia failed for bureaucratic reasons. He subsequently traveled to Switzerland and then Germany, where he apparently fell under the influence of a radical network accused of recruiting for the Islamic State group.

Although Germany rejected his asylum application last summer and flagged him as a potential terror threat, authorities patiently waited for Tunisia to produce the required paperwork before deporting him.

Just as the deportation was being finalized, Amri is believed to have hijacked a truck and rammed it into holiday crowds at a Berlin Christmas market.

Amri was shot dead by Italian police at train station in Milan.
Brazilian police say they have discovered a charred vehicle containing a body they think may be the Greek ambassador who went missing three days ago.

The Globo television channel showed images Thursday of a burned-out white car in the Nova Iguacu neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, a poor and violent neighborhood where Greek Ambassador Kyriakos Amiridis was reported to have been visiting friends.

Globo reported that the license plate on the car matched that of Amiridis' vehicle.

Police said in a statement Thursday that Kyriakos Amiridis was last seen Monday night in Nova Iguacu.

Greek embassy officials would not confirm that Amiridis was missing and said only that he was vacationing in the area and was expected to return to work January 9.

Rio state police say they have opened a missing person case. According to Brazilian media, the ambassador's wife reported him missing after he left their holiday apartment in Nova Iguacu and failed to return or to get in touch.

Amiridis had just assumed the post in Rio this year. He previously served as Greece's ambassador to Libya from 2012 to 2016.
Haiti has delayed publication of the final, certified results of its disputed presidential election.



Electoral authorities said late Wednesday that they will release the results on January 3. A preliminary tally gave a big victory to Jovenel Moise, the candidate backed by Haiti's previous president. He topped his closest challenger by more than 385,000 votes in the November 20 election redo.



Only 21 percent of Haiti's voters participated in the election, which was called after an October 2015 election was annulled when a special commission reported finding what appeared to be significant fraud and misconduct. Moise also finished first in that vote count.



Officials said the results of legislative races will be published starting on Thursday.
New York City officials said security for Saturday's New Year's Eve celebration will feature massive 20-ton (18-metric-ton) sanitation trucks weighted with an extra 15 tons (13.6 metric tons) of sand and 7,000 police officers.

The "blocker trucks" and other vehicles will be used to close off vehicular access to Times Square. The officials said though there have been no specific threats to the event, the measures were driven by other terror attacks across the world.

As we formulated this year's plan, we paid close attention to world events and we learned from those events, said Carlos Gomez, the NYPD's chief of patrol. During recent attacks in Berlin and Nice, France, terrorists used large trucks to drive into crowds, killing dozens.

More than 2 million people are expected to attend the annual ball drop countdown in Midtown Manhattan.

Times Square revelers, who are prohibited from carrying umbrellas and large bags, will be screened at two points: once when they approach the Crossroads of the World, and again when they enter one of the 65 pens that hold thousands of people each.

And, as in past years, officials have removed trash bins and mailboxes, sealed manhole covers and done sweeps of parking garages and hotels.

We're going to have one of the most well-policed, best-protected events in one of the safest venues in the entire world given all the assets that we deploy here, New York City Police Commissioner James O'Neill said at a news conference Thursday.
President Barack Obama on Thursday hit Russia with new sanctions over its computer hacking and interference in the November presidential election and other Russian actions, including harassing U.S. diplomats in Moscow.

Obama called his actions "a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior."

Among the actions the president ordered were sanctions against nine Russian individuals and entities: two Russian intelligence services, the GRU and FSB; four officers of GRU; and three companies that provided material support to the GRU.

In addition, Evgeniy Bogachev and Aleksey Belan were also sanctioned. The Treasury Department called them "notorious criminals" who were responsible for the cybertheft of more than $100 million from U.S. banks and other American firms.

35 expulsions

Thirty-five Russian government officials in Washington and in the consulate in San Francisco were given 72 hours to leave the United States for "acting in a manner inconsistent with their diplomatic status and consular activities."

Russian officials also will be denied access to what the U.S. State Department calls two Russian government-owned recreational compounds in Maryland and New York. This was ordered after U.S. diplomats in Moscow were harassed and even physically assaulted.

"In addition to holding Russia accountable for what it has done, the United States and friends and allies around the world must work together to oppose Russia's efforts to undermine established international norms of behavior and interfere with democratic governance," Obama said in announcing the sanctions.

A senior White House official said Thursday's publicly announced actions were not the end of the American response. He said there would be other measures that wouldn't be publicized.

The official said there had been no debate within the Obama administration over whether Russia indeed interfered in the presidential election, primarily by hacking Democratic Party emails to try to harm Hillary Clinton's campaign and boost Donald Trump's chances of winning the November 8 election.

The official said the White House believed Russia would try to interfere in elections in other countries.

He also said he had no reason to believe Russia would not try the same thing in future U.S. contests. The next major American election will be in 2018, for the entire House of Representatives and a number of Senate seats.

No surprise

The Obama administration had warned the Kremlin numerous times in public and private that it knew what Russian hackers were up to and that Thursday's sanctions should not come as a surprise to anyone.

It also said it was inconceivable that Russian President Vladimir Putin knew nothing about it.

Watch: How Do Experts Know Russians Hacked the Election?

A Kremlin spokesman said Russia was considering an "appropriate" retaliation and accused the United Sates of trying to destroy ties with Moscow.

President-elect Trump, who has made no secret of his desires for better ties with Moscow, responded to the sanctions by saying it was time for the country to "move on to bigger and better things." But he intimated that he still had doubts about Russia's involvement in the election.

"In the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation," Trump said in a statement.

Congressional opposition

Emma Ashford, a foreign policy expert from the Cato Institute, told VOA that Trump would face a lot of opposition from Congress if he tried to undo the sanctions.

"Part of why this has been so difficult for the Obama administration is they were also trying to find something that Trump could not on his first day in office undo," Ashford said.

She added that the Obama administration must "try to send a signal that no matter what Donald Trump might say about how much he likes Vladimir Putin and how we're going to improve relations with Russia, that there has to be some sort of penalty for what the Russians tried to do in the election."

A State Department official said Thursday that reversing Obama's orders would be "inadvisable," adding that it made no sense to invite Russian intelligence officials back into the United States.

Thirty-five is the second largest number of Russian diplomats ordered out of the United States at one time since the end of the Cold War.

President George W. Bush expelled 50 Russians in March 2001 for alleged spying.

President Ronald Reagan deported a total of 80 Russian diplomats also suspected of spying during the fading years of the Cold War in 1986.
Peru said on Wednesday that Odebrecht SA and other companies involved in corruption will not be able to bid on public work contracts, a week after the Brazilian builder acknowledged distributing $29 million in bribes in the Andean country.

The government is changing public contracting laws to ensure that companies that have been penalized for corruption or that have admitted to bribing officials cannot compete on projects, said Prime Minister Fernando Zavala.

They won't be able to participate in public tenders, Zavala told the media when asked if that included Odebrecht.

The announcement appeared to end Odebrecht's nearly four-decade role as a successful bidder on public works projects in Peru, the first country outside Brazil where it ventured and home to some of its most ambitious projects, from a highway that crosses the Amazon to a tunnel that pumps water through the Andes.

Zavala said the government would decide on a case-by-case basis what to do with billions' worth in contracts already awarded to Odebrecht as local prosecutors determine if they were won with bribes.

Odebrecht did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The family-owned conglomerate is at the center of a growing corruption scandal in Latin America after it said in a plea deal in the United States that it doled out $439 million in bribes to public officials and their intermediaries in countries outside Brazil, according to U.S. court documents.

The plea deal did not name the officials who took bribes in Peru or the projects involved.

With several executives in prison in Brazil and its debt mounting, Odebrecht is not expected to bid on new projects anytime soon.

However, Zavala's comments could help the government firm up its stance against corruption after President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski faced criticism for appearing to defend Odebrecht by saying that not all of the company was corrupt.

On Tuesday, Panama said it was canceling a $1 billion hydroelectric contract awarded to Odebrecht in recent years and would ban the company from future projects until it cooperates with local authorities.
Three minors were among seven people shot dead by suspected vigilantes in the Philippines at a house storing illegal narcotics, police said Thursday, in the latest killings during a bloody and murky war on drugs.

Two unknown gunmen arrived on motorcycles and entered what police called a drugs den north of the capital Manila late Wednesday. They opened fire on those inside, killing five instantly before fleeing, according to a police report, which said two other victims died before reaching the hospital.

Four of those killed were teenagers, two of them 15, one 16 and one 18. The killings come as the government of President Rodrigo Duterte prepares legislation to put to Congress to lower the age of criminal liability to nine from 15.

More than 6,100 people have been killed in the past six months during Dutertes controversial war on drugs, about a third in police operations and others classified as deaths under investigation. Police say killings during counter-narcotics operations were in self-defense.

The crackdown, the core plank of Dutertes election campaign, has been condemned internationally and has created tension between the Philippines and key allies and donors, among them the European Union, United States and United Nations. He has praised China for staying out of it.

Duterte has hit back with stunning rebukes and says he is willing to rot in jail to rid the Philippines of a drugs problem he initially vowed to solve within three to six months.

He says the scourge was bigger than he first thought. In a television interview Thursday, Duterte said the drug war would not end soon.

Until the last pusher is out of the street ... until the last drugs lord is killed, this drug campaign would continue to the last day of my term, he said.

Killings by vigilantes have occurred often, and the authorities have been accused by rights groups of hiring assassins to kill suspects.

Duterte vehemently denies police are in cahoots with vigilantes and has said drug gangs are killing rivals and silencing informants and it was happening long before he took office.
The school principal allegedly molested the girls during a period of two-three months when they came to his house for tuitions.

By Nolan Pinto: A school principal was arrested for allegedly molesting seven girl students. He was produced before a court which remanded him in 14-day judicial custody.

Here are the details:

The accused, identified as Hussain, was arrested on the complaint filed by a victim in the presence of her parents.

The school principal allegedly molested the girls during a period of two-three months when they came to his house for tuitions.

The accused was booked under Section 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and Section 354 of the IPC.

The school is located in Thanisandra village and falls under the jurisdiction of Sampigehalli police station. School teachers have requested the parents to allow the school to run till the end of the academic session.

On Wednesday, parents and social activists stormed into the school protesting against the school principal. Some said the school does not have surveillance cameras despite mandated by law.

Many alleged that similar instances are being reported frequently in the state and yet the education department has failed to take any action. "It is only when incidents like these happen that authorities act," said Shakeel Basha, a social activist.

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U.S. officials say a key leader of Islamic State in its de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria was killed by a coalition airstrike this week, confirming earlier reports.

A statement by the U.S.-led coalition Thursday said Abu Jandal al-Kuwaiti was killed in a strike near near Tabqa Dam on Monday. It said he was a previous member of IS's War Committee.

Abu Jandal was involved in the use of suicide vehicles, IEDs and chemical weapons against the SDF. Because of his associations with ISIL terror attack planners and War Council members, his death will degrade ISIL's ability to defend Raqqa and launch external operations against the West, the statement said.

The coalition said he also participated in the retaking of Palmyra before sent to Tabqa with the mission to improve Islamic State defenses against the U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, reported Tuesday that al-Kuwaiti was a target by U.S. led coalition aircraft and IS supporters shared on social media that he was dead.

The SDF, a coalition of Kurdish and Arab forces, launched its Raqqa offensive in early November, routing Islamic State fighters from the northern part of the province.

The ongoing offensive consists of two major front lines where SDF units, with the help of U.S. air support, are approaching Raqqa from the west, attempting to encircle the city and cut a highway link between Raqqa and the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, another IS stronghold.

The U.S. recently announced it has assigned another 200 troops to Syria to train and advise local fighters battling IS, joining 300 American fighters already authorized to operate in Syria.
In South Africa, the next presidential election is still over two years away but the possible candidates are already a hot topic of national debate after the turbulent political ups and downs of the past year.

President Jacob Zuma emerges from 2016 bruised and battered by yet another chain of corruption scandals. He survived an impeachment attempt and a string of motions for a vote of no confidence, and investigations into his conduct continue.

Although Zuma still enjoys support, some both outside and within the party are already talking about his successor as the head of the ruling African National Congress.



The ANC suffered unprecedented losses in local elections in August, losing control of several key cities. The Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) cut into the ANC support base in those polls.

"There is no longer subject of doubt that Zumas leadership has actually destroyed the integrity of the ANC. The question now is how long will it take for the ANC to come back from this," says Independent political analyst Ralph Mathekga.

Zuma cant run again in 2019. He will have served his two-term limit. Party rules will not allow him to remain as ANC head either.

A frontrunner to succeed him is his former wife and soon to be ex-African Union Commission chair, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. She steps down from the AU post in January. Dlamini-Zuma has strong support in the partys largest province of Kwazulu Natal. However, the opposite camp, largely dominated by the ANCs alliance partners, wants current Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa to take the reins.

Political analyst Karima Brown says both candidates are seen as less tainted than Zuma.

"The factions are basically stacking up. What will be interesting for me is what the combinations are of the top six and it will be interesting to see if Cyril Ramaphosas availability splits the Kwazulu Natal vote and how that impact the rest of the ANC structure," says Brown.

The ANC has dominated South African politics since the end of apartheid in 1994. The new party leader would still likely be the favorite in the 2019 presidential elections, but it won't be an easy ride.

"First of all, the new leader has to restore credibility of people in government. You have got to restore peoples confidence that when wrong-doing happens there will be consequences," says Mathekga. "It doesnt mean the person has to be perfect, has got to come out with perfect policy because there is no such thing. You just need someone who is not interested in being corrupt."

Mathekga warns that a compromise candidate could emerge given the fact that Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma are supported by what looks like opposing factions.



The suspense may not end any time soon. The ANC isnt scheduled to hold the conference where it could elect a new leader until the end of 2017.
A nationwide Syrian cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey that went into effect at midnight was holding Friday, despite some violations.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported clashes early Friday between troops and rebels in the central province of Hama and near the capital, Damascus, but said there have been no reports of civilian casualties since the truce began. The group also reported an aerial attack on the rebel-held Barda Valley near Damascus.

Opposition activist Mazen al-Shami, who is based in the Damascus suburb of Douma, said minor clashes nearby left one rebel wounded. Activist Ahmad al-Masalmeh, in the southern Daraa province, said government forces had opened fire on rebel-held areas.

Several past attempts at halting the fighting have failed. As with previous agreements, the current cease-fire excludes both the al-Qaida-affiliated Fatah al-Sham Front, which fights alongside other rebel factions, and the Islamic State group.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the cease-fire will be guaranteed by both Moscow and Turkey, and the agreement has been welcomed by Iran. Moscow and Tehran provide crucial military support to Syrian President Bashar Assad, while Turkey has long served as a rear base and source of supplies for the rebels.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called the cease-fire a "major achievement" in a tweet Friday. "Let's build on it by tackling the roots of extremist terror," he added.

Russia said the deal was signed by seven of Syria's major rebel factions, though none of them immediately confirmed it, and one denied signing it.

The truce came on the heels of a Russian-Turkish agreement earlier this month to evacuate the last rebels from eastern Aleppo after they were confined to a tiny enclave by a government offensive. The retaking of all of Aleppo marked Assad's greatest victory since the start of the 2011 uprising against his family's four-decade rule.

"The defeat of the terrorists in Aleppo is an important step toward ending the war," Assad said in an interview with TG5, an Italian TV station, adding that the capture of the city does not mean that the war has ended because "terrorists" are still in Syria.

The United States was left out of both agreements, reflecting the deterioration of relations between Moscow and Washington after the failure of previous diplomatic efforts on Syria.

Assad told TG5 "we are more optimistic, with caution," about the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has suggested greater cooperation with Russia against extremist groups.

"We can say part of the optimism could be related to better relation between the United States and Russia," Assad said, speaking in English.

"Mr. Trump, during his campaign - (said) that his priority is fighting terrorism, and we believe that this is the beginning of the solution, if he can implement what he announced," Assad said in the interview, which was apparently filmed before the cease-fire was announced.

Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency meanwhile quoted the military as saying Russia carried out three airstrikes against Islamic State targets near the northern town of al-Bab, where Turkish troops and allied Syrian opposition forces have been battling the extremist group. The strikes indicated that Russia and Turkey may work together to combat IS once the fighting elsewhere in Syria has been halted.

The Turkish military statement quoted by Anadolu did not say when the Russian air strikes took place, but said they killed 12 IS militants.

Separately, 26 IS militants, including some senior commanders, were killed in Turkish airstrikes on al-Bab and the Daglabash region, and some 17 IS targets were destroyed, Anadolu reported. It said a Turkish soldier was kill in a IS attack on troops south of the al-Azrak area.

Turkey sent troops and tanks into northern Syria in August to help opposition forces clear a border area of IS militants and curb the advances of U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters, who are also battling the extremist group.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that two telecommunications companies are adding thousands of jobs to the U.S. economy.

Stepping outside his Mar-a-Lago resort home in Florida, Trump said Sprint is bringing 5,000 jobs back from overseas and that a new satellite manufacturer, OneWeb, will create 3,000 U.S. jobs.

Trump gave no details and did not say if he or his transition team had anything to do with the new jobs.

Trump has congratulated himself for the four-point rise in the U.S. Consumer Confidence Index for December, tweeting Thanks, Donald. But economists say consumer confidence has traditionally gone up after a new president from a different party is elected.

Obama, Trump talk on phone

Trump also told reporters President Barack Obama telephoned him Wednesday and that the two had a very nice conversation. Trump described their talk as being very general.

A minor feud erupted between Trump and Obama this week after the president said he could have beaten Trump if he had been allowed to run for a third term.

Trump tweeted No Way and noted that Obama personally campaigned in so-called swing states and still could not get former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton elected.

Trump said he is trying to do his best to disregard the many inflammatory President O statements and roadblocks. Thought it was going to be a smooth transition  NOT, he wrote in another tweet."

'Very generous'

But his press secretary, Sean Spicer, said Wednesday both the current president and the team have been very generous with their time as far as the actual mechanics of the transition have gone and I expect them to continue to speak fairly regularly.

When asked Wednesday for a comment on Secretary of State John Kerry's speech on Middle East peace, Trump would only say it speaks for itself. But he said the United Nations is not living up to its potential, saying the world body is causing problems, not solving them.
Tunisian security forces said on Thursday that they had broken up an al Qaeda-linked militant cell with 10 members that was active near the coastal city of Sousse.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that the group had used the Telegram encrypted messaging system to communicate with associates inside and outside Tunisia, and was plotting to carry out "terrorist operations", without giving further details.

The cell had links to Okba Ibn Nafaa, an al Qaeda-linked group based in the Mount Chaambi range near the Algerian border that has claimed attacks against Tunisian security forces, the statement said. Its members were aged between 25 and 45 and included two women, it added.

Tunisia has struggled to contain Islamist militancy since its 2011 uprising, suffering three major attacks last year including one in which 38 foreign tourists were killed by a gunman on a beach in Sousse.

Tunisian security forces said recently that they had dismantled 160 jihadist cells in the first 10 months of this year, about 45 percent more than during the whole of 2015.
Turkey and Russia negotiated intensely throughout December to reach a deal on a cease-fire in Syria, which took effect Thursday. But the two countries still back opposite sides in the fight, which raises questions for Ankara's role in reaching a lasting peace agreement.

The cease-fire is an important step to resolve the Syrian conflict," Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Thursday. His statement said the Russian and Turkish presidents spoke Thursday to discuss the cease-fire and next months planned Syrian peace conference in Kazakhstan.

Kalin confirmed reports that since early December, Turkey had facilitated talks between Syrian rebel groups and Russian officials in Ankara.

Some political analysts in Turkey say the fact that Russia and Turkey have backed opposite sides in the war could offer the biggest chance that the cease-fire will succeed where other initiatives have failed.

They are representing the two opposing sides in the Syrian civil war and they are negotiating, notes political columnist Semih Idiz of the Al Monitor website. This is why this may give help and credibility to this process. So anything they agree has some credibility.

The Turkish foreign ministry has said it will work with Russia to support and monitor the cease-fire.

Opposite sides on Assad

Moscow is the main military backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has considerable leverage over his government. Analysts say Russian support was decisive in turning the tide of the war in Damascuss favor.

Ankara, however, has been the most important supporter of the rebels, not only with aid, but also providing their main supply route.

Ankara is still at loggerheads with Moscow over the future role of Syria's President Assad. The Turkish Foreign Minister has reaffirmed Turkeys call that Assad must be removed as part of any peace agreement. Both Moscow and Tehran reject the demand.

Questions remain over how far Ankaras influence extends in the conflict. Turkey is speaking for the Free Syrian Army, and groups fighting for it, observes columnist Idiz. But can Turkey can speak for all the groups that make up the conflict in Syria at the moment, that is going to be one of main problems. And then there are lot of proxy wars going on in Syria at the moment.

Seeking cooperation

Turkey has acknowledged that all the countries with influence on combatant groups in Syria must cooperate to secure the cease-fire. To help achieve that, this week Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu held talks with Qatar, another key backer of the Syrian rebels.

Cavusoglu on Wednesday also called on Tehran to use its influence with Shi'ite militias operating in Syria. The foreign minister has pushed for the militias to leave Syria, which some regional analysts suggest is controversial. Tehran and Ankara are increasingly accusing one another of pursing sectarian policies in the region.

The cease-fire agreement does not include U.N.-designated terrorist groups. The Turkish foreign minister says both Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al- Sham, formally called al-Nusra, will continue to be subject to attacks. But local media report some Syrian rebel groups claim only IS will be targeted.



The cease-fire does not appear to address whether Turkeys military incursion into Syria, operation Euphrates Shield, will continue to target the Syrian Kurdish rebel group, the YPG. Ankara calls the YPG terrorists, a stance the United Nations does not back.





But Ankara says the YPG is an affiliate of the PKK, which the U.N. does consider a terrorist group. The YPG rejects that claim, as do most of Ankaras Western allies. Turkey's government hasn't yet said what it plans for its its Syria campaign.



Despite the questions, there appears to be powerful momentum behind the process. This is a last-ditch effort, people are looking to see if it provides a result, although this will be harder than thought, said columnist Idiz.
The Turkish government on Thursday dismissed Washington's denials that it has provided weapons to a Syrian Kurdish militia force, which Turkey considers to be a terrorist group.



It also complained about a lack of support from the U.S.-led coalition to its offensive against the Islamic State group in northern Syria.



Differences over the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces in Syria are driving a wedge between Turkey and its NATO ally, the United States. Turkey views the People's Protection Units, or YPG, as a terrorist organization because of their links to Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. It accuses the group of involvement in a series a bomb attacks in Turkey carried out by Kurdish militants - charges the YPG rejects.



The U.S. does not consider the YPG or its political wing to be terrorists and has backed the Syrian Kurdish groups, arguing that they are the most effective force against IS.



In an interview with A Haber news channel Thursday, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said: The United States has provided arms to the YPG - period.



He was responding to a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy a day earlier that said the U.S. had not provided weapons or explosives to the YPG or the PKK - period.



They know as well as we know that the United States provides arms to the YPG because they are fighting [IS], Cavusoglu said. We have documents to prove it, and the whole world is aware.

Cavusoglu said the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition had stopped providing air cover for Turkish troops and Turkey-backed Syrian opposition forces in Syria. He blamed that on alleged pressure by the Syrian Kurdish groups on the United States.



The YPG is exerting pressure on America, he said.



Turkey sent troops into northern Syria in August to clear a border area of IS militants and to thwart the Syrian Kurdish groups' territorial advances.



Addressing a scientific awards ceremony in Ankara, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also rebuffed the U.S. denials and called on Washington to side with its ally.



We are with you in NATO but despite this, you give support to separatist terror organizations and not to us, Erdogan said. This is not something we can accept.



In our operation in al-Bab, we are not seeing the slightest support from NATO or from our allies who have forces in the region, Erdogan added, in reference to a northern Syrian town that Turkish troops are fighting to retake from the IS group.
Hackers have targeted Ukrainian state institutions about 6,500 times in the past two months, including incidents that showed Russian security services were waging a cyberwar against the country, President Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday.

In December, Ukraine suffered attacks on its finance and defense ministries and the State Treasury that allocates cash to government institutions. A suspected hack also wiped out part of Kyiv's power grid, causing a blackout in part of the capital.

"Acts of terrorism and sabotage on critical infrastructure facilities remain possible today," Poroshenko said during a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council, according to a statement released by Poroshenko's office.

The statement said the president stressed that "the investigation of a number of incidents indicated the complicity directly or indirectly of Russian security services waging a cyberwar against our country".

Relations between Kyiv and Moscow collapsed in 2014 following Russia's annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, where fighting continues despite a ceasefire agreement.

Among the 6,500 attacks Poroshenko said the country had been hit by, the attack on the State Treasury halted its systems for several days, meaning state workers and pensioners had been unable to receive their salaries or payments on time.

Cyber security firm CrowdStrike said last week a hacking group linked to the Russian government likely used a malware implant on Android devices to track and target Ukrainian artillery units from late 2014 through 2016.

Its findings are the latest to support a growing view among Western security officials and cyber security researchers that Russian President Vladimir Putin has increasingly relied on hacking to exert influence and attack geopolitical foes.

Russia has repeatedly denied hacking accusations.

Poroshenko's comments come as the Obama administration plans to announce retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking into U.S. political institutions and individuals and leaking information in an effort to help Donald Trump win the presidency. Trump has dismissed the assessments of the U.S. intelligence community.

In December 2015, Ukrainian regional power company Prykarpattyaoblenergo reported an outage, saying the area affected included the regional capital Ivano-Frankivsk. Ukraine's state security service blamed Russia.

Experts widely described that incident as the first known power outage caused by a cyber attack. The U.S. cyber firm iSight Partners identified the perpetrator as a Russian hacking group known as "Sandworm".

As a result of the cyber attacks, Ukraine's security council agreed measures to protect state institutions, the statement said. It did not disclose what the measures were.
Rohingya Muslim villagers who spoke to a group of visiting reporters in Myanmar's Rakhine state have been harassed and, in at least one case, murdered. Government and Rohingya advocates are offering conflicting accounts of who is responsible.



The body of one of the men who spoke to reporters was found headless in a river, while others fled to neighboring Bangladesh. One woman told VOA by telephone from Bangladesh that she feared for her life after telling the visiting journalists reporters that she had been raped by soldiers.



The invitation-only media tour, comprising mainly journalists from Myanmar-based publications, marked the first time reporters had been allowed into the region in Rakhine state since three police posts came under attack on Oct. 9, leaving nine border guards dead.



Human rights groups accused the Myanmar military of responding with excessive force, and released satellite photos to support their claims that several Rohingya villages were burned to the ground. Soldiers are also accused of rapes, killings and other abuses that prompted thousands of Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. Myanmar authorities reject the charges.



The reporters, who were escorted by government officials to selected villages last week, were unable to confirm most of the complaints. At least two women told the reporters that they had been raped.





Reporters for Western media outlets protested at being left out of the tour and suggested the trip had been set up for "show." Information Ministry spokesman Ye Naing told VOA the trip had been hastily arranged but that the journalists were given free rein to report whatever they saw and heard.



Reports of retaliation against villagers who spoke to the reporters emerged immediately after the tour. On Dec. 22, authorities announced the discovery of the body of Dus Mohammad, a 39-year-old volunteer librarian also known as Shuna Mia. His severed head was found nearby.



Reports said the man had told reporters that more than 1,000 people had fled his village in response to the military deployment, but that Dus Mohammad had denied many of the allegations against the soldiers.



A posting on the Facebook page of Myanmar's de-facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, said Dus Mohammad "told media that there was no case of arson by the military and police forces, no rape and no unjust arrests." Local media speculated that he may have been killed by Rohingya militants angered by his denials.



Nurul Islam, the Britain-based chairman of a Rohingya advocacy group, strongly challenged that idea, saying his Arakan Rohingya National Organization has been told by villagers who were present that Dus Mohammad said nothing to anger other Rohingya.



He said his group has been told that groups of Rakhines -- members of the Buddhist majority ethnic group in the state -- have joined the military in attacking Rohingya villages.

"We have strong reasons to believe that the armed Rakhines...carried out this murder," he said in a telephone interview.



Other Rohingya activists told VOA that the discovery of Dus Mohammad's body prompted other villagers who had criticized the soldiers during the press tour to go into hiding or flee to Bangladesh.





Noor Jahan, a 27-year-old widow, told VOA by telephone that she had received serious threats after telling the visiting journalists on Dec. 21 that she had been raped. She said she and her 6-year-old daughter crossed into Bangladesh three days later.



"Five soldiers and Mogh [Buddhist] men had entered my house and they all raped me one by one and I fell unconscious," Jahan said. "I told the journalists how I had been raped and tortured by the soldiers and the Mogh men. Many other Rohingyas too reported to the media about rapes, killings and torture by the soldiers."

"After Shuna Mia was found slaughtered and when the soldiers and police launched a search for me, I became sure I would be killed," Jahan added. "Fearing for my life, I have fled to another country now."



Burmese reporters who participated in the media tour confirmed to VOA that they spoke to Noor Jahan and another woman, Jamah Leha, who described being dragged into a forest and raped. The reporters, however, said the claims were inconsistent and they were seeking more confirmation before reporting on the women's complaints.



The government says it later sent investigators to the village to follow up on the women's stories and take appropriate action, but that the women had disappeared. Rohingya activists say the women went into hiding because they believed the officials were going to retaliate against them.



Ko Ko Linn, a Bangladesh-based Rohingya community leader, said in a telephone interview that many Rohingya villagers held back during the press tour because they did not trust the Burmese reporters.

"They feared if they told the journalists that the soldiers and the Rakhines were the perpetrators of the violence, it would surely trigger fierce reprisals from them afterward," he said.



Human Rights Watch has estimated that 1,500 buildings have been burned since the Myanmar military deployed to the area following the attacks on the police posts. The United Nations says 30,000 people have been left homeless and 27,000 have fled to Bangladesh.



The International Crisis Group, an independent foreign affairs monitoring group, said in a report this month that the attack on the police stations appears to have been the work of an emerging militant group that is "led by a committee of Rohingya emigres in Saudi Arabia and is commanded on the ground by Rohingya with international training and experience in modern guerrilla war tactics."



It said the well-funded and well-organized group, which refers to itself as Harakah al-Yaqin (aith Movement, Hay), arose in response to longstanding discrimination against Muslims in Myanmar and warned that a failure by the military to distinguish between militants and civilians will only make matters worse.
Amid population declines for many wildlife species in Africa, conservationists are sounding alarm bells for the cheetah, the fastest animal on land.

An estimated 7,100 cheetahs remain in the wild across Africa and in a small area of Iran, and human encroachment has pushed the wide-ranging predator out of 91 percent of its historic habitat, according to a study published on Monday.

Consequently, the cheetah should be defined as "endangered" instead of the less serious "vulnerable" on an official watch list of threatened species worldwide, the study said.

"This period is really crunch time for species like cheetah that need these big areas," said Sarah Durant, a cheetah specialist at the Zoological Society of London and the lead author of the report published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

About 77 percent of cheetah habitats fall outside wildlife reserves and other protected areas, the study said, requiring outreach to governments and villages to promote tolerance for a carnivore that sometimes hunts livestock.

Besides habitat loss, cheetahs face attacks from villagers, loss of antelope and other prey that are killed by people for their meat, an illegal trade in cheetah cubs, the trafficking of cheetah skins and the threat of getting hit by speeding vehicles.

A cheetah has been recorded running at a speed of 29 meters (95 feet) per second. The species may move more slowly while hunting and it can only maintain top speeds for a few hundred meters.

More than half of the world's cheetahs live in southern Africa, including in Namibia and Botswana, which have relatively sparse human populations. Cheetahs have been virtually wiped out in Asia, save for fewer than 50 in Iran, according to the study, whose contributors included the Panthera group and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Durant said there was uncertainty over the 7,100 number, which was based on data from experts in areas where cheetahs live and estimates for other areas. Cheetahs are difficult to find because they move over vast regions, she said.

Durant also led a previous assessment of nearly 6,700 cheetahs published last year by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which keeps a watch list of threatened species. Since then, experts have provided new information and refined counting methods, contrasting with rough estimates in the 10,000-range in recent decades.

The cheetah population in Zimbabwe declined from an estimated 1,500 in 1999 to between 150 and 170, according to a survey conducted between 2013 and 2015 by a group called Cheetah Conservation Project Zimbabwe. The group solicited cheetah photographs and reports of sightings from tourists, safari guides and others and interviewed more than 1,000 people, including village heads and cattle managers.

Cheetah experts note that Angola is developing a plan to protect cheetahs and African wild dogs. That could yield better data on cheetah numbers in a country where information has been thin, said Rosemary Groom, a conservationist who participated in an October workshop on the subject in Angola's Quicama National Park.

Despite habitat loss across the continent, the Mara area in southwest Kenya and in the adjacent Serengeti National Park in Tanzania still offers a refuge, said Femke Broekhuis, head of the Mara Cheetah Project. Recent data from a GPS collar on one Mara cheetah showed that it traveled 19 kilometers (12 miles) overnight, she said.

Cheetahs often roam alone, though on Monday morning Broekhuis saw a rare sight: five male cheetahs, together.
Two Sri Lankan nationals were living in India as Indian citizen availing all the benefits for past ten years. Their fraud was exposed by French immigration officials when they landed in that country.

By Manogya Loiwal : Two Sri Lankan nationals were arrested at the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport with fake Indian passports on Thursday.

The two accused, identified as Suresh Karani and Jebanesam Ramerswani, sneaked into India from Sri Lanka around 10 years ago and were operating with fake documents since then.

They had been living as citizens of the country after procuring forged documents.

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READ| No security stamp on hand baggage at seven new airports: CISF

Two days ago, they had flown to France via China, where the French Immigration officials had detained them to verify their passports on grounds of suspicion.

ALSO WATCH:

The documents were, later, examined by the authorities and the two were deported to India with immediate effect.

The Indian Immigration officials, then, filed a report with the local police station. Acting on the complaint, the police arrested the two Sri Lankan national from the airport in Kolkata.

ALSO READ:

Security lapses found inside Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport

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The new year holds the potential for two paradigm-changing events in the city of Marysville.

The main one is the future development of the DTE site, said City Manager Randy Fernandez. We need jobs and a tax base in Marysville. This is definitely a regional project.

The Edison plant was imploded 14 months ago and the site has been cleaned up.

To date, no specific projects have been announced for the property.

The plant opened in 1922, Edisons third coal burning plant after the Delray and Conner Creek plants in Detroit, and employed as many as 250 at its peak. It stopped producing electricity in 2001. DTE placed into extended cold storage in 2011.

We had a meeting today with local, county, state and federal officials regarding that site, said Fernandez on Dec. 22.

Ive said for two years that I believe the DTE property to be the economic linchpin for not only the city of Marysville but this entire region, said Mayor Dan Damman in the wake of the demolition. We live in an incredible time in an incredible city and were on the cusp of greatness.

The city is considering moving all of its employees into a new city hall, the former headquarters of Blue Water Plastics at 1515 Busha Highway, which was donated to the city in September.

Were looking at the one-stop shopping of putting all city departments in one location to better serve our residents, said Fernandez. That may or may not happen.

Fernandez continues to market the 55,000-square-foot building to corporations in the area.

A number of details must be worked out prior to using the building as a city, not least a cost-benefit analysis.

Those are the two main things well be looking at in 2017, said Fernandez.

Marysville City Councilmember Paul Wessel noted at the regular council meeting on Dec. 5 that work had begun on the new $125,000 fishing pier just south of the new boat ramps. The pier will be the last major piece of the citys $6-plus million overhaul of its frontage on the St. Clair River.

A Malcolm Marine barge was in place three days before Christmas and work was proceeding.

Jim Bloch is a freelance writer. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.
Vladimir Putin: Colleagues,

The news has just come in that this morning, a few hours ago, an event that we not just long since hoped for but also worked hard for has taken place. Three documents have been signed. The first is an agreement between the Syrian government and the armed opposition on a ceasefire on the Syrian Arab Republics territory. The second document agrees a series of measures to monitor the ceasefire. The third document is a statement of readiness to start peace talks on ending the Syrian conflict.

The Russian Defence Ministry and Foreign Ministry were in constant contact with our partners in Damascus and other capitals and worked hard together with our partners in Turkey.

We know that the Russian, Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers recently held a trilateral meeting in Moscow, at which all three countries committed themselves to not simply monitoring but also guaranteeing the peace process in Syria.

I would like to hear your analysis of the events currently underway, and we will discuss the next steps in this peace process. We realise that the agreements reached are very fragile and require particular attention, patience, a professional approach to the issues, and constant contact with our partners in the region.

Mr Shoigu, you have the floor.

Sergei Shoigu (Defence Minister): Mr President, acting on your instruction, the Defence Ministry, with Turkey acting as intermediary, spent two months in talks with leaders of the groups that make up the moderate Syrian opposition. These groups control the greater part of areas in Syrias central and northern regions not under control of the government in Damascus. These detachments have more than 60,000 fighters. The most influential field commanders from seven opposition groups took part in the talks.

At the same time, we carried out the same work with the Syrian government. The talks made it possible for the parties to reach a common position and sign these three basic agreements that introduce a ceasefire, establish a monitoring regime, and set out procedures for organising talks on a peace settlement of the Syrian conflict.

The Defence Ministry has established a communications hotline for maintaining cooperation with Turkey, which is acting jointly with Russia as a guarantor of the ceasefire and respect for the agreements reached.

If you decide to let these agreements take effect, we are ready to guarantee the ceasefires introduction and organise ongoing monitoring to ensure it is respected.

I think that the conditions are in place now for a ceasefire to take effect on Syrias territory and establish direct dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition groups that seek to preserve Syrias territorial integrity and sovereignty. This also creates the conditions we need to be able to reduce Russias military presence on Syrian territory.

Mr President, the groups with whom the talks were conducted are presented here. (Watch presentation.) They all signed these agreements this morning. In terms of their territorial location, here you see the territory under these groups control.

Vladimir Putin: Mr Shoigu, these seven armed opposition groups, what and who do they represent?

Sergei Shoigu: Ahrar al-Sham, for example, has 80 detachments on Syrian soil, together with military hardware, T-55 and T-72 tanks and artillery. In terms of territory, Mr President, this

Vladimir Putin: How many armed fighters are we talking about here?

Sergei Shoigu: Sixty-two thousand armed people. Over these two months, we spent the bulk of the time on making sure that the maps indicate what we at one point asked our American colleagues to do.

Vladimir Putin: So, these groups are the core, essentially, the nucleus. They make up the main armed opposition forces.

Sergei Shoigu: Yes, Mr President. They constitute the main opposition forces.

These are the areas currently under their control. Here is Aleppo and here is Damascus, and this area is practically entirely under their control. Whats more, they have indicated the exact coordinates of locations and settlements under their control. The same goes for the central region and the situation in the districts around Damascus. Thus, we see that this area is under these detachments control.

We have also established a direct communications line with our Turkish colleagues, who are acting as guarantors to ensure that all terms of the agreements are respected, particularly as regards monitoring the agreements enforcement. The main purpose of this monitoring work is to ensure that organisations that do not cease hostilities are listed as terrorist organisations, and the same kind of action will be taken against them as is being taken against ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra throughout the remaining territory.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you.

Mr Lavrov.

Sergei Lavrov (Foreign Minister): Mr President, we will take measures today to ensure that the package of agreements that was signed be disseminated as official UN Security Council documents. We will brief the Security Council members on the work accomplished and answer their questions.

The current UN Secretary General and the Secretary General Designate, who takes office on January 1, welcomed this process that Russia and Turkey began and that Iran supported and took part in.

Throughout this joint work with Turkey and Iran, we briefed our other partners in the region and kept them informed in what we are doing. Now, following these consultations, we are ready to start preparing the meeting in Astana together with our Turkish and Iranian colleagues.

It is important to increase the number of guarantor countries, and we therefore want at this stage to invite our Egyptian colleagues to join these agreements. To my knowledge, you discussed this matter with the President of Egypt today. Later, at subsequent stages, we could probably get other key countries with influence on events in Syria involved too, countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, and Jordan.

Of course, we will invite the UN representative too. This will enable us to secure continuity of this political process, taking into account the framework approved by Security Council Resolution 2254.

I also hope that once Donald Trumps administration takes office, they too will join these efforts so that we can all work in this area in a friendly spirit and as a team.

Vladimir Putin: Let me say again that the agreements reached are fragile, of course, and require our particular attention and support to cement and develop them. Nonetheless, this is a significant result of our joint work and of the efforts the Defence Ministry, Foreign Ministry and our partners in the region have made.

Now, we must do all possible to ensure that these agreements take effect and that they work, so that the negotiation teams already formed or in the process of formation can come as soon as possible to Astana to begin the real peace process.

In this respect, I call on the Syrian Arab Republics government, the armed opposition groups, and all countries in the region, whether involved in the conflict or with influence on the parties to the conflict, to give their support to the agreements reached and take an active part in the planned talks in Kazakhstans capital.

(Addressing Sergei Lavrov) I ask you to organise contacts between myself and our partners in Turkey, Iran and Damascus, in order to discuss our next steps together to reinforce the agreements reached.

I agree with the Defence Ministry proposal to scale back our military presence in Syria. We will certainly continue our fight against international terrorism, of course, and will continue to support the legitimate Syrian government in its fight against terrorism.

We will, of course, carry out the agreements we have reached, including on developing our military base in Tartus and the Hmeimim air base.

I want to thank you for everything you have done in this important part of the fight against international terrorism.

Sergei Shoigu: Mr President, with your permission, we will confirm that the ceasefire will take effect from midnight on December 30.

Vladimir Putin: Agreed.

Sergei Shoigu: Thank you.
The undercover police operation spanned two-and-a-half years and led to arrest of 15 people.

By Indo-Asian News Service: Police have seized nearly $360 million worth of cocaine in what authorities have claimed is the largest in Australia's history, authorities said today.

Fifteen men, including a former National Rugby League (NRL) player, were arrested during the Christmas Day raids on Sunday following an undercover operation that had been ongoing for more than two and a half years, 9 News Australia reported.

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Here are more details:

Australian Federal Police (AFP) and New South Wales state police have charged the 15 men with serious drug offences. The accused are aged between 29 and 63 years.

Police have seized approximately 500 kg of cocaine in Brooklyn, north of Sydney and a further 600 kg in Tahiti that was allegedly bound for Australia. The bust also involved authorities in Tahiti and Fiji.

"The size of that seizure collectively makes it the largest cocaine seizure in Australian law enforcement history," AFP Acting Assistant Commissioner Chris Sheehan said.

"The criminal syndicate we have dismantled over the last few days was a robust, resilient and determined syndicate."

Sheehan said they were confident "the entire group has been taken out", 9 News Australia said.

"We have ongoing inquiries, particularly in South America and other parts of the world, to look at who they were dealing with to bring the drugs from those countries to Australia."

ALSO READ: Desi Narcos? Cocaine smuggling up by 670 per cent in India, Maharashtra tops with seizures worth Rs 425 crore

ALSO READ: India Today Expose: How aspirants take banned drugs to pass police fitness test in Haryana

ALSO WATCH

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On 19 December 2016, the jihadists of Ahrar al-Sham (Islamic Movement of the free people of Sham)  the leading group of moderates (read as: moderately anti-imperialist)  rejected merging with Fateh al-Sham (Front for the Conquest of Sham) during a meeting of their Council.

This Council convened just before East Aleppo was liberated which represents a major defeat for Ahrar al-Sham.

Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formally known as Al-Nusra, is the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.

In the photo above, the two groups appear already very close: a white flag for Ahrar al-Sham, a black flag for Al-Qaeda.

After Turkey seems to have abandoned the objective of toppling the Arab Syrian Republic, different groups of jihadists are seeking out fresh sources of support and are turning towards Saudi Arabia.
Photo: Lawrence Schiller  Polaris Communications Inc

If you were on social media over the past 24 hours, theres a fair chance you stumbled across the gorgeous black-and-white photograph, shown above, of a young Carrie Fisher attentively watching her mother, Debbie Reynolds, while she performs onstage. The photo itself is striking on its own merit, but after the deaths of both Fisher and Reynolds this week, it has reached a new level of poignancy. The photographer, Lawrence Schiller, did a short interview with the New York Times to discuss the shot, which he took at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas in 1963 while on assignment. Her daughter was really mesmerized by her mother always. Thats what really stood out, he explained. Youre waiting for the moment in which something youve seen is illustrated. And then you dont even stop and think. The image is there and your camera is like a sponge to absorb the moment. Schiller also noted that a nanny watching over Fisher brought a stool for her to sit on, Fisher climbed on top of it all by herself, and sat through the entire performance without looking away. Two Hollywood icons immortalized, indeed.
Photo: WireImage. Photo: Kevin Winter/WireImage

Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher had a rollicking, fabled mother-daughter love story. In the wake of their deaths, Todd Fisher  Fishers brother, Reynoldss son  posted a touching illustration of both women heading to the afterlife in an embrace. Theyre both in their most iconic costumes: Fisher, dressed in Princess Leias white cloak with her signature buns, and Reynolds in her Singin in the Rain raincoat. This is a beautiful love story to witness in my 58 years. I will miss them both so much. Love is everlasting, Todd tweeted Thursday afternoon. The drawing came courtesy of Georgia artist Ricky LaChance, who initially shared it only on his private Facebook page. When he read that Reynolds was so heartbroken over her daughters death, he decided to share it widely. On Facebook, LaChance wrote that he was asked why he chose to show Debbie in her raincoat. I love her in Singin in the Rain, he posted. It made me feel joy.
By PTI: New Delhi, Dec 29 (PTI) The Lt Governors office has recommended a CBI probe in the appointment of Soumya Jain, the daughter of Health Minister Satyendar Jain, as an advisor in the health department.

Sources said the Delhi government, upon direction from the LGs office, sent a letter to CBI earlier this month to look into the matter.

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Reacting to the development, Jain rejected the allegation of favouritism saying she had worked voluntarily and not a single paisa was given to her.

In July, Soumya had resigned the post of adviser of the Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics following Oppositions allegation of nepotism, though the Health Minister had been maintaining she was not being paid a "single penny".

"We have done nothing wrong. She was not given a single paisa. She had offered to work voluntarily and we had taken her service. Let them probe the matter," Jain said.

Meanwhile, senior BJP leader Vijender Gupta said recommendation of the matter to CBI by the LG office "strengthens the belief that the AAP government "indulged in gross irregularities in the matter of appointments". PTI BUN TIR

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The Madras High Court is hearing a PIL seeking the appointment of a judicial commission to probe into the death of the former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister.

By Pramod Madhav: The Madras High Court today expressed its doubts over the December 5 demise of J Jayalalithaa, saying the death was sudden and there was no medical report submitted of her long illness.

"Media has raised a lot of doubts. Personally I also have doubts in Jayalalithaa's death," Justice Vaidyalingam of the Madras High Court said.

"When she was admitted in hospital, it was said that she was on proper diet. At least after her death now, truth should be revealed," he said. The next hearing into the case is scheduled for January 9.

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Also read | Sasikala Natarajan era begins in AIADMK: Jayalalithaa's aide elected party General Secretary

As conspiracy theories continue to do the rounds over Jayalalithaa's death, the Madras High Court is hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking the appointment of a judicial commission to probe into the death of the former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister.

AIADMK WORKER FILED PETITION

The petition was filed by Joseph, an AIADMK worker.

There is suspicion regarding the death of the Chief Minister and that's why we filed the plea, said Vijay Anand, Joseph's lawyer.

The judge has given his personal view about the suspension behind her death, Anand said.

He added that it was strange that neither the health minister nor the health secretary gave any information about the treatment given to her unlike what happened when MGR was sick.

AMMA LOYALIST ALLEGES MURDER

Jayalalithaa loyalist Shihan Hussaini has alleged that she was killed. He wants Amma's body exhumed and an autopsy conducted on it.

Also read | AIADMK's wishlist for departed Amma: Nobel for world peace, Magsaysay

Hussaini, who has floated a party named after Jaya, has accused Sasikala's husband M. Natarajan of the "murder" and terms him the "mastermind".

The PIL cites a Calcutta High Court order appointing a judicial commission to unravel the mystery surrounding Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's death.

WATCH VIDEO

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Despite opposition from Texas women, health professionals and funeral service providers, Gov. Greg Abbott opted to move ahead with new rules requiring burial or cremation of fetal remains. These rules would apply to pregnancies ending in abortion or miscarriage, regardless of the stage of the pregnancy or wishes of the woman.

And now, a federal court has granted a temporary block on the regulations. As a result, Texas and the Center for Reproductive Rights will now embark on a lengthy lawsuit to decide if the regulations will be blocked permanently.

Another attempt by Texas lawmakers to put roadblocks in the way of womens health is not surprising. But these rules are not just about conservative lawmakers attempting to find alternative ways to stop women from obtaining abortions. They are, pure and simple, a fundraising campaign: a self-aggrandizing effort by lawmakers to appeal to conservative donors.

Last July, Abbott slipped the changes into the Health and Human Services Commission regulations that effectively circumvented the legislative process. Shortly after he began the process of manipulating the HHSC, he issued a fundraising letter to his constituents citing his involvement in these restrictive regulations as evidence of his intent to turn the tides against the soulless abortion industry in Texas, followed by an invitation to donate to his efforts.

The soulless abortion industry in Texas that Abbott referred to helps about 50,000 women in Texas make decisions about their reproductive health each year. Of those 50,000 women, the vast majority, about 45,000, accesses abortion before the 10th week of gestation. At this point in development, the remains in question are about the length of a bean pod, 1 inches. They typically weigh about half an ounce.

These small dimensions, however, do not equate to a small cost. If Texas women had been required to arrange cremation or burial of all aborted or miscarried pregnancies in 2014, the total cost would have been more than $100 million. In comparison, the Texas Legislative Budget Board allocated about half that amount to K-12 education spending in 2016.

Moreover, its not clear who will bear these costs. Even if abortion clinics or women seeking abortion are forced to pay for the actual procedure of burying or cremating the remains of a pregnancy, there will also be the costs of the legal battle the state will take on to fight for the rules in the courts.

In reality, these rules are yet another cost Texans will pay so that conservative politicians can make a point  that they still dont like abortion and, if you dont either, you should give them your money. Or at least be happy to fund a million-dollar court case.

Lawmakers know these rules are a waste of time and money. They know they are a clear attempt to circumvent the Supreme Courts decision in Whole Womens Health vs. Hellerstedt, which struck down restrictions on abortion masquerading as laws to protect womens health. They also know that it is irresponsible to pursue these rules  as well as the accompanying bill in the upcoming legislative session that would codify them in state law  at the expense of issues that desperately need attention. Our state literacy rate, for example, is one of the lowest in the country.

It is reprehensible for elected officials to waste time on what amounts to fundraising projects and exhibitions of personal moral ideologies that serve only to interfere in the lives of others. This is not a case of politicians standing up for their beliefs or fighting for their constituents. This is a case of politicians ignoring the facts and ignoring the precedent that the U.S. Supreme Court set less than a year ago. This is an example of a costly and irresponsible state government.

Abigail Aiken is an assistant professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Fred Tally-Foos is an undergraduate student in the Plan II Honors Program at UT-Austin.
By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: In yet another embarrassment for the ruling BJP, a case has been registered against the president of its Maharashtra unit and Member of Parliament, Raosaheb Danve. The case is regarding the controversial statement made by Danve during a poll campaign rally for the local body elections. The FIR has been filed under section 171 B of the IPC at the Paithan Police Station in Aurangabad district on Wednesday night.

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While addressing a rally during his campaign on December 17 for the Nagar Panchayat Polls in Paithan, Danve had appealed to his voters to accept "Lakshmi" ( Goddess of wealth) if it is offered to them on the eve of polls. "Today is 17th and tomorrow is 18th - the day of voting.. If Goddess Lakshmi gives you darshan today, do not turn it down. Accept it and vote for whoever you have decided for," Danve reportedly said in the rally. A video clip of Danve's statement had also gone viral on social media. Calling it as an attempt to promote cash for votes, Opposition parties had approached the State Election Commission demanding strict action against Danve.

Taking a serious note of Danve's statement, the state election commission had asked Aurangabad District Collector to register an FIR against Danve for violating the model code of conduct.

But the Opposition is not happy just with the FIR. The Samajwadi Party has demanded Danve's resignation. "The Election Commission has directed the District Collector to file a case against Raosaheb Danve. He should now immediately resign on moral grounds. The protocol offered to him should also be taken away,"demanded Samajwadi Party leader and MLA Abu Asim Azmi.

The NCP has called this as arrogance of power, "This is the second time that someone from the BJP or affiliated with the BJP has been rapped on the knuckles by the EC. Earlier a minsieter in Fadnavis Cabinet, Mahadev Jankar had to face the music for pressurising an election officer. This is nothing but arrpogance of power," alleged Nawab Malik, Spokesperson of the Nationalist Congress Party.

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On January 8, a 'Ghanta Naad'( Ringing of bells) agitation will be held at district head quarters of Congress.

By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: The Maharashtra unit of Congress will be taking to streets on January 8 to protest against demonetisation.

Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) president Ashok Chavan said that the agitation will start from January 2 and leaders from the party will address press conferences state-wide. On January 8, a 'Ghanta Naad'( Ringing of bells) agitation will be held at district head quarters.

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"Narendra in Delhi and Devendra in Maharashtra have resulted in "Daridra" (poverty) for the common man," said Chavan. "Even after fifty days since demonetisation, hardships of the common man, farmers still continue. Prime minister should answer the questions posed by party vice president Rahul Gandh," he added.

CHAVAN DEMANDS AND QUESTIONS

Chavan also demanded a judicial probe in the cash seizures from vehicles allegedly belonging to two BJP ministers. "Cash was seized from co-operatives minister Subhash Deshmukh in Solapur. Also large sums of cash were recovered from a private car that belonged to Vaidyanath Bank. But the government seems to be in no mood to take any action against them."

Chavan also demanded that the restrictions on withdrawal of money be lifted with immediate effect and till the time these restrictions are in place, a special interest at the rate of 18 per cent per annum be given to all.

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Running clinic helps speed up Airmen

Ian Adamson, president of Healthy Running, uses a foam roller to demonstrate ankle and calf stretching during a natural running form clinic at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., Oct. 6, 2016. Adamson has a masters degree in sports medicine and uses his experience and knowledge to teach about healthy living and how to improve running. I think courses like this bring a different perspective on fitness compared to what Airmen continue to hear from base health services, said Alison Morrell, 90th Medical Operations Squadron health promotion coordinator. Adamson is a professional who has won multiple gold medals and broken world records. He shows that he knows what he is talking about through his education and experience. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Christopher Ruano)
A teenager, born with rare spine condition that left half of her body immobile, has become an inspiration for others in Kolkata. She is more adventurous than most of the able-bodied people.

By Manogya Loiwal : Malvika Kalani, a 14-year-old girl living in Kolkata, is a go-getter and stops, practically, at nothing. Not even her ailment, which rendered her lower body immobile, has dampened her spirit to outshine almost everything and everyone.

From paragliding to trekking, badminton to dancing, this girl stops at nothing. But, her real passion is dance. A differently-abled body is no hindrance to her.

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"I enjoy swimming, dancing and a bit of badminton. I try to do as much as I can. I have tried trekking and rock climbing I enjoy adventure activities. Whenever we go out I really want to do the rides," said Malvika, with a beam of light illuminating from her eyes.

Her parents have tried everything under the sky to find a cure for their daughter's ailment. But, doctors told them that her spine deformity had no cure. Such patients can only be rehabilitated, the doctors said.

(Photo: Shyam Sundar Ghosh)

DIFFERENT AND SPECIAL

Mamta Kalani, the mother of Malvika, said, "We came to know about her problems only after her birth. Previous tests did not tell anything. She has a spine deformity."

"We have consulted doctors from everywhere. Finally, we were told that she could not be cured. Rehabilitation is the only solution," said Mamta Kalani.

(Photo: Shyam Sundar Ghosh)

WORKS LIKE ANY OTHER CHILD

Is Malvika given special treatment for being a differently able child? Her mother says, no.

"My behaviour was always normal with her. Just in the beginning, I was taken aback. After that I never felt she has an unusual condition. So, she was also normal. I was also normal," Mamta Kalani said.

What about the rehabilitation process that doctors recommend for a patient like her? Mamata Kalani says Malvika is as normal in her routine as any other child.

(Photo: Shyam Sundar Ghosh)

"There is no compromise in rehabilitation. Her routine is like a normal child. She does everything. She goes to school, gets ready by herself and even takes out her own clothes," Mamta said.

ALL ALONE ON SCHOOL INCURSIONS

"Initially, when her school started, I used to feel as to how she would handle herself. But, I never used to show her that I was concerned. I tried my level best to make her strong so that she does everything on her own," Malvika's mother said.

As a small child, Malvika insisted on going out on school incursions. "Every year in school, there is an excursion. She used to insist. I never said 'no' to her rather said that we would think about it when the time was right," Mamta said.

(Photo: Shyam Sundar Ghosh) (Photo: Shyam Sundar Ghosh)

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But, now that the apprehensions of her parents have been proved misplaced, Malvika goes out on her own.

Mamata Kalani explained saying, "She proved herself that she can manage on her own and now she goes on school trips as well without anyone's help like a normal child. I am very thankful to her friends, teachers and my family for being so supportive."

THE DANCING QUEEN

Malvika has a special place in her heart for dancing. She loves to dance in every possible situation- be it some relative's wedding or a dance competition, she makes it a point to participate and usually, Malvika steals the limelight.

Her mother Mamata says that even as a child, Malvika had a sense of beat and rhythm. At a family wedding function, Malvika danced for the first time on the stage.

(Photo: Shyam Sundar Ghosh)

"She got a huge applaud there, says the proud mother. Everyone was so overwhelmed to see her dance, especially the way she danced," Mamta said.

"It's been 6-7 years since and now, she goes to dance classes like any other normal child. She carries on any activity that one can think of. She swims. She also goes for badminton classes," added Mamta.

(Photo: Shyam Sundar Ghosh)

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Malvika is now an inspiration to all those, who feel that their differential ability can hinder their dreams. Of course, her parents have played a key role.

(Photo: Shyam Sundar Ghosh)

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By PTI: for execution

Pune, Dec 29 (PTI) A 24-year-old man from Bengaluru has been arrested in connection with the brutal murder of a young woman IT professional here last week with police claiming unrequited love was the reason behind the crime.

Another youth, who police suspect was roped in by the accused to carry out the crime, is also being questioned.

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Pune police said Santosh Kumar Gupta meticulously planned the killing of Antara Das, who was working with an IT major here. He was detained earlier after the deceased womans parents expressed suspicion that he might be stalking her and was arrested last night on charges of murder and conspiracy.

Gupta originally hails from Ara district in Bihar.

Das was attacked with a sharp weapon near Kanbay Chowk in Talawade on the city outskirts on Friday night, barely 500 metres from her workplace. She was declared dead upon arrival in a hospital.

The alleged role of another youth, believed to be Guptas friend, is emerging in the murder as the police suspect he was tasked to keep an eye on Antara by Gupta who wanted to be sure that there is no other person in her life.

Gupta, accused of conspiracy, was produced before a local court, which remanded him in police custody till January 4.

"During investigation, it was revealed that Santosh Kumar Gupta had very smartly planned the murder. The accused claimed that he was present in Bengaluru on the day of the incident," Additional Superintendent of Police Rajkumar Shinde said.

Police said Gupta met Antara in Bengaluru and after she shifted to Pune, he started harassing her by sending messages. Gupta was forcing her to enter a relationship with him.

As Antara blocked his number, he started calling her from other phones and kept on harassing her.

"There are messages between them which showed that Kumar was forcing her to have a relationship with him. However, she was non-responsive and even reprimanded him for harassing her," Shinde said.

While seeking Guptas remand, the prosecution said the police are yet to ascertain who killed Antara and that sim cards and mobile phones used by the accused in hatching the plot are yet to be recovered.

"Since Antara was rejecting his proposal and even reprimanded him for harassing her and even complained to her parents, Gupta had asked his friend, who too was known to Antara, to keep a watch on her movement to see whether there was any other person in her life," Shinde said. (More) PTI SPK GK NSK GVS

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Patient Lalit Verma said he was treated on the basis of a "faulty report" which mentioned female organs such as uterus adnexa, ovary and pouch of Douglas.

By Sneha Agrawal: A clerical error of using a female form template for a male patient's ultrasound report, followed by medical negligence at a reputed private hospital of the national Capital, left a Delhi-based civil engineer with lasting medical issues and heavy financial setbacks.

Lalit Verma, 42, was awarded compensation early this month after nearly a decade-long legal battle in a consumer court, which held the hospital guilty of neglect.

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Verma said he was treated on the basis of a "faulty report" which mentioned female organs such as uterus adnexa, ovary and pouch of Douglas. The heavy dose of medicines thus administered to him, he believes left him with crippling side-effects.

BUSINESS SHUT DUE TO POOR HEALTH

"I have gained much weight and suffer from shortness of breath. Even for minor ailments, I need strong medicines; small doses have no effect on me," Verma told Mail Today.

"I ran a business of greeting cards before the incident but had to shut it down as I was too weak to run it properly. I had to shut down my business and sold two flats to meet the financial needs of my family. I am forced to live in a rented accommodation due to my medical expenses."

Also read: Shocking! Rats eat eyes of dead woman in Bhopal hospital; MoS Health says cannot control rodents

Also read: Delhi: 5 private hospitals on radar after complaints about medical negligence, inflated bills

PENALTY

The court order has brought some relief to Verma. Coming down heavily on the callousness, the order said that treating a patient without ascertaining cause of ailment with due care speaks volume about the quality of service being provided.

The court directed the appellant to refund an amount of Rs 49,028 with an interest at 12 per cent per annum to the complainant, besides paying Rs 20,000 on account of compensation for mental and physical agony and Rs 10,000 on account of cost of litigation. "It was an error which no doctor of reasonable competence should commit and hence the same comes within the purview of negligence," the court said in its order.

Also read: Bihar's biggest government hospital not in tow with cashless society dream, still accepts cash

It declared the ultrasound report as faulty for it contained reference to female organs. The counsel of the hospital had submitted that no harm was caused by the error in the transcription of ultrasound report. "The fact that ultrasound report was correct is evident from finding of fatty liver which was found in subsequent ultrasounds also. As complainant did not have fever, no pathological test was necessary at the time of discharge. No kidney stone was visible and in the ultrasound done," the counsel told court.

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However, the counsel for Verma, Rajesh Kumar said the doctors did not carry out a fresh ultrasound even after the fault was spotted and his client was given medication for 17 consecutive days that further deteriorated his condition. Kumar said the hospital's explanation that it was the typist's fault could not be used to defend the doctor who signed the report.

VICTORY TASTES BITTER

However the court observed that the hospital had not disclosed when the error was detected and questioned that why no fresh ultrasound was carried out when the defect came to light. "It amounts to fault, imperfection, shortcoming in performance required to be maintained for consideration received," said the order. Calling it an act of negligence, the consumer court asked the hospital authorities to compensate him for the loss. Speaking to Mail Today, Verma said even though he felt vindicated he is still bitter over the fact that for one whole year he remained unhealthy and was forced to discontinue his business due to lack of physical and mental strength.

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"Is it not the responsibility of the doctors to ensure that they read the test reports before prescribing and injecting medicines?" he said. "It was very important for me to drag them to court otherwise the doctors would not learn to take the responsibility of their act." He said that what happened to him could have also happened to somebody else and therefore decided to seek legal remedy from the court.

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By Disha Roy Choudhury, India Today Web Desk: In a world where societal values stem out of supposed morality, our life is often governed by things forbidden. There are a few (or many in Indians' case) dos and don'ts that every individual is brought up with. And there are issues, serious as they may be, that must remain a hush-hush affair--be it homosexuality, sex, menstruation or even mental health--because, "log kya kahenge".

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Mental illness has long been synonymous with madness. Every time one has suffered from a mental disorder, he/she has been pitied, shamed, and in extreme cases, ostracised. This, in turn, has bogged down many. The question that arises here is, what is it that sets the benchmark for sanity? What are the pre-conditions that help create this line between the 'sane' and 'insane'? On what basis does society become the advocate of rationality?

Also Read:Deepika gets emotional while talking about her depression

As Foucault once said, "The possibility of madness is implicit in the very phenomenon of passion". Time is now ripe for us to begin decoding the taboo around mental illness--to begin sensitising people about it, to tell them and ourselves in particular that mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of or shy away from. And talking openly about it is ABSOLUTELY fine.

The year 2016 has been eventful in ways more than one. It has been a year of revolution, of uprisings and of debunking social stigmas.

So, here goes another confidence booster--the following are the celebrities who owned up to mental illness in 2016.

1. Deepika Padukone

This diva from Bollywood has lately been a huge inspiration for a lot of people suffering from depression. Deepika had first spoken about her depression two years ago. The actress has been candid about her illness and is now encouraging others to do the same through her newly launched campaign, Dobara Poochho, that aims to break the stigma around mental health.

Her foundation, The Live Love Laugh Foundation, is driving a full-fledged awareness campaign to bridge the gap between patients and therapists. "The reason I came out in the open about it was because I just did not want to feel what I was feeling, I did not let depression get the better of me. I think the root cause is stigma. And the day we, as a society, can together get over that stigma and bring awareness about mental health issues, we will win this battle," she had shared at an event on World Mental Health Day.

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2. Honey Singh

Honey Singh. Photo courtesy:Instagram/_Honey_Singh_

Dismissing all rumours about himself, this king of rap finally confessed to having been a victim of bipolar disorder earlier this year. "The truth is I was suffering from bipolar disorder. It went on for 18 months, during which I changed four doctors, the medication wasn't working on me and crazy things were happening. I must confess that I was bipolar and an alcoholic, which aggravated the condition," the musician said in an interview.

3. Zayn Malik

Zayn Malik. Photo:pictures.reuters.com

The One Direction sensation has recently authored an autobiography, Zayn, in which he has been absolutely blatant about his response to the stigma, "Anxiety is nothing to be ashamed of; it affects millions of people every day."

"I don't want to say I'm sick. I want to tell people what's going on, and I'm not gonna be ashamed of what's happening," he's written in his book.

4. Karan Johar

Karan Johar. Photo courtesy: Instagram/karanjohar

Known for being ever-so candid, this film-maker finally spoke about battling clinical depression for years in a recently televised interview. Calling it the "darkest period" of his life, Karan Johar went on to speak about how the anti-anxiety therapy sessions had really benefited him. "I went through a series of anti-anxiety medication. A year and a half post that, when I stopped it, I realised that I am in a much better place. Today, I actually feel the emotion of excitement and happiness. When you go through it, you stop feeling that zing of emotion. Today I am getting all of them back," he expressed.

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5. Shama Sikander

Shama Sikander. Photo courtesy:Instagram/shamasikander

Well, this small-screen actress has lately been called the Deepika Padukone of television. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Shama spoke about having attempted suicide five years ago. She even went on to underline society's ignorance on the issue of mental illness: "Like many others, my parents too thought that I was possessed because they didn't have any idea about bipolar disorder. If you know about it, you will not judge others."

6. Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher. Photo: pictures.reuters.com

Being a patient of mania herself, this iconic actress had been writing advice columns for the Guardian on mental health. In fact, her last column, published this November, addressed the issue of bipolar disorder: "We have been given a challenging illness, and there is no other option than to meet those challenges. Think of it as an opportunity to be heroic--not "I survived living in Mosul during an attack'' heroic--but an emotional survival,'' was her advice to one of her readers. Fisher was herself diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her 20s.

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7. Ileana D'Cruz

Ileana D'Cruz. Photo courtesy: Instagram/ileana_official

Ileana told the world that seeking help for any sort of mental illness was nothing to be shameful about. Talking about her mental illness in an interview, she said, "I know I've been dealing with it for over 10-12 years, maybe even 15, but I never really knew what it was. I finally went to somebody a few months ago and she sort of helped me out." Ileana has been suffering from Body Dysmorphic Disorder, whereby one gets fixated with a particular body part and starts hating it to the point of obsession.

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According to the investigation so far, the robbery is not the handiwork of a local criminal gang. Sources said police suspect an inter-state professional gang's involvement in the crime.

In October, a gang of five men, posing as cops, had kidnapped the manager of a Muthoot Finance branch in Kumbalgodu, Bengaluru, and decamped with gold and cash worth more than Rs 90 lakh.

Sources said the modus operandi and number of miscreants involved in both the cases are similar.

As per the CCTV footage recovered by the police, the robbers, after looting the bank around 9.30 am, took the Hyderabad-Mumbai highway and crossed the Telangana-Karnataka border around 12 noon.

Sixteen teams of Cyberabad Police, under whose division the RC Puram branch falls, are camping in the neighbouring state. Joint Commissioner of Cyberabad Police, Stephen Ravindra, is in Gulbarga, Karnataka, leading the police investigation.

Police have found that the number plate of the Scorpio car used in the crime was fake. The number was traced to a Bajaj Chetak scooter. Police are also probing if some Bihar and Uttar Pradesh-based gangs were involved in the robbery.

Speaking to India Today, DGP, Telangana, Anurag Shrma said, "Our teams are on job and we are investigating all possible angles. We are hopeful of solving this case before the year ends".
The Election of 2016: What Happened and What Does it Mean?

December 28, 2016

OGDEN, Utah  The new year will bring with it a new U.S. president, Donald Trump, along with questions about what the change in administration will be like. Leah Murray, a political science professor at Weber State University, will discuss the 2016 election as part of the Weber Historical Society Lecture Series, Jan. 9 at 7 p.m. in the Hurst Center Dumke Legacy Hall.

During Murrays lecture, The Election of 2016: What Happened and What Does it Mean, she will explore the presidential election and answer questions about how different groups in the nation voted, what will happen next and how it compares to larger global trends.

Murray will also address questions about the Electoral College, since this election has left many people skeptical of the system used to select the nations president.

This is an important topic as Clinton won the popular vote but is not president, Murray said. People do not understand how that happens, so we will discuss the process.

Murray said poll predictions were another source of confusion during the election. Predictions cast Hillary Clinton as the likely victor, and many voters approached the election believing Donald Trump had a slim chance of winning. During her lecture, Murray will explain how the predictions were so inaccurate.

This event is part of the Weber Historical Society Spring 2017 Lecture Series. It is presented by the WSU Alumni Association, the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences, the Department of History, Stewart Library and the Weber Historical Society.

Visit weber.edu/wsutoday for more news about Weber State University.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Dec. 29, 2016 | MURRAY, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Dec. 29, 2016 | 04:27 PM | MURRAY, KY

A Murray man faces assault and drug charges, after police responded to a home on Christmas day to check on a resident.



The Murray Police Department says officers responded to a house on North 17th Street. After arriving, officers made contact with 32-year-old Thomas Sullivan. Officers said they could see a marijuana pipe and some loose marijuana inside the home, and Sullivan was then walked outside to check on a warrant issued in his name.



While Sullivan was outside, a woman who lives at the home told officers Sullivan had injured her leg and prevented her from seeking treatment during a previous incident. She allowed officers to search the home, and they reportedly found more marijuana, along with a scale and items with meth residue on them. They also found a gram of methamphetamine in a plastic capsule.



Sullivan was arrested and charged with 4th degree assault (domestic violence), unlawful imprisonment, possession of meth, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
By PTI: London, Dec 29 (PTI) You can now send a physical kiss to your long-distance lover over the internet, thanks to a new smartphone gadget developed by researchers.

The device, known as Kissenger, works with pressure sensors and actuators.

It records the users kiss and transmits it to an identical receiving device, which recreates it for the person on the other end through an app that also features videocalling.

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"Kissing is the most direct and universal expression of intimacy and affection," said Emma Yann Zhang, who worked on the prototype as PhD student at City University London.

"Its a way for us to bond and maintain intimacy in our relationships," she said.

"Also, it?s stress reducing; when we engage in this kind of intimate physical touch, we have a lower level of blood pressure," Zhang was quoted as saying by the Mirror.

Parents can also use Kissenger to give their children a kiss on the cheek when they are away at work, researchers said. PTI MHN SAR MHN

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Ideologically subversive within a glittery rainbow-coloured package  La Cage aux Folles is surely a musical for our times. A Queer utopia within a fictionalised Saint Tropez comes under existential threat from a right-wing traditionalist politician whose star is in the ascendant. Conventional ideas of morality and family structure are challenged with pathos and humour in a French farce worthy of Moliere.

Conceiving the visual world of the musical was a bit of a dream job for a stage designer. The producers wanted a sumptuous and extravagant set, and it was enjoyable imagining the look within a timeline of performance makers  I thought about the kind of work which would have inspired Georges and Albin and informed the performances they make  Erte, Ziegfeld's Follies, Folies Bergere, and so on. Additional inspiration came from contemporary pictures of the Paris apartment belonging to fashion photographers Pierre et Gilles, the imagery of David Lachapelle, and my much-loved copy of Stephen Calloway's book Baroque Baroque: The Culture of Excess.

For me the key location of the musical is the "Cage" club. Rather than being a form of prison, it is a sanctuary where homosexuality and transvestism are not only accepted, but rather are celebrated and revered. Correspondingly, the set design is dominated by an ornate false proscenium, which is decorated with filigree peacocks, gilded lilies, and miniature birdcages. I discovered quite quickly that the sets needed to facilitate the other locations had to be able to compete visually with the proscenium in terms of detail and finish, so Albin and Georges' apartment is a riot of floral wallpaper and gold-framed male nude paintings, the scenes backstage feature a giant Nubian sculpture from an unseen Egyptian extravaganza, and Jacqueline's restaurant is decorated with stained glass windows containing sunflower and bee motifs. Overall the aesthetic sits somewhere between Art Nouveau and Rococo.

There were two major challenges  firstly the musical jumps frequently from location to location. It took a lot of consideration to find the best way possible for us to flow effortlessly from scene to scene. Secondly, this will be the first time the musical has toured the UK  and we've all worked hard to make the design practical on a weekly turnaround.

From a personal perspective the process has provoked some interesting observations - I'm certainly grateful to have benefited from the fact that the arts and theatre continue to welcome sexual diversity, and provide a haven for self-expression and experimentation. The conflict we see in the story between hard-won freedoms and creeping political conservatism is as relevant as ever. Za Za's defiant "I Am What I Am" has not in my lifetime seemed quite so relevant as it does today.

by Gary McCann





La Cage aux Folles opens at the New Theatre Oxford from 5 January 2017, before touring the UK to London, Dublin, Norwich, Canterbury, Cardiff, Malvern, Nottingham, Blackpool, Edinburgh, Leeds and more.
According to Daryl Kimball, executive director of Arms Control Association, a Washington-based think tank, the draft proposal takes into consideration a hypothetical Indian opposition to Pakistan's NSG membership.

By Indo-Asian News Service: A draft proposal for accepting new members into the Nuclear Suppliers Group paves the way for India's entry but leaves Pakistan out, says a US-based arms control organisation.

HERE IS WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

1. The Arms Control Association (ACA), Washington, also warns that relaxing membership rules will undermine non-proliferation.

2. Last week, the US media reported that Rafael Mariano Grossi, a former chairman of the NSG, had prepared a two-page document, explaining how a non-NPT state, like India and Pakistan, could join the group. Grossi was acting on behalf of the current chairman, Song Young-wan of South Korea, and his document enjoys a semi-official status, Dawn reported.

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3. To prevent India from blocking Pakistan from joining the NPT, Grossi's draft note proposed that "one non-NPT member state should reach an understanding not to block consensus on membership for another non-NPT member state".

4. But ACA's Executive Director Daryl Kimball warns that "Pakistan still has grounds to object to the formula outlined by Grossi".

5. He explains that the document will require Pakistan to meet the same criteria for membership as India "but, to engage in civil nuclear trade with NSG states, it would have to win a separate NSG exemption from the full-scope safeguards requirement".

6. India is seeking membership of the NSG on the strength of the fact that it is already doing business with NSG members.

7. The 48-nation NSG is a nuclear technology control organisation formed in 1975 in response to India's first nuclear weapons test, which used plutonium produced with nuclear technology from Canada and the US. The NSG seeks to prevent similar future misuses.

8. The current NSG membership rules require a state to sign the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) before joining this exclusive club. India remains one of the only three countries, with Israel and Pakistan, never to have signed the NPT.

9. Earlier this year, India formally applied for membership and was followed by Pakistan. The US and a host of other powerful western nations back India's application, but China and half a dozen other nations are blocking India's membership, which requires a consensus of all members.

10. India hoped to join the group during NSG's last plenary session, held in Seoul in June this year, but the meeting ended without taking any decision on New Delhi's application.

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By PTI: From Yoshita Singh

New York, Dec 29 (PTI) The New York Police Department will allow its Sikh officers to wear turbans and maintain beards, relaxing its uniform policy, a move aimed at inclusiveness.

New York Police Commissioner James ONeill announced the measures being taken towards ensuring religious accommodation to its officers following a graduation ceremony for new police recruits yesterday.

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Under the revised policy, officers from the Sikh faith will be allowed to have beards that extend up to one-half inch from the face. The officers may also wear blue turbans ? with a hat shield it affixed to it ? in place of the traditional police cap.

"Were making this change to make sure that we allow everybody in New York City that wants to apply and have the opportunity to work in the greatest police department in the nation, to make sure we give them that opportunity," the commissioner said.

Standing alongside Sikh officers after the grand graduation ceremony, ONeill the measures were aimed at making the NYPD "as diverse as possible".

"We changed our beard policy and our head covering policy. It is a major change in our uniform policy, so we had to go about it carefully," he said, as quoted in a New York Post report.

The Commissioner said there are about 160 Sikh officers currently in the ranks and he was looking to expand those numbers. He said the religious accommodation will give people from the faith the opportunity to join the police department.

"Weve been working with the Sikh officers to try to make sure we get this done. I had the opportunity to make the change and I thought it was about time that we did that. We want to make the NYPD as diverse as possible and I think this is going to be one way to help us with that," he said.

Sikh Officers Association, a group of Sikh officers welcomed the move, posting on Twitter that "Thank you @NYPDONeill for allowing Sikh Officers to wear a turban in the @NYPDnews. This is a proud moment for Sikh Community".

Of the 557 recruits who graduated from the Police Academy, 33 are Muslims and two are Sikhs, according to the Police Department.

According to the police departments patrol guide, officers are prohibited from having beards and headdresses that are not part of the uniform. However exceptions have been made for officers who receive a medical or religious accommodation to wear facial hair up to one millimetre in length.

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Sikh advocacy group Sikh Coalition welcomed the move, saying it will send a strong message that there should be no discrimination against members of the community, which has contributed significantly to the city and the country.

"The Sikh Coalition has been working for over a decade to change the NYPDs policy that discriminated against Sikhs," the group said in a post on Facebook adding that in recent years, that work has continued with community partners, like the NYPD Sikh Officer Association. PTI YAS UZM

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Ten rapid response teams have been mobilised for the culling operation in the area.

By Manogya Loiwal : Despite the National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases (NIHSAD), confirming the presence of the H5NI strain in Kerang village in Khurda district of Odisha, villagers have been opposing the culling of poultry in the area.

However, the hesitant villagers have now finally allowed the administration to carry out the culling after the latter assured them of providing compensation.

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Five teams are currently engaged in the culling process in the presence of senior district officials, the local police and the villagers. After culling, the dead birds are being dumped inside pit which is dug on the outskirts of the village.

The district administration could not cull the birds on Wednesday because of the protest of villagers. Following the information, district collector Niranjan Sahu went to the village to pacify the villagers.

The collector assured them of receiving an additional Rs 25 compensation per chicken from the District Red Cross, over and above the government for each fowl.

The process of culling the chickens in the village within a radius of one km was initiated after four dead crows and three dead poultry tested positive for the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus, bird flu virus.

Pradeep Maharathy, Fisheries & Animal Resources Development Minister , informed, "As many as 260 chickens were culled till noon. A compensation of Rs 90 from the state government and Rs 25 from Red Cross is being provided for culling of each fowl and the situation would be under control within 4-5 days."

Ten rapid response teams have been mobilised for the culling operation in the area.

More than 1,200 chickens are likely to be culled during the operation.

Mohammad Wasim in Bhubaneshwar

--- ENDS ---
The Kolkata-based businessman was arrested on Thursday from an airport while he was trying to flee Malaysia, for allegedly converting demonetised notes worth Rs 25-crore into new currency notes.

By Manogya Loiwal : Property and bank lockers related to Parasmal Lodha, who allegedly converted demonetised notes worth Rs 25-crore into new currency notes, are being sealed and raided in different parts of Kolkata.

Senior officials from Delhi and Kolkata of Enforcement Directorate sealed jewellery worth crores from three bank lockers of Parasmal Lodha.

ED officials had seized five keys of Lodha's lockers since his arrest and were trying to identify them.

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Three lockers have been identified by the officials in two banks but two lockers are yet to be identified.

One locker is in Park street branch of Allahabad bank and Two lockers are in Ballygunge Branch of Indian Overseas Bank.

All three have been sealed after ascertaining the valuables in it.

Raids and seizures are being conducted at various places in past few days.

Sources in ED confirmed that Jewellery worth crores was kept in the lockers and some documents too have been found.

Parasmal Lodha with help from various businessmen and influential people was active in liasioning with income tax officials and judicial corridors also.

The Kolkata-based businessman was arrested on Thursday from an airport while he was trying to flee Malaysia, for allegedly illegally converting demonetised notes worth Rs 25-crore into new currency notes.

--- ENDS ---
Opinion

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The Ephemerals are having some fun with their status as Winnipegs premier indigenous curatorial supergroup. Last week Jaimie Isaac, Niki Little and Jenny Western launched Trio, a paper doll set and homage to the 1987 Dolly, Linda and Emmylou album.

I have to say though, this year Ive really admired their solo work.

Organized around the four quadrants of the medicine wheel and four stages of life, Littles Enendaman | Mnminigook (intention and worth in Oji-Cree) opened in January at Aceartinc., the product of the artist-run gallerys first Indigenous Curatorial Residency. A beautiful exhibition and a strong show of commitment by the gallery, ripple effects of the collaboration will continue to be felt in programming cycles to come.

Isaac, meanwhile, has been making waves at the WAG, first with Quayuk tchigaewin: Making Good, which recast the gallerys in-between spaces as potential sites of reconciliation, and most excellently with the recent, righteous Boarder X. The vibrant look at board and skate cultures influence on indigenous art and identity continues through the spring.

(Remaining Ephemeral Jenny Western was no slouch herself, welcoming a second child and assuming regional art review duty at the national website Akimbo.ca.)

Also at the WAG, this summers career survey of groundbreaking stone-carver Oviloo Tunnillie  a woman and artist defiantly and cheerfully unbothered with others expectations  and the ongoing, overwhelmingly diverse Our Land both helped generate buzz for the new Inuit Art Centre, which breaks ground next year.

Curator Kegan McFaddens multi-venue Since Then for the 10th Nuna (Now) festival was one of the years most ambitious projects, expanding the Icelandic events focus to include non-Icelandic and, notably, indigenous artists. The result was a sprawling network of exhibitions that at turns challenged and nuanced familiar narratives of diaspora and settlement, and the work was excellent.

Enough about curators. At Plug In this spring, quirky South Korean conceptualist Kim Beoms Continuing Education took a jaundiced but empathetic, humorous and unhinged look at educational institutions  it was a scream. At Platform just this month, Vancouver artist Ho Tam rebranded himself as a magazine with incisive, affecting results. Known for baroque installations and live-projected performances, erstwhile Winnipegger Daniel Barrows ghoulish wit sparkled and oozed in Dark Watercolours, his show of prints and multiples at Martha Street Studio.

A Rube Goldberg of the still life genre, for Plunder Dupes at Actual Gallery Ian August made jerry-built forgeries of Mesopotamian artifacts looted from the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. These became the subjects of lurid, larger-than-life paintings that somehow tapped into the perverse strangeness of witnessing ongoing cultural and human tragedy from a position of helpless remove.

Erica Mendritzki is the Earth Mother and were all flops, basically. Bouncing ungovernably between tones of voice and artistic vocabularies, her Sinon Lhiver / Snowed in and Felt Up at the Maison des Artistes was the most bracing and off-putting thing I saw all year. The paintings and sculptural tripping hazards slurred between image, text and greasy abstraction, projecting the hostile environments women navigate onto a blasted winter landscape littered with hidden obstacles and suspicious yellow-grey smears.

Possibly the most remarkable art event this year was one I made a point of missing. Taking it to the Grave was 28-year-old Andrew (Glamdrew) Hendersons fabulous living funeral, during which the artist and terminal cancer patient had audience members coded secrets tattooed on his own skin. He died several days later.

I didnt think a critic needed to be there, and I didnt think I could shut that part of me off. Or Ive been close enough to death and dont seek it out, whichever. Its comforting to know it happened.

This year has given us plenty of chances to reflect on loss, missed opportunity and the consequences still to come. Its reassuring to see that artists, curators, and institutions here can take a hard look at themselves and share deeply, contributing to something greater in the process.

Steven Leyden Cochrane is a Winnipeg-based artist, writer and educator.
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The Manitoba Metis Federation is taking the provincial government to court to reinstate an unreasonable cut to its health department.

In an application filed Dec. 22 in Court of Queens Bench, the organization has applied for a judicial review of the provinces decision to cut $650,000 in funding used to employ five health staff members.

The decision is unreasonable and will have a negative effect on health care available to citizens of the Manitoba Metis community, states the application.

MELISSA TAIT / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES President of the Manitoba Metis Federation David Chartrand is infuriated after learning the provincial government is cutting health services funding for Metis people.

The federation argues the decision violates Metis constitutional rights and breached the principles of procedural fairness.

The provinces decision drew immediate condemnation from MMF president David Chartrand at a Nov. 29 meeting. He said he was blindsided when he learned core funding for the health and wellness department in 2016-17 had been cut.

An incensed Chartrand stormed out of the meeting and promptly began calling media to the inform them of the decision.

The MMF later purchased an ad in the Winnipeg Free Press denouncing the decision; it ran under the headline, Metis Lives Matter.

The court application asks the court to reverse the decision and reinstate the purchase agreement between the province and MMF for 2016-17 year.

The MMF says the money paid the salaries of the five health workers, who were advised on how best to target services to Metis communities by Manitoba Health and regional health authorities. Chartrand said one staffer was employed on an initiative to end homelessness in Brandon.

The Tories argued in November the MMF-employed staff were providing education on the unique needs of the Metis population, not direct services to people.

Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen disputed the notion the province had cut anything. He said the previous NDP government funded a pilot project that was extended for a couple of years. It ended March 31 and wasnt renewed by the NDP, he said.

We did not cut the funding. It ended before we came into government, Goertzen told the Free Press in November.

Government officials said Wednesday they were unable to comment further on a matter that is before the courts.

The funding was approved year-over-year beginning in 2011. The purchase agreement technically expired in March of 2016, but the MMF continued to operate, provide services and incur expenses out of its own pocket on the expectation the funding would be renewed, the application says.

There was always a significant time lag between the expiry of one funding agreement and the expiry of the next one, the application notes, pointing to the 2015-16 agreement, which wasnt officially approved until September 2015.

MMF asked to meet with former NDP health minister Sharon Blady prior to last Aprils election, and with Goertzen after the Tories victory, but werent granted a sit-down until Nov. 29, the application says.

At that meeting, Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen informed Chartrand that the $650,000 funding, along with a $667,000 request to begin a three-year disease prevention program in 2016-17, would likely be denied following the results of a KPMG health-care review.

Goertzen offered no other details, other than to say the cut was made by the NDP.

The application states the delay in granting a formal meeting and the lack of advance notice meant the MMF operated on the legitimate expectation that funding would be approved for the year.

A judge will consider MMFs application at a hearing scheduled Jan. 12.

 With files from Larry Kusch

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @kristinannable

Metis
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OTTAWA  More than one-third of Manitoba women and one-fifth of men say the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States is likely to keep them from travelling south of the border, and the number is even higher among those with the biggest influence on spending.

A poll by Probe Research shows 29 per cent of Manitobans, just under one in three, said they would be less likely to visit the U.S. when Trump is president.

That could be the equivalent of nearly 300,000 people deciding to scuttle their regular shopping trips to Grand Forks or a family vacation in Disney World.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES A Probe Research poll shows 29 per cent of Manitobans, just under one in three, said they would be less likely to visit the U.S. when Trump is president.

That number jumps to 37 per cent among Manitoba women, and a significant 49 per cent among women between 35 and 54 years old. Those are important distinctions because women typically are responsible for more spending decisions and more trips to the U.S. for Canadians. The U.S. Department of Commerce says women account for more than half of Canadian visitors to the U.S.

Overall, 70 per cent of men in Manitoba say Trumps election will have zero impact on whether they travel south of the border or not, while 21 per cent say they will likely travel there less frequently.

Market research also suggests women are responsible for more than 90 per cent of spending decisions on vacations and 70 to 80 per cent of consumer purchases overall.

If one-third of Manitoba women choose to eliminate or reduce their trips to the U.S., the economic impact could be significant there. North Dakota reported more than 730,000 cars crossed into it from Canada in 2015. Anyone who has visited the Target in Grand Forks knows holiday weekends often see more Manitoba licence plates in the parking lot than American ones.

The Probe findings were taken in a poll conducted by phone of 1,000 Manitoba adults between Nov. 29 and Dec. 11. It is considered accurate within 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out 20.

The Trump effect on travel could be exacerbated by the expected drop in Canadas dollar. Travel to the United States dropped by 13 per cent in the first part of 2016, a decline that began when the Canadian dollar began to drop in value compared with the U.S. dollar. Some predict the loonie could drop another 10 cents this year, to 65 cents against the U.S. dollar, which will impact U.S. travel because the cost will go up.

In 2015, the last full year for which statistics are available, Canadians made 20.7 million visits to the U.S. and spent almost $20 billion.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca
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For the third time in less than 10 years, the province has extended the amortization period for pension solvency deficiency payments, again raising the issue of whether the regulations are appropriate for the economic times.

An order in council passed Dec. 14 approved regulatory changes to the Pensions Benefit Act that will extend the period of time a defined benefits plan solvency deficiency can be repaid from five years to 10 years.

The new regulations cover valuations of defined benefit plans between Dec. 30, 2016 and Jan. 3, 2019.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Finance Minister Cameron Friesen talks about the deficit forecast outside his office at the Manitoba Legislative Building during a news conference on Dec. 20.

The province provided similar temporary relief in 2008 and 2011. Payments related to those relief periods remain in place.

In an interview with the Free Press on Wednesday, Finance Minister Cameron Friesen said the regulatory change strikes the balance in giving companies the solvency relief they have requested while still protecting employee pensions.

Weve listened to industry, and we are trying to get this right. This is not recusing anyone from the responsibility they have to keep their pensions in good form, but rather it essentially provides a concession to pension sponsors while building in protections for employees, Friesen said.

Doubling the amortization period effectively reduces the monthly expense of correcting the solvency deficiency by 50 per cent.

A pension plan will qualify for the relief only if fewer than one-third of plan members not yet receiving benefits and fewer than one-third of the total number of members or their beneficiaries receiving a pension object to it.

Friesen said 57 companies in Manitoba have a defined benefit plan and 41 of those are private companies. In both 2008 and 2011, roughly 11 companies opted for the solvency relief, he said.

This will be helpful to those plans that have cash flow issues, said Tyler Smith, a consulting actuary at Benchmark Decisions Ltd. in Winnipeg.

Any money you take out of operations and put into the pension plan you are protecting the pension plan, but you are also making it more difficult for the viability of the company on its own. There is a balance there.

Pension plans that are less than 90 per cent solvent must undergo a solvency evaluation every year. Plans that are more than 90 per cent solvent only need to do so every three years.

Edith Samuels, an actuary and principal in the Winnipeg office of the consulting firm Mercer, said the meaningfulness of the relief will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

It will be plan-specific, she said. How big is your deficit, and how big is it relative to your ability to fund it?

The solvency test reviews the status of the pension fund from all sorts of actuarial angles but determines the liabilities as if the fund was to be wound up on the date of the review and uses Government of Canada bond rates  which are at historic lows  to do the evaluations. Even though pension fund sponsors manage the fund to be viable for the long term, they are forced to gauge solvency at current values.

Instead of calculating that the pension funds assets will grow annually by, for example, 10 per cent  many pension fund assets are performing well these days  solvency funding regulations require the calculations to use the very low current bond rates of around two per cent.

Actuaries have been advocating the province review the entire Pensions Benefit Act because, if nothing else, the need to regularly change the regulations is an indication the act is not working properly.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Finance Minister Cameron Friesen talks about the deficit forecast outside his office at the Manitoba Legislative Building during a news conference on Dec. 20.

Pension professionals see the temporary deficiency funding relief as beneficial, but many believe the solvency framework is somewhat flawed.

Solvency funding has likely had an adverse effect on whether defined benefit plans exist or not, Samuels said.

It is a constant balancing act of creating benefit security for the members, which is what the solvency test creates versus allowing the plan sponsor to offer a defined benefit plan.

The required five-year review by the Pension Commission of Manitoba was authorized by Friesen in the fall and is expected to be complete sometime in mid-2017.

There are those who will hear this news and say that we havent gone far enough there are those that have said we have gone too far, Friesen said.

The current change in regulation does not mean there will not be further legislative changes after the reviews completion, Friesen said.

The changes we bring now in this 2016 regulation do not demonstrate that we would not also undertake other actions that go to pension solvency, he said.

The review will look at legislative changes to pension solvency undertaken in other provinces such as Ontario and Quebec, he said.

I would say, Stay tuned, he said. Lets let the commission do its work.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca
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The usual flow is down to a trickle and its because of the bloody weather.

We usually see a lot of donor turnout during the month of December, when people are in the giving mood, says Canadian Blood Services Tracy Smith. Its been a really hard December for us.

Last weekends snowstorm and the one that kicked off winter on Dec. 6 have significantly reduced the number of donations this month, said Smith, associate director for the agencys prairie region.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The week between Christmas and New Year's Day is traditionally a low donation period, but weather conditions have made things even worse this year.

The weather forced CBS to cancel some clinics, including one Monday in Portage la Prairie. The loss was about 120 units of blood. In addition, some who made appointments to donate cancelled.

We went through that really cold snap, too, she said. So people are kind of running from their car to their house and not wanting to make those extra trips.

The week between Christmas and New Years Day is traditionally a low donation period, but weather conditions have made things even worse this year.

CBS isnt short blood at the moment, and is determined not to get to that point.

We want to ensure that we do not get into a situation where there is an impact to our inventory levels, Smith said. We need to collect 17,000 units of blood each week to meet the needs of hospital patients across the country.

The problem isnt isolated to Manitoba, either. Canadian Blood Services issued a news release on Dec. 19 encouraging donors not to cancel appointments elsewhere in the country because of harsh conditions.

The agency has 1,000 open appointments that need to be filled in the next two weeks alone in Winnipeg. The national organization has set a goal to get 100,000 new donors by March. The number is currently 40,000 short of the target; Manitoba is 2,000 shy of its number.

Canadian Blood Services recently extended the recuperation period between donations from women to 12 weeks from eight, allowing iron levels to return to normal, Smith said, adding that change has had an impact on donations.

Stephen Christensen made a 65th birthday donation Wednesday at the agencys offices and main clinic at 777 William Ave.

He said he heard about the shortage of donors and felt he should do his part for the 51st time.

Its a good experience, and it makes me feel good to help everyone else out, he said.

Smith urged people to book online, download the Give Blood smartphone app or find a clinic nearby so CBS can meet hospital demand.

courtney.bannatyne@freepress.mb.ca
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Winnipegger Ahmed Warsame was hoping to retire this year. After working nearly 30 years in war zones such as South Sudan and running the worlds largest refugee camp near Somalia, he was ready to go home to Richmond West and relax. But in the midst of the worlds worst refugee crisis in generations, duty called, and Warsame answered.

Warsame, 54, was named director of global emergencies, staff security and supply management by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. In January, hell be posted at UN headquarters in Geneva but expects to be on the ground focusing on refugee efforts in Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Nigeria and Uganda.

Theres a global crisis affecting millions of people, he said Wednesday from Nairobi, Kenya. Hes there recovering from an intensive two-year term in war-torn South Sudan as the UNHCRs country representative.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Ahmed Warsame, of Winnipeg, was named director of global emergencies, staff security and supply management by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

South Sudan was my primary focus  now its multiple countries, said Warsame, who is married with two adult daughters living in Winnipeg. Theres been a mass displacement of people in their home countries and outside.

Over three decades, Warsame has earned a reputation at the UN refugee agency for getting help to people stuck in the worlds hot spots. Part troubleshooter and diplomat, the soft-spoken Somalia-born Canadian said his skill is co-ordinating the work of multiple aid organizations and successfully negotiating with armed groups to get humanitarian aid to people in desperate need.

I understand the complexity and challenge. He ran the refugee agencys office in Peshawar, Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan before being placed in charge of the worlds largest refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, near the border with Somalia. When conflict erupted in South Sudan, the worlds newest nation, Warsame was sent there as the UNHCRs country representative. Soon, hell be in charge of global emergencies.

Its amazing what hes doing, said Tom Denton, executive director of Hospitality House Refugee Ministry in Winnipeg. He has known Warsame for nearly 20 years. Denton said they met when the UNHCR manager was home in Winnipeg and looking into sponsoring his wifes relatives to come to Canada. I was astounded when he told me he had this work with the UNHCR, said Denton, a former newspaper publisher.

I dont think I know a more important Winnipegger, he said.

Warsame moved to Winnipeg in 1997. He had been working as a consultant for the UN in Somalia when civil war broke out in 1991. He arrived in Canada with government aid, applied for permanent residency and made Winnipeg his home base as he continued to work for the UN as a foreign service officer in many countries struggling with conflict.

Hes risen through the ranks to progressively more challenging posts. The most difficult was the most recent, in South Sudan. It led the middle-aged Warsame to think about an early retirement. He was responsible for getting humanitarian aid to people in that volatile region while making sure more than 100 UNHCR workers were safe.

We didnt lose any, he said, but some workers and their families had to flee to Uganda.

Today, according to the UNHCR, (South Sudan) is one of the leading refugee-producing countries, said Warsame.

People have taken refuge in neighbouring Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia, he said. Now there are 1.5 million displaced South Sudanese, some of whom are protected by UN peacekeepers, he said. Warsame is not giving up on South Sudans people.

I am hopeful the will of the people will prevail and they will have a government of their choice, he said.

His next posting to Geneva wont be a desk job, Warsame said.

Im going to be travelling a lot to see for myself the situation and reaching out to a lot of teams around the globe to help them address emergencies, he said.

Hes going to meet the people working to help refugees in northern Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Nigeria and Uganda.

Im going to be visiting them and supporting those offices and UNHCR teams on the ground, he said.

For Warsame, defining success and job satisfaction is simple: Avoid a major humanitarian catastrophe.

To do that, they need donor support for food aid, a water supply and sanitation for refugees. Providing those basic services can be complicated and dangerous. In countries such as Nigeria, where Boko Haram terrorists are adding to instability, and in the Middle East, where multiple factions are fighting, keeping aid workers safe so they can do their jobs keeping refugees safe is a challenge, said Warsame. Resources are being stretched thin.

I think there is donor fatigue with the number of crises around the globe, he said. Some donors are frustrated by the lack of political progress being made and the adherence to laws and human rights, said Warsame. Donors are getting fatigued.

Thats a challenge for the UNHCR, said Warsame, who expects to be interacting with donors.

Im trying to explain to them, Dont abandon humanity. After all that Warsame has seen, he hasnt abandoned it.

Ill do my best to extend a helping hand. Millions of people are in need of humanitarian aid and protection.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

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There is a little-noticed fight going on within the Canadian Senate over how the institution will operate in the future. The fight involves principles, power and pragmatism. At stake are disagreements among several groups of senators over how fast and in what ways the Senate will be transformed from a party-based, top-down, government-controlled institution to an independent, non-partisan one.

The current process has been labelled modernization to distinguish it from the numerous failed attempts to reform the Senate. Put simply, modernization involves non-constitutional changes to the methods of appointment, backgrounds of senators, structures, rules and parliamentary practices of the institution.

On Oct. 4, after months of work, a special Senate committee on modernization released a report containing 21 recommendations on such topics as television coverage of the chamber, a question period with cabinet ministers, a new method to select the Speaker and a provision for splitting so-called omnibus bills. At the same time the Senate was debating its modernization, it was adjusting to the arrival of more than 20 new independent senators, including a government representative who is a substitute for the former leader of the government.

ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS files Patricia Bovey stands with senators Peter Harder (left) and Murray Sinclair before being sworn in during a ceremony in the Senate in November.

Before analyzing these developments, some recent historical background is helpful. Mindful of the many failed constitutional attempts to create a Triple-E Senate  equal, elected and effective  then-prime minister Stephen Harper proposed an incremental approach in which election of Senate nominees would take place in the next provincial campaign after a vacancy arose. The elections were described as conditional because the prime minister retained the right to recommend nominees for appointment by the governor general. In 2014, the Supreme Court decided fundamental reforms to the Senate require a constitutional amendment approved by seven provinces representing 50 per cent of the national population, and that abolition of the Senate requires unanimous consent.

Harper abandoned his goal of an elected Senate and began filling vacancies as they arose. Several of his high-profile appointees became central figures in a scandal involving fraud charges against Senator Mike Duffy (who was later acquitted), the suspension of a number of senators for spending abuses and the conduct of an audit into inappropriate spending that resulted in 14 serving and former senators having to return expense money.

In part to distance his party from the Senate scandal, Justin Trudeau announced in January 2014 he was dropping Liberal senators from the national caucus. Trudeau also created a new appointment process intended to establish, over time, a non-partisan, independent Senate. After winning the October 2015 election, he appointed a distinguished panel that would review nominations and applications from individuals seeking Senate appointments. The roles of the prime minister in recommending nominees, and the governor general in approving them, did not change. After several rounds of appointments, most observers agree high-quality appointments have resulted. Notably, there have not been the party fundraisers, campaign managers and defeated candidates who were prominent among appointees in the past under both Liberal and Conservative prime ministers.

The Senate membership now consists of 42 independents, 41 Conservatives  who are part of the national party caucus  and 21 Liberals, who no longer are part of the national party caucus. (There is also one vacancy.) With the Senate retirements (at age 75) scheduled over the next couple of years, the independents will become the majority group in the Senate.

Among the current independents is Peter Harder, a former career public servant and member of the Liberal party transition team, who last March was appointed as the government representative in the Senate. It was widely assumed Harder was a substitute for the traditional leader of the government in the Senate.

It is unclear whether this is legally proper. The position of leader of the government is recognized in both the Parliament Act and the rules of the Senate. Historically, with the exception of some brief periods (1926, 1958 to 1963 and 2013 to the present), the leader had been a member of cabinet, and it was his or her responsibility to manage and co-ordinate the governments legislative program in the upper house. Under Senate rules, the leader had a number of prerogatives, such as proposing time allocations on bills and assigning senators to committees. It is unclear whether this authority transfers to the government representative.

This background brings us to the issues of principle, power and pragmatism related to how the evolving Senate will operate in the future.

Both Liberal and Conservative senators have charged the changes introduced by the Trudeau government and the actions to date by the government representative are transforming the Senate in fundamental ways that violate the existing constitutional order. Our constitution, they argue, is meant to be similar in principle to the Westminster model that exists in the United Kingdom. For them, this implies the upper house will always be structured and operated on the basis of an identifiable governing party and an official opposition. Historically, they argue, partisanship has provided the motivation, incentives, direction, ideas, initiative and daily activities that drive the institution.

Sen. James Cowan, a former Senate government leader for the Liberals, accused Peter Harder of making partisanship a dirty word. He argued participation in party caucuses allows senators to learn from their colleagues and to divide up the work of defending or criticizing government bills and the general performance of governments. It is through the clash of competitive parliamentary parties that issues are clarified and the accountability of the government for actions and inactions is reinforced. It is insulting and demeaning to imply senators who serve, or have served, in party caucuses are incapable of arriving at independent judgments on legislation and other actions of government.

Last month, Harder denied his goal was to undermine the role of the Senate in its legislative review and accountability functions. He argued partisanship had been a hindrance to these functions. The virtue of the Westminster model, he argued, is its adaptability to different national settings and to changing circumstances within a particular country.

He suggested his critics wanted a Senate in the mirror image of the House of Lords in the U.K., something that, by reason of its origins, size, composition and powers, the Senate had never been. As evidence of the adaptability of the Westminster model, he pointed to the Nunavut legislature, with its 22 members, that operates on a non-partisan, consensus basis. Arising out of indigenous traditions, the Nunavut model might provide inspiration for rethinking the dynamics of the Senate.

In a speech given Sept. 28, Harder also proposed for the purpose of organizing Senate business that traditional party caucuses be replaced with regional caucuses. The regional caucuses would select members to serve on the managerial committees of the Senate (internal economy, budgets and administration, and the selection committee), and would participate in such processes as time allocation, assigning senators to committees and approving committee travel. The change would supposedly strengthen the Senates role as a voice for the regions. However, critics argued the regional caucus model would blur accountability and potentially contribute to regional tensions.

When change is introduced into an institution, there are usually conflicts over the distribution of both formal authority (hard power) and informal influence (soft power). Arguments about contending constitutional principles are often disguises for what are really disputes over power. Partisan senators are fighting the loss of power; this is especially so for the Conservative senators, who face the prospect of losing the ascendant position gained during the Harper era.

Resentment, suspicion and mistrust among senators have become sources of conflict. In November, the government representative invited the entire Senate membership to an informal meeting to discuss forthcoming government bills. The affiliated senators said this broke with the tradition of discussing Senate business in the open, on the floor of the Senate, and boycotted the meeting.

They also accused Harder of seeking to become the de facto leader of a government caucus comprising the entire Senate membership. It was that motive, they suggested, that explained his earlier request for an office budget of $850,000  the same amount allocated to the former government leader, who was in charge of a caucus of 50 senators. With no caucus to lead, Harder was given a budget of approximately half of what he requested.

The Senate is supposed to operate on the principle all its members are equal. For several months after their appointment, the independent senators had fewer places on Senate committees than their numbers warrant, fewer research resources and limited opportunities to participate in parliamentary associations. Committees provide the best opportunities for senators to study policy issues, but they need staff resources to make a meaningful contribution.

Early this year, in anticipation of the arrival of the new senators, the partisan senators agreed to set aside one spot on each committee for an independent. This included membership on the standing committee on internal economy, budgets and administration, which assigns resources to senators. The aligned senators declared further recognition of the growing independent group would take time. On Dec. 6, a deal was reached between Harder and the aligned senators to provide independent senators with committee places proportionate to their share of the Senate membership. This was accomplished by adding to the membership of all committees, so no senators were forced off a committee.

The deal on committee memberships involved the type of pragmatism, negotiation and compromise required for the Senate to operate efficiently and effectively in the future. Leadership will be required, but it must be shared, collaborative leadership instead of the top-down, singular leadership of the past. As the government representative, Harder does not have the status of being a cabinet minister, plays no role in deciding who will serve in the Senate, does not lead a caucus and has no perks to bestow. To help achieve a functional Senate, he must rely on soft power techniques such as inclusion, information sharing, persuasion, negotiation and principled compromises. Transforming the recent hyper-partisan and negative culture of the Senate into a less partisan and more constructive culture will take contextual intelligence, political skills, patience and perseverance.

Modernization of the Senate was supposed to be less difficult than reform, but it is not without obstacles.

Paul Thomas is a professor emeritus in the department of political studies at the University of Manitoba.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 28/12/2016 (2136 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear 2017:

Were delighted to extend this offer of employment for the position of the new year.

To reiterate the terms: this is a one-year contract position with a start date of Jan. 1. Its a full-time position with lots of duties-as-assigned, and when we say full time we mean you will literally work 24/7 until midnight on Dec. 31, at which point youll be terminated. If its any consolation, the goodbye parties (yes, thats plural) are often pretty swank.

2016 was the kind of year that sent everyone Googling for the definition of the word surreal.

Unfortunately, theres no possibility of renewal  you get one kick at the can, so to speak  but there is lots of room for professional development. Theres also no compensation, but trust us, you will get a ton of exposure. Were assuming a contract in which you will work constantly with no pay is cool with you; 2016 was always going on and on about the benefits of the gig economy and side hustles.

Speaking of 2016, lets get down to brass tacks here. As Im sure youre already aware, your predecessor was terrible. Really just appallingly bad. Yes, we know, there have been worse years in history, but you know what? There have also been much better years.

For one, 2016 killed a lot of iconic celebrities. Now, were not saying it was all 2016s fault, per se. But it really was a lot of celebrities. Some might even go as far as saying a suspicious number of celebrities. David Bowie, Prince, Alan Rickman, Muhammad Ali, Leonard Cohen, Sharon Jones, to name a few. And then, in its very last week, 2016 took George Michael and Carrie Fisher. (Yes, 2016 was a real monster.)

David Bowie

We completely understand you will, inevitably, have some celebrity deaths on your hands, 2017. After all, one of your key roles will be to mark the passage of time. But perhaps you could leave Betty White alone? Itd be good for morale. Just a suggestion.

In Canada, Because its 2016 became something of a buzz-phrase after the newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formed a gender-balanced cabinet. This phrase was really just a fancy way to say, Its about time. And the original phrase was, Because its 2015. Still, that didnt stop writers of op-eds from using Because its 2016 as a shorthand for basic equal-rights advances that should have happened a long time ago.

But progress is not a word most people associate with 2016. Under 2016s watch, the United States of America elected Donald Trump to be its next president. This is obviously a disaster, the aftershocks of which will be deeply felt for a long time. Unfortunately, that means youve got your work cut out for you, 2017. In the final months of 2016s term, hate crimes increased. A white-nationalist movement  dubbed the alt-right  was emboldened by the election of a racist, misogynist reality-TV star to the highest office of the most powerful country. Things are bleak, 2017. People are scared.

Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian Press files Above: a wildfire rages south of Fort McMurray, Alta., in May.

Of course, other terrible things happened during 2016. Aleppo, once the gem of Syria, has been ripped apart by war. The words Zika, a virus, and Brexit, the U.K.s withdrawal from the European Union, entered our everyday vocabulary. A man walked into a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., and opened fire in a hate crime that killed 49 people. Fort McMurray, Alta., burned. Terrorist attacks killed and injured hundreds of people in countries all over the world. Unarmed protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline were met with police violence.

This is not a complete list of grievances, but you get the point: 2016 was the kind of year that sent everyone Googling for the definition of the word surreal.

So, what kind of year do you want to be, 2017? Because, look: if were being completely honest, we arent all that optimistic about you, either. But we want to be convinced. We want to be wowed. And we want you to think of the possibilities. You could be the year in which people take action. You could be the year in which people rise up, speak out and refuse to accept the oppression of minorities and women. You could be the year in which fact-checking and critical thinking become concepts as buzzed-about as fake news and post-truth.

Do you want to be remembered as the Worst Year Ever? Or do you want to be remembered as the Best Year Ever? (Or, at the very least, the OKest Year Ever?)

We just want you to be the year that tries. Thats really all were asking you to do, when you boil it down. Just try. Try to be better. Can you do that for us, 2017?

Great. See you Sunday.

Sincerely,

The Hiring Committee

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti

Carrie Fisher Alan Rickman Muhammad Ali
Pune Police have arrested the accused in Antara Das murder case. According to police, the accused committed the crime after his proposals for marriage were turned down by the deceased software engineer.

By Pankaj P. Khelkar: Pune police have finally arrested Santosh Kumar on charges of involvement in the murder of software engineer Antara Das.

Santosh Kumar was brought from Bangalore after her family told the police that she had complained about being harassed by the accused for past eight months.

ANTARA DAS MURDER CASE: THINGS TO KNOW Antara Das was killed on December 24 in Pune not very far from her office after she failed to escape the assailant, who chased her along the footpath and stabbed her multiple times. Acting on the information provided by the family members of Antara Das, Pune Rural Police zeroed in on Santosh Kumar and arrested him from Bengaluru. Speaking to India Today Additional SP Rajkumar Shinde said accused Santosh Kumar has claimed that he knew Antara and helped her get accommodation in Bengaluru and also in Pune. Santosh Kumar also told the police that he had some 'feelings' for Antara, who did not respond to him positively. He kept persuading her but all in vain. According to police, Santosh, later, came to Pune to convince Antara but she refused to treat him anything more than 'a normal friend'. Santosh asked one of his software engineer friend Ashu Gupta in Pune to get Antara accept his proposal. But, Antara could not be persuaded, the police said. Santosh told the police that his engagement broke over his 'madness' for Antara. Santosh Kumar also claimed, the police said, that Antara complained to him about Ashu Gupta sending her obscene text messages. Police have questioned Ashu Gupta to ascertain if he played any role in the murder of Antara Das. Police are also looking for a possible 'third person', in what they suspect to have been a case of love-triangle taken tragic turn for Antara Das.

--- ENDS ---

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Minnesota state parks and trails are hosting nine First Day Hikes on Jan. 1, including Whitewater State Park from 1-2 p.m.

The hikes are part a nationwide effort to get as many kids and adults as possible out hiking on the first day of the new year. The effort includes more than 400 guided hikes in all 50 states.

Walking is a great way to warm up to winter, said Erika Rivers, director of the DNRs Parks and Trails Division. If you cant attend one of our guided hikes, round up your friends and family for your own First Day Hike. Start 2017 with a commitment to yourself; youll burn calories, reduce stress and have fun.

The hike is free, but a vehicle permit ($5 for a one-day permit or $25 for a year-round permit) is required to enter Minnesota state parks.

Participants should dress for the weather and meet at the Whitewater Valley Visitor Center. They may also want to bring a water bottle, a snack, binoculars and a camera.

If there is sufficient snow, snowshoeing will be an option at the First Day Hike. Snowshoes are available in child and adult sizes.
Winona

Wednesday

11:30 a.m.  A package containing two rings was reported missing from a residence on the 850 block of West Fifth Street.

2:55 p.m.  A tire and the soft top on a vehicle parked on the 500 block of East Wabasha Street were slashed.

11:25 p.m.  Chad Jackson Roemer, 21, Shakopee, Minn., was cited for possession of a small amount of marijuana following a traffic stop near West Wabasha and Washington streets. A passenger in the vehicle, Elija Lee Smith, 22, Winona, was cited for possession of drug paraphernalia.

Thursday

12:01 a.m.6:30 a.m.  Police issued 33 alternate-side parking tickets.

12:45 a.m.  Charges of fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance (amphetamine) were referred against Antonio Degale Shorter, 19, Winona, following a traffic stop near West Fifth and Vila streets. A passenger in the vehicle, Martinesha Starkist Carter, 18, Winona, was cited for possession of a small amount of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.
JUNEAU  John Corey retires today after 30 years of providing legal advice from his office in the Dodge County Administration Building.

Coreys official last day is Friday, but county offices are closed for the New Years Day holiday. He began as the assistant corporate counselor on May 18, 1987.

My previous experience, well the most relevant experience, was working in Pierce County as the corporation counsel, Corey said. He held the position for four years.

Feb. 20, 1996, he was appointed by the Dodge County Board of Supervisors as the corporate counselor for Dodge County.

It has been a great fit for Corey. He said he most enjoys working with the supervisors on the board and the department heads.

I spent a lot of time doing legal matters for the departments and county board, Corey said. I produced most of the resolutions for the board. I enjoyed that very much.

One project that Corey will never forget is the countys involvement with the Monarch Range property in Beaver Dam. The county acquired the property in 1988 due to delinquent taxes. The property was divided into 11 lots and was among the first projects in the state to receive a brownfield grant to revitalize contaminated land. Six lots were sold and Recheks Food Pride, Dodge County Credit Union, the Monarch Plaza strip mall and parking have been installed there.

I spent quite a bit of time on that, Corey said.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) monitored groundwater and soil contamination along with pumping the ground water to reduce the contamination at the site. It continued to monitor the vacant sites after the sale of some of the Monarch parcels.

The DNR had an environmental site assessment of the vacant lots, and the contamination was cleaned up fairly recently, Corey said.

Corey said he will turn 70 in January and felt it was time to retire. He plans to spend some time traveling, including a trip to Cuba and visiting his daughters. He also wants to focus on reading and walking.

Dodge County is in the process of hiring Coreys replacement, with application materials due Jan. 10. A tentative start date for the next corporate counselor is March 21.
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP)  An inmate from Iowa with a history of violence toward guards and one notorious escape has died in a Wisconsin prison one month after he was transferred there, authorities said Thursday.

Justin Kestner, 26, was found unresponsive Dec. 21 in his assigned cell at the Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin, the Iowa Department of Corrections said in a statement. Prison staff responded and initiated lifesaving measures that were unsuccessful.

Prison officials and the Dodge County sheriff said Thursday that they are investigating the death, and that no additional information on the suspected cause or manner was available. A medical examiner said autopsy results havent been completed.

Kestner made headlines on July 4, 2015, when he became the first inmate in a decade to escape from Iowas historic maximum-security prison in Fort Madison. An investigation found that he removed screws from the shower to gain access to a narrow pipe chase  an enclosed space that houses the prisons pipes. He was able to climb up until he reached the attic, then crawled through a vent to reach the roof.

He descended by climbing down the buildings downspout and landing outside a prison fence. He timed his escape to coincide with holiday fireworks in the hopes that guards would be distracted, and left in his bed a dummy made up of milk cartons and insulation to try to fool them into thinking he was sleeping. Kestner stole a car after his escape but was captured within hours near Geneseo, Illinois.

Kestner was serving time for robbing gas stations in Sioux City, Iowa, in 2009. A judge in February extended his original 20-year sentence by 15 years after Kestner pleaded guilty to the escape and vehicle theft.

Sometime after the escape, Kestner was transferred to the penitentiary in Anamosa, Iowa. In October, authorities said that Kestner managed to get out of a health services room before he assaulted a correctional officer with a crude piece of metal. The officer suffered multiple contusions to the face that required medical treatment.

Kestner, who had previously attacked guards in Fort Madison, was placed in segregation after that incident. On Nov. 21, he was transferred to Wisconsin through the Interstate Commission for Adult Offender Supervision, which governs the movement of offenders from state to state.

Dodge Correctional is Wisconsins intake facility for all new inmates, who are later assigned to specific prisons. Wisconsin Department of Corrections spokesman Tristan Cook said the agency is conducting an internal investigation into the death.

Iowa prisons spokesman Fred Scaletta said it took several days to announce the death because authorities in Iowa and Wisconsin needed to work together to notify Kestners family and victims.
Tolling Wisconsins U.S. interstates could raise billions for the states most-traveled thoroughfares, but the cost would be borne by motorists, big upfront investments would be needed and its unclear if the state could get the federal approval it would require, a new state Department of Transportation study finds.

The study also finds Gov. Scott Walkers road-funding plan for the next two years, which holds the line on taxes and fees, puts Wisconsin roads on course to worsen severely over the next decade.

Findings from the study, commissioned by state lawmakers and Walker last year as part of the 2015-17 state budget, were released Wednesday. A day earlier, Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb, with little explanation, announced his resignation effective next month.

Walkers office did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the study.

The question of how to address state transportation funding is expected to feature prominently in the upcoming 2017-18 legislative session.

Assembly Republican leaders say toll roads, which currently dont exist in Wisconsin, should be considered.

The DOT study does not recommend for or against tolling, but gives a broad overview of its pros, cons, and of how it would be implemented.

Any plan for toll roads would take at least four years to implement, the study found. It estimates upfront capital costs for tolling Wisconsins interstates would range between $350 million and $400 million.

The study assumes highway tolls would be collected electronically  via transponders in vehicles or by photographing vehicle license plates and mailing toll bills to vehicle owners. Such a system eliminates the need for motorists to stop to pay a toll, and for toll plazas that restrict highway access.

Depending on the chosen toll rate, the state could net between $14 billion and $41 billion from tolling on interstates from 2020 through 2050, the study found. The numbers are based on a statewide network of tolls that would be collected on all Wisconsins U.S. interstates: 94, 90, 43, 41 and 39.

The revenues would come from motorists, including in- and out-of-state residents. The study attempts to project the share of motorists who would avoid interstates to dodge the tolls.

Under the studys projections, a motorist would pay between as little as $2.72 or as much as $8.16 to travel from Madison to Milwaukee.

The first scenario is based on an average toll rate of 4 cents a mile; the second, an average rate of 12 cents a mile. The range of rates is comparable to other states, such as Illinois, that collect highway tolls, according to the study.

Under the same scenarios, a trip from Madison to La Crosse would cost as little as $5.16 or as much as $15.48.

Even if state leaders could agree on a toll-road plan  which is far from assured  another big hurdle would be getting federal permission to toll U.S. interstates, where the most revenue could be generated.

The study notes that a 2015 change in federal law might allow Wisconsin to vie with other states for spots in a federal pilot program to authorize interstate tolling.

Wisconsins transportation-funding woes stem from rising construction costs and stagnant revenues in the state transportation fund, which come almost entirely from gas taxes and vehicle registration fees. As the states road-funding picture has worsened in recent years, lawmakers increasingly have resorted to greater borrowing and delaying major highway projects, such as the Verona Road expansion in Dane County.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and fellow Republicans who control the Assembly are open to a tax or fee hike for transportation. Walker opposes such an increase unless matched, dollar for dollar, with a tax or fee cut elsewhere in the budget. Republicans who control the state Senate are split on the question, according to their majority leader, Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau.

The new study reinforces what Gottlieb told the Assembly Transportation Committee earlier this month: without new revenues, more projects would be delayed and the states roads would continue to crumble.

On a path following the plan Walker outlined in September, the state would face a transportation funding shortfall of $852 million over the decade, the study found.

Road conditions would worsen severely during the next decade, according to the study. And planning for road expansions would grind to a halt, with planning for them not even undertaken until 2055.
In the movies and in real life, smoking cigarettes used to be much more common. When entering a restaurant, the hostess would ask do you prefer the smoking or non-smoking section? Airplanes had little lights that went on when the plane reached a sufficient altitude and it was OK to smoke again. Ashtrays were a fixture in most living rooms.

Things began to change in the mid-1960s when warning labels from the Surgeon General started appearing on cigarette packages. The hazards of second-hand smoke became more widely known. In July 2010, a Wisconsin law requiring all workplaces be smoke free went into effect. Smoking no longer was a relatively harmless habit. It became a public health problem.

Years ago climate change was portrayed as something only those crazy, kale-eating green types cared about. But thats changing. Here in Sauk County, people are recognizing this as an issue of public health. On Feb. 4, at the Plain Kraemer Library and Community Center, more than 40 people from law enforcement, emergency management, fire departments, county governments, local municipalities, schools, hospitals and the faith community gathered to talk about building local capacity to address climate effects.

The health department received a mini-grant from the Wisconsin Department of Health called Building Resistance Against Climate Effects. Sauk County was one of three Wisconsin counties that received funds in 2016 to study climate effects and their potential impact on our community. A speaker from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services gave an overview of global climate data as it pertains to Wisconsin discussing that Wisconsin has been getting warmer; weve been getting more precipitation; less snow cover, more freezing rain and ice storms in the future and the growing season in Wisconsin is getting longer.

Attendees worked in small groups to identify the likely public health concerns arising from a changing climate. The impact on mental health was the no. 1 concern due to stress, depression and anxiety resulting from extreme weather events. Nos. 2, 3 and 4 were impact on those with chronic diseases, injuries and waterborne illness. Sauk County Preparedness Coordinator Cassidy Walsh led a follow-up meeting Dec. 8, summarizing the final report of the BRACE grant. One of many actions steps is making sure every county resident knows about the 211 help line they can call for emergency help with housing, food and shelter. Also, anyone with text capability can text their zip code to 888777 and that will connect them to the Nixle emergency system. Residents then receive emergency alerts and updates via text message.

In a practical, quiet and unobtrusive way, were in the middle of an evolution in our thinking about climate change. Here in Sauk County, from what I see, we are doing it quietly, avoiding the sometimes contentious political debate over the issue. The amount of carbon we put in the air through burning of fossil fuels no longer is a harmless habit we can enjoy without thinking about it. There are real impacts to the health and well being of our neighbors.
Hope House of Baraboo is the go-to resource for help with domestic violence across five counties in this part of Wisconsin, and is now offering support for those seeking help in downtown Portage.

We are starting a support group for victims and survivors of domestic violence, said Hope House Outreach Advocate Katie Fluger. Basically, we are meeting bi-monthly at the Portage Library for an hour in the afternoon. It is targeted at stay-at-home moms, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. So kind of before the kids need to be picked up from school.

The group meets the first and third Friday of the month at the Portage Public Librarys Sanderson Memorial Room, with the next meeting on Jan. 6.

I think it will be a helpful service for women  primarily women, and some men, giving them a safe place to go, said Barry Erath, director of Aspen Family Counseling. To my knowledge, we havent had anything like this before.

The expansion of services is in part a result of the Hope Houses grant-funded operations. Fluger said that when she joined the organization in May, one specific condition was development of outreach groups in each of the counties it serves.

In late November we decided that we needed to start a support group in Portage, said Fluger, because Columbia is a fairly largely populated county and Portage seemed to make sense as a place to start it up in Columbia County.

Other initiatives have included a group that meets at the shelter in Baraboo, another group in Marquette County and a program reaching out to high school students in Adams County.

We just kind of broadcast it out there and make it open to whoever might want to come in, said Fluger. We also have people who are not victims of domestic abuse, who might be family members or secondary victims of trauma who can heal and grow with the others.

It is a lot more common than people think, said Erath, explaining that definitive measures can be difficult to come by, although court documents from divorce proceedings can be illuminating, reflecting the situation of a couple with at least one party seeking a conclusive separation.

From January up to today weve had 173 domestic arrests where at least one person was taken into custody, said Portage Police Chief Ken Manthey. And usually the calls involve battery or disorderly conduct that involve the threats where someone feels threatened that their safety is in jeopardy. But that also does not reflect the calls we get that include keep the peace.

Officers are called to keep the peace so as to provide oversight during tense, necessary interaction, such as a spouse given a temporary exception to a court order of no-contact in order to collect belongings from a home, or when parents have to fulfill a child custody order.

Were fortunate to have three counseling services (Aspen Family Counseling, Compass Counseling, the Pauquette Center) available here in Portage to help couples to either mend or repair their relationships or to try to deal with child custody issues calmly and peacefully, so that we dont have to get involved, said Manthey. Its very traumatic for children to see law enforcement get involved in these situations.

This is more of a way to get their foot in with Hope House, said Fluger. Maybe they dont feel comfortable meeting with an advocate one on one, but they can come and talk to other women and work on an arts and crafts project for an hour and talk about things they are going through, or watch an informational video.

Its a good thing that this support group is starting up so that victims can talk to other victims, said Manthey, and realize that they are not alone and realize that other people are going through similar experiences.
On Thursday morning, Congress Punjab in-charge Asha Kumari and Captain Amarinder Singh met Singh to discuss the key points to be included in the manifesto.

Amarinder Singh shares an excellent rapport with the former prime minister and has said to have requested him to also release the manifesto in the state.

This assumes political significance considering the recent criticism of Singh as an economist by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a function in Varanasi.

Singh, who is a renowned economist, has given key inputs on the economic front for the manifesto which will now be given a final shape.

The PPCC manifesto committee, led by former Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal will be adding the points.
A Princeton man is facing time in prison after his arrest on a sixth drunken driving offense on Tuesday.

Donald Cheers Jr., 59, appeared in Columbia County Circuit Court on Tuesday afternoon, charged with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated as a sixth offense.

A Columbia County Sheriffs Office deputy reportedly noticed Cheers as he was filling his vehicle with gas at the Fort Winnebago BP station, hearing a vehicle with a loud muffler.

The deputy stopped Cheers on County Highway F near Clark Road, during which Cheers said that he was on his way home to Green Lake County from visiting a friend in Milwaukee. Following a field sobriety test, Cheers registered .064 on a preliminary breath test.

Cheers has been convicted of operating while intoxicated five times  in 1990, 1992, and three times in 2000.

More recently, in 2010, Cheers was convicted after pleas of no-contest to charges of maintaining a drug trafficking place, then later possession of drug paraphernalia.

I just want you to understand Mr. Cheers, this is an offense that could mean ending up in prison, said Judge Alan White. If you are drinking again, as a person who has been convicted five times, the alcohol you can have in your system is very limited. So stay away from that activity. Plus it would be a violation of your bond. You follow me?

Cheers was released on $2,500 signature bond, scheduled to return to court next for a March 3 hearing.

If convicted, Cheers faces a minimum six months in jail or up to six years in prison. Legislation signed by Gov. Scott Walker has increased maximum penalties in drunken driving convictions starting Jan. 1. Although Wisconsin remains the only state that does not treat operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated as a first offense as a criminal offense, the law makes an arrest for a fourth offense punishable with up to six years in prison and penalties increased with subsequent charges.
Editors note: For the remaining days of 2016, the Portage Daily Register will recap the years top stories, as chosen by the Daily Registers staff. Today we feature the stories ranked No. 5 and No. 4.

No. 5: Road fatalities on the rise in Columbia County.

Twenty-one.

Thats how many people have died on Columbia Countys roads since the beginning of 2016  and that figure was accurate as of the end of November, with more than a month remaining in the year

To say its an unusually high number of annual fatalities is an understatement. Between 2011 and 2015, the average number of fatalities in Columbia County annually was 10. The next-highest total in the last five years was 13, in 2011.

The Nov. 27 death of Robert Anthony Koy, 41, of Winona, Minn., put Columbia County among just five Wisconsin counties with 20 or more traffic deaths in 2016. The others were Milwaukee (70), Dane (38), Waukesha (23) and Rock (20).

Among the other Columbia County fatalities:

A triple fatality in February in the town of Pacific, which killed Zia Lynn, Rowan, 18, of Oxford, and passenger Donald K.C. Pangburn, 26, of Baraboo, and Jack W.L. Stalker, 19, of Montello. A 19-year-old Montello man survived the single-vehicle crash.

Two Portage residents, Patrick Shier, 37, and Angela Larson, 34, who were found dead after a single-vehicle accident in June on Highway F in the town of Fort Winnebago.

Adam Chester, 24, of Portage, and Jacon Bachmann, 25, of Baraboo, killed in a Memorial Day head-on collision on Highway 33 east of Portage.

A Horicon man, 76-year-old Anton Salaks Sr., who hit a deer with his motorcycle on Highway 33 in November.

A motorcyclist, Steven Ebert, 69, of Middleton, who crashed with a van in September on Highway 113 near Lodi.

Peter A. Ripp, 25, of Waunakee, a five-year veteran of the Wisconsin National Guard, who died in a rollover on Highway 60 near Lodi in August.

No. 4: Portage Family Skate Park opens

The ceremonial ribbon hadnt yet been cut at the Portage Family Skate Park on Sept. 9, and already Kyle Little was talking about making it even bigger.

From the moment of the August soft opening of the 4,178-square-foot facility in Goodyear Park, it has been crowded with skateboarders and in-line skaters  and, at first  bicyclists, though bikes were later prohibited in the interest of safety.

The June start of construction, by Dreamland Skateparks of Lincoln City, Oregon, was the culmination of years of work on the part of Little and other supporters of Portage Family Skate Park.

Built near the splash pad that opened in 2013, the skate park is designed to appeal to skaters of all ages, while paying tribute to the communitys character and its recent past. The parks features honor the Columbia County tradition of curling, and the memory of the Clough Building, which stood near Goodyear Park until it was torn down in 2011.

At the grand opening Sept. 9, Little joined dignitaries such as Mayor Rick Dodd and Police Chief Ken Manthey  and several dozen skaters and scooter-riders  in cutting a ribbon to officially open the park, in a program featuring trick skating.

Little has said he hopes to raise about $50,000 for future additions to the skate park. Fundraising activities have included a chili cook-off and a community Halloween celebration.
PRAIRIE DU SAC  In 1993, veterinarian Joe Kelley treated his first raptor  a bald eagle affectionately named Abby. Twenty-three years later, the owner of Sauk Prairie Small Animal Hospital has become known for his ability to address injuries to the majestic creature.

Kelley will share his experiences Jan. 14 with the throngs of bird watchers and bald eagle enthusiasts who will descend upon Sauk Prairie for the 30th annual Bald Eagle Watching Days.

Dr. Joe has an interesting story to tell about caring for bald eagles along the Lower Wisconsin Riverway in the 1990s and 2000s, said Ferry Bluff Eagle Council board member Meredith Beckman. Bald eagles in the greater Sauk Prairie area were getting sick and dying from an unknown cause. Because Dr. Joe is a locally known and respected veterinarian and he has an interest in exotic animal medicine, folks from the area would bring sick eagles to him for help.

Kelley was first introduced to exotics in vet school, when he spent a year working with everything from rhinoceroses to small reptiles. He then went to work at his fathers Prairie du Sac clinic, which Kelley now owns.

One day the (Department of Natural Resources) came in with an eagle, Kelley said. My dad looks at me and says, Well youre the exotics guy. I had no idea what to do.

Kelley worked with the animal and provided valium to the seizing eagle. It later was transported to a raptor care center in Minnesota, where it was rehabilitated.

One day I get this call and they tell me, OK, shes ready to be released.

The bird was flown back to Wisconsin, where Kelley and a former employee picked up the eagle from the airport. They decided to release the eagle into the wild from VFW Park along the Wisconsin River in Prairie du Sac, where the raptors are commonly spotted. Kelley said he was surprised to be greeted by a group of people from wildlife groups and the DNR who had gathered to watch.

I asked one guy, Is this a big deal? Kelley said. He said, How many of these have you seen? Thats how I first realized this was an amazing thing, to be able to release an eagle.

Eagle releases have continued from VFW Park in the years since. Marge Gibson from the Raptor Education Group Inc. in Antigo frequently releases rehabilitated eagles into the wild as part of Eagle Watching Days, to the delight of onlookers. Her group is scheduled to do so again this year at VFW Park from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. Jan. 14  shortly after Kelleys presentation at the Tripp Museum in Prairie du Sac.

Kelley said he never intended to become a regional expert on treating injured raptors, but after his 1993 release was broadcast on television, people started bringing them into the clinic.

A special veterinary license is required to treat raptors, so Kelley only can do emergency work. The eagles are then either sent to the raptor center at the University of Minnesota, or to the Raptor Education Group for rehabilitation. We werent really interested in doing the long-term care and rehabilitation, Kelley said. As soon as the eagle is ready, it goes.

From about 1993 to 2005 he saw a lot of eagles who suffered from seizures; a condition they named Lower Wisconsin River Syndrome. We never did find out what was causing it, Kelley said. Just as quickly as the syndrome came, it went away.

Early on, Kelley learned about every one in 10 eagles that are treated will die. At the time, he treated several eagles each year. Now he typically sees one to two. His most recent eagle encounter was about two months ago.

Since Abby the eagle, Kelley has treated about 100 more. About 50 percent have been released; a number that still amazes Kelley to this day.

Many of the eagles he sees have bullet wounds or have been hit by a vehicle; general trauma, Kelley said. Some things we can deal with. Others, not so much.

His raptor patients predominately are brought in by the DNR; however sometimes the average person will see one and bring it in. It doesnt happen that much, Kelley said. You get a look at that wingspan and those talons and it can be scary.

Working with eagles has both its rewards and challenges. They are a top-of-the-food-chain-type creature so they arent real afraid, which is nice, Kelley said.

Kelley said he also had an eagles talon slice his hand while he was attempting to X-ray it. He noted the wingspan of the creatures can reach up to 8 feet, requiring caution when handling them.

For Kelley, the eagle is something different he doesnt see every day.

But I enjoy educating people about eagles, he said. When I have one and I get to bring a client back to see one up close  the look on their face makes it all worthwhile.
The query is in the nature of seeking future date of an event which is not defined as information as per Section 2(f) of the RTI Act, RBI said in response to an RTI query.

The Bankers Bank refused to disclose reasons behind the demonetisation of about Rs 20 lakh crore of currency in the country citing Section 8(1)(a) of the Right to Information Act.

Denying the information sought in the RTI application, the RBI did not give any reasons as to how exemption would apply in the given case as the decision was already taken.

There was no way that disclosure of information would have fit in any of the reasons cited in section 8(1)(a) of the RTI Act.

The clause of public interest would apply where exemption clause applies on the information sought by an applicant.

In the present case, the information sought does not attract any exemption clause, said former Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi.

He said law is very clear that when a public authority rejects to disclose an information it must give clear reasons as to how the exemption clause would apply in the given case.

Recently, it had refused to allow access to minutes of meetings held to decide on the issue of demonetisation of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8.

Responding to an RTI application filed by activist Venkatesh Nayak, the Bankers Bank refused to disclose the minutes of the crucial meetings of Central Board of Directors on the issue of demonetisation citing section 8(1)(a) of the transparency law.

Nayak said he will appeal against the decision, adding, while confidentiality prior to the making of the demonetisation decision is understandable, continued secrecy after the implementation of the decision is difficult to understand when crores of Indians are facing difficulties due to the shortage of cash in the economy.

He said the refusal to disclose the minutes of the board meeting where the decision was taken is perplexing to say the very least.

Former Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi also underlined that RBI has created an in-house, disclosure policy which is against the letter and spirit of the RTI Act.
PulteGroup, Inc., through its subsidiaries, primarily engages in the homebuilding business in the United States. It acquires and develops land primarily for residential purposes; and constructs housing on such land. The company also offers various home designs, including single-family detached, townhomes, condominiums, and duplexes under the Centex, Pulte Homes, Del Webb, DiVosta Homes, American West, and John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods brand names. As of December 31, 2021, it controlled 228,296 lots, of which 109,078 were owned and 119,218 were under land option agreements. In addition, the company arranges financing through the origination of mortgage loans primarily for homebuyers; sells the servicing rights for the originated loans; and provides title insurance policies, and examination and closing services to homebuyers. PulteGroup, Inc. was formerly known as Pulte Homes, Inc. and changed its name to PulteGroup, Inc. in March 2010. The company was founded in 1950 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
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. 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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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Ltd., Pramerica Financial Asia Limited, Pramerica Fixed Income Funds Management Limited, Pramerica Fosun Life Insurance Co. Ltd., Pramerica Holdings Ltd, Pramerica Hong Kong Holdings Limited, Pramerica Insurance Agency China Company Ltd., Pramerica Luxembourg CP GP S.a.r.l., Pramerica PRECAP I GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP II GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP III GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP IV GP LLP, Pramerica Pan European Real Estate Scots LP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I GP Scots Feeder LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I Scotland Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital II Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital III Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP Limited, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP Scots Feeder LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V Netherlands GP LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital VI Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Scots CP GP LLP, Preco III Scotland Limited Partnership, Pru 101 Wood LLC, Pru Alpha Partners I LLC, Pru Fixed Income Emerging Markets Partners I LLC, PruVen Capital Partners Fund I L.P., Pruco Assignment Corporation, Pruco Life Insurance Company, Pruco Life Insurance Company of New Jersey, Pruco Securities LLC, Prudential 900 Aviation Boulevard LLC, Prudential Affordable Mortgage Company LLC, Prudential Agricultural Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Annuities Distributors Inc., Prudential Annuities Holding Company Inc., Prudential Annuities Inc., Prudential Annuities Information Services & Technology Corporation, Prudential Annuities Life Assurance Corporation, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Captive Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Universal Company, Prudential Bank & Trust FSB, Prudential Capital Energy Opportunity Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners Management Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Partners Management Fund IV L.P., Prudential Capital and Investment Services LLC, Prudential Chile II SpA, Prudential Chile SpA, Prudential Commercial Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Equity Group LLC, Prudential Financial Inc., Prudential Fixed Income Global Liquidity Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Fixed Income U.S. Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Funding LLC, Prudential General Services of Japan Y.K., Prudential Gibraltar Agency Co. 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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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Humana Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a health and well-being company in the United States. It operates through three segments: Retail, Group and Specialty, and Healthcare Services. The company offers medical and supplemental benefit plans to individuals. It also has a contract with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to administer the Limited Income Newly Eligible Transition prescription drug plan program; and contracts with various states to provide Medicaid, dual eligible, and long-term support services benefits. In addition, the company provides commercial fully insured medical and specialty health insurance benefits comprising dental, vision, and other supplemental health benefits; and administrative services only products to individuals and employer groups, as well as military services, such as TRICARE T2017 East Region contract. Further, it offers pharmacy solutions, provider services, and home solutions services, such as home health and other services to its health plan members, as well as to third parties. As of December 31, 2021, the company had approximately 17 million members in medical benefit plans, as well as approximately 5 million members in specialty products. Humana Inc. was founded in 1961 and is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky.
Calix, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides cloud and software platforms, and systems and services in the United States, rest of Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. The company's cloud and software platforms, and systems and services enable broadband service providers (BSPs) to provide a range of services. It provides Calix Cloud platform, a role-based analytics platform comprising Calix Marketing Cloud, Calix Support Cloud, and Calix Operations Cloud, which are configurable to display role-based insights and enable BSPs to anticipate and target new revenue-generating services and applications through mobile application. The company also offers EXOS, a carrier class premises operating system and fully integrated with its GigaSpire family of systems to be ready for deployment as a complete subscriber experience solutions for BSP's residential and business subscribers; and AXOS, a software platform to access edge of the network by its architecture and operations. It offers its products through its direct sales force and resellers. Calix, Inc. was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.
Lingerswaran, along with Sasikala Pushpa's lawyers, yesterday entered the AIADMK headquarters in an attempt to file nomination for the party's general secretary's post, ahead of the party's general body meeting today.

He and his supporters were badly injured after being attacked by AIADMK cadres. Lingerswaran was rescued by the police and taken to a safer location.

Late yesterday night, Sasikala Pushpa had filed an FIR seeking information about her husband's whereabouts as it was the cops who took him away.
Crane Holdings Co., together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells engineered industrial products in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. The company has four business segments: Aerospace & Electronics, Process Flow Technologies, Payment & Merchandising Technologies, and Engineered Materials. The Aerospace & Electronics segment supplies critical components and systems, including original equipment and aftermarket parts, primarily for the commercial aerospace, and the military aerospace, defense and space markets. The Process Flow Technologies segment provides engineered fluid handling equipment for mission critical applications. It offers process valves and related products, commercial valves, and pumps and systems. The Payment & Merchandising Technologies segment provides high technology payment acceptance and dispensing products to original equipment manufacturers, and for certain vertical markets. This segment also offers currency handling and processing systems, cash and cashless payment and merchandising solutions, equipment service solutions, and connected managed service solutions. The Engineered Materials segment manufactures fiberglass-reinforced plastic panels and coils, primarily for use in the manufacturing of recreational vehicles and in commercial and industrial buildings applications. It provides products and solutions to customers across end markets, including aerospace, defense, chemical and petrochemical, water and wastewater, payment automation, and banknote security and production, as well as for a range of general industrial and consumer applications. The company was formerly known as Crane Co. and changed its name to Crane Holdings Co. in May 2022. Crane Holdings Co. was founded in 1855 and is based in Stamford, Connecticut.
The Samajwadi Party feud intensifies as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav signals fightback after he was ignored by his father Mulayam Singh Yadav in giving party tickets for the assembly polls.

By India Today Web Desk: After Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav announced the names of 325 candidates for Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has given indication of another round of political wrestling within the Yadav family.

Akhilesh had given his own list of 403 candidates to the party chief and father Mulayam Singh Yadav, who preferred to field more candidates of brother Shivpal Yadav's choice.

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With the latest move, the political battle of one-upmanship between UP Samajwadi Party chief Shivpal Yadav and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has once again come to the surface in the ruling party and the family.

PARI-WAR: THINGS TO KNOW Several Samajwadi Party MLAs started reaching 5, Kalidas Marg in Lucknow- the official residence of UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. Among the first few party legislators were Dharmendra Yadav, Arvind Singh Gop and Abhishek Mishra. The meeting of legislators came in the wake of Mulayam Singh Yadav ignoring Akhilesh's wish in giving party tickets for the assembly polls. Akhilesh Yadav is believed to convey his grievances to Mulayam Singh Yadav after consulting the MLAs. Akhilesh Yadav was touring Bundelkhand, when Mulayam Singh Yadav announced 325 candidates on Wednesday. While Mulayam Singh gave accommodated the choices of his brother Shivpal Yadav, he dumped several key aides and associates of Akhilesh Yadav. Mulayam gave ticket to Atiq Ahmed, who faces over 40 charges of serious offences including that of murder. Akhilesh was vehemently against giving ticket to Atiq Ahmad, who was backed by Shivpal Yadav. Later in the days, Akhilesh Yadav sacked two party leaders- husband and wife- considered close to Shivpal Yadav from their government posts.

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On a day when Sasikala Natarajan was appointed as successor by her partymen, the Congress has said that despite its alliance with DMK in Tamil Nadu, the party is not 'hostile' to the AIADMK.

By Supriya Bhardwaj: Reigns of AIADMK moved from Amma to Chinnamma in Tamil Nadu. With Sasikala being handed over the charge of party, Congress is keeping a close watch on the events taking place in the southern state.

The Congress is in alliance with DMK in Tamil Nadu, but in post-Jayalalithaa era the party leaders emphasise that they are not 'hostile' to AIADMK.

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CONGRESS SENDING FEELERS TO AIADMK: THINGS TO KNOW Congress spokesperson PC Chacko said, "We have better understanding with DMK but we are not hostile towards AIADMK. We have no hostility towards AIADMK also." Congress insiders maintain that with TMC chief Mamata Banerjee their side, if AIADMK joins them, the party's stature as the leading opposition force will boost. AIADMK has 37 Lok Sabha members and 12 Rajya Sabha MPs. The sources also say that the Congress is planning fresh back-channel talks with the newly appointed AIADMK chief Sasikala. The signs of this can be seen during two occasions, pointed the sources. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was the first national level leader to visit the Apollo hospital to meet ailing former Tamil Nadu CM Jayalithaa. Rahul Gandhi had met Sasikala and present Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam during her visit to the Apollo hospital. But, party spokesperson Chacko is playing it safe. Officially, he maintained, "We don't want to predict anything in Tamil Nadu. We have an alliance with DMK. We are not wooing rather BJP is trying to woo AIADMK." With both Congress and BJP looking interested in winning over the AIADMK, all political eyes are now fixed on Chinnamma Sasikala.

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The general council of the AIADMK today passed the resolution at its meeting in Chennai, attended among others by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam.

By India Today Web Desk: Sasikala Natarajan, close aide of late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, has been elected as the AIADMK General Secretary unopposed in a party meeting in Chennai today.

The general council of the AIADMK today passed the resolution at its meeting, attended among others by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam.

Sasikala did not attend the meeting but that did not stop the party leaders from electing her as their new leader.

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The council also passed a resolution condoling the death of Jayalalithaa, who died of cardiac arrest on December 5 following a long admission at Chennai's Apollo Hospital.

SASIKALA LACKS JAYA'S CHARISMA

While it is true that Sasikala will have to wait for the imprimatur of the electorate to confirm her legitimacy as a successor, it is obvious that her uphill political journey will be far more arduous than Jayalalithaa's.

Chennai: AIADMK general body meeting underway (Inside Visuals) pic.twitter.com/hpuU0FFQCQ&; ANI (@ANI_news) December 29, 2016

For starters, she doesn't have the latter's charisma or the kind of political experience which Jayalalithaa gained through years of tutelage under MGR. Instead, Sasikala comes across as a reclusive, dour personality.

Another disadvantage besides her lack of charisma is the "baggage" of a family. Moreover, she and her relatives are still under the cloud of malfeasance.

It has to be remembered that despite her closeness to Jayalalithaa, the latter evicted her for a while from her Poes Garden residence following charges that Sasikala's family had used her proximity to the former Chief Minister to make financial gains.

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Jayalalithaa, too, had followed the same pattern. When her mentor MG Ramachandran died in 1987, his widow, Janaki, assumed his mantle and became Chief Minister, but for a mere 24 days.

Following an electoral defeat of her breakaway faction of the AIADMK in 1989, Janaki had no option but to step aside, as MGR's co-star in the film world and longstanding companion, Jayalalithaa, took the reins of a reunited party in her hands.

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Construction starts on second Hualong One

29 December 2016

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China General Nuclear (CGN) has started construction of its second Hualong One reactor - unit 4 of the Fangchenggang nuclear power plant in western China. Pouring first concrete began on 23 December, "marking the official start of construction on another Hualong-1 (HPR1000) demonstration power unit, China's first homegrown nuclear power plant", CGN said the following day.

Construction gets under way at Fangchenggang unit 4 (Image: CGN)

CGN now has 19 nuclear power units in operation with a total installed capacity of 20.38 GWe and nine under construction that total 11.36 GWe.

The Fangchenggang plant will act as a reference plant for CGN's Bradwell B Project in the UK, and "will demonstrate China's cutting-edge nuclear power technology to the international market", CGN said.

Fangchenggang is located near Hongsha village in the Guangxi Autonomous Region, about 45 kilometres from the border with Vietnam. A total of six large pressurized water reactors are planned to operate there. Units 1 and 2 are both CPR-1000s, units 3 and 4 will feature Hualong One reactors, and units 5 and 6 are to be AP1000s.

Construction of the first two units at the plant began in July and December 2010, respectively. Unit 1 was connected to the grid in October 2015 and entered commercial operation on 1 January. Unit 2 was connected to the grid in July.

First concrete was poured for the nuclear island of unit 3 of the Fangchenggang plant on 24 December 2015 and is expected to start up in 2019. Unit 4 is scheduled to start up in 2020.

The plant is 39% owned by Guangxi Investment Group and 61% owned by CGN.

"Upon completion, the plant will provide steady and clear power for the Beibu Gulf Economic Zone, and also play a positive role in the control of air pollution," CGN said.

Once in operation, the first four Fangchenggang units are expected to generate 31.5 terawatts of electricity and avoid the use of 10.12 million tonnes of coal, thus reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 24.86 million tonnes, CGN added.

The units will also help decrease both sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions by 400,000 tonnes, it said.

"The plant's environmental benefit is equal to those of 725-square-kilometers of forests," it said, while the project has so far created more than 2800 jobs for Fangchenggang locals and Guangxi people.

There are now 21 reactors under construction in China with an installed capacity total of 24,106 MWe.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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Belgium is located in Western Europe, and it shares its borders with France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, and the North Sea. It covers an area of 11,787 square miles. Within this area is are three principal geographical regions. These regions include the coastal plains, which consist of sand dunes, the central plateau, which consists of valleys and gorges, and the Ardennes, which consists of a rocky and forested plateau. Rivers and other waterways flow across large portions of these regions. This article takes a closer look at some of the longest rivers in Belgium.

Rivers of Belgium

Meuse

The Meuse River is the largest river to pass through Belgium. It stretches for 575 miles across France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Approximately 113 miles of this can be found in Belgium, where it forms part of the border with the Netherlands. This river is important to the economy of Belgium as it provides navigable areas that connect port cities to industrial cities. The majority of the Meuse River Basin is located within Belgium, 4,633 square miles. A recent study of this river indicates that the water level has increased significantly during the wintertime over the last several centuries. This has contributed to an increased number of flooding in certain areas near the river. The Meuse River is also important historically as it was the inspiration for first landscape painting of the Middle Ages.

Scheldt

The second longest river running through Belgium is the Scheldt. Of its 220-mile length, approximately 124 miles flow through Belgium, while the rest of the river is shared with France and the Netherlands. The Lys River empties into the Scheldt at the city of Ghent and in Antwerp, the river veers west into the Netherlands where it empties into the North Sea. This river has been an important transportation and trade route since Roman times. Today, the economy of Belgium and, more specifically, of Antwerp continue to rely on this river. Antwerp, for example, is the second largest port city in Europe, located right on the banks of the Scheldt River. Additionally, several canals connect this river with the Rhine, Meuse, and Seine Rivers, which allows industrial goods to be transported among various cities.

Oise

The third longest Belgian river is the Oise River, which runs along a course of 212 miles in length through Belgium and France. Only around 12 miles of this is located within Belgium, where it begins in the Hainaut Province. In France, this river flows into the Seine, connecting Paris to coastal regions throughout Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Currently, construction of the Seine-Nord Europe Canal is being planned. With this canal, large ships will be able to travel from the Seine in Paris to ports in Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Dunkerque.

Other major rivers in Belgium can be found detailed in the chart published below.

Environmental Threats

Belgium has a high population density, which means large numbers of people can be found living in relatively small areas. Many of these populations are located along river banks, which is particularly threatening to the environmental health of these waters. Additionally, Belgium is a heavily industrialized nation, which means high levels of pollution and contaminants that make their way into the local rivers. Recognizing these environmental threats, the government of Belgium has implemented several programs, projects, and regulations to reduce the contamination of its waterways. These efforts have worked to greatly improve the water quality. This improved quality has, in turn, brought an increased level of biodiversity to its rivers. This has been seen in greater numbers of both trout and salmon. Recently, the EU Commission has reported excellent water quality off the coast of Belgium in the majority of tested sites.
Peru shares most of its rivers with its neighboring countries, including the Amazon River, one of the longest and most diverse rivers in the world. Most Peruvian rivers originate from the peaks of the Andes and drain into three basins. Those pouring into the Pacific Ocean are short and steep and flow intermittently. Tributaries of the Amazon River are fuller, longer and less steep and the rivers that drain into Lake Titicaca are short and fuller.

The Major Rivers Of Peru

Amazon River

The mighty Amazon River is probably the longest river on earth, covering a total of 4,345 miles measured from the mouth to the most distant all year round source. It flows through Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Guyana, and Suriname. It carries more water than any other river and is responsible for about one-fifth of all freshwater that flows into the world's oceans. These waters are a home to about 3,000 known species of fish. The Peruvian Amazon Rainforest covers approximately 60% of Peruvian land and is one of the most diverse ecosystems on earth. It hosts about 262 species of amphibians, 806 species of birds, 300 mammal species, 180 reptile species and 8,000 plants. The Pacaya Samira Reserve is located on the river tributaries, and it is vibrant with blue-and-yellow macaws, snowy egrets, laughing falcons, and kingfishers among others. Illegal gold mining, pollution, and illegal oil extraction going on in the river and its basins are the threats facing this longest river.

Purus

Purus River is a feeder of the Amazon River and covers a total of 1,839 miles. It rises in Peru and defines the boundary between Peru and Brazil. The forested area around the Purus supports several species of animals including the pure red howler monkey native to Peru, Brazil, and Bolivia. Among the birds here are the blue heron, egrets, scarlet, green parrots, and macaws. There are also large predators like water lizards and boa constrictor snake. The river had a great historical significance and was named after a local branch of the natives who settled in the region. It supported the civilization of multiple tribes and earthworks of this pre-Colombian culture still exist in the upper area of the river, just close to the Bolivian border. Many of the Brazil's and Peru's rubber plantations are concentrated along its course, and its basin is a major supplier of cash crops and commodities like manioc, jute, and guarana. The trans-Amazonian highway cutting across the river basin serves as a primary facilitator for deforestation and pollution in this region which is a major concern as it affects its biodiversity.

Jurua

The Jurua River is one of the largest, most navigable and economically important rivers in Brazil and Peru, covering a length of 1, 926 miles. It meanders through floodplains and forested areas with an incomparable biodiversity of flora and fauna which are sources of livelihood for the communities living in its vicinity. Some of the main economic activities carried out in the area include logging, agriculture, fishing, and construction. It is one of the major electricity suppliers with hydroelectric dams built along its banks. Its fauna and flora include trees like capirona, capinuri and ceiba tree. The Peruvian portion has about 184 fish species including catfish, crustaceans, and discusses fish. The variable avian range from kingfishers, parrots, wild ducks to horned screamers. Foreign companies invading the forest land in search of rubber and oil deposits, and hydroelectric dam constructions are the major threats to this river.

Maranon

Maranon River is one of the most important rivers in Peru and a key tributary to the Amazon River. Dry forests extend along the upper river valley and its tributaries and are home to 64 rare bird species, 26 of them are endemic to Peru. The pacaya-samina national reserve is located in the area between the marina and Ucayali Rivers with abundant plant life and water life including pink dolphins, Amazonian manatees, giant river otters and giant river turtles. Animas include a variety of endangered monkey such as the spider monkey, wholly monkey and howler monkey. The proposed hydroelectric dam construction along the banks of the river is a supposed major threat likely to face Maranon River.

Other Rivers In Peru

The longest river that is wholly Peru's is Ucayali flowing in an area of 994 miles and drains into the Amazon River. The Putumayo River crosses through the territories of Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and Peru and later joins the Amazon River. It is a major transport, navigable for almost its total length. The other main rivers of Peru include Javari River shared by Peru and Brazil, Napo River crossing Peru and Ecuador territories and Huallaga River which is wholly within Peru.
Stephen and Victoria Valentine

By: Feng Qian WorldWideWeirdNews.com

Police in Mississippi, said that they have arrested a aGrinch couplea for stealing Christmas treats from a family.

Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey said that police were called at 9:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

A man reported that he and his wife had come home to find a red Chevrolet Cavalier parked on their property.

As the couple approached their house, a man and a woman ran out and drove away in their vehicle.

Deputies who responded to the scene, said that the aGrinch couple,a ate the couples food, including their Christmas treats, and they smoked inside the home.

Police issued an alert with a description of the thieves and the vehicle.

Deputy Luke Stickman spotted the vehicle and the suspects. The couple was identified as Stephen and Victoria Valentine.

Deputies said that they found three grams of methamphetamine in their possession.

Both suspects were charged with burglary and possession of controlled substance.
A group of migrants from Syria, kicked a baby in the face because the carriage was taking up too much space on their bus, according to police in Germany.

Augsburg police said that the incident unfolded on Sunday night, as residents were being evacuated due to a bomb that was found in the city.

Around 9:30 p.m., a large number of migrants were traveling on a bus when several men began fighting.

About five migrants became violent after claiming that the 1-year-old childas baby carriage is taking up too much space in their bus.

They then kicked the baby in the face because the mother refused to get off the bus. Passengers called paramedics to treat the injured child.

When paramedics arrived at the scene to treat the child, the migrants used their belts to beat them. The paramedics called the police who arrived at the scene at restored order.

So far, no arrests have been made.
Laderrick and Larry Rostchild and Karmen Coleman

By: Mahesh Sarin WorldWideWeirdNews.com

A woman posted a shocking video to the Internet, showing two men burning a cat alive.

Police in Mississippi, have launched an investigation after receiving reports about the disturbing incident.

The woman, Karmen Coleman, 23, posted the video to Snapchat with the caption: aThey hell mana with a laughter emoji.

Coleman eventually turned herself in to police and she removed the clip after learning that she is facing charges of rendering criminal assistance.

Police in Moss Point, have now issued arrest warrants for 43-year-old Larry Rostchild Jr., and his nephew Laderrick, 24, after charging them with aggravated cruelty to an animal.

The video of the incident showed the black and white cat being locked in a cage before they poured boiling hot water on the defenseless cat.

Steam can be seen rising from the cage as the cat was heard hissing and meowing at his tormentors. One of the men also kicked the cage.

The cat was later found dead.
(Scroll down for video) A woman in the United Kingdom, who became very distraught when a cat was following her, called police to have it arrested.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MET) in London, released the most ridiculous phone calls they got over the past few weeks, including the one of the woman who was complaining about the cat.

Police warned people to think before they call 999, as the number is only for true emergencies.

Police said that by calling 999 for trivial issues, resources are taking away from true emergencies and cause the lines to be busy.

MET released these extracts from 12 999 calls that did not require any police response.

aI am at Heathrow Airport and I have left one of my bags in a taxi?a

aI have seen a fox walking outside the window and I wanted to report it in case itas dangerous.a

aBasically, Iam in N8 and Iam trying to get home to Finsbury Park, and I donat have any money on me for a taxi. I want police to come and pick me up and take me home.a

aMy mother put a deposit down on a fridge-freezer and they havenat delivered it. They keep changing the delivery date.a

aIam lost and Iam looking for a building that I canat find, can you tell me where it is?a

aI sent back my headphones because they are faulty and the manufacturer said they havenat received them.a

aThere was a bird in the store but its ok, someone has removed it now.a

aI want to report that I have lost my driving license.a

aI have a dispute, I took my dog to be groomed and they shaved it instead of trimming it.a

aThere is a cat following me down the road and it keeps hissing.a

aWhat time do the betting shops close in N18?a

aCan you give me the number for the non-emergency police?a
The witness told the police that the man fell after losing his balance while looking into the ladies' room, the local newspaper said in a report.

Police officials found the man lying dead in a pool of blood. The body was sent to a local hospital.
Alaska's two senators jointly welcomed a new addition to their Southeast team.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan issued statements December 22 congratulating Chere Klein to serve at the South Southeast delegation representative office in her home town of Ketchikan.

"The district office is kind of the eyes and ears of the senators when they're back in D.C.," Klein explained of the post. "Our main business is doing casework, and that's helping constituents around the district with any kind of federal agency that they're having any issues with, or if they don't think things are getting don...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP)  Alaska lawmakers could take another run at revising statues governing alcohol when the legislature convenes next month.

A Soldotna state senator, Republican Peter Micciche, is expected to again push for reforms that were partially addressed in his bill in 2015, the Junaeau Empire reported.

The Alaska Alcoholic Beverage Control Board and interested parties since 2012 have worked on new drafts of Title 4, the chapter of state statutes that regulates the manufacture, possession and sale of alcoholic beverages.

I dont want to say revising so much as bringing Title...
Emergency Pharmacy Service Frees up Thousands of Appointments

This article is old - Published: Thursday, Dec 29th, 2016

A new emergency pharmacy service has prevented thousands of unnecessary visits to North Wales GPs, outpatient clinics and casualty, claim health chiefs.

Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) is the first health board in Wales to take advantage of a change in regulations, which allows the Welsh NHS to fund the emergency supply of prescription medication to patients.

The Community Pharmacy Medicines Service aims at reducing demand and workload on overstretched GP surgeries, out-of-hours services and A&E  freeing up the time of healthcare staff, to spend on patients who need the care most.

The service means 132 pharmacists across the region can supply a patients regular medicines, free of charge, in an emergency without the need to get a prescription.

New data shows the Community Pharmacy Emergency Medicines Service completed 8,025 emergency supply consultations between December 2015 and November 2016, and supplied 11,936 items of medication.

Of the 8,025 consultations, 1,016 patients said they would have contacted their GP without the service, 2,863 said they would have accessed the GP out-of-hours service and 866 said they would have visited a nearby A&E department.

The remaining 3,149 said they would have potentially gone without their medication.

With the average 10-minute GP appointment costing 44 and a hospital outpatient appointment costing 153, according to NHS figures, the value of the saved appointments amounts to almost 300,000.

Health experts have also welcomed the success of the scheme but stress that patients need to take responsibility for their medications and only use the service in a genuine emergency.

BCUHB Chief Pharmacist Berwyn Owen said: While these arrangements are more cost-effective than the alternative, which might be an A&E visit, the core benefit is really the fact that it frees up a GPs time to deal with a patient who really needs medical help.

Were very pleased with the performance of the service and it is a real success story. Weve been running the Community Pharmacy Medicines Service throughout BCUHB for two years now and were already seeing just how much of an impact it can have.

But its important to remember that this is a service that has been set up to help patients access their medicines in an emergency when things have gone wrong  its not a service which should be accessed as a matter of routine.

Patients can also order their usual repeat prescriptions through MyHealthOnline. Patients who register online can order their repeat medication from their GP via the internet.

At the community pharmacy, patients undergo a short consultation with the pharmacist. The patients identity is checked and a check is also made to ensure that the medication they have requested is regularly supplied to them on prescription.

The pharmacy will then make organise a supply of the regular medication to the patient which is free of charge with the cost being paid by NHS Wales.
By PTI: Kabul, Dec 29 (PTI) The head of the Sikh community in Afghanistans restive Kunduz city was shot dead by unknown gunmen today, the second such incident within three months, triggering fear among the minority group members.

Lala Del Souz was gunned down at about 9am in the Haji Gulistan Kochi Haman area of the city, Tolo News reported.

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He was reportedly on his way to his shop when the shooting occurred. He died from his injuries while being taken to hospital, the report said.

According to relatives of the deceased, he had been shot five years ago but survived the attack.

Kunduz security chief Masoum Stanikzai confirmed the incident and said police have arrested three suspects.

"Investigations will however continue," he said.

Del Souzs uncle, Prem, said the deceased had been well- liked and had no enemies.

The shooting, meanwhile, sparked an outcry on social media with hundreds of people condemning the incident and sending condolences to his family.

Prem, however, called on government to thoroughly investigate the incident and make sure those responsible are brought to justice. He said if this does not happen, the few remaining Sikhs will sell up and leave the province.

Following the collapse of Kunduz to Taliban, many Sikhs left the province. Currently only three families are still there, the report said.

Sikhs have lived in Kunduz for over thirty years and at one time there were as many as 40 families in the area.

After the collapse of Kunduz city last year, Del Souz apparently moved his family to India. He stayed on in Kunduz and lived with his uncle.

Close to 99 per cent of Hindu and Sikh in Afghanistan have left the country over the past three decades.

Sikh and Hindu population numbered 220,000 in the 1980s.

It is now estimated that only 1,350 Hindus and Sikhs remain in the country, the report said.

Hindus and Sikhs suffered huge setbacks after the Taliban regime collapsed in 2001. This forced many of them to leave rural areas and move to Kabul in order to make a living.

In October, a Sikh man was abducted from his home and gunned down by suspected militants in Afghanistans restive Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan.

Sardar Rawail Singh, who lived in Jalalabad, was abducted from his house by militants wearing military fatigues and killed in Khalis Famil area. PTI NSA AKJ NSA

--- ENDS ---

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By PTI: Kabul, Dec 29 (PTI) The head of the Sikh community in Afghanistans restive Kunduz city was shot dead by unknown gunmen today, the second such incident within three months, triggering fear among the minority group members in the country.

Lala Del Souz, a naturopath, was gunned down at about 9am in the Haji Gulistan Kochi Haman area of the city, Tolo News reported.

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He was reportedly on his way to his shop when the shooting occurred. He died from his injuries while being taken to hospital, the report said.

According to relatives of the deceased, he had been shot five years ago but survived the attack.

Kunduz security chief Masoum Stanikzai confirmed the incident and said police have arrested three suspects.

"Investigations will however continue," he said.

Del Souzs uncle, Prem, said the deceased had been well- liked and had no enemies.

The shooting, meanwhile, sparked an outcry on social media with hundreds of people condemning the incident and sending condolences to his family.

Prem called on government to thoroughly investigate the incident and make sure those responsible are brought to justice. He said if this does not happen, the few remaining Sikhs will sell up and leave the province.

Following the collapse of Kunduz city to Taliban militants, many Sikhs left the province. Currently only three families are still there, the report said.

Sikhs have lived in Kunduz for over thirty years and at one time there were as many as 40 families in the area.

After the collapse of Kunduz city last year, Del Souz apparently moved his family to India. He stayed on in Kunduz and lived with his uncle.

Close to 99 per cent of Hindu and Sikh in Afghanistan have left the country over the past three decades.

Sikh and Hindu population numbered 220,000 in the 1980s.

It is now estimated that only 1,350 Hindus and Sikhs remain in the war-torn country, the report said.

Hindus and Sikhs suffered huge setbacks after the Taliban regime collapsed in 2001. This forced many of them to leave rural areas and move to Kabul in order to make a living.

In October, a Sikh man was abducted from his home and gunned down by suspected militants in Afghanistans restive Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan.

Sardar Rawail Singh, who lived in Jalalabad, was abducted from his house by militants wearing military fatigues and killed in Khalis Famil area. PTI NSA AKJ AKJ

--- ENDS ---

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A possible contact of Anis Amri, the presumed perpetrator of last weeks Christmas market attack, was arrested in Berlin on Wednesday. The suspect is a 40-year-old Tunisian who lives in Berlin. The information was released by Der Spiegel based on sources within the security services.

The circumstances of the arrest are as unclear as the circumstances of the attack that took place on 19 December. All of the information provided by the authorities and reported in the media is highly contradictory and strengthens the suspicion that sections of the state apparatus were informed about the attack and either allowed it to happen or even provided indirect support.

According to Der Spiegel, investigators tracked down the Tunisian now in custody via the evaluation of electronic communication data attributed to Amri. Among other things, investigators found a mobile telephone in the cab of the vehicle that crashed into the Christmas market. According to the Federal Prosecutors office, the number of the arrested man was included on the phone.

The phone was allegedly first found on Tuesday, together with Amris wallet, following a renewed investigation of the truck, which had been moved to the Julius Leber Barracks in Berlin. According to the Berlin police, the late date for the discovery was due to the meticulous work at the crime scene. Officers had worked according to the principle of thoroughness before speed.

Who are the Berlin police seeking to fool? From the standpoint of the investigation it is incomprehensible that speed should not be a top priority in the hunt for someone alleged to be armed and responsible for a terror attack. Moreover, it is well known that the security services had Amri under observation from the outset. A week ago Zeit Online stated: While the public was still asking up until Tuesday afternoon if a young Pakistani was the culprit, investigators long since possessed another trace leading to A.

Now it is reported that prior to being allegedly shot in Milan by an Italian policeman last Friday night, Amri had fled through several European countries. It is supposed that Amri took a train to Italy from Lyon in France. Before that he was also in the Netherlands, investigators from the Federal Criminal Police Office told Der Spiegel.

How probable is it that Amri could travel through a series of European countries without the knowledge of the security forces?

From the details that have emerged it is clear that Amri carried out the attack literally under the noses of the authorities. In the spring of 2016, the 24-year-old Tunisian was even driven to Berlin by an informant of the domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). In Berlin he was subject to intense supervision and had close ties with undercover agents of the BfV, with whom he discussed the procurement of heavy weapons.

In light of German history and the manner in which the attack is being used it would be politically naive to rule out the involvement of sections of the state.

In a previous article we have pointed out that state provocations have a long tradition for political purposes, especially in Germany. Berlin is the city of the Reichstag Fire, which the Nazis organized in 1933 in order to establish their dictatorship and crush any opposition. The secret services of the Federal Republic were built up by leading Nazis and were repeatedly involved in right-wing conspiracies in the postwar period, including the resignation of Social Democratic chancellor Willy Brandt in 1974. The secret services were also involved in the 1980 attack on the Oktoberfest, the largest terror attack in postwar Germany.

In recent years, the security services established close links with far right and Islamic extremist circles to advance their deeply reactionary domestic and foreign policy goals. In the 1990s and first decade of the 2000s, the far right terrorist group NSU committed at least ten murders under the noses of the domestic secret services.

The indirect and covert support of Islamic militias by the German government during the regime-change war in Syria has strengthened links between the German secret services and these forces, who have been able to travel in the hundreds from Europe to the Middle East.

There are obvious parallels between the Berlin attack, the NSU killings and the attack on the Oktoberfest. In all three cases the perpetrators or alleged perpetrators were operating in an environment full of state agents and died.

There is as yet no concrete proof that elements of the security apparatus allowed Amri to carry out or perhaps directly organized the attack in order to destabilize the Merkel government and shift German politics far to the right. However, it is clear that sections of the security apparatus have been agitating for the replacement of Merkel for some time.

Already in October 2015 the newspaper Welt am Sonntag published an article titled Security officers yearn for Merkels departure. The article reported massive resistance to Merkels refugee policy, which secret service circles and security authorities regarded as unlawful. Concerns are growing every day in the ranks of the constitutional protection service, the Federal Criminal Police Office, foreign intelligence (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) and the Federal Police regarding the loss of control and the haphazard mass migration, the Welt reported.

The aggressive witch-hunt of refugees and the massive rearmament of the state apparatus in the last few days indicate that growing sections of the ruling class are intent on installing an even more right-wing government, despite Merkels turnaround on refugee policy. Right-wing politicians, journalists, and professors talk and write as if the Nazi dictatorship and the Holocaust had never taken place in Germany.

A commentary in the Berliner Morgenpost accused the political leadership of the country of doing nothing but instead celebrating Christmas. Based on her guidelines Merkel could have come down hard and showed strength of leadership. What was necessary now were maximum legal means and new laws such as foot shackles for dangerous persons. The author then adds, provocatively: Attention, a daring thesis: It doesnt mean the Fourth Reich is back, if one has round-the-clock surveillance of 550 highly dangerous persons or at least those who have no right of residence.

The notorious right-wing Der Spiegel commentator Jan Fleischhauer rages in his latest column for Spiegel Online: I would not mind, for example, if people who throw away their identification papers so that they cannot be deported are detained with bread and water until they remember where they come from. I would also not be adverse to taking into custody someone who spends the time to his deportation with drug trafficking and brawling. He wanted the state quite emotionless...to respond with a bit more hardness.

The Humboldt professor, Jorg Baberowski, who functions increasingly as a megaphone for the extreme right, took up a similar line just a few days after the attack. Horst Seehofer is, of course, right when he says that we now have to rethink immigration policy [...] in the face of these terrible incidents, he explained on German broadcaster ZDF. One had to consider to introduce video surveillance in public places, allow policemen to patrol busy places and punish more severely and kick out of the country dangerous persons and perpetrators of violent crime.

Viewpoints such as those of Baberowski and Fleischhauer are hardly distinguishable from those of the AfD and other far right-wing groups, which have long demanded the ousting of Merkel.

The current title of the right-wing extremist Compact magazine bears the provocative title: Merkels last fight: last days in the chancellors bunker. Compact has close links to the AfD and Pegida, but also to parts of the security apparatus and the military. In the autumn of 2015 the magazine published three open letters from General Major Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, who called on Merkel to resign from office and hand over government business until the next election to the chairman of the third ruling party Mr. Seehofer.

Although Merkel made a sharp turn to the right at the last Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party congress, there is a growing circle which favours a coup detat in her party. In an article titled CDU Guerrillas vs. Merkel, the conservative Die Welt reports of the growing aversion to party leader Angela Merkel and her prospective top candidature for the Bundestag election in 2017. After the controversial admission of several hundred thousand refugees nationwide there are Christian Democratic circles within the CDU, which regard Merkels supporters as political opponents and seek to establish a conservative turn in their party.

Political responsibility for the dangerous lurch to the right in Germany rests with the SPD, Left Party and Greens. Their answer to the extreme right is to adopt their policies and agitate for more police and faster deportations. A genuine fight against the right wing in Germanyagainst militarism, dictatorship and social counterrevolutionrequires the development of the Socialist Equality Party, an independent working-class movement based on the principles of international socialism.
On December 22, the Australian, Rupert Murdochs national flagship, reported: Fears are mounting within the Liberal Party that maverick South Australian senator Cory Bernardi is set to split from the Coalition to spearhead the new Australian Conservatives party, with an announcement expected in the new year.

The conservative firebrand and his very close friend Gina Rinehart met key members of US president-elect Donald Trumps campaign team, including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, in Washington last month, fuelling fears the senator might have the support of Australias richest woman to bankroll the party and dilute the Liberals support base.

Bernardi, who was thrown off the Liberal Partys frontbench for linking gay marriage with polygamy and bestiality, first mooted a far-right breakaway party in the immediate aftermath of the July 2 federal election, which saw the Liberal-National Coalition government scrape into office with a mere one-seat majority.

The election brought to the surface the extent of seething political discontent among wide layers of the population towards ever-widening social inequality, unemployment, the casualisation of former full-time jobs, and the unrelenting, three-decades-long assault on social rights, especially public education, health and pensions. The establishment parties, Liberal, National, Labor and Greens, together won just 75 percent of the vote, their lowest combined result since the Second World War. In the absence of any alternative program or perspective from Labor, the Greens or the trade unions, a series of right-wing populist parties and individuals was able to capitalise on this mass disaffection, winning a total of 11 cross-bench Senate seats. Not one of them offered any solution to the social crisis. Instead, they sought to channel the growing popular hostility and outrage in a nationalist, xenophobic and chauvinist direction.

Bernardi responded to the election result by calling it a disaster, and accusing Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of driving away the partys base. Youre seeing a whole bunch of conservative votes splinter off into other parties, he said. I want to make sure that people who have a conservative disposition are adequately represented in the public square. Bernardi insisted that the task was now to unite Australian Conservatives  regardless of their party affiliation, and that Pauline Hanson, leader of the anti-immigrant One Nation party, which won four Senate seats, should not be dismissed.

Yesterday, Murdoch columnist Miranda Devine revealed that, in an interview on 2GB radio, Hanson had told her that she was willing to join forces with Bernardi, and would even allow him to take over [One Nation] rather than forming another party, which would only split the conservative vote. Devine characterised Hansons offer as a stunning proposal that would send shockwaves through the Coalition and concluded that Bernardi would be unlikely to rebuff Hansons offer to solidify conservative support for them both

Having won four federal Senate seats, Hansons One Nation is preparing to stand scores of candidates in the next state elections in Queensland and Western Australia. Recent polls indicate that she has up to 30 percent support in major working class suburbs of Queensland, and a Galaxy poll recorded 16 per cent support across that state.

Bernardi and Hanson share a common platform, which has strong similarities with that of US President-elect Trump, the UKIP party in Britain, the AfD in Germany and Marine Le Pen in France: economic nationalism, anti-immigrant chauvinism, militarism and war. Their new-found prominence (in the case of Hanson, after being sidelined for nearly 18 years), is due to factors similar to those that have elevated their counterparts in Europe and the US. It is symptomatic of the depth of the economic, political and social malaise throughout the country.

They target the most economically devastated areas, where recent studies have revealed some 6.6 million people now live in conditions of actual recession, centred in Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales. They utilise demagogic rhetoric to vilify all Muslims as responsible for Islamic terrorism and call for their deportation, and blame welfare recipients for the social crisis inflicted by successive governments, both Liberal-National and Labor, over the past three decades. They attack China and Chinese land buyers for attempting to take over the country.

While Hanson wins adherents by railing against the banks, demanding higher taxes on foreign companies and advocating protectionism, Bernardi makes a more direct appeal to his Christian fundamentalist constituency. He is an avid climate change denier and a campaigner for the claw-back of democratic rights, such as same-sex marriage and abortion. A message on his Australian Conservatives web site, posted on December 19, said the group was planning a massive 2017. Our new state-of-the-art website is almost ready to go, and we will be launching it early next year, along with a number of important campaigns. It claimed to have 60,000 supporters.

Bernardi has apparently hinted that his new party will be called Australian Majority.

Politicians and the media blame the rise of figures such as Hanson and Bernardi on the working class and its alleged shift to the right. In reality, this is far from the truth. What is in fact underway, in Australia and internationally, is a pronounced radicalisation among growing layers of workers and young people, expressed in escalating opposition to social inequality, state repression and war. Those workers who voted for Trump in the US, did so not because they were racists, or sexists, but because the Democrat Obama, with the full support of Clinton, had presided over eight years of war, mass unemployment and austerity, and the rise of social inequality to historically unprecedented levels. Many decided that they could not live through four more years of the same.

Bernardi is particularly sensitive to this radicalisation, having visited the US in the midst of the presidential election campaign. On his return, he warned that a left-wing movement could emerge in Australia, similar to that which had coalesced behind Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Party candidate in the US primaries.

On November 3, just days before the US election, Bernardi told the Guardian that he believed anyone other than Hillary Clinton would clean up in this contest. He went on to say that if Sanders had been the Democratic candidate he would have won, because he had promised change and a policy mix that appealed to many people.

Sanders won more than 13 million votes in the primaries, only slightly fewer than Clinton, by declaring himself a democratic socialist and calling for a political revolution against the billionaires. He claimed to strongly oppose Clinton, criticising her ties to Wall Street and her highly-paid speeches to bankers and corporate chiefs. It was precisely Sanders self-proclaimed commitment to socialism that attracted such strong support.

Having ridden on this rising sentiment for progressive social change, especially among young people, Sanders then demonstrated his real politicshis support for the billionaire eliteby nominating Clinton on the floor of the Democratic National Convention. Immediately after that, he publicly offered to support her campaign. As a result, many of his outraged supporters refused to vote for Clinton, while some expressed their disgust by voting for Trump.

Bernardi indicated his main fear when he spoke to the Sydney Morning Herald on December 11, explaining that a US pollster had shown him research that found 50 per cent of young Americans believe socialism or communism is a preferable system to capitalism.

Concerned, above all, to prevent such a development in Australia, Bernardi is hoping to use bigotry and prejudice to sow political confusion, provoke divisions in the working class and blame foreigners for the deteriorating conditions generated by Australian capitalism. Above all, as his comments on Sanders indicate, he is striving to prevent the emergence of a genuine socialist movement in the working class and among young people that fights for a revolutionary internationalist solution to the capitalist crisis.

Despite Bernardis intentions, there is considerable nervousness within the ruling establishment about a split in the Liberal Party, one of the two mainstays of bourgeois rule in Australia. In the past nine years, there have been five changes of government and four inner-party coups within the Liberal and Labor parties, creating an already toxic climate within Canberras corridors of power, and immense anxiety in corporate and financial boardrooms.

An Australian editorial on December 23 warned that revived speculation about another conservative splinter to be headed by Bernardi was a reminder about the dangers of such political fracturing. It urged Turnbull to adjust the positioning of his government, that is, to shift it far further to the right.

For now, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whom Turnbull ousted in September 2015, is appealing to Bernardi, a member of Abbotts conservative faction in the Liberal Party, to remain in the party. But the instability and turmoil that has been wracking Canberra for the past several years will only deepen in 2017.
The passing of the Localism Act in 2011 was hailed by the then-Conservative/Liberal Democrat government as the start of a new era of people power.

Former Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles declared the new legislation would herald a ground-breaking shift in power to councils and communities overturning decades of central government control. Bristol, the largest city in the southwest of England, with a population of 433,000, became a flagship of the coalitions plans. It was to become the first city outside London to be governed by a directly elected mayor and a rainbow cabinet in which the Green Party played a key role. Now the city is on the verge of bankruptcy.

In 2011, the World Socialist Web Site warned that talk of giving local communities greater choice and ownership over local facilities and services was a cynical exercise designed to enable corporate and financial concerns to tailor locally administered public expenditure and assets to their interests. In the process, central government funding would be axed and local public services restructured and privatised.

Localism was part of a broader move in Scotland, Wales and the English regions, directed towards a layer of the upper middle class, who saw devolution as a means of obtaining for themselves a greater share of the wealth secured through driving up the rate of exploitation of the working class and imposing tax cuts and other measures to attract corporate investment.

The Tories borrowed the concept of localism from the 1997-2010 Blair Labour government.

The creation of a directly elected mayor was a key aspect of the Localism Act. Presiding over all executive functions, the mayor would control decisions relating to staffing, the tendering of council services and awarding of contracts, housing policy and planning permission.

Speaking of the plans for a directly elected mayor in Bristol in 2012, former Labour Council leader Helen Holland said, I think this is going to bring some stability to the city.

Stephen Williams, the former Bristol West Liberal Democrat MP, insisted, It is going to mean that Bristol is going to be much more powerful.

The Green Party, which has had some influence in the city, was opposed nationally to the creation of directly elected mayors, declaring they undermined local democracy.

In May 2012, Bristol and nine other citiesManchester, Coventry, Nottingham, Bradford, Sheffield, Birmingham, Newcastle, Wakefield and Leedsheld referendums to introduce directly elected mayors. The hostility to the plans was such that in all the cities except Bristol they were thrown out. And in Bristol, the measure was just in favour (53 percent) on a turnout of only 20 percent. In one city ward, it was 6 percent.

Local millionaire architect George Ferguson was awarded the post. In the 1970s, Ferguson was the first Liberal to be elected to the City Council, a Labour stronghold for decades. Aware that he would never be elected as a representative of the despised Liberal Democrats, Ferguson resigned his membership shortly before the election and stood as an Independent.

Despite the unprecedented low turnout, a spokesman for the campaign in support of the mayor told the BBC, It was one of the most significant days in Bristol politics in living memory.

Today, Bristol City Council is suffering a 78 percent cut to its annual budget over 10 years from 201 million in 2010-2011 to 45 million in 2019-2020. Throughout this time, Labour and the Greens have been incapable of articulating any serious challenge to Westminsters austerity demands, choosing attacks on services and wages as the only option.

The Green Partys manifesto for 2012 declared, We do not agree with the logic of cutting public spending at a time of recession, and pledged to fight for Bristol resources.

Newly elected Mayor Ferguson offered the Green Party councillor for the Ashley area of the city, Gus Hoyt, the position of cabinet member for neighbourhoods, environment and council housing in his six-member rainbow cabinet. Although the Green Party was publicly opposed to directly elected mayors, Hoyt accepteda decision unanimously endorsed by the local Green Party. Hoyt now declared the rainbow cabinet was a positive and innovative new direction, and an alternative to the ancient ideas of confrontational politics at Westminster and sent an important message to other cities around the country and Europe.

Shortly after his appointment, Hoyt and the Green councillor for Southville, Tess Green, declared that there was no alternative but to accept the financial situation which has been imposed upon us. They voted to support 35 million in cuts to jobs and services in the 2013 budget, and raise council tax by nearly 2 percent.

Hoyt and Ferguson sought to force the council to drop its no-eviction policy for council tenants affected by the bedroom tax. Ferguson presided over unprecedented cuts to vital services from 2012-2015. The Green Party was key to their imposition.

In the Bristol mayoral election in May 2016, Ferguson was thrown out and Labours Marvin Rees took his place, declaring on his investiture, We will prioritise the public services that help the most vulnerable in our city to lead lives of dignity and respect. Together, we will be ambitious in driving our city forward in its task of becoming a leading European city.

Rees was strongly backed by party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who visited the city four times during his election campaign and once after his victory. He appointed six Labour councillors to his cabinet along with one Conservative, one Lib Dem and one GreenFi Hance as cabinet member for city health and wellbeing.

Like his predecessor, Rees has wasted no time in implementing cuts and slashing jobs. With the council projected to face a budget deficit of 60 million for the year 2019/2020, it was announced in August that up to 1,000 jobs are to go this financial year.

In early December, a freeze on non-essential spending was issued by Rees, halting all maintenance of buildings, roads and parks unless there is a risk to peoples health or safety. The council will also stop recruiting any permanent or temporary roles unless they provide legally-required services, and will not agree any new or extended contracts for goods or services without approval from the Chief Executive and statutory financial and legal officers.

Speaking to the Bristol Post, Rees declared, Drastic cuts are just around the corner and hundreds of council staff will lose their jobs by the end of the financial yearbut Council Tax bills will be going up from April.

At a projected rise of 3.5 percent, the average working class household will be expected to pay an additional 50 per year in Council Tax from April of next year.

Contrary to the rhetoric of people power, and empowering local communities, localism has enabled a more effective imposition of the Tories economic and political agenda. As demonstrated in Bristol, brutal austerity and the destruction of public services have proceeded using the services of the Labour Party and Green Party.
Social services and foster care programs across the United States are overwhelmed by the influx of children from families shattered by the opioid epidemic. In West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and other states, thousands of children have been orphaned and placed into foster care or living arrangements with relatives who struggle to make ends meet with inadequate compensation.

In West Virginia, 5,182 children were in foster care this year, a 13 percent increase over 2015 and 24 percent higher than 2012. Substance abuse has been cited as a factor in 80 percent of cases where children were removed from their homes between 2011 and 2015, according to the state Department of Health and Human Resources. Cuts to social safety net programs have compounded the difficulty of caring for these children with fewer resources and staff.

Ohio confronts a similar problem, with a 19 percent rise in the number of children removed from parental custody since 2010. Honestly, if something doesnt happen with this addiction crisis, we can lose a generation of kids, Robin Reese, executive director of Lucas County Children Services, told the Wall Street Journal in an article published December 15. God knows I would hate to see orphanages come back, but the child-protection system is being inundated now. In Lucas County, which includes the industrial city of Toledo, billboards advertise the need for new foster parents to try to meet a 20 percent increase in the number of children removed from parental custody.

Kentucky has the highest rate of children placed into the kinship care of grandparents or other relatives in the country. Statewide, 7 percent of children70,000 kidsare living with neither parent. Kentucky also has the highest rate of child homelessness in the US. Drug overdoses are a prime factor in this social crisis. In eastern Kentucky, like in West Virginia, where the coal industry was once the foundation of the economic life of communities, drug addiction has soared. In Harlan County, once a major coal-mining center, 26 percent of children are reported as homeless.

Deaths from drug overdoses have spiraled upwards in recent years, surpassing gun homicides and contributing to a decline in life expectancy in the US. Most of the drug overdoses are due to opioids like prescription painkillers and heroin. In the past year, drugs like fentanyl, an opioid at least 50 times stronger than morphine, and carfentanil, an elephant tranquilizer thousands of times stronger than morphine, have circulated into the heroin market and contributed to a sharp increase in overdoses and deaths. The number of babies born suffering from drug withdrawal, a condition called neonatal abstinence syndrome, is also on the rise.

When parents die of drug overdoses or are arrested and jailed, children are placed into the custody of the state or with relatives. Many grandparents and even great-grandparents must assume responsibility for caring for young children, creating financial and sometimes health hardships on them.

They never expected to be raising their grandchildren, but are thrilled to have them in their home, explains a West Virginia caseworker in an appeal for charitable donations to a struggling elderly couple in a Charleston Gazette-Mail piece November 26. Their grandchildren are ages two and four and their grandparents were unable to afford winter coats for them. They have struggled greatly at the loss of their son and his wife and cannot understand the circumstances surrounding their deaths. They only want what is best for their granddaughters and they want to give them a good start in life.

One private non-profit child welfare organization, the Childrens Home Society of West Virginia, reports that it has provided emergency shelter to more than 14,600 children in the last year at its 13 locations across the state. On any given night, according to Chris Freeman, the societys director of communications, the shelters are near or at capacity, with an average of 100 children at the shelters.

Many children suffer serious emotional trauma at the loss of their parents. They may have witnessed overdoses or discovered their deceased mothers and fathers. Often they have been living in poor conditions, including homelessness, with spotty school attendance, or experienced malnutrition, abuse and neglect. They frequently have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or develop learning and behavioral problems.

While they need urgent care, children with mental distress face a waiting list of two months or more even in metropolitan regions. Those in rural areas have little to no resources beyond their families.

In the absence of adequate social services and counseling, these children are vulnerable to slipping into truancy, homelessness, or drug addiction themselves. The response of the state, as it has responded to the drug epidemic and the collapse of the economy, has been to resort to a law-and-order crackdown and prisons.

West Virginia incarcerates rising numbers of young people, mostly for low-level offenses that would not be considered crimes if perpetrated by an adult. In the last 16 years, youth confinement has declined in almost every state except West Virginia, where the confinement rate has grown by almost 50 percent, noted Kim White, a member of the Mental Health Matters organization and assistant professor of social work at Marshall University.
In a lengthy speech delivered at the State Department headquarters in Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry defended the longstanding US policy of supporting a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The speech was something of a eulogy for a policy being consigned to the rubbish heap by the incoming Trump administration and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, both of which support the ultra-right Israeli settlers on the West Bank who seek the complete dispossession of the Palestinian people.

Kerry was defending the Obama administrations decision not to veto UN Security Resolution 2334, adopted last week by a 14-0 vote, with the United States abstaining. The resolution criticizes Israels policy of expanding Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, but includes no enforcement mechanism and remains a token and toothless gesture.

The vitriolic response of the Israeli government, including denunciations of the Obama administration for supposedly siding with Palestinian terrorists against Israeli Jews, indicates that Netanyahu has been given a green light by the incoming Trump administration to end the pretense of supporting the creation of even a puppet Palestinian state and seeking to resume peace negotiations.

Kerrys speech was a cynical defense of the Obama administrations record and the long-standing US policy of advocating the creation of a Palestinian state carved out of the territories seized by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. He outlined Washingtons military, diplomatic and economic support for the Israeli state as it carried out brutal and illegal attacks on the Palestinians and Israels Arab neighbor states, while at the same time seeking to portray the US as a friend of the Palestinian people and an honest broker in the Middle East conflict.

Kerry was remarkably defensive in the face of the enraged response from the Netanyahu government, which has the full backing not only of Trump, but also the congressional Republicans and a large section of congressional Democrats.

The secretary of state declared that no US administration had done as much for Israel as the Obama administration, citing the record $38 billion arms deal signed this year as well as steadfast backing from Washington for Israeli war crimes in Gaza. He argued that every US president in modern history has allowed resolutions critical of Israel to pass the Security Council by abstaining rather than vetoing. George W. Bush did so six times, while for Obama, last weeks resolution was the first.

The crux of Kerrys argument, directed largely to the US ruling elite and Congress, was that the national interest of American imperialism does not always and necessarily coincide with the policies of a particular Israeli government. Regrettably, he declared, some seem to believe that US friendship means the US must accept any policy, regardless of our own interests.

He explained in some detail how the growth of settlements, particularly those built deep within the West Bank on territory that would have to become part of any Palestinian mini-state, was being orchestrated to make a two-state policy impossible. He criticized the impact of the ultra-right settlers on Israeli politics.

The Israeli prime minister publicly supports a two-state solution, Kerry said. But his current coalition is the most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements. The result is that policies of this government are leading in the opposite direction. They are leading towards one state. In fact, Israel has increasingly consolidated control over much of the West Bank for its own purposes, effectively reversing the transition to greater Palestinian civil authority that was called for by the Oslo Accords.

Kerry reiterated the demographic argument that has long been made by the Labor wing of the Zionist ruling elite in Israel: that annexation of the West Bank would be disastrous for the state of Israel, since the rapid growth of the Palestinian population meant that Arabs would soon outnumber Jews in a combined state.

There are a similar number of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, he said. They have a choice. They can choose to live together in one state or they can separate into two states. But here is a fundamental reality. If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both. And it wont ever really be at peace.

US imperialism, along with its client states among the Arab monarchies and dictatorships, as well as the Labor Party wing of the Zionists, has made use of these demographic trends to argue for the establishment of a Palestinian puppet state that would police the Palestinian population while insuring a substantial Jewish majority within Israel itself.

The right wing of the Zionists, particularly the settlers, want to scrap the two-state policy in favor of the outright annexation of the West Bank, to be achieved by seizing more and more Palestinian land for Israeli settlement and ultimately repeating the 1947 mass expulsions of Palestinian Arabs on an even larger scale by deporting the West Bank population to Jordan.

The Obama administration and its predecessors have opposed such a policy, not because it would constitute a war crime and a humanitarian catastrophe, but because it would risk triggering upheavals throughout the Arab and Moslem world and threaten the broader interests of US imperialism.

The Trump administration appears prepared, however, to embark on such a policy, evidently calculating that it can deal with the consequences with military force. Trump has named as his ambassador to Israel his personal bankruptcy attorney, David Friedman, a longtime fundraiser for West Bank settlements who has publicly supported moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In the run-up to the vote on the UN resolution, Trump intervened in the diplomatic maneuvering in a way that is unprecedented for a US president-elect. Contacted by the Israelis about the Egyptian governments role in drafting and presenting the resolution, Trump called Egyptian military dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on the carpet, using the prospect of a cutoff of future US financial subsidies to induce him to drop the resolution. Four other members of the Security Council took up the resolution and forced the vote, however, foiling the Trump-Netanyahu effort and prompting Netanyahus explosion of rage against Kerry and Obama.

Netanyahu had a similar reaction to Kerrys speech. He declared that the US official was obsessed with settlements, while ignoring what the Israeli prime minister called the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflictthe refusal of the Palestinians to accept the establishment of a Jewish state, i.e., their refusal to accept dispossession and Zionist oppression.

The immediate concern of the Netanyahu government appears to be that the US decision not to veto Resolution 2334 and Kerrys speech are setting the stage for the adoption of a negotiating framework based on a two-state policy at the upcoming Paris conference on the Middle East, which convenes January 15. A declaration from this conference could become the basis for another UN Security Council resolution to be adopted before Trump takes office on January 20, creating diplomatic and perhaps legal obstacles to further Israeli encroachments on Palestinian territory on the West Bank.
On August 4, 2014, at Port Hedland in northwestern Australia, Julieka Dhu, a 22-year-old Aboriginal woman, died of a preventable illness while in police custody for unpaid fines of $3,622.34. Dhu had been imprisoned on August 2 for four days to cut out her fines, after calling police to report she was a victim of domestic violence.

Her fines had accumulated over years, primarily due to previous clashes with the police, including a skirmish with a policewoman (assaulting a police officer) when she was just 18.

Under pressure from Dhus family and supporters, the Western Australia (WA) state coroner, Ros Fogliani, released on December 16 some video footage of Dhus last moments in the South Hedland police station.

The video, which has been widely shared, shows Dhus collapse in her cell due to illness. An officer enters and pulls at her arm. When she does not get up, he lets go and allows her to drop, her head lolling off the bed. The officer then pulls her arm again and pushes her onto the bed. Finally, he then pulls her up by her arms and drags her from the bed.

Outside her cell, another officer grabs Dhus feet and she is carried to a police van. Her body is completely limp, and she appears barely conscious throughout.

Fogliani had refused to release the footage on the basis that it had the real potential to re-traumatise and distress the family, despite the family repeatedly demanding it be released to the public. The lawyer for Dhus father, Kevin Banks-Smith, said the family thought exposing the last hours of her life was the most powerful and effective way they can honour [her] memory.

The coronial inquiry found that Dhu died of staphylococcal septicaemia and pneumonia, an infection that spread widely throughout her body but was easily preventable with antibiotics. She was also suffering from a fractured rib and osteomyelitis, a bone infection.

In the police cell, Dhu had complained of chest pain and was twice taken to Hedland Health Campus, a small regional hospital. But she was discharged back into police custody without necessary tests or a chest x-ray, on the basis she had behavioural issues. She died on a third visit.

According to the evidence, police officers asserted that Dhu was faking her injuries and told medical staff she only started complaining when she found out she would have to spend four days in custody.

Fogliani described the police behaviour as unprofessional and inhumane but did not recommend any charges against the officers. WA Police Commissioner Karl OCallaghan said 11 officers had breached procedures but theres been no criminality identified. He said four officers had been sanctioned internally but did not say what measures, if any, would be taken against them.

WA Premier Colin Barnett essentially blamed Dhu for her own death, saying: While that should never have happened, and I dont excuse it, there were difficult situations the police were facing then. A lot of aggression and the like.

Such official responses, effectively ensuring legal immunity for the police, are typical. There is a growing number of deaths, of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, in police custody or prison. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which was launched by the Hawke Labor government to head off a groundswell of opposition to the deaths of 99 Aboriginal prisoners between 1980 and 1989.

As intended by the Labor government, the royal commission was a whitewashit did not lead to the conviction of a single officer. Instead the commission issued recommendations primarily aimed at integrating a layer of Aboriginal leaders into the state and police force as advisors. These measures, such as the establishment of Aboriginal Justice Advisory Committees, have only led to an increase in deaths in custody.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 10 Aboriginal people died in custody in 1991, when the royal commission report was released. It quickly peaked to 22 deaths in 1995 and only dropped to 9 in 2007 before rising to 13 in 2008, the last year ABS figures are available.

Although racism undoubtedly plays a role in the cruel treatment of indigenous people by the police, there is a high rate of deaths for all prisoners, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike. There were 57 non-indigenous people killed in police custody in 1991, spiking to a record 90 deaths in 1997 and remaining high, with 73 killed in 2008. In fact, the ABS states there is no difference in the rates of death for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal prisoners, but that a disproportionately high number of Aboriginal people are detained by police.

These statistics, barely ever reported in the media, point to the underlying class issues. Indigenous people are more likely to be imprisoned, and die, because they are among the poorest and most vulnerable members of the working class.

Dhus plight illustrates this reality. She was far from alone in being jailed for being unable to pay fines.

Since tougher conditions for fine-defaulters were introduced in 2009, the number of people in WA jails for fine-defaulting has increased sixfold. Last year, one in three women sent to jail was there for unpaid fines. For all Aboriginal prisoners, the figure was one in six.

The number of fines issued in WA courts increased by 30.8 percent from 349,511 in 2010-11 to 457,295 in 2014-15. The total fines issued annually rose 45 percent, from $76.8 million to $111.3 million.

According to an April 2016 report by the WA Inspector of Custodial Services, 7,026 people were jailed for the non-payment of fines between 2006-07 and 2014-15, averaging 11 people in jail on any one day. Non-Aboriginal young men made up just over 20 percent of the total, with non-Aboriginal men as a whole making up 48 percent.

These statistics provide only a limited indication of the social distress, including rising joblessness, inequality and cuts to essential social services, that is driving the increasing rates of imprisonment for non-payment of fines.

The repressive law and order response of successive governments, such as imprisonment for fine-defaulting, harsher bail laws and mandatory prison terms for minor offences, is boosting the powers of the police, and the entire state apparatus, to deal with rising political and social unrest as economic conditions deteriorate (see: Millions of Australians living in recession).
The New York City Department of Education (DOE) sent letters on December 19 notifying parents that it will retest all 1,520 occupied public school buildings for lead in the drinking water. The testing period was delineated as running from the winter until June 16.

New York public school water outlets underwent testing from last March through June as part of a national wave of concern after the exposure of criminal violations of standards for lead in the drinking water of Flint, Michigan. The decision to retest in New York was a result of criticism of the protocols used in the first round of testing.

The deputy chancellor of the school system, Elizabeth Rose, wrote that the retesting will be done out of an abundance of caution  New York City water is safe and families and staff should rest assured that our drinking water is of the highest quality in the world. However, the very need to retest the entire school system a half year after it underwent testing indicates a potential health crisis that is unresolved in a school system with over 1 million students and 135,000 employees.

In fact, despite the publicity over the deception that occurred in Flint, the New York City school water event has been handled with a similar disregard for health and safety by officials. The city had not tested school water for 10 years. Then, the testing they finally conducted drew criticism from Marc Edwards, the civil engineering professor from Virginia Tech university who helped uncover the dangerously high levels of lead-in-water in Flint.

Edwards was cited in the New York Times last August saying: The results should be thrown into the garbage and the city should start over. In the same article, Dr. Yanna Lambrindidou, an expert on the federal Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) who works with Dr. Edwards, declared that New York Citys schools may have just broken the national record for flawed testing.

Following the crisis in Flint, testing in Newark, New Jersey, early last March showed half the schools had sampled lead levels in their water that was above the legal action level of 15 parts per billion set in the LCR by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Water fountains in those 30 schools were shut off, bottled water distributed and plans announced to test half of Newarks 35,000 students for lead. Then, the Newark school district reported that even higher elevated lead samplings had been found from 2012 to 2015 without any action having been taken.

Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia were among other cities that experienced crises over high lead levels in drinking water. Also in March, a review of EPA data from 2012 to 2015 showed that nearly 2000 water systems across all 50 states had elevated lead levels, according to the USA Today Network. This was about 20 percent of the water systems in the US that test their water. Of those systems, 350 supplied water to schools and day-care centers. Four million US residents live in communities where authorities failed to conduct mandated lead testing or did the testing improperly.

New York City then joined school systems across the country in testing their water. The citys Education Department changed policy to re-test schools water every five years while schools with elevated lead levels will have more frequent sampling. Then in June, with nearly 100 schools in New York state reporting positive testing for lead in water samples, the state legislature voted to require all schools in the state to test for lead. However, schools will not be completely covered for the cost and future testing is required only every five years.

With all 1,520 occupied school buildings tested between March and June, the city claimed in mid-August that by opening day, removal of lead from water outlets in the 510 schools found to have lead above the EPA action level would be finished. Maintenance staff in those buildings, however, were instructed to flush all the outlets in the building briefly every Monday morning for two hours before contractors came to test the water. Their justification for this pre-stagnation flushing method was that water sitting in pipes over weekends or vacations when schools might not be in use would not give normal results for lead.

When the scientists criticized the citys testing method as grossly flawed and hiding lead in the water, city officials, who initially defended their methods, said they would re-test every building that exceeded the action level. On September 2, a spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio stated that by October retesting would begin for every school building that originally had showed excessive lead levels, but no date was given for when those buildings would be tested that had not had samples exceeding that threshold.

Now, the latest promise from the citys Department of Education, as of December 19, is that testing is expected to be concluded by June 16, another half year after the process was originally supposed to have been accomplished. In contrast, after the Washington, D.C., public school system was criticized in the spring of 2016 for failing to inform the public as to past annual lead testing results, a second blitz testing at all DC schools took less than two months.

In the majority of New York schools built more than a half-century ago, the pipes are made of lead that can leach into the citys relatively clean water, especially after it stands over the weekend. The state health commissioner, Howard Zucker, has noted, There are hundreds of thousands of pipes in buildings and schools across New York state, which cannot cheaply or easily be replaced. He added, Thats why maintenance, flushing, and testing are so important. The cities in New York state require schools to flush their outlets Monday mornings, and New York City claims this protects the children.

However, theres a regulatory black hole when it comes to schools and day-care centers, Dr. Lambrinidou explained in USA Today. There is a problem with the way excess levels of lead are calculated to mandate corrective action because 10 percent of samples can be above the action-level of 15 ppb of lead, which allows for 10 percent of (locations tested) to dispense any concentration of lead whatsoever.

New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina argues that the water supply is safe and is annually tested 500,000 times a year. Notwithstanding, high lead levels were found in schools due to water running through lead pipes in the largely older buildings. Furthermore, two-thirds of city schools had not been tested in the 10 years since 2006.

Physiological consequences can be dire from water higher than the EPA action level. However, experts say there is no safe level of exposure to lead for children. Although lead plumbing was banned nationally in 1987, many school buildings, as well as residential and commercial buildings, still contain lead pipes and service lines.

While the toxicity of lead piping was known since ancient Rome, official foot-dragging plus a lack of resources for investigations and restorations, including by the EPA, have compounded the national health emergency. Last June, the National Resources Defense Council reported that 18 million Americans in 5,300 communities are endangered from water systems in violation of the LCR.

The average age of school buildings in the US is 44 years old, with many more than twice that age. A recent study calls for $145 billion per year to bring Americas K-12 public school facilities up to code, a sum that is not even remotely being considered. Elementary and high schools have, in fact, cut capital spending by 37 percent between 2008 and 2013, with a total of 38 states cutting spending. Moreover, the federal government does not provide support for school building or maintenance, causing an increased burden from local property taxes, which disadvantages lower-income communities.

This situation has developed under both Democrat and Republican administrations. Donald Trumps appointments to his cabinet of billionaire Betsy DeVos as secretary of education, who desires public school funding be moved to private schools, and Scott Pruitt to head the EPA, in order to dismantle it, point to the drastic escalation of class conflict in the offing.
President Barack Obama signed into law last week his seventh and final Pentagon spending bill, providing $619 billion to continue and expand the murderous violence of the US war machine. Spending more than the next seven countries combined, the US military is currently engaged in combat operations in at least seven different countries, while maintaining some 800 overseas bases around the world.

Obamas signing statement was released on the Friday afternoon of a long holiday weekend, the favored time in Washington for dumping news that officials hope will escape the attention of the public. Once again, behind the backs of the American people, US imperialism is preparing another escalation of militarism and war.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), as the Pentagon budget legislation is known, runs over 3,000 pages. It can be safely said that few if any of the members of the House and Senate who overwhelming approved it (in the Senate it passed 92-7) read the bill before casting their votes.

Yet, contained within its pages, along with the dry language of military personnel policies and the lucrative authorization of multi-billion-dollar contracts for new weapons systems, there is to be found a key to the real political legacy of Barack Obama, whose presidency comes to an end in barely three weeks.

Eight years ago, Obama was swept into office on a wave of antiwar sentiment based on the misplaced hopes of large sections of the population that Americas first black president, with his promise of change you can believe in, would spell an end to the wars and crimes of the Bush administration.

After barely nine months in office, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his supposed vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and for having captured the worlds attention and given its people hope for a better future.

Even as the peace prize was announced, Obama was meeting with his war council to plan a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan. He was putting in place the framework for his signature policythe drone assassination program that has killed thousands from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Somalia and Yemen. And he was preparing what has since emerged as a $1 trillion nuclear weapons modernization program.

The supposed candidate of peace and change will now leave office with the deplorable distinction of becoming the first American president to have kept the country at war for two entire four-year terms. He seamlessly continued the so-called war on terror launched by his predecessor, George W. Bush, at the cost of over a million lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, while adding to it the wars launched under the cynical pretense of human rights in Libya and Syria, killing hundreds of thousands more and turning millions of others into refugees.

The bill that he signed last Friday provides the necessary resources for the uninterrupted continuation of this eruption of American militarism in pursuit of global US hegemony.

The general outlines of the NDAA were previously reported. In addition to the base Pentagon budget, it includes a $67 billion Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) appropriation, a massive slush fund used to finance US wars abroad as well as budget-busting increases to military spending. Further funds are provided for the Energy Departments nuclear weapons programs.

In the final version of the legislation, previously unpublicized provisions have emerged that amount to a mandate to the incoming Trump administration to continue and escalate the provocative military confrontations initiated by the Obama White House.

Included in the bill is language facilitating the provision of man-portable air defense systems to the vetted Syrian opposition during fiscal year 2017. As is well known, weapons funneled by the CIA and the Pentagon to the so-called moderate rebels have invariably ended up in the hands of Al Qaeda-affiliated militias that constitute the core fighting force in the US-orchestrated war for regime-change in Syria. These anti-aircraft missiles can be used not only to shoot down Russian warplanes, but also civilian passenger jets.

Another part of the bill aimed directly against Moscow includes a major increase in military aid to the right-wing, anti-Russian government of Ukraine, including for lethal military equipment.

In a blatant provocation directed against China, the legislation provides for high-level exchanges between the US military and the military of the island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory. The measure represents a further attack on the One China policy embraced by Washington for nearly four decades. It is in line with the provocation staged by Donald Trump earlier this month, accepting a congratulatory phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and thereby signaling plans for an even more confrontational policy toward China.

Both Russia and China issued statements denouncing the provisions in the NDAA directed specifically against them.

The legislation also includes a provision known as the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, which represents a plan to build up the propaganda arm of the US government. In the name of creating a new government agency to counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests, it establishes the framework for directing propaganda against the American people and cracking down on anyone who challenges or exposes the crimes of the US government.

Perhaps most decisively for the legacy of the 44th president of the United States, the legislation enacted last Friday is the seventh NDAA in a row signed by Obama that explicitly prohibits the closure of the infamous US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In his signing statement, Obama cynically criticized this provision, while accepting it, declaring that unless the Congress changes course, it will be judged harshly by history.

In reality, when it comes to Guantanamo, history will find Obama himself guilty. On his first day in office in 2009 he announced an executive order promising that within one year he would shut down the prison camp, which had become a hated symbol of US torture and criminality. Ever since, Obama has bowed to the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies and the political right, including within the Democratic Party, obeying the restrictions of Congress and refusing to take any action to close Guantanamo.

At the same time, he protected all those within the Bush administration who were responsible for ordering and overseeing the systematic use of torture not only at Guantanamo, but in Iraq, Afghanistan and at CIA black sites round the world.

On January 20, Obama will hand the keys of Guantanamo to Donald Trump, who has vowed to load it up with some bad dudes. He has also called for the imprisonment of US citizens there and indicated his support for a redoubled use of torture.

Obamas legacy is the seamless continuity between the crimes of the Bush administration, which were compounded during his own eight years in the White House, and the coming crimes of the government headed by Trump.
Distraught over the delay in arrival of their son's body, the Sikh youth's family in Haryana's Sirsa has contacted the Indian High Commission in New Zealand as well as the New Zealand High Commission in India for help, but is yet to receive a positive response.

By India Today Web Desk: The family of Hardeep Singh Deol, a 24-year-old youth who was stabbed to death by a girl at Christchurch in New Zealand on Christmas Day, is distraught over the delay in the arrival of his body at his native Rania town in Haryana's Sirsa district.

The family has contacted the Indian High Commission in New Zealand as well as the New Zealand High Commission in India for help, but is yet to receive a positive response.

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Having no means to bringing Hardeep's body to India on their own, the family has tweeted to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj seeking government's help.

HARDEEP ON A WORK VISA IN CHRISTCHURCH

Hardeep Singh Deol, who was on a work visa in Christchurch after completing a course in hotel management in New Zealand, was allegedly stabbed by a 22-year-old girl on Christmas.

According to information received by the family, the girl was arrested and has been charged with murder.

Hardeep was rushed to a hospital with critical stab wounds where he died on Tuesday.

"He completed his B. Tech from a private college in Malout in Punjab's Muktsar district and went to New Zealand to pursue a course in hotel management. Three months ago, he got his degree and found a job in a hotel in Christchurch. He told us that he had Christmas vacations for 15 days starting December 25. But on the night of his first vacation, he was stabbed and fatally injured," said Hardeep's uncle Manpreet Singh Deol.

NO CLUE ABOUT MOTIVE: FAMILY

The family has no idea about the motive of the crime.

"He never told his family members about the girl, identified as Franchesca Kororia Borell, by the police. After his death, his Indian friends in New Zealand told us that Hardeep had known the girl for 15-20 days," Manpreet said.

He said Hardeep's mother Sukhwinder Kaur and sister Sandeep Kaur were inconsolable and the delay in the arrival of his body was making their condition worse.

Meanwhile, the Gurdwara Sabha in Christchurch has begun collecting contribution for helping the distressed family.

"Pls inform everyone our friend RIP #Hardeep_singh_deol has passed away in an incident. It's a very sad news for our community. It's time to stay together for help to his family. And please donate as much as you can - From Christchurch (New Zealand) Account details- 12-3482-0024198-00, Gurdwara Sahib Christchurch," said a message posted on social media.

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Encouraged by the electoral victory of Donald Trump in the US, the Polish ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) has stepped up its offensive against the countrys liberal opposition and its efforts to establish an authoritarian regime.

During the night of 17 December police broke up a blockade of the parliament (Sejm) organised by the opposition. Previously, the liberal opposition had organized protests throughout Poland, mobilising tens of thousands to oppose a new law restricting the access of the media to parliament.

One day earlier, on Friday, 16 December, deputies of the opposition Civics Platform (PO) and Nowoczesna (Modern) had occupied the plenary hall of the Sejm to protest against the law. The government responded by switching the vote on the 2017 budget to another room, and, according to media reports, excluded both members of the opposition and the media. Thereby the PiS effectively prevented the opposition deputies from voting on the budget, one of the most important rights of the Sejm.

Opposition Sejm deputies still continue to occupy the plenary chamber. The occupation is due to continue until the next scheduled meeting on January 11. The Sejm has now been surrounded with a metal fence and is guarded by policemen. Demonstrations outside the building are forbidden and PiS leader Jarosaw Kaczynski has accused the opposition of an attempted coup.

Three days after the Sejm blockade, the PiS, with the support of President Andrzej Duda, stripped the powers of the countrys constitutional court in a cloak and dagger operation. On the nights of 19 and 20 of December, it rapidly passed three changes of law, which in effect places the court under government control. The president of the constitutional court is now to be appointed directly by the state president, and Duda immediately appointed PiS supporter Julia Przyslebska as new court president. The term of office of Andrzej Rezplinski, who was close to the opposition, had expired on 19 December.

At the end of last year, the constitutional court had declared several laws passed by the PiS to be unconstitutional. The government, however, refused to print the judgments, which did not become legally binding under Polish law. Now, the constitutional court is virtually eliminated as an institution independent of the government. The PiS can now pass the constitutional changes announced by the party in 2015 in its electoral program.

The EU has openly placed itself on the side of the liberal opposition in the domestic political debate. After a meeting on 21 December, the EU Commission asked Poland to amend the most recent legislative amendments to the constitutional court within two months. It did so within the framework of the so-called rule of law mechanism, which the EU Commission applied against Poland for the first time in its history at the beginning of the year. PiS has already announced that it will not accept the most recent proposals. If it does not meet the new deadline, the EU can theoretically withdraw Polands voting and veto rights.

The former president of the Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has described this move as a nuclear option. In the history of the EU, sanctions have never been imposed against a member country. However, such an option appears unlikely because Hungary is likely to use its veto. A decision for sanctions could also quickly lead to Poland quitting the EU, leading in turn to the collapse of the Union.

With its authoritarian offensive, the PiS is reacting to the election of Donald Trump in the US. It regards the election of the right-wing billionaire who draws on far right forces as confirmation of its own domestic policy. At the same time, the election result has exacerbated the dispute over the countrys foreign policy orientation. Polish ruling circles fear that the US government under Trump will distance itself from NATO and seek rapprochement with Russia.

The PiS is responding to growing uncertainty in international relations with authoritarian measures and accelerated military rearmament. The liberal opposition has no real alternative to offer, apart from appeals to privileged sections of the urban middle class and the European Union, which is responsible for enforcing austerity throughout Europe at the expense of the working class.

The PiSs authoritarian measures are highly unpopular, although the government has tried to neutralize working class opposition with some social concessions such as the introduction of a child allowance of 500 Zloty per month (around 125) and a reduction in the retirement age. In polls, 68 percent of the population rejected the law restricting media access to parliament. A majority of Poles also oppose the PiS offensive against the constitutional court. Around 47 percent say the country is heading in the wrong direction, with this figure expected to grow.

Ultimately, however, the liberal opposition is far more afraid of mobilizing the working class than of the authoritarian measures and methods of the PiS. Like the PiS, it emerged from sections of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the Solidarity trade union movement, which supported capitalist restoration in 1989. The restoration led to a massive impoverishment of the working class, broad layers of the middle class and the rural population. The limited bourgeois democratic rights established in the constitution in 1997 to legitimize capitalist restoration and create a stable framework for bourgeois rule have been almost completely dismantled by the PiS within a year.

On the issue of warfare against Russia, the liberal opposition basically agrees with the government. There are, however, sharp differences as to which imperialist powers Poland should align.

The PiS government is oriented towards a close alliance with the US and UK and the establishment of an alliance of Eastern European states against Russiathe so-called Intermarium. It opposes the attempts of Berlin to convert the EU into a military union, and fears German pre-eminence in Europe. Its authoritarian tendencies, drawing from the example of the Pilsudski regime that ruled between the world wars, are aimed at preparing for war and the violent repression of the working class.

The liberal opposition, on the other hand, argues that an alliance of Eastern European states against Russia is unfeasible and would bring Poland into conflict with Berlin, which rejects an Intermarium solution. The liberal opposition regards an exclusive orientation to the US and the UK as a threat to Polands national interests. It therefore wants to establish a close alliance with both the US and the EU and in particular Germany, Polands most important economic partner.

The election of Donald Trump as the next US president has intensified these differences. The now feared rapprochement between Russia and the US would be a disaster for both camps. The liberal wing of the bourgeoisie, represented by the key figure of EU Council President Donald Tusk, considers it all the more important to work closely with Germany and France and strengthen the EU.

Representatives of the government, on the other hand, have declared their desire to work more closely with the US. The PiS has, in the main, sought to ignore and downplay the threats made by Trump to desert NATO and improve relations with Russia. The Polish bourgeoisie has maintained an orientation towards the US and NATO since 1989. Following the accession of Poland and other Eastern European countries into the Atlantic military alliance, the US has repeatedly tried to play off these countries (new Europe) against Berlin and Paris (old Europe) in order to counter the growing influence of Germany in the EU. Under the former PO government led by Donald Tusk, who is now a close ally of Chancellor Merkel, Poland developed close political and economic relations with Germany and, to a lesser extent, France.

The threatened break-up of the EU, the growing conflicts between the leading imperialist powers of Europe and the US and the possible change in the course of US foreign policy under Trump now pose a practically insoluble dilemma for the Polish bourgeoisie. As was the case in the 1930s, it is desperately trying to steer between the imperialist powers which are increasingly on the path toward world war.
Andreas Rumler: Exil als geistige Lebensform, Brecht und Feuchtwanger. Ein Arbeitsbundnis, Edition A.B. Fischer, Berlin 2016, 160 S., ISBN 978-937434-76-6

In Exile as an Intellectual Way of Life, journalist and non-fiction writer Andreas Rumler examines the lifelong collaboration of two major German literary figures of the 20th century, playwright and novelist Lion Feuchtwanger (1884-1958) and playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956).

Each writer had to flee the Nazis and continue his literary work for many years under the difficult conditions of emigration. Rumler concentrates on their period in exile and draws attention to many important texts written at the time, especially by Feuchtwanger, which have received insufficient consideration from the public at large and from academics.

The reader discovers numerous interesting details about the life and work of both authors and many of their contemporaries. Rumler covers the period from their first encounter in Munich in 1919 to their various places of exile under the Nazis in France, Scandinavia and the United States, and eventually the postwar years. He restricts himself largely, however, to biographical details and remains at the level of interpreting and describing their exile literature. He fails to seriously scrutinize their problems and artistic contributions as part of critically making sense of a society shaped by fascism and war. In fact, in dealing with this subject matter, such a broader approach is all the more necessary.

Rumler bases himself on the various biographical statements of the authors and their colleagues and describes the works which arose from their collaboration and how each influenced the other. Feuchtwanger writes in Attempt at an Autobiography (1927), that three colleagues had strongly influenced him: Heinrich Mann changed my diction, [Alfred] Doblin my epic form, Brecht my dramatic form. All three authors were forced to emigrate.

Rumler vividly depicts, for example, the writers budding friendship and their lives in the Schwabing [Munich] bohemian world as well as the first theatrical and lyrical successes of the young Brecht. But by the early 1920s artistic life in Munich was already overshadowed by the brown demagoguery in a beer haze and Nazi demonstrations. The right-wing press agitated against both Brecht and the Jewish Feuchtwanger. In a review of Brechts play In the Jungle of Cities (1923) the Nazi paper Volkischer Beobachter wrote: The theatre reeked of the stench of the Jew. Rumler comments: The presumed Jewishness of Brecht stank to the Nazis. Stink and tear gas bombs were thrown.

With their emigration to Berlin, the political and cultural center of the Weimar Republic, the two authors attempted to escape increasing attacks from the extreme right. It was, in a way, their first exile and at the same time a period marked by success. In his literary experiments, Brecht frequently took the advice of the more experienced Feuchtwanger.

But the hostility from right-wing circles and the National Socialists was growing stronger. The Nazis resented Feuchtwanger, especially, for his novel Success (Erfolg,1930), in which he satirically depicted the rise of Hitler.

As Feuchtwanger stated in the Welt am Abend [Communist Party-run daily tabloid] in 1931: So what intellectuals and artists have to expect when the Third Reich is finally erected is clear: extermination. That is what awaits most of the intellectuals, and whoever can, is preparing today their emigration. When one moves among the intellectuals of Berlin, one has the impression that Berlin is a city of innumerable future emigrants.

Rumler describes the intellectual environment of his two protagonists, their associates and the atmosphere in which they worked and lived. What he does not discuss, however, are the political conditions that made it possible for the National Socialists to come to power. Neither the role of the Social Democrats nor the Stalinist KPD is examined in any detail, even though the two writers plight and possibilities for workingtheir strengths and their ultimate powerlessness in the Weimar Republicwere directly determined by such factors.

January 30, 1933, the date on which Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, is depicted as more or less a natural catastrophe befalling the intellectuals, which, though not coming out of the blue, was still not foreseeable in the form it took. But then one thing followed another, culture continued in Germany, but much more restricted against the backdrop of torture chambers and concentration camps, reads the conclusion of the chapter Operas and Didactic Plays.

Rumler notes that Feuchtwanger had steel blinds installed at his villa in Grunewald, but then in November 1932 set off on a trip to the United Stateswhere his novels had achieved greater success than in Germanyconvinced that Hitler is finished. It was to be a one-way trip.

In 1932 Brecht bought a house in Ammersee, Bavaria. Both authors found themselves on the list of those to be eliminated, which reads like a whos who of the intellectual elite in Germany. Their books were burned in the middle of Berlin on May 10, 1933.

While Feuchtwanger first settled in Sanary-sur-Mer in southeastern France following his return from the US, Brecht fled on the morning after the Reichstag fire [February 27, 1933] through Prague, Vienna and Switzerland to Denmark. Rumler describes concisely but vividly how the life and work of both writers in exile took shape.

Sanary developed into a center of German emigre authors and artists, cut off from the culture familiar to them, their publishers, and their readership. Among them were Heinrich and Thomas Mann, his children Klaus and Erika, Ernst Bloch, Ludwig Marcuse, Rene Schickele, Ernst Toller, Joseph Roth, Franz Werfel, Friedrich Wolf and others. Very few of them had been able to rescue any of their possessions. Their houses, apartments, libraries and archives were for the most part confiscated and plundered. Their German citizenship was revoked.

Feuchtwanger was relatively privileged, having access to ample royalties from his success abroad and was able to acquire a villa on the Riviera and a new library. For a short time, Brecht also came from Denmark to Sanary to work with him.

During this period, Feuchtwanger wrote a novel in which he sought to enlighten the world about the anti-Semitic barbarism in Germany: The Oppermanns [to The Oppenheims]. He had to change the name of the family in the title, however, because a high-ranking Nazi functionary and publisher named Oppermann threatened to send Feuchtwangers brother, the owner of a publishing company in Halle and still in Germany, to a concentration camp.

In the fall of 1933, the book was released by the Dutch publishing firm Querido, whichlike Allert de Lange in Amsterdam and Oprecht in Zurichdared to print the works of German authors in exile. After the German invasion of the Netherlands, Emanuel Querido and his wife were transported to the Sobibor extermination camp and killed.

Relationship with the Kremlin bureaucracy

Rumler is vague about the relationship of Feuchtwanger and Brecht to the Kremlin bureaucracy in Moscow and its cultural politics.

In the spring of 1935, Brecht travelled to Moscow where he met friends and theatre collaborators, such as Erwin Piscator, the actresses Carola Neher and Asja Lacis, his colleague Bernhard Reich and his translator Sergei Tretyakov. Many of his friends and acquaintances in Moscow disappeared soon after into the Stalinist prisons, or were murdered. In his private records and diaries, Brecht expressed his concern over their fate but never addressed the issue publicly. Like Feuchtwanger, he deceived himself into thinking that, faced with the reality of fascism, one had to be oriented to the Soviet regime.

Both declared their willingness to participate with German Communist Party member Willi Bredel (who had emigrated to Moscow) in publishing the exile journal Das Wort [The Word]. Rumler mentions nothing about the conflicts between the publishers and contributors to the journal, which revolved around the issue of a literature appropriate to the situation and the socialist realist policy decreed by the Stalinists. He merely points out that the Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939 sealed the fate of the journal. [1]

He also fails to cite Brechts (unpublished) description of the Stalin-Hitler deal in his journal on September 9, 1939: Of course the German-Russian pact created much confusion among all proletarians  in front of the world proletariat, the [Soviet] union carries the horrible stigma of offering assistance to fascism, the most extreme, anti-working class type of capitalism. I dont believe that anything more can be said than that the [Soviet] union saved itself at the cost of leaving the world proletariat without any solutions, hope or solidarity. [2] Both authors agreed not to criticise the Soviet Union publicly.

Like Feuchtwanger, Brecht participated in 1935 in the Stalinists International Conference of Writers for the Defence of Culture, in Paris, and both gave speeches, which Rumler refers to only in passing. He notes both authors had differing opinions about Marxism. Feuchtwanger espoused left-wing views, but openly opposed Marxism and argued with Brecht about this. Rumler points to this briefly, but hardly deals with the matter. The main problem is that he fails to pose the question of whether Stalinism had anything to do with Marxism at all.

In his Paris speech, Feuchtwanger spoke on historical novels and took up current problems: For my part, since starting writing, I have tried to write historical novels based on reason, against stupidity and violence, against that which Marx described as a sinking into the ahistorical. Perhaps there are weapons in the field of literature which work more effectively, but for reasons that I have tried to explain, I am best suited to use this weapon, the historical novel, and I intend to use it further.

For Feuchtwanger the issue was how to enlighten with the aid of literature. As he wrote in his essay The Novel Today is International in 1932, he wanted to help the great mass of those willing to be educated through narration to develop a point of view through feeling, enabling an orientation in this confusing world. A praiseworthy undertaking, but how can one develop such an orientation without a profound analysis of class society?

His novel Erfolg features a Swiss liberal writer Jacques Tuerlin, a kind of alter ego of Feuchtwanger, who declares: A great man  who you cant stand and I cannot either, I mean Karl Marx  said philosophers have only explained the world, the point is to change it. I believe for my part, the only way to change it is to explain it  Great empires pass away, a good book remains. I believe in well-written paper more than in machine guns. Rumler comments: Tuerlin was to be proved right.

Brecht was also no Marxist. Although he posed as an admirer of dialectics and declared himself a materialist, the historical dimension of Marxs theory remained foreign to him, or at least he was incapable of applying it to his own situation. As his letter to the artist George Grosz revealed, Brecht followed the Stalinist-organised congress in Paris from a certain distance and urged writers in his speech not to seek the origins of fascism in barbarism or a lack of education, but in the roots of the barbarism, the prevailing property relations.

Brechts conviction that the key question was the overthrow of capitalist property relations, of course, was not wrong. But this remained completely abstract because he never dealt with the concrete policies of the Communist Parties and their leadership in Moscow, making his defence of culture in the face of Stalinist politics at the least naive, if not misguided and deluded.

Brecht and Feuchtwangerand they were not the only intellectuals to fall in this categoryregarded the Soviet Union, despite Stalinism, as the only possibility for defeating fascism, and therefore kept any criticism or doubts about the policies of the Comintern they had to themselves. Given the successes and acceptance of National Socialist Germany within the Western democracies, the Soviet Union seemed to him [Feuchtwanger] as the only remaining bulwark and the only possible ally in the struggle against the Nazi terror, writes Rumler, in what amounts to an apology for this stance, which Brecht also shared.

Feuchtwanger in particular went much further than merely refraining from criticism. This became especially overt and public in 1937 during his trip to Moscow, which he selectively depicted in the slim volume Moscow 1937. Despite certain doubts and reservations, Feuchtwanger accepted the invitation from the Soviet Union after Andre Gide had published his own highly critical report about his trip. He wanted to evaluate the USSR with his own eyes and came to diametrically opposed conclusions than Gide.

After dealing with a number of secondary issues, Rumler notes that Feuchtwanger even met Stalin himself. Rumler fails to mention that Feuchtwanger was not able to meet writers who had fallen out of favour, such as Boris Pasternak or Boris Pilnyak. The most famous literary critic, a man highly valued by Lenin and Trotsky, Alexander Voronsky, was notably not among his discussion partners. Voronsky was executed following a 20-minute trial by an emergency court of the military collegium of the Supreme Soviet in August 1937.

Moscow Trials

Rumler deals very briefly with the especially repellent report by Feuchtwanger of the second Trotskyist Trial, which the author attended along with the American Ambassador Joseph E. Davies. In the second half of January 1937, he was in the court on several occasions during the second trial.

Both the diplomat and the author convinced themselves of the legality of the accusations and the conduct of the trial. Rumler writes tersely Like the American ambassador Davies, Feuchtwanger also assessed his experiences in the Soviet Union with a sort of benevolence that is difficult to understand today. His book Moscow 1937  disappointed, when compared to the pithy analyses of National Socialism in Success, The Oppenheims and Exile. He criticises the extreme personality cult around Stalin  as a sort of forgivable sin. He regards the essence of the Soviet Union to be organised reason within bounds. It is true, however, the nagging and paternalistic attitude towards artists disturbed him.

Rumlers paltry assessment of Feuchtwangers account is remarkable, bearing in mind the facts already known at the time of the notorious frame-up trials that Feuchtwanger must have also known. Feuchtwanger swallowed the lies given him by his accompanying KGB agents and Stalin himself, and distorted historical facts in his reporte.g., regarding Lenins relationship with Trotsky and Stalinand regurgitated Stalins version alone. He portrayed Trotskys personality in such a way to make the case that Stalin had no other recourse but to persecute and ultimately kill him to save the Soviet Union.

Rumler does not make any reference to the repulsive passages and characterizations of Trotsky and his followers in Moscow 1937. Feuchtwanger wrote: Trotskys tragedy is that he was not content with being a great writer. This insatiability turned him into a contentious doctrinaire who, by the mischief he made, and meant to make, caused innumerable people to forget his merits. [3]

According to Feuchtwanger, closer examination reveals that the conduct of which the charge [in the Moscow Trials] accuses Trotsky, far from being incredible, is the only conduct which can be expected from Trotskys state of mind.  Trotsky has given expression time and time again to his unbounded hatred and contempt for Stalin. Would he not translate into action what he had expressed in word and writing? It was clear, Feuchtwanger asserted, that to achieve his ends to get into the USSR again, Trotsky would even go so far as to work with the Gestapo. [4]

Feuchtwanger praised Stalin as a great organiser, who for many years  has been striving to win over competent Trotskyists, rather than destroy them, and it is in a way, affecting to see how doggedly he is endeavouring to use them for his work. [5]

Turning a blind eye to what was going on around him, Feuchtwanger denied that innumerable Trotskyists and Bolshevik revolutionaries had already disappeared, been tortured and eliminated in prisons and camps. Even many Communists and ordinary citizens who had never expressed sympathy for Trotsky, but who were regarded with disfavour by Stalin and his cronies, shared the same fate.

Feuchtwanger went to extreme lengths and employed the most specious arguments to account for and justify what he declared to be the clarity and secrets of the Trotskyist trials. The fact that he published his report against the advice of acquaintances, Rumler regards as proof of his bravery and civil courage. To underline this, he also quotes Brechts praise for Feuchtwangers Tacitian travel report. Brecht praised Feuchtwangers Moscow book as a small miracle and a special achievement  For a skeptic like him it is difficult to praise. He has been forced to change his style  And that required bravery, not just intellectual, a quality which is very rare in our literature.

The fact that Rumler deals briefly with this history, and in an entirely uncritical manner, indicates he has not bothered to study the relevant political and historical background. In any event, he makes no mention of any of Trotskys writings in his bibliography.

Trotskys essay Art and Politics in Our Epoch (1938) could have helped him gain a much more informed understanding of the problems and tragedies faced by writers in the 1930s and 1940s. Trotsky writes:

The decline of bourgeois society means an intolerable exacerbation of social contradictions, which are transformed inevitably into personal contradictions, calling forth an ever more burning need for a liberating art. Furthermore, a declining capitalism already finds itself completely incapable of offering the minimum conditions for the development of tendencies in art which correspond, however little, to our epoch. It fears superstitiously every new word, for it is no longer a matter of corrections and reforms for capitalism but of life and death. The oppressed masses live their own life. Bohemianism offers too limited a social base. Hence new tendencies take on a more and more violent character, alternating between hope and despair. The artistic schools of the last few decadescubism, futurism, dadaism, surrealismfollow each other without reaching a complete development. Art, which is the most complex part of culture, the most sensitive and at the same time the least protected, suffers most from the decline and decay of bourgeois society.

To find a solution to this impasse through art itself is impossible. It is a crisis which concerns all culture, beginning at its economic base and ending in the highest spheres of ideology. Art can neither escape the crisis nor partition itself off. Art cannot save itself. It will rot away inevitablyas Grecian art rotted beneath the ruins of a culture founded on slaveryunless present-day society is able to rebuild itself. This task is essentially revolutionary in character. For these reasons the function of art in our epoch is determined by its relation to the revolution.

But precisely in this path, history has set a formidable snare for the artist. A whole generation of leftist intelligentsia has turned its eyes for the last ten or fifteen years to the East and has bound its lot, in varying degrees, to a victorious revolution, if not to a revolutionary proletariat. Now, this is by no means one and the same thing. In the victorious revolution there is not only the revolution, but there is also the new privileged stratum which raises itself on the shoulders of the revolution. In reality, the leftist intelligentsia has tried to change masters. What has it gained? [6]

Unlike Brecht, who eventually moved to East Germany, Feuchtwanger remained in the US until his death in 1958, although he never received his long-cherished American citizenship. He was spied on by the US government, and repeatedly had to undergo long interrogations. His letters were monitored by the security forces of both the US and East Germany (Stasi).

In 1952, when the city of Munich wanted to award Feuchtwanger its literary prize, right-wing opposition came from the entire Bavarian provincial episcopal movement and the city council had to justify the award on the basis of the authors literary achievement and not his political views.

Feuchtwanger and Brecht never met again after their parting in 1947 in Santa Monica. Feuchtwanger remained an emigrant all his life, Rumler writes, and then adds, his exile became an intellectual form of life, clearly indicating that Feuchtwanger never really felt at home in his comfortable villa on the Pacific.

But this certainly had less to do with the intellect and much more with the painful real world. Feuchtwanger wrote to Brecht in 1949: My situation here is not exactly comfortable, peaceful calm while a few gentlemen with atomic bombs peek around the corner. Along with Brecht he feared a new war. In light of the rearmament taking place in West Germany, Brecht wrote to the German parliament in 1956: Since I am against the war, I am against the introduction of conscription in both parts of Germany, and since it may be a question of life and death, I propose a referendum in both parts of Germany.

While Rumlers book is unsatisfactory in regard to its political-literary analysis, it does provoke renewed interest in the questions and tasks confronting artists and writers in the 20th centurywhich are just as relevant today.

Notes:

[1] Rumler is very imprecise here. It is true that in the spring of 1939, negotiations between Germany and the USSR had secretly begun by Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, but the pact was not signed until 23 August 1939 in Moscow.

[2] Bertolt Brecht: Arbeitsjournal 1938-1942, Frankfurt 1974, 48

[3] Lion Feuchtwanger, Moscow 1937, Left Book Club, 118

[4] Ibid., 136

[5] Ibid., 132

[6] Leon Trotsky, Art and Politics in Our Epoch (June 1938), Leon Trotsky on Literature and Art, Pathfinder Press, 1970, 106
On Wednesday, anonymous Turkish officials told the Anadolu state press agency that they had agreed to a deal extending to all of Syria the cease-fire declared in Aleppo after Syrian government troops retook that city earlier this month. They said they had reached the agreement in talks with Russian and Iranian officials.

The source said that under the plan, Ankara and Moscow will work for the cease-fire to come into force at midnight on Wednesday, Anadolu reported. It added that terrorist organizations will be excluded from the deal.

Anadolu cited Russian parliamentarian Sergei Jeleznyak as saying, This decision has a strategic character and it may end to a large extent the Syrian crisis. It also reported that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev had expressed his readiness to host talks in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, between Syrian President Bashar al-Assads regime and opposition militias.

The deal reportedly includes provisions for an initial suspension of airstrikes and other confidence-building measures. Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) spokesman Yasin Aktay said the AKP government aimed for the cease-fire to be effective as we enter 2017.

For the time being, however, the agreement remains very fragile and its content unclear. Not only does a deal brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iranand, significantly, excluding Washingtonface opposition from the US foreign policy establishment, but it is not clear that Moscow, Ankara and Tehran agree on what the cease-fire entails.

Moscow backed away from endorsing the cease-fire after it was announced in Turkey. Asked by reporters in a conference call for a comment on the cease-fire proposal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied, I cannot answer that question right now I dont have sufficient information.

There is little prospect of such a deal bringing peace to Syria by the beginning of 2017, i.e., the beginning of next week. First, it expressly excludes terrorist militias in the Syrian opposition, including the Islamic State (IS) and the Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly al-Nusra), which will continue to be targeted.

Nor do Russia, Turkey and Iran agree on which other forces within Syria are terrorist, and thus should continue to be targets for military action by their forces, as well as US and European forces, in the region. The cease-fire, as the Turkish daily Hurriyet wrote, maintains constructive ambiguity over which opposition militias are considered terrorist. A major bone of contention is apparently the AKP governments classification of US-backed Kurdish nationalist militias in Syria as terrorist.

The AKP is focused on preventing the establishment of a Kurdish state within the current territory of Syria. It views the US alliance with Kurdish nationalist groups as a basic national security threat. Turkish army units are currently fighting a bloody battle in Syria, at Al-Bab, to capture the city and set up a potential Turkish offensive on the Syrian city of Raqqa, an IS stronghold that Ankara does not want to see fall to US-backed Kurdish nationalists.

Discussing the cease-fire proposal, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu acknowledged that the other powers involved in the talks had not yet classified the Syrian-Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), as terrorist. However, he said that the PYD would not attend talks in Astana.

Now, there is no consensus on the YPG yet. Some countries are trying to benefit from the PYD against Daesh, Cavusoglu said, employing the name used for IS in Turkey.

Finally, the cease-fire deal will provoke bitter opposition from Washington. The Obama administration has supported the YPG as the key force in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia it uses as its main proxy in Syria against IS. The Russian-Turkish move to exclude Washington from talks on a key Middle East peace deal has angered the US foreign policy establishment, sections of which are pushing for an even more aggressive policy in Syria after Donald Trumps inauguration as US president next month.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by Obama on December 23 contains provisions for a reckless escalation of the US intervention in Syria by sanctioning the provision of portable antiaircraft missiles to opposition militias within the country. This would allow US-backed opposition forces to shoot down Russian aircraft carrying out ground support missions for Syrian army units.

Such a policy could provoke a direct clash between the United States and Russia, particularly if Moscow tries to protect its aircraft by forcibly preventing delivery of US weapons to the opposition.

The NDAA drew sharp criticisms from Moscow, where Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it would put these weapons in the hands of jihadists with whom the sham moderate opposition have long acted jointly. Such a decision is a direct threat to the Russian air force, to other Russian military personnel, and to our embassy in Syria, which has come under fire more than once. We therefore view this step as a hostile one.

Nonetheless, key sections of the US foreign policy establishment are calling for an aggressive intervention in Syria to reverse the string of defeats suffered by the US-backed opposition this year.

Richard Haass, the president of the US Council on Foreign Relations, penned a column titled Aleppos sobering lessons in which he predicted increased fighting against al-Nusra forces in Idlib province near Aleppo and criticized Obama for not going to war against the Assad regime in 2013, when the US nearly bombed Damascus based on bogus claims that Assad had used chemical weapons.

Haass wrote: The next major battle will be fought in Idlib province; the only question is when. And even after that, the war will continue to fester in various parts of what will remain a divided country. He went on to add that not acting in Syria has proved to be as consequential as acting. At no point was this clearer than when the United States did not fulfill its threat to make Assads government pay for its use of chemical weapons. That proved to be a missed opportunityto alter the momentum of the conflict...

Tensions between Washington and Ankara have mounted in the wake of the failed US- and German-backed coup on July 15 that nearly succeeded in toppling the AKP government and assassinating Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As Ankara attempted to sideline the Kurdish nationalist groups in talks with Moscow and Tehran, Erdogan denounced Washington for supporting Kurdish nationalist groups in Syria in the strongest terms, accusing it of backing terrorist groups.

Erdogan attacked US officials, declaring that it is all obvious and clear that they are giving support to terrorist organizations, to the YPG and PYD and also including Daesh. He continued, We have in our hands confirmed evidence in photos, pictures and footage for all of this. As I have previously said, we will take matters into our own hands, one way or another.
By PTI: Siwan, Dec 29 (PTI) Slain journalist Rajdeo Ranjans wife Asha Ranjan has lodged an FIR alleging threats received asking her to back out from pursuing a case against RJD strongman and former Siwan MP Mohammad Shahabuddin in connection with the killing of her husband who was a working with a prominent vernacular newspaper.

Rajdeo, who was the Siwan bureau chief of the newspaper, was shot dead on May 13 at a busy fruit market near Siwan railway station.

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Mufassil police station SHO Vinay Kumar Singh said Asha filed the FIR yesterday where she alleged receiving a phone call from Dubai, threatening her to withdraw the case against Shahabuddin in the Supreme Court in connection with the killing of her husband.

She stated in the FIR, "I got a call from +671 at 12:28 am (on the intervening night of December 26-27). The caller asked me if I knew Shahabuddin. Once I replied in the affirmative, he said a lot of drama has been done and now, I should withdraw the case filed in the Supreme Court against Shahabuddin.

"I should stop pursuing the case failing which they (Shahabuddins henchmen) would chop us into pieces, so that it would be difficult for anyone to recognise us. I am terrified. Please help me as we have repeatedly been getting threat calls. Even the security provided to our family is only on paper."

The widow of the scribe had moved the apex court seeking transfer of the probe and trial of her husbands murder case to Delhi from Siwan as she feared that a free-and-fair trial against Shahabuddin was not possible if he was lodged in a Bihar jail.

Shahabuddin is currently lodged in Siwan jail after the apex court had, on September 30, cancelled his bail after hearing the two petitions filed by the Bihar government and lawyer Prashant Bhushan on behalf of the slain scribes family.

The Bihar government had, on May 16, within three days of the murder, handed over the probe to the central agency. PTI CORR AR SNS MM RC

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Police said that County Commissioner Bill Proctor's son was arrested Wednesday for armed robbery.

According to an arrest affidavit, Jordan Proctor entered a SunTrust Bank on South Monroe Street around 9:20 a.m. to cash a check. When he went to cash the check, the clerk noticed that the check had been altered from $100 to $1,000.

When the teller refused to cash the check and would not return it to him, he became upset and threatened to "tear this place up."

For a while, Proctor refused to leave and paced back and forth angrily, but eventually left.

Wednesday morning around 9:20 a.m., Proctor came back into the same bank carrying a handgun. He jumped onto and over the counter, pointed a gun at the employees, and demanded money.

After getting the money, Proctor left on foot. The teller who had helped him the day before recognized him, leading to his arrest.

He was charged for armed robbery and forging documents.

His father, County Commissioner Bill Proctor issued this statement regarding his arrest:

Life is a continuous struggle of ups and downs. Tomorrow, I will try to get back up again. Only God knows why we are all wired differently. Nobodys mind or heart works exactly the same.

The task of fathering has proven to be complicated and at times unfathomable as to how to get this job done correctly. It is especially difficult when life itself seems beyond the capacity of a child to understand and to negotiate for themselves.

I will never stop loving my son, Jordan Proctor. I hope we will be buried in the same cemetery plot, right next to each other, side by side, forever.

While we take different paths through life, I trust we will transcend into the same place in eternity. With Gods help and collective prayers my son and our family shall overcome our challengessomeday.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A former Jackson County heath worker was arrested for allegedly hitting a disabled patient in the face.

The Florida Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit said that 21-year-old Ashley Griffin was arrested on Wednesday after an investigation.

They said that the investigation started after they received a complaint from the Florida Department of Children and Families about an alleged abuse of a patent at Jackson County Sunland Center's intermediate care facility for the developmentally disabled.

Investigators said that Griffin had hit a disabled patient in the face and caused bleeding and bruising.

She has been charged with one count of abuse of a disabled adult, a third degree felony. Griffin faces up to five years in prison at $5,000 in fines if convicted.
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) -- For thousands in the military, coming home for the holidays is just a wish, but one young man from Perry made the trip back to surprise who he calls his "second family."

19-year-old D'andre Wells knew joining the U.S. Army was what he wanted.

"I could do something better with my life, travel the world and provide from my family," he said.

The 2016 Taylor County High School graduate has been in basic training in Missouri, leaving behind a group he's considered a "second family" for years.

"They took care of me when I was down struggling, and they've always been there for me, supporting me through everything," Wells said.

The "family" is a group of friends and siblings who call Wells a "brother."

"He is really nice to me," said Paityn Clark, 7. "He takes me to the bowling alley and everything else."

"If we ask to go anywhere, he will just drop everything and come," said Alexis Bell, 16. "He's just that kind of person. He puts everyone else before himself."

"They treat me like my family treats me," Wells said. "They love me, they care for me."

The family hadn't seen D'andre for five months. They kept in touch, sending handwritten letters and care packages. They said they worried about him every day, wishing for him to come home.

"It made me really sad," Clark said. "I was like, 'Please don't go, please don't go, please don't go.'"

They weren't expecting him back for the holidays, but Wells had other plans.

Just before Christmas Eve, the family took pictures with Santa at Governor's Square Mall. Wells popped out behind Santa's chair.

"I was the first one to just jump up and squeeze him to death!" Clark said.

"All I could do was cry," Bell said. "I had just my face covered. All I could do was cry."

"I started to cry a little bit. It felt like home," said Wells. "I felt like I was back safe."

Wells will be home in Perry until January 3. He has six weeks left of basic training before he heads to Louisiana.
By PTI: Los Angeles, Dec 29 (PTI) You may need to convince a computer that you are telling the truth during future airport security checks, thanks to a new lie-detecting kiosk that can spot changes in physiology and behaviour during interviews with travellers.

The Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real Time (AVATAR) is currently being tested to help border security agents determine whether travellers coming into Canada may have undisclosed motives for entering the country.

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"AVATAR is a kiosk, much like an airport check-in or grocery store self-checkout kiosk," said Professor Aaron Elkins from San Diego State University in the US.

"However, this kiosk has a face on the screen that asks questions of travellers and can detect changes in physiology and behaviour during the interview.

"The system can detect changes in the eyes, voice, gestures and posture to determine potential risk. It can even tell when you are curling your toes," said Elkins.

Passengers would step up to the kiosk and be asked a series of questions such as, "Do you have fruits or vegetables in your luggage?" or "Are you carrying any weapons with you?"

Eye-detection software and motion and pressure sensors would monitor the passengers as they answer the questions, looking for tell-tale physiological signs of lying or discomfort.

The kiosk would also ask a series of innocuous questions to establish baseline measurements so people are just nervous about flying, for example, would not be unduly singled out.

Once the kiosk detected deception, they would flag those passengers for further scrutiny from human agents.

Elkins began working on AVATAR when he was a PhD student at the University of Arizona. As the deception detection project grew more advanced and more sensors were added, more data about the interviewee was analysed.

"Weve come to realise that this can be used not just for border security, but also for law enforcement, job interviews and other human resources applications as well," Elkins said.

"We continue to make improvements, such as analysing the collected data using Big Data analysis techniques that make AVATAR a potentially valuable tool across many industries," he said.

Elkins is looking for a government agency willing to utilise the technology in a real-world application.

"AVATAR has been tested in labs, in airports and at border crossing stations," Elkins noted.

"The system is fully ready for implementation to help stem the flow of contraband, thwart fleeing criminals, and detect potential terrorists and many other applications in the effort to secure international borders," he said. PTI SAR SAR

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Hardeep Singh, 26, was stabbed during a Christmas party by a 22-year-old girl who has been arrested and is facing a murder charge.

By India Today Web Desk: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj replied to the family of a 26-year-old Sikh youth, who was stabbed to death by a girl in New Zealand, on Twitter and assured help.

She told the the family that she has given instructions to India's High Commissioner in New Zealand and have asked for the family's contact details.

Deol family - Rania (Sirsa) : I hv seen news report and given instructions to our High Commissioner in New Zealand. https://t.co/dDDOqiemt3 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) December 29, 2016

Please give me your number. I will spk to you on phone. You need not come to Delhi. My heartfelt condolences./2 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) December 29, 2016

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Hardeep Singh of Rania in Haryana's Sirsa district was stabbed to death on Christmas day in Christchurch in New Zealand.

Singh's family contacted the Indian High Commission in New Zealand as well as the New Zealand High Commission in India for help but as of now have not received any positive response.

Also read: Sikh youth stabbed to death in New Zealand on Christmas, family in Haryana awaits body

After several attempts, the family decided to tweet to Sushma Swaraj seeking government's help and also go to Delhi to meet her. However, Swaraj responded on time and asked for their contact details saving them a trip to Delhi.

The 26-year-old went to New Zealand to pursue hotel management after completing his BTech from Malout, Punjab and was living there on a work permit.

Singh was stabbed during a Christmas party by a 22-year-old girl who was arrested and has confessed to the crime.

The accused has been identified as Franchesca Kororia Borell and is facing murder charge after Singh's death.

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Buttons, an orphaned elk known to many in Kittitas County, visited the fire lines to say hi to some of the firefighters working to contain a wildfire near Cle Elum. (Photos courtesy: Kittitas County Fire District #7)
Thailand will be dedicating this New Year to the Thai monarchy and to the happiness of Thai people.

By India Today Web Desk: All geared up for the New Year, Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) expects to commence its celebrations with an increased number of international travellers.

The TAT hopes to welcome 3,75,000 international tourist arrivals during the New Year holiday period, accounting for a five per cent surge over that of the previous year. And from India alone, it expects around 13,200 arrivals in the same period.

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The estimated numbers are likely to generate tourism revenue of about THB 55.5 billion, up by 12 per cent from last year.

Also Read:Best of All, It's in Hong Kong, claims Hong Kong Tourism through its new campaign

The New Year in Thailand will be dedicated to His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Paying tributes to the Thai monarchy as well as to the happiness of the Thai people, the country will be hosting a traditional candle lighting and a prayer ceremony called Thien Haeng Siam or Candlelight of Siam. It will be held at Bangkok's Sanam Luang and at various other locations nationwide and worldwide on December 31 this year.

Local and foreign visitors have been invited to join pre-New Year countdown activities, followed by the main event, which is set to begin at 1900 hrs. Part of the activities will be writing an oath to live a good life, getting a candle for the lighting ceremony and taking part in Buddhist rituals. Later in the evening, the participants will take part in a 89-second silence to pay respect to late King Rama IX, marking his 89 years. On January 1, at least 1,00,000 candles will be lit and New Year's prayers will take place to welcome the new year.

''New Year celebrations across the globe have commenced in full swing, and like every year we have plans to bring in the New Year in a true Thai way that will be memorable. Thailand will usher in 2017 with 'the Candlelight of Siam', which is a traditional ceremony that aims to encourage Thai people to preserve important features of Thai society, especially the nation, religion and the monarchy. This will be a one-of-its-kind experience, with people singing to New Year Blessings songs and the Royal Anthem to pay respect to King Rama IX. We would like to extend an invitation to our guests from India to join us for this ceremony and get an experience of a lifetime," said Soraya Homchuen, director, Tourism Authority of Thailand, Mumbai.

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Dan Shapiro arrived in Israel as the US ambassador in the worst period in terms of the relations between the two countries. President Barack Obama was photographed at the White House talking on the phone with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his feet on the table pointed at the camera. He forced a construction freeze on Netanyahu which included every centimeter beyond the Green Line and clarified, by the way, that he was cancelling the understandings reached with President George W. Bush (in case anyone thought that a new president does not cancel decisions made by his predecessors).

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In a historic visit to the Middle East, Obama promised the Arabs democracy and progress, but failed to visit the Jewish state.

David Friedman. The Lefts concerns are remarkably similar to the concerns that were voiced in the Right over Dan Shapiros appointment by Obama (Photo: AP / Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP)

Shapiro arrived with a heavy weight on his back and managed to shake it off. He will complete his term as the first ambassador who created tight relations with the ultra-Orthodox and settler sectors as well, with the political and ideological Right, although he grew up in the liberal Judaism that supported Obama. In fact, he is probably the only ambassador who plans to stay in Israel after the end of his term. The children are already Israeli, the spirit is mixed with the local breeze. Israel changed Shapiro more than he changed Israel as Obamas representative. Even during the tough days, no one in the Right boycotted him. On the contrary, every conversation or meeting became a source of closeness.

This summary of Shapiros term is important in order to understand the absurdity of the criticism over the expected appointment of David Friedman President-elect Donald Trumps associate, as the next US ambassador to Israel. Like Shapiro, Friedman is expected to implement the White House policy, not his own desires. I assume that the freed Shapiro will be able to advise him on how to deal with unpleasant situations when the distance between Washington and Jerusalem grows or shrinks according to passing interests. Like Shapiro, he will find himself meeting audiences he was unfamiliar with, connecting with people he did not agree with, being torn between Jews from there and Jews from here.

The only difference is that Friedman will arrive with wings rather than weights. Trump, and Friedman as his representative in the elections, promised that Israel would be a leading partner and not just another consideration. He promised that Jerusalem would be recognized as Israels capital and that the anti-Israel resolutions in the United Nations would be automatically vetoed. It seems that the Israeli Left should have embraced the new ambassador with all its might. These promises dont include anything that the Israeli Left should not support, and they dont include anything that would disrupt a scenario in which a different prime minister would rise to power. On the contrary, it should be a convenient start for any term and government in Israel.

But Friedman has spoken against J Street, supported (God forbid) a yeshiva in Beit El, and if that were not enough  he is a Jew who belongs to the Modern Orthodox movement  a combination which has already stirred the New York Times editorial board and the Israeli Left. Its remarkably similar to the concerns that were voiced in the Right over Shapiros appointment, then Obamas close advisor and a Conservative Jew.

Im not one of Trumps fans. I see him as an opportunist who knows how to manipulate the masses. The mirror he placed in front of the real democracy concept is profound and ugly, but in Israeli eyes he is mostly a promise and an opportunity.

This is the first time that Israel can deal with fundamental questions about its future and desired vision without any pressure from Washington. This is the first time in years that Israel has an opportunity to put something on the table that is not a repeat of outdated political slogans. Ironically, this opportunity is what people in the Israeli Left (and in the Right too) are afraid of. The problem is not Friedman, but the fear that threats of isolation, a diplomatic tsunami or a painful blow in order to restrain construction in Judea and Samaria will no longer be possible. This opportunity is also the fear in the Right that we will have to provide answers.

The embassy may move to Jerusalem, as it should have a long time ago. No one will stop the construction in east Jerusalem. Israel will be able to build settlements and expand wherever it decides, to determine the future of the E1 zone, but it will require the Netanyahu government to tell the American administration what it wants. When Netanyahu gives an interview to 60 Minutes and talks about the need to get the Trump administration to help advance two states for two people, its the opposite. There is a new administration in America, and in Israel we need people who are not afraid.
The 173rd Israeli Air Force pilots course finished with a grand ceremony on Thursday. IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot spoke at the ceremony, saying our enemies view the IDF as a formidable foe. Just this month the IDF received an amazing plane which will keep Israel as one of the most advanced fighting forces in the world.

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Eisenkot then directed his comments to the new pilots.

You all are a part of our ability to maintain our countrys existence, and to continue to enable us to excel and win wars. But remember, although the sky is the limit, the way is the way of the land. Only a strong, professional, and moral IDF can ensure the security of the citizens of Israel. The whole nation of Israel puts their trust in your hands.

The new pilots (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Netanyahu continued, talking about the turmoil going on in the Middle East, and the endless waves of refugees fleeing the region for Europe.

Prime Minister Netanyahu at the pilots' closing ceremony (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Fire is burning everywhere, the prime minister continued. There are enormous massacres being carried out against innocent people. An unending stream of refugees is wandering from continent to continent. With all due respect to those who speak about the central conflict in the Middle East - this is in fact the tragedy in our region. Not our relatively marginal conflict with the Palestinians, but the collapse of entire nations, entire countries. More people have been killed n only a few months of fighting in Syria, Yemen, and Sudan than in 100 years of conflict with the Palestinians.

The fourth female combat pilot

According to the Israel Air Force website, 26 percent of the pilots are going to be combat pilots, 23 percent combat navigators, 20 percent transport pilots, and 27 percent will be helicopter pilots.

Israels fourth female fighter pilot also graduated from the course. After having been a simulator instructor, she got into pilots training and finished the course, becoming a combat fighter pilot.
President-elect Donald Trump says Israel is being treated "very, very unfairly," maintaining that countries that are "horrible places" never get reprimanded.

Trump talked to reporters Wednesday in what became his longest question-and-answer session since the election.

He refused to directly answer a question about whether Israel should stop building settlements, saying he is "very, very strong on Israel."

Trump says Israel is "up for 20 reprimands" at the United Nations, whereas nations that are "horrible places, that treat people horribly, haven't even been reprimanded."

Trump tweeted earlier Wednesday that Israel should "stay strong," saying Jan. 20, inauguration day, "is fast approaching!"
Democratic lawmakers are offering mixed reactions to Secretary of State John Kerry's speech deploring Israeli settlement-building and defending the US move not to veto a controversial UN resolution.

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York says his former Senate colleague "seems to have forgotten the history off settlements in Gaza" and warns Kerry's speech may have "emboldened extremists on both sides."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says Kerry reaffirmed America's commitment to Israel. But she also says she opposes UN efforts, a reference to the Obama administration's decision on the resolution.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer is also avoiding direct criticism of Kerry. But he says the resolution "will not bring peace closer."

All three Democrats are members of congressional leadership.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Bayit Yehudi) failed to heed recent warnings of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from speaking about annexing land when he repeated his view on Thursday morning that the age of a Palestinian state has come to an end.

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Speaking in an interview with Ynet, Bennett said that on January 20 when President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House, Palestine will be taken off the agenda, advocating instead that Israeli law be imposed on areas in Judea and Samaria.

Naftali Bennett (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)

Addressing Wednesday's speech by US Secretary of State John Kerry outlining his vision for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Bennett said: He has good intentions, but his speech was like his policiestotally out of touch with reality.

The minister also declared that The Israeli government will advance a program of sovereignty over Maale Adumim for a start and promised that he would advance an agenda to ensure that Israeli law also apply to the Jordan Valley, Ariel and Ofra where there are half a million Jews and 70,000 Arabs. In the rest of the territory there will be Palestinian separate autonomy where there is around 1.2 million Arabs and not even a single Jew.

The State of Israel is about to change. If we impose the law on Area C, on a strategic level the picture will be different. he continued.

Bennett sought to refute the notion that a two-state solution offered the greatest prospect for peace, reiterating that The Palestinians already have a Palestinian state in Gaza. They chose to turn it into Hamastan.

MK Michael Oren (Kulanu), also speaking to Ynet, said that he agreed with Bennetts analysis of John Kerrys speech positing that he was essentially stuck in the past.

MK Michael Oren in the Ynet studio

He still lives in the 90s without seeing the shifts that have taken place in the Middle East, the Second Intifada, he doesnt see the withdrawal from Gaza as a result of which we received masses of rockets," the former Israeli Envoy to the US said.

"There are no peace proposalssuch as Ehud Baraks, Ehud Olmertsthat were no rejected by the Palestinians. For eight years they have refused to sit with us. Every day we repeat ourselves saying come and talk to us without pre-conditions.







On Sunday, Netanyahu instructed ministers to refrain from making public declarations relating to annexation of territories or construction in the West Bank, warning that more international maneuvers could be made against Israel until the expiration of President Obamas tenure in office on January 20.
Some of the thousands of documents that were declassified on Wednesday relating to the Yemenite children affair reveal a story indicating that Israels first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was allegedly approached by an immigrant from Yemen, Yosef Avraham, for help in locating his missing wife and son in 1949.

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Avraham arrived in Israel with his wife Ktzia, their daughter Mazal and their one-week-old son Tov. They landed at the Lod Airport and were sent to the Pardesiya transit immigrant camp, where they were all medically examined and hospitalized. Avraham recovered a week later, but was unable to find his wife and children.

With the assistance of his relatives, he managed to locate his daughter, but his wife and son were nowhere to be found.

Immigrants from Yemen in Moshav Ksalon (Photo: David Rubinger)

A policeman gave me a note with the address of the Prime Ministers Office in Jerusalem. He recommended that I go to there and tell Ben-Gurion my problem, Avraham said. Amazingly, he managed to meet with the prime minister directly.

I told him what happened and where I lived, and I asked him to help find my wife and the baby. In my presence, he telephoned a few people and asked them to urgently find out where they were.

Avraham returned to Pardesiya after Ben-Gurion gave him money for public transportation. The next day, he was visited by two policemen and a policewoman, and together they conducted an extensive search.

Despite the efforts however, his wife and son were not found and an investigation revealed that they had both passed away.

Some 3,500 files relating to the Yemenite children affairthe mysterious disappearance of thousands of Yemenite babies and toddlers between 1948 and 1954were declassified by the Israel State Archives on Wednesday, following a public and media protest and pressure placed on the government by many families.

The files contain 210,000 documents which can be accessed on the archives website, and will now enable family members to finally learn the fate of thousands of children, while researchers will be able to enter into personal files, examine where they were buried and their causes of death. Among these files, the archive workers found additional unique stories.

Photo: David Eldan/GPO

Dr. Amster was the first woman physician at Rambam Hospitals childrens clinic, which opened in January 1949. She worked at the hospital till 1953. In 1996, she testified about her work before the Kedmi Commission, which was appointed to look into the Yemenite childrens affair. Her testimony is revealed for the first time in the exposed protocols.

The children arrived at the clinic in a very bad state. I would get called to the emergency room and there would be five, six, eight or ten who arrived at the same time, very sick. They were in serious condition. I went to the ER and I looked at the children  They were in such a bad state that they were immediately given infusions and transfusions and all kinds of treatments. The children were dehydrated and very thin, she recalled.

Asked if the treatment the children received was successful, she replied: They did not recover. One night I saw six children die. Most of them were from Yemen. I will never forget that night.

She noted that there were some children who did recover, but that the hospital staff did not know their names. The names were a big problem. Every Yemenite child had many names. We didnt know what the surname was and what the first name was. We didnt even see the parents.

After the healthy children were discharged to guesthouses or foster homes, they lost contact with the hospital staff, said Amster who also testified that she did not know what happened to them.

The complexity of the names in the Yemenite community is also reflected through the story of Sliman Moshe Bahajali, who turned to President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi in February 1954 and asked for help in locating his missing son. The presidents bureau approached the Jewish Agency, the Israel Police, the Health Ministry and the Interior Ministry in search of the lost child.

In a response to the presidents bureau, which was defined as highly confidential, Dr. M. Yahel, manager of the hospital division at the Health Ministry, blamed the Yemeni Jews habit of not using surnames, but rather six consecutive names which no one could understand. He also blamed the great confusion during the immigration period and the unprofessional manpower and shortage of workers. He accused parents of failing to pick up their children from the hospital, and even claimed that due to the good treatment the children had received, some parents did not recognize them when they arrived to pick them up.

In his response, Yahel mentioned what he called the rumor that the white Ashkenazim convey messages about babies death, and actually steal Yemenite children for those who dont have children. The commissions findings eventually determined that Sliman Moshe Bahajalis son had died two months after his arrival in Israel and had been buried the next day.

The archivists detected a similar pattern in most of the testimonies of the families whose children disappeared. Shortly after immigrating to Israel, the families moved to an immigrant camp and the parents were required to put their babies and toddlers in a babies house. For a while, the mothers would arrive to nurse and feed them, until one day they were told that their toddler had been taken to the hospital due to an illness. After a while, they were informed that the child had died.
The year 2016 has been declared the most fatal year on Israels roads in the past five years, with deaths caused from road accidents becoming increasingly commonplace, according to the Road Safety Authority (RSA).

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As recently as Monday, a 26-year-old man was killed in a road accident in the Lower Galilee, bringing the number of traffic fatalities since the beginning of the year to 371, the RSA figures show. The death toll is up from last year, which totaled at 356.

This is also the fifth year in a row marking a rise in the number of traffic fatalities. Last week, four people were killed in a road accident in Samaria (West Bank) involving an Israeli vehicle. Moreover, people who were injured in accidents which tok place prior to it eventually succumbed to their wounds.

Familiar images from Israels roads in 2016

An examination of the RSA figures points to an alarming increase in the number of young drivers killed in road accidents in the past year41 compared to 35 last year. Another concern is the sharp rise recorded in the Arab sector120 traffic fatalities in the past year compared to 99 in 2015.

The figures further illustrate an increase in traffic fatalities both on municipal roads, where the speed is usually limited to 50 kilometers per hour, and on freeways.

A total of 127 people were killed on municipal roads last year, while this year the number has already reached 132. On freeways, the number of fatalities in 2016 is up by 19 compared to the previous year, bringing it to a total of 238.

A fatal year for motrocyclists too

Among pedestrians, 101 were killed this year compared to 107 in 201542 of them over the age of 65.

Despite the generally gloomy figures, some solace could be taken from the fact that despite the increased use of electric bicycles, the past 365 days have recorded a drop in the number of cyclist killed on Israel roads10 deaths this year compared to 15 last year.

Furthermore, 2015 was particularly fatal for motorcyclists, with 56 deaths as opposed to 43 this year.

Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg

An analysis of the figures by timing reveals a different picture each month concerning road accidents. January 2016, for example was a less fatal month than it was in 2015, with 26 deaths compared to 31.

February recorded an increase from the same month the previous year, with 34 fatalities compared to 31. March was the month containing the least number of fatalities since 2013 with 21 traffic-related deaths. But with the arrival of April, the optimism was short-lived as it became the deadliest month in the past three years, tallying 33 fatalities.

May recorded a drop again (29 compared to 41 in 2015), but the summer months of June and July once again dashed any optimism that may have resurfaced. Indeed, thirty-nine people were killed on Israels roads in June and 37 were killed in July (compared to 27 in both those months in 2015).

August was hardly any better, claiming 34 livesonly towo fewer than in August in 2015. The number remained high in September with 37 traffic-related deaths, compared to 23 in 2015.

October recorded 31 traffic fatalities, compared to 36 last year, while November saw a significant drop from 26 deaths last year to 17 this year.

In the past month alone, thirty-two people were killed in road accidents, compared to 29 fatalities in December 2015.
The Gottex franchisee has announced that it plans to shut down the GAP clothes retail chain in Israel in 2017, amid chronic decreases in sales.

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The fashion conglomerate has promised it will make efforts to hire workers from its stores in Israel and to integrate them into alternative corporations in other brands.

Gottex controls a number of high-end fashion retail store operations in Israel, including Zara, Pull&Bear, Bershka and Massimo Dutti. It also owns its own Gottex brand of swimwear.

GAP

The group, owned by Joe Shavel, purchased the right to GAP activities from Elbit Imaging in January 2012 for NIS 40 million. Then, the fashion chainselling mens, womens and childrens and baby clothesoperated 5 stores in Israel, a figure that was brought up to 7 by 2016.

The financial situation for the retail store is not only on the decline in Israel however, with its operations suffering significant blows around the world.

It was recently published that GAP in the US has seen a consistent fall in its profit margins for the past few years and consequently announced that this year it would shut down 65 branches instead of the 50 originally planned.

GAP also possesses brands such as Banana Republic, Old Navy and others, all of which have registered plummeting sales. Banana Republic for example, announced the closure of it branches in Britain and Old Navy in Japan.
The French daily newspaper Le Monde unveiled new details Wednesday about the famous Operation Entebbe the successful 1976 Israeli hostage-rescue mission in Uganda. The new details were revealed following the declassification of documents from the archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the Israeli operation.

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Throughout the article, the French newspaper discusses the entire story of the hostagesfrom the hijacking of an Air France plane June 27, 1976, to the moment the Israeli and Jewish hostages were released a week later in a bold and complex operation in the African country, which was ruled at the time by dictator Idi Amin.

The Le Monde report. The new details were revealed following the declassification of documents from the French Foreign Ministrys archives

According to Le Monde, the diplomatic documents cleared for publication shed a different light on the Israeli operation in several aspects. The Ugandan authorities, for example, did not know in advance that a plane had been hijacked and that it was making its way to Entebbe. The documents further reveal that the Israeli operation was not completely secret and that at least three countriesKenya, Britain and Germany  were privy to its details beforehand.

Hostages welcomed home (Photo: Avi Simchoni, Micky Tzarfati, Bamahane)

Another point exposed in the newspapers interactive article is that two of three hostages were killed by friendly fire and that Israel never provided an explanation for the third hostages death.

One of the exposed French Foreign Ministry documents on Operation Entebbe

According to the French newspaper, negotiations were held before the military operation between Somali Ambassador to Uganda Hasni Abdullah Farah (as the terrorists representative), Idi Amin (as an intermediary) and French Ambassador to Uganda Pierre-Henri Renard (who represented Israel and France).

The French ambassador also signed some of the diplomatic correspondences with the Foreign Ministry in Paris, which were published by Le Monde.

Q&A from the Le Monde report:

Question: Did Ugandan President Idi Amin know about the hijacking in advance and expect the Air France plane to arrive in Entebbe?

Answer: No.

Explanation 1: The Ugandan authorities were only aware of the hijacked plane once it started flying towards Entebbe.

Explanation 2: Idi Amin arrived at the hijacked plane only two hours after it landed and was not permitted to approach it.

Question:

Did Israel act on its own?

Answer: No.

Explanation 1: Kenya served as a parking spot for the Israeli armys planes after the operation and as a logistic base for Israel during the preparations for the operation.

Explanation 2: A British diplomat was present at the Entebbe airport during the operation.

Explanation 3: A German Lufthansa flight, which was scheduled to land in Entebbe, was cancelled.

Question:

Was the Israeli operation flawless?

Answer: No.

Explanation 1: Two of the three hostages who died during the operation were likely killed by Israeli bullets.

Explanation 2: The parents of one of the killed hostages, Jean-Jacques Mimouni, never received a clear explanation about the role the IDF played in his death.

On June 27, 1976, four terroriststwo Germans and two Palestinianhijacked an Air France plane making its way from Israel to Paris. After stopping in Athens, Greece and in Benghazi, Libya, the plane headed towards Entebbe, Uganda, and the four terrorists were joined by three other Palestinians.

On July 4, the IDF launched a special operation to free the Israeli and Jewish hostages in Entebbe. The operation, conducted at the Entebbe Airport, lasted 20 minutes and left all seven terrorists killed, as well as one Israeli soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Yoni Netanyahu, commander of the elite commando unit Sayeret Matkal and brother of Prime Minister Benjamin Netantyahu.

The successful operation shocked the Israeli public and the entire world, particularly due to the great distance between Israel and Uganda (about 3,800 kilometers) and the boldness of its planners and executors. In the following years, the operation was used as background for many films and books.
Israel is set to enter the new year with a population of 8,630,000, according to statistics published by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) on Thursday afternoon.

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A number of surprising conclusions can be drawn from the data, not least that in 50 years, a third of the total Israeli population is forecast to be Haredi. Moreover, if trends continue, by the year 2065, Israel can expect to a population of 25 million people.

The last year saw an additional 167,000 people joining the Israeli population by its conclusion, constituting a 2% increasea percentage relatively consistent with the annual growth throughout the last decade.

Natural births account for 83% of the increase, despite the fact that there were fewer births than there were deaths, while the remaining 17% consists of new immigrants. The total number of people immigrating to Israel was larger than the number emigrating.

Over the course of the last year a total of 181,000 babies were born while 24,000 Jews made aliyah and 12,000 more moved to Israel for other reasons. The year was also hit with 43,000 deaths, and around 7,000 were registered as residing abroad for more than a year.

One of the most surprising changes relates to the trends of aliyah and the origins of those embarking on the voyage.

Photo: Avi Roccah

According to the stats, twenty-seven percent of Olim came from Russia in 2016 while 22% came from neighboring Ukraine, 18% from France and 10% from the US.

The majority of the Olim, around 18,500 people, came from Europe (77%), from the Americas (17%), Asia (4%) and approximately 500 from Africa (2%).

The figures presented by the CBS do not however, correspond with those compiled by the Jewish Agency (JA).

Olim land in Israel (Photo: Shaul Golan)

According to incomplete figures by the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Absorption, in 2016 27,000 Olim headed to Israel, marking a relatively steep drop from 31,000 last year.

The data also records an increase in the number of Olim hailing from Russia, and a decrease in those moving from France and Ukraine.

While the final figures of the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Absorption are scheduled to be published in January 2017, the stats which have been collated thus far illustrate that 7,000 Russians arrived in Israel this yearup from 6,000 in 2015while Israel absorbed 5,500 Ukrainians this year as opposed to 7,221 in 2015.

France showed the most conspicuous decrease, with Israels borders witnessing the flow of a mere 5,000 Olim in 2016 compared to 7,900 the preceding year.

Indeed, after leading in the aliyah figures for three consecutive years, France has now dropped down to third place.

The US also recorded a minor drop in numbers of Olim, with only 2,900 packing their bags for Israel rather than the 3,070 in 2015.
Indian Air Force has made its Advance Landing Ground at Tuting in Arunachal Pradesh operational. The Tuting ALG had been abandoned after 1962-war with China.

By India Today Web Desk: The IAF Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) at Tuting, a small town located in the Upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh has once again become operational.

The ALG at Tuting was inaugurated by Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu in the presence of Air Marshal C Hari Kumar, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Air Command (EAC) on Wednesday.

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The Tuting ALG will facilitate air connectivity with rest of the country. This will not only help the Indian Air Force in ensuring better supplies in the hour of need, but will also boost tourism in Arunachal Pradesh.

The strategic location of Tuting ALG will serve as the launching pad for the IAF operations and help in managing the India-China border areas.

Arunachal Pradesh CM Pema Khandu with Air Marshal C Hari Kumar. (Photo: @CMPemaKhandu)

DECISION TAKEN BY UPA

In 2008, the cabinet committee on security gave approval for the revival of the Tuting ALG, which had been abandoned after the 1962-India-China war.

After the CCS approval, the IAF embarked on the ambitious reconstruction plan to upgrade Tuting ALG along with other ALGs in the area. The land of Tuting ALG was taken over by the IAF in 2010.

Arunchal Pradesh CM Prema Khandu inaugurated Tutin ALG. (Photo: @CMPemaKhandu)

TUTING- A STRATEGIC BEAUTY

Tuting ALG is located on the banks of River Siang. It provides access to the pristine and picturesque landscape of the region.

The ALG has been upgraded with a full-fledged runway and all the associated facilities.

The ALG will be used to bring in vital supplies from cities in Assam via fixed wing aircraft and helicopters besides meeting challenges during natural calamities.

(Photo: @CMPemaKhandu)

The concerned authorities have submitted a propoal for the commencement of civil flights operations from Tuting ALG. The proposal is pending with the Director General Civil Aviation and Airport Authority of India.

The unspoilt natural beauty of the area is sure to attract many tourists, which, in turn, is likely to usher in a new round of the prosperity and happiness for the local population.

--- ENDS ---
BEIRUT- A Free Syrian Army-affiliated rebel official said on Thursday rebels had agreed to a nationwide ceasefire plan backed by Russia and Turkey.

Zakaria Malahifji, head of the political office of rebel group Fastaqim, told Reuters the truce excludes areas under the control of Islamic State only. The Syrian army earlier said the ceasefire excluded Islamic State, the group formerly known as the Nusra Front and all groups linked to them.
YEREVAN- Officials say that at least three soldiers have been killed in a border skirmish between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops.

Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Ovanissian three Armenian servicemen died in fighting Thursday. Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said one of its troops was missing in action.

Armenia and Azerbaijan blamed each other for the fighting.

Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry claimed that its forces inflicted "heavy casualties" on the Armenian intruders, while Armenia's Defense Ministry said that it repelled an intrusion from Azerbaijan, killing seven enemy soldiers. The conflicting claims couldn't be independently verified.
Thousands of personal files relating to the Yemenite children affair  the mysterious disappearance of thousands of Yemenite babies and toddlers between 1948 and 1954 were declassified by the Israel State Archives on Wednesday, alongside personal files of immigrants from Iran, Iraq and Northern African counties. One of those files describes the story of Zion Katsav, the brother of former president Moshe Katsav.

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Moshe Katsav was born in 1945 in the Iranian city of Yazd to Gohar and Shmuel Katsav. When he was one year old the family moved to Tehran, and when he was five they immigrated to Israel and were housed in the Shaar Aliyah transit camp near Haifa. From there, they moved to the Kastina transit camp, which went on to become the city of Kiryat Malachi. His brother, Zion-Shalom Katsav, was born there.

Yemenite children in a transit camp (Photo: David Robinger)

In May 1952, at the age of six month, Zion Katsav fell ill and was taken to the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center. The family was then informed that the child had died. When the Shalgi Commission was appointed to investigate the Yemenite childrens affair in the early 1990s, Katsav tried to find out what had happened to his brother, but did not disclose any details. His decision to appeal to the committee, and details of the familys suspicions, are now revealed in the declassified documents.

While Katsav was the Likud Chairman  at that time part of the opposition  he sent the committee the details regarding his brother. He wrote that his baby brother Zion was born on 12/24/1951, and allegedly died on 5/22/1952. However, Katsav said that the information the family received raised serious concerns. His death certificate was written in 1964  13 years after we were told he had died.

Katsav further wrote that the baby was taken to the hospital alone  without being accompanied by the parents  and the next day, they notified that the baby had died. No one in the family was shown a body. The National Health Insurance continued to pay out an allowance for an extra child for 10 years following the announcement that my baby brother had died. It was only after I myself wrote to the National Health Insurance about the death of my brother that they stopped these payments, which were then retroactively deducted.

Yemenite children in Rosh Ha'ayin, 1958 (Photo: David Robinger)

In a letter to the Shalgi commission, Katsav added that despite the death certificate, my dead brother still got a letter drafting him into the IDF.

Another notable surprise for the Katsav family was that (the brothers) name was changed from Avner to Zion-Shalom, but the name was only changed in the population registry in 1965. Zions grave was also never located, but the family was told that the grave was somewhere in the Kastina cemetery.

The Shalgi Committee noted that the Kiryat Malachi Religious Council only began registering graves in 1956. However, the Committee said that with the information presented in the death certificate and the explanation to the family that Zion was buried in the cemetery next to the hospital, it is possible to assume that the baby died in the hospital in Kastina, and it is probably that he was then buried in the Kastina cemetery.

Moshe Katsav (Photo: AFP)

Moshe Katsavs younger brother Lior told Ynet that my brother was born after my brother Moshe and after my sister Shoshana. He got sick and was taken from Kiryat Malachi to Assaf Harofeh Medical Center. We were told he had died a short while later. According to the records, he was allegedly buried in the Kiryat Malachi (Kastina) cemetery. However, in reality, there is no grave. The papers which were released (Wednesday) will reveal the facts of what happened during that time.

By the way, he continued, the person who looked for and found the relevant documents was my 13-year-old daughter. We still dont know where (Zion) is buried. My mother  for whom this is still an open wound  is sure he is still alive. We still havent told her about the new findings because we dont want to cause her even more grief.
KINSHASA- Authorities in Congo say a key opposition figure has been sentenced to five years in prison amid heightened political tensions in this Central African nation.

A court found Franck Diongo guilty of arbitrary arrest and aggravated illegal detention. Authorities accused him of holding members of the presidential guard at his residence earlier this month and said Diongo's supporters beat them.

Georges Kapiamba, president of Access to Justice, said Wednesday's sentencing comes after "an unjust trial."

Also Wednesday, 15 people were sentenced to three years in prison in Lubumbashi after demonstrating against President Joseph Kabila earlier this month.
CAIRO - Egypt's government has approved a deal to hand over two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia and sent it to parliament for ratification, despite a legal dispute over the plan, according to state television.

The deal, announced in April, caused public uproar and rare protests by Egyptians who said the uninhabited islands of Tiran and Sanafir belonged to their country.

The controversy has become a source of tension with Saudi Arabia, which has provided billions of dollars of aid to Egypt but recently halted fuel shipments amid deteriorating relations.

In June, the Higher Administrative Court annulled the agreement, saying Egyptian sovereignty over the islands could not be given up. The Egyptian government lodged an appeal.
MEDELLIN- When Wilson Lopez lived in the jungle, he thought civilian life in the city meant meeting people, walking the streets, having a job. But the former Colombian guerrilla wasn't able to do any of these things.

Lopez went from a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia jungle camp to prison and then to the streets of Medellin after receiving a pardon in January. Since then, he hasn't been able to find a steady job or home, and couldn't go for stroll with his family in Medellin after he received death threats from a criminal group that said it didn't want rebels in its territory.

"I am in the mouth of the tiger," said Lopez, who agreed to speak with The Associated Press inside a warehouse in the capital of Colombia's mountainous Antioquia province. He wore a cap pulled low over his face and was accompanied by a friend.

Lopez was one of 30 rebel prisoners pardoned by the government of President Juan Manuel Santos as a confidence-building gesture to advance peace talks with the FARC, as Latin America's last major leftist guerrilla army is known. Lopez's troubles integrating into civilian life highlight the difficulties that some 8,000 FARC guerrillas and 4,000 prisoners will face in rejoining society as part of the historic peace pact ratified by the country's congress on Nov. 30.
BUENOS AIRES - An Argentine appeals court on Thursday revived a case accusing former President Christina Fernandez of trying to cover up Iran's alleged role in the bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center in 1994.

The prosecutor who first brought the allegation, Alberto Nisman, died mysteriously in January 2015, and a judge later threw the case out for lack of evidence. But that ruling was revoked on Thursday, opening Fernandez to prosecution.

"The evidence does not allow for a clear dismissal of the possible commission of illicit acts," the country's official CIJ Judicial Information Center said in a statement. "The accusations must be weighed in advance of dismissal."

Argentine courts have accused Iran of sponsoring the attack, which killed 85 people at the AMIA Jewish community center.
WARSAW- A Polish court handed a prison sentence Thursday to a businessman convicted in the illegal wiretapping of top Polish politicians in expensive Warsaw restaurants.

The court sentenced Marek Falenta, the businessman convicted of masterminding the wiretapping, to 2A years in prison and gave suspended sentences to two waiters who secretly recorded the leaders' private conversations. A third waiter was ordered to pay 50,000 zlotys ($12,000) to charity.

The release of the restaurant recordings sparked a political scandal in 2014 that contributed to the loss of power last year of Civic Platform, the centrist party that had governed Poland for eight years.

The recordings caught top members of the government of former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, now the head of the European Council, using crude language and making rough assessments of foreign allies. The scandal led to the resignation of several senior officials, including Radek Sikorski, a former foreign minister and speaker of the Poland Parliament.
Wing donates to local homeless families

Fifty-one homeless families from the Marysville Joint Unified School District were invited to Breakfast with Santa Dec. 20, 2016, at Cedar Lane Elementary School in Olivehurst, California.



The event provided hot breakfast, gifts, time with Santa Claus and was made possible with the help and donations from twelve businesses and organizations, including Beale Air Force Base.



This event was a chance to provide a meal to homeless children and their families, and to give them gifts from Santa Claus they otherwise would not likely receive, said Jim Bibbee, 940th Force Support Squadron Community Readiness Consultant.



After the 940th Air Refueling Wings holiday party, the wing donated hundreds of toys and food items to help those in need.



On school days, students in the MJUSD are provided two free meals per day. During the three-week holiday break, some students and families dont know when or where their next meal will come from.



Amanda Book, MJUSD homeless advocate, said the goal of this event was to give these families a warm place to eat a free meal.



As each family entered, they were given hot breakfast. But the highlight of the event came shortly after.



Ho, ho, ho, Santa Claus said, as he walked through the door. Merry Christmas.



Bibbee was talking with a young boy when Santa Claus arrived.



He immediately had an ear-to-ear smile, Bibbee said.



Smiles were seen across the room and a line formed to meet the man in red before he even sat down. Every infant, child and teenager had the opportunity to visit and get a present.



Children also wrote letters and thank you notes to Santa Claus, made crafts and picked out more toys from bins.



Families expressed their appreciation, saying gracias, and thank you, throughout the morning. Holiday spirit and warm feelings filled the room.



Knowing that youre helping people that truly need help made all the difference in the world, Bibbee said.



As families left the event, they were given a pie and individualized gift bags. The bags were from organizations that adopted them, filled with more food and items off the childrens wish lists.



Unfortunately, not all 51 families were able to make it to breakfast, but they still received their gifts, whether they were able to pick them up after the event or have them delivered by Book.



We try to help as many families as possible, Book said. We appreciate all of the organizations and departments that helped out. We couldnt have done it without them.



In addition to those from Beale AFB, donations were provided by Yuba County Probation, Agents of Change, Warm-a-Sole, Remax Gold, So You Can, 20/30 Club, MHS Clubs, MJUSD employees and friends, Kiwanis, Linda Lions Club and Bishops Pies.
By PTI: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, Dec 29 (PTI) US President-elect Donald Trump has hit out at the United Nations, saying the world body is causing problems instead of solving them.

"The UN has such tremendous potential, not living up to its potential. There is such tremendous potential, but it is not living up," Trump told reporters in Florida yesterday.

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"When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They dont. They cause problems," he said.

He was responding to a question if America under his administration is considering leaving the United Nations.

In a series of tweets earlier this week, Trump criticised the world body, in particularly the Security Council for passing a resolution against Israel.

"So, if it lives up to the potential, its a great thing. And if it doesnt, its a waste of time and money," he said.

"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the US, but not anymore," Trump said in a tweet yesterday.

"The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!" he added. PTI LKJ ASV

--- ENDS ---
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - On Tuesday, at approximately 3:45 p.m., officers responded to an armed robbery call that took place at Del Pueblo Birrieria, located at 1225 W. 8th Street.

The initial investigation showed a Hispanic male in his 20s, heavy set with a shaved head, wearing a black sweater and sunglasses entered the business and demanded money. When the victim questioned if this was real, the suspect pulled a handgun out and demanded the money again. The suspect took an undisclosed amount of cash and fled the area.

Video surveillance was obtained and the suspect was identified as 38 year old Ricky Spencer by law enforcement. Spencer was located and arrested at 6:02 p.m. Spencer was booked into the Yuma County Detention Center for armed robbery and aggravated assault.

There were no reported injuries reference to this case.

The Yuma Police Department encourages anyone with any information about this case to please call the Yuma Police Department at (928) 373-4700 or 78-Crime at (928) 782-7463 to remain anonymous.
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - The Yuma County Library District is pleased to offer digital access to lynda.com, a leading online learning company that helps anyone learn business, software, technology and creative skills to achieve personal and professional goals.

On Thursday, January 12th and 19th, the Somerton Library will offer Intro to lynda.com at 10:30 a.m. Whether youre looking for professional development, or are just interested in pursuing a new hobby, lynda.com has something for everyone! There is no charge to attend.



The Somerton Library is located at 240 Canal Street in Somerton, AZ. For more information, call (928) 627-2149.
Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business.
The Russian diplomats would be given 72 hours to leave the United States.

By Reuters: The United States expelled 35 Russian diplomats and closed two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland in response to a campaign of harassment against American diplomats in Moscow, a senior US official said on Thursday.

The move against the diplomats from the Russian embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco is part of a series of actions announced on Thursday to punish Russia for a campaign of intimidation of American diplomats in Moscow and interference in the US election.

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The Obama administration was also announcing on Thursday a series of retaliatory measures against Russia for hacking into US political institutions and individuals and leaking information to help President-elect Donald Trump and other Republican candidates, two US officials said.

Trump, who takes office on January 20, has called for better relations with Russia. It was not clear if he will be able to immediately overturn the measures announced on Thursday.

The Russian diplomats would have 72 hours to leave the United States, the official said. Access to the two compounds, which are used by Russian officials for intelligence gathering, will be denied to all Russian officials as of noon on Friday, the senior US official added.

"These actions were taken to respond to Russian harassment of American diplomats and actions by the diplomats that we have assessed to be not consistent with diplomatic practice," the official said.

The State Department has long complained that Russian security agents and traffic police have harassed US diplomats in Moscow, and US Secretary of State John Kerry has raised the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

"By imposing costs on the Russian diplomats in the United States, by denying them access to the two facilities, we hope the Russian government reevaluates its own actions, which have impeded the ability and safety of our own embassy personnel in Russia," the official said.

The US official declined to name the Russian diplomats who would be affected, although it is understood that Russia's ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, will not be one of those expelled.

RUSSIA RESPONDS

"New US sanctions on Russia are counterproductive and will harm a restoration of bilateral ties," said Konstantin Dolgov, Russia's Foreign Ministry commissioner for human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

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The party's electoral campaign in Agra suffered a major setback when Chandrasen Taplu, the party's strongest candidate from Agra Cantonment seat suddenly passed away due to heart failure.

By Siraj Qureshi: Following the cold war between Shivpal Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav over ticket distribution for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav on Wednesday declared a list of 325 candidates, including eight candidates from Agra district.

However, the party's electoral campaign in Agra suffered a major setback when Chandrasen Taplu, the party's strongest candidate from Agra Cantonment seat suddenly passed away due to heart failure today morning. Taplu, who was being counted as the most favourable contender for the Cantonment seat, contesting against BSP's sitting MLA Gutiyarilal Dubesh, was also known in the local social circles as a favourite of UP SP President Shivpal Singh Yadav.

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Taplu suddenly collapsed at his residence and was immediately rushed to a nearby hospital where he was referred to Delhi. However Taplu died mid-way, plunging the Samajwadi Party in grief over having lost a young and promising leader.

ALSO READ: Samajwadi Party split inevitable? CM Akhilesh Yadav's loyalist MLAs to contest UP election on their own

Bhartiya Muslim Vikas Parishad Chairman Sami Aghai told India Today that Taplu was a very promising candidate from the Samajwadi Party and had a lot of admirers all over Agra. His work in his locality during his tenure as a corporator was highly appreciated by the people. He was also an advisor to the Agra Development Authority. When his name was announced as the SP candidate for Cantonment seat, the locals were ecstatic and his victory was being seen as certain.

However, his untimely death has created a vacuum for the seat which can only be filled if his wife or some other member of his family is given the ticket.

Agra City President of Samajwadi Party, Raisuddin said that the list of eight candidates for Agra district could be decided after much efforts and the name of the candidate for the ninth seat is still pending for Etmadpur.

It now remains to be seen what the Samajwadi Party decides about the future of the Cantonment seat. With Taplu's death, the most likely strategy would be to field his widow as the candidate to gain sympathy votes, but in view of the current political upheavals at the party high command levels each possibility is limited merely to speculation.

ALSO READ:

Samajwadi crisis: Mulayam Singh ditches son Akhilesh Yadav for brothers Amar Singh, Shivpal

UP Assembly poll: Mulayam says he's the final word on SP tickets, rules out alliance with Congress

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Hi there, reader! Yes you, my dear, ogling at this bright page spilling into red. Its because of you that we at Zee News are all worked up! From the bossy types (hey boss its just a blog!) to the <I> chai chors</I> (the peon who is too busy looking at Mallika Sherawat on site)! All excited and taking a deep breath before plunging into the spicy world that the new India- Your India, my India- has come to live in.<br/><br/>Welcome to the heady times of a youngistan India. Where the gentlemens game has turned into a sporting orgy incomplete without a bevy firang beauties jiggling what they got, where your fav stars are willing to shake what they got with YOU on a reality show, where blogs have replaced eyes as the window to ones soul, and where the letter S truly represents everything we love- silver spoons, saucy curves, sushi, sex, street food, style, smooth skin, saree, spotlight, speaking (arguing, if a certain Sen is to be believed), soul-searching, sparkling drinks and spice.<br/><br/>Lots of the last S.<br/><br/>Its not for nothing that our land is often called the spice bowl. Since the time our ancients found spices to churn the curry culture, our <I>mirch-masala</I> has tickled many a-nose and made them stream with tears of gluttonous gratitude.<br/><br/>You see, we are like that only.<br/><br/>Celebrating birth and death, kindling a thousand lights on a moonless night, squeezing lemon into our soft-drinks, making our <I>sati-savitris</I> drench on screen with proper <I>jhtakas</I> in my-white-is whiter-than-your-white sarees, throwing colours at none other than Godthe spice train just goes on.<br/><br/>Spice is truly the way of life in India. And in such a charged atmosphere, how could we ignore the amount of fun you are having and, indeed, want to have?<br/><br/>After all underneath us all Indians is a <I>chaat </I>loving foodie who just cant do without his daily mouthful of <I>golgappa</I>. No, not even the hard news nosed nosey types (us) who like to drown themselves under the Sethusamudram or periodically choke themselves with nuclear deal dramas.<br/><br/>So it was that we decided to add some <I>tadka</I> in your- and our- life. Smelling it already? Well thats Spicezee.com brewing!<br/><br/>Its your adda, dhaba, lounge, pub, disc, mehfil- call it what you will- of glamour, glitz and girls. From Rakhi Sawants latest nakhra to Britneys newest revelation (not just the sans underwear type), from movies and music ratings to whats happening at a theatre near you, from the latest offering from Salman Rushdie to Sri Sri Ravishankars enlightening musings- Spicezee is your first and last stop on the entertainment trail.<br/><br/>Basically spicezee.com puts anything and everything about the well heeled and sought after trendsetters from India and across the world just a click away.<br/><br/>Television, Fashion, fads, funny & weird stories from around the world, Bollywood/Hollywood gossip, hotties on the dating circuit, latest pictures & videos, blogs, interviews, reviews & previews, fitness & yoga- you ask it, Spicezees got it.<br/><br/>And oh I hope you didnt miss the main ingredient of this mouth watering salami of a site, its main <I>masala</I>- You. This offering is made entirely with you in mind. You can have your say on every story posted, every picture shown, every video played- you type it, we make it live instantly.<br/><br/>Believe me you, feedback is something taken very seriously here. So bring on the compliments/<I>Wah Wahs</I>, the brickbats/<I>Chi Chis</I>- we are all ears dear reader.<br/><br/>And in the end, well a statutory warning:<br/><br/>Logging on to Spicezee.com can be intoxicating. You may feel like abandoning the eggs simmering on your pan or the sandwich grilling in the oven and find your eyes & ears glued to the computer screen. We take no responsibility for sudden wardrobe changes due to the fashion tips offered on site nor would the company be liable in case of your sudden urge to karaoke your neighbours deaf just to be published on the website. We will entertain no complaints about any rise in the number of gossip aunts who know why Katrina has become such a cat or why Amy Winehouse craves for pills. In short, click at your own risk.<br/><br/>Happy snee..ee.e.aAAAcChHOOOO..zing!<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>
By PTI: Ahmedabad, Dec 29 (PTI) Counting is underway today of votes for the elections held in 8,624 gram panchayats across Gujarat two days back.

According to Gujarat State Election Commission (SEC), the counting process is being held at 252 places across the state with the help of more than 17,300 polling staff.

As ballot papers were used instead of EVMs during polling, the staff will be required to count each vote manually, said a release by the SEC.

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In the polling held in 8,624 village panchayats across the state for the election of members as well as sarpanchs on December 27, about 80.12 per cent voter turnout was recorded.

This time, around 1.20 lakh candidates were in fray for 53,116 wards across the state, whereas 26,800 candidates contested on 8,527 seats of sarpanchs.

Over 44,000 ballot boxes were used across more than 22,000 polling booths in state.

Total registered voters for the polls stood at over 1.65 crore, including 79.6 lakh women.

Though EVMs were not used, voters were given the choice of NOTA (None Of The Above) in the ballot papers.

Due to some procedural irregularities and misprints of some ballot papers during polling, the SEC held re-election yesterday on six different seats, including four seats for members and two seats of sarpanch.

The gram panchayat polls are not fought on party symbols, as candidates need to fight on their personal capacity. In gram panchayat polls, each voter is required to cast two votes, one to elect sarpanch and another for electing panchayat member for his ward. PTI PJT PD GK GK RYS

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Undeniably, Shahrukh and Aamir are the hottest ingredients for my Spiczee chicken delight. It all began with Aamir Khans recent blog, in which he stated that he has a dog called Shahrukh. The remark paved way for a great controversy in B-town and had the entire nation talking. What is on with Aamir? Till recently was he not the Mr Perfectionist? Aamir, please dont be so ridiculously involved in such down-market antics of insulting a fellow actor and especially not King Khan.<br/><br/>Well, Shahrukh didnt really appear to be affected with Aamirs comments; He chose to keep his calm and acted in a much-dignified manner. So far Shahrukh has been replying to Aamir in a diplomatic fashion, but I would like to warn Aamir that if his childish acts happen to continue, things can get real dirty. <br/><br/>It seems SRK is just not hitting the right notes these days; troubles are mounting on him one after the other. Shahrukh has been in for an onslaught ever since the launch of his TV show `Paanchvi Paas` well which is not doing well either. And talking about his IPL team, it has been the nucleus of complexities for him- the dressing room conflict, then the defeat of his team has crushed his dream of winning the `KARAMYUDH`.<br/><br/>Oh! Shahrukh I feel so sad for you!<br/><br/>Mmm with all that spicy gossip Im certain on winning the Yummy blog award. <br/>Now lets add some juicy flavour to the feast.<br/><br/>Lets move on to the new starlet Deepika Padukone (Dips), who is all set to reign as the Princess of Tinsel Town, and has been in the glare of publicity for her ever changing relationships. <br/><br/>One really wonders who Dips is finally dating. Is it our cricket hero Yuvi, the T20 charmer Dhoni, or the mummys scrumptious boy Ranbir Kapoor? <br/><br/>This cute looking hunk definitely has chics drooling over him. He is as alluring as of course, my recipes. And with all that fan following, I really dont think Dips can have him for too long. But, I am sure she would cope up with it much sooner than expected because she seems to have a fling thing with almost everyone she meets. <br/><br/>Ask her about her status quo with each of these men and she finds refuge in diplomatic cliche. Dips, you are yet another, saucy ingredient for my Spicezee delight. <br/><br/>Hey! I did hear something on Dips teaming up with the King Khan to donate a few bucks for the release of an India Prisoner Of War in Pak. Wonder what happened to that. Thought she was finally making it into my good books.<br/><br/>Even Kareena Kapoor (Bebo) is riding the high waves of Bollywood. The searing hot sexy siren of Bollywood, who set the screen on fire with her sexy size zero look in `Tashan` is aspiring to be the No. 1. <br/><br/>This is besides being known as the 'Endorsement Queen of Bollywood' like brand SRK and brand Big B. Bebos beau Saif seems to be endorsing the Queen herself. With that tattoo in his arm what else do you expect? <br/><br/>I really hope this time Bebo is really considering marriage. I dont want to see our Chote Nawab ending up like poor dear Shahid. <br/><br/>I know  I know you are all ears to more tittle-tattle. But, youd just have to wait until I dish up more gossips from B-town. See you soon!<br/>
Hurray! The torture has finally ended after 8 long years- a little too late I would say but better late than never. Its time to rejoice So here is raising a toast to the unnatural death of Ekta Kapoors flagship<i> rona dhona, maha drama</i> Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. May the dreaded K never return to haunt us again <br><br> Wonder why I am being so cynical? <i>Kyunki</i> it drove us to the wall, <i>Kyunki</i> it tested our patience and intelligence, <i>Kyunki</i> it portrayed us (women) in the most stereotypical fashion, <i>Kyunki</i> it did not come with a warning of watching at ones own risk and <i>Kyunki</i> one did not need a reason to detest this show or cast suspicious glances at those who did like the show. <br><br> So in case you are a Kyunki fan then please leave or forever hold your peace for this write up; its not meant for the faint hearted or weak willed. Readers discretion is advised as we are going to dive in some serious whipping and no holds barred bashing of this soggy saga. <br><br> But just like any other Balaji serial which begins on a chirpy note with the birds singing and the temple bells tolling; Kyunki wasnt all that bad initially. So I would like to venture into un-chartered waters and risk appreciating this k katha just a bit. For, like it or not, the show had the potential of being met with a different fate had many aspects been handled differently. <br><br> <b>The Good</b> <br><br> <b>Family ties:</b> A joint family in the confused 21st century was one of the major USPs that got the viewers hooked on to the show. When most of the soaps were busy celebrating nuclear family freedom, Kyunki came as a refreshing break. A show about an affluent <i>Gujarati</i> family that had a modern outlook yet traditional values immediately clicked with the audience and garnered the highest TRPs. <br><br> <b>Widow re-marriage:</b> Everything said and done, the show did break a lot of taboos. The soap, time and again, took up the cause of widow re-marriage. Tulsi, her daughter Shobha and daughter-in-law Nandini were urged to remarry once their spouses passed away. <br><br> <b>Marital rape:</b> The prima donnas of TV serials Kyunki once again took the lead in bringing the harsh reality to the fore. The loveless marriage of Nandini and Ansh served the plot to present this brutal truth. Nandini is raped by her husband Ansh, who was subsequently dragged to court by Nandini on the behest of guess who??? Anshs mother Tulsi. <br><br> <b>Mother India Tulsis killing of own son:</b> Not that I want to promote domestic violence but Tulsi killing her own son Ansh to protect her <i>bebas bahu</i> was one of the few eye popping, unbelievable, exaggerated sequences. Nevertheless, it was the right thing to do. May be killing was a little to much for anyones taste but the idea was well conveyed. <br><br> <b>Baa-the 84 yr old (or was she 400?) fashionista:</b> This was one of the few crowning moments of the show. Just when critics were breathing fire down Ektas neck to send Baa to the grave, she sends her to the school of fashion design. Once again the point was taken well. The aged cant be just nudged away, they have a life too. <br><br> Even a Kyunki basher like me feels that the show did have the potential had it not slipped from good to bad to downright ugly. <br><br> <b>The Bad</b> <br><br> <b>Blah blah blah about <i>sanskaars</i>:</b> Anyone watching the show could easily give religious channels like 'Sanskaar' and 'Aastha' a miss. The characters of the show had loads of <i>faltoo gyaan</i> to pass on to its poor moral defunct viewers any given day. <br><br> <b>Privacy went for a toss:</b> From bedroom talk to kitchen politics, everybody overheard everybody. Whether is was a husband and wife doing coochie coo or a <i>saas</i> bitching about the new bride, someone would always overhear and pass on the golden words. The motto being: if informed then better misinform. <br><br> <b>Drama queens galore:</b> Who needs dialogues, when your body language speaks volumes? Cunning smirks, weird eye moves, and look east talk west actions, exaggerated reactions reduced the dialogues to mere lip service. In fact, put the show on mute and you are as good as someone whos heard all the wailing, screeching and thundering. <br><br> <b>Sleeping beauties:</b> They smiled in make-up, they wept in make-up (water proof of course), they even slept in make-up; the characters were good enough to enter a beauty pageant on any given moment. Being glamorous is good, but did no one tell these <i>saas bahus</i> that sleeping with make-up on was a beauty disaster. Quiet literally the characters hid their true colours behind the glossy exteriors. <br><br> <b>The Ugly</b> <br><br> <b>Reverse ageing process:</b> Generations leaps had a different connotation here. The most bugging factor was the characters getting younger and sassier with each passing year. Instead of getting sober with age, they just got lousy make up jobs done and the beauticians had a ball. Getting older here meant extra coats of foundations, oodles and oodles of mascara, and even more glam accessories. <br><br> <b>Arise from the dead:</b> Grrr grrr even Ramsay Brothers would have bowed to Ekta Kapoor when she pulled Mihir out of the coffin. The day Mihir returned from the dead, the show was fated to be doomed. For the tacky scheme was used time and again as the characters deemed dead would suddenly appear and instead of going BOOM, the audience went Yawn <br><br> <b>In-law incest:</b> Being accommodating is one thing but marrying your brothers ex-wife is simply tacky. Every now and then a wife would leave her husband and go and marry her devar. What kind of a sick minded plot was the show promoting? <br><br> <b><i>Saaziish</i> and more <i>saazish</i>:</b> Mindless conspiracies ruled and misunderstandings were the order of the day. Just when something good would happen; the bad immediately followed leaving room for ample of drama. <br><br> It will always remain a mystery as to how a serial so banal and plot-dead, where the characters always remained dressed as if they were attending a barat or a Halloween party, could become so popular. <br><br> But like it or not Kyunki was one the most popular shows the telly has ever known. But with the channel the tying a goose around its neck and finally sending it to the dungeons, all I am left is with a list of if only that could have saved it from its unprecedented death <br><br> If only Mihir had not died or brought back from the dead on popular demand, if only the characters looked their part, if only Baa bid adieu before she turned 400, if only the family members understood the term privacy, if only Ekta Kapoor gave some credit to the viewers intelligence and did not take them for a ride, if only Tulsi did not have to be such a goody two shoes. The show could have been bearable!
The towel also carries a message which says, "Didi's Handloom Product, Only Colour, Superior Quality, 100 per cent Cotton".

By Manogya Loiwal : The craze for Mamata Banerjee has reached a new high when a local shopkeeper in the Burdwan district started selling a "gamcha" (towel) with the chief minister's picture and name printed on it.

The love for Prime Minister Narendra Modi might make a Gujarat businessman to buy a Rs 2.5 crore suit, but the reach of Mamata to grassroots of her state is undisputed as people have been queuing up to buy these towels.

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The new rage:

1. Being sold at Rs 40-50, the towels are not only gaining popularity amongst the Trinamool Congress workers and supporters but the general public is also quite excited to buy them.

2. Interestingly, the towels have been reportedly manufactured in Bihar and sold in various parts in West Bengal and maybe that is the reason why "Didi" is printed in Hindi, instead of Bengali.

3. The towel also carries a message which says, "Didi's Handloom Product, Only Colour, Superior Quality, 100 per cent Cotton".

4. However, one section of the population is raising questions about allowing the use of a chief minister's name and picture for such profit bearing.

5. One of the customers, Madhusudhan Hazra Choudhury said, "It is not right to sell towels with the chief minister's name but at least some poor unemployed shopkeeper is earning through it."

With inputs from Sujata Mehera in Burdwan.

Also read: What was demonetisation's real motive, asks Rahul; Mamata asks if Modi will resign after 50 days

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These wild elephants have been attacking various villages in West Midnapore claiming around 19 lives already this year.

By Manogya Loiwal : A herd of 70 elephants had entered the West Midnapore district in West Bengal three months ago and have since then been travelling in the entire region thus disrupting daily life of the villagers.

Today morning when Manmatha Koley, a resident of Gilabpani village in West Midnapore district went out of his house, he was hit by an elephant.

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He was travelling by a cycle from the Asnasuli road to teach tuitions when his vision got blurred by the fog and he hit three elephants.

"He was travelling by his cycle to take tuitions when due to fog nothing was visible to him and hit three elephants. He died on spot, but we still took him to the hospital," explained, Chitranjit Koyle, a relative of Manmatha.

These wild elephants have been attacking various villages in West Midnapore claiming around 19 lives already this year.

The incident also reveals the inefficiency of the forest officials and the rise in man and animal conflict in the district.

With Shah Jahan Ali in Midnapore

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Itanagar: Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu and six others were suspended from the People's Party of Arunachal on charges of anti-party activities, a media report said on Thursday night.

All of them have been temporarily suspended from the party's primary membership, ANI reported.

Their suspension order is with immediate effect pending disciplinary proceedings, it said, adding Khandu therefore, ceases to be the legislature party leader of PPA.

Khandu had recently expressed unhappiness over the 'resource-crunch' tag used by officials to describe his state, terming it as "misleading".

"We always say, ours is a resource-crunch state. Let me tell you, it's a misnomer. See around us, we have abundant resources.

Where we have failed is to tap these resources for our economic development," PTI quoted him as saying at an event.

Khandu said the tag has been used so often that it has become a habit and it has come to an extent that people use it with pride.

"We cannot depend on the Centre forever. We have to harness and encash our own resources and remove the resource-crunch tag," Khandu said.

Khandu was sworn in as chief minister on July 17.
By India Today Web Desk: Things are soon going to take a dark turn in popular daily show Yeh Hai Mohabbatein. While the search for Ruhi's blackmailer is still on, the Bhalla family will try and let their hair down for the new year party.

Also see: Yeh Hai Mohabbatein spoiler: Raman, Ishita, Shagun team up to nab Ruhi's blackmailer

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Ruhi and Sohail will perform a dance routine at the bash, and the whole family will try to forget their troubles for a while. But things will take a nasty turn as Ishita will suddenly disappear without telling the family about anything.

However, later she will call Raman and inform him that she is with Pihu and they will get a clue about the blackmailer from a tattoo parlour.

Meanwhile, Ruhi will take Ishita's precious ornaments and give them to the blackmailer.

Sohail will accompany Ruhi as they both go to meet the blackmailer. But he will accidentally end up killing the blackmailer. Raman will reach the same place and realise that the dead person is not the one who has been harassing Ruhi. While Ishita will discover that Sohail and the blackmailer sport the same tattoo.

Does that mean that Sohail is actually the blackmailer?

To find out, tune in to Star Plus at 7:30 pm tonight.

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The main entrance to the offices of Angolan State oil firm SONANGOL pictured in Luanda on June 2, 2016

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos's daughter, reportedly Africa's richest woman, has been cleared to head the national oil company Sonangol, after a court rejected a legal challenge.

Isabel dos Santos was put in charge of Sonangol in June in a move some analysts said was the first sign of succession plans for the country's long-time ruler.

The president, in power since 1979, later announced that he would stand down in 2017, though no successor has officially been named.

His daughter's appointment was disputed by 12 lawyers who said the law did not allow public officials to nominate family members, but the Supreme Court ruled in her favour on December 22, an official said Thursday.

"According to the decision... the appointment of Isabel dos Santos by her father does not violate the law on public probity or the Angolan Constitution," said David Mendes, a spokesman for the lawyers.

The country's opposition had equated her Sonangol appointment with nepotism, prompting the legal challenge.

Mendes said the lawyers would appeal the decision at the country's Constitutional Court.

"The judgement of the Supreme Court has many shortcomings and does not satisfactorily answer the questions we asked," he said.

Nicknamed the "Princess", the president's 43-year-old daughter has been ranked by Forbes magazine as the richest woman on the continent with a fortune of around $3 billion (2.87 billion euros).

She owns stakes in several companies in Angola and former colonial power Portugal, notably in the banking and telecommunications sectors.

Three years ago the president appointed his son Jose Filomeno dos Santos to chair the country's $5 billion Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Sonangol has been mired in financial difficulties since the fall in global oil prices. Since her appointment in the summer the president's daughter has pledged to turn the company around.

Earlier this month Sonangol announced it would not pay dividends to the state this year -- a first for the country's main source of foreign currency.

Angola's vast oil wealth has not trickled down to the masses and critics accuse both dos Santos and his family of amassing huge wealth by siphoning off state funds.
Emirates airline has received its first Rolls-Royce powered Airbus A380s, after reaching an agreement over a technical issue

Dubai's Emirates said Thursday it has reached an agreement with Rolls-Royce over a "technical issue" relating to the engines of Airbus's A380 superjumbo, and confirmed receiving one plane this week.

The carrier also said it "will continue to receive deliveries of both A380s and (Boeing) 777s in 2017."

"Emirates can confirm that we have come to an agreement with Rolls-Royce on the technical issue relating to engines for our A380s. We have received delivery of our first Rolls-Royce powered A380s this week," a spokesperson told AFP.

It will take delivery of two more units "before the end of this year."

Airbus said Wednesday it delivered the first A380 to Emirates equipped with a Rolls-Royce engine, a day after it said it was postponing for a year the planned delivery of 12 units.

The delay was linked to the Emirates's wish to purchase the finest Rolls-Royce engines, an informed source said.

"We continue to work closely with Airbus and Emirates Airline to satisfy their requests," a Rolls-Royce spokesman told AFP on Wednesday.

In November, Emirates complained of "technical difficulties" with the Trent 900 engines produced by the British firm for the A380.

In April 2015, Airbus selected Rolls-Royce for the lucrative deal to provide the engines for 50 of its A380s that was worth a record at the time of $9.2 billion.

Emirates, the biggest client for superjumbos, took delivery of its A380 in November and has ordered 142 in total.

A380s with the Rolls-Royce motor are already being operated by other airlines such as Qantas and Singapore Airlines.
LAS VEGASIt's that time of year again, and the online adult industry is buzzing with excitement for the upcoming InterNEXT Expo 2017.

Presented by BitterStrawberry, the show will once again be held at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas, January 14-17. Per the norm, the conference will be well attended by the biggest and best-known businesses in the online adult sector.

With a wide range of events scheduled to take place, attendees are sure to get more than their money's worth. Registration provides access to the much anticipated Meet Market, Educational Seminars and Workshops and the Keynote Address presented by Gregory Clayman from Flirt4Free. In addition, attendees gain admittance to [email protected], the show-within-a-show that focuses on the LGBT community. Admittance to the 6th Annual GFY Awards, daily networking events and nightly parties is also included.

To bolster the show even further, after listening to feedback from show attendees and sponsors, InterNEXT is pleased to announce that the 2017 show will feature an Exhibition Floor. The Expo Floor, located in the Artists Hall, will be open 4-7 p.m. January 14 and noon to 5 p.m. January 15 and 16. The perfect complement to the highly successful Meet Market, show attendees will find 40-plus exhibitors in one central location conducive to business. Attendees are encouraged to stop by the Expo Floor to meet with exhibitors throughout the show. To locate the Artists Hall, refer to the show map here.

Companies exhibiting include 0x7a69, Adxxx, Affil4You, Aurora Global, AWE, BitterStrawberry, Bucharest Summit, Cambuilder, CamPower, CamPrive.com, Cherry Pimps, Crak Revenue, DateTronix, Epoch, Etology, Eurowebtainment, ExoClick, FirstChoice Pay, Flirt4Free, FriendFinderNetworks, Grooby, ICM Registery, IMonetizeIt, Juicy Ads, Man World Media, Medley.com, MetArt, MindGeek, Mobius Payments, Model Centro, MoJoHost, NetBilling, NTS, OrbitalPay, Paxum, Paysafecard.com, Process Deposits, PussyCash, Quantox, SegPay, Stripchat/xHamster , Terpon, TrafficHaus, Traffic Partners, twistbox, VIP Offers and many more.

Registration, sponsored by Pussycash, is open at InterNEXT-Expo.com.

Registration is free to all affiliates, models and studios. After completing registration, attendees can directly contact one another via the site. To stay where the industry stays, go here to book a room at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
Donald Trump said today that U.S. telecommunications company Sprint will bring 5,000 jobs back to the United States from overseas, while he said another company OneWeb will add 3,000 jobs in the United States.

The Predator-elect said the deal "was done through" Japanese billionaire and technology investor Masayoshi Son, who is the CEO of Softbankwhich has a controlling stake in Sprint Corp.

"I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they are going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States, they are taking them from other countries," Trump told reporters outside his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

"And also OneWeb, a new company, is going to be hiring 3,000 people. So that's very exciting," he added.



Never heard of "OneWeb" before, but okay.

Son and Trump have been at this for a while. Not sure how this benefits Trump Org, but we can rest assured that it does somehow.
THURSDAY, Dec. 29, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- An artist's work may reveal early signs of progressive brain disease, a new study suggests.

Researchers examined the brushstrokes in nearly 2,100 paintings from seven famous artists.

Two (Salvador Dali and Norval Morrisseau) had Parkinson's disease, two (James Brooks and Willem de Kooning) had Alzheimer's disease, and three (Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet) had no known neurodegenerative disorders.

The results showed clear patterns of change in the works of the artists with neurodegenerative disorders, compared to those with no brain diseases.

"Art has long been embraced by psychologists an effective method of improving the quality of life for those persons living with cognitive disorders," study author Alex Forsythe said. Forsythe is a senior lecturer and director of studies in applied psychology at the University of Liverpool in England.

"We have built on this tradition by unpicking artists 'handwriting' through the analysis of their individual connection with the brush and paint. This process offers the potential for the detection of emerging neurological problems," she said in a university news release.

The study was published Dec. 29 in the journal Neuropsychology.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about Alzheimer's disease.
Finland becomes the first country in the world to get rid of all school subjects and take on phenomenon-based learning by the year 2020.

The teaching style will also become more holistic and cooperation-based rather than a traditional teacher-centered way of teaching.

Many students in this day and age often wonder if they will ever need the subjects theyre learning at school in their professional or personal development.

Phenomenon-Based

In light of that, Finland becomes the first country in the world to plan to remove all school subjects and instead implement phenomenon-based learning, an education system more suitable for the 21st century.

Phenomenon-based learning allows students to pick a phenomenon they see in real life, and study everything about it, and what may relate to it.

Phenomenal Education said on their website: In Phenomenon Based Learning (PHenoBL) and teaching, holistic real-world phenomena provide the starting point for learning. The phenomena are studied as complete entities, in their real context, and the information and skills related to them are studied by crossing the boundaries between subjects.

For example, if a student chooses a vocational course, can take cafeteria services and then the phenomenon will be studied through math, languages, writing and communication skills etc.

If a student wants to study the European Union, they would study it through economics, languages, geography and the history of the countries involved, the events that led up to it, etc.

This is whats called the interdisciplinary approach, meaning subjects will be included in the learning, but only the aspects of the subjects that pertain to the particular chosen phenomenon.

The teaching style will also change. Instead of the traditional teacher-to-student method, this way of learning will be a more holistic approach, involving a lot of teamwork, and structuring the classroom in a problem-solving approach.

This is supposed to fully take place by 2020, however schools are currently being told to include a period of phenomenon-based learning at least once a year.
By Silvia Aloisi and Balazs Koranyi MILAN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Italy's economy minister has said the European Central Bank should have explained more clearly why it nearly doubled its estimate of the capital shortfall for the ailing bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena , which is being bailed out by the state. In unusually critical comments of the euro zone's banking supervisor, Pier Carlo Padoan told a newspaper that the ECB's new capital target was the result of a "very rigid stance" in its assessment of the bank's risk profile. "It would have been useful, if not kind, to have a bit more information from the ECB about the criteria that led to this assessment," Padoan told the financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. Monte dei Paschi, Italy's third biggest lender and the world's oldest, said on Monday the ECB had estimated its capital shortfall at 8.8 billion euros (7.5 billion pounds), compared with a 5 billion-euro gap previously indicated by the bank. The higher capital requirement substantially increases the cost of the bank's rescue by the government after it failed to raise the 5 billion euros on the market. The Bank of Italy said in a statement later on Thursday that based on its own calculations the Treasury may have to put up around 6.6 billion euros to salvage the lender, including 2 billion euros to compensate around 40,000 retail bond holders. The size of the state intervention has raised concern that Italy's newly created 20-billion-euro bank bailout fund may not have enough money for other weak banks. The government says the fund is sufficient. The rest of the money Monte dei Paschi needs will come from the forced conversion of its subordinated bonds into shares, in line with European rules on bank crises. The lender fared the worst in EU-wide banking stress tests published in July. Padoan said he expected the capital increase to take place in two to three months. The ECB told the Italian treasury of its decision in a letter, which Padoan said was just five lines long and which has not been made public. It irked the Rome government and has quickly turned into a political issue. A group of lawmakers from the ruling Democratic Party asked Padoan and Italy's foreign minister on Wednesday to explain in parliament what had happened. "I was a bit surprised to receive the news, out of the blue and on Christmas day," Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni told a press conference. "It's important that the reasons behind this assessment are shared and that there is a dialogue because we need to handle this issue together ... We will stick to our guns." The ECB has declined to comment on its rationale for the larger capital shortfall. The Bank of Italy said in its statement that Monte dei Paschi's estimate of a 5 billion euros capital gap was based on the results of the stress test, conducted on end-2015 data, and included assumptions such as the sale of its whole portfolio of defaulting loans - a key part of its plan to raise money privately. Given that plan's failure and the bank's worsening balance sheet over the past year, the central bank said the 8.8 billion euro capital requirement was justified by the need to reach an 8 percent Common Equity Tier 1 (CET 1) ratio - a key measure of financial strength - in an adverse scenario. A source said the ECB had wanted to ensure that Monte dei Paschi had enough capital to safely meet that requirement, so it would be able to restore investor and customer confidence. The source also said the ECB had offered to explain its stance to both the Italian treasury and Monte dei Paschi. At 8 percent under the adverse scenario, Monte dei Paschi would still be below the average of the ECB's stress test, in which banks would see their CET 1 ratio fall to 9.4 percent from 13.2 percent. The 8 percent threshold in the adverse scenario was also a requirement the ECB set for ailing Greek banks in a 2015 review. Padoan said the exact amount of capital Monte dei Paschi will have to raise will be determined once it presents a new business plan to the ECB and the European Commission, but he played down the bank's problems. "The bank is in optimal condition and will have great success," he said. ($1 = 0.9566 euros) (Additional reporting by Giulia Segreti and Agnieszka Flak in Milan and Giselda Vagnoni in Rome; Editing by Adrian Croft, Larry King)
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
Happy New Year! Welcome to our first Free Range chat of 2017.

We've got a fresh start on our minds because, well, you know why. Something about that turn to Jan. 1 gets us all in the mood for change, and for 5 of us, it's a change in our eating habits. We had Ellie Krieger weigh in (so to speak) with her thoughts on 5 diets we chose to try for 30 days, and we're going to post updates every week this month. Do any of our approaches resonate with you? What are you own goals for eating in 2017 -- healthwise or not?

Because we don't want January to be ALL about dieting, we also have Cathy Barrow's latest Bring It column, focusing on one of my favorite desserts: a trifle/tipsy cake. Read it and dream...

We'll have giveaway books for our favorite chatters today: "Cooking That Counts: 1200- to 1500-Calorie Meal Plans to Lose Weight Deliciously" by the editors of Cooking Light, "The Whole30 Cookbook" by Melissa Hartwig, and "Eat Beautiful" by Wendy Rowe.

And for you PostPoints members, here is today's code: FR1433 . Remember, you'll record and enter it into the PostPoints site under Claim My Points to earn points. The code expires at midnight, so be sure to enter the code by 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday to get credit for participating.

OK, let's do this!
The foreign affairs ministry has issued Monday a statement rejecting and rebuking in the strongest terms the verbal blunders uttered by the Istiqlal partys Secretary General, Hamid Chabat, regarding the borders and the territorial integrity of Mauritania.

Chabat said at a meeting on Saturday that Mauritania is a Moroccan territory and that the borders of Morocco stretch from Ceuta to the Senegal River. These statements infuriated the Mauritanian political class.

The foreign affairs ministry flatly rejects these statements which are prejudicial to bilateral relations with Mauritania and undermine Moroccos diplomacy in the continent.

The statement adds that Morocco, under the leadership of King Mohammed VI, adopts a diplomacy that is underpinned by neighborliness, solidarity and cooperation with the sister nations.

Moroccos foreign ministry made it clear that the Kingdom fully respects the known and recognized borders, under the international law, of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania and its territorial integrity and calls on the Mauritanian government to take these statements with a pinch of salt.

The statement concludes that such reckless remarks play into the logic of the adversaries of Moroccos territorial integrity who are fighting to prevent its legitimate return to its African institutional family.

Later in the evening, local media le360.ma reported that the Head of Government Abdelilah Benkirane would fly to Nouakchott this Tuesday as envoy of King Mohammed VI to the Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.
Russia has hinted that it supports Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar of the Libya National Army, loyal to the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (HoR), saying he has a fundamental role in the formation of the new Libyan leadership.

Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said Haftar is a leading political and military figure in the war torn country and hailed him as a unifying figure because he is doing a lot to fight Islamic State terrorists and help the government restore control of oil production.

Libya has been engulfed in a five year war and the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) has failed to make an impact due to its limited authority and influence in the country.

The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister told Bloomberg News he believes that Libyans have to find a compromise on his (Hafatrs) participation in the new Libyan leadership as his forces control a significant territory in the country.

The tobruk-based house of representatives (HOR) does not recognize the GNA and has refused to approve the Libyan Political Agreement which will legitimize the UN-backed government. According to Gatilov, the lack of interest of the Tobruk-based government is due to the UN Special envoy Martin Kobler who tries to strike deals with part of the Libyan political establishment behind the back of other influential players. He lamented that such a situation doesnt help to advance the political process in Libya.

Kobler had earlier on called on Moscow to support the GNA because the consensus of the international community is important to end the war. Although the GNA, led by prime minister-designate Fayez Serraj, enjoys support from Western countries, Gatilov said its control extends to only very limited territory and is not considered as a truly national government body.

Field Marshall Haftar has visited Moscow twice over the past six months and the statements by Gatilov are the strongest endorsement message to come from Moscow. Haftars Libya National Army is also supported by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
King Mohammed VI has renewed Moroccos attachment to the secular friendship ties and good neighborly relations existing with sisterly Mauritania.

In a telephone conversation with President Mohammed Ould Abdelaziz, the Moroccan sovereign renewed his unwavering support and friendship, as well as his attachment to the neighborliness and solidarity relation between the two countries, based on the long-standing and family relations which have always existed between the two peoples, said a statement released by the royal office.

King Mohammed VI also reassured President Mohammed Ould Adelaziz that the North African Kingdom recognizes the territorial integrity of Mauritania in conformity with international law.

During the phone talk, the two Heads of State voiced their determination to preserve this relation against any attempt seeking to undermine it, added statement of the royal office.

The Moroccan monarch made the phone call to the Mauritanian president following the irresponsible remarks by Istiqlal partys Secretary General, Hamid Chabat, regarding the borders and territorial integrity of Mauritania.

Last weekend, Chabat had said at a meeting that Mauritania is a Moroccan territory and that the historical borders of Morocco stretch from Ceuta to the Senegal River.

These imprudent and unwise remarks have irked both the Moroccan and the Mauritanian political class. In a bid to make things crystal-clear and to avoid any diplomatic row, Head of Moroccan government Abdelilah Benkirane and minister delegate to foreign affairs Nasser Bourita flew to Mauritania to dispel any misunderstanding, that could affect the excellent relations between the two neighbors.

The Moroccan Foreign ministry as well as several senior members of the Istiqlal Party have all slammed the politically incorrect remarks made by Chabat.
Hayk Sarukhanyans domestic cheese production facility, which is located in bordering Voskepar village in Armenias Tavush Province, will mark its tenth anniversary next year.

In fact, nothing has changed over the course of these years, Sarukhanyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The locals know very well that they can deliver their milk right at Sarukhanyans house, and that the milk needs to be pure; that is why they monitor the sanitary state of their animals.

Hayk Sarukhanyan has the same requirements also from his cheese production facility.

We work as a family; I, my wife, and my son, he added. Two years ago, I was exempt from [paying] taxes, as domestic production.

The product is sold also in [capital city] Yerevan. (). We took it to Russia, too.
Portugal is considering abandoning golden visa scheme

Biden and Erdogan to meet at G-20 summit

NATO supports normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and welcomes EU efforts

Bank of England raises interest rates by largest amount since 1989

Scholz says Berlin must change its attitude toward China

Cavusoglu and Stoltenberg disagree over Sweden's and Finland's fulfillment of commitments

Turkish Vice President to visit Azerbaijan and occupied Shushi

Britain buys 250 million pounds worth of oil from Azerbaijan from July 2021 to June 2022

Yair Lapid congratulates Benjamin Netanyahu on winning election

Armenian MOD: Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense spreads another disinformation

ENISA: War in Ukraine, geopolitics fuel cyberattacks

Armenian MFA: Yerevan and Baku agree to speed up work on agreeing procedure of Commissions' activities

Zelenskyy will not participate in G20 summit if Putin participates in it

WP: Man who attacked Pelosi's husband was in the U.S. illegally

At Upper Lars, 30 cars are allowed through per day instead of previous 300: What are authorities doing?

Bloomberg: Turkey unlikely to sign Sweden's bid for NATO membership before the end of the year

Military servicemen in Armenia to be attested: Discussion at parliamentary standing committee

IEA calls for urgent action on gas shortages in Europe

French Senate to consider resolution demanding immediate withdrawal of Azerbaijani troops from Armenian territory

Papikyan: The final number of dead will be published after the identification is complete

Armen Grigoryan presents to Patrushev consequences of Azerbaijani aggression

Indonesia reveals its own kamikaze drones

UN: Russia resumes participation in inspection of ships in Black Sea

Grigoryan: Armenia interested in using communication routes through Azerbaijan

Investigative Committee: 10 officers charged in Armenia

FT: Azerbaijan demands EU funding and long-term contracts for gas supplies

Security Council Secretary: Azerbaijani troops must leave Armenian territory

US becomes 2nd largest gas supplier to EU

Russian Defense Ministry reports release of 107 Russian servicemen from Ukrainian captivity

How U.S supports Azerbaijan in 20 years by suspending 907th Amendment?

Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs will receive less funds in 2023 than in previous two years

German government urges its citizens to leave Iran

Armenian MFA: Unblocking infrastructures is one of the main directions of talks

Armenia MFA: We expect positive results in relations with Turkey in near future

Armenia to open diplomatic representations in several countries in 2023: Uruguay among them

Former Pakistani Prime Minister injured in shooting of election motorcade

Russian MFA: Great Britain transferred underwater drones to Ukraine

Armenia FM: International community has sent very clear signal to Azerbaijan

Prime Minister receives Arin Karapet, Swedish MP

Dollar, euro drop in Armenia

Armenia FM: In few days there will be meeting between me, Bayramov, Blinken in Washington

IRNA: Iran's IRGC eliminated a group that was planning attacks on government agencies

Lawcoster 'Pobeda' to resume flights to Armenia at end of this year

Armenia ex-President Kocharyan: One cannot despair, struggle must continue

Deputy FM: Armenia can make some progress in simplifying visa regime with EU

Turkey says Russia assures not to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine

CSTO deputy chief: Armenia-Azerbaijan escalation, confrontation risk remains

Armenian MFA: Cautious optimism in restoration of diplomatic relations with Hungary

Uzbekistan refuses to resume operation of Mir cards in country

Belarus Council: If Poland unleashes aggression, war will spread throughout Eastern Europe

Peskov: It is up to the Ministry of Defense to increase the term of military service

Valerie Boyer: Corrupt, racist Azerbaijan is attacking Armenia borders, seeking to continue ethnic cleansing, genocide

Meeting of CIS Security Councils chiefs kicks off in Moscow

Charles III travels with teddy bear and toilet seat

EU plans to finance programs in Armenia for AMD 55 billion 747 mln

Economy minister: Armenia and Iran are making efforts to jointly sell goods to third countries

Azerbaijani Armed Forces practice capturing borders during exercises on border with Iran

Storm in Philippines leaves 150 people killed

Inflation in Turkey is up to 85.51% in October

Armenia economy minister on Central Bank: First they said increase would be 4%t, then 1%, then 6%

Borrell thanks UN and Turkey for facilitating Russia's return to the grain deal

Foreign direct investments in Armenia last year totals AMD 129.2bln

Minister: Examination of Armenian soldiers' bodies continues

Jaguar station wagon from Elizabeth II fleet to be sold at auction

IMF plans to provide more than $165 million to Armenia

Marukyan: Baku says Karabakh Armenians should either stay on Azerbaijan terms or leave for 3rd country

Minister of Economy: Armenia's role in Eurasian Economic Union grows

Biden says U.S. troops will stay in Europe for a long time

Vahan Hunanyan: Yerevan and Tehran have no disagreements on most issues

Armenia, Russia to collaborate in information security

Artsakh State Minister: There are many principal disagreements with Armenian authorities

Public TV Company of Armenia to make purchase worth AMD 2 698.6mln for Junior Eurovision 2022

Armenian-Russian trade turnover up by 71.7%, Economy Minister

Secretaries of CIS Security Councils to discuss nuclear security

Economy minister: Armenia exports to other EEU countries increased 2 times

Outgoing Artsakh Minister Artak Beglaryan to take position in state government system

Japan Coast Guard reports 3 North Korean missile launches in a day

Pashinyan says Armenian government did a lot for revival of Armenian aviation

Oil falls in price

Patrushev comments on Zelenskiy's statement about preventive nuclear strike

WSJ: Americans favor Republicans over Democrats

Turkey announces normalization of grain corridor

Gold prices are down

Putin calls on CIS countries security councils to use all their security capabilities

SPRING PR founders were awarded the 'Global PR Leader of the year'

Copper prices are rising

State Duma member proposes to extend term of military service in Russia

Iranian MPs: Powerful Iran will never tolerate changing of its borders

Turkey to complete construction of pipeline in Black Sea in November

Newspaper: Armenia-Azerbaijan peace treaty to be signed in Georgia

US delivers more than 200 artillery systems to Ukraine since February

Secretary of Armenian Security Council to visit Moscow

Switzerland to direct $100 million to repair energy infrastructure in Ukraine

Study: Blue whales eat 10 million particles of microplastics a day

Microsoft president warns of shortage of staff to fight climate change

Latvia extends state of emergency on Belarus border

WSJ: UAE tried to convince Saudi Arabia not to cut oil production

Cavusoglu: Greece must stop arming the demilitarized islands in the Aegean Sea

Moody's downgrades outlook for banks in Germany, Italy, and 4 other countries to negative

About 40 international companies to announce their relocation to UAE by end of year
YEREVAN.  The Armenian side has three casualties, as a result of the diversionary infiltration attempt which Azerbaijani troops launched Thursday at Armenias state border, southeast of Chinari village.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan, Spokesperson of the Minister of Defense, told the aforementioned to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Two of the casualties are soldiers, whereas the other is an officer.

As reported earlier, Azerbaijani troops launched a diversionary infiltration attempt, on early in the morning on Thursday, at Armenias state border sector, southeast of Chinari village in Tavush Province.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan informed that the Republic of Armenia (RA) Armed Forces entered into a battle with the adversary.

Snipers and grenade launchers fires are shot, which continue, he noted. The RA Armed Forces fully control the situation by preventing the encroachment of the adversary.
YEREVAN.  Divisions of the Republic of Armenia (RA) Armed Forces have neutralized the Azerbaijani troops aggressive actions on Thursday morning.

The adversary has been driven back, having suffered injuries and casualties, including in the Armenian military positions, the Ministry of Defense (MOD) informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The RA Ministry of Defense possesses of irrefutable evidence of RA state border violation by the Azerbaijani side, reads the MOD statement. The military and political leadership of Azerbaijan bears the full accountability for the provocation that took place.

Azerbaijani troops had launched a diversionary infiltration attempt, on early Thursday morning, at Armenias state border, southeast of Chinari village in Tavush Province.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan, Spokesperson of the RA Minister of Defense, informed that the RA Armed Forces entered into a battle with the adversary.

Snipers and grenade launchers fires are shot, which continue, he noted. The RA Armed Forces fully control the situation by preventing the encroachment of the adversary.

As a result of this infiltration attempt, however, the Armenian armed forces suffered three casualties: Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh Melikyan, and Privates Edgar Narayan and Erik Abovyan.
YEREVAN.  At present, the situation is calm at the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, and the adversary has suffered up to seven military casualties.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan, Spokesperson of the Republic of Armenia (RA) Minister of Defense, informed the above-said.

The Armed Forces of Armenia are carrying out search and clearance work, he added. There are no injured in the RA Armed Forces.

Azerbaijani troops had launched a diversionary infiltration attempt, on early Thursday morning, at the RA state border, southeast of Chinari village in Tavush Province.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan had informed that the RA Armed Forces entered into a battle with the adversary.

Snipers and grenade launchers fires are shot, which continue, he noted. The RA Armed Forces fully control the situation by preventing the encroachment of the adversary.

The adversary was driven back, having suffered injuries and casualties, including in the Armenian military positions, informed the Ministry of Defense (MOD).

The RA Ministry of Defense possesses of irrefutable evidence of RA state border violation by the Azerbaijani side, reads the MOD statement. The military and political leadership of Azerbaijan bears the full accountability for the provocation that took place.

As a result of this infiltration attempt, however, the Armenian armed forces suffered three casualties: Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh Melikyan, and Privates Edgar Narayan and Erik Abovyan.
YEREVAN.  Office of the Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) of the Republic of Armenia (RA) has issued a statement in connection with the Azerbaijani armed forces diversionary infiltration attempt Thursday, at the border.

This action by the Azerbaijani armed forces clearly violates all international requirements for protecting the right to life.

Depriving a manincluding a military servicemanof life under the conditions when any likelihood of attack is absent, is subject to strong condemnation and is impermissible.

It is strictly reprehensible to launch a military action near an inhabited village; and in the morning and afternoon hours, in that, which makes real the chance of causing damage to the village residents, and such intent by the Azerbaijani armed forces.

Based on the results of the carrying out of fact-finding work [on location], substantiated assessments will be made, to submit to the relevant international organizations, the statement reads, in particular.

Azerbaijani troops had launched a diversionary infiltration attempt, on early Thursday morning, at the RA state border, southeast of Chinari village in Tavush Province.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan had informed that the RA Armed Forces entered into a battle with the adversary.

Snipers and grenade launchers fires are shot, which continue, he noted. The RA Armed Forces fully control the situation by preventing the encroachment of the adversary.

The adversary was driven back, having suffered injuries and casualties, including in the Armenian military positions, informed the Ministry of Defense (MOD).

The RA Ministry of Defense possesses of irrefutable evidence of RA state border violation by the Azerbaijani side, reads the MOD statement. The military and political leadership of Azerbaijan bears the full accountability for the provocation that took place.

As a result of this infiltration attempt, however, the Armenian armed forces suffered three casualties: Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh Melikyan, and Privates Edgar Narayan and Erik Abovyan.
The best investigative journalism troubles the powerfuland In These Times has been busy making trouble for 40 years now.

At the turn of the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt accused pioneering investigative reporters who were chronicling horrific labor conditions, racial violence and unsafe housing of focusing too much on the negative. Quoting a passage from John Bunyans 1678 novel The Pilgrims Progress, Roosevelt compared them to the man who could look no way but downward with the muck-rake in his hands.

Investigative journalists have since worn the badge of muckrakers proudly, and at In These Times, its a label that suits us just fine. The journalists who have worked here understand that its in the muck that the truth is often buried.

ITT has always been willing to dig into stories that the mainstream media ignoredperhaps due to ideological blinders, or corporate pressure, that keep them from looking downward at how the actions of governments and corporations impact marginalized communities. By continually raising this question, In These Times arrived first to the scene of some of the most controversial and contested stories of the past four decadesand caused no end of trouble for people in high places.

It was during the Reagan administration that In These Times investigative reporting came into its own. ITT dogged Reagan throughout the 1980s. At the height of the Iran-Contra affair, the paper had reporters in more than half a dozen countries chasing leads. Over a four-year period, it published dozens of articles connecting the threads of various programs through which the Reagan administration, circumventing Congress, channeled funds to paramilitary groups attempting to overthrow the elected government of Nicaragua. That included Vince Bielski and Dennis Bernsteins December 1986 story, which pieced together the outlines of what became a major scandal for the Reagan administration: that the Contras were involved in trafficking cocaine into the United States.
YEREVAN.  The Republic of Armenia Ministry of Foreign Affairs (RA MFA) issued a statement in connection with the Azerbaijani armed forces diversionary infiltration attempt Thursday, at the border.

We condemn in the strongest terms todays diversionary incursion attempt by Azerbaijan on the state border with Armenia, which resulted in human loses. We express our deepest condolences to the relatives and fellow servicemen of the fallen soldiers.

While the most serious damage caused to the settlement process in the result of the Azerbaijani aggression against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) this April has not been overcome yet, Baku embarks on a new adventurism grossly violating the agreements reached at the Vienna and St. Petersburg summits and the commitment to settle the issue through peaceful means. This is how Baku responds to the Foreign Ministers of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries who urged in Hamburg to adhere strictly to the 1994/95 ceasefire agreements.

On numerous occasions the international community, via the Co-Chairs, has called to maintain the ceasefire, especially during the holidays. By undertaking military diversionary incursion on the Christmas and New Years Eve, Baku acts against the universal human values.

The international community, first and foremost the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries, should take immediate steps to sober up the Azerbaijani leadership, who has lost the sense of reality, ignores and opposes with defiance to their calls and demands, reads the Armenia MFA statement.

Azerbaijani troops launched a diversionary infiltration attempt, on early Thursday morning, at the RA state border, southeast of Chinari village in Tavush Province.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan, Spokesperson of the RA Minister of Defense, had informed that the Armenian armed forces entered into a battle with the adversary.

Snipers and grenade launchers fires are shot, which continue, he noted. The RA Armed Forces fully control the situation by preventing the encroachment of the adversary.

The adversary was driven back, having suffered injuries and casualties, including in the Armenian military positions, informed the Ministry of Defense (MOD).

The RA Ministry of Defense possesses of irrefutable evidence of RA state border violation by the Azerbaijani side, reads the MOD statement. The military and political leadership of Azerbaijan bears the full accountability for the provocation that took place.

As a result of this infiltration attempt, however, the Armenian armed forces suffered three casualties: Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh Melikyan, and Privates Edgar Narayan and Erik Abovyan.
The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Secretariat received with a particular concern the information about the armed incident near Chinari village, in the Republic of Armenia (RA).

The aforesaid is noted in CSTO Secretary General Nikolay Bordyuzhas comments on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border incident, on Thursday.

We assess such actions in the territory of a CSTO member state as a provocation, especially against the backdrop of the quite serious incident in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, in April of this year, with the use of heavy weapons and military equipment.

Considering the efforts launched by the leaders of the two [conflicting] sides as well as of some [other] states, it seemed that the Karabakh conflict settlement process finally would be more active. However, the information being recently received from the region, [and] about the violation of the ceasefire agreements, especially the December 29 incident which has caused the death of military servicemen, gives rise to serious concern, reads the comments by the CSTO Secretary General.

Azerbaijani troops launched a diversionary infiltration attempt, on early Thursday morning, at the RA state border, southeast of Chinari village in Tavush Province.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan, Spokesperson of the RA Minister of Defense, had informed that the Armenian armed forces entered into a battle with the adversary.

Snipers and grenade launchers fires are shot, which continue, he noted. The RA Armed Forces fully control the situation by preventing the encroachment of the adversary.

The adversary was driven back, having suffered injuries and casualties, including in the Armenian military positions, informed the Ministry of Defense (MOD).

The RA Ministry of Defense possesses of irrefutable evidence of RA state border violation by the Azerbaijani side, reads the MOD statement. The military and political leadership of Azerbaijan bears the full accountability for the provocation that took place.

As a result of this infiltration attempt, however, the Armenian armed forces suffered three casualties: Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh Melikyan, and Privates Edgar Narayan and Erik Abovyan.
YEREVAN.  After the provocation it launched on Thursday morning, the Azerbaijani side now attempts to put the accountability for what occurred on the Armenian side.

The Republic of Armenia Ministry of Defense (RA MOD) noted the aforesaid in a new statement.

We announce yet again that irrefutable evidence regarding the Azerbaijani side being the aggressor are available at the disposal of the Armed Forces of Armenia. The RA Ministry of Defense has officially announced that the Azerbaijani side suffered losses during the provocation. The RA military servicemen were killed at the place of their service.

Against this backdrop, [Azerbaijans] allegations about the actions of a reconnaissance team of the Armenian side, and an Azerbaijani soldier going missing, become ridiculous.

The RA Ministry of Defense reaffirms its position regarding the need for the introduction of international mechanisms for investigation, to prevent such provocations and to ensure the controllability of the steady fulfillment of the internationally assumed obligations for the ceasefire, reads the MOD new statement.

As reported earlier, Azerbaijani troops launched a diversionary infiltration attempt, on early Thursday morning, at the RA state border, southeast of Chinari village in Tavush Province.

Artsrun Hovhannisyan, Spokesperson of the RA Minister of Defense, informed that the Armenian armed forces entered into a battle with the adversary. Snipers and grenade launchers fires are shot, which continue, he noted. The RA Armed Forces fully control the situation by preventing the encroachment of the adversary.

The Azerbaijani armed forces were driven back, having suffered injuries and casualtiesincluding in the Armenian military positions, informed the Armenia MOD. The RA Ministry of Defense possesses irrefutable evidence of RA state border violation by the Azerbaijani side, reads the MOD statement. The military and political leadership of Azerbaijan bears the full accountability for the provocation that took place.

As a result of this infiltration attempt, however, the Armenian armed forces suffered three casualties: Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh Melikyan, and Privates Edgar Narayan and Erik Abovyan.
YEREVAN. - The construction of the new high-voltage Armenia-Georgia overhead power transmission line will kick off next year.

Deputy Minister of Energy Infrastructure and Natural Resources of Armenia, Hayk Harutyunyan, said the aforementioned during a Facebook press-conference Thursday, summing up the work carried out in 2016.

The implementation of the program will enable the mutual energy supplies to reach 350 and then 700 MW.

The construction of the second high-voltage transmission line has already kicked off. It aims to increase the mutual energy supplies with Iran by several times.

According to Harutyunyan, as a result of implementing these two systematic programs, Armenia will have a principally new power system.

Armenia will thereby have an opportunity to export thrice more power than the consumption of our domestic market. This creates serious preconditions for becoming an important player in the regional processes, the Deputy Minister said.
YEREVAN. - The statement made by the Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Nikolay Bordyuzha regarding the incident on the ArmenianAzerbaijani border can be assessed as positive and targeted.

Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia, Eduard Sharmazanov, who is also the spokesperson for the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), told the aforementioned to Armenian News  NEWS.am.

I consider that statement positive for three reasons. First, the operative response from the CSTO is already very positive. Second, Bordyuzha regards the diversionary attempt in Chinari [village] as a provocation, that is, CSTO no longer speaks with general assessments. Nikolay Bordyuzha precisely qualifies the actions of Azerbaijan as a provocation, this being not only the position of the CSTO, but also that of the [OSCE Minsk Group] co-chair Russia. Third, speaking about the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR/Artsakh), the Secretary General of the CSTO uses the wording -  (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic) in the original Russian text. I dont remember the CSTO or other institution to mention the word Republic in its official written assessments when referring to Artsakh. This is a new impulse and pressure against Azerbaijan, he said.

In Sharmazanovs words, of course, a stricter assessment can be given, but this can be accepted to a certain extent as a targeted assessment, which named the Azerbaijanis actions a provocation. We should realize that there is a diplomatic vocabulary and from this standpoint this was quite a serious and targeted assessment.

Referring to the adversarys diversionary infiltration attempt on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, Sharmazanov noted that this is Azerbaijans response to the Saint Petersburg and Vienna agreements. It is also not ruled out that Azerbaijan, finding itself in a deadlock in the negotiation process, tries to either change the situation or make the talks more complicated, he noted. Aliyev makes such a step while the mediation sides are talking about the continuation of talks and immediate implementation of the principles adopted in Saint Petersburg and Vienna. This is a condemnable step. It shows the genuine nature of the state of Azerbaijan, which poses a serious threat to the regional security.

As reported earlier, Azerbaijani troops launched a diversionary infiltration attempt, on early Thursday morning, at the Republic of Armenia (RA) state border, southeast of Chinari village in Tavush Province.

The Azerbaijani armed forces were driven back, having suffered injuries and casualtiesincluding in the Armenian military positions, informed the Armenia MOD. The RA Ministry of Defense possesses irrefutable evidence of RA state border violation by the Azerbaijani side, reads the MOD statement. The military and political leadership of Azerbaijan bears the full accountability for the provocation that took place.

As a result of this infiltration attempt, however, the Armenian armed forces suffered three casualties: Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh Melikyan, and Privates Edgar Narayan and Erik Abovyan.
He calls out Tehran, saying that they have not become moderate nor rational with the advent of the JCPOA Nuclear Deal. Instead, they have become more entitled and emboldened to pursue anti-American and anti-Semitism. Further, Iran never signed the JCPOA nuclear deal, and Iranian leaders violated the deal three times in the past year.

In Resolution 2231, the UN Security Council made it clear that it calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology. According to Tasnim News Agency, as recently as December 28 the Iranian Air Defense held an operational test of Sayyad-3 missiles paired with Talash homegrown missile system, in southern parts of the country.

Additionally, Iran has increased strategic and tactical cooperation with Russia to undermine US interests, strengthening the Russia-China-Iran axis.

More shockingly, Iran continues to rank at the top of the list for executions per capita. Iran has now become the worlds leading executioner of juveniles.

When it comes to breaking international laws, in 2016 Iran reached new levels. The billions of dollars it received as part of the Nuclear Deal didnt encourage Tehran to become a rational and moderate state. Iran instead it used the money to pursue the ideals of Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Now listed as the top state sponsor of terrorism, Iran is accused of providing a range of support, including financial, training, and equipment, to groups around the world.

The first violation of the JCPOA nuclear deal was reported in July 2016, by Germanys domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The agency stated that the Iranian government was pursuing a clandestine path to obtain illicit nuclear technology and equipment from German companies, at what is, even by international standards, a quantitatively high level.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized Iran, but no action was taken.

Although Iran should request permission from a UN Security Council panel for purchases of nuclear direct-use goods, according to the nuclear deal, they did not. A report by the Institute for Science and International Security drew attention to Irans violation as well. The Institute for Science and International Security has learned that Irans Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) recently made an attempt to purchase tons of controlled carbon fiber from a country. This attempt occurred after Implementation Day of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The attempt to acquire carbon fiber was denied by the supplier and its government. Nonetheless, the AEOI had enough carbon fiber to replace existing advanced centrifuge rotors and had no need for additional quantities over the next several years, let alone for tons of carbon fiber. This attempt thus raises concerns over whether Iran intends to abide by its JCPOA commitments. In particular, Iran may seek to stockpile the carbon fiber so as to be able to build advanced centrifuge rotors far beyond its current needs under the JCPOA, providing an advantage that would allow it to quickly build an advanced centrifuge enrichment plant if it chose to leave or disregard the JCPOA during the next few years. The carbon fiber procurement attempt is also another example of efforts by the P5+1 to keep secret problematic Iranian actions.

In February 2016 as Iran exceeded its threshold for heavy water, used to produce nuclear weapons. In November 2016, according to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran once again violated the deal by holding more heavy water than permitted.

Iran was faced no consequences for either violation.

In 2016, Iran significantly ratcheted up its production of ballistic missiles, it test-fired at least eight ballistic missiles, each capable of carrying multiple nuclear heads. This is a blatant violation of the nuclear deal, as well as United Nations resolutions 1929 and 2231. The JCPOA states that Iran mustnt undertake any ballistic missile activity until the date eight years after the JCPOA Adoption Day or until the date on which the IAEA submits a report confirming the Broader Conclusion, whichever is earlier.

The UN Security Council resolution (Paragraph 3 of Annex B of resolution 2231 of 2015) is clear. The resolution calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.

Another UN Security Council resolution, 1929, also states, Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology, and that States shall take all necessary measures to prevent the transfer of technology or technical assistance to Iran related to such activities.

It is accurate to argue that the Obama Administrations appeasement policies towards Iran, gave Tehran tremendous financial relief. Meanwhile, Irans Supreme leader Khamenei instigated more anti-American sentiments and continued lashing out at the Great Satan. Iran publicly harassed the US Navy, detained US sailors, and imprisoned several American citizens. Khamenei has also threatened Israel repeatedly and made remarks about wiping Israel from the face of earth in less than 8 minutes. In December 2016, Khamenei stated that Israel would not exist in 25 years. He even published a book laying out a plan on how to destroy Israel.

As Tehran became more heavily armed, it increased its interventions in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and intensified its assistance to its Shiite proxies and Bashar al Assad, bolstering the Shia axis. Iran also increased strategic and tactical cooperation with Russia to undermine US interests, strengthening the Russia-China-Iran axis.

Finally, when it comes to human rights, Iran set some of the worst records since this regimes establishment in 1979. Human Rights Watch say that in 2016 Iran escalated the mass executions of minorities, as well as the imprisonment of human rights and political activists. Iran ranks top in the world for executions per capita, and according to Amnesty International, Iran is the worlds leading executioner of juveniles.

There is correlation between Iran gaining more money and breaching international laws. The appeasements of this past year, and the violation gone unpunished allows Iran to continue committing human rights violations, spreading its revolutionary values of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, destabilizing the region, intensifying regional conflicts and humanitarian tragedies, and pursing its regional ambitions.
YEREVAN. - The diversionary infiltration attempt on the border with Armenia came to once again prove that Azerbaijan is continuing a policy not aimed at the enhancement of peace in the region.

Spokesperson for the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), Edurard Sharmazanov, who is also the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly (NA), said the aforementioned after the session of the RPA Executive Body on Thursday.

In his words, this is a challenge to the regional peace and stability. ''The international community should condemn this operation in the strictest way possible. The military and political leadership of Armenia is fully responsible for all this,'' Sharmazanov stressed, adding that he expects a very strict assessment from the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs as well.

As reported earlier, Azerbaijani troops launched a diversionary infiltration attempt, on early Thursday morning, at the Republic of Armenia (RA) state border, southeast of Chinari village in Tavush Province. The Azerbaijani armed forces were driven back, having suffered injuries and casualtiesincluding in the Armenian military positions, informed the Armenia MOD. As a result of this infiltration attempt, however, the Armenian armed forces suffered three casualties: Senior Lieutenant Shavarsh Melikyan, and Privates Edgar Narayan and Erik Abovyan.
IS Provides Details of Grozny Operation in Naba 61, Promotes Attack in Italy by Anis Amri
(Bloomberg) -- China has criticized Japans decision to add the word Taiwan to the name of its de facto embassy in Taipei, risking fresh tensions over the self-governing island after a recent spat between China and the U.S.

The Interchange Association, Japan said on its website Wednesday that starting next year it will become the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association. It said the office "will continue to act as a bridge between Japan and Taiwan and is determined to further advance relations."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular briefing that Beijing is "strongly unhappy with Japans negative moves concerning the Taiwan issue." A statement on the ministrys website urged Japan to "stick to the One-China principle, properly deal with Taiwan-related issues, and refrain from sending wrong signals to the Taiwan administration and the international community or causing new disruptions to China-Japan relations."

The naming spat adds to simmering tensions in East Asia. Tomomi Inada, Japans defense minister, on Thursday visited a Tokyo shrine seen in neighboring countries as a symbol of her countrys wartime aggression; Japans military said Sunday it spotted a Chinese aircraft carrier sailing into the Western Pacific near Okinawa; and last week a Japanese government agency said Chinese universities and think tanks were forming ties with Okinawan independence groups.

Trump Friction

Many countries including Japan do not formally recognize Taiwan as an independent nation, a condition of maintaining diplomatic ties with Beijing. China works to ensure that Taiwan uses other names when it participates in international organizations or events, such as "Chinese Taipei" during the Olympics.

Relations between Taiwan and China have soured since Tsai Ing-wen became the islands president in May. Tsai has declined to endorse the One-China policy, a long-standing acknowledgment that the two are part of the same China, even if they disagree on what that means. China considers Taiwan a breakaway province.

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Friction over Taiwan escalated after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump accepted a phone call earlier this month from Tsai -- whom he referred to on Twitter as Taiwanese president -- and indicated he could be willing to reconsider his countrys stance on the One-China policy. Japan has also angered China by supporting nations engaged in a dispute with Beijing over the South China Sea.

Taiwans Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed Japans move, saying the new title reflected its work in Taiwan and confirmed the development of ties with Japan.

"In recent years, Taiwan and Japan have grown close," the ministry said in an e-mailed statement. "Taiwan and Japan both enjoy the universal values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law. Opinion polls show the feeling of the two peoples are close and friendly."

(Updates with Japan defense minister visiting Yasukuni shrine in fourth paragraph.)

--With assistance from Andy Sharp To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Keith Zhai in Beijing at qzhai4@bloomberg.net, Debra Mao in Taipei at dmao5@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net, Philip Glamann

2016 Bloomberg L.P.
The Italian state will foot 6.6 billion euros of the 8.8 billion euro ($9.2 billion) bill for bailing out struggling Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS), the country's central bank said Thursday. The European Central Bank, citing the need for recapitalisation, on Tuesday raised the total capital required by more than three billion euros than had been judged necessary just one month ago. Explaining the higher cost of the bailout, Italy's central bank in a statement said the public rescue plan was costlier than the original "market solution" directed at private investors. The former plan was calculated at 5 billion euros, of which about 3 billion euros was meant to cover losses deriving from the sale of BMPS's bad loans and 2 billion euros was to protect against an increase in "the coverage ratio of the unlikely-to-pay loans". However in the case of Monte dei Paschi di Siena "the immediate cost to the state" under the public option would amount to about 4.6 billion euros, it said. "To this must be added the subsequent compensation of retail subscribers (about 2 billion euros) for a total of about 6.6 billion euros." The statement added: "The cost to entities other than the Italian state will be about 2.2 billion euros. Accordingly, the total cost amounts to 8.8 billion euros." Italian media had reported the likely cost to taxpayers as being around six billion euros. BMPS came last in the ECB's bank stress tests this summer. It has been forced to raise capital twice since 2014 and its share price has plunged 80 percent since the start of the year, meaning it faced an uphill battle to win over investors. Founded in Siena in 1472, BMPS has been in trouble for years. Weakened by the disastrous purchase in 2007 of the Antonveneta bank at twice the estimated value, it drifted into scandal when its management team was accused of fraud and misuse of funds. The European Commission, meanwhile, announced late Thursday that it had given the go-ahead for a six-month extension -- until 30 June 2017 -- of a bank guarantee scheme, covering "liquidity support measures in favour of solvent credit institutions in Italy for use in case of need". "This means that regardless of circumstances banks will have no difficulties in funding their operations and deposit access will be ensured at all times," a Commission spokesman said.
In 2017, the Netherlands will celebrate the centenary of the Dutch art and design movement De Stijl with a series of events including three major exhibitions at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague that will kick off in February.

Known for its iconic red, yellow and blue color palette made famous by the artist Piet Mondrian, the De Stijl movement began in the Netherlands in 1917.

In the same year, painter, poet and critic Theo van Doesburg launched the magazine De Stijl ("The style") to provide a platform for avant-garde artists, designers and architects.The publication attracted contributors including Gerrit Rietveld, Bart van der Leck and Vilmos Huszar.

De Stijl, which is also referred to as neo-plasticism, aimed at pure abstraction by reducing visual compositions to the bare essentials: straight lines and primary colors. Piet Mondrian's abstract paintings in primary colors with black lines on a white background quickly became famous and helped orient the movement.

De Stijl artists aimed to achieve a better and more modern society, and their aesthetic was applied across design, fashion, architecture and advertising. Examples include Gerrit Rietveld's Red and Blue chair, kitchens by Piet Zwart for Bruynzeel, Jan Wils' Papaverhof housing complex and Jan Duiker's Nirwana apartment block in The Hague.

For the De Stijl centenary, the Netherlands is launching a year-long program of events under the title "Mondrian to Dutch Design: 100 Years of De Stijl."

The Gemeentemuseum will be at the center of the festivities, with plans to present its entire Mondrian collection -- more than 300 works in all -- in a single retrospective.

On February 11, 2017, the museum will present the first of its three exhibitions timed to mark the De Stijl centenary. "Piet Mondrian and Bart van der Leck: Inventing a New Art" will look at the genesis of De Stijl's iconic palette through the friendship and mutual influence of two of the movement's foremost painters.

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Running through May 21, that exhibition will be followed by "The Discovery of Mondrian," a major retrospective running from June 3 to September 24, 2017. The show of more than 300 works will trace the early history of modern art and the artist's life in Amsterdam, Paris, London and New York.

A concurrent exhibition beginning June 10, 2017 will examine De Stijl's influence on design. "The Architecture and Interiors of De Stijl" will show how De Stijl artists designed the modern city, street and home, shedding new light on a movement typically seen as austere. The exhibition runs through September 17.

Find out more at: www.gemeentemuseum.nl/en
A nationwide ceasefire in Syria brokered by Russia and Turkey took effect at midnight (2200 GMT), in a potentially major breakthrough in the conflict of more than five years. The deal, which does not include designated "terrorists" like the Islamic State group, was announced hours earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin and confirmed by the Syrian army and opposition. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there had been "total calm since the start of the ceasefire in many provinces all over Syria" adding that "no violations were monitored in all regions". According to an AFP correspondent in Eastern Ghouta, the shelling and airstrikes stopped from more than one hour in the region after intensive shelling and raids on Thursday. AFP correspondents in Damascus and Idlib said there had been no sound of shelling, airstrikes or clashes since midnight. The agreement, hailed by Syria's government as a "real opportunity" to find a political solution to the war, comes a week after the regime recaptured second city Aleppo in a major blow to rebel forces. The deal was brokered by Russia and Turkey, which back opposing sides in the conflict, but does not involve Washington, which has negotiated previous ceasefires with Moscow. Putin said Damascus and the "main forces of the armed opposition" had inked a truce and a document expressing a readiness to start peace talks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the agreement as a "historic opportunity" to end the Syrian conflict, which has killed more than 310,000 people and forced millions from their homes. Putin said he would also reduce Moscow's military contingent in Syria that has been flying a bombing campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad since last year. The Kremlin strongman, however, said Russia would continue to fight "terrorism" in Syria and maintain its support for the regime. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said seven opposition groups, including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham, had signed the deal and those who failed to adhere would be considered "terrorists". Erdogan indicated Turkey would press on with its four-month incursion into Syria against Islamic State group jihadists and Kurdish militia. - Astana peace talks - Syria's army said the deal did not include IS and the former Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, now rebranded the Fateh al-Sham Front. That could cause complications in areas like Idlib in northwestern Syria, where Fateh al-Sham is allied with rebel groups that have signed on to the deal. Syria's political opposition and rebels had confirmed their backing for the truce, saying it applied to all parts of the country. "The agreement is for all of Syria and contains no exceptions or preconditions," said Osama Abou Zeid, a legal adviser to rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner. The agreement comes after Turkey and Russia brokered a deal to allow the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians and rebel fighters from Aleppo. Moscow and Ankara are now pushing for peace talks between Damascus and the rebels to start soon in Kazakhstan's capital Astana. "Now we need to do everything for these agreements to come into force, for them to work, so that the negotiating teams that have been or are being formed promptly and as soon as possible arrive in Astana," Putin said. UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura said he hoped the agreement would "pave the way for productive talks" in Kazakhstan, but also reiterated he wants negotiations mediated by his office to continue early next year. - 'Positive development' - Russia and Turkey have both said the peace talks they will supervise are meant to supplement UN-backed peace efforts, rather than replace them entirely. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia, Turkey and Iran were arranging for the talks and pressing for other key international players to get involved. Lavrov said Moscow would invite Egypt and try to attract other regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Jordan. He added Moscow would seek to involve US President-elect Donald Trump's administration once he takes office in less than a month, but the process does not appear to involve outgoing President Barack Obama's administration. The US State Department called the ceasefire deal a "positive development" and said it hoped it would lead to fresh negotiations on Syria's political future. Abou Zeid confirmed the truce deal was intended to pave the way for new talks in Astana, with the High Negotiations Committee that has represented the opposition at previous negotiations expected to participate. Turkey has long backed Syria's opposition, and its relations with Russia soured last year after Ankara shot down a Russian warplane. But the two countries have worked closely of late on Syria, and Turkey was conspicuously quiet as Assad's forces retook Aleppo.
Zambia has ordered the national air force into action to fight a plague of pests that has invaded maize crops and threatened vital food supplies.

The air force is transporting pesticides across the country so that fields can be sprayed in an attempt to combat infestations of "army worms", a type of larvae moth that can decimate crops.

"The Zambia Air Force has since begun to airlift chemicals," President Edward Lungu's spokesman said in statement.

"The president has directed that the chemicals that were purchased under emergency operations should be distributed to all parts of the country."

Agriculture ministry permanent secretary Julius Shawa told reporters that army worms had damaged crops in four of the country's ten provinces -- Copperbelt, Luapula, Central and Lusaka.

"It is not the entire province. It's only some districts in the four provinces," said Shawa.

Lungu's spokesman said the president was concerned that harvest volumes would be badly damaged "if the outbreak of the worms is not controlled speedily."

No details were available on the number of aircraft involved in the operation.

Maize -- or corn -- is a stable crop across much of Africa, used to make dishes such as pap.
The discovery of a burned-out car in Rio state with a body inside has sparked fears that it might be that of the Greek ambassador to Brazil, missing since Monday. Rio police were examining the corpse and scene but could not say whether it was that of the envoy, 59-year-old Kyriakos Amiridis. "The information that we can confirm right now is that we have found a car in (the district of) Nova Iguacu with a body and it is being investigated," a source in the homicide squad told AFP. The source would not say whether the license plate of the car was from the rental the ambassador was using, nor when DNA results on the body would be back. Amiridis had been on vacation with his family in Rio de Janeiro's northern Nova Iguacu area since December 21. He was due to fly back to Brasilia on January 9, a Greek embassy official told AFP. But he went missing on Monday night, after going out of the apartment they were renting and taking the car, according to Brazilian media. His Brazilian wife formally declared him missing on Wednesday. The Brazilian news website published photos of the burned car found on the slope of a busy suburban thoroughfare. It reported that police "suspected" the body inside to be that of the ambassador. The Greek foreign ministry had earlier issued a statement saying that after Amiridis was declared missing, "the full mobilization of all the competent Brazilian authorities was requested." Amiridis was named ambassador this year. He had previously served as Greece's consul general in Rio from 2001 to 2004. He served as Greece's ambassador to Libya from 2012 to 2016. He is married and has a daughter, according to the embassy in Brasilia.
(PHOTO: Reuters)

An Indonesian man and woman who were allegedly planning to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have been deported by Singapores Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA).

According to a Straits Times report, the couple were deported to Batam on Tuesday (27 December). Riau Islands police spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Sapporo Erlangga, told the broadsheet that the duo arrived at HarbourFront Centre in Singapore on Monday and were held for interrogation before being deported the next day.

They are now under interrogation with police and immigration officers. They planned to go to Syria. Investigation (sic) is being carried out intensively on whether they are planning to join ISIS, said Erlangga.

The man, identified only as MNA, is a 40-year-old native of the Medan, North Sumatra province. The woman, also aged 40, was identified only as SI and is said to live in West Java province.

The couple had departed from Batam via speed boat on Monday afternoon. They had planned to continue their trip to Syria from Singapore.

In February, Singapore deported four Indonesians who were also planning to travel on to Syria. The three staff members of a West Java radical Islamic boarding school and a teenage student were sent home after after investigations revealed that they had plans to make their way to Syria to fight for ISIS, said Singapores Ministry of Home Affairs.
DAVAO CITY  President Duterte yesterday told Filipinos not to believe Catholic priests and urged them to join the Iglesia ni Duterte, a religion he would establish where there is no prohibition and men are allowed to have five wives.

The Catholic Church has been critical of Dutertes drug war, which is marked by summary killings and human rights violations.

Duterte blasted the Catholic Church anew after the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines and other churches, including the Redemptorist Church in Baclaran, launched exhibits of photos of summary killings under Dutertes bloody drug war.

In response, Duterte threw insults at the Church during the Christmas party of 2,000 barangay captains and councilors in his hometown Davao City yesterday.

You say Duterte killer. You priests, you blame me for the death of thousands of drug addicts, even those who died in hospitals, you still blame me. But you are the ones who killed Christ, Duterte said.

The President also claimed that the Catholic Church has been so hypocritical of his drug war and yet it has not lifted a finger to help the more than four million drug addicts in the country despite collecting large amounts of money during mass.

They always shout in protest and yet they did not do anything against illegal drugs. They never bothered to help, he said.

There is something new these days. Iglesia ni Duterte naay bag-o. Walay bawal-bawal puwede lima ka asawa. Pero saw-a ang problema (Iglesia ni Duterte, where there is no prohibition, you can even have five wives. But make sure you are responsible for your problems).

The Church is not giving anything even if they collect so much. My statement is full of sarcasm because they (priests) have been criticizing me. They are hypocrites, he added.

Duterte also said that he believes there is a God and he believes in Allah, but he does not believe in religion, particularly the Catholic Church because it is sowing fear among its faithful about the existence of heaven and hell.

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Do not believe it. That is what that religion is all about, they are instilling fear that you will go to hell if you are a sinner. But you will only know if there is indeed a hell if you die, the President said.

Duterte told barangay officials to wait for him to die because he would come back and tell them if there is really heaven or hell.

Be careful about religion, it is about gold. It is about gold. They have not done anything. Where is their God and their grace? There is the hypocrisy of it all, he said.

Body of Christ sa inyong igit (in your poop), the President added.

Duterte also likened the Catholic Church to the United States under President Barack Obama, the United Nations and the Commission on Human Rights that have all called his attention to the rising number of summary killings in the drug war.

America did not do anything for the four million Filipino addicts. And they even scold me, he added.

The President claimed he knows the Catholic Church so well since he studied at Cor Jesu College in Digos City, Davao del Sur and at the Ateneo de Davao University, where he was taught about mortal sin and venial sin.

Catholic is a sordid religion. It is about time to show you its history. There were popes who sired a child and even had sex with his child, that was Pope Leo, the President claimed.

Why? Is there a God who is evil who makes hell? he further asked.

He also urged Filipinos not to believe in the priests blessing the dead with holy water. He noted that the faithful even pay for the rites as well as for the holy water.

Basbas basbas kayo diyan. Eh, galing lang naman yang tubig niyo sa Davao City Water District (You keep on blessing. Yet the water you use is from Davao City Water District), he added.

Duterte: No blessing, no heros burial for me

Duterte also said that he does not want his remains to be blessed by a priest.

He wants his body to be cremated within 24 hours after his death just like what was done to the remains of his mother Soledad in 2012.

Cremate me within 24 hours. And there should be no blessing of holy water. I do not hold on to anything. If I go, I go, he said.

Spare me the drama of all those ceremonies. I do not like it, nakokornihan ako (I find it corny), he added.

And despite being president, Duterte said he does not want to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, where Duterte allowed dictator Ferdinand Marcos to be buried despite public outrage over the heros burial for one whose regime committed plunder and atrocities.

Do not bury me there at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, sa kanila na lang yan (give it to them), Duterte said.

Millions in illegal drugs seized

As Duterte continues to defend the drug war, the police seized millions worth of illegal drugs.

In Bukidnon, police seized P20 million worth of suspected shabu loaded in a car intercepted at a checkpoint on Tuesday afternoon.

Criminal Investigation and Detection Group chief Roel Obusan identified the suspects from Maguindanao as Nahar Apam, 19, of Awang Datu Odin, Sinsuat; Sohud Salik, 26, of Maitong, Kabuntalan; Tho Tha, 25, of Datu Piang; and Johari Akmad, 27, of Talayan.

The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), on the other hand, intercepted 11 kilos of marijuana at the Port of Dumangas in Iloilo on Dec. 23.

In a statement yesterday, the PCG said the illegal drugs worth about P110,000 were seized from two passengers about to board a vessel to Bacolod by operatives from its K-9 unit and sub-station.

A report to the PCG headquarters showed that the contraband was discovered after the two suspects identified as Tonichi Ami and Abdullah Ishaq refused to submit their backpacks for inspection before boarding the ship.

The two suspects ran away outside the port area and were later intercepted hiding in nearby houses, the PCG said.

The seized marijuana was turned over to the local police for proper disposition, the PCG added.  With Edu Punay, Cecille Suerte Felipe
NIAMEY (Reuters) - Dozens of Boko Haram fighters have given themselves up to authorities in southern Niger, the interior minister said, days after the Islamist group suffered key losses over the border in Nigeria. "Thirty-one young people from Diffa, who were enrolled a few years ago in Boko Haram, decided to surrender," minister Mohamed Bazoum wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, above pictures of him touring the area near Nigeria's northeast border. The fighters arrived in the remote desert town of Diffa in groups and were being held by local authorities. "I learnt that the first who surrendered were not arrested, and I surrendered," a former Boko Haram combatant told national television. "We expect a pardon from the government so that we can participate in the development of the country and help us get rid of the trauma." In June, tens of thousands of people fled Diffa as Boko Haram swept the region. Five Niger soldiers were killed by the militants near Diffa in September. In a statement carried later on national television, Bazoum said the government would welcome the former fighters "with open arms", adding: "All those who have parents who are with Boko Haram can tell them to return. Boko Haram is now weak." Boko Haram has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than 2 million during a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state in Nigeria. In recent years its attacks have spilled into neighbouring Niger, Cameroon and Chad. Hundreds of Boko Haram fighters surrendered in Chad in October and November as the group ceded territory. The group controlled an area about the size of Belgium in early 2015 but has since been pushed back by international forces including troops from Niger. Nigeria's army captured its last enclave in the vast Sambisa forest on Friday, President Muhammadu Buhari said on Saturday. (Reporting Boureima Balima; Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Andrew Roche)
BATON ROUGE, La.  State agriculture officials say theyve confirmed a case of Equine Herpes Myeloencephalopathy, an often deadly neurological disease spread by horse-to-horse contact, at the New Orleans Fair Grounds Racetrack.

The Louisiana Department of Agriculture & Forestry, in a news release Wednesday, said a 2-year-old thoroughbred gelding reportedly developed a fever and neurological signs last week and was euthanized Dec. 26. Nasal swab and blood tests were confirmed positive for Equine Herpes Virus-1 neurogenic strain. EHM is caused from a mutant strain of EHV-1, a common respiratory virus.

Although not transmissible to humans, department officials said EHM can be spread through the air, contaminated equipment, clothing and hands. Symptoms include fever, ocular or nasal discharge, limb swelling, abortion and neurologic signs like unsteady gait, urine dribbling, hind limb weakness and inability to rise. There is no cure but symptoms are treatable.

LDAF said no other horses at the Fair Grounds have shown signs of the disease, but the barn where the affected horse was housed is currently under quarantine. Forty-six horses in the barn are being monitored twice daily for clinical signs of the disease such as fever.

As a result of the EHM case, biosecurity measures at the barn and high traffic areas of the track have been ramped up. Those measures include restricting personnel within the quarantined barn and hand, boot, and equipment sanitizing stations have been set up.

An epidemiological investigation also is underway by state and federal animal health officials as they continue to monitor the situation.

State officials are reminding horse owners to be vigilant at horse events and to practice preventative measures such as vaccination, hand-washing, and not sharing equipment.

The department said EHM was last detected at the Fair Grounds in 2008.
President-elect Donald Trump continued to berate the United Nations on Wednesday, saying the organization is causing problems rather than solving them and that it will be a waste of time and money if it doesnt start living up to its potential.

Trump was asked by a reporter if he wants the United States to leave the 71-year-old institution. The president-elected stopped short of endorsing such a move but heaped additional criticism on an organization that two days earlier he said had become  just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time.

There is such tremendous potential, but it is not living up, Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They dont. They cause problems.

So, if it lives up to the potential, its a great thing, Trump added. And if it doesnt, its a waste of time and money.

Trump has been harshly critical of the U.N. in the wake of last weeks adoption of a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Trump had advocated for the United States to block the move.

Instead, President Barack Obama instructed U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power to abstain from voting, on the grounds that the Israeli governments continued support for expanding Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory could undermine any prospect of eventually reaching a two-state solution to the simmering conflict.

Secretary of State John Kerry elaborated on the Obama administrations position during a speech on Wednesday.

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President-elect Donald Trump provided new details Wednesday of his agreement with SoftBank chief executive Masayoshi Son to generate thousands of jobs in the United States, part of a string of unusually direct negotiations between Trump and corporate America.

Trump said telecom corporation Sprint, owned by Tokyo-based SoftBank, will move 5,000 jobs to the United States from other countries, but he provided no other details. In a statement, however, Sprint appeared to contradict Trumps claim, indicating that only some of the jobs will be shifted from foreign locations and that the rest will be newly created positions.

Sprint did not specify which countries the jobs might come from but said the additions would include posts in customer service and sales. It expected to add them by the end of fiscal year 2017.

Trump also said Virginia-based start-up OneWeb would create 3,000 jobs. That company recently received about $1 billion in financing from SoftBank.

Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida, Trump said that bringing jobs to the United States from other countries was a nice change and credited Son for the deal.

Son met with Trump in New York earlier this month at the president-elects transition team headquarters in Trump Tower. At that time, Son announced plans to invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 new jobs  moves that Trump said were spurred by his presidential victory. It remained unclear whether the jobs announced Wednesday were part of that promise.

However, in the month before the presidential election, SoftBank said it intended to contribute $25 billion to an international fund that would invest in global technology companies over the next five years. It is unclear whether that money is funding any of the U.S. initiatives Son has announced with Trump since then.

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President Barack Obama on Wednesday created new national monuments in a sacred tribal site in southeastern Utah and in a swath of Nevada desert, after years of political fights over the fate of the areas.

The designations further cement Obamas environmental legacy as one of the most consequential  and contentious  in presidential history. He now has invoked his executive power to create national monuments 29 times during his tenure, establishing or expanding protections for more than 553 million acres of federal lands and waters.

Environmental groups have praised the conservation efforts, but critics say they amount to a federal land grab. Some worry that the new designations could fuel another armed protest by antigovernment forces inspired by the Cliven Bundy family, such as the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon this year.

Obamas newest designations include two sprawling Western landscapes that are under threat, yet also where local residents are deeply divided on how the land should be used.

In Utah, where the federal government owns roughly two thirds of the land, the designation of another 1.35-million acres to create the Bears Ears National Monument undoubtedly will prove polarizing.

For the first time, Native American tribes will offer management input for a national monument through an inter-tribal commission. Five tribes that often have been at odds in the past  the Hopi, Navajo, Uintah and Ouray Ute, Ute Mountain Ute and Pueblo of Zuni  will together have responsibility for protecting an area that contains well-preserved remnants of ancestral Pueblo sites dating back more than 3,500 years.

We have always looked to Bears Ears as a place of refuge, as a place where we can gather herbs and medicinal plants, and a place of prayer and sacredness, Russell Begaye, president of the Navajo Nation, said in a call with reporters Wednesday. These places  the rocks, the wind, the land  they are living, breathing things that deserve timely and lasting protection.

While many environmentalists and archaeologists supported their monument, most Utah politicians opposed the sites unilateral protection. Instead, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop, R-Utah, and a fellow Utah Republican, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, devoted three years to drafting a land-use bill that would have protected a large portion of the site but would have allowed some development. The bill stalled in the House.

In a statement Wednesday, Chaffetz said he was outraged by the designation, saying Obamas decision politicizes a long-simmering conflict.

The midnight monument is a slap in the face to the people of Utah, attempting to silence the voices of those who will bear the heavy burden it imposes, he said, vowing to work with the Trump administration to try to repeal the decision. It does not have the support of the governor, a single member of the states congressional delegation, nor any local elected officials or state legislators who represent the area.

Meanwhile, the Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada has been a site of contention for more than 15 years. As Las Vegas sought to expand, local, state and federal managers agreed to protect species such as the imperiled desert tortoise in Gold Butte. But they did little for either the animals or the actual sagebrush steppe and Mojave Desert in the roughly 300,000-acre area marked by fossilized sand dunes and panels of petroglyphs that tower over the landscape.

Though all the legal grazing permits in the area northeast of the Las Vegas were sold more than a decade ago as part of a deal with environmental groups and county officials, a single family  headed by cattle rancher Cliven Bundy  refused to recognize federal officials authority over the government land. The Bundys engaged in an armed standoff with Bureau of Land Management officials in 2014; several still await trial for the confrontation. Their followers occupied the Malheur refuge in January.

In a statement, Obama said Wednesdays designations protect some of our countrys most important cultural treasures, including abundant rock art, archaeological sites, and lands considered sacred by Native American tribes. Todays actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has put more than 5 million acres of federal land in his home state off limits to development, pressed relentlessly for Obama to invoke his executive authority on behalf of Gold Butte. Reid intensified his campaign when the Bundys were jailed earlier this year for a takeover at the Oregon wildlife refuge, arguing that any pushback would be minimized while they were incarcerated.

Gold Butte is a fascinating place full of natural wonders, Reid said in a statement Wednesday. Protecting Gold Butte ensures that generations of people will continue to have the opportunity to experience Nevadas natural beauty. Weve done something lasting and historic today.

Obama on Wednesday created both sites using his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives president power to designate national monuments without approval from Congress. But Republicans have raised the prospect of curtailing the law when they control both the executive and legislative branches next year.

How their effort fares could determine not only what safeguards persist for the landscape, rock carvings and other archaeological sites in Bears Ears and Gold Butte, but what power future presidents can wield over the nations most ecologically and historically significant federal holdings.

Kristen Brengel, vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, said in an interview that she and others just hope the American public rejects efforts to curtail the act. Both Bishop and the congressman Donald Trump has tapped to head the Interior Department, Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., support changes.

Its a wonderful law that allows the president to make quick decisions to protect areas when they need it, Brengel said. Why would we want to destroy that?

BLM officials have documented acts of vandalism and looting in Bears Ears, but Bishop said he does not view it as being in imminent danger. He met on Dec. 5 with members of Trumps transition team to discuss whether the next administration would consider overturning any designation Obama made in the area.

The Antiquities Act does not prohibit a president from abolishing or modifying the terms of a previously declared monument which has not been ratified by Congress, Bishop said in a statement after the meeting.

In a few instances, presidents have modified the size of monuments established by their predecessors: Woodrow Wilson slashed nearly half the acreage of Mount Olympus National Monument, which Theodore Roosevelt had established. But in 1938, the U.S. attorney general wrote a formal opinion saying the Antiquities Act authorized a president to establish a monument but did not grant a president the right to abolish one.

According to John Leshy, a former Interior solicitor general who now teaches at the University of California Hastings College of Law, neither the unilateral modification nor abolishment of a national monument has been tested in court. Congress, though, can potentially do both of those things.

We do not see that the Trump administration has authority to undo this, Christy Goldfuss, managing director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said Wednesday.

Only Franklin D. Roosevelt has used the Antiquities Act more than Obama. And the president is likely to either match Roosevelts record with a 30th designation, according to several individuals briefed on the White Houses plans, or possibly to exceed it by doing two more before leaving office Jan. 20.

Administration officials are eyeing an expansion of the California Coastal National Monument and Oregons Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument as well as the establishment of one monument in South Carolina and two in Alabama to commemorate the Reconstruction and civil rights eras, respectively.

Yet given Republicans presidential and congressional victories last month, several proposals are likely to remain unrealized. Some activists are disappointed that Obama may not designate the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument, which would stretch more than a million acres and protect the area from new uranium mining. The monument has been supported by Native American tribes and, according to polling, a majority of Arizonans. But the states two GOP senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, have so far opposed it, in part because of concerns it would prevent public access and complicate forest-thinning efforts necessary to prevent wildfire hazards.

Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee and supporter of the Grand Canyon designation, noted that Congress has considered more than a dozen pieces of legislation aimed at curtailing, restricting or eliminating the presidents authority under the Antiquities Act. Until now, the threat of an Obama veto effectively blocked those efforts. That wont be the case going forward.

That battle will come. I dont see it going away, Grijalva said. And it will set up a key question for Trump: How willing is this new president to give up power?

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An oil truck slid off the road and spilled fuel into the Cimarron River near Eagle Nest in Northern New Mexico shortly before noon on Wednesday, according to a spokeswoman for New Mexico State Police.

Sgt. Elizabeth Armijo said the trailer was carrying unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel, and between 500 and 1100 gallons of diesel fuel spilled into the river after the crash.

State Police, Eagle Nest Fire Department, and Raton Fire Department responded to the scene approximately five miles east of Eagle Nest on westbound U.S. 64.

The CMV (commercial motor vehicle) was removed from the river hours after the crash, Armijo said. A federally approved hazmat team has arrived on scene to initiate assessment and clean-up.

She said police cited the truck driver, from the Fronk Oil Company of Booker Tex., for careless driving and issued an inspection of the truck.

Armijo said police are working with state and local agencies to inform those in the area who may be affected by the spill.

In addition, the NM Environment Department is working with State Police to fully assess the environmental impacts of the accident and to ensure all is handled appropriately, she said.
An estimated 500 to 1,100 gallons of diesel fuel spilled into the Cimarron River in northern New Mexico after a commercial truck slid off a highway near Eagle Nest on Tuesday, according to New Mexico State Police.

A federally approved hazmat team has arrived on scene to initiate assessment and clean-up, State Police spokeswoman Sgt. Elizabeth Armijo said in a news release issued Wednesday. State Police is working with other state and local agencies to inform those in the area who potentially may be affected by this incident. In addition, the (New Mexico) Environment Department is working with State Police to fully assess the environmental impacts of the accident and to ensure all is handled appropriately.

The crash and spill happened around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday on U.S. 64, Armijo said.

According to the news release, a commercial motor vehicle hauling a tanker-trailer holding unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel was headed west when it slid off the north side of U.S. 64 and into the Cimarron River about five miles east of Eagle Nest.

After impacting the river, Armijo said, the tanker trailer disengaged causing some diesel fuel to leak.

State Police, the Eagle Nest Fire Department and the Raton Fire Department, which has a hazardous materials response team, responded.

The fuel was off-loaded from the tanker-trailer, the spokeswoman said, and the vehicle was removed from the river hours after the crash.

The driver of the commercial vehicle, operated by Fronk Oil Co. of Booker, Texas, was cited for careless driving, Armijo said.
EDITORS NOTE: This opinion column previously appeared on the Cipher Brief at www.thecipherbrief.com

The complete meltdown of humanity in Aleppo, as recently described by the United Nations, is an indictment of Russian/Syrian/Iranian barbarism, Arab indifference, and American dereliction and policy failure in the Levant. The horrendous human tragedy, which is barely causing a yawn in the West  and across the Arab world as well  will always cast a shadow on the legacy of President Barack Obama.

The presidents failure to face down the Russians, the Iranians, and the Syrian tyrant, long before Aleppo started to burn and empty of its inhabitants, belies his constant touting of American values and empathy with human suffering.

As the Syrian barrel bombs and the Russian barbaric indiscriminate bombing turn Aleppo into rubble, and as its inhabitants are being slaughtered, the world is awestruck by this administrations seemingly detached indifference and convoluted war-avoidance logic. Americas failed leadership has emboldened Russia, not only to bomb Aleppo into smithereens but to wage an unprecedented cyber attack on the U.S. electoral system  Americas most precious constitutional guarantee.

Lets be very clear: Criticizing Obamas lack of decisive action against the dictator of Damascus cannot possibly absolve Russian President Vladimir Putins shameful and bloodthirsty approach to Aleppo and the Syrian people. Putin has no shame and doesnt truly care what the world thinks of his vicious attacks on innocent civilians or whether he is charged with war crimes.

President Obama has argued that avoiding a military confrontation with the Russians drove his inaction in Syria, and that his desire not to politicize U.S. intelligence underlay his refusal to publicize the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons emails before the election.

That could have worked if Putin responded in kind. Sadly for Obama, Clinton lost the election, and Putin is winning the Syrian war. More importantly, the helpless people of Aleppo paid the price for these political machinations with their lives.

How did this happen?

For the record, I had previously criticized former President George W. Bushs invasion of Iraq and his advocacy of regime change in that war-torn country. On the eve of the invasion in March 2003, I briefed that externally driven, violent regime change in Iraq, without deep knowledge of the social, political, historical, demographic and sectarian dynamics of Iraq and the Gulf region, would lead to disaster.

In fact, in his book, At the Center of the Storm, former CIA Director George Tenet referred to a paper that was briefed to senior policymakers in which analysts argued that forcing regime change in Iraq in a war that was not well thought-out in advance would create a perfect storm of instability, sectarianism and unending internal conflict.

Obama inherited the mess in Iraq and vowed to extricate America from that unnecessary war and promised not to engage in similar wars in the region. His reticence to engage in large-scale military operations in the region was perhaps the fundamental reason why he allowed the situation in Syria to deteriorate so horribly. Its now painfully clear that such inaction has contributed to Syrian President Bashar Assads barbarity and Russias and Irans destruction of Aleppo.

These three criminal actors viewed Obamas deliberate hesitancy to act as a sign of weakness and abandonment of American principles and a marginalization of American influence in Syria. Consequently, they waged their bloody attacks on Aleppos civilians without concern or accountability and in defiance of all international legal norms.

Excluding Secretary of State John Kerry from the recent meeting of Russian, Iranian and Turkish foreign ministers in Moscow to discuss the future of Syria once more underscores their perception of Americas diminishing regional role. The Trump administration must view this development not as a game but as a serious threat to Americas strategic interests in the region and beyond.

Where do we go from here?

Some would maintain that whatever the president did or did not do in 2012 is water under the bridge, and its too late to do anything about it now. Thats a false argument. The United States retains the ability to exercise its preponderant power  soft and hard  in many ways that could send a clear message to Assad and his Russian masters.

First, the Obama administration should make it abundantly and publicly clear to Putin that he cannot revenge his ambassadors murder in Turkey by waging an even more vicious bombing campaign against Aleppo and other opposition-held towns and localities in Syria. The United States should place its air assets in the Mediterranean, Turkey, Jordan, and elsewhere near Syria and should be prepared to fly its fighter jets in Syrian airspace. Its not too late to declare a no-fly zone over Syria and proceed to enforce it.

Second, the United States and its allies should embark on a multinational rescue operation inside Syria, protected by American military might, to rescue the trapped inhabitants of Aleppo and other towns and cities, and to provide them with food, clothing and shelter. They must be protected from Syrian and Russian butchery.

Third, the Obama administration should put in place, in conjunction with the U.N. Security Council, or with the U.N. General Assembly backing if Russia blocks Security Council action, a regional/international military operation to bring about the end of the Assad regime and the defeat of the Islamic State in Raqqa and other places in Syria. The non-ISIS opposition should be included in this effort. This operation should also include preparing for a post-Assad regime in Syria.

Putin and his little protege in Damascus cannot possibly be appeased if the United States hopes to maintain a credible presence and influence in the region and retain the ability to defend its interests and personnel across the Middle East. Bullying should not be allowed to stand, whether in local school yards or in Syria. Bullies, whether a middle school kid, a Syrian dictator, or a Russian plutocrat, must be held accountable for their actions. The people of Aleppo deserve no less.

Emile Nakhleh is research professor and director of the Global and National Security Policy Institute at the University of New Mexico and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Heres a major world event that went almost unnoticed in the heat of the 2016 U.S. elections, and that may make big headlines in 2017: Chinas renewed push to increase its presence in Latin America.

While President-elect Donald J. Trump is pushing a negative agenda for Latin America  vowing to build a wall on the U.S. southern border, renegotiate or scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, and kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal with Asian and Latin American countries  China is happily seeking to fill the vacuum of constructive U.S. policies in the region.

In mid-November, while the U.S. was consumed by Trumps November election victory, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Ecuador, Peru and Chile. It was the Chinese leaders third visit to Latin America since taking office in 2013.

So far, Xi has visited 10 Latin American countries since he took office three years ago, almost as many as the 11 visited by President Barack Obama during his eight years in office.

During his latest Latin American tour, Xi  among other things  inaugurated Ecuadors biggest hydroelectric dam built by a Chinese firm with Chinese loans, and discussed new infrastructure investments in Peru and Chile.

A few weeks earlier, in September, Xi hosted the presidents of Brazil, Argentina and Mexico at a meeting of G-20 world leaders in Hangzhou, China.

Judging from what I hear from Latin American presidents and diplomats, Xi sees an opportunity to increase Chinas presence in Latin America despite the recent decline in Chinese-Latin American bilateral trade and investments.

Chinas trade with the region, which soared over the past 10 years and reached its peak in 2013, declined by 11 percent over the past two years, largely because of Chinas economic slowdown, according to U.N figures. In addition, China is stuck with billions in bad loans to Venezuela and Cuba.

Still, China remains the top or second-largest trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Xis charm offensive in Latin America began before the U.S. elections. Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who visited China in September in what was his first foreign trip as president, told me after the trip that they treated me like a king while in Beijing.

Kuczynski, a former Wall Street investment banker, said he discussed Chinese investments in Peruvian ports, railroads and perhaps highways, and came back with the impression that they had a tremendous enthusiasm for carrying out these projects.

Trumps continued anti-Mexico tirades, his appointment of NAFTA critic Wilbur Ross as secretary of commerce, and, more importantly, his announcement that he will scrap the TPP agreement with Asian and Latin American countries as soon as he takes office, will be a golden opportunity for China in the region, many diplomats say.

Diego Guelar, Argentinas ambassador to China, says that with the United States in an anti-free-trade mode and the European Union beset by internal problems after Britains Brexit vote to leave the European Union, China is emerging by default as the new world champion of free trade.

China already has free trade agreements with Chile, Peru and Costa Rica. It may sign new deals with Latin American countries, or expand its Asian free trade zone negotiations to Latin American countries in the near future, he said.

Trumps announcement that he will scrap the TPP was a godsend to China, Guelar told me from Beijing. Its a present the Chinese never expected, wrapped in a Tiffany box and a silk bow.

My opinion: Most Latin American countries are much more eager to increase their economic ties with the United States than with China.

While China buys largely raw materials such as oil, minerals and soybeans from Latin America  at depressed prices and producing relatively few jobs  the United States imports more manufactured goods from the region, which are more lucrative and generate more employment.

But if all Trump has to offer to Latin America is a negative agenda  anti-trade, anti-immigration, and anti-climate change  China will fill the void and gain even more influence in the region.

Copyright, The Miami Herald; e-mail to aoppenheimer@herald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
It is a cautionary tale, from a respected outside institution, as to the folly of simply throwing money at early childhood education without accountability measures. Those who would advocate for another raid on the Land Grant Permanent Fund in the name of helping New Mexicos youngest children should take heed.

Because so far, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on New Mexicos Head Start has left the Land of Enchantment dead last in the nation when it comes to instructional quality. And that should come as no surprise, given the dismal proficiency rates of our youngest public school students.

The new report, from Rutgers Universitys National Institute of Early Education Research, took classroom observations during the 2014-2015 school year and found New Mexicos Head Start program is 50th among the states  yet instead of prompting a demand for accountability, the criticism has already, predictably, prompted a call to spend even more money.

And its not the first time.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services doles out around $8 billion a year under Head Start for preschool instruction for low-income children, along with family health and nutrition services. In 2013, a Legislative Finance Committee report showed the $61 million the federal government spent on New Mexicos Head Start each fiscal year had done nothing to boost third-grade reading and math scores. Then, as now, there was a call to simply spend more rather than target existing spending to data-driven programs.

By 2014-15, annual federal spending on Head Start in New Mexico had increased to $78 million  around $8,387 per child  yet the results show that in this case, spending more just gets you more of the same.

In a state that dedicates close to half of its budget on K-12 public education, that has increased K-12 spending from $2.49 billion in 2008 to $2.75 billion this year, that has boosted the early childhood budget to nearly $200 million and ranks among the top states with the highest percentage increase of spending on these programs in recent years, it is unconscionable that fewer children can read and do math at grade level than three years ago. (In 2013, around half of New Mexico students could read and do math at grade level; now, using a standardized test better aligned with curriculum, just 27.7 percent of students can read at grade level and just 19.9 percent can do math at grade level.)

The Rutgers study found just 36 percent of Head Start teachers in the state have bachelors degrees, compared with the national average of 73 percent. Apologists for the Head Start ranking argue New Mexico needs to spend more on teachers, even though a Legislative Finance Committee report found the states $300 million three-tiered licensure system did little to improve student test scores.

Chairman and Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, said in 2012, Weve rewarded, in many cases, mediocrity, and really havent accomplished what we set out to do.

Advocates for taking hundreds of millions more out of the states trust fund for education offer no more than the vague promise of high-quality early childhood education. Thats highly suspect, considering a longitudinal study of what was a promising K-3 Plus program, which extends the school year into the summer months for some of the states poorest children, found that any gains in math, reading and writing flatten out over time.

Unless and until advocates for spending more on early childhood education can fight data with data  that is, offer a proven program to address New Mexicos abysmal standings in everything from Head Start to student proficiency  they should focus on channeling the hundreds of millions in existing funding to programs that actually work.

New Mexicos taxpayers, and especially its students, deserve more, not just more of the same.

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.
Its the time of year when many of us pull out our cameras and photo albums, intent on marking memories as well as the passage of time. We smile for the camera today while we laugh at yesterdays out-of-style haircuts and clothing.

The illustrations and photos that accompany this story take that to another level. If a picture is worth a thousand words, the before-and-after photos of Rosie, Elijah, Cammy and others speak volumes. Unfortunately, to get to their happy after  and there is one  its necessary to take a hard look at their absolutely awful before.

In the 1950s, 65 infant chimps were moved from West Africa to Alamogordo for biomedical research. In 2010, the U.S. government had about 300 chimps in captivity. The only way to know what the more than 100 chimpanzees held at the Alamogordo Primate Facility looked like was to cobble together illustrated likenesses based on grainy black-and white photos in their medical records  and it took Animal Protection of New Mexico filing a Freedom of Information Act request to get those. One look at their stories and its no wonder the drawings show dour, joyless beings.

Rosie was born in a lab in 1981 and first used in research when she was just 6 months old. Laura Bonar, a registered nurse and Animal Protections chief program and policy officer, says the medical records show that over two decades Rosie survived at least 100 chemical immobilizations and developed a sensitivity to the drug ketamine, suffering multiple complications from researchers continued use of ketamine to sedate her for testing. Rosie has had 15 liver biopsies with little to no pain relief provided and has a history of cardiac arrhythmia.

Elijah was born on Holloman Air Force Base in 1990. Bonar says, Medical records document him trying to avoid being darted and forced into squeeze cages when he was 6 years old, with a note from the record saying, He isnt learning.  Elijah was shipped back and forth to different laboratories for research by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health and infected with or exposed to hepatitis A, B, C, and G in studies. He had a liver wedge surgery in 1997 where two-thirds of his left lobe was removed for study without record of pain medication administered, and he developed a hernia from the scar tissue of this surgery in 2001.

Cammy was born on Holloman Air Force Base in 1980 and taken from her mother shortly after birth. Bonar says, When Cammy was just a year old, she started being shipped back and forth to the CDC in Phoenix and then Atlanta for use in hepatitis research.  Starting in December 1994  Cammy was  subject to multiple liver biopsies  has a vulvar laceration  significant swollen lymph nodes in the groin  renal disease and is missing the tip of her tongue.

Bonars group joined forces with then-Gov. Bill Richardson, U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, and the same year the illustrations were drawn they persuaded the NIH to stop shipping chimps from Alamogordo to testing labs. (No testing had happened in Alamogordo for a decade.)

Then the NIH went back on its word and shipped 14 more New Mexico chimps to San Antonio, Texas, for potential biomedical research at what is now called Texas Biomedical Research Institute. Rosie, Elijah and Cammy were among them. And for the next several years, Animal Protection of New Mexico, New Mexico leaders and leading scientists worked to spread the word that invasive testing on chimps is scientifically, morally, ethically and financially bankrupt. That chimps are so different from humans on a cellular level that decades of attempts to use them to study/prevent/cure everything from cancer to hepatitis to AIDS delivered nothing but pain with no gain.

In 2013, the NIH had announced it would retire most of the government-owned chimpanzees but would keep 50 primates  including those New Mexico chimps in San Antonio  available for further invasive testing. Around Thanksgiving 2015, the NIH finally retired those chimps, with Director Francis Collins saying in an internal memo obtained by the Journal that it is time to acknowledge that there is no further justification for the 50 chimpanzees to continue to be kept available for invasive biomedical research.

And as 2016 comes to a close, there are new pictures to look at: pictures of Rosie, Elijah, Cammy and other New Mexico chimps at the 200-acre Chimp Haven sanctuary near Shreveport, La. One look and there is no question they are sentient beings with the capacity to suffer not just psychological distress and depression  but joy.

Cathy Spraetz, president and CEO of Chimp Haven, says, We have loved hearing and seeing these chimps hoot with emotion and embrace one another in sanctuary. Bonar says Chimp Haven provides chimps access to multi-acre forested habitats, something which is just not possible at APF. At Chimp Haven, they will have the ability to live more naturally in larger, mixed-sex groups, and live in a social setting with their peers.

Sanctuary is much cheaper than testing, but it isnt free. (The federal government picks up 75 percent of the sanctuary tab.) The New Mexico Community Foundations Chimpanzee Sanctuary Fund, which Bonar helps oversee, has awarded Chimp Haven a $112,500 grant to help support 25 Alamogordo chimps  15 to be sent early in the new year.

There is more to do in 2017. Bonar says there are 127 chimps still alive at APF as of Dec. 16, most of whom are elderly and suffer from chronic illness. These chimps deserve improved housing in sanctuary where all their behavioral needs will be met. Chimp Haven is ready and waiting. Its website says, We invite others to help us care for the more than 100 chimps who are waiting to make their way to Chimp Haven from Alamogordo, as well as the other 200 plus residents currently at our sanctuary.

UpFront is a front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to assistant editorial page editor DVal Westphal at 823-3858 or road@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

Disembodied eyes, giant glowing bones and a 30-foot-tall robot in the parking lot all played a part in making a Santa Fe art exhibit the most popular place in a social media app with hundreds of millions of followers.

Thats according to USA Today, which ranked Meow Wolfs House of Eternal Return as the most popular New Mexico locale on Instagram, a photo sharing site owned by Facebook.

Since it opened in March, the site has attracted tens of thousands of visitors and a similar amount of photos on Instagram.

We sort of pride ourselves on being something that people are excited to share with others, said Vince Kadlubek, CEO of Meow Wolf. The general public wants something unique and interesting thats not your standard corporate experience.

Instagram is a social media application with 600 million users who share photos of themselves, their pets and interesting places. Meow Wolf falls in the latter category. USA Today based its rankings on the most geo-tagged places within the app in each state. Kadlubek said Meow Wolf has been tagged 30,000 times since it opened in March.

According to Kadlubek, the Santa Fe attraction draws roughly 35,000 visitors a month. Traffic surged this week, and Kadlubek said it is the result of people searching for something to do during the holidays. Inside a former bowling alley in the middle of Santa Fe, Meow Wolf is an interactive art exhibit created by dozens of artists. In one room, you might find massive glowing bones. Strike them and theyll play a note. Open a refrigerator door in a home and a white tunnel will lead to a space station. In yet another, dozens of huge eyes on a ceiling stare at all who enter.

But most popular are the underwater fish tank exhibit; a dark, snaking corridor filled with fluorescent colored trees that look like coral; and the laser harp, a nearly all-dark room save for red beams that play music when passed through.

People can spend hours at the exhibit. Its vastness is part of what makes it so popular on Instagram, according to Amy Tischler, co-owner of Simply Social Media, a social media consulting group.

Tischler also said the variety of art attracts revisits, which means more photos. And the fact that its a permanent exhibition gives people opportunities to post pictures year-round.

(Meow Wolf) is a brand-new, exciting and totally unique concept, Tischler said. People love to post about (a) one-of-a-kind experience.

Kadlubek said new art will be added to the exhibit soon, which could give a reason for those who have already visited to plan a return visit. And he said the group, which employs about 100 people, will announce plans to expand in the near future.

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, White Sands, and the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University campuses were the next-most tagged locations in the state.
Copyright  2016 Albuquerque Journal

When President Barack Obama visited New Mexicos Carlsbad Caverns over the summer, he and his family rode the parks freight elevators into the caves because the passenger elevators were out of service.

They still are.

It is a stark reminder of the National Park Services nearly $12 billion backlog of maintenance needs that havent been met  either due to a lack of funding or a slow-moving contracting system  including more than $202 million in New Mexico.

Carlsbad Caverns alone estimates that its backlog tops $44 million, half of which is needed to repair two large passenger elevators and two smaller freight elevators built in the 1950s and 1930s, respectively, according to spokeswoman Valerie Gohlke.

The congressman who represents the area blames the park service bureaucracy.

Republican Rep. Steve Pearce has been frustrated by the park services efforts to get the passenger elevators fixed, according to Chief of Staff Todd Willens. Gohlke told the Journal a request for proposals has not yet been issued.

In our meetings with the park service, it was never about money, Willens said. It was contracting. They have to get it through the park service bureaucracy. We find it amazingly frustrating that park service has allowed this to carry on.

The two passenger elevators and one freight elevator broke down in the fall of 2015 and remained out of service for nearly six months, while the fourth was reserved for emergencies.

That meant tens of thousands of visitors to the park each month had to enter at the caves mouth and walk the dark, wet, winding trail down 750 feet into the Big Room of stalactites and stalagmites and exit back up the way they came.

The in-and-out hike alone takes two to three hours; the elevators deposit visitors to the bottom, 750 feet below the surface.

Gohlke estimates the outage depressed visits to the park by about 11 percent on average during those six months  although total park visitation is tracking slightly higher year over year through November to about 434,000 parkgoers from fewer than 430,000 through the same period in 2015.

After the park fixed the one broken-down freight elevator, rangers put both freight elevators back in service to take visitors up and down. They hold eight people each; the still out-of-service passenger elevators hold 16 people apiece.

The caverns are a huge draw to Carlsbad, a city of about 28,000 people on the Pecos River whose economy depends on potash mining, oil and gas extraction and an underground nuclear waste dump. That, and tourism.

We are very fortunate here in Carlsbad to have a diversified economy, said Robert Defer, chief executive of the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce. Tourism plays a large part. (The caverns) draw people from all over the world. They eat in our restaurants, stay in our hotels, fill up their cars.

Tourist target

People who visited the caverns during the winter and spring complained about the elevators on TripAdvisor.com.

A visitor from California traveling with seniors and someone with a disability wrote very disappointed. A woman from New York with a boyfriend with a bad knee said the elevator outage curtailed his exploration to a very short distance. A visitor from Georgia wrote, It was quite a walk in and a real haul coming back up for me. I think that the elevators being broken are stopping a lot of people from going in.

Members of New Mexicos congressional delegation say they are working on it.

Sen. Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat who sits on the appropriations subcommittee that sets the budget for the Interior Department and park service, said he has pushed to secure $4 million for the elevator repairs.

The elevator outage has caused problems for visitors, and its understandable that small business owners and others in the community are concerned that the elevator outage will keep people from visiting Carlsbad, he said in an emailed statement.

Gohlke said the passenger elevator repairs could take until 2018 to complete. The freight elevator repairs will wait until after the passenger elevators are back in service and could take until 2020, she said.

Although Obama did not make public remarks during his June visit to the caverns, the White House used his national parks tour to celebrate the systems centennial this year and bring attention to the backlog of maintenance needed to keep up the parks antiquated infrastructure.
A U.S. Army National Guard helicopter crashed approximately 25 miles southeast of Houston Wednesday, killing both crew members, the Texas National Guard said in a statement.

The helicopter, an AH-64 Apache gunship, belonged to the Texas Army National Guards 36th Combat Aviation Brigade and had been flying from nearby Ellington field on a training mission when it crashed at around 3:50 p.m. near the Bayport Cruise Terminal in Pasadena, Texas.

The Texas National Guard said Coast Guard helicopter and boat crews, along with local first responders, had been dispatched to the scene following the accident. Local news footage from the crash site showed what appeared to be part of a rotor blade near the terminal and The Associated Press reported that witnesses saw the helicopter break apart in mid-air.

Our deepest sympathies, thoughts and prayers are with their families, the statement said. The incident is under investigation and further information will be released as it becomes available.

Names of the deceased are often held for 24 hours pending the notification of their next-of-kin.

In April, two Apaches crashed into each other during takeoff from Camp Humphreys in South Korea. Four soldiers were injured in the incident.

The Apache is the U.S. Armys premier helicopter gunship and is designed to support ground troops with an array of weapons, including a 30mm cannon and Hellfire missiles. The 36th Combat Aviation Brigades Apache unit, the 1st of the 149th Attack Reconnaissance Battalion recently retired its fleet of older Apaches in 2012, replacing them with AH-64D Longbow variant, according to a recent history of the unit.
First things first: Food and Drug Commissioner Robert Califf says that he has not had any contact with the Trump transition team. Thats the latest sign that the cardiologist, confirmed as FDA chief less than a year ago, will be heading back to Durham, N.C., where hes on leave from Duke University. Still, he has no regrets: Everyone who knows me knows I have just had fun every day on the job, he said in an interview.

Some days were presumably more fun than others. Take the controversy surrounding a drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Studies did not show a clear benefit to the drug and an FDA advisory committee voted against approving it, but patient advocacy groups pushed for the drug. After much infighting, the drug was granted accelerated approval this fall by the agencys top drug-review official, and Califf allowed the decision to stand.

Meanwhile, Califf strongly defended the FDAs requirement that a drug must be shown to be effective for approval. Jim ONeill, an associate of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel who has been mentioned as a possible successor to Califf in the Trump administration, has suggested that the agency require only safety testing for approval.

Califf also talked about his mother, who has multiple myeloma.

(This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.)

Q: What do you think are the biggest challenges facing the agency?

A: Were seeing increasingly complex information, so we need really good people to deal with it, and there were limitations in terms of hiring and information technology and infrastructure that are really critical to a science-based public health agency with a regulatory mandate. So thats something I have really focused on, and its going to be an ongoing challenge because the world is moving faster, not slower.

The second big need is . . . evidence generation. I started off as a doc, running intensive-care units. You make decisions about individual people, multiple decisions a day, your decisions have consequences. Its exciting, theres a lot at stake. The middle part of my career has been as a researcher and research administrator where at the end of every article you say, More research is needed. And thats wonderful, too, because the goal is open exploration.

But then at the FDA, you have a lot of the same science issues but you have to make decisions. And its very noticeable when we make decisions with good evidence. Its still emotionally charged because we regulate such a large part of the economy, and there are winners and losers. But when we have good evidence, its easy to defend the decisions and the arguments are typically good arguments to have about how you interpret good evidence.

But we are often in situations where we have to make decisions because there are time limits and we dont have the kind of evidence we really need to make a good decision, and then things are not so pretty. Here we are in a time when everything is digitized, we have scads of information, but as a society we havent been so good at turning that information into knowledge, particularly in the medical arena.

Q: When you look back at the controversy over the Duchenne muscular dystrophy drug, do you have any second thoughts about the way that turned out?

A: One great thing about having been an intensive care doctor, I dont lose sleep over second thoughts because you should learn from your experience and try to do things better the next time, so my thoughts were really reflected in what I wrote [which was to defer to the FDAs top drug-review official].

We didnt have the evidence we really wanted and a decision had to be made. But the steps that should be taken in the future to reduce the number of times we get into this situation, I think I clearly laid out. By law, the FDA is given a lot of discretion in cases of serious and life-threatening diseases with no available treatment. We are instructed by law to consider all sources of evidence beyond the traditional and to use unvalidated biomarkers [such as molecules that may be affected by a drug and measured] if we think that its reasonably likely they will predict a clinical benefit. So as I pointed out in the document, the definition of reasonably likely is not defined and all sources of evidence includes a lot of possible things.

We have been working closely with NIH because with 5,000 rare genetic diseases and this being such an exciting time of not just quantifying the genome, which Francis Collins started, but now understanding the functional aspects, we are going to have cures for a lot of rare genetic diseases.

I hope people will look at the Sarepta case [Serapta Therapeutics produces the Duchenne muscular dystrophy drug], and say there are some things that regardless of whether we think FDA made the right decision, lets look at what needs to be done for the next 4,999 rare genetic diseases because patients and their families have reason to want things to get done.

Q: Whats your reaction to the argument that drugs should not have to be proven effective before getting approved by the FDA?

Theres a history to proving effectiveness of drugs that goes back to pre-1962, that I think many people are aware of, and the requirements are written into law. I think what many people lose sight of is that whats been called a standard is actually quite flexible. As an intensive-care-unit doc, and now Im of the age where Im a patient, too (Im on drugs for lipids and hypertension), I think people will want to take drugs that have a benefit because all drugs have a risk. I dont know of any that are completely free of risk.

Almost 90 percent of drugs that get into Phase One [the earliest stage of clinical trials] dont make it to market because of toxicity or they actually dont work or they cant be manufactured on a scale thats needed to be safely produced and distributed in a global market. And so that means if you are not demonstrating that a drug has a benefit, most of what they take wont work.

And I think we have pretty clear evidence from the public that they would like to have a system thats giving them some assurance that the treatments they are given work.

But again, to get back to the flexible standard, that means in the case of rare genetic disease with no available treatment, working means changing a biomarker, it doesnt mean improving a clinical outcome, and then the proof of that is developed post-market.

Q: How do you think the 21st Century Cures law will affect the agency?

I think 21st Century Cures worked out quite well for us. The personnel issues are clear and we are very happy with what Congress agreed to do there. [The bill allows FDA to give pay raises to scientists and other expert staff.] And the sections on real-world evidence and modernizing clinical trials are all quite consistent with the direction we hoped we would be going in and I think will be helpful.

Q: In the debate over high drug prices, the FDA sometimes gets criticized for not approving generic drugs quickly enough. Some in Congress want to set a 150-day deadline for some generic-drug approvals. Whats your reaction?

We need to approve generics as quickly as we can, keeping in mind that the laws for generics are pretty simple in terms of what a company needs to do for a generic drug. But a company also needs to be able to manufacture the drug and show that its high quality throughout the supply chain. In some of the dialogue about this, people may have lost sight of the fact that if you look at the backlog in generics its almost all compounds that have had multiple applications because there were deficiencies that needed to be corrected. I dont know that 150 days is necessarily the right number. But theres no objection at FDA to going as fast as we can as long as we keep a quality standard.

Q: What else is on your mind?

My mom has multiple myeloma. If you were a cancer patient, you would want the industry to do well, but you want there to be a rational approach that optimizes getting the right treatments out there at the right time. Shes a beneficiary of accelerated approval of a drug for multiple myeloma. Just recently, I got a call saying its time for hospice for your mom. She has had 89 good years. Im saying all this with her agreement and permission.

I called [FDA oncology chief Richard] Pazdur and said, Whats new? And he said, We have a few things that look good and they are tolerated well and even for someone age 89 might work. And its worked in her. And Im insistent that we need to then bring in the evidence after accelerated approval. For this particular drug, I wont go into the specifics of the drug, but I was pleased a couple weeks ago to see they did randomized trials in follow-up and they were positive and got additional indications.

She wanted to be alive to vote, I wont say for whom.
MINNEAPOLIS  A man and woman caused a disruption on a Delta Air Lines flight to Los Angeles, prompting the pilot to return the plane to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, airport officials said Thursday.

The flight took off at 6:20 p.m. Wednesday but returned at 7:35 p.m., airport spokesman Patrick Hogan said. The flight crew reported the couple became disruptive and refused to follow instructions, he said. Partial police reports released Thursday didnt give details of the nature of the disruption. Airport police arrested the pair and they were questioned by police and the FBI, Hogan said.

The police reports show Blake Adam Fleisig, 35, of Los Angeles, was ticketed for disorderly conduct involving brawling or fighting. Anna Christine Koosmann, 36, of Edina, Minnesota, was ticketed for disorderly conduct and for obstructing police. While police released Fleisig late Wednesday, Koosmann was taken to the Hennepin County Jail, where she was released early Thursday after posting $78 bail, the jail roster shows. Shes due in court Jan 13. The charges are all misdemeanors.

Video shot by a passenger shows Fleisig scuffling with another passenger as officers removed him from the plane and Koosmann cursing as officers escorted her off.

Delta issued a statement saying the flight crew elected to return to Minneapolis shortly after takeoff when two passengers refused to follow crew instructions, became aggressive and created a disruption in the cabin. The statement says the safety of customers and employees is the airlines top priority.

Neither Fleisig nor Koosmann has a listed phone number and an Associated Press reporter could not reach them for comment.

Hogan said the full police report on the incident isnt available because officers are still investigating.
Talking to Valerie Jarrett about her time as senior adviser to President Barack Obama and specifically about that time he sang Amazing Grace in Charleston, S.C., on June 26, 2015, got me to thinking about other amazing moments of the Obama presidency. So, before Obama nostalgia hits full-tilt after New Years Day, here are nine amazing moments from his presidency.

Donald Trump is here tonight!

Donald Trump loves being the center of attention, even negative attention. But as we learned this year, the roasting of the Big Apple builder by Obama at the 2011 White House Correspondents Association dinner accelerated [Trumps] ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world.

Donald Trump is here tonight! Now, I know that hes taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And thats because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter  like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?

On Nov. 8, Trump went from butt-of-the-joke to president-elect.

The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden.

What made Obamas focus on Trump on April 30, 2011, all the more extraordinary was what was happening at the exact same time. Unbeknownst to anyone except senior aides, the president authorized the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader who unleashed horror on the United States with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The presidents late-night announcement on May 1 of the missions success led to celebrations in front of the White House and in New York.

You lie!

Nothing personified the peevish relationship between congressional Republicans and the president more than this remarkable moment during a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9, 2009. It proved to be a harbinger of disrespectful things to come.

Obama was trying to save his push for health-care reform. There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants, he said. This, too, is false  the reforms Im proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., yelled, You lie! It was a stunning breach of decorum and protocol that left then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., agape and Vice President Biden shaking his lowered head. Obama glared and continued, Its not true.

The president was right.

I have no more campaigns to run.

The reticence that Obama displayed amid Republican taunting in the well of the House of Representatives in 2009 was gone during his State of the Union address in 2015. As he called on the nation to pursue a better politics, the president reminded the gathered, I have no more campaigns to run.

The ensuing GOP-led applause evoked a moment of epic presidential shade. Looking over at the Republicans, Obama said, I know because I won both of them. And did he. Obama is the first president since Dwight Eisenhower to win at least 51 percent of the vote twice.

Every time I think about those kids it gets me mad.

The murder of 20 schoolchildren and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012, shocked the national conscience. But not enough to spur Congress to pass any legislation that could possibly keep guns out of the hands of folks who really shouldnt have them. Nearly four years and many more mass shootings later, Obama announced new executive actions on gun control. Yet, the emotion of Newtown was still present as tears streamed down the usually stoic presidents face when he mentioned the lost little ones.

First-graders. And from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun.

Every time I think about those kids it gets me mad. And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.

So all of us need to demand a Congress brave enough to stand up to the gun lobbys lies. All of us need to stand up and protect its citizens. All of us need to demand governors and legislatures and businesses do their part to make our communities safer. We need the wide majority of responsible gun owners who grieve with us every time this happens and feel like your views are not being properly represented to join with us to demand something better.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

When the president walked into the White House press briefing room on July 19, 2013, he caught the press corps by surprise not only with his presence but also by what he had to say. The nation was reeling from the not guilty verdict against George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African American teenager, in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26, 2012. And what Obama did was give voice to the frustration and fear that had gripped the black community then.

You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago, the president said. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, theres a lot of pain around what happened here, I think its important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesnt go away.

A year later, starting with the July 2014 death of Eric Garner captured on video by a bystander, the American people would see one too many times what African Americans had been railing against for generations.

I want to know if my hair is just like yours

While walking through the West Wing of the White House in 2009, I saw what has remained my all-time favorite photo of the Obama presidency. Jacob Philadelphia, then 5 years old, was in the Oval Office with his family to take a photo with the president. The little guy had a request. I want to know if my hair is just like yours, Jacob asked Obama. Hands in his pocket, the president bowed his head for Jacob to have a touch.

There is a lot going on in that photo that stopped me dead in my tracks when I saw it nearly eight years ago. For a host of reasons owing to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, we African Americans are sensitive about our heads and our hair. So Obama allowing his head to be touched by a stranger was already remarkable.

But what got me is the obvious connection the little guy was making between himself and the black man who was also president of the United States. As I wrote after Jackie Calmes of The New York Times reported on the picture, what White House photographer Pete Souza was able to capture was how Obama addressed so much about race without ever opening his mouth.

Edmund Pettus Bridge with John Lewis

On March 7, 1965, John Lewis and many others were savagely beaten by law enforcement at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge as they started the Selma-to-Montgomery, Ala., marches for voting rights. Fifty years later, Lewis, a leader of that march, returned to the site of Bloody Sunday as a 15-term member of Congress from Georgia and as a guest of the nations first African American president.

There, in that setting, those two men represented how far our nation has come since its not-so-distant Jim Crow past. That one is president and the other is a member of Congress shows what the American people are capable of when they see their fellow citizens being violently abused for demanding basic civil rights and human dignity. Obamas 2015 speech commemorating the Alabama marches was masterful in its clear-eyed view of our ongoing journey toward a more perfect union.

June 26, 2015

Youll recall that this was the date the president flew to Charleston and sang Amazing Grace while eulogizing Clementa Pinckney, the pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church who was murdered with eight parishioners by avowed racist Dylann Roof a week earlier. But that was also the day the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples had a constitutional right to marry.

Everyone saw this coming. Over the years, lower court rulings in favor of marriage equality and actions by various states to legalize same-sex unions laid the groundwork for that historic decision. Still, to have it officially happen, to have marriage equality become the law of the land, marked a high point in our nations effort to be more just and more fair.

From ending the ban on LGBT service members from serving openly in the military to no longer defending the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) against constitutional challenge, Obama earned his honorary first gay president moniker from Newsweek.

But as sweet as the Supreme Court victory was, nothing was more moving than what happened at the White House that evening. As darkness crept over Washington, the residence became aglow in the rainbow colors of the LGBT pride flag. Never before had the peoples house been so adorned. Never before had the dignity of LGBT people been so publicly supported by their president. Amazing.

As an openly gay African American man who will marry his partner next year, I will forever be grateful to this president for fighting for me, for us.



Capehart is a Washington Post columnist and editorial writer.



Rep. Joe Wilson yells You lie!



I have no more campaigns to run.
BEIRUT  The Latest on the conflict in Syria, and the Russia-Turkey-brokered cease-fire agreement (all times local):

8:45 p.m.

Syrias foreign minister has welcomed the cease-fire agreement and said there is a real chance for a political settlement.

In comments made to Syrian TV Thursday, he said the Syrian government will attend peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana with an open mind, but suggested it would not be willing to compromise on the fate of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Everything is negotiable except national sovereignty and the peoples right to choose its leadership.

He lashed out at Turkey, calling it an aggressive country and an occupier of parts of the Syrian territories.

He also said Turkey was not mentioned in any of the documents that were signed, adding that Turkey was not a partner and we didnt negotiate with it.

Russias president called Assad Thursday to discuss the cease-fire agreement and upcoming talks in Astana, the Syrian presidency said on its Instagram page.

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8:30 p.m.

Turkeys prime minister says the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish militia wont take part in peace talks that could take place if a nationwide Syrian cease-fire agreement succeeds.

Binali Yildirim told reporters Thursday: No group that we regard as a terror organization will sit around the negotiating table and we regard the PYD as a terror organization. He was referring to the Democratic Union Party, which Turkey considers to be an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

An adviser to the U.N. envoy for Syria has said the peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition could be held in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan before the new U.S. president is sworn in on Jan. 20

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8:15 p.m.

The Kremlin says Syrian President Bashar Assad is committed to abiding by a cease-fire deal as well as a sit down for talks with the opposition.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Assad spoke on the phone to discuss the nationwide cease-fire deal that the Syrian government and Russia announced earlier on Thursday, the Kremlin said in a statement.

The Kremlin said Assad told Putin he is committed to implementing the cease-fire agreement and prepared to join the peace talks with opposition rebels that will follow the deal.

Vitaly Naumkin, who advises U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura, said in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency that talks in the Kazakh capital Astana could be held before the new U.S. president is sworn in on Jan. 20.

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7:45 p.m.

A Kurdish official says Kurdish groups and their Arab and Christian allies have approved a document that would act as a constitution in their autonomous region in northern Syria.

Nawaf Khalil, an official with the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, said the document known as the Social Contract was approved Thursday during a meeting in the northeastern Syrian town of Rmeilan.

Syrian Kurds run their self-declared, largely autonomous area, called Rojava Kurdistan or western Kurdistan.

The new document removed the word Rojava, in an apparent move to appease Arab and Christian groups that are part of the autonomous region.

Despite the large Kurdish presence in northeastern Syria, many towns and villages in the autonomous region are predominantly Arab or Christian.

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7:30 p.m.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Turkey will press ahead with its military offensive to clear a border area in northern Syria from Islamic State militants, saying the cease-fire agreement does not comprise terror organizations.

Erdogan on Thursday labeled the cease-fire agreement a window of opportunity that should not be squandered and called on all sides to abide by its terms.

In an apparent reference to Iran, Erdogan said all countries with influence over groups fighting in Syria should also contribute to the cease-fire process.

Speaking at a news conference alongside the president of Kosovo, Erdogan said the peace talks set to be held in Kazakhstans capital, Astana, were not meant to replace the peace process in Geneva but rather complement it.

Erdogan said the Turkish military operations against terrorist organizations, including Daesh, will continue until the security of the Turkish citizens is completely guaranteed. There can be no concessions on this issue. He was using an Arabic acronym for the IS group.

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7 p.m.

Russias foreign ministry says a mortar round has exploded inside the Russian embassy compound in the Syrian capital Damascus.

Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement Thursday that the mortar fired from a rebel-controlled suburb of Damascus fell near the entrance of the embassys consulate department. The ministry reported insignificant material damage and no injuries.

It is the second mortar attack on the Russian embassy in as many days. The foreign ministry said Wednesday that a mortar round had landed in the embassy courtyard without exploding, and that another had also fallen in the vicinity.

Zakharova on Thursday linked the attack to a cease-fire deal in Syria that the government forces and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced earlier in the day.

Russia is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who since 2011has been battling a revolt against his familys four-decade rule.

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6:30 p.m.

U.N. envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura is welcoming the agreement on a cease-fire in Syria and says he hopes it will pave the way for productive talks between the parties to the countrys civil war.

A statement from de Misturas office in Geneva on Thursday said he hopes that the accord will save civilian lives, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance across Syria and allow for useful talks in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

The statement added: The special envoy is of the view that these developments should contribute to inclusive and productive intra-Syrian negotiations to be convened under UN auspices on Feb. 8, 2017.

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6:15 p.m.

Egypt has welcomed the nationwide cease-fire in Syria that will go into effect at midnight Thursday.

In a statement Thursday following a meeting with a Syrian opposition leader, Ahmed al-Jarba, the Foreign Ministry says it is of critical importance that Syrian forces develop a common vision to resolve the countrys crisis and begin serious talks about the future of Syria.

The cease-fire, which will be observed by Turkey and Russia, who are to follow the situation on the ground to ensure that it holds. It will include all parts of Syria, including the eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus.

Excerpts of the cease-fire agreement obtained by The Associated Press say the truce will include all areas where the moderate opposition has a presence, including those where al-Qaidas branch in Syria exists.

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6 p.m.

An adviser to the U.N. envoy for Syria says peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition could be held in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan before the new U.S. president is sworn in.

Vitaly Naumkin, who advises U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura, said in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency that talks in the Kazakh capital Astana should take place in the nearest future.

All of this will happen before Jan. 20, he was quoted as saying, adding that U.N.-sponsored talks in Geneva will be held afterward, when Donald Trump is sworn in as the U.S. president.

Naumkins remarks came several hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Syrian army said that a nation-wide cease-fire agreement has been reached with opposition rebels, and that it will be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar Assads government and the opposition, without specifying a date.

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5:15 p.m.

A spokesman for the main moderate Syrian opposition groups says they have agreed to abide by the nationwide cease-fire that will go into effect at midnight Thursday.

Osama Abu Zeid has told reporters in Turkey that the truce will be followed by peace talks in Kazakhstan that will focus on finding a solution for Syrias crisis.

He said 13 armed opposition factions have signed the five-point agreement.

Abu Zeid says the peace talks will be based on the Geneva 2012 declaration that called for a transitional governing body with full executive powers to run affairs in Syria during the transitional period.

He said this means that there will be no presence for (President Bashar) Assad in the future.

He said the truce excluded the Islamic State group and the main Kurdish militia that Turkey considers a terrorist organization.

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4:30 p.m.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans spokesman says the Turkish and Russian leaders have discussed the cease-fire agreement as well as a planned peace process for Syria during a telephone conversation.

Ibrahim Kalin said Thursday that Turkey considers the cease-fire an important step to resolve the Syrian conflict.

The arrangement aims to expand the cease-fire in Aleppo to other parts of Syria, secure uninterrupted humanitarian assistance and revitalize the political process, Kalin said.

Kalin said Erdogan would continue to work toward the success of peace talks scheduled to take place in Kazakhstans capital, Astana.

___

4:15 p.m.

Turkish media reports say Russian war planes have targeted the Islamic State group in northern Syria, providing support to a Turkish offensive there.

The pro-government Sabah newspaper and other media said Thursday that the Russian jets bombed IS targets in the al-Bab region late on Wednesday. If confirmed, it would mark the first instance of Russian support to the Turkish operation in northern Syria.

The reports were based on unnamed Turkish military officials and came after Turkey complained about a lack of aerial support from the U.S.-led coalition for its operation to capture al-Bab from the extremist group.

The reports said Russian warplanes hit targets south of al-Bab.

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4 p.m.

The cease-fire that will go into effect in Syria midnight Thursday will include all parts of Syria including the eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus.

Excerpts of the cease-fire agreement that were obtained by The Associated Press say the truce will include all areas where the moderate opposition has a presence, including those where al-Qaidas branch in Syria exists.

It says the opposition will be given the right to name its delegation to peace talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana.

The talks will begin within a month from the time the cease-fire goes into effect. It says the peace talks will be in accordance with December 2015 U.N. Security Council resolution 2254 which endorsed a road map for a transitional period that includes parliamentary and presidential elections within 18 months.

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2:30 p.m.

A main Syrian opposition group says it supports a nationwide cease-fire set to go into effect at midnight and that moderate rebel factions will abide by it, but defend themselves if attacked.

Ahmad Ramadan of the Syrian National Coalition said the truce reached Thursday includes a halt to airstrikes and shelling.

Ramadan said in text messages sent to The Associated Press that members of the Free Syrian Army, a loose alliance of several moderate rebel factions, will abide by the truce but retaliate to violations by government and allied forces.

The Syrian army said the truce does not include al-Qaidas branch in Syria and the Islamic State group, two of the most powerful armed factions.

___

2:10 p.m.

Turkey has welcomed a Syrian cease-fire set to come into effect at midnight.

The Foreign Ministry says groups regarded as terror organizations by the U.N. Security Council will be excluded from the cease-fire, in which Turkey and Russia will act as guarantors.

It was apparently referring to the Islamic State group and the al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front.

It says the government and the opposition have agreed to halt attacks, including aerial attacks, and not to expand territories under their control in a way that would be detrimental to each other.

Turkey and Russia would closely follow the situation on the ground to ensure the cease-fire holds. The statement calls on all sides wielding influence on the warring parties to provide the necessary support to halt hostilities.

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2 p.m.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to scale down its presence in Syria, where it has provided crucial support to Syrian President Bashar Assads forces.

Putin spoke Thursday, as a Syrian cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey was set to begin at midnight.

Putin didnt say how many troops and weapons will be withdrawn. He said Russia will continue fighting international terrorism in Syria and supporting Assads military.

Putin also said that the Russian military will maintain its presence at both an air base in Syrias coastal province of Latakia and the naval facility in the Syrian port of Tartus.

The cease-fire is to be followed by renewed peace negotiations to end the nearly six-year conflict.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Egypt will be invited to join the process, and that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan could eventually join as well.

___

1:45 p.m.

The Syrian army has announced a nationwide cease-fire as of midnight.

In a statement carried by state news agency SANA on Thursday, the military command declares a comprehensive nationwide cessation of hostilities as of midnight.

State TV says the cease-fire paves the way for reactivating negotiations to end the conflict.

It says the cease-fire comes after the successes achieved by the armed forces, an apparent reference to the capture of rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo earlier this month.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia and Turkey will guarantee the truce. Russia is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, while Turkey supports the opposition.

___

1:30 p.m.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says a Syrian cease-fire agreement has been reached with Turkey.

Putin said Thursday that Russia and Turkey will guarantee the truce, which is set to begin at midnight. He says it will be followed by peace talks between Syrian President Bashar Assads government and the opposition, and that the Syrian parties would take part in talks to be held in Kazakhstan, without specifying a date.

Syrias military said it had agreed to a nationwide cease-fire starting at midnight.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu says the truce will include 62,000 opposition fighters across Syria, and that the Russian military has established a hotline with its Turkish counterpart to monitor compliance.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that that President-elect Donald Trumps administration will be welcome to join the Syrian peace process once he takes office.

Russia is a key ally of Assad, while Turkey is one of the main backers of the opposition. Several previous attempts to halt the civil war have failed.

___

11:15 a.m.

Turkey says Lebanons militant Hezbollah group should withdraw from Syria and a nationwide cease-fire should come into effect before the end of the year.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to back President Bashar Assads forces.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with the Turkish A Haber news channel on Thursday that Ankara and Moscow are close to reaching an agreement on a nationwide cease-fire. Turkey would serve as guarantor of rebel compliance, while Russia would guarantee adherence by the government.

He says Iran stated during talks earlier this month in Moscow that it will act as a guarantor for the Syrian government as well as allied Shiite groups, including Hezbollah.
A cease-fire announced by the Syrian government went into effect across the country early Friday as part of a broader deal that includes a return to peace talks after more than five years of a war.

Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad reestablished control over the northern city of Aleppo earlier this month, forcing rebels to flee what was once their largest stronghold and handing the government a victory that appeared to bring the wars endgame into view.

The Assad government, backed by Russia and Iran, is now in its strongest position since the start of the war, while rebel groups are mostly boxed into the northwestern province of Idlib and hold no strategically significant urban areas.

The Syrian military declared in a statement issued Thursday that the comprehensive cessation of hostilities follows victories and advances by the armed forces.

Russia and Turkey, which brokered the deal, said they could guarantee compliance from the government and its armed opposition respectively, after weeks of negotiations.

In Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the agreement a historic opportunity that should not be squandered. But in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged it was fragile.

The agreement marks an ambitious venture by the Russian leader to establish his dominant role as dealmaker in the Syrian conflict and further sideline the United States less than a month before President-elect Donald Trumps inauguration.

The Syrian army said it excluded terrorist organizations, notably the Islamic State, but also the countrys al-Qaida affiliate, an influential component of what remains of Syrias armed opposition. The caveat suggested that the fighting could continue in Idlib, now the rebels final bastion.

Speaking in a televised meeting with his defense and foreign ministers Thursday, Putin said three documents were signed: the cease-fire to begin Friday between the Syrian government and certain rebel groups, an agreement on monitoring the truce and a statement of readiness to begin peace talks.

The State Department said it had played no part in the negotiations but called news of the cease-fire a positive development. Mark Toner, a department spokesman, said, We hope it will be implemented fully and respected by all parties.

As President Barack Obama prepares to leave office next month, Washingtons influence in Syria is much diminished. Russia and Turkey have taken the lead on initiatives to end a war that has killed almost half a million people, spurred the largest refugee crisis since World War II and gave safe haven to a global terrorist threat in the form of the Islamic State.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did not mention Obama in his remarks, instead inviting the incoming Trump administration to join the process after the president-elects inauguration.

I would also like to express my hope that when the administration of Donald Trump assumes its responsibilities, they may also join these efforts in order to work toward this goal in a friendly and collective manner, Lavrov said during the meeting.

Trump has signaled his willingness to work with Moscow on a solution to the Syrian conflict. He is also on record as supporting policies that include a withdrawal of support for the armed opposition and the establishment of safe zones for civilians.

The intervention of Russias air force last year transformed the Syrian governments fortunes, quashing a major rebel offensive and turning the war in Damascuss favor. Although Russia later announced a partial withdrawal, its air and ground forces continue to play an important role, even as the influence of Assads other main backer, Iran, rises.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said seven opposition groups with a combined 60,000 fighters from central and northern Syria have agreed to the cease-fire, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, two powerful Islamist factions.

The exclusion of groups linked to the Islamic State and al-Qaida seemed to be the latest attempt to peel jihadist fighters from more-moderate elements in the armed opposition.

The al-Qaida-linked Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly called Jabhat al-Nusra, contributes significant firepower to a coalition of rebel groups in Idlib province. U.S. officials say it may be difficult to separate the extremists fighting alongside a number of key rebel groups.

Previous cease-fires have been short-lived. A similar deal announced by the United States and Russia in February lasted longer than most but was over by July. A U.S.-Russian deal in September lasted a week.

The Syrian National Coalition, a leading political opposition group based in Turkey, confirmed its support for the truce. A senior official, Hadi al-Bahra, described it in a message posted to Twitter as a positive achievement, saying his group would make sure that this agreement will be implemented fully.

But as diplomacy continued, so did the fighting. A Syrian rescue group known as the White Helmets said Thursday that at least 12 people were killed and 27 others injured in airstrikes and artillery shelling on civilian homes in eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb. Footage from the area showed an elderly man being carried to an ambulance, his blood-soaked scarf streaking the vehicle as his stretcher was placed inside.

Peace efforts in Syria must still survive the many potential pitfalls of the shaky alliance between Russia and Turkey. But if Putins gambit to play peacemaker among the bitter regional rivals of the Middle East is successful, it would mark his greatest international achievement to date. To broker a solution to the regions bloodiest conflict while excluding the United States would be an important shift in the international balance of power  one that Putin has called for publicly since he took power in 2000.

  

Heba Habib in Stockholm contributed to this report.
In the taxonomy of deception, many believe that the worst kind of lie is one of commission  intentionally misleading someone by knowingly making a false statement.

But another common type of deception  one many have witnessed but probably didnt know what to call  may be viewed just as badly.

Paltering, or the active use of a truthful statement to mislead someone  is the subject of a new research study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It finds that the tactic is not only common  more than half of business executives enrolled in a Harvard Business School executive education course admitted they had used it in some or most of their negotiations, for instance  but viewed with equal distrust as intentional lies. Participants in the study rated the behavior of someone who paltered in a negotiation as being just as unethical or untrustworthy as the person who outright lied with a known falsehood.

Weve underspecified what it means to do any form of deception other than a lie of commission, said Todd Rogers, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and one of the authors of the paper, in an interview. Though not a new term  he says its borrowed from the field of philosophy  Rogers and his co-authors have co-opted the concept of paltering for the field of negotiation.

Their research found that people doing the misleading think paltering is better than committing an outright lie. But the target of the deception doesnt: If people find out that you paltered, which means you told truthful statements, they react as if you lied to them.

Politicians, Rogers said, do this all the time. The most famous example may be Bill Clintons famous is response to NewsHour host Jim Lehrer, with which Rogers and his co-authors launch their paper. Clinton told Lehrer in 1998 that there is not a sexual relationship  that is accurate with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. While the statement was technically true at the time  the Starr Commission found his relationship had ended months before the interview  it also misled people and did not tell the whole truth.

Rogers co-author, Francesca Gino, pointed to examples from the 2016 presidential election in an article in the Harvard Business Review. In the Sept. 26 presidential debate, for instance, Donald Trump answered a question about a federal lawsuit from 1973 charging his familys firm at the time with housing discrimination. When I was very young, I went into my fathers company, Trump said in the debate. We, along with many, many other companies throughout the country  it was a federal lawsuit  were sued. We settled the suit with zero  with no admission of guilt. It was very easy to do. . . . That was a lawsuit brought against many real estate firms, and its just one of those things.

While there was no admission of guilt, Gino wrote, an investigation by the New York Times suggested the settlement did not mean the family company, which Trump was president of at the time, was innocent. The Trumps signed a consent decree, which typically does not include an admission of guilt, but did include pages of stipulations intended to ensure the desegregation of Trump properties, the Times reported. The Washington Posts Fact-Checker also noted the particular lawsuit in question was squarely aimed at the Trumps and their company, not many companies.

Another example came from Hillary Clintons running mate, Tim Kaine, whose assertion during the vice presidential debate that Richard Nixon released tax returns when he was under audit made it seem like he did so while he was running for re-election. Gino notes that, in fact, he released them under audit a year after his re-election.

Business leaders do it, too. The researchers asked experienced negotiators who were part of an executive education course at Harvard Business School whether they engage in paltering, and 52 percent admitted to doing so. The study also found that participants believed that actively making truthful statements, even if meant to mislead, was more ethical than outright lies or passively omitting relevant information.

That could cause people to palter too much in negotiations, Rogers said. If they think it is not that bad, and then think their counterparts wont think its that bad, theyd be making a mistake, he said.

The type of lie known as a lie of omission might be thought of as being similar to paltering. In both cases, the deceiver isnt telling the whole truth. But theyre different, says Rogers: One is the passive failure to disclose something a negotiation counterpart doesnt know, while paltering is the active use of truthful statements to mislead.

Say youre negotiating with a buyer over a used car youre trying to sell. If the buyer says I presume the car is in excellent shape and the engine runs well, simply failing to correct him if the engine has had problems is a lie of omission, Rogers says. But if you say I drove it yesterday in 10-below temperatures and it drove well, even if you know its been to the shop twice in the past month, thats paltering. Opportunities to lie by omission, Rogers says, actually dont arise all that often.

Of course, classifying whether voters or negotiation counterparts will see paltering as ethical is vastly complicated by an election in which the usual standards for truth and political rhetoric seemed to be ignored. Seventy percent of the statements by President-elect Donald Trump examined by the nonpartisan fact-checking outlet Politifact have been rated mostly false, false or pants on fire.

Paltering is only important in a world where communicators feel they have to be able to say something thats defensibly true, Rogers said. Its crazy that we have to even acknowledge that constraint on the relevance of this.

It really requires norms of coherence and consistency, he said. And if you dont abide by those, then theres no reason you would ever need to palter, because you could just say whatever you want.
An adviser to Russian president Vladimir Putin has said the country could be disconnected from the global Internet if needed.

The comments by German Klimenko, the Russian presidents Internet adviser, come as the United States is said to be mulling covert cyber-operations against Russia in retaliation for Moscows interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Klimenko made his remarks during an interview with the Russian-language RT television channel, whose interviewer asked about a draft law from November that seeks to regulate the Russian Internet.

In the law we are talking about the protection of critical infrastructure, which should be located in the territory of Russia, Klimenko said. For example, hackers can penetrate the structure of commercial banks and steal money. This is bad, but if they enter into the system of the Central Bank, we would be in big trouble.

Klimenko pointed out that Western powers had cut Crimea off from Google and Microsoft services after the peninsula was annexed from Ukraine by Russia (the companies were complying with U.S. sanctions on Crimea imposed after Russias takeover). He suggested that showed why it was necessary for the Russian Internet to work on its own.

There is a high probability of tectonic shifts in our relations with the West, said Klimenko. Therefore, our task is to adjust the Russian segment of the Internet to protect themselves from such scenarios. He added that critical infrastructure should be on Russian territory, so no one could turn it off.

Adam Segal, an expert in cybersecurity at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Hacked World Order, said that Klimenkos comments appeared to be a response to the threat of cyberattacks from the United States. But he doubted Klimenkos idea of an isolated Russian Internet would work out well.

A cut-off Internet may still be vulnerable to sophisticated attacks, said Segal, and theyd want it to be a very temporary measure.

Klimenko himself has personally denied any Russian role in U.S. hacking. Usually these kinds of leaks take place not because hackers broke in, but, as any professional will tell you, because someone simply forgot the password or set the simple password 123456, he said in comments to Russian state media in June.

But the Russian government has long held a skeptical view of the Internet itself, sometimes suggesting it is a foreign tool used to influence Russian politics. Putin himself once dubbed the Internet a CIA project. The Russian press reported in 2015 that domestic Internet service providers (ISPs) had been blocking traffic from various foreign sources to see how the Russian Internet would work without them. It was reported at the time that the tests were ultimately unsuccessful, as many smaller ISPs did not take part.

In November, Russias communications regulator blocked access to LinkedIn, a U.S.-based social network for business professionals, for violating a 2014 law that required social networks with Russian users to physically store six months of data on Russian land. Despite the law, a number of foreign social networks  most notably Facebook and Twitter  are not known to comply.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russias Internet and the co-author of  The Red Web, downplayed the tone of Klimenkos comments, suggesting that Putins Internet adviser makes lots of sensational comments, trying to make himself useful.

But Soldatov added that Russias attempts to move away from a U.S.- and Europe-dominated Internet were very real. Thats largely motivated by a desire to have more control of information in Russia and access to data for surveillance purposes  and Russia isnt alone in that, he said.

What makes things worse is that it coincides with the new rapprochement with China on cyber that started in 2016, with Chinese and Russian Internet censors exchanging visits and lots of talk how to improve the Internet filtering system, said Soldatov, warning of a disastrous effect on Russian Internet freedoms.
Donald Trump is once again claiming credit for beating back the scourge of outsourcing, this time insisting that he is the reason that Sprint has announced plans to move thousands of jobs back to America from other countries.

Because of whats happening, and the spirit and the hope, I was just called by the head people at Sprint, and they are going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States, Trump said, adding that the news of jobs coming back into the United States marks a nice change. Trump later added that the jobs were coming back because of me.

But based on what we know right now, it is not at all clear what role Trump  or whatever spirit of hope his victory has created  had in bringing these jobs back to the U.S.

Yet here are some of the headlines that greeted Trumps claim:

 CNN: Trump declares victory: Sprint will create 5,000 U.S. jobs.

 The New York Times: Trump Takes Credit for Sprint Plan to Add 5,000 Jobs in U.S.

 USA Today: 8,000 U.S. jobs? Trump takes credit for Sprint, start-up decisions.

 ABC News: Trump claims Sprint to create 5,000 jobs because of me.

 The Associated Press: Trump takes credit for 8,000 jobs from Japanese mogul.

 The Washington Post: Trump touts thousands of new jobs in deal with Softbank CEO.

To be sure, you could find the facts of the situation buried in the body of these stories. (Some of these headlines refer to 8,000 jobs, rather than 5,000, because of an additional 3,000 jobs that Trump announced.) But the 5,000 jobs seem to have been previously decided, and the broader plans of which they are a part seem to have predated the election. As the Times write-up explained:



Sprint later said that the jobs were part of a previously announced commitment by Japans SoftBank, which owns a controlling stake in the mobile phone carrier, to invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 positions. That announcement, made by Masayoshi Son, the chief executive of SoftBank, followed a meeting with Mr. Trump this month.

SoftBank is also a major investor in OneWeb, a satellite start-up that Mr. Trump said Wednesday would create an additional 3,000 jobs in the United States.



Trump previously met with Son in early December, after which Son announced this $50 billion investment in the United States. Trump took credit for that at the time, too. But if you click through to the linked story about SoftBanks announcement at that time, you learn this:



The $50 billion investment pledge is not an entirely new initiative that SoftBank is undertaking. Instead, the money is projected to come from the Japanese companys previously announced Vision fund, a $100 billion vehicle for investing in technology companies worldwide.

The fund  which includes Saudi Arabia, a target of Mr. Trumps ire during the presidential campaign, as a key partner  was always expected to strike a significant portion of its deals in the United States.



Now, in fairness to Trump, we dont really know whether he did or did not play some kind of role in ensuring that these expected deals in the U.S. will now actually happen. Maybe he did.

But thats exactly the point: We do not yet know whether he played any role or, if he did, what that role might have entailed. Indeed, its perfectly plausible that he may not have played any role at all, or if he did, that it might have been largely incidental. Which is to say that we have no way of knowing whether the Trump claim reflected in all of these headlines  that he does deserve credit for this happening  is true or not.

Some headlines did manage to convey this basic underlying problem. Politico noted in its headline that Trump was touting previously announced jobs. Bloomberg was even better, stating flatly in its headline: Trump seeks credit for 5,000 Sprint jobs already touted.

A suggested rule of thumb

I would like to propose a rule of thumb for these situations: If the headline does not convey the fact that Trumps claim is in question or open to doubt, based on the known facts, then it is insufficiently informative. The Bloomberg headline does accomplish this. If the headline merely conveys that Trump claimed credit for something, without also conveying that this is open to doubt, then it risks being misleading, particularly since people often scan headlines without digging deeper into the stories and the factual details.

Why is this a risk any news org would choose to take, when it doesnt have to? Look, its obvious that Trump has adopted a strategy of actively trying to game such headlines in his favor. Trumps claims about Carrier jobs staying in Indiana turned out to be significantly less rosy upon closer inspection. And remember when Trump falsely claimed credit for keeping a Ford plant here that was going to stay anyway? It really doesnt take much to convey it in a headline when Trumps claim is in doubt.

Whats more, all this is exacerbated by another problem here: It may be in the interests of the companies in question to play along with the story that Trump is telling. When Trump falsely takes credit for a companys decision to keep or move jobs here, why would that company want to set the record straight, when so doing could incur the wrath of the new administration, and when allowing Trumps self-serving tale to stand could conceivably lead the new administration to view it favorably? The full story will be even harder to come by in these situations  making it more important that headlines inform readers and viewers when Trumps claim is unverified or suspect.

Pretty much everyone already accepts that Trumps nonstop lies and embellishment pose an unprecedented challenge to the news media. Whats more, weve already seen news orgs actively adjust their editorial approaches to cope with it. When the New York Times famously broke with precedent and called Trumps birtherism a lie in a front page headline, executive editor Dean Baquet explained that this was necessary because Trump was going beyond the normal sort of obfuscation that politicians traffic in. In other words, Trump is forging new frontiers of dishonesty, and news organizations must adjust accordingly.

Now that its obvious that President Trump will strategically employ exaggerated announcements of saved jobs to rig the headlines in his favor, maybe its time to rethink how to handle that, too.

And this should go without saying, but Id like to add one additional point to my proposed rule of thumb for Trump headlines: If the known facts show that his claims are false or outright lies, the headline should clearly indicate that, too.
Far Side cartoons, Ansel Adams landscapes, underwater dogs  so cliche. Why settle for a humdrum wall calendar in 2017 when you can track your days with CIA paintings showing agency operatives stealing secrets, killing off enemies or even getting killed themselves?

January features a painting of a CIA contractor firing an AK-47 out of an Air America chopper at a North Vietnamese biplane. Flip to April for The First Sting, depicting a CIA-trained Afghan mujahideen fighter striking a Soviet helicopter with a Stinger missile. End 2017 on a high note: December features the famous Glomar Explorer in 1974 recovering a portion of a Soviet submarine teeming with secrets from the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

The inaugural Secret Ops of the CIA calendar was produced by the nephew of an agency contractor killed in the line of duty and features reproductions of the actual paintings that have hung for years in the hallways of CIA headquarters in Northern Virginia. Yes, the CIA has an official art collection, although you cant just drive up to the agency to check it out.

But for as little as the cost of about a weeks worth of coffee, you can adorn your kitchen wall with prints of genuine CIA artwork showing clandestine missions from World War II to Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

The calendars are on sale for $28 at the International Spy Museum and its online gift store; or for $23.95 on the website of its producer, Erik Kirzinger, a North Carolina man whose uncle, a CIA contractor, was killed during a 1952 mission in China depicted in one of the calendar paintings, Ambush in Manchuria.

But the CIA wont sell the calendar at its gift shop.

I bent over backwards to make sure everyone on their end was comfortable, Kirzinger said, declining to elaborate. I mean, the CIA gift shop has sold made-in-China coffee mugs with the CIA logo on it. Good grief!

Toni Hiley, the longtime CIA museum director, said the gift shop cant sell the calendar because its not an official work of the U.S. government.

For the folks who run the International Spy Museum in downtown Washington, the CIAs loss is their gain. The shop bought 25 copies of the calendar and quickly sold out. Then the museum store purchased another 300.

When we tell visitors that its the first time you can have prints of these paintings all together, theyre surprised, and they get really excited, and they also get excited that the CIA logo itself is on it, said Allison Bishop, a book buyer for the spy museum and retail store. So few products have the CIA logo allowed to be on the product.

(In true, cryptic CIA fashion, Kirzingers calendar cover does carry the agencys blue seal with an eagle, but he said the agency also required him to print a disclaimer next to the seal that says the CIA does not approve, endorse or authorize use of its name, initials, or Seal.)

It was Kirzinger, 65, who began commissioning large oil-on-canvas paintings for the CIA. And it was Kirzinger who designed and published the calendar with his own money, along with significant contributions from a retired case officer in California and the chief executive of a technology company whose father was a CIA contract pilot.

I am unaware of any other CIA calendar like this, Kirzinger said. If the true-to-life scenes depicted in the CIA artwork involved the service branches, there certainly would be large medal presentation ceremonies with marching bands and well-deserved public acclaim. But for the men and women in the silent service, everything is on a need-to-know basis, including whether or not medals and citations were presented.

The backs of each page contain several paragraphs of Kirzingers research, archival photos of agency personnel, and other documents. In advance of its release last month, he submitted the calendar to the agencys museum and staff historians to verify its accuracy.

Though Kirzinger has never worked in the spy business himself, he led a peripatetic life, working as a logger, a fly fishing guide, a cowboy on a 165,000-acre cattle ranch in Montana, and the regional director of a now-defunct Chinese restaurant franchise.

He first made contact with the CIA nearly two decades ago, because of his dogged attempt to find the remains of his uncle, Norman A. Schwartz, a pilot killed on a secret mission into Communist China in 1952. In the spring of 1998, Kirzingers aging mother pushed him to have Schwartzs remains repatriated from China, where his plane crashed, so he could be buried next to their parents in Louisville.

After getting nowhere, Kirzinger wrote then-CIA Director George Tenet. A few weeks later, his office called back, disclosing that the agency would chisel a star onto its marble Memorial Wall in his honor. Though Schwartzs remains were never found, he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Cross, the CIAs highest honor of valor. At the CIAs annual Memorial Wall ceremony in 2000, Kirzinger said Tenets vivid remarks about the slain operatives inspired his project.

I just had these visions of artwork, from the OSS through the contemporary war on global terrorism, and if you lined up all these paintings, youd see the visual history of the CIA, one painting at a time, he said. I knew the only artwork at the headquarters was some god-awful modern art . . . and tacky Americana prints.

Eventually, Kirzinger pitched himself to the CIA as a volunteer who could find the artists, pool private donations to pay them, and research the missions scenes to ensure the paintings accuracy. The first painting, Earthquakes Final Flight, which depicts a CIA plane in May 1954 under fire over North Vietnam, was installed at the agency in 2005.

Eriks vision for the collection ran parallel to our own desire to create a world-class art collection, said Hiley, the agencys longtime museum director. She added that the CIA wanted to amass a collection on par with the combat paintings owned by military branches.

In June 2010, after multiple pieces had been unveiled at the agency, Kirzinger was presented with the Agency Seal Medal, an honor awarded by the CIA to non-agency personnel. After that, Kirzinger bowed out of his role as the agencys unofficial arts commissioner. But last year, he decided to incorporate those paintings into the inaugural Secret Ops of the CIA calendar, at the insistence of one of the artworks donors, Bruce Walker, a retired CIA case officer in San Francisco.

Eriks very patriotic to begin with, but hes very skilled with understanding what the agency needed to pull this off, said Walker, 84. To achieve this product requires a lot of finesse and diplomacy.

Where does Kirzinger hang his Secret Ops of the CIA calendar?

Um, I dont have one, he said. As soon as I get them, I give them away. I have to send a batch to the CIA director and another batch to the Directorate of Operations.
The Buffalo Board of Education voted Thursday to demand the resignation of Carl Paladino, a board member who made vile and racist remarks about the Obamas. Paladino co-chaired President-elect Donald Trumps campaign in New York.

In a special meeting called to discuss Paladinos comments, board members voted 6 to 2 to call for his resignation. If he does not, the board will petition the New York state commissioner of education, who has the authority to initiate proceedings to have Paladino removed from the panel.

A statement from the New York State Education Department issued after the vote said:

  

We will continue to closely monitor the actions by the Buffalo School Board, the Buffalo Parent-Teacher Organization and others on this matter. Once we receive an application for removal, we will review it as quickly as possible. We continue to review all of our options.

  

Paladino, a wealthy Republican business executive, said in response to a survey by the alternative newspaper Artvoice that his biggest wish in 2017 is that President Barack Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a cow, then dies and is buried in a cow pasture. He said that he hopes first lady Michelle Obama would return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.

He was blasted by elected politicians, schools and others, and many called for him to resign his position on the Buffalo school board, where he has served since 2013 and this year won reelection. Paladino initially refused to back away from his comments, but he recently sent a 12-paragraph email to supporters saying that he would not resign but that:

  

I never intended to hurt the minority community who I spent years trying to help out of the cycle of poverty in our inner cities. To them I apologize.

  

Syracuse.com reported that Paladino, in his email, also went on to defiantly criticize those who have asked him to resign from the Buffalo School Board over his remarks and continued his relentless attack on Obamas record as president.

Barbara Seals Nevergold, the school board president, called for Thursdays special meeting and made a statement recently that clearly stated her position:

  

We have whats called a Dignity For All Students act. It does not just apply to students. It applies to everyone in the district. It applies to me, every other board member, every staff member. Adults are expected to adhere to that policy and if were not adhering to the policy, how in the world can we ask our students to adhere to it?
Oh, what a tangled web we weave. When first we practise to deceive!

negotiator

@Price44

Can I point out the meeting is on the schedule online? Any response? Can I point out the meeting is on the schedule online? Any response? pic.twitter.com/Z4KAwi4KRR December 28, 2016

@Price44 Are you saying a meeting took place but the transcript is fake, or that Rice wasn't at the meeting? December 28, 2016

QUESTION: Yeah. I mean, tensions have been increasing since the UN vote on Friday. Im sure youve seen all the reports and heard a lot of the words. The Israeli officials are now being quoted as saying that they have evidence that they will lay out to the Trump administration of  in which the U.S., specifically Kerry, had discussions with the Palestinians before the vote, a few weeks before, during a visit to Washington where Saeb Erekat was around, and basically that he pushed them to go to Egypt and to move ahead with this resolution. Thats one of the things.

MR TONER: Okay.

QUESTION: So the question is: Was the U.S. hiding behind this other group of countries to submit the resolution? Were those discussions ever taken place? Because the Israelis feel that theyve got evidence that there was meddling by the Americans.

MR TONER: Excuse me. Forgive me. (Coughs.) I picked up a cold over the weekend too, unfortunately, so I apologize.

So youre right. Weve obviously seen the same reports, an amalgamation of different allegations that somehow this was U.S.-driven and precooked. What Ill say  excuse me  (coughs)  is that we reject the notion that the United States was the driving force behind this resolution. Thats just not true. The United States did not draft this resolution, nor did it put it forward. It was drafted and initially introduced, as we all know, by Egypt, in coordination with the Palestinians and others. When it was clear that the Egyptians and the Palestinians would insist on bringing this resolution to a vote and that every other country on the council would, in fact, support it, we made clear to others, including those on the Security Council, that further changes were needed to make the text more balanced. And thats a standard practice on  with regard to resolutions at the Security Council. So theres nothing new to this.

You look like youre pouncing on me, but go ahead.

QUESTION: No, we just 

MR TONER: No, well continue. I can continue, but if you have a  do you have a follow up?

QUESTION: No, no. Lets just keep going with this.

MR TONER: Okay, sure. And this is a really important point. We also made clear at every conversation  in every conversation  that the President would make the final decision and that he would have to review the final text before making his final decision. So the idea that this was, again, precooked or that we had agreed upon the text weeks in advance is just not accurate. And in fact 

QUESTION: But we know that 

MR TONER: Go ahead. Im sorry. Go ahead.

QUESTION: No, we know that the U.S. didnt draft it or put it forward. But was the U.S. in any way coaxing on any  another group of countries to move ahead and go and move ahead with this resolution?

MR TONER: Well, again, these are  I mean, again, I think its important to have the proper context, in that all through the fall there was talk about  and we often got the question here and of course we replied that were never going to discuss hypotheticals in terms of what resolutions or what is circulating out there  but of course, there has been for some time in the fall talk about this resolution or that resolution with regard to the Middle East peace and the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

So of course, in the  of course, in the course of those conversations, were always making clear what our parameters are, what our beliefs are, what our  what we need to see or what we  in order to even consider a resolution. Thats part of the give-and-take of the UN.

QUESTION: But surely these countries, before they would move ahead, would want to get the view of an influential member of the Security Council of the UN of who  of what their position would be on this.

MR TONER: Well, again, I think we  of course, as the draft or the text was circulated, we said to those on the Security Council that  what further changes were needed to make the text more balanced. And in fact, we ended up abstaining because we didnt feel it was balanced enough in the sense of it didnt hit hard enough on the incitement-to-violence side of the coin.

Go ahead. You look perplexed. (Laughter.) Go ahead, Said.

QUESTION: At what stage did you intervene to try and balance? Was it after Egypt said theyd withdraw it?

MR TONER: I think it was once  yeah, I mean, once  I mean, I dont have a date certain. It was once the Egyptians and Palestinians made it clear that they were going to advance this text or bring this resolution to a vote and that, in fact, it would be supported by other countries.

QUESTION: Does that date predate Mr. Erekats visit to the State Department?

MR TONER: I dont know the date of his visit. But again, Im not  Im not exactly  and Im not necessarily excluding that when he did visit to the State Department that they didnt discuss possible resolutions or anything like that in terms of draft language. But again, there was no  nothing precooked. There was nothing  this was not some move orchestrated by the United States.

Please.

QUESTION: Could you be clear what you just said? I heard a double negative in there. Youre not precluding that they didnt discuss it. Are you saying they  that when the Palestinians were here 

MR TONER: I dont have a readout. Yeah, I dont have a readout of that meeting in front of me. I just  but I said I can imagine that they talked about Middle East peace broadly and efforts to reinvigorate the process. I dont know that they discussed the possible action at the UN. But of course, as we  as I said in answer to Lesleys question, that was something that was in the mix for some months now in New York at the UN that there might be some action taken there.

QUESTION: And what about New Zealand, when the Secretary was there before Antarctica?

MR TONER: Yeah.

One of the closed-door discussions between United States Secretary of State John Kerry and the New Zealand Government today was a potential resolution by the United Nations Security Council on a two-state solution for the Israel - Palestinian conflict.

After the talks, Foreign Minister Murray McCully even raised the possibility of the US or New Zealand sponsoring a resolution.

"It is a conversation we are engaged in deeply and we've spent some time talking to Secretary Kerry about where the US might go on this.

"It is something that is still in play," McCully told reporters after talks today in Wellington.

QUESTION: And also I believe he had a meeting here with Mr. Shoukry at some point in early December.

MR TONER: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: Was the resolution discussed at either of those meetings with those diplomats?

MR TONER: Again, I cant specifically say whether the resolution  but certainly, if a resolution or action at the UN was discussed, it wasnt discussed in the level of detail where there was some final text. We always reserved the right with any text that was put forward, drafted and put forward, to veto it or to not take action or abstain, which is what we ended up doing.

QUESTION: But you advised them on how to put together a motion that the United States would feel comfortable abstaining or voting in favor of?

MR TONER: Well, I think what we said is  and this is not just unique to this process, but once a text, a draft text is to the point where its going to be put forward to a vote, of course we would provide input on what we believed were  was language that didnt pass or didnt allow us to vote for it or 

QUESTION: You see what Im saying?

MR TONER: Yeah.

QUESTION: You didnt just say bring whatever motion you like up and well vote however we feel about it. You were encouraging them to bring forward a motion that you would feel comfortable not blocking.

MR TONER: Well, but we have to be really careful in how were talking about this because what the allegations 

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR TONER: No, I know and I understand that. But no, no, but Im saying that some of the allegations out there, frankly, are implying that this was somehow some  as I said, some orchestrated action by the U.S. to pass a resolution that was negative about settlement activity in Israel, and the fact is that thats just not the case. Of course, we would always provide, when the final text was going up for a vote, our opinion on where the red lines were. But I think that  I think this is all a little bit of a sideshow, to be honest, that this was a resolution that we could not in good conscience veto because it condemns violence, it condemned incitement, it reiterates what has long been the overwhelming consensus international view on settlements, and it calls for the parties to take constructive steps to advance a two-state solution on the ground. There was nothing in there that would prompt us to veto that type of resolution.

QUESTION: But there was nothing in there 

MR TONER: And in fact 

QUESTION:  because you told them not to put anything in there that would cause you to veto it.

MR TONER: But that  but again, not at all. And I said we did not take the lead in drafting this resolution. That was done by the Egyptians with the Palestinians. But again, in any kind of resolution process, of course theres moments where  or I mean, its not like our views regarding settlements or regarding resolutions with respect to Israel arent well-known and well-vetted within the UN community. Theres been many times in the past where weve not  or we vetoed resolutions that we found to be biased towards Israel. But thats another point here is that theres nothing  the other canard in all of this is that this was somehow breaking with longstanding U.S. tradition in the UN Security Council, when we all know that every administration has vetoed  or rather has abstained or voted for similar resolutions.

to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967

QUESTION: But its true then that you had opportunities to ask them not to bring it forward at all and didnt take them.

MR TONER: Im not sure what youre 

QUESTION: Well, instead of saying why not write the motion this way, you could have said please dont bring a motion.

MR TONER: Well, again, I think when it was clear to us that they were going to bring it to a vote and that every other council  every other country on the council was going to support that resolution, that draft text 

Jonathan Schanzer, a Middle East expert and vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Free Beacon that he spoke with U.S. officials in September who admitted that a U.N. measure of some shape or form was actively considered, a charge that runs counter the White Houses official narrative.

We know that this administration was at a minimum helping to shape a final resolution at the United Nations and had been working on this for months, Schanzer said.

This isnt terribly dissimilar from the administrations attempts to spin the cash pallets they sent to Iran, he added, referring to the administrations efforts to conceal the fact that it sent the Iranian government some $1.7 billion in cash.

The fact is, the administration has been flagged as being an active participant in this U.N. resolution, Schanzer said. Now they wish to try to spin this as inconsequential. This was an attempt by the administration to lead from behind, as they have done countless times in the past and which has failed countless times in the past.

One veteran foreign policy insider and former government official who requested anonymity in order to speak freely described senior Obama administration officials as lying sacks of shit who routinely feed the press disinformation.

A senior congressional aide who is working on a package of repercussions aimed at the U.N. told the Free Beacon the administration is scrambling to provide excuses in response to the breakdown in its own narrative regarding the resolution.

The administration got caught red handed, and now theyre talking out of both sides of their mouth, said the source, who was not authorized to speak on record. First they claimed the resolution was simply not objectionable. Now they say it will actually help advance peace. These denials only look more ridiculous with each passing day as new evidence surfaces that the White House was behind this anti-Israel resolution.

The Obama administration has been caught several times misleading the public about its campaign to discredit Israel, including the funding of an organization that sought to unseat Netanyahu in the countrys last election, according to one congressional adviser who works with Republican and Democratic offices on Middle East issues.

If you are Jewish and supporting Barack Obama and John Kerry, well, you would have made a fine helper at Auschwitz.  Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) December 28, 2016

The Obama administration's effort to deny Prime Minister Netanyahu's charge that Obama was behind the passage of a UN resolution declaring the Western Wall to be 'Palestinian territory' has come apart under the weight of its own lies.You will recall, if you follow the links above that the Obama administration denied the Netanyahu government's accusations that Obama-Kerry were behind and orchestrating the UN resolution. And if you keep reading below, you will find out that in fact, the Obama administration has been orchestrating this resolution since September, and that John Kerry's little post-election trip to New Zealand (and Antartica) is likely connected to it.On Wednesday morning, Israel Radio reported on an Egyptian newspaper report that published a summary of a meeting among Kerry, Susan Rice and chief 'Palestinian'Saeb Erekat. That led to this denial from US National Security Council spokesman Ned Price:To which CAMERA analyst Gidon Shaviv responded.Price equivocated.Price never responded to the question.But in fact, on Tuesday, the State Department's Mark Toner admitted that the meeting did take place. And much more (full transcript here ).Actually, it's'standard practice' unless you're looking for an excuse not to veto it. If the United States had planned to veto the resolution - as happened many times in the past - it would not have bothered to pretend to make the text 'more balanced,' because it would not have mattered. And it certainly would not have sent Secretary Kerry gallivanting around the world to work on it.You mean like 'humiliated' Joe Biden leaning on Ukraine to improve the 'optics' and make it 14-0? But Toner didn't bother to explain that.Yes, of course. Because without the need to worry any more about himself or his party, the true Jew-hating Obama was free to come out.No. When you abstain and you could have vetoed, that's a vote in favor. Let's call a spade a spade.Erekat 'visited' the State Department on December 12 - ten days before the Egyptians presented and withdrew the resolution, and eleven days before Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela - with open support from the UK and behind the scenes support from the US - presented it again. Orchestrated? Bet on it.This wouldn't be anywhere near as suspicious had the meeting been publicly disclosed on December 12. But if had, Israel would not have been blindsided.Yeah indeed. Let's interrupt for a minute. Here's a New Zealand Herald report from November 13, five days after the US election.New Zealand's two-year term on the Security Council will end in ignominy on Saturday. But then, we should not have been as surprised by their behavior as we were. Our bad.Back to the State Department.Like I said - when you have a veto and you don't use it, you're voting in favor.Sounds like game, set and match right here.Actually, no. The only party it calls on to do anything is Israel Actually, no administration other than the Carter administration has ever called 'settlements' illegal. And no administration has ever called on 'all States'That's right. In case you missed it, the Obama administration voted for a resolution that backs BDS.Since when does a country with veto power have to worry about what 'every other country on the council' is going to do, especially a week before ten of the council's 15 members are about to turn over? Funny that we never hear Russia or China worrying about what 'every other country on the council' is going to do.But the effort to destroy Israel in the council goes back much further than Kerry's trip to New Zealand in November. Here's Adam Kredo from the Washington Free Beacon.And if you're having any doubts whether to believe Schanzer or to believe the Obama-Kerry spin, please consider this.All of which leads this Jew to believe that columnist and lawyer Kurt Schlichter is spot-on with this tweet.Indeed.

Labels: American allies, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, John Kerry, New Zealand, Saeb Erekat, United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334
SKODA Ireland last week announced a 20% volume growth in sales for 2016 versus 2015 in a record year which saw the brand deliver over 9,500 new vehicles.

The growth has meant that SKODA have retained their position as the sixth highest selling car brand in the country for the second year running, while they have increased their market share to 6.5%.



New car turnover has increased by 29% from 115m to 148m and the turnover from sales of vehicle parts and accessories has increased 13% from 7.8 m to 8.8 m.

A growing number of customers are also availing of the competitive SKODA finance offers and last week the company announced that they have loaned over 105million to customers over the past twelve months, an increase of 48.9% on 2015.

In addition to this record sales and finance performance, extensive building works have been rolled out over the last 12-18 months to completely transform the appearance of the SKODA dealer network at a cost of 12.5million.



Speaking last week, Brand Director at SKODA Ireland, John Donegan commented, "At SKODA we are extremely optimistic for 2017. The new face of our dealer network will be the most modern of any car brand in Ireland and we will have some exciting new models for our customers to experience."

He added, "It is a testament to the confidence of our Dealer Network also that they have such faith in the brand by investing 12.5million in their new showrooms."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Genesee & Wyoming Inc. owns and leases freight railroads. It operates through three segments: North American Operations, Australian Operations, and U.K./European Operations. The company transports various commodities, including agricultural products, autos and auto parts, chemicals and plastics, coal and coke, food and kindred products, lumber and forest products, metallic ores, metals, minerals and stone, petroleum products, pulp and paper, waste, and other commodities. It owns or leases 122 freight railroads, including 105 short line railroads and 2 regional freight railroads located in the United States, 8 short line railroads located in Canada, 3 railroads located in Australia, 1 railroad located in the United Kingdom, 1 railroad in Poland and Germany, and 2 railroads in the Netherlands with a total of approximately 16,200 miles of track. The company also operates 6,200 additional miles of track that is owned or leased by others. In addition, it operates deep sea maritime containers and provides bulk haulage, including coal, aggregates, cement, and infrastructure services. Further, the company provides rail service at approximately 40 ports; rail-ferry service in North America, Australia, and Europe; and contract coal loading and railcar switching for industrial customers. Genesee & Wyoming Inc. was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Darien, Connecticut.
Trinity Industries, Inc. provides rail transportation products and services under the TrinityRail name in North America. It operates in two segments, Railcar Leasing and Management Services Group, and Rail Products Group. The Railcar Leasing and Management Services Group segment leases freight and tank railcars; originates and manages railcar leases for third-party investors; and provides fleet maintenance and management services. As of December 31, 2021, it had a fleet of 106,970 owned or leased railcars. This segment serves industrial shipper and railroad companies operating in agriculture, construction and metals, consumer products, energy, and refined products and chemicals markets. The Rail Products Group segment manufactures freight and tank railcars for transporting various liquids, gases, and dry cargo; and offers railcar maintenance and modification services. This segment serves railroads, leasing companies, and industrial shippers of products in the agriculture, construction and metals, consumer products, energy, and refined products and chemicals markets. It sells or leases products and services through its own sales personnel and independent sales representatives. Trinity Industries, Inc. was incorporated in 1933 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
This Account has been suspended.
Brands exist in a world with global challenges.

As our planet grows smaller and smaller, thanks to growing interconnectivity brought about by advances in communication technology, the Internet, commerce and travel, brands will continue to play a greater role in addressing these challenges, not only for their own marketing posture, but for the benefit of the global community.

As the World Economic Forum, an international organization committed to public-private cooperation, suggests, the worlds biggest challenges will require the active involvement of both public and private sectors. From a macro-perspective, the WEF identified the 10 biggest global challenges that concern both governments and brands in 2016 as follows:

Food Security: Ending hunger and improving nutrition worldwide Economic Growth: Ending drastic income inequalities Unemployment: Stimulating job growth Climate Change: Reducing greenhouse gases that lead to global warming Global Finance: Recovery from the last financial crisis and continued growth The Future of the Internet: Increasing beyond the 43% of the worlds currently connected population
In February, a former credit union accountant will begin her two-year prison sentence for stealing more than $300,000 from the $20.9 million Independent Employers Group Federal Credit Union in Hilo, Hawaii.

Melody Camba, 38, pleaded guilty to embezzlement in September, nine months after IEGFCU was merged into the $1.5 billion HawaiiUSA Federal Credit Union in Honolulu in December 2015.

During Cambas sentencing hearing Dec. 21, U.S. District Court Judge Helen Gillmor ordered the former employee to pay $308,696 in restitution and serve five years of supervised release following her prison term.

Camba stole the funds from January 2014 to November 2015 by writing 108 unauthorized checks. The theft was uncovered after the credit union merged with HawaiiUSA last year.
Malaysia Sets Up Cybersecurity Academy

The Malaysian Digital Economic Corporation (MDEC) and Protection Group International (PGI) have signed an agreement to work together to develop a cybersecurity academy in Malaysia.

It will be known as the UK-APAC Centre of Security Excellence and will see PGI and MDEC collaborate, generate and formulate awareness and strategies to regularly promote bilateral cybersecurity research and investment opportunities.

PGI will provide strategic advice on the design of the academys cybersecurity courses, infrastructure and resources. PGI will also draw on its curriculum of UK Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) Certified Training courses, materials and expert trainers to conduct pilot programs and oversee the development of local trainers for continuous learning at the academy.

Studies show that up to 2 million cybersecurity jobs will be unfilled by 2019 unless there is a step change in the numbers of new people entering the cyber security profession, said Barry Roche, CEO of PGI. PGI set up its Cyber Academy to play a leading role in identifying and training new entrants, reskilling those seeking to change careers into cyber, and continuing the professional development of the cyber security workforce. We are delighted to have demonstrated our expertise in these areas to.

PGI was opened in September 2014 by the Rt. Hon Karen Bradley MP, now the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in the UK, to help tackle the global cyber-skills shortage.

Since then, PGI has trained over 1,000 cyber specialists from 21 countries, and developed tailored courses and programs for government, police and armed forces clients, as well as senior management, mainstream IT specialists and entire workforces, from corporate to critical infrastructure clients. PGIs immersive courses are powered by its training infrastructure, which offers students realistic scenarios on up to 3,600 virtual machines.

Seeing PGIs workforce conversion training in action has been extremely interesting and insightful, said Yasmin Mahmood, CEO of MDEC. Learning from their ability to convert IT staff into frontline cyber security professionals will be pivotal to our cyber-development.

We are looking forward to harnessing PGIs expertise to ensure that the UK-APAC Centre of Security Excellence can play a similar role in creating much-needed cyber security professionals in Malaysia and the broader Asia-Pacific region.

Infosecurity Magazine: Malaysian Police Work with Interpol & FBI to Foil Cyber Warfare Threat:


This daily digest focuses on Yuan rates, major Chinese economic data, market sentiment, new developments in Chinas foreign exchange policies, changes in financial market regulations, as well as market news typically available only in Chinese-language sources.

- U.S. Dollar, Euro, Yen, and Pounds weights in CFETS Yuan Index have been reduced.

- Chinas liquidity mechanism shows a clogging issue: non-bank institutions unable to borrow from banks.

- If youre looking for more trading ideas, check out our Trading Guides.

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Yuan Rates

- China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS), the FX trading platform operator, announced on Thursday that it will adjust the way to calculate the CFETS Yuan Index, a key measure of the Yuan against a basket of currencies, from January 1st, 2017.

The weight of the U.S. Dollar in the CFETS Yuan Index will be reduced to 22.40% from 26.40% and the Euros will be cut to 16.34% from 21.39%; 11 new currencies will be added into the index, including the South Korean Won, a long-suggested currency to the trade-weighted basket, as South Korea is the fifth largest trading partner to China. CFETS told that it will assess the currency basket on an annualized basis and adjust the composition of the basket and corresponding weights according to changes in international trade weights.

- Chinas onshore liquidity mechanism is facing a problem: despite that the Central Bank has been injecting cash into the interbank market, non-bank institutions remain in short of liquidity as banks have tightened credit issuance to them in the effort to curb banks own risks.

The overnight Yuan borrowing rate in Shanghai interbank market began to drop since last week: SHIBOR O/N fell from 2.345% on December 21st to 2.227% on December 29th, which indicates that conditions for banks to meet their imminent-term liquidity need have improved.

Data downloaded from Bloomberg; chart prepared by Renee Mu.

However, for non-bank institutions, they are still struggling to cover shortfalls in cash which normally gets worse as it approach to the year end. On December 27th, the 1-day government bond reverse repo rate jumped to 33.00% in the afternoon session and closed at 18.55%, the second highest level this year (the highest was 35.41% on September 29th). The rate remained elevated and volatile on Wednesday and early Thursday before dropped to 0.55% at Thursday close.

Investors in government bond reverse repos are generally individual or non-bank institutional investors. The soaring rate indicates that non-bank institutions were not able to borrow from banks and therefore had to seek alternatives, such as through government bond reverse repos.

Data downloaded from Bloomberg; chart prepared by Renee Mu.

This is not the first time that Chinas liquidity mechanism encountered trouble recently. On December 15th, both 5-year and 10-year government bond futures plunged and suspended in trading, triggered by Fed rate hike and market rumors; yet, a root cause is that banks tightened credit issuance to non-bank institutions. One of the regulators responses on that day was guiding banks to lend to non-bank institutions.

Within such context, Chinas Central Bank is less likely to cut the reserve requirement ratio soon, despite of increasing speculations on it. Pumping more water into a clogged tube not only may fail to feed dry areas but could also flood somewhere else, such as the property market, which has already attracted too much cash, fueling price bubbles.

Market News

Hexun News: Chinese leading online media of financial news.

- Chinas Finance Ministry held the annual meeting on December 29th to set the agenda for 2017. The Finance Minister Xiao Jie said that the department will expand fiscal spending appropriately, continue to cut taxes and fees and make sure economic growth to fall within a reasonable range next year.

Normally, China state agencies will hold meetings following the Central Economic Work Conference and set their plans and targets accordingly.

China Finance Information: a finance online media administrated by Xinhua Agency.

- State-owned enterprises (SOEs)s debt-to-asset ratio rebounded to a high of 61.6% in November, following drops in two months in a row, according to Chinas statistics bureau. This indicates that SOEs have not made substantial progress in reducing leverage. On the contrary, the debt-to-asset ratio of private-owned companies continued to fall in November, down -0.2% to 51.1%. In terms of profits, SOEs growth increased to 8.2% from 4.8% in the month prior while the growth of private-owned companies dropped to 5.9% from 6.6%; this is the first time in six years that SOEs profits expanded faster than private-owned companies.

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Talking Points:

Crude oil prices near monthly highs before OPEC output cut

Gold prices mark time as news-flow driving Fed bets dries up

Knee-jerk volatility remains a worry in illiquid holiday trade

Crude oil prices continued to hover near December highs ahead of implementation of OPECs output cut scheme next month. The cartels Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo said the monitoring committee meant to enforce compliance with the accord will convene on January 13. Gold prices remained confined to a narrow range amid a lull in news-flow driving speculation about Fed monetary policy for the year ahead.

Another quiet day on the European data front and a small helping of US news-flow seem like ingredients for continued standstill. As noted previously however, illiquidity can have a potent amplifying effect on otherwise modest price swings. This means that an unexpected headline may drive significant volatility in thin, holiday trade. Indeed, yesterdays Euro and British Pound selloff seems to be a case in point.

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GOLD TECHNICAL ANALYSIS  Gold prices continue to oscillate in a now-familiar range above the $1100/oz figure. The first layer of support is at 1120.72, the 38.2% Fibonacci expansion, with a break below that on a daily closing basis paving the way for a test of the 50% level at 1099.91. Alternatively, push above the 23.6% Fib at 1146.47 sees the next upside barrier at 1162.35, the 14.6% expansion.

CRUDE OIL TECHNICAL ANALYSIS  Crude oil prices continue to hover near Decembers swing top. Near-term resistance in the 54.66-55.15 area (38.2% Fibonacci expansion, trend line), with a break above that on a daily closing basis exposing the 50% level at 56.11. Alternatively, a reversal back below horizontal pivot support at 51.91 opens the door for a challenge of the 38.2% Fib retracement at 49.80.

--- Written by Ilya Spivak, Currency Strategist for DailyFX.com

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MINNEAPOLIS - Welders can develop Parkinson's disease-like symptoms that may get worse the longer and more they are exposed to the chemical element manganese from welding fumes, according to a study published in the December 28, 2016, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"These welders are developing parkinsonian symptoms even though their exposure to manganese is below the current regulatory limits," said study author Brad A. Racette, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo., and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. "This study suggests that we need more stringent workplace monitoring of manganese exposure, greater use of protective equipment and monitoring and systematic assessment of workers to prevent this disabling disease."

Welding has been linked to parkinsonism, which is a general term for a group of disorders that cause movement problems similar to those seen in Parkinson's disease, such as slow movement and stiffness.

The study involved 886 Midwestern workers at two shipyards and a heavy machinery fabrication shop. The participants were examined by neurologists who specialize in movement disorders at the start of the study, and 398 of them were followed for up to 10 years to test for Parkinson's symptoms.

The workers' exposure to manganese was assessed through a questionnaire about their job types and length of time on the job. Average exposure was estimated at a manganese concentration of 0.14 milligrams manganese per cubic meter.

A total of 135 of the workers, or 15 percent, had parkinsonism, with scores of at least 15 on a scale of zero to 108 points. The researchers found that cumulative manganese exposure was associated with a yearly increase in scores on a movement test. Each additional milligram of manganese per cubic meter per year added an estimated 0.24 points on the scale of movement problems.

"For example, a worker who had been a welder for 20 years before the first examination had an estimated 2.8 milligrams manganese per cubic meter years exposure and would be predicted to have nearly a seven-point increase on the movement test related to that welding fume exposure," Racette said.

The results remained the same after adjusting for other factors that could affect risk of movement disorders, such as smoking, alcohol consumption and pesticide exposure.

The symptoms that got worse with cumulative manganese exposure were slowness of movement in the arms and hands, stiffness in arms and legs, speech problems and reduction of facial expression.

The relationship between welding exposure and increased symptoms was especially strong in welders who did flux core arc welding in a confined space, the welding process that generates the highest levels of particulate matter. It was also strong in workers whose first exam was within five years after they started welding, which may be because workers with higher exposure may develop parkinsonism and then drop out of the workforce, Racette said.

Racette noted that they were unable to measure workers' cumulative manganese exposure directly. He also said that they cannot rule out the effect of other metals in the welding fumes or other exposures, such as paint and degreasing solvents.

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The study was supported by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Center for Research Resources and National Institutes of Health Roadmap for Medical Research.

To learn more about Parkinson's disease, visit http://www.aan.com/patients.

The American Academy of Neurology is the world's largest association of neurologists and neuroscience professionals, with 30,000 members. The AAN is dedicated to promoting the highest quality patient-centered neurologic care. A neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as Alzheimer's disease, stroke, migraine, multiple sclerosis, concussion, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy.

For more information about the American Academy of Neurology, visit http://www.aan.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Media Contacts:

Renee Tessman, rtessman@aan.com, (612) 928-6137

Michelle Uher, muher@aan.com, (612) 928-6120
It's an exciting time to be an elderly mouse. Researchers believe that by removing senescent cells (cells with a persistent damage response), which naturally accumulate with age, senior rodents can regrow hair, run faster, and improve organ function. This strategy may bring us one step closer to the "fountain of youth," but it's important to be cautious and not hype, says researcher of aging Peter de Keizer of the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands. In an Opinion published December 29 in Trends in Molecule Medicine, he discusses the milestones the field still needs to hit before translation in humans is ready for discussion.

The removal of senescent cells, first discovered in the 1960s, received renewed interest in the 2010s as a therapeutic option to combat some aspects of aging. Researchers noticed that these permanently arrested cells accumulate in mature tissue and that some of them secrete factors that are harmful to tissue function and impair their neighboring cells. To explain what causes this noise in the system, de Keizer proposes a "senescence-stem lock model" in which the chronic secretion of pro-inflammatory factors by these senescent cells keeps neighboring cells in a permanent stem-like state and thereby prevents proper tissue renewal.

"When bringing in a defective car for repairs it is insufficient to remove the rust and broken parts; you also want to replace these," says de Keizer "A perfect anti-senescence therapy would not only clear senescent cells, but also kick-start tissue rejuvenation by stimulating differentiation of nearby stem cells. This may be complementary with, for instance, the exciting approaches recently made in the field of transient expression of stem cell factors (Cell, 10.1016/j.cell.2016.11.052)."

There's still much basic research to be done before humans visit their local rejuvenation clinic for their annual shot of anti-aging serum. Identifying potential safety issues or off-target effects, which is currently understudied in rodents, is a major part of the process. (Senescent cells do have a temporary role in wound healing, so you don't want to eliminate them when you are injured or at the wrong point in time)

De Keizer sees three milestones for realistic translation of an anti-senescence approach:

Milestone #1: Proof of Concept

Several studies have already addressed whether senescence is a cause of aging and whether its elimination stalls this process. By taking out senescent cells, naturally aging mice lived 25% longer, which is evidence that it could be possible.

Several studies have already addressed whether senescence is a cause of aging and whether its elimination stalls this process. By taking out senescent cells, naturally aging mice lived 25% longer, which is evidence that it could be possible. Milestone #2: Safe Therapeutics

Anti-senescent drugs are already being tested, but none of them have yet to be deemed safe because they also target pathways expressed by non-senescent cells. It is likely that this marker will be passed in the near future.

Anti-senescent drugs are already being tested, but none of them have yet to be deemed safe because they also target pathways expressed by non-senescent cells. It is likely that this marker will be passed in the near future. Milestone #3: Reversal of Aging

Finally, researchers will need to identify whether clearance of senescence can also be applied retrospectively to counteract features of natural aging that have already manifested. Although aging does seem like it can be stalled through therapeutic compounds, it remains unclear whether age-related diseases can be completely deterred.

"What if we have a brilliant anti- senescence treatment, then what?" says de Keizer. "How can we hit two birds with one stone--anti-senescence and tissue rejuvenation? I would also advise caution for claiming too much, too soon about the benefits of the fast-growing list of therapeutic compounds that are being discovered. That being said, these are clearly very exciting times, and I am confident we will find applicable anti-senescence treatments that can counteract age-related pathologies."

Researchers will also need to think about when such treatments should be administered (such as before or after the onset of certain conditions) and who would benefit the most. The potentially high cost of an anti-aging therapy, as well as off-target toxicity, could also be limiting factors for widespread market use as it is translated.

De Keizer, who plans to co-found a start-up based on the discovery of anti-senescence compounds from his lab, is hopeful that cell-penetrating peptides that can block specific activities of these retired cells could be the path forward over broad-range inhibitors.

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This work was funded by the Erasmus University Medical Center and the Dutch Cancer Society.

Trends in Molecular Medicine, de Keizer, Peter: "The Fountain of Youth by Targeting Senescent Cells?" http://www.cell.com/trends/molecular-medicine/fulltext/S1471-4914(16)30172-1

Trends in Molecular Medicine (@TrendsMolecMed), published by Cell Press, is a monthly review journal that facilitates communication between groups of highly trained professionals who share the common goal of understanding and explaining the molecular basis of disease as it relates to new clinical practice. Visit: http://www.cell.com/trends/molecular-medicine. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.
Physicists from the Lomonosov Moscow State University have obtained diamond crystals in the form of a regular pyramid of micrometer size. Moreover, in cooperation with co-workers from other Russian and foreign research centers they have also studied the luminescence and electron emission properties of obtained diamond crystals. The research results have been represented in a serie of articles published in the leading peer review journals, the most recent appeared in Scientific Reports.

Researchers from the Faculty of Physics, the Lomonosov Moscow State University, have described structural peculiarities of micrometer size diamond crystals of needle- and thread-like shapes, and their interrelation with luminescence features and efficiency of field electron emission. The luminescence properties of such thread-like diamond crystals could be used in different types of sensors, quantum optical devices and also for creation of element base for quantum computers and in other areas of science and technology.

The best friends of girls and technologists

Brilliants are polished rough diamond crystals and glorified as "a girl's best friend". Wide use of diamonds in various industrial processes is relatively less famous among ordinary people. However, technological application of diamonds significantly outweighs their jewelry usage and is constantly increasing both in terms of quantity and enhancing the diversity of areas of their application. Such high application significance turns out to be a constant motivation for researchers, busy with elaboration of new methods of diamond synthesis, processing and enduing with necessary features.

One of the problems, which are to be solved for a number of technology developments, is production of needle- and thread-like diamond crystals. Such shaping of original natural and synthetic diamonds is possible due to man-handling (polishing) in the same way as it happens during brilliant production. Other means imply usage of lithography and ion beam technologies, which help to separate fragments of necessary shape from crystals of large size. However, such "cutting" techniques are quite expensive and not always acceptable.

A team of researchers, working at the Faculty of Physics ofthe Lomonosov Moscow State University under the guidance of Professor Alexander Obraztsov, has suggested a technology, which makes possible mass production of small diamond crystals (or crystallites) of needle- and thread-like shapes. The first results, got during the studies in this direction, were published seven years ago in Diamond & Related Materials journal.

Alexander Obraztsov, Professor at the Department of Polymer and Crystal Physics, at the Faculty of Physics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University; Doctor of Science in Physics and Mathematics, being the main research author shares the following comments. He says: "The proposed technique involves usage of a well-known regularity, determining formation of polycrystalline films from crystallites of elongate ("columnar") shape. For instance, ice on a surface of lake often consists of such crystallites, what could be observed while it's melting. Usually, during diamond polycrystalline films production, one strives to provide such conditions, which allow crystallites of columnar shape, composing the films, to tightly connect with each other, creating dense homogeneous structure".

Everything, except diamonds, is gasified

Researchers from the Lomonosov Moscow State University have shown that diamond films, which have been previously perceived as "bad quality" ones as they consist of separate crystallites, not connecting with each other, now could be used for production of diamonds in the form of needle- or thread-like developments of regular pyramid form. In order to achieve this, it's necessary to heat such films to definite temperature in air or in another oxygen-containing environment. When heated, a part of the film material begins oxidizing and gasifies. Due to the fact that oxidation temperature depends on the carbon material features, and diamond crystallites oxidation need maximum temperature, it's possible to adjust this temperature so that all the material, except these diamond crystallites, is gasified. This relatively simple technology combines production of polycrystalline diamond films with specified structural characteristics with their heating in the air. It makes possible mass production of diamond crystallites of various shapes (needle- and thread-like ones and so on). Some idea about such crystallites can be obtained from electron microscopy images. The crystallites could be used, for instance, as high hardness elements: a cutter for high- precision processing, indenters or probes for scanning microscopes. Such application was described in the article, published earlier by the team in journal Review of Scientific Instruments. At the moment all probes, produced using this technology, are commercially offered.

It's possible to manage useful properties of a diamond

During follow-up research and developments, conducted at the Faculty of Physics, the Lomonosov Moscow State University, the initial technology has been significantly improved, what has allowed to diversify shapes and sizes of the needle-like crystallites and extend prospective field of their application. Researchers from the Lomonosov Moscow State University have drawn attention to optical properties of a diamond, which are of significant fundamental scientific and applied interest. The results of these studies are represented in the series of articles in Journal of Luminescence, Nanotechnology, and Scientific Reports.

These recent publications describe structural peculiarities of such diamond crystallites and their interrelation with luminescence features and efficiency of field electron emission. As it is mentioned by the researchers, the latter is, probably, the first example of genuine diamond field-emission (or cold) cathode realization. Many efforts have been made for its obtaining and studying of such kind of cathodes for the last two decades. Luminescence properties of the needle-like diamond crystals could be applied in different types of sensors, quantum optical devices and also in creation of element base for quantum computers and in other areas of science and technology.

Alexander Obraztsov further notices: "I'd especially like to highlight the significant input of young researchers - Viktor Kleshch and Rinat Ismagilov - to these studies. Their enthusiasm and intense work have allowed to get the above described results, which are truly new and possess fundamental scientific and applied importance".

The studies have been conducted with support of the Russian Science Foundation.

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SAN DIEGO - A physician at Scripps Health's Prebys Cardiovascular Institute has become the first in the Western United States to treat heart attack patients with a new supersaturated oxygen (SSO2) system in an attempt to reduce permanent damage to their heart muscle.

The recent treatments of two San Diego men were part of an ongoing clinical trial examining the effectiveness of the experimental SSO2 system and technique in combination with angioplasty, stenting and medication. Scripps is the only site in California participating in the nationwide study called IC-HOT (Evaluation of Intracoronary Hyperoxemic Oxygen Therapy).

"A heart attack is like a house fire, the longer it takes to put it out, the more structural damage that is done," said John C. Harrington, M.D., the interventional cardiologist who is leading the study at Scripps. "By infusing higher concentrations of oxygen into the artery responsible for the heart attack, we can decrease the size of the area of heart muscle that is damaged because it is deprived of oxygen."

Every year nearly 1 million people in the United States have a heart attack, typically caused when the blood flow carrying oxygen to the heart is reduced or blocked. Although the standard for heart attack care is angioplasty and stenting, for many patients those treatments aren't enough to salvage dead or damaged heart tissue that was starved of oxygen.

During SSO2 therapy developed by the Irvine, Calif., biotechnology company TherOx Inc., saline is drawn into a chamber in a disposable cartridge inserted into the treatment system. Supersaturated oxygen is sprayed into a second chamber and mixed with the saline. The patient's blood is circulated through a third chamber where it mixes with the SSO2 saline. The blood-oxygen-saline solution is then directed by catheter into the patient's coronary artery where it infuses the capillary bed and surrounding heart tissue. The procedure takes about one hour.

The IC-HOT study seeks to enroll 100 patients who suffer their first heart attack and receive SSO2 treatment within six hours of first experiencing symptoms. The study's primary aim is to validate the safety and effectiveness of the therapy system. Enrollment is expected to be completed by February 2017.

In a previous trial of an earlier generation of the TherOx system which didn't involve Scripps, heart attack patients experienced a median reduction of 26 percent in the size of the damaged area of their heart muscle tissue compared to angioplasty and stenting alone.

The treatment of heart attacks has advanced greatly over the past few decades, leading to improvements in mortality rates and decreased hospital stays. Minimally invasive catheter procedures, which deliver stents, angioplasty balloons and other treatments to the heart through veins and arteries, have greatly reduced the need for open heart surgeries.

Still, more needs to be done.

Patients with nearly identical characteristics - age, risk factors and cardiovascular muscle damage from the same type of heart attack -- can receive the same treatment but experience very different outcomes.

"One patient may have preserved heart function while the other may have a large area of heart tissue death," Dr. Harrington said. "Clearly there are additional factors that need to be explored to reduce heart muscle damage.

"The hope is that people receiving SSO2 treatment will leave the hospital with a less damaged heart," he said.

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Scripps is the only heart care provider in the region consistently recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of the best in the country. In 2016, U.S. News & World Report ranked Scripps 28th in the nation, the highest rated program in San Diego County.

ABOUT SCRIPPS HEALTH

Founded in 1924 by philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps, Scripps Health is a nonprofit integrated health care delivery system based in San Diego, Calif. Scripps treats more than 700,000 patients annually through the dedication of 3,000 affiliated physicians and more than 15,000 employees among its five acute-care hospital campuses, hospice and home health care services, 28 outpatient centers and clinics, and hundreds of affiliated physician offices throughout the region.

Recognized as a leader in disease and injury prevention, diagnosis and treatment, Scripps is also at the forefront of clinical research, genomic medicine and wireless health care. With three highly respected graduate medical education programs, Scripps is a longstanding member of the Association of American Medical Colleges. Scripps has been ranked four times as one of the nation's best health care systems by Truven Health Analytics. Its hospitals are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report among the nation's best and Scripps is regularly recognized by Fortune, Working Mother magazine and AARP as one of the best places in the nation to work. More information can be found at http://www.scripps.org.
JUPITER, FL - December 29, 2016 - A new study led by scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) sheds light on a signaling circuit in cells that drives therapy resistance in prostate cancer. The researchers found that targeting the components of this circuit suppresses advanced prostate cancer development.

The study, led by TSRI Associate Professor Jun-Li Luo, was published online ahead of print in the journal Molecular Cell.

A New Strategy to Fight Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer--which, according to the American Cancer Society, affects one in six American men--is the second-leading cause of death after lung cancer in American men.

Currently, the most effective treatment of advanced prostate cancer is to deprive the cancer of what feeds it--androgen hormones such as testosterone. Unfortunately, almost all patients eventually develop resistance to this therapy, leaving doctors with no options to counteract the inevitable.

The new study shows that a "constitutively active" signaling circuit can trigger cells to grow into tumors and drive therapy resistance in advanced prostate cancer. A cell signal pathway with constitutive activity requires no binding partner (ligand) to activate; instead, the signaling circuit continually activates itself.

This signaling circuit, which is composed of the protein complex IB/NF-B (p65) and several other molecules, controls the expression of stem cell transcription factors (proteins that guide the conversion of genetic information from DNA to RNA) that fuel the aggressive growth of these resistant cancer cells.

"The fact that the constitutive activation of NF-kB in the circuit is independent of traditional activation opens the door for potential treatment options," said Luo.

Targeting Other Signaling Components Shows Promise

NF-kB plays important roles in cancer development, and it is regarded as one of the most important targets for cancer therapy.

However, the use of NF-kB inhibitors in treating cancer is complicated by severe side effects related to immunosuppression caused by indiscriminate inhibition of NF-kB in normal immune cells.

Luo noted that targeting the other non-IB/NF-B components in this signaling circuit would avoid the suppression of NF-B in normal immune cells while keeping the potent anti-cancer efficacy.

In addition to IB/NF-B, the signaling circuit includes the microRNA miR-196b-3p, Meis2 and PPP3CC. While miR-196b-3p promotes tumor development, Meis2, which is an essential developmental gene in mammals, can disrupt the circuit when overexpressed. The protein PPP3CC can inhibit NF-B activity in prostate cancer cells.

"Disrupting this circuit by targeting any of its individual components blocks the expression of these transcription factors and significantly impairs therapy-resistant prostate cancer," said TSRI Research Associate Ji-Hak Jeong, the first author of the study.

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In addition to Luo and Jeong, other authors of the study, "A Constitutive Intrinsic Inflammatory Signaling Circuit Composed of miR-196b, Meis2, PPP3CC, and P65, Drives Prostate Cancer Castration Resistance," are TSRI's Sun-Jin Park and Shohreh Iravani Dickinson of the Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL.

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants 1R01CA140956, 1R01CA197944 and 1R21NS073098), the United States Department of Defense (grants W81XWH-09-1-0533, W81XWH-14-1-0051 and W81XWH-15-1-0235), The Florida Department of Health, Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program (grant 09BB-13), the ThinkPinkKids Foundation and the Frenchman's Creek Women for Cancer Research.

About The Scripps Research Institute

The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) is one of the world's largest independent, not-for-profit organizations focusing on research in the biomedical sciences. TSRI is internationally recognized for its contributions to science and health, including its role in laying the foundation for new treatments for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, and other diseases. An institution that evolved from the Scripps Metabolic Clinic founded by philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps in 1924, the institute now employs more than 2,500 people on its campuses in La Jolla, CA, and Jupiter, FL, where its renowned scientists--including two Nobel laureates and 20 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering or Medicine--work toward their next discoveries. The institute's graduate program, which awards PhD degrees in biology and chemistry, ranks among the top ten of its kind in the nation. For more information, see http://www.scripps.edu.
In a study published online by JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, Kathleen M. Schieffer, B.S., of the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, Pa., and colleagues examined the association between sensorineural hearing loss and conductive hearing loss and iron deficiency anemia in adults ages 21 to 90 years in the United States.

In 2014, approximately 15 percent of adults reported difficulty with hearing. Because iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is a common and easily correctable condition, further understanding of the association between IDA and all types of hearing loss may help to open new possibilities for early identification and appropriate treatment. For this study, using data obtained from deidentified electronic medical records from the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pa., iron deficiency anemia was determined by low hemoglobin and ferritin levels for age and sex in 305,339 adults ages 21 to 90 years; associations between hearing loss and IDA were evaluated.

Of the patients in the study population, 43 percent were men; average age was 50 years. There was a 1.6 percent prevalence of combined hearing loss (defined as any combination of conductive hearing loss [hearing loss due to problems with the bones of the middle ear], sensorineural hearing loss, deafness, and unspecified hearing loss) and 0.7 percent prevalence of IDA. Both sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL; when there is damage to the cochlea or to the nerve pathways from the inner ear to the brain) (present in 1.1 percent of individuals with IDA) and combined hearing loss (present in 3.4 percent) were significantly associated with IDA. Analysis confirmed increased odds of SNHL and combined hearing loss among adults with IDA.

"An association exists between IDA in adults and hearing loss. The next steps are to better understand this correlation and whether promptly diagnosing and treating IDA may positively affect the overall health status of adults with hearing loss," the authors write.

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(JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. Published online December 29, 2016. doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2016.3631. The study is available pre-embargo at the For The Media website.)

Editor's Note: This publication was supported by grants from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. All authors have completed and submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest and none were reported.

To place an electronic embedded link to this study in your story Link will be live at the embargo time: http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaotolaryngology/fullarticle/10.1001/jamaoto.2016.3631
English is now considered the common language, or 'lingua franca', of global science. All major scientific journals seemingly publish in English, despite the fact that their pages contain research from across the globe.

However, a new study suggests that over a third of new scientific reports are published in languages other than English, which can result in these findings being overlooked - contributing to biases in our understanding.

As well as the international community missing important science, language hinders new findings getting through to practitioners in the field say researchers from the University of Cambridge.

They argue that whenever science is only published in one language, including solely in English, barriers to the transfer of knowledge are created.

The Cambridge researchers call on scientific journals to publish basic summaries of a study's key findings in multiple languages, and universities and funding bodies to encourage translations as part of their 'outreach' evaluation criteria.

"While we recognise the importance of a lingua franca, and the contribution of English to science, the scientific community should not assume that all important information is published in English," says Dr Tatsuya Amano from Cambridge's Department of Zoology.

"Language barriers continue to impede the global compilation and application of scientific knowledge."

The researchers point out an imbalance in knowledge transfer in countries where English is not the mother tongue: "much scientific knowledge that has originated there and elsewhere is available only in English and not in their local languages."

This is a particular problem in subjects where both local expertise and implementation is vital - such as environmental sciences.

As part of the study, published today in the journal PLOS Biology, those in charge of Spain's protected natural areas were surveyed. Over half the respondents identified language as an obstacle to using the latest science for habitat management.

The Cambridge team also conducted a litmus test of language use in science. They surveyed the web platform Google Scholar - one of the largest public repositories of scientific documents - in a total of 16 languages for studies relating to biodiversity conservation published during a single year, 2014.

Of the over 75,000 documents, including journal articles, books and theses, some 35.6% were not in English. Of these, the majority was in Spanish (12.6%) or Portuguese (10.3%). Simplified Chinese made up 6%, and 3% were in French.

The researchers also found thousands of newly published conservation science documents in other languages, including several hundred each in Italian, German, Japanese, Korean and Swedish.

Random sampling showed that, on average, only around half of non-English documents also included titles or abstracts in English. This means that around 13,000 documents on conservation science published in 2014 are unsearchable using English keywords.

This can result in sweeps of current scientific knowledge - known as 'systematic reviews' - being biased towards evidence published in English, say the researchers. This, in turn, may lead to over-representation of results considered positive or 'statistically significant', and these are more likely to appear in English language journals deemed 'high-impact'.

In addition, information on areas specific to countries where English is not the mother tongue can be overlooked when searching only in English.

For environmental science, this means important knowledge relating to local species, habitats and ecosystems - but also applies to diseases and medical sciences. For example, documents reporting the infection of pigs with avian flu in China initially went unnoticed by international communities, including the WHO and the UN, due to publication in Chinese-language journals.

"Scientific knowledge generated in the field by non-native English speakers is inevitably under-represented, particularly in the dominant English-language academic journals. This potentially renders local and indigenous knowledge unavailable in English," says lead author Amano.

"The real problem of language barriers in science is that few people have tried to solve it. Native English speakers tend to assume that all the important information is available in English. But this is not true, as we show in our study.

"On the other hand, non-native English speakers, like myself, tend to think carrying out research in English is the first priority, often ending up ignoring non-English science and its communication.

"I believe the scientific community needs to start seriously tackling this issue."

Amano and colleagues say that, when conducting systematic reviews or developing databases at a global scale, speakers of a wide range of languages should be included in the discussion: "at least Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and French, which, in theory, cover the vast majority of non-English scientific documents."

The website conservationevidence.com, a repository for conservation science developed at Cambridge by some of the authors, has also established an international panel to extract the best non-English language papers, including Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese.

"Journals, funders, authors and institutions should be encouraged to supply translations of a summary of a scientific publication - regardless of the language it is originally published in," says Amano. The authors of the new study have provided a summary in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and French as well as Japanese.

"While outreach activities have recently been advocated in science, it is rare for such activities to involve communication across language barriers."

The researchers suggest efforts to translate should be evaluated in a similar way to other outreach activities such as public engagement, particularly if the science covers issues at a global scale or regions where English is not the mother tongue.

Adds Amano: "We should see this as an opportunity as well as a challenge. Overcoming language barriers can help us achieve less biased knowledge and enhance the application of science globally."

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Researchers have found evidence that could shed new light on the complex community of trillions of microorganisms living in all our guts, and how they interact with our bodies

Researchers have found evidence that could shed new light on the complex community of trillions of microorganisms living in all our guts, and how they interact with our bodies.

Scientists at the University of Exeter Medical School and University of Zaragoza in Spain studied a protein known as TLR2, a critical detector of the microbiota found in the intestine. They found that it regulates levels of serotonin - a neurotransmitter which carries messages to the brain, and is also found in the gut, where it regulates our bowel routines.

The research, carried out in cell cultures and verified in mice, provides strong evidence that microbiota can interfere with human physiology by modulating the serotonin transporter activity. Serotonin transporter is a target for numerous diseases and it seems that microbiota living in our guts is able to interfere with this transporter, controlling our serotonin levels.

The finding, published in PLOS ONE, comes as scientists across the world are working to understand the complicated interactions between the "invisible world" of the microbiota in our bodies and the impact they have on our health and even our moods. Recently, scientists in California found evidence that the bacteria in the gut play a role in causing Parkinson's Disease.

It may also help explain how the microbiota in our guts affect our physiology. Inflammatory bowel disease is thought to be triggered when TLR2 is not functioning properly, but so far, the mechanisms behind this have not been fully understood. This study aimed to further this understanding, and was supported the Foundation for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases in Aragon (ARAINF), in Spain.

Dr Eva Latorre, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Exeter Medical School, said the new finding helped to further understanding in a fast-growing research area. She said: "This paper has concluded that the protein TLR2 alters the availability of serotonin, which is important in a range of conditions from depression to inflammatory bowel disease. It is early days in this research though. We need to understand much more about the relationship between the microbiota in our guts and how they interact, before we can hope to harness effective new treatments."

The research team examined human cells in a model of the intestine in the laboratory, looking at how they express proteins and RNA - activities which regulate how they behave. They found that TLR2 controls serotonin transporter - obtaining the same result in studies on mice.

Principal investigator of this study, Professor Jose E Mesonero, at the University of Zaragoza, said: "This paper opens our minds about the complex universe of this forgotten organ: the microbiome. We have concluded that TLR2 not only can detect microbiota, but also modulate serotonin transport, one of the crucial mechanism in neurological and inflammatory diseases. Much has to be yet studied, but this work can improve our understanding about the connection between gut and brain thought microbiota."

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The paper, called 'Intestinal serotonin transporter inhibition by Toll-like receptor 2 activation. A feedback modulation', is published in PLOS ONE, by Eva Latorre, Elena Layunta, Laura Grasa, Marta Castro, Julian Pardo, Fernando Gomollon, Ana I. Alcalde and Jose E. Mesonero.
PHILADELPHIA - New molecular imaging technologies can make it easier to diagnose, monitor, and treat cancers while potentially saving patients from undergoing therapies that are likely to be ineffective and playing a role in minimizing side effects, according to experts from the Abramson Cancer Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In a review published online today in JAMA Oncology, the Penn team says finding a way to use these techniques more widely in clinical settings should be a top priority.

Precision cancer care focuses on identifying the specific biomarkers of a patient's cancer, which can help doctors make decisions about the best treatment options. A traditional way to learn about the genetic makeup of cancer is through a biopsy - in which doctors have to physically remove tissue from a patient and then examine it. But new molecular imaging, which can be used to complement the biopsy and is noninvasive, can provide added benefit in certain cases, especially when multiple examinations are needed.

There are four main areas where molecular imaging can have a major impact, according to the study's lead author David A. Mankoff, MD, PhD, the Gerd Muehllehner Professor of Radiology and director of the PET Center at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. First, it can help identify patients most likely to benefit from targeted therapy.

"Once we start treatment, it can also help us plan radiotherapy treatment and help define the boundaries of the active tumor," Mankoff said.

Second, it can monitor the movement of drugs throughout the body to guide drug dosing and minimize side effects. Similarly, it can also monitor whether those drugs are having an effect. Finally, all of this data can be combined to predict patient outcomes including overall survival.

Unlike X-ray and ordinary magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which reveal the large-scale structures of tissues in the body, molecular imaging uses special imaging "probe" compounds--injected into the patient--to highlight a desired molecular target in a tissue of interest. FDG-PET, one of the only molecular imaging techniques routinely used in oncology, employs a glucose-like probe, FDG, with a radioactive isotope of fluorine attached as a beacon. Once it is injected into the bloodstream, the FDG probe quickly accumulates in tumors, which tend to make heavy use of glucose. Thus, it "lights up" those tumors on a PET (positron emission tomography) scan.

FDG-PET, a method that the University of Pennsylvania helped pioneer, has been used for more than two decades to detect tumors and determine the extent to which cancer has spread. But the newer PET probes now in development and testing are meant for many other applications in cancer medicine.

Two new classes of probe that show particular promise are designed to bind to estrogen and HER2 receptors. Breast, uterine, and ovarian tumors often use these receptors to boost their growth, and many cancer drugs target them. Detecting the presence of tumor estrogen or HER2 receptors with PET scans would enable oncologists to examine all sites of cancer for each patient, choose the appropriate drug treatment more quickly, monitor the tumor for changes that would necessitate a switch to another treatment, and even evaluate how well a drug is hitting its receptor targets.

Imaging with the new PET probes also could reveal receptors or other tumor-related markers at sites where the cancer may have spread, including bone, which is much harder to biopsy.

The probes targeted to breast cancer have shown great promise so far in breast cancer clinical trials, and Mankoff and his Penn Medicine colleagues have helped lead this research effort. One national, multi-center trial focused on the estrogen receptor is co-chaired by oncologist Amy Clark, MD, MSCE, a co-author of the review and an assistant professor of medicine at the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Another smaller trial of estrogen receptor imaging is underway at the Abramson Cancer Center's 2-PREVENT Translational Center of Excellence.

"Many of these methods are already being studied in clinical trials, but the path from clinical trials to routine clinical use is seldom easy," Mankoff said. "And molecular imaging methods face some particularly challenging hurdles such as the need to deliver the short-lived imaging probes to centers performing the imaging."

Because these methods are so new to oncologists, there is no standard procedure for testing them, or for making an empirical case for their clinical value to the FDA, medical insurers, and ultimately oncologists themselves. "We don't have a good framework yet for moving these potentially powerful diagnostic tools into routine clinical use," Mankoff said. "Among other things, we need to bring the imaging and oncology communities together to find the best way forward."

Mankoff and his colleagues argue that making a strong clinical case for these new imaging techniques will mean demonstrating their ability to improve traditional treatment outcomes such as progression-free survival and quality of life. Clinical trials of these methods also could take into account the value of avoiding ineffective treatments. In one recent trial, researchers showed that a combination of FDG and HER2-targeted PET imaging was 100 percent accurate in predicting patient responses to a costly new anti-HER2 breast cancer drug.

"In that case, molecular imaging could have directed treatment to patients highly likely to benefit and spared many other patients the toxic effects and costs of ineffective therapy," Mankoff said.

Above all, Mankoff says testing of new imaging methods should focus on applications where they clearly represent an advance for patients over other imaging or biopsy-based techniques.

"These clinical trial results for the new molecular imaging methods are going to be compelling for patients and their referring oncologists only when they address clinical challenges not met by existing approaches," he said.

Michael D. Farwell, MD, an assistant professor of Radiology at Penn, and Daniel A. Pryma, MD, associate professor of Radiology at Penn, also co-authored the review.

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Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $5.3 billion enterprise.

The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 18 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $373 million awarded in the 2015 fiscal year. T

he University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center -- which are recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report -- Chester County Hospital; Lancaster General Health; Penn Wissahickon Hospice; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional affiliated inpatient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region include Chestnut Hill Hospital and Good Shepherd Penn Partners, a partnership between Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network and Penn Medicine.

Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2015, Penn Medicine provided $253.3 million to benefit our community.
December 29, 2016 - Patient satisfaction has become an important quality measure in the US healthcare system. But some plastic surgeons question the value of subjective patient satisfaction ratings--suggesting that they might even lead to lower-quality care in some situations, according to a special topic article in the January issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

"Increasingly used as a measure of physician performance, patient satisfaction data can be flawed and not broadly applicable," comments ASPS Member Surgeon Terence Myckatyn, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis. "While patient satisfaction is important, we think that better rating tools are needed to measure it." Dr. Myckatyn's coauthors were Justin Brent Cohen, MD, and Keith Brandt, MD.

Plastic Surgeons Question Value of Subjective Patient Satisfaction Ratings

Dr. Myckatyn and colleagues share some concerns about the trend toward using patient satisfaction ratings as a measure of physician performance. The focus on patient satisfaction is driven by the fact that the United States spends more than any other nation on healthcare, but lags behind in outcomes. Patient satisfaction is now among the quality of care indicators used in "pay for performance" programs tying financial reimbursement under Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.

But using patient satisfaction ratings in this way is having some unintended consequences, the authors believe. For example, some hospitals are upgrading their physical facilities and adding luxury amenities, in an attempt to improve patient satisfaction scores. "One could argue that these costly expenses have more to do with the perception of healthcare quality rather than actual outcomes," Dr. Myckatyn and colleagues write.

There are even anecdotal reports of doctors altering their medical judgment to improve patient satisfaction and minimize negative reviews--for example, prescribing antibiotics or strong pain medications to keep patients happy and move them quickly through the system. "Behavior motivated by patient satisfaction becomes especially dangerous when ratings are directly tied to compensation," according to the authors.

Meanwhile, it's unclear whether satisfaction and other measures of patient experience are correlated with traditional measures of health care safety and quality. Dr. Myckatyn and coauthors write: "The truth is that there is little high-level evidence to support that patient satisfaction surveys will provide Americans with improved medical outcomes, but there are plenty of contradictory data."

Some studies even suggest that higher-intensity healthcare is associated with increased patient satisfaction but also with increased mortality, with no impact on objective quality measures. While other studies have linked higher satisfaction to better outcomes, interpretation of these studies is limited by the fact that patient satisfaction is "inherently subjective and labile."

As a specialty, plastic surgery doesn't have a strong body of research on patient satisfaction and its relationship to outcomes. Yet especially for aesthetic surgery, plastic surgeons have always been attuned to the importance of patient feedback.

While they don't discard the notion of assessing patient satisfaction, Dr. Myckatyn and colleagues make the point that the rubrics currently used to rate patient satisfaction "do not consistently predict improved outcomes and satisfaction." They conclude: "What is needed are reliable tools that will take into account what constitutes superior quality in a more systematic, meaningful, and validated way."

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Click here to read "The Importance of Patient Satisfaction: A Blessing, a Curse, or Simply Irrelevant?"

Article: "The Importance of Patient Satisfaction: A Blessing, a Curse, or Simply Irrelevant?" (doi: 10.1097/PRS.0000000000002848)

Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery is published by Wolters Kluwer.

About Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery

For more than 70 years, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (http://www.prsjournal.com/) has been the one consistently excellent reference for every specialist who uses plastic surgery techniques or works in conjunction with a plastic surgeon. The official journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery brings subscribers up-to-the-minute reports on the latest techniques and follow-up for all areas of plastic and reconstructive surgery, including breast reconstruction, experimental studies, maxillofacial reconstruction, hand and microsurgery, burn repair, and cosmetic surgery, as well as news on medico-legal issues.

About ASPS

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons is the largest organization of board-certified plastic surgeons in the world. Representing more than 7,000 physician members, the Society is recognized as a leading authority and information source on cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery. ASPS comprises more than 94 percent of all board-certified plastic surgeons in the United States. Founded in 1931, the Society represents physicians certified by The American Board of Plastic Surgery or The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

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Cellular activated carbon, a new type of activated carbon we prepared, is based on carbon foams, the inner surfaces of which are activated physically by CO2 to generate an available surface made up of micro/mesopores. The carbon foams are enriched with macropores that are connected to the cell walls. After activation, the cellular activated carbon produces a great deal of micro and mesopores at the surface of the macropores; therefore, this new bimodal cellular activated carbon can be used just like the classic activated carbon as an adsorbent, catalyst support, energy storage and biological material in various industries.

But the most difference is the ACs are normally in the form of grains or are granular with surface areas mainly being controlled by their inner microporosity (pore size less than 2 nm) and mesoporosity (pore size ranging from 2 to 50 nm). The mesoporosity also plays a role in the pathways for reactants flowing through the carbon grains. When we using this carbon foam as a precursor provides pathways for the macropores, so the resulting features for the new cellular activated carbon are the monolithic shape and high adsorption kinetics due to the size of the bigger pores.

This research was supported in part by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31300488) and the Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (xjq201420).

Addition co-authors of the Nano paper are Lu LUO from Fujian Argricuture and Forestry University and Mizi Fan Brunel University.

Corresponding author for this study is Weigang ZHAO, weigang-hao@hotmail.com. The paper can be found in NANO.

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Welders exposed to airborne manganese at estimated levels below federal occupational safety standards exhibit neurological problems similar to Parkinson's disease, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Further, the more they are exposed to manganese-containing welding fumes, the faster the workers' signs and symptoms worsen.

The findings, published Dec. 28 in Neurology, suggest that current safety standards may not adequately protect welders from the dangers of the job.

"We found that chronic exposure to manganese-containing welding fumes is associated with progressive neurological symptoms such as slow movement and difficulty speaking," said Brad A. Racette, MD, a professor of neurology and the study's senior author. "The more exposure you have to welding fumes, the more quickly those symptoms progress over time."

At high levels, manganese - a key component of important industrial processes such as welding and steelmaking - can cause manganism, a severe neurologic disorder with symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease, including slowness, clumsiness, tremors, mood changes, and difficulty walking and speaking. The risk of manganism drove the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) decades ago to set standards limiting the amount of manganese in the air at workplaces. While these safety standards are widely believed to have eliminated manganism as an occupational hazard, researchers who study the effects of manganese exposure have long suspected that there may still be some health effects at levels much lower than what is allowable per OSHA standards.

"Many researchers view what's allowable as too high a level of manganese, but until now there really weren't data to prove it," said Racette, who also is executive vice chairman in the Department of Neurology. "This is the first study that shows clinically relevant health effects that are occurring at estimated exposures that are an order of magnitude lower than the OSHA limit."

Racette and colleagues studied 886 welders at three worksites in the Midwest - two shipyards and one heavy-machinery fabrication shop. Each welder filled out a detailed job history questionnaire, which the researchers used to calculate each participant's exposure by combining the estimated manganese exposure for specific job titles with the amount of time spent in each job.

Each participant also underwent at least two standardized clinical evaluations of motor function spaced a year or more apart and using the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale. The evaluations were performed by trained neurologists looking for signs of neurological damage such as muscle stiffness, gait instability, reduced facial expressions and slow movement.

A score of 6 or lower was considered normal on the evaluation scale, and those with scores of 15 or higher were placed in the parkinsonism category. Parkinsonism is a set of neurological signs and symptoms similar to what is seen in Parkinson's disease. At their first evaluation, the welders had an average score of 8.8, and 15 percent of the welders fell into the parkinsonism category.

Moreover, participants' scores increased over time, and the welders exposed to the highest levels of manganese showed the biggest changes in their scores, an indication that their neurological problems were worsening faster than those of workers exposed to less manganese.

The scores for workers at the same sites who were not exposed to welding fumes did not change over time, suggesting that welding fumes, not aging, were responsible for the increasing scores.

Racette's team did not directly measure the participants' quality of life, but previous studies by his team have shown that higher parkinsonism scores in welders are associated with more difficulty with activities of daily life such as eating, mobility and writing.

"This is not something we can ignore," Racette said. "I think a qualified neurologist would look at these clinical signs and say, 'There's something wrong here.' This would be having an effect on people's lives."

The most worrisome aspect of the study, Racette said, is that the neurological signs showed up in people with an estimated exposure of only 0.14 milligrams of manganese per cubic meter of air, far below the safety standard set by OSHA at 5 milligrams per cubic meter.

In 2013, the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists recommended a limit of 0.02 milligrams of manganese per cubic meter. Some companies already are attempting to keep their workers' exposures below that level by improving ventilation, mandating personal protective equipment and using low-manganese welding wire. However, only OSHA's standards are enforceable by law.

"We can make the workplace safer for welders," Racette said. "Reducing OSHA's allowable levels of manganese would probably make a big difference in terms of safety and help workers avoid such risks."

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SALEM, Ohio  Cattle with Ohio lineage may soon be roaming the deserts of Israel, if a recent mission to implant the indigenous cattle with U.S.-bred cattle embryos is successful.

In November, Larry Baker, director of the Ohio Livestock and Genetics Export Council, traveled to Israel with Veterinarian Emily Em Mowrer, owner of Stonehouse Veterinary Service in St. Clairsville, Ohio, to oversee the implantation of beef cattle embryos, purchased from Ohio cattle producers, into Israels existing cattle herds.

Two Israeli cattle ranchers, Erez Cahaner and his father, Katcha Cahaner, had traveled to Ohio in May and toured a couple Ohio beef farms to select the type of cattle they would like to introduce into their existing herds, explained Baker. The men were connected with the Ohio Livestock and Genetics Export Council through the Negev Foundation, a not-for-profit group that sponsors sustainable agriculture research and projects to help develop the Negev Desert region in Israel.

Not enough cattle

A high percentage of the cattle in Israel were a breed of Simmental cattle imported from Europe, Baker said. They dont keep track of their parentage, he said, adding they believed their cattle could be traced back to just four genetic lines.

The breeders had traded cattle back and forth for years within Europe, without bringing in new blood lines. On top of that, Baker said there is only 50,000 head of beef cattle in the whole country of Israel  not enough to sustain the growing need of the people in the country.

Rugged cattle

We discussed whether (exporting) live cattle would be better (than embryos), said Baker. But when the men described their harsh conditions  lack of rainfall and heat  we decided embryos would be better. That way the cattle could be born into the harsh conditions.

Embryos were purchased from two Ohio cattle farmers, Darol Dickinson of Dickinson Cattle Company and John Grimes of Maplecrest Farms, and one Montana farmer, Ryan Ludvigson of Ludvigson Stock Farms.

The Longhorns were chosen because of their ability to withstand some of the toughest climates. Longhorns can get by with less grass and lower nutrient levels, said Baker. Israeli cattle ranchers have also lost many of their herd to predators. The horns will help ward off those predators.

The Angus breeds were chosen for their ruggedness and carcass quality. Baker said one of the toughest parts was convincing the men of the type of cattle they really needed versus what they perceived the needed. A lot of different countries I deal with, they look at the breed magazines and see the show cattle and thats what they want, said Baker. They dont need the show cattle, they need the rugged cattle with sound feet and legs that produce a good carcass.

Embryo transfer

In Israel, Baker and Mowrer visited several farms that were mostly cow-calf operations and a few feedlots associated with those cow-calf operations. Mowrer showed the cattle owners and local veterinarians in Israel how to implant the embryos. Its not always easy to walk on to someones farm and start offering suggestions, said Mowrer.

But they were so open, she said, noting their willingness to share what practices they have in place and take suggestions. Mowrer walked them through each step, from how to prepare the cow, how to handle the embryos and how to load the gun. They were very open to whole thing. They wanted to go in after me and feel what I feel, she said.

I think there was some scepticism to some degree, she said, but the cattle owners had lots of questions for Mowrer. I was surprised by those who came  how much they knew and how much they wanted to learn, she said. That day, Mowrer helped the farmers implant 29 embryos. Ten more were implanted the following day. Ive talked to them since then and it doesnt sound like many (cows) have come into heat, indicating a high success rate.

Israel market

Another key component to understanding the needs of Israels cattle industry was understanding how the product is marketed and consumed. Baker noted in his trip report that live cattle is slaughtered directly for the butcher shops. Different butchers will pick up the quarters of meat they want for their market and will age and dissect them, depending on the consumers who visit their shop.

For the kosher market, the meat must be harvested under direction of the rabbi and only the front quarters of the cattle are used. Rear quarters can be used only if it has been stripped of veins and arteries.

These guys are just so proud of what they are doing, said Mowrer. They want to create a branded product and create their own market share  kind of like a Certified Angus Beef. She explained the producers want to say they took this product, starting with an embryo, and took it all the way to the plate.

Ohio genetics

Mowrer said this project was instrumental in raising awareness that we (Ohio producers) have a product that other folks want and need. We do have a product that we can sell and grow.

Wisconsin and Ohio have been the two leading export states of genetic and germ plasma  semen or embryos  mostly due to the long-time health status of the in-state herds, explained Baker. It does come back to our genetics. In Ohio we should maybe market that a little bit more. We have something that people want, said Mowrer.




Haiti - Elections : The protesters try to challenge the electoral judges





Tuesday, the verification work at the Vote Tabulation Center (CTV) was suspended for a few minutes following receipt of a summons from "Pitit Dessalin" and LAPEH requesting the resumption of the verification process where it was on December 23, when the protesters decided to leave the premises after the decision of the Electoral Court to apply Article 77 of Council Regulation https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19598-haiti-flash-the-bcen-applies-the-regulation-the-protesters-leave-the-ctv.html



Moreover, a little before 4:00 pm the verification was interrupted following the filing by bailiff, at the registry of the electoral court of a request by the lawyers of Jude Celestin and those of Moise Jean-Charles of recusation of the 5 judges composing the Bureau of the National Electoral Litigation (BCEN) for legitimate suspicion of serious bias and conflict of interest.



Josette J. Dorcely, the President of the Electoral Court, considering that only the board of directors of the CEP can decide on the motion of recusation filed by the protesting parties has transmitted their requests to the CEP for the legal suites. Moreover, in order to respect the act of justice which obliges her, she has announced the immediate suspension of the verifications, eaving unfinished the work that was to end this Tuesday.



For the PHTK, this request for recusal of the judges by the protesters is an ultimate attempt of the losers who try to delay the verification and prevent the publication of the final results scheduled on 29 December.



Furthermore, the day before, the law firm of Fanmi Lavalas on behalf of the candidate Maryse Narcisse sent a letter to de facto President Jocelerme Privert informing him of a summons made to the BCEN as well as to the president and members of the CEP, to warn them against any publication of final results.



Actions that may call into question the publication of the results that everyone expected impatiently, as expected Thursday, December 29, 2016.



To be continued...



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19598-haiti-flash-the-bcen-applies-the-regulation-the-protesters-leave-the-ctv.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19623-haiti-flash-d-3-publication-of-final-results-as-planned.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19600-haiti-flash-situation-unchanged-at-ctv-date-of-results-maintained.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19598-haiti-flash-the-bcen-applies-the-regulation-the-protesters-leave-the-ctv.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19589-haiti-elections-verifications-at-the-ctv-the-tone-rises-nothing-advances-or-almost.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19579-haiti-elections-the-verification-of-the-pv-has-begun-not-near-to-be-finished.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Security : Terrible accident on National #1, more than 30 victims





Early on Monday morning, on the national road # 1, in the locality of Terre Noire (commune of Saint-Marc), a terrible accident occurred involving 3 vehicles, causing 5 deaths and about 30 wounded (provisional record).



The accident occurred when a pickup truck attempted to overtake a bus, struck the bus and collided head-on with a pickup that was coming in the opposite direction, according to legal findings.



Most of the wounded were taken to the Saint-Nicolas Hospital, three of them had to be taken to Port-au-Prince and several were transferred to other hospitals, notably in the Plateau Central given the seriousness of their condition, according to the National Ambulance Center.



5 people have died of the consequences of this accident, including two in the hospital informed the hospital Saint-Nicolas.



The balance could increase, given the severity of the injuries of some victims who are in critical condition.



S/ HaitiLibre


















West Bengal is slowly, but steadily, heading back to its gory past when Hindus and Muslims were at daggers drawn and communal clashes and riots were frequent. And Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee is solely to blame for this.

Banerjees blatant appeasement of Muslims is not only causing acute heartburn among Hindus, but has also emboldened the minority community to attack Hindus at many places. These attacks have been mostly unprovoked ones and with the sinister motive of driving away Hindus from their hearth and homes with the intention of taking those, as well as their livelihoods, over.

Her administration has been playing the role of a passive onlooker and the state police have been venturing into riot-torn areas only after the damage is done. The reason: Banerjee does not want her administration to take any action against Muslim rioters because she feels that doing so would alienate her precious Muslim vote bank without which it will be impossible for her to cling on to power in Bengal.

Take the latest such communal riot that broke out in a village at Howrahs Dhulagarh area, about 28 kilometers west of Kolkata, last week. According to this report, Muslims brought out a procession complete with loudspeakers blaring Hindi film music on 13 December to celebrate Eid-e-Milad (the birthday of Prophet Mohammed), which actually fell on 12 December and was a public holiday. On 13 December, Hindus at Dhulagarh village, like in the rest of the country, were observing Margashirsha Purnima.

Hindus at the village requested those in the procession to lower the volume of the loudspeaker since the music was interfering with some rituals. This incensed a section of those in the procession and they started attacking Hindu homes and shops. According to local people, the attackers were non-local Muslims. Hindu houses and shops were looted and then set ablaze while, as this Zee News report says, police who reached the village were attacked by bombs and prevented from stopping the rioters.

Locals and leaders of Hindu Samhati (a Hindu social organisation) say the attack on Hindus at Dhulagarh, like many others that have occurred with increasing regularity all over Bengal over the last few years, were pre-planned. Why would people participating in a procession to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet carry sticks, choppers and other lethal weapons as well as bottles filled with acid (which they hurled at shops), kerosene and diesel (which were used to set Hindu houses and shops ablaze after they were looted) and country-made bombs (that were hurled at the police)? Why was the procession taken out a day after Eid-e-Milad? And why were non-locals in the procession? asked Hindu Samhati leader Prashanta Sen.

In October this year, communal riots broke out in 12 places all over the state over Durga Puja immersions and Muharram tazia processions. The seed for that was sown by Mamata Banerjee herself when she banned immersion of idols of Goddess Durga on Dashami (the last day of the four-day Durga Puja) and the day after that on the ground that the immersion processions would coincide with Muharram processions. She wanted immersions to take place before 4 pm on the day of Dashami or two days after that.

The Calcutta High Court came down heavily on the restrictions and said: There has been a clear endeavour on the part of the state government to pamper and appease the minority section of the public at the cost of the majority section without there being any plausible justification the state government has been irresponsibly brazen in its conduct of being partial to one community, thereby infringing on the fundamental rights of people worshipping Ma Durga. The High Court also warned the state that it would be dangerous to mix politics with religion.

But by the time the Calcutta High Court delivered its stinging criticism of the Banerjee government, the damage had already been done. The state governments restrictions had ignited anger and discontent among the Hindus of the state and triggered tension between the two communities. This simmering tension got the spark it required to get ignited into full-scale riots when those in the Muharram processions attacked the Durga immersion processions.

At all the places, the immersion processions or Durga Puja mandaps were attacked by those taking part in the Muharram processions. And there seemed to be a clear intention to create trouble. For instance, some mischief makers burst a firecracker in the midst of a Muharram procession at Malda and started shouting that the procession had been attacked with bombs. In no time, swords, daggers, choppers and lathis came out and Hindu homes, shops and temples were attacked. It was pre-planned, a state home department officer who did not want to be named for obvious reasons said.

Hindus were angry not only because of the unreasonable restrictions on Durga Puja immersions, but also over other such anti-Hindu and pro-minority actions of the Banerjee government. For instance, for four consecutive years, her government had been denying permission to 300 Hindu families of a village in the states Birbhum district to organise a Durga Puja because 25-odd Muslim families in that village would be offended!

In 2012, she started giving monthly stipends of Rs 2,500 and Rs 1,000 to imams and muezzins of the 32,000-odd mosques in the state. This was perceived, and rightly so, as one of the most blatant and shameless acts of minority appeasement. She has also allowed hardline Muslim organisations a free hand in the state. For instance, the hanging to 1971 war criminals in Bangladesh triggered massive protests by Muslims in Kolkata and at rallies called by them, they called for (as can be seen in this video) Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasinas death.

Last month, a massive rally that brought Kolkata to a halt demanded a steep hike in the stipends to the imams and muezzins to Rs 20,000 and Rs 10,000 per month respectively. A few months ago, another massive protest rally against notorious preacher Zakir Naik brought the city to its knees. Another massive rally against the Uniform Civil Code (the biggest such rally in the country till date) was held last month in Kolkata. In fact, Kolkata is emerging as the hub of hardline Muslim activism.

West Bengal has also become a safe haven for Islamists hounded out of Bangladesh. Hundreds of Jamaat-e-Islami leaders and activists accused of heinous crimes like killings of secularists and bloggers have taken shelter in West Bengal. The Mamata Banerjee administration has turned a blind eye to their presence. The Khagragarh blast was an eye-opener. Many such Bangladeshi criminals and terrorists sheltered in West Bengal have been planning attacks on targets in Bangladesh, said a central intelligence officer.

The fallout of all this is the steady Hindu-Muslim polarisation, especially in rural and semi-urban areas of the state. This polarisation has been triggered by what Hindus perceive is the blatant appeasement of minorities. Many incidents in the past point to the state administration favouring Muslims over Hindus. While this has emboldened Muslims to attack Hindus, the Hindus have been chafing at this and their anger has reached the tipping point, warns sociologist Dibyajyoti Goswami.

West Bengal is no stranger to communal riots. More than 5,000 people were killed and tens of thousands displaced in the infamous Calcutta riots of 1946. Many riots had occurred before that as well. Since then, too, communal riots have rocked Bengal. A few such examples will suffice: the 1964 riots in Kolkata that were a reaction to the pogrom against Hindus in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), the 1992 riots in the aftermath of the demolition of the structure in Ayodhya, the 2013 riots in Canning, and many more all over the state.

But whatever be the failing of the erstwhile Left Front government, and despite its soft minority appeasement, the lid was kept firmly on communal tensions. Banerjee, in her desperate bid to stay on in power, is stirring the communal pot by leaning heavily towards Muslims. This can only spell disaster for Bengal.

Source : Swarajya Magazine
Head of the Trust Board of the Thirukoneswaram temple trust Mr. Arul Subramaniam has become the recent target of the Government of Sri Lanka. Police are attempting to arrest him. He is facing police action for performing his duties towards the sacred restoration of the ancient Thirukoneswaram temple.

Siva Senai strongly condemn this unprovoked attempt by the Government of Sri Lanka. Recent history is replete with arrests and humiliations of Hindus in the Trincomalee District in the name of archaeological preservation.

Hindus are more concerned than the Government is preserving their heritage. No one can question the sincerity and dedication of the trustees of various Hindu temples in Trincomalee district.

It is a brazen act of a Government which constitutionally prioritizes the Buddhist religion to the disadvantage of the Hindu Population. Trincomalee district Member of Parliament Mr. R. Sambanthan, who was himself a trustee of the Thirukoneswaram temple, will not tolerate this.

Siva Senai demands that all proposed actions on Mr. Arul Subramaniam for performing his religious duties, be dropped forthwith.

Let it be known to the Hindus all over the world, that the state continuously harasses Hindus. Hindus are not living with safety and security in Sri Lanka.

Source : A report from Siva Senai
Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who shot Philando Castile in his car in Minnesota took a training course called The Bulletproof Warrior, now renamed as the Street Survival Seminar. The same training, with a new name, is coming to Sacramento this coming February.

The evidence suggests that this course, and courses similar to it, offered by a private company called Calibre Press , are even worse than Urban Shield  the organized para-military and terror response training put on for police by the Alameda County Sheriffs Department  if thats imaginable.

The New York Times quotes Chuck Wexler, Executive Director of the Police Executive Research Forum, as saying that courses like those offered by Calibre reinforce the thinking that everyone is out to get the police if you hesitate, you could lose your life.

Michael Becar, the leader of an international police training association says seminars like those offered by Calibre and other firms foster a sense of paranoia among officers.

The course Yanez took is now called BulletProof, (according to the Star-Tribune, Calibre recently changed the name of its Bulletproof Warrior course after complaints from police departments about the implication of the word warrior.') and its coming to Sacramento on February 20, 2017, hosted by the California Highway Patrol.

You can listen to a sampler from the course here.

The Times describes the course as having charts and graphs on Combat Efficiency and Perceptual Distortions in Combat and says that it suggests that the will to survive is all too often trained out of the psyches of our police officers.

Its militarized policing on the individual level, drilled into the attendees as they are shown videos of police being shot  but if they are shown videos such as Oscar Grant, Walter Scott, and Mario Woods being executed as well, no one is volunteering that information.

We know that police should be being trained to de-escalate; we know that paranoia leads directly to officers shooting at people because they think that toy trucks and cell phones look like handguns. Calibre and the mentality it pushes are indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds, likely thousands over the years.

Urban Shield could  at least theoretically  be shut down by the will of the people, because it is sponsored, financed and organized by various levels of government. Not so with Calibre trainings. They are privately run, and while some police officers go with the assent of their agencies and may get reimbursement, some simply pay the $200 fee and go to them on their own.

Still, the one coming up in Sacramento is Hosted by and at the California Highway Patrol in Sacramento. It should not be so hosted, and we should demand such. Hell, it deserves to be shut down.

Calling Stop Urban Shield, APTP, AROC, Black Lives Matter activists and all those fighting against police repression  those who recognize that police terror is directly related to police militarization. What begins with a lecture ends with Philando Castile bleeding out on the sidewalk, and too many of us watching the video over and over and wondering why?
With the media fixated on motor car insurance, SMEs will tell you that the costs of all types of insurance for buildings, public liability and employees, are rising.

Isme is no supporter of the insurance industry, but as long as we have a system that places the value of a broken toe at 15,000, we will have expensive insurance.

We and other players presented to the Dail finance committee a list of measures to reduce insurance costs. The committee ignored most of what they were told.

If the judiciary wont play ball, legislate a way out for them, and amend the Constitution, if necessary.

As long as judges continue to pick compensation figures out of that part of their anatomy best reserved for sitting upon, we will have unaffordable insurance.

All sorts of costs are too high in Ireland. Insurance, electricity, rent, health, education, transport and energy  all affect SMEs directly, or through their employees. All are highly influenced or controlled by government policy.

Credit is improving slowly, but decisions are taking too long, and the premium being paid by SMEs is at least 1% over normal commercial lending.

It is unacceptable to demand signed, undated letters of resignation from the directors of companies seeking credit.

While the pillar banks dither, and continue to be unreasonable with SMEs, other financiers are eating their lunch.

The public discourse on pay has been overwhelmed by the public sector unions.

Despite only accounting for 15% of the workforce, they are almost 17% better paid that the rest of society on a like-for-like basis.

We need to get real about public sector pay, and public sector spending in general.

As a society, we espouse no values and cant assign a priority to anything.

When SMEs hit a funding problem, the very last person tapped is the customer. You improve processes. You do more with less. You reduce your costs. You purchase better. You change the way you deliver. This mindset is absent in the public service.

Where significant job creation is concerned, SMEs are the only game in town.

However, the crisis isnt over for SMEs. Unfortunately, advice on terminations and redundancies remains in the top three queries to the Isme help-line.

Yet, the outlook for multinationals is now so uncertain (think Trump, Brexit) that SMEs are going to have to paddle the Irish canoe for the next four years.

A final word to our Government: Stop trying to micro-manage everything.

Fifteen people are not capable of running every facet of life. Set meaningful goals for your departments. Promote those officials who meet them. Remove those who dont. Tell us your vision. Share your values and defend them.

Even if some people dont like them, theyll at least appreciate the fact you have a spine.

Stop pandering to the parties who can barely muster a margin-of-error in polls.

This is the type of politics that has lead the US to elect the most unpopular candidate in history, and to UK voters deciding to leave the EU before googling what is the EU? in their thousands.

Accept the fact you inhabit a post-truth, fake news world; where feelings mean more than facts; where every idiot with a Twitter account considers an anonymous opinion more important than that of the Taoiseach.

Neil McDonnell is chief executive at business group Isme.
Sabina Gold & Silver Corp. (TSX: SBB) provides an update on the timing on a decision by the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada ("INAC").

On June 15, 2016, the Nunavut Impact Review Board ("NIRB") recommended to the federal Minister of INAC that the Back River Project not proceed to the next phase of permitting at this time. INAC has since been reviewing the NIRB Report and the Minister has three options:

Reject the NIRB Report/recommendation; Accept the NIRB Report/recommendation; or Send the project back to NIRB for reconsideration.

The federal government had originally suggested that its decision would likely be made before the end of Q4, 2016, however, they continue to consider the NIRB recommendation carefully.

Since the NIRB recommendation Sabina has continued to work with the Kitikmeot Inuit Association ("KIA") and various responsible agencies to define additional measures to address the NIRB uncertainties stated in the report. This work includes a two-day workshop on wildlife management and mitigation held in Yellowknife in October and multiple visits to the Kitikmeot communities resulting in an additional 25 meetings with the KIA, hamlet councils, hunters and trappers' organizations, advisory groups and the public since the last Company update.

Sabina continues to receive broad based Inuit support for the Project both at the final hearings in April and since the NIRB report in June. Letters written to the Minister on behalf of Sabina and the Project have been received from the KIA (the land owner) hamlet councils, hunters and trappers' organizations, community representatives, as well as the Government of Nunavut. Additionally, the Company has also been working with the KIA to progress the Inuit Impact and Benefit Agreement required for the Project.

"We had hoped to receive a decision from INAC before the end of the year," said Bruce McLeod, President & CEO "We have been working diligently with all appropriate parties in the interim towards this end. However, despite these efforts it is likely that we will not receive word from the Minister's office until early in 2017. Although this is disappointing to our shareholders, we appreciate INAC's careful consideration of the NIRB Report. We have continued to work with parties to bolster our plans and remain confident that there are no issues on the Project that cannot be addressed. We also appreciate the strong support we have received from Kitikmeot stakeholders and responsible parties: support that I believe is unprecedented for a mining project in Nunavut."

About Sabina Gold & Silver

Sabina Gold & Silver Corp. is a well-financed, emerging precious metals company with district scale, world class undeveloped assets in one of the world's newest, politically stable mining jurisdictions: Nunavut, Canada.

Source: Sabina Gold & Silver
Largo Resources Ltd. (TSX.V: LGO) has announced a non-brokered private placement financing through the issuance of up to 52,400,000 units of the Company for aggregate gross proceeds of up to CA$23,580,000.

Each Unit will be sold at a price of CDN$0.45, which price is equal to a 13.5% discount to the 5-day weighted average price of the common shares of the Company (the "Common Shares") on the Toronto Stock Exchange (the "TSX") on December 13, 2016, the day prior to the date on which the independent special committee of the board of directors of the Company approved the terms of the Offering, and a 4% discount to the 5-day weighted average price of the Common Shares on the TSX on December 22, 2016, the day prior to the date the Company filed for approval of the Offering with the TSX.

Each Unit shall consist of one Common Share and one common share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will be exercisable into one Common Share at a price of CDN$0.65 per share for a period of three years from closing of the Offering. All securities issued in the Offering will be subject to a four-month hold from the date of issuance.

Insiders of the Company (the "Insiders"), including certain funds managed by Arias Resource Capital Management LP (the "ARC Funds") and certain entities controlled by Mr. Alberto Beeck, a director of the Company, may purchase up to the full number of Units offered for sale under the Offering. The Offering will not result in a change of control of the Company.

Shareholder Approval

As set out in the Company's press release of November 16, 2016, the syndicate of Brazilian commercial lenders (the "Lenders") under the Company's existing debt facilities is requiring an injection of working capital into the Company's operating subsidiary of not less than US$15 million dollars prior to December 31, 2016 as a condition of granting a new debt facility to the Company (the "2017 Facilities") which would have the effect of pushing back principal and interest payments on the Company's existing debt facilities for an additional calendar year. Subsequently, the Lenders agreed to extend the December 31, 2016 date to January 10, 2017. Absent the 2017 Facilities, the Company will be required to begin making principal and interest payments effective January 15, 2017.

The Company currently has 423,765,993 issued and outstanding Common Shares on a non-diluted basis. There will be 476,165,993 Common Shares issued and outstanding on a non-diluted basis following closing of the Offering (assuming the issuance of the maximum number of Units under the Offering). Insiders may purchase up to the full number of Units being offered for sale under the Offering, Accordingly, an aggregate of 104.8 million Common Shares (including Common Shares issuable upon the exercise of the Warrants) representing approximately 24.7% of the current number of issued and outstanding Common Shares, could be issued to Insiders in the Offering. Over the course of the past six months and assuming closing of the Offering and the acquisition of all of the Units by Insiders under the Offering, an aggregate of approximately 115 million Common Shares (including Common Shares issuable upon the exercise of warrants) representing approximately 27.9% of the number of issued and outstanding Common Shares will have been issued to Insiders.

Section 607(g)(ii) of the TSX Company Manual requires the Company to obtain the approval of holders of a majority of the currently issued and outstanding Common Shares, excluding the votes attached to the Common Shares held by the Insiders who will participate in the Offering (the "Majority of the Minority"), because the Offering could result in the issuance of that number of Common Shares to Insiders as would be greater than 10% of the number of Common Shares issued and outstanding immediately prior to last issuance to Insiders within the past six month period.

Pursuant to Section 604(d) of the TSX Company Manual, the Company has obtained the approval of the Majority of the Minority for the Offering and the proposed Insider participation in the Offering by way of written consent. The ARC Funds, which collectively currently own approximately 59.86% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares on a non-diluted basis, and entities controlled by Mr. Alberto Beeck, a director of the Company, which collectively currently own approximately 8.74% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares on a non-diluted basis, may participate in the Offering. An aggregate of 253,662,190 Common Shares owned by the ARC Funds and 37,021,124 Common Shares owned or controlled by entities controlled by Mr. Alberto Beeck, were excluded from the Common Shares comprising the Majority of the Minority. The Toronto Stock Exchange has conditionally approved the Offering and granted listing approval of the Common Shares to be issued under the Offering subject to final acceptance on this basis, in lieu of requiring the Company to hold a shareholder meeting to approve the Offering.

About Largo Resources

Largo Resources Ltd. is a growing strategic mineral company focused on the production of vanadium pentoxide at its Vanadio de Maracas Menchen Mine. Vanadium is primarily used as an alloy to strengthen steel and reduce its weight. Vanadium enhanced steels are used in a vast and growing range of products that are used and encountered every day; including, rebar, automobiles, transport infrastructure etc. As trends in the steel industry now demand increasingly stronger and lighter products for advanced applications, the use of vanadium is expected to grow over the medium and long term. Largo also has interests in a portfolio of other projects, including: a 100% interest in the Currais Novos Tungsten Tailings Project in Brazil; a 100% interest in the Campo Alegre de Lourdes Iron-Vanadium Project in Brazil; and a 100% interest in the Northern Dancer Tungsten-Molybdenum property in the Yukon Territory, Canada. For more information, please visit www.largoresources.com.

Source: Largo Resources
By Kang Seung-woo





Tomomi Inada

The government strongly condemned the Japanese defense minister's visit to a controversial war shrine, Thursday, describing it as "deplorable."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned a ranking official from the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to protest the visit that it believes is an attempt to justify its wartime aggression.

Earlier in the day, Tomomi Inada visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo to pay her respects to the Japanese war dead  the first time that Japan's incumbent defense chief has ever visited the shrine.

However, Yasukuni also honors 14 Class-A war criminals from World War II, so visits by Japanese government officials often become a source of tension between Japan and neighboring countries Korea and China that view it as a symbol of Japan's past imperialism.

"It is deplorable that Japan's responsible politicians visit Yasukuni Shrine that glorifies its past colonial invasions and war by housing war criminals," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck.

"Unless Japan demonstrates humble introspection and sincere self-reflection on its wartime past, it will not be able to gain the trust of neighboring countries and the international community."

The defense ministry also expressed regret over Inada's act.

"We strongly condemn the Japanese defense minister's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, given that we have stressed that the two sides should face up to history and build a future-oriented relationship," the ministry said in a statement.

The shrine visit was made one day after the first anniversary of the "comfort women" deal between Korea and Japan.

On Dec. 28, last year, the two nations reached an agreement to end their dispute over Japan's enslavement of Korean women who were forced into prostitution in Japanese military brothels during World War II. The surviving victims, politicians and the people, however, are demanding a renegotiation of the deal or its cancellation, claiming that it fell short of fully restoring the dignity and honor of the comfort women.

In addition, Inada visited the shrine one day after accompanying Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on his trip to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, where he offered condolences to the victims of Japan's attack on the U.S. naval base 75 years ago.

Abe, who often visited the Yasukuni and drew criticism, has refrained from visiting the shrine since 2013, but he has instead sent symbolic offerings on key memorial dates.

Later in the day, Chung Byong-won, director-general of the foreign ministry's Northeast Asia Affairs Bureau, officially lodged the protest with Kohei Maruyama, a minister at the Japanese Embassy here, after summoning him to the ministry.

The defense ministry also summoned a Japanese defense attache to complain about the Japanese defense chief's visit.

On Wednesday, Japanese Reconstruction Minister Masahiro Imamura also visited the shrine, which drew a backlash from China.

"We once again urge the Japanese to look squarely at their past and reflect deeply upon their aggression and take a responsible attitude, and make tangible moves to win the trust of its Asian neighbors and the world," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
Two guests drink tea while receiving a foot bath at Solgaheon in Seochon, Seoul.

/ Courtesy of Seoul Tourism Organization



By Kim Se-jeong

More people travel individually in Seoul, and they crave more unique local experiences. Onemoretrip.net, a website operated by the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) and the Seoul Tourism Organization (STO), helps them with a variety of local cultural, culinary, beauty and historic tour programs.

One such program is a foot bath at Solgaheon, a healing cafe that is perfect for those looking for relaxation. Located in Seochon, the cafe has a unique and appealing atmosphere as it's housed within a traditional hanok. The foot bath service lasts one hour and guests can enjoy traditional and medicinal teas such as mint and chrysanthemum. During winter, the hot baths are available indoors and the cost begins at $52.50.

The foot bath has proven a hit with many including one anonymous traveler who wrote, "I was fascinated by the beauty of a Korean traditional house. The herbal foot bath was hot enough to relieve my fatigue and it was such a nice healing time for me."



Guests work with tools to make their own stamps at Todok Learning Room in Insa-dong, Seoul.



Another popular program is a traditional stamp making experience. Todok Learning Room in Insa-dong helps travelers make their own artistic stamps. One simply has to choose a preferred name  English or Korean  and trace their design, then the Todok staff will carve the stamp right in front of the customer. The price of the stamps begins at $31.50, and it makes for a unique souvenir.

"This was a short but memorable way to get a souvenir to take home from Korea. You can select from many different stamp designs and watch as your name is hand carved into it," one stamp-making participant said.





A man cooking bulgogi at OME Cooking Lab in Dongdaemun, Seoul.



Cooking Korean cuisine is a must for food lovers and OME Cooking Lab offers a variety of dishes for cooking including kimchi, bibimbap (rice mixed with vegetables), and haemulpajeon (seafood and green onion pancake).

All participants, maximum seven, go shopping together, cook and eat together. Shopping takes place at a traditional local market, such as Kyungdong Market, offering a rare opportunity to learn about Korean ingredients. The fee for the cooking session starts at $52.50.

When it comes to perfume, people often think about Chanel or Gucci products that are found in duty-free shops. However, Aromind says anyone can make his or her own perfume at a cost of only $52.50. The perfume-making experience at Aromind in Bukchon Hanok Village has proven extremely popular, and reservations are highly recommended.

Onemoretrip.net is an initiative by the SMG and the STO as they continue to strive to offer unique local experiences for the city's visitors. The website, launched in November, presents experience programs that are not commonly found in standard tour guidebooks and websites. In conjunction with the launching of One More Trip's mobile website, a special contest is currently underway with prizes including Amazon gift cards and even an Apple Watch. For more information, visit www.onemoretrip.net.




(EAPRO-TCO-SocPol-NOB)

Vacancy No. EAPRO/TCO-VA-2017/03

Job Level: NO-B

Duty Station: Thailand Country Office, Bangkok

Position No. : THL17003

Application Close: 26 January 2017

Contract Type: Fixed-Term

Purpose of the Position

Under supervision of Chief Social Policy, Accountable for effective engagement in social policy dialogue with the Government for programme development, advocating for increased public resource allocation and budgeting towards the social sector and sustainable decentralization of social services and local capacity building in support of the goal of universal coverage of essential social services and the creation of a protective environment for children. Conducts data collection and analysis to fill information gaps and to strengthen capacity for advocacy for childrens rights, and to support the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the World Fit for Children (WFFC) agenda.

Major Responsibilities

1. Social policy dialogue and programme development

Provides professional assistance in UNICEFs engagement in social policy dialogue and development with the Government, maintains constructive dialogue and partnerships between international and local stakeholders to support the development of social policies and programmes contributing to the progressive realization of childrens rights and strengthening of implementation and monitoring mechanisms at all levels of society, and ensures that the services reach out in innovative, effective ways to those most vulnerable pockets of children and families that have been previously left out.

Promotes the advocacy for juvenile justice reform, supports child rights-based reviews of national, provincial and local legislation, in close consultation with community-level structures and supports the health and education sectors and the social welfare system for children.

2. Monitoring state budget resources

Monitors and updates current information on state budgeting and spending patterns for social programmes and decentralization status of social services on an on-going basis to support advocacy for greater public resources and budget allocation for social development, the prioritization of resource allocation for children, and universal coverage of essential services for children, to ensure that they reflect the best interest of children.

3. Sustainable decentralization and capacity building

Where the national decentralization process is taking place, collaborates with the central and local authorities to assist in planning, policy discussion and service delivery closely responding to the needs of local communities.

Provides on-going support in making decentralization sustainable through adequate local support while keeping decentralized services both accessible and effective.

Collaborates with the central and local authorities to strengthen community-based capacity on quality data collection, analysis for policy development, planning, implementation, coordination, monitoring of social policy and programmes.

Provides professional assistance in the development programme plans of action for children at provincial and district/municipality levels; supports to strengthen coordination between sectors and between different levels of government structures for policy implementation.

4. Data collection, analysis and results-based approach

Collects systematically qualitative data for the sound and up-to-date assessment of the situation of children and women to provide the base-lines for result-based decisions on interventions and evaluations. Provides technical support for the development of information systems for monitoring child rights indicators, with emphasis on community and child participation.

Provides timely, regular data-driven analysis for effective prioritization, planning, and development; facilitates results-based management for planning, adjusting, and scaling-up specific social policy initiatives. Support maintenance of information system for monitoring gender/sex disaggregated data.

Contributes to the analysis of the macroeconomic context of social policy programmes and its impact on social development, emerging issues and social policy concerns, as well as implications for children, and proposes and promotes appropriate responses in respect of such issues and concerns, including government resource allocation policies and the effect of social welfare policies on the rights of children.

5. Advocacy and communication

Promotes and raises awareness on childrens rights with both the general public and with policy makers, effective information dissemination, mass media campaign, special events, and other means, to ensure local buy-in, commitment, and continued relevance of UNICEF programming.

6. Partnerships

Contributes to the establishment and enhancement of effective partnerships with the Government, bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, civil society and local leaders, the private sector, and other UN agencies to support sustained and proactive commitment to the Convention of the Rights of the Child and to achieve global UN agendas such as the Millennium Development Goals and the World Fit for Children (WFFC) agenda.

Identifies other critical partners, promotes awareness and builds capacity of partners, and actively facilitates effective collaboration within the UN family.

7. UNICEF Programme Management

Supports and contributes to effective and efficient planning, management, coordination, monitoring and evaluation of the country programme.

Ensures that the social planning project enhances policy dialogue, planning, supervision, technical advice, management, training, research and support; and that the monitoring and evaluation component strengthens monitoring and evaluation of the social sectors and provides support to sectoral and decentralized information systems.
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Were excited to announce that metalbulletin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com.

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Discover more than 2000 prices, news and analysis in primary and secondary metals markets. We cover base metals, industrial minerals, ores and alloys, steel, scrap and steel raw materials.

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DEC. 28: Re-signing Hamilton to a minors pact is a formality now that hes been cleared by the Rangers medical staff, writes MLB.coms T.R. Sullivan. Hamilton will still have to earn his way onto the Major League roster in Spring Training, though.

DEC. 23: The Rangers are likely to strike a deal to re-sign veteran outfielder Josh Hamilton, according to Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Team doctors are said to have taken a look at Hamiltons surgically repaired left knee and determined that he should be ready to go next spring.

Of course, the expectation at this point is that Hamilton will need to battle for a roster spot as a minor-league signee. The 35-year-old never managed to play last year, as he ultimately required two procedures to address ligament damage in his knee. He was released in August, with both team and player suggesting at the time that a new deal was contemplated.

Hamiltons most recent MLB action came in 2015, when he returned to the Rangers after the Angels cut bait on his ill-fated free-agent contract. He managed to take 182 plate appearances, producing a .253/.291/.441 batting line with eight home runs.

While it seems that there could still be power in Hamiltons long-feared bat, hell need to turn things around in the on-base department to return to productivity. He struck out 52 times while drawing only ten walks in his recent run with Texas.

Hamilton did post above-average offensive numbers during his two seasons with the Halos before that, though, even if his .255/.316/.426 slash fell well shy of hopes when he inked a five-year, $125MM to head to Los Angeles. He received that huge contract after posting five consecutive All-Star campaigns with the Rangers from 2008 through 2012.

Beyond the performance and health questions, Hamiltons record includes a troubled history with substance abuse that stretches to the early stages of his professional career. But Texas was willing to take on the associated risks when it accepted a small piece of the remainder of his contract with Los Angeles, and obviously feels that he has held up his end of the bargain since coming back into the fold.
Abena Akuaba Appiah, Miss Queen and Beauty Universe, has encouraged young Ghanaian models to show resilience and focus on their dreams.

She asked models in the country not to let anything be a hindrance to their success, adding that if any of them wanted to be an international model, only the sky is the limit.

Miss Appiah said this in Accra at a ceremony to honour her for winning the prestigious and widely contested international pageant  Queen and Beauty Universe.

Miss Appiah said discrimination was a big challenge she encountered for being dark-skinned adding, However, I managed to overcome this by exuding confidence and putting everything behind me, brushing it off and having my goal and target in front of me.

She encouraged other young women to keep their heads up as there's nothing you cannot do if you put your mind to it.

Meanwhile, the Ghanaian model shared her plan of going back to school to complete her remaining semester. She also intends to continue her work with Baldwin University Foundation to assist under-privileged children to go to school.

Right now, that is my key; I want to use this platform to help people, she said.

She expressed appreciation to all Ghanaians for their support, acceptance and warm welcome.

When I was coming, I didn't expect such a huge welcome, but what I have gotten, I am happy, she indicated.

She commended Eurostar, the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel, the Ghana Police Service, Yutong and all her sponsors for their support.
Talented gospel artiste Annette Danso, popularly known as Annette D, has expressed gratitude to Ghanaians for their support, which eventually saw her honoured at the Bass Awards held on Sunday, December 25, at the National Theatre in Accra.

The gospel icon won the alternative reggae/dancehall song of the year award with her popular song titled, 'Searching', featuring Bujwu Stingo.

Speaking in an interview with BEATWAVES yesterday in Accra, Annette D said its a great surprise and it is the work of God.

The gospel artiste, who believes her inclusion in this year's Bass Awards was as a result of her hard work, commended the organizers of the event for honouring her.

She expressed her profound gratitude to God and all her fans for the immense support she had had since joining the gospel music industry.

I am saying a big thank you to God for His blessings upon my life. I thank my fans for their support. I am grateful to them, she added.

Thrilling Annette D, who is among the few gospel musicians in the country who have managed to survive in the industry, said since she joined the industry God has been faithful to her and continues to bless her.

She also thanked Gabriel Ansah, her executive producer as well as radio and television presenters for providing her with the needed platforms on their various networks for the advancement of her musical career.

Annette, who is credited with three albums, is also credited with hit songs such as 'Eye,' 'Tena Yesu Nase,' 'Wole Noko,' 'Monyi Awurade Aye,' among others.

As part of her social responsibility, the gospel songstress, in collaboration with the Future Leaders Foundation Network, will on Monday, January 2, organize an event dubbed, Community Street Party For Kids at Nungua, a suburb of Accra.

The party will witness performances from gospel music acts such as Gifty Osei, Lady Prempeh, Perppy, Goldmann, Joe Wizzy, Nutty Ranking, Asanquomah, Ras Appiah among others.

By George Clifford Owusu
Tributes have been paid to US actress Debbie Reynolds, who has died aged 84 after a suspected stroke.

"This is too hard to comprehend," wrote entertainer Bette Midler , who said Reynolds had been "beautiful, talented [and] devoted to her craft."

Dame Joan Collins said she was " truly heartbroken ", describing Reynolds as "a wonderfully warm friend and colleague".

Reynolds' death followed that of her daughter Carrie Fisher, who died two days ago aged 60.

"I can't imagine what Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds' family are going through this week," tweeted chat show host Ellen DeGeneres. "I send all of my love."

Star Trek's William Shatner called her " Hollywood Royalty ", adding: "It breaks my heart that she is gone. I'd hoped that my grieving was done for 2016."

Talk show host Larry King said she was " pure class ... talented, beautiful, unsinkable," while Madonna advised her Twitter followers to "Hug Your mother today! Then Hug your daughter!"

"Debbie went to be with Carrie," wrote Debra Messing , who played Reynolds' on-screen daughter in Will and Grace.

"She always worried about her. Carrie left too soon and now they are together again."

Will and Grace star Sean Hayes added his condolences, saying: "It is beyond astonishing that both @carrieffisher & @DebbieReynolds1 have left this earth. I overwhelmingly adored & admired them both."

Co-star Eric McCormack added: "The combination of the loss of @carrieffisher & then her mom @DebbieReynolds1 is too much. I'm really at a loss here..."

Veteran comic actress Carol Channing, 95, said called Reynolds "beautiful and generous".

"It seems like only yesterday she was having lunch here at the house and we were discussing the possibility of working together in a new show," she added.

Reynolds was also remembered by actor Albert Brooks, who played her on-screen son in 1996 film Mother.

"I can't believe this happened one day after Carrie," he tweeted , describing Reynolds as "a legend and my movie mom".

"There is nothing harder than having to bury a child," wrote Shatner's Star Trek co-star George Takei .

"Debbie died of a broken heart, but she's with her daughter now."

Others to pay tribute included actress Mia Farrow, who said she hoped Reynolds and Fisher were " somewhere having fun ".

British comedian Stephen Fry , who earlier tweeted that it had been a "crushing blow to lose Carrie Fisher", offered his "deepest sympathy" to the family at "this new blow".

Actor Rip Torn said he had been "blessed" to work with Reynolds in her Las Vegas stage show, calling her "generous to a fault".

The Screen Actors Guild, who gave the Singin' in the Rain star a lifetime achievement award in 2015, has also paid homage.

"We have lost a unique talent and a national treasure," said its president, Gabrielle Carteris .

"Coming so close to the death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher, this is truly a double tragedy."

Candles and flowers have been left on Reynolds' star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
President-Elect Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has promised the people of Krobo land, particularly those resident in the Akyem area, that they have nothing to fear during his presidency.

The President-Elect and some selected members of his team took their Thank You Tour to the people of Krobo land in the Eastern region Thursday.

The visit was to express his gratitude for the role they played in the election outcome which saw the New Patriotic Party (NPP) win the Upper Manya Krobo Constituency seat.

Addressing the chief of Krobo, Nene Sakitey II, Nana Akufo-Addo assured that he is seeking to work with all the people of Ghana in peace.

The propaganda of our opponents especially amongst the Krobo people who are living in the Akyem areas was that if I came, they will be in jeopardy. I want to tell you before the entire Krobo people that they should all feel secured, no danger is going to come to them in Akyem land because of me, he assured.

The President-Elect reiterated that, he is determined to work with all the peoples of our country to improve the economy of our nation to bring prosperity to all parts of Ghana and for that to happen, I need peace and unity in our nation.

I am not the one to coming to disturb anybody wherever they are in Ghana. The people of Krobo in Akyem are secure, they are safe and they will continue to be safe and live dignified lives, Nana Akufo-Addo guaranteed.

The Krobo chief Nene Sakitey II speaking at the event indicated that they will provide all the support Nana Akufo-Addo needs and urged him to create another district in Krobo land to accelerate development there.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
28.12.2016 LISTEN

We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrongthis is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it (W.E.B. Du Bois).

AN IMPERATIVE NEED FOR TEACHABLE CLOSURES IN INSTITUTIONAL CORRUPTION CASES

The wise create proverbs for fools to learn, not to repeat (An African proverb).

Then also if we should remind our readers again, in the article Bugri Naabu: The Only Thing I Fear is the English Language published on Ghana and elsewhere on December 4, 2014, we suggested in no uncertain terms that a story half told deserves a measure of uncompromising finality, a moral and political denouement in the political theatre.

We still maintain this stance.

Having said that, we should also point out we are yet to know in any degree of appreciable detail whether the National Democratic Congress (NDC) or the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has any intentions of pursuing these scandalous allegations of malfeasance to their logical conclusion.

Our central argument is that pursuing this matter to its logical conclusion without the emotional taint of political bias in a competent jurisdiction, for instance, is one surest way to strengthen our institutions and furthermore, perhaps most significantly, to stamp or drum the fear of institutional deterrence and of corrective justice into unscrupulous public officials.

After all, there is nothing more important for us at this point than seeing our institutions work.

Therefore, it is high time we as a nation moved past this spectacular familiarity of lip service which our scheming, unproductive politicians pay to strengthening public institutions even as the moral qualities of men and women representing these institutions go into steep decline.

Likewise, we have to move past the erroneous impression that the astonishing scale of institutional corruption in Ghana somehow starts and ends with the investigational lens of Anas Aremeyaw Anas camerafar from it.

Rather, institutional corruption has all the debilitating symptomatology of terminal cancer after having metastasized in the Ghanaian body politic throughout the years.

There is a haunting schadenfreude that accompanies our kleptomaniacal democracy in that this kleptomaniacal democracy feeds on the blood of institutional corruption while the former, in turn, feeds on the former.

This idea which closely resembles the concept of reciprocal causation has everything to do with divorcing our kleptomaniacal democracy from institutional corruption.

Arrogance of power also supports this strong correlation.

Ghana therefore sits on a nuclear bomb of institutional corruptionthat is.

In one sense therefore, attempts to dissolve the thick concrete wall between our kleptomaniacal democracy and institutional corruption remains a forbidding challenge.

In another sense the NPP and NDC which have no shame and have strategically resolved into apocalyptic authors of political wickedness in high places, have also turned themselves into vindictive masquerades of grudging viragos behind a pastiche of moral translucence where they have comfortably assumed undue apostleship of the moral high ground in matters of public and political morality.

Politicians are wont to make bold sloganeering and electioneering assertions about policy and institutional reforms for the general benefit of society, yet once they officially assume the mantle of leadership they quickly dispense with these convenient assertions for lack of conviction of purpose and enforcement.

OTHER CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS

Ambush in the Night (Bob Marley):

Trying to belittle our

Integrity now

They say what we know

Is just what they teach us

And we're so ignorant

Well, what we know

Is not what they tell us:

We're not ignorant, I mean it

Ghanaian politicians always claim there is no money in the national purse to underwrite better public services or even expand and refurbish existing ones; to turn under-tree schools into habitable ones fully furnished with modern conveniences from basic teaching materials to computers; to provide for universal toilet facilities so as to eliminate or curtail open defecation; to remunerate state employees; to construct public infrastructure and so on, yet out of the blue flows unstinted money for vote-buying; bribing officials of the Electoral Commission (EC) and television and radio owners and presenters/hosts, judges, the grassroots of political parties, serial callers

At the end of the day, institutional corruption persists because we have developed an unlimited capacity for it. However, unlike the infamous corruptocrat Kufuor, the late Mills refused to pursue the murderous political criminals in the ethnocentric NPP, because Nigerian conman T.B. Joshua prevailed on him to resist public pressure to do just that, for the sake of national peace.

As expected, Mills political pathos would directly play into the leprous hands of our entrenched duopolistic corruptocracy.

On the other hand, it will be politically objectionable if the Flagstaff House under Akufo-Addos watch dare designate Owusu Bempah as one of its unofficial policy advisors, although we will also concede that to be a decisional prerogative only the former can exercise as the popular embodiment of the executive institution.

The Flagstaff House, a den of murderous political thieves and criminals and ignoble hypocritical robots, should not be turned into a lounge for sycophantic, scheming charlatans and shady characters who are wont to constitute themselves into public nuisance, for we have come a long way and therefore we should all expect to know better on the basis of this eye-opening knowledge.

The Flagstaff House is supposed to be a rational, pragmatic laboratory for patriotic technocrats who truly understand the intricacies of nation-building, economic and sustainable development, comparative advantage and more generally, development economics.

Perhaps, most significantly, these miscalculations put the kibosh on the entire enterprise of understanding it [institutional corruption]. Even so, egregious political miscalculations such as having unpatriotic, irrational, un-pragmatic and non-technocratic political theologians serve in unofficial capacities as policy advisors may have a detrimental impact on the countrys development economics.

We may have witnessed a policy instantiation of this phenomenon in the Mills administration as well as in the Rawlings administration, the latter of which the policy manipulations of Rev. Dr. Vincent Kwabena Damuah, founding overseer of the Africana Mission, immediately come to mind.

In fact, and if we may also add, such miscalculations have rather tended to undermine or frustrate serious longitudinal investigations into the winding nature of institutional corruption.

This is why charlatans such as Owusu Bempah must be made to stay as far away from the Flagstaff House as is humanly possible, that is, he must be kept at arms length from the office of the executive president as the rational pragmatism of politics, statecraft and strategic policy formulations do not make for the charitable provinces of dubious, weak-minded political theologians and sticky, divisive opportunists, and certainly a place not for apocalyptic dreamers and sensational prophetic nation-wreckers and grudging millennialist sermonizers.

Politics is a serious business meant for strong minds although not the kind of minds we see in our kleptomaniacal idiocracy.

That one is all too clear.

The other fact is that the leaderships of the NPP and the NDC liberally promote idiocracy and corruptocracy because, as we pointed out elsewhere, both systems make Ghanas kleptomaniacal democracy possible and hence the lack of moral seriousness and political will on the part of the ruling class to fight institutional corruption.

Instead of investigating political criminals, prosecuting them and sending them to prison if and when found guilty, they are transferred from one department to another and even promoted in some cases on the basis of political expedience and patronage. The end result is a revolving-door of impunity and recidivism.

Even when or where a corruption case goes to the office of the presidency for official review, it is converted into a parody of justice.

White papers issued on important cases of institutional corruption and forwarded to the executive presidency for redress is simply reduced to partisan dumpsites of toilet rollspaper tigers, or to the kind of hyped partisan politics and shameful earsplitting rhetoric of political equalization Ghanaians are generally known for.

Nothing absolutely getsliterallydone by way of the fight against institutional corruption. And so the partisan business of public corruption continues unabatedas usual.

These paper tigers conflate positive economics with normative judgments, for instance.

This is the more reason why empanelling an independent commission may be in the best of the nation since it is our opinion that it may do a better job of effectively tracking the epidemiology of institutional corruption throughout the Fourth Republic than, say, either the NPP or the NDC.

Moreover, independence and political influence are synonymous in Ghanas kleptomaniacal democracy.

How can one notorious criminal political gang investigate another notorious criminal political gang, let alone exercise the adjudicative powers of prosecution and sentencing? How can one criminal political gang simultaneously take on the sacred roles of judgeship, prosecutorship, and wardenship?

Sometimes, if not all the time, we get the eerie feeling that a vigorous crusade mounted against the muscular scaffolding of institutional corruption will bring down Ghanas much-vaunted kleptomaniacal democracy, hence the political and moral nonchalance in the face of the wanton dissipation of the public purse!

In the end Ghanaians should hold their leaders to their phantom, grandiose electioneering and sloganeering promises, for instance from passing the Freedom of Information Bill (FOIB) to creating a special office for an independent prosecutor. Such are basic demands. Need we say more?

We shall return with Part 4.

REFERENCES

The Best: 72+ African Wise Proverbs And Inspiring Quotes. Retrieved from http://afritorial.com/the-best-72-african-wise-proverbs/
Collins Osei Assibey on a sick bed after being assaulted

29.12.2016 LISTEN

One of the victims of the dastard attacks perpetrated by the younger brother of Hon. Collins Dauda, the outgoing Minister for Lands and Mineral Resources, Abdulai Naaba, is asking the security agencies in the country to bring his attacker to justice.

Collins Osei Assibey was among some sympathizers of the New Patriotic Party who were brutally assaulted by Naaba on the eve of the December 7 polls, resulting in some of them suffering various degrees of injuries.

Collins Osei Assibey particularly sustained the severest injury in the arms and the neck after Naaba and his thugs assaulted him at Sankore whilst he and some NPP supporters were on their way to a community in the Asunafo Constituency.

Prior to the elections, Abdulai Naaba, who is a blood brother of Hon. Collins Dauda, openly confessed to killing people for the sake of his brother and was on record to have openly subjected his political opponents to physical assaults and harassments.

Though the police initially said they had caused the arrest of the perpetrator weeks before the elections after he openly confessed to murdering and threatening to do same, he was surprisingly found in the Sankore Community, perpetrating more violent acts.

Abdulai Naaba has meanwhile rendered public apology and called for forgiveness from Ghanaians and those he had offended.

But one of his victims is leaving no stone unturned in ensuring that his attacker was brought to book.

At a press conference held at the Ashanti Regional Office of the NPP in Kumasi, Collins Osei Assibey, who was still in a bandage, appealed to the security to do proper investigations and bring Abdulai Naaba and all those who assisted him in his onslaught to book.

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Mr. Martin. A. B. K. Amidu has won the respect of many Ghanaians for his intransigent fight against wanton dissipation of national purse by his own party: National Democratic Congress (NDC) apparatchiks. No wonder that he has gained the sobriquet: citizen vigilante. Since Nana Addo Dankwa Akufu Addo (NADAA) led New Patriotic Partys (NPP) victory in the presidential and parliamentary elections on December 7, 2016, many Ghanaians have suggested the inclusion of Mr. Amidu in the incoming administration. The latest individual to add his voice to the call is no mean person like Dr. Kwame Addo Kufour. Look Martin Amidu is the Number One crusader against corruption in Ghana, the younger brother of Former President John Kufuor said. If the president-elect can put him in a position to help us fight corruption, I will be very happy. I believe he is the leading crusader against corruption (Source: Ghanaweb.com, Wednesday, December 28, 2016). Both Dr. Kwame Addo Kufour and NADAA are politicians of insightful and impressive erudition. Nevertheless, this call will somewhat not inure to the benefit of NPP as a political organization. My main reason is what I termed as integrity conflict

Mr. Amidu is very credible and honest when it comes to protecting national treasury and fighting against kleptocracy. He deserves a national honor. However, can his loyalty within an organization be trusted? How well could he bridge his NDC political ideology with that of NPP? Mr. Amidu was a senior member of NDC. He became the vice presidential candidate for the Late President Mills, then candidate Mills in the run-up to 2000 presidential election. After, NDCs pyrrhic victory in the 2008 election, the late president Mills appointed him as an interior minister. He was later reshuffled as an attorney general and minister of justice. So what prevented Mr. Amidu from resolving his differences within NDC as an organization? This means that Mr. Amidu did not raise the bar of competence when it comes to organizational integrity. His attacks on NDC government benefitted NPP. If a second wife teases and jubilates while the husband is physically assaulting the first wife, she must be prepared for the same degree of assault as soon as a third wife comes in. From my novice commonsensical thoughts Mr. Amidu is bereft of loyalty relative to organizational integrity. Every successful government is a product of a political party. Political parties thrive on secrecy. Adding Mr. Amidu to NADAAs cabinet could either be useful or politically suicidal.

Industrial/organizational (I/O) psychologists underscore the significance of integrity or honesty test especially during job interviews and employees selection. Integrity test is used to determine whether an employee will engage in counter-productive or dishonest work related behaviors such as cheating, stealing and sabotage. There are two main types of integrity test namely: overt integrity test ( measurement of attitude towards theft, and through an admission of self-report and actual theft behavior ) and the personality type integrity test (an attempt to measure personality traits believed to predict counter-productive conducts such as risk taking, emotional instability, psychological misgivings, dishonesty and irresponsibility).

No organization in the world will hire somebody who breaches the policy of the company regarding confidentiality. Notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Amidus revelation on corruption within NDC is healthy for national development, his modus operandi is pernicious to organizational development. Thus, the call to include Mr. Amidu in Nana Addos government is a necessary evil. His inclusion in the cabinet could empower and motivate other members to conduct their affairs in a very responsible manner. It could also compromise the principle of confidentiality within NPP as a political party. Besides, it could create fear within the cabinet ministers and this could slow down development.

I think the call to include Mr. Amidu in the incoming administration is in order as it could help the image of the government. However, it could frustrate NPP as a political party. Mr. Amidu needs a national honor rather than political position due to ideological differences between NDC and NPP as well as the aforementioned integrity conflict (national integrity versus organizational integrity). Psychologically, giving him a political appointment is a form of bribery to influence his role as a citizen vigilante.

Fellow countrymen, I think the incoming NPP government can reward him by adding him to the beneficiaries of the article 71 office holders emoluments. This is because he lost his job out of patriotic zeal. We can recognize his patriotism for Ghana by appreciating and loving his effort. We can conceive of a future without high rise. But a humanity without music and love is not just inconceivable: It is impossible (George Leonard). God Bless Our Homeland Ghana.

Feedbacks must be directed to [email protected]

Nana Yaw Osei (Padigo), USA
29.12.2016 LISTEN

Road accidents, flooding, earth quakes, fire outbreaks and others are all disasters that occur in either our homes or work places. Most which are caused by man and others as a result of natural occurrence. Most of the manmade disasters can be prevented and also those with the effect of natural ones can be reduce or made less serious when stringent measures are put in place.

Ghana over the past years has set up many institutions which include the Environmental Protection Agency, the Ghana Fire Service, NADMO, NPA, NRC, Ambulance Service and others to help control these disasters.

The EPA is an agency of the Ghanas Ministry of environment, science and technology and innovation established by the EPA act 490 (1994) and oversees the implementation of the National Environment Policy. The EPA's mission is to manage, protect and enhance the countries global solutions on environmental problems. The major activities of the EPA are to educate the public about the environment, to conduct both environmental impact assessment and strategic environment assessment, monitor the activities of industry and mines, reporting the state of the environment and also to research on environmental stability. Before most industries or organizations would be given permit to operate, it is the responsibility of the EPA to carry out environmental impact assessment and strategic environment assessment to make sure these organizations would not cause harm to the environment. What actually happens on the ground is that all of these are not carried out and yet those industries are permitted to operate. This occurs because the EPA has no over sight body to make sure they conduct their activities properly.

Not to remind Ghanaians of the sad event of June 3rd, 2015, but the 5 member committee that was set up to investigate the cause of this disaster recommended that there should be a complete dredging of the Odaw drain because it had been choked with waste mostly of plastic nature. They further suggested a ban on the use of plastic materials because they are non degradable and has environmental consequences. They also recommended a standardized training, certification and licensing of filling stations and their attendants should be carried out. This certification was supposed to have been completed by the EPA before the stations could be built. So the question is where have we gotten to?

Another institution responsible for our safety is the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO), formed in 1996 responsible for managements of disasters as well as other emergencies in the country under the ministry of interior. They provide rehabilitation services to the victims, ensuring preparedness of the country in the management of disasters, coordination of the various governmental and nongovernmental agencies in the management of disasters. The organizations mandate includes responses to earth quakes, floods rainstorms market fires.

The major challenge faced by NADMO is the lack of adequate resources to function effectively. This challenge is highlighted in march 2011 when the arrival of 16700 Ghanaian returnees from Libya and 7000 from the cote divoire . Budget allocations to the organisation is nothing to write home about, they rely sometimes on other benevolent organisations and philanthropist in times of emergencies. NADMO is fast becoming a white elephant. At the district level, one could hardly find relief items or seek support from the said district offices.

The Ghana National Fire and rescue Service which is under the Ministry of Interior performs the following functions creates and sustains the awareness of the hazards of fire and heighten the role of the individual in prevention of fires, inspects and provides technical assistance in fire management, offer rescue and evacuation services to those trapped by fire and in other emergency situations. Ghana has recorded 2469 incidents of fire out breaks within the first quarter of this year as against 2038 within the same period in the last year representing 21.27% increase. Just recently Ghana has recorded 6 deaths due to fire outbreaks around the trade fair entre in Accra as a result of fire outburst in one of the filling stations. A report by Mr. Michael Yarquah (Media house) says that the fire service would continuously take tough measures against filling stations that are flouting the laws of the nation. This exposes the weakness of the service.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

Most of the agencies and stakeholders responsible for controlling disasters in the country have the same challenges preventing them from performing effectively. Inadequate Logistics, high government influence, understaffed personnel and poor supervision.

Eagle Eye International strongly believe that the establishment of an autonomous authority, named NATIONAL SAFETY AUTHORITY, deriving it's powers from an act of parliament or a constitutional instruments or any other legislation with its funding clearly stated in the legislation. The body would serve as an oversight to the major stakeholders where the already existing agencies like the NADMO, EPA, NPA, ambulance service, Road commission etc shall be a department under the authority in providing safety in the country. Creation of an oversight would ensure that all activities undertaken would be accounted for. The Authority would also contribute to development of the country in instances where it brings to a halt or reduces the impact of disasters in the country.

Like the National Identification Authority which in the future will regulate the birth and death, electoral commission, DVLA, GRA and the passport office same should be for the National Safety Authority.

Signed

Eagle Eye International

Ing. Zack Tio Asare

+233 (0) 540123534 / +233 (0) 242728128

Director, Communications

Eagle Eye International

Seth Adu - Adjei

+233 (0) 208617748

Director, Research Security and Intelligence

Eagle Eye International

Doh Gabriel

+233 (0) 542842543 / +233 (0) 207251520

National Coordinator

Eagle Eye International

QUARSHIE egyer joseph

Operations, Eagle Eye International

+233 (0) 245607479 / +233 (0) 269560070

Stephen Nani

Secretary, Eagle Eye International

+233 (0) 244220245 / +233 (0) 273099765
Leaders of Russian business and industries hope to strike corporate deals with local Ghanaian partners and strengthen economic cooperation in the region during the annual Russian-African Forum (RAF 2017) scheduled to take place on March 13 to 14, 2017, in Accra, Ghana.

In a letter released on Tuesday, the organizers said the business forum would be arranged as an exclusive business event where senior executives meet for high level negotiations and interaction in the headquarters of major industry players.

The economy of Ghana is one of the fast growing in the region. The key focus of country is to meet the ever growing demand for housing, power, infrastructure, skills development, food safety and trade development to supply the domestic market with consumer goods.

Russian companies have developed a vast expertise in those areas and are ready to participate in infrastructure, energy, mining, agriculture and other projects. Russian business sees Ghana as a promising business partner.

The following topics will be highlighted in the business program of the RAF 2017 Ghana: Energy projects: power generation and transmission equipment; power engineering services;

Transportation: motor vehicles, buses, and construction machinery; railway transport and equipment; aeroplanes and related equipment; passengers and cargo ships and vessel engineering, procurement and construction of transport, power and pipeline infrastructure;

Food safety: chemicals and fertilizers, grain storage, machinery, food processing; Oil and gas production, handling and services equipment; Mining exploration and equipment; Financial and legal services.

During the Russian-African Forum in Ghana, participants will explore some of the key topical issues facing the industry, drawing on the latest information and feedback from companies in the cutting edge. There will also be business visits organised by Ghanaian companies to increase knowledge and share experiences of business and investment developments in the region.

The first meeting of the Russian-African Forum took place in Kenyas capital Nairobi on January 27-31, 2015. Leading Russian export companies and business representatives from Kenya and Rwanda joined in the discussion of cooperation opportunities in the East African region.

The second Russian-African Forum was held in 2015 in the city of Ekaterinburg, the industrial heart of Russia as an integral part of the international industrial fair Innoprom supported by the Ministry of Trade and the industry of the Russian Federation.

The Russian-African Forum 2016 in Tanzania in April, 2016, hosted a large group of Russian government representatives, industrialists and business tycoons headed by the Minister of trade and industry of Russian Federation, Denis Manturov, for a mission to a continent widely reputed for its vibrant and steadfast improvement in business environment.

In 2016, Russian-African Forum also took place on June 16, 2016 during St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and on the 11th to 14th of July 2016 during the INNOPROM Forum in Ekaterinburg in Russia. Report from Kester Kenn Klomegah in Moscow
One of the critical lessons to be learnt from Nana Akufo-Addo's emphatic electoral victory is that God is not to be mocked.

For many years since the President-Elect showed an interest in becoming President of the Republic of Ghana, he has had to surmount myriad challenges. Of these, the most worrying was the one from within his political grouping. He has been described as the most vilified politician in Africa, yet today, he is laughing last and doing so best.

The ways of God vary from ours. When they placed their hands on their chests and swore that Nana Akufo-Addo cannot be President, they were playing God who alone knows tomorrow.

Now that God they claimed would not make the man President has made him one, we wonder what would be going on in their minds.

We recall the storming of the party headquarters by persons engaged to paint a picture of confusion and deny the party a dog's chance of winning the polls.

Even intriguing and a source of lesson is the fact that the margin was unprecedented. God moves in mysterious ways, He performs anytime he wants to do so.

He does not contact his creatures before taking decisions.

Little wonder, the one-touch win they arrogated to themselves turned out to be the most humiliating defeat.

When they cry and turn to alcohol to sooth their pain, it is understandable.

God has a special way of dealing with issues and these are beyond our ken: that is why the illnesses attributed to the President-Elect, some of them well packaged in a so-called international magazine in a bid to impact negatively on Akufo-Addo's chances, failed to fly.

Aren't these lessons worthy of consideration by those who easily get consumed by sheer hatred? For each elapsing day in our sojourn on earth, myriad lessons rear their heads for those lucky to appreciate them.

We have seen them who defected and said all manner of nasty things about Akufo-Addo. Today, they would avoid the subject as they pray for negative developments during the tenure of the man who would soon call the shots. If they had eyes to see and to appreciate the works of the Creator who anointed the man soon to be President, they would discover that his hand is over the one who was presented as a bad product.

They would soon see him changing the fortunes of the country which has bled for so long  its resources looted by a clique which saw nothing wrong with their enterprise.

Intercessory activities continue to be said by Ghanaians. Let him, as David, not fear the Goliath who displayed hundreds of billboards across the country.
Nene Tetteh Agblezee III, Divisional Chief of Yilo Krobo Traditional Council in the Eastern Region, has said the doomsayers who seek President-elect Nana Akufo-Addo's downfall will bow their heads in shame.

According to the divisional chief, Nana Addo, during this year's electioneering campaign, made a lot of promises to change the destiny of Ghana if elected into office, but his opponents propagated that they were vain promises. But he (Nene Tetteh) believes that Nana Addo  having emerged victorious in the just-ended presidential poll with a wide margin against President John Mahama  will fulfill all the promises he made to shame his enemies.

Nene Agblezee, who was visibly over-excited after singing a song in the Krobo language intended to shame Nana Addo's doomsayers when addressing him (Nana Addo) and his entourage during his Thank you tour of the region  which started from Odumase Krobo  appealed to Nana to build a factory in the area for mango processing to create jobs for the youth.

The traditional ruler also asked Nana to establish the Eastern University at Somanya which was promised by the outgoing National Democratic Congress (NDC) government.

Nana, you made a lot of promises during the campaign era which your opponents said you could not do. We believe you will do them so our eyes are watching you. Now that you have been elected, please do them to shame your opponents, Nene Agblezee entreated.

He stated that the entire chiefs in the three Krobo lands would render their supports to Nana and his government to succeed.

Nana Akufo-Addo thanked the chiefs and the electorate for voting massively for him in the December 7 poll.

FROM Daniel Bampoe, Odumae Krobo
The case involving the two serving police officers who attempted robbing the Ghana Commercial Bank (GCB) bullion van at Donkorkrom in the Eastern Region took a dramatic twist yesterday when one of the accused persons dared the prosecutor to swear.

According to General Lance Corporal Daniel Kissi Abrokwah, Chief Inspector Robert Gyamfi must swear if the case docket he claims had been forwarded to the Attorney-General for advice was not in his possession at the court.

G/L/Cpl. Abrokwah was emphatic that he had seen the original docket before C/Insp. Gyamfi.

At yesterday's sitting, the prosecution once again prayed the court for an adjournment of the case because the docket was still with the AG.

The prosecution has since October 31, 2016 been praying the court for an adjournment to enable the AG to advice them in respect of the case.

L/Cpl. Elvis Mensah, who is in the dock with a civilian accomplice Hafisu Mohammed aka Danjuma, did not also spare the prosecution.

He said the ballistic report in respect of the case was ready but it was not before the court.

G/L/Cpl. Mensah explained that the case investigator had told a police panel that the report was ready, insisting that a lot of things were being hidden from them.

The Magistrate Stephen Owusu asked Abrokwah how he got to know that the original case docket was in the possession of the prosecutor, stressing that normally, a duplicate copy of the docket is sent to the AG whilst the prosecutor keeps the original.

He argued that the police had concluded their investigation and forwarded the evidence to the AG and that same would be brought before the court.

In the view of the judge, it was wrong for the accused persons to interfere in the affairs of the police, indicating that there would not be any ambush litigation in the trial.

Mr. Owusu assured the two cops not to be worried because all the evidence would be made available before the court.

The court held that the accused persons must not jump the gun and urged them to engage the services of a lawyer.

However, the third accomplice Danjuma told the court that he had no issues.

The case was adjourned until January 10, 2017.

The three are before the court over the death of Daniel K. Sarpong, 52, the driver of the GCB Bullion Van with registration GN 1354-15 in the Donkorkrom robbery.

According to the prosecution, the two, General Lance Corporals Solomon Elvis Mensah and Daniel Kissi Abrokwah, had the intention to rob the vehicle which had always come to Donkorkrom to supply money to the bank.

The two accused policemen, who were on duty at the GN and GCB Banks respectively, decided to exercise their plan of robbing the bullion van of any cash it was carrying, according to the prosecution.

Charges

The prosecution, led by DSP Abraham Annor, told the court that the three on August 16, this year, at Mame-Krobo, near Tease in the Eastern Region, conspired and acted together with a common criminal objective to commit crime to wit murder.

The two policemen have been slapped with additional charges of attempted robbery and murder.

In the murder case, the prosecution stated that the cops at the same place and date caused the death of the driver of the Nkawkaw GCB Bank bullion van.

The prosecutor, DSP Annor, disclosed that on the said day, the policemen discussed the plan to rob the van with Danjuma, a cabbie who is their friend.

He said the policemen waylaid the van at a spot between Tease and Mame-Krobo, each armed with an AK 47 assault rifle at about 10:30 am, stressing that Danjuma drove his vehicle towards Ekye Amanfrom to monitor the arrival of the van.

By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson

[email protected]
Nigerias most senior Muslim cleric has rejected a new gender equality bill, which proposes that women and men inherit an equal share.

The Sultan of Sokoto, Mohamed Saad Abubakar, said Muslims would not accept the violation of Islamic law guaranteeing men a greater share.

Nigerias main Christian body has welcomed the bill, saying its religion permitted equal inheritance.

Activists have pushed for the bill to end discrimination against women.

Nigeria is a deeply religious society with roughly the same number of Christians and Muslims.

Speaking at a Koranic recitation ceremony in northern Zamfara state, the sultan said: Our religion is our total way of life. Therefore, we will not accept any move to change what Allah permitted us to do.

He added: Islam is a peaceful religion; we have been living peacefully with Christians and followers of other religions in this country. Therefore, we should be allowed to perform our religion effectively.

In October, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said it did not find anything wrong with the bill because in Christianity inheritance is shared equally between male and female.

Lawmakers say they will consider public opinion before a decision is taken on which aspects of the bill to approve and which aspects to reject.

In March, Nigerias senate rejected an earlier version of the bill, saying it was incompatible with Nigerian culture and religious beliefs.

Human rights activist Bukky Shonibare called the rejection of the bill in March a sad day for Nigerian women and said it showed how backward we are.
Pastor Adoboe (right) handing over the facility to Rev. Richard Asante. INSET: Some of the items

Freedom Aid Ghana (FAG), in collaboration with Jesus Christ Ministries and Hernando Bible Studies, Florida, USA, has presented a fully decorated Children Service Hall worth several thousands of Ghana cedis to the Madina Central Assemblies of God Church in Accra.

The event, which coincided with the Christmas festivities, also saw the donation of over 100 schoolbags to children.

The gesture forms part of the resolve of the donors  Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Potakey and Minister Melinda Hunnicutt, both in Florida  to express the love of Christ to children in Ghana.

The donation, among others, is expected to support nursing mothers with the necessary logistics and to enable the smooth running of the children's ministry.

Receiving the items on behalf of the Church, Rev. Dr. Richard Osei Asante, District Pastor, said the donation was a move that would make the services of the children very comfortable.

All these things are for you to make your services comfortable. You will be able to learn when you come to church; you will enjoy and be playing with the toys here, he said.

Rev. Dr. Asante, who is also the senior pastor of the church added, On behalf of the Church Board and the whole congregation, we say a big thank you. We want you to communicate our appreciation to sister Aggie (Mrs. Agnes Potakey, a former member of the church) and her partners. Tell her that we will continue to pray for them.

According to the man of God, the church will continue to appreciate them and pray that the mercies and protection of the Most High will continue to be with them.

Pastor Bright Adoboe, Executive Director of FAG, urged the children to remember to assist the church wherever they find themselves in the years ahead.

Our partners want to show that love is for all. They want to express their love to all of us here in Ghana and I want to believe that tomorrow if you also find yourself somewhere you can also do likewise, the pastor declared.

He continued: Come back home and find out what you can also do to support the church; and that is what we are doing today.

Earlier, the donors refreshed the Sunday school children, numbering over 200.

The items included a set of musical instruments, guitar, assorted toys, a four-in-one crib, baby swings, bouncers, baby relaxers, baby trolleys, baby walkers, Christmas trees, baby diapers, New Testament Bibles and note pads.

By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson

[email protected]
Dr Mahamadu Bawumia, head of the Economic Management Team of the incoming New Patriotic Party (NPP) government, has promised to remove tax obstacles to greatly lessen the plight of people.

The Vice President-elect, who disclosed this recently in an interview with Joy Fm, an Accra-based radio station, bemoaned the low growth of Ghana's economy.

We want to see the economy growing. Right now we're growing around three percent. We used to grow in the big days around 2011 about 14 percent when the oil was coming, 8 percent coming down but we're now at 3 percent. You need to increase the growth rate of the economy. And the way you are going to do it of course is to make sure that the private sector is energized.

And so we are going to see a transformation even in mindset that you're going to build the most business-friendly and the most people-friendly economy that you can, so that we encourage both local and foreign investment. We'll remove the obstacles and bring down the tax burden on people. We will make sure that the health service is better managed and people can actually get better and quality access to healthcare.

He also pledged to protect the country's business environment, adding that the business climate would influence the enterprising prospects of the private sector.

According to the former Deputy Bank of Ghana governor, there were clear cut policies set by the incoming administration to reposition the country as the most business and people-friendly economy in Africa.

He mentioned that an Akufo-Addo led administration would evolve policies that would expand and transform Ghana's economy.

I want to also make sure that Nana Akufo-Addo's call that we should have no village that has water problem in the next two years be realized. And we believe for example that the $1 million per constituency each year, the equivalent which is GH4 million a year per constituency, if the constituencies identify those needs and the executing agencies address them, we should not really have water problem.

This one-village-one-dam promise, we should realize it, so that we can get the agriculture sector moving. Because if you're going to transform this economy and you don't transform agriculture, then you have done nothing. So we are going to see a major focus on agriculture so that we can begin the process of transformation. We also want to see jobs being created and move the economy from focus on taxation to focus on production.

[email protected]

By Samuel Boadi


Shea butter dealers have projected a boom in business starting next month when the Harmattan intensifies.

They said the rise in patronage of shea butter, popularly known as nkuto occurs during every Harmattan season, which makes it logical to make the prediction.

This was revealed by a survey conducted by the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Tuesday.

The survey, which sought to determine the connection between Harmattan and the patronage of creams, also revealed that shea butter sold more than any other cream during the dry season.

Susana Akua Atta, who sells shea butter at Mallam market in Accra, explained that the cream was more capable of fighting dry skin as compared to other creams.

She also said shea butter had some ingredients, which makes it effective for addressing some health problems.

Yaa Aboagyewaa Mensah, who owns a cosmetic shop at Dansoman, a suburb of Accra, said the cream moisturises the skin and makes it look bright.

We use Nkuto for babies, which makes them look beautiful, she said.

Mr Appiah Kubi, who deals Nkuto in large quantities at Lapaz, told GNA that the cream will make you look fresh all time. It makes your skin soft and relaxed.

Adelaide Akosua Korantemaa, a beautician and skin therapist at Madina, said shea butter was better than all other creams.

She explained that it has very significant nutrients capable of militating against skin diseases such as pimples, rashes, boils and wrinkles.

She recommended the cream to everyone, saying it is best fit for all type skin colours.

Cynthia Appiah, a nurse, said shea butter is normally recommended for patients during the dry season.

She explained that unlike some creams which contain chemicals which could cause skin irritation and bleaching, Nkuto had natural composition which makes it appropriate for patients.

Shea butter is slightly yellowish or ivory-coloured natural fat extracted from fruit of the shea tree by crushing and boiling.

It is widely used in cosmetics as a moisturiser and an emollient, as cooking oil in West Africa, and sometimes used in the chocolate industry as a substitute for cocoa butter.

 GNA


The President of the Brong Ahafo House of Chiefs, Pimapim Yaw Kabrese, who doubles as Yejimanhene, has appealed to President-elect Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo to forgive all those who made disparaging statements about him in the run-up to the December polls.

Pimapim Yaw Kabrese made the appeal last Friday when Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo and his entourage paid a courtesy call on the regional house of chiefs to thank them and the subjects for supporting him.

It would be recalled Pimapim Yaw Kabrese and other chiefs in the Brong Ahafo Region openly threw their weight behind President Mahama.

The Omanhene of Sunyani Traditional Area, Nana Bosoma Aso Nkrawire IV, whose prediction for Mahama, caused confusion in the region was also present at the meeting.

Nana Bosoma Aso Nkrawire IV had predicted that President Mahama would win 80 percent of the total valid votes.

Addressing the President-elect and his entourage, Pimnapim Kabresey asked Nana Addo and the NPP to forgive all those who said negative things about him or the party.

He said Nana Addo's conduct ensured peaceful elections in the country.

He called on the President-elect to appoint indigenes who have the requisite qualifications and expertise as ministers.

On his part, the President-elect thanked the people of the region for giving him their unflinching support.

He said the region's 57% popular vote enabled him to win the presidency.

Nana Addo also thanked the chiefs and people for voting for 20 NPP parliamentary candidates during the elections.

He said he would fulfill all his campaign promises and revive the cashew industry.

Nana Addo also reiterated his pledge to refund the deposits of all customers of DKM Micro Finance.

The President-elect was accompanied by Vice President-elect, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia, Women's Organizer National, Otiko Afisa Jaba and some leading members of the party.

[email protected]

From Daniel Y Dayee, Sunyani


The Founding President of the think tank, IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, has recommended that salaries of high to middle-level public officials should be pegged to the countrys economic performance.

Franklin Cudjoe believes this will prevent regular salary increment of public office holders captured in Article 71 of the Constitution without recourse to the countrys economic challenges.

Emoluments of Article 71 office holders are charged on the Consolidated Fund and determined by the President on the recommendations of a committee appointed by the President acting in accordance with the advice of the Council of State.

A recent recommendation for a rise in the emoluments for these public office holders by the Presidential Committee on Emoluments has raised concerns it will add to the country's financial challenges.

The country has signed a financial assistance deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a bid to shore up the financial challenges. One of the key recommendations of the IMF is for managers of the economy to cut the ballooning public wage bill.

Meanwhile, the Committee's report has proposed an annual increase of 10% by 2017, backdated to 2013 for the political class listed under Article 71 of the 1992 Constitution  which includes the President, the Vice President, the Speaker of Parliament and Legislators, Judges among others.

The report, signed by Prof. Dora Francisca Edua-Buandoh, Chair of the committee, explained that the recommendations were based on the committee's guiding principles of fairness, equity, motivation and ability of government to pay.

Details of the report show that the President, who takes home a non-taxable salary of GH15,972, has now been pegged at a new 2016 salary of GH22,809. This translates into a 42.8% pay rise over the four years.

The Chief Justice, head of the Judiciary, is paid GH15,552 but can now expect a new figure of GH17,107.

The Speaker of Parliament, the head of the Legislative arm of government who is paid GH16,174 will be put on 17,791 cedis.

The report has been approved by Parliament.

These increments come at a time when the countrys public wage, which stands at over GH10 billion as at March this year, is breaking the coffers.

Franklin Cudjoe said on the Super Morning Show on Joy FM Thursday that the salary of some of the Article 71 office holders under the recent proposal is three times the per capita income of every Ghanaian  some GH5,060  a situation he finds troubling.

But that is not Mr Cudjoes only problem with the new emoluments of the elite public office holders.

This practice of backdating salaries doesnt make sense at all, he said, adding the whole enterprise of salary negotiations should be looked at from an economic point of view, he said

He also recommends proper consolidation of salaries in the public sector to prevent some chief executives from milking the country dry through sitting allowances that sometimes exceed, many times, their salaries.

The way to go about it is to have leading light in the political establishment say to us that we are not going to do this again.

He told show host, Nhyira Addo that unless we have that conversation of pegging emoluments against the nature of the economy at the time, we will continue to have this problem.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected]
Celebrating speeches and speech making across the world

All over the world, learning to speak is a relatively organic process, children hear their parents communicating with them and others and absorb this speech through observation. Learning to speak and understanding language is an essential part of brain development. Through interaction, prompting, labeling and even reading parents can help their children develop a stronger and more advanced vocabulary.

For public speakers and the likes, language is important in your speech because at the most fundamental level, this is how your audience will understand what you're saying. From the actual words that come out of your mouth to the points and topics you articulate, language is the vehicle that helps your audience understand and agree with your statement or argument.

What you actually choose to say in your speechevery single wordmust be carefully selected thus how the birth of World Speech Day Ghana begins come March 15 2017.

In 2016 there were World Speech Day (WSD) events in some 30 countries. For 2017 we have doubled that number and new nations come on board almost each day. From Hawaii to Helsinki, from Gambia to Papua New Guinea, there are new events everywhere. Schools, universities, charities, NGOs, businesses, government departments: participants are hugely diverse. In the USA, the National Speech and Debate Association as well the Urban Debate League are taking part. In the Middle East there are exciting nationwide events in Dubai and Saudi Arabia and in Africa more than 27 nations are involved,including Benin, Nigeria and Malawi and now Ghana. And in Asia, major events in Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia and the Philippines

The Ismaili centre in vancouver, Canada, is hosting a World Speech Day 2017 event in association with the sfu centre. One of the main aims of World Speech Day is to share not just ideas, but cultural values, and enable these values to cross fertilise among different communities.

We believe in human potential. From #unexpectedvoices come remarkable ideas but how do we release this power? It's through speeches!

Apply to be a volunteer/speaker at World Speech Day Ghana by emailing your name, location with brief profiling of yourself to [email protected]. Alternatively, WhatsApp +233578144277 to be part of the experience.

All potential partners and sponsors can also reach our Partnerships and Sponsorship Manager at [email protected] or call 0273052281. #UnexpectedVoices #WorldSpeechDay
The National Democratic Congress (NDC), has formed a 13-member committee to investigate the cause of the party's historic defeat in the December 7 polls.

The committee, which was formed by the NDC's Functional Executive Committee (NEC), and approved by its Council of Elders, is being chaired by a Former Minister of Finance and Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission, Kwesi Botchwey.

Kwesi Botchwey

President John Mahama was defeated by the New Patriotic Partys Nana Akufo-Addo in the December 7 elections, in what many have described as the worst performance put up by a sitting President in an election.

The NPP Flagbearer finally secured the presidency after a third time, beating the incumbent, President John Mahama with 53.85 percent of valid votes cast.

Nana Akufo-Addo rode on the back of the valid votes cast to become Ghana's fifth president under the fourth Republic. President Mahama, who ran on the ticket of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC), secured 44.40 of valid votes cast.

The difference in votes between the two main contenders was a little over 1.1 million, one of the highest to have been recorded against a sitting President in recent times.

The NDC also lost most of its seats in Parliament pushing them to be minority side in the law making house.

According to the NDC, the committee is expected to conduct hearing among the rank and file of the party, as well as solicit for views from members of the party across the country for review and restructure itself.

Addressing the press on Thursday, General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, said the committee is expected to submit its report within 90 days after its inauguration.

Below are the members:

Kwesi Botchwey Edward Doe Adjaho (Outgoing Speaker of Parliament) Alhaji Hudu Yahaya Naval Capt. Asase Gyimah William Ahadzi (director of research at the NDC headquarters) Ibrahim Zuberu, (Lecturer at Accra Technical University and member of NDC) Razak Abu (Researcher at NDC's Development Challenge) Juliana Azumah Mensah (Former MP for Agotime-Ziope) Barbarah Serwah Asamoah Four (4) members from NDC parliamentary caucus (including Minority Leader)

According to Asiedu Nketia, the committee which is yet to be inaugurated, is expected to review and validate the results of the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections and find out the causes of the poor performance of the NDC in both the presidential and the parliamentary election, as well as to deal with other matter reasonably related to the above objectives and to make recommendations to the National Executive Committee about the way forward.

The committee shall submit its report within 90 days of its inauguration, he added.



By: Godwin A. Allotey & Philip Nii Lartey/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @AlloteyGodwin
By Angela Ayimbire, GNA

Accra, Dec. 29, GNA - Third Dream Smile (3DS), a non- governmental organisation (NGO) whose focus is on helping sick children, has donated food and toys to children at the Princess Marie Louise Children's Hospital in Accra.

As part of their quest to support sick children, they visited a number of hospitals to see what they could do for these children.

Miss Sarah Kwayisibea Kumi, Founder of the organisation said most NGO's in Ghana were concentrating more on orphans and street children but they identified that the sick children in hospitals also deserve to be shown love.

'I believe children who are sick and in pains deserve more love and so my organisation has identified this gap and will want to fill it', she said.

She added that 3DS was collaborating with IFNES fly Ghana to paint children's hospitals with their paints that killed mosquitoes to help protect the children from getting malaria while at the hospitals.

She also called on corporate organisations and philanthropists to help support the worthy course.

Third Dream Smile was founded in January 2016 and has done well so far and has plans to do more.

GNA
The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), has issued a 3-day ultimatum to political parties to remove all their publicity materials displayed at public places without authorization.

The Assembly said churches and other institutions that have also posted their materials at such unauthorized places especially on bridges and flyovers, must also remove them within the 3-day period.

The Accra Metropolitan Coordinating Director, Sam Ayeh-Datey, in a statement said the assembly will be compelled to fine parties, churches and individuals who fail to comply with the directive.

He said the assembly will also be forced to remove such materials after the three-day ultimatum.

Speaking to Citi News, he said the assembly although has designated places for posting publicity materials, allowed posting at some unauthorized places due to the elections, but will not condone the practice.

Because of the political season, we allowed it to happen; we were not checking. But now that the political season is over, we feel that all these things that is all over the city, the right thing must be done. They paste it all over the city at unauthorized places, on bridges, and public facilities. We have event boards where they can easily do that without us bothering them.

He said the political parties must remove all materials by Friday, December 30.

'Parties cautioned against unauthorized posting of publicity materials'

The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) in October this year, warned political parties to desist from erecting and pasting of party's paraphernalia and banners at unauthorized places ahead of the December 7 elections.

According to AMA, the placement of billboards and pasting of publicity materials at unlawful places is against the Assembly's 'premises maintenance by-law' of 1995.

The Public Relations Officer of the Assembly, Numo Blafo II, told Citi News the assembly has noted with concern the development in the run-up to this year's elections and will soon take action against it.

When it gets to this period we have the political parties putting up their paraphernalia, billboards and posters indiscriminately and some even without permit from the assembly, he said.



By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @jnyabor
The National Union of Ghana Students this afternoon paid a working visit to the gas explosion victim's at the 37 military hospital.

They were led by the public relations officer of the 37 military hospital, Mr Gariba Pabi to the various wards which were accommodating the victims .

The entourage led by Mr LUQMAN Abubakari, the NUGS President met two victim's who are students with one being a basic school student and a female(name withheld) also a student offering BBA Accounting at the Zenith university college who are recovering at a faster pace as indicated by the medical officers at the time of visit.

"At this trying moments as you're recovering steadily, we wish to assure you that NUGS is solidly behind you in prayers. Our presence here today is to sympathize with you and wish you a speedy recovery", the President of NUGS said.

On our visit, we realised the victims need counselling and guidance as they are recovering and taking up unfamiliar body features as a result of the burns. Mr Luqman Abubakari observed.

NUGS pleads with the government, Environmental Protection Agency and all stakeholders to take measures to protect lives and properties since there are various gas stations sited around school's and communities. Typical examples are the gas stations situated just behind Odorgonor SHS,opposite Techiman SHS, opposite University of Profesional Studies, (UPS) Accra and many other's that poses a major threat to the lives of Ghanaian students.

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..I am not a legal expert, nor do l pretend to be one, but is just a common knowledge, for example; when a teller at a bank or any other individual mistakenly, deliberately or even fickly makes a deposit of money into another person's account, l think the purported error needs very short period and/or time frame, like few minutes to an hour to make rectification, and if the time to rectify the "error" elapses, the potential beneficiary will not be legally liable for using the deposit..

And if we have to take cue from above concept, it would be more juicier and legally binding right of ordinary Ghanaian when the deposit was authorized by constitutionally mandated body like the High Court of Ghana. It will be left for legal expert to determine the level of criminal responsibility for using the amount deposited into your account, even if there is, it won't have far-reaching repercussions legally speaking

The subject under discussion is, in 2010, businessman, philantrophist and financier Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome was awarded Ghc 51.2 millions as judgement debt. I do not have proof, evidence to sustain my analysis but if l should take cue from decision made by judicial body in charge of interpreting evidence brought before it and making decision henceforth, l will be tempted to conclude that, somehow Mr. Woyome had presented a strong case before the 'grand jury' which culminated verdict in his favour

Shortly after the court determined that indeed Mr.Woyome had a case and an amount of Ghc 51.2 Millions be awarded as compensation for a role he played in construction of stadia 2008 tournament held in Ghana, he was arrested and charged with making financial loss to the state through defrauding by false pretence

"Ghana sweet keke" as some will put it, but how do we go from compensation authorized by constitutional mandated body like the Ghanaian judicial system to financial loss to state through defrauding by false pretence?

However, Martin Amidu, quickly sought redress in supreme court, the highest court of the land after Mr. Woyome was cleared of any wrong-doing by the High Court in 2015.

Mr. Amidu a former attorney general and minister of justice under Mills-Mahama government was forced to resign, some say, sacked because he personally opposed the payment of the money to Mr. Woyome and publicly implied that Government had a hand in the court verdict which tipped scale of justice in favour of Mr. Woyome

So far, Mr. Woyome is yet to return the money in compliance to Supreme court's verdict of 2014 which determined that indeed the money was illegally paid. But am yet to come to terms when in early 2015 the same justice system cleared Mr. Woyome of financial loss to the state through defrauding by false pretence. So on what Supreme court based its current verdict that the money was illegally paid, may be on technicality?

But, is technicality blanket proof that renders Mr. Woyome's allegations and evidence presented in court of law worthless? Despite litigations and counter-litigations against and in favour of Mr. Woyome which have virtually ended up in nothing, a section of the public has joined the fray

When he was accosted in super market at Achimota by citizen vigilante with intemperate rhetorically tribal rantings, something to the effect, "Woyome the Ewe thief" and the chorus sung by symphatetic anti-ewe cabals at Ghanaweb comment column and another incident; a trader quoted Woyome brouhaha as her reason not to pay income tax of a business she runs upon arrest effected by AMA authority. And if we have to juxtapose Rawlings' painting Mr. Woyome a thief to balance the equation that other tribal sentiments there is element of truth but many have dismissed Rawlings 'chidings' as political expediency

But his people showered him morale support when he visited volta region in apparent bid to parry off what they claim as tribal driven hatred and that several entities and indibiduals have benefitted from judgement debts, some, during Kufour led NPP regime, and those who were awarded the judgement debts have not attracted such jolt in public opinion, media cabals and politicos de elite

Well, for those who may not know the Ewes, as people, they can be compared to the kurds for example who demographically and geographically stretches from Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria or the shia in similar composition But we are different; our folks live in parts of Togo, Benin and Ghana. Sociable, peaceful and willing to work with everybody in harmony people

As if the concert party put up by our justice system and Ghanaian societies and institutions is not enough, Mr. Martin Amidu has won another bid to retry Woyome in the supreme court once more after the supreme gave Mr. Amidu the go ahead to cross-examine Mr. Woyome

"What cross-examination again for" should be the question we, including Mr. Abdul Malik Kweku Baako, veteran and maverick journalist and Nana Akomeah, NPP's communication director be asking instead of dancing and asking for live telecast respectively

And if we should pick any of these judicial decisions at all, the verdict of the supreme court in 2014 with determination that the judgement debt was illegally awarded and the money be refunded should be the one, though l have serious doubt we will be able to recoup the money which might have been spent by now

Agobodzo, Richard

The author is Ghanaian based in Europe, you can contact the author through [email protected] or www.facebook.com/Agobodzo Richard
12 months to celebrate and promote the contribution of the tourism sector to building a better world. This is the major goal of the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development 2017 that will start in few days.

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development recalling the potential of tourism to advance the universal 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) .

The International Year aims to support a change in policies, business practices and consumer behavior towards a more sustainable tourism sector than can contribute effectively to the SDGs.

"This is a unique opportunity to build a more responsible and committed tourism sector that can capitalize its immense potential in terms of economic prosperity, social inclusion, peace and understanding, cultural and environmental preservation said UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai.

Accounting for 7% of worldwide exports, one in eleven jobs and 10% of the worlds GDP, the tourism sector if well managed can foster inclusive economic growth, social inclusiveness and the protection of cultural and natural assets.

The International Year will promote tourisms role in the following five key areas:

(1) Inclusive and sustainable economic growth;

(2) Social inclusiveness, employment and poverty reduction;

(3) Resource efficiency, environmental protection and climate change;

(4) Cultural values, diversity and heritage; and

(5) Mutual understanding, peace and security.

The presentation of the International Year will take place in Madrid on 18 January 2017 on the occasion of the Spanish Tourism Fair, FITUR.

UNWTO invites all partners to join the celebrations by sharing their activities and initiatives to advance sustainable tourism for development at www.tourism4development2017.org
The outgoing Ghana Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia H. E Alhaji Said Sinare has refuted allegations that he has looted state properties in his custody while in office.

According to him he was in Riyadh to pack bag and baggage out of his office and official residence, in connection to proper protocol demand and never took any property belonging to the government of Ghana.

Briefing news men to clear the air, this was what Ambassador Alhaji Said Sinare said,

"Anytime there is a new government in power, it is automatic that appointees vacate their positions and give way to a successor.

Reacting to the allegations that he had looted state properties in Riyadh, Ambassador Said Sinare noted that he only too personal properties he had purchased with his personal money.

"In packing stuff out of the official the Embassy, is entitled to take away properties he purchased with his personal funds whilst in office.

Items like furniture, TV, etc that he bought to augment existing properties in the facility with his personal resources are meant to be his and not the state thus infallible if he takes them along"

Alhaji Said Sinare , who doubles as a vice chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), flew home to campaign vigorously for the re election of President John Dramani Mahama, and other Parliamentary candidates.

He noted that since he campaigned vigorously for President John Dramani Manana, he had became a target of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), thus has become a dog to be given a bad name and hang.

"There is no doubt that the NPP , under President Nana Akufo Addo, has a clear agenda to persecute , antagonize, vilify, which hunt and make life uneasy for some appointees of the erstwhile President Mahama government who are thought to be die hard critics of the President Elect and the NPP.

To this end, all efforts are being made to incriminate the Saudi Arabia Ambassador with criminality of looting government property for no just cause.

Alhaji Sinare worked hard to uplift the image of Ghana and boosted friendship ties between Accra and Cairo , while he was Ambassador to Egypt, has been described as a loyal nationalist who served with passion and energy to raise high the flag of Ghana.

His remarkable human relations and a sense of patriotism with which he handled his office in Riyadh is there for all to see.

While Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Alhaji Said Sinare , distinguished himself by deepening the already good relationship with the Gulf nations. He helped in rescuing innocent Ghanaians who were being molested and maltreeted in that country and flew them back home for free.

He is seen by many as a sincere personality who has worked diligently and effectively to protect and save the image of Ghana. He won't stoop , low in looting his office. He is above that." Alhaji said Sinare concluded.
President John Mahama has been decorated with beads and given a new title- promise fulfilling president- by traditional authorities in Yilo Krobo in the Eastern Region.

The new accolade came after the president cut sod for the construction of the Eastern Region university, Thursday.

The University of Environment and Sustainable Development as it will be called will be the first public university in the Eastern Region.

The sod cutting ceremony was to fulfill a promise President John Mahama made as part of his 2016 campaign.

"I will not take your support for granted. What is due you as your fair share of the national cake, I will make sure that you get it.

We have legislation of the Eastern University currently before parliament and that university in Kroboland will make the area a citadel of education in Ghana. It will specialise in Environmental Studies and Agriculture. We know majority of residents [here] are farmers and it will focus on research to help productivity, Mr Mahama said during his Accounting to the People tour in April this year.

Despite losing the election, President Mahama returned to Yilo Krobo to dig the ground for the commencement of the project, with only few days left for him to hand over power to the Nana Akufo-Addo led New Patriotic Party administration.

It was an emotional return for the president as some of the residents were seen wailing and exchanging pleasantries with the president, Joy FM's Eastern Region correspondent Kofi Siaw reported.

Some of the supporters are praying he returns as flagbearer for the party in 2020.

President John Mahama after cutting the sod stated that the university is expected to ensure equitable access to tertiary education.

"The university will feature general and specialised degrees in order to fill in the gaps and ensure the completeness of training for environmental and sustainable development professionals.

"...The university will also provide courses in urban architecture, natural resources and environmental economics, environmental policy and environment science will also feature as key areas of study.

The president said a complete modern institute of higher learning, with academic facilities, residential facilities for students, staff bungalows will be constructed on the site in Somanya.

"The university will be a multi campus institution. The main campus will be on this site and the second campus will be constructed in Donkorkrom on the Afram plains also in the Eastern Region," he said.

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com|Nathan Gadugah
Well the elections in Ghana have at long last come and gone. Ghana has survived and put to shame all the naysayers and dooms-day predictors. Post-election however there is this interesting phenomenon that is of interest to my organization - Corruption and Fraud Audit Consortium (CAFAC) of Ghana  and that is: What to do with the old guard politicians and their looted wealth. Should we just follow the proverbial Ghanaian mantra of Leave it in Gods hands (Fa Ma Nyame), or should we seek restitution? Do we even have avenues for recovery and/or restoration?

There is no doubt that all the political crooks will be seeking cover and looking for ways to hide their stolen wealth. This article will therefore seek to blow wide open the creative schemes these politicians will use to keep us in the dark so that hopefully the long arm of the law can engulf them.

1. The first and most common scheme is the use of surrogates. Whether it is bank accounts or real estate properties, politicians will always place them in the name of surrogates who will be either friends or family. The disparity between the politicians pay and possessions does not dissuade banks from welcoming their business. The politicians will use accounts in Ghana and other African countries, the US, Europe, Asia and Australia to handle their affairs. Some accounts are in the name of wives; others are in the name of mistresses.

2. The second type of scheme is common knowledge. We all know of Swiss bank accounts and others full of ill-gotten gains by senior political people who simply diverted or to put it bluntly stole the money.

3. Third is the setting up of a myriad of dummy offshore companies and laundering of millions of dollars from unknown sources. These political crooks purchase homes and mansions around the world, as well as private jets and luxury cars.

4. Another scheme is straightforward bribery by a foreign owned business. The scheme is simple  The foreign businessman or multinational will offer a bribe say $180 million to the Ghanaian politician in return for letting them build a plant. These bribes are usually funneled through a middleman, who is usually the key cog in the whole fraud scheme. He usually has cultural connections and understanding with the developing countries like Ghana and ensures that money flows to shell company accounts in Netherlands, New York, Monaco and Switzerland to name a few.

In all the four schemes outlined above, the ultimate repository of the ill-gotten wealth is either a bank account or a real estate property. Therefore we shall concentrate on the ways in which we can blow the lid on these two repositories.

According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the most potent and common way to expose corruption is what is known as the Tip. Believe it or not, even though it may sound very simple, the tip is a very powerful way to expose political corruption. Therefore in the coming days and months and years, our mantra should be If you know something, say something We are calling on all well-meaning Ghanaians who have specific information about any politician with bank accounts and properties amassed illegally to be willing to place the information in the public domain. In this regard we are also counting on bank employees who should put Ghana first and anonymously make such information available social media.

The ACFE is also states that one way of catching corruption is reconciling the lifestyle of the fraudster with his/her legitimate sources of income. If there is an outrageous discrepancy, then there is a prima facie case for corruption. Therefore if a politician is earning $4000 a month and is living in opulence and you are privy to such information, please put Ghana first and provide the information on social media.

The incoming National Patriotic Party (NPP) administration should as a matter of urgency seek a strong partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). This Office is not only the custodian of the UN Anti-Corruption Convention; it is a provider of technical assistance. This is essential because many of the measures made possible by the Convention - like asset recovery, overcoming bank secrecy, and exposing illicit enrichment - are new to all States and require new skills and knowledge. If Ghana joins hands with the office, Ghanaian politicians who have turned into kleptocrats will find no safe haven for themselves or their money.

Nigeria for example has effectively recovered large amounts of stolen assets with the help of UNODC. UNODC also continues to work with the current Nigerian Government to refine and strengthen their fledgling prevention and recovery systems. They have proudly partnered with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission - in a $30 million project - to ensure that the devastating effects of corruption will stop plaguing Nigeria. This involves: strengthening the capacity of the Financial Intelligence Unit; strengthening judicial integrity; and improving anti-money laundering capacity. Such concrete initiatives can help Nigeria and Ghana to enhance good governance and financial accountability, and reduce fraud and corruption.

The next weapon to be used against these politicians is the Money laundering laws of Ghana. Ghana in 2008 enacted its Anti-Money laundering Act (Act 749) to combat money laundering and track criminals and financiers of terrorist activities. These laws target deposits which exceed certain critical thresholds and fail the smell test of being scrupulous and clean. Through these laws corrupt politicians with huge and dubious deposits may be subjected to some investigations.

Other steps:

The Declaration of Asset regime must be overhauled. Currently the method of declaring assets and scrutinizing them may not help but if Nana Addo will keep his pledge to fight corruption then all high-level officials (President, Vice President, Ministers, Legislative officers, Central bank governors, Police and Customs Chiefs, Military Generals), should sign a statement granting permission to banks (both local and foreign), real estate or investment house to disclose any personal assets they may hold. Admittedly this net will not catch the old guard of politicians bit it will be a good safeguard for the future.

The one thing that has over the years protected kleptocrats is the bank secrecy laws. But that is changing as stated earlier. This is a highly technical area which needs a careful examination. Therefore I will address that in my next article.

By Hector O. Boham, President and CEO of Corruption and Fraud Audit Consortium (CAFAC) Ghana Limited

Hector can be reached at [email protected]
Accra, Dec. 29, GNA - GCB Bank Limited has made a total donation of GH302,646.00 to five institutions towards the improvement of education and health.

The five institutions include the Commonwealth Hall Library of the University of Ghana, Legon which was refurbished and presented with 10 computers and accessories amounting to GH42,640.00.

Other beneficiaries are the Accident and Orthopaedic Centre of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital - GH50,000, the Typhoid Research Project - GH30,000.00 and the Sheikh Usman Nuhu Sharubutu Education Trust Fund - GH20,000.

A six-classroom block for the Bomaa Roman Catholic Junior High School in the Brong-Ahafo Region is under construction at an estimated cost of GH160,000.00, courtesy GCB Bank.

Mr Ernest Mawuli Agbesi, the Managing Director of the bank, said the bank was proud to offer assistance to the health and education sectors which were important to national development.

He recalled the recent inauguration of a 1,200 capacity examination/lecture theatre to the University of Ghana. The GH4.9 million building complex, sponsored by the GCB Bank, is equipped with the state of the art facilities that provide a conducive atmosphere for teaching and learning.

Mr Agbesi said in furtherance of quality health care delivery, the bank supported the Graft Foundation in its reconstructive surgery programme which positively impacted the lives of some 87 people.

GCB Bank also sponsored a GH30,000 eye-screening campaign which provided treatment for some 3000 people with eye diseases between September and October this year in Takoradi and Accra.

A second donation of GH30,000.00 has been made towards the ongoing Typhoid Research Project being handled by doctors of the Korle-bu Teaching Hospital.

Mr Paa Kwesi Yankey, the President of the University of Ghana Alumni Association, thanked the bank and MD for the continuous support to the university.

Dr Frederick Kwarteng, the Head of Department at the Accident and Orthopedics Department at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, thanked the bank for its support in refurbishing the wards at the Orthopedic Department.

Alhaji Mamah Gado Mohammed and Alhaji Khuzaima M. Osman, Chairman and General Secretary respectively of the Sheikh Usman Nuhu Sharubutu Education Trust Fund, received the GH20,000.00 on behalf of the National Chief Imam.

GNA
29.12.2016 LISTEN

Accra, Dec. 29, GNA - A lawyer who is defending a banker and another standing trial over GH GH356,100.00 theft is lamenting over bail conditions meted out to his clients.

Mr Andy K Vortia said the bail conditions were albatross and that his clients were unable to execute the bail condition as a result of the justification and has prayed the court to review it.

Ferdinand Kofi Amponsah, an employee of the Bank, and Issah Abdul aka Issah Alhassan have been charged with Conspiracy and Stealing from various accounts at GCB Bank limited.

The two had earlier pleaded not guilty to the charges and were admitted to bail in the sum of GH400,000.00 with four sureties each with a justification before the court presided over by Mrs Abena Oppong Adjin-Doku on December 14.

The accused persons are to deposit their passports to the court's registry and report to the Criminal Investigations Department every Wednesday.

Appearing before the substantive judge, Mrs Afi Agbenu, Defence counsel prayed the court to review the justification and include civil servants.

Mr Vortia questioned why the Police was stilling keeping Issah Alhassan, an accomplice whom Amponsah accused wrongly.

According to Mr Vortia, the case investigator should have left Alhassan off the hook as he had been accused wrongly.

However, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) A. Yirenkyi who held brief for the prosecution recounted that that it was not the duty of the investigator to discharge Alhassan because the matter was before the court.

ASP Yirenkyi told the court that Amponsah in the morning had been able to meet the bail conditions but Alhassan had not been able to execute his bail.

The court therefore reviewed Alhassan's bail by waving the justification. It ordered that the sureties should be people in gainful employment. The other conditions were however to remain.

The matter has been adjourned to January 19, 2017.

Prosecution had earlier told the court through Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) George Amega that Amponsah was stationed at the Takoradi branch of GCB and Abdul is an auto-mechanic and a customer of the Bank.

DSP Amega said during the period between September and November this year, Management of GCB Bank, Accra, received complaints on fraudulent withdrawals from various customers' accounts.

According to the prosecutor, these withdrawals were carried out with cheques found to be 'cloned cheques,' drawn on accounts located at the Bank's branches in Accra.

Prosecution said it was established through investigations that while the true account holders had their genuine cheque books intact, replicated copies of leaflets bearing the serial numbers of leaflets not yet issued by account holders were produced with forged signatures.

DSP Amega said these cloned leaflets were drawn on the Bank and presented at branches outside Accra and various withdrawals made.

The Prosecutor said the Police established that four accounts of the Bank had fraudulent withdrawals made on them.

Police investigation revealed that Amponsah even though stationed at Takoradi at the Corporate Banking outlet used his identification number FC07072 which was assigned to him at Mampong to make several enquiries on the accounts prior to or after the cloned cheques were presented.

Based on that, prosecution said Amponsah was nabbed and during Police investigations, he admitted the offence and disclosed that it was upon the request of Abdul that he made enquiries on the account.

According to the Prosecutor, Amponsah also indicated that he took photographs of signature mandates, cheque book serial numbers, photographs and other confidential details of high valued accounts holders, which he forwarded to Abdul and others.

It came to light that Amponsah in his current deployment was not permitted to check or query individual customer accounts of the Bank but he was engaged in these activities secretly in collaboration with accomplices to steal money from the Bank.

Prosecution said cloned cheques presented at various branches of the Bank had resulted in the theft of GH356,100.00.

Prosecution said Amponsah had admitted receiving money from Abdul and claims to own two houses at Kasoa, which were built from the proceeds of the crime.

Prosecution said seven other accounts have also been identified as being used by Amponsah and other staff of the Bank and huge withdrawals made.

The Prosecutor said further investigations are underway.

GNA

By Joyce Danso, GNA
29.12.2016 LISTEN

Human trafficking and slavery is an international concern affecting millions of people across the globe.

For Ghana, there have been numerous incidents of trafficking and abuse both internally and externally and the canker is one of the biggest challenges facing the country at the national and transnational levels.

Ghanaian migrants, particularly women and young girls, are increasingly recruited through licensed and unlicensed recruitment agencies to work as domestic servants in various countries and annually thousands leave the shores of the nation to Gulf countries in search of such opportunities.

Many of these migrants often fall prey to some dubious recruitment agencies with little or no training or information on the destination countries.

Many streets of Accra are filled with such fraudulent advertisements promising juicy job opportunities abroad and innocent migrants, believing such advertisements, end up in prostitution and slavery or find themselves in all sorts of inhumane treatments.

These advertisements are now common in the streets of Ghana as well as on social media channels, such Facebook and WhatsApp.

According to information collected by Ghana Immigration Service, over 2,000 women departed for work in the Middle East between September 2014 and January 2015.

Since then, over 350 of them have returned, reporting inhumane working conditions and hours, physical, emotional and sexual exploitation and non-payment of salaries.

These migrants, apart from being exploited by the unlicensed recruitment agencies, have no knowledge about the country of destination and as soon as they reached their destination, their 'masters' took away their passports.

The 2014/2015 yearly report by SEWA Foundation dubbed 'Rescuing Enslaved Ghanaians in The Gulf States' reveal that there are hundreds of Ghanaians girls stranded in Kuwait and majority of them have hidden themselves in a town called Mahboula.

It is said that these girls went there with promises of better jobs but had to run away from their employers as they could no longer tolerate the inhumane treatment from their employers.

Many of these girls complained that when they found themselves stranded on the streets and they called on some Ghanaians to help them, instead of sending them to the police station or the government shelter, they in turn kept them in their rooms, abused them and then dumped them again on the streets.

Some agents and associations also pretend to be helping with rescuing these stranded house helps but instead are also actively involved in recruiting people from Ghana to Kuwait and disassociate themselves from any attempt to actually rescue the victims and send them back to their home countries.

The report said in most cases, citizens from other countries such as Philippians and India are paid higher wages than Ghanaians for the same job and responsibilities because their countries of origin have policies that covers payment of wages and remunerations to their citizens.

As a result, individuals from these nations are treated well on the job compared to their Ghanaian counterparts.

According to the report the Ghanaian migrants also expressed concern that because there is no embassy in Kuwait, it is difficult to deal with issues that comes up against Ghanaian residents, saying, such issues would have to be sent to Riyahd in Saudi Arabia to have them addressed and appealed to government to open an embassy there.

To address this concern, seven key Ghanaian Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have jointly agreed on measures to protect migrants at home and abroad.

The agreement was the outcome of a day's workshop to commemorate this year's International Migrants Day held in Accra.

The seven MDAs are Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations, Labour Department, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), and Ghana Police Service.

The workshop also was attended by representatives from the European Union Delegation to Ghana, Embassy of the United States, British High Commission and civil society organizations.

Discussions focused on issues of exploitation of migrant workers, particularly Ghanaian women and girls in the field of domestic work.

The Government of Ghana has initiated various measures on migration management including establishing a Migration Information Centre and a Migration Information Bureau, which acts as a one stop shop for information for potential migrants; signing of a bilateral agreement on labour issues with the Government of Jordan; creating of an association of employment agencies; sensitizing Ghanaian ambassadors and relevant stakeholders; developing a National Migration Policy; and the establishment of a unit at the Kotoka International Airport to identify potential victims of trafficking prior to departure and providing return and reintegration assistance to returnees through IOM.

However, recognizing the increasing challenges and the continued exploitation of migrants, the aforementioned MDAs and IOM, reaffirmed their commitment to the promotion and protection of the rights of vulnerable Ghanaian migrants at the workshop.

This was delivered through the Joint Statement and the recommendations made on the development of standardized operating procedures, information sharing and data collection protocols, provision of pre-departure training and orientation, improved monitoring of recruitment agencies and provision of systematic reintegration assistance among others.

The Joint Statement on Protecting Migrant Workers at Home and Abroad acknowledged the challenges at every stage of migration (pre-departure, departure, in host countries, return and post return) and consequently the need for a whole of government approach.

Through this statement the participants recommitted themselves to implementing the recommendations to ensure a safe migration system and a decent work for all Ghanaian migrants.

The workshop was held under the auspices of IOM's Ghana Integrated Migration Management Approach (GIMMA) project which aims to bolster the Government of Ghana's migration management efforts, funded by the European Union.

Mr Sammy Longman Attakuma, the Chief Director of Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations, who read the joint statement on behalf of other stakeholders, said they would also develop information sharing protocols to inform stakeholders to enable them contribute to the protection of migrants as well as ensure their rights and that of their families.

He said: 'We also intend to negotiate additional bilateral agreements with key receiving countries, to facilitate humane and orderly labour migration and decent work for all.

"Strengthen access to information for potential migrants in Ghana and contribute to their ability to make informed decisions by improving the capacity of institutional structures to serve as one-stop migrant workers' resource centres.

"Improve access and availability of training and pre-departure orientation opportunities, to increase knowledge amongst potential migrants on issues of job training, adjusting to a new culture, cultural sensitivities in the country of destination and their rights among others," he said.

Mr Attakuma said they would enhance the law enforcement response including the closure, investigation and prosecution of illegal recruitment agencies and individuals who facilitate the recruitment and trafficking for domestic work of Ghanaian migrants.

Ms Sylvia Lopez-Ekra, Chief of Mission, IOM, blamed the plights of these women on fraudulent advertisements for jobs opportunities in various countries and stressed the need to intensify education on the concern.

She said it was not fair for IOM and the Foreign Ministry to organize and bring back the migrants any time there was a problem, only for the perpetrators of the illegal act- illegal recruiting agencies- to be left unpunished.

December 14 every year, is recognised by the UN as International Migration Day to remember and identify the challenges of migrant workers as well as their contributions to national development in terms of remittances to the families.
Accra, Dec. 29, GNA - Mr Stephen Ashitey Adjei, Leader of the former workers of Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA), says he and colleagues will protest against the pay rise for the President and other Article 71 office holders.

He said the recommendations by the Presidential Committee on Emoluments for a 10 per cent pay rise, was in a bad state and so the former workers would demonstrate when it was recommended.

The sixth Parliament of the 4th Republic resumed sitting on Tuesday, December 20, considered among other things, emoluments to be paid to the Article 71 office holders led by the President.

In an interview with Ghana News Agency in Accra, he said the workers, who were laid off 14 years ago, have not been paid since 2002 and had since appealed to the Executive including President John Dramani Mahama over their plight.

He said so far only five of their colleagues have been paid their full severance benefits.

Mr Ashietey Adjei said the ex-workers petitioned the former President John Evans Atta Mills over their plight, who ordered that they should be paid.

GNA
Accra, Dec. 29, GNA - The harmattan season has pushed many Ghanaians to adopt innovative methods to manage the weather with the wearing of heavy clothing, applying body moisturisers, and reducing the intake of chilled water and beverage.

Ms Evelyn Norvi Tualli, a student of the University of Professional Studies, Accra told the Ghana News Agency that the unfriendly weather condition associated with the coldness and dryness was worrying.

She said, as a preventive measure from catching cold, which had the tendency of distracting her studies, she had decided not to take chilled liquids and also apply Shea butter to her body to avoid dryness and cracks.

Ms Edem Sedoameda, a student of the IPMC College of Technology, said the harmattan has brought intense coldness, dryness and lots of dust into the system making breathing very uncomfortable.

Ms Sedoameda said she had been managing the weather condition by applying oily pomade, wearing long and thick clothing to avoid any form of affliction that might come with the weather.

Meanwhile, Mr Mawuli Nuekpe, a French Teacher at Jesus and Mary School at Nima, said the weather was a very bad, 'I'm currently suffering from sore throat and that is making me feel uncomfortable'.

As a preventive measure, Mr Nuekpe said he was going to the pharmacy to buy some medication to treat the sore throat.

The harmattan is a season where a hot, dry wind blows from the north east or east of the Sahara usually carrying large amounts of dust transported during December through to February.

This year, it is heightened in the late December in the country which had been characterised by cloudy atmosphere especially during the mornings and evenings.

GNA

By Julius K. Satsi, GNA
29.12.2016 LISTEN

Accra, Dec. 29, GNA - The Ministry of Health (MOH) on Thursday presented a cheque for GH 200,000.00 to support the four health institutions taking care of victims of the recent gas explosion at La in Accra.

The explosion occurred at the Louis Gas Station behind the International Trade Fair Centre in La.

The four health facilities taking care of the victims are the 37 Military Hospital which received GH 125,000.00; the La General Hospital - GH 50,000.00 and the Korle-Bu Teaching and the Police Hospitals receiving GH 15,000.00 and GH 10,000.00 respectively.

The fund was disbursed according to the numbers of injured victims on admission at each hospital as well as those victims who daily patronised the hospitals for treatment as a result of the explosion.

Mr Alex Segbefia, the Minister of Health, who presented the cheques to the representatives of the various health institutions, said each facility would also receive a consignment of pharmaceutical products including antibiotics, infusions, face masks and disposable aprons.

He said the donation was in fulfillment of President John Dramani Mahama's promise to support the various health institutions that were taking care of the victims of the gas explosion that occurred at a facility behind the Ghana Trade Fair Centre.

He said the Ministry would work at meeting any further needs of those institutions to ensure that the lives of the surviving victims were preserved.

Mr Segbefia said there were a number of casualties and so far a total of nine fatalities had been recorded of which six were confirmed to have died instantly from the gas explosion and the other three passing on the next day at the hospital.

He said the various hospitals were currently treating victims with various degrees of injuries and burns, some of which were still serious, with one patient still at the Intensive Care Unit at the 37 Military Hospital.

He praised the Ghana National Fire Service, the Military and the media for their swift intervention and reportage of the incident and the various health institutions for the great care and support provided for the victims.

Mr Segbefia commended President Mahama and Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, the President Elect, for their swift response and for visiting the victims of the disaster.

Lt. Col. Richard Atarah, the Officer In-Charge of Medical Stores and Equipment Depot at the37 Military Hospital, thanked the Government for its assistance which would go a long way to facilitate the work of the various hospitals and ensure quick results to their services.

He, however, appealed to civil society for more of such assistance to health institutions to serve as a backup stock, saying disasters were timeless and unpredictable, and the facilities needed to stand in readiness at all times for such unfortunate eventualities to be able to save lives.

GNA

By Christabel Addo, GNA
Around kitchen tables, in offices and at seminars across Nebraska, farmers are making battle plans.

Their enemy, lying dormant in cold winter soil, has been creeping across the state, infecting fields, choking out row crops.

Palmer Amaranth, long the scourge of cotton-growing southern states, has been making its way north as seeds hitch rides on harvesting equipment, get mingled with cotton seed hulls used for livestock feed and recently mixed in with pollinator seed mixes.

Front-line weapons for fighting weeds -- herbicides like Roundup -- have begun to fail as the plant quickly develops resistance.

Palmer Amaranth has been a growing problem throughout the Midwest the past couple of years, with new infestations reported in Iowa and Minnesota, where state ag officials have burned fields in an attempt to prevent its spread.

In Nebraska, about the time Wilber was celebrating Czech Days in August, crews of migrant workers were walking area fields with corn knives, cutting out Palmer Amaranth by hand. Its an old tradition returned.

In the 1970s, Nebraska teenagers could earn summer spending cash walking crop rows and pulling weeds for farmers. The practice died out with the widespread use of herbicides that could get the job done cheaper and more efficiently.

With plants like Palmer Amaranth and scouring rush adapting to survive herbicides, farmers have little choice but to return to more labor-intensive means of weeding.

Farmers in Saline County found the weed there for the first time this year.

Ive been here since 1982 in Saline County, and Id never seen the weed before until this year, said Randy Pryor, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln extension educator based there.

Its easily mistaken for its cousins pigweed and waterhemp, both of which are common in Nebraska, but Palmer Amaranth grows bigger and faster, and a single plant can produce hundreds of thousands of seeds.

I call Palmer Amaranth a pigweed on steroids, said Pryor.

Under good conditions, it can grow 2 to 3 inches a day, reaching heights of more than 6 feet.

A few plants one year can become a massive problem the next. Palmer Amaranth crowds out row crops, robbing them of nutrients and moisture.

The resulting yield loss can be apocalyptic for farmers bottom line. A heavy infestation can cut corn yields by as much as 91 percent and soybeans as much as 70 percent, according to Purdue University Extension.

Palmer Amaranth has been spreading in Nebraska from the west and south to the north and east, said Stevan Knezevic, UNL professor of agronomy and horticulture.

In the last 10 or so years, weve seen an expansion into Nebraska. Its pretty much everywhere from east to west south of the interstate ...," he said. "Its extremely invasive.

Its getting worse. Its not going to get better.

In the southern United States, Palmer Amaranth devastated cotton production when it developed resistance to Roundup, he said.

Farmers there have since replaced their Roundup Ready cotton with other products, like LibertyLink cotton, which is used with chemical giant Bayers Liberty herbicide.

Now theyre spraying Liberty all over the place controlling Palmer, but there are some anecdotal cases of Palmer developing resistance to that chemical as well, Knezevic said.

Its just on the edge of Lancaster County now, said County Weed Control Superintendent Brent Meyer.

Once, tilling -- which turns the soil and breaks it up -- would have helped control weeds. But many farmers have gone to no-till techniques to preserve moisture, prevent erosion and promote a healthy soil ecosystem.

Weve created an opportunity for plants, if they develop a resistance to those herbicides, to spread," Meyer said. "Our change in farming practices has led to the expansion of Palmer Amaranth and scouring rush because of the way weve changed farming. Theyve just taken advantage of an opportunity that was created for them."

The strategy in Nebraska is to delay Palmer Amaranth from getting a foothold for as long as possible and to manage it, said Pryor. Experts are telling farmers to cut it out by hand, if necessary, or by spot spraying when they see the first few plants in ditches or along the edge of their fields.

Palmer Amaranth is not on Nebraskas list of 12 noxious weeds, and officials said there has been no talk about adding it.

Officials in Iowa and Minnesota believe a seed mix intended to support pollinators for use on conservation land was inadvertently contaminated with Palmer Amaranth seeds. Farmers worry seeds from those conservation reserve program fields will blow over to crop fields.

USDA Farm Service Agency spokeswoman Isabel Benemelis said the plant is not approved for seed mixes nor intentionally planted. USDA is working with landowners who got the bad mixes to control the plant via hand pulling, spot spraying or mowing to reduce seed production.

"Controlling noxious weeds, whether introduced inadvertently through seed or that already exist on a site, is a critical part of the landowner's contract requirements under the Conservation Reserve Program and other USDA farm programs," she said.
- The Nigerian Army has provided updates on the operation that led to the capture of Sambisa Forest

- Quran belonging to Abubakar Shekau was recovered

- The Holy Book will be presented to President Buhari

The Nigerian Army has confirmed the recovery of a Quran belonging to Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau in Sambisa forest following a military operation that led to the capture of the terrorists camp.

President Muhammadu Buhari had sent a goodwill message to the army on Saturday, December 24 for the success recorded in the fight against Boko Haram with the capture of Camp Zero used by the terrorists.

File photo of Abubar Sekau with his Quran

READ ALSO: Army arrests white man in Sambisa Forest

NAN reports that Maj.-Gen. Lucky Irabor who is the Theatre Commander of Operation Lafiya Dole spoke on Wednesday, December 28 where he elaborated on Operation Rescue Final.

He said the Quran was believed to be left behind by the Boko Haram leader when he fled from the forest and said the Holy Book will be presented to the president by Lt.-Gen. Tukur Burutai who is the chief of army staff.

Maj Gen Lucky Irabor at the press briefing

Irabor said: We believe that the Holy Book and the flag were abandoned by Abubakar Shekau while he escaped.

The Book will be taken to the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Burutai, for onward presentation to Mr President.

Shekau's Quran being shown by the army

We have also made a lot of arrests. Our troops in Damboa arrested about 15 Boko Haram members. We also arrested one Musa from Potiskum on Christmas day which was Dec.25.

On Dec. 26 our troops also intercepted two Boko Haram suspects in Maiduguri.

READ ALSO: Nigerian army to reorganise military operations in north-east

We, therefore, warn residents of the state to be wary of people coming to hide in and around their houses.

Flag belonging to Boko Haram displayed

We are also warning residents to report any suspected Boko Haram members hiding in their houses to the relevant security agencies and any failure to do that would tantamount to supporting and sympathising with the sects activities.

It was earlier revealed that some CJFF members who took part in the offensive that resulted in the capture of Camp Zero located in the heart of Sambisa Forest brought down the flag of Shekau

Source: Legit.ng
- An audio tape of a telephone conversation between Wike and Fayose has surfaced

- In the leaked telephone conversation, they were reportedly discussing rigging the Rivers rerun

- No official statement has been released by either governor

The Rivers rerun election has once again surfaced in the news, and this time, an audio tape has been released by Sahara Reporters, which reportedly contains evidence that both governors rigged the elections and were mocking the Nigerian army.

In the telephone conversation between Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state and Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti state both men can be heard discussing how Wike allegedly rigged the December 10, 2016 rerun of legislative elections in Rivers.

READ ALSO: No level of intimidation can make me sell the interest of my state  Wike to DSS

The alleged telephone call opens with Fayose congratulating WIke on his successful maneuvering, to which Wike responds with excited laughter.

In a voice that is reportedly Wike's, he spoke on how he outmaneuvered the Nigerian Army, saying that: "Nigeria Army does not exist again."

This is not the first time an audio tape that is reportedly Wike's has surfaced online. Previously, a telephone conversation obtained and released by Sahara Reporters allegedly portrayed WIke discussing with an INEC official whom he had bribed.

READ ALSO: Fayose chides DSS over claim on governor Wike, says; DSS working for APC

Governor Wike however denied the audio tape, saying that it was fabricated evidence.

Earlier, Nyesom Wike had alleged that security agencies planned to make Rivers state ungovernable during the December 10 Rivers-rerun election for political reasons.

Wike said the security agencies planned to achieve this by causing violence during the poll.

The governor made the accusation while speaking at an address to members of the Rivers state traditional rulers council who paid him a Christmas visit on Tuesday, December 27.

You can listen to the audio tape here.

Below is an audio of Wike talking to the INEC official:

Source: Legit.ng
- The Catholic Church has come out to tell the world of the pains and sufferings being witnessed by the people of southern Kaduna

- The church has also claimed that the herdsmen's continuous attack is an attempt to conquer the people of the region, who are mostly Christians, by Fulani jihadists

- The church however accused the state and federal government of complicity in the genocide happening in Southern Kaduna

Catholic Church presents pains, sorrows, agony of southern Kaduna

The Catholic Church has come out strongly to decry the pains being suffered by the people of Southern Kaduna who are predominantly Christians.

The church, in a press release, noted that the alleged fight against the people of Southern Kaduna is a jihad which is well-funded even as it claimed that the herdsmen are not different from Boko Haram terrorists.

READ ALSO: Southern Kaduna has become a cemetery - Senator Shehu Sani

It further claimed that it is a move to suppress the spread of the gospel of Christ.

According to the press release which emanated from the Catholic Church of Kafancha, Nigerian military men who were stationed there also helped herdsmen in supervising attacks on the people.

The press release read in part:

We, the Clergy, Religious and Laity of the Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan are here to present to the world, the pains, agony and sorrows that have befallen us in this part of the State, the Southern Senatorial Zone of Kaduna State.

"In the last weeks and months, we have become victims of systematic attacks orchestrated by another version of Boko Haram, who also go by the name Fulani Herdsmen."

The church also highlighted grievous attacks against Christians of Southern Kaduna over the years, insisting that recent events are a continuation of the war against Christianity by Islam Jihadist.

Going further, the church said: The events of the past weeks and months are unfortunate and further confirm that there is a hidden agenda targeted at the Christian Majority of Southern Kaduna.

"This Jihad is well funded, well planned and executed by agents of destabilization. Thus, our voice is like that of the one at Ramah that refused to be consoled (Jeremiah 31:15). We are however assured by the words of Christ that not a hair of our head will be lost (Luke 21:18).

The church also added: "For the records, Southern Kaduna Senatorial District is made up of Eight (8) Local Government areas: Sanga, Jemaa, Kaura, Jaba, Zangon Kataf, Kagarko, Kachia, and Kauru. These Local governments are densely populated by Christians.

"This land, fertile and agrarian, is blessed with adequate rainfall enough to make our crops yield bounteously. The beautiful hills and valleys are a sight to behold. It is this beautiful gift of God to the people of Southern Kaduna that our adversaries seek to covet by employing terrorism in order to occupy.

"Our Land and Faith have become the envy of our traducers and persecutors. The gift of the Christian faith found a place in the hearts of our forefathers hundreds of years ago and today we can boast of a vibrant faith in Jesus Christ represented by the many denominations in Southern Kaduna and an army of Ministers of the Gospel who today have been elevated by God to various offices."

The church also stated the issues which culminated in the recent destruction of lives and properties.

READ ALSO: Opinion: Southern Kaduna: Hit back or die! FFK tells Christians in Kaduna

"What started like a minor misunderstanding between Fulani herdsmen and indigenous farmers was badly handled and it soon took a different turn for the worse. Our people are largely farmers. They depend on their farms for sustenance.

"Our Farmers will labor all year round to cultivate their farms. The Fulani herdsmen will deliberately walk their cows into their farmlands. The cows will naturally eat up the crops and destroy the farmlands.

"For families that depend on this, one can better imagine the negative impact. So when this happens, the farmer confronts the Fulani herdsmen to seek a peaceful resolution.

"Most times, this gesture is met with stiff resistance as the herdsmen would threaten the farmer or begins a violent fight. In most occasions, because the herdsmen are armed to the teeth, they deal a heavy blow to the local farmer that result in death."

The church also accused the government of bias in handling the situation and claimed that it has been supporting the herdsmen.

"Unfortunately, our government both at the Centre and State levels have failed woefully. If anything, government has shown outright partisanship in favor of the herdsmen to the disappointment of the majority Southern Kaduna indigenes and Christians.

"This is what lends credence to our earlier assertion and belief that there is a well-planned Jihad against our people with the sole aim of conquering our people and occupying our land.

"We have been disappointed in the way the soldiers have been manipulated or railroaded to favor the Muslims. In most of these attacks, the military stands aloof and watches while our people are being massacred.

"The viciousness of these self-styled Jihadists sends shivers into the spines of our traumatized people. In the Godogodo and Pasakori attacks for example, the military merely watched and supervised the burning of our homes.

"When the youth mobilized to repel the attackers, the soldiers deliberately blocked them from entering the town.

"The herdsmen and their ilk turned the towns into killing fields and killed mostly women, children and the elderly who couldnt run for cover.

"The level of barbarity was such that pregnant women got their wombs blown out and massacred before their children. And these innocent children were not spared either," the church lamented.

Meanwhile, Senator Shehu Sani, the lawmaker representing Kaduna central, has paid a solidarity visit to the senator representing southern Kaduna district Danjuma Laah in efforts to commiserate with him on the persistent killings in his senatorial district.

Source: Legit.ng
Lincoln police aren't yet releasing the name of the baby in foster care who died Tuesday, but they did say the foster mother was the only other adult in the southwest Lincoln home when the baby stopped breathing.

Lancaster County Assessor's website shows that the home listed in police reports is owned by Catherine and Bruce Benoist.

And Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Russ Reno confirmed the couple are licensed foster parents.

Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister said Thursday the foster mother was the only other adult in the home when she called 911 to say the 14-month-old boy was in cardiac distress.

Authorities still are trying to determine what happened before the call from 3631 W. Plum St.

An autopsy on the baby was done Wednesday. Thursday morning, Bliemeister said the results are pending further analysis and declined to give more information.

Earlier this week, police said the preliminary investigation indicated the baby suffered a brain injury and internal bleeding. Bliemeister said further testing will be done to determine his cause of death.

No arrests have been made, the chief said.

Lincoln Fire and Rescue was called to the home just before 11 p.m. on Dec. 22, according to police and dispatch records.

Catherine Benoist performed CPR before medics arrived and took the baby to a local hospital, according to records.

The Benoists have been licensed foster care providers since January 2014 and have cared for nine state wards since then, Reno said. No disciplinary reports have been filed against them, he said.

No evidence of abuse was found in an examination of the baby's 2-year-old sister, who also lived in the foster home, police have said. The girl has been placed elsewhere.

The siblings were among 3,516 state wards placed outside of their homes in Nebraska as of Dec. 5, according to HHS.

In the past three years, 11 children in foster care died -- none at the hands of foster caregivers, said Reno.

Of those, four had known medical conditions that resulted in their deaths, four entered foster care with existing serious injuries, two were medically fragile when they became state wards and one died of SIDS, Reno said.
- The chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Senator Monsurat Sunmonu has said the upper chamber is pushing for Diaspora voting in the 2019 general elections

- Senator Sunmonu said that giving franchise to Nigerians abroad would give the impression that they are part of the system

- The Oyo state senator said she could not promise that Diaspora voting would be a reality in the 2019 general elections

The chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Senator Monsurat Sunmonu has said the upper chamber is pushing for Diaspora voting in the 2019 general elections.

Sunmonu on Thursday, December 29, said that giving franchise to Nigerians abroad would give the impression that they are part of the system, adding that her committee had suggested how Nigerians in the Diaspora could vote in future elections.

She said: The first thing that we must do is for Nigerians to have their rights to cast their votes anywhere they are. If you cast your vote, that makes you a part of the system.

READ ALSO: FG to introduce electronic declaration of assets in 2017

According to her, the Diaspora Nigerians who have the Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) can cast their votes as the PVC has all their personal data and fingerprint.

The chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs said: The Nigerian Passports that are issued to people outside the country is the same thing with fingerprints and personal data. They can use that to cast their votes outside. So that shows they are Nigerians.

If we start from there and they know that Nigerians outside can as well vote, then they will be able to know that we incorporate them into the system.

They will know that it is their rights to come and fight for anything in Nigeria, to come and say yes, this is our votes in New York, Switzerland or anywhere. We must start with that; that is where we must start, to make them eligible to vote.

However Sunmonu, said she could not promise that Diaspora voting would be a reality in the 2019 general elections.

I cant say but we know that as things are going now, the Senate will not hesitate to do its best and I will say that I give kudos to the leadership of the Senate who is looking at this.

I know the committees on Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Interior, and Foreign Affairs will all work together to see what we can do for Diaspora and for Nigerians just to make Nigeria move forward, she further said.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in November 2016 that the possibility of Nigerians living abroad to vote in the 2019 general elections would depend on the amendment to the countrys electoral laws.

READ ALSO: Senate begins probe of NNPC's missing $6.9bn

The chairman of the commission, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, stated this when he played host to the Senate Committee on Diaspora and NGOs.

He said for the nation to allow Nigerians living abroad to vote, several sections of the constitution and the Electoral Act must be amended by the National Assembly.

Meanwhile, the Senate has started the process of amending section 308 of the 1999 constitution which gives the president, vice president, governors, and deputy governors immunity against prosecution while they are in office.

The bill which was sponsored by Senator Ovie Omo-Agege (LP, Delta) has been referred to the Senate committee on constitution amendment chaired by the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu.

Source: Legit.ng
- Sources at the CBN say the apex bank did not award contract for the printing of small naira denominations for about a year, leading to scarcity

- Sources attribute the high cost of printing banknotes as the reason the apex bank did not give contracts for their production

- But the CBN denies allegations that it has not contracted the printing of smaller denomination currencies since 2015

CBN says it did not make provision for small naira denominations to be supplied in smaller denomination during the festive season.

Source: Depositphotos

The current economic recession has forced the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) not to print small naira denominations for about a year, causing the scarcity of the notes in the economy, sources at the apex bank have disclosed.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), citing sources at the CBN reports that for a year now, the apex bank did not award contract for the printing of the notes such as N5, N10, N20 and N50 usually done abroad.

READ ALSO: No provision for new minimum wage in 2017 budget, Labour union laments

According to NAN, the recently printed notes in circulation, N200, N500 and N1,000 , were produced by the Nigeria Security Printing and Minting plc (NSPM).

Sources attribute the high cost of printing banknotes as the reason the apex bank did not give contracts for their production.

The cost of printing N50 is almost the same as N1,000. Printing small denominations costs more than the value and with the present economic situation, it makes sense to print higher notes which can be done locally by NSPM.," a source said.

Confirming the scarcity of the small naira denominations in the country, a worker at the First Bank Plc said that there were hardly smaller currency notes to give to customers throughout the 2016 festive seasons.

We usually request for cash from the CBN through our Cash Management Centre, but recently, we have not been able to get mints of N100 and below.

We had N50 at one point but it wasnt in the quantity we are used to getting.

We have been telling our customers who call to request for mints that the smallest currencies they can get is N200, the worker, who pleaded anonomity said.

READ ALSO: Bureau De Change operators reveal reason behind Naira fall

But the CBN has denied the allegation that it had not contracted the printing of smaller denomination currencies since 2015.

The CBN acting director, corporate communications, Mr Isaac Okorafor, dismissed reports of scarcity of smaller denomination in the market.

He said people are complaining because the CBN did not make provision for mints to be supplied in smaller denomination during the festive season.

You see people are fond of abusing these denominations by spraying them to be stepped on during weddings and other ceremonies.

The abuse is even worse during the festive season, so we decided to make scarce the denominations. But its not that we have not been printing them.

 Yes we havent printed abroad but we also print locally which we have been doing, he said.

Meanwhile, the Union of Tomato Paste Manufacturers in Nigeria through its spokesman, Mr. Nnamdi Nnodebe, has hinted that the once vibrant tomato industry might stop existing next year if the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) does not amend its policy on Forex to exclude triple concentrate tomato paste from the scope of the 41 items under the restricted list.

The Managing Director of Sonia Foods Industries Limited, one of the stakeholders in the production of tomato paste variants, said this from his office in Lagos

He said it makes better economics to import the raw materials that will enable production, grow the economy and keep jobs rather than importing the finished products or frustrating efforts to get the raw materials, thereby rendering millions jobless which might further kill the economy.

Source: Legit.ng
Employees of an east Lincoln bank branch escaped injury Wednesday when one of two robbers fired two shots in their direction, police said.

The two robbers, who remained at large early Thursday, entered the Union Bank & Trust branch at 6801 O St. between 5:20 and 5:30 p.m., Lincoln Police Sgt. Jake Dilsaver said.

A bandana covered the face of one of the assailants.

One of the robbers carried a handgun, Dilsaver said. Police found bullet holes in the bank's ceiling and in a flat screen TV, Sgt. Randy Clark said Thursday.

They left with an undisclosed amount of cash and a red dye pack had exploded, Clark said.

An attempt to track them using a police dog wasn't successful. A detailed description has not been released.

Clark said police are looking into the possibility the robbery is connected to a similar robbery that happened at the U-Stop on West O Street Monday.

Two men went into the store around 9:44 p.m., police said, and one fired a warning shot and took cash while the other stood near the door.

No injuries were reported in that robbery.
As the Swedish historian Kristian Gerner has argued, centuries of Russian history demonstrate that Moscow has two approaches to neighboring countries: the models of Kazan and Manchu. Under the first model, Russia absorbs, overwhelms or keeps bullying its neighbor as it did in 1552 when Ivan the Terrible conquered the Khanate of Kazan. Under the second model, it recognizes the neighbor as equal or too big to confront as it did in the 1689 Nerchinsk Treaty, Russias first border treaty with China. For centuries, there was nothing in between. But Finland proved in the postwar years to be the exception.

Its not difficult to sort Russias present neighbors into Mr. Gerners categories. Russia has demonstrated on several occasions in its handling of conflicts in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine that is has no compunction when it comes to attacking weaker neighbors and seizing territory.

Finland survived and prospered after World War II because it was ahead of its time. In an era of near total polarization, it adapted the principles of asymmetric defense to its very difficult geographic situation. Finland was far from a vassal to the Soviet Union. It maintained its democracy, a low-profile military defense and above all its Western orientation. How we were able to do this is the true story of Finlandization.

The strategy worked because Finland remained true to its principles: credible defense and a strong free-market system. After Stalins death, Finlands president, Urho Kekkonen, used two arguments to turn the tables on Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev.

First, he made clear to the Soviets, without explicitly saying so, that Finland would defend its independence, as it had done in repelling two Soviet attacks in 1939 and 1944. Second, he convinced them that Finlands economy would suffer and that Russias own interests would be harmed if the Soviet Union prevented Finlands integration into postwar West European economic arrangements such as the European Free Trade Association and the European Economic Community. Finland remained the Soviet Unions largest Western trading partner until the 1970s. Joining the European Union in 1995 was a homecoming.
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan  Few post-Soviet countries are as comfortable for a Russian-speaker to visit as Kyrgyzstan. This landlocked mountainous country of roughly 5.6 million, wedged between China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, kept Russian as an official language after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Kyrgyz had fallen into disuse during the Soviet era and lacked the vocabulary for affairs of state. As a result, a generation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country still speaks Russian.

Recently, Kyrgyzstan has been growing notably more Russian. Although Kyrgyz has gained many words, speakers and advocates for making it the countrys sole state language, activists from nongovernmental organizations say they noticed a couple of years ago that Russian-language media got suddenly more robust, gaining a crop of new freelance writers who seemed to come from nowhere. The same people seem to be writing for a recently revived Russian-language website called Stan Radar, apparently addressed to the residents of the five post-Soviet stans: Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Many of the stories on the site emphasize the importance of the Russian language in these countries, as well as the potential economic dangers of not joining the customs union initiated by Russia. The site contains no specific contact information or any other identifying details, and activists say their efforts to find out who owns it have been futile. They have established, though, that the server is located in Moscow.

Another website, the name of which translates as Eurasians: The New Wave, brims with articles warning that Kyrgyzstan may face the threat of a Ukrainian-style revolution or a Syrian-style radical Islamist takeover if it fails to form a tighter bond with Moscow. It reveals little about its identity, only that it belongs to a foundation started in Moscow in 2010 to strengthen the ties between Russia and Kyrgyzstan and that its partners include an organization called Rossotrudnichestvo, or Russian Cooperation, a federal agency founded in 2008 to foster connections between Russia and Russian speakers abroad. In 2012 Konstantin Kosachev, a high-level functionary of Russias ruling party, United Russia, was appointed to lead the ministry that runs Rossotrudnichestvo, and since then it has really made its presence known in Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere. It organizes cultural events and sponsors Russian-language educational programs, and most important, according to activists here, it works to influence Kyrgyz legislators.
Only the presence of an international peacekeeping force can make a difference today. The U.N. support mission was never meant to be such a force; it was designed to help build institutions of governance. And the United Nations Security Council cannot expand its mandate. Russia, which accused the West of wrongfully extending the U.N. support missions ambit beyond the protection of civilians during the 2011 conflict, would veto any resolution calling for the missions transformation into an intervention force. The United States government, for its part, has no appetite for sending more American boots on the ground, particularly as it pulls troops out of Afghanistan and struggles to forestall the advances of Sunni Islamists in Iraq.

The responsibility for creating a peacekeeping force for Libya falls squarely on European states. Considering their longstanding economic and political interests in North Africa and their concerns over immigration, it is they, after all, that have the most to lose from Libyas collapse. Libya is part of the European Unions soft underbelly.

Europeans were at the forefront of the intervention in 2011, with logistical and intelligence support from the United States, and they must spearhead any action now. Frances president and defense minister have openly called for international intervention, most recently in September. While I was testifying before an Italian parliamentary commission on foreign affairs in Rome on Oct. 24, I was struck by how frankly some members were arguing that only a European-led force could provide a way out of the current impasse. The original notion some European politicians held  that a beefed-up U.N. mission was needed  has lost its appeal.

The model for this intervention should be a version of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force that was created to stem the Taliban in Afghanistan, supplemented with intelligence and logistical support from the United States. Its initial mandate would be to buttress the internationally recognized government in Tobruk by protecting vital infrastructure and state institutions, keeping militias apart by preventing them from traveling to rival territory and controlling the flow of arms. Although Libyas territory is vast, most of the new forces operations would be confined to the coastal strip, where the main government institutions are located, necessitating only a few thousand soldiers.

Since the end of the 2011 conflict, the various Libyan governments have been reluctant to invite international help. They thought they could manage on their own and feared that outside assistance would undermine their legitimacy with the Libyan people. But recently the ground has shifted dramatically. Members of both the House of Representatives in Tobruk and the rump G.N.C. in Tripoli told me privately late this summer that the situation is desperate, and that outside intervention may be the only way to keep Libya together as a single nation.

Establishing a peacekeeping force is a difficult undertaking for Europe  politically, financially and economically. But the alternatives are worse. Standing by or encouraging more fruitless talks would almost certainly mean a conflict of attrition among Libyas government and the militias, destabilization in the Maghreb and the Sahel, massive smuggling and unchecked illegal immigration toward Europe. For European governments the choice is stark: Move in decisively or deal with another failed Arab state on their doorstep.

Dirk Vandewalle is an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College.
BUENAVENTURA, Colombia  On Aug. 23, 2008, Victor Gomez left his home outside of Bogota, telling his family he had been offered work in another region of Colombia. The 23-year-old man had been struggling to provide for his young daughter as a part-time doorman. Two days later Mr. Gomez was dead, with a bullet between his eyes, in a faraway morgue, where the army had reported him an enemy combatant killed in action.

Mr. Gomez was just one of possibly thousands of civilians executed by Colombian military personnel between 2002 and 2008. Civilian prosecutors are investigating more than 3,000 cases, many involving young men lured by fake job offers to distant towns, where the army murdered them. Soldiers and officers, under pressure from superiors to show positive results and boost body counts in the conflict against guerrilla groups, would report the victims as insurgents or criminals killed in combat. Targets included the homeless, farmers, children and people with mental disabilities. In Colombia, the cases are known as false positives.

Now, the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos is close to securing passage of legislation that threatens to deny justice for these victims by transferring the cases of military personnel accused of the killings from the civilian to the military justice system. The bills, including one that could be approved as early as next week, appear aimed to appease the military leadership, which has been reluctant to support President Santoss current peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.

There has been some important progress in prosecuting low-ranking soldiers for false positives. But most cases remain unresolved and just a handful of senior officers have been convicted. This is a major concern for the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, who is closely monitoring investigations in Colombia. Her office has described the killings as apparently systematic and driven by a policy adopted at least within certain army brigades.
The long-ruling president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore, was corrupt, exclusionary and increasingly autocratic before his abrupt fall from power late last month. But he did have the law on his side in his showdown with the street demonstrators who ultimately pushed him from office  and that fact reveals flaws in African democracy that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the continent.

Legally, the protesters did not have much to stand on. Not only did the presidents attempt to extend his term in office by changing the Constitution follow legal procedures, but his decision late last month to renounce that effort and promise to resign at the end of his mandate in November 2015 seemed to address the demonstrators original concerns. Still, they wanted him out. Now.

The larger issue in Burkina Faso, as elsewhere in Africa, is that formally democratic rules can easily be applied to perpetuate the authoritarian domination of a ruling clique. People might vote and parliament might convene, follow procedure and pass laws, but it is a largely hidden network of patronage alliances and security agencies that actually rules. This system excludes large segments of society from the benefits of genuine representation and produces vast inequalities mediated though access to state resources and offices. It breeds grievances, alienation and anger, which the burning down of Burkina Fasos Parliament by demonstrators illustrates only too well.

Mr. Compaore took power in 1987 in a coup that saw the killing of his friend Thomas Sankara in a crime never accounted for. For all the normalization and economic reforms he brought about, and despite his growing reputation as an agent of stability, his mediations of regional conflicts, and his willingness to support Americas local anti-terror efforts, he developed an increasingly authoritarian regime shrouded in democratic trappings.
The son of an elderly couple robbed and attacked in their Lincoln home in 2011 confronted a 23-year-old man who went to prison for the crime Wednesday and asked the Nebraska Parole Board not to let him out.

He said he wanted to ask Raymond Maestas, the man up for parole, why he physically struck, kicked and beat up his father, a 74-year-old who had no qualms with him.

The man died in 2014 and carried a gun in his last three years.

"We just feel like parole is not an option," the man said, speaking for himself and his brother.

Asked by the Parole Board to respond, Maestas said the reason he did it was because at that point in his life he was making bad decisions and didn't realize how old the couple was.

"To be honest, it probably wouldn't have mattered," Maestas said. "I was on a path of destruction."

He said he feels their pain every day and can only apologize and ask for forgiveness now.

"They're right. What I did was wrong," Maestas said.

In 2011, Maestas was 17 when he and Daniel Catalina kicked their way into a brick house not far from Belmont School early one Sunday morning in April and woke an elderly couple to threats.

The strangers said they had guns, then stole cash, six guns and ammunition. The couple's son said Wednesday they assaulted his dad.

Police caught them the next day. Both later pleaded guilty to robbery and were sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison.

Maestas, who with good time has been eligible for parole since April, has been working at a Lincoln concrete company, got his GED and completed anger management and substance abuse treatment.

He hoped to enroll in Metro Community College if he got out and has been at Community Corrections Center-Lincoln since August.

The board deferred the hearing until August 2017 to see him continue on the path he's on a little bit longer.

Parole Board member Rex Richard told Maestas he didn't think he was the most important person in the room right now.

"These people are," Richard said pointing to the brothers.

As Maestas got up to leave, he turned to the brothers and said, "I do apologize."

And they nodded.
KIRKENES, Norway  According to the worldview of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, the town of Kirkenes, Norway, is an illusion. To Mr. Putin, there is only east and west, two separate spheres split by a straight north-south line through Europe. But the place does actually exist: in Finnmark, Norways northernmost county, just a few miles away from the Russian border and farther east than Sweden, Finland and the Baltic countries.

In geopolitical terms, one can see incredible things here. Huge fishing vessels with Cyrillic nameplates unload tons of king crab and cod at Kirkenes harbor, destined for the European market. Farther down the road, at the shopping mall  labeled in Cyrillic  Russian families from across the border come to purchase yogurt, cheese, winter coats and perfumes. We are talking about, please note, NATO territory.

This isnt just a result of a natural, free local economy; after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, people in the Arctic built an astonishingly well-functioning, cross-border neighborhood here. Fishing takes place on the basis of a bilateral quota system. Thanks to a regional trade deal, Russian customers bound for Kirkenes dont need visas. As a result, more than half of the buyers in Kirkeness supermarkets, salespersons say, are Russians, boosting the economy of this 10,000-person town several times over. The latest and most promising common endeavor involves talks over the mutual exploitation of the oil and gas fields in the Barents Sea.

Its no wonder, then, that the Norwegians above the Arctic Circle are particularly nervous about the prospect of a new Cold War. Is there no way out? they ask. Many here argue that Mr. Putin is never going to give back Crimea to Ukraine anyway  so why should we maintain sanctions that will not only cripple Russias economy, but ours, too? Its a question that has already started to travel farther south across Europe.
When President Obama announced that the United States would normalize relations with Cuba, he quoted a Cuban saying  No es facil, or It wont be easy  to emphasize the long road ahead in discarding a more than 50-year-old policy.

Mr. Obamas historic announcement has provided the foundation for a vastly improved relationship. But ensuring that the new relationship prospers and becomes an engine for a democratic and stable Cuba will not be easy. To move the process forward steadily and quickly, the United States and the international community should agree on a strategy that encourages positive change.

The symbolism of full diplomatic relations is huge: The American flag will fly in Havana, and the Cuban flag in Washington. But for American and Cuban diplomats to collaborate effectively, each government should remove all remaining restrictions on their travel and allow them to meet with appointed and elected officials, as well as representatives of advocacy groups, news organizations, universities and other parts of civil society. The first order of business is for our diplomats to expand and formalize cooperation on migration, the environment, narcotics and crime.

Under a policy informally known as wet foot, dry foot, Cubans caught in the waters between Cuba and the United States are sent home or to a third country, while Cubans who make it to Americas shores are allowed to stay. The policy needs to be rescinded  an action that can occur through executive order  to foster safe and orderly migration and to save lives.
Lechuguilla Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico has been closed to the public since its discovery in 1986. Only select scientists and cave experts have been allowed to enter due to the caves delicate and fragile nature. Because of these restrictions, the cave has become a breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Professor Hazel Barton of University of Akron explains that exploring these remote and uncharted environments presents the opportunity to study the development and diversity of microbes that have never been touched by humans.

Professor Gerald Wright of McMaster University has conducted research in Lechuguilla Cave to examine a bacterium known as Paenibacillus sp. LC231. This bacterium has been isolated inside the cave for thousands of years, making it the perfect atmosphere to study how microorganisms have evolved without human contact and interference. According to Wrights study published in the journal Nature Communications, Paenibacillus sp. LC231 is resistant to 26 of 40 antibiotics tested. In addition to the resistance of numerous antibiotics, the bacterium also inactivates 7 distinct classes.

Professor Wrights research team also exposed multiple pathways of possible clinical concern. The discovery of these pathways could lead to health innovations and allow researchers time to create new drugs to fight this type of resistance before it even becomes a problem in the medical world.

Chamberlain Smith is a science intern and a freelance writer based in Athens, Georgia.
Producer Ed Richardson, co-founder of Atlanta Metro Studios, is adapting Georgia native Flannery OConnors classic short story A Good Man is Hard to Find into a movie with screenwriter Benedict Fitzgerald, best known for writing Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ.

Richardson and Fitzgerald both have a personal connection to the story. Richardson said in a press release, Like countless OConnor devotees around the world, the power of this story has had an overwhelming impact on my life. To say this is a passion project doesnt touch it. For Fitzgerald, not only has he written the screenplay for a previous OConnor adaptation (John Hustons Wise Blood), but his parents were also close friends with the author, who babysat him on a number of occasions when he was young.

Richardson said of Fitzgerald:

Benedict was always the most organic choice to write the screenplay for A Good Man is Hard to Find. It was clear the moment we met, and has been reinforced throughout this entire process. Especially considering his familys close relationship with Miss OConnor, as well as his personal abiding devotion for her mighty works, its an honor to work together to bring this film to a global audience.

OConnors stories were deeply influenced by her upbringing in Georgia and the movie will stay close to that influence: itll be filmed in 2017 throughout Georgia, near OConnors family home. As an Atlantan, I consider myself very fortunate to be just a short drive from Andalusia, the OConnor family farm in Milledgeville, Richardson said. I have a painting of the farm house hanging over my desk in my office at Atlanta Metro Studios.

OConnors dark story of a serial killer murdering a Georgia family received sharp backlash when it was published in 1953, but Richardson says, It wasnt just violence for the sake of violence, and her writings offered salvation for all  even us misfits.
North Korea has long fascinated storytellers, including author J. M. Lee. The Boy Who Escaped Paradise, Lees latest novel translated into English, uses the Hermit Kingdom as the backdrop for a tale of defectors, destiny, and hope. A labyrinthine book that weaves through Pyongyangs choreographed celebrations to Yanjis back alleys to Seouls refugee community, The Boy delivers a haunting journey through the eyes of a young man with Asperger syndrome.

Ahn Gil-mo was 11 when the North Korean school system discovered he was a math genius. Because of his talent, he was relocated to the capital city with his family and enjoyed a life of relative comfortfor a short time. Within a year, his family was arrested after his father was discovered to be a practicing Christian. Separated from his family in a prison camp, Gil-mo befriends a girl, Yong-ae, and ultimately escapes the camp to search for her after she is freed.

Gil-mos quest to find Yong-ae takes him from the red light districts of border cities to the high-risk-high-reward world of Shanghai, where he uses fake passports, assumed names, and his math skills to survive. But the law eventually catches up with Gil-mo, and he tells his story from FBI custody as a suspect for crimes ranging from fraud to murder.

Jumping back and forth between Gil-mos years on the run and his interrogation by the FBI makes for a clunky and rushed narrative at times, but the novel still offers a fascinating story reminiscent of a North Korean Slumdog Millionaire. This, of course, isnt a true-to-life tale, but Lee successfully reveals how fortunes can change overnight for societys most vulnerable refugees. Gil-mo ricochets from wealth to poverty and comfort to danger numerous times, relying on the kindness of others to make ends meet.

Gil-mos Aspergers adds another layer to the narrative, although one that doesnt feel played out. His fixation on finding Yong-ae is endearing and his math abilities save the day more than once, but there is a sense of exploitation just below the surface. Gil-mo is capable but gullible, willing to retreat into numbers whenever given the chance and unable to see the peoples possible motives for helping him. This mires him in drug rings, fraudulent charity organizations, and other schemes that put him in danger.

Yong-ae herself is more a master manipulator than a damsel in distress. Having defected a few months before Gil-mo, she strings him along when she needs his help. Theres a sadness to their one-sided relationship that tugs at the readers heartstrings, underscoring how vulnerable Gil-mo truly is as he moves through the world by himself.

Despite a complex framework that doesnt always do the story justice, the novel hits a satisfactory end that feels authentic. Lees novel touches on the literary need for character-driven stories that move beyond the strangeness and horror of life under the North Korean state. This, along with its thriller-like pace, make The Boy Who Escaped Paradise worth a read.
the year has ended as quickly as it started. Over the last 12 months, I hope you were able to check off one or more things from your bucket list. I hope you learned much, traveled far, formed new relationships, and rekindled old ones.

The longer I live the more Im amazed by this oyster called Earth. In truth, Im even more amazed by the people I can share it with. If you believe the same, I hope youll join me next year in overturning every rock we encounter to discover the best this planet has to offer. If not (or if youve forgotten that truth), I hope youll open your heart anew next year with a little help from your friends. The glass really is half full.

Enough pontificating. Its time to revisit some of the greatest trips of 2016. For the record, this column has taken me to five continents, a dozen countries, numerous cities, and countless points of interest over the last 20 months. While these were the greatest trips I took last year, here are the most memorable trips I took this year:

Earlier this year I stayed in an industrial-view room in a small westside hotel. While the gritty surroundings were nothing to write home about, the experience impressed more than the nicest Ritz-Carlton ever could. I learned that day that blue skies, chance, and sunshine often hide in plain sight. To find silver linings, we must remind ourselves over and over that life is a gift, ordinary can be awesome, and this is living.

Over the summer I hiked 10 days in three countries around one epic mountain. Not only did the experience convert me into a group tour believer, it inspired me to overnight at refuges whenever possible on multi-day hikes. Backpacking Europe may be cliche, but its entirely worth it.

If you dont know what feelings to seek out, chances are youll probably miss out. That was the thinking when researching and writing the five sensations everyone should experience. In writing that story, I even identified an iconic experience that incorporates four of the five sensations, which shortly after resulted in my first time skydiving.

After visiting each first-hand, Im happy to report that both Australia and New Zealand live up to their reputations as excellent places to adventure. Read my profiles of each if you dont believe me. Who knew so much fun could be found in this remote corner of the world?

If youre searching for a destination to impress your well-traveled friends or value rock-bottom prices over remarkable experiences, dont go to Costa Rica. But if you like getting wet and want to experience one of the worlds most proven and beautiful playgrounds for green adventure, exotic wildlife, and extremely good vibes, heres why you should immediately upgrade Costa Rica to your bucket list.

On a personal note, thank you for reading this column. If you like what Ive written so far and want to follow where I go next year, bookmark this page. Upcoming columns include five places to go next year, Patagonia, more national parks, Alaska by sea, Oh Canada, red rock resorts, Kenya, Key West, my first time in Asia, and whatever else my editor (Hi, Alex!) lets me get away with. Until then.

Off the Grid columnist Blake Snow writes epic stories for fancy publications and Fortune 500 companies. Follow him on Twitter.
Americans waste an astonishing amount of food every year30 to 40% according to one source. This loss occurs throughout the food system, from warehouses where produce goes bad before making it to markets, to grocery stores where foods are discarded based on nonsensical sell-by dates, to restaurants who mismanage their inventory.

However, nearly six billion pounds of fruits and vegetables never even make it into the system each year. Crops rot in fields, unpicked due to lack of labor, insufficient price potential in the markets, or just for being ugly in a world demanding perfect fruits and vegetables. The Vermont nonprofit Salvation Farms is working to help solve this problem, hoping to provide an example for others to follow.

Since its founding in 2004, Salvation Farmswhich is not a farm, but a nonprofit with a mission to reduce food loss and increase the use of locally grown foodshas focused on gleaning unused produce and getting it to the states institutions. In 2012, the organization began a series of programs to train people how to work with the food it collects to make it easier to distribute. These pilot courses proved successful, and in the fall of 2016, Salvation Farms signed a lease on a permanent facility for this workforce development effort, called the Vermont Commodity Program.

Theresa Snow, executive director of Salvation Farms, says that the Vermont Commodity Program is really just an evolution of how we started. . . If were going to start capturing a volume of food thats reflective of whats available on farms, were going to need to move it into a system . . . for cleaning, assessing, and minimal processing.

Snow stresses that the program is about more than just distributing food. We want to provide experiential learning opportunities, she says, because we think that true changes happens through people. Omar Oyarzabal, from the University of Vermont Extension, describes many of the programs participants as trying for a second chance in life. They want to retrain and get competitive to get into the market.

Students experience hands-on lessons in food safety, first aid, preparation techniques, and organization skills. The hope is that they will learn the importance of food preparation as well as general job skills that they can carry with them into food service, agricultural, or even manufacturing jobs.

They take numerous field trips to meet the farmers whose crops are donated to the program, and they visit the charitable organizations that receive their packaged goods. Thomas Case, director of Vermont Commodity Program, says, Making that connection, meeting a farmer, just seeing the equipment, seeing the plants in the ground is important. Anyone whos a consumer and eats should have some understanding of where their food comes from and be able to make good decisions.

A recent participant, Natalie Bekkouche, described the courses biggest impact for her to be the social aspect. People who wouldnt have otherwise come together have bonded over this common goal. Other students express similar sentiments from I have grown in my confidence from doing this, to I liked getting in the flow of production work, and I will be sad to leave but am excited about the future as well.

Local farmers also benefit from working with the Vermont Commodity Program. Joe Tisbert, who runs Valley Dream Farm in Cambridge, Vermont, estimates that 50,000 pounds of gleaned produce has gone into the Salvation Farms program. Every farm has that day, that week that something cant sell, and it makes no sense to just throw it all in compost, he says.

Though compost is an important agricultural resource, Snow points out that more than 14 million pounds of vegetables and berries are left on farms every year in Vermont alone. Stand that number up against the 80,000 Vermonters who are food insecure each year and the more than $10 million the states institutions spend on out-of-state food to provide more than 19 million meals annually, and its clear that something has to change to get that surplus out of the fields and into the food system.

Snow emphasizes that the programs aim is to expose people to opportunities to think about the food system and their role in it. Thats what really leverages changebuilding up educated and skilled workers who can impact the type of food system we have in our state and in our country, she says. Were hoping the Vermont Commodity Program will become a valuable part of that, a solution for that equation.
Share this: Christmas gifts were sent to military troops from Grand Living Realty for the holidays. #PalmCoast @GrandLivingReal

By: Grand Living Realty

Left to right: Cindy Tetreault, Patsy Moden, Kim Wahl & Doris Dolamore.

Contact

Grand Living Realty

***@grandlivingpalmcoast.com Grand Living Realty

End

-- Lindsay Dolamore, CEO Managing Broker of Grand Living Realty, is pleased to announce that the company has sent holiday gifts to military troops in Afghanistan for the fifth year in a row."This project was started five years ago when Flagler Beach resident Doug Beaven was stationed in Afghanistan and realized that many of the soldiers did not receive anything for Christmas," said Dolamore. "He emailed Patsy Moden, a real estate agent in our office, and she has coordinated the project with the Grand Haven Women's Club and the Grand Haven community ever since," he added.The group has sent 25-30 boxes of goodies each year since 2011. Grand Living management, Lindsey Doamore and Jim Cullis, pay for all of the shipping costs. In 2013, the group had an American flag flown in their honor over the military base they sent the presents to, and received the flag to display.Grand Living Realty opened its new modern office across the street from the main gate of the Grand Haven community on Colbert Lane earlier this year. The real estate center incorporates real estate services, real estate development and strategic alliances with Southern Title, Ameris Bank Mortgage Services, Austinterior & Accessories and Grand Haven Properties.According to Dolamore, the real estate center concept is for customers to have a convenient one-stop location for all the primary residential real estate services. The real estate center also provides a vision of the lifestyle in Flagler County and Palm Coast, information on area master planned communities and an inviting atmosphere including a casual cafe and an art displays from local gallery Salvo Art Project.Grand Living Realty is a partnership between Dolamore and Jim Cullis, a 30-year veteran in real estate development, including acquisition analysis to design, construction, sales and marketing, and operations management. Dolamore has over 30 years experience managing large real estate brokerages. The company offers complete real estate brokerage services including residential buyer and seller representation, builder representation and commercial real estate from its office at 2298 Colbert Lane in Palm Coast. Grand Living Realty also specializes in master planned communities developed by Cullis including Grand Haven in Palm Coast. Grand Living Realty can be reached at 386-447-0800 or online at http://www.grandLivingpalmcoast.com http://www.grandhavenpalmcoast.com ).L to R Cindy Tetreault, Patsy Moden, Kim Wahl, Doris Dolamore
Activity at a DAV-RecruitMilitary Veterans Job Fair

Media Contact

Kelly Wagner

RecruitMilitary LLC

kelly.wagner@ recruitmilitary.com

513-677-7084 Kelly WagnerRecruitMilitary LLC513-677-7084

End

-- DAV and RecruitMilitary will produce its inaugural on-base Veterans Job Fair at American Lake Conference Center on January 18, 2017 for veterans, transitioning military personnel, National Guard members, Reserve members and spouses. The event will feature at least 30 Seattle-area employers. The Joint Base Lewis-McChord event is one of 27 on-base events this year."DAV RecruitMilitary job fairs maintain a track record of helping veterans and their families find meaningful employment,"said President Peter Gudmundsson. "Just last year, 56.3% of veteran job seekers expected to secure an interview following a DAV RecruitMilitary job fair. Employers were expected to extend as many as 38,700 interviews and more than 12,000 job offers."Among the 30 companies attending the upcoming Joint Base Lewis-McChord event are DAV, McKesson Corporation, Seattle City Light, Seattle Police Department, Vinnell Arabia, Vigor Industrial, LLC and Washington State Patrol. An updated list of all exhibitors can be found at https://events.recruitmilitary.com/ events/joint- base-lewis-mcchord- job-fair-january- 18-2017#event- exhibitors RecruitMilitary has produced veteran job fairs since 2006 and has held 22 events in Seattle, drawing 7,327 attendees and 848 exhibitors. The company has produced more than 814 events in 65 cities across the country. The full schedule of events for 2017 can be found at https://Events.RecruitMilitary.com DAV was founded by World War I veterans in Cincinnati in 1920 and chartered by the United States Congress in 1932. DAV (www.dav.org)is a non-profit organization with 1.2 million members. Together, DAV and RecruitMilitary share a common mission: to connect America's veterans and their family members with meaningful and fulfilling employment opportunities and to help employers attract, appreciate and retain veterans, spouses, and their survivors. Through career fairs, outreach and resources, this partnership fights to ensure veterans receive the benefits they've earned to lead productive, dignified and high-quality lives.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVjqGgtBodMRecruitMilitary also has the nation's largest database of military job seekers. More than 1,000,000 veterans, transitioning military and military spouses are registered as job seekers in its database and 238,000 jobs are posted on the RecruitMilitary job board. RecruitMilitary also provides employer job postings, targeted email campaigns, retained hiring services and advertising space in online and print media. The company also publishes, a bimonthly print and digital magazine; and distributes 50,000+ print copies of each issue.About RecruitMilitaryRecruitMilitary (http://RecruitMilitary.com)is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bradley-Morris, Inc. (BMI), the largest military-focused recruiting company in the U.S. Together, BMI and RecruitMilitary offer employers access to more than 1,000,000 military job seekers via services that include contingency recruiting, military job fairs, a job board, employer branding, a military base publication and more.
Activity at a DAV-RecruitMilitary Veterans Job Fair

Media Contact

Kelly Wagner

RecruitMilitary LLC

kelly.wagner@ recruitmilitary.com

513-677-7084 Kelly WagnerRecruitMilitary LLC513-677-7084

End

-- DAV and RecruitMilitary will produce a Veterans Job Fair at the Scottish Rite Center on January 19, 2017 for veterans, transitioning military personnel, National Guard members, Reserve members and spouses. The event will feature more than 17 Sacramento-area employers."DAV RecruitMilitary job fairs maintain a track record of helping veterans and their families find meaningful employment,"said President Peter Gudmundsson. "Just last year, 56.3% of veteran job seekers expected to secure an interview following a DAV RecruitMilitary job fair. Employers were expected to extend as many as 38,700 interviews and more than 12,000 job offers."Among the nearly 20 companies attending the upcoming Sacramento event are DAV, Farmers Insurance, L-3 Communications, USS-Posco Industries, A California Joint Venture, Dragados USA, First Command Financial Planning, KBR, Public Consulting Group, Inc., Sears Holding and Walgreens. An updated list of all exhibitors can be found at https://events.recruitmilitary.com/ events/sacramento- veterans-job- fair-january- 19-2017#event- exhibitors In July of 2016, the DAV RecruitMilitary Sacramento event connected more than 224 veteran job seekers with 38 exhibitors, including Hearst Television, PepsiCo and The Home Depot. Participating companies expected to conduct up to 336 interviews and make up to 92 job offers following that career fair.RecruitMilitary has produced veteran job fairs since 2006 and has held 10 events in Sacramento, drawing 7,925 attendees and 855 exhibitors. The company has produced more than 814 events in 65 cities across the country.DAV was founded by World War I veterans in Cincinnati in 1920 and chartered by the United States Congress in 1932. DAV ( www.dav.org ) is a non-profit organization with 1.2 million members. Together, DAV and RecruitMilitary share a common mission: to connect America's veterans and their family members with meaningful and fulfilling employment opportunities and to help employers attract, appreciate and retain veterans, spouses, and their survivors. Through career fairs, outreach and resources, this partnership fights to ensure veterans receive the benefits they've earned to lead productive, dignified and high-quality lives.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVjqGgtBodMIn addition to veterans job fairs, RecruitMilitary also offers subscriptions to its database of 903,000+ registered candidates at http://www.recruitmilitary.com. RecruitMilitary provides employer job postings, targeted email campaigns, retained hiring services and advertising space in online and print media. The company also publishes, a bimonthly print and digital magazine; and distributes 50,000+ print copies of each issue.About RecruitMilitaryRecruitMilitary (http://RecruitMilitary.com)is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bradley-Morris, Inc. (BMI), the largest military-focused recruiting company in the U.S. Together, BMI and RecruitMilitary offer employers access to more than 1,000,000 military job seekers via services that include contingency recruiting, military job fairs, a job board, employer branding, a military base publication and more.
By: VERC Enterprises

VERC Hedge School Ed Alliance

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-- VERC Enterprises (www.vercenterprises.com), a leading convenience store and Mobil/Gulf gasoline operator with locations throughout Eastern Massachusetts and New Hampshire, recently presented Hedge Elementary School in Plymouth with a check for $500, a grant made possible through the ExxonMobil Educational Alliance Program.Funded by the ExxonMobil Corporation, the ExxonMobil Educational Alliance program is designed to provide local retailers an opportunity to invest in the future of their communities through educational grants to neighborhood schools.Tony Depina, Manager of the VERC Enterprises Commerce Way Mobil location in Plymouth and District ManagerShan Muhammadpresented the check to Kristin Wilson, principal at Hedge Elementary School."We're proud to participate in such a fine program that recognizes and supports the quality of local schools," said Leo Vercollone, CEO of VERC Enterprises.VERC Enterprises is the region's leading, independent chain of convenience stores and gasoline stations, with locations throughout Eastern Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The company began 39 years ago with a single car wash in Marshfield, in a business founded by Eugene Vercollone. Today two of Mr. Vercollone's sons operate the company, with Leo as President and Paul as Vice President. The firm has more than 270 employees and is a leader in hiring those with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. In 2011 VERC Enterprises was recognized by the Boston Business Journal as a Best Place to Work in Massachusetts and as a Leader in Diversity and in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2016 by the Boston Globe as a Best Place to Work in Massachusetts. For additional information, please visit the website, www.vercenterprises.com , or call 781-934-7300.To learn more about VERC, please view: https://www.youtube.com/ embed/videoseries? list=PLesS4W9hjtufdf6GhvnfUKMk2l2Q- r-MM Shan Muhammad, District Manager and Tony Depina, Manager of the VERC Enterprises Commerce Way Mobil present a check for $500 to Kristin Wilson, Principal at Hedge Elementary School; the grant was made possible through the ExxonMobil Educational Alliance Program.
Blomingdale's newest bohemian brand, RahiCali, is bringing a refreshingly authentic flare to the embroidery trend with their Spring 2017 collection.

Contact

Gabriella Layne

***@rahicali.com Gabriella Layne

End

-- The Boheme is coming into full bloom at Bloomingdale's this season. The major high end retailer is introducing a new bohemian brand to the Bloomingdale's family called RahiCali, created by a young fashion trio whose style savvy has taken their independent family business mainstream. Their new Spring 2017 collection, "Sunset Getaway," is available now at Bloomingdale's online and at store locations.Since the release of its first collection in Summer 2016, RahiCali's incredibly intricate and contemporary embroidery has earned it widespread attention among fashion retailers due to its equally ultra feminine and fashion forward aesthetic. With fine embroidery coming up as a major trend among high end designers and ruling the runways throughout this season's worldwide fashion weeks, RahiCali couldn't have claimed their spot among the fashion elite at a more perfect time.3JAINS are a young trio of fashion mavens who have taken over as the 2nd generation of their international family empire. Their stake to fame: bohemian brand RahiCali ( https://www.rahicali.com/ ), whose authentic interpretation of the boho trend relies on inspiration from their rooted Asian heritage. The traditional inspiration of each collection is combined with bohemian staples and contemporary trends to create collections that are perfectly fitting for the modern day nomad and wanderlust dreamer.RahiCali is a destination for dreamers, adventurers, and lovers everywhere. "Rahi," which means "Traveller" in Sanskrit, embodies the wandering spirit of the RahiCali girl. She is young and curious and always marvelled by exotic locations and unparalleled landscapes. Her whimshical soul keeps her fun, daring and feeling limitless.Born in the colorful and relaxed backdrops of Southern California, the RahiCali collection is effortless, feminine and free-spirited. It epitomizes the eternal So-Cal boho culture with its flirty silhouettes, vibrant hues and delicate details. Each collection encapsulates rich embroideries styled romantically over easy and airy fabrics. Each season celebrates a movement of pure romance and wanderlust, the perfect setting for a modern boheme paradise.
The International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) member of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group, has convened a US$ 45 million Murabaha financing agreement with the Islamic Republic of Mauritania represented by the Ministry of Economic

By: comma

ITFC Supports Mauritanias Energy

Contact

comma

***@commapr.com comma

End

-- and Finance and the Mauritanian Electricity Company (SOMELEC), as an executing agency. The purpose of the agreement comes within the Financing Plan of Mauritania's electricity needs for supplying hospitals, medical centers and industrial units.The agreement has been signed in ITFC's headquarters in Jeddah by Eng. Hani Salem Sonbol, CEO ITFC and Mr. Abass Silla, Public Investments and Economic Cooperation, in the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Mauritania, in the presence of Mr. Mohammed Salem Ahmed, General Manager, SOMELEC and representatives from both entities.Eng. Hani Salem Sonbol has treasured the confidence of the Islamic Government of Mauritania and SOMELEC that they bestowed on the corporation for being the main financer for the electricity needs as well as the supporter of industrial sector, which is deemed as strategic in Mauritania. Eng. Hani has added that the agreementreflects ITFC's mandate in supporting the member countries' strategic sectors and its understating to the importance of financing the industrial sector being of a positive impact on the government's economy.On the signing ceremony, Mr. Abbas has said:" The International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) contributed to the sustainability of the general electricity services in Mauritania and the continuity of this financing will enable the electricity company to enhance its investment program which targets exporting the electricity energy throughout the counry".The agreement comes within the public authority's plan for correcting the company's status, providing it with the petroleum derivatives necessary for power stations operations to supply 44 cities with electricity in Mauritania. It is worth to mention that the approved total financing amount reached US$ 120 million for the interest of the Mauritanian Electricity Company interest.
ARBOR Technology, a leading provider of embedded computing solutions, is proud to announce that its 8" Mobile & Desktop POS System -Gladius G0830, along with three other products, was honored with "Taiwan Excellence Award 2017".

By: ARBOR Technology Corp.

Media Contact

WINHO TECH

***@gmail.com

886-2-25571816 WINHO TECH886-2-25571816

End

-- Real Time News, Citizen Journalist Richard Shao, Taipei Reported, Dec 29, 2016ARBOR Technology, a leading provider of embedded computing solutions, is proud to announce that its 8" Mobile & Desktop POS System -Gladius G0830, along with three other products, was honored with "Taiwan Excellence Award 2017". The G0830 was awarded for its extraordinary ergonomic design, high level of modular design and market orientation capability. After receiving Best Choice Award at COMPUTEX 2016, this is the second award that the G0830 has won.8" Mobile & Desktop(https://www.arborcommerce.com/mobile-pos-g0830.html)The Gladius G0830 is a compact yes versatile restaurant POS system combining the advantage of both mobile and fixed POS in a single solution. Featuring the design of a detachable tablet, the G0830 greatly reduces installation costs and the space required and thus greatly enhancing mobility and flexibility.The product has a sophisticated dual-OS platform to support both Windows-dominated markets and emerging Android markets. Designed as a total solution for a variety of POS applications, the G0830 comes with multi-functions including barcode scanner, Wi-Fi, MSR and NFC, as well as an ergonomic design for POS users, e.g., a pistol grip with power bank for long hour operation. The design embodies a high level of modular design and customer-oriented usability to fulfill the needs for restaurant POS demands.Moreover, the G0830 offers an optional cloud-based device management system Node-Watch which is designed by ARBOR, providing businesses with convenient and cost efficient access to manage multi-location devices from a central admin console.Please contact your local ARBOR sales representative for more information, or email us at sales@arborcommerce.com
55,000 Square- Foot Residence is Part of EF International Academy's Second Westchester Campus in Thornwood, NY

By: Scully Construction LLC

EF International Academy's New 250-Bed Student Residence

Contact

Frank Pagani, PaganiPR

***@paganipr.com Frank Pagani, PaganiPR

End

-- Last September, 250 high school students from around the world moved into a new 55,000- square- foot residence building for EF Academy (EFA) located in Thornwood, NY.For White Plains-based Scully Construction LLCwhich built the state-of-the-art, 250-bed, four story structure the project, located on property previously owned by the Legionnaires of Christ and IBMpresented a very tight schedule challenge. "With ground breaking in January, we were facing a compressed timetable to complete the project and be ready for the start of a new semester," saidco-owner of the 35-year-old Scully Construction LLC, one of the leading providers of construction services in the tri-state area.He noted there was added pressure associated with undertaking the high-profile, $22 million residence because it would help showcase the client's newest campus on the 97-acre property that was home to IBM's former 410,000 square-foot Thornwood Conference Center. EF's main Westchester campus is located on the site of the former Marymount College in Tarrytown."With so much at stake for this prestigious client, we needed to factor in some cushion to assure that not only would we fulfill the client's and architect's vision but to allow enough time for the 250 rooms to be properly furnished before the students arrived."In close collaboration with Allied Works Architecture and the client, the Scully team developed an innovative design solution that shaved several months from the schedule. "The solution involved the use of a structural steel framing system with pre-stressed concrete plank for the floors and roof and pre-cast 4-story tall architectural panels for the building's massive and distinctively designed facade," Keating explained, adding: "This pre-cast approach, done to exact specifications, was undertaken while our construction crew built foundations and erected the steel structure .This enabled us to complete a dormitory that lived up to the Swiss-based EF's reputation as a world-class educational institution."The residence building is the first new structure in EF's master plan for the site but it's not Scully's first work there. When EF acquired the property from the Legionnaires of Christ in 2014, Scully landed the contract to extensively renovate and repurpose the former IBM corporate conference center for use as new classrooms, administrative offices and dorm rooms. That project consisted of a $27 million, four month interior and exterior renovation to three of the existing buildings, totaling over 400,000 square feet.The new student residence continues Scully's tradition of providing full-service construction services in the New York metro area for educational, corporate, retail, healthcare and hospitality clients. Currently, Scully is working on a$6.5 million dialysis center for The Rogosin Institute (a division of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital), located in Brooklyn.
By: South Shore Chamber of Commerce

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-- As part of its Business Education Series, the South Shore Chamber of Commerce (www.southshorechamber.org)will host "New Year's Resolution: Get More Social!" on Wednesday, January 11at Chamber headquarters, 1050 Hingham Street, Rockland.The event, slated from 8:00 to 9:30 a.m., will focus on new ways to communicate with social media followers to increase revenue and engagement in 2017.Developed and offered by the Chamber's Not For Profit Affinity Group, the program will provide educational content for Not For Profit organizations and other local businesses on practical and effective tools to grow their business through social media engagement and marketing using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.The workshop will feature a panel of presenters, including representatives from the United Way of Massachusetts Bay; radius financial group; and Main Street Media Group.Admission fee, which includes a light breakfast, is $25 for all South Shore Chamber and affiliate Chamber members and members of the South Shore Young Professionals. There is a $40 admission fee for non-members. Pre-registration is required by contacting jwilliams@southshorechamber.org The South Shore Chamber of Commerce has long been recognized throughout the state as one of the most active and forceful advocates for the business community and numbers among the larger Chambers of Commerce nationally. The South Shore Chamber is a not-for-profit association of businesses in the communities south of Boston. It is committed to helping its members grow their businesses and to improve the business climate in the region. Members range in size from major international corporations headquartered on the South Shore to small local firms and sole proprietorships. For additional information on the Chamber, please visit www.southshorechamber.org or call 781-421-3900.
By: Popplr

Media Contact

Kelli Bennett

kelli@wethrivemedia.com

3174574759 Kelli Bennett3174574759

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-- On Dec. 31 from 9 p.m.-2 a.m., Popplr, the company behind Atlanta's inaugural Diner En Blanc and co-producer of PXP Fest 2015, will host hundreds of Atlantans for The Peach Ball: Confetti Reign at the Georgia Freight Depot, 65 Martin Luther King Jr Dr SE, Atlanta, Ga. 30303 from 9 p.m.-2 a.m. with headlining DJ Bryan-Michael Cox.As the buzz builds across the city for The Peach Ball so does the excitement of event creator, Rufin Tshinanga, founder of Popplr. "This year we will continue the vision of making Atlanta a staple for New Year's Eve," he said.The leaders at Popplr have charged themselves with highlighting and elevating Hip Hop DJs, made evident by the Peach Ball's acclaimed line up. In the main room, Bryan-Michael Cox, Grammy Award winning producer, songwriter and now-artist will provide sounds for the first part of the evening and DJ Prince Akeem will finish out the night.Cox, who is known for his extensive experience and knowledge of music history, is returning to the Peach Ball for his second year. While he hasn't divulged all of his surprises for the New Year's Eve celebration, guests can plan to hear his new work as an artist: "Verbatim" and "Karma."He promises to take Peach Ball-goers to another level musically. "I like to play a little bit of everythinghit people from all different angles at all different times," he said. "I may not stay on one style for ten minutes; I may go from T.I. to Bryson [Tiller] to Lil' Kim."From 9:00-10:30 p.m. in a separate room, dubbed the "Silent Party," Peach Ball attendees will be provided wireless headphones to listen to their prefered style of music along with sounds by DJ OSHO.The Peach Ball: Confetti Reign will also feature Martell and Perrier-Jouet beverages. Tickets avaiable here: thepeachball.ticketleap.com/ t/ThePeachBallDOTCom/ "An unmatched DJ set is just the start to what Peach Ball guests will enjoy," said Tshinanga. "We will also offer a VIP lounge, passed complimentary Hors D'oeuvres, open bar, a champagne toast and more.""Come out! The Peach Ball is always great," Cox urged. "Let loose and ring in 2017 the right way, with positive vibes."About Popplr: Founded in 2014 by Rufin Tshinanga, Popplr & Company LLC is an experiential tech company based out of Atlanta, Ga. After placing second at Startup Weekend Atlanta 2013, a competition sponsored by The Kauffman Foundation, Tshinanga has since spearheaded a variety of pop-up style, lifestyle and experiential events including the Peach Ball; The inaugural Diner En Blanc Atlanta, PXP Fest 2015, in conjunction with DJ Fully Focus and Akon; The Social at Midtown Atlanta's Opera Nightclub and more.


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The refurbishment of buildings is becoming an ideal method to increase the stock of high quality office spaces in Madrid. Within the capital city, there are 14.8 million square metres of office space (3,300 properties), of which the majority, some 80%, is more than 10 years old and of greatly

[]
Suzuki Motors global sales have been on a decline. Their production in home market Japan, fell for the 21 straight month. Similar is the situation of Suzuki in other global markets, except for India. Here, 2016 will see Maruti, a subsidiary of Suzuki, produce double the number of cars Suzuki has produced.

Suzuki is all-set to end the year 2016 with annual sales of about 7.65-7.75 lakh units in Japan, while its subsidiary  Maruti is on its way to end the year with sales of 15.2-15.5 lakh units. Suzuki owns 56% stake in Maruti.

In Japan, Suzukis production this year is lowest in about 5-6 years. But in India, Maruti has been reporting record growth, year after year. Not only Maruti is improving domestic presence, they are also exporting new cars to newer markets. For example, their new Baleno hatchback is exclusively made in India, and exported to the world. It is also the first car Maruti has exported to the home country of its parent.

India is expected to see an increase in the production of Suzuki cars even further as the company will setup their first plant in India which will be 100% owned by them. This is being setup in Gujarat, and will start production by February 2017. Cars produced at the Suzuki plant will be sold in India as well as exported.

Suzuki in India

The interesting point to note here is that Suzuki will be operating as a completely different organization than Maruti Suzuki. This means that Maruti will have to buy cars from Suzuki, which are produced at the Gujarat plant and then sell to customers. This transaction is expected to result in higher profits for Suzuki.

At the same time when Suzuki is finding it difficult to stop decline in sales, it is also contending with a scandal back home, which emerged earlier this year. The company has pleaded guilty for having misrepresented fuel efficiency figures on as many as 16 of their cars.

Suzuki blames the 2008 global financial crisis for this, but states that it was not done to cheat buyers. Suzuki admitted to use of deceptive measures for getting fuel economy of their cars. Suzuki claimed that windy conditions at the companys seaside testing grounds made it mandatory to test some vehicles in the lab rather than outdoors as stipulated by the Government.

via ET Auto
Tata Motors launched the much awaited Xenon facelift today. Called Xenon Yodha, Tata Motors launched the new commercial vehicle in the presence of companys new brand ambassador, Akshay Kumar.

Tata Xenon Yodha is basically Xenon facelift which comes with revised headlight cluster, front grille, front bumper, new taillights, new rear bumper, etc. Overall, the facelift is more attractive and has a larger road presence.

Highlights

 High levels of performance and lowest operating cost

 Available in single cab & double cab, with a competitive price starting at Rs.6.05 lakhs (Single Cab  BSIII) & Rs 6.19 (Single Cab  BSIV)

 Available in 44 and 42 option, with a rated payload of up to 1,250 kg, for a wide range of commercial applications

 Best-in-class engine & drivelines, best-in-load body, with maximum loading area, with high quality paint and thickness

 Contemporary tall SUV styled work horse, with well-appointed comfortable interiors

 Enhanced stability with bigger 16-inch radial tyres, best suited for all loading & terrain requirements

 First-in-segment Customized Free AMC package of 3 years/ 1 lakh km

 Best-in-industry Warranty of 3 years or 3,00,000 km (whichever is earlier)

Tata Xenon Yodha Engine

The Tata Xenon is powered by a 3.0 liter diesel engine offering 53.7 kW (72 HP) in BSIII & 63.4 kW (85 HP) in BS IV, the engine delivers high torque of 223Nm in BS III & 250 Nm in BS IV. Tata Xenon pickup is the most versatile pick-up on Indian roads, claims the company. It is a combination of sturdiness and comfort, performance and looks and is an ideal choice for many small and medium business ventures for their transport operations.

For better mileage, the smart pick-up has a reliable and rugged gear box, for a flat curve at 1600-2200 r/min. This aids in in better pick up in loaded condition, also ensuring lesser gear shifts. Only available in manual transmission option. Automatic Transmission Xenon is not on offer in India.

Dimensions & Features

 Ground clearance of 210 mm

 16 inch tyres

 4 mm chassis frame

 Power Steering

 Adjustable steering column

 High intensity cabin lights

 Carpet flooring on the inside

 High load body with internal length of 2550 mm and width of 1750 mm

News Release
FM denies receiving invitation to attend political consultations





SANA'A, Dec. 28 (Saba)  Foreign Minister Hisham Sharaf on Wednesday denied reports that the Political Leadership or the National Salvation Government have received an invitation to attend consultations aimed at reaching a political settlement.



"Till this moment we have not yet received any official invitation to attend any consultations or meetings," the minister told Saba.



He said the political leadership always welcomes any peace initiative to reach a political settlement that includes a comprehensive cessation of the aggression against the Yemeni people and lift the siege on the country.



"We are committed to the latest road map proposed by the United Nations envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, as a good basis for any coming meetings or consultations," said the minister Sharaf.



Mr. Sharaf stressed on the importance of reaching a comprehensive ceasefire that could succeed such meetings, lifting land, sea and air blockade, and lift siege on the capital Sana'a International



Airport before civil and commercial air traffic "as there were no justifications for closing the airport."

The Foreign Minister expressed his hope that the peace sponsor states would exert all efforts to help end the aggression war on Yemen.



"There will not be a peaceful settlement without preserving the rights of the Yemeni people and the Yemeni soil," Mr. Sharaf said.







HA-ZaK



Saba

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[28/December/2016]
The use of residual forest biomass for rural development faces significant economic hurdles that make it unlikely to be a source of jobs in the near future, according to an analysis by economists at Oregon State University.

In a model of the forest industry, researchers in the College of Forestry combined an evaluation of costs for collecting, transporting and processing biomass with the potential locations of regional processing facilities in western Oregon. Each location was chosen because it is adjacent to an existing or recently-closed wood product operation such as a sawmill or plywood manufacturing plant.

The study, published in Forest Policy and Economics, focused on biomass generated during timber harvesting operations. Biomass consists of branches and treetops that are generally left in the woods or burned. In some highly accessible locations, these residues are ground up or chipped and used to make a product known as "hog fuel."

"There's a lot of interest in focusing on the use of biomass to meet multiple objectives, one of which is support for rural communities," said Mindy Crandall, who led the research as a doctoral student at Oregon State and is an assistant professor at the University of Maine.

"We thought this might provide some support for that idea," she said. "But from a strictly market feasibility perspective, it isn't all that likely that these facilities will be located in remote, struggling rural communities without targeted subsidies or support."

While researchers don't dismiss the possibility of reducing costs by increasing the efficiency of biomass operations, the future feasibility of such development may depend on public investments and the creation of new markets. And while the study considered the possibility of generating biomass from restoration or thinning operations on federal forestlands, it concluded that the additional supply does little to change the economic feasibility of processing facilities.

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It would take changes in technology from transportation to processing as well as the development of new value-added products -- such as aviation fuel and industrial chemicals -- to improve the economic feasibility of biomass, scientists say.

The study may be the first to combine a model of biomass operations with specific locations for regional processing facilities where the material could be processed and stored. Researchers identified 65 likely locations in western Oregon for such facilities, which they call "depots."

The cost of harvesting, chipping and loading biomass at timber harvesting sites comes to about $37.50 per dry ton, researchers estimated. Operating costs of a regional depot -- including labor, fuel, maintenance, electricity and supplies -- would add another $11 per dry ton. These estimates do not include transportation and depot construction.

"The actual levels of these costs that operators experience will be really critical to feasibility," added Crandall.

Researchers have explored the potential for biomass to be used to make aviation fuel, said John Sessions, an OSU professor of forestry who did not take part in this analysis. Sessions has studied the use of forest harvest residues to produce aviation fuel in a project led by Washington State University. While it is technically possible, the economic feasibility of making aviation fuel from biomass would depend on generating income from co-products as well. The first commercial airline flight using aviation fuel made from forest harvest residues was flown by Alaska Airlines last month from Seattle to Washington, D.C., said Sessions, using residues from this project.

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Other efficiencies in biomass processing and transportation could improve economic feasibility, added Sessions. They include reducing its moisture content and increasing its density to reduce trucking costs. The scale of processing facilities could be adjusted to minimize the cost per ton.

Crandall and her colleagues estimated that a depot operating three shifts per day and producing 75,000 dry tons per year would create about 19 jobs.

They also considered the possibility that an increase in material from federal forests would make a difference, but transportation costs would rise because such lands tend to be remote from likely depots.

"Just like with real estate, it's 'location, location, location' that matters here, and national forest lands are not uniformly distributed across the landscape," said Darius Adams, co-author on the paper. "They are frequently in less accessible areas, and it would cost more to transport material."

The potential for biomass, the researchers said, will likely depend on the ability to achieve other aims in addition to generating biomass as a product: wildfire risk reduction, forest restoration, energy and rural economic stimulus.

Support for the research came from the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance led by Washington State funded through the National Institute of Food and Agriculture in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
New North Carolina State University research delves into the movement and evolution of the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s, which set down roots in the United States before attacking Europe.

To track the evolution of differing strains of Phytophthora infestans, the pathogen responsible for the Irish potato famine and a major cause of late-blight disease on potato and tomato plants around the world, NC State plant pathologists studied 12 key regions on the genomes of 183 pathogen samples -- historic and modern -- from across the globe.

The study, published in PLOS ONE, shows that a lineage called FAM-1 caused outbreaks of potato late blight in the United States in 1843 and then two years later in Great Britain and Ireland. It was also found in historic samples from Colombia suggesting a South American origin. FAM-1 caused massive and debilitating late-blight disease outbreaks in Europe, leaving starvation and migration in its wake. Jean Ristaino, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor of Plant Pathology and the corresponding author of the study, theorizes that the pathogen arrived in Europe via infected potatoes on South American ships or directly from infected potatoes from the United States.

But FAM-1 wasn't just a one-hit wonder that made its mark and then quickly disappeared.

"FAM-1 was widespread and dominant in the United States in the mid-to-late 19th century and the early 20th century," Ristaino said. "It also was found in Costa Rica and Columbia in the early 20th century."

FAM-1 survived for about 100 years in the United States but was then displaced by a different strain of the pathogen called US-1, Ristaino said.

"US-1 is not a direct descendant of FAM-1, but rather a sister lineage," Ristaino said.

US-1, in turn, has been elbowed out of its eponymous homeland by even more aggressive strains of the pathogen that have originated in Mexico. Our winter vegetable crops, grown there and imported into the U.S., harbor the pathogen, she said.

The pathogen's effects aren't limited to the decimation of Ireland's potato crop 170 years ago. Billions are spent worldwide each year in attempts to control the pathogen, Ristaino said. Potatoes in the developing world are particularly vulnerable as fungicides are less available and expensive.
Varmint hunters' choice of ammunition plays a role in the amount of lead that scavengers such as golden eagles could ingest, a new study shows, and offers a way to minimize the lead exposure to wildlife.

Using a new bullet-fragment recovery technique known as "digestion," the research also suggests that radiographs, or X-rays, a common tool for estimating how much of the toxic metal left is behind in shot pests or game animals, tend to produce low estimates.

A team of researchers that included Oregon State University undergraduate student Mason Wagner and U.S. Geological Survey scientists collected 127 Belding's ground squirrel carcasses from alfalfa fields in southern Oregon and northern California.

Eleven western states produce roughly 40 percent of the U.S.'s alfalfa, and burrowing mammals such as ground squirrels and prairie dogs can cause significant yield loss. Shooting the rodents is an important form of pest control as well as a popular recreational pastime throughout the West.

The carcasses are typically left on the fields, where avian scavengers like eagles, hawks and kestrels descend upon the carrion to feed both themselves and their nestlings.

This study looked at how much lead remained in the carcasses and how that correlated with the type of bullet used. Models were also created to estimate from radiographs the amount of lead left in a carcass and the potential effect of the lead on nestlings' mortality, growth and production of an enzyme critical to the blood's ability to carry oxygen.

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Results of the study by Oregon State's College of Agricultural Sciences and the USGS were recently published in PLOS ONE.

The research found 80 percent of shot carcasses had detectible fragments of lead. The study also found bullet type didn't have an effect on the number of fragments, but it did influence the mass of the retained fragments. Also, smaller carcasses showed more "pass-through," i.e. less retained lead.

Squirrels shot with high-velocity, high-mass .17-caliber Super Mag bullets, for example, had 28 times the retained fragment mass of those shot with .22-caliber solid bullets. One percent of the Super Mags' original mass was left behind, by far the highest percentage of any ammo type, and the Super Mag fragments also dispersed more than two times farther through the carcass -- making them more likely to be eaten by a scavenging animal.

Modeling suggested that hawk and eagle nestlings fed regularly with shot ground squirrels could likely lose more than half the production of the key enzyme ALAD throughout the nestling period, though no nestlings would be expected to die of lead poisoning. They could, though, eat enough lead to impair late-nestling-stage growth, but by then they would have done most of their growing anyway.

The digestion procedure for extracting bullet fragments involved processing carcasses into a solution that was run through sieves and a gold-prospecting sluice box. Researchers used digestion on 30 carcasses to determine a relationship between digestion results and radiography results.

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"We found that radiographs are not very accurate at estimating how much lead is left in a carcass," said study co-author Collin Eagles-Smith, a USGS ecologist and OSU courtesy assistant professor of fisheries and wildlife. "They underestimate density when there are more small fragments. Small ones are the pieces that are more digestible and likely to enter the circulatory system."

Radiography has also been used to estimate how much lead is present in shot game animals such as deer and elk.

In addition to providing a check on the accuracy of estimating via radiography, the research also suggests a way for hunters to minimize the amount of lead left in varmint carcasses.

"The sheer number of carcasses after a hunting session is a challenge to pick up, assuming you can even find all of the carcasses," said lead author Garth Herring, also a USGS ecologist. "Picking up every last carcass is not realistic, but there are choices people can make regarding ammunition that may result in smaller amounts of lead in the carcasses left behind."

Eagles-Smith noted that rodenticides, an alternative to shooting, have their own toxicological implications.

"These pests are really an economic threat to farmers, and shooting them is one method to control their numbers," he said. "Choosing an ammunition type, such as .22-caliber solid bullets, that creates substantially fewer fragments can be a way to minimize lead exposure to scavengers and other wildlife."
I am seeing some chatter over the past few days of traffic and algorithm shifts within Google search. The issue is, it is the holiday break weekend and search volume is completely different this week and also the fact that most of Google is on vacation this week. So I doubt Google launched any algorithmic changes this week, during the holiday break.

Chatter began two days ago in this ongoing WebmasterWorld thread. Here are some of those comments:

Yesterday and today my organic traffic is well above normal. Freaky both by day and by holiday season. Something happening.

Me too...My total traffic has continued to decline straight through the holiday...now down by 2/3 since the 14th for no apparent reason at all.

US ecommerce, organic Google traffic is down 40%-50%.

Same here. Significant increase year over year and week over week.

The deal is, this week is really dead for most people. Most people I know are off or working less hours. So none of this is surprising.

John Mueller from Google responded to one such question, a webmaster blaming the mobile first index, which isn't live yet on the issue. John said:

@Neuromancer My guess those are normal fluctuations, independent of the mobile-first index experiments. Happy to look if you have a URL.  John .o()o. (@JohnMu) December 29, 2016

Virtually all of the automated tracking tools show very little fluctuation in the search results in the past week or so. The last big change we covered was on December 15th.

So I think what webmasters are seeing are just normal holiday slowness.

What do you think, was there an update?

Forum discussion at Twitter and WebmasterWorld.
Page Content

When an employee asks for a disability accommodation, an employer may be inclined to request a doctor's note. But is this generally the best move for the company?

The issue of if and when to ask for a doctor's note is a matter of debate. One lawyer interviewed by SHRM Online emphasized the need for doctors' notes in the vast majority of cases to show medical justification for an accommodation. But two other lawyers emphasized that doctors' notes are needed only in certain situations, stressing that it depends on the circumstances.

Disability Law

Under California law, companies generally must provide "reasonable accommodation" to workers who can't perform necessary job functions because of a disability. Employers also must engage in the "interactive process" with workers who need this type of accommodation. The interactive process is an ongoing effort by both sides to evaluate potential accommodations.

[SHRM members-only how-to guide: How to Manage Disability Accommodations in California]

This process is governed by the Fair Employment and Housing Act, which protects disabled employees from discrimination and harassment.

Despite the debate over doctors' notes, lawyers say they're not aware of any court rulings on this specific topic.

Should You Ask for a Note?

There are valid reasons to ask workers for a doctor's note, according to Nancy Yaffe, an attorney with Fox Rothschild in Los Angeles. Generally, if an employee lacks a note, the employer won't know if the accommodation is medically necessary, she said. And without a note, the employer won't know how long the accommodation should last, she added.

In October, Yaffe debated the issue of doctors' notes during a Los Angeles County Bar Association panel discussion. In a blog post, Yaffe wrote that "one issue that sparked a lot of debate among the panelists (and attendees) was my recommendation to employers to consistently request a doctor's note to substantiate requests for accommodations, and to facilitate the interactive process. My advice was based on my experience with employees who ask for the moon (such as the stated need for a walking desk or first class air travel or a job transfer to a role for a preferred supervisor), but often can't substantiate those requests with any medical requirement."

Because many disabilities aren't visible, "accommodation requests can't be properly evaluated without medical justification," Yaffe wrote.

She told SHRM Online of a situation in which a client's employee was injured in a car accident. The woman hurt her knee, and the employer accommodated her by letting her sit with her leg up and by giving her a parking spot convenient to the workplace so she wouldn't have to walk far.

Yaffe recalled that the new HR director called her a year and a half later, asking: "Hey, Nancy, why does this woman have this parking spot?"

It turns out that the business never requested an updated doctor's note from the employee. When the company finally resumed the interactive process and followed up about the employee's need for an accommodation, it was discovered that the accommodation wasn't necessary anymore.

"My default is that in the vast, vast majority of circumstances, it's absolutely appropriate to ask for a doctor's note," Yaffe said. "Overwhelmingly, the policy should be to get a doctor's note."

In contrast to Yaffe, attorney David Geffen emphasized that doctors' notes are needed only in certain circumstances.

When the disability-related needs aren't completely clear, a doctor's note helps to clarify those needs, said Geffen, a mediator in Santa Monica who also participated in the bar association's panel discussion.

But when the disability-related needs are entirely clear, requesting a doctor's note is unnecessaryand might even be perceived as harassment, Geffen said. He cites the example of a blind person who needs assistive technology, like a reader, in the workplace. In this case, a doctor's note isn't needed, he said.

Although employers need to be careful, there are situations in which requesting a doctor's note would make sense, according to Geffen. When there are several different work arrangements that could accommodate an employee, a doctor's note could help an employer decide which accommodation is best, he said.

Situations Vary

Employers aren't required to provide all accommodations requested. They're only required to provide the ones that are necessary to accommodate a disability, and the employer gets to choose if more than one option is available, Geffen explained. In these situations, it makes sense to get a doctor's note because the company might want the doctor's input on the various possibilities, he said.

Like Geffen, attorney Christine Baran emphasized the need for doctors' notes in only some circumstances. She framed the issue as revolving around the type of accommodation requested.

If the request is something significant, then it's a good idea to get a doctor's note, according to Baran, of Fisher & Phillips in Irvine. But if it would be a "quick, easy, minimal" accommodation, a doctor's note is unnecessary, she told SHRM Online.

For instance, if the employee says he or she has eye problems and requests a lightbulb change, then there would be no need for a note, she said. But if an employee asks to work from home three days a week to obtain medical treatment, a doctor's note generally would make sense, she said.

However, Baran agreed with Geffen that if the disability-related needs are completely clear, then a doctor's note would be unnecessary. For example, if a blind employee asks to work from home three days a week to get assistance from a reader at home, there's no reason to request a note, according to Baran.

Despite her stance favoring doctors' notes, Yaffe said there are some very limited exceptions. For instance, she said that if an employee is clearly blindif, say, the worker uses a white cane and a guide dogthen there's no need for a note. But if an employee with diabetes is going blind, for example, the employer should request a note to understand the extent of the impairment, she added.

Toni Vranjes is a freelance business writer in San Pedro, Calif.
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As expected EW (electronic warfare) based systems for detecting and disabling commercial UAVs are beginning to appear. An Israeli military electronics firm recently announced ReDrone, a portable (three large suitcases of gear needed a few minutes for set up) system for detecting and interfering with the operation of commercial UAVs. These are the kind of UAVs favored by terrorists and criminals in general. ReDrone takes advantage of the fact that these UAVs have published specifications which makes it easier to build a database of frequencies to look for and tap into or jam. The database used by ReDrone can be updated as new UAVs appear or change the frequencies they use. ReDrone can also be equipped to detect and jam illegal (for UAV use) frequencies that criminals could use via minor changes to commercial UAVs. ReDrone can be set to just detect, track and identify or to jam (or even take over) control signals or video feeds.

ReDrone can also be used with a similar product; SupervisIR, which detects heat. This is important because most commercial UAVs can be used on automatic (moving along a preprogrammed path) and taking pictures and video that are stored on the UAV and accessed only after the UAV automatically returns and lands. These can only be detected visually or, at night, via infrared (heat sensing). ReDrone and SupervisIR are designed to work together and produce a common display of what is out there. Both these systems are sold mainly to military and police organizations.

Its no surprise that Israeli firms are working on products like ReDrone and SupervisIR because Israel has had to deal with more commercial UAVs used by criminals (usually Islamic terrorists) than any other nation.
Norway has ordered five American P-8A maritime reconnaissance aircraft to replace six P-3 Orion and three DA-20 Jet Falcon aircraft. Like many NATO countries Norway felt little need to upgrade their ASW (anti-submarine warfare) aircraft. But now Russia has revived the Cold War and the Norwegians are responding. Until 2014 Norway planned to refurbish its P-3Cs so they could serve another 20 years. But once Russia began acting up, the more expensive option (P-8As) became more attractive. The two DA-20 aircraft are French business jets equipped for ELIMNT (intelligence collection) work. P-8As can also be equipped to handle that.

The P-8 Poseidon is based on the widely used Boeing 737 airliner. Although the Boeing 737 based P-8A is a two engine jet, compared to the four engine turboprop P-3, it is a far more capable plane. The P-8A has 23 percent more floor space than the P-3 and is larger (38 meter/118 foot wingspan, versus 32.25 meter/100 foot) and heavier (83 tons versus 61). Most other characteristics are the same. Both can stay in the air about 10 hours per sortie. Speed is different. Cruise speed for the 737 is 910 kilometers an hour, versus 590 for the P-3. This makes it possible for the P-8A to get to a patrol area faster, which is a major advantage when chasing down subs first spotted by distant sonar arrays or satellites. However, the P-3 can carry more weapons (9 tons versus 5.6). This is less of a factor as the weapons (torpedoes, missiles, mines, sonobouys) are lighter and more effective today and that trend continues. Both carry the same size crew of 10-11 pilots and equipment operators. Both aircraft carry search radar and various other sensors.

The 737 has, like the P-3, been equipped with hard points on the wings for torpedoes or missiles. The B-737 is a more modern design and has been used successfully since the 1960s by commercial aviation. Navy aviators are confident that it will be as reliable as the P-3. The P-3 was based on the Electra civilian airliner that first flew in 1954, although only 170 were built, plus 600 P-3s. Some Electras are still in service. The Boeing 737 first flew in 1965, and over 5,000 have been built. The P-8A will be the first 737 designed with a bomb bay and four wing racks for weapons. The P-8A for Norway costs about $230 million each.

The P-8 entered service in 2013. The U.S. is buying 122 P-8s and already has over 30 in service. India has eight with four more on order. Australia has one in service and 11 more on the way. Britain has ordered nine and several other nations are now interested because users so far are satisfied with P-8 performance.
by Austin Bay December 29, 2016

25 years ago this week.(December 26, 1991) the Soviet Union (USSR) collapsed. Though Cold War has no definitive peace treaty per se, with the Kremlin's Communist empire in fragments everyone knew the great military and economic struggle between the free world and the Communist bloc had ended.

Fortunately the Cold War didn't end with a nuclear bang. North Americans and western Europeans typically reacted with the same mix of relief and pinch-me disbelief that characterized their reactions on November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall cracked. Oh, there were some intellectuals who swore history had ended and liberal democratic free enterprise had defeated all comers. Others noted the brewing conflicts in the Balkans and thought they were about to get a return to ugly history. We could agree that with USSR's demise meant there was less to dread. But what would replace it?

Starting in Fall 1989, former Warsaw Pact nations like Poland and Hungary began gleefully shedding their Communist chains. They were racing west, thank you, and looked forward to eventually joining NATO. Poland had been invaded in 1939 by the USSR's Red Army. In 1939, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's Red Army invaded Poland, as an ally of Nazi Germany. In 1956 Hungary had revolted against the Soviet occupation. Historian Dr. A. A. Nofi argues that the liberation of Eastern Europe will prove to be the most significant long-term historical impact of the Soviet collapse.

The Baltic nations were looking forward to the USSR's demise. The citizens of the other non-Russian Soviet republics had hated the dictatorship that ruled by fear. However, there were mixed emotions, especially in countries like Ukraine, who had substantial Russian population. No one knew quite what to expect.

Russians were confused. They hated Stalinist Communism and its gulags, but the domestic poverty and crime they confronted gave many the impression that freedom was a form of dangerous anarchy.

Russian pride took a heavy blow. Russia, as the USSR's kingpin, had been a world power -- the Kremlin versus Washington. Remembering the German reaction to losing WW1, American and British leaders tried to minimize the damage to Russian national esteem. Check the record: both the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations tried to include Russia as a diplomatic partner. But the Russian people knew they had lost a long war.

The Russian Army-- the core of the old Soviet Army-- was a mess but still overmatched the armies of former Warsaw Pact satellites and the ad hoc militaries ex-Soviet Socialist Republics concocted. But Russians had lost their confidence; from their perspective neighbors who once feared them mocked them. So they cheered when Russian forces lingered in Moldova's Transdnistr region, becoming "peacekeepers" protecting ethnic Russians.

Left-behind Russians were (and still are) a problem. So were left-behind nukes, particularly in Ukraine. The Clinton Administration, Ukraine and Britain thought they had solved the problem of ex-Soviet nukes and Ukrainian territorial sovereignty when the Kremlin agreed to the Budapest Accord of 1994. Ukraine would give up its nukes and Russia would respect Ukraine's borders, as is, including the Crimean Peninsula, a region most Russians regard as Russian territory.

However, in February 2014 Russian President Vladimir Putin's modernized Russian Army launched a "stealth invasion" of Crimea and shredded the Budapest Accord. In March 2014, Putin's Kremlin annexed the Crimean Peninsula.

In Europe, armed land grabs followed by annexation have history of inciting huge bloodbaths. The last nation to attempt it was Adolf Hitler's Germany. The war in eastern Ukraine is no blitzkrieg; it's a creeping war of aggression, fought in fits and starts.

There is nothing cold about the war -- it's a simmering war, and it has spawned a simmering arms race. Poland has responded by expanding its military. As a political deterrent, NATO is slowly "forward deploying" U.S. and western European forces.
Mexicos Cartel War passed the ten year mark on December 11. Thats the day then-president Calderon ordered a military-led task force to enter Michoacan state and defeat very-well armed organized criminal gangs that out-gunned local and state police. Calderon feared the drug gangs were on the verge of carving out drug duchies similar to those in Colombia. Calderon was quickly criticized for militarizing a criminal problem. However, Mexico faced an unusual situation. The drug cartels had gunmen who were better trained than the police. They also had military-grade arms. The drug gangs had lots of cash to bribe politicians as well as local and state police. Drug gang firepower and cash had overwhelmed local police forces and government institutions. The drug cartels also turned their guns on one another as they fought turf wars for control of drug trafficking routes to the U.S. Mexican citizens were often caught in crossfires. The gangs also extorted money from legitimate businesses and kidnapped people for ransom. With cartel gunmen ambushing and out-gunning municipal, state and federal police, Calderon decided he had to use the military as a last resort. The Mexican military is the one institution the long-governing PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) had never completely corrupted. As 2017 begins, the military remains one of the most highly trusted institutions in Mexican society.

Unfortunately, in terms of tactics and operations, December 2016 looks a lot like December 2006. Heres part of the StrategyPage Mexico update from that month.

December 17, 2006: The (Mexican) Army announced a major drug bust operation in western Mexico. The army arrested Elias Valencia, head of the Valencia drug cartelThe Army and various police organizations began a large-scale counter-drug operation in Michoacan state on December 11. The operation included a large "sweep" of Michoacan by troops supported by armored vehicles. Police had been ambushed in southwestern Michoacan and it looks like the armored vehicles were a response to the road ambushes. The state has been the scene of fighting between the Gulf Carteland the Valencia cartel. The two cartels had been shooting at one another and committing "execution style" gangland slayings. The army reported one firefight on December 13 near what was described as a "marihuana plantation."Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderon, promised he would take action against the drug gangs. It looks like action includes the Mexican Army deployed as a police force but also conducting operations that look more than a bit like counter-insurgency operations.

The current president Pena thought he could demilitarize the war. During his 2012 campaign for the presidency he promised to create a new paramilitary police force (a gendarmerie) that would be trained and equipped to battle the drug cartels. However, much to its dismay, the Mexican military continues to do most of the fighting. (Austin Bay)

December 27, 2016: Violence is once again increasing in Ciudad Juarez (Chihuahua state). In October 2015 there were 96 homicides in the city. So far this year there have been 454 murders. This means 2016 will be the deadliest year in Ciudad Juarez since 2012. That was the year a turf war between the Juarez cartel and the Sinaloa cartel petered out with a Sinaloa victory. Now police report that the number of cartel commando-type raids in the city has increased. This indicates another turf war is in full swing. With Sinaloa senior commander Joaquin Guzman once again in prison other cartels are testing Sinaloas ability to defend its turf.

December 26, 2016: Spokesmen for self-defense forces in Guerrero state say they remain frustrated with the governments inability to provide security in rural areas. Thats why citizens in rural areas continue to resist government attempts to break up the community self-defense forces (also called local militias and autodefensas).

December 25, 2016: Cartel gunmen killed 13 people in Michoacan and Guerrero states. The state prosecutors office in Michoacan reported that police found six heads in the town of Jiquilpan. The police believe the heads belong to Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG) gunmen. CJNG is fighting a turf war with the New Michoacan Family cartel (NFM).

December 23, 2016: Costa Rica is investigating reports that former Veracruz state governor Javier Duarte has fled Mexico and is now hiding in Costa Rica. Duarte disappeared in early November and is wanted on corruption charges in Mexico. He was a member of the ruling PRI but PRI kicked Duarte out of the party after he was accused of collaborating with organized criminal gangs and money laundering.

December 19, 2016: UN economists estimate that Mexicos GDP would decline 2.7 percent if the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is completely eliminated. The estimate is based on the fact that approximately 85 percent of Mexicos exports by value are exported to Canada and the U.S., the other members of NAFTA.

December 15, 2016: The national refugee agency, COMAR, said that conditions in Central America indicate that Mexico will face a sharp increase in the number of people from Central American nations seeking asylum. In 2015 Mexico received 3,424 asylum applications in 2015. The government said the 2016 application figure exceeds 8,000. Most of the applicants come from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. COMAR expects over 20,000 applications in 2017. The asylum seekers are fleeing gang violence and poverty.

December 13, 2016: Police have discovered two more super tunnels running beneath the border and connecting Tijuana to San Diego. One was finished, the other was still under construction. Both tunnels began in a warehouse district in Tijuana.

December 11, 2016: Ten years ago today the Cartel War began and since then an estimated 100,000 people have been killed in the war and another 30,000 are missing.

December 9, 2016: President Pena announced that military personnel will continue to be deployed to combat drug-related violence. Penas statement came after the Defense Minister said he that he was uncomfortable with the anti-cartel mission. The military was not the appropriate instrument for combating criminal gangs, but the military was doing the job because no one else could do it. Many municipal policemen in Mexico are corrupt, poorly trained or unreliable.

Police in Guerrero state found the burned bodies of three federal detectives in a charred pickup truck near the town of Zihuatanejo. The body of a fourth victim was found near the truck. Prosecutors believe the murder victims may have been cooperating with the Jalisco New Generation cartel.

Federal police and Mexican military personnel arrested Alfredo Beltran Guzmannear the city of Guadalajara. Prosecutors believe Beltran Guzman is now the senior commander of the Beltran Leyva cartel (also called the Beltran Leyva Organization).

December 5, 2016: The government reported that in October 2016 national unemployment fell to its lowest level in nine years.

December 3, 2016: American and Mexican media report that the Zetas cartel is fracturing and re-fracturing. Two rival faction, the Cartel Del Noreste and Grupo Bravo/Zetas Vieja Escuela, are fighting a turf war. The war began in Tamaulipas but has now spread into Nuevo Leon and Coahuila. There are also reports that the Zetas Vieja Escuela ar trying to forge an alliance with the Gulf cartel.

December 2, 2016: The director of the U.S. Border Patrol has told Congress that 7,400 border patrol agents have been assaulted since 2006.

December 1, 2016: A U.S. federal court sentenced a drug smuggler to 27 years in jail. Manuel Fernandez-Valencia worked with both the Sinaloa cartel and the Beltran-Leyva Organization. He moved cocaine from Mexico and Central America to the U.S. west coast and Midwest. According to prosecutors he would use almost any means of transportation to smuggle the drugs --from aircraft, mini-submarines, fishing boats, trucks, cars and -- yes-- container ships.

November 30, 2016: A member of The Texas Mexican Mafia, a Texas gang believed to be aligned with Mexican cartels, has been sentenced to five consecutive life prison terms without parole for his involvement in five murders. One of the murder victims was a policeman.

November 29, 2016: Prosecutors in Guerrero state said they have jailed one of the Sinaloa cartels chief opium smugglers. Vicente Carrillo Salmeron was arrested in in the city of Acapulco. Police found him in possession of weapons, cocaine and methamphetamines.
Freeport-McMoRan Inc. engages in the mining of mineral properties in North America, South America, and Indonesia. The company primarily explores for copper, gold, molybdenum, silver, and other metals, as well as oil and gas. Its assets include the Grasberg minerals district in Indonesia; Morenci, Bagdad, Safford, Sierrita, and Miami in Arizona; Tyrone and Chino in New Mexico; and Henderson and Climax in Colorado, North America, as well as Cerro Verde in Peru and El Abra in Chile. The company also operates a portfolio of oil and gas properties primarily located in offshore California and the Gulf of Mexico. As of December 31, 2021, it operated approximately 135 wells. The company was formerly known as Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. and changed its name to Freeport-McMoRan Inc. in July 2014. Freeport-McMoRan Inc. was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona.
A headline that would become famous appeared in the New York Daily News in October 1975 after then-President Gerald Ford denied federal assistance to spare the city from bankruptcy. It read: "Ford to City: Drop Dead."

President Obama has told Israel much the same. By instructing his U.N. ambassador not to veto a resolution condemning Israel for building so-called settlements on disputed land, the president has aided and comforted that nation's enemies. The U.S. abstention will inevitably invite stepped-up attacks against Israelis, as well as calls for more boycotts by the European Union, whose ugly anti-Semitic past and present is well documented.

In the Middle East, symbols can be more important than substance, and this symbolic act will send a strong message to Israel's enemies.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the resolution a "shameful ambush" and "distorted," noting, "It states that the Jewish quarter and Western Wall (in Jerusalem) are occupied, which is absurd." Netanyahu, who has had a tense relationship with President Obama, suggested he expects better relations between the U.S. and Israel after Donald Trump becomes president.

Netanyahu likes to cite history to show how the Jews were in the land long before Arab peoples showed up and started rewriting the past to the point that it belongs in the fiction section of bookstores.

What makes anyone think that what Israel does, or does not do, has any effect on the behavior and declared religious mandate of those dedicated to eliminating the country and killing and/or expelling every Jew from it? Did unilaterally relinquishing Gaza bring Israel closer to peace? It did not. Instead, it invited Hamas to use the region as a launching pad for terrorist attacks. It is the same with agreements between Palestinian and Israeli leaders. Israel released terrorist prisoners and got more terror. Israel gave up land and got more terror. Only the deliberately blind and deaf who refuse to believe the stated and repeated goals of Palestinian leadership and much of the Arab world (and Iran) to eliminate Israel still think that the key to peace and stability lies solely with that country.

Only the self-deluded think the establishment of a separate Palestinian state will result in peace. Such a state would most certainly be used as a base for a modern "final solution" against Israel.

What kind of state would the Palestinians establish? Their leaders have already said it would be one without Jews. Netanyahu noted that in any other scenario this would be seen as "ethnic cleansing," but because much of the world hates Jews and is embarrassed by Israel and its prosperity, it applies a different standard to the Palestinians.

The late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin once told me that while Israel needs friends, it could never fully trust any nation for its security. The Obama administration's refusal to veto the U.N. resolution is more proof he was right.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says he will ask Congress to stop sending money to the U.N. until the resolution is repealed. His proposal is gaining support among some pro-Israel Democrats. Netanyahu has announced the termination of programs and aid to nations that voted in favor of the resolution and recalled some of his country's ambassadors from those states.

At a time when Jews the world over are celebrating Hanukkah and the miracle of lights, Barack Obama has attempted to turn out the light on the Jewish state. Israel will survive, because it has survived worse than a U.N. resolution, but the action will only encourage her enemies, which include every nation that voted for this resolution and engaged in boycotts of Israeli products and businesses.

The prophet Isaiah wrote: "Speak tenderly to Jerusalem" (Isaiah 40:2). The Psalmist said: "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem" (Psalm 122:6). In his final insult to Israel, President Obama has spoken harshly and ensured there will be more war, not peace. The Nobel committee should demand he return his prematurely awarded Peace Prize.
Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc., an offshore energy services company, provides specialty services to the offshore energy industry primarily in Brazil, the Gulf of Mexico, North Sea, the Asia Pacific, and West Africa regions. The company operates through three segments: Well Intervention, Robotics, and Production Facilities. It engages in the installation of flowlines, control umbilicals, and manifold assemblies and risers; trenching and burial of pipelines; installation and tie-in of riser and manifold assembly; commissioning, testing, and inspection activities; and provision of cable and umbilical lay, and connection services. The company also provides well intervention, intervention engineering, and production enhancement services; inspection, repair, and maintenance of production structures, trees, jumpers, risers, pipelines, and subsea equipment; and related support services. In addition, it offers reclamation and remediation services; well plug and abandonment services; pipeline abandonment services; and site inspections. Additionally, the company offers oil and natural gas processing facilities and services; and fast response system, as well as site clearance and subsea support services. It serves independent oil and gas producers and suppliers, pipeline transmission companies, renewable energy companies, and offshore engineering and construction firms. The company was formerly known as Cal Dive International, Inc. and changed its name to Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. in March 2006. Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. was incorporated in 1979 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
The following companies are subsidiares of PepsiCo: Alimentos Quaker Oats y Compania Limitada, Alimentos del Istmo S.A., Amavale Agricola Ltda., Anderson Hill Insurance Limited, Asia Bottlers Limited, BAESA Capital Corporation Ltd., BFY Brands, BFY Brands LLC, BFY Brands Limited, BUG de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Balmoral Industries LLC, Bare Foods Co., Barrhead LLC, Be & Cheery, Beaman Bottling Company, Bebidas Sudamerica S.A., Beech Limited, Bell Taco Funding Syndicate, Bendler Investments II Ltd, Bendler Investments S.a r.l, Beverage Services Limited, Beverages Foods & Service Industries Inc., Bishkeksut OJSC, Blaue NC S. de R.L. de C.V., Blue Cloud Distribution Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Arizona Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Arkansas Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Colorado Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Florida Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Georgia Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Illinois Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Indiana Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Iowa Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Kentucky Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Louisiana Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Minnesota Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Mississippi Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Missouri Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Nebraska Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Nevada Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of North Carolina Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Ohio Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Oklahoma Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Pennsylvania Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of South Carolina Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Tennessee Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Texas Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Virginia Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Wisconsin Inc., Blue Ridge Sales LLC, Bluebird Foods Limited, Bluecan Holdings Unlimited Company, Bokomo Zambia Limited, Bolsherechensky Molkombinat JSC, Boquitas Fiestas LLC, Boquitas Fiestas S.R.L., Bottling Group Financing LLC, Bottling Group Holdings LLC, Bottling Group LLC, Bronte Industries Ltd, C & I Leasing Inc., CB Manufacturing Company Inc., CEME Holdings LLC, CMC Investment Company, Caroni Investments LLC, Centro-Mediterranea de Bebidas Carbonicas PepsiCo S.L., Ceres Fruit Juices Pty Ltd, ChampBev Inc., China Concentrate Holdings Hong Kong Limited, Chipsy International for Food Industries S.A.E., Chipsy for Food Industries S.A.E., Chitos Internacional y Cia Ltda, Cipa Industrial de Produtos Alimentares Ltda., Cipa Nordeste Industrial de Produtos Alimentares Ltda., Cocina Autentica Inc., Comercializadora CMC Investment y Compania Limitada, Comercializadora Nacional SAS Ltda., Comercializadora PepsiCo Mexico S de R.L. de C.V., Compania de Bebidas PepsiCo S.L., Concentrate Holding Uruguay Pte. Ltd., Concentrate Manufacturing Singapore Pte. Ltd., Confiteria Alegro S. de R.L. de C.V., Copella Fruit Juices Limited, Copper Beech International LLC, Corina Snacks Limited, Corporativo Internacional Mexicano S. de R.L. de C.V., CytoSport Holdings Inc., CytoSport Inc., Davlyn Realty Corporation, Defosto Holdings Limited, Desarrollo Inmobiliario Gamesa S. de R.L. de C.V., Dilexis S.A., Donon Holdings Limited, Drinkfinity USA Inc., Drinkstation Inc., Drinkstation Innovation Co. Ltd., Drinkstation Limited, Dutch Snacks Holding S.A. de C.V., Duyvis Production B.V., EPIC Enterprises Inc., Echo Bay Holdings Inc., Elaboradora Argentina de Cereales S.R.L., Enter Logistica LLC, Environ at Inverrary Partnership, Environ of Inverrary Inc., Eridanus Investments S.a r.l, Evercrisp Snack Productos de Chile S.A., FL Transportation Inc., FLI Andean LLC, FLI Colombia LLC, FLI Snacks Andean GP LLC, Fabrica PepsiCo Mexicali S. de R.L. de C.V., Fabrica de Productos Alimenticios Rene y Cia S.C.A., Fairlight International SRL, Far East Bottlers Hong Kong Limited, Food Concepts Pioneer Ltd., Forest Akers Nederland B.V., Forty-Six Peaks Holding Inc., Fovarosi Asvanyviz es Uditoipari Zartkoruen Mukodo Reszvenytarsasag, Freshwater International B.V., Frito Lay Gida Sanayi Ve Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Frito Lay Poland Sp. z o.o., Frito Lay Sp. z o.o., Frito Lay de Guatemala y Compania Limitada, Frito-Lay Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Frito-Lay Dip Company Inc., Frito-Lay Dominicana S.A., Frito-Lay Global Investments B.V., Frito-Lay Inc., Frito-Lay Investments B.V., Frito-Lay Manufacturing LLC, Frito-Lay Netherlands Holding B.V., Frito-Lay North America Inc., Frito-Lay Sales Inc., Frito-Lay Trading Company Europe GmbH, Frito-Lay Trading Company GmbH, Frito-Lay Trading Company Poland GmbH, Frito-Lay Trinidad Unlimited, Fruko Mesrubat Sanayi Limited Sirketi, GB Czech LLC, GB International Inc., GB Russia LLC, GB Slovak LLC, GMP Manufacturing Inc., Gambrinus Investments Limited, Gamesa LLC, Gamesa S. de R.L. de C.V., Gas Natural de Merida S. A. de C. V., Gatorade Puerto Rico Company, General Bottlers of Hungary Inc., Golden Grain Company, Goveh S.R.L., Grayhawk Leasing LLC, Green Hemlock International LLC, Grupo Frito Lay y Compania Limitada, Grupo Gamesa S. de R.L. de C.V., Grupo Mabel, Grupo Sabritas S. de R.L. de C.V., Gulkevichskiy Maslozavod JSC, Hangzhou Baicaowei Corporate Management Consulting Co. Ltd., Hangzhou Haomusi Food Co, Hangzhou Haomusi Food Co. Ltd., Hangzhou Tao Dao Technology Co. Ltd., Health Warrior, Health Warrior Inc., Heathland LP, Helioscope Limited, Hillbrook Inc., Hillgrove Inc., Hillwood Bottling LLC, Hogganfield Limited Partnership, Holding Company "Opolie" JSC, Homefinding Company of Texas, Hudson Valley Insurance Company, IC Equities Inc., IZZE Beverage Co., Inmobiliaria Interamericana S.A. De C.V., Integrated Beverage Services Bangladesh Limited, Integrated Foods & Beverages Pvt. Ltd., International Bottlers Management Co. LLC, International KAS Aktiengesellschaft, Inversiones Borneo S.R.L., Inversiones PFI Chile Limitada, Inviting Foods Holdings Inc., Inviting Foods LLC, KAS Anorthosis S.a r.l, KAS S.L., KFC, Kevita Inc., Kinvara LLC, Kungursky Molkombinat JSC, Larragana S.L., Latin American Holdings Ltd., Latin American Snack Foods ApS, Latin Foods International LLC, Lebedyansky, Lebedyansky Holdings LLC, Lebedyansky LLC, Limited Liability Company "Sandora", Linkbay Limited, Lithuanian Snacks UAB, Mabel, Marbo Product d.o.o. Beograd, Marbo d.o.o. Laktasi, Matudis - Comercio de Produtos Alimentares Limitada, Matutano - Sociedade de Produtos Alimentares Lda., Mid-America Improvement Corporation, Mountainview Insurance Company Inc., Muscle Milk, NCJV LLC, New Bern Transport Corporation, New Century Beverage Company LLC, Noble Leasing LLC, Northeast Hot-Fill Co-op Inc., Office at Solyanka LLC, Onbiso Inversiones S.L., One World Enterprises LLC, One World Investors Inc., P-A Barbados Bottling Company LLC, P-A Bottlers Barbados SRL, P-Americas LLC, PAS Luxembourg S.a r.l, PAS Netherlands B.V., PBG Canada Holdings II LLC, PBG Canada Holdings Inc., PBG Cyprus Holdings Limited, PBG Investment Partnership, PBG Midwest Holdings S.a r.l, PBG Soda Can Holdings S.a r.l, PCBL LLC, PCNA Manufacturing Inc., PR Beverages Cyprus Holding Limited, PR Beverages Cyprus Russia Holding Limited, PRB Luxembourg S.a r.l, PRS Inc., PSAS Inversiones LLC, PSE Logistica S.R.L., PT Quaker Indonesia, Papas Chips S.A., Pei N.V., Pep Trade LLC, Pepsi B.V., Pepsi Beverages Holdings Inc., Pepsi Bottling Group Global Finance LLC, Pepsi Bottling Group GmbH, Pepsi Bottling Group Hoosiers B.V., Pepsi Bottling Holdings Inc., Pepsi Bugshan Investments S.A.E., Pepsi Cola Colombia Ltda, Pepsi Cola Egypt S.A.E., Pepsi Cola Panamericana S.R.L., Pepsi Cola Servis Ve Dagitim Limited Sirketi, Pepsi Cola Trading Ireland, Pepsi Logistics Company Inc., Pepsi Northwest Beverages LLC, Pepsi Overseas Investments Partnership, Pepsi Promotions Inc., Pepsi-Cola Advertising and Marketing Inc., Pepsi-Cola Bermuda Limited, Pepsi-Cola Bottlers Holding C.V., Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company Of St. Louis Inc., Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Ft. Lauderdale-Palm Beach LLC, Pepsi-Cola Company, Pepsi-Cola Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Pepsi-Cola Far East Trade Development Co. Inc., Pepsi-Cola Finance LLC, Pepsi-Cola General Bottlers Poland Sp. z o.o., Pepsi-Cola Industrial da Amazonia Ltda., Pepsi-Cola International Cork, Pepsi-Cola International LLC, Pepsi-Cola International Limited, Pepsi-Cola International Limited U.S.A., Pepsi-Cola International Private Limited, Pepsi-Cola Korea Co. Ltd., Pepsi-Cola Management and Administrative Services Inc., Pepsi-Cola Manufacturing Company Of Uruguay S.R.L., Pepsi-Cola Manufacturing International Limited, Pepsi-Cola Manufacturing Mediterranean Limited, Pepsi-Cola Marketing Corp. Of P.R. Inc., Pepsi-Cola Mediterranean Ltd., Pepsi-Cola Metropolitan Bottling Company Inc., Pepsi-Cola Mexicana Holdings LLC, Pepsi-Cola Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Pepsi-Cola National Marketing LLC, Pepsi-Cola Operating Company Of Chesapeake And Indianapolis, Pepsi-Cola Sales and Distribution Inc., Pepsi-Cola Technical Operations Inc., Pepsi-Cola Thai Trading Co. Ltd., Pepsi-Cola de Honduras S.R.L., Pepsi-Cola of Corvallis Inc., PepsiAmericas Nemzetkozi Szolgaltato Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, PepsiCo ANZ Holdings Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Alimentos Antioquia Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos Colombia Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos Ecuador Cia. Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos Z.F. Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos de Bolivia S.R.L., PepsiCo Amacoco Bebidas Do Brasil Ltda., PepsiCo Asia Research & Development Center Company Limited, PepsiCo Australia Financing Cyprus Limited, PepsiCo Australia Financing Limited Partnership, PepsiCo Australia Financing Partner 1 LLC, PepsiCo Australia Financing Partner 2 LLC, PepsiCo Australia Financing Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Australia Holdings Pty Limited, PepsiCo Australia International, PepsiCo Austria Services GmbH, PepsiCo Azerbaijan Limited Liability Company, PepsiCo BeLux BV, PepsiCo Beverage Sales LLC, PepsiCo Beverage Singapore Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Beverages Bermuda Limited, PepsiCo Beverages Hong Kong Limited, PepsiCo Beverages International Limited, PepsiCo Beverages Italia Societa' A Responsabilita' Limitata, PepsiCo Canada Finance LLC, PepsiCo Canada Holdings ULC, PepsiCo Canada Investment ULC, PepsiCo Canada ULC, PepsiCo Captive Holdings Inc., PepsiCo Caribbean Inc., PepsiCo China Limited, PepsiCo Consulting Polska Sp. z o.o., PepsiCo De Bolivia S.R.L., PepsiCo Del Paraguay S.R.L., PepsiCo Deutschland GmbH, PepsiCo Eesti AS, PepsiCo Euro Bermuda Limited, PepsiCo Euro Finance Antilles B.V., PepsiCo Europe Support Center S.L., PepsiCo Finance Americas Company, PepsiCo Finance Antilles A N.V., PepsiCo Finance Antilles B N.V., PepsiCo Finance South Africa Proprietary Limited, PepsiCo Financial Shared Services Inc., PepsiCo Food & Beverage Holdings Hong Kong Limited, PepsiCo Foods A.I.E., PepsiCo Foods China Company Limited, PepsiCo Foods Group Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Foods Guangdong Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Foods Nigeria Limited, PepsiCo Foods Private Limited, PepsiCo Foods Sichuan Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Foods Taiwan Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Foods Vietnam Company, PepsiCo France SAS, PepsiCo Global Business Services India LLP, PepsiCo Global Business Services Poland Sp. z o.o., PepsiCo Global Holdings Limited, PepsiCo Global Investments B.V., PepsiCo Global Investments S.a r.l, PepsiCo Global Mobility LLC, PepsiCo Global Real Estate Inc., PepsiCo Global Trading Solutions Unlimited Company, PepsiCo Golden Holdings Inc., PepsiCo Group Finance International B.V., PepsiCo Group Holdings International B.V., PepsiCo Group Spotswood Holdings S.a r.l, PepsiCo Gulf International FZE, PepsiCo Hellas Single Member Industrial and Commercial Societe Anonyme, PepsiCo Holding de Espana S.L., PepsiCo Holdings, PepsiCo Holdings LLC, PepsiCo Holdings Toshkent LLC, PepsiCo Hong Kong LLC, PepsiCo Iberia Servicios Centrales S.L., PepsiCo India Holdings Private Limited, PepsiCo India Sales Private Limited, PepsiCo Internacional Mexico S. de R. L. de C. V., PepsiCo International Hong Kong Limited, PepsiCo International Limited, PepsiCo International Pte Ltd., PepsiCo Investments Europe I B.V., PepsiCo Investments Ltd., PepsiCo Ireland Food & Beverages Unlimited Company, PepsiCo Japan Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Light B.V., PepsiCo Logistyka Sp. z o.o., PepsiCo Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., PepsiCo Management Services SAS, PepsiCo Manufacturing A.I.E., PepsiCo Max B.V., PepsiCo Mexico Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., PepsiCo Nederland B.V., PepsiCo Nordic Denmark ApS, PepsiCo Nordic Finland Oy, PepsiCo Nordic Norway AS, PepsiCo Nutrition Trading DMCC, PepsiCo One B.V., PepsiCo Overseas Corporation, PepsiCo Overseas Financing Partnership, PepsiCo Panimex Inc, PepsiCo Products B.V., PepsiCo Products FLLC, PepsiCo Puerto Rico Inc., PepsiCo Sales Inc., PepsiCo Sales LLC, PepsiCo Services Asia Ltd., PepsiCo Services CZ s.r.o., PepsiCo Services LLC, PepsiCo Twist B.V., PepsiCo UK Pension Plan Trustee Limited, PepsiCo Ventures B.V., PepsiCo Wave Holdings LLC, PepsiCo World Trading Company Inc., PepsiCo Y LLC, PepsiCo de Argentina S.R.L., PepsiCo de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., PepsiCo do Brasil Industria e Comercio de Alimentos Ltda., PepsiCo do Brasil Ltda., PepsiCola Interamericana de Guatemala S.A., Pet Iberia S.L., Pete & Johnny Limited, Pine International LLC, Pine International Limited, Pinstripe Leasing LLC, Pioneer Food Group Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods Groceries Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods Group Ltd., Pioneer Foods Holdings Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods UK Ltd, Pioneer Foods Wellingtons Pty Ltd, Pipers Crisps Limited, PlayCo Inc., Pop corners, PopCorners Holdings Inc., Portfolio Concentrate Solutions Unlimited Company, Premier Nutrition Trading L.L.C., Prestwick LLC, Prev PepsiCo Sociedade Previdenciaria, Productos Alimenticios Rene LLC, Productos S.A.S. 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Ltd., Wimm-Bill-Dann Central Asia-Almaty LLP, Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods LLC, Wimm-Bill-Dann Georgia Ltd., Wimm-Bill-Dann JSC, and Wimm-Bill-Dann Ukraine PJSC.

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New York Community Bancorp, Inc. is the bank holding company for New York Community Bank. New York Community Bank is the nations 47th-largest financial institution and its largest thrift. As a thrift, the bank specializes in real estate and consumer accounts specifically real estate loans and savings accounts and has limited exposure to other forms of business banking. Among the benefits to consumers are interest-bearing checking and saving accounts that come with higher-than-average interest rates.

New York Community Bank was founded in 1859 to serve Queens County, New York. It operated under that name, growing all the while, until 2000 when it changed its name to better reflect the business. The company IPOd in 1993 and has made multiple acquisitions in the time since. As of 6/30/2022, the bank had $63.1 billion in assets and $41.2 billion in deposits.

New York Community Bank operates in greater New York City, New Jersey, Ohio, Florida, and Arizona. The company provides deposit products ranging from interest-bearing checking and money market accounts to savings accounts, IRAs, and CDs. Brands under the companys umbrella include AmTrust in Florida and Arizona, Ohio Savings Bank, Garden State Savings Bank, and Atlantic Bank.

The bank offers a wide range of real-estate-related loans including but not limited to multi-family loans, commercial real estate loans, construction loans, and consumer loans and mortgages. Investment products include annuities, mutual funds, and life insurance. Customers include individuals, small businesses, and organizations and are served through a network of more than 230 branches, and 300 ATMs, online, mobile, and by phone. Many of the locations are open 24 hours and 6 days a week although those hours are not available at all branches. Clients can access their accounts digitally 24/7.

New York Community Bancorp and its underlying business carry investment-grade credit ratings from all the major rating agencies. The credit outlook in the 4th quarter of 2022 was stable as it had been for some time. In New York, it is a leader in the multi-family market specializing in lower-cost housing in rent-controlled areas. As of June 30, 2022, the multi-family loan portfolio accounted for more than 75% of all investments. The company has a stock purchase and dividend reinvestment plan that help to sustain a high level of ownership.






WASHINGTON -- It was June 2001 and I was covering President George W. Bush's trip to Slovenia, where he had just met Vladimir Putin for the first time. I and others were struck by Bush's praise for the Russian leader as "trustworthy." Said Bush: "I was able to get a sense of his soul."

But back in Washington, my editor had no interest in such talk. He rewrote my lede with other news -- a tidbit about missile defense -- and he moved the "kissy-face" stuff about Putin's soul down to Paragraph 18.

In retrospect, that moment in Slovenia defined the Russia relationship for years to come. Putin had seduced Bush, who only slowly came to understand he had misjudged this adversary's soul. Putin opposed Bush in Iraq and was unhelpful with Iran. He shut down independent television, sent business leaders who criticized him into exile and prison, ousted democratic parties from government, canceled the election of governors and invaded Georgia.

The kissy-face happened all over again when President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to "reset" relations. Russia responded by working against the United States in Syria, sheltering Edward Snowden, invading and occupying parts of Ukraine, and hacking and meddling in the U.S. election to defeat Clinton.

Now it's Donald Trump's turn for kissy-face, and the president-elect is practically groping the Russian dictator. After Putin gloated Friday that Democrats need to learn "to lose with dignity," Trump tweeted Putin a sloppy kiss: "So true!" he said of Putin's comments.

Trump also celebrated a letter he received from Putin calling for more collaboration between the two countries. "His thoughts are so correct," Trump said.

Trump's blush-inducing embrace of the strongman has included repeated praise of Putin's leadership, deflected questions about Putin's political killings and disparagement of U.S. intelligence for accusing Russia of election meddling.

In three weeks, Trump will assume the presidency, and we'll learn what his embrace of Putin really means. Perhaps Trump is just a dupe and he'll realize over time that Putin is no friend. The alternative, supported by Trump's choice of Putin-friendly advisers Michael T. Flynn and Rex Tillerson, is that Trump really is pro-Putin and will grant the Russian dictator more latitude internationally and will emulate his autocratic tendencies at home.

The former would require us to endure some policy failures as Putin proved himself again to be an adversary. The latter would test the limits of our democratic institutions.

In either case, it would be useful for Americans to have at least a cursory sense of the man our new president proposes to embrace. Here's a quick glimpse into Putin's soul to get us started:

Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was killed outside the Kremlin as he walked home one night last year. Putin's regime blames Chechens, but Nemtsov's is one of a dozen high-profile murders of opponents widely thought to have been sanctioned by Putin's government.

Another Putin opponent, Alexander Litvinenko, was killed in London by polonium poisoning in 2006. The British government said Putin "probably" approved the hit. That same year, opposition journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot and killed outside her apartment.

Among the many business leaders imprisoned or ousted under Putin are Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was head of the oil giant Yukos, and associate Platon Lebedev. The Russian human rights group Memorial says there are 102 people held in Russian prisons for their political or religious beliefs.

The Kremlin has provided funding and training for far-right nationalist parties in Europe, and it used its state media and an army of hackers and social-media trolls to spread disinformation in the United States, in continental Europe and in Britain before the Brexit vote. The goals: to weaken European unity and the NATO alliance and to keep Europe dependent on Russian energy.

An Amnesty International summary of Putin's rule leaves no doubt about his totalitarian state: "Journalist Killed  Human Rights Lawyer Killed  Gay Rights Protesters Attacked  Repressive Laws Enacted  Fines for 'Promoting Homosexuality' Imposed  President Putin Signs Law to Re-criminalize Defamation  USAID Expelled  Federal Treason and Espionage Act goes into effect  Moscow Authorities Detain Protesters and Opposition Party Members."

This, Mr. President-elect, is the man you are embracing. Please spare us the kissy-face.
It's not so much the text messages about sad, abandoned animals that Noni Boen Schirm gets every day. But the pictures. Often they're of cats and dogs peering out of a kennel. Shellshocked by the sudden, dramatic change in their lives. They're frequently sick. Or too young to be alone. And Noni, who works with several rescue organizations in the San Bernardino, California, area, can't say no to any of them.

Noni Boen Schirm

She gets alerts from the shelter about animals who are in desperate need - mostly pets abandoned too young or needing critical care. "Whenever I get texts," she tells The Dodo, "I go to the shelter and grab them all." She's on the front line of caring for these desperate animals until they can find a foster home. But the picture Noni received on Tuesday morning was different from so many that came before. Sunny didn't look like a typical shelter dog. In fact, the 7-week-old Chihuahua was still wearing the navy sweater his former owner had knit for him.

Dodo Shows Faith = Restored Rescued Wild Horse Loves To Play With A Little Donkey

Noni Boen Schirm

He even arrived at the San Bernardino shelter with his doggy bed.

Noni Boen Schirm

It seemed whoever surrendered Sunny had loved him a lot, even if for the briefest moment. And the tiny dog, suddenly alone at a bustling shelter, clung to every last stitch of the love he once knew.

Noni Boen Schirm

Until Noni arrived at the shelter on Tuesday morning - and gave him something more lasting to cling to. "He was scared," she says. "But once he gets to know you, he's playful." Within half an hour, Noni had found Sunny a foster home - one that has the option to adopt him. "He went straight to my friend's house after I picked him up," she says.

Noni Boen Schirm

And, even if his foster family doesn't end up adopting him, Sunny's days of clinging to an old sweater for comfort are already behind him. Because for the rest of his life, he'll be wrapped up in a lasting security blanket - the warmth of family.

Noni Boen Schirm

As for Noni, her phone will keep buzzing with more pleas for help. And she will always pick up.

Noni Boen Schirm
By all accounts, Alec Baldwin is distraught over the death of Halyna Hutchins. As you likely have read about by now, the 
These days, it looks as though Leonardo DiCaprio might be on the verge of settling down with Camila Morrone But 
President-elect Donald Trump sought credit for Sprints commitment to create or bring back 5,000 jobs that the carrier says are part of broader U.S. hiring plans previously announced by Japan-based parent SoftBank Group Corp.

Trump said SoftBank chairman Masayoshi Son was among those behind the move to add workers. The Japanese billionaire, who Trump calls Masa, said earlier this month that he intends to invest $50 billion (U.S.) in the U.S. using a previously announced technology fund, creating 50,000 jobs.

Because of whats happening and the spirit and the hope I was just called by the head people at Sprint and theyre going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States, Trump told reporters Wednesday outside his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. Masa and some other people were very much involved with that.

The 5,000 jobs in Sprints plans are part of Sons overall 50,000-job commitment, though theyll be funded by Sprint and not SoftBank, the U.S. carrier said.

The employment will be in customer care, sales and other functions, Sprint said in a statement Wednesday. The company is still determining the location of the positions, which will be filled by the end of March 2018, Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint said. Sprint had about 30,000 employees as of the end of March, down from 38,000 in 2013, when Son acquired the company.

Trump disputed the notion that the jobs had already been announced, telling reporters later Wednesday that I just spoke with the head person. He said because of me theyre doing 5,000 jobs in this country. He referred reporters to his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, for details. She didnt respond to a request for comment, and Sprint didnt respond to followup questions.

Sons vow to invest in the U.S. and create jobs helped provide Trump with evidence hes producing more work for Americans. It also scored points for Sprint, which was rebuffed by the Obama administration on a previous merger attempt.

Trump also repeated an announcement earlier this month that OneWeb Ltd., a satellite startup backed by Sons SoftBank Group Corp., will create almost 3,000 jobs in Florida over the next four years. That number consists of about 1,200 jobs at OneWeb, plus about 1,800 jobs at suppliers that work directly with the startup and include Qualcomm Inc., Hughes Network Systems and Honeywell International Inc., Greg Wyler, founder of OneWeb, said in an interview.

Masas meeting with Trump invigorated and inspired Masa to increase investment in OneWeb and accelerate OneWebs growth, Wyler said in an interview. In September, October and November, the U.S. economy gained an average of 176,000 nonfarm jobs a month, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Sprint shares have more than doubled this year on improving subscriber gains and speculation that the company could revisit a long-speculated merger with T-Mobile US Inc., the third-largest wireless provider, under the Trump administration. The stock rose less than 1 per cent in early trading Thursday.

Sprint has struggled since 2013, when Son hinted he could try to buy T-Mobile, only to abandon the effort after signals from the Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department that they could oppose the move. While T-Mobile has rebounded, becoming the countrys fastest growing carrier, Sprint has cut costs and mortgaged assets to contain its debt.

OneWeb is developing small, low-orbit satellites to provide wireless Internet access in remote areas. The company raised $1.2 billion from SoftBank and others this month. The Trump administrations interest in space accelerated OneWebs plans, said a spokesman, Charles Palmer.

Consumer and business confidence has surged since the election, reflecting optimism about Trumps pledges to boost growth, keep the labour market churning, cut taxes and ease regulations. Trump has meanwhile scored political victories as president-elect by appearing to persuade individual companies to keep or create jobs in the U.S., and by intervening in Pentagon contracts.

Trump struck a deal with United Technologies Corp.s Carrier unit last month to keep about 800 manufacturing jobs at a furnace factory in Indianapolis. Trump had vowed during his campaign that he would force the company to abandon plans to move the jobs to Mexico. About 1,000 Carrier jobs are still leaving the state for Mexico, and the company will receive about $7 million in incentives from state taxpayers for the positions it is keeping in Indianapolis.

This month, IBM chief executive officer Ginni Rometty  a Trump economic adviser  announced just before a meeting with Trump that she planned to hire 25,000 people in the U.S. and invest $1 billion over the next four years.

Earlier this month, Trump called on Boeing to cut the price of a new version of the presidents aircraft, Air Force One. Last week, he said he had asked the company to price-out a new version of its F-18 Super Hornet fighter that could compete with Lockheed Martin Corp.s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive U.S. weapons system ever.

The announcements have buttressed Trumps campaign-trail claims that he would use his business acumen to broker better deals for American workers and taxpayers. Hes also said he will exit or renegotiate trade deals that make it easier for companies to shift production to countries with lower labour costs, and threatened to impose significant tariffs on imports.

Trumps public pronouncements sometimes exaggerate either the costs of projects hes trying to influence or his own impact. For example, he said the new Air Force One would cost $4 billion, while the Air Force has budgeted $3.2 billion so far to research, develop and purchase two of the planes. He claimed he had convinced Carrier to keep more than 1,000 jobs in Indianapolis; the accurate number is about 800. In November, the president-elect claimed credit for convincing Ford to keep an auto plant in Kentucky rather than moving it to Mexico. Ford had planned to move production of a specific model to Mexico, but did not expect to close the Kentucky plant or reduce the number of jobs there.

And while companies have expressed optimism over Trumps promise to lower the corporate tax rate, new tariffs could ratchet up the price of consumer goods.

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LOS ANGELESDebbie Reynolds, an actress who sang and danced her way into film history opposite Gene Kelly in the classic 1952 musical Singin in the Rain, a movie that helped turn her into a sweetheart of American film, has died. She was 84.

Her son, Todd Fisher, said Reynolds died Wednesday, a day after her daughter, Carrie Fisher, died.

Shes now with Carrie and were all heartbroken, Fisher said from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where his mother was taken by ambulance earlier Wednesday.

He said the stress of his sisters death at the age of 60 was too much for Reynolds.

Between 1950 and 1967, she appeared in more than 30 movie musicals and light comedies, receiving her lone Oscar nomination for playing the title character in 1964s The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Many critics considered it her most memorable early role, and it was a favourite  Reynolds related to a woman with tremendous zest for life.

Off-screen, she starred as the wronged woman in a love triangle that many in the late 1950s considered the Hollywood scandal of the century. Her first husband, singer Eddie Fisher, left Reynolds  perceived by moviegoers as the girl next door  for sultry actress Elizabeth Taylor.

Standing alone in her front yard in 1958, the abandoned Reynolds met the press. Fastened to her blouse was a diaper pin, a reminder of the couples two young children inside. The nuclear-like split, as a Times article from that era described it, proved disastrous to Fishers career.

The outpouring of public sympathy for Reynolds only served to increase her fame  the comedy The Mating Game that she co-starred in with Tony Randall was one of four movies she appeared in the next year.

She was just 18 when studio chief Louis B. Mayer cast her in Singin in the Rain over the objections of Kelly, who wanted a professional dancer for the part. Decades later, Reynolds said she could still recall the pain from three months of dance rehearsals that made her feet bleed.

Singin in the Rain and childbirth were the hardest things I ever had to do in my life, Reynolds wrote in her 1988 autobiography Debbie.

The movie about Hollywoods transition to talkies was a box-office hit, and her portrayal of an up-and-coming spunky actress turned Reynolds into a star. It is widely considered one of the greatest movie musicals.

Her last role was Liberaces mother in the 2013 HBO movie Behind the Candelabra. She received the 2014 Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

Work was a necessity for the thrice-divorced Reynolds, whose public image was far more rosy than her private life.

After Reynolds married Fisher in 1955, they had two children, Carrie and Todd. Their daughter became an actress best known for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars movies and, later, a successful writer. Their son was named for Fishers best friend, producer Mike Todd.

Reynolds second and third husbands left her in financial ruin, she often said.

Husband No. 2, Harry Karl, was a shoe magnate who lost his millions and hers through gambling and bad investments, according to her autobiography. He left her with her two children and his three to raise when they divorced in 1973 after 14 years of marriage.

It took her 10 years to pay off Karls debts, and Ive never forgiven him for that, Reynolds said in 1997. He died in 1985.

In 1997, the Las Vegas hotel and casino she opened in the early 1990s went belly up and she filed for bankruptcy. Reynolds blamed her third husband, real estate developer Richard Hamlett, for mismanaging the property. They divorced in 1996 after more than a decade together.

Carrie Fisher, who gained her own fame to rival her mothers, died just one day before other on Tuesday, after suffering a medical emergency on a flight from London to Los Angeles.

In a November interview with for the NPR show Fresh Air, Fisher spoke of her admiration for her mother, whom she said had some recent health setbacks.

Shes an immensely powerful woman, and I just admire my mother very much, Fisher said. Theres very few women from her generation who worked like that, who just kept a career going all her life, and raised children, and had horrible relationships, and lost all her money, and got it back again.

I mean, shes had an amazing life, and shes someone to admire.

In addition to her son, Reynolds is survived by a granddaughter, actress Billie Lourd.

More on thestar.com:

Outpouring of grief for Debbie Reynolds from Hollywood stars and fans

Carrie Fisher flashed her witty side with these quotes

Fans create a Hollywood Walk of Fame star for Carrie Fisher

With files from The Associated Press, Peter Goffin and Megan Dolski

Social media reaction to death of Debbie Reynolds

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Retired Canadian politician Ujjal Dosanjh has written an open letter to the prime minister of India, criticizing plans to build a statue worth almost $700 million.

The statue will be of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, a 17th-century Indian warrior king who carved out a kingdom that formed the Maratha Empire and who revived many ancient Hindu traditions.

The statue will be the worlds tallest at approximately 190 metres and cost more than $675 million (Canadian), according to Dosanjhs letter. International media reports have the statue ranging from 190 metres to 192 metres, and costing between $710 million and $720 million.

It will be built on reclaimed land in the Arabian Sea of Mumbai. Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the statue, which will be completed by 2019, over the weekend.

Even in the midst of struggle, Shivaji Maharaj remained a torchbearer of good governance, Modi said at the inaugural event according to Al Jazeera. So many aspects of his personality inspire us.

This prompted Dosanjh to write a column in the Indian Express newspaper accusing Modi of thrusting India into the politics of pandering to regional and other identities.

From my perspective its political pandering. Its trying to drudge up historical nonetheless important figures to appeal to regions and groups of people and appear to be doing something for them when in fact nothing is being done, Dosanjh told the Star on Tuesday.

I just think this is politics of distraction . . . . You have a prime minister in that country that has done nothing about corruption for two-and-a-half years.

Dosanjh also referenced Modis currency swap two months ago, which led to cash shortages and Dosanjh said hurt the economy and hurt ordinary people.

The Indian government said at the time that demonetizing big currency notes was expected to bring billions of dollars into the economy and tax base, long hobbled by corruption and money laundering.

Ram Sutar, the sculptor of the statue of Shivaji, defended the statue, according to India Times.

If people had worried about how much the Taj Mahal would cost, it would never have been built, he said.

Maharashtra chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, had a similar argument while speaking in the state legislative assembly, according to Al Jazeera.

How can we think about the cost when it comes to building a memorial for Shivaji Maharaj? Fadnavis said. He is our pride and it is only fitting that we should build a grand memorial in his name.

In his letter, Dosanjh wrote that the plans to build a statue of Shivaji were a criminal distraction from the life and death issues of poverty, corruption, injustice and inequality in India. He said the statue may destroy or negatively impact the livelihood of 150,000 fishermen because its location may affect the coastal area near Mumbai and the aquatic ecosystem in the area.

Building a statue isnt going to feed anyone, it isnt going to clothe anybody, it isnt going to provide schools or hospitals or good roads or sewage facilities or good jobs, he said. Its not appropriate for a democratically elected government to be erecting these facades to past glory when people are dying in poverty.

Dosanjh, who is of Indian origin and formerly served as the federal health minister, premier of British Columbia, and an MP for Vancouver South also referenced another statue that Modi had promised: one of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, one of the founding fathers of India. The statue, which Dosanjh said cost almost $600 million (Canadian), is being built in Indias westernmost state, Gujarat, and was set to be the tallest statue in the world. But the new statue of Shivaji would be taller than it.

No government unless youre totally idiotic would spend a billion dollars on two statues, no matter how important a person they might be, Dosanjh said.

Dosanjh is not alone in his criticisms of the statue. An online petition against the new statue said This is not what Shivaji would have wanted and I am sure we can find other ways to honour him.

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Sandra Ogonoski wakes up many nights, sick with worry about how to care for her 49-year-old son.

Allen Ogonoski was beaten in a British Columbia jail cell in 2011, his head battered so badly that he sometimes forgets what his mother tells him within a few minutes.

He still sleeps with a blanket wrapped around his head like a shawl, protecting his head, the 70-year-old said in a recent telephone interview from her home in Winnipeg.

When Im gone, who is going to look after him?

Ogonoski, her son and her husband Gerald, 73, are among a growing number of inmates and their family members joining lawsuits arguing Canadas federal and provincial facilities fail to meet basic constitutional and common law duties to keep prisoners safe from violence.

Ontario lawyer Kevin Egan represents dozens of families and inmates in federal and provincial prisons who have gone through similar experiences. The veteran litigator began by focusing on the violence he says has plagued the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre in London.

His clients include Jeremy Sippel, who was severely beaten at the facility after being arrested for alleged child abduction in 2013  a charge later dropped in court after the girls parents testified to his innocence.

In an interview, Sippel, who is in his late 20s, said the beating occurred within minutes of his arrival, after a guard told him inmates were awaiting him. Almost four years later he has plates in his jaw, and suffers nightmares, depression and memory loss.

It broke me, said Sippel, who describes himself as self-medicating and says he fears that if he turns to street drugs hell end up in a correctional facility again.

Egan launched about 60 lawsuits against the jail for alleged mistreatment, and in August a judge certified his class action against the Ontario correctional service that included allegations the London jail has violated the constitutions guarantees of citizens rights to security of the person and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.

Egan estimates that up to 9,076 former inmates may be eligible for settlements and, if successful, the Ontario government could be liable for $45 million. Meanwhile, he has about 20 claims at other facilities around the province, including several federal institutions.

The Ontario government has sought leave to appeal the certification of the class action, said Egan.

The province said in an email that the transformation of Ontarios correctional system is a top priority of the ministry.

The plan is to transform by addressing the safety of staff and inmates; rehabilitation and reintegration programs; discharge planning; and strengthened mental health supports for inmates.

A spokesman said the government faced about 50 legal claims in 2015, and 70 claims in 2016, although he wasnt able to say how much has been paid out in settlements.

Meanwhile, the Correctional Service Canada website says Ottawa recorded contingent liability allowances for claims and litigations amounting to approximately $8.5 million this year, roughly double the figure listed two years earlier.

The department was also facing about $10 million in lawyers fees in the last fiscal year. Correctional Service Canada said it was unable to provide comment on the figures or provide its position on lawsuits by press time.

Ivan Zinger, the federal ombudsman for prisoners, said in an interview that the rise of lawsuits indicates a failure on the part of the federal and provincial governments to learn from past mistakes.

The ones that are troubling are settled and they always come with a nondisclosure document and theyre swept under the carpet. The public doesnt learn how much was paid . . . You basically silence people by throwing money at it, he said.

He added the lawsuits are coming amidst a steady rise in violence in prisons across the country.

Correctional Service figures indicate a 93-per-cent increase in federal inmate-on-inmate assaults since 2006, with about 581 assaults committed a year.

In Ontario provincial jails, assaults are up 13 per cent from a decade ago; in Nova Scotia, they are up 46 per cent over last year. In Alberta, the number of annual assaults  ranging from severe beatings to spitting  have doubled since 2007. In British Columbia, they are up by about a third compared to 2011.

Michael Weinrath, a University of Winnipeg criminologist, said he agrees with Zinger that the lawsuits are sometimes used as a way to avoid accountability, but added they are also having a significant impact to provoke change.

Lawsuits do get (governments) attention, and I think has influenced the structuring of correctional centre activity, reducing inmate contact with each other, he wrote in an email.

The Ogonoski familys statement of claim, yet to be proven in an upcoming civil trial in Vancouver, argues the Surrey Pretrial jail could have foreseen the dangers of double bunking Allen in a cell with a member of the Red Scorpion gang on Aug. 15, 2011. A statement of defence says that guards didnt receive reliable information to indicate Ogonoskis cellmate posed a risk to him.

Sandra Ogonoski said if she succeeds in her action, shes hoping it will mean economic security for her son  and pressure for change in the system.

She said since Allens beating, she has suffered a stroke, lives with high blood pressure and has to cope with a son who may never recover.

If the public realized what this will cost providing injured inmates with health care the rest of their lives. . . maybe governments will consider revamping our justice system.

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OTTAWAGovernor General David Johnston is marking the start of whats likely his last few months as the Queens representative in Canada by urging all Canadians to make 2017, Canadas 150th birthday, a legacy year.

This year we celebrate, and we stand at a threshold. We have a rare, once-in-a-generation opportunity to think about Canada, and to look to the future, Johnston said in his annual New Years message.

We have a chance to reflect, to reaffirm, to look ahead and say: We love this country. Weve come so far. Lets make it even better.

Johnstons term is up in September, but how his replacement will be selected has yet to be determined.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told The Canadian Press in a year-end interview that he hasnt given much thought yet on how the next governor general will be appointed.

But he said whatever the process, it will likely be in keeping with what he characterized as his governments approach to appointments in general.

Diversity and minority representation and hearing a broad range of voices in appointment positions across this country is important to me, he said.

 ... so it would surprise me if whatever process we end up putting in place for helping me select the next governor general didnt put a tremendous emphasis on bringing in a broad range of perspectives and voices for me to choose from.

Johnston, Canadas 28th governor general, was appointed in 2010 after a committee proposed a list of names to then-prime minister Stephen Harper.

Two years later, Harper struck a formal panel to advise on future vice-regal appointments and Trudeau said hell review that system before deciding on how hell go forward.

Im not going to change things just to reinvent the wheel, he said.

If there is a good process that we can improve by making more open and transparent and more diverse, that I will probably do.

Johnstons term should have ended in 2015 but it was extended by Harper ahead of that years election.

Among the projects hes worked on during his time in office has been expanding the reach of the countrys honours system, including the Order of Canada, which celebrates its own 50th anniversary in 2017.

The motto for that award  they desire a better country  is a fitting motto for the nations birthday celebrations as all Canadians desire a better country, Johnston said.

Were so fortunate to live in Canada, but theres so much more work to do, he said.

Lets ensure this is a country of both excellence and equality of opportunity for all. Lets work towards achieving reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples. Lets continue to celebrate diversity. Its strength, one that has allowed us to build a society that is the envy of the world.

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Elizabeth Wettlaufer came home from rehab the day after police in white forensic suits combed through her Woodstock apartment and hauled out evidence. She had yet to be charged for the murder of eight nursing home residents under her care, but her world was collapsing around her.

It was shortly after Wettlaufer, a 49-year-old registered nurse, had signed an Oct. 6 peace bond banning her from providing health care and placing her under a 7 p.m. curfew, except for AA meetings.

She started packing to go live with her parents nearby, and served notice she would be vacating the fifth-floor, two-bedroom unit she had called home for at least nine years.

Neighbours didnt know about the bond, but Wettlaufer made no secret about the instability in her life. They knew her as the friend who one day announced she had found God and wasnt a lesbian anymore, as the recovering drug addict who twice spent time in rehab, as the tenant behind in her rent.

When her bags were done, Wettlaufer asked a neighbour what kind of gossip the police search had sparked.

I said to her, People are saying you killed someone, said the neighbour, who spoke on the condition she not be identified. And she starts laughing her head off. She was hysterical. She thought the whole thing was funny.

Police have not named the deadly drug they allege Wettlaufer administered. But the peace bond banned her from specifically possessing insulin, and any controlled drug that wasnt prescribed.

A source familiar with aspects of the investigation said Wettlaufer once offered to put down a neighbours sick cat with insulin she had in her apartment. Contacted by the Star, the neighbour denied having told the story to police and insisted the offer never happened.

Theres more agreement about Wettlaufer saying she got hooked on drugs while on the job at Woodstocks Caressant Care nursing home, where seven of the eight people were allegedly killed.

She told her neighbour Nancy Gilbert she got the drugs from the medication cart she controlled as a registered nurse. She said she got to the point where she didnt want it to control her life or her job, said Gilbert, 56, explaining Wettlaufers first tour in rehab, which occurred before she met the nurse two years ago.

Wettlaufers LinkedIn profile said she worked at Caressant from June 2007 to March 2014. Judging from a dramatic Facebook post, her first day off drugs was in late September 2014. (On Sept. 28, 2015, she wrote on Facebook: My own voice called me in the darkness. Other hands lifted me when I chose the light. One year ago today I woke up not dead. 365 days clean and sober.)

Gilbert doesnt know under what circumstances Wettlaufer left Caressant Care. But the neighbour who saw her laughing the day of her return from rehab claimed it involved an incident when she was high on drugs.

She said she lost her job because she accidentally gave someone the wrong medication because she was fried, the neighbour said. She wasnt fired. They said if she left quietly they would just let it go.

Wettlaufers next job was at the Meadow Park nursing home in London, where she is accused of killing the last victim, 75-year-old Arpad Horvath, sometime during a week-long period in August 2014. The neighbours claims raise questions of whether at least one life could have been saved.

Officials at both Caressant Care and Meadow Park declined to answer emailed questions asking if they knew Wettlaufer was a drug addict, whether she was fired or asked to resign, or whether her conduct was reported to the College of Nurses of Ontario, which regulates the profession.

Representatives of both homes referred the Star to their statements in late October, which said they were co-operating fully with the police investigation and did not want to compromise it with further comment.

Whats known is that Wettlaufer remained a registered nurse until she resigned on Sept. 30, 2016, according to the colleges website. That likely occurred while Wettlaufer was under the care of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, where she gave staff information that caused them to alert police about the deaths, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

Employers must alert the college if there is a concern that a nurse is not practicing safely, says a college document on mandatory reporting. The college must also be informed if a nurse is fired, or if a nurse is incapacitated by a health condition, including addiction.

A nurse who is found to be incapacitated may be required to comply with appropriate medical treatment before returning to practice, the college says.

A college spokesperson, Denise Riposati, would not say if the college ever received a complaint about Wettlaufer, or investigated her.

Nursing homes dont need to notify the college if nurses resign, unless managers had planned to fire them, the college document says. A quiet resignation avoids a potential costly union grievance, or a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, which considers addiction a disability and recently ruled a nurse could not be fired because of it.

When a nurse is suspected of substance abuse or stealing meds an investigation is initiated, a senior long-term-care official said in an email to the Stars Theresa Boyle. It is very hard to prove it and it takes quite a bit of time.

Linda Haslam-Stroud, president of the Ontario Nurses Association, the union that represents registered nurses at Caressant Care, declined an interview request on whether Wettlaufer had ever been the subject of complaints, and on the reporting of performance concerns to the college.

Laura Jackson and Don Martin were good friends with Maurice Granat, 84, Wettlaufers second alleged victim. They visited the long-time auto body shop worker at Caressant Care at least once a week.

On Dec. 23, 2007, they received a call at about 4 a.m. from someone at the Woodstock facility saying Granat  known to them as Moe  was not well. They rushed to the nursing home.

Martin entered the room and saw Granat struggling with a nurse he says he recognized as Wettlaufer after seeing photos of her arrest. Granats arms were flailing and he was making strange noises. Martin held his hand and Granat calmed down.

To Granats friends, the nurse appeared gruff. She just said, Get out of my way. Get out of my way, Jackson said.

She left the room and returned moments later with a needle. She shoved Jackson aside and said, This will soothe him now.

About 20 minutes later, Granat gasped his final breath. Jackson and Martin have no idea what medication was administered and there is no evidence it led to the death.

Neither Jackson nor Martin thought often about that day, until they saw Granats name on the front page of the Star. They were gobsmacked and floored. And they cant stop thinking about it.

Its spinning in my mind, Martin said. I never heard (before) what he sounded like that day. He was struggling with her. Was he fighting her? What was going on before wed been there?

Caressant Care is a sprawling, for-profit nursing home with 193 beds on a quiet street in Woodstock. In the busy front foyer, a television wishes patients happy birthday through a slide show of smiling nurses with happy residents. Taped to the wall are certificates trumpeting government inspections that gave clean bills of health.

Wettlaufer usually worked the night shift, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. There are no managers or supervisors at that time, and as the only RN on site, Wettlaufer was the boss, says Ross Gerrie, president of the Unifor local that represents 135 workers at Woodstocks Caressant Care, including registered practical nurses and personal support workers.

Ontario law requires no more than one RN on site at all times, a number so inadequate its a disgrace, said Doris Grinspun, CEO of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario.

Wettlaufers main responsibility was the administration of drugs. At the start of her shift, she would count and note the number in the medication cart with the nurse ending the previous shift. The exercise would be repeated when Wettlaufer passed the cart to the morning nurse.

She supervised a night staff of one registered practical nurse and eight personal support workers, according to a knowledgeable worker at the home. These 10 people, including Wettlaufer, were responsible for 163 nursing home residents, who sleep four to a room.

Most workers are part-time, juggling jobs. If one calls in sick, the workload for everyone else tends to increase because replacements are difficult to find and management wont call one in if overtime needs to be paid, Gerrie said. This problem is industry-wide, he added.

There is no legislation that requires a certain number of minimum hours of care per patient, so the home piles the work on to the next person, he said. That could result in only one PSW lifting a resident to go to the washroom instead of two, as required by regulations, he added.

So the workers are in jeopardy because theyre more susceptible to injury and the patients are in jeopardy, too, because theres not enough people to care for them, he said. This is everyday stuff.

Wettlaufer was always ready to help whenever she could, says one worker who watched her perform for years at Caressant Care.

She was a good nurse and great to work with, said the worker, who didnt want to be named for fear of being fired. I never heard anyone complain about her performance.

Caregivers are under instructions to limit diapers to three per resident per day. But Wettlaufer, who controlled a master key, was always ready to provide more when asked.

She was great with the residents, the worker said. Ive never seen her not be nice to anybody.

In an online poem she wrote six years ago, titled Working Happy, Wettlaufer described her love of old people, their wrinkles, their frailties, their refusing to eat anything but icecream, even their smell. I love the finality, the resignation, the knowing this is their last home.

One day in 2014 Wettlaufer was suddenly gone from Caressant. Gerrie said members he spoke with have no idea why she left.

Since the charges against Wettlaufer were announced in late October, three managers at the nursing home have resigned, for reasons unclear, Gerrie said.He added that an inspector with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care is on site each day, questioning residents and staff about conditions.

On the ministrys website, it is common to find inspections about specific complaints where Caressants Woodstock home is given a clean bill of health. But the two general inspections posted  in 2014 and 2015  found numerous deficiencies.

In resident bathrooms noted a wall visibly stained with urine, brown/yellow substance around the base of toilets, says the 2015 general inspection, bathroom floor tiles had a build-up of black debris/dirt, toilet rims with mounted Versa frames visibly soiled with green/black/white substances behind the toilet seat, rust stains in toilet bowls  and dried food on the walls of a dining room.

In 11 of 27 complaints by residents, the 2015 inspection could not find documents stating the case had been resolved. The inspector also cited safety concerns about an unlocked stairwell door.

A December 2014 inspection said the home failed to ensure that drugs are stored in a medication cart that is secured and locked. It spotted a nurse leaving the cart unattended for several minutes near the dining hall, with drugs available on top of the medication cart.

Another inspection that year noted a resident was injured while being lifted by personal support workers who had not received training, and eight residents didnt receive baths due to staffing shortages.

Wettlaufers alleged victims ranged in age from 75 to 96. Their friends and relatives say they never suspected a thing.

In a 24-day period beginning Oct. 14, 2011, she is accused of killing three people, including 95-year-old Helen Matheson, a former teacher who began her career in a one-room schoolhouse in Innerkip, near Woodstock.

Helen lived two years in Caressant and her son, Jon Matheson, visited her every day. She was lucid and mobile until a couple of weeks before her death, when Matheson noticed her going downhill quickly. She suddenly refused to eat.

Im thinking its old age, said Matheson, 72.

On Oct. 13, Matheson got a call from someone at the home saying his mother was living her last moments. He arrived at about 7 p.m. and sat at her bedside. He dozed off several times. He opened his eyes at one point past midnight and his mother was dead.

She never complained of being mistreated at the home, said Matheson, who cant recall ever seeing Wettlaufer there. And I always thought people were looked after fairly well.

This year, on Oct. 7, an OPP officer visited Mathesons home and identified himself as the lead investigator in the alleged murders. He said they had no idea about a motive, Matheson said. When Matheson asked if his mothers body would need to be exhumed, the officer said, We dont know yet. Three weeks later police told reporters bodies would not be exhumed.

How could this have happened? said Matheson, a logger in B.C. for almost four decades before he returned to look after his mother. Theres supposed to be all kinds of checks and balances.

I try to think back, was there something I missed? I cant come up with anything, really. And thats the frustrating part.

Victims of health-providers-turned-serial-killers are often the most defenseless, including infants, people with developmental delays and adults with dementia, said Beatrice Crofts Yorker, co-author of a 2006 study on doctors, nurses and nurses aides who kill. And once these caregivers realize how easy it is, They sort of get emboldened.

The study, published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, found 90 worldwide prosecutions of health providers for serial murders since 1970. Fully 86 per cent of them were nurses. Of the 54 convicted at the time the study was published, all but three were charged for killings in Europe and the U.S. The convicted were found guilty of killing 317 patients and suspected in the deaths of 2,113 others.

Most killings occurred in hospitals; 13 of the convicted murdered in nursing homes. Injections of non-narcotic medications, including insulin, were the preferred method.

The attractive thing about insulin is that it can take a long time to kill someone, Yorker said in an interview. Insulin has a lot of variability. You can be completely done with your shift, gone home, not even on the unit when a patient dies.

Mistaken doses of insulin rarely kill. The amount needed to take a life requires premeditation, said Yorker, a professor of nursing and criminal justice at California State University, Los Angeles.

The murdering caregivers showed evidence of personality disorders. Motivations included sadistic satisfaction, the killing of demanding patients, and the pressures of a heavy workload and needing to free up beds, the study found.

A lack of oversight during evening and night shifts was noted as a factor. The study also noted the pressures on health care facilities to let nurses they have suspicions about quietly leave.

At present, risk management approaches seem to favor policies geared toward preventing lawsuits for wrongful termination, denial of employment or defamation, the study says.

A better balance is needed between the employment rights of caregivers and the ability of healthcare facilities to know about the backgrounds of employees. We encourage healthcare employers to be forthcoming with references that include information that a healthcare worker was fired, or to provide information regarding adverse patient outcomes associated with the presence of a particular caregiver.

If convicted, Wettlaufer will be Canadas first confirmed health-care serial killer. She has yet to enter a plea, and will next appear in court via video link Jan. 6.

Jim Van Allen, a former OPP criminal profiler who was part of the team that nabbed serial killer Russell Williams in 2010, noted her alleged murders are scattered between August 2007 and August 2014, with only one cluster of three in 2011.

If I was on the investigation Id be inclined to look back at whats going on in that persons life at the time of the murders, he said in an interview. It might be explained by their relationship with the patient or some other stress thats going on in their life.

You can bet police are plotting this out on a timeline, he added.

Wettlaufer was born Elizabeth Parker and grew up with a brother in a religious household in the Woodstock area. She was a member of her high schools band and choir, and received a bachelors degree in religious education counselling from the London Baptist Bible College, now called the Heritage Baptist College.

She became a registered nurse in June 1995. She met the man she would marry, a truck driver who works nights, at a Baptist church. They tied the knot in October 1997 and lived in a modest white bungalow on Woodstocks Winniett St.

They had no children, and began living apart in January 2007, seven months before the first alleged murder. In May 2008, her husband, Daniel, applied for a divorce, noting in a document there is no chance of reconciliation. The uncontested divorce was finalized six months later.

The ex-husband, who did not respond to requests for an interview, told a neighbour he wished she had reverted to her maiden name after the divorce.

Early in 2008, through a chat room on the website Gay Canada, Wettlaufer connected with Sheila Andrews. That summer she flew to Prince Albert, Sask., to spend a week with Andrews at her home.

When she got off the plane she almost body-slammed me, said Andrews, 49. Shes like, Ive been telling everybody how much in love I am with you and we were going to get together and everything. And Im just, like, Whoa, slow down, sweetheart. Were just meeting. Thats what kind of scared me off.

Wettlaufer struck Andrews as a very nice person. But Andrews avoided physical intimacy because the chemistry wasnt there. It left Wettlaufer bitter and disappointed, she said.

Wettlaufer told Andrews her marriage didnt work out because she was interested in women. Andrews got a sense that Wettlaufer was in the closet because of her religious upbringing.

In one online poem, I Never, Wettlaufer laments yearning for someone but being too terrified to even steal a kiss. And now I wonder why. Why did I keep myself apart, why did I give in to so called morality, why did I let rules rule me?

The only serious relationship, since her divorce, that neighbours know of was in 2011, the year Wettlaufer is accused of killing three people. A woman moved in with her for four months. The woman told Oshawa resident Patricia Crosbie, who was living with the womans son at the time, that the reason Wettlaufer gave her for breaking up was that she was no longer a lesbian.

The ex-girlfriend refused to comment when contacted by the Star. She insisted, however, that Wettlaufer was not violent, Ill say that much.

Neighbours then started hearing gospel music in Wettlaufers apartment. One day, while sitting outside the building on a hot night with friends, the conversation turned to relationships and one recalls Wettlaufer saying, Oh, I found God and I wasnt a lesbian anymore.

She lived with two cats and a dog she rescued, a Jack Russell terrier named Nashville. She said that she enjoyed being on her own, because she had her animals, and she spent a lot of time with her mom and dad, said her neighbour and friend, Nancy Gilbert.

Wettlaufer also has a brother in Halifax. In 2011, she posted on a poetry website that she had spoken with him for the first time in two years. He declined an interview request, as did Wettlaufers mother.

Also in 2011, under the pseudonym Betty Weston, Wettlaufer published an online poem about a woman trying to quench her craze by stabbing someone to death. In the comments section below the poem she wrote that making the killer a woman made me feel powerful.

Wettlaufer changed jobs frequently after Caressant Care. She spent a few months at the Meadow Park home in London, and then worked temporary nursing contracts, between February 2015 and August 2016, at three long-term-care homes in Paris, Brantford and Port Dover, all owned by Revera Homes. This summer, she worked part time as an in-home care provider for Saint Elizabeth Home Health Care.

Gilbert describes her as very easygoing, very friendly. But Wettlaufers next-door neighbour suspects her of taking part in a three-year campaign of vandalism and harassment against him. Whats certain is that Wettlaufer called the childrens aid society when the neighbours 3-year-old boy was found wandering the hallway in 2015. The neighbour was convicted of abandonment, but soon regained guardianship.

He says he was on his balcony this summer when Wettlaufer leaned around the balcony partition and apologized for the harassment over the years.

Then all of a sudden she starts to confide in me, says the 54-year-old neighbour, who used to run a roofing company. I couldnt believe what Im hearing because weve basically been enemies for the last three years.

He claims Wettlaufer told him she got fired from one job for stealing medication, and got fired from a second job because  in words the neighbour said she used  I was high when I gave the patient the wrong medication and he almost died.

In early September, Wettlaufer found her dog a new home, a move that struck her friends and neighbours as strange considering how much she loved the terrier. Then she told them she was off to rehab.

She returned in early October, after police had searched her apartment, and spent her curfew hours at her parents home. The peace bond she signed ordered her to continue any treatment for mental health with doctors.

Four days before her arrest she had supper with Gilbert and another neighbour.

She was in a great mood, Gilbert says. We joked around and had a really nice meal. I knew she had a curfew, but it just didnt kick in why.

When this came to light I just couldnt believe that they were talking about the same Beth, because I had no idea, none whatsoever  if this is true  that she could ever do something like that.

MORE ON THESTAR.COM

From caring nurse to accused serial killer: who is Elizabeth Wettlaufer?

Even after murder charges, previous tragedy casts long shadow in Woodstock

Daughter of man allegedly killed in nursing home wants vindication from legal system

Family, friends of victims appear at court hearing for Elizabeth Wettlaufer

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The widow of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford is in police custody for suspected impaired driving, police confirmed on Wednesday night.

Renata Ford is in police custody at 23 Division, Const. Victor Kwong of the Toronto Police Service told the Star late Wednesday.

It was not immediately clear when or where Ford was arrested. However, the investigation began at 6 p.m., Kwong said.

She is being held overnight.

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In the last three years, there have been 36 reports of sexual abuse in state licensed facilities and the child welfare system, a chilling accumulation that has rightfully prompted an investigation by the state inspector general for child welfare.

That investigation, according to inspector general Julie Rogers, will determine whether adequate steps are being taken by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services to prevent and respond to abuse of youth in the states care, including children placed in state-licensed facilities and group homes, youth in foster homes and adopted from the child welfare system.

The abuse cases have been reported to law enforcement and investigated, leading to prosecutions of foster parents and state facility workers for sexual assault or failing to protect a child in their care.

Now Rogers office will investigate the system and how the state protects the chiildren and youth under its care.

"These are horrific, or can be very horrific, situations, and there are numbers to show it's not just once in a great while," she said ."What we're doing right now is looking to see if the system has gaps or if the system can improve to further protect these kids from sexual victimization."

Rogers investigation will focus on better understanding when and why youth under the protection of the state are being sexually abused and victimized and whether the state has enough safeguards in selecting its caregivers. The investigation, which will include interviews and data analysis, will look at whether the state has enough safeguards in selecting its caregivers.

It has the support of Gov. Pete Ricketts key legislators and, critically, HHS, which has pledged to cooperate with the inquiry and has already been working on improving the system.

Those improvements have included reducing out-of-home placements of children with a new service aimed at keeping children in their homes to be introduced in 2016 and an intensive family placement program.

Rogers investigation will, it is hoped, identify further areas for improvement and make specific recommendations to HHS and, if necessary, the Legislature. The recommendations will be made public in September as part of the inspector generals annual report. They should be taken seriously, as there can be no higher priority for the state than protecting children in its care.
Zully Samji has overcome a lot in his 47 years.

Abused as a child and plagued since adolescence by depression and anxiety, Samji has waded through a swamp of mental illnesses and addiction.

He says he has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, anxiety disorder and an eating disorder. He has fought alcohol, cocaine and crack habits, and is in recovery.

After three decades of mental health treatment, he has made some breakthroughs. But he says he still cannot find timely, affordable therapy.

My experience in the mental health system  I have two ways of feeling about it, says Samji. Ive felt supported at times and very marginalized at times as well.

Samji is one of thousands of Ontarians caught between long wait times for publicly funded therapists and high costs for quick access to private ones.

The result is a two-tier mental health system, says Dr. Sylvain Roy, president of the Ontario Psychological Association.

If you have money and can pay for services  you can see a psychologist overnight almost, Roy says. But if you dont, youre stuck on wait lists.

Read part 1 of this series:Patients suffer over gap between physical and mental health care

In the summer, Samji wrapped up a 12-week course of OHIP-covered cognitive behavioural therapy, in which patients learn to modify their behaviour by challenging their troubling or irrational thoughts.

In October, he was referred to a new psychiatrist in North York.

Samji is now on a waiting list. He will not see this psychiatrist until May 2017, at which point his therapy will have been halted for more than eight months.

The most likely destinations for people seeking therapy are psychiatrists and psychologists.

Both are qualified to diagnose mental health conditions and provide talk therapy. The primary difference between the two professions is that psychiatrists are physicians. They can prescribe medication and, critically, their services are covered by OHIP.

There is, however, a major backlog of patients waiting to see psychiatrists.

The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care does not currently track therapy wait times. But anecdotal evidence from patients, advocates and care providers suggests it can take weeks, months or even years to see a psychiatrist.

In 2014, the Ministry committed $2.75 million over three years to help the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, and three other psychiatric hospitals in Ontario, track wait times, find gaps in service and build frameworks for reporting and accountability.

The province is now working to create a standard definition of wait times, says Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care spokesperson David Jensen.

Once a standardized definition for wait times is in place, wait time information will be collected, monitored and publicly reported for both in-patient and out-patient programs, Jensen says.

Access to psychologists in private practice can be much quicker than access to psychiatrists. But psychologists, for the most part, are not covered by OHIP, and their fees can be prohibitively high for many patients.

The Ontario Psychological Association recommends its members charge $225 per session in private practice.

Roy says that amount reflects psychologist fees in the United States and the costs of office rent, staff salaries and other business overheads.

Most psychologists that I know, especially who work with more vulnerable groups, tend to ask for $150, $160 per hour, says Roy. They want to have a fair rate.

Many private psychologists will work pro bono or on a sliding scale for certain patients, says Roy, though it can be hard to find those less costly services.

A patient must find the psychologist they want to see, then contact them and ask for a discounted rate, which they may or may not provide.

Ultimately the work is on the patient here to navigate the system, which adds to the complexity of the whole thing, says Roy. Its a mess for everybody.

Even reduced fees can be too pricey for some patients.

When Samji was working full-time, he found a therapist who charged $60 per session.

Now I wouldnt be able to afford it, he says.

The Ontario government currently covers only minor subsidies for people trying to access private therapy.

People on provincial disability assistance or the Ontario Works financial and employment aid program can get coverage for the cost of their transportation to and from medical appointments, including therapy.

Jensen says Ontario has committed to providing health benefits for children and youth in low-income families, as part of its poverty reduction strategy. The province will explore in consultation with key experts and stakeholders, long-term options to extend broader health benefits to all low-income Ontarians, Jensen says, adding that the government will work with experts to determine what mental health services might be included in those benefits.

Many employer-provided healthcare plans offer some degree of coverage for therapy, says Dr. Karen Cohen, CEO of the Canadian Psychological Association.

The challenge with those plans is that, often, the limits on the coverage are so low that it isnt going to buy anyone a meaningful amount of treatment, Cohen says.

Dr. Kwame McKenzie, a psychiatrist who leads the Wellesley Institute think-tank on urban health, calls the situation laughable.

Theyll give you $300 or $400, maybe theyll give you $1,000. On the open market, $1,000 might get you five sessions, (but) if you need cognitive behavioural therapy, at minimum youre going to be into eight to 12 sessions, McKenzie says.

Its like they would cover cardiac surgery but you need a triple bypass and theyll just do one of the arteries. It doesnt make any sense.

The CPA recommends that employers offer $3,000 to $3,500 of therapy coverage.

There are psychologists on salary at hospitals, whose services are free, but theyre plagued by the same long wait lists as psychiatrists, and their numbers are shrinking, says Cohen.

When hospitals face their own public funding pressures, it impacts their own salary resources, Cohen says. More psychologists now, when they leave school and go into practice, theyre going into private practice, (not) public practice. And the minute you put it in the private sector its not funded.

The backlog of patients waiting for affordable therapy could be alleviated with better oversight and organization in the mental health care system, says Dr. Vicky Stergiopoulos, physician-in-chief at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

(In Canada) in general, there is a little bit of inertia across the system, says Stergiopoulos, who is also a faculty member at University of Toronto psychiatry department.

There isnt enough attention to flow, to really moving people on, graduating patients to other levels of care, to less care, or different types of care over time.

She also stresses that psychiatrists and psychologists are not the only professionals capable of delivering effective treatment.

There is a wide range of professionals who cost far less than psychologists and can be valuable members of a mental health care team, Stergiopoulos says, offering social workers and nurses as examples.

I think they should be available through either primary care services or general hospitals or specialty hospitals, adds Stergiopoulos.

It would be a wise investment to increase the number of inter-professional staff that deliver (mental health) intervention.

Across Ontario, counselors with masters degrees in social work or psychology provide free or low-cost therapy at community-based mental health organizations.

They are funded primarily by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, which also helps fund a helpline and website called ConnexOntario to help direct people to mental health and addiction services in their area.

Gail Czukar who, as CEO of Addictions and Mental Health Ontario, represents over 220 of those organizations, says they are less costly than putting more psychiatrists or doctors of psychology on the payroll.

But community-based mental health resources have wait lists too.

If somebody calls and they say, Well itll be a month before you can see anybody, people get discouraged and thats when they go and look for a private therapist at much greater cost, Czukar says.

Increased government funding could help the organizations expand their services, she adds.

Czukar, McKenzie, Roy and others continue to call for greater commitment to, and spending on, mental health by governments.

There needs to be a public ownership of mental health, Roy says. The Ministry of Health in every Canadian jurisdiction has to own up to the fact that mental health is a health condition.

Note  January 11, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version.

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The Toronto sisters accused of trying to extort and cyberbully a Nigerian billionaire through a sex-scandal website have apologized and taken responsibility for the site in a video posted on YouTube Thursday.

Sisters Jyoti and Kiran Matharoo, who have a substantial Instagram following, were accused, according to the news site Politics Nigeria, of trying to blackmail Femi Otedola, a Nigerian man named in Forbes magazines list of 2016 billionaires.

The sisters allegedly tried to blackmail Otedola by claiming they had evidence of him cheating on his wife that they would post to the sex-scandal website NaijaGistLive, according to Politics Nigeria.

In the video apology, posted to YouTube on Thursday by Linda Ikeji TV, Jyoti and Kiran Matharoo say that most of their sites stories were sent to them by close friends or associates of the people they wrote about.

We apologize to Femi Otedola and his family, especially his wife and children and all the other petitioners, read one sister, who appears to be Jyoti, in the video.

Otedola made his money in the energy sector, according to Forbes, which at one point estimated his net worth at $1.8 billion.

The intention was not to hurt anyone or to be malicious. The intention was not to extort anyone, read Matharoo. We havent received any money from the website.

Her next words are barely intelligible, but she says that that the money went to Babatunde Oyebode of Huzzle Inc.

In Nigerian court documents, the Matharoos list their address as 1080 The Queensway in Toronto.

That address does not exist on the Toronto land registry.

A Star reporter searched the area for 1080 The Queensway and was unable to locate a building at that address.

There is a condominium complex at 1050 The Queensway. The Star found no Matharoos listed in its directory.

Beside 1050 The Queensway is a parking lot. The property next to that is an LCBO, with the address 1090 The Queensway.

Local business owners told the Star they did not know where 1080 The Queensway might be.

In a series of messages to the Star, someone posting from a Twitter account under the name Babatunde Oyebode, listed as CEO of Huzzle Inc., said that he had been arrested and charged by Nigerian police.

He still faces charges of blackmail and extortion, but was released from jail on Dec. 17, he said.

The Twitter user posting as Oyebode, whose company Huzzle Inc. provides online marketing and brand services, told the Star he was hired to design and host the Matharoos website, but never met the sisters.

He was hired and paid through a third party, he said.

In a post to Facebook, Oyebode proclaimed his innocence.

I never ran the blog, I never publish(ed) for them or was I a party to any blackmail or extortion, he wrote.

The website NaijaGistLive was down as of Thursday night.

The Matharoo sisters have a large following on social media and also run the lifestyle blog Matropolitan.com, where they post photos depicting a lavish lifestyle.

Theyve shared their exploits  from flying in private jets and cruising in luxury vehicles to ritzy locations  and designer apparel on their personal Instagram accounts.

The women, who some have compared to the Kardashians, are usually seen pouting, always immaculately groomed and wearing designer clothes.

The pair snap pictures of shopping sprees at stores like Harrods, Dior, Celine and Tom Ford for their followers to see, as well as selfies of their outfits and the food they eat.

But Bryan Brown, who knew the Matharoo sisters when they lived in Toronto, said they arent as Kim Kardashian as everyone is making them out to be.

Brown, 35, said he knew them socially through his entertainment and promotion company StarStruck Experiences and said the sisters attended parties he threw at Skybar in Toronto.

They would come, they would buy their own bottles, they would buy their own drinks, they would pay for their own tickets, they never asked me for a dollar, for nothing for free, recalled Brown.

Though Brown has fallen out of touch with the women and said he didnt know they were in Nigeria, he remembered them fondly.

I didnt know them too personally, but Ive interacted with them a few times and theyve always been so sweet, theyve always been so nice.

With files from Peter Goffin

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Jim Lowther still remembers sitting in his basement more than six years ago, wondering what he was going to do next with his life.

After 15 years of service in the Canadian Armed Forces, which included tours in Bosnia, Lowther was medically released in 2005. His time with the military left him grappling with post traumatic stress disorder. He spent much of his time not doing much at all.

His wife Debbie and those in his circle of support told him it was time do something. Several weeks in a row, Lowther drove by St. Andrews Church and contemplated going in to help out with Sunday supper. Eventually, on his seventh drive past the church, he went inside and began helping those in need.

It was there that Lowther bumped into another fellow veteran.

He said he was homeless. And I was floored. It didnt resonate with me. What do you mean? What are you talking about? How did this happen? What the hell?

The man pointed to three other veterans at the supper, all of them struggling and without a place to live.

I went home and told my wife, and neither of us could believe it. We looked it up, and saw search results from the U.S., but little information about Canada, he said.

But as they soon found out, there were many homeless veterans in Canada. Lowther and Debbie conducted a boots-on-the-ground walk in Halifax and found several more veterans living on the streets. Then they heard from someone in Lethbridge, Alta., who was in need of assistance.

What began as a walk to seek out and help homeless veterans has now evolved into a national organization, with an army of nearly 500 volunteers that helps hundreds of homeless and in-crisis veterans each year.

Veterans Emergency Transition Services Canada (VETS Canada) has helped more than 1,400 veterans since it first began in 2010. Today, it serves 16 locations across the country.

In 2014, the VETS Canada was awarded a contract by Veterans Affairs Canada. The government funds three full-time staff members and an office in Halifax. Lowther says the government assistance means 100 per cent of all donations can go towards helping homeless veterans and those in crisis.

Tim Kerr, the director of Veterans Priority Program Secretariat with Veteran Affairs, said VETS Canada has helped identify homeless veterans that the department would likely not have been aware of had it not been for the organization.

They have certainly expanded our knowledge of how many homeless veterans are out there, Kerr said. We still, as a department, have a long way to go in terms of knowing the entire situation, but VETS Canada has provided us with an opportunity to reach out and help more homeless veterans than we would have without them.

Richard MacCallum, a veteran who spent 16 years as a reservist and member of the Armed Forces, was one of those people. He lost his business in the economic downturn, which cost him just about everything he had.

A year ago, he was working in Ottawa and staying at the Salvation Army shelter when he was approached by a VETS Canada volunteer who urged MacCallum to get in touch with the organization.

Not long after he emailed VETS Canada, MacCallum was taken out of the shelter and put in an extended-stay hotel, complete with a fridge full of groceries. He stayed there for three months while the organization helped him secure an apartment, and deal with medical issues. VETS Canada also provided proper winter gear, so he could stay warm while working construction.

I cant say enough about these people, MacCallum said through tears. The military looks out for their own. Its a shame that it has to come this. I honestly dont know where I would have ended up if it wasnt for them.

Now, MacCallum spends his limited free time volunteering for the group that helped him off his feet.

No one deserves to live on the street, MacCallum said. It doesnt matter if youre military or not. If we can help, thatll make a difference.

Before receiving help from the government and the hundreds of eager volunteers, the Lowthers sunk nearly all of their savings into the cause.

We had so many people that were suffering, so many families that were in need, we had to do it, Lowther said. Ive spent money through my career on some crazy things, but this wasnt it. This was something that needed to be done.

The organization says most of the veterans they assist are men who live in cities. However, the number of female veterans in need of help has increased in the last year, from six per cent of all total cases in 2015 to 16 per cent this year.

There are also more older veterans looking for assistance. Last year, 10 per cent of veterans helped were 60 years old or more. This year, that figure jumped to 25 per cent. Many veterans are struggling because of extensive delays waiting to receive a pension from the backlogged Department of National Defence.

Hilary Turner, a former reservist and volunteer who runs the Toronto chapter of VETS Canada, has seen the organization help not only homeless veterans, but those in moments of need.

In one case, a female armed forces veteran was moving to northern Ontario for her studies when her car broke down. VETS Canada offered to subsidize her travel costs in order to get her.

The organization hasnt just changed the lives of many veterans across the country. Lowther said its helped him find his own purpose.

I have PTSD, a traumatic brain injury, herniated discs, Im just as beat up as everybody. Until this, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, he said. I was lost in limbo. And then this became my mission. It was like okay, here is your something. Go do that.

Walter Semaniw, a retired lieutenant-general who helped get VETS Canada running in Ottawa, hopes Canadians become more aware of the help that some of their veterans need.

Veterans have been there for the nation when the nation needed them, Semaniw said. Every Canadian goes through a tough time in their lives, and so do veterans. They were there for our nation, and our nation should be there for them.

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MILANItalian Premier Paolo Gentiloni said Thursday that there are no indications the Tunisian fugitive from the Berlin Christmas market attack, who was shot dead near Milan, had any significant contacts in Italy.

Gentiloni noted that Amri apparently was radicalized while he was in Italy.

We know that in most cases, the radicalization happens in our prisons, in our neighbourhoods, Gentiloni said.

Italys top anti-terrorism prosecutor, Franco Roberti, told La Repubblica newspaper that Amri found the convictions of his radicalization path in prison, in desperation, isolation and marginalization.

Italian investigators have been trying to determine whether Anis Amri tapped a jihadi network in Italy, his European port of entry when he left Tunisia in early 2011 and the end of his nearly four-day flight following the Berlin truck attack that left 12 dead.

No particular networks have emerged in Italy, Gentiloni told reporters in Rome ahead of a security meeting in Milan headed by his interior minister.

But the prime minister said there still is a need to enhance anti-terror measures, including making it easier to deport migrants living in the country illegally. Existing measures already permit Italy to expel foreign nationals with suspected terror ties, with 66 carried out so far this year and 152 since the beginning of 2015.

They include a Tunisian man living in the northern province of Brescia who was expelled Thursday. The Interior Ministry alleged he received instructions last month to carry out an attack in Italy in retaliation for operations by Italy in Libya.

Interior Minister Marco Minniti said the deported man apparently had no connection with fellow Tunisian Amri and there were no indications any attack was imminent.

But the expulsion was important because he wasnt just any character. He had a profile that was potentially interesting, Minniti said.

Authorities in Rome, meanwhile, seized cellphones during a search of two apartments where Amri stayed in 2015, the news agency ANSA reported. One is home to a Tunisian currently jailed on a drug dealing conviction.

Amri died of a single gunshot wound last Friday after shooting an officer in the shoulder during a routine police stop in the working class Milan suburb of Sesto San Giovanni. He was spotted alone outside a deserted train station in the early morning hours, drawing the officers suspicion.

Minniti said such preventative policing was key to the terror fight.

We are facing a high level of unpredictability, and the only way of avoiding these actions is to control the territory, Minniti said.

Amri had crossed the border from France by train hours earlier, getting off in the Italian border town of Bardonecchia, then taking a regional train to Turin and another to Milan. His ultimate destination remains unclear.

Gentiloni credited good police work for ending Amris flight, but said the government would look at further strengthening anti-terrorism measures. That would include steps to make more efficient the repatriation mechanisms from the migrant centres, he said.

Amri told authorities after his arrival in 2011 that he was a minor, winning him the right to stay, but he quickly landed in jail after setting fire to a migrant centre. Attempts by Italy to deport him after his release failed for bureaucratic reasons.

MORE ON THESTAR.COM

Suspected contact of Berlin Christmas market attacker arrested

Footage reportedly shows suspect visiting mosque after Berlin Christmas market attack

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Its safe to say that most people are ready be done with 2016 and are all hoping that 2017 will be a far better year.

Celebrity deaths alone  most recently, and tragically, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds  political turmoil, war  the list goes on and on.

But one brave Birmingham, U.K. man decided to brighten peoples spirits via Facebook and remind them of all the good things that happened in 2016.

Matt Strange compiled the surprisingly long list, and the world listened, garnering him more than 104,000 reactions and close to 60,000 shares by Thursday.

It was originally just meant to be a shout at my Facebook friends to see that theres a lot of good they can see or do, Strange said.

He adds that he never expected it to go viral.

Its been mind blowing, when it hit like 1,000 shares I thought it would burn out in a day or so  instead its just still going.

While enlightening there were a few ambiguities, so heres a rundown of the list with a few clarifications. :

Theres an Ebola vaccine now  True. Researchers of the World Health Organization have been testing an experimental vaccine developed by the Canadian government in Guinea. Results showed none of 5,800 people who were given the vaccine developed the disease after all had some contact with a new Ebola patient  a 100 per cent success rate.

Child Mortality  Down across the globe  True. According to the World Health Organization, neonatal deaths have been decreasing since 1990.

+9% survival rate in pancreatic cancer sufferers  Inconclusive. There was no data to corroborate this. Most health organizations say that the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is lower; a bleak 8 per cent, according to the Canadian Cancer Society.

Gene responsible for ALS found  Not quite. Scientists announced in July that they had found a genetic variant that occurs in 3 per cent of ALS cases, making it the most common genetic cause of the disease. A breakthrough, nonetheless.

Volunteers in India planted 50 Million trees in 24 hours  Likely. It has yet to be confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records, but National Geographic reported it in July. Nat Geo adds that the previous record  a mere 847,275 trees belonged to Pakistan.

Suicide rates down globally  Not verified. There is no proof of this.

The Ozone layer is repairing itself  Partly true. The first signs of healing have been detected in the South Pole. But it is definitely a start.

The Rabbinical assembly issued a resolution affirming the rights of trans and non conforming individuals  True. Heres the resolution, from April.

MIND CONTROLLED ROBOT ARMS  True. The University of Minnesota published an article in the journal Scientific Reports purporting that, using an electroencephalogram, or EEG, subjects were able to place objects on shelves using brain waves.

Leo got dat Oscar  True. He sure did!

Wild tigers numbers up FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 100 YEARS  True. The increase is quite significant: According to the World Wildlife Foundation, the wild tiger population grew from as few as 3,200 in 2010 to 3,890 in 2016, an increase just shy of 22 per cent. The increase is due to conservation, better samples and other factors, says the NGO.

Giant Pandas  No longer endangered  True. However they are still considered vulnerable and the population is only 1,864 in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

A solar powered plane did a f---ing world trip True. It wasnt non-stop however. It took 17 flights at an average speed of 70 km/h for the pilots to circle the whole world in 505 days. The plane completed the journey in July.

Global Malaria down by 60 per cent  True. Rates have fallen that much since 2000 and between 2010 and 2015, according to the World Health Organization.

Measles ERADICATED from the Americas  True. This achievement culminates a 22-year effort involving mass vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella throughout the Americas, the WHO said in September.

93 per cent of the worlds children learned to read and write  the highest percentage IN HUMAN HISTORY  Not verified. Its unclear where Strange got this number. In 2014, the OECD reported 85 per cent of the worlds children were learning to read and write.

China plans to be completely renewable by 2020 and has a global plan for by 2050.  False. Chinas Ministry of Environmental Protection posted a statement on their website saying, By the end of 2020, renewable energy facilities will supply 1.9 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity, accounting for 27 per cent of total power generation, according to the National Development and Reform Commission 2016-2020 plan for renewable energy. Thats a start, but its not completely renewable.

Huge global push in renewable energy  True. A 2016 study from the Frankfurt School and the United Nations Environment Protection found that 2015 set a record for global investment in renewables: $285.9 billion, up 5 per cent from 2011.

Norway committed zero deforestation, zero  True. On top of that, they also banned deforestation as a whole in July, according to Forbes.

Every major grocer and fast food chain in the U.S. pledged to use cage free eggs only by 2025  True. This didnt just happen in the in the U.S., in Canada, Loblaw, Metro, Sobeys and Walmart also committed to cage free eggs in March.

Manatees  No longer endangered  Partially true. The Florida subspecies of the West Indian Manatee is, indeed, no longer considered endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The species as a whole has never been classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, however.

Wild wolves  back in Europe  True, but it happened in 2015. According to the Telegraph, wild wolves were spotted north of Hamburg, Germany, for the first time in 18 years in February 2015. They had previously been hunted to extinction in Europe.

Wild Salmon spawning in the Connecticut River for the first time since the American Revolution  True. Earlier efforts to restore salmon to the river had failed, but scientists discovered three salmon nests full of eggs in February, according to Al Jazeera. Thats something hasnt happened in over two centuries.

Columbian white tailed deer  no longer endangered  True. The ruling was made by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reclassified the subspecies, which lives near the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington, in October.

Green Sea Turtles  NO LONGER ENDANGERED  Partially true. Floridas Green Sea Turtles are no longer considered endangered. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association reclassified breeding populations in Florida and Mexico as threatened in April. The NOAA still considers some populations to be endangered, however, and the IUCN says the species as a whole is still endangered.

Sea World no longer breeding captive killer whales  True. Sea World announced it would stop the practice in March.

Humpback Whales  NO LONGER ENDANGERED  Partially true. The NOAA reclassified most humpback populations in September, after years of recovery. The NOAA was slow to come to this conclusion, however: The the species as a whole in 1990.

Global aid  up by 7 per cent  Partially true. The NGO Global Humanitarian Assistance organization found that the global humanitarian response increased for a third year in 2015, from 25.1 to 28.0 billion dollars. This actually represents an 11 per cent increase from 2014-2015.

Americas most generous year EVER in charity and aid  Not verified. The Giving USA 2016 report estimated that total charitable donations increased by 4.1 per cent in 2015.

Chinas most generous year EVER in charity and aid at $15 goddamn Billion Not verified. The Charities Aid Foundation placed China in its lowest rankings for the World Giving Index 2016.

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Theres no good time of the year to be hungry. But somehow the need seems so much greater during the holiday season and in the coldest months of winter.

Thats why its so important that Torontos Daily Bread Food Bank reach its collection goal for its holiday drive.

Sadly, with little time to go until wraps up on Dec. 31, the food bank has a long way to go to ensure no one gets turned away from its doors with less than a full hamper.

Earlier this week executive director Gail Nyberg told the Star the food bank was 900,000 pounds short of its 1.5 million pound food collection goal and about half a million dollars short of its cash donation goal of $1.5 million.

Not all donations have been picked up from collection centres, she acknowledged. But, this is the first time Nyberg, who has been with the food bank for 11 years, says she has seen such a large margin between the goal and what has been collected.

Although the holiday drive is coming to an end soon, the food bank accepts items all 365 days of the year at fire halls and grocery stores, Nyberg said.

Still, Torontonians should open their hearts and wallets to make sure the holiday drives goal is met.

The need is great and, sadly, it has been growing.

Food bank use in 2015-2016 was up slightly over the year before, the food bank reported in September. That was largely due to a spike in the winter months of 2016 that coincided with rising food costs and Syrian newcomers moving out of hotels and into housing.

And though food bank visits dropped 16 per cent in the core since 2008, they have spiked by 48 per cent in Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough as the poor move out of the city centre and into the inner suburbs.

While children make up 29 per cent of food bank users, the fastest growing group is adults over age 45. They made up more than a third of the food banks 905,970 visits last year.

Food bank managers believe that trend is the result of adults, especially single people, losing their jobs after the recession and still having difficulty re-entering the labour market.

Michael Moroz is one example of a single adult using the food bank. The disabled former CN rail conductor lives in a subsidized apartment in an Etobicoke seniors building. But the $770 in monthly benefits he receives from the Ontario Disability Support Program doesnt leave much for food after he pays his rent, utilities and outstanding debts.

At first he didnt want to use a food bank because of the stigma, he told the Star. But, as he now says: I share the same emotions of most people here. They are embarrassed, but grateful as hell.

This season of giving, then, is a crucial time for Torontonians to donate what they can as soon as they can so that food bank users wont find their hampers lacking on a cold winters day.

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Gategroup Holding said it will pay 237.5 million ($248.3 million) to Air France to take control of the airline's in-flight catering business.

The Swiss provider of airline catering will buy 49.99% of the unit, known as Servair, effective Jan. 1 and will finance the transaction initially through a bridge facility, which will be replaced by a capital market transaction sometime in the first half of the year.

The combined company will create an in-flight catering business serving more than 300 airlines in more than 200 facilities with 39,000 employees and annual revenue of more than Sfr4.4 billion ($4.3 billion).

"The new group will aim to take advantage of the best competences of both Gategroup and Servair and at the same time to have the most global network worldwide to better serve our customer. We will operate as one group with global leadership," Gategroup CEO Xavier Rossinyol said in a statement. "With this new step we will be able to further accelerate the strategy of efficiencies and growth."

Gategroup took charge of talks with Air France after Chinese conglomerate HCA finalized its purchase of the Zurich-based caterer on Dec. 22. Lazard is acting as Gategroup's financial advisor, while Bredin Prat is serving as the company's legal advisor.

Gategroup shares rose 0.38% to Sfr52.80 in Zurich by 09:45 GMT while Air France KLM fell 0.3% to 5.26 each.
Oil prices were holding steady as U.S. crude stockpiles unexpectedly increased ahead of the anticipated OPEC production cuts, which are slated to begin on Jan. 1, 2017.

U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate for February delivery was close to flat, trading at around $54.02 a barrel, while Brent crude futures were rising by nearly 0.3% to $56.39 a barrel at 11 a.m. ET.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said U.S. crude inventories increased by 614,000 barrels for the week ending Dec. 23. The build pushed stockpiles up to 486.1 million barrels, meaning domestic inventories are still near the upper limit of the average range for this time of year. Analysts had been anticipating a decline of 2.1 million barrels.

The EIA data differs the American Petroleum Institute's (API) weekly report that showed a larger-than-expected build of 4.2 million barrels. The bearish report halted the recent oil rally late Wednesday.

Crude oil imports declined to 8.2 million barrels per day last week. Over the four weeks, imports averaged 8.1 million barrels per day, which represents a 2.4% jump from the same period last year.

Refinery inputs decreased by 101,000 barrels per day to 16.6 million barrels per day last week. Refineries operated at 91% of their operable capacity last week, the EIA reported.

Meanwhile, motor gasoline inventories fell by 1.6 million barrels last week, but stockpiles are in the upper half of the average range. Distillate supplies fell by 1.9 million barrels.

Immediately following the report, shares of U.S. oil majors ConocoPhillips (COP) and Chevron (CVX) were holding relatively flat to slightly down during the trading session.

The build in domestic oil inventories comes just three days ahead of the OPEC cuts.

The cartel and 11 non-OPEC producers, including Russia, agreed to curb production by about 1.8 million barrels a day, for at least the first six months of the new year. OPEC's leading producer, Saudi Arabia, is implementing the biggest cut, reducing production by 486,000 barrels a day. Meanwhile, Russia has said it will trim its output by 300,000 barrels a day.

While news of the agreement and the anticipated rebalancing of the currently oversupplied oil market has moved prices to the mid-$50 range, there is still worry that OPEC member nations will not adhere to the cuts, especially considering OPEC's long history of cheating.

"Given the strained government balance sheets and considerable unity, we feel the agreement should last into the second half of 2017," says Coker Palmer Institutional.

A committee of OPEC and non-OPEC producers agreed to meet in January to discuss compliance with the production agreement, says Kuwait's oil minister Essam Al-Marzouq.

While OPEC cuts its output, U.S. oil producers, however, are expected to increase shale production. Research analysts with Coker Palmer Institutional say U.S. shale is needed to provide 30% to 40% of world demand growth of approximately 1.3 million barrels a day.

Traders will get a better idea of how U.S. companies are responding to OPEC from the Baker Hughes (BHI) rig count on Friday, which is seen as an important barometer for drilling activity across the U.S. and North America. Last week, U.S. oil producers brought 13 rigs online, while gas producers added 3 rigs. Texas' lucrative Permian Basin saw the biggest increase in rigs, climbing by four, which brought the total up to 262 rigs -- the most in any major domestic basin.

"I think the marketplace may place more importance on the U.S. rig count this week, with crude trading in the low to mid $50s, than on actual supplies," saysTheStreet contributor Stephen "Sarge" Guilfoyle.

Employees of TheStreet are restricted from trading individual securities.
VeriFone Systems, Inc. provides payments and commerce solutions at the point of sale (POS) worldwide. It offers countertop solutions that accept payment options, including contactless, NFC, mobile wallets, and EMV; PIN pads that support credit and debit card, EBT, EMV, and other PIN-based transactions; and multilane consumer facing commerce devices. It also provides portable payment devices, including small, portable, and handheld devices that enable merchants to accept electronic payments wherever wireless connectivity is available; and mobile solutions that attach to and interface with iOS or Android based smartphones and tablets. In addition, it offers integrated electronic payment systems that combine electronic payment processing, fuel dispensing, and ECR functions, as well as secure payment systems for integration with petroleum pump controllers; unattended and self-service payment solutions designed to enable payment transactions in self-service, high-transaction volume, and public transportation environments; and network access solutions. Further, it provides installation, deployment, training, and application development and delivery solutions; project management, client education program, and consulting services; helpdesk support, equipment repair and maintenance, and software post-contract support services; and application libraries and development tools. Additionally, it offers omnichannel commerce, terminal management, and security solutions; and cloud-based managed, transaction payment, and other value added services. It sells its products directly; and through third party and channel partners. It serves financial institutions, payment processors, government organizations, and retailers; petroleum, transportation, and healthcare companies; and quick service restaurants. The company was formerly known as VeriFone Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to VeriFone Systems, Inc. in May 2010. VeriFone Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Jose, California.
State officials appear to be changing the states execution protocol in an extraordinarily cavalier fashion -- doing hardly any research and with little review by experts.

A Freedom of Information request turned up no traceable evidence of research to determine best practices used in states with recent experience in executing people, no emails or correspondence with anyone out of state government.

In fact, there was virtually no written contact with anyone in state government either -- no drafts of proposed changes circulated with key responsible officials including Gov. Pete Ricketts (the individual most personally responsible for the reinstatement of the death penalty in Nebraska), Attorney General Doug Peterson, Corrections Director Scott Frakes.

The task of rewriting the states rules for putting a person to death fell to Julie Smith, an attorney for the Department of Correctional Services, and, judging from the available evidence, she was given little help, although Frakes said he worked with her on the protocol.

The rewriting was substantial. Smith made changes to 43 of the 53 section descriptors and subsections of the death penalty protocol.

Given the solemn nature of the subject matter, and given that the protocol is certain to be challenged in court, its puzzling that the Ricketts administration made such a minimal investment of time and energy in rewriting the document.

Smith may be a whiz when it comes to legalese, but every writer knows that good editors are a boon, especially when technicalities and nuances are of the utmost importance.

The Ricketts administration already made an embarrassing misstep in trying to implement the death penalty when it tried to buy execution drugs from a so-called broker in India with a questionable record. The effort was unsuccessful, and the state probably never will recover its $54,400.

If the Ricketts administration thinks the fact that six out of 10 voters supported reinstating the death penalty in November ended the discussion, it is sorely mistaken.

Myriad issues remain, especially since the proposed protocol changes put much of the execution process behind closed doors. Just last week, a federal judge turned back an attempt by Arizona to allow lethal drugs to be injected out of public view.

Use of the death penalty around the country is declining rapidly. It was imposed in 30 cases last year  the lowest number since capital punishment was reinstated nationwide in 1976.

Lincoln Sen. Colby Coash, one of the Nebraska conservatives who worked to keep the death penalty off the books here, maintained that the death penalty system was broken and couldnt be fixed. Judging from the low-energy effort to fix the protocol, it shouldnt surprise anyone when it turns out that hes right.
The following companies are subsidiares of Illinois Tool Works: A V Co 1 Limited, A V Co 2 Limited, A V Co 3 Limited, ACCU-LUBE Manufacturing GmbH - Schmiermittel und -gerate -, AIP/BI Holdings Inc., Accessories Marketing Holding Corp., Advanced Molding Company Inc., Allen France SAS, Alpine Engineered Products, Alpine Systems Corporation, Anaerobicos S.r.l., AppliChem GmbH, Avery Berkel France, Avery India Limited, Avery Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avery Weigh Tronix, Avery Weigh-Tronix Finance Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix International Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix LLC, Avery Weigh-Tronix Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Properties Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Suzhou Weighing Technology Co. Ltd., Azon Limited, B.C. Immo, Beijing Miller Electric Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Berkel Ireland Limited, Berrington UK, Brapenta Eletronica Ltda., Brooks Instrument B.V., Brooks Instrument GmbH, Brooks Instrument KFT, Brooks Instrument Korea Ltd., Brooks Instrument LLC, Brooks Instrument Shanghai Co. Ltd, Buell Industries Inc., CCI Realty Company, CFC Europe GmbH, CS Australia Pty Limited, CS Mexico Holding Company S DE RL DE CV, Calvia Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnosci, Capital Ventures Australasia S.a r.l, Capmax Logistica S.A. de C.V., Celeste Industries Corporation, Coeur, Coeur Asia Limited, Coeur Holding Company, Coeur Inc., Coeur Shanghai Medical Appliance Trading Co. Ltd, Compagnie Hobart, Compagnie de Materiel et d'Equipements Techniques-Comet, Constructions Isothermiques Bontami C.I.B., Crane Carrier Company, Denison Mayes Group Limited, Despatch Industries, Diagraph Corporation Sdn. Bhd, Diagraph ITW Mexico S. de R.L. De C.V., Diagraph Mexico S.A. DE C.V., Dongguan Ark-Les Electric Components Co. Ltd., Dongguan CK Branding Co. Ltd., Duo Fast de Espana S.A.U., Duo-Fast Korea Co. Ltd., Duo-Fast LLC, E.C.S. d.o.o., E2M Production B.V.., E2M Technologies B.V.., E2M Technologies Inc.., ECS Cable Protection Sp. Zoo, ELRO Grosskuchen GmbH, ELRO Holding AG, ELRO-WERKE AG, Elro Group, Eltex-Elektrostatik-Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Envases Multipac S.A. de C.V., Eurotec Srl, Exhibit 21, FEG Investments L.L.C., Filtertek De Mexico Holding Inc., Filtertek De Mexico S.A. de C.V., Filtertek SAS, GC Financement SA, Gamko B.V., Gun Hwa Platech Taicang Co. Ltd., HOBART Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Hartness International, Hobart Andina S.A.S., Hobart Belgium B.V., Hobart Brothers International Chile Limitada, Hobart Brothers LLC, Hobart Dayton Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Hobart Food Equipment Co. Ltd., Hobart International Singapore Pte. Ltd., Hobart Japan K.K., Hobart Korea LLC, Hobart LLC, Hobart Nederland B.V., Hobart Sales & Service Inc., Hobart Scandinavia ApS, Hobart Techniek B.V., Horis, ILC Investments Holdings Inc., ITW AEP LLC, ITW AOC LLC, ITW Aircraft Investments Inc., ITW Ampang Industries Philippines Inc., ITW Appliance Components EOOD, ITW Appliance Components S.A. de C.V., ITW Appliance Components S.r.l.a, ITW Appliance Components d.o.o., ITW Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, ITW Australia Property Holdings Pty Ltd., ITW Australia Pty Ltd, ITW Automotive Components Chongqing Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Components Langfang Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Japan K.K., ITW Automotive Korea LLC, ITW Automotive Parts Shanghai Co. Ltd, ITW Automotive Products GmbH, ITW Automotive Products Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Bailly Comte, ITW Befestigungssysteme GmbH, ITW Belgium B.V., ITW Brazilian Nominee L.L.C., ITW Building Components Group Inc., ITW CER, ITW CP Distribution Center Holland BV, ITW CS UK Ltd., ITW Canada Inc., ITW Celeste Inc., ITW Chemical Products Ltda, ITW Chemical Products Scandinavia ApS, ITW China Investment Company Limited, ITW Colombia S.A.S., ITW Construction Products AB, ITW Construction Products AS, ITW Construction Products ApS, ITW Construction Products CZ s.r.o., ITW Construction Products Italy Srl, ITW Construction Products OU, ITW Construction Products OY, ITW Construction Products Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Construction Products Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW Construction Services Manila Inc., ITW Contamination Control B.V., ITW Contamination Control Wujiang Co. Ltd., ITW Covid Security Group Inc., ITW DS Investments Inc., ITW DelFast do Brasil Ltda., ITW Denmark ApS, ITW Deutschland GmbH, ITW Diagraph GmbH, ITW Dynatec, ITW Dynatec Adhesive Equipment Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Dynatec GmbH, ITW Dynatec Kabushiki Kaisha, ITW EAE B.V., ITW EAE Mexico S de RL de CV, ITW EF&C France SAS, ITW EF&C Selb GmbH, ITW EU Holdings Ltd., ITW Electronic Business Asia Co. Limited, ITW Electronic Components/Products Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Electronics Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Epsilon Sarl, ITW Espana S.L., ITW European Finance Co. Ltd., ITW European Finance II Co. Ltd., ITW European Finance III Co. Ltd., ITW FEG Hong Kong Limited, ITW FEG do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW Fastener Products GmbH, ITW Fluids and Hygiene Solutions Ltda., ITW Food Equipment Group LLC, ITW GH LLC, ITW GSE ApS, ITW GSE Inc., ITW Gamma Sarl, ITW German Management LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings Y Compania Sociedad en Comandita por Acciones, ITW Global Investments Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Europe GmbH, ITW Global Tire Repair Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Japan K.K., ITW Graphics Asia Limited, ITW Graphics Thailand Ltd., ITW Great Britain Investment & Licensing Holding Company, ITW Group France Luxembourg S.ar.l., ITW HLP Thailand Co. Ltd., ITW Holding Quimica B.C. S.L. 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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Thomson Reuters Corporation provides business information services in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. It operates in five segments: Legal Professionals, Corporates, Tax & Accounting Professionals, Reuters News, and Global Print. The Legal Professionals segment offers research and workflow products focusing on legal research and integrated legal workflow solutions that combine content, tools, and analytics to law firms and governments. The Corporates segment provides a suite of content-enabled technology solutions for legal, tax, regulatory, compliance, and IT professionals. The Tax & Accounting Professionals segment offers research and workflow products focusing on tax offerings and automating tax workflows to tax, accounting, and audit professionals in accounting firms. The Reuters News segment provides business, financial, and international news to media organizations, professional, and news consumers through news agency and industry events. The Global Print segment offers legal and tax information primarily in print format to legal and tax professionals, governments, law schools, and corporations. The company was formerly known as The Thomson Corporation and changed its name to Thomson Reuters Corporation in April 2008. The company was founded in 1851 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Thomson Reuters Corporation is a subsidiary of The Woodbridge Company Limited.
Kinder Morgan, Inc. operates as an energy infrastructure company in North America. The company operates through four segments: Natural Gas Pipelines, Products Pipelines, Terminals, and CO2. The Natural Gas Pipelines segment owns and operates interstate and intrastate natural gas pipeline, and underground storage systems; natural gas gathering systems and natural gas processing and treating facilities; natural gas liquids fractionation facilities and transportation systems; and liquefied natural gas liquefaction and storage facilities. The Products Pipelines segment owns and operates refined petroleum products, and crude oil and condensate pipelines; and associated product terminals and petroleum pipeline transmix facilities. The Terminals segment owns and/or operates liquids and bulk terminals that stores and handles various commodities, including gasoline, diesel fuel, chemicals, ethanol, metals, and petroleum coke; and owns tankers. The CO2 segment produces, transports, and markets CO2 to recovery and production crude oil from mature oil fields; owns interests in/or operates oil fields and gasoline processing plants; and operates a crude oil pipeline system in West Texas, as well as owns and operates RNG and LNG facilities. It owns and operates approximately 83,000 miles of pipelines and 143 terminals. The company was formerly known as Kinder Morgan Holdco LLC and changed its name to Kinder Morgan, Inc. in February 2011. Kinder Morgan, Inc. was founded in 1936 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
RALSTON  A 23-year-old Omaha woman accused of breaking one of her infant son's legs has been given five years of probation.

Court records say Brittany Burgess was sentenced last week in Douglas County District Court. She'd pleaded guilty to a lesser child abuse charge after making an agreement with prosecutors.

Ralston police arrested Burgess last January. A court document said a hospital doctor told officers a bone in one of the boy's lower legs was fractured more than once and was caused "by pushing down and twisting."

The boy was 2 months old at the time. He and his older brother were placed in state custody.
Smart & Final Stores, Inc. operates as a food retailer in the United States. It operates in two segments, Smart & Final and Smart Foodservice. The company's stores offer fresh perishables and everyday grocery items, such as produce, meat and deli, dairy and cheese, grocery, and beverage products, as well as paper and packaging, and restaurant equipment and janitorial supplies. It also provides various private label products under the First Street, Sun Harvest, Simply Value, La Romanella, Montecito, Iris, and Ambiance brands. The company sells its products to household and business customers; restaurants; caterers; and various other foodservice businesses, such as food trucks and coffee houses through vendors and suppliers. As of December 30, 2018, it operated 326 grocery and foodservice stores, including 59 Smart & Final stores, 201 Smart & Final Extra! stores, and 66 Smart Foodservice Warehouse stores located in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and Utah, as well as 15 stores in Northwestern Mexico operated through a joint venture. Smart & Final Stores, Inc. was founded in 1871 and is headquartered in Commerce, California.
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.
The following companies are subsidiares of International Flavors & Fragrances: 1456111 Ontario Limited, A. Boake Roberts And Company (Holding) Limited, ASA Ventures Inc., Agtech Products Inc., Alpris Ltd., Amco SP Z.O.O, ApS Syntetic, Aroma S.A., Aromatics Holdings Limited, Aromco Ltd., Aromor, Arvin Company, Asian Investments Inc., Atelier du Parfumeur IFF Grasse SAS, BKF Vision Ltd, BSA India Food Ingr. P. Ltd., Belden Company, Branch office of DuPont Protein Technologies International Sales LLC, Bremil Industria e Comercio de Ingredientes Alimenticos Ltda. , Bremil S/A Industria De Produtos Alimenticos , Bush Boake Allen (New Zealand) Limited, Bush Boake Allen (Pension Trustees) Limited, Bush Boake Allen Australia Pty Ltd, Bush Boake Allen Benelux B.V., Bush Boake Allen Chile S.A., Bush Boake Allen Controladora S.A. de C.V., Bush Boake Allen Enterprises Limited, Bush Boake Allen Holdings (U.K.) Limited, Bush Boake Allen Inc., Bush Boake Allen Inc., Bush Boake Allen Limited, Bush Boake Allen Zimbabwe (Private) Limited, Bush Boake Allen do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., Butamax Advanced Biofuels LLC, Chemical Process Materials and Equipment S.A., CitraSource Holdings L.L.C., Columbia PhytoTechnology LLC, Columbia Phytotechnology LLC, Cometra ApS, Crestmont Investment Co., Cultor Oy, DDP Specialty Products Germany GmbH & Co. KG, DDP Specialty Products Poland Sp. z.o.o., DSP Germany N&B Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Daivd Michael Netherlands B.V., Dandy Lions Limited, Danisco (China) Co. Ltd., Danisco (China) Holding Co. Ltd., Danisco (India) Private Limited, Danisco (Zhangjiagang) Textural Ingredients Co. Ltd., Danisco Argentina S.A., Danisco Australia Pty Limited, Danisco Austria GmbH, Danisco B.V., Danisco Biosciences (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Danisco Brasil Ltda., Danisco Canada Inc., Danisco Chile S.A., Danisco Colombia Ltda., Danisco Cultor (Switzerland) AG, Danisco Cultor Sweden AB, Danisco Cultor Trading Ltda., Danisco Czech Republic a.s., Danisco Deutschland GmbH, Danisco Dis Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Danisco Egypt Trading LLC, Danisco Flexible Brasil Ltda, Danisco France SAS, Danisco Guatemala S.A., Danisco Holding USA Inc., Danisco Holdings (UK) Ltd., Danisco Holland B.V., Danisco Ingredients Belgium N.V., Danisco Italia S.p.A., Danisco Japan Limited, Danisco Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Danisco Mexicana S.A. de C.V., Danisco Mexico S.A. de C.V., Danisco New Zealand Limited, Danisco Nutrition & Bioscience Greece Ltd., Danisco Nutrition & Biosciences Korea Ltd., Danisco Nutrition & Biosciences Malaysia SDN. BHD., Danisco Nutrition & Biosciences Taiwan Limited, Danisco Nutrition and Biosciences India Private Ltd, Danisco Peru S.A.C., Danisco Poland Sp. z.o.o, Danisco Singapore Pte. Ltd., Danisco South Africa (Pty) Ltd., Danisco Sweeteners Oy, Danisco Switzerland AG, Danisco UK Ltd., Danisco US Inc., Danisco USA Inc., Danisco Ukraine LLC, Danisco Zaandam BV, David Michael & Company (Canada) 1986 Ltd., David Michael Europe S.A.S., Du Pont de Nemours Nigeria Limited, DuPont (Shanghai) Enterprise Co. Ltd., DuPont Acquisition LLC, DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol LLC, DuPont Denmark Holding ApS, DuPont Electronics Holding LLC, DuPont LA Holding 1 BV, DuPont Lanka (Private) Limited, DuPont Nutrition (Thailand) Ltd, DuPont Nutrition Biosciences ApS, DuPont Nutrition Dis Ticaret Limited Sirketi, DuPont Nutrition Food Ingredients (Beijing) Co. Ltd., DuPont Nutrition Ingredientes BRASIL LTDA, DuPont Nutrition International, DuPont Nutrition Ireland, DuPont Nutrition Italy SRL (f/k/a FMC Chemical Italy SrL), DuPont Nutrition Manufacturing UK Limited, DuPont Nutrition Mexicana S.A de C.V., DuPont Nutrition Mexico S.A de C.V., DuPont Nutrition Norge AS, DuPont Nutrition Philippines Inc., DuPont Nutrition USA Inc, DuPont Nutrition and Biosciences Iberica S.L., DuPont Protein Technologies International Sales LLC, DuPont S&C Holding LLC, DuPont Shineway Luohe Food Company Limited , DuPont Shineway Luohe Protein Company Limited , DuPont US Holding LLC, DuPont de Nemours Kenya Limited, ERELEM, ETOL SK s.r.o., ETOL-RUS Ltd., Eden Essentials Inc., Envoltec Industria de Embalagens Ltda. , Enzymotec Australia PTY LTD, Enzymotec Singapore Pte. Ltd., Enzymotec USA Inc., Etol Aroma Ve Baharat Gida Urunleri San.Ve Tic.a.s., Etol JVE d.o.o., Etol Proizvodnja Arom D.O.O, Etol Skopje DRUSTVO ZA TRGOVIJA ETOL UVOZ-IZVOZ DOOEL, FYMSA Real Estate LLC (23), FYMSA del Caribe S.R.L , Fangchen International Trading Ltd. (6), Finnfeeds Finland Oy, Finnfeeds Oy, Finnsugar Bioproducts Inc., Flavor Systems International Inc., Flavors and Essences UK Limited, FoodBlenders Limited, Foreign Trade Representative of Danisco Singapore Pte. Ltd., Fragrance Resources, Fragrance Resources (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Fragrance Resources Asia Pacific Ltd., Frutarom (Asia Pacific) Limited, Frutarom (Marketing) S.R.L., Frutarom (UK) Holdings Limited, Frutarom (UK) Ltd., Frutarom - Etol (UK) Limited, Frutarom Belgium N.V., Frutarom Chile S.A., Frutarom Czech Republic S.r.o, Frutarom Do Brazil Industria E Comercio Ltda., Frutarom Etol RO SRL, Frutarom Etol Ukraine LLC., Frutarom F&F Trading (Shanghai) Co., Frutarom Finance EUR AG, Frutarom Flavors (Kushan) Co Ltd., Frutarom Flavors Mexico S.A. de C.V., Frutarom Flavours (India) Private Limited (14), Frutarom France S.A.R.L, Frutarom Germany GmbH, Frutarom Gida Urunleri Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Frutarom Global Ltd., Frutarom GmbH, Frutarom Industries Ld, Frutarom Industries Ltd., Frutarom Italy S.r.l, Frutarom Kenya Limited, Frutarom Ltd., Frutarom Netherlands B.V., Frutarom Nigeria Limited, Frutarom Nordic A/S Flachsmann Scandinavia A/S Aksel Holm-Essensfabrik A / S, Frutarom Norway A.S, Frutarom Peru S.A. (Montana Food activity), Frutarom Production GmbH, Frutarom Savory Solutions Austria GmbH, Frutarom Savory Solutions Germany GmbH, Frutarom Savory Solutions Switzerland AG, Frutarom Savory Solutions Ukraine, Frutarom Switzerland Finance CHF AG, Frutarom Switzerland Finance GBP AG, Frutarom Switzerland Finance MXN AG, Frutarom Switzerland Finance USD AG, Frutarom Switzerland Ltd., Frutarom Trade & Marketing (1990) Ltd., Frutarom UK Investments Limited, Frutarom USA Holding Inc., Frutarom USA Inc., Frutarom do Brasil GRU Industria e Comercio Ltda., Genencor (China) Bio-Products Co. Ltd., Genencor International B.V., Genencor International BVBA, Genencor International Holding BV, Genencor International Indiana Inc., Genencor International Oy, Genencor International Wisconsin Inc., Genencor Mauritius Ltd., Genentech Ventures Inc., Grow Company Inc., Hagelin Flv (UK) Ltd., Hexachem Sociedad Anonima, IB EMEA Holding 2 B.V., IFF (BVI) Limited, IFF (Korea) Inc., IFF Aroma Esans Sanayi Ve Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, IFF Augusta Holdings LLC, IFF Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, IFF Benicarlo S.L., IFF Bio-Technology (Nanjing) Co. Ltd., IFF Capital Services, IFF Chemical Holdings Inc., IFF Delaware Holdings LLC, IFF Essencias e Fragrancias Ltda., IFF Flavors & Fragrances (Hangzhou) Trading Co. Ltd., IFF Fragrance GmbH, IFF Hungary Global Kft, IFF International Inc., IFF Latin American Holdings (Espana) S.L., IFF Mexico Manufactura S.A. de C.V., IFF Murcia Natural Ingredients S.L., IFF Sabores y Fragancias de Chile Ltda., IFF Turkey Aroma Ve Esans Urunleri Satis Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, IFF West Africa Limited, IFF Worldwide LLC, Ingrediants dooel Skopje, Institut Europeen de Biologie Cellulaire, International Aroma Group, International Flavors & Fragrances (Canada) Ltd., International Flavors & Fragrances (Caribe) Inc., International Flavors & Fragrances (China) Ltd., International Flavors & Fragrances (Greater Asia) Pte. Ltd, International Flavors & Fragrances (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., International Flavors & Fragrances (Hong Kong) Limited, International Flavors & Fragrances (Japan) Ltd., International Flavors & Fragrances (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., International Flavors & Fragrances (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., International Flavors & Fragrances (Mexico) S. de R.L. de C.V., International Flavors & Fragrances (Middle East) FZ-LLC, International Flavors & Fragrances (Myanmar) Limited, International Flavors & Fragrances (Nederland) Holding B.V., International Flavors & Fragrances (Philippines) Inc., International Flavors & Fragrances (Poland) Sp. z o.o., International Flavors & Fragrances (Vietnam) Limited Liability Company, International Flavors & Fragrances (ZhangJiagang) Co. Ltd., International Flavors & Fragrances (Zhejiang) Co. Ltd., International Flavors & Fragrances (Zimbabwe) (Private) Ltd., International Flavors & Fragrances Ardenne S.a r.l., International Flavors & Fragrances France Holding I SAS, International Flavors & Fragrances France Holding II SAS, International Flavors & Fragrances France Holding III SAS, International Flavors & Fragrances Holdings LLC, International Flavors & Fragrances I.F.F. (Chile) Limitada, International Flavors & Fragrances I.F.F. (Espana) S.A., International Flavors & Fragrances I.F.F. (Hungary) Kft, International Flavors & Fragrances I.F.F. (Nederland) B.V., International Flavors & Fragrances I.F.F. (Norden) AB, International Flavors & Fragrances I.F.F. (Rus), International Flavors & Fragrances IFF (Deutschland) GmbH, International Flavors & Fragrances IFF (France) SAS, International Flavors & Fragrances Irish Acquisition Company Limited, International Flavors and Fragrances Colombia S.A.S., International Flavors and Fragrances I.F.F. (Israel) Ltd., International Flavors and Fragrances IFF (South Africa), International Flavors and Fragrances Ingredients Ltd, International Flavors e Fragrances IFF (Italia) S.r.l., International Flavours & Fragrances (Australia) Pty Ltd, International Flavours & Fragrances (CIL) Limited, International Flavours & Fragrances (GB) Holdings Limited, International Flavours & Fragrances (Mauritius) Ltd, International Flavours & Fragrances (NZ) Limited, International Flavours & Fragrances (Pension Trustees) Limited, International Flavours & Fragrances (Thailand) Limited, International Flavours & Fragrances I.F.F. (Great Britain) Limited, International Flavours & Fragrances India Private Limited (13), International Frutarom Corporation, Inventive Food Technology (ZQ) Ltd., Inventive Technology Ltd., Irish Flavours and Fragrances Limited, K-Vision Consulting and Investments Ltd, Kelp Industries Pty. Ltd, Leagel GmbH (11), Leagel S.r.l. (19), Les Ingredients Alimentaires BSA Inc., Les Laboratories Bio ForeXtra Inc., Lucas Meyer Cosmetics, Lucas Meyer Cosmetics Australia Pty Ltd, Lucas Meyer Cosmetics Canada Inc., Lucas Meyer Cosmetics S.A.S., M.P. Equity Holdings Ltd, MISR Company for Aromatic products, Manseg S.A., Mark Services Holdings Inc., N&B Chemicals Germany GmbH, N&B EMEA Holding B.V., N&B Germany Verwaltungs-GmbH, N&B International Holding B.V., N&B NL BV - Saudi Branch, N&B Real Estate Verwaltungs-GmbH, N&B Services BV, N&B Switzerland  UAE Branch, N&H EMEA Holding 1 BV, N&H EMEA Holding 2 BV, N&H EMEA Holding B.V., N&H International Holding 1 B.V., N&H International Holding 3 BV, N&H Switzerland Holding Sarl, Nardi Armoas Ltda., Neptune Merger Sub I Inc., Neptune Merger Sub II LLC, New Asia Holdco B.V., Nutra-Lease Ltd. (16), Nutrition & Bioscience (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., Nutrition & Bioscience (Switzerland) GmbH, Nutrition & Bioscience (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Nutrition & Bioscience Pakistan (Private) Ltd, Nutrition & Biosciences (Finland) Oy, Nutrition & Biosciences (France) SAS, Nutrition & Biosciences (Sweden) AB, Nutrition & Biosciences (UK) Ltd, Nutrition & Biosciences Argentina S.A.U., Nutrition & Biosciences Australia Pty Ltd., Nutrition & Biosciences Brasil Ingredientes Ltda., Nutrition & Biosciences Canada Company, Nutrition & Biosciences Chile SpA, Nutrition & Biosciences Colombia S.A.S, Nutrition & Biosciences Hong Kong Limited, Nutrition & Biosciences Hungary Limited Liability Company, Nutrition & Biosciences Inc., Nutrition & Biosciences Italy S.r.l., Nutrition & Biosciences Japan K.K., Nutrition & Biosciences Korea Ltd., Nutrition & Biosciences Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Nutrition & Biosciences Netherlands B.V., Nutrition & Biosciences New Zealand Limited, Nutrition & Biosciences Singapore Pte. Ltd., Nutrition & Biosciences USA 1 LLC, Nutrition & Biosciences USA 2 LLC, Nutrition & Biosciences USA 3 LLC, Nutrition & Biosciences Vietnam Company Limited, Nutrition Biosciences USA 4 Inc, Nutrition and Biosciences South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Nutrition and Biosciences Spain S.L., OOO WIBERG Rus, P.T. Essence Indonesia, PARMA FA, PIASA USA (24), PM Taiwan Inc., PT Blue Cube Indonesia, PTI Astana LLC, PTI CA LLC, PTI Center LLC, PTI Group of Companies LLC (GK PTI), PTI-BEL TUE, PTI-MOL LLC, PTI-NN LLC, PTI-Ukraine LLC, Platinum Absolut LLC, Pointer Specialty Chemicals LLC, Protein Technologies Do Brasil Ltda., Protein Technologies International Asia Pacific LLC, Protein Technologies International Development LLC, Protein Technologies International Europe LLC, Proveedores de Ingenieria Alimentaria S.A. de C.V. ("PIASA") (17), Prowin International Ltd., Pucheng Yongfang Fragrance Technology Co. Ltd. , Redbrook (UK) Limited, Redbrook Blentech Limited, Redbrook Ingredient Services Limited, Rene Laurent SAS, Representaciones FYMSA S.A. de C.V (FYMSA) (18), Rohm and Haas Wood Treatment LLC, SP EMEA Holding 8 BV, SP Holding IB Inc., SP Nutrition and Health (Singapore) Inc., Sabormax Industria de Alimentos e Representacao Ltda., Savoury Flavours (Holding) Limited, Savoury Flavours Ltd., Solae (UK) Limited, Solae Argentina S.A., Solae Australia Pty Limited, Solae Belgium N.V., Solae Company India Private Limited, Solae Denmark ApS, Solae Deutschland GmbH (f/k/a CSY Agri-Processing (Deutschland) GmbH), Solae Do Brasil Industria E Comercio De Alimentos Ltda., Solae Europe S.A., Solae Holdings LLC, Solae Investimentos LTDA, Solae LLC (SMLLC of Solae Holdings), Solae Overseas B.V., Solae Trading (Shanghai) Company Ltd., Solae de Mexico S.A. de C.V. (formerly PTI Mexico), Solae do Brasil Holdings Ltda., Sonarome Private Limited (15), Southern Cross Botanicals Pty Ltd, Specialty Products Balkans d.o.o., Specialty Products FZE, Specialty Products N&H Inc, Specialty Products US LLC, Speximo AB, TNI Investments NV, Tastepoint Flavors (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Tastepoint Inc., Tastepoint OOO, Tastepoint Polska Sp.z o.o, Tastepoint SA (Pty) Ltd., Tastepoint Tovarna arom in etericnih olj d.o.o., Taura Natural Ingredients (Australia) Pty Limited, Taura Natural Ingredients (North America) Inc., Taura Natural Ingredients Holdings Pty Limited, Taura Natural Ingredients Ltd., Taura Natural Ingredients NV, Tekhnomol Soya Products LLC, The Additive Advantage LLC, The Additive Advantage LLC, The Foote & Jenks Corporation, The Mighty Company Limited (21), Thorungaverksmidjan HF (12), UFC America Inc., Unique Flavors Proprietary Limited, Unique Food Solutions Proprietary Limited, Unique Ingredients Limited, VAYA PHARMA HONKG LTD, VITIVA proizvodnja in storitve d.d., Vantodio Holdings Limited, Vaya Pharma Inc., Vaya Pharma Pte Ltd. (20), Venezuela Protein Technologies Internationla -PTI C.A., W.W. Holdings Inc., WIBERG Italia S.r.l., Wiberg Baharat San.Tic.A.S, Wiberg Canada Inc., Wiberg Corporation of California, Wiberg Corporation., Yderns 1 ApS, ZAO Danisco, extrakt chemie Dr. Bruno Stellmach GmbH, iDrug Delivery Inc.(Delaware) (22), nternational Flavors & Fragrances S.R.L., van Ameringen-Haebler Inc., and world wide WIBERG GmbH.

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Harley-Davidson, Inc. manufactures and sells motorcycles. The company operates in two segments, Motorcycles and Related Products and Financial Services. The Motorcycles and Related Products segment designs, manufactures, and sells Harley-Davidson motorcycles, including cruiser, touring, standard, sportbike, and dual models, as well as motorcycle parts, accessories, apparel, and related services. This segment sells its products to retail customers through a network of independent dealers, as well as e-commerce channels in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. The Financial Services segment provides wholesale financing services, such as floorplan and open account financing of motorcycles, and parts and accessories; and retail financing services, including installment lending for the purchase of new and used Harley-Davidson motorcycles, as well as point-of-sale protection products comprising motorcycle insurance, extended service contracts, and motorcycle maintenance protection. This segment also licenses third-party financial institutions that issue credit cards bearing the Harley-Davidson brand. Harley-Davidson, Inc. was founded in 1903 and is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.